WHEN Mrs. Iden threw his lardy-cake descent in Iden's face she alluded
to Grandfather Iden's being a baker and miller, and noted for the
manufacture of these articles. A lardy, or larded, cake is a thing, I
suppose, unknown to most of this generation; they were the principal
confectionery familiar to country folk when Grandfather Iden was at the
top of his business activity, seventy years since, in the Waterloo era.
A lardy-cake is an oblong, flat cake, crossed with lines, and rounded at
the corners, made of dough, lard, sugar, and spice. Our ancestors liked
something to gnaw at, and did not go in for lightness in their pastry;
they liked something to stick to their teeth, and after that to their
ribs. The lardy-cake eminently fulfilled these conditions; they put a
trifle of sugar and spice in it, to set it going as it were, and the
rest depended on the strength of the digestion. But if a ploughboy could
get a new, warm lardy-cake, fresh from the oven, he thought himself
blessed.
Grandfather Iden had long since ceased any serious business, but he
still made a few of these renowned cakes for his amusement, and sold a
good few at times to the carters' lads who came in to market.
Amaryllis knew the path perfectly, but if she had not, the tom-tomming
of drums and blowing of brass, audible two miles away, would have guided
her safely to the fair. The noise became prodigious as she
approached--the ceaseless tomtom, the beating of drums and gongs outside
the show vans, the shouting of the showmen, the roar of a great crowd,
the booing of cattle, the baaing of sheep, the neighing of
horses--altogether the "rucket" was tremendous.
She looked back from the hill close to the town and saw the people
hurrying in from every quarter--there was a string of them following the
path she had come, and others getting over distant stiles. A shower had
fallen in the night, but the ceaseless wheels had ground up the dust
again, and the lines of the various roads were distinctly marked by the
clouds hanging above them. For one on business, fifty hastened on to
join the uproar.
Suppose the Venus de Medici had been fetched from Florence and had been
set up in the town of Woolhorton, or the Laocoon from Rome, or the Milo
from Paris, do you think all these people would have scurried in such
haste to admire these beautiful works? Nothing of the sort; if you want
a crowd you must make a row. It is really wonderful how people do
thoroughly and unaffectedly enjoy a fearful disturbance; if the cannon
could be shot off quietly, and guns made no noise, battles would not be
half so popular to read about. The silent arrow is uninteresting, and if
you describe a mediæval scramble you must put in plenty of splintering
lances, resounding armour, shrieks and groans, and so render it lively.
"This is the patent age of new inventions," and some one might make a
profit by starting a fête announcing that a drum or a gong would be
provided for every individual, to be beaten in a grand universal chorus.
Amaryllis had no little difficulty in getting through the crowd till she
found her way behind the booths and slipped along the narrow passage
between them and the houses. There was an arched entrance,
archæologically interesting, by which she paused a moment, half inclined
to go up and inquire for her boots. The shoemaker who lived there had
had them since Christmas, and all that wanted doing was a patch on one
toe; they were always just going to be done, but never finished. She
read the inscription over his door, "Tiras Wise, Shoemaker; Established
1697." A different sort of shoemaker to your lively Northampton awls; a
man who has been in business two hundred years cannot be hurried. She
sighed, and passed on.
The step to Grandfather Iden's door consisted of one wide stone of
semi-circular shape, in which the feet of three generations of
customers had worn a deep grove. The venerable old gentleman, for he was
over ninety, was leaning on the hatch (or lower half of the door), in
the act of handing some of his cakes to two village girls who had called
for them. These innocent, hamlet girls, supposed to be so rurally
simple, had just been telling him how they never forgot his nice cakes,
but always came every fair day to buy some. For this they got sixpence
each, it being well known that the old gentleman was so delighted with
anybody who bought his cakes he generally gave them back their money,
and a few coppers besides.
He took Amaryllis by the arm as she stood on the step and pulled her
into the shop, asked her if her father were coming, then walked her down
by the oven-door, and made her stand up by a silver-mounted peel, to see
how tall she was. The peel is the long wooden rod, broad at one end,
with which loaves are placed in the baker's oven. Father Iden being
proud of his trade, in his old age had his favourite peel ornamented
with silver.
"Too fast--too fast," he said, shaking his head, and coughing; "you grow
too fast; there's the notch I cut last year, and now you're two inches
taller." He lowered the peel, and showed her where his thumb was--quite
two inches higher than the last year's mark.
"I want to be tall," said Amaryllis.
"I daresay--I daresay," said the old man, in the hasty manner of feeble
age, as he cut another notch to record her height. The handle of the
peel was notched all round, where he had measured his grandchildren;
there were so many marks it was not easy to see how he distinguished
them.
"Is your father coming?" he asked, when he had finished with the knife.
"I don't know." This was Jesuitically true--she did not _know_--she
could not be certain; but in her heart she was sure he would not come.
But she did not want to hear any hard words said about him.
"Has he sent anything? Have you brought anything for me? No. No.
Hum!--ha!"--fit of coughing--"Well, well--come in; dinner's late,
there's time to hear you read--you're fond of books, you read a great
deal at home,"--and so talking, half to himself and half to her, he led
the way into the parlour by the shop.
