THE ESSAYS AND SKETCHES
BY DOUGLAS JERROLD
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All rights reserved
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[Illustration:
“The two flasks were in brief time emptied.”
]
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[Illustration]
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The Essays of
DOUGLAS JERROLD
❧
Edited
by his Grandson
WALTER JERROLD
with Illustrations by
H·M·BROCK
1903
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON
AND COMPANY
West Twenty-Third Street
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
SHAKESPEARE AT CHARLECOTE PARK 1
SHAKESPEARE AT “BANK-SIDE” 7
THE EPITAPH OF SIR HUGH EVANS 13
BULLY BOTTOM’S BABES 22
SHAKESPEARE IN CHINA 28
SOLOMON’S APE 39
THE CASTLE BUILDERS OF PADUA 46
THE TAPESTRY WEAVER OF 50
BEAUVAIS
THE WINE CELLAR: A “MORALITY” 58
RECOLLECTIONS OF GUY FAWKES 67
ELIZABETH AND VICTORIA 75
THE LITTLE GREAT AND THE GREAT 90
LITTLE
THE MANAGER’S PIG 95
SOME ACCOUNT OF A STAGE DEVIL 103
FIRESIDE SAINTS 121
CAT-AND-FIDDLE MORALITIES: THE 127
TALE OF A TIGER
A GOSSIP AT RECULVERS 140
THE TWO WINDOWS 150
THE ORDER OF POVERTY 154
THE OLD MAN AT THE GATE 166
THE FOLLY OF THE SWORD 171
THE GREENWICH PENSIONER 181
THE DRILL SERGEANT 189
THE HANDBOOK OF SWINDLING 199
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“The two flasks were in brief time _Photogravure
emptied” (The Wine Cellar) Frontispiece_
PAGE
_Headpiece to_ Contents v
_Tailpiece to_ Contents vi
_Headpiece to_ List of Illustrations vii
_Headpiece to_ Shakespeare at Charlecote 1
Park
_Tailpiece to_ Shakespeare at Charlecote 6
Park
_Headpiece to_ Shakespeare at 7
“Bank-Side”
_Tailpiece to_ Shakespeare at 12
“Bank-Side”
_Headpiece to_ The Epitaph of Sir Hugh 13
Evans
“One who would have added weight and 17
dignity to the ceremony”
_Headpiece to_ Bully Bottom’s Babes 22
_Tailpiece to_ Bully Bottom’s Babes 27
_Headpiece to_ Shakespeare in China 28
“Became wise by poring on his book” 34
_Tailpiece to_ Shakespeare in China 38
_Headpiece to_ Solomon’s Ape 39
“Cast him down a ripe pomegranate” 43
_Tailpiece to_ Solomon’s Ape 45
_Headpiece to_ The Castle Builders of 46
Padua
_Headpiece to_ The Tapestry Weaver of 50
Beauvais
_Tailpiece to_ The Tapestry Weaver of 57
Beauvais
_Headpiece to_ The Wine Cellar: A 58
“Morality”
_Tailpiece to_ The Wine Cellar: A 66
“Morality”
_Headpiece to_ Recollections of Guy 67
Fawkes
“Rejoicing in the captivity of a suit of 70
clothes stuffed with hay”
_Tailpiece to_ Recollections of Guy 74
Fawkes
_Headpiece to_ Elizabeth and Victoria 75
“Rank ... preached its high prerogative 80
from externals”
“Hangman’s surgery” 83
_Headpiece to_ The Little Great and the 90
Great Little
_Tailpiece to_ The Little Great and the 94
Great Little
_Headpiece to_ The Manager’s Pig 95
_Tailpiece to_ The Manager’s Pig 102
_Headpiece to_ Some Account of a Stage 103
Devil
“Would solace the child by playing upon 113
a diabolic fiddle”
_Tailpiece to_ Some Account of a Stage 120
Devil
_Headpiece to_ Fireside Saints 121
_Tailpiece to_ Fireside Saints 126
_Headpiece to_ Cat-and-Fiddle 127
Moralities: The Tale of a Tiger
“Almost for two whole days did the tiger 135
sleep”
_Tailpiece to_ Cat-and-Fiddle 139
Moralities: The Tale of a Tiger
_Headpiece to_ A Gossip at Reculvers 140
“Sugar from even the sweeter lips of 143
lady mistress”
_Tailpiece to_ A Gossip at Reculvers 149
_Headpiece to_ The Two Windows 150
_Headpiece to_ The Order of Poverty 154
“He has dreamed away his life upon a 164
hillside”
_Tailpiece to_ The Order of Poverty 165
_Headpiece to_ The Old Man at the Gate 166
_Headpiece to_ The Folly of the Sword 171
“Hodge, poor fellow, enlists” 175
_Tailpiece to_ The Folly of the Sword 180
_Headpiece to_ The Greenwich Pensioner 181
_Tailpiece to_ The Greenwich Pensioner 188
_Headpiece to_ The Drill Sergeant 189
“He is, indeed, unbent” 195
_Headpiece to_ The Handbook of Swindling 199
“Politely receives his destroyer” 233
“Any one of these names may be ... 246
confidently given in to the night
constable”
“Other worthies laboured on horseback” 256
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
MUCH of Douglas Jerrold’s writing took essay form although he only
applied the title to five short pieces which were added as _Essays_ to
_The Chronicles of Clovernook_ in 1846. Those five pieces are included
in this volume along with others from his collected works, and from
among those scattered contributions to periodicals which have been
brought together at various times since his death.
Born in London on January 3rd, 1803, Douglas William Jerrold was the
youngest son of a theatrical manager then of the Kent circuit. His baby
years were passed at Cranbrook, his childhood at Sheerness, and then,
not having quite attained the mature age of eleven, he was entered as a
first-class volunteer on board the _Namur_, guardship at the Nore, on
December 22, 1813. Here in the ship’s school his education was
continued, and here the midshipman was allowed privileges dear to the
boyish heart; he was permitted to keep pigeons, and not the least of his
privileges was the being permitted the use of the captain’s collection
of books—that captain, it is pleasant to recall, being a brother of Jane
Austen. About fifteen months after joining the _Namur_ he was
transferred to the brig _Ernest_, engaged in convoying transports and in
bringing home wounded soldiers from the Continent. Then came Waterloo
and Peace. In October 1815 the _Ernest_ was paid off and the boy-officer
returned to civil life. At the end of the year the Jerrold family left
Sheerness for London, and Douglas made a new start as printer’s
apprentice, and perseveringly pursued a rigorous plan of self-education.
Then he began writing verses and plays, and when he was eighteen his
first piece was represented on the stage. Play-writing and slight
journalism were combined with the compositor’s work for a few years
before, throwing aside the composing stick, he relied entirely on the
pen. Numerous plays—of many of which nothing beyond the names is now
recoverable—were written before Douglas Jerrold made his “hit” with
_Black-eyed Susan_ in 1829. Thenceforward he was a busy playwright and a
constant contributor to the magazines, annuals and newspapers. In 1841
the advent of _Punch_ introduced him to a medium peculiarly suited to
his genius, and to that periodical he contributed his most popular work,
_Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures_, and one of his best novels, _The Story
of a Feather_. To the _Illuminated Magazine_ (1843-4) and _Douglas
Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine_ (1845-8), both of which he edited, he
contributed many characteristic essays and stories, but later he devoted
himself more particularly to political writing as editor of _Douglas
Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper_ (1846-8), and of _Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper_
(1852-7). He died on June 8th, 1857.
We have heard much within recent years for and against fiction “with a
purpose,” as though this was some new literary manifestation. Among the
best remembered writers of the early Victorian era are just those who
had a purpose other than that of merely amusing their readers—Thackeray
and Dickens are of course the two most striking examples. The author’s
purpose is often the salt not only flavouring his work for immediate
contemporaries, but also preserving it for future readers. That with
Douglas Jerrold this purpose counted for much we have his own words to
show. Prefacing one of his serial ventures he said: “It will be our
chief object to make every essay—however brief, and however light and
familiar in its treatment—breathe _with a purpose_. Experience assures
us that, especially at the present day, it is _by a defined purpose
alone_, whether significant in twenty pages or in twenty lines, that the
sympathies of the world are to be engaged, and its support insured.”
That this conviction was at the back of the greater part of Douglas
Jerrold’s writings no student of his work can fail to recognise. The
fact is perhaps answerable for much of his work having enjoyed but a
temporary popularity, for there are two ways of writing “with a
purpose”—the first the topical or journalistic way, and the second the
general or more philosophical. Yet if Douglas Jerrold expended himself
to a considerable extent over the particular, he by no means neglected
the general, of which there is abundant testimony in this volume, as
well as in _St Giles and St James_, _The Story of a Feather_, _Punch’s
Letters_, and that little book of golden philosophy, _The Chronicles of
Clovernook_.
The essays collected into this volume are, as has been hinted, from
various sources; the earliest dates from the late ’twenties, the latest
from the last year of the author’s life. No attempt has been made to
place them chronologically. It has seemed well to keep the five
Shakespearean essays together, representing as they do a life-long
interest of their author’s. In the early ’thirties Douglas Jerrold and a
number of other young Shakespeare enthusiasts—William Godwin the
Younger, Laman Blanchard, Kenny Meadows, etc.—formed the Mulberry Club,
at the gatherings of which essays and verses were read by the members;
some certainly of the following papers formed part of the club’s
“Mulberry Leaves,” as also did the same writer’s song on _Shakespeare’s
Crab Tree_, a song which may be quoted here, as it is not widely known,
to complete Jerrold’s “leaves.”
To Shakespeare’s mighty line
Let’s drink with heart and soul;
’Twill give a zest divine,
Though humble be the bowl.
Then drink while I essay,
In slipshod, careless rhyme,
A legendary lay
Of Willy’s golden time.
One balmy summer’s night,
As Stratford yeomen tell,
One Will, the royst’ring wight,
Beneath a crab tree fell;
And, sunk in deep repose,
The tipsy time beguiled,
Till Dan Apollo rose
Upon his greatest child.
Since then all people vowed
The tree had wondrous power:
With sense, with speech endowed,
’Twould prattle by the hour;
Though scattered far about,
Its remnants still would blab:
Mind, ere this fact you doubt,—
It was a female crab.
“I felt,” thus spoke the tree,
“As down the poet lay,
A touch, a thrill, a glee,
Ne’er felt before that day.
Along my verdant blood
A quick’ning sense did shoot,
Expanding every bud,
And rip’ning all my fruit.
“What sounds did move the air,
Around me and above!
The yell of mad despair,
The burning sigh of love!
Ambition, guilt-possessed,
Suspicion on the rack,
The ringing laugh and jest,
Begot by sherris-sack!
“Since then, my branches full
Of Shakespeare’s vital heat,
My fruit, once crude and dull
Became as honey sweet;
And when, o’er plain and hill,
Each tree was leafless seen,
My boughs did flourish still
In everlasting green.”
And thus our moral food
Doth Shakespeare leaven still,
Enriching all the good
And less’ning all the ill;—
Thus, by his bounty shed
Like balm from angel’s wing,
Though winter scathe our head,
Our spirits dance with spring.
With reference to the first of the following essays there recently came
into my hands an interesting letter from the author, which may well be
quoted here. Walter Savage Landor’s _Citation and Examination of William
Shakespeare_ had been published in 1834, and apparently Jerrold’s
correspondent had pointed out the similarity of theme:—
“11 THISTLE GROVE, LITTLE CHELSEA,
“_August 6th (1835)_.
“MY DEAR SIR,—_The Trial of Shakespeare_ was, I think, published
by Bentley. I have only read extracts from it in reviews; and
though therein I recognised _nothing similar to my little
sketch_, nevertheless the publication of the book does, on
consideration, seem to preoccupy the subject. I concluded that
you had seen something of the volume, or should before have
pointed it out to you. If you please—for I confess myself
somewhat thin-skinned under any charge of plagiary, the more
especially when unmerited—you may omit the first legend.
“For the second, it has never yet seen the light; nor am I aware
of the existence of any essay to which even the uncharitableness
of criticism might imagine a resemblance.
“It struck me, on reading it, that were it broken up more into
paragraphs—as new objects are introduced—it would be more
effective. As it is the images crowding so closely upon each
other—(whilst the spirit of the essay depends upon the
distinctness with which they represent the several plays)—may
confuse, and thus fail to satisfy the reader. If you think with
me, and will again favour me with the proof, I will make the
alterations with as little trouble as possible to the printer.
There being now only one legend, I should call the paper
_Shakespeare at Bank-side_.—I am, my dear Sir, yours truly,
“DOUGLAS JERROLD.”
“W. H. HARRISON, Esq.”
Beyond the fact that they both deal with the tradition of Shakespeare’s
deer-stealing escapade and departure from Stratford-on-Avon, there is
but little similarity between Douglas Jerrold’s brief essay and Landor’s
much longer work. With reference to _Shakespeare in China_ it may be of
interest to point out—the author in satirising his fellow countryman
later used the fiction of describing English characters from the Chinese
point of view in _Punch_ of May 25th, 1844.
If the first few essays testify to the author’s loving homage to
Shakespeare, others in no uncertain voice proclaim his political
radicalism, his detestation of war, and his sense of the truth that
man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn. In
_Recollections of Guy Fawkes_ the references to the Isle of Sheppy “some
five and twenty years ago” are reminiscences of Jerrold’s boyhood at
Sheerness. The pleasant little homily on human consistency, _The
Manager’s Pig_, is said to have been founded in fact; the manager in
question being Davidge of the Coburg Theatre, to whom Jerrold was for a
time “household author” at a weekly salary. The series of
_Cat-and-Fiddle Moralities_ so auspiciously begun with _The Tale of a
Tiger_ was not pursued any further. _The Drill Sergeant_ and _The
Greenwich Pensioner_ formed part of a series of _Full Lengths_,
contributed to the _Monthly Magazine_ in 1826-7; there were at least six
of them, but as I have not been able to consult a complete set of the
magazine, I have only been able to trace three—the two given and one on
_The Ship Clergyman_.
In the closing item of this collection we have a satiric essay of a
sort, which seems to have been in the air at the time; it was published
originally in 1839 with illustrations by Phiz, at the same time that
Thackeray by contributing his _Catherine_ to _Fraser’s_ was also seeking
to discredit “the Newgate school” of fiction. Later, in _Punch_, Douglas
Jerrold reverted to the “Newgate novel-mongers,” mentioning them as
still a power, and showing that satire had not stopped the demand for
their productions; and in one of the most popular of his comedies a
character is made to say, “When I was young, girls used to read
_Pilgrim’s Progress_, _Jeremy Taylor_, and such books of innocence; now,
young ladies know the ways of Newgate as well as the turnkeys. Then,
books gave girls hearty, healthy food; now, silly things, like larks in
cages, they live upon hemp-seed.”
W. J.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
SHAKESPEARE AT CHARLECOTE PARK
IT was a fine May morning when the bailiff of Sir Thomas Lucy, of
Charlecote, attended by some half-dozen serving men, rode quickly
through the streets of Stratford, and halted at the abode of his worship
the Mayor. The children in the street stood mute, and stared; gossips
ran to door and casement; Thrums, the tailor, mechanically twitched off
his cap, and for a moment forgot the new bridal jerkin of Martin
Lapworth, the turner, of Henley Street; John-a-Combe, the thrifty
money-scrivener, startled from a sum of arithmetic, watched the horsemen
with peering eyes and open mouth; and every face expressed astonishment
and surmise as the horses’ hoofs tore up the road, and the arms of the
riders rang and clattered; and their visages, burly and glowing, showed
as of men bearing mighty tidings. Had a thunderbolt fallen in the
market-place, it could not more suddenly have broken the tranquillity of
Stratford than had the sudden visit of Sir Thomas Lucy’s retainers.
Every one pressed to the Mayor’s house to learn the tidings, and in a
brief time one, taking up the fears of his neighbour for the truth, told
an inquiring third that the swarthy Spaniard, with a thousand ships, had
entered the Thames; that her gracious highness the Queen was a close
prisoner in the Tower, and that the damnable papists had carried the
host through the city, and had performed High Mass in the Abbey of
Westminster. This rumour was opposed by another, averring that the Queen
had drunk poison in a quart of sherris (a beverage much loved by her
highness)—whilst a fourth story told of her private marriage with the
Master of the Horse. Great wonderment followed on each tale. Some vowed
they would never be brought to speak Spanish, others religiously called
for fire upon all Catholics—whilst more than one good housewife hoped
that in all reasonable time her Majesty would bring forth a prince.
Stratford was the very court-place for rumour; old, yellow Avon paused
in his course, astonished at the hum and buzz that came with every wind.
At length the truth became manifest. No Spanish bottom poisoned the
Thames; no Spanish flag blasted the air of England. Elizabeth yet
gripped her sceptre—yet indulged in undrugged sack and cold virginity.
Still it was no mean event that could thrust seven of Sir Thomas Lucy’s
men into their saddles, and send them galloping, like so many St
Georges, to the Mayor of Stratford. Thus it was then; the park of Sir
Thomas had been entered on the over-night, and one fine head of fallow
deer stolen from the pasturage, whilst another was found sorely maimed,
sobbing out its life among the underwood. The marauders were known, and
Sir Thomas had sent to his worship to apprehend the evil-doers, and
despatch them under a safe guard to the hall of Charlecote. This simple
story mightily disappointed the worthy denizens of Stratford, and, for
the most part, sent them back to their various business. Many, however,
lingered about his worship’s dwelling to catch a view of the
culprits—for they were soon in custody—and many a head was thrust from
the windows to look at the offenders, as, mounted on horseback, and well
guarded on all sides by Sir Thomas Lucy’s servants and the constables of
Stratford, they took their way through the town, and, crossing the Avon,
turned on the left to Charlecote.
There were four criminals, and all in the first flush of manhood; they
rode as gaily among their guards as though each carried a hawk upon his
fist and were ambling to the sound of Milan bells. One of the culprits
was specially distinguished from his companions, more by the perfect
beauty of his face than by the laughing unconcern that shone in it. He
seemed about twenty-two years of age, of somewhat more than ordinary
stature, his limbs combining gracefulness of form with manly strength.
He sat upon his saddle as though he grew there. His countenance was of
extraordinary sweetness. He had an eye, at once so brilliant and so
deep, so various in its expression, so keenly piercing, yet so meltingly
soft—an eye so wonderful and instant in its power as though it could
read the whole world at a glance—such an eye as hardly ever shone within
the face of man; it was not an eye of flesh—it was a living soul. His
nose and chin were shaped as with a chisel from the fairest marble; his
mouth looked instinct with thought, yet as sweet and gentle in its
expression as is an infant’s when it dreams and smiles. And as he doffed
his hat to a fair head that looked mournfully at him from an upper
casement, his broad forehead bared out from his dark curls in surpassing
power and amplitude. It seemed a tablet writ with a new world.
The townspeople gazed at the young man, and some of them said, “Poor
Will Shakespeare!” Others said, “’Twas a sore thing to get a child for
the gallows!” and one old crone lifted up her lean hands and cried, “God
help poor Anne Hathaway, she had better married the tailor!” Some
prophesied a world of trouble for the young man’s parents; many railed
him as a scapegrace given to loose companions, a mischievous varlet, a
midnight roysterer; but the greater number only cried, “Poor Will
Shakespeare!” It was but a short ride to the hall, yet ere the escort
had arrived there Sir Thomas Lucy with some choice guests were seated at
dinner.
Hereupon the constables were ordered to take especial care of the
culprits, who were forthwith consigned to the darkest and strongest
cellar at Charlecote. Here, at least, it was thought that Will
Shakespeare would abate somewhat of his unseemly hardihood, for all the
way to the mansion he had laughed and jested and made riddles on the
constables’ beards, and sang snatches of profane songs, and kissed his
fingers to the damsels on the road, and, indeed, “showed himself,” as a
discreet, observing nun declared, “little better than a child of Satan.”
In the cellar he and his co-mates, it was thought, would mend their
manners. “As they do not learn to respect God, and worship Sir Thomas,
and honour deer’s flesh, as good Christians ought—and they learn not
these things in the dark—’tis to waste God’s gifts upon ’em to let ’em
see the light of day.” Thus spoke Ralph Elder, constable of Stratford,
to one of the grooms of Charlecote. “I tell you, John,” continued the
functionary, “Will Shakespeare’s horse didn’t stumble for nothing at the
field of hemp. God saves poor babes born to be hanged, for ’tis no
constable’s affair——Hush! mercy on us, they laugh—laugh like lords!”
To the shame of the prisoners be it spoken, the discourse of Ralph was
broken by a loud shout from the cellar. To add to the abomination, the
captives trolled forth in full concert a song—“a scornful thing,” as
Ralph afterwards declared it, “against the might and authority of Sir
Thomas Lucy.” The men, the maids—all flocked to the cellar door, while
the dungeon of the prisoners rang with their shouting voices. “It was
thus they glorified,” as Ralph avowed, “in their past iniquities”:—
“’Twas yester morning, as I walked adown by Charlecote Meads,
And counting o’er my wicked sins, as friars count their beads;
I halted just beside a deer—a deer with speaking face,
That seem’d to say, ‘In God’s name come and take me from this place!’
“And then it ’gan to tell its tale—and said its babe forlorn
Had butcher’d been for Lucy’s dish soon after it was born;
‘I know ’tis right!’ exclaimed the dam, ‘my child should form a feast,
But what I most complain of is, that beast should dine off beast!’
“And still the creature mourn’d its fate, and how it came to pass
That Lucy here a scarecrow is, in London town an ass![1]
And ended still its sad complaints with offers of its life,
twenty hundred times exclaimed, ‘Oh! haven’t you a knife?’
“There’s brawny limbs in Stratford town, there’s hearts without a fear,
There’s tender souls who really have compassion on a deer;
And last night was without a moon, a night of nights to give
Fit dying consolation to a deer that may not live.
“The dappled brute lay on the grass, a knife was in its side;
Another from its yearning throat let forth its vital tide.
It said, as tho’ escaping from the worst that could befall,
‘Now, thank my stars, I shall not smoke on board at Charlecote Hall!’
“Oh, happy deer! Above your friends exalted high by fate,
You’re not condemned like all the herds to Lucy’s glutton plate;
But every morsel of your flesh, from shoulder to the haunch,
Tho’ bred and killed in Charlecote Park, hath lined an honest paunch.”
Footnote 1:
“In the country a scarecrow, in London an ass!”—_Shakespeare’s Satire
on Sir Thomas Lucy._
The household were truly scandalised at this bravado. The night came on,
and still the prisoners sang and laughed. In the morning Sir Thomas took
his chair of state, and ordered the culprits to his presence. The
servants hurried to the cellar—but the birds were flown. How they
effected their escape remaineth to this day a mystery, though it cannot
be disguised that heavy suspicion fell upon four of the maids. The story
went that Shakespeare was a day or two afterwards passed on the London
road.
This tale was corroborated by John-a-Combes. For, many years afterwards,
a townsman of Stratford, who had quitted his native place for the Indies
just at the time that Warwickshire rang with the deeds of the
deer-stealers, returned home, and amongst other gossip was heard to ask
the thrifty money-getter what became of that rare spark, Will
Shakespeare, him who entered Sir Thomas’s park at Charlecote. “Marry,
sir,” replied John; “the worst has become of him, for after that robbery
he went to London, where he turned stage actor, and writ plays, _King
Lear_, _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, and such things.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
SHAKESPEARE AT “BANK-SIDE”[2]
THE bell of St Mary Overy had struck three; the flag was just displayed
from the Rose play-house; and, rustling in the wind, was like, in the
words of the pious Philip Stubbes, “unto a false harlot, flaunting the
unwary onward to destruction and to death.” Barges and boats, filled
with the flower of the court-end and the city, crowded to the bridge.
Gallants, in the pride of new cloak and doublet, leaped to the shore,
making rich the strand with many a fair gentlewoman lifted all tenderly
from the craft; horses pranced along Bank-side, spurred by their riders
to the door of the tiring-room; nay, there was no man, woman, or child
who did not seem beckoned by the Rose flag to the play,—whose ears did
not drink in the music of the trumpets, as though it was the most
ravishing sound of the earth. At length the trumpets ceased, and the
play began.
Footnote 2:
According to Rowe’s story, related to Pope, Shakespeare’s first
employment in London was to wait at the door of the play-house and
hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they might be
ready after the performance. “But I cannot,” says Mr Steevens,
“dismiss this anecdote without observing, that it seems to want every
mark of probability.”
The Rose was crammed. In the penny gallery was many an apprentice
unlawfully dispensing his master’s time—it might be, his master’s penny
too. Many a husband, slunk from a shrew’s pipe and hands, was there, to
list and shake the head at the player’s tale of wedded love. Nor here
and there was wanting, peeping from a nook, with cap pulled over the
brow, and ruff huddled about the neck, the sly, happy face of one, who
yesterday gave an assenting groan to the charitable wonder of a godly
neighbour—of one who marvelled that the Rose flag should flout the
heavens, yet call not down the penal fire. The yard was thronged; and on
the stage was many a bird of courtly feather, perched on his sixpenny
stool; whilst the late comer lay at length upon the rushes, his thoughts
wrested from his hose and points by the mystery of the play.
Happy, thrice happy wights, thus fenced and rounded in from the leprous,
eating cares of life! Happy ye, who, even with a penny piece, can
transport yourselves into a land of fairy—can lull the pains of flesh
with the music of high thoughts! The play goes on, with all its
influences. Where is the courtier? Ten thousand miles from the glassy
floor of a palace, lying on a bank, listening to a reed piping in
Arcady. Where the man of thrift? He hath shuffled off his trading suit,
and dreams himself a shepherd of the golden time. Where the wife-ridden
husband, doubtful of a natural right to his own soul? He is an Indian
emperor, flushed with the mastery of ten thousand slaves! Where is the
poor apprentice—he who hath weals upon his back for twopence lost on
Wednesday? He is in El Dorado, strutting upon gold. Thus works the
play—let it go on. Our business calls us to the outside.
There is scarcely a passenger to be seen on Bank-side. Three or four
boys loiter about the theatre, some trying, through a deceitful crevice,
to catch a glimpse of the play—some tending horses, until the show be
done. Apart from these, his arms crossed, leaning against a post, his
eyes fixed on the Rose flag,—stands a youth, whose face, though perfect
in its beauty, has yet a troubled air. As he stands, watching the
rustling beacon, it almost seems—so fixed is his look—as though he held
some converse with it; as though the fortunes of his future life were
woven in its web in mystic characters, and he, with his spirit straining
from his eyes, were seeking to decipher them. Now—so would imagination
work—there seemed voluble speech in its flapping folds, and now a
visible face. The youth turned from gazing on the flag to the open
river. Some spirit was upon him; and, through his eyes, gave to vulgar
objects a new and startling form. He was in a day-dream of wonder and
beauty; and as it is told that those doomed to the ocean with hearts
yearning for the land see fields and pleasant gardens in the heaving
wave,—so our hero, tricked by his errant fancy, gazed breathless at new
wonders sweeping before him. A golden mist shrouded the mansions and
warehouses on the strand. Each common thing of earth glowed and dilated
under the creative spirit of the dreamer. The Thames seemed fixed—whilst
a thousand forms moved along the silver pavement. The sky shone
brighter—harmony was in the air! The shades move on.
First passes one bearing in his hand a skull: wisdom is in his eyes,
music on his tongue—the soul of contemplation in the flesh of an Apollo:
the greatest wonder and the deepest truth—the type of great thought and
sickly fancies—the arm of clay, wrestling with and holding down the
angel. He looks at the skull, as though death had written on it the
history of man. In the distance one white arm is seen above the tide,
clutching at the branches of a willow “growing askant a brook.”
Now there are sweet, fitful noises in the air: a shaggy monster, his
lips glued to a bottle—his eyes scarlet with wine—wine throbbing in the
very soles of his feet—heaves and rolls along, mocked at by a sparkling
creature couched in a cowslip’s bell.
And now a maiden and a youth, an eternity of love in their passionate
looks, with death as a hooded priest joining their hands: a gay gallant
follows them, led on by Queen Mab, twisting and sporting as a porker’s
tail.
The horns sound—all, all is sylvan! Philosophy in hunter’s suit,
stretched beneath an oak, moralises on a wounded deer, festering,
neglected, and alone: and now the bells of folly jingle in the breeze,
and the suit of motley glances among the greenwood.
The earth is blasted—the air seems full of spells: the shadows of the
Fates darken the march of the conqueror: the hero is stabbed with
air-drawn steel.
The waves roar like lions round the cliff: the winds are up, and
howling; yet there is a voice, louder than theirs—a voice made high and
piercing by intensest agony! The singer comes, his white head “crowned
with rank fumitor”—madness, tended by truth, speaking through folly!
The Adriatic basks in the sun: there is a street in Venice; “a merry
bargain” is struck—the Jew slinks like a balked tiger from the court.
Enter a pair of legs, marvellously cross-gartered.
And hark! to a sound of piping, comes one with an ass’s head wreathed
with musk roses and a spirit playing around it like a wildfire.
A handkerchief, with “magic in the web,” comes like a trail of light,
and disappears.
A leek—a leek of immortal green shoots up!
Behold! like to the _San Trinidad_, swims in a buck-basket labelled “to
Datchet Meads.”
There gleam two roses, red and white—a Roman cloak stabbed through and
through—a lantern of the watch of Messina!
A thousand images of power and beauty pass along.
The glorious pageant is over—no! fancy is yet at work.—
Yonder ship, laden with sherris, canary, and spice—see how her masts and
rigging fall and melt, like metal in a furnace! Her huge hold, stowed to
the deck with wine, swells and distends, and takes another form. We see
no ship, but a man mountain, with a belly that “would sink a navy.” One
butt of red wine is sinking in the Thames: no; it moves and shapes
itself into something like a nose, which, rising like a comet, fiery
red, before him of the abdomen, seems as ’twere purposed for a torch to
light him “’twixt tavern and tavern.” And see——
But the day-dream of the youth is broken. A visitor, mounted, has just
arrived, and would fain enter the play-house; but there is none bold or
strong enough to hold his steed. At least a dozen men—it was remarkable
that each had in his bosom a roll of paper, it might be the draft of a
play—rushing from the Rose, strove to hold the bridle: but some the
horse trod down—some he struck paralytic with his flashing eye—some ran
away, half distraught at his terrible neighing. At length our dreamer
approached the steed, which, as it had been suddenly turned to stone,
stood still. The rider dismounted and entered the play-house, leaving
his horse tended by our hero. The animal ate from out his hand—answered
with its proud head the caresses of its feeder—and, as it pranced and
curveted, a sound of music, as from the horny hoofs of dancing satyrs,
rose from the earth. All stood amazed at the sudden taming of the horse.
The play ended—the audience issued from the doors. The story had run
from mouth to mouth, touching the new-comer and his horse. All hurried
about the stranger, to see him mount. He, with some difficulty, such was
the crowd, leaped on his steed, when, inclining his face, radiant with
smiles, towards the youth who had performed the office of his groom, he
flashed like a sunbeam out of sight. All stood marble with astonishment.
At length the immortal quality of the visitor was made manifest, for, in
the press and hurry, a feather had fallen from one of his wings—albeit,
concealed and guarded by a long cloak.
The youth who had taken charge of the horse seized, as his rightful
wages, on this relic of Phœbus, and, taking his way, he fashioned it
into a pen, and with it from time to time gave to the “airy nothings” of
his day-dream “a local habitation and a name.”
* * * * *
It is modestly hoped that this well-authenticated story will wholly
silence the sceptical objections of Mr Steevens.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
“Hearing little John Fenton lisp his Berkshire Latin”
]
THE EPITAPH OF SIR HUGH EVANS
“THERE’S pippins and cheese to come!”
Such are the hopeful words of an old divine—of one Sir Hugh Evans—a
preacher distinguished in the latter part of the reign of Henry the
Fourth, not so much for the ascetic asperity of his speech and bearing
as for a certain household wisdom that ran like threads of gold through
his most familiar sentences, enhanced and recommended by a blithe look
and a chirping voice; all of which excellent gifts made him the oracle
and friend of the yeomen and goodwives of Windsor. These inestimable
qualities—to say nothing of his miraculous hand at bowls, and his
marvellous sagacity as a brewer of sack—had, as we have already
inferred, endeared him to his flock: and, living, and preaching, and
gossiping in a neighbourhood of love and good fellowship, the parson
grew old, his cheek mellowing to the last; when, in the year——, he fell,
like an over-ripe plum from the tree, into his grave—all the singing men
and maids and little children of mournful Windsor following their
teacher to his couch of earth, and chanting around it the hymn best
loved by him when living.
In sooth, the funeral of the poor knight was most bravely attended. Six
stout morrice-men carried the corpse from a cottage, the property of the
burly, roystering Host of the “Garter”—a pretty rustic nook, near
Datchet Meads, whither the worn-out parson had, for six months before
his death, retired from the stir and bustle of Windsor—and where, on a
summer evening, he might be seen seated in the porch, patiently hearing
little John Fenton lisp his Berkshire Latin,—the said John being the
youngest grandson of old Master Page, and godchild of the grey-headed,
big-bellied landlord of the “Garter.” Poor Sir Hugh had long been
afflicted with a vexing asthma; and, though in his gayer times he would
still brew sack for younger revellers, telling them rare tales of “poor
dear Sir John and the Prince,” he had, for seven years before his death,
eschewed his former sports, and was never known to hear of a match of
bowls that he did not shake his head and sigh,—and then, like a
stout-hearted Christian as he was, soothe his discomfited spirit with
the snatch of an old song. Doctor Caius had, on his death-bed,
bequeathed to Sir Hugh an inestimable treasure; nothing less than a
prescription—a very charm—to take away a winter cough: for three years
had it been to Sir Hugh as the best gift of King Oberon; but the fourth
winter the amulet cast its virtue, and from year to year the parson grew
worse and worse,—when, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, on a bright
May morning, in the arms of his gossip and friend, staid, sober Master
Slender, with the Host of the “Garter” seated (for he was too fat to
stand) in an arm-chair at the bedside, and Master Page and Master Ford
at the foot, Sir Hugh Evans, knight and priest, passed into death, as
into a sweet, sound sleep. His wits had wandered somewhat during the
night,—for he talked of “Herne the hunter” and “a boy in white”; and
then he tried to chirrup a song,—and Masters Page and Ford smiled sadly
in each other’s face as the dying man, chuckling as he carolled, trolled
forth—
“Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles, and starlight, and moonshine be out.”
As the day advanced, the dying man became more calm; and at length,
conscious of his state, he passed away at half-past nine in the morning,
with a look of serenest happiness—and “God be with you!” were the last
words that fluttered from his lips.
The personal property of the dead parson was shared among his friends
and servants. Master Slender inherited his “Book of Songs and Posies”;
the Host of the “Garter” the sword with which Sir Hugh had dared Doctor
Caius to mortal combat; and all his wardrobe, consisting of two entire
suits and four shirts, somewhat softened the grief of Francis Simple—son
of Simple, former retainer of Master Slender, and for three years
body-servant of dead Sir Hugh. A sum of two shillings and fourpence,
discovered among the effects of the deceased, was faithfully distributed
to the parish poor.
[Illustration:
“One ... who would have added weight and dignity to the ceremony”
]
There was sadness in Windsor streets as the funeral procession moved
slowly towards the church. Old men and women talked of the frolics of
Sir Hugh; and though they said he had been in his day something of the
merriest for a parson, yet more than one gossip declared it to be her
belief that “worse men had been made bishops.” A long train of friends
and old acquaintance followed the body. First, came worthy Master
Slender—chief mourner. He was a bachelor, a little past his prime of
life, with a sad and sober brow, and a belly inclining to portliness.
The severe censors of Windsor had called him woman-hater, for that in
his songs and in his speech he would bear too hardly on the frailties
and fickleness of the delicate sex; for which unjust severity older
people might perchance, and they would, have found some small apology.
For, in truth, Master Slender was a man of softest heart; and though he
studiously avoided the company of women, he was the friend of all the
children of Datchet and Windsor. He always carried apples in his pocket
for little John Fenton, youngest child of Anne Fenton, formerly Anne
Page; and was once found sitting in Windsor Park, with little John upon
his knees,—Master Slender crying like a chidden maid. Of this enough.
Let it now suffice to say that Master Slender—for the Host was too heavy
to walk—was chief mourner. Then followed Ford and his wife; next, Mr
Page and his son William,—poor Mrs Page being dead two years at
Christmas, from a cold caught with over dancing, and then obstinately
walking through the snow from her old gossip Ford’s. Next in the
procession were Master Fenton and his wife, and then followed their
eight children in couples; then Robin—now a prosperous vintner, once
page to Sir John,—with Francis Simple; and then a score of little ones,
to whom the poor dead parson would give teaching in reading and
writing,—and, where he marked an apter wit among his free disciples,
something of the Latin accidence. These were all that followed Sir Hugh
Evans to his rest—for death had thinned the thick file of his old
acquaintance. One was wanting, who would have added weight and dignity
to the ceremony—who, had he not some few years before been called to
fill the widest grave that was ever dug for flesh, would have cast from
his broad and valiant face a lustrous sorrow on the manes of the dead
churchman,—who would have wept tears, rich as wine, upon the coffin of
his old friend; for to him, in the convenient greatness of his heart,
all men, from the prince of the blood to the nimming knave who stole the
“handle of Mrs Bridget’s fan,” were, by turns, friends and good fellows;
who, at the supper at the “Garter” (for the Host gave a solemn feast in
celebration of the mournful event), would have moralised on death and
mortal accidents, and, between his tankards, talked fine philosophy—true
divinity; would have caroused to the memory of the dead in the most
religious spirit of sack, and have sent round whole flagons of surest
consolation. Alas! this great, this seeming invincible spirit, this
mighty wit, with jests all but rich enough to laugh Death from his
purpose—to put him civilly aside with a quip, bidding him to pass on and
strike at leaner bosoms,—he himself, though with “three fingers on the
ribs,” had been hit; and he, who seemed made to live for ever, an
embodied principle of fleshly enjoyment,—he, the great Sir John—
“He was dead and nailèd in his chest.”
