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BUCKINGHAM 
LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  BUCKINGHAM 


8113273 


Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. "-SHAKESPEARE. 


Journal 


CONDUCTED   BY 


CHARLES    DICKENS. 


VOLUME  XVI. 


FROM   JULY  4,  1857,  TO  DECEMBER  12,  1857. 

Being  from  No.  380  to  No.  403,  and  also  including  the  Extra  Number  and  a 
half  for  Christmas. 

• 


LONDON: 
OFFICE,  16,  WELLINGTON  STREET  NOKTH. 

1857. 


..._ 


LONDON : 
BRADBURY  AND  EVANS,   PRINTERS,   WHITEFEIARS. 


1 

TAG* 

AGNES  LBB          •        .               .36 
Algeria.  Captain  Doineau's  Trial 
in   423 

CONTENTS, 

FiGB 

DATCHLEY  Philharmonic,  The   .    213 
Debtor  and  Creditor    .        .        .    525 
Debtors  a  Century  Ago   .        .    .    279 

HallsviUe             «...    241 
Hamlet,  A  History  of     .        .    .    545 
Hamlet,  The  Original         .        .    372 

Allonby                 ....    361 

Debtor's  Best  Friend,  The  .        .    279 

Hard  Roads      534 

Amateur  Philharmonic,  The       .    213 
American  IndiansTravelling  Ex- 
'    press          367 

Debtors'  Prison,  A  .        .        .     .    421 
Delhi,  The  First  Sack  of     .        .    276 
Diarists    294 

Hazlitfs  Works  .        .        .        .478 
Health  and  Habitation           .    .    194 
Healthy  Year  in  London     .        .    193 

Auiphlett  Love  Match,  The    .    .    173 
Amsterdam       .        .        .400,446,501 
Apnrentiees,  The  Lazy  Tour  of 
thi  Two  Idle   313,  337,  361,  385,  409 
Art  Treasures  Exhibition,  The    349 
Article  Making    ....    480 
At  Home  in  Siam     .        .        .    .    481 
At  the  Coulisses  in  Paris    .        .      22 
Australia,  Lost  in  the  Bush    .    .      93 
Autobiography  of  a  Mahomme- 
dan  Gentleman         .        .        .    490 

BADGERY,  MRS.            .        .        ,    290 

Dictionnaire,  Infernal          .        .        1 
Discursive  Mind,  A         ...    477 
Disinfectants         ....        9 
Disraeli,  Mr.  Isaac          .        .     .    403 
Dissenters  and  Police  in  Prussia    171 
Doctor  Conolly         .        .        .    .    518 
Doctor  Garrick     .        .        .        .166 
Doctor  Johnson        .        .        .    .    403 
Doctors'  Bills       .        .        .        .25 
Doctoring  by  Lightning          .    .    450 
Doncaster  Races  ....    409 
Down  among  the  Dutchmen    398,  446, 
501 

Helena  Mathewson          .        .    .      13 
Her  Grace  of  the  Hobnails  .        .    310 
Herrick's  Julia         .        .        .    .     322 
Hint  from  Siam    ....    202 
Horse  Guards,   An  Application 
at  the          239 
How  the  Writer  was  Despatch- 
boxed          239- 

IMMEASURABLE  Wonder  .        .    .    118 
Imprisonment  for  Debt  a  Cen- 
tury ago     279 
Inch  by  Inch  Upward     .        .    .      49 

Bangkok  the  Capital  of  Siam     .    482 

Dryden,  Mr  405 

India,  Censorship  of  the  Press   .     293 

Battle,  Trial  by        .        .        .    .    488 
Behind  the  Scenes       ...      22 
Beranger  185 
Best  Man,  The     .        .        .        .488 

Dubious  Episodes  in  History     .    404 
Duchess  Fan  in  Norway      .        .    310 
Dudley.  Sir  Robert  .        .        .    .      83 
Dutch  Manners  •        .        398,  446,  501 

India,  A  Day  with  Nena  Sahib  .    458 
India,    Lutfullah    Khan's    Life 
in        490 
India,  The  Furniture  of  a  Rajah's 

Billiards  in  India         .        .        .461 
Biography,  The  Pest  of          .    .      73 
Black  Act,  A         ....    293 
Boulogne  Wood        .                •     .      89 
.     Bourbon  Paris,  Photographed     .    300 
Bradgate  Hall  443 
Brave  Coucou-Driver  The           .    265 

EDINBURGH  Review      ...      97 
Edmund  Waller        .          246,  402,  405 
Eleanor  Clare's  Journal  for  Ten 
Years        .        .       19Z,  232,  252,  271 
Elizabeth,  Empress  of  Russia     .    100 
Encumbered  Estate         .        .    .      81 

India,  Wanderings  in              .    .    457 
Indian  Billiard-player         .        .    461 
Indian  Cavalry       .        ...     154 
Indian  Irregulars         .        .       .    244 
Indian  Mahommedans    .        .     .    490 
Indian     Recruits    and     Indian 
English              ....    319- 

Brer  oh  of  Promise,  A               .     .    260 
Bride  Chamber,  Story  of  the       .    386 
Brittany,  Superstitions  of        .     .        3 
Brother  Mttller  and  his  Orphan 
Work    433 
Burning  and  Burying  .        .        .    22(j 
Burning  the  Dead  in  Siam      .    .    487 

Author.  The          .        .        .    .    540 
English  Witches          .        .        .138 
Extract  of  Funeral  Flowers    .    .      69 

FAIR  Penitent,  A     .        .        .     .      55 
Fair-time  at  Leipsic     .        .        .    560 
Falling  Leaves        .        .        .    .    354 
Faradism      451 

Indian  Thugs        '  .        .        .    .    457 
Infant  Orphan  House,  The         .    433 
Invisible  Ghosts      .        ...    109 
Irish  Encumbered  Estate    .        .      84 
Irregular  Cavalry   .        .        .    .    244 
Irregular  Cava'ry,  Mutiny  of     .    154 

JAMES  the  First,  Birth  of    .        .    40S 

Calculation,  Powers  of     .        .    .    141 
Calcutta        ....             393 

First  Sack  of  Delhi,  The      .        .    276 

Japan,  Roads  in  .         .        .         .    534 

Canning  Town,  Health  Report  of    241 
Canton  City          .        .        .        .376 
Captain  Doineau      .        .        .     .    423 
Captain  Snow's  Voyage       .        .    418 
Carlisle     .                ...         314 

Forebodings  of  Thomas  Raikes, 
Esquire         294 
Francis  Wey,  upon  England       .    540 
Frauds  in  Commerce       .        .    .    444 

Journey  in  Search  of  Nothing    .    217 
Judicial  Duels                  .        .    .    489 
Junction  Station,  A     ...    36ft 

Carnevale     407 
Carrock,  The  Idle  Apprentices' 
Ascent  of  316 
Cat's  Grease     453 
Cattle  Disease,  The     .        .        .163 
Celibacy,  College  Laws  of      .    .    191 

for  Murder        ....    423 
French  Cocou-Driver,  The      .    .    265 
French  Tavern  Life            .     Ill,  207 
French  War-Office  in  1785          .      34 
Friends  of  the  Patagonian      .    .    416 
Frogs    91 

Kerby  Castle       ....    444 
Killing  Time   221 

LADY  Jane  Grey's  Residence      .    443 
Lamb's  Works         .        .        .    .    478 
Lancaster      .....    367 

Charles  Lamb's  Works        .        .    478 
Charles  the  Second  and  the  Oak    404 
Chips  .        .        .34,  83,  162,  402,  536 
Christina,  Queen  of  Sweden    .    .    156 
Cloister,  A  Voice  from  the  .        .    191 
Commercial  Frauds         .        .    .    444 

Funeral  Flowers,  Extract  of  .    .      69 

GALVANISM    450 
Garrick,  A  Story  of  .        .        .    .    166 
Gaston,  the  Little  Wolf      .        .      28 

Lazy  Tour  of  Two  Idle  Appren- 
tices      .        .  313,  337,  361,  385,  409 
Leaves  of  Plants      .        ...    354 
Leipsic  Fair          ....    560 
Letter-  Writer,  The  New        .    .    205 
Light     463 

Common  Lodging  Houses'  Act  .    334 
Companionable  Sparrow,  A         .    130 
Cooks,  A  School  for         .        .         162 

General  Board  of  Health,  The    .    193 
George  Mttller          .        .        .    .    433 
George  Pull  the  Potter                    223 

Lightning  Doctor     ....    450 
Little  Dorrit  and  the  Edinburgh 

Crowded  Dwellings'  Act      .        .    333 
Crystals  under  the  Microscope    .    467 
Cumberland  Doctor's  Story,  The    340 
Cumberland  Village,  A     .        315,  338 
Curiosities  of  Literature,  The     .    403 
Curious  Misprint  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review   ....      97 

Ge  >rge  Stephenson         .        .    .      50 
Giant  Thor  283 
Great  St.  Leger,  The       .       .    .    411 
Green  Frogs         91 
Gymnastics,  Rational      .        .    .    566 

HABITUJJS  of  Westminster      .    .    402 

Locomotive  Engine,  A  Ride  on  .    553 
Londoners  over  the  Border          .    241 
Lord  William  Courtenay        .    .    523 
Lord  W.Tyler     ....    333 
Lost  in  the  Bush      .        .        .    .      93 
Lucknow,  A  Traveller  in    .        .    458 
Lunatics  in  Bethlehem   ...    147 

iv                                                             CONTENTS. 

(AM 

Lunatics   and   Keepers   at  the 
i:.in-     410 

rioB 
Petty  Larceny  &  Co.,  Messrs.     .    444 
Philharmonic  at  Datchley,  The  .    213 
Photographecs      ....    352 
Physical  Training  in  Schools     .    565 
Physiology,  Teaching  of      .        .    567 
Piccadilly  and  the  Uaymarket  .    264 
Piece  of  Work,  A     .        .        .    .    564 
Polarisation  463 

PAOI 

Stephenson,  George      ...      50 
Stepping  Stones        .        .        .    .    402 
Sticky  toes     91 

Lunatics,  Treatment  of       .       .    518 
Lutfullah  Khan       .        .        .    .    490 
Lyndon  Hall.        .       .       .    468,493 

MADEMOISELLE  Gautier  .        .    .     65 

Stretch  of  Memory,  A      .        .    .    402 
Sun-Horse,  The    .        .        .        .556 
Superstitions  and  Traditions       .        1 
Sweetest  of  Women,  The        .    .    246 

TAVERNS,  French        .       .     Ill,  207 
Things    within     Dr.    Conolly'a 
remembrance    ....    518 
Thor  and  the  Giants        .        .    .    282 
Three  Generations       ...      59 
Thugs  in  India        .        .        .    .    457 
Thurtell  the  Murderer        .       .    262 
Touching  (and   Touched)   Cha- 
racter, A       407 
Touching  the  Lord  Hamlet  .       .    372 
Tracks  in  the  Bush  .        .        .    .      93 
Trial  by  Battle     ....    488 
Trial  of  Captain  Doineau       .    .    423 
Twenty  Shillings  in  the  Pound  .    444 
Two  First-Class  Passengers   .    .    430 
Two  Janes,  The   ....    412 

UNIVERSITY  Commission,  The    .    191 
Unprotected  Fernalea  in  Norway    310 

VERY  Black  Act,  A      .       .       .293 
Village  Life      218 
Voice  from  the  Cloister,  A  .       .191 

WALLER,  Mr.  Edmund    .  246,  402,  405 
Wanderings  in  India    .        .    457,505 
Weare,  The  Murder  of  .        .    .    262 
Westdale  Head    .       .       .       .285 
Westminster  at  Four  o'Clock      .    402 
Whirlwind  at  Calcutta        .        .    393 
Whirlwind,  Riding  the        .        .    553 
WhowasHe?  83 
Wigton,  A  Rainy  Day  at    .        .337 
Will's  Coffee  House         .        .    .    404 
Winckler,  Mr.,  The  Calculator   .    141 
Witches  of  England         .        .    .    138 
Witches  of  Scotland     ...      75 

YELLOW  Tiger,  The       .        .    .    121 
Your  Life  or  Your  Likeness       .      73 

POETRY. 
ANGELA    ....                251 
Autumn         132 
Dead  Past,  A    108 
Dismal  Pool,  The         ...      12 
First  Snow  on  the  Fell    .        .    .    468 
George  Levison;  or,  The  School- 
fellows                  .        .        .    .    562 

Manchester  School  of  Art      .    .    349 
Marie  Courtenay  ....    523 
Marriage,   A    Breach    of    Pro- 
mise of  260 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots  .        .        .    406 
Meaning  Me,  Sir?   ....        6 
Microscopes          ,        .                    464 
Microscopic  Preparations         132,  467 
Missionaries  to  Patagonia  .        .    416 
Mistakes  in  Speech         .        .    .    204 
Monkey  King       .        .        .        .438 
Monte  Video,  Voyage  to  .        .    .    419 
Mrs.  Badgery        .        .        .        .289 
M  tiller,  and  his  Orphans         .    .    433 
Murrain,  The       ....    163 
Mutiny  in  India,  A  .        .        .    .    154 
Mutiny,  Sepoy  Symbols  of  .        .    228 
My  Lost  Home        .       .        .    .    529 
My  Window     150 

NADIR  Shah     276 
Nature's    Greatness   in    Small 
Things       511 

Poor  Tom.—  A  City  Weed      .    .    381 
Pope,  Mr.  Alexander  .        .        .404 
Post  Office,  Calcutta        .        .    .    396 
Post  Office,  The,  and  the  Edin- 
burgh Review      .       .       .    .      98 
Potter,  Ge  >rge  Pull,  the      .        .    223 
Powers  of  Calculation     .        .    .    141 
Prattleton's  Mouday  out        .      .    537 
Press  in  India,  Tlie      .        .        .293 
Press  in  Prussia,  The     .        .    .    170 
Prussian  Clergy  ....    169 
Prussian  Police        .        ...    169 
Punch  and  Judy  ....    477 

QOEEN'S  Guest,  The        .       .    .    421 
Queeu's  Revenge,  The         .       .    156 

RACE  Week  at  Doncaster   .       .    409 
Raikes'  Diary          .        .        .    .    297 
Railway  Passengers    .        .        .    430 
Rational  Gymnastics       .        .    .    566 
Recruiting  in  India      .        .        .319 
Remarkable  Revolution  .        .    .    100 
Retouching  the  Lord  Hamlet     .    545 
Riding  the  Whirlwind         .        .    553 
Rinderpest;  or,  Steppe-Murrain.    163 
Rogues'  Walk  262 
Romantic  Breach  of  Promise       .    260 
Romeo,  A  Lady  in  Love  with     .    166 
Russian  Revolution,  A    .        .    .    100 

SACHARIBSA.  .....    246 

Nena  Sahlh,  A  Day  with       .    .    458 
"Never  Too  Late  to  Learn"       .    205 
New  Colonists  of  Norfolk  Island     467 
New  Letter-  Writer,  The      .        .    205 
,  Newton's  (Sir  Isaac)  Pet  Dog     .    404 
Next  Week      46 
Night  Porter,  The       .        .        .    513 
Norfolk  Island         .        .        .    .    476 
Norway,    An    English    Youug 
Lady  in         310 
Nothing,  A  Journey  in  Search  of    217 
Number  Five,  Hanbury  Terrace    568 

OLD  Hawtrey  308 
One  of  Sir  Hans  Sloahe's  Patients    536 
Opium  (China)     .        .        .        .181 
Opium  (India)          .        .        .     .    104 
Organic  Cell,  The         .        .        .511 
Orpban-House  on  Ashley  Down     433 
Oude,  A  Traveller  iu  .        .        .    458 
Our  Family  Picture        .  303,  326,  3o5 
Our  P's  and  Q's        .        .       .    .    204 
Over-Crowded    Dwellings'    Pre- 
ventive A  ct               .        .        .    334 

PATAGONIAN  Missionary  Society    416 
Patagonians,  Friends  of  the        .    416 
Paris,  Behind  the  Scenes  at  the 
Opera     22 
Paris,  in  Time  of  the  Bourbons      300 
Paris  on  London  ....    540 
Pepys'  Diary    295 

The  Extra  Christmas  Number,  THE  P 
IN  WOMEN,  CHILDREN, 

CHAP.      I.—  ' 
CHAP.    II.—  ' 
CHAP.  III.—' 

Samuel  Johnson       .        .        .    .    404 
Sand  and  Roses    .        .        .        .548 
Scandinavian  God  Thor,  The      .    282 
Scawfell     286 

School  for  Cooks,  A              .        .162 
Scotland,  Witches  of       .        .    .      75 
Sea-  Worm,  The    ....    118 
Self  made  Potter,  The     .        .    .    223 
Sepoy  Symbols  of  Mutiny   .        .    228 
Siam,  A  Hint  from  .        .        .    .    202 
Siam.  At  Home  In        ...    481 
Sir    Hans   Sloane's,   A  Patient 
of                               ...    536 

S'-r  Robert  Dudley  .       .       .    .     83 
Six  Old  Men  886 
Suow  Express,  The  .        .        .    .    367 
Snow's,  Captain,  Voyage     .        .    418 
South  Kensington  Museum        .    537 
Sparrows  .        .        .        .        .    .    130 

Leaf,  The       227 

Sporting  Andience,  A  .        .        .    412 
Sporting  Gents         .        .        .262,410 
St.  Leger  Kace,  The     .        .        .411 
Star  of  Bethlehem,  The  .        .    .    145 

My  Sister          300 
Unopened  Buds    ....      36 
Wand  of  Light         .        .        .    .    397 

ERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS,  AND  THEIR  TREASURE 
SILVER,  AND  JEWELS,  will  be  found  at  the  end  of  the  Volume. 

FAQS 

PhR  Island  of  Silver  Store.                 ....        1 

i'he  Raits  on  the  River                       .        p 

.      30 

"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS."— 


°-  380.] 


A  WEEKLY  JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 

SATURDAY,  JULY  4,  1857. 


(  PKICE  2il. 
(  STAMPED  3d. 


SUPERSTITIONS    AND    TEADITIONS. 


THE  pedigree  of  Superstition  is  easily  traced. 
She  is  the  offspring  of  Ignorance  and  Fear, 
and  has  fully  developed  with  her  growth 
the  qualities  of  both  her  parents.  She  has 
unfortunately  been  very  long-lived,  and  it  is 
almost  a  question,  whether  she  will  ever  die, 
Tradition,  her  daughter  (whose  sire  was 
Custom),  sustaining  her  existence  with  a 
devotion  more  than  commonly  filial.  Super- 
stition is  a  hag  that  always  rides  in  darkness, 
but  we  occasionally,  even  now,  get  glimpses 
of  her  flight,  and  the  time  is  not  so  very  far 
gone  by  since  she  was  a  constant  guest  not 
only  in  pauperum  taberuas  (the  habitation  of 
kthe  poor),  but  regumque  turres  (in  the 
palaces  of  kings  also).  Napoleon's  Red  Man, 
the  Black  Huntsman  of  Foutainebleau,  the 
Spectre  of  the  Tuileries,  and  other  examples 
nearer  home,  demonstrate  the  great  unwil- 
lingness of  Superstition  to  shift  her  ground 
when  once  she  gets  into  high  places  ;  while 
there  is  scarcely  any  one  we  meet,  of  our 
own  or  of  a  lower  degree,  who  has  not  some 
tradition  to  tell,  in  which  an  implicit  belief 
in  an  inexplicable  superstition  is  the  unalter- 
able feature.  I  have  myself  a  story  of  this 
kind  to  repeat,  at  no  very  distant  day  ;  but 
in  the  meantime  I  confine  the  present  sub- 
ject to  certain  details  of  belief  and  obser- 
vance. 

Let  me  begin  with  a  singular  account  of  a 
very  curious  people,  the  Aparctians,  of  whom 
I  meet  with  a  description  in  the  Dictionnaire 
Infernal,  of  M.  J.  Colliu  de  Plancy,  a  some- 
what rare  and  rather  remarkable  volume. 
The  Aparctians,  as  their  name  implies, 
inhabit  the  frozen  north.  They  are  trans- 
parent as  crystal,  and  their  feet  are  as  sharp 
and  narrow  as  skates,  a  peculiarity  which 
enables  them  to  get  over  the  ground — or 
rather  the  ice — at  a  most  tremendous  pace. 
Their  beards  are  long,  but  they  wear  them 
at  the  end  of  the  nose  instead  of  the  chin, 
which  makes  it  probable  that  they  may  be 
icicles.  They  have  no  tongue,  but  in  its 
place  they  clatter  musically  with  their  teeth, 
which  are  not  separated  from  each  other,  but 
form  two  solid  pieces.  They  never  go  out  of 
doors  in  the  daytime  (perhaps  the  icy  caverns, 
in  which  they  dwell,  have  no  doors),  and  the 
perpetuation  of  their  race  is  insured  by 


drops  of  perspiration,  which  congeal  and 
become  Aparctians  (a  simple  and  natural 
process,  when  once  the  necessary  perspiration 
is  obtained).  That  all  things  in  the  habits  of 
this  people  may  be  conformable,  they  worship 
a  white  bear.  M.  de  Plancy's  authority 
states,  that  they  are  not  often  met  with, — 
which  is  probable. 

From  the  Pole  to  the  Equator  is  a  long 
stride,  but  the  local  colour  produces  similar 
effects.  What  the  Aparctians  are  to  northern 
wanderers,  the  race  called  Tibalang  are  to 
the  native  inhabitants  of  Borneo  and  Suma- 
tra, with  only  the  difference  between  a  past 
and  a  present  existence.  The  Tibalaugs  are 
phantoms,  which  the  aborigines  believe  they 
see  hovering  over  the  tops  of  certain  very  old 
trees,  in  which  they  are  persuaded  that  the 
souls  of  their  ancestors  have  taken  up  their 
abodes.  .They  describe  them  as  of  gigantic 
stature,  with  long  hair,  small  feet,  painted 
bodies,  and  outstretched  wings  of  enormous 
size, — not  very  unlike  the  Vampire  bat, 
magnified  by  superstitious  dread. 

But,  there  is  110  need  to  visit  hyperborean 
regions,  or  to  voyage  between  the  tropics  in 
search  of  the  preternatural,  when  a  steamer 
from  Southampton  can  take  us  in  twelve 
hours  to  the  coast  of  Brittany  ;  where,  if 
we  carefully  look  up  the  traditions  of  the  in- 
habitants, we  may  find  the  means  of  filling  a 
tolerably  large  wallet  with  the  materials 
which  travellers  are  commonly  said  to  dis- 
pense so  freely.  Abundant  in  all  parts  of 
the  ancient  Duchy,  there  is  no  district  in 
which  traditions  are  more  deeply  rooted  than 
in  the  department  of  Finistere, — so  deeply, 
that  it  may  be  many  years  yet  before  they 
are  dispersed  by  the  railway  whistle.  In  the 
cantons  surrounding  Morlaix,  the  popular 
belief  is  strong  in  a  race  of  demons  called 
Teus.  They  are  of  two  kinds  :  one  of  them 
is  called  the  Teus-ar-pouliet.  and  the  other  the 
Buguel  Nos  ;  both  are  of  a  beneficent  nature. 
The  Teus-ar-pouliet  usually  presents  himself 
under  the  form  of  a  dog,  a  cow,  or  some  other 
domestic  animal,  being — I  suppose — unwil- 
ling to  affright  or  astonish  the  natives  by 
assuming  a  less  familiar  shape,  though  I  must 
confess  it  would  astonish  me  very  much  to 
see  a  cow  attempt  to  iron  my  shirts,  or  sweep 
up  the  kitchen.  Like  Milton's  lubber-fiend, 
however,  or  the  Scottish  brownie,  this 


VOL.  xvr. 


260 


2       [July  4, 1957.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


friendly  spirit  does  all  the  household 
drudgery  when  everybody  is  gone  to  bed — 
which  is  the  reason,  perhaps,  why  the  Breton 
cottages  are  the  dirtiest  iu  Europe.  The 
services  of  the  Buguel  Nos,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  rendered  out  of  doors,  and  the 
shape  in  which  he  appears  is  human,  with 
this  peculiarity  in  his  stature,  which  is 
gigantic,  that  it  increases  as  lie  approaches. 
He  is  only  to  be  seen  where  cross-roads 
meet,  between  midnight  and  two  in  the 
morning.  When  the  "belated  peasant  calls 
upon  him  for  aid,  he  comes  forth  dressed 
in  a  long  white  mantle,  which  he  throws 
over  the  suppliant ;  who,  safe  beneath  its 
fold?,  listens  to  the  terrific  grating  of  the 
wheels  of  the  Devil's  chariot,  as  it  crashes 
along  the  highway,  to  the  accompaniment  of 
fearful  shrieks  and  dismal  howls  ;  or,  it  may 
be  that  he  hides  from  the  Carriguel-ar-ancou, 
or  death-cart,  which  is  covered  with  white 
cloth  and  driven  furiously  by  skeletons. 
Sometimes  in  lonely  places,  at  the  foot  of 
some  Menhir  (the  long,  upright,  Druidical 
stone),  the  peasant  suddenly  comes  upon  a 
party  of  those  unearthly  washerwomen,  the 
Ar-cannercz-nos,  or  Singers  of  the  Night; 
who  compel  him  to  assist  them  in  wringing 
out  their  clothes,  and  woe  betide  him  if  he 
twists  the  linen  differently  from  them,  as  at 
once  they  fall  on  him  and  break  both  his 
arms.  This  is  not  a  country  where  Falstaff 
would  have  liked  to  be  a  night-walker  ;  for, 
even  participation  in  the  amusements  of  its 
goblins  is  compulsory.  There  is  one  par- 
ticular class  of  dwarfs,  called  Courils,  or 
Poulpiquets,  who  inhabit  the  Dolmens  (the 
Druidical  stones  arranged  in  tabular  form), 
and  whose  pleasure  it  is  to  caper  on  the 
heath  by  moonlight,  pounce  upon  the  way- 
farer, and  oblige  him  to  join  in  their  dance, 
never  suffering  him  to  stop  until,  overcome 
by  fatigue,  he  falls  to  the  ground  a  corpse. 
Less  malevolent  than  the  Courils,  is  a  family 
of  dwarfs,  about  a  foot  high,  who  roam 
through  the  vast  caverns  that  lie  beneath 
the  ruins  of  the  old  castle  of  Morlaix,  mak- 
ing music  with  their  hammers  on  large 
copper  basins.  These  dwarfs  are  gold-diggers, 
who  spread  their  treasure  in  the  sun  to  dry. 
The  peasant  who  modestly  extends  his  palm, 
receives  from  them  a  handful  of  the  precious 
metal  ;  but  he  who  provides  himself  with  a 
sack,  intending  to  fill  it,  is  cruelly  beaten  and 
driven  away.  Treasure-trove  in  Brittany  is 
surrounded  by  many  uncertainties.  In  the 
district  of  Lesnaven,  immense  hoards  are 
guarded  by  demons,  who  take  the  shape, 
sometimes  of  an  old  man  or  woman,  some- 
times of  a  black  poodle.  Having  discovered 
the  locality — which  is  equivalent  to  catching 
your  hare — you  must  silently  make  a  deep 
hole  in  the  ground  ;  the  thunder  will  roar, 
the  lightning  will  flash,  meteors  will  shoot 
through  the  air ;  and,  amidst  the  riot  of  the 
discordant  elements,  you  will  hear  the  clank- 
ing of  chains  ;  but,  keep  an  undaunted  heart, 


persevere  in  your  toil,  and  you  will  at  last  be 
rewarded  by  discovering  an  enormous  lump 
of  gold,  or  silver.  If  you  chance  to  utter  a 
single  exclamation  while  raising  the  treasure 
to  the  surface,  it  is  all  over  with  you  :  it  sinks, 
;nid  is  seen  no  more.  On  Palm  Sunday, 
during  the  singing  of  the  Mass,  the  demons 
are  forced  to  make  an  exhibition  of  their 
metallic  wealth,  though  they  artfully  dis- 
guise its  value  under  the  appearance  of 
leaves,  stones,  and  bits  of  coal.  But  you. 
are  perfectly  up  to  this  dodge ;  and,  if  you  can 
succeed  in  sprinkling  these  objects  with  holy 
water,  or  even  in  touching  them  with  some 
other  consecrated  thing,  they  turn  into  gold, 
and  you  may  fill  your  pockets  as  conscien- 
tiously as  if  you  were  a  Royal  British  Bank 
director.  . 

I  know  not  whether  the  demon  called  Jan- 
gant-e-tan  (John  and  his  fire)  be  a  treasure- 
fiend  or  not,  but  there  is  some  probability  in 
the  belief  that  he  delights  in  confounding 
treasure-seekers.  It  is  his  habit  to  turn  out 
at  night,  and  spreading  forth  the  five  fin- 
gers of  his  right  hand,  which  blaze  like 
torches,  to  whirl  them  round  with  incon- 
ceivable velocity,  and  run  with  all  his 
speed,  until  he  bogs  the  unhappy  wretch  who 
follows,  and  leaves  him  in  utter  darkness, 
amid  screams  of  derisive  laughter. 

In  the  neighbourhood  of  Plougasnou,  there 
is  still  practised  a  species  of  divination,  the 
future  being  predicted  by  weather-wise  sor- 
cerers ;  who  interpret  the  motion  of  the 
sea  and  the  rush  of  the  waves  as  they  break 
upon  the  shore.  These  diviners  fall  on 
their  knees  and  worship  the  planet  Venus 
when  she  rises.  Others  raise  an  altar  in 
some  lonely  spot  and  place  on  it  several 
small  copper  coins  which,  when  the  evening 
Mass  is  ended,  they  grind  to  dust.  This  pow- 
der, taken  in  a  glass  of  wine,  cider,  or  brandy, 
makes  him  who  drinks  it  invincible  in  the 
wrestling-match  or  the  race  :  it  is  just  possible 
that  the  liquor  alone  might  answer  the  same 
purpose.  More  poetical  than  dram- drinking 
is  the  custom  of  the  maidens  of  Plougasnou. 
There  is  a  small  chapel  in  a  field  that  over- 
looks the  coast,  whither  they  repair  to  hang 
up  their  shorn  tresses,  a  sacrifice  which  they 
make  in  the  hope  of  securing  the  safe  return 
of  a  sailor  lover  or  the  recovery  of  some 
dear  friend  who  is  sick.  A  different  custom 
prevails  at  Croizic  where  a  high  rock  hangs 
over  the  shore,  the  approach  to  which  is  by  a 
gentle  grassy  slope.  The  women  of  the 
country  and  the  unmarried  girls  dress  them- 
selves in  all  their  bravery,  and  with  their 
hair  floating  over  their  shoulders  and  adorned 
with  freshly -gathered  flowers,  rush  up  the 
slope,  and,  stretching  out  their  arms,  raise 
their  eyes  to  heaven,  and  sing  in  chorus  : 

Sea-mew,  s-c:i-inc\v  ! 

Send  back  our  husbands  and  lovers  true. 

(Goelans,  gn 

Ilame:ft.z-riou8  nog  nmris  ct  nos  auians.) 


Charles  Dickens.] 


SUPERSTITIONS  AND  TRADITIONS. 


[July  4.  1857.:      3 


The  sea-mew  is  a  bird  of  good  omen  to 
the  people  on  the  coast  of  Morlaix.  A  small 
species  called  tarak,  white,  with  red  beak  and 
feet,  and  a  black  spot  on  the  head,  appears  in 
April  and  goes  away  in  September.  The 
period  of  its  arrival  is  considered  the  com- 
mencement of  the  season  of  fine  weather. 
Its  perpetual  cry  is  "  Quit  !  quit  !  quit  !  " 
the  synonym  in  Bas-breton  for  "  Go  !  go  ! 
go  !  "  The  constant  prayer  of  the  women  on 
these  coasts  is  for  the  safety  of  their  hus- 
bands :  at  Roscoff  they  have  a  practice  of 
sweeping  the  chapel  of  the  Holy  Union  after 
Mass,  after  which  they  kneel  down  and  blow 
the  dust  in  the  direction  the  boats  have  gone, 
hoping  by  this  means  to  ensure  a  favouring 

fale.  In  the  little  island  of  Sein,  which  is  j 
ut  the  prolongation  of  Cape  Raz,  the  doors 
of  the  cottages  are  never  closed  but  when  a 
tempest  threatens.  When  the  first  whistling 
of  the  wind  that  announces  the  storm  is 
heard,  the  girls  and  women  cry  :  "  Shut  the 
doors  quickly  !  Listen  to  the  Crierien,  the 
whirlwind  follows  them  !  "  These  Crierien 
are  the  shadows,  the  skeleton  forms  of  ship- 
wrecked men,  who,  weary  of  being  tossed  to 
and  fro  in  the  stormy  air,  call  earnestly  for 
burial.  At  Guingamp,  when  the  body  of  a 
drowned  man  cannot  be  found,  a  lighted  taper 
!*•  fixed  in  a  loaf  of  bread,  which  is  then 
abandoned  to  the  retreating  current ;  where 
the  loaf  stops,  they  expect  to  discover  the 
body. 

No  people  are  more  superstitious  than  the 
Bretons  in  all  that  concerns  the  dead.  In 
the  district  of  St.  Pol  de  Leon,  if  the  in- 
habitants see  a  stranger  treading  on  the 
graves  in  the  churchyard,  they  call  out : 
"  Quitte  a  ha  Jesse  divan  va  anasun,"  literally : 
"  Begone  from  above  my  dead !  "  In  the 
country  round  about  Lesnaven  they  never 
sweep  a  house  at  night :  not  merely  on  account 
of  the  presumed  services  of  the  Buguel  Nos, 
but  because  they  believe  that  sweeping  brings 
bad  luck,  and  that  the  movement  of  the 
broom  disturbs  the  dead  who  walk  there. 
They  say  that  on  the  eve  of  All  Souls  there 
are  more  dead  assembled  in  every  house 
than  there  are  grains  of  sand  on  the  sea- 
shore. To  provide  for  their  wants  that  night, 
they  prepare  quantities  of  pancakes.  The 
presence  of  the  unsepultured  dead  has  its 
effect  on  the  continuance  of  tempests.  At 
Quimper  they  think  that  storms  never  sub- 
side till  the  bodies  of  those  who  have  been 
drowned  are  cast  on  shore.  On  the  chances 
of  life  and  death,  they  believe  that  two 
ravens  are  attached  to  each  house,  and  pre- 
dict the  several  issues.  Birth  and  marriage 
have  their  superstitions  as  well  as  the  closing 
scene.  At  Carnac,  when  a  child  is  taken  to 
be  baptised,  a  bit  of  black  bread  is  tied  round 
its  neck  to  prevent  the  spells  that  might 
otherwise  be  thrown  upon  it ;  and  at  the 
christening  festival  a  woman  never  allows 
her  child  to  be  handed  across  the  table. 
For  herself,  when  she  leaves  the  church  after ' 


marriage,  it  is  the  custom  at  the  same  place 
that  she  should  be  presented  with  a  large 
branch  of  laurel,  loaded  with  apples,  and 
ornamented  with  ribbons  ;  at  the  end  of  the 
branch  a  live  bird  is  fastened  by  a  wedding 
favour,  and  on  reaching  the  churchyard  wall 
the  ribbon  is  detached  and  the  bird  set  at 
liberty.  To  remind  a  bride  of  her  domestic 
duties,  a  distaff  with  some  flax  is  presented 
to  her  on  the  same  occasion,  and  she  spins  it 
off  before  she  takes  any  share  in  the  festivities 
of  the  day.  At  Scae'r  two  tapers  are  lighted  at 
the  moment  the  marriage  ceremony  ia  ended : 
one  of  them  is  set  before  the  husband,  the 
other  before  the  wife  ;  the  taper  that  burns 
the  palest,  indicates  which  of  the  two  is  to 
die  first.  At  Kerneval  there  is  a  very  odd 
custom  :  the  bride  on  the  night  of  her  wed- 
ding is  supplied  with  nuts  to  amuse  herself 
with  during  the  hours  of  darkness  !  While 
on  the  subject  of  marriage  I  may  mention  a 
very  generally-received  superstition  which  is 
not  confined  to  Brittany.  The  choice  of  the 
fourth  finger  of  the  left  hand  for  the  wedding 
ring  arose  from  the  belief  that  a  nerve  pro- 
ceeded from  it,  which  communicated  directly 
with  the  heart.  It  was  thought  that  the 
moment  when  the  husband  placed  the  ring 
on  his  bride's  finger,  was  that  which  had  the 
greatest  influence  on  their  after-lives.  If 
the  ring  stopped  on  the  finger  before  it 
reached  the  first  joint,  the  wife  would  rule 
the  roast ;  but,  if  he  passed  it  on  at  once  to 
its  right  place  the  mastery  remained  with 
him.  Some  brides  have  been  so  impressed 
by  this  tradition  that  they  have  made  it  a 
point  to  crook  their  fourth  finger  at  this 
part  of  the  marriage  ceremony,  so  that  the 
ring  shall  stick  in  the  way. 

In  many  parts  of  Brittany  they  keep  a 
very  watchful  eye  over  the  morals  of  the 
young  women.  The  fountain  of  Bodilis,  near 
Landividian,  is  famous  as  an  ordeal  to  test 
propriety  of  conduct.  The  pin  which  fastens 
the  habit-shirt  is  dropped  into  the  water, 
and  if  it  reaches  the  bottom  with  the  point 
downwards,  the  girl  is  freed  from  all  sus- 
picion ;  if,  on  the  contrary,  it  turns  the  other 
way  and  sinks  head-foremost,  her  reputation 
is  irretrievably  damaged.  The  fountain  of 
Baranton  witnesses  a  more  harmless  experi- 
ment. It  is  one  of  those  springs  which  boil 
up  when  a  fragment  of  metal  is  thrown  in, 
and  the  children  are  in  the  habit  of  gathering 
round  its  brink,  and  saying  to  it  as  they 
stoop  over  the  water,  "Smile,  fountain  of 
Baranton,  and  I  will  give  you  a  pin ! " 
There  is  scarcely  a  fountain  in  Brittany  that 
is  not  consecrated  by  some  religious  monu- 
ment. In  times  of  great  drought,  the  villagers 
go  to  them  in  procession  to  pray  for  rain. 
Such  an  occurrence  took  place  as  late  as  the 
month  of  August,  eighteen  hundred  and 
thirty-five,  when  all  the  inhabitants  of  Kon- 
Kored  (The  Fairies'  Valley),  near  Montfort, 
proceeded  to  a  neighbouring  fountain  with 
banners  and  crosses,  chanting  canticles  to 


4      [July  4.  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[ConJucteJ  by 


the  music  of  the  church-bells,  and  the  curate, 
•who  headed  the  procession, blessed  the  spring, 
dipped  in  the  holy-water  brush,  and  sprinkled 
tlie  water  on  the  ground.  What  came  of  the 
ceremony  is  not  recorded. 

Amongst  the  ordinary  Breton  superstitions, 
the  following  may  be  cited  : — He  who  eats 
the  heart  of  an  eel,  warm  from  the  body,  is 
supposed  to  be  at  once  endowed  with  the 
gift  of  prophecy.  (If  this  were  known  on  the 
turf,  how  many  an  eel-pieman  might  win  the 
Derby  !)  A  man  whose  hair  curls  naturally, 
is  sure,  they  say,  to  be  beloved  by  everybody 
(a  very  serviceable  belief  if  the  negroes  could 
have,  the  benefit  of  it  in  the  United  States 
and  elsewhere).  Throughout  Finistere  the 
peasants  make  a  point  of  not  eating  cabbage 
on  Saint  Stephen's  day,  because  the  proto- 
martyr  is  said  to  have  concealed  himself 
from  his  persecutoi-s  in  a  field  of  cabbages. 
They  suppo.se  that  if  butter  is  offered  to  Saint 
Herve  (whoever  he  may  have  been),  their 
cattle  are  safe  from  wolves,  because  the  saint, 
stricken  with  blindness,  was  once  led  about 
by  a  wolf:  they  also  entertain  the  notion 
that  foxes  will  never  enter  a  henroost  that 
is  sprinkled  with  the  water  in  which  pig's 
chitterlings  have  been  boiled  ;  but  it  is  not 
set  forth  that  any  of  the  Breton  saints  were 
ever  remarkably  addicted  to  pig's  chitter- 
lings, though,  without  doubt,  some  of  them 
were. 

Divination,  by  all  kinds  of  processes,  is 
common  in  Brittany.  It  is  accomplished 
by  means  of  needles  :  —  Five-and-twenty 
new  needles  are  put  into  a  plate  ;  water 
is  poured  over  them  ;  and,  as  many  needles 
as  cross  each  other,  so  many  are  the'diviner's 
enemies.  To  know  how  long  a  person  will 
live,  a  fig-leaf  is  gathered,  and  the  question 
asked  is  written  with  the  finger  upon  it.  If 
the  leaf  dries  up  quickly  afterward,  a 
speedy  death  ensues ;  if  slowly,  then  a 
long  life.  The  mole,  famous  always  for 
working  in  the  dark,  lends  himself  very  much 
to  the  practice  of  divination,  all  sorts  of  sage 
conclusions  being  inferred  from  the  aspect  of 
his  entrails.  He  is  also  considered  in  valuable 
as  a  remedy  in  many  parts  of  France,  where 
the  use  of  the  mole-fied  hand  (la  main 
taupee),  in  which  a  live  mole  had  been 
squeezed  to  death,  is  the  medium  resorted 
to  :  the  slightest  touch  with  this  hand,  while 
it  is  yet  warm  from  contact  with  the  animal, 
cures  the  toothache  and  also  the  colic.  If  the 
foot  of  a  mole  is  wrapped  in  a  laurel  leaf 
and  put  into  a  horse's  mouth,  he  imme- 
diately takes  fright.  There  is  a  curious 
magnetic  sympathy,  apparently,  between 
moles  and  horses,  for  if  a  black  horse  be 
sponged  over  with  the  water  in  which  a  mole 
has  been  boiled,  the  beast  will  immediately 
turn  white.  There  is  also  an  alleged  sym- 
pathy between  men  and  bees,  and  in  some 
districts  of  Brittany  it  is  believed  that  if  the 
hard-working  insects  are  not  informed  of  the 
events  which  interest  their  masters,  nothing 


goes  right  afterwards  about  the  house.  It 
is  on  this  account  that  when  any  one  in  a 
family  dies,  the  peasants  fasten  a  bit  of  black 
cloth  to  the  hive,  or  a  bit  of  red  if  a  marriage 
takes  place.  The  French,  as  we  know,  are 
not  first-rate  sportsmen — certain  devices  not 
commonly  practised  in  England  may  there- 
fore be  allowed  them  in  the  pursuit  of  game. 
Thus,  in  the  Berrichon — though  George  Sand 
says  nothing  about  it— some  artful  dodgers 
mix  the  juice  of  henbane  with  the  blood  of  a 
leveret,  and  having  anointed  their  gaiters 
therewith,  expect  that  all  the  hares  in  the 
neighbourhood  will  be  attracted  towards  the 
wearer  of  the  gaiters. 

The  kingfisher  is  held  in  great  estimation 
in  many  parts  of  France,  on  account  of  cer- 
tain supposed  qualities.  It  is  considered  to 
be  a  natural  weathercock,  which,  when  hung 
up  by  the  beak,  will  turn  its  breast  to  the 
quarter  whence  the  wind  blows.  The  king- 
fisher is  also  said  to  be  endowed  with  the 
precious  gift  of  enriching  its  possessor,  of 
preserving  harmony  in  families,  and  of  im- 
parting beauty  to  women  who  wear  its 
feathers.  The  kingfisher's  fame  has  travelled 
into  Tartary,  where  the  inhabitants  almost 
adore  the  bird.  They  eagerly  collect  its 
plumage,  and,  throwing  the  feathers  into  a 
vase  of  water,  preserve  those  that  float, 
believing  that  it  is  quite  sufficient  for  a 
woman  to  touch  one  of  them  to  make  her 
love  the  wearer.  A  Tartar,  if  he  be  fortu- 
nate enough  to  own  a  kingfisher,  carefully 
preserves  the  beak,  claws,  and  skin,  when  it 
dies,  and  puts  them  in  a  purse  ;  as  long  as 
he  carries  these  relics  on  his  person,  he  is 
secure  against  any  misfortune. 

Some  of  the  preceding  superstitious  have, 
probably,  become  merely  traditional,  and  to 
the  latter  class  we  must  assign  the  belief  in 
the  good  traveller's  walking-stick  (le  baton 
du  bon  voyageur),  the  wondrous  properties  of 
which,  and  the  manner  of  its  construction, 
are  described  as  follows  in  the  Secrets  Mer- 
veilleux  du  Petit  Albert : — "  Take,"  says  the 
necromantic  teacher,  "a  thick  and  straight 
branch  of  elder,  and  after  extracting  the 
pith,  put  a  ferrule  at  one  end.  Then  substi- 
tute for  the  pith  the  ejres  of  a  young  wolf, 
the  tongue  and  the  heart  of  a  dog,  three  green, 
lizards,  and  the  hearts  of  three  swallows,  all 
of  them  reduced  to  powder  by  the  heat  of  the 
sun"  (a  fragrant  process)  "between  two 
papers  sprinkled  with  saltpetre.  On  the  top 
of  this  powder,  place  seven  leaves  of  vervain, 
gathered  on  the  eve  of  Saint  John  the  Bap- 
tist, together  with  a  stone  of  divers  colours, 
which  is  found  in  the  nest  of  the  lapwing, 
and  put  whatever  kind  of  knob  to  the  stick 
that  you  fancy.  You  may  then  rest  assured 
that  this  stick  will  not  only  preserve  you 
from  robbers,  mad  dogs,  wild  beasts,  and  dan- 
gers of  all  sorts,  but  also  procure  you  a  good 
supper  and  a  night's  lodging  wherever  you 
choose  to  stop."  Such  a  walking-stick  would 
have  been  of  infinite  service  to  the  Galliciau 


.  Dickens.] 


SUPERSTITIONS  AND  TRADITIONS. 


[July  4,  For.]       5 


beggar,  of  whom  the  SieurBoguet  (an  old  ac- 
quaintance of  ours)  tells  a  singular  story  in  his 
Treatise  on  Sorcerers.  This  beggar  was  the  ! 
proprietor  of  one  of  those  Imps  called  the  Cam- 
biou  (or  Devil's-brat) — the  natural  child  of! 
those  two  very  agreeable  demons,  the  Incubus  : 
and  the  Succubus — acreature  of  extraordinary  j 
weight  that  always  drains  its  nurses  dry  and 
never,  by  any  chance,  gets  fat.  The  beggar, 
with  the  imp  in  his  arms,  made  his  appear- 
ance one  day  in  a  certain  town  in  Gallicia, 
and  seemed  so  much  encumbered  by  his 
^charge,  in  endeavouring  to  ford  a  deep  stream 
•which  ran  through  the  place,  that  a  gentleman 
on  horseback,  who  was  passing  by,  took  com- 
passion on  him  and  offered  to  convey  the 
child  across.  He  accordingly  set  it  on  his 
horse  and  plunged  into  the  stream  ;  but  the 
little  demon  was  so  heavy  that  the  animal 
sank  and  the  cavalier  had  to  swim  for  his 
life.  A  short  time  afterwards,  the  beggar, 
who  had  run  away  on  witnessing  this  catas- 
trophe was  captured,  and  he  acknowledged 
that  the  child  was  a  Cambion,  and  had  been 
very  useful  to  him  in  his  calling,  and  turned 
people's  minds  towards  alms-givings.  What 
became  of  the  Cambion  is  not  stated,  but  I 
believe  the  beggar  was  burnt.  These  heavy 
little  devils  are  the  same  as  the  German 
"Wechselkinder,  the  changelings  of  the  old 
English  ballad. 

The  mention  of  almsgiving  recalls  a  some- 
what ludicrous  story  of  modern  date,  where  a 
most  inopportune  miracle  was  wrought.  The 
well-known  French  missionary,  Father  Bri- 
daine,  was  always  poor,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  he  gave  away  everything  he  had.  One 
evening  lie  asked  for  a  night's  lodging  of  the 
curate  of  a  village  through  which  he  passed, 
and  the  worthy  man  having  only  one  bed, 
shared  it  with  him.  At  daybreak  Father 
Bridaine  rose,  according  to  custom,  and  went 
to  say  his  prayers  at  the  neighbouring  church. 
Returning  from  this  sacred  duty  he  met  a 
beggar,  who  asked  an  alms.  "  Alas,  my 
friend,  I  have  nothing ! "  said  the  good 
priest,  mechanically  putting  his  hand  in  his 
breeches  pocket,  where,  to  his  astonishment, 
he  found  something  hard  wrapped  up  in 
paper,  which  he  knew  he  had  not  left  there. 
He  hastily  opened  the  paper,  and  seeing  four 
crowns  in  it,  cried  out  that  it  was  a  miracle  ! 
He  gave  the  money  to  the  beggar,  and  has- 
tened into  the  church  to  return  thanks  to 
God.  The  curate  soon  after  arrived  there, 
and  Father  Bridaine  related  the  miracle  with 
the  greatest  unction  ;  the  curate  turned  pale, 
put  his  hand  in  his  pocket,  and  in  an  instant 
perceived  that  Father  Bridaine,  in  getting 
up  in  the  dark,  had  taken  the  wrong  pair  of 
breeches  ;  he  had  performed  a  miracle  with 
the  curate's  crowns  ! 

At  a  period  rather  more  remote,  Saint 
Antide,  Bishop  of  Besangon,  was  one  day 
walking  in  the  fields,  when  he  met  with  a 
very  thin,  u»ly  devii,  who  boasted  to  the 
bishop  that  he  had  just  been  committing 


some  sad  mischief  in  one  of  the  churches  at 
Rome. 

"Come  here,  you  slave  of  Satan,"  ex- 
claimed Saint  Antide,  "  and  kneel  down  !  " 

The  demon  obeyed,  placed  himself  on  all- 
fours,  and  the  saint,  getting  astride  on  his 
back,  ordered  him  to  fly  off  immediately  to 
Rome.  Arrived  there,  the  bishop  put  every- 
thing to  rights  in  the  dilapidated  church,  and 
then  returned  to  his  diocese  by  the  same 
conveyance :  not  forgetting,  however,  as  he 
dismounted,  to  bestow  a  hearty  kick  on  the 
demon,  which  sent  him  howling  back  to  the 
unblissful  regions. 

There  are  many  similar  stories  related 
of  demons  who  have  been  serviceable  to 
mortal  masters  ;  generally  speaking,  how- 
ever, against  the  grain.  Of  the  most 
usual  kind  was  the  Familiar,  who  was 
always  at  hand.  Bodin  relates  that  about 
two  years  before  lie  published  his  De- 
monomania  (4to,  Paris,  1587),  there  was 
a  nobleman  at  Villars-Costerets,  who  had 
one  of  these  imps  confined  in  a  ring, 
which  he  had  at  his  command,  to  do  what  he 
pleased  with,  and  treat  exactly  like  a  slave  ; 
having  bought  it  at  a  very  high  price  from  a 
Spaniard.  But,  the  nobleman,  as  commonly 
happened,  came  to  grief  through  this  Fami- 
liar, for  the  spirit  was  possessed  with  an  in- 
vincible habit  of  telling  lies,  and  on  one  occa- 
sion, being  very  much  enraged,  the  nobleman 
threw  his  ring  into  the  fire,  thinking  thereby* 
to  burn  the  demon ;  it  was,  however,  the 
creature's  native  element,  it  released  him 
from  thraldom,  and  the  demon  thereupon, 
tormented  his  former  master,  until  he  drove 
him  mad.  The  witch's  Familiar  was  almost 
invariably  a  toad,  but  a  frog  was  made  to 
figure  in  that  capacity  only  a  few  years  ago 
with  very  fatal  consequences.  The  history  of 
the  occurrence  is  a  sad  example  of  the  effects 
of  superstitious  fear.  It  happened  in  the 
commune  of  Bussy-en-Oth,  in  the  department 
of  the  Aube,  in  France,  in  the  year  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-one.  A  young  man  of  that 
village  had  been  passing  the  day  enjoying  the 
very  French  amusement  of  fishing  for  frogs. 
He  had  caught  a  great  many,  and  placed 
them  alive  in  a  bag.  On  his  way  home  he 
saw  a  peasant  walking  slowly  on  the  road 
before  him,  the  large  half-open  pocket  of 
whose  waistcoat  invited  the  fisherman  to 
the  perpetration  of  a  practical  joke.  Ac- 
cordingly, as  he  passed  the  peasant,  he 
managed,  unperceived,  to  slip  one  of  the 
frogs  into  his  pocket.  The  peasant  unsus- 
pectingly walked  on,  reached  his  cottage, 
and,  tired  with  the  labours  of  the  da}7,  soon 
afterwards  went  to  rest,  throwing  his  clothes 
as  usual  on  his  bed.  In  the  middle  of  the 
night,  Jacquemin — that  was  the  peasant's 
name — was  awakened  by  feeling  something 
cold  crawling  over  his  face,  and  uttering 
indistinct  cries  ;  it  was,  of  course,  the  frog 
that  had  crept  out  of  Jacquemin's  pocket,  and 
had  paused  on  its  journey  to  croak.  Jacque- 


4. 18*7-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


min,  who  was  of  an  exceedingly  timorous 
nature,  lay  as  still  as  death  till  his  nocturnal 
visitor  departed,  nothing  doubting  that  he 
Lad  been  visited  by  a  spirit. 

The  man's  character  for  simplicity  was  so 
generally  known  that  people  were  always 
playing  tricks  upon  him,  and  on  the  very 
next  morning  after  the  preceding  visitation 
one  of  his  friends  came  into  his  cott;igo, 
and  told  him  that  his  old  uncle,  who  fired 
at  Sens,  had  just  died,  and  advised  him  to 
set  oft'  and  claim  his  share  of  the  inheritance. 
Jacquemin,  on  hearing  this  news,  made  no 
more  ado,  but  at  once  set  out  with  his  wife 
for  Sens,  distant  eight  leagues  from  where 
he  lived.  Arrived  at  the  house  of  the  sup- 
posed deceased,  the  first  person  he  saw  was 
his  uncle  sitting  in  his  arm-chair.  Any- 
body else  would  have  perceived  that  he  had 
been  duped,  but  this  poor  fellow,  firmly 
believing  that  his  uncle  was  dead,  was  seized 
with  sudden  terror,  and  dragging  his  wife 
out  of  the  house,  set  off  again  to  Bussy, 
without  giving  time  for  a  word  of  explana- 
tion. In  the  meantime  the  frog  had  not 
abandoned  his  cottage,  but  had  taken  refuge 
in  a  hole  in  the  flooring,  from  whence, 
every  now  and  then  it  uttered  dismal  croaks. 
Jacquemin,  convinced  that  he  had  seen  his 
uncle's  ghost,  fancied  that  these  noises  were 
made  by  the  spirit,  and  the  agony  he  un- 
derwent became  insupportable.  A  prey  to  the 
direst  fear,  Jacquemin,  at  last,  hung  himself 
one  morning  in  his  hayloft.  On  the  follow- 
ing day,  his  wife,  despairing  for  the  loss  of 
her  husband,  threw  herself  into  a  pond,  and 
was  found  drowned, — a  double  suicide  caused 
by  an  imbecile  superstition. 


MEANING  ME,  SIR  ? 

IT  is  not  only  Scrub,  in  the  comedy,  who  says, 
"  I  believe  they  talked  of  me,  for  they  laughed 
constiHiedly."  Scrub  in  the  club  says  the 
same  ;  and  in  the  drawing-room  ;  ay,  and  in 
the  church.  There  is  nowhere  where  Scrub 


confer  on  her  the  inestimable  honour  of  bear- 
ing his  name.  A  happy  escape  for  Eve's 
daughter,  as  you  will  find  if  you  peruse  the 
following  lines,  which  I  hope  will  be  seri- 
ously laid  to  heart  by  any  of  her  numerous 
sisters  who  are  about  to  marry  Scrubs. 

Delamour  Wormwood,  the  chief  of  this 
distinguished  family,  was  engaged  to  Phillis 
Daisy  field,  with  his  own  entire  approbation. 
She  was  the  gentlest  and  simplest  of  her  sex ; 
very  beautiful  and  very  young ;  never 
laughed  unnecessarily,  though  she  had  the 
reddest  lips  and  whitest  teeth  in  the  world  ; 
and,  therefore,  Delamour  never  suspected  she 
was  talking  disrespectfully  of  him.  And, 
indeed,  she  was  so  tender-hearted,  and  so 
modest,  and  believing,  she  never  spoke  dis- 
respectfully of  anybody.  She  thought  Dela- 
mour very  handsome,  and  in  this  she  was  not 
altogether  mistaken;  she  believed  a  great 
part  of  the  vows  of  attachment  he  made  to 
her,  and  in  this  she  was  ridiculously  wrong, 
for  among  the  vows  was  one  of  complete 
confidence  and  unbounded  trust.  As  he  said 
the  words  he  watched  tlie  expression  of  her 
face, 

"  You  don't  believe  me,"  he  said. 
"  Oh,  yes,  I  do.     What  interest  can   you 
have  in  saying  so,  if  you  don't  feel  so  1  " 

"  But  your  eyes  are  inexpressive,  your 
mouth  is  closed,  your  cheeks  are  neither 
flushed  nor  pale.  I  should  like  to  see  you 
more  agitated." 

"  Oh,  so  I  should  be,"  said  the  innocent 
Phillis,  "  if  I  did  not  believe  you.  But  as 
it  is,  why  should  I  change  my  ordinary 
looks  ? " 

"  Well,  there  may  be  something  in  that," 
said  Delamour  ;  but,  still  he  was  not  perfectly 
pleased  with  the  gentle  Phillis's  self-posses- 
sion. 

Phillis  lived  with  her  aunt  at  Thistledale, 
in  Hertfordshire,  and  had  only  a  brother  who 
could  have  any  right  to  interfere  with  her 
proceedings.  He  was  a  gallant  lieutenant  in 
the  Blazing  Hussars,  and  was  stationed  so  far 


isn't  perpetually  on  the  watch,  for  the  faint-  away  that  it  had  not  been  thought  worth 


eat  sound  of  laughter,  in  order  to  show  his 
logical  sharpness  and  prove  that  he,  Scrub,  is 
the  subject  of  conversation.  Nor  does  it 
need  laughter  to  attract  his  notice.  Hissing 
would  do  just  as  well.  Even  silence  has  its 
Btings.  "  They  must  be  thinking  of  me,"  he 
thinks,  "  they  say  so  little."  "  They  must  be 
trying  to  spite  me, — they  look  so  happy." 
"  She  must  be  utterly  forgetful  of  me, — she 
smiles  so  sweetly."  Scrub,  in  short,  is  a  dis- 
gusting fellow,  whom  all  of  us  meet  fifty 
times  a  day — apt  to  take  offence  at  imaginary 
neglect,  attributing  false  motives  to  the  most 
reasonable  actions  ;  egotistic,  exacting,  self- 
tormenting — a  prose  Othello,  whose  lago  is 
his  own  insufferable  vanity,  which  makes  him 
the  victim  of  jealousy  and  suspicion,  and 
who  is  only  prevented  from  having  a  real 
Desdemona  by  never  havi-.ig  had  manly  con- 
fidence enough  in  any  of  Eve's  daughters  to 


while  to  ask  his  consent  to  his  sister's  becom- 
ing Mrs.  Wormwood.  Besides,  he  was  soon 
coming  home,  and  the  wedding  was  not  in- 
tended for  at  least  a  year. 

Delamour,  radiant  with  delight,  got  into- 
the  railway-carriage  to  visit  Mrs.  Ogleton. 
This  was  the  name  of  Phillis's  aunt ;  and  as- 
the  train  stopped  at  Neddithorpe,  the  enrap- 
tured lover  stepped  upon  the  platform  and 
ordered  a  fly  for  Thistledale.  While  he 
waited  for  the  vehicle,  he  walked  to  and 
fro  in  deep  meditation  on  his  own  perfec- 
tions, and  took  no  notice  of  two  other  gentle- 
men who  had  apparently  arrived  by  the  same 
train  :  two  pleasant-visaged,  loud-voiced, 
military-looking  men,  swinging  their  canes 
or  switching  their  lower  integuments,  as  is 
the  habit  of  English  cavaliers. 

"  Ha,  ha  !  "  laughed  one,  continuing  a  con- 
versation which  had  been  interrupted  by  the 


Charles 


MEANING  ME,  SIR  ? 


[July  4,  13->7.]       7 


arrival  ;  "  I  never  saw  such  a  spoony-looking 
snob  in  all  my  life." 

"  A  regular  pump,"  replied  the  other. 

Delamour's  attention  was  attracted. 
"  Spoony  !  "  he  thought,  "  snob  —  pump  ! 
What  are  the  fellows  talking  of? " 

"And  yet  I  believe  the  booby  thinks  he 
has  made  a  conquest  of  one  of  tiie  prettiest 
girls  in  Herts  !  "  continued  the  first  speaker. 
To  wbich  the  other,  who  was  not  eloquent, 
said  only,  "  Ha,  ha  ! — what  a  muff  !  " 

"  Oh,  by  George,  this  won't  do,"  thought 
Delaruour.  "  I'll  let  the  puppies  know  I 
overhear  them."  So  saying,  he  coughed  so  loud 
a  cough  that  it  sounded  something  like  a  crow 
of  detiance,  and  looked  at  the  vinconscious 
speakers  as  if  he  wished  to  assault  them 
on  the  spot.  A  policeman,  however,  came 
out  from  the  booking-office  and  changed  the 
current  of  his  thoughts. 

"  I  advise  you  to  be  on  your  guard,  gentle- 
men," said  the  policeman  addressing  the  two 
young  men  who  had  excited  Delamour's 
wrath  ;  "  one  of  the  London  swell-mob  came 
by  the  last  train,  and  is  perhaps  lurking 
about  still." 

The  friends  instinctively  looked  at  the  only 
other  person  on  the  platform  ;  but,  seeing 
only  a  very  good-looking,  well-dressed  gen- 
tleman, they  resumed  their  conversation, 
after  thanking  the  policeman  for  his  warning. 
The  look  was  not  thrown  away  on  the  irri- 
tated Delamour.  He  vented  his  rage  on 
the  policeman. 

"Why  didn't  you  give  the  notice  also  to 
me  ? "  he  inquired  in  a  very  bitter  tone.  "  I 
believe,"  he  added  when  the  two  companions 
had  come  within  ear-shot,  "  that  the  swell- 
mob  frequently  go  in  couples,"  so  saying  he 
fixed  his  ferocious  eyes  on  the  countenances 
of  the  friends,  "  and  generally  pretend  to  be 
military  men." 

"  You  seem  to  be  up  to  their  dodges  pretty 
well,"  said  the  guardian  of  the  laws,  who  was 
offended  at  the  tone  and  manner  of  Worm- 
wood's address.  "  You  can,  perhaps,  be  on 
your  guard  against  them,  without  telling,  as 
you're  so  up  to  their  tricks."  And  pulling 
from  his  breast-pocket  a  half  sheet  of  paper, 
he  began  to  read  it  with  great  attention, 
casting  angry  glances  from  time  to  time  on 
the  indignant  Delamour.  His  patience  could 
stand  it  no  longer.  He  went  up  to  the  man 
and  said,  "  You  insolent  caitiff  !  How  dare 
you  insult  me  by  such  conduct  ?  How  dare 
you  think  me  a  thief  I  " 

"  I  don't,  sir, — leastways,  I  never  told  you 
so  ; "  said  the  man,  amazed. 

"  Arn't  you  reading  a  description  of  a 
swell-mob  man,  in  that  extract  from  the  Hue 
and  Cry  1 "  continued  Delamour,  "  measuring 
my  features,  noting  the  colour  of  my  eyes, 
the  length  of  my  hair  1 — I  will  report  you  to 
your  superiors— you  shall  be  turned  out  of 
your  corps  if  it  costs  me  a  thousand 
pounds " 

"  I  say,  saw, — what  has  the  man  done  1  " 


said  one  of  the  gentlemen,  arrested  by  the 
noise. 

"Copying  the  example  of  gross  impertinence 
set  him  by  you  and  your  friend,"  replied 
Wormwood. 

The  fine  manner  of  the  gay  stranger  in- 
stantly disappeared.  He  spoke  plainly,  and 
like  a  man.  "  You  are  either  under  a  great 
mistake,"  he  said,  "  or  are  desirous  of  picking 
a  quarrel  with  people  who  never  offended 
you.  I  desire  to  know  what  is  the  meaning 
of  your  language." 

"  Didn't  you  call  me  a  pump,  a  few  minutes 
ago, — a  spoony  snob, — a  muft'  ? " 

"  I  hadn't  the  honour  of  being  aware  of 
such  an  individual's  existence,"  replied  the 
gentleman,  "and  certainly  never  honoured 
you  by  making  you  the  subject  of  my  conver- 
sation." 

"  Then  I'm  exceedingly  sorry  if,  in  the 
heat  of  the  moment " 

"There  is  no  need  of  sorrow,"  said  the 
stranger,  smiling,  "  and  still  less  for  heat.  I 
should  be  inclined  to  be  more  exacting  if  I 
thought  you  were  a  gentleman  ;  but,  after 
your  altercation  with  the  policeman,  I  take 
no  notice  of  what  you  say.  Good  morning." 

"  Here's  the  paper  I  was  reading,  sir," 
said  the  policeman,  "  my  instructions  for  the 
luggage- van  by  next  train.  And  now  what 
have  you  got  to  say  ?  " 

Delamour  wjis  in  such  fierce  wrath  at  the 
two  young  officers  who  had  just  stepped  into 
their  fly,  that  he  could  say  nothing  to  the 
triumphant  constable. 

"  Who  are  those  vulgar  fellows  in  the  car- 
riage 1 "  he  cried,  hoping  to  be  overheard  by 
the  objects  of  his  question.  "  If  I  knew  the 
coxcombs'  names,  they  should  answer  for 
their  behaviour." 

"  They're  Captain  Harleigh  and  another 
officer  of  the  Queen's  Blazers.  You  can 
find  'em  at  the  barracks,  easy,"  said  the 
policeman,  with  a  malicious  grin.  "  But  I 
advise  you  to  be  quiet  if  you  want  to  keep 
a  whole  bone  in  your  body." 

Delamour  gulped  the  information,  and  the 
insult.  The  name  of  the  Queen's  Blazers 
had  struck  him  dumb.  Phillis's  brother  was 
a  lieutenant  in  that  ferocious  regiment,  and 
if  he  was  told  of  his  absurd  behaviour,  of  his 
quickness  in  taking  offence,  his  ungovernable 
temper,  what  would  he  say  ?  In  perfect 
silence  he  took  his  seat  in  the  fly  when  it 
drew  up,  and  placed  half-a-sovereign  in  the 
policeman's  hand.  With  a  cautious  look  to 
see  that  his  inspector  was  not  on  the  watch, 
the  policeman  pocketed  the  money,  and  said, 
as  the  fly  moved  off,  "  Don't  be  afraid.  I 
won't  tell  the  captain  where  you  be  gone,  or 
you'd  get  as  good  a  kicking  as  e'er  you  had 
in  your  life." 

If  a  look  could  have  strangled  the  good- 
natured  policeman,  B  30  would  have  been  a 
dead  man.  As  ib  was,  it  was  a  murderous 
glance  thrown  away,  and  Delamour  pursued 
his  way  through  country  lanes  and  wreathing 


8 


•>«' 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conctnctrd 


hedgerows,  towards  the  residence  of  his  So  saying  she  threw  away  the  crook  and  took 
ch.'irining  Phillis.  the  wreath  from  her  little  straw-hat;  "and 

\V  hen  he  arrived  at  the  Hall,  he  expected  now,"  she  continued,  taking  his  arm  and 
to  find  her  on  the  lawii.  "When  he  was  turning  homeward,  "I  will  be  as  steady  and 
ushered  into  the  house,  he  expected  to  find  sensible  as  you  please.  Let  us  go  in  and  see 
her  in  the  drawing-room.  Mrs.  Ogleton  had  my  aunt." 

gone  out,  he  was  told,  and  Miss  Phillis  also  ;  Delamour  brooded  over  the  previous  part 
but  they  had  both  left  word  they  would  soon  -  of  the  conversation.  He  didn't  like  the  allu- 
be  back.  j  sion  to  Strephon,  nor  the  rapture  about  pipes 

'•  Was  I   expected   at   this  hour,  do  you  and  singing. 


know  ?  "  said  Delamour  to  the  footman. 
That  functionary  was  new  to  the  establish- 


ment,   and   was    not    acquainted  with  Mr. 


Wormwood's  person. 

"  Didn't  a  letter  come  this   morning 
post  ? "    he  inquired  ;    "  from  London — pink 
envelope — red  seal — coat  of  arms  ?  " 


"  The  girl  can't  be  altogether  devoted  to 
me,  or  she  wouldn't  talk  such  nonsense  about 
dancing  with  shepherds  on  the  grass.  I  am 


"  Yes,"  replied  the  man  ;  "  from  the  hair- 
dresser wasn't  it  ?  "  he  inquired,  a  little 
doubtful,  but  not  very,  as  to  whether  Mr. 
Truefit's  representative  stood  before  him. 

"  What  do  you  mean  ? "    exclaimed  Dela- 


no shepherd,  and  she  knows  that  very  well." 
by  |      The  aunt  received  them  at  the  door. 

"The  post,"  she  said  to  Phillis,  "has  just 
brought  me  a  letter  from  your  brother.     He 


mour,  "  you  insulting  scoundrel !      I'm  Mr. 


Wormwood,    and    wrote    to    announce 
arrival." 


"  I  humbly  beg  your  pardon,  sir ;  but  Miss 
•Pliillis  didn't  mention  nobody  but  the  barber, 
and  of  course,  sir,  you  see — but  I'm  very 
sorry,  I  assure  you,  sir,  and  I  hope  you  won't 
allude  to  the  mistake." 

Delamour  left  the  house  and  pursued  his 
way  through  the  park.  At  the  side  of  an 
ornamental  sheet  of  water,  beyond  a  rising 
knoll,  he  saw  his  adored  Phillis.  She  had  a 
crook  in  her  hand  and  a  round  hat  on  her 
head,  tastefully  ornamented  with  flowers  of 
her  own  gathering.  A  close-fitting  dress 
revealed  the  matchless  symmetry  of  her 


my  at  once  !  " 

"He  promises  to  be  here  to-morrow,"  said 


has  been  unexpectedly  ordered  to  join  his 
head-quarters,  at  Neddithorpe,  and  arrived 
there  last  night." 

"  Oh  ! 
Phillis. 
come  to  see  us  1     Oh  !  let  us  go  to  see  him 


I'm     so    delighted ! "     exclaimed 
Dear  Edward !     when    does    he 


Mrs.  Ogleton  in  a  cold  tone,  "  and  I  should 
like  to  see  Mr.  Wormwood  for  a  few  minutes 
alone." 

Mr.  Wormwood  had  just  resolved  to  ask 
Phillis  why  she  was  in  such  rapture  about 
the  return  of  her  brother.  Wasn't  he,  her 
lover,  by  her  side  1  and  yet  she  wished  to 
start  away  from  him  !  But  he  followed  Mrs. 
Ogleton  into  the  drawing-room,  and  Phillis 
saw,  there  was  something  wrong,  but  could 
not  tell  what. 

"  The  letter  from  Edward  Daisyfield," 
began  the  lady,  "  is  exceedingly  unpleasant. 


re;    her  petticoats  were  very  short,  and  |  He  tells  me  that  he  has  long  promised  the 


her  feet  the  smallest  and  prettiest  in  the 
world.  The  shepherdess  smiled  when  she 
saw  her  lover,  and  blushed  at  being  detected 
in  her  festival  attire. 

"  It  is  so  pleasant  to  watch  the  sheep ! "  she 
paid.  "  Oh  !  how  I  wish  I  had  lived  in  the 
days  of  rustic  simplicities,  when  everybody 
was  so  kind  and  innocent.  It  must  have 
been  charming  to  fold  in  the  flock  when  the 
hot  sun  began  to  descend,  and  then  to  assem- 
ble for  a  dance  upon  the  grass — no  etiquette, 
no  drawing-room  false  refinement." 

"And  Strephon  ?"  inquired  Delamour  with 
a  cloud  beginning  to  darken  his  brow. 

"  Oh !  he  would  have  been  some  gentle 
villager, — some  neighbouring  farmer's  son, 
soft-voiced  and  musical  ;  for,  of  course,  he 
would  have  sung,  and  played  delightfully  on 
his  oaten  reed." 

"  You  know,  I  suppose,  Miss   Daisyfield, 
that  I  neither  play  nor  sing  ;  and,  to  tell  _you 
the    truth, 
either.*1 


I    despise    any    one   who    does 


"  But  I  am  only  painting  a  fancy  scene," 
replied  Phillis,  alarmed  at  the  sharpness  of 
his  tone.  "You  didn't  think  I  was  iserious, 
Delamour  ?  I  was  a  kind  of  actress  for  the 
lime,  and  thought  I  would  speak  in  character." 


hand  of  his  sister  to  one  of  his  brother  officers, 
and  he  has  received  with  great  disapprobation 
my  announcement  of  your  engagement." 

"  Indeed  ?  "  said  Delamour,  "  and  why  ? 
What  has  he  or  any  popinjay  in  the  Blazers 
to  say  against  me  ?  " 

"  Oh,  nothing  against  you,"  replied  the 
lady  ;  "  for  he  never  heard  of  you  before. 
All  he  says  is,  he  prefers  Captain  Belford,  and 
refuses  his  consent  to  your  suit." 

"And  does  Phillis  agree  with  him?" 
inquired  Mr.  Wormwood. 

"  I  have  this  moment  got  the  letter," 
replied  the  lady,  "and  she  knows  nothing 
about  it.  I  have  given  my  approval,  you  are 
aware,  Mr.  Wormwood  ;  but  the  decision,  I 
suppose,  will  lie  with  Phillis  herself." 

"It  is  a  little  too  late,  I  should  think,  to 
make  it  a  matter  of  choice,"  said  Delamour 
bitterly.  "  I  have  announced  my  approaching 
marriage  to  all  my  friends,  and  I  won't  be 
made  a  fool  of,  by  either  brother  or  sister. — 
Why,  the  world  would  laugh  at  me,  and  I 
am  not  a  man  to  be  laughed  at  with 
impunity." 

"  I  never  heard  of  Captain  Belford,"  said 
Phillis,  when  she  was  informed  of  her  bro- 
ther's epistle.  "  I  will  have  nothing  to  say 


Dliorles  Jlicier.t.] 


DISINFECTANTS. 


(.July  4.  1357.] 


to  him,  and  I'm  sure,  Edward  only  requires 
to  know  you  as  well  as  I  do,  to  see  that  I 
can  never  be  happy  with  any  one  else." 

"  Dearest  girl !  you  make  me  happier  than 
ever  I  was  before." 

"  You  are  always  so  kind  and  trusting — " 
continued  Phillis, — and  Delamour  looked 
searchiugly  in  her  face — • 

"  You  are  so  eeuerous  and  open  and  unsus- 
picious— " 

A  cloud  darkened  on  the  lover's  brow — 

"  And  I'm  sure  you'll  be  great  friends  with 
Edward,  and  indeed  with  all  the  Blazers,  for 
he  says  they  are  the  most  gentlemanly  fellows 
in  the  world.  It  will  be  so  pleasant  when  he 
brings  some  of  them  here  ! " 

"  I  trust  lie  won't,  for  a  more  disgusting  set 

of  snobs  and  puppies but,  pray,  excuse 

me,  dearest  Phillis,  your  assurance  of  affec- 
tion is  all  I  require,  and  I  laugh  at  the 
pretentious  of  a  whole  regiment  of  Belfords  ; 
so  let  them  come  whenever  they  like." 

He  was  delighted  with  the  transparent 
truth  and  simplicity  of  his  artless  Phillis, 
and  took  his  way  to  London  more  satisfied 
with  her  (and  himself)  than  ever.  But  on 
reflection — and  he  took  three  days  at  least  to 
reflect — he  perceived,  that  he  must  come  to 
an  understanding  with  his  rival. 

It  was  necessary  for  his  self-respect  that  he 
should  show  that  gentleman  how  thoroughly 
he  despised  him,  and  accordingly  he  wrote 
an  insulting  letter  to  the  distinguished  Bla- 
zer, and  was  about  to  send  it  to  the  post, 
when  his  servant  entered  with  a  card,  and 
said,  '•'  the  gentleman  is  in  the  hall." 

Delamour  looked  at  the  card,  and  saw 
printed  thereon  the  name  of  "  Captain  Bel- 
ford." 

"  Show  him  in,"  he  said,  and  prepared  for 
battle.  There  was  no  battle  in  the  face  or 
manner  of  his  visitor,  however.  Fair,  honest, 
happy-looking,  as  becomes  perfect  health 
and  three-aud-twenty  years  of  age,  the 
captain  smiled  graciously  as  he  entered. 

"  You  are  surprised  to  see  me  here,  Mr. 
Wormwood,"  he  said ;  "  but  the  fact  is,  I 
think  it  right  to  come  to  an  explanation." 

"Exactly  what  I  wished,  sir,"  said  Dela- 
mour, biting  his  lips. 

."My  friend,  Ned  Daisyfield,"  he  con- 
tinued, "is  too  flattering  in  his  estimate 
of  my  merits.  He  wished  me,  of 
course,  you  know,  to  offer  my  hand  to  his 
sister.  He  introduced  me  to  her  two  days 
ago.  A  charming  girl,  I  confess— very  pure, 
very  beautiful,  and  as  her  aunt  is  rich,  I 
believe,  an  heiress,  if  she  pleases  the  old 
lady  in  the  choice  of  a  husband.  I  dare 
say  time  and  assiduity,  with  the  favour  of 
her  brother,  might  enable  me  to  make  an 
impression  on  her  heart ;  but  —  I  am  not 
going  to  try — I  resign  all  claim  into  your 


his  surprise,  the  visitor  was  gone.  "  Before 
I  had  time  to  call  him  to  order  for  his 
behaviour  at  Neddithorpe,  for  he  is  Harleigh's 
companion,"  he  muttered  ;  "  and  yet  he  is 
a  fine  fellow — open — noble — and  very  hand- 
some. Why  has  he  surrendered  his  chance 
of  Phillis  ?  He  admires  her  beauty,  her 
character,  and  knows  she  is  to  have  a 

fortune — How  kind  ! But  is  it  not  rather 

strange  ?  Why  is  he  so  absurdly  friendly  ? 
Ah  !  " — And  here  for  an  hour  he  sank  into  a 
he  have  heard  any- 
Is  there  a  vulgar 


tit  of  musing.      "  Can 
thing   about    Phillis  ? 


Strephon  after  all,  with  his  disgusting  pipe  1 
I  don't  like  this."  And  he  smiled  as  he 
went  out — perhaps  he  laughed  when  he 
reached  the  street.  "  He  rejects  her.  There 
must  be  a  reason" — And  here  he  mused 


.At  the  end  of  three  hours'  meditation,  he 
packed  up  all  his  traps,  supplied  himself  with 
circular  notes,  took  out  his  passport,  and 
went,  sulking,  gloomy,  and  quarrelling, 
through  France  and  Italy  for  three  years. 
At  the  end  of  that  time  he  came  home. 
On  landing  at  Southampton  he  saw  a  face 
he  knew.  Curiosity  as  to  what  had  be- 
come of  Phillis,  induced  him  to  speak.  He 
went  up  and  held  out  his  hand.  "  Captain 
Belford,"  he  said.  "  I  fear  you  have  for- 
gotten me." 

"  Oh,  not  at  all,"  replied  the  gentleman ; 
"you  are  Mr.  Wormwood, — but  I  am  not 
Captain  Belford;  I  am  Ned  Daisyfield,  Phillis's 
brother.  I  called  on  you,  and  pretended  to 
be  Belford  ;  it  was  only  to  try  you,  for  Phillis 
had  written  you  were  of  a  sour,  suspicious 
disposition ;  but  she  didn't  wish  to  offend 
her  aunt,  who  supported  your  cause.  The 
bait  took.  You  thought  something  must  be 
wrong, — some  trick  intended  against  your- 
self,— and  gave  poor  Phillis  up,  without 
condescending  to  assign  any  reason.  Charley 
Belford  stept  in.  In  a  fortnight  Phillis  was 
quite  reconciled  to  my  choice.  They 


have 
-and 


been  married  more  than  two  years- 

I  have  the  honour  to  wish  you  a  remarkably 

good  day." 

DISINFECTANTS. 


AFTER  all,  in  many  of  our  modern  social  im- 
provements, we  do  but  go  back  to  the  wisdom 
of  our  ancestors  :  we  do  not  deserve  the  whole 
merit  of  invention.  In  certain  sanitary  prac- 
tices, for  instance,  the  ancients  were  farther 
advanced  than  we  are  at  present — infinitely 
farther  than  we  have  been  until  quite  lately. 
Take  the  questions  of  ventilation  and  disin- 
fection, as  treated  of  in  Dr.  Angus  Smith's 
careful  and  comprehensive  paper,  published  in 
the  Journal  of  the  Society  of  Arts  ;  and  let  us 
see  how  far  we  have  gone  beyond  or  lagged 


hands,  and  trust  sincerely  you  will  make  [  behind  the  sanitary  expedients  which  were 
her  happy,  for  no  one  can  deserve  it  more.  I  fashionable  when  the  Pyramids  were  being 
Good  morning."  !  built,  and  Penelope  was  weaving  her  bevvil- 

Before     Delamour     could    recover    from  j  dering  web  ;  or,  later,  when  Coustantine  sat 


1 0      [July  4.  is-.! 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


on  the  throne  of  the  she-wolf's  sons,  and  the 
greatest  empire  that  the  world  has  ever  seen 


was    beginning  to   break   beneath    its    own 
enormous  weight. 

In  mi  early  period  of  the  eastern  empire 
the  Justinian  code  provided  for  the  complete 
ventilation  of  the  fine  new  city  of  Constanti- 
nople, by  ordering  that  no  one  should  stop 
the  view,  in  any  manner,  of  the  windows 
looking  towards  the  sea,  and  that  the  mini- 
mum width  of  the  streets  should  not  be  less 
than  twelve  feet.  In  Rome,  the  minimum 
was  five  feet — a  law  which  the  authorities 
were  not  able  to  improve,  owing  to  the  land- 
lords, whose  private  vested  interests  jostled 
public  advantage  out  of  the  way.  But,  the 
perfect  sewerage  of  Koine,  being  one  of  the 
most  important  disinfecting  conditions  of  a 
city,  made  up  for  this  want  of  afreer  circulation 
of  air.  Her  cloacae  are  marvels  to  the  present 
day,  and  the  duty  of  keeping  them  cleansed 
and  in  good  repair  was  a  grave  state  matter, 
delegated  to  the  prastor  as  one  of  his  most 
important  functions.  Jerusalem  even  had 
her  streets  swept  daily,  though  in  no  time 
has  the  Hebrew  been  remarkable  for  a  fana- 
tical attention  to  cleanliness,  either  of  person 
or  of  dwelling.  But,  the  world  went  back  in 


kreosote,  using  this  last  also  for  skin  diseases 
in  cattle,  for  which  it  has  been  found  valu- 
able. Another  mode  of  using  kreosote  may 
be  seen  in  the  circumstance  that  hams  were 
hung  up  on  the  roof,  and  apparently  smoked. 
Sulphur  was  one  of  the  most  valued  disin- 
fectants iu  Greece  and  Italy.  When  Ulysses 
killed  the  suitors,  after  putting  matters  in 
order,  he  called  for  sulphur  to  sulphurise  the 
place  by  burning  the  sulphur,  and  so  causing 
acid  fumigations.  It  was  also  a  sacred 
method  of  purification,  and  its  name  in  Greek 
signifies  divine.  It  was  burnt  in  lustrations, 
as  a  religious  ceremony  ;  and  the  shepherds 
yearly  purified  their  nocks  with  it.  The 
Italians  have  re-discovered  its  use  in  their 
vineyards,  as  a  cure  for  the  oidium — at  least, 
as  a  check  and  preventive,  if  not  wholly  a 
cure.  Bitters,  also,  were  used  to  preserve 
new  wines,  much  in  the  same  way  as  we  use 
hops.  Honey,  again,  for  purposes  where  we 
use  sugar,  and  sometimes  for  preserving  spe- 
cimens, as  we  would  now  employ  spirits  of 
wine.  Thus,  a  centaur  which  was  born  in 
Thessaly,  but  which,  unfortunately  for  man- 
kind, died  the  day  after  its  birth,  was  sent, 
preserved  in  honey,  to  a  museum  in  Egypt. 
That  centaur  would  be  worth  finding,  in  this 


this  common  sense  of  the  streets ;  and,  in  age  of  the  Feejee  mermaid  and  the  woolly 
spite  of  the  example  and  experience  of  the  horse.  Fire  was  another  great  purifier.  In. 
past,  it  was  only  in  the  twelfth  century  that  times  of  plague  or  general  distemper,  fire, 
the  first  pavements  were  laid,  by  Philip  accompanied  with  perfumes,  flowers,  vinegar, 
Augustus,  in  Paris.  Heaven  knows  how  long  j  aromatic  substances,  pepper,  mustard,  &c., 
the  mother-city  of  la  belle  France  would  i  was  used  in  the  streets  as  a  disinfectant.  We 
have  yet  remained  ungarmshed  with  paving-  have  all  read  of  its  value  in  our  own  Great 
stones,  had  not  the  royal  nose  been  one  day  i  Plague.  But,  in  ancient  times  purification  by 
unpleasantly  assaulted  during  a  ride  taken  '  fire  had  a  literal  as  well  as  a  moral  sense,  and 
through  the  streets ;  when  the  filth  stirred  meant  something  more  real  and  living  than 
up  by  the  hoofs  of  the  cavalcade  bore  such  j  what  the  same  words  mean  used  now  as  a 
pungent  evidence  to  the  need  of  improve-  mere  forgotten  sign.  Water  waa  also  much 
ment  that  a  ray  of  light  penetrated  the  '  relied  on  as  a  means  of  purification  ;  and  our 
kingly  brain,  and  pavements  were  the  result,  far-away  progenitors  knew  how  to  check 
Yet  matters  went  on  so  slowly,  even  after '  epidemic  disease  by  closing  the  windows 
this  initiation,  that  so  late  as  last  century  looking  towards  the  infected  quarter,  and 


there  was  a  riot  in  Paris  because  of  the  accu- 
mulation of  filth  and  refuse  in  certain  quar- 
ters, which  the  authorities  did  not  care  to 
remove.  Things  are  mending  now  ;  and 
Paris,  with  her  streets  washed  and  brushed 
every  day,  like  a  dainty  lady's  face,  is  one  of 
the  cleanest,  if  one  of  the  least  efficiently 
drained,  cities  of  the  civilised  world  ;  while 
London  is  fidgetting  so  feverishly  over  her 
sanitary  short-comings,  that  surely  all  must 
soon  be  put  to  rights  there,  from  the  great 
central  river  sewer  to  the  smallest  drains  of 
the  outcast  courts. 

But  our  business  is  with  positive  rather 
than  with  r  lative  disinfectants.    Besides  ven- 


tilation  and 


sewerage 


the    ancients   knew 


various  chemical  agents  of  purification  which 
we  have  i-e-discovered  in  quite  late  times. 
The  natron  or  nitre,  with  which  the  Egyp- 
tians washed  the  bodies  they  were  about  to 
embalm,  was  our  modern  caustic  soda  ;  their 


opening  those  with  the  contrary  aspect.  They 
knew,  also,  the  use  of  anaesthetics,  and  could 
perform  painless  extraction  of  teeth  by  means 
of  white  hellebore.  In  the  fifteenth  century, 
too,  Philip  Bersaldo  speaks  of  amputation 
without  pain  as  an  idea  and  practice  of 
common  use.  This,  though  beside  the  general 
purport  of  our  paper,  is  a  fact  too  curious  to 
be  omitted. 

The  modern  history  of  disinfectants  began 
in  the  seventeenth  century  ;  but  it  was  only 
in  seventeen  hundred  and  thirty-two  that 
Dr.  Petit  made  the  first  notable  experiment 
in  antiseptics  ;  using  small  pieces  of  mutton 
to  try  how  long  each  special  antiseptic  pre- 
served a  piece  untainted.  His  conclusions 
were,  that  astringents  were  the  best,  their 
action  being  similar  to  that  of  drying.  Sir 
John  Pringle  followed  in  the  same  track. 
His  antiseptic  panaceas  were  salts,  and  the 
astringent  gummy  and  resinous  parts  of  vege- 


oil  of  cedar   was  turpentine  ;    they  distilled    tables   and  fermenting   liquors.       Dr.   Mac- 
both  pitch  and  tar,  and  cured  toothache  with    bride,  after  him,  speaks  of  acids  as  the  long- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


DISINFECTANTS. 


[July  4, 1357-]      11 


prescribed  antiseptic  agents  ;  even  when  con- 
siderably diluted,  still  powerful.  He  adds 
the  following  substances  to  his  list.  Alkalies 
and  salts ;  gum-resins,  such  as  myrrh-assa- 
foetida,  aloes,  and  terra  japonica ;  decoctions 
of  Virginian  snake-root,  pepper,  ginger, 
saffron,  sage,  mint,  contrayerva  root,  valerian, 
rhubarb,  angelica,  senna,  common  worm-' 
wood  ;  and  to  some  extent,  mustard,  celery, 
carrots,  turnips,  garlic,  onions,  cabbage,  cole- 
wort,  and  horseradish.  Lime,  he  says,  pre- 
vents, but  does  not  remove  putrefaction  ; 
while  astringent  mineral  acids,  and  ardent 
spirits,  "  not  only  absorb  the  matter  from  the 
putrescent  substance,  but  likewise  crisp  up 
its  fibres,  and  thereby  render  it  so  hard  and 
durable,  that  no  change  of  combination  will 
take  place  for  many  years."  Molasses  closes 
this  list  of  Dr.  Macbride,  drawn  out  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In 
seventeen  hundred  and  seventy-three,  Guyton 
Morveau  proposed  fumigating  hospitals  with 
muriatic  acid  vapours  ;  and  in  seventeen 
hundred  and  eighty,  Dr.  Carmichael  Smyth 
used  nitrous  fumes  at  Winchester,  and  in  the 
Fleet,  without  giving  the  French  chymist  the 
credit  of  that  rediscovery  of  antique  wisdom, 
— namely,  acid  fumigation.  Parliament,  in 
eighteen  hundred  and  two,  voted  five  thou- 
sand pounds  to  Dr.  Smyth  ;  and  poor  Guy- 
ton  Morveau  was  horribly  disgusted,  both  at 
the  theft  and  its  unjust  reward.  As  well  he 
might  be.  In  seventeen  hundred  and  seventy- 
one  and  seventeen  hundred  and  seventy-two, 
Fourcroy  discovered  the  properties  of  chlorine 
as  a  fumigating  agent ;  and  Dr.  Cruikshank 
introduced  the  application  of  it  to  us  in 
England.  "  All  these  acids,"  says  Dr.  Angus 
Smith,  "  are  very  violent,  and  fitted  only  for 
extreme  cases,  which  ought  not  to  be  allowed 
to  occur.  Chlorine  may  be  excepted  ;  it  may 
be  used  with  advantage  in  minute  quantities, 
at  least  for  a  limited  period.  When  applied  to 
centres  of  putridity,  the  great  objection  to  it 
is,  that  it  destroys  the  ammonia,  sending 
off  the  nitrogen  as  a  not  very  pure  gas*. 
It  soon  acquires  much  moisture,  loses  its 
power,  and  gives  a  very  unpleasant  odour  to 
the  hand  when  touched.  Its  destruction  of 
manures  is,  however,  the  principal  objection 
to  it." 

"  Chlorine  acts  by  uniting  with  hydrogen, 
acids  by  uniting  with  the  compounds  of 
hydrogen  —  water  and  ammonia.  Chlorine 
decomposes  the  sulphur  and  phosphorous  com- 
pounds of  hydrogen.  It  will  even  dissolve 
a  piece  of  flesh,  so  as  to  form  a  transparent 
liquid." 

Oxygen  has  a  double  action :  the  first  is  to 
cause  putrefaction,  the  second  oxidation  or 
disinfection.  In  soldering  preserved  meats 
in  air-tight  vessels,  not  a  trace  of  air  must  be 
left  behind  ;  and  one  bubble  of  oxygen  in 
grape-juice  ready  to  ferment,  will  originate 
that  process  through  the  whole  quantity. 
Hildeubrand  found  that  meat  in  a  vessel  of 
oxygen,  putrified  in  eleven  hours.  Sweeny 


preserved  meat  in  water  by  first  boiling  out 
the  air,  cooling  it,  covering  it  with  a  stratum 
of  oil  to  keep  out  the  air,  and  adding  iron 
filings  to  absorb  what  might  have  been 
allowed  to  enter.  Meat  preserved  thus 
remained  sweet  seven  months.  Leuch  added 
a  covering  of  oil  also,  but  used  unboiled 
water  and  sulphur,  instead  of  iron.  His 
process  kept  the  meat  sweet  for  only  two 
months.  The  Damaras  of  South  Africa  cut 
their  meat  into  strips,  and  dry  it  in  the  sun  ; 
for  simple  dryness  arrests  decay  and  prevents 
infection.  So  does  intense  cold.  As  for  the 
first  method,  Dr.  Henry  disinfected  the 
clothes  of  fever  patients  by  baking  them. 
But  to  return  to  our  oxygen. 

"  Air  being  the  initial  cause  of  putrefac- 
tion," we  are  quoting  Dr.  Smith,  "  it  would 
seem  strange  to  class  it  among  disinfectants, 
but  in  some  respects  it  is  the  greatest  of  all. 
Its  first  action  is  mechanical,  as  in  natural 
or  artificial  ventilation.  It  is  known  that 
the  worst  plagues  have  arisen  in  great  calms ; 
crowded  rooms  and  unchanged  air  increase 
almost  every  disease,  whilst  ventilation  has 
a  contrary  effect.  The  action  of  the  air  on 
putrid  matter  is  too  slow  for  many  of  the 
wants  of  civilisation,  and  hence  the  need  of 
an  artificial  disinfectant.  But,  Nature  her- 
self has  a  mode  of  hastening  it  by  giving  an 
increased  power  to  it  under  the  influence  of 
porous  bodies.  The  porous  body  most  in  use 
is  the  soil,  which  is  a  powerful  disinfecting 
agent :  so  much  so  that  putrid  matter,  when 
completely  absorbed  by  it,  unless  in  exces- 
sive quantities,  entirely  loses  its  smell,  and 
water  drained  from  the  soil  at  a  sufficient 
depth  is  found  to  have  lost  all  its  organic 
matter  ;  so  thoroughly  has  it  been  disinfected. 
In  doing  this,  oxygen  is  absorbed  ;  and  it 
will  be  found  that  water  containing  decom- 
posing organic  matter,  has  its  oxygen  re- 
moved, serving  frequently  as  a  useful  index 
to  the  state  of  the  decompositions  going  for- 
ward." 

The  soil,  by  virtue  of  its  porosity,  presses 
gases  into  smaller  space  than  they  occupy 
under  ordinary  atmospheric  pressure,  and 
thus  mechanically  compels  combination.  But 
for  this  power,  the  soil  of  towns  would  be 
one  mass  of  corruption  ;  whereas,  the  water 
from  the  soil  of  towns  is  much  valued, 
even  when  too  impure  for  drinking.  "  This 
is  caused  by  the  formation  of  nitric  acid, 
which  is  the  result  of  purification,  and  not 
only  so,  but  a  reservoir  of  air  or  oxygen, 
wherewith  to  purify  still  more."  This  puri- 
fying power  of  percolation  is  the  reason  why 
the  Thames  "  is  not  intolerable  ;"  were  it  not 
for  this,  that  river  would  indeed  be  the  great 
River  of  Death  to  London.  The  reason,  also, 
why  charcoal  is  so  valuable  as  a  disinfecting 
agent,  is,  that  being  one  of  the  most  porous 
bodies,  it  absorbs  impure  gases  and  oxidises 
them.  But,  it  does  not  preserve  organic  sub- 
stances. Mr.  Condy  lias  applied  condensed 
oxygen  as  a  disinfecting  agt:nt,  and  French 


12       [July  1,:,.  71 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


a&atorui&ta  have  begun  to  use  sulpliate  of 
soda  tor  the  same  purpose,  with  success, 
especially  when  mixed  with  kreosote.  Alka- 
line salts  are  rather  antiseptic  than  disin- 
fectant ;  metallic  salts  are  disinfectant.  Lead, 
;'.i>fiiie,  mercury  (as  corrosive  sublimate),  are 
singularly  useful.  Sulphate  of  iron,  too,  has 
wonderful  disinfecting  properties,  "as  wonder- 
ful as  it  used  to  have  when  it  figured  in  the 
world  as  the  powder  of  sympathy."  Cay- 
Lussac  aud  Mr.  Young  recommend  the 
chloride  of  manganese,  "  the  waste  product 
of  the  manufacture  of  chlorine  ;"  but  Dr. 
Smith  shows  that  this  is  a  harmful  and 
dangerous  application,  substituting  chloride 
of  zinc  as  one  of  the  best  disinfecting  salts 
known.  But,  we  must  give  a  word  to  his 
own  discovery — the  disinfecting  agent  known 
as  McDougall's  Disinfecting  Powder. 

Finding  that  magnesia  was  the  best  base 
to  use  in  the  disinfection  of  manures,  as 
the  only  one  which  gave  an  insoluble  animo- 
uiacal  salt,  and  preserved  the  ammonia  at 
the  same  time  ;  finding,  also,  that  of  all  acids 
sulphur  was  the  best,  equal  at  least  iu  power 
to  chlorine,  without  the  destructive  property 
of  chlorine — namely,  the  decomposing  of 
ammonia — Dr.  Smith  combined  magnesia  and 
sulphurous  acid,  and  found  the  effect  as  a 
disinfecting  and  deodorising  agent  as  efficient 
as  he  could  desire,  save  iu  one  particular — a 
slight  remaining  smell.  He  therefore  added 
to  the  sulphite  about  five  per  cent,  of  phenic 
acid  (got  from  coal-tar),  and  with  these  com- 
binations obtained  a  perfect  disinfecting 
powder.  It  has  been  tried  at  the  Manchester 
cavalry  barracks,  sprinkled  on  the  floor  of 
the  stable,  with  the  bedding  laid  over  it ;  it 
was  used  on  board  the  transport-ships  carry- 
ing troop  horses  to  the  Crimea  ;  and  it  has 
been  found  specially  valuable  in  certain  large 
stables  of  private  owners. 

In  consequence  of  powdering  the  floor  with  it 
almost  daily,  the  manure  becomes  thoroughly  mixed 
with  the  disinfectant.  The  results  are  remarkable. 
The  manure  does  not  heat  or  ferment,  as  in  other 
cases,  so  that  there  is  no  fear  of  loss  by  ammoniacal 
gas:,  or  by  putrid  vapours.  The  liquid  which  flows 
from  it  is  without  smell.  From  the  arrest  of  decay, 
flics  do  not  come  around  it  in  numbers,  and  the  horses 
also  are  preserved  from  flics,  a  state  which  has  a  very 
favourable  effect  upon  them.  Mr.  Murray,  who  has 
always  four  or  iive  dozen  of  the  most  valuable  horses 
on  hand,  says  that  headache  has  disappeared  from  his 
stables;  and  of  lung  disease,  which  was  formerly  com- 
mon, he  has  not  had  an  instance.  The  horses  are 
healthier  and  in  better  spirits,  whilst  a  good  deal  of 
straw  is  saved.  They  breathe  air  without  either 
ammonia,  which  hurts  the  eyes  of  those  who  enter,  or 
of  putrid  matter;  the  whiteness  of  the  powder  makes 
the  stable  appear  as  if  constantly  newly  whitewashed. 
A  curious  circumstance  is  said  by  most  of  those  who 
use  it  to  occur.  The  stable  is  cooler,  not  only  to  the 
feeling,  r.s  we  might  suppose,  by  removing  animal 
matter,  but  to  the  thermometer.  I  have  not  made 
the  observations  myself,  but  they  are  to  be  relied  on, 
and  to  the  feeling  the  change  is  distinct.  The  removal 
of  heat  I  ascribe  to  the  fact  that  the  animal  matter  has 


censed  to  oxidise.  The  slow  combustion  or  putre- 
faction produces  heat  in  the  manure,  probably  also  iu 
the  atmosphere  itself,  where  the  vapours  are  mixed 
with  the  oxygen.  The  oxidation  and  putrefaction  are 
simultaneously  arrested.  It  might  be  said  that  since 
decomposition  is  arrested,  the  manure  is  made  unlit 
for  plants  ;  besides,  it  is  known  that  liquids  from  tar 
jiut  a  stop  to  vegetable  life  as  they  do  to  animal.  But 
Mr.  Murray  found  that  after  having  sold  his  manure 
of  one  year  with  the  powder  in  it,  he  was  offered 
double  for  it  next  year.  It  is  therefore  established 
that  a  just  medium  has  been  attained,  the  preservation 
of  the  manure  on  one  side,  and  the  health  of  the  plant 
on  the  other. 

The  great  object  to  be  attained  is  the 
disinfection  of  town  sewage.  Last  year  the 
little  town  of  Leek  was  attacked  by  an 
epidemic.  A  council  of  medical  men  decided 
on  trying  this  McDougall's  disinfecting 
powder.  It  was  tried,  and  the  following  are 
the  results  communicated  by  Mr.  Dale,  town 
surveyor. 

Its  use  was  most  efficient  in  staying  the  plague ; 
never  was  the  intimate  connection  between  foul  cess- 
pools, &c  ,  and  disease  more  strikingly  demonstrated. 
The  fever  and  putrid  sore  throats  prevailed  most  iu 
the  neighbourhoods  nearest  to  the  open  sewers  and 
cesspools.  On  using  the  disinfecting  powder,  the 
offensive  smells  were  perfectly  removed,  and  the 
abatement  of  the  disease  immediately  followed. 
There  were  no  new  cases,  and  those  under  treatment 
at  the  time  assumed  a  much  milder  form.  We  ex- 
hausted a  small  stock  of  disinfecting  powder  on  the 
third  of  January.  In  the  course  of  a  few  weeks,  when 
the  cesspools  began  again  to  give  off  offensive  smells, 
the  disease  broke  out  a  second  time,  when  the  authori- 
ties ordered  a  further  supply,  and  upon  using  it  as 
before,  the  disease  agaiu  assumed  a  milder  form  and 
eventually  disappeared. 


THE  DISMAL  POOL. 

IT  lies  in  deepest  forest  gloom, 

Where  huge  trees  push  the  sun  away, 

And  tall  weeds  catch  each  struggling  beam- 
That  through  the  branches  peers  its  way. 

It  sleeps  in  bed  of  flinty  rocks 

Whose  shatter' d  foreheads  shrink  from  light, 
And  scowl  from  out  their  dusky  home 

With  frown  that  makes  a  blacker  night. 

It  dwells  cncinctured  from  the  view, 
And  stamp' d  as  with  a  brand  of  doom, 

As  hated  as  a  spot  accursed 
Aud  shiiun'd  as  is  a  plague-fill  d  toinb. 

It  seems  a  haunt  where  Horror  sils, 

And  fixes  deep  her  ebon  rule; 
And  men  have  named  it,  passing  by 

With  bated  breath,  The  Dismal  Pool. 

A.  wondrous  sorrow  seems  to  rest 

Upon  the  almost  stirless  trees; 
And  listless  as  the  eye  of  death 

The  livid  lake  looks  up  to  these. 

And  never  at  the  morning's  birth 

The  sweet  lark  soars  this  lake  above;. 

Isor  children  come  with  matin  glee 
To  read  their  mirror'd  smiles  of  love. 


Charles  Dlcieas.] 


HELENA  MATHEWSON. 


[July  4,  1&.7.J       13 


And  never  in  the  sunny  noon 

The  small  flics  skim  its  leaden  breast ; 

Nor  ever  'mid  those  death-bound  leaves 
The  \voodguest  hums  herself  to  rest. 

And  nowhere  through  the  lanky  grass 
Beams  out  the  violet's  tender  eye  ; 

Nor  lily  pale  upon  the  bank 

Bends  down  to  see  its  beauty  die. 

But  all  is  rough,  and  all  is  still, 
And  all  is  night  that  diniiueth  day, 

And  all  is  Upas  deathfulness, 
That  saps  the  spirit's  life  away. 

01),  why,  when  all  the  earth  is  glad, 
And  every  lake  is  fringed  with  bloom, 

Hast  tliou  been  chosen,  Dismal  Pool, 
To  be  the  only  home  of  gloom  ? 

"f  is  surely  from  some  primal  curse 

Thou  liest  thus  so  deep  away  ; 
Unvisited  of  tnoon  by  night, 

Unvisited  of  sun  by  day. 

Or  are  thy  waters  human  tears 

That  flow  in  secret  evermore  ? 
And  are  those  traces  human  steps 

That,  like  mine  own,  have  press'd  thy  shore  ? 

But  wherefore  have  I  hither  come  ? 

And  wherefore  am  I  tarrying  still 
Where  loathsome  things  of  fear  and  doubt 

Sink  on.  my  heart  their  pinioiis  chill  ? 

Already  droops  my  soul  of  Youth 
Within  this  deadly  atmosphere  ; 
And  o'er  the  morning's  hills  of  gold 
Are  clinging  shadows  dense  and  drear. 

Fast  fades  the  past,  where  life  was  peace; 

Dim  grow  the  future's  gates  of  bliss  ; 
Ah  !  luckless  oue,  if  all  thy  days 

Shall  be  a  present  like  to  this  ! 

O,  burial-place  of  every  love  ! 

Dread  catacomb  of  faith  and  joy  ! 
Come,  Hope,  to  lead  me  from  this  spot, 

Thou  wast  my  angel  when  a  boy  ! 


HELENA  MATHEWSON. 

CHAPTER   THE  FIRST. 

MY  father  was  rector  of  Licliendale,  a 
little,  grey-walled  town,  of  which  few  but 
north-country  people  have  ever  heard.  My 
mother  died  when  I  was  quite  a  child, 
leaving  me — little  Helena,  as  I  was  always 
called — with  no  other  companions  than  my 
two  brothers,  Paul  arid  Lawrence,  and  our 
faithful,  old  nurse,  Hannah.  My  eldest 
brother,  Paul,  was  grave  and  moody  ; 
and  Lawrence  and  I,  who  were  warm 
allies,  were  nearly  always  quarrelling  with 
him.  Lawrence  could  not  bear  to  hear 
what  Paul  so  firmly  maintained ; — that  un- 
less Helena  were  a  better  girl,  and  more 
careful  over  her  spelling,  she  would  be 
burnt  alive  after  she  died.  Not  seeing  the 
inconsistency  of  this  terrible  threat, 
and,  fearing  from  Paul's  authoritative  tone, 


that  he  had  the  power  to  execute  it, 
Lawrence  would  take  up  my  cause  with 
fiery  zeal,  and  often  cudgelled  Paul  into 
granting  me  a  milder  sentence.  We  used  to 
take  our  lesson-books  into  the  study  every 
morning;  and,  while  I  learnt  my  spelling, 
my  brothers  read  and  construed  with  my 
father. 

But  Paul  soon  grew  too  old  for  mere 
home-schooling  ;  and,  after  much  secrecy  and 
mysterious  preparation,  he  was  sent  to  the 
grammar-school  at  Sawbridge.  Lawrie  and 
I  made  merry  over  his  departure.  We  had 
wilder  games  than  ever  in.  the  garden  and 
woods,  and  got  into  twice  as  many  scrapes 
as  before  ;  so  that  sometimes  even  Hannah 
lost  all  patience  with  us,  and  dragged  us — 
little  trembling  culprits — before  my  father, 
who  lifted  his  kind  eyes  from  his  book,  and 
tried,  with  but  little  success,  to  look  dis- 
pleased. 

Those  happy  days  passed  too  quickly, 
Lawrence  went  to  school;  and,  after  two  or 
three  years  there,  to  Rome.  He  had  always 
said  he  would  be  an  artist ;  and  he  did  not 
flinch  from  his  plan  as  he  grew  out  of  child- 
hood, but  adhered  to  it  so  steadily  that  at 
length  my  father  consented  to  his  going  to 
Italy  to  study.  He  was  very  young  to  be 
sent  so  far  alone  ;  but  my  father  had  lived 
for  so  long  in  Lichendale,  that  he  seemed  to 
have  forgotten  how  full  of  danger  and 
temptation  a  city  like  Borne  would  be  to 
one  eager  and  reckless  as  Lawrence. 

Poor  Lawrie  !  I  remember  our  last  parting 
well.  He  was  so  glad  to  be  going  to  Italy,  so 
sorry  to  leave  Lichendale, and  so  charmed  with 
the  unusual  hurry  and  bustle,  and  his  suddenly 
acquired  importance,  that  smiles  and  tears 
chased  each  other  away  in  quick  succession 
from  his  face.  I  can  see  now  his  lust,  sad 
look,  as  the  mail-coach,  which  had  stopped 
for  him  at  our  gate,  drove  off;  and  I  remem- 
ber turning  out  of  the  sunny  garden  into  the 
house,  and  running  upstairs  that  I  might 
sob  undisturbed  in  some  quiet  hiding-place. 
But  Paul,  who  had  come  over  for  the  day 
to  say  good  bye  to  Lawrence,  soon  dis- 
covered me  ;  and,  instead  of  trying  to  com- 
fort me,  talked  in  a  slow,  measured  moan 
of  the  wickedness  of  my  grief,  and  of 
his  belief  that  despondency  was  a  child  of 
the  devil. 

Lawrence's  letters  were  frequent  and  affec- 
tionate, and  at  first  almost  homesick.  The 
pleasures  of  Borne  were  great,  he  wrote, 
but  still  he  loved  Lichendale  and  Helena, 
far,  far  more  dearly  than  ever,  and  often 
longed  to  come  back.  Gradually,  however, 
another  tone  crept  into  them.  There  were 
fewer  allusions  to  home,  aud  to  the  time 
when  he  should  return  to  us ;  but,  instead, 
the  thin  blue  sheets  were  covered  with  ac- 
counts of  the  grand  English  families  that 
!  he  met,  whose  patronage  seemed  to  intoxi- 
cate him,  and  of  beautiful  ladies,  whom,  I 
[feared,  he  liked  better  than,  little  Helena, 


14 


.1SS7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


if  they  were  really  as  lovely  as  he  described 
them.  Sir  Edward  Stamford,  the  owner  of 
Lichendale  Hall,  and  who  would  have  been 
the  great  man  of  our  neighbourhood  had  he 
ever  visited  it,  was  one  of  the  acquaintance 
of  whom  we  heard  most.  My  father  regretted 
this  much  ;  for  reports  had  travelled  home 
that  the  life  Sir  Edward  led  abroad  was  wild 
and  dissipated  ;  and  those  who  recollected 
him  at  Liehendale,  in  the  old  Baronet's  time, 
declared  that  he  had  been  always  self-willed 
and  passionate. 

Lawrence  had  been  absent  six  years.  I  was 
grown  into  a  tall,  shy  girl  of  sixteen ;  and 
Paul,  after  a  successful  career  at  Cambridge, 
was  on  the  eve  of  being  ordained.  Surely, 
Lawrence  would  soon  come  back,  I  thought. 
My  father  also  longed  for  his  return,  and 
wrote  to  urge  him  to  leave  Home,  at  least  for 
a  while.  We  were  full  of  glad  expectation. 
My  father  counted  the  weeks  that  would 
elapse  before  his  return,  and  I  counted  the 
days  and  hours,  which  I  thought  would  never 


Before  that  day  came  a  more  terrible — a 
more  suddenly  terrible  one.  A  letter  came 
for  my  father  from  Italy,  but  not  directed 
in  Lawrence's  hand.  I  took  it  into  my  father's 
study  myself,  and  watched  him  as  he  read 
it.  He  seemed  to  dread  evil.  He  broke  the 
seal  slowly,  and  paused  before  he  dared  to 
glance  at  the  contents.  I  was  so  frightened 
and  impatient  that  I  could  have  torn  it  open, 
had  it  been  bound  with  iron,  and  my  father's 
delay  was  dreadful  to  me.  One  look  at  his  face, 
as  he  stared  in  horror  at  the  short,  Italian 
sentence,  confirmed  my  worst  fears,  and  I  did 
not  need  to  hear  the  word  "  Dead  ! "  rise 
slowly  to  his  lips,  to  strike  the  awful  cer- 
tainty through  me,  that  Lawrence — affec- 
tionate, wilful  Lawrence — would  never  come 
back  to  us.  I  did  not  scream  or  faint.  I 
felt  the  longing  that  I  have  had  from  child- 
hood, whenever  I  have  been  unhappy  or 
terror-stricken,  to  creep  away  with  my  grief 
and  hide  ;  but  I  could  not  leave  my  father, 
pale  and  ghastly  as  he  looked.  Thank  God  ! 
I  did  not.  For  years  he  had  had  symptoms 
of  heart-disease.  I  clung  to  him  in  silence, 
thinking  that  it  was  only  his  great  mental 
pain  that  made  him  so  deadly  still  and 
white.  I  chafed  and  kissed  his  hands  ;  and, 
in  grief  for  his  grief,  almost  forgot  my 
own.  "  Paul — send  for  him  !  "  he  sighed. 
I  left  the  room,  wrote  a  short  note  to  sum- 
mon him,  and  then  hastened  back  to  the 
study,  for  I  began  to  fear  my  father  was 
ill. 

In  those  few  minutes  Death  had  entered, 
and  claimed  his  victim.  What  a  night  of 
misery  I  passed !  I  longed  to  die.  Why 
was  I  spared  ? — spared  to  pain  and  mourning 
and  craving  grief? 

CHAPTER   THE   SECOND. 

NEARLY  two  years  passed,  and  I  still 
lived  at  the  dear  old  rectory.  Sir  Edward 


Stamford,  the  patron  of  the  living  of  Lichen- 
dale,  had  written  to  offer  it  to  Paul  when  he 
heard  of  my  father's  death.  The  letter  was 
kind,  and  full  of  polite  regrets  that  they 
should  most  probably  never  meet,  as  he 
intended  to  remain  always  abroad.  There 
was  no  mention  of  Lawrence  in  it ;  which  I 
thought  strange.  My  brother  hesitated 
for  some  time  before  accepting  a  living 
from  one  whom  he  chose  to  call  a  sinner 
in  the  sight  of  the  Lord ;  but  his  affection 
for  Lichendale ;  for  its  grand,  old  parish 
chui'ch,  and  the  sober,  godly  towns-people, 
overcame  these  scruples,  and  he  settled 
down  into  my  father's  place,  if  not  to  fulfil 
its  duties  as  mildly,  at  any  rate  with  as 
rigid  conscientiousness  and  self-denial.  Han- 
nah had  left  us,  to  live  with  some  orphan 
nieces  of  hers  in  another  town  ;  so  I  was 
Paul's  little  housekeepei-,  as  I  had  latterly 
been  my  father's.  There  were  none  of  the 
few  families  of  our  own  rank  in  Lichendale 
that  I  much  liked,  or  with  whom  I  kept  up 
any  great  intimacy,  so  that  I  often  felt  sadly 
lonely.  Paul  loved  me  in  his  grave  way, 
but  he  seemed  to  think  that  any  unnecessary 
display  of  affection  was  harmful,  and  I  can- 
not remember  his  ever  petting  or  caressing 
me.  Still,  after  the  first  great  grief  for 
Lawrie  and  my  father  had  been  softened  by 
time,  I  was  happy — in  a  sort  of  quiet,  listless 
way.  The  country  round  Lichendale  was 
beautiful.  On  one  side,  was  the  park,  with 
the  Hall  peering  through  the  trees  ;  and,  on 
the  other,  the  red  sands  which  the  tide 
rarely  covered,  stretching  away  to  the  silver 
sea-line.  I  used  to  take  long  walks  by 
myself  on  these  sands,  or  in  the  woods.  I 
did  not  read  much  ;  for  the  only  books  that 
Paul  allowed  me  were  what  I  did  not  care 
for ;  either  abstruse  treatises  on  religion,  or 
biographies,  in  which  the  history  of  the 
man  was  made  subservient  to  all  manner  of 
doleful  morals,  and  melancholy  hints  to 
sinners.  We  lived  very  simply.  Lawrence 
had  left  many  debts  in  Rome  ;  and,  to  pay 
these,  it  was  necessary  for  a  few  years  to  give 
up  many  luxuries,  and  to  part  with  one  of 
our  trusty  old  servants.  So  I  found  some 
pleasant  occupation  in  little  household 
duties. 

This  was  my  life  when  I  was  eighteen  ; 
and  it  was  then  that  Sir  Edward  Stamford 
suddenly  returned  to  Lichendale.  He  was 
brought  by  the  report  of  an  approaching  dis- 
solution of  Parliament,  people  said  ;  for,  they 
whispered,  he  meant  to  stand  for  Lichendale, 
to  turn  out  the  present  sleepy  old  member. 
Lichendale  is  one  of  the  smallest  borough- 
towns  in  England  ;  but,  at  the  passing  of  the 
Reform  Bill,  everybody  thought  it  likely  to 
become  a  populous  seaport.  There  weiv 
rumours  of  docks  to  be  built,  and  new  lines  of 
traffic  to  be  opened  ;  and  the  old  inhabitants, 
terrified  at  the  prospect  of  these  changes, 
swore  vengeance  against  the  different  com- 
panies that  were  to  effect  them  ;  but,  as  time 


Charles  Dickens.] 


HELENA  MATHEWSON. 


[July  4, 1357.]       15 


wore  on,  and  year  after  year  the  sea  gradually 
receded  from  the  town,  these  projects  had  to 


Lichendale  was  doomed  to  sink  into  a  quiet, 
decaying  town  ;  instead  of  rising  to  any  great 
maritime  importance,  and  they  almost  ques- 
tioned the  necessity  of  its  being  represented. 


often,  as  if  you  felt  no  shame  in  his  death  ; 
but  when  you  grow  older,  you  will  feel  as  I 
do,  and  shudder  when  you  remember  that 
he  was  a  duellist." 

Poor  dead  Lawrie  !  I  felt  as  if  it  was 
some  great  moral  want  in  me  that  prevented 
my  blaming  him  as  Paul  did.  To  Paul  a 


The  constituency  was  small  and  tractable, ;  duel  was  murder  in  its  most  cold  and  wilful 
with  but  vague  political  notions.  Colonel !  form.  He  seemed  to  forget  the  temptations 
Peterson  had  been  elected  more  on  account  to  which  Lawrence  had  been  exposed,  and 


of  his  high  character  as  a  squire  and  country 
gentleman,  than  for  anything  else  ;  and  even 


the   fact  that   he  was  the   challenged — not 
the   challenger ;   nay,  sometimes  it  seemed 


though  Sir  Edward  should  enter  the  lists, '  as  if  he  forgot  that  it  was  his  own  brother 


with  his  brilliant  talents  and  strong  opinions, 


whom     he     so 


relentlessly    condemned.    '. 
as 


yet  it  would  be  doubtful,  unless  his  character  could   only  pity  Lawrie   goaded — as   I   felt 
could  bear  comparison  with  the  honest  old  he  must  have  been,  by  false  shame,  and  not 


colonel's,  whether  he  would  succeed   in  his 

attempt  to  wrest  the  borough  from  his  hands. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  day  which  followed 


by  any  unforgiving  passion — to  that  last 
act  which  he  had  expiated  with  his  life. 
But  Paul,  as  I  have  said,  felt  differently. 


Sir  Edward's  return,  Paul  bade  me  get  ready   It    hurt    his    pride   of     goodness   that 


to  go  and  call  with  him  at  the  Hall.  I  dared 
not  disobey  ;  yet  the  thoughts  of  venturing, 
even  with  my  brother's  protection,  within 
that  terribly  grand  house  and  encountering 
its  master,  made  me  feel  shy  and  frightened. 


brother  should  have  died  such  a  death. 


his 
He 


hushed  it  up  as  much  as  he  could  ;  not- 
withstanding, the  report  spread  through 
Lichendale  that  "  young  Mathewson  had  died 
far  away  across  seas  in  a  murdering-match  ; " 


But  our  walk  through  the   park,  with  our  and  deep  words  of  wrath  against  his  mur- 
feet  sinking  deep  into  the  mossy,  daisy-spotted  '  derer   were   mingled    with   regrets   for    my 


grass,  and  the  sea-wind  making  a  low,  surging 
sound  in  the  dark  pine  trees  round  us, 
freshened  me  up,  and  gave  me  a  merry 


father  ;  whose  death,  it  was  known,  had  been 
caused  by  the  sudden  sorrow.  With  whom 
Lawrence  had  fought,  we  did  not  know.  No 


courage.  I  danced  along,  laughing  at  the  '  details  had  been  given  in  the  letter  which  my 
notion  of  my  going  like  a  grand  dame  to  father  had  received  ;  and  Paul  would  never 
call  on  the  lord  of  the  manor  in  the  after-  make  inquiries,  either  as  to  the  cause  of  the 
noon, — I  who  had  spent  the  morning  in  duel,  or  the  name  of  the  challenger  ;  so  that 
mending  stockings,  and  shelling  peas.  At :  the  suspicions  which  rested,  with  but  little 
another  time,  Paul  would  have  reproved  me  ;  ground,  on  a  French  artist  were  never  con- 
for  my  wild  spirits ;  but  he  was  now  busy  j  tinned.  "  Vengeance  is  mine  ;  I  will  repay, 
turning  over  and  over  and  perfecting  the  !  saith  the  Lord,"  Paul  would  repeat  to  him- 
speech  of  welcome  and  thanks  with  which  I  self,  half  aloud,  whenever  people  talked  of 


he  meant  to  greet  his  patron.  We  reached 
the  great  portico.  I  had  once  been  shown 
over  the  Hall  by  a  cross  old  housekeeper,  but 
I  had  never  before  called  there,  or  leisurely 
examined  any  of  the  beautiful  rooms ;  so 
that  I  was  quite  delighted  that  Sir  Edward 
delayed  coming  to  us,  and  left  me  time  to 
look  at  all  the  curiosities  with  which  the 
spacious  ante-room  was  filled.  Sir  Edward 
kept  us  waiting  a  long  time  ;  and  when  he  at 
length  entered,  he  looked  pre-occupied  and 
somewhat  constrained.  He  was  about  thirty, 
to  all  appearance  ;  tall  and  firmly  built,  with 
a  face  passion-worn  and  pale,  yet  strangely 
attractive.  He  hardly  raised  his  eyes  to  our 
faces  as  he  approached  us;  but  once,  when  the 
conversation  flagged  and  he  turned  them 
full  on  me,  I  quailed  beneath  their  steady, 
lustrous  gaze. 

"  Paul,"  I  said,  as  we  walked  home,  "  I  did 
so  wish  you  would  have  asked  Sir  Edward 
about  Lawrie.  He  might  have  remem- 
bered much  to  tell  us  if  you  had  but  begun 
the  subject,  which  perhaps  he  did  not  like  to 


introduce  himself." 

"  I    could    not    mention 


his   name    to   a 


stranger  :  it  would  not  be  right  in  me,  if  I 
could.     You  talk  about  Lawrence  freely  and 


the  chance  of  discovering  the  unknown  mur- 
derer ;  as  if  it  gave  him  a  kind  of  grim  plea- 
sure to  remember  into  what  Almighty  hands 
he  had  yielded  his  cause.  Surely,  I  thought, 
the  Creator  in  his  great  goodness  judges  more 
mercifully  than  men  judge." 

CHAPTER   THE  THIRD. 

THE  morning  after  our  call,  Paul  was  out, 
and  I  had  gone  up-stairs  to  get  my  hat  for  a 
stroll,  when  Jane  came  panting  up  the  stairs, 
breathless  with  astonishment,  for  "  Sir  Ed- 
ward was  in  the  parlour!"  What  could  he 
want  ? 

"  Did  you  tell  him  Mr.  Paul  was  out, 
Jane?" 

"  Yes,  Miss  Helen  ;  but  he  asked  if  you 
were  in  the  house,  and  he  corned  in  almost 
afore  I'd  time  to  answer  yes." 

He  must  have  called  on  some  urgent  busi- 
ness, I  thought  ;  and  I  hurried  down  to  him. 
His  ride  through  the  fresh  morning  air  had 
flushed  his  cheeks,  and  he  looked  very  hand- 
some. His  half-haughty,  half-careless  bear- 
ing impressed  me  as  something  strange  and 
striking ;  it  was  so  different  from  Paul's  grave, 
alow  manner. 

