Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II
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Title: Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II
Author: Various
Editor: Charles Dickens
Publisher: Richard Bentley
Release date: September 7, 2014 [eBook #46804]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY, VOLUME II ***
BENTLEY'S
MISCELLANY.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1837.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
ADDRESS.
Twelve months have elapsed since we first took the field, and every
successive number of our Miscellany has experienced a warmer reception,
and a more extensive circulation, than its predecessor.
In the opening of the new year, and the commencement of our new volume,
we hope to make many changes for the better, and none for the worse;
and, to show that, while we have one grateful eye to past patronage,
we have another wary one to future favours; in short, that, like the
heroine of the sweet poem descriptive of the faithlessness and perjury
of Mr. John Oakhum, of the Royal Navy, we look two ways at once.
It is our intention to usher in the new year with a very merry
greeting, towards the accomplishment of which end we have prevailed
upon a long procession of distinguished friends to mount their hobbies
on the occasion, in humble imitation of those adventurous and
aldermanic spirits who gallantly bestrode their foaming chargers on the
memorable ninth of this present month, while
"The stones did rattle underneath,
As if Cheapside were mad."
These, and a hundred other great designs, preparations, and surprises,
are in contemplation, for the fulfilment of all of which we are already
bound in two volumes cloth, and have no objection, if it be any
additional security to the public, to stand bound in twenty more.
BOZ.
30th November, 1837.
CONTENTS
OF THE
SECOND VOLUME.
SONGS of the Month--July, by "Father Prout;" August; September, by
"Father Prout;" October, by J.M.; November, by C.D.; December, by
Punch Pages 1, 109, 213, 321, 429, 533
Papers by Boz:
Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy's Progress, 2, 110, 215, 430, 534
The Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything 397
Poetry by Mrs. Cornwell Baron Wilson:
Elegiac Stanzas 16
Lady Blue's Ball 380
My Father's Old Hall 453
Fictions of the Middle Ages: The Butterfly Bishop, by Delta 17
A New Song to the Old Tune of Kate Kearney 25
What Tom Binks did when he didn't know what to do with himself 26
A Gentleman Quite 36
The Foster-Child 37
The White Man's Devil-house, by F.H. Rankin 46
A Lyric for Lovers 50
The Remains of Hajji Baba, by the Author of "Zohrab" 51,166
Shakspeare Papers, by Dr. Maginn:
No. III. Romeo 57
IV. Midsummer Night's Dream--Bottom the Weaver 370
V. His Ladies--Lady Macbeth 550
The Piper's Progress, by Father Prout 67
Papers by J.A. Wade:
No. II. Darby the Swift 68
III. The Darbiad 464
Song of the Old Bell 196
Serenade to Francesca 239
Phelim O'Toole's Nine Muse-ings on his Native County 319
Papers by Captain Medwin:
The Duel 76
Mascalbruni 254
The Last of the Bandits 585
The Monk of Ravenne 81
A Marine's Courtship, by M. Burke Honan 82
Family Stories, by Thomas Ingoldsby:
No. VI. Mrs. Botherby's Story--The Leech of Folkestone 91
VII. Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story--Look at the Clock 207
What though we were Rivals of yore, by T. Haynes Bayly 124
Papers by the Author of "Stories of Waterloo:"
Love in the City 125
The Regatta, No. I.: Run Across Channel 299
Legends--of Ballar; the Church of the Seven; and the Tory
Islanders 527
Three Notches from the Devil's Tail, or the Man in the Spanish
Cloak, by the Author of "Reminiscences of a Monthly Nurse" 135
The Serenade 149
The Portrait Gallery, by the Author of "The Bee Hive"
No. III. The Cannon Family 150
IV. Journey to Boulogne 454
A Chapter on Laughing 163
A Muster-chaunt for the Members of the Temperance Societies 165
My Uncle: a Fragment 175
Why the Wind blows round St. Paul's, by Joyce Jocund 176
Papers by C. Whitehead:
Rather Hard to Take 181
The Narrative of John Ward Gibson 240
Nights at Sea, by the Old Sailor:
No. IV. The French Captain's Story 183
V. The French Captain's Story 471
VI. Jack among the Mummies 610
Midnight Mishaps, by Edward Mayhew 197
The Dream 206
Genius, or the Dog's-meat Dog, by Egerton Webbe 214
The Poisoners of the Seventeenth Century, by George Hogarth:
No. I. The Marchioness de Brinvilliers 229
II. Sir Thomas Overbury 322
Smoke 268
Some Passages in the Life of a Disappointed Man 270
The Professor, by Goliah Gahagan 277
Biddy Tibbs, who cared for Nobody, by H. Holl 288
The Key of Granada 303
Glorvina, the Maid of Meath, by J. Sheridan Knowles 304
An Excellent Offer, by Marmaduke Blake 340
The Autobiography of a Good Joke 354
The Secret, by M. Paul de Kock 360
The Man with the Club-foot 381
A Remonstratory Ode to Mr. Cross on the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
by Joyce Jocund 413
Memoirs of Beau Nash 414
Grub-street News 425
The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman 445
The Relics of St. Pius 462
A few Inquiries 470
Lines occasioned by the Death of Count Borowlaski 484
A Chapter on Widows 485
Petrarch in London 494
Adventures in Paris, by Toby Allspy:
The Five Floors No. I. 495; No. II. 575
Martial in Town 507
Astronomical Agitation--Reform of the Solar System 508
The Adventures of a Tale, by Mrs. Erskine Norton 511
When and Why the Devil Invented Brandy 518
The Wit in spite of Himself, by Richard Johns 521
The Apportionment of the World, from Schiller 549
Ode to the Queen 568
Suicide 569
The Glories of Good Humour 591
Song of the Modern Time 594
Capital Punishments in London Eighty Years ago--Earl Ferrers 595
A Peter Pindaric to and of a Fog, by Punch 606
The Castle by the Sea 623
Legislative Nomenclature 624
Nobility in Disguise, by Dudley Costello 626
Another Original of "Not a Drum was heard," 632
Index 633
ILLUSTRATIONS.
BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
Page
Oliver Twist--The Dodger's way of going to work 2
A Marine's Courtship 82
Oliver Twist recovering from the fever 110
Midnight Mishaps 197
Oliver Twist and his affectionate Friends 215
A Disappointed Man 270
The Autobiography of a Good Joke 354
The Secret 360
Oliver Twist returns to the Jew's den 430
The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman 445
Oliver Twist instructed by the Dodger 533
Jack among the Mummies 610
Portrait of Beau Nash, by W. Greatbach 414
BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.
SONG OF THE MONTH. No. VII.
July, 1837.
BEING A BAPTISMAL CHAUNT FOR THE BIRTH OF OUR SECOND VOLUME, AS SUNG
(IN CHARACTER) BY FATHER PROUT.
(Tune "_The groves of Blarney_.")
"Ille ego qui quondam," &c. &c.--_Æneid._
I.
In the month of Janus,
When Boz to gain us,
Quite "miscellaneous,"
Flashed his wit so keen,
One, (Prout they call him,)
In style most solemn,
Led off the volume
Of his magazine.
II.
Though MAGA, 'mongst her
Bright set of youngsters,
Had many songsters
For her opening tome;
Yet she would rather
Invite "the Father,"
And an indulgence gather
From the Pope of Rome.
III.
And, such a beauty
From head to shoe-tie,
Without dispute we
Found her first boy,
That she det_a_rmined,
There's such a charm in 't,
The Father's _sarmint_
She'd again employ.
IV.
While other children
Are quite bewilderin',
'Tis joy that fill'd her in
This bantling; 'cause
What eye but glistens,
And what ear but listens,
When the clargy christens
A babe of Boz?
V.
I've got a scruple
That this young pupil
Surprised its parent
Ere her time was sped;
Else I'm unwary,
Or, 'tis she's a fairy,
For in January
She was brought to bed.
VI.
This infant may be
A six months' baby,
But may his cradle
Be blest! say I;
And luck defend him!
And joy attend him!
Since we can't mend him,
Born in July.
VII.
He's no abortion,
But born to fortune,
And most opportune,
Though before his time;
Him, Muse, O! nourish,
And make him flourish
Quite Tommy-Moorish
Both in prose and rhyme!
VIII.
I remember, also,
That this month they call so,
From Roman JULIUS
The "_Cæsarian_" styled;
Who was no gosling,
But, like this Boz-ling,
From birth a dazzling
And precocious child!
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!
OLIVER TWIST;
OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
BY BOZ.
ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
CHAPTER THE NINTH.
CONTAINING FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT OLD GENTLEMAN,
AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS.
It was late next morning when Oliver awoke from a sound, long sleep.
There was nobody in the room beside, but the old Jew, who was boiling
some coffee in a saucepan for breakfast, and whistling softly to
himself as he stirred it round and round with an iron spoon. He would
stop every now and then to listen when there was the least noise below;
and, when he had satisfied himself, he would go on whistling and
stirring again, as before.
Although Oliver had roused himself from sleep, he was not thoroughly
awake. There is a drowsy, heavy state, between sleeping and waking,
when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and
yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than
you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses
wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such times, a mortal knows just
enough of what his mind is doing to form some glimmering conception of
its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space,
when freed from the irksome restraint of its corporeal associate.
Oliver was precisely in the condition I have described. He saw the Jew
with his half-closed eyes, heard his low whistling, and recognised the
sound of the spoon grating against the saucepan's sides; and yet the
self-same senses were mentally engaged at the same time, in busy action
with almost everybody he had ever known.
When the coffee was done, the Jew drew the saucepan to the hob, and,
standing in an irresolute attitude for a few minutes as if he did not
well know how to employ himself, turned round and looked at Oliver, and
called him by his name. He did not answer, and was to all appearance
asleep.
After satisfying himself upon this head, the Jew stepped gently to the
door, which he fastened; he then drew forth, as it seemed to Oliver,
from some trap in the floor, a small box, which he placed carefully
on the table. His eyes glistened as he raised the lid and looked in.
Dragging an old chair to the table, he sat down, and took from it a
magnificent gold watch, sparkling with diamonds.
[Illustration: Oliver amazed at the Dodger's Mode of 'going to work']
"Aha!" said the Jew, shrugging up his shoulders, and distorting every
feature with a hideous grin. "Clever dogs! clever dogs! Staunch to the
last! Never told the old parson where they were; never peached upon old
Fagin. And why should they? It wouldn't have loosened the knot, or kept
the drop up a minute longer. No, no, no! Fine fellows! fine fellows!"
With these, and other muttered reflections of the like nature, the
Jew once more deposited the watch in its place of safety. At least
half a dozen more were severally drawn forth from the same box, and
surveyed with equal pleasure; besides rings, brooches, bracelets, and
other articles of jewellery, of such magnificent materials and costly
workmanship that Oliver had no idea even of their names.
Having replaced these trinkets, the Jew took out another, so small
that it lay in the palm of his hand. There seemed to be some very
minute inscription on it, for the Jew laid it flat upon the table, and,
shading it with his hand, pored over it long and earnestly. At length
he set it down as if despairing of success, and, leaning back in his
chair, muttered,
"What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead
men never bring awkward stories to light. The prospect of the gallows,
too, makes them hardy and bold. Ah, it's a fine thing for the trade!
Five of them strung up in a row, and none left to play booty or turn
white-livered!"
As the Jew uttered these words, his bright dark eyes which had been
staring vacantly before him, fell on Oliver's face; the boy's eyes
were fixed on his in mute curiosity, and, although the recognition was
only for an instant--for the briefest space of time that can possibly
be conceived,--it was enough to show the old man that he had been
observed. He closed the lid of the box with a loud crash, and, laying
his hand on a bread-knife which was on the table, started furiously up.
He trembled very much though; for, even in his terror, Oliver could see
that the knife quivered in the air.
"What's that?" said the Jew. "What do you watch me for? Why are you
awake? What have you seen? Speak out, boy! Quick--quick! for your life!"
"I wasn't able to sleep any longer, sir," replied Oliver, meekly. "I am
very sorry if I have disturbed you, sir."
"You were not awake an hour ago?" said the Jew, scowling fiercely on
the boy.
"No--no, indeed, sir," replied Oliver.
"Are you sure?" cried the Jew, with a still fiercer look than before,
and a threatening attitude.
"Upon my word I was not, sir," replied Oliver, earnestly. "I was not,
indeed, sir."
"Tush, tush, my dear!" said the Jew, suddenly resuming his old manner,
and playing with the knife a little before he laid it down, as if to
induce the belief that he had caught it up in mere sport. "Of course I
know that, my dear. I only tried to frighten you. You're a brave boy.
Ha! ha! you're a brave boy, Oliver!" and the Jew rubbed his hands with
a chuckle, but looked uneasily at the box notwithstanding.
"Did you see any of these pretty things, my dear?" said the Jew, laying
his hand upon it after a short pause.
"Yes, sir," replied Oliver.
"Ah!" said the Jew, turning rather pale. "They--they're mine, Oliver;
my little property. All I have to live upon in my old age. The folks
call me a miser, my dear,--only a miser; that's all."
Oliver thought the old gentleman must be a decided miser to live in
such a dirty place, with so many watches; but, thinking that perhaps
his fondness for the Dodger and the other boys cost him a good deal
of money, he only cast a deferential look at the Jew, and asked if he
might get up.
"Certainly, my dear,--certainly," replied the old gentleman. "Stay.
There's a pitcher of water in the corner by the door. Bring it here,
and I'll give you a basin to wash in, my dear."
Oliver got up, walked across the room, and stooped for one instant to
raise the pitcher. When he turned his head, the box was gone.
He had scarcely washed himself and made everything tidy by emptying
the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew's directions, than
the Dodger returned, accompanied by a very sprightly young friend whom
Oliver had seen smoking on the previous night, and who was now formally
introduced to him as Charley Bates. The four then sat down to breakfast
off the coffee and some hot rolls and ham which the Dodger had brought
home in the crown of his hat.
"Well," said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing himself
to the Dodger, "I hope you've been at work this morning, my dears."
"Hard," replied the Dodger.
"As nails," added Charley Bates.
"Good boys, good boys!" said the Jew. "What have _you_ got, Dodger?"
"A couple of pocket-books," replied that young gentleman.
"Lined?" inquired the Jew with trembling eagerness.
"Pretty well," replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books, one
green and the other red.
"Not so heavy as they might be," said the Jew, after looking at the
insides carefully; "but very neat, and nicely made. Ingenious workman,
ain't he, Oliver?"
"Very, indeed, sir," said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates laughed
uproariously, very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing to
laugh at, in anything that had passed.
"And what have you got, my dear?" said Fagin to Charley Bates.
"Wipes," replied Master Bates: at the same time producing four
pocket-handkerchiefs.
"Well," said the Jew, inspecting them closely; "they're very good
ones,--very. You haven't marked them well, though, Charley; so the
marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we'll teach Oliver how to
do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh?--Ha! ha! ha!"
"If you please, sir," said Oliver.
"You'd like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Charley
Bates, wouldn't you, my dear?" said the Jew.
"Very much indeed, if you'll teach me, sir," replied Oliver.
Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply
that he burst into another laugh; which laugh meeting the coffee he
was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly
terminated in his premature suffocation.
"He is so jolly green," said Charley when he recovered, as an apology
to the company for his unpolite behaviour.
The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver's hair down over
his eyes, and said he'd know better by-and-by; upon which the old
gentleman, observing Oliver's colour mounting, changed the subject by
asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution that
morning. This made him wonder more and more, for it was plain from
the replies of the two boys that they had both been there; and Oliver
naturally wondered how they could possibly have found time to be so
very industrious.
When the breakfast was cleared away, the merry old gentleman and
the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was
performed in this way:--The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in
one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in
his waistcoat-pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and sticking
a mock diamond pin in his shirt, buttoned his coat tight round him,
and, putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in the pockets,
trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of the manner
in which old gentlemen walk about the streets every hour in the day.
Sometimes he stopped at the fire-place, and sometimes at the door,
making belief that he was staring with all his might into shop-windows.
At such times he would look constantly round him for fear of thieves,
and keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to see that he hadn't lost
anything, in such a very funny and natural manner, that Oliver laughed
till the tears ran down his face. All this time the two boys followed
him closely about, getting out of his sight so nimbly every time he
turned round, that it was impossible to follow their motions. At last
the Dodger trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidentally, while
Charley Bates stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment
they took from him with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box,
note-case, watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief,--even
the spectacle-case. If the old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his
pockets, he cried out where it was, and then the game began all over
again.
When this game had been played a great many times, a couple of young
ladies came to see the young gentlemen, one of whom was called Bet and
the other Nancy. They wore a good deal of hair, not very neatly turned
up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and stockings. They
were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of colour
in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty. Being remarkably
free and agreeable in their manners, Oliver thought them very nice
girls indeed, as there is no doubt they were.
These visitors stopped a long time. Spirits were produced, in
consequence of one of the young ladies complaining of a coldness in her
inside, and the conversation took a very convivial and improving turn.
At length Charley Bates expressed his opinion that it was time to pad
the hoof, which it occurred to Oliver must be French for going out; for
directly afterwards the Dodger, and Charley, and the two young ladies
went away together, having been kindly furnished with money to spend,
by the amiable old Jew.
"There, my dear," said Fagin, "that's a pleasant life, isn't it? They
have gone out for the day."
"Have they done work, sir?" inquired Oliver.
"Yes," said the Jew; "that is, unless they should unexpectedly come
across any when they are out; and they won't neglect it if they do, my
dear, depend upon it."
"Make 'em your models, my dear, make 'em your models," said the Jew,
tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add force to his words;
"do everything they bid you, and take their advice in all matters,
especially the Dodger's, my dear. He'll be a great man himself, and
make you one too, if you take pattern by him. Is my handkerchief
hanging out of my pocket, my dear?" said the Jew, stopping short.
"Yes, sir," said Oliver.
"See if you can take it out, without my feeling it, as you saw them do
when we were at play this morning."
Oliver held up the bottom of the pocket with one hand as he had seen
the Dodger do, and drew the handkerchief lightly out of it with the
other.
"Is it gone?" cried the Jew.
"Here it is, sir," said Oliver, showing it in his hand.
"You're a clever boy, my dear," said the playful old gentleman, patting
Oliver on the head approvingly; "I never saw a sharper lad. Here's a
shilling for you. If you go on in this way, you'll be the greatest man
of the time. And now come here, and I'll show you how to take the marks
out of the handkerchiefs."
Oliver wondered what picking the old gentleman's pocket in play had to
do with his chances of being a great man; but thinking that the Jew,
being so much his senior, must know best, followed him quietly to the
table, and was soon deeply involved in his new study.
CHAPTER THE TENTH.
OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF HIS NEW
ASSOCIATES, AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE. BEING A SHORT BUT
VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER IN THIS HISTORY.
For eight or ten days Oliver remained in the Jew's room, picking the
marks out of the pocket-handkerchiefs, (of which a great number were
brought home,) and sometimes taking part in the game already described,
which the two boys and the Jew played regularly every day. At length
he began to languish for the fresh air, and took many occasions of
earnestly entreating the old gentleman to allow him to go out to work
with his two companions.
Oliver was rendered the more anxious to be actively employed by what
he had seen of the stern morality of the old gentleman's character.
Whenever the Dodger or Charley Bates came home at night empty-handed,
he would expatiate with great vehemence on the misery of idle and
lazy habits, and enforce upon them the necessity of an active life by
sending them supperless to bed: upon one occasion he even went so far
as to knock them both down a flight of stairs; but this was carrying
out his virtuous precepts to an unusual extent.
At length one morning Oliver obtained the permission he had so eagerly
sought. There had been no handkerchiefs to work upon, for two or three
days, and the dinners had been rather meagre. Perhaps these were
reasons for the old gentleman's giving his assent; but, whether they
were or no, he told Oliver he might go, and placed him under the joint
guardianship of Charley Bates and his friend the Dodger.
The three boys sallied out, the Dodger with his coat-sleeves tucked up
and his hat cocked as usual, Master Bates sauntering along with his
hands in his pockets, and Oliver between them, wondering where they
were going, and what branch of manufacture he would be instructed in
first.
