The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book
by William Makepeace Thackeray · English · Gutenberg #42890 · 1,485,597 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Release date: June 7, 2013 [eBook #42890]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH; AND THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK ***
Produced by Chris Curnow, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
material from the Google Print project.)
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
[Illustration]
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH
AND
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
BY
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
_With Illustrations by the Author_
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902
CONTENTS
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
PAGE
An Invasion of France 1
A Caution to Travellers 12
The Fêtes of July 27
On the French School of Painting 35
The Painter’s Bargain 51
Cartouche 64
On some French Fashionable Novels 76
A Gambler’s Death 95
Napoleon and his System 104
The Story of Mary Ancel 116
Beatrice Merger 133
Caricatures and Lithography in Paris 139
Little Poinsinet 162
The Devil’s Wager 175
Madame Sand and the New Apocalypse 185
The Case of Peytel 208
French Dramas and Melodramas 233
Meditations at Versailles 251
THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK
PAGE
CHAPTER I
A Summer Day in Dublin, or there and thereabouts 271
CHAPTER II
A Country-house in Kildare--Sketches of an Irish Family and Farm 291
CHAPTER III
From Carlow to Waterford 300
CHAPTER IV
From Waterford to Cork 310
CHAPTER V
Cork--The Agricultural Show--Father Mathew 319
CHAPTER VI
Cork--The Ursuline Convent 327
CHAPTER VII
Cork 334
CHAPTER VIII
From Cork to Bantry; with an Account of the City of Skibbereen 345
CHAPTER IX
Rainy Days at Glengariff 355
CHAPTER X
From Glengariff to Killarney 362
CHAPTER XI
Killarney--Stag-hunting on the Lake 370
CHAPTER XII
Killarney--The Races--Mucross 377
CHAPTER XIII
Tralee--Listowel--Tarbert 385
CHAPTER XIV
Limerick 391
CHAPTER XV
Galway--Kilroy’s Hotel--Galway Night’s Entertainments--First
Night: An Evening with Captain Freeny 403
CHAPTER XVI
More Rain in Galway--A Walk there--And the Second Galway
Night’s Entertainment 419
CHAPTER XVII
From Galway to Ballynahinch 442
CHAPTER XVIII
Roundstone Petty Sessions 452
CHAPTER XIX
Clifden to Westport 456
CHAPTER XX
Westport 462
CHAPTER XXI
The Pattern at Croagh-Patrick 466
CHAPTER XXII
From Westport to Ballinasloe 470
CHAPTER XXIII
Ballinasloe to Dublin 474
CHAPTER XXIV
Two Days in Wicklow 478
CHAPTER XXV
Country Meetings in Kildare--Meath--Drogheda 494
CHAPTER XXVI
Dundalk 506
CHAPTER XXVII
Newry, Armagh, Belfast--From Dundalk to Newry 519
CHAPTER XXVIII
Belfast to the Causeway 529
CHAPTER XXIX
The Giant’s Causeway--Coleraine--Portrush 538
CHAPTER XXX
Peg of Limavaddy 550
CHAPTER XXXI
Templemoyle--Derry 553
CHAPTER XXXII
Dublin at last 565
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
DEDICATORY LETTER
TO
M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC.
27 RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS
SIR,--It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise
virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the
admiration and example of his fellow-men.
Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a
small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you
were met by a statement from your creditor, that an immediate settlement
of your bill would be extremely inconvenient to him, your reply was,
‘Mon Dieu, sir, let not that annoy you; if you want money, as a
gentleman often does in a strange country, I have a thousand-franc note
at my house which is quite at your service.’
History or experience, sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions that
can be compared to yours,--an offer like this from a stranger and a
tailor seems to me so astonishing,--that you must pardon me for thus
making your virtue public, and acquainting the English nation with your
merit and your name. Let me add, sir, that you live on the first floor;
that your cloths and fit are excellent, and your charges moderate and
just; and, as a humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these
volumes at your feet.--Your obliged, faithful servant,
M. A. TITMARSH.
About half of the sketches in these volumes have already appeared in
print, in various periodical works. A part of the text of one tale, and
the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French originals; the
other stories, which are, in the main, true, have been written upon
facts and characters, that came within the Author’s observation during a
residence in Paris.
* * * * *
As the remaining papers relate to public events, which occurred during
the same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has ventured to
give his publication the title which it bears.
LONDON,
_July 1, 1840_.
[Illustration: EXPLANATION OF THE ALLEGORY
Number 1’s an ancient Carlist, Number 8 a Paris Artist,
Gloomily there stands between them, Number 2 a Bonapartist;
In the middle is King Louis-Philip standing at his ease,
Guarded by a loyal Grocer, and a Sergeant of Police;
4’s the people in a passion, 6 a Priest of pious mien,
5 a Gentleman of Fashion, copied from a Magazine.
]
THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
AN INVASION OF FRANCE
‘Cæsar venit in Galliam summâ diligentiâ.’
About twelve o’clock, just as the bell of the packet is tolling a
farewell to London Bridge, and warning off the blackguard-boys with the
newspapers, who have been shoving _Times_, _Herald_, _Penny Paul-Pry_,
_Penny Satirist_, _Flare-up_, and other abominations into your
face--just as the bell has tolled, and the Jews, strangers,
people-taking-leave-of-their-families, and blackguard-boys aforesaid are
making a rush for the narrow plank which conducts from the paddle-box of
the _Emerald_ steamboat unto the quay--you perceive, staggering down
Thames Street, those two hackney-coaches, for the arrival of which you
have been praying, trembling, hoping, despairing, swearing--sw----, I
beg your pardon, I believe the word is not used in polite company--and
transpiring, for the last half-hour. Yes, at last, the two coaches draw
near, and from thence an awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags,
nurserymaids, hat-boxes, band-boxes, bonnet-boxes, desks, cloaks, and an
affectionate wife, are discharged on the quay.
‘Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane,’ screams that worthy woman, who has
been for a fortnight employed in getting this tremendous body of troops
and baggage into marching order. ‘Hicks! Hicks! for Heaven’s sake mind
the babies!’--‘George--Edward, sir, if you go near that porter with the
trunk, he will tumble down and kill you, you naughty boy!--My love, _do_
take the cloaks and umbrellas, and give a hand to Fanny and Lucy; and I
wish you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear; they want fifteen
shillings, and count the packages, love--twenty-seven packages,--and
bring little Flo; where’s little Flo?--Flo! Flo!’--(Flo comes sneaking
in; she has been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier,
that sneaks off similarly, landward).
As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a
danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a
ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front
of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her
courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always,
I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill,
eager, and ill-humoured, before and during a great family move of this
nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother
leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary
nursemaids, are safe in the cabin; you have counted twenty-six of the
twenty-seven parcels, and have them on board; and that horrid man on the
paddle-box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW,
SIR!--says, _Now, sir_, no more.
I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy
among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any of
the movements of the vessel. When these private arrangements are made,
you find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, sweet
whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for
the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations of ship-masts,
and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the
ships, the barges salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious
and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, ‘Ease her, stop her!’
which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes out,
‘Ease her, stop her!’ in echo: the deck is crowded with groups of
figures, and the sun shines over all.
The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, ‘Lunch, ladies
and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?’
About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great, red, raw Cheshire
cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced,
and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in
individuals of their size and stature.
The decks have a strange look; the people on them, that is. Wives,
elderly stout husbands, nursemaids, and children predominate, of course,
in English steamboats. Such may be considered as the distinctive marks
of the English gentleman at three or four and forty: two or three of
such groups have pitched their camps on the deck. Then there are a
number of young men, of whom three or four have allowed their moustaches
to _begin_ to grow since last Friday; for they are going ‘on the
Continent,’ and they look, therefore, as if their upper lips were
smeared with snuff.
A _danseuse_ from the opera is on her way to Paris. Followed by her
_bonne_ and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the
real dancer fashion, and ogling all around. How happy the two young
Englishmen are, who can speak French, and make up to her: and how all
criticise her points and paces! Yonder is a group of young ladies, who
are going to Paris to learn how to be governesses: those two splendidly
dressed ladies are milliners from the Rue Richelieu, who have just
brought over, and disposed of, their cargo of summer fashions. Here sits
the Rev. Mr. Snodgrass with his pupils, whom he is conducting to his
establishment, near Boulogne, where, in addition to a classical and
mathematical education (washing included), the young gentlemen have the
benefit of learning French among _the French themselves_. Accordingly,
the young gentlemen are locked up in a great rickety house, two miles
from Boulogne, and never see a soul, except the French usher and the
cook.
Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill--(I never
shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little, dark, dirty,
six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their
pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly anointing
themselves with some charm against sea-sickness!)--a few Frenchmen are
there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to
the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that
the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the
bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and
wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could
fancy the Mounseers formidable at sea.
There are, of course, many Jews on board. Who ever travelled by
steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or sledge
without meeting some of the wandering race?
By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck
again, and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes tea;
and then there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses as a
preventive against what may happen; and about this time you pass the
Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups on deck
disappear, and your wife, giving you an alarmed look, descends, with her
little ones, to the ladies’ cabin, and you see the steward and his boys
issuing from their den under the paddle-box, with each a heap of round
tin vases, like those which are called, I believe, in America,
_expectoratoons_, only these are larger.
The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than
ever--ridge by ridge of long white rock passes away. ‘That’s Ramsgit,’
says the man at the helm; and, presently, ‘That there’s Deal--it’s
dreadful fallen off since the war;’ and ‘That’s Dover, round that there
pint, only you can’t see it;’ and, in the meantime, the sun has plumped
his hot face into the water, and the moon has shown hers as soon as ever
his back is turned, and Mrs. ---- (the wife in general) has brought up
her children and self from the horrid cabin, in which, she says, it is
impossible to breathe; and the poor little wretches are, by the
officious stewardess and smart steward (expectoratoonifer), accommodated
with a heap of blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which
they crawl, as best they may, and from the heaving heap of which are,
during the rest of the voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and sounds
of puking woe!
Dear, dear Maria! Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers and
brutal wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the insolence
of haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their demands at
least eighteenpence? Is this the woman at whose voice servants tremble;
at the sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and mayhap the parlour, is
in order? Look at her now, prostrate, prostrate--no strength has she to
speak, scarce power to push to her youngest one--her suffering,
struggling Rosa,--to push to her the--the instrumentoon!
In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the
passengers, who have their own woes (you yourself--for how can you help
_them_?--you are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is up with
you), are looking on indifferent--one man there is who has been watching
you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your helpless family the
tenderness that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and you have
been conversing with him, in the course of the morning, in
French--which, he says, you speak remarkably well, like a native, in
fact, and then in English (which, after all, you find, is more
convenient). What can express your gratitude to this gentleman for all
his goodness towards your family and yourself?--you talk to him, he has
served under the Emperor, and is, for all that, sensible, modest, and
well informed. He speaks, indeed, of his countrymen almost with
contempt, and readily admits the superiority of a Briton, on the seas
and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a
foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This
distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are
going?--where you stop?--if you have a great quantity of luggage on
board?--and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes
you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the
monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up.
Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you
find him now, perhaps (with characteristic ingratitude), something of a
bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the children and their
mamma. At last a Boulogne light comes in sight (you see it over the bows
of the vessel, when, having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks swiftly
down), Boulogne harbour is in sight, and the foreigner says:
The distinguished foreigner says, says he--‘Sare, eef you af no ‘otel, I
sall recommend you, milor, to ze ‘Otel Betfort, in ze Quay, sare, close
to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose. Good bets and fine garten,
sare; table-d’hôte, sare, à cinq-heures; breakfast, sare, in French or
English style;--I am the commissionaire, sare, and vill see to your
loggish.’
...Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking, French
humbug!--Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his
business; but at twelve o’clock at night, when the voyage is over, and
the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to go, with a wife
and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to stand, and longing for
bed, you find yourself, somehow, in the Hôtel Bedford (and you can’t be
better), and smiling chambermaids carry off your children to snug beds;
while smart waiters produce for your honour--a cold fowl, say, and a
salad, and a bottle of Bordeaux and seltzer-water.
* * * * *
The morning comes--I don’t know a pleasanter feeling than that of waking
with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you may have
made the voyage a dozen times) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a
very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red _percale_; the windows
are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are
little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet
all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be--the sun shines brighter
than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and
what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the
courtyard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is
going to Paris _en poste_, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier,
the postillion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls
out for ‘Quatre biftecks aux pommes, pour le trente-trois’--(O my
countrymen! I love your tastes and your ways!)--the chambermaid is
laughing, and says, ‘Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!’ (what can they be
about?)--a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and says,
‘Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo pah?’ He has
been ringing for half an hour--the last energetic appeal succeeds, and
shortly he is enabled to descend to the coffee-room, where, with three
hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes what
he calls his first _French_ breakfast.
It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the little
French fishermen’s children are beautiful, and the little French
soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge _pompons_ on their
caps, and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their
littleness, far more military and more intelligent than the heavy louts
one has seen swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a
crowd of bare-legged fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman
who is screaming ‘Fleuve du Tage,’ at an inn-window, to a harp, and
there are the little gamins mocking _him_. Lo! these seven young ladies,
with red hair and green veils, they are from neighbouring Albion, and
going to bathe. Here come three Englishmen, _habitués_ evidently of the
place,--dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress,
another has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of
guiltless spurs--all have as much hair on the face as nature or art can
supply, and all wear their hats very much on one side. Believe me, there
is on the face of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard
like one of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,--so
ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and
depraved.
But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?--Take things coolly. As the
poet has observed, ‘Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;’ with
such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don’t give us, cries the
patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else can
do that), but rather continue in that good-humoured, facetious,
descriptive style, with which your letter has commenced. Your remark,
sir, is perfectly just, and does honour to your head and excellent
heart.
There is little need to give a description of the good town of Boulogne;
which, haute and basse, with the new lighthouse and the new harbour, and
the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the convents, and the number of
English and French residents, and the pillar erected in honour of the
grand _Armée d’Angleterre_, so called because it _didn’t_ go to England,
have all been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned
Dr. Millingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it
is to hear the stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon’s time argue how that
audacious Corsican _would_ have marched to London, after swallowing
Nelson and all his gunboats, but for _cette malheureuse guerre
d’Espagne_ and _cette glorieuse campagne d’Autriche_, which the gold of
Pitt caused to be raised at the Emperors tail, in order to call him off
from the helpless country in his front. Some Frenchmen go farther still,
and vow that in Spain they were never beaten at all; indeed, if you read
in the _Biographie des Hommes du Jour_, article ‘Soult,’ you will fancy
that, with the exception of the disaster at Vittoria, the campaigns in
Spain and Portugal were a series of triumphs. Only, by looking at a map,
it is observable that Vimieiro is a mortal long way from Toulouse,
where, at the end of certain years of victories, we somehow find the
honest Marshal. And what then?--he went to Toulouse for the purpose of
beating the English there, to be sure;--a known fact, on which comment
would be superfluous. However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate;
let us break off further palaver, and away at once....
