assembled on parade in Lombard Street, where, at that time, was seated the
General Post-Office. In what exact strength we mustered I do not remember;
but, from the length of each separate _attelage_, we filled the street,
though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On _any_
night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the
appointments about the carriages and the harness, and the magnificence of
the horses, were what might first have fixed the attention. Every
carriage, on every morning in the year, was taken down to an inspector
for examination--wheels, axles, linch-pins, pole, glasses, &c., were
all critically probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been
cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigor as if they
belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered
itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and behold!
to the ordinary display, what a heart-shaking addition!--horses, men,
carriages--all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons.
The guards, who are his majesty's servants, and the coachmen, who are
within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of course;
and as it is summer (for all the _land_ victories were won in summer,) they
wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without any
covering of upper coats. Such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of
the laurels in their hats, dilated their hearts, by giving to them openly
an _official_ connection with the great news, in which already they have
the general interest of patriotism. That great national sentiment surmounts
and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen
to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress.
The usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has on this
night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man
by the transcendent bond of his English blood. The spectators, who are
numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent
feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the
post-office servants the great ancestral names of cities known to history
through a thousand years,--Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester,
Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth,
Glasgow--expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its
towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive
radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of
lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is
the signal for drawing off, which process is the finest part of the entire
spectacle. Then come the horses into play,--horses! can these be horses
that (unless powerfully reined in) would bound off with the action and
gestures of leopards? What stir!--what sea-like ferment!--what a thundering
of wheels, what a trampling of horses!--what farewell cheers--what
redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name of the
particular mail--"Liverpool for ever!"--with the name of the particular
victory--"Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!" The half-slumbering
consciousness that, all night long and all the next day--perhaps for even
a longer period--many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of
gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning
joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by
multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive
diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment
is destined to travel, almost without intermission, westwards for three
hundred[10] miles--northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our
Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundred fold by a sort of
visionary sympathy with the approaching sympathies, yet unborn, which we
are going to evoke.
Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the broad
uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we begin to enter upon our
natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer
evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we are
seen from every story of every house. Heads of every age crowd to
the windows--young and old understand the language of our victorious
symbols--and rolling volleys of sympathizing cheers run along behind and
before our course. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets
his lameness--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade, but stands
erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The victory has healed
him, and says--Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and
cellars, look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our
martial laurels--sometimes kiss their hands, sometimes hang out, as signals
of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that lies
ready to their hands. On the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near
within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is
approaching us. The weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and
one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within
the carriage. It contains three ladies, one likely to be "mama," and two
of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely
animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every
syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and
raising of the hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage--by the
sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them--and by the
heightened color on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them
saying--"See, see! Look at their laurels. Oh, mama! there has been a great
battle in Spain; and it has been a great victory." In a moment we are on
the point of passing them. We passengers--I on the box, and the two on the
roof behind me--raise our hats, the coachman makes his professional salute
with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his
dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to
us, in return, with a winning graciousness of gesture: all smile on each
side in a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a
grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies
say that we are nothing to _them_? Oh, no; they will not say _that_. They
cannot deny--they do not deny--that for this night they are our sisters:
gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to
come--we on the outside have the honor to be their brothers. Those poor
women again, who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance of
Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to be returning from labor--do
you mean to say that they are washerwomen and char-women? Oh, my poor
friend, you are quite mistaken; they are nothing of the kind. I assure you
they stand in a higher rank; for this one night they feel themselves by
birthright to be daughters of England, and answer to no humbler title.
Every joy, however, even rapturous joy--such is the sad law of earth--may
carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet,
we see approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeating the
circumstances of the former case. Here, also, the glasses are all
down--here, also, is an elderly lady seated; but the two amiable daughters
are missing; for the single young person, sitting by the lady's side, seems
to be an attendant--so I judge from her dress, and her air of respectful
reserve. The lady is in mourning; and her countenance expresses sorrow.
At first she does not look up; so that I believe she is not aware of our
approach, until she hears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs. Then
she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our triumphal equipage.