"  You  must  not  think  me  au  impertinent 


16       [July  4,  1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


intruder,  Miss  Mathewson,"  he  said,  as  I'  "I  met  him  many  times,"  said  Sir  Edward, 
entered  ;  "I  bring  my  excuse  in  my  pocket,"  in  a  low,  indistinct  voice,  starting  from  his 
and  he  tossed  a  note  on  to  the  table.  "  It  is  reverie.  Hiseyes  were  fastened  on  me — full  of 
to  bog  you  and  your  brother  to  dine  with  me  pity,  I  fancied  ;  but  I  dared  hardly  meet  them, 
to-morrow.  I  wrote  it  for  the  chance  of  lie  said  little  more,  and  soon  went  away, 
your  being  out.  There  seems  but  little  pro-:  Oh  !  he,  too, thinks  like  Paul,  that  Lawrence 
spect  of  a  dissolution,  and  time  hangs  heavily  has  sinned  deeply,  and  would  avoid  the  sub- 
on  my  hands  ;  so,  if  you  and  Mr.  Mathewson  ject,  I  thought  to  myself,  as  I  pondered  over 
will  give  me  the  pleasure  of  your  society  for  i  the  visit  ;  and  I  wondered  if  Sir  Edward  dis- 
to-morrow  evening  at  least,  I  shall  be  quite  )  liked  me  for  mentioning  Lawrence  so  shame- 
delighted."  i lessly. 

CHAPTER  THE   FOURTH." 

SIR  EDWARD  was  like  a  flash  of  lightning 


I  felt  that  I  ought  to  respond  to  this  in- 
vitation  with    some  very  civil  thanks  ;  but  j 

the  thought  that  came  uppermost  in  my  ;  striking  across  my  quiet  path.  Everything 
miud  was  of  surprise  at  Sir  Edward's  want  I  in  rny  daily  life  lost  its  brightness.  We  saw  a 
of  occupation.  !  good  deal  of  him,  and  soon  I  began  to  feel  those 

"  All  your  tenants  would  be  so  glad  to  see  '  days    which   passed    without    meeting   him, 
you,"  I  said,  hesitatingly  ;  "  if  you   have  so  j  long  and  dreary.     Each  day  I  liked  his  face 


much  spare  time,  I  mean.' 


better ;  and  the  look  of  passion,  that  I  had 


"Do  you  think  they  would  1"  replied  Sir   at  lirst  noticed  in  it,  seemed,  by  degrees,  to 
Edward,  looking  surprised  at  my  daring  to  give  place  to  one  of  gentleness  and  kindness. 


hint  at  his  neglect  of  duty  as  a  landlord, 
have  always  transacted  business  with  them 
through  my  agent.     Still,  perhaps,  they  might 


Gradually,  too,  tales  of  recent  kind  deeds 
amongst  his  tenantry,  took  the  place  of  the 
reports  which  had  been  rife  in  Lichendale 


care  to  see  me,  though  I  can't  say  the  anxiety  j  before  his  return,  of  his  dissipation  at  Borne, 
to  meet  is  mutual.  The  farmers  round  Lichen-  :  I  sometimes  wondered  if  my  few  words  were 
dale  must  be  a  very  dull  set  of  people.  Can  the  cause  of  his  kindly  intercourse  with  the 
you  tell  me  what  character  I  bear  here,  Miss  poor  people  ;  but  I  checked  myself  quickly 
Mathewson  1  You  must  know  my  tenants  in  this  presumptuous  supposition,  and  attri- 
well.  Do  those  in  the  town,  for  instance,  bated  the  change  to  his  natural  good  feel- 
hold  me  very  low  in  their  righteous  estima-  ing.  At  any  rate,  it  could  hardly  be  to  curry 
tion,  pray  ]  Have  reports  unfavourable  to  favour  with  his  constituents  ;  for,  all  chance 
me  travelled  from  Italy  1 "  he  said,  with  a  of  a  speedy  dissolution  of  Parliament  seemed 
bitterness  which  a  smile  faintly  concealed.  ;  past. 

"  I  do  riot  know  if  they  love  you  at  present ; !  He  seemed,  to  my  astonishment,  to  care  to 
for  it  is  difficult  to  love  those  one  never  sees.  •  talk  to  me  even  more  than  to  Paul,  whose  pre- 
No  !  no  !  I  don't  mean  that,"  I  added  quickly, '  judice  against  him  never  quite  wore  off.  Paul 
thinking  of  Lawrie ;  "  but  it  would  be  difficult ;  — if  ever  I  ventured  to  express  any  of  my 


for  them  to  love  one  who  has  left  them, 
and  shown  no  interest  in  their  welfare.  I 
know  that  they  are  a  good  and  grateful  set  of 
people,  and  that  you  might  easily  win  their 
affection  I  am  sure." 

"  I   was    thinking  of   their  good    esteem 
merely  as  regarded  the  probabilities  of  my 


boundless  admiration  for  Sir  Edward's  wit  or 
genius — checked  me,  and  reminded  me  of  all 
we  had  heard  against  his  character. 

"  I  can  believe  him  passionate,  Paul ;  but 
surely  he  is  nothing  worse." 

"  Passion  is  a  fearful  thing,  Helena,"  Paul 
would  reply ;  "and  I  believe  Sir  Edward  to 


being  elected,  if  there  should  be  a  dissolution,"  j  be  selfish — more  from  habit  than  dispositioi 
said  Sir  Edward,  earnestly  ;  "  but  you  make  j  perhaps  ;  but  still  inexcusably  selfish." 
me  feel  ashamed  of  myself.    I  ought  to  con- 1      "He  has  had  no  motive  for  self-denial, 
sider  it  more  as  a  proof  of  my  having  been  i  most  likely,"  I  urged. 

a  good  landlord  to  them,  and  less  as  a  means  j  One  beautiful  evening — it  was  then  the 
of  my  own  success  in  life.  I  shall  take  your  i  month  of  June — I  set  out  to  walk  by  a  short 
hint  ;  meanwhile.  I  am  confoundedly  disap-  cut  through  the  park,  to  see  a  woman  who 
pointed  at  Parliament  having  settled  down  j  was  ill,  and  to  whom  I  was  taking  some 
again  so  quietly.  I  had  quite  worked  myself  |  things.  I  hurried  along ;  for  I  was  late.  Paul 


up  into  a  fever  of  imagination,  at  the  thoughts 
of  iny  contesting  the  election  with  Colonel 
Peterson." 

"  You  left  Borne  on  purpose  to  stand  for 
Lichemiale,  did  you  not  ?" 


had  set  out  some  time  before  to  the  church, 
where  there  was  service  that  evening,  and  I 
knew  he  would  be  vexed  if  I  were  not  in  time 
for  it.  I  had  got  into  a  way  of  always  looking 

evening, 


out    for  Sir    Edward ;    and,    that 

;  Yes,"  said  Sir  Edward,  musingly,  and  his  although  I  had  to  walk  quickly,  I  could 
face  brightened  with  some  unspoken,  sunny :  not  refrain  from  stopping  every  now  and 
recollection  of  the  Eternal  City.  j  then  to  see  if  he  was  in  sight.  I  met  the 

"  Did  you  know  my  brother  Lawrence  |  curate  hastening  to  the  church.  I  quickened 
there?"  I  asked  quickly,  for  1  was  afraid  of  my  steps,  and  determined  not  to  stop  again 
my  courage  failing  me  if  I  did  not  grasp  at  till  I  reached  the  cottage.  Nothing  stiirtios 
the  first  opportunity  of  asking  the  question  one  so  much  as  the  sudden  fulfilment  of  sunx; 
which  Paul  had  ao  strongly  discountenanced,  present  dream  that  hope  has  conjured  up. 


Charles  Dicken*.  I 


HELENA  MATHEWSON. 


[July  4.!  as;.]     17 


And,  as  I  walked  along,  fancying  what  I  should 
do  and  say  if  Sir  Edward  were  to  appear,  I 
was  startled  by  the  well-known  canter  of  his 
horse.  My  heart  beat  wildly.  I  thought  it 
would  have  burst.  The  hoofs  struck  louder 
and  louder  on  the  grass,  as  the  horse  bounded 
towards  me,  but  1  did  not  turn  round  again. 
I  longed  to  see  if  it  really  were  Sir  Edward, 
or  whether  I  was  mistaken  ;  but  I  felt  that 
I  was  scarlet,  and  I  bent  my  head  under  my 
lint,  and  tried  to  hide  my  blushes.  Sir 
Edward  sprang  from  his  horse,  and  stopped 
me.  1  do  not  know  now  exactly  what  he 
said.  Even  then  I  caught  at  its  meaning 
from  his  face  rather  than  heard  his  words  ; 
for  my  brain  reeled — the  trees  seemed  to 
rock,  and  the.  light  to  quiver  and  fade  before 
my  eyes.  Faint  and  dizzy,  I  thought  I  must 
have  fallen  to  the  ground  at  his  feet ;  but 
Sir  Edward  saw  how  white  I  grew,  and 
passed  his  strong  arm  round  me.  I  think 
he  did  not  dislike  my  weakness  ;  for  as  we 
stood  there,  he  told  me  how,  from  his  first 
look  at  my  face  he  had  liked  me,  and  cared 
to  see  me  again,  and  that  he  now  loved 
me  dearly,  and  wanted  me  to  promise  to 
be  his  wife.  It  was  strange  to  me,  and 
yet  very  sweet,  to  be  spoken  to  with  such 
loving  tenderness.  It  brought  back  to 
my  mind  the  days  when  I  had  my  father 
and  Lawrence  to  caress  me  ;  and,  mistily, 
there  uprose  a  dim  remembrance  of  one, 
holding  me  tight  in  her  dying  grasp,  pressing 
long,  soft  kisses  on  the  little  cheek  she  had 
wetted  with  her  tears  ;  for,  with  such  gentle 
words  and  ways  as  a  mother  might  use  to  a 
frightened  child,  did  Sir  Edward  strive  to 
soothe  me,  till  my  faintiiess  passed,  and  he 
had  gained  my  answer. 

The  church  bells  stopped. 

"  I  must  go,  Sir  Edward,  or  Paul  will  be 
so  vexed  ?" 

"  You  shall  neither  go  to  church,  nor  call 
me  Sir  Edward,"  he  said,  smiling ;  and  detain- 
ing me  with  playful  force,  he  made  me 
sit  down  on  a  low  ledge  of  rock  that 
pierced  the  grass  close  by,^  cushioned  with 
soft,  purple  thyme,  and  golden-starred  money- 
wort. "Helena,"  he  continued,  his  eyes 
pleading  more  earnestly  than  his  words, 
"  can  you  forgive  the  wild,  wicked  youth 
that  I  have  spent  1  Will  you  strive  to  forget 
what  I  have  been,  and  learn  to  think  of  me 
only  as  I  now  am  :  pardoning  all  that  I  have 
done  wrong  for  the  sake  of  my  true,  deep 
love?" 

I  did  not  answer.  I  hardly  heard  his  last 
•words.  A  sudden  doubt  had  filled  my  mind, 
that  cast  a  dark  shadow  across  the  sunshine 
of  my  happiness. 

"  When  you  ask  me  to  be  your  wife,  Sir 
Edward,"  I  said,  trying  not  to  dread  his 
answer,  "do  you  remember  the  shame  that 
Paul  says  attaches  to  our  name  1  Do  you 
remember  that  my  youngest  brother  died  in 
a  duel?" 

Sir  Edward  started. 


"Those  are  your  brother's  rigid  no- 
tions, Helena — very  orthodox  no  doubt — 
but  they  are  not  mine.  In  this  peaceful  place, 
perhaps,  duelling  seems  a  terrible  thing  ;  but 
it  is  nonsense,  of  Mr.  Mathewson  to  talk  of 
it  so.  No  stain  inflated  on  your  name  from 
that — though  if  it  did — still  I  would  marry 
you." 

"I  have  always  thought  Paul  judged  Lawrie 
too  harshly,"  I  said,  "and  I  am  glad  you 
think  the  same.  Did  you  first  like  my  face 
because  it  reminded  you  of  Lawrence's,  Sir 
Edward?" 

Sir  Edward  answered  me  with  a  gay  laugh ; 
but  his  voice  trembled. 

I  wished  the  church  bells  to  ring  again, 
with  their  peaceful,  booming  sound.  There 
seemed  something  half  unholy  in  the  light, 
careless  way  in  which  he  had  spoken  of  duel- 
ling ;  although  intended  to  quiet  my 
doubts.  It  felt  to  me — yes  !  I  am  sure  that 
it  is  not  my  present  fancy — it  felt  to  me  at 
that  moment,  as  if  Lawrence  stood  unseen 
between  me  and  Sir  Edward.  The  wind, 
chill  and  damp,  rustled  through  the  trees, 
with  a  dreary,  shuddering  sound.  Sir  Edward 
rose,  and  walked  apart  for  a  few  minutes. 

"  Go  home,  dear  little  Helena,"  he  said,  at 
length  ;  "  I  shall  come  and  see  your  brother 
to-morrow." 

I  got  home  quickly,  and  sat  iu  the  twilight 
waiting  lor  Paul. 

.  CHAPTER   THE  FIFTH. 

I  HAD  half  feared  that  Paul  might  refuse 
his  consent  to  our  engagement ;  but  I  was 
mistaken.  His  opinion  of  Sir  Edward  had 
that  very  day  been  greatly  improved  by  some- 
thing he  had  heard  in  the  town — some  kind 
or  honourable  deed,  I  forget  exactly  what  ; 
and,  with  many  admonitions  as  to  my  future 
conduct,  and  not  a  few  reproofs  for  past  mis- 
demeanours, he  gave  a  slow,  solemn  consent. 

The  few  weeks  of  my  engagement  were 
perfect  happiness  to  me.  Before,  I  had  had 
no  one  to  sympathise  with  me  in  all  my  daily 
joys  and  sorrows,  or  in  my  deeper  feelings  ; 
but,  now,  Edward  would  listen  with  un- 
tiring patience  and  ready  sympathy  to  any- 
thing that  came  into  my  head.  Only  about 
Lawrence  I  never  talked  to  him.  Paul's  opi- 
nions— although  I  could  not  accept  them — had 
yet  sufficient  power,  by  their  firm  persistency, 
to  shake  my  confidence  in  my  own  ;  and  I 
dreaded  lest  Edward's  pride  should  ever 
turn  and  rebel  at  the  remembrance  of  what 
Paul  called  our  tarnished  name,  and  felt  glad 
that  Sir  Edward  himself  never  alluded  to  the 
subject,  of  which  I  feared  to  remind  him. 
Paul's  grave,  sullen  manners  hardly  vexed 
me  now  ;  for  I  knew  it  was  but  to  bear  with 
them  for  an  hour  or  so,  and  that  in  the  next 
Edward  would  be  at  my  side.  He  awoke  my 
interest  in  a  thousand  new  things.  To  be 
his  fit  companion,  I  felt  I  must  read  books 
which  I  had  never  even  seen,  and  these  he 
gladly  lent  me  from  the  library  at  the  Hall. 


18     Uuly  -t.  is-,:.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  &T 


One  day  wlieu  I  was  there,  and  he  was  hunting 
up  some  volume  for  me,  my  eye  was  attracted 
to  a  drawer  which  was  partly  open.  I  looked 
into  it.  It  was  full  of  beautiful  gems,  deli- 
cate enamels,  and  mosaics,  that  he  had 
brought  from  Italy ;  and,  in  the  furthest 
corner,  glittering  in  the  darkness,  lay  some 
quaintly  carved  pistols. 

"Shut  that  drawer,  Helena!"  said  Sir 
Edward,  fiercely,  turning  round  suddenly, 
and  set-ing  where  I  stood. 

I  obeyed,  and  laughingly  asked  if  it  was  a 
second  Blue  Beard's  cupboard.  But  I  got  no 
answer,  and  when  I  looked  round,  Sir  Edward 
was  fixedly  watching  me,  all  colour  gone  from 
his  cheeks — all  tenderness  from  his  eyes. 

Did  you  again  stand  between  and  part  us, 
Lawrence  ? 

Edward  had  promised  to  walk  with  me 
on  the  sands,  on  the  evening  of  the  day 
but  one  before  that  fixed  for  my  wedding.  I 
was  punctual  to  my  appointment.  The  stable 
clock  at  the  Hall  rung  out  eight  as  I  reached 
the  bridge  which,  crossing  the  river,  leads 
into  the  park,  and  which  was  our  usual 
trysting-place  ;  but  no  Edward  was  there. 
I  waited  till  nine  o'clock,  and  then,  frightened 
at  his  not  coming,  ran  to  the  Hall  with  beat- 
ing heart  and  dark  misgivings. 

Sir  Edward  was  in  the  library,  but  very  busy, 
the  servant  said,  in  answer  to  iny  inquiry. 
He  could  not  be  too  busy  to  see  me,  I 
thought,  so  I  heeded  not  what  else  the  man 
said,  but  went  quickly  to  the  library. 

"  Colonel  Peterson  is  dead  ! "  said  Sir  Ed- 
ward eagerly  when  I  burst  into  the  room, 
"  I  am  sorry  I  have  broken  my  appointment, 
but  these  gentlemen,"  and  he  bowed  to  two 
whom  I  recognised  as  leading  people  in  our 
little  town,  "  have  already  honoured  me  with 
a  request  that  I  shall  supply  his  place.  You 
had  better  go  home  now."'' 

I  felt  sad  as  I  walked  home.  It  was 
wrong,  however,  I  knew,  to  mind  that  Sir 
Edward  seemed  engrossed  in  this  sudden 
prospect  of  entering  the  political  field,  where 
he  longed  to  distinguish  himself ;  and  I 
made  many  resolutions  not  to  think  of  my 
own  claims,  or  to  mind  how  I,  for  a  while, 
might  be  discarded. 

Our  marriage  was  put  off.  Sir  Edward 
was  fully  occupied  with  the  chances  of 
his  election.  Paul  went  up  to  London, 
and  I  begged  him  not  to  hasten  home  ;  for  I 
determined  to  conquer  the  old  feeling  of  lone- 
liness which  was  creeping  over  me,  and  not 
to  own  its  power  by  requiring  him  as  a  com- 
panion. Two  or  three  days  after  he  had  left 
me,  I  was  sitting  in  the  evening  reading  in 
the  drawing-room.  The  morning  of  that  day 
had  been  sunny  and  bright;  but,  in  the  evening, 
a  heavy,  grey  mist  had  closed  round  the  dale, 
and  sad  feelings  of  depression  had  come  over 
me.  Edward  had  been  only  once  to  see  me 
in  my  solitude  ;  and,  in  that  short  visit,  he  had 
seemed  abstracted  and  half-longing  to  be 
gone.  I  knew  that,  fair  as  his  chance  was, 


there  was  yet  need  for  exertion,  as  two  other 
candidates  had  corne  forward.  I  knew  that  he 
was  much  occupied  ;  still  it  was  difficult  to 
keep  my  resolution  of  not  minding  how  much 
he  might  seem  to  neglect  me.  The  wind  and 
rain  sounded  so  dreary,  and  my  heart  was  so 
heavy,  that  at  length  1  buried  my  face  in  my 
hands  and  sobbed. 

CHAPTER   THE   SIXTH. 

A  RING  at  the  door  startled  me.  I  wiped 
away  my  tears.  It  must  be  Edward.  How 
hasty  and  unjust  I  had  been  !  I  rose  to  meet 
him,  but  instead  of  Edward  I  saw  Paul. 
"  Helena,"  he  said,  "  before  I  had  even 
time  to  exclaim  at  his  sudden  appearance,  or 
almost  to  notice  his  wet,  disordered  dress,  "  I 
have  heard  some  dreadful  news  in  London, 
and  I  have  hastened  straight  home  to  tell 
you  it — to  warn  and  save  you." 

"  Oh  !  tell  me  quickly,  Paul,"  I  gasped  ; 
"  what  is  it  ?  Do  not  stop  to  break  it 
to  me,  but  tell  me.  Anything  is  better  than 
suspense." 

"  Bear  it  bravely  then,  Helena,"  he  said  ; 
but  he  himself  was  pale  and  trembling,  and 
as  he  continued,  his  voice  sunk  to  a  low, 
hoarse  whisper, — "  Sir  Edward  Stamford  is 
Lawrence's  murderer." 

I  uttered  a  fierce  contradiction  ;  and  I  felt, 
defiantly  indignant. 

"Alas,  Helena!"  said  Paul,  "the 
person  who  told  me — a  Signer  Corti — 
stood  beside  Lawrence  as  his  second  in  the 
duel ;  but  had  promised  him,  as  he  lay  dying,, 
never  to  reveal  by  whose  hand  he  fell ;  for 
the  challenge  had  been  tauntingly  given,  and 
the  offence  pitilessly  avenged.  The  quarrel 
arose  about  some  girl  they  both  admired — 
a  Miss  Graham — and  Lawrence  knew,  I  sup- 
pose, what  shame  would  clog  his  adver- 
sary's steps  were  his  crime  known." 

"  Yes,  Lawrence's  generosity  would  be  true 
till  death,"  I  broke  in,  "  but,  oh  !  that  man 
must  be  deceiving  us ;  it  cannot  be  Sir 
Edward  who  has  done  this  cruel  deed." 

"He  showed  me  the  letter,  Helena,  in 
which  Lawrence  asked  him  to  be  his  second, 
and  in  which  Sir  Edward's  name  was  men- 
tioned. Nay,  he  had  even  the  pistols  with 
him  in  London,  which  had  been  Sir  Edward's, 
and  bore  his  crest  and  initials,  for  they  had 
changed  weapons  before  fighting.  Lawrence's 
must  be  in  Sir  Edward's  possession,  no  doubt ; 
they  were  that  clumsy  old  pair  that  my 
father  had  mended  up  for  him. 

"  1  have  seen  them,"  I  said.  Alas  !  I  could 
no  longer  doubt  Paul's  statement ;  for,  with 
fearful  distinctness,  the  scene  in  the  Hall- 
library  flashed  back  upon  my  mind — the  open 
drawer,  the  bright  pistols,  Sir  Edward's  face, 
rigid  arid  white  with  alarm — -and  I  wondered 
how  even  my  trustful  love  could  have  blinded 
me  to  the  truth  for  so  long. 

"  Corti  would  never  have  broken  his  pro- 
mise, Helena,  if  it  had  not  been  necessary  to 
do  so,  to  save  you  from  marrying  your 


Cileries  Dicker*.! 


HELENA  MATHEWSON. 


[July  4, 1357.] 


brother's  murderer.     Report   had   told  him 
what  you  were  about  to  do." 

"  '  To  save  me  from  it,'  Paul,"  I  exolaimed, 
"  what  do  you  mean  'I " 

"  Is  it  possible,  you  misunderstand  me  1 ' 
he  said.  "  I  mean  that  your  duty  and  your 
natural  affection  ought  to  strengthen  you 
to  renounce  Sir  Edward.  I  can  hardly 
believe  that  you  will  find  it  a  difficult  task,' 
he  added,  bitterly, "  not  to  love  your  brother's 
murderer." 

"  I  cannot  take  back  my  love,  Paul.  I 
never  gave  it  for  any  definite  reason  ;  it 
•was  sent  like  some  blessed  instinct,  and  now, 
though  I  shudder  to  think  what  he  is,  I  cannot 
— cannot  part  from  Edward.  It  may  be 
wicked  and  unnatural  of  me  ;  but  I  cannot ! " 
Paul  groaned  aloud  with  horror.  "  Why  did 
I  ever  allow  this  engagement  ? "  he  mut- 
tered to  himself. 

"  Only  think  of  the  terrible  remorse  he 
must  have  suffered,  dear  Paul,"  I  pleaded, 
trying  to  be  calm. 

"  I  cannot  count,  Helena,  his  so  cruelly  de- 
ceiving you,  as  remorse.  No  :  you  must  and 
shall  break  off  this  engagement.  His  guilt 
has  cancelled  any  promise  you  can  have 
made  him." 

"I  am  stronger -hearted  than  I  seem," 
I  said :  "  and,  although  the  whole  world  cry 
out  and  condemn  me,  I  will  stand  by  him, 
comforting  him,  and  strengthening  him  to  a 
right  repentance.  I  know  you  can  tear  and 
keep  me  away  now  ;  but,  when  I  am  of  age, 
I  will  spring  free  from  you  and  return  to  Sir 
Edward." 

I  stood  there  firm  and  resolute.  A  deep 
pain  was  at  my  heart,  and  terror  struggled 
with  my  love  ;  but  still  it  lived  imperiously 
strong,  bound  up,  as  it  seemed,  with  my  life. 
Paul  was  silent. 

"  Good  night,"  I  said,  and  moved  towards 
the  door. 

He  detained  me  by  the  arm. 
"  Hear ! "  he  said,  and  his  voice  was 
cruelly  calm,  "  the  determination  to 
which  your  obstinacy  forces  me  ;  and  from 
which  no  earthly  power  shall  make  me 
flinch.  If  you  persist  in  your  refusal  to 
break  off  with  Sir  Edward,  I  will  make 
known  his  guilt  in  every  home  around.  No 
child  but  shall  point  at  him,  and  cry, 
'  Murderer  ! '  no  mother  but  shall  pray  that 
her  daughter  may  not  live  to  love  like  you. 
Dp  yoa  think,  Helena,  that  the  people  of 
Lichendale  will  then  choose  him,  his  name 
blood-stained  and  blackened,  for  their  repre- 
sentative 1  They  will  not— they  shall  not— 
if  my  words  have  power  to  move  them.  Mur- 
derer— deceiver  as  he  is,  what  should  it 
matter  to  him  who  has  lost  heaven,  if  this 
chance  of  earthly  success  escape  him  ?  I 
place  it  in  your  power  to  prevent  this  :  make 
your  choice." 

CHAPTER  THE  SEVENTH. 

I  STAGGERED  up    to  my   own  room,   and 


threw  myself  on  the  bed.  I  lay  sobbing  in 
th-e  darkness  till  Paul  heard  me,  and  came 
to  me.  I  would  not  listen  to  him  ;  but  turned 
away  with  angry  dread.  When  he  had  left 
uie,  I  rose  from  my  bed,  went  to  the  open 
window,  and,  leaning  out,  strove  to  see 
through  black  vacancy  the  Hall,  where  Sir 
Edward  was  sleeping,  ignorant  of  my  wild 
despair.  The  night-air  cooled  my  burning 
cheeks,  and  the  peaceful  silence,  only  broken 
by  the  roar  of  the  distant  tkie,  stilled  my 
passionate  grief.  I  knelt  down  and  prayed.  I 
prayed  th?,t  my  love  might  be  unselfish,  and 
that  I  might,  if  necessary,  be  strong  enough 
to  sacrifice  my  own  happiness  to  his. 

Slowly  but  surely  the  conviction  stole  upon 
me  that,  to  do  right,  I  must  give  him  up. 
I  tried  to  resist  it.  I  grappled  with  it  ;  but 
in  vain.  It  mastered  me.  The  impetuosity  of 
his  love  had  been  trampled  down  by  his 
ambition.  I  did  not  love  him  the  less  for  this. 
It  merely  made  me  long  that,  when  his  ambi- 
tion was  gratified,  I  might  be  taught  how  to 
win  back  his  first  great  love.  Paul  had  acted 
with  cruel  and  unerring  foresight,  when 
he  had  made  the  alternative  of  my  re- 
fusing to  give  up  Sir  Edward  the  almost 
certain  loss  of  his  election,  and  he  had  rightly 
guessed  the  conclusion  I  should  work  out 
in  my  own  mind.  For  I  felt  that  Sir 
Edward,  triumphant  in  his  election,  and 
carried  by  it  into  new  scenes  and  society, 
would  soon  forget  me,  and  any  pain  resigning 
me  might  at  first  cost  him. 

The  dawn  crept  slowly  on,  and  the  great 
white  lilies,  that  I  had  planted  out  in  the 
garden  to  make  it  gay  for  Paul  when  I 
should  be  gone,  grew  into  distinctness,  point- 
ing with  their  golden  fingers  towards 
heaven.  I  still  knelt  by  the  window,  praying 
that  I  might  not  shrink  from  the  sacrifice. 

What  Sir  Edward  answered,  when  Paul 
wrote  to  him  to  tell  him  of  my  determination 
to  break  off'  the  engagement,  I  was  never 
told  exactly  ;  but  I  fancy  his  reply  consisted 
chiefly  of  thanks  for  the  assurance,  which  I 
had  made  Paul  promise  to  give,  that  his 
secret  should  not  escape  through  us.  I  had 
asked  Paul  to  write,  because  I  could  not 
have  borne  to  do  so  without  giving  any 
explanation,  and  the  only  true  one  would 
nave  bound  Sir  Edward  in  honour  to 
lold  to  his  engagement. 

For  several  days  after  that  terrible  night 
I  lay  in  a  death-like  stupor.  The  nierry 
church-bells  woke  me  from  it. 

"  Is  it  my  wedding-day  to-day  ?  "  I  asked, 
as  I  sickened  back  into  half-conscious- 
ness. 

"  Oh,  Miss  Helena  !  "  said  Jane,  who  had 
watched  with  Paul  by  me,  "I  am  right  glad 
;o  hear  your  voice  again.  It's  no  wedding. 
The  bells  are  ringing  for  Sir  Edward— Sir 
Edward,  Miss." — tihe  guessed  rightly  that 
name  would  rouse  me.  "  He's  won  the 
election,  and  he's  given  the  ringers  a  power 
o'  money." 


20        [July  4,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


by 


A  flood  of  recollection  was  let  loose.     It  draw  us  closer  together  than  I  could  once 

wa-  all  too  true  !     I  turned  ray  face  to  the  have  deemed    possible;     and    I   strove  my 

•wall — I  wept  bitter  tears.     "Oh!  that  I  had  utmost  to  hold  fast  what   I  had  gained  by 

&  mother  to  comfort  me."  them. 


CHAPTER   THE   EIGHTH. 

THREE  years  passed.  As  soon  as  I  re- 
covered from  my  illness  I  resumed  my  house- 
hold duties.  1  even  went  out  in  the  town, 
after  I  heard  of  Sir  Edward's  departure  for 
London  ;  for  I  knew  that  the  longer  it  was 
deferred  the  more  painful  would  it  be  to  me 
to  revisit  the  places  which  his  presence  had 
made  so  dear.  I  strove  hard  to  conquer  my 
grief.  In  the  daytime,  by  constant  occupa- 
tion, to  which  I  forced  myself,  I  contrived 
to  drive  it  from  me ;  but,  at  night,  when  I 
was  alone,  it  sprang  from  its  hiding-place, 
like  some  horrid  spectre,  and  stared  me  in 
the  face  with  relentless  eyes.  Sir  Edward 
seldom  came  to  Lichendale,  and,  during  these 
rare  visits,  I  never  left  the  house.  His  career 
in  public  was  brilliant.  Had  I  not  paid  for  it 
dearly  ?  Even  in  his  absence  he  continued 
to  do  much  good  amongst  his  poorer  tenants; 
and  if  ever,  by  chance,  they  forgot  my  past 
history  and  in  my  visits  named  him  to  me,  it 
was  with  love  and  respect  for  his  character. 
Jf,  instead  of  receiving  this  approbation,  he 
had  been  branded  and  condemned  by  the 
•world,  would  he  not  have  sunk  in  his  own 
self-respect,  and  have  verified  the  unjustly 
harsh  opinion  of  the  public  1 
*  My  love  for  him  never  wavered.  The  recol- 
lection of  those  few  happy  weeks  when  I 
had  been  his,  gradually  became  more  and 
more  dream-like  ;  but  my  love  continued 
unquenched.  For  many  months  Paul  and 
3  led  a  life  of  silent  antagonism.  Although 
I  tried  to  forgive,  I  could  not  forget  what 
he  had  done,  and  I  do  not  think  I  considered 
enough  how  little  he  had  ever  understood, 
or  even  been  capable  of  understanding, 
my  devotion  to  Sir  Edward,  or  how  much 
ol  his  childish  experiences  had  been  calcu- 
lated to  increase  his  naturally  harsh,  unfor- 
giving disposition.  Hannah,  loving  Lawrence 
the  most  for  his  little  winsome,  sportful 
ways,  had  often  unknowingly  checked  Paul's 
affectionate  impulses.  Once  as  I  watched  him 
reading,  and  noticed  the  lines  of  care  and 
thought  deepening  on  his  face,  I  was  startled 
into  a  painful  consciousness  of  what  a  love- 
less life  we  led  ;  only  brother  and  sister  to 
each  other  as  we  were.  I  was  humbled  by 
my  sorrow,  and  I  did  not  repress  the  thought 
that  perhaps  it  was  my  fault  for  always 
striving  and  chafing  against  his  will,  instead 
of  showing  him  a  loving  submission.  With  a 
sudden  impulse  I  sprang  up,  and  flung  my 
•inns  round  his  neck.  "1  do  love  you,  Paul," 
I  murmured,  "  I  really  do."  I  feared  he 
might  put  me  coldly  from  him.  I  felt  half 
ashamed  that  I  had  not  restrained  myself; 
but  his  low,  "  God  bless  you  for  this, 
Helena,"  dispelled  all  doubts,  and  thrilled 
me  with  joy.  Those  few  words  seemed  to 


CHAPTER   THE   NINTH. 

ONE  day  I  was  returning  slowly  home, 
after  a  morning  spent  at  the  school,  when  I 
saw  the  doctor  rush  past  me  without  a  not 
or  word  of  recognition.  A  servant  followed 
him,  hot  and  out  of  breath.  I  glanced  at  the 
livery — it  was  Sir  Edward's  ! 

"  Who  is  ill  at  the  Hall  ?  "  I  asked.  The 
man,  a  stranger  to  me,  stared  at  me  ;  for,  I 
suppose,  I  looked  wild  and  eager. 

"  Sir  Edward,"  he  said,  "  he's  got  a  fever. 
I  told  him  last  night  he  had  better  have 
the  doctor,  but  he  wouldn't  listen  to  me, 
and  now  he'll  want  the  doctor  and  the  parson 
both." 

Terror  seemed  to  give  me  strength.  I  got 
to  the  Hall  without  stopping  to  think.  I 
opened  a  side-door  that  I  knew  was  left 
unlocked,  and  sprang  up  the  wide  stairs,  and 
on — on — into  Sir  Edward's  presence.  A  wild, 
ringing  laugh  greeted  me — 

"  Ha  !  Helena  !  "  he  screamed  in  his  deli- 
rium, "  is  that  you  ?  and  where  is  Lawrence  'I 
— poor,  bleeding  Lawrence  !  "  His  eyes  glared 
with  fever. 

Paul  stood  at  the  bedside  ;  brought  there, 
faco  to  face  with  his  enemy,  by  a  summons 
which  he  had  not  dared  to  disobey — a  sum- 
mons to  give  spiritual  peace  and  comfort  to 
one,  who,  the  messenger  had  said,  lay  at  the 
point  of  death.  He  saw  me  as  I  entered ; 
but  he  did  not  send  me  away.  The  past  was 
forgotten  in  that  awful  present. 

Long,  weary  days  of  watching  followed. 
Out-of-doors,  I  remember,  everything  was  so 
bright  and  joyous  in  the  summer-weather. 
All  day  the  belling  of  the  deer,  and  the  low, 
sweet  notes  of  birds  calling  to  each  other, 
came  floating  through  the  open  window  into 
the  darkened  room  ;  and  I  could  hear1,  too, 
the  people  passing  through  the  park  laughing 
gaily  in  the  sunshine.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
full  measure  of  my  misery,  beneath  the 
weight  of  which  I  thought  my  heart  must 
surely  break,  were  but  a  little  drop  of  sor- 
row in  the  great  stream  of  glad  life,  that 
eddied  sparkling  on,  untroubled,  unpitying. 
It  was  terrible  to  see  Sir  Edward  suffer,  and 
to  be  able  to  give  him  no  relief:  to  hear 
him  shriek  in  his  delirium  like  cue  tor- 
mented, and  have  no  power  to  soothe.  Law- 
rence's death-scene  seemed  to  haunt  him  like 
a  ghastly  vision.  He  mentioned  his  name 
perpetually,  in  rapid,  incoherent  sentences, 
that  were  sometimes  half-Italian,  and  of  which 
I  could  only  guess  the  sad  meaning.  Often 
his  voice  sank  to  a  low  moaning  for  Helena  ; 
but,  when  I  came  forward  and  spoke  to  him — 
hoping  that  as  at  fii-st  he  would  recognise  me — 
he  shrunk  shuddering  away  with  shut  eyes, 
seeing  in  rne  only  my  likeness  to  Lawrence  ; 
whose  face,  as  he  last  looked  upon  it,  was 


Chatlct : 


HELENA  MATHEWSON. 


[July  4.  135;.]       21 


not,  I  think,  more  white  and  wild  than  mine 
became  in  those  hours  of  misery. 

It  was  during  the  second  night  of  our 
•watching  that  the  physician,  tor  whom  Paul 
had  telegraphed  from  London,  arrived.  I 
heard  the  hoarse  grating  of  the  carriage- 
wheels  over  the  gravel.  I  knew  that  he  was 
come,  and  with  him,  I  hardly  doubted,  relief 
for  Sir  Edward.  He  came  up-stairs  immedi- 
ately, and  entered  the  room  with  a  quiet, 
cautious  tread.  I  could  hardly  bear  the  sus- 
pense of  those  moments.  I  crept  out  into  the 
dark  ante-room, and  stood  there  straining  with 
expectation,  and  vainly  trying  to  forget  that  it 
was  for  a  verdict  of  life  or  death  that  I 
waited.  Sir  Edward's  great  dog  left  the  side 
of  the  door,  where  he  had  lain  ever  since  his 
master  had  been  taken  ill,  and  came  to  me 
Avith  a  strange,  piteous  whine. 

At  length  the  physician  left  the  patient's 
room,  and  Paul  followed  him,  pressing  him 
for  an  opinion.  They  did  not  see  me  standing 
there  in  the  faint  moonlight,  and  I  was 
too  anxious,  too  eager,  to  move ;  so  they 
spoke  out  the  cruel  truth  plainly, •and  I 
drank  in  their  words  as  some  poor  creature 
mad  with  thirst,  might  snatch  and  swallow 
poison. 

"  Did  you  say  there  was  no  hope  ] "  said 
Paul.  My  breath  came  and  went  quick. 

"Not  a  shadow,"  the  physician  replied; 
"  I  do  not  see  a  chance  of  recovery  with  that 
pulse,  and  T  am  not  apt  to  give  up  a  case. 
You  haven't  gained  much  by  bringing  me 
down  here,  you  see,"  he  added,  lightly,  as  he 
and  Paul  passed  on  into  the  gallery. 

I  tried  to  go  towards  the  room ;  but  my 
strength  failed.  I  sank  to  the  ground  like 
one  paralysed.  As  I  crouched  there,  iu  the 
darkness,  I  heard  my  name  loaded  with 
reproaches.  In  delirious  anguish  my  faith- 
lessness was  denounced  ior  killing  its  victim, 
and,  in  that  manner,  avenging  Lawrence. 
These  reproaches  had  enough  of  terrible  sense 
in  them  to  sound  more  than  mere  raving.*. 
But,  through  the  tumult  of  my  grief,  holy 
words  of  promise  rose  to  my  remembrance — 
"Ask,  and  it  shall  be  given  uuto  you."  I 
raised  my  hands  in  an  agony  of  supplication, 
and  prayed  for  Edward's  recovery  with 
intense  longing. 

I  do  not  know  why  I  longed  for  it  so  ear- 
nestly, remembering  always  as  I  did  that 
when  he  got  well  I  must  leave  him.  I  sup- 
pose I  had  unconsciously  some  expectation 
that,  if  lie  lived,  he  would  in  some  way  learn 
how  true  I  had  been  to  him  ;  and,  before  death, 
give  me  one  word  or  look  of  gratitude.  I 
rose,  strengthened  and  comforted,  and  went 
to  him. 

The  crisis  of  the  fever  passed.  Sir  Ed  ward's 
strength  had  been  spent  iu  the  fury  of  his 
delirium,  and  he  lay  prostrate  and  weak  as  a 
little  child  ;  but  he  lived,  my  prayers  were 
heard.  Death  had  hovered  very  near ; 
but  at  His  commands,  he  spread  his  black 
pinions  and  fled.  I  w.atcliec.1  on  day  and  night 


by  Sir  Edward  till  he  was  out  of  danger,  and 
his  consciousness  returned.  Then  Paul  bade 
me  go  home,  and  there  was  a  gentle  pity  in 
his  voice  that  filled  my  heart  with  a  ne'.v 
hope. 

He  still  stayed  at  the  Hall,  nursing  Sir 
Edward.  Twice  or  three  times  every  day 
he  sent  me  short  bulletins ;  and,  on  the  expec- 
tation of  these,  I  seemed  to  live.  Each  day  Sir 
Edward  was  getting  better.  Each  day  I  felt 
sure  that  Paul's  heart  was  softening  towards 
him,  arid  yearning  more  and  more  to  proffer 
forgiveness.  One  day  (it  was  more  than  a 
week  after  the  crisis)  Paul's  note  was  longer 
than  it  had  ever  been  before. 

"  I  have  told  Sir  Edward  evcrj'thing — my  threat 
which  Heaven  has  taught  me  to  repent,  and  your  sacri- 
fice. His  joy  when  I  told  him  why  you  had  parted 
from  him,  was  so  great  that  I  was  quite  afraid  lest  its 
effects  should  throw  him  back.  I  must  tell  you  what 
be  says  ;  for,  at  present  it  would  be  dangerous  for  him 
to  see  you.  He  declares,  that  I  was  quite  deceived  in 
thinking  that  he  felt  no  remorse  iu  meeting  us  ;  and 
that  it  was  only  from  a  strong  desire  to  make  every 
reparation  in  his  power,  that,  by  giving  me  this  living, 
he  insured  our  home  so  near  bis.  He  says,  that  ha 
bad  a  shuddering  reluctance  to  meet  those  whom  be 
bad  so  deeply  injured  ;  but  that,  directly  be  bad  seen 
you,  be  felt  it  impossible  to  stop  his  intercourse  with 
us.  lie  blames  himself  bitterly  for  the  sorrow  he  has 
caused  you  by  the  cowardly  concealment  of  his  crime 
when  be  engaged  himself  to  you.  When  he  heard  of 
your  determination  to  part  from  him,  he  naturally  con- 
cluded that  it  resulted  from  indignation  at  his  conduct, 
with  which  I  had  told  him  we  were  acquainted.  But 
he  now  knows  how  it  all  was.  He  says,  that  ever  since 
then  be  has  been  making  most  earnest  efforts  to 
subdue  the  passionate  heat  of  temper  which  drovo 
him  to  bis  crime ;  but  that  he  bad  determined  not  to 
plead  for  your  forgiveness  till  be  could  prove,  by  bis 
having  conquered  his  evil  disposition,  that  be  bad 
striven  hard  to  earn  it.  These  are  nearly  bis  words. 
I  believe  that  he  meant  to  have  seen  you,  to  tell  you 
all  this  himself,  during  this  visit  to  Licbendale;  and 
that  bis  anxiety  as  to  your  answer,  in  great  measure, 
brought  on  the  fever.  His  repentance  has  been  bitter}, 
but  a  clay  of  gladness  has  dawned. — Yours,  P.  M." 

My  tears  fell  fast  and  thick  as  I  finished 
this  letter,  but  through  them  I  saw- 
Lawrence's  eyes  shining  from  his  portrait 
on  the  wall,  —  bright  and  glad,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  as  if  his  spirit  spoke  through 
them,  rejoicing  with  me,  and  sanctioning  my 
perfect  happiness. 

"  Helena,"  said  Sir  Edward  to  me  the 
other  day,  "  miserable  as  those  three  years 
were,  even  if  it  were  possible,  I  would 
not  have  them  undone.  They  taught 
me  how  previous  you  were  ;  and,  in  striving 
to  win  you  back,  my  love  for  you  helped 
me  to  overcome  evil  in  many  a  fierce 
conflict." 

"  That  time  has  done  us  all  good,"  I  said. 
"  It  made  Paul  and  me  love  each  other,  as  we 
should  never  otherwise  have  done.  I  see 
now  how  sorrow  is  sent  with  divinely  mer- 
ciful purposes." 


22       [July  4, 1S57J 


HOUSEHOLD  WOHDS. 


[Conducted 


"O  baby,  baby,"  said  Edward,  catching 
up  our  little  girl  from  the  floor,  "  we  will 
never  let  you  marry  such  a  wicked  man  as 
Sir  Edward  Stamford,  though  mamma  has 
done  ao, — will  we  ?  " 


AT  THE  COULISSES  IN  PAEIS. 


THE  features  of  this  region  of  enchantment 
are  pretty  much  the  same  all  the  world  over, 
excepting  always  the  tawdry  efforts  of  pro- 
vincial theatriculism,  sure  and  fatal  a  waken  er 
from  all  romantic  notions.  In  the  wide 
domain  of  the  great  metropolitan  boards 
there  are  no  such  jarring  associations. 
The  colouring,  seen  afar  off  through  the 
misty  haze  always  floating  over  the  par- 
terre, is  softened  away  into  a  golden  vision  ; 
while  all  other  stage  trickeries  become  in- 
vested with  a  certain  dignity  that  forbids 
any  degrading  ideas.  It  is  one  magnificent 
sham,  in  which  all  believers  coming  to  wor- 
ship have  unbounded  faith,  and  would  grieve 
to  be  awakened  from  their  delusion.  Espe- 
cially is  there  a  certain  grandeur  in  the 
aspect  of  a  great  Paris  opera-house,  very  in- 
spiring; even  to  blaze  habitues,  when  impe- 
rial visitors  are  expected  to  occupy  the  grand 
loge  on  the  left,  and  the  stalls  below  are 
crowded  to  the  full,  and  the  balcony  tiers  are 
peopled  with  noble  ladies,  round  whom  float 
clouds  of  snowy  muslin — all  so  many  pictures 
in  gorgeous  gold  and  crimson  setting.  For 
everywhere  is  there  gold  and  crimson — golden 
shields  and  garlands  on  this  same  rich  crim- 
son ground.  There  is  a  flood  of  white  sub- 
dued light  from  lustres  diffusing  everything. 
The  grand  army  in  the  orchestra,  ranged 
in  many  long  files  behind  each  other,  are 
arrayed  in  gala  costume  —  white  ties  and 
evening  garments — to  do  honour  to  the 
august  presence  on  the  left,  soon  expected  to 
be  here.  By-and-by,  a  rustle  and  general 
flutter  running  round,  and  upturning  effaces  in 
the  parterre,  betoken  that  beneath  the  golden 
crown  and  bee  sprinkled  draperies  of  the  grand 
loge  visitors  have  arrived,  and  are  bestowing 
themselves  in  their  places.  Those  who  sit 
opposite  can  discern,  through  the  open  door, 
the  tall  figure  of  a  Cent  Garde,  keeping  watch 
and  ward  in  the  corridor.  After  an  instant's 
further  delay,  the  chef  appears  suddenly  in 
the  orchestra — a  man  with  high  bald  crown 
and  spectacles.  He  opens  his  music  hastily, 
and,  looking  around  him,  lifts  his  baton  in 
the  air.  Then,  one,  two,  three,  and  from  a 
lone,  mysterious  corner  rises  the  subdued 
tremolo  of  the  drum.  An  exalting,  soul- 
stirring  moment  that,  if  it  be  the  first  night 
of  a  new  opera — M.  Verdi's  Vfipres,  say — in 
which  the  Parisian  public  takes  exceeding 
delight. 

Supposing  it  now  to  have  reached  the  end 
of  the  opening  act,  and  that  the  parties  who 
purvey  that  ingenious  sheet,  L'Entreacte,  the 
evening  journals,  and  lorgnettes,  are  all  busy 


with  their  callings,  the  curious  stranger, 
looking  about  him,  will  note  that  m;my  are 
deep  in  those  evening  papers,  and  that  many 
more  seats  are  void,  and  garnished  round 
curiously  with  a  ligature  formed  of  a  white 
handkerchief.  This  is  but  a  sign  that  the 
absence  of  the  late  occupant  is  only  tempo- 
rary, and  that  he  will  shortly  return  and 
resume  his  rights.  But  he  will  likewise  be 
attracted  by  a  door  towards  the  right  of  the 
orchestra  opening  every  now  and  then,  and 
swinging  to  behind  men  of  all  ages  and  quali- 
ties. That  swinging  door,  he  will  be  told, 
leads  to  the  mystic  regions  of  the  Coulisses. 
Those  gentlemen  have  perpetual  entr6e  be- 
hind the  scenes  ;  and  it  is  by  them,  most 
likely,  that  the  white  mementoes  have  been 
left  on  the  parterre  seats. 

Behind  that  awful  door,  sits  always  a  stern 
Cerberus — stern,  that  is,  to  all  who  come 
without  just  title  of  entry,  but  otherwise 
endowed  with  persuasive  and  insinuating 
manners.  He  has  come  in  contact  with  so 
many  ranks  and  characters,  that  he  has 
grown-  in  some  sort  to  be  a  man  of  the  world. 
But,  in  matters  connected  with  duty  he  is 
utterly  inflexible.  To  those  whose  names  are 
wanting  on  the  little  roll  that  hangs  before 
him,  neither  prayers,  nor  soothing  persuasion, 
nor  gold  itself,  can  open  the  passage.  That 
man  is  known  to  be  incorruptible.  M.  Cer- 
berus is  not  to  be  seduced. 

Supposing,  however,  the  stranger  to  have 
cemented  friendly  relations  with  one  of  the 
orchestra, or  that  M.  le  Directeur  has  kindly 
furnished  him  with  a  passeport,  and  the  door 
has  swung-to  behind  him,  he  will  find  him- 
self, after  a  few  steps  forward,  in  a  very 
strange  and  novel  scene.  To  say  nothing  of 
the  mysteries  overhead — the  pulleys  and 
cordage,  like  the  rigging  of  a  great  ship,  the 
ponderous  bits  of  scenic  furniture  descending 
slowly,  the  figures  seen  high  in  the  air,  walking 
across  frail  bridges — he  will  be  more  puzzled 
with  the  stranger  scene  going  on  below. 
Here  is  a  flood  of  people  newly  entered  by 
that  same  swinging  door,  who  are  now  busy 
seeking  out  their  own  friends  and  familiars. 
Great  toppling  structures  are  being  moved 
forward  by  strong  arms  to  the  front.  Here 
are  singers  walking  to  and  fro,  ch.iunting 
their  parts  softly  to  themselves  ;  ballerinas 
disporting  fancifully,  for  practice  sake,  in  the 
centre  of  the  stage ;  captains  of  firemen, 
with  their  lieutenants  and  subordinates,  pry- 
ing curiously  into  out-of-the-way  corners 
and  by  places ;  M.  le  Directeur  himself, 
walking  up  and  down  thoughtfully — in  charm- 
ing spirits  if  the  house  be  crowded  to  incon- 
venience. There  must  be  added  to  this,  a 
perfect  Babel  of  many  tongues,  of  words  of 
command,  angry  chiding,  and  inextinguish- 
able laughter,  from  the  lively  groups  scat- 
tered over  the  stage.  In  the  midst  of 
all  this,  a  voice  is  heard  sounding  clear 
above  the  storm,  "Clear  the  stage,  messieurs 
et  mesdames !  the  curtain  is  about  to  rise." 


Charles  Dickene.] 


AT  THE  COULISSES  IN  PARIS. 


[July  4, 1357.1        23 


Clouds  of  muslin  float  away  airily  to  the  side. ! 
Gradually  the  little  groups  are  broken  up,  j 
and   a  stream   of   habitues  begins  to  flow  j 
steadily  through  the  swinging  door.    There  j 
are  signs  of  life  to  be  seen  in  the  prompter's 
little    music-book    opening,   as  it   were,    of 
itself.     The  chef  re-appears  in  his  place,  and 
all    is    ready  for  the   opening    of    act  the 
second. 

There  are,  however,  certain  risks  and  ills 
which  inexperienced  Coulisse  visitors  are  in 
some  measure  heir  to.  It  is  not  universally 
known  that  there  are  huge  balance-weights 
swinging  over-head,  by  way  of  counter- 
poise, the  cords  of  which  have  been  known 
to  give  way,  and  the  weights  to  come  crash- 
ing down  with  terrific  effect.  Now  and  then 
cords  and  blocks  drop  from  above,  with  a 
stray  man  occasionally.  Sometimes  a  trap 
will  open  suddenly  at  the  feet  of  a  curious 
observer,  and,  if  he  be  tempted  to  look  down 
and  see  what  may  be  coming  next,  he  may 
perhaps  find  himself  a  cheval  on  some  con- 
struction, and  borne  aloft  to  the  clouds — 
— thus,  for  once  in  his  life,  realising  his 
apotheosis.  The  toe  of  a  pirouetting  danseuse 
has,  before  now,  done  grievous  mischief  to  a 
bystander's  physiognomy.  To  such  pitfalls 
are  the  unthinking  exposed.  Therefore  has 
it  been  held  that  the  foremost  portion  of  the 
stage — namely  that  nearest  to  the  curtain — 
is  the  most  secure,  and  furthest  removed 
from  peril. 

Far  behind,  beyond  even  the  remotest  flat, 
may  be  noted  two  other  doors,  each  leading 
to  more  regions  of  mystery.  Thus  is  there 
mystery  within  mystery — wheels  within 
wheels.  One  of  these  opens  into  the  dancers' 
hall  and  tiring-rooms,  the  other  into  that 
set  apart  for  the  singers.  Once  on  a  time, 
this  singers'  room  was  a  glittering  salon  in 
the  famous  Hotel  de  Clioiseul,  and  still  shows 
the  rich  white  and  gold  adornments  of  that 
decorative  age.  At  present  it  is  a  bald  and 
desolate-looking  apartment,  its  only  furniture 
being  a  single  pianoforte  and  a  few  benches. 
For,  hither  resort,  each  in  their  turn,  the 
leading  artistes  to  make  their  early  ^pe- 
titions of  the  new  opera,  the  maestro  himself 
presiding.  But,  in  the  other  salle — that  on 
the  right — the  proceedings  are  of  a  more  stir- 
ring and  enlivening  quality.  It  is  always  bril- 
liantly illuminated  and  garnished  plentifully 
with  handsome  looking-glasses  reaching  to 
the  floor.  Here  congregate  the  dansenses 
and  their  intimates  in  noisy  groups.  Ambas- 
sadors, ministers,  peers,  deputies,  and  marshals 
of  France  are  to  be  seen  here,  night  after  night; 
Veteran  Bugeaud,  on  one  of  his  short  Alge- 
rian furloughs,  came  often  too.  Very  motley 
and  diverse  are  the  occupations  of  all  present. 
Some  are  busy  putting  a  last  finish  to  their 
toilette,  while  many  more  are  clustered  round 
an  ancient  and  generous  friend — affectionately 
known  as  papa — who  is  distributing  bon- 
bons and  other  sweet  confection.  Others, 
again,  whose  turn  to  go  on  will  come  round 


presently,  are  hard  at  work  practising  steps, 
putting  themselves,  as  their  phrase  runs,  en 
train.  For  this  purpose  specially,  are  fixed 
before  the  looking-glasses,  at  a  convenient 
height  from  the  ground,  certain  smooth 
blocks  of  wood.  To  such  elevation  will  the 
conscientious  danseuse  raise  her  foot,  and 
keep  it  there  poised  for  many  minutes.  This 
process  secures  proper  flexibility  for  what 
may  be  termed  the  pair  of  compasses 
manoeuvre.  After  a  fair  allowance  of  this 
exercise,  mademoiselle  takes  in  her  own 
hands  a  coquettish  little  watering-pot, 
and,  with  abundance  of  graces,  proceeds 
to  sprinkle  a  small  circle  in  front  of 
the  glass.  Wrapt  admirers  look  on  in 
ecstasy,  mademoiselle's  own  particular  wor- 
shipper holding  the  sacred  watering-pot. 
Then  follows  a  series  of  bold  springs — entre- 
chats, as  they  are  called — and  other  light 
gymnastics,  until  Monsieur  1'Avertisseur— 
there  is  no  such  degraded  being  as  a  call- 
boy — until  Monsieur  1'Avertisseur  draws 
near  and  informs  mademoiselle  that  her  hour 
has  come  ;  thereupon,  mademoiselle  delicately 
withdraws  certain  preservatives  against  dust 
and  other  foreign  matter — inimical  to  the 
tint  of  delicate  silken  hose — and  in  an  instant 
has  substituted  new  bright  satin  shoes  for 
the  more  elderly  ones  in  which  she  has  been 
practising.  The  worshipper  is  privileged  to 
stand  by,  and  looks  on  reverently  at  this 
toilette. 

Here,  too,  come  the  first-class  artistes,  in 
the  broad  daylight,  to  rehearse  and  receive  in- 
struction in  their  distinct  specialities  ;  for, 
there  is  a  reign  of  terrible  drudgery  at  those 
glittering  Coulisses,  side  by  side  with  that 
other  reign  of  spangles  and  enchantment. 
All  day  long,  there  is  a  treadmill  turning, 
which  is  worked  wearily  by  the  lofty  and 
lowly  of  the  profession.  All  must  bend 
to  this  stern  training  regimen,  and  Pale 
Mattre-de-danse — as  surely  as  Pallida  Mors— 
stamps  his  impartial  foot  alike  before  the 
premidre  of  the  ballerinas  as  before  the 
humblest  supernumerary  coryphee.  For  these 
there  is  no  private  salle  :  it  is  a  stern  law 
that  all  their  repetitions  shall  take  place  on 
the  stage  itself,  to  the  bald  accompaniment  of 
a  single  violin.  Very  dreary,  and  at  the 
same  time  very  curious,  are  the  scenes  at 
this  ballet  rehearsal,  in  dull  theatrical  day- 
light, if  only  from  the  strange  contrast  to  be 
seen  there.  Some  ladies  arrive  magnificently, 
in  their  carriages  drawn  by  English  horses, 
and  superbly  habited  in  costly  finery,  while 
near  them  stands  a  young  creature  in  mean, 
shabby  garments,  who  has  had  to  trudge  it 
from  some  remote  quartier.  The  stranger 
who  is  prying  curiously  about,  will  take  note 
of  their  bonnets  lying  together  upon  the 
table — one,  an  exquisite  little  construction, 
elegance  itself,  from  the  atelier  of  the  imperial 
modiste  ;  the  other,  a  faded,  flattened  thing 
beaten  out  of  all  shape,  and  washed  in  many 
a  deluge  of  rain.  Yet  does  mademoiselle 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[July  4,  ISi/.] 


4  her  humble  sister  with  singular  grace 
and  kindness,  and  suffer  herself  to  be  ad- 
i  the  same  easy  terms.  Further,  if 
the  poor  superuumoraire  has  met  with  some 
grievous  accident,  or  has  {'alien  sick  and  is 
thus  hindered  from  supporting  her  large 
family,  mademoiselle  has  been  often  known 
to  take  up  the  case  with  a  sort  of  furore, 
going  round  among  her  brother  and  sister 
artistes,  gathering  moneys  for  the  distress, >d, 
A  (iash  of  piety,  too,  occasionally  seasons  the 
light  manners  of  the  Coulisses,  most  of  the 
young  ladies  attending  mass  regularly  every 
Sunday,  and  being  otherwise  devout.  They 
may  be  found  burning  their  votive  candles 
be'lbre  Our  Lady's  altar,  in  the  hope  of  de- 
liverance from  some  little  trouble.  They  are 
P.  to  little  pilgrimages  to  holy  places, 
and  pray  earnestly,  poor  souls  !  too  often,  it 
is  to  be  feared,  that  some  erratic  lover  may 
be  given  back  to  them. 

Returning  again  to  this  day  rehearsal, 
which  may  be  likened  to  a  sort  of  bivouac, 
the  contemplative  stranger  will  find  many 
more  subjects  for  his  recreation.  Looking 
round  him,  he  will  discover  some  seated  in 
remote  corners,  deep  in  Sue  or  Paul  de  Kock, 
thus  diligently  improving  their  spare  minutes  ; 
some  others  are  keeping  close  to  maternal 
shelter  ;  while  many  more  are  reposing  their 
weary  limbs  on  sofas. 

Discipline  is  very  strictly  enforced  in  all 
stage  business.  During  rep6tition  a  certain 
amount  of  toleration  is  extended  to  mirth 
and  high  spirits  ;  but,  once  the  lamps  are 
lighted  and  the  audience  gathered  in  front, 
any  inattention  or  levity  is  visited  with 
severe  penalties  in  the  shape  of  heavy  fines. 
Mademoiselle  is  often  disagreeably  surprised, 
when  betaking  herself  to  the  treasurer's 
office,  at  finding  the  week's  salary 
sadly  reduced  by  these.  Oftentimes  a 
note  arrives  from  a  lady,  stating  that  she  is 
stricken  with  sudden  indisposition,  and  is 
consequently  obliged  to  forego  the  pleasure 
of  assisting  at  the  evening's  performance. 
This  ought  to  be  enough  for  the  direction, 
who  should  have  sympathy  for  the  fair 
sufferer  ;  but  the  direction  has  little  faith, 
being  a  dull  sort  of  body  much  given  to 
doubting,  and  so  sends  off  suspiciously  to 
know  if  mademoiselle  be  really  at  home  and 
coniined  to  her  room.  For  the  poor  con- 
valescent ha.'J  been  known  to  muster  strength 
:ient  for  a  little  dinner  at  the  Freres 
Provincanx  <<r  Maison  Dore,  and  have  occa- 
sionally been  seen,  when  actually  thought  to 
be  in  extremis,  sitting  in  a  stall  at  the  Fran- 
cais,  arrayed  in  toilette  most  ublouissante. 
But,  though  unreasonably  sceptical  at  times, 
the  direction  has  still  bowels  for  its  Hock  of 
bom!  ikic  sick  and  wounded.  Fractures  and 
ins  attendant  on  miscalculated  pirouettes, 
accidents  from  falling  scenery,  with  other! 


mishaps,  are  sure  to  make  up  a  full  morning's 
list  of  casualties.  Medical  officers,  therefore, 
attached  to  the  establishment,  receive  their 
list  every  morning,  and  set  forth  upon  tiieir 
rounds,  visiting  impartially  the  highest  man- 
sarde  and  stately  premier.  A  wise  and 
humane  dispensation  this,  and,  in  the  end, 
profitable  to  the  direction. 

The  popular  refection  behind  the  scenes  is 
the  simple,  old-established  drink  known  as 
eau  sucree,  or  else  a  little  Madeira  wine  and 
water,  or,  for  those  who  have  demi  voltes 
and  such  trying  exercise  before  them,  some 
very  strong  cold  soup,  held  to  be  the  best 
restorative  of  all.  The  danseuse  usually  has 
her  maid,  her  sister,  or  mother,  waiting  at 
the  side-scene,  and  holding  for  her  a 
handkerchief  and  cloak,  wilh  a  cup  of  the 
cold  soup  elixir.  The  tried  campaigner  of 
the  ball  season  also  knows  the  efficacy  of 
this  strengthening  extract.  Often  does 
some  figurante,  after  lavishing  her  set  round 
of  smiles  upon  parterre  and  stalls,  fall 
trembling  into  her  mother's  arms  at  the 
wing  with  a  deep  cry  of  pain.  "  O,  mother  ! 
how  T  suffer!"  Then,  after  a  little  of  the 
panacea  and  a  few  moments'  rest,  she  goes 
forth  again  full  of  nods  and  becks  and 
wreathed  smiles,  and  all  the  world  theatrical 
holds  unanimously  that  never  was  mademoi- 
selle in  more  bewitching  or  inhetter  verve  than 
to-night.  A  common  ill  to  which  the  danseuse 
is  subject,  is  a  sort  of  chronic  inflammation  of 
the  nostrils,  which  obliges  the  mouth  to  be 
kept  open  for  the  sake  of  taking  breath,  and 
is  found  very  distressing.  This  is  the  b3te 
noir  of  the  ballet,  for  which,  as  yet,  there 
has  been  no  cure  discovered  beyond  time  and 
patience. 

AVe  have  taken  but  a  glimpse  at  tins 
Coulisses  :  hardly  sufficient  perhaps  for  those 
who,  being  men  of  Bohemia,  wish  to  go  deep 
into  the  subject.  For  such  readers,  have  !><>>  :i 
lately  written  certain  voluminous  chronicles, 
records  of  managerial  life  and  troubles,  with 
which  the  Parisian  market  has  been  inun- 
dated, and  which  set  forth  minutely,  many 
curious  details. 


Nearly  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  iim1.  Sixpence,  neatly 
bound  in  cloth, 

THE  FIFTEENTH  VOLUME 

or 

HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

Coiit-uuiii"  the  Numbers  issued  between  tlio  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  June  of  tiie  present 
year. 


Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  8vo,  price  Oae 
GtdnM, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILIUE  COLLINS. 
Bradbury  aud  Evans,  Whitetriarg. 


/  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOUDS  is  reservedly  the  -Authors. 


S ottizUd  at  tLe  Office,  No.  16.  WeUinzio    Street  Xr.:tli,  StiauO.    riinteJ  by  :).  st,  TnOtefriaw,  tondon. 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD   WORDS."— 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 

A  WEEKLY  JOURNAL, 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


°-  381.] 


SATURDAY,  JULY  11,  1857. 


PniCB  3d. 
STAMPED  3,?. 


DOCTOES'  BILLS. 

WHEN  a  young  gentleman  who  lias  no  in- 
capacity for  the  enjoyment  of  baked  meats 
and  pastry,  being  tried  with  beef  can  eat 
none,  being  tried  with  tin-key  turns  against 
poultry,  chokes  in  the  struggle  to  get  pud- 
ding down,  and  even  lets  a  strawberry  lie 
whole  in  his  month  because  he  cannot 
make  up  his  mind  to  swallow  it,  there  is  a 
question  that  may  reasonably  occur  to  his 
Mends, — Can  he  be  hungry  ?  We  are  good 
friends  of  the  medical  profession,  and  we 
have  now  at  our  elbow  a  pile  of  Parliamen- 
tary bills  that  have  been  introduced  by  one  at 
a  time  or  two  at  a  time — just  now  trial  is 
being  made  with  two  at  a  time — under  the 
belief  that  each  may  be  the  bill  beginning, 
"Whereas  it  is  expedient  to  amend  the  laws 
relating  to  the  medical  pi-ofession,"  which 
the  medical  profession  says  it  wants.  The 
profession  cries,  or  is  said  to  cry,  "  Beef ! " 
gets  beef,  and  declares  it  too  tough  or  too 
tender,  too  dry  or  too  juicy.  Away  it  goes. 
The  profession  cries — or  is  said  to  cry — 
"  Pudding  !  "  and  is  offered  a  great  choice  of 
puddings,  but  eats  none.  The  profession 
only  wants  a  bit  of  cheese,  but  there  is  no 
cheese  that  is  the  cheese.  Yet  the  profes- 
sion, though  it  can  eat  nothing,  really  seems 
to  feel  uneasy  in  the  stomach.  As  friends, 
we  suggest  that,  perhaps  the  sense  is  one,  not 
of  a  void  to  be  filled,  but  of  a  weight  to  be 
thrown  off.  The  similitude  is  less  agreeable 
than  apt.  We  take  another. 

A  young  lady,  tending  to  be  buxom,  feels 
a  difficulty  in  getting  on,  complains  of 
cold  at  the  extremities,  looks  blue  in  the 
face,  and  calls  iu  a  variety  of  surgeons  and 
physicians.  The  young  lady's  name  is  Miss 
Hygeia.  One  adviser  prescribes  blisters  to 
the  right  leg,  another  prescribes  blisters  to 
the  left  leg  ;  various  cunning  surgeons  even 
suggest  odd  morsels  of  amputation  here  and 
there,  and  there  is  no  potion  that  is  not  to  be 
found  in  U\e  prescriptions  laid  upon  the 
table  for  her  benefit,— upon  the  table  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  The  young  lady  is 
the  medical  profession.  Some  very  ordinary 
persons,  who  are  not  cunning  at  all,  don't  see 
any  use  in  blistering  her  legs — cauterising 
by  law  the  medical  corporations  —  or  in 
shaving  her  head,  and  cupping  her  behind 


the  brain — taking  the  strength,  by  law,  out 
of  the  universities  ;  and  think  it  a  wise 
instinct  that  keeps  her  from  the  swallowing 
of  any  legal  potion.  It  is,  they  say,  a  pure 
case  of  tight  lacing.  Cut  her  stays. 

While  we  write,  two  rival  dockets  of 
opinion  and  advice  upon  her  case — medical 
bills — are  before  the  public.  In  each,  the 
advice  is  to  put  her  in  some  sort  of  irons, 
dose,  and  bandage  her  ;  in  neither  is  it  re- 
commended that  her  chest  be  cut  loose,  and 
allowed  to  work  as  it  can  work  if  left  to 
nature.  A  woman  can  live  without  being 
fixed  in  a  machine  that  shall  inflate  her 
lungs  for  her,  push  up  her  diaphragm,  and 
regulate  the  rise  and  fall  of  every  rib.  So 
can  a  profession  ;  though  the  legislators  for 
physician,  surgeon,  and  apothecary  don't 
appear  to  think  so.  Of  the  two  courses  of 
treatment  proposed  in  the  case  of  Hygeia 
(the  one  by  Mr.  Headlam,  the  other  by  Lord 
Elcho),  one  involves  more  cramping  and 
dosing  than  the  other,  and  is,  therefore,  by  so 
much  worse  than  the  other.  If  either  be 
adopted,  we  shall  presently  have  reason  to 
show  why  one  should  be  taken  and  the  other 
left.  But  we  have,  in  the  first  place,  our 
own  counsel  to  give.  Undoubtedly  Hygeia 
is  blue  in  the  face  ;  she  does  find  some  diffi- 
culty in  getting  on,  she  is  very  much  starved 
at  the  extremities,  and  is  weaker  than  she 
ought  to  be  about  the  head.  Something  must 
be  done  for  her  ;  but  what  ?  We  say,  do 
not  dose,  bleed,  blister,  amputate,  or  bandage  : 
simply,  Cut  her  stays. 

Setting  aside  metaphor,  let  us  ask  what  is 
the  main  thing  proposed  by  the  law-makers  ? 
— or  the  bill-makers  :  they  never  get  so  far  as 
to  the  making  of  a  law.  "  For  the  good  of  the 
public,"  one  bill  declares  itself  to  be.  "  For 
the  good  of  the  profession,  I  am,"  says 
another. 

Here  is  one  that  was  introduced  by  Mr. 
Warburton,  Mr.  Wakley,  and  Mr.  Hawes,  in 
the  year  eighteen  hundred  and  forty, — whereas 
and  because  it  was  "  expedient  that  all  male 
persons  practising  medicine  in  the  United 
Kingdom  should  be  registered ;  and  that 
all  properly  educated  medical  practitioners 
should  be  encouraged  to  exercise  their  pro- 
fession, in  all  or  any  of  its  branches  in  what- 
soever parts  of  the  British," — et  coetera.  The 
bill  set  up  a  machinery  of  registrars  and 


VOL.  5  VI. 


381 


26      [July  11,  1SI>7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


sub-registrars,  and  proposed  taxing  the  doc- 
tors for  the  means  of  paying  its  expenses.  It 
proposed  to  get  up  a  medical  council  for 
each  of  the  three  parts  of  the  United  King- 
dom ;  in  each  council  there  were  to  be  thirty- 
six  men  ;  in  each  thirty-six  there  were  to  be 
four-and-twenty  representatives  chosen  by 
universal  suffrage  of  the  registered  practi- 
tioners, £c.,  &c. ;  also  there  was  to  be  a 
general  election  of  six  every  year,  &c.,  &c. 
There  was  to  be  a  medical  senate,  as  there 
is  a  clerical  senate  (a  senate  among  senates), 
and  then  there  was  to  be  a  new  college  of 
medicine.  We  need  not  go  into  details. 
It  is  not  at  all  surprising  to  us,  that  the 
medical  profession  could  not  make  up  its 
mind  that  this  was  the  bill  of  bills. 

In  the  year  following,  Mr.  Hawes,  Mr. 
E\vart,  and  Mr.  Button  introduced  this  bill 
again,  with  variations  of  detail ;  the  chief 
variation  being  the  extinction  of  the  idea  of 
another  college.  There  was  to  be  general 
registration.  Bolus  and  Scalpel  were  to  take 
out  annual  certificates,  and  pay  for  them. 
There  was  to  be  a  Scotch  council,  an  Irish 
council,  and  an  English  council,  of  twenty  in 
each,  the  members  elected  by  ballot.  They 
were  to  form  a  lower  house  ;  and  there  was 
to  be  formed  of  its  select  men  an  upper 
house  or  medical  senate.  The  profession  natu- 
rally did  not  care  greatly  to  be  bothered  with 
the  addition  of  this  new  machinery  to  the 
clogs  already  tied  about  its  body. 

We  jump  to  the  years  forty-four  and  forty- 
five,  during  which  Sir  James  Graham  was 
engaged  in  compounding  a  pill  for  the  doc- 
tors. Forty-five  was  a  great  year  for 
measures  and  amended  measures.  Sir  James, 
in  a  second  version  of  a  former  device  of  his 
own,  proposed  a  new  council  of  health,  with 
one  of  Her  Majesty's  principal  Secretaries  of 
State  for  president,  the  medical  Eegius  Pro- 
fessor, and  certain  other  persons  for  the 
members.  The  council  was  to  see  that  a 
register  was  kept,  to  see  that  examinations 
were  of  the  right  sort,  and  to  protect  as 
well  as  meddle  with  existing  medical  cor- 
porations, leaving  them  their  monopolies  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  intact.  This  bill 
was  taken  into  a  committee  room,  whence  it 
emerged  with  a  new  royal  college  of  general 
practitioners  fastened  to  its  tail.  Lut  the 
profession  didn't  really  care  about  state 
councils  and  royal  colleges.  The  bill  was 
torn  down;  and,  in  the  succeeding  year,  a  new 
bill  was  pasted  over  it  by  Mr.  Wakley  and  Mr. 
Warburton.  This  bill  aimed  simply  at  secur- 
ing registration.  It  went  into  committee  and 
came  out  an  amended  bill;  of  which  the  pur- 
port was  that  all  qualified  surgeons  were  to 
be  compelled  to  take  in,  as  a  sort  of  annual, 
price  five  shillings,  their  marriage  lines  to 
the  profession  whereto  they  were  joined,  and 
be  able  to  prove  by  them,  and  by  them  only, 
that  they  were  wedded  to  it  lawfully.  The 
doctors  didn't  care  very  much  about  these 
marriage  lines.  They  were  proposed  to  them 


again  in  the  year  following,  with  the  addi- 
tion of  some  machinery  for  enabling  a  "  said 
Secretary  of  State"  to  secure  uniformity  of 
qualification  among  doctors.  The  profession 
didn't  believe  in  this  bill  either.  We  break 
off  the  catalogue  and  come  at  once  to  the 
time  present, — which  begins  last  year. 

Mr.  Headlam  introduced  last  year  a  new 
medical  bill,  which  suffered  metamorphosis 
in  a  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
This  year  the  metamorphosed  bill  appears  in 
the  House  under  Lord  Elcho's  guardianship, 
and  the  unaltered  bill  also  appears  in  the 
House,  it  being  again  brought  forward  by 
Mr.  Headlam. 

Before  we  describe  the  substance  of  the  two 
new  propositions,  we  must  state  one  very 
essential  fact  ;  because,  in  the  different  modes 
of  dealing  with  this  fact,  there  lies  the  real 
difference  between  the  spirit  of  the  one  bill  and 
the  spirit  of  the  other.  There  are  two  sets  of 
examining  bodies  in  Great  Britain,  first,  the 
corporations  of  physicians,  of  surgeons,  and  of 
apothecaries  ;  second,  the  sevei-al  universities. 
The  universities  can  grant  degrees,  of  which 
some  do  and  some  do  not  convey  the  right 
of  practice,  and  some  give  the  right  of  prac- 
tising only  within  a  given  area.  The  general 
spirit  of  Mr.  Headlam's  bill  is  to  protect  the 
corporations  and  keep  down  the  universities ; 
the  general  spirit  of  the  other  bill  is  to  pro- 
tect the  universities  and  keep  down  some,  at 
least,  of  the  corporations.  Each,  at  the  same 
time,  sets  up  a  medical  council  and  a  scheme 
of  registration. 

So  we  have  in  the  new  bills  a  strong 
family  likeness  to  the  whole  gallery  of  their 
predecessors.  Medical  reform  is  still  held 
to  be  the  destroying  of  something  that  does 
exist  and  the  creating  of  something  that  does 
not  exist.  As  commonly  proposed,  it  is  the 
destruction  of  some  bit  of  life  and  the  creation 
of  some  bit  of  machinery  in  place  of  it. 

But  the  thing  really  wanted  is  more  ful- 
ness of  life  and  less  restriction.^  While  the 
bandaging  of  the  afflicted  profession  has  been 
discussed  year  after  year  in  Parliament, 
the  afflicted  profession  itself,  restive  or  in- 
different about  every  such  proposal,  has  been 
developing  fast,  and  working  its  way  nobly 
forward  to  a  higher  life.  Except  the  London 
College  of  Physicians,  there  is  scarcely  a 
medical  examining  body  in  the  kingdom  that 
has  not  made  more  or  less  rapid  advance  in 
its  demands  on  the  wit  of  candidates  for  its 
approval;  and  in  the  very  front  of  this  great 
forward  movement  there  now  stands  the 
University  of  London.  It  is,  we  think, 
simply  absurd  to  propose  the  delivery  of  this 
young  giant  of  a  calling,  tied  and  bound,  into 
the  hands  of  any  single  state  council,  or  of 
any  corporation.  To  deliver  up  the  profes- 
sion of  physic  in  England  as  serf  to  the 
London  College  of  Physicians — one  conse- 
quence of  Mr.  Headlam's  propositions — is  of 
all  conceivable  mistakes  the  worst.  That 
body  includes  many  very  able  men  ;  but,  as  a 


Charles  l)ickens.J 


DOCTOES'  BILLS. 


[July  11,1357.]      2V 


body,  is  so  starved  by  the  legal  fiction  that 
its  F.B.C.P.s  are  the  Few  Really  Competent 
Persons  practising  medicine  in  the  metro- 
polis, that  there  is  not  a  more  decrepit  cor- 
poration to  be  found  in  the  three  kingdoms. 
Some  little  time  ago,  when  a  medical  journal 
said  that  a  certain  physician  of  mark  had 
applied  for  and  obtained  the  fellowship  of 
the  London  College,  that  physician  thought 
it  due  to  his  credit  to  write  to  the  medical 
journal  and  explain  that  he  did  not  ask  the 
college  to  give ;  but  that  on  the  part  of  the 
college  he  was  asked  to  take.  The  college 
has  nothing  to  rely  upon  but  the  prestige  of 
an  old  name  and  a  reputation  bolstered  up 
by  law.  It  is  as  dead  as  the  dead  tongue  in 
which  it  carries  on  the  farce  of  an  exami- 
nation with  its  candidates.  Nothing  short 
of  the  abandoning  of  its  monopolies  will 
bring  its  blood  again  into  free  circulation. 
Corporations  could  work  under  the  defence 
of  monopolies  in  those  old  days  when  men 
worked  under  the  defence  of  helmet,  breast- 
plate, gauntlet,  greaves,  and  buckler.  Now-a- 
days,  there  are  many  fragments  of  old  charter 
still  in  use,  that  are  fit  only  to  be  exhibited  at 
Manchester  in  the  same  cases  with  the  old 
armour  and  firelocks  of  three  centuries  ago. 

We  are  persuaded  that  what  the  medical 
profession  really  wants  in  this  age  of  its  most 
rapid  progress,  is  a  complete  abandonment 
of  the  dead  principle  of  protection,  and  the 
admission  of  free  trade  throughout  its  bor- 
ders. The  article  to  be  produced — as  all  the 
bill-makers  protest — is  a  well-educated  prac- 
titioner of  medicine.  We  are  more  likely  to 
get  this  when  there  are  fifty  licensing  bodies, 
all  dependent  for  their  life  on  their  good  re- 
putation and  competing  for  precedence  of 
credit,  than  when  there  is  one  central  council 
managing  everything,  and  there  are  one  or 
two  fat  corporations  undertaking  to  do  all 
the  work  in  a  sweet  concord  with  the  deni- 
zens of  Downing  Street. 

It  is  said  that  we  have  here  a  special  case 
to  which  it  is  not  possible  to  apply  the  prin- 
ciple of  competition.  That  licensing  bodies 
have  a  tendency  to  underbid  each  other,  and 
to'  pass  incompetent  men  for  the  sake  of 
pocketing  their  fees.  The  plan  was  tried  by 
one  or  two  bodies,  and  was  found  so  ruinous 
— so  perfectly  analogous  to  the  killing  of  the 
goose  which  laid  the  golden  eggs — that  the 
utmost  paius  were  taken  to  give  publicity  to 
the  fact  of  its  utter  abandonment. 

London  corporations  sometimes  sneer  at 
the  Scotch  universities.  A  London  practi- 
tioner is  often  heard  to  say  that  a  St.  An- 
drew's degree  is  good  for  nothing.  But  we 
find,  on  inquiry,  that  only  last  May,  of  fifty- 
seven  candidates  for  the  M.D.  of  St.  An- 
drew's, fourteen  were  rejected ;  and  that,  of 
the  fourteen,  all  but  one  had  obtained  licences 
and  diplomas  of  other  privileged  corporations, 
chiefly  in  England.  English  general  practi- 
tioners every  year  show  in  many  cases  that 
they  are  not  up  to  the  St.  Andrew's  mark, 


whatever  that  may  be.  There  is  another  fact. 
Public  opinion  in  the  profession  does  not 
regard  a  degree  obtained  at  St.  Andrew's 
University  as,  by  itself,  a  complete  title  to 
practise  physic.  The  consequence  is  that 
during  the  last  eleven  years,  five  hundred 
and  seventy-three  persons  have  obtained  that 
degree  at  Aberdeen  ;  and,  in  this  number, 
there  were  only  thirty-four  who  so  much  as 
applied  for  a  diploma  without  being  already 
furnished  with  another  licence  :  while,  even, 
of  the  thirty-four,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  greater  number  afterwards  presented 
themselves  elsewhere  for  examination.  Does 
this  look  as  if  medical  licensing  bodies 
thought  it  worth  while  to  underbid  each 
other,  or  as  if  medical  men  found  their 
account  in  getting  a  small  licence  to  practise 
on  the  easiest  terms  and  in  the  cheapest 
market  ? 

Our  belief  is,  that  the  thing  really  wanted 
by  the  medical  profession,  is  permission  to 
take  freely  its  own  manner  of  growth.  Let 
no  establishment, — whether  an  old  guild  or  a 
new  university, — claim  any  title  to  respect 
that  it  cannot  make  good,  and  let  the  lead  be 
taken  by  whatever  body  can  command  it 
best.  Let  there  be  no  licensing  to  practice 
within  so  many  miles  of  Charing  Cross,  and 
not  beyond.  Within  reasonable  bounds  let 
all  licensing  bodies  have  full  play  for  their 
best  energies,  and  let  a  man  declared  com- 
petent to  physic  his  neighbour  on  one  side  of 
the  Tweed,  physic  him  also  on  the  other  side. 
Let  no  institution  have  about  itself  an  atmo- 
sphere poisonous  to  men  licensed  by  any  rival 
body.  Let  every  licence  be  a  licence,  full  and 
frank  ;  only,  whenever  a  man  practises,  let  it 
be  known  whence  his  licence  comes,  and  how 
much  it  is  worth.  Experience  of  late  years 
has  clearly  shown  that  the  tendency  of  com- 
petition among  licensing  bodies  is  to  increase 
the  strictness  of  the  test  applied  to  candi- 
dates, it  being  felt  that  this  determines, "more 
than  anything,  the  value  of  the  licence  and 
the  degree  of  respect  paid  to  the  body  giving 
it.  Now,  what  do  the  manufacturers  of  parlia- 
mentary bills  for  the  doctors  usually  want  ? 

They  want  a  public  registration  of  all  qua- 
lified practitioners,  and  a  uniform  standard 
of  qualification,  generally  determined  by 
some  sort  of  professional  Privy  Council,  Par- 
liament, or  House  of  Convocation. 

There  can  be  no  harm  in  an  official  register. 
Private  enterprise  has  indeed  already  fur- 
nished two  medical  directories,  published 
annually,  and  containing  the  names  and  quali- 
fications of  all  legal  practitioners  of  medi- 
cine. Jealousy  and  self-interest  keep  watch, 
over  the  accuracy  of  these  volumes ;  they 
are  cheap,  and  a  patient  who  may  happen 
to  know  so  little  about  his  medical  adviser  as 
to  wish  to  look  his  name  out  in  a  dictionary, 
may  as  well,  we  think,  turn  to  a  cheap 
medical  directory  managed  by  private  enter- 
prise under  the  corrective  influence  of  com- 
petition, as  to  a  dear  article  of  the  same  sort 


28        [July  11,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted 


compiled  hi  an  ostentatious,  cumbrous  way 
by  the  official  medical  council,  and  one  of  her 
Majesty's  principal  Secretaries  of  State.  The 
register,  we  may  be  sure,  will  not  be  the 
more  popular  for  being  a  blue  book  instead 
of  a  red  book.  But,  we  do  not  dwell  upon 
that  point.  A  trustworthy  medical  directory 
is  a  good  thing,  and  such  a  work  may  need  an 
Act  of  Parliament  for  its  production — or  it 
may  not. 

The  next  is  the  troublesome  point — uni- 
formity of  test.  That  notion  is,  we  are 
convinced,  moonshine.  To  have  uniformity 
of  test  in  examinations,  one  must  have  uni- 
formity of  brains  in  all  examiners,  and 
uniformity  of  ready  wit  in  all  the  candidates. 
On  the  whole,  upto  a  certain  point,  the  tougher 
the  examination  has  been  the  more  it  is 
worth  ;  but  the  best  parts  of  a  man's  skill  are 
those  that  cannot  be  brought  out — except  by 
one  examiner  out  of  a  thousand — in  the  way  oi 
catechism.  Comparative  ignorance  with  tact, 
may  find  its  use  among  the  sick  more  surely 
than  dull  knowledge  that  does  not  give  heed 
to  the  mere  instincts  of  quick  wit.  There 
are  not  two  practitioners  in  Britain  uniformly 


say,  and  if  they,  or  either  of  them,  be  pro- 
;eeded  with  in  Parliament,  we  shall  proceed 
io  the  discussion  of  them  in  this  journal  also. 
But  if  they  be  dropped,  we  shall  save  our  ink 
and  paper. 

GASTON,  THE  LITTLE  WOLF. 

IN  eighteen  hundred  and  twenty-four  art 
old  lady  named  Madame  de  Sariac,  living  in 
Gascony,  had  one  of  those  nursery  fights 
with  her  grandson  aged  seven,  which  at  the 
time  are  treated  as  eternal  sins,  and  after- 
wards regarded  as  prospective  virtues.  Younr* 
master  had  been  required  to  kneel  and 
demand  pardon  for  some  misdeed :  young 
master  refused.  Backing  into  a  corner,  he 
doubled  his  little  fists,  and  in  a  voice  of 
infantine  thunder  exclaimed,  "  Touch  me  if 
you  dare  ! "  Old  grandmamma  Sariac  was 
fain  to  leave  her  rebellious  descendant  to  his 
own  devices :  which  rebellious  descendant 
was  Gaston  de  Eaousset-Boulbon,  the  Little 
Wolf  of  that  Gascon  household.  On  another 
occasion  the  Little  Wolf,  offended  by  Baptiste, 
ordered  Baptiste  out  of  the  house.  The  old 


qualified  ;  and  we  believe  that  the  differences  servant,  not  taking  the  dismissal  of  a  baby 
between  mind  and  mind,  after  examination  has 


beenpassed,  are  so  great,  as  to  reduce  to  insig- 
nificance the  value  of  a  few  questions,  more  or 
less,  in  the  preliminary  test.  A  physician 
who  has  obtained  his  degrees  with  honours 
recognised  as  honours  by  his  own  fraternity, 
may  be  content  with  the  seal  thus  set  on  his 


preliminary  studies,  and  thenceforward  prac-  I  between  him  and  me  ! 


much  to  heart,  remained ;  and  the  next 
morning  performs  his  services  as  usual. 
Little  Wolf,  furious,  appeals  to  grandmamma. 
Grandmamma,  indignant  at  this  baby  invasion 
of  her  authority,  upholds  Baptiste. 

"  Very   well !  "  lisps    Little  Wolf  in  an 
agony  of  passion,   "then  you  must  choose 


tise  as  if  all  the  ends  of  study  were  achieved. 


True    to    his  word 


If  he  stays  I  go." 
the    young  autocrat 


His  friend,  who  narrowly  escaped  rejection  at  disappeared  that  very  night,  and  was  only 


the  easiest  examining  board  to  which  he  could 
apply  for  a  diploma,  may  have  been  ad- 
monished of  his  slender  competence  in  know- 
ledge, and  impelled  to  study  as  he  works  on 


recovered  when  he  had  wandered  three  good 
leagues  away  on  the  Toulouse  road.  Another 
time  also  he  started  off.  This  was  when  M.  le 
Comte  de  Eaousset-Boulbon,  senior,  came  to 


in  the  world.  In  five  years  the  position  of  j  take  him  to  the  Jesuits' College  at  Fribourg  ; 
the  two  men  is  reversed.  By  the  preliminary  !  and  papa  Boulbon  was  a  man  so  cold,  so 
test  in  medicine,  as  in  all  other  walks  of  life,  j  stern,  so  severe,  that  even  the  Little  Wolf 
the  subsequent  career  can  seldom  be  deter-  j  was  daunted,  and  preferred  the  woods  and 


mined. 

We  do  not  believe,  then,  that  it  matters 
a  jot  to  the  profession  or  the  public  whether 
there  be  ten  or  a  hundred  licensing  bodies 
in  Great  Britain  to  whom  students  may 
apply  for  leave  to  practise  medicine,  so 


hunger  to  that  iron  face  and  icy  heart. 
This  time  he  was  two  nights  in  the  forest ; 
but  the  old  count  caught  him  at  last,  and 
hauled  him  off  to  Fribourg. 

The    Jesuits    received    him    kindly,    and 
educated  him   judiciously.      He    had    been 


long  as  it  is  made   certain  by  the  course  eight  years  at  the  college,  and  had  never  re- 
of  past  experience,  and  by  the  increasing  ceived  a  punishment  in  any  shape,  when,  one 


height  of  the  ground  taken  by  its  practi- 
tioners on  behalf  of  physic  and  surgery,  that 
nobody  will  get  a  legal  qualification  who 
has  not  spent  several  years  in  a  fixed  course 
of  training  for  his  work,  and  who  has  not  satis- 
fied certain  examiners.  Of  these  examiners, 
the  easiest  we  know,  measure  their  candidates 
by  as  high  a  standard  as  a  Secretary  of  State 
would  find  it  prudent  or  just  to  assign  as  a 
minimum. 

Thus  far  we  have  expressed  our  opinion  of 
the  bills  usually  framed  relative  to  doctors. 


day — he  was  seventeen  now — the  reverend 
father  ordered  him  to  kneel  during  the  even- 
ing lesson,  as  expiation  of  some  collegiate 
offence  of  which  he  had  been  guilty. 

"  I  will  only  kneel  before  GOD,"  be  said  to- 
the  father  Gralic6. 

"  You  must  obey,  or  leave  the  college :  '* 
answered  the  father. 

"  My  choice  is  made ;"  replied  Gaston,  and 
he  left  the  college  that  very  evening. 

A  short  time  after  this  he  came  of  age. 
His  father  called  him  into  his  study,  and 


Of  the  two  doctors'  bills  introduced  during  1  in  the  presence  of  a  notary,  gave  him   up 
the  present  session  we  have  sundry  things  to  !  all  the    accounts    of   his   minority,  putting 


Charles  Dickens.] 


GASTON  THE  LITTLE  WOLF. 


[July  11,  1S57.]       29 


him  in  immediate  possession  of  the  fortune 
devolving  on  him  through  his  mother,  and 
taking  his  receipt  with  the  terrible  formality 
and  automaton-like  stolidity  of  his  character. 
Gaston  remained  a  short  time  with  his  father 
after  this  ;  but  the  severe  rule  of  the  old 
royalist  was  not  much  to  his  taste  ;  and,  in  a 
few  months,  the  young  Count  de  Eaousset- 
Boulbon,  handsome,  ardent,  rich,  accom- 
plished and  generous,  found  himself  in 
the  full  flood  of  Parisian  temptation  and 


Parisian 
wearing 


excess, 
off    the 


He 
thin 


was    not 
lacker    of 


long     in 
modesty 


and  humility  with  which  his  collegiate  edu- 
cation might  have  covered  his  natural  impe- 
tuosity ;  not  long  either  in  forsaking  the 


he  had  to  take  to  various  unpoetical  means  of 
earning  a  simple  subsistence.  At  last,  wearied 
with  his  position,  and  having  in  him  a  far 
nobler  character  and  larger  nature  than  the 
life  of  the  Boulevards  could  satisfy,  he  re- 
solved on  going  to  Algeria  ;  there  to  settle 
and  colonise  on  a  grand  scale.  Gaston  de 
Baousset  could  do  nothing  in  miniature. 
His  father  died  about  this  time,  and  the 
additional  portion  which  came  into  his  hands 
helped  him  on  wonderfully  in  Algeria. 

His  life  was  by  no  means  dull  or  unin- 
teresting there.  He  made  himself  renowned 
as  one  of  the  most  daring  sportsmen  of  the 
colony  ;  he  performed  many  brilliant  actions 
as  a  military  volunteer ;  and  he  kept  a  kind 


white  flag,  in   allegiance  to  which  he  had  ;  of  open  house  for  all  who  cared  to  accept  his 
been  brought  up,  for  the  tricolor  and  the  faith   almost  regal  hospitality.     He  also  wrote  a 


of  la  jeune  .France.  A  year  of  Parisian  life 
sent  him  down  to  his  father's  house  a  very 
different  being  to  what  he  was  even  when  he 


political  pamphlet,  which  attracted  consider- 
able notice,  and  procured  him  the  favour  of 
the  new  governor  of  Algeria,  the  Due 


left  it.  From  the  royalist  school-boy  had  d'Aumale.  All  was  going  on  merrily,  when 
emerged  the  republican  dandy.  Papa  [the  revolution  of  Eighteen  hundred  and 
Boulbon  was  horrified.  After  dinner,  while  forty-eight  broke  out ;  and  Gaston  de 
Gaston  smoked  his  cigar  on  the  terrace,  he  Eaousset,  like  many  others,  was  crushed 
said  to  his  wife  (Gaston's  mother-in-law  ;  his  and  ruined  by  the  blow.  But  Gaston 


own  mother  had  died  when  he  was  an  infant)  : 
"  Madam,  it  will  be  painful  to  me  to  dispute 
with  my  son  ;  impossible  to  support  his  oppo- 
sition. You  see  him !  He  returns  to  us 
from  Paris  with  a  beard,  and  a  cigar  between 
his  lips.  Let  the  cigar  pass  :  but  tell  him,  I 
pray  you,  madam,  that  it  does  not  become  a 


was  none  the  less  a  republican  because  the 
republic  had  destroyed  his  fortunes.  He 
was  not  one  to  hunt  with  the  hounds  for  the 
moment  of  their  success,  unless  he  could  join 
heartily  in  the  game  ;  and  his  speeches  to 
the  electors  of  the  Bouches  des  Bh6ne,  and 
of  Yaucluse,  his  articles  in  the  journal  which 


man  of  his  birth  to  wear  a  beard  like  a  mou-  |  he  edited  for  more  than  a  year,  his  whole 


jik,  and  that  I  shall  be  obliged  to  him  if  he 
will  make  a  sacrifice  of  it  to  my  wishes." 
Gaston's   beard  was  a  very  fine  one  :  he 


conduct  and  language  bound  him  publicly  to 
the  cause  of  liberty,  though  he  made  but 
little  personal  gain  out  of  his  advocacy.  For, 


was  proud  of  it,  and  it  added  not  a  little  j  he  failed  at  the  general  elections,  and  he 
to  his  beauty  ;  but  the  old  man  was  not  one  |  failed  at  the  election  for  the  Legislative 
to  say  nay  to.  Gaston  yielded  ;  and,  the  next '  Assembly.  Disgusted  at  his  non-success,  he 


morning,  appeared  with  a  smooth  chin. 

"  Monsieur,"  said  the  count  to  him,  "  I 
thank  you  for  your  deference  to  my  wishes." 

A  few  days  after  this,  he  said  again  to  his 
wife  :  "  Madam,  I  authorise  you  to  tell  my 
son,  that  he  may  let  his  beard  grow  again. 
After  duly  considering  the  matter,  I  do  not 
see  any  objections  to  it." 

Gaston,  charmed,  locked  up  his  razors  ;  but 
the  old  man  soon  grew  disgusted  and  impa- 


quitted  Paris  and  France  for  the  golden  land 
of  California. 

He  sailed  from  Southampton  on  the 
seventeenth  of  May  in  the  Avon,  going  as  a 
steerage  passenger  among  sailors  and  ser- 
vants. It  was  a  hard  trial  for  his  pride  ;  also 
for  one  of  his  luxurious  habits  ;  but  the  other 
French  gentlemen  on  board  soon  found  out 
his  real  value,  and,  steerage  passenger  as 
he  was,  he  associated  with  the  cabiu  pas- 


tient  at  the  unseemly  stubble  that  necessarily   sengers  as  their  equal :  which  assuredly  he 


prefaced  the  full-grown  beard. 


was,  and  somewhat  their  superior.     At  San 


"  Madam,"  he  said,  one  evening,  "  decidedly  \  Francisco  he  turned  fisherman  and  fish  sales- 
a  beard  does  not  become  Gaston.  I  pray  you,    man ;  then  he  was  a  lighterman,  woi-king  hard 


tell  him  to  shave  it  off  again.' 

For  all  answer  to  this  request,  Gastou 
went  up  stairs,  packed  up  his  trunks,  and 
started  that  night  for  Paris.  The  father  and 
son  never  met  again. 

Eeturned  to  Paris,  Gaston  plunged  with 
even  fiercer  passion  and  more  reckless 
licence,  into  the  dissipations  and  vices  of  his 
class  ;  realising  in  himself  all  the  mad  extra- 
vagances which  Leon  Gozlan,  Balzac,  Kock, 
and  others,  have  described  as  belonging  to 
the  "  lion  "  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Of 


from  morning  to  night,  in  lading  and  unlading 
ships  ;  and  lastly,  he  went  oif  to  Los  Angeles 
and  San  Diego  to  buy  cows,  for  the  purpose 
of  reselling  them  at  an  enormous  profit  at 
San  Francisco.  He  made  the  journey  many 
times  ;  once  striking  off  on  a  solitaiy  voyage 
of  discovery.  But  his  cow-selling  ended 
disastrously,  though  it  gave  him  a  clear 
knowledge  of  the  country,  and  enabled  him 
to  mature  the  great  project  he  had  con- 
ceived. The  weakness  of  the  Mexican  govern- 
ment, and  the  hatred  of  the  people  for  the 


course,  his  fortune  was  soon  dissipated,  and   Americans,  gave  him  the  idea  of  forming  a 


SO      [July  11.  issr. 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Sonora,  "a  valiant  French  barrier,"  which 
should  both  protect  Mexico  against  the 
United  States,  and  form  the  nucleus  of  an 
important  French  colony.  Mr.  Dillon,  the 
French  consul  at  San  Francisco,  was  con- 
sulted on  this  project.  He  entered  into  it 
warmly ;  gave  M.  de  Raousset  letters  of 
introduction  to  leading  people,  able  to  help 
him  ;  and,  our  hero  left  for  Mexico,  to  lay  his 
plans  before  the  house  of  Jeker,  Torre,  and 
Company,  bankers. 

This  was  the  project  proposed  : — The  mines 
of  Arizona,  which  had  been  abandoned  for 
a  long  while,  owing  to  the  terrible  neighbour- 
hood of  the  Apaches  Indians,  were  known  as 
the  richest  and  most  easily  worked  in  all  So- 
nora. The  Mexican  govei'nnient  was  to  grant 
these  mines  to  Raousset,  and  he  was  to  free 
them  from  the  Indians,  develop  their  resources, 
and  make  them  the  nucleus  of  French  emi- 
gration. In  about  two  months'  time,  the 
Restauradora  company  was  formed,  and  a 
formal  concession  of  the  land  was  made  to  it 
by  General  Arista,  president  of  the  Mexican 
republic.  Two  mouths  after,  Raousset  signed 
a  private  treaty  with  the  directors  of  the 
company  engaging  to  land  at  once  at  Guay- 
mas,  in  Sonora,  with  a  hundred  and  fifty 
armed  men  under  military  organisation,  to 
explore  and  take  possession  of  Arizona  and 
her  mines ;  the  society  undertaking  the  cost 
of  the  expedition,  sending  ammunition  and 
provision  to  Guaymas,  and  to  Saric, — half 
way  between  Guaymas  and  Arizona.  For 
his  share,  Raousset  was  to  have  the  half  of 
the  land,  the  mines,  and  the  places  already 
found  and  to  be  found.  M.  Aguilar,  governor 
of  Sonora ;  and  M.  Levasseur,  French  minister 
at  Mexico,  were  members  of  the  Restaura- 
dora  Society  ;  famished  with  powerful  let- 
ters of  introduction  and  protection,  notably 
to  General  Blanco,  military  chief  of  Sonora  ; 
our  hero  and  his  little  band  disembarked  at 
Guaymas,  in  June,  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-two. 

Immediately  on  landing,  he  wrote  to 
General  Blanco,  who  had  been  apprised  be- 
forehand by  M.  Levasseur  of  the  expedition. 
The  general  feigned  astonishment,  ignorance, 
and  hesitation ;  and  commanded  Raousset 
to  wait  inactive  at  Guaymas  until  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  what  he  should  do  with 
him  and  his  followers.  The  minister  remon- 
strated ;  Raousset  complained  ;  the  general 
was  firm.  For,  a  rival  company  had  been 
formed  in  Mexico  to  dispute  the  possession  of 
Arizona  with  the  Restauradora  Society  ;  and 
Blanco  and  the  leading  men  of  Guaymas  be- 
longed to  it.  After  a  month  spent  in  inaction, 
luxury,  and  rapid  demoralisation  of  the 
whole  band,  Raousset  went  alone  to  Her- 
mosillo, where  his  volunteers  were  to  join 
him.  But  his  troops  fell  into  disputations 
and  anarchy  by  the  way  ;  and  Raousset  had 
to  gallop  back  to  near  Guaymas,  to  rally,  rate, 
and  reform  them.  At  Hermosillo  he  made 
an  example  of  some  of  the  ringleaders,  whom 


he  dismissed  with  contempt,  and  the  little 
band  fell  again  quietly  under  his  control.  On 
the  fifteenth  of  August  they  arrived  at  the 
Pueblo  di  Santa  Anna,  en  route  to  Saric, 
where  food  and  stores  awaited  them  ;  and 
there  Raousset  received  a  notice  signed  by 
Blanco,  and  addressed  to  the  department,  which 
"required  the  French  to  renounce  their  nation- 
ality ;  or,  in  case  of  refusal,  they  were  to  be 
forced  to  re-embark."  M.  de  Raousset  re- 
fused to  obey  this  dictum,  or  to  accept  the 
alternative  ;  and  he  and  his  men  pushed  on 
to  Saric,  where  two  dragoons  brought  them 
the  general's  final  and  irrevocable  decision  : 
that  they  must  either  become  Mexican 
soldiers  without  pay — as  such  they  might 
claim  the  mines ;  or  they  might  be  still 
Frenchmen,  but  then  strangers,  and  incapable 
of  possessing  land,  according  to  the  ancient 
law  of  Mexico  ;  or  they  might  reduce  their 
band  to  fifty  men,  under  a  responsible 
Mexican  chief,  in  which  case  they  might 
march  at  once  to  Arizona,  and  take  posses- 
sion of  the  mines  in  the  name  and  for  the 
service  of  the  Restauradora  Company. 
Raousset  assembled  his  men,  read  them  the 
conditions  of  the  general,  and  asked  what 
course  they  would  take  ?  They  unanimously 
refused  Blanco's  proposition,  and  determined 
on  continuing  the  expedition  according  to  the 
terms  of  the  agreement  made  with  the  Res- 
tauradora Company.  The  prefect  of  Altar, 
under  whose  jurisdiction  Saric  was  included, 
next  forbade  further  march,  or  future  posses- 
sion to  these  armed  French  immigrants ; 
and  Colonel  Gimenez  not  only  added  insult 
to  his  compatriot's  breach  of  faith,  but  even 
wrote  privately  to  Lenoir,  Raousset's  senior 
lieutenant,  to  urge  him  to  seize  the  command 
of  the  troop,  and  deliver  them  over  to  the 
Mexican  authorities.  Lenoir  gave  the  letter 
to  Raousset,  who  read  it  aloud  to  the  band  ; 
and  they,  for  all  answer,  cried  "  To  arms  !  " 
with  more  vigour  than  prudence.  Raousset 
restrained  them  for  the  moment ;  but  further 
correspondence  with  the  Mexicans  having 
proved  to  him  that  nothing  was  to  be  got  by 
patience  or  by  parley,  he  declared  war.  On 
the  twenty-third  of  September,  he  and  his 
men  quitted  Saric,  and  marched  back  on 
Hermosillo,  stopping  for  a  week  at  La  Made- 
laine,  then  in  all  the  gaiety  and  joyousness  of 
her  fete-time.  At  La  Madelaine  was  a  young 
girl,  fair  as  a  Saxon,  tall,  proud,  and  beauti- 
ful. Some  one  at  her  father's  attacked  the 
character  of  Raousset.  She  defended  him, 
although  her  father,  being  one  of  the  princi- 
pal authorities  of  Sonora,  was  officially  Ins 
enemy.  An  old  lady  said  satirically  ;  ''  My 
dear  Autonia,  are  you  seriously  in  love  with 
this  pirate  chief  1  " 

"Yes,"  answered  Antonia,  rising  and 
draping  herself  in  her  rebozo,  "I  do  love  this 
pirate,  as  you  call  him.  Yes ;  I  love  him  !  " 

The  next  evening  Antonia,  in  the  sight  of 
six  thousand  people,  went  to  the  pirate- 
count's  camp,  and  into  the  tent. 


Ciarle»  Dickens.] 


STICKYTOES. 


[July  11,  1857.]         31 


In  eight  days  Hermosillo  was  readied ; 
and  in  an  hour  after  the  preliminary  parley 
with  Novai'a,  the  temporary  prefect,  the 
French — with  a  severe  loss  of  officers  and 
men — were  masters  of  the  town,  and  the  war 
was  fairly  begun.  As  the  Northern  Sono- 
rians  hated  the  present  government  and 
favoured  the  French  immigration,  it  seemed 
as  if  it  would  be  the  signal  for  a  general  revolt. 
Perhaps  it  would  have  decided  the  question 
had  Raousset  been  enabled  to  follow  up  the 
advantage  he  had  gained  ;  but,  unfortunately 
for  him,  he  fell  sick  immediately  after  the 
battle,  and,  more  dead  than  alive,  was  carried 
back  to  Guaymas  by  his  men,  utterly  demo- 
ralised by  the  want  of  their  leader  and  the 
loss  of  their  officers.  A  short  distance  from 
Guaymas  a  messenger  fromM.Calvo,a  French 
merchant,  prayed  de  Raousset  not  to  advance 
further  ;  but  to  see  the  general  and  to  patch 
up  some  kind  of  treaty  which  should  prevent 
further  bloodshed.  Raousset  was  march- 
ing on  Guaymas,  and  would  have  surely  taken 
it,  even  in  the  present  enfeebled  state  of  his 
band,  as  it  was  totally  undefended  and  un- 
protected. Eaousset  obeyed  the  suggestion  ; 
but  no  good  came  of  it ;  and,  in  the  evening, 
his  sickness  increased,  so  that  for  three  weeks 
he  was  insensible,  and  hovering  between  life 
and  death.  When  he  recovered  he  found  that 
the  company  had  treated  with  General 
Blanco,  and  had  accepted  forty  thousand 
piastres  for  the  evacuation  of  Souora. 

As  soon  as  he  was  able  Eaousset  went  to 
San  Francisco  to  organise  another  expedition  ; 
and  at  this  moment  Walker,  the  Fillibuster, 
offered  him  the  command  of  his  troops  in 
Lower  California,  which  offer  he  refused. 
Arista  now  gave  up  the  presidency  of  the 
Mexican  re  public,  which  Santa  Anna  assumed. 
The  Frenchman  believed  in  Santa  Anna,  and 
hoped  as  much  as  he  believed.  But  the  two 
men  quarrelled  in  their  interviews ;  and 
de  Eaousset  in  revenge  entered  into  a  plot 
against  Santa  Anna,  which  was  discovered ; 
the  plotter  himself  receiving  timely  intima- 
tion of  his  betrayal,  and  so  able  to  escape  the 
doom  which  else  would  have  overtaken  him 
then.  He  returned  to  San  Francisco ;  still 
with  Sonora,  the  mines  of  Arizona  and 
Antonia  in  his  head,  and  he  worked  at  his 
plan  so  well  that  in  the  middle  of  May, 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty- four,  he  sailed  for 
Guaymas,  prepared  to  take  his  own  course 
for  weal  or  woe.  He  began  his  journey 
by  garotting  the  American  captain,  who 
wished  to  delay  the  start  owing  to  the  ter- 
rible weather ;  and,  on  the  twenty-eighth  of 
June,  he  landed  at  Guaymas.  His  first 
measures  were  abortive ;  but  his  presence 
excited  the  French  soldiers  and  emigrants  in 
the  town  to  the  last  degree.  Mexican  folly 
and  insolence  were  not  wanting  to  exaspe- 
rate this  French  pride  and  rapacity,  and 
soon  a  struggle  between  the  two  parties 
was  inevitable.  Fights  in  different  parts  of 
the  town  inflamed  the  bad  blood  already 


roused  ;  and,  when  a  body  of  armed  Indians 
and  a  large  number  of  troops  from  the  inte- 
rior arrived  to  strengthen  the  Mexicans,  all 
hope  of  peace  was  at  an  end.  The  French 
soldiers  clamoured  for  war  ;  for  a  sudden 
onset  and  the  leadership  of  the  count  ; 
Raousset  —  nothing  loth — urged  on  the 
scheme,  of  which  he  undertook  both  the 
responsibility  and  the  command.  After 
three  hours'  hard  fighting  the  insurgents  laid 
down  their  arms  ;  Raousset  broke  his  sword, 
and  was  conducted  as  a  prisoner  to  the  con- 
sul's house.  It  had  been  a  combat  between 
four  hundred  on  the  insurgents'  side  and  eigh- 
teen hundred  on  the  Mexican.  Ten  days  after 
Raousset  was  tried  and  condemned,  and,  two 
days  aftev,  was  executed.  He  refused  to  allow 
his  eyes  to  be  bandaged,  and  met  his  death 
with  a  calm,  grave  courage  that  had  some- 
thing truly  heroic  in  it.  He  fell  at  the  first 
vollej',  and  the  Sonorians  lamented  him  as 
the  fallen  defender  of  their  independence. 
Here  were  grand  talents  and  a  rich  nature 
lost,  which  under  more  favourable  circum- 
stances might  have  revolutionised  a  hemi- 
sphere. His  biographer,  Henry  de  la  Made- 
lene,  calls  him  a  "  Cortes  slain  at  the  outset ;" 
and  a  second  Cortes  he  might,  indeed,  have 
proved,  had  he  known  the  material  out  of 
which  man  fashions  success. 


STICKYTOES. 


IN  these  latter  days,  a  radical  revolution 
has  broken  out  in  the  kingdom  of  Petland. 
The  lowest  membei's  of  zoological  society 
have  risen  to  the  highest  dignities.  Sea- 
anemones,  and  others  of  equally  doubtful 
position,  assume  to  be  regarded  as  domestic 
pets.  The  aquavivaria,  marine  and  fresh, 
have  introduced  a  host  of  aspirants  after 
the  daily  smiles  and  tenderness  of  ladies  ; 
and  there  are  symptoms  that  even  invisible 
pets,  curious  and  choice  animalcules,  rotifers, 
and  vorticellse,  will,  before  long,  be  tended, 
fed,  and  cherished,  as  rustic  adornments  in 
our  homes  of  taste.  "Liberty,  fraternity, 
equality !"  is  the  unanimous  cry  of  multitudes 
of  oppressed  candidates  for  admission  to 
our  drawing-rooms.  "  A  fair  stage,  and  no 
favour ! "  shout  an  ark-full  of  dumb  but 
noisy  animals.  "No  close  boroughs,  for 
proud,  exclusive,  long-eared  rabbits  !  down 
with  aristocratic  Italian  greyhounds,  King 
Charles's  spaniels,  and  Angora  cats  !  Abo- 
lish the  privileged  monopoly  of  canaries, 
guinea-pigs,  piping  bulfinches, — and  your 
petitioners,  the  entire  roll-call  of  living  things 
created,  the  united  body  of  members  entered 
on  the  list  of  Cuvier's  Zoology,  will  ever 
pray.  Justice  to  flying  things ;  justice  to 
swimming  things  ;  justice  to  all !" 

At  the  next  election  of  a  fashionable  pet,  I . 
have  a  candidate  of  my  own  to  propose. 
Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  beg  to  present  to 
your  notice  the  Honourable  Mr.  Verdant 
Stickytoes,  of  ancient  lineage,  accustomed  to 


32 


".  I 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


public  speaking  in  a  clear  flute-like  voice, 
•which  you  may  distinctly  hear  further  off  than 
I  dare  state,  and  which  has  earned  for  him, 
from  ill-natured  auditors,  the  nickname  of 
roquet,  cur-dog,  or  barker.  But,  as  every 
village  dame  thinks  the  mew  of  her  own  pro- 
per cat  melodious ;  as  every  proprietor  of  a 
husky-voiced  dog  considers  that  hoarse  dog's 
bark  equal  to  the  finest  tenor  voice ;  why  may 
I  not  rank  the  cry  of  my  prot6ge  to  be  equal 
in  tone  to  the  sweetest  flageolet  1 

My  first  acquaintance  with  him  happened 
thus  : — Walking  in  the  environs  of  Padua  one 
blazing  September  afternoon,  while  wonder- 
ing whether  Portia  had  ever  strolled  in  that 
direction,  my  eye  was  caught  by  the  leaf  of  a 
plane-tree,  whose  yellowness  betrayed  the 
approach  of  autumn.  In  the  middle  of  that 
leaf  was  a  bright  green  spot,  in  which,  on 
close  inspection,  might  be  detected  something 
of  a  human  shape,  squatting  close,  with  eyes, 
hands,  arms,  and  legs,  of  tiny  and  imp-like 
symmetry.  It  was  a  miniature  of  Nicholas 
Senior,  after  he  has  put  on  his  pea-green 
suit,  which  he  keeps  in  his  wardrobe  for 
state  occasions.  It  was  Puck  crouching  iow, 
to  catch  the  fairies  at  some  forbidden  frolic 
that  would  get  them  a  good  scolding  from 
their  Queen,  Titania.  I  seized  the  little 
demon,  plane-leaf  and  all,  wrapped  him 
well  in  a  lawn  handkerchief,  put  him  in 
my  pocket,  and  stalked  back  to  the  city,  to 
examine  the  piisoner  in  the  presence  of  wit- 
nesses. When  the  court  of  inquiry  was 
formally  opened,  though  the  handkerchief 
was  all.  right,  Mr.  Verdant  Sticky  toes  was 
gone. 

Padua  and  its  arcaded  streets  were  neai-ly 
forgotten  ;  I  was  crossing  a  vast  tract  of 
fertile  country  in  the  north  of  France,  which, 
long  after  the  foundation  of  Padua,  was 
nothing  more  than  a  tidal  estuary,  but  is  now 
good  dry  solid  land,  selling  at  a  high  price 
per  acre.  In  a  pond,  in  this  consolidated 
estuary,  I  again  beheld  Mr.  Verdant  taking 
a  bath,  which  is  rather  contrary  to  his  daily 
habits.  This  time  I  captured  and  kept 
him.  Safe  imprisoned  in  a  crystal  cage,  with 
evei'y  comfort  except  liberty,  he  was  ex- 
hibited to  numerous  wondering  Frenchmen, 
who  were  astonished  to  learn  that  the  Sticky- 
toes  family  were  settled  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. Since  that  date,  lettres  de  cachet  have 
been  issued  against  many  innocent  members 
of  the  race  by  parties  desirous  of  possessing 
specimens  of  hyla  viridis,  or  rana  arborea,  or 
rainette,  or  graisset,  or  tree-frog,  or  grenouille 
de  St.  Martin,  all  which  are  aliases  adopted 
by  these  slippery  gentlemen. 

Hyla  is  derived  from  the  Greek  word 
CU\T),  a  wood,  and  is  appropriately  given  to 
that  branch  of  the  frog  family  which  are 
adepts  in  climbing.  The  English  popular 
mind  is  acquainted  only  with  frogs  that  swim 
in  the  water  or  leap  over  the  grass  ;  but  the 
hylic  are  gifted  with  the  faculty  of  mounting, 
which  they  accomplish  by  means  of  an  expan- 


sion of  the  skin,  forming  a  moist  disk,  at  the 
tip  of  each  toe,  on  the  hind  feet  as  well  as  on 
the  fore,  evidently  acting  as  a  sucker,  like 
the  round  bits  of  wet  leather  at  the  end  of  a 
string  with  which  school-boys  delight  to 
carry  stones.  It  is  this  peculiarity  which 
distinguishes  them  from  frogs  proper  and 
from  toads  in  general,  enabling  them  to 
adhere  and  hang  even  to  the  underside  of 
leaves.  Hylse  are  aquatic  in  their  habits 
only  at  certain  seasons.  They  are  oviparous, 
tailless  quadrupeds,  whose  reproduction,  and 
the  growth  of  whose  tadpoles,  accord  exactly 
with  those  of  the  grand  assemblage  of  toads 
and  frogs.  When  their  spawn  is  once  de- 
posited, they  betake  themselves  to  the  culti- 
vated uplands,  catching  their  prey  amongst 
the  growing  corn.  The  greater  part  of  my 
summer  captures  have  been  made  in  hawthorn 
hedges,  where  the  Messieurs  Stickytoes  hop 
from  twig  to  twig  in  chase  of  the  gnats,  with 
the  ease  of  a  tomtit  in  a  lilac  bush.  In  fact, 
they  are  fond  of  air  and  sunshine,  and  warmth. 
Their  bold  leaps  resemble  those  of  the  flying 
squirrel ;  they  have  no  fear  of  consequences 
when  they  dart  from  a  branch.  An  insect 
passes  within  vaulting  range  ;  they  spring  at 
it  into  mid  air,  and  a  clutch  at  a  leaf  with  a 
single  hand,  or  even  a  finger  or  two,  is  suffi- 
cient to  uphold  them. 

In  captivity,  they  jump  with  equal  expert- 
ness  and  grace  if  a  bluebottle  is  introduced 
within  their  crystal  prison.  Their  diet 
appears  to  be  living  insects  exclusively ; 
some  books  talk  of  feeding  them  on  bread 
and  milk,  but  I  have  seen  no  symptom  that 
they  would  accept  such  an  Arcadian  re- 
gimen. Hence,  they  are  useful  friends  and 
neighbours  in  a  country  plagued  with  insect 
vermin.  If  St.  Patrick  had  been  lord  of  an 
island  swarming  with  mosquitos  and  blowflies, 
he  would  have  welcomed  tree-frogs,  and  made 
them  comfortable  at  home,  instead  of  banish- 
ing them  from  his  realms.  They  do  no  harm, 
if  they  do  no  good,  even  supposing  that  you 
neither  eat  them  nor  amuse  yourself  with 
their  antics  ;  but  you  may  do  both  profitably. 
The  hyloe  fill  a  respectable  and  useful  position 
in  the  world,  and  have  no  right  to  be  spoken 
of  with  disparagement.  Jumpers  you  may 
style  them  if  you  like,  but  I  cannot  agree  to 
call  them  reptiles.  An  open  attack  is  not  a 
crawling  surprise.  They  do  not  appear  to 
exercise  on  their  victims  any  of  the  terror 
or  fascination  attributed  to  snakes ;  on  the 
contrary,  they  manifest  a  certain  forbearance 
and  dry  humour.  The  flies  seem  to  have  no 
instinctive  dread  of  the  owner  of  the  mouth 
tli at  is  soon  to  entomb  them.  A  bluebottle 
will  walk  up  the  inclined  plane  of  a  hyla's 
back,  settling  on  the  tip  of  his  nose  as  a  con- 
venient point  whence  to  enjoy  the  pi-ospect. 
Stickytoes  remains  politely  immovable, 
showing  no  outwai'd  symptom  of  the  tick- 
ling he  must  have  felt  on  his  skin,  but 
simply  rolling  his  prominent  eyes  at  the  un- 
invited visitor.  The  fly  soon  starts  off  for  an 


Charles  Dickens.] 


STICK  YTOES. 


[July  1),  185  7-i       33 


excursion  in  the  air  ;  but,  when  he  has  risen 
to  the  altitude  of  an  inch  or  two,  Mr.  Verdant 
cuts  a  violent  caper,  and  catches  the  flutterei 
on  the  wing.  It"  the  frog  is  large  and  the  fly 
little,  it  is  gone  without  further  ceremony  ; 
but  if  the  fly  is  nearly  as  big  as  the  frog,  its 
struggles  are  wrestled  with  by  the  conqueror's 
fore-paws,  which  push  it  down  the  wide-open 
throat,  much  as  a  clown  in  a  pantomime 
conti-ives  to  swallow  his  string  of  stolen 
sausages. 

Poor  Mr.  Verdant  is  often  kidnapped  by 
continental  savans,  in  preference  to  his  rela- 
tions the  Browns,  for  the  purpose  of  serving 
in  electrical  experiments,  or  as  a  living  hygro- 
meter or  hygroscope,  in  which  latter  capa- 
cities I  have  no  faith  in  him.  He  is  also 
employed  by  microscopists,  to  show  the 
circulation  of  the  blood  in  the  web  of  his 
foot ;  philosophers  (whose  blood  must  be  as 
cold  as  a  frog's)  also  indicate  the  cruel  means 
by  which  the  same  wonderful  spectacle  may 
be  beheld  in  his  tongue.  The  latter  sight  will 
certainly  not  be  enjoyed  by  any  one  who  is 
weak  enough  to  feel  a  tenderness  for  the 
brute  creation.  The  former  method  (by  dis- 
tending the  web)  merely  causes  the  creature 
temporary  inconvenience  and  slight  pain,  if 
any.  But  the  readiest  way  of  contemplating 
the  magnificent  phenomenon  of  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood  made  visible, — which  has 
been  compared  to  the  sudden  animation  of  a 
geographical  map,  by  their  proper  motions 
being  imparted  to  all  the  rivers  delineated 
upon  it,  from  their  fountains  to  their  embou- 
chures, with  their  tributaries  and  affluents, — 
is  to  submit  the  tail  of  a  tadpole  to  the 
microscope.  After  you  have  gazed  your  fill, 
you  may  return  him  to  his  native  element, 
when  he  will  swim  away  as  if  nothing  had 
happened.  Even  if  you  despise  the  life  of  a 
tadpole,  and  leave  him  to  die  of  drought  on 
the  slip  of  glass, — at  least  you  do  not  torture 
him.  True,  you  can't  have  tadpoles  to 
exhibit,  as  you  can  frogs,  at  all  times  of  the 
year  ;  but  you  might  kindly  profit  by  the 
opportunities  of  April  and  May.  You  can 
surely  spare  Mr.  Verdant  Stickytoes  and  his 
dusky  fraternity  all  unnecessary  stretchings 
on  the  rack,  by  studying  circulation  less  after 
the  Abyssinian  method,  in  the  tails  of  tad- 
poles, the  gills  of  young  newts,  and  the  yolk- 
bags  of  new-born  fishes. 

The  genus,  of  which  Mr.  Verdant  may  be 
taken  as  the  type,  has  its  representatives  in 
almost  every  warm  and  temperate  country  of 
the  globe.  In  the  Keptile  House  of  the  Eegent's 
Park  Gardens,  a  Hyla  from  New  Zealand 
may  be  seen  reposing  side  by  side  with  some 
of  our  present  friends  from  the  Pas-de- 
Calais.  A  humpty  one  is  found  in  the  isle  of 
Lemnos  ;  another  in  Surinam.  America  has 
a  considerable  variety  of  tree-frogs ;  milky- 
white,  red,  and  orange-yellow.  None  of  these 
Stickytoes  are  superior,  or  equal,  to  our  own 
Hyla  viridis  in  their  saltatory  performances. 