(During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay his
bill at the hôtel at Boulogne, to mount the diligence of Laffitte,
Caillard, and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much
jingling of harness-bells and screaming of postillions.)
* * * * *
The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to remove
the greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks during the
journey. She withdraws the ‘Madras’ of dubious hue which has bound her
head for the last five-and-twenty hours, and replaces it by the black
velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your nose, has hung from the
diligence roof since your departure from Boulogne. The old lady in the
opposite corner, who has been sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully of
anisette, arranges her little parcels in that immense basket of
abominations which all old women carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth
and eyes with her dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap
into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming headpiece,
covered with withered artificial flowers and crumpled tags of ribbon;
she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her
handkerchief before her mouth:--her eyes roll strangely about for an
instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has been
getting her teeth ready, which had lain in her basket among the bonbons,
pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake, lozenges, prayer-books,
peppermint-water, copper-money, and false hair--stowed away there during
the voyage. The Jewish gentleman, who has been so attentive to the
milliner during the journey, and is traveller and bagman by profession,
gathers together his various goods. The sallow-faced English lad, who
has been drunk ever since we left Boulogne yesterday, and is coming to
Paris to pursue the study of medicine, swears that he rejoices to leave
the cursed diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and d--d glad
that the d--d voyage is so nearly over. ‘Enfin!’ says your neighbour,
yawning, and inserting an elbow in the mouth of his right-and left-hand
companion, ‘nous voilà.’
NOUS VOILÀ!--We are at Paris! This must account for the removal of the
milliner’s curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady’s teeth.--Since
the last _relais_, the diligence has been travelling with extraordinary
speed. The postillion cracks his terrible whip, and screams shrilly. The
conductor blows incessantly on his horn, the bells of the harness, the
bumping and ringing of the wheels and chains, and the clatter of the
great hoofs of the heavy snorting Norman stallions, have wondrously
increased within this the last ten minutes; and the diligence, which has
been proceeding hitherto at the rate of a league an hour, now dashes
gallantly forward, as if it would traverse at least six miles in the
same space of time. Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at St.
Stephen’s--he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the end. He
gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; at the close,
again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; he cracketh the
whip of his satire; he shouts the shout of his patriotism; and, urging
his eloquence to its roughest canter, awakens the sleepers, and inspires
the weary, until men say, What a wondrous orator! What a capital coach!
We will ride henceforth in it, and in no other!
But, behold us at Paris! The diligence has reached a rude-looking gate,
or _grille_, flanked by two lodges; the French kings of old made their
entry by this gate; some of the hottest battles of the late revolution
were fought before it. At present, it is blocked by carts and peasants,
and a busy crowd of men, in green, examining the packages before they
enter, probing the straw with long needles. It is the Barrier of St.
Denis, and the green men are the customs’ men of the city of Paris. If
you are a countryman, who would introduce a cow into the metropolis, the
city demands twenty-four francs for such a privilege: if you have a
hundredweight of tallow-candles, you must, previously, disburse three
francs: if a drove of hogs, nine francs per whole hog: but upon these
subjects Mr. Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and other writers have already
enlightened the public. In the present instance, after a momentary
pause, one of the men in green mounts by the side of the conductor, and
the ponderous vehicle pursues its journey.
The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents a
strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where
everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were
painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and black sky.
Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and colour. Before
you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of _gutter_--not a
very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each
side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some
as high as the Tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is
their favourite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give
a strange air of rude gaiety to the looks. Milkwomen, with a little
crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling
the chief material of the Parisian _café-au-lait_. Gay wineshops,
painted red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, are
filled with workmen taking their morning’s draught. That gloomy-looking
prison on your right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for
Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now
occupy that mansion; they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread
of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of
all the other prisoners; they make hooks and eyes and phosphorus-boxes,
and they attend chapel every Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure
they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the Legislature to
superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor
creatures continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago,
and are at the Porte St. Denis itself.
There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass; it commemorates
some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in
ponderous allegories--nymphs and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with
fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch
Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion
revived, and overcame the man some years afterwards; but of this fact,
singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then,
_round_ the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect
of triumphal arches), you cross the Boulevard, which gives a glimpse of
trees and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the
Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and
the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and
the great vehicle clatters into the courtyard, where its journey is
destined to conclude.
If there was a noise before of screaming postillions and cracked horns,
it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are in
a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the father of diligences.
Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute--no light affairs,
like your English vehicles, but ponderous machines, containing fifteen
passengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on
the roof: others are loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming
or departing;--bustling porters and screaming commissionaires. These
latter seize you as you descend from your place,--twenty cards are
thrust into your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable
swiftness, shriek into your ear, ‘Dis way, sare; are you for ze Otel of
Rhin? Hôtel de l’Amirauté!--Hôtel Bristol, sare?--Monsieur, l’Hôtel de
Lille? Sacr-rrré nom de Dieu, laissez passer ce petit Monsieur! Ow mosh
loggish ave you, sare?’
[Illustration]
And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of
Titmarsh. If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love English
comfort, clean rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would have
plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you be?)
concerning wine; if, in this foreign country, you _will_ have your
English companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-and-water--do
not listen to any of these commissioner fellows, but with your best
English accent shout out boldly, MEURICE! and straightway a man will
step forward to conduct you to the Rue de Rivoli.
Here you find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for instance,
for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled eggs, or
grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a society which
will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the Universities;
young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters, with fat
father and mother; officers of dragoons, and lawyers’ clerks. The last
time we dined at Meurice’s we hobbed and nobbed with no less a person
than Mr. Moses, the celebrated bailiff of Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham
was on his right, and a clergyman’s lady, with a train of white-haired
girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken with the diamond rings of the
fascinating stranger!
It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, especially
if you spend your days reading the English papers at Galignani’s, as
many of our foreign tourists do.
But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose. If,--to continue on
the subject of hotel-choosing,--if you love quiet, heavy bills, and the
best _table-d’hôte_ in the city, go, O stranger! to the Hôtel des
Princes; it is close to the Boulevard, and convenient for Frascati’s.
The Hôtel Mirabeau possesses scarcely less attraction; but of this you
will find, in Mr. Bulwer’s _Autobiography of Pelham_, a faithful and
complete account. Lawson’s Hotel has likewise its merits, as also the
Hôtel de Lille, which may be described as a ‘second chop’ Meurice.
If you are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the pleasant
art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the Hôtel
Corneille, near the Odéon, or others of its species; there are many
where you can live royally (until you economise by going into lodgings)
on four francs a day; and where, if by any strange chance you are
desirous for a while to get rid of your countrymen, you will find that
they scarcely ever penetrate.
But, above all O, my countrymen! shun boarding-houses, especially if you
have ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the characters of
the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and their
mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad
dinners; and, secondly, bad company. If you play cards, you are very
likely playing with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a----
person with whom you had better have nothing to do.
* * * * *
NOTE (which ladies are requested not to read).--In one of these
establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a friend
of the writer lived. A lady, who had passed for some time as the wife of
one of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and name, her original
husband remaining in the house, and saluting her by her new title.
A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS
A million dangers and snares await the traveller, as soon as he issues
out of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted; and as each man
cannot do better than relate such events as have happened in the course
of his own experience, and may keep the unwary from the path of danger,
let us take this, the very earliest opportunity, of imparting to the
public a little of the wisdom which we painfully have acquired.
And first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be remarked,
that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of native and exotic
swindlers than are to be found in any other European nursery. What young
Englishman that visits it, but has not determined, in his heart, to have
a little share of the gaieties that go on--just for once, just to see
what they are like? How many, when the horrible gambling-dens were open,
did resist a sight of them?--nay, was not a young fellow rather
flattered by a dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went, fondly
pretending that he should see ‘French society,’ in the persons of
certain Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place?
My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although, perhaps, a
little weaker and simpler than his neighbours; and coming to Paris with
exactly the same notions that bring many others of the British youth to
that capital, events befell him there, last winter, which are strictly
true, and shall here be narrated, by way of warning to all.
Pog, it must be premised, is a City man, who travels in drugs for a
couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, drives
his own gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the metropolis,
a remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man. Pogson’s only fault
is too great an attachment to the fair:--‘The sex,’ as he says often,
‘will be his ruin;’ the fact is, that Pog never travels without a _Don
Juan_ under his driving-cushion, and is a pretty-looking young fellow
enough.
Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in that
city that his love of the sex had like to have cost him dear. He worked
his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the towns on his
route, rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares as his master
dealt in (‘the sweetest sample of castor-oil, smelt like a nosegay--went
off like wildfire--hogshead and a-half at Rochester, eight-and-twenty
gallons at Canterbury,’ and so on), and crossed to Calais, and thence
voyaged to Paris in the coupé of the diligence. He paid for two places,
too, although a single man, and the reason shall now be made known.
Dining at the _table-d’hôte_ at Quillacq’s--it is the best inn on the
continent of Europe--our little traveller had the happiness to be placed
next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the extreme pink of
the nobility. A large lady, in black satin, with eyes and hair as black
as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles, sable tippet, worked
pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings on each of her plump white
fingers. Her cheeks were as pink as the finest Chinese rouge could make
them: Pog knew the article; he travelled in it. Her lips were as red as
the ruby lip-salve: she used the very best, that was clear.
She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and
talking perpetually of _mes trente-deux ans_); and Pogson, the wicked
young dog! who professed not to care for young misses, saying they smelt
so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that the lady was one of
_his_ beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us about her, he said, ‘She’s
a slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg’lar good one; _one of my sort_!’ And
such was Pogson’s credit in all commercial rooms, that one of _his_ sort
was considered to pass all other sorts.
During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly polite and attentive to
the lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the way with
the best-bred English on their first arrival ‘on the Continent,’ all his
impressions regarding the sights and persons he had seen. Such remarks
having been made during half an hour’s ramble about the ramparts and
town, and in the course of a walk down to the custom-house, and a
confidential communication with the commissionaire, must be, doubtless,
very valuable to Frenchmen in their own country: and the lady listened
to Pogson’s opinions, not only with benevolent attention, but actually,
she said, with pleasure and delight. Mr. Pogson said that there was no
such thing as good meat in France, and that’s why they cooked their
victuals in this queer way: he had seen many soldiers parading about the
place, and expressed a true Englishman’s abhorrence of an armed force;
not that he feared such fellows as these--little whipper-snappers--our
men would eat them. Hereupon the lady admitted that our Guards were
angels, but that Monsieur must not be too hard upon the French; ‘her
father was a General of the Emperor.’
Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself, at the notion that he was
dining with a General’s daughter, and instantly ordered a bottle of
champagne to keep up his consequence.
‘Mrs. Bironn, ma’am,’ said he, for he had heard the waiter call her by
some such name, ‘if you _will_ accept a glass of champagne, ma’am,
you’ll do me, I’m sure, great _h_onour: they say it’s very good, and a
precious sight cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too--not that
I care for money. Mrs. Bironn, ma’am, your health, ma’am.’
The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine.
‘Har you any relation, ma’am, if I may make so bold; har you anyways
connected with the family of our immortal bard?’
‘Sir, I beg your pardon.’
‘Don’t mention it, ma’am: but Bi_ronn_ and _By_ron are hevidently the
same names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you
might be related to his lordship: his horigin, ma’am, was of French
extraction:’ and here Pogson began to repeat:
‘Hare thy heyes like thy mother’s, my fair child,
Hada! sole daughter of my ouse and art.’
‘Oh!’ said the lady, laughing, ‘you speak of _Lor_ Byron.’
‘Hauthor of _Don Juan_, _Child Arold_, and _Cain, a Mystery,’_ said
Pogson: ‘I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la Bironn, took
the liberty of hasking whether you were connected with his
lordship;--that’s hall;’ and my friend here grew dreadfully red, and
began twiddling his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining very
eagerly the contents of his plate.
‘Oh no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baroness; my husband was Baron,
and I am Baroness.’
‘What! ‘ave I the honour--I beg your pardon, ma’am--is your ladyship a
Baroness, and I not know it; pray excuse me for calling you ma’am.’
The Baroness smiled most graciously--with such a look as Juno cast upon
unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends upon
him--the Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black velvet
bag, drew from it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory card-case
extracted a glazed card, printed in gold; on it was engraved a coronet,
and under the coronet the words--
BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL,
NÉE DE MELVAL-NORVAL.
_Rue Taitbout_.
[Illustration: MR. POGSON’S TEMPTATION]
The grand Pitt diamond--the Queen’s own star of the garter--a sample of
otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more curiously,
or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness.
Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocket-book: and when
he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of the Baroness de
Florval-Delval, née de Melval-Norval, gazing upon him with friendly and
serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled through Pogson’s blood: he
felt himself to be the very happiest fellow ‘on the Continent.’
But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly and
elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of his
conversation: he was too much frightened at the presence he was in, and
contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep attention, and
ejaculations of ‘Yes, my lady,’ and ‘No, your ladyship,’ for some
minutes after the discovery had been made. Pogson piqued himself on his
breeding: ‘I hate the aristocracy,’ he said, ‘but that’s no reason why I
shouldn’t behave like a gentleman.’
A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the
ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in
Pogson’s champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room,
when the happy bagman had the delight of a _tête-à-tête_. The Baroness
did not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was comfortable,
and she had ordered none in her apartment. Might Pogson give her one
more glass of champagne, or would her ladyship prefer ‘something hot.’
Her ladyship gravely said, she never took _anything_ hot! ‘Some
champagne, then, a leetle drop?’ She would! she would! Oh, gods! how
Pogson’s hand shook as he filled and offered her the glass!
What took place during the rest of the evening had better be described
by Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to publish his
letter:--
‘QUILLACQ’S HOTEL (_pronounced_ KILLYAX), CALAIS.
‘DEAR TIT,--I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or,
rather, yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a
wonderful adventure that has just befallen me. A woman, in course;
that’s always the case with _me_, you know: but oh, Tit! if you
_could_ but see her! Of the first family in France, the
Florval-Melvals, beautiful as an angel, and no more caring for
money than I do for split peas.
‘I’ll tell you how it all occurred. Everybody in France, you know,
dines at the ordinary--it’s quite distangy to do so. There was only
three of us to-day, however,--the Baroness, me, and a gent, who
never spoke a word; and we didn’t want him to, neither: do you mark
that?
‘You know my way with the women; champagne’s the thing; make ‘em
drink, make ‘em talk;--make ‘em talk, make ‘em do anything. So I
orders a bottle, as if for myself; and, “Ma’am,” says I, “will you
take a glass of Sham--just one?” Take it she did--for you know it’s
quite distangy here: everybody dines at the _table-d’hôte_, and
everybody accepts everybody’s wine. Bob Irons, who travels in
linen, on our circuit, told me that he had made some slap-up
acquaintances among the genteelest people at Paris, nothing but by
offering them Sham.
‘Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses--the
old fellow goes--we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military
man, she said: is it not singular that so many people should?), and
by ten o’clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her
whole history, knew where she came from, and where she was going.