The pace at which they went was such a very lazy, ill-looking saunter,
that Oliver soon began to think his companions were going to deceive
the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The Dodger had a
vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small
boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates exhibited some
very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering
divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and
thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that
they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction.
These things looked so bad, that Oliver was on the point of declaring
his intention of seeking his way back in the best way he could, when
his thoughts were suddenly directed into another channel by a very
mysterious change of behaviour on the part of the Dodger.
They were just emerging from a narrow court not far from the open
square in Clerkenwell, which is called, by some strange perversion of
terms, "The Green," when the Dodger made a sudden stop, and, laying his
finger on his lip, drew his companions back again with the greatest
caution and circumspection.
"What's the matter?" demanded Oliver.
"Hush!" replied the Dodger. "Do you see that old cove at the
book-stall?"
"The old gentleman over the way?" said Oliver. "Yes, I see him."
"He'll do," said the Dodger.
"A prime plant," observed Charley Bates.
Oliver looked from one to the other with the greatest surprise, but was
not permitted to make any inquiries, for the two boys walked stealthily
across the road, and slunk close behind the old gentleman towards whom
his attention had been directed. Oliver walked a few paces after them,
and, not knowing whether to advance or retire, stood looking on in
silent amazement.
The old gentleman was a very respectable-looking personage, with a
powdered head and gold spectacles; dressed in a bottle-green coat with
a black velvet collar, and white trousers: with a smart bamboo cane
under his arm. He had taken up a book from the stall, and there he
stood, reading away as hard as if he were in his elbow-chair in his
own study. It was very possible that he fancied himself there, indeed;
for it was plain, from his utter abstraction, that he saw not the
book-stall, nor the street, nor the boys, nor, in short, anything but
the book itself, which he was reading straight through, turning over
the leaves when he got to the bottom of a page, beginning at the top
line of the next one, and going regularly on with the greatest interest
and eagerness.
What was Oliver's horror and alarm as he stood a few paces off, looking
on with his eye-lids as wide open as they would possibly go, to see the
Dodger plunge his hand into this old gentleman's pocket, and draw from
thence a handkerchief, which he handed to Charley Bates, and with which
they both ran away round the corner at full speed!
In one instant the whole mystery of the handkerchiefs, and the watches,
and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy's mind. He stood for
a moment with the blood tingling so through all his veins from terror,
that he felt as if he were in a burning fire; then, confused and
frightened, he took to his heels, and, not knowing what he did, made
off as fast as he could lay his feet to the ground.
This was all done in a minute's space, and the very instant that Oliver
began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his pocket, and
missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the boy scudding
away at such a rapid pace, he very naturally concluded him to be the
depredator, and, shouting "Stop thief!" with all his might, made off
after him, book in hand.
But the old gentleman was not the only person who raised the hue and
cry. The Dodger and Master Bates, unwilling to attract public attention
by running down the open street, had merely retired into the very first
doorway round the corner. They no sooner heard the cry, and saw Oliver
running, than, guessing exactly how the matter stood, they issued forth
with great promptitude, and, shouting "Stop thief!" too, joined in the
pursuit like good citizens.
Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was
not theoretically acquainted with their beautiful axiom that
self-preservation is the first law of nature. If he had been, perhaps
he would have been prepared for this. Not being prepared, however,
it alarmed him the more; so away he went like the wind, with the old
gentlemen and the two boys roaring and shouting behind him.
"Stop thief! stop thief!" There is a magic in the sound. The
tradesman leaves his counter, and the carman his waggon; the butcher
throws down his tray, the baker his basket, the milkman his pail,
the errand-boy his parcels, the schoolboy his marbles, the paviour
his pick-axe, the child his battledore: away they run, pell-mell,
helter-skelter, slap-dash, tearing, yelling, and screaming, knocking
down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and
astonishing the fowls; and streets, squares, and courts re-echo with
the sound.
"Stop thief! stop thief!" The cry is taken up by a hundred voices, and
the crowd accumulate at every turning. Away they fly, splashing through
the mud, and rattling along the pavements; up go the windows, out run
the people, onward bear the mob: a whole audience desert Punch in the
very thickest of the plot, and, joining the rushing throng, swell the
shout, and lend fresh vigour to the cry, "Stop thief! stop thief!"
"Stop thief! stop thief!" There is a passion _for hunting something_
deeply implanted in the human breast. One wretched, breathless child,
panting with exhaustion, terror in his looks, agony in his eye, large
drops of perspiration streaming down his face, strains every nerve to
make head upon his pursuers; and as they follow on his track, and gain
upon him every instant, they hail his decreasing strength with still
louder shouts, and whoop and scream with joy "Stop thief!"--Ay, stop
him for God's sake, were it only in mercy!
Stopped at last. A clever blow that. He's down upon the pavement,
and the crowd eagerly gather round him; each new comer jostling and
struggling with the others to catch a glimpse. "Stand aside!"--"Give
him a little air!"--"Nonsense! he don't deserve it."--"Where's the
gentleman?"--"Here he is, coming down the street."--"Make room there
for the gentleman!"--"Is this the boy, sir?"--"Yes."
Oliver lay covered with mud and dust, and bleeding from the mouth,
looking wildly round upon the heap of faces that surrounded him, when
the old gentleman was officiously dragged and pushed into the circle
by the foremost of the pursuers, and made this reply to their anxious
inquiries.
"Yes," said the gentleman in a benevolent voice, "I am afraid it is."
"Afraid!" murmured the crowd. "That's a good un."
"Poor fellow!" said the gentleman, "he has hurt himself."
"I did that, sir," said a great lubberly fellow stepping forward; "and
preciously I cut my knuckle agin' his mouth. _I_ stopped him, sir."
The fellow touched his hat with a grin, expecting something for
his pains; but the old gentleman, eyeing him with an expression of
disgust, looked anxiously round, as if he contemplated running away
himself; which it is very possible he might have attempted to do, and
thus afforded another chase, had not a police officer (who is always
the last person to arrive in such cases) at that moment made his way
through the crowd, and seized Oliver by the collar. "Come, get up,"
said the man roughly.
"It wasn't me indeed, sir. Indeed, indeed, it was two other boys," said
Oliver, clasping his hands passionately, and looking round: "they are
here somewhere."
"Oh no, they ain't," said the officer. He meant this to be ironical;
but it was true besides, for the Dodger and Charley Bates had filed off
down the first convenient court they came to. "Come, get up."
"Don't hurt him," said the old gentleman compassionately.
"Oh no, I won't hurt him," replied the officer, tearing his jacket half
off his back in proof thereof. "Come, I know you; it won't do. Will you
stand upon your legs, you young devil?"
Oliver, who could hardly stand, made a shift to raise himself upon his
feet, and was at once lugged along the streets by the jacket-collar at
a rapid pace. The gentleman walked on with them by the officer's side;
and as many of the crowd as could, got a little a-head, and stared back
at Oliver from time to time. The boys shouted in triumph, and on they
went.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
TREATS OF MR. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE, AND FURNISHES A SLIGHT
SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE.
The offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in the
immediate neighbourhood of a very notorious metropolitan police-office.
The crowd had only the satisfaction of accompanying Oliver through two
or three streets, and down a place called Mutton-hill, when he was led
beneath a low archway and up a dirty court into this dispensary of
summary justice, by the back way. It was a small paved yard into which
they turned; and here they encountered a stout man with a bunch of
whiskers on his face, and a bunch of keys in his hand.
"What's the matter now?" said the man carelessly.
"A young fogle-hunter," replied the man who had Oliver in charge.
"Are you the party that's been robbed, sir?" inquired the man with the
keys.
"Yes, I am," replied the old gentleman; "but I am not sure that this
boy actually took the handkerchief. I--I'd rather not press the case."
"Must go before the magistrate now, sir," replied the man. "His worship
will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young gallows."
This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which he
unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a small stone cell. Here he
was searched, and, nothing been found upon him, locked up.
This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar, only not
so light. It was most intolerably dirty, for it was Monday morning, and
it had been tenanted since Saturday night by six drunken people. But
this is nothing. In our station-houses, men and women are every night
confined on the most trivial _charges_--the word is worth noting--in
dungeons, compared with which, those in Newgate, occupied by the most
atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and under sentence of death, are
palaces! Let any man who doubts this, compare the two.
The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key grated
in the lock; and turned with a sigh to the book which had been the
innocent cause of all this disturbance.
"There is something in that boy's face," said the old gentleman to
himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover of
the book in a thoughtful manner, "something that touches and interests
me. _Can_ he be innocent? He looked like--By the bye," exclaimed the
old gentleman, halting very abruptly, and staring up into the sky, "God
bless my soul! where have I seen something like that look before?"
After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked with the same
meditative face into a back ante-room opening from the yard; and
there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's eye a vast
amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many
years. "No," said the old gentleman, shaking his head; "it must be
imagination."
He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was
not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There
were the faces of friends and foes, and of many that had been almost
strangers, peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of
young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were others
that the grave had changed to ghastly trophies of death, but which the
mind, superior to his power, still dressed in their old freshness and
beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the
smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering
of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from
earth only to be set up as a light to shed a soft and gentle glow upon
the path to Heaven.
But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which Oliver's
features bore a trace; so he heaved a sigh over the recollections he
had awakened; and being, happily for himself, an absent old gentleman,
buried them again in the pages of the musty book.
He was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the
man with the keys to follow him into the office. He closed his book
hastily, and was at once ushered into the imposing presence of the
renowned Mr. Fang.
The office was a front parlour, with a panneled wall. Mr. Fang sat
behind a bar at the upper end; and on one side the door was a sort of
wooden pen in which poor little Oliver was already deposited, trembling
very much at the awfulness of the scene.
Mr. Fang was a middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair; and
what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was
stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking
rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought an
action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy
damages.
The old gentleman bowed respectfully, and, advancing to the
magistrate's desk, said, suiting the action to the word, "That is my
name and address, sir." He then withdrew a pace or two; and, with
another polite and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be
questioned.
Now, it so happened that Mr. Fang was at that moment perusing a leading
article in a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some recent
decision of his, and commending him, for the three hundred and fiftieth
time, to the special and particular notice of the Secretary of State
for the Home Department. He was out of temper, and he looked up with an
angry scowl.
"Who are you?" said Mr. Fang.
The old gentleman pointed with some surprise to his card.
"Officer!" said Mr. Fang, tossing the card contemptuously away with the
newspaper, "who is this fellow?"
"My name, sir," said the old gentleman, speaking _like_ a gentleman,
and consequently in strong contrast to Mr. Fang,--"my name, sir, is
Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the name of the magistrate who offers
a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a respectable man, under the
protection of the bench." Saying this, Mr. Brownlow looked round the
office as if in search of some person who would afford him the required
information.
"Officer!" said Mr. Fang, throwing the paper on one side, "what's this
fellow charged with?"
"He's not charged at all, your worship," replied the officer. "He
appears against the boy, your worship."
His worship knew this perfectly well; but it was a good annoyance, and
a safe one.
"Appears against the boy, does he?" said Fang, surveying Mr. Brownlow
contemptuously from head to foot. "Swear him."
"Before I am sworn I must beg to say one word," said Mr. Brownlow;
"and that is, that I never, without actual experience, could have
believed----"
"Hold your tongue, sir!" said Mr. Fang peremptorily.
"I will not, sir!" replied the spirited old gentleman.
"Hold your tongue this instant, or I'll have you turned out of the
office!" said Mr. Fang. "You're an insolent impertinent fellow. How
dare you bully a magistrate!"
"What!" exclaimed the old gentleman, reddening.
"Swear this person!" said Fang to the clerk. "I'll not hear another
word. Swear him!"
Mr. Brownlow's indignation was greatly roused; but, reflecting that
he might only injure the boy by giving vent to it, he suppressed his
feelings, and submitted to be sworn at once.
"Now," said Fang, "what's the charge against this boy? What have you
got to say, sir?"
"I was standing at a book-stall--" Mr. Brownlow began.
"Hold your tongue, sir!" said Mr. Fang. "Policeman!--where's the
policeman? Here, swear this man. Now, policeman, what is this?"
The policeman with becoming humility related how he had taken the
charge, how he had searched Oliver and found nothing on his person; and
how that was all he knew about it.
"Are there any witnesses?" inquired Mr. Fang.
"None, your worship," replied the policeman.
Mr. Fang sat silent for some minutes, and then, turning round to the
prosecutor, said, in a towering passion,
"Do you mean to state what your complaint against this boy is, fellow,
or do you not? You have been sworn. Now, if you stand there, refusing
to give evidence, I'll punish you for disrespect to the bench; I will,
by ----"
By what, or by whom, nobody knows, for the clerk and jailer coughed
very loud just at the right moment, and the former dropped a heavy book
on the floor; thus preventing the word from being heard--accidentally,
of course.
With many interruptions, and repeated insults, Mr. Brownlow contrived
to state his case; observing that, in the surprise of the moment, he
had run after the boy because he saw him running away, and expressing
his hope that, if the magistrate should believe him, although not
actually the thief, to be connected with thieves, he would deal as
leniently with him as justice would allow.
"He has been hurt already," said the old gentleman in conclusion. "And
I fear," he added, with great energy, looking towards the bar,--"I
really fear that he is very ill."
"Oh! yes; I dare say!" said Mr. Fang, with a sneer. "Come; none of your
tricks here, you young vagabond; they won't do. What's your name?"
Oliver tried to reply, but his tongue failed him. He was deadly pale,
and the whole place seemed turning round and round.
"What's your name, you hardened scoundrel?" thundered Mr. Fang.
"Officer, what's his name?"
This was addressed to a bluff old fellow in a striped waistcoat, who
was standing by the bar. He bent over Oliver, and repeated the inquiry;
but finding him really incapable of understanding the question, and
knowing that his not replying would only infuriate the magistrate the
more, and add to the severity of his sentence, he hazarded a guess.
"He says his name's Tom White, your worship," said this kind-hearted
thief-taker.
"Oh, he won't speak out, won't he?" said Fang. "Very well, very well.
Where does he live?"
"Where he can, your worship," replied the officer, again pretending to
receive Oliver's answer.
"Has he any parents?" inquired Mr. Fang.
"He says they died in his infancy, your worship," replied the officer,
hazarding the usual reply.
At this point of the inquiry Oliver raised his head, and, looking round
with imploring eyes, murmured a feeble prayer for a draught of water.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Mr. Fang; "don't try to make a fool of me."
"I think he really is ill, your worship," remonstrated the officer.
"I know better," said Mr. Fang.
"Take care of him, officer," said the old gentleman, raising his hands
instinctively; "he'll fall down."
"Stand away, officer," cried Fang savagely; "let him if he likes."
Oliver availed himself of the kind permission, and fell heavily to the
floor in a fainting fit. The men in the office looked at each other,
but no one dared to stir.
"I knew he was shamming," said Fang, as if this were incontestable
proof of the fact. "Let him lie; he'll soon be tired of that."
"How do you propose to deal with the case, sir?" inquired the clerk in
a low voice.
"Summarily," replied Mr. Fang. "He stands committed for three
months,--hard labour of course. Clear the office."
The door was opened for this purpose, and a couple of men were
preparing to carry the insensible boy to his cell, when an elderly man
of decent but poor appearance, clad in an old suit of black, rushed
hastily into the office, and advanced to the bench.
"Stop, stop,--don't take him away,--for Heaven's sake stop a moment,"
cried the new-comer, breathless with haste.
Although the presiding geniuses in such an office as this, exercise
a summary and arbitrary power over the liberties, the good name, the
character, almost the lives of his Majesty's subjects, especially of
the poorer class, and although within such walls enough fantastic
tricks are daily played to make the angels weep thick tears of blood,
they are closed to the public, save through the medium of the daily
press. Mr. Fang was consequently not a little indignant to see an
unbidden guest enter in such irreverent disorder.
"What is this? Who is this? Turn this man out. Clear the office," cried
Mr. Fang.
"I will speak," cried the man; "I will not be turned out,--I saw it
all. I keep the book-stall. I demand to be sworn. I will not be put
down. Mr. Fang, you must hear me. You dare not refuse, sir."
The man was right. His manner was bold and determined, and the matter
was growing rather too serious to be hushed up.
"Swear the fellow," growled Fang with a very ill grace. "Now, man, what
have you got to say?"
"This," said the man: "I saw three boys--two others and the prisoner
here--loitering on the opposite side of the way, when this gentleman
was reading. The robbery was committed by another boy. I saw it done,
and I saw that this boy was perfectly amazed and stupified by it."
Having by this time recovered a little breath, the worthy book-stall
keeper proceeded to relate in a more coherent manner the exact
circumstances of the robbery.
"Why didn't you come here before?" said Fang after a pause.
"I hadn't a soul to mind the shop," replied the man; "everybody that
could have helped me had joined in the pursuit. I could get nobody till
five minutes ago, and I've run here all the way."
"The prosecutor was reading, was he?" inquired Fang, after another
pause.
"Yes," replied the man, "the very book he has got in his hand."
"Oh, that book, eh?" said Fang. "Is it paid for?"
"No, it is not," replied the man, with a smile.
"Dear me, I forgot all about it!" exclaimed the absent old gentleman,
innocently.
"A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy!" said Fang,
with a comical effort to look humane. "I consider, sir, that you have
obtained possession of that book under very suspicious and disreputable
circumstances, and you may think yourself very fortunate that the owner
of the property declines to prosecute. Let this be a lesson to you, my
man, or the law will overtake you yet. The boy is discharged. Clear the
office!"
"D--me!" cried the old gentleman, bursting out with the rage he had
kept down so long, "d--me! I'll----"
"Clear the office!" roared the magistrate. "Officers, do you hear?
Clear the office!"
The mandate was obeyed, and the indignant Mr. Brownlow was conveyed
out, with the book in one hand and the bamboo cane in the other, in a
perfect phrenzy of rage and defiance.
He reached the yard, and it vanished in a moment. Little Oliver Twist
lay on his back on the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned and his
temples bathed with water: his face a deadly white, and a cold tremble
convulsing his whole frame.
"Poor boy, poor boy!" said Mr. Brownlow bending over him. "Call a
coach, somebody, pray, directly!"
A coach was obtained, and Oliver, having been carefully laid on one
seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the other.
"May I accompany you?" said the book-stall keeper looking in.
"Bless me, yes, my dear friend," said Mr. Brownlow quickly. "I forgot
you. Dear, dear! I've got this unhappy book still. Jump in. Poor
fellow! there's no time to lose."
The book-stall keeper got into the coach, and away they drove.
ELEGIAC STANZAS.
BY MRS. CORNWELL BARON WILSON.
Why mourn we for her, who in Spring's tender bloom,
And the sweet blush of womanhood, quitted life's sphere?
Why weep we for her? Thro' the gates of the tomb
She has pass'd to the regions undimm'd by a tear!
To the spirits' far land in the mansions above,
Unsullied, thus early her soul wing'd its flight;
While she bask'd in the beams of affection and love,
And knew not the clouds that oft shadow their light!
Fate's hand pluck'd the bud ere it blossom'd to fame,
No withering canker its leaflets had known;
The ministering angels her fellowship claim,
And rejoice o'er a spirit as pure as their own!
While she knew but life's purer and tenderer ties,
The guardian who watches life's path from our birth
Call'd home the bright being Heav'n form'd for the skies
Ere its bloom had been ting'd by the follies of earth!
Alas! while the light of her young spirit's flame
Shone a day-star of Hope to illumine us here,
The messenger-seraph too suddenly came,
And bore his bright charge to her own native sphere!
Yet mourn not for her, who, in Spring's tender bloom,
Has made life a desert to those left behind;
Like the rose-leaf, tho' wither'd, still yielding perfume,
In our hearts, ever fragrant, her memory is shrin'd!
FICTIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
BY DELTA.
THE BUTTERFLY BISHOP.
Amongst the numerous grievances complained of, during the reigns of the
Anglo-Norman sovereigns, none gave more uneasiness than the inhuman
severity of the forest-laws; they disgusted those nobles not in the
confidence of the monarch, oppressed the people, and impoverished the
country.
The privilege of hunting in the royal forests was confined to the king
and his favourites, who spent the greater portion of their time, not
engaged in active warfare, in that diversion; many of them pursued wild
beasts with greater fury than they did enemies of their country, and
became as savage as the very brutes they hunted.