Hyla  viridis  is  bright  green  on  the  back  and 


all  the  upper  part  of  its  body,  and  white 
beneath,  which  portion  is  entirely  covered 
with  little  tubercles.  In  the  males,  the 
throat  is  brownish,  of  different  degrees  of 
depth,  especially  in  spring,  while  that  of  the 
ladies  always  remains  white  and  delicate,  as 
beseems  their  sex.  Their  bright  eyes  have 
oblong  pupils  with  orange  irides.  They  are 
said  not  to  propagate  till  they  are  four  years 
of  age :  in  which  case  they  must  be  long-lived 
creatures,  barring  accidents.  They  have  good 
reasons  for  avoiding  pools  of  water  ;  because 
water  is  the  resort  of  ducks,  who  would 
swallow  a  party  of  Verdants,  whole  and 
entire,  with  as  much  ease  as  a  cabman  would 
engulph  a  dozen  Milton  oysters.  One  indi- 
vidual is  recorded  to  have  lived  eight  years 
in  a  jar  of  water  covered  with  a  net.  During 
summer,  they  gave  him  fresh  grass,  with 
flies  and  gnats  for  food.  In  winter,  he  was 
kept  in  a  hothouse,  secure  from  chilly 
weather.  He  was  supplied  with  hay  slightly 
moistened,  and  the  few  flies  that  could  be 
found  for  him,  which  he  awaited  open- 
mouthed,  and  seized  with  surprising  address. 
Late  in  the  autumn  he  grumbled  evidently 
at  the  rise  in  the  price  of  flies  and  spiders, 
which  grew  scarcer  every  day  ;  and  when  he 
could  only  get  an  insect  once  a  week  or  so, 
he  grew  visibly  thinner  and  weaker.  Never- 
theless, with  the  return  of  spring  and  its 
winged  game,  he  soon  recovered.  This  Sticky- 
toes  used  to  croak  in  his  glassy  prison,  and 
was  now  and  then  indulged  with  an  exit  from 
his  jar  and  a  jump  about  the  room.  And 
so  he  led  his  damp  and  contemplative 
existence,  till  in  his  eighth  winter,  no  flies 
being  obtainable  for  love  or  money,  he  lan- 
guished and  died. 

Our  own  Verdants,  kept  in  a  warm  parlour 
all  winter,  had  not  the  strength  left  to  bear  a 
voyage  across  the  Channel,  except  one  ;  who 
languished  for  a  time,  refusing  meal-worms 
and  such  food  as  could  be  got  for  him  ;  but 
who  now  thrives  a  prosperous  frog  in  the 
Eeptile  House  of  the  Zoological  Gardens. 
He  and  his  companions  had  remained 
wide  awake  from  October  till  April, 
when  they  ought  to  have  been  asleep :  de- 
vouring flies  greedily  whenever  flies  were 
forthcoming.  Other  Verdants,  wintered  in  a 
cool  cellar,  returned  to  the  realms  of  light  in 
much  better  condition,  Hence  it  appears  that 
animals,  naturally  falling  torpid  from  cold, 
dissipate  but  little  of  their  substance,  and 
have  no  need  of  food  ;  while,  if  excited  by 
the  stimulus  of  heat  to  frequent  breathing 
and  exercise,  they  require  more  nourishment 
than  is  to  be  found  at  that  time  of  year.  It  is 
only  another  proof  of  the  harmony  of  Nature's 
operations.  In  the  Eeptile  House,  the  Sticky- 
toes  are  supplied  with  mealworms,  which 
are  to  be  had  at  all  times  of  the  year. 

The  voice  of  the  Hyla  viridis,  when  heard 
in  a  room,  is  something  astounding  in  respect 
to  loudness,  as  coming  from  so  small  a  crea- 
ture. The  captive  vocalist  may  sometimes 


34      [July  ii,  is:  7.3 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


be  excited  to  perform  by  a  noise  having  a' 
slight  resemblance  to  his  own  melodious 
i  u.  One  of  my  tree-frogs  commenced  his 
song  in  answer  to  the  sound  of  a  carpenter's 
saw,  who  was  fitting  a  new  shelf  into  a  closet. 
The  experiment  was  repeated  with  gratifying 
success.  The  voice  is  not  emitted  so  much 
from  the  lungs  as  from  the  pouch  of  skin 
beneath  the  chin,  which  is  swollen  out  into 
enormous  balloon-like  proportions.  The  bal- 
loon, in  fact,  fulfils  the  office  of  the  bag  in  a 
bag-pipe,  or  the  bellows  in  an  organ.  It  must 
have  been  the  sight  of  the  Hyla  croaking 
whieh  suggested  to  ./Esop  his  fable  of  the 
proud  frog  swelling  himself  out  to  the  size  of 
the  bull.  In  fact,  the  fable  is  not  a  pure  inven- 
tion utterly  devoid  of  foundation  in  nature. 

Professor  Forbes  admits  the  Hyla  viridis 
as  a  member  of  the  British  Fauna.  There  is 
so  little  difference  between  the  climate  of  our 
southern  counties  and  that  of  the  haunts  of 
my  Verdauts,  that  it  would  be  surprising  if 
they  were  not  to  be  found  in  England,  as  in 
France,  in  greater  actual  numbers  than  the 
human  natives  suspect.  When  Great  Britain 
and  the  continent  of  Europe  were  one,  tree- 
frogs  would  naturally  abound  in  Kent  and 
Hampshire,  as  well  as  in  Pas-de-Calais  and 
Somme.  The  slight  separation  caused  by  the 
Straits  of  Dover  would  simply  fix  the  terres- 
trial inhabitants  on  the  spot  where  they 
happened  to  be  at  the  time. 

The  establishment  of  a  colony  of  tree- 
frogs  in  an  English  park  is  an  enterprise  in 
which  there  would  seem  to  be  no  difficulty 
wherever  there  was  a  sufficiency  of  bushes  for 
cover  and  hunting-ground,  and  stagnant 
water  for  breeding,  with  a  fair  amount  of 
summer  warmth.  In  France,  the  late  severe 
winters  have  not  diminished  the  number  of 
the  Verdants.  la  captivity,  the  grand  desi- 
deratum is  live  flies,  of  which  we  have  often  i 
many  more  than  enough.  I  should  like  to  j 
offer  a  prize  for  the  best  cage  for  tree-frogs  j 
contrived  on  the  principle  of  their  being  self- 
supplied  with  prey — a  sort  of  fly-trap,  in  short. 
There  must  be  holes  through  which  flies  of 
various  sizes,  from  a  green-bottle  downwards, 
may  find  an  easy  entrance,  without  allowing 
any  exit  on  the  part  of  the  frogs.  A  blue- 
bottle is  as  big  as  an  infant  Verdant,  and 
where  that  could  get  in,  the  frogling  could 
get  out.  There  must  be  the  means  of  luring 
in  the  insect  poultry  in  such  abundance  that 
froggy  may  live  like  an  independent  gentle- 
man, with  enough  for  himself,  and  something 
to  give  away  amongst  his  indigent  neighbours. 
Such  a  mode  of  thinning  the  summer  plague 
of  flies  would  be  much  more  humane  than 
the  atrocious  system  of  converting  flies  into 
Stickytoes  by  means  of  glutinous  sheets  of 
paper,  sold  in  the  streets  under  the  name  of 
"  Catch  'em  alive  !  "  The  commissariat  is  the 
principal  difficulty  in  domesticating  Mr. 
Verdant.  He  is  very  fond  of  spiders  ;  but 
what  properly  regulated  house  will  own  to 
harbouring  them  ?  Several  were  collected  in 


a  paper-bag  for  some  tree-frogs  which  are 
thriving  pretty  well  in  a  small  Fernery,  and 
into  this  they  were  put,  bag  and  all.  Next 
morning  two  of  the  frogs  were  found — like 
gluttons  as  they  are  when  tried  with 
spider-diet,  inside  the  bag — without  a  ves- 
tige of  the  spiders  to  be  seen. 

With  being  made  torpid  in  winter  (per- 
haps by  burying  them  alive  in  a  bottle),  we 
may  succeed  in  making  Stickytoes  an  estab- 
lished pet,  as  his  prettiness  and  oddity 
deserve  that  he  should  be  made. 


CHIP. 

THE  FRENCH  WAR-OFFICE  IN  SEVENTEEN 
HUNDRED  AND  EIGHTY-FIVE. 

THE  encouraging  notion  first  sent  abroad 
by  the  great  Napoleon,  that  every  soldier 
carries  a  baton  de  marechal  in  his  knapsack, 
has  a  less  figurative  signification  than  would 
at  first  sight  appear.  It  is  true  that  the  pro- 
portion of  the  marshals  to  the  body  of  the 
army — in  the  ratio  of  about  a  dozen  to  some 
half  a  million — render  it  highly  probable 
that  the  private  will  have  to  bear  about  this 
ideal  baton  to  the  end  of  his  days.  He  him- 
self well  knows  that  there  is  but  slender 
prospect  of  the  tempting  bauble  ever  leaving 
that  corner  of  his  knapsack,  and  taking  ap- 
preciable shape.  But  he  knows,  besides,  that 
be  carries  in  that  same  store  of  his  other 
more  tangible  badges  of  distinction,  such  as 
the  sous-officier's  golden  epaulette,  the  laced 
hat  of  the  General  of  Division,  and  the  Grand 
Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour.  These  are 
prizes — all  within  his  grasp — for  which  the 
marechal's  baton  stands  but  as  a  figure. 

In  our  own  army,  on  the  other  hand,  it  la 
an  old  complaint,  of  which  men  are  almost 
weary,  that  such  glittering  trophies  may  be 
looked  for  in  vain  among  the  soldiers'  fur- 
niture. Not  even  in  that  metaphorical  shape 
of  the  phantom  marshal's  baton,  which 
would  be  some  poor  encouragement.  This 

frievance  is  now  in  process  of  being  re- 
ressed  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  until  the  date 
of  this  Napoleonic  saying,  the  French  army, 
under  Bourbon  handling,  was  in  more  cruel 
plight  than  ever  were  British  forces  in  the 
worst  days  of  Crimean  confusion.  Had  but 
Egalite",  or  other  obstructive  of  those  times, 
prayed  for  a  commission  of  enquiry  into  the 
management  of  the  war-office,  what  marvel- 
lous disclosures  would  have  been  sent  forth  ! 
The  famous  Livre  Rouge,  with  its  crimson 
type  and  list  of  mysterious  pensions,  could 
scarcely  have  caused  more  astonishment.  The 
world —  the  .reforming  world  especially —  is 
apt  to  forget  this  fact  when  it  points  so  tri- 
umphantly to  the  perfect  arrangement  of 
our  allies — to  their  smooth  roads  to  pro- 
motion, to  their  ingenious  fashions  of  cook- 
ing, hutting,  and  the  like  ;  and,  above  all, 
to  the  pleasing  addition  to  the  soldiers' 
necessaries  before  -  mentioned,  the  baton 
in  nubibus,  carried  about  in  the  knapsack. 


Charles  Dickena.1 


CHIP. 


[July  11,135;.]      35 


Until  the  date  of  the  Revolution  and 
the  military  dictatorship,  such  things  were 
not  heard  of.  On  the  contrary,  every- 
thing military  seemed  to  be  utterly  sunk  in 
corruption,  and  the  prey  of  a  gigantic  jobbing 
system.  The  broad  features  of  this  fatal 
mismanagement  are  tolerably  well  known  to 
the  world  ;  but,  from  a  tell-tale  Army  List 
issued  from  the  office  of  M.  le  Mar6chal  de 
Segur,  Minister  of  War,  in  the  year  seven- 
teen hundred  and  eighty-five,  only  four  years 
before  the  Eevolution,  a  few  significant  facts 
may  be  gleaned.  What  would  seem  at  first 
only  a  barren  catalogue  of  names,  becomes, 
for  us,  a  Blue-book  impeachment,  as  it  were, 
of  those  days.  For,  through  the  pages  of 
this  little  volume  the  truth  slips  out  acci- 
dentally, and  lets  us  officially  into  the  secrets 
of  the  whole  system.  The  very  first  glance 
at  its  crowded  pages  discovers  a  strange  prin- 
ciple in  their  distribution  of  military  honours 
and  rewards. 

In  each  regiment  are  to  be  found  between 
seventy  and  eighty  officers.  Of  these,  some  five 
or  six  on  an  average  bear  titles,  or  at  least 
enjoy  the  Corinthian  prefix  "  de,"  before  their 
names.  This  proves  the  aristocratic  element 
to  have  been  slender  indeed  in  the  French 
army, — somewhere  in  the  proportion  of  one  to 
about  fifteen  or  sixteen.  Turning  then  to  the 
higher  grades — those  including  the  marshals 
of  France,  generals,  and  brigadiers — which 
make  an  overgrown  total  of  nearly  thirteen 
hundred  and  thirty — it  would  be  expected 
that  the  greater  half  at  least  would  fall  to 
the  share  of  the  untitled  many.  Twelve 
hundred  such  appointments  would  be  the 
proper  proportion.  On  the  contrary,  we  find 
no  less  than  nine  hundred  and  twenty  filled 
by  dukes,  barons,  marquises,  and  other 
gentles  with  the  privileged  "de;"  and  the 
miserable  dole  of  scarcely  four  hundred 
reserved  "  pour  eucourager  les  autres " — 
namely,  those  fifteen  or  sixteen  thousand 
officers  who  practically  worked  the  French 
army.  No  wonder  then  that  when  the  hour 
of  trial  arrived,  the  army  was  found  to  fail  in 
its  duty. 

Another  significant  token  of  decay  meets 
us  in  the  costly  institution  known  as"  Maison 
du  Roi,"  or  Royal  Guard.  In  this  choice 
corps — which  was  intended  as  provision  for 
poorer  scions  of  the  aristocracy — it  was  con- 
trived that  there  should  be  an  officer  to  about 
every  three  men.  Which  arrangement,  how- 
ever convenient  as  a  mode  of  provision,  could 
scarcely  have  contributed  to  the  efficiency 
of  the  army.  Very  stately  is  the  enumera- 
tion of  the  various  divisions  and  subdivisions 
of  this  body — leading  off  with  the  Scotch 
companies,  in  whose  ranks,  as  was  to  be , 
expected,  not  a  Scot  was  to  be  found.  Next 
came  the  "  Hundred  Swiss,"  precursors  of 
the  giants  in  sky-blue,  and  bright  cuirasses, 
who  now  watch  over  the  person  of  Napoleon 
the  Third.  After  these  we  find  the  Garde  de ' 
Porte,  or  door-guard,  of  royal  Louis ;  the  j 


guard  of  the  H6tel  du  Roi ;  gendarmerie  of 
numerous  denominations  ;  light  horse ;  and 
the  Gardes  Franchises,  of  questionable  noto- 
riety, who  abandoned  their  king  in  his 
extremity  ;  next  follow  the  Swiss  Guard,  the 
valiant  Swiss,  whose  bright  scarlet  uniforms 
on  that  fatal  tenth  of  August,  was  the  mark 
for  many  a  bullet.  More  ingenious  denomi- 
nations follow, — such  as  the  Scotch  gendar- 
merie, and,  curious  to  say,  the  English ! 
raised,  it  seems,  so  far  back  as  the  year  six- 
teen hundred  and  sixty-seven.  The  queeix 
had  her  gendarmes  ;  so,  too,  had  his  high- 
ness the  Dauphin ;  so  had  Monsieur,  the 
King's  brother,  and  the  Count  d'Artois. 
Monsieur  is  also  provided  with  a  body-guard 
of  his  own,  to  say  nothing  of  his  Swiss  guard 
and  his  door-guard.  The  Count  d'Artois 
must  likewise  have  his  Swiss-guard,  his 
body-guard,  and  his  door-guard ;  which 
filled  up,  with  tolerable  completeness,  the 
roll  of  this  Maison  du  Roi. 

Pluralism  was  another  plague-spot  in  the 
system.  The  kingdom  was  at  that  time  par- 
celled out  into  a  number  of  small  govern- 
ments,— all  which  became  so  much  "  provi^- 
sion  "  for  favourite  commanders.  The  Comte 
de  Rochambeau,  who  conducted  the  war  in 
America,  found  time,  perhaps  when  abroad 
in  that  country,  to  fill  the  offices  of  chief- 
governor  of  the  Boulonnois,  governor  of  Ville- 
franche,  and  Commander-in-chief  of  Picardy, 
besides  keeping  a  few  spare  moments  for  the 
duties  of  the  colonelcy  of  the  Auvergne  regi- 
ment. But,  he  pales  his  ineffectual  fires 
before  the  star  of  Baron  Besenval,  the  Swiss 
legionary  ;  "  an  amiable  sybarite,"  as  he  ig 
described  in  a  strange  pamphlet  of  the  time, 
"  possessed  of  very  little  esprit ;  but  who  has 
raised  himself  above  his  fellows  by  making 
good  use  of  his  eyes  and  ears.  His  handsome 
person  was  of  some  service  to  him  at  court, 
and  his  ample  fortune  furnished  him  with 
the  means  of  shining  there."  This  favoured 
soldier  of  fortune  enjoyed  the  following  high 
commands.  He  was  sub-governor  of  Hugu- 
nau,  in  Alsace  ;  sub-governor  of  the  Cham- 
pagne and  Brie  district ;  sub-governor  of  the 
province  of  Nivernois  ;  and  sub-governor  of 
Berri ;  —  here  were  sub-governorships  in 
plenty.  But,  there  was  more  to  come. 
He  was  commander-in-chief  of  Tournois ; 
command  er-in-chief  of  the  city  of  Paris  ;  and 
lastly,  lieutenant-colonel  of  the  Swiss-guards ! 
This  was  a  strange  gathering  of  high  offices  in 
the  person  of  one  man  ;  a  simple  colonel.  It 
would  be  thought  that  the  care  of  a  single 
province  would  be  sufficient  to  give  full  em- 
ployment to  any  mortal  with  ordinary  capa- 
cities. Still,  he  and  his  major,  Baron  Bach- 
mann,  proved  themselves  not  unworthy  of 
such  high  distinction,  and  did  good  service 
when  the  day  of  trial  came  round. 

Another  abuse  was  the  accumulating 
of  great  offices  in  the  hands  of  children 
of  tender  years, — of  boys  at  school,  and  of 
young  men  wholly  unequal  to  the  duties, 


36     [J"iy  11,  i 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[ConducteJ  by 


Tims  the  Due  de  Richelieu — the  "  vainqueur 
tie  Mahon,"  as  they  were  foud  of  calling  him, 
in  glorification  of  that  diminutive  victory, — 
was  appointed  colonel  of  the  Bearne  regi- 
ment at  the  age  of  twenty-two  ;  while  the 
Due  de  Broglie  was  similarly  "provided  for," 
at  the  earlier  age  of  sixteen.  But  the  Due 
de  Mouchy  was  even  luckier  in  his  genera- 
tion. He  found  himself  military  governor  of 
the  town,  castle,  and  parks  of  Versailles  and 
Marly,  at  the  capable  age  of  five  years  ! 
Another  marshal  became  colonel  at  nineteen; 
while  the  Mar6chal  de  Castries  rejoiced  in 
the  important  posts  of  king's  lieutenant  in 
Languedoc,  and  governor  of  Montpellier  and 
Cette,  when  only  thirteen  years  old. 

This  glance  at  the  pages  of  this  official 
handbook  helps  us  to  some  knowledge  of  the 
way  they  were  ordering  matters  military  in 
France,  j  ust  before  the  great  crash  came. 


UNOPENED  BUDS. 

A  SHAPE  of  beauty  beyond  man's  device, 

Which  held  a  precious  life  with  us  begun, 
Light  feet  at  rest,  like  streamlets  chain'd  with  ice, 

And  folded  hands  whose  little  work  is  done, 
Make  this  poor  hamlet  sacred  to  our  grief: 

Pass'd  is  the  soul,  which  was  of  nobler  worth, 
Like  fire  from  glowworm,  tint  from  wither'd  leaf, 

Perfume  from  fallen  flower,  or  daylight  from  the 
earth. 

Star,  faded  from  our  sky  elsewhere  to  shine, 

Whose  beam  to  bless  us  for  a  while  was  given  ; 
Little  white  hand,  a  few  times  clasp'd  in  mine, 

Sweet  face,  whose  light  is  now  return'd  to  heaven. 
With  empty  arms,  I  linger  where  thou  liest, 

And  pluck  half-open'd  flowers  as  types  of  thee, 
And  think  that  angels,  amid  joys  the  highest, 

Are  happier  for  thy  love,    which    still    they  share 
with  me. 

AGNES  LEE. 

CHAPTER  THE   FIRST. 

MRS.  WARREN  was  a  charming  woman — as 
like  the  popular  notion  of  a  perfect  angel  as 
anybody  could  hope  to  find,  if  they  took  the 
longest  summer  day  for  the  search.  She  was 
an  Irishwoman,  the  widow  of  an  English 
gentleman  of  large  fortune,  who  had  left  her 
endowed  with  an  ample  jointure  and  a  hand- 
some manor-house  in  Staffordshire.  She  was 
young,  bright,  fascinating,  and  thoroughly 
good-natured  ;  she  enjoyed  nothing  so  much 
as  making  people  happy,  and  would  sacrifice 
her  own  pleasure  or  convenience  even,  for  an 
entire  stranger,  provided  the  necessities  of 
the  case  had  been  brought  before  her  with 
sufficient  eloquence  or  emphasis.  She  did 
everything  in  the  easiest  and  most  graceful 
manner,  and  had  the  virtue  of  forgetting  all 
about  it  herself,  as  soon  as  the  occasion  had 
passed  away.  She  was  devoted  to  her  friends, 
and  loved  them  dearly,  so  long  as  they  were 
there  to  assist  themselves ;  but,  if  they  went 
away,  she  never  thought  of  them  till  the  next 


time  she  saw  them,  when  she  was  again  as 
fond  of  them  as  ever.  With  all  her  gene- 
rosity, however,  her  tradespeople  complained 
that  she  did  not  pay  her  bills ;  that  she  did 
very  shabby  things,  and  that  she  drove 
dreadfully  hard  bargains.  A  poor  woman 
whom  she  had  employed  to  do  some  plain 
work,  declared  contemptuously  that  she 
would  sooner  work  for  Jews  than  for  cha- 
ritable ladies  :  they  screwed  down  so  in  the 
price,  and  kept  folks  waiting  so  long  for  their 
money. 

It  was  not  difficult  for  Mrs.  Warren  to  be 
an  angel :  she  had  no  domestic  discipline  to 
test  her  virtues  too  severely,  nor  to  ruffle  the 
bird  of  paradise  beauty  of  her  wings.  Hus- 
bands are  daily  stumbling-blocks  in  the  path 
of  female  perfection  ;  they  have  the  faculty 
of  taking  the  shine  out  of  the  most  dazzling 
appearances.  It  is  easier  to  be  an  angel  than 
to  be  an  average  good  woman  under  domestic 
difficulties. 

Mrs.  Huxley  was  the  wife  of  the  hard- 
working clergyman  in  whose  parish  Mrs. 
Warren's  manor-house  was  situated.  She 
had  a  cross  husband,  who  did  not  adore 
her,  but  who  (chiefly  from  the  force  of  habit) 
found  fault  with  everything  she  did  ;  nothing 
but  the  purest  gold  could  have  stood  the 
constant  outpouring  of  so  much  sulphuric 
acid.  Yet  Mrs.  Huxley  went  on  in  the  even, 
tenor  of  her  way,  struggling  with  straitened 
means,  delicate  health,  recurring  washing- 
days,  and  her  husband's  temper.  Her  eco- 
nomical feebleness,  and  the  difficulties  of 
keeping  her  weekly  bills  in  a  state  of 
liquidation,  were  greatly  complicated  in  con- 
sequence of  all  the  poor  people  in  the  parish 
coming  to  her  as  to  a  sort  of  earthly  Provi- 
dence, to  supply  all  they  lacked  in  the  shape 
of  food,  physic,  raiment,  and  good  advice* 
Strangers  said  that  Mrs.  Huxley  looked  fret- 
ful, and  that  it  was  a  pity  a  clergyman's  wife 
should  have  such  unattractive  manners  ;  that 
it  must  be  a  trial  to  such  a  pleasant  genial 
man  as  her  husband  to  have  a  partner  so 
unlike  himself,  and  all  that.  The  recording 
angel  might  have  given  a  different  verdict ; 
the  poor  of  her  parish  knew  her  value. 

The  family  at  the  Rectory  consisted  of  one 
daughter,  named  Miriam,  and  an  orphan 
niece  of  Mr.  Huxley's,  whom  they  had 
adopted.  Mr.  Huxley  had  made  many  diffi- 
culties when  this  plan  was  first  proposed.  Ho 
objected  to  the  expense,  and  wished  the  girl 
to  be  sent  as  an  articled  pupil  to  some  cheap 
school,  where  she  might  qualify  herself  to  be- 
come a  nursery  governess,  or  to  wait  on  young 
ladies.  This  he  said  on  the  plea  that,  as  they 
would  not  be  able  to  give  her  any  fortune,  it 
would  be  cruel  to  give  her  a  taste  for  comforts, 
she  could  not  hereafter  expect ;  that  it  was  best 
to  accustom  her  betimes  to  the  hardships  of 
her  lot.  Mrs.  Huxley  did  not  often  contradict 
her  husband  ;  but,  on  this  occasion,  she  exerted 
her  powers  of  speech  ;  she  was  a  mother,  and, 
acted  as  she  would  have  wished  another  to 


Charles  Dickens.] 


AGNES  LEE. 


(July  11,  1857.1        37 


act  by  her  own  Miriam.  Mr.  Huxley  gra- 
ciously allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded,  and 
Agnes  Lee,  the  child  of  his  favourite  sister, 
was  adopted  into  the  Eectory  nursery  on  a 
perfect  equality  with  her  cousin.  It  somehow 
got  to  be  reported  abroad,  that  Mrs.  Huxley 
had  greatly  opposed  her  husband's  generosity, 
and  had  wished  the  little  orphan  to  be  sent 
to  the  workhouse. 

The  two  children  grew  up  together,  and 
were  as  fond  of  each  other  as  sisters  usually 
are  ;  but  Agnes  Lee  had  the  strongest  will 
and  the  most  energy.  So  it  was  she  who 
settled  the  plays  and  polity  of  doll-land,  and 
who  took  the  lead  in  all  matters  of  "  books, 
and  work,  and  needle-play."  Agnes  was 
twelve,  and  Miriam  fourteen,  when  the  fasci- 
nating Mrs.  Warren  came  to  live  at  the 
Great  House. 

She  took  up  the  Eectory  people  most 
warmly,  and  threw  herself  with*  enthusiasm 
into  all  manner  of  benevolent  schemes  for 
the  benefit  of  the  parish.  To  the  two  girls 
she  seemed  like  a  good  fairy.  She  had  them 
constantly  to  her  beautiful  house,  she  gave 
them  lessons  in  singing,  and  taught  them  to 
dance  ;  her  French  maid  manufactured  their 
bonnets  and  dresses  ;  she  lavished  gifts  upon 
them,  she  made  pets  of  them,  and  was  never 
weary  of  inventing  schemes  for  giving  them 
pleasure.  It  was  delightful  to  see  their  en- 
joyment and  to  receive  their  gratitude,  and 
she  never  suspected  the  delicate  unobtrusive 
care  with  which  poor  cold,  stiff,  Mrs.  Huxley 
contrived  that  the  two  girls  should  never 
fall  too  heavily  upon  the  hands  of  their  beau- 
tiful patroness.  She  also  tried  to  inspire 
them  with  a  portion  of  her  own  reserve  ;  but 
that  was  not  so  easy.  Miriam — a  mild,  shy, 
undemonstrative  girl — felt  an  admiration  of 
Mrs.  Warren  that  approached  to  idolatry.  It 
took  the  place  of  a  first  love.  Mrs.  Warreti 
liked  the  excitement  of  being  loved  with 
enthusiasm  ;  but  she  never  calculated  the 
responsibility  it  brought  along  with  it, 
and  omitted  nothing  that  could  stimulate 
Miriam's  passionate  attachment.  Agnes  was 
less  impressionable.  She  had  a  precocious 
amount  of  common  sense,  and  Mrs.  Warren's 
fascinations  did  not  take  too  much  hold  upon 
her.  The  Hector  was  almost  as  much  be- 
witched as  his  daughter  by  the  fair  widow. 
She  talked  gaily  to  him,  and  obliged  him  to 
rub  up  his  ancient  gallantry,  which  had  fallen 
into  rusty  disuse.  She  dressed  all  the  children 
of  his  school  in  green  gowns  and  red  ribbons. 
She  subscribed  a  painted  window  to  the 
church.  She  talked  over  two  refractory 
churchwardens,  who  had  been  the  torment  of 
his  life  :  above  all,  she  admired  his  sermons  ; 
and,  as  she  was  in  correspondence  with  a  lord 
bishop,  he  had  sanguine  hopes  that  her  admi- 
ration might  lead  to  something  better.  Mrs. 
Huxley  was  the  only  person  who  refused  to 
be  charmed.  She  did  not  contradict  the 
raptures  expressed  by  her  husband  and 
daughter,  but  she  heard  them  in.  silence. 


When  Miriam  was  sixteen,  she  fell  into 
delicate  health  ;  a  slight  accident  developed 
a  spinal  affection.  A  London  physician, 
who  with  his  wife  was  on  a  short  visit  to 
Mrs.  Warren,  saw  Miriam  at  her  request, 
and  gave  little  hope  that  she  would  ever  be 
anything  but  a  life-long  invalid.  She  was 
ordered  to  keep  as  much  as  possible  in 
a  recumbent  position.  Mrs.  Warren  was 
on  the  point  tof  departing  for  London. 
Nothing  could  exceed  her  sympathy  and 
generosity.  At  first  she  declared  she  would 
postpone  her  journey,  to  assist  Mrs.  Huxley 
to  nurse  her  sweet  Miriam  ;  but  she  easily 
gave  up  that  idea  when  Mrs.  Huxley  de- 
clared, rather  dryly,  "  that  there  was  not  the 
least  occasion  ;  for,  as  the  case  was  likely  to 
be  tedious,  it  was  better  to  begin  as  they 
could  go  on."  Mrs.  Warren,  however,  loaded 
Miriam  with  presents.  She  made  Miriam 
promise  to  write  to  her  all  she  read  and 
thought ;  and,  for  this  purpose,  she  gave  her 
a  supply  of  fairy-like  paper  and  a  gold  pen. 
Miriam,  on  her  side,  promised  to  write  twice 
a-week  at  least,  and  to  tell  Mrs.  Warren 
everything  that  could  amuse  her.  Mrs. 
Warren  gave  orders  to  her  gardener  to  sup- 
ply the  Rectory  with  fruit,  flowers,  and 
vegetables  ;  but  either  Mrs.  Warren's  direc- 
tions were  not  clear,  or  the  gardener  did  not 
choose  to  act  upon  them.  He  charged  for 
everything  that  he  sent  down,  and  gave  as  his 
reason  that  his  mistress  paid  him  no  wages 
in  her  absence,  but  let  him  pick  up  what  he 
could. 

After  Mrs.  Warren's  departure,  she  wrote 
for  a  month  ;  after  that,  her  letters  ceased. 
Newspapers  supplied  their  place  ;  and,  it 
appeared  from  the  notices  of  fashionable 
life,  that  Mrs.  Warren  had  taktn  her 
place  amongst  the  gayest.  At  last  the  news- 
papers ceased  ;  the  last  that  came  contained 
the  announcement  that  Mrs.  Warren  had  left 
town  for  Paris.  After  this,  no  more  news 
reached  the  Eectory.  The  Manor  House  re- 
mained shut  up,  and  the  lodge-keeper  said 
"  that  the  Missis  was  spending  the  winter  at 
Bath." 

At  first  Miriam  wrote  in  all  the  enthusiasm, 
and  good  faith  of  youthful  adoration.  Mrs. 
Warren  had  begged  she  would  not  count 
with  her  letter  for  letter,  but  have  trust  in 
her  unalterable  attachment,  &c.,  &c. ;  and 
Miriam  went  on  writing,  long  after  all  answers 
had  ceased.  Everything  earthly  has  its 
limit ;  and,  when  reciprocity  is  all  on 
one  side,  the  term  is  reached  rather  earlier 
than  it  might  otherwise  have  been.  Poor 
Miriam  lay  oil  her  couch,  and  went  through 
all  the  heart  •  sickening  process  of  disen- 
chantment about  the  friendship  which  she 
had  made  the  light  of  her  life.  She 
rejoiced  moodily  in  her  physical  sufferings,, 
and  hoped  that  she  should  soon  die,  as  she 
could  not  endure  such  misery  long.  The 
young  believe  in  the  eternity  of  all  they  feeL 

She  was  roused  from  this  sorrow  of  sen- 


38      [July  11.  13i7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


lC<  nductei  by 


timent  by  a  real  affliction.  Scarlet  fever 
broke  out  in  the  parish.  Air.  Huxley  caught 
it,  and  died,  after  a  fortnight's  illness.  A 
life  insurance  for  a  thousand  pounds,  and  a 
few  hundreds  painfully  saved  and  laid  by  in 
the  Bank  of  England,  was  all  the  provision 
that  remained  to  his  family. 

A  fortnight  after  the  funei-al,  Mrs.  Huxley 
and  Agnes  were  sitting  sadly  before  the  fire, 
which  had  burned  low,  on  a  dull,  chill 
November  evening.  Miriam  lay  on  her 
couch,  and  could  scarcely  be  discerned  in  the 
deepening  shadow.  The  dusk  was  gathering 
thick,  the  curtains  were  not  drawn ;  both 
without  and  within,  the  world  looked  equally 
desolate  to  these  three  women.  The  silence 
was  broken  only  by  the  sighs  of  poor  Mrs. 
Huxley ;  the  dull  firelight  showed  her 
widow's  cap,  and  the  glaze  of  tears  upon 
her  pale  clay-like  cheeks.  At  length  Agnes 
roused  herself.  She  had  taken  the  lead  in 
the  house  since  the  family  troubles,  and  now 
moved  briskly  about  the  room,  endeavouring 
to  impart  something  like  comfort.  She  re- 
plenished the  fire,  trimmed  the  lamp ;  and 
made  the  old  servant  bring  in  tea. 

.Agnes  threw  in  an  extra  spoonful  of  green, 
spread  a  tempting  slice  of  toast,  and  placed 
a  small  table  between  Mrs.  Huxley  and 
Miriam,  who  both  began  insensibly  to  be 
influenced  by  the  change  she  had  produced. 
When  tea  was  over,  they  became  almost 
cheerful.  After  tea,  Mrs.  Huxley  took  out 
her  knitting,  and  Agnes  brought  out  her 
work-basket. 

"  Now  listen,  dear  aunt ;  for  I  have  schemed 
a  scheme,  which  only  needs  your  approval." 

"  That  will  go  a  very  little  way  towards 
doing  good,"  sighed  Mrs.  Huxley. 

"  Oh,  !t  will  go  further  than  you  think  !  " 
said  Agnes,  cheerfully.  "  I  was  up  at  the 
Green  this  morning,  and  I  heard  that  Sam 
Blacksmith  is  going  to  leave  his  cottage  for 
another  that  is  nearer  to  his  smithy.  It 
struck  nie  that  the  one  he  is  leaving  would 
just  suit  you,  and  Miriam,  and  old  Mary. 
There  is  a  garden  ;  and  the  cottage  in  your 
hands  will  be  charming.  This  furniture  will 
look  to  moi*e  advantage  there  than  it  does 
here  ;  and,  when  I  have  seen  you  comfortably 
settled,  I  shall  leave  you,  to  seek  my  for- 
tune." 

"  My  dear,  you  are  so  rash,  and  you  talk  so 
fast,  I  don't  hear  one  word  you  say,"  said 
Mrs.  Huxley,  querulously. 

"  I  was  talking,  aunt,  about  a  cottage  I  had 
seen  this  morning/'  said  Agnes,  gently.  "  I 
thought  it  would  just  suit  us." 

"I  am  sure  I  shall  not  like  it.  It  will 
have  stone  floors,  which  will  not  do  for 
Miriam.  You  talk  so  wildly  of  going  to  seek 
your  fortune.  I  am  sure  I  don't  know  what  is 
to  become  of  us.  You  are  so  sanguine :  no 
good  ever  comes  of  it.  You  were  all  so  set 
up  with  Mrs.  Warren,  and  you  see  what  came 
of  it." 

"  Well,  aunt,  iny  belief  is,  that  Mrs.  War- 


ren would  be  as  good  as  ever,  if  she  only  saw 
us ;  but  she  cannot  recollect  people  out  of 
sight." 

"She  loves  flattery,  and  she  likes  fresh 
people,"  said  Miriam,  bitterly. 

Agnes  went  to  the  piano,  and  began  to  play 
some  old  hymn  tunes  very  softly. 

"Agnes,  my  dear,  I  cannot  bear  music. 
Do  come  back  and  sit  still,"  said  her  aunt. 

The  next  morning  Agnes  persuaded  her 
aunt  to  go  with  her  to  the  Green,  to  look  at 
the  cottage  ;  and,  after  some  objections,  Mrs. 
Huxley  agreed  that  it  might  be  made  to  do. 

Whilst  making  arrangements  for  the  re- 
moval, Agnes  thought  seriously  how  she  was 
to  obtain  a  situation  of  some  kind,  and 
anxiously  examined  what  she  was  qualified 
to  undertake.  She  knew  that  she  had  only 
herself  to  depend  upon.  A  few  days  after- 
wards the  postman  brought  a  letter  with  a 
foreign  postmark.  It  was  Mrs.  Warren's 
handwriting.  Agnes  bounded  with  it  into 
the  parlour,  exclaiming,  "  See  !  who  was  right 
about  Mrs.  Warren  1  It  is  for  you." 

Miriam  turned  aside  her  head.  Mrs. 
Huxley  put  on  her  spectacles  ;  and,  after 
turning  the  letter  over  half-a-dozen  times, 
opened  it.  A  bank-note  for  twenty  pounds 
fell  out.  The  letter  was  written  in  the  kind- 
est tone.  She  had  just  seen  .the  mention  of 
Mr.  Huxley's  death,  and  wrote  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment.  She  was  full  of  self-reproach 
for  her  neglect ;  begged  them  to  believe  she 
loved  them  as  much  as  ever ;  spoke  of  Miriam 
with  great  kindness,  but  without  any  spe- 
ciality ;  begged  to  be  informed  of  their  plans 
for  the  future ;  and,  in  a  hasty  postscript, 
said,  that  the  enclosure  was  towards  erecting 
a  tablet  to  the  memory  of  her  dear  friend,  or 
for  any  other  purpose  they  preferred. 

Nothing  could  be  kinder  or  more  delicate  ; 
but  Miriam  was  nearly  choked  with  bitter  feel- 
ings. The  letter  showed  her  how  completely 
she  had  faded  away  from  Mrs.  Warren's 
affection.  She  vehemently  urged  her  mother 
and  cousin  to  send  back  the  money. 

Agnes  undertook  to  answer  the  letter; 
which  she  did  with  great  judgment.  Even 
Miriam  was  satisfied.  She  mentioned  her 
own  desire  to  find  a  situation  as  prepara- 
tory governess,  and  asked  Mrs.  Warren 
if  she  had  it  in  her  power  to  recommend 
her. 

As  soon  as  could  reasonably  be  expected, 
the  answer  came,  addressed  to  Mrs.  Huxley, 
begging  that  Agnes  might  at  once  join  the 
writer  in  Paris,  where,  she  had  not  the  least 
doubt,  she  would  be  able  to  place  her  ad- 
vantageously. Minute  directions  were  given 
for  the  journey.  On  arriving  in  Paris,  Agues 
was  to  proceed  at  once  to  the  Hotel  Ray- 
mond, where  Mrs.  Warren  was  staying. 

"  How  kind  !  how  very  kind  !  "  exclaimed 
Agnes.  "  You  see  her  heart  is  in  the  right 
place  after  all  !  " 

"  It  is  certainly  very  kind  ;  but  I  do  not 
like  you  to  take  so  long  a  journey  alone,  you 


Char'ei  Dickens.] 


AGNES  LEE. 


[July  11,  1337J      39 


are  too  young.  I  cannot  feel  it  either  right 
or  prudent,"  said  Mrs.  Huxley. 

"  My  dear  Agnes,"  said  Miriam,  "you  shall 
not  be  trusted  to  the  mercy  of  that  woman. 
She  cares  for  nothing  but  excitement.  She 
has  no  notion  of  obligation,  and  will  be  as 
likely  as  not  to  have  left  Paris  by  the  time 
you  arrive,  if  the  fancy  has  taken  her  for 
visiting  Egypt  or  Mexico.  I  know  what  she 
is,  and  you  shall  not  go." 

"My  dear  aunt,  as  I  am  to  make  my  own 
way  in  the  world,  the  sooner  I  begin  the 
better.  I  am  to  take  charge  of  others,  and  I 
must  learn  to  take  care  of  myself.  My  dear 
Miriam,  you  are  unjust.  I  place  very  little 
dependence  on  the  stability  of  Mrs.  Warren's 
emotions  ;  but  she  always  likes  people  when 
they  are  with  her.  It  is  an  opening  I  am 
not  likely  to  have  again,  and  the  sooner  I 
avail  myself  of  it  the  better." 

"Agnes,  be  warned,  I  entreat  you.  No 
good  will  ever  come  out  of  that  woman's 
random  benefits.  They  are  no  better  than 
snares.  Have  nothing  to  do  with  her." 

Agnes  would  not  be  warned.  She  wished 
to  go  out  into  the  world,  to  make  her  own 
way.  She  had  no  fears  for  herself.  She 
argued  and  persuaded,  and  at  last  her  aunt 
consented.  Miriam  was  over-ruled,  and  a 
grateful  acceptance  was  written  to  Mrs. 
Warren,  fixing  that  day  three  weeks  for  her 
departure. 

"  The  die  is  cast  now  !  "  said  Agnes,  when 
she  returned  from  carrying  the  letter  to  the 
post,  "I  wonder  what  my  future  lot  will 
be!" 

CHAPTER  THE  SECOND. 

THE  diligence  rolled  heavily  into  the  Court 
of  the  Messageries  Royal  in  Paris,  towards 
the  middle  of  a  keen  bright  day  in  the  last 
week  of  December.  A  fair,  elegant  English 
girl,  in  deep  mourning,  looked  anxiously  out 
of  the  window  of  the  coupe,  in  search  of  some 
one  to  claim  her. 

"  Is  there  any  one  waiting  for  you,  Ma'm- 
selle  1 "  asked  the  good-natured  conductor. 
"  Will  it  please  you  to  alight  1 " 

"  I  see  no  one,"  said  Agnes,  who  was 
bewildered  with  the  noise  and  bustle.  "I 
must  have  a  coach  to  go  to  this  address, 
please." 

"  Mrs.  Warren,  Hotel  Eaymond,"  read  the 
conductor,  looking  at  her  keenly.  "You 
want  to  go  there,  do  you  1  Well,  I  will  see. 
Your  friends  ought  not  to  have  left  you  to 
arrive  alone.  But  the  English  are  so  droll !  " 

In  a  few  minutes  he  returned. 

"  Now,  Ma'mselle,  here  is  a  coach.  The 
driver  is  my  friend ;  he  will  see  you  safe. 
You  may  trust  him.  I  would  go  with  you 
myself,  but — " 

"You  have  been  very  kind  to  me,"  said 
Agnes,  gratefully.  Her  command  of  French 
was  very  limited,  and  she  said  this  in  Eng- 
lish ;  but  the  look  that  accompanied  it  spoke 
the  language  which  needs  no  interpreter. 


"  Pardon.  No  thanks ;  it  is  my  duty. 
Ma'mselle  is  too  generous !  There  is  no 
occasion."  And  the  gallant  conductor  put 
back  the  five-franc  piece  that  Agnes  tendered 
with  some  embarrassment ;  for,  during  the 
journey  he  had  shown  her  kindness  that  she 
felt  could  not  be  repaid  in  money.  She  took 
from  her  purse  a  half-crown  piece  English 
money.  This  the  conductor  put  into  his  left 
waistcoat-pocket,  as  he  said  "for  a  remem- 
brance of  Ma'mselle." 

The  hackney-coach  soon  arrived  at  Ray- 
mond's. A  grand-lpoking  servant  came  to 
the  door  of  the  coach,  and  inquired  her  plea- 
sure, with  an  elaborate  politeness  that  would 
have  been  overwhelming  at  any  other  time  ; 
but  Agnes  scarcely  noticed  him.  She  eagerly 
handed  him  Mrs.  Warren's  card ;  but  what 
little  French  she  could  command  had  entirely 
departed,  and  she  could  not  utter  a  word. 
The  gar§on  took  the  card,  looked  at  it  with 
a  slight  gesture  of  surprise,  and  returned  to 
the  house.  In  the  meantime  the  coachman 
dismounted,  took  down  the  modest  luggage, 
and  demanded  his  fare.  Agnes  alighted, 
gave  the  man  what  he  asked,  and  he  had  just 
driven  away,  when  the  gar§on  returned, 
accompanied  by  another. 

"  Ma'mselle  is  under  a  meestake,"  said  the 
new  comer,  who  evidently  believed  that  he 
spoke  English  like  a  native.  "Madame 
Warren  is  no  more  here — she  departed  two 
days  since  for  Marseilles." 

Agnes  looked  stupidly  at  him.  She  had 
heard  what  he  said  perfectly,  and  she  was 
quite  calm  ;  but  it  was  the  calmness  that 
makes  the  heart  stand  still,  and  turns  the  life 
within  to  stone. 

"  She  told  me  to  come  here.  She  knew  I 
was  to  come."  Agnes  spoke  with  stiffened 
lips  and  a  voice  that  did  net  seem  her  own. 

"  She  may  have  left  some  message — some 
letter  for  Ma'mselle,"  suggested  the  first 
gar§on.  "  I  will  inquire." 

Agues  sat  down  upon  her  trunk.  She  felt 
convinced  that  Mrs.  Warren  had  gone  and 
left  no  directions  about  her.  She  had  just 
five  francs  and  half  a  guinea  left  of  money. 
Her  position  presented  itself  to  her  with 
perfect  lucidity ;  but  she  felt  no  alarm, 
only  a  horrible  stillness  and  paralysis  of  all 
emotion. 

The  garc,on  returned :  he  had  a  letter  in 
his  hand.  Madame  Warren  had  departed 
for  Marseilles,  en  route  for  Sicily.  She  had 
left  no  message  or  direction.  That  letter  had 
arrived  a  few  hours  after  her  departure,  but 
they  did  not  know  where  to  forward  it. 

Agnes  looked  at  the  letter.  It  was  her 
own,  stating  the  time  she  would  arrive  in 
Paris,  and  requesting  to  be  met.  She  gave 
it  back  to  the  gargon  without  speaking,  and 
rested  her  head  dreamily  and  wearily  upon 
her  hand. 

The  sight  of  a  young  and  extremely  pretty 
English  girl  in  deep  mourning  and  sitting 
upon  her  trunk,  had  by  this  time  attracted 


40       [July  II,  1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[.Conducted  by 


a  group  of  curious  spectators.  The  fate  of 
Agnes  Lee  was  trembling  in  the  balance. 
Already,  a  man,  no  longer  young,  who  had 
lost  his  front  teeth,  and  who  looked  as  if  he 
had  no  bones  in  his  body,  and  a  woman  with 
a  hard,  insolent,  determined  face,  varnished 
with  cajolery,  approached  her.  The  woman 
addressed  her  in  passably  good  English,  but 
Agnes  seemed  not  to  hear.  At  this  crisis  a 
grave,  middle-aged  man  made  his  way  from 
the  street.  He  looked  round  with  surprise 
at  the  persons  crowding  in  the  court,  and  his 
eye  fell  on  Agnes.  He  went  up  to  her.  The 
man 'and  woman  both  shrank  back  from  his 
glance. 

"What  is  the  meaning  of  all  this,  my 
child  ?  How  came  you  here,  and  what  do 
you  want  1 " 

He  spoke  with  a  certain  benevolent  auste- 
rity. His  tone  roused  Agnes  ;  she  looked  up 
and  passed  her  hand  in  a  bewildered  way 
over  her  forehead  ;  but  she  could  not  recol- 
lect or  explain  her  story.  Mechanically  she 
gave  him  Mrs.  Warren's  letter  directing  her 
to  the  Hotel  Eaymond,  and  looked  acutely  at 
him  as  his  eye  glanced  over  it. 

"  My  poor  child,  you  cannot  remain  here. 
They  ought  not  to  have  left  you  here  for 
a  moment.  You  must  come  in  and  speak 
to  my  wife.  We  will  see  what  can  be 
done." 

The  loiterers  dispersed — the  new-comer 
was  the  proprietor  of  the  hotel.  Desiring  a 
porter  to  take  up  her  trunk,  he  led  her  into 
a  private  office,  where  a  pleasant  looking 
woman  of  about  forty  sat  at  a  desk  sur- 
rounded by  account-books  and  ledgers.  She 
looked  up  from  her  writing  as  they  entered. 
He  spoke  to  her  in  a  low  voice,  and  gave  her 
the  letter  to  read. 

"  Mais  c'est  une  infamie  !  "  said  she,  vehe- 
mently, when  she  had  read  it.  You  have 
done  well  to  bring  her  in — it  was  worthy  of 
you,  my  friend.  Heavens  !  she  is  stupefied 
with  cold  and  fear !  " 

Agnes  stood  still,  apparently  unconscious 
of  what  was  passing  ;  she  heard,  but  she 
could  give  no  sign.  At  length  sight  and 
sound  became  confused,  and  she  fell. 

When  she  recovered,  she  was  lying  in  bed, 
and  a  pleasant  -  looking  nurse  was  sitting 
beside  her,  dressed  in  a  tall  white  Normandy 
cap  and  striped  jacket.  She  nodded  and 
smiled,  and  showed  her  white  teeth,  when 
Agnes  opened  her  eyes,  shook  her  head,  and 
jabbered  something  that  Agues  could  not  com- 
prehend. The  girl  felt  too  weak  and  too 
dreamy  to  attempt  to  unravel  the  mystery 
of  where  she  was  and  how  she  came 
there.  In  a  short  time,  the  lady  she  had 
seen  sitting  in  the  office  amongst  the  day- 
books and  ledgers  came  in.  She  laid  her 
hand  gently  on  her  forehead,  saying,  in  a 
cheerful  voice,  "  You  are  better  now.  You 
are  with  friends.  You  shall  tell  us  your 
story  when  you  are  stronger.  You  must  not 
agitate  yourself." 


Agnes  endeavoured  to  rise,  but  sank 
back  ;  the  long  journey  and  the  severe 
shock  she  had  received  had  made  her 
seriously  ill.  The  doctor  who  had  been  called 
to  revive  her  from  her  long  trance-like  swoon 
ordered  the  profouudest  quiet,  and,  thanks  to 
the  Samaritan  kindness  of  her  new  friends, 
Agnes  was  enabled  to  follow  the  doctor's 
directions :  for  two  days  she  lay  in  a  delight- 
ful state  of  repose,  between  waking  and 
dreaming.  Everything  she  needed  was  brought 
to  her,  as  by  some  friendly  magic,  at  pre- 
cisely the  right  moment.  On  the  third  day 
she  felt  almost  well,  and  expressed  a  wish  to 
get  up  and  dress.  Her  hostess  took  her  down 
to  a  pleasant  parlour  beyond  the  office.  There 
were  books,  and  prints,  and  newspapers  ;  she 
was  desired  to  amuse  herself,  and  not  to 
trouble  her  head  with  any  anxiety  about  the 
future  :  she  was  a  visitor. 

M.  Eaymond,  the  proprietor,  came  in. 
Agnes  had  not  seen  him  since  the  day  he 
brought  her  into  his  house.  He  was  a  grave 
sensible  man.  To  him  she  told  her  whole 
story,  and  gave  him  Mrs.  Warren's  letters 
to  read.  "  My  good  young  lady,"  said  he,  as 
he  returned  them,  "we  have  only  a  little 
strength,  and  should  not  waste  it  in  super- 
fluities ;  we  need  it  all  to  do  our  simple  duty. 
This  lady  was  too  fond  of  the  luxury  of  doing 
good,  as  it  is  called ;  but  I  cannot  under- 
stand her  thoughtlessness.  There  must  be 
some  mistake  ;  though,  after  incurring  the 
responsibility  of  sending  for  you,  no  mistake 
ought  to  have  been  possible." 

Agnes  tried  to  express  all  the  gratitude 
she  felt ;  but  M.  Eaymond  interrupted  her. 
She  was  far  from  realising  all  the  danger 
she  had  escaped  ;  she  knew  it  in  after  years. 
"  I  shall  write  home,"  she  said  ;  "  my  aunt 
and  cousin  will  be  anxious  until  they  hear." 

"Let  them  be  uneasy  a  little  longer,  till 
you  can  tell  them  something  definite  about 
your  prospects.  Anything  you  could  say  now 
would  only  alarm  them." 

Two  days  afterwards  M.  Eaymond  came 
to  her  and  said,  "  Do  not  think  we  want  to 
get  rid  of  you  ;  but,  if  it  suits  you,  I  have 
heard  of  a  situation.  Madame  Tremordyn 
wants  a  companion — a  young  lady  who  will 
be  to  her  as  like  a  daughter  as  can  be 
got  for  money.  She  is  a  good  woman,  but 
proud  and  peculiar  ;  and,  so  long  as  her  sou 
does  not  fall  in  love  with  you,  she  will  treat 
you  well  The  son  is  with  his  regiment  in 
Algiers  just  now  ;  so  you  are  safe.  I  will  take 
you  to  her  this  afternoon." 

They  went  accordingly.  Madame  Tre- 
mordyn— an  old  Breton  lady,  stately  with 
grey  hair  and  flashing  dark  grey  eyes, 
dressed  in  stiff  black  silk — received  her  with 
stately  urbanity,  explained  the  duties  of  her 
situation,  and  expressed  her  wish  that  Agnes 
should  engage  with  her.  The  salary  was 
liberal,  and  Agues  thankfully  accepted  the 
offer.  It  was  settled  that  she  should  come 
the  next  morning.  "  Eecollect  your  home  ia 


Charle»  Dickens.] 


AGNES  LEE. 


[July  11, 1357.]      41 


with  us,"  said  M.  Raymond.     "  Corae  back  to 
us  if  3'ou  are  unhappy." 

That  night  Agnes  wrote  to  her  aunt  the 
history  of  all  that  had  befallen  her,  and  the 
friends  who  had  been  raised  up  to  her,  and 
the  home  that  had  offered  in  a  land  of 
strangers.  But,  with  all  this  cause  for  thank- 
fulness, Agnes  cried  herself  to  sleep  that 
night.  She  realised  for  the  first  time  that 
she  was  alone  in  her  life,  and  belonged  to 
uobody. 

CHAPTER   THE   THIRD. 

ALL  who  have  had  to  live  under  the  dynasty 
of  a  peculiar  temper,  know  that  it  can  neither 
be  defined  nor  calculated  upon.  It  is  the 
knot  in  the  wood  that  prevents  the  material 
from  ever  being  turned  to  any  good  account. 
Madame  Tremordyn  always  declared  that  she 
was  the  least  exacting  person  in  existence  ; 
and,  so  long  as  Agnes  was  always  in  the 
room  with  her,  always  on  the  alert  watch- 
ing her  eye  for  anything  she  might  need 
— so  long  Madame  was  quite  satisfied. 
Madame  Tremordyn  had  a  passion  for  every- 
thing English.  She  would  be  read  aloud 
to  at  all  hours  of  the  day  or  night.  Agnes 
slept  upon  a  bed  in  her  room,  whence  she 
might  be  roused,  if  Madame  Tremordyn 
herself  could  not  rest ;  and  woe  to  Agnes 
if  her  attention  flagged,  and  if  she  did 
not  seem  to  feel  interest  and  enjoyment 
in  whatever  the  book  in  hand  might  be — 
whether  it  were  the  History  of  Miss  Betty 
Thoughtless,  or  the  Economy  of  Human  Life. 
Madame  Tremordyn  took  the  life  of  Agnes, 
and  crumbled  it  away :  she  used  it  up  like 
a  choice  condiment,  to  give  a  flavour  to 
her  own. 

Yet,  with  all  this  exigence,  Agnes  was 
nothing  to  Madame  Tremordyn,  who  consi- 
dered her  much  as  she  did  the  gown  she  wore, 
or  the  dinner  she  ate.  She  was  one  of  the  many 
comforts  with  which  she  had  surrounded 
herself ;  she  gave  Agnes  no  more  regard  or 
confidence,  notwithstanding  their  close  inter- 
course, than  she  granted  to  her  arm-chair,  or 
to  the  little  dog  that  stood  on  its  hind  legs. 
Yet,  Agnes  had  no  material  hardship  to 
complain  of  ;  she,  only  felt  as  if  the  breath 
were  being  drawn  out  of  her,  and  she  were 
slowly  suffocating.  But  where  else  could  she 
go  ]  what  could  she  do  ?  At  length,  Ma- 
dame Tremordyn  fell  really  ill,  and  required 
constant  nursing  and  tending.  Agnes  had 
sleepless  nights,  as  well  as  watchful  days,  but 
it  was  a  more  defined  state  of  existence. 
Agnes  was  a  capital  nurse  ;  the  old  lady 
was  human,  after  all,  and  was  touched  by 
skill  and  kindness.  She  declared  that  Agnes 
seemed  to  nurse  her  as  if  she  liked  it. 

Henceforth  Agnes  had  not  to  live  in 
a  state  of  moral  starvation.  The  old  lady 
treated  her  like  a  human  being,  and  really 
felt  an  interest  in  her.  She  asked  her 
questions  about  home,  and  about  her  aunt 
and  cousin  ;  also,  she  told  Agnes  about  her- 


self, about  her  son,  and  about  her  late  hus- 
band. She  spoke  of  her  own  affairs  and  of 
her  own  experiences.  It  was  egotism  cer- 
tainly ;  but  egotism  that  asks  for  sympathy 
is  the  one  touch  of  nature  which  makes  the 
whole  world  kin.  Agnes  grew  less  unhappy 
as  she  felt  she  became  more  necessary  to  the 
strange  exacting  old  woman  with  whom  her 
lot  was  cast.  She  had  the  pleasure  of  sending 
remittances  to  her  aunt  and  cousin — proofs 
of  her  material  well-being  ;  and  she  always 
wrote  cheerfully  to  them.  Occasionally,  but 
very  rarely,  she  was  allowed  to  go  and  visit 
her  friends  the  Raymonds. 

No  news  ever  came  of  Mrs.  Warren.  She 
might  have  been  a  myth ;  so  completely 
had  she  passed  away.  There  had  been  an 
admixture  of  accident  in  her  neglect ;  but  it 
was  accident  that  rather  aggravated  than 
excused  her  conduct.  The  day  after  she 
wrote  so  warmly  to  Agnes  to  come  to  her 
in  Paris,  Sir  Edward  Destrayes  came 
to  her,  and  entreated  her  to  go  to  his 
mother,  who  was  ill  ;  and  Mrs.  Warren  was 
her  most  intimate  friend :  indeed,  they  were 
strangers  in  Paris,  and  Mrs.  Warren  was 
nearly  the  only  person  they  knew.  Lady 
Destrayes  was  ordered  to  the  South  of  France 
— would  dear,  kind  Mrs.  Warren  go  with 
her  1  It  would  be  the  greatest  kindness  in 
the  world  !  Mrs.  Warren  spoke  French  so 
beautifully,  and  neither  mother  nor  son  spoke 
it  at  all.  Sir  Edward  Destrayes  was  some 
years  younger  than  Mrs.  Warren.  The  world, 
if  it  had  been  ill-natured,  might  have  said  he 
was  a  mere  boy  to  her  ;  nevertheless,  Mrs. 
Warren  was  in  love  with  him,  and  she 
hoped  it  was  nothing  but  his  bash- 
fulness  that  hindered  him  from  declaring 
himself  in  love  with  her.  Gladly  would  she 
have  agreed  to  the  proposed  journey;  but 
there  was  that  invitation  to  Agnes. 
She  must  await  her  answer.  Agnes,  as 
we  have  seen,  accepted  the  offer,  which  Mrs. 
Warren  felt  to  be  provoking  enough — Lady 
Destrayes  needed  her  so  much  !  What  was 
to  be  done  ?  A  certain  Madame  de  Brissac, 
to  whom  she  confided  her  dilemma,  offered  to 
take  Agnes  into  her  own  nursery  (without 
salary)  until  a  better  place  could  be  found. 
Mrs.  Warren  was  enchanted  :  nothing  coiild 
be  better.  She  wrote  a  note  to  Agnes, 
telling  her  she  had  found  her  a  situation 
with  Madame  de  Brissac ;  where  she  hoped 
she  would  be  happy,  and  enclosed  her  some 
money,  along  with  Madame  de  Brissac's 
address.  The  preparations  for  departure  were 
hurried  ;  for  the  party  set  out  some  days 
earlier  than  was  intended.  Agnes  and  her 
concerns  passed  entirely  from  Mrs.  Warren's 
mind.  Six  weeks  afterwards,  searching  her 
portfolio,  a  letter  fell  out  with  the  seal 
unbroken;  it  was  her  own  letter  to  Agnes. 
The  sight  of  it  turned  her  sick.  She  did 
not  dare  to  think  of  what  might  have  hap- 
pened. She  sat  for  a  few  moments  stupified, 
and  then  hastily  flung  the  accusing  letter  into 


42       [July  11,1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


the  fire,  without  a  thought  for  the  money  in- 
side. She  tried  not  to  think  of  Agnes.  She 
did  not  dare  to  write  to  Mrs.  Huxley  to 
inquire  what  had  become  of  her.  Mrs. 
Huxley  and  Miriam  never  heard  from  her 
again  ;  the  Manor  House  was  sold,  and  Mrs. 
Warren  passed  away  like  a  dream.  Mean- 
time she  married  Sir  Edward  Destrayes 
against  his  mother's  wishes.  It  is  to  be 
presumed  that  he  did  not  find  her  the  angel 
she  was  reputed  to  be ;  for,  at  the  end  of  a 
year,  they  separated.  She  always  got  on 
better  alone  ;  but,  as  she  had  married  without 
settlement,  she  had  not  the  wherewith  to  be 
so  much  of  an  angel  in  her  latter  days  as  in 
the  beginning. 

Agnes  wondered  and  speculated  what  could 
have  become  of  her.  Madame  Trernordyn 
grimly  smiled,  and  said  nobody  ever  made 
such  mischief  in  life  as  those  who  did  at  once 
too  much  and  too  little.  "If  you  begin  an  act 
of  benevolence,  you  are  no  longer  free  to  lay 
it  down  in  the  middle.  So,  my  dear,  don't  go 
off  into  benevolence.  You  never  know  where 
it  will  lead  you." 

When  Agnes  had  been  with  Madame 
Tremordyn  a  little  more  than  a  year, 
Madame  Tremordyn's  son  came  kome  from 
Africa.  He  was  a  handsome,  soldierly 
young  man ;  but  grave  and  melancholy ; 
poetical,  dreamy,  gentle  as  a  woman  ;  but 
proud  and  sensitive.  Agnes  was  nineteen, 
extremely  lovely,  with  golden  hair,  blue  eyes, 
and  a  delicate  wild-rose  complexion  ;  a  little 
too  firmly  set  in  figure  for  her  height,  but  that 
seemed  characteristic.  She  had  learned  to  be 
self-reliant,  and  had  been  obliged  to  keep  all 
her  thoughts  and  emotions  to  herself.  At 
first  Madame  Tremordyn  was  proud  to  show 
off  her  son.  She  insisted  that  Agnes  should 
admire  him,  and  was  never  weary  of  talking 
about  him.  Agnes  had  been  trained  to  be  a 
good  listener.  Madame  li ked  her  son  to  sit  with 
her,  and  he  showed  himself  remarkably  trac- 
table— a  model  for  sons.  He  did  not  seem  to 
care  in  the  least  for  going  out.  He  preferred 
sitting  and  watching  Agnes — listening  to 
her  as  she  read — whilst  he  pretended  to  be 
writing  or  reading.  In  a  little  while  Madame 
Tremordyn  opened  her  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
her  son  was  in  love  with  Agnes — Agnes,  a 
portionless  orphan,  with  few  friends  and 
no  connexions.  But  Agnes  was  a  mortal 
maiden,  and  she  loved  M.  Achille  Tremor- 
dyu,  who  might  have  aspired  to  the  hand  of 
an  heiress  with  a  shield  full  of  quarteriugs. 

M.  Achille  Tremordyn  opened  his  heart  to 
his  mother,  and  begged  her  blessing  and 
consent  to  his  marrying  Agnes.  Madame 
Tremordyn  was  very  indignant.  She  accused 
Agnes  of  the  blackest  ingratitude,  and 
desired  her  son,  if  he  valued  her  blessing  in 
the  least,  not  to  think  of  her,  but  dutifully 
to  turn  his  eyes  to  the  young  lady  she  destined 
for  him,  and  with  whose  parents  she  had, 
indeed,  opened  a  negociatiou.  M.  Achille 
declared  that  he  would  have  his  own  way  ; 


Agnes  only  wept.  The  storm  of  dame  Tre- 
mordyu's  wrath  fell  heaviest  upon  her,  she 
being  the  weakest,  and  best  able  to  hear  it 
without  reply.  The  result  was,  that  Agues 
was  sent  away  in  disgrace. 

The  Raymonds  gladly  received  her,  and 
entered  warmly  into  her  case.  Madame 
Raymond  declared  it  was  unheard-of  bar- 
barism and  pride,  and  that  the  old  lady 
would  find  it  come  home  to  her.  M.  Achille 
Tremordyn  left  home  to  join  his  regi- 
ment, first  having  had  an  interview  with 
Agnes.  He  vowed  eternal  constancy,  and  all 
the  passionate  things  that  to  lovers  make 
the  world,  for  the  time  being,  look  like 
enchantment.  It  was  the  first  ray  of 
romance  that  had  gilded  Agnes's  life.  She 
loved  as  she  did  everything  else, — thoroughly, 
stedfastly,  and  with  her  whole  heart ;  but 
refused  to  marry,  or  to  hold  a  correspondence 
with  her  lover,  until  his  mother  gave  her 
consent.  She  would,  however,  wait,  even  if 
it  were  for  life. 

After  her  son  was  gone,  Madame  Tre- 
mordyn felt  very  cross  and  miserable.  She 
did  not,  for  one  moment,  believe  she  had 
done  wrong  ;  but  it  was  very  provoking  that 
neither  her  son  nor  Agnes  could  be  made  to 
confess  that  she  had  done  right. 

Agnes  remained  with  the  Raymonds, 
wrapped  round  with  a  sense  of  happiness  she 
had  never  known  before.  She  assisted  Ma- 
dame Raymond  to  keep  the  books  ;  for  they 
would  not  hear  of  her  leaving  them.  Madame 
Tremordyn  felt  herself  aggrieved.  She  had 
engaged  a  young  person  in  the  room  of 
Agnes,  with  whom  no  man  was  likely  to  be 
attracted  ;  but,  unluckily,  Madame  Tremor- 
dyn found  her  as  unpleasant  and  unattractive 
as  the  rest  of  the  world  did.  She  missed 
Agnes  sorely.  At  length  she  fairly  fretted 
and  fumed  herself  into  a  nervous  fever. 
Mademoiselle  Bichat,  her  companion,  became 
doubly  insupportable.  Madame  wrote  a  note 
to  Agnes,  reproaching  her  with  cruelty  for 
leaving  her,  and  bidding  her  come  back. 
She  signed  herself  The  Mother  of  Achille. 
There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  go  ;  and 
Agnes  went,  hoping  that  the  difficulties 
that  lay  between  her  and  happiness  were 
soluble,  and  had  begun  to  melt  away.  The 
demoiselle  Bichat  was  discarded,  and  Agnes 
re-installed  in  her  old  place.  The  old  lady 
was  not  the  least  more  amiable  or  reasonable 
for  being  ill.  She  talked  incessantly  about 
her  son,  and  reproached  Agnes  with  having 
stolen  his  heart  away  from  her,  his  mother  ; 
yet,  with  curious  contradiction,  she  loved 
Agnes  all  the  more  for  the  very  attachment 
she  so  bitterly  deprecated.  If  Agnes  could 
only  have  loved  him  in  a  humble,  despairing 
way,  she  would  have  been  allowed  to  be 
miserable  to  her  heart's  content.  But  to  be 
loved  in  return  !  To  aspire  to  marry  him  ! 
That  was  the  offence. 

Two  years  passed  over.  At  the  end  of 
them  Achille  returned  on  sick-leave.  He 


Charles  Dickens.] 


AGNES  LEE. 


[July  11, 1337.]      43 


had  had  a  fever,  which  had  left  him  in  a  low, 
desponding  state.  Madame  Tremordyn  would 
not  spare  Agues, — she  could  not  do  without 
her.  She  told  her  she  would  never  consent 
to  her  marriage  with  her  sou,  and  that  she 
must  submit  to  her  lot  like  a  Christian,  and 
nurse  Achille  like  a  sister ;  which  she  had  no 
objection  to  consider  her.  The  sight  of 
Achille,  gaunt  and  worn  with  illness,  made 
Agnes  thankful  to  stop  on  any  terms. 

Achille  was  greatly  changed  ;  he  was 
irritable,  nervous,  and  full  of  strange  fancies. 
He  clung  to  Agnes  as  a  child  to  its  mother. 
Her  calm  and  tender  gentleness  soothed  him, 
and  she  could  rouse  him  from  the  fits  of 
gloom  and  depression  to  which  he  was  sub- 
ject. His  mother  lamented  over  the  wreck 
he  had  become  ;  but  the  love  of  Agnes  be- 
came stronger  and  deeper.  The  nature  of  it 
had  changed,  but  his  need  of  her  had  a  more 
touching  charm  than  when,  in  his  brilliant 
days,  she  had  looked  up  to  him  as  a  some- 
thing more  than  mortal,  and  wondered,  in 
her  humility,  what  he  saw  in  her  to  attract 
him.  Gradually  he  seemed  to  recover  his 
health.  The  shadow  that  lay  upon  him  was 
lifted  off,  and  he  became  like  his  old  self. 
He  was  not,  however,  able  to  return  to  the 
army.  He  retired,  with  the  grade  of  captain 
and  the  decoration  of  the  Legion  of  Honour. 

Madame  Tremordyu's  fortune  was  small, 
and  consisted  in  a  life-rent.  There  would 
be  little  or  nothing  at  her  death  for  her 
son.  It  was  necessary  he  should  find 
some  employment.  Through  the  influence 
of  some  relatives,  he  obtained  a  situation  in 
the  Customs.  The  salary  was  modest,  but  it 
was  enough  to  live  upon  in  tolerable  com- 
fort. He  again  announced  to  his  mother  his 
intention  of  marrying  Agnes ;  ;md,  this 
time,  he  met  with  no  opposition — it  would 
have  been  useless.  Agnes  was  presented  to 
friends  and  relatives  of  the  clan  Tremordyn 
as  the  betrothed  of  Achille.  It  was  half 
settled  that  Agnes  should  pay  a  visit  to  her 
aunt  and  cousin  whom  she  had  not  seen  for 
near  four  years ;  but  Mrs.  Tremordyn  fell  ill, 
and  could  not  spare  her.  The  visit  was  post- 
poned till  she  could  go  with  her  husband;  and, 
in  the  meanwhile,  letters  of  love  and  congra- 
tulation came  from  them.  The  whole  Tre- 
mordyn tribe  expressed  their  gracious  appro- 
bation of  the  young  English  girl  their  kinsman 
had  chosen,  and  made  liberal  offerings  of 
marriage  gifts.  The  good  Raymonds  furnished 
the  trousseau,  and  Agnes  could  scarcely 
believe  in  the  happiness  that  arose  upon  her 
life.  Once  or  twice  she  perceived  a  strange- 
ness in  Achille.  It  was  no  coldness  or  estrange- 
ment, for  he  could  not  bear  her  out  of  his 
sight.  He  was  quite  well  in  health,  and,  at 
times,  in  extravagantly  good  spirits.  Yet  he 
was  unlike  himself:  he  appeared  conscious 
that  she  perceived  something,  and  was  rest- 
less and  annoyed  if  she  looked  at  him.  The 
peculiarity  passed  off,  and  she  tried  to  think 
it  was  her  own  fancy. 


The  wedding-clay  came.  The  wedding 
guests  were  assembled  in  Madame  Eay- 
mond's  best  salon ;  for  Agnes  was  their 
adopted  daughter,  and  was  to  be  married 
from  their  house.  Neither  Achille  nor  his 
mother  had  arrived.  Agnes,  looking  lovely 
in  her  white  dress  and  veil,  sat  in  her  room 
until  she  should  be  summoned.  The  time 
passed  on — some  of  the  guests  looked  at  their 
watches  —  a  carriage  drove  up.  Madame 
Tremordyn,  dressed  magnificently,  but  look- 
ing pale  and  terror-stricken,  came  into  the 
room,  her  usual  stately  step  was  now  tottering 
and  eager. 

"Is  my  son,  is  Achille  here?"  she  asked 
in  an  imperious  but  hollow  voice. 

No  one  replied.  A  thrill  of  undefined  terror 
passed  through  all  assembled. 

"  Is  he  here,  I  ask  1  He  left  home  two 
hours  ago." 

"He  has  not  been  here.  We  have  not  seen 
him,"  replied  the  eldest  member  of  the  family. 
"  Calm  yourself,  my  cousin,  doubtless  he  will 
be  here  soon."  • 

There  was  an  uneasy  silence,  broken  by  the 
rustling  of  dresses,  and  the  restless  moving  of 
people  afraid  to  stir ;  feeling,  as  it  were 
under  a  spell.  The  eldest  kinsman  spoke 
again. 

"  Let  some  one  go  in  search  of  him." 

Three  or  four  rose  at  this  suggestion. 
Madame  Tremordyn  bowed  her  head,  and 
said  "  Go  ! "  It  was  all  she  had  the  force  to 
articulate.  The  guests  who  remained  looked 
at  each  other  with  gloomy  forebodings,  and 
knew  not  what  to  do.  At  last  the  door 
opened  and  Agnes  entered.  A  large  shawl 
was  wrapped  over  her  bridal  dress,  but  she 
was  without  either  veil  or  ornaments ;  her 
face  was  pale,  her  eyes  dilated. 

"  What  is  all  this  ?  Let  me  know  the 
worst — what  has  happened  1 "  She  looked 
from  one  to  the  other,  but  none  answered  her. 
She  went  up  to  Madame  Tremordyn,  and 
said,  "  Tell  me,  mother." 

But,  Madame  Tremordyn  put  her  aside, 
and  said : 

"You  are  the  cause  of  whatever  ill  has 
befallen  him." 

A  murmur  rose  from  the  company ;  but  the 
poor  mother  looked  so  stricken  and  miserable 
that  no  one  had  the  heart  to  blame  her  un- 
reason. Everybody  felt  the  position  too  irk- 
some to  endure  longer  ;  and,  one  after  another, 
they  glided  noiselessly  away ;  leaving  only 
Agnes,  Madame  Tremordyn,  and  the  good 
Raymonds.  The  hours  passed  on,  and  still  no 
tidings.  The  suspense  became  intolerable. 
M.Raymond  went  out  to  seek  for  information, 
and  also  to  put  the  police  in  motion.  Agnes, 
who  had  sat  all  this  while  still  and  calm, 
without  uttering  a  word  or  shedding  a  tear, 
rose  and  beckoned  Madame  Raymond  to 
come  out  of  hearing. 

"  I  must  change  this  dress  and  go  home 
with  her  ;  we  must  be  at  home  when  he  is 
brought  back." 


44      (July  11, 1867.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Con.luctea 


"But  you  cannot  go  there  my  child — it 
•would  be  unheard  of." 

"  They  will  both  need  me — there  is  no  one 
•who  can  fill  my  place — let  me  go." 

She  spoke  gently,  but  resolutely.  Madame 
Raymond  saw  that  it  was  no  case  for  remon- 
strance. In  a  few  moments  Agnes  returned 
in  her  walking-dress.  She  laid  her  hand  on 
Madame  Tremordyn,  and  said  : 

"Let  us  go  home." 

The  poor  mother,  looking  ten  years  older 
than  on  the  previous  day,  rose,  and  leaning 
upon  Agnes  walked  feebly  to  the  door. 
Madame  Raymond  supported  her  on  the 
other  side  ;  she  would  have  gone  with  them, 
but  Agnes  shook  her  head  and  kissed  her 
silently.  Arrived  at  home  Agnes  resumed 
her  old  position.  She  busied  herself  about 
Madame  Tremordyn.  She  made  her  take 
some  nourishment,  chafed  her  hands  and 
feet,  and  tried  to  keep  some  warmth  and  life 
within  her  ;  but  little  speech  passed  between 
them. 

The  weary  hours  passed  on,  and  no  tidings; 
About  midnight  a  strangely  sounding  footstep 
was  heard  upon  the  stair.  The  door  of  the 
room  opened,  and  Achille,  with  his  dress  dis- 
ordered and  torn,  and  covered  with  mud, 
stood  before  them.  He  stopped  short  at  see- 
ing them,  and  evidently  did  not  recognise 
them.  He  did  not  speak.  There  was  a  wild 
glare  in  his  eye, — he  was  quite  mad. 

Madame  Tremordyn,  in  extreme  terror, 
shrank  back  in  her  arm-chair,  trying  to  hide 
herself.  Agnes  placed  herself  before  her  ; 
looking  steadily  at  Achille,  she  said  quietly, 

"  Make  no  noise,  your  mother  is  ill." 

He  sat  down  slowly,  and  with  apparent 
-eluctance,  upon  the  chair  she  indicated. 
She  kept  her  eye  fixed  upon  him,  and  he 
moved  uneasily  under  its  influence.  It  was 
like  being  with  an  uncaged  wild  beast ;  and, 
what  was  to  be  the  end,  she  did  not  know. 
At  length  he  rose  stealthily  and  backed  j 
towards  the  door,  which  remained  open,  i 
The  instant  he  gained  the  landing-place  j 
he  sprang  down  stairs  with  a  yell.  The  j 
house  door  was  closed  with  violence,  and  he 
was  heard  running  furiously  up  the  street ;  i 
his  yells  and  shouts  ringing  through  the  air. ' 
.Agnes  drew  a  deep  breath,  and  turned  to , 
Madame  Tremordyn,  who  lay  back  in  her 
chair  speechless  ;  her  face  was  dreadfully ! 
distorted.  She  had  been  struck  with  para- 
lysis. 

CHAPTER  THE   FOURTH. 

AGNES  roused  the  domestics  for  medical 
assistance,  and  got  Madame  Tremordyn  to 
bed,  as  speedily  as  possible.  Her  strength 
and  calmness  seemed  little  less  than  super- 
natural. The  medical  man  remained  in 
attendance  the  rest  of  the  night ;  but  no 
change  for  the  better  took  place.  Madame 
Tremordyn  lay  still  speechless,  distorted, 
yet  not  altogether  insensible,  as  might  be 
seen  by  her  eyes,  which  followed  Agnes 


wistfully.  No  tidings  came  of  Achille,  until 
the  next  day  at  noon,  when  Mrs.  Tremordyn's 
kinsman  came  with  the  news  that  Achille 
had  been  conveyed  to  the  Bicetre,  a  furious 
maniac.  He  spoke  low,  but  Mrs.  Tremordyn 
heard  him  ;  a  gleam  of  terrible  anguish  shone 
from  her  eyes,  but  she  was  powerless  to 
move. 

"  We  must  leave  him  there,"  said  the  kins- 
man. "  He  will  be  better  attended  to  than 
he  could  be  elsewhere.  I  will  make  in- 
quiries to-morrow  about  him,  and  send  you 
tidings.  The  physician  says  it  has  been  com- 
ing on  for  some  time.  How  fortunate,  dear 
girl,  that  it  was  before  the  marriage  instead 
of  after :  what  a  frightful  fate  you  have 
escaped  ! " 

"  Do  you  think  so  ? "  said  Agnes,  sadly.  "  I 
must  regret  it  always  ;  for,  if  I  had  been  his 
wife  I  should  have  had  the  right  to  be  with 
him  ill  or  well." 

"  You  could  do  him  no  good.  I  doubt 
whether  he  would  know  you  ;  but  you  are 
romantic." 

Day  after  day  passed  slowly  on  without  any 
change.  The  accounts  of  Achille  were  that  he 
continued  dangerous  and  ungovernable  ;  that 
his  was  one  of  the  worst  cases  in  the  house. 
Mrs.  Tremordyn  lay  helpless  and  speech- 
less. The  guests  who  had  assembled  at 
the  ill-omened  wedding,  had  departed  to 
their  different  abodes  ;  most  of  them  had 
come  up  from  distant  parts  of  the  country  for 
the  occasion  ;  none  of  them  resided  perma- 
nently in  Paris.  The  old  kinsman  alone  re- 
mained until  Madame  Tremordyn's  state 
declared  itself  one  way  or  other. 

One  night,  about  a  fortnight  after  her 
seizure,  Madame  Tremordyn  recovered  her 
speech  so  far  as  to  be  intelligible.  She 
spoke  lucidly  to  Agnes,  who  was  watching 
beside  her,  and  began  to  give  her  some 
directions  about  her  affairs  ;  but  her  mind 
was  too  much  weakened.  She  blessed 
her  for  all  her  attention  and  goodness ; 
bade  her  be  the  good  angel  of  her  son ; 
and,  while  speaking,  a  stupor  benumbed  her, 
and  she  never  awoke  from  it. 

The  kinsman  assumed  the  direction  of 
affairs,  took  possession  of  her  effects,  broke 
up  her  establishment,  made  Agnes  a  present, 
and  a  handsome  speech,  and  evidently  con- 
sidered her  connection  with  the  family  at  an 
end.  Agnes  went  back  to  the  Raymonds  to 
consider  what  she  would  do. 

The  first  thing  needful,  was  to  recruit 
her  strength.  She  felt  bitterly  the  severance 
of  the  tie  between  her  and  the  rest  of  Achille 's 
family.  They  had  made  up  their  minds  that 
he  was  never  to  get  better  ;  but,  to  her,  the 
idea  of  leaving  him  to.  his  fate  was  too  pain- 
ful to  contemplate.  As  soon  as  she  had  suf- 
ficiently recovered  she  asked  M.  Raymond 
to  take  her  to  the  Bicetre.  There  she  had 
an  interview  with  the  head  physician  ;  Avho 
said  that  Achille's  case,  if  not  hopeless,  would 
be  of  long  duration.  Agues  entreated  to  be 


Charles  Dieiene.] 


AGNES  LEE. 


[July  11,  1857-1       45 


allowed  to  see  him  —  of  course  she  was  A  year  passed,  and  Agnes  made  a 
refused  ;  but  her  importunity  was  not  to  formal  demand  to  have  Achille  discharged 
be  put  by  ;  and,  at  last,  she  was  conducted  from  the  hospital,  and  given  over  to  her  care, 
to  his  cell.  He  received  her  calmly,  and  There  were  many  difficulties  raised,  and  a 
declared  he  knew  she  would  come,  and  that  great  deal  of  opposition.  M.  Achille  Tre- 
he  had  been  expecting  her  since  the  day  niordyn  was  not  recovered  ;  he  was  liable  to 
before.  He  seemed  quite  rational  and  col-  a  dangerous  outbreak  at  any  moment ;  it  was 
lected,  and  entreated  her  to  take  him  away  not  a  fit  charge  for  a  young  woman,  and 
as  it  drove  him  mad  to  be  there.  The  physi-  much  besides  ;  but  Agnes  was  gifted  with 
cian  spoke,  but  Achille  did  not  heed  him.  the  power  of  bearing  down  all  opposition. 
He  kept  his  eyes  fixed  on  Agnes,  with  a  She  argued  and  entreated,  and  finally  pre- 
look  of  touching  entreaty.  Agnes  looked  vailed. 

wistfully  at  the  physician,  who  said  to  Great  was  the  astonishment  of  Monsieur 
Achille,  "  It  depends  entirely  on  yourself.  J  Raymond,  to  see  her  thus  accompanied, 
You  shall  go  the  moment  you  render  it  drive  up  to  his  door :  that  of  Madame 
possible  for  us  to  send  you  away."  j  Raymond,  of  course  was  not  less,  but 

Achille  put  his  hand  to  his  forehead,  as  [  the  surprise  of  both  reached  its  height, 
though  endeavouring  to  follow  out  an  idea. !  when  Agnes  gravely,  and  without  any 
At  last  he  said,  "  I  understand.  I  will  |  embarrassment  requested  him  to  come 
obey."  with  them  to  the  Mairie  to  see  her  married. 

He  gravely  kissed  Agnes's  hand,  and  Achille  stood  by,  perfectly  calm,  but 
attended  her  to  the  door  of  the  cell,  as  the  imprisoned  madness  lurked  in  his 
though  it  had  been  a  drawing-room.  eyes,  and  looked  out  us  on  the  watch  to 

"  You  have  wonderful  power  over  that  spring  forth.  He  spoke,  however,  with  grave 
patient,  Mademoiselle,"  said  the  physician,  and  graceful  courtesy,  and  said  that  M.  and 


"are  you  accustomed  to  mad  persons  1 " 

Agnes  shook  her  head. 

"  Although  he  looks  so  quiet  now,  I  would 
not  be  left  alone  with  him  for  a  thousand 
pounds,"  said  he. 

During  their  ride  home,  Agues  never  spoke ; 


Madame  Raymond  must  perceive  that  Agnes 
was  his  good  angel  who  had  procured  his 
deliverance,  and  that  it  was  necessary  she 
should  give  him  the  right  to  remain  with 
her  and  protect  her.  He  could  not  leave  her 
— it  was  necessary  to  fulfil  their  old  contract. 


she  was  maturing  a  plan  in  her  mind.  She  :  He  said  this  in  a  subdued,  measured  way  ; 
asked  the  Raymonds  to  procure  her  some  '  but  with  a  suppressed  impatience,  as  if  a 
out-of-door  teaching.  They  entreated  her  very  little  opposition  would  make  him  break 
to  remain  with  them  as  their  daughter, !  out  into  violence.  M.  Raymond  took  her 
and  to  live  with  them ;  but  she  steadily  re- 1  apart,  and  represented  everything  that 


fused  their  kindness,  and  they  were  obliged  to 
desist.  They  procured  her  some  pupils,  whom 
she  was  to  instruct  in  music,  drawing,  and 
English.  She  still  further  distressed  the 
Raymonds  by  withdrawing  from  their  house, 
and  establishing  herself  in  a  modest  lodging 
near  the  Bicetre  ;  she  attended  her  pupils, 


common  sense  and  friendship  could  suggest. 
Agnes  was  immovable.  Her  sole  reply  was, 
"  He  will  never  get  well  there  ;  if  he  comes  to 
me  I  will  cure  him."  In  the  end,  M.  Ray- 
mond had  to  give  way  as  the  doctors  had 
done.  He  and  Madame  Raymond  went 
with  them  to  the  Mairie,  and  saw  them 


and  visited  Achille  whenever  the  autbori- 1  married. 
ties  permitted.  As  for  Achille,  from  the  They  went  home  with  them  afterwards., 
first  day  she  came,  a  great  change  had  come  |  Agnes  had  arranged  her  modest  manage 
over  him.  He  was  still  mad,  but  seemed  |  with  cheerfulness  and  good  taste.  A  sensible 
by  superhuman  effort,  to  control  all  out-  j  good-looking,  middle-aged  woman  was  the 
ward  manifestations  of  his  madness.  His !  only  domestic. 


delusions  were  as  grave  as  ever,  —  some- 
times he  was  betrayed  into  speaking  of  them, 
and  he  never  renounced  them — but  all  his 
actions  were  sane  and  collected.  If  Agnes 
were  a  day  beyond  her  time  he  grew  restless 


'I  have  known  her  long,"  said  Agnes,, 
"  she  lived  with  Madame  Tremordyn  in 
Normandie,  and  she  knew  Achille  as  a  boy,, 
and  is  quite  willing  to  share  my  task." 

I   believe    you  are  a    rational    lunatic, 


and  desponding.  In  her  personal  habits  |  Agnes,"  said  M.  Raymond.  "  However,  if  you 
Agnes  exercised  an  almost  sordid  parsi-  fail,  you  will  come  to  us  at  once." 
mony — she  laid  by  nearly  the  whole  of  her  They  remained  to  partake  of  an  English 
earnings — her  clientele  increased — she  had  I  tea  which  Agnes  had  got  up,  Achille  per- 
rnore  work  than  she  could  do.  Her  story  formed  his  part,  as  host,  with  simple  dig- 
excited  interest  wherever  it  was  known,  and  nity.  M.  Raymond  was  almost  re-assured, 
her  own  manners  and  appearance  confirmed  j  Nevertheless  he  led  her  aside,  and  said,  "My 
it.  She  received  many  handsome  presents, !  dear  girl,  I  stand  here  as  your  father.  Are 
and  was  in  the  receipt  of  a  comfortable  '<  you  sure  you  are  not  afraid  to  remain  witk 
income  :  still  she  confined  herself  to  the  barest '  this  man  ? " 

necessaries  of  life.  The  Raymonds  seldom  "  Afraid  ?  oh,  no.  How  can  one  feel  afraid 
saw  her,  and  they  were  hurt  that  she  took  of  a  person  we  love  ?"  said  she,  looking  up 
them  so  little  into  her  confidence.  I  at  him  with  a  smile.  And  then  she  tried  to 


46       [July  11, 13S7.J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


utter  her  thanks  for  all  his  goodness  to  her  ; 
but    her  voice  choked,  and   she  burst    into 


to  others,  not  the  love  they  give  us,  that  fills 
our  heart. 


tears.  Six    years   after    marriage    Achille    Tre- 

"  There,  there,  my  child,  do  not  agitate  '  mordyn  died.  He  expressed  eloquently  and 
yourself.  You  know  we  look  on  you  as  our  j  even  tenderly  his  sense  of  all  he  owed  to  his 
daughter— we  love  you."  j  wife,  and  his  high  opinion  of  her  many 

And  tears  dropped  upon  the  golden  curls  as  ]  virtues,  and  regretted  all  she  had  suffered  for 
he  kissed  them.     Poor  Madame   Raymond  '  him.     It  was  not  the  farewell  that  a  woman 
sobbed    audibly,   as  she  held  Agnes  in  her  j  and  a  wife  would  wish  for;  but  she  loved 
arms,  and  would  not  let  her  go.  Achille  stood  him,  and  did  not  cavil  at  his  words, 
by,  looking  on.  After  his  death  she  went  to  live  near  the 

'•  Why  do  you  weep  ?  "  he  asked,  gently  ;  Raymonds.  She  still  continued  to  teach, 
"  are  you  afraid  that  I  shall  hurt  your  friend  ? ;  though  no  longer  from  necessity  ;  but, 
You  need  not  fear,— she  is  my  one  blessing:  after  she  had  somewhat  recovered  from 


I  will  make  her  great — I  will  !  ' 

He    seemed     to     recollect     himself, 


stopped,  drawing  himself  up  haughtily. 
Agnes  disengaged  herself  gently  from  the 
embrace  of  Madame  Raymond,  and  Achille 


the  blankness  which  had  fallen  on  her  life, 
and  she  devoted  herself  to  finding  out  friendless 


young  girls,  and  providing  them  with  homes 
and  the  means  of  gaining  a  living.  For  this 
purpose  she  worked,  and  to  it  she  devoted 


attended  them  courteously  to  their  coach.        I  all  her  earnings :  recollecting  the  aunt  who 
There  was  a  dangerous  glare  in  his  eyes   had  adopted  her  when  she  arrived  in  Paris, 
when  he  came  back.     "Now  Agnes,   those   and    found    herself   abandoned.      The    good 
people    are  gone.      They  shall  never  come  "" 
back.      If  they  had  stayed  a  moment  longer 
I  would  have  killed  them  !  " 


Raymonds  left  her  a  fortune,  with  which  she 
built  a  house,  and  was  the  mother  in  it ;  and 
many  were  the  daughters  who  had  cause  to 
After  that  evening,  the  Raymonds  did  not   bless  her.     She  lived  to  an  advanced  age,  and 

(*  1 1  ttri        L  «.i  O    7 


see  Agnes  for  many  months.  Whatever  were 
the  secrets  of  her  home,  no  eye  saw  them  ;  she 
struggled  with  her  lot  alone.  She  attended 
her  pxipils  regularly,  and  none  of  them  saw 
any  signs  of  weakness  or  anxiety.  Her  face 
was  stern  and  grave 


died  quite  recently. 


NEXT  WEEK. 


I  WILL  begin  next  week.  I  am  quite  re- 
but her  duties  were  [  solved  upon  it.  Whatever  inducements  to 
punctually  fulfilled,  and  no  plea  of  illness  further  delay  may  offer  themselves,  I  will 
or  complaint,  of  any  kind,  escaped  her.  j  not  listen  to  them.  No.  If  I  am  alive  and 
It  was  understood  that  her  husband  was  in  good  health,  let  what  will  happen,  I  have 
an  invalid,  and  that  she  did  not  go  into  com-  fully  made  my  mind  up  that  I  will  begin  that 


pany — that  was  all  the  world  knew  of  her 
affairs. 

The  old  servant  died,  and  her  place  was 
never  filled  up.  Agnes  went  to  market  and 
managed  all  her  household  affairs  before  she 


five-act  comedy  next  week. 

Such  is  my  fixed  detei'mination.  I 
have  the  story  of  my  comedy  all  settled  in 
my  mind.  I  have,  and  have  had  for  some 
years,  the  characters  and  incidents,  even  to 


went  to  her  pupils.  Her  husband  was  j  the  minutest  details,  clearly  arranged ;  all 
seen  sometimes  working  in  the  garden  or  j  that  is  wanting  is  for  me  to  sit  down  and, 
sitting — if  the  weather  was  warm — in  the  with  what  powers  of  language  I  possess,  to 
sunny  arbour,  shaded  with  climbing  plants  ;  put  my  work  on  paper.  I  know  that  I  have 
but,  he  never  left  the  house  except  with  his '  a  ready  market  for  it  when  completed,  and 
wife.  j  so,  once  for  all,  I  am  resolved  to  set  to  work 

-At  the  end  of  three  years,  the  hope 
to  which  Agnes  had  clung  with  such 
passionate  steadfastness  was  fulfilled.  Her 
husband  entirely  recovered  his  reason ; 


in  earnest  at  it — next  week. 

Why  shouldn't  I  ?     For  years  I  have  been 
panting  after  litei'ary  fame,   and  have  felt 


son ;  sure  my  true  vocation  is  dramatic  author- 
but,  in  this  hope  realised  there  was  ship.  Here  is  an  opportunity  too  long 
mixed  a  great  despair.  With  recovered :  neglected,  which,  if  now  seized  upon,  may 
sanity  came  the  consciousness  of  all  that  his  \  (should  I  not  say  must  ?)  accomplish  all  my 
wife  had  done  for  him,  and  he  had  not  wishes.  I  know  my  comedy  will  be  a  great 
breadth  of  magnanimity  to  accept  it.  It  may '  success.  I  have  few  rivals  to  contend  against 
be  thnt  the  habits  of  rule  and  self-reliance  now  that  original  works  of  standard  merit 
which  had  been  forced  upon  her  by  her  are  so  very  rare.  In  fact  all  leads  me  to 
position  did  not  exactly  suit  the  changed  j  believe  that  I  may,  if  I  choose,  at  once  attain 
position  of  things — people  must  brave  the !  a  very  high  rank  amongst  living  dramatists, 
defects  of  their  qualities.  This  trial  was  the  I  Why  should  I  then  delay  my  triumph  ? 
hardest  she  had  endured  ;  but  she  hid  suffer-  Why,  indeed  !  I  will  begin  next  week. 


ing  bravely.     Her  husband  respected  her — 
honoured  her — was  always  gentle  and  cour- 


And  now,  with  every  possible  encourage- 
ment to  do  so,  with  nothing  upon  earth  to 


teous  —  did  everything  except  love  her ;  dissuade  me  from  it,  I  have  no  doubt  the 
but  she  loved  him,  and  it  is  more  blessed  to  reader  fully  believes  I  mean  to  keep  my 
give  than  to  receive.  It  is  the  love  we  give  resolution.  And  so  I  do,  I  pledge  my  word, 


Charles  fl  lekene.] 


NEXT  WEEK. 


[July  11, 1857.]       47 


most  positively.  And  yet  experience  is  a 
cruel  teacher.  Even  now,  determined  as  I 
feel  upon  a  course  of  action,  a  fear  will  arise. ! 
No  matter.  Listen,  reader,  to  a  few  past ; 
experiences  of  next  week. 

When  quite  a  youth,  I  spent  two  years  in  [ 
making  up  my  mind  that  I  would  commence 
the  study  of  the  French  language — next 
week.  My  fate  had  placed  me  as  junior 
clerk  in  the  counting-house  of  a  London  mer- 
chant who  had  extensive  dealings  with 
Parisian  houses.  Here,  by  my  industry  and 
application  (for  do  not  let  anyone  suppose  by 
the  confession  I  am  about  to  make  that  I 
lack  either  of  those  qxialities),  I  had  become 
a  great  favourite  with  my  employer.  There 
seemed  every  certainty  of  my  ultimate  pro- 
motion to  a  much  better  position  in  the 
office.  One  thing  alone  stood  in  my  way  ;  it 
was  my  ignorance  of  French,  and  consequent 
inability  to  manage  the  continental  corre- 
spondence. No  sooner  did  this  fact  dawn 
upon  me  than,  with  the  promptness  of  deter- 
mination upon  which  I  pride  myself,  I  firmly 
resolved  to  commence  taking  lessons  in 
French.  I  would  begin  next  week.  There 
was  no  hurry,  to  be  sure,  for  there  was  no 
immediate  prospect  of  a  change,  and  I,  of 
course,  could  not  expect  advancement  till  a 
vacancy  arose.  Still,  it  was  only  prudent  to 
be  prepared  for  anything  that  might  occur. 
So  I  would  not  delay.  I  would  begin  next 
week. 

Never  was  I  more  serious  in  making  a 
resolution — not  even  now  about  my  five-act 
comedy — than  I  was  then,  and  yet  the  next 
week,  and  the  next,  and  many  next  weeks, 
passed,  and  I  had  not  begun  my  French.  It 
was  not  that  I  had  forgotten  my  determi- 
nation. By  no  means.  But  something  or 
other  always  happened — nothing  of  conse- 
quence, it  is  true,  mere  trifles  generally — 
which  called  for  my  attention.  Well,  it  was 
no  great  matter  after  all.  What  could  a  few 
days  signify  1  I  would  get  these  little  matters 
off  my  mind  first,  and  then  I  would  begin  in 
earnest.  And  so  a  month  or  two  slipped  by, 
and  all  at  once  it  struck  me  that  I  was  no 
nearer  beginning  than  I  was  when  first  I 
made  my  resolution.  Should  I  commence 
that  moment  1  No,  no !  I  laughed  at  my 
own  suggestion  of  such  precipitate  haste. 
Had  I  not  strength  of  mind  enough  to  trust 
my  determination  ?  Besides,  the  prospect  of 
a  vacancy  was  as  remote  as  ever.  I  would 
though,  positively  and  without  fail,  begin 
next  week.  It  was  nearly  two  years  after 
this  that  the  long-looked  for  vacancy  did 
actually  occur  ;  and  what  made  the  matter 
more  provoking  was  the  fact  that  I  really 
did  and  do  still  believe  that  the  following 
week  I  absolutely  should  have  set  to  work 
preparing  myself  for  it. 

A  kind  old  aunt  of  mine  resided  once  near 
Islington.  It  was  a  long  way  from  my 
lodgings  on  the  Surrey  side,  it  is  true  ;  but 
the  old  lady  had  always  been  so  kind  to  me 


when  I  used  to  go,  a  mere  child,  to  stay  a 
week  with  her  ;  I  had  such  grateful  reminis- 
cences of  the  toffee,  hardbake,  and  the  innu- 
merable other  unwholesome  delights  she  used 
to  treat  me  with,  to  say  nothing  of  the  toys 
with  which  I  always  came  home  loaded,  that 
I  felt  bound  in  common  gratitude  to  show 
her  some  attention  now  that  I  had  arrived 
at  man's  estate  and  had  discarded  Albert 
rock  for  Albert  neck-ties,  had  done  with  tops 
and  marbles,  and  confined  my  kite-flying  to 
the  somewhat  costly  mode  of  raising  ready 
money,  which  goes  by  that  name  in  the  City. 
Besides,  I  really  loved  her  for  her  own  sake, 
for  with  all  her  curious  whims  and  fancies 
she  was  a  good,  warm-hearted  creature,  and 
I  knew  that  a  visit  from  me  would  be  hailed 
by  the  good  old  lady  with  delight.  I  made 
my  mind  up  I  would  go  and  spend  a  day  with 
her.  When  1  Well,  next  week.  Some  few 
months  back  I  heard  my  poor  old  aunt  was 
dead.  I  never  had  accomplished  my  intended 
trip  to  Islington,  and  I  found  the  little  pro- 
perty she  left  behind,  even  the  gold  watch 
she  always  used  to  say  was  to  be  mine,  and 
used  to  let  me  have  to  play  with  when  a 
baby,  had  been  bequeathed  to  strangers.  I 
did  not  care  so  very  much  about  the  mere 
pecuniary  loss  ;  but  it  did  grieve  me  to  the 
heart  to  think  she  had  conceived  that  I  her 
favourite  nephew  had  deserted  her ;  and 
ceased  to  care  for  her  ;  which,  on  my  word, 
I  never  did.  I  had  put  off  my  visit  time 
after  time,  ever  resolving  firmly  that  it 
should  be  paid  next  week — until  at  last  a 
week  came  when  for  my  poor  old  aunt  there 
was  no  next. 

In  almost  every  circumstance  of  life  next 
week  has  been  my  rock-ahead.  I  am  fond 
of  the  arts,  and  yet  for  six  whole  years  I 
lived  in  London  without  seeing  a  single 
exhibition  of  the  Royal  Academy  pictures 
(by  the  bye  I  am  told  there  are  some 
capital  pictures  to  be  seen  this  year.  I 
have  not  been  yet,  but  am  going  next 
week).  Yet  every  year  did  I  resolve  that 
I  would  not  run  the  risk  of  missing  them 
again  ;  how  was  it  then  that  passing  through 
Trafalgar  Square,  at  least  three  times  a  week, 
separated  only  by  a  flight  of  steps,  a  stone 
wall,  and  a  charge  of  one  shilling,  stealing, 
from  these  great  works  of  art — how  was  it  I 
say  that  for  six  successive  years  I  did  miss 
seeing  them  ?  Simply  because  I  meant  to 
go  next  week,  and  I  continued  meaning  to  do 
so,  until  I  passed  again  and  found  the  exhi- 
bition over. 

I  am  a  Londoner  by  birth,  yet  have  I  never 
seen  Saint  Paul's.  That  is  to  say,  as  yet  I 
have  not  seen  those  portions  of  it  which  form 
one  of  the  London  sights  that  country 
visitors  get  over  ere  they  have  been  twenty- 
four  hours  in  the  great  metropolis.  Its  glo- 
rious outline  as  viewed  from  the  river,  with 
its  magnificent  dome  looking  like  the  Impe- 
rial crown  upon  the  head  of  London,  I  have 
seen,  of  course.  And  the  interior — at  least 


48 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[July  11,  1857-J 


BO  much  of  it  as  is  devoted  to  the  purposes 
of  worship,  I  have  seeu  often.  But  the  show- 
part — the  whispering-gallery,  the  stone-gal- 
lery, the  golden  gallery,  clock  and  bell,  geo- 
metrical staircase,  lauthorn,  ball,  and  so  forth, 
I  have  never  seen,  nor  am  I  likely  to  see,  un- 
til— well,  yes,  I  think  (and  I  have  thought 
for  many  years),  I'll  have  a  look  at  them  next 
week. 

Is  it  not  so  with  most  things  which  we 
think  we  can  do  at  any  time — we  put  them 
off  unconsciously,  until  at  last  we  never  do 
them.  At  any  rate,  such  is  the  case  with 
me.  I  remember  that  when  the  Eoyal 
Italian  Opera  was  in  the  very  height  of  its 
first  glories  at  Covent  Garden  1  had  the 
entr6e  for  one  whole  season.  Upon  the 
opening  night,  they  played  an  opera  which  I 
had  seen  so  often  that  I  did  not  much  care 
about  going.  I  would  wait  for  the  produc- 
tion of  that  great  work  of  which  I  had 
heard  so  much,  and  which  was  to  be  repre- 
sented for  the  first  time  in  London,  in  a  night 
or  two.  Then  I  quite  resolved  that  nothing 
short  of  my  being  laid  upon  a  bed  of  sick- 
ness should  prevent  my  going.  Well,  the 
great  work  was  produced.  I  certainly  should 
like  to  go  ;  but,  after  all,  the  piece  must  have 
a  good,  long  run,  and  there  would  be  plenty 
of  other  opportunities  of  my  hearing  it.  I 
Avould  go  next  week.  Need  I  say  after  the 
utterance  of  these  fatal  words,  I  did  not  go 
at  all.  The  season  had  passed  away — with 
what  marvellous  rapidity  it  seemed  to  have 
flown  \vhen  over  ? — and  I  had  never  visited 
the  opera  once. 

And  as  that  opera  season  was  to  me,  so  is 
the  season  of  no  end  of  human  lives.  Who 
amongst  us  is  not  conscious  of  this  same  pro- 
pensity for  putting  off  until  next  week  things 
that  could  be  (it  may  be  that  can  only  be) 
done  now  ?  Who  amongst  us  can  look  back 
upon  his  past  experience  without  feeling  how 
much  more  he  might  have  done,  how  much 
more  useful  he  might  have  been,  both  to 
himself  and  others,  had  he  never  reckoned  on 
next  week? 

I  have  had  money  owing  to  me  which  I 
might  have  received  on  application,  but  not 
being  in  absolute  and  immediate  want  of  it, 
I  have  delayed  applying  for  it.  Next  week 
would  be  quite  time  enough  for  me.  Months 
afterwards  I  was  in  want  of  it,  and  did  apply. 
My  debtor  had  two  days  before  been  made  a 
bankrupt. 

I  am  a  married  man,  and  father  of  a  family. 
Lucky  it  is  for  me  (I  say  it  advisedly,  the 
sneers  and  sarcasms  of  misogamist  bachelors 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding),  lucky  it  is 
for  me  that  lovely  woman  has  the  privilege 
of  fixing  the  happy  day.  Had  it  been  left  to 
me,  I  fear  I  should  have  put  our  wedding 
off  until  next  week,  and  lived  and  died  a 
bachelor. 


The  chances  I  have  had  of  literary  employ- 
ment upon  various  newspapers,  magazines 
and  other  periodicals,  I  will  not  here  enume- 
rate. The  reader  would  no  doubt  attribute 
it  to  vanity  were  I  to  do  so.  Enough  that 
almost  every  chance  has  been  neglected.  Not 
wilfully,  by  any  means.  I  like  the  work,  and 
like  the  proceeds  of  it  too.  In  fact,  I  have 
been  now  for  a  great  length  of  time  fully 
determined  to  contribute  regularly  to  several 
publications.  But  alas !  my  determination 
always  has  been  to  commence  next  week, 
until  too  often  I  have  found  the  opportunity 
had  passed  and  others  filled  the  place  I  might 
have  held.  How  it  is  that  the  present  article 
came  to  be  written  now,  instead  of  being  put 
off  to  that  terrible  next  week  of  mine,  I 
cannot  say.  However,  here  it  is.  Once 
begun,  I  have  but  little  difficulty  in  pro- 
ceeding,— but  oh  !  the  struggle  to  begin  ! 

Enough  of  these  confessions  of  my  past 
short-comings  ;  for  the  future  I  must  really 
make  an  effort  to  turn  over  a  new  leaf.  First 
there  is  my  five-act  comedy,  I  have  already 
mentioned.  Suppose  I  were  to  set  to  work 
upon  it  now, — this  very  day 

No  ;  not  to  day.  But,  next  week,  I  really 
do  mean,  as  I  have  said,  to  begin  in  earnest 
at  it.  Next  week,  too,  I  commence  to  get  up 
early  in  the  morning, — to  keep  a  diary, — to 
make  a  point  of  walking  four  miles  daily 
before  breakfast, — to  put  five  shillings  weekly 
in  the  Savings'  Bank  (which,  I  have  just  read 
in  the  statistics  column  of  a  penny  paper,  will 
amount  to  something  fabulous  in  the  course 
of  years).  Next  week,  too,  I  intend  to  begin 
a  regular  course  of  study  in  a  few  things,  no 
matter  what,  in  which  I  am  deficient.  But, 
I  will  say  no  more  about  my  good  inten- 
tions, lest  the  reader  should  imagine  by  their 
number  that  I  shall  never  carry  them  into 
effect.  I  will,  though,  I  am  determined. 

True  it  is,  I  have  been  quite  as  positively 
determined  ever  since  I  can  remember.  True 
it  is,  too,  my  positive  determinations  as  yet 
have  come  to  nothing.  No  matter.  This 
time  I  am  resolved.  I  will  begin  Next 
Week. 


Now  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  and  Sixpence,  neatly 
bound  in  cloth, 

THE  FIFTEENTH  VOLUME 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

Containing  the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  June  of  the  prcseiit 
year. 


Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One. 
Guinea, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILKIE  COLLINS. 
Bradbury  and  Evans,  Whitcfriars. 


The  Eight  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  "WonDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors- 


f  nblijhtd  at  the  Office,  No.  16.  Wel!in«to    Street  North,  St.ard.    Tiinte:  by  BSABBUKT  t  EvAas,  Whitefriars,  London. 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD   WORDS."— 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY  JOURNAL, 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


382.] 


SATURDAY,  JULY  18,  1857. 


fPBICB  Id. 

\  STAMPED  3d. 


INCH  BY  INCH  UPWAED. 


AMONG  the  ashes  and  slag  of  a  poor  colliery 
village,  near  Newcastle-ou-Tyne,  in  the  un- 
plastered  room  —  with  a  clay  floor  and  garret 
roof  —  that  was  the  entire  home  of  the  family 
to  which  he  was  born,  there  came  into  the 
world,  on  a  June  day,  seventy-six  years  ago, 
one  of  its  best  benefactors.  The  village  is 
named  Wylam.  The  family  occupying,  in 
the  year  seventeen  hundred  and  eighty-one, 
one  of  the  four  labourers'  apartments  con- 
tained in  the  cottage  —  known  as  High  Street 
House  —  was  that  of  Eobert  Stepheuson  and 
his  wife,  Mabel,  their  only  child  being  a  two- 
year  old  boy,  named  James  ;  when  on  the 
ninth  of  June,  in  the  year  just  named,  a 
second  son  was  born  to  them,  whom  they 
called  George.  That  was  George  Stephen- 
son,  the  founder  of  the  railway  system. 

The  family  continued  to  increase  ;  and,  by 
the  time  when  George  was  twelve  years  old  he 
had  three  brothers  and  two  sisters.  He  grew 
up  in  war  times  when  bread  was  very  dear, 
and  it  was  bitterly  difficult  for  working  men 
to  earn  more  than  would  keep  body  and 
soul  together.  His  father,  known  as  old 
Bob  by  the  neighbours,  was  a  fireman  to  the 
pumping-engine  at  the  Wylam  colliery,  earn- 
ing not  more  than  twelve  shillings  a-week. 


pleasure  in  telling  wonderful  stories  to  the 
children  who  gathered  about  his  engine-fire  of 
evenings.  About  his  engine-fire  also,  tame 
robins  would  gather  for  the  crumbs  he 
spared  out  of  his  scanty  dinner  —  for  he  was 
a  man  who  loved  all  kinds  of  animals,  and  he 
would  give  no  better  treat  to  his  child 
George,  than  to  hold  him  up  that  he  might 
look  at  the  young  blackbirds  in  •  their  nest. 
The  mother,  Mabel,  was  a  delicate  and  nerv- 
ous woman  ;  who,  though  troubled  with  what 
neighbours  called  the  rising  of  the  vapours, 
had  some  qualities  that  won  their  admiration. 
A  surviving  neighbour,  who  looks  back  upon 
the  couple,  says  of  them,  that  "  they  had  very 
little  to  come  and  go  upon.  They  were  honest 
folk,  but  sore  haudden  doon  in  the  world." 

Little  George  carried  his  father's  dinner  to 
the  engine,  helped  to  tug  about  and  nurse 
the  children  younger  than  himself  and  to  keep 
them  out  of  the  way  of  the  horses  drawing 
chaldron  waggons  on  the  wooden  tramroadj 


that  ran  close  before  the  threshold  of  the 
cottage  door.  If  the  rising  of  the  vapours 
had  made  Mabel  a  Pythoness,  she  might 
have  discovered,  as  she  stood  at  the  door, 
lines  of  fate  in  the  two  wooden  couplets  on 
the  road.  But,  they  only  warned  her  of 
danger  threatening  her  children  while  at  play. 

Twelve  shillings  a-week  when  times  are 
hard,  will  not  go  far  towards  the  support 
of  a  father,  a  mother,  and  a  lapful  of 
little  children.  The  coal  at  Wylam  was 
worked  out,  and  old  Bob's  engine,  which  had 
"  stood  till  she  grew  fearsome  to  look  at," 
was  pulled  down.  The  poor  family  then 
followed  the  work  to  Dewley  Burn  ;  where 
Robert  Stephenson  waited  as*  fireman  on  a 
newer  engine,  and  set  up  his  household  in  a 
one-roomed  cottage  near  the  centre  of  a 
group  of  little  collier's  huts  that  stand  on  the 
edge  of  a  rift,  bridged  over  here  and  there, 
because  there  runs  along  its  bottom  a  small, 
babbling  stream.  Little  George — Geordie 
Steevie — was  then  eight  years  old.  Of  course 
he  had  not  been  to  school ;  but  he  was  strong, 
nimble  of  body  and  of  wit,  and  eager  to  begin 
the  business  of  bread-winning  with  the  least 
possible  delay.  In  a  neighbouring  farm- 
house lived  Grace  Ainslie,  a  widow,  whose 
cows  had  the  right  to  graze  along  the  waggon 
road.  The  post  of  keeping  them  out  of  the 
way  of  the  waggons,  and  preventing  them 
from  trespassing  on  other  persons'  liberties 
was  given  to  George.  He  was  to  have  a 
shilling  a  week,  and  his  duty  was  to  include 
barring  the  gates  at  night  after  the  waggons 
had  all  passed. 

That  was  the  beginning  of  George  Stephen- 
son's  career,  and  from  it  he  pushed  forward 
his  fortune  inch  by  inch  upward.  Of  course 
he  had  certain  peculiar  abilities  ;  but  many 
may  have  them,  yet  few  do  good  with  them. 
George  Stephenson  made  his  own  fortune, 
and  also  added  largely  to  the  wealth  and 
general  well-being  of  society.  Our  purpose 
is — following  the  details  published  recently 
by  MR.  SMILES  in  a  most  faithful  and  elabo- 
rate biography — to  show  how  a  man  may  get 
up  the  hill  Difficulty  who  is  content  to  mount 
by  short  firm  steps,  keeping  his  eyes  well 
upon  the  ground  that  happens  to  lie  next 
before  his  feet. 

As  watcher  of  Grace  Ainslie's  cows,  the 
'work  of  little  Geordie  Steevie  gave  him 


VOL.  XVI. 


382 


60      [July  18.  1SS7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


time  for  play.  He  became  an  authority  on 
birds'  nests,  made  whistles  of  reeds  and 
straws  ;  ;iud,  with  Tom  Tholoway  his  chosen 
playmate,  had  especial  pleasure  in  the  build- 
ing of  little  clay  engines  with  the  soil  of 
Dewley  Bog  :  hemlock  stalks  being  used  to 
represent  steam-pipes  and  other  apparatus. 
Any  child,  whose  father's  work  was  to  at- 
tend an  engine,  would  have  played  at  engines  ; 
but,  in  the  case  of  George  Stephenson,  it  is, 
nevertheless,  a  pleasure  to  the  fancy  to 
dwell  on  the  fact  that,  as  a  child,  he  made  j 
mud-engines  and  not  mud-pies,  when  playing  i 
in  the  dirt.  When  his  legs  were  long  enough  1 
to  carry  him  across  the  little  furrows,  little  j 
George  was  promoted  to  the  business  of 
leading  horses  at  the  plough,  and  was  trusted 
also  to  hoe  turnips  and  to  do  other  farm- 
work  at  the  advanced  wages  of  two  shillings 
a-week.  But,  his  brother  James — two  years 
his  senior — was  then  earning  three  shillings 
a-week  as  corf-bitter  or  picker  at  the  colliery  ; 
that  is  to  say,  he  helped  to  pick  out  of  the  ; 
coal,  stones,  bats  and  dross.  Upon  that  neat  | 
inch  of  progress,  little  George  fixed  his  atten- 
tion. Having  made  it  good,  he  tried  for- 
ward till  he  secured  another  inch,  and 
received  four  shillings  a  week  as  driver  of  the 
gin-horse.  In  that  capacity  he  was  employed 
at  the  Hade  Callerton  Colliery,  two  miles 
from  Dewley  Burn,  whither  he  went  early  of 
mornings  and  whence  he  returned  late  of 
evenings,  "a  grit,  bare-legged  laddie,  very 
quick-witted  and  full  of  fun  and  tricks."  He 
bred  rabbits.  He  knew  all  the  nests 
between  Black  Callerton  and  Dewley ; 
brought  home  young  birds  when  they  were 
old  enough  ;  fed  them,  and  tamed  them.  One 
of  his  tame  blackbirds  flew  all  day  in  and  out 
of  and  about  the  cottage,  roosting  at  night  on 
the  bedhead  ;  but  she  disappeared  during  the 
summer  months,  to  do  her  proper  duty  as  a 
bird,  duly  returning  in  the  winter. 

As  driver  of  the  gin-horse,  Geordie  Steevie 
fixed  his  eye  upon  the  post  of  assistant-fire- 
man to  his  father  at  the  Dewley  engine.  At 
the  early  age  of  fourteen,  he  got  that  promo- 
tion, and  his  wages  became  six  shillings  a- 
week.  He  was  then  so  young  that  he  used 
to  hide  when  the  owner  of  the  colliery  came 
round,  lest  he  should  think  him  too  small  for 
his  place. 

The  coal  at  Dewley  Burn  was  worked 
out  ;  and  the  Stephensons  again  moved 
to  Jolly's  Close,  a  little  row  of  cottages 
shut  in  between  steep  banks.  The  family 
v,,is  now  helped  by  the  earnings  of  the 
children  ;  and,  out  of  the  united  incomes  of  its 
members,  made  thirty-five  shillings  or  two 
pounds  a-week.  But,  the  boys,  as  they  grew 
older,  grew  hungrier,  and  the  war  with 
Napoleon  was  then  raising  the  price  of  wheat 
from  fifty-four  shillings  to  one  hundred  and 
thirty  shillings  a  quarter.  It  was  still  hard 
to  live.  George,  at  fifteen  years  old — a  big 
aud  bony  boy — was  promoted  to  the  fail, 
office  of  fireman  at  a  new  working,  the  Mid- 


mill  winning,  where  he  had  a  young  friend, 
named  Bill  Coe,  for  his  mate.  But  the  Mid- 
mill  engine  was  a  very  little  one,  and  the 
nominal  increase  of  dignity  was  not  attended 
•\vilh  increase  of  wages.  George's  ambition 
was  to  attain  rank  as  soon  as  possible  as  a 
full  workman,  and  to  earn  as  good  wages  as 
those  his  father  had  :  twelve  shillings  a-week. 
He  was  steady,  sober,  indefatigable  in  his 
work,  ready  of  wit,  and  physically  strong. 
It  was  a  great  pleasure  to  him  to  compete 
with  his  associates  in  lifting  heavy  weights, 
throwing  the  hammer,  and  putting  the  stone. 
He  once  lifted  as  much  as  sixty  stone.  Mid- 
mill  pit  being  closed,  George  and  his  friend 
Coe  were  sent  to  work  another  pumping 
engine,  fixed  near  Throchley  Bridge.  While 
there,  his  work  was  adjudged  worthy  of  a 
man's  hire.  One  Saturday  evening,  the  fore- 
man paid  him  twelve  shillings  for  a  week's 
work,  and  told  him  that  he  was,  from  that 
date,  advanced.  When  he  came  out,  he  told 
his  fellow-workmen  his  good  fortune,  and 
declared  in  triumph  :  "  Now  I  am  a  made 
man  for  life." 

He  had  reached  inch  by  inch  the  natural 
object  of  a  boy's  ambition  ; — to  be  man  enough 
to  do  what  he  has  seen  done  by  his  father. 
But  he  was  man  enough  for  more  than  that. 
By  natural  ability  joined  to  unflagging 
industry  he  still  won  his  way  slowly  up ; 
and,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  worked  in  a 
new  pit  at  the  same  engine  with  his  father  ; 
the  son  taking  the  higher  place  as  engine- 
man,  and  Old  Bob  being  still  a  fireman  as 
he  had  been  from  the  first. 

It  was  the  duty  of  the  engine-man  to 
watch  the  engine,  to  correct  a  certain  class 
of  hitches  in  its  working,  and,  when  anything 
was  wrong  that  he  could  not  put  right,  to  send 
word  to  the  chief  engineer.  George  Stephen- 
son  fell  in  love  with  his  engine,  and  was 
never  tired  of  watching  it.  In  leisure  hours, 
when  his  companions  went  to  their  sports, 
he  took  his  machine  to  pieces,  cleaned  every 
part  of  it,  and  put  it  together  again.  Tims, 
he  not  only  kept  it  in  admirable  working 
order,  but  became  intimately  acquainted  with 
all  its  parts  and  knew  their  use.  He  acquired 
credit  for  devotion  to  his  work,  and  really 
was  devoted  to  it ;  at  the  same  time  he 
acquired  a  kind  of  knowledge  that  would 
help  him  to  get  an  inch  higher  in  the  world. 

But,  there  was  another  kind  of  knowledge 
necessary.  At  the  age  of  eighteen  he  could 
not  read  ;  he  could  not  write  his  name.  His 
father  had  been  too  poor  to  afford  any  school- 
ing to  the  children.  He  was  then  getting 
his  friend  Coe  to  teach  him  the  mystery  of 
brakeing,  that  he  might,  when  opportunity 
occurred,  advance  to  the  post  of  brakes- 
man— next  above  that  which  he  held.  He 
became  curious  also  to  know  definitely 
something  about  the  famous  engines  that 
were  in  those  days  planned  by  Watt  and 
Bolton.  The  desire  for  knowledge  taught  him. 
the  necessity  of  learning  to  read  books. 


Chulei  Dickene.] 


INCH  BY  INCH  UPWARD. 


[July  IS,  1357.]       51 


The  brave  young  man  resolved  therefore 
to  learn  his  letters  and  make  pot-hooks 
at  a  night-school  among  a  few  colliers'  sons, 
who  paid  threepence  a-week  each  to  a  poor 
teacher  at  Welbottle.  At  the  age  of  nine- 
teen, he  could  write  his  name.  A  night- 
school  was  set  up  by  a  Scotchman  within  a 
few  minutes'  walk  of  Jolly's  Close ;  and  to 
this,  George  Stephenson  removed  himself. 
The  Scotchman  had  much  credit  for  his 
mastery  of  arithmetic.  He  knew  as  far  as 
reduction.  George  fastened  upon  arithmetic 
with  an  especial  zeal,  and  was  more  apt  than 
any  other  pupil  for  the  study.  In  no  very 
long  time  he  had  worked  out  all  that  could 
be  yielded  to  him  by  the  dominie.  While 
thus  engaged,  the  young  man  was  getting 
lessons  from  his  friend  Coe  in  brakeing ;  and, 
with  Coe's  help,  persisting  in  them  against 
dogged  opposition  from  some  of  the  old  hands. 
At  the  age  of  twenty,  being  perfectly  steady 
and  trustworthy  as  a  workman,  he  obtained 
the  place  of  brakesman  at  the  Dolly  Pit, 
Black  Callerton  ;  with  wages  varying  from 
seventeen  and  sixpence  to  a  pound  a-week. 
But,  wheat  then  cost  nearly  six  pounds  the 
quarter. 

George  was  ambitious  to  save  a  guinea  or 
two,  because  he  was  in  love  with  something 
better  able  to  return  his  good-will  than  a 
steam-engine.  In  leisure  hours  he  turned 
his  mechanical  dexterity  to  the  business  of 
mending  the  shoes  of  his  fellow-work- 
men, and  advanced  from  mending  to  the 
making  both  of  shoes  and  lasts.  This  addi- 
tion to  his  daily  twelve  hours'  labour  at  the 
colliery,  made  some  little  addition  to  his 
weekly  earnings.  It  enabled  him  to  save  his 
first  guinea,  and  encouraged  him  to  think  the 
more  of  marrying  Fanny  Henderson,  a  pretty 
servant  in  a  neighbouring  farm-house;  sweet- 
tempered,  sensible,  and  good.  He  once  had 
shoes  of  hers  to  mend,  and,  as  he  carried  j 
them  to  her  one  Sunday  evening  with  a  j 
friend  he  could  not  help  pulling  them  out  of  | 
his  pocket  every  now  and  then  to  admire  them 
because  they  were  hers,  and  to  bid  his  com- 
panion observe  what  a  capital  job  he  had 
made  of  them. 

