--and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice prepended--there
was the "labour," there the "work."
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery.
No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this
necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays
too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our
lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But
then they come into our head. But when the head has to go out to
them--when the mountain must go to Mahomet--
Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.
It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but
mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic
impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no
smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could
procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of
brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without
straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon--_the Public_--like him in
Bel's temple--must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel,
and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side
bursting him.
MISS PATE
[Sidenote: _M.M. Betham_]
A Miss Pate (when he heard of her, he asked if she was any relation to
Mr. John _Head_, of Ipswich) was at a party, and he said, on hearing her
name, "Miss Pate I hate." "You are the first person who ever told me so,
however," said she. "Oh! I mean nothing by it. If it had been Miss Dove,
I should have said, Miss Dove I love, or Miss Pike I like." ... Another,
who was very much marked with the small-pox, looked as if the devil had
ridden roughshod over her face. I saw him talking to her afterwards
with great apparent interest, and noticed it, saying, "I thought he had
not liked her." His reply was, "I like her internals very well."
THE LOST ORNAMENT
[Sidenote: _Washington Allston_]
Lamb was present when a naval officer was giving an account of an action
which he had been in, and, to illustrate the carelessness and disregard
of life at such times, said that a sailor had both his legs shot off,
and as his shipmates were carrying him below, another shot came and took
off his arms; they, thinking he was pretty much used up, though life was
still in him, threw him out of a port. "Shame, d----d shame," stuttered
our Lamb, "he m-m-might have l-lived to have been an a-a-ornament to
Society!"
YOUR HAT, SIR
[Sidenote: _Crabb Robinson_]
I dined at Lamb's, and then walked with him to Highgate, self-invited.
There we found a large party. Mr. and Mrs. Green, the Aderses, Irving,
Collins, R.A., a Mr. Taylor, a young man of talents in the Colonial
Office, Basil Montagu, a Mr. Chance, and one or two others. It was a
_rich_ evening. Coleridge talked his best, and it appeared better
because he and Irving supported the same doctrines. His superiority was
striking. The idea dwelt on was the higher character of the internal
evidence of Christianity, as addressed to our immediate consciousness of
our own wants and the necessity of a religion and a revelation. In a
style not to me clear or intelligible, Irving and Coleridge both
declaimed. The _advocatus diaboli_ for the evening was Mr. Taylor, who,
in a way very creditable to his manners as a gentleman, but with little
more than verbal cleverness, and an ordinary logic, and the confidence
of a young man who has no suspicion of his own deficiencies, affirmed
that those evidences which the Christian thinks he finds in his internal
convictions, the Mahometan also thinks he has; and he affirmed that
Mahomet had improved the condition of mankind. Lamb asked him whether he
came in a turban or a hat.
ELIA'S TAIL
[Sidenote: _J.B._]
When I first knew Charles Lamb, I ventured, one evening, to say
something that I intended should pass for wit. "Ha! very well; very
well, indeed!" said he. "Ben Jonson has said worse things" (I brightened
up, but he went stammering on to the end of the
sentence)--"and--and--and _better_!" A pinch of snuff concluded this
compliment, which put a stop to my wit for the evening. I related the
thing to Hazlitt, afterwards, who laughed. "Aye," said he, "you are
never sure of him till he gets to the end. His jokes would be the
sharpest things in the world, but that they are blunted by his
good-nature. He wants malice--which is a pity." "But," said I, "his
words at first seemed so--" "Oh! as for that," replied Hazlitt, "his
sayings are generally like women's letters: all the pith is in the
postscript."
CHARLES AND HIS SISTER
[Sidenote: _Mrs. Balmanno_]
Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means
looked so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather
stout, and comely maiden lady of middle age. Dressed with quaker-like
simplicity in dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of
snow-white muslin folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the
beholder in her favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners
were very quiet and gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently,
but seldom laughed, partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her
merry host and hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most
mild and kindly nature.
Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring disciple; her
eyes seldom absent from his face. Even when apparently engrossed in
conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word for which
he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the room, show
how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high spirits,
sauntering about the room, with his hands crossed behind his back,
conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him,
but evidently mentally acknowledging Miss Kelly to be the _rara avis_ of
his thoughts, by the great attention he paid to every word she uttered.
Truly pleasant it must have been to her, even though accustomed to see
people listen breathless with admiration while she spoke, to find her
words have so much charm for such a man as Charles Lamb.
He appeared to enjoy himself greatly, much to the gratification of Mrs.
Hood, who often interchanged happy glances with Miss Lamb, who nodded
approvingly. He spoke much--with emphasis and hurry of words, sorely
impeded by the stammering utterance which in him was not unattractive.
