[Sidenote: _G.K. Chesterton_]
For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic
caution to be added. Even for those who cannot do their work in bed (as,
for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that
the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution I
mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it
without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course,
of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it
without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does
it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific
explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.--"Tremendous Trifles."
[Sidenote: _G.K. Chesterton_]
His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise
enough to be made a fool of. He will make himself happy in the traps
that have been laid for him; he will roll in their nets and sleep. All
doors will fly open to him who has a mildness more defiant than mere
courage. The whole is unerringly expressed in one fortunate phrase--he
will be always "taken in." To be taken in everywhere is to see the
inside of everything. It is the hospitality of circumstance. With
torches and trumpets, like a guest, the greenhorn is taken in by Life.
And the sceptic is cast out by it.--"Charles Dickens."
[Sidenote: _G.K. Chesterton_]
I have often been haunted with a fancy that the creeds of men might be
paralleled and represented in their beverages. Wine might stand for
genuine Catholicism, and ale for genuine Protestantism; for these at
least are real religions, with comfort and strength in them. Clean cold
Agnosticism would be clean cold water--an excellent thing if you can get
it. Most modern ethical and idealistic movements might be well
represented by soda-water--which is a fuss about nothing. Mr. Bernard
Shaw's philosophy is exactly like black coffee--it awakens, but it does
not really inspire. Modern hygienic materialism is very like cocoa; it
would be impossible to express one's contempt for it in stronger terms
than that.--"William Blake."
* * * * *
To the quietest human being, seated in the quietest house, there will
sometimes come a sudden and unmeaning hunger for the possibilities or
impossibilities of things; he will abruptly wonder whether the teapot
may not suddenly begin to pour out honey or sea-water, the clock to
point to all hours of the day at once, the candle to burn green or
crimson, the door to open upon a lake or a potato-field instead of a
London street. Upon any one who feels this nameless anarchism there
rests for the time being the spirit of pantomime. Of the clown who cuts
the policeman in two it may be said (with no darker meaning) that he
realises one of our visions.--"The Defendant."
"THE VULGAR TONGUE"
[Sidenote: _Dean Hole_]
First, of abuses. I protest against those sensational adjectives, which
are so commonly misapplied--against the union of grand and noble words
with subjects of a minute and trivial nature. It is as though a huge
locomotive engine were brought out to draw a child's perambulator, or as
though an Armstrong gun were loaded and levelled to exterminate a
tom-tit.
I heard a tourist say the other day that, when he was at Black Gang
Chine, in the Isle of Wight, he had seen the _most magnificent_--what do
you think? A sunset, a man-of-war, a thunderstorm? Nothing of the kind.
He had seen the most _magnificent prawns_ he ever ate in his life.
And when I asked another young gentleman, who was speaking of "_the most
tremendous screw_ ever made in the world," to which of our great
ironclads he referred, he smiled upon me with a benign and courteous
pity, as he said that he "was alluding to a screw into the middle
pocket, which he had recently seen during a game at billiards between
Cook and the younger Roberts."
When you hear one lady informing another that she had just seen simply
the most _exquisite_, the most _lovely_, the most _perfect_ thing in
existence, is she referring to something wonderful in nature, or to
something beautiful in art, or can it be only a bonnet? Has she just
come home from the glaciers of Switzerland, the lakes of Italy, the
mountains of Connemara, or the castles of the Rhine, or can it be that
she has been no farther than Marshall and Snelgrove's shop?
Then there's that awful "_awful_!" Why, if a thousandth part of things
which are commonly affirmed to be aweful were aweful, we should go about
with our faces blanched, like his who drew Priam's curtain in the dead
of night, our teeth chattering, and our hair on end. Everything is
_aweful_--awefully good or awefully bad.
Only last week I handed a plate to a young lady at luncheon, and,
looking sweetly upon me, as though I had brought a reprieve from the
gallows, she sighed, "Oh thanks! how _awfully_ kind!"
And years ago, I went with John Leech to admire Robson in _The Porter's
Knot_, and when that pathetic little drama was over, and the actor had
stirred our souls with pity, an undergraduate in the stalls before us
turned to his companion, as the curtain fell, and said, tremulously,
with an emotion which did him honour, although his diction was queer,
"Awefully jolly! awefully jolly!"
Yes, it amuses, but it pains us more, this reckless abuse and confusion
of words, because it tends to lower the dignity and to pervert the
meaning of our language; it dishonours the best member that we have. If
we use the most startling and impressive words which we can find, when
we do not really require them, when the crisis comes in which they are
appropriate, they seem feeble and commonplace. We are as persons who,
wearing their best clothes daily, are but dingy guests at a feast.
Then comes retribution. They who cry "Wolf!" whenever they see a leveret
are not believed when Lupus comes. They who suffer "excruciating agony"
whenever a thorn pricks, can say no more under exquisite pain, and their
familiar words are powerless to evoke the sympathy which they have
repelled so long. They are more likely to receive the severe rebuke
administered by a gruff old gentleman to his maudlin, moribund
neighbour, who was ever exaggerating his ailments, and who, upon his
doleful declaration that "between three and four o'clock that morning he
had been at Death's door!" was abruptly but anxiously asked--"Oh, why
didn't you go in?"