George  Stephenson  still  enjoyed  exercise 
in  feats  of  agility  and  strength  ;  still  spent  a 
part  of  each  idle  afternoon  on  the  pay 
Saturday  in  taking  his  engine  to  pieces; 
cleaning  it  and  pondering  over  the  uses  and 
values  of  its  parts.  He  was  a  model  work- 
man in  the  eyes  of  his  employers ;  never 
missing  a  day's  wages  through  idleness  or 
indiscretion  ;  spending  none  of  his  evenings 
in  public-houses,  avoiding  the  dog-fights 
and  cock-fights,  and  man-fights  in  which 
pitmen  delighted.  Once,  indeed,  being  in- 
sulted by  Ned  Nelson,  the  bully  of  the  pit, 
young  Stephenson  disdained  to  quail  before 
him,  though  he  was  a  great  fighter,  and  a 
man  with  whom  it  was  considered  danger- 
ous to  quarrel.  Nelson  challenged  him  to 
a  pitched  battle,  and  the  challenge  was 


accepted.  Everybody  said  Stephenson  would 
be  killed.  The  young  men  and  boys  came 
round  him  with  awe,  to  ask  whether  it  was 
true  that  he  was  "goin'  to  feight  Nelson." 
"  Aye,"  he  said,  "  never  fear  for  me,  I'll  feight 
him."  Nelson  went  off  work  to  go  into 
training.  Stephenson  worked  on  as  usual ; 
went  from  a  day's  labour  to  the  field  of 
battle  and  on  the  appointed  evening,  and, 
with  his  strong  muscle  and  hard  bone  put 
down  the  bully,  as  he  never  for  a  moment 
doubted  that  he  would. 

As  a  brakesman,  George  Stephenson 
had  been  removed  to  Willington  Ballast 
Quay,  when,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one  he 
signed  his  name  in  the  register  of  Newburn 
Church  as  the  husband  of  Fanny  Henderson  j 
and,  seating  her  behind  him  on  a  pillion 
upon  a  stout  farm-horse  borrowed  from  her 
sister's  master,  with  the  sister  as  bridesmaid 
and  a  friend  as  bridesman,  he  went  first  to 
his  father  and  mother — who  were  growing 
old,  and  struggling  against  poverty  in  Jolly's 
Close — and,  having  paid  his  duty  as  a  son  to 
them,  jolted  across  country,  and  through  the 
streets  of  Newcastle,  upon  a  ride  homeward 
of  fifteen  miles.  An  upper  room  in  a  small 
cottage  at  Wellington  Quay  was  the  home  to 
which  George  took  his  bride.  Thirteen 
months  afterwards,  his  only  son,  Robert,  was 
born  there.  The  exercise  of  his  mechanical 
skill,  prompted  sometimes  by  bold  specula- 
tions of  his  own,  amused  the  young  husband— • 
and  the  wife  doubtless — of  an  evening. 
He  was  at  work  on  the  problem  of  Perpetual 
Motion.  He  had  acquired  reputation  as  a 
shoemaker.  Accident  gave  rise  to  a  yet 
more  profitable  exercise  of  ingenuity.  Alarm 
of  a  chimney  on  fire  caused  his  room  to  be 
one  day  flooded  with  soot  and  water  by  good- 
natured  friends.  His  most  valuable  piece  of 
furniture,  the  clock,  was  seriously  injured. 
He  could  not  afibrd  to  send  it  to  a  clock- 
maker,  and  resolved  to  try  his  own  hand 
on  the  works  ;  took  them  to  pieces,  studied 
them,  and  so  put  them  together  as  to  cure 
his  clock  in  a  way  marvellous  to  all  the 
village.  He  was  soon  asked  to  cure  a  neigh- 
bour's clock,  and  gradually  made  his  title 
good  to  great  fame  as  a  clock-curer  through- 
out the  district. 

After  having  lived  three  years  as  brakes- 
man at  Willington  Quay,  George  Stephenson 
removed  to  Killingworth,  where  he  was  made 
brakesman  at  the  West  Moor  Colliery.  From 
the  high  ground  of  Killingworth,  the  spires  of 
Newcastle,  seven  miles  distant,  are  visible- 
weather  and  smoke  permitting.  At  Killing- 
worth,  when  they  had  been  but  two  or  three 
years  married,  George  Stephenson's  wife, 
Fanny,  died.  Soon  after  her  death,  leaving 
his  little  boy  in  charge  of  a  neighbour,  he 
marched  on  foot  into  Scotland ;  for,  he  had 
been  invited  by  the  owners  of  a  colliery  near 
Montrose  to  superintend  the  working  of  one 
of  Bolton  and  Watt's  engines.  For  this  work 
he  received  rather  high  wages  ;  and,  after  a 


52 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


year's  absence,  he  marched  back  again,  ou 
foot,  to  Killmgworth,  with  twenty-eight 
pounds  in  his  pocket.  During  his  absence  a 
bad  accident  had  happened  to  his  father. 
The  steam-blast  had  been  inadvertently  let 
iu  upon  him  when  he  was  inside  an  engine. 
It  struck  him  in  the  face,  and  blinded  him 
for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  George  coming 
home  from  Scotland,  paid  the  old  man's 
debts,  removed  his  parents  to  a  comfortable 
cottage  near  his  own  place  of  work  at  Kil- 
lingworth — for  he  was  again  taken  on  as 
brakesman  at  the  West  Moor  Pit — and 
worked  for  them  during  the  remainder  of 
their  lives.  At  this  time  there  was  dis- 
tress and  riot  among  labourers.  George 
was  drawn  for  the  militia,  and  spent  the 
remainder  of  his  savings  on  the  payment  of 
a  substitute.  He  was  so  much  disabled  in 
fortune  that  he  thought  of  emigrating  to 
America,  as  one  of  his  sisters  was  then  doing 
in  company  with  her  husband,  but — happily 
for  his  own  country — he  could  not  raise 
money  enough  to  take  him  out  of  it.  To  a 
friend  he  afterwards  said  of  his  sorrow  at 
this  time,  "  You  know  the  road  from  my 
house  at  the  West  Moor  to  Killingworth.  I 
remember,  when  I  went  along  that  road,  I 
•wept  bitterly,  for  I  knew  not  where  my  lot 
would  be  cast." 

It  was  a  slight  advance  in  independence, 
although  no  advance  in  fortune,  when  Ste- 
pheuson,  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  joined 
two  other  brakesmen  in  taking  a  small 
contract  under  the  lessees  for  brakeing  the 
engines  at  the  West  Moor  pit.  The  profits 
did  not  always  bring  him  in  a  pound  a-week. 
His  little  son,  Robert,  was  growing  up,  and 
he  was  bent  firmly  on  giving  him  what  he 
himself  had  lacked :  the  utmost  attainable 
benefit  of  education  in  his  boyhood.  There- 
fore George  spent  his  nights  in  mending 
clocks  and  watches  for  his  neighbours 
mended  and  made  shoes,  cut  out  lasts,  even 
cut  out  the  pitmen's  clothes  for  their  wives 
to  make  up,  arid  worked  at  their  embroidery 
He  turned  every  spare  minute  to  account 
and  so  wrung,  from  a  stubborn  fortune,  powei 
to  give  the  first  rudiments  of  education  to 
his  son. 

At  last  there   came  a  day  when  all  the 
cleaning  and  dissecting  of  his  engines  turnec 
to  profit,  and  the  clock-doctor  won  the  more 
important    character  of  engine-doctor.     He 
had  on  various  occasions    suggested  to  th 
owners  small  contrivances  which  had  savei 
wear  and  tear  of  material,  or  otherwise  im 
proved  the  working  of  his  pit.     When 
was  twenty-nine  years  old,  a  new  pit  was 
sunk  at   Killingworth — now  known  as  th 
Killingworth  High  Pit — over  which  a  New 
comen  engine  was  fixed  for  the  purpose  o 
pumping  water  from  the  shaft.     For  some 
reason  the  engine  failed  ;  as  one  of  the  work 
men    engaged    on    it  tells    the    case,   "  sh 
couldn't  keep  her  jack-head  in  water  ;  all  th 
engine-men  in  the  neighbourhood  were  tried 


is  well  as  Crowther  of  the  Ouseburn,  but 
hey  were  clean  bet."  The  engine  pumped 
o  no  purpose  for  nearly  twelve  months. 
Stephenson  had  observed,  when  he  saw  it 
milt,  that  if  there  was  much  water  in  the 
mine,  that  engine  wouldn't  keep  it  under,  but 
o  the  opinion  of  a  common  brakesman  no 
iced  had  been  paid.  He  used  often  to  inquire- 
as  to  "  how  she  was  getting  on,"  and  the 
answer  always  was,  that  the  men  were  still 
drowned  out.  One  Saturday  afternoon, George 
went  to  the  High  Pit,  and  made  a  close 
xamination  of  the  whole  machine.  Kit 
EEeppel,  sinker  at  the  pit,  said  to  him  when 
le  had  done, 

"  Weel,  George,  what  do  you  mak'  o'  her  ? 
Do  you  think  you  could  do  anything  to  im- 
prove her  1 " 

"  Man,"  said  George,  "  I  could  alter  her 
and  make  her  draw.  In  a  week's  time  from 
this  I  could  send  you  to  the  bottom." 

The  conversation  was  reported  to  Ealph 
Dods,  the  head  viewer.  George  was  known 
;o  be  an  ingenious  and  determined  fellow  : 
and,  as  Dods  said, "  the  engineers  hereabouts  are 
all  bet."  The  brakesman,  therefore,  was  at 
once  allowed  to  try  his  skill :  he  could  not 
make  matters  worse  than  they  were,  and  he 
might  mend  them.  He  was  set  to  work  at. 
once,  picked  his  own  men  to  carry  out  the 
alterations  he  thought  necessary,  took  the 
whole  engine  to  pieces,  reconstructed  it,  and 
really  did,  in  a  week's  time  after  his  talk 
with  Heppel,  clear  the  pit  of  water.  This 
achievement  brought  him  fame  as  a  pump- 
curer.  Dods  made  him  a  present  of  ten 
pounds,  and  he  was  appointed  engine-man  on 
good  wages  at  the  pit  he  had  redeemed,  until 
the  work  of  sinking  was  completed.  The  job 
lasted  about  a  year.  Thus,  at  the  age  of  thirty, 
Stephenson  had  begun  to  find  his  way  across 
the  borders  of  the  engineer's  profession.  To 
all  the  wheezy  engines  in  the  neighbourhood 
he  was  called  in  as  a  professional  adviser- 
The  regular  men  called  him  a  quack  ;  but  the 
quack  perfectly  understood  the  constitution 
of  an  engine,  and  worked  miracles  of  heal- 
ing. One  day,  as  he  passed  a  drowned  quarry, 
on  his  way  from  work,  at  which  a  wind- 
mill worked  an  inefficient  pump,  he  told  the 
men,  "  he  would  set  up  for  them  an  engine 
no  bigger  than  a  kail-pot,  that  would  clear 
them  out  in  a  week."  And  he  fulfilled  his 
promise. 

A  year  after  his  triumph  at  the  High. 
Pit,  the  eugine-wright  at  Killingworth  was. 
killed  by  an  accident,  and  George  titephensonr. 
on  Mr.  Dods'  recommendation,  was  promoted 
to  his  place  by  the  lessees.  He  was  appointed, 
engine-wright  to  the  colliery  at  a  salary  of 
one  hundred  pounds  a-year. 

At  this  time  of  his  life,  Stephenson  was 
associating  with  John  Wigham,  a  farmer's 
son,  who  understood  the  rule  of  three,  who 
had  acquired  some  little  knowledge  of  che- 
mistry and  natural  philosophy,  and  who 
possessed  a  volume  of  Ferguson's  Lectures  on 


Charles  Dick<n< 


INCH  BY  INCH  UPWAED. 


53 


Mechanics.  With  John  Wigham,  Stephenson 
spent  many  leisure  hours  in  study  and  ex- 
periment ;  learning  all  John  could  teach,  and 
able  to  teach  not  a  little  out  of  his  own 
thoughts  in  exchange  for  the  result  of  John's 
reading.  George  Stephenson,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-three  had  saved  a  hundred  guineas  ; 
and  his  son  Eobert,  then  taken  from  a  village- 
school,  was  sent  to  Brace's  academy,  at  New- 
castle. 

The  father  had  built  with  his  own  hand 
three  rooms  and  an  oven,  in  addition  to  the 
one  room  and  a  garret  up  a  step-ladder  that 
had  been  taken  for  his  home  at  Killingworth. 
He  had  a  little  garden,  in  which  he  devoted 
part  of  his  energy  to  the  growth  of  monster 
leeks  and  cabbages.  In  the  garden  was  a 
mechanical  scarecrow  of  his  own  invention. 
The  garden  door  was  fastened  by  a  lock  of 
his  contrivance,  that  none  but  himself  could 
open.  The  house  was  a  curiosity-shop  of 
models  and  mechanical  ideas.  He  amused 
people  with  a  lamp  that  would  burn  under 
water,  attached  an  alarum  to  the  watchmen's 
clock,  and  showed  women  how  to  make  a 
smoke-jack  rock  the  baby's  cradle.  He  was 
full  of  a  vigorous  life.  Kit  Heppel  one  day 
challenged  him  to  leap  from  the  top  of  one 
high  wall  to  the  top  of  another,  there  being 
a  deep  gap  between ;  to  his  dismay  he  was 
taken  at  his  word  instantly.  Stephenson 
cleared  the  eleven  feet  at  a  bound,  exactly 
measuring  his  distance. 

As  engine-wright,  Stephenson  had  opportu- 
nities of  carrying  still  farther  his  study  of  the 
engine,  as  well  as  of  turning  to  account  the 
knowledge  he  already  possessed.  His  inge- 
nuity soon  caused  a  reduction  of  the  number 
of  horses  employed  in  the  colliery  from  a 
hundred  to  fifteen  or  sixteen  ;  and  he  had 
access  not  only  to  the  mine  at  Killingworth, 
but  to  all  collieries  belonging  to  Lord  Ravens- 
worth  and  his  partners,  a  firm  that  had  been 
named  the  Grand  Allies.  The  locomotive 
engine  was  then  known  to  the  world  as  a 
new  toy,  curious  and  costly.  Stephenson  had 
a  perception  of  what  might  be  done  with  it, 
and  was  beginning  to  make  it  the  subject  of 
his  thoughts.  From  the  education  of  his  son 
Robert,  he  was  now  deriving  knowledge  for 
himself.  The  father  entered  him  as  a  member 
of  the  Newcastle  Literary  and  Philosophical 
Institution,  and  toiled  with  him  over  books 
of  science  borrowed  from  its  library.  Me- 
chanical plans  he  read  at  sight,  never  re- 
quiring to  refer  to  the  description  ;  "  a  good 
plan,"  he  said,  "should  always  explain 
itself."  One  of  the  secretaries  of  the 
Newcastle  Institution  watched  with  lively 
interest  the  studies  of  both  father  and 
son,  and  helped  them  freely  to  the  use  of 
books  and  instruments,  while  he  assisted 
their  endeavours  with  his  counsels.  George 
Stephenson  was  thirty-two  years  old,  and 
however  little  he  may  by  that  time  have 
achieved,  one  sees  that  he  had  accumu- 
lated in  himself  a  store  of  power  that  would 


inevitably  carry  him  on — upon  his  own  plan 
of  inch  by  inch  advance — to  new  successes. 
Various  experiments  had  been  made  with  the 
new  locomotive  engines.  One  had  been  tried 
upon  the  Wylam  tram-road,  which  went 
by  the  cottage  in  which  Stephenson  was 
born.  George  Stephenson  brooded  upon  the 
subject,  watched  their  failures,  worked  at  the 
theory  of  their  construction,  and  made  it  his 
business  to  see  one.  He  felt  his  way  to  the 
manufacture  of  a  better  engine,  and  proceeded 
to  bring  the  subject  unuor  the  notice  of  the 
lessees  of  the  colliery.  He  had  acquired 
reputation  not  only  as  an  ingenious  but  as  a 
sate  and  prudent  man.  He  had  instituted 
already  many  improvements  in  the  collieries. 
Lord  Ravensworth,  the  principal  partner, 
therefore  authorised  him  to  fulfil  his  wish  ; 
and  with  the  greatest  difficulty  making 
workmen  of  some  of  the  colliery  hands,  and, 
having  the  colliery  blacksmith  for  his  head 
assistant,  he  built  his  first  locomotive  in  the 
workshops  at  Westmoor,  and  called  it  "  My 
Lord."  It  was  the  first  engine  constructed 
with  smooth  wheels  ;  for  Stephenson  never 
admitted  the  prevailing  notion  that  con- 
trivances were  necessary  to  secure  adhe- 
sion. "  My  Lord  "  was  called  "  Blutcher  "  by 
the  people  round  about.  It  was  first  placed 
on  the  Killiugworth  Railway  on  the  twenty- 
fifth  of  July,  eighteen  hundred  and  fourteen, 
and,  though  a  cumbrous  machine,  was  the 
most  successful  that  had,  up  to  that  date, 
been  constructed. 

At  the  end  of  a  year  it  was  found  that  the 
work  done  by  Blutcher  cost  about  as  much 
as  the  same  work  would  have  cost  if  done  by 
horses.  Then  it  occurred  to  Stephenson  to 
turn  the  steam-pipe  into  the  chimney,  and 
carry  the  smoke  up  with  the  draught  of  a 
steam-blast.  That  would  add  to  the  intensity 
of  the  fire  and  to  the  rapidity  with  which 
steam  could  be  generated.  The  power  of  the 
engine  was,  by  this  expedient,  doubled. 

At  about  the  same  time  some  frightful 
accidents,  caused  by  explosion  in  the  pits  of 
his  district,  set  Stephenson  to  exercise  his 
ingenuity  for  the  discovery  of  a  miner's  safety 
lamp.  By  a  mechanical  theory  of  his  own, 
tested  by  experiments  made  boldly  at  the  peril 
of  his  life,  he  arrived  at  the  construction  of  a 
lamp  less  simple,  though  perhaps  safer,  than 
that  of  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  and  with  the  same 
method  of  defence.  The  practical  man  and 
the  philosopher  worked  independently  in  the 
same  year  on  the  same  problem.  Stephen- 
son's  solution  was  arrived  at  a  few  weeks 
earlier  than  Davy's,  and  upon  this  fact  a  great 
controversy  afterwards  was  founded.  One 
material  result  of  it  was,  that  Stephenson 
eventually  received  as  public  testimonial  a 
thousand  pounds,  which  he  used  later  in  life 
as  capital  for  the  founding  at  Newcastle  of 
his  famous  locomotive  factory.  At  the  Kil- 
lingworth pits  the  "  Geordy  "  safety  lamp  is 
still  in  use,  being  there,  of  course,  considered 
to  be  better  than  the  Davy. 


64     [July  is,  i 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Locomotives  had  been  used  only  on  the 
tram-roads  of  the  collieries,  and  by  the  time 
•when  Stephenson  built  his  second  engine  were 
generally  abandoned  as  failures.  Stephenson 
alone  stayed  in  the  field  and  did  not  care  who 
said  that  there  would  be  at  Killingworth  "  a 
terrible  blow-up  some  day."  He  had  already 
made  up  his  mind  that  the  perfection  of  a 
travelling  engine  would  be  half  lost  if  it  did 
not  run  on  a  perfected  rail.  Engine  and  rail 
he  spoke  of,  even  then,  as  "man  and  wife," 
and  his  contrivances  for  the  improvement  of 
the  locomotive  always  went  hand  in  hand 
with  his  contrivances  for  the  improvement  of 
the-  road  on  which  it  ran.  We  need  not 
follow  the  mechanical  details.  In  his  work 
at  the  rail  and  engine  he  made  progress  in 
his  own  way,  inch  by  inch  ;  every  new  loco- 
motive built  by  him  contained  improvements 
on  its  predecessor  ;  every  time  he  laid  down 
a  fresh  rail  he  added  some  new  element  of 
strength  and  firmness  to  it.  The  Killing- 
worth  Colliery  Railway  was  the  seed  from 
which  sprang  the  whole  European — and  now 
more  than  European — system  of  railway 
intercourse.  While  systems  and  theories 
rose  and  fell  round  about,  George  Stephen- 
sou  kept  his  little  line  in  working  order, 
made  it  pay,  and  slowly  advanced  in  the  im- 
provement of  the  rails  and  engines  used  upon 
it.  When  it  had  been  five  years  at  work,  the 
owners  of  the  Hetton  Colliery,  in  the  county 
of  Durham,  invited  Stephenson  to  act  as 
engineer  for  them  in  laying  down  an  equally 
efficient  and  much  longer  line.  Its  length 
was  to  be  eight  miles,  and  it  would  cross  one 
of  the  highest  hills  in  the  district :  Stepheuson 
put  his  locomotive  on  the  level  ground, 
worked  the  inclines  with  stationary  engines, 
showed  how  full  waggons  descending  an 
incline  might  be  used  as  a  power  for  the 
drawing  up  of  empty  ones,  and  in  three  years 
completed  successfully  a  most  interesting  and 
novel  series  of  works. 

In  those  days  there  was  talk  of  railroads  to 
be  worked  by  horse-power,  or  any  better 
powei',  if  better  there  were  ;  but  at  avy  rate 
level  roads  laid  down  with  rails  for  the 
facility  of  traffic,  were  projected  between 
Stockton  and  Darlington,  between  Liverpool 
and  Manchester,  and  between  other  places. 

The  Killingworth  Railway  was  seven  years 
old,  the  Hetton  line  then  being  in  course  of 
construction ;  and  George  Stephenson  was 
forty  years  old  when  "one  day,"  writes  Mr. 
Smiles,  "  about  the  end  of  the  year  eighteen 
hundred  and  twenty -one,  two  strangers 
knocked  at  the  door  of  Mr.  Pease's  house 
in  Dai-liugton"  (Mr.  Pease  was  the  head 
promoter  of  the  railway  between  Darlington 
and  Stockton),  "  and  the  message  was  brought 
to  him  that  some,  persons  from  Killingworth 
•wanted  to  speak  with  him.  They  were  in- 
vited in  ;  on  which  one  of  the  visitors  intro 
duced  himself  as  Nicholas  Wood,  viewer  at 
Killingworth  ;  and  then,  turning  to  his  com- 
panion, he  introduced  him  as  George  Stephen- 


son  of  the  same  place."  George  had  also  a 
letter  of  introduction  from  the  manager  at 
Killingworth,  and  c;ime  as  a  person  who  had 
had  experience  in  the  laying  out  of  railways, 
to  offer  his  services.  He  had  walked  to 
Darlington,  with  here  and  there  a  lift  upon 
a  coach,  to  see  whether  he  could  not  get  for 
his  locomotive  a  fair  trial,  and  for  himself  a 
step  of  advancement  in  life,  upon  Mr.  Pease's 
line.  He  told  his  wish  in  the  strong  North- 
umbrian dialect  of  his  district  ;  as  for  him- 
self, he  said,  he  was  "only  the  engiue-wright 
at  Killingworth,  that's  what  he  was." 

Mr.  Pease  liked  him,  told  him  his  plans, 
which  were  all  founded  on  the  use  of  horse- 
power, he  being  satisfied  "  that  a  horse  upon 
an  iron  road  would  draw  ten  tons  for  one  on 
a  common  road,  and  that  before  long  the 
railway  would  become  the  King's  Highway." 
Stephenson  boldly  declared  that  his  locomo- 
tive was  worth  fifty  horses,  and  that  moving 
engines  would  in  course  of  time  supersede 
all  horse-power  upon  railroads.  "  Come 
over,"  he  said,  "to  Killingworth,  and  see 
what  my  Blutcher  can  do ;  seeing  is  believing, 
sir."  Mr.  Pease  went,  saw,  and  believed. 
Stephenson  was  appointed  engineer  to  the 
Company,  at  a  salary  of  three  hundred  a- 
year.  The  Darlington  line  was  constructed 
in  accordance  with  his  survey.  His  travel- 
ling engine  ran  upon  it  for  the  first  time  oil 
the  twenty- seventh  of  September,  eighteen 
hundred  and  twenty-five,  in  sight  of  an  im- 
mense concourse  of  people,  and  attained,  in 
some  parts  of  its  course,  a  speed — then  unex- 
ampled— of  twelve  miles  an  hour.  When 
Stephenson  afterwards  became  a  famous  man 
he  forgot  none  of  his  old  friends.  He  visited 
even  poor  cottagers  who  had  done  a  chance 
kindness  to  him.  Mr.  Pease  will  transmit  to 
his  descendants  a  gold  watch,  inscribed — 
"  Esteem  and  gratitude :  from  George  Ste- 
phenson to  Edward  Pease." 

It  was  while  the  Stockton  and  Darlington 
line  was  in  progress  that  George  Stephenson 
proposed  establishing  a  locomotive  factory, 
and  training  a  body  of  mechanics  skilled  to 
the  new  work,  at  Newcastle.  The  thousand 
pounds  given  to  him  by  the  coal-owners  for 
his  invention  of  the  safety-lamp,  he  could 
advance.  Mr.  Pease  and  another  friend 
advanced  five  hundred  each,  and  so  the 
Newcastle  Engine  Factory  was  founded. 

With  what  determined  perseverance  Mr. 
Stephenson  upheld  the  cause  of  the  locomo- 
tive in  connection  with  the  proposed  Liver- 
pool and  Manchester  line :  how  he  did 
cheaply  what  all  the  regular  engineers  de- 
clared impossible  or  ruinous,  in  carrying 
that  line  over  Chat-Moss,  persevering,  wheu 
all  who  were  about  him  had  confessed  de- 
spair, and  because  he  had  made  good  his 
boldest  promises  in  every  one  case  :  how  h© 
was  at  last  trusted  in  the  face  of  public 
ridicule,  upon  the  merits  of  the  locomotive 
also :  how  after  the  line  was  built,  at  the 
public  competition  of  light  engines  constructed 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  FATE  PENITENT. 


[Jnly  IP,  1857.]       55 


in  accordance  with  certain  strict  conditions, 
his  little  Rocket  won  the  prize  :  how  the 
fulfilment  01  his  utmost  assertions  raised 
Stephenson  to  the  position  of  an  oracle  in 
the  eyes  of  the  public :  how  he  nevertheless 
went  on  improving  the  construction  of  both 
rails  and  locomotives  :  how  the  great  railway 
system,  of  which  the  foundations  were  laid 
patiently  by  him,  was  rapidly  developed : 
how,  when  success  begot  a  mania,  he  was  as 
conspicuous  for  his  determined  moderation 
as  he  had  before  been  for  his  determined  zeal : 
how  he  attained  honour  and  fortune  ;  and 
retired  from  public  life,  again  to  grow  enor- 
mous fruits  or  vegetables  in  his  garden — 
pineapples  instead  of  leeks — again  to  pet 
animals  and  watch  the  birds'  nests  in  the 
hedges — we  need  not  tell  in  detail  ;  Mr. 
Smiles's  excellent  biography  tells  it  alL 

One  of  the  chief  pleasures  of  his  latter  days 
was  to  hold  out  a  helping  hand  to  poor  in- 
ventors who  deserved  assistance.  He  was  a 
true  man  to  the  last,  whom  failure  never  drove 
to  despair  ;  whom  success  never  elated  to 
folly.  Inch  by  inch  he  made  his  ground 
good  in  the  world,  and  for  the  world.  A 
year  before  his  death  in  eighteen  hundred 
and  forty-eight,  somebody,  about  to  dedicate 
a  book  to  him,  asked  him  what  were  his 
"ornamental  initials."  His  reply  was,  "I 
have  to  state  that  I  have  no  nourishes  to 
my  name,  either  before  or  after;  and  I  think 
it  will  be  as  well  if  you  merely  say,  George 
Stephenson." 


A  FAIR  PENITENT. 


CHARLES  PINKAU  DUCLOS  was  a  French 
writer  of  biographies  and  novels,  who  lived 
and  worked  during  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  He  prospered  sufficiently 
well,  as  a  literary  man,  to  be  made  secretary 
to  the  French  Academy,  and  to  be  allowed 
to  succeed  Voltaire  in  the  office  of  historio- 
grapher of  France.  He  has  left  behind  him, 
in  his  own  country,  the  reputation  of  a  lively 
writer  of  the  second  class,  who  addressed  the 
public  of  his  day  with  fair  success,  and  who, 
since  his  death,  has  not  troubled  posterity  to 
take  any  particular  notice  of  him. 

Among  the  papers  left  by  Duclos,  two 
manuscripts  were  found,  which  he  probably 
intended  to  turn  to  some  literary  account. 
The  first  was  a  brief  Memoir,  written  by 
himself,  of  a  Frenchwoman,  named  Made- 
moiselle Gautier,  who  began  life  as  an  actress 
and  who  ended  it  as  a  Carmelite  nun.  The 
second  manuscript  was  the  lady's  own  account 
of  the  process  of  her  conversion,  and  of  the 
circumstances  which  attended  her  moral 
passage  from  the  state  of  a  sinner  to  the  state 
of  a  saint.  There  are  certain  national  pecu- 
liarities iu  the  character  of  Mademoiselle 
Gautier  and  in  the  narrative  of  her  conver- 
sion, which  are  perhaps  interesting  enough 
to  be  reproduced  with  some  chance  of  pleasing 
the  reader  of  the  present  day. 


It  appears,  from  the  account  given  of  her 
by  Duclos,  that  Mademoiselle  Gautier  made 
her  appearance  on  the  stage  of  the  Theatre 
Frangois  in  the  year  seventeen  hundred  and 
sixteen.  She  is  described  as  a  handsome 
woman,  with  a  fine  figure,  a  fresh  complexion, 
a  lively  disposition,  and  a  violent  temper. 
Besides  possessing  capacity  as  an  actress,  she 
could  write  very  good  verses,  she  was  clever 
at  painting  in  miniature,  and,  most  remark- 
able quality  of  all,  she  was  possessed  of 
prodigious  muscular  strength.  It  is  recorded 
of  Mademoiselle,  that  she  could  roll  up  a 
silver  plate  with  her  hands,  and  that  she 
covered  herself  with  distinction  in  a  trial  of 
strength  with  no  less  a  person  than  the 
famous  soldier,  Marshal  Saxe. 

Nobody  who  is  at  all  acquainted  with  the 
social  history  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
France,  need  be  told  that  Mademoiselle  Gau- 
tier had  a,  long  list  of  lovers, — for  the  most 
part,  persons  of  quality,  marshals,  counts, 
and  so  forth.  The  only  man,  however,  who 
really  attached  her  to  him,  was  an  actor  at 
the  Theatre  Frangois,  a  famous  player  in  his 
day,  named  Quinault  Dufresne.  Mademoi- 
selle Gautier  seems  to  have  loved  him  with 
all  the  ardour  of  her  naturally  passionate 
disposition.  At  first,  he  returned  her  affec- 
tion ;  but,  as  soon  as  she  ventured  to  test 
the  sincerity  of  his  attachment  by  speaking 
of  marriage,  he  cooled  towards  her  imme- 
diately, and  the  connection  between  them 
was  broken  off.  In  all  her  former  love-affairs, 
she  had  been  noted  for  the  high  tone  which 
she  adopted  towards  her  admirers,  and  for 
the  despotic  authority  which  she  exercised 
over  them  even  in  her  gayest  moments.  But 
the  severance  of  her  connection  with  Quinault 
Dufresne  wounded  her  to  her  heart.  She 
had  loved  the  man  so  dearly,  had  made  so 
many  sacrifices  for  him,  had  counted  so  fondly 
on  the  devotion  of  her  whole  future  life  to 
him,  that  the  first  discovery  of  his  coldness 
towards  her  broke  her  spirit  at  once  and  for 
ever.  She  fell  into  a  condition  of  hopeless 
melancholy,  looked  back  with  remorse  and 
horror  at  her  past  life,  and  abandoned  the 
stage  and  the  society  in  which  she  had  lived, 
to  end  her  days  repentantly  in  the  character 
of  a  Carmelite  nun. 

So  far,  her  history  is  the  history  of 
hundreds  of  other  women  before  her  time 
and  after  it.  The  prominent  interest  of  her 
life,  for  the  student  of  human  nature,  lies  in 
the  story  of  her  conversion,  as  told  by  her- 
self. The  greater  part  of  the  narrative — 
every  page  of  which  is  more  or  less  charac- 
teristic of  the  Frenchwoman  of  the  eighteenth 
century — may  be  given,  with  certain  suppres- 
sions and  abridgments,  in  her  own  words. 
The  reader  will  observe,  at  the  outset,  one 
curious  fact.  Mademoiselle  Gautier  does  not 
so  much  as  hint  at  the  influence  which  the 
loss  of  her  lover  had  in  disposing  her  mind  to 
reflect  on  serious  subjects.  IShe  describes 
her  conversion  as  if  it  had  taken  its  rise  in  a 


56     [July  18,1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS, 


[Conducted  br 


sudden  inspiration  from  Heaven.     Even  the 
name  of  Quinault  Dufresne  is  not  once  men- 


tioned from  one 
other. 


end  of  her  narrative  to  the 


On  the  twenty-fifth  of  April,  seventeen 
hundred  and  twenty- two  (writes  Mademoi- 
selle Gautier),  while  I  was  still  leading  a  life 
of  pleasure — according  to  the  pernicious  ideas 
of  pleasure  which  pass  current  in  the  world — 
I  happen  to  awake,  contrary  to  my  usual 
custom,  between  eight  and  nine  o'clock  in 
the  morning.  I  remember  that  it  is  my 
birthday  ;  I  ring  for  my  people  ;  and  my 
maid  answers  the  bell,  alarmed  by  the  idea 
that  I  am  ill.  I  tell  her  to  dress  me  that  I 
may  go  to  mass.  I  go  to  the  Church  of  the 
Cordeliers,  followed  by  my  footman,  and 
taking  with  me  a  little  orphan  whom  I  had 


adopted.    The    first 
•celebrated     without 


part    of   the    mass    is 
attracting    my   atten- 


tion ;  but,  at  the  second  part  the  accusing 
voice  of  my  conscience  suddenly  begins 
to  speak.  "What  brings  you  here?"  it 
says.  "Do  you  come  to  reward  God  for 
making  you  the  attractive  person  that  you 
are,  by  mortally  transgressing  His  laws 
every  day  of  your  life  ?"  I  hear  that  ques- 
tion, and  I  am  unspeakably  overwhelmed  by 
it.  I  quit  the  chair  on  which  I  have  hitherto 
been  leaning  carelessly,  and  I  prostrate  my- 
self in  an  agony  of  remorse  on  the  pavement 
of  the  church. 

The  mass  over,  I  send  home  the  footman 
and  the  orphan,  remaining  behind  myself, 
plunged  in  inconceivable  perplexity.  At 
last  I  rouse  myself  on  a  suddea  ;  I  go  to  the 
sacristy  ;  I  demand  a  mass  for  my  own  proper 
advantage  every  day  ;  I  determine  to  attend 
it  regularly  ;  and,  after  three  hours  of  agita- 
tion, I  return  home,  resolved  to  enter  on  the 
path  that  leads  to  justification. 

Six  months  passed.  Every  morning  I 
went  to  my  mass  :  every  evening  I  spent  in 
my  customary  dissipations. 

Some  of  my  friends  indulged  in  consider- 
able merriment  at  my  expense  when  they 
found  out  my  constant  attendance  at  mass. 
Accordingly,  I  disguised  myself  as  a  boy, 
when  i  went  to  church,  to  escape  observation. 
My  disguise  was  found  out,  and  the  jokes 
against  me  were  redoubled.  Upon  this,  I 
began  to  think  of  the  words  of  the  Gospel, 
which  declare  the  impossibility  of  serving 
two  masters.  I  determined  to  abandon  the 
service  of  Mammon. 

The  first  vanity  I  gave  up  was  the  vanity 
of  keeping  a  maid.  By  way  of  further  accus- 
toming myself  to  the  retreat  from  the  world 
which  I  now  began  to  meditate,  I  declined 
all  invitations  to  parties  under  the  pretext  of 
indisposition.  But  the  nearer  the  Easter 
time  approached  at  which  I  had  settled  in 
my  own  mind  definitely  to  turn  my  back  on 
•worldly  temptations  and  pleasures,  the  more 
violent  became  my  internal  struggles  with 


such  an  extent  that  I  was  troubled  with  per- 
petual attacks  of  retching  and  sickness, 
which,  however,  did  not  prevent  me  from 
writing  my  general  confession,  addressed  to 
the  vicar  of  Saint  Sulpice,  the  parish  in  which. 
I  lived. 

Just  Heaven  !  what  did  I  not  suffer  some 
days  afterwards,  when  I  united  around  me 
at  dinner,  for  the  last  time,  all  the  friends 
who  had  been  dearest  to  me  in  the  days  of 
my  worldly  life  !  What  words  can  describe 
the  tumult  of  my  heart  when  one  of  my 
guests  said  to  me,  "  You  are  giving  us  too 
good  a  dinner  for  a  Wednesday  in  Passion 
Week;"  and  when  another  answered,  jest- 
ingly, "  You  forget  that  this  is  her  farewell 
dinner  to  her  friends  !"  I  felt  ready  to  faint 
while  they  were  talking,  and  rose  from  table 
pretexting  as  an  excuse,  that  I  had  a  pay- 
ment to  make  that  evening,  which  I  could 
not  in  honour  defer  any  longer.  The  com 
pany  rose  with  me,  and  saw  me  to  the  door 
I  got  into  my  carriage,  and  the  company 
returned  to  table.  My  nerves  were  in  such  a 
state  that  I  shrieked  at  the  first  crack  of  the 
coachman's  whip ;  and  the  company  came 
running  down  again  to  know  what  was  the 
matter.  One  of  my  servants  cleverly  stopped 
them  from  all  hurrying  out  to  the  carriage 
together,  by  declaring  that  the  scream  pro- 
ceeded from  my  adopted  orphan.  Upon  this 
they  returned  quietly  enough  to  their  wine, 
and  I  drove  off  with  my  general  confession 
to  the  vicar  of  Saint  Sulpice. 

My  interview  with  the  vicar  lasted  three 
hours.  His  joy  at  discovering  that  I  was  in 
a  state  of  grace  was  extreme.  My  own 
emotions  were  quite  indescribable.  Late  at 
night  I  returned  to  my  own  house,  and 
found  my  guests  all  gone.  I  employed  my- 
self in  writing  farewell  letters  to  the  manager 
and  company  of  the  theatre,  and  in  making 
the  necessary  arrangements  for  sending  back 
my  adopted  orphan  to  his  friends,  with 
twenty  pistoles.  Finally,  I  directed  the  ser- 
vants to  say,  if  anybody  enquired  after  me 
the  next  day,  that  I  had  gone  out  of  town 
for  some  time  ;  and  after  that,  at  five  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  I  left  my  home  in  Paris 
never  to  return  to  it  again. 

By  this  time  I  had  thoroughly  recovered 
my  tranquillity.  I  was  as  easy  in  my  mind 
at  leaving  my  house  as  I  am  now  when  I 
quit  my  cell  to  sing  in  the  choir.  Such 
already  was  the  happy  result  of  my  perpetual 
masses,  my  general  confession,  and  my  three 
hours'  interview  with  the  vicar  of  Saint 
Sulpice. 

Before  taking  leave  of  the  world,  I  went 
to  Versailles  to  say  good-bye  to  my  worthy 
patrons,  Cardinal  Fleury  and  the  Duke  de 
Gesvres.  From  them,  I  went  to  mass  in  the 
King's  Chapel  ;  and  after  that,  I  called  on  a 


I  had    mortally 
of    making    my 
peace   with  her.     She  received  me  angrily 


lady   of   Versailles   whom 
offended,  for  the   purpose 


myself.    My  health  suffered  under  them  to    enough.    I  told  her  I  had  not  come  to  justify 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  FAIR  PENITENT. 


[July  13, 1357.]      57 


myself,  but  to  ask  her  pardon.  If  she  granted 
it,  she  would  send  me  away  happy.  If  she 
declined  to  be  reconciled,  Providence  would 
probably  be  satisfied  with  my  submission, 
but  certainly  not  with  her  refusal.  She  felt 
the  force  of  this  argument ;  and  we  made  it 
up  on  the  spot. 

I  left  Versailles  immediately  afterwards, 
without  taking  anything  to  eat ;  the  act  of 
humility  which  I  had  just  performed  being 
as  good  as  a  meal  to  me. 

Towards  evening,  I  entered  the  house  of 
the  Community  of  Saint.  Perpetua  at  Paris. 
I  had  ordered  a  little  room  to  be  furnished 
there  for  me,  until  the  inventory  of  my 
worldly  effects  was  completed,  and  until  I 
could  conclude  my  arrangements  for  entering 
a  convent.  On  first  installing  myself,  I  be- 
gan to  feel  hungry  at  last,  and  begged  the 
Superior  of  the  Community  to  give  me  for 
supper  anything  that  remained  from  the 
dinner  of  the  house.  They  had  nothing  but 
a  little  stewed  carp,  of  which  I  eat  with  an 
excellent  appetite.  Marvellous  to  relate, 
although  I  had  been  able  to  keep  nothing  on 
my  stomach  for  the  past  three  months, 
although  I  had  been  dreadfully  sick  after  a 
little  rice  soup  on  the  evening  before,  the 
stewed  carp  of  the  sisterhood  of  Saint  Per- 
petua, with  some  nuts  afterwards  for  dessert, 
agreed  with  me  charmingly,  and  I  slept  all 
through  the  night  afterwards  as  peacefully 
as  a  child  ! 

When  the  news  of  my  retirement  became 
public,  it  occasioned  great  talk  in  Paris. 
Various  people  assigned  various  reasons  for 
the  strange  course  that  I  had  taken.  No- 
body, however,  believed  that  I  had  quitted 
the  world  in  the  prime  of  my  life  (I  was  then 
thirty-one  years  old),  never  to  return  to  it 
again.  Meanwhile,  my  inventory  was  finished 
and  my  goods  were  sold.  One  of  my  friends 
sent  a  letter,  entreating  me  to  reconsider  my 
determination.  My  mind  was  made  up,  and 
I  wrote  to  say  so.  When  my  goods  had  been 
all  sold,  I  left  Paris  to  go  and  live  incognito 
as  a  parlour-boarder  in  the  Convent  of  the 
Ursuliue  nuns  of  Pondevaux.  Here  I 
wished  to  try  the  mode  of  life  for  a  little 
while  before  I  assumed  the  serious  responsi- 
bility of  taking  the  veil.  I  knew  my  own 
character — I  remembered  my  early  horror  of 
total  seclusion,  and  my  inveterate  dislike  to 
the  company  of  women  only  ;  and,  moved 
by  these  considerations,  I  resolved,  now  that 
I  had  taken  the  first  important  step,  to  pro- 
ceed in  the  future  with  caution. 

The  nuns  of  Pondevaux  received  me  among 
them  with  great  kindness.  They  gave  me  a 
large  room,  which  I  partitioned  off  into  three 
small  ones.  I  assisted  at  all  the  pious  exer- 
cises of  the  place.  Deceived  by  my  fashion- 
able appearance  and  my  plump  figure,  the 
good  nuns  treated  me  as  if  I  was  a  person 
of  high  distinction.  This  afflicted  me,  and  I 
undeceived  them.  When  they  knew  who  I 
really  was,  they  only  behaved  towards  me 


with   still  greater  kindness.     I   passed  my 
time  in  reading  and  praying,  and  led   the 
quietest,   sweetest  life  it  is  possible  to  con 
ceive. 

After  ten  months'  sojourn  at  Pondevaux, 
I  went  to  Lyons,  and  entered  (still  as  parlour- 
boarder  only)  the  House  of  Auticaille,  occu- 
pied by  the  nuns  of  the  Order  of  Saint  Mary. 
Here,  I  enjoyed  the  advantage  of  having  for 
director  of  my  conscience  that  holy  man, 
Father  Deveaux.  He  belonged  to  the  Order 
of  the  Jesuits  ;  and  he  was  good  enough, 
when  I  first  asked  him  for  advice,  to  suggest 
that  I  should  get  up  at  eleven  o'clock  at 
night  to  say  my  prayers,  and  should  remain 
absorbed  in  devotion  until  midnight.  In 
obedience  to  the  directions  of  this  saintly 
person,  I  kept  myself  awake  as  well  as  I 
could  till  eleven  o'clock.  I  then  got  on  my 
knees  with  great  fervour,  and  I  blush  to  con- 
fess it,  immediately  fell  as  fast  asleep  as  a 
dormouse.  This  went  on  for  several  nights, 
when  Father  Deveaux  finding  that  my  mid- 
night devotions  were  rather  too  much  for 
me,  was  so  obliging  as  to  prescribe  another 
species  of  pious  exercise,  in  a  letter  which 
he  wrote  to  me  with  his  own  hand.  The  holy 
father,  after  deeply  regretting  my  inability  to 
keep  awake,  informed  me  that  he  had  a  new 
act  of  penitence  to  suggest  to  me  by  the  per- 
formance of  which  I  might  still  hope  to 
expiate  my  sins.  He  then,  in  the  plainest 
terms,  advised  me  to  have  recourse  to  the 
discipline  of  flagellation,  every  Friday,  using 
the  cat-o'-nine-tails  on  my  bare  shoulders 
for  the  length  of  time  that  it  would  take  to 
repeat  a  Miserere.  In  conclusion,  he  informed 
me  that  the  nuns  of  Anticaille  would  probably 
lend  me  the  necessary  instrument  of  flagella- 
tion ;  but,  if  they  made  any  difficulty  about 
it,  he  was  benevolently  ready  to  furnish  me 
with  a  new  and  special  cat-o'-niue-tails  of  his 
own  making. 

Never  was  woman  more  amazed  or  more 
angry  than  I,  when  I  first  read  this  letter. 
"  What !  "  cried  I  to  myself,  "  does  this  man 
seriously  recommend  me  to  lash  my  own 
shoulders  ?  Just  Heaven,  what  imperti- 
nence !  And  yet,  is  it  not  my  duty  to  put  up 
with  it  1  Does  not  this  apparent  insolence 
proceed  from  the  pen  of  a  holy  man  1  If  he 
tells  me  to  flog  my  wickedness  out  of  me,  is 
it  not  my  bounden  duty  to  lay  on  the  scourge 
with  all  my  might  immediately  ?  Sinner 
that  I  am  !  I  am  thinking  remorsefully  of 
my  plump  shoulders  and  the  dimples  on  my 
back,  when  I  ought  to  be  thinking  of  nothing 
but  the  cat-o'-nine-tails  and  obedience  to 
Father  Deveaux  1 " 

These  reflections  soon  gave  me  the  resolu- 
tion which  I  had  wanted  at  first.  I  was 
ashamed  to  ask  the  nuns  for  an  instrument 
of  flagellation  ;  so  I  made  one  for  myself  of 
stout  cord,  pitilessly  knotted  at  very  short 
intervals.  This  done,  I  shut  myself  up  while 
the  nuns  were  at  prayer,  uncovered  my 
shoulders,  and  rained  such  a  shower  of  lashes 


58       [July  M,  18J7J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


on  them,  in  the  first  fervour  of  my  newly- 
awakened  zeal,  that  I  fairly  flogged  myself 
down  on  the  ground,,flat  on  my  nose,  before 
]  had  repeated  more  of  the  Miserere  than  the 
first  two  or  three  lines. 

I  burst  out  crying,  shedding  tears  of  spite 
against  myself  when  I  ought  to  have  been 
shedding  tears  of  devotional  gratitude  for  the 
kindness  of  Father  Deveaux.  All  through 
the  night,  I  never  closed  my  eyes,  and  in  the 
morning  I  found  my  poor  shoulders  (once  so 
generally  admired  for  their  whiteness)  striped 
with  all  the  colours  of  the  rainbow.  The 
sight  threw  me  into  a  passion,  and  I  profanely 
said 'to  myself  while  I  was  dressing,  "The 
next  time  I  see  Father  Deveaux,  I  will  give 
my  tongue  full  swing,  and  make  the  hair  of 
that  holy  man  stand  on  end  with  terror ! " 
A  few  hours  afterwai'ds,  he  came  to  the  con- 
vent, and  all  my  resolution  melted  away  at 
the  sight  of  him.  His  imposing  exterior  had 
such  an  effect  on  me  that  I  could  only  humbly 
entreat  him  to  excuse  me  from  inflicting  a 
second  flagellation  on  myself.  He  smiled 
beniguantly,  and  granted  my  request  with  a 
saintly  amiability.  "  Give  me  the  cat-o'-nine- 
tails," he  said,  in  conclusion,  "and  I  will  keep 
it  for  you  till  you  ask  me  for  it  again.  You 
are  sure  to  ask  for  it  again,  dear  child — to 
ask  for  it  on  your  bended  knees !  " 

Pious  and  prophetic  man !  Before  many 
days  had  passed  his  words  came  true.  If  he 
had  persisted  severely  in  ordering  me  to  flog 
myself,  I  might  have  opposed  him  for  months 
together  ;  but,  as  it  was,  who  could  resist 
the  amiable  indulgence  he  showed  towards 
my  weakness  ?  The  very  next  day  after  my 
interview,  I  began  to  feel  ashamed  of  my  own 
cowardice  ;  and  the  day  after  that  I  went 
down  on  my  knees,  exactly  as  he  had  pre- 
dicted, and  said,  "  Father  Deveaux,  give  me 
back  my  cat-o'-niue-tails."  From  that  time 
I  cheerfully  underwent  the  discipline  of 
flagellation,  learning  the  regular  method  of 
practising  it  from  the  sisterhood,  and  feeling, 
in  a  spiritual  point  of  view,  immensely  the 
better  for  it. 

The  nuns,  finding  that  I  cheerfully  devoted 
myself  to  every  act  of  self-sacrifice  prescribed 
by  the  rules  of  their  convent,  wondered  very 
much  that  I  still  hesitated  about  taking  the 
veil.  I  begged  them  not  to  mention  the  sub- 
ject to  me  till  my  mind  was  quite  made  up 
about  it.  They  respected  my  wish,  and  said 
no  more ;  but  they  lent  me  books  to  read 
which  assisted  in  strengthening  my  waverin 
resolution.  Among  these  books  was  the 
Life  of  Madame  de  Montmorenci,  who,  after 
the  shocking  death  of  her  husband,  entered 
the  Order  of  St.  Mary.  The  great  example 
of  this  lady  made  me  reflect  seriously,  and  I 
communicated  my  thoughts,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  to  Father  Deveaux.  He  assured  me 
that  the  one  last  greatest  sacrifice  which  re- 
mained for  me  to  make  was  the  sacrifice  of 
my  liberty.  I  had  long  known  that  this  was 
my  duty,  and  I  now  felt,  for  the  first  time, 


that  I  had  courage  and  resolution  enough 
boldly  to  face  the  idea  of  taking  the  veil. 

While  I  was  in  this  happy  frame  of  mind, 
I  happened  to  meet  with  the  history  of  the 
famous  Banco,  founder,  or  rather  reformer, 
of  the  Order  of  La  Trappe.  I  found  a  strange 
similarity  between  my  own  worldly  errors 
and  those  of  this  illustrious  penitent.  The 
discovery  had  such  an  effect  on  me,  that  I 
spurned  all  idea  of  entering  a  convent  where 
the  rules  were  comparatively  easy,  as  was 
the  case  at  Anticaille,  and  determined,  when 
I  did  take  the  veil,  to  enter  an  Order  whose 
discipline  was  as  severe  as  the  discipline  of 
La  Trappe  itself.  Father  Deveaux  informed 
me  that  I  should  find  exactly  what  I  wanted 
among  the  Carmelite  nuns ;  and,  by  his 
advice,  I  immediately  put  myself  in  commu- 
nication with  the  Archbishop  of  Villeroi.  I 
opened  my  heart  to  this  worthy  prelate,  con- 
vinced him  of  my  sincerity,  and  gained  from 
him  a  promise  that  he  would  get  me  ad- 
mitted among  the  Carmelite  nuns  of  Lyons. 
One  thing  I  begged  of  him  at  parting,  which 
was,  that  he  would  tell  the  whole  truth 
about  my  former  life  and  about  the  profes- 
sion that  I  had  exercised  in  the  world.  I 
was  resolved  to  deceive  nobody,  and  to 
enter  no  convent  under  false  pretences  of  any 
sort. 

My  wishes  were  scrupulously  fulfilled ;  and 
the  nuns  were  dreadfully  frightened  when 
they  heard  that  I  had  been  an  actress  at 
Paris.  But  the  Archbishop  promising  to 
answer  for  me,  and  to  take  all  their  scruples 
on  his  own  conscience,  they  consented  to 
receive  me.  I  could  not  trust  myself  to  take 
formal  leave  of  the  nuns  of  Anticaille,  who 
had  been  so  kind  to  me,  and  towards  whom 
I  felt  so  gratefully.  So  I  wrote  my  farewell 
to  them  after  privately  leaving  their  house, 
telling  them  frankly  the  motives  which 
animated  me,  and  asking  their  pardon  for 
separating  myself  from  them  in  secret. 

On  the  fourteenth  of  October,  seventeen 
hundred  and  twenty-four,  I  entered  the  Car- 
melite convent  at  Lyons,  eighteen  months 
after  my  flight  from  the  world,  and  my  aban- 
donment of  my  profession — to  adopt  which, 
I  may  say,  in  my  own  defence,  that  I  was 
first  led  through  sheer  poverty.  At  the  age 
of  seventeen  years,  and  possessing  (if  I  may 
credit  report)  remarkable  personal  charms,  I 
was  left  perfectly  destitute  through  the 
spendthrift  habits  of  my  father.  I  was 
easily  persuaded  to  go  on  the  stage,  and  soon 
tempted,  with  my  youth  and  inexperience,  to 
lead  an  irregular  life.  I  do  not  wish  to 
assert  that  dissipation  necessarily  follows  the 
choice  of  the  actress's  profession,  for  I  have 
known  many  estimable  women  on  the  stage. 
I,  unhappily,  was  not  one  of  the  number.  I 
confess  it  to  my  shame,  and,  as  the  chief  of 
sinners,  I  am  only  the  more  grateful  to  the 
mercy  of  Heaven  which  accomplished  my 
conversion. 

When  I  entered  the  convent,  I  entreated 


Charles  Dickens,] 


THEEE  GENERATIONS. 


[July  IS,  1S57.]      59 


the  prioress  to  let  me  live  in  perfect  obscu- 
rity, without  corresponding  with  my  friends, 
or  even  with  my  relations.  She  declined  to 
grant  this  last  request,  thinking  that  my  zeal 
was  leading  me  too  far.  On  the  other  hand, 
she  complied  with  my  wish  to  be  employed 
at  once,  without  the  slightest  preparatory 
indulgence  or  consideration,  on  any  menial 
labour  which  the  discipline  of  the  convent 
might  require  from  me.  On  the  first  day  of 
my  admission  a  broom  was  put  into  my 
hands.  I  was  appointed  also  to  wash  up  the 
dishes,  to  scour  the  saucepans,  to  draw  water 
from  a  deep  well,  to  carry  each  sister's 
pitcher  to  its  proper  place,  and  to  scrub  the 
tables  in  the  refectory.  From  these  occupa- 
tions I  got  on  in  time  to  making  rope  shoes 
for  the  sisterhood,  and  to  taking  care  of  the 
great  clock  of  the  convent ;  this  last  employ- 
ment requiring  me  to  pull  up  three  im- 
mensely heavy  weights  regularly  every  day. 
Seven  years  of  my  life  passed  in  this  hard 
work,  and  I  can  honestly  say  that  I  never 
murmured  over  it. 

To  return,  however,  to  the  period  of  my 
admission  into  the  convent. 

After  three  months  of  probation,  I  took 
the  veil  on  the  twentieth  of  January,  seven- 
teen hundred  and  twenty-five.  The  Arch- 
bishop did  me  the  honour  to  preside  at  the 
ceremony  ;  and,  in  spite  of  the  rigour  of  the 
season,  all  Lyons  poured  into  the  church  to 
see  me  take  the  vows.  I  was  deeply  affected ; 
but  I  never  faltered  in  my  resolution.  I  pro- 
nounced the  oaths  with  a  firm  voice,  and  with 
a  tranquillity  which  astonished  all  the  spec- 
tators,— a  tranquillity  which  has  never  once 
failed  me  since  that  time. 

Such  is  the  story  of  my  conversion.  Pro- 
vidence sent  me  into  the  world  with  an  excel- 
lent nature,  with  a  true  heart,  with  a 
remarkable  susceptibility  to  the  influence  of 
estimable  sentiments.  My  parents  neglected 
my  education,  and  left  me  in  the  world, 
destitute  of  everything  but  youth,  beauty, 
and  a  lively  temperament.  I  tried  hard  to 
be  virtuous  ;  I  vowed,  before  I  was  out  of 
my  teens,  and  when  I  happened  to  be  struck 
down  by  a  serious  illness,  to  leave  the  stage, 
and  to  keep  my  reputation  unblemished,  if 
anybody  would  only  give  me  two  hundred 
livres  a  year  to  live  upon.  Nobody  came  for- 
ward to  help  me,  and  I  fell.  Heaven  pardon 
the  rich  people  of  Paris  who  might  have 
preserved  my  virtue  at  so  small  a  cost  ! 
Heaven  grant  me  courage  to  follow  the  better 
path  into  which  its  mercy  has  led  me,  and  to 
persevere  in  a  life  of  penitence  and  devotion 
to  the  end  of  my  days  ! 

So  this  singular  confession  ends.  Besides 
the  little  vanities  and  levities  which  appear 
here  and  there  on  its  surface,  there  is  surely 
a  strong  under-current  of  sincerity  aod  frank- 
ness which  fit  it  to  appeal  in  some  degree  to 
the  sympathy  as  well  as  the  curiosity  of  the 
reader.  It  is  impossible  to  read  the  narra- 


tive without  feeling  that  there  must  have 
been  something  really  genuine  and  hearty  in 
Mademoiselle  Gautier's  nature  ;  and  it  is  a 
gratifying  proof  of  the  honest  integrity  of  her 
purpose  to  know  that  she  persevered  to  the 
last  in  the  life  of  humility  and  seclusion 
which  her  conscience  had  convinced  her  was 
the  best  life  that  she  could  lead.  Persons 
who  knew  her  in  the  Carmelite  convent, 
report  that  she  lived  and  died  in  it,  pre- 
serving to  the  last,  all  the  better  part  of  the 
youthful  liveliness  of  her  character.  She 
always  received  visitors  with  pleasure,  always 
talked  to  them  with  surprising  cheerfulness, 
always  assisted  the  poor,  and  always  willingly 
wrote  letters  to  her  former  patrons  in  Paris 
to  help  the  interests  of  her  needy  friends. 
Towards  the  end  of  her  life,  she  was  afflicted 
with  blindness  ;  but  she  was  a  trouble  to  no 
one  in  consequence  of  this  affliction,  for  she 
continued,  in  spite  of  it,  to  clean  her  own 
cell,  to  make  her  own  bed,  and  to  cook  her 
own  food  just  as  usual.  One  little  charac- 
teristic vanity — harmless  enough,  surely  ? — 
remained  with  her  to  the  last.  She  never 
forgot  her  own  handsome  face,  which  all 
Paris  had  admired  in  the  by-gone  time  ;  and 
she  contrived  to  get  a  dispensation  from  the 
Pope  which  allowed  her  to  receive  visitors  in 
the  convent  parlour  without  a  veil. 


THEEE  GENERATIONS. 


SCARCLIFF,  on  the  north-eastern  coast  of 
England,  is  one  of  the  very  few  beautiful 
spots  so  situated,  which  have  not  been  meta- 
morphosed into  fashionable  watering-places. 
Our  pier  is  still  constructed  of  great  loose 
stones,  or  boulders,  upon  which  I  am  happy 
to  think  no  modern  dandy  ccull  set  foot 
without  considerable  d;.mige;  oar  yellow 
sands  are  not  stuck  over  witti  mangy-looking 
iron  pipes  (upon  which  the  seawater  has  had 
a  horrible  external  effect),  in  order  to  supply 
douche,  tepid,  and  hot  baths  to  people  who 
resemble  the  pipes ;  no  committee  of  health 
has  removed  the  tangled  wilderness  of 
weed  that  clings  about  our  rocks  when  the 
tide  ebbs,  and  affords  that  refreshing  fra- 
grance called  the  smell  of  the  sea ;  no  es- 
planade of  Portland  stone,  with  this  restric- 
tion and  that  restriction  printed  up  all  over 
it,  and  a  policeman  to  see  that  every  restriction 
is  attended  to,  deforms  our  beach  ;  no  infirm 
imitations  of  the  ark  make  our  shores 
hideous.  If  we  want  to  bathe  and  are  men, 
we  stride  along  the  tinkling  shingle  and 
craunch  into  the  shell-abouuding  sand,  as 
far  as  the  point  yonder  ;  and  there,  with  one 
of  the  many-coloured  caves  for  our  dressing- 
room,  we  plunge  down,  down,  down,  away 
from  the  sun  and  the  sky,  into  another 
world  of  shade  and  coolness,  where  we 
cannot  stay  very  long  without  inconve- 
nience, and  all  is  man  that  comes  to  fishes' 
net ;  then,  breathless  and  palpitating,  we 
arise  again,  to  take  our  pleasure  upon  the 


60       [July   18,1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


sparkling  sea,  without  becoming  the  focus  of 
a  score  of  telescopes.  The  ladies  have  not 
so  far  to  walk  ;  a  secluded  bay  close  by,  on 
the  other  side,  is  dedicated  to  them ;  where 
the  innocent  sea-gulls  and  soft  white  waves 
are  alone  spectators  of  their  curtsies  and 
taking  of  hands. 

Our  population  consists  almost  entirely  of 
fishermen,  of  whom  more  than  one  possesses  a 
considerable  property  acquired  in  other  ways 
than  oyster-dredging  or  lobster-catching,  in 
the  good  old  times  of  Saucy  Susans  and 
smuggling  runs.  Scarcliff,  we  boast,  owned 
in  -those  times  at  least  one  as  tidy  lugger 
as  ever  gave  the  go-by  to  her  Majesty's 
revenue-cutters ;  and  there  was  scarcely  a 
cottage  where  the  purest  French  brandy 
could  not  be  procured  under  the  unconscious 
title  of  skim  milk  (from  the  duty  being  taken 
off,  I  suppose),  or  a  farm-house  where  a 
casual  reference  to  cabbage  crops,  failed  to 
produce  the  choicest  of  Havaunah  cigars. 
The  gains  of  the  free-trader  must,  indeed, 
have  been  enormous,  to  admit  of  such  uni- 
versal bribery ;  and  the  popularity  of  his 
profession  was  great  in  proportion.  What  if 
the  horses  of  the  yeoman  next  the  sea  were 
haled  out  in  the  dead  midnight  to  carry  a 
cargo  twenty  miles  across  the  moorland, 
thence  to  be  conveyed  still  further  be- 
yond the  reach  of  suspicion  ?  A  keg  or 
two  left  in  their  manger  atoned  for  the  dirt 
and  weariness  of  the  cattle.  What  if  a  coast- 
guardsman  or  so,  more  officious  in  their 
duties  than  need  be,  got  occasionally  spilt 
over  the  cliffs  in  the  darkness,  and  by  mis- 
take 1  Some  few  victims  must  be  sacrificed 
to  every  system,  even  to  that  of  the  contra- 
band trade ;  whose  theory  was  that  of  the 
Jeremy Bentham,and  had  in  view  the  greatest 
happiness  of  the  greatest  possible  number. 

It  was  thus  that  old  Jacob  Ashfield — who 
flourished  at  Scarcliff  at  the  commencement  of 
this  present  century — got  so  respected.  I  did 
not  know  him  personally  until  long  after  his 
palmy  time  ;  and,  still  hale  and  vigorous  old 
fellow  as  he  was  and  is,  he  was  changed 
enough  from  him  who  had  the  strongest 
arm  and  steadiest  eye  of  any  betwixt  the 
Humber  and  the  Wash.  He  lived  by  the 
streamlet's  side  that  runs  along  the  east- 
ern gully  down  to  the  village.  The  place 
was  suited  to  the  owner  ;  a  huge  fall  and 
lasher  leapt  and  eddied  before  the  cottage 
door  with  thunder  enough  to  deafen  an  ear 
unaccustomed  to  the  turmoil ;  and  there 
were  indeed  many  things  done  and  said  by 
old  Jacob  and  his  visitors,  which  would  not 
have  sounded  well  to  listeners,  even  if  they 
had  understood  their  meaning  ;  for,  as  the 
law  has  an  infinite  amount  of  vain  repetition 
and  foolish  jargon,  in  order  to  confuse  clients 
and  keep  a  lucrative  business  in  professional 
hands,  so  had  these  evaders  of  the  law  a 
dictionary  of  their  own,  and  were  indebted 
for  much  of  their  language  neither  to  John- 
son, nor  to  Webster,  nor  (slang  as  their 


expressions  often  were)  to  Walker  himself. 
More  than  once,  on  dark  and  wintry  nights, 
the  officers  of  excise  have  cooled  their  heels 
for  hours  on  the  little  wooden  bridge  that 
spanned  the  torrent,  so  difficult  did  they  find 
it  to  make  known  their  presence  to  the  pro- 
prietor ;  while  he  and  his  family  were 
breaking  up  a  barrel  or  two  which  might 
liave  given  them  offence,  and  letting  many  a 
gallon  of  white  ale  mix  with  the  foaming 
flood,  to  make  trout  and  grilse  and  salmon 
exceedingly  drunk  and  astonished,  between 
Watersleap  and  Scarcliff  Bay. 

Jack  Ashfield,  a  boy  of  about  twenty 
years  of  age,  and  his  sister  Kitty — the 
prettiest  woman,  say  the  old  people,  ever 
seen  in  these  parts,  by  far — assisted  their 
father  well  and  willingly;  often  and  often, 
through  the  dark  October  nights,  did  Jack 
sit  upon  the  slippery  heather  of  the  great 
sloping  heights  of  Sleamouth  Cove,  show- 
ing the  light  of  his  lantern  to  the  sear 
and  shading  it  from  the  land,  to  guide  the 
lugger's  course ;  and  whenever  charming 
Kitty's  petticoats  seemed  a  trifle  more  stiffly 
quilted  than  usual,  when  she  rode  into  the 
market-town  with  her  basket,  it  was  generally 
attributed  to  the  presence  of  cigars.  Although 
thus  notorious  from  their  youth  up,  as  op- 
posing themselves  to  his  Majesty's  excise- 
laws,  they  were  in  all  other  respects  perfectly 
honest  and  well-conducted,  and  redeemed,  by 
their  good -nature  and  pleasant  looks,  the 
rough  behaviour  and  buccaneering  appear- 
ance of  old  Jacob.  His  life  had  been  a 
chequered  one,  and  not,  in  any  of  its 
patterns,  favourable  to  the  development  of 
gentleness  or  respectability ;  he  had  been 
a  pressed  man  under  Nelson,  and  had  fought 
against  the  grain  and  against  the  French 
for  years,  but  behaving  gallantly  enough 
at  all  times,  and  especially  at  Trafalgar. 
He  had  an  enormous  belief  and  gloried 
exceedingly  in  his  great  commander.  When 
he  heard  that  Cronstadt  was  not  to  be 
attacked  in  the  late  war,  he  got  very 
excited,  and  blasphemed  —  as  was  his 
custom  on  most  occasions  —  uninterrupt- 
edly for  a  week  or  two.  He  never  knew, 
poor  old  fellow,  when  he  was  guilty  of  his 
frightful  expressions,  but  used  them  in  the 
old  man-of-war  style,  interjeetionally,  and 
for  emphasis. 

"  If  old  Nelly  had  been  alive,  he'd  not  have 
waited  for  orders  from  home,  nor  nothing, 
but  he'd  have  gone  in  leading  the  line,  and 
the  fleet  'ud  have  folio  wed,  mark  ye,  although 
they  had  to  sail  over  his  sunken  ships.  Why, 
when  Villainouve  heard  that  the  command: 
had  been  given  to  Old  Nelly,  he  calls  his 
admirals,  captains,  lieutenants,  and  what  not, 
on  to  his  quarter-deck,  and  says  he,  '  We  are 
all  dead  men  !' " 

And  then,  amidst  a  dropping  fire  of  impre- 
cations, old  Jacob  would  point  out  upon  the 
sand  Avith  his  staff  the  way  in  which  the 
enemy's  line  was  broken  in  the  great  battle 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THREE  GENERATIONS. 


[July  18.  1857.]       61 


•wherein  Old  Nelly  got  killed  by  the  Parlez- 
vous — a  curse  and  a  blessing,  each  of  the 
intensest  character,  were  wont  here  to  be 
given  almost  simultaneously,  like  water 
thrown  upon  fire — and,  "  There,  too,  it  was 
that  I  got  this  and  tins,"  (exhibiting  the  most 
frightful  fissures,)  "  but  neither  of  them  as 
gave  them,  mark  ye,  ever  went  home  to 
boast  on  it." 

Tired  of  the  monotonous  life  of  a  man-of- 
war,  he  had  joined  one  of  the  junior  lieutenants 
of  his  ship — a  sprig  of  nobility,  exhibiting 
a  singular  parallel  in  his  disposition  to  the 
wayward  Ashfield  himself — in  deserting  from 
her  in  company  with  many  others,  and  man- 
ning a  privateer  of  their  own,  in  which 
they  cruised  for  months  in  the  Medi- 
terranean, and  obtained  several  prizes.  The 
spi-ig  was  lopped  off  the  Navy  List  for  this, 
however  ;  and  his  fellow  truants,  although 
otherwise  pardoned,  were  deprived  of  their 
long  service  pensions.  When  the  war  was 
over,  Jacob  got  a  part-share  in  the  Scarcliff 
lugger  Saucy  Susan,  and  made  many  success- 
ful runs.  The  proh'ts  were  so  large  that  two 
lucky  trips  were  calculated  to  counterbalance 
the  loss  of  cargo,  vessel  and  all  upon  its  third 
venture.  Old  Ashfield  once  showed  my  father 
(who,  although  minister  of  the  parish,  did 
not  consider  it  worth  while  to  send  twenty 
miles  and  more  for  indifferent  brandy  to 
make  his  winter  punch  with,  when  he  could 
get  it  far  better  at  one-fifth  of  the  price  at 
Watersleap)  at  least  two  thousand  guineas  in 
gold,  which  he  kept  in  an  old  portmanteau, 
and  took  a  handful  from  when  it  was  needed. 
He  was  not  by  any  means  miserly  or  over- 
prudent,  but  had  unsettled  views  upon  our 
monetary  system,  and  would  have  considered 
it  an  act  of  madness  to  trust  money  to  a  banker, 
or  let  it  out  at  interest.  It  was,  however, 
light  come,  light  go,  with  men  of  his  trade, 
and,  cheap  as  his  liquor  was  to  him,  his 
profuse  drinking,  perhaps — if  other  things 
had  not  impoverished  him — would  have  kept 
and  left  him  poor.  Of  what  that  drinking 
consisted  we  of  the  present  day  at  Scarcliti 
have  happily  no  experience  ;  but,  to  judge  by 
old  Ashtield's  present  consumption  it  must 
have  been  something  tremendous.  Through 
the  tyranny  of  the  customs  he  has  been  of 
late  years  reduced  to  gin  and  beer  mostly,  of 
which  he  imbibes  in  a  week  sufficient  to  float 
himself  in. 

"  Why,  I  mind,"  says  he,  "  when  none  of 
us  was  considered  a  man  who  could  not  take 
his  half-pint  stoup  of  white  ale  (pale  brandy) 
at  a  draught,  and  amongst  us  of  the  Saucy 
Susan  there  was  a  forfeit  for  who  did  not 
take  his  pint  before  breakfast,  regular,  and 
without  a  drop  of  water.  Why  Mark  Hilson 
and  I  and  Robert  Gore — Hiison  died  in  the 
union  (an  expletive  in  connection  with  the 
poor-law  system  occurred  here)  at  eighty-one, 
and  Robert  is  alive  now  to  tell  you  it" I  don't 
speak  truth.  We  three  were  drunk  for  an 
entire  week,  without  ever  eating  so  much  as  a 


crust  of  bread.  When  we  were  too  far  gone 
we  laid  down  on  a  hurdle  of  wet  straw,  and 
when  that  revived  us  something,  to  it  we  set 
again.  Brandy  !  Why  there  wasn't  a  cottage 
in  Scarcliff  without  its  little  cellar  in  the 
garden  or  under  the  hearth-stone,  nor  a  pail, 
nor  a  jug,  nor  a  tub  about  the  place  but  had 
held  the  skim  milk  of  the  Saucy  Susan." 

Jacob  himself  was  never  caught  by  the 
custom-house  people,  although  they  knew 
him  so  well,  except  once. 

"  It  was  between  two  and  three  in  the 
morning,  and  I  was  driving  a  cargo  of  a  dozen 
kegs  up  Scarcliff  hill  to  the  moorland  with 
six  horses  in  a  team,  two  kegs  upon  each 
horse,  when  I  heard  the  coasters  corning  arter 
me.  I  drove  as  hard  as  I  could,  but  they 
were  mounted,  too,  and  before  I  had  got  a 
mile  away  over  the  moor  they  was  upon 
me.  '  Ah,  ah  ! '  says  they,  '  so  we've  caught 
you  at  last,  Jacob  ?  How  early  you  go  to 
work  in  the  morning ! '  And  very  jolly  they 
were  about  the  capture,  you  may  be  sure  ; 
sixty  gallons  of  white  ale  and  six  horses  was 
a  pretty  good  prize  among  three  of  them. 
Now  they  had  got  no  regular  warrant  with 
them,  which  it  was  necessary  to  have  before 
they  could  lawfully  seize,  and  they  took  me 
into  Barton  to  get  it.  The  parson,  who  was 
the  magistrate  there,  happened,  as  I  very 
well  knew,  to  be  out  for  a  day  or  two,  and 
we  had  to  bide  at  the  inn  till  he  came  home, 
'  And,  though  you  are  our  prisoner,  Jacob,  we 
won't  treat  you  ill,'  said  the  men,  very  good- 
natured  through  their  good-luck  ;  '  and  we'll 
all  make  merry  till  the  warrant  comes,  for  it 
is  at  the  king's  own  expense.'  Which  indeed 
we  did,  and  a  pretty  state  excisemen  and 
prisoner  and  all  were  in  for  the  thirty-six 
hours  before  the  parson  came  home.  Well, 
the  head  coaster  at  last  gets  the  warrant, 
and,  '  Now,'  says  he,  '  'tis  lawful  for  us  to 
taste  the  prize.'  So  they  opened  one  of  the 
kegs,  and  passed  the  cup  from  one  to  t'other  ; 
but  neither  of  them  took  very  kindly  to  it, 
for,  indeed,  it  was  nothing,  bless  their  simple 
souls,  but  innocent  sea- water,  and  while  I 
was  cutting  away  and  being  caught  upon  the 
moor  a  very  pretty  run  the  Saucy  Susan 
made  of  it  into  Sleainouth  Cove,  the  coasters 
being  otherwise  engaged." 

It  was  about  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and 
twenty-one,  that  a  young  gentleman  from 
Oxford  University,  of  the  name  of  Hindon, 
came  down  to  our  little  village.  He  had  been 
expelled  from  college  for  excesses  which, 
even  at  that  time,  and  although  he  came  of  a 
great  family,  were  considered  too  grave  to- 
be  over-looked.  The  Hindons  of  the  Wolds 
had  reigned  in  their  own  place  for  centuries, 
and,  though  sufficiently  lawless,  none  of 
that  stock  had  ever  grown  up  so  wild  as 
Drunken  Dick.  Some  very  fast  men — not 
many — are  decent  and  respectable  fellows 
at  bottom,  and  when  they  have  run  their 
muck  and  done  their  quantum  of  mischief, 
pull  up  short  and  become  gentlemen  in  man- 


62      [July  18, 1887J 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


ners  and  looks,  at  least,  to  the  end  of  their 
days.  But  Dick  was  not  of  that  sort ;  he  only 
left  off  cock-fighting,  because  it  ceased  out  of 
the  country  altogether  and  left  him  ;  he 
indulged  in  and  was  patron  of  every  conceiv- 
able blackguardism  that  remained.  Wine, 
indeed,  he  was  not  addicted  to,  considering  it 
at  best  but  poor  stuff,  only  fit  for  clergy- 
men ;  but  he  drank  brandy  to  an  extent 
which  astonished  even  old  Jacob  himself.  He 
had  contracted  heavy  debts  at  college,  and 
was  condemned  to  a  somewhat  short  allow- 
ance of  three  hundred  a-year,  so  that  the 
cheapness  of  the  white  ale  had  combined, 
perhaps,  with  the  desire  of  getting  out  of 
sight  of  all  his  relatives  in  attracting  him  to 
our  simple  village.  Depraved  almost  utterly, 
and  coarse-minded  beyond  the  coarsest, 
as  Dick  was,  he  was  however  in  many 
respects  less  contemptible  than  the  univer- 
sity scamp  of  to-day.  He  was,  at  least,  open 
and  inartificial  ;  his  vices  were  those  of  a 
healthy  though  brutish  animalism,  and  never 
sank  into  cold,  passionless  debauchery.  His 
irreligion  was  manifest  enough,  indeed  ;  but 
it  did  not  show  itself  in  sneers  or  yawns. 
Selfish  he  was,  but  by  no  means  callous  to  j 
the  wants  and  misery  of  others,  and  at  all 
events  he  never  made  a  jest  of  them. 
Bloated  in  the  face,  shaky  in  the  hands,  fishy 
about  the  eyes,  as  the  youth  had  already  be- 
come, he  did  riot  make  a  boast  of  his  infir- 
mities, or  think  it  fine  to  be  used  up.  I  have 
known  something  of  the  sublime  drawlers  and 
nil  admirari  exquisites  of  now-a-days,  and, 
upon  the  whole,  I  very  much  prefer  poor  | 
Drunken  Dick ;  he  was  not  altogether 
adapted  for  friendship,  but  he  was  good-  j 
natured  and  social.  He  sang  over  his  jorums 
of  hot  punch,  with  which  he  refreshed  him- 
self at  the  conclusion  of  every  verse,  like  a  bird 
singing  at  a  streamlet's  side  ;  he  gave  away 
his  money  with  both  hands  at  once  ;  he  swore 
as  hard  as  ever  our  armies  did  in  Flanders  ; 
and,  with  such  gifts  as  these,  it  was  no  won- 
der that  he  was  hailed  good  fellow  at  once 
by  the  crew  of  the  Saucy  Susan. 

He  had  lodgings  at  the  little  inn,  but  all  his 
days  and  halt'  his  nights  were  spent  at  Waters- 
leap,  drinking  the  skim  milk  from  the  half- 
pint  stoups,  with  the  best  of  them,  and  acquir- 
ing the  free-trader's  language  with  a  facility 
much  greater  than  that  he  had  ever  exhi- 
bited for  Latin  and  Greek.  Congenial  as  he 
found  old  Jacob  and  his  companions  to  be, 
there  was,  however,  at  the  smuggler's  cot- 
tage metal  more  attractive  in  the  person  of 
Kitty  Ashfield.  In  spite  of  her  connections 
and  pursuits,  she  was  a  simple,  innocent  girl, 
and  presented  to  Richard  Hindon  a  charming 
contrast  to  all  others  whom  he  had  ever  been 
acquainted  with;  the  inlluence,  slight  as  it  was, 
which  she  exerted  over  him,  for  good,  showed 
how  much  might  have  been  done  for  the  dis- 
solute, ruined  youth,  if  he  had  had  earlier,  the 
advantage  of  a  woman's  love  and  society.  His 
mother  had  died  while  he  was  an  infant, 


and  he  had  no  sister ;  his  father  and  elder 
brother  were  proud  and  apathetic  to  the  last 
degree,  moved  only  at  times  to  wrath,  by  his 
various  escapades  and  disgraces,  and  comforted 
themselves  —  as  they  did  not  scruple  to 
tell  him — that,  while  they  lived  and  their 
successors,  he  should  never  have  one  acre  of 
the  great  Hindon  estates  to  squander  in  drink 
and  at  the  gaming-table.  With  these  unpro- 
mising prospects  for  the  future  he  had  there- 
fore never  become  the  mark  of  intriguing 
mammas,  or  the  cynosure  of  fashionable 
virgins  with  an  eye  to  settlements.  For  the 
last  twenty  years  of  a  life  that  had  only 
reached  to  twenty-two,  poor  Dick  had  never 
known  the  society  of  a  woman  at  once 
beautiful,  honest,  and  disinterested ;  and 
Kitty  Ashfield  was  all  three.  When  she  rode 
the  galloping  grey  into  Barton,  with  the 
basket  on  her  arm  and  the  cigars  in  the 
quilting  of  her  petticoat,  it  seemed  as  though 
she  was  born  to  be  an  amazon,  so  well  she 
sat,  rx>  perfectly  she  looked  at  ease,  with  her 
long  raven  curls  blown  back  and  streaming  on 
the  moorland  breezes,  and  her  delicate  cheeks 
a-glow.  When  she  sculled  herself  in  her 
father's  boat  round  Sleamouth  Point,  it 
seemed  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world, 
for  those  graceful  arms  to  be  rowing  ;  what- 
ever she  did,  indeed,  appeared  to  be  the  occu- 
pation peculiarly  fitted  to  show  forth  her  per- 
sonal graces,  and  those  were,  of  course,  almost 
the  only  ones  of  which  Dick  Hindon  was  a 
judge.  She  could  not  read  with  any  great 
facility,  but  that  art  —  if  indeed  he  tho- 
roughly possessed  it — was  a  dead-lettertohim, 
as  he  never  looked  at  a  book.  She  did  not  spell 
well,  when  she  wrote ;  not  above  one  word  in 
three,  perhaps,  could  be  relied  upon,  but  that 
moderate  average  was  as  good  as — if  not  better 
— than  Dick's  ;  and,  in  his  eyes,  Kitty  Ash- 
field was  perfect. 

Did  Eichard  Hindon,  Esquire,  late  gentle- 
man commoner  of  Merton  College,  Oxford, 
and  second  son  of  Sir  Marmaduke  Hindon  of 
the  Wolds,  then  really  contemplate  making 
old  Jacob's  contraband  daughter  his  wife  ? 
Why,  no  :  we  have  a  sneaking  kindness  to- 
wards Dick,  down  here,  at  Scarcliff,  but  I  can't 
say  that  he  did  ;  it  was  not  through  pride, 
nor  on  account  of  so  great  advantage 
being  on  his  side,  without  any  to  counter- 
balance them  on  her's — which,  at  least,  is 
the  opinion  of  society,  when  an  aristocratic 
blackguard  has  the  exceeding  good  for- 
tune to  wed  a  poor  but  honest  country  girl 
— but  that  he  did  not  like  the  notion  of  being 
a  married  man,  at  all.  Like  the  fop  who 
would  have  been  a  soldier  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  villainous  saltpetre,  poor  Dick,  like 
many  others,  would  have  wedded  with  plea- 
sure if  it  were  not  for  the  wedding-ring. 
While  all  the  men  in  Scarcliff  were  pitying 
poor  Kitty,  and  all  the  women  saying  it 
served  her  right,  she  got  to  like  handsome 
Dick  Hindon  and  his  attentions  better  and 
better  every  day.  He  began  to  leave  off 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THREE  GENERATIONS. 


[Jvuy  IS,  185?.]       63 


drinking,  and  confined  himself  to  little  more 
than  a  quart  of  white  ale  per  diem ;  he 
stayed  his  more  objectionable  songs  in  mid- 
verse  whenever  she  entered  her  father's 
banqueting  -  room,  or  changed  them  into 
ditties  more  suited  to  maiden's  ears,  and  it 
was  altogether  wonderful  how  comparatively 
virtuous  he  got,  in  order  to  effect  his  vicious 
object. 

My  father,  however,  both  as  minister  of 
the  parish,  and  because  he  had  a  fondness 
for  the  simple  girl,  came  over  to  Watersleap, 
and  had  a  long  talk  with  Jacob  upon  the 
subject.  When  he  had  stated  his  fears  to 
the  old  smuggler,  and  expressed  his  sorrow 
at  seeing  him  encourage  the  young  man  as  he 
did,  Jacob  Ashfield  answered  by  pointing  to 
a  ship's  cutlass  that  hung  over  the  mantel- 
piece, and  adding  these  words :  "Young  Master 
Hindon  is  not  a  very  wise  man,  sir,  and  not 
a  very  scrupulous  one  ;  but  he  knows  right 
well  that  if  he  or  any  man  dared  to  offer  love 
to  my  daughter  Kitty  that  was  not  honour- 
able, I'd  cut  him  asunder  with  that  old  sword 
of  mine  as  clean  as  ever  I  did  a  Frenchman  ; " 
which  threat,  in  consideration  of  the  pai-son's 
presence,  he  considerately  garnished  with  not 
more  than  six  of  his  most  stupendous  exple- 
tives. Dick,  who  was  as  brave  as  a  lion,  was 
indeed  aware  of  his  danger,  and  had  no  desire 
to  incur  the  old  man's  vengeance  ;  and  it  was 
half  with  the  intention  of  performing  his  pro- 
mise upon  oath  of  becoming  her  husband  that 
he  ran  away  with  Kitty  one  summer  evening, 
both  upon  the  galloping  grey.  They  had  three 
hours  clear  start  of  Jacob ;  to  whom  my  father 
lent  his  horse  to  pursue  them  on,  after  having 
extracted  from  him  a  solemn  vow  that  there 
should  be  no  murder  committed.  He 
tracked  them  with  great  sagacity  along  the 
moor,  and  to  a  neighbouring  town,  from 
which  they  had  taken  a  post-chaise  to  Horn- 
castle,  and  thither  he  followed  them.  Kitty 
had  left  a  slip  of  paper  behind  her  for  her 
father's  eyes  : — "  Richard  is  going  to  marry 
me  at  Gretna  ; "  and  with  that  in  his  hand, 
and  the  redoubtable  cutlass  hanging  by  his 
side,  he  strode  into  the  inn  parlour  where  the 
two  runaways  were,  Kitty  drowned  in  tears, 
and  Dick  trying  to  comfort  her  in  vain  with 
(Excise)  brandy  and  water.  "  Well,"  said 
Jacob,  "  young  people,  since  you  have  chosen 
to  give  me  this  wild  goose  chace  instead  of 
being  married  quietly  at  Scarcliff,  which  you 
might  have  done  any  day,  you  must  entei'- 
tain  your  father  instead  of  his  entertaining 
you ;  only  since  York  and  not  Horii castle 
lies  on  your  way  to  Gretna,  I  shall  now  take 
the  liberty  of  never  letting  you  out  of  my 
sight  until  you  have  gone  to  church  together." 
The  old  man  never  used  fewer  imprecations ; 
but  he  never  looked  more  determined  than 
upon  that  occasion,  and  Richard  Hindon  did 
not  hesitate  or  quibble  a  moment,  but  was 
married  the  very  next  morning. 

That  was  the  best  that  was  ever  known  of 
Dick,  and  almost  the  last.  He  never  came  back 


again  to  Watersleap ;  and  Kitty,  delicate, 
sickly,  sadly  altered,  only  came  home  to  die. 

She  was  a  widow,  and  had  a  son  of  fourteen 
years  old — the  only  one — by  that  time.  Many 
changes,  too,  had  taken  place  at  Scarcliff 
during  her  absence.  I  was  the  clergyman 
who  attended  her  bedside  in  my  father's 
place  ;  her  brother  Jack  was  also  dead,  and 
his  young  wife  dead,  leaving  a  daughter, 
Mary,  more  beautiful,  as  I  think,  even  than 
her  aunt ;  but  old  Jacob  Ashfield  was  hale 
and  hearty  still,  and  gave  her  and  young 
Harry  Hindon,  a  warm  welcome  at  the 
cottage.  It  was  no  wonder  ;  nobody  who  had 
known  her  in  her  youth  could  have  seen 
her  pinched  with  want,  weary  with  care, 
without  a  tender  pity,  and  Jacob  had  been 
a  loving  father  all  along ;  that  portman- 
teau full  of  guineas  had  almost  all  been 
spent  in  assisting  her  and  her  husband  in 
their  long  and  wretched  struggle  against 
poverty,  in  a  foreign  land  (for  debt  had  made 
it  necessary),  and  amongst  utter  strangers. 
From  the  marriage-day  of  poor  Scapegrace 
Dick,  not  a  shilling's  worth  of  help  had  he 
received  from  his  proud  unyielding  parent, 
not  a  doe  among  all  the  deer  herds  in  the 
Wolds  had  ever  been  fatted  against  that 
prodigal's  return.  Vice  had  been  often 
winked  at,  crime  (provided  it  were  of  the 
aristocratic  sort)  would  have  met  with  ex- 
tenuation enough  ;  but  not  even  the  glimmer 
of  pardon  was  held  out  to  the  unblushing 
Hindon  who  had  dared  to  contract  legal 
marriage  with  the  daughter  of  a  private 
seaman — an  A.B. — a  man  before  the  mast — a 
hand !  This  blot  on  the  'scutcheon,  this 
polluter  of  Norman  blood,  was  erased  by  his 
own  act  at  once  from  the  pedigree  leaf  of  the 
family  Bible,  and  from  the  clause  which  left 
him — in  spite  of  all  other  disgraces — ten 
thousand  pounds  in  Sir  Marmaduke's  will ; 
and  it  is  due  to  his  dead  son  to  say,  wicked  as 
he  was,  and  wild  as  he  was,  that  he  never 
visited  these  things  upon  the  innocent  cause 
of  them — his  wife.  A  bad  father  and  a  bad 
husband  he  was,  yet  a  kind  one ;  better, 
perhaps,  in  both  relations  than  the  old  baronet 
with  all  his  outward  seeming  had  been  before 
him  ;  and,  indeed,  as  long  as  he  could  get  his 
allowance  of  brandy,  he  felt  his  deprivations 
but  very  little.  She,  like  a  true  woman, 
accused  herself  of  all  his  misfortunes,  and 
suffered  from  them  most  upon  his  account. 

Their  son  Harry,  naturally  enough,  grew  up 
with  a  great  liking  for  his  unseen  relatives  at 
Scarcliif,  and  with  a  proportionate  prejudice 
against  his  progenitors  in  the  Wolds.  He  was 
a  beautiful  boy,  as  might  have  been  expected 
from  such  parents,  and  could  read  and  write 
with  great  facility — which  might  not  have  been 
expected  ;  his  slightly  foreign  pronunciation 
atoned  for  his  somewhat  indifferent  English, 
and,  mongrel  as  he  was,  his  independent  air 
and  bluff  natural  manner  contrasted  well  with 
his  unquestionably  high-born  Hiudou  of  Hin- 
don looks.  He  was  a  favourite  of  mine,  of 


64      (Julyl8.1V57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


all  of  us,  from  the  very  first,  and  the  especial 
darling  of  his  graiuU'atlier  ;  the  old  man  soon 
taught  him  to  whip  Scarcliff  stream,  and 
throw  a  line  well  clear  of  its  overhanging 
oak  branches,  as  well  as  he  could  himself. 
Harry  and  I  have  had  many  and  many 
a  fishing  bout  together.  He  had  the  run  of 
my  little  library,  and  used  it  pretty  freely,  so 
that  we  had  subjects  enough  for  conversation 
in  that  direction,  but  I  liked  his  original  talk 
best.  His  opinions  were  singularly  generous 
and  liberal,  and  I  was  wont  to  rally  him 
upon  that  point,  saying  that  if  ever  he  be- 
came Sir  Harry,  he  would  alter  his  political 
views.  He  was  now  but  one  remove  from 
the  Hindon  lands,  his  grandfather  being  al- 
ready dead  ;  but  his  uncle,  as  much  in  spite 
towards  the  young  man,  it  was  said,  as  for 
love  towards  his  intended  bride,  was  about 
to  marry.  It  is  fair  to  say,  however,  that 
immediately  upon  his  succession  to  the  title 
he  had  offered  to  adopt  the  boy,  upon  con- 
dition that  he  left  his  mother,  and  promised 
to  cease  all  connection  with  Scarcliff ;  a  small 
pension  was  also  to  be  settled  upon  poor 
dying  Kitty.  Harry  was  left  to  take  his 
own  choice  upon  the  matter,  and  answered 
by  tearing  his  uncle's  gracious  letter  into 
fragments,  throwing  his  arms  around  his 
mother's  neck,  and  covering  her  with  kisses. 
There  was  another  tie  that  bound  him  to 
Watersleap.  Never  did  I  see  so  beautiful  a 
pair  as  they,  nor  one  so  well  fitted  for  each 
other  in  mind  and  character.  Mary  had  been 
brought  up  very  differently  from  the  genera- 
tion that  preceded  her  ;  she.  had  never  gone  to 
market  with  her  father,  with  her  petticoat  stiff 
with  contraband  articles ;  the  smuggling  trade, 
in  consequence  of  wiser  legislation,  was  almost 
extinct  at  Scarcliff.  Brandy  had  long  become 
dear  and  scarce,  and  she  had  not  been  accus- 
tomed to  see"  drunkenness  on  every  side  of 
her,  and  at  her  own  home.  Old  Jacob,  indeed, 
was  so  thoroughly  seasoned  to  strong  liquor, 
that  he  could  scarcely  have  got  intoxicated 
by  any  quantity,  and  most  of  his  contem- 
poraries were  in  the  grave  ;  his  man-of-war 
expressions  still  remained,  but  they  were 
understood  as  such — a  foam  and  fury  very 
reprehensible,  but  signifying  nothing — by 
the  new  race  rising  up  around  him.  She 
had  been  tolerably  educated  under  my 
mother's  care  at  the  Parsonage  House,  and 
the  beautiful  girl  had  a  disposition  harmo- 
nising with  her  looks,  as  the  scent  is  appro- 
priate to  the  flower.  Harry  and  she  were 
not  plighted,  for  they  were  both  very  young ; 
and  poor  Kitty's  death,  which  occurred  about 
this  time,  put  the  matter  still  farther  off; 
but  it  was  understood  that  they  would  be 
married  one  day.  His  love  for  her  was  of  a 
far  other  sort  than  that  with  which  Richard 
Hindon  had  wooed  his  mother  twenty  years 
before  ;  he  was  continually  vexing  himself 
•with  thoughts  of  what  he  should  turn  to  in 
order  to  make  a  living  sufficient  for  her  and 
himself.  A  home  they  already  had  at 


Watersleap,  which  the  old  man  would  not 
lu-ar  of  the  two  orphans  quitting,  but  they 
had  no  money.  The  best  fisherman  in 
SScarcliff  had  little  to  fear  from  actual  want, 
but  it  was  for  her  comforts  that  he  was 
troubled ;  not  by  any  dislike  or  doubt  of 
supporting  her  by  his  labours.  Bread,  eggs, 
poultry  and  meat,  with  us  have  to  travel 
a  distance  of  twenty  miles  before  they  can 
reach  a  regular  market,  and  are  therefore 
cheaper  in  our  village  than  any  Londoner 
with  a  large  family  ever  dreamed  of  in  his 
wildest  dreams.  It  has  always  been  sur- 
prising to  me  that  such  out-of-the-way  nooks 
and  corners  of  old  England  as  this  of  ours 
are  not  sought  out  by  people  of  very  small 
fixed  incomes,  in  preference  to  filthy  lodgings 
in  obscure  streets,  where  nothing,  even  with 
the  help  of  a  scanty  salary  in  a  lawyer's  or 
merchant's  office  obtained  by  the  hardest 
drudgery,  can  possibly  be  saved  at  the  year's 
end.  Harry  Hindon,  with  nothing  a-year, 
was  more  to  be  envied,  it  seems  to  me,  than 
any  quilldriver  with  an  income  of  a  hundred 
pounds.  It  may  be,  however,  that  I  am 
wrong,  and  that  this  life  of  ease  and  liberty 
which  we  all  live  at  Scarcliff,  has  spoilt  for 
real  civilised  work  even  the  parson  himself. 
Still,  as  I  said,  Harry,  for  his  love's  sake,  was 
looking  somewhat  higher,  and  had  even  de- 
cided upon  taking  by  the  year  a  little  farm 
(which  his  grandfather  could  still  assist  him 
to  do),  when  a  circumstance  occurred  whick 
scattered  all  his  plans,  and  set  the  whole 
population  in  a  fever  of  excitement  and 
wonder. 

A  small,  wizen-faced  lawyer,  very  much  un- 
accustomed to  horse  exercise,  came  riding  over 
the  moorland  from  far  away,  to  the  cottage  by 
the  stream  ;  he  was  in  deep  black,  and  much 
dejection,  but  his  countenance  puckered 
up  into  a  smile  at  the  sight  of  the  young 
Hindon : 

"  Allow  me,"  said  he,  "  to  congratulate  you, 
Sir  Harry,  upon  your  succession  to  the  family 
title  and  estates!  To  sympathise  with  you 
(he  dropped  his  voice),  upon  the  demise  of 
your  late  uncle,  Sir  Marmaduke  ;  it  is  a  pro- 
vidential circumstance,  so  exceedingly  thick- 
necked  and  short  in  the  breath  as  he  was, 
that  he  had  an  insuperable  objection  to  sign- 
ing any  testamentary  document  whatsoever  ; 
the  hall  and  the  whole  property  in  the  Wolds, 
four  thousand  pounds  a-year  in  land  (the 
little  man  seemed  to  be  eating  turtle  fat,  so 
slowly  and  unctuously,  he  dwelt  upon  this 
part  of  his  address),  thirty  thousand  pounds  in 
the  Funds,  and  the  patronage  of  two  excellent 
livings  (one  just  vacant),  are  yours  :  your  at- 
tendance is  immediately  required  to  prevent 
any  sort  of  opposition  ;  and,"  concluded  the 
little  man  after  a  pause,  "to  be  present  at  the 
obsequies  of  the  late  lamented  baronet." 

He  was  certainly  in  a  great  hurry,  for  he 
refused  even  to  take  a  chair  while  he  refreshed 
himself,  and  mounting  a  descendant  of  the  old 
galloping  grey,  with  a  distressing  reluctance, 


Charles  Dickens.) 


CAIEO. 


[July  IS,  1357.]         65 


rode  off  with  young  Sir  Harry,  that  very  after- 
noon. He  left  the  inmates  of  the  cottage  ani- 
mated by  very  different  feelings  ;  the  old  man 
was  wild  with  joy,  delighting  in  histitled  grand- 
son, and  expressing  his  exultation  in  envelopes 
of  explosive  epithets,  like  the  bon-bons  of  a 
supper-party  ;  the  girl  was  tearful  and  un- 
happy, missing  him  who  had  been  absent 
from  her,  not  even  for  a  day,  for  years  ; 
and,  perhaps,  doubtful  of  her  lover's  faith 
amidst  the  unknown  temptations  of  his  new 
position.  I  thought  it  not  right  to  check  any 
mistrust  that  she  might  entertain.  I  had  in- 
deed the  highest  opinion  of  my  friend  Harry  ; 
but  the  difference  between  the  smuggler's 
grandson  looking  out  for  a  dairy  farm,  and 
the  heir  of  thousands  per  annum,  was  too 
great  to  permit  me  to  be  sure  even  of  him  ; 
how  many  promises  of  both  wise  and  good 
men  have  melted  before  a  sun  of  prosperity, 
far  less  powerful  than  his  !  I  felt,  therefore, 
not  astounded,  but  deeply  grieved  by  the 
commencement  of  the  young  baronet's  letter, 
written  not  many  weeks  ago,  and  immediately 
fter  his  arrival  at  Hindoii  Hall. 

"  DEAR  AND  REVEREND  SIR, — I  arrived  at  my  place 
here  with  Mr.  Tapewell  yesterday  morning;  it  is  a 
very  grand  one  indeed ;  there  are  two  great  drawing 
rooms  and  A  library  en  suite,  where  I  suppose  I  must 
give  my  ball  to  the  county,  so  soon  as  a  decent  time 
has  elapsed  after  the  obsequies  of  the  late  Sir  Marma- 
duke.  He  was  buried  yesterday  in  our  family  vault, 
and  many  of  the  nobility  and  gentry  round  expressed 
their  respect  for  his  memory  by  sending  their  carriages, 
with  coachmen  and  footmen  complete,  to  follow  the 
hearse.  I  begin  to  feel  myself  quite  at  home,  and  my 
people  all  recognise  my  likeness  to  that  long  line  of 
ancestors  which  adorns  the  great  corridor.  I  have  had 
my  hands  full  enough  of  important  business,  as  you 
may  imagine,  but  1  hope  I  have  not  forgotten  my  good 
friend  at  Scarcliff;  and  I  want  your  assistance  here, 
my  dear  sir,  in  suggesting  what  would  be  the  most 
appropriate  present  by  which  I  could  mark  my  sense  of 
their  kindness.  I  am  thinking  of  sending  half-a- 
hogshead  of  the  best  French  brandy  to  the  old  gentle- 
man at  Watersleap — what  think  you  ?  " 

If  it  were  not  for  my  burning  indignation, 
I  could  have  shed  tears  in  reading  these 
heartless  words  of  this  spoilt  child  of  fortune, 
which  he  applied  to  his  grandfather  and 
patron,  to  whom  he  owed  all. 

"  As  for  the  young  lady,  my  dear  sir,  I  am  afraid  I 
almost  committed  myself  in  that  quarter;  but  really  a 
flirtation,  however  strong,  is  more  excusable  at  Scarcliff 
— pour  passer  le  temps — than  anywhere  else ;  the 
Hindon  blood,  however,  cannot  quite  stand  another 
mesalliance,  I  think." 

This  finished  the  page,  and  I  had  scarcely 
patience,  so  vehement  was  my  scorn,  to  turn 
the  leaf  and  read  the  following : 

"  And  now,  my  dear  and  kind  friend,  I  believe  I 
have  paid  you  for  the  cruel  prophecies  you  used  to 
make  concerning  me  whenever  1  should  become  Sir 
Harry.  I  wonder,  however,  I  could  have  imagined 
such  noxious  sentiments  as  I  have  expressed  (I  flatter 
myself)  to  your  extreme  disgust  overleaf.  I  long 


to  be  back  again  at  the  dear  village ;  or  rather, 
I  wish  that  the  whole  of  its  inhabitants  would 
come  and  live  at  the  hall ;  I  am  sure  it  is  quite  big 
enough,  and  looks  at  present  comfortless,  unfriendly, 
ghost-haunted,  and  cold.  Certainly  I  shall  transport 
hither  many  of  your  best  friends,  to  be  your  parishioners 
anew  at  Hindon  ;  for  you  must  not  refuse  that  little  gift 
from  hands  that  have  received  so  very  much  from  you. 
I  write,  by  this  day's  post,  to  Watersleap,  two  letters, 
and,  I  hope,  send  welcome  tidings.  I  really  do  want 
your  advice  upon  what  good — what  greatest  benefit — I 
can  possibly  do  at  Scarcliff,  to  man,  woman,  and  child 
there,  all  of  whom  I  know  so  well ;  they  deserve  far 
more  than  I  can  give  them,  indeed.  I  have  looked  in 
the  most  malignant  depths  of  my  heart  for  testimonies 
against  them,  but  can  find  no  record  anywhere  save 
of  kind  words  and  neighbourly  deeds.  And  now, 
to  speak  of  that  which  engrosses  almost  my  every 
thought,  do,  dear  friend,  persuade  my  beloved  Mary 
to  fix  a  day  for  our  marriage  in  your  old  grey  church, 
upon  Scarcliff  Hill,  not  very  far  from  this  on  which  I 
write.  If  I  have  a  pleasure  beyond  the  mere  selfish 
one  of  showing  myself  in  some  sort  grateful  to  my 
many  friends,  in  this  good  fortune  of  mine,  it  is  that 
which  I  anticipate  in  having  her  to  share  it.  If  I  care 
in  the  least  for  this  position  of  mine,  it  is  because  I 
know  how  she,  who  has  been  poor  herself,  and  under- 
stands the  poor,  will  grace  it.  You,  however,  must 
be  our  Mentor,  as  before,  and,  beyond  all  things, 
remind  me  sharply  of  the  young  fisherman's  opinions 
whenever  I  affect  the  Sir  Harry  overmuch.  To 
prevent  any  further  mixture  with  baseness,  and  to 
keep  this  magnificent  line  of  mine  quite  pure  and  in 
the  family — entirely  that  is,  you  see,  from  genealogical 
reasons — I  hope  within  the  month  to  marry  my  first 
cousin,  Mary  Ashfield." 


CAIRO. 


THE  joltings  in  the  Desert ;  the  furnace- 
heat  of  the  Eed  Sea  ;  the  utter  sandy  wretch- 
edness of  Suez  ;  the  cindery  dreariness  of 
Aden,  are  all  alike  forgotten  and  forgiven  by 
the  traveller,  when  arrived  at  Cairo — the 
Grand  Cairo  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  the 
next-door  neighbour  of  Thebes,  the  adopted 
of  the  Pyramids,  the  dweller  on  the  lotus- 
banked  Nile.  Two  short  days  and  'nights 
have  scarcely  passed  away  since  I  was  the 
helpless  victim  of  beery  stewards,  steaming 
cuddy  servants,  and  greasy  Lascars.  To-night 
I  am  steeped  in  the  odoriferous  dreaminess  of 
Oriental  romance,  lounging  arm-in-arm  with 
the  spirits  of  departed  sultans,  grand  viziers, 
and  chiefs  of  all  the  eunuchs,  with  the  bright 
rays  of  an  Egyptian  moon  lighting  up 
mosque,  palace,  bazaar,  and  fountain,  and 
lending  an  additional  grandeur  to  the  outline 
of  the  silent  pyramids,  whose  dark  forms 
stand  out  so  heavily  against  the  soft  bright 
sky,  like  giant  sentinels  watching  over  the 
changing  destiny  of  the  land  of  poetry,  ro- 
mance, and  fairy  legend. 

The  night  is  one  of  surpassing  loveliness. 
The  air  so  soft  and  bland,  as  only  to  be  found 
in  this  lotus-land.  Not  one  restless  breath 
of  balmy  atmosphere  is  found  to  stir  the 
feathery  leaves  of  palms,  or  move  a  ripple  on 
the  moonlit  lake.  Insects  on  leaf,  and 
flower,  and  shrub,  are  busy  in  the  coolness  of 


66       [July  IS,  1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conductedby 


the  niifht,  and  give  forth  cheerful  sounds. 
Fountains  on  many  a  marble  terrace  or 
flower-girt  walk,  send  forth  their  cooling 
streams,  whose  rippling  music  lulls  restless 
sleepers  with  its  silvery  notes.  A  fairy  spell 
seems  hanging  on  the  city,  whose  teeming 
thousands  might  have  been  changed,  by  some 
sorcerer's  magic,  into  dead  blocks  of  marble, 
so  still,  and  hushed,  and  motionless  the  city 
of  the  Egyptian  sultans. 

I  am  moving  through  one  of  the  principal 
open  squares  of  Cairo  alone,  and  regardless 
of  cautions  about  Nubian  bravos,  eunuchs' 
bowstrings  and  sackings  in  the  Nile.  The 
sqviare  is  considered  a  fine  one  in  Egypt ;  not 
at  all  equal  to  those  of  Belgrave  or  Grosvenor, 
though  perhaps  on  a  par  with  that  of  Fins- 
bury,  minus  the  houses.  There  is  a  row  of 
ghostly  trees  on  one  side,  an  invisible  line  of 
railings  on  the  other.  A  shadowy  indistinct 
range  of  buildings  along  the  western  side, 
that  may  be  old  piano-forte  manufactories 
or  upholsterers'  warerooms,  with  the  wall  of 
Bunhill  burial-ground  skirting  the  remaining 
frontage. 

A  way  in  one  corner  of  this  singular  princi- 
pal square  is  a  narrow  outlet  that  teems  with 
hopeful  promise  of  things  as  yet  unseen.  It 
is  a  street  evidently,  though  partaking  much 
of  the  dimensions  of  a  London  lane.  Tall 
frowning  gables  of  strange-looking  houses  are 
on  either  side,  while  here  and  there,  at  uncer- 
tain distances,  are  suspended  queer-looking 
dwarfy  lanterns,  sending  forth  a  foggy  sort 
of  light,  not  sufficient  to  illumine  the  gloom  of 
an  oyster-stall.  The  upper  part  of  this 
oriental  Petticoat  Lane  is  lit  bravely  by  the 
moon,  and  there,  far  above,  may  be  seen  the 
strangest  kinds  of  windows,  all  latticed  and 
carved  like  unpretending  oriels  in  a  private 


gothic  chapel. 
Below   all   this 


moonlit    trelliswork  and 


ai'chitecture  are  beetling  heavy  doorways  and 
sombre  wickets  barely  made  visible  amidst 
their  darkness  by  the  sickly  twinkling  of  the 
baby  lanterns.  The  walls  are  thick,  the 
gates  are  massive,  the  bolts  and  locks  are  of 
Cyclopean  magnitude,  and  carry  on  their 
rusty  iron  visages  the  features  of  dark  talea 
and  strange  adventures. 

There  is  a  noble  mosque,  with  its  stately 
gilded  minarets  towering  above  the  walls  and 
gates  below,  and  radiant  with  the  brightness 
of  the  hour.  Further  on  is  a  goodly  building 
of  polished  marble.  The  moonbeams  fal  ling 
thickly  on  it,  show  how  much  time  and  skill 
the  craftsmen  of  old  Egypt  have  lavished  on 
its  form.  It  is  a  public  fountain,  where  the 
haltand  blindmay  rest  and  quench  theirthirst. 
Beyond  it,  again,  adjoining  a  long  low  range 
of  wall  and  peering  gables,  are  a  suite  of 
baths  of  many-coloured  marble.  Beautifully 
moulded  by  the  carver's  chisel,  yet  of  less 
pretensions  than  the  fountain,  as  a  work  of 
art.  It  stands  forth  grandly  from  the  crowd 


The  whole  scene,  with  its  nocturnal  still- 
ness, its  mosque,  fountain,  latticed  windows, 
and  fantastic  gateways,  conjures  up  vividly  be- 
fore me  the  legeuds  of  the  Thousand  and 
One  Nights.  It  seems,  indeed,  like  a  picture 
cut  out  of  that  wonderful  volume.  Every 
curious  building, — each  dark  mysterious  por- 
tal appears  as  though  belonging  to  some 
portion  of  the  Arabian  Tales,  peopled  with 
emirs,  merchants,  calendars,  and  hunch- 
backed tailors. 

There  is  a  noble  mansion  of  the  Arabian 
Nights'  description ;  massive,  large,  full  of 
quaint  doors  and  sly  windows,  doing  their 
best  to  see,  yet  not  be  seen.  It  is  shaded  by 
lofty  palms,  whilst  over  the  thick  wall  of  the 
garden  and  terrace  may  be  seen  the  bright 
flowers  and  verdant  leaves  of  the  pomegra- 
nate and  citron.  The  principal  gateway  is 
slightly  ajar,  and  without  running  too  much, 
risk  of  being  bowstrung,  or  sacked,  I  venture 
to  indulge  my  curiosity  by  peeping  slily  in 
through  the  narrow  aperture  left  by  the 
unclosed  door.  There  were  many  lights  in- 
side,— lanterns,  torches,  and  flambeaux,  and 
by  their  combined  light  I  obtain  an  uncer- 
tain vision  of  a  busy  multitude  within  a  hall 
shut  off  from  the  courtyard  by  trellis-work 
and  windows.  There  is  a  sound  of  revelry 
within;  of  merry  voices,  of  stringed  instru- 
ments, of  dancing  feet.  They  are  evidently 
the  domestic  part  of  some  establishment  of 
quality,  making  holiday  to  celebrate  some 
family  event.  Who  can  say  but  it  may  be 
the  wedding-night  of  some  vizier's  daughter 
or  son  ? 

I  could  linger  at  the  door  longer  yet,  in 
the  hope  of  gaining  insight  into  the  inner 
mysteries  of  this  merry-making  ;  but,  cer- 
tain unpleasant  twinges  about  the  neck, 
warn  me  of  what  may  possibly  be  the  result ; 
and,  as  I  cannot  be  sure  that  the  nightwatch 
of  the  Cairo  police  will  hear  me  in  the  event 
of  my  requiring  their  aid,  I  yield  to  discre- 
tion, and  move  away  from  the  fascinating 
gateway  slowly  and  reluctantly. 

The  time,  the  place,  and  the  scene  before 
me,  conjure  itp  the  incidents  related  in  the 
early  part  of  the  adventures  of  Bedreddin 
Hassan  ;  where  the  genie  and  the  fairy  trans- 
port that  young  and  good-looking  adventurer 
from  Balsora  to  the  door  of  the  bath  at 
Cairo,  just  in  time  to  upset  the  connubial 
arrangements  of  the  Sultan's  hunch-backed 
groom.  Who  knows  but  this  may  be  the 
identical  street,  and  the  gate  yonder  through 
which  I  have  just  been  peeping,  the 
selfsame  door  of  Schemseddin's  palace,  in 
which  Bedreddin  Hassan's  adventures  com- 
menced 1  And  it  was,  perhaps,  not  far  dis- 
tant from  this  spot,  that  the  terror-stricken 
Bedreddin  was  afterwards  brought,  secured 
in  an  iron-bound  cage,  from  Damascus,  under 
the  instant  apprehension  of  death  for  the 
treasonable  act  of  omitting  pepper  in  the 


of  strange  fantastic  dwellings  that  cluster  j  concoction  of  his  cheesecakes.     How  many 
round  about  it.  '  more  adventures  may  not  have  taken  place 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CAIRO, 


IJuly  18, 1857.]      67 


in  this  same  street !  How  many  sultans  may 
have  perambulated  this  identical  thorough- 
fare, on  the  track  of  suspected  viziers  or 
doubtful  favourites  !  Who  can  say  how  many 
calendars'  sous,  or  emirs  in  disguise  may  not 
have  rested  on  the  marble  seat  of  yon  quaint 
old  fountain,  grotesque  in  the  moonlight,  and 
have  quenched  their  thirst  with  its  cooling 
waters  1  Every  stone  about  me  seems  in 
some  unspeakable  way  woven  with  the  his- 
tory of  the  past,  and  bound  by  endearing 
links  to  the  bygone  chapters  of  fairy 
romance. 

The  first  living  creature  I  have  encoun- 
tered this  night  in  my  perambulations  is  an 
old  decrepit  man  on  a  donkey.  Muffled  in 
ample  folds  of  muslin,  it  is  difficult  to  say — 
save  by  his  stooping  form — whether  he  be 
aged  or  young.  lie  starts  at  meeting  me,  at 
that  unusual  hour,  but  goes  on  his  solitary 
way  with  the  usual  Moslem  salutation,  "  God 
is  great,  and  Mahomet  is  his  prophet !  "  The 
voice  dies  away  in  the  silent  distance  ;  and  I 
wend  my  weary  way  to  the  hotel  by  the 
grotesque  principal  square,  to  rest  till  day- 
light, and  dream  of  caliphs,  viziers,  geuies, 
hunchbacks,  cadis,  Ethiopians,  and  cheese- 
cakes. 

It  is  mid-day,  that  is  to  say  early  in  the 
forenoon  by  the  hour,  though  high-noon 
judging  from  the  intensity  of  the  sun's  rays ; 
lam  equipped  once  more  for  a  visit  of  Oriental 
research  amidst  the  stone,  and  wood  and  dust 
of  Grand  Cairo  ;  and,  forcing  my  hasty  way 
through  a  regiment  of  bearded  dragomen 
that  are  fain  to  make  common  property  of 
me,  I  rush  down  the  wide  stairs  into  the 
courtyard,  climbing  upon  the  nearest  of 
nine  saddled  donkeys  that  cut  off  all  egress 
from  the  hotel.  I  give  the  creature  the  full 
length  of  the  reins,  with  licence  to  bear  me 
whither  he  wills.  The  animal  is  evidently 
quite  up  to  the  tastes  of  overland  travellers, 
and  trots  away  with  me  at  a  cheerful  pace, 
towards  and  into  the  very  busiest  and  nar- 
rowest thoroughfares. 

I  have  frequently  heard  that  the  cream  of 
daily  life  in  Cairo  is  to  be  met  with  only  in 
the  by-ways  and  bazaars,  especially  in  that 
devoted  to  the  Turkish  dealers  in  miscel- 
laneous wares.  I  have  not  been  misinformed. 
The  interest  of  the  scene  becomes  intensi- 
fied with  the  narrowness  of  the  thronged 
streets.  As  the  width  of  the  pavement  de- 
creases., the  shouting  of  the  donkey-boys, 
the  oaths  of  camel-drivers,  the  threats  of 
Arab-mounted  eunuchs,  the  shrieks  for 
baksheesh  become  louder  and  shriller,  and 
it  requires  some  little  presence  of  mind 
to  make  way  through  the  noisy  staggering 
throng. 

I  am  now  in  the  very  heart  of  busy  Cairo, 
with  its  many  pulses  beating  quick  and  high 
about  me.  I  am  where  I  have  for  long  years 
sighed  to  be,  and  whither  in  my  dreams  I 
have  often  wandered  in  imagination.  But] 
Cairo  by  moonlight  and  Cairo  by  sunlight 


— hot,  glaring,  suffocating  high-noon — are,  in 
appearance,  two  very  different  places.  The 
softness,  the  coolness,  the  hushed  romance  of 
night  hide  themselves  before  the  dusty  heat 
of  mid-day.  The  arabesque  windows,  the 
latticed  portals,  the  higli  gables,  the  gaunt 
palms,  the  carved  fountains  that,  by  the  pale 
light  of  the  moon,  appeared  so  richly  pic- 
turesque, so  artistically  finished,  are  now 
broken,  deformed,  and  thickly- coated  with 
dust.  The  mosques  are  very  much  out  of 
repair.  The  bazaars  are  fast  falling  to  decay 
— I  should  say  not  let  on  repairing  leases. 
The  baths  appear  to  stand  in  need  of  fre- 
quent purifying  dips  themselves.  The  motley 
crowd  of  merchants,  devotees,  fellahs,  Copts, 
Turks,  Arabs,  eunuchs,  buyers,  and  loungers 
are,  on  the  whole,  exceedingly  doubtful  about 
the  skin  and  garments,  and  I  cannot  avoid 
feeling  a  strong  conviction  that  a  free  appli- 
cation of  whitewash  and  soap  would  greatly 
improve  the  appearance  of  the  Cau'o  commu- 
nity and  their  tenements. 

The  street  I  am  now  quietly  pacing  along 
is  of  ample  dimensions  compared  to  many 
of  the  busy  thoroughfares.  The  houses  on 
either  side  appear  as  though  inhabited  long 
before  the  builder  had  any  intention  of 
finishing  them  off.  They  are  the  merest 
ghostly  skeletons  of  tall  old  houses  grown 
out  of  their  bricks  and  mortar  ages  ago, 
and  embalmed,  mummy-like,  in  the  dust  and 
heat  of  the  city  of  the  Nile.  Stretching 
across  the  entire  width  of  the  street,  from  the 
tops  of  either  range  of  dwellings,  is  an  un- 
sightly cross-bar-work  of  bamboos,  on  which 
are  scattered,  at  intervals  of  much  uncer- 
tainty, fragments  of  tattei'ed  matting,  carpets, 
sacking,  worn-out  garments,  and,  in  short, 
whatever  fabric  gives  promise  of  shielding 
the  passers-by  and  dwellers  in  the  bazaar 
from  the  scorching  rays  of  the  summer  sun. 
It  gives  to  the  whole  street  an  appearance  of 
having  bungling  plasterers  at  work  on  a 
ragged  and  extensive  ceiling. 

I  could  rein  in  my  ambling  donkey  in  the 
midst  of  this  most  picturesque  street,  and 
spend  a  good  hour  in  an  examination  of  the 
passers-by,  of  the  shops,  their  owners,  and 
their  frequenters.  Why  that  sherbet  shop  at 
the  corner  of  the  narrow  passage,  with  the 
Italian  name  over  the  doorway,  the  many- 
coloured  bottles  in  the  windows,  and  the 
many-vestured  gossipers  within  seated  on 
divans,  couches,  and  easy-chairs,  drinking 
and  listening  to  some  quaint  story  or  touching 
scandal,  are  alone  a  fertile  study  for  a  lover 
of  the  novel  and  the  picturesque. 

But  time  presses,  and  I  must  allow  my 
willing  animal  to  amble  forward  amongst 
camels  and  water-carriers,  gay  equipages 
and  frightful  mendicants.  We  proceed  far 
up  this  street,  and,  as  if  perfectly  aware  of 
my  desire  to  see  all  that  is  interesting  and 
characteristic  of  Egyptian  city-life,  my  donkey 
bears  me  nimbly  and  warily  through  the 
pressing  throng,  past  the  dilapidated  old 


68 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


dusty  mosque,  as  far  as  the  bamboo  scaffolding 
•with  windows  and  doors  stuck  about  it,  iii 
imitation  of  a  stately  warehouse,  and  now  we 
are  threading  our  less  nimble  way  through 
the  choked-up,  steaming  mazes  of  the  Turkish 
bazaar. 

Of  all  the  places  of  public  resort  in  Cairo, 
excepting  only  the  mosques,  this  bazaar  is 
the  most  especially  Oriental,  and  strikingly 
picturesque.  Of  great  extent,  it  is  divided 
into  many  different  departments,  in  each  of 
which  goods  and  wares  of  a  particular  class 
are  exposed  for  sale.  In  one  or  two  lanes  of 
shops  there  are  only  boots  and  slippers  to  be 
seen.  Further  on,  mats,  pillows,  and  cushions 
are  the  articles  to  be  disposed  of.  In  another 
quarter,  clothes  of  every  description  are 
heaped  up  and  stored  in  lofty  piles.  In 
another,  jewellery  and  ornaments  in  utmost 
variety ;  further  on,  quaint  copper  and  iron 
vessels ;  and  yet  further  still,  are  the  shops 
devoted  to  miscellaneous  merchandise. 

I  know  not  which  to  admire  most — the 
curious  style  and  fashion  of  the  shops,  the 
strange  variety  of  their  contents,  the  pic- 
turesque garb  of  the  many  dealers,  or  their 
Oriental  gravity  and  seeming  indifference  to 
all  worldly  matters  about  them.  There  is  a 
bearded  old  gentleman  seated  in  great  dignity 
on  a  soft  ottoman,  cross-legged,  like  a  Euro- 
pean tailor.  He  is  a  noble-looking  mer- 
chant of  fancy  articles,  tastefully  clad  in 
ample  robes,  with  a  hookah  of  extensive 
dimensions  in  his  mouth.  He  is  apparently 
a  compound  of  Timour  the  Tartar  as  per- 
sonated at  Astley's,  and  the  solemn  Turkish 
gentleman  seated  for  a  number  of  years 
in  the  front  window  of  the  Cigar  Divan  in 
the  Strand.  It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  a 
deep  interest  in  this  stately  dealer  in  miscel- 
lanies. His  shop  is  at  the  corner  of  a  pas- 
sage leading  to  the  bazaar  of  eatables ;  and 
not  one  of  the  many  counters  in  the  vicinity 
can  boast  of  such  a  showy  assemblage  of 
wares  as  are  here  stored  up  in  gay  pro- 
fusion. 

Slipping  from  my  saddle,  and  flinging  the 
reins  to  the  young  Egyptian  urchin  who  has 
charge  of  my  donkey,  I  make  my  way  to  the 
solemn  Turk,  and,  salaaming  to  him  in  such  a 
way  as  my  knowledge  of  the  East  enables  me, 
I  proceed  to  examine  and  admire  his  mer- 
chandise. An  Oriental,  whether  in  Egypt  or 
Bengal,  will  never  allow  himself  to  be  sur- 
prised at  anything,  nor  to  evince  any  of  the 
most  ordinary  emotion.  Accordingly,  I  do 
not  look  for  any  outward  and  visible  signs  of 
pleasure,  or  even  of  attention,  from  the 
cushioned,  turbaned  Mahometan.  If  he  is 
looking  at  me  at  all — and  I  feel  extremely 
doubtful  on  the  point — it  must  be  my  shoes 
that  are  occupying  his  attention  ;  for  his 
eyes  are  bent  most  provokingly  downward, 
calmly  and  immoveably.  I  roam  over  his 
long  array  of  articles,  from  the  richer  silk 
purses  of  Persia,  and  the  embroidered  slippers 
from  Morocco,  to  the  fine  steel-work  of  Da- 


mascus, glistening  in  the  sunlight  like  Elking- 
ton's  best  electro-plated  wares.  I  nod  my 
head  and  smile  in  approval  of  the  goods  ;  and, 
as  a  reward  for  my  Frankish  friendliness, 
the  Turk  lifts  up  his  deep  dark  eyes,  mutters 
something  in  soft  Arabic,  and  motions  grace- 
fully to  an  attendant  in  the  rear. 