Leave me alone with ‘em; I can find out any woman’s history in half
an hour.
‘And where do you think she _is_ going? to Paris, to be sure: she
has her seat in what they call the coopy (though you’re not near so
cooped in it as in our coaches. I’ve been to the office and seen
one of ‘em). She has her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds
_three_; so what does Sam Pogson do?--he goes and takes the other
two. Ain’t I up to a thing or two? Oh no, not the least; but I
shall have her to myself the whole of the way.
‘We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches
you: please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind
the expense. And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you come
down to the coach, call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would--it
sounds well travelling, you know; and when she asked me if I was an
officer, I couldn’t say no. Adieu, then, my dear fellow, till
Monday, and vive le joy, as they say. The Baroness says I speak
French charmingly, she talks English as well as you or I.--Your
affectionate friend, S. POGSON.’
This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an
apartment for Mr. Pogson as beseemed a gentleman of his rank in the
world and the army. At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to the
diligence office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine which
contained him and his lovely Baroness.
Those who have much frequented the society of gentlemen of his
profession (and what more delightful?) must be aware that, when all the
rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty
hours’ coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and as spruce as when he
started; having within himself a thousand little conveniences for the
voyage, which common travellers neglect. Pogson had a little portable
toilet, of which he had not failed to take advantage, and with his
long, curling, flaxen hair, flowing under a sealskin cap, with a gold
tassel, with a blue-and-gold satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet
waistcoat, a light green cut-away coat, a pair of barred
brick-dust-coloured pantaloons, and a neat mackintosh, presented,
altogether, as elegant and _distingué_ an appearance as any one could
desire. He had put on a clean collar at breakfast, and a pair of white
kids as he entered the barrier, and looked, as he rushed into my arms,
more like a man stepping out of a bandbox than one descending from a
vehicle that has just performed one of the laziest, dullest, flattest,
stalest, dirtiest journeys in Europe.
To my surprise, there were _two_ ladies in the coach with my friend, and
not _one_, as I had expected. One of these, a stout female, carrying
sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman’s wraps, was evidently a
maid-servant; the other, in black, was Pogson’s fair one, evidently. I
could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sallow face,--of a dusky
nightcap flapping over the curl-papers,--but these were hidden by a lace
veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which the crowning birds-of-paradise
were evidently in a moulting state. She was encased in many shawls and
wrappers; she put, hesitatingly, a pretty little foot out of the
carriage--Pogson was by her side in an instant, and, gallantly putting
one of his white kids round her waist, aided this interesting creature
to descend. I saw, by her walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my
little Pogson was a lost man.
After some brief parley between them--in which it was charming to hear
how my friend Samuel _would_ speak what he called French to a lady who
could not understand one syllable of his jargon--the mutual
hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a
graceful French curtsey. ‘_Ad_you!’ said Samuel, and waved his lily
hand. ‘_Adyou-addimang._’
A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach
with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the imperial, here
passed us, and greeted me with a ‘How d’ye do?’ He had shouldered his
own little valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of
commissionaires, who would have fain spared him the trouble.
‘Do you know that chap?’ says Pogson; ‘surly fellow, ain’t he?’
‘The kindest man in existence,’ answered I; ‘all the world knows Major
British.’
‘He’s a Major, is he?--why, that’s the fellow that dined with us at
Killyax’s; it’s lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he
mightn’t have liked it, you know:’ and then Sam fell into a
reverie;--what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
‘Did you ever _see_ such a foot and ankle?’ said Sam, after sitting for
some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene; his hands in his
pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.
‘_Isn’t_ she a slap-up woman, eh, now?’ pursued he; and began
enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a
favourite animal.
‘You seem to have gone a pretty length already,’ said I, ‘by promising
to visit her to morrow.’
‘A good length?--I believe you. Leave _me_ alone for that.’
‘But I thought you were only to be two in the _coupé_, you wicked
rogue.’
‘Two in the _coupy_? Oh! ah! yes, you know--why, that is, I didn’t know
she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman
travelling without one!), and couldn’t, in course, refuse, when she
asked me to let the maid in.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Couldn’t, you know, as a man of _h_onour; but I made up for all that,’
said Pogson, winking slily, and putting his hand to his little bunch of
a nose, in a very knowing way.
‘You did, and how?’
‘Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and
my back’s half broke, I can tell you:’ and thus having depicted his
happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was
to lodge during his stay in Paris.
The next day, at five, we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and
described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as ‘slap-up.’ She had
received him quite like an old friend; treated him to _eau sucrée_, of
which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer: and actually asked
him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous
youth’s brow, and I inquired still further.
‘Why,’ said he, with a sigh, ‘I thought she was a widow; and, hang it!
who should come in but her husband the Baron; a big fellow, sir, with a
blue coat, a red ribbing, and _such_ a pair of mustachios!’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘he didn’t turn you out, I suppose?’
‘Oh no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said that he
respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,--said he had
fought in Spain against us,--and made me welcome.’
‘What could you want more?’
Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of
human nature had been there to read into this little bagman’s heart, it
would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered
soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young
scoundrel was concocting.
I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter of the
Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a fashionable fellow
as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, and a new city to see,
should be always wandering to my dull quarters; so that, although he did
not make his appearance for some time, he must not be accused of any
lukewarmness of friendship on that score.
He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once I had the good
fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as
pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in the Champs
Élysées. ‘That’s _another_ tiptop chap,’ said he, when we met, at
length. ‘What do you think of an Earl’s son, my boy? Honourable Tom
Ringwood, son of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you think of that, eh?’
I thought he was getting into very good society. Sam was a dashing
fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr.
Ringwood at the Baron’s, and they’d been to the play together; and the
honourable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being
well-to-do _in a certain quarter_; and he had had a game of billiards
with the Baron, at the _Estaminy_, ‘a very distangy place, where you
smoke,’ said Sam; ‘quite select, and frequented by the tiptop nobility;’
and they were as thick as peas in a shell; and they were to dine that
day at Ringwood’s, and sup, the next night, with the Baroness.
‘I think the chaps down the road will stare,’ said Sam, ‘when they hear
how I’ve been coming it.’ And stare, no doubt, they would; for it is
certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. Pogson’s
advantages.
The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping together,
and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam intended to
bestow on his relations when he returned. Seven needle-books, for his
sisters; a gilt buckle, for his mamma; a handsome French cashmere shawl
and bonnet, for his aunt (the old lady keeps an inn in the Borough, and
has plenty of money, and no heirs); and a toothpick case, for his
father. Sam is a good fellow to all his relations, and as for his aunt,
he adores her. Well, we were to go and make these purchases, and I
arrived punctually at my time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very
pale and dismal.
I saw how it had been.--‘A little too much of Mr. Ringwood’s claret, I
suppose?’
He only gave a sickly stare.
‘Where does the Honourable Tom live?’ says I.
‘_Honourable!_’ says Sam, with a hollow horrid laugh; ‘I tell you, Dick,
he’s no more Honourable than you are.’
‘What, an impostor?’
‘No, no; not that. He is a real Honourable, only--’
‘Oh, ho! I smell a rat--a little jealous, eh?’
‘Jealousy be hanged! I tell you he’s a thief; and the Baron’s a thief;
and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better. Eight-and-thirty pounds
he won of me before supper; and made me drunk, and sent me home:--is
_that_ honourable? How can _I_ afford to lose forty pounds? It’s took me
two years to save it up:--if my old aunt gets wind of it, she’ll cut me
off with a shilling: hang me!’--and here Sam, in an agony, tore his fair
hair.
While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was rung,
which signal being answered by a surly ‘Come in,’ a tall, very
fashionable gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to his chin,
entered the room. ‘Pogson, my buck, how goes it?’ said he familiarly,
and gave a stare at me: I was making for my hat.
‘Don’t go,’ said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again.
The Honourable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha’d: and, at last, said he
wished to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible.
‘There’s no secrets betwixt me and my friend,’ cried Sam.
Mr. Ringwood paused a little:--’ An awkward business that of last
night,’ at length exclaimed he.
‘I believe it _was_ an awkward business,’ said Sam drily.
‘I really am very sorry for your losses.’
‘Thank you: and so am I, _I_ can tell you,’ said Sam.
‘You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink, you
_will_ play high: by Gad, you led _us_ in, and not we you.’
‘I dare say,’ answered Sam, with something of peevishness; ‘losses is
losses: there’s no use talking about ‘em when they’re over and paid.’
‘And paid?’ here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ringwood; ‘why, my dear fel----
what the deuce--has Florval been with you?’
‘D----Florval!’ growled Tom, ‘I’ve never set eyes on his face since last
night; and never wish to see him again.’
‘Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the bills
which you gave him last night?’
‘Bills! what do you mean?’
‘I mean, sir, these bills,’ said the Honourable Tom, producing two out
of his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion. ‘“I promise to pay,
on demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four hundred pounds.
October 20, 1838.” “Ten days after date I promise to pay the Baron de et
cætera, et cætera, one hundred and ninety-eight pounds. Samuel Pogson.”
You didn’t say what regiment you were in.’
‘WHAT!’ shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, starting up, and looking
preternaturally pale and hideous.
‘D---- it, sir, you don’t affect ignorance: you don’t pretend not to
remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms: money
_lent_ to you, by Madame de Melval, at your own request, and lost to her
husband? You don’t suppose, sir, that I shall be such an infernal idiot
as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up with a mean subterfuge
of this sort? Will you, or will you not, pay the money, sir?’
‘I will not,’ said Sam stoutly; ‘it’s a d----d swin----’
Here Mr. Ringwood sprang up, clenching his riding-whip, and looking so
fierce, that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room. ‘Utter
that word again, and, by Heaven, I’ll murder you!’ shouted Mr. Ringwood,
and looked as if he would, too: ‘once more, will you, or will you not,
pay this money?’
‘I can’t,’ said Sam faintly.
‘I’ll call again, Captain Pogson,’ said Mr. Ringwood, ‘I’ll call again
in one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you must meet my
friend, the Baron de Melval, or I’ll post you for a swindler and a
coward.’ With this he went out; the door thundered to after him, and
when the clink of his steps departing had subsided, I was enabled to
look round at Pog. The poor little man had his elbows on the marble
table, his head between his hands, and looked as one has seen gentlemen
look over a steam-vessel off Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably
fresh: at last he fairly burst out crying.
‘If Mrs. Pogson heard of this,’ said I, ‘what would become of the Three
Tuns?’ (for I wished to give him a lesson). ‘If your ma, who took you
every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was paying attention
to married women;--if Drench, Glauber, and Co., your employers, were to
know that their confidential agent was a gambler, and unfit to be
trusted with their money, how long do you think your connection would
last with them, and who would afterwards employ you?’
To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa
whimpering so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have
relented towards him, and would have been touched by the little wretch’s
tears. Everything, too, must be pleaded in excuse for this unfortunate
bagman: who, if he wished to pass for a Captain, had only done so
because he had an intense respect and longing for rank: if he had made
love to the Baroness, had only done so because he was given to
understand by Lord Byron’s _Don Juan_ that making love was a very
correct, natty thing: and if he had gambled, had only been induced to do
so by the bright eyes and example of the Baron and the Baroness. O ye
Barons and Baronesses of England! if ye knew what a number of small
commoners are daily occupied in studying your lives, and imitating your
aristocratic ways, how careful would ye be of your morals, manners, and
conversation!
My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson, and
revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to be
practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and determined to
apply for counsel to no less a person than Major British.
A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major
British; and Heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when
I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Pog’s. The Major is on half-pay,
and occupies a modest apartment, _au quatrième_, in the very hotel which
Pogson had patronised at my suggestion; indeed, I had chosen it from
Major British’s own peculiar recommendation.
There is no better guide to follow than such a character as the honest
Major, of whom there are many likenesses now scattered over the
continent of Europe: men who love to live well, and are forced to live
cheaply, and who find the English, abroad, a thousand times easier,
merrier, and more hospitable than the same persons at home. I, for my
part, never landed on Calais pier without feeling that a load of sorrows
was left on the other side of the water; and have always fancied that
black care stepped on board the steamer, along with the custom-house
officers, at Gravesend, and accompanied one to yonder black louring
towers of London--so busy, so dismal, and so vast.
British would have cut any foreigner’s throat who ventured to say so
much, but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this nature; for
he passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad, with headquarters
at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and only went to England for
the month’s shooting, on the grounds of his old Colonel, now an old
Lord, of whose acquaintance the Major was passably inclined to boast.
He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every one of
the English nobility; gave himself certain little airs of a man of
fashion, that were by no means disagreeable; and was, indeed, kindly
regarded by such English aristocracy as he met in his little annual
tours among the German courts, in Italy, or in Paris, where he never
missed an ambassador’s night, and retailed to us, who didn’t go, but
were delighted to know all that had taken place, accurate accounts of
the dishes, the dresses, and the scandal which had there fallen under
his observation.
He is, however, one of the most useful persons in society that can
possibly be; for besides being incorrigibly duelsome on his own account,
he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor in the world,
and has carried more friends through scrapes and prevented more deaths
than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single
step in the army, as is well known. In ‘14 he killed a celebrated French
fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he does,
a great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family
people, he is loved by them both, and has as welcome a place made for
him at a roaring bachelor’s supper at the Café Anglais as at a staid
dowager’s dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honoré. Such pleasant old
boys are very profitable aquaintances, let me tell you; and lucky is the
young man who has one or two such friends in his list.
Hurrying on Pogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to the
Major’s _quatrième_, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in. The
little gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in painting,
elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily
promenaded the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had
been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his hands; no man
stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely brushed, with a
stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red face, with a blue
frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy little person, as Major
British, about whom we have written these two pages. He stared rather
hardly at my companion, but gave me a kind shake of the hand, and we
proceeded at once to business. ‘Major British,’ said I, ‘we want your
advice in regard to an unpleasant affair which has just occurred to my
friend Pogson.’
‘Pogson, take a chair.’
‘You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other day,
encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman.’
British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help
feeling pleased.
‘Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was she
with him; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him to her
house, where he has been constantly, and has been received with much
kindness.’
‘I see,’ says British.
‘Her husband the Baron ----’
‘_Now_ it’s coming,’ said the Major, with a grin: ‘her husband is
jealous, I suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my dear
sir, you can’t refuse--can’t refuse.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Pogson, wagging his head passionately.
‘Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as his
lady was, and has introduced him to some very _distingués_ friends of
his own set. Last night one of the Baron’s friends gave a party in
honour of my friend Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards
_before_ he was made drunk, and Heaven knows how much after.’
‘Not a shilling, by sacred Heaven!--not a shilling!’ yelled out Pogson.
‘After the supper I ad such an eadach, I couldn’t do anything but fall
asleep on the sofa.’
‘You “ad such an eadach,” sir,’ said British sternly, who piques himself
on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney.
‘Such a _h_-eadache, sir,’ replied Pogson, with much meekness.
‘The unfortunate man is brought home at two o’clock, as tipsy as
possible, dragged upstairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking, receives
a visit from his entertainer of the night before--a Lord’s son, Major, a
tiptop fellow,--who brings a couple of bills that my friend Pogson is
said to have signed.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, the thing’s quite simple,--he must pay them.’