I protest, in the next place, against the use of long, large words for
the gratification of that conceit or covetousness which seeks to obtain,
from mere grandiloquence, reputations and rewards to which it is not
entitled. Being a gardener, I like to call a spade as spelt; and if any
one terms it an horticultural implement, or a mattock, I do not expect
him to dig much. I have used the monosyllable "shop," and I will not
recall it, though a thousand pairs of gleaming scissors were pointed at
my breast, and I was told by an angry army of apprentices to talk shop
no more--the word was vulgar, or rather obsolete, superseded by the more
graceful terms of mart, emporium, warehouse, repository, bazaar, and
lounge.
Plain folk, who sold drugs when I was a boy, were not ashamed to be
called druggists, but now they are pharmaceutical chymists, and
analytical Homoeopathists; and one is tempted to quote Canning's
paraphrase, which he made when Dr. Addington had been complimenting the
country party, "I do remember an apothecary, gulling of simples."
Persons who cut hair were known as hair-cutters, and they who attended
to the feet were called corn-cutters; but now the former are artists in
hair, and the latter are chiropodists.
No long time ago I consulted with an intelligent tradesman as to the
best way of protecting from frost a long line of standard rose-trees,
growing near a wall in my garden, and shortly afterwards I received from
him the drawing of a clever design, with a letter informing me that he
had now the pleasure of submitting to my inspection his idea of a
_Cheimoboethus_. When I rallied from my swoon, and was staggering
towards my lexicon, I remembered that, as [Greek: cheimon] was the Greek
for winter, and [Greek: boaethos] for a friend in need, the word was not
without appropriate meaning; but I never took heart to order the
invention, because I felt convinced that, if I were to inform my
gardener that we were going to have a Cheimoboethus, he would say that
he would rather leave.
A bird-stuffer is now a plumassier and taxidermist; and when I asked a
waiter the meaning of "Phusitechnicon," which I read over a shop
opposite his hotel, he told me it meant old china. And he bowed
respectfully, as one who knew how to treat a great scholar, when he met
him, as I remarked gravely, "Ah yes, I see: no doubt from _phusi_--the
ancients, and _technicon_--cups and saucers."
Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another
objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in
the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a
distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and
that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by
the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible
impulse to be gently nursed by the physician. If a poor man steals, he
is a desperate thief; but if a rich man fancies that which does not
belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and "the spoons will be returned."
If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a drunken sot; but if a rich
man is oft intoxicated, he is afflicted with Dipsomania! Interesting
patient! I should like to prescribe for him. I feel sure I could do him
good with my medicines--the crank and water-gruel!
Leaving him at it, I pass on to another mania, which rather provokes
amusement than anger--the mania to be called "Esquire." Forty years ago,
the title was restricted to those who carried arms. The armiger, no
longer toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his
own arms, as he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage
door. People who became rich, and found themselves shut out from
"genteel society" because they had only letters upon their spoons,
instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs,
were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds' Office, that
one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a
groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were
consequently entitled to bear upon their arms a stable-bucket _azure_,
between two horses current, and to wear as their crest a curry-comb in
base argent, between two wisps of hay proper, they and their
descendants, according to the law of arms. But the luxury was expensive:
a lump sum to the Heralds, and two pound two to the King's taxes; and
so, as time went on, men of large ambition, but of limited means, began
to crave for some more economical process by which they might become
esquires. They met together, and they solved the difficulty. They
conferred the title upon each other, and they charged no fee. And now
the postal authorities will tell you that the number of the "esquires"
not carrying arms, not having so much as a leg to stand on (in the
matter of legal claims), is something "awful!" But the process is so
charmingly cheap and easy that we may expect a further development. Why
should we not all be baronets? Why should we not raise ourselves, every
man of us, on his own private hoist, to the Peerage?
We have all been ladies and gentlemen so long that a little nobility,
with its attendant titles, cannot fail to make a pleasant change. Bessie
Black, who cleans the fire-irons, has for some years been Miss
Cinderella, with a chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds
in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A
quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of
those terms "ladies and gentlemen," which had once such definite and
narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When
I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that
lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, 'Them's ways,' I says, 'as
I don't hold to'; and she makes answer to me, 'You better hadn't.'"
Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen
who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in
carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling
themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited
to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any
anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as all who go
amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in
cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen illustrious snobs in satin, and
sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman!
There's no title shouted at a reception so grand in my idea as this; and
yet, methinks, that any man may win and wear it who is brave, and
truthful, and generous, and pure, and kind--who is, in one word, a
Christian!