In  a  moment  a  tiny  cup  of  smoking  black 
coffee  is  handed  to  me  on  a  rich  salver.  I 
am  too  well  versed  in  Oriental  customs  to 
decline  the  civility ;  besides  which,  I  am 
anxious  to  ascertain  if  Mocha  coffee  so  near 
the  place  of  its  production,  is  the  delicious 
beverage  it  is  said  to  be.  Rumour  has  in 
this  instance  been  a  faithful  chronicler ;  the 
coffee  is  of  exquisite  flavour,  though  I  confess 
my  degenerate  tastes  desire  a  taste  of  milk 
with  it. 

Pleased  with  my  ready  acceptance  of  his 
coffee,  and  flattered  by  my  signs  of  approval, 
he  hands  me  a  richly-jewelled  snuff-box,  of 
which  I  also  avail  myself,  though  detesting 
snuff,  and  go.off  forthwith  into  a  paroxysm 
of  sneezes.  Lastly,  the  mouth  of  his  own 
particular  hookah  is  handed  to  me.  I  am 
not  usually  a  smoker  of  tobacco ;  yet,  so 
fragrant  and  so  delicately  flavoured,  is  this 
famed  Turkish  herb,  thnt  the  fumes  tempt 
me  to  some  whiffs  of  wonderful  vigour  and 
length. 

I  wish  to  depart,  and  look  around  me  for 
some  memento  of  the  time  and  place.  A 
purse,  worked  in  silver  lace  on  a  rich  silk 
velvet  ground,  takes  my  attention.  Whilst 
selecting  this,  my  new  acquaintance  brings 
forward,  wrapped  in  many  careful  folds  of 
soft  cloth,  a  box  of  curious  workmanship 
and  rarer  materials.  Gold  and  silver,  ivory, 
pearls  and  precious  stones  combine  in  its 
construction,  and  almost  dazzle  the  eye  with 
their  brilliancy.  It  is  a  gem  worthy  the 
acceptance  of  princes.  The  world-famed 
Koh-i-noor  might  condescend  to  repose  within 
its  sparkling  embrace.  Cleopatra  might  have 
kept  her  love-letters  in  it.  Alexander  the 
Great  could  have  condescended  to  call  it  his. 
The  cost  of  it,  I  am  assured,  through  an 
interpreter  is  a  mere  trifle  for  an  English 
emir  to  give  ;  only  a  few  hundreds  of  pounds 
sterling.  But,  as  1  have  a  tolerably  vivid  idea 
that  my  spare  hundreds  will  flow  in  a  more 
westerly  and  practical  direction,  I  descend  to 
the  purchase  of  an  African  purse,  much  to 
the  disappointment  of  the  Turkish  merchant; 
who,  however,  does  not  condescend  to  evince 
the  slightest  emotion,  even  of  contempt.  I 
pocket  my  purse,  and  depart  laden  with  the 
ordinary  stereotyped  "  Bismillahs,"  "  In  the 
name  of  the  Prophet,"  &c.,  losing  myself  for 
another  hour  or  two  amongst  the  strange 
intricacies  of  rickety  bazaars,  dusty  baths, 
and  invalided  mosques. 

The  day  is  still  blazing  hot.  The  main 
street  is  more  crowded  than  the  bazaars. 
Vehicles  of  many  descriptions  are  passing 
in  every  direction,  while  foot-passengers, 
riders,  camels,  and  donkey-drivers,  mingle 


Charles  llickens  ] 


EXTEACT  OF  FUNERAL  FLOWERS. 


[July  18. 1857.]        69 


in  extricable  confusion.  There  are  three 
young  cadets  on  Arab  steeds,  hired  at  a 
dollar  a  hour,  prancing  about  in  an  uneasy 
frame  of  body  and  mind.  There  is  a  sort 
of  hybrid  caldche  brimful  of  overland  tra- 
vellers, amongst  them  my  companions  of 
the  Desert,  the  Tipperary  young  lady,  and 
her  tall  brown-hatted  friend,  eating  custard 
apples  and  laughing  with  true  Hibernian 
vigor  at  the  strange  scenes  about  them.  One 
of  the  i  young  innocent  cadets  backs  his 
prancing  steed  into  a  jeweller's  shop,  and 
plays  havoc  with  the  glass-cases.  The  others, 
flying  to  his  rescue,  upset  a  Greek  merchant 
and  a  brace  of  Mollahs,  or  Moslem  church- 
wardens, and  damage  a  score  of  weak-eyed 
mendicants,  much  to  the  enjoyment  of  my 
friends  in  the  calcche. 

Alas,  how  fleetly  the  moments  pass  !  I 
could  yet  wander  for  days  amidst  the  by- 
ways of  this  fine  old  city,  and  well  employ 
the  time.  There  are  quiet  nooks  and  corners 
I  could  with  pleasure  dive  into.  There  are 
grey-bearded  old  dealers,  the  very  counterpart 
of  the  broker  employed  by  the  Christian 
Mei'chant  in  the  Arabian  Nights  to  sell  his 
Bagdad  wares.  One  of  them  keeps  just  such 
a  quiet  little  place  as  did  Bedreddiu  of  old, 
where  the  veiled  young  lady  was  so  conver- 
satiouable  with  the  owner  of  the  silk  stuli's. 
I  feel  certain  that  many  a  good  story  and 
strange  adventure  may  be  still  heard  at  that 
counter. 

But  my  time  is  up.  Portmanteaus  and 
carpet-bags  tear  me  away  from  my  medita- 
tions. Once  more  we  are  closely  packed  in 
vans,  tearing  madly  over  a  chaos  of  stones 
and  ruts,  thankful  at  length  to  find  our- 
selves steaming  down  the  Nile  in  a  dirty, 
odoriferous  tub  of  a  boat  towards  Alexandria 
and  home. 


EXTRACT  OF  FUNERAL  FLOWERS. 

SAID  the  noble  Antony,  in  his  insidious  bit 
of  declamation  over  slain  Caesar,  "  I  come  to 
bury  Caesar  not  to  praise  him  " — following  it 
up,  nevertheless,  with  a  handsome  panegyric 
of  the  deceased.  Full  of  such  delusive  pro- 
mise are  honourable  members  about  to 
trouble  the  house  with  a  few  observations — 
reviewers,  reviewing  not  the  work  at  the 
head  of  their  article — and  certain  popular 
divines,  mostly  dissenting — whose  "now  in 
conclusion,"  is  but  taking  on  horses  for 
another  weary  stage.  With  which  class 
must  have  claimed  kindred  the  famous 
preacher,  whose  sixteenth  ly  and  seven- 
teenthly,  so  distracted  Major  Dalgetty  in 
Argyle's  chapel. 

It  was  over  the  dead,  specially,  that  such 
holy  men  were  privileged  with  longest  mea- 
sure, and  in  libraries  of  old  divinity,  under 
dust  of  a  century's  gathering,  such  mortuary 
eloquence  chiefly  abounds.  They  usually 
come  forth  upon  the  world  in  tract  shape, 
with  deep  mourning  border  garnishing  the 


title  page,  published,  of  course,  at  earnest; 
request  of  the  congregation,  and  are  distri- 
buted plentifully  among  the  friends  of  the 
deceased.  Any  one  who  should  take  up  the 
task  of  exploring  this  dismal  category,  would 
find  entertainment  (lugubrious  indeed),  in 
comparing  and  balancing  the  various  modes 
of  "improving"  a  fellow  creature's  decease. 
How  one  reverend  panegyrist  would  dwell 
long  and  wearily  upon  the  virtues  of  "  Our 
Friend,"  such  being  theapproved  form  of  allu- 
sion, tracing  him  painfully  from  his  mother's 
arms  downwards.  While  another — say,  Mr. 
John  Howe,  Minister  of  the  Gospel — is  so 
busy  with  his  ingenious  figures  and  refine- 
ments, as  to  utterly  pretermit  all  allusion  to 
Our  Friend,  bringing  him  in  unhandsomely 
at  the  close,  and  despatching  him  in  a  line. 
Still,  if  one  have  but  patience — patience  for 
due  sifting  and  winnowing— the  result  will 
be  a  fine  quintessence,  rich  in  its  old,  full- 
flavoured  English,  its  quips,  and  cranks,  and 
quaint  conceits,  turned  after  the  manner  of 
ancient  Fuller  and  his  brethren.  Well 
worthy  are  such  treasures  of  being  rescued 
from  their  dusty  bondage.  At  the  same  time 
it  will  be  seen  that  in  productions  of  this 
class,  saving  always  the  stately  English  of 
Tillotson,  Sherlock,  and  others  of  their  reve- 
rend brethren  on  the  Bench,  whose  native 
dignity  prevented  their  falling  into  such 
freedoms,  there  is  to  be  found  a  strange  mix- 
ture of  stilted  pomp  and  unpleasing  famili- 
arity, of  quotation  sacred  and  profane 
indifferently,  of  broad  political  allusion  and  of 
ingenious  similitudes  drawn  from  every-day 
life.  A  few  specimens  of  this  curious  man- 
ner of  treating  a  sacred  subject  may  be  found 
not  without  interest,  and  may  pei'haps  set 
others  exploring  this  singular  vein  of  litera- 
ture. 

We  are  told  that  the  Right  Worshipful  Sir 
Humphrey  Lund,  Knight,  departed  this  life 
some  time  in  the  year  sixteen  hundred  and 
thirty,  and  over  his  remains,  laid  out  solemnly 
in  state,  the  Reverend  Daniel  Featley,  Doctor 
in  Divinitie,  pronounced  a  funeral  eulogium, 
beginning  with  Seneca.  "Seneca,"  said  the 
Reverend  Daniel  Featley,  opening  his  dis- 
course, "  Seneca  compareth  the  remembrance 
of  a  deceased  Friend  to  a  kind  of  Apple 
called  Suave  Amarum — a  sweet  Bitter,  or 
bitter  Sweet.  Such  is  the  fruit  I  am  to  pre- 
sent you  with  at  this  present,  partly  bitter 
and  partly  sweet  ....  Bitter  in  its  appli- 
cation, as  it  rubbeth  your  Memorie  with  the- 
consideration  of  your  irreparable  losse  of 
such  a  friend  as  here  lieth  before  you  :  yet 
sweet  as  it  presenteth  to  you  his  invaluable 
gaine,  and  inconceivable  blisse."  Then  in- 
troducing his  text,  he  goes  on  :  "  Certainly  if 
ever  wholesome  sugar  was  found  in  a  poy- 
soned  Cane :  if  ever  out  of  a  Sinke  there 
exhaled  a  savour  of  life  :  if  ever  a  bitter 
Fountain  sent  forth  a  medicinall  water:  if 
ever  the  Divell's  Charmer  set  or  sung  a 
Divine  Spell,  it  is  this  in  my  Texte  :  Let  my 


70      [July  is,  I8b7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


last  end  be  like  unto  his."  Diverging  then  to 
r.aliiam  and  his  :iss,  he  touches  on  the  objec- 
tion often  made  against  preachers,  that  their 
works  do  not  square  with  their  teaching. 
"  Balaam  turned  a  Blesser  ]  how  many 
queasie  Stoniackes  are  there  that  will  loathe 
the  daintiest  meats,  if  they  be  served  in  a 
sluttish  disli  ....  Sometimes  svill  Men  out 
of  the  evill  Shop  of  their  mouth  utter  good 
Wares.  Are  there  not  many  (Preachers) 
who  like  "Watermen  looke  one  way  and  row 
the  other  way — looke  towards  Heaven  and 
row  with  all  their  strengthe  to  Hell !  .  .  .  . 
God  knocketh  at  the  hearts  of  all  either  by 
a  softer  knock — the  inward  motions  of  his 
Spirit,  or  by  a  lowder  knock,  with  the  Eod  of 
his  Afflictions.  And  if  they  will  give  care, 
and  albeit  they  cannot  open  the  door,  yet 
give,  a  plucke  at  the  bolt,  or  a  lift  at  the 
latch,  God  will  give  them  strength  to  open 
it." 

Concerning  the  excellence  of  meditating 
frequently  on  our  deaths,  Mr.  Featley  has 
some  good  things  to  tell — though,  perhaps,  a 
little  too  forcible  in  some  of  his  expressions. 
*  It  killeth  Sin  in  us,  or  much  diminisheth 
the  feare  of  Death.  As  the  streaking  of  a 
Dead  Hand  on  the  Belly  cureth  a  Tympanie, 
and  as  the  ashes  of  a  viper  applied  to  the 
part  that  is  stung,  draws  the  venome  out  of 
it,  so  of  the  ashes  of  a  sinner  we  may  make 
a  soveraigne  Salve  against  Sin,  after  this 
manner.  Art  thou  Narcissus  or  Nireus 
enamoured  with  thine  owne  Beauty  ?  take  of 
the  ashes  of  a  beautifull  person,  now  rotten 
in  the  Grave,  and  lay  them  to  thy  heart  and 
say  :  Such  as  these  stinking  Ashes  and  foule 
Earth  are,  I  shall  be  !  Such  Thoughts  as 
these  are  excellent  Sawces  to  season  the 
pleasures  of  life,  that  we  surfeit  not  of 
them."  There  is  need  of  a  commentary  and 
notes  to  Mr.  Featley's  text,  to  let  us  into  the 
secret  of  what  was  a  Tympanie — and  what 
potency  the  Mortmain  or  Dead  Hand  could 
have  in  its  cure.  The  nostrum  of  the  Viper's 
ashes  savours  strongly  of  the  old  Hydropho- 
bian  remedy ;  namely,  taking  a  hair  of  the 
dog  that  gave  the  bite.  The  Dead  Hand, 
too,  has  taken  many  healing  and  supersti- 
tious shapes  of  which  not  the  least  terrible 
was  the  fearful  Hand  of  Glory.  The  Reve- 
rend Dan  Featley  has  a  stroke  en  passant 
at  suicides  which  is  ingeniously  put.  Says 
he  :  "they  ease  the  Devill  of  the  paines  to 
fetch  them  away — for  they  fetch  their  fees 
themselves,  and  leape  into  the  Pit  of  De- 
struction." 

At  the  Funeral  of  the  Eight  Honourable 
and  most  Excellent  Lady,  the  Lady  Eliza- 
beth Capell,  Dowager,  Mr.  Edmund  Barber, 
late  Chaplain  to  Her  Honour,  pronounced 
a  discourse  which  is  curious  as  introducing 
a  term  with  which  our  English  Charivari 
has  of  late  been  very  merry.  Said  Mr. 
Edmund  Barber,  in  his  exordium:  "I  shall 
begin  with  the  first  of  them,  the  Party 
making  the  requests,"  alluding  to  the  de- 


ceased Lady.  "  Her  immediate  Father,"  we 
are  told,  "was  that  accomplished  and  gene- 
rous Person,  Sir  Charles  Morisin."  All 
this  gentleman's  anxiety  was  for  the  fitting 
establishment  of  his  children,  and  especially 
to  "  find  a  fit  and  proper  Husband  for  Her, 
and  He  (a  Person  not  to  be  named  with- 
out a  Preface  of  Honor  and  Eeverence  ! ) 
the  truly  Noble  and  Honorable  Arthur 
Capell !  "  Having  thus  bowed  low  to  this 
Person  of  Quality,  Mr.  Barber  proceeds  to 
enter  minutely  into  the  life  and  actions  of 
his  defunct  Patroness — for  many  pages  to- 
gether. Making  all  allowance  for  the  par- 
tiality which  Mr.  Barber's  late  office  may 
be  supposed  to  have  inspired,  the  Lady 
Elizabeth  Capell  must  indeed  have  been  a 
light  before  her  generation,  and  have 
been  adorned  with  many  virtues.  Even 
as  Mr.  Barber  sarcastically  adds,  "  her 
Closet  was  not,  as  too  many  Ladies  are,  an 
Exchange  of  curious  Pictures,  and  of  rare 
and  costly  Jewels — but  a  private  Oratory  as 
it  were  :  "  winding  all  up  with  this  inge- 
nious figure  :  "  Her  life,  as  to  outward  Pro- 
vidence, was  not  unlike  Joseph's  party- 
coloured  Garment,  a  Coat  of  divers  colours. 
God  Almighty  thinking  it  beat  to  Sawce  her 
Passover  with  Sower  tarts." 

"  Such,"  says  Doctor  Megott,  in  the  year 
sixteen  hundred  and  seventy — finishing  the 
deceased's  funeral  praises  with  a  line  from 
Virgil — "Such  was  this  worthy  Person; 
who  on  the  twenty-eighth  of  May  last  past, 
was  taken  suddenly  and  fatally !  in  a  man- 
ner Quantum  mutatus  ab  illo  !  How  strange 
was  this !  That  Head  which  was  the  tena- 
cious receptacle  of  so  much  usefull  Learning, 
is  now  the  stupefied  seat  of  a  Disease  !  Those 
Eyes  which  had  read  through  so  many  sorts 
of  Bookes  cannot  now  by  any  means  be  kept 
open.  That  Tongue  which  dropped  things 
sweeter  than  the  Honeycomb,  cannot  now 
pronounce  an  ordinary  sentence  !  That  Per- 
son whom  so  many  of  all  degrees  and 
Ranks  of  People  so  rejoiced  to  see,  is  now 
become  a  sad  and  doleful  Spectacle."  There 
is  a  certain  simplicity  about  these  phrases 
sounding  racily  in  our  ears — to  say  nothing 
of  the  quaint  Bathos  conveyed  in  the  "eyes 
which  cannot  now  by  any  means  be  kept 
open,"  and  the  sudden  descent  from  the 
sweetness  of  the  Honeycomb  to  utter  inabi- 
lity to  "  pronounce  an  ordinary  sentence." 
Thus  is  "  Our  Friend  "  in  Doctor  Megott's 
hands,  made  to  point  a  moral — being  dwelt 
upon  affectionately  in  Poor  Yorick  !  fashion. 

Another  "  valiant  woman,"  who  must  have 
been  the  very  jewel  of  her  sex,  and  stored 
abundantly  with  all  "  vertues,"  passed  away 
some  time  near  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  was  magnified  on  her  funeral  day 
in  a  style  very  quaint  and  richly  Fulleresque. 
It  bears  the  title  —  poetical  enough  —  of 
Nature's  Good  Night,  and  with  this  text  the 
preacher  started  :  "  Weep  not  ;  she  is  not 
dead,  but  sleepeth."  After  which  he  falls  to 


Charles  Dickens.] 


EXTEACT  OF  FUNERAL  FLOWERS. 


lJulT  18, 18S7J       71 


ingenious  refinings  and  manifold  subdivi- 
sions, so  much  in  favor  at  that  day,  but 
which  must  have  been  bewildering  enough  to 
the  hearers. 

"  The  division  of  this  text,"  said  the  Reve- 
rend Preacher,  "is  made  to  my  hands  by  the 
meeting  of  this  congregation.  Three  parties 
are  visible  in  the  premises  which  discover 
three  parts  legible  in  the  words.  Imo<  The 
Dead — Shee  !  The  Mourners — all  wept ! 
The  Preacher — Weep  not !  " 

So  short  a  text  promised  but  scanty  enter- 
tainment. Yet,  how  much  has  the  tortuous 
Divine  already  contrived  to  extract  from  it. 
But  it  will  bear  further  dissection  ;  for  it 
must  be  recollected  that  "  these  parts  upon 
review  are  like  those  sheep,  Cant.  4,  whereof 
every  one  bears  twins.  In  the  Dead  is  con- 
siderable 1°  Her  Person  ;  2°  Her  Condition. 
In  her  Person,  her  age,  short  !  her  sex, 
wretched  !  "  Thus  is  the  chart  mapped  out, 
and  after  a  short  respite  the  Preacher  goes 
back  to  take  up  his  first  point,  forgotten, 
perhaps,  by  this  time,  intending  "  in  the 
beginning  to  speak  of  a  woman  brought  to 
her  death,  which  is  the  first  Party — Shee  ! " 
Then  is  "  Shee  "  introduced  and  dwelt  on  for 
many  pages,  in  the  course  of  which  occurs  a 
strange  legal  metaphor  relating  to  the  great 
Judgment  Day — viz.,  "  because  the  Angel 
makes  an  affidavit  that  time  shall  be  no 
more."  He  must  have  been  partial  to  such 
legal  figures ;  for,  further  on  he  reminds 
them  that  "the  guilty  and  the  innocent  do 
lie  in  like  custody,  till  the  great  Assize  and 
Gaol  Delivery."  After  all,  Death  has  not  so 
many  terrors,  if  we  but  look  at  it  in  the 
proper  light:  for  "grant  our  lives  to  be  >a 
span  long,  yet  is  that  life  but  as  a  span 
forced  from  a  gouty  hand — the  farther  it 
reacheth,  the  more  it  troubleth  its  owner." 
Death  brings  with  it  sure  release  from  tribu- 
lation and  sorrows  ;  and,  above  all,  what  is 
no  light  blessing,  certain  delivery  from 
ugliness!  "For,"  exclaims  the  Preacher, 
"how  precious  were  it  to  those  that  like  the 
elephants  loathe  to  see  their  own  face !  " 
Whether,  in  a  Natural  History  point  of  view, 
these  animals  have  such  repugnance  to  their 
own  reflection,  may  perhaps  be  doubted ; 
but  it  must  have  fallen  ungratefully  on  the 
ears  of  such  as  were  tolerably  ill-favoured. 
Different  degrees  of  sorrow  for  the  departed 
— some  bearing  their  loss  eequo  animo — 
others  "  weeping  carnation  tears  "  and  "  pick- 
ling up  the  memory  of  dead  friends  in  the 
brine  of  their  own  eyes."  Not  long  after  he 
falls  into  an  ingenious  piece  of  musical  illus- 
tration drawn  from  Cathedral  chanting. 
"  Observe,"  says  he,  "that  Anthem  which 
Isay  (Isaiah)  hath  set  for  a  Christian  paren- 
tation  to  be  sung  at  the  grave.  The  Dead 
Man  shall  live — (that  is  the  Leading  voice  by 
the  Prophet) — together  with  my  dead  body 
he  shall  arise  (that  is  the  Counter  Tenor  sung 
by  Christ).  Awake  and  sing  ye  that  dwell 
in  dust  (that  is  the  chorus,  sung  by  the 


!  whole  Quire)."  Sparkling  here  and  there, 
•  are  gems  of  purest  water  and  bright  poesy. 
Returning  once  again  to  "  The  Party — Shee," 
he  says  of  her  finery  :  "  When  she  spake 
wisdom  dictated  and  wit  delivered.  She  hung 
j  her  language  at  your  ear,  as  jewels,  much 
of  worth  in  a  small  bulk  !  "  With  him  a 
dream  is  but  "  a  fairy  round  of  chimerical 
semblances — >a  dance  of  phantasies."  The 
deceased  lady's  happy  art,  in  hitting  the 
juste  milieu  of  the  mode,  is  also  worthy  of 
mention  :  "  her  attire  "  being  "  neither  sordid 
nor  curions — not  too  early  in,  nor  too  late 
out  of,  fashion — counsel  worthy  the  atten- 
tion of  all  Provincial  Lionnes." 

The  character  of  the  late  Mr.  John  Moul- 
son  has  been  happily  epitomised  in  a  bold 
scrivenery  metaphor.  "He  copied  out  his 
life  the  old  way  of  Christianity,  and  writ  so 
fair  after  the  primitives  that  few  now  can 
imitate  his  hand." 

In  the  year  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy- 
eight,  the  body  of  Sir  Edmoud  Berry  Godfrey, 
one  of  his  Majesty's  Justices  of  the  Peace, 
was  found  lying  in  a  field  pierced  with  many 
wounds.  Great  was  the  excitement,  as  all 
the  world  well  knows,  on  the  discovery  of 
this  "barbarous  murther,"  and  Doctor  Oates 
and  Master  Bedloe  being  at  that  time  busily 
at  work,  it  was  concluded  that  this  must  be 
more  of  the  Papists'  bloody  work.  Meantime 
the  body  of  the  knight — after  being  exposed 
for  some  days — was  committed  to  the  earth 
"  with  strange  and  terrible  ceremonies,"  as 
Mr.  Macaulay  has  written  it ;  and  the 
Reverend  William  Lloyd,  D.D.,  Dean  of 
Bangor,  one  of  his  Majesty's  chaplains  in 
ordinary,  Vicar  of  Saint  Martiu's-in-the- 
Fields,  delivered  an  inflammatory  discourse  in 
his  own  church.  On  which  occasion  "Our 
Friend  "  had  a  fair  share  of  space  allotted  to 
him,  and  the  discourse  itself  has  attained  a 
questionable  notoriety  from  the  fact  of  a 
Christian  Divine  choosing  so  solemn  an 
occasion  for  exciting  the  party-passions  of 
his  hearers. 

"  He  was,"  says  the  dean,  invoicing,  as  it 
were,  the  deceased  knight's  perfections, 
"  born  to  be  a  Justice  of  Peace  :  his 
grandfather,  his  father,  his  elder  brother 
were  so  before  him.  The  two  last  were  also 
Members  of  Parliament.  His  great  grand- 
father was  a  Captain,  which  was  consider- 
able in  those  days Our  friend  could 

have  no  great  estate,  being  the  tenth  son  of 
his  father,  and  his  father  was  a  younger 
son  of  his  grandfather.  So  that,  though  his 
father  had  a  plentiful  estate,  and  his  grand- 
father one  of  the  fairest  in  his  country,  yet 
but  a  small  portion  of  these  could  fall  to  his 
share." 

Here  are  genealogical  details  in  abund- 
ance, proving  young  Godfrey's  prospects,  on 
starting  in  life,  to  have  been  cheerless 
enough.  In  spite  of  such  discouragement, 
he  attained  to  high  station  and  honours,  and 
to  what  in  the  dean's  eyes  is  his  greatest 


72 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[July  18,  1857.) 


glory — for  he  recurs  to  it  perpetually — the 
station  of  a  Justice  of  Peace.  "He  was, 
perhaps,  the  man  of  our  age  that  did  the 
most  good  in  that  station  .  .  .  He  that  ought 
to  know  best  hath  often  said  Sir  Edmund 
Godfrey  he  took  to  be  the  best  Justice  of 
Peace  in  this  kingdom."  And,  further  on, 
says  the  Divine  with  enthusiasm,  "  that 
which  exceeds  all  the  rest,  where  the  officers 
durst  not,  he  went  himself  into  the  Pest 
house  to  seize  on  a  malefactor  !  " 

Having  done  with  particulars  of  the  knight's 
life,  the  preacher  turns  now  to  more  serious 
matters  :  "  Methiuks  I  see  you  all  stirred  up, 
as  it  were,  expecting  I  should  name  you  the 
persons  that  did  this  bloody  fact.  But  I 
cannot  pretend  to  that.  I  can  only  say  with 
David,  they  were  wicked  men."  Still,  though 
this  seems  discouraging  enough,  "  if  you 
would  know  more,  I  will  endeavour  to  show 
you  how  possibly  you  may  discover  them." 
There  are  faithful  signs  and  tokens  in  such 
cases  pointing  unmistakeably  in  the  direction 
of  the  guilty  parties.  He  can  help  them  to  a 
few  of  these.  They  should  take  thought  of 
"  Cassius's  word,  cui  bono  ?  For  whose  in- 
terest was  it." 

"  They  must  have  been  some  that  were  not 
safe  while  he  lived,"  says  Doctor  Lloyd,  hint- 
ing darkly,  "  or  some  that  might  be  better 
for  his  death."  It  could  not  have  been  any 
who  bore  personal  malice  against  him.  He 
was  too  "  tender  hearted  "  for  that.  "  Much 
less  were  they  robbers  or  any  such  poor 
rogues  that  kill  men  for  what  they  have. 
These  did  their  work  gratis  ....  'Tis  very 
credible  that  the  authors  had  some  other 
interest  that  moved  them  to  it.  And  that 
seems  rather  to  have  been  against  the  govern- 
ment and  the  laws."  This  is  something  more 
explicit ;  but  the  dean  will  speak  even 
plainer  yet.  The  principles  of  such  parties 
are  an  unfailing  test.  "  How  shall  we  excuse 
them  that  hold  it  lawful  to  do  such  things  ?  If 
there  are  such  men  in  the  world,  and  if  the 
other  tokens  agree  to  them,  they  surely  are 
the  likeliest  that  can  be  thought  of  for  this 
matter."  But  away  with  all  circumlocutions 
and  mysterious  hints.  It  were  best  now  to 
speak  out  plainly.  "  Such  a  sort  of  men  there 
is,  even  here  in  England — we  have  them 
among  us.  I  could  not  but  think  of  them 
when  I  named  the  other  tokens,  and  so 
must  any  one  that  hath  been  conversant 
in  their  books.  We  need  not  put  them  on 
the  rack  to  make  them  confess.  They  offer 
themselves.  They  are  the  Jesuites  I  speak 
of!" 

"  We  thank  you,  Eeverend  Fathers  of  the 
Society,"  says  the  dean  warming  with  his 
subject,  "if  you  were  the  men  that  killed 
him,  as  you  are  the  likeliest,  if  we  may 
believe  yourselves :  we  thank  you  that  you 
did  not  begiu  with  the  government  first. 


That  you  killed  him,  not  the  king.  There  had 
been  a  blow  indeed.  We  thank  you  for  not 
beginning  with  that.  Though  we  have  the 
less  cause,  if  your  plot  was  against  the  king, 
and  you  only  took  this  man  away  that  you 
might  the  better  cover  it."  Could  anything 
be  devised  more  ingeniously  suggestive,  or  be 
more  artfully  put  than  these  last  few  sen- 
tences ?  "  God  still  deliver  us,"  continues  the 
dean.  "  from  your  bloody  hands.  God  keep 
England  from  your  bloody  religion  !  " 

The  only  tiling  that  surprises  the  dean  is 
the  wonderful  patience  and  equanimity  with- 
which  the  people  of  England  have  tolerated 
these  dangerous  conspirators.  "  I  cannot  but 
reflect,"  he  says,  "  on  the  incredible  patience 
that  was  found  in  you  at  the  Fire  of  London 
.  .  .  .  You  then  bore  patieutly  that  great 
loss,  both  of  your  houses  and  of  your  goods, 
And  now  it  cometh  to  your  persons  and 
lives,  still  your  patience  continues." 

Still,  with  all  these  dangers,  there  is  a  cer- 
tain consolation  and  hope,  "  especially  if  we 
remember  the  good  Providence  of  God  which 
is  the  third  thing.  He  that  hath  de- 
livered me  from  the  bear  and  the  lion,  he 
will  deliver  me  from  the  hand  of  this  Phi- 
listine. We  might  argue  likewise  :  He  that 
saved  us  in  Eighty-Eight,  he  that  saved 
us  from  the  Gun  Powder  Plot,  he  will 
deliver  us  from  this  cursed  conspiracy  .... 
Who  knows  but  in  the  end  it  may  prove  a 
fatal  blow  to  themselves  1  This,  together 
with  other  things  now  under  consideration, 
may  occasion  a  fair  riddance  of  all  that 
faction  out  of  England  !  "  There  is  a  certain 
significance  in  those  "  other  things  now 
under  consideration,"  suggesting  associa- 
tions of  Doctor  Gates  and  Bedloe  then  very 
busy. 

Finally,  the  dean  winds  up  and  sends  his 
hearers  home  with  this  comforting  assurance, 
"  Let  them  kill  our  bodies,  abuse  them,  man- 
gle them,  as  this  is  or  worse  :  let  them  burn 
them  and  throw  our  ashes  whither  they 
please.  We  shall  lose  nothing  by  it.  At  last, 
we  shall  all  meet  again  in  a  happy  and  blessed 
Resurrection  !  " 


Now  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  and  Sixpence,  neatly 
bound  in  cloth, 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

Containing  the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  June  of  the  preseoit 
year. 


Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One 
Guinea, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILKIE  COLLINS. 
Bradbury  and  Evans,  Whitefriars. 


The  Eight  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOUDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Publiihe'.  »t  the  Office,  3  o.  16,  Wellington  Street  North,Sir»nd.    I'nutedby  IJKAUBUBI  &  EVANS,  \V  lutelf  iars,  Loudo:: 


"Familiar in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS"— SHAKESPEARE. 


HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

A   WEEKLY   JOUKNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


-  383.] 


SATU11DAY,  JULY  25,  1857. 


(  PHICB  2ct. 
I  STAMPED  3d. 


YOUR  LIFE  OE  YOUR  LIKENESS. 


Tins  is  a  protest  against  a  growing  and  in- 
tolerable evil  to  which  every  reader  of  these 
lines  will  unhesitatingly  put  his  name.  Every 
body  is  subject  to  the  nuisance.  Some  pre- 
tend to  despise  it ;  some  are  goodnatured, 
and  don't  care  about  it ;  others  are  so  snob- 
bish and  vain,  that  they  positively  like  it  ; 
but  all  this  is  no  argument  why  you  and  I 
should  submit  to  it,  or  refrain  from  express- 
ing our  disgust  and  dissatisfaction. 

I  mean  the  pest  of  biography.  What  in  the 
world  have  I  done  to  have  my  life  written  1 
or  my  neighbour  the  doctor  ]  or  Softlie,  our 
curate  1  We  have  never  won  battles,  nor 
invented  logarithms,  nor  conquered  Sciiide, 
nor  done  anything  whatever  out  of  the  most 
ordinary  course  of  the  most  prosaic  existences. 
Indeed,  I  may  say  the  two  gentlemen  I  have 
mentioned  are  the  dullest  fellows  I  ever  knew 
— they  are  stupid  at  breakfast,  dinner,  and 
tea  ;  they  never  said  a  witty  thing  in  their 
lives ;  they  never  tried  to  repeat  a  witty 
thiug  without  entirely  destroying  it.  I  have 
no  doubt  they  think  and  say  precisely  the 
same  of  me,  and  yet  we  are  all  three  in  the 
greatest  danger  of  having  our  lives  in  print 
every  day.  And  not  only  that — which  is  bad 
enough — but  we  are  pestered  twice  a-week  at 
least,  with  requests  to  be  our  own  execu- 
tioners, to  write  memoirs  of  ourselves,  to 
furnish  materials  for  our  own  immolation,  j 
Fancy  Smedder,  M.D.,  writing  his  adventures ! 
Fancy  Softlie,  M.A.,  inditing  his  Recollec- 
tions !  Why,  they  have  neither  recollections 
nor  adventures  ;  and  the  whole  reason  of  the 
application  is  that  we  three  live  in  a  village 
where,  some  time  or  other,  in  the  reign  of 
somebody  or  other,  there  was  a  fellow  of  the 
name  of  Chaucer,  who  had  some  lands  here  ; 
and  our  houses  are  built  on  part  of  his  estate. 
What  does  it  matter  to  me  whether  or  not 
this  person  had  at  one  time  the  property 
which  is  now  mine  :  or  what  does  it  add  to 
the  knowledge  people  may  wish  to  have 
about  him,  to  be  told  all  about  Smedder's 
birth,  parentage,  and  education  ;  or  the  years 
in  which  I  was  baptised  and  married  ?  But 
there's  a  society,  forsooth,  called  the  "  Chau- 
cerian," and  to  please  the  admirers  of  that 
unexampled  poetaster — though,  confound  me 
if  I  ever  read  a  word  of  him  ! — I  am  to  parade 


before  all  the  world,  my  age,  and  my  wife's 
age  (I  wish  they  may  catch  her  in  a  commu- 
nicative vein !),  where  my  father  made  his 
money,  what  he  gave  for  this  estate,  who 
instructed  me  in  the  rudiments  of  Latin  and 
Greek,  and  who  my  schoolmaster's  father 
was,  and  whether  his  wife  survived  him. 
What  right  have  those  inquisitive  Chauceriaus 
to  know  how  many  children  I  have,  and  how 
long  a  time  elapsed  between  their  births  ? 
They'll  be  sending  for  my  marriage  certificate 
next, — with  a  facsimile  of  my  wife's  wedding- 
ring. 

At  another  time  there  was  a  fellow — at 
what  period  of  the  world's  history  not  a  soul 
in  the  parish  can  divine — who  performed 
miracles  every  Thursday,  with  the  water  of  a 
well  which  none  of  us  knew  anything  about, 
in  the  "halig-field  above  the  tannen,"  which 
none  of  us  ever  heard  the  name  of.  The 
miraculous  gentleman  was  Saint  Snibble,  a 
disciple  of  a  person  calling  himself  the  Vene- 
rable Bede,  whoever  he  may  be,  who  used  to 
cut  up  his  shirt  into  little  pieces  when  he  had 
worn  it  twelve  years  without  changing  ;  and 
who,  dipping  fragments  of  it  into  the  well,  gave 
the  water  the  power  of  curing  all  the  cattle 
which  drank  it,  of  all  manner  of  diseases ; 
and  bottles  of  it  were  sent  to  all  the  vete- 
rinary surgeons  in  the  land.  Now  there  is  a 
"  Snibble  brotherhood,"  it  appears,  who  are 
gathering  up  every  tittle  of  information  they 
can  collect  about  their  chief.  They  have, 
therefore,  pressed  me  to  furnish  a  sketch  of 
my  worldly  progress,  to  be  published  in  their 
Transaction:;.  The  old  man  lived,  I  am  told, 
a  thousand  and  odd  years  ago,  and  what  con- 
nection my  voyage  to  New  Y"ork  in  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-four,  or  my  partnership 
with  Spuddy  and  Frip  can  have  to  do  with 
him,  neither  my  wife  nor  I  can  guess,  I 
remember,  indeed,  we  made  a  good  specula- 
tion in  soap,  but  the  saintly  Snibble  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  particular  in  that  article 
of  commerce  ;  and  surely  it  can  make  no 
difference  to  him  whether  my  eldest  daughter's 
name  is  Mary  Anne  with  two  capital  letters, 
or  Marianne  with  only  one  ;  and  yet  that  is 
a  question  about  which  the  society  is  greatly 
agitated. 

They  are  jolly  fellows,  too,  those  in- 
quirers after  the  water-cure !  They  fixed  a 
day  to  come  over  and  search  for  the  sacred 


VOL.  XVI. 


383 


74       [J>-.).v  25,  1887.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.Conducted 


•pring.  and  pive  me  such  violent  hints  that 
some  liulo  refreshment  would  be  required 
after  i  heir  labours,  that  I  asked  the  explorers 
to  lunch.  There  were  six  aud  thirty  brethren 
of  Saint  Snibble  ;  all  devotedly  attached  to 
beer,  and  cold  lamb  and  salad,  and  cold 
brandy-and-water  and  cigars,  not  to  mention 
gooseberry-pies,  and  stra\\'berries  and  cre;nn, 
And  the  result  was,  that,  after  a  pleasant 
stroll  through  some  of  the  upland  fields,  and 
tearing  a  tew  gates  off  their  hinges,  and 
breaking  several  holes  in  the  hedges,  they 
returned,  as  ignorant  of  the  whereabout  of 
the  holy  well  as  when  they  came.  They 
would  have  had  more  success  if  the  object 
of  tin  ir  search  had  been  bottled  ale.  How- 
ever, they  drank  my  health  with  three  times 
three,  and  made  me  an  honorary  member  of 
their  fraternity  ;  with  thanks  for  the  promise 
(which  I  never  gave  them)  of  supplying  the 
secretary  with  the  main  incidents  of  my 
career. 

Scarcely  have  I  recovered  from  the  biogra- 
phical attempts  of  these  two  associations, 
when  a  letter  is  put  into  my  hands  with  a 
seal  on  it  the  size  of  a  saucer,  with  armorial 
bearings  enough  to  fill  up  the  panels  of  an 
omnibus;  and  on  opening  it,  I  find  it  is 
another  of  the  same.  This  time  the  applica- 
tion is  made  for  a  minute  narrative  of  every- 
thing that  ever  befel  me,  or  my  father  or 
grandfather,  to  be  inserted  with  a  vast  im- 
pression of  my  family  shield  in  Ye  Booke  of 

yc    Barons    of    England.      Who    the    

I  won't  write  the  word  in  full — ever  spelt 
book  with  an  e  at  the  end  of  it,  or  thought 
I  was  a  baron  of  England  1  And  yet  it 
appears  I  have  held  that  exalted  rank 
for  many  years ;  aud  my  father  held  it 
before  me  ;  for  the  lands  we  possess  are 
freehold  ;  and  freeholders  under  the  crown 
are  barons,  though  not  of  parliament — but 
barons  by  as  true  and  indefeasible  a  title  as 
if  we  were  barons  of  beef,  or  had  signed 
Magna  Charta,or  had  made  the  king  sign  it,  I 
don't  remember  which.  And  all  this  time  I 
have  called  myself  esquire,  or  even  plain 
Mr.  But  in  return  for  this  revelation  of 
my  magnificence,  1  am  to  inform  the  editor, 
Blenkinsop  Gwillim,  Squire  in  Arms,  Norroy 
Trumpet,  and  Tabard  of  Maintenance,  to  the 
care  of  Messrs.  Spittle  and  Lick,  Mediaeval 
and  Heraldic  Booksellers  to  the  Brethren  of 
Roiicesva-lles, — on  a  variety  of  subjects  of  the 
deepest  importance.  I  have  mislaid  the  man's 
letter,  but  it  haunts  me  yet  like  the  hideous 
and  confused  thing  one  dreams  of  after  a 
supper.  There  is  a  good  deal  about 
•IKS  and  griffins ;  and  one  question 
seems  to  have  excited  the  Trumpet's  in- 
terest ID  an  intense  degree  ;  namely,  whether 
I  claimed  the  right  to  quarter  salterwise  or 
otherwise  ;  as  a  family  of  the  same  name  in 
Derbyshire  manifests  gules,  "in  the  first 
grand  quarter  with  two  sheep  rampant  within 
a  d<  -i  re." 

It  these  persecutions  are  long-continued,  it 


is  my  intention  to  sell  this  little  domain.  I 
have  been  very  happy  in  it,  man  aud  boy,  for 
thirty  years.  It  consists  of  a  hundred  and  ten 
acres  of  moderately  productive  ground.  I 
have  a  house  on  it,  with  a  miniature  serpentine 
in  front,  and  a  lawn  trimly  kept,  and  trees  of 
my  own  planting.  But,  house,  and  lands,  and 
trees,  and  lake — I  must  leave  them  all ;  hunted 
literally  for  my  life,  and  driven  into  lodgings 
to  prevent  appearing  in  print  as  co-parishioner 
with  one  exploded  humbug,  and  co-proprietor 
with  another,  and  one  of  the  barons  of 
England,  and  I  don't  know  how  many  cha- 
racters beside ;  for  there  is  no  end  to  the 
ities  in  which  I  am  expected  to  write 
my  adventures.  If  I  had  been  Robinson 
Crusoe  the  public  curiosity  could  not  have 
been  greater ;  aud  my  fear  is  that,  in  some 
weak  moment,  I  may  be  deluded  into  jotting 
down  the  exact  date  of  my  christening  and 
marriage,  and  waking  some  morning  famous 
among  the  distinguished  personages  of  the 
day. 

I  have  mentioned  the  lake.  It  covers 
about  two  acres,  and  is  four  hundred  and 
fifty  feet  long.  On  it  I  keep  a  boat ;  and,  in 
the  cool  summer  evenings,  I  make  my  two 
girls,  who  are  both  capital  handlers  of  the 
oar,  row  me  for  half  an  hour  on  the  water. 
We  sometimes  fish  out  of  the  boat,  but 
never  catch  anything.  This  is  quite  enough. 
A  request  comes  to  me  for  my  subscription 
to  a  new  work  by  a  gentleman  of  genius, 
whom  I  never  heard  of  before,  but  who,  it 
appears,  is  author  of  the  Lives  of  the  Sussex 
Coach-makers  ;  and  he  wishes  me  to  furnish 
materials  for  a  memoir  of  myself,  to  be 
inserted  in  his  forthcoming  volume  of  the 
Lives  of  the  Yachters.  I  am  to  tell  him  at 
what  time  my  predilection  of  maritime  ad- 
ventures first  manifested  itself;  whether  I 
have  any  relations  in  the  navy  or  the  mer- 
cantile service,  and  generally  what  I  have 
been  doing  for  the  last  forty  years :  with 
anecdotes  of  my  neighbours  and  friends.  As 
a  further  inducement  to  grant  his  request, 
he  informs  me  that  an  illustration  to  my 
memoirs,  consisting  of  an  excellent  photo- 
graphic likeness,  is  already  in  hia  possession, 
a  woodcut  of  which  will  be  the  frontispiece  to 
my  obliging  communication. 

This  is  a  greater  nuisance  than  the  others. 
The  pen  it  is  just  barely  possible  to  escape 
from  ;  you  may  resolve  positively  to  con- 
tinue as  mute  and  inglorious  as  Milton  if  he 
had  been  a  Dorsetshire  labourer  at  nine  shil- 
lings a-week  ;  but,  from  a  set  of  amateur 
portrait-mongers  who  catch  you  unawares  and 
make  hideous  images  of  you  when  you 
are  quite  unconscious  of  their  proceedings, 
there  is  no  safety  whatever.  There  is  not 
a  summer  in  which  our  village  is  not  invaded 
by  dozens  of  those  artistical  impostors ; 
and  as  long  as  they  confine  themselves  to 
cliff  and  waterfall,  or  winding  lane  or  dila- 
pidated old  church,  nobody  can  blame  them. 
except  occasionally  for  a  trespass.  But  what 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  WITCHES  OF  SCOTLAND. 


I  July  23,  1S57.]       75 


are  we  to  say  to  them,  when  they  avail 
themselves  of  their  portable  apparatus,  and 
snap  you  up  at  your  most  unguarded  mo- 
ments, in  your  most  unbecoming  deshabille, 
and  stamp  you  for  ever  with  such  insolent 
resemblance  of  attitude  and  feature,  that  it 
is  impossible  to  deny  the  identity  ?  and  yet, 
so  altered  in  the  process,  so  harshened  in  the 
expression,  so  vulgarised  in  the  apparel,  that 
you  might  safely  indite  the  performance  as 
a  libel  ;  being  calculated  to  bring  you  into 
hatred  and  contempt.  At  first,  I  used  to 
take  these  travelling  geniuses  for  professors 
of  the  thimble-rig,  and  expected  to  see  them 
produce  their  peas  and  other  property  when 
they  planted  their  three-legged  stand  in  our 
lane.  When  the  mountebank  in  a  few  minutes 
threw  a  black  cloth  over  his  head  and  box, 
I  was  in  expectation  of  seeing  some  extra- 
ordinary metamorphoses  of  his  countenance, 
and  hearing  him  commence  in  the  familiar 
strains  of  Punch  and  Judy.  At  that  very 
moment  he  was  setting  his  lenses  right  upon 
my  face ;  and,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  there 
was  the  visible  representation  of  a  country 
gentleman,  with  an  expression  of  the  most 
foolish  and  open-mouthed  surprise,  which  for 
all  future  time  will  be  a  reminiscence  to  the 
gratified  operator  of  his  visit  to  the  classical 
village  of  Marlydown. 

What  right  has  that  fellow  to  my  portrait  1 
I  think,  I  hear  the  uncomplimentary  remarks 
which  the  wretched  animals,  male  and  female, 
his  uncles  and  cousins,  sisters  and  brothers,  to 
whom  he  will  show  the  results  of  his  sum- 
mer's excursion,  will  make  on  my  picture. 
"  What  a  snob  !  "  they  will  cry  ;  "  what  an 
ill-tempered  looking  ruffian  !  what  an  idiotic 
looking  spoon !  what  a  pretentious  looking 
old  beau  !  what  a  ragged-coated  old  miser ! " 
For,  one  peculiarity  of  the  photographic  pro- 
cess is,  that  it  admits  a  thousand  interpreta- 
tions of  the  result  of  its  labours,  so  that  the 
most  diverse  opinions  are  expressed  of  the 
same  production — and  to  all  this  I  am  sub- 
jected by  an  interloper  who  never  asked  my 
leave  or  license,  and  whose  foolish  head  I 
should  have  broken  with  my  weeding  spud 
if  he  had  had  the  audacity  to  ask  my  con- 
sent. The  wretch  had  the  further  im- 
pertinence to  ask  the  villagers  who  I  was ; 
and  he  wrote  it  on  a  slip  of  paper  affixed  to 
his  caricature,  so  that  generations  yet  unborn 
will  see  Likeness  of  C — 1 — 1  W — Ik — ns,  Esq., 
Marlydown,  Sussex,  as  he  appeared  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  Saturday,  June 
tenth,  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-four, — by 

me then  follows  the  complacent  idiot's 

name. 

Can  it  be  that  this  iniquitous  individual 
is  the  talented  editor  of  the  Lives  of  the 
Yachters  ?  or  the  still  more  unprincipled 
proposer  of  a  series  of  shilling  biographies 
to  be  called  Notes  on  Potato-growers,  who 
demands  a  full  and  circumstantial  account  of 
all  my  actions  on  the  strength  of  my  white 
kidneys  ? 


These,  I  assure  you,  are  only  a  few  exam- 
ples of  the  inconveniences  I  experience  from 
the  inquisitive  propensities  of  the  present 
age.  As  to  the  Income-Tax,  I  did  not  like  it 
at  all,  especially  while  it  was  at  sixteen  pence 
in  the  pound  ;  but  I  never  considered  it  half 
so  annoying  and  inquisitorial  as  the  biogra- 
phic and  photographic  enthusiasts,  who  worry 
me  out  of  house  and  home.  You  paid  the 
tax-gatherer,  and  were  troubled  no  more 
till  the  ensuing  half-year ;  but  these  fellows 
are  perpetually  on  your  track.  If  you  are 
somebody,  they  insist  on  your  insertion 
among  the  great  ones  of  the  earth.  You  join 
the  Wellingtons,  Napoleons,  Caesars,  and 
Alexanders,  and  are  content  with  your 
fellow-immortals,  for  haven't  you  invented  a 
new  cheese-press,  or  in  some  other  way  been 
of  use  to  your  country  and  species  ? — But  for 
us, — us  who  live  forgotten  and  die  forlorn, 
is  there  no  way  of  escaping  the  hateful 
confession  of  our  uselessuess,  our  ignorance, 
our  dulness,  our  stupidity  1  If  we  are  pro- 
foundly conscious  of  our  uuworthiuess  to 
appear  in  the  company  of  the  Somebodies, 
is  it  absolutely  impossible  to  avoid  the  ne- 
cessity of  writing  ourselves  down  among  the 
Nobodies  ? 


THE  WITCHES  OF  SCOTLAND. 


THE  first  notable  trial  for  witchcraft  in 
Scotland  was  that  of  Bessie  Dunlop ;  which 
was  held  on  the  eighth  of  November,  fifteen 
hundred  and  seventy-six.  We  exclude  the 
execution  of  the  unfortunate  Lady  Glainmis, 
in  fifteen  hundred  and  thirty-seven ;  for 
though  it  has  been  the  fashion  to  class 
her  among  the  earliest  and  the  noblest 
victims  of  the  witch  delusion,  she  was,  on 
the  contrary,  burnt  for  high  treason  ;  and 
her  death  was  a  political,  not  a  superstitious 
murder.  We  also  pass  by  the  trial  and 
execution  for  witchcraft  of  Janet  Bowman, 
in  fifteen  hundred  and  seventy-two — the 
Eecord  presenting  no  point  of  special  interest 
— and  give,  as  the  first  of  any  historical 
value,  the  tragic  history  of  poor  Bessie  Dun- 
lop,  "  spous  to  Audro  Jak  in  Lyne." 

Bessie  deposed,  after  torture  (it  is  very  im- 
portant to  observe  those  two  words)  that  one 
day  as  she  was  going  between  her  own  house 
and  Monkcastle  yard,  driving  her  cows,  and 
making  "  hevye  sair  dule  with  hirselff," 
weeping  bitterly  for  her  cow  that  was  dead, 
and  her  husband  and  child  who  were  lying 
sick  "in  the  land-ill" — she  herself  still  weak 
after  "  gissane,"  or  child-birth — she  met  "  ane 
honest,  wele,  elderlie  man,  gray  bairdit ;  and 
had  ane  gray  coitt  with  Lumbart  slevis  of 
the  auld  fussioun  ;  ane  pair  of  grey  brekis 
and  quhyte  shankis  gartenit  aboue  the  kne  ; 
ane  blak  bonet  on  his  heed,  cloise  behind 
and  plane  befoir,  with  silkiu  laLssis  dra\viu 
throw  the  lippis  thairof,  and  ane  whyte  wand 
in  his  hand."  This  was  Thorn  Reid,  who 


76       [July  IS.  i»7J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted 


had  been  killed  at  the  battle  of  Pinkye 
(fifteen  hundred  and  forty-seven),  but  was 
now  a  dweller  in  Elfame  or  Fairy-land. 
Thom  stopped  her,  ask  nig  why  she  was 
•weeping  so  sorely  ;  poor  Bessie  told  him 
her  troubles.  The  little  old  man  soothed 
her  by  assuring  her  that,  though  her  cow 
and  child  would  die,  yet  her  husband  would 
recover;  and  Bessie,  after  being  "sumthing 
fleit"  at  seeing  him  pass  through  too  uan*ow 
a  hole  in  the  dyke  for  an  honest,  earthly  man  to 
pass  through,  yet  returned  home  comforted 
at  hearing  that  her  goodman  would  mend. 
After  this,  she  and  Thom  forgathered 
several  times.  Once  he  came  to  her  house, 
and  took  her  away,  in  the  presence  of 
her  husband  and  three  tailors — they  seeing 
nothing — to  where  twelve  people  were  assem- 
bled waiting  for  her.  These  were  eight 
women  and  four  men,  all  "  verrie  semelie 
lyk  to  see ;"  and  they  were  the  "  gude 
wichtis  that  wynnit  in  the  Court  of  Elfame," 
who  had  come  to  persuade  her  to  go  away 
with  them.  But  Bessie  refused.  Half  de- 
mented as  she  was,  she  was  loyal  to  her 
husband  and  her  children,  and  would  have 
nothing  to  say  to  a  separation  from  them  ; 
though  Thom  Reid  was  angry  and  told  her 
"  it  would  be  worse  for  her."  Once,  too,  the 
Queen  of  the  Fairies,  a  stout,  comely  woman, 
came  to  her,  as  she  was  again  "lying  in 
gissane,"  and  asked  for  a  drink,  which  Bessie 
gave  her.  She  told  her  that  the  child  would 
die,  but  that  her  husband  would  recover : 
for  poor  Andro  Jak  seems  to  have  been  often 
in  a  delicate  condition,  and  to  have  given 
Bessie's  faithful  heart  many  an  anxious  hour. 
Then  Thom  began  to  teach  her  the  art  of 
healing.  He  gave  her  roots  wherewith  to 
make  salves  for  sheep  or  cows,  or  children 
"  taken  with  an  evill  blast  of  wind  or  elf- 
grippit :"  and  she  cured  many  people,  by 
following,  as  she  said,  the  old  man's  direc- 
tions. For  instance,  she  healed  Lady  John- 
stone's  daughter,  married  to  the  young  Laird 
of  Stanelie,  by  giving  her  a  drink  made  of 
strong  ale,  boiled  with  cloves,  ginger,  aniseed, 
liquorice,  and  white  sugar  :  which  Thom  said 
was  good  for  her  complaint — "  a  cold  blood 
that  went  about  her  heart,  and  caused  her  to 
pine  and  fall  away."  But  she  could  not  mend 
old  Lady  Kilbowye's  leg.  It  had  been 
crooked  all  her  lite,  and  now,  he  said,  the 
marrow  was  consumed  and  the  blood  be- 
numbed. It  was  hopeless  ;  and  it  would  be 
worse  for  her  if  she  asked  for  fairy  help 
ntrain.  Bessie  also  found  stolen  goods,  under 
Thorn's  directing  ;  and  those  which  she  could 
not  find,  she  could  at  least  tell  of.  Thus, 
Hugh  Scott's  cloak  could  not  be  returned, 
because  it  had  been  made  into  a  kirtle  :  and 
James  Baird  and  Henry  Jamesouu  could  not 
recover  their  plough  irons,  because  James 
Douglas,  the  sheriff's  officer,  had  accepted  a 
bribe  of  three  pounds  not  to  find  them.  Lady 
Blair,  too,  after  having  "  dang  and  wrackit " 
her  servants  on  account  of  certain  linen  of 


which  she  had  been  robbed,  learned  by  the 
mouth  of  Bessie,  prompted  by  Thom,  that 
Margaret  Syniple,  her  own  friend  and  rela- 
tion, had  stolen  it.  With  divers  other  like 
revelations.  Bessie  also  received  from  the 
hands  of  her  ghostly  friend  a  green  silk  lace, 
which,  if  tacked  to  the  "wylie  coat,"  and 
wound  about  the  left  arm  of  any  woman 
about  to  be  a  mother,  would  facilitate 
recovery  marvellously.  She  lost  the  lace  ; 
insinuating  that  Thom  took  it  away  again  ; 
but  kept  her  fatal  character  for  more 
medical  skilfulness  than  belonged  to  an 
ordinary  or  canny  old  wife.  She  said  that 
she  often  saw  Thom  Reid  going  about  like 
other  people.  He  would  be  in  the  streets  of 
Edinburgh,  handling  goods  like  any  living 
man  ;  but  she  never  spoke  to  him,  unless  he 
spoke  to  her  first :  he  had  forbidden  her  to 
do  so.  The  last  time  she  met  him  before  her 
arrest,  he  told  her  of  the  evil  that  was  to 
come :  but  he  buoyed  her  up  with  false 
hopes,  assuring  her  that  she  would  be  well 
treated  and  eventually  stand  clear.  Poor 
Bessie  Dunlop ! — After  being  cruelly  tortured, 
and  her  not  very  strong  brain  utterly  dis- 
organised, she  was  "  convict  and  burnt "  on 
the  Castle  Hill,  of  Edinburgh.  A  mournful 
commentary  on  her  elfin  friend's  brave  words 
and  promises. 

On  the  twenty-eighth  of  May,  fifteen  hun- 
dred and  eighty-eight,  Alesoun  Peirsoun  was 
haled  before  a  just  judge  and  sapient  jury,  on 
the  same  accusation  of  witchcraft,  and  con- 
sorting with  the  fairy  folk.  This  Alesoun,  or 
Alison  Pearson,  had  a  certain  cousin,  one 
William  Simpson,  who,  according  to  her 
account,  had  been  carried  to  Egypt  by  a  man 
of  Egypt  (gipsy)  when  he  was  a  mere  lad, 
and  had  there  been  educated  in  the  medical 
profession,  in  which  he  seems  to  have  been 
more  than  ordinarily  skilful.  Simpson's 
father  had  been  smith  to  gracious  majesty; 
but,  during  his  son's  absence  in  Egypt,  he 
had  died,  for  "  opening  a  priest's  book,  and 
looking  upon  it," — a  fact  as  veracious  as  all 
the  rest  of  this  crazed  narrative.  Well.  Mr. 
William  once  cured  his  cousin  of  some  curious 
disorder,  thereby  gaining  great  influence 
over  her ;  which  he  abused  by  taking  her 
with  him  to  fairy  land,  and  introducing  her 
to  the  good  neighbours,  whose  company  he 
himself  had  affected  for  many  years.  They 
treated  poor  Alison  very  harshly.  They 
used  to  beat  and  knock  her  about  till  she 
was  terrified  out  of  the  small  wits  she 
ever  possessed  ;  and  frequently  she  was 
left  by  them  covered  with  bad  bruises,  and 
perfectly  powerless.  She  was  never  free 
from  her  questionable  associates.  They  used 
to  come  upon  her  at  all  times,  and  initiate 
her  into  their  secrets,  whether  she  liked  it 
or  no.  They  used  to  show  her  how  they 
gathered  their  herbs  before  sunrise,  and 
she  would  watch  them  with  their  pans 
and  fires  making  the  "saws,"  or  salves, 
that  could  kill  or  cure  all  who  used  them, 


diaries  l)icken«J 


THE  WITCHES  OF  SCOTLAND. 


[July  25, 1857.]        77 


according  to  the  witch's  will.  What  with 
fairy  teaching,  and  Mr.  William's  clinical 
lectures,  half-crazed  Alison  soon  got  a  repu- 
tation for  healing  powers  ;  so  great,  that  the 
Bishop  of  St.  Andrews — a  poor,  shaken  hypo- 
chondriac, with  as  many  diseases  on  him 
as  would  fill  the  ward  of  a  hospital  — 
applied  to  her  for  some  of  her  charms  and 
remedies,  which  she  had  the  sense  to  make 
palatable  enough  ;  namely,  spiced  claret — a 
quart  to  be  drunk  at  two  draughts — and  a 
boiled  capon.  It  scarcely  needed  witchcraft 
to  have  prescribed  that  for  a  luxurious 
prelate,  who  had  brought  himself  into  a  state 
of  chronic  dyspepsia  by  laziness  and  good 
living.  Mr.  William  was  very  careful  of 
Alison.  He  used  to  go  before  the  fairy  folk, 
when  they  set  out  in  the  whirlwinds  to 
plajfue  her,  and  tell  her  of  their  coming  ;  and 
he  was  very  urgent  that  she  should  not  go 
away  with  them  altogether,  since  a  tythe  of 
them  was  yearly  taken  down  to  hell.  But, 
neither  Mr.  William's  thought  nor  fairy 
power  could  save  poor  Alice.  She  was 
"convicted  and  burnt,"  never  more  to  be 
troubled  by  epilepsy,  or  the  feverish  dreams 
of  madness. 

Nobler  names  come  next  upon  the  records. 
Katherine  Lady  Fowlis,  and  Hector  Munro, 
her  step-son,  were  tried  on  the  twenty-second 
of  July,  fifteen  hundred  and  ninety,  for 
"  witchcraft,  incantation,  sorcery,  and  poison- 
ing." Two  people  were  in  the  Lady's  way, 
— Margery  Campbell,  the  young  lady  -of 
Balnagowan,  wife  to  George  Ross  of  Bal- 
nagowan,  Lady  Katharine's  brother ;  and 
Robert  Munro,  her  step-son,  present  Baron 
of  Fowlis,  and  brother  to  the  Hector  Munro 
mentioned  above.  If  these  two  persons  were 
dead,  then  George  Ross  could  marry  the 
young  Lady  Fowlis,  to  the  pecuniary  advan- 
tage of  himself  and  his  family.  Hector's 
quarrel  was  with  his  half-brother,  George 
Munro  of  Obisdale,  Lady  Katherine's  own 
son.  The  charges  against  the  Lady  Katherine 
were — the  unlawful  making  of  two  pictures 
representing  the  young  Lady  Balnagowan 
and  Robert  Munro,  which  pictures  two 
notorious  witches,  Cristiane  Ross  and  Mar- 
jory M'Allester,  alias  Loskie  Loncart,  shot  at 
with  "  elf-arrow-heads."  But  the  pictures — 
literally  images  of  wax  or  clay — were  broken 
by  the  arrow-heads,  and  the  spell  was  de- 
stroyed. After  this,  the  Lady  made  a  stoup 
or  pailful  of  poison,  to  be  sent  to  Robert 
Munro.  The  pail  leaked,  and  all  the  poison 
ran  out,  excepting  a  very  small  quantity, 
which  an  unfortunate  page  belonging  to  the 
Lady  tasted,  and  incontinently  died.  Again, 
another  pig  or  jar  full  of  poison  was  pre- 
pared ;  this  time  of  double  strength  ;  the 
brewer  thereof,  Loskie  Loncart.  It  was  sent 
to  the  young  laird  by  the  hands  of  Lady 
Katherine's  foster-mother ;  but  she  broke 
the  jar  by  the  way  ;  and,  like  the  page, 
tasting  the  contents,  paid  the  penalty  of  her 
curiosity  with  her  life.  The  poison  was  of 


such  a  nature  that  neither  cow  nor  sheep 
would  touch  the  grass  where  it  fell ;  and 
soon  the  herbage  withered  away  altogether, 
in  fearful  memorial  of  her  guilt.  She  was 
more  successful  in  her  attempts  on  the  young 
Lady  Balnagowan.  Her  "  dittay  "  sets  forth 
that  the  poor  girl,  tasting  of  her  step-mother's 
infernal  potions,  contracted  an  incurable 
disease ;  the  pain  and  anguish  she  suffered 
revolting  even  the  wretch  who  administered 
the  poison.  But  she  did  not  die.  Nothing 
daunted  by  her  failures,  the  Lady  sent  far 
and  wide,  and  openly  too,  for  various  poisons ; 
consulting  with  "  Egyptians  "  and  notorious 
witches  as  to  what  would  best  "  suit  the 
complexions  "  of  her  victims ;  and  whether 
her  ratsbane,  which  she  often  tried,  should 
be  administered  in  eggs,  broth,  or  cabbage. 
She  paid  many  sums,  too,  for  more  clay 
images  and  elf-arrow-heads,  which  elf-arrow- 
heads are  the  ancient  arrow-heads  fre- 
quently found  in  Scotland ;  and  her 
wickedness  at  last  grew  too  patent  even  for 
her  rank  to  cover.  She  was  arrested  and 
arraigned  ;  but  the  jury,  composed  of  the 
Fowlis  dependants,  acquitted  her,  though 
many  of  her  creatures  had  previously  been 
"  convicted  and  burnt,"  on  the  same  charges 
as  those  now  made  against  her. 

Hector  Munro's  trial  was  somewhat  of  a 
different  stamp.  His  step-mother  does  not 
seem  to  have  had  much  confidence  in  mere 
sorcery.  She-  put  her  faith  in  facts  rather 
than  in  incantations,  and  preferred  drugs  to 
charms.  But,  Hector  was  more  superstitious 
and  more  cowardly.  Parings  of  nails,  clip- 
pings of  hair,  water  wherein  enchanted  stones 
had  been  laid,  were  all  of  as  much  potency 
in  his  mind  as  the  "ratoun  poysoun,"  so  dear 
to  the  Lady  ;  and  the  method  of  his  intended 
murder  rested  on  such  means  as  these.  After 
a  small  piece  of  preliminary  sorcery,  under- 
taken with  his  foster-m other,  Cristian  Neill 
Dayzell  and  Marion  Mclngareach,  "  one  of 
the  most  notorious  and  rank  witches  of  the 
country,"  it  was  pronounced  that  Hector, 
who  was  sick,  would  not  recover  his  health 
unless  the  principal  man  of  his  blood  should 
suffer  for  him.  This  was  found  to  be  none 
other  than  George  Munro  of  Obisdale,  Lady 
Fowlis's  eldest  son.  George  then  must  die  ; 
not  by  poison,  but  by  sorcery  ;  and  the  first 
step  to  be  taken  was  to  secure  his  presence 
by  Hector's  bed-side.  Seven  times  did  the 
invalid  impatiently  send  for  him  ;  and  when 
at  last  he  did  come,  Hector  said  never  a 
word  to  him,  after  his  surly  "  better  now  that 
you  have  come,"  in  answer  to  George's 
a  how's  a'  with  you  ] "  but  sat  for  a  full 
hour,  with  his  left  hand  in  his  brother's 
right,  working  the  first  spell  in  silence, 
according  to  the  directions  of  his  foster- 
mother  and  the  witch.  That  night,  one  hour 
after  midnight,  the  two  women  went  out 
to  a  "piece  of  ground  lying  between  two 
manors,"  and  there  made  a  grave,  near  to 
the  sea  flood.  A  few  nights  after  this— it 


78 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bv 


was  January — [lector,  wrapped  in  blankets, 
was  carried  out  of  his  sick  hod  and  laid  ill 
this  grave  ;  he,  his  foster-mother, and  Mcln- 
gareach  all  silent  as  death.  The  sods  were 
laid  over  him,  and  the  witch  sat  down  by 
him.  Then  Cristian  Dayzell,  with  a  young 
boy  in  her  hand,  ran  the  breadth  of  nine 
rigs  or  furrows,  and,  coming  back  to  the 
grave,  asked  the  witch,  "  who  was  her 
choice  1 "  Mclngareach,  prompted  by 
the  devil,  answered,  "that  Mr.  Hector  was 
her  choice  to  live,  and  his  brother  George  to 
die  for  him  !"  This  ceremony  was  repealed 
thrice,  and  then  they  all  returned  silently  to 
the  house  ;  Hector  Munro  convinced  that 
everything  necessary  had  now  been  done, 
and  tint  liis  half-brother  must  perforce  be 
his  sacrifice.  In  his  gratitude  he  male 
Clarion  Mclngareach  keeper  of  his  sheep  ; 
and  so  uplifted  her  that  the  country  people 
durst  not  oppose  her  for  their  lives.  It  was 
the  common  talk  that  he  favoured  and 
honoured  her,  said  the  dittay,  "  gif  she  had 
been  his  wife  ; "  and  once  he  kept  her  out  of 
the  way,  when  she  was  cited  to  appear  before 
the  court,  to  answer  to  the  charge  of  witch- 
craft. But,  Hector  got  clear,  as  his  step- 
mother had  done  half  an  hour  before  him  ; 
and  we  hear  no  more  of  the  Fowlis  crimes 
or  the  Fowlis  follies. 

On  the  twenty-sixth  of  May,  fifteen  hun- 
dred and  ninety,  John  Fiau,  alias  Cuningham, 
Master  of  the  School  at  Saltpans,  Lothian, 
and  contemptuously  recorded  as  "  Secretar 
and  Register  to  the  Devil,"  was  arraigned 
for  witchcraft  and  high-treason.  There 
were  twenty  counts  against  him  ;  the  least 
of  which  was  enough  to  have  lighted  a 
witch-fire  at  that  time  on  the  fatal  Castle 
Hill.  First,  he  was  accused  of  entering  into 
a  covenant  with  Satan,  who  appeared  to  him 
all  in  white,  as  he  lay  in  bed,  thinking  how 
he  could  be  revenged  on  Thomas  Tr  urn  bill, 
for  not  having  whitewashed  his  room.  After 
promising  his  Satanic  Majesty  allegiance 
and  homage,  he  received  his  mark  ;  which 
was  found,  later,  under  his  tongue,  with 
two  pins  stuck  up  to  their  heads.  Dr. 
Fian  had  once  the  misfortune  to  be  un- 
well, which  was  translated  into  a  grievous 
crime  by  the  gracious  "  assisa "  who  tried 
him.  He  was  found  guilty,  — "  fyltt,"  is 
the  legal  term, — of  "  feigning  himself  to  be 
sick  in  the  said  Thomas  Trumbill's  cham- 
ber, where  he  was  stricken  in  great  ecsta- 
cies  and  trances,  lying  by  the  space  of  two 
or  three  hours  dead,  his  spirit  taken,  and 
suffered  himself  to  be  carried  and  trans- 
ported to  many  mountains,  as  he  thought, 
through  all  the  world,  according  to  his 
depositions  ;  "  those  depositions  made  after 
fearful  torture,  and  recanted  the  instant  his 
mind  recovered  its  tone.  He  was  also  found 
guilty  of  suffering  himself  to  be  carried  to 
North  Berwick  church,  where,  together  with 
many  others,  he  did  homage  to  Satan,  as  he 
stood  in  the  pulpit  "  making  doubtful 


speeches,"  and  bidding  them  "not  to  fear, 
though  he  was  grim."  But  the  pith  of  the 
indictment  was,  that  he,  Fian,  and  sundry 
others  to  be  spoken  of  hereafter,  entered  into 
a  league  with  Satan  to  wreck  the  King  (James 
the  Sixth)  on  his  Denmark  voyage,  when,  in 
a  fit  of  clumsy  gallantry,  he  went  to  visit  his 
future  queen.  While  sailing  to  Denmark, 
Fian  and  a  whole  crew  of  witches  and 
wizards  met  Satan  at  sea,  and  the  master, 
giving  an  enchanted  cat  into  Robert  Grier- 
son's  hand,  bade  him  "cast  the  same  into  • 
the  sea,  hola!"  Which  was  done,  and  a 
strong  gale  was  the  consequence.  Then, 
when  the  King  was  returning  from  Den- 
mark, the  Devil  promised  to  raise  a  mist, 
which  should  wreck  him  on  English  ground. 
To  perform  which  feat  he  took  something 
like  a  football,  appearing  like  a  wisp  to 
Dr.  Fian,  which,  when  he  cast  it  into  the 
sea,  caused  the  great  mist  to  rise  that  nearly 
drove  the  cumbrous  pedant  on  to  the  English 
shore. 

Then  he  was  convicted  of  again  consorting 
with  Satan  and  his  crew,  still  in  North  Ber- 
wick church  ;  where  they  paced  round  the 
church  "  withershins,"  that  is,  contrary  to  the 
way  of  the  sun.  Fian  blew  into  the  lock 
to  open  the  door — a  favourite  trick  of  his — 
and  blew  in  the  lights  which  burned  blue 
and  seemed  black  ;  and  where  Satan,  as  a 
"  mickle  blak  man,"  preached  again  to  them, 
and  made  them  very  angry  by  calling  Robert 
Grierson  by  his  name.  He  ought  to  have 
been  called  "  Ro'  the  Comptroller,  or  Rob 
the  Rowar."  This  slip  of  Satan's  dis- 
pleasing them,  they  ran  "hirdie  girdie" 
in  great  excitement.  At  this  seance,  Fian 
and  others  rifled  the  graves  of  the  dead, 
and  dismembered  their  bodies  for  charms. 
Once  at  the  house  of  David  Seaton's 
mother,  he  breathed  into  a  woman's  hand, 
sitting  by  the  fire,  and  opened  a  lock  at  the 
other  end  of  the  kitchen.  Once  he  raised  up 
four  candles  on  his  horse's  two  ears,  and  a 
fifth  on  the  staff  which  a  man,  riding  with 
him,  carried  in  his  hand.  These  magic  can- 
dles gave  as  much  light  as  the  sun  at  noon- 
day, and  the  man  was  so  terrified  that  he 
fell  dead  on  his  own  threshold.  Then  he 
was  seen  to  chase  a  cat ;  and  to  be  carried 
in  the  chace  over  a  hedge  so  high  that 
he  could  not  touch  the  cat's  head.  When 
asked  why  he  hunted  her,  he  said  that  Satan 
wanted  all  the  cats  he  could  lay  his  hands 
on,  to  cast  into  the  sea  for  the  purpose  of 
raising  storms  for  shipwreck.  Which,  with 
divers  smaller  and  somewhat  monotonous 
charges,  formed  the  sum  of  the  indict- 
ment against  him.  He  was  put  to  the 
torture.  First,  his  head  was  "  thrawed 
with  a  rope,"  for  about  an  hour.  But,  he 
would  confess  nothing.  Then  they  tried  fair 
means  and  coaxed  him,  with  no  better  suc- 
cess ;  and  then  they  "  put  him  to  the  most 
severe  and  cruell  paine  in  the  worlde," 
namely  the  Boots.  After  the  third  stroke 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  WITCHES  OF  SCOTLAND. 


[July  25,  185;.]       79 


he  became  speechless ;  and  they,  sup- 
posing it  to  be  the  devil's  mark  which 
kept  1dm  silent,  searched  for  that  mark,  that 
by  its  discovery  the  spell  might  be  broken. 
So  they  found  it,  as  was  said  before,  under 
his  tongue,  with  two  charmed  pins  stuck  up 
to  their  heads  therein.  And  when  they 
were  withdrawn,  that  is,  after  some  further 
torture,  he  confessed  anything  his  tor- 
mentors pleased.  The  next  day  he  re- 
canted his  confession.  He  was  then  some- 
what restored  to  himself,  and  had  mastered 
the  weakness  of  his  agony.  Of  course  it 
was  declared  that  the  devil  had  visited  him 
during  the  night,  and  had  marked  him 
afresh.  They  searched,  but  found  nothing  ; 
so,  in  revenge,  they  put  him  to  the  torture 
again.  But,  he  remained  constant  to  the  last  ; 
bearing  his  grievous  tortures  with  most 
heroic  patience  and  fortitude  ;  and  dying  as  a 
brave  man  knows  always  how  to  die.  Find- 
ing that  nothing  more  could  be  made  of  him, 
he  was  strangled  and  burnt  "in  the  Castle 
Hill  of  Edinbrongh,  on  a  Saturdaie,  in  the 
ende  of  Januarie  last  past,  1591." 

Fian  was  the  first  victim  of  the  grand  battue 
opened  to  the  royal  witch-hunter.  Others 
were  to  follow,  the  manner  of  whose  finding 
was  singular  enough.  Baillie  David  Seaton 
had  a  half-crazed  servant-girl,  one  Geillis 
Duncan,  whose  conduct  had  excited  the 
righteous  suspicion  of  her  master.  To  make 
sure  he  tortured  her:  first  by  the  "pillie- 
winks "  or  thumbscrews,  then  by  wrench- 
ing, binding,  or  thrawing  her  head  with 
a  rope.  But,  not  confessing  under  all  this 
agony,  she  was  searched,  and  the  mark 
was  found  on  her  throat.  Whereon  she 
immediately  confessed,  accusing  amongst 
others,  the  defunct  John  Fian  or  Cuning- 
ham,  Agnes  Sampson,  "  the  eldest  witch  of 
them  all"  at  Haddington,  Agnes  Tompson 
of  Edinburgh,  and  Euphemia  Macalzean, 
daughter  of  Lord  Cliftounhall,  one  of  the 
Senators  of  the  College  of  Justice.  Agnes 
Sampson's  trial  came  lirst.  She  was  a  grave 
matron-like  educated  woman,  commonly 
called  the  "grace  wyff,"  or  "wise  wife  of 
Keith  ; "  and,  to  her  was  assigned  the  doubt- 
ful honour  of  being  carried  to  Holyrood. 
there  to  be  examined  before  the  king  himself. 
At  first  she  quietly  and  firmly  denied  all 
that  she  was  charged  with.  But — after 
having  been  fastened  to  the  witches'  bridle, 
kept  without  sleep,  her  head  shaved  and 
thrawn  with  a  rope,  searched  and  pricked 
— she  too  confessed  whatever  blasphemous 
nonsense  her  accusers  chose  to  charge  her 
with,  to  the  wondrous  edification  of  the  kingly 
witch-finder.  She  said  that  she  and  two 
hundred  more  witches  went  to  sea  on  All 
Halloween  in  riddles  or  sieves,  making  merry 
and  drinking  by  the  way  ;  that  they  lauded 
at  North  Berwick  church,  where,  taking 
hands  they  danced  a  round,  saying : 

"  Cotniuer  goe  ye  before  !  cotnmer  goe  ye, 
Gif  ye  will  not  goe  before  ;  commer  let  rne." 


She  said  also  that  Geillis  Duncan,  the 
informer,  went  before  them,  playing  on  the 
Jew's  harp  ;  which  so  delighted  Gracious 
Majesty  to  hear  that  he  sent  on  the  instant  for 
Geillis  Duncan  to  play  the  same  tune  before 
him  ;  which  she  did  :  to  his  "great  pleasure 
and  amazement."  Furthermore,  Agnes  Simp- 
son confessed,  that,  on  asking  Satan  why  he 
hated  King  James,  and  wished  so  greatly 
to  destroy  him,  the  foul  fiend  answered 
"  because  he  is  the  greatest  enemy  I  have," 
adding  though,  that  he  was  "  un  homme  de 
Dieu,"  and  that  he,  Satan,  was  powerless 
against  him.  A  pretty  piece  of  flattery  !  but, 
it  availed  the  poor  wise  wife,  little.  Her 
indictment  was  very  heavy  :  fifty-three  counts 
in  all ;  for  the  most  part  curing  disease  by 
incantations  and  charms,  and  foretelling 
events,  especially  disease  or  death.  As  she 
went  on,  weakened  in  body  and  fevered  in 
mind  by  torture,  she  owned  to  more  mon- 
strous things.  Item,  to  having  a  familiar, 
the  devil  in  shape  of  a  dog  by  name  Elva, 
whom  she  called  to  her  by  saying,  "  Hola, 
master !  "  and  conjured  away  by  "  the  Law 
be  lived  on."  This  dog  she  caused  to  appear 
to  the  Lady  of  Edmistoun's  daughters,  when 
she  called  him  out  of  the  well,  where  he  lay 
growling,  to  tell  them  if  the  old  lady  would 
live  or  die.  Then  she  said  she  caused  a  ship, 
"  The  Grace  of  God,"  to  perish.  For  helping 
her  in  this  nefarious  deed  she  gave  twenty 
shillings  to  Grey  Meill,  "ane  auld  sely  pure 
plowman,"  who  usually  kept  the  door  at  the 
witches'  conventions,  and  who  had  attended 
on  her  in  this  shipwreck  adventure.  Then  she 
was  one  of  the  foremost  and  most  active  in 
the  celebrated  storm-raising  for  the  destruc- 
tion, or  at  least  the  damage  of  the  king  on 
his  return  from  Denmark ;  giving  some 
curious  particulars  in  addition  to  what  we 
have  already  read  in  Fian's  indictment :  as, 
that  she  and  her  sister  witches  baptised  the 
cat  which  raised  the  storm,  by  putting  it 
with  various  ceremonies,  thrice  through  the 
"chimney  crook,"  and  fastening  four  bones 
of  dead  men  to  its  four  feet.  Which  processes 
it  made  infallible  as  a  storm-raiser,  and  ship- 
wrecker  general.  She  was  also  at  all  the 
famous  North  Berwick  meetings  ;  where 
Dr.  Fian  was  secretary  and  lock  -  opener  ; 
where  they  were  baptised  of  the  fiend  and 
received  formally  into  his  congregation  ; 
where  he  preached  to  them  as  a  great 
black  man  ;  and  where  they  rifled  graves 
and  meted  out  the  dead  among  them.  For 
all  which  crimes  Agnes  Sampson,  the  grave 
matron -like,  well-educated  grace  -  wile  of 
Keith,  was  tied  to  a  stake  on  Castle  Hill, 
and  burnt. 

Euphemia  Macalzean  was  even  higher 
game.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Lord  Ciifton- 
hall,  and  wife  of  Patrick  Moscrop,  a  man  of 
wealth  and  standing.  She  was  a  firm,  heroic, 
passionate  woman,  whom  no  tortures  could 
weaken  into  confession,  no  threats  terrify 
into  submission.  She  fought  her  way  inch 


80      [July  C5, 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


by  inch,  using  every  legal  power  open  to  her, 


but  she 
demned 


was  "  convict "    at   last,  and   con- 
to   be    burnt    alive  ;    the   severest 


sentence  ever  pronounced  against  a  witch. 
There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  her 
•witchcraft  was  made  merely  the  pretence, 
while  her  political  predilections,  the  friend- 
ship for  the  Earl  of  Bothwell,  and  her  Catholic 
religion,  were  the  real  grounds  of  the  king's 
enmity  to  her,  and  the  real  causes  of  the 
seventy  with  which  she  was  treated.  Her 
indictment  contains  the  ordinary  list  of 
crimes,  diversified  with  the  addition  of  be- 
witching a  certain  Joseph  Douglas,  whose 
love  she  craved,  and  found  beyond  her  power 
to  retain.  The  young  wife  whom  Douglas 
married  and  the  two  children  she  bore  him, 
also  came  in  for  part  of  the  alleged  maleficent 
enchantments.  She  did  the  "  bairns  to  death," 
and  struck  the  wife  with  sickness.  She  was 
also  accused  of  the  heinous  crime  of  casting 
her  childbirth  pains,  once  on  a  dog,  and  once 
on  a  cat ;  both  of  which  beasts  ran  dis- 
tractedly out  of  the  house — as  well  they 
miirht — and  were  never  seen  again. 


once,  too,  she  tried  to  cast  them  on  her  hus- 
band :  without  effect  as  it  would  seem.  She 
was  also  accused  of  endeavouring  to  poison 
her  husband,  and  it  was  manifest  that  their 
union  was  not  a  happy  one — he  being  for  the 
most  part  away  from  her  :  and  it  was  proved 
that  Agnes  Sampson,  the  wise  wife,  had  made 
a  clay  picture  of  John  Moscrop,  her  father- 
in-law,  who  should  by  these  enchantments 
have  dwindled  and  died.  But  failed  to  do  as 
he  was  witch-bidden.  So  that  these  crimes, 
with  others  like  to  them,  such  as  sending 


principal  witnesses,  Isobel'sown  child  of  eight 
years  of  age,  added  a  black  man  as  well. 
Isobel,  after  denying  all  and  sundry  of  the 
counts  against  her,  under  torture  admitted 
their  truth.  In  the  night  time  she  found 
means  to  escape  from  her  prison,  which  was 
the  belfry  ;  in  clambering  over  the  roof  of 
the  church  she  fell  down,  and  died  five  days 
afterwards.  Margaret  was  then  tortured  :  the 
juggler  had  strangled  himself :  and  she  was 
the  last  remaining  of  this  "  coven."  The 
torture  they  used,  said  the  noble  Lord  Com- 
missioners, "was  safe  and  gentle."  They  put 
her  two  bare  legs  in  a  pair  of  stocks,  and  laid 
on  them  iron  bars  one  by  one  ;  augmenting 
the  weight  by  degrees,  till  Margaret  cried  to 
be  released,  promising  to  confess  the  truth  as 
they  wished  to  hear  it.  But  when  released 
she  only  denied  the  charges  afresh  ;  so  they 
had  recourse  to  the  iron  bars  again.  When, 
after  a  time,  she  shrieked  aloud,  saying : 
"  Tak  off!  talc  off!  and  befoir  God  I  will 
show  ye  the  whole  form  ! "  She  then  con- 
fessed ;  and  in  her  confession  included  Isobel 
Crawford  ;  who,  when  arrested — as  she  was, 
on  the  instant — made  no  defence,  but  stupe- 
fied and  paralysed,  admitted  all  they  chose. 
Margaret's  trial  proceeded  ;  sullen  and  de- 
spairing, she  assented  to  all  that  she  was 
charged  with  ;  when  Alexander  Dein,  her 
husband,  entered  the  court,  accompanied  by 
a  lawyer.  And  then  the  despair  which  had 
crept  over  the  young  wife  passed  away,  and 
she  demanded  to  be  defended.  "  All  that  I 
have  confessed,"  she  said,  "  was  in  an  agony 
of  torture  ;  and,  before  God,  all  I  have  spoken 
is  false  and  untrue  !  But,"  she  added,  patheti- 


visions,  and  devils,  and  sickness,  and  death  to  j  cally,  turning  to  her  husband,  "  ye  have  been 
every  one  who  stood  in  her  way,  or  had  ever ;  ower  lang  in  coming  ! "  In  spite  of  her  legal 
offended  her,  were  quite  sufficient  legal  causes  '  defence,  however,  she  was  condemned;  and 
of  death.  And  James  could  gratify  both  his  at  the  stake  entreated  that  no  harm  should 


superstitious  fears  and  his  political  animosity 
at  the  same  time,  while  Euphemia  Macal- 
zean,  the  fine,  brave,  handsome,  passionate 
Euphemia,  writhed  in  agony  at  the  stake, 


befall  Isobel  Crawford,  who  was  utterly  and 
entirely  innocent.  The  young  creature  was 
strangled  and  burnt :  bearing  herself  bravely 
to  the  last.  Isobel  was  now  tried :  "  after 


where  she  was    bound    "  to    be    consumed  |  the  assistant  minister  of  Irvine,  Mr.  David 
quick."  I  Dickson,  had  made  earaest  prayers  to  God 

In  sixteen  hundred  and  eighteen,  Margaret  for  opening  her  obdurate  and  closed  heart ; 
Barclay,  a  young,  high-spirited,  and  beauti-  j  she  was  subjected  to  the  torture  of  iron  bars 
ful  woman,  was  accused,  together  with  Isobel '  laid  upon  her  bare  shins,  her  feet  being  in 


Insh,  by  a  wandering  juggler  called  John 
Stewart,  of  having  applied  to  him  to  be 
taught  magic  arts  ;  and  also  of  having,  by 
sorcery,  shipwrecked  the  vessel  and  drowned 
the  crew  of  John  Dein,  her  husband's  brother, 
with  whom  and  with  his  wife  she  had  had  a 
quarrel  a  short  time  ago,  ending  in  her 
bringing  against  them  a  legal  action  for 
slander.  Margaret  denied  the  charge  :  poor 
Isobel,  for  her  part,  declared  she  had  never 
seen  Stewart  in  her  life  before  ;  though  he 
asserted  he  had  found  her  modelling  clay 
figures  and  clay  ships,  in  company  with  Mar- 
garet, for  the  destruction  of  the  men  and 
vessel  aforesaid.  A  black  dog,  with  fiery 
eyes,  and  breathing  fire  from  his  nostrils, 
formed  part  of  the  conclave  :  and  one  of  the 


the  stocks,  as  in  the  case  of  Margaret  Bar- 
clay." She  endured  this  torture  "  admirably,'' 
without  any  kind  of  din  or  exclamation, 
suffering  above  thirty  stone  of  iron  to  be  laid 
on  her  legs,  never  shrinking  thereat,  in  any 
sort,  but  remaining,  as  it  were,  steady.  But 
in  shifting  the  situation  of  the  iron  bars,  and 
removing  them  to  another  part  of  her  shins, 
her  constancy  gave  way,  as  Margaret's  had 
done  ;  and  she,  too,  broke  out  into  horrible 
cries  of  "Tak  off!  takoff!"  She  then  con- 
fessed, and  was  sentenced  ;  but  on  her  execu- 
tion she  denied  all  that  she  had  admitted, 
interrupted  the  minister  in  his  prayer,  and 
refused  to  pardon  the  executioner.  They 
had  made  her  mad. 
We  must  pass  over  the  scores  of  witches 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  WITCHES  OF  SCOTLAND. 


[July  25,  1857-]       81 


who  were  yearly  strangled  and  burnt  on  such 
charges  as,  "  casting  sickness  on  such  an  one 
by  means  of  ane  blak  clout,"  &c. ;  raising  the 
devil  ;  curing  diseases  by  incantations  ;  fore- 
telling events  ;  charming  to  death,  or  to  love,  j 
as  the  case  might  be  ;  sending  visions  to ' 
frighten  silly  men  and  half-crazed  women ; 
cursing  land  with  a  paddock,  or  toad-drawn 
plough,  &c.,  &c.  Curious  as  the  various  trials 
are,  we  cannot  give  even  the  names  of  the 
sufferers  ;  witch-finding  increased  so  rapidly 
in  Scotland.  In  sixteen  hundred  and  sixty- 
one,  the  most  fertile  and  the  most  fatal  year  | 
of  all,  no  fewer  than  fourteen  special  com- 
missions were  granted  for  the  purpose  of 
trying  witches  for  the  sederunt  of  Novem- 
ber the  seventh  ;  how  many  unfortunates 
were  murdered  on  this  charge  Heaven  only 
knows.  We  have  the  records  of  but  one — 
the  Justiciary  Court ;  and  they  were  tried 
by  all  sorts  of  courts,  ordinary  and  extra- 
ordinary. It  was  the  popular  amusement ; 
and  it  would  have  taken  a  wiser  and  a 
braver  man  than  any  living  at  that  time  to 
have  turned  the  tide  in  favour  of  the  poor, 
persecuted  servants  of  the  "  deil."  Though 
it  was  the  Catholic  Bull  of  Innocent  the 
Eighth,  in  fourteen  hundred  and  eighty-four, 
which  first  stirred  up  the  persecuting  zeal  of 
the  godly  against  witchcraft,  yet  Calvinistic 
Scotland  soon  outstripped  the  papacy  in  her 
zealous  hate,  and  poured  out  blood  that  will 
leave  a  stain  on  her  history,  so  long  as  that 
history  shall  endure. 

We  turn  now  those  crimson  pages  rapidly, 
till  we  come  to  the  witches  of  Auldearne, 
and  Isobell  Gowdie's  confessions. 

It  does  not  seem  that  Isobell  Gowdie  was 
either  pricked  by  John  Kincaid,  the  "  com- 
mon pricker  " — the  Scottish  Matthew  Hop- 
kins— or  tortured  before  she  made  her 
confessions.  She  was  probably  a  wild,  ex- 
cited lunatic,  whose  ravings  ran  in  the 
popular  groove,  rather  than  on  any  purely 
personal  matters  ;  and  who  was  not  so  much 
deceiving,  as  self-deceived  by  insanity.  She 
began  by  stating  how,  that  one  day  she  met 
the  devil ;  and,  denying  her  baptism,  put  one 
of  her  hands  to  the  crown  of  her  head,  and 
the  other  to  the  sole  of  her  foot,  making  over 
to  him  all  that  lay  between ;  he,  as  a 
"  mickle,  black,  hairy  man,"  standing  in  the 
pulpit  of  the  church  at  Auldearne,  reading 
out  of  a  black  book.  Isobell  was  baptized  by 
him  in  her  own  blood,  by  the  name  of  Janet, 
and  henceforth  was  one  of  the  most  devoted 
of  her  coven,  or  compan}r.  For,  they  were 
divided  into  covens,  or  bands,  under  proper 
officers  and  leaders.  John  Young  was  officer 
to  her  coven,  and  the  number  composing  it  was 
thirteen.  They  went  through  the  ordinary 
misdeeds  of  witchcraft.  '  They  destroyed 
corn-fields ;  spoilt  brewings  ;  dug  up  un- 
christeued  children,  and  cut  them  into 
charms ;  ploughed  with  toads  and  frogs, 
cursing  the  laud  as  they  went,  to  make  it 
barren :  they  rode  on  straws,  which  they 


made  into  horses,  by  putting  them  between 
their  feet,  saying,  "  Horse  and  hattock  in  the 
devil's  name  ; "  and  Isobell  went  to  the  land 
of  faerie,  where  she  got  meat  from  the 
"  Queen  of  Faerie,"  more  than  she  could  eat. 
The  queen  was  a  comely  woman,  bravely 
dressed  in  white  linen,  and  white  and  brown 
clothes ;  and  the  king  was  a  fine  man,  well 
favoured,  and  broad-faced ;  but  there  were 
elf  bulls,  "  roytting  and  skoilling  up  and 
down  there,"  which  frightened  poor  Isobell 
sorely.  They  took  away  cow's  milk,  too,  in  a 
very  odd  manner, — by  platting  a  tether  the 
wrong  way,  and  drawing  it  between  the  cow's 
hind  and  fore  feet  ;  then,  milking  the  tether, 
they  drew  the  cow's  milk  clean  away.  To 
restore  it,  it  was  necessary  to  cut  the  witch- 
line,  and  the  milk  would  flow  back.  Of 
course  there  were  clay  pictures  of  any  who 
offended  the  witches,  and  therefore  were 
desired  to  be  put  out  of  the  way.  All  the 
male  children  of  the  laird  of  Parkis  were 
doomed  to  perish  because  of  a  clay  picture  of 
a  little  child,  which  was  every  now  and  then 
laid  by  the  fire  till  it  shrivelled  and  withered. 
As  jackdaws,  hares,  cats,  &c.,  our  witches 
passed  from  house  to  house,  destroying  dye- 
ing vats,  and  beer-casks,  and  all  sorts  of 
things,  which  their  owners  had  forgotten  to 
"  sanctify  ;  "  and  which  omission  gave  the 
witches  their  power. 

In  her  next  confession.  Isobell  went  into 
further  particulars  respecting  the  constitution 
of  her  coven.  Each  of  the  thirteen  witches 
had  a  spirit  appointed  to  wait  on  her.  Sweiu, 
clothed  in  grass-green,  waited  oil  Margaret 
Wilson,  called  Fickle  -  nearest  -  the  -  wind  ; 
Eorie,  in  yellow,  waited  on  Throw-the -corn- 
yard.  The  Eoaring  Lion,  in  sea-green,  waited 
on  Bessie  Bule.  Mak  Hector,  in  grass-green, 
(a  young  devil  this!)  accompanied  the  Maiden 
of  the  Coven,  daughter  to  Pickle-nearest- 
the-wind,  and  called  Over-the-dyke-with-it. 
Robert  the  Rule,  in  sad  dun,  a  commander 
of  the  spirits,  waited  on  Margaret  Bodie. 
Thief-of-hell-wait-upon-herself  waited  on 
Bessie  Wilson.  Isobell's  own  spirit  was 
the  Red  Riever,  and  he  was  ever  in  black. 
The  eighth  spirit  was  Robert-the-jakes, 
aged,  and  clothed  in  dun,  "ane  glaiked 
gowked  spirit,"  waiting  on  Able-and-Stout ; 
the  ninth  was  Laing,  serving  Bessie 
Bauld ;  the  tenth  was  Thomas,  a  fairy ; 
but  there  Isobell's  questioners  stopped  her, 
and  no  more  information  was  given  of  the 
spirits  of  the  coven.  She  then  told  them 
that  to  raise  a  wind  they  took  a  rag  of  cloth, 
and  wetted  it  in  the  water,  then  knocked  it 
on  a  stone  with  a  flat  piece  of  wood,  singing 
a  doggerel  rhyme.  She  gave  them,  too,  the 
rhymes  necessary  for  trauformation  into  a 
hare,  cat,  crow,  &c.,  and  for  turning  back  into 
their  own  shapes  again.  The  rhymes  are 
unique  ;  the  only  rhymes  of  the  kind  to  be 
found  in  the  whole  history  of  witchcraft ; 
but  we  have  not  space  to  transcribe  them  ; 
for  Isobell  was  a  mighty  talker,  and  told 


82       [Jill-  25.  185;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Coaductei 


much.  Olio-  thoir.;'h.  slid  \v;is  nearly  caught 
as  a  bare  ;  sdie  had  just  time  to  run  behind  a 
dust,  the  dogs  panting  after  her,  and  to 
say : — 

"  H:\ir!  liair!  God  send  the  cair  ! 
I  am  in  a  hcaris  likncs  now, 
Bot  1  sail  be  a  \voniau  fwiii  now  ! 
liair  !  hair  !  God  send  tliu  cuir!" 


which    restored    her   to  her   proper    shape 

again. 

Satan. 

calling 


But.  they  had  a  hard  task-master  in 


little  light  into  the  heavy  brains  of  the  igno- 
rant and  superstitious  rulers  ;  for,  though 
even  ho  » Saved  not  go  so  tar  a1*  to  deny  the 
existence  of  witchcraft  altogether  like  the 
"Sadducees"  of  England,  yet  he  condemned 
"  next  to  the  wretches  themselves,  those  cruel 
and  too  forward  judges  who  burn  persons  by 
thousands  as  guilty  of  this  crime."  He 
instanced  out  of  his  own  knowledge,  a 
poor  weaver  convicted  of  sorcery,  who,  on 
being  asked  what  the  devil  was  like  when 


He  often  beat  them;  especially  for  j  he  appeared  to  him,  answered,  "like  flies 
him  Black  Johnnie,  which  they  dancing  about  the  candle ;"  and  a  poor 
wou.d  do  amongst  themselves  ;  when  he  woman  asked  him  seriously  when  she  was 
would  suddenly  appear  in  the  midst  of  \  accused,  if  a  person  could  be  a  witch  and  not 
them,  saying,  "  I  ken  weel  enough  what  ye  j  know  it  1  Another,  who  had  confessed  judi- 
aiv  Baying  of  me!"  and  fall  to  scourging  '  cially,  told  him,  under  secrecy,  "  that  she  had 
them  like  a  fierce  school-master  with  his  !  not  contest  because  she  was  guilty  ;  but,  being 


a  poor  creature  who  wrought  for  her  meat, 
she  knew  she  would  starve  ;  for  no  person 
thereafter  would  either  give  her  meat  or 
lodging,  and  that  all  men  would  beat  her 


scholars.  Alexander  Elder  was  very  often 
beaten.  He  was  very  "soft,"  and  did 
nothing  but  howl  and  cry,  not  defending 
himself  in  the  least.  But,  Margaret  Wil- 
son defended  herself  with  her  hands,  and  '  anoT  hound  dogs  at  her,  and  that,  therefore, 
Bessie  Wilson  "  would  speak  crusty  with  j  she  desired  to  be  out  of  the  world  ;  where- 
her  tongue,  and  would  be  belling  at  him  ]  upon  she  wept  most  bitterly,  and  upon  her 
soundly;"  so  that  on  the  whole  the  fiend !  knees  called  God  to  witness"  what  she  said." 
had  but  a  riotous  set  of  servants  after  all.  |  Another  told  him  that,  "  she  was  afraid  the 
Janet  Braidhead  succeeded  Isobell  Gowdie  \  devil  would  challenge  a  right  to  her  after  she 
in  her  madness.  Her  confession,  made  was  said  to  be  his  servant,  and  would  haunt 
between  IsobelPs  third  and  fourth,  follows  her,  as  the  minister  said,  when  he  was 
in  precisely  the  same  track.  She,  like  her  desiring  her  to  confess,  and  therefore  she 
unhappy  predecessor,  gave  the  names  of  desired  to  die." 

numerous  respectable  people  whom  she  j  A  poor  woman  in  Lauder  jail,  lying  there 
asserted  were  belonging  to  the  various  ,  on  charge  of  witchcraft,  sent  for  the  minister 
covens.  She  even  accused  her  own  husband  of  of  the  town  to  make  her  true  confession :  which 

was  of  reiterated  acts  of  sorcery.  The 
minister  did  not  believe  her,  but  ascribed 
this  confession  to  the  devil.  However,  the 
woman  persisted,  and  was  taken  out  with  the 
rest  to  be  burnt.  Just  before  her  execution, 
she  cried  out :  "  Now,  all  you  that  see  me 
this  day,  know  that  I  am  now  to  die  a  witch 

thing  was  euougli  for  a  conviction  in  those  by  my  own  confession,  and  I  free  all  men, 
days.  A  muttered  curse,  an  angry  threat,  especially  the  ministers  and  magistrates,  of 
a  little  more  knowledge  than  the  rest  of  the  <  the  guilt  of  my  blood.  I  take  it  wholly  on 
neighbours,  a  taste  for  natural  history,  an  j  myself.  My  blood  be  upon  my  own  head ; 
evil  temper,  or  a  lonely  life,  anything  was  •  and  as  I  must  make  answer  to  the  God  of 
sufficient  to  fasten  the  reputation  of  sorcery  i  heaven  presently,  I  declare  I  am  as  free  of 
on  man  or  woman  ;  and  that  reputation  j  witchcraft  as  any  child ;  but  being  delated 
once  fastened,  then  indeed  the  happiest,  as  j  by  a  malicious  woman,  and  put  in  prison 
the  most  fatally  certain,  thing  for  the  suf-  j  under  the  name  of  a  witch,  disowned  by  my 
ferer  was  death.  Life  would  have  been  but  husband  and  friends,  and  seeing  no  ground  of 
one  long  martyrdom  of  want  and  shame  and  hope  of  my  coming  out  of  prison,  or  ever 


presenting  her  for  the  infernal  baptism  ;  and, 
as  the  confession  of  one  witch  was  sufficient 
for  tiie  condemnation  of  all  named  therein, 
it  is  mournful  to  reflect  on  the  number  of 
innocent  people  the  wild  ravings  of  one  or 
LWO  lunatics  could  doom  to  misery  and 
and  a  felon's  cruel  death.  Any- 


insult. 


coming  in  credit  again,  through  the  tempta- 


j  ne  delusion  at  last  wore  itself  out.  The  ,  tion  of  the  devil  I  made  up  that  confession, 
latest  execution  in  Scotland  for  witchcraft  was  on  purpose  to  destroy  my  own  life,  being 
tiiat  of  an  old  idiot-woman  in  seventeen  huu-  i  weary  of  it,  and  choosing  rather  to  die  than 
"dredaud  twenty-two  ;  but  even  before  then, !  to  live;"  and  so  died.  Even  after  Sir 
in  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-eight,  a  sus-  i  George  Mackenzie's  noble  book,  however, 
pected  witch  had  known  how  to  get  legal :  the  witch-fires  were  still  kept  burning ; 
redress  against  some  who  had  tormented  and  j  hundreds  of  innocent  creatures,  hundreds  of 
pricked  her.  Sir  George  Mackenzie,  "  that :  desperate,  insane,  or  ruined  wretches  were 
noble  wit  of  Scotland,"  was  mainly  instru-  bound  to  the  stake  and  burnt  to  ashes,  on 
mental  in  putting  down  the  horrible  phantasy  these  foul  and  ridiculous  charges.  The 
which  lay  like  a  curse  on  the  laud, and  blighted  young,  the  old,  the  beautiful,  the  noble,  the 
the  whole  race  on  which  it  fell.  His  elo-  j  mean  and  the  wealthy,  all  were  fair  game 
quent,  forcible,  and  manly  reasonings  let  a  i  alike.  iTor  witnesses, — the  testimony  of  a 


Charles  DickeiiB.] 


CHIP. 


(July  25, 1S37-1      83 


child  of  eight  years  of  age  was  taken  against 
the  mother  ;  and  a  girl  of  fourteen  was 
accused  as  a  professed  witch  by  a  child  scarce 
out  of  the  cradle. 


CHIP. 


MYSTERIES  of  all  kinds  environ  the  me- 
mory of  Robert  Dudley,  Earl  of  Leicester, 
the  proud  favourite  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  He 
seemed  peculiarly  prone  to  placing  himself  in 
awkward  predicaments  by  contracting  mar- 
riages which,  if  discovered,  were  sure  to 
bring  upon  him  the  wrath  of  his  jealous 
and  vain  mistress.  That  he  was  really  the 
husband  of  the  unfortunate  Amy  Robsart, 
the  heroine  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's  inimitable 
novel,  cannot  be  positively  asserted  ;  but  it 
seems  a  received  opinion  that  he  was  pri- 
vately married,  or  else  that  he  feigned  a 
marriage  to  deceive  the  Lady  Douglas 
Sheffield,  the  mother  of  his  son,  who  was 
called  Sir  Robert  Dudley. 

The  fate  of  this  young  man  is  peculiarly 
sad.  During  his  mother's  lifetime,  the  earl 
became  the  acknowledged  husband  of  another 
lady,  and  it  was  not  till  after  his  father's 
death  that  he  endeavoured  to  prove  his  legi- 
timacy. Kenilworth  Castle  was  left  by  the 
earl  to  his  brother  Ambrose,  Earl  of  War- 
wick, for  his  life,  but  to  descend  on  the 
demise  of  that  brother  to  Sir  Robert  Dudley, 
whom  he  names  in  his  will  as  his  son.  It 
happened  that  he  came  into  possession  in  a 
very  short  time,  and  then,  probably  from 
some  proofs  he  obtained,  resolved  to  esta- 
blish an  undoubted  right  to  the  estates  he 
enjoyed  by  his  father's  gift. 

Scarcely  had  proceedings  been  commenced 
than  all  question  was  abruptly  concluded 
by  a  special  order  of  the  lords  and  per- 
emptory orders  issued  that  all  the  deposi- 
tions brought  forward  should  be  sealed  up, 
and  no  copies  taken  without  the  king's  special 
license. 

Permission,  or  rather  a  command,  was 
given  to  Sir  Robert  to  travel  for  three  years, 
at  the  end  of  which  time,  in  consequence  of 
his  continued  absence,  the  considerate  King 
James  seized  his  castle  and  estates  for  the 
use  of  the  crown.  Officers  were  sent  down 
to  Kenilworth  to  make  a  survey,  by  whom  it 
was  reported  that "  the  like,  both  for  strength 
and  pleasure,  and  state,  was  not  within  the 
realm  of  England." 

Doubtless,  King  James  sincerely  regretted 
that  the  contumacious  absence  of  the  young 
heir  of  Kenilworth  should  have  obliged 
him  to  take  charge  of  these  estates  ;  to  show 
his  disinterestedness  he  bestowed  them,  not 
on  his  favourite  Carr,  but  on  his  son,  Prince 
Henry,  who,  with  his  customary  nobility  of 
spirit,  proclaimed  his  readiness  to  pay  to  the 
Desdichado  Sir  Robert,  the  sum  of  fourteen 
thousand  five  hundred  pounds,  for  his  title  to 


the  castle  and  domains.  The  death  of  this 
amiable  and  generous  prince,  the  very  con- 
trast to  his  cold-hearted  father,  prevented  the 
payment  of  the  money,  except  three  thousand 
pounds  which,  arrested  by  unworthy  hands 
before  it  reached  Sir  Robert,  never  bene- 
fited him. 

Kenilworth  remained  to  the  crown,  and  the 
heir  was  forced  to  exist  on  a  pension 
granted  him  by  the  grand-duke  of  Tuscany, 
whose  warm  friendship  supported  him  under 
his  severe  trials.  He  was  held  in  high  honour 
by  foreign  sovereigns,  and  the  title  of  duke  was 
bestowed  on  him  by  the  Emperor  Ferdinand 
the  Second.  He  had  married  before  he 
quitted  England,  a  daughter  of  Sir  Thomas 
Leigh,  who,  for  some  unexplained  reason,  re- 
mained behind  in  England,  and  died  at  the 
advanced  age  of  ninety,  adored  by  all  her 
dependants. 

She  lies  buried  in  the  Church  of  Stone- 
leigh  in  Warwickshire,  with  her  daughter, 
the  sole  solace  of  her  long  bereavement.  She 
bears  on  her  tomb  the  title  of  Alice,  Duchess 
Dudley,  and  above  her  effigies,  beneath  a 
canopy,  are  shields  of  arms  to  which  royal 
jealousy  disputed  the  right  of  her  hus- 
band. 

This  is  a  curious  story,  and  involves 
much  mystery.  Who  was  Sir  Robert  Dud- 
ley ?  An  entry  in  a  manuscript,  at  the 
free  school  of  Shrewsbury,  tells  of  a 
certain  son  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester  and 
Queen  Elizabeth.*  Was  this  son  brought  up 
i  by  Lady  Douglas  Sheffield,  whose  marriage 
was  never  proved,  and  was  the  Maiden 
Queen,  as  has  been  suspected,  in  truth,  pri- 
vately united  to  her  subject  1 

Was  this  the  cause  of  her  disinclination  to 
name  her  successor,  and  was  this  the  reason 
of  Sir  Robert's  banishment  1  The  fate  of 
Arabella  Stuart,  warning  the  heir  of  Keuil- 
worth  that  those  who  had  even  a  distant 
claim  to  the  crown  were  never  in  safety  from 
the  cruel  and  crafty  James. 

What  became  of  those  papers  so  carefully 
sealed  up  and  not  permitted  to  see  the  light? 
Did  Overbury  know  of  their  existence  ?  Did 
Prince  Henry  suspect  their  contents,  and  did 


*  This  manuscript,  which  is  well  preserved  and  par- 
tially illuminated,  once  belonged  to  a  Koman  Catholic  vicar 
of  Shrewsbury,  who  in  fifteen  hundred  and  fifty -five  was 
appointed  to  the  vicarage  by  Queen  Mary.    He  afterwards 
conformed  to  the  Established  Church,  and  held  the  living 
for  sixty  years.     This  vicar,   who  was  called  Sir  John. 
Dychar,  m  ight  not  have  been  friendly  to  the  Protestant 
queen  ;  and  the  singular  entry  hi  his  hand  on  the  margin 
of  the  book  may  have  been  a  piece  of  malice.     It  is,  how- 
ever,   remarkable  that  an   attempt  has  been  made  to 
efface  the  entry,  but  unsuccessfully,  the  first  ink  being 
I  the  blackest,  and  refusing  to  be  overpowered  by  that 
i  which  substituted  other  words,  in  hopes  of  misleading 
the  reader.     The  entry  runs  as  follows:  "Henry  Roido 
!  Dudley  Tuther  Plautageuet,  filius  Q.    E.   reg.  et  Robt. 
|  Comitis  Leicestr."      This  is  written  at  the  top  of  the 
[  page,  nearly  at  the  beginning  of  the  book,  and  at  the 
bottom  there  has  evidently  been  more;   but  a  square 
piece  h:is  been  cut  out  of  the  leaf,  therefore  the  secret  is 
effectually  preserved.     There  is  a  tradition  that  such  a 
personage  as  this  mysterious  son  was  brought  up  secretly 
at  the  free-school  of  Shrewsbury ;  but  what  became  of 
him  is  not  known ;   nor  is  it  easy  to  account  for  this 
curious  entry  in  the  parish-church  book  of  Shrewsbury. 


84       '[July  25,  1S5T.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Somerset    advise  the  means   of   concealing 
the  knowledge  for  ever  ? 

The  Hither  of  fair  Alice,  the  wife  of  the 
banished  Sir  Robert,  was  Sir  Thomas 
Leigh,  Alderman  of  London  in  Elizabeth's 
time.  He  bought  large  estates  in  this 
part  of  Warwickshire,  and  built  his 
house  on  the  site  of  an  abbey.  It  is 
a  curious  fact  that  his  descendants  were 
staunch  friends  of  the  house  of  Stuart,  and 
carried  their  devotion  to  such  an  extent  that 
they  remained  partisans  up  to  the  close  of 
the  last  century,  cherishing  a  hostile  feeling 
towards  the  reigning  family,  and  dwelling 
on  every  circumstance  which  recalled  the 
memory  of  the  old.  Portraits  of  the  Stuarts 
adorned  their  halls,  memorials  of  the  Stuarts 
surrounded  them  on  every  side,  and  they 
lived  in  solitai-y  gloom,  brooding  over  the 
fate  of  that  ill-starred  race,  and  indifferent  to 
the  moving  and  advancing  world  beyond, 
by  whom  the  Stuarts  were  gradually  for- 
gotten. The  last  lord  fell  into  a  state  of 
moody  depression,  and  on  his  death  and 
that  of  his  sister,  the  estate  passed  to  another 
branch. 


AN  ENCUMBERED  ESTATE. 


NOT  many  years  ago  a  very  large  part  of 
the  soil  of  Ireland  was  under  the  control  of 
the  Court  of  Chancery.  Everybody  knows 
what  an  affectionate  interest  that  venerable 
institution  takes  in  all  the  concerns  of  life  ; 
how  it  meditates  on  all  the  conflicting 
relations  of  man  and  property  ;  how  it  hears, 
inquires,  ponders,  doubts,  and  lingers.  It 
may  be  easily  imagined,  then,  with  what 
special  fitness  it  applies  its  unwieldiness  to 
the  complicated  details  of  land  management, 
and  what  blessed  results  must  follow  from 
the  esteemed  official  method  of  doing  every- 
body's business  by  deputy.  The  following 
sketch — from  my  own  experience — of  an 
Encumbered  Estate,  and  how  Chancery 
stepped  in  to  set  everything  to  rights,  will 
afford  an  illustration  of  the  system,  and  give 
one  more  representation  of  a  phase  of  Irish 
life  which,  by  no  means  new  in  fiction,  is 
happily  becoming  more  rare  in  actual 
existence. 

When  a  mortgagee  or  judgment  creditor 
wished  to  get  in  his  money,  the  owner  of  the 
lands  charged  therewith  being,  of  course, 
unable  to  pay,  a  bill  was  filed  in  Chancery, 
praying  that  the  lands  might  be  sold  for  the 
discharge  of  the  debts,  and  that  in  the  mean 
time  a  receiver  should  be  appointed  to 
collect  the  rents,  which  were  to  be  applied, 
first,  to  the  payment  of  costs,  and  secondly  to 
keep  down  the  interest  on  the  encumbrances. 
It  was  a  very  rare  circumstance  indeed  when 
any  surplus  remained  towards  the  liquida- 
tion of  the  principal. 

To  prepare  an  estate  for  sale — to  make  out 
the  title — to  take  an  account  of  all  the  debts, 
demanded  much  labour  and  often  involved 


serious  and  difficult  questions  of  law,  so  that 
years  were  commonly  spent  on  the  work. 
The  lawyers  and  receivers  profited  by  the 
costs  and  expenses,  and  felt  no  temptation 
to  hurry  matters.  So  it-  has  happened 
that  receivers  remained  in  undisturbed  pos- 
session of  their  posts  for  many  years ;  and, 
giowing  grey  or  dying  in  the  service,  have 
transmitted  the  office  as  an  inheritance  to 
their  sons.  During  all  this  time,  the  unfor- 
tunate owners  were  ousted  from  their 
patrimony,  and  were  not  suffered  to  interfere 
in  the  management.  They  might  sometimes 
attempt  to  expedite  the  progress  of  the 
litigation,  but  in  general  they  were  quiescent, 
mystified  by  the  cloudy  terrors  of  the  law, 
or  perhaps  unwilling  to  provoke  the  too 
speedy  investigation  of  a  dubious  title,  or — 
which  was  just  as  likely  as  any  other  reason 
— being  so  deeply  encumbered  as  to  be  with- 
out interest  in — and  consequently  indifferent 
as  to  what  became  of — the  estate.  If,  moreover, 
the  owner,  as  was  sometimes  the  case,  was 
allowed  to  retain  possession  of  the  dwelling- 
house  and  a  few  acres  of  land,  he  became  as 
interested  in  delay  as  was  every  one  con- 
cerned except  the  creditors,  who,  however,  in 
the  former  state  of  the  law  could  not  help  them- 
selves. The  measure  for  the  sale  of  Encum- 
bered Estates  in  Ireland,  and  other  changes, 
have  removed  many  of  the  impediments  here 
hinted  at,  and  have  thereby  not  a  little  con- 
tributed to  the  present  and  growing  pros- 
perity of  that  country. 

I  was  once  induced  to  become  the  receiver 
for  a  property  in  Tipperary  by  a  friendly 
attorney,  who  being  concerned  for  the  plain- 
tiff in  the  cause,  stipulated  with  me  that  I 
should  appoint  him  my  solicitor :  also  a 
species  of  plurality  now  prohibited,  but  at 
that  time  common,  and  productive  of  much 
abuse.  My  duties,  according  to  his  represen- 
tation, would  be  of  a  light  and  pleasant 
nature,  affording  the  opportunity  of  making 
a  little  money  by  the  agreeable  method  of  a 
summer  excursion  to  a  pretty  country.  It  was 
Tipperary,  to  be  sure,  but  this  estate  was 
of  quite  an  exceptional  character,  and  the 
Tipperary  boys,  after  all,  were  not  so  very 
black  as  it  was  the  fashion  to  paint  them. 

Careless,  and  full  of  confidence,  I  set  forth 
to  introduce  myself  to  the  tenantry,  who 
received  me  with  great  respect.  As  I  left 
each  cottage  the  inmates  accompanied  me 
to  the  next,  and  when  I  arrived  at  a 
remote  part  of  the  lands,  more  than  a  mile 
from  the  road,  I  found  myself  surrounded  by 
forty  or  fifty  stalwart  specimens  of  that  wild 
peasantry  whose  evil  reputation  had  spread 
over  Europe.  Smiles  and  words  of  welcome 
met  me  wherever  I  turned  ;  yet  their  glance 
was  bold,  and  implied,  I  fancied,  a  conscious 
pride  of  their  prowess  and  their  fame.  They 
looked  dangerous,  in  short,  and  I  deemed  it 
prudent  for  the  present  to  suppress  the  lofty 
and  severe  discourse  which  I  had  prepared 
upon  the  duties  of  tenants,  the  rights  of  pro- 


Chr.iles  Dickens.] 


AN  ENCUMBERED  ESTATE. 


[July  25,  !?3M        85 


perty,  and  the  dread  powers  of  the  Court  of 
Chancery  ;  inviting  them  to  meet  me  for 
the  despatch  of  business,  in  the  neighbouring 
town  on  the  morrow,  I  dismissed  the  assem- 
bly with  a  few  conciliatory  words,  which  were 
received  with  applause  and  complimentary 
phrases,  which  have  as  much  meaning  in  low  as 
in  polite  society.  "  May  your  honour  live  long 
to  reign  over  us,"  and  "  It  is  easy  to  know  the 
real  gentleman,"  were  current  flatteries  with 
these  proficients  in  blarney. 

On  the  next  day  a  few  brought  money, — 
many  brought  only  excuses,  which  were 
either  palpably  false  or  seemed  very  like 
defiance  ;  some  of  the  tenants  did  not  ap- 
pear ;  but,  all  who  came  had  a  story  of  griev- 
ance and  oppression  suffered  at  the  hands  of 
their  deposed  landlord. 

Mr.  Bigg  was  still  a  young  man,  having 
inherited  the  estate  from  his  father  while 
a  child.  Beared  in  utter  idleness,  without 
education,  and  in  the  unrestrained  indulgence 
of  every  boyish  caprice,  he  no  sooner  obtained 
full  possession  of  his  property  than  he 
launched  into  the  wildest  excesses  of  folly  and 
extravagance.  Having  quickly  dissipated 
the  savings  of  a  long  minority,  he  borrowed 
largely  on  mortgages  and  judgments ;  in 
a  few  years,  becoming  unable  to  raise  more 
money  in  this  way,  and  sorely  pressed  by 
accumulated  embarrassments,  he  had  recourse 
to  the  last  shifts  of  a  cruel  and  unscrupulous 
ingenuity.  He  started  points  of  law,  broke 
leases,  and  raised  the  rents,  which  he  insisted 
on  being  paid  to  the  day,  although  a  hanging 
gale  was  the  usage  of  the  country  ;  and  if  the 
tenants  were  not  up  to  time,he  distrained  with- 
out a  day's  delay  and  without  notice.  He 
persuaded  them  to  lend  him  money,  and  when  j 
rent-day  came  round  would  allow  no  credit  j 
for  the  loan,  but  would  compel  them  to  pay 
or  would  levy  a  distress  without  mercy.  His 
horses  and  cattle  trespassed  in  their  fields, 
and  he  freely  helped  himself  to  whatever 
pleased  him  of  their  property.  So  matters 
went  on  for  two  or  three  years,  the  landlord 
becoming  more  and  more  deeply  involved, 
his  life  more  degraded  and  his  resources 
more  desperate  ;  for,  as  the  tenants  became 
poorer,  they  grew  more  cunning,  as  well  as 
sullen  and  fierce,  and  it  was  neither  so  pro- 
fitable nor  so  easy  to  cheat  and  bully  them 
as  before.  Seeing  that  these  things  took  j 
place  in  Tipperary,  the  marvel  ia  that  the 
harried  and  plundered  peasants  did  not  turn 
on  their  oppressor.  Examples  were  not  want-  '• 
ing  in  their  close  neighbourhood  of  a  terrible  ; 
vengeance  for  a  tenant's  wrongs.  But  whe- 
ther it  was  that  the  agrarian  code  had  not 
yet  attained  to  that  hellish  perfection  at 
which  it  afterwards  arrived,  or  that  a  linger- 
ing spark  of  personal  affection  prompted  their 
forbearance,  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  they 
never  Inade  any  open  resistance  to  his  out- 
rages, and  never  by  any  overt  act  resented 
them  ;  and  although  many  of  his  proceedings 
were  notoriously  illegal,  not  one  of  the  unfor- 


tunate people  evar  went  to  law  with  the 
master.  Indeed,  the  probability  is,  that  so 
sneaking  an  attempt  would  have  been  indig- 
nantly reprobated  by  the  body  of  the  ten- 
antry. It  was  commonly  supposed  also,  that 
a  chosen  band  of  the  most  reckless  spirits 
watched  over  the  safety  of  the  landlord  ;  and 
this  circumstance,  or  the  prevalent  belief  of 
it,  may  have  deterred  any  hostile  enter- 
prise. 

Like  the  farmers  and  peasantry  of  other 
countries,  the  Irish  are  great  lovers  of 
field  sports  ;  Mr.  Bigg  was  ardent  in  the 
pursuit  of  every  species  of  game.  A  debt 
incurred  for  topboots  and  other  hunting  gear 
was  the  nucleus  of  the  large  encumbrance 
which  was  the  immediate  cause  or  instru- 
ment of  his  ruin  ;  the  plaintiff  in  the  cause 
of  Toby  versus  Bigg,  being  a  celebrated  boot- 
maker and  money-lender.  Almost  to  the  last, 
Mr.  Bigg  kept  horses  and  hounds  ;  and  near 
the  close  of  his  career  of  dissipation,  it  happened 
more  than  once,  while  he  had  no  dinner  to 
eat  and  none  to  help  him,  that  he  being 
on  his  keeping,  that  is,  hiding  from  the  pro- 
cess of  the  court,  his  favourite  hunter,  which 
he  cftuld  not  bring  himself  to  part  with,  was 
plentifully  but  stealthily  supplied  with  oats 
by  the  tenants ;  and  his  dogs  were  brought 
home  to  their  cottages  and  shared  their 
children's  meals.  Their  landlord  had  spent 
his  boyhood  amongst  them  ;  they  had  catered 
for,  and  been  the  companions  of  his  amuse- 
ments, for  in  the  field  he  was  free  and  joyous 
as  in  business  he  was  morose  and  harsh.  A 
community  of  enjoyment  is  a  strong  bond  of 
attachment,  and  its  influence  never  wholly 
faded  away  from  the  minds  of  the  rough 
but  kindly  peasants.  Master  John,  they 
called  their  patron  in  the  wild  days  of  his 
youth;  and  the  same  familiar  and  affectionate 
style  of  Master  John  they  continued,  even 
when  most  embittered  against  him  for  his 
oppression. 