The punishment for hunting or destroying game in royal forests, or
other property belonging to the crown, was very severe: the offender
was generally put to death; but, if he could afford to pay an enormous
mulct to the king, the sentence was commuted either to dismemberment or
tedious imprisonment.
The propensity of the dignified clergy to follow secular pastimes,
especially that of hunting, is well known: they were ambitious to
surpass the laity in the number and splendid livery of their huntsmen,
and to excel in making the woods resound with the echo of their bugles;
many of them are recorded for their skill in the aristocratic and manly
amusement of the chase. Few persons, however, either ecclesiastic
or secular, equalled Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester, in his
fondness for, and prowess in, the chase.
Peter had spent the prime of his life as a soldier,[1] and having
rendered King John essential service in such capacity, that monarch
conferred upon him the lucrative office of Bishop of Winchester, and he
thenceforth became a curer of souls instead of a destroyer of bodies.
Peter's appointment as a bishop afforded him ample time to devote to
the fascinating employment of chasing the "full-acorned boar" and
stealthy fox: he thought the hunter's shout, the winding notes of the
clanging horn, and the joyous bark of the hounds, much sweeter music
than the nasal chaunt of the drowsy monks.
It happened one day that Peter, (who was, according to the Chronicle of
Lanercost,[2] a proud and worldly man,--as was too often the case with
bishops of that period,) with a bugle dangling at his belt, and mounted
upon a fiery steed, attended by a vast retinue of men, horses, and
hounds, was in hot pursuit of a wary old fox; his courser,--more fleet
than the mountain roe, scarce bruising the grass with his iron-shod
hoofs,--like Bucephalus of Macedon, took fright at his own shadow, and
became unmanageable; nor were all the skill and spur of the rider able
to check his impetuous speed: the harder the bishop pulled, the more
unruly became his steed; the bridle now suddenly snapped in twain,
and the bishop was left to the fate that awaited him. Velocipede,
for so the horse was called, now seemed exultingly to bound over the
deepest ditches, and to clear the highest thorny-twining hedge with the
greatest ease: nothing could moderate his foaming rage; he resembled
more the far-famed Pegasus of Medusan blood, than the palfrey of a
gentle bishop. The retinue, and eager hounds, notwithstanding their
utmost endeavour to keep pace with their master, were left far behind.
Peter, having no control over his flying barbary, awaited with truly
apostolic calmness and gravity the issue of his wondrous ride,
seriously expecting every minute a broken neck or leg; or, perchance,
to have his preaching spoilt by the dislocation of a jaw-bone.--Such
thoughts will frequently obtrude themselves into the minds of men
encompassed with similar difficulties, let their presence of mind be
never so great.
After half an hour's ride in such unepiscopal speed, which can only
be compared to that of a steam-engine upon the Manchester railroad,
Velocipede suddenly stopped before a magnificent castle with frowning
battlements and a gloomy moat. The bishop, wondering at what he saw,
was struck dumb with astonishment; for he well knew that so extensive a
castle had not hitherto existed in his diocese, nor did he know of any
such in England. Velocipede seemed also at his wits' end, and commenced
frisking and gamboling about; and, in making a devotional curvet to
the castle, threw the gallant, but unprepared bishop, over his head.
Peter was either stunned or entranced by the fall,--whether his senses
ever returned the reader must determine for himself when he has perused
what follows: the bishop, however, always declared that he was never
senseless, and that he could preach as well after, as before his fall.
No sooner was the bishop safely located upon the verdant down by the
reverential feelings of the awe-struck Velocipede, than the castle's
drawbridge fell, and an aged seneschal, of rubicund-tinted face, with
at least fifty liveried lackeys in fanciful suits, ran to assist the
bishop, and help him to regain his legs.
By the aid of a restorative cordial the bishop was resuscitated, and,
upon coming to himself, was welcomed by the seneschal to the castle of
Utopia.
The bishop looked aghast.
"My lord bishop," said the seneschal, "the king, our master, has
been long expecting you; he is all impatient to embrace you: hasten,
my lord, hasten your steps into the castle; the wines are cooled,
the supper is ready; oh, such a supper! my mouth waters at the very
smell thereof! Four wild turkeys smoke upon the spit, seven bitterns,
six-and-twenty grey partridges, two-and-thirty red-legged ones, sixteen
pheasants, nine woodcocks, nineteen herons, two-and-thirty rooks,
twenty ring-doves, sixty leverets, twelve hares, twenty rabbits, and an
ocean of Welsh ones, (enough to surfeit all the mice, and kill every
apoplectic person in the world,) twenty kids, six roebucks, eight
he-goats, fifteen sucking wild-boars, a flock of wild-ducks, to say
nothing of the sturgeons, pikes, jacks, and other fish, both fresh and
saltwater, besides ten tons of the most exquisite native oysters: and
then there are flagons, goblets, and mead-cups overflowing with frothy
ale, exhilarating wine, and goodly mead, all longing to empty their
contents into our parched and ready stomachs, which are unquenchable
asbestos; for we drink lustily, my lord, and eat powdered beef salted
at Shrovetide, to season our mouths, and render them rabid for liquid
in the same proportion as a rabid dog avoids it."
The seneschal here paused to take breath, for his description of the
supper exhausted the wind-trunk of his organ; and the bishop, seizing
the opportunity of its being replenished, said,
"Peace, hoary dotard! thou hast mistaken thy man; I am Peter de Roches,
Bishop of Winchester, and Protector of England during the king's
sojourn abroad."
"You need not tell _me_ what I already know," replied the seneschal;
"though, it seems, I must again remind _you_ that my lord the king
awaits your coming within the castle walls, and has prepared a
sumptuous supper, with all manner of good cheer, to greet you."
"Supper!" said the bishop in astonishment, "I have not yet dined;
besides I never eat supper."
"The devil take your inhuman fashion, then!" replied the seneschal:
"in extreme necessity I might forego a dinner, provided I had eaten
an overwhelming breakfast; but I would as soon die as go without my
supper. To go to bed without supper is a base and aristocratic custom;
I say it is an error offensive to nature, and nature's dictates; all
fasting is bad save breakfasting. That wicked pope who first invented
fasting ought to have been baked alive in the papal kitchen."
To the latter part of the seneschal's speech the bishop mentally
assented; but he merely said,
"Go to, thou gorged dullard, and tell thy master to gormandize without
me."
"Well, go I suppose I must, if you will not come," returned the
seneschal, "for I cannot longer tarry here. Ah, Sir Bishop, did you
feel the gnawings of my stomach, you would be glad to throw some food
to the hungry mastiff that seems feeding upon my very vitals!"
"Hold thy balderdash!" said the bishop, who had become very irritated,
and would have sworn, had it been etiquette to do so in those days,
at the effusive and edacious harangue of the seneschal. "Verily, thy
hunger and thirst have gotten the better of thy wits! Whence comest
thou?"
"From within the pincernary of that castle, where I have been
indefatigably filling the goblets," answered the seneschal, smacking
his lips. "_Sitio! sitio!_ my parched mouth moistens at the thought!
Oh! the lachryma Christi, the nectar, the ambrosia, and the true
Falernian! Ah! Sir Bishop, some persons drink to quench their thirst,
but I drink to prevent it."
"Pshaw!" said the bishop, "the wine that thou hast already drunken hath
fuddled thy brains."
"By a gammon of the saltest bacon!" returned the seneschal, "I have
more sense of what is good in my little finger than your reverence has
in your whole pate, or you would not stand shilly-shambling here whilst
so goodly a supper waits within."
The bishop was highly incensed at the seneschal's reflection upon his
pate, and would have followed, had he dared, the slashing example of
his namesake, and have smitten off the ear of this high-priest of
the pantry; (for he always wore a sword, even in the pulpit, firmly
believing in the efficacy of cold steel, knowing from experience that
it would make a deeper and more lasting impression upon human obduracy
than the most eloquent preaching;) but the bishop was deterred by
prudential reflections from such sanguinary vengeance.
How long the confabulation between the bishop and the loquacious
seneschal would have lasted, and to what extent the patience of the
former might have been tried, it would at this remote period be
difficult to determine, especially as the Lanercost Chronicle does not
inform us. At any rate, it was cut shorter than it would have been, by
the approach of twenty youthful knights, clad in superb armour, and
riding upon horses caparisoned in most costly and gorgeous trappings;
they dismounted, and made a low obeisance. The bishop returned it as
lowly as bishops generally do, unless they are bowing to the premier
during the vacancy of an archbishoprick. The knights advanced; but
Peter remained as firm and majestic as the rock of Gibraltar.
"Sir Bishop," said the chief of the knights, a youth with a most
beautiful and smiling face, "we are come to request your speedy
attendance upon our lord the king, who with any other than yourself
would have been much displeased at your perverse absence, after you
have been bidden by the steward of the household."
The bishop rubbed, shut, and opened his eyes.--"Am I bewitched,"
thought he to himself, "or do I dream?"
"Neither the one nor the other," said the knight, who perfectly
understood the bishop's cogitations.
"No? What, then, does all this mean?" inquired the bishop. "When did my
lord the king return from Picardy?"
"Proceed into the castle," replied the knight, "and let him answer for
himself."
"If these people consider this a joke," thought the bishop, "I by no
means think it one. At all events, come what come may, I will follow up
this strange adventure, and be even with these gentlemen. I have not a
bishop's garment," said he, addressing the seneschal; "how can I appear
before the king, accoutred as I am?"
"Knowing how much you are addicted to hunting," returned the seneschal,
"the king will assuredly receive you in your usual costume."
"Tut, fool!" said the bishop sneeringly; "do you forget, or has your
time been so engrossed with epicurean pursuits, that you have not
learnt how a guest, though bidden, was punished because he attended a
supper-party without a proper garment? Find me a becoming dress, and I
will instantly attend his highness' pleasure."
"If you will condescend to follow me," said the youthful knight, "a
sacerdotal dress shall be procured for you."
The bishop, nodding assent, was then conducted in solemn silence into
the wardrobe of the castle, where the obsequious attendants soon
arrayed him in a dress fit for a bishop to sit with the king at supper
in. It was not such unpretending costume as that in which bishops are
at present apparelled; but robes of the tinctured colours of the East,
which were more apt to remind both the wearer and the beholders of
mundane pomps and vanities, than of the humility and simplicity of
Christianity. The alb was of most dazzling white, the dalmatica of
gold tissue, the stole was embroidered with precious stones, and the
chasuble, of purple velvet wrought with orfraise, was also studded with
costly orient gems.
The bishop thus splendidly accoutred was conducted with great state
and solemnity into the banqueting-room, one of the most magnificent
and spacious of the kind. It excelled everything he had ever before
seen: odoriferous and fragrant perfumes, fit for a Peri[3] to feed
on, saluted his nose; his sight was dazzled by splendid and radiant
illuminations, the most exquisite music stole upon his ear, and
laughter and mirth seemed to be universal; every face (there were many
hundreds in the room) was decked with a smile; there wanted but one
thing to complete the enchantment of the scene,--the light of woman's
laughing eye.
As the bishop entered the hall, five hundred harpers in an instant
twanged their harps; and the air resounded with trumpets, clarions,
fifes, and other musical instruments, not omitting the hollow drum.
The bishop, being tainted with the superstitious feelings of the
age, easily persuaded himself that he was in an enchanted palace; he
therefore determined to conform to every custom that prevailed in the
assembled company, and by that means he hoped to ingratiate himself
with the presiding spirit. When he had reached the centre of the hall,
the king (he wore a robe of rich crimson velvet, furred with ermine,
over a dalmatica flowered with gold, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and
diamonds, and on his head was a splendid crown beyond estimation,)
descended from a throne of the purest crystal, and advanced to meet the
bishop. As he passed the obsequious nobles, he received their servile
adulation with a smile, and, extending his arms, folded the bishop in a
royal embrace. The latter surveyed with some awe the brawny shoulders
of the king, and regarded with much respect the amber-coloured locks
hanging in great profusion down his musculous back. The bishop thought
that the aquiline nose, the expansive brow, the large clear azure eye,
and the ruddy complexion of his host, about as much resembled those of
his own monarch as a terrible-looking bull-dog does a snarling mongrel.
But he kept his complimentary thoughts of his host to himself, as he
was not at any time of a communicative spirit,--he was a proud, not a
vain man,--and he moreover did not know how his compliment might be
received.
The king handed the bishop to the upper end of the hall, and placed him
at his right hand. No sooner were they seated than twenty trumpeters,
in a gallery at the lower end of the room, blew, as the signal for
supper to be served up, three such electrifying blasts, that, had the
building not been as substantial as beautiful, it must have been shaken.
As the loquacious seneschal, in tempting the bishop to quicken his
steps to supper, has put us in possession of many of the various
articles provided for this festive entertainment, we shall not weary
our reader by recapitulating them; but content ourselves with stating
that, in addition to the solid fare, there were exquisite and delicate
fruits and viands, with wines and liqueurs of the choicest quality and
flavour. The supper-service was of the most superb description, frosted
silver and burnished gold; the goblets, vases, and wine-cups were of
crystal, mounted in gold richly carved. Such a feast the bishop had
never seen or tasted; and yet he was, like many of his predecessors
and successors too, perfectly familiar with the charms of eating and
drinking.
Nothing produces good-fellowship, intimacy, and conviviality more than
a good supper. We do not mean the cold, formal, and pompous supper
given to a fashionable party of the present day; but such as were
peculiar to by-gone days, when the table groaned under hot and solid
joints, and the company, with good appetites as provocatives, ate
and drank right heartily,--when glee and joy sat merrily upon every
face, and the glass went briskly round. Even misanthropes or proud men
could not be insensible to such festive scenes; their hearts would
necessarily warm as the exhilarating wine washed away their gloomy and
proud thoughts.
The bishop soon became familiar with his host, ate, drank, laughed,
and was merry; (we will not so scandalise the Bench as to presume that
he was drunk, although the Chronicle of Lanercost insinuates as much;)
the conversation was brilliant, the wit bright and poignant, and the
repartees flashed, and often rebounded upon the discharger.
To put a direct or pointed question at any time is, to say the least
of it, ungentlemanly; it very often gives dire offence, is seldom
admired or tolerated even by your most intimate acquaintance; and men
are seldom guilty of it, unless in their cups, or with a desire of
insulting:--how unpalatable must it be to royalty! As we know it was
the bishop's desire to keep upon good terms with his host, it is but
natural to infer that he would not intentionally insult him by any
rude question. If, therefore, any rudeness occurred on the part of the
bishop, it is charitable to set it down to inebriation, or perhaps to
the bishop's habit of putting questions in the confessional.
To the ineffable surprise of the king, the bishop was so injudicious as
to ask his host, in the most direct and pointed manner, who he was, and
whence he came there.
No sooner had the bishop attempted to satisfy his prying curiosity by
what appeared to him a very natural question, than the hall shook as if
Nature were indignant at his presumptuous inquiry; the whole place was
filled with an effulgent lambent light so brilliant, that it entirely
eclipsed the blaze of the variegated lamps that burned in the hall; a
low murmuring wind followed. The king's eyes seemed to flash liquid
fire as he answered, "Know me for what I am,--Arthur, formerly lord of
the whole monarchy of Britain, son of the mighty Pendragon, and the
illustrious founder of the Order of the Round Table."
The bishop, having a firm heart and buxom valour, was far from being
daunted, as most men in a similar situation would have been, and he
inquired whether the story then current was true, that King Arthur
was not dead, but had been carried away by fairies into some pleasant
place, where he was to remain for a time, and then return again
and reign in as great authority as ever; or whether he died by the
sword-wounds he received from the sons of the king of the Picts;
and if so, whether his soul was saved, and come to revisit this
sublunary world. The bishop, meditating authorship, asked a thousand
other questions relative to the immortality of the soul; and so
subtle were they, that, had they been put in these days of sciolism
and charlatanry, his fame would have been as brilliant, lasting, and
deserved as that of the noble editor of Paley's Theology.
Whether King Arthur did not choose to satisfy the bishop's curiosity,
or whether, judging from the usual depth of the human mind, he thought
the immortality of the soul a subject too deep and mystic for such
moonshine treatises as have been written concerning it, the Chronicle
of Lanercost does not inform us. It merely states, that to all the
bishop's searching questions Arthur only replied, "_Verè expecto
misericordiam Dei magnam_." He had no sooner uttered those words than
a roar, like the falling of mighty waters such as Niagara's was heard,
and from the incense-altar another blaze of transcendent light issued:
the whole assembly, excepting the bishop, prostrated themselves and
chaunted a hymn, which he, mistaking for a bacchanal-venatical chorus,
heartily joined in. Upon this outrage of public decency, the chaunt
instantly terminated with a crash resembling what is ignorantly called
the falling of a thunderbolt; the altar again smoked, and horrible and
clamorous noises issued therefrom, like the bellowing of buffaloes, the
howling of wolves, the snarling and barking of hounds, the neighing of
horses, the halloo of huntsmen, and the blasts of brazen trumpets, all
in heterogeneous mingle. The smoke gradually assumed the appearance
of a host of hunters; one of them, evidently their chief, fixed his
glaring eyes upon the bishop, and frowned awfully. The bishop did not
admire the looks of the hunter-chief, and even winced a little when he
raised his ghastly arm, (as a self-satisfied orator does when about
to enforce some appalling clap-trap sentiment,) and said in a gruff
growl, "I am Nimrod, of hunting fame, and such a hunter was I as the
world had not before, or since, or will ever have again. Yet was I
no monopolizer of game, or murderer of men to preserve it, as some
have unjustly charged me. I loved the chase, and taught my subjects
to love it too; but thou, oh Bishop Peter, hast been a cruel hunter,
and strict preserver of game. The tongues thou hast dilacerated, the
ears and noses thou hast cut off, and the wretches thou hast slain,
form an awful catalogue of cruelty, and one that will require tears of
blood to wash out. Hearken to the lamentations of thy victims, and the
bewailings of the widows and orphans thy cruelty hath made! Hadst thou
not been so peerless and bold a hunter, I should not have condescended
to warn you of the terrible fate you will experience in the world to
come, unless you mend your ways. Lover and encourager that I was, and
interested as I still am in that manly sport, I would sooner that it
were entirely lost to the world than it should be disgraced by human
bloodshed. List, I say, to the cries of the victims whom thou hast
sacrificed at the altar of Diana, thy divinity!" Loud lamentations were
now heard, and a hideous group of dismembered menacing ghosts flitted
rapidly before the bishop's wondering sight. He closed his eyes to
avoid their angry looks; one writer insinuates that he swooned, but we
think that unlikely. Be it, however, as it may, upon his opening his
eyes he neither saw Nimrod, his crew, nor any of the victims of the
forest-laws. They had every one of them disappeared!
King Arthur, like a brave and magnanimous prince, soon forgot and
forgave the bishop's want of good breeding in asking impertinent
questions; though he severely chid him for having split so many human
noses, and dismembered Christians without the slightest remorse, for so
trifling an offence as infraction of the forest-laws: and that, too,
within the very precinct of Winchester Castle, where the Round Table
was preserved. The bishop thought those offences anything but trifling,
and that the souls as well as bodies of the offenders merited the
severest punishment, instead of commiseration.
King Arthur then denounced the concupiscence of the dignitaries of the
church, and their appetite for, and easy digestion of, the good things
of the world; and he declared that they regarded nothing but sensual
gratification, and wasted their precious lives in banqueting, hawking,
and hunting. He entreated the bishop to leave off his hunting habits,
and to take unto those that were more episcopal and less sanguinary. He
told him that it would add considerably to his mundane happiness, and
tend more to his salvation than ten thousand thoughtless repetitions of
the "pater noster" and twelve thousand of the "ave Maria." So much did
King Arthur say, needless here to be repeated, that the bishop mentally
resolved to profit by the king's advice. But it occurred to him that
he could not suddenly leave off hunting without assigning a sufficient
reason for his determination; and that if he related what had befallen
him, his being a bishop would not entitle him to credit, nor protect
him from the derision of his sovereign and his courtiers; for who would
believe his most solemn asseveration that he had seen Nimrod, and
conversed and supped with King Arthur?