Some people think to make themselves gentlemen by tampering with their
patronymics, and by altering their family name. Brown has added an _e_
to his; and greedy Green, though he had two already, has followed his
example; and White spells his with a _y_; and Bob Smith calls his son
and heir Augustus Charlemagne Sacheverel Smythe; and Tailor calls
himself Tayleure. And one day Tailor went out a-hunting, and he worried
a whipper-in, who had plenty of work on his hands, with a series of
silly questions, until, upon his asking the name of a hound, he received
an answer which put an end to the discourse: "Well, sir," said the Whip,
"we used to call him Towler; but things has got so fine and fashionable
we calls him _Tow-leure."_
Passing from abuse to disuse, I would not refer to words which are
gradually becoming obsolete, but which some of us, partly from
admiration of the words themselves, and partly from old associations,
would not willingly let die. Beginning alphabetically, the adjective
_ask_ is one of those grand old English monosyllables which convey the
sense in the sound, It speaks to you of a day in March, when the wind
is in the east, and all the clouds are of a dull slate colour, and the
roads are white, and the hedges black, and the fallows are dry and hard
as bricks, and a bitter, searching, piercing wind whistles at your
sealskins and Ulsters, your Lindseys and Jerseys, your foot-warmers and
muffatees, and you feel, with Miggs, "as though water were flowing
aperiently down your back," and sit shuddering--dithering (there's
another word rarely used, but with a sufficient amount of chilliness in
it to ice a bottle of champagne) "dithering in the _ask_, ungenial day."
Then I like _abear_ (the penultimate _a_ pronounced as _e_)--"I can't
abeer him"; _addled_--"Bill's addled noat a three week"; _agate_--"I see
you've agate on't"; _among-hands_--"Tom schemed to do it among-hands";
_all along of_--"It was all along of them 'osses"; etc.
Of B's there is a swarm: _beleddy_ (a corruption, as most men know, of
"by our lady"), and I can only notice a few of the Queens. _Botch_ is a
word which, though found in Shakespeare and Dryden, and other authors,
is rarely used by us; and yet, methinks, in these days, when the great
object seems to be to get quantity in place of quality, and to make as
much display as we can at the price--when so much is done by contract,
and there is, in consequence, strong temptation to daub with untempered
mortar, to use green timber, to put in bad material where it will not be
seen, the verb _to botch_ is only too appropriate to all such scampish
proceedings.
And what do you think of _bofen-yed_? I once heard a farmer, shouting
from the garden fence, with the vocal powers of a Boanerges, to a
labourer at work about a quarter of a mile away, "Yer gret bofen-yed,
can ter ear noat?" (_Anglicè_, "You ox-headed lout, are you stone
deaf?"); and more frequently the terms, _pudding-yed_ and _noggen-yed_
have been addressed in my hearing to obtuse and stupid folk. The former
requires no comment, and an explanation of the latter--_noggen_, hard,
rough, coarse--may be found in Johnson. "Nay, I did na say thee wor a
noggen-yed; I said Lawyer said thee were a noggen-yed," was a poor
apology, once spoken in Lancashire. And there also, in time-honoured
Lancaster, was made the following illustrative speech. A conceited young
barrister, with a _nez retroussé_ and a new wig, had been bullying for
some time a rough, honest Lancashire lad, who was giving evidence in a
trial, and at last the lawyer, thinking that he saw his opportunity,
turned sharply upon the witness and said, "Why, fellow, only a short
time ago you stated so and so." To which came the indignant answer,
"Why, yer powder-yedded monkey, I never said noat o' sort; I appeal to
th' company!"
I have a loving faith in children. Mixing with them daily--in church, in
school, and at their play--I think that I know something about them; and
I maintain that a disagreeable child is a sorrowful exception to the
rule, and the result of mismanagement and foolish indulgences on the
part of parents and teachers. But when this abnormal nuisance is found,
a peevish, fretful child--a child who is always wanting to taste, a
child who ignores the admirable purposes for which pocket-handkerchiefs
were designed, such an _enfant terrible_ as he who told the kindly
mother, offering to bring her 'Gustus to join him in his play, that "if
you bring your 'Gustus here I shall make a slit in him with my new
knife, and let out his sawdust"--when, I repeat, we come in contact with
such an obnoxious precocity as this, what word can describe him so
satisfactorily as the monosyllable--_brat_?
More detestable, because more powerful to do hurt, and with less excuse
for doing it, is _the Blab_; the unctuous, tattling Blab, who creeps to
your side with words softer than butter, but having war in his heart; he
"always thought that Sam Smith was such a friend of yours, and" (hardly
waiting for your "So he is") "was surprised and rather disgusted by his
remarks at the Club last Thursday." And then he tells you something
which, for a moment, and until principle prevails over passion, suggests
the removal by violence of several of Sam's teeth, and he leaves you
distressed and distrustful, until you discover, as you most probably
will, that there has been cruel misrepresentation. Ah, if poor
Jeannette's desire were realised, and they who make the quarrels were
the only men to fight, how nice it would be to sit upon an eminence and
watch the Battle of the Blabs!
There was a battle once on a small scale, the only rational duel ever
fought, in which a brace of Blabs were sweetly discomfited. They had
succeeded in separating "very friends," and had arranged a hostile
meeting; but, through the intervention of better men, and without their
cognisance, the principals entered into explanation, and, finding that
they had been misled, mutually agreed to fire at the seconds, who had
made the mischief. One Blab received a bullet in the calf of his leg,
and the other a _ping_ close to his whiskers; and then the combatants
said that their honour was satisfied, and the party broke up.