It  would  be  hopeless  to  attempt  a  de- 
scription of  the  confusion  into  which  the 
property  had  been  brought  by  Mr.  Bigg's  ex- 
traordinary system  of  management.  The 
boundaries  of  the  farms  were  unsettled  ;  the 
lands  were  full  of  squatters,  many  of  whom 
had  formerly  been  tenants  and  had  been 
ejected  by  the  landlord.  These  inter- 
lopers of  course  paid  no  rent,  and  were 
omitted  from  the  rental,  or  list  of  tenants 
and  farms,  which  the  owner  gave  in  for  my 
use  and  guidance  as  receiver.  This  docu  ment 
also  contained  a  statement  of  the  arrears  01 
rent  due,  and,  as  might  be  expected,  made 
no  mention  of  the  monies  which  many  of  the 
tenants  had  advanced  in  the  name  or  under 
the  pretence  of  fines  and  loans ;  and  in  most 
cases  there  was  a  suppression  of  the  agreement 
to  grant  leases  in  consideration  of  these 
advances.  Utterly  vain  was  the  effort  to 
arrange  such  complicated  accounts,  or  to 
reconcile  the  reclamations  of  the  tenants 
with  the  obstinate  demands  of  the  landlord. 


86 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


In  tliose  days  tlie  Court  of  Chancery  seldom 
abated  rents,  or  remitted  arrears,  and  was 
slow  to  adopt  any  unusual  steps  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  affairs  of  an  estate,  unless  with 
the  consent  of  the  inheritor,  or  owner.  In 
this  case,  the  inheritor  would  consent  to 
nothing  ;  with  a  proper  amount  of  vigour 
and  activity  on  the  part  of  the  receiver,  all 
arrears  could  easily  be  got  in.  After  this 
hint  of  what  I  was  to  expect  if  I  should 
betray  a  weak  compassion  for  the  poor 
tenants,  or  any  sickly  distaste  for  the  task 
appointed  me  of  grinding  them  to  the  dust, 
1  steeled  my  resolution  and  buckled  on  my 
armour  for  the  crusade  against  the  rebellious 
vassals  of  Riggballyrann. 

1'assive  resistance  was  the  order  of  the 
day  throughout  the  estate.  .Not  only 
those  were  recusants,  who  had  reason  to 
think'  they  had  been  cheated  or  oppressed  ; 
but,  the  few  who  had  no  real  grievance  to 
allege,  taking  advantage  of  the  general  dis- 
order, set  up  fictitious  claims,  and  played  to 
admiration  the  obstreperous  martyr  to  land- 
lord cruelty.  For  two  years  the  contest 
raged,  maintained  on  one  side  by  a  whole 
army  of  bailiffs  and  other  minions  of  the 
law,  by  perpetual  seizures  of  crops  and 
cattle,  public  cants  or  sales  by  auction,  by 
civil  bill-processes  (actions  in  the  County 
Court),  and  by  writs  of  attachment  issuing 
from  Chancery, — and  obstinately  encountered 
on  the  other  part  by  rescues,  hiding  from 
the  officers  of  justice,  making  away  with 
crops  by  night,  by  the  occasional  thrashing 
of  an  \inlucky  bailiff  after  making  him  dine 
on  his  own  process,  and  by  the  exercise  of 
every  species  of  evasion,  in  all  the  manifold 
varieties  of  trickery,  which  the  native  inge- 
nuity of  Tipperary-boys  and  the  practised 
craft  of  quarter-sessions  attorneys  could  sug- 
gest. A  certain  excitement  was  not  wanting 
to  this  chaos  of  embroilment ;  but  after  a 
while,  the  inglorious  strife  began  to  weary 
me,  and  I  was  disgusted  by  the  loss  of 
time  and  the  smallnesa  of  profit ;  for  the 
amount  of  rent  received  was  small,  and  the 
labour  was  considerable.  Meanwhile,  the 
expenses  to  the  estate  were  very  great,  for, 
in  addition  to  the  forces  kept  on  foot  and 
parallel  with  the  movements  in  the  field,  a 
series  of  proceedings  was  i-arried  on  in  the 
Master's  Office  in  Dublin,  by  the  machinery 
of  what  are  called  statements  of  facts,  con- 
taining reports  of  our  doings  in  the  country, ! 
and  recommendations  of  new  measures  to  be  ; 
adopted.  These  often  provoked  opposition 
from  the  owner  or  the  creditors  ;  ami  nume- 
rous attendances  and  much  debates  ensued, 
to  the  huge  pleasure  and  advantage  of  the 
professional  gentlemen  engaged. 

There  were  five  brothers  named  Martin,  i 
occupying,  on  a  remote  part  of  the  property, 
as  many  farms,  which  originally  formed  one 
holding  of  about  one  hundred  and  forty 
acres,  and  had  been  in  possession  of  their 
father  under  a  lease  from  Mr.  Rigg's  prede- 


cessor. This  lease,  Mr.  Pugg  cancelled, 
alleging  that  the  division  amongst  the  five 
sons  had  wrought  a  forfeiture,  lie  consider- 
ably increased  the  rents,  and  then  promised 
them  separate  leases,  provided  each  paid  him 
in  advance  a  sum  equal  to  a  year's  rent, 
which  was  to  be  allowed  in  the  last  year  of 
the  term.  Having  received  the  money,  he 
evaded  the  execution  of  the  leases,  and  dis- 
trained regularly  every  half-year  for  the 
rent.  In  his  sworn  rental,  he  entered  them 
as  tenants  from  year  to  year,  and  made  no 
mention  of  the.  promised  leases  or  of«  the 
sums  which  they  had  advanced  ;  and  when 
asked  by  me  for  an  explanation,  he  repudiated 
the  transaction  altogether,  declaring,  that 
the  money  had  been  given  for  the  goodwill 
on  their  entering  their  farms.  The  receipts 
were  so  vaguely  worded  as  to  throw  no  light 
on  the  matter  ;  the  old  lease  had  been  givn 
up  to  the  landlord,  who  destroyed  it,  and  the 
unfortunate  Martins  had  no  documentary 
evidence  of  the  agreement.  They  refused 
to  pay  any  rent,  unless  the  leases  were 
granted,  which  the  Court  could  not  do  ;  or 
unless  they  were  repaid  their  advances,  which 
Mr.  Rigg  neither  would  nor  could  do.  And 
so  they  were  left  to  the  mercy  of  the  law, 
and  the  extreme  rigour  of  the  Court,  which 
it  was  my  duty  to  enforce. 

These  Martins  were  all  tall  and  athletic 
men,  with  dark  eyes  and  a  quick  and  lively 
expression.  They  were  above  the  order  of 
peasants,  and  two  of  them  were  the  hand- 
somest specimens  I  had  seen  of  that  physi- 
cally noble  race.  The  beauty  of  their  children 
was  quite  remarkable,  and  the  occasional 
gifts  of  pence  and  toys,  which  I  bestowed  on 
them,  quickly  won  their  favour,  which  was 
not  without  its  influence  on  the  parents, 
with  whom  I  was  more  popular  than  the 
unpleasant  nature  of  rny  business  with  them 
led  me  to  expect.  On  my  first  visit,  I  was 
warmly  received  ;  they  hoped  now  to  have 
justice  ;  they  told  me  their  story,  expressing 
a  wish  to  live  at  peace,  for  they  had  been 
sorely  harassed.  Nevertheless,  they  would 
pay  no  rent,  as  they  had  not  got  the  leases, 
nor  been  allowed  the  money  they  had 
advanced.  I  distrained  the  corn  in  their 
haggards  ;  but,  in  order  to  save  the  expense 
of  bailiffs  and  keepers,  they  were  persuaded 
to  give  security  for  its  production  on  the  day 
of  sale.  The  auction  was  attended  only  by 
themselves  and  a  few  neighbours,  who  bought 
at  fair  prices,  of  course,  in  trust  for  the  JV1  ar- 
tins  ;  and  all  passed  off  quietly.  They  had 
not  yet  abandoned  all  hopes  of  a  settlement, 
and  were  unwilling  prematurely  to  provoke 
a  rupture. 

Six  months  afterwards,  having  failed  to 
arrange  their  accounts,  the.  land  lord  refusing 
to  yield,  I  paid  the  Martins  another  visit,  and 
found  them  civil,  but  on  the  subject  of  rent 
intractable.  They  would  never  pay  a  penny, 
nor  give  up  their  farms — I  might  do  as  I 
pleased.  There  was  an  ominous  air  of  pre- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


AN  ENCUMBERED  ESTATE. 


[July25,lS67.1       87 


paration  and  precaution  about  them ;  the 
houses  were  closely  shut  up  ;  the  doors  and 
windows  were  fastened,  and  were  opened 
only  on  my  word  of  honour  that  I  would  not 
distrain.  Look-out  men  were  posted  at  the 
stiles  and  on  the  slope  of  the  hill  to  pass  the 
signal  of  any  hostile  demonstration  ;  and  the 
cattle  had  been  driven  on0  the  lauds.  Finding 
the  Martins  inexorable,  I  gave  them  notice 
that  I  must  proceed  to  extremities  ;  and 
coming  on  the  next  day  with  bailiffs,  I  seized 
whatever  we  could  lay  hands  on,  which  was 
but  little  in  addition  to  the  growing  crops, 
which  at  that  time  might  be  taken  in  distress. 
On  this  occasion  keepers  were  placed  in 
charge  until  the  sale  could  take  place,  four- 
teen days  later.  They  slept  on  their  post, 
were  made  drunk,  and  the  neighbours 
assembled,  and,  by  the  light  of  a  brilliant 
harvest  moon,  reaped  the  corn  and  carried  it 
off  the  lands,  where  I  could  not  follow  it : 
although  rumour  and  suspicion  traced  it  to  the 
barns  of  a  certain  justice  of  the  peace,  living 
not  far  away,  and  who  scarcely  thought  it 
necessary  to  deny  his  complicity  in  this 
contempt  of  law.  The  thing  was  notorious 
enough,  but  evidence  could  not  be  obtained, 
though  matter  was  gleaned  to  furnish  another 
statement  of  facts  and  another  bill  of  costs. 

The  auction  of  what  goods  were  left  was 
attended  by  crowds  of  people,  plainly  bent 
on  preventing  any  purchases  being  made  ; 
and  accordingly  the  lots  were,  one  after  the 
other,  knocked  down  for  a  few  pence  to 
friends  of  the  Martins,  and  of  course  for 
them.  I  made  one  or  two  biddings  on  my 
own  account ;  but,  finding  myself  declared  the 
buyer,  for  ten  shillings,  of  a  huge  clamp  of  | 
turf  (or  peat)  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  long, 
which  it  would  be  impossible  to  dispose  of,  I 
gave  up  speculation,  and  let  things  take  their 
course.  The  sale  barely  paid  the  expenses, 
and  clearly  showed  the  determination  of  the 
people  to  back  the  Martins  in  their  contu- 
macy. 

This  sketch  would  be  imperfect  if  it  did 
not  contain  some  notice  of  the  peculiar  class 
of  bailiffs,  keepers,  or  sheriff's-men,  which 
these  agrarian  wars  created  and  fostered. 
You  might  as  well  paint  the  knight  without 
his  squire,  as  separate  the  receiver  and  his 
bailiff.  I  was  obliged  to  employ  several  of 
these  gentry.  The  principal  of  the  gang  was 
a  young  man  of  a  tall  and  slight  figure,  but 
wiry  aud  athletic.  His  arms  were  of  un- 
usual length,  muscular,  and  strong  ;  his  eyes 
were  bloodshot,  and  had  a  stealthy  look 
which  avoided  your  gaze,  but  with  any 
excitement  they  would  flash  with  a  cruel  and 
dangerous  expression.  He  had  been  recom- 
mended to  me  as  the  greatest  ruffian  in 
Tipperary.  Indeed,  none  but  a  ruffian  could 
efficiently  perform  the  duties  required  of 
him  ;  and  his  fidelity  was  in  some  measure 
assured  by  the  fear  and  detestation  with 
which  he  was  regarded  by  the  people. 
Humour  ascribed  to  him  many  desperate  and 


ruthless  deeds  ;  and  he  was  supposed  to  feel 
little  scruple  to  shed  blood  in  self-defence,  or 
in  the  execution  of  his  orders.  Having  once 
been  set  upon,  he  slew  one  of  his  assailants, 
and  wounded  two  or  three  more.  Such  was 
the  fame  of  this  and  other  exploits,  and  such 
the  terror  of  his  prowess,  that  this  man, 
hated  as  he  was,  could  pass  alone  and  unmo- 
lested by  day  or  night  through  the  most 
disturbed  districts  ;  as  the  crowd  retired 
from  his  path  in  the  market-place,  a  grim 
pride  in  the  awe  which  his  presence  inspired 
would  kindle  a  baleful  light  in  his  eye,  at 
which  the  bystanders  would  shudderingly 
cross  themselves.  He  had  no  associates 
except  his  near  relatives  and  his  professional 
colleagues,  and  was  not  afraid  to  occupy  a 
lonely  cottage  in  a  wood,  half  a  mile  from  the 
town,  and  without  another  habitation  near. 
At  the  time  I  made  his  acquaintance  he 
was,  I  suspect,  becoming  weary  of  this 
estrangement  from  his  kind,  and  was  not 
unwilling  to  come  to  terms  with  those  whom 
he  had  hitherto  despised  and  defied.  I  fancy 
there  was  an  understanding  between  him  and 
the  peasantry,  by  virtue  of  which  he  played 
into  their  hands,  and  gave  them  secret  in- 
formation. Yet  when  extreme  measures 
could  no  longer  be  evaded,  or  if  his  blood 
was  up,  the  fierce  and  savage  spirit  revived 
within  him,  and  he  was  as  reckless  and  as 
cruel  as  of  old.  While  in  my  employment, 
however,  I  believe  he  consistently  betrayed 
me  throughout  ;  and  although  opportunities 
were  not  wanting,  he  did  not  display  that 
daring  and  animosity  to  the  peasant  class 
which  had  made  his  reputation.  I  felt  he 
was  not  to  be  depended  on,  in  a  moment  of 
danger. 

One  of  the  Martins  had  struck  and  fright- 
ened away  a  keeper,  and  his  offence  having 
been  duly  reported  in  a  statement  of  facts, 
writ  of  attachment,  nominally  for  non-pay- 
ment of  his  rent,  issued  against  him  ;  and,  by 
dint  of  much  pressing  and  threatening,  the 
dilatory  Sheriff  was  at  length  successful  in 
arresting  him.  On  being  brought  before  the 
magistrates  at  petty  session,  they  thought 
proper  to  let  him  go  without  bail,  on  his 
promise  to  appear  on  a  future  day.  Peter, 
however,  neither  paid  his  rent  nor  obeyed 
the  summons  to  go  to  gaol  ;  whereupon  the 
constabulary  were  ordered  to  take  him  ;  but 
they  were  not  over-zealous  in  their  search, 
and  gave  me  to  understand  that  they  had 
positively  ascertained  he  had  left  the  country. 
Shortly  afterwards,  however,  in  one  of  my 
visits  to  the  lands,  I  observed  the  fugitive 
riding  leisurely  along  the  slope  of  the  oppo- 
site hill,  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  off.  Ke- 
turning  hastily  to  the  town,  I  informed  the 
sub-inspector  of  police  of  what  I  had  seen, 
and  called  upon  him  to  do  his  duty,  warning 
him  of  the  serious  consequences  of  further 
neglecting  the  orders  of  the  Court.  With 
some  confusion  and  prodigious  bustle,  he 
summoned  his  horse  and  a  party  of  his  men, 


88 


[Conducted  by 


and  galloped  away  in  pursuit :  but  the  bird 
had  flown.  Peter  fled  iu  earnest  this  time, 
and  was  never  seen  again  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. 

\Ve  had  wholly  failed  to  subdue  the  con- 
tumacy of  the  tenants.  No  rent  was  paid  ; 
and  the  writs  and  orders  of  the  Court  of 
Chancery  were  disregarded,  not  only  by  the 
peasantry,  but  by  the  magistrates  and  police 
alike.  Whether  this  was  owing  to  the  slow 
and  unwieldy  nature  of  the  powers  of  the 
Court,  or  from  sympathy  with  the  tenants, 
and  dislike  of  such  a  character  as  Mr.  Rigg, 
it  is  not  easy  to  determine.  The  Master, 
however,  was  of  opinion — on  a  new  statement 
of  facts,  and  after  much  discussion  by  counsel 
for  all  parties  in  the  suit — that  such  systema- 
tic and  continued  disobedience  and  contempt 
of  authority  demanded  unusual  remedies. 
He  'therefore  directed  a  case  to  be  laid 
before  the  attorney-general,  who  advised  that 
the  receiver  should  report  the  misconduct  of 
the  constabulary  to  the  authorities  at  the 
Castle,  and  that  I  should  bring  an  action 
against  the  magistrates  who  had  discharged 
the  prisoner  without  bail.  I  flatly  refused  to 
do  either  the  one  or  the  other.  It  was  my  bu- 
siness to  collect  the  rents  ;  and  trouble  and 
danger  enough  did  this  bring  me,  without 
thrusting  my  hand  into  another  hornets' 
nest.  Were  I  to  attack  the  police  and  magis- 
trates, as  suggested,  they  would,  of  course, 
become  deeply  interested  in  probing  and 
sifting  every  part  of  my  proceedings,  to  dis- 
cover some  flaw  or  irregularity  which  might 
release  them  from  responsibility,  and  over- 
whelm me.  However,  on  its  being  repre- 
sented to  the  Master  that  the  contemplated 
proceedings  would  be  expensive,  and  that 
there  were  no  funds  available,  he  authorised 
me  to  wait  until  I  should  get  in  some  money  ; 
but  we  always  so  timed  our  statement  of 
facts,  and  so  calculated  the  costs,  that  there 
never  was  a  penny  in  hand  for  so  dangerous 
an  object. 

The  affair,  however,  began  to  look  serious. 
The  creditors  had  not  yet  been  paid  a  frac- 
tion, the  tenants  were  in  open  rebellion,  and 
the  unprofitable  contest  seemed  likely  to  last 
for  ages.  There  was  much  grumbling  amongst 
the  parties  to  the  cause  ;  the  owner  and 
others  talked  of  holding  the  receiver  account- 
able ;  and  my  sureties  becoming  uneasy, 
besought  me  to  resign  the  office.  This  was 
now  neither  safe  nor  practicable.  It  was 
necessary  that  I  should  first  signalise  my 
zeal  by  some  strenuous  effort,  which  should 
disarm  opposition  and  bring  me  in  triumph 
"  through  the  office." 

Meditating  a  coup-de-main,  I  set  out  once 
more  for  the  country.  The  tenantry  were 
prepared  for  me,  and  as  soon  as  I  arrived  in 
the  neighbourhood,  messengers  (as  I  after- 
wards learned)  scampered  off  in  all  directions 
with  the  news.  I  followed  immediately  with 
ruy  bailiffs.  A  portion  of  the  estate  covered 
the  slopes  of  two  gently  rising  hills,  which 


commanded  a  view  of  the  road  that  ran  in 
the  bottom  of  the  valley.  No  sooner  were 
our  cars  descried,  though  still  a  mile  distant, 
than  horns  began  to  blow,  and  men  were 
seen  hastening  to  the  spot  from  all  sides. 
We  dashed  on  with  speed,  but  were  only  in 
time  to  see  men  on  horses,  without  saddle  or 
bridle,  riding  wildly  about  the  fields,  and 
driving  the  cattle  madly  before  them.  The 
ploughman  left  his  plough  in  the  furrow ; 
the  carter  abandoned  his  vehicle  in  the  lane  ; 
mounting  their  beasts  in  hot  haste,  they  all 
galloped  away.  We  found  solitude  and  deep 
stillness,  where  all  had  been  life  and  hurry  a 
minute  before.  The  houses  were  shut  up, 
and  not  a  soul  was  to  be  seen  ;  we  withdrew, 
baulked  in  our  enterprise,  and  crest-fallen  at 
our  failure. 

Next  day  I  left  the  town,  allowing  the  re- 
port to  circulate  that  I  had  returned  to  Dublin. 
Making  a  considerable  circuit,  I  reached 
another  town  about  ten  miles  distant,  where  I 
I  remained  quiet  for  four  or  five  days.  Setting 
out  on  the  sixth  day  at  sunrise,  I  met  a 
strong  force  of  bailiffs  and  helpers,  by  ap- 
pointment. It  was  a  lovely  summer's  morn- 
ing when  we  drew  near  the  lands,  not  by  the 
high-road,  but  across  the  fields  at  the  bottom 
of  the  hill,  where  an  enemy's  approach  would 
be  least  expected.  All  was  still  in  the  land- 
scape ;  the  smoke  of  the  lighting  fires  in  the 
houses  rose  high  and  straight  in  the  dewy 
air  ;  the  cattle  thickly  studded  the  pastures, 
and  a  rich  booty  seemed  at  last  within  our 
toils.  Spreading  my  men  across  the  meadows, 
some  scores  of  fine  cows  and  oxen  were 
speedily  collected  together  and  driven  along 
a  boreen,  or  by-road,  which  led  from  the 
bog  to  the  highway.  In  less  than  half-an- 
hour  we  were  within  a  hundred  yards  of  the 
road,  and  were  congratulating  ourselves  on  a 
complete  and  easy  success,  when  suddenly  the 
rude  blast  of  a  horn  smote  our  ears,  followed 
by  loud  cries  and  screams ;  we  then  beheld 
the  houses  burst  open,  and  men  and  women 
rushing  forth,  many  of  them  half-dressed, 
and  scrambling  down  the  steep  hills  to  place 
themselves  in  front  of  the  herd,  where  they 
were  about  to  debouch  on  the  road.  Hasten- 
ing to  the  van,  I  found  a  mob  blocking  up 
the  path,  and  with  voice  and  sticks  turning 
back  the  cattle,  which,  pressed  both  in  front 
and  rear,  became  frantic  with  terror,  and, 
rushing  madly  to  and  fro,  overturned  some  of 
the  drivers,  and  in  spite  of  all  our  efforts 
contrived  to  escape  by  plunging  through  the 
hedges  or  leaping  over  the  walls  which  lined 
the  lane.  A  huge  fellow,  with  a  face  as 
black  as  a  smith's  ought  to  be,  and  in  his 
shirt,  was  conspicuous  as  he  roved  about, 
wielding  a  great  club  and  bellowing  like 
a  bull  of  Bashan.  Accosting  him,  I  said 
he  was  committing  a  breach  of  the  peace, 
and  menaced  him  with  the  penalties  of  the 
law. 

"  To  hell  with  you  and  the  law,"  was  his 
sole  reply,  as  he  whirled  his  stick  around  his 


Charles  Dickeni.] 


BOULOGNE  WOOD. 


[July  25,  1357.]        89 


head.  I  saw  it  descending  on  my  skull, 
and  gave  myself  up  for  lost,  when  the  wife 
of  Tim  Mai  tin,  who  from  the  top  of  the  wall 
had  been  vociferously  abusing  us,  suddenly  | 
jumped  from  her  perch,  and  pushed  aside  my  | 
giant  assailant,  so  that  his  mighty  stroke  fell 
on  the  empty  air. 

"  Mind  the  black  heifer,  Simon,"  she  cried 
to  the  blacksmith,  "  she'll  be  out  on  the 
road.  While  he  went  oif  in  chace  of  the 
wanderer,  Mrs.  Martin  seized  me  by  the  arm, 
and  leading  me  through  a  gap  in  the  oppo- 
site hedge,  whispered,  "Be  off  with  you, 
sir,  be  off  with  you  ;  some  of  these  strangers 
will  kill  you  ;  we  can't  be  sure  of  them,  you 
know,  sir,  and  it's  better  for  you  to  go  at 
once." 

She  seemed  anxious  to  convince  me  that 
none  of  the  people  who  knew  me  would  do 
me  any  harm,  but  this  forbearance  did  not  ex- 
tend to  my  men,  against  whom  the  women 
were  very  violent.  Lining  the  walls  and 
ditches,  they  waved  their  arms  and  shouted 
at  the  cattle,  then  turned  to  scold  us  with 
every  epithet  that  rage  suggested.  Some 
of  them  had  stones  tied  up  in  the  corners  of 
their  aprons,  with  which  they  gave  one  or 
two  of  the  bailiffs  smart  blows  enough.  In- 
deed, the  latter  were  particularly  afraid  of 
these  Amazons,  and  fled  without  shame  from 
the  sweep  of  the  loaded  apron.  The  horns 
blew  without  ceasing  ;  many  shots  were  fired, 
and  the  crowd  continued  to  increase.  The 
cattle  were  hopelessly  dispersed,  galloping 
wildly  across  the  country,  still  urged  by 
terror.  Seeing  that  my  force  was  too  small 
to  cope  with  the  angry  people  and  unwilling 
to  provoke  a  further  collision,  which  might 
lead  to  bloodshed,  I  followed  the  advice  of 
my  protectress,  who  still  remained  near  me 
on  the  safer  side  of  the  ditch,  and  collecting 
my  men  I  retired  across  the  fields,  amid  the 
jeers  and  hooting  of  the  crowd,  and  pursued 
by  a  shower  of  stones,  and  a  general  dis- 
charge of  fire-arms. 

We  went  at  once  to  the  nearest  justice 
of  peace,  and  lodged  informations  for  the 
assault  and  rescue.  The  valiant  chief  bailiff 
made  an  affidavit  breathing  fire  and  slaughter. 
The  mob,  according  to  him,  consisted  of 
several  hundreds,  roaring  for  our  blood  ; 
many  shots,  he  swore,  were  aimed  at  me ; 
he  saw  them  putting  pebbles  taken  from  the 
ground  into  their  guns,  instead  of  balls  ;  and 
two  bleeding  heads,  and  three  or  four  limp- 
ing legs  amongst  the  helpers  gave  the  affair 
a  very  serious  aspect,  so  that  much  corre- 
spondence ensued  between  the  magistrates, 
the  police,  and  the  Castle. 

But,  nothing  came  of  it.  and  not  one  of  the 
people  ever  suffered  punishment  for  his 
share  in  the  illegal  proceedings  of  that  day. 
This  impunity  was  doubtless  due  to  the  re- 
markable blindness  of  my  men,  who,  although 
living-  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  necessarily 
knowing  the  whole  population  well,  never 
saw  or  recognised  the  faces  of  any  of 


the  rioters.  Even  those  with  whom  they 
had  closely  grappled  and  struggled  were  so 
disguised  that  their  mothers  would  not  know 
them.  They  could  only  remember  the 
names  of  the  women  who  were  making  peace, 
and  they  could  not,  or  would  not,  identify 
one  of  the  rioters.  Simon  the  smith  I 
might  recognise,  but  he  kept  out  of  the  way, 
and  the  threatened  prosecutions  fell  to  the 
ground. 

As  for  me,  I  had  done  enough.  One  more 
triumphant  statement  of  facts,  describing 
my  adventure,  in  language  as  glowing  as  the 
technical  nature  of  these  crabbed  documents 
would  admit,  and  enlarging  on  the  peril  I 
had  incurred  in  the  discharge  of  my  duty, 
and  in  vindicating  the  authority  of  the  Court, 
put  to  silence  the  cavils  and  the  grumbling 
of  the  discontented  creditors  and  the  angry 
inheritor,  and  even  won  a  panegyric  on  my 
zeal  from  the  caustic  old  Master.  In  the 
eclat  of  this  success,  I  obtained  leave  to  re- 
sign the  receivership  at  the  expense  of  the 
estate,  and  went  no  more  to  Eiggballyrann. 

The  Martins,  as  I  afterwards  heard,  held 
out  for  two  years  longer  ;  and  then  the  five 
families  went  to  America  with  the  money 
which  should  have  gone  to  the  landlord,  or 
rather  to  his  creditors,  aided  by  the  consider- 
able sums,  amounting  to  three  or  four  years' 
rent,  which  they  received  for  the  good-will, 
or  tenant-right  of  their  farms  from  other 
tenants  of  the  lands,  who  themselves  paid  no 
rent ;  and,  who,  while  thus  purchasing  new 
acquisitions,  pleaded  poverty  as  the  excuse 
for  their  default.  The  property  became  more 
and  more  steeped  in  pauperism  and  disorder, 
until  at  length  it  was  cleared  out  by  famine 
and  emigration.  It  was  ultimately  sold  in 
the  Encumbered  Estates  Court,  for  about  one 
third  of  its  value,  and  has  since  become  dis- 
tinguished for  tranquillity  and  good  farm- 
ing. Mr.  Rigg  has  vanished,  no  one  can  tell 
where  ;  his  name,  and  family,  and  I  trust  his 
example,  are  now  unknown  in  Tipperary. 


BOULOGNE  WOOD. 


THE  Bois  de  Boulogne  is  now  the  most 
beautiful  park  possessed  by  the  Parisians. 
It  is  situated  to  the  north  of  the  capital,  at 
the  distance  of  about  a  mile  from  the  Bar- 
ridrede  1'Etoile. 

The  Forest  of  Rouvray,  a  portion  of  which  is 
now  called  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  was,  of  old,  a 
small  peninsula  formed  by  an  arm  of  the  river 
Seine.  Although  the  first  official  recognition 
of  its  existence  appeared  in  a  document 
issued  by  Louis  the  Eleventh,  appointing 
Olivier  le  Daim,  his  barber,  Grand  Master  of 
the  Woods  and  Forests  of  France,  the  Forest 
of  Rouvray  holds  a  prominent  place  in  the 
chronicles  of  prior  kings.  As  far  back  as  the 
commencement  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
several  rich  citizens  of  Paris  resolved  (as  two 
train-loads  did  only  the  other  day)  to  expiate 
their  sins  by  making  a  pilgrimage  to  a  chapel 


90       [JulyJ*.  1S57J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bj 


containing  a  celebrated  image  of  the  Virgin  at 
Boulogne-sor-Mar.  On  tlieir  return,  wishing 
to  hand  down  to  posterity  a  remembrance  of 
their  pious  zeal,  they  determined  to  build 
a  chapel  on  a  site  possessed  by  one  of  them 
in  the  Forest  of  Rouvray.  exactly  similar  to 
the  one  they  had  visited.  On  application  to 
the  king,  the  royal  permission  was  speedily 
granted.  When  the  ch;ipel  was  built,  the 
immense  concourse  of  pilgrims  made  it  neces- 
sary to  provide  accommodation  for  them 
in  the  vicinity.  A  little  village  arose  in ; 
course  of  time,  and  received  the  name  of; 
Boulogne.  Charles  the  Fifth,  a  few  years  j 
afterwards,  had  summer  residences  built  for  ; 
himself  and  court  at  a  short  distance  from 
Autolium,  on  the  side  nearest  to  Paris.  This 
group  of  houses  formed  the  nucleus  of  the 
village  of  Passy.  From  its  proximity  to  the 
capital,  and  on  account  of  the  excellent  hunt-  ! 
ing  ground  it  afforded,  the  Forest  of  Rouvray 
became  one  of  the  favourite  resorts  of  suc- 
cessive French  kings.  Chateaux  were  built 
and  roads  were  made  for  their  convenience 
and  pleasure.  Gradually,  the  three  little 
villages  increased  in  size,  to  the  diminution 
of  the  forest ;  which  at  length  was  reduced 
to  the  proportions  of  a  wood,  with  the  name 
of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne. 

Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  the  first  monarch 
who  made  plantations  in  the  Bois  de  Bou- 
logne. The  green  of  pines,  firs,  cedars,  cy- 
presses, and  junipers  was  arranged  to  contrast 
agreeably  in  winter  with  the  brown  solemnity 
of  oaks,  elms,  and  limes,  and  the  silvery  baric 
of  beeches.  The  wall  which  surrounded  the 
wood  was  rebuilt,  and  keepers  were  appointed 
to  drive  away  footpads  and  vagabonds.  During 
the  successive  occupations  of  Paris  by  the 
allies  in  eighteen  hundred  and  fourteen  and 
fifteen,  nearly  all  the  trees  in  the  Bois  de  Bou- 
logne were  cut  down  and  used  as  fire-wood. 
Iii  June,  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-four,  the 
Bois  de  Boulogne  was  given  over  by  the  state 
to  the  city  of  Paris,  on  condition  that  it 
should  be  made  into  a  park,  and  at  least  two 
millions  of  francs  spent,  within  four  years, 
upon  its  embellishment.  Napoleon  the  Third, 
it  is  said,  drew  out  a  plan  of  the  alterations, 
and  confided  its  execution  to  M.  Vare,  a  cele- 
brated French  landscape  gardener :  leaving 
him  full  liberty,  however,  to  modify  it  if 
necessary.  We  shall  presently  see  with  what 
success  their  labours  have  been  attended. 

The  most  important  edifice  in  the  Forest 
of  Rouvray  for  many  centuries  was  the  Con- 
vent of  Longchamps.  This  convent  was 
founded  in  the  year  twelve  hundred  and  sixty 
by  Isabella,  the  sister  of  Louis  the  Ninth. 
At  her  death,  which  occurred  in  twelve  hun- 
dred and  seventy,  she  was  dressed  in  the 
robe  of  Saint  Frangois  and  buried  in  the 
chapel  of  the  convent.  Saint  Louis  followed 
Isabella  to  the  grave,  and  afterwards  de- 
livered a  discourse  full  of  condolence  for  the 
loss  which  the  community  had  sustained. 
Agnes  d'Uarcourt,  the  third  Abbess  of  Long- 


champs,  published  the  life  of  Isabella,  and 
declared  that  numerous  miraculous  cures 
had  been  effected  through  her  intercession. 
The  announcement  of  these  miracles  at- 
tracted immense  crowds  to  Longchamps  for 
more  than  two  centuries,  and  the  belief  in 
them  became  so  universal  that  Pope  Leon 
the  Tenth  declared  Isabella  beatified  by  a 
bull  dated  the  third  of  January,  fifteen  hun- 
dred and  twenty-one.  Soon  afterwards,  the 
body  was  exhumed,  and  it  became  a  part  of 
the  religious  duty  of  all  good  Christians  to 
pay  an  annual  visit,  and  present  an  annual 
offering  at  the  shrine  of  Sainte  Isabella. 
Thus  originated  the  celebrated  pilgrimages 
to  Longchamps,  which  were  rigorously  kept 
up  until  about  the  middle  of  the  last  cen- 
tury. When  the  convent  began  to  be 
neglected,  the  nuns  announced,  as  a  means  of 
rekindling  the  religious  ardour  of  the  Pa- 
risians, that  the  first  singers  of  the  opera 
wo\ild  chant  sacred  music  every  Wednesday, 
Thursday,  and  Friday  in  Easter  week.  The 
plan  succeeded  beyond  their  most  sanguine 
expectations ;  and  for  many  years  the  chapel 
was  always  crowded  on  the  three  appointed 
days.  At  length  the  singing  was  prohibited 
by  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  and  the  convent 
closed  to  the  public.  The  Parisians,  how- 
ever, having  become  used  to  the  Easter  pil- 
grimages, determined  to  keep  them  up  in 
their  own  way.  With  an  eye  to  business,  on 
which  they  would  have  been  mercilessly 
sarcastic  if  the  English  had  showu  it,  they 
changed  the  pious  pilgrimages  to  Longchamps 
Abbey  into  gay  promenades  to  Longchamps 
for  the  display  of  the  spring  fashions.  In  seven- 
teen hundred  and  eighty-five,  an  Englishman 
appeared  at  Longchamps  in  a  silver  carriage, 
sparkling  with  precious  stones,  and  drawn  by 
horses  shod  with  silver.  This  was  the  signal 
for  the  most  extravagant  display  of  wealth 
ever  witnessed  in  the  French  capital.  As  a 
natural  sequence,  the  Reign  of  Terror  came, 
and  the  Convent  of  Longchamps  was  de- 
stroyed, and  the  priests  and  nuns  put  to 
death.  The  promenades,  nevertheless,  were 
revived  under  Napoleon  the  First,  and  have 
been  continued  ever  since. 

The  Champs  Elys6es,the  Avenue  de  1'Impe- 
ratrice,  and  the  Route  de  Longechamps,  in  the 
Bois  de  Boulogne,  still  present  an  animated 
appearance  on  the  days  of  promenades.  The 
roads  are  crowded  with  vehicles  of  ever}7  de- 
scription ;  aristocratic  carriages  occupied  by 
ladies  in  the  most  fantastically  beautiful  toi- 
lets ;  cabs  and  hired  vehicles  filled  with  niilli- 
nersand  man tua-makers,  dressed  up  to  exhibit 
the  spring  modes  and  novelties ;  adver- 
tising vans  painted  in  the  loudest  colours ; 
and  cars  decorated  with  gaudy  ribbons,  or 
tastefully  festooned  with  flowers.  The  pedes- 
trians lounge  about  and  criticise  the  passers- 
by,  while  flower-girls  with  early  violets,  and 
marchands  de  coco,  and  plaisir,  circulate 
through  the  crowd.  The  carriages  merely 
go  to  the  site  of  the  ancient  convent — which 


Charles  Dickens.] 


BOULOGNE  WOOD. 


[July  25.  1857.]    91 


is  marked  by  the  picturesque  ruin  of  a  wind" 
mill,  aiid  return  by  the  same  route. 

Not  far  from  Longchamps,  on  the  northern 
side,  stands  the  beautiful  park  and  chateau  oi 
Bagatelle.  This  residence  was  originally  a 
small  pavilion  belonging  to  Mademoiselle  de 
Charolois,  the  daughter  of  Louis,  Prince  de 
Conde.  At  her  death,  Bagatelle  passed  into 
the  hands  of  the  Count  d'Artois,  one  of  the 
brothers  of  Louis  the  Sixteenth.  He  had 
the  pavilion  pulled  down,  and  a  miniature 
palace  built  in  its  stead,  which  cost  him  six 
hundred  thousand  francs,  or  twenty  -  four 
thousand  pounds.  The  count  laid  a  wager, 
it  is  said,  of  one  hundred  thousand  franc 
with  the  Queen  Marie  Antoinette,  that  his 
chateau  would  be  built  in  one  month.  He 
won  the  bet.  Bagatelle  received  the  well- 
merited  name  of  La  Folie  d'Artois.  It  es- 
caped destruction  duriug  the  Eevolution  of 
seventeen  hundred  and  ninety-three,  and  is 
now  the  property  of  the  Marquis  of  Hertford. 

Near  the  northern  entrance  to  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne  there  is  a  public  establishment 
called  Madrid.  It  stands  on  the  ground 
formerly  occupied  by  le  chateau  de  Faience 
(the  clelph  castle),  which  was  built  by  Francois 
the  First,  and  received  its  name  because  the 
exterior  was  made  of  porcelain.  The  front 
was  ornamented  with  several  rich  enamels  by 
Bernardin  de  Palissy,  and  the  chateau  w;is 
noted  for  the  splendid  collection  of  pictures 
and  statues  with  which  it  was  filled.  Henry 
the  Third  caused  this  beautiful  residence  to 
be  turned  into  a  menagerie  for  wild  beasts, 
which  fought  bulls  for  his  amusement.  One 
night,  however,  his  majesty  dreamed  that  the 
wild  beasts  intended  to  devour  him  ;  and  next 
morning,  he  ordered  them  all  to  be  killed. 
In  seventeen  hundred  and  ninety-three,  the 
porcelain  chateau  was  sold  to  a  company  who 
undertook  to  demolish  it.  The  beautiful 
enamels  of  Bernardin  de  Palissy  were  sold 
to  a  pavior,  and  made  into  cement  !  Happily, 
a  few  fragments  of  the  porcelain  were  pre- 
served, and  served  as  models  when  the  chateau 
was  reconstructed  a  few  years  since.  The 
finest  oak  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  stands  op- 
posite Madrid. 

At  the  back  of  Madrid  is  a  group  of  hand- 
some villas,  enclosed  in  pretty  gardens,  called 
St.  James.  They  have  been  erected  on  the 
site  of  an  extravagantly  beautiful  summer 
residence,  built  by  the  famous  treasurer  of 
the  Marine,  Bandard  de  Saint  James.  He 
surrounded  his  mansion  with  magnificent 
gardens,  on  which  he  squandered  enormous 
sums  of  money.  A  single  rock  is  said  to  have 
cost  sixty  thousand  pounds,  and  to  have  re- 
quired forty  horses  to  carry  the  smallest 
block.  Bandard  de  Saint  James  failed  for  one 
million  pounds,  and  was  imprisoned  in  the 
Bastile,  where  he  died  in  great  misery.  Saint 
James,  with  its  pretty  cottages  and  gardens, 
looks  like  an  isolated  bit  of  Saint  John's 
Wood. 

To  the  east  of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  and 


the  north  of  Passy,  a  muette,  or  hunting-box, 
was  erected  for  the  accommodation  of  Charles 
the  Ninth,  on  his  return  from  hunting. 
The  first  balloon  ascension  in  France  took 
place  in  seventeen  hundred  and  eighty-three, 
in  the  gardens  of  La  Muette,  in  presence  of 
the  king  and  queen.  Soon  after  a  monster 
banquet  was  given  in  the  park  by  the  city  of 
Paris,  to  twenty  thousand  delegates  from 
the  departments  on  the  occasion  of  the  Con- 
federation. During  the  Eeign  of  Terror, 
the  chateau  de  la  Muette  was  destroyed; 
and,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  twenty-three, 
the  park  and  gardens  were  sold  to  Se- 
bastien  Erard,  the  piano-forte  maker.  M. 
Erard  had  a  handsome  mansion  built,  and  the 
gardens  restored  to  their  former  beauty.  The 
green  sward,  the  white  statuary,  and  the 
many-coloured  flowers  around  this  beautiful 
residence,  still  form  a  lovely  coup  d'ceil 
from  the  gate  of  La  Muette  in  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne. 

At  a  short  distance  from  La  Muette,  on  the 
left-hand  side,  there  is  a  place  of  amusement 
called  Eanelagh.  Its  history  is  somewhat 
curious.  In  seventeen  hundred  and  seventy- 
three,  one  of  the  lodge-keepers  of  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne,  named  Morison,  obtained  per- 
mission of  the  Prince  de  Soubise,  governor  of 
the  chateau  de  la  Muette,  to  erect  a  building 
— in  imitation  of  the  one  built  by  Lord  Eaue- 
lagh  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames — which  Avas 
to  contain  a  cafe,  a  restaurant,  a  ball-room, 
and  a  theatre.  It  was  opened  with  great 
success  on  the  twenty-fifth  of  July,  seventeen 
hundred  and  seventy -four.  Five  years  after- 
wards, the  grand  master  of  the  rivers  and 
forests  of  the  environs  of  Paris,  imagining 
that  his  rights  had  been  infringed  by  the 
permission,  issued  a  decree  commanding  Mori- 
son,  on  pain  of  the  galleys,  to  destroy  all  the 
works  which  he  had  constructed  in  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne.  Morison  immediately  applied 
to  the  king ;  who,  in  a  few  days,  revoked 
the  decree,  and  allowed  Eanelagh  to  be  re- 
opened with  great  splendour.  This  was  the 
most  brilliant  epoch  in  its  history.  A  society 
composed  of  a  hundred  members  founded  a 
weekly  ball,  which  was  extensively  patronised 
by  the  Parisians.  The  Queen  Marie  Antoi- 
nette, several  times  honoured  the  ball  with 
her  presence  during  her  stay  at  La  Muette. 
When  the  Eevolution  came,  Morisou,  after 
struggling  for  some  time  with  adversity,  was 
compelled  to  sell  his  furniture  to  pay  his  debts. 
Under  the  Directory,  a  few  young  coxcombs 
attempted  to  revive  the  ball  ;  but  the  people 
became  jealous,  the  dancers  were  insulted 
and  menaced,  finally  arrested,  and  the  ball- 
room taken  possession  of  by  a  battalion  of 
guards.  Eanelagh  was  then  definitively 
losed  until  the  overthrow  of  the  Directory 
by  Napoleon,  when  it  became  once  more  the 
rendezvous  of  the  notorieties  of  the  time. 
Among  others,  Eauelagh  produced  Trenitz 
the  dancer,  who  has  given  his  name  to  one  of 
the  figures  of  the  quadrille.  During  the 


92       [->uljr  25,  1S57-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


occupation  by  the  allies,  Eanelagh  was  con- 
verted successively  into  stables  and  an 
hospital.  Not  long  afterwards,  the  building 
was  completely  destroyed  by  a  storm.  At 
the  restoration,  the  proprietor  had  to  plead 
six  years  for  permission  to  rebuild  it.  When, 
at  length,  he  obtained  an  authorisation,  the 
establishment  was  speedily  reopened,  on  a 
scale  of  great  magnificence,  under  the  patron- 
age of  the  Duchess  de  Berry,  and  has 
flourished  ever  since. 

The  recent  improvements  in  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne,  consist  principally  in  the  introduc- 
tion of  water  into  the  wood,  by  the  formation 
of  a  river,  a  lake,  and  several  large  and  small 
ponds.  The  river  is  situated  at  a  short  dis- 
tance from  the  Porte  Dauphine,  and  extends 
along  the  wood  in  an  easterly  direction.  In 
the  middle  of  the  river  there  are  two  islands 
joined  to  each  other  by  a  picturesque  bridge 
made  of  rocks.  These  islands  are  laid  out 
with  green  grassplats,  sandy  serpentine 
paths,  and  immense  patches  of  gorgeous 
flowers.  Peeping  out  from  among  the  trees 
are  grottoes,  summer-houses,  Swiss  cottages, 
and  romantic  ruins.  Pretty  boats  trimmed 
with  green  and  yellow  cloth,  and  gaily  deco- 
rated with  tricolor  flags,  form  the  only  mode 
of  conveyance  to  the  islands.  On  the  banks 
of  the  river  there  are  landing-places,  and 
seats  made  of  rocks  and  carved  wood.  Narrow 
footpaths,  bordered  by  green  banks  and  sur- 
rounded by  broad  carriage-drives,  lead  to  the 
source  of  the  river ;  which  has  been  made 
into  a  splendid  waterfall.  Separated  only 
by  the  width  of  a  road  from  the  river,  is 
the  silent  lake,  where  water  -  lilies  spread 
their  calices  to  the  sun,  and  swarms  of  little 
fish  flit  under  the  water.  Near  the  end  of 
the  lake  a  mound  has  been  formed,  which 
commands  a  view  over  the  whole  of  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne  and  its  environs.  To  the  right 
of  the  river  and  the  lake  artificial  streams 
meander  with  innumerable  windings,  and  are 
spanned  here  and  there  by  fantastic  bridges 
festooned  with  ivy,  which  are  reflected  in  the 
limpid  water.  On  both  sides  there  are  over- 
hanging trees,  green  seats,  and  shady  bowers, 
which  afford  an  agreeable  shelter  from  the 
sun  in  midsummer.  Where  the  streams 
slacken  their  course,  innumerable  whirligigs 
(gyrinidse)  skim  just  under  the  surface.  These 
streams  lead  toLongchamps,  where  they  widen 
into  three  small  lakes.  By  the  side  of  these 
lakes  two  race-courses  have  been  formed,  one 
two  thousand  and  the  other  four  thousand 
metres  long.  Opposite  to  them  a  mound  has 
been  raised  commanding  a  magnificent  view 
over  the  race-course,  and  the  immense  pano- 
rama which  stretches  from  the  banks  of  the 
Seine,  from  Mount  Valerien  and  St.  Cloud  to 
the  village  of  Passy  and  the  Arc  de  Triomphe. 
The  Bois  de  Boulogne  has  been  cut  up  and 
intersected  with  new  roads,  with  a  view  to 
prevent  its  being  the  scene  of  duels  and 
suicides,  which,  were  formerly  very  frequent 
occurrences.  There  is,  indeed,  a  tree  near  the 


gate  of  La  Muette  which  is  called  1'arbre  des 
peudus — the  tree  of  the  hanged — but,  from 
henceforth,  the  horrors  will  be  driven  away, 
it  is  hoped,  at  least,  as  far  as  to  the  Bois  de 
Vincennes. 

In  several  parts  of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne, 
immense  tracts  of  land  have  been  converted 
into  beautiful,  green,  grassy  prairies.  One  of 
these  has  been  inclosed,  and  made  into  a 
pleasure  gai'den,  and  received  the  name  of 
Pre  Catelan, — Catelan's  Prairie.  The  grounds 
are  laid  out  in  spacious  lawns,  intersected  by 
carriage-drives  and  gravel-walks,  with  here 
and  there  beds  and  banks  of  lovely  flowers. 
There  is  a  cafe,  a  reading-room,  a  photogra- 
phic establishment,  a  telegraphic  electrical 
machine,  by  means  of  which  two  persons  can 
converse  at  a  distance,  a  concert-room,  seve- 
ral puppet-shows,  and  various  other  amuse- 
ments. Eighty  thousand  trees  and  shrubs 
have  been  distributed  in  clusters  over  the 
garden,  which  is  brilliantly  illuminated  every 
evening  with  coloured  lamps. 

Prti  Catelan  derives  its  name  from  a 
broken  cross  standing  near  its  principal 
entrance,  which  marks  the  site  of  a  lament- 
able tragedy  enacted  in  the  Forest  of  Kouvray 
towards  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
During  the  reign  of  Philippe  le  Bel  of 
France  there  lived,  at  the  court  of  Beatrix  of 
Savoy  Countess  of  Provence,  a  wandering 
minstrel,  named  Arnaud  Catelan.  As  Catelan 
was  the  most  celebrated  troubadour  of  his 
epoch,  the  French  king  wished  to  attract 
him  to  his  court,  and  sent  a  letter  to  Beatrix 
begging  her  to  allow  Catelan  to  come  and 
spend  a  few  months  in  Paris.  Beatrix  gave 
her  consent  immediately,  and  the  troubadour, 
highly  flattered  by  the  invitation,  set  out  upon 
his  journey,  accompanied  by  a  servant  to 
carry  his  baggage.  On  arriving  in  Paris  he 
was  told  that  the  king  was  staying  at  the 
manor  of  Passy,  and  desired  him  to  proceed 
thither.  Catelan  resumed  his  journey,  hoping 
to  reach  Passy  before  nightfall.  When  he 
arrived  at  the  outskirts  of  the  Forest  of  Eou- 
vray  he  met  a  company  of  soldiers,  whose 
captain  informed  him  they  had  been  sent  by 
the  king  to  protect  him.  The  shades  of 
evening  were  closing  in  fast  as  they  continued 
their  march,  Catelan  walking  in  front  con- 
versing with  the  captain,  while  his  servant 
followed  with  the  soldiers.  Suddenly  the 
captain  said  to  Catelan  : 

"  Cii  messire,  your  servant  carries  a  ham- 
per which  seems  too  great  a  load  for  him.  Is 
it  very  heavy  1  " 

"  Oh,  yes,"  replied  the  troubadour,  with 
pride,  "it  is  full  of  presents  for  his  ma- 
jesty." 

A  few  minutes  afterwards  the  captain 
stopped  and  whispered  something  to  the  lieu- 
tenant. The  night  came  on  dai-k,  cold,  and 
windy,  and  Catelan  remarked  that,  instead  of 
keeping  on  the  outskirts,  as  he  had  been  told 
to  do,  he  was  led  into  the  thickest,  part  of  the 
forest.  When  they  reached  the  spoUwhere 


Charles  DicVen«.] 


TRACKS  IN  THE  BUSH. 


[July  25. 18570       93 


the  cross  now  stands,  the  captain  drew  his 
sword,  and  killed  Catelan  with  a  single  blow, 
aud  the  soldiers  simultaneously  surrounded 
the  servant  and  massacred  him.  The  mur- 
derers unpacked  the  hamper,  but,  to  their 
surprise,  found  in  it  only  bottles  of  liquors 
and  perfumes.  Although  dreadfully  disap- 
pointed they  divided  the  spoil,  and  returned 
to  the  king,  saying,  Catelan  was  nowhere  to 
be  found.  The  next  day  Philippe  ordered  a 
search  to  be  made  in  the  forest,  and  after 
some  time  the  two  bodies  were  found  in  a 
pool  of  blood.  The  king  was  deeply  afflicted 
at  the  murder,  and  caused  the  corpses  to  be 
buried  on  the  spot,  and  a  stone  cross  about 
twenty  feet  high  erected  over  the  grave. 

A  few  months  afterwards  the  captain  pre- 
sented himself  at  court  perfumed  with  ascent 
which  was  manufactured  only  in  Provence. 
This  excited  the  king's  suspicions.  He  caused 
inquiries  to  be  made,  and  was  soon  informed 
that  several  l.ad  been  found  drunk  with 
liquors  from  Provence  in  their  possession. 
Investigations  were  immediately  made  ;  the 
apartments  of  the  captain  and  his  men  were 
searched  ;  and  tLe  result  was  the  discovery 
of  a  hamper  marked  with  the  arms  of  Cate- 
lau,  and  several  bottles  of  Provengal  liquors 
and  perfumes.  The  evidence  was  sufficient  to 
bring  home  their  guilt  to  the  murderers,  who 
were  soeedily  tried  and  burnt  to  death  at  a 
slow  fire. 


TEACKS  IN  THE  BUSH. 


A  STOCKMAN  in  my  employment  was,  not 
many  years  ago,  missing  from  a  cattle  station 
distant  from  Sydney  about  two  hundred  and 
thirty  miles.  The  man  had  gone  one  afternoon 
in  search  of  a  horse  that  had  strayed.  Not 
having  returned  at  night  or  the  next  morning, 
the  natural  conclusion  was  that  he  had  been 
lost  in  the  bush.  I,  at  once,  called  in  the 
aid  of  the  blacks,  and,  attended  by  two 
European  servants  (stockmen),  headed  the 
expedition.  The  chief  difficulty  lay  in  getting 
on  the  man's  track  ;  and  several  hours  were 
spent  before  this  important  object  was 
accomplished.  The  savages  exhibited  some 
ingenuity  even  in  this.  They  described  large 
circles  round  the  hut  whence  the  man  had 
taken  his  departure,  and  kept  on  extending 
them  until  they  were  satisfied  they  had  the 

E  roper  footprints.  The  track  once  found, 
alt"  a  dozen  of  the  blacks  went  off  like 
a  pack  of  hounds.  Now  and  then,  in 
the  dense  forest  through  which  we  wandered 
in  our  search,  there  was  a  check,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  extreme  dryness  of  the 
ground ;  or  the  wind  had  blown  about 
the  fallen  leaves  of  the  gigantic  gum-trees, 
which  abound  in  those  regions ;  but,  for 
the  most  part,  the  course  was  straight 
on  end. 

We  had  provided  ourselves  with  flour, 
salt  beef,  tea,  sugar,  blankets  and  other  per- 
souar  comforts.  These  were  carried  on  a 


horse  which  a  small  black  boy,  of  about  four- 
teen years  of  age,  rode  in  our  rear. 

On  the  first  day  we  continued  our  search 
until  the  sun  had  gone  down,  and  then 
pitched  our  camp  and  waited  for  day-light. 
With  their  tomahawks  the  blacks  stripped 
off  large  sheets  of  bark  from  the  gum-trees, 
and  cut  down  a  few  saplings.  With  these 
we  made  a  hut ;  at  the  opening  of  which  we 
lighted  a  fire,  partly  for  boiling  the  water 
for  tea,  and  partly  for  the  purpose  of  keeping 
off  the  musquitoes.  During  the  night,  we 
had  a  very  heavy  storm  of  lightning  and 
thunder,  accompanied  by  torrents  of  rain. 
This,  I  fancied,  would  render  the  tracking 
even  more  difficult,  as  the  rain  was  suffi- 
ciently heavy  to  wash  out  the  footprints  of 
a  man,  had  any  such  footprints  been  pre- 
viously perceptible.  When  the  sun  arose, 
however,  the  blacks,  seemingly  without 
difficulty,  took  up  the  track  and  followed  it 
at  the  rate  of  two  and  a  half  miles  an  hour 
until  noon,  when  we  halted  to  take  some  rest 
and  refreshments.  The  foot  of  civilised  man 
had  never  before  trodden  in  that  wild  region ; 
which  was  peopled  only  with  the  kangaroo, 
the  emu,  the  opossum,  and  wild  cat.  The  still- 
ness was  awful ;  and,  ever  and  anon,  the  blacks 
would  cooey  (a  hail  peculiar  to  the  savages 
of  New-Holland,  which  may  be  heard  several 
miles  off),  but — and  we  listened  each  time  with 
intense  anxiety — there  was  no  response. 

At  about  half-past  three  in  the  afternoon 
of  the  second  day  we  came  to  a  spot,  where 
the  blacks  expressed,  by  gestures,  that  the 
missing  stockman  had  sat  down  ;  and  in  con- 
firmation of  their  statement,  they  pointed  to 
a  stone,  which  had  evidently  been  lately 
removed  from  its  original  place.  I  enquired, 
by  gestures,  whether  we  were  near  the  lost 
man ;  but  the  blacks  shook  their  heads  and 
held  up  two  fingers,  from  which  I  gleaned 
that  two  days  had  elapsed  since  the  man 
had  been  there.  At  five  we  came  to  another 
spot  where  the  missing  stockman  had  laid 
down,  and  here  we  found  his  short  pipe 
broken.  It  would  be  difficult  to  describe  the 
satisfaction  with  which  I  eyed  this  piece  of 
man's  handywork.  It  refreshed  my  confi- 
dence in  the  natives'  power  of  tracking,  and 
made  me  the  more  eager  to  pursue  the  search 
with  rapidity.  By  promises  of  large  rewards, 
I  quickened  their  movements,  and  we  tra- 
velled at  the  rate  of  four  miles  an  hour. 
We  now  came  upon  a  soil  covered  with  im- 
mense boulders.  This, I  fancied,  would  impade, 
if  not  destroy  the  track ;  but  this  was  not  the 
case.  It  is  true,  we  could  not  travel  so  fast 
over  these  large  round  stones  ;  but  the  blacks 
never  once  halted,  except  when  they  came  to 
a  spot  where  they  satisfied  me  the  stockman 
himself  had  rested.  None  but  those  who 
have  been  in  search  of  a  fellow-creature 
under  similar  circumstances  can  conceive  the 
anxiety  which  such  a  search  creates.  I  could 
not  help  placing  myself  in  the  position  of  the 
unhappy  man,  who  was  roaming  about  as  one 


94    IJuiy  a.  1*7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


blindfolded,  and  probably  hoping  on  even  in 
the  face  of  despair.  Again  we  came  to  a 
forest  of  huge  gum-trees. 

At  times,  the  gestures  of  the  blacks,  while 
following  the  footprints  of  the  stockman, 
indicated  to  me  that  he  had  been  running. 
At  other  times,  they  imitated  the  languid 
movements  of  a  weaiy  and  footsore  traveller. 
They  knew  exactly  the  pace  at  which  the  poor 
fellow  had  wandered  about  in  those  untrodden 
wilds  ;  and  now  and  then,  while  following  in 
his  wake  and  imitating  him,  they  would 
laugh  merrily.  They  were  not  a  little  amused 
that  I  should  be  angry  at,  and  rebuke  such  a 
demonstration. 

The  sun  went  down,  and  our  second  day's 
search  was  ended.  Again  we  pitched  our 
camp  and  lighted  fires.  We  had  now  tra- 
velled about  thirty  miles  from  the  station, 
and  the  blacks,  who  had  now  got  beyond 
the  precincts  of  their  district,  became  fear- 
ful of  meeting  with  some  strange  tribe, 
who  would  destroy  them  and  myself.  Indeed, 
if  I  and  my  European  companions  had  not 
been  armed  with  a  gun  each,  and  a  plenti- 
ful supply  of  ammunition,  my  sable  guides 
would  have  i%efused  to  proceed  any  further. 

All  night  long  I  lay  awake,  imagining, 
hoping,  fearing,  and  praying  for  day-light ; 
which  at  last  dawned.  Onwai-d  we  went 
through  a  magnificent  country,  beautifully 
wooded,  and  well  watered  by  streams  and 
covered  with  luxuriant  pasture, — all  waste 
land,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  term. 
At  about  ten  we  came  to  a  valley  in  which 
grew  a  number  of  wattle-trees.  From  these 
trees,  a  gum,  resembling  gum  arable  in  all 
its  properties,  exudes  in  the  warm  season. 
The  blacks  pointed  to  the  branches,  from 
which  this  gum  had  recently  been  stripped, 
and  indicated  that  the  man  had  eaten  of  a 
pink  grub,  as  large  as  a  silk-worm,  which  lives 
in  the  bark  of  the  wattle-tree.  Luckily 
he  had  with  him  a  clasp-knife,  with  which 
he  had  contrived  to  dig  out  these  grubs ; 
which  the  blacks  assured  me  were  a  dainty  ; 
but  I  was  not  tempted  to  try  them. 

On  again  putting  the  question  to  the 
blacks,  whether  we  were  near  the  man  of 
whom  we  were  in  search,  they  shook  their 
heads  and  held  up  two  fingers.  We  now  came 
to  a  clear  shallow  stream,  in  which  the  blacks 
informed  me  by  gestures  that  the  missing 
man  had  bathed  ;  but  he  had  not  crossed 
the  stream,  as  his  track  lay  on  the  bank 
we  had  approached. 

After  travelling  along  this  bank  for  about 
three  miles,  we  came  to  a  huge  swamp  into 
which  the  stream  flowed,  and  ended.  Here 
the  footprints  were  plainly  discernible  even 
by  myself  and  my  European  companions.  I 
examined  them  carefully,  and  was  pained  to 
find  that  they  confirmed  the  opinion  of  the 
blacks,  namely  that  they  were  not  fresh. 
Presently  we  found  the  man's  boots.  These 
had  become  too  heavy  for  him  to  walk  in, 
and  too  inconvenient  to  carry,  and  he  had 


cast  them  off.  Not  far  from  the  boots  was 
a  red  cotton  handkerchief,  which  he  had 
worn  round  his  neck  on  leaving  the  station. 
This,  too,  he  had  found  too  hot  to  wear  in 
that  oppressive  weather,  and  had  therefore 
discai'ded  it. 

Following  the  track,  we  came  to  a  forest 
of  white  gum-trees.  The  bark  of  these  trees 
is  the  colour  of  cream,  and  the  surface  is  as 
smooth  as  glass.  On  the  rind  of  one  of  these 
trees  the  man  had  carved,  with  his  kuife, 
the  following  words  : — 

"  Oh  God,  have  mercy  upon  me. — T.  B." 

How  fervent  and  sincere  must  have  been  this 
prayer  in  the  heart,  to  admit  of  the  hand 
carving  it  upon  that  tree  ! 

Towards  evening  we  came  to  a  tract  of 
country  as  barren  as  the  desert  between 
Cairo  and  Suez  ;  but  the  soil  was  not  sandy, 
and  it  was  covered  with  stones  of  unequal 
size.  Here  the  miraculous  power  of  the 
black  man's  eye  astounded  us  more  than 
ever.  The  reader  must  bear  in  mind  that 
the  lost  man  was  now  walking  barefooted 
and  tenderfooted,  and  would  naturally  pick 
his  way  as  lightly  and  as  cautiously  as 
possible.  Nevertheless,  the  savage  tracked 
his  course  with  scarcely  a  halt. 

Again  the  sun  went  down,  and  again  we 
formed  our  little  camp,  on  the  slope  of  a  hill, 
at  the  foot  of  which  lay  a  lagoon,  literally 
covered  with  wild  ducks  and  black  swans. 
Some  of  these  birds  we  shot  for  food,  as  it 
was  now  a  matter  of  prudence,  if  not  of  neces- 
sity, to  husband  the  flour  and  meat  we  had 
brought  with  us. 

Another  sunrise,  and  we  pursued  our  jour- 
ney. Towards  noon  we  came  to  a  belt  of 
small  mountains  composed  chiefly  of  black 
lime-stone.  Here  the  blacks  faltered  ;  and, 
after  a  long  and  animated  discussion  amongst 
themselves — not  one  word  of  which  I 
understood — they  signified  to  me  that  they 
had  lost  the  track  and  could  proceed  no 
further.  This  I  was  not  disposed  to  believe, 
and  imperatively  signalled  them  to  go  on. 
They  refused.  I  then  had  recourse  to 
promises,  kind  words,  smiles,  and  encouraging 
gestures.  They  were  still  recusant.  I  then 
loaded  my  gun  with  ball,  and  requested  the 
stockmen  to  do  the  like.  I  threatened  the 
blacks  that  I  would  shoot  them,  if  they  did 
not  take  up  the  track  and  pursue  it.  This 
alarmed  them  ;  and,  after  another  discussion 
amongst  themselves,  they  obeyed  me,  but 
reluctantly  and  sullenly.  One  of  the  stock- 
men, with  much  foresight,  suggested  that 
we  ought  to  make  sure  of  two  out  of  the  six 
black  fellows  ;  for,  if  they  had  a  chance,  they 
would  probably  escape  and  leave  us  to  perish 
in  the  wilds  ;  and,  without  their  aid  we  could 
never  retrace  our  steps  to  the  station.  I  at 
once  acted  on  this  suggestion,  and  bound  two 
of  the  best  of  them  together  by  the  arms, 
and  carried  the  end  of  the  cord  in  my  right 
hand. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


TEACKS  IN  THE  BUSH. 


[July  25, 1857/1        95 


At  four  in  the  afternoon  we  had  crossed 
this  belt  of  low  mountains,  and  came  upon 
a  tract  of  country  which  resembled  a  well- 
kept  park  in  England.  We  were  all  so 
greatly  fatigued  that  we  were  compelled  to 
halt  for  the  night.  Great  as  was  my  longing 
to  proceed — a  longing  not  a  little  whetted  by 
the  fact  that  the  blacks  now  held  up  only 
one  finger,  in  order  to  express  that  the  object 
of  our  search  was  only  one  day  in  advance 
of  us. 

At  midnight  the  four  blacks,  who  were  not 
bound,  and  who  were  in  a  rude  hut  a  few 
yards  distant,  came  to  the  opening  of  my 
tenement  and  bade  me  listen.  I  did  listen, 
and  heard  a  sound  resembling  the  beating  of 
the  waves  against  the  sea-shore.  I  explained 
to  them,  as  well  as  I  possibly  could,  that  the 
noise  was  that  of  the  wind  coming  through 
the  leaves  of  the  trees.  This,  however,  they 
refused  to  believe,  for  there  was  scarcely  a 
breath  of  air  stii*ring. 

"  Can  it  be  that  we  are  near  the  sea- 
coast  ? "  I  asked  myself ;  and  the  noise, 
which  every  moment  became  more  distinctly 
audible,  seemed  to  reply,  "  yes." 

The  morning  dawned,  and  to  my  intense 
disappointment,  I  discovered  that  the  four 
unbound  blacks  had  decamped.  They  had, 
no  doubt,  retraced  their  steps  by  the  road 
they  had  come.  The  remaining  two  were 
now  put  upon  the  track,  and  not  for  a  single 
moment  did  I  relinquish  my  hold  of  the  cord. 
To  a  certainty,  they  would  have  escaped,  had 
we  not  kept  a  tight  hand  upon  them.  Any 
attempt  to  reason  with  them  would  have 
been  absurd.  Fortunately,  the  boy  who  had 
charge  of  the  horse  had  been  faithful,  and 
had  remained. 

As  the  day  advanced  and  we  proceeded  on- 
ward, the  sound  of  the  waves  beating  against 
the  shore  became  more  and  more  distinct, 
and  the  terror  of  the  guides  increased  propor- 
tionately. We  were,  however,  some  miles  from 
the  ocean,  and  did  not  see  it  until  four  in  the 
afternoon.  The  faces  of  the  blacks,  when 
they  gazed  on  the  great  water,  of  which  they 
had  never  formed  even  the  most  remote  con- 
ception, presented  a  scene  which  would  have 
been  worthy  of  some  great  painter's  obser- 
vation. 

It  was  a  clear  day,  not  a  cloud  to  be  seen 
in  the  firmament ;  but  the  wind  was  high, 
and  the  dark  blue  billows  were  crested  with 
a  milk-white  foam.  It  was  from  an  eminence 
of  some  three  hundred  feet  that  we  looked 
upon  them.  With  their  keen  black  eyes  pro- 
truding from  their  sockets,  their  nostrils  dis- 
tended, their  huge  mouths  wide  open,  their 
long  matted  hair  in  disorder,  their  hands  held 
aloft,  their  bodies  half-crouching  and  half- 
struggling  to  maintain  an  erect  position ; 
unable  to  move  backward  or  forward  ;  the 
perspiration  streaming  from  every  pore  of 
their  unclothed  skin ;  speechless,  motion- 
less, amazed  and  terrified ;  the  two  inland 
savages  stood  paralysed  at  what  they  saw. 


The  boy,  although  astounded,  was  not 
afraid. 

Precious  as  was  time,  I  would  not  disturb 
their  reverie.  For  ten  minutes  their  eyes 
were  riveted  on  the  sea.  By  (  slow  degrees 
their  countenances  exhibited  that  the  ori- 
ginal terror  was  receding  from  their  hearts ; 
and  then  they  breathed  hard,  as  men  do  after 
some  violent  exertion.  They  then  looked  at 
each  other  and  at  us  ;  and,  as  though  recon- 
ciled to  the  miraculous  appearance  of  the 
deep,  they  again  contemplated  the  billows 
with  a  smile  which  gradually  grew  into  a 
loud  and  meaningless  laugh. 

On  the  rocky  spot  upon  which  we  were 
standing,  one  of  the  blacks  pointed  to  his  own 
knees  ;  and  placed  his  forefinger  on  two  spots 
close  to  each  other.  Hence  I  concluded  that 
the  lost  man  had  knelt  down  there  in  prayer. 
I  invariably  carried  about  with  me,  in  the 
bush  of  Australia,  a  pocket-magnifying-glass 
for  the  purpose  of  lighting  a  pipe  or  a  fire  ; 
and,  with  this  glass,  1  carefully  examined  the 
spots  indicated  by  the  blacks.  But  I  could 
see  nothing — not  the  faintest  outline  of  an 
imprint  on  that  piece  of  hard  stone.  Either 
they  tried  to  deceive  us,  or  their  powers  of 
perception  were  indeed  miraculous. 

After  a  brief  while  we  continued  our  search. 
The  lost  man  had  wandered  along  the  per- 
pendicular cliffs,  keeping  the  ocean  in  sight. 
We  followed  his  every  step  until  the  sun 
went  down ;  then  halted  for  the  night  and 
secured  our  guides,  over  whom,  as  usual,  we 
alternately  kept  a  very  strict  watch. 

During  the  night  we  suffered  severely 
from  thirst,  and  when  morning  dawned  we 
were  compelled  to  leave  the  track  for  a  while, 
and  search  for  water.  Providentially  we  were 
successful.  A  cavity  in  one  of  the  rocks  had 
been  filled  by  the  recent  rain.  Out  of  this 
basin,  our  horse  also  drank  his  fill. 

I  may  here  mention  a  few  peculiarities  of 
the  colonial  stock-horse.  Wherever  a  man  can 
make  his  way,  so  can  this  quadruped.  He 
becomes,  in  point  of  sure-footedness,  like  a 
mule,  and  in  nimbleness  like  a  goat,  after  a 
few  years  of  servitude  in  cattle-tending.  He 
will  walk  down  a  ravine  as  steep  as  the  roof 
of  a  house,  or  up  a  hill  that  is  almost  perpen- 
dicular. Through  the  dense  brushwood  he 
will  push  his  way  with  his  head,  just  as 
the  elephant  does.  He  takes  to  the  water 
like  a  Newfoundland  dog,  and  swims  a  river 
as  a  matter  of  course.  To  fatigue  he  seems 
insensible,  and,  can  do  with  the  smallest 
amount  of  provender.  The  way  in  which  the 
old  horse  which  accompanied  me  in  the  expe- 
dition, I  am  describing,  got  down  and  got  up 
some  of  the  places  which  lay  in  our  track 
would  have  astounded  every  person  who,  like 
us,  had  not  previously  witnessed  similar  per- 
formances. 

We  pushed  on  at  a  speedy  pace,  and,  to 
my  great  joy,  the  blacks  now  represented 
that  the  (to  me  invisible)  footprints  were 
very  fresh,  and  the  missing  man  not  far 


96 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[July  L'5, 1S57.] 


ahead  of  us.  Every  place  where  he  had 
halted,  sat  down,  or  laiu  down,  or  stayed  to 
drink,  was  pointed  out.  Presently  \ve  came 
to  an  opening  in  the  cliffs  which  led  to  the 
sea-shore,  where  we  found  a  beautiful  bay  of  j 
immense  length.  Here  I  no  longer  required  j 
the  aid  of  the  savages  in  tracking  ;  on  the 
sand  from  which  the  waves  had  receded  a  few 
hours  previously  were  plainly  visible  the 
imprints  of  naked  feet.  The  blacks,  who 
had  no  idea  of  salt-water  laid  themselves 
down  on  their  stomachs,  for  the  purpose  of 
taking  a  hearty  draught.  The  first  mouthful, 
however,  satisfied  them  ;  and  then  wondered 
as  much  at  the  taste  of  the  ocean  as  they 
had  wondered  at  the  sight  thereof. 

After  walking  several  miles,  the  rising  of 
the  tide  and  the  bluff  character  of  the  coast 
induced  us  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  first 
opening  in  the  cliffs,  and  ascend  to  the  high 
land.  It  was  with  indescribable  pain,  I  re- 
flected that  the  approaching  waves  would 
obliterate  the  foot-prints  then  upon  the  sand, 
and  that  the  thread  which  we  had  followed  up 
to  that  moment,  would  certainly  be  snapped. 
The  faculty  possessed  by  the  blacks  had  defied 
the  wind  and  the  rain ;  the  earth  and  the 
rocks  had  been  unable  to  conceal  from  the 
sight  of  the  savage  the  precise  places  where 
the  foot  of  civilised  man  had  trod  ;  but  the 
ocean,  even  in  his  repose,  makes  all  men 
acknowledge  his  might  !  We  wandered,  along 
the  cliffs,  cooeying  from  time  to  time,  and 
listening  for  a  response  ;  but  none  came,  even 
upon  the  acutely  sensitive  ears  of  the  savages. 
A  little  before  sunset,  we  came  to  another 
opening,  leading  down  to  a  bay  ;  and  here 
the  track  of  the  lost  man  was  again  found. 
He  had  ascended  and  pursued  his  way  along 
the  cliffs.  We  followed  until  the  light  failed, 
and  we  were  compelled  to  halt.  Before 
doing  so  we  cooeyed  in  concert,  and  dis- 
charged the  fowling-pieces  several  times,  but 
without  effect. 

It  rained  during  the  night  ;  but  ceased 
before  the  day  had  dawned,  and  we  resumed 
our  journey.  After  an  hour's  walk,  we  came 
upon  another  opening,  and  descended  to  the 
water's  edge  ;  which  was  skirted  by  a  sandy 
beach,  and  extended  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
compass.  Here,  too,  I  could  dispense  with 
the  aid  of  the  blacks,  and  followed  on  the 
track  as  fast  as  possible.  Indeed,  I  and  my 
companions  frequently  ran.  Presently,  the 
lost  man's  footsteps  diverged  from  the  sandy 
shore,  and  took  to  the  high  land.  We  had 
proceeded  more  than  a  mile  and  a  half,  when 
the  black  boy,  who  was  mounted  on  the  horse 
and  following  close  at  my  heels,  called, 
"  Him  !  him  !  "  arid  pointing  to  a  figure, 
about  seventy  yards  distant,  stretched  upon 
the  grass  beneath  the  shade  of  a  wild  fig- 
tree,  and  near  a  stream  of  fresh  water.  I 


recognised  at  once  the  stockman ;  but 
the  question  was,  Was  he  living  or  dead? 
Having  commanded  the  party  to  remain 
where  they  stood,  I  approached  the  body 
upon  tiptoe.  The  man  was  not  dead,  but  in 
a  profound  slumber;  from  which  I  would  not 
awake  him.  His  countenance  was  pale  and 
haggard,  but  his  breathing  was  loud  and 
natural.  I  beckoned  the  party  to  approach, 
and  then  placed  my  fore-finger  on  my  lips,  as 
a  signal  that  they  were  to  keep  silence. 
Within  an  hour  the  man  awoke,  and  stared 
wildly  around  him.  When  he  saw  us,  he  was 
under  the  impression  that  he  had  not  been 
lost ;  but  that,  while  searching  for  the  horse, 
he  had  felt  weary,  laid  down,  slept,  and  had 
dreamed  all  that  had  really  happened  to  him. 
Thus,  there  was  no  sudden  shock  of  unex- 
pected good  fortune  ;  the  effects  of  which 
upon  him  I  at  first  dreaded. 

According  to  the  number  of  days  that  we 
had  been  travelling,  and  the  pace  at  which  we 
had  travelled,  I  computed  that  we  had  walked 
about  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  miles  ; 
but,  according  to  a  map  which  I  consulted, 
we  were  not  more  than  eighty  miles  distant, 
in  a  direct  line,  from  the  station.  On  our 
way  back,  it  was  most  distressing  to  observe 
the  emotions  of  the  stockman  when  he 
came  to,  or  remembered  the  places  where  he 
had  rested,  eaten,  drank,  or  slept,  during  his 
hopeless  wanderings  through  the  wilds  of  the 
wildest  country  in  the  known  world.  The 
wattle-trees  from  which  he  had  stripped  the 
gum,  the  stream  in  which  he  had  bathed,  the 
swamp  where  he  had  discarded  his  boots,  the 
tree  on  which  he  had  carved  his  prayer, — the 
spot  where  he  had  broken  his  pipe, — that  very 
spot  upon  which  he  first  felt  that  he  was  lost 
in  the  bush — these  and  the  poignant  suffer- 
ings he  had  undergone  had  so  great  an  effect 
upon  him,  that  by  the  time  he  returned  to  the 
station  his  intellect  entirely  deserted  him. 
He,  however,  partly  recovered  ;  but — some- 
times better,  sometimes  worse — in  a  few 
months  it  became  necessary  to  have  him 
removed  to  the  government  lunatic  asylum. 


Now  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  and  Sixpence,  neatly 
bound  in  cloth, 

THE  FIFTEENTH  VOLUME 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

Containing  the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  June  of  the  present 
year. 


Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One 
Guinea, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILKIE  COLLINS. 
Bradbury  and  Evans,  Whitefriars. 


The  Itiylit  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  ly  the  Authors. 


Published  »t  the  Offce,  No.  in,  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  BRADBVHY  &  EVANS,  \Vhitefriarc,  London. 


"Familiar  In  their  Moutlix  as  HOUSEHOLD    WORDS."— MIAK 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY  JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


°-  384.] 


SATURDAY,  AUGUST  1,  1857. 


f  Pnica  <id. 
\  STAMPED  37. 


CURIOUS  MISPRINT  IN  THE  EDIN-  '  Pinch  Wlthln  the  memory  of  men,  is  License 
BURGH  REVIEW  'm  a  "ove"st-     Will  the  Edinburgh  Review 

forgive  Mr.  Dickens  for  taking  the  liberty  to 

THE  Edinburgh  Review,  in  an  article  in  its  >  point  out  what  is  License  in  a  Reviewer  ? 
last  number,  on   "The   License   of  Modern 
Novelists,"  is  angry  with  MR.  DICKENS  and 
other    modern   novelists,   for    not   confining 
themselves  to  the  mere  amusement  of  their 


readers,  and  for  testifying  in  their  works  that 
they    seriously    feel    the    interest    of    true 


"Even  the  catastrophe  in  'Little  Dovrit'  is  evi- 
dently borrowed  from  the  recent  fall  of  houses  in 
Tottenham  Court  Road,  which  happens  to  have 
appeared  in  the  newspapers  at  a  convenient  period." 

Thus,  the  Reviewer.     The  Novelist  begs  to 


Englishmen  in  the  welfare  and  honor  of  their  ask  him  whether  there  is  no  License  in  his 
country.  To  them  should  be  left  the  making  writing  those  words  and  stating  that  assump- 
of  easy  occasional  books  for  idle  young  gentle-  j  tion  as  a  truth,  when  any  man  accustomed  to 
men  and  ladies  to  take  up  and  lay  down  on  |  the  critical  examination  of  a  book  cannot 
sofas,  drawing-room  tables,  and  window-seats;  j  fail,  attentively  turning  over  the  pages  of 
to  the  Edinburgh  Review  should  be  reserved  Little  Dorrit,  to  observe  that  that  catastrophe 
the  settlement  of  all  social  and  political  is  carefully  prepared  for  from  the  very  first 
questions,  and  the  strangulation  of  all  com-  |  presentation  of  the  old  house  in  the  story  ; 
plainers.  '  MR.  THACKERAY  may  write  upon  I  that  when  Rigaud,  the  man  who  is  crushed 
Snobs,  but  there  must  be  none  in  the  superior  '  by  the  fall  of  the  house,  first  enters  it  (hun- 
government  departments.  There  is  no  posi-  j  dreds  of  pages  before  the  end),  he  is  beset  by 


tive  objection  to  MR.  HEADE  having  to  do,  in 
a  Platonic  way,  with  a  Scottish  fishwoman  or 
so  ;  but  he  must  by  no  means  connect  him- 
self with  Prison  Discipline.  That  is  the  in- 
alienable property  of  official  personages  ;  and, 
until  Mr.  Reade  can  show  that  he  has  so 
much  a-year,  paid  quarterly,  for  understand- 
ing (or  not  understanding)  the  subject,  it  is 
none  of  his,  and  it  is  impossible  that  he  can 


a  mysterious  fear  and  shuddering  ;  that  the 
rotten  and  crazy  state  of  the  house  is  labori- 
ously kept  before  the  reader,  whenever  the 
house  is  shown  ;  that  the  -way  to  the  demo- 
lition of  the  man  and  the  house  together,  is 
paved  all  through  the  book  with  a  painful 
minuteness  and  reiterated  care  of  prepara- 
tion, the  necessity  of  which  (in  order  that 
the  thread  may  be  kept  in  the  reader's  mind 


be  allowed  to  deal  with  it.  1  through  nearly  two   years),  is   one   of  the 

The  name- of  Mr.  Dickens  is  at  the  head  of  i  adverse    incidents    of   that  social   form    of 
this  page,  and  the  hand  of  Mr.  Dickens  writes  I  publication  ?       It   may   be    nothing  to   the 


this  paper.  He  will  shelter  himself  under 
no  affectation  of  being  any  one  else,  in  having 
a  few  words  of  earnest  but  temperate  re- 
monstrance with  the  Edinburgh  Review, 
before  pointing  out  its  curious  misprint. 


question  that  Mr.  Dickens  now  publicly  de- 
clares, on  his  word  and  honor,  that  that 
catastrophe  was  written,  was  engraven  on 
steel,  w;»s  printed,  had  passed  through  the 
hands  of  compositors,  readers  for  the  press, 


Temperate,  for  the  honor  of  Literature  ;  tern-  and  pressmen,  and  was  in  type  and  iu  proof  iu 
perate,  because  of  the  great  services  which  i  the  Printing  House  of  MESSRS.  JJHADUURY  AND 
the  Edinburgh  Review  has  rendered  in  its  EVANS,  before  the  accident  in  Tottenham 
time  to  good  literature,  and  good  govern-  j  Court  Road  occurred.  But,  it  is  much  to  the 
meut  ;  temperate,  in  remembrance  of  the '  question  that  an  honorable  reviewer  might 
loving  affection  of  JEFFREY,  the  friendship  of  have  easily  traced  this  out  in  the  internal 
SYDNEY  SMITH,  and  the  faithful  sympathy  of  evidence  of  the  book  itself,  before  lie  stated, 
both.  I  for  a  fact,  what  is  utterly  and  entirely,  in 

The  License  of  Modern  Novelists  is  a  taking  !  every  particular  and  respect,  untrue.  More ;  if 


title.  But  it  suggest^  another, — the  License 
of  Modern  Reviewers.  Mr.  Dickens's  libel 
on  the  wonderfully  exact  and  vigorous  English 
government,  which  is  always  ready  for  any 
emergency,  and  which,  as  everybody  knows, 
has  never  shown  itself  to  be  at  all  feeble  at  a 


the  Editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  (unbend- 
ing from  the  severe  official  duties  of  a  blame- 
less branch  of  the  Circumlocution  Office)  had 
happened  to  condescend  to  cast  his  eye  on  the 
passage,  and  had  referred  even  its  mechanical 
probabilities  and  improbabilities  to  his  pub- 


VOL,    XV f. 


98         [August  1,  IS67.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


they    hardly    perceived    how    Mr. 
could  have  waited,    with    such 


lishers,  those  experienced  gentlemen  must 
h:ive  warned  him  th:it  he  was  getting  into 
danger  ;  must  have  told  him  that  on  a  com- 
parison of  dates,  and  with  a  reference  to  the 
number  printed  of  Little  Dorrit,  with  that 
very  incident  illustrated,  and  to  the  date  of 
the  publication  of  the  completed  book  in  a 
volume, 
Dickens 

desperate  Micawberism.  for  a  fall  of  houses 
in  Tottenham  Court  Road,  to  get  him  out  of 
his  difficulties,  and  yet  could  have  come 
up  to  time  with  the  needful  punctuality. 
Does  the  Edinburgh  Eeview  make  no 
charges  at  random  'I  Does  it  live  in  a  blue 
and  vellow  glass  house,  and  yet  throw 
such  big  stones  over  the  roof?  Will  the 
licensed  Reviewer  apologize  to  the  licensed 
Novelist,  for  his  little  Circumlocution  Office  1 
"Will  he  "examine  the  justice"  of  his  own 


cally  opposed  him  as  long  as  opposition  was 
in  any  way  possible  ;  that  the  Circumlocution 
Office  would  have  been  most  devoutly  glad  if 
it  could  have  harried  Mr.  Rowland  Hill's 
soul  out  of  his  body,  and  consigned  him  and 
his  troublesome  penny  project  to  the  grave 
together. 

Mr.  Rowland  Hill ! !  Now,  see  the  im- 
possibility of  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  being  the 
name  which  the  Edinburgh  Review  sent  to 
the  printer.  It  may  have  relied  on  the 
forbearance  of  Mr.  Dickens  towards  living 
gentlemen,  for  his  being  mute  on  a  mighty 
job  that  was  jobbed  in  that  very  Post-Office 
when  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  was  taboo  there,  and 
it  shall  not  rely  upon  his  courtesy  in  vain  : 
though  there  be  breezes  on  the  southern 
side  of  mid-Strand,  London,  in  which  the 
scent  of  it  is  yet  strong  on  quarter-days. 
But,  the  Edinburgh  Review  never  can  have 


"general  charges,"  as  well  as  Mr.  Dickens's  'I  I  put  up  Mr.  Rowland  Hill   for  the    putting 
Will  l>o  niinlv  liis  nwn  words  t,r>  himsplf.  and  '  down     of    Mr.     Dickens's    idle    fiction    of  a 


Will  he  apply  his  own  words  to  himself,  and 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  really  is,  "  a 
little  curious  to  consider  what  qualifications 


of   Mr.    Dickens's    idle    fiction 
Circumlocution  Office.    The  "  license  "  would 
have  been  too   great,    the    absurdity  would 


a  man  ought  to  possess,  before  he  could  with  I  have  been  too  transparent,  the  Circumlocu- 
any  kind  of  propriety  hold  this  language  "  ?       tion  Office  dictation  and  partizanship  would 
now   proceeds  to   the  Re- 


The    Novelist 
viewer's  curious  misprint. 


The  Reviewer,  in 


his  laudation  of  the  great  official  depart- 
ments, and  in  his  indignant  denial  of  there 
being  any  trace  of  a  Circumlocution  Office  to 
be  detected  among  them  all,  begs  to  know, 
"  what  does  Mr.  Dickens  think  of  the  whole 
organisation  of  the  Post  Office,  and  of  the 
system  of  cheap  Postage  1 "  Taking  St.  Mar- 
tins-le-grand  in  tow,  the  wrathful  Circum- 
locution steamer,  puffing  at  Mr.  Dickens  to 


have  been  much  too  manifest. 

"The  Circumlocution  Office  adopted  his 
scheme,  and  gave  him  the  leading  share  in 
carrying  it  out,"  The  words  are  clearly  not 
applicable  to  Mr.  Rowland  Hill.  Does  the 
Reviewer  remember  the  history  of  Mr. 
Rowland  Hill's  scheme  ?  The  Novelist  does, 
and  will  state  it  here,  exactly ;  in  spite  of 
its  being  one  of  the  eternal  decrees  that 
the  Reviewer,  in  virtue  of  his  license,  shall 
know  everything,  and  that  the  Novelist  in 


crush  him  with  all  the  weight  of  that  first-rate  j  virtue  of  his  license,  shall  know  nothing, 
vessel,  demands,  "to  take  a  single  and  well-  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  published  his  pamphlet 
known  example,  how  does  he  account  for  the  on  the  establishment  of  one  uniform  penny 
career  of  MR.  ROWLAND  HILL  ?  A  gentleman  |  postage,  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  eighteen 


in  a  private  and  not  very  conspicuous  posi- 
tion, writes  a  pamphlet  recommending  what 
amounted  to  a  revolution  in  a  most  impor- 
tant department  of  the  Government.  Did 
the  Circumlocution  Office  neglect  him,  tra- 
duce him,  break  his  heart,  and  ruin  his  for- 
tune ?  They  adopted  his  scheme,  and  gave 
him  the  leading  share  in  carrying  it  out,  and 
yet  this  is  the  government  which  Mr.  Dickens 
declares  to  be  a  sworn  foe  to  talent,  and  a 
systematic  enemy  to  ingenuity." 

The  curious  misprint,  here,  is  the  name  of 
Mr.  Rowland  Hill.  Some  other  and  per- 
fectly different  name  must  have  been  sent  to 
the  printer.  Mr.  Rowland  Hill !  !  Why,  if 
Mr.  Rowland  Hill  were  not,  in  toughness,  a 
man  of  a  hundred  thousand  ;  if  he  had  not 
had  in  the  struggles  of  his  career  a  stedfast- 
ness  of  purpose  overriding  all  sensitiveness, 
and  steadily  staring  grim  despair  out  of  coun- 
tenance, the  Circumlocution  Office  would 
have  made  a  dead  man  of  him  long  and  long 
ago.  Mr.  Dickens,  among  his  other  darings, 
dares  to  state,  that  the  Circumlocution  Office 
most  heartily  hated  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  ;  that 
the  Circumlocution  Office  most  characteristi- 


hundred  and  thirty  -  seven.  Mr.  Wallace, 
member  for  Greenock,  who  had  long  been 
opposed  to  the  then  existing  Post-Office 
system,  moved  for  a  Committee  on  the  sub- 
ject. Its  appointment  was  opposed  by  the 
Government — or,  let  us  say,  the  Circumlocu- 
tion Office — but  was  afterwards  conceded. 
Before  that  Committee,  the  Circumlocution 
Office  and  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  were  per- 
petually in  conflict  on  questions  of  fact ;  and 
it  invariably  turned  out  that  Mr.  Rowland 
Hill  was  always  right  in  his  facts,  and  that 
the  Circumlocution  Office  was  always  wrong. 
Even  on  so  plain  a  point  as  the  average 
number  of  letters  at  that  very  time  passing 
through  the  Post  Office,  Mr.  Rowland  Hill 
was  right,  and  the  Circumlocution  Office  was 


just  then,  certainly  ;  for,  nothing  whatever 
was  done,  arising  out  of  the  enquiries  of  that 
Committee.  But,  it  happened  that  the  Whig 
Government  afterwards  came  to  be  beaten  on 
the  Jamaica  question,  by  reason  of  the  Radi- 


Duke™.]  CURIOUS  MISPRINT  IN  THE  EDINBURGH  REVIEW. 


i,  is-,;.]    99 


cals  voting  against  them.  Six1  Robert  Peel 
was  commanded  to  form  a  Government,  but 
{'ailed,  in  consequence  of  the  difficulties  that 
arose  (our  readers  will  remember  them)  about 
the  Ladies  of  the  Bedchamber.  The  Ladies  of 
the  Bedchamber  brought  the  Whigs  in  again, 
and  then  the  Eadicals  (being  always  for  the 
destruction  of  everything)  made  it  one  of  the 
conditions  of  their  rendering  their  support  to 
the  new  Whig  Government  that  the  penny- 
postage  system  should  be  adopted.  This  was 
two  years  after  the  appointment  of  the  Com- 
mittee :  that  is  to  say,  in  eighteen  hundred 
and  thirty-nine.  The  Circumlocution  Office 
had,  to  that  time,  done  nothing  towards  the 
penny  postage,  but  oppose,  delay,  contradict, 
and  show  itself  uniformly  wrong. 

"  They  adopted  his  scheme,  and  gave  him 
the  leading  share  in  carrying  it  out."  Of 
course  they  gave  him  the  leading  share  in 
carrying  it  out,  then,  at  the  time  when  they 
adopted  it,  and  took  the  credit  and  popularity 
of  it  ?  Not  so.  In  eighteen  hundred  and 
thirty-nine,  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  was  appointed 
— not  to  the  Post  Office,  but  to  the  Treasury. 
Was  he  appointed  to  the  Treasury  to  carry  out 
his  own  scheme  ?  No.  He  was  appointed 
"  to  advise."  In  other  words,  to  instruct  the 
ignorant  Circumlocution  Office  how  to  do 
without  him,  if  it  by  any  means  could.  On 
the  tenth  of  January,  eighteen  hundred  and 
forty,  the  penny-postage  system  was  adopted. 
Then,  of  course,  the  Circumlocution  Office 
gave  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  "  the  leading  share 
in  carrying  it  cut "  ?  Not  exactly,  but  it 
gave  him  the  leading  share  in  carrying 
himself  out :  for,  in  eighteen  hundred  and 
forty-two,  it  summarily  dismissed  Mr.  Row- 
land Hill  altogether  ! 

When  the  Circumlocution  Office  had  come 
to  that  pass  in  its  patriotic  course,  so  much 
admired  by  the  Edinburgh  Review,  of  pro- 
tecting and  patronizing  Mr.  Rowland  Hill, 
whom  any  child  who  is  not  a  Novelist  can 
perceive  to  have  been  its  peculiar  protege ; 
the  public  mind  (always  perverse)  became 
much  excited  on  the  subject.  Sir  Thomas 
Wilde  moved  for  another  Committee.  Cir- 
cumlocution Office  interposed.  Nothing  was 
done.  The  public  subscribed  and  presented 
to  Mr.  Rowland  Hill,  Sixteen  Thousand 
Pounds.  Circumlocution  Office  remained 
true  to  itself  and  its  functions.  Did  nothing  ; 
would  do  nothing.  It  was'not  until  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-six,  four  years  afterwards, 
that  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  was  appointed  to  a 
place  in  the  Post  Office.  Was  he  appointed, 
even  then,  to  the  "  leading  share  in  carrying 
out "  his  scheme  1  He  was  permitted  to 
creep  into  the  Post  Office  up  the  back  stairs, 
through  having  a  place  created  for  him. 
This  post  of  dignity  and  honor,  this  Circum- 
locution Office  ci'own,  was  called  "Secretary 
to  the  Post-Master  General ;  "  there  being 
already  a  Secretary  to  the  Post  Office,  of 
whom  the  Circumlocution  Office  had  declared, 
as  its  reason  for  dismissing  Mr.  Rowland 


Hill,  that  his  functions  and  Mr.  Rowland 
Hill's  could  not  be  made  to  harmonize. 

They  did  not  harmonize.  They  were  in 
perpetual  discord.  Penny  postage  is  but  one 
reform  of  a  number  of  Post  Office  reforms 
effected  by  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  ;  and  these, 
for  eight  years  longer,  were  thwarted  and 
opposed  by  the  Circumlocution  Office,  tooth 
and  nail.  It  was  not  until  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty-four,  fourteen  years  after  the  ap- 
pointment of  Mr.  Wallace's  Committee,  that 
Mr.  Rowland  Hill  (having,  as  was  openly 
stated  at  the  time,  threatened  to  resign  and 
to  give  his  reasons  for  doing  so),  was  at  last 
made  sole  Secretary  r.t  the  Post  Office,  and 
the  inharmonious  secretary  (of  whom  no 
more  shall  be  said)  was  otherwise  disposed 
of.  It  is  only  since  that  date  of  eighteen 
hundred  and  fifty-four,  that  such  reforms  as 
the  amalgamation  of  the  general  and  district 
posts,  the  division  of  London  into  ten  towns, 
the  earlier  delivery  of  letters  all  over  the 
country,  the  book  and  parcels  post,  the 
increase  of  letter- receiving  houses  every- 
where, and  the  management  of  the  Post 
Office  with  a  greatly  increased  efficiency,  have 
been  brought  about  by  Mr.  Rowland  Hill 
for  the  public  benefit  and  the  public  con- 
venience. 

If  the  Edinburgh  Review  could  seriously 
want  to  know  "  how  Mr.  Dickens  accounts  for 
the  career  of  Mr.  Rowland  Hill,"  Mr.  Dickens 
would  account  for  it  by  his  being  a  Birming- 
ham man  of  such  imperturbable  steadiness 
and  strength  of  purpose,  that  the  Circumlo- 
cution Office,  by  its  utmost  endeavours,  very 
freely  tried,  could  not  weaken  his  determina- 
tion, sharpen  his  razor,  or  break  his  heart. 
By  his  being  a  man  in  whose  behalf  the 
public  gallantry  was  roused,  and  the  public 
spirit  awakened.  By  his  having  a  project, 
in  its  nature  so  plainly  and  directly  tending 
to  the  immediate  benefit  of  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  the  State,  that  the  Cir- 
cumlocution Office  could  not  blind  them, 
though  it  could  for  a  time  cripple  it.  By  his 
having  thus,  from  the  first  to  the  last,  made 
his  way  in  spite  of  the  Circumlocution  Office, 
and  dead  against  it  as  his  natural  enemy. 

But,  the  name  is  evidently  a  curious  mis- 
print and  an  unfortunate  mistake.  The 
Novelist  will  await  the  Reviewer's  correction 
of  the  press,  and  substitution  of  the  right 
name. 

Will  the  Edinburgh,  Review  also  take  its 
next  opportunity  of  manfully  expressing  its 
regret  that  in  too  distempered  a  zeal  for  the 
Circumlocution  Office,  it  has  been  betrayed, 
as  to  that  Tottenham  Court  Road  assertion, 
into  a  hasty  substitution  of  untruth  for  truth  ; 
the  discredit  of  which,  it  might  have  saved 
itself,  if  it  had  been  sufficiently  cool  and  con- 
siderate to  be  simply  just  ?  It  will,  too  pos- 
sibly, have  much  to  clo  by  that  time  in  cham- 
pioning its  Circumlocution  Office  in  new 
triumphs  on  the  voyage  out  to  India  (God 
knows  that  the  Novelist  has  his  private  as 


100 


>i 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


well  as  liis  public  reasons  for  writing  the 
foreboding  with  no  triumphant  heart  !)  ;  but 
even  party  occupation,  the  reviewer's  license, 
or  the  editorial  plural,  does  not  absolve  a 
gentleman  from  a  gentleman's  duty,  a  gentle- 
man's  restraint,  and  a  gentleman's  generosity, 
Mr.  Dickens  will  willingly  do  his  best  to 
"account  for"  any  new  case  of  Circumlocu- 
tion Office  protection  that  the  Review  may 
make  a  gauntlet  of.  He  may  be  trusted  to 
do  so,. he  hopes,  with  a  just  respect  for  the 
Review,  for  himself,  and  for  his  calling  ; 
beyond  the  sound,  healthy,  legitimate  uses 
and  influences  of  which,  he  lias  no  purpose 
to  serve,  and  no  ambition  in  life  to  gratify. 

A  REMARKABLE  REVOLUTION. 

A  REVOLUTION  which  is  serious  enough  to 
overthrow  a  reigning  sovereign  —  which  is 
.short  enough  to  last  only  nine  hours — and 
which  is  peaceable  enough  to  begin  and  end 
without  the  taking  of  a  single  life  or  the 
shedding  of  a  drop  of  blood,  is  certainly  a 
phenomenon  in  the  history  of  human  affairs 
.vhich  is  worth  being  carefully  investigated. 
•Such  a  revolution  actually  happened,  m  the 
empire  of  Russia,  little  more  than  a  century 
and  a  quarter  ago.  The  narrative  of  its  rise, 
its  progress,  and  its  end  deserves  to  be  made 
known,  for  there  are  points  of  interest  con- 
nected with  it  which  may  claim  the  rare 
attraction  of  novelty,  while  they  possess  at 
the  same  time  the  indispensable  historical 
merit  of  being  founded  on.  a  plain  and 
recognisable  basis  of  truth. 

Let  us  begin  by  inquiring  into  the  state  of 
affairs  by  which  this  remarkable  revolution 
was  produced. 

We  start  with  a  famous  Russian  character 
— Peter  the  Great.  His  son,  who  may  be 
not  unfairly  distinguished,  as  Peter  the 
Small,  died  in  the  year  seventeen  hundred 
and  thirty.  With  his  death,  the  political 
difficulties  arose,  which  ended  in  the  easy 
pulling  down  of  one  sovereign  ruler  at  mid- 
night and  the  easy  setting  up  of  another  by 
nine  o'clock  the  next  morning. 

Besides  the  ton  whom  he  left  to  succeed 
him,  Peter  the  Great  had  a  daughter,  whose 
title  was  princess,  and  whose  name  was 
Elizabeth.  Peter's  wife,  the  famous  Em- 
press Catherine,  being  a  far-seeing  woman, 
mad-}  a  will  which  contained  the  expression 
of  her  wishes  in  regard  to  the  succession  to 
the  throne,  and  which  plainly  and  properly 
designated  the  Princess  Elizabeth  (there 
being  no  Salic  law  in  Russia)  as  the  reigning 
sovereign  to  be  chosen  after  the  death  of  her 
brother,  Peter  the  Small.  Nothing,  ap- 
parently, could  be  more  plain  and  straight- 
forward than  the  course  to  be  followed,  at 
that  time,  in  appointing  a  new  ruler  over  the 
Russian  people. 

But  there  happened  to  be  living  at  Court 
two  noblemen  —  Prince  d'Olgorowki  and 
Count  Ostennau — who  had  an  interest  of 


their  own  in  complicating  the  affairs  con- 
nected with  the  succession.  These  two  dis- 
tinguished personages  had  possessed  con- 
siderable power  and  authority,  under  the 
feeble  reign  of  Peter  the  Small,  and  they 
knew  enough  of  his  sister's  resolute  and 
self-reliant  character  to  entertain  considerable 
doubts  as  to  what  might  become  of  their 
court  position  and  their  political  privileges 
after  the  Princess  Eli/.-ibeth  was  seated  on 
the  throne.  .Accordingly  they  lost  no  time 
in  nominating  a  rival  candidate  of  their 
own  choosing,  whom  they  dexterously  raised 
to  the  Imperial  dignity,  before  there  was 
time  for  the  partisans  of  the  Princess  Eliza- 
beth to  question  the  authority  under  which 
they  acted,  much  less  to  oppose  the  execution 
of  it  with  the  slightest  chance  of  success. 
The  new  sovereign,  thus  unjustly  invested 
with  power,  was  a  woman — Anne,  Dowager 
Duchess  of  Corn-land  —  and  the  pretence 
under  which  Prince  d'OIgorowki  and  Count 
Osterman  proclaimed  her  as  Empress  of 
Russia,  was  that  Peter  the  Small  had  con- 
fidentially communicated  to  them,  on  his 
death-bed,  a  desire  that  the  Dowager 
Duchess  should  be  chosen,  as  the  sovereign 
to  succeed  him. 

Tke  principal  result  of  the  Dowager 
Duchess's  occupation  of  the  throne  was  the 
additional  complication  of  the  political  affairs 
of  Russia.  The  new  empress  had  an  ejre  to 
the  advancement  of  her  family  ;  and,  among 
the  other  relatives  for  whom  she  provided, 
was  a  niece,  named  Catherine.  By  the  wise 
management  of  the  empress,  this  young  lady 
was  married  to  the  Prince  of  Brunswick, 
brother-in-law  of  the  King  of  Prussia.  The 
|  first  child  born  of  the  marriage  was  a  boy 
named  Ivan.  Before  he  had  reached  the 
age  of  two  years,  his  mother's  aunt,  the 
Empress,  died  ;  and,  when  her  will  was 
opened,  it  was  discovered,  to  the  amazement 
of  everyone,  that  she  had  appointed  this 
child  to  succeed  her  ou  the  throne  of 
Russia. 

The  private  motive  which  led  the  empress 
to  take  this  extraordinary  course,  wa.s  her 
desire  to  place  the  sovereign  power  in  the 
hands  of  one  of  the  favourites,  the  Duke  de 
Biren,  by  nominating  that  nobleman  as  the 
guardian  of  the  infant  Ivan.  To  accomplish 
this  purpose,  she  had  not  only  slighted  the 
legitimate  claims  of  Peter  the  Great's 
daughter,  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  but  had 
also  entirely  overlooked  the  interests  of 
Ivan's  mother,  who  naturally  felt  that  she 
had  a  right  to  nscend  the  throne,  as  the 
nearest  relation  of  the  deceased  empress  and 
the  mother  of  the  chill,  who  was  designated 
as  the  future  emperor.  To  the  bewilder- 
ment and  dissatisfaction  thus  produced,  a 
further  element  of  confusion  was  added  by 
the  total  incapacity  of  the  Duke  de  Biren 
to  occupy  creditably  the  post  of  authority 
which  had  !>een  assigned  to  him.  Before  lie 
had  been  long1  in  office,  he  gave  way  alto- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  REMARKABLE  REVOLUTION. 


[August  1,  185M        101 


gether  under  the  double  responsibility  of 
guiding  the  affairs  of  Russia  and  directing 
the  education  of  the  future  emperor.  Ivan's 
mother  saw  the  chance  of  asserting  her 
rights  which  the  weakness  of  the  duke 
afforded  to  her.  She  was  a  resolute  woman  ; 
and  she  seized  her  opportunity  bv  banishing 
Biren  to  Siberia,  and  taking  his  place  as 
Regent  of  the  Empire  and  guardian  of  her 
infant  son. 

Such  was  the  result,  thus  far,  of  the  great 
scramble  for  the  crown  which  began  with 
the  death  of  the  son  of  Peter  the  Great. 
Such  was  the  position  of  affairs  in  Russia  at 
the  time  when  the  revolution  broke  out. 

Throng! i  all  the  contentious  which  dis- 
tracted the  country,  the  Princess  Elizabeth 
lived  in  the  retirement  of  her  own  palace, 
waiting  secretly,  patiently,  and  vigilantly  for 
the  fit  opportunity  of  asserting  her  rights. 
She  was,  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  a  re- 
markable woman,  and  she  numbered  two 
remarkable  men  among  the  adherents  of  her 
cause.  One  was  the  French  ambassador  at 
the  Court  of  Russia,  the  Marquis  de  la 
Cliet.-irdie.  The  other  was  the  surgeon  of 
Elizabeth's  household,  a  German,  named 
Lestoc.  The  Frenchman  had  money  to 
spend  ;  the  German  had  brains  to  plot.  Both 
were  men  of  tried  courage  and  resolute  will ; 
and  both  were  destined  to  take  the  foremost 
places  in  the  coming  struggle.  It  is  certainly 
not  the  least  curious  circumstance  in  the 
extraordinary  revolution  which  we  are  now 
about  to  describe,  that  it  was  planned  and 
carried  out  by  two  foreigners.  In  the 
struggle  for  the  Russian  throne,  the  natives 
of  the  Russian  soil  were  used  only  as  instru- 
ments to  be  handled  and  directed  at  the 
pleasure  of  the  French  ambassador  and  the 
German  surgeon. 

The  Marquis  and  Lestoc,  watching  the 
signs  of  the  times,  arrived  at  the  conclusion 
that  the  period  of  the  banishment  of  the 
Duke  de  Biren  and  of  the  assumption  of  the 
supreme  power  by  the  mother  of  Ivan,  was 
also  the  period  for  effecting  the  revolution 
which  was  to  place  the  Princess  Elizabeth  on 
the  throne  of  her  ancestors.  The  dissatis- 
faction in  Russia  had,  by  this  time,  spread 
widely  among  all  classes.  The  people  chafed 
under  a  despotism  inflicted  on  them  by 
foreigners.  The  native  nobility  felt  outraged 
by  their  exclusion  from,  privileges  which  had 
been  conceded  to  their  order  under  former 
reigns,  before  the  aliens  from  Courland  had 
seized  on  the  reins  of  power.  The  army  was 
for  the  most  part  to  be  depended  on  to 
answer  any  bold  appeal  that  might  be  made 
to  it,  in  favour  of  the  daughter  of  Peter  the 
Gi  eat.  With  these  chances  in  their  favour, 
the  Frenchman  and  the  German  set  them- 
selves to  the  work  of  organising  the  scattered 
elements  of  discontent.  The  Marquis  opened 
his  well-filled  purse ;  and  Surgeon  Lestoc 
prowled  about  the  city  and  the  palace  with 
watchful  eyes,  with  persuasive  tongue,  with 


delicately-bribing  hands.  The  great  point  to 
be  achieved  was  to  tamper  successfully  with 
the  regiment  on  duty  at  the  palace ;  and 
this  was  skilfully  and  quickly  accomplished 
by  Lestoc.  In  the  course  of  a  few  days  only, 
he  contrived  to  make  sure  of  all  the  consider- 
able officers  of  the  regiment,  and  of  certain 
picked  men  from  the  ranks  besides.  On 
counting  heads,  the  members  of  the  military 
conspiracy  thus  organised  came  to  thirty- 
three.  Exactly  the  same  number  of  men  had 
once  plotted  the  overthrow  of  Julius  Caosar, 
nncl  had  succeeded  in  the  attempt. 

Matters  had  proceeded  thus  far  when  the 
suspicions  of  the  Duchess  Regent  (that  being 
the  title  which  Ivan's  mother  had  now 
assumed)  were  suddenly  excited,  without  the 
slightest  apparent  cause  to  arouse  them. 
Nothing  dangerous  had  been  openly  at- 
tempted as  yet,  and  not  one  of  the  conspira- 
tors had  betrayed  the  secret.  Nevertheless 
the  Duchess  Regent  began  to  doubt ;  and,  one 
morning,  she  astonished  and  alarmed  the 
marquis  and  Lestoc  by  sending,  without  any 
previous  warning,  for  the  Princess  Elizabeth, 
and  by  addressing  a  series  of  searching  ques- 
tions to  her  at  a  private  interview.  For- 
tunately for  the  success  of  the  plot,  the 
daughter  of  Peter  the  Great  was  more  than 
a  match  for  the  Duchess  Regent.  From  first 
to  last  Elizabeth  proved  herself  equal  to  the 
dangerous  situation  in  which  she  was  placed. 
The  Duchess  discovered  nothing  ;  and  the 
heads  of  the  thirty-three  conspirators  re- 
mained safe  on  their  shoulders. 

This  piece  of  good  fortune  operated  on  the 
cunning  and  resolute  Lestoc  as  a  warning  to 
make  haste.  Between  the  danger  of  waiting 
to  mature  the  conspiracy,  and  the  risk  of 
letting  it  break  out  abruptly  before  the 
organisation  of  it  was  complete,  he  chose  the 
latter  alternative.  The  Marquis  agreed  with 
him  that  it  was  best  to  venture  everything, 
before  there  was  time  for  the  suspicions  of  the 
Duchess  to  be  renewed ;  and  the  Princess 
Elizabeth,  on  her  part,  was  perfectly  ready 
to  be  guided  by  the  advice  of  her  two  trusty 
adherents.  The  fifteenth  of  January,  seven- 
teen hundred  and  forty-one,  had  been  the 
day  originally  fixed  for  the  breaking  out  of 
the  revolution.  Lestoc  now  advanced  the 
period  for  making  the  great  attempt  by  nine 
days.  On  the  night  of  the  sixth  of  January 
the  Duchess  Regent  and  the  Princess  Eliza- 
beth were  to  change  places,  and  the  throne  of 
Russia  was  to  become  once  more  the  inheri- 
tance of  the  family  of  Peter  the  Great. 

Between  nine  and  ten  o'clock,  on  the  night 
of  the  sixth,  Surgeon  Lestoc  strolled  out, 
with  careless  serenity  on  his  face,  and  de- 
vouring anxiety  at  his  heart,  to  play  his 
accustomed  game  of  billiards  at  a  French 
coffee-house.  The  stakes  were  ten  ducats,  and 
Lestoc  did  not 'play  quite  so  well  as  usual  that 
evening.  When  the  clock  of  the  coffee-house 
struck  ten,  he  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the 
game,  and  drew  out  his  watch. 


102       [August  1.1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


"  I  beg  ten  thousand  pardons,"  he  said  to 
the  gentleman  with  whom  he  was  playing  ; 
"  but  I  :im  afraid  I  must  ask  yon  to  let  me 
go  before  the  game  is  done.  I  have  a  patient 
to  see  at  ten  o'clock,  and  the  hour  lias  just 
struck.  Here  is  a  friend  of  mine,"  he  conti- 
nued, bringing  forward  one  of  the  bystanders 
by  the  arm,  "  who  will,  with  your  permission, 
play  in  my  place.  It  is  quite  immaterial  to 
me  whether  he  loses  or  whether  he  wins,  I  am 
merely  anxious  that  your  game  should  not  be 
interrupted.  Ten  thousand  pardons  again. 
Nothing  but  the  necessity  of  seeing  a  patient 
could  have  induced  me  to  be  guilty  of  this 
apparent  rudeness.  I  wish  you  much  plea- 
sure, gentlemen,  and  I  most  unwillingly  bid 
you  good  night." 

With  that  polite  farewell,  he  departed. 
The  patient  whom  he  was  going  to  cure  was 
the  sick  Russian  Empire. 

He  got  into  his  sledge,  and  drove  off  to 
the  palace  of  the  Princess  Elizabeth.  She 
trembled  a  little  when  he  told  her  quietly 
that  the  hour  had  come  for  possessing  herself 
of  the  throne ;  but,  soon  recovering  her 
spirits,  dressed  to  go  out,  concealed  a  knife 
about  her  in  case  of  emergency,  and  took  her 
place  by  the  side  of  Lestoc  in  the  sledge. 
The  two  then  set  forth  together  for  the 
French  embassy  to  pick  up  the  second  leader 
of  the  conspiracy. 

They  found  the  Marquis  alone,  cool, 
smiling,  humming  a  gay  French  tune,  and 
quietly  amusing  himself  by  making  a  drawing. 
Elizabeth  and  Lestoe  looked  over  his  shoulder, 
and  the  former  started  a  little  when  she  saw 
what  the  subject  of  the  drawing  was.  In 
the  background  appeared  a  lai'ge  monastery, 
a  grim  prison -like  building,  with  barred 
windows  and  jealously -closed  gates;  in 
the  foreground  were  two  high  gibbets  and 
two  wheels  of  the  sort  used  to  break  criminals 
on.  The  drawing  was  touched  in  with 
extraordinary  neatness  and  steadiness  of 
hand  ;  and  the  marquis  laughed  gaily 
when  he  saw  how  seriously  the  subject  repre- 
sented had  startled  and  amazed  the  Princess 
Elizabeth. 

"  Courage,  madam  ! "  he  said.  "  I  was 
only  amusing  myself  by  making  a  sketch 
illustrative  of  the  future  which  we  may  all 
three  expect  if  we  fail  in  our  enterprise.  In 
an  hour  from  this  time,  you  will  be  on  the 
throne,  or  on  your  way  to  this  ugly  building." 
(He  touched  the  monastery  in  the  back- 
ground of  the  drawing  lightly  with  the  point 
of  his  pencil.)  "  In  an  hour  from  this  time, 
also,  our  worthy  Lestoc  and  myself  will  either 
be  the  two  luckiest  men  in  Russia,  or  the 
two  miserable  criminals  who  are  bound  on 
these"  (he  touched  the  wheels)  "and  hung 
up  afterwards  on  those "  (he  touched  the 
gibbets).  "You  will  p;<rd<m  me,  madam,  for 
indulging  in  this  ghastly  fancy  ]  I  was 
always  eccentric  from  childhood.  My  good 
Lestoc,  as  we  seem  to  be  quite  ready,  perhaps 
you  will  kindly  precede  us  to  the  door,  and 


allow  me  the  honour  of  handing  the  Princess 
to  the  sledge  ?" 

They  leit  the  house,  laughing  and  chatting 
as  carelessly  as  if  they  were  a  party  going  to 
the  theatre.  Lestoc  took  the  reins.  "  To  the 
palace  of  the  Duchess  Regent,  coachman  !" 
said  the  Marquis,  pleasantly.  And  to  the 
palace  they  went. 

They  made  no  attempt  to  slip  in  by  back- 
doors, but  boldly  drove  up  to  the  grand 
entrance,  inside  of  which  the  guard-house 
was  situated. 

;;  Who  goes  there  ?"  cried  the  sentinel  as 
they  left  the  sledge  and  passed  in. 

The  Marquis  took  a  pinch  of  snuff. 

"  Don't  you  see,  my  good  fellow  ?"  he  said. 
"A  lady  and  two  gentlemen." 

The  slightest  irregularity  was  serious 
enough  to  alarm  the  guard  at  the  Imperial 
palace  in  those  critical  times.  The  sentinel 
presented  his  rnusket  at  the  Marquis,  and  a 
drummer-boy  who  was  standing  near  ran  to 
;  his  instrument  and  caught  up  his  drum-sticks 
to  beat  the  alarm. 

Before  the  sentinel  could  fire,  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  the  thirty-three  conspirators,  and 
was  disarmed  in  an  instant.  Before  the 
drummer-boy  could  beat  the  alarm,  the 
Princess  Elizabeth  had  drawn  out  her  knife 
and  had  stabbed — not  the  boy,but — the  drum  ! 
These  slight  preliminary  obstacles  being  thus 
disposed  of,  Lestoc  and  the  Marquis,  having 
the  Princess  between  them,  and  being  fol- 
lowed by  their  thirty-three  adherents,  marched 
resolutely  into  the  great  hall  of  the  palace, 
and  there  confronted  the  entire  guard. 

"  Gentlemen,"  said  the  Marquis,  "  I  have 
the  honour  of  presenting  you  to  your  future 
empress,  the  daughter  of  Peter  the  Great." 

Half  the  guard  had  been  bribed  by  the 
cunning  Lestoc.  The  other  half,  seeing  their 
comrades  advance  and  pay  homage  to  the 
Princess,  followed  the  example  of  loyalty. 
Elizabeth  was  escorted  into  a  room  on  the 
ground-float  by  a  military  court  formed  in 
the  course  of  five  minutes.  The  Marquis  and 
the  faithful  thirty-three  went  up-stairs  to  the 
sleeping  apartments  of  the  palace.  Lestoc 
ran  out,  and  ordered  a  carriage  to  be  got 
ready — then  joined  the  Marquis  and  the  con- 
spirators. The  Duchess  Regent  and  her 
child  were  just  retiring  for  the  night  when 
the  German  surgeon  and  the  French-  ambas- 
sador politely  informed  them  that  they  were 
prisoners.  Entreaties  were  of  no  avail  ;  re- 
sistance was  out  of  the  question.  Both 
mother  and  son  were  led  down  to  the  carriage 
that  Lestoc  had  ordered,  and  were  driven  off, 
under  a  strong  guard,  to  the  fortress  of 
Riga. 

The  palace  was  secured,  and  the  Duchess 
was  imprisoned,  but  Lestoc  and  the  Marquis 
had  not  done  their  night's  work  yet.  It  was 
necessary  to  make  sure  of  three  powerful 
personages  connected  with  the  government. 
Three  more  carriages  were  ordered  out  when 
the  Duchess's  carriage  had  been  driven  off ; 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  EEMAEKABLE  EEVOLUTION. 


[August  1,  1857.]        103 


and  three  noblemen — among  them  Count 
Osterman,  the  original  cause  of  the  troubles 
in  Russia — were  woke  out  of  their  first  sleep 
with  the  information  that  they  were  state 
prisoners,  and  were  started  before  daylight 
on  their  way  to  Siberia.  At  the  same  time 
the  thirty-three  conspirators  were  scattered 
about  in  every  barrack-room  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, proclaiming  Elizabeth  Empress,  in  right 
of  her  illustrious  parentage,  and  in  the  name 
of  the  Eussian  people.  Soon  after  daylight, 
the  moment  the  working  population  was 
beginning  to  be  astir,  the  churches  were 
occupied  by  trusty  men  under  Lestoc's  orders, 
and  the  oaths  of  fidelity  to  Elizabeth  were 
administered  to  the  willing  populace  as  fast 
as  they  came  in  to  morning  prayers.  By  nine 
o'clock  the  work  was  done  ;  the  people  were 
satisfied  ;  the  army  was  gained  over  ;  Eliza- 
beth sat  on  her  father's  throne,  unopposed,  un- 
questioned, unstained  by  the  sheddingof  a  drop 
of  blood  ;  and  Lestoc  and  the  Marquis  could 
rest  from  their  labours  at  last,  and  could  say 
to  each  other  with  literal  truth,  "  The  govern- 
ment of  Eussia  has  been  changed  iu  nine 
hours,  and  we  two  foreigners  are  the  men 
who  have  worked  the  miracle  ! " 

Such  was  the  Eussiaii  revolution  of  seven- 
teen hundred  and  forty-one.  It  was  not  the 
less  effectual  because  it  had  lasted  but  a  few 
hours,  and  had  been  accomplished  without 
the  sacrifice  of  a  single  life.  The  Imperial 
inheritance,  which  it  had  placed  in  the  hands 
of  Elizabeth,  was  not  snatched  from  them 
again.  The  daughter  of  the  great  Czar  lived 
and  died  Empress  of  Eussia. 

And  what  became  of  the  two  men  who 
had  won  the  throne  for  her  ?  The  story  of 
the  after-conduct  of  the  Marquis  and  Lestoc 
must  answer  that  question.  The  events  of 
the  revolution  itself  are  hardly  more  strange 
than  the  events  in  the  lives  of  the  French 
ambassador  and  the  German  surgeon,  when 
the  brief  struggle  was  over  and  the  change 
in  the  dynasty  was  accomplished. 

To  begin  with  the  Marquis.  He  had  laid 
the  Princess  Elizabeth  under  serious  obli- 
gations to  his  courage  and  fidelity  ;  and  his 
services  were  repaid  by  such  a  reward  as,  in  his 
vainest  moments,  he  could  never  have  dared 
to  hope  for.  He  had  not  only  excited  Eliza- 
beth's gratitude,  as  a  faithful  adherent,  but 
he  had  touched  her  heart  as  a  man  ;  and,  as 
soon  as  she  was  settled  quietly  on  the  throne, 
she  proved  her  admiration  of  his  merits, 
his  services,  and  himself  by  offering  to  marry 
him. 

This  proposal,  which  conferred  on  the 
Marquis  the  highest  distinction  in  Eussia, 
fairly  turned  his  brain.  The  imperturbable 
man  who  had  preserved  his  coolness  in  a 
situation  of  the  deadliest  danger,  lost  all  con- 
trol over  himself  the  moment  he  rose  to  the 
climax  of  prosperity.  Having  obtained  leave 
of  absence  from  his  Imperial  mistress,  he 
returned  to  France  to  ask  leave  from  his  own 


sovereign  to  marry  the  empress.  This  per- 
mission was  readily  granted.  After  receiving 
it,  any  man  of  ordinary  discretion  would  have 
kept  the  fact  of  the  Empress's  partiality  for 
him  as  strictly  secret  as  possible,  until  it  could 
be  openly  avowed  on  the  marriage-day.  Far 
from  this,  the  Marquis's  vanity  led  him  to 
proclaim  the  brilliant  destiny  in  store  for  him 
all  over  Paris.  He  commissioned  the  king's 
genealogist  to  construct  a  pedigree  which 
should  be  made  to  show  that  he  was  not  un- 
worthy to  contract  a  royal  alliance.  When 
the  pedigree  was  completed  he  had  the  incre- 
dible folly  to  exhibit  it  publicly,  along  with 
the  keepsakes  which  the  Empress  had  given  to 
him  and  the  rich  presents  which  he  intended 
to  bestow  as  marks  of  his  favour  on  the  lords 
and  ladies  of  the  Eussian  court.  Nor  did  his 
imprudence  end  even  here.  When  he  re- 
turned to  St.  Petersburg,  he  took  back  with 
him,  among  the  other  persons  comprising  his 
train,  a  woman  of  loose  character,  dressed  in 
the  disguise  of  a  page.  The  persons  about 
the  Eussian  court,  whose  prejudices  he  had 
never  attempted  to  conciliate — whose  envy 
at  his  success  waited  only  for  the  slightest 
opportunity  to  effect  his  ruin — suspected  the 
sex  of  the  pretended  page,  and  too.k  good 
care  that  the  report  of  their  suspicions 
should  penetrate  gradually  to  the  foot  of  the 
throne.  It  seems  barely  credible,  but  it  is, 
nevertheless,  unquestionably  the  fact,  that 
the  infatuated  Marquis  absolutely  allowed 
the  Empress  an  opportunity  of  seeing  his 
page.  Elizabeth's  eye,  sharpened  by  jealousy, 
penetrated  instantly  to  the  truth.  Any  less 
disgraceful  insult  she  would  probably  have 
forgiven,  but  such  an  outrage  as  this  no 
woman — especially  no  woman  in  her  position 
—  could  pardon.  With  one  momentary 
glance  of  anger  and  disdain,  she  dismissed 
the  Marquis  from  her  presence,  and  never, 
from  that  moment,  saw  him  again. 