King Arthur, perceiving what was agitating the bishop's ideas,
determined to assist in fulfilling so righteous a resolve as the bishop
was meditating.
"Extend your right hand," said Arthur; the bishop complied. "Shut it,"
said Arthur; the bishop did as he was told. "Now open it," continued
Arthur. The bishop opened his hand, and there flew therefrom an
exquisitely beautiful butterfly.
The bishop, notwithstanding all that he had just before seen and heard,
now in real good earnest believed himself bewitched, and heartily
wished that he had never forsaken the profession of a soldier for that
of a bishop, to be subject to miracles; for in those days miracles and
visions only occurred to the dignified clergy.
King Arthur, compassionating the bishop's perturbation, said, "Whenever
in relating your adventure any one doubts it, you shall afford him
sufficient autopsy of its verity by sending, at all seasons of the
year, a butterfly from your hand, in memorial of me and of your
virtuous resolution."
The bishop cordially thanked King Arthur for his kindness and
consideration, and swore by the face at Lucca, (his favourite oath,)
that as long as he lived, he would never again sound the bugle, follow
hounds, nor punish man, woman, or child for infringing the game-laws;
and that he would moreover exert all his influence with King John to
relax the inhuman severity of the forest-laws.
No sooner had the bishop made a solemn adjuration to that effect than
he felt a stunning blow upon his head, which deprived him of all
sensation. When he recovered, he found himself lying where Velocipede
had thrown him, and the brute quietly grazing by his side.
The bishop vaulted upon his saddle, spurred his steed, and galloped off
as fast as the creature could go. After a ride of about five miles,
he found his attendants anxiously seeking him. He related all that
had occurred, to their great awe and astonishment; but when they had
autoptical evidence of the truth of his narration, by his letting loose
a mealy-winged butterfly from his hand, their fear and wonder exceeded
all bounds.
The bishop's adventure was soon bruited abroad, and thousands flocked
from all parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and even the Continent,
to see the man who had supped with King Arthur, and seen the hunter
Nimrod. Many more came to witness a miracle performed: a circumstance
of rare occurrence to the vulgar in those days, miracles, as we have
above observed, being reserved for the private view of bishops and
monks. Those pilgrimaging to Winchester always sought and received
a blessing from the butterfly hand of the bishop as soon as he was
satisfied that a liberal oblation had been made at the high altar of
his cathedral.
The frequent repetition of the miracle obtained for Peter the
appellation of the BUTTERFLY BISHOP; and the offerings at the high
altar so greatly augmented his revenue, that he never once repented of
his promise to King Arthur. His time was so occupied in performing the
miracle and blessing the people, that he had no time, whatever was his
inclination, for hunting.
The Chronicler ends this strange story in the following words "_Quid in
hoc anima Arthuri mortalis adhuc docere voluerit, perpendat qui meliùs
conjicere poterit_:"--which, for the benefit of our female readers,
may be rendered thus,--"What the still mortal soul of Arthur wished to
teach by this, let him consider who can best interpret."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Matthew Paris describes him as "_Vir equestris ordinis, et
in rebus bellicis eruditus_."]
[Footnote 2: The original words are, "_Idem vir vanus et mundanus, ut
nimis inolevit nostris pontificibus_."]
[Footnote 3: The Peris of Persian romance are supposed to feed upon the
choicest odours; by which food they overcome their bitterest enemies
the Deevs, (with whom they wage incessant war,) whose malignant nature
is impatient of fragrance.]
A NEW SONG TO THE OLD TUNE OF "KATE KEARNEY."
O, say have you heard of Duvernay?
They tell me she's able to earn a
Hundred pounds in a night,
Such crowds she'll delight--
What _danseuse_ is like to Duvernay?
If you e'er go to see this Duvernay,
Just notice her when she shall turn a
Most sweet pirouette,
And you'll never regret
Forking out to behold this Duvernay.
Would you know where you may see Duvernay?
You must go to Pall-mall, and just turn a
Little up a wide street,
When the Opera you'll meet,
And there you'll behold this Duvernay.
Tell me not of Leroux or Taglioni;
One's too stout, and the other's too bony:
If you see them all three,
You'll be thinking with me,
Of all dancers the flow'r is Duvernay.
F.G.
_City of London Institution,
Aldersgate-street._
WHAT TOM BINKS DID WHEN HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HIMSELF.
Is it creditable to that very respectable academical abstraction,
that indefatigable pioneer to the march of intellect, (which some
imagine to be the rogues' march,) the _schoolmaster_, notwithstanding
his ubiquity, and his being lately abroad on his travels, that the
medical faculty, with all their appliances of pill and book, have not
up to this hour been able to devise a remedy for a very common-place
disorder, so feelingly enunciated in that touching and eloquent
exclamation, "I really don't know what to do with myself!" or to
ascertain in what category of diseases incident to humanity it is
to be placed? Like hydrophobia, it has baffled the ingenuity of the
faculty, who summarily disposed of the evil between two feather-beds;
and, though no effectual remedy has been devised for this pet malady, a
feather-bed, or an easy-chair, has been found to operate as a sedative.
One thing is clear; that, of all the ills that flesh or spirit is heir
to, this interesting disorder possesses as respectable a degree of
obstinacy and virulency as ever humanity had to cope with.
Talk of being dunned for your own or anybody else's debt; talk of a
favourite horse or dog falling sick just as you are ready to mount,
and the scent reeking hot on the stubble; of being bored, no matter
with what; talk--even if one is put to that--of the devil; and what
are all these petty annoyances to that sublime of _blue-devilism_ to
which a poor devil is reduced, when, in his extremity, he reposes his
hands on his "fair round belly," or thrusts them to the very bottom of
his breeches' pockets, with not a cross there to keep the devil out,
and feelingly exclaims, "I really don't know what to do with myself!"
One may double the corner on a dun, or stop his mouth for three months
together with a promissory note, though at the end of that period it
may be as fructifying as any note of admiration; or, at worst, pay him
and be d--d to him, and there's an end. That biped Shank's mare is a
very respectable animal, which you may borrow; or any body else's who
may be disposed to lend. In case of a _bore_, you may retaliate, and
_perforate_ in your turn. You may defy the devil, though backed with
this world, and his own, and the flesh to boot. But when that _ne
plus ultra_ of blue-devilism attacks you, what's the remedy? I don't
know--do you? but this I know; that it is the most rascally, &c. &c.
&c. kind of malady, will be generally admitted.
Your poor devil at the East-end, and your devil-may-care fellow of
the West-end, are equally honoured by its visitation; while your
happy, active middle-man, who stands aloof from either end, sturdily
bids it defiance, and slams the door in its face. Under the influence
of this visitor it is that sundry pious pilgrimages are made to
the foot of Waterloo or Blackfriars' bridges, to steal out of life
through an archway, unless the dear enthusiast is interrupted by a
meddling officious waterman, and his senses gently wooed back by the
resuscitating apparatus and warm blankets of the Humane Society. Will
Sprightly, with four thousand a-year unincumbered, doesn't know what
to do with himself, and straightway falls to the agreeable occupation
of encumbering it, and, when it will bear no more, he finds he cannot
bear himself, and incontinently flies from one state of suspense to
another, and hangs himself; or, should the ruling passion be strong
in death, and he is desirous even then to cut a figure, why, he cuts
his throat; or, the report of a pistol will give you a pretty correct
intimation of his whereabouts, and his probable occupation. "Temporary
insanity" is uniformly the verdict of your "crowner's 'quest" on such
occasions; even a physician of any repute will honestly state on
ordinary occasions, particularly when the patient has the benefit of
his skill and experience in helping him to leave this wicked world,
that he died of such and such a disorder, and will manfully state the
name of the disorder, and the world gives him credit for his skill and
integrity. Would gentlemen serving upon "crowners' 'quests" imitate
this heroic example, instead of recording the foolish verdict of
"temporary insanity," they would say, "The deceased _didn't know what
to do with himself_!" This would be intelligible, and the faculty might
stumble upon a remedy; but "temporary insanity" is too transitory,
too fugitive to be grappled with, too vague and indefinite in its
very name ever to do any good, and the patient is generally "past all
surgery" before one suspects he is attacked with insanity, be it ever
so temporary or evanescent: but in honestly recording that "he didn't
know what to do with himself, _and thereby came by his death_," it
would be but doing justice to that interesting malady. Thus it could be
easily observed in all its stages, from its incipient symptoms at the
gaming or any other well-garnished table, where it sometimes takes its
rise, through all its phases and evolutions, till the malady comes to
a _head_, and a man blows out his brains. The disease, through each of
these changes, might be stayed in its progress, and society might be
benefited by the honesty of the verdict.
Shade of the "mild Abernethy!" how many thousands of thy patients
laboured under this disorder! and how often did thy sagacious and
provident spirit turn the halter into a skipping-rope, and, in order
that thy patients should live, insist upon a few mouthfuls the less!
To a feeling very near akin to this, Tom Binks found himself reduced,
as, about twelve at noon, he flung himself into an easy-chair, and
sought, from the appliances of its downy cushions, a lenitive for
his wounded spirit. His feet on the fender, the fire gently stirred,
the curtains still undrawn and shutting out the garish sun, his eye
fixed on the glowing landscape formed by the fantastic combination
of the embers in the grate, the corners of his fine mouth drawn down
in hopeless despondency, as if nothing on earth could elevate them,
his hands clasped over his knees, he sat, not knowing what to do with
himself.
The room in which Binks sat was small, but elegant; pictures of the
most costly description covered the walls,--the most exquisite that
owned him or anybody else as _master_; gold and silver had done their
work. On the polished surface of the tables were thrown the most
amusing works of the day, the last new novel, the lively magazine,
the gay album, the serious review, all exhibiting on the same board
like so many brethren of the _Ravel family_, in the most alluring
and seductive shapes; but they exhibited in vain. With all these
elements of happiness around him, what _could_ Binks sigh for? With
easy possessions, he was the most uneasy of human beings. Did he play,
fortune was always in the best humour with him: in the billiard-room
the ball bounded from his cue to its destination; in the field his shot
was unerring, and the papers regularly chronicled the murder, or the
music, of his gun: no man stood better with _ins_ and outs; his maiden
speech was said to be _shy_, simply because it _was_ maiden, but full
of promise. With the ladies he was whatever he or they pleased; but
now you could "brain him with my lady's fan" as he sits vegetating, or
cogitating, on a pile of cushions, his breakfast scarcely touched, and
hardly sensible of his shaggy friend that lay couched at his feet, with
his snout buried in the hearth-rug, and his bloodshot eye occasionally
wandering in search of a regard from his listless master.
At an early age Binks had contrived to run through half the Continent
and his fortune together; he had travelled from "Dan to Beersheba,"
and all was barren; and, at twenty-three, the gay Binks had serious
notions that _this_ was not the best of all possible worlds, and that
_that_ world, commonly known as the other, to distinguish it from
this, might hold out a store of enjoyment of higher zest and relish
than the common-place realities of this. Whether he should wait for
his turn when the passage to it might become quite natural, or force
his way _vi et armis_, that is, with a pistol in hand, (for some
folks _will_ be impatient, and enter in at a breach,) was a matter
that sorely perplexed him. Tired of this hum-drum life, which a man
of common activity can exhaust of its most stimulating excitements in
a few years, was it surprising that he wished for _another_? But the
doubt that it was a better, would sometimes intrude itself, and agitate
the very powder in the pan of the pistol that lay before him on the
breakfast table. Now that the murder is out, it must be confessed that
Binks had a notion of shooting himself.
What heroic resolves he then made! What a noble contempt for this
world he then exhibited as he resolutely eyed the pistol, curiously
scanned its silver mounting, saw that the powder was in the pan,
looked anxiously around to see that none intruded, or should deprive
him of the honour of falling by his own hand: still he hesitated; he
lifted the deadly weapon with one hand, and with the other a volume of
Shakspeare, which opened at the play of _Hamlet_, and, by the hasty
glance which he threw on it, he perceived that "the Eternal had set his
canon 'gainst self-slaughter," and Binks was perplexed. It became now
a matter not so much of life and death as of simple calculation; on
one side there was a pistol _for_, and on the other a _canon 'gainst_
self-slaughter. In this state of indecision, thus sorely beset with
adverse arguments, what did Binks do? Why, he acted somewhat like a
sensible man; he yielded to the heavier weight of metal,--the great-gun
of Shakspeare carried it; and he consented to live, drew the charge,
lest he should return to it, (for he knew his man,) and made up his
mind that Shakspeare was a sensible fellow. Have you ever felt as
if your very heart-strings were tugged at by wild horses, when the
infernal host of _blues_, marshalled by the devil himself, have taken
the field against your peace, and that you don't know what to do with
yourself?
"Throw but a stone, the giant dies."
Very good; but a pebble of such potency is not always at hand,
particularly in a drawing-room. Do something, no matter what: go into
the open air; there's your window invitingly open, and, provided it is
not too far from the ground, 'tis but a step in advance to the shock
that may rouse you. Turn financier,--chancellor of your own exchequer;
there's your tailor's bill lying on the table, wooing you to analyze
its soft items; give it a first reading, and pass it. What a relief,
on such occasions, is the presence of any living creature!--your sleek
tabby,--no,--that fellow doesn't know what to do with himself neither.
Your playful little Italian grey-hound, whose playfulness is the very
poetry of motion. And Binks found no relief in these gentle appliances.
There he lies, flung upon his ottoman, and dallying with its downy
cushions, with his foot of almost feminine symmetry coquetting with
his morocco slipper, jerking it off and on according to the intensity
of the fit. Ponto stands before him. Noble dog, Ponto! He, too, has
his turn at the slipper, and seizes it in his huge mouth, and gambols
round the room with it, and now crouches with it before his master,
and earnestly looks at him, and those two eyes of his suggest a
double-barrelled gun, and this puts a pistol into his head, and there
it was at hand, lying on the table, just ready for a charge.
"Mr. Cently," said a servant, half-opening the door; and Binks
indolently extended the forefinger of his jewelled hand to his visitor.
"Very glad to see you, Cently; this mortgage, I suppose--"
"Is over due, Mr. Binks,--must redeem, though. I shan't let it out
of the family. The sum is large--hard to get--bad times. Fine dog
that--bulls and bears are very sulky to-day on 'Change.--Dear me, a
murderous-looking pistol that, sir--muzzle to muzzle--then brains
against the wall."
"Provided he has them," said Binks.
"Every man has a little--quality's the thing. I have to meet Scrip
in the City at two--no time to lose, sir;" and Binks, who was made
aware of the necessity of a visit to the City, to arrange the terms
of a loan, put himself under the plastic hands of Bedo, and in a few
minutes the pair were rolling towards the City in Cently's carriage,
which thundered along, scarcely waiting to take the necessary turns,
and narrowly escaped running down several old women of both sexes, till
they came to Charing-Cross.
"Money is scarce in these times," said Cently, as a sprinkling of cabs
and omnibuses impeded their course; "broad acres are fine things. I
mustn't let them go. The sum is large--ten per cent."
All this, and a few other equally interesting particulars, were lost
upon the abstract Binks, who was quietly lolling back in the carriage,
and exercising his optics and calculating powers on the size, number,
and colours of the tom-cats as they sunned themselves on the gutters,
or held attic intercourse with one another, between May-fair and
Temple-bar.
"You understand me," continued Cently; "let me see; how many thousands?
I think it cannot be under fourscore,--great amount that!"
"Not quite so many," said Binks; "I only counted sixty, and I'm correct
to a tail; bet you a rump and dozen on it."
"On what, sir?"
"On the cats, Cently."
"Ha! ha! Very facetious, Mr. Binks; but I'm not joking.
"You bore me, Cently. Set me down here. Go, and do the needful;
and when all's ready to sign and seal, you'll find me here;" and
Binks alighted from the carriage, and ascended the stairs of the
Mansion-house, which was then alive with sounds and sights of gladness:
a kind of fancy-fair was being held there for the benefit of some
charitable institution, and the _élite_ of the North, and wealth of
the East and West ends were combined in the holy cause of charity. He
entered, and mingled with the gay groups that promenaded the hall,
which was converted into a bazaar, where beauty and _bijouterie_ lured
the careless purchaser,--where a thousand soft things were said and
handled, and the angel of charity spread her wings over a scene where
streamed and flaunted many a silken banner, and pointed to every little
stand. "Happy country!" thought Binks, "that, amid all the anxieties
and contentions of commerce and politics, remembers in these noble
institutions the cause of the widow and the orphan. This must be the
surest mart for beauty when she's found at a stand in the sacred cause
of charity. Here the thoughtless forget themselves, and think of
others; here the merchant is generous, and forgets his change."
"I ain't a-going to be done out of my half-crown that way neither,
ma'am," said a burly little personage in top-boots and perspiration
to a lovely girl who presided at a stand, and who was trying to lure
a supplementary half-crown, the balance of a half-sovereign, which,
after much grumbling, he consented to pay for a shaking mandarin. The
thorough-bass in which this was uttered roused Binks from his reverie,
and, on looking round, he beheld the lovely girl in playful yet earnest
contention for the half-crown, which the fat little man finally
surrendered to a few persuasive looks, and good-humouredly pocketed his
shaking mandarin and his chagrin together, and marched off.
Binks approached, and as she raised her eyes from the gay assortment
before her, still animated with the pious contention in which she was
engaged, they encountered those of Binks, who was riveted to the spot
gazing at the beautiful creature that stood before him. He turned over
a few articles, and became at once deeply immersed in the gay little
miscellany before him. She would show everything.--Yes,--the articles
were of the best description; and Binks felt those taper fingers, as
they tossed them about, as if they were busy with his heart-strings;
and the perverse Binks asked twenty different questions, and got as
many answers eloquent and sweet: and then there were looks lustrous and
shy, and blushes deep and enchanting; and she would go on expatiating
on the beauty of her _bijouterie_, and he would stand absorbed and
drinking in the sweet sound of a voice that was modulated with the
sweetest harmony,--and she would help him to a pair of gloves. Binks
took several pairs. The first he tried on were very perverse,--too
tight; and the fairest hands in the City would distend them, and she
would help to draw them on; and then their palms would meet, and their
fingers seek one another, and the taper finger of the sweet girl and
the jewelled hand of Binks would be imprisoned unconsciously for a few
seconds in the same glove.
"I shall take the whole," said he, and Julia (for that was her name)
was delighted; and Binks was asking for more, and pulled out,--not his
purse, but the disappointed hand that was seeking for it.--The purse
was not there.
No doubt it was that very civil gentleman that rubbed against him as
he was stepping out of the carriage, and apologised. Here was a grab
at heart-strings and purse-strings together. He drew out a box set
with brilliants,--it would stand him at a pinch,--and took a small one
from the stand, and he would exchange boxes. And this was love,--love
at first sight,--which we would match all the world over with any at
second sight.
"Oh, love! no habitant of earth art thou."
Henceforth shalt thou take thy _stand_ at a bazaar, and we shall bare
our bosom to thy shafts, provided they be tipped with a little charity,
and drawn in the holy cause of a benevolent institution! The hours
lingered on as if they too had come to a stand, the evening stole
on apace, group after group vanished from the bazaar, and Binks and
Julia were still in sweet and endearing communion with each other. The
evening was chilly, and he would help on her splendid cachmere; and the
loveliest arm in the City leant on Binks as he led her down the steps
of the Mansion-house. The evening was fine, and he would see her home;
and both wondered to find themselves at her father's door. And then
there was a sweet good-night, and kind looks, and gentle pressings of
the hand, and promises to meet again.
"Want a coach, sir?" said a heavy-coated, slouched-hat brother of the
cab to Binks, as he stood wondering at himself, his adventure, and the
fairy figure that a smart servant in livery had just closed the door
upon.
"Yes--no,--I--I'll walk, friend,--the night's fine;" which healthy
resolution he was induced to take from certain reminiscences, and his
purse, though absent, was thought of with regret.
And Binks trod his perilous way through the "palpable obscure" of
the City with buoyant spirits, as if a pinion lifted every limb,
notwithstanding a little plebeian pressure from without through
Cheapside, as often as he forgot his own side of the way; and he
entered his club the happiest dog that ever moonlight, or its rival
luminary gas-light, shone upon, and surrendered himself to the
intoxicating influence of the only draught of pure pleasure he ever
quaffed.