Miss Kelly (charming, natural Miss Kelly, who has drawn from her
audiences more heart-felt tears and smiles than perhaps any other
English actress), with quiet good-humour listened and laughed at the
witty sallies of her host and his gifted friend, seeming as little an
actress as it is possible to conceive. Once, however, when some allusion
was made to a comic scene in a new play then just brought out, wherein
she had performed to the life the character of a low-bred lady's-maid
passing herself off as her mistress, Miss Kelly arose, and with a kind
of resistless ardour repeated a few sentences so inimitably that
everybody laughed as much as if the real lady's-maid, and not the
actress, had been before them; while she who had so well personated the
part quietly resumed her seat without the least sign of merriment, as
grave as possible. Most striking had been the transition from the calm,
lady-like person, to the gay, loquacious soubrette; and not less so the
sudden extinction of vivacity and resumption of well-bred decorum. This
little scene for a few moments charmed everybody out of themselves, and
gave a new impetus to conversation....
Mr. Lamb oddly walked all round the table, looking closely at any dish
that struck his fancy before he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs.
Hood that he should by that means know how to select some dish that was
difficult to carve, and take the trouble off her hands; accordingly,
having jested in this manner, he placed himself with great deliberation
before a lobster-salad, observing _that_ was the thing. On her asking
him to take some roast fowl, he assented. "What part shall I help you
to, Mr. Lamb?" "Back," said he quickly; "I always prefer the back." My
husband laid down his knife and fork, and, looking upwards, exclaimed:
"By heavens! I could not have believed it, if anybody else had sworn
it." "Believed what?" said kind Mrs. Hood, anxiously, colouring to the
temples, and fancying there was something amiss in the piece he had
been helped to. "Believe what? why, madam, that Charles Lamb was a
backbiter?" Hood gave one of his short, quick laughs, gone almost ere it
had come, whilst Lamb went off into a loud fit of mirth, exclaiming:
"Now, that's devilish good! I'll sup with you to-morrow night." This
eccentric flight made everybody very merry, and amidst a most amusing
mixture of wit and humour, sense and nonsense, we feasted merrily,
amidst jocose health-drinking, sentiments, speeches, and songs.
Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song, "If you go to
France, be sure you learn the lingo," his pensive manner and feeble
voice making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing,
excused himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a
Latin eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered
forth a string of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
frequently occurred, we ladies thought it was in praise of her. The
delivery of his speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a
gentleman who sat next to me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he
informed me that it was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the
lobster-salad!
IN A COACH
[Sidenote: _Charles Lamb_]
The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell them.
We had, then, in the coach a rather talkative gentleman, but very civil,
all the way, and took up a servant-maid at Stamford, going to a sick
mistress.... The _former_ engaged me in a discourse for full twenty
miles on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which, being merely
problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my
totally un-engineer-like faculties. But when, somewhere about Stanstead,
he put an unfortunate question tome as to the "probability of its
turning out a good turnip season," and when I, who am still less of an
agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a
potato-ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very
much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola
a-laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquillity for the only
moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other
fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met with a _well-informed
passenger_, which is an accident so desirable in a stage coach. We were
rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way.
KING DAVID AND THE GARDENER
[Sidenote: _Anon._]
Vrom readin' Scripture well Oi knows
Pzalmist 'e had na rest vrom voes;
Vor po-or ole Dave gre-at pits they'd delve,
An' then, dam loons, vail in theirselve.
This iz ma readin' ov the Book,
An' to ma self do mak' me look;
Wi' dew respeck, Oi veel loike him,
Tho' later born, and deal more slim.
Vor ev'ry day, wi' buzz an' hum,
Into ma garden voes do come;
The waspies starm ma gabled wall
An' into t' trenches t' grub do crawl.
The blackbird, sparrer, tit, an' thrush
Do commandeer each curran' bush,
While slugs off lettuce take their smack,
And maggots turn the celery black.
Wi' greenfly zlimin' roun' ma roses,
An' earwigs pokin' be-astly noses
In dahlias vit vor virst at Show,
Oi ha' ma troubles, as yew may know;
But Dave did circumwent the Devil,
An' wi' ma insecks Oi get level,
Lard! wi' what piety Oi tend 'em,
An' wi' ma boot rejoicin' end 'em!
Zo, maister gets his dish o' peas,
An' mum her roses, if yew please,
But, lawks, they little knaw, Oi 'speck,
What Oi've laid out in intelleck;
But Dave got little praise vrom man,
An' as Oi ta-ake ma wat'rin'-can,
Oi zays, zays Oi, next world wull show
Who wuz tip-tappers here below.