Some years ago there lived in our village an individual who was known to
us as _Brawnging_ Bill. Does not the epithet describe the man? As you
pronounce it, does not William's photograph present itself to your
mental eye? A large, obese, idle _hulk_ of a man (fine old Saxon word,
that _hulc_!) lounging about with his hands in his pockets and a pipe in
his mouth; a man who talks at the top of his voice, and laughs the loud
laugh which tells the vacant mind, and lies with such volubility that
you would think truth was a fool. Eloquent, didactic, imperious was he
in the taproom and by the blacksmith's forge, in the quoit-yard and in
the alley of skittles, and yet, whene'er his tongue led him into
trouble, and there was whisper of peril to that fat form of his, at the
first utterance of a threat, the first sign of aggressive anger, there
was a dissolving view of our Brawnging Bill.
From B to C.--Whenever the fairer sex enter Parliament (breathes there a
man with ears so deaf as to doubt their powers of parlance?) and we have
a House of Ladies as well as a House of Lords, I anticipate that among
the first measures introduced will be a coercive Bill for Regulating in
the Clay Districts the scraping, wiping, and cleaning of men's boots on
their return from the garden or the field. A sore provocation it must
surely be to those who love order and brightness to find slabs of dirt
upon their new oil-cloth, Indian mats, and bright encaustic tiles.
Justly may the gentlest spirit _chunter_ and complain while the guilty
husband, from his dressing-room hard by, vainly essays to evade his
shame by a quotation--"Would my darling have me come bootless home--home
without boots, and in wet weather, too?" Better to give the real, the
only excuse, and say that the soil is so--no, not adhesive, not sticky,
not tenacious, but, to use a word ten thousand times more expressive
than these, so _clarty_.
And do you not remember (on we go, voyaging among the C's,) a time, a
happy time, before you knew what digestion meant, when you delighted to
_cranch_ the unripe gooseberry, until you heard the _clomp_ of the
paternal tread on the _causey_, and crouched lest you should _catch
it_, hid to escape a hiding; and how, nevertheless, swift retribution
followed upon the track of crime, and you suffered those internal pains,
which were vulgarly known as _colly-wobbles_, and were _coddled_, in
consequence, upon your mother's knee?
Going on to D--Dickens, in a description of a street row, represents one
of the lady disputants as saying to her adversary, "You go home, and,
when you are quite sober, mend your stockings"; and he adds that these
allusions, not only to her intemperate habits but to the state of her
wardrobe, were so exasperating to the accused party that she proceeded
to comply, not with the suggestion of her accuser, but with the request
of the bystanders, and to "pitch in" with considerable alacrity.
Assuming that her hose was as reported, let us hope that she had the
worst of the combat, for there is something in the idea of a _dowdy_
which is hateful to the manly mind. How life-like the portrait which the
word paints for us! a coarse, fat female, her dingy cap, with its faded
ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes hookless, holes buttonless,
upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on the ground. When we clergy
visit Mrs. Dowdy's home, or the residence of her sister, Mrs. Slattern,
and find that, though it is towards evening, they have not tidied either
self or house, we know why the children are unhealthy and untaught, and
why the husband prefers the warmth and cleanliness of "The Manor Arms"
to his own miserable hut. As a house-keeper, Mrs. Dowdy could only
"please the pigs"; and this reminds me what an apt word we have in
_dunky_ for a rotund, obese, little porket. I do not find the latter in
Johnson, but dowdy in Shakespeare, and _slattern_ is from the Swedish.
No word suggests itself as I stand at E's, and I therefore proceed with
a sonata in F, composed, not by Beethoven, but by a horse-breaker, with
certain amplifications of my own: "The young horse was in famous
_fettle_, and _framed_ splendidly over the _flakes_; but he seemed all
of a _flabber-gaster_ when he caught sight of the water, put himself
into a regular _fandango_, and the more I _flanked_ him the more he
_funked,_ till in he went with a _flop._"
I come now to a gem of purest ray serene. To me the monosyllable _gorp_
is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Take a youth, who has passed
his life as an underling on some secluded farm, to an exhibition of wax
figures, gorgeously attired, rolling their eyes and lifting up their
arms to slow music, and you shall see him _gorp_. Or go with that young
man to a display of fireworks, and when the first asteroid rocket sends
out its glowing stars you shall see that wide-mouthed, wobbling
agriculturist so gorp as to make it almost impossible for the descending
stick to go anywhere save down his throat.
But we are all of us naturally fond of gorping. We abstain in our
sensitive days, because somebody said it was vulgar; but, as we grow
older and wiser, and that bell-wether Fashion tinkles vainly in our
ears, we flatten our happy noses upon the shop-windows once again, and
thoroughly enjoy our _gorp_.
At Oxford, I remember, it was considered very low indeed to gorp. In
fact, we did not allow ourselves to be astonished at anything, unless it
was the audacity of trades-people with reference to the payment of their
little bills. Wherefore I the more honour the conduct and courage of a
college friend who, honest himself, and as free from humbug as any man I
know, was bored, especially in London, by the society of an affected
coxcomb, who persisted in attaching himself whenever they met, giving
himself all sorts of silly airs, enlarging upon his intimacy with titled
folks, and asserting himself to be, like Mrs. Jarley's show, the delight
of the nobility and gentry of the day. "Gradually," said my friend to
me, "I discovered a process by which I might execute a deed of
separation. First, I rattled my stick against the area railings, and I
saw him wince; then I whistled an Ethiopian serenade, and 'o'er his face
a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced'; but when I set my hat well
on the back of my head, and _gorped_ with open mouth at six legs of pork
in a butcher's shop, he fled, and I saw him no more."