Julia Deering was the only daughter of a rather comfortable trader, a
man well to do in the world,--that is, in the City. Business--business
was at once his solace and his pride, and any pursuit or avocation in
life of which that bustling noun-substantive was not the principal
element, was an abomination in his sight. The West-end, he thought,
had no business where it stood. He looked upon it as a huge fungus,
the denizens thereof good for nothing; and lords--no matter of what
creation--he looked upon with the most supreme contempt. Julia was his
only child, and, next his business, the sole object of his solicitude.
She grew into loveliness and womanhood amid the smoke and seclusion of
her father's premises; and, though turned of "quick seventeen," yet he
thought that her settlement in the world, like the settlement of an
account with an old house in the City, might take place at any time.
Any hint to the contrary, whether through the eloquent and suggestive
looks of the maiden herself, or the unequivocal assiduity of City
beaux, was sure to make the old man peevish.
Julia, with a world of sense, had a spice of romance about her. She
loved the West-end, or anything pertaining to it, as much as her father
hated it. A noble mirror in her little boudoir, as she toyed and
coquetted with her budding beauties before it, frequently hinted that
she might be a fine lady; which could only come to pass by her becoming
the wife of something like a lord. City beaux were her aversion. They
looked at her through _stocks_, and she often wished their necks in
them.
Many were the stolen visits to the City which Binks made to see his
young betrothed. His suit prospered,--Julia was everything he could
wish; but as fathers _will_ be in the way on such occasions,--how can
they be so hard-hearted?--and as something like his consent was deemed
necessary, Binks, through the medium of a friend, had the old man's
sentiments sounded on the subject; and a decided refusal, couched in
no very flattering terms, was the result. "I cannot disguise from
you," said Julia one evening to Binks, after he had communicated to
her the disastrous intelligence, "that there is much to encounter in
my father's disposition. He is old and wealthy, with only myself to
inherit it; and--would you believe it?--he has the greatest aversion
to a man of rank, and thinks superior manners and accomplishments only
a cover to heartlessness and deceit; and, what is strange, he has
repeatedly said he will never consent to my union with anybody as long
as he is in anything like health,--in short, till he is no longer able
to protect me himself."
"That is strange indeed!" said Binks, as he hung with the tenderest
rapture on the confiding frankness and simplicity of his fair
companion; "your father's objections are no less serious than strange."
"Can nothing," inquired Julia despondingly, "be done to get over them?"
Had Echo been present, she would have said, "Get over them."
"There can, there can," said Binks with transport; "I have it. So long
as your father is in good health, he will never give his consent to
your marriage. Now he is old: and suppose he can be persuaded that
he _looks_ ill,--such things, you know, are done,--and contrive that
he shall keep his bed for a few days; and then,--and then, my dear
girl, let the affair be again pressed upon him." And Binks met the
ingenuous blush and smile of his young betrothed as she acquiesced
with an embrace, in which was blended more heartfelt rapture than ever
he experienced in the dissipated round of tumultuous and exciting
pleasures.
"The times are certainly very bad, Julia," said old Deering to his
daughter, as they were at breakfast one morning together; "I never
recollect them so bad;" and he helped himself to a large slice of ham.
"They may be bad, pa," said the daughter; "but you mustn't take it so
much to heart. Everybody notices how ill you look since the firm of
Dobody and Sons went."
The old man suspended a piece of ham, that he had impaled on a fork,
midway between his mouth and plate; and, planting his right hand on his
thigh, he looked earnestly at the girl.
"What connexion, hussey, has that failure with my looks or my books
either? As long as I can keep both free from blotches, I don't care a
fig for what the world says. But I do believe, girl, that I am not
as well as either of us could wish,--I am fallen off in my appetite.
I _could_ finish my ham,--three slices,--and a few eggs; but I am a
little changed, Julia. Hussey, you've a sharp eye; and to notice it!"
"Lord! pa," said the insidious Julia, "all your acquaintance notice it.
Mr. Coserly was the first to notice it."
"And what did the rascal say?"
"Why, pa, he said nothing; but there was a great deal in _that_. When
certain people say little or nothing, they mean a great deal; and when
there is a great deal of meaning in what one does not say, why, it's a
very dangerous thing; isn't it, pa?"
"Very true, child, very true. But what can we have for dinner to-day,
Julia? I expect an old friend of mine, Mr. Tibbs over the way; a very
proper, industrious, well-to-do-in-the-world kind of man is honest Dick
Tibbs. He owes me a trifle,--but that is nothing between us. He is none
of your West-end chaps,--no lack-silver spendthrift,--no hair-lipped,
hair-brained scamp, with all his fortune on his back, like a pedlar
and his wallet.--Another cup of tea, Julia.--As I was saying, honest
Dick Tibbs is----' But what's the matter with the girl? Why, there's
the tea running out of the urn these last two minutes about the floor.
Why, Julia, what _is_ the matter? Ah! I see how it is--I thought as
much. Ye're a cunning pair. But not yet a while, Julia; time enough,
girl,--time enough. When your dear mother was----"
"I--I--wo-o-on't be Mrs. Ti-i-bbs for all that, pa," hysterically
sobbed Julia; "I won't be married----"
"That's a dear love!" whimpered the old man; "don't think of marrying
him yet until I'm----. But I'm pretty strong yet. I'll live, so I will,
till--ugh!--ugh!--these rheumatics--as long as--Deuce take this old
cough!"
"As long as God pleases, pa; as long as God pleases," said Julia; and
she slid her arm coaxingly round her father's neck, and wiped away the
perspiration that stood like whip-cord upon his brow; and he fell to
musing on the girl's words, and left his breakfast unfinished.
In the course of that week, through the industry of his daughter,
the old man was plagued wherever he went with condolence and
inquiries about his health, which he heard with all the petulance and
irritability of a miser upon whose hoards an unexpected demand is to be
made. He accordingly dosed himself with physic, gorged himself at his
meals, and took such peculiar pains to preserve his health after this
fashion as would have deprived any other person of it.
A circumstance at length occurred that bade fair to supersede the
necessity of Julia's pious artifice, and to produce ill looks in
abundance in the old man. A house with which he was connected failed,
and involved him in its ruin. This was a blow that smote the old man
to the heart, and he sank under it. Everything was surrendered to the
creditors; and his house, with its splendid furniture, was submitted to
the hammer of the auctioneer.
On the morning of that day a note was put into Binks' hands; it
was from Julia, and to the effect "that as her father's ruin left
her no alternative but to share his lot, she could not, under such
circumstances, think of involving him in their ruin, and begged he
would think no further of the matter."
"Poor girl!" said Binks, as he gazed on the note that told so briefly
of so much calamity. What a real _bonâ-fide_ misfortune was, crushing
and accumulating, and, as it were, breaking the man's heart within him,
he had no idea of, except what the pathetic in a novel, or the chapter
of accidents in a newspaper, furnished. These things were well enough
to read, and to talk about, at a clear fire-side; but for a substantial
display of energetic and effective sympathy, by succouring the
distressed, it was what he did not think himself capable of. A second
time, however, he mastered his indolence, and drove to Julia's house.
What a situation was it in, and what a sight did it present! If there
is in this world a scene more harrowing to human feeling than another,
'tis that presented by one's house on the eve of an auction,--a scene
of "confusion worse confounded." The tossing about and displacing,
by strange hands, of articles that from time and association have
become part and parcel of ourselves, linked with a thousand sweet
recollections, and the innocent display of which was a source of
dearest household pleasure, now parcelled and ticketed out, and
catalogued, for the curious and malevolent hands and eyes of strangers!
Our dearest and holiest places of privacy intruded upon; our sweet
little nooks and haunts, which are, as it were, set apart for the
most favoured of our household gods, and where only the footsteps of
tenderest love should be heard, now echoing and teeming with strange
sounds and sights!
What a sad volume, and in boards too, is a piece of carpeting piled in
a corner of a room, revealing the unsightly seams of the naked floor;
and "the decent clock," with its hands either broken or pointed to the
wrong hour! The bleak and cheerless hearth, every brick of which was
an object for the vacant and listless gaze of a pensive abstraction,
the scene of sweet gambols and merry gossipings, all are sad mementos
of the "base uses" to which the iron hand of necessity will convert
objects dear to us from the sweetest household associations.
Elevated in his pulpit, the eloquent Mr. Touchem, the auctioneer,
presided; and, seated beside him, the very picture of
broken-heartedness, was old Deering, bent, and leaning forward on his
gold-headed cane, his eye vacant and listless, looking at every article
with the curiosity of a child, speaking not a word, and only betraying
his interest in the scene by a sympathetic stamp of his cane on the
floor whenever the nervous and grating click of the auctioneer's hammer
on his desk announced the sale of some favourite article. There was
one lot only which he showed any anxiety to possess, and as the porter
handed it round, the old man's countenance gleamed with pleasure as
his eye wistfully followed it: it was the representation of a little
spaniel worked in worsted, and the joint work of Julia and his deceased
wife.
"Rascal!" exclaimed the old man, as the porter somewhat roughly rubbed
the dust off it, "be tender of the poor thing. That's Julia's. I--I bid
for that; I bid five pounds for that," said the old man, in a voice
scarcely articulate with emotion.
"Six pounds," said a voice in the crowd.
"Who bids against me?" muttered old Deering, as he ran his eye over
the group whence the voice issued. "It was the work of my poor child's
hands, and of her dear departed mother. Another pound for it, Mr.
Auctioneer."
The same voice bid against him.
The old man raised himself in his chair, gazed wistfully and
imploringly in the direction of the voice, and sank back in sullen
resignation in his chair.
"Going for eight pounds--once--twice--the last time!" and the sharp and
sudden click of the auctioneer's hammer, as it fell, came with a harsh
grating sound on the ear of the old man, as he groaned, and muttered
something between a curse and an entreaty.
Old Deering, notwithstanding the utter ruin of his fortune, still
continued, from sheer force of habit, to frequent his old haunts;
and his drooped and wasted figure, with his well-known _tops_ and
gold-headed cane, might be seen loitering about the purlieus of the
Exchange, inquiring the price of stocks with as much anxiety as ever,
and wondering at the ill-manners of some persons who, from his rambling
and incoherent expressions, looked upon him as somewhat crazed. He was
in truth so.
This was the time for the active benevolence of Binks to show itself;
for, except when his indolence stood in the way, he had a heart. He
saw Julia, and gave her the most decided assurances of his unaltered
attachment, as the old man's malady threatened to become serious. He
privately purchased a neat little cottage outside town, and had all
the furniture (for he attended the auction, and arranged that every
article of it should be bought in,) conveyed to it. He took particular
care--for he consulted Julia on the details--that the disposition of
the furniture in the new house should, as nearly as circumstances would
permit, be exactly the same as in the house in town. Her father's
easy-chair, pictures, books, the pianoforte,--for almost every article
had been preserved by the management of Binks,--were put into something
like their accustomed places; and little Fidelio, the object of
contention at the auction, looked quite as brisk as ever, enshrined in
his glass-case over the mantelpiece, not a whit the worse for having
his jacket dusted. Change of air, and absence from the scene of his
former activity, was suggested as the best remedy for the malady of the
old man.
To this little cottage Julia and her father drove one day, on pretence
of looking for a suitable residence, such as became their altered
circumstances. This little cottage struck his fancy, and he expressed a
wish to see it. A very agreeable young man showed them over the house.
The more he examined it, the more he liked it; every thing in it was so
like what he once had.
"Why, Julia, this is your pianoforte! let me hear you play; I'll know
it among a thousand;" and Julia played "sweet home" for him,--an air
her father always liked. His eye glistened as she played; it reminded
him of better days and his old house in the City, and he dropped into
his easy-chair. "And Fidelio, the little spaniel! Why, how is this,
Julia?--And this gentleman?" and he looked alternately at Binks and
Julia. "Ah, hussey! I see how it is; but it's an odd way of coming
together."
* * * * *
And Binks was happy--happy as the day was long. Julia and he were
married. The gay Binks, like another Hercules, gave up his _club_ when
he married, and was content with his love in a cottage, with no other
interruption to his happiness than the occasional pettishness of the
old man, who could never well forgive Binks for outbidding him for
Fidelio at the auction. And the malady of _not knowing what to do with
himself_ never afterwards attacked him, now that the odds were two to
one against it.
S.Y.
A GENTLEMAN QUITE.
In Bentley's May number I read of a goose,
Whose aim in this life was to be of some use;
Now _I_ always act on the opposite plan,
And endeavour to take the least trouble I can:
I sing at no concert, I dance at no ball,--
I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
When invited to dinner, I'd much rather starve,
Than attempt for some hungry half-dozen to carve;
And folks do exist, who, when dishes are nice,
Won't scruple to send their plates up to you twice:
All vainly for sauces on me do they call,--
I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
If ask'd for some verses an album to fill,
I don't plead want of time, but admit want of skill;
There's nothing ungentlemanlike in a dunce,
So I state the plain fact, and save trouble at once;
For, rather than write, I'd mend shoes in a stall,--
I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
When doom'd to the Opera with ladies to go,
I'm not quite so green as to play the old beau;
The fiddlers and dancers are paid to amuse,
And, to stand on their level, is what I don't choose.
When over, for footman or coach I don't bawl,--
I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
Of my club in Pall Mall I was very soon cured,
They wanted to make me a sort of a steward;
Those persons must surely have owed me a grudge,
To wish me to work as an amateur drudge.
A suggestion so horrible made my flesh crawl;
I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
I've an uncle, or nephew, or kin of some kind,
Who, to sit in St. Stephen's, once felt much inclin'd;
To his vulgar committee he added my name;
When my poor valet read it, he redden'd with shame.
With no mob from the hustings will I ever brawl,--
I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
But Death's the great leveller: every one knows
Gentility's essence is graceful repose,
And the grave yields repose that must charm e'en a Turk;
No labour or toil there, the worm does the work.
When shrouded, and coffin'd, and under a pall,
Man's a gentleman quite, he's of no use at all!
May, 1837.
J.S.
THE FOSTER-CHILD.
"Ten years to-day! Mercy on us, time does fly indeed! it seems but
yesterday. And here she sat, her beautiful fair face all reddened by
the heat, as in her childish romps she puffed with might and main the
fire in this very grate. Dear heart, how sweet a child it was surely!
Well, David, say what folks will, I'm convinced there was a fate about
it."
Before I relate how far David coincided in this opinion of his "gude
wife," I will mention to whom and to what she alluded, and how I had
an opportunity of declaring a similar conviction. Seated, after a kind
reception by the master and matron, in their best room in the workhouse
of L----, at my request they were proceeding to gratify my curiosity,
raised by a picture which hung between the windows. The subject and
execution were striking: it had been hit off at one of those luckiest
moments for the artist, when, unconsciously, the study presented that
inspiration to the task which so rarely occurs in what is termed "a
sitting for a likeness." On a three-legged stool, with one foot raised
upon the fender, and an old pair of bellows resting on her lap, in
the act of blowing the fire,--long clustering locks, the brightest
yellow that ever rivalled sunbeams, flowing from a head turned towards
her right shoulder, from which a coarse holland pinafore had slipt by
the breaking of one of the fastenings,--sat a child, apparently eight
or nine years of age, in whose face beamed more beauty, spirit, and
intelligence than surely ever were portrayed on canvass. Well might the
good dame cry, "Dear heart, how sweet a child it was!" Never before or
since have I beheld its equal; and the vivid recollection of the wonder
I then felt, will never cease to throw its light upon the page of
memory till time turns over the new leaf of existence. What admirable
grace! how exquisitely free! she seemed indeed to inhale the breath
that panting look bespoke a lack of. What joyous fire in her large blue
eyes! and then the parted laughing lips, and small pearl teeth! the
attitude how careless, and most natural! all appeared as much to live
as if all actual. But, little do I hope, gentle reader, to excite in
you as lively an interest for the original, by my weak tints of simple
black and white, as the glowing colours of the picture roused in me. I
will not attempt it; but at once proceed with the story appertaining
to the object of my inquiry, as narrated by the worthy matron of "the
house."
"Do you tell the tale, Bessum," said honest David, addressing his
spouse, whose name, from Elizabeth and Betsy, had undergone this
farther proof of the liberties married folks take with one another.
"Do you tell the tale, and, if needs be, I can help you on, where you
forget any part of it."
"Ah! you're a 'cute fellow, David," said Elizabeth; "you know how to
set an easy task as well as any one, 'specially when it's for yourself
to go about; but, never mind, I wun't rate 'e for 't, for I know 'tis a
sad subject for you to deal with."
Bessum was evidently right, for the tear that stood trembling for a
moment in the corner of David's eye as she spoke, rolled unheeded down
his cheek; while the handkerchief that seemed to have been taken from
across his knees for the purpose of concealing the simplicity of the
tribute his honest heart was paying, was employed, for at least the
tenth time that day, to brush the irreverent dust from the picture of
his "poor dear child."
I was affected to a degree for which I was unable to account, by the
touching sigh poor David heaved as he replaced the handkerchief on his
knees, and resigned himself to the pangs my curiosity was about to
inflict on him. There was a tender melancholy in the kind creature's
face that seemed to mark the lacerated feelings of intense affection.
I could have pressed him to my breast in sympathy of his sufferings,
for I was already a sharer of his grief before I knew the cause of it.
It was at this moment that the dame began her story in the words of my
commencement.
"Ten years to-day," said she, "since that picture was painted, sir."
"Ah, my poor dear child!" sighed David; from which ejaculation I
inferred that I was about to hear a tale, of which his own daughter
was the heroine: but I was soon undeceived by his wife, who thus
proceeded:--
"It ben't necessary to go farther back into the dear child's life than
to the day on which she was first placed with me to nurse. Who she is
has nought to do with what she is, or the story of her life; certain
sure it is she was the loveliest babe I ever saw, and I and David were
as proud of her as if she were our own, bless her dear heart! How
everybody talked about her! and how all the folks did love her too,
surely! I can't tell ye, sir, how beautiful she was; and, as she grew,
her beauty kept good pace with her years, I promise you. She was nine
years old the day the painter came to make a likeness of her for her
father. Here she sat in this very room, just as you see her in the
picture, sir: she had run in from the garden where she had been at
romps with poor George, and was puffing away at the fire with an old
pair of bellows which she found among the lumber in the tool-house,
when the gentleman, whom she did not notice at first, was arranging his
matters for the painting of the picture. It was at the moment that she
turned round to see who was in the room, that, as he said, he was so
struck with her lovely face he could have taken her likeness if he had
not seen her a moment longer; and, sure enough, he was not out much in
his reckoning, for scarcely had he taken his pencil in his hand before
the little mad-cap bounded out of the room, and ran off to her playmate
in the garden. That is a copy of the picture, sir; and if the poor dear
child were sitting here as she was on that day, she couldn't look more
like herself than that painting does to me."
David was in the very act of again converting his handkerchief into a
duster; but, after a momentary struggle, for once in a way he pressed a
corner of it to his eyes, and kept his seat.
"Of all those, barring myself and David," continued the dame, "who
loved the sweet child,--as, to be sure, everybody did more or
less,--none seemed to dote on her so much as the young gentleman who
was then our village doctor's assistant, and poor George."
"And, pray, who was poor George?" said I.
"Ah! sir, his is a sorry story too; but of that anon. He was a
gentleman born, sir, bless his dear soul! but, before he was barely out
of his teens, study and such like turned his wits, and poor George was
placed in our care, an idiot. Oh! how he would watch and wait upon his
"young mistress," as he used to call the dear child! and Harri--for
so we nicknamed our little Harriet--seemed to look up to him for all
her amusements and happiness. Good heart! to see him racing round the
garden till he was fairly tired and beat for breath, trundling her
in the wheelbarrow, and fancying himself her coachman; and then how
he'd follow her wherever she went, as if to protect her; always at
a distance when he fancied she didn't wish him with her, but never
out of sight. She appeared to be his only care; his poor head seemed
filled with nothing but thoughts of her. His friends used to send
him trinkets, and money, and baubles, to amuse him; and his greatest
pride was to take little Harri into his room, and show her his stores,
hang his gilt chains and beads about her neck, seat her in his large
arm-chair, and stand behind it as if he were her footman, and play
all kinds of pranks to make her laugh; for he seemed pleased when she
laughed at him, though he wouldn't bear a smile from anybody else at
the same cause. His senses served him at times, and then he would fall
into fits of the bitterest melancholy as he sat looking in our sweet
child's face, as if reflecting how much he loved her, and how little
his wandering mind was able to prove his affection! Ah, poor dear
fellow! it's well his sufferings ended when they did, for they would
have been terrible indeed if he had lived till now; but all who loved
her best, fell off from her either by death or desertion when her day
of trouble came."