Others, too, passed away with their great dominator, were wanting at the
ceremonial. Where was he, with nose enshrining jests richer to us than
rubies? Truly liberal, yet most unfortunate spirit, hapless Bardolph;
where, when Sir Hugh was laid upon the lap of his mother earth, oh!
where wert thou? Where was that glorious feature that, had the burying
been at the dead time of night, would have outshone the torches? Where
was that all-rich—all-lovely nose? Alack! it may be in the maws of
French falcons; its luckless owner throttled on the plains of Agincourt
for almost the smallest theft; hung up by fellest order of the Fifth
Henry—of his old boon companion, his brother robber on the field of
Gadshill. And could Harry march from the plain with laurel on his brow
and leave the comrade of his youth—his fellow-footpad—with neck mortally
cut “with edge of penny cord”? Should such a chaplet have been
intertwined with such hemp? The death of Bardolph is a blot—a foul, foul
blot on the ’scutcheon of Agincourt. But let us pass the ingratitude and
tyranny of kings, to dwell wholly upon the burial of Sir Hugh.
Who shall say that all the spirits with whom the parson was wont to
recreate himself,—to counsel, to quarrel,—who shall say that they did
not all mingle in the procession, all once again pass through the
streets of ancient Windsor? The broad shadow of Sir John, arm-in-arm
with the spirit of Mrs Page,—Bardolph and Nym, descended from their
gibbets, new from the plains of France, to make melancholy holiday in
Berkshire,—learned Dr Caius, babbling Quickly, and Pistol, her broken,
war-worn husband, kicked down the tavern stairs, where in his old days
he served as drawer, and was killed,—and Shallow, immortal Shallow, his
lean ghost fluttering with a sense of office,—who shall say that all
these did not crowd about the coffin of good Sir Hugh, and, as he was
laid in the grave, give him a smiling welcome to his everlasting
habitation? Let us not, in this day of light, be charged with
superstition, if in these pages—perpetual as adamant—we register our
belief, a belief mingling in our very blood, that all these illustrious
ghosts followed, and, with their dim majesty, ennobled the
procession,—albeit, to the eyes of the uninitiate, none but the living
did service to the dead.
Sir Hugh Evans was laid by the side of his old friend and old
antagonist, Doctor Caius; and, for many years, there was a story among
the good wives of Windsor, that the fairies, once a year, danced round
the grave of Sir Hugh, the turf upon it growing as bright as emeralds;
and, in a hawthorn bush, but a few paces from the spot, “melodious
birds” did, at certain seasons, “sing madrigals.”
We have now to speak of the epitaph of the good Sir Hugh. More than four
hundred years have passed away since the mortal part of that most worthy
piece of Welsh divinity was consigned to dust. It may be a lesson to
ambition to learn that the exact spot where he was buried cannot, at the
present time, be verified: the ablest antiquarians are at odds about it.
Proud, however,—and, we trust, not unbecomingly so,—are we to be the
means of publishing to the world the epitaph of Sir Hugh, copied from
his tombstone, in the possession of a gentleman in Berkshire, who has
resisted our most earnest supplications that he would suffer us to make
known his name. This favour he has resolutely refused; but has, in the
most handsome manner, presented us with the use of the tombstone,
together with a most voluminous, and no less satisfactory, account of
its genuineness. Happy should we have been could we have found room for
the history of the relic at full. Leaving it, however, for the archives
of the Antiquarian Society, we must content ourselves with stating that
the document fully proves that the tombstone was erected from the
private munificence of Master Slender, and that the pithy and most
touching epitaph inscribed upon it was selected by his happy taste, as
combining all the excellences of an epitaph in the fewest words—these
words having the further recommendation of being uttered, on a memorable
occasion, by the deceased himself. The words were repeated to Master
Slender by his servant Simple, despatched, on a certain day, by Sir Hugh
with a letter touching the wooing of Anne Page. After long pondering,
reviewing every circumstance of his ancient friendship with the dead Sir
Hugh,—seated, one sunny afternoon, on the bench outside the “Garter,”
the words came jump again into the mind of Slender; and quickly raising
and emptying his tankard, he marched, like a man resolved, to the
stone-cutter, and—for he cared not for Latin—bade the workman cut on the
stone—(the inscription, considering its age, is in a wonderful state of
preservation)—the words that follow:—
HUGH EVANS
PRIESTE
Dyed atte Datchette
MAY—ANNO DOMI 14—
AGED—
“THERE’S PIPPINS AND CHEESE—TO COME.”
How simply, yet how beautifully, does this epitaph shadow forth the
fruitfulness of the future! How delicate, and yet how sufficing, its
note of promise!—
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“THERE’S PIPPINS AND CHEESE—TO COME.”
Pippins! Does not the word, upon a tombstone, conjure up thoughts of
Hesperian gardens—of immortal trees, laden with golden fruit; with
delicious produce, the growth of a soil where not one useless weed takes
root, where no baneful snake rustles among the grass, where no blight
descends, no canker withers? Where we may pluck from the consenting
boughs, and eat, and eat—and never, as in earthly things, find a worm at
the core, a rottenness at the heart, where outside beauty tempted us to
taste? “There’s pippins _to come_!” The evil and misery gathered with
the apple of death will be destroyed—forgotten—by the ambrosial fruit to
be plucked for ever in immortal orchards!—
“THERE’S PIPPINS AND CHEESE—TO COME!”
What a picture of plenty in its most beneficent aspect—what a prospect
of pastoral abundance!
Think of it, ye oppressed of the earth! Ye, who are bowed and pinched by
want—ye, who are scourged by the hands of persecution—ye, crushed with
misery—ye, doomed to the bitterness of broken faith; take this
consolation to your wearied souls—apply this balsam to your bruised
hearts.—Though all earth be to you as barren as the sands—
“THERE’S PIPPINS AND CHEESE—TO COME!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
BULLY BOTTOM’S BABES
THE immortal weaver of Athens hath a host of descendants. They are
scattered throughout every country of the world, their moral likeness to
their sage ancestor becoming stronger in the land of wealth and luxury.
They are a race marked and distinguished by the characteristics of their
first parent—omnivorous selfishness and invulnerable self-complacency.
They wear the ass’s head, yet know it not; and heedless of the devotion,
have the Titania fortune still to round their temples “with coronets of
fresh and fragrant flowers.” They sleep to the watching of an enamoured
fairy, and wake only to new experiences of her tenderness and beauty.
“Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries;
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes,
To have my love to bed and to arise:
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.”
Have we not here the adjuration of the fairy fortune to all her
ministering delights and pleasures of the world, to render service and
to do homage to the dull-brained creature of her passion? Extract the
poetry, the delicious fancy, from the injunction of the Queen of
Fairies, and what is it but the command of worldly luck to her many
servitors, to seek all imaginable delights for the sordid lump of earth,
the mere animal with an “ass’s head” her diseased and wayward affections
have made an idol of? Is not the world thronged with these Bottoms? In
shape, in lineament, in every moral feature, are they not the veritable
descendants of the swaggering homespun Athenian? They are the very
nurslings of fortune, the monstrous and uncouth objects of her blind and
fickle passion; yet do they submit to her endearments with no distrust,
no passing suspicion of their own worthiness. They receive her
blandishments as nothing more than a just and rightful reward for
excellence. They cannot conceive how it could have been otherwise. Their
imagination, vassal to their self-complacency, will not allow them to
change places for an instant with their less prosperous fellow. No;
Fortune dotes upon them, and how can she help it? Her extravagant
fondness is not excused, but justified, made inevitable by the excelling
worthiness of their parts. Hence, with what serenity they issue mandates
to the retainers of their fond mistress—with what lordly self-conviction
of their own merits they accept their service! How they order Cobweb,
Peaseblossom, and Mustardseed to do their fantastic bidding, as though
their bondmaster, created with natural and inalienable right to their
feudality. Nothing in the way of greatness surprises them—no flattery
startles them.
“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful!” cries Titania to her
ass-headed lover, and he by no syllable disclaims the truth, the justice
of the eulogy. He swallows the praise as his natural food, takes the
sweet sound of his doting goddess as rightful, every-day applause. He is
loved by a goddess, for the goddess—we have said it—cannot help it.
The insensibility of the sons of Bottom is one of their grand, their
unerring characteristics. It is this profitable faculty that would make
them task the daintiest spirits for their own poorest, vilest wants, and
dream of nothing monstrous or extravagant in such application.
“I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb: if I cut
my finger, I shall make bold with you.”
“Scratch my head, Peaseblossom.”
“Monsieur Cobweb; good mounsieur, get you your weapons in your hand, and
kill me a red-hipped bumble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good
mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag.”
Thus spoke the great progenitor, Bottom; and of a verity his children
are not more shame-faced task-masters.
Next, let us contrast the power and beauty of delights placed by Queen
Titania at his will, with the mean, the sordid wretchedness of Bottom’s
appetite and tastes.
“_Tit._ What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?
“_Bot._ I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let’s have the tongs and
bones.
“_Tit._ Or say, sweet love, what thou desir’st to eat.
“_Bot._ Truly a peck of provender: I could munch your good dry oats.
Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay,
hath no fellow.
“_Tit._ I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
The squirrel’s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.
“_Bot._ I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I pray
you, let none of your people stir me: I have an exposition of sleep come
upon me.
“_Tit._ Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
Fairies, be gone, and be always away.
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
_Oh, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!_”
Is this a scene of mere fairy-land? No; but a thing of hard, every-day
prosaic life. Have we not about us the children, the thick-headed
descendants of Bottom, with the Titania fortune tempting them to the
enjoyments of the rarest and sweetest delights? and yet the coarse
animal craving of
“The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,”
make answer to her dainty invitations with the poorest, coarsest
desires! A goddess bids them choose music, and they are for nothing but
“tongs and bones.” Fortune prays them to the banquet on immortal food,
and, with asinine stubbornness, they bray for “a handful or two of dried
peas.” They are warbled to by a goddess, and, unconscious of the homage,
they make answer with the sense of an ass. We ask it, did Bottom die
childless?
Bottom’s babes flourish in twenty paths of life. We meet his children in
the stock-market; we see them sleek and smug behind the counter; we
catch their faces through carriage windows; we hear their tuneful voices
from the county-bench, the city-court, yea, in nobler convocations
still. Sometimes, too, like their Athenian father, they are
“translated.” No matter for the difference of calling, the influence of
education, there is the family face—the family voice; the expression of
self-blessed insensibility, the note of self-complacent gratulation.
Throughout the life-teeming page of Shakespeare there is not a finer
poetic rendering of a commonplace, vulgar class than Bottom.
The very heart of their mystery beats in the bosom of the weaver. His
eagerness to be all things, from an assured conviction of his fitness
for everything, is only their daily conceit dramatically developed. In
that brief scene, what a picture have we, what a history of the ten
thousand incidents of prose life! What an exhibition of the profound
busy-bodies who clamorously desire to be Wall, Lion, Moonshine, and
Pyramus too, not from an acquired belief, but as it would seem from a
natural instinct of their own fitness for the combined charges! How
triumphantly does Bottom swagger down his fellows! How small, mean,
degenerate—what nobodies are they, before that giant conceit, the
thick-skulled weaver![3] And in all this there is nothing that is not
the severest transcript of human life. We laugh at it; and the next
moment we are touched into gravity by a reflection of its serious
meaning—its philosophic comments on the vulgar pretence of the every-day
world.
Footnote 3:
It is impossible, we think, for the reader, if he witnessed _A
Midsummer Night’s Dream_ at Covent Garden last season (1840) to banish
from his memory the _Flute_ of Keeley in this scene. How meekly, how
resignedly he gave place to the burly consequence of _Bottom_. It was
not imbecility, but a mute absorbing sense of homage to the greatness
of the weaver, one of those subtle touches that show the sympathy of
the actor with the profoundest meanings of the poet.
The finer part of the picture, in which as we receive it, Shakespeare,
with immortal tints, has shadowed forth the souls of a herd of men, is
Bottom doted upon by the Queen of Fairies. It is here we have the true
lineaments of a vulgar nature emblazoned by luck. It is here we
recognise the self-sufficient creature of worldly success—the ignorant
bashaw of life wearing his bravery as an ordained and necessary part of
himself. He has the riches, the sweets of the earth, at his command, and
he pauses not in passing wonder at his prosperity. To him there is no
such power as a Providence. It is a part of the world’s destiny that he
should be precisely what he is; he is the begotten of fate, and owes no
obligation to vulgar fortune.
Nor are Bottom’s Babes less like their putative sire, if they have
suffered no transformation. There are those who come into the world with
the ass’s head, and live and die wound in the arms of doting wealth. The
hard task-masters of life are often of these. The foolish, arrogant
censors of the faults and backslippings of penury are to be found among
them—the full fleshed moralists who shake their shaggy ears at the small
delinquencies of struggling men. They eat, drink, sport, and sleep in
fairyland; their lightest wish evokes a minister to do their bidding;
and in their most fantastic, foolish moods, still Fortune—weak, besotted
quean!—cries, with silverest voice:—
“Oh, how I love ye! How I dote on ye!”
Bottom as we opine, considered in his truthfulness, in his reflective
powers of worldly semblance, awakens our pensiveness, not our mirth. We
think of the thousands of his children, and the smile that would break
at the mere words of the weaver, is chequered by the thought of his
prosaic offspring. Yes; his offspring. It matters not that you point
to—in his carriage, that you run through his accredited genealogy, that
you show his armorial bearings. We answer—if he receive the goods of
fortune as his _right_, with no thankfulness for the gifts, no gratitude
displayed by constant sympathy with the wants and weaknesses of
suffering man, though you call him marquis, we say he is the Babe of
Bottom; and for his quarterings, though they date from the Conquest, the
eye of our philosophy sees nought on his carriage panels but an ass’s
head in a field, proper; and in the motto reads—“A bottle of hay!”
[Illustration:
A bottle of hay.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
SHAKESPEARE IN CHINA
“I cannot tell that the wisest Mandarin now living in China is not
indebted for part of his energy and sagacity to Shakespeare and
Milton, even though it should happen that he never heard of their
names.”
—Godwin’s _Essay on Sepulchres_.
WE do great injustice to the College of Mandarins, if we think that body
at the present time ignorant of the marvels of Shakespeare. No: Canton
has produced its commentator, and, by means of his explanatory genius,
it is hoped that in a few years the whole Celestial Empire will, in the
fulness of its knowledge, bow to the majesty of the poet. At this moment
we have before us a radiant evidence of the admission of the great
teacher into the Sacred City: believe it, astounded reader, Shakespeare
has gone farther than Nieuhoff. England, however—that England who has
shown herself such an idolatress of her darling son—who has encircled
the house in which he first drew breath with a golden rail—who has
secured it from possible destruction at the hands of the bigot, by
making it the property of the State—that England who, when the tree
planted by the bard was felled by the axe, wept as she turned the timber
into ’bacco-stoppers[4]—that England who, even at the present time, only
a little more than two centuries after his death, has already begun to
think of the propriety of erecting, at some future day, a national
monument to her poet—that England cannot, after the many and affecting
instances of her deep and maternal love towards her most illustrious
child, refuse to aid in the dissemination of Shakespearanity in any
corner of the world, but at the present interesting crisis, more
particularly in the empire of China.
Footnote 4:
The Mulberry-tree was cut down; and the race of Gastrels is not
extinct.
The cry that the Chinese are not yet fit for Shakespeare—a cry raised in
the same acute spirit in which people in chains have been said not to be
fit for freedom—can, we think, have no bad effect on even moderately
liberal men, after the production of papers now beneath our hands. All
we ask of the Foreign Minister is a company, to act either on board
Chinese junks or on shore, as the intellectual wants of his Majesty may
require; nay, if under the direction of their own stage-manager, to
exhibit themselves at any distance in the interior. The company to be
paid and clothed by the government for whose benefit they act, with this
condition, that they be subject to the laws and customs of the Chinese,
obediently shaving their eyebrows and letting their tails grow. For the
passing difficulty of the language, that, we have no doubt, will soon be
overcome; many of the actors, we religiously believe it, speaking and
playing equally well in English or in Chinese. We now come to the proofs
of the fit condition of the people for Shakespeare—for that which they
will “hail as a boon,” and which we shall part with as a drug.
Some months since, it was our fortune to be present at an auction of
curiosities from the East—shells, parrots, rice-paper, chop-sticks,
japanned cabinets, and cut-throat sparrows. Our friend Peregrine—he had
just arrived from the Great Pyramid, from the top of which, and by means
of a most excellent glass, he had discovered, and afterwards made
captive, three giraffes—bade money for a picture. As it was a scene from
Shakespeare, there were of course no opposing bidders, and he became the
owner of what proved to be an exquisite evidence of Chinese art and
imitation; in brief, no other than a copy faithfully drawn, and most
brilliantly coloured by an artist at Canton of the Boydell picture of
Falstaff in the Buck-basket, and the Merry Wives. The picture, however,
proved in itself to be of little value compared to the essay found to be
inserted at the back between the picture and the frame; being written on
paper, half a quire of which would not exceed the thickness of a
butterfly’s wing, it is no wonder that the treasure escaped even the
meritorious vigilance of an auctioneer. It is this essay that we now
propose to submit to the reader, in evidence of the condition of China
for an instant export of a company of fine Shakespearian actors. When we
state that the essay has been printed by its author in at least one of
the Canton journals, the dissemination and adoption of the principles
comprised in it, over the whole of China, cannot for half a moment be a
matter of doubt.
We regret that we cannot wholly acquit our intelligent Mandarin of the
taint of ingratitude. It is evident that his views of English history—at
least of that portion in which Falstaff conspicuously appears, for the
writer suffers no subject to escape in any way involved in the character
of the immortal knight—have been gathered from one of our fellow
countrymen; he has, if we may be allowed to say it, sucked the brain, as
a “weasel sucks eggs,” of some enlightened but obscure supercargo whom
he has left unhonoured and unthanked. How different, in a similar case,
was the conduct of an Englishman: our deep veneration of the national
character will not, at this happy moment, suffer us to be silent on the
grateful magnanimity of Mr Nahum Tate, who, in his preface to his
improved version of _King Lear_, returns his “thanks to an _ingenious
friend_ who first pointed out the tragedy” to his condescending notice!
The silence of the Mandarin towards his instructor is the more strange,
as ingratitude is not the vice of the barbarian. An ingenious friend
points out a skulking, unarmed straggler to a Cossack; the soldier makes
him prisoner, cuts off his ears, slits his nose, bores his tongue, and
having mounted the captive behind him, in the cordial spirit of Nahum
Tate, “thanks his ingenious friend” for his information! But it is so;
in this particular our mandarin fails in comparison with the Cossack and
with Nahum Tate.
We now lay before the reader the Essay of Ching the Mandarin, who, it
will be seen, in his orders to the painter employed to copy the original
picture—by whom taken to China remains unknown—has, with national
exactness, given the birth and education not only of the author of
Falstaff, but of Falstaff himself, together with glancing notices
of—Windsor wives and Windsor soap.
It is, perhaps, only due to the translator, to state that by our express
solicitation he has a little lowered the orientalism of the original,
whilst he has at the same time endeavoured to preserve the easy,
conversational tone of the educated Chinese.
“CHING TO TING.
“I send, O Ting, from the barbarian ship, a picture of barbarians. Make
one for your friend, like unto it; in size, in shape, and colour, even
the same. But why should I waste words with Ting, whose pencil is true
as the tongue of Confutzee? No; I will straightway deliver to him all my
studies have made known to me of the barbarians written on the canvas
before him: for how can even Ting paint the faces of barbarians in their
very truth, if he knows not the history not only of themselves but of
their fathers?
“The he barbarian with the big belly was called Forlstoff, and in time
was known as Surgeon Forlstoff: from which, there is no doubt, he was a
skilful leech in the army of the barbarian king, more of whom in good
season. Forlstoff’s father was one Shak or Shake, Speare or Spear; for
there have been great tumults among the barbarians about the e. In
nothing does the ignorance of the English barbarians more lamentably
discover itself than in the origin they obstinately give to their
Shakespeare; who, according to them, was, like the great Brahme, hatched
in an egg on the bank of a river, as may be seen in a thousand idle
books in which he is called the ‘Swan of Haveone.’ And this conceit was
further manifested in the building of a place called ‘the Swan Theatre,’
where the barbarians were wont to worship. There is little known of
Shakespeare’s wife, Forlstoff’s mother, and that little proves her to
have been an idle person, given to great sleep and sloth, as is shown by
her getting nothing at the death of her husband but his ‘second-best
bed!’
“If Forlstoff would not, at a later time of life, leave off stealing,
there is little doubt that he owed the fault to his father, Shakespeare,
who was forced to fly to London, which is a sacred city for all thieves,
for having stolen an antelope, an animal consecrated to the higher kinds
of barbarians, and which it is death for the poor to touch. Indeed, the
flesh of the antelope is to be eaten with safety by very few of the
barbarians, it having killed even many of the Eldermen immediately after
dinner.
“When Shakespeare came to London he was poor and without friends, and he
held the horses of the rich barbarians who came to worship at a temple
on the banks of the river. In time he learned to make shoes for the
horses; and in such esteem are the shoes still held by the barbarians,
that they are bought at any price, and nailed at the threshold of their
houses and barns; for where they are nailed, the foolish natives think
no fire, no pestilence will come, and no evil thing have any strength.
Such is the silly idolatry of the barbarians.
“At length Shakespeare got admitted into the temple; and there he showed
himself master of the greatest arts; and he wrote charms upon paper
which, it is said, will make a man weep or laugh with very
happiness,—will bring spirits from the sky and devils from the
water,—will open the heart of a man and show what creeps within it,—will
now snatch a crown from a king, and now put wings to the back of a
beggar. And all this they say Shakespeare did, and studied not. No,
beloved Ting, he was not like Sing, who, though but a poor cowherd,
became wise by poring on his book spread between the horns of his cow,
he travelling on her back.
“And Shakespeare proceeded in his marvels, and he became rich; and even
the queen of the barbarians was seen to smile at him, and once, with a
burning look, to throw her glove at him; but Shakespeare, it is said, to
the discomfiture of the queen, returned the glove, taking no further
notice of the amatory invitation.
“In a ripe season of his life Shakespeare gave up conjuring, and
returned to the village on the banks of the river Haveone, where, as it
is ignorantly believed, he was hatched, and where he lived in the
fulness of fortune. He had laid down his conjuring-rod and taken off his
gown, and passed for nothing more than a man, and, it is said—though
you, beloved Ting, who see the haughty eyes and curling noses of the
lesser man mandarins, can, after what I have writ of Shakespeare, hardly
believe it—thought himself nothing more.
[Illustration:
“Became wise by poring on his book”
]
“Shakespeare built himself a house and planted a tree. The house is
gone, but the barbarians preserve bricks of it in their inner chambers,
even—I tremble as I pen it—as we preserve the altars of our gods.
“The tree was cut down by a fakir in a brain fever, but the wood is
still worshipped. And this, O Ting! I would not ask you to believe had
not your own eyes witnessed that wonderful tree,[5] the leaves whereof,
falling to the ground, become mice! Hence learn that the leaves of
Shakespeare’s mulberry have become men, and on a certain day every year,
with mulberry boughs about their heads, their bodies clothed in their
richest garments, they chant praises to the memory of Shakespeare, and
drink wine to his name.
Footnote 5:
See Navarrete’s _China_ for the account of this tree; underneath
which, we humbly suggest, it would be as well to keep a cat.
“Shakespeare—Forlstoff’s father, and the father of a hundred lusty sons
and daughters, such as until that time had never been born,
Shakespeare—died! He was buried in a chest of cedar, set about with
plates of gold. On one of these plates was writ some magic words; for
thieves, breaking into the grave, were fixed and changed to stone; and
are now to be seen even as they were first struck by the charm of the
magician. And so much, beloved Ting, of Shakespeare, Forlstoff’s
father.”
That our Mandarin has herein displayed very popular abilities for the
difficult task of a commentator, no one who has read many volumes of
Shakespearian commentaries will, we believe, deny. It is observable that
in many instances he makes his facts; a custom of particular advantage
to the indulgence of the most peculiar opinions and conclusions. We have
read some writers who, deprived of this privilege, would really have
nothing to work upon. The pleasure of making a giant, great as it
possibly may be, cannot be comparable to the delight of killing him, our
own handiwork. If, however, our reader will bear with us, we will
proceed with the labours of Ching on the character of Falstaff, and on
those personages and events, directly and indirectly, associated with
his glorious name. Falstaff in China! Jack Falstaff on a regimen of
rice!
“Forlstoff was born in the third hour of the morning; and at his birth
the roundness of his belly and the whiteness of his head betokened his
future greatness. But little is known of his early life; save that he
assisted in the temples of the barbarians, where his voice, once
remarkable for its sweetness, became broken with the zeal of the singer.
He then travelled with a juggler, and—if lying were not the especial
vice of the barbarians—did greater wonders than even our own Yiyi. The
Eldermen of London—so named because chosen from the oldest
inhabitants—are known by a ring upon the thumb; this ring Forlstoff, to
the admiration of the barbarian court, crept through and through like
any worm, and was promoted by the king therefore. I should, however, do
evil unto truth did I not advise you, O Ting, that this feat of
Forlstoff seems greater than it really is: for a tame eagle being kept
at the court of the king, it was afterwards discovered that a talon of
the bird was something thicker than the waist of the said Forlstoff.
“It is certain that Forlstoff, a short time after his feat with the
ring, became a student in a place called Clemency Inn; which, as its
name implies, is a temple wherein youths study to become meek and
merciful, to love all men as brothers of their own flesh, and to despise
the allurements of wealth. There was with him another student, called
Robert Shaller, who afterwards became a mandarin, or, in the barbarian
tongue, a justice of the peace, being promoted to that office because he
was like a double radish, and had his head carved with a knife. He was,
when at Clemency Inn, dressed in an eel-skin, and used to sleep in a
lute-case. He lent Forlstoff what the barbarians call a thousand pounds,
which Forlstoff was honest enough to—acknowledge.
“I next find Forlstoff in company with one Princeal, the son of the
barbarian king, and several thieves. Forlstoff—and here the vice of his
father, Shakespeare, breaks out in the child—tempts the king’s son to
turn robber. He is, however, so ashamed of the wickedness, that he goes
about it with a mask on his face, as a king’s son ought.
“Forlstoff falls into disgrace with Princeal, and is sent by him with
soldiers to Coventry; that being a place in the barbarian country where
no man speaks to his neighbour. After some delay Forlstoff marches
through Coventry to fight one Pursy, who can ride up a straight hill,
and is therefore called Hotspur. Forlstoff fights with him by—that is,
near a clock, and kills him, Princeal, the king’s son, meanly
endeavouring to deprive Forlstoff of the honour.
“After the battle Forlstoff goes to dine with the king at Wincer, which
is the royal manufactory for soap. Forlstoff pretends to love two wives
at the same time, and is put by them in what is called by the barbarians
a _buck_-basket—that is a basket for the finer sort of barbarians, their
word _buck_ answering to our _push_, and meaning high, handsome, grand.
He is flung into the river, and saves himself by swimming to a garter.
He is afterwards punished by being turned into the royal forest, with
horns upon his head and chains upon his hands. Princeal, in time,
becomes king, and discards Forlstoff, who goes home—goes to bed—does
nothing but look at the ends of his fingers, talks of the green fields
about Wincer, and dies.
“For the habits of Forlstoff, if they were not quite as virtuous as
those of Fo, it was perhaps the fault of his times; for we have his own
words to prove that they were once those of the best barbarians. He
swore but few oaths—gambled but once a day—paid his debts four times—and
took recreation only when he cared for it. He loved sack—a liquor that
has puzzled the heads of the learned—without eggs, and was
extraordinarily temperate in bread.
“His companions were thieves of the highest repute—but all, unhappily,
died and left no sons!
“You will now, oh wise and virtuous Ting, directed by these few and
feeble words, paint me the picture of Forlstoff and his two wives.”
We put it to the impartial reader whether Ching, in the above estimate
of the character of Falstaff, has not entitled himself to take rank with
many Shakespearian commentators; and whether, if the Foreign Minister
will not consent to ship a company of English actors to Canton, Ching
should not be invited by the patrons of the British drama to preside in
a London theatre.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
SOLOMON’S APE
“For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram:
once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and
silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.”—_Kings._
A LEARNED rabbi, Ben Eli, had filled three thick MS. folios with the
adventures of a certain ape, a sojourner at the court of the wisest of
kings. Though the work has hitherto been withheld from the world, it
seems not unlikely that it has long been the acknowledged model of many
biographies. We conceive there is internal evidence in the history of
thousands of courtiers, that the writers were aware how much the erudite
Ben Eli could make of an ape. They who have gravely registered the
slightest formality, the most evanescent word or gesture of certain
heroes, must have had in their memory the first chronicler of monkey
tricks. There was a time when it would have been the simplest and safest
course to publish the entire folio: in former days, readers were like
hogs, whose master had the right of pannage: they were turned into the
literary forest to root, and grub up, and become as fat as they might.
Now, it is not enough to show them the tree of knowledge; but it is
compulsory on those who drive the “dreadful trade,” to clamber the
branches, and gather the fruit. Nay, and when gathered, the apple serves
not the epicure of our day, if it be not carefully pared and sliced;
and, in some instances, presented on a fork of standard gold or silver.
Moreover, cases have happened wherein the quality of the fork hath been
cavilled for, more than that of the apple: thus, an embossed implement
hath at times passed off a sorry crab. Once it was enough for wisdom to
point out the wood where grew the nuts: now must she gather and crack
them.
Thus much by way of feeble apology for the licence we have taken with
the folios of the venerable Ben Eli. We have wandered through their
forest of leaves; we have picked all we could lay our hands upon; we
have torn away the husk—have broken the shell—and for the few
kernels—gentle feeder, some of them are before you.
“And the ape became a favourite with the servants of Solomon. And the
women smiled upon him, and the men laughed at his grimace; and the ape
was puffed with pride, and became a proverb to the wise. And the ape
forgot the mother that bore him, and the father that begat him, and the
wood which, in the days of his youth, did give him shadow. And—brief be
the words—the ape forgot he was an ape.
“There was a strange woman in the court of King Solomon. She was
beautiful as light; and many men did try for the love of the strange
woman; for she was a princess in her own country.
“And it fell, that the woman looked from her window, and beheld in the
court below the ape stretched, sleeping in the sun: for it was high
noon, and there was silence on all things. But in the heart of the
strange woman there was no peace, for she thought of her father’s tents.
“And the ape awoke, and, looking upward, beheld the strange woman. And
there was vanity in his heart, and he still looked upward. And the
captive woman had compassion on the creature, and, believing that he
hungered, cast him down a ripe pomegranate. And the ape did eat the
pomegranate, and did lick his lips, and did say in his heart, ‘Of a
truth, the strange woman doth love me.’
“And the next day, at the same hour, the ape watched under the window of
the strange woman, and again she did throw him fruit, which he did eat,
and again did cry, ‘Nay, it is certain she doth love me.’
“And the same thing came to pass on the third and fourth day.
“And in the stillness of the fifth day, when sleep lay upon the lids of
the household, the ape did clamber the wall which did shut in the
strange woman. And as he clomb, a voice still cried in his heart, ‘She
doth love me.’
“And the ape clambered up to the window of the strange woman; and when
she saw the monster, she filled the chamber with her screams, and
shrieked for help. And the servants of the chamber came to her aid; and
the court was filled with a multitude.
“And the woman entreated to be saved from the ape; but the ape
understood not her words, for still he said to himself, ‘She doth love
me.’
“And the men took staves, and did beat and bruise the ape, but the ape
was not convinced; for yet he said, ‘It is plain she doth love me.’ And
the ape fell wounded into the court beneath.
“And when they inquired of the matter, the woman said, ‘I thought the
ape did hunger, and I took compassion on his misery, and threw to him a
pomegranate.’
“Then a wise man said to the woman—‘Daughter, let not beauty give gifts
unto fools; for out of the kindness of her heart do they misinterpret;
and in the very offerings of her compassion do they breed an ill
report.’
“And even as the wise man said these things, the ape lay in the court
beneath, and did lick his sore, and did blow the pouches of his cheeks,
and cried, ‘It is manifest, the strange woman doth love me.’
“There were two jugglers in the train of the Queen of Sheba. And they
played, each with a serpent, before King Solomon.
“Now the queen sought to prove the knowledge of the king, and said,—‘Oh,
Solomon, thou who hast spoken of trees, from the cedar to the
hyssop—also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping things, and of
fishes;
“‘Declare unto thy servant, which of the two is the true serpent (for
one was cunningly fashioned like unto a living snake, and did move and
writhe in the hands of the juggler); for, of a truth, there is but one
of the two that hath life.’
“And the jugglers played with the snakes before the seat of King
Solomon.
“Then the king did privily send for the ape; and when he was brought in,
the king caused him to be led near unto the jugglers.
“And the ape passed one of the men who played with a snake, and took no
note thereof; but as he approached the fellow who held the second snake,
the ape did shake, and his hair did rise upon his skin, and he trembled
exceedingly; wherefore King Solomon discovered the true snake, and all
men praised the wisdom of the king.[6]
Footnote 6:
See Rabbinical stories for a parallel case.
“Now the ape discovered that he had been made the judge between the true
and the false snake, and his head did swell with the shouting, and he
was puffed up with vain glory.
“And after some days a multitude stood before the judgment porch. And a
strife had arisen between two carvers—skilful workmen were they both.
“Palm-trees, and open flowers, and every manner of curious carving had
they carved.
“And they both claimed certain carvings of cherubim. And when they had
spoken and called their witnesses, King Solomon paused to consider
before he delivered judgment.
[Illustration:
“Cast him down a ripe pomegranate”
]
“It so chanced that the ape had crept among the multitude, and had
listened to the story of the carvers; and when he saw the king pause, he
said to himself, ‘Solomon is perplexed.’
“And the ape brake through the multitude, and ran to the porch, and did
motion that he would judge between the carvers.
“And the ape did leap upon the shoulders of the one, and did caress him;
but at the other he did scream, and grind his teeth. And Solomon
understood the folly of the ape, and cried:—
“‘It is ever so with the fool. Allow him the wisdom that perceiveth and
shunneth a serpent, and straightway he will believe he hath
understanding to judge even between the cherubim.’”
At present we must end our extracts from the pages of Ben Eli; though we
cannot close without appending the final reflection of the learned
rabbi, who, having narrated a thousand other instances of the folly of
the ape—how he pilfered from the treasury, how he stole jewels to hang
about him, and how he plucked bare divers peacocks to make himself a
glory from their plumes, observes:—
“_An ape will ever be an ape, though compassed with gold, and silver,
and ivory, and though his dwelling-place be even the court of King
Solomon._”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE CASTLE BUILDERS OF PADUA
GIULIO and Ippolito were sons of a farmer living near Padua. The old man
was of a quiet and placable temper, rarely suffering any mischance to
ruffle him, but, in the firm and placid hope of the future,
tranquillising himself under the evil of the present. If blight came
upon his corn one year, he would say ’twere a rare thing to have blights
in two successive seasons; and so he would hope that the next harvest,
in its abundance, might more than compensate for the scarcity of the
last. Thus he lived from boyhood to age, and retained in the features of
the old man a something of the lightness and vivacity of youth. His
sons, however, bore no resemblance to their father. Instead of labouring
on the farm they wasted their time in idly wishing that fortune had made
them, in lieu of healthy, honest sons of a farmer, the children of some
rich magnifico, that so they might have passed their days in all the
sports of the times, in jousting, hunting, and in studying the fashions
of brave apparel. They were of a humour at once impetuous and sulky, and
would either idly mope about the farm, or violently abuse and ill-treat
whomsoever accident might throw in their way. The old man was inly
grieved at the wilfulness and disobedience of his sons, but, with his
usual disposition, hoped that time might remedy the evil; and so, but
rarely reproving them, they were left sole masters of their hours and
actions.
One night, after supper, the brothers walked into the garden to give
loose to their idle fancies, always yearning after matters visionary and
improbable. It was a glorious night, the moon was at the full, and
myriads of stars glowed in the deep blue firmament. The air stirred
among the trees and flowers, wafting abroad their sweetness; the dew
glittered on the leaves, and a deep-voiced nightingale, perched in a
citron tree, poured forth a torrent of song upon the air. It was an hour
for good thoughts and holy aspirations. Giulio threw himself upon a
bank, and, after gazing with intentness at the sky, exclaimed:—
“Would that I had fields ample as the heavens above us!”