‘I can’t pay them.’
‘He can’t pay them,’ said we both in a breath: ‘Pogson is a commercial
traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he to pay
five hundred pounds?’
‘A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble? Gentlemen gamble,
sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements of the gentry.
What business had you with Barons and Lords’ sons, sir?--serve you
right, sir.’
‘Sir,’ says Pogson, with some dignity, ‘merit, and not birth, is the
criterion of a man; I despise an hereditary aristocracy, and admire only
Nature’s gentlemen. For my part, I think that a British merch--’
‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ bounced out the Major, ‘and don’t lecture me;
don’t come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature’s
gentlemen--Nature’s tomfools, sir! Did Nature open a cash account for
you at a banker’s, sir! Did Nature give you an education, sir? What do
you mean by competing with people to whom Nature has given all these
things? Stick to your bags, Mr. Pogson, and your bagmen, and leave
Barons and their like to their own ways.’
‘Yes, but, Major,’ here cried that faithful friend, who has always stood
by Pogson; ‘they won’t leave him alone.’
‘The Honourable gent says I must fight if I don’t pay,’ whimpered Sam.
‘What! fight _you_? Do you mean that the Honourable gent, as you call
him, will go out with a bagman?’
‘He doesn’t know I’m a--I’m a commercial man,’ blushingly said Sam: ‘he
fancies I’m a military gent.’
The Major’s gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion; and he
laughed outrageously. ‘Why, the fact is, sir,’ said I, ‘that my friend
Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being
complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly, he
was in the army. He only assumed the rank in order to dazzle her weak
imagination, never fancying that there was a husband, and a circle of
friends, with whom he was afterwards to make an acquaintance; and then,
you know, it was too late to withdraw.’
‘A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pogson, by making love to
other men’s wives, and calling yourself names,’ said the Major, who was
restored to good-humour. ‘And, pray, who is the _h_onourable gent?’
‘The Earl of Cinqbars’ son,’ says Pogson, ‘the Honourable Tom Ringwood.’
‘I thought it was some such character: and the Baron is the Baron de
Florval-Melval?’
‘The very same.’
‘And his wife a black-haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle; calls
herself Athenais; and is always talking about her _trente-deux ans_?
Why, sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard when we were here
in ‘15. She’s no more his wife than I am. Melval’s name is Chicot. The
woman is always travelling between London and Paris: I saw she was
hooking you at Calais; she has hooked ten men, in the course of the last
two years, in this very way. She lent you money, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’--‘And she leans on your shoulder, and whispers, “Play half for
me,” and somebody wins it, and the poor thing is as sorry as you are,
and her husband storms and rages, and insists on double stakes; and she
leans over your shoulder again, and tells every card in your hand to
your adversary; and that’s the way it’s done, Mr. Pogson.’
‘I’ve been _ad_, I see I ave,’ said Pogson very humbly.
‘Well, sir,’ said the Major, ‘in consideration, not of you, sir--for,
give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful little
scoundrel--in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with whom, I am
proud to say, I am intimate’ (the Major dearly loved a lord, and was, by
his own showing, acquainted with half the peerage), ‘I will aid you in
this affair. Your cursed vanity, sir, and want of principle, has set
you, in the first place, intriguing with other men’s wives; and if you
had been shot for your pains, a bullet would have only served you right,
sir. You must go about as an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay
richly for your swindling, sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as I
think your punishment has been already pretty severe, I shall do my
best, out of regard for my friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter
going any further; and I recommend you to leave Paris without delay. Now
let me wish you a good morning.’ Wherewith British made a majestic bow,
and began giving the last touch to his varnished boots.
We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chapfallen; and I meditating
on the wisdom of the half-pay philosopher, and wondering what means he
would employ to rescue Pogson from his fate.
What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ringwood did _not_ make his
appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for ‘Mr. Pogson,
commercial traveller,’ etc. etc. It was blank inside, but contained his
two bills. Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for Vienna; nor
did the Major explain the circumstances which caused his departure; but
he muttered something about ‘knew some of his old tricks,’ threatened
police, and made him disgorge directly.
Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often thought it
was very green of him to give up the bills to the Major, who, certainly,
would never have pressed the matter before the police, out of respect
for his friend Lord Cinqbars.
THE FÊTES OF JULY
IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘BUNGAY BEACON’
PARIS, _July_ 30th, 1839.
We have arrived here just in time for the fêtes of July. You have read,
no doubt, of that glorious revolution which took place here nine years
ago, and which is now commemorated annually, in a pretty facetious
manner, by gun-firing, student-processions, pole-climbing-for-silver-spoons,
gold-watches, and legs-of-mutton, monarchical orations, and what not,
and sanctioned, moreover, by Chamber of Deputies, with a grant of a
couple of hundred thousand francs to defray the expenses of all the
crackers, gun-firings, and legs-of-mutton aforesaid. There is a new
fountain in the Place Louis Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis
Seize, or else the Place de la Révolution, or else the Place de la
Concorde (who can say why?)--which, I am told, is to run bad wine
during certain hours to-morrow, and there _would_ have been a review
of the National Guards and the Line--only, since the Fieschi business,
reviews are no joke, and so this latter part of the festivity has been
discontinued.
Do you not laugh--O Pharos of Bungay--at the continuance of a humbug
such as this? at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug? The King of the
Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the most absolute Sovereign
in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of this fair kingdom of France
a single man who cares sixpence about him, or his dynasty, except,
mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Château, who eat his dinners, and put
their hands in his purse. The feeling of loyalty is as dead as old
Charles the Tenth; the Chambers have been laughed at, the country has
been laughed at, all the successive ministries have been laughed at (and
you know who is the wag that has amused himself with them all); and,
behold, here come three days at the end of July, and cannons think it
necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz, fountains
to run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy
_mâts-de-cocagne_ in token of gratitude and _réjouissance publique_!--My
dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact humbugs,
these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other nations
of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses,
opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible to preserve a
grave countenance; instead of having Carlyle to write a _History of the
French Revolution_, I often think it should be handed over to Dickens or
Theodore Hook, and oh! where is the Rabelais to be the faithful
historian of the last phase of the Revolution--the last glorious nine
years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious three days?
I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have
seen, with my neighbours, all the gingerbread stalls down the Champs
Élysées, and some of the ‘catafalques’ erected to the memory of the
heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected personally
with the victims, and not having in the least profited by their deaths,
come and weep; but the grief shown on the first day is quite as absurd
and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one
which admits of much wholesome reflection and food for mirth; and,
besides, is so richly treated by the French themselves, that it would
be a sin and a shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the honour of
translating, for your edification, an account of the first day’s
proceedings--it is mighty amusing, to my thinking.
CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY
‘To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honour of the victims of
July, were held in the various edifices consecrated to public worship.
‘These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially that of
the Petits-Pères), were uniformly hung with black on the outside; the
hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July 1830--surrounded by
a wreath of oak-leaves.
‘In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought
proper to dress _little catafalques_, as for burials of the third and
fourth class. Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number of the
National Guard.
‘The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and a
great concourse of people attended. The service was performed with the
greatest pomp.
‘In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full attendance:
_apologetical discourses_ on the Revolution of July were pronounced by
the pastors.
‘The absence of M. de Quélen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many members
of the superior clergy, was remarked at Nôtre Dame.
‘The civil authorities attended service in the several districts.
‘The poles, ornamented with tricoloured flags, which formerly were
placed on Nôtre Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed. The flags on
the Pont Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high, and
covered with crape.’
Et cætera, et cætera, et cætera.
‘The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and adorned
with tricoloured flags. In front and in the middle was erected an
expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and surmounted by a funeral
vase.
‘_These tombs were guarded by the_ MUNICIPAL GUARD, THE TROOPS OF THE
LINE, THE SERGENS DE VILLE (_town patrol_), AND A BRIGADE OF AGENTS OF
POLICE IN PLAIN CLOTHES, under the orders of peace-officer Vassal.
‘Between eleven and twelve o’clock, some young men, to the number of 400
or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a
tricoloured banner with an inscription, “To THE MANES OF JULY:” ranging
themselves in order, they marched five abreast to the Marché des
Innocens. On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of the Halle aux Draps,
where the post had been doubled, issued out without arms, and the
town-sergeants placed themselves before the market to prevent the entry
of the procession. The young men passed in perfect order, and without
saying a word--only lifting their hats as they defiled before the tombs.
When they arrived at the Louvre they found the gates shut and the Garden
evacuated. The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion.
‘After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to the
public.’
* * * * *
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
There’s nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning of
this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous,
undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of
these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of
professed wags;--do not the men write their own tale with an admirable
Sancho-like gravity and _naïveté_, which one could not desire improved?
How good is that touch of sly indignation about the _little
catafalques_! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the
Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout
Jews! and how touching the ‘_apologetical discourses_ on the
Revolution,’ delivered by the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound
affliction of the Gardes Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the
police-agents in plain clothes, and the troops with fixed bayonets,
sobbing round the ‘expiatory monuments of a pyramidical shape,
surmounted by funeral vases,’ and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into
the public who might wish to indulge in the same woe! O ‘Manes of July!’
(the phrase is pretty and grammatical), why did you with sharp bullets
break those Louvre windows? Why did you bayonet redcoated Swiss behind
that fair white facade, and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, prospective
guillotine, burst yonder bronze gates, rush through that peaceful
picture-gallery, and hurl royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of
Kings, head-over-heels out of yonder Tuileries windows?
It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:--there is, however,
_one_ benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press or
person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks of
them?)--_one_ benefit they have gained, or nearly--_abolition de la
peine-de-mort_, namely _pour délit politique_--no more wicked
guillotining for revolutions. A Frenchman must have his revolution--it
is his nature to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to
fire at troops of the line--it is a sin to balk it. Did not the King
send off Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four? Did not the
jury, before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolutionary Colonel
Vaudrey not guilty?--One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent
courage and energy in half a dozen _émeutes_, he will get promotion and
a premium.
I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject) want to talk more
nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes
over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers,
and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched,
foolhardy Barbès, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which
has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart’s speech:
‘When the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate
that awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:--_I_ am the Indian!’
‘Well----’
‘M. Victor Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court
of Peers, condemning Barbès to death, was published. The great poet
composed the following verses:
‘“Par votre ange envolé, ainsi qu’une colombe,
Par le royal enfant, doux et frêle roseau,
Grâce, encore une fois! Grâce, au nom de la tombe!
Grâce, au nom du berçeau!”[1]
‘M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which
he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the
penny-post.
‘That truly is a noble voice which can at all hours thus speak to the
throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the gods--it is
better named now--it is the language of the kings.
‘But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the poet.
The pen of his Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbès, while that
of the poet was still writing.
‘Louis Philippe replied to the author of _Ruy Blas_ most graciously,
that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses
had only confirmed his previous disposition to mercy.’
Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
monstrous palpable folly? In any country; save this, would a poet who
chose to write four crack-brained verses comparing an angel to a dove,
and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in
the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and the
little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a
‘gracious answer’ to his nonsense? Would he have ever despatched the
nonsense? and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of
‘the noble voice that could thus speak to the throne,’ and the noble
throne that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice? You get
nothing done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage-tricks are played,
and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or
solemn; in the face of death, as by Barbès with his hideous Indian
metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his
twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King’s absurd reply to
this absurd demand! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a
reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why the
law should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower world,
our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or should move on,
majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions--like a God: but, in
the very midst of the path across which it is to pass, lo! M. Victor
Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says, O divine Justice! I will trouble
you to listen to the following trifling effusion of mine:
‘_Par votre ange envolé, ainsi qu’une_,’ etc.
Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo’s verses,
and, with true French politeness, says, ‘Mon cher Monsieur, these verses
are charming, _ravissants, délicieux_, and, coming from such a
_célébrité littéraire_ as yourself, shall meet with every possible
attention--in fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous
opinions, this charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher
Monsieur Hugo, au revoir!’--and they part:--Justice taking off his hat
and bowing, and the Author of _Ruy Blas_ quite convinced that he has
been treating with him _d’égal à égal_. I can hardly bring my mind to
fancy that anything is serious in France--it seems to be all rant,
tinsel, and stage-play. Sham liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham
justice,--_où, diable, donc la vérité va-t-elle se nicher_?
* * * * *
The last rocket of the fête of July has just mounted, exploded, made a
portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue-lights, and then
(like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth gun on the
Invalid Terrace has uttered its last roar--and a great comfort it is
for eyes and ears that the festival is over. We shall be able to go
about our every-day business again, and not be hustled by the gendarmes
or the crowd.
The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and
beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to
the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where
their manners and innocent gaiety show a very pleasing contrast to the
coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our own
country--at Epsom racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The
greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers
from a place in the neighbourhood of Paris, who, as soon as the
fireworks were over, formed themselves into a line, three or four
abreast, and so marched singing home. As for the fireworks, squibs and
crackers are very hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of
them: to me, the prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the
number of children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the
parents towards these little creatures. It does one good to see honest,
heavy _épiciers_, fathers of families, playing with them in the
Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders,
through many long hours, in order that the little ones, too, may have
their share of the fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does not
take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part,
to take care of the children at home.
The fête, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only
a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during
the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs
Élysées for full half a mile have been consigned to their dens and
darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the
glorious 29th of July?--I think not; the Government which vowed that
there should be no more persecutions of the press, was, on that very
29th, seizing a legitimist paper, for some real or fancied offence
against it: it had seized, and was seizing daily, numbers of persons
merely suspected of being disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is
understood, when some of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to
trial, were found guilty and sentenced to _one_ day’s imprisonment,
after _thirty-six days’ detention on suspicion_). I think the Government
which follows such a system cannot be very anxious about any further
revolutionary fêtes, and that the Chamber may reasonably refuse to vote
more money for them. Why should men be so mighty proud of having, on a
certain day, cut a certain numbre of their fellow-countrymen’s throats?
The Guards and the Line employed, this time nine years, did no more than
those who cannonaded the starving Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless
inhabitants of the Rue Transnounain; they did but fulfil the soldier’s
honourable duty,--his superiors bid him kill and he killeth; perhaps,
had he gone to his work with a little more heart, the result would have
been different, and then--would the conquering party have been justified
in annually rejoicing over the conquered? Would we have thought Charles
X. justified in causing fireworks to be blazed, and concerts to be sung,
and speeches to be spouted, in commemoration of his victory over his
slaughtered countrymen? I wish, for my part, they would allow the people
to go about their business as on the other 362 days of the year, and
leave the Champs Élysées free for the omnibuses to run, and the
Tuileries in quiet, so that the nursemaids might come as usual, and the
newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece.
Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these latter,
and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication is
not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver
disquisition. The July fêtes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable
part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them, one by
one; to read Tweedledum’s praise, and Tweedledee’s indignation--to read,
in the _Débats_, how the King was received with shouts and loyal
vivats--in the _National_, how not a tongue was wagged in his praise,
but, on the instant of his departure, how the people called for the
‘Marseillaise’ and applauded _that_. But best say no more about the
fête. The legitimists were always indignant at it. The high Philippist
party sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it; it seems a
joke against _them_. Why continue it! If there be anything sacred in the
name and idea of royalty, why renew this fête? It only shows how a
rightful monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous usurper
stole his precious diadem. If there be anything noble in the memory of a
day, when citizens, unused to war, rose against practised veterans, and,
armed with the strength of their cause, overthrew them, why speak of it
now? or renew the bitter recollections of the bootless struggle and
victory? O Lafayette! O hero of two worlds! O accomplished Cromwell
Grandison! you have to answer for more than any mortal man who has
played a part in history: two republics and one monarchy does the world
owe to you; and especially grateful should your country be to you. Did
you not, in ‘90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and, in
‘30, prepare the way for----
* * * * *
[The editor of the _Bungay Beacon_ would insert no more of this letter,
which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public.]
ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING
WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL
DISQUISITIONS
IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP OF LONDON
The three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the
École des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of French art, since
its commencement almost, and give the stranger a pretty fair opportunity
to study and appreciate the school. The French list of painters contains
some very good names--no very great ones, except Poussin (unless the
admirers of Claude choose to rank him among great painters),--and I
think the school was never in so flourishing a condition as it is at the
present day. They say there are three thousand artists in this town
alone: of these a handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but well
understand their business; draw the figure accurately; sketch with
cleverness; and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs’ shops, in a
decent manner.
To account for a superiority over England--which, I think, as regards
art, is incontestable--it must be remembered that the painter’s trade,
in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood,
and, generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen
excellent schools in which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a
practised master, learn the apprenticeship of his art at an expense of
about ten pounds a year. In England there is no school except the
Academy, unless the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and
place himself under the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young
man, for his ten pounds, has all sorts of accessory instruction, models,
etc.; and has, further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study
his profession which are not to be found in England,--the streets are
filled with picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures walking
about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms are covered
with pictures; Nature herself is inclined more kindly to him, for the
sky is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines
for the greater part of the year. Add to this incitements more selfish,
but quite as powerful: a French artist is paid very handsomely; for five
hundred a year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society
rather above his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and
hostesses in places where titles are laughed at, and a baron is thought
of no more account than a banker’s clerk.
The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, dirtiest
existence possible. He comes to Paris, probably at sixteen, from his
province; his parents settle forty pounds a year on him, and pay his
master; he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter
of Nôtre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters); he
arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labours among a
score of companions as merry and poor as himself. Each gentleman has his
favourite tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a
cloud of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of
choruses, of which no one can form an idea that has not been present at
such an assembly.
[Illustration]
You see here every variety of _coiffure_ that has ever been known. Some
young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their shoulders--you may
smell the tobacco with which they are scented across the street;--some
have straight locks, black, oily, and redundant; some have _toupées_ in
the famous Louis-Philippe fashion; some are cropped close; some have
adopted the present mode--which he who would follow must, in order to do
so, part his hair in the middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with
gum, and iron it flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears, you
take the tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the
whole head--such curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat,
and in her Britannic Majesty’s coachman’s state wig.
This is the last fashion. As for the beards, there is no end to them;
all my friends the artists have beards who can raise them; and Nature,
though she has rather stinted the bodies and limbs of the French nation,
has been very liberal to them of hair, as you may see by the following
specimen. Fancy these heads and beards under all sorts of caps--Chinese
caps, Mandarin caps, Greek skull-caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or
Kuzzilbash caps, Middle Age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps
of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all
the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen
can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.
In this company and costume the French student of art passes his days
and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what theatres, at
what _guinguettes_, in company with what seducing little milliner, there
is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his coat to go to a
carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse for six
weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment.
These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport
themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German _bursch_
towards the _philister_, or as the military man, during the Empire, did
to the _pékin_:--from the height of their poverty they look down upon
him with the greatest imaginable scorn--a scorn, I think, by which the
citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the arts is intense. The case
is very different in England, where a grocer’s daughter would think she
made a _mésalliance_ by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in
spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry
composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose
positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As for instance,
my friend, the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable pedigree, a
paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in Warwickshire, in
company with several squires and parsons of that enlightened county.
Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily agreeable at dinner,
and delighted all present with his learning and wit. ‘Who is that
monstrous pleasant fellow?’ said one of the squires. ’ Don’t you know?’
replied another. ‘It’s Asterisk, the author of So-and-so, and a famous
contributor to such-and-such a magazine.’ ‘Good heavens!’ said the
squire, quite horrified; ‘a literary man! I thought he had been a
gentleman!’
Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the grand
hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the great _de par
le monde_, as Brantôme says, and entertained them in a proper
ministerial magnificence. The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was
at one of his ministerial parties; and went, a fortnight afterwards, as
in duty bound, to pay her respects to M. Guizot. But it happened, in
this fortnight, that M. Guizot was Minister no longer; but gave up his
portfolio, and his grand hotel, to retire into private life, and to
occupy his humble apartments in the house which he possesses, and of
which he lets the greater portion. A friend of mine was present at one
of the ex-Minister’s _soirées_, where the Duchess of Dash made her
appearance. He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite
astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder. Two or
three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a Minister _en
retraite_, who lives by letting lodgings! In our country was ever such a
thing heard of? No, thank Heaven! and a Briton ought to be proud of the
difference.
But to our muttons. This country is surely the paradise of painters and
penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet at Rome,
exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and leading such a
life as Rubens or Titian did of old; when one sees M. Thiers’s grand
villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he was not even a
penny-a-liner, no such luck); when one contemplates, in imagination, M.
Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk through the picture gallery
of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore, with a wheel-chair, a privilege
of princes only, and accompanied--nay, for what I know, actually
trundled--down the gallery by majesty itself--who does not long to make
one of the great nation, exchange his native tongue for the melodious
jabber of France; or, at least, adopt it for his native country, like
Marshal Saxe, Napoleon, and Anacharsis Clootz? Noble people! they made
Tom Paine a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a _dynasty_
of him.
Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in
France; and here, at least, we are back to them. At the École Royale des
Beaux-Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of their
performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being bound to
leave their prize sketch or picture. Can anything good come out of the
Royal Academy? is a question which has been considerably mooted in
England (in the neighbourhood of Suffolk Street especially). The
hundreds of French samples are, I think, not very satisfactory. The
subjects are almost all what are called classical: Orestes pursued by
every variety of Furies; numbers of little wolf-sucking Romuluses;
Hectors and Andromaches in a complication of parting embraces, and so
forth; for it was the absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because
these subjects had been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must
remain so _in sæcula sæculorum_; because to these lofty heights giants
had scaled, behold the race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at
them likewise! and on the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs
(excuse the pleasantry) were instructed to swell out and roar as much as
possible like bulk.
What was the consequence, my dear friend? In trying to make themselves
into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as might be
expected. For a hundred and ten years the classical humbug oppressed
the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy
years’ specimens of the dulness which it engendered.
Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave
him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our
very best to ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas fit us
no more than their breeches! It is the study of Nature, surely, that
profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a
dustman up to Æschylus, is God’s work, and good to read, as all works of
Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit
itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not
the courage to utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked,
and quarrelled with the world, and found himself growing fit, and
quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-humoured,
did not half Europe grow ill-humoured too? Did not every poet feel his
young affections withered, and despair and darkness cast upon his soul?
Because certain mighty men of old could make heroical statues and plays,
must we not be told that there is no other beauty but classical
beauty?--must not every little whipster of a French poet chalk you out
plays, ‘Henriades,’ and such-like, and vow that here was the real thing,
the undeniable Kalon?
The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world
was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now are by
what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is curious to
look at the pictorial traditions as here handed down. The consequence of
them is, that scarce one of the classical pictures exhibited is worth
much more than two-and-sixpence. Borrowed from statuary, in the first
place, the colour of the paintings seems, as much as possible, to
participate in it: they are mostly of a misty, stony-green, dismal hue,
as if they had been painted in a world where no colour was. In every
picture there are, of course, white mantles, white urns, white columns,
white statues--those _obligés_ accomplishments of the sublime. There are
the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips,
just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as if the
latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from
which there was no appeal. Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is
yonder simpering Venus de’ Medici to be our standard of beauty, or the
Greek tragedies to bound our notions of the sublime? There was no reason
why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and remain ἁναξ ἁνδρὡν
to eternity: and there is a classical quotation, which you may have
occasionally heard, beginning _Vixere fortes_, etc., which, as it avers
that there were a great number of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may
not unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to
succeed him. Shakespeare made a better man when his imagination moulded
the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you will measure Satan by
Prometheus, the blind old Puritan’s work by that of the fiery Grecian
poet, does not Milton’s angel surpass Æschylus’s--surpass him by ‘many a
rood’?
In this same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a
number of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he ought
to be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized copy of ‘The
Last Judgment’ of Michael Angelo, and a number of casts from statues by
the same splendid hand. There is the sublime, if you please--a new
sublime--an original sublime--quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See
yonder, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in
glory; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august
and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the ‘Moses,’ the grandest
figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something
frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examining this, and the
astonishing picture of ‘The Judgment,’ or even a single figure of it,
the spectator’s sense amounts almost to pain. I would not like to be
left in a room alone with the ‘Moses.’ How did the artist live amongst
them, and create them? How did he suffer the painful labour of
invention? One fancies that he would have been scorched up, like Semele,
by sights too tremendous for his vision to bear. One cannot imagine him,
with our small physical endowments and weaknesses, a man like ourselves.
As for the École Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its
students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men did
anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began thinking for
themselves. There is only one picture among the many hundreds that has,
to my idea, much merit (a charming composition of Homer singing, signed
Jourdy); and the only good that the academy has done by its pupils was
to send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the
intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the
least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession,
the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down,
and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them
away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by
us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and sent them rambling
after artificial grace without the proper means of judging or attaining
it.
A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts. It is beautiful,
and as well finished and convenient as beautiful. With its light and
elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of the Renaissance, and
fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on a fine day, a place more
_riant_ and pleasing.
Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the
Luxembourg, where _bonnes_, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with
pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where
the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the
_émeutes_ which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the
picture-gallery of modern French artists whom Government thinks worthy
of patronage.
A very great proportion of these, as we see by the catalogue, are by the
students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux Arts, and
who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken rank among
the professors of the art. I don’t know a more pleasing exhibition; for
there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very
good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness of execution.
In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be
a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up
among the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases,
with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The
anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in
consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in
full vigour. There is Brutus, having chopped his son’s head off, with
all the agony of a father; and then, calling for number two, there is
Æneas carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as
two Hottentots, and many more such choice subjects from Lemprière.
But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with
which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it:--
7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. ‘The Grand
Dauphiness Dying.’
18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, etc. ‘Zenobia found Dead.’
36. Debay, Chevalier. ‘The Death of Lucretia.’
38. Dejuinne. ‘The Death of Hector.’
34. Court, Chevalier de la, etc. ‘The Death of Cæsar.’
39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. ‘Dante and Virgil in the
Infernal Lake,’ ‘The Massacre of Scio,’ and ‘Medea
going to murder her Children.’
43. Delaroche, Chevalier. ‘Joas taken from among the Dead.’
44. ‘The Death of Queen Elizabeth.’
45. ‘Edward V. and his Brother’ (preparing for death).
50. ‘Hecuba going to be Sacrificed.’ Drolling, Chevalier.
51. Dubois. ‘Young Clovis found Dead.’
56. Henry, Chevalier. ‘The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.’
75. Guérin, Chevalier. ‘Cain, after the Death of Abel.’
83. Jacquand. ‘Death of Adelaide de Comminges.’
88. ‘The Death of Eudamidas.’
93. ‘The Death of Hymetto.’
103. ‘The Death of Philip of Austria.’
And so on.
You see what woeful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these
painters, and ought to be called _Chevaliers de la Mort_. I don’t know
why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such
grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself
should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at
the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and
because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these
men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all
the circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the
scheme--the bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that
our teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your
humble servant and other anti-humbuggists should heartily, according to
the strength that is in them, endeavour to pull down. What, for
instance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas? What
was Hecuba to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I
would lay a wager that neither of them ever conjugated τὑπτω,
and that their school learning carried them not as far as the letter,
but only to the game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such
subjects? From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in
sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba,
in the _Mythological Dictionary_. What a classicism, inspired by rouge,
gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lemprière, and copied, half from ancient
statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence
the hour!
Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his ‘Medea’ is a
genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs.
Brownrigg, and her two female ‘prentices, would have done as well as the
desperate Colchian, with her τἑκνα φἱλτατα. M. Delacroix has
produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp
of genius on all of them,--the great poetical _intention_, which is
worth all your execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit; with
not such a great _heart_, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful
draughtsman, and an excellent arranger of his subject. ‘The Death of
Elizabeth’ is a raw, young performance, seemingly--not, at least, to my
taste. The ‘Enfans d’Edouard’ is renowned over Europe, and has appeared
in a hundred different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and
gloomy, and merits fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in
such subjects--in what Lord Portsmouth used to call ‘black jobs.’ He has
killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Duke of Guise, and I don’t
know whom besides. He is, at present, occupied with a vast work at the
Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honour of seeing him--a
little, keen-looking man, some five feet in height. He wore, on this
important occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act of
smoking a cigar.
Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king
of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the
Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such
subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; and he is so clever a
man, that all he does is good, to a certain degree. His ‘Judith’ is
somewhat violent, perhaps. His ‘Rebecca’ most pleasing, and not the less
so for a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless singularity
of costume. ‘Raphael and Michael Angelo’ is as clever a picture as can
be--clever is just the word--the groups and drawing excellent, the
colouring pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French students study it
incessantly; there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix.
His little scraps of woodcuts, in the now publishing _Life of Napoleon_,
are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid for them not a
penny more than he merits.
The picture, by Court, of ‘The Death of Cæsar,’ is remarkable for effect
and excellent workmanship; and the head of Brutus (who looks like Armand
Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful heads of women, and
some very good colour in the picture. Jacquand’s ‘Death of Adelaide de
Comminge’ is neither more nor less than beautiful. Adelaide had, it
appears, a lover, who betook himself to a convent of Trappists. She
followed him thither, disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not
discovered by him till on her death-bed. The painter has told this story
in a most pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of
_onction_ and melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally
represented, and the tone and colour very good. Decaisne’s ‘Guardian
Angel’ is not so good in colour, but is equally beautiful in expression
and grace. A little child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the
infant. You see women look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and
what triumph would a painter have more?
We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-pieces
of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain of
Grasivaudan), and the ‘Prometheus’ of Aligny. This is an imitation,
perhaps; as is a noble picture of ‘Jesus Christ and the Children,’ by
Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better models, at any rate; and
one begins to perceive that the odious classical dynasty is no more.
Poussin’s magnificent ‘Polyphemus’ (I only know a print of that
marvellous composition) has, perhaps, suggested the first-named picture;
and the latter has been inspired by a good enthusiastic study of the
Roman schools.
Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school. When he broke up
his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of his pupils
attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and some, with scarcely
a penny in their pouches, walked through France, and across the Alps, in
a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being determined not to forsake their old
master. Such an action was worthy of them, and of the high rank which
their profession holds in France, where the honours to be acquired by
art are only inferior to those which are gained in war. One reads of
such peregrinations in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian
painter followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara.
In regard of Ingres’s individual merit, as a painter, the writer of this
is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him; one being a
_plafond_ in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.
Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art,
and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us
back to Cranach and Dürer, and which is making progress here.
For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or
Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbours, and will be a favourite
with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be a
greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of
silly affectations and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is
Chevalier Ziegler’s picture of ‘St. Luke painting the Virgin.’ St. Luke
has a monk’s dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her
arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eyeing
his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this
Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life.
First, take your colours, and rub them down clean,--bright carmine,
bright yellow, bright sienna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the
costumes of your figures as much as possible like the costumes of the
early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above
colours; and if on a gold ground, the more ‘Catholic’ your art is. Dress
your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good
commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you may see
in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal in
Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster’s wife by Cranach or Van
Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their gowns, and proper
angular draperies. Place all their heads on one side, with the eyes
shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the back of the head, draw, and
gild with gold-leaf, a halo, or glory, of the exact shape of a
cart-wheel: and you have the thing done. It is Catholic art _tout
craché_, as Louis Philippe says. We have it still in England, handed
down to us for four centuries, in the pictures on the cards, as the
redoubtable king and queen of clubs. Look at them: you will see that the
costumes and attitudes are precisely similar to those which figure in
the catholicities of the school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley’s ‘Jeune Fille confiant son premier
secret à Vénus.’ Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of this
year only; and, I think, the best sculpture in the gallery--pretty,
fanciful, _naïve_; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I
have seldom seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also,
Jaley’s ‘Pudeur,’ Jacquot’s ‘Nymph,’ and Rude’s ‘Boy with the Tortoise.’
These are not very exalted subjects, or what are called exalted, and do
not go beyond simple, smiling beauty and nature. But what then? Are we
gods, Miltons, Michael Angelos, that can leave earth when we please, and
soar to heights immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of
academicians would fain make us so. Are you not, and half the painters
in London, panting for an opportunity to show your genius in a great
‘historical picture’? O blind race! Have you wings? Not a feather: and
yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the tops of rugged hills;
and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your ragged elbows, and making
as if you would fly! Come down, silly Dædalus; come down to the lowly
places in which Nature ordered you to walk. The sweet flowers are
springing there; the fat muttons are waiting there; the pleasant sun
shines there; be content and humble, and take your share of the good
cheer.
While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has gaily
conducted us across the water; and _le garde qui veille à la porte du
Louvre ne défend pas_ our entry.
What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners who
sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the brethren
of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any extraordinary
wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which Paris, more than
any other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury which surpasses all
others, and spend their days in a palace which all the money of all the
Rothschilds could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine in
a cellar; but no grandee in Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings’
houses have, at best, but damask hangings and gilt cornices. What are
these to a wall covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards
of Rubens? Artists from England, who have a national gallery that
resembles a moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except
under particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may
revel here to their hearts’ content. Here is a room half a mile long,
with as many windows as Alladin’s palace, open from sunrise till
evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study: the only
puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall begin upon, and keep
his eyes away from the rest.
Fontaine’s grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings, and
shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery: but it is thought
too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance on
Sabbath. A little back-stair (leading from a court, in which stand
numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, of polished granite) is the
common entry for students and others, who, during the week, enter the
gallery.
Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
artists which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death only
entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let us
confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this letter.
I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two
admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gaiety. The
colour is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one of these so much
lauded pictures is the portrait of a washerwoman. ‘Pope Pius,’ at the
Louvre, is as bad in colour, and as remarkable for its vigour and look
of life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life,
but must attempt the heroic;--failed signally, and, what is worse,
carried a whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman
so, twenty years ago, he would have thrown the _démenti_ in your teeth;
or, at least, laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us
that we don’t know when we are beaten; they go a step farther, and swear
their defeats are victories. David was a part of the glory of the
Empire; and one might as well have said, there, that ‘Romulus’ was a bad
picture, as that Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who
believe in the Emperor, believe in the Théâtre Français, and believe
that Ducis improved upon Shakespeare, have the above opinion. Still, it
is curious to remark, in this place, how art and literature become party
matters, and political sects have their favourite painters and authors.
Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead. He died about a year after
his bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott,
from his castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch
adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders,
who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and
harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes
and demigods of Greece and Rome. _Notre Dame à la rescousse!_ Sir Brian
de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clean out of his saddle.
Andromache may weep; but her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See!
Robin Hood twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. _Montjoie
Saint Denis!_ down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder are
Leonidas and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor.
Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lemprière by the
nose, and reigns sovereign.
Of the great pictures of David, the defunct, we need not, then, say
much. Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has
come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is
because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage.
But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude,
which was followed by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how
are we to suppose yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the
heroic and the sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever nature
will allow; the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to
stretch their legs too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus--
[Illustration: Romulus. The Horatii.]
Romulus’s is the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all in
the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond
Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michael, I don’t think
would.
The little picture of ‘Paris and Helen,’ one of the master’s earliest, I
believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely
painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious
ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and
have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the
master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the
varnish? Girodet’s pictures are green; Gros’s emperors and grenadiers
have universally the jaundice. Gerard’s ‘Psyche’ has a most decided
green sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the
enthusiasm which this performance inspired on its first appearance
before the public.
In the same room with it is Girodet’s ghastly ‘Deluge,’ and Géricault’s
dismal ‘Medusa.’ Géricault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a
man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because
no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his
talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price.
All his works have a grand _cachet_: he never did anything mean. When he
painted the ‘Raft of the Medusa,’ it is said he lived for a long time
among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second
Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar, probably,
with Reynolds’s admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft
beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and
frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black,
against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a
legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper, because more natural,
than Girodet’s green ‘Deluge,’ for instance; or his livid ‘Orestes,’ or
red-hot ‘Clytemnestra.’
Seen from a distance, the latter’s ‘Deluge’ has a certain awe-inspiring
air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold
of a tree. On the green man’s shoulders is his old father, in a green
old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and, dangling
at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful
head); and a green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group.
The old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the
tree, which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of
giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the critics;
they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French
tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with
pleasure,--the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good
things--melancholy antitheses--sparkling undertakers’ wit; but this is
heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly.
The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin’s pictures; they put me in
mind of the colour of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy, lurid hue.
How noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is
in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts
Diogenes! The air is thunder-laden and breathes heavily. You hear
ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom.
Near it is a landscape, by Carol Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite
a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding up
a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. _O matutini rores
auræque salubres_! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to
create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish! You can
see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh
salubrious airs (‘the breath of Nature blowing free,’ as the Corn-law
man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapours are rising up
from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the
time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with
regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without
bearing away a certain pleasing dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the
other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein, lies the vast
privilege of the landscape painter: he does not address you with one
fixed particular subject of expression, but with a thousand never
contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may
always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial
imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your
bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more
delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen
landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large
pieces of figures have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar
upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David’s
sansculotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical
brightness and gaiety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder
ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades!
What splendid dandies are those, ever smirking, turning out their toes,
with broad blue ribands to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and
wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a
golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little Cupids, bubbling up in
clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There
is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye
is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to
a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to
pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm,
fresh, delicate, yet full of flavour,--should be likened to a bottle of
Chateau Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romanée
Gelée?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odour almost sickens you; a
sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had
been drinking hot blood.
An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off
this mortal stage, in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often
indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of
pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.
Confess how many times you have read Béranger, and how many Milton? If
you go to the Star and Garter, don’t you grow sick of that vast luscious
landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and
a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to
this subject,--say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton they never
grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with exquisite
Titania. Let us thank Heaven, my dear sir, for according to us the power
to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I have never heard
that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses
of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and
to the donkeys; and if it nothing profit us, _aërias tentâsse domos_
along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
I have now only to mention the charming ‘Cruche Cassée’ of Greuze, which
all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the colour (a thought
too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are
three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and
colour; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to
be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very
fine picture by Bon Bollongue, ‘Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,’
deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigour and richness of
colour. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes
of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of
Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the
French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better colour, and
of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.
Every one of Lesueur’s church-pictures are worth examining and admiring;
they are full of ‘unction’ and pious mystical grace. ‘Saint Scholastica’
is divine; and the ‘Taking down from the Cross’ as noble a composition
as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more
beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in
the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out
with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I
declare that the ‘Jardinière’ is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing
heavenly about her. I vow that the ‘Saint Elizabeth’ is a bad
picture,--a bad composition, badly drawn, badly coloured, in a bad
imitation of Titian,--a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when
Raphael painted this picture, two years before his death, the spirit of
painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; _it was
time that he should die_!!
There,--the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is
no time to speak of Lesueur’s ‘Crucifixion,’ which is odiously coloured,
to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most
difficult to translate into words;--one lays down the pen, and thinks
and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one:
ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colours
are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the
whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if
pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which,
for the present, adieu.--Your faithful
M. A. T.
_To_ MR. ROBERT MACGILP, _Newman Street, London_.
THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN
Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and, as all the world
knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
came to sit to him.
As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
butcher’s daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit
the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair creature’s
name--‘was as lovely a bit of mutton,’ her father said, ‘as ever a man
would wish to stick a knife into.’ She had sat to the painter for all
sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge’s
pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless
other characters: Portrait of a Lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who
was by this time the offspring of their affections.
The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more
lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
household; bakers’ bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural
butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and swore that
his daughter, and the dauber her husband, should have no more of his
wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over
their little infant, vowed to Heaven that they would do without: but in
the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon
pawned his best coat.
When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind
of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the
course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan,
his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand basin and
ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa
said, smiling, that she had found a second father in _her uncle_,--a
base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no
longer the tender simple Griskinissa of other days.
I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking: she swallowed the
warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
evening with the crimson plush breeches.
Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
Griskinissa’s face and her mind grew ugly together; her good-humour
changed to bilious bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets to foul
abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and the
peach colour on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded up
into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to
this a dirty draggle-tailed chintz; long matted hair, wandering into her
eyes and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have
the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.
Poor Simon, who had been a gay lively fellow enough in the days of his
better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck, and
cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the
neighbours could hear this woman’s tongue, and understand her doings;
bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the
floor, and poor Gambouge’s oil and varnish pots went clattering through
the windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon sat
pale and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the brandy-bottle, when
Mrs. Gambouge was out of the way.
One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a picture
of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced a year
before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in
the most pathetic manner. ‘Oh, miserable fate of genius!’ cried he, ‘was
I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this--to be bullied by a
fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold
only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed be
the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or steal, let me sell myself
as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched
than I am now!’
‘Quite the contrary,’ cried a small cheery voice.
‘What!’ exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. ‘Who’s
there?--where are you?--who are you?’
‘You were just speaking of me,’ said the voice.
Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right a bladder of
crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany.
‘Where are you?’ cried he again.
‘S-q-u-e-e-z-e!’ exclaimed the little voice.
Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze, when,
as sure as I am living, a little imp spirted out from the hole upon the
palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily manner.
When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to be
as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then he
jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the poor
painter what he wanted with him.
* * * * *
The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself at
last upon the top of Gambouge’s easel,--smearing out, with his heels,
all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on to the allegoric
portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
‘What!’ exclaimed Simon, ‘is it the----’
[Illustration]
‘Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I
am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me a
little better.’
‘Upon my word,’ said the painter, ‘it is a very singular surprise which
you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
existence.’
The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr. Macready’s
best looks, said:
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.’
Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but felt
somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation of his
new friend.
Diabolus continued: ‘You are a man of merit, and want money: you will
starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend,
how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai,
the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but
the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of
an article which, in itself, is a supposition,--a valueless, windy,
uncertain property of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think,
an _animula vagula blandula_--bah! there is no use beating about the
bush--I mean _a soul_. Come, let me have it: you know you will sell it
some other way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!’--and,
having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as
big as a double _Times_, only there was a different _stamp_ in the
corner.
It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love
to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be
found in the Devil’s own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the
skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over the
paper and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven years, and
at the end of that time was to become the property of the----: Provided
that, during the course of the seven years, every single wish which he
might form should be gratified by the other of the contracting parties;
otherwise the deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge should be
left ‘to go to the ---- his own way.’
‘You will never see me again,’ said Diabolus, in shaking hands with poor
Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at this
day--‘never, at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask will
be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me, it is
best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like scandal. But if
you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and out of the course
of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of this you are the
best judge.’ So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the
chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance,
nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, Heaven
forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an
opportunity to make a similar bargain.
‘Heigho!’ said Simon. ‘I wonder whether this be a reality or a dream. I
am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means to be drunk?
and as for sleeping, I’m too hungry for that. I wish I could see a capon
and a bottle of white wine.’
‘MONSIEUR SIMON!’ cried a voice on the landing-place.
‘C’est ici,’ quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so; and
lo! there was a restaurateur’s boy at the door, supporting a tray, a
tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a tall
amber-coloured flask of sauterne.
‘I am the new boy, sir,’ exclaimed this youth, on entering; ‘but I
believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things.’
Simon grinned, and said, ‘Certainly, I did _ask_ for these things.’ But
such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on his
innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they were for
old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived on
the floor beneath.
‘Go, my boy,’ he said; ‘it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
remove the plates and glasses.’
The little waiter trotted downstairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured
the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--seasoning his
repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
inevitable bill, which was to follow all.
‘Ye gods!’ said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, ‘what a dinner!
what wine!--and how gaily served up too!’ There were silver forks and
spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver dish. ‘Why, the
money for this dish and these spoons,’ cried Simon, ‘would keep me and
Mrs. G. for a month! I wish’--and here Simon whistled, and turned round
to see that nobody was peeping--‘I wish the plate were mine.’
Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! ‘Here they are,’ thought Simon to
himself; ‘why should not I _take them_?’ And take them he did.
‘Detection,’ said he, ‘is not so bad as starvation; and I would as soon
live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge.’
So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout, and
ran downstairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he was.
He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker--that
establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piété. ‘I am obliged
to come to you again, my old friend,’ said Simon, ‘with some family
plate, of which I beseech you to take care.’
The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. ‘I can give you nothing
upon them,’ said he.
‘What!’ cried Simon; ‘not even the worth of the silver?’
‘No; I could buy them at that price at the “Café Morisot,” Rue de la
Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper.’ And, so
saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he had
wished to pawn.
The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime--_when
crime is found out!_--otherwise, conscience takes matters much more
easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be virtuous.
‘But, hark ye, my friend,’ continued the honest broker, ‘there is no
reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have half
the money?--speak, or I peach.’
Simon’s resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. ‘Give me
half,’ he said, ‘and let me go.--What scoundrels are these pawnbrokers!’
ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, ‘seeking every
wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won gain.’
When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of no
less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked
up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon it
was inscribed the simple number, 152. ‘A gambling-house,’ thought
Gambouge. ‘I wish I had half the money that is now on the table
upstairs.’
He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
hundred persons busy at a table of _rouge et noir_. Gambouge’s five
napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was
more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning
round--in ‘its predestined circle rolled,’ as Shelley has it, after
Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and
thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to
the delighted painter. ‘Oh, Diabolus!’ cried he, ‘now it is that I begin
to believe in thee! Don’t talk about merit,’ he cried; ‘talk about
fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future--tell me of _zeroes_.’
And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.
The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped into
zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
lookers-on began to stare at him.
There were twelve thousand pounds on the table. Suffice it to say, that
Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick bundle of
bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had been but
half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a prince for
half a year!
Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had a
stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He repented
of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the restaurateur’s plate.
‘O honesty!’ he cried, ‘how unworthy is an action like this of a man who
has a property like mine!’ So he went back to the pawnbroker with the
gloomiest face imaginable. ‘My friend,’ said he, ‘I have sinned against
all that I hold most sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion.
Here is thy money. In the name of Heaven, restore me the plate which I
have wrongfully sold thee!’
But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, ‘Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell it at
all.’
‘Well,’ cried Gambouge, ‘thou art an inexorable ruffian, Trois-boules;
but I will give thee all I am worth.’ And here he produced a billet of
five hundred francs. ‘Look,’ said he, ‘this money is all I own; it is
the payment of two years’ lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O Heaven! I _stole_ that
plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer the
thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did wrong. I
will starve, I will confess; but I will, I _will_ do right!’
The broker was alarmed. ‘Give me thy note,’ he cried; ‘here is the
plate.’
‘Give me an acquittal first,’ cried Simon, almost broken-hearted; ‘sign
me a paper, and the money is yours.’ So Trois-boules wrote according to
Gambouge’s dictation: ‘Received, for thirteen ounces of plate, twenty
pounds.’
‘Monster of iniquity!’ cried the painter, ‘fiend of wickedness! thou art
caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds’ worth of
plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted
dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money, or I will
bring thee to justice!’
The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave
up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken a
victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a tartar. Simon now
returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner, and
restored the plate.
* * * * *
And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a profound
picture of human life) that Gambouge, since he had grown rich, grew
likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father. He fed the
poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And I have no
doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar
circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon Gambouge.
There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse than
ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he went
to plays, she went to Bible societies, and _vice versâ_: in fact, she
led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a cat in
the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as may be supposed, Simon
prospered in all worldly things--he was the most miserable dog in the
whole city of Paris. Only on the point of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon
agree: and for many years, and during a considerable number of hours in
each day, he thus dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin. O
philosophy! we may talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the
wine-cup, where thou liest like truth in a well, where shall we find
thee?
He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there
was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes, and
the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six years,
began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all as that which
we have described at the commencement of this history. He had grown, as
we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to mass, and had a
confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to consult that
reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole matter.
‘I am inclined to think, holy sir,’ said Gambouge, after he had
concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his
desires were accomplished, ‘that, after all, this demon was no other
than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of that bottle
of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity.’
The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church comfortably
together, and entered afterwards a _café_, where they sat down to
refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his button-hole,
presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before
which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ he
said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers of
the day.
‘Bah!’ said he, at last,--‘sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais? Look,
sir,’ he said, handing over an immense sheet of the _Times_ to Mr.
Gambouge, ‘was ever anything so monstrous?’
Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page. ‘It is
enormous,’ he said; ‘but I do not read English.’
‘Nay,’ said the man with the orders, ‘look closer at it, Signor
Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is.’
Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked at
it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. ‘Come, M. l’Abbé he
said; ‘the heat and glare of this place are intolerable.’
* * * * *
The stranger rose with them. ‘Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
monsieur,’ said he; ‘I do not mind speaking before the Abbé here, who
will be my very good friend one of these days; but I thought it
necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it _at
church_, as you may fancy.’
Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted _Times_, the paper signed
by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
* * * * *
There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to
live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had consultations
with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais.
But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty had been
before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted could give him a
pennyworth of consolation.
Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to
all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
One day Simon’s confessor came bounding into the room with the greatest
glee. ‘My friend,’ said he, ‘I have it! Eureka!--I have found it. Send
the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit College at Rome,
give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter’s; and tell his Holiness
you will double all, if he will give you absolution!’
Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome,
_ventre à terre_. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition,
and sent him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in
due form.
‘Now,’ said he, ‘foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Diabolus! your contract
is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe on the road
to salvation.’ In a fervour of gratitude he clasped the hand of his
confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the cheeks of these
good men.
They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
sitting opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail about
as if he would have gone mad with glee.
‘Why,’ said he, ‘what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
_that_?’ and he tossed the Pope’s missive into a corner. ‘M. l’Abbé
knows,’ he said, bowing and grinning, ‘that though the Pope’s paper may
pass current _here_, it is not worth twopence in our country. What do I
care about the Pope’s absolution? You might just as well be absolved by
your under-butler.’
‘Egad,’ said the Abbé, ‘the rogue is right--I quite forgot the fact,
which he points out clearly enough.’
‘No, no, Gambouge,’ continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, ‘go thy
ways, old fellow, that _cock won’t fight_.’ And he retired up the
chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail
scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed, or
a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more easy to imagine than
to describe.
To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into
such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked
under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night or
day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and cursed
his stars that he ever had married the butcher’s daughter.
It wanted six months of the time.
A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in the
city of Paris--he gaily presided at one end of his table, while Mrs.
Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other extremity.
After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
appear. The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear naked;
the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster; everybody was
pale with expectation and affright.
A very quiet gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to the
company. ‘I will not show my _credentials_,’ he said, blushing, and
pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
shoe-buckles, ‘unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the person
you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will.’
‘You know,’ said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
‘that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months to
come?’
‘I am,’ replied the new-comer.
‘You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit the
bond which I gave you?’
‘It is true.’
‘You declare this before the present company?’
‘Upon my honour, as a gentleman,’ said Diabolus, bowing, and laying his
hand upon his waistcoat.
A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
‘My love,’ continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, ‘will you be
so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am
anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who, in
sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest and
fondest companion.’
Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
husband’s side, and took him tenderly by the hand. ‘Simon!’ said she,
‘is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?’
Simon continued solemnly: ‘Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to obey
me in all things for the six months during which our contract has to
run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half a
year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her caprices,
follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which falls from her
infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I will deliver
myself up at the appointed time.’
Not Lord G----, when flogged by Lord B---- in the House,--not Mr.
Cartlitch, of Astley’s Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did
now. ‘Take another year, Gambouge,’ screamed he; ‘two more--ten
more--a century; roast me on Lawrence’s gridiron, boil me in holy water,
but don’t ask that: don’t, don’t bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge!’
[Illustration: A PUZZLE FOR THE DEVIL]
Simon smiled sternly. ‘I have said it,’ he cried; ‘do this, or our
contract is at an end.’
The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
house turned sour; he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person
in the company well-nigh fainted with the colic. He slapped down the
great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it
with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty pair of
wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with
his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.
* * * * *
Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. ‘You drunken, lazy
scoundrel!’ cried a shrill and well-known voice, ‘you have been asleep
these two hours:’ and here he received another terrific box on the ear.
It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
Nothing remained to corroborate his story except the bladder of lake,
and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
‘I wish,’ said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, ‘that
dreams were true;’ and he went to work again at his portrait.
* * * * *
My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
that her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
CARTOUCHE
I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur
Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much the
fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for
histories of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is
cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest
Church-of-England men.
Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says
the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the Courtille, and in
the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years
later, and in the Marais;--of respectable parents, of course. Think of
the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough,
Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Molière,
Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same
twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing, _à l’envi_!
Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift
was but a dull, idle college lad; but if we read the histories of some
other great men mentioned in the above list--I mean the thieves,
especially--we shall find that they all commenced very early: they
showed a passion for their art, as little Raphael did, or little Mozart;
and the history of Cartouche’s knaveries begins almost with his
breeches.
Dominic’s parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont (now
Louis le Grand); and although it has never been discovered that the
Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced him much in classical or
theological knowledge, Cartouche, in revenge, showed, by repeated
instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were
strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although
not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is
yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and
twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to
his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in the
college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in,
suspicion (which, alas! was confirmed) immediately fell upon him: and by
this little piece of youthful _naïveté_, a scheme, prettily conceived
and smartly performed, was rendered naught.
Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the
apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under
contribution. Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he used to
deal with them, occasionally, on honest principles of barter; that is,
whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows’ knives, books, rulers,
or playthings, which he used fairly to exchange for tarts and
gingerbread.
It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was determined to patronise
this young man; for before he had been long at college, and soon after
he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from the nightcap scrape,
an opportunity occurred by which he was enabled to gratify both his
propensities at once, and not only to steal, but to steal sweetmeats. It
happened that the principal of the college received some pots of
Narbonne honey, which came under the eyes of Cartouche, and in which
that young gentleman, as soon as ever he saw them, determined to put his
fingers. The president of the college put aside his honey-pots in an
apartment within his own; to which, except by the one door which led
into the room which his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet.
There was no chimney in the room; and the windows looked into the court,
where there was a porter at night, and where crowds passed by day. What
was Cartouche to do?--have the honey he must.
Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and over
the president’s rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, into which
the dexterous Cartouche penetrated. These were divided from the rooms
below, according to the fashion of those days, by a set of large beams,
which reached across the whole building, and across which rude planks
were laid, which formed the ceiling of the lower story and the floor of
the upper. Some of these planks did young Cartouche remove; and having
descended by means of a rope, tied a couple of others to the neck of the
honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his prey in safety. He then
cunningly fixed the planks again in their old places, and retired to
gorge himself upon his booty. And, now, see the punishment of avarice!
Everybody knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by a
vow to have no more than a certain small sum of money in their
possession. The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a
larger sum, in defiance of this rule: and where do you think the old
gentleman had hidden it? In the honey-pots! As Cartouche dug his spoon
into one of them, he brought out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a
couple of golden louis, which, with ninety-eight more of their fellows,
were comfortably hidden in the pots. Little Dominic, who, before, had
cut rather a poor figure among his fellow-students, now appeared in as
fine clothes as any of them could boast of; and when asked by his
parents, on going home, how he came by them, said that a young nobleman
of his schoolfellows had taken a violent fancy to him, and made him a
present of a couple of his suits. Cartouche the elder, good man, went to
thank the young nobleman; but none such could be found, and young
Cartouche disdained to give any explanation of his manner of gaining the
money.
Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of youth.
Cartouche lost a hundred louis--for what? For a pot of honey not worth a
couple of shillings. Had he fished out the pieces, and replaced the pots
and the honey, he might have been safe, and a respectable citizen all
his life after. The principal would not have dared to confess the loss
of his money, and did not, openly; but he vowed vengeance against the
stealer of his sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made. Cartouche, as
usual, was fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were found
a couple of empty honey-pots! From this scrape there is no knowing how
he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a little
anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young Cartouche was made
to disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold pieces, old Cartouche
made up the deficiency, and his son was allowed to remain
unpunished--until the next time.
This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though history has
not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis Dominic next
committed, it must have been a serious one; for Cartouche, who had borne
philosophically all the whippings and punishments which were
administered to him at college, did not dare to face that one which his
indignant father had in pickle for him. As he was coming home from
school, on the first day after his crime when he received permission to
go abroad, one of his brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met him
at a short distance from home, and told him what was in preparation;
which so frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home
altogether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself as he
could.
Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full exercise of
it, and his gains were by no means equal to his appetite. In whatever
professions he tried,--whether he joined the gypsies, which he did;
whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, which occupation history
attributes to him,--poor Cartouche was always hungry. Hungry and ragged,
he wandered from one place and profession to another, and regretted the
honey-pots at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and _bouilli_ at home.
Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a merchant, and had dealings
at Rouen. One day, walking on the quays of that city, this gentleman saw
a very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had just made a pounce upon
some bones and turnip-peelings, that had been flung out on the quay, and
was eating them as greedily as if they had been turkeys and truffles.
The worthy man examined the lad a little closer. Oh, heavens! it was
their runaway prodigal--it was little Louis Dominic! The merchant was
touched by his case; and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and
the rags and dirt of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and
hugged him with the tenderest affection. Louis kissed and hugged too,
and blubbered a great deal; he was very repentant, as a man often is
when he is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace was
made; and his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly, and for
a while Louis was as good a son as might be.
But why attempt to balk the progress of genius? Louis’s was not to be
kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time--a smart, lively
young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamoured of a lovely
washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have
something more than mere flames and sentiment;--a washer, or any other
woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps,
and a necklace every now and then, and a few handkerchiefs and silk
stockings, and a treat into the country or to the play. Now, how are all
these things to be had without money? Cartouche saw at once that it was
impossible; and as his father would give him none, he was obliged to
look for it elsewhere. He took to his old courses, and lifted a purse
here, and a watch there; and found, moreover, an accommodating
gentleman, who took the wares off his hands.
This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable society,
in which Cartouche’s merit began speedily to be recognised, and in which
he learnt how pleasant it is in life to have friends to assist one, and
how much may be done by a proper division of labour. M. Cartouche, in
fact, formed part of a regular company or gang of gentlemen, who were
associated together for the purpose of making war on the public and the
law.
Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a rich
young gentleman from the provinces. As is the fashion in France, the
parents had arranged the match among themselves, and the young people
had never met until just before the time appointed for the marriage,
when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his title-deeds, and
settlements, and money. Now, there can hardly be found in history a
finer instance of devotion than Cartouche now exhibited. He went to his
captain, explained the matter to him, and actually, for the good of his
country, as it were (the thieves might be called his country),
sacrificed his sister’s husband’s property. Informations were taken, the
house of the bridegroom was reconnoitred, and, one night, Cartouche, in
company with some chosen friends, made his first visit to the house of
his brother-in-law. All the people were gone to bed; and, doubtless, for
fear of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions spared him
the trouble of opening the door, by ascending quietly at the window.
They arrived at the room where the bridegroom kept his great chest, and
set industriously to work, filing and picking the locks which defended
the treasure.
The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly Cartouche
and his workmen handled their tools, from fear of disturbing his
slumbers, their benevolent design was disappointed, for awaken him they
did; and quietly slipping out of bed, he came to a place where he had a
complete view of all that was going on. He did not cry out, or frighten
himself sillily; but, on the contrary, contented himself with watching
the countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognise them on
another occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did not feel the
slightest anxiety about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed
all the cash and papers the day before.
As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the
nothing which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such a
loud voice, ‘Here, Thomas!--John!--officer!--keep the gate, fire at the
rascals!’ that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped nimbly out of
window, and left the house free.
Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother-in-law, but
eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present at
his father’s house. The evening before the marriage came; and then his
father insisted upon his appearance among the other relatives of the
bride’s and bridegroom’s families, who were all to assemble and make
merry. Cartouche was obliged to yield; and brought with him one or two
of his companions, who had been, by the way, present in the affair of
the empty money-boxes; and though he never fancied that there was any
danger in meeting his brother-in-law, for he had no idea that he had
been seen on the night of the attack, with a natural modesty, which did
him really credit, he kept out of the young bridegroom’s sight as much
as he could, and showed no desire to be presented to him. At supper,
however, as he was sneaking modestly down to a side-table, his father
shouted after him, ‘Ho, Dominic, come hither, and sit opposite your
brother-in-law:’ which Dominic did, his friends following. The
bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a bumper; and was in the act
of making him a pretty speech, on the honour of an alliance with such a
family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship in general, when,
looking in his face--ye gods! he saw the very man who had been filing at
his money-chest a few nights ago! By his side, too, sat a couple more of
the gang. The poor fellow turned deadly pale and sick, and, setting his
glass down, ran quickly out of the room, for he thought he was in
company of a whole gang of robbers. And when he got home, he wrote a
letter to the elder Cartouche, humbly declining any connection with his
family.
Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an
abrupt dissolution of the engagement; and then, much to his horror,
heard of his eldest son’s doings. ‘You would not have me marry into
such a family?’ said the ex-bridegroom. And old Cartouche, an honest old
citizen, confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would not. What was he
to do with the lad? He did not like to ask for a _lettre de cachet_, and
shut him up in the Bastile. He determined to give him a year’s
discipline at the monastery of St. Lazare.
But how to catch the young gentleman? Old Cartouche knew that, were he
to tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey, and,
therefore, he determined to be very cunning. He told Dominic that he was
about to make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and should require a
witness; so they stepped into a carriage together, and drove
unsuspectingly to the Rue St. Denis. But, when they arrived near the
convent, Cartouche saw several ominous figures gathering round the
coach, and felt that his doom was sealed. However, he made as if he knew
nothing of the conspiracy; and the carriage drew up, and his father
descended, and, bidding him wait for a minute in the coach, promised to
return to him. Cartouche looked out; on the other side of the way half a
dozen men were posted, evidently with the intention of arresting him.
Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius, which,
if he had not been professionally employed in the morning, he never
could have executed. He had in his pocket a piece of linen, which he had
laid hold of at the door of some shop, and from which he quickly tore
three suitable stripes. One he tied round his head, after the fashion of
a nightcap; a second round his waist, like an apron; and with the third
he covered his hat, a round one with a large brim. His coat and his
periwig he left behind him in the carriage; and when he stepped out from
it (which he did without asking the coachman to let down the steps), he
bore exactly the appearance of a cook’s boy carrying a dish; and with
this he slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade adieu to
the Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily to seek him,
and was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and wig.
With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home, father, friends,
conscience, remorse, society, behind him. He discovered (like a great
number of other philosophers and poets, when they have committed
rascally actions) that the world was all going wrong, and he quarrelled
with it outright. One of the first stories told of the illustrious
Cartouche, when he became professionally and openly a robber, redounds
highly to his credit, and shows that he knew how to take advantage of
the occasion, and how much he had improved in the course of a very few
years’ experience. His courage and ingenuity were vastly admired by his
friends; so much so, that, one day, the captain of the band thought fit
to compliment him, and vowed that when he (the captain) died, Cartouche
should infallibly be called to the command-in-chief. This conversation,
so flattering to Cartouche, was carried on between the two gentlemen, as
they were walking, one night, on the quays by the side of the Seine.
Cartouche, when the captain made the last remark, blushingly protested
against it, and pleaded his extreme youth as a reason why his comrades
could never put entire trust in him. ‘Psha, man!’ said the captain, ‘thy
youth is in thy favour; thou wilt live only the longer to lead thy
troops to victory. As for strength, bravery, and cunning, wert thou as
old as Methuselah, thou couldst not be better provided than thou art
now, at eighteen.’ What was the reply of Monsieur Cartouche? He
answered, not by words, but by actions. Drawing his knife from his
girdle, he instantly dug it into the captain’s left side, as near his
heart as possible: and then, seizing that imprudent commander,
precipitated him violently into the waters of the Seine, to keep company
with the gudgeons and river-gods. When he returned to the band, and
recounted how the captain had basely attempted to assassinate him, and
how he, on the contrary, had, by exertion of superior skill, overcome
the captain, not one of the society believed a word of his history; but
they elected him captain forthwith. I think his Excellency Don Rafael
Maroto, the pacificator of Spain, is an amiable character, for whom
history has not been written in vain.
Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the feats
which Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a pitch of
glory, that if there had been a hundred thousand, instead of a hundred
of them, who knows but that a new and popular dynasty might not have
been founded, and ‘Louis Dominic, premier Empereur des Frances,’ might
have performed innumerable glorious actions, and fixed himself in the
hearts of his people, just as other monarchs have done, a hundred years
after Cartouche’s death.
A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of Cartouche,
who, in company with two other gentlemen, robbed the _coche_, or
packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity of
booty,--making the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling them at
leisure. ‘This money will be but very little among three,’ whispered
Cartouche to his neighbour, as the three conquerors were making merry
over their gains; ‘if you were but to pull the trigger of your pistol in
the neighbourhood of your comrade’s ear, perhaps it might go off, and
then there would be but two of us to share.’ Strangely enough, as
Cartouche said, the pistol _did_ go off, and No. 3 perished. ‘Give him
another ball,’ said Cartouche: and another was fired into him. But no
sooner had Cartouche’s comrade discharged both his pistols, than
Cartouche himself, seized with a furious indignation, drew his: ‘Learn,
monster,’ cried he, ‘not to be so greedy of gold, and perish, the victim
of thy disloyalty and avarice!’ So Cartouche slew the second robber; and
there is no man in Europe who can say that the latter did not merit well
his punishment.
I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of the
triumphs of Cartouche and his band: how he robbed the Countess of O----,
going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell in love with
him, and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the lieutenant of
police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any man who would bring
Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a coach-and-six, drove up to
the hôtel of the police; and the noble Marquess, desiring to see
Monsieur de la Reynie, on matters of the highest moment, alone, the
latter introduced him into his private cabinet; and how, when there, the
Marquess drew from his pocket a long curiously shaped dagger: ‘Look at
this, Monsieur de la Reynie,’ said he; ‘this dagger is poisoned!’
‘Is it possible?’ said M. de la Reynie.
‘A prick of it would do for any man,’ said the Marquess.
‘You don’t say so!’ said M. de la Reynie.
‘I do, though; and, what is more,’ says the Marquess, in a terrible
voice, ‘if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, with
your face towards it, and your hands crossed over your back, or if you
make the slightest noise or cry, I will stick this poisoned dagger
between your ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche!’
At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk incontinently
down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully gagged and corded;
after which Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands upon all the money which
was kept in the lieutenant’s cabinet. Alas! and alas! many a stout
bailiff, and many an honest fellow of a spy, went, for that day, without
his pay and his victuals.
There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, and
found in it a certain Abbé Potter, who was full of indignation against
this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went back to Paris,
which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he should give the
lieutenant of police some information, which would infallibly lead to
the scoundrel’s capture. But poor Potter was disappointed in his
designs; for, before he could fulfil them, he was made the victim of
Cartouche’s cruelty.
A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche had
travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbé de Potter, of that town;
that, on the reverend gentleman’s return towards Paris, Cartouche had
waylaid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and would come to Paris
himself, bearing the name and clothes of the unfortunate Abbé, by the
Lille coach, on such a day. The Lille coach arrived, was surrounded by
police agents; the monster Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the
Abbé’s guise. He was seized, bound, flung into prison, brought out to be
examined, and, on examination, found to be no other than the Abbé Potter
himself! It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men,
and find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us.
Another diligence adventure is recounted of the famous Cartouche. It
happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady, clad in
widow’s weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of servants. The poor
thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman of Marseilles, and was going
to the capital to arrange with her lawyers, and to settle her husband’s
will. The Count de Grinche (for so her fellow-passenger was called) was
quite as candid as the pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a
captain in the regiment of Nivernois; that he was going to Paris to buy
a colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince de
Montmorenci, the Commandeur de la Trémoille, with all their interest at
Court, could not fail to procure for him. To be short, in the course of
the four days’ journey, the Count Louis Dominic de Grinche played his
cards so well, that the poor little widow half forgot her late husband;
and her eyes glistened with tears as the Count kissed her hand at
parting--at parting, he hoped, only for a few hours.
Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the end
of a fortnight, and in the midst of a _tête-à-tête_, he plunged, one
morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, ‘Leonora, do you love me?’ the
poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh in the world;
and, sinking her blushing head on his shoulder, whispered, ‘Oh, Dominic,
je t’aime! Ah!’ said she, ‘how noble is it of my Dominic to take me with
the little I have, and he so rich a nobleman!’ The fact is, the old
Baron’s titles and estates had passed away to his nephews; his dowager
was only left with three hundred thousand livres, in _rentes sur
l’état_,--a handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of
Count Dominic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de
la Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorise him to
aspire to the hand of a duchess, at least.
The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick that
was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her affianced
husband, sold out her money, and realised it in gold, to be made over to
him on the day when the contract was to be signed. The day arrived; and,
according to the custom in France, the relations of both parties
attended. The widow’s relatives, though respectable, were not of the
first nobility, being chiefly persons of the _finance_ or the _robe_;
there was the President of the Court of Arras, and his lady; a
farmer-general; a judge of a court of Paris; and other such grave and
respectable people. As for Monsieur le Comte de la Grinche, he was not
bound for names; and, having the whole peerage to choose from, brought a
host of Montmorencies, Créquis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back. His
_homme d’affaires_ brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans
of his estates, and the titles of his glorious ancestry. The widow’s
lawyers had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one side and
the parchments on the other, lay the contract which was to make the
widow’s three hundred thousand francs the property of the Count de
Grinche. The Count de la Grinche was just about to sign, when the
Marshal de Villars, stepping up to him, said, ‘Captain, do you know who
the President of the Court of Arras, yonder, is? It is old Manasseh, the
fence, of Brussels. I pawned a gold watch to him, which I stole from
Cadogan, when I was with Malbrook’s army in Flanders.’
Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. ‘Run me
through the body!’ said his Grace, ‘but the Comptroller-General’s lady,
there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the----’
Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon’s voice fell.
Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table. He took up one
of the widow’s fifteen thousand gold pieces;--it was as pretty a bit of
copper as you could wish to see. ‘My dear,’ said he politely, ‘there is
some mistake here, and this business had better stop.’
‘Count!’ gasped the poor widow.
‘Count be hanged!’ answered the bridegroom sternly; ‘my name is
CARTOUCHE!’
[Illustration: CARTOUCHE]
ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS
WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL
There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for
money, and having received a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a
state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed
out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as
exactly to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so much richer than the
doublets of all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honour the
procession was given, remarked the painter, and so his deceit was found
out.
I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a
similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more
agreeable, lifelike, and natural than the true one: and all who, from
laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and
comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that
they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their
favourite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the
world.
If, then, ladies, the bigwigs begin to sneer at the course of our
studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the
mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let us
at once take a high ground, and say,--Go you to your own employments,
and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from
the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black-draughts of metaphysics; go
fumble over history-books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy; _our_
histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk
sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley, and
Co.; our walks are over such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and
Shakespeare have laid out for us; and if our dwellings are castles in
the air, we find them excessively splendid and commodious;--be not you
envious because you have no wings to fly thither. Let the bigwigs
despise us; such contempt of their neighbours is the custom of all
barbarous tribes; witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared
that there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sclavonic
hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their jargon
which signifies ‘to speak;’ the ruffians imagining that they had a
monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other nations were
dumb.
Not so: others may be _deaf_; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent,
instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so
much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on
his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were
much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible
catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the
reader.
As thus:
Julius Cæsar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard, at Blenheim.
The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
And what have we here?--so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had
been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia; and
that Julius Cæsar’s family name had been John Churchill;--the fact would
have stood, in history, thus:
‘Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia.’
And why not?--we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated,
that:
‘The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and
Cæsar, writing home to his mamma, said, “Madame, tout est perdu
fors l’honneur.”’
What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
written, and sixty-volumed _Biographies Universelles_, and Lardner’s
_Cabinet Cyclopædias_, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the
names everything; and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by
learning Walker’s _Gazetteer_, or getting by heart a fifty-years-old
edition of the _Court Guide_.
Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
question--the novelists.
* * * * *
On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked,
that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as ‘copies’ and
‘compositions.’ Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly
stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according
to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them); and, for
composition, we intend to favour the public with some studies of French
modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of
the English public.
Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by the
French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works
political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical,
theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a
plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time and
study. And, passing from novels in general to French novels, let us
confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a
great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal
observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has dwelt
two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for the
purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)--let an
English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he knows
of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many
French friends he has made? He has enjoyed, at the end of the year, say:
At the English Ambassador’s, so many soirées.
At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
At cafés, so many dinners.
At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax-candles, cups of tea,
glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the
same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people.
Year by year we live in France, and grow grey, and see no more. We play
écarté with Monsieur de Trèfle every night; but what know we of the
heart of the man--of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trèfle?
If we have good legs, and love the amusement, we dance with Countess
Flicflac, Tuesdays and Thursdays, ever since the Peace: and how far are
we advanced in acquaintance with her since we first twirled her round a
room? We know her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of
them are sham, by the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and her
rouge--but no more: she may turn into a kitchen-wench at twelve on
Thursday night, for aught we know; her _voiture_, a pumpkin; and her
_gens_, so many rats: but the real, rougeless, _intime_ Flicflac, we
know not. This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we may understand
the French language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but never can
penetrate into Flicflac’s confidence: our ways are not her ways; our
manners of thinking not hers; when we say a good thing, in the course of
the night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac will trill you
off fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the _bêtise_ of the Briton, who
has never a word to say. We are married, and have fourteen children, and
would just as soon make love to the Pope of Rome as to any one but our
own wife. If you do not make love to Flicflac, from the day after her
marriage to the day she reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool. We won’t
play at écarté with Trèfle on Sunday nights; and are seen walking,
about one o’clock (accompanied by fourteen red-haired children, with
fourteen gleaming prayer-books), away from the church. ‘Grand Dieu!’
cries Trèfle, ‘is that man mad? He won’t play at cards on a Sunday; he
goes to church on a Sunday; he has fourteen children!’
[Illustration: HOW TO ASTONISH THE FRENCH
AN ENGLISH FAMILY IN THE TUILERIES]
Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise? Pass we on to our argument,
which is, that with our English notions and moral and physical
constitution, it is quite impossible that we should become intimate with
our brisk neighbours; and when such authors as Lady Morgan and Mrs.
Trollope, having frequented a certain number of tea-parties in the
French capital, begin to prattle about French manners and men--with all
respect for the talents of those ladies, we do believe their information
not to be worth a sixpence: they speak to us, not of men, but of
tea-parties. Tea-parties are the same all the world over; with the
exception that, with
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