David's resolution was plainly wavering as to the application of his
handkerchief, when Bessum gave it the turn in favour of the picture on
perceiving her husband's emotion, by adding,
"As for David and myself, you know, sir, we are nobody; it would be
strange indeed if we could ever have turned our backs upon the dear
child."
"God forbid!" said David; and little Harri's portrait received the
extra polish breathed upon it by a deep sigh, previous to the ordinary
one emanating solely from the handkerchief. "God forbid!" repeated
David, and Bessum added a hearty amen as she resumed her story.
"As the sweet child grew up," continued she, "she was the talk of all
tongues far and near; and, before she was fifteen, sir, gentlefolks
came from all parts to see her. A fine time we had of it surely;
first one pretence, and then another, kept us answering questions
and inquiries about her all day long. As for Dame Beetle, who kept a
little shop, and sold gloves, over the way, just facing this window,
she made a pretty penny by the beauty of our sweet child, although the
old simpleton thought it was the goodness of her gloves that brought
her so many gentlemen customers. Why, I have known no fewer than five
or six of the neighbouring squires,--ay, and lords too,--so difficult
to fit, that they've been standing over the little counter by the hour
together; but I warrant not to much purpose, as far as the real object
of their visit was concerned. No sooner did horse, or gig, or carriage
stop in the village, than dear Mr. George,--that is him that was with
the doctor, you know, sir."
"Oh, his name was George too?"
"Yes, that it was, sir; and down here he would run as fast as legs
could carry him, and his first question was always, 'David, where is
little Harri? Take her into the garden.' And here he would sit till
the gentlefolks opposite were gone away. If ever one creature did dote
upon another, Mr. George loved that sweet child. Ah! would to Heaven
he had lived to make her his wife! but it's all fate, and so I suppose
it's for the best as it is; though I would have died sooner than things
should have fallen out as they have, if that could have prevented it!"
"A thousand times over," responded David, with a fond glance at the
picture. "I'd rather never have been born than have lived to weep over
the ruin of such heavenly beauty and goodness."
A chill of horror struck upon my heart as I repeated with inquiring
emphasis the word that had produced it.
"The ruin!" said I; "impossible!" and as I raised my eyes towards
heaven at the thought of such a sacrifice, they caught those of the
victim in the picture. I could have wept aloud, so powerful was the
influence of the gaze that I encountered. There sat the loveliest
creature that the world e'er saw,--an artless, careless child, health,
hope, and happiness beaming in her sweet fair face; her lips, although
the choicest target for his aim, the foil of Cupid's darts, so pure, so
modest was the smile that parted them; her eyes, the beacon-lights of
virgin chastity; her joyous look, the Lethe where pale Care could come
but to be lost,--it scared off Woe! And were these made for Ruin to
write shame upon! Oh, man!--monster!--ingrate fiend!--I was roused from
my reverie by the perseverance of the good dame, who thus took up the
thread of her discourse, that my exclamation had broken:
"Ah, poor Mr. George! if he had lived, all would have been well. I
make bold to say, for certain sure, they would have been man and wife
by this time; for though she used to go on finely at 'that doctor,'
as the darling girl used to call him, because he was the cause of her
being taken into the garden so often, without knowing why,--for all
that, she loved him in her heart, poor dear! as well she might; for,
as I said before, he fairly doted upon her. And yet, so delicate was
his noble mind, he could never as it were talk seriously to her,--that
is to say, not to make any kind of love to her, you know, sir. He had
known her from a precious babe; and although his whole heart and soul,
I do believe, were set upon one day making her his wife, if so be as
she should not refuse him of her own free will, still he felt so almost
like a father to her, though he was not more than eight or nine years
older than she, that he never could bring himself to fairly pay court
to her as a lover, you see."
"God bless his noble heart!" said David, as he rested his elbow on his
knee, and his chin on the palm of his hand; "he always said he should
be drowned: there's fate again, Bessum, sure enough."
"And did he die by drowning?" said I.
"Ay, sir," replied the dame; "and scarce was he dead, as if they only
waited for that, than our sweet child's misfortunes began."
"Destiny, indeed!" thought I, as a superstitious feeling seemed to
prepare me for the proofs of it.
"She was just sixteen, and that's nearly five years ago, when she lost
him who would have been more than all the world to her, as a body may
say, and when Lieutenant H---- brought permission from a certain
quarter to court her for his wife. Heavy was my poor heart at the
thought of parting with the dear child; but more so ten times over,
though I couldn't tell why, at the idea of who I was going to part with
her to. She, poor darling, was proud of the conceit of being married,
and pleased with the gold lace and cocked-hat of the young sailor. I
don't believe the thought of love for him ever once entered her head:
but that was nothing, for she would have loved any one who behaved
kindly to her; and then to be a wife, and her own mistress, and the
mistress of a house! Alack-a-day! she little knew what she was doing
when she promised her hand where her heart had not gone before, and
where none was beating for her. But it was well she made no objection,
for it was to be, whether or no; so she was spared at least the pain
of being forced against her will. Well, sir, the wedding-day came,
and never do I remember such a day as it was. In vain did the bells
ring and the sun shine; folks, spite of all, and of themselves too,
couldn't be merry: they smiled, and talked, and tried to appear gay;
but, to my plain, honest thinking, there was not a light heart in the
village. Poor George, to be sure, was dancing with delight, for he saw
the preparations, and the fine clothes, and he heard the bells ringing
and the neighbours talking, and he understood that all was for and
about his lady, as he then called his old playmate; and the idea of
so much fuss and bustle on her account made him as proud and happy as
if he were to be the sharer of it. Little did he imagine that it was
to end in robbing him of the only comfort of his hapless life, poor
fellow; and as the bride and bridegroom came from church, where to the
very altar he had followed like a guardian saint, his watchful eye
faithful in its duty to the last, he picked up here and there a flower
that the villagers had strewn, on which she trod, and stuck them in a
row in the button-holes of his waistcoat. But when the time came that
our dear sweet child was to be torn from our arms, then was a scene
I never shall forget. She bade us one by one good-b'ye, as if she
didn't dream of being gone from us a day. It fairly seemed as though
Providence had deprived her of all thought. But when she came to take
her leave of George, she appeared to shrink from bidding him farewell.
She took his hand, and with a fluttering smile said, 'George, I am
going for a ride,' and she was gone! For full three hours after, George
was missing; and when the twilight made us stir to find where he could
be, there by the garden-gate he stood, with the old wheelbarrow at his
side, his handkerchief spread out upon it, as he was wont to do when
he used to wheel his little playmate in it years agone,--there was he
waiting till she should come 'to ride.' Poor, poor creature! he had no
idea of the journey that she meant, when she told him she was going for
a ride. He knew that he had been her coachman many a time and oft, and
he thought of no other carriage than that which he had driven. I burst
out a-crying at the very sight of him. There he stood, as confident
that she was coming as if he had seen her on the threshold of the door
with her gypsy hat on her head. Three hours he had waited; and when I
saw him, it would have melted a heart of stone to watch his look, and
think upon the misery in store for him. The sun had gone down, and
there was not a sound to hear, but now and then the melancholy pipe
of a robin, or the distant tinkle of a sheep-bell. Everything seemed
sorrowing in silence at our loss; and he that would pine most, alone
was ignorant of it. I hadn't courage to call him away and tell him his
misfortune; but when David brought him in, and told him that his lady
had gone for a ride with the 'new footman,' as the poor fellow called
the lieutenant, the anguish in his face was more woeful than you can
think of, sir. Every day at the same hour he brought the wheelbarrow
to the garden-gate, and kept it there till sunset; then, till he went
to bed, he'd sit arranging the withered flowers in his waistcoat. He
was never obstinate in refusing to do as he was desired; but, unless
he had been bidden to eat and drink, no morsel would have passed his
lips: he never thought of hunger or of thirst; his little mistress, his
old playmate, and, as he thought her, his only friend, alone occupied
his mind, that never wandered now. It was fixed upon one object, and on
that it dwelt. Ten months he pined and lingered for his loss; and then,
more sensible than he had ever been before, poor George, sir, died!"
"And happy for him that he is no more," said I, anticipating the sequel
of little Harri's story. "He has gone down to the cold bed, it is true;
but his pillow is far smoother than the down that is pressed in vain
for quiet and repose by the heartless and unfeeling."
"True, very true, sir," said David, and I was half in doubt whether the
handkerchief would be put in requisition again; but it kept its place
across the knees of my host, and Bessum continued. "From the day she
left us, sir, we saw no more of our dear child for two years; but sad
was the tale that reached us in the mean while. Think of her wrongs,
sir;--the man who had taken her, to be parted but by death, left her
the very next day, after he had robbed scores of honest hearts of the
chance of proving the sincerity of their love by a life of cherishing
and devotion."
"God forgive him!" said David, "for I never can."
"The gallows pardon him! for I never would," cried I.--"And what became
of the deserted wife?"
Bessum, who had for nearly an hour stifled the feelings to which
she was all that time hankering to give vent, finding this either
too seasonable or powerful an occasion to resist, burst into tears;
while David, as a counterpoise to the grief which he had heretofore
monopolised, evinced a well-timed symptom of stoicism, by folding up
his handkerchief at least three times as small as the usual dimensions
which laundresses or common consent have established time out of mind
as its proper limit, and then thrusting it into the salt-box pocket of
his coat, as being the last place, at that particular crisis, to which,
under the influence of his senses, he certainly must have intended its
destination.
"I shall make short work of the rest on't, I promise ye, sir," sobbed
the tender-hearted foster-mother; "it ben't much use to dwell upon the
finish."
"End it at once," said I, impatient of farther melancholy detail.
"Twenty-four hours had not passed, sir, after the heartless fellow
had become a husband, before he was aboard ship, and on his way to
the Indies. He had completed his bargain; he had married our blessed
child, and received his wages for the job. He took her to the house
of one of her relations near London, and without telling her whither
he was going, or when, if ever, he should return, left her as I have
described. Fancy the sweet soul's sufferings, sir!--think what she
felt when she found herself a widow before she was fairly a wife! Oh!
my heart bleeds when I recollect her wrongs! Well, sir, she pined and
fretted till those with whom she lived would fain to have got rid of
her, I promise you; and it was not long before they had their wish."
"And did the poor child die of her distress?" said I. "Alas! so young!"
"Not just then, sir. You'll scarcely think that the worst of her
troubles had yet to come; but so it was, poor dear! As fate would have
it, she was one day met and followed home by a gentleman, who, she
could not help observing, appeared so struck with her, that, though he
did not offer to speak to her, he seemed determined upon finding where
she lived. Every day for more than a week did he watch the house nearly
all day long; and when at last she went out of doors, he made the best
of the opportunity, and began in the most woeful manner to tell her
how much he loved her, and what he was suffering on her account, and
to beg and pray of her not to be angry with him for what he could not
help. Well, sir, he spoke so mild and respectful, and seemed so truly
miserable, that the wretched widow couldn't find it in her heart to
speak harshly to him, and so at first she made no answer at all. He
told her that he saw she had something on her mind that distressed
her, and said he felt certain sure he could make her happy, and that
not even her displeasure should make him cease from the attempt. And,
sure enough, to her, poor thing! he seemed to be as good as his word;
for, though she forbade him to approach her in any way again, still
he hovered about the house as much as ever, and wrote such letters,
telling of his misery and anxiety on her account, that, tired out by
the ill-treatment of those to whose tender mercies she was abandoned,
sinking under the pangs of her desertion, and beset by the arts and
entreaties of a fine young man, who seemed to speak so fairly for her
comfort and good, in an evil hour the poor distracted and deluded
creature flew to his arms for that protection which in vain was pledged
her by a husband. I have already told you that, in my opinion, she
never had a thought of any love for the man she had married. It is not
to be wondered at, then, that one, who at least professed himself to
be all that a husband should be, found no great difficulty or delay
in gaining her affections and confidence in return. In short, her
young heart, that had never before known the feeling, was now fixed
upon this man with all the fondness and devotion of a first love. It
was no hard matter, therefore, for him to persuade her to whatever
he liked; and the first advice he gave her for her good, was to take
a house in the neighbourhood of one of the parks, which he made his
home, eating, drinking, and riding about at her expense. Well, sir, for
several months this was a life of uninterrupted happiness for our poor
Harri. She had quiet or company as she liked, and the society of him
that she loved to madness. The first sign of interruption to the joys
that, alas! are always too dearly bought at the sacrifice she had made,
was the news of the arrival in England of her husband, and, within
two days after that, his appearance at her house. Here was a fine to
do, indeed! She was alone in her drawing-room, and no one else in the
house but the two maid-servants. In vain did she entreat and resist
him; by main force he carried her out of the house; put her into a
hackney-coach, without bonnet or shawl; and drove away with her to the
house of his mother. That man was born to be her torment and ruin, sir.
He had left her when he ought most to have been in her company, and
he returned when his desertion had driven her in misery and despair
to seek for happiness, in the expectation of which with him he had
deceived her,--to disturb the comfort his heartlessness had neglected
to afford her. Don't fancy that he loved her, sir. 'Twas no such thing,
as I shall soon make clear to you. However, not six hours after she
had been taken away, the dear child was home again, and in the arms of
the man she would have risked her life for. Here was devotion, sir!
She got out of a one-pair of stairs window, by letting herself down
with the bed-clothes as far as they would reach, and by jumping the
rest; and just as she had been taken from her home, without a bit of
outdoor covering, off she set, in the cold and wet of a December night,
and had to walk for full a mile and a half before she got the coach
that carried her home. Did her husband love her, sir? Day after day he
rode or walked past the house, and sent letters to her; but never once
offered to seek out the man that kept his wife from him. _Can_ he have
loved her, sir? To leave her in the quiet possession of another, and
take himself off again to the Indies! So much for the husband:--and now
for the lover, as he called himself. Matters, I don't know what, took
him to France, and he was to return to her who was weary of her life in
his absence, within a month. He had not been gone a fortnight before
she received a letter from him, written in a French prison, where he
was confined for debt. That hour she started post for Dover, and in
three days they were on their road home together. Little Harri had
released the man she adored, and brought him away from his troubles in
triumph and joy."
David's handkerchief, notwithstanding the depth into which it had been
plunged, and the compactness with which it had been doubled up, was out
of his pocket, unfolded, and across his knees in an instant; evincing
a conviction in the mind of its proprietor that that part of Bessum's
story was approaching to narration which would certainly call for its
application in the united capacities to which David was in the habit of
appropriating it.
The dame resumed; for I should mention that she had made a preparatory
pause, in the interval of which she took occasion to fortify herself
for the coming trial with a considerable pinch of Scotch snuff.
"They didn't reach home, sir," said she, "for more than a fortnight;
for they stayed a day here, and a day there, to see the sights, and
such like; and because she, poor dear! was in no condition for much
hurry, though she had forgotten that, when she started, as she did
every thing but her devoted love for him she went to rescue. But,
when they did arrive, dearly did our sweet child pay for the fault
a husband's cruelty had driven her to commit, and bitter was the
punishment of Providence: but it was all fate, I'm sure it was; it
must have been; for surely her crime did not call for such a dreadful
judgment as befell her. Oh, good heart, sir! think of the poor dear
after all she had undergone in a journey to a foreign land, where she
had never been before, and all alone, too, sir, without a friend to
help or to advise her! She had left a house fitted and furnished like
a little palace, as a body may say; the homestead of her high-priced,
fatal happiness. Think of her reaching what she thought a home, and
finding none! She was soon to be a mother, and she had not a bed to lay
her down upon! In the short time that she had been away, the servant in
whose charge she left her house, by the help and advice of a villain
she kept company with, had carried off every thing, under the pretence
that she was moving for her mistress! Ah! you may look surprised, sir,
and with reason, _but 'tis just as true as you and I sit here_."
"God's will be done!" sobbed David, as he buried his face in his
handkerchief with both his hands. "She's out of harm's way now, Bessum.
God's will be done!" and the simple-hearted man wept like a boy. The
tears ran so fast down the sorrowful face of the poor dame, that the
relief they afforded her enabled her to proceed to the climax of little
Harri's misfortunes.
"She didn't rave and take on, sir," said Bessum. "The hand of destiny
was on her, and she felt it. As calmly as though nothing had occurred,
she bade the coachman drive to a certain hotel; she seemed to reckon
but for a moment between what she had lost and what she had regained,
and she was satisfied with the account as it stood. All in the world
for which she cared was still spared to her,--she had herself preserved
him, the author of her dishonour, the cause of her loss, and, the
only compensation for it, the father of her child! These were all she
prized; and he who was one and all, now sat beside her. With a smile of
resignation, confidence, and content, she looked in his face, and said,
"What's to be done?"
The eyes upon the canvass seemed to ask _me_ for an answer: I felt that
I could beg subsistence for such a woman; become a drudge, a slave, or
yield my life up for her sake.
"And what was his reply?" cried I.
"Good advice--good advice, sir," sobbed Bessum. "_He asked her if she
did not think she had better go to her old nurse!_"
Mute with amazement and disgust, I sank back in my chair.
"What!" cried I, when the power of articulation returned; "was that the
good advice?"
"Ay, sir,--ay! that was all the comfort our poor dear got from her
_lover_; she asked him for no more. She didn't upbraid him. He had
dealt her death-blow, and she followed his advice; she came to her old
nurse, sir,--God be praised!--and I and David closed her precious eyes
for ever, after they had lingered, in their last dim sight, on the
lifeless image of him, whose name, with her forgiveness, and prayer to
Heaven for his happiness, were the last words upon her sweet, sweet
lips!"
"And if a special hand is not upraised to strew his path of life with
tenfold the sharp pangs that he employed to drive his victim to an
early grave," cried I, "it can only be that it has already crushed the
monster into death."
My heart was faint and sick at the recital I had heard. I returned to
my inn; and all that night--for it was in vain that I attempted to
sleep--I mused upon this awful dispensation of the wrath of Heaven, and
the dread severity with which the wisdom of vindictive Providence had
stricken the transgression of poor little Harri!
EUGENIUS.
THE WHITE MAN'S DEVIL-HOUSE.
A FRAGMENT.
BY F. HARRISON RANKIN.
"There is a magic in the craft."
Exoterics surmise it to consist in "winks and nods," proverbially
of equal inspiration to steeds labouring under the dispensation of
_gutta serena_. Mesmer's Animal Magnetism was nothing to the invisible
"tractors." Ticklings of the palm have been surmised; talismanic
numbers have been hinted at; sounds inaudible have been suggested;
together with certain "melodious twangs," awakening pineal sympathy.
Mrs. Veal's ghost, from De Foe's autopsy of the apparition, evidently
held no less a grade in the scale of shadowy society than that of
Master Mason.
John Locke, the philosopher, subsequently one of the fraternity, opined
that the art embraced sorcery, alchemy, the transmutation of essences
and of metals, together with similar common-place desiderata.
Whatever the nature of the spell, its sway is wide. Affinity of feeling
generated by it runs round the world. It may be found in the land of
the Chinese, of the Arab, the Red Indian, and the wild Tartar; in the
frozen circle, habitat of all seals excepting Solomon's, and in the
burning desert,
"Terra domibus negata."
Our story relates to the last pleasant locality.
Upon the windward coast of Africa, in a situation calculated to warm
the coolest temperament, stands a European settlement,--a pimple of
civilization upon the fiery face of a barbarous continent.
"Once upon a time" a lodge had existed there. Its members had ceased to
melt, having gradually melted away; for the constant flux and reflux
of white residents, the brief sojourn of many, and the death of an
appropriate portion, rapidly vary the population of the little colony.