“I would,” rejoined Ippolito, “I had as many sheep as there are stars.”
“And what,” asked Giulio, with a sarcastic smile, “would your wisdom do
with them?”
“Marry,” replied Ippolito, “I would pasture them in your sageship’s
fields.”
“What!” exclaimed Giulio, suddenly raising himself upon his elbow, and
looking with an eye of fire upon his brother; “whether I would or not?”
“Truly, ay,” said Ippolito, with a stubborn significance of manner.
“Have a care,” cried Giulio, “have a care, Ippolito; do not thwart me.
Am I not your elder brother?”
“Yes; and marry, what of that? Though you came first into the world, I
trow you left some manhood for him who followed after.”
“You do not mean to insist that, despite my will, despite the
determination of your elder brother, you will pasture your sheep in my
grounds?”
“In truth but I do.”
“And that,” rejoined Giulio, his cheek flushing, and his lip tremulous,
“and that without fee or recompense?”
“Assuredly.”
Giulio leaped to his feet, and, dashing his clenched hand against a
tree, with a face full of passion, and in a voice made terrible by rage,
he screamed, rather than said, “By the Blessed Virgin but you do not!”
“And by St Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins I protest I will.”
This was uttered by Ippolito in a tone of banter and bravado that for a
moment made the excited frame of Giulio quiver from head to foot. He
gazed at the features of Ippolito, all drawn into a sneer, and for a
moment gnashed his teeth. He was hastily approaching the scoffer, when,
by an apparently strong effort, he arrested himself, and, turning upon
his heel, struck hastily down another path, where he might be seen
pacing with short, quick steps, whilst Ippolito, leaning against a tree,
carelessly sang a few lines of a serenata. This indifference was too
much for Giulio; he stopped short, turned, and then rapidly came up to
Ippolito, and with a manner of attempted tranquillity, said, “Ippolito,
I do not wish to quarrel with you; I am your elder brother; then give up
the point.”
“Not I,” replied Ippolito, with the same immovable smile.
“What, then, you are determined that your sheep shall, in very despite
of me, pasture in my fields?”
“They shall.”
“Villain!” raved Giulio; and ere the word was well uttered he had dashed
his clenched hand in his brother’s face. Ippolito sprang like a wild
beast at Giulio, and for a moment they stood with a hand at each other’s
throat, and their eyes, in the words of the Psalmist, were “whetted” on
one another. They stood but to gain breath, then grappled closer.
Ippolito threw his brother to the earth, huddling his knees upon him,
furious blows were exchanged, but scarce a sound was uttered, save at
intervals a blasphemous oath or a half-strangled groan. Giulio was
completely overpowered by the superior strength and cooler temper of his
brother; but, lying prostrate and conquered, his hands pinioned to his
breast, and Ippolito glaring at him with malicious triumph, he cursed
and spat at him. Ippolito removed his hand from his brother’s throat,
and ere his pulse could beat, Giulio’s poniard was in his brother’s
heart. He gave a loud shriek, and fell a streaming corpse upon his
murderer. The father, roused by the sound, came hurrying to the garden;
Giulio, leaping from under the dead body, rushed by the old man, who was
all too speedily bending over his murdered child. From that hour hope
and tranquillity forsook the father; he became a brain-sick, querulous
creature, and in a few months died almost an idiot. Giulio joined a
party of robbers, and, after a brief but dark career of crime, was shot
by the sbirri.
Ye who would build castles in the air—who would slay your hours with
foolish and unprofitable longings—ponder on the visionary fields, the
ideal sheep of Giulio and Ippolito.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE TAPESTRY WEAVER OF BEAUVAIS
THE oldest people of Beauvais remembered Schatten the tapestry weaver.
Some vowed he was threescore, some a hundred years old; and ever as the
subject was touched upon, Schatten would widen his huge mouth, and cry
with a low chuckle, “Ay, ay, a thousand—more or less. I shall live to
see wrinkles in the sun.” None knew from what stock he sprang—from what
land he came. Such questions he would ever parry with some extravagance.
“I was born of felspar and quartz, and my home was the Hartz Mountains
when they were no bigger than mole-hills.” And thus Schatten lived on.
He saw the child rise into manhood—wed—become a parent—a grey-headed
man—a corpse; and so with the child’s child, and yet no change came upon
Schatten. He stood, a flinty image gazing on dying generations.
A hovel in an obscure part of Beauvais was the dwelling of the weaver.
There was his tapestry loom; and there, day after day, and night after
night, would he work, at times droning a song to cheer what seemed the
monotony of an eternal employment. Notwithstanding the inexplicable
mystery about the man, he was, on the whole, a favourite with his
fellow-townsmen. There was something so meek in his demeanour, so
placid, so unassuming, and his speech was so soft and gentle, that
although his name had been mingled in strange recitals, he had never
been molested, but, on the contrary, was generally considered a
harmless, well-meaning creature; one who, far from sneering at the
pleasures of youth, looked upon them with seeming satisfaction. No one
more frequently witnessed the bacchanal revelries of the topers of
Beauvais; for, though Schatten was no drinker himself, he beheld with
unaffected pleasure the loose jollity of others. The like at feasts:
although he was temperate as a chameleon, he would most readily carve
huge collops for others. He seemed to hold in peculiar admiration a
purple, bloated face and swagging paunch, though his own sharp visage
was as yellow as saffron, and his figure lank as a thread-paper. This
urbanity towards the failings of others was, it will be conceded, the
secret of his popularity. Though he himself abstained from all animal
indulgence, he not only did not gloomily lecture on the lawlessness of
appetite, but, on the contrary, smiled on its achievements. This charity
hath served many besides old Schatten.
But there was another circumstance that greatly assisted the goodly
reputation of the weaver: it was the character of his many visitors and
pupils. His hovel was the resort of the loveliest girls—the most
beautiful youths, not only of the town of Beauvais, but from the great
city itself—from elegant, voluptuous Paris; for even at the period of
which we write it was distinguished for the refinement and luxuries of
life.
Schatten, in his capacity of tapestry weaver, had pictures of every
variety of subject; and it was his good fortune that those professors
who excelled in the beautiful art seemed by common consent to seek old
Schatten, that he might immortalise their radiant sketches in his still
more exquisite tapestry. There was no subject which painting could
portray, no imagination which it could robe in life and colour, that was
not ready for the loom of Schatten. If a battle were the theme, there
might be seen contending heroes, with stern rapture in their faces,
glory about their heads—their every limb glowing as with Mars’ own
fire—their swords like sunbeams, and the smoking blood more like
libations to purple Liber, than torrents in which the human life gushed
forth. Thus a battle woven by old Schatten was a grand and glorious
thing—each combatant was an excited god; whilst the drained and pallid
carcass—the dreadful wounds, with jagged and gaping mouths—the rigid
muscle straining against death—the fixed and stone-like eye, and clotted
hair—all the gross, substantial horrors of systematic slaughter, were
thrown into the shade: they were not to expose that common liar—Glory.
If the subject were beauty, there might be seen—as erst was chosen by
the antique master—one charm from twenty different faces, making a
miracle of perfection. All that was voluptuous and entrancing shone in
the dewy light of woman’s eye; there was an eternal youth in her red
lip, a tenderness in her warm cheek: too pure for the earth, too
exquisitely fragile, she seemed of a sisterhood ’twixt humanity and
angels. The same masterly hand was displayed though the subject was the
banquet of the glutton—the supper was still spread “in the Apollo.” The
same power shown in the golden heaps of the miser: the food, the wine,
seemed ambrosia and nectar, bestowing immortality on the lip that
tasted: the gold glittered like something dropped from the skies, to be
worn as amulets against calamity.
A man so potent in his handicraft as Schatten might have surrounded
himself with all the symbols of wealth; and, had he been ambitious, have
successfully contended for the highest honours of citizenship. But, it
was plain, he valued gold as ashes; and for the trappings of state and
place, the most regal shows, the pomp and blazonry of kings, were with
him matter for a jest.
“Alack!” cried Michel Sous, a withered money-scrivener of Beauvais—“I
hear ’twas a brave sight; and plague on my shanks! I have missed it.
Which way went the procession?” The man of bonds and pieces remained
gaping for the answer of the tapestry weaver, who stood, cross-legged,
leaning on his staff, with a face immovable as granite. It was a day of
triumph, a time of holiday, and Michel had for once quitted his bags and
desk to sun himself in the glory of his fellow-townsmen. “Weaver, I say,
which way went the procession, and where shall I find it?”
“It went, after some turnings, into the churchyard. Take up a handful of
mould, and, in truth, you clutch a part of what you seek.”
“Why, thou art drunk, merry, or mad! The churchyard and mould! I ask you
where went, where _is_, the procession?”
“Where I tell you. I saw it pass by me, and after some windings and
shiftings, I saw each brave puppet—that strutted as though the angels
were looking at it—I saw it shrink, and bend, and totter, and the
yellowness of age crept over it, and its eye faded, and its hair
whitened, and it crawled into the earth as the fox slinks beneath his
cover. The trumpets lay dumb and cankering in the soil—the rustling
flags dropped tinder at the breeze—the rust-eaten sword crumbled beneath
the mattock of the digger, and rank grass grows above the pomp of the
last hour.”
“Why, Schatten, thou art dreaming. Blessed St Mary! thou surely didst
not see the sight, else thou hadst told me a truer story of its
progress.”
“Not so: trust me, I saw the revel—but I beheld it from the pinnacle of
time; and I tell you again, all the men who passed me I watched into the
churchyard. Their haughty eyes—their trophies, flags, and clamorous
pipes—I say to you, they are dust! The shout of triumph hath died in the
distance, and _hic jacet_ is now the only tongue.”
“So, so—a riddle,” crowed the scrivener; and he hobbled on to seek a
less perplexing respondent.
Such were, at times, the answers of old Schatten, who, when he pleased,
could be as grave and oracular as a father confessor. Such were his
reflections on pageants which, to many thoughtless and happy minds, were
the symbols of all earthly greatness. It was his pastime to analyse
appearance—to unravel the glossy web of policy—to unfold the swathings
of vain pomp and ceremony, and point to the foul mummy they encased. Yet
would he vary this custom with smiles and laughter, and witty sayings,
which gave a savour to the wine they honoured. He would, with his thin
voice troll a song in praise of beauty, and, with quick conceits, prick
on lusty youth to deeds of jollity and wild adventure; nay, he would
often mingle in the revelry. Many a time have the townsfolk of Beauvais
laughed at the gambols of old Schatten, who, pranked in his best, would
trip it with some blue-eyed fair one, who, seemingly unconscious of the
deformity of her partner, would glide through the dance all smiles and
sweetness, as though mortal youth were wedded to immortality, and
wrinkles and grey hairs were not the inheritance of the children of
earth. Alas! but a few months, or weeks, and the poor maiden—she who
seemed the embodied principle of beauty and motion—was as the “clods of
the valley,” a mass of blank insensibility.
Various were the ways by which old Schatten had insinuated himself into
the good graces of the people of Beauvais. To please them he would, when
in the humour, act twenty different parts—now he would be a learned
doctor, and now a mountebank; at times he would utter the wisdom of
sages—at times play a hundred antic tricks, making his audience shout
with merriment. For one long winter did Schatten profoundly lecture upon
laurels, crowns, swords, and money-bags; and, like a skilful chemist,
would he analyse their component parts.
“This,” cried Schatten, producing a semblance of the wreath, “this is
the laurel crown of one of the Cæsars. How fresh and green the leaves
remain! Ha! there is no such preservative as innocent blood—it embalms
the names of mighty potentates, who else had never been heard of:
steeped in it, deformity becomes loveliness—fame colours her most
lasting pictures with its paint! The fields that grew this branch were
richly manured: tens of thousands of hearts lay rotting there; the light
of thousands of eyes was quenched; palaces and hovels, in
undistinguished heaps, were strewn about the soil; there lay the hoary
and the unborn; the murdered wife and the outraged virgin—and showers of
tears falling on this garden of agony and horror, it was miraculously
fertile—for lo! it gave forth this one branch, to deck the forehead of
one man! In the veins that seam its leaves are the heart strings of
murdered nations; it is the plant of fire and blood, reaped by the
sword!—Such is the conqueror’s laurel.
“And here is the despot’s diadem!—Many a time, like glowing iron, hath
it seared the brows it circled. Of what is it composed? What wonderful
ingredients meet in this quintessence of worldly wealth? See, the
passions and the feelings that helped to make it still haunt their
handiwork. Their shadows live in its glittering metal and its flashing
gems. Full-blooded power, with a demon’s eye, glares from this
ruby—leprous fear trembles in these pearls—in every diamond, care or
compunction weeps a tear! Throughout the gold I see a thousand forms,
dawning and fading like hues in heated steel:—there, fancy detects the
assassin with his knife;—there, the bondsman snaps his chain;—there, is
the headsman;—there, the civil war! These are the shades that haunt the
despot’s crown; that wear him waking, and screech to him in his sleep. A
nation’s groan is pent up in its round. It is a living thing that eats
into the brain of the possessor, making him mad and drunk for blood and
power!
“The miser’s money-bag!—Another monster—all throat. Could its owner have
put the sun itself within this bag, the world for him had been in
darkness—perpetual night had cast a pall upon creation—the fruits of
earth had withered in the bud, and want and misery been universal;
whilst he, the thrifty villain! smugly lived in bloom, and in his very
baseness found felicity! And yet, what was the worth of all this bag
contained? Though it was stuffed with wealth, it was hung about with
fears. As its owner slid his palm into the heap, he would start as
though he felt the hand of death were hidden there to grasp him. He was
almost blind within a world of beauty. His eye saw no images save those
painted by gold; his ears heard not, save when the metal tinkled; his
tongue was dumb, if it spoke not of wealth; the glittering pieces were
to him the children of his heart and soul—dull offspring of the foulest
appetites; yet he hugged them to his bosom—he hugged them, and in his
dying hour they turned to snakes, and stung him in the embrace! This is
the miser’s money-bag—the abode of reptiles, the sepulchre of the soul!
“The sword!—Ceremony sanctifies it. Some kingly words are spoken—a
trumpet is blown; straightway the sword is _ennobled_!
“The lawyer’s gown!—the masquerading dress of common-sense. There is a
living instinct in its web: let golden villainy come under it, and with
a thought it flows and spreads, and gives an ample shelter to the thing
it covers; let poor knavery seek it, and it shrinks and curtains up, and
leaves the trembling victim naked to the court!”
Thus, in his graver moments, would old Schatten preach to his hearers;
then, with a thought, he would break from the solemn discourse, and make
merriment with the self-same objects. Thus, like a skilful juggler, he
would hold the conqueror’s laurel, that hardy plant, to his lips, and
with a puff blow it into dust; he would change the tiara into a huge
snake, monstrous and ugly, and make the beholders start at its
contortions. The long purse he would ravel into a shroud; he would melt
the sword into drops of blood, and turn the lawyer’s gown into a net of
steel. Whilst these tricks made him a favourite with the young and gay,
his learning, and the thousand stories he had of men of all ages and of
all ranks, rendered him an oracle of wisdom to the studious. It was
observed that Schatten, whilst narrating any history, always spoke as
though he had been an eye-witness of the circumstance he detailed; nay,
as though he had known their most secret thoughts.
* * * * *
And who is Schatten, whose history is yet unfinished? Who is this
mysterious Weaver, whose deeds, if chronicled, would fill thousands of
folios? He is everywhere about us: in the solitude of our chamber, in
the press and throng of the street, in the wilderness and in the city.
—“MY DAYS ARE SWIFTER THAN A WEAVER’S SHUTTLE.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE WINE CELLAR
_A “MORALITY”_
STEPHEN CURLEW was a thrifty goldsmith in the reign of the Second
Charles. His shop was a mine of metal: he worked for the Court,
although, we fear, his name is not to be found in any record in the
State-Paper Office. Stephen was a bachelor, and, what is strange, he
never felt—that is, he never complained of—his loneliness. His chased
ewers, his embossed goblets, his gold in bars, were to him wife and
children. Midas was his only kinsman. He would creep among his
treasures, like an old grey rat, and rub his hands, and smile, as if
communing with the wealth about him. He had so long hugged gold to his
heart that it beat for nothing else. Stephen was a practical
philosopher; for he would meekly take the order—nay, consult the
caprice—of the veriest popinjay with the humility of a pauper, when, at
a word, he might have out-blazoned lords and earls. If this be not real
philosophy, thought Stephen, as he walked slipshod at the heels of his
customers, what is?
Stephen was a man of temperance; he was content to see venison carved on
his hunting-cups; he cared not to have it in his larder. His eyes would
melt at clustering grapes chased on banquet goblets, but no drop of the
living juice passed the goldsmith’s lips. Stephen only gave audience to
Bacchus when introduced by Plutus. Such was the frugality of Stephen to
his sixty-fifth year; and then, or his name had not been eternised in
this our page, temptation fell upon him.
It was eight o’clock on a raw spring evening, and Stephen sat alone in
his back-room. There was no more fire upon the hearth than might have
lain in a tinder-box, but Stephen held his parchment hands above it, and
would not be cold. A small silver lamp, with a short wick—for the keen
observation of Stephen had taught him the scientific truth, that the
less the wick, the less the waste of oil—glowed, a yellow speck in the
darkness. On the table lay a book, a treatise on precious stones; and on
Stephen’s knee, _Hermes, the True Philosopher_. Stephen was startled
from a waking dream by a loud and hasty knocking at the door. Mike, the
boy, was out; but it could not be he. Stephen took up the lamp, and was
creeping to the door, when his eye caught the silver, and he again
placed it upon the table, and felt his way through the shop. Unbolting
the five bolts of the door, but keeping fast the chain, Stephen demanded
“who was there?”
“I bear a commission from Sir William Brouncker, and I’m in haste.”
“Stay you a minute—but a minute,” and Stephen hurried back for the lamp,
then hastily returned, opened the door, and the visitor passed the
threshold.
“Tis not Charles!” cried Stephen, alarmed at his mistake, for he
believed he had heard the voice of Sir William’s man.
“No matter for that, Stephen; you work for men, and not for Christian
names. Come, I have a job for you”; and the visitor, with the easy,
assured air of a gallant, lounged into the back-parlour, followed by the
tremulous Stephen.
“Sir William——” began the goldsmith.
“He bade me use his name; the work I’d have you do is for myself. Fear
not: here’s money in advance,” and the stranger plucked from his pocket
a purse, which in its ample length lay like a bloated snake upon the
table.
Stephen smiled, and said, “Your business, sir?”
“See here,” and the stranger moved the lamp immediately between them,
when, for the first time, Stephen clearly saw the countenance of his
customer. His face was red as brick, and his eyes looked deep as the
sea, and glowed with good humour. His mouth was large and frank, and his
voice came as from the well of truth. His hair fell in curls behind his
ears, and his moustache, black as coal, made a perfect crescent on his
lip, the points upwards. Other men may be merely good fellows, the
stranger seemed the best. “See here,” he repeated, and produced a
drawing on a small piece of paper, “can you cut me this in a seal ring?”
“Humph!” and Stephen put on his spectacles; “the subject is——”
“Bacchus squeezing grape-juice into the cup of Death,” said the
stranger.
“An odd conceit,” cried the goldsmith.
“We all have our whims, or woe to the sellers,” said the customer.
“Well, can it be done?”
“Surely, sir, surely. On what shall it be cut?”
“An emerald, nothing less. It is the drinker’s stone. In a week, Master
Curlew?”
“This day week, sir, if I live in health.”
The day came. Stephen was a tradesman of his word, and the stranger sat
in the back-parlour, looking curiously into the ring.
“_Per Bacco!_ Rarely done. Why, Master Curlew, thou hast caught the very
chops of glorious Liber, his swimming eyes, and blessed mouth. Ha! ha!
thou hast put thy heart into the work, Master Curlew; and how cunningly
hast thou all but hid the dart of death behind the thyrsus of the god!
How his life-giving hand clutches the pulpy cluster, and with what a
gush comes down the purple rain, plashing into rubies in the cup of
Mors!”
“It was my wish to satisfy, most noble sir,” said Stephen, meekly,
somewhat confounded by the loud praises of the speaker.
“May you never be choked with a grape-stone, Master Curlew, for this
goodly work. Ha!” and the speaker looked archly at the withered
goldsmith; “it hath cost thee many a headache ere thou couldst do this.”
“If I may say it, I have laboured hard at the craft—have been a thrifty,
sober man,” said Stephen.
“Sober! Ha! ha! ha!” shouted the speaker, and his face glowed redder,
and his eyes melted; “sober! why, thou wast begot in a wine cask, and
suckled by a bottle, or thou hadst never done this. By the thigh of
Jupiter! he who touched this,” and the stranger held up the ring to his
eye, and laughed again, “he who touched this hath never known water.
Tut! man, were I to pink thee with a sword thou’dst bleed wine!”
“I,” cried Stephen, “I bleed,” and he glanced fearfully towards the
door, and then at the stranger, who continued to look at the ring.
“The skin of the sorriest goat shall sometimes hold the choicest
liquor,” said the stranger, looking into the dry face of the goldsmith.
“Come, confess, art thou not a sly roysterer? Or art thou a hermit over
thy drops, and dost count flasks alone? Ay! ay! well, to thy cellar,
man; and—yes—thine arms are long enough—bring up ten bottles of thy
choicest Malaga.”
“I!—my cellar!—Malaga!” stammered Stephen.
“Surely thou hast a cellar?” and the stranger put his hat upon the table
with the air of a man set in for a carouse.
“For forty years, but it hath never known wine,” cried the goldsmith.
“I—I have never known wine.” The stranger said nothing; but, turning
full upon Stephen, and, placing his hands upon his knees, he blew out
his flushing cheeks like a bagpipe, and sat with his eyes blazing upon
the heretic. “No, never!” gasped Stephen, terrified, for a sense of his
wickedness began to possess him.
“And thou dost repent?” asked the stranger, with a touch of mercy
towards the sinner.
“I—humph! I’m a poor man,” cried Curlew; “yes, though I’m a goldsmith,
and seem rich, I—I’m poor! poor!”
“Well, ’tis lucky I come provided,” and the stranger placed upon the
table a couple of flasks. Whether he took them from under his cloak, or
evoked them through the floor, Stephen knew not; but he started at them
as they stood rebukingly upon his table, as if they had been two sheeted
ghosts. “Come, glasses,” cried the giver of the wine.
“Glasses!” echoed Stephen, “in my house!”
“Right, glasses! No—cups, and let them be gold ones!” and the bacchanal,
for it was plain he was such, waved his arm with an authority which
Stephen attempted not to dispute, but rose and hobbled into the shop,
and returned with two cups just as the first cork was drawn. “Come,
there’s sunlight in that, eh?” cried the stranger, as he poured the wine
into the vessels. “So, thou hast never drunk wine? Well, here’s to the
baptism of thy heart!” And the stranger emptied the cup, and his lips
smacked like a whip.
And Stephen Curlew tasted the wine, and looked around, below, above; and
the oaken wainscot did not split in twain, nor did the floor yawn, nor
the ceiling gape. Stephen tasted a second time; thrice did he drink, and
he licked his mouth as a cat licks the cream from her whiskers, and,
putting his left hand upon his belly, softly sighed.
“Ha! ha! another cup! I know thou wilt,” and Stephen took another, and
another; and the two flasks were in brief time emptied. They were,
however, speedily followed by two more, placed by the stranger on the
table, Stephen opening his eyes and mouth at their mysterious
appearance. The contents of these were duly swallowed, and lo! another
two stood before the goldsmith, or, as he then thought, four.
“There never was such a Bacchus!” cried Stephen’s customer, eyeing the
ring. “Why, a man may see his stomach fairly heave, and his cheek ripen
with wine: yet, till this night, thou hadst never tasted the juice!
What—what could have taught thee to carve the god so capitally?”
“Instinct—instinct,” called out the goldsmith, his lips turned to clay
by too much wine.
“And yet,” said the stranger, “I care not so much for—— How old art
thou, Stephen?”
“Sixty-five,” and Stephen hiccupped.
“I care not so much for thy Death, Stephen; instinct should have made
thee a better hand at Death.”
“Tis a good Death,” cried the goldsmith, with unusual boldness, “a most
sweet Death.”
“Tis too broad—the skeleton of an alderman with the flesh dried upon
him. He hath not the true desolation, the ghastly nothingness, of the
big bugbear. No matter; I’m content; but this I’ll say, though thou hast
shown thyself a professor at Bacchus, thou art yet but a poor apprentice
at Death.”
Stephen Curlew answered not with words, but he snored very audibly. How
long he slept he could not well discover, but when he awoke he found
himself alone; no, not alone, there stood upon the table an unopened
flask of wine. In a moment the mystery broke upon him—and he sprang to
his feet with a shriek, and rushed into the shop. No—he had not been
drugged by thieves—all was as it should be. The stranger, like an honest
and courteous man, had taken but his own; and, without disturbing the
sleeper, had quitted the house. And Stephen Curlew, the wine glowing in
his heart—yea, down to his very nails, stood and smiled at the unopened
flask before him.
Stephen continued to eye the flask; and though its donor had shared with
him he knew not how many bottles, Stephen was resolved that not one drop
of the luscious juice before him should wet an alien throat. But
how—where to secure it? For, in the new passion which seized upon the
goldsmith, the one flask seemed to him more precious than the costly
treasure in his shop—a thing to be guarded with more scrupulous
affection—more jealous love. In what nook of his house to hide the
glorious wealth—what corner, where it might escape the profane glances
and itching fingers of his workmen? The thought fell in a golden flash
upon him—the cellar—ay, the cellar! Who of his household ever thought of
approaching the cellar? Stephen seized the flask and lamp, and paused.
The cellar had no lock! No matter; he had a bag of three-inch nails and
a stout hammer.
* * * * *
The next morning neighbours met at the closed door and windows of the
goldsmith, and knocked and shouted, shouted and knocked. They were,
however, reduced to a crowbar, and, at length, burst into the house.
Every place was searched, but there was nowhere visible old Stephen
Curlew. Days passed on, and strange stories filled the ears of men. One
neighbour vowed that he had had a dream or a vision, he knew not which,
wherein he saw the goldsmith whirled down the Strand in a chariot drawn
by a lion and a tiger, and driven by a half-naked young man, wearing a
panther skin, and on his head vine-leaves and ivy. An old woman swore
that she had seen Stephen carried away by a dozen devils (very much in
liquor), with red faces and goat legs. However, in less than a month,
the goldsmith’s nephew, a scrivener’s clerk, took possession of Curlew’s
wealth, and became a new-made butterfly with golden wings. As for
Stephen, after various speculations, it was concluded, to the
satisfaction of all parties, that he must have been carried away by
Satan himself, and the nephew cared not to combat popular opinions. But
such, in truth, was not the end of the goldsmith. Hear it.
* * * * *
Stephen, possessed by the thought of the cellar, with the one flask, a
lamp, nails, and hammer, proceeded to the sacred crypt. He arrived in
the vault, and having kissed the flask, reverently put it down, and
straightway addressed himself to the work. Closing the door, he drove
the first nail, the second, third; and borrowing new strength from the
greatness of his purpose, he struck each nail upon the head with the
force and precision of a Cyclops, burying it deep in the oak. With this
new-found might he drove eleven nails; the twelfth was between his thumb
and finger, when looking round—oh! sad mishap, heavy mischance! awful
error!—he had driven the nails from the wrong side! In a word—and we
tremble while we write it—he had nailed himself in! There he stood, and
there stood the flask. He gasped with horror; his foot stumbled, struck
the lamp, it fell over, and the light went out.
Shall we write further on the agony of Stephen Curlew? Shall we describe
how he clawed and struck at the door, now in the hope to wrench a nail,
and now to alarm the breathing men above? No; we will not dwell upon the
horror; it is enough that the fate of the goldsmith was dimly shadowed
forth in the following paragraph of last Saturday:—
“Some labourers, digging a foundation near”—no, we will not name the
place, for the family of the Curlews is not yet extinct, and there may
be descendants in the neighbourhood—“near——, found a skeleton. A hammer
was beside it, with several long nails: a small wine flask was also
found near the remains, which, it is considered, could not have been in
the vault in which they were discovered less than a century and
three-quarters!”
Oh, ye heads of families! and oh, ye thrifty, middle-aged bachelors,
boarding with families, or growing mouldy by yourselves, never, while ye
live, forget the terrible end of Stephen Curlew. And oh, ye heads of
families—and oh, ye aforesaid bachelors, albeit ye have only one bottle
left, never, NEVER NAIL UP THE WINE CELLAR!
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
RECOLLECTIONS OF GUY FAWKES
“When a man has once been very famous for jests and merry adventures, he
is made to adopt all the jests that want a father, and many times
such as are unworthy of him.”—Motteux’s _Life of Rabelais_.
AT midnight, on the fifth of November, in the year of grace one thousand
six hundred and five, Guido Fawkes, “gentleman,” was discovered, “booted
and spurred,” in the vicinity of St Stephen’s Chapel, having on his
person “three matches, a tinder-box, and a dark lantern”; and purposing
by means of gunpowder to blow up, says King James, “the whole nobility,
the most part of the knights and gentry, besides the whole judges of the
land, with _most of the lawyers_ and the whole clerks!” For the one
indiscretion Guido Fawkes forfeited his gentility, and became a proverb
of wickedness. In boyhood we looked upon Guido Fawkes, gentleman, as one
little lower than the devil; he had four horns, and a dozen tails.
“Years that bring the philosophic mind” have divested him of these
excrescences and appendages, and Guido Fawkes now appears to matured
charities merely a person of a singularly eccentric disposition.
Some five and twenty years ago it was the patriotic custom of the
authorities of an Isle of Sheppy dockyard to bestow upon their
apprentices a few waggon-loads of resinous timber, that a bonfire worthy
of the cause it celebrated might be kindled from the public purse—that
the effigy of the arch-fiend Guy might be consumed in a fire three times
hotter than the fire of a furnace. Such fierce liberality was not lost
upon the townspeople; their ardour in the burning business smouldered
not; every man subscribed his plank or log; and, from the commissioner
in his uniform, to Bobby in his pinafore, the fifth of November glowed,
in the calendar of their minds, a pillar of fire. For a month before
that day, the coming anniversary busied the thoughts of boyish
executioners, resolved to show their patriotism in the appointments of
the Guy—in the grotesque iniquity of his face—in the cumbrous state of
his huge arm-chair. To beg clothes from door to door was the business of
every lover of Church and State. To ask for a coat—a pair of breeches—a
shirt (the frill could be made of paper)—hose and hat, was not
mendicity, but the fulfilment of a high social duty.
Guy Fawkes would at length be dressed. A philosopher might have found
good matter in his eleemosynary suit. In the coat of the bloodthirsty
wretch he might have recognised the habit of Scum, the slop-seller, a
quiet trader afloat of twenty thousand pounds—in the vest of the
villainous ruffian the discarded waistcoat of Smallgrog, the honest
landlord of a little house for sailors—in the stockings of the atrocious
miscreant the hose of the equitable Weevil, biscuit-contractor to his
Majesty’s fleet—whilst for the leather of the fiend-like effigy, Guy
Fawkes was to be exhibited, and afterwards burnt in, the broad-toed
shoes of that best of men, Trap, the town attorney.
The chair, too, in which Guy Fawkes sat, might it not have some day
enshrined a justice of the peace? and the lantern fixed in the hand of
the diabolical, lynx-eyed monster, might it not have been the property
of the most amiable and most somnolent of all the Blue Town watchmen? A
mask was fixed upon the effigy, or the lump of clay kneaded into human
features, and horribly or delicately expressed, according to the
benevolent art of the makers!—might not the same visor have been worn by
a perfect gentleman, with considerable advantage, at a masquerade?—might
not the clay nose and mouth of the loathsome traitor have borne an
accidental likeness to the very pink of patriots? Let philosophy ponder
well on Guy Fawkes.
We will now attempt our childish recollections of the great Guy. We have
waked at midnight, perhaps dreaming of the bonfire about to blaze, and
thinking we heard the distant chorus sounding to the advent of the
Mighty Terror. No, it was the sea booming across the marsh, the wind
rising or falling. There was nothing for it but to go to sleep and dream
of unextinguishable squibs and crackers. At length four o’clock arrives;
the cocks crow—the boys can’t be long now. There—hark!—how the chant
comes up the street, like one voice—the voice of a solitary droning
witch! We lie breathless, and shape to ourselves Guy Fawkes in the dark!
Our hearts beat quicker and quicker as the chant becomes louder; and we
sit up in bed, as the boys approach the door, and, oh! how we wish to be
with them! There—there they are in full chorus! Hark:—
“The fifth of November, as I can remember,
Is gunpowder treason and plot,
I know no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.”
We feel an unutterable pang, for loudest among the loud, we hear the
shrill voice of Jack Tarleton. “Ha!” we sigh, “_his_ mother lets _him_
out.” The bitterness passes away with the—
“Hallo, boys! Hallo, boys! make a round ring,
Hallo, boys! Hallo, boys! God save the king!”
[Illustration:
“Rejoicing in the captivity of a suit of clothes stuffed with hay”
]
And now the procession moves on, and the voices die in the distance,
and we feel we are left alone; and, in a few minutes, we hear new
revellers, rejoicing in the captivity of a suit of clothes stuffed
with hay, and called Guy Fawkes. Guy Fawkes! Guy Fawkes! who—what _is_
Guy Fawkes? We had been told that he had been caught with a lantern,
tinder-box and matches, ready to blow up thousands of barrels of
gunpowder, and so to destroy the king, bishops, and members of
Parliament. It must be shocking—very shocking; still, we could not
perfectly envisage the atrocity—we could not make out the full horror.
We had the undefined sense of the greatness of a king, though we
hardly dared to hope we should ever see one. We had a less remote
notion of the nature of a bishop, having been helped somewhat in our
speculations by the person of the curate at the garrison church.
“Curates may come to be bishops, only bishops are very much greater;
and curates have nothing upon their heads, whereas certain bishops
might wear mitres.” On learning this we thought that bishops were
merely full-grown curates; in the same way that we had seen Poland
hens with their topknots of feathers only the spring before
bare-headed little chicks. It was thus, in the irreverence of
childhood, we disposed of the whole bench of bishops. But now came we
to the difficulty—what, what could be a member of Parliament? Was it a
living thing? If so, had it a voice? Could it speak? Could it sit?
Could it say yes and no? Could it walk? Could it turn? Or was it
merely an image? Was it pulled by wires, like sister Jenny’s doll? We
had been told that members of Parliament made laws. What _were_ laws?
Were they the lions and unicorns on the king’s arms? Were they a
better sort of cake, too dear for everybody to buy? Little boys ate
parliament-cakes—were law-cakes for men? If so, were they gilt or
plain?—with comfits or without?
It is no matter, we thought, being unable to satisfy ourselves: it is no
matter. Guy Fawkes—that shadowy, terrible mystery—had once lived and
tried to kill the king, the full-grown curates, and those undivined
riddles—members of Parliament. We again went to our first question. Who
_was_ Guy Fawkes? Did he have a father and mother? Was Guy Fawkes ever a
little boy? and did he fly a kite and play at marbles? If so, how could
he have ever thought it worth his while to trouble himself with other
matters? There was something terrifying in the idea of having played
with Guy Fawkes. We fancied him at taw—we saw him _knuckle down_. No—it
could not be; the imagination of the child could not dwell upon such an
impossibility. Guy Fawkes a boy!—a baby! now shaking a rattle—now
murmuring as he fed, his mother smiling down upon him! No, no—it was
impossible; Guy Fawkes was never born—he was from the first a man—he
never could have been a baby. He seemed to us a part of the things that
had always been, and always would be—a piece of grim eternity; a
principle of everlasting wickedness.
Is it in childhood alone—is it only in the dim imaginings of infancy—in
the wandering guesses of babyhood, that we manifest this ignorance? When
the full-grown thief is hanged, do we not sometimes forget that he was
the child of misery and vice—born for the gallows—nursed for the halter?
Did we legislate a little more for the cradle, might we not be spared
some pains for the hulks?
And then we had been told that Guy Fawkes came from Spain. Where was
Spain? Was it a million miles away, and what distance was a million
miles? Were there little boys in Spain, or were they all like Guy
Fawkes? How strange, and yet how delightful to us did it seem to feel
that we were a part of the wonderful things about us! To be at all upon
this world—to be one at the great _show_ of men and women—to feel that
when we grew bigger we should know everything of kings, bishops, members
of Parliament, and Guy Fawkes! What a golden glory hung about the
undiscovered!
And Guy Fawkes, we had heard, had his head cut off, and his body cut
into quarters! Could this be true? Could men do to men what we had seen
Fulk the butcher do to sheep? How much, we thought, had little boys to
grow out of before they could agree to this! And then, when done, what
was the good of it—what _could_ be the good of it? Was Guy Fawkes
eaten—if not, _why_ cut him up?
Had Guy Fawkes a wife, and little boys and girls? Did he love his
children, and buy them toys and apples—or, like Sawney Bean, did he
devour them? Did Guy Fawkes say his prayers?