Bowed by more than ninety years, his back curved over forwards, and his
limbs curved in the opposite direction, so that the outline of his form
resembled a flattened capital S. For his chin hung over his chest, and
his knees never straightened themselves, but were always more or less
bent as he stood or walked. It was much the attitude of a strong man
heavily laden and unable to stand upright--such an attitude as big Jack
Duck in his great strength might take when carrying two sacks of wheat
at once. There was as heavy a load on Grandfather Iden's back, but Time
is invisible.
He wore a grey suit, as a true miller and baker should, and had worn the
same cut and colour for years and years. In the shop, too, he always
had a grey hat on, perhaps its original hue was white, but it got to
appear grey upon him; a large grey chimney-pot, many sizes too big for
his head apparently, for it looked as if for ever about to descend and
put out his face like an extinguisher. Though his boots were so
carefully polished, they quickly took a grey tint from the flour dust as
he pottered about the bins in the morning. The ends of his trousers, too
long for his antique shanks, folded and creased over his boots, and
almost hid his grey cloth under-gaiters.
A great knobbed old nose--but stay, I will not go further, it is not
right to paint too faithfully the features of the very aged, which are
repellent in spite of themselves; I mean, they cannot help their faces,
their sentiments and actions are another matter; therefore I will leave
Father Iden's face as a dim blot on the mirror; you look in it and it
reflects everywhere, except one spot.
Amaryllis followed him jauntily,--little did she care, reckless girl,
for the twenty thousand guineas in the iron box under his bed.
The cottage folk, who always know so much, had endless tales of Iden's
wealth; how years ago bushels upon bushels of pennies, done up in
five-shilling packets, had been literally carted like potatoes away from
the bakehouse to go to London; how ponies were laden with sacks of
silver groats, all paid over that furrowed counter for the golden flour,
dust more golden than the sands of ancient Pactolus.
Reckless Amaryllis cared not a pin for all the spade guineas in the iron
box.
The old man sat down by the fire without removing his hat, motioning to
her to shut the door, which she was loth to do, for the little room was
smothered with smoke. Troubled with asthma, he coughed incessantly, and
mopped his mouth with a vast silk handkerchief, but his dull blood
craved for warmth, and he got his knees close to the grate, and piled up
the coal till it smoked and smoked, and filled the close apartment with
a suffocating haze of carbon. To be asked into Father Iden's sanctuary
was an honour, but, like other honours, it had to be paid for.
Amaryllis gasped as she sat down, and tried to breathe as short as
possible, to avoid inhaling more than she could bear.
"Books," said her grandfather, pointing to the bookcases, which occupied
three sides of the room. "Books--you like books; look at them--go and
see."
To humour him, Amaryllis rose, and appeared to look carefully along the
shelves which she had scanned so many times before. They contained very
good books indeed, such books as were not to be found elsewhere
throughout the whole town of Woolhorton, and perhaps hardly in the
county, old and rare volumes of price, such as Sotheby, Wilkinson, and
Co. delight to offer to collectors, such as Bernard Quaritch, that giant
of the modern auction room, would have written magnificent cheques for.
Did you ever see the Giant Quaritch in the auction-room bidding for
books? It is one of the sights of London, let me tell you, to any one
who thinks or is alive to the present day. Most sights are reputations
merely--the pale reflection of things that were real once. This sight is
something of the living time, the day in which we live. Get an
_Athenæum_ in the season, examine the advertisements of book auctions,
and attend the next great sale of some famous library.
You have a recollection of the giant who sat by the highway and devoured
the pilgrims who passed? This giant sits in the middle of the ring and
devours the books set loose upon their travels after the repose of
centuries.
What prices to give! No one can withstand him. From Paris they send
agents with a million francs at their back; from Berlin and Vienna come
the eager snappers-up of much considered trifles, but in vain. They only
get what the Giant chooses to leave them.
Books that nobody ever heard of fetch £50, £60, £100, £200; wretched
little books never opened since they were printed; dull duodecimos on
the course of the river Wein; nondescript indescribable twaddling local
books in Italian, Spanish, queer French, written and printed in some
unknown foreign village; read them--you might as well try to amuse
yourself with a Chinese pamphlet! What earthly value they are of cannot
be discovered. They were composed by authors whose names are gone like
the sand washed by the Nile into the sea before Herodotus. They contain
no beautiful poetry, no elevated thought, no scientific discovery; they
are simply so much paper, printing, and binding, so many years old, and
it is for that age, printing, and binding that the money is paid.
I have read a good many books in my time--I would not give sixpence for
the whole lot.
They are not like a block-book--first efforts at printing; nor like the
first editions of great authors; there is not the slightest intrinsic
value in them whatever.
Yet some of them fetch prices which not long ago were thought tremendous
even for the Shakespeare folio.
Hundreds and hundreds of pounds are paid for them. Living and writing
authors of the present day are paid in old songs by comparison.
Still, this enormous value set on old books is one of the remarkable
signs of the day. If any one wishes to know what To-Day is, these
book-auctions are of the things he should go to see.
Such books as these lined Grandfather Iden's shelves; among them there
were a few that I call _real_ old books, an early translation or two, an
early Shakespeare, and once there had been a very valuable Boccaccio,
but this had gone into Lord Pamment's library, "Presented by James
Bartholomew Iden, Esq."
The old man often went to look at and admire his Boccaccio in my Lord's
library.
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