After a lapse of years, however, it was not long since determined that
the lodge should be re-opened.
The house formerly used had become ineligible; and, in the true spirit
of a mason-soldier, a gallant captain offered to receive his brothers
in his own wing of the barracks.
This building was advantageously situated. It crowned the summit of a
high conical hill; so that, although the deluges of the rainy season
were fast approaching, it could with much facility be closely and
effectually tiled. But here, art was still in her swaddling bands; and
although, in our accomplished country, bricklayers and plasterers are
as "plenty as blackberries," in her colony no tiler could be found.
The name of Solyma,--that prince of architects, and prototype of modern
Wrens and Barrys,--his glory, and his power over things seen and
unseen, were familiar, especially to the black Mahometan population, to
the sojourning Foulah, and the travelled Mandingo; but they possessed
neither his skill nor his secret, being as mournfully ignorant of his
workmanlike perfections as they are of the name of the mother of Moses.
A tiler, however, was indispensable; and here arose a difficulty.
What black man, Mahometan or pagan, could be induced to receive
instruction; and, regardless of the prophet Mahmoud on the one hand,
and, on the other, of Satan,--the principal object of fervid worship
amongst the infidels of those hot parts,--to hazard his well-being in
this world, and his sombre soul in the next, by tiling the edifice?
Various were the negro gentlemen invited; but few possessed "hearts
big enough." No wonder that in the gold-dust country they should prove
deficient in the "_æs triplex!_" One refused upon the very admissible
ground that the masons had been accustomed to attend service in the
colonial church once annually; and that, claiming to himself the same
liberty of conscience which he allowed to others,--being by birth, and
subsequently by conviction, of that extensive religious "persuasion"
called Pagans, and of the particular sect of the said popular church
which worships the devil and reverences dead men's teeth,--he must
decline compromising his religious principles, and sanctioning by his
presence the heterodox tenets of the English colonial chaplain.
A second, however, had forsaken the Heathen modes of his ancestors,
and had waxed into a fervent proselyte, under missionary auspices, in
all respects save a tough hereditary prejudice in favour of a genteel
establishment of eight or ten wives
"To grind his corn,"
as Mungo Park poetically saith, but
"To pound his rice,"
as it doubtless ran in the original and vernacular glote, whether
Fantee, Mandingo, Cosso, Bullum, or Soosoo. This strange conjugal whim,
be it remarked, generally is as unalienable, tenaciously tenable, and
adhesive to the negro taste, as "roast pig" was to the palate of the
mortal Charles Lamb and the immortal "Elia."
This reclaimed pagan, however, professed that he would rather dine
on fried soles, that unclean piscatorial; masticate dog's flesh
before it had become putrid; disbelieve in witchcraft; or put away a
spouse, however freckled, than adjoin himself unto a society whose
nominal master indeed might be the Honourable Colonial Secretary, but
whose real spiritual president, he well knew, could be no other than
Beelzebub the _Bugaboog_, whose ways he had renounced.[4]
The remaining mass of the negro "ton" declined their services on
reasons no less satisfactory. They appealed to the yet living
reputation of the deceased lodge, which they characterized as
_prononcée_ to a degree; for the spirit of the building, once redolent
of mysteries and fraternity, prolongs a posthumous existence in their
imaginings, awful and evitabund. It is desolate, for none will enter
it; it is crumbling, for none will repair it; it is shunned as the
favourite triclinium of Sathana, Beelzeboub, and Ashtaroth; it is known
as
"THE WHITE MAN'S DEVIL-HOUSE."
As incredulous a negress as ever succumbed to Obeah asserted that, from
its vague interior, bells were heard to toll, and chains to clank, at
the lone hour of midnight, twelve,--when the "sun lived in the bush;"
and that many a rash eye had been scared away by goblin apparitions
and rank sights. With her own orbs, whilst stealthily prying through a
window, had she beheld no less a potentate than Satan himself, sucking
the blood of a white cock, and feeding a dead man with palaver sauce.
The idea of secret and mysterious associations is not new to the
negroes; they have not borrowed it from the white man. A short
reference to the nature of such as are familiar to them will throw
light upon the awe with which they regarded the old Devil-House of the
white man, and declined the privilege of _entrée_ at the new one.
Their own hidden fraternities existed in gigantic organisation,
and with withering power, long before the diseased and "craw-craw"
complexion of European discoverers was known to the natural inheritors
of Warren's jet blacking. Evil rites attend them; and bodily
mutilation, and the chance of slavery, are united to supernatural
horrors. Well aware of this, they naturally imagine similar diabolic
mysteries to constitute the "working" of white man's freemasonry: nay,
more; recognising the superiority, the mastery of the whites in all
things that come under their observation, they take for granted that
the same exists in matters which they do not witness, and, if their own
orgies are terrific, they suppose that those of the white man must be
intensely more so.
Of all men they are most horribly superstitious, and, in consequence,
are victims also to superstitious horrors of the first magnitude. The
forest, or bush, the air, the streams, the ground, swarm with a surplus
population of Satan's imps and witches. Each moment and each step
expose the wayfarer to the gripe of some malicious fiend. To evade the
unwholesome clutch, the limbs are ornamented with charms and talismans,
with dead men's hair and leopards' teeth. To deprecate and conciliate
these animavorous specimens of African zoology no pains are spared, and
temples named "Devil-Houses" witness the placatory sacrifices to the
spirit of evil.
But this will not suffice. It is not enough simply to protect the
person. Associations are formed which recognise the necessity of
watching over Satan's interests, by visiting with direful vengeance
such members of the tribe at large as may have treated his majesty
with less respect than his station entitles him to expect. There are
liberalists and spiritual republicans even in Africa.
Some writers, in noticing these associations as similar to freemasonry,
have fallen into the same error with the black colonists aforesaid, who
refused their aid to tile the lodge because they confounded it with
their own tremendous and execrable fraternities.
The secret sisterhoods of Africa have their own peculiar charms
and peculiar annoyances. The initiated maidens enjoy much respect,
and a singular liability to be sold to the slave-factory; and many
inducements are held out to the grand-mistress of the order to dispose
of her gentle sisters in this manner, since a well-built maiden,
warranted of clever action, of unblemished points, and sound lungs,
will find bidders at a hundred hard dollars at any respectable bazaar
between Senegal and Guinea. "Inshallah!" (God be praised!) as the
Mahometan slave-merchant thankfully observed.
The honour, however, compensates for the danger, and they love to
entwine the privileged emblem of their order, the ivory circlets, in
the hair; an ornament that glads the heart of the simple ebony maid, as
feathers and brilliants rejoice that of the blonde or the nut-brown.
The initiations, alas! are attended with ungentle mutilation of the
person; and the trembling and weeping girl is blindfolded, that she
may never know the woman who lacerated her. Gashes, however, on the
face, arms, breast, and back, are favourite ornaments; they are the
unpretending substitutes for rouge and cosmetics. The society is in a
flourishing state, and the worshipful mistress derives a considerable
revenue by the sale of refractory maidens. The guilt generally arises
in the practice of witchcraft and sorcery;--accomplishments assiduously
cultivated by the young ladies of Nigritia.
But, to return to our story. Enough has been said to explain how it
happened that ideas of awe rested amongst the black colonists upon "The
White Man's Devil-House."
The night was of that deep-toned glory unimagined save by those who
have watched the firmament of a tropical sky. No moon was up; but the
moon-like planets threw upon the sultry ground shadows of man and horse
as they slowly wound round the long mountain path that led from the
sea-washed capital at its foot, to the summit of the Barrack Hill. As a
higher elevation was gained, the suffocating breath of the low grounds
became tempered by the land breeze, that floated down by the channel
of the wide river, and flung itself rudely upon the hill side. Yet
the still, close atmosphere, and the distant flickering of purple and
golden lightning far away to the east over the lands of savage nations,
warned against loitering for the chance of a tornado. By ones and
twos the little straggling brotherhood alighted at the barrack gates;
and there, thousands of miles from Old England and the fire-side of
home, men unconnected by birth, by interests, or by office, met, and
cordially felt that they were related. Just before entering the chamber
whose secrets are bound as by adamant, the eye fell upon a figure
sitting in the verandah in the very dignity of overmastering terror.
His aspect told that he was following the poet's advice,
"Nimium ne crede colori!"
He was a black man awaiting the ceremony of initiation with much the
same intensity of interest that enlivens the criminal at execution.
He appeared the living representative of that fear-stricken island
tree whose trembling leaves distil a sympathetic dew. He was an
old serjeant of the Royal African Corps. Years of discipline had
taught him reverence for the tastes of his superiors; and when
invited by his officer to tile the lodge, overcome on the one hand
by the condescension of the captain, and overwhelmed on the other by
misgivings of latent Satanic cajolery, he had plunged into the Rubicon.
If his commander had deemed it expedient to form an alliance with so
powerful a prince as the prince of darkness, what business had he to do
with it? He had fought at Waterloo, and would fight at any time against
the devil himself if ordered to the charge; but he had never expected
to serve in the same company. However, he sturdily denied flinching
from the approaching trial of his courage.
The negro's burnished face smartened up when all was over. Rumour,
whose numerous tongues, if well pickled, would pair off with all the
boiled turkeys cooked in Christendom on a Christmas-day, and leave
plenty to spare, told the tale of wonder in "quarter less no time," how
Serjeant B. had become a member of white man's purrah; how he had sat
down to supper with Captain ---- on one side, the devil on the other,
and the chief judge opposite; how the serjeant thought he recognised
the "old gentleman" as a comrade in the Peninsula; and how the "old
gentleman" politely acknowledged similar remembrances, and took wine
with him; and how they had parted, with mutual hopes and promises of
meeting again at some future day, in the hot season, not in "the rains."
The more the woolly-headed men and maidens of his inquisitive
acquaintance interrogated the serjeant himself concerning his adventure
on that fearful night, the more he would not tell them a word about
the matter; and, to this moment, no mysteries are more mysterious, no
secrets more arcane, than those which trouble the black population of
the little colony respecting "The White Man's Devil-House."
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 4: It is curious that whilst the Hebrew word Beelzebub means
"prince of flies," Bugaboo, in negro language, signifies "the white
ant," which is deemed the devil's familiar.]
A LYRIC FOR LOVERS.
Love launch'd a gallant little craft,
Complete with every rope;
In golden words was painted aft--
"The Cupid, Captain Hope."
Pleasure was rated second-mate,
And Passion made to steer;
The guns were handed o'er to Fate,
To Impulse sailing-gear.
Merrily roved the thoughtless crew
Amidst the billows' strife;
But soon a sail bore down,--all knew
'Twas Captain Reason's "Life."
And Pleasure left, though Passion said
He'd guard her safe from all harms.
'Twas vain; for Fate ramm'd home the lead,
While Love prepared the small-arms.
A storm arose! The canvass now
Escaped from Impulse' hand,
While headstrong Passion dash'd the prow
Swift on a rocky strand.
"All's lost!" each trembling sailor cried;
"Bid Captain Hope adieu!"
But in his life-boat Reason hied
To save the silly crew.
Impulse the torrents overwhelm,
But Pleasure 'scaped from wreck;
Love, making Reason take the helm,
Chain'd Passion to the deck.
"I thought you were my foe; but now,"
Said Love, "we'll sail together;
Reason, henceforth through life shalt thou
My pilot be for ever!"
REMAINS OF HAJJI BABA.
CHAPTER VII.
My great anxiety now was to reach the foot of the English throne as
soon as possible; and I consulted my infidel friend upon the safest,
easiest, and least public manner of putting my project into execution.
I had thought it right to place sufficient confidence in him to inform
him that I was an agent of the King of Persia, commissioned to make
certain proposals to the King of England; but that it was not my
intention to insist upon an _istakbal_, or deputation, upon my entry
into the principal city, or to demand either maintenance or lodging at
the expense of the nation: in short, I wished to be as little known as
possible. He assured me that the most private manner of travelling was
a public coach. This rather appeared paradoxical, for how could I be
private and public at the same time? but, after certain explanations, I
found that he was right; particularly when he assured me that in point
of expense the private mode of conveyance cost about seven times more
than the public.
Accordingly, the next morning, having, through the interference of my
friend, paid what was due to the owner of the caravanserai, I seated
myself in the corner of a handsome coach, drawn by four fine horses,
which appeared at the door on purpose for my convenience. My friend
seated himself by my side, Mahboob was placed on the outside, and we
drove off at such a rate, that I neither had time to find out whether
the hour was fortunate, or indeed to ascertain which was the direction
of Mecca, much less to say my prayers.
We had not proceeded far, when we stopped, and a third person
ascended, and took possession of the corner opposite to me. He was a
coarse-looking infidel, with a sallow face covered with hair: bushy
eyebrows, dirty in appearance, and, as far as I could discover, wishing
to look like one of the people, although he might be of the race of the
_omrah_. He said nothing upon entrance,--not even the English _Selam
alekum_, which I had long learned to be expressed by the words "Good
morning, and fine day;" but there he sat, as if the orifice of his
mouth had been closed by a stroke of fate. The cast of his eye as it
glanced upon me was not that of hospitality; and I was certain that,
had he been an Arab, I should not have heard the sound of his pestle
and mortar braying the coffee for me in token of welcome.
I discovered that my friend's name, who had hitherto thrown his shadow
over me, was Jān Pûl, words which surprised me, because they are
pure Persian, and might be interpreted, "Soul, Money!" Although the
new-comer eyed me with little kindness of aspect, yet, when he looked
at my friend Jān, there was a slight indication of respect; but
still he said nothing.
We had scarcely cleared the town, when the coach again stopped, and we
discovered stepping out of a handsome equipage, with servants and men
in _kalaats_ to help him, an infidel, who, after some delay taken up
in providing for his comfort and accommodation, was helped into our
conveyance, and he occupied the fourth and last place in it. He was
a handsome man, cleanly and handsomely dressed, full of fair forms
and politeness; a perfect contrast to his predecessor, and upon whose
whole bearing and manners was inscribed, in legible characters, _sahib
najib_, or gentleman.
He was as civil to me as his predecessor had been the contrary. Having
ascertained that I was a Persian, he welcomed me to his country in a
form of words different from those used in Persia; but in so doing,
he not only made my heart glad, but made his own face white. He then
complimented me upon belonging to a nation whose people willingly
obeyed and upheld the authority of their king, and who were satisfied
to live under the laws of their ancient monarchy. I had so long been
unaccustomed to receive compliments, that, upon hearing this from the
sahib najib, I almost thought myself in Persia again, and was about
preparing a suitable answer,--one in which I intended at once to uphold
the dignity of my sovereign and to exhibit my own individual readiness
of wit,--when an uncouth sound proceeded from the unclean infidel,
almost the first sign of life which he had given, that made me start,
stopped my eloquence, and threw all the sugared words which I had
prepared, back into my throat again. As far as I could understand, the
purport of this inauspicious noise was to announce to the sahib najib
that he had said something in the words he had addressed to me to
which he did not agree, for I perceived anger and disgust arise in his
countenance, while the looks of "Soul Money," though not much given to
change, also became lowering.
"Surely, sir," said the sahib najib, addressing the unclean infidel
still with courtesy in his manner,--"surely you will allow, in
these unsettled times, that loyalty to one's king, and obedience to
established laws, is a subject worthy of compliment."
"I allow nothing," replied the other, looking straight forward, "but
what is for the good of the people."
Upon this there arose a discussion so long and so animated, that it
lasted almost all the way to the foot of the English throne, and of
which I could with difficulty catch the meaning, so new were most of
the words used to my ears.
The sahib najib's argument was full of words such as these;
the constitution--vested rights--ancient privileges--funded
property--established church--landed interest; and although we were
driving through a country more prosperous to my eye than even the
regions of Mahomet's paradise could be, surrounded by every luxury, and
he apparently the lord of wealth and luxury, still he seemed to persist
that he was ruined and reduced to beggary, that his country was on the
brink of perdition, and that nothing remained for him to do but to sit
down for the rest of his days upon the nummud of despair, and to eat
the bitter rind of grief.
The rough infidel, on the contrary, argued that constitutional rights,
funded property, land, church, laws, and a great many more things, of
the import of which I was ignorant, but of which I promised to acquire
knowledge, all, he argued, were alone to be turned to the use of the
people; and thus I began to have some little idea of what was meant by
that People Shah of whom we had heard so much in Persia.
"What!" said the sahib najib, "when you see the constitution in danger,
do not you perceive that it will endanger the happiness of the people
whose cause you advocate?"
"I do not see that it is in danger," said the other. "If my boat is
sinking because we carry too much sail, shall I not trim my sails and
inspect my ballast?"
"But by trimming your boat you would throw all your cargo overboard,
and thus lose all you have," answered the other.
This part of the conversation I understood, and then I said, "I now
understand: when a camel is overladen, and cannot proceed, on account
of the weight of his burthen, either the camel will die, or I must
lighten his burthen."
"Very good," said the rough man, who now for the first time cast
the shadow of his condescension over me. "You are the lord of quick
understanding, and see things."
"But," said his well-dressed antagonist, "I neither agree that the boat
is badly trimmed, or that the camel is overladen:" then, turning to me,
he said, "Surely, sir, you, who have been bred and born a Mussulman,
who have let your beard grow according to old-established custom, who
have washed your hands and feet in accordance to the precepts of your
law,--you would not change all at once, because some new sect in your
country were to arise and say, 'Cut off your beard, cease to wash, pray
in a new manner, and say to Mahomet, You are a false prophet;' you
could not in your conscience do so."
"_Astafarallah!_" said I, blowing over my shoulders at the same time,
"am I mad to eat such a profusion of abomination!"
"You are a man of perfection," said he. "I am sure the more you see of
my country and get acquainted with its present condition, the more you
will agree with me."
I looked towards my friend Jān Pûl, who hitherto had not uttered a
word, and said, "This sahib says nothing. Perhaps owing to his saying
less than we do, he may be the lord of more wisdom than all our heads
put together."
"What can I say," said Jān calmly, "when there is much to be said
on both sides? The highest wisdom is to gather experience from the
past, and apply it to the necessities of the future."
"Agreed," said the rough man: "we must therefore reform."
"Agreed," said the smooth man: "reform is useless."
I immediately perceived how the matter stood, and, with that
penetration for which all Persians are famous, I discovered the true
state of the whole country. I saw that the people were divided into two
sects, as much opposed to each other as Jews are to true believers;
that plain sense had as little chance in the controversy as a sober man
may have in the brawls of two drunkards; and that, before things get
straight, each of the drunkards must be sobered by breaking their shins
in stumbling over a stone, or their heads by carrying them too high.
CHAPTER VIII.
We continued to drive onwards: the faster we went, the more the
infidels argued. I sat in my corner guessing my way through their
words, and already making up in my mind the sort of letter which I
should write to the Asylum of the Universe upon the state of this
extraordinary country, whilst my silent friend, with his hook-stick and
close-buttoned coat, shut his eyes and slumbered; only occasionally
giving signs of life. At length we arrived at a house which I
supposed might be a caravanserai, after the Franc fashion, open to
true believers, for, on looking up I saw painted upon a board an
elephant with a castle upon its back. I began to think this might be
in compliment to me, seeing that elephants are part of the state of
Persian monarchs: but I was mistaken, because, instead of taking any
notice of me, the sahib najib, on the contrary, did not show his usual
civility; but, putting his head out of the window, he asked one of the
bystanders, "Is there any news astir?"
"Nothing particular," said an unconcerned infidel; "nothing. The papers
say, 'A man threw a stone and has broken the king's head!'"
"There," said the smooth man to the rough, "there, that comes of your
reform!"
"I deny that," said the other: "on the contrary, it comes of your
no-reform."
"Why, surely," answered the sahib najib, "if you had not taught the
people not to respect their king, to despise his nobles, and to laugh
at the laws, such an atrocity never would have happened."
"No, indeed, it never would," retorted the other, "if you had made such
changes that the people would love their king, respect his nobles, and
be satisfied with the laws."
"Then you think stoning your king a right thing to do?" said one.
"Then you allow making him odious," answered the other, "is what ought
to be done?"
"Will a stone get up and throw itself?"
"Will a man complain unless he be aggrieved?"