Had Guy Fawkes a friend? Did he ever laugh—did he ever tell a droll
story? Did Guy Fawkes ever sing a song? Like Frampton, the Blue Town
Barber, did Guy Fawkes ever get drunk? At length we put to ourselves the
question of questions:—
_Was there ever such a man as Guy Fawkes? Did Guy Fawkes ever live?_
This query annoyed us with the doubt that we had been tricked into a
hate, a fear, a loathing, a wonder—and a mixture of these passions and
emotions, for a fib. We felt disappointed when we felt the reality of
Guy Fawkes to be doubtful. We had heard of griffins and unicorns, of
dragons that had eaten men like apples, and had then been told that
there never had been any such thing. If we were not to believe in a
dragon, why should we believe in Guy Fawkes? After all, was the whole
story but make-game?
The child passively accepts a story of the future, he can bring his mind
up to a thing promised, but wants faith in the past. The cause is
obvious; he recollects few things gone, but is full of things to come.
Hence Guy Fawkes was with us the ogre of a nursery; we could have
readily believed, especially after the Story of Beauty and the Beast,
that he married Goody Two Shoes, and was the father of Little Red Riding
Hood.
But Guy Fawkes grows with us from boyhood to youth. He gets flesh and
blood with every November; he is no longer the stuffed plaything of a
schoolboy or the grotesque excuse for begging vagabonds, but the
veritable Guy Fawkes, “gentleman.” We see him, “Thomas Percy’s alleged
man,” at the door of the vault, “booted and spurred”; we behold that
“very tall and desperate fellow,” lurking in the deep of night, with
looks of deadly resolution, pounced upon by that vigilant gentleman of
the privy-chamber, Sir Thomas Knevit! We go with Guido, “the new Mutius
Scævola, born in England,” before the council, where “he often smiles in
scornful manner, not only avowing the fact, but repenting only, with the
said Scævola, his failing in the execution thereof.” We think of him
“answering quickly to every man’s objection, scoffing at any idle
questions which were propounded to him, and jesting with such as he
thought had no authority to examine him.” And then we think of the
thanksgiving of the great James, who gave praise that, had the intent of
the wicked prevailed, he should not have “died ingloriously in an
ale-house, a stew, or such vile place,” but with “the best and most
honourable company.”[7]
Footnote 7:
See “His Majesty’s Speech concerning the Gunpowder Plot,” etc., in the
_Harleian Miscellany_.
Guy Fawkes is, in our baby thoughts, a mysterious vision, one of the
shadows of evil advancing on the path of childhood. We grow older, and
the substances of evil come close upon us—we see their dark lantern, and
snuff the brimstone.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
ELIZABETH AND VICTORIA.
EVERY generation compared to the age it immediately succeeds is but a
further lapse from Paradise. Every grandfather is of necessity a wiser,
kinder, nobler being that the grandson doomed to follow him—every
grandmother chaster, gentler, more self-denying, more devoted to the
beauty of goodness, than the giddy, vain, thoughtless creature, who in
her time is sentenced to be grandmother to somebody, whose still
increased defects will only serve to bring out the little lustre of the
gentlewoman who preceded her. Man, undoubtedly, had at the first a fixed
amount of goodness bestowed upon him; but this goodness, by being passed
from generation to generation, has, like a very handsome piece of coin,
with arms and legend in bold relief, become so worn by continual
transit, that it demands the greatest activity of faith to believe that
which is now current in the world, to be any portion of the identical
goodness with which the human race was originally endowed. Hapless
creatures are we! Moral paupers of the nineteenth century, turning a
shining cheek upon one another, and by the potent force of swagger,
passing off our thin, worn, illegible pieces of coin—how often, no
thicker, no weightier than a spangle on a player’s robe!—when our
glorious ancestors, in the grandeur of their goodness, could ring down
musical shekels! Nay, as we go back, we find the coin of excellence so
heavy, so abounding, that how any man—Samson perhaps excepted—had
strength enough to carry his own virtues about him, puzzles the
effeminacy of present thought. Folks then were doubtless made grave,
majestic in their movements by the very weight of their excellence.
Whilst we, poor anatomies—skipjacks of the nineteenth century—we carry
all our ready virtue in either corner of our waistcoat pocket, and from
its very lightness, are unhappily enabled to act all sorts of unhallowed
capers—to forget the true majesty of man in the antics of the
mountebank. Forlorn degradation of the human race!
But the tears of the reader—for if he have a heart of flesh, it is by
this time melting in his eyes—are not confidently demanded for only the
one generation whereof (seeing he is our reader) he is certainly not the
worst unit: but we here require of him to weep for posterity; yes, to
subscribe a rivulet of tears for the generations to come. The coinage of
the virtues at present in circulation among us is so thin, so defaced,
so battered, so clipt, that it appears to us wholly impossible that any
portion of the currency can descend a couple of generations lower. What,
then, is to become of our grandchildren? Without one particle of golden
truth and goodness left to them, for we cannot take into account the two
or three pieces hoarded—as old ladies have hoarded silver pennies—what
remains, what alternative for our descendants but to become a generation
of coiners? Can any man withstand the terror of this picture, wherein
all the world are shown as so many passers of pocket-pieces, lacquered
over with something that seems like gold and silver, but which, indeed,
is only seeming? A picture wherein he who is the ablest
hypocrite—passing off the greatest amount of false coin upon his
neighbor—shall appear the most virtuous person! Is not this an appalling
scene to contemplate? Yet, if there be any truth in a common theory, if
there be any veracity in the words written in a thousand pages, uttered
at every fireside, dropt in the casual meeting of man and man at
door-steps, in by-lanes, highways, and market-places—the picture we have
shadowed forth must become an iron present.
“We shall never see such times again!”
“The world isn’t what it used to be.”
“When I was a boy, things hadn’t come to this pass.”
“The world gets wickeder and wickeder.”
Since the builders of Babel were scattered, these thoughts have been
voiced in every tongue. From the very discontent and fantasticalness of
his nature, man looks backward at the lost Paradise of another age. He
affects to snuff the odour of its fruits and flowers, and with a
melancholy shaking of the head, sees, or thinks he sees, the flashing of
the fiery swords that guard them. And then, in the restlessness of his
heart, in the peevishness and discontent of his soul, he says all sorts
of bitter things of the generations he has fallen among; and, from the
vanished glory of the past, predicts increasing darkness for the future.
Happily, the prophesying cannot be true; and happily, too, for the
condition of the prophet, he knows it will not. But then there is a sort
of comfort in the waywardness of discontent; at times, a soothing music
to the restlessness of the soul in the deep bass of hearty grumbling.
The ingratitude of the act is entirely forgotten in the pleasure. “Ha!
those were the merry days—the golden times of England they were!” May
not this be heard from the tradesman, the mechanic, as he is borne past
Tilbury Fort, and the thoughts of Queen Elizabeth, of her “golden days,”
ring in his brain; and living only in the nineteenth century, he has
some vague, perplexing notion that he has missed an Eden, only by a
hundred years or two? He thinks not—why should he?—of the luxury he now
purchases for a shilling; a luxury, not compassable in those golden days
by all the power and wealth of all the combining sovereigns of the
earth, for he is a passenger of a Gravesend steamboat, the fare
twelvepence.
We would not forget that wonder of Elizabeth’s navy, the _Great Harry_.
No; we would especially remember it, to compare the marvel, with all its
terrors, to the agent of our day, which, wrought and directed from a few
gallons of water, makes the winged ship but as a log—a dead leviathan
upon the deep; which, in the certainty and intensity of its power of
destruction must, in the fulness of time, make blood-spilling war
bankrupt, preaching peace with all men, even from “the cannon’s mouth.”
We are, however, a degenerate race. In our maudlin sensibility, we have
taken under our protection the very brutes of the earth—the fowls of the
air—the fish of the sea. We have cast the majesty of the law around the
asses of the reign of Victoria—have assured to live geese a property in
their own feathers—have, with a touch of tenderness, denounced the
wood-plugged claws of the lobsters of Billingsgate. We have a society,
whose motto, spiritually, is—
“Never to link our pleasure or our pride
With suffering of the meanest thing that lives.”
Very different, indeed, was the spirit of the English people, when their
good and gracious Queen Elizabeth smiled sweetly upon bull dogs, and
found national music in the growl, the roar, and the yell of a
bear-garden; whereto, in all the courtesy of a nobler and more virtuous
age, the sovereign led the French ambassador; that, as chroniclers tell
us, Monsieur might arrive at a sort of comparative knowledge of English
bravery, judging the courage of the people by the stubborn daring of
their dogs.
Then we had no Epsom, with its high moralities—no Ascot, with its
splendour and wealth. Great, indeed, was the distance—deep the
abyss—between the sovereign and the sovereign people.
And in those merry, golden days of good Queen Bess, rank was something;
it had its brave outside, and preached its high prerogative from
externals. The nobleman declared his nobility by his cloak, doublet and
jerkin; by the plumes in his hat; by the jewels flashing in his shoes.
Society, in all its gradations, was inexorably marked by the tailor and
goldsmith.
But what is the tailor of the nineteenth century? What doth he for
nobility? Alas! next to nothing. The gentleman is no longer the creature
of the tailor’s hands—the being of his shop-board. The gentleman must
dress himself in ease, in affability, in the gentler and calmer
courtesies of life, to make distinguishable the nobility of his nature
from the homeliness, the vulgarity of the very man who, it may be, finds
nobility in shoe-leather. Thus, gentility of blood, deprived by
innovation of its external livery—denied the outward marks of
supremacy—is thrown upon its bare self to make good its prerogative.
Manner must now do the former duty of fine clothes.
State, too, was in the blessed times of Elizabeth a most majestic
matter. The queen’s carriage, unlike Victoria’s, was a vehicle wondrous
in the eyes of men as the chariot of King Pharaoh. Now, does every poor
man keep his coach—price sixpence! How does the economy of luxury
vulgarise the indulgence?
[Illustration:
“Rank preached its high prerogative from externals”
]
Travelling was then a grave and serious adventure. The horse-litter was
certainly a more dignified means of transit than the fuming, boiling,
roaring steam-engine, that rushes forward with a man as though the human
anatomy was no more than a woolpack. In the good old times of Queen
Bess, a man might take his five long days and more for a hundred miles,
putting up, after a week’s jolting, at his hostelry, the Queen’s Head of
Islington, for one good night’s rest, ere he should gird up his loins to
enter London. Now is man taught to lose all respect for the hoariness of
time by the quickness of motion. Now may he pass over two hundred miles
in some seven or eight hours if he will, taking his first meal in the
heart of Lancashire, and his good-night glass at a Geneva palace in
London. Is it wonderful that our present days should abound more in
sinful levity than the days of the good Queen Elizabeth, seeing that we
may, in the same space of time, crowd so much more iniquity? The truth
is, science has thrown so many hours upon our hands, that we are
compelled to kill them with all sorts of arrows—which, as moralists
declare, have mortal poison at the barb, however gay and brilliant may
be the feathers that carry it home. Dreadful will be the time when that
subtle fiend, science, shall perform nearly all human drudgery; for then
men in their very idleness will have nought else to destroy save their
own souls; and the destruction will, of course, be quicker, and, to the
father of all mischief, much more satisfactory.
Again, in the good times of Elizabeth, humanity was blessed with a
modesty, a deference—in these days of bronze, to be vainly sought
for—towards the awfulness of power, the grim majesty of authority. And
if, indeed, it happened that some outrageous wretch, forgetful of the
purpose of nature in creating him the Queen’s liegeman, and therefore
her property—if, for a moment, he should cease to remember the fealty
which, by the principle of the divine right of kings, should be vital to
him as the blood in his veins—why, was there not provided for him, by
the benignity of custom and the law, a salutary remedy? If he advanced a
new opinion, had he not ears wherewith, by hangman’s surgery, he might
be cured of such disease? If he took a mistaken view of the rights of
his fellow-subjects, might he not be taught to consider them from a
higher point of elevation, and so be instructed?
Booksellers, in the merry time of Elizabeth, were enabled to vindicate a
higher claim to moral and physical daring than is permitted to them in
these dull and drivelling days. He who published a book,
questioning—though never so gently—the prerogative of her Majesty to do
just as the spirit should move her, might have his right hand chopped
off, and afterwards—there have been examples of such devotion—wave his
bloody stump, with a loyal shout of “God save the Queen!” But these were
merry days—golden days—in which the royal prerogative was more majestic,
more awful than in the nineteenth century. And wherefore? The reason is
plain as the Queen’s arms.
The king of beasts lives on flesh. His carnivorousness is one of the
great elements of his Majesty. So was it in the times of Elizabeth, with
the Queen’s prerogative. It was for the most part fed upon flesh. It
would be a curious and instructive calculation could we arrive at the
precise number of noses, and arms, and hands, and human heads, and
quarters of human carcases, which—during the merry, golden reign of
Elizabeth, of those days we shall never see again—were required by law
to keep strong and lusty the prerogative of the Virgin Queen! How, as
the human head festered and rotted above the city gates, was the
prerogative sweetened by the putrefaction! And then the daily lessons
preached by the mute horror of the dead man’s mouth, to the human life
daily passing beneath it! What precepts of love and gentleness towards
all men fell from the shrivelled lips—what Christianity gleamed from the
withered eye-balls! How admirably were the every-day thoughts of men
associated with prerogative, its majesty for ever preached by dead men’s
tongues—its beauty visible in dead men’s flesh. Those were the golden
days—the merry days—we shall never see such times again. Now, a poor and
frivolous race, we pass beneath Temple Bar, untaught by the grim
moralities that from its height were wont to instruct our forefathers.
In the days of Elizabeth we might have lounged at the door of the city
shopkeeper, and whilst chaffering for a commodity of this world, have
had our thoughts elevated by a consideration of the ghastly
skull—grinning a comment upon all earthly vanities—above us. Those days
are gone—passed for ever. We have now plate-glass and dainty painting,
and precious woods, in the shops of our tradesmen, but nought to take us
from the vanity of life—no prerogative of a Virgin Queen, in the useful
semblance of a _memento mori_.
[Illustration:
“Hangman’s surgery”
]
It is to the want of such stern yet wholesome monitors we are doubtless
to attribute the decay of the national character. We are sunk in
effeminacy, withered by the fond ministerings of science. The road of
life—which, by its ruggedness, was wont to try the sinews of our
Elizabethan ancestors—we, their degenerate children, have spread as with
a carpet, and hung the walls around us with radiant tapestry. The
veriest household drudge of our time is a Sardanapalus compared to the
lackey of the Virgin Queen. The tatterdemalion, who lives on highway
alms, may look down upon the beggar of Elizabeth; for the mendicant of
Victoria may, with his prayed-for pence, purchase luxuries unknown to
the Dives of former days.
And what—if we listen to complaining patriotism—what is the evil born of
this? A loss of moral energy; a wasting away of national fibre. Believe
this melancholy philosophy, and national weakness came in (a moral moth
in the commodity) with silk stockings. Ere then was the bearing of man
more majestic in the eyes of angels! For then was the sword the type of
station, a gentleman no more appearing abroad without his rapier than a
wasp without its sting. Human life could not but lose part of its
dignity with its cold steel. What a fine comment on the charity, the
gentleness, the humanity of his fellow-men, did every gentleman wear at
his side! He was, in a manner, his own law-maker, his own executioner.
In the judgment of later philosophy, we are prone to believe that the
said gentlemen may appear, at the best, ferocious simpletons—creatures
swaggering “between heaven and earth,” with their hands upon their
hilts, ready and yearning for a thrust at those who took the wall of
their gentility. Ha! those, indeed, were the good old days! And then
came a whining, curd-complexioned benevolence, and in progress of time,
its thin, white, womanly fingers unbuckled the sword-belt of the bully,
and organised police. Sword-makers were bankrupt, and human nature lost
a grace!
Thus, it appears, the world has been from age to age declining in
virtue, and can only escape the very profound of iniquity by a speedy
dissolution. Every half dozen years or so, a prophet growls from a
cellar, or cries from the altitude of a garret, the advent of the last
day. An earthquake, or some other convulsion (the particulars of which
are only vouchsafed to the prophet) is to destroy the earth or London at
least; whereupon old gentlemen remove to Gravesend, and careful
housewives take stock of their plate. Now, every such prophecy, instead
of bewildering honest people with all sorts of fears, and all sorts of
anxieties for their personal property, ought to make them sing
thanksgiving songs for the promised blessing. It being the creed of
these people that the world gets worse and worse, they would at least
have the comfort to know that they had seen the last of its wickedness.
For a moment, reader, we will suppose you one of these. Consider, upon
your own faith, what a terrible wretch will necessarily be your
great-great-great-great-great-grandson! Well, would it not be
satisfaction to you that this dragon (we believe dragons are oviparous)
should be crushed in the egg of the future? How would you like your own
flesh and blood inevitably changed by the course of time into the
anatomy of something very like a demon? You are bad enough as you are;
that dismal truth your own humility preaches to you; to say nothing of
the plain speaking of your neighbours. No; out of pure love and pity for
humanity, you ought to wish all the world to stop with your own pulse.
It is hard enough now, even for the best of us, to keep on the
respectable side of the statutes; but, with the growing wickedness of
the world, we should like to know what sort of metal will the laws be
made of. The great social link must inevitably be a fetter.
How often have we stood, with the unseen tears in our eyes, watching the
nobility of the land, in nobility’s best bib and tucker, winding in
golden line to the drawing-room of Queen Victoria! Alas! degenerate
dukes—faded duchesses. Marquises fallen upon evil times—marchionesses
very dim indeed! What are you to the nobility of Elizabeth? What to the
grandees of those merry days, the golden shadow of which is brightness
itself to the cold, grey glimmering of the present? We have yet one
thought to comfort us; and that is, a half belief that the court of
Elizabeth was held as nothing to all courts preceding; and so back,
until Englishmen mourned over the abomination of cloaks and vests,
sorrowing for those golden days, those good old times of the painted
Britons! Great was the virtue abounding in _woad_; grievous the wilful
iniquity woven in broad-cloth.
Queen Elizabeth died—fair, regal bud!—in the sweetness of virginity; and
though the sun (by some despairing effort) managed to rise the next
morning, it has never been wholly itself since. She died, and was
brought to Whitehall, to the great calamity of the fish then swimming in
the river; for a poet of the day, quoted by Camden, has eternised the
evil that in the hour fell upon Thames flounders:—
“The Queene was brought by water to Whitehall;
At every stroke the oares teares let fall;
More clung about the barge; fish under water
_Wept out their eyes of pearle, and swame blinde after_,
I think the bargemen might with easier thighes
Have rowed her thither in her people’s eyes.
Yet, howsoere, thus much my thoughts have scann’d,
She’d come by water, had she come by land.”
So closed the golden days of Queen Elizabeth; leaving us, in all the
virtues and comforts of the world, the bankrupt children of Queen
Victoria!
Unworthy is he of the balmy sweetness of this blessed May who can think
so! A churlish, foolish, moody traitor to the spirit of goodness and
beauty that, as with the bounty of the sun and air, calls up forms of
loveliness in his path, and surrounds him with ten thousand household
blessings! With active presences, which the poet of Elizabeth, in even
_his_ large love for man could scarce have dreamed of; or, dreaming,
seen them as a part of fairy fantasy—a cloud-woven pageant!
Let the man who lives by his daily sweat pause in his toil, and, with
his foot upon his spade, watch the white smoke that floats in the
distance; listen to the lessening thunder of the engine that, instinct
with Vulcanic life, has rushed, devouring space, before it. That little
curl of smoke hangs in the air a thing of blessed promise—that roar of
the engine is the melody of hope to unborn generations. But now, the
digger of the soil looks moodily at that vapour, and his heart is
festering with the curse upon the devil Steam; that fiend that grinds
his bones beneath the wheels of British Juggernaut. Poor creature! The
seeming demon is a beneficent presence that, in the ripeness of time,
will work regeneration of the hopes of men.
Let the poor man—the mechanic of a town—look around him. Let him in his
own house, humble though it be, acknowledge the presence of a thousand
comforts which, had he lived two centuries ago, he could not with a
baron’s wealth have purchased. Not mere creature enjoyments; but
humanizing, refining pleasures, drawing man nearer to man, expanding the
human heart, and imparting to humanity the truest greatness in the
greatest gentleness.
“What!” it may be asked, “can you have the hardihood, or the ignorance,
to vaunt these days above the days of Elizabeth? These days with famine
throwing the shuttle—with ignorance, wholly brutish, digging in the
pit—with gold, a monster all brain, and so the very worst of
monsters—dominating throughout the land, and crushing the pulses of
thousands within its hard, relentless grasp? Would you not rather pray
for a return of those merry, merry days, when men were whipped,
imprisoned, branded, burnt, at little more than the mere will of
Majesty, for mere opinion—but who had, nevertheless, bacon and bread and
ale sufficient to the day?”
No; we would go no step backward, but many in advance; our faith still
increasing in the enlarged sympathies of men; in the reverence which man
has learned and is still learning to pay towards the nature of his
fellow-men; in the deep belief that whatever change may and _must_ take
place in the social fabric—we have that spirit of wisdom and tolerance
(certainly _not_ a social creature of the golden days) waxing strong
among us,—so strong that the fabric will be altered and repaired brick
by brick, and stone by stone. Meanwhile, the scaffolding is fast growing
up about it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE LITTLE GREAT AND THE GREAT LITTLE
EXTRAORDINARY is the mind of man! He sails in mid-air; he compasseth the
globe; he blunts the lightning; he writeth _Hamlet_, _Paradise Lost_,
the _Principia_, and he chaineth a flea by the leg. He maketh the strong
elephant to bend his joints, and he subdueth a flea, if not to “hew
wood,” at least to draw water. These, the later triumphs of the human
essence, are now on exhibition somewhere in that long ark for modern
monsters, Regent Street! Yes, the “Industrious Fleas” at once delight
and shame fashionable idlers, sending them to their beds to ruminate on
the sagacity of the living world about them.
We love a monster as much as ever did _Trinculo_; hence we have been
bitten; that is, we have made acquaintance with the “Industrious Fleas.”
Let us shortly enumerate their separate capabilities. One flea, a fine
muscular fellow, worthy, did fairies die, to be mourning coach horse at
the funeral of Queen Titania (how long since the fairies had a
coronation!), draws a very splendid carriage, constructed from the pith
of elder. He curvets, and bounds, and shows his blood (he must have been
fed in some royal stable—he has surely fattened on kings) with the
proudest royal coach-horse, on—as they say at public dinners—“the
proudest day of its life.” Having seen its legs, we shall think more
seriously of the kick of a flea ever after. Then, to talk of a “flea
bite,” as a proverb for a wife—a mere nothing; let those who speak thus
vainly contemplate the terrible proboscis of the aforesaid chariot flea,
and then think of the formidable weapon, plunged through one’s tender
skin, and sucking up by quarts (we saw, we looked through a microscope)
our hearts’ best blood! To go to bed appears no wonder, but to be able
to rise again after what we have beheld, seems to us a daily miracle! To
proceed. Another of the “industrious” takes the air with a chain and a
weight to his leg, the wonder consisting in its resignation to its
destiny. A third flea, also manacled, draws water. A fourth flea has a
more awful duty—to bear Napoleon Bonaparte, late of France, but now of
St Helena—there he is, the victor of a hundred fights, majestically
seated on flea back. An enthusiastic Frenchman may, if he have good
eyes, see in the miniature emperor, the sallow, thoughtful face, the
“brassy eye” (_vide_ Haydon’s account) of the original despot—could the
figure take snuff, the illusion would be perfect. Two other fleas,
soldiers, fight a desperate combat, affording in their proper persons a
triumphant refutation to the celebrated dogma of the philosopher, that
“fleas are not lobsters.” We understood from the _Cicerone_ that their
deadly enmity was excited towards each other by a mutual tickling. We
were also informed that one of the fleas (“epicurean animal!”) had the
honour to sup off the hand of the Princess Augusta. This fact was
shamefully hushed up by the magas of the _Court Circular_, else how
would it have astonished the world to have read that “last night Her
Royal Highness the Princess Augusta gave a supper to the fleas!” Certain
it is, the document contains at times news of less interest.[8] This
condescension on the part of her Highness, though it speaks much for her
affability, has been the cause of grievous heartburnings and bickerings
among the society. It is extraordinary the airs that every flea gives
himself about “his blood.” However, it is to be hoped that a herald will
be appointed to settle the claims of each disputant, and to favour the
whole with a genealogical tree. Who knows whether one of these fleas’
ancestors did not bite Sancho Panza, or the Dulcinea del Toboso, or the
_Carters_, who were “bitten like a tench”? Speaking on our own
responsibility, we are afraid that each of these little creatures, after
all its vanity about pure blood, has been somewhat capricious in its
appetite; a fault, by the by, which often puzzles the heralds in their
labours, for certain other little animals are very angry, when they
speak of blood, too.
Footnote 8:
Her Majesty the Queen, and Prince George of Cumberland, stood the
whole of the sermon!!—_Court Circular_, April 8, 1832.
We quitted the exhibition, and walking at a melancholy pace, with our
long, lean visage bent towards the earth, we were accosted by a man—an
odd-looking person, with a box at his back—who begged we would stop and
see his show. We were in a sight-seeing humour, and at once consented.
The box was placed on a trestle, our eye was at the glass, and our ears
open, when the man commenced his description:—
“The first view presents you with a grand state coach of the Great
Mogul; it is drawn by a thousand curious animals; they are, as you will
perceive, very finely dressed in rich harness, tall feathers, and flying
ribbons; they come and tie themselves to the coach, and feel it an
honour to be bridled; they snort, and caper, and kick mud into the eyes
of the bystanders.
“The next view shows you one of these animals with a long chain and a
heavy log. This chain was fixed upon his leg when he was born; and
though he has sometimes tried to file away the links, he has had his
knuckles so smartly rapped, and been called so many names—been so
preached to that the chain and log were for his own good, and that it
would ruin him to take them from him—that ’tis likely he will, for the
public benefit, be made to wear them to the end of his days.
“The animal in the next view, that is chained and draws water, is one of
the Great Mogul’s million of slaves. Although he draws bucket after
bucketful for the Mogul’s house and his household, for his horses and
his dogs, and his kitchen, and his flower garden, he is often perishing
himself for one half mouthful; his lips are blistered, and his tongue
black, with the water drawn by his own hands, running about him.
“The fourth animal is mounted on a fiery dragon, that, belching flames,
kindles forests, fires towns, dries rivers, blasts harvests, and
swallows men, women, and sucking babes. Look to the left, and the dragon
is turned to a something no bigger than a mouse, and with its stinted
rations of butter and cheese.
“In the fifth and last view you see ten thousand of these animals
ferociously killing, biting, tearing another ten thousand, whom they
never saw till a few minutes ago, and with whom they have no quarrel.
But they kill one another because they are tickled to do so. That is,
certain animals go about with tickling wands called ‘glory,’ ‘deathless
renown,’ ‘laurel,’ and other titillating syllables, poking in the ribs
of the poor benighted creatures.”
I took my eye from the glass: “My good man, what have you shown me?”
“Fleas, sir.”
“Fleas!—nonsense; the fleas are shown above.”
“Yes, sir; but mine are the fleas with two legs; though, _if_ I must be
honest, I can’t say I see any difference between the fleas in my
show-box and the fleas above.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE MANAGER’S PIG
“Some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have
daily seen and been acquainted with whilst they were alive.... In
this behaviour, methinks there appears something like a
consciousness of guilt; it looks as if they endeavoured to save
themselves from the imputation of a crime (which they know sticks
somewhere) by removing the cause of it as far as they can from
themselves.”—MANDEVILLE.
ARISTIDES TINFOIL, it is our fixed belief, was intended by nature either
for lawn sleeves or ermined robes; he was, we doubt it not, sent into
this world an embryo bishop, or a lord-chief-justice _in posse_. Such,
we are convinced, was the benignant purpose of nature; but the cruel
despotism of worldly circumstance relentlessly crossed the fair design;
and Tinfoil, with a heart of honey and a head of iron, was only a
player—or, we should rather say, a master among players. Tinfoil might
have preached charity-sermons till tears should have overflowed the
pews; no matter, he acted the benevolent old men to the sobs and spasms
of a crowded audience: he might, with singular efficacy, have passed
sentence of death on coiners and sheep-stealers; circumstances, however,
confined his mild reproofs to scene-shifters, bill-stickers, Cupids at
one shilling per night, and white muslin Graces.
“Where is Mr Moriturus?” asked Tinfoil, chagrined at the untoward
absence of his retainer. “Where is he?”
“Ill, Sir,” was the melancholy answer, “very ill.”
“Ill!” exclaimed Tinfoil, in a tone of anger, quickly subsiding into
mild remonstrance. “Ill!—why—why doesn’t the good man _die at once_?”
A pretty budding girl had, unhappily, listened to the silvery tongue of
a rival manager. “Take her from the villain!” exclaimed Tinfoil to the
sorrowing parent; “bring her here, and then—then I’ll tell you what I’ll
do.”
“Dear, kind Mr Tinfoil, what will you do!”
“I’ll bring her out, Sir—bring her out in—” and here the manager named a
play in which the horrors of seduction are painted in bold colours for
the indignant virtuous. “I’ll bring her out in that, Sir, as a
particular favour to you, and sympathising as I must with the affliction
you suffer, I—I myself will play the injured father, Sir.”
These, however, are but faint lines in the strongly-marked character of
Tinfoil, and merely displaying them to awaken the attention of the
reader to what we consider a most triumphant piece of casuistry on the
part of our hero—to an incident which admits of so many hundred worldly
illustrations—we shall proceed to the pig. The subject, we own, may
appear unpromising from its extreme homeliness; yet, as the precious
bezoar is sought for in deer and goats, so may a pearl of price be found
even in a pig.
It is our fervent wish to be most exact in every point of this little
history; yet cannot we remember the exact year in which Tinfoil,
revolving in his managerial mind the very many experiments made under
his government on the curiosity and sensibilities of the public,
determined in a golden moment, upon the introduction of a pig, in a
drama to be expressly written for the animal’s capacities. In the slang
of the craft, the pig was to be measured for his part.
We cannot take it upon ourselves to avow, that an accident of late
occurrence to a brother actor, did not, at least remotely, influence the
choice of Tinfoil. The mishap was this. A few miles from London—for the
sake of unborn generations we conceal the name of the town—the dullard
denizens had manifested an extraordinary apathy to the delights of the
drama. In the despairing words of one of the sufferers, “nothing could
move ’em.” However, another of more sanguine temperament resolved to
make a last bold effort on their stubborn souls, and to such high end,
set a pig at them. Mingling the blandishments of the lottery with the
witcheries of the drama, he caused it to be printed in boldest type to
the townspeople of ——, that a shower of little bits of paper would take
place between the play and farce, and amidst this shower a prize would
descend, conveying to the lucky possessor the entire property of a real
China-bred porker! Inconceivable as to us it is the scheme failed—the
pig remained live stock upon the hands of the projector, who, the next
morning, walked to town; and recounting his adverse fortune to the
calculating Tinfoil, supplicated any employment.
“And you still possess the pig? Humph!” mused Tinfoil; “perhaps we may
come to some arrangement.”
In few words the applicant was admitted among Tinfoil’s troop; the pig,
at a nominal price, passing into the hands of the manager.
The pig was no sooner a member of the company than the household author
was summoned by Tinfoil, who, introducing the man of letters to the
porker, shortly intimated that “he must write a part for him.”
“For a pig, Sir?” exclaimed the author.
“Measure him,” said Tinfoil, not condescending to notice the
astonishment of the dramatist.
“But, my dear Sir, it is impossible that——”
“Sir! impossible is a word which I cannot allow in my establishment. By
this time, Sir, you ought to know that my will, Sir, is sufficient for
all things, Sir—that, in a word, Sir, there is a great deal of Napoleon
about me, Sir.”
We must admit that the dramatist ought not to have forgotten this last
interesting circumstance, Mr Tinfoil himself very frequently recurring
to it. Indeed, it was only an hour before that he had censured the
charwoman for having squandered a whole sack of sawdust on the hall
floor, when half a sack was the allotted quantity. “He, Mr Tinfoil, had
said half a sack; and the woman knew, or ought to know, there was a good
deal of Napoleon about him!” To return to the pig.
“Measure him, Sir,” cried Mr Tinfoil, the deepening tones growling
through his teeth, and his finger pointing still more emphatically
downwards to the pig.
“Why,” observed the author, “if it could be measured, perhaps——”
“_If_ it could! Sir,” and Mr Tinfoil, when at all excited, trolled the
monosyllable with peculiar energy—“Sir, I wouldn’t give a straw for a
dramatist who couldn’t measure the cholera-morbus.”
“Much may be done for an actor by measuring,” remarked the dramatist,
gradually falling into the opinion of his employer.
“Everything, Sir! Good God! what might I not have been had I
condescended to be measured? Human nature, Sir—the divine and glorious
characteristic of our common being, Sir—that is the thing, Sir—by
heavens! Sir, when I think of that great creature, Shakespeare, Sir, and
think that he never measured actors—no, Sir——”
“No, Sir,” acquiesced the dramatist.
“Notwithstanding, Sir, we live in other times, Sir, and you must write a
part for the pig, Sir.”
“Very well, Sir; if he must be measured, Sir, he must,” said the author.
“It is a melancholy thing to be obliged to succumb to the folly of the
day,” remarked Mr Tinfoil, “and yet, Sir, I could name certain people,
Sir, who, by heavens! Sir, would not have a part to their backs, Sir, if
they had not been measured for it, Sir. Let me see: it is not three
o’clock—well, some time to-night you’ll let me have the piece for the
pig, Sir.”
Now whether the writer addressed was by his “so potent art” enabled to
measure a pig—to write a perfect swinish drama in a few hours—or
whether, knowing the Buonapartean self-will of the manager, the
dramatist thought it wise to make no remonstrance, we cannot truly
discover: certain it is, with no objection made, he took his leave.
“An extraordinary young man, Sir—I have brought him out, Sir—a wonderful
young man, Sir,” observed Mr Tinfoil to a friend and neighbour, a dealer
in marine-stores. “Only wants working, Sir—requires nothing but being
kept at it, Sir.”
“Well, it must be a puzzling trade,” remarked the dealer.
“Puzzling, Sir! By heavens! Sir, my heart bleeds for men of letters,
Sir—they are great creatures, Sir—wonderful natures, Sir—we cannot think
too highly of them, Sir—cannot sufficiently reward them, Sir! Now, Sir,
it is perfectly unknown my liberality towards that young man! But then,
Sir—it is my delight, Sir, when I find real genius, Sir—when I meet with
a man of original mind, Sir—by heavens! Sir,” again cried Mr Tinfoil,
resorting to the exclamation as an outlet for his overcharged feelings.
The pig was duly measured—the piece prepared—and, having been produced
at enormous expense, was sealed with the unqualified approbation of a
discerning public.
The pig-drama had been represented about twenty nights, when the author
of the piece, in friendly converse with his patron manager, remarked
“that the porker had been a most profitable venture.”
“Why, Sir,” replied Mr Tinfoil, “tolerably well; but the fact is, I am
obliged to bolster him. He has had the advantage of three new
afterpieces, and therefore can’t complain that he has been let down.
Still, the pig has done very well, and perhaps may run a fortnight
more.” Saying this Tinfoil quaffed from a brimming glass of his chosen
fluid.
“At all events,” remarked the author, “the pig possesses one advantage
not to be found in any other of your actors.”
“And what, Sir,” asked Mr Tinfoil, “what may that be?”
“Why, after the pig has done his work, and the piece is put by, you may
eat the pig.”
The manager started from the inhuman man of letters with a look of
mingled horror, disgust and pity. When he had somewhat recovered from
his amazement he asked with evident loathing, “What did you say, Sir?”
“I said,” replied the insensible author, “that when the pig had played
out his part you might eat him.”
Mr Tinfoil, gently stirring his brandy-and-water, fixed an eye, like
that of death-darting cockatrice, upon the author, and after swallowing
the liquor, and thereby somewhat regaining his self-possession, he
addressed the thoughtless dramatist in words and tones that, as he has
since declared, can never cease to vibrate in his memory.
“Sir!” thus spoke Mr Tinfoil. “I regret—much regret, Sir, that anything
in my conduct could have induced you, Sir, to think so uncharitably of
my disposition, Sir.”
“I assure you, Sir——”
“Hear me out, Sir. What, Sir! think me capable of feeding upon an animal
that I have played with—a creature, whose sagacity has almost made it my
humble friend—a pig that has eaten from my hand—that knows my voice—that
I—I eat that pig—good heavens, Sir!”
“I’m sure I didn’t mean——”
“No, Sir,” cried Tinfoil, “not were I starving, Sir—not were I
famishing, Sir, could I be brought to taste that pig.”
Much more did Mr Tinfoil deliver declaratory of his horror at the bare
idea of setting his teeth in the flesh of his quadruped actor, and the
rebuked man of letters quitted the manager with an exalted notion of his
sensibility.
The pig-drama continued to be played to the increasing satisfaction of
the public; the audience, however, only being admitted to view the
professional abilities of the animal; his suppers—from some
extraordinary omission of Tinfoil—not being eaten before the curtain.