THE CALAIS NIGHT-BOAT
[Sidenote: _Charles Dickens_]
It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my
malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see
it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject. When I
first made acquaintance with Calais it was as a maundering young wretch
in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was
conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity,
sea-sickness--who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache
somewhere in its stomach--who had been put into a horrible swing in
Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or
the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times have changed, and now I enter Calais
self-reliant and rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a
look-out for it, I recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am
acquainted with its ways, and I know--and I can bear--its worst
behaviour.
Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eye-sight and
discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that,
now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming
frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and
stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to
despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy
dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more
hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit and
you think you are there--roll, roar, wash!--Calais has retired miles
inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and
slide in its character, has Calais, to be specially commended to the
infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it dives
under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or two to the right, with
the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about for it!
Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly detest
Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed. It always goes
to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp
and candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and
hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much-esteemed friends, but they
are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the
Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I
don't want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such
an hour. I know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or
pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon that
circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I am
reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise for
obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes
round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough, without the
officious Warden's interference?
As I wait here on board the night-packet, for the South-Eastern train to
come down with the mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for some
intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour. All its noises
smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea,
and of me for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone to bed,
or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady
footing on this slippery deck. The many gas-eyes of the Marine Parade
twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of
Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the
Third.
A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier
with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving of the
boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami
were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which they
have no control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become violently
agitated--rumble, hum, scream, roar--and establish an immense family
washing-day at each paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as
the doors of the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping
figures with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles,
descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's
Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with
hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a few
shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy Englishmen
prepared for the worst and pretending not to expect it. I cannot
disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that we are a body
of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant in number as may
serve to get rid of us with the least possible delay; that there are no
night-loungers interested in us; that the unwilling lamps shiver and
shudder at us; that the sole object is to commit us to the deep and
abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and
then the very train itself has gone to bed before we are off! What is
the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from an umbrella?
Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put up that article,
and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature near
me--whom I only know to be a fellow-creature because of his umbrella:
without which he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or
bulkhead--clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp that will not
relax until he lands at Calais. Is there an analogy, in certain
constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up and keeping the spirits
up? A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies, "Stand by!" "Stand by,
below!" "Half a turn ahead!" "Half a turn ahead!" "Half speed!" "Half
speed!" "Port!" "Port!" "Steady!" "Steady!" "Go on!" "Go on!"
A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a
floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the
bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers--these are the personal
sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to
know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely
established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows
that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other
two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover
them up. Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way
that bodes no good.
It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no
bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that hateful
town. I have done so before, many times, but that is past. Let me
register a vow. Implacable animosity to Calais everm--that was an
awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a
complaining roar.
The wind blows stiffly from the nor'-east, the sea runs high, we ship a
deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers
lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the
laundress; but, for my own uncommercial part, I cannot pretend that I
am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A general howling,
whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a
general knocking about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very
vague. In a sweet, faint temper, something like the smell of damaged
oranges, I think I should feel languidly benevolent if I had time. I
have not time, because I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself
with Irish melodies. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," is the
particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to myself in
the most charming manner and with the greatest expression. Now and then
I raise my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats, in the most
uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don't mind it) and notice that I
am a whirling shuttle-cock between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on
the French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English
coast; but I don't notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in
my hatred of Calais. Then I go on again, "Rich and rare were the ge-ems
she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O
her beauty was fa-a-a-r beyond"--I am particularly proud of my execution
here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from the sea, and
another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box
more audibly indisposed than I think he need be--"Her sparkling gems, or
snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond"--another
awkward one here, and the fellow creature with the umbrella down and
picked up--"Her spa-a-arkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady!
snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very selfishly audible,
bump roar wash white wand."
As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me
becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open the
furnace-doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the
old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the
for-ever-extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and
paddle-boxes is _their_ gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the
monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid
team. Anon, the intermittent funnel-roar of protest at every violent
roll becomes the regular blast of the high-pressure engine, and I
recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended the
Mississippi when the American Civil War was not, and when only its
causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls,
an end of rope, and a jerking block or so become suggestive of
Franconi's Circus in Paris, where I shall be this very night mayhap (for
it must be morning now), and they dance to the selfsame time and tune as
the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these
waves as they come rushing on I cannot desert the pressing demands made
upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with
something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads
that he first went a-seafaring and near foundering (what a terrific
sound that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.
Still, through all this, I must ask her (who _was_ she, I wonder!) for
the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to
stray, so lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's sons so
good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures at the
paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm, No son of
Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow creatures with
umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight, they--what a
tremendous one!--love honour and virtue more: For though they love
stewards with a bull's-eye bright, they'll trouble you for your ticket,
sir--rough passage to-night!