Our decorations explain the case to her at once; but she beholds them with
apparent anxiety, or even with terror. Some time before this, I, finding it
difficult to hit a flying mark, when embarrassed by the coachman's person
and reins intervening, had given to the guard a _Courier_ evening paper,
containing the gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. Accordingly
he tossed it in so folded that the huge capitals expressing some such
legend as--GLORIOUS VICTORY, might catch the eye at once. To see the paper,
however, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained
everything; and, if the guard were right in thinking the lady to have
received it with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she had
suffered some deep personal affliction in connection with this Spanish war.
Here now was the case of one, who, having formerly suffered, might,
erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself with anticipations of another
similar suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours later, occurred
the reverse case. A poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in a
day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the battle,
blindly allowed herself to express an exultation so unmeasured in the
news, and its details, as gave to her the appearance which amongst Celtic
Highlanders is called _fey_. This was at some little town, I forget what,
where we happened to change horses near midnight. Some fair or wake had
kept the people up out of their beds. We saw many lights moving about as
we drew near; and perhaps the most impressive scene on our route was our
reception at this place. The flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance
of blue lights (technically Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses;
the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon
flowers and glittering laurels, whilst all around the massy darkness seemed
to invest us with walls of impenetrable blackness, together with the
prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical
and affecting. As we staid for three or four minutes, I alighted. And
immediately from a dismantled stall in the street, where perhaps she had
been presiding at some part of the evening, advanced eagerly a middle-aged
woman. The sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon
myself. The victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on _this_
occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera. I told her the main outline of
the battle. But her agitation, though not the agitation of fear, but of
exultation rather, and enthusiasm, had been so conspicuous when listening,
and when first applying for information, that I could not but ask her if
she had not some relation in the Peninsular army. Oh! yes: her only son was
there. In what regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart
sank within me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, which an
Englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their memory,
had made the most memorable and effective charge recorded in military
annals. They leaped their horses--_over_ a trench where they could, _into_
it, and with the result of death or mutilation when they could _not_. What
proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who _did_, closed up
and went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervor--(I use the
word _divinity_ by design: the inspiration of God must have prompted this
movement to those whom even then he was calling to his presence)--that two
results followed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe,
originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralyzed a French column, six
thousand strong, then ascending the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole
French army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first to have
been all but annihilated; but eventually, I believe, not so many as one in
four survived. And this, then, was the regiment--a regiment already for
some hours known to myself and all London, as stretched, by a large
majority, upon one bloody aceldama--in which the young trooper served whose
mother was now talking with myself in a spirit of such hopeful enthusiasm.
Did I tell her the truth? Had I the heart to break up her dreams? No. I
said to myself, to-morrow, or the next day, she will hear the worst. For
this night, wherefore should she not sleep in peace? After to-morrow,
the chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This brief
respite, let her owe this to _my_ gift and _my_ forbearance. But, if I told
her not of the bloody price that had been paid, there was no reason for
suppressing the contributions from her son's regiment to the service and
glory of the day. For the very few words that I had time for speaking, I
governed myself accordingly. I showed her not the funeral banners under
which the noble regiment was sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing
laurels from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled
together. But I told her how these dear children of England, privates and
officers, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as hunters to
the morning's chase. I told her how they rode their horses into the mists
of death, (saying to myself, but not saying to _her_,) and laid down their
young lives for thee, O mother England! as willingly--poured out their
noble blood as cheerfully--as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants,
they had rested their wearied heads upon their mother's knees, or had sunk
to sleep in her arms. It is singular that she seemed to have no fears, even
after this knowledge that the 23d Dragoons had been conspicuously engaged,
for her son's safety: but so much was she enraptured by the knowledge that
_his_ regiment, and therefore _he_, had rendered eminent service in the
trying conflict--a service which had actually made them the foremost topic
of conversation in London--that in the mere simplicity of her fervent
nature, she threw her arms round my neck, and, poor woman, kissed me.
NOTES.
[NOTE 1.
Lady Madeline Gordon.]
[NOTE 2.
"_Vast distances_."--One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers, where
two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same
minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a
particular bridge which exactly bisected the total distance.]
[NOTE 3.
"_Resident_."--The number on the books was far greater, many of whom kept
up an intermitting communication with Oxford. But I speak of those only who
were steadily pursuing their academic studies, and of those who resided
constantly as _fellows_.]