Great, however, as was the success of the pig, at about the fortieth
night his prosperity began to wane—he was withdrawn, and passed into
oblivion.
A few weeks had elapsed, and the author was summoned to the dwelling of
his manager, to write a play for a stud of horses. Tinfoil was at
dinner, whereto he courteously invited his household scribe.
“You oughtn’t to refuse,” said one of the diners, “for this,” and the
speaker pointed to some pickled pork in the dish, “this is an old friend
of yours.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed the dramatist, looking reproachfully at
Tinfoil. “Why, not the pig?”
Tinfoil somewhat abashed coughed and nodded.
“Why, you said that nothing on earth would tempt you to eat that pig.”
“No more it could, Sir,” cried the assured manager, “no, Sir—no more it
could—_unless salted_!”
Of how many applications is this casuistry of the manager susceptible?
“When, Sir,” cried the pensioned patriot, “I swore that no power in the
universal world could make me accept a favour at the hands of such men—I
meant——”
“_Unless salted!_”
How often is it with men’s principles, as with the manager’s pig; things
inviolable, immutable—_unless salted_?
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
SOME ACCOUNT OF A STAGE DEVIL
THE “principle of evil,” as commonly embodied in the theatre, has been a
sorry affair; the stage devil, in a word, a shabby person. From the time
of the mysteries at Coventry to the melodramas of the phosphoric pen of
the blue-fire dramatists, the father of iniquity has made his appearance
in a manner more provocative of contempt than of peace; a candidate for
our smiles, rather than a thing of terrors; we have chuckled where we
should have shuddered.
That the stage devil should have been so commonplace an individual, when
there were devils innumerable where-from an admirable selection of
demons might be “constantly on hand,” made it the more inexcusable on
the part of those gentlemen invested with the power of administering to,
and in some measure forming, public taste. What a catalogue of devils
may be found in the Fathers! Let us particularise a few from the
thousand of demons with which the benevolent imaginations of our
ancestors have peopled the air, the earth, and the flood. Poor humanity
stands aghast at the fearful odds of spiritual influences arrayed
against it; for it is the fixed opinion of Paracelsus, that “the air is
not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible
devils”; whilst another philosopher declares that there is “not so much
as an hairbreadth empty in earth or in water, above or under the earth!”
Cornelius Agrippa has carefully classified devils, making them of nine
orders. The first are the false Gods adored at Delphos and elsewhere in
various idols, having for their captain Beelzebub; the second rank is of
“liars and equivocators,” as Apollo—poor Apollo!—“and the like”; the
third are “vessels of anger, inventors of all mischief,” and their
prince is Belial; the fourth are malicious, revengeful devils, their
chief being Asmodeus; the fifth are cozeners, such as belong to
magicians and witches, their prince is Satan; the sixth are those aerial
devils that corrupt the air, and cause plagues, thunder, fire, and
tempests—Meresin is their prince; the seventh is a destroyer, captain of
the fairies; the eighth is an accusing or calumniating devil; and the
ninth are all these in several kinds, their commander being Mammon. Of
all these infernal creatures Cornelius Agrippa writes, with the
confidence and seeming accuracy of a man favoured with their most
intimate acquaintance.
In addition to these we have, on the authority of grave philosophers,
legions of household devils, from such as “commonly work by blazing
stars,” fire-drakes, or _ignes fatui_, to those who “counterfeit suns
and moons, and oftentimes sit on ship masts.” Their common place of
rendezvous, when unemployed, is Mount Hecla. Cardon, with an enviable
gravity, declares that “his father had an aerial devil bound to him for
twenty and eight years.” Paracelsus relates many stories, all
authenticated, of she-devils, “that have lived and been married to
mortal men, and so continued for certain years with them, and after for
some dislike have forsaken them.” Olaus Magnus—a most delightful
liar—has a narrative of “one Hotheius, a king of Sweden, that, having
lost his company as he was hunting one day, met with these water-nymphs
and fairies, and was feasted by them”; and Hector Boethius of “Macbeth
and Banquo, two Scottish lords, that, as they were wandering in the
woods, had their fortune told them by three strange women!” For the
“good people,” the wood-nymphs, foliots, fairies, they are, on the best
authority, to be seen in many places in Germany, “where they do usually
walk in little coats some two feet long.” Subterranean devils are
divided by Olaus Magnus into six companies; they commonly haunt mines,
“and the metal-men in many places account it good luck, a sign of
treasure and rich ore, when they see them.” Georgius Agricola (_de
subterraneis animantibus_) reckons two more kinds, “that are clothed
after the manner of metal-men, and will do their work.” Their office,
according to the shrewd guess of certain philosophers, “is to keep
treasure in the earth that it be not all at once revealed.”
On the 20th of June 1484, it is upon record that the devil appeared “at
Hamond, in Saxony,” in the likeness of a field-piper, and carried away a
hundred and thirty children “that were never after seen!” I might fill
folios with the pranks and malicious mummeries of the evil spirit, all,
too, duly attested by the most respectable witnesses, but shall at once
leave the demons of the philosophers for the spirits of the playmongers,
the devils of the world for the devils of the stage.
Why is it that, nine times out of ten, your stage devil is a droll
rather than a terrible creature? I suspect this arises from the bravado
of innate wickedness. We endeavour to shirk all thoughts, all
recollections of his horrible attributes, by endowing him with grotesque
propensities. We strive to laugh ourselves out of our fears: we make a
mountebank of what is in truth our terror, and resolutely strive to grin
away our apprehensions. Surely some feeling of this kind must be at the
bottom of all our ten thousand jokes at the devil’s expense—of the glee
and enjoyment with which the devil is received at the theatre; where,
until the appearance of Mr Wieland, he had been but a commonplace
absurdity, a dull repetition of a most dull joke.
Wieland has evidently studied the attributes of the evil principle; with
true German profundity, he has taken their length, and their depth, and
their breadth, he has all the devil at his very finger ends, and richly
deserves the very splendid silver-gilt horns and tail (manufactured by
Rundell and Bridges) presented to him a few nights since by the company
at the English Opera-house; presented with a speech from the
stage-manager, which, or I have been grossly misinformed, drew tears
from the eyes of the very scene-shifters.
Can anybody forget Wieland’s devil in the _Daughter of the Danube_?
Never was there a more dainty bit of infernal nature. It lives in my
mind like one of Hoffman’s tales, a realisation of the hero of the
nightmare, a thing in almost horrible affinity with human passions. How
he eyed the Naiades, how he laughed and ogled, and faintingly
approached, then wandered round the object of his demoniacal affections!
And then how he burst into action! How he sprang, and leapt, and
whirled, and, chuckling at his own invincible nature, spun like a
teetotum at the sword of his baffled assailant! And then his yawn and
sneeze! There was absolute poetry in them—the very highest poetry of the
ludicrous: a fine imagination to produce such sounds as part of the
strange, wild, grotesque phantom—to give it a voice that, when we heard
it, we felt to be the only voice such a thing could have. There is fine
truth in the devils of Wieland. We feel that they live and have their
being in the realms of fancy; they are not stereotype commonplaces, but
most rare and delicate monsters, brought from the air, the earth, or the
flood; and wherever they are from, bearing in them the finest
characteristics of their mysterious and fantastic whereabouts.
Wieland’s last devil, in an opera bearing his fearful name, is not
altogether so dainty a fellow as his elder brother of the Danube, whose
melancholy so endeared him to our sympathies, whose lackadaisical
demeanour so won upon our human weakness. In _The Devil’s Opera_ the
hero is more of the pantomimist than of the thinking creature; he is not
contemplative, but all for action; he does not, like the former fiend,
retire into the fastness of his infernal mind to brood on love and fate,
but is incessantly grinning, leaping, tumbling; hence he is less
interesting to the meditative part of the audience, though, possibly,
more attractive to the majority of playgoers, who seem to take the “evil
principle” under their peculiar patronage, laughing, shouting, and
hurrahing at every scurvy trick played by it on poor, undefended
humanity; though, with a bold aim of genius on the part of the author,
the devil, in the opera, is made the ally of love and virtue against
blind tyranny and silly superstition. The devil is changed, bound, the
bond-slave of the good and respectable part of the _dramatis personae_,
to the confusion of the foolish and the wicked. This is certainly
putting the “evil principle” to the very first advantage. The best
triumph of the highest benevolence is, undoubtedly, to turn the
dominating fiend into the toiling vassal, and in the new opera this
glory is most unequivocally achieved.
To Wieland we are greatly indebted for having reformed the “infernal
powers” of the theatre; for having rescued the imp of the stage from the
vulgar commonplace character in which he has too long distinguished
himself, or, I ought rather to say, exposed himself; for there was no
mystery whatever in him: he was a sign-post devil, a miserable daub,
with not one of those emanations of profound, unearthly thought—not the
slightest approach to that delicacy of colouring, that softening of
light into shade, and shade into light, that distinguish the devil of
Wieland. No: in him we have the foul fiend divested of all his vulgar,
Bartlemy Fair attributes; his horns, and tail, and saucer-eyes, and
fish-hook nails, are the least part of him; they are the mere accidents
of his nature, not his nature itself; we have the devil in the abstract,
and are compelled to receive with some consideration the popular and
charitable proverb that declares him to be not quite so black as limners
have shadowed him.
By the rarest accident I have obtained some account of the birth and
childhood of Wieland. It appears that he is a German born, being the
youngest of six sons of Hans Wieland, a poor and most amiable
doll-maker, a citizen of Hildesheim. When only four years old the child
was lost in the Hartz Mountains, whither his father and several
neighbours had resorted to make holiday. The child had from his cradle
manifested the greatest propensities towards the ludicrous; it was his
delight to place his father’s dolls in the most preposterous positions,
doing this with a seriousness, a gravity, in strange contrast with his
employment. It was plain to Professor Teufelskopf, a frequent visitor at
the shop of old Wieland, employed by the professor on toys that are yet
to astound the world—being no other than a man and wife and four
children, made entirely out of pear-tree, and yet so exquisitely
constructed, as to be enabled to eat and drink, cry, and pay taxes, with
a punctuality and propriety not surpassed by many machines of flesh and
blood—I say it was the opinion of Professor Teufelskopf that young
Wieland was destined to play a great part among men, an opinion we are
happy to say nightly illustrated by the interesting subject of this
memoir. We have, however, to speak of his adventures when only four
years old, in the Hartz Mountains. For a whole month was the child
missing, to the agony of its parents, and the deep regret of all the
citizens of Hildesheim, with whom little George was an especial
favourite. The mountains were overrun by various parties in search of
the unfortunate little vagrant, but with no success. It was plain that
the boy had been caught away by some spirit of the mines with which the
marvellous districts abound, or, it might be, carried to the very height
of the Brockenberg, by the king of the mountains, to be his page and
cup-bearer. The gravest folks of the Hildesheim shook their heads, and
more than two declared that they never thought George would grow up to
be a man—he was so odd, so strange, so fantastic, so unlike any other
child. The despair of Hans Wieland was fast settling into deep
melancholy, and he had almost given up all hope, when, as he sat
brooding at his fireside one autumn night, his wife—she had quitted him
not a minute to go upstairs—uttered a piercing shriek. Hans rushed from
the fireside, and in an instant joined his wife, who, speechless with
delight and wonder, pointed to the nook in the chamber where little
George was wont to sleep, and where, at the time, but how brought there
was never, never known, the boy lay in the profoundest slumber; in all
things the same plump, good-looking child, save that his cheek was more
than usually flushed. Hans Wieland and his wife fell upon their knees
and sobbed thanksgivings.
I cannot dwell upon the effect produced by this mysterious return of the
child upon the people of Hildesheim. The shop of Hans Wieland was
thronged with folks anxious to learn from the child himself a full
account of his wanderings, of how he happened to stray away, of what he
had seen, and by what means he had been brought back. To all these
questions, though on other points a most docile infant, George
maintained the most dogged silence, several of the church authorities,
half a dozen professors, nay, the great Teufelskopf himself, questioned
the child; but all in vain, George was resolutely dumb. It was plain,
however, that he had been the playfellow, the pet of supernatural
beings; and though there can be but little doubt that his friends and
devils as shown upon the stage are no other than faithful copies of the
grotesque originals at this moment sporting in the neighbourhood of the
Brockenberg, Mr Wieland, as I am credibly informed, though a gentle and
amiable person in other respects, is apt to be ruffled, nay, violent, if
impertinently pressed upon the subject of his early wanderings. When,
however, we reflect upon the great advantages obtained by Mr Wieland
from what is now to be considered the most fortunate accident of his
childhood, we must admit that there is somewhat less praise due to him
than if he appeared before us as a great original. Since I have
commenced this paper, I have been informed by Mr Dullandry, of _The Wet
Blanket_, that the goblin in _The Daughter of the Danube_, a touch of
acting in which Mr Wieland gathered a wreath of red-hot laurels, is by
no means what it was taken for, a piece of fine invention on the part of
the actor, but an imitation, a most servile copy of the real spirit that
carried George away from his father and friends, tempting the little
truant with a handful of the most delicious black cherries, and a
draught of kirschen-wasser. That every gesture, every movement, nay,
that the leer of the eye and the “villainous hanging of the nether lip,”
the sneeze, the cough, the sigh, the lightning speed, the
“_Infernal_ beauty, melancholy grace,”
all the attributes of mind and body of that most delicate fiend of
the Brockenberg, were given in the hobgoblin of the Danube. Hence,
if Mr Wieland be not, as we thought him, a great original, he is
most assuredly the first of mimics, and has turned a peril of his
childhood to a golden purpose. Dullandry declares upon the best
authority—doubtless his own—that the devil of the Brockenberg, when
little George cried to go home to his father and mother, his brother
and sister, would solace the child by playing upon a diabolic
fiddle, the strings of wolf’s gut and the bow-string from the snowy
hair of the witch of the Alps, dancing the while, and by the
devilish magic of the music bringing from every fissure in the
rocks, every cleft in the earth, and from every stream, their
supernatural intelligences to caper and make holiday, for the
especial delight of the poor, kidnapped son of the doll-maker of
Hildesheim. If this be true, and when Dullandry speaks it is hard to
doubt, his words being pearls without speck or flaw—if this be true,
we here beg leave to inform Mr Wieland that from this minute we
withdraw from him a great part of that admiration with which we have
always remembered the spasmodic twitch of his elbow, the
self-complacency about his eyes and jaws, the lofty look of
conscious power, the stamping of the foot, and the inexhaustible
energy of _bowing_ which marked his _Devil on Two Sticks_, all such
graces and qualifications being, as from Dullandry, it now appears,
the original property of the devil of the Brockenberg. However, to
return to our narrative, which, as I am prepared to show, has in
these days of daring speculation the inestimable charm of truth to
recommend it to the severest attention of my readers.
Little George remained a marvel to the good citizens of Hildesheim, few
of whom, for certain prudential reasons, would any longer permit their
children to play with him; fearing, and reasonably enough, some evil
from contact with a child who was evidently a favourite with the spirits
of the Hartz Mountains. However, this resolution had no effect on
George, who more than ever indulged in solitary rambles, becoming day by
day more serious and taciturn. His little head—as Professor Teufelskopf
sagaciously observed—was filled with the shapes and shadows haunting the
Brockenberg. Many were the solicitations made by Teufelskopf and rival
professors to Hans Wieland, to be permitted to take little George and
educate him for a philosopher, an alchemist, in fact for anything and
everything, the boy displaying capacities, as all declared, only to be
found in an infant Faust. To all these prayers Hans Wieland was deaf. He
resolved to bring up his son to the honest and useful employment of
doll-making; keeping, if possible, his head from the cobwebs and dust of
the schools, and making him a worthy minister to the simple and innocent
enjoyments of baby girls,[9] rather than consenting to his elevation as
a puzzler and riddler among men. Thus our hero, denied to the scholastic
yearnings of the great Teufelskopf, sat at home, articulating the joints
of dolls, and helping to make their eyes open and shut, when—had his
father the true worthy ambition in him—the boy would have been inducted
into knowledge that might have given him supernatural power over living
flesh and blood, bending and binding it to his own high, philosophic
purposes. Hans Wieland, however, was a simple, honest soul, with a
great, and, therefore, proper sense of the beauties and uses of the art
of doll-making. Glad also am I to state that little George, with all his
dreaminess, remained a most dutiful, sweet-tempered boy; and might be
seen, seven hours at least out of the twenty-four, seated on a
three-legged stool fitting the arms and legs of the ligneous hopes of
the little girls of Hildesheim, his thoughts, it may be, far, far away
with the fiddling goblin of the Brockenberg, making holiday with the
multitude of spirits in the Hartz Mountains.
Footnote 9:
One of the most touching instances of the “maternal instinct,” as it
has been called, in children, came under my notice a few months ago. A
wretched woman, with an infant in her arms, mother and child in very
tatters, solicited the alms of a nursery-maid passing with a child,
clothed in the most luxurious manner, hugging a large wax doll. The
mother followed the girl, begging for relief “to get bread for her
child,” whilst the child itself, gazing at the treasure in the arms of
the baby of prosperity, cried, “Mammy, when will you buy me a doll?” I
have met with few things more affecting than the contrast of the
destitute parent begging her bread (the misery seemed real) and the
beggar’s child begging of its mother for a “doll!”
[Illustration:
“Would solace the child by playing upon a diabolic fiddle”
]
This mental abstraction on the part of little George was but too often
forced upon the observation of the worthy Hans, the young doll-maker
constantly giving the looks and limbs of hobgoblins to the faces and
bodies of dolls, intended by the father to supply the demand for
household dolls of the same staid and prudish aspect, of the same
proportion of members, as the dolls that had for two hundred years
soothed and delighted the little maidens of Hildesheim. It is a fact
hitherto unknown in England, that in the Museum of Hildesheim—a
beautiful, though somewhat heavy building of the Saxon order—there are
either eleven or twelve (I think twelve) demon dolls made by young
Wieland, and to this day shown to the curious—though the circumstance
has, strangely enough, remained unnoticed by the writers of Guide
Books—as faithful portraits of the supernatural inhabitants of the Hartz
Mountains. I am told, however, that within the last three years, one of
the figures has been removed into a separate chamber, and is only to be
seen by an express order from the town council, in consequence of its
lamentable effects on the nerves of a certain German princess, who was
so overcome by the exhibition, that it was very much feared by the whole
of the principality—extending in territory at least a mile and a
quarter, and containing no less than three hundred and twenty
subjects—the territory would pass to a younger brother, or, what is
worse, be the scene of a frightful revolution, an heir direct being
wanted to consolidate the dynasty. This unfortunate event, though,
possibly, fatal to the future peace of the said principality, is
nevertheless a striking instance of the powerful imagination or rather
of the retentive memory of the young Wieland. The doll, like all the
others, is a true copy from diabolic life. How the painful story
attached to it should have escaped all the foreign correspondents of all
the newspapers is a matter of surpassing astonishment.
We have now arrived at an important change in the life of our hero. His
father had received a munificent order for three dolls from Prince
Gotheoleog, a great patron of the fine arts in all their many branches.
The dolls were intended by the prince—he was the best and most indulgent
of fathers—as presents for his daughters; and, therefore, no pains, no
cost, were to be spared upon them. After a lapse of three months the
order was completed; and young Wieland, then in his seventh year, was
dressed in his holiday suit, and—the dolls being carried by Peter
Shnicht, an occasional assistant of Hans Wieland—he took his way to the
palace of the prince. It was about half-past twelve when he arrived
there, and the weather being extremely sultry, George sat down upon the
palace steps to rest and compose himself before he ventured to knock at
the gate. He had remained there but a short time, when he was addressed
by a tall, majestic-looking person clothed in a huntsman’s suit, and
carrying a double-barrel gun, a weapon used in the neighbourhood of
Hildesheim in boar-shooting, who, asking our hero his name and business,
was struck with the extraordinary readiness of the boy’s answers, and,
more than all, with a certain look of diabolic reverence peeping from
his eyes, and odd smiles playing about his mouth. The stranger knocked
at the gate, gave his gun to a servant, and bade the little doll-maker
follow the domestic, who showed him into a sumptuous apartment. The
reader is prepared to find in the man with the gun no other person than
Prince Gotheoleog himself, who in a few minutes reappeared to George,
asked him in the most condescending manner various questions respecting
his proficiency in reading and writing, and finally dismissed him with
ten groschen for his extraordinary intelligence. Six months after this
Prince Gotheoleog was appointed ambassador to the court of St James’s,
and young Wieland attended him in the humble, yet most honourable
capacity of page. This appointment Hans Wieland, in his simplicity,
believed would effectually win his romantic son from his errant habits,
would cure him of day-dreaming, by plunging his neck deep into the
affairs of this world. Alas! it had precisely the reverse effect upon
the diplomatic doll-maker. From the moment that he found himself
associated, though in the slightest degree, with politics, the latent
desire to play the devil burst forth with inextinguishable ardour. A
sense of duty—a filial regard for the prejudices of his father—did for a
time restrain him from throwing up his very lucrative and most promising
situation in the household of Prince Gotheoleog, and kept him to the
incessant toil, unmitigated drudgery of diplomatic life; but having one
luckless night gained admission into the gallery of the House of Commons
on the debate of a certain question, to which I shall not more
particularly allude, and there having seen and heard a certain member,
whose name I shall not specify, sway and convulse the senate, George
resolved from that moment to play the devil, and nothing but the devil,
to the end of his days. He immediately retired to Bellamy’s, and penned
his resignation to Prince Gotheoleog, trusting, with the confidence of
true genius, to fortune, to his own force of character, or, what is more
likely, without once thinking of the means or accidents, to obtain the
end of his indomitable aspirations—an appearance as the devil.
Unrivalled as Wieland is as the representative of the fiend in all his
thousand shapes—to be sure the great advantages of our hero’s education
in the Hartz Mountains are not to be forgotten—it is yet to be regretted
that he ever
“To the playhouse gave up what was meant for mankind.”
It is, and must ever be, a matter of sorrow not only to his best
wishers, but to the friends of the world at large, that those high
qualifications, those surpassing powers of diabolic phlegm, vivacity and
impudence, which have made Mr Wieland’s devils the _beau idéal_ of the
infernal, had not been suffered to ripen in the genial clime of
diplomacy. In the full glow of my admiration of his diabolic
beauties—that is, since the facts above narrated have been in my
possession—I have often scarcely suppressed a sigh to think how great an
ambassador has been sacrificed in a play-house fiend. Indeed, nothing
can be more truly diplomatic than the supernatural shifts of Wieland.
Had he acted in France, in the days of Napoleon, he had been kidnapped
from the stage, and, _nolens volens_, made a plenipotentiary.
It is a painful theme to dwell upon the strugglings of modest, and,
consequently, unsupported genius. Therefore I shall, at least for the
present, suppress a very long and minute account of the trials that
beset our hero in his attempts to make known the wonders that were in
him. I shall not relate how he was flouted by one manager, snubbed by
another, derisively smiled upon by a third; how, at length, he obtained
a footing in a theatre, but was condemned to act the minor iniquities,
less gifted men being promoted to play the devil himself. In all these
trials, however, in all these disappointments and occasional
heartburnings, the genius of our hero continued to ripen. His horns
still budded, and his tail gave token of great promise; and, at length,
he burst upon the town, from top to toe, _intus et in cute_, a perfect
and most dainty devil. Great as his success has been, I should not have
thus lengthily dwelt upon it, were I not convinced of its future
increase. There are grand mysteries in Wieland—part of his infant
wanderings in the Hartz—yet to be revealed. I feel certain from the
demoniacal variety of his humour, that there are a legion of spirits,
fantastic and new, yet to be shown to us; all of them the old
acquaintance of our hero’s babyhood, all from the same genuine source of
romance as his _Devil on Two_ _Sticks_, his _Devil of the Danube_, and
his _Devil of the Opera_.
Having discussed the professional merits of Mr Wieland, the reader may
probably feel curious respecting the private habits of a man so
distinguished by his supernatural emotions. I am enabled, it is with
considerable satisfaction I avow it, to satisfy the laudable anxiety of
the reader, and from the same authentic materials that have supplied the
principal part of this notice.
Mr Wieland is a gentleman of the most retired and simple manners. After
the severest rehearsals of a new devil he has been known to recreate
himself in the enclosure of St James’s Park; and further, to illustrate
his contemplative and benevolent habits, by flinging to the various
water-fowl in the canal—by-the-way, in imitation of a great regal
authority—fragments of cake and biscuits. His dress is of the plainest
kind, being commonly a snuff-coloured coat buttoned up to the neck; a
white cravat, drab small-clothes, and drab knee-gaiters. A gold-headed
cane, said to have been in the possession of Cornelius Agrippa, is
sometimes in his hand. He is occasionally induced to take a pinch of
snuff, but was never seen to smoke. His face is as well known at the
British Museum as are the Elgin Marbles, Mr Wieland having for some
years been employed on a new edition of the _Talmud_. Although a German
by birth, Mr Wieland speaks English with remarkable purity, having had
the advantage of early instruction in our language from a British
dramatist, who, driven from the stage by the invasion of French pieces,
sought to earn his precarious bread as a journeyman doll-maker with Mr
Wieland, senior. We could enter into further particulars, but shall
commit a violence upon ourselves, and here wind up what we trust will
henceforth prove a model for all stage biographers.
The inquiring reader may possibly desire to learn how we became
possessed of the valuable documents from which the above narrative is
gathered. To this we boldly make answer; we blush not, while we avow,
that our dear friend Dullandry has a most careless habit of carrying his
most valuable communications for _The Wet Blanket_ in his coat pocket;
and that only on Thursday last we overtook him, with his papers peeping
from their sanctuary, when—when, in a word, the temptation was too much
for us, and the consequence is, that the reader has “some account of a
stage devil.”
Why should all dramatic truths be confined to the impartial and original
pages of _The Wet Blanket_?
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
Saint Patty
]
FIRESIDE SAINTS
ST DOLLY
AT an early age St Dolly showed the sweetness of her nature by her
tender love for her widowed father, a baker, dwelling at Pie Corner,
with a large family of little children. It chanced that with bad
harvests bread became so dear that, of course, bakers were ruined by
high prices. The miller fell upon Dolly’s father, and swept the shop
with his golden thumb. Not a bed was left for the baker or his little
ones. St Dolly slept upon a flour sack, having prayed that good angels
would help her to help her father. Now sleeping, she dreamt that the
oven was lighted, and she felt falling in a shower about her raisins,
currants, almonds, lemon peel, flour, with heavy drops of brandy. Then
in her dreams she saw the fairies gather up the things that fell and
knead them into a cake. They put the cake into the oven, and dancing
round and round, the fairies vanished, crying, “_Draw the cake,
Dolly—Dolly, draw the cake!_” And Dolly awoke and drew the cake, and,
behold, it was the first twelfth cake, sugared at the top, and bearing
the images of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Now this cake, shown in the
window, came to the king’s ear; and the king bought the cake, knighted
the baker, and married Dolly to his grand falconer, to whom she proved a
faithful and loving wife, bearing him a baker’s dozen of lovely
children.
ST PATTY
St Patty was an orphan, and dwelt in a cot with a sour old aunt. It
chanced, it being bitter cold, that three hunters came and craved for
meat and drink. “Pack!” said the sour aunt, “neither meat nor drink have
ye here.” “Neither meat nor drink,” said Patty; “but something better.”
And she ran and brought some milk, some eggs, and some flour, and,
beating them up, poured the batter in the pan. Then she took the pan and
tossed the cake over; and then a robin alighted at the window, and kept
singing these words—_One good turn deserves another_. And Patty tossed
and tossed the cakes; and the hunters ate their fill and departed. And
next day the hunter-baron came in state to the cot; and trumpets were
blown, and the heralds cried—_One good turn deserves another_; in token
whereof Patty became the baron’s wife, and pancakes were eaten on Shrove
Tuesday ever after.
ST NORAH
St Norah was a poor girl, and came to England to service. Sweet-tempered
and gentle, she seemed to love everything she spoke to. And she prayed
to St Patrick that he would give her a good gift that would make her not
proud but useful: and St Patrick, out of his own head, taught St Norah
_how to boil a potato_. A sad thing, and to be lamented, that the secret
has come down to so few.
ST BETSY
St Betsy was wedded to a knight who sailed with Raleigh and brought home
tobacco; and the knight smoked. But he thought that St Betsy, like other
fine ladies of the court, would fain that he should smoke out of doors,
nor taint with ’bacco-smoke the tapestry. Whereupon the knight would
seek his garden, his orchard, and in any weather smoke _sub Jove_. Now
it chanced as the knight smoked St Betsy came to him and said, “My lord,
pray ye come into the house.” And the knight went with St Betsy, who
took him into a newly-cedared room, and said, “I pray, my lord,
henceforth smoke here: for is it not a shame that you, who are the
foundation and the prop of your house, should have no place to put your
head into and smoke?” And St Betsy led him to a chair, and with her own
fingers filled him a pipe; and from that time the knight sat in the
cedar chamber and smoked his weed.
ST PHILLIS
St Phillis was a virgin of noble parentage, but withal as simple as any
shepherdess of curds and cream. She married a wealthy lord, and had much
pin-money. But when other ladies wore diamond and pearls, St Phillis
only wore a red and white rose in her hair. Yet her pin-money brought
the best of jewellery in the happy eyes of the poor about her. St
Phillis was rewarded. She lived until fourscore, and still carried the
red and white rose in her face, and left their fragrance in her memory.
ST PHŒBE
St Phœbe was married early to a wilful, but withal a good-hearted
husband. He was a merchant, and would come home sour and sullen from
’change. Whereupon, after much pondering, St Phœbe in her patience set
to work and, praying the while, made of dyed lambswool a door-mat. And
it chanced from that time, that never did the husband touch that mat
that it didn’t clean his temper with his shoes, and he sat down by his
Phœbe as mild as the lamb whose wool he had trod upon. Thus gentleness
may make miraculous door-mats!
ST SALLY
St Sally, from her childhood, was known for her inner-most love of
truth. It was said of her that her heart was in a crystal shrine, and
all the world might see it. Moreover, when other women denied, or strove
to hide their age, St Sally said, “I am five-and-thirty.” Whereupon next
birthday St Sally’s husband, at a feast of all their friends, gave her a
necklace of six-and-thirty opal beads; and on every birthday added a
bead, until the beads mounted to four-score and one. And the beads
seemed to act as a charm; for St Sally, wearing the sum of her age about
her neck, age never appeared in her face. Such, in the olden time, was
the reward of simplicity and truth.
ST BECKY
A very good man was St Becky’s husband, but with his heart a little too
much in his bottle. Port wine—red port wine—was his delight, and his
constant cry was—bee’s-wing. Now as he sat tipsy in his arbour, a wasp
dropped into his glass, and the wasp was swallowed, stinging the man
inwardly. Doctors crowded, and with much ado the man’s life was saved.
Now St Becky nursed her husband tenderly to health, and upbraided him
not; but she said these words, and they reformed him:—“_My dear, take
wine, and bless your heart with it—but wine in moderation: else, never
forget that the bee’s wing of to-day becomes the wasp’s sting of
to-morrow._”
ST LILY
St Lily was the wife of a poor man, who tried to support his family—and
the children were many—by writing books. But in those days it was not as
easy for a man to find a publisher as to say his paternoster. Many were
the books that were written by the husband of St Lily; but to every book
St Lily gave at least two babes. However, blithe as the cricket was the
spirit that ruled about the hearth of St Lily. And how she helped her
helpmate! She smiled sunbeams into his ink bottle, and turned his goose
pen to the quill of a dove! She made the paper he wrote on as white as
her name, and as fragrant as her soul. And when folks wondered how St
Lily managed so lightly with fortune’s troubles, she always answered,
that she never heeded them, for _troubles were like babies, and only
grew the bigger by nursing_.
ST FANNY
St Fanny was a notable housewife. Her house was a temple of neatness.
Kings might have dined upon her staircase! Now her great delight was to
provide all things comfortable for her husband, a hard-working merchant,
much abroad, but loving his home. Now one night he returned tired and
hungry, and, by some mischance, there was nothing for supper. Shops were
shut; and great was the grief of St Fanny. Taking off a bracelet of seed
pearl she said, “_I’d give this ten times over for a supper for my
husband._” And every pearl straightway became an oyster, and St Fanny
opened—the husband ate—and lo! in every oyster was a pearl as big as a
hazel nut; and so was St Fanny made rich for life.
ST FLORENCE OR ST NIGHTINGALE
St Florence, by her works, had her lips blessed with comforting, and her
hands touched with healing; and she crossed the sea, and built
hospitals, and solaced, and restored. And so long as English mistletoe
gathers beneath it truthful hearts, and English holly brightens happy
eyes, so long will Englishmen, at home or abroad, on land or on the
wave—so long, in memory of that Eastern Christmas, will they cry—_God
bless St Florence! Bless St Nightingale!_
ST JENNY
St Jenny was wedded to a very poor man; they had scarcely bread to keep
them; but Jenny was of so sweet a temper that even want bore a bright
face, and Jenny always smiled. In the worst seasons Jenny would spare
crumbs for the birds, and sugar for the bees. Now it so happened that
one autumn a storm rent their cot in twenty places apart; when, behold,
between the joists, from the basement to the roof, there was nothing but
honeycomb and honey—a little fortune for St Jenny and her husband, in
honey. Now some said it was the bees, but more declared it was the sweet
temper of St Jenny that had filled the poor man’s house with honey.
[Illustration:
Saint Jenny
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
CAT-AND-FIDDLE MORALITIES
The Tale of a Tiger
FOR fifteen years had the large wooden arm-chair of the Cat-and-Fiddle
been consecrated to the use of Captain Bam. He would sit in it as it
were a throne; and the customary guests of the hostelry paid him
affectionate loyalty. He had won all hearts by his odd, kind ways; he
had become the familiar oracle of all by his strange, yet wise sayings.
He had, too, the rare and happy knack of so mixing his wisdom with his
drollery, that when men laughed and swallowed his jest, they also, like
children cheated with sweetened physic, swallowed something that in
proper season would do them hearty good. And then there was a mystery
about Captain Bam; and, at times, mystery is a sort of sauce to human
character. It will now and then give a strange relish to what without it
would be insipid commonplace. Not that it was so with Captain Bam.
Certainly not; but the mystery was this. Fifteen years before—on a
sharp, wintry afternoon—he crossed the threshold of the Cat-and-Fiddle.
He carried a small leathern pack, and appeared otherwise appointed for a
long pilgrimage. It was, we say, sharp, blighting weather, and Captain
Bam called hastily for a mug of ale. “A mug of ale, and directly,” said
Captain Bam, “for I can’t stop a minute.” The ale was brought, and the
Captain hastily took a long draught thereof. He then drew his breath,
and a smile as from the very roots of his heart broke over his face, and
his eye strangely glimmered and twinkled upon the landlord. “_Eureka!_”
said Captain Bam, and the host looked. “_Eureka!_” again exclaimed the
Captain. “Take my pack,” he said, in a voice trembling with the fulness
of satisfaction, “take my pack—I will rest here.”
And Captain Bam—his pack removed—sank in the large arm-chair. It seemed
that his travels were ended; that, in a happy moment, he had
accomplished the purpose of his life; that all his future existence
would be an appointed state of rest. There was a little wooden nook—a
sort of summer-house, at the end of a long garden—which, after few
words, he hired of the host; whence every night he came to bestow his
talk upon the guests of the Cat-and-Fiddle. “And how he would talk! Ha!
better than a printed book.” Such was the oft avowed opinion of his
gladdened hearers. And now the Captain is dead. His body lies in the
churchyard of the market town, but two miles distant from the
Cat-and-Fiddle. He had himself written his epitaph. It is a model of
brief simplicity—enough to bring a blush into the cheek of many a
stone-faced cherub. The epitaph has only one word: it is this: “BAM.”
The Captain died, but not his stories. No; there sat every night in the
fireside corner of the Cat-and-Fiddle an ardent, passionate lover of the
mind of Bam. He was a silent Pylades—a mute Pythias. He would sit and
store himself with the syllables of Bam; then, like the bee, would he
fly rejoicing home, and ere he slept hive the wisdom in enduring ink.
That wisdom is now before us. The little vellum-bound book, its pages
finely written as with the point of a needle, lies upon our desk. Upon
the forehead of its title-page there are these words, “CAT-AND-FIDDLE
MORALITIES”; touchingly recollectful of the genial haunt where their
fine wisdom was audible.
There are—no, we will not tell the number of stories enshrined in this
little book. But from time to time we will lay one before the reader, in
what we believe to be the very words of Bam.
Yes: we will begin with the first. Here it is—the title beautifully
engrossed, from which we guess the legal yearnings of the
chronicler—here it is.
THE TALE OF A TIGER
Perhaps, my friends, you have never heard of a place called Singapore.