"Hallo! my friend," said the sahib najib to the bystander, "what is
said about this atrocious act, eh?"
"Why, some say, 'Poor king!' others say, 'Poor stone!'" answered the
bystander in the coolest manner possible.
At this I began truly to have an insight into things, and could not
help exclaiming in the bottom of my gullet, "_Allah Allah, il Allah!_
There is but one Allah!"
"You understood what that man said?" said Jān Pûl to me, with a
sigh, and in a low voice.
"_Belli_, yes," said I, "wonderful! The men of this country are lions
without saints. Allah! Allah! to throw a stone at the king, and no
executioner by, to cut the wretch's head off."
"No, no," said he, "that must be proved; first, whether it was a stone;
second, whether it was a man who threw it; and, third, whether it hit
the king's head, or some other head."
"_Aman, aman!_ Mercy, mercy!" I exclaimed; "let me return to Persia. If
so little is said about breaking the king's head, where shall I turn
for justice if some one cuts off my ears? Well may the people want
reform!"
"I will just prove to you, sir," said the soft infidel, "that this case
just proves that we want no reform."
"How!" said I, "break your king's head, and nobody to mend it!"
"That is not the case," said he. "If a people have so much security
from the laws, that not even the poorest wretch, even for a crime
of such magnitude, can be condemned without proof against him and a
full trial, surely they cannot complain: they are all equal in the
eye of the law, and more they cannot want." He said this in great
exultation, having obtained, as he conceived, a complete triumph over
his adversary, and eyed him with appropriate scorn.
The rough man looked as if his head went round and round, and as if he
were come to a full stop; but, pulling up the two ends of his shirt,--I
suppose to show that he had one,--he said, "If the people have one good
law, is that a reason why they should not have more? The great man may
get his head broke,--he is rich and mighty, a little salve cures him,
and he is as rich and happy as ever; but the poor man who has broken
it, save the satisfaction of making a good throw, he remains as poor
and miserable as ever."
"Then, sir," said the sahib najib, "you would have what can never
be,--you would have perfect equality amongst mankind?"
"Yes, truly," exclaimed the other; "because, if all were equal, there
would be no heads broken, and no stones thrown."
This, too, I understood, and said, "What words are these? All men
cannot be kings, nor can they all be viziers, nor all khans. I, who
know nothing of your extraordinary customs, I can understand that. Were
I to think of being anything but what I am, might not my neighbour
think so too; and if I wished to be him, and he me, why, then the
world would soon be upside down, and from one end of the universe to
the other there would be nothing but clutching of beards, and cries of
justice, and no justice!"
"Whatever you may say," said the rough infidel, "we must have more
equality in our country than we have at present, or else the world will
turn upside down. The rich must be poorer, and the poor richer."
During this conversation we were in rapid motion, driving through
streets lighted up as magnificently as if the Shah himself had ordered
a feast of fire-works, and ornamented by shops exhibiting such riches,
that not all the wealth brought from Hind by Nadir Shah, or amassed by
the Sofi, could compare to it.
"Strange," thought I to myself, "that this people are not satisfied
with their lot!" Passing by a splendid shop, resplendent with cutlery,
part of my instructions came into my head, and I said to the rough
man, "In the name of the Prophet, do you still make penknives and
broad-cloth?"
At this question my companion stared, and said, "Penknives and
broad-cloth, did you say? Why, we have more penknives and broad-cloth
than we know what to do with. We have made so much and so many, that
the whole world has more of them than it wants; and the poor creatures,
the manufacturers, are starving for want of work. Surely this wants
reform."
This was delightful news for me, and I longed to send an immediate
courier to the Shah to inform him of the important fact.
"Whose fault is it?" said the soft man, determined not to be beaten on
any ground. "If manufacturers will do too much, whose fault is it but
their own? Unless you make a reform in common sense, surely no other
reform is needful."
By this time the coach had stopped, and I found that we had reached our
last menzil. The rough man got out first; but just as he was stepping
down, in order to ensure the last word, he exclaimed, "We want reform
not only in that, but in everything else,--more particularly in rotten
boroughs."
At these two last words, the soft man became evidently angered, his
liver turning into blood, whilst his face became red. "Rotten boroughs,
indeed! the country is lost for ever if one borough is disfranchised."
These words were totally new to my ears, and what they meant I knew
not; but I became quite certain that the rough man had hit the smooth
man in a sore place. But I was in the seventh heaven at the end of
their controversy. I had never heard such warmth of argument, not since
that famous dispute at the Medressah, in Ispahan, between two famous
Mollahs, the one a suni, the other a shiah, whether the children of the
true faith, in washing according to the prescribed law, were to let the
water run from the hand to the elbow, or whether from the elbow to the
hand. They argued for three whole moons, and neither were convinced;
and so they remain to this day, each in his own persuasion.
"How will it be possible," thought I, "to unravel this intricate
question? It is plain these English are a nation of madmen. Oh! could
they but take one look at my country, where the will of one man is
all in all,--where no man's head is safe on his shoulders for one
moment,--where, if he heaps up riches in the course of many years,
they may be taken from him in an hour,--where he does not even think
for himself, much less speak,--where man is as withering grass of
the field, and life as the wind blowing over it; could they but know
this, short would be their controversies. They would praise Allah with
gratitude for their condition, be content with their fate, and drive
all wish of change from their thoughts, as threatening the overthrow of
their happiness."
SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. III.
ROMEO.
"Of this unlucky sort our Romeus is one,
For all his hap turns to mishap, and all his mirth to mone."
_The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet._
"Never," says Prince Escalus, in the concluding distich of Romeo and
Juliet,
"--was there story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
It is a story which, in the inartificial shape of a black-letter
ballad, powerfully affected the imagination, and awakened the
sensibilities, of our ancestors, and in the hands of Shakspeare has
become the love-story of the whole world. Who cares for the loves of
Petrarch and Laura, or of Eloisa and Abelard, compared with those of
Romeo and Juliet? The gallantries of Petrarch are conveyed in models
of polished and ornate verse; but, in spite of their elegance, we feel
that they are frosty as the Alps beneath which they were written. They
are only the exercises of genius, not the ebullitions of feeling; and
we can easily credit the story that Petrarch refused a dispensation
to marry Laura, lest marriage might spoil his poetry. The muse, and
not the lady, was his mistress. In the case of Abelard there are many
associations which are not agreeable; and, after all, we can hardly
help looking upon him as a fitter hero for Bayle's Dictionary than a
romance. In Romeo and Juliet we have the poetry of Petrarch without its
iciness, and the passion of Eloisa free from its coarse exhibition. We
have, too, philosophy far more profound than ever was scattered over
the syllogistic pages of Abelard, full of knowledge and acuteness as
they undoubtedly are.
But I am not about to consider Romeo merely as a lover, or to use him
as an illustration of Lysander's often-quoted line,
"The course of true love never did run smooth."
In that course the current has been as rough to others as to Romeo;
who, in spite of all his misfortunes, has wooed and won the lady of his
affections. That Lysander's line is often true, cannot be questioned;
though it is no more than the exaggeration of an annoyed suitor to
say that love has _never_ run smoothly. The reason why it should be
so generally true, is given in "Peveril of the Peak" by Sir Walter
Scott; a man who closely approached to the genius of Shakspeare in
depicting character, and who, above all writers of imagination, most
nearly resembled him in the possession of keen, shrewd, every-day
common-sense, rendered more remarkable by the contrast of the romantic,
pathetic, and picturesque by which it is in all directions surrounded.
"This celebrated passage
['Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,' &c.]
which we have prefixed to this chapter, [chap. xii. vol. i. Peveril
of the Peak,] has, like most observations of the same author, its
foundation in real experience. The period at which love is felt most
strongly is seldom that at which there is much prospect of its being
brought to a happy issue. In fine, there are few men who do not look
back in secret to some period of their youth at which a sincere and
early affection was repulsed or betrayed, or became abortive under
opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history,
which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us,
even in the most busy or the most advanced period of life, to listen
with total indifference to a tale of true love."[5]
These remarks, the justice of which cannot be questioned, scarcely
apply to the case of Romeo. In no respect, save that the families
were at variance, was the match between him and Juliet such as not
to afford a prospect of happy issue; and everything indicated the
possibility of making their marriage a ground of reconciliation between
their respective houses. Both are tired of the quarrel. Lady Capulet
and Lady Montague are introduced in the very first scene of the play,
endeavouring to pacify their husbands; and, when the brawl is over,
Paris laments to Juliet's father that it is a pity persons of such
honourable reckoning should have lived so long at variance. For Romeo
himself old Capulet expresses the highest respect, as being one of the
ornaments of the city; and, after the death of Juliet, old Montague,
touched by her truth and constancy, proposes to raise to her a statue
of gold. With such sentiments and predispositions, the early passion of
the Veronese lovers does not come within the canon of Sir Walter Scott;
and, as I have said, I do not think that Romeo is designed merely as an
exhibition of a man unfortunate in love.
I consider him to be meant as the character of an _unlucky_ man,--a
man who, with the best views and fairest intentions, is perpetually so
unfortunate as to fail in every aspiration, and, while exerting himself
to the utmost in their behalf, to involve all whom he holds dearest
in misery and ruin. At the commencement of the play an idle quarrel
among some low retainers of the rival families produces a general riot,
with which he has nothing to do. He is not present from beginning to
end; the tumult has been so sudden and unexpected, that his father is
obliged to ask
"What set this ancient quarrel new abroach?"
And yet it is this very quarrel which lays him prostrate in death
by his own hand, outside Capulet's monument, before the tragedy
concludes. While the fray was going on, he was nursing love-fancies,
and endeavouring to persuade himself that his heart was breaking for
Rosaline. How afflicting his passion must have been, we see by the
conundrums he makes upon it:
"Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears.[6]
What is it else?--a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet."--
And so forth. The sorrows which we can balance in such trim antitheses
do not lie very deep. The time is rapidly advancing when his sentences
will be less sounding.
"It is my lady; oh, it is my love!
O that she knew she were!"--
speaks more touchingly the state of his engrossed soul than all the
fine metaphors ever vented. The supercilious Spartans in the days of
their success prided themselves upon the laconic brevity of their
despatches to states in hostility or alliance with them. When they were
sinking before the Macedonians, another style was adopted; and Philip
observed that he had taught them to lengthen their monosyllables. Real
love has had a contrary effect upon Romeo. It has abridged his swelling
passages, and brought him to the language of prose. The reason of the
alteration is the same in both cases. The brevity of the Spartans
was the result of studied affectation. They sought, by the insolence
of threats obscurely insinuated in a sort of demi-oracular language,
to impose upon others,--perhaps they imposed upon themselves,--an
extravagant opinion of their mysterious power. The secret was found
out at last, and their anger bubbled over in big words and lengthened
sentences. The love of Rosaline is as much affected on the part of
Romeo, and it explodes in wire-drawn conceits.
"When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;
And those who often drown'd could never die,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.
One fairer than my love!--the all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun."
It is no wonder that a gentleman who is so clever as to be able to say
such extremely fine things, forgets, in the next scene, the devout
religion of his eye, without any apprehension of the transparent
heretic being burnt for a liar by the transmutation of tears into the
flames of an _auto da fe_. He is doomed to discover that love in his
case is not a madness most discreet when he defies the stars; there are
then no lines of magnificent declamation.
"Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!
Thou knowest my lodging: get me ink and paper,
And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night."
Nothing can be plainer prose than these verses. But how were they
delivered? Balthazar will tell us.
"Pardon me, sir; I dare not leave you thus:
Your looks are pale and wild, and do import
Some misadventure."
Again, nothing can be more quiet than his final determination:
"Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night."
It is plain Juliet,--unattended by any romantic epithet of love. There
is nothing about "Cupid's arrow," or "Dian's wit;" no honeyed word
escapes his lips,--nor again does any accent of despair. His mind is
so made up,--the whole course of the short remainder of his life so
unalterably fixed, that it is perfectly useless to think more about it
He has full leisure to reflect without disturbance upon the details of
the squalid penury which made him set down the poor apothecary as a
fit instrument for what now had become his "need;" and he offers his
proposition of purchasing that soon-speeding gear which is to hurry him
out of life, with the same business-like tone as if he were purchasing
a pennyworth of sugar-candy. When the apothecary suggests the danger
of selling such drugs, Romeo can reflect on the folly of scrupling
to sacrifice life when the holder of it is so poor and unfortunate.
Gallant and gay of appearance himself, he tells his new-found
acquaintance that bareness, famine, oppression, ragged misery, the
hollow cheek and the hungry eye, are fitting reasons why death should
be desired, not avoided; and with a cool philosophy assures him that
gold is worse poison than the compound which hurries the life-weary
taker out of the world. The language of desperation cannot be more
dismally determined. What did the apothecary think of his customer as
he pocketed the forty ducats? There you go, lad,--there you go, he
might have said,--there you go with that in your girdle that, if you
had the strength of twenty men, would straight despatch you. Well do
I know the use for which you intend it. To-morrow's sun sees not you
alive. And you philosophise to me on the necessity of buying food and
getting into flesh. You taunt my poverty,--you laugh at my rags,--you
bid me defy the law,--you tell me the world is my enemy. It may be
so, lad,--it may be so; but less tattered is my garment than your
heart,--less harassed by law of one kind or another my pursuit than
yours. What ails that lad? I know not, neither do I care. But that
he should moralise to me on the hard lot which I experience,--that
he, with those looks and those accents, should fancy that I, amid
my beggarly account of empty boxes, am less happy than he,--ha! ha!
ha!--it is something to make one laugh. Ride your way, boy: I have your
forty ducats in my purse, and you my drug in your pocket. And the law!
Well! What can the executioner do worse to me in my penury and my age
than you have doomed for yourself in your youth and splendour. I carry
not my hangman in my saddle as I ride along. And the curses which the
rabble may pour upon my dying moments,--what are they to the howling
gurgle which, now rising from your heart, is deafening your ears?
Adieu, boy,--adieu!--and keep your philosophy for yourself. Ho! ho! ho!
But had any other passion or pursuit occupied Romeo, he would have been
equally unlucky as in his love. Ill fortune has marked him for her own.
From beginning to end he intends the best; but his interfering is ever
for the worst. It is evident that he has not taken any part in the
family feud which divides Verona, and his first attachment is to a lady
of the antagonist house.[7] To see that lady,--perhaps to mark that
he has had no share in the tumult of the morning,--he goes to a ball
given by Capulet, at which the suitor accepted by the family is to be
introduced to Juliet as her intended husband. Paris is in every way an
eligible match.
"Verona's summer hath not such a flower."
He who has slain him addresses his corse as that of the "noble County
Paris," with a kindly remembrance that he was kinsman of a friend slain
in Romeo's own cause. Nothing can be more fervent, more honourable,
or more delicate than his devoted and considerate wooing. His grief
at the loss of Juliet is expressed in few words; but its sincerity is
told by his midnight and secret visit to the tomb of her whom living he
had honoured, and on whom, when dead, he could not restrain himself
from lavishing funereal homage. Secure of the favour of her father, no
serious objection could be anticipated from herself. When questioned
by her mother, she readily promises obedience to parental wishes, and
goes to the ball determined to "look to like, if looking liking move."
Everything glides on in smooth current till the appearance of him
whose presence is deadly. Romeo himself is a most reluctant visitor.
He apprehends that the consequences of the night's revels will be the
vile forfeit of a despised life by an untimely death, but submits to
his destiny. He foresees that it is no wit to go, but consoles himself
with the reflection that he "means well in going to this mask." His
intentions, as usual, are good; and, as usual, their consequences are
ruinous.
He yields to his passion, and marries Juliet. For this hasty act he has
the excuse that the match may put an end to the discord between the
families. Friar Lawrence hopes that
"this alliance may so happy prove
To turn your households' rancour into love."
It certainly has that effect in the end of the play, but it is by the
suicidal deaths of the flower and hope of both families. Capulet and
Montague tender, in a gloomy peace the hands of friendship, over the
untimely grave of the poor sacrifices to their enmity. Had he met
her elsewhere than in her father's house, he might have succeeded in
a more prosperous love. But there his visit is looked upon by the
professed duellist Tybalt, hot from the encounter of the morning,
and enraged that he was baulked of a victim, as an intrusion and an
insult. The fiery partisan is curbed with much difficulty by his uncle;
and withdraws, his flesh trembling with wilful choler, determined to
wreak vengeance at the first opportunity on the intruder. It is not
long before the opportunity offers. Vainly does Romeo endeavour to
pacify the bullying swordsman,--vainly does he protest that he loves
the name of Capulet,--vainly does he decline the proffered duel. His
good intentions are again doomed to be frustrated. There stands by
his side as mad-blooded a spirit as Tybalt himself, and Mercutio,
all unconscious of the reasons why Romeo refuses to fight, takes up
the abandoned quarrel. The star of the unlucky man is ever in the
ascendant. His ill-omened interference slays his friend. Had he kept
quiet, the issue might have been different; but the power that had
the steerage of his course had destined that the uplifting of his
sword was to be the signal of death to his very friend. And when
the dying Mercutio says, "Why the devil came you between us? I was
hurt under your arm;" he can only offer the excuse, which is always
true, and always unavailing, "I thought all for the best." All his
visions of reconciliation between the houses are dissipated. How can
he now avoid fighting with Tybalt? His best friend lies dead, slain
in his own quarrel, through his own accursed intermeddling; and the
swaggering victor, still hot from the slaughter, comes back to triumph
over the dead. Who with the heart and spirit of a man could under such
circumstances refrain from exclaiming,
"Away to heaven, respective lenity!
And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now."
Vanish gentle breath, calm words, knees humbly bowed!--his weapon
in an instant glitters in the blazing sun; and as with a lightning
flash,--as rapidly and resistlessly,--before Benvolio can pull his
sword from the scabbard, Tybalt, whom his kindred deemed a match for
twenty men, is laid by the side of him who but a moment before had
been the victim of his blade. What avails the practised science of
the duellist, the gentleman of the very first house, of the first and
second cause!--how weak is the immortal passado, or the punto reverso,
the hay, or all the other learned devices of Vincent Saviola, against
the whirlwind rage of a man driven to desperation by all that can rouse
fury or stimulate hatred! He sees the blood of his friend red upon the
ground; the accents of gross and unprovoked outrage ring in his ears;
the perverse and obstinate insolence of a bravo confident in his skill,
and depending upon it to insure him impunity, has marred his hopes; and
the butcher of the silk button has no chance against the demon which he
has evoked. "A la stoccata" carries it not away in this encounter; but
Romeo exults not in his death. He stands amazed, and is with difficulty
hurried off, exclaiming against the constant fate which perpetually
throws him in the way of misfortune. Well, indeed, may Friar Lawrence
address him by the title of "thou fearful man!"--as a man whose career
through life is calculated to inspire terror. Well may he say to him
that
"Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity."
And slight is the attention which Romeo pays to the eloquent arguments
by which it is proved that he had every reason to consider himself
happy. When the friar assures him that
"A pack of blessings lights upon thy back,
Happiness courts thee in her best array,"
the nurse may think it a discourse of learning and good counsel, fit to
detain an enraptured auditor all the night. Romeo feels it in his case
to be an idle declamation, unworthy of an answer.
The events which occur during his enforced absence, the haste
of Paris to be wedded, the zeal of old Capulet in promoting the
wishes of his expected son-in-law, the desperate expedient of the
sleeping-draught,[8] the accident which prevented the delivery of the
friar's letter, the officious haste of Balthazar to communicate the
tidings of Juliet's burial, are all matters out of his control. But the
mode of his death is chosen by himself; and in that he is as unlucky as
in everything else. Utterly loathing life, the manner of his leaving it
must be instantaneous. He stipulates that the poison by which he is to
die shall not be slow of effect. He calls for
"such soon-speeding gear
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead."
He leaves himself no chance of escape. Instant death is in his hand;
and, thanking the true apothecary for the quickness of his drugs, he
scarcely leaves himself a moment with a kiss to die. If he had been
less in a hurry,--if he had not felt it impossible to delay posting off
to Verona for a single night,--if his riding had been less rapid, or
his medicine less sudden in its effect, he might have lived. The friar
was at hand to release Juliet from her tomb the very instant after the
fatal phial ha
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