[NOTE 4.
"_Snobs_," and its antithesis, "_nobs_," arose among the internal fractions
of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have
existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely
and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the
public attention.]
[NOTE 5.
"_False echoes_"--yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, as
breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all.--They stand
in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering
_Vengeur_, as the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, "_La Garde meurt,
mais ne se rend pas_," as the repartees of Talleyrand.]
[NOTE 6.
"_Privileged few_." The general impression was, that this splendid costume
belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their professional dress. But
that was an error. To the guard it _did_ belong, as a matter of course, and
was essential as an official warrant, and a means of instant identification
for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. But the
coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him
immediately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet
coat only as an honorary distinction after long or special service.]
[NOTE 7.
"_Households_."--Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the
red deer, but by separate families, parents, and children; which feature
of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, added to their
comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, conciliate to them
an interest of a peculiarly tender character, if less dignified by the
grandeurs of savage and forest life.]
[NOTE 8.
"_However visionary_."--But _are_ they always visionary? the unicorn, the
kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn,
for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather _too_ true; for, simply
as a _monokeras_, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere,
rather too often for the peace of what in Scotland would be called the
_intending_ traveller. That which really _is_ a lie in the account of the
unicorn--viz., his legendary rivalship with the lion--which lie may God
preserve, in preserving the mighty imperial shield that embalms it--cannot
be more destructive to the zoological pretensions of the unicorn, than
are to the same pretensions in the lion our many popular crazes about his
goodness and magnanimity, or the old fancy (adopted by Spenser, and noticed
by so many among our elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden innocence.
The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes; nor
has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably
exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel
lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful,
is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it
had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,) nobody would have
questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c.
The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human
habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and
brush her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on
our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as many that are
assessed to the poor-rates.]
[NOTE 9.
"_Audacity_!"--Such the French accounted it; and it has struck me that
Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period of her
present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to
that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of
us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it
had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said
more than once--"Here are the English--we have them: they are caught _en
flagrant delit_" Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk
deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in the north of Portugal,
during the flight from an English army, and subsequently at Albuera, in the
bloodiest of recorded battles.]
[NOTE 10.
"_Three hundred_." Of necessity this scale of measurement, to an American,
if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I
remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury
of a little lying, by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of
the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and
concluding in something like these terms:--"And, sir, arriving at London,
this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs,
having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of one
hundred and seventy miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to
contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while
to answer a pure falsehood gravely, else one might say that no Englishman
out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of
a continent; nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the
peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the
extent of soil which it drains: yet, if he _had_ been so absurd, the
American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the
Thames even as to volume of water--viz. the Tiber--has contrived to make
itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent
not reached, nor likely to be reached very soon, by any river, however
corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the
density of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which
it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the
largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not
by a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to
be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our
English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in
these terms:--"These rascals, sir, in France and England, cannot march half
a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and
lodging; whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country,
that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage a dog shall
not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for
breakfast."]
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH.
[THE reader is to understand this present paper, in its two sections of
_The Vision_, &c., and _The Dream-Fugue_, as connected with a previous
paper on _The English Mail-Coach_. The ultimate object was the Dream-Fugue,
as an attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with
a colossal form of impassioned horror. The Vision of Sudden Death contains
the mail-coach incident, which did really occur, and did really suggest
the variations of the Dream, here taken up by the Fugue, as well as other
variations not now recorded. Confluent with these impressions, from the
terrific experience on the Manchester and Glasgow mail, were other and more
general impressions, derived from long familiarity with the English mail,
as developed in the former paper; impressions, for instance, of animal
beauty and power, of rapid motion, at that time unprecedented, of
connection with the government and public business of a great nation, but,
above all, of connection with the national victories at an unexampled
crisis,--the mail being the privileged organ for publishing and dispersing
all news of that kind. From this function of the mail, arises naturally the
introduction of Waterloo into the fourth variation of the Fogue; for the
mail itself having been carried into the dreams by the incident in the
Vision, naturally all the accessory circumstances of pomp and grandeur
investing this national carriage followed in the train of the principal
image.]