Thus did my friend successfully assume the lineaments of a _gawk_, and
the deportment of a _gorby_, that he might evade the oppressive
attentions of a companion given to _gawster_. The enemy whom he so
adroitly dispersed bore a strong family likeness to a fraternal
nuisance, whom we recently inspected, being, in fact, a new edition, on
toned paper and elegantly bound, of the braggart, "Brawnging Bill," and
exhibiting the same feeble powers of resistance when his silly conceits
were thwarted. Honest men, hoping reformation, rejoice to see him slink
away, rejoice to see the _gawsterer_ subdued, as when Theodore Hook
rushed across Fleet Street to one, who was walking as proudly down it as
though the Bank of England was his counting-house and St. Paul's his
private Chapel, and, almost breathless with admiring awe, gasped his
anxious question--"O sir, O pray sir, may I ask, sir--are you anybody in
particular?" Certainly it is either a great amusement or a great
irritation (as the weather, or disposition, or digestion may influence),
to meet with persons in parks, promenades, esplanades, and spas who
ostensibly expect you to look at them in an ecstasy of wonder, as though
they were a sunset on Mont Blanc or the Balaklava Charge.
Only in three exceptional cases is it permissible, as I think, to
_gawster_. I like to see a drum-major, with my grandmother's
carriage-muff on his head, and a baton in his hand as long as a
bean-rod, swaggering at the head of his regiment, as though he had only
to knock at the gates of a besieged city and the governor would
instantly send the keys. Secondly, I was disappointed the other day at
the stolid behaviour of a sheep, who went on grazing with a sublime
indifference when a peacock, having marched some distance for the
purpose, wheeled round within a yard of his nose, displaying his
brilliant charms in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their
ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful music, in
accordance with the command of Jupiter, and with Lemprière's dictionary,
made them wink in a delicious drowse. And, thirdly, in the case of a
game bantam, once my property, who flew up every morning to the top of a
tall pump, and challenged Nottinghamshire to fight, I could not but
admire the gawstering spirit, because he so thoroughly meant all that he
said, and would have gladly matched himself against a mad elephant, or
would have crowed defiance, midway between the rails, as the express
rushed on at speed.
But in other animals I would pitilessly suppress proclivities to
gawster. I would ask power from Parliament to whip, when mild persuasion
failed, the precocious prig, "neither man nor boy," who struts about on
Sundays, scoffing at religion, and polluting the air with bad tobacco
and worse talk; and I would authorise the police to supervise, and to
send home at their discretion, those small giggling girls who, having
lost the shame which is a glory and a grace, and coveting every
adornment but one, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, are seen in
our streets, with nearly half a year's wage upon their backs, and the
change on their faces--in brass.
To gawster, in fine, is a sure indication of moral and physical
debility. He who gawsters is like a show, which has enormous pictures
and clanging cymbals, and gongs, and drums, and an obese showman, in his
shirt-sleeves, lying through a speaking-trumpet at the top of his voice,
_outside_, and little more than a three-headed puppy, or a seven-legged
lamb (not in vigorous life, as shown upon the canvas, but in glass and
spirits of wine) _within_. When, for example, you hear a man gawster
about his horsemanship, you may be sure that he will never be first over
a fence, unless it be some wee obstacle, which you could almost arrange
on a rocking-horse, and then he will rush wildly at it, as though he had
made up his mind to die; or, if his boasting be of cricket, you may
expect next morning to see him miss the first easy catch which comes.
I need hardly ask whether you have known, my reader, what it is to feel
yourself _gloppened_, as when in boyhood (if feminine, please ask your
brother), you had just finished your first pipe of the herb called shag,
and on your face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced, as
represented in that marvellous sketch by John Leech, "Old Bagshawe under
the influence of tobacco"; when you went forth with your mother for an
innings, as you hoped, at the confectioner's, and a second ditto at the
toyshop, and saw her ringing the dentist's bell; when you had carefully
adjusted that cracker to Mr. Nabal's knocker, and were lighting the
lucifer within the quiet seclusion of your cap, and suddenly the
knuckles of Mr. Nabal's left pressed rudely on your nape, and the thumb
and finger of his right essayed to meet each other through the lobe of
your ear; when your dearest friend, in the strictest confidence, and
having sworn you to secrecy, showed you a lock of gleaming hair, given
to him by the girl whom you adored.
And it was you, my Thomas, you,
The friend in whom my soul confided,
Who dared to gaze on her--to do,
I may say, much the same as I did.
Or when, in after-years, unequally mated, you groaned, with Parolles,
under the subjection of a stronger will, "a man that's married is a man
that's marred"; and it might be said of you, as once it was said by a
labourer of one of his neighbours (so have I read in a book about roses,
a charming volume, which should be on every table), "Bill has been and
married his mestur, and she has _gloppened_ him a goodish bit."