Well, it’s no matter if you haven’t. It’s a long, long way east, where
all sorts of shipping trade, and where all sorts of people
live—Chinamen, Malays, Javanese, Bengalees, English, Dutch, and what
not. Well, there was at Singapore a certain Dutch family in the pepper
trade. They were named Vandervermin. They were all rich, cautious, heavy
people; all save Jacob Vandervermin, who when a mere youth was left a
poor orphan; left, as it might have seemed, on purpose to exercise the
loving benevolence of prosperous uncles and aunts, and flourishing
cousins. Alas! the whole body of the Vandervermins considered the
poverty of Jacob as a blight—a family reproach; a nuisance that every
one sought to put off upon the other. Jacob was the little toe of clay
that disgraced the Vandervermin body of brass. And what made him worse,
he was, for one with Dutch blood in his veins, a sprightly, frolicsome
fellow. He was a beggar, and yet, with a stony hardness of heart—as
Peter Vandervermin, the head of the family, declared—he would laugh and
make offensive jokes upon his wretchedness. There are men who cannot
understand a joke, simply because it is a thing that carries no worth
with it in a ledger. Now Peter Vandervermin received a joke—especially
the joke of a poor man—as an offence to his judgment and a sidelong
sneer at his pocket. His wife, Drusilla Vandervermin, was of the same
belief; and in this goodly creed man and wife had reared a numerous
family. Jacob Vandervermin was the only outcast of the name who had ever
disgraced it by a jest. It was plain he would come to no good; plain
that he would die the death of a sinner. When one day his body was found
mortally mangled by a tiger, not one of the Vandervermins was shocked or
surprised. No: they had always said that something dreadful would happen
to him, and it had come about. Jacob was buried—handsomely buried. Not
one of the Vandervermins would have given him when alive the value of a
coffin nail; but, being dead, the case was altered. The pride of the
family was concerned in the funeral; hence, they respected themselves in
their treatment of the deceased. Doubtless the ghost of a despised,
ill-used relation is propitiated by a costly burial; and thus many a
cousin or half-brother who has glided through life in a cobweb coat has
superfine cloth upon his coffin.
I had this history of Jacob Vandervermin from a Chinaman. He repeated it
to me with the eloquence and fervour of a believer. The Chinamen—at
least the sort that live at Singapore—believe that when the tiger kills
its first man, his ghost becomes its very slave; bound, ordered by fate
to be a sort of jackal to the tiger; compelled by destiny to find the
beast its dinners, even among his kith and kin. Hence, a tiger having
carried off one of a family, not one of the survivors is from that
moment safe. My Chinaman—he passed for a very learned fellow among his
tribe—had the most intimate knowledge of the Vandervermin tragedy,
which, after his own lofty fashion—painting his story as though he was
painting his native porcelain—he related to me. I shall give it you in
plain, cold English; for, my good friends all, be it known to you, I
scorn the flourish of a traveller.
At the age of eighteen Jacob Vandervermin—having been knocked from uncle
to uncle, the poor, passive family shuttlecock—fell at length into the
counting-house of his richest, and oldest uncle, Peter. For two years
did Jacob eat the bread of dependence; for with that bitter word was his
bread always buttered—when he awakened the inextinguishable ire of his
rich and orderly relative. Jacob had been guilty of a gross wickedness;
in fact, of a crime, in the eyes of Peter Vandervermin, of the deepest
dye. He had, in a moment of culpable neglect, let fall a large,
unsightly blot of ink upon his uncle’s ledger. To the mind of Peter
Vandervermin, his graceless nephew had thrown an indelible stain upon
the white reputation of the family; at least Peter so avenged the fault,
for without a word he seized a ruler that lay upon the desk, and with it
smote the skull of the blotting offender. Jacob uttered no syllable; but
instantly closing the ledger, and raising it with both his hands, he
brought down the book of figures with such precise vehemence upon the
head of his uncle, that the principal of the house of Vandervermin & Co.
lay stunned and prostrate on the floor of his own temple—that is, of his
own counting-house.
Now Jacob was not a man to give unnecessary trouble. He knew that if he
remained it would only cause his uncle the pain and the perplexity of
thrusting him from the house, and therefore, with scarcely a penny in
his purse, did Jacob don his hat and cross his uncle’s threshold.
Vain was it for him to beg the aid of any of the name of Vandervermin.
What, he—a poor creature, too, a pauper, a beggar, a—no, there was no
worse word for him—he smite so good, so tender an uncle! No, he might
starve, perish; it would be to share his wickedness to relieve him. It
was a secret comfort to the Vandervermins that Jacob, in a momentary
forgetfulness, had knocked down his uncle. That sacrilegious blow had
for ever and for ever snapped the thousand fine ties that—despite of his
previous errors—still held him to the family heart. Now he might perish;
and the sooner the better. The only hope was that he would be drowned,
or decently starved to death; that, for the sake of the family, he would
not come to be hanged, however richly he deserved it.
For some weeks Jacob continued to live without money. Nothing, perhaps,
so eminently shows the superiority, the crowning greatness of the human
animal—a fact so well attested in many cases—as the power of man to
subsist for a time without cash. He is a self-wonder while he does it;
nevertheless, the miracle is performed. Tear a plant up by the
roots—fling it aside—and it perishes. Shut a cat up in an empty,
mouseless garret, and one by one her nine lives will go out. But take
money from man—money, which is the root of evil, a root upon which man
best flourishes, thereby proving the wickedness of his nature—and still,
still he lives. Perhaps, somehow, the carnivorous, omnivorous animal
becomes an air-plant, and so feeds upon the atmosphere about him. I have
met with many air-plants of the sort. There is not a city, a town,
without them. Such men get over days, and weeks, and months, and wonder
how they have so successfully travelled thus far to the grave. They must
rub their hands, that they have cheated what seemed to them a vital
principle of nature.
And in this way Jacob Vandervermin lived. Every day seemed to him a
difficult stepping-stone to get over, and yet the night saw him on the
other side of it. But it is hard, miserable work, this keeping check
against time by meals in the bowels: this incessant looking for butcher
and baker as the allies against death, and wondering and trembling from
day to day, lest they should not come to the rescue. My friends, this is
hard, debasing work—I have known it.
One day, with thoughts heavy as lead upon his brain, did Jacob
Vandervermin wander forth. He wandered and wandered, until, weary and
spent, he sank upon the stump of a tree in a desolate place. “How—how,”
cried Jacob, “shall I live another day!”
What a mole-eyed thing is man! How he crucifies himself with vain
thoughts—how he stands upon tiptoe, straining his eyestrings, trying to
look into the future, when at that moment the play is over—the show is
done.
Jacob had scarcely uttered—“How shall I live another day!” when a tiger,
a royal tiger—wherefore a cruel, treacherous, bloodthirsty beast should
be called royal, I know not—when a royal tiger—fell like a thunderbolt
upon him.
As a very large tom-cat snaps in its mouth a very small mouse, and
looking statelily around seems to say—the mouse kicking all the
while—“Pooh, pooh; why this is nothing!” so did the royal tiger look and
speak, with Jacob Vandervermin writhing and screaming in its jaw. Well,
tigers make short work of men. Almost as short as man himself sometimes
makes of his fellow biped. Jacob Vandervermin—it was his luck to meet
with a benevolent tiger; he was not played with before he was finally
crunched—Jacob Vandervermin was soon dead.
And now, my friends, prepare for a wonder! Long before the tiger had
picked the bones of Jacob—Jacob’s ghost stood, like a waiting footman,
meekly behind the dining animal. There was Jacob in his wide,
parasol-like hat of straw—his white jacket and trousers, in all things
the same as when he lived, save that he was so transparent the eye could
see through him: and then his look was so serene and passionless! It was
odd to see how meekly the ghost looked on the while the tiger gnawed and
crunched, and then with its rasping tongue cleaned the bones of the
ghost’s late body. It was plain that the ghost cared no more for what he
once thought the most valuable thing under heaven, than if it were an
old threadbare coat, put aside for a glorious garment. Thus, after a few
minutes, the ghost seated itself upon the stump of the tree—where, a
short time before, it had sat in the flesh—and twiddling its thumbs,
looked composedly about it. And when the tiger had finished Jacob—for
the poor animal had not for a week before tasted so much as a field
mouse—it stalked away to its den, the ghost of Jacob following it.
Gorged to the whiskers, almost for two whole days did the tiger sleep.
And then rising and stretching itself—like a Mogul after a debauch—the
tiger said, “Jacob!”
“What wills my lord?” answered Jacob’s ghost.
“Jacob, I must sup: something nice, now—something delicate. I don’t like
to say it to your face, Jacob, but you haven’t quite agreed with me. I
could fancy something mild and tender to-night.”
For a moment the ghost was thoughtful; then observed, “What says my lord
to a nice sugar-cane salad?”
The tiger leered somewhat pityingly at the ghost; then saying “Look
here!” opened its jaws. Even the ghost of Jacob shivered—like moonlight
upon water—at the dreadful array of teeth. “Think you,” said the tiger,
“such teeth were made for salads?”
“Tigers, I have heard, were not always flesh-eaters,” said the ghost, a
little boldly.
[Illustration:
“Almost for two whole days did the tiger sleep”
]
“Why, there is a story among tigers,” answered the ingenuous brute,
“that at one time—but it’s a long time ago—we used to crop clover and
trefoil and wild thyme, for all the world like foolish little lambs. And
then suddenly—but how it came about I never heard—we took to eating the
kids and lambkins that before we played with. How the change began, and
who took to killing first, I know not: I have only heard it wasn’t
tigers; and now, I only know that I must sup: that this very night I
must have another Vandervermin. Have you any babies in the house?”
“None: I assure you, my lord, not one,” answered the ghost.
“That’s a pity,” said the tiger, “for I feel it, my stomach needs
something tender and succulent. However, lead on: air and exercise may
tone my vitals a little. Why do you tarry, sirrah?”—and the tiger
growled like a stage tyrant—“you know your destiny; lead on.”
The ghost seemed to feel the truthful force of the rebuke, and
immediately led the way. As they walked on, the ghost espied a
remarkably fine ox, strayed from a neighbouring farm. “See, my lord,
see!” cried the shadow.
“No, no,” said the tiger, a little contemptuously. “I can’t do that sort
of thing now: having once tasted the goodness of man, I must go on with
him. No, no; I thank my luck I now know what good living really is.” And
then the tiger paused, and twisting its tail gracefully about its legs,
as sometimes an ingenuous maid will twist about a gown flounce, the
brute observed—“What a lovely night! How the air freshens one’s spirits!
What a beautiful moon—and how the stars shine—and the airs whisper among
the tamarind trees, like unseen fairies making love! You are sure,
Jacob, there is not a baby in the house?”
“Nothing like it, my lord,” answered Jacob.
“What is the best you can promise me?” asked the tiger.
“To-night, I’m afraid nothing better than Drusilla, my aunt,” said the
ghost. The tiger growled dubiously; and then said, “Well, we can but
look at her. You know the safest way—so mind what you’re about.”
Cautiously, stealthily, goaded by fate, did the ghost of Jacob lead the
tiger to the mansion of Peter Vandervermin. Leaping a low wall, they
gained a garden, and proceeded along a winding walk, until they came to
a pretty little summer pavilion, wherein sat aunt Drusilla, as was her
wont, knitting, with a large Dutch pug at her feet.
“There’s your supper,” said Jacob, pointing to the withered old
gentlewoman.
“Humph!” growled the tiger, and angrily twitched its tail—“humph! It’s
against my stomach; I can’t do it.”
“What think you,” urged the ghost, “of the pug just for a snack?”
The tiger curled its whiskers with a look of disgust, and growling
“dropsical,” turned supperless away. And all the next night did the
tiger fast. But sweet is the sauce of hunger; for on the third evening
the tiger rose and stretched itself, and its eyes glared with
brightening flame as it said—“Come along, Jacob: I don’t know that the
old woman will eat badly after all.”
Jacob again conducted the destroyer to the house. Again showed Drusilla,
unconscious of her fate, knitting, knitting. There was a slight growl—a
spring—an old woman’s scream—a yap, yap from the pug—and then the wall
was leapt—and Peter Vandervermin was a widower.
I will not follow the tiger to its banquet. Suffice it to say, the tiger
ate and slept. However, very ill and feverish did the tiger awake in the
morning. “Jacob,” cried the tiger, “what’s the matter with me? Phew! I
can hardly move.”
“Perhaps,” said Jacob, “my lord has just a stitch in his side.”
“No, no,” said the tiger, “I feel ’em now; it’s that abominable old
woman’s knitting needles.”
“Every rose has its thorn, my lord,” said the ghost, joking as a ghost
may be supposed to joke. “You never find a woman without pins and
needles.”
“Jacob,” cried the tiger, “either you come of a very bad family, or,
after all, man-eating is by no means so wholesome—however pleasant it
may be—as a hearty, simple meal off a buffalo, a deer, or anything of
that sort.”
“Then why, my lord,” urged the ghost, “why not return to the humbler
diet?”
“That’s all very well, Jacob. Why don’t men—with red noses and no
insides—turn from arrack and new rum, and drink only at the diamond
spring? I begin to feel myself no better than a drunkard: yes, I fear
I’m a lost tiger. It’s very nice—very delicious to eat a man at
night—but it’s like what I’ve heard of drink—what a headache it leaves
in the morning! Ha!” cried the beast, “I’m afraid I’m making quite a man
of myself. Look at my tongue, Jacob; it’s as hard and as dry, you might
grind an axe upon it. Oh, that dreadful old woman!”—and the tiger closed
its heavy, bloodshot eyes, and tried to sleep.
Only three days past, and then the tiger leapt up, and licking itself
all over—as though it was going out to an evening party, and wished to
put the very best gloss upon its coat—the creature cried—“Come away,
Jacob; I must have another Vandervermin.”
“Oh, my lord,” cried the ghost, “think what you’ll suffer in the
morning.”
“_That_ for the morning,” cried the tiger, whisking its tail—“I tell
you, Jacob, I intend to make a night of it. Slave, lead on.”
And thus for three months, conducted by the fate-enforced ghost, did the
tiger continue to sup off Vandervermins. Uncles and aunts, cousins male
and female, in all eight, had the tiger devoured, when one night the
brute carried off the ninth and last victim in the person of Justus
Vandervermin, lawyer and usurer. The tiger—strange to say—devoured every
bit of him; but it was the brute’s last morsel; it never could digest
him. Justus Vandervermin remained, like so much india-rubber, in the
vitals of the tiger. Nothing could stir the lawyer.
“Jacob,” cried the brute, feeling its last hour approach. “I shall die,
and your ghost will be at rest. I forgive you—but why—why didn’t you
tell me that Justus was a lawyer?”
And with these words the tiger died, and the ghost of Jacob Vandervermin
was instantly at peace.
* * * * *
“And if all this story isn’t true, Captain”—asked one of the
Cat-and-Fiddle company—“what do you get out of it?”
“Why, true or not, this much,” answered Captain Bam; “never to neglect
and ill-use a poor relation. For however low and helpless he may seem,
the day may come when he shall have about him the strength of a tiger.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
A GOSSIP AT RECULVERS
THE spirit of the Saxon seems still to linger along the shores of Kent.
There is the air of antiquity about them; a something breathing of the
olden day—an influence, surviving all the changes of time, all the
vicissitudes of politic and social life. The genius of the Heptarchy
comes closer upon us from the realm of shadows; the Wittenagemote is not
a convocation of ghosts—not a venerable House of Mists; but a living,
talking, voting Parliament. We feel a something old, strong, stubborn,
hearty; a something for the intense meaning of which we have no other
word than “English” rising about us from every rood of Kent. And
wherefore this? England was not made piecemeal. Her foundations in the
deep—could a sea of molten gold purchase the worth of her surrounding
ocean?—are of the same age. The same sun has risen and set upon the
whole island. Wherefore, then, is Kent predominant in the mind for
qualities which the mind denies to other counties? Because it is still
invested with the poetry of action. Because we feel that Kent was the
cradle of the marrow and bone of England; because we still see, ay, as
palpably as we behold yonder trail of ebon smoke—the broad black pennant
of that mighty admiral, Steam—the sails of Cæsar threatening Kent, and
Kent barbarians clustering on the shore, defying him. It is thus that
the spirit of past deeds survives immortally, and works upon the future:
it is thus we are indissolubly linked to the memories of the bygone day
by the still active soul that once informed it.
How rich in thoughts—how fertile in fancies that quicken the brain and
dally with the heart, is every footpace of the soil! Reader, be with us
for a brief time at this beautiful village of Herne. The sky is sullen;
and summer, like a fine yet froward wench, smiles now and then, now
frowns the blacker for the passing brightness: nevertheless, summer in
her worst mood cannot spoil the beautiful features of this demure, this
antique village. It seems a very nest—warm and snug, and green—for human
life; with the twilight haze of time about it, almost consecrating it
from the aching hopes and feverish expectations of the present. Who
would think that the bray and roar of multitudinous London sounded but
some sixty miles away? The church stands peacefully, reverently, like
some old visionary monk, his feet on earth—his thoughts with God. And
the graves are all about; and things of peace and gentleness, like
folded sheep, are gathered round it.
There is a stile which man might make the throne of solemn thought—his
pregnant matter, the peasant bones that lie beneath. And on the other
side, a park, teeming with beauty; with sward green as emeralds, and
soft as a mole’s back; and trees, with centuries circulating in their
gnarled massiveness.
But we must quit the churchyard, and turning to the right, we will
stroll towards Reculvers. How rich the swelling meadows! How their green
breasts heave with conceived fertility! And on this side corn-fields;
the grain stalk thick as a reed; the crop level and compact as a green
bank. And here, too, is a field of canary seed: of seed grown for London
birds in London cages. The farmer shoots the sparrow—the little rustic
scoundrel—that with felonious bill would carry away one grain sown for,
made sacred to, Portman Square canary! We might, perhaps, find a higher
parallel to this did we look with curious eyes about us. Nevertheless,
bumpkin sparrow has his world of air to range in; his free loves; and
for his nest his ivied wall or hawthorn bush. These, say the worst, are
a happy set-off even against a gilt-wired cage; sand like diamond dust;
unfailing seed, and sugar from even the sweeter lips of lady mistress.
Powder and small shot may come upon the sparrow like apoplexy upon an
alderman, with the unbolted morsel in its gullet; yet, consider—hath the
canary no danger to encounter? Doth not prosperity keep a cat?
Well, this idle gossip has brought us within a short distance of
Reculvers. Here—so goes the hoary legend—Augustine impressed the first
Christian foot upon the English shore, sent hither by good Pope Gregory;
no less good that, if the same legend be true, he had a subtle sense of
a joke. Christianity, unless historians say what is not, owes somewhat
of its introduction into heathen England to a pun. The story is so old
that there is not a schoolmaster’s dog throughout merry Britain that
could not bark it. Nevertheless, we will indicate our moral courage by
repeating it. Our ink turns red with blushes at the thought—no
matter—for once we will write in our blushes.
[Illustration:
“Sugar from even the sweeter lips of lady mistress”
]
Pope Gregory, seeing some white-haired, pink-cheeked boys for sale in
the Roman slave-market, asked who they were? _Sunt Angli_—they are
English, was the response. _Non sunt Angli_—_sed Angeli_; they are not
English, but angels, was the Papal playfulness. His Holiness then
inquired from what part of England. _Deirii_, they are Deirians, was the
answer. Whereupon the pope, following up his vein of pleasantry, said,
_Non Deirii, sed De ira_—not Deirians, but from the anger of the Lord:
snatched, as his Holiness indicated, from the vengeance that must always
light upon heathenism.
This grey-haired story, like the grey hairs of Nestor, is pregnant with
practical wisdom. Let us imagine Pope Gregory to have been a dull man;
even for a pope a dull man. Let us allow that his mind had not been
sufficiently comprehensive to take within its circle the scattered
lights of intelligence, which, brought into a focus, make a joke.
Suppose, in a word, that the pope had had no ear for a pun? Saint
Augustine might still have watched the bubbles upon Tiber, and never
have been sea-sick on his English voyage.
What does this prove? What does this incident preach with a
thunder-tongue? Why, the necessity, the vital necessity, of advancing no
man to any sort of dignity, who is not all alive as an eel to a joke. We
are convinced of it. The world will never be properly ruled, until jests
entirely supersede the authority of Acts of Parliament. As it is, the
Acts are too frequently the jests, without the fun.
We are now close to Reculvers. There, reader, there—where you see that
wave leaping up to kiss that big white stone—that is the very spot where
Saint Augustine put down the sole of his Catholic foot. If it be not, we
have been misinformed and cheated of our money; we can say no more.
Never mind the spot. Is there not a glory lighting up the whole beach?
Is not every wave of silver—every little stone, a shining crystal? Doth
not the air vibrate with harmonies, strangely winding into the heart,
and awakening the brain! Are we not under the spell of the imagination
which makes the present vulgarity melt away like morning mists, and
shows to us the full, uplighted glory of the past?
There was a landing on the Sussex Coast; a landing of a Duke of
Normandy, and a horde of armed cut-throats. Looking at them even through
the distance of some eight hundred years, what are they but as a gang of
burglars? A band of pick-purses—blood-shedders—robbers!
What was this landing of a host of men, in the full trump and blazonry
of war—what all their ships, their minstrelsey, and armed power—to the
advent of Augustine and his fellow-monks, brought hither by the
forlornness of the soul of man? it is this thought that makes this bit
of pebbled beach a sacred spot; it is this spirit of meditation that
hears in every little wave a sweet and solemn music.
And there, where the ocean tumbles, was in the olden day a goodly town,
sapped, swallowed by the wearing, the voracious sea. At lowest tides the
people still discover odd, quaint, household relics, which, despite the
homely breeding of the finders, must carry away their thoughts into the
mist of time, and make them feel antiquity. The very children of the
village are hucksters of the spoils of dead centuries. They grow up with
some small trading knowledge of fossils; and are deep, very deep in all
sorts of petrifactions. They must have strange early sympathies towards
that mysterious town with all its tradesfolk and market-folk sunk below
the sea; a place of which they have a constant inkling in the petty
spoils lashed upwards by the tempest. Indeed, it is difficult for the
mind to conceive the annihilation of a whole town, engulfed in the
ocean. The tricksy fancy will assert itself; and looking over the
shining water, with summer basking on it, we are apt to dream that the
said market-town has only suffered a “sea-change”; and that fathoms
deep, the town still stands—that busy life goes on—that people of an
odd, sea-green aspect, it may be, still carry on the work of mortal
breathing; make love, beget little ones, and die. But this, indeed, is
the dream of idleness. Yet, who—if he could change his mind at will,
would make his mind incapable of such poor fantasies? How much of the
coarse web of existence owes its beauty to the idlest dreams with which
we colour it!
The village of Reculvers is a choice work of antiquity. The spirit of
King Ethelbert tarries there still, and lives enshrined in the sign of a
public-house. It would be well for all kings could their spirits survive
with such genial associations. There are some dead royalties too
profitless even for a public sign. Who, now, with any other choice would
empty a tankard under the auspices of Bloody Mary, as that anointed
“femininitie” is called; or take a chop even at Nero’s Head? No;
inn-keepers know the subtle prejudices of man, nor violate the
sympathies of life with their sign-posts.
Here, on the sanded floor of King Ethelbert’s hostelry, do village
antiquarians often congregate. Here, at times, are stories told—stories
not all unworthy of the type of Antiquarian _Transactions_—of _fibulæ_,
talked of as buckles, and other tangible bits of Roman history. Here, we
have heard, how a certain woman—living at this blessed hour, and the
mother of a family—went out at very low tide, and found the branch of a
filbert-tree with clustering filberts on it, all stone, at least a
thousand years old—and more. Here, too, have we heard of a wonderful
horse-shoe, picked up by Joe Squellins; a shoe, as the finder averred,
as old as the world. Poor Joe! What was his reward?—it may be, a pint of
ale for that inestimable bit of iron! And yet was he a working
antiquarian. Joe Squellins had within him the unchristened elements of
F.S.A.
The sea has spared something of the old churchyard; although it has torn
open the sad sanctity of the grave, and reveals to the day, corpse upon
corpse—layers of the dead, thickly, closely packed, body upon body. A
lateral view of rows of skeletons, entombed in Christian earth centuries
since, for a moment staggers the mind, with this inward peep of the
grave. We at once see the close, dark prison of the churchyard, and our
breath comes heavily, and we shudder. It is only for a moment. There is
a lark singing, singing over our head—a mile upwards in the blue
heaven—singing like a freed soul: we look again, and smile serenely at
the bones of what was man.
Many of our gentle countrymen—fellow-metropolitans—who once a year
wriggle out their souls from the slit of their tills to give the
immortal essence sea air, make a pilgrimage to Reculvers. This Golgotha,
we have noted it, has to them especial attractions. Many are the mortal
relics borne away to decorate a London chimney-piece. Many a skeleton
gives up its rib, its _ulna_, two or three odd _vertebræ_, or some such
gimcrack to the London visitor, for a London ornament. Present the same
man with a bone from a London hospital, and he would hold the act
abominable, irreligiously presumptuous. But time has “silvered o’er” the
bone from Reculvers; has cleansed it from the taint of mortality; has
merged the loathsomeness in the curiosity; for time turns even the worst
of horrors to the broadest of jests. We have now Guy Fawkes about to
blow Lords and Commons into eternity—and now Guy Fawkes masked for a
pantomime.
One day, wandering near this open graveyard, we met a boy, carrying
away, with exulting looks, a skull in very perfect preservation. He was
a London boy, and looked rich indeed with his treasure.
“What have you there?” we asked.
“A man’s head—a skull,” was the answer.
“And what can you possibly do with a skull?”
“Take it to London.”
“And when you have it in London, what then will you do with it?”
“I know.”
“No doubt. But what will you do with it?”
And to this thrice-repeated question the boy three times answered, “I
know.”
“Come, here’s sixpence. Now, what will you do with it?”
The boy took the coin—grinned—hugged himself, hugging the skull the
closer, and said very briskly, “Make a money box of it!”
A strange thought for a child. And yet, mused we as we strolled along,
how many of us, with nature beneficent and smiling on all sides—how many
of us think of nothing so much as hoarding sixpences—yea, hoarding them
even in the very jaws of desolate Death!
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE TWO WINDOWS
THE Union Workhouse of the ancient parish of Herne—how calm and pastoral
is that little nook of Kent!—has two outward windows. The fabric, built
by the inspiration of the New Poor-law, was a blind, eyeless piece of
brickwork; a gaol for the iniquity and perseverance of poverty; a
Newgate for the felony of want. The chiefs and elders of Parliament had
said, “Let us make abiding-places for the poor; let us separate them,
lepers as they are, from the clean; let us shut them up from the sight
of the green earth; let them not behold the work of the season in the
budding trees, in their leafy branches, in their red and golden robes of
autumn, in the gaunt bareness of solemn winter. Let the grass spring and
the wild-flower blossom; but let not the poor, the unclean of the land,
look upon the work of God.” After this resolve the Union was built; with
inner windows looking upon walls, and walls turned blank upon the
outward world. No crevice, no loophole permitted captive poverty a look,
a glimpse of the fresh face of nature; his soul, like his body, was
bricked up according to statute; he had by the insolence of destitution
offended the niceness of the world, and he was doomed by his judges to a
divorce from the commonest rights of earth. Hence, the Union Workhouse
turned its sullen, unbroken wall of brick upon the fields and trees, and
the pauper was made to look only upon pauperism. The freshness and
luxuriance of nature—her prodigal loveliness—was not for his eyes; he
was poor, and even to behold the plenteousness of the teeming earth was
an enjoyment beyond his state—a banned delight—a luxury which those who
paid for his food could not properly vouchsafe him!
At length—when they themselves know it not, men’s hearts will work, a
sense of right will sometimes steal upon their sleep, an instinct of
goodness will, like silver water from the rock, gush forth—at length it
was resolved by the guardians of the poor—guardians of the poor! what a
holiness of purpose should inform those well-worn syllables—that the
dull, blind, squalid workhouse should have light; that its brick walls
should be pierced with two windows; that the fields and trees should
gladden pauper eyes, appealing to old recollections; childhood thoughts;
daily, customary feelings. It was determined that the pauper prisoner
should, through the iron bars of penury, have comforting glimpses of
God’s goodness without; that he should, though all unconsciously, make
offerings upon the green altar of the earth; that his heart should
commune, in its own unknowing way, with those sweet influences, which,
coming from God, discourse in some manner to all men.
And so it was determined that the Union Workhouse should have two
outward windows. The guardians of the poor appeared with the labourers.
“Here,” said the guardians, “break through the wall; here pierce one
window—here, another.” Then turning to the paupers, some few
age-stricken folks, they said, with smug complacency, “We are going to
give you some light.” And this, reader, is not a goosequill fiction; it
is a thing of truth.
“We are going to give you some light.” We cannot help it, if this
liberal goodness—this gentle philanthropy—drive back thought to the
first gift of light; if it call up, as with an iron tongue, the memory
of the holy birth of light, word-begotten, of all men. And the nature of
man, solemnised by such memories—kindled and uplifted, skies beyond
expression, by the sublime inheritance—is it not a hard task to consider
with composure even the compunction of a guardian of the poor, who
pierces with two windows the prison-house of the pauper to let God’s
light in? May not the small authority of man be sometimes as a
blaspheming burlesque of Almighty Beneficence?
Let us, for a time forgetful of state philosophy—forgetful of the
plausibilities of social prosperity that set the poor apart from the
rich and well-to-do, as creatures somewhat different in the real drama
of life, although on certain occasions, as it were for form’s sake, for
Christian ceremony, allowed to be made from the clay of the same Eden as
their masters—let us behold the earth in its freshness, and man, its
owner, in the vigour of his new birth, the heir of an impartial
Providence, and the receiver of its glories; and then consider him as
the task-master of his fellow, as the grudging churl that metes out
light and air to his helpless brother; and for this sole cause—this one
bitter reason—he _is_ helpless.
A miserable sight—a hideous testimony of the thankfulness of prosperous
man—is the rural union, with its blank dead wall of brick; a cold, blind
thing, the work of human perversity and human selfishness, amidst ten
thousand thousand evidences of Eternal bounty. How beautiful is the
beauty of God around it! There is not a sapling waving its green tresses
of June that does not make the heart yearn with kindliness; not a
field-flower that does not, with its speaking eye, tell of abundant
goodness; the brook is musical with the same sweet truth; all sights and
sounds declare it. The liberal loveliness of nature, turn where we will,
looks upon and whispers to us. We are made the heirs of wealth
inexhaustible, of pleasures deep as the sea and pure as the joys of
Paradise. And our return for this, our offering to the wretchedness of
our fellow-creatures, is yonder prison, with its dead wall turned upon
the pleasant aspects of nature, lest the pauper captives within should
behold what God has done for that world, in which, according to the
world’s justice, they have nothing. Hence is the pauper treated, in his
blind dungeon, as though there was a felonious purpose in his eyesight;
as though, a prisoner in the union, he would commit larceny on the meads
and trees, and all the rural objects that from babyhood have been
familiar to him, to the exceeding injury and loss of the free folks,
who, by the blessing of skill and good luck, have “land and beeves.”
We know not a more fantastic tyranny, a more wilful assertion of the
arrogance of man, than this needless shutting up of his poorer brother
in a gaol of poverty—barring his eyes of every comforting object,
compelling him to look only upon that which at every look speaks to his
soul of his miserable dependence upon his richer fellow; which denies to
him the innocent, unbought glimpse of out-door nature, as though the
scene was a land of promise from which his beggary had made him alien.
Is human want so wicked that it should be unblessed with even a glance
at the pleasant things of creation? Has the pauper—because pauper—no
further claim upon the earth, save for his final bed—the grave? The
rustic unions, with their forlorn blank walls, cry, yes!
If God punish man for crime, as man punishes man for poverty, woe to the
sons of Adam!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE ORDER OF POVERTY
WHY should not Lazarus make to himself an order of tatters? Why should
not poverty have its patch of honour? Wherefore should not the undubbed
knights of evil fortune carry about them, with a gracious humility, the
inevitable types of their valorous contest with the Paynim iniquities of
life? Wherefore may not man wear indigence as proudly as nobility
flashes its jewels? Is there not a higher heraldry than that of the
college?
Not a very long time ago the King of Greece awarded to an Englishman the
Order of the Redeemer. The Englishman did not reject the gift; he did
not stare with wonder, or smile in meek pity at the grave mockery of the
distinction; but winning the consent of our Sovereign Lady Victoria to
sport the jewel, the Knight of Christ—knight by the handiwork of the
King of Greece—hung about him the Order of the Redeemer.
And what may be the gracious discipline of this Order of Redemption? Has
the new knight sold off all that he had, and given the money to the
poor? We have heard of no such broker’s work; and surely the newspaper
tongue would have given loud utterance to the penitence of Mammon. What
discipline, then, does this Order of Christ compel upon its holy and
immaculate brotherhood? What glorifying services towards the heart and
spirit of man what self-martyrdom does it recompense? Is it the bright
reward of humility—of active loving-kindness towards everything that
breathes? Is it that the knighted, beyond ten thousand men, has proved
the divine temper of the spiritual follower of Jesus, making his hourly
life an active goodness, and with every breath drawn drawing nearer to
rewarding Heaven? Surely the Order of the Redeemer—that awful, solemn
badge, setting apart its wearer from the sordid crowd of earth—could
only be vouchsafed to some hard Christian service—could only reward some
triumphant wrestling of the suffering soul—some wondrous victory in the
forlorn hope of this dark struggling life. These are our thoughts—these
our passionate words; whereupon the herald of the court of Greece—a
grave, fantastic wizard—with mildly-reproving look and most delicate
speech, says: “You are wrong: quite wrong. The Order of the Redeemer,
though by no means the first Order, is a very pretty Order in its way.
Six months since we gave it to Captain Jonquil, from Paris; and truly no
man more deserved the Order of the Redeemer. He taught His Majesty’s
infantry the use of the bayonet: his howitzer practice, too, is a divine
thing. Captain Jonquil is a great soldier. Last week the Order of the
Redeemer was also bestowed upon Andreas, a great favourite at court—but,
if the naughty truth must be told, a pimp.”
Alas! is heraldry always innocent of blasphemy?
On the 13th of June 1843, a grave masque—a solemn ceremony—was held at
the court of St James. Heraldry again looked smug and pompous. A knight
was to be made of “the most ancient Order of the Thistle.” Let us make a
clean breast of our ignorance; we assert nothing against the antiquity
of the Thistle; for what we know, it may be as old—ay, as old as asses.
But upon the glad 13th of June a chapter was held, and John, Marquis of
Bute, and the Right Hon. William, Earl of Mansfield, were elected
knights. They of course took the oaths to protect and succour distressed
maidens, orphans and widows; to abstain from every sort of wrong, and to
do every sort of right.
“The Marquis of Bute then kneeling near the Sovereign, and Mr Woods on
his knee, presenting to the Queen the riband and jewel of the Order, Her
Majesty was graciously pleased to place the same over the noble
Marquis’s left shoulder. His Lordship rising, kissed the Sovereign’s
hand, and having received the congratulations of the knights brethren,
retired.”
From that moment John, Marquis of Bute, looked and moved with the aspect
and bearing of a man, radiant with new honours. He was a Knight of the
Thistle, and the jewel sparkling at his bosom feebly typified the
bright, admiring looks of the world—the gaze of mingled love and
admiration bent upon him. But on this earth—in this abiding-place of
equity—men do not get even thistles for nothing. It may, indeed, happen
that desert may pant and moan without honour; but in the court of kings,
where justice weighs with nicest balance, honour never with its smiles
mocks imbecility, or gilds with outward lustre a concealed rottenness.
Honour never gives alms, but awards justice. Mendicancy, though with
liveried lackies clustering at its carriage—and there is such
pauperism—may whine and pray its hardest, yet move not the inflexible
herald. He awards those jewels to virtue, which virtue has sweated, bled
for. And it is with this belief, yea, in the very bigotry of the creed,
we ask—what has John, Marquis of Bute, fulfilled to earn his thistle?
What, the Right Hon. William, Earl of Mansfield? What dragon wrong has
either overcome? What giant Untruth stormed in Sophist Castle? What
necromantic wickedness baffled and confounded? Yet, these battles have
been fought—these triumphs won; oh! who shall doubt them? Be sure of it,
ye unbelieving demagogues—scoffing plebians, not for nothing nobility
browses upon thistles.
We pay all honour to these inventions, these learned devices of the
Herald. They doubtless clothe, comfort, and adorn humanity, which,
without them, would be cold, naked, shrunk, and squalid. They, moreover,
gloriously attest the supremacy of the tame, the civilised man, over the
wild animal. The orders of the Herald are _tattoo_ without the pain of
puncture. The New Zealander carries his knighthood, lined and starred
and flowered, in his visage. The civilised knight hangs it more
conveniently on a riband.
We are such devout believers in the efficacy of Orders, that we devote
this small essay to an attempt to make them, under some phase or other,
universal. We will not linger in a consideration of the Orders already
dead; lovely was their life, and as fragrant is their memory. There was
one Order—Teutonic, if we mistake not, the Order of Fools. There was a
quaint sincerity in the very title of this brotherhood. Its philosophy
was out-speaking; and more than all, the constitution of such a chapter
admitted knights against whose worthiness, whose peculiar right to wear
the badge, no envious demagogue could say his bitter saying. Surely, in
our reverence for the wisdom of antiquity, this Order might have
resurrection. The Fool might have his bauble newly varnished—his cap
newly hung with tinkling bells. Some of us chirp and cackle of the
wisdom of the bygone day; but that is only wisdom which jumps with our
own cunning; which fortifies us in the warm and quiet nook of some
hallowed prejudice. From the mere abstract love of justice, we should be
right glad to have the Order of Fools revived in the fullest splendour
of Folly. Such an Order would so beneficently provide for many
unrewarded public idlers—ay, and public workers.