The  same  evening  his  papers  were  seized, 
all  the  presents  that  he  had  received  from. 
the  Empress 'were  taken  from  him,  and  he 
was  ordered  to  leave  the  Eussian  dominions 
for  ever,  within  eight  days'  time.  He  was  not 
allowed  to  write,  or  take  any  other  means  of 
attempting  to  justify  himself ;  and,  on  his 
way  back  to  his  native  country,  he  was 
followed  to  the  frontier  by  certain  officers  of 
the  Eussian  army,  and  there  stripped,  with 
every  mark  of  ignominy,  of  all  the  orders  of 
nobility,  which  he  had  received  from  the 
Imperial  court.  He  returned  to  Paris  a  dis- 
graced man,  lived  there  in  solitude,  obscurity, 
and  neglect  for  some  years,  and  died  in  a 
state  of  positive  want,  the  unknown  inhabi- 
tant of  one  of  the  meanest  dwellings  in  the 
whole  city. 

The  end  of  Lestoc  is  hardly  less  remark- 
able than  the  end  of  the  Marquis.  In  their 
weak  points  as  in  their  strong,  the  cha- 
racters of  these  two  men  seem  to  have  been 
singularly  alike.  Making  due  allowance  for 


104       [August],  1857  J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


the  difference  in  station  between  the  German 
surgeon  and  the  French  ambassador,  it  is 
undeniable  that  Elizabeth  showed  her  sense 
of  the  services  of  Lestoc  as  gratefully  and 
generously  as  she  had  shown  her  sense  of  the 
services  of  the  Marquis.  The  ex-surgeon 
was  raised  at  onee  to  the  position  of  the 
eliief  favourite  and  the  most  powerful  man 
about  the  Court.  Besides  the  privileges 
which  he  shared  equally  with  the  highest 
nobles  of  the  period,  he  was  allowed  access 
to  the  Empress  on  all  private  as  well  as  on 
all  public  occasions.  He  had  a  perpetual 
right  of  entry  into  her  domestic  circle  which 
was  conceded  to  no  one  else  ;  and  he  held  a 
position,  on  days  of  public  reception,  that 
placed  him  on  an  eminence  to  which  no 
other  man  in  Russia  could  hope  to  attain. 
Such  was  his  position  ;  and,  strange  to  say, 
it  had  precisely  the  same  maddening  effect 
on  his  vanity  which  the  prospect  of  an 
imperial  alliance  had  exercised  over  the 
vanity  of  the  marquis.  Lestoc's  audacity 
became  ungovernable  ;  his  insolence  knew 
no  bounds.  He  abused  the  privileges  con- 
ferred upon  him  by  Elizabeth's  grateful 
regard,  with  such  baseness  and  such  indeli- 
cacy, that  the  Empress,  after  repeatedly 
cautioning  him  in  the  friendliest  possible 
terms,  found  herself  obliged,  out  of  regard 
to  her  own  reputation  and  to  the  remon- 
strances which  assailed  her  from  all  the 
persons  of  her  Court,  to  deprive  him  of  the 
privilege  of  entry  into  her  private  apart- 
ments. 

This  check,  instead  of  operating  as  a 
timely  warning  to  Lestoc,  irritated  him  into 
the  commission  of  fresh  acts  of  insolence,  so 
wanton  in  their  nature  that  Elizabeth  at 
last  lost  all  patience,  and  angrily  reproached 
him  with  the  audacious  ingratitude  of  his 
behaviour.  The  reproach  was  retorted  by 
Lestoc,  who  fiercely  accused  the  Empress  of 
forgetting  the  great  services  that  he  had 
rendered  her,  and  declared  that  he  would 
turn  his  back  on  her  and  her  dominions, 
after  first  resenting  the  contumely  with 
which  he  had  been  treated  by  an  act  of 
revenge  that  she  would  remember  to  the 
day  of  her  death. 

The  vengeance  which  he  had  threatened 
proved  to  be  the  vengeance  of  a  forger  and 
a  cheat.  The  banker  in  St.  Petersburg  who 
•was  charged  with  the  duty  of  disbursing  the 
sums  of  state  money  which  were  set  apart 
for  the  Empress's  use,  received  an  order,  one 
day,  to  pay  four  hundred  thousand  ducats,  to 
a  certain  person,  who  was  not  mentioned  by 
name,  biit  who,  it  was  stated,  would  call, 
with  the  proper  credentials,  to  receive  the 
money.  The  banker  was  struck  by  this 
irregular  method  of  performing  the  pi*e- 
liminaries  of  an  important  matter  of  busi- 
ness, and  he  considered  it  to  be  his  duty  to 
show  the  document  which  he  had  received 
to  one  of  the  Ministers.  Secret  inquiries 
were  immediately  set  on  foot,  and  they  ended 


in  the  discovery  that  the  order  was  a  false 
one,  and  that  the  man  who  had  forged  it 
was  no  other  than  Lestoc. 

For  a  crime  of  this  kind  the  punishment 
was  death.  But  the  Empress  had  declared, 
on  her  accession,  that  she  would  sign  no 
warrant  for  the  taking  away  of  life  during 
her  reign,  and,  moreover,  she  still  generously 
remembered  what  she  had  owed  in  former 
times  to  Lestoc.  Accordingly,  she  changed 
his  punishment  to  a  sentence  of  exile  to 
Siberia,  with  special  orders  that  the  life  of 
the  banished  man  should  be  made  as  easy 
to  him  as  possible.  He  had  not  passed 
many  years  in  the  wildernesses  of  Siberia, 
before  Elizabeth's  strong  sense  of  past  obli- 
gation to  him,  induced  her  still  further  to 
lighten  his  punishment  by  ordering  that  he 
should  be  brought  back  to  St.  Petersburg 
and  confined  in  the  fortress  there,  where  her 
own  eyes  might  assure  her  that  he  was 
treated  with  mercy  and  consideration.  It  is 
probable  that  she  only  intended  this  change 
as  a  prelude  to  the  restoration  of  his  liberty  ; 
but  the  future  occasion  for  pardoning  him 
never  came.  Shortly  after  his  return  to 
St.  Petersburg,  Lestoc  ended  his  days  in  the 
prison  of  the  fortress. 

So  the  two  leaders  of  the  Russian  revo- 
lution lived,  and  so  they  died.  It  has  been 
said,  and  said  well,  that  the  only  sure  proof  of 
a  man's  strength  of  mind  is  to  be  discovered 
by  observing  the  manner  in  which  he  bears 
success.  History  shows  few  such  remarkable 
examples  of  the  truth  of  this  axiom,  as  are 
afforded  by  the  lives  of  the  Marquis  de  la 
Chetardie  and  the  German  surgeon  Lestoc. 
Two  stronger  men  in  the  hour  of  peril  and 
two  weaker  men  in  the  hour  of  security  have 
not  often  appeared  in  this  world  to  vanquish 
adverse  circumstances  like  heroes,  and  to  be 
conquered  like  cowards  afterwards  by  nothing 
but  success. 


OPIUM. 

CHAPTER   THE   FIRST.      INDIA. 

IT  not  unfrequently  happens  that — amid 
the  storms  of  "party,  hostile  divisions,  bitter 
speeches, parliamentary  disruptions,  dissolved 
sessions,  hustings'  agitations,  cabinet  recon- 
structions, plausible  promises  —  the  plain 
facts  ot  a  large  international  question  are 
little  understood  by  the  people.  The  present 
outbreak  with  China  is  not  exactly  an  opium 
war,  yet  opium  gives  flavour  to  it,  and  opium 
chests  are  Pandora-boxes  whence  much  mis- 
chief flies  out  to  trouble  the  Oriental  world. 
What  opium  is,  and  how  it  is  used  ;  who  gave 
it,  and  where  ;  who  buy  it,  and  why  ;  who 
pay  for  it,  and  how ;  who  fight  about  it,  and 
when — are  questions  that  we  ought,  for  rea- 
sons presently  to  be  shown,  to  be  well  able  to 
answer  in  England,  since  they  bear  very 
closely  on  our  relation  with  a  hundred  mil- 
lion East  Indians  and  three  hundred  millions 
Chinese.  An  attempt  is  here  made — in  an 


Ch.-.r'ps  Dichens.] 


OPIUM. 


f  August  1,1837.]         105 


Indian  chapter  relating  to  the  producers,  and 
a  Chinese  chapter  relating  to  the  consumers 
— to  give  a  plain  account  of  the  matter  : 
steering  clear  between  the  merchant-bias  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  missionary-bias  on  the 
other. 

Opium,  then,  is  a  brownish,  substance, 
smoked  and  chewed  in  a  manner  somewhat 
analogous  to  tobacco,  and  to  gratify  a  similar 
craving.  It  is  the  juice  of  the  white  poppy, 
solidified  and  otherwise  prepared.  This  plant 
is  extensively  grown  in  Asia  and  Europe, 
sometimes  for  the  sake  of  the  oil  contained 
in  the  seeds,  sometimes  for  the  medicinal  pro- 
perties of  the  capsules,  but  more  generally  I 
for  the  peculiar  opiate  qualities  of  the  juice. ! 
Although  the  Turks,  Syrians,  Egyptians,  and  , 
Persians  cultivate  the  poppy  for  the  sake  of  i 
the  opium,  this  branch  of  husbandry  is  more  ! 
especially  attended  to  in  India  ;  not  through  ' 
the  superior  qualities  of  the  soil  or  climate, 
but  from  an  all-powerful  money-motive,  pre- 
sently to  be  elucidated.  Much  care  and 
labour  are  needed  in  preparing  the  ground 
and  tending  the  young  plants,  and  many 
sources  of  injury  are  due  to  fluctuation  in 
wind,  rain,  and  dew :  hence  the  growth  of 
the  poppy  for  opium  is  rather  precarious.  In 
India,  the  cultivation  takes  place  in  the  cold 
season,  and  the  manuring  and  watering  are 
sedulously  attended  to.  Soon  after  the  flowers 
fall,  the  plant  is  ripe  for  the  opium  harvest. 
The  people  flock  to  the  fields  in  the  evening, 
armed  with  crooked-bladed  knives,  which 
are  employed  to  cut  incisions  in  the  capsules  I 
or  poppy-heads,  in  various  directions.  They  ' 
then  retire  for  the  night ;  and  on  resuming 
field-work  early  next  morning,  they  find  that 
juice  has  exuded  through  the  incisions,  and 
collected  on  the  surface.  At  first  it  is  white 
and  milky,  but  the  heat  of  the  sun  speedily 
converts  it  into  a  brown  gummy  mass,  in 
which  state  it  is  scraped  off.  The  thickened 
juice,  in  crude  opium,  is  collected  as  it  exudes 
day  after  day,  until  all  has  been  obtained  ; 
and  this  total  quantity  is  affected,  not  only 
by  the  whole  routine  of  culture,  but  by  the 
state  of  the  weather  during  the  cultivation 
and  collecting.  The  produce  is  either  simply 
dried  ;  or,  to  equalise  the  quality,  the  whole 
of  the  day's  collection  is  rubbed  together  in  a 
mortar  or  similar  vessel,  and  reduced  to  a 
homogenous  semi-fluid  mass,  which  is  then 
quickly  dried  in  the  shade. 

At  this  point  it  becomes  necessary  to  un- 
derstand the  qualities  for  or  on  account  of 
which  opium  is  consumed  by  man.  We  have 
briefly  noticed  the  opium  culture,  taken  in 
its  simplest  form,  without  regard  to  any 
other  interests  than  those  of  the  cultivator. 
But  we  cannot  now  stir  a  step  further  in  the 
narrative,  without  attending  to  those  quali- 
ties in  opium  that  have  determined  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  East  India  Company.  The 
art  of  deriving  a  revenue  from  this  commo- 
dity has  been  invented  by  the  Company,  and 
has  become  the  basis  for  a  vast  trade  between 


India  and  China.  Had  opium  been  employed 
merely  as  a  medicinal  drug,  \ve  should  never 
have  heard  of  opium  wars  in  the  Celestial 
Empire  ;  since,  owing  to  the  strength  of  the 
drug,  a  little  would  go  a  great  way  in  the 
hands  of  the  medical  practitioner.  The  poppy 
yields  morphia,  narcotina,  codeia,  meconine, 
and  other  substances  invaluable  in  the  heal- 
ing art  ;  and  it  is  the  source  whence  lauda- 
num, spirit  of  poppies,  and  a  host  of  nostrums 
under  the  names  of  Godfrey's  cordial,  pare- 
goric elixir,  black  drop,  sedative  liquor, 
Jeremie's  solution,  &c.,  derive  their  chief 
qualities.  But  the  sick  consume  very  little 
of  this  substance  ;  it  is  by  men,  men  hale 
enough  to  dispense  with  the  use  if  they  so 
please,  that  the  market-supply  of  opium  is 
mostly  taken  off.  Those  who  do  not  take 
opium  as  an  indulgence  can  form  no  adequate 
conception  of  the  effect  it  produces ;  and 
must  therefore  be  dependent  on  opium-eaters 
and  smokers,  or  on  medical  writers,  for  infor- 
mation on  this  subject.  The  collectors  of 
opium  are  generally  pale,  and  affected  with 
tremblings  ;  and  if  opium  be  heated,  the 
vapours  mixing  with  the  air  of  the  room  have 
a  tendency  to  produce  insensibility  in  man 
and  the  lower  animals.  It  acts  either  as  a 
stimulant  or  a  sedative,  according  to  the 
quantity  taken,  the  frequency  of  repetition, 
and  the  state  of  the  system  when  it  is  admi- 
nistered. M.  Pereira  states  that,  to  persons 
unaccustomed  to  its  use,  the  eating  of  less 
than  a  grain  of  opium  generally  produces  a 
stimulant  action  ;  the  mind  is  exhilarated, 
ideas  flow  more  quickly,  a  pleasurable  condi- 
tion of  the  whole  system  is  experienced, 
difficult  to  describe  ;  there  is  a  capability  of 
greater  exertion  than  usual ;  but  this  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  diminution  of  muscular  power, 
and  of  susceptibility  to  the  impression  of 
external  objects  ;  a  desire  of  repose  comes  on, 
hunger  is  not  felt,  but  thirst  increases.  Very 
soon,  however,  the  craving  increases  by  that 
which  it  feeds  upon  ;  the  pleasurable  stimulus 
is  only  renewable  by  increasing  the  dose,  in- 
somuch that  a  portion  of  a  grain  no  longer 
produces  the  result  yearned  for.  When  the 
quantity  reaches  two  or  three  grains  at  a 
dose,  the  st.-fge  of  excitement  is  soon  followed 
by  the  stage  of  depression ;  the  pulse  isfulland 
rapid,  then  faint  and  slow  ;  the  skin  becomes 
hot,  the  mouth  and  throat  dry,  the  appetite 
diminished,  the  thirst  increased,  the  taste  of 
food  deteriorated  by  nausea,  the  muscles 
enfeebled,  the  organs  of  sense  dull,  the  ideas 
confused,  and  the  inclination  torpid :  in 
short,  the  pleasurable  stage  is  brief  compared 
with  the  painful  stage  that  follows  it.  Four 
grains,  to  a  person  quite  unaccustomed  to  its 
use,  are  likely  to  be  fatal ;  but  to  an  opium- 
eater  or  smoker  this  is  only  a  very  moderate 
dose.  The  Turks,  who  in  many  cases  take 
opium  as  a  stimulant  because  their  religion 
forbids  the  use  of  wiue,  begin  v/ith  perhaps 
half  a  grain  ;  but  the  mania  carries  them  to 
such  a  length  that,  when  the  habit  is  fully 


106        [August  1,  ! 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


confirmed,  two  drachms  or-  more  per  day  are 
craved  for.  Dr.  Oppenheim,  in  relation  to 
these  Turkish  opium-eaters  (who  take  the 
drug  in  the  form  of  pills),  says  :  "  The  effect 
of  the  opium  manifests  itself  one  or  two 
hours  after  it  lias  been  taken,  and  lasts  for 
four  or  six  hours,  according  to  the  dose 
taken  and  the  idiosyncracy  of  the  subject.  In 
persons  accustomed  to  take  it,  it  produces  a 
high  degree  of  animation,  which  the  Theriaki 
(opium-eaters)  represent  as  the  acme  of  hap- 
piness. The  habitual  opium-eater  is  instantly 
recognised  by  his  appearance.  A  total  atten- 
uation of  body,  a  withered  yellow  counte- 
nance, a  lame  gait,  a  bending  of  the  spine, 
frequently  to  such  a  degree  as  to  assume  a 
circular  form,  and  glossy  deep-sunken  eyes, 
betray  him  at  the  first  glance.  The  digestive 
organs  are  in  the  highest  degree  disturbed  : 
the  sufferer  eats  scarcely  anything ;  his 
mental  and  bodily  powers  are  destroyed — he 
is  impotent.  By  degrees,  as  the  habit  be- 
comes more  confirmed,  his  strength  continues 
decreasing,  the  craving  for  the  stimulus  be- 
comes even  greater,  and  to  produce  tlie 
desired  effect  the  dose  must  constantly  be 
augmented.  When  the  dose  of  two  or  three 
drachms  a  day  no  longer  produces  the  beatific 
intoxication  so  eagerly  sought,  they  mix  the 
opium  with  corrosive  sublimate,  increasing 
the  quantity  till  it  reaches  ten  grains  a  day." 
Most  English  readers  are  to  some  extent 
familiar  with  the  revelations  made  by  De 
Quincy  and  Coleridge,  corroborating  this 
account  of  the  terrible  effects  of  opium- 
eating.  As  to  the  Chinese  habit  of  opium- 
smoking,  the  next  chapter  will  introduce  us 
to  it, 

Now  this  Oriental  tendency  to  opium- 
eating  and  smoking  will  furnish  a  clue  to  the 
past  and  present  proceedings  of  the  East 
India  Company,  in  relation  to  the  culture  of 
the  poppy.  Just  ninety  years  ago,  Messrs. 
Watson  and  Wheeler,  two  civil  servants  of 
the  Company  at  Calcutta,  suggested  to  the 
Council  that  as  India  grew  opium,  a  revenue 
might  possibly  be  derived  therefrom.  Until 
that  time,  China  had  purchased  no  foreign 
opium,  except  a  little  from  India,  a  little 
brought  from  Turkey  by  Portuguese  mer- 
chants ;  but  it  was  now  thought  that  India 
might  obtain  a  larger  share  in  the  trade. 
The  suggestion  was  so  far  adopted  as  to 
ensure  emoluments  for  several  officers  under 
the  Government ;  but  in  the  course  of  a  few 
years  the  monopoly  was  taken  out  of  the 
hands  of  those  officers,  and  the  profit  of  the 
trade  assumed  for  the  benefit  of  the  Com- 
pany, through  the  medium  of  middlemen  or 
speculators.  The  system  continued  under 
the  direction  of  the  Board  of  Revenue,  but 
towards  the  close  of  the  century  it  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Board  of  Trade.  About  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century  the  middle- 
man, or  contractor  system,  was  abolished. 
Company's  agents  were  directly  appointed, 
and  the  cultivation  of  the  poppy  was  strictly 


limited  to  certain  defined  districts  in  the 
Bengal  Presidency ;  the  plan,  thus  esta- 
blished, has  been  continued  down  to  the 
present  time,  with  modification  in  its  details, 
but  not  in  its  principle. 

Opium,  then,  is  a  rigorous  monopoly  of  the 
E.-ist  India  Company,  so  far  as  India  is  con- 
cerned ;  and  the  monopoly  is  cherished  and 
fostered  because  the  Chinese  are  found  to  be 
ready  purchasers.  The  Company  are  not  the 
growers  of  the  poppy,  but  they  control  the 
growers  in  an  extraordinary  way.  Benares, 
Patna.  and  Malvva  are  the  three  provinces 
where  the  plant  is  grown.  Leaving  Malwa 
for  special  mention  presently,  we  proceed  to 
describe  the  mode  in  which  the  operations  are 
conducted  in  the  other  two  provinces.  The 
cultivation  of  the  poppy  is  prohibited,  except 
for  the  purpose  of  selling  the  juice  to  the 
Company  at  a  fixed  price,  at  which  it  is 
received.  Any  cultivator  willing  to  engage 
in  this  branch  of  husbandry  is  permitted  so 
to  do,  on  the  condition  specified  ;  but  no  one 
is  compelled,  against  his  sense  of  his  own 
interests.  The  price  for  the  juice — about 
ninepence  per  pound  on  an  average  of  years — 
is  found  sufficient  to  stimulate  production. 
The  Company  will  take  any  quantity,  be  the 
produce  above  or  below  the  average.  The 
poppy  fields  are  measured  every  year,  and 
their  boundaries  fixed,  in  order  to  prevent 
collision  among  those  to  whom  they  are  as- 
signed. The  contract  between  the  Company 
and  the  growers  is  managed  through  many 
intermediate  agents — including  a  collector, 
who  is  a  European  ;  gomastaks,  a  superior 
class  of  native  agents  ;  sudder  mattus,  a 
respectable  class  of  landowners ;  village 
mattus,  the  principal  inhabitants  of  the  vil- 
lages ;  and  the  ryots  or  peasant  cultivators. 
According  to  the  engagement  entered  into, 
when  the  poppies  are  ripe,  immediately  before 
the  extraction  of  the  juice,  the  gomastak  and 
his  assistants  make  a  circuit  of  the  country 
or  district,  and  form  by  guess  a  probable 
estimate  of  the  produce  of  each  field.  He 
then  makes  the  ryot  enter  into  an  engage- 
ment to  deliver  the  quantity  thus  estimated, 
and  as  much  more  as  the  field  will  yield,  at 
the  price  previously  fixed.  If  the  quantity 
delivered  be  less  than  the  estimate,  and  the 
collector  has  reason  to  suppose  the  ryot  has 
kept  back  any,  the  former  is  empowered  by 
law  to  prosecute  the  ryot  in  the  civil  courts 
for  damages.  If  a  ryot  enters  on  the  culti- 
vation of  the  poppy  without  having  previously 
made  his  agreement  with  the  Company,  his 
property  becomes  immediately  attached,  until 
he  either  destroys  his  poppies  or  makes  the 
requisite  bargain.  There  would  be  tyranny 
in  the  working  of  such  a  system,  were  it  not 
perfectly  optional  to  the  ryot  to  abandon  the 
culture  of  the  poppy  whenever  it  became  un- 
profitable or  unpleasant  to  him;  and  indeed 
the  opponents  of  the  system  assert  that  it  is 
very  difficult  for  the  poor  cultivators  to  get 
out  of  the  groove,  whether  they  wish  or  no. 


Charles  Dickens-] 


OPIUM. 


[August  I,  1857-]         107 


Considering,  however,  that  the  culture  has 
vastly  increased  in  amount  lately,  the  balance 
of  evidence  seems  to  show  that  the  cultivators 
find  opium  to  be  as  profitable  as  rice  or 
cotton. 

.  It  is  said  above,  that  the  price  paid  to  the 
ryot  for  the  juice  is  about  uiuepence  per 
pound  ;  but  the  product  costs  the  Company 
four  or  five  times  this  amount  before  it 
finally  passes  into  other  hands.  The  juice 
has  many  processes  to  go  through  before  it  is 
fit  for  the  market,  and  these  processes  differ 
in  different  countries.  The  per-centage  of 
morphia  contained  in  poppy  juice  being  the 
chief  fact  that  determines  its  value,  the 
opium  brought  to  market  is  carefully  classi- 
fied, in  order  that  dealers  may,  in  the  first 
place,  guess  the  quality  from  the  country  or 
district,  and  then  analyse  it  more  minutely. 
Thus  Smyrna  opium  is  prepared  into  irregular 
flattened  masses  of  about  two  pounds  weight, 
somewhat  hard,  blackish  brown,  waxy  in 
lustre,  and  enveloped  in  leaves.  Constanti- 
uopolitan  opium, generally  in  small  lens-shaped 
cakes,  and  covered  with  poppy  leaves,  is 
redder,  softer,  and  weaker  in  quality  than 
that  from  Smyrna.  Egyptian  opium,  brought 
to  market  in  leaf-enveloped,  round,  flattened 
cakes,  about  three  inches  in  diameter,  is 
redder  than  the  last  named  kind,  but  much 
harder.  Persian  opium,  of  intermediate 
colour,  odour,  and  consistence,  is  brought  to 
market  in  the  form  of  cylindrical  sticks,  each 
enveloped  with  smooth  glossy  paper  and  tied 
with  cotton.  The  Indian  opium,  which  in 
many  respects  is  the  most  important,  is 
treated  as  follows : — After  the  juice  has  been 
collected  it  is  gradually  inspissated  in  the 
cool  shade,  care  being  taken  to  procure  a 
proper  jelly-like  consistence,  without  grit  or 
sourness.  When  ready  for  market,  it  pos- 
sesses a  degree  of  adhesiveness  which  keeps 
it  from  dropping  from  the  hand  for  some 
seconds,  though  the  hand  be  inverted.  In  the 
Patna  and  Benares  districts  the  opium  is 
made  into  balls  about  the  size  of  the  double 
fist,  and  covered  with  a  hard  skin  made  of 
the  petals  of  the  poppy.  The  chests  in  which 
the  opium  is  packed  for  the  market  are  made 
of  mango-wood  ;  each  consists  of  two  stories 
or  stages,  and  each  story  has  twenty  compart- 
ments to  contain  twenty  balls,  insomuch  that 
the  balls  of  opium  are  all  kept  separate. 
The  balls  weighing  about  three  pounds  and 
a-half  each,  the  average  chest-weight  does 
not  depart  far  from  a  hundred  and  forty 
pounds. 

We  have  reserved  for  a  special  paragraph 
the  Malwa  opium,  for  a  reason  that  may  now 
appear.  Malwa  is  not  a  British  possession. 
It  is  one  of  those  few  states  in  Hiudostan, 
becoming  fewer  and  fewer  in  each  generation, 
that  are  still  independent.  The  East  India 
Company  cannot,  therefore,  send  the  tax- 
gatherer  into  that  province,  but  they  never- 
theless contrive  to  obtain  a  large  revenue 
out  of  it  in  another  way.  The  Malwa  culti- 


vators, quite  independent  of  the  Company, 
grow  poppies  and  prepare  opium  just  when 
and  where  they  find  it  most  convenient. 
They  make  up  the  opium  into  cakes  about 
the  size  of  the  single  fist,  and  pack  it  in  dried 
poppy  leaves,  and  the  chests  in  which  the 
cakes  are  placed  are  covered  with  hides  or 
coarse  cloth  for  their  preservation.  All  is  so 
far  well  ;  but  if  the  cultivators  wish  to  sell 
the  opium  to  foreign  merchants  for  shipment 
at  a  seaport,  how  is  this  to  be  effected  'I 
Malwa,  situated  between  Bombay  and  Delhi, 
does  not  come  down  to  the  coast,  nor  can  it 
obtain  communication  with  any  coast  but  by 
transit  through  some  other  province.  When 
Scinde  was  independent,  the  opium  of  Malwa 
found  its  way  to  the  port  of  Kurrachee  in 
that  region,  without  coming  in  contact  with 
British  authorities ;  but  when  Scinde  was 
conquered  by  the  late  Sir  Charles  James 
Napier,  this  opium  trade  was  at  once  stopped. 
The  Company  obtained  such  a  command  over 
the  western  coasts  that.  Malwa  opium  could 
reach  no  port  except  that  of  Bombay,  and  by 
no  route  that  would  keep  clear  of  British 
territory.  Such  being  the  new  state  of  affairs, 
a  frontier  duty  was  established,  analogous  to 
the  customs'  toll  on  the  continent  of  .Europe, 
but  very  heavy  in  amount.  The  opium  is 
sold  by  the  cultivators  to  dealers  in  Malwa, 
and  about  eight  thousand  chests  are  annually 
consumed  in  that  province  ;  but  a  much 
larger  quantity  is  now  sent  by  land  route  to 
Bombay,  a  distance  of  nearly  five  hundred 
miles.  The  Malwa  opium  was  formerly 
admitted  along  this  route  at  a  small  duty,  so 
long  as  there  was  a  rival  outlet  through 
Scinde  ;  but  in  proportion  as  a  monopoly  has 
been  acquired  by  the  Company  the  duty  has 
been  raised.  The  British  resident  at  Indore, 
a  sort  of  ambassador  to  the  Malwa  state, 
grants  "  passes "  to  merchants  to  convey 
opium  thence  to  Bombay ;  and  for  these 
passes  or  permits  a  sum  is  paid  which  has 
been  trebled  in  amount  in  fifteen  years — it 
having  been  raised  from  about  a  hundred  and 
thirty  to  four  hundred  rupees  per  chest.  The 
last-named  rate  of  duty,  on  a  chest  of  about 
one  hundred  and  forty  pounds,  is  nearly  six 
shillings  per  pound — eight  times  as  much  as 
the  ryot  cultivator  obtains  for  the  juice.  Any 
opium  found  within  the  Bombay  Presidency, 
on  which  transit  duty  has  not  been  paid,  is 
not  only  forfeited,  but  entails  a  fine  on  the 
owner. 

One  stage  more,  and  we  arrive  at  the  whole- 
sale mercantile  dealings  in  Indian  opium.  Until 
the  great  change  effected  in  the  Company's 
charter,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-four, 
the  Company  were  their  own  merchants  in 
foreign  countries,  to  the  exclusion  of  others  ; 
but  the  external  trade  is  now  free,  and  is 
managed  by  any  merchants  belonging  to  any 
country.  In  Madras  presidency  no  opium  is 
grown,  and  none  exported.  In  Bombay  pre- 
sidency no  opium  is  grown,  but  the  Malwa 
opium  pays  duty  on  passing  through  British 


108 


,i»7.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


territory  to  that  port.  In  Bengal  presidency 
a  system  of  sale  by  auction  is  adopted.  When 
the  Bengal  opium  has  been  collected  and 
brought  to  the  Company's  depots  in  the  cities 
of  Benares  and  Patna,  when  it  has  been  puri- 
fied and  packed  in  the  chests,  it  is  sent  to 
Calcutta,  where  brokers,  acting  for  the  Com- 
pany, dispose  of  the  opium  by  auction  to  the 


the  dependence  of  Britain  on  the  United 
States  for  a  supply  of  that  important  mate- 
rial is  beginning  to  excite  much  uneasiness 
— it  would  be  more  to  the  advantage  both 
of  India  and  of  England. 

As  far  back  as  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago, 
when  the  affairs  of  the  East  India  Company 
were  investigated  by  parliament,  and  when 
the  revenue  derived  from  opium  was  far 


highest  bidders.     The  purchasers  are  English, 

American,  and  other  merchants,  \vho  buy  to  j  smaller  than  it  has  since  become,  the  corn- 
sell  again  at  any  other  ports  they  please  ;  it,  i  mittee  reported :  "  In  the  present  state  of  the 
being  a  well  understood  fact,  however,  that  i  revenue  of  India,  it  does  not  appear  advisable 
China  is  the  great  market  to  which  they  |  to  abandon  so  important  a  source  of  revenue; 


look. 
The 


commercial    history  of    a  pound   of 


Indian  opium,  then,  is  this  :  The  Company 
pay  about  uinepence  for  the  juice  to  the  ryot 
cultivator;  they  incur  a  further  expenditure 
of  three  shillings  or  so,  by  the  time  the  opium 
lias  left  their  hands.  They  receive,  on  an 
average,  say  twelve  shillings  from  the  rner- 


a  duty  on  opium  being  a  tax  which  falls 
principally  upon  the  foreign  consumers,  and 
which  appears,  upon  the  whole,  less  liable  to 
objection  than  any  other  that  could  be  sub- 
stituted." This  line  of  argument  has  been 
since  ;  the  servants  of  the  Com- 


pany,   in   evidence  before    commissions   and 
committees,  constantly  assert  that  the  opium 


chant  who  buys  at  the  Calcutta  sale,  and  revenue  must  not  be  touched,  unless  the 
they  pocket  the  difference  between  lour  shil-  moralists  can  point  out  some  substitute ;  they 
lings  and  twelve.  These  sums  must  be  taken  J  say,  if  you  touch  this  revenue,  you  will  para- 
simply  as  a  means  of  showing  how  the  price  i  lise  any  exertions  we  may  make  to  improve 
rises,  and  not  the  actual  prices  for  any  one  ]  the  natives  and  industry  of  India.  Money 
year.  The  Company  have  sold  at  seven  we  must  have — if  not  from  opium,  where  else  ? 


shillings  per  pound,  they  have  sold  at  a 
guinea  per  pound,  according  to  the  general 
state  of  affairs  in  India  or  in  China,  and  their 


The  Marquis  of  Dalhousie,  in  the  remark- 
able Minute  giving  the  results  of  his  eight 
years'  government  of  India,  shows  that  the 


profits  have  been  proportionally  affected.  As  i  opium  revenue  had  increased  from  less  than 
to  the  further  increase  of  price  in  China,  the  i  three  millions  sterling,  iu  eighteen  hundred 
next  chapter  will  afford  some  information.  [and  forty-eight,  to  more  than  five  millions  in 


At  Bombay,  the  exports  of  opium  to  China 
are  greater  than  all  the  other  exports  to  all 
countries  ;  but,  at  Calcutta,  the  general 
trade  being  vastly  in  excess  of  that  at  the 
sister  presideuc\',  the  opium  exports  do  not 
appear  to  be  relatively  so  large,  although  the 
actual  quantity  of  Benares  and  Patna  opium, 
sold  at  Calcutta,  is  about  twice  that  of 
Malwa  opium  sold  at  Bombay.  The  sales  at 
Calcutta  have  increased  from  two  to  twelve 
in  the  year,  and  are  managed  by  brokers  em- 
ployed by  the  Company.  The  Company  have 
nothing  further  to  do  with  the  matter  after 
these 


eighteen  hundred  and  fifty- six  ;  that  it  now 
forms  one-sixth  of  the  entire  revenue  of  our 
vast  Indian  empire  ;  and  he  ventures  upon 
no  suggestions  for  the  future  abandonment  or 
diminution  of  this  source  of  wealth. 

The  next  chapter  will  take  up  from  India 
to  China  ;  from  the  opium-growers  to  the 
opium-consumers  ;  from  those  who  obtain  a 
revenue  through  smoke,  to  those  who  puff 
the  smoke  that  yields  the  revenue. 

A  DEAD  PAST. 


the  merchants  or  buyers  take  I  f^p1'"  at  least.;  ^ok,  you  have  taken  from  me 


the  drug  whithersoever  they  will — mostly  to 
China,  in  low-hulled,  swift-sailing  vessels. 
Ninety  years  ago,  India  sent  two  hundred 
chests  of  opium  annually  to  China  ;  now,  she 
sends  fifty  or  sixty  thousand  ;  at  that  time,  the 
opium  paid  only  cultivators'  and  merchants' 
profits  ;  at  present,  it  yields  in  addition  a 
revenue  of  no  less  than  five  millions  sterling 
to  the  East  India  Company.  And  yet  it  is 
calculated  that  all  the  opium  fields  of  India 
combined,  do  not  exceed  an  area  of  a  hun- 
dred thousand  acres,  or  a  square  of  land 
measuring  twelve  or  thirteen  miles  on  each 
side.  In  the  culture  of  these  fields,  the  Com- 
pany not  only  pay  the  ryot  for  the  opium 
produced,  but  advance  him  money  to  assist  in 
the  culture  ;  and  this  has  led  some  of  the 
well-wishers  of  India  to  assert  that,  if  the 
Company  would  foster  the  growth  of  cotton 
in  the  same  way — especially  at  a  time  when 


:  m« 


*nu  *  '  "ot  nor  moan  ; 


The  Future,  too,  with  all  her  glorious  promise, 
But  do  not  leave  me  utterly  alone. 

Spare  me  the  Past — for,  see,  she  cannot  harm  you, 
She  lies  so  white  and  cold,  wrapped  in  her  shroud, 
All,  all  my  own!  and  trust  me  I  will  hide  her 
Within  my  soul,  nor  speak  to  her  aloud. 

I  folded  her  soft  hands  upon  her  bosom 
And  strewed  my  flowers  upon  her — the}'  still  live — 
Sometimes  I  like  to  kiss  her  closed  white  eyelids, 
And  think  of  all  the  joy  she  used  to  give. 

Cruel  indeed  it  were  to  take  her  from  me  : 
She  sleeps,  she  will  not  wake — no  fear — again. 
And  so  I  laid  her,  such  a  gentle  burthen, 
Quietly  on  my  heart  to  still  its  pain. 

I  do  not  think  the  ro*y  smiling  Present, 
Or  the  vaguo  Future,  spite  of  all  her  charms, 
Could  ever  rival  her.     You  know  ycu  laid  her, 
Long  years  ago,  then  living,  in  my  arms. 


Char'es  Dickens.] 


INVISIBLE  GHOSTS. 


[August  1,  1857.]        109 


Leave  her  at  least — while  my  tears  fall  upon  her, 
I  (licaivi  she  smiles,  just  as  she  did  of  yore  ; 
As  dear  as  ever  to  me — nay,  it  may  be, 
Even  dearer  still — since  I  have  nothing  more. 


INVISIBLE  GHOSTS. 


SOME  twenty  years  ago,  a  rich  West  India 
merchant,  a  Mr.  Walderburn,  purchased  an 
estate  in  the  county  of  Kent,  and  went  thither 
to  reside  with  his  wife  and  family  ;  such 
family  consisting  of  two  sons  and  two  daugh- 
ters, all  of  whom  were  grown  up. 

The  house  on  the  estate  was  a  fine  old 
ninnsiou  in  the  Elizabethan  style  of  architec- 
ture, and  the  grounds  by  which  it  was  sur- 
rounded were  laid  out  with  great  care  and  in 
excellent  taste.  The  property  had  belonged 
originally  to  a  bai-onet  who  had  distinguished 
himself  in  political  life.  So  perfect  a  property 
was  never  purchased  for  so  small  a  sum. 
The  house  and  grounds — known  as  Carlville 
— together  with  one  hundred  acres  of  arable 
land,  were  knocked  down  by  the  illustrious 
George  Robins  for  nine  thousand,  two  hun- 
dred, and  fifty  pounds. 

The  estate  had  been  in  the  possession  of 
its  late  owner's  family  for  upwards  of  two 
hundred  years.  In  that  house  had  been  born 
several  eminent  military  men,  a  naval  hero, 
a  very  distinguished  lawyer,  a  statesman  of 
no  ordinary  repute,  and  a  lady  celebrated  for 
her  remarkable  beauty  and  her  wit. 

It  was  in  the  autumn  that  Mr.Walderburu 
took  possession  of  Carlville,  and  a  number  of 
guests  were  invited  to  inaugurate  the  event. 
The  elder  son  of  Mr.  Walderburn  was  in  the 
array,  and  brought  with  him  several  officers 
of  his  regiment.  The  younger  son  was  at  the 
university  of  Oxford,  and  was  accompanied 
to  his  father's  new  home  by  three  intimate 
college  friends.  The  Misses  Walderburn  had 
also  their  especial  favourites  ;  and  they,  too, 
journeyed  to  Carlville.  A  merrier  party  it 
would  be  difficult  to  imagine. 

On  the  evening  of  the  third  day,  when  the 
ladies  had  just  risen  from  the  dinner-table 
and  retired  to  the  drawing-room,  the  sound  of 
carriage  wheels,  and  presently  a  loud  rapping 
at  the  door,  were  distinctly  heard.  As  no 
visitor  was  expected,  this  startled  the  host ; 
who,  finding  that  no  one  had  been  announced, 
was  tempted  to  inquire  of  the  footman  : 

"  Who  was  that '{  " 

"No  one,  sh,"  was  the  reply. 

"  Did  you  hear  a  rap  at  the  door  ']  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Did  you  open  the  door  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Did  you  not  see  any  one  I "' 

"No  one,  sir." 

"  Very  strange  !  "  ejaculated  Mr.  Walder- 
burn, passing  round  the  bottles  which  were 
standing  before  him. 

In  another  five  minutes  there  was  heard, 
for  the  second  time,  a  sound  of  carriage 
wheels,  followed  by  a  vigorous  rapping  at  the 


door,  which  was  opened.  But  the  footman 
saw  no  one,  and  conveyed  this  information  to 
his  master  without  waiting  to  be  questioned. 

Mr.  Waldei-burn,  his  sons,  and  his  guests, 
were  at  a  loss  to  comprehend  the  matter. 
There  were  three  young  gentlemen  living  at 
Glenpark  (an  estate  near  Carlville)  who  were 
just  then  under  a  cloud,  in  consequence  of 
having  committed  sundry  irregularities  during 
the  absence  of  their  mother  and  sisters  on 
the  continent.  These  young  gentlemen  (the 
eldest  was  four  and  twenty,  and  the  youngest 
just  of  age)  were  fond  of  practical  joking  ; 
and  to  their  account  this  rapping  at  the  door 
was  laid.  While  the  stupidity  of  such  con- 
duct was  being  remarked  upon,  there  came, 
for  the  third  time,  the  sound  of  carriage 
wheels,  followed  by  a  very  loud  rapping.  On 
this  occasion,  Mr.  Walderburn  sprang  up  and 
went  out,  determined  to  catch  and  severely 
punish  these  senseless  intruders.  The  younger 
son,  armed  with  a  stick,  ran  round  by  the 
back  way  to  cut  off  the  retreat  of  the  vehicle, 
while  the  elder  son  opened  the  hall  door.  It 
was  a  brilliant  moonlight  night,  but  no  car- 
riage nor  any  person  was  to  be  seen. 

Mr.  Walderburn's  sons  stood  in  front  of 
the  mansion,  discoursing  on  the  oddness  of 
the  recent  proceeding.  That  a  human  hand 
had  rapped  at  the  door  there  was  no  sort  of 
doubt  in  their  minds,  and  that  the  sound  they 
had  heard  previously  to  the  rapping  was  the 
sound  of  carriage  wheels  and  the  tramp  of 
horses,  they  were  equally  certain.  In  order 
to  be  prepared  for  the  next  visit,  they 
crouched  down  and  secreted  themselves  be- 
hind a  large  shrub.  They  had  not  been  in 
this  position  for  more  than  five  minutes  when 
a  sound  of  wheels  and  of  horses'  hoofs  in- 
duced them  to  look  around  them  earnestly 
and  intently.  They  saw  nothing ;  but  they 
heard  a  carriage  pulled  up  at  the  door,  the 
steps  let  down,  then  the  rapping  at  the  door, 
the  rustling  of  silk  dresses,  the  steps  put  up 
again,  and  the  moving  away  of  the  carriage 
towards  the  stables. 

None  of  the  Walderburn  family  were  timid 
people,  or  believers  in  ghosts.  The  young 
men,  therefore,  without  scruple,  went  into 
the  drawing-room,  where  all  the  inmates  of 
the  house  were  now  assembled,  and  made 
known  what  had  occurred.  As  is  usually 
the  case  on  such  occasions,  their  statement 
was  received  with  laughter  and  incredulity. 

And  now  there  came  another  rapping  at 
the  door,  and  the  big  footman,  who  had  heard 
the  young  masters'  report  in  the  drawing- 
room,  trembled  so  violently,  that  the  cups 
and  saucers  on  the  tray  which  he  was  hand- 
ing round  began  to  reel,  dance,  and  stagger. 

';  Listen  !  "  said  the  elder  son  of  Mr.  Wal- 
derburn. 

All  listened,  and  distinctly  heard  the  sound 
of  carriage  wheels  and  of  horses'  hoofs. 

There  was  a  huge  portico  before  thq.  front 
door  of  the  mansion,  and  on  the  top  thereof 
a  balcony.  Thence  the  eye  could  command 


110 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


the  sight  of  any  vehicle  coming  iii  or  going 
out  of  either  of  the  great  gates.  Thither 
the  whole  party  repaired  to  look  for  the 
ghosts. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  noises  already 
described  were  again  heard,  but  nothing 
could  be  seen.  Everyone  now  set  to  work  to 
divine  the  cause  of  these  supernatural  sounds. 
One  said  that  it  was  the  wind  through  the 
trees  ;  another,  that  there  must  be  a  drain 
under  the  premises  inhabited  by  rats ;  a 
third  suggested  distant  thunder,  and  so  on. 
But  then  there  was  the  rapping  at  the  door 
by  invisible  hands.  And  for  this,  everybody 
was  equally  at  a  loss  to  account. 

This  rapping  and  arrival  of  invisible  car- 
riages   was    continued    till   about   half-past 
ten.     It  then  ceased,  and  gave  way  to  sounds 
more  supernatural  still.    There  arose  a  sound  i 
of  subdued  music  through  the  mansion.     It ; 
was  no  delusion.     Every  one  heard  it — ser-  J 
vants  included — heard  it  distinctly,  and  could 
follow  the  old  tunes  to  which  our  forefathers 
used  to  dance.    And  some,  who  listened  most ' 
attentively,  declared  that  they  could  hear  the  j 
movement  of  feet  in  several  of  the  rooms  and 
upon  the  stairs. 

Retiring  to  rest  while  these  noises  con- 
tinned  was  out  of  the  question,  and  the  whole 
party  remained  up,  speculating,  surmising, 
and  wondering.  Towards  daylight  the  sound 
of  the  music  ceased,  and  then  came  the  noise 
which  always  attends  the  breaking-up  of  a 
ball.  Shutting  of  carriage  doors,  moving  on- 
ward of  hoi'ses,  &c.  The  reader  must  under- ! 
stand,  however,  that  throughout  the  whole  of  ] 
these  extraordinary  noises  the  sound  of  the 
human  voice  was  never  heard  ;  and,  as  already 
stated,  nothing  whatever  was  seen. 

Daylight  put  an  end  to  any  alarm  that  had 
crept  amongst  the  members  of  the  party  at  | 
Carlville,  and  the  majority  went  to  rest. 

The  evil  consequences  of  the  past  night's  | 
events  were  speedily  manifested.  The  female  { 
servants,  one  and  all,  wished  to  leave  the  ser- 
vice. They  would  not  on  any  terms,  they 
said,  remain  iii  a  house  that  was  haunted,  j 
They  insisted  on  going  at  once,  being  quite 
prepared  to  forfeit  their  wages,  if  that 
step  should  be  taken.  The  maids  of  the 
lady  visitors  also  declared  that  they  would 
rather  not  remain  another  night ;  and  this 
was  an  excellent  reason  for  the  lady  visitors 
themselves,  who  were  really  frightened,  to 
remove  from  Carlville.  In  a  word,  before  the 
day  had  passed,  Carlville  was  left  to  the 
members  of  the  Walderburn  family,  and  a 
few  of  the  men-servants. 

Night  came,  and  all  was  as  still  as  the 
grave.  No  sound  of  carriage,  no  noise  of  any 
sort  or  kind.  The  Walderburns,  who  were 
strong-minded  people,  began  to  reason  on  the 
matter,  and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
impressions  of  the  past  night  were  mere 
delusions,  that  the  imagination  of  one  person 
in  the  first  instance  had  fired  the  imagination 
of  the  rest,  and  that  then  the  idea  had 


become  a  fixed  idea  with  all.  New  female 
servants  were  engaged  from  a  town  ten 
miles  distant,  and  the  establishment  of 
Carlville  was  once  more  perfect  in  every 
particular. 

The  gentlefolks  in  the  vicinity  now  began 
to  call  upon  the  Walderburns,  who  were 
anxious  to  question  them  about  the  super- 
natural noises,  which  still  stole  over  their 
minds  ;  but  somehow  or  other  they  felt 
ashamed  to  do  so,  especially  as  there  had  been 
no  recurrence  of  these  noises.  Amongst  others 
who  called  at  Carlville  was  Mr.  Estrelle,  a 
very  gentlemanlike  and  clever  man  of  about 
thirty  years  of  age.  The  Walderburn  family 
were  charmed  with  him,  and  the  sons  espe- 
cially cultivated  his  acquaintance. 

One  day  the  conversation  happening  to 
turn  upon  the  estate  Carlville  and  its  late 
proprietor,  Mr.  Estrelle  spoke  as  follows  : — 

"Old  Sir  Hugh  was  something  more  than 
eccentric.  He  was  at  times  insane.  Con- 
scious of  being  so,  he  retired  from  public 
life  and  came  down  here  to  live.  He  held 
aloof  from  all  the  families  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. I  was  the  only  person  whose  visits 
he  received,  and  I  frequently  dined  with  him. 
He  had  always  covers  laid  for  twenty,  even 
when  he  dined  alone.  The  fact  was,  he  used 
to  say,  that  he  never  knew  when  his  guests 
would,  or  would  not  come.  Especially  the 
ladies.  I  should  mention  that  these  guests 
to  whom  Sir  Hugh  attended,  were  shadows  ; 
imaginary  guests  to  whom  he  would  intro- 
duce you,  with  all  the  formality  imaginable." 

"  Was  Sir  Hugh  imbecile  ?  " 

"No,"  replied  Mr.  Estrelle.  "On  the 
contrary.  He  was  an  extremely  able  man 
to  the  last,  and  his  language  in  conversation 
was  of  the  most  vivacious  and  polished  cha- 
racter. Sir  Hugh  was  the  very  opposite  to 
a  bore  ;  even  at  one  of  his  ghost  dinner 
parties,  or  ghost  balls,  or  ghost  breakfasts, 
at  all  of  which  I  have  been  and  acted." 

"How  acted?" 

"  Sir  Hugh  would  point  out  to  me  the  lad) 
whom  I  was  to  conduct  to  the  table,  and  would 
appoint  the  place  of  every  one  at  the  board. 
Strange  to  say,  every  lady  or  gentleman 
guest,  whose  name  he  mentioned,  was  dead. 
That  Sir  Hugh,  in  his  imagination,  saw  them, 
there  could  be  no  doubt.  The  servants,  of 
course,  humoured  this  odd  fancy  of  their 
master's,  and  waited  on  his  imaginary  guests, 
as  though  they  had  been  living  flesh  and 
blood.  I,  too,  used  to  humour  him,  by  address- 
ing Lord  George  This,  or  Lady  Mary  That, 
across  the  table.  Sometimes,  Sir  Hugh 
would  sit  at  the  top  of  the  long  table,  and 
put  me  at  the  bottom,  and  at  that  distance, 
and  in  a  tone  appropriate  to  the  distance, 
invite  me,  in  my  turn,  to  take  wine  with 
him.  No  gentleman  ever  did  the  honour  of 
the  table  with  more  grace  and  bearing,  while 
his  flow  of  witty  anecdote  was  unceasing 
and  never  stale  or  tedious.  Curiously 
enough,  he  would  frequently  tell  very  amus- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


FRENCH  TAVERN  LIFE. 


[August   1.  Us;.]       HI 


ing  stories,  which  had  for  their  burden  the 
delusions  of  insane  persons." 

"  But  did  you  never  hear  the  carriages 
come  and  go,  and  the  music  ?  "  enquired  Mrs. 
Walderburn. 

"What  carriages'/  what  music?"  said 
Mr.  Estrelle. 

"  The  carriages  which  brought  the  guests, 
and  the  music  to  which  they  danced/' 

"  Never  !  I  never  saw  nor  heard  anything 
of  the  kind,  but  attributed  all  that  occurred 
to  Sir  Hugh's  madness.  It  was  the  only 
point  upon  which  he  was  mad." 

Mr.  Estrelle  was  astounded  when  he  heard 
from  the  Walderburns  the  particulars  of  the 
noises  which  were  heard  on  the  first  night  of 
their  occupancy  of  the  mansion.  It  was  agreed, 
however,  that  the  story  should  not  gain  cur- 
rency, insomuch  as  it  would  not  only  create  a 
commotion  in  the  neighbourhood,  but  lessen 
the  value  of  the  property,  perhaps.  It  was 
further  arranged,  that,  in  the  event  of  the 
shadowy  vehicles  again  visiting  the  mansion, 
Mr.  Estrelle  should  b«  summoned. 

Six  weeks  passed  away  and  not  a  sound 
was  heard,  save  sounds  for  which  everyone 
could  account ;  when,  one  night  at  half-past 
nine,  there  came  that  loud  and  vigorous 
rapping  which  bespeaks  the  arrival  of  some 
important  personage.  The  Walderburu 
family,  Avho  where  all  in  the  drawing-room, 
involuntarily  started.  The  lady  of  the  house, 
very  much  agitated,  rang  the  bell.  The 
footman,  pale  and  trembling,  entered  the 
room,  and  was  requested  to  open  the  hall  door. 
This  he  refused  to  do,  unless  accompanied  by 
some  one.  Mr.  Walderburn  and  his  sons 
went  with  him.  There  was  no  one  at  the 
door  ;  but  the  rustling  of  silk  dresses  was 
again  heard  and  the  other  noises  which  have 
been  already  described.  A  groom  was  dis- 
patched to  Mr.  Estrelle.  He  came  and 
heard,  as  distinctly  as  every  one  else  did,  a 
repetition  of  what  occurred  on  the  first  night, 
when  the  unseen  ghosts  looked  in  upon  the 
Walderburn  family. 

People  may  not  believe  in,  or  be  afraid  of 
ghosts,  nevertheless  it  is  far  from  pleasant 
to  inhabit  a  house  where  airy  nothings  take 
such  liberties  with  the  knocker,  and  whose 
visits  defy  all  calculation.  Mr.  Walderburn 
therefore  determined  on  leaving  Carlville,  and 
advertised  the  property  to  be  let.  He  was 
too  conscientious,  however,  to  do  so,  without 
informing  a  tenant  who  proposed,  of  the  cause 
why  the  family  vacated  so  very  desirable  a 
residence. 

Notwithstanding  this  great  drawback,  as 
it  was  called,  the  mansion  was  let  to  a 
Mr.  Southdown  :  a  gentleman  who  laughed 
to  scorn  the  idea  of  a  house  being  haunted, 
and  who  was  so  confident  of  the  Walderburn 
family  being  under  a  delusion,  that  he  took  it 
on  lease  for  three  years.  The  Southdowns 
occupied  it,  however,  for  only  four  months. 
Of  course,  they  offered  to  pay  the  rent,  but 
live  in  it,  they  Avould  not ; — for  on  one  occa- 


sion, when  they  had  an  evening  party  of  their 
own  friends,  the  ghosts  thought  proper  to 
join  it,  and  two-thirds  of  the  ladies  in  the 
room  fainted. 

It  now  became  notorious,  throughout  the 
county,  that  Carlville  was  haunted  ;  and,  from 
that  time,  the  mansion  was  locked  up  and 
left  entirely  to  shadows,  and  spiders.  Three 
or  four  times  it  was  put  up  to  auction,  but 
no  one  would  make  anything  like  a  bid  for 
it.  An  eminent  builder  was  once  sent  down 
to  inspect  the  house  and  report  upon  it.  Mr. 
Walderburn  junior  accompanied  him.  The 
eminent  builder  at  once  discovered  the  cause 
of  the  noises.  It  was  as  "  plain  as  a  pike- 
staff," he  said.  "  The  portico  attracted  a 
strong  current  of  air,  which  passed  rapidly 
through  it,  and  hence  &c."  The  portico  was 
pulled  down.  But  the  invisible  ghosts  came 
as  usual.  All  the  drains  on  the  premises 
were  then  opened  and  examined  under  the 
supervision  of  the  eminent  builder.  There 
was  not  a  single  rat  or  mouse  or  other  animal 
to  be  found  in  them.  Then  the  eminent 
builder  said,  "  it  must  be  the  trees  by  which 
the  mansion  was  surrounded,"  and  those 
stately  elms  and  venerable  oaks,  which  had 
been  planted  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Eighth,  were  cut  down  and  sold  for  timber. 
But  the  ghosts  visited  Carlville,  nevertheless. 
The  knocker  was  then  removed  ;  then  the 
door  and  the  windows,  and  the  remaining 
articles  of  furniture  carried  away.  To  no 
purpose.  The  same  noises  were  distinctly 
heard.  The  land  was  now  sold  separately, 
and  the  mansion,  which  Mr.  Walderburn 
would  not  have  pulled  down,  was  suffered  to 
go  to  ruin. 

About  three  years  ago  I  was  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Carlville,  the  place  of  which  I 
had  so  often  heard  the  Walderburns  speak. 
Curiosity  prompted  me  to  pay  the  place  a 
visit.  I  rode  over  in  the  company  of  a 
friend,  and  on  my  way  recounted  to  him  the 
facts  above  narrated.  To  my  surprise,  I 
found  the  ruin  peopled.  Several  poor  fami- 
lies had  taken  up  their  abode  within  those 
walls.  I  asked  them  if  they  ever  saw  the 
ghosts  ?  They  replied  : — "  No,  but  we  some- 
times hear  'em  plain  enough.  Hows'ever 
they  never  meddle  with  us,  nor  us  with 
them." 

"  And  the  music  ?"  I  enquired. 

"  Yes,  and  very  pleasant  it  is  on  a  winter's 
evening,  or  a  summer's  either,"  responded  a 
dark-eyed  young  woman  with  a  child  in  her 
arms. 

• 
FRENCH  TAVERN-LIFE. 

IN    TWO    CHAPTERS. — CHAPTER    THE    FIRST. 

IT  was  at  a  very  early  period  that  Paris 
became,  what  it  has  ever  since  remained,  the 
metroplis  of  gastronomy,  or — as  Bob  Fudge 
calls  it — "  the  head  quarters  of  prog,"  When 
Father  Bonaveuture  Calatagirone,  the  General 
of  the  Cordeliers,  and  one  of  the  negotiators 


112        [August  1. 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  hy 


of  the  peace  of  Vervius,  returned  to  Italy,  lie   selves,  as  Rabelais  says,  "  by  eating  their  dry 

could  speak  of  nothing  else.     11  is  only  re- j  bread  before  the  cook's  ovens,  and  finding 

membrauce   was  of  the  roast  meats  of  the  \  the  smell  of  the  roast  meat  a   most  savoury 

Bue  de  la  Huchette,  and  of  tlie  Rue  aux  Ours,  j  accompaniment." 

Sauval,   the   historian    tells    us,   that   when'      The  makers  of  rag  outs  produced,  two  centu- 

Fatlier  Bonaventure   was   questioned   about  ries  ago,  names  as  celebrated  HS  those  of  Felix, 

the  pleasures  of  Paris,  he  raised  his  eyes  to 

Heaven,  and,  with  expanding  nostrils  as  if 

the  flavour  was  still  there,  exclaimed  :  "  Truly 

those  roasts  are  a  stupendous  thing."     The 

Venetian   Ambassador,  Jerome  Lippomano, 

who  visited  Paris  in  the  year  fifteen  hundred 

and  seventy-seven,  has  left  a  curious  account  of 

the  mode  of  living  in  that  capital  in  his  time. 

"  Pan's,"  he  writes,  "  contains,  in  abundance, 

everything  that  can  be  desired.  It  is  a  market 

for  all  countries,  and  provisions   are  carried 

thither  from    every   part  of  France.     Thus, 

although  its  population  is  numberless,  nothing 

is  wanting  there  :  whatever  is  required  seems 

as   if  it  i'ell   from    the   skies.     The   price  of 

provisions  is,  nevertheless,  rather  high ;  for,  to 

speak  the  truth,  the  French  lay  out   money 

on  nothing  so  willingly  as  on  eating,  and  what 

they  call  making  good  cheer.  On  this  account 

it   is   that   butchers,    cooks,   poulterers,  and 

tavern -keepers  are  to  be  met  with  in  such 

numbers  that  they  create  a  general  confusion  : 

there  is  no  street  of  any  pretension  that  is 


Lesage,  Careme,  and  others  of  our  own  time. 
Amongst  them  were  Fagnauit,  Flechrnor, 
Mignot,  and  the  illustrious  Ragueneau.  The 
three  h' rst  are  mentioned  in  h  igh  terms  of  praise 
in  a  book  called  the  Commode  des  Adresses 
(a  sort  of  cook's  almanac),  written  by  one 
Abraham  du  Pradel,  who  says:  "M.  Fag- 
nauit, esquire  of  the  kitchen  to  his  Highness 
the  Prince,  makes  excellent  ragoftts,  which 
he  sells  to  persons  of  taste.  Jn  the  same 
degree  is  the  Sieur  Flechmer,  who  lives  in 
the  Rue  Saint  Antoine,  at  the  corner  of  Saint 
Paul.  He  sells  large  quantities  of  fine 
brioches  (light  cakes,  still  extant  and  well- 
known),  which  the  ladies  take  in  their  drives 
to  Vincennes.  The  Sieur  Mignot,  Rue  de  la 
Harpe,  has  not  only  a  high  reputation  for 
pastry,  but  also  for  ail-  kinds  of  ragofits, 
being  a  patissier-traiteur."  The  memory  of 
the  Sieur  Mignot  has  been  preserved  by  more 
distinguished  writers  than  Du  Pradel  ;  for 
Boileau  has  deigned  to  abuse  his  sauces,  and 
Voltaire  has  indignantly  denied  an  attributed 


not  filled  with  them.     At  any  time,  in   any  i  relationship   with   the   famous    pastry-cook, 
place,  live  animals  and  raw  meat  are  to  be   Of  the  L'reat  Ragueneau  something  more  is 


bought,  and  you  may  get  anything  you  like 
drest  in  less  than  half  an  hour,  for  any 
number  of  guests  :  the  rotisseur  supplies  the 
flesh  and  fowl,  and  the  patissier,  the  pat- 
ties, tarts,  entrees,  sauces,  and  ragouts.  You 
may  dine  at  the  cabarets  at  any  price  you 
may  choose  to  name  ;  being  served  accord- 
ingly, whether  at  one  or  two  testoons  ;  at  a 
crown,  at  four,  six,  or  even  twenty  crowns  a- 
head  if  you  please.  But  for  the  last  named 
sum  there  is  nothing  you  may  not  command  ; 


known.  His  shop,  situated  in  the  Rue  Saint 
Honore,  between  the  Rue  de  1'Arbre  Sec 
and  the  Palais  Royal,  was  the  resort  of  all 
the  poets,  comedians,  and  tippleis,  who  be- 
longed to  the  neighbouring  theatre,  or 
frequented  the  Cross  of  the  Trahoir.  Oddly 
enough,  Ragueneau,  preferred  the  custom 
of  the  two  former  classes  to  that  of  the 
latter,  for  though  their  coin  was  scant  they 
possessed  the  gift  of  the  gab,  and  he  was 
quite  content  to  hear  them  talk  and  receive 


even,  I  doubt  not,  to  the  extent  of  manna  I  payment  for  his  long  bills  in  orders  for  the 
soup,  or  a  roasted  phoenix.  The  princes  and  |  Com6die  Franchise,  whither  he  went  joy- 
the  king  himself,  often  dine  at  these  places."  ,  ously  to  applaud  Moratory  or  Moliere.  If 
The  pastrycooks,  always  played  a  con-  j  evil  communications  corrupt  good  manners, 
spicuous  part  in  Parisian  gastronomy  ;  |  relations  with  literary  men  will  sometimes 
sparing  neither  labour  nor  invention  to  j  make  poets,  and  by  dint  of  frequenting  the 


heighten  the  attractions  of  their  wares. 
L'Estoile,  who  wrote  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Ninth,  describes  them  as  setting  out 
their  pastry,  in  the  summer,  in  large  open 
ovens  which  perfumed  the  streets  ;  while,  in 
winter,  they  made  a  display  in  the  windows 
of  their  shops  of  sugared  patties,  crisp  cakes, 
marchpane,  made  of  peeled  almonds  seasoned 


theatres  and  listening  to  the  outpourings 
of  the  Muse,  Ragueneau  himself  became  a 
rhymester  ;  only  this  must  be  observed  that 
while  his  patties  were  excellent,  his  verses 
were  detestable. 

The  functions  of  the  patissiers  and  r6tis- 
seurs  of  Paris  assimilated  them  in  many 
particulai's  to  the  tavern-keepers ;  the  rooms 


with  half  of  their  weight  of  sugar  and  i  behind  their  shops  being  used  for  all  the  pur- 
flavoured  with  rose  water,  and  ta^rts  of  musk  poses  to  which  those  of  the  cabarets  were 
and  amber,  which  costs  as  much  as  twenty-  turned.  It  is  unnecessary  to  dwell  upon  this 


five  crowns  a-piece  ;  there  were  cakes,  too, 
steeped  in  hvpocras  and  stuffed  with  fruit, 


and    immense    pies 
pieces    de    four    be 


(so    must,    the    grasses 
translated),     crammed 


full  of  sweetmeats,  pistachios,  and  citrous, 
which  pleased  the  eye  by  their  colour, 
and  gratified  the  sense  of  smell  by  their 
odour.  The  poor  were  fain  to  content  them- 


subject,  but  sufficient  may  be  inferred  from 
the  proverbial  saying,  applied  to  the  women 
who  frequented  the  patissiers  openly  :  "  Elle 
a  honte  bue;  el!e  a  passo  par  devant  I'lmis 
du  patissier."  (She  has  drunk  of  shame  ;  she 
has  entered  by  the  pastry-cook's  door).  The 
cooks  themselves  had  their  share  in  this 
accusation,  and  they  were  obnoxious  to 


Charles  Dickens.1 


FRENCH  TAVERN  LIFE. 


[August  1,  1857.]        113 


reproach  in  other  respects.  Thus,  they  were 
prohibited  by  law  from  cutting  off  the  combs 
of  old  cocks  in  order  to  make  them  pass  for 
capons.  They  were  obliged  to  clip  the  ears  of 
tame  rabbits,  that  they  might  not  be  mis-  ' 
taken  for  wild  ones,  and  to  cut  the  throats  of 
their  domestic  ducks  to  establish  a  similar  j 
distinction.  They  were  also  compelled  to  sell  | 
their  rabbits  with  the  heads  on,  "  in  order/' 
said  the  ordinance,  "  that  cats  might  not  be 
sold  in  their  stead."  If  it  chanced,  however, 
in  spite  of  the  royal  edict,  that  a  rotisseur 
served  up  a  cat  for  a  rabbit,  and  was  detected, 
an  old  parliamentary  decree  condemned  the 
culprit  to  make  public  amends,  by  going 
in  the  middle  of  the  day  to  the  banks  of 
the  Seine,  and  throwing  the  skinned  and 
decapitated  grimalkins  into  the  river,  with 
this  confession  uttered  in  his  loudest  voice  : 
"  Good  people,  it  would  not  have  been  my  | 
fault,  or  that  of  my  treacherous  sauces,  if 
the  torn  cats  you  see  here  had  not  been 
taken  for  honest  rabbits." 

Without  enjoying  the  best  reputation,  the 
cabarets  of  Saint  Cloud  had  a  remarkable 
celebrity.  They  were  called  bottle-houses 
(maisons  de  bouteille),  and  the  most  famous 
amongst  them  was  that  kept  by  La  Duryer, 
renowned  for  generosity  and  charity,  and  for 
an  extraordinary  exploit  performed  on  a  memo- 
rable occasion.  La  Duryer  was  a  native  of 
Mons,  in  Hainault,  from  which  place  she  had 
been  taken,  when  quite  a  girl,  by  Monsieur 
Saint  Preuil ;  who  made  her  a  sutler.  It  was  a 
poor  enough  appointment ;  but  La  Duryer  felt 
eternally  grateiul  for  it,  and  devoted  herself 
heart  and  soul  to  the  service  of  Saint  Preuil, 
whose  housekeeper  she  also  became  ;  econo- 
mising his  means,  supplying  him  with  all  the 
money  she  could  scrape  together,  and  receiving 
very  often  as  her  only  recompense  harsh  words 
and  hard  blows  ;  both  of  which  she  endured 
without  a  murmur.  In  the  course  of  time, 
Saint  Preuil  obtained  high  military  pro- 
motion, and  was  made  Governor  of  Arras. 
There  was  no  longer  any  occasion  for  her  to 
continue  in  the  sutling  line,  or  in  his  service; 
and  she  left  both,  to  establish  an  inn  at  Saint 
Cloud,  marrying  a  poor,  but  respectable  man. 
Her  new  calling  flourished  amazingly  ;  and, 
at  the  end  of  a  few  years,  she  possessed  the 
finest  cabaret  for  thirty  leagues  round  Paris. 
In  the  midst,  however,  of  La  Duryer's  pros- 
perity, she  was  informed  that  her  old  pro- 
tector, Saint  Preuil,  had  imprudently  mixed 
himself  up  in  the  conspiracy  of  Cinq  Mars 
and  De  Thou  against  Cardinal  llichelieu ;  and 
that,  like  them,  he  had  been  arrested,  con- 
demned, and  taken  to  Amiens  for  execution. 
Nothing  could  restrain  La  Duryer  :  she  shut 
up  her  cabaret  and  set  off  at  once  for 
Amiens.  She  arrived  there  to  view  the 
populace  in  the  market-place  clamouring  for 
the  head  of  the  Cardinal's  victim.  The  poor 
creature,  involved  in  the  crowd,  was  carried 
by  it  to  and  fro,  until  she  reached  the  very 
foot  of  the  scaffold.  liaising  her  eyes,  she 


beheld  Saint  Preuil  standing  beside  the  axe, 
pale  but  composed  ;  his  neck  was  bare  : 
his  hands  were  tied  behind  his  back,  and  his 
right  foot  rested  upon  the  bloody  block.  La 
Duryer  tried  to  call  out  to  him  ;  she  strained 
herself  to  her  full  height,  extended  her  arms, 
and  made  countless  efforts  to  attract  his 
attention,  but  in  vain :  the  noise  and  con- 
fusion drowned  her  voice,  and  prevented 
Saint  Preuil,  who  was  buried  in  a  reverie, 
from  perceiving  her  gestures.  The  execu- 
tioner made  a  movement  to  pick  tip  the  axe, 
Saint  Preuil  stepped  back,  and  La  Duryer 
lost  sight  of  him,  while,  a  few  moments  after, 
a  loud  cry  arose  from  the  people,  and  some- 
thing heavy  fell  upon  the  scaffuld,  which  was 
followed  by  a  rush  of  blood.  The  fatal 
blow  had  fallen  !  La  Duryer  staggered  at 
first  beneath  the  effects  of  her  grief  and 
terror,  then  suddenly  regaining  courage,  she 
flung  herself  on  the  steps  of  the  scaffold,  and 
mounted  them  at  a  bound.  The  executioner- 
was  in  the  act  of  raising  the  immense  basket, 
in  which  he  had  placed  the  body  of  Saint 
Preuil  ;  the  lid  gave  way,  and  out  flew  the 
victim's  head,  which  rolled  at  the  feet  of  La 
Duryer.  She  did  not  shrink  from  the  hor- 
rible sight — her  hour  of  fear  had  past — but, 
stooping  down  while  the  executioner's  back 
was  turned,  she  seized  the  head  of  her  former 
master,  covered  it  over  with  her  apron,  and 
hastily  gliding  from  the  scaffold,  was  soon 
lost  from  sight  in  the  narrow  streets  of 
Amiens.  She  did  not  return  to  Saint  Cloud, 
until  she  had  caused  the  head  of  Saint  Preuil 
to  be  embalmed,  and  had  erected  a  splendid 
tomb  to  his  memory.  Notwithstanding  all 
the  pains  she  took  to  conceal  the  part  she 
had  acted,  this  adventure  became  generally 
known.  Her  name  was  everywhere  men- 
tioned in  terms  of  the  highest  praise,  and  her 
cabaret  became  more  frequented  than  ever. 
"If  I  were  curious  on  such  a  subject,"  writes 
Furetidre,  "  I  should  like  to  know  how  many 
turkeys  were  eaten  on  a  certain  day  at  Saint 
Cloud,  at  La  Duryer's."  More,  without 
doubt,  than  at  all  the  rest  of  the  bottle- 
houses  in  the  neighbouring  villages,  put  to- 
gether. 

The  taverns  of  Paris  have  witnessed  or 
given  birth  to  many  a  tragic  drama.  It  was 
from  one  of  the  lowest  of  the  class  that 
Ravaillac  issued  on  the  day  when  he  mur- 
dered King  Henry  the  Fourth,  armed  with  a 
knife  which  he  had  stolen.  Arriving  in  Paris, 
somewhere  about  the  tenth  of  May  sixteen 
hundred  and  ten,  with  the  crowds  who  were 
attracted  thither  by  the  fetes  which  were 
given  on  the  occasion  of  the  queen's  coro- 
nation, Ravaillac  roamed  about  the  streets, 
vainly  endeavouring  to  find  a  lodging.  Near 
the  Hospital  of  the  Quinze  Vingt  in  the 
Rue  St.  Honore,  he  entered  a  small  tavern, 
in  the  hope  of  meeting  with  accommoda- 
tion ;  while  the  servant,  whom  he  had  ad- 
dressed, was  making  inquiry  of  her  master, 
he  seized  a  large  pointed  knife,  hid  it  under  his 


114         iAiwist  1.1857.3 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


cloak,  and.  Wing  refused  the  lodging  he' 
sought,  went  out  again  into  the  street. 
Wandering  along  the  Rue  St.  Honore,  he 
came  to  the  region  of  the  Butte  (hill) 
of  St.  Eoch,  where  a  number  of  low  sub- 
urban taverns  were  clustered,  and,  knock- 
ing at  the  door  of  the  Three  Pigeons,  he 
obtained  admittance.  Here  he  remained  till 
the  morning  of  the  fourteenth  of  May,  when, 
hearing  of  the  king's  intended  visit  to  the 
Arsenal,  he  planted  himself  in  the  narrowest 
part  of  the  Rue  St.  Honor6,  close  to  the  Rue 
de  la  Ferronerie,  and  mounting  one  of  the 
large  stone-posts  that  stood  against  the  wall, 
perpetrated  the  crime  which  the  Jesuits  had 
so  long  instigated. 

Roadside  inns  were  scarcely  safe  places 
when  scenes  such  as  that  which  is  related  by 
the  Duke  de  Saint-Simon,  were  enacted  in 
them  :  The  Vatteville  family,  says  the 
historian,  is  one  of  rank  in  Tranche  Comte. 
That  member  of  it  of  whom  I  have  to  speak 
became  a  Carthusian  monk  at  an  early  age, 
and  after  making  his  profession,  was  ordained 
a  priest.  He  was  a  man  of  ability,  but  of  a 
licentious,  impatient  disposition,  and  he  soon 
repented  the  choice  he  had  made.  He  re- 
solved to  fly  from  it,  and  succeeded  by 
degrees  in  providing  himself  with  a  secular 
dress,  with  money,  pistols,  and  a  horse.  But 
the  superior  of  the  order,  opening  the 
door  of  Vatteville's  cell  with  a  master-key, 
found  him  in  his  disguise,  standing  on  a 
ladder,  about  to  effect  his  escape.  The 
Prior  called  out  to  the  monk  to  descend, 
on  which  Vatteville  coolly  turned  round  and, 
drawing  out  a  pistol,  shot  his  superior  dead 
on  the  spot.  He  scaled  the  convent- walls,  and 
was  seen  there  no  more.  He  chose  the  most 
unfrequented  roads  ;  and,  on  the  second  day 
after  the  murder,  halted  at  a  lonely  inn, 
where,  having  dismounted,  he  called  the 
host  and  demanded,  what  he  had  in  the 
house  to  eat  ? 

The  man  replied  :  — "  A  leg  of  mutton  and 
a  capon." 

"Good,"  said  the  unfrocked  monk,  "put 
them  both  on  the  spit." 

The  host  remonstrated,  saying  they  were 
too  much  for  one  person's  dinner  ;  to 
which  Vatteville  angrily  replied,  that  he 
meant  to  pay  for  what  he  ordered,  that  he 
had  appetite  enough  for  two  such  dinners, 
and  that  it  would  be  just  as  well  to  make  no 
objections.  The  terrified  host  submitted. 
While  the  traveller's  enormous  meal  was 
roasting  before  the  fire,  another  horseman 
arrived,  who  also  called  for  dinner.  The 
host,  pointing  to  the  spit,  told  the  new- 
comer there  was  nothing  but  what/  he  saw 
there  : 

"Very  well,"  said  the  stranger,  "  a  part  of 
that  will  do  for  me,  and  1  will  pay  my  share." 
The  host  shook  his  head  and  told  him  why 
lie  did  not  dare  to  give  him  any.  On  this, 
the  stranger  went  up-stairs  to  the  room 
where  Vatteville  was,  and  civilly  requested 


[Conducted  by 

to  dine  with  him,  paying,  of  course, 
his  proportion.  He  met  with  a  churlish  re- 
fusal. High  words  arose,  and  Vatteville  put 
an  end  to  the  dispute  by  shooting  the  travel- 
ler as  he  had  shot  the  Prior.  The  house 
was  at  once  in  an  uproar;* but  Vatteville 
quietly  went  down-stairs,  ordered  the  dinner 
to  be  served,  ate  it  up  to  the  last  fragments, 
paid  his  reckoning,  and  then  mounted  his 
horse  and  rode  off.  He  found  France  too 
hot  to  huld  him,  succeeded  in  escaping  from 
the  country,  reached  the  frontiers  of  Turkey, 
and  there,  assuming  the  turban,  finished  his 
career  in  the  military  seirvce  of  the  Sultan. 

These  tavern  quarrels  were  the  commonest 
occurrences.  Through  one  of  them  the  cele- 
brated Marshal  Fabert  nearly  lost  his  life. 
In  the  month  of  March  sixteen  hundred 
and  forty-one,  a  period  fertile  in  the  most 
scandalous  duels,  when  the  life  of  a  man 
was  accounted  of  no  more  value  than  that 
of  a  dog,  the  marshal  was  travelling  post,  and 
stopped  to  rest  his  horses  at  (Jlermont  in 
the  Beauvoisis.  About  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  the  Count  de  Rantzau,  nephew 
of  the  marshal  of  the  same  name,  and  a 
captain  of  cavalry,  named  Laquenay,  entered 
|  Faber's  bed-chamber,  and  began  to  dance 
about  the  room  and  make  a  great  disturbance. 
Fabert,  awakened  by  the  noise,  called  out 
to  them  from  his  bed:  "Gentlemen,  you 
must  be  aware  of  the  customs  of  these 
houses  ;  this  room  is  mine,  there  are  others 
in  the  hotel,  and  I  beg  of  you  to  select  one 
of  them  for  your  amusements." 

"Sir,"  replied  Rantzau,  "you  may  go  to 
sleep  if  you  can.  For  my  part,  I  mean  to  stay 
where  I  am  and  do  just  as  I  please." 

Fabert,  irritated  at  this  insolent  reply, 
jumped  out  of  bed  ;  and  barefooted  and 
undressed  as  he  was,  seized  his  sword  to 
drive  out  the  intruders.  Rantzau  and  Laque- 
nay both  drew  at  the  same  moment,  and 
got  the  marshal  between  them  in  such  a 
position,  that  he  could  not  strike  at  one 
without  being  wounded  by  the  other.  A 
bloody  combat  then  took  place,  and  the 
people  of  the  hotel,  alarmed  by  the  noise, 
rushed  up-stairs  and  disarmed  Laquenay,  who 
stood  near  the  door.  At  the  same  moment, 
Fabert,  though  pierced  by  fourteen  wounds, 
rushed  upon  Rantzau,  and  seizing  him  round 
the  body,  threw  him  on  the  floor,  and  holding 
the  point  of  his  sword  to  his  throat,  cried 
out : 

"Tell  me  your  name,  you  scoundrel,  or  I 
will  kill  you  on  the  spot." 

Receiving  no  answer,  he  was  about  to  exe- 
cute his  threat,  when  the  host  exclaimed  : 

"  I  know  him,  Monsieur  de  Fabert ;  his 
name  is  Rautzau." 

On  hearing  this,  the  young  count  was  in 
despair.  "What  have  I  done?"  he  cried; 
"  better  for  me  that  I  had  been  dead  !  " 

Hut  Marshal  Fabert  was  as  generous  as 
he  was  bravo.  "  Make  haste  and  begone, 
young  man,"  he  said;  "and  endeavour  to 


J 


Charley,  Dicker.] 


FRENCH  TAVERN  LIFE. 


I,  ! 


115 


avoid  the  punishment  which  is  due  to  assas- 
sins." The  doors  were  closed,  and  an  armed 
force  had  been  sent  for  to  arrest  the  guilty 
pair.  Fabert  entreated  the  host  to  favour  their 
escape,  but  he  refused  at  first  to  do  so,  and 
it  was  only  at  the  repeated  instances  of  the 
marshal  that  they  were  allowed  to  depart. 
Eventually,  when  Fabert  had  recovered  from 
his  wounds,  he  solicited  and  obtained  their 


pardon  from  the  king. 


The  owner  of  this  cabaret,  whose  name  was 
Grouyn,  soon  made  a  fortune,  and  his  son, 
who  began  his  career  as  a  waiter,  ended  it  as 
a  man  of  vast  wealth  and  importance. 

The  great  noblemen  of  the  Court  had  also 
their  place  of  predilection.  This  was  the 
cabaret  of  La  Boisselidre,  near  the  Louvre. 
It  bore  no  special  sign,  being  well  enough 


known    by   her    name, 
woman  ;    and, 


She    was    a    very ' 

beautiful    woman  ;    and,   those    who    dined 

In  the  time  of  Louis  the  Thirteenth,  the  i  there  had  to  pay  for  it — a  dinner  at  her 
most  celebrated  taverns  in  Paris  were  the  j  house  costing  five  times  as  much  as  at  any 
cabaret  of  the  Fox  in  the  garden  of  Tuileries  ; ;  other  tavern  in  Paris.  At  the  cabaret  of  La 
that  of  the  Fine  Air,  near  the  Liixemburg  ; !  Boisselidre  (long  after  her  death)  the  cour- 
the  tavern  called  the  Cross  of  the  Trahoir,  tiers  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth  drank  the 
famous  for  its  cellar  of  muscat  wine,  and  the  best  vin  de  Beaune,  a  wine  which  was 
cabaret  of  the  Three  Golden  Bridges,  at 
which  the  poet  La  Serre  wiped  out  a  long 

score, —  as  Lambert,  the  singer,  had  done  ]  same  reason.  The  Grand  Monarque  having 
before  him  at  the  Cross  of  the  Trahoir, —  fallen  sick,  Fa.gon,  his  doctor,  who  was  a 
by  marrying  the  tavern-keeper's  daughter  :  Burguudian,  ordered  him  to  drink  Beaune 
the  last  resource  of  needy  topers.  It  was  instead  of  the  wines  of  Spain  or  Italy,  and 
from  the  cabaret  of  the  Fox  that  Cyrano  de  thenceforward  all  other  wine  was  despised  : 
Bergerac,  the  celebrated  duellist,  whose  long  for  the  same  slavish  reason,  the  courtiers 
nose  was  seamed  with  scars,  sent  out  that  would  have  swallowed  ditch-water  without  a 
vaunting  challenge,  prohibiting  the  whole  i  grimace.  In  a  curious  collection  intituled 
human  race  from  being  alive  within  three  j  Recueilde  plus  Excellents  Ballets  de  ce  Temps 
days  under  the  penalty  of  falling  beneath  his  (A.D.  sixteen  hundred  and  twelve),  a  noble 
rapier.  La  Croix  de  Lorraine  (The  Cross  j  man's  bill  of  fare  at  La  Boisseliere's  is  amply 
of  Lorraine)  was  the  most  celebrated  i  set  out  in  doggerel  verse,  in  which  the  dishes 
cabaret  in  Par  is,  and  dated,  as  its  name  implies,  i  are  marshalled  more  according  to  the  exi- 
from  the  days  of  the  League.  It  was  a  haunt  |  gencies  of  the  rhyme  than  the  natural  order 
of  the  poets,  and  Moliere  and  Boileau  were  j  of  succession.  Two  hundred  livres  a-week 
frequent  visitors  there  ;  as  to  Chapelle,  the  appears  to  have  been  the  cost  of  master  and 
satirical  rival  of  Despreaux,  he  was  seldom  I  man,  for  the  existence  of  the  lackey  was 


brought  into  fashion  by  that  king,  as  sherry 
was  by  George  the  Fourth,  and  for  much  the 


to  be  found  elsewhere,  and  was  generally  half- 
seas  over.  But  it  was  not  to  drink  that  the 
melancholy  Moliere  and  the  sprightly  Boi- 
leau went  to  the  taverns  :  they  were  both 
abstemious  men,  who  lived  almost  on  a  regi- 
men. The  observant  dramatist  gathered 
there  the  materials  of  many  a  comic  trait ; 
the  shrewd  satirist  found  an  audience  at  all 
times  for  his  sparkling-  verse.  The  favourite 
tavern  of  Racine  was  Le  Mouton  Blanc  (The 
White  Sheep),  kept  by  the  widow  Berrin, 
near  the  cemetery  of  Saint  John,  with  Boileau 
and  the  Advocate  Brilhac  for  his  companions. 
This  house,  or  rather  its  sign,  is  said  to  be 
still  in  existence,  transferred  from  the  ceme- 
tery to  the  Rue  de  la  Verrerie :  it  should, 
of  all  others,  be  the  place  for  drinking  the 
Mouton  claret,  which  is  now  so  much  in 
vogue.  La  T6te  Noire  (The  Black  Head) 
and  Le  Diable  (The  Devil — reminding  us  of 
our  own  Ben  Jonson  and  his  joyous  crew), 
were  also  honoured  by  the  presence  of  the 
great  poets.  But  the  most  illustrious  cabaret 
of  the  period,  the  true  literary  tavern,  was 
unquestionably  La  Pomme  de  Pin,  in  the  Rue 
Licorne,  in  the  city  quarter.  It  was  there 
that  Chapelle  was  enthroned  every  night, 
surrounded  by  a  brilliant  circle,  amongst 
whom  his  wit  shone  the  brightest.  There 
was  no  Parisian  with  any  pretension  to  lite  • 
rature  who  did  not  go  at  least  twice  a-week 
to  the  Fir-cone  to  get  tipsy  with  Chapelle. 


always  merged  in  that  of  the  noble.  The 
most  constant  visitor  to  the  cabai'et  of  La 
Boisselidre,  in  the  reign  of  Louis  the  Four- 
teenth, vvas  the  Marquis  d'  Uxelles,  a  man  of 
high  family,  a  soldier  of  great  merit,  and  a 
tippler  of  enormous  capacity,  who  would  will- 
ingly forego  every  other  enjoyment  for  a 
carouse.  The  minister  Louvois  one  day  sent 
him  the  much-coveted  decoration  of  the  blue 
ribbon.  "Offer  my  thanks  to  M.  de  Louvois," 
said  the  marquis  to  the  minister's  messenger, 
"but  tell  him  at  the  same  time  that  I  shall 
refuse  the  order  if  I  am  expected  to  give  up 
the  cabaret."  Louvois  smiled  at  the  message, 
but  paid  the  marquis  off  by  appointing  the 
Count  d'  Harcourt,  a  notorious  drunkard,  to 
bestow  the  knightly  accolade. 

Besides  those  already  mentioned,  two  other 
houses,  called  Boucingo  and  La  Guerbois,  were 
noted.  Boucingo  is  immortalised  in  the  verse 
of  Boileau,  as  being  famous  for  the  Sauce 
Robert  (which  gives  such  piquancy  to  pork 
cutlets)  ;  and  the  wine  of  Alicant,  manufac- 
tured by  himself,  and  sold  at  fifty  sous  a 
bottle,  was  preferred  to  the  genuine  kind. 
The  cabaret  of  La  Guerbois  was  the  head- 
quarters of  the  singing  club  established  in  the 
quarter  of  Saint  Roch  ;  and  Laiuez,  the  ana- 
creontic poet,  who  wrote  a  long  poem  called 
The  Corkscrew,  and  lived  close  by,  was  a  con- 
stant guest.  It  was  a  great  house  for  the 
lawyers  and  financiers,  who  drank  deeply  and 


11G       [August  1,  1S57J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


paid  well.  Amongst  the  former  was  a  presi- 
dent of  one  of  the  courts,  of  whom  Menage 
(who  suppresses  his  name,  only  giving  the 
initial  letter)  says,  "  When  this  good  fellow 
began  to  feel  the  effects  of  his  wine,  it  gave 
him  so  much  pleasure  that,  in  order  to  re- 
member to  get  drunk  again  next  day,  he 
stuck  pins  into  the  sleeve  of  his  coat." 

To  La  Guerbois  also  came  the  celebrated 
farmer-general,  M.  de  Bechamel,  Marquis  de 
Nointel,  who  has  bequeathed  his  name  to  gas- 
tronomy. It  was,  we  are  told,  enough  to  re- 
awaken the  appetite  of  the  satiated,  to  see 
the  marquis  with  his  lace  cuffs  turned  up, 
fire  in  his  eye,  and  eloquence  on  his  lips, 
arranging  witli  his  own  hands  the  sauces 
financiers,  in  which  he  so  skilfully  combined 
his  mushrooms  and  spices.  Thither,  too,  he 
was  in  the  habit  of  sending  from  his  own 
house  in  the  Hue  des  Petits  Champs  the 
patties  and  vol-au-vents  which  had  been  ela- 
borated under  his  own  eyes,  and  were  eaten 
hot  by  himself  and  friends  from  the  ovens  of 
La  Guerbois.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
Moliere  had  M.  de  Bechamel  in  his  mind 
when  he  drew  out  the  bill  of  fare  which 
Dorante,  on  the  authority  of  Damis,  recom- 
mends to  the  bourgeois  gentilhomme.  M.  de 
Bechamel  was  so  fond  of  his  art,  that  he  drew 
up,  under  the  name  of  his  cook,  Lebas,  a 
series  of  gastronomic  precepts  in  verse,  which 
lie  dedicated  to  different  persons  of  quality. 
He  even  had  them  set  to  music,  and  sung  to 
popular  tunes.  For  instance,  his  receipt  for 
dressing  partridges  after  the  Spanish  fashion 
was  set  to  the  air  Petits  oiseaux,  rassurez- 
vous  (Little  birds,  take  courage),  and  ran 
thus  : 

"  I)u  vin,  do  1'Imile  ct  clu  citron, 

Coriandre  et  la  rocambole, 

Duns  cc  ragout  a  I'Espagnole, 

Lo  tout  ensemble  sera  bon." 

With  the  addition  of  a  Spanish  town,  to  help 
the  rhyme,  these  lines  may  be  thus  ren- 
dered : 

"  Wild  garlic,  coriander, 

"\Vith  lemon,  oil,  and  wine, 
Form  the  sauce  wbicli,  at  Sautancler, 

Makes  partridges  divine  ! " 
He  had  also  a  cullis  of  crayfish  arranged 
to  the  tune  of  Petits  moutons  qui   dans   la 
plaine  (Little  sheep  that   in  the   plain),  as 
follows : 

"  Les  ecrevisses  bicn  pilees, 
Mitonnez-les  dans  du  bouillon  ; 
Joignez-y  du  pain  qui  soil  bon, 
lit  que  toutes  soil  bien  passe"es." 

Verse  will  hardly  help  us  here,  so  take  the 
receipt  in  plain  prose  :  Pound  your  crayfish 
well,  and  let  them  simmer  gently  in  gravy  ; 
add  a  little  of  the  finest  bread,  and  strain 
all  carefully  through  a  colander — a  very  com- 
plete way  of  obtaining  the  essence  of  cray- 
fish. 

Marshal  d'  Estr6es  was  as  learned  in 
wines,  as  his  friend  M.  de  Bechamel  in  choice 
dishes.  He  it  was  who  first  introduced  into 


the  cabarets  of  Paris  the  exquisite  wines 
which  were  made  on  his  estate  of  Sillery. 
His  wife  always  presided,  during  the  vintage, 
over  the  making  of  this  wine,  while  the 
marshal  presided  at  the  drinking.  Sillery 
champagne,  consequently,  bears  the  name  of 
Vin  de  la  Marechale,  in  honour  of  the  lady, 
ami  many  a  toast  coupled  with  her  name  was 
drunk  at  the  cabaret  of  La  Guerbois. 

A  curious  gastronomic  wager  was  once 
decided  at  this  tavern.  Prince  Henry  of 
Bourbon,  the  son  of  the  Great  Cond6,  was 
supping  there  with  a  number  of  his  friends. 
Prince  de  Conti,  who  was  a  tremendous 
bore,  kept  hammering  av/ay  i«,t  one  eternal 
theme,  the  extraordinary  appetite  of  his 
beagles.  "  My  kennels  absolutely  ruin  me," 
said  he  ;  "I  can't  tell  what  possesses  the  dogs, 
but  they  eat  at  least  a  thousand  crowns' 
worth  every  mouth  !  " 

"  Indeed  !  "  exclaimed  Prince  Henry  ;  "I'll 
bet  you  anything  you  please,  not  one  of  them 
can  eat  at  a  meal  so  much  as  my  servant, 
La  Guiche." 

"  When  we  are  again  at  Versailles,"  re- 
turned Conti,  "  I  will  back  a  certain  beagle 
of  mine  against  him." 

"  Very  good  ;  but  in  the  mean  time  I 
should  like  you  to  see  what  the  fellow  can 
do.  Look  here  ;  it  will  soon  be  midnight.  I 
will  wager  a  thousand  louis  that  La  Guiche 
eats  up  the  whole  of  that  piece  of  meat  while 
the  clock  is  striking  twelve."  Prince  Henry 
pointed,  as  he  spoke,  to  an  enormous  shoulder 
of  mutton  that  had  not  been  touched. 

"  He  can't  get  through  half  of  it,"  ex- 
claimed Couti  ;  "  it's  a  bet." 

"Done!"  replied  Conti,  and  La  Guiche 
was  sent  for. 

He  was  a  little  wiry  fellow  ;  and,  when  lie 
was  told  of  the  wager,  the  grin  he  gave  de- 
veloped a  set  of  teeth  that  a  wolf  might  have 
been  proud  of.  It  wanted  ten  minutes  to  the 
hour,  and  in  the  interim  La  Guiche  made  his 
preparations.  He  seated  himself  before  the 
shoulder  of  mutton,  cut  every  particle  of 
meat  off  the  bone,  arranged  it  in  twelve  por- 
tions, and  remained,  fork  in  hand,  in  an  atti- 
tude of  expectation.  At  the  first  stroke  he 
swallowed  two  of  the  immense  morsels  ;  at 
the  sixth  he  was  one  ahead,  and  took  advan- 
tage of  the  fact  to  swallow  a  goblet  of  vin  de 
Beaune  which  his  master  handed  to  him. 
The  ninth  stroke  sounded,  and  the  glutton 
exhibited  symptoms  of  being  beaten.  The 
Prince  de  Conti  shouted  with  exultation  at 
the  prospect  of  winning,  for  ten  strokes  had 
gone  and  two  pieces  remained. 

"A  hundred  louis  for  yourself,"  cried 
Condo,  ''  and  the  stewardship  of  my  hotel  in 
the  Marais,  if  you  gain  the  wager !  Make 
another  eli'ort  !  " 

La  Guiche  made  a  superb  rally  ;  he  drove 
his  fork  into  the  remaining  pieces,  and  took 
them  in  at  one  swallow  ;  bat  he  fell  on  the 
floor,  black  in  the  face,  and  all  but  suffocated, 
as  the  clock  left  off  striking:. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


FRENCH  TAVERN  LIFE. 


I  August  1.  1S57.] 


"  Curry  him  away,"  said  Condti,  "  and  take 
every  care  of  him ;  lie  shall  have  the  steward- 
ship and  the  money  !  " 

La  Guiche  obtained  both  ;  but  never,  as 
long  as  he  lived,  touched  another  shoulder  of 
mutton.  This  gluttonous  adventure  is  re- 
corded in  a  pamphlet  printed  at  Dijon  in  the 
ye;ir  sixteen  hundred  and  ninety-three,  and 
intituled  :  The  admirable  way  oi'  La  Guiche 
to  eat  methodically  a  joint  of  mutton  while 
twelve  o'clock  is  striking  (L'art  admirable 
de  la  Guiche  pour  manger  methodiquement 
un  rnembre  de  niouton  pendant  que  douze 
heures  sonnent). 


w;is  at  the  Epee  de  Bois  (The  Wooden  Sword) 
in  the  Rue  de  Venise  ;  and  whatever  member 
of  that  fraternity  was  caught  tippling  else- 
where had  to  pay  a  heavy  fine. 

The  priests  and  monks  must  not  be  for- 
gotten. As  the  proverb  went,  "The  Capu- 
chins drink  sparingly,  the  Cele'stins  copiously, 
the  Jacobins  cup  for  cup,  and  the  Cordeliers 
empty  the  cellar  ; 
cially  observable 

never  put  water  in  their  wine.  The  priests 
indulged  more  covertly,  fearing  the  gibes  of 
their  parishioners,  but  that  their  lips  were 
familiar  with  the  flagon  is  tolerably  certain 


and  one  thing  was  spe- 
in    their    drinking — thev 


The  cabaret  of  the  Eons  Enfans  (Good  ;  from  the  number  of  satirical  poems  which 
Fellows),  to  which  the  comedians  were  prin-  ;  were  made  against  them.  The  ecclesiastical 
cipally  in  the  habit  of  resorting,  was  an  ex-  taverns,  so  to  designate  them,  were,  Le  Riche 


celleut  house  of  its  kind,  iloliere  used  to  go 
there,  with  the  greater  part  of  his  company. 
Amongst  the  rest  was  Champmesle,  the  hus- 
band of  the  famous  tragedian,  whom  Racine 
loved  and  Boileau  has  praised  with  so  much 


Laboureur  (The  Rich  Labourer),  in  the  en- 
closure of  the  Foire  St.  Germain  ;  La  Table 
Roland  (Roland's  Table),  in  the  Valley  of 
Misery  (the  name  given  to  that  part  of  Paris 
which  is  now  called  the  Quai  de  la  M6o-is- 


enthusiasm.     The  poor  man,  who  had  little  j  serie)  ;    and    Le   Tveillis    Vert    (The    Green 
jealousy  in  his  composition,  used  to  drown  j  Trellis),  in  the  Rue  Saint  Hyaciuthe,  which 
what  cares   he  had,  at  the  Bons  Enfans,  in  j  was  the  most  renowned  of  any. 
champagne,  which,  report  said,  was  paid  for  j      The  learned  men  of  Paris,  and  those  better 
by  Racine.     Even  when  he  had  lost  his  wife  j  known  as  the  pedants  of  the  university,  dined 


and   grown   old,  and  no  wealthy   friend  re- 
mained to  reward  his  complaisance,  he  still 


continued  to  haunt  the  cabaret,  in  which,  in 

fact,  lie  ended  his  days.     One  morning,  with 

a  strange  presentiment  upon  him,  he  went  to  !  Crown) 

the  church  of  the   Cordeliers,   to  order  two 

masses  to  be  sung — one  for  the  repose  of  his 

mother,  the  other  for  that  of  his  wife — and 


and  caroused  at  the  Cabaret  de  la  Come  (The 
Horn),  in   the   Place    Maubert,  and  at  the 


gave  a  piece  of  thirty  sous  to  the  sacristan, 
who  observed  that  he  had  given  him  ten  sous 
too  much.  "  Very  well,"  rejoined  Champ- 
rnesle,  "keep  them  for  a  mass  for  myself." 
He  then  left  the  church,  and  went  back  to 
the  Bons  Eufans.  He  found  several  friends 
of  his  seated  on  a  bench  in  front  of  the 
cabaret — they  were  talking  about  dining  to- 
gether, and  Champrnesle.  joining  the  group, 


Hotel  Saint-Quentin,  in  the  Rue  cles  Cordiers. 
It  was  at  the  Ecu  d' Argent  (The  Silver 
that,  on  festival  days,  all  the 
bacchanalians  of  the  Sor bonne  were  wont 
to  assemble  to  toss  off  the  vin  de  Beaune 
for  which  the  house  was  celebrated.  It 


was  only  then  that  you  could  be  sure  of 
getting  the  fashionable  soups  genuine,  of 
which  Boileau  has  given  the  somewhat  ironi- 
cal receipt  in  his  third  satire.  Montmaur, 
the  learned  epicure,  famous  also  for  his  good 
sayings,  was  the  perpetual  president  of  the 
Silver  Crown,  in  which  capacity  Menage  has 
embalmed  his  memory  in  a  satirical  Latin 
poem,  where  he  represents  him  seated  on  an 


observed  that  he  would  be  of  the  party.  The  enormous  reversed  saucepan,  instructing  the 
words  were  hardly  uttered  before  he  fell  j  young  cooks  in  the  science  of  gastronomy, 
heavily  on  the  ground ;  his  friends  raised  Montmaur  was  p.rofessor  of  Greek  at  the 


him  instantly,  but  there  was  no  dinner  for 
him  that  day  :  he  was  dead  ! 

The  comedians  of  Paris  did  not,  however, 
limit  their  patronage  to  one  tavern.  Besides 
the  Bons  Enfants,  they  frequented  Les  Deux 
Faisants  (The  Two  Pheasants),  which  was 
struck  by  lightning  and  burnt  to  the  ground 
while  at  the  height  of  its  reputation  ;  Les 
Trois  Maillets  (The  Three  Mallets),  and 
L'Ange  (The  Angel),  where  the  indomitable 
Chapelle  fell  into  a  tipsy  slumber  one  evening- 
while  a  tragedy  was  being  recited  in  which  a 
single  combat  took  place,  and,  waking  up 
suddenly,  the  poet  fancied  he  was  in  a  row 
on  the  Pont  Neuf,  and,  shouting  with  all  his 
might,  ran  out  of  the  house  as  fast  as  his  legs 
could  carry  him.  The  musicians  of  Paris 
gave  the  preference  to  no  tavern  in  parti- 
cular. They  drank  freely  everywhere;  but 
the  dancers  had  their  chosen  locality,  which 


college  of  Boncourt ;  and,  when  he  died, 
search  was  made  amongst  his  papers  for  the 
learned  works  which  he  was  supposed  to 
have  written.  None,  however,  were  found  ; 
but  in  their  place  the  seekers  discovered  a 
treatise  on  The  Four  Meals  a  Day,  with  their 
Etymology ;  and  a  Petition  to  the  Lieu- 
tenant of  Police,  requesting  him  to  prohibit 
the  tavern-keepers  from  making  use  of  dishes 
with  convex  bottoms,  which  is  a  manifest 
deception,  &e. 

Before  I  close  the  list  of  the  most  noted 
taverns  of  Paris  during  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, mention  must  be  made  of  two  in  the 
quarter  of  the  Marais,  the  most  fashionable 
locality  in  the  time  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth. 
The  first  of  these,  situated  in  the  street,  then 
new,  of  the  Pas  de  la  Miile,  near  the  Place 
Royal e,  was  kept  by  a  very  handsome  woman 
named  Coifiier,  and  bore  the  appellation,  if 


118       [August  1,  is;;. 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[CondiH 


not  the  feign,  of  La  Fosse  aux  Lions  (The 
Lions'  Den).  La  Coiffier's  wines  were  first- 
rate,  and  her  cookery  superb  ;  her  house  was 
always  filled  with  people  of  quality,  but  none 
went  there  more  frequently  than  the  i'at  poet 
Saint  Amand — a  tun  of  a  man,  like  FalstafF. 
Taverns  were  the  delight  of  his  existence. 
One  called  La  Perle  (The  Pearl)  attracted 
him  for  a  very  especial  reason — the  clock 
never  went  right  ;  it  was  either  too  slow  or 
had  stopped  altogether.  When  others  abused 
the  clock,  Saint  Amand  took  up  its  defence, 
and  rinally  wrote  the  following  couplet,  which 
the  master  of  the  cabaret  caused  to  be  placed 
beneath  it : — 

"  Quc  j'iiille  bicn,  ou  mal,  il  nc  t'importe  pa?, 

Puisque  ce'ans  toute  heurc  est  1'heure  dcs  repas." 

Which  may  be  literally,  if  not  elegantly, 
translated  thus  : — 

"  What  matter  whether  fast  or  slow  I'm  jogging, 
Since  every  hour  is  here  the  hour  for  progging." 

Saint  Amand'a  death  was  characteristic. 
He  gave  up  the  ghost  at  a  cabaret  called  Le 
Petit  Mauve  (The  Little  Sea-mew),  which  is 
still  in  existence  at  the  corner  of  the  Eue  de 
la  Marais  and  the  Eue  de  Seine.  He  died,  it 
is  said,  with  a  bottle  and  glass  before  him. 


AN  IMMEASURABLE  WONDEE. 


A  HUNDRED  years  ago,  the  industrious  and 
intelligent  author  of  a  Topographical  History 
of  Cornwall,  Mr.  Borlase,  described,  for  the 
first  time  in  a  book,  a  seaside  annelide,  which 
the  Cornish  fishermen  called  the  sea  long- 
worm.  "With  a  view  to  encourage  men  to 
take  pains  and  trouble  in  searching  out  un- 
known and  undescribed  plants  and  animals, 
the  custom  has  prevailed  of  connecting  the 
name  of  the  discoverer  with  the  name  of  the 
plant  or  animal.  The  practice  had  something 
sound  and  good  in  it,  although  it  has  been 
abominably  abused ;  Cuvier  only  gave  honour 
where  it  was  justly  due  when  he  called 
the  sea  long-worm  the  Borlasia.  There  is,  it 
may  be  remarked,  however,  only  a  bookish 
reminiscence  in  the  Cuvierian  name,  while  in 
the  name  of  the  Cornish  fishermen  there  is  a 
rude  description,  a  rough  word-picture  of  the 
animal. 

Mr.  Borlase  says  :  "  The  long-worm  found 
upon  Careg-killas.  in  Mount's  Bay,  which, 
though  it  might  properly  enough  come  in 
among  the  anguilliforui  fishes,  which  are  to 
succeed  in  their  order,  yet  I  choose  to  place 
here  among  the  less  perfect  kind  of  sea- 
animals.  It  is  brown,  and  slender  as  a 
wheateii  reed  ;  it  measured  five  feet  in 
length  (and  perhaps  not  at  its  full  stretch), 
but  so  tender,  slimy,  and  soluble,  that  out  of 
the  water  it  will  not  bear  being  moved  with- 
out breaking  ;  it  had  the  contractile  power 
to  such  a  degree  that  it  would  shrink  itself 
to  half  its  length,  and  then  extend  itself  again 
as  before." 

Colonel  Montagu,  an   excellent   observer. 


f  seems  to  question  the  accuracy  of  the  accounts 
he  had  received  from  the  Devonshire  fisher- 
men of  the  length  of  the  Borlasia.  He  says  : 

"  This  species  of  Gardius  is  not  uncommon 
on  several  parts  of  the  south  coast  of  Devon- 
shire, where  it  is  by  some  of  the  fishermen 
known  by  the  very  applicable  name  given  to 
it  in  the  History  of  Cornwall.  It  is  indeed 
of  so  prodigious  a  length  that  it  is  impossible 
to  fix  any  bounds  ;  some  of  the  fishermen 
say  thirty  yards — but  perhaps  as  many  feet 
is  the  utmost ;  those  specimens  which  have 
come  under  our  inspection  did  not  appear  to 
exceed  twenty  feet,  and  more  commonly  from 
eight  to  fourteen  or  fifteen." 

The  skin  is  perfectly  smooth  and  covered 
with  a  strong  tenacious  slime  ;  the  head  or 
anterior  end  is  usually  more  depressed  and 
broader  than  any  other  part,  but  all  parts  are 
equally  alterable,  and  in  continual  change 
from  round  to  flat,  rising  into  large  swellings 
or  protuberances  in  various  parts,  especially 
when  touched. 

The  expansion  and  contraction  are  so  un- 
limited that  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  ascer- 
tain the  utmost  length  of  this  worm.  One 
which  was  estimated  to  be  about  eight  feet 
long  was  put  alive  into  spirits,  and  instantly 
contracted  to  about  one  foot,  at  the  same 
time  increasing  double  the  bulk,  which  origi- 
nally was  about  the  diameter  of  a  crow's 
quill.  In  the  vast  exertion  of  the  muscles 
the  animal  is  generally  divided  at  those  parts 
which  had  been  twined  into  knots. 

The  French  fishermen  agree  with  the 
English  in  giving  the  Borlasia  the  length  of 
a  hundred  feet.  After  such  a  concurrence  of 
testimony,  it  would  be  presumptuous  to  con- 
tradict observations  with  reasonings.  There 
may,  however,  be  error  without  wilful  exag- 
geration. Every  child  knows  the  illusion  of 
a  circle  of  fire  produced  by  whirling  a  stick 
red-hot  at  one  end,  rapidly  in  the  dark.  The 
long  worm  is,  I  believe,  a  nocturnal  animal, 
resting  tranquil  during  the  day  and  moving 
chiefly  at  night.  When  the  fishermen  observe 
it  of  a  shiny  night,  stretching  suddenly,  as  it 
appears,  fifty,  sixty,  seventy,  or  a  hundred 
feet,  there  may  be  something  of  visual  illusion 
in  the  startled  and  truthful,  although  incom- 
plete and  inaccurate,  observations. 

Some  of  the  savans  have  given  the  sea 
long-worm  another  name,  and  have  called  it. 
the  Nemertes  Borlasii.  The  dictionaries  of 
natural  history  say  this  is  a  mythological  name. 
What  a  worm  of  the  Channel  has  to  do  with 
mythology  they  do  not  explain.  From  the 
etymology  of  this  Greek  word,  however,  I  fancy 
the  man  who  used  it  had  a  meaning,  and  knew 
something  of  the  animal.  The  Nemertes  sig- 
nifies the  Never-misser — the  animal  who  never 
misses  his  prey.  As  there  is  something  of 
the  form  painted  by  the  name  of  the  fisher- 
men, there  is  something  of  the  character  of 
the  animal  hit  oil'  when  he  is  called  the 
Ne'er-misser.  Boastful  books  abound,  de- 
scribing the  feats  of  rod  and  line  fishermen, 


Charles  Dickens.] 


AN  IMMEASURABLE  WONDER. 


[August  1, 1S57.)       119 


but  tins  worm  is  the  unrivalled,  the  never- 
missing,  the  living  line  and  hook  fisher. 
Monsieur  Dumeril,  the  father  of  the  French 
naturalists,  who  first  made  this  worm  known 
in  France,  called  it  un  lacet — a  lasso,  or 
an  elastic  noose. 

Some  British  naturalists  have  called  these 
annelides,  ribbon-worms.  And  these  living 
ribbons  are  of  all  sizes  and  colours.  The 
tarry  Borlasia  of  our  southern  coasts  is  cer- 
tainly not  a  beautiful  ribbon.  A  French 
milliner  will  never  recommend  it  to  adorn 
the  smart  hats  of  the  Britannic  ladies,  and 
would  shriek  at  the  fancy  of  allying 
it  to  the  little  flower-pots  Avorn  upon  the 
top-knots  of  Gallic  dames.  However,  like 
many  British  things,  our  Borlasia  is  plain 
but  efficient.  The  ribbons  found  upon  the 
coasts  of  the  South  Sea  Islands  are  of 
a  dark  brown  hue  with  reddish  stripes. 
Near  Hobart's  Town,  Van  Diemen's  Land, 
there  are  found  Borlasia  of  a  beautiful 
golden  yellow  with  brown  bands,  and  a  very 
black  narrow  stripe  running  along  the  back. 
There  is  also  found,  upon  those  shores,  a 
variety  with  violet  brown  sides  and  a  white 
line  along  the  belly.  The  Borlasia  of  Port 
Jackson  is  of  a  deep  bottle-green,  with  a  white 
wavy  baud  across  the  flat  obtuse  head.  On 
each  side  of  the  neck  there  is  a  red  pore.  Worms 
like  these  might  furnish  ribbon  patterns 
pretty  enough  to  be  called  croquant  in  Paris. 

The  sea-side  observer  upon  the  south- 
western coast  of  England,  whose  zeal  to  see 
strange  beasts  has  induced  him  to  turn  over 
stones  with  a  crow-bai-,  and  forage  in 
crannies,  can  scarcely  fail  to  find  the  tarry 
long-worm  near  low  water-mark.  Mr.  Charles 
Kingsley  describes  it  graphically  in  his 
Glances,,  when  he  says  it  looks  like  "  a  tarred 
string,"  and  coils  up  into  "a  black,  shiny, 
knotted  lump  among  the  gravel,  small  enough 
to  be  taken  up  in  a  dessert  spoon."  When 
the  coils  of  the  Nemertes  are  drawn  out  upon 
the  hand  it  stretches  out  into  nine  or  more 
feet  of  a  slimy  tape  of  living  caoutchouc,  some 
eighth  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  a  dark,  choco- 
late black,  with  paler  longitudinal  lines/' 
Probably,  it  is  by  design  that  it  looks  like  a 
dead  strip  of  seaweed,  as  it  lies  in  the  holes 
of. the  rocks  or  under  the  stones. 

All  the  observers  of  this  singular  worm 
have  been  amazed  by  the  wonderful  power  it 
lias  of  contracting  and  stretching  its  muscles 
at  will,  by  tying  or  untying  itself  into  innu- 
merable knots.  The  long-worm  glides  and 
flows  in  the  water  by  means  of  vibratile 
hairs  which  are  discoVerable  only  by  the 
microscope,  although  they  cover  the  whole  of 
its  body.  When  it  wishes  to  change  place, 
it  stretches  out  its  serpent -like  head  and 
gropes  for  a  suitable  stone  at  the  distance  of 
fifteen  or  twenty  feet  from  its  previous 
residence.  When  it  has  found  a  comfortable 
stone  it  winds  itself  round  it;  and,  as  one  end 
is  twined  upon  the  new  stone,  the  other  end 
is  untwined  from  the  old. 


Mr.  Charles  Kingsley  describes  the  move- 
ments  of  the   line   and   hook  fisher,   when 
catching  his  prey,  with  a  vivacity  which  could 
only  have  been  derived  from  the  direct  obser- 
vation of  a  very  observant  man  and  an  excel- 
lent  writer.     The  little  fish — a  gobie   or  a 
blenny — absorbed,  probably,  in  the  chase  of 
shrimps,  mistakes  the  worm  fora  dead  strip  of 
seaweed.     So  thinks  the  little  fish  who  plays 
over  and  over  it,  till  it  touches,  at  last,  what 
is  too  surely  a  head.     In  an  instant,  a  bell- 
shaped  sucker  mouth  has  fastened  to  its  side. 
In  another  instant,  from  one  lip,  a  concave, 
double  proboscis,  just  like  a  tapir's  (another 
instance    of    the    repetition   of  forms),   has 
clasped  him  like  a  finger  ;    and  now  begins 
the  struggle  ;    but  in   vain.      He   is  being 
played  with  such  a  fishing-line  as  the  skill  of 
a  Wilson  or  a  Stoddart  never  could  invent; 
j  a  living  line,  with  elasticity  beyond  that  of 
I  the  most  delicate  fly-rod,  which  follows  every 
I  lunge,  shortening  and  lengthening,  slipping 
'  and  twining  round  every  piece  of  gravel  and 
stem  of  sea- weed,  with  a  tiring  drag,  such  as 
i  no  Highland  wrist  or  step  could  ever  bring  to 
j  bear  on  salmon  or  on  trout.  The  victim  is  tired, 
:  now  ;    and  slowly,  and  yet  dexterously,  his 
I  blind  assailant  is  feeling  and  shifting  along 
;  his    side,  till    he  reaches    one    end  of  him. 
;  Then  the  black    lips    expand,    and   slowly 
and  surely  the  curved  finger  begins  packing 
;  him,    end-foremost,   down    into    the   gullet, 
:  where  he  sinks,  inch  by  inch,  until  the  swell- 
i  ing,  which    marks  his    place,  is  lost  among 
the  coils,  and  he  is  probably  macerated  to  a 
pulp  long  before  he  has  reached  his  cave  of 
doom.     Once  safe  down,  the  black  murderer 
slowly  contracts  again  into  a  knotted  heap, 
and  lies    like  a  boa  with  a  stag  inside  him, 
motionless  and  blest. 

The  instruments  of  nutrition,  like  all 
other  organs  of  this  animal,  have  not  as  yet 
been  studied  with  sufficient  accuracy  and 
adequate  science.  Professor  de  Quatrefages, 
in  his  elaborate  and  strikingly  illustrated 
monography  upon  the  Nemertes,  appears  to 
have  fallen  into  a  grave  mistake.  One  of  the 
most  important  distinctions  in  the  animal 
world  is  the  division  of  animals  into  animals 
with  digestive  organs  like  the  anemones, 
and  animals  formed  like  all  the  higher  orders 
of  the  animal  world.  The  distinction  between 
the  vegetal  and  animal  worlds  is  based  upon 
the  absence  or  presence  of  a  stomach.  Natu- 
ralists, when  dealing  with  the  animated 
existences  upon  the  doubtful  borders  of  these 
worlds,  say  that  the  sponge  for  example  is  an 
animal,  because  it  has  a  digestive  sac. 

Colonel  Montagu,  who  has,  during  half 
a  century,  enjoyed  an  established  reputation 
as  an  accurate  observer,  saw  the  organ  in 
action  of  which  M.  de  Quatrefages  denies  the 
existence.  The  description  he  gives  of  what 
he  witnessed  wears  the  impress  of  reality. 
The  structure  of  the  instrument  which  he 
describes,  is  wonderful,  no  doubt  ;  but  it  is 
onlv  a  wonder  in  accoi'dance  with  all  the 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[August  1,  1S57.} 


other  organic  wonders  of  the  animal.  Pro-  when  exhausted  by  fatigue,  and  the  sleep  of 
hably  enough  _M.  no  (^natrefiiges  could  not  satisfied  digestion,  are  all  exceedingly  like 
discover,  with  his  microscope,  in  specimens  the  boa.  When  the  boa  constrictor  swallows 
destroyed  by  alcohol,  the  organ  Colonel  his  prey,  it  is  curious  to  see  with  what  niathe- 
Montagu  saw  in 'action  in  the  living  animal,  matical  exactitude  he  adjusts  the  spine  of 
But  surely,  in  this  case,  the  negative  of  the  the  victim  to  his  spine.  I  have  seen  a  boa 
learned  professor  is  valueless  in  presence  of  constrictor  pounce  upon  the  throat  of  a 
the  affirmative  of  the  colonel;  although  he  rabbit ;  and,  after  the  rabbit  was  exhausted,  if 
was  but  a  colonel1.  Most  certainly  the  failure  not  de.ul,  the  boa  changed  his  hold  and 
of  the  learned  professor  is  not  sufficiently  adjusted  the  head  exactly  into  his  mouth, 
decisive  of  itself  to  warrant  the  imagination  which  was  successively  and  constantly  ex- 
of  the  existence  of  an  annelide  of  prodigious  panded  upon  the  body  of  the  victim.  It 
length,  and  yet  similar  in  the  structure  of  would  be  singular  if  the  Ne'er-misser  of  the 
the  intestinal  canal  to  the  short  polypes  or  rock  pools  engulfed  his  gobie  exactly  as  the 
the  flat  anemonies.  l:  serpent  of  the  forests  swallows  his  monkey. 

Nothing  is  known  of  the  most  important  ^  The  sea  long-worm  has  a  great  number  of 
part  of  the  nutritive  processes  of  the  sea  long- 'eggs.  The  ovaries,  which  are  placed  upon 
•worm.  His  breathing  instruments  have  not '  the  two  sides  of  the  body,  are  very  large.  1 
as  yet  been  discovered.  How  his  blond  am  afraid  to  mention  the  number  of  eggs 
receives  oxygen,  or,  in  other  words,  how  his  ;  which  it  is  calculated  maybe  found  in  the 
food  becomes  alive,  is  entirely  unknown.  The  ovaries  of  a  Nemert.es  during  the  season  of 
savans  have  popped  him  into  alcohol  and  |  gestation  ;  they  are  as  many  as  four  or 
pulled  him  to  pieces  afterwards  to  find  out:  five  hundred  thousand.  The  eggs  of  the 
his  secrets  ;  but  death  can  never  tell  the  |  Ne'er-missers  are  eaten  in  vast  numbers  by 
secrets  of  life.  When  I  was  a  very^.  little  j  fishes,  and  the  vastness  of  their  numbers  is 
boy  I  had  a  fiddle  given  me,  and  I  pujled  it :  necessary  to  the  preservation  of  the  species. 
to  pieces  to  find  out  the  thing  whichfmade  [  The  incredulity  with  which  the  statements 
the  music  ;  but  I'didn't.  i*.  of  physiologists  are  received  respecting  the 

The  books  of  natural  history  say  that  the  [numbers  of  the  eggs  of  animals  will  be  re- 
Nemertes  lives  by  sucking  the  substance  of  j  moved  by  a  simple  explanation  of  the  method 


the  anomies.  The  little  two-valved  •.nupllusk 
resembling  an  oyster  with  a  hole  in  the  flat 
valve,  is  the  auomia,  or  irregular,  as  it  was 
called  when  it  was  supposed  to  be  an  odd- 
lookino-  oyster.  Scottish  fishermen  call  the 

O  «/ 


of  calculation.  The  ovary  is  measured,  and  a 
portion — say,  a  quarter  of  an  inch  square — is 
cut  out.  The  number  of  eggs  found  in  the 
quarter  of  the  inch  is  counted,  and  then  multi- 
plied by  the  number  of  square  quarter- 


anomia  the   Egyptian    lamp,  a  name  which    inches  which  are   found  in  the  ovary.     The 
has  the  merit  of  involving  something  of  a    little  fishes  eat  the  eggs  of  the  loujj-worm? 


description.  But  the  auomia  is  not  an  oyster. 
It  has  three  muscles,  while  the  oyster  h;is 
only  one.  As  to  the  Nemertes  sucking  the 
flesh  of  these  droll,  little  bivalves,  there  is  no 


evidence  ;  and  the  accusation  is  supported  by 
vo  better  evidence  than  inference  and  sus- 


and  the  long-worms  who  escape,  revenge  their 
kin  upon  the  little  fishes.  And  thus  their 
lives  of  natural  war  have  passed  from  the 
beginning  and  will  run  on  to  the  end  of  time. 


The  muscular  system  of  the  Nemertes  has 
•  never  as    yet,   we    fear,    been    scientifically 
picion.  .  '  studied.     Yet    marvellous    suppleness,    con- 

Au  animal  may  be  described  as  a  nervous  tractility,  and  expansibility  of  form,  are  the 
system  with  nutritive  and  reproductive  chief  characteristics  of  the  animal.  The  great 
mechanisms.  The  nervous  system  of  the  i-number  of  lateral  branching  nerves  described 
long-worm  seems  very  simple.  Most  of  the  by  Eathke  doubtless  command  a  great  num- 
worms  or  ringed  animals  have  a  collar,  which  ,  ber  of  muscles  of  the  most  delicate  structure. 
represents  the  brain,  round  the  gullet,  formed  | 
by  the  two  nerves  which  connect  the  upper  : 
dorsal  and  the  ventral  lower  ganglions.  1  he  • 
nervous  system  of  the  Nemertes  consists  only 
of  two  side  ganglions,  whence  part  two  strings 
stretching  to  the  extremity  of  the  body  and 


Xow  ready,  price  Five  Shillings 
bound  in  cloth, 


l 


M 


THE  FIFTEENTH  VOLUME 


olf    a   great   number   of  branching 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 


sending 

threads.      Two  great  vessels  placed    upon   the'  Containing    the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 

side  accompany  these  nervous  trunks,  and  a   Janiiaiy  and  the  Twsnty-soventb  of  June  of  the  present 
third  meanders  upon  the  median  line:  all  tho    * 
three  being  simple  and  without  ramifications. 
The  instinct  or  inward  prompting  implanted 
in  this  nervous  system  is  .similar  to  the  in- 
stinct, of  the  boa  constrictor.     The  fastening 
upon  the  prey,  the  swallowing  of  it  endwise 


published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One 
Guinea, 


THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WJLKIE  COMJXS. 
Brudbury  and  Evans,  Whitefriars. 


The  illfjlit  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD 


served  by  the  Authors. 


Louden:  l'ubli»bctl  at  the  Offlw,  No.  1",  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    New  Tork:    Dix  i  KBWABUS. 


"Familiar  in  tlieir  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD    WOEDS"— SHA 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY  JOUENAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


385.] 


SATURDAY,  AUGUST  8,   1857. 


f  PRICK  2<Z. 
(  STAMPED  3d. 


THE  YELLOW  TIGER, 

IT  was  fully  three  long  hours  behind  its 
time,  that  great  Lyons  diligence  ;  which,  con- 
sidering that  the  roads  were  clear  and  open, 
was  curious,  to  say  the  least  of  it.  This  was 
at  the  old  inn  at  Troyes,  bearing  the  name, 
Tigre  Jamie,  or  Yellow  Tiger,  on  a  cool  sum- 
mer's evening.  It  had  been  a  fierce,  glaring 
day ;  and  we — madame  who  directs,  that  is, 
and  myself — were  looking  over  from  the 
wooden"  gallery  that  runs  round  the  court, 
speculating  what  it  might  be  that  detained 
the  great  Lyons  diligence. 