I remember an occasion when a gawsterer was gloppened sorely. There was
an ancient mansion, wainscoted and floored with shining oak, _glib_--I
have not heard that apposite, terse little monosyllable since I went
_slurring_ with the village boys--glib as glass; and in that ancient
mansion there was a banquet; and to that banquet came, with other
guests, "a fop in a gay coat," a coxcomb wearing the bright vestment of
the hunter, albeit in the hour of chase he only hunted gates and gaps;
and upon the white satin lining of his "pink" there was a tiny
button-hole bouquet, such as Mab might have held with her fairy fingers
at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he
resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as
the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's wing; and he was
going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent
smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of
these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as
though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the
winsome damsel in particular, and a large "Oh!" from the procession in
general, and a flash of horizontal scarlet, as when a soldier falls in
battle; and then the bruised and bewildered dandy picked himself up, as
best he could, to perform a part for which his qualifications were
small--the personification of a man who had a relish for pain; and I
sympathised with, though I did not love him--not so much because his
feelings, as because his raiment was torn, and he, who was generally the
most lively and locomotive of all, was now depressed and sedentary, like
the lover of Constance, brooding upon his silent grief, as on its nest
the dove, while we remained at the dinner-table, and finally backing out
of the drawing-room at an early hour, as though our hostess were the
queen.
And his involuntary gymnastics remind me, as I pass on to that
"terrible thoroughbred" letter H (I have heard men speak of others who
ignored it in conversation as though they must be capable of any crime),
of a stout old lady in the manufacturing districts, whose husband had
been very successful in business, and had purchased a fine old country
residence from some dilapidated squire. She was complaining to a visitor
of the difficulty which she had in walking upon the polished floors.
"First I sluther," she said, "and then I hutch; and then I sluther, and
then I hutch; and the more I hutch the more I sluther."
Only one other specimen (for I must hurry on helter-skelter and
harum-scarum) from words beginning with H--to be, or cause others to be,
on the _hig_, that is, to go about, or cause others to go about, in a
fume, angrily excited, menacing revenge. "Betty," I asked one of my
parishioners, "why do you make these ill-natured, irritating speeches to
your next-door neighbour?" "Oh, bless yer," was the reply I received, "I
only said 'em just to set old Sally on the _hig_." She knew that not to
many was it given to hear resignedly the bitter word, that not to many
was given in its reality the resignation affected by another of my old
women, who (one of those wretched combinations of religion and rancour,
"who think they're pious when they're only bilious") accosted me with
the startling intelligence--"Oh, Mestur 'Ole, I've got another lift
towards 'eaven. Bowcocks" (tenants of the cottage adjoining her own),
"Bowcocks has been telling more lies; blessed are the parsecuted!"
Better open war than this dismal affectation of peace! Better to confess
ourselves _hity-tity_, and to raise a _hullabaloo_, than such _humbug_
as this!
I, the egotist, has for once nothing to say; but J recalls to me an
extract from a conversation which took place during one of my parochial
visitations.
_Pastor_.--"Did I not see old Nanny Smith talking with you at your door
just now?"
_Parishioner_.--"Oh yes, she wor' here not three minutes sin', and
_jabbering_, as usual, like a clamm'd [famished] jay in a wood; but when
she see your reverence coming up th' lane, th' old lass wor' gone in a
_jiffey_."
K makes no suggestions, and L but few. "I'll _lay_," has no reference to
eggs or to a recumbent posture, but implies a wager. Some years ago, I
was riding to the meet, and came up inaudibly, upon the wayside grass,
with two grooms on their masters' hunters, peering over their pummels at
a mounted horse in the distance before them and anxiously discussing his
identity. Just as I was passing the disputants, the one turned to the
other and said, "I shall _lay yer_ three threepenny gins to one as it's
Colonel's rat-tailed 'oss."
_Lig_ is still commonly used for "lie." "Our Bob has ligabed sin'
Monday." "The moon wor _ligging_ behind a cloud, so they couldn't see
keepers coming." To _lorp_ is to move awkwardly or idly, and the word
suggests a noble line for the alliterative poet:
Lo, lazy lubbers loutish, lorp and loll.
In the days of my boyhood I was perplexed conjecturing by what process
of the rustic mind moles had changed their names into _Mouldi-warps_;
but I have since discovered that in this instance, as in countless
others, the bucolic brain was not so mollified by beans and bacon as
some would have us believe. The _mould_--and very fine mould it is--is
_warped_, turned up by the mole; and this reminds me of a mole-catcher,
whose principles were warped also, and whose occupation was gone awhile
in our parts, when it was discovered that he carried a collection of
dead moles about with him, with which, the morning after his traps had
been set, he made a grand display on some contiguous hedge, inducing his
employer fondly to imagine that his enemies (as he thought of them) had
been all destroyed in a night.
Flying onwards--for this is a very fugitive piece--I would ask
admiration for the adjective _muggy_, as exquisitely descriptive of
weather, not uncommon in this climate, where a fog gives one the idea,
suggested by Dickens, that nature is brewing on an extensive scale
outside, and there's dampness everywhere, taking the curl from ringlet
and whisker, and causing our adhesive envelopes to fasten themselves on
our writing-table, as though practising the duties of their post.
No sun, no moon,
No morn, no noon,
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day--
No sky, no earthly view,
No distance looking blue.
No road, no street, no t'other side the way--
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member,
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No ... vember!