There was a time when the world in its first childhood needed
playthings. Then was the Herald the world’s toy-maker, and made for it
pretty little nick-knacks—golden fleeces—stars, ribands and garters;
tempting the world to follow the kickshaws, as nurse with sugared
bread-and-butter tempts the yeanling to try its tottering feet. The
world has grown old—old and wise: yet is not the Herald bankrupt, but
like a pedlar at a fair, draws the hearts of simple men after the
shining, silken glories in his box. Meanwhile, philosophy in hodden
grey, laughs at the crowd, who bellow back the laugh and sometimes pelt
the reverend fool for his irreligious humour: for he who believes not in
Stars and Garters is unbeliever; to the world’s best and brightest
faith, atheist and scoffer.
Is it not strange that a man should think the better of himself for a
few stones glittering in his bosom? That a costly band about the leg
should make the blood dance more swiftly through the arteries? That a
man seeing his breast set with jewellers’ stars should think them
glorious as the stars of heaven—himself, little less than an earthly
god, so deified? If these things be really types and emblems of true
greatness, what rascal poverty besets the man without them! How is he
damned in his baseness! What mere offal of humanity, the biped without
an Order! And, therefore, let stars be multiplied; and let nobility—like
bees—suck honey from Thistles!
We are, however, confirmed in our late failing faith. We are bigoted to
Orders. Men, like watches, must work the better upon jewels. Man is, at
the best, a puppet; and is only put into dignified motion when pulled by
Blue or Red Ribands. Now, as few, indeed, of us can get stars, garters
or ribands, let us have Orders of our own. Let us, with invincible
self-complacency, ennoble ourselves.
In the hopeless ignorance and vulgarity of our first prejudice, we might
possibly want due veneration for the Golden Fleece; an ancient and most
noble Order, worn by few. Yet with all our worst carelessness towards
the Order, we never felt for it the same pitying contempt we feel
towards an Order worn by many—not at their button-holes, not outside
their breasts, but in the very core of their hearts—the Order of the
Golden Calf.
Oh! bowelless Plutus, what a host of Knights! What a lean-faced,
low-browed, thick-jowled, swag-bellied brotherhood! Deformity, in all
its fantastic variety, meets in the chapter. They wear no armour of
steel or brass, but are cased in the magic mail of impenetrable
Bank-paper. They have no sword, no spear, no iron mace with spikes; but
they ride merrily into the fight of life, swinging about gold-gutted
purses, and levelling with the dust rebellious poverty. These are the
Knights of the Golden Calf. It is a glorious community. What a look of
easy triumph they have! With what serene self-satisfaction they measure
the wide distance between mere paupers—the Knights of the Order of
Nothing—and themselves! How they walk the earth as if they alone
possessed the patent of walking upright! How they dilate in the light of
their own gold, like adders in the sun!
A most fatal honour is this Order of the Golden Calf. It is worn unseen,
as we have said, in the hearts of men; but its effects are visible: the
disease speaks out in every atom of flesh—poor human worm’s-meat!—and
throbs in every muscle. It poisons the soul; gives the eye a squint;
takes from the face of fellow-man its God-gifted dignity, and makes him
a thing to prey upon; to work, to use up; to reduce to so much hard
cash; then to be put up, with a wary look of triumph, into the pocket.
This Order damns with a leprosy of soul its worshipper. It blinds and
deafens him to the glories and the harmonies ministrant to poorer men.
His eye is jaundiced, and in the very stars of God he sees nought but
twinkling guineas.
At this moment great is the Order throughout the land! Tyrannous its
laws, reckless its doings. It is strong, and why should it be just? To
be of this Order is now the one great striving of life. They alone are
men who wear the jewel—wretches they without it. Man was originally made
from the dust of the earth: he is now formed of a richer substance: the
true man is made of gold. Yes, the regenerate Adam is struck only at the
Mint.
The Knights of the Order of the Golden Calf have no formal ceremony of
election; yet has brother knight almost instinctive knowledge of
brother. In the solitude of his own thoughts is he made one of the
community; in utter privacy he kisses the pulseless hand of Plutus, and
swears to his supremacy. The oath divorces him from pauper-life—from its
cares, its wants, its sympathies. He is privileged from the uneasiness
of thought, the wear and tear of anxiety for fellow-man; he is compact
and self-concentrated in his selfishness. Nought ruffles him that
touches not that inmost jewel of his soul, his knighthood’s Order.
In the olden day the Knights of the Fleece, the Garter and other
glories, won their rank upon the battlefield—blood and strife being to
them the hand-maids of honour. The chivalry of the Golden Calf is mild
and gentle. It splits no brain-pan, spills no blood; yet is it ever
fighting. We are at the exchange. Look at that easy, peaceful man. What
a serenity is upon his cheek! What a mild lustre in his eye! How plainly
is he habited! He wears the livery of simplicity and the look of peace.
Yet has he in his heart the Order of the Golden Calf. He is one of
Mammon’s boldest heroes. A very soldier of fortune. He is now
fighting—fighting valorously. He has come armed with a bran-new lie—a
falsehood of surpassing temper, which with wondrous quietude he lays
about him, making huge gashes in the money-bags of those he fights with.
A good foreign lie, well finished and well mounted, is to this Knight of
the Golden Calf as the sword of Faery to Orlando. With it he sometimes
cuts down giant fortunes, and after “grinds their bones to make his
bread.”
And there are small esquires and pages of the Order; men who, with
heart-felt veneration, lick their lips at the Golden Calf, and with more
than bridegroom yearning pant for possession. These small folk swarm
like summer-gnats; and still they drone the praises of the Calf; and
looking at no other thing, have their eyes bleared and dazzled to all
beside.
The Knights of the Golden Calf shed no blood; that is, the wounds they
deal bleed inwardly and give no evidence of homicide. They are, too,
great consumers of the marrow of men; and yet they break no bones, but
by a trick known to their Order extract without fracture precious
nutriment. They are great alchemists, too; and turn the sweat of
unrequited poverty, aye, the tears of childhood, into drops of gold.
Much wrong, much violence, much wayward cruelty—if the true history of
knighthood were indicted—lies upon the Fleece, the Garter, yes, upon the
Templar’s Lamb;—yet all is but as May-day pastime to the voracity, the
ignorance, the wilful selfishness, the bestial lowings of the Golden
Calf. And of this Order the oldest of the brotherhood are the most
gluttonous. There is one whose every fibre is blasted with age. To the
imagination his face is as a coffin-plate. Yet is he all belly. As cruel
as a cat though toothless as a bird!
Oh, ye knights, great and small—whether expanding on the mart, or lying
_perdu_ in back parlours—fling from your hearts the Order there, and
feel for once the warmth of kindly blood! The brotherhood chuckle at the
adjuration. Well, let us fight the Order with an Order.
The Order of Poverty against the Order of the Golden Calf!
Will it not be a merry time, when men, with a blithe face and open look,
shall confess that they are poor? When they shall be to the world what
they are to themselves? When the lie, the shuffle, the bland, yet
anxious hypocrisy of seeming, and seeming only, shall be a creed
forsworn? When Poverty asserts itself, and never blushes and stammers at
its true name, the Knights of the Calf must give ground. Much of their
strength, their poor renown, their miserable glory, lies in the
hypocrisy of those who would imitate them. They believe themselves
great, because the poor, in the very ignorance of the dignity of
poverty, would ape their magnificence.
The Order of Poverty! How many sub-orders might it embrace! As the
spirit of Gothic chivalry has its fraternities, so might the Order of
Poverty have its distinct devices.
The Order of the Thistle! That is an order for nobility—a glory to
glorify marquisate or earldom. Can we not, under the rule of Poverty,
find as happy a badge?
Look at this peasant. His face bronzed with midday toil. From sunrise to
sunset, with cheerful looks and uncomplaining words, he turns the primal
curse to dignity, and manfully earns his bread in the sweat of his brow.
Look at the fields around! Golden with blessed corn. Look at this
bloodless soldier of the plough—this hero of the sickle. His triumphs
are there, piled up in bread-bestowing sheaves. Is he not Sir Knight of
the Wheat-Ear? Surely, as truly dubbed in the heraldry of justice, as
any Knight of the Thistle.
And here is a white-haired shepherd. As a boy, a child, playful as the
lambs he tended, he laboured. He has dreamed away his life upon a
hillside—on downs—on solitary heaths. The humble, simple, patient
watcher for fellow-men. Solitude has been his companion: he has grown
old, wrinkled, bent in the eye of the burning sun. His highest wisdom is
a guess at the coming weather: he may have heard of diamonds, but he
knows the evening star. He has never sat at a congress of kings: he has
never helped to commit a felony upon a whole nation. Yet is he to our
mind a most reverend Knight of the Fleece. If the Herald object to this,
let us call him Knight of the Lamb! In its gentleness and patience, a
fitting type of the poor old shepherd.
And here is a pauper, missioned from the workhouse to break stones at
the road-side. How he strikes and strikes at that unyielding bit of
flint! Is it not the stony heart of the world’s injustice knocked at by
poverty? What haggardness is in his face! What a blight hangs about him!
There are more years in his looks than in his bones. Time has marked him
with an iron pen. He wailed as a babe for bread his father was not
allowed to earn. He can recollect every dinner—they were so few—of his
childhood. He grew up, and want was with him even as his shadow. He has
shivered with cold—fainted with hunger. His every day of life has been
set about by goading wretchedness. Around him, too, were the stores of
plenty. Food, raiment, and money mocked the man made half mad with
destitution. Yet, with a valorous heart, a proud conquest of the
shuddering spirit, he walked with honesty and starved. His long journey
of life hath been through thorny places, and now he sits upon a pile of
stones on the wayside, breaking them for workhouse bread. Could loftiest
chivalry show greater heroism—nobler self-control, than this old man,
this weary breaker of flints? Shall he not be of the Order of Poverty?
Is not penury to him even as a robe of honour? His grey workhouse coat
braver than purple and miniver? He shall be Knight of the Granite if you
will. A workhouse gem, indeed—a wretched, highway jewel—yet, to the eye
of truth, finer than many a ducal diamond.
[Illustration:
“He has dreamed his life upon a hillside—”
]
This man is a weaver; this a potter. Here, too, is a razor-grinder; here
an iron-worker. Labour is their lot; labour they yearn for, though to
some of them labour comes with miserable disease and early death. Have
we not here Knights of the Shuttle, Knights of Clay, and Knights of
Vulcan, who prepare the carcase of the giant engine for its vital flood
of steam? Are not these among the noblest of the sons of Poverty? Shall
they not take high rank in its Order?
We are at the mouth of a mine. There, many, many fathoms below us, works
the naked, grimed, and sweating wretch, oppressed, brutalised, that he
may dig us coal for our winter’s hearth; where we may gather round, and
with filled bellies, well-clothed backs, and hearts all lapped in
self-complacency, talk of the talked-of evils of the world, as though
they were the fables of ill-natured men, and not the verities of
bleeding life. That these men, doing the foulest offices of the world
should still be of the world’s poorest, gives dignity to want—the glory
of long-suffering to poverty.
And so, indeed, in the mind of wisdom, is poverty ennobled. And for the
Knights of the Golden Calf, how are they outnumbered! Let us, then,
revive the Order of Poverty. Ponder, reader, on its antiquity. For was
not Christ Himself Chancellor of the Order, and the Apostles Knights
Companions?
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE OLD MAN AT THE GATE
IN Surrey, some three miles from Chertsey, is a quiet, dull, sequestered
nook, called Shepperton Green. Whether the new philanthropy of new
pauper laws hath, of late years, sought out the spot I know not. At the
time whereof I write, the olden charity dwelt in an old workhouse—a
primitive abiding-place for the broken ploughman, the palsied shepherd,
the old, old peasant, for whom nothing more remained in this world but
to die. The governor of this abode of benevolence dwelt in the lower
part of the building, and therein, as the village trade might fluctuate,
made or mended shoes. Let the plain truth be said—the governor was a
cobbler. Within a stone’s cast of the workhouse was a little white gate
swung between two hedge-banks in the road to Chertsey. Here, pass when
you would, stood an old man, whose self-imposed office it was to open
the gate; for the which service the passenger would drop some small
benevolence in the withered hand of the aged peasant. This man was a
pauper—one of the almsmen of the village workhouse.
There was a custom—whether established by the governor aforesaid or by
predecessors of a vanished century, I know not—that made it the
privilege of the oldest pauper to stand the porter at the gate; his
perquisite, by right of years, the halfpence of the rare pedestrian. As
the senior died, the living senior succeeded to the office. Now the
gate—and now the grave.
And this is all the history? All. The story is told—it will not bear
another syllable. The “Old Man” is at the gate; the custom which places
him there has been made known, and with it ends the narrative.
How few the incidents of life—how multitudinous its emotions! How flat,
monotonous may be the circumstance of daily existence, and yet how
various the thoughts which spring from it! Look at yonder landscape,
broken into hill and dale, with trees of every hue and form, and water
winding in silver threads through velvet fields. How beautiful—for how
various! Cast your eye over that moor; it is flat and desolate—barren as
barren rock. Not so. Seek the soil, and then, with nearer gaze,
contemplate the wondrous forms and colours of the thousand mosses
growing there; give ear to the hum of busy life sounding at every root
of poorest grass. Listen! Does not the heart of the earth beat audibly
beneath this seeming barrenness—audibly as where the corn grows and the
grape ripens? Is it not so with the veriest rich and the veriest
poor—with the most active and with apparently the most inert?
That “Old Man at the Gate” has eighty years upon his head—eighty years,
covering it with natural reverence. He was once in London—only once.
This pilgrimage excepted, he has never journeyed twenty miles from the
cottage in which he was born; of which he became the master; whereto he
brought his wife; where his children saw the light, and their children
after; where many of them died; and whence, having with a stout soul,
fought against the strengthening ills of poverty and old age, he was
thrust by want and sickness out, and, with a stung heart, he laid his
bones upon a workhouse bed.
Life to the “Old Man” has been one long path across a moor—a flat,
unbroken journey; the eye uncheered, the heart unsatisfied. Coldness and
sterility have compassed him round. Yet, has he been subdued to the
blankness of his destiny? Has his mind remained the unwrit page that
schoolmen talk of—has his heart become a clod? Has he been made by
poverty a moving image—a plough-guiding, corn-thrashing instrument? Have
not unutterable thoughts sometimes stirred within his brain—thoughts
that elevated, yet confused him with a sense of eternal beauty—coming
upon him like the spiritual presences to the shepherds? Has he not been
beset by the inward and mysterious yearning of the heart towards the
unknown and the unseen? He has been a ploughman. In the eye of the
well-to-do, dignified with the accomplishments of reading and writing,
is he of little more intelligence than the oxen treading the glebe. Yet,
who shall say that the influence of nature—that the glories of the
rising sun—may not have called forth harmonies of soul from the rustic
drudge, the moving statue of a man!
That worn-out, threadbare remnant of humanity at the gate; age makes it
reverend, and the inevitable—shall inevitable be said?—injustice of the
world invests it with majesty, the majesty of suffering meekly borne and
meekly decaying. “The poor shall never cease out of the land.” This text
the self-complacency of competence loveth to quote: it hath a melody in
it, a lulling sweetness to the selfishness of our nature. Hunger, and
cold, and nakedness, are the hard portion of man; there is no help for
it; rags must flutter about us; man, yes, even the strong man, his only
wealth (the wealth of Adam) wasting in his bones, must hold his pauper
hand to his brother of four meals _per diem_; it is a necessity of
nature, and there is no help for it. And thus some men send their
consciences to sleep by the chinking of their own purses. Necessity of
evil is an excellent philosophy applied to everybody but—ourselves.
These easy souls will see nothing in our “Old Man at the Gate” but a
pauper, let out of the workhouse for the chance of a few halfpence.
Surely, he is something more? He is old; very old. Every day, every
hour, earth has less claim in him. He is so old, so feeble, that even as
you look he seems sinking. At sunset he is scarcely the man who opened
the gate to you in the morning. Yet there is no disease in him—none. He
is dying of old age. He is working out that most awful problem of
life—slowly, solemnly. He is now the badged pauper—and now in the
unknown country with Solomon!
Can man look upon a more touching solemnity? There stands the old man,
passive as a stone, nearer every moment to churchyard clay! It was only
yesterday that he took his station at the gate. His predecessor held the
post for two years; he too daily, daily dying:—
“Till like a clock, worn out with eating time,
The weary wheels of life at length stood still.”
How long will the present watcher survive? In that very uncertainty—in
the very hoariness of age which brings home to us that uncertainty—there
is something that makes the old man sacred; for, in the course of
nature, is not the oldest man the nearest to the angels?
Yet, away from these thoughts, there is reverence due to that old man.
What has been his life? A war with suffering. What a beautiful world is
this! How rich and glorious! How abundant in blessings—great and
little—to thousands! What a lovely place hath God made it; and how have
God’s creatures darkened and outraged it to the wrong of one another!
Well, what had this man of the world? What stake, as the effrontery of
selfishness has it? The wild fox was better cared for. Though preserved
some day to be killed, it _was_ preserved until then. What did this old
man inherit? Toil, incessant toil, with no holiday of the heart: he came
into the world a badged animal of labour; the property of animals. What
was the earth to him?—a place to die in.
“The poor shall never cease out of the land.” Shall we then,
accommodating our sympathies to this hard necessity, look serenely down
upon the wretched? Shall we preach only comfort to ourselves from the
doomed condition of others? It is an easy philosophy; so easy there is
but little wonder it is so well exercised.
But “The Old Man at the Gate” has, for seventy years, worked and worked;
and what his closing reward? The workhouse. Shall we not, some of us,
blush crimson at our own world-successes, considering the destitution of
our worthy, single-hearted fellows? Should not affluence touch its hat
to “The Old Man at the Gate” with a reverence for the years upon him;
he—the born soldier of poverty, doomed for life to lead life’s forlorn
hope? Thus considered, surely Dives may unbonnet to Lazarus.
To our mind the venerableness of age made “The Old Man at the Gate”
something like a spiritual presence. He was so old, who could say how
few the pulsations of his heart between him and the grave! But there he
was with a meek happiness upon him; gentle, cheerful. He was not built
up in bricks and mortar; but was still in the open air, with the
sweetest influences about him; the sky—the trees—the green sward—and
flowers with the breath of God in them!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
The fifes and drums of her Majesty’s Grenadiers
]
THE FOLLY OF THE SWORD
MAY we ask the reader to behold with us a melancholy show—a saddening,
miserable spectacle? We will not take him to a prison, a workhouse, a
Bedlam, where human nature expiates its guiltiness, its lack of worldly
goods, its most desolate perplexity; but we will take him to a
wretchedness, first contrived by wrong and perpetrated by folly. We will
show him the embryo mischief that in due season shall be born in the
completion of its terror, and shall be christened with a sounding
name,—Folly and wickedness standing its sponsors.
We are in St James’s Park. The royal standard of England burns in the
summer air—the Queen is in London. We pass the Palace, and in a few
paces are in Birdcage Walk. There, reader, is the miserable show we
promised you. There are some fifty recruits, drilled by a sergeant to do
homicide, killingly, handsomely. In Birdcage Walk Glory sits upon her
eggs, and hatches eagles!
How very beautiful is the sky above us! What a blessing comes with the
fresh, quick air! The trees, drawing their green beauty from the earth,
quicken our thoughts of the bounteousness of this teeming world. Here in
this nook, this patch, where we yet feel the vibrations of surrounding
London—even here Nature, constant in her beauty, blooms and smiles,
uplifting the heart of man—if the heart be his to own her.
Now, look aside and contemplate God’s image with a musket. Your bosom
duly expanding with gratitude to nature for the blessings she has heaped
about you, behold the crowning glory of God’s work managed, like a
machine, to slay the image of God—to stain the teeming earth with
homicidal blood—to fill the air with howling anguish! Is not yonder row
of clowns a melancholy sight? Yet are they the sucklings of Glory—the
baby mighty ones of a future _Gazette_. Reason beholds them with a deep
pity. Imagination magnifies them into fiends of wickedness. There is
carnage about them—carnage, and the pestilential vapour of the
slaughtered. What a fine-looking thing is war! Yet dress it as we may,
dress and feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it and sing swaggering
songs about it—what is it, nine times out of ten—but murder in uniform?
Cain, taken the sergeant’s shilling?
And now we hear the fifes and drums of her Majesty’s Grenadiers. They
pass on the other side; and a crowd of idlers, their hearts jumping to
the music, their eyes dazzled, and their feelings perverted, hang about
the march and catch the infection—the love of glory! And true wisdom
thinks of the world’s age, and sighs at its slow advance in all that
really dignifies man—the truest dignity being the truest love for his
fellow. And then hope, and faith in human progress, contemplate the
pageant, its real ghastliness disguised by outward glare and frippery,
and know the day will come when the symbols of war will be as the sacred
beasts of old Egypt—things to mark the barbarism of bygone war;
melancholy records of the past perversity of human nature.
We can imagine the deep-chested laughter—the look of scorn which would
annihilate, and then the smile of compassion—of the man of war at this,
the dream of folly and the wanderings of an inflamed brain. Yet, oh, man
of war! at this very moment are you shrinking, withering like an aged
giant. The fingers of Opinion have been busy at your plume—you are not
the feathered thing you were; and then that little tube, the goose
quill, has sent its silent shot into your huge anatomy; and the
corroding INK, even whilst you look at it, and think it shines so
brightly, is eating with a tooth of rust into your sword.
That a man should kill a man and rejoice in the deed—nay, gather glory
from it—is the act of a wild animal. The force of muscle and the
dexterity of limb which make the wild man a conqueror are deemed, in
savage life, man’s highest attributes. The creature whom, in the pride
of our Christianity, we call heathen and spiritually desolate, has some
personal feeling in the strife—he kills his enemy, and then, making an
oven of hot stones, bakes his dead body, and, for crowning satisfaction,
eats it. His enemy becomes a part of him; his glory is turned to
nutriment; and he is content. What barbarism! Field-marshals sicken at
the horror; nay, troopers shudder at the tale, like a fine lady at a
toad.
In what, then, consists the prime evil? In the murder, or in the meal?
Which is the most hideous deed—to kill a man, or to cook and eat the man
when killed?
But, softly, there is no murder in the case. The craft of man has made a
splendid ceremony of homicide—has invested it with dignity. He
slaughters with flags flying, drums beating, trumpets braying. He kills
according to method, and has worldly honours for his grim handiwork. He
does not, like the unchristian savage, carry away with him mortal
trophies from the skulls of his enemies. No, the alchemy and magic of
authority turns his well-won scalps into epaulets, or hangs them in
stars and crosses at his button-hole; and then, the battle over, the
dead not eaten, but carefully buried—and the maimed and mangled howling
and blaspheming in hospitals—the meek Christian warrior marches to
church, and reverently folding his sweet and spotless hands, sings _Te
Deum_. Angels wave his fervent thanks to God, to whose footstool—in his
own faith—he has so lately sent his shuddering thousands. And this
spirit of destruction working within him is canonised by the craft and
ignorance of man and worshipped as glory!
And this religion of the sword—this dazzling heathenism, that makes a
pomp of wickedness—seizes and distracts us even on the threshold of
life. Swords and drums are our baby playthings; the types of violence
and destruction are made the pretty pastimes of our childhood; and as we
grow older, the outward magnificence of the ogre Glory—his trappings and
his trumpets, his privileges, and the songs that are shouted in his
praise—ensnare the bigger baby to his sacrifice. Hence slaughter becomes
an exalted profession; the marked, distinguished employment of what in
the jargon of the world is called a gentleman.
[Illustration:
“Hodge, poor fellow, enlists”
]
But for this craft operating upon this ignorance, who—in the name of
outraged God—would become the hireling of the Sword? Hodge, poor fellow,
enlists. He wants work; or he is idle, dissolute. Kept, by the injustice
of the world, as ignorant as the farmyard swine, he is the better
instrument for the world’s craft. His ear is tickled with the fife and
drum; or he is drunk; or the sergeant—the lying valet of glory—tells a
good tale, and already Hodge is a warrior in the rough. In a fornight’s
time you may see him at Chatham; or indeed he was one of those we marked
in Birdcage Walk. Day by day the sergeant works at the block ploughman,
and, chipping and chipping, at length carves out a true, handsome
soldier of the line. What knew Hodge of the responsibility of man? What
dreams had he of the self-accountability of the human spirit? He is
become the lackey of carnage, the liveried footman, at a few pence per
day, of fire and blood. The musket stock, which for many an hour he
hugs—hugs in sulks and weariness—was no more a party to its present use
than was Hodge. That piece of walnut is the fragment of a tree that
might have given shade and fruit for another century; homely, rustic
people gathering under it. Now it is the instrument of wrong and
violence; the working tool of slaughter. Tree and man, are not their
destinies as one?
And is Hodge alone of benighted mind? Is he alone deficient of that
knowledge of moral right and wrong, which really and truly crowns the
man king of himself? When he surrenders up his nature, a mere machine
with human pulses to do the bidding of war, has he taken counsel with
his own reflection—does he know the limit of the sacrifice? He has taken
his shilling, and knows the facings of his uniform!
When the born and bred gentleman, to keep to coined and current terms,
pays down his thousand pounds or so for his commission, what incites to
the purchase? It may be the elegant idleness of the calling: it may be
the bullion and glitter of the regimentals; or, devout worshipper, it
may be an unquenchable thirst for glory. From the moment when his name
stars the _Gazette_, what does he become? The bond-servant of war!
Instantly he ceases to be a judge between moral right and moral injury.
It is his duty not to think, but to obey. He has given up, surrendered
to another the freedom of his soul: he has dethroned the majesty of his
own will. He must be active in wrong, and see not the injustice: shed
blood for craft and usurpation, calling bloodshed valour. He may be
made, by the iniquity of those who use him, a burglar and a brigand; but
glory calls him pretty names for his prowess, and the wicked weakness of
the world shouts and acknowledges him. And is this the true condition of
reasonable man? Is it by such means that he best vindicates the
greatness of his mission here? Is he when he most gives up the free
motions of his own soul—is he then most glorious?
A few months ago chance showed us a band of ruffians who, as it
afterwards appeared, were intent upon most desperate mischief. They
spread themselves over the country, attacking, robbing, and murdering
all who fell into their hands. Men, women, and children all suffered
alike. Nor were the villains satisfied with this. In their wanton
ruthlessness they set fire to cottages, and tore up and destroyed
plantations. Every footpace of their march was marked with blood and
desolation.
Who were these wretches? you ask. What place did they ravage? Were they
not caught and punished?
They were a part of the army of Africa; valorous Frenchmen, bound for
Algiers to cut Arab throats; and, in the name of glory, and for the
everlasting glory of France, to burn, pillage, and despoil; and all for
national honour—all for glory!
But Glory cannot dazzle Truth. Does it not at times appear no otherwise
than a highwayman with a pistol at a nation’s breast? a burglar with a
crowbar entering a kingdom? Alas! in this world there is no Old Bailey
for nations, otherwise where would have been the crowned heads that
divided Poland? Those felon monarchs anointed to—steal? It is true the
historian claps the cutpurse conqueror in the dock, and he is tried by
the jury of posterity. _He_ is past the verdict, yet is not its
damnatory voice lost upon generations? For thus is the world
taught—albeit slowly taught—true glory; when that which passed for
virtue is truly tested to be vile; when the hero is hauled from the car
and fixed for ever in the pillory.
But war brings forth the heroism of the soul: war tests the magnanimity
of man. Sweet is the humanity that spares a fallen foe; gracious the
compassion that tends his wounds, that brings even a cup of water to his
burning lips. Granted. But is there not a heroism of a grander mould—the
heroism of forbearance? Is not the humanity that refuses to strike a
nobler virtue than the late pity born of violence? Pretty is it to see
the victor with salve and lint kneeling at his bloody trophy—a maimed
and agonised fellow-man; but surely it had been better to withhold the
blow than to have been first mischievous, to be afterwards humane.
That nations professing a belief in Christ should couple glory with war
is monstrous blasphemy. Their faith, their professing faith, is—“Love
one another”; their practice is to—cut throats; and more, to bribe and
hoodwink men to the wickedness, the trade of blood is magnified into a
virtue. We pray against battle, and glorify the deeds of death. We say
beautiful are the ways of peace, and then cocker ourselves upon our
perfect doings in the art of man-slaying. Let us then cease to pay the
sacrifice of admiration to the demon—War; let us not acknowledge him as
a mighty and majestic principle, but, at the very best, a grim and
melancholy necessity.
But there always has been—there always will be—war. It is inevitable; it
is a part of the condition of human society. Man has always made glory
to himself from the destruction of his fellow; so it will continue. It
may be very pitiable; would it were otherwise! But so it is, and there
is no helping it.
Happily we are slowly killing this destructive fallacy. A long breathing
time of peace has been fatal to the dread magnificence of glory. Science
and philosophy—_povera e nuda filosofia!_—have made good their claims,
inducing man to believe that he may vindicate the divinity of his nature
otherwise than by perpetrating destruction. He begins to think there is
a better glory in the communication of triumphs of the mind, than in the
clash of steel and the roar of artillery. At the present moment a
society, embracing men of distant nations—“natural enemies,” as the old
wicked cant of the old patriotism had it—is at work plucking the plumes
from Glory, unbracing his armour, and divesting the ogre of all that
dazzled foolish and unthinking men, showing the rascal in his natural
hideousness, in all his base deformity. Some, too, are calculating the
cost of Glory’s table: some showing what an appetite the demon has,
devouring at a meal the substance of these thousand sons of
industry—yea, eating up the wealth of kingdoms. And thus by degrees are
men beginning to look upon this god Glory as no more than a
finely-trapped Sawney Bean—a monster and a destroyer—a nuisance—a noisy
lie.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE GREENWICH PENSIONER
A GREENWICH pensioner! Did any of my readers ever ponder on that strange
composition of battered humanity and blue serge? Did they never feel a
something approaching very near gratitude on passing, in the metropolis,
a Greenwich pensioner, who, with his honest, carved out, unabashed
front, looks as bluntly and as wonderingly at the bustle and splendour
around him as does an unsophisticated wether suddenly removed from South
Downs to Cheapside, whilst shaking his woollen coat beneath the whip of
the coachman to the Lord Mayor. What a mixture of gravity and wonderment
is in the poor brute’s countenance! how with its meek, uplifted head it
stares at the effulgent vehicle,—runs leaping at the coach-wheels,
mistaking them for hurdles,—falls, awe-struck, back, at the gilt and
beavered greatness of the footman’s cocked hat,—then, suddenly awakened
from its amazement by the lurcher’s teeth, or the driver’s stick, makes
an unlucky spring of some three feet into the air, catches a glance of
its figure in the mirrored walls of a silk mercer, and, startled at the
sight, dashes through the first court,—carrying perhaps a few yards upon
its back some red-faced, nankeen-gaitered little stockbroker, whose
spattered small clothes are for a time unregarded in the mighty rush of
drovers, butchers, dogs, and idlers.
Now such is the real Greenwich pensioner. When I say _real_, I mean one
who abhors London worse than he does a Frenchman; who thinks there is
nothing to be seen in it, unless, indeed, it be Nelson’s tomb, in St
Paul’s, or the “Ship” public-house, in Tooley Street. London is to him a
never-failing source of merriment; that is, whilst he is out of it. He
sits at Greenwich, and looking as sagely as a starling ere he snaps at a
fly, at the piled-up clouds of smoke hanging over the metropolis, or,
indeed, almost propped upon its chimney-pots, and, stretching forth his
stick, significantly points them out to his former shipmates, asking
them if they do not think “there is something dark over there—something
of an ‘ox-eye’ to the west?” He, indeed, never ventures to London,
unless it be for a fresh supply of tobacco, or to pay a quarterly visit
to his grand-daughter, the upper housemaid in a gentleman’s family,—and
who, indeed, thinks with horror upon his call, because the neighbours
laugh at the cocked hat and the shoe-buckles of her relative; but
principally because Richard, the baker’s young man, declares he hates
all sailors. The visit is never a very lengthened one, especially if the
girl lives far to the west; for her grandfather has to call upon Will
Somebody, who set up, with his prize-money, a public-house in Wapping.
So off he starts, hurries up the Strand, touches his hat from a point of
principle as he nears Somerset House; puts out more canvas, and away for
Temple Bar. The pensioner has not yet, however, sat for his picture.
We have all read of crabs being despoiled of their claws, locusts of
their entrails, and turtles of their brains, receiving in lieu thereof a
pellet of cotton, and yet retaining life, and appearing, in the words of
the experimentalising and soft-hearted naturalist, “very lively and
comfortable.”[10] Now, the real Greenwich pensioner distances all these;
he is, indeed, an enigma: nature knows not what to make of him. He hath
been suspended, like a school-boy’s bob-cherry, a hundred times over the
chaps of death, and yet still been snatched away by the hand of
Providence—to whom, indeed, his many hurts and dangers have especially
endeared him. Ye of the “_land_ interest,” ye soft-faced young sparks,
who think with terror upon a razor on a frosty morning,—ye suffering old
gentlemen, who pause at a linen-draper’s, and pass the flannel between
your fingers, as time verges towards October—ye martyrs to a winter
cough, ye racked with a quarterly toothache—all ye of household ailings,
look upon this hacked, shivered piece of clay, this Greenwich
pensioner:—consider of how many of his powers he is despoiled—see where
the cutlass and the boarding-spike have ploughed up and pierced his
flesh; see where the bullet has glanced, singeing by; and when you have
reckoned up—if they are to be reckoned—his many scars, above all, look
at his hard, contented, weather-barnacled face, and then, gentle
spectators, complain of your rheums, your joint-twitchings, and your
corns!
Footnote 10:
See _Vaillant_ and _Redi_.
Why, this Greenwich pensioner is in himself a record of the last forty
years’ war. He is a breathing volume of naval history: not an event but
is somewhere indented in him with steel or lead: he has been the stick
in which the English Mars has notched his cricket matches, when
twenty-four pounders were balls, and mainmasts wickets. See, in his
blinded eye is Howe’s victory on the glorious First of June; that stump
of what was once an arm is Nile; and in his wooden leg read Trafalgar.
As to his scars, a gallant action, or a desperate cutting out is noted
in every one of them. And what was the old fellow’s only wish, as with a
shattered knee he lay in the cock-pit under the surgeon’s hand—what was
his earnest supplication to the wet-eyed messmate who bore him down the
hatchway? Simply that he would save him one of the splinters of the
mainmast of the _Victory_, to make of it a leg for Sundays! His wish was
granted; and at Greenwich, always on the seventh day, and also on the
21st of October, is he to be seen, propped upon the inestimable
splinter, which from labour, time, and beeswax, has taken the dark
glossiness of mahogany. What a face he has! What a certain consciousness
of his superiority on his own element at times puffs out his lip, and
gives a sudden twitch to his head! But ask him in what quarter sets the
wind—and note, how with his one eye he will glance at you from top to
toe; and, without ever raising his head or hand to make a self-inquiry,
answers you at once, as though it was a question he was already prepared
for! And so, indeed, he is; it being his first business, on rising, to
consult the weather. The only way to gain his entire confidence, is at
once frankly to avow your utter ignorance, and his superiority; and
then, after he has leered at you with an eye in which there is a meeting
of contempt, good-humour, and self-importance, he is wholly your own;
and will straightway launch into the South Seas, coast along the shores
of Guinea,—where, by-the-bye, he will tell you he once fell in love with
a negress, who, however, jilted him for the cook—and then he will launch
out about Admiral Duncan—take you a voyage with him round Cape Horn,
where a mermaid appeared, and sang a song to the ship’s crew; and who,
indeed, blew aside all the musket shots that were ungallantly fired at
her in requital of her melody. But our pensioner has one particular
story; hear him through that, suffer yourself to be wholly astounded at
its recital, and, if you were not a landsman, he would instantly greet
you as his dearest friend. The heroes of this same story are, our
pensioner and a shark: a tremendous shark that used to be the terror of
the harbour of St Thomas’s. Upon this shark, and the piece of the
mainmast of the _Victory_, is our pensioner content to rest all his
importance during his life, and his fame with posterity. He will tell
you that he, being caterer of the mess, let fall a piece of beef out at
the port-hole, which this terrible shark received into its jaws, and
twisted its body most provokingly at the delicious mouthful. Hereupon
our pensioner—it was before, he reminds you, he had lost a limb—asks
leave of the first lieutenant (for the captain was ashore) to have a
bout with the shark: leave being granted, all the crew are quickly in
the shrouds, and upon the hammock netting, to see Tom “tackle the
shark.” Our pensioner now enters into a minute detail of how, having
armed himself with a long knife, he jumped overboard, dived under the
shark, whom he saw approaching with distended jaws, and inflicted a
tremendous wound with the knife in the belly of the fish; this is
repeated thrice, when the shark turns itself upon its back—a boat is let
down, and both the conqueror and the conquered are quickly received upon
deck. You are doubtless astonished at this; he, however, adds to your
surprise by telling you that the mess regaled off the piece of beef
recovered from the fish; be more astounded at this, although mingle no
doubt in your astonishment, and he will straightway promise some day to
treat your eyes with a sight of a set of chequer men, cut from the very
dorsal bone of the immolated shark! To be the hearer of a sailor’s tale
is something like undergoing the ancient ordeal of red-hot ploughshares;
be innocent of unbelief, and you may, as was held, journey in safety;
doubt the smallest point, and you are quickly withered into nought.