Le  Eoeuf  from  below  (he  was  waiting  to 
bring  out  his  relay  of  fresh  and  shining 
steeds)  had  it  that  nothing  but  the  casse-cou 
— the  casse-cou  darone — could  be  at  the 
bottom  of  it.  His  own  private  impression 
was,  that  the  great  diligence  was  at  that 
moment  resting  on  its  side  in  the  depths  of 
that  gully.  Where  was  it  1  Well,  let  him 
see.  They  all  knew  the  steep  hill  a  little 
beyond  the  last  stage.  And  the  twist  in  the 
road  just  after?  Well,  the  villanous  casse- 
cou  was  close  by,  at  that  very  turn  ;  and,  if 
the  Faquin  of  a  coachman  had  not  his  beasts 
well  in  hand  (and  they  pulled  like  three 
hundred  devils)  or  if  he  chanced  to  be  a  little 
gris — in.  his  cups,  that  is — the  great  diligence 
would,  of  a  dead  certainty,  meet  with  some 
heavy  misfortune.  Dame !  ought  he  not  to 
know  ?  Had  not  his  own  beast  run  right 
into  it  one  Saturday  night  ?  (Significant 
laughter  here,  from  bystanders.) 

One  of  M.  Le  Boeuf's  coadjutors,  being 
pressed  for  his  opinion,  submitted  that  it 
could  be  only  Griugoire.  He  had  prophesied 
no  good  of  that  animal  from  the  first.  Take 
his  word  for  it,  it  was  Gringoire — who,  by  the 
way,  carried  his  tail  in  a  fashion  that  no 
well-regulated  quadruped  should  do  ;  Grin- 
goire had  done  all  the  mischief.  He  had  got 
the  bit  between  his  teeth,  or  had  shied,  or  had 
thrown  himself  on  the  ground,  and  had  so 
overturned  the  great  Lyons  diligence. 

The  brethren  standing  round,  all  in  blue 
frocks  and  shining  black  belts,  loudly  dis- 
sented from  this  doctrine,  as  reflecting  too 
severely  on  Gringoire  and  the  driver.  Peste  ! 
the  horse  was  a  good  horse  at  bottom,  with  a 
mouth  of  iron,  it  is  true,  but  a  good  horse 
for  all  that.  As  for  Pepiu  the  cocher,  the 


i  bon  homme  knew  what  he  was  about ;  was 
never  gris,  except  when  off  duty. 

As  the  discussion  warmed  up,  other  parties 

lounging  about  the  gateway  and  outhouses 

drew   near  and   listened.      And  so  a  little 

crowd  was  gathered  below,  from  which  rose, 

upwards  to  our  gallery,  a  din  of  altercation, 

seasoned  with  cross-fire  of  contradiction  and 

]  plentiful  pestes,  mordieus,  sacres,  and  such 

t  profane  expletives. 

Said  madame,  turning  to  me  with  a  smile, 
|  having  listened  tranquilly  for  some  minutes, 
:''The  heavy  diligence  will  arrive,  neverthe- 
less, whatever  these  galliards  may  say.    I 
have  no  fears  for  it," 

"  You  are  expecting  some  guests,  I  think 
you  told  me  1 " 

"  Yes,  monsieur  :  that  good,  gentle,  M.  Le- 
nioine,  with  his  mother  and  pretty  fiancee. 
Three  travellers,  sir.  Heavens!  I  had  nearly 
forgotten  about  the  golden  chamber.  Fancho- 
nette  !  Fanchonette  !  " 

Here  a  glass  door  just  opposite  opened 
softly,  and  a  little  figure  in  boddice  and  pet- 

•  ticoat  of  bright  colours,  with  small  lace  cap 

•  and  ribbons  on  the  back  of  her  head,  stepped 
out  upon  the   gallery,  as  it  were,  straight 
from   one   of   Lancry's  pictures.    This   was 
Fanchonette,  and  the  glass  door  opened  into 
the  gilded  chamber.  She  curtsied  low  to  me,  the 
stranger.     She  said  she  had  but  that  instant 

i  been  putting  one  last  touch  to  the  golden 
I  chamber,  brushing  away  some  specks  of  dust 
I  accumulated  since  mid-day  upon  the  mirrors 
i  and  Dresden  figures.  M.  Lemoine,  when  he 
'  arrived,  would  find  everything  looking  as 
I  bright  and  fresh,  as  in  his  own  chateau  at 

home.    With  this  little  speech,  the  Lancry 

sketch  curtseyed  low,  and  disappeared  quickly 

behind  the  glass  door. 

"  This  M.  Lemoine  seems  to  have  made 

many  friends,"  I  said,  turning  to  madame. 
"No  wonder,  monsieur,"  she  replied,  "he 

is  so  good  and  gentle,  if  that  wicked  brother 

of  his  would  only  let  him  live  in  peace." 
"How  is  that '? "  I  said,  beginning  to  grow 

a  little  curious  concerning  this  M.  Lemoine. 

"  What  of  this  ogre  of  a  brother  ? " 

"  He  is  his  half-brother,"  madame  said  ; 
j  "  a  wicked,  graceless  monster  as  ever  came 
'  upon  the  earth  of  the  bou  Dieu.  His  own 

father  left  away  all  his  estates  from  him,  and 

gave  them  over  to  M.  Lemoiue  ;  not  but  that 


VOL.  XVI. 


385 


122    [AoguU  8,  i»7J 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


he  himself  was  handsomely  taken  care  of — 
mon  Dieu  !  far  too  handsomely !  He,  how- 
ever, had  spent  it  all,  and  was  now  wandering 
about  the  world,  a  beggar." 

"It  certainly  seemed  a  curious  disposition," 
madanie  went  on  to  say,  "  considering  that 
M.  Lemoiue  was  only  madame's  son — slie 
having  been  married  before — and  that  wicked 
M.  Charles  his  own  child.  But  nobody  could 
like  him — not  even  his  own  father." 

"  And  this  M.  Lemoine  was  expected  here 
that  evening  ? " 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "in  company  Avith  his 
mother,  a  cold,  haughty  woman,  that  always 
went  with  him,  and  with  mademoiselle  his 
cousin,  to  whom  he  was  to  be  wedded  as  soon 
as  his  wretched  health  permitted.  Voila 
tout !  There  was  the  whole  history  for  me  ! 


Would    I 
ments  1 " 


excuse   her  now  for  a   few  mo- 


During  the  last  few  minutes  that  madame 
was  speaking,  I  had  noticed  that  a  glass  door 
on  the  right  had  opened  softly,  disclosing  a 
prospect  of  a  gentleman  sipping  his  wine  and 
smoking  a  cigar  leisurely  after  dinner.  No 


should  have  expired  at  the  end  of  the  fourth 
hour  but  for  la  petite  Fanchouette  yonder, 
whom,  by  the  way,  you  may  have  seen.  A 
little  Chloris." 

I  was  beginning  to  find  this  gentleman's 
manner  so  little  to  my  taste,  that  I  prepared 
to  turn  away  and  make  for  my  own  room, 
when  suddenly  a  faint  rolling  sound,  accom- 
panied with  a  distant  musical  tinkling,  fell 
upon  my  ears.  "  Hark  ! "  said  he.  "  It  conies, 
diligence  le  desire,  le  bien  aim6  !  See,  the 
gamins  are  already  in  ecstasy  ! " 

It  was  singular — the  contempt  he  showed 
for  the  poor  men  below.  They,  by  this  time, 
were  all  rushing  to  the  great  gateway  ;  so 
there  could  be  no  question  but  that  the  great 
diligence  was  approaching.  Heavy  plunging 
sounds,  as  of  concussion  against  strong  timber 
doors,  "with  shrill  whinnying,  denoted  that 
the  fresh  relay  knew  also  what  was  coming, 
and  were  impatient  to  be  led  forth.  Madame 
herself  had  caught  the  sounds  fiom  afar  off 
in  her  little  room,  and  was  now  tripping 
down  the  broad  steps  into  the  court.  Lat- 
tices were  opened  suddenly  in  the  roof  and 


doubt  the  cool  evening  breeze  was  found  to  other  parts,  and  eager  faces  put  forth  to 
enter  very  gratefully,  for  the  gentleman  pre-  j  listen.  Gradually  it  drew  nearer  ;  the  tink- 
sently  pushed  the  little  gilt  table  from  him,  ling  soon  changed  to  a  sort  of  harmonious 
and  walked  out  slowly  upon  the  gallery,  still  jangle ;  there  was  a  vigorous  tramping  of 
smoking  his  cigar.  He  had  a  disagreeable  heavy  hoofs,  cheerful  cries  from  the  driver 
simper  always  put  on  below  his  light  yellow  encouraging  his  beasts,  with  a  stray  note 
moustaches,  and  he  had,  besides,  a  fashion  of  from  his  horn  now  and  again;  then  more 
keeping  his  hands  buried  in  his  trowsers  jingling  and  harsh  clatter  mingled  together, 
pockets,  which  seemed  as  full  and  capacious  |  with  hollow  rumbling  now  quite  close  at 
as  a  Turk's.  He  looked  down  for  some  j  hand.  The  crowd  at  the  archway  fall  sud- 
minutes  into  the  court  below,  simpering  denly  to  each  side,  and  there  appear  at  the 
pleasantly  at  the  discussion  still  going  for-  opening  two  dusty  thick-set  horses,  one  on 
•ward,  then  walked  slowly  round  to  where  I  the  right,  of  a  high  cream-colour,  with  a  huge 
was  standing,  and,  bowing  low,  prayed  me  to  i  black  patch  on  his  haunch.  That  must  be 
have  the  bounty  and  condescension  to  allow  i  Gringoire,  beyond  mistake,  who  has  thus 
him  to  light  his  cigar  at  mine.  He  had  been  j  nobly  vindicated  his  good  name  ;  for  M.  Le 
so  maladroit  as  to  let  his  own  go  out.  Cu- j  Bceuf  is  pointing  to  him  triumphantly.  After 
riously  enough,  I  had  seen  him,  but  a  minute  Gringoire  and  his  yoke-fellow  toil  two  other 


before,  slily  rub  his  cigar  against  the  wall 
with  great  secrecy  and  mystery.  The  signifi- 
cance of  this  act  was  now  quite  plain  to  me. 
I  should  have  liked  him  better  if  he  had 
made  his  advances  openly,  without  any  such 
little  trickery.  It  was  a  pleasant  evening,  he 
observed,  diligently  lighting  his  cigar.  I  too, 
he  supposed,  was  waiting  to  see  the  heavy 
diligence  come  in.  No  ?  Would  I  forgive 
him  for  thinking  so  at  first ;  for  every  creature 
in  that  dull  place  seemed  to  take  surprising 
interest  in  the  movements  of  that  huge 
machine.  "  Messieurs  there,"  he  added,  sim- 
pering contemptuously,  on  the  people  below, 
"  find  pleasing  excitement  in  such  talk.  The 
poor  souls  !  They  know  no  better — ha!  ha ! " 
His  laugh  was  disagreeable — very  sweet  and 
hollow  -  sounding.  "  Have  you  been  here 
long  ?"  he  went  on ;  "I  have  been  sojourning 
here  two  days." 

"  I  only  arrived  this  evening,"  I  answered, 


drily  enough. 
"  Two   days  ; 


would  you  believe  it— two 


mortal  days !     Why,  it  is  my  belief  that  I 


great  creatures,  all  four  being  garnished 
with  high  collars  fringed  handsomely  with 
red  and  blue  tassels.  And  behind  them  comes 
reeling  in  the  great  moving  mountain  itself, 
that  hasjourueyeddown  from  Lyons,  whitened 
over  with  a  crust  of  dust.  There  is  a  great 
tarpaulin  covering  up  baggage,  high  heaped, 
well  whitened  too  ;  and  there  are  many  faces 
looking  forth  from  rotonde,  and  coupe,  and 
interieur,  of  baked  and  unwholesome  aspect, 
as  though  they  had  gathered  their  share  of 
the  dust  also.  "  In  the  centre  of  the  court  it 
has  pulled  up  short.  The  doors  are  dragged 
open,  short  bidders  applied,  and  many  figures 
in  the  blouses  and  shining  belts  are  crawling 
up  the  sides,  making  for  the  roof.  Now,  too, 
are  led  forth  the  four  fresh  and  gamesome 
animals,  who  beguile  the  tedium  of  yoking 
by  divers  posturings  and  fierce  sweeps  of 
their  hinder  legs  at  unwary  bystanders. 

But  from  the  conpo — was  being  assisted 
forth,  by  gentle  hands — madanie  herself,  aid- 
ing tenderly — a  tall  man,  delicate-looking  and 
slightly  bent.  He  seemed  a  little  feeble,  but 


Charles  Di-kens.J 


THE  YELLOW  TIGER 


I  August  8,  1357.]    123 


walked  better  as  lie  leant  on  the  arm  of  a 
stately  lady  in  black,  looking  haughtily  round 
on  all  about  her.  On  the  side  was  a  young 
girl,  golden-haired  and  graceful,  whom  I 
knew  to  be  the  future  bride.  I  was  all  this 
while  leaning  over  the  balustrade,  looking 
down  into  the  court. 

Presently,  a  very  curious  scene  took  place. 
I  had  seen  the  gentleman  of  the  yellow 
moustaches,  simpering  to  himself  as  though 
much  amused  at  what  was  going  forward. 
But,  when  the  young  man  and  the  two  ladies 
Lad  begun  to  ascoud  the  wooden  staircase, 
he  threw  away  his  cigar,  and  walked  leisurely 
down  to  meet  them. 

"  Dearest  brother,"  he  said,  withdrawing 
one  hand  from  his  deep  pockets,  "soyez  le 
bienvenu  !  I  am  rejoiced  to  see  yoti  looking 
so  fresh  and  well.  But  the  journey  must  have 
fatigued  you  terribly  !  " 

The  tall  lady's  eyes  flashed  fire,  and  she 
stepped  forward  in  front  of  her  son. 

"  Go  away  !  Retirez-voug,  in  fame  !  "  she 
said.  "  What  do  you  do  here  ? — how  dare 
you  present  yourself  to  us  ?  " 

"Sweet  madame,"  he  said,  bowing  low, 
"  accept  my  humble  excuses  ;  but  I  wish  to 
speak  privately  with  my  dear  brother  here, 
who,  by  the  way,  seems  to  be  getting  all  his 
strength  back  again.  I  have  waited  here — 
two  whole  days  —  looking  forward  to  this 
pleasure." 

"  Stand  back  quickly  !  "  said  the  tall  lady, 
trembling  with  rage.  "  Will  nobody  take  this 
infame  from  our  sight  ?  Messieurs  !  mes- 
sieurs !  I  entreat  you,  make  him  with- 
draw!" 

The  men  in  blouses  were  gathering  round 
gradually — to  whom  our  hostess  was  vehe- 
mently unfolding  the  whole  history,  plainly 
working  on  their  feelings.  It  was  held  to  be 
a  crying  shame,  and  M.  Le  Bceuf  was  pro- 
posing to  interfere  physically.  But  young 
M.  Lernoine  gently  drew  his  mother  to  one 
side. 

"  Dearest  mother,"  he  said,  "  let  us  hear 
what  he  has  to  say.  He  can  do  us  no 
harm." 

"No,  Dieu  merci,"  she  said,  "we  are  be- 
yond his  malice.  But  you  must  not  speak 
with  him,  my  son." 

All  this  while  the  gentleman  with  the  saffron 
moustaches  had  been  leaning  back  against 
the  rail,  surveying  both  with  a  quiet  smile. 

"  Well,  brother,"  he  said,  at  last,  "you  see, 
madame — gentle-minded,  religious  woman 
that  she  is — wishes  to  inflame  matters.  Let 
us  finish  with  this  child's  work.  I  have 
journeyed  many  leagues  to  speak  with  you, 
and  do  you  suppose  I  will  let  myself  be 
turned  back  by  caprice  of  this  sort !  Give  me 
half  an  hour— but  one  half  hour.  She  shall 
be  by  all  the  while.  Also  mademoiselle,  if 
she  have  any  fancy  for  it." 

The  young  man  looked  round  at  the 
haughty  dame  beside  him. 

"  This  seems   only   reasonable,"  he  said ; 


''  we  had  best  hear  what  he  has  to  say.  Well, 
brother,  come  to  my  room  —  to  the  golden 
chamber,  in  an  hour.  But,  mind,  this  shall  be 
the  last  time." 

"  With  all  my  heart,"  said  the  other,  bow- 
ing profoundly.  I  shall  trouble  you  no 
further  after  that.  Meanwhile,  accept  my 
gratulations,  Mademoiselle  est  vraiment 
belle  !  Au  revoir,  then,  in  an  hour." 

He  lifted  his  hat  as  they  passed  him,  and 
then  walked  down,  unconcernedly,  among 
the  blue-frocked  bourgeoise  of  the  court. 

"  Don't  stop  up  the  way,  good  people,"  he 
said,  coolly  putting  M.  Le  Boeuf  aside,  "  it 
hinders  all  comfort  in  walking  :  "  then  lighted 
a  cigar,  and  strode  out  carelessly  upon  the  high 
road. 

The  glass-doors  of  the  golden  chamber  had 
been  thrown  open,  disclosing  a  pretty  little 
room  adorned  fancifully  with  mirrors  and 
light  chintz  hangings.  Into  this  they  entered, 
the  hostess  leading  the  way,  and  bringing 
forward  an  arm-chair  into  which  M.  Lemoine 
dropped  himself  wearily.  Madame  was  taking 
counsel  with  Fanchonette,  at  the  end  of  the 
room  (the  chintz  and  Louis-quinze  mirrors 
were  quite  in  keeping  with  the  Lancry 
figure),  and,  as  the  glass-doors  shut-to  gently, 
I  saw  his  cousin  bending  over  him  tenderly. 
He  looked  up  pleasantly  into  her  lace. 

Within  the  hour's  time,  the  great  diligence 
had  departed,  toppling  fearfully  as  it  passed 
out  under  the  archway  ;  while  the  men  in 
blue — their  day's  work  being  ended — dis- 
persed and  left  the  court  quite  bare  and 
empty.  Soon  after,  the  stranger  came  saun- 
tering in,  his  hands  deeper  in  his  pockets, 
and  well  up  to  his  time.  At  the  foot  of  the 
steps  he  stopped  and  called  out  loudly  to 
Fanchouette,  "Go  quickly,  ma  petite,  and  see 
if  it  be  their  pleasure  to  receive  me." 

Soon  returned  Fanchonette,  tripping  lightly, 
with  word  that  they  were  already  waiting  for 
monsieur, — would  he  follow  her. 

"  On,  then,  mignonne  !"  he  exclaimed,  and 
walked  up-stairs,  round  to  the  golden  cham- 
ber, entering  boldly, and  letting  the  glass-doors 
swing-to  with  loud  chatter  behind  him. 

Madame,  our  hostess,  reported  to  me 
afterwards,  that,  as  she  was  passing  by 
she  heard  strange  tones,  as  of  fierce  and 
angry  quarrel — 'apparently  the  voices  of 
M.  Lemoine's  mother  and  the  stranger. 
She  had  often  heard  that  there  was  some 
ugly  secret  in  the  family — some  skeleton- 
closet  as  it  were — which  lie,  no  doubt,  was 
threating  to  make  known  to  the  world.  He 
was  lache-lache  !  madame  said,  several  times, 
with  indignation.  It  was  curious,  too,  how 
the  interest  of  that  whole  establishment  be- 
came concentrated  on  that  one  chamber.  It 
was  known  universally  that  there  was  some 
mystery  going  on  inside.  Even  Fanchonette 
found  occasion  to  pass  that  way  now  and  then, 
gleaning,  no  doubt,  stray  ends  of  discourse. 
I,  myself,  felt  irresistibly  moved,  to  wander 
round  in  that  direction  ;  but,  for  the  sake  of 


124     [August  s,  is;,;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


public  opinion,  had  held  out  against  the 
little  weakness.  It  would  be  more  profitable, 
as  it  was  such  a  cool,  fresh  evening,  to  go 
forth  and  stroll  leisurely  towards  the  village, 
scarcely  a  mile  away.  So  I  sauntered  forth 
at  an  easy  pace  from  beneath  the  archway. 

It  was  very  grateful  that  evening  walk 
down  to  the  village,  lying  along  all  manner 
of  green  lanes  and  shady  places.  There  was 
a  kind  of  short  cut  through  the  fields 
— pointed  out  by  an  obliging  peasant — which 
led  across  rustic  bridges  anil  through  a  little 
wood,  very  tempting  and  retired.  There  was  ' 
the  village  church,  too,  just  after  getting 
clear  of  the  wood  :  an  ancient  structure,  and 
very  grey  and  mossy,  with  the  door  standing  j 
open.  I  looked  in  and  found  M.  le  cure  at 
the  high  altar  steps  instructing  his  little ' 
band  ot  children  for  first  communion  or  other 
great  act.  A  gentle,  patient  man  looked  M. 
le  cure,  as  he  stood  within  his  altar-rails, 
and  very  innocent  and  eager  seemed  his  little 
following.  I  waited  afar  off— just  under  the 
porch — for  many  minutes,  listening,  looking 
round,  too,  at  the  pretty  decoration  of  the 
church,  —  garnished  plentifully  with  white 
rose-wreaths,  perhaps  for  some  high  festival 
coming  on. 

It  was  long  past  ten  o'clock  when  I 
found  myself  at  the  door  of  the  old  Yellow 
Tiger.  That  establishment  was  now  about 
sinking  into  its  night's  repose  ;  lights  begin- 
ning to  twinkle  here  and  thei*e  at  strange 
windows.  M.  Le  Bceuf  and  all  his  company 
had  long  since  departed,  and  as  I  entered,  a 
man  was  coming  down  the  steps  with  a  huge 
bunch  of  keys  to  fasten  up  all  securely  for 
the  night.  The  day's  work  was  done,  and  it 
w;;s  time  for  all  Christians  to  be  in  their 
rooms.  So  I  took  the  lamp  and  made  straight 
for  the  little  alcove  chamber  where  I  was  to 
repose  ;  leaving,  as  is  best  to  do  in  strange 
places,  the  light  burning  upon  the  table. 

When  I  awoke  again,  it  must  have  been  a 
couple  of  hours  past  midnight,  and  I  found 
that  my  lamp  must  have  just  gone  out.  For 
there  was  a  column  of  thick  black  smoke 
curling  upwards  from  it  to  the  coiling.  The 
ni-ht  was  miserably  warm  and  uncomfortable, 
and  I  foresaw  that  there  was  at  least  an 
hour  or  two  of  wretched  tossing  in  store  for 
me.  To  which  prospect  I  at,  once  resigned 
myself,  and  waited  calmly  for  the  tumult,  to 
begin. 

Though  the  lamp  had  gone  out,  there  was 
still  abundance  of  light  pouring  into  the 
room  through  the  glass-door  and  its  thin 
muslin  blind.  For,  the  moon  was  up  and 
made  every  corner  of  my  little  room  as  light 
as  day.  From  the  alcove  where  I  lay — just 
facing  the  door — 1  could  be  pretty  sure  that 
the  court-yard  was  steeped  in  a  broad  sheet 
of  white  light.  So,  too,  must  have  been  the  i 
gallery  running  round  (this  was  my  little 
speculation,  striving  to  keep  away  the  hour ' 
of  torment),  and  its  many  sleepers,  now  fast 
bound  in  their  slumbers.  Just  then  the 


little  clock  set  to  chiming  out  three,  so  that 
I  had  gone  tolerably  near  the  hour.  As 
I  was  thinking  what  musical  bells  were 
to  be  found  occasionally  in  these  out-of- 
the-way  villages,  it  suddenly  struck  me 
that  there  was  a  creaking  sound  outside 
in  the  gallery,  as  of  a  light  footstep.  The 
night  was  so  very  still  that  there  could  be  no 
doubt  of  it.  There  was  a  creaking  sound  in 
the  gallery.  At  the  same  instant,  Hercule, 
the  great  white  hound,  always  chained  up  of 
nights  in  the  porch,  gave  forth  a  long  melan- 
choly howl.  Whereupon  the  sounds  ceased 
suddenly. 

By  and  by  they  commenced  again,  coming 
nearer  this  time  and  mystifying  me  exceed- 
ingly, when  suddenly,  having  my  eyes  fixed 
upon  the  door,  a  tall  shadow  seemed  to  flit 
swiftly  across  the  door — a  man's  shadow,  too. 
What  could  this  mean  1  Who  could  be 
moving  about  in  this  secret  fashion  ?  Per- 
haps a  watchman,  kept  by  madame  to  look 
after  the  safety  of  their  premises  ;  perhaps 
a  stranger  with  some  unlawful  purpose.  I 
got  up  hastily  and  went  over  to  the  door  to 
look  out.  There  was  no  sign  of  any  person 
being  there ;  the  gallery  was  perfectly 
deserted.  The  court  below  was — exactly  as 
I  had  been  figuring  it — flooded  with  moon- 
light. There  were  also  those  fantastic  sha- 
dows shooting  out  from  the  foot  of  the 
pillars,  and  underneath  the  gallery  deep 
cavernous  recesses,  steeped  in  shade  and 
mystery.  Hercule  was  still  at  his  mournful 
song,  and  something  must  have  troubled  his 
slumbers.  Still,  as  I  said,  there  was  no  sign 
of  any  living  creature  ;  so,  after  a  little 
further  contemplation  of  the  tranquil  scene, 
I  shut  the  door  gently,  taking  care  to  secure 
it  from  within,  and  went  back  to  the  alcove. 

The  diligence  passed  by  at  six  o'clock  next 
morning  and  was  to  call  at  the  great  gate  to 
take  me  up.  It  seemed  to  me,  that  I  had 
but  just  turned  round  to  sleep,  when  a  hoarse 
voice  came  through  the  glass-door,  calling  to 
me  and  rattling  it  impatiently. 

"What  do  you  want  ?  "  I  said  sleepily. 

"  The  diligence,  M'sieu  !  it  is  coining  over 
the  hill.  M'sieu  will  have  to  hasten  him- 
self." 

I  jumped  up  hastily  and  was  in  my  clothes 
in  an  'instant.  Madame,  with  delicate  fore- 
thought, had  a  little  cup  of  coffee  ready 
(the  great  diligence  would  halt  for  breakfast 
some  two  or  three  hours  later),  which  I  had 
finished  just  as  the  jangling  music  of  the 
great  diligence  made  itself  heard  at  the  door. 
As  I  was  following  out  M.  Le  Bceuf,  who 
had  my  luggage  on  his  shoulder,  a  piercing 
scream  rang  out,  so  sharp  and  full  of  anguish 
that  all  who  were  there  turned  and  rushed 
back  into  the  court.  There  was  M.  Lernoine's 
mother  out  upon  the  gallery  in  a  light  dress- 
ing gown,  leaning  over  the  rail,  tossing  her 
arms  wildly  about.  There,  too,  was  madame 
our  hostess,  struggling  hard  with  the  golden- 
haired  young  girl  at  the  door  of  M.  Lemoine's 


[August  S,  135;.]       125 


room.  Little  Fanchonette,  with  her  hands  with  a  certain  pritnitiveness  of  dress  and 
covering  up  her  face,  was  running  round  the  manners  among  its  men  and  women  by  way 
gallery  in  a  sort  of  distracted  manner,  calling  of  local  colouring.  I  thought  frequently  of 


"  au  secours !    au  secours  : 
the  room-door  in  an  instant. 


"  0  such  a  terrible  thing  !  "  said  madame  ; 
"  don't  go  in — don't  go  in  !  " 

I  knew  well  what  that  terrible  thing  was, 
having  had  a  dreadful  presentiment  from  the 


We   were  at  the  late  Mr.  Sterne  and  his  tender  soul,  and 
went    round    very    much    after    the     easy, 


lounging  manner  of  that  famous  sentimen- 
talist. 

In  a-n  admirable  specimen  of  this  ancient 
town    architecture,    bearing    the    name    of 


very  first  minute.     Upon  his  bed  was  lying)  Montc.eaux, I  found  myself  one  evening,  after 
M.   Lemoine,  on  his  face,    quite    stiff  and  some  three  or  four  days'  sojourning,  sitting 


cold  ;  and,  as  they  turned  him  over,  two  dis- 
coloured marks  upon  his  throat  came  into 
He  had  been  most  foully  done  to 


view, 
death  - 


-had  poor  M.  Lemoine. 


Suddenly  some  one  whispered,  Where  was 
the  stranger :  he  who  had  arrived  yesterday  ? 


by  an  open  lattice  and  looking  out  on  their 
chief  street.  This  was  in  a  furnished  lodg- 
ing over  a  little  wine-shop,  which  I  hud 
secured  at  incredibly  small  charges.  I  knew 
that  over  my  head  there  was  a  wonderful 
bit  of  gable  with  vast  slopes  of  red  tiling, 


— and  some  one  else  walked  away  on  tip-toe  !  and,  as  of  course,  a  little  belfry  and  weather- 
to  wai'ds  his  room.  He  had  departed.  It  was  j  cock,  wherein  the  daws  did  most  congregate, 
plain,  too,  that  his  bed  had  not  been  slept  in.  1 1  knew  that,  externally,  great  beams,  hand- 


It  was  easy,  therefore,  to  know  at  whose  door 
to  lay  this  foul  deed. 

By  this  time,  madame,  now  quite  motionless 
and  exhausted,  had  been  got  into  the  house, 


somely  coloured,  crossed  diagonally  just 
below  my  little  diamond- paned  lattice,  and 
that  underneath  was  a  deep  doorway  with 
well-wrought  arch  and  pillars,  which  might 


as  well  as  the  yellow-haired  young  lady,  very  well  have  been  abstracted  from  the  old 
M.  le  conducteur  said  very  quietly  to  me, :  church  hard  by.  I  knew  also  that  at  the 
that  it  was  an  awful  thing  to  happen,  an  \  angle  of  the  house,  just  on  a  line  with  my 
awful  thing.  He  felt  for  madame's  situation,  j  lattice,  was  a  niche,  or  resting-place,  for  a, 
but  he  had  his  orders  and  must  go  forward  -  certain  holy  woman  now  in  glory,  who  had 


without  delay.    So  he  was  at  my  service  from 
that  moment. 

As  we  came  down  the  steps,  we  found  that 
the  court  had  filled  up  with  a  strange  rapi- 
dity; many  men  in  the  blue  garments  having 
gathered  there,  talking  softly  together  and 
surmising  ;  the  gens-d'armes  would  be  there, 
they  said,  in  a  few  m:nutes.  Le  Boeuf  and 
others  were  already  scouring  the  country. 
So  I  ascended  into  the  great  diligence,  sorrow- 
fully ;  thinking  what  blight  and  desolation 
had  of  a  sudden  fallen  upon  the  peaceful 
house.  The  cocher  was  impatient;  he  had 
had  a  hard  time  of  it  with  his  four  strug- 
gling animals.  They  had  been  making  the 
stones  and  gravel  fly  about  furiously  for  the 
last  quarter  of  an  hour.  The  door  was  slammed 
to,  the  conductor  had  clambered  up  to  his 
nook,  the  musical  jingling,  the  crunching,  the 
rumbling  began  again  afresh,  and  the  great 
diligence  moved  onward.  As  we  reached 
the  top  of  the  hill,  we  met  six  tall  men  in 
cocked  hats  and  boots,  and  very  white 
shoulder-belts.  These  were  the  gens-d'armes 
that  had  been  sent  for  ;  now  on  their  way  to 
the  old  Yellow  Tiger  Inn. 

How  many  years  was  it  before  I  came  by 
that  road  again,  through  the  pleasant  bye- 
ways  and  paysages  of  France  the  Beautiful, 
ns  her  sons  and  daughters  like  to  call  her  ? 


once  been  richly  dight  in  gold  and  colouring, 
but  was  now  as  dull  and  grey  as  her  stone 
canopy.  To  her,  I  noted  that  every  man  as 
he  passed  uncovered  reverently  ;  which  was 
indeed  only  fitting,  she  being  patroness  and 
special  guardian  of  the  town. 

The  day's  work  was  done,  and  it  was  a 
Saturday  evening.  Therefore  were  gathered 
about  the  street  corner,  under  the  saint, 
many  of  the  Mont§eaux  wise  men  taking 
their  ease  in  the  cool  of  the  evening  and  dis- 
cussing the  fair  or  festival  nearest  at  hand. 
Past  them  would  flit  by,  occasionally,  coming 
from  drawing  water  at  the  fountain,  the 
Maries  and  Victorines  of  the  place,  in  petti- 
coats of  bright  colours  and  dainty  caps,  and 
with  little  crosses  on  their  necks.  There  came 
by, too,  a  tall  dark  man,  without  a  hat,  holding 
up  his  gown  with  one  hand — monsieur  le 
cur6,  in  a  word — who  stayed  for  a  few 
moments'  talk  with  the  wise  men.  His  day's 
work  at  the  church,  shrifts  and  all,  was 
now  over,  and  he  was  speeding  on  to  the 
presbyteVe  close  by.  Altogether,  I  said  to 
myself,  as  pretty  a  little  cabinet  bit  as  I  have 


seen  for  many  a  long  day. 
Down    the    little    street 


facing    us    (the 


patroness  from  her  angle  could  command 
undisturbed  prospect  of  no  less  than  three 
streets)  came  tripping  lightly  a  young  girl  in 
black,  with  a  littie  black  silk  hood  half  drawn 
over  her  head.  I  saw  her  coming  a  long  way 


Close  upon  four,  I  think.     This  time  I  had 

been  wandering  over  the  country  in  true  off,  even  from  the  moment  she  had  issued 
Zingnrp  humour ;  casting  about  for  ancient  |  from  the  old  house  that  hung  so  over  upon 
quiet  little  towns,  removed  from  great  high-  the  street.  As  she  drew  nearer,  there  came 


ways  and  touriet  profanities,  where  abound, 
choice  street  corners  and  maimed  statues  in 


upon    me    suddenly  a    reminiscence    as    of 
Lancry  and  of  a  juicy  brush  and  clear  limpid 


broken   arches  and   a  rare   fountain  or  so,  colouring.     I  thought  I  recollected  something 


126 


&1SS7. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


of  that  face  and  figure,  and,  by  the  time  she 
was  passing  under  the  window,  I  had  placed 
her  on  a  certain  gallery  just  coming  forth 
from  the  golden  chamber,  with  the  old 
Yellow  Tiyer  as  background.  So  I  stooped 
over  and  called  out  softly  "  Fanchonette  !" 

She  was  a  little  startled,  and  looked  up. 
It  was  Fanchonette  beyond  all  mistake.  She 
was  not  scared  at  being  so  accosted,  but 
stopped  still  a  moment  to  know  what  I  might 
want. 

"Fanchonette,"  I  said,  "don't  you  re- 
member ?  How  gets  on  the  old  Yellow 
Tiger  and  mac  lame  ?" 

She  put  her  little  finger  to  her  forehead 
thoughtfully. 

"  Ah  !  I  recollect  it  all  now  ! "  she  said, 
clapping  her  hands.  "  I  recollect  monsieur 
perfectly.  Monsieur  was  there,"  she  added 
sorrowfully,  "  all  that  terrible  night." 

"  Wait  for  a  moment,  Fanchonette,"  I  said, 
"  I  am  coming  down  to  you."  For  someway 
I  always  shrank  from  that  paternal  manner 
of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sterne,  when  opening 
up  the  country  sentimentally ;  so  I  went 
down  to  meet  Fauchonette  —  ungallantly 
enough — at  the  door.  "  Now,  what  has 
brought  you  to  these  parts  ?"  I  said.  "Tell 
me  all  your  little  history,  Fanchonette." 

"  O,  monsieur  ! "  she  said,  "  I  left  the 
Yellow  Tiger  long  since,  and  I  now  serve 
madarne — the  tall,  dark  lady,  whose  son  was, 

helas  !  so  miserably " 

"  Ah  !  I  remember  that  night  well."  And 
the  young  fiancee,  the  golden-haired  demoi- 
selle, where  was  she  ?  I  asked. 

She  had  been  with  the  Soeurs  de  la  Miseri- 
corde  since  a  long  time  back — in  noviciate, 
Fanchonette  believed.  But  had  I  not  taken 
an  interest  in  her — at  least  she  thought  so — 
and  in  the  family  ?  I  had  certainly,  I  said, 
and  had  often  thought  of  them  since.  Ah  ! 
she  was  sure  of  it.  She  had  noticed  it  in 
me  that  night  when  madame  was  recounting 
her  history — and  now,  if  I  would  be  so  good, 
BO  condescending,  she  said,  putting  \\p  her 
hands,  and  actually  trembling  with  eagerness, 
to  corne  with  her  for  one  short  quarter  of 
an  hour  to  her  mistress.  O  !  I  did  not  know 
what  a  relief,  what  a  raising  up  from  deses- 
poir,  I  should  bring  with  me. 

I  looked  at  her  a  little  mystified.  To  be 
sure,  I  said  ;  but  what  could  I  do  for  her  ? 
O,  much  ;  a  great  deal  !  I  could  help  them 
very  much  indeed  !  The  Blessed  Mother  had 
sent  me  to  them  as  a  guardian  angel  and 
deliverer  !  Madame  had  been  utterly  crushed 
past  hope  ;  but  now  all  ^would  go  well. 
Would  1  go  now  1  She  was  stopping  in  the 
great  house  yonder. 

This  was  mysterious  enough,  but  I  said 
by  all  means  ;  and  so  Fanchonette  tripped 
on — a  messenger  of  good  tidings  of  great 
joy — leading  the  way  to  the  great  house  that 
hung  so  into  the  street.  Arrived  under  its 
shadow,  she  lifted  the  latch  softly,  and, 
leaving  me  below,  ran  up  to  tell  madame. 


She  was  away  some  five  minutes,  and  then 
called  over  the  stairs  that  monsieur  was  to 
mount,  if  he  pleased.  So  I  ascended  a  dark, 
winding  staircase,  such  as  are  much  found  in 
such  mansions,  and  was  led  along  a  low, 
narrow  corridor  into  a  large  handsome  room, 
fitted  however  with  mullions  and  panes 
of  diamond  pattern  much  as  in  my  own  tene- 
ment. Here,  in  a  great  gilt  chair  (very 
tarnished  though),  surrounded  with  cabinets 
and  mirrors  and  clocks  and  china  of  the 
pattern  popular  in  the  days  of  King  Louis  the 
Fifteenth,  was  Madame  Lemoine,  all  in  black, 
who  sat  back  stiff  and  stern  in  her  chair, 
regarding  me  closely  as  I  came  in.  I  knew 
her  at  once.  She  was  just  as  I  had  seen 
her  on  the  stairs  of  the  Yellow  Tiger,  only 
her  features  had  grown  sharpened  and 
pinched  a  little  ;  her  eyes,  too,  had  now  and 
then  a  sharp,  restless  glare.  tShe  looked  at 
me  hard  for  a  few  moments. 

"  Sit  down,  monsieur,  sit  down,"  she  said, 
nervously,  "here  just  beside  me.  Do  you 
know  that  you  can  help  us — that  is,  if  you  are 
willing  to  do  so  1 " 

I  said  that  anything  I  could  do  for  them, 
provided  it  fell  within  the  next  few  days, 
they  were  heartily  welcome  to. 

"  Thanks,  thanks,  thanks  ! "  she  said  many 
times  over,  with  the  same  nervous  manner. 
"  You  shall  hear  first  what  is  wanted  of 
you — not  so  very  much  after  all.  Rather, 
first  what  do  you  know  of  us,  or  must  I  go 
through  the  whole  wretched  story ?" 

"  If  she  alluded,"  I  said,  "  to  a  certain 
fatal  night  some  four  years  since,  why " 

"  Ah,  true  !  I  had  been  there.  Fanchonette 
had  told  her  all  that.  Well,  monsieur,"  she 
went  on,  rubbing  her  thin  fingers  together, 
"  how  do  you  suppose  my  miserable  life  has 
been  spent  since  then  ?  What  has  been  my 
food  and  nourishment  all  that  while  ? 
Guess  !" 

I  shook  my  head.  I  could  not  pretend  to 
say  what  had  been  madame's  occupation. 

"  Try  !  try  ! "  she  said,  striking  the  smooth 
knob  of  her  chair,  her  eyes  ranging  from 
object  to  object  in  the  quick,  restless  way  I 
had  noticed.  "  What  was  the  fittest  employ- 
ment for  the  poor  broken-hearted  mother  ? 
Come  !  Make  a  guess,  monsieur  ! " 

It  had  grown  a  little  darker  now,  and 
there  were  shadows  gathering  round  the 
upholstery  of  King  Louis'  day.  For  nearly 
a  minute  no  one  spoke,  neither  I,  nor  Fan- 
chonette standing  behind  her  mistress's  chair, 
nor  the  grim  lady  herself  waiting  an  answer 
so  solemnly.  Madame  had  been  travelling, 
no  doubt,  I  suggested. 

"  Right,"  said  madame,  "  we  have  been 
travelling  wearily :  scouring  the  great  con- 
tinent of  Europe  from  end  to  end.  Poor 
Fanchonette  is  tired,  and  I  am  tired.  Does 
monsieur  " — here  she  stooped  forward,  peer- 
ing nervously  into  my  face  ; — "  does  monsieur 
ever  recollect  meeting — in  any  of  the  great 
public  places,  for  instance — a  man  with  light 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  YELLOW  TIGER. 


[August  S.  185?.]       127 


yellow  moustache?,  white  teeth,  and  a  false 
smile.  Let  monsieur  see  his  description,  as 
officially  drawn  up,  with  proper  signalment. 
Eyes,  grey  ;  nose,  arched  ;  height,  medium  ; 
hair,  yellow  ;  and  the  rest  of  it.  We  have 
been  travelling  after  him,  monsieur." 

I  was  uow  beginning  to  understand. 

"Well,"  she  went  on,  "we  were  hunting 
that  shadow  up  and  down,  tracking  those 
yellow  moustaches  hopelessly,  without  aid 
from  any  one,  for  how  long,  Fanchonette  1 
Ah,  for  three  years — yes  !  At  the  end  of 
three  years,  monsieur — three  weary  years — 
we  had  hunted  him  down  —  tracked  him 
home.  It  was  time,  though :  full  time  !  We 


had    not    strength 
chonette  1 " 


for    much    more,    Fan- 


"  Where  did  you  find  him  then,  madame  1 " 


Why,  in  a  lonely  German 


I  said. 

"  Ah  !  where  1 

town,  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains.  But  what 
use  was  it  1  We  had  no  friends  among  the 
great  ones,  and  could  not  lay  a  finger  on  him 
in  that  foreign  country.  All  that  was  left 
to  us  was  to  keep  watch  over  him  until 
he  should  be  drawn  back  again  by  his  des- 
tiny— as  they  say  such  men  always  are 
drawn — to  his  own  country.  How  long 
did  we  keep  watch  over  him,  there, 
Fanchonette  1 " 

"  For  ten  months,  madame." 

"  For  ten  months,  and  then  he  departed, 
as  I  knew  he  would,  aud  crept  back  to  his 
own  land.  And  now,"  she.  said,  lowering  her 
voice  in  a  whisper,  "  he  is  close  by  us  here — 
in  the  town  of  Dezieres,  not  five  miles 
away — 

Madame  paused  here  for  a  moment,  still 
playing  feverishly  with  the  smooth  knob  oi 
her  chair. 

"Here  is  what  we  would  ask  of  you,  if 
you  would  not  think  it  too  much.  Fan- 
chonette has  been  into  this  town  and  has 
brought  back  some  idle  story  about  its  not 
being  the  man  ;  no  false  smile,  she  says,  nor 
yellow  moustaches — as  if  he  were  fool  enough 
to  keep  such  tokens.  Mon  Dieu  !  "  she  added 


lifting  up  her  thin  hands, 
to  be  he,  and  no   other. 


;  it  shall  turn  out 
He  is    lying   at 


this   moment  in  Dezidres,  awaiting  for  his 
hour." 

"  In  what  way,  then,  dear  madame,  would 
you  have  me  assist  you  1 " 

"Fanchonette  does  not  know-  this  man 
and  my  poor  eyes  are  old  and  weak  and 
would  not  help  me  to  know  him.  See  us 
here,  then,  monsieur,  two  friendless  women, 
and  give  us  this  help.  Go  into  that  town, 
see  him,  speak  with  him,  probe  his  very 
soul,  and  if  he  turn  pale  have  them  ready  to 
rush  in  upon  him. 
pass  such  things  1  " 

I  could  only  promise  that  I  would  set  forth 
for  Dezieres,  not  that  Saturday  night — it 
b^ing  far  too  late — but  towards  noon  the 
next  day,  when  she  might  depend  on  my  best 


How  were  we  to  corn- 


sorrows  and  her  pale,  handsome  countenance, 
so  worn  and  sharpened  with  sorrows.  It  was 
lard  to  resist  the  piteous,  earnest  look,  with 
which  she  had  waited  for  my  answer. 

"  A  troubled  time  you  must  have  had  of 
t,  my  poor  girl,"  I  said  to  Fanchonette,  as  we 
went  down  to  the  door. 

"Ah,  yes,  monsieur;"  she  said,  "but 
we  would  have  travelled  to  the  world's 
end  to  find  him.  I  have  no  fears.  The 
Bon  Dieu  will  deliver  him  up  to  justice 
yet." 

The  next  day  was  Sunday,  and  a  very 
bright  festival  morning  it  seemed  to  be. 
Looking  betimes  from  my  little  casement,  I 
saw  the  whole  town  astir,  and,  in  the  street 
making  towards  the  church  where  was  to  be, 
presently,  the  grand  mass.  They  came  in 
all  manner  of  costumes :  abundance  of  high 
white  caps,  and  bright  shawls  and  petti- 
coats variegating  the  tide.  There  were  some, 
too,  from  the  country  outside,  drawn  along 
by  stout  horses,  adorned  with  gay  harness  and 
fringes.  There  were  stout  patriarchs  trudg- 
ing along,  boldly  leaning  on  their  good  sticks, 
and  young  girls — the  Maries  aud  Victorines 
of  last  night — with  gold  pins  in  their  hair  and 
great  bouquets,  and  gallants  in  blouses  walk- 
ing beside  them.  So  they  went  by ;  all  bound 
for  the  grand  mass.  I  would  go  to  the  grand 
mass  also. 

High  altar  abundantly  decked  with  ar- 
tificial white  roses ;  little  altars  in  little 
by-chapels  decked  also  with  artificial  white 
roses.  White  roses  round  the  capitals  of 
the  tall,  grey  pillars.  White  roses  along  the 
organ-gallery,  and  around  the  angels,  and  on 
the  head  of  the  pretty  statue  of  our  lady,  or  it 
might  be  of  our  saint  and  patroness,  in  the 
middle  of  the  aisle.  This  was  the  first  im- 
pression upon  the  senses  of  the  curious 
stranger.  The  secret  of  this  waste  of  white 
roses  was  this ;  it  was  the  patroness's  festi- 
val-day, and,  on  looking  closer,  I  found  that 
very  many  of  the  bouquets  had,  in  fact, 
found  their  way  to  the  feet  of  her  effigy. 
There  was  to  be  a  grand  fonction,  in  short, 
aud  it  was  confidently  expected  that  M.  le 
grand  vicaire-general  of  the  district,  would 


in  a  panegyric ;  but  a  little  doubt  hung 
over  this  prospect.  There  was  altogether  a 
bright,  innocent  aspect  about  the  church 
interior  as  I  stood  looking  down  at  it  from 
the  porch,  so  well  peopled  with  its  ranks  of 
gaily-dressed  peasantry,  which  struck  me  as 
another  of  those  choice  pictures  for  which  I 
was  indebted  to  this  little  place.  There  was 
a  tall  man  in  a  cocked-hat  who  was  over- 
powering in  his  attentions,  unprompted  by 
mercenary  motives.  When  the  grand  mass 
began,  a  flood  of  boys  in  white,  a  flood  of  men 
in  white,  together  with  a  train  of  lay  figures, 
displaying  upon  their  backs  the  gorgeous 
copes  lent  by  adjoining  parishes  to  do  honour 
to  the  patroness,  and  now  M.  le  cur6  him- 


exertions.     I  was  touched  by  the  poor  lady's  I  self,  celebrant  in  a  dazzling  robe,  never  seen 


128        [Augiwt  8,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


by  Montceaux  eyes — fresh  from  Paris — 
censors,  floating  clouds,  gold,  silver,  glitter, 
torches,  and  sweet  fragrance, — that  was  the 


fess,  in  all  honour,  have  you  half-a-dozen 
people  in  your  house?"  Indeed  he  can 
assure  monsieur  that  there  are  at  least  that 


fonction.  Alack,  for  the  music,  though  j  number — or  very  nearly  so.  No,  I  say, 
chaunted,  indeed,  with  a  will,  but  dissonant,  |  pointing  significantly  to  the  keys  hung  close 
and  of  the  nose  nasal.  Nor  can  I  restrain  !  by — about  three  thick — who  have  you  now  1 


a  gentle  remonstrance  against  the  leathern 
spiral  instrument — that  cruel  diseuchauter 
— worked  with  remorseless  vigour  by  the 
Tubal  Cain  of  the  place.  At  the  end  of  the 
fonction — when  the  patroness  is  happily  borne 
back  to  her  resting-place — comes  a  moment 
of  intolerable  suspense.  Has  M.  le  grand- 
vicaire  come  ?  Will  he  come  ?  In  a  mo- 
ment more  there  is  sensation  in  the  church, 
for  there  issue  forth  boys  in  white,  the  men 
in  white,  the  lay  figures  even  ;  and,  lastly, 


Why, there  was  M.  Petit  the  avocat,  and  M.  le 
sous-lieutenant,  and  now,  let  him  see — oh, 
yes  !  There  was  M.  Falcon, — not  exactly 
stopping  in  the  house  ;  and  there  was  M. 
Eabbe,  professor  of  languages  and  belles 

lettres,  and Well,  well,  I  say,  so  that 

any  of  them  dined,  I  was  content.  O,  yes, 
they  would  dine  :  monsieur  might  depend  on 
that.  M.  Eabbe  always  dined.  Good.  Then 
I  would  be  there  at  five. 

I  am  interested  in  M.   Eabbe,   professor 


walking  modestly  with  M.  le  cure,  M.  le  j  of  languages  and  belles  lettres.  I  am  de- 
grand-vicaire  himself.  Pie  has  come,  then, '  sirous  of  meeting  M.  Eabbe  at  dinner,  and 
the  long  desiderated  !  A  rather  florid,  portly  making  his  acquaintance.  I  walk  up  the 
man,  M.  le  grand-vicaire,  but  true  as  steel,  street  carelessly,  thinking  what  manner  of 
and  has  come  twenty  miles  that  morning  for  I  man  he  may  turn  out  to  be,  when  I  am  seized 
the  patroness  and  her  flock.  He  will  dine  !  unaccountably  with  misgivings  on  the  score 
with  M.  le  cure  in  state,  and  meet  the  maire  of  my  passport.  My  passport,  of  all  things  in 
and  other  great  syndics.  A  very  excellent '  the  world  !  Was  it  perfectly  en  rggle  as 
sermon  from  M.  le  grand-vicaire,  full  of  their  phrase  was  ?  Had  it  its  fu!l  comple- 
sound  truths,  with  a  little  varnish  of  a  Paris  ment  of  visas,  and  sand,  and  stamps  ?  Would 
accent  over  all.  For,  he  is  not  provincial,  it  do  for  such  remote  quarters  as  Dezieres  ? 
and  hath  eminent  prospects  of  being  a  bishop, !  Who  was  to  let  me  know  concerning  these 
and  those  not  so  remote  either.  A  great  day  j  things  1  I  stop  a  passer-by,  and  inquire  with 
altogether — a  very  high  festival !  j  civility  for  the  Bureau  of  Passports.  The 

Shortly  after  noontide,  a  sort  of  caleche  sent'  passer-by  is  puzzled — not  often  coming  in 
over  from  Dezieres,  departed  by  the  northern  \  contact  with  such  notions  —  he  supposes  I 
side  of  the  town.  There  were,  inside  of  that  may  hear  of  it  at  the  Police.  Yes  ;  and 
caleche,  Madame  Lemoine,  Mademoiselle  the  Police  ?  Ah !  that  Avas  in  Eue  Pot 
Fanchonette,  and  myself.  After  all,  madame  |  d'Etain — Tin  Pot  Street  that  is— straight 
had  decided,  almost  at  the  last  minute,  to  go  j  as  I  can  go.  Thanks.  One  thousand 
forward  to  Dezieres  and  wait  there  the  thanks ! 


progress  of  events. 


I  proceed,  straight  as  I  can  go,  into  Tin  Pot 


In  about  an  hour's  time  then,  we  were  Street,  and  discover  the  Police  at  once  from 
struggling  slowly  up  the  paved  causeway  the  sign  of  a  gens-d'arme  hung  out,  as  it  were, 
that  leads  into  that  town:  a  much  greater  at  the  door.  Two  other  gens-d'armes  are  seated 
and  more  imposing  place  than  Montceaux.  on  a  little  bench  under  the  window,  enjoy- 
There  is  a  barriere  and  there  are  officials  ing  the  evening.  I  go  up  to  the  Sign,  and 
there,  and  octroi ;  at  which  spot  we  turned  ask  if  I  may  be  allowed  a  few  minutes'  con- 
sharply  to  the  right,  making  for  a  quiet  and  versation  with  M.  le  chef.  He  looks  hard  at 
retired  house  of  rest,  known  as  the  Son  of  me,  moving  his  hand  over  his  chin  with  a 
France  Inn.  At  the  Son  of  France  were  set !  rasping  sound.  Then,  with  a  slow  glance,  he 
down  madame  and  her  attendant,  whilst  I  j  takes  me  in  from  head  to  foot,  and  under 
went  off  on  foot  to  the  Three  Gold  Crowns,  pretext  of  picking  up  a  straw,  contrives  a 
on  certain  business  of  my  own.  1  private  view  at  my  back.  The  brethren  on 

At  the  door  of  that  house  of  entertainment !  the  bench  have  by  this  time  drawn  neai', 
I  made  enquiries  in  an  easy  unconcerned  man-  !  look  me  all  over,  and  make  rasping  sounds 
ner  :  firstly,  as  to  the  hour  they  were  accus- 1  on  their  chins.  I  repeat  my  request  of  being 
tomed  to  lay  out  their  table-d'hote,  and  also  as  conducted  to  the  presence  of  M.  le  chef, 
to  whether  I  could  be  accommodated  with  an  i  Upon  which  the  Sign — clearly  not  knowing 
apartment  for  that  night.  It  was  explained  to  '  what  to  make  of  it — motions  me  to  follow, 
me  that,  on  the  score  of  dinner,  I  was  unhap-  j  and  leads  me  into  a  little  back  room.  The 
pily  too  late  for  the  first  table-d'hote,  which '  door  is  shut,  and  I  am  left  alone  with  a 


was  laid  always  at  one,  precisely.  But  that,  by 
inlinite  good  luck,  there  would  be  another 
laid  at  five  o'clock,  to  suit  the  convenience  of 
strangers  arrived  for  the  festival.  As  to  the 
apartment  I  might  have  my  choice ;  for 
U;trcou  candidly  acknowledges  there  are  not 
many  stopping  in  the  house.  "  Bad  times 


gentleman  behind  a  table — bald,  and  rather 
full  in  person — wearing  a  travelling  cap  tied 
with  a  bow  of  ribbon  in  front,  and  an  ancient 
brown  coat :  altogether  recalling  forcibly 
the  men  that  used  to  book  you  in  country 
towns  for  the  Eoyal  Mail,  during  the  fine 
old  coaching  times. 


these  for  business,"  I  say,  laughingly.   "  Con-       I  have  some  curious  conversation  with  M. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  YELLOW  TIGER, 


LAumi*t  y,  111:.]        129 


le  chef:  for  nearly  half  an  hour.  In  spite  of 
Royal  Mail  associations,  I  find  him  a  man  of 
wonderful  tact  and  knowledge.  Indeed,  how 
would  he  have  got  there  at  all  were  it  other- 
wise ?  Strange  to  say,  he  has  shown  me  some 
queer  notes  of  his  own  making  during  the  last 
two  or  three  days.  As  I  go  away  it  seems 
settled  that  M.  le  chef  will  not  dine  at  home 
that  day ;  but  has  taken  a  fancy  for  trying 
the  cuisine  at  the  Three  Gold  Crowns.  He 
will  dine  much  about  the  time  we  do,  only 
he  will  be  served  in  a  little  Cabinet  Particu- 
lier  by  himself.  I  am  grieved  at  not  having 
his  company  at  the  public  table  ;  for  he  is  a 
man  of  wit  and  easy  manners.  But  he  has 
his  little  oddities,  he  sa.ys,  and  so  shrugs  me 
out. 

At  about  ten  minutes  before  five,  I  am 
ascending  the  stairs  of  the  Three  Gold 
Crowns.  I  find  the  lieutenant  already  there 
before  me,  walking  up  and  down — gentlemen 
of  the  Imperial  Service  proving,  within  my 
experience,  punctual  and  fatal  patrons  of  the 
proprietors  of  such  establishments.  We  salute 
each  other  profoundly,  and  enter  upon  the 
probabilities  of  there  being  full  or  scanty 
attendance  at  the  approaching  meal.  To  us  en- 
tered presently  a  purple,  orb-faced  gentleman, 
plainly  of  the  country  interest  and  Squire 
Western  habits,  and  then  a  little  smart  man, 
who  recalled  forcibly  the  popular  portraits  of 
M.  Thiers.  He  seems,  as  it  were,  perpetually 
shooting  out  into  points  and  angles,  and  comes 
in  company  with  the  gentleman  of  the  country, 
laying  out  some  local  interest  energetically 
with  his  pointed  finger. 

Behind  them  walks  out  the  host  of  the 
Three  Gold  Crowns,  heralding  the  soup — 
significant  onien  that  no  more  are  to  come 
or  at  least  be  waited  for.  But  the  professor 
of  modern  tongues  and  belles  lettres, 
where  is  he  ?  I  am  so  interested  in  this 
coming  of  M.  Rabbe,  that  I  feel  myself 
getting  troubled  and  uneasy  in  mind,  and 
look  every  instant  towards  the  door.  More 
especially  as  I  know  from  sounds  behind 
the  partition  that  there  is  a  gentleman  being 
served  in  private — contingent,  as  it  were,  upon 
M.  Rabbe's  arrival.  Perhaps  M.  Rabbe  may 
have  private  reasons  for  not  desiring  to  meet 
me  ?  Seriously  I  am  very  much  disturbed, 
and  think  anxiously  of  the  thin,  pale  lady 
expectant  at  the  Son  of  France. 

The  soup  then  is  put  on.  Officious  garcons 
bustle  about,  and  the  clatter  of  China  ware 
and  tongues  sets  in.  M.  Petit — for  I  have 
learnt  long  since  that  M.  Thiers'  portrait 
stands  for  him — talks  for  the  whole  company. 
He  has  his  sharp  forefinger  laid  upon  his 
neighbour's  chest ;  now  upon  his  plate  ;  now 
vertically  upon  his  own  palm.  He  is  for 
ever  illustrating  things  with  little  construc- 
tions of  his  knife  and  fork,  his  napkin  and 
his  chair.  He  distracts  me  from  what  I  am 
thinking  of  so  nervously.  The  sous-lieute- 
nant and  M.  Falcon  accept  him  cheerfully  as 
he  is — and  without  reply — for  their  souls  are 


now  laid  conscientiously  to  the  great  work 
before  them. 

Just  as  the  soup  is  being  taken  away,  I 
catch  the  sound  of  a  distant  step  upon  the 
stairs.  Our  host  catches  it  too  ;  for  he  bids 
Antoine  stay  his  hand,  and  leave  the  soup 
for  M.  Rabbe.  For  another  moment,  niy 
heart  is  beating  hard,  and  there  enters  some 
one  bowing  low,  and  full  of  soft  apologies — a 
little  warm,  too,  with  the  haste  he  has  made 
— and  wiping  his  forehead  with  his  handker- 
chief. Ah,  Fanchonette  !  For  all  that  arti- 
ficial strip  of  baldness  reaching  even  to  the 
back  of  the  head  ;  in  spite  of  those  shorn  lips 
and  cheeks  ;  of  that  limp  neckcloth,  swathed 
in  many  folds  and  brought  down  upon  the 
chest ;  of  that  bunch  of  seals  ;  and  the  long 
black  garment  a  shade  seedy  at  the  collar;  I 
say  you  should  have  known  M.  Rabbe,  in  one 
second,  at  that  comely  German  town  !  I 
would  have  picked  him  out  of  a  thousand. 

He  was  one  of  M.  Petit's  own  circle  of 
friends ;  for  that  gentleman  saluted  him  heart- 
ily as  he  took  his  seat.  A  very  agreeable  man 
was  M.  Rabbe,  and  entertained  us  wonder- 
fully for  the  rest  of  dinner  ;  excepting  that  at 
times  he  had  a  peculiar  manner  of  displaying 
his  teeth,  and  I  could  not  help  fancying  ayellow 
moustache  just  over  them.  He  spoke  cheer- 
fully of  the  morning's  fonction,  and  of  the 
admirable  sermon  of  M.  le  vicaire  —  such 
plain,  sound  doctrine,  and  so  good  for  the 
people  !  Then  he  falls  upon  fiscal  questions 
with  M.  Petit,  handling  them  with  a  certain 
skill.  The  lieutenant  is,  all  this  while,  too 
hard  at  work  for  mere  converse. 

At  last  M.  Petit,  looking  at  his  watch,  dis- 
covers that  he  has  important  business  else- 
where, and  so  departs  with  a  bow  that  takes 
in  all  the  company.  The  lieutenant  rises 
about  the  same  time  ;  bethinking  him  of  the 
little  cafe  in  the  Square  of  the  town.  Remain 
therefore,  the  country  interest,  myself,  and 
M.  Rabbe  :  who  says  with  a  pleasant  smiie 
that  he  knows  of  a  particular  Volnay,  now 
lying  in  our  host's  cellars,  and  would  take 
leave  to  order  up  some,  for  our  special 
tasting.  At  this  moment  there  are  sounds  of 
movement  behind  the  partition,  and  presently 
enters  with  bows,  my  friend  the  chef,  with 
newspaper  in  one  hand,  and  his  glass  and  a 
slim  wine-flask  in  the  other,  begging  to  be 
allowed  to  join  the  company.  I  confess  I 
scarcely  know  M.  le  chef  again.  He  is 
strangely  metamorphosed,  having  now  got 
up  a  little  of  the  aspect  of  a  town  burgher 
in  his  Sunday  suit :  with  a  brusque  local 
tone  of  speech.  No  traces  here  of  the 
brown  garment  and  the  ancient  travelling 
cap  !  He  draws  in  his  chair,  looks  round 
on  us  cheerfully,  and  I  now  feel  that  the 
time  for  business  is  at  hand. 

"  You  do  meet  excellent  wines  " — I  say,  in 
continuation  of  the  Volnay  discussion — "  in 
some  of  those  little  towns  up  and  down  the 
country." 

"Ay,"   says  M.  le  chef,  holding  his  glass 


130        [Ausust  8,185".] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


to  the  light,  "and  perhaps  nowhere  so  good 
as  in  this  town  of  ours." 

"  The  gentleman  is  right,"  says  M.  Falcon, 
•with  an  oath  of  the  true  western  fashion — 
only  in  French — 'let  them  match  our  wines 
if  they  can  !  Pardieu  !  I  say  what  is  known, 
and  can  be  proved  !  " 

"He  has  reason  !"  M.  le  clief  says,  glancing 
at  me  ever  so  little.  "Trust  to  a  clean  country 
cabaret  for  pure  honest  wines  !  " 

"  Yes,"  I  reply,  "  I  have  travelled  over 
many  leagues  of  France,  and  I  think  the  best 
wines  I  have  fallen  in  with,  were  at  an  old 
cabaret  in  the  south." 

"  Where,  if  T  may  take  the  liberty  ?  "  M.  le 
chef  asks  with  interest. 

"  Let  me  see,"  I  answer  reflecting,  "it  is  so 
long  since.  Ah  to  be  sure — down  near 
Troves  somewhere,  at  a  house  called  the 
Yellow  Tiger ! " 

M.  Rabbe  was  about  to  drink  when  I  began 
this  speech.  At  the  moment  the  words  Yellow 
Tiger  were  spoken,  his  glass  was  not  an 
inch  from  his  lips.  He  started.  His  arm 
shook  so  violently,  that  the  wine  ran  over 
his  glass.  Then  he  swallowed  it  all  off — 
every  drop,  with  a  gulp — hastily  to  hide  his 
white  lips,  and  stole  a  cowering  look  round 
the  table,  just  catching  M.  le  chef  in  the 
act  of  leaning  forward  with  his  hands  upon  his 
knees,  watching  him  with  intense  curiosity. 

"  What  are  you  all  looking  at  me  for  in  this 
•way  1 "  he  said  angrily. 

"  We  are  concerned  for  monsieur's  health," 
says  the  chef,  "lest  he  should  be  seized 
with  sudden  sickness.  That  name  of  Yellow 
Tiger  seemed  to  have  such  strange  effect." 

M.  Rabbe  looks  at  him  uneasily  for  a 
moment ;  then  laughs  more  uneasily  still, 
and  fills  out  for  himself  another  bumper  of 
Volnay. 

"  To  go  back  to  this  Yellow  Tiger  wine," 
says  M.  le  chef,  reaching  over  for  the  flask, 
"  was  it  so  good  now,  really  ? " 

"  Famous  !  And  I  ought  to  remember  it 
well.  For  the  night  I  drank  of  it  there  was 
murder  done  in  the  Yellow  Tiger  Inn  !  " 

Again  M.  Rabbe's  glass  was  stayed  in  its 
course,  and  the  precious  Volnay  scattered  on 
the  floor.  He  was  looking  over  at  me  with 
a  painful,  devouring  expression,  which  I  shall 
never  forget. 

"  Monsieur  must  be  unwell,"  says  M.  le 
chef,  with  anxiety ;  "  the  gentleman  will 
recollect  that  I  said  so  at  first." 

"I  am  very  unwell,"  gasps  M.  Rabbe  stag- 
gering up  on  his  feet,  and  not  taking  his 
eyes  from  me,  "  very  unwell  indeed.  I  shall 
go  out  into  the  fresh  air,  it  will  revive  me." 

"The  thing  of  all  others  in  the  world,"  M. 
le  chef  says  ;  "  nothing  is  so  good  as  the  cool 
fresh  air,  with  a  little  eau  de  Cologne  to 
the  temples.  Stay,"  says  M.  le  chef,  rising 
•with  good-natured  alacrity,  "let  monsieur 
lean  on  me,  till  he  gets  to  the  garden.  He  is 
weak  evideutly.  Oh,  there  is  nothing  like 
the  cool  air !  " 


So  M.  le  chef  gets  monsieur's  arm  under 
his  own.  They  go  out  together,  and  M.  le 
chef  gives  me  one  queer  look  from  over  his 
shoulder. 

That  evening  it  fell  out  that  a  strong  party 
of  geus-d'armes,  with  bavouets  fixed  and 
drawn  closely  round  a  hand-cuffed  man,  came 
past  the  Son  of  France  Inn.  There,  a  tall 
thin  lady  in  black  stood  at  a  front  window. 
It  was  nearly  certain,  I  was  informed,  that 
the  destiny  of  the  handcuffed  man,  would 
be  resolved  at  the  Bagnes  or  galleys  at 
Brest. 


A  COMPANIONABLE  SPARROW. 


I  FOUND  myself  by  the  decrees  of  the  Fates, 
in  the  winter  of  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty- 
five  (oue  of  the  coldest  of  recent  winters,  and 
during  one  of  the  coldest  of  December  nights) 
at  an  evening  party  in  the  rue  de  la  Ville 
1'Eveque,  in  Paris.  The  heroine  of  this  even- 
ing party  for  me  was  neither  a  rosy  made- 
moiselle nor  a  queenly  madame,  but  a  spar- 
>row  (la  Pierrette).  During  a  jubilee  moment 
of  emancipation  from  the  news  and  the  wit, 
the  music  and  the  dancing,  the  men  exhi- 
biting their  distinction,  and  the  women 
displaying  their  beauty,  I  espied  a  little 
brown  ball  upon  the  top  corner  of  a  large 
and  lofty  gilded  mirror,  fastened  against  a 
wall  in  a  corner  of  one  of  the  rooms.  Intel- 
ligence is  a  substantive  feminine,  I  suppose, 
on  account  of  her  curiosity  ;  and  my  intelli- 
gence immediately  rushed  into  my  eyes,  and 
began  peeping,  staring,  and  darting  glances, 
to  discover  what  the  little  brown  ball  upon 
the  gilt  cornice  might  be.  She  soon  found 
out  it  was  a  sparrow  rolled  up  into  a  ball, 
with  its  beak  under  its  wing,  and  fast  asleep. 
My  intelligence  was  immensely  enjoying  the 
problem  how  a  sparrow  could  have  been 
thus  tamed  and  domesticated,  when  the  con- 
tagion of  curiosity  spread  from  me  to  my 
neighbours  in  the  room,  and  from  room  to 
room  throughout  the  whole  assembly,  just  as 
a  circular  ripple  makes  more  and  more  cir- 
cular ripples  upon  the  surface  of  water.  I 
soon  found  I  was  in  a  crowd  of  persons  all 
gazing  in  one  direction.  Treble  voices  with 
bass  murmurs  accompanying  them  made 
quite  a  concert  of  melodious  cries  of  wonder. 
Just  before  the  mirror,  marble  arms  held  up 
candles  statuesquely,  yet  nearer  and  nearer 
and  higher  and  higher.  Some  of  these  heads 
and  arms,  done  in  stone,  would  have  adorned 
a  sculpture-room.  But  the  sparrow  was 
roused  by  the  light.  Awakened  and  startled, 
rather  than  frightened,  the  spai'row  flew 
round  and  round  the  room,  and  alighted  upon 
its  gilded  perch  again.  And  now,  in  com- 
pliance with  my  repeated  requests,  Made- 
moiselle 1'Apprivoiseuse  de  Moineau  has 
been  kind  enough  to  write  out  for  me  the 
story  of  this  sparrow,  and  I  have  the  pleasure 
of  submitting  it  to  my  readers. 


Charles  Dickens.! 


A  COMPANIONABLE  SPAEEOW. 


8,  1357.]       131 


As  the  circumstances  are  extraordinary,  I ' 
shall  intrude  only  a  few  words  to  the  incre- 
dulous reader.  I  am  one  of  many  persons 
who  have  frequently  seen  this  sparrow  fly 
into  the  apartment  in  which  I  saw  her.  I 
have  repeatedly  seen  this  sparrow  leave  her 
companions  upon  the  roofs  and  in  the  trees. 
I  have  seen  her  wait  until  the  window  was 
opened.  I  have  seen  her  study  the  counte- 
nances of  the  persons  in  the  room.  She  does 
not  like  my  looks,  for  example ;  and  the 
truth  is,  I  have  in  my  time  dissected  indivi-  ; 
duals  of  her  kind ;  and  perhaps,  a  guilty 
conscience  needing  no  accuser,  she  sees  my 
guilt  in  my  face.  I  may  have  a  dissect-bird 
look,  although  I  hope  not.  Most  certainly  I 
have  known  her  dark  hazel  eyes  gaze  at  me  for 
a  long  time,  and  have  learned  from  her  manner 
that  she  deemed  me  decidedly  a  suspicious 
character,  whose  presence  on  the  premises 
was  dangerous.  She  trusts  all  ladies  impli- 
citly. To  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  her 
fly  into  the  room,  I  have  had  to  make  myself 
invisible  in  a  corner.  When  the  persons 
Avho  have  excited  her  distrust  are  hidden,  she 
flies  into  the  room,  and  the  window  is  shut 
upon  her.  From  her  cornice  she  can  con- 
template even  men-folks  with  composure. 

I  came  to  live,  says  Mademoiselle  1'Ap- 
privoiseuse  de  Moineau,  in  my  present  abode, 
rue  de  la  Ville  1'Eveque,  Paris,  in  April, 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-one.  Almost  my 
first  care  was  to  make  a  sort  of  garden  upon 
a  little  terrace  upon  which  the  sunniest 
sitting-room  opens.  Finding  that  the  spar- 
rows ate  up  all  the  best  blossoms,  I  provided 
a  good  supply  of  bird-seed  and  bread  crumbs, 
which  they  soon  found  out  to  be  better  food 
than  flowers.  One  day  I  perceived  that  one 
of  them  could  scarcely  fly.  It  fluttered 
about  the  table  where  I  sat  at  work,  and  at 
last  fell  down  almost  insensible.  I  called  my 
good  Louise,  who  is  skilful  in  the  treatment 
of  those  who  suffer.  She  found  that  this 
poor  bird  had  broken  its  leg  and  injured  its , 
foot.  We  contrived  to  set  the  broken  limb  [ 
as  well  as  we  could,  and  bound  it  with 
worsted  to  a  lucifer-match  by  way  of  a  splint. 
The  foot  was  much  swollen,  but  a  bath  in  a 
wine-glass  of  warm  water  soon  relieved  it. 
We  laid  it  in  a  soft  warm  nest  in  a  cage,  and 
in  a  few  minutes  it  went  to  sleep.  That  our 
little  patient  might  not  feel  lonely,  we  placed 
the  cage  close  to  that  of  two  canaries,  Paul 
and  Virginia,  who  live  in  the  window.  They 
became  excellent  neighbours  ;  and  the  doors 
of  the  two  cages  being  open,  the  canaries 
used  to  bring  food  to  the  invalid ;  and  I 
have  often  see  them  pushing  towards  it  little 
bits  of  spongecake  through  the  bars  of  the 
two  cages.  Paul  would  sit  by  the  nest  and 
sing  to  the  sparrow  whenever  he  had  a 
moment  to  spare.  Within  a  week  our  guest 
was  able  to  join  its  companions  on  the 
terrace,  but  towards  evening  it  came  back  to 
sleep  in  the  cage.  It  continued  for  about 
ten  days  to  go  out  every  morning,  returning 


regularly  at  eventide.  It  then  left  us  alto- 
gether, and  we  saw  it  no  more,  except  now 
and  then,  when  it  flew  in  for  a  moment  to 
pick  up  a  hurried  meal.  Louise  now  guessed 
that  our  little  friend  had  eggs,  and  we  dis- 
covered that  she  too  lived  in  a  hole  in  the  con- 
vent wall  which  forms  one  side  of  our  garden. 
That  day  we  gave  her  the  name  of  Pierrette. 

To  my  surprise  she  arrived  one  morning 
with  a  young  bird  upon  her  back.  There  it 
sat  with  the  tips  of  its  little  \vings  slipped 
under  the  wings  of  its  mother,  and  its  tender 
claws  buried  in  her  feathers,  so  that  it  could 
not  fall  during  their  flight.  Having  landed 
her  little  one  inside  the  window,  Pierrette 
fed  it  abundantly,  and  then  lowered  herself 
down  by  its  side,  to  enable  it  to  mount  easily 
upon  her  back  to  be  carried  home.  In  due 
time  she  brought  all  her  five  young  ones, 
ranged  them  in  a  row  on  the  carpet  before 
me,  and  then  flew  upon  the  flounce  of  my 
dress,  and,  by  her  wistful  looks,  seemed  to 
invite  me  to  admire  her  family.  While  she 
fed  her  little  ones  inside  the  window,  her 
mate,  Pierrot  we  called  him,  stood  outside  on 
the  rail,  to  be  ready  to  warn  her  of  any 
coming  danger. 

As  the  young  ones  grew  from  day  to  day, 
it  was  wonderful  to  see  with  what  care 
Pierrette  taught  the  two  elder  of  the  brood  to 
feed  their  little  brothers.  They  evidently 
understood  all  she  said  and  soon  set  to  work, 
while  she  sat  on  a  sprig  of  ivy  watching  their 
movements.  The  good  sense  and  tenderness 
evinced  by  these  parent  birds  in  the  manage- 
ment of  their  young,  were  perfectly  marvel- 
lous. When  the  little  ones  quarrelled  over 
their  crumbs,  or  pushed  one  another  aside 
in  the  eagerness  to  catch  a  drop  of  dew  from 
any  ivy-leaf,  Pierrette  would  interfere  with 
gentle  decision  and  set  them  to  rights  directly. 
On,  more  serious  occasions  Pierrot  would  step 
in  to  restore  order  by  means  of  vehement 
language  and  a  peck  or  two  of  his  beak  for 
the  more  turbulent. 

And  so  they  went  on,  until  these  baby 
birds  grew  to  be  large  and  strong.  Pierrette 
then  began  to  think  of  another  brood,  and 
disappeared  as  she  had  done  before.  As  the 
time  drew  near  for  the  second  brood  to 
visit  us,  it  seemed  to  be  Pierrot's  duty  to 
keep  the  first  brood  from  coming  into  the 
room,  so  that  the  new  little  ones  and  their 
mother  might  have  their  territory  in  the 
window  quite  to  themselves. 

One  evening  in  October,  instead  of  going 
home  as  usual  to  sleep,  Pierrette  remained 
with  us.  She  flew  rapidly  round  and  round 
the  room,  and  at  last  selected  for  her  rest- 
ing-place the  top  of  a  looking-glass  in  the 
least  frequented  corner  of  the  room.  When 
she  had  satisfied  herself  that  this  was  a 
good  position,  she  came  down  to  the  win- 
dow which  was  still  open,  eat  her  supper, 
chatted  with  her  friends  the  canaries,  and 
then  flew  back  to  the  top  of  her  looking- 
glass  for  the  night.  From  that  time  she 


132       [ August  S  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  AVORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


has  never  failed  to  sleep  here  during  the 
winter  mouths.  Before  she  leaves  us  in  the 
morning  she  always  eats  a  good  breakfast 
and  takes  a  bath,  and  invariably  has  a  little 
gossip  with  Paul  and  Virginia.  The  window 
is  generally  open  for  her  towards  sunset, 
but  if  it  happens  to  be  shut  she  pecks  at  it 
and  calls  us  until  we  open  it.  She  always 
looks  in  before  she  eaters,  to  see  what  sort 
of  company  may  be  in  the  room.  If  she  sees 
any  one  she  does  not  fancy,  she  waits  quietly 
in  her  ivy  bower  until  they  go  away,  before 
she  ventures  to  come  in. 

Two  years  ago — in  the  winter — our  poor 
Pierrot  was  very  ill.  He  came  to  us  for  help, 
and  took  refuge  in  my  work-basket.  Pierrette 
did  her  utmost  to  induce  him  to  go  up  to 
her  retreat  on  the  looking-glass,  but  he  was 
far  too  weak  to  fly.  Finding  him  deaf  to  her 
counsel  she  became  very  angry,  screamed  at 
him  and  flapped  her  wings,  and  at  last  seized 
him  on  her  back  by  the  top  of  his  head,  and 
shook  him  violently  in  the  air  rs  if  she 
wished  to  kill  him.  After  repeating  this 
strange  treatment,  several  times,  she  went  to 
roost  herself.  She  never  saw  him  again.  I 
sat  up  half  the  night  trying  to  comfort  poor 
Pierrot :  he  seemed  so  much  to  enjoy  being 
breathed  on  and  kept  warm  in  my  hands.  I 
hoped  he  might  recover,  for  he  crept  under 
the  book-case  and  went  to  sleep,  but  Louise 
found  him  in  the  morning  lying  quite  dead 
in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

Pierrette  had  no  difficulty  iu  finding 
another  mate,  but  not  a  second  gentle 
Pierrot.  The  new  husband  proved  to  be 
violent  in  temper  and  somewhat  despotic  in 
his  notions.  Sho  brought  her  first  brood  after 
this  second  marriage  to  show  us  before  there 
was  a  feather  to  be  seen  on  any  one  of  the 
young  ones.  Pierrot  the  Second  1'ollowed  in 
high  wrath,  scolded  and  picked  at  her  in  a 
way  that  must  have  astonished  her,  and  then 
stood  by  while  she  carried  them,  every  one, 
home  again.  Ever  since  that  adventure  she 
waits  to  bring  us  her  little  ones  until  they 
are  able  to  fly  with  her. 

Pierrette  has  five  broods  of  five  eggs  every 
summer.  This  year,  June,  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty-seven,  she  has  a  second  brood  of  full 
fledged.  She  is,  consequently,  the  mother  of,  at 
least,  a  hundred  and  thirty  young  sparrows. 


AUTUMN. 

I  SAW  the  leaves  drop  trembling 
From  crests  of  cony  limes  ; 

The  wind  sang  through  the  branches 
Most  sorrow-waking  rhymes. 

No  flower  in  all  the  valleys 
Look'd  up  with  face  of  mirth; 

But  shroud-like  vapour  rested 
Upon  the  bloomless  earth. 

Then  fearful  thoughts,  too  truth-like, 
Of  inner  change  and  blight 

Came  o'er  my  startled  spirit, 
As  fell  the  early  night. 


'•But,  Autumn,"  cried  I,  "scatter 
The  leaves  from  forest-trees  ; 

And  moan  through  saddcn'd  branches 
Thy  wailing  threnodies. 

Bat  spare  this  heart  the  verdure 
That  robed  it  in  the  spring, 

And  let  the  summer's  echoes 
Still  round  my  pathway  sing! 

Rest  only  on  the  valleys, 

Drear  mist  that  bringest  death! 

But  breathe  not  on  this  bosom 
Thy  joy-destroying  breath  !  " 


MICROSCOPIC  PREPARATIONS. 


IT  seems  probable,  from  many  symptoms, 
that  the  microscope  is  about  to  become  the 
idol  of  the  day  ;  we  appear  to  be  on  the  eve 
of  a  microscope  mania.  For  some  time  past, 
that  fascinating  instrument  has  taken  its 
rank  as  an  indispensable  aid  to  science.  The 
geologist  confidently  appeals  to  its  evidence, 
when  he  asserts  that  coal  is  only  fossilised 
vegetable  substance  ;  that  chalk  and  other 
important  strata  are  in  great  part  composed 
of  shells  ;  that  a  minute  fragment  of  a  tooth 
belonged  to  a  reptile  and  not  to  a  fish  ;  that 
a  splinter  of  bone  had  traversed  the  air,  ages 
and  ages  ago,  in  the  body  of  a  flying  lizard, 
and  not  in  that  of  a  bird.  For  the  anatomist, 
the  medical  man,  and  the  zoologist  in  general, 
the  microscope  is  not  an  instrument  which 
he  can  use  or  neglect  at  his  pleasure.  On 
the  contrary,  the  objects  for  which  it  must  be 
employed  are  determinate.  It  is  destined  to 
teach  a  number  of  facts  and  exhibit  a  multi- 
tude of  organs,  which  can  be  studied  neither 
by  the  naked  eye,  nor  by  the  aid  of  any  other 
instrument.  Such  are,  the  textures  of  the 
tissues,  the  phenomena  attending  the  course 
of  the  blood,  the  vibrations  of  cilia  in  animal- 
cules, animals,  and  men  ;  the  contractions  of 
the  muscular  fibres,  and  many  other  things 
of  the  highest  interest.  Besides  these 
learned  pursuits,  which  are  the  business 
of  the  comparative  few,  the  microscope  olfers 
an  inexhaustible  treasury  of  amusement  to 
crowds  of  amateurs  who  aim  no  higher 
than  to  obtain  a  little  useful  information 
respecting  the  nature  of  the  ordinary  objects 
by  which  they  are  surrounded,  and  are 
content  to  admire  beauty  and  variety  of 
design,  even  when  they  cannot  penetrate  to 
final  causes.  To  the  invalid  or  lame  person 
confined  to  the  house,  to  the  worn  man  of 
business  whose  soul  is  weary  of  aftairs,  to  the 
lonely  dweller  in  a  country  residence  where 
little  or  only  uncongenial  society  is  to  be  had, 
— to  such  persons,  and  to  many  others,  a  few 
plants  and  minerals  from  the  nearest  hedge 
or  stone-heap,  a  box  of  the  commonest 
insects,  a  half-score  of  wide-mouthed  bottles 
containing  water-weeds  —  some  from  any 
neighbouring  pool,  others  from  the  seashore 
— will  supply  a  succession  of  entertainment, 
which  is  incredible  to  those  who  have  not 


Charles  Dickens-] 


MICROSCOPIC  PREPARATIONS. 


[August  8, 1557.]         133 


made  the  experiment.  Nor  is  this  the  occu- 
pation of  a  trifler  ;  for,  while  thus  occupying 
our  leisure,  we  unconsciously  attain  a  com- 
prehensive view  of  the  Great  Artificer's 
wisdom  and  power. 

Microscopic  preparations  are  fast  increasing 
in  importance,  as  an  article  of  commerce ;  they 
are  one  of  the  many  battle-grounds  of  con) pet- 
ing  rivalries.  Rich  men,  as  amateurs,  and  men 
of  science,  as  students,  form  with  these  their 
microscopic  museums,  as  others  keep  their 
microscopic  menageries.  Collections  and 
cabinets  of  microscopic  preparations  are  to 
be  purchased,  containing  from  a  dozen  to  a 
thousand  objects  and  upwards  ;  and  lists  and 
catalogues  are  published  from  which  the 
buyer  may  choose  the  articles  that  best  suit 
his  taste  or  illustrate  his  studies.  With  the 
aid  of  these  preparations,  there  is  no  reason 
why  the  microscope  should  not  become  an 
instrument  of  drawing-room  recreation,  quite 
as  much  as  the  stereoscope,  over  which  it  has 
the  advantage  of  variety,  to  speak  of  nothing 
farther  or  higher.  For,  although  the  por- 
traits of  microscopic  objects,  drawn  and  en- 
graved and  coloured  after  life,  arc  often  very 
beautiful  and  wonderful  performances,  and  a 
volume  of  them  will  help  you  to  spend  an 
interesting  evening,  still  they  are  faint 
and  feeble  nothings  when  compared  with  the 
objects  themselves  as  seen  under  a  good  in- 
strument. Their  great  utility  lies  in  their 
helping  you  to  recognise  the  originals  them- 
selves, when  you  meet  with  them.  With  the 
solar  or  oxyhydrogen  microscopes  exhibited 
at  public  lectures,  you  only  see  the  shadow  of 
the  thing  displayed  ;  but,  with  a  good  com- 
pound microscope  you  behold  the  thing  itself 
actually  and  bodily. 

The  ordinary  routine  of  manipulation  for 
the  production  of  good  preparations  will  be 
found  in  most  elementary  treatises  on  the 
microscope  ;  in  Carpenter,  Queckett,  Hogg, 
Beale,  and  others.  Nevertheless,  I  will  give 
a  few  supplemental  hints,  kindly  commu- 
nicated by  an  expert  practitioner,  which  may 
be  useful  to  the  student,  and  even  to  those 
who  are  more  advanced. 

In  mounting  in  balsam,  if  your  object  be  an 
animal  preparation  or  any  other  liable  to  curl 
under  the  influence  of  heat,  first  evaporate 
your  balsam  on  the  slide  to  such  a  consistence 
that  it  will  harden  readily  on  cooling  ;  take 
it  from  the  source  of  heat,  suffer  it  nearly  to 
cool,  then  place  on  it  j'our  object,  and  then, 
upon  the  object,  your  glass  cover.  Heat  it 
again  slowly.  The  heat,  equalised  by  the 
cover,  prevents  the  curling,  and  the  prepara- 
tion is  mounted  in  the  usual  way  without 
further  difficulty. 

In  mounting  animal  preparations  in  bal- 
sam— or  others  which  from  circumstances 
require  moistening  first  with  turpentine,  as 
feru-sporules,  foraminifera,  and  such  like — let 
the  balsam  be  afterwards  heated  very,  very 
gradually.  By  this  you  avoid  bubbles,  and 
evaporate  the  turpentine  completely,  so  as  to 


make  a  finer  and  clearer  preparation.  The 
|  sooner  balsam  preparations  are  cleaned  after 
I  being  mounted,  the  easier  it  is  to  do  it. 

In  preparing  diatomaceoe,*  either  fresh  or 
i  from  fossil  earth,  there  is  but  one  mode  of 
i  procuring  good  specimens.  Wash  your  earth 
j  thoroughly.  Having  prepared  five  or  six 
I  clean  cups,  pour  it  from  one  to  the  other, 
j  allowing  it  to  stand  one  minute  in  the  first, 
two  minutes  in  the  second,  four  in  the  third, 
•  eight  in  the  fourth,  and  so  on  in  similar  pro- 
portions. Try  them  all  under  the  micro- 
I  scope,  and  you  will  find  that  probably  only 
i  one  will  yield  good  specimens. 

All  saline  solutions,  being  slow  of  evapora- 
tion, are  easier  to  mount  in  than  spirit.  The 
only  art  of  mounting  in  flat  cells  consists  in 
the  drying  of  each  coat  of  varnish  (gold-size 
is  the  best)  before  the  next  is  applied.  In 
wet  weather,  three  days  should  elapse  between 
the  first  and  second  coats  ;  in  dry  weather, 
one  is  enough.  When  the  second  coat  is 
on,  the  preparation  is  for  the  time  safe  ;  the 
third  and  fourth  may  be  applied  at  longer 
intervals.  Some  few  out  of  a  series  of  cell- 
preparations  will  always  spoil ;  but,  by 
adopting  this  precaution,  our  experienced 
practitioner  has  been  successful  in  a  hundred 
and  forty-eight  out  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
preparations,  over  and  over  again. 

Dry  preparations,  apparently  so  easy, 
puzzle  beginners  most.  There  is  a  simple 
way  of  mounting  them  ;  make  previously  a 
sort  of  cup  on  the  glass  slides  you  keep  in 
store  with  a  ring  of  gold-size  painted  on  them. 
The  longer  they  are  afterwards  kept  in  store, 
the  better.  When  wanted  for  use,  place  on 
them  your  object ;  slightly  heat  your  cleaned 
cover  ;  drop  it  on  the  circle  of  gold-size  ; 
press  it  down,  and  the  preparation  is  finished. 
If  not  thoroughly  and  completely  dry,  the 
size  will  run.  Difficult  scales  for  test-objects, 
as  those  of  the  lepisma  and  the  podurse,  are 
(I,  the  writer,  think)  better  mounted  dry 
than  in  balsam. 

Most  infusorial  animalcules,  as  soon  as  the 
water  in  which  they  swim  is  evaporated, 
tumble  to  pieces,  or  burst,  even  "going  off" 
gradually  and  regularly,  as  a  Catherine-wheel 
discharges  its  fireworks.  No  conservative 
fluid  keeps  them  well  enough  to  allow  them 
satisfactorily  to  be  offered  for  sale ;  for 
private  examination  and  use,  five  grains  of 
rock-salt,  and  a  grain  of  alum,  to  the  ounce  of 
uudistilled  water,  answer  best. 

It  will  be  seen  from  these  brief  practical 

suggestions,   that  the   preparer's  art   is  no 

mere    mechanical   routine.     He   must  have 

science  to  know  what  is  worth  preserving, 

taste  to  arrange  it  gracefully  and  accurately, 

and  skill  so  to  embalm  his  object  as  to  retain 

its  beauty  for  future  admirers.     He  must 

|  have  an  artistic  eye,  a  fine  touch,  an  exteu- 

;  sive  knowledge  of  Nature's  minutiae,  and  a 

|  hand  practised  in  the  manipulation  of  his 

*  See  Household  "Words,  vol.  xiv.,  pages  293  and  294. 


134      [Angu«tS,lS67.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


business.  Hence,  it  is  no  day-dream  to  pre- 
dict that,  before  long,  collections  of  micro- 
scopic objects  will  publicly  enter  the  lists 
with  other  articles  of  virtu.  Choice  speci- 
mens of  invisibilities  will  rise  to  high  fancy 
prices, — especially  after  their  preparers  are 
dead.  As  we  treasure  cabinet- pictures  by 
Teniers  or  the  Breughels,  so  shall  we  set  an 
exalted  value  on  charming  bits  of  still-life 
from  the  studios  of  Amadio  or  Stevens,  on 
insect-portraits  by  Topping,  on  botanical 
groups  by  Bourgogue  the  Elder,  and  on  other 
works  by  anonymous  artists,  whose  names, 
though  not  their  productions,  still  remain 
unknown  to  fame.  We  shall  have  con- 
noisseurs, fanciers,  and  collectors  of  micro- 
scopic objects,  with  all  the  peculiarities  of  the 
genus.  Indeed,  I  might  say  we  have  them 
already  in  the  adolescent  stage  of  their 
growth.  But,  one  of  these  days,  as  my  readers 
who  live  long  enough  will  see,  beautiful  pre- 
parations by  first -rate  hands  will  pass 
through  the  same  course  of  destiny  as  illu- 
minated missals,  majolica  earthenware,  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini  carvings,  and  the  like.  Their 
multitude,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  prevent  any 
artificial  reduction  of  their  numbers,  with  the 
view  of  increasing  the  value  of  those  that  are 
left.  Dutchmen  with  whom  a  rare  tulip  has 
separated  into  a  couple  of  bulbs,  have  crushed 
one  of  them  beneath  their  heel  to  render  the 
other  a  solitary  specimen.  Bibliomaniacs  ' 
have  made  a  copy  of  a  book  unique,  by  com- 
mitting rival  copies  to  the  flames.  The 
Arabs  are  grand  amateurs  of  red  and  white 
piebald  horses.  "  When  you  see  a  piebald 
horse,"  they  say,  "  buy  it ;  if  you  cannot  buy 
it,  steal  it  ;  if  you  cannot  steal  it,  kill  it."  To 
follow  out  the  system  (more  to  be  honoured 
in  the  breach  than  the  observance),  we 
should  have  speculators  buying  up  the 
diatoms  from  Ichaboe  guano,  and  causing 
them  to  disappear  as  the  substance  itself 
grows  scarcer,  and  the  present  microscopic 
preparations  from  it  enter  the  list  of  works 
by  the  "  old  masters." 

Those  who  are  in  the  habit  of  preparing 
microscopic  objects  for  the  supply  of  the 
public,  very  soon  become  aware  of  a,  to  them, 
important  fact, — that  the  greatest  demand  is  j 
not,  as  might  be  supposed,  from  beginners, 
and  those  to  whom  the  manipulation  necessary 
might  be  thought  too  difficult,  but  that  their 
best  customers  are  those  who  are  best  ac- 
quainted with  specimens,  and  with  the  difficulty 
of  so  arranging  them  as  most  clearly  to  display 
their  specific  form  or  characteristics.  A  short 
time  spent  by  an  able  manipulator  will  suffice 
to  arrange  three  or  four  specimens  of  the 
same  object,  when  hours  and  hours  might  be 
fruitlessly  wasted  by  another  equally  or  better 
qualified  to  observe  and  comment  upon  the 
preparation  when  accurately  arranged,  but 
incapable,  from  want  of  practice,  of  mounting 
it  to  his  satisfaction.  In  short,  here,  as 
elsewhere,  a  division  of  labour  is  expedient 
for  the  public  good.  An  able  microscopist 


often  discovers  that  his  time  is  better  spent 
in  making  observations,  and  iu  recording 
them,  than  in  manipulation. 

Therefore,  if  you  are  a  real  and  earnest 
student,  the  aid  of  a  preparer  will  be  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  economise  time,  even 
supposing  you  have  the  skill  to  make  prepa- 
rations yourself.  If  you  are  an  amateur,, 
playing  with  the  microscope  principally  for 
your  amusement,  you  will  have  still  less 
time  to  dissect,  embalm,  and  mount  minute 
objects — on  the  rule  that  busy  people  always 
find  more  spare  time  for  extra  work  than 
comparatively  idle  ones.  One  motive,  too, 
for  sending  your  object  to  a  professional 
artist,  should  be  the  communication  to  other 
amateurs — the  publication,  as  it  were — of 
rarities  and  novelties,  by  the  agency  of  the 
preparer.  If  you  meet  with  anything  new 
and  good,  unless  you  are  selfish  and  jealous, 
you  will  send  what  you  can  spare  to  a  pro- 
fessional preparer.  You  may  fairly  expect 
to  receive  similar  favours  iu  return  ;  and  a 
slice,  a  pinch,  or  a  tuffc  of  a  discovery,  is 
enough  for  yourself.  The  rest  will  serve  to 
give  pleasure  to  others.  It  is  true  that  very 
many  objects  of  interest,  which  only  require 
to  be  placed  dry  and  uninjured  between  two 
plates  of  glass,  you  may  collect  aud  mount 
for  yourself  with  perfect  success,  temporarily. 
The  scales  and  hairs  of  insects  are  comprised 
in  this  class  ;  gossamer  threads,  such  as  float 
in  the  autumnal  sunshine,  furnish  you,  under 
the  microscope,  with  a  tangled  skein  of  silk 
which  would  take  a  lifetime  to  unravel.  But 
objects  stored  without  due  aud  regular 
preparation  will  not  keep  ;  they  will  shake 
out  from  between  your  glasses,  or  the 
dust  will  shake  in,  or  they  will  be  overrun 
with  threads  of  minute  mouldiness.  By 
trusting  the  choicest  to  a  skilled  preparer, 
you  will  preserve  them  indefinitely. 

Anatomical  preparations  take  high  rank 
among  those  sold  for  the  microscope.  Per- 
haps the  most  interesting  anatomical  phe- 
nomenon the  microscope  has  to  show,  is  the 
circulation  of  the  blood  in  the  body  of  a 
living  animal ;  next  to  that  wonrlrous  sight, 
is  the  intricate  course  and  minute  sub- 
division of  the  capillary  vessels  which  per- 
meate the  several  organs  of  living  creature.s. 
To  show  these  more  visibly,  they  are  injected 
with  colouring-matter  reduced  to  the  finest 
possible  state  of  division,  which  is  mixed 
with  aud  suspended  in,  a  smooth  size  or 
gelatine.  A  brass  syringe,  constructed  for 
the  purpose,  is  the  forcing-pump  employed  to 
cause  the  colouring-matter  to  penetrate 
the  vessels.  Many  precautions  have  to  be 
taken.  Only  a  gentle  force  must  be  applied 
to  the  piston  at  first,  to  be  gradually  in- 
creased as  the  vessels  become  filled.  A 
simple  mechanical  arrangement  has  been 
contrived,  by  which  the  operator  is  saved 
the  fatigue  of  maintaining  with  his  hand  this 
regulated  pressure.  A  sheep's  or  a  pig's 
kidney  is  a  convenient  organ  for  a  beginner 


Charles  Dicken»J 


MICROSCOPIC  PKEPABATIONS. 


[Auguet  S,  1857.]       135 


to  try  his  hand  on.  In  small  animals,  such 
as  mice,  bats,  and  frogs,  the  whole  circulation 
of  the  system  may  be  injected  from  the  aorta, 
and  the  pulmonary  vessels  from  the  pul- 
monary artery.  But,  amateurs  who  do  not 
follow  medical  science  as  a  profession,  will 
purchase  better  specimens  of  professional 
preparers  than  they  are  likely  to  produce. 
If  several  sets  of  vessels  in  the  same  pre- 
paration (as  the  arteries,  the  veins,  and 
the  gland-ducts),  are  required  to  be  dis- 
played by  injection,  differently  coloured  sub- 
stances are  employed.  A  white  injection  is 
prepared  from  the  carbonate  of  lead.  Blue 
injections  do  not  answer  well,  because  they 
reflect  light  badly  ;  to  avoid  that  incon- 
venience, Prussian-blue  is  sometimes  largely 
mixed  with  white,  and  so  is  vermilion 
also.  It  should  be  remembered  that  these 
preparations  are  mostly  viewed  as  opaque 
objects,  and  not  by  transmitted  light.  Small 
portions  of  the  injected  organ  are  mounted 
in  cells,  either  dry  or  in  fluid,  according  as 
circumstances  allow.  Still,  thin  sect'ons  of 
organs  in  which  the  capillaries  are  imper- 
fectly injected,  may  be  mounted  as  trans- 
parent objects,  when  they  are  better  seen 
than  such  as  have  been  completely  filled.  In 
general  anatomy,  the  main  point  is  to  fill  the 
capillaries,  and  to  try  and  make  the  injections 
in  such  a  way  as  that  the  several  colouring 
matters  may  be  seen  forced  intc  the  arteries 
and  the  veins,  touching  each  other,  and  more 
or  less  mingled  in  the  finest  parts  of  the  j 
organic  network. 

Injected  preparations  are  the  dearest  to 
purchase,  the  most  difficult  to  make,  and 
the  most  difficult  to  study  and  interpret. 
They  demand  the  skilful  exercise  of  the 
anatomist's  art ;  but,  those  who  turn  out 
good  injections  are  wrong  in  fancying,  as 
some  seem  to  fancy,  that  nobody  else  can 
produce  equally  good  ones.  The  same  re- 
mark applies  to  the  secrets  of  the  composition 
of  the  matter  injected.  With  the  precautions 
which  experience  alone  can  teach,  the  prac- 
titioner will  succeed  in  making  good  injections 
with  whatever  colouring-matter  he  habitually 
uses  in  preference  to  others.  The  main  point 
of  success  is  to  employ  the  amount  of  time 
and  patience  which  the  conditions  necessary 
for  the  work  require.  Whatever  be  the  organ 
injected,  an  hour  and  a-half  or  two  hours 
must  be  allowed  to  each  set  of  vessels. 
By  hurrying  the  work,  either  the  injec- 
tion fails  to  have  the  several  colouring- 
matters  in  contact  with  each  other  in  the 
capillaries,  or  ruptures  take  place.  The  dis- 
section of  injections  intended  for  microscopic 
observation,-  like  almost  all  dissections 
effected  by  the  aid  of  that  instrument,  are 
performed  under  water.  The  exceptions  are, 
such  tissues  as  are  affected  by  the  action  of 
water ;  thus,  the  retina  is  rendered  white 
and  opaque  by  the  action  of  water,  instead 
of  semi-transparent  ;  also  tissues,  as  that  of 
the  placenta  and  certain  glands,  which  ought 


to  be  examined  while  charged  with  blood. 
It  requires  a  lengthened  study  of  an  injection 
to  ascertain  whether  it  has  succeeded  or  no  ; 
and  several  injections  of  the  same  tissue  must 
also  be  inspected.  As  in  the  study  of  the 
anatomical  elements  by  the  aid  of  the  micro- 
scope, an  observer  must  go  through  a  certain 
course  of  education  before  he  can  distinguish 
in  an  injection  what  is  of  importance  from 
what  is  of  none.  Practice  alone  will  enable 
the  learner  to  recognise  the  bundles  of  the 
tissues,  the  follicles  or  little  bags  of  the 
glands,  and  the  distribution  and  windings  of 
the  vessels  which  accompany  or  cover  them. 
The  same  of  the  mucous  membranes ;  the 
undulations  and  anastomoses  or  inter-com- 
munications of  the  capillaries,  their  distri- 
bution around  the  glandular  orifices  ;  and 
these  orifices  themselves  cannot  be  properly 
studied  without  devoting  several  hours, 
sometimes  several  days,  to  their  examination. 
Consequently,  injections  shown  to  passing 
observers  are  rarely  well  interpreted,  unless 
the  persons  to  whom  they  are  exhibited  are 
in  the  habit  of  looking  at  objects  so  prepared. 
It  is  rare  that  they  remember  more  than  a 
general  idea  of  an  elegant  piece  of  coloured 
network. 

"  But  what  is  the  use  of  attending  to  such 
minutiae  ?"  an  inexperienced  reader  may  ask. 
It  is  difficult  to  explain  briefly  the  full 
application  of  such  elementary  studies  ;  but 
one  instance  may  be  cited.  That  dreadful 
disease,  cancer,  is  known  to  most  by  name. 
Now,  there  are  other  diseases  of  less  gravity, 
which  resemble  cancer  so  nearly,  that  the 
practitioner  cannot  decide  whether  to  operate 
or  not.  The  microscope  distinguishes  true 
cancer  from  false,  easily  and  infallibly. 

Interesting  anatomical  preparations  are 
the  pigment-cells  from  the  iris  of  the  eye — 
the  pigment-cells  from  a  negro's  skin,  re- 
sembling those  in  the  tail  of  a  tadpole ; 
transverse  sections  of  hairs,  human  and 
others,  sliced  like  a  cucumber,  to  show  their 
internal  structure ;  transverse  and  perpen- 
dicular sections  of  teeth,  comprising  a  repre- 
sentative of  each  great  group  in  zoology ; 
fibrous  membranes,  commencing  with  those 
of  egg-shells  ;  muscular  fibre  separated  into 
fibrilias  ;  the  capillaries  in  various  organs  ; 
sections  of  bone  ;  preparations  of  morbid 
tissues,  for  comparison  with  healthy  ones  ; 
and  many  others,  which  will  naturally 
present  themselves  to  the  student.  One 
object  recommended  for  study  will  startle 
many.  Dr.  Carpenter  philosophically  tells 
us,  "  The  nerve-fibres  are  readily  seen  in  the 
fungiform  papillae  of  the  tongue,  to  each  of 
which  several  of  them  proceed.  These  bodies, 
which  are  very  transparent,  may  be  well 
seen  by  snipping  off  minute  portions  of  the 
tongue  of  the  frog,  or  by  snipping  off  the 
papillae  themselves  from  the  surface  of  the 
living  human  tongue,  which  can  be  readily 
done  by  a  dexterous  use  of  the  curved  scis- 
sors, with  no  more  pain  than  the  prick  of  a 


136     [August  .-,  i«;.;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


pin  would  give.  The  transparency  of  any  of 
these  papilla)  is  increased  by  treating  them 
with  a  solution  of  soda."  This  is  enough  to 
make  a  nervous  patient  afraid  to  show  his 
tongue  to  a  microscopically-inclined  doctor. 

Anatomical  preparations,  therefore,  are  the  | 
dearest,  in  consequence  of  the  pains  required 
to  make  them  perfect.     But,  as  far  as  price 
is  concerned,  all  the  microscopic  preparations 
in  the  market  are,  generally  speaking,  and  at ' 
present,  wonderfully  cheap.     Only   try  arid 
produce  a  few  at  the  same  price  yourself,  and  [ 
you  will  see.     They  are  not  mechanical  pro-  j 
ductions,  like  nails  and  buttons,  that  can  be 
turned   off  by  the  gross  ;    every  one  must 
have  the  touch  of  the   master  given  to  it 
before  it  can  pass  into  the  scientific  market ;  I 
and  such  things  cannot  be  done  by  deputy , 
any  more  than  statues  and  pictures  can.    Our  j 
preparers  (one  would  think)  must  be  actu-  | 
ated  quite  as  much  by  the  love  of  art  as  by  ' 
the  love  of  gain.     Suppose  a  man  cau  turn 
off  thirty  successful  preparations  a-day  for 
five  days  in  the  week  all  the  year  round,  he 
has  not  made  a  large  income  at  the  highest 
rate   of  payment.     But,  those  who  have  to 
eiudy   for,   and  collect,  and    prepare    their  j 
materials  for  any  pursuit  that  comes  withiu  j 
the  range  of  art,  well  know  that  five  days  j 
a  week  of  productive  labour  is  more  than 
they  can  accomplish  continually,  even  with  j 
the  division  of  labour  brought  about  by  the  j 
aid  of  sous  or  pupils. 

To  come  to  financial  particulars.  Mr. 
Samuel  Stevens,  the  well-known  natural- 
history  agent,  of  Bloomsbury  Street,  has  on 
sale  good  preparations  elegantly  mounted  and 
packed  in  neat  boxes  containing  one  or  two 
dozen,  at  half-a-guinea  per  dozen.  His 
published  list  offers  a  choice  of  more  than 
two  hundred  numbered  objects  of  great 
variety.  To  point  out  a  few  ;  the  palates 
of  snails  and  of  freshwater  and  marine  mol- 
lusks  are  very  remarkable.  When  we  see  a 
soft  snail  ,eating  a  hard  cabbage-leaf  or  carrot 
— if  we  reflected  on  the  operation — we  must 
conclude  that  it  cannot  be  performed  with- 
out the  agency  of  teeth.  The  micro- 
scope shows  us,  in  a  well-prepared  palate 
from  a  land  or  water-snail,  rows  upon  rows 
of  teeth,  containing  altogether  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  molars.  The  shark  devours 
animal  food,  and  so  does  the  whelk.  But, 
talk  of  a  shark's  rows  of  teeth  !  they  are 
nothing  to  the  weapons  that  line  the  mouth  of 
a  whelk, — half-a-dozen  in  each  row  in.  the 
middle,  with  a  chevaux-de-frise  of  tusks  on 
either  side.  Are  a  dozen  different  mollusk 
palates — ready  for  comparison  and  study — 
dear  at  half-a-guiuea  ?  Simply  think  of  the 
time  and  cost,  requisite  to  produce  them  as 
home-made  articles. 

Upon  the  whole,  there  is  nothing  superior 
to  the  immense  variety  of  objects  supplied,  at 
from  fifteen,  to  eighteen  shillings  per  dozen, 
by  Amadio,  of  Throgmorton  Street.  The 
sections  of  wood  are  very  perfect,  resembling 


exquisite  crochet-work  or  lace,  and  displaying 
even  greater  beauty  under  high  powers 
than  under  low,  which  is  a  test  of  their  excel- 
lence. Sponge  and  gorgonia  spicules  form 
another  set  of  lovely  minutue,  which  are 
different  in  each  respective  species  of 
zoophyte.  Some  are  like  yellow  Hercules' 
clubs  of  sugar-candy,  which  would  attract 
wonderfully  in  a  confectioner's  window ; 
others  are  cut-glass  billiard-cues  intermixed 
with  crystal  stars.  Objects  of  unusual  rarity, 
or  difficulty,  or  unpleasantness,  are  dearer 
everywhere,  as  it  is  only  reasonable.  That 
charming  creature,  the  itch-insect, — a  dis- 
course has  been  written  setting  forth  the 
pleasures  and  advantages  of  the  itch-disease, 
— costs  four  shillings  ;  the  bed-bug  is  a  less 
expensive  luxury,  though  more  so  than  the 
ordinary  run  of  objects.  In  all  these,  the 
microscope  illustrates  the  wonders  of  creation; 
but  there  are  also  preparations  wherein  the 
art  of  man  is  rendered  visible.  Upon  a 
small  circle  of  glass  is  a  dim  grey  spot 
about  the  size  and  shape  of  the  letter  U  at 
the  beginning  of  this  sentence.  To  the  naked 
eye,  it  is  unmeaning  and  indistinct.  Viewed 
with  a  sufficient  power,  it  displays  a  mural 
monument,  on  the  face  of  which  is  an  in- 
scription, in  nineteen  lines  of  capital  letters, 
"  In  Memory  of  William  Sturgeon  " — with  a 
longer  biographical  notice  than  I  have  room 
for  here,  and  all  within  considerably  less  than 
the  limits  of  this  letter  U.  It  is  not,  as 
might  be  supposed,  the  manual  result  of 
patient  toil  and  eye-straining  ;  nor  is  the 
feat  accomplished  by  clever  mechanical 
arrangements ;  it  is  an  application  of  the 
photographic  art.  Not  only  are  microscopic 
photographs  taken  from  fixed  and  inanimate 
objects,  like  the  above  mural  monument,  but 
also  from  living  personages,  and  even  groups 
from  life. 

First,  an  ordinary  photograph  is  taken, 
say  four  and  a-quarter  inches,  by  three 
and  a-quarter.  The  picture  so  obtained  is 
gradually  reduced  by  using  lenses  of  a  short 
focal  length.  When  an  engraving  or  a  monu- 
mental tablet  has  to  be  reduced,  the  photo- 
graphic picture  may  be  taken  much  smaller 
in  the  first  instance  ;  but,  when  a  group  of 
figures  from  life  or  an  individual  portrait 
is  required,  a  lens  of  comparatively  greater 
focal  length  must  be  used.  It  is  impossible 
to  get,  from  life,  a  very  small  picture  at  the 
first  step ;  because  the  various  portions  of 
the  group  would  not  all  be  distinctly  in  the 
focus.  Microscopic  photographs  are  sold  at 
four  and  sixpence  each.  Loyal  or  loving  per- 
sons cau  thus  carry  about  with  them,  at  a 
cheap  rate,  the  portrait  of  their  sovereign  or 
their  sweetheart,  packed  in  the  smallest  pos- 
sible compass.  By  similar  means,  secret  corre- 
spondence can  be  carried  on.  A  microscopic 
message  photographed  on  glass,  might,  pass 
through  a  multitude  of  hostile  hands,  without 
its  import  being  even  suspected.  Timid 
suitors  might  save  their  blushes  by  the  pre- 


Cb*rles  Dickens.] 


MICROSCOPIC  PREPARATIONS. 


[August  8,1557.]       137 


sentation  of  a  petition  to  be  perused,  not 
under  the  rose,  but  under  the  microscope. 
But,  in  short,  without  being  nice  as  to  a  six- 
pence or  a  shilling,  it  is  convenient  to  be 
able  to  order  microscopic  preparations  of 


objects  that  invite  your  attention.      Thus,  I j  proved     that 
am  awaiting  the  mouth  of  a  medicinal  leech,  females. 


and  sundry  medical  students.  The  question 
was  of  considerable  theoretical  and  physio- 
logical importance  —  touching,  as  it  did, 
spontaneous  genei-ation  and  the  reproduc- 
tion of  parasites  in  general.  M.  Bour*gogne 
itch-insects  are  males  and 


to  be  better  enabled  to  inspect  its  lancets 
and  pump  ;  and,  having  discovered  for  myself 
what  others,  no  doubt,  have  discovei'ed 
before — namely,  that  the  mouth  of  the  tad- 
pole is  not  only  armed  with  cutting  teeth, 


M.  Bourgogne's  best  preparations  are  ex- 
cellent, with  the  merit  of  being  determined  and 
named  ;  his  inferior  preparations  are  very  in- 
different, full  of  bubbles  and  dirt.  For  inspec- 
tion by  persons  who  have  had  a  certain  expe- 


but  has  two  or  three  rows  of  lips  outside, !  rience,  some  of  these  cheap  French  prepara- 
that  are  garnished  with  a  fringe  of  tooth-  tions  are  useful ;  but,  as  articles  of  luxury  and 
like  moustaches — I  have  requested  a  prepa-  ornamental  art,  the  English  are  superior.  M. 
ration  to  be  made,  regardless  of  expense, ;  Bourgogne  classes  his  productions  into  first, 
for  the  better  examination  of  my  tadpole's ;  second,  and  third-choice  specimens.  When 
gums.  I  Beau  Brummel's  valet  came  down-stairs  from 

Amongst  continental  preparers,  Joseph  j  dressing  his  master  for  dinner,  he  generally 
Bourgogne,  of  Rue  Notre-Dame,  Paris,  stands  brought  with  him  an  armful  of  discarded  white 
preeminent.  He  is  a  man  whose  whole  soul .  cravats.  "  These,"  he  explained,  "  are  our 
is  in  his  art,  and  he  naturally  speaks  of  mi-  failures."  Just  so  we  may  suppose  that  M. 
croscopie  preparation  as  one  of  the  most  Bourgogne's  third-choice  preparations — some 
important  aids  to  science.  He  has  had  the  of  them  as  low  as  threepence-halfpenny  each 
great  advantage  of  constant  communication  |  (what  can  you  expect  for  threepence  half- 
with  the  most  learned  men  of  Paris,  who '  penny  ?)  are,  what  he  is  too  prudent,  as 
have  aided  him  in  their  several  departments,  j  well  as  too  honest,  to  sell  at  higher  prices  ; 
From  Eobin,  he  has  had  lessons  in  anatomy ;  j  "  our  failures,"  in  short.  And,  as  good 
from  Thuret,  in  the  structure  of  algse.  Of :  French  preparations  are  costly,  while  bad 
late,  his  health  has  become  impaired  in  con-  ones  are  not  cheap,  an  English  collector  has 
sequence  of  severe  application,  while  his  no  motive  to  go  out  of  his  own  country, 
business  is  steadily  on  the  increase.  He  pro-  unless  perhaps  it  be  for  some  novelty  in  the 
poses,  therefore,  to  divide  his  grand  micro-  !  way  of  morbid  anatomy,  or  other  exceptional 
scopic  empire  into  three  kingdoms  —  the  ;  cases. 

mineral,  the  vegetable,  and  the  animal — one  A  microscopic  museum  should  be  formed 
of  which  he  will  bequeath  to  each  of  his  three  '  on  somewhat  the  same  principle  as  a  picture 
sons.  M.  Bourgogne  discovered  the  male  of  gallery.  First,  there  should  be  nothing  but 
the  human  itch-insect,  which  discovery  made  a  what  is  good;  secondly,  there  should  be 
great  sensation  at  the  time,  not  having  been  variety,  with  several  samples  of  all  the  great 
seen  before.  It  seems  to  have  been  com-  masters.  Preparers  who  have  been  in  the 
pletely  unknown  until  eighteen 'forty,  probably  j  habit  of  collecting  during  several  years,  have 
because  it  is  never  found  in  the  furrows  of  each  of  them,  probably,  in  his  secret  store- 
the  skin,  as  the  female  always  is.  Nobody  I  house,  some  treasure  whose  native  habitat, 
then  suspected  that  the  male  lived  constantly  '  or  source  has  baffled  the  research  of  compet- 
on  the  surface  of  the  epidermis ;  being  also  ing  collectors.  To  some,  the  superiority  of 
smaller  than  the  female,  it  escaped  observa-  \  certain  instruments,  or  special  adroitness. 


tion.  Ten  years  afterwards,  amongst  three 
hundred  of  these  insects,  which  Monsieur  B. 
had  received  in  several  lots,  he  recognised  a 
single  male  by  its  agility,  and  by  its  fourth 
pair  of  paws,  which  had  suckers  at  their 
tips,  instead  of  long  bristles,  like  the  female. 
He  valued  the  precious  acarus  as  a  rarity, 
and  it  formed  part  of  his  collection  at  the 
London  exhibition  in  'fifty-two.  But,  Dr. 
Bourguignon  had  the  indiscretion  and  the 
hardihood  to  publish  a  pamphlet  denying  the 
existence  of  this  male  acarus,  as  well  as  of 
the  acarus  of  the  rabbit,  and  others.  M. 
Bourgogne,  urged  by  his  friends,  started  for 
London,  and  established  the  truth  of  the  fact 
by  bringing  back  the  treasured  object,  and 
having  a  drawing  made  from  it,  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Annales  des  Maladies  de  la 
Peau.  And  then,  visiting  the  hospital  of  St. 
Louis,  he  captured  several  males  on  the  skin 
of  patients,  in  the  presence  of  Dr.  Hardy 


may  give  the  superiority  in  certain  classes  of 
objects.  The  microscopist  will  profit  by  all 
these  in  turn.  The  lield  of  nature  is  so 
vast,  that  every  student  may  gratify  his  own 
peculiar  taste.  It  is  desirable  to  have  some 
sequence  and  connection  in  the  objects  col- 
lected. Thus,  we  may  have  preparations  of 
the  principal  organs  of  the  domestic  fly,  to 
illustrate  its  economy  ;  the  eye,  the  proboscis, 
the  foot,  the  spiracle,  and  other  parts  of  its 
bodily  frame.  The  scales  of  butterflies  and 
other  insects  afford  ample  subjects  for  com- 
parison ;  the  cuticles  of  plants,  showing  their 
stomata,  or  perspiring  holes ;  sections  of 


bones    and    teeth 
plants ;    feathers, 


starches    from    various 
hairs,    and    innumerable 


other  things  will  suggest  themselves.  A 
good  selection  of  the  spiracles,  or  breathing- 
holes  in  the  sides  of  different  larvae  and  in- 
sects would  afford  a  series  of  objects  to  which 
there  is  nothing  similar  in  birds  and  beasts. 


1 38       [August  a  1857-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


A  friend  to  whom  I  showed  the  spiracle  of 
the  house-fly,  exclaimed  in  astonishment  that 
nature  hud  taken  more  pains  with  those  in- 
significant creatures  than  with  us. 

Orife  great  merit  of  modern  microscopes  is 
their  portability ;  if  the  reader  wish  to  test 
their  attractiveness,  let  him  arrive  some 
rainy  day  at  a  country  house  full  of  company, 
when  the  guests  are  prevented  from  enjoy- 
ing out-door  amusements.  Let  him  there 
produce  one  of  Amadio's  forty-guinea  instru- 
ments, with  the  polarizing  and  dark-ground 
apparatus  complete,  accompanied  by  a  box- 
full  of  good  preparations,  and  he  will  work 
wonders. 


THE  WITCHES  OF  ENGLAND. 


WITCHCRAFT  in  England  was  very  much  the 
same  thing  as  witchcraft  everywhere  else. 
The  same  rites  were  gone  through,  and  the 
same  ceremonies  observed  ;  and  "  Little 
Martin,"  whether  as  a  goat  with  a  man's 
voice,  or  a  man  with  a  goat's  legs,  received 
the  same  homage  from  the  English  witches 
as  he  did  at  Blockula  and  at  Auldearne, 
on  Walpurgis  night  in  Germany,  and  A 11- 
Hallowmas-een  in  Scotland.  Indeed  the 
uniformity  of  practice  and  belief  was  one 
of  the  most  singular  phenomena  of  this 
wonderful  delusion  ;  and  widely  different  as 
every  social  habit  and  observance  might  be 
between  (for  instance)  Sweden  and  Scotland, 
the  customs  and  creed  of  the  witch  population 
are  found  to  be  singularly  uniform.  Ditches 
dug  with  their  nails  and  filled  with  the  blood 
of  a  black  lamb  ;  images  of  clay  or  wax 
"  pricked  to  the  quick  ;"  unchristened  children 
dug  up  from  the  grave  and  parted  into  lots 
for  charms  ;  perforated  stones  ;  ancient 
relics  ;  herbs,  chiefly  poisonous  or  medicinal  ; 
toads  and  loathsome  insects  ;  strange  unusual 
matters,  such  as  the  bones  of  a  green  frog,  a 
cat's  brains,  owl's  eyes  and  eggs,  bats'  wings, 
and  so  forth ;  these  were,  in  all  countries,  more 
or  less  prominent  in  the  alphabet  of  sorcery. 
While  everywhere  it  was  believed  that  witches 
could  control  the  elements,  command  the 
fruits  of  the  earth,  transform  themselves 
and  others  into  what  animals  they  would, 
bewitch  by  spells  and  muttered  charms, 
and  conjure  up  the  devil  at  will;  that  they 
possessed  familiars  whom  they  nourished  on 
their  own  bodies ;  that  they  denied  their 
baptismal  vows,  and  took  on  them  the 
sacraments  of  the  devil  ;  that  they  were 
bound  to  deliver  to  their  master  a  certain 
tale  of  victims,  generally  unborn  or  un- 
christened infants ;  that  they  could  creep 
through  keyholes  ;  make  straws  and  broom- 
handles  into  horses  :  that  they  were  all 
marked  on  their  second  or  infernal  baptism, 
which  mark  was  known  by  being  insensible 
to  the  "pricking  pin  ;"  that  while  this  mark 
was  undiscovered,  they  had  the  power  of 
denial  or  silence,  but  that  on  its  discovery 
the  charm  was  broken,  and  they  must  perforce 


confess  —  which  was  the  meaning  of  the 
searching,  pricking,  and  shaving  practised  on 
suspected  witches  ;  that  the}7  could  not  shed 
tears,  or  at  best  no  more  than  three  from  the 
left  eye  ;  and  that,  if  they  were  "  swum,"  the 
water,  being  the  sacred  element  used  in  Chris- 
tian baptism,  would  reject  them  from  its  bosom 
and  leave  them  floating  on  the  surface.  Such 
at  least  was  the  theory  respecting  the  alleged 
buoyancy  of  witches,  and  the  original  mean- 
ing of  that  cruel  custom.  These  articles  of 
faith  are  to  be  found,  with  very  little  modifi- 
cation wherever  witches  and  warlocks  formed 
part  of  the  social  creed,  and  their  habits  and 
peculiarities  were  catalogued,  credited,  and 
made  the  rule  of  life.  There  were  three 
classes  of  witches  distinguished,  like  jockeys 
in  a  race,  by  their  colours.  White  witches 
were  helpful  and  beneficent.  They  charmed 
away  diseases  ;  they  assisted  tired  Industry 
in  its  work,  and  caused  stolen  goods  to  be 
restored  ;  but  they  were  not  averse  to  a  little 
harmless  mischief.  Dryden  sings  . 

At  least  as  little  honest  as  he  could ; 

And,  like  white  witches,  mischievously  good. 

Black  witches  did  nothing  but  harm  ;  and 
gray  witches  capriciously  did  good  at  one 
time,  and  evil  at  another. 

The  Duchess  of  Gloucester,  proud  and  dark 
Dame  Eleanor1,  was  among  the  earliest  of  our 
notable  witches.  After  her,  came  Jane  Shore ; 
though,  in  both  these  instances  (as  w.ith  Lady 
Glammis  and  Euphemia  Macalzean)  so  much 
of  party  and  personal  feeling  was  mixed  up 
with  the  charge  of  witchcraft,  that  we  can 
scarcely  determine  now,  how  much  was  real 
superstition  and  how  much  political  enmity. 
The  Duke  of  Buckingham  in  fifteen  hundred 
and  twenty-one,  and  Lord  Hungerford  a  few 
years  later,  were  also  high  names  to  be  taken 
to  the  scaffold  on  the  charge  of  trafficking 
with  sorcerers  ;  while  the  Maid  of  Kent, 
Mildred  Norrington  the  Maid  of  Westall, 
and  Richard  Dugdale  the  