I love, though not as licensed victuallers love, the little monosyllable
_nip_. What a nimble agility, what a motive power, in that curt,
imperative word!--the pistol-shot which starts the boat-race, the brief,
shrill whistle which starts the train. "Just nip off your horse and pull
out that stake." "You nipped out o' the army," said a snob to a friend
of mine, who had retired some years before the Crimean invasion, and
who, in his magisterial capacity, had offended the snob; "you know'd t'
war wor' a-coming; you nipped out, you didn't relish them Rooshan
baggonets a-prodding and a-pricking. You nipped out o' th' army; you
know'd t' war wor' coming. Good morning. I think you were right."
When the wind bloweth in from the Orient, or when our discretion has
collapsed before a lobster salad (that claw looked so innocently pink,
and that lettuce so crisp and green!) then is poor human nature but too
prone to be querulous; we disagree, like the lobster, with our fellow
creatures; we are peevishly disposed to _nag_. "My mestur has been a
good husband to me," said one of the matrons of my flock, "but he can
chime in nasty when he wants to _nag_."
Times of refinement are probably at hand when, under the sacred
influence of School Boards, the rural tongue shall cease to substitute
the word _no-at_ for nought, or nothing. I am not sorry that when that
epoch comes I shall no longer be attached to this machine. I cling to
those expressions, which I have heard from childhood: "He's like a
_no-at." "_He's up to _no-at_." One day, years ago, we waited for the
train at, not Coventry, but Ratcliffe-on-Trent, and while we waited a
weary workman, with his bag of tools on his back, came and sat on the
bench beside. Presently we were joined by a third person in the
garrulous phase of inebriety, and he pestered the tired artisan with his
_bosh_and _gibberish_ (two words which should have been introduced at an
earlier period of my history) until he provoked the righteous
expostulation, "Oh, don't bother me; you're drunk." Then, with an air of
outraged dignity, and with a stern solemnity, which, if he had not
wobbled in his gait and stammered in his utterance, might have suggested
the idea that he had just been appointed Professor of Philosophy for the
Midland Districts, he delivered an oration: "Now just you listen to me.
Do you suppose as a Mighty Power 'ud mak the barley to grow, and the
'ops to grow, and then put it into the minds of other parties to mak'
'em foment, and me not meant to drink 'em? why, you know _no-at_!"
Whereupon the apt rejoinder: "I know this--that a Mighty Power never
meant the barley to grow, nor the hops to grow, for you to take and turn
yoursen into a be-ast."
_Nobbut_ is still common in these parts, in abbreviation of "nothing
but." I congratulated an invalid parishioner on the presence of the
doctor, and he said dolefully, "Oh yes, sir; thank yer, sir--but it's
_nobbut_ th' 'prentice."
My limits do not allow me to mind my L's and Q's and R's, or I might
have enlarged upon such words as _palaver_, and _pawling_, and _peart_,
and _prod_, and_romper_, and _ramshackle_, and _rawm_; and I can only
dwell upon one selection from the S's, of which there is a long
Sigmatismus, such as _snag_ ("Billy and Sally's always at _snags_"), and
_scuft_, and _scrawl_ ("he wor' just a glass over the scrawl," _i.e._
the line of sobriety), and _scrawm_, and _slape_, and _snigger_, and
_slive_ ("I see that _shack a-_sliving_ and a_-skulking about"), and
_slare_, and_slawmy_, and _sneck_, and _snoozle_, and _spank_, and
_stodge_, and _stunt_, and _swish_.
The word which I would illustrate is _skimpy_. It signifies something
mean and defective; and in the following history, told to me by a
clerical friend, it refers to an attenuated and bony female. When a
curate in a remote country parish, he took a raw village lad into his
service, to train him for some better place; and, when his education was
sufficiently advanced, and he had made some progress in the art of
writing, he was permitted to accompany his master to a large
dinner-party given by a neighbouring squire. Next morning he
communicated his experiences to the housekeeper, and she treacherously
repeated them to my friend. "'Oh,' he said, 'it just wor' grand. Me and
t'other gentlemen in livery we stood i' th' 'all, and they flung open
folding-doors, and out comes the quality tu and tu, harm i' harm, all
a-talking and a-grinning, and as smart as ninepence. I wor' quite
surprised at mestur. He come out last of all, with a _skimpy_old woman.
I should say she wor' sisty off, and there were squire's daughter,
looking as bewtifle as bewtifle, and dressed up as gay as waxwork. I
never made no mistake, except giving one gentleman mustard wrong side,
and just a drop or so o' gravy down a hunbeknown young lady's back.'" I
have reached the length of my tether, and will go no longer a-_tweing_
after words, lest I put my readers in a _tiff_, and leave them in a
_tantrum_. I will _yark_ off. Said an underkeeper who had just shot at a
snipe: "It _yarked_ up and screeted, and I nipped round and blazed; but
I catched my toe on a bit of a tussock, and so, consarn it, I missed."
Let me hope that I have not so completely failed in my aim, while firing
my small shot against certain abuses and disuses connected with The
Vulgar Tongue.
THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD WITH HIS SON
[Sidenote: _Calverley_]
O what harper could worthily harp it,
Mine Edward! this wide-stretching wold
(Look out _wold_) with its wonderful carpet
Of emerald, purple, and gold?
Look well at it--also look sharp, it
Is getting so cold.
The purple is heather _(erica)_;
The yellow, gorse--call'd sometimes "whin."
Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a
Green beetle as if on a pin,
You may roll in it, if you would like a
Few holes in your skin.