I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and
inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words from
the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I have been
vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their
town by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes
round their necks by which they have since been towed into so many
cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as
highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me, I see the
light of Cape Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward,
and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still
ahead and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of
attachment to Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that
I will stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent
stranger, pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin, asked
me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a very
agreeable place indeed--rather hilly than otherwise.
So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly--though still I
seem to have been on board a week--that I am bumped, rolled, gurgled,
washed, and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has
finally lighted her through the Green Isle. When blest for ever is she
who relied On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we have not to
land to-night down among those slimy timbers--covered with green hair as
if it were the mermaid's favourite combing-place--where one crawls to
the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp; but we go steaming up
the harbour to the Railway-station Quay. And, as we go, the sea washes
in and out among the piles and planks with dead, heavy beats and in
quite a furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in
the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their
vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come struggling
against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief and wiping of
faces, everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious double-tooth
out, and to be this very instant free of the dentist's hands. And now we
all know for the first time how wet and cold we are, and how salt we
are; and now I love Calais with my heart of hearts!
"Hôtel Dessin!" (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is but a
bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of that best of
inns). "Hôtel Meurice!" "Hôtel de France!" "Hôtel de Calais!" "The Royal
Hotel, sir, Anglaishe 'ouse!" "You going to Parry, sir?" "Your baggage,
registair free, sir?" Bless ye, my Touters; bless ye, my
commissionaires; bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of military
form, who are always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seeking
inscrutable jobs which I never see you get! Bless ye, my Custom-house
officers in green and grey; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that
descend into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom
to give my change of linen a peculiar shake-up, as if it were a measure
of chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
except that, when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written on my
heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur
l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast devoted to
your charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the
gangway by the twinkling lantern my dearest brother and friend, he once
of the Passport Office, he who collects the names! May he be for ever
changeless in his buttoned black boat-surtout, with his note-book in his
hand, and his tall black hat surmounting his round, smiling, patient
face! Let us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours _à tout
jamais_--for the whole of ever.
Calais up and doing at the railway-station, and Calais down and dreaming
in its bed; Calais with something of "an ancient and fish-like smell"
about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais represented at
the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and
Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons with a monomania for
changing money--though I never shall be able to understand, in my
present state of existence, how they live by it; but I suppose I should,
if I understood the currency question; Calais _en gros_ and Calais _en
détail_, forgive one who has deeply wronged you,--I was not fully aware
of it on the other side, but I meant Dover.
Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers. Ascend then,
gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles,
Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of the uncommercial
interest, ascend with the rest. The train is light to-night, and I share
my compartment with but two fellow-travellers; one, a compatriot in an
obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they
don't keep "London time" on a French railway, and who is made angry by
my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris time being more in their
way; the other, a young priest, with a very small bird in a very small
cage, who feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the
network above his head, where he advances twittering to his front wires,
and seems to address me in an electioneering manner. The compatriot (who
crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction,
as he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch
on deck) and the young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep,
and then the bird and I have it all to ourselves....
LETTERS
[Sidenote: _Walter Bagehot_]
The complete letter-writer is now an unknown animal. In the last
century, when communications were difficult, and epistles rare, there
were a great many valuable people who devoted a good deal of time to
writing elaborate letters. You wrote letters to a man whom you knew
nineteen years and a half ago, and told him what you had for dinner, and
what your second cousin said, and how the crops got on. Every detail of
life was described and dwelt on, and improved. The art of writing, at
least of writing easily, was comparatively rare, which kept the number
of such compositions within narrow limits. Sir Walter Scott says he knew
a man who remembered that the London post-bag once came to Edinburgh
with only one letter in it. One can fancy the solemn, conscientious
elaborateness with which a person would write, with the notion that his
letter would have a whole coach and a whole bag to itself, and travel
two hundred miles alone, the exclusive object of a red guard's care. The
only thing like it now--the deferential minuteness with which one public
office writes to another, conscious that the letter will travel on her
Majesty's service three doors down the passage--sinks by comparison into
cursory brevity.
No administrative reform will be able to bring even the official mind of
these days into the grave inch-an-hour conscientiousness with which a
confidential correspondent of a century ago related the growth of
apples, the manufacture of jams, the appearance of flirtations, and
other such-like things. All the ordinary incidents of an easy life were
made the most of; a party was epistolary capital, a race a mine of
wealth. So deeply sentimental was this intercourse that it was much
argued whether the affections were created for the sake of ink, or ink
for the sake of the affections. Thus it continued for many years, and
the fruits thereof are written in the volumes of family papers, which
daily appear, are prized as "materials for the historian," and
consigned, as the case may be, to posterity or oblivion. All this has
now passed away. Mr. Rowland Hill is entitled to the credit, not only of
introducing stamps, but also of destroying letters.
THE TRAGEDY
[Sidenote: _Ingoldsby_]