What an odd contrast to his early life is the state of a Greenwich
pensioner! It is as though a part of the angry and foaming sea should
lie stagnant in a bathing tub. All his business is to recount his former
adventures—to plod about, and look with a disdainful eye at trees and
bricks and mortar; or, when he would indulge in a serious fit of spleen,
to walk down to the river’s side, and let his gall feed upon the mishaps
of London apprentices, who, fearless of consequences, may have ventured
some five miles from home in _not_ a “trim-built wherry.” A Greenwich
pensioner fresh from sea is a most preposterous creature; he gets up
every morning for a week, a month, and still finds himself in the same
place; he knows not what to make of it—he feels the strangeness of his
situation, and would, had he the patience and the wit, liken himself to
a hundred unsettled things. Compare him to a hippopotamus in a
gentleman’s park, and he would tell you he had in his day seen a
hippopotamus, and then, with a good-natured grunt, acquiesce in the
resemblance; or to a jolly-boat in a flower garden; or to a sea-gull in
the cage of a canary; or to a porpoise upon a hearthrug; or to a
boatswain’s whistle in a nursery; or to a marling-spike in a milliner’s
workroom; or a tar-barrel in a confectioner’s; with any one or all of
these misplaced articles would our unsettled pensioner sympathise, until
time shall have reconciled him to his asylum; and even then his fancy,
like the shells upon our mantelpiece, will sound of the distant and the
dangerous ocean. At Greenwich, however, the mutilated old sailor has
time enough to indulge in the recollection of his early days, and, with
what wisdom he may, to make up his mind to meet in another world those
whom his arm may have sent thither long before. Death, at length, gently
lays the veteran upon his back—his last words, as the sailor puts his
withered hand upon his heart, are “All’s well,” and sea and earth have
passed away. His body, which had been for forty years a bulwark to the
land, now demands of it but “two paces of the vilest earth”; and if
aught could spring from the tomb characteristic of its inmate, from the
grave of the pensioner would arise the stout, unbending oak—it would be
his fitting monument; and the carolling of the birds in its branches
would be his loud, his artless epitaph.
The Greenwich pensioner, wherever we meet with him, is a fine, quaint
memento of our national greatness, and our fortunate locality. We should
look upon him as the representative of Neptune, and bend our spirit
towards him accordingly. But that is not sufficient; we have individual
acknowledgments to make to him for the comforts of a long safety. Let us
but consider, as we look at his wooden supporter, that if it had not
been for his leg the cannon-ball might have scattered us in our tea
parlour—the bullet which deprived him of his orb of vision might have
stricken _Our Village_ from our hand whilst ensconced in our study; the
cutlass which cleaved his shoulder might have demolished our china vase,
or our globe of golden fish:—instead of which, hemmed round by such
walls of stout and honest flesh, we have lived securely, participating
in every peaceful and domestic comfort, and neither heard the roar of
the cannon nor seen its smoke. Shakespeare has compared England to “a
swan’s nest” in the “world’s pool”: let us be nautical in our similes,
and liken her to a single lemon kernel in a huge bowl of punch: who is
it that has prevented the kernel from being ladled down the throat of
despotism, from becoming but an atom of the great, loathsome mass?—our
Greenwich pensioner. Who has kept our houses from being transformed into
barracks and our cabbage markets into parades?—again, and again, let it
be answered, the Greenwich pensioner. Reader, if the next time you see
the tar, you should perchance have with you your wife and smiling
family, think that if their tenderness has never been shocked by scenes
of blood and terror, you owe such quietude to a Greenwich pensioner.
Indeed, I know not if a triennial progress of the Greenwich
establishment through the whole kingdom would not be attended with the
most beneficial effects—fathers would teach their little ones to lisp
thanksgivings unto God that they were born in England, as reminded of
their happy superiority by the withered form of every Greenwich
pensioner.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE DRILL SERGEANT
SHALL we view our subject through the glasses of philosophy? Precious
microscopic glasses, by which we look into the exquisite order of a
bee’s weapon, which shames the ruggedness of that vaunted wonder of
man’s hands—a Whitechapel needle. By which the superfine coat of the
unworthy appears but as a vile complication of coarse hemp-strings; by
which we look into the heart that to the naked eye displays a tenanted
cherub, with voice of music and wings of light, but find a weak-eyed
little monster, with squeak of mouse and pinions of leather. O, glorious
spectacles! which show palaces not entirely as resting-places for
divinities—many laurels as nettles, stinging what they are fancied to
adorn—Fame’s trumpet, a penny whistle blown by Asthma—the awful person
of Ceremony, a Merry-Andrew stricken grave—a grand review-day, a game at
ninepins on an extensive scale—a levee, a triumph of the laceman and
jeweller—a court ode, a verbose receipt for wages—“honourable
gentleman,” convicted scoundrel—“learned friend,” stupid opponent—a
prison, a temporary retirement from noise—a glass of spring water, a
“cup of sack”—an ugly face, God’s own handiwork—a handsome one, nothing
more—noble blood, of the same hue as a carter’s—a black parish coffin, a
couch of crystal—a grave, a place of rest—consecrated earth, the whole
globe—a tombstone, work for the mason—a pompous epitaph, the toil of a
liar! This transformation—or rather, this showing of reality—is the
result of using the glasses of philosophy. Without the common microscope
we could not know how certain insects respired, whether at the mouth or
shoulders; wanting philosophy’s optic, we should be in like ignorance of
the source of being in some men—for all exist not by the same laws. To
the naked eye, indeed, there appears no difference; but to the
spectacled orb of philosophy it is shown that many men respire, not by
inward organisation, but by external and adventitious instruments. Let
those who are sceptical on this position consider for a moment the
bearing of a thorough-paced coxcomb: does he breathe from his lungs? No;
but from his habiliments. His coat, cravat, boots—yea, his spurs, are
the sources of his being, his dignity, his action. Nay, some men take
all their life from a riband at their button-hole, or a garter at their
leg.—Our Drill Sergeant takes it from his rattan.
I know that much of this may be deemed foreign to the purpose. To those
who so conclude, I say—A common wire-dancer gives not his grand feat
without many little nick-nack preparations. When we visit the Egyptian
Hall, that grand emporium of monsters, we do not step from the pavement
into the show-room, but are wisely made to thread two or three passages
for the better excitation of our feelings. And shall my Drill Sergeant
have not the common observance paid to a mermaid? I trust I have more
respect for my subject, and the army in general. If any one of my
readers, when he glanced at the title, thought to meet with the Sergeant
standing bolt upright at the beginning of the line, like the sentinel at
Buckingham Gate, I luxuriate in his disappointment.
To be candid: I had laid down no form for my beginning; so I thought a
caper or two upon philosophy would not be amiss, trusting eventually to
drop upon my subject. This is a trick frequently played by ——. However,
to business.
We must contemplate the Drill Sergeant at a distance: there is no
closing with him. A painter would decline a chair in the tiger’s den,
asserting that he could take the animal’s stripes equally well through
the bars. Even so will I take the stripes of our Sergeant. First, to
consider his appearance, or rather the discipline by which his “thews
and muscles” deport themselves. He has a vile, cat-like leer of the eye,
that makes us retreat back a few paces, and rub our palms, to be assured
the knave has not secretly placed in one of them a shilling. We tremble,
and for once are afraid to meet the king’s countenance—(I am adding to
the awful attributes of the Drill Sergeant the fearful privilege of
recruiting). We shrink, lest he has mentally approved of us as being
worthy of ball cartridge. He glances towards our leg, and we cannot but
feel that he is thinking how it would look in a black gaiter. At this
moment we take courage, and, valiantly lifting off our hat, pass our
luxuriant curls through our four fingers—we are petrified; for we see by
his chuckle that he has already doomed our tresses to the scissors of
the barrack-barber. We are at once about to take to our legs, when,
turning round, we see something under a middle-sized man, looking over
our head. On this we feel our safety, and triumph in the glory of five
feet one. Something must always be allowed for weakness—something for
vanity; which, indeed, philosophers denominate the greatest weakness.
Hence all these cogitations, foolishly attributed by the little
individual to the Sergeant, arise from the civil man’s self-conceit; the
Sergeant always treating with ineffable contempt persons of a certain
size. And here may be remarked the astonishing capacity of our Sergeant
in judging of human altitude. Ere George Bidder can enumerate the
virtues of King Ferdinand, our Sergeant will sum up the exact height of
a man, duly allowing for his pumps and silk stockings. Strive to mystify
the question, and the ability of the Sergeant mocks the endeavour; for,
he will, on a minute’s notice, resolve how many feet of martial flesh
are in a complete square, after including the triangle, fife, and
drummer lads, and deducting some of the boy officers. Thus,
five-feet-eight reader, if thou wouldst enjoy the pranks of the
Sergeant, unmolested by his eye, teach thy leg to mimic lameness: or, if
easier, cough consumptively.
I would wish to convey a striking resemblance of our Drill Sergeant on
duty, when you would swear by his gait that this glorious earth was
wholly composed of spring wires, so elastic are his soles. It is a
motion unparalleled either in the natural or artificial world; it is a
movement by itself—like the swoop of the eagle, the waddle of the duck,
the fleetness of the greyhound, or the hop of the frog. And yet, on
intense consideration, I think I have seen something approximating to
the bearing of our Drill Sergeant. What think you of the manner of a pug
dog in a dropsy, exposed for air on a nipping December morning, his
black nose turning almost white with indignation at the coldness of the
flags?—There certainly is a resemblance; there is dignity in both
animals, albeit to the daring eye of a grotesque character. It must,
however, be owned, that on great occasions our Sergeant can alter his
deportment. It is not in the nature of things to be always strained to
the highest: the distended skin of the serpent at times falls into
amiable and social wrinkles; an arrant shrew may sometimes be caught
singing “_Sweet Home!_” the bow-string of a William Tell may be
doubtless as relaxed and tuneless as the instrument of a Haymarket
fiddler;—and shall not our Sergeant unbend? He does break himself up
from the stiffness of parade; for see him when the draughts of mine
hostess hath diluted some portion of military starch, and he no longer
holds his head like a game-cock, taking his morning’s potation; see him
then, and own that even a Sergeant may be amiable. Is he not the very
model of elegant ease? He is, indeed, unbent; for his limbs swing
loosely as hung ramrods. Our Sergeant can now talk; his tongue hath
overleapt the two barriers, “Attention!” and “Stand at ease!” and
rambles wildly from Egypt to Waterloo. And if it should happen that the
pretty barmaid be niece to the landlady, mark how the Sergeant probes
for her feelings with charged bayonets—how he will try to smite her
gentle ear with a discharge of artillery—swear that he hath had twenty
wounds under his coat, although very politically adding that they have
left him not a bit the worse man. Then, if the damsel still continue
untouched, taking orders with a calm air, our Sergeant hints in a
whisper, audible to the dozing watchman at the door, something about a
Spanish widow at Saragossa; adding very loudly, “But no—I was always for
true love!” adorning the beautiful edifice of principle with a flowery
oath. He then begins a sentiment, and, at a loss, dives for the
conclusion to it in a pot of ale. If there happen to be four or five
privates in the room, our Sergeant increases in importance from the
circumstance—just as a cat becomes great from the introduction of a
litter of puppies. Our Sergeant is more than ever the leading gander of
the flock—the king-herring of the shoal—the blue-bottle of the swarm—the
pebble of the sand—the G of the gamut. He has now additional hearers of
the tales of his prowess, and, if he but give the wink, companions who
saw him face the breach and spike the cannon. His rank next becomes the
subject of discussion; and looking very complacently at his arm, he
tells of some dreadful exploit in which he earned his stripes. “And
doubtless, Sergeant, not before you deserved them,” ventures a small,
quiet wight in the corner, who will have his fling, though at the
expense of his liquor; for ere he concludes his remark he gives the
Sergeant his glass—just as a schoolboy, who twitches the trunk of an
elephant, throws to the animal a peace-offering of apples—whilst the
privates inwardly laugh at the joke, and get rebuked for again enjoying
it on parade to-morrow morning. Just as the Sergeant’s opponents are
nearly all slaughtered, a little Italian boy, bearing a tortoise,
adroitly glides into the room to display the testaceous wonder; or he
has with him a bust of Napoleon, at which our Sergeant bristles up,
looking, indeed, seriously fierce at plaster of Paris. Here he utters
some half-audible wish that he had not received a bullet in the last
charge, and then——Now, however, our Sergeant takes an opportunity to
pour forth his learning—he mangles five words of French; the Italian
shakes his head, and holds forth his hand; the Sergeant swears at him
for an impostor, ignorant of his own language. It drawing late, our
Sergeant calls for his reckoning, and, learning the amount, with an
affected air of destitution avows he has no money; he has not a piece of
silver about him, unless it be that at his breast—and here he carelessly
lifts up with one finger a Waterloo medal;—then he draws out a watch,
once the property of a French general slain by our Sergeant, and asks if
that will serve for the amount? At length, however, the money being
shaken from a yellow silk purse, our Sergeant, after a salutary
admonition to the privates, goes off, as he says, to visit a friend in
the Ordnance.
[Illustration:
He is, indeed, unbent.
]
Now this is the utmost stretch of our Sergeant’s amiability; and he
departs with a consciousness of having made himself remarkably
agreeable, at the same time that he has maintained the proper dignity of
the army. To-morrow he is stiff and stately again, performing his old
duty of setting up in due order men for the sport of War, that fearful
skittle-player. And, indeed, how great must be the satisfaction of the
Drill Sergeant when he thinks that, by his kindly solicitude, his
Majesty’s subjects will “die with decency” and “in close order.”
Soothing reflection!
We may liken a Recruiting Sergeant to a sturdy woodman—a Drill Sergeant
to a carpenter. Let us take a dozen vigorous young elms, with the same
number of bluff-cheeked, straddling rustics. How picturesque and
inviting do the green waving elms appear! Whilst we look at them our
love and admiration of the natural so wholly possess us that we cannot
for a moment bring ourselves to imagine the most beautiful offspring of
teeming earth cut up into boot-jacks or broom-handles: in the very idea
there is sacrilege to the sylvan deities. The woodman, however, lays the
axe to the elms (the forest groans at the slaughter); the carpenter
comes up with his basket of tools across his shoulder; and at a
Christmas dinner we may by chance admire the extraordinary polish of our
eating knife, little thinking it owes its lustre to the elm which
shadowed us at midsummer. Now for our rustics. We meet them in green
lanes, striding like young ogres—carelessness in their very
hat-buckles—a scorn of ceremony in the significant tuck-up of their
smock-frock. The Recruiting Sergeant spirits them away from fields to
which they were the chief adornment, and the Drill Sergeant begins his
labour.
And now, reader, behold some martial carpentry and joinery. Our Drill
Sergeant hath but few implements: as eye, voice, hand, leg, rattan.
These few tools serve him for every purpose, and with them he brings
down a human carcass, though at first as unwieldy as a bull, to the
slimness and elegance of the roe. There are the dozen misshapen logs
before him; the foliage of their heads gone with the elm leaves, as also
their bark—their “rough pash,”—the frocks and wide breeches.
Mercy on us! there was a stroke of handiwork! the Sergeant with but one
word has driven a wedge into the very breast of that pale-looking
youngster, whose eyelid shakes as though it would dam up a tear! Perhaps
the poor wretch is now thinking of yellow corn and harvest home. Another
skilful touch, and the Sergeant hath fairly chiselled away some inches
off the shoulder of that flaxen-headed tyro: and see how he is rounding
off that mottled set of knuckles, whilst the owner redly, but dumbly,
sympathises with their sufferings. There is no part left untouched by
our Sergeant; he by turns, saws, planes, pierces, and thumps every limb
and every joint; applies scouring paper to any little knot or
ruggedness, until man, glorious man, the “paragon of animals,” fears no
competition in stateliness of march, or glibness of movement, from
either peacock or Punch.
The Drill Sergeant hath but little complacency in him; he is a thing to
be reverenced, not doted upon; we fear him and his mysteries; even his
good humour startles, for it is at once as blustering and as
insignificant as a report of a blank cartridge. Again, I say, the Drill
Sergeant is to be approached with awe; smirking flies the majesty of his
rattan. He is the despot of joints; and we rub our hands with glee, and
our very toes glow again, when we reflect they are not of his dominions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
The HANDBOOK of SWINDLING
]
CHAPTER I
By the late Captain Barabbas Whitefeather. Late of the body-guard of his
Majesty, King Carlos; Treasurer of the British Wine and Vinegar
Company; Trustee for the protection of the River Thames from
incendiaries; principal inventor of Poyais stock; Ranger of St
George’s Fields; original Patentee of the Parachute Conveyance
Association; Knight of every order of the fleece; Scamp and Cur.
“A man he was to all the country _dear_.”—GOLDSMITH.
Edited by John Jackdaw.
THE editor has disciplined himself to receive with becoming moderation
the tremendous expression of national gratitude consequent on the
publication of this valuable work—the production of the late estimable
Captain Barabbas Whitefeather. It was discovered among many other papers
accidentally left at the lodgings of the deceased, and placed in the
hands of the editor by the executors of the lamented and—if a novel
epithet may be applied to him—talented author.
When “handbooks” devoted to the lighter elegancies, nay, to the
frivolities, of life are every day poured down upon a thankful
generation, it would indeed be to incur the charge of poltroonery to
doubt the brilliant success of the present essay.
The philosophical observer who has witnessed the fervent welcome
accorded by a British public to “The Handbook of Skittles,” “The
Handbook of Cheese-Toasting,” “The Handbook of Eel-Skinning,” “The
Handbook of Nutmeg-Grating,” “The Handbook of Corn-Cutting,” “The
Handbook of Kitten-Drowning,” and other productions of lesser pith and
purpose,—the philosophic observer cannot but glow with the sweetest and
liveliest feelings of anticipated pleasure at the outburst of national
gratitude acknowledging and rejoicing in the publication of
“THE HANDBOOK OF SWINDLING.”
Let us for a moment consider the comprehensiveness of the subject. Other
handbooks have their merits and their uses: far be it from the editor to
detract one iota from their claims upon a thoughtful people; yet it must
be conceded that their different subjects apply rather to the wants of
sections of the public than to the public in its integrity. For
instance, how few rejoice in the masculine exercise of skittles! Toasted
cheese, albeit the favourite diet of many of Cyclopean digestion, is
sedulously shunned by dyspeptic hundreds of thousands. The class of the
eel-skinning public is indeed most limited; nutmeg is never dreamt of by
at least a million of our fellow-subjects; a million more, it is our
cheerful hope, know not the visitation of corns; whilst, could a census
be taken of the number of kittens annually sacrificed by drowning, it
would possibly be discovered that not one British subject out of five
hundred is ever called upon to perform that painful, yet necessary and
most domestic operation. It must then be acknowledged that all handbooks
hitherto published are more or less limited in their application; but
for “The Handbook of Swindling,”—why, it is a national work; a _vade
mecum_ for a whole people!
It was the intention of the editor to dedicate this work to some
illustrious individual worthy of the distinction. But so many
candidates—all equally deserving of the honour—with claims so nicely
balanced, rose before him, that the editor, considering it would be
invidious to many to select one alone, dedicates the book to the nation
at large. Yes, he gives it to his country; but too well repaid if he
shall be the means of calling from the working day road of life one
simple traveller to the pleasant “primrose path” made easier and laid
more open to him by this golden volume.
BREAKNECK STEPS,
OLD BAILEY.
CHAPTER I
THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO CAPTAIN WHITEFEATHER’S RELATIONS
IT was a favourite conviction of my late respected uncle and godfather,
Barabbas Whitefeather—he fell in the very flower of his age, at only
forty-five, a premature victim to the insalubrity of Bermuda, where he
was stationed in a very public capacity by the British Government—it
was, I say, a pet belief of the sagacious Barabbas that every man had
within him what I think heathen philosophers have called a particle of
divine gold; but which my uncle, in the fine simplicity of his nature,
and at the same time humanely accommodating his language to the lowest
understanding of his species, denominated “a bit of the swindler.”
Discriminating reader, Barabbas Whitefeather was a man of homespun wit,
who chewed not his words until they had lost all their original form and
vigour; no, he flung them from him with the air of a man who knows he is
laying down a guinea of the best mint gold, and not timidly and
sneakingly, like a passer of gilt copper.
“Every man has within him a bit of the swindler!”
The sentence fell upon me in the days of my earliest childhood; yes, it
was in that ductile, happy, and susceptible season of life that the
words of my uncle Barabbas—precious seed!—dropped into my infant heart,
where—but let me not boast, let me rather indulge in the luxury of
memory—yes, suffer me, complying reader, to carry you into the presence
of my sainted uncle: bear with me whilst with affectionate reverence I
call up from the abyss of time the interesting shadow of Barabbas
Whitefeather.
It was my birthday—I was six years old. I had been promised that that
day should be distinguished by a circumstance which, as we advance in
life and become involved in the meshes of the world, is apt to be
forgotten, albeit of the first importance at the time—I was to be
breeched. _I was not._ I can only remember that a cloud seemed suddenly
to have fallen upon our house—that my father would come home long after
the lamb had lain down to rest, and would still leave the domestic roof
before the rising of the lark, that his temper, generally rough, became
much rougher; and that, only a few days before my birthday, on
expressing my infantine delights at the trumpets blown before the
newly-arrived judges, he rebuked me with unwonted emphasis, at the same
time wishing the trumpets and the judges, as I then conceived, very
oddly incorporated with one another. I was then within a few days of six
years old—I was a fine, tall, plump child, and on my birthday was to
have been breeched. The neighbourhood called for it. I repeat it, my
birthday came and passed, and found and left me still in coats.
That day, however, was ordained to be the most eventful of my life. It
is that day which, if the world shall continue to remember the deeds of
Captain Barabbas Whitefeather, must be held by posterity in especial
respect. It is to that day that I owe everything; and what I owe, it
would be the worst of affectation in the world to deny or to forget. To
proceed with my history.
“Brab,”—it was thus my father was wont to tamper with the euphony of
Barabbas,—“Brab, nunkey wants to see you; so you must toddle with me.”
Some weeks had elapsed since I had seen uncle Barabbas; and at his name
visions of cakes and apples, peg-tops and whipping-tops, rose before me.
Like Agesilaus, Socrates, Yorick, and other men whom I do not hesitate
to call of his kidney, my uncle would chequer and ameliorate the labour
of public life by sporting with little children. “He hath borne me on
his back a thousand times.” I was of course delighted at the prospect of
visiting my uncle; but was at the same time made to wonder at the
preparation of my father, who carefully bound up one of his eyes, glued
large whiskers on his cheeks, and otherwise so disguised himself that,
although I saw him do it, I could scarcely believe it was he. However, I
thought it was all to have some game with Uncle Barabbas—and in my
childishness crowed with laughter at anticipation of the sport.
I walked with my father, and in about half-an-hour came to a very large
house, a place I had never seen before: for my dear mother, always
fuming about fevers and measles, kept me close at home. My father,
suddenly walking very lame, knocked at the door, and through a cold that
had come on him all in a minute, asked hoarsely enough for my uncle. The
man let us in, and then another man went before us; and then I knew I
was in a place where there were heaps of gold and diamonds, for the man
unlocked and locked again at least a dozen doors. I give my childish
impressions, which I entreat the reader not to smile at, but to remember
the simplicity and ingenuousness of my age. Well, after a time, we were
led into an open court, where some gentlemen were throwing up halfpence,
and two on a bench were pushing straws; and there was one dancing, and
one or two singing, and all as happy as birds.
I looked round the place and saw uncle Barabbas smoking in a corner. I
was about to call him when my father gave my arm such a pull I thought
it was broken; and so I resolved to say nothing, but to wait and see the
fun that father would play off upon uncle. Sure enough Barabbas never
knew him; and though my uncle patted me upon the head, he had, I
thought, forgotten me, for he gave me nothing. My father and my uncle
talked together for a long time; when—I see my uncle now—Barabbas
suddenly brought himself up, and raising his head, and extending his
right arm, the palm open, he said in a solemn voice:—
“Depend upon it, every man has within him a bit of the swindler.”
My father shook his head; whereupon my uncle, for he was very scholarly,
and could talk for an hour without stopping, proceeded as follows:—I am
perfectly certain as to the words, having subsequently found the whole
written speech among other of my uncle’s papers; Barabbas, like some
other wits and orators, carefully putting in pen and ink any brilliant
thought that struck him—any argument that was a hobby with him, that he
might at proper season extemporaneously bring it forth to the delight
and astonishment of his hearers. My father shook his head at the dogma
of my uncle, who, without stop, continued:—
“Are you so ignorant as to believe in the deficiency of mankind in
general—to imagine that nature is so partial a mother as to dower
with her best gifts only a few of her children, leaving the
multitude defenceless, unarmed? My dear sir,”—here my uncle lowered
his voice,—“amend your ignorance—be just to nature. Do you see
tigers whelped without claws—elephants calved that never have
tusks—rattlesnakes hatched with no stings? Is nature so niggard—so
partial—so unjust? No—philosophers and conquerors have made their
marks, and signed their names to the fact—to swindle is to exhibit
the peculiar attribute of the human animal; it is at once the
triumph and distinguishing faculty of the race. But you will say, do
all men swindle? and I ask, do all snakes sting—all elephants gore?
There is, however, an unanswerable argument which proves that men,
when gregarious, are inevitably swindlers; at least, if they are
not, let not the failing be placed to their account; they would be,
if they might. Let me put a case. You recollect Gloss, the retired
merchant? What an excellent man was Gloss! A pattern man to make a
whole generation by! Nobody could surpass him in what is called
honesty, rectitude, moral propriety, and other gibberish. Well,
Gloss joins a ‘Board’; he becomes one of a community; and,
immediately, the latent feeling asserts itself: he is a backbone man
with the rest of his brotherhood; and though as simple Gloss, and
not a member of the ‘board,’ he is the same as ever, yet when acting
with his fellows, when one of the body corporate, when he merges the
man Gloss in the board member, the inherent faculty becomes active,
and he gratifies the instinct, or the refined reason, or whatever
men agree to call it—and complacently swindles with the rest. He
cannot do otherwise: human nature is tested by the occasion; and if,
under the circumstances, he refuse to swindle, he ceases to be a
man. Swindling, my dear sir”—and here my uncle spoke in a tremulous
voice, and my father seemed touched by the emotion—“Swindling, my
dear sir, has indeed a far more comprehensive meaning than that
superficially awarded to it by, possibly, very respectable people.
Good soldiers may fight, pillage, and violate under a banner, and
yet, in truth, shall not be able to read and interpret the legend
emblazoned on it.”
I could perceive that my father did not perfectly understand this. He,
therefore, nodded assentingly, and my uncle, with new animation,
proceeded:—
“When I reflect on the extensive and subtle operation of the
faculty—when I perceive that, in this our best possible social state, it
is, so to speak, the cement that keeps society together; the bond of
union; the very salt of human government—it does, I confess it, irk me
to find men ungraciously deny its existence, putting off its triumphs
upon other motives, and depriving swindling of the glory of its deeds.
Strange perversion of human intellect—laughable contradiction of moral
purposes! Thus, the politician flutters at the very breath of swindler;
thus, the stockbroker struts and swells, and lays his hand upon his
waistcoat with a blank look of wondering innocence at the slightest
allusion to the faculty that makes a man of him—to which he owes his
carriage and country house, his conservatories and his pineries; and
above all, the flattering hope of calling Lord Giggleton son-in-law; his
lordship being over head, and, what is more, over ears in love with
Arabella’s guineas. And yet, such is the base, the black ingratitude of
human nature, that this man, this most adroit and lucky stockbroker,
starts even at the name of swindler! He indignantly denies the slightest
obligation to the higher faculty—the _mens divinior_ of the cabinet, the
mart, and the counting-house. Look at Sir Godfrey Measles, the
illustrious pork contractor, in whom our brave and magnanimous sailors
confide for dinners. Did he not in the most handsome way forfeit a fine
to his king and country for having failed to supply swine’s flesh at so
much per stone? And then, having paid his fine like a patriot and a
man,—did he not, having before bought up all the pork to be had—did he
not, with the gushing feelings of a philanthropist, offer it at three
times the contract price? Now what was this? Men who veil their meaning
in allegory may say that Sir Godfrey Measles ‘drove his pigs to a fine
market.’ For myself, I elevate the homely phrase of pig-driver into the
more ennobling name of swindler. Others may say that Sir Godfrey only
traded—I stick to my belief; I say he swindled. More: I reverence him
for the act; my only deep regret is, that he should have failed in an
ingenuous gratitude, and denied the action of the higher principle. I
have long looked upon the world, and, with sorrow, I say it, in nothing
do the generations of successful men show so much cold and callous
ingratitude as in their treatment of their guardian genius, that
prettiest of Pucks, that best of Robin Goodfellows, that deftest of
household fairies, hight Swindling!”
My father cast his one eye towards his eloquent brother with a look of
speaking admiration; and, although there was a pause, did not presume to
make any rejoinder. My uncle proceeded:—
“But why number examples? Why attempt to prove that which every man, if
he would but consult the recesses of his own bosom, must truly know? Ask
all the professions; demand of the lawyer, with yellow, studious cheek,
wherefore he should coin gold out of little strips of paper, written
over by youthful scribes at two or three shillings per diem. Request him
to give you the philosophy of costs—the exquisite meaning of appearance
and declaration, and reply and rejoinder, and all the thousand terms
invented by the most cunning class of labourers, the overlookers at the
building of Babel. Ask the sleek practitioner to what he owes his
fortune. To common-sense—to justice—to the fair and rational barter of
labour for shillings? If he be a hypocrite—if he be resolved to clap in
with the world, and carry on a profitable duplicity, he will swell like
a bull-frog at the query, and, forgetful of his knuckles, will strike
his heart, answering with the big-mouthed ‘Yes!’ But if at the end of a
long practice there should by miracle remain in that attorney’s bosom a
throb of truth, he will blandly, yet significantly smile at the
words—the counters men play with—common-sense and justice, and
magnanimously and unblushingly declare his debt to—swindling!
“Is it otherwise with the physician, who sells his guesses for truth,
and doubts and doubts a patient into the grave, whilst his medicinal
palm is open for the guinea? When the apothecary vends cinnamon and
peppermint water for _elixir vitæ_, doth he practise a noble art? Yea;
for, safely and successfully, he—swindles.
“When the tradesman—his housemaid at the time perhaps in Bridewell for
petty larceny committed on the greasepot—when he, smiling across the
counter at his victim, puts off knowingly the poorest commodity at the
highest price, how stands he in relation to his captive handmaid? Why,
Rebecca has robbed, but the tradesman has only driven his trade: the
slut has for ever and for ever lost her character, with it seven pounds
_per annum_, and, it may be, tea and sugar included—but for Mr Jackson,
her master, he has turned the profit penny; he has—but all in the way of
business—swindled.”
“It is very true,” exclaimed my father with an oath, “it is very true.
When what is swindling isn’t swindling according to law, it’s a fortune
to a man; but when it’s agin law, and found out——”
“The result I know,” cried my uncle, a slight tint of red suffusing his
manly cheek. “All mankind may be divided into two classes: the swindlers
according to custom and to law, and the swindlers according to the bent
of their natural genius.”
“True agin,” cried my father, slapping his thigh.
“Still, the propensity,” said my uncle, “is universal: men only want
temptation. It is extraordinary how, like a chain, the feeling runs from
breast to breast. Jack Smasher was one of the prettiest hands at
coining; and more, he was blessed with a wife born, I should say, with a
genius for passing bad money. She took a crown—one of her husband’s
base-begotten offspring—purchased with it three pennyworth of rhubarb
from a Quaker chemist, who—undone man!—handed over four-and-ninepence
change. Aminadab Straightback was, even among his brethren, the
brightest child of truth. In due season Aminadab detected the guileful
crown, and in his own clear breast resolved to destroy it. However, it
remained by the strangest accident in his till, and by an accident still
more extraordinary, was given in part of change for a guinea to a
gentleman a little the worse for liquor, who on his way home to bed took
the precaution of dropping into Straightback’s for a box of—his own
patent—anti-bacchic pills. In the morning the vinous gentleman
discovered the pocket-piece, but as he had changed more than one guinea,
could not with certainty detect the giver of the counterfeit. No matter.
It remained loose with other money in his pocket, and one day, to his
own surprise, he found he had passed it. He had taken a journey, and it
was very dark when, in the handsomest manner, he fee’d the coachman. The
poor man who drove the Tally-ho did not realise more than £400 per
annum, and could not afford to lose five shillings; hence Smasher’s
crown became at a fitting opportunity the property of a sand-blind old
gentlewoman, who, her loss discovered, lifted up her hands at the
iniquity of the world, and put aside the brassy wickedness. The good old
soul never missed a charity sermon. The Reverend Mr Sulphurtongue made a
sweet discourse in favour of the conversion of the Jews, and the
churchwardens condescended to hold each a plate. To the great disgust of
the discoverers, a bad crown was detected amongst the subscribed
half-crowns and shillings. The beadle was directed to destroy it. He
intended to do so, but, in pure forgetfulness, passed it one day for
purl; the landlady of the ‘George’ having, as she said ‘taken it, was
resolved not to lose it,’ and by some accident it was given to a pedlar,
who, after a walk of twenty miles, entered an ale-house, took his supper
of bread and cheese, went to bed, rose, and proffered for his account
Jack Smasher’s pocket-piece. The pedlar was immediately given into the
hands of a constable, taken before a magistrate, and ordered to be
imprisoned and whipped as a passer of counterfeit coin.”
“See what luck is!” cried my father; “it’s the Quaker _what_ should have
lost the dollar.”
“He couldn’t do it; for though he was a most respectable person, and
lived and died with that character, he was but a man. He had been
swindled—the link of the chain was touched, and it vibrated—you
perceive, it vibrated?”
Again my father nodded.
“Yes,” exclaimed Barabbas Whitefeather, “I repeat it—the sympathy is
universal. All men can, do, or might, swindle. Though with many the
propensity be latent, it surely exists, and needs but the happy moment
to be awakened into life. The proof is easy: take ten, twenty, thirty
men—creatures of light; admirable, estimable, conscientious persons;
by-words of excellence, proverbs of truth in their individual dealings;
and yet, make of them a ‘board’—a ‘committee’—a ‘council’—a ‘company’—no
matter what may be the collective name by which they may be known—and
immediately every member will acknowledge the quickening of a feeling—a
sudden growth of an indomitable lust to—swindle. What is this but a
proof of the faculty—as I have said—dormant, but requiring only the
necessary agent to awaken it? Oh! let no man perk himself up in the
pride of his innocence—strut and pout, big with the prejudice of
respectability! He knows not the mystery of his own nature; for though
to his own eyes he shall be a saint, he will, when time and purpose
shall see fit to call his better feelings into life, he will, he must,
he cannot do otherwise than—swindle.”
My father, though a strong man, was much affected.
“As for you, my dear child,” said my uncle, taking me by the hand,
kissing me, and looking benevolently upon me, “as for you, remember the
words of Barabbas Whitefeather. At present you know not their worth, but
a time will come when better than pearls or gold will be this my parting
council to you. Throughout your life do nought but swindle. If you can,
swindle on the right side of the statute, but at all events, my dear
child,”—even now I feel the pressure of that wise man’s lip, the warm
tear trickling down my cheeks,—“at all events, Barabbas, swindle!”
I am now in my nine-and-thirtieth year; and from my first day of
discretion until this, the season of ripest manhood, I can, laying my
hand upon my heart, most conscientiously declare that never for a moment
have I forgotten the last injunction of the best of uncles. But why
should I speak on this head? The world will do me justice.
My uncle shook my parent by the hand. “Good-bye,” he said; “we may never
meet again, for I am now two-and-forty, and you know”—this I could _not_
understand—“you know _it’s fourteen penn’orth_.”
My father, choking with emotion, cried, “D—n ’em!” We quitted my uncle;
and I trust I shall not be accused of adopting the language of
hyperbole, when I state that we quitted him with feelings far more easy
of conception than description.
Only a twelvemonth after this, I lost my excellent father. It may prove
to the giddy and the vain the uncertainty of life, when I state that my
worthy parent was in robust health one minute and dead the next. It may
also prove that he had held some place in the world, when I assure the
reader that crowds of people flocked to our house to pay honour to his
cold remains; which, for the benefit of his widow and son, were
exhibited at sixpence a head to grown persons, and half-price for
children. I should be unjust to my parent’s memory were I to withhold
another circumstance illustrative of the consequence of my father to the
world at large: the night-cap in which he died was purchased by a
gentleman, a lover of the fine arts, after a severe contest with other
bidders, for two guineas.
And so much for my uncle and my father, both worthy of the name of
Whitefeather.