You wouldn't? Then think of how kind you
Should be to the insects who crave
Your compassion--and then, look behind you
At yon barley-ears! Don't they look brave
As they undulate _(undulate_, mind you,
From _unda, a wave_).
The noise of those sheep-bells, how faint it
Sounds here--(on account of our height)!
And this hillock itself--who could paint it,
With its changes of shadow and light?
Is it not---(never, Eddy, say "ain't it")--
A marvellous sight?
Then yon desolate eerie morasses,
The haunts of the snipe and the hern--
(I shall question the two upper classes
On _aquatiles_ when we return)--
Why, I see on them absolute masses
Of _felix_, or fern.
How it interests e'en a beginner
(Or _tiro_) like dear little Ned!
Is he listening? As I am a sinner,
He's asleep--he is wagging his head.
Wake up! I'll go home to my dinner,
And you to your bed.
The boundless ineffable prairie;
The splendour of mountain and lake,
With their hues that seem ever to vary;
The mighty pine-forests which shake
In the wind, and in which the unwary
May tread on a snake;
And this wold, with its heathery garment,
Are themes undeniably great.
But--although there is not any harm in't--
It's perhaps little good to dilate
On their charms to a dull little varmint
Of seven or eight.
TARTARIN DE TARASCON
[Sidenote: _Daudet_]
At the time of which I am speaking, Tartarin of Tarascon was not the
Tartarin that he is to-day, the great Tartarin of Tarascon, so popular
throughout the South of France. However--even then--he was already king
of Tarascon.
Let me tell you whence this kingship.
You must know, first, that every one there is a huntsman, from the
greatest to the smallest.
So, every Sunday morning, Tarascon takes arms and leaves the walls,
game-bag on the back, gun on the shoulder, with a commotion of dogs,
ferrets, trumpets, and hunting-horns. It is a superb sight.
Unfortunately, game is wanting, absolutely wanting.
However stupid animals may be, in the end they had become wary.
For five leagues round Tarascon warrens are empty, nests deserted. Not a
thrush, not a quail, not the least little rabbit, not the smallest
leveret.
And yet these pretty Tarascon hillocks are very tempting, perfumed with
myrtle, lavender, and rosemary; and these fine muscat grapes, swollen
with sweetness, which grow by the side of the Rhone, extremely
appetising too--yes, but there is Tarascon behind, and in the little
world of fur and feather Tarascon has an evil fame. The birds of passage
themselves have marked it with a big cross on their maps of the route,
and when the wild-ducks, descending towards Camargue in long triangles,
see the steeples of the town in the distance, the leader screams at the
top of his lungs, "There is Tarascon!--There is Tarascon!" and the whole
flight turns.
In short, as far as game is concerned, only one old rogue of a hare
remains, who has escaped by some miracle from the September massacres of
the Tarasconners, and who insists on living there. In Tarascon this hare
is well known. They have given him a name. He is called "The Express."
It is known that his form is in M. Bompard's ground--which, by the way,
has doubled and even trebled its price--but so far no one has been able
to get at it.
At the present moment there are one or two desperate fellows who have
set their hearts upon him.
The others have made up their minds that it is hopeless, and "The
Express" has become a sort of local superstition, although the
Tarasconners are not very superstitious and eat swallows in a salmi when
they can get them.
"But," you object, "if game is so rare in Tarascon, what do the Tarascon
sportsmen do every Sunday?"
What do they do?
Well, bless me! they go out into the open country two or three leagues
from the town. They gather into little groups of six or seven, stretch
themselves tranquilly in the shadow of an old wall, an olive-tree, take
out of their game-bags a great piece of beef seasoned with _daube_, some
uncooked onions, a large sausage, some anchovies, and begin an
interminable luncheon, moistened by one of those nice little Rhone wines
which make a man laugh and sing.
After that, when one has laid in a good stock of provisions, one rises,
whistles the dogs, loads the guns, and the chase begins. That is to say,
each gentleman takes his cap, flings it into the air with all his might,
and fires at it.
He who puts most shots into his cap is proclaimed king of the hunt, and
returns in the evening to Tarascon in triumph, with his peppered cap on
the end of his gun, amidst yappings and fanfares.
Needless to say, there is a great trade of caps in the town. There are
even hatters who sell caps torn and full of holes for the use of the
clumsy. But hardly any one but Bézuquet, the chemist, buys them. It is
dishonouring!
As a cap-hunter, Tartarin of Tarascon has no equal. Every Sunday morning
he starts with a new cap; every Sunday evening he returns with a rag. At
the little house with the baobab-tree the greenhouses were full of the
glorious trophies. For this reason all the Tarasconners recognised him
as their master, and as Tartarin knew the code of a sportsman through
and through, had read all the treatises, all the manuals of every
conceivable hunt, from the pursuit of caps to the pursuit of Bengal
tigers, these gentlemen made him their great sporting justicier, and
appointed him arbitrator in all their discussions.
Every day, from three to four, at Costecalde's the gunsmith, a fat man
was to be seen, very grave, with a pipe between his teeth, sitting in a
chair covered with green leather, in the middle of a shop full of
cap-hunters, all standing and wrangling. It was Tartarin of Tarascon
administering justice, Nimrod added to Solomon.