REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD
GUIDE-BOOKS
Among the odd volumes in my father’s library, was a collection of old
European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his travels, a
great many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many courses of
studying them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages, some
of which I thought resembled the mustached faces of foreigners. Among
others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered pamphlet, the rouge
here and there effaced upon its now thin and attenuated cheeks,
entitled, _“Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de L’Ancien et du
Nouveau Paris: Miroir Fidèle”_ also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in
marbleized binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled,
_“Itinéraire Instructif de Rome, ou Description Générale des Monumens
Antiques et Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables de Peinteur,
de Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Célébre Ville;”_ on the
russet title-page is a vignette representing a barren rock, partly
shaded by a scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under the lee
of the rock and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the
houseless foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the
illustrious twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the
ground, with locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing
occupation; a large cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough, and the
wolf looks a good deal like one of the no-horn breed of barn-yard cows;
the work is published _“Avec privilege du Souverain Pontife.”_ There
was also a velvet-bound old volume, in brass clasps, entitled, _“The
Conductor through Holland”_ with a plate of the Stadt House; also a
venerable _“Picture of London”_ abounding in representations of St.
Paul’s, the Monument, Temple-Bar, Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards,
the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book,
in a dusty-looking yellow cover, reminding one of the paneled doors of
a mail-coach, and bearing an elaborate title-page, full of printer’s
flourishes, in emulation of the cracks of a four-in-hand whip,
entitled, in part, _“The Great Roads, both direct and cross, throughout
England and Wales, from an actual Admeasurement by order of His
Majesty’s Postmaster-General: This work describes the Cities, Market
and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those at which the Assizes are
held, and gives the time of the Mails’ arrival and departure from each:
Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which the stages go, and the
Inns in the country which supply post-horses and carriages: Describes
the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Seats situated near the Road, with Maps of
the Environs of London, Bath, Brighton, and Margate.”_ It is dedicated
_“To the Right Honorable the Earls of Chesterfield and Leicester, by
their Lordships’ Most Obliged, Obedient, and Obsequious Servant, John
Gary,_ 1798.” Also a green pamphlet, with a motto from Virgil, and an
intricate coat of arms on the cover, looking like a diagram of the
Labyrinth of Crete, entitled, “A _Description of York, its Antiquities
and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral; compiled with great
pains from the most authentic records.”_ Also a small
scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a
frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and turrets of
King’s College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, _“The Cambridge Guide:
its Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the
Town and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral.”_ Also a
pamphlet, with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly
higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an
accurate representation of the _“North or Grand Front of Blenheim,”_
and entitled, “A _Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the
Duke of Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings,
Tapestry, and Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks,
and a General Description of the famous China Gallery,_ &.; _with an
Essay on Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the
Palace, and a New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park.”_ And lastly, and
to the purpose, there was a volume called “THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL.”
It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
could.
But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from
the life.
As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear
to my boyhood,—the very pages which, years and years ago, my father
turned over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft,
pleasing sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and
forgotten!
Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer
myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer’s shambles.
I will, my beloved,—old family relic that you are;—till you drop leaf
from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
In size, it is what the booksellers call an _18mo;_ it is bound in
green morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and
tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of
red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that
he who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
But let us open the volume.
What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and
falling air-castles? Ah, no!—these are all part and parcel of the
precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
sonnets, I might write under this horse, _“Drawn at the age of three
years,”_ and under this autograph, _“Executed at the age of eight.”_
Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and
the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
Dibdin’s? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry
captain of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin’s ditty are
mine; this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But
not so fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.
Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father’s
hand-writing, the following:—
WALTER REDBURN.
Riddough’s Royal Hotel,
Liverpool, March 20th, 1808.
Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous
memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore
indubitably my father’s, which he must have made at various times
during his stay in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued,
old, midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous
effacements, it is much like cross-reading to make them out; yet, I
must here copy a few at random:—
£ s. d
_Guide-Book_ 3 6
_Dinner at the Star and Garter_ 10
_Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)_ 2 6 3
_Gratuities_ 4
_Hack_ 4 6
_Thompson’s Seasons_ 5
_Library_ 1
_Boat on the river_ 6
_Port wine and cigar_ 4
And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
_Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday._
_Call upon Mr. Morille same day._
_Leave card at Colonel Digby’s on Tuesday._
_Theatre Friday night—Richard III. and new farce._
_Present letter at Miss L——’s on Tuesday._
_Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday._
_Get my draft on London cashed._
_Write home by the Princess._
_Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt’s._
Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the
British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is _“A
Plan of the Town of Liverpool.”_ But there seems little plan in the
confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks
irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along,
a peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.
On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish
white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to
populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space
designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in
Liverpool.
Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in
all directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked
_“Riddough’s Hotel,”_ the house my father stopped at.
These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow
the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and
penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.
By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a
foreign land; but attended St. John’s Church near the Hay-market, and
other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in
Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian,
poet, and banker.
Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and
come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her
head with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an
oval sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this
motto elastically stretched for a border—_“Deus nobis haec otia
fecit.”_
The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary
representation of a now extinct fowl, called the _“Liver,”_ said to
have inhabited a _“pool,”_ which antiquarians assert once covered a
good part of the ground where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird,
and this pool, Liverpool derives its name.
At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
roll over a huge bale of goods.
Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following
title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a
facsimile:—
_The Picture
of Liverpool:
or, Stranger’s Guide
and Gentleman’s Pocket Companion
_ FOR THE TOWN.
Embellished
With Engravings
By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.
Liverpool:
Printed in Swift’s Court,
And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
previous editions of the work; and quotes _“testimonies of respect
which had lately appeared in various quarters_ —_the British Critic,
Review, and the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and
Wales”—_and concludes by expressing the hope, that this new, revised,
and illustrated edition might _“render it less unworthy of the public
notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is intended to
illustrate.”_
A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place
of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope _Place, 1st
Sept._ 1803.
But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour
of the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
occupation, and name.
But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author
must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy
him a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming
that his noblest epitaph.
After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:—
_“Where Mersey’s stream, long winding o’er the plain,
Pours his full tribute to the circling main,
A band of fishers chose their humble seat;
Contented labor blessed the fair retreat,
Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude,
They braved the billows for precarious food:
Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore,
Their nets and little boats their only store.”_
Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations,
and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer’s
Shipwreck.
And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
city patriotism; for in his _“Survey of__ the Town”_ are nine thickly
printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public
of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by
saying, that _“the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is
at present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will
no doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as
this noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the
sweetest delicacy of feeling.”_
Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the
author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But
that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a
reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.
This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately
style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of
Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and
bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when
_“his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled,”_ the poet breaks forth
like all Parnassus with:—
_“Now o’er the wondering world her name resounds,
From northern climes to India’s distant bounds—
Where’er his shores the broad Atlantic waves;
Where’er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves;
Where’er the honored flood extends his tide,
That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride.
Greenland for her its bulky whale resigns,
And temperate Gallia rears her generous vines:
’Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow,
And the ripe fruitage bends the laboring bough;
In every clime her prosperous fleets are known,
She makes the wealth of every clime her own.”_
It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:—
_“And here_ R*s*o*, _with genius all his own,
New tracks explores, and all before unknown?”_
Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted
bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the warmest appreciation of
the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation which
gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce. He is
called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his
histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with
classical admiration.
The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by
informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of
Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on
that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and
antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the _Doomsday-Book_
of William the Conqueror.
Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his
numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the
uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned
to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would
have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man
of Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that
the soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.
But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of
antiquarian research, is the pious author’s moralizing reflections upon
an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the
inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a
subsidy, wherein they style themselves _“her majesty’s poor decayed
town of Liverpool.”_
As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book,
bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how
this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous
antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing
old. And when I turn to the second chapter, _“On the increase of the
town, and number of inhabitants,”_ and then skim over page after page
throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense
grandeur of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in
population, opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must
look back upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of
immeasurable superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness
at the vanity of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is
the corner-stone of tomorrow; and as St. Peter’s church was built in
great part of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however
imposing, we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the
grander domes of posterity.
And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting
of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as
the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers,
flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our
Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From
far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are
now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad
boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into
the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and
Fourteenth-street; and going still farther south, may exhume the
present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and
mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.
As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified style
of this _“Picture of Liverpool,”_ so different from the brief, pert,
and unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the present day, I
shall now insert the chapter of antiquarian researches; especially as
it is entertaining in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps
rare information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous
town, to which I made _my first voyage._ And I think that with regard
to a matter, concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far
better to quote my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial
baron-of-beef of information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so,
pass it off as original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book
its due.
But how can the printer’s art so dim and mellow down the pages into a
soft sunset yellow; and to the reader’s eye, shed over the type all the
pleasant associations which the original carries to me!
No! by my father’s sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond
family reminiscences, I will not! I will _not_ quote thee, old Morocco,
before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities
would only be skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for
me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing
from a guide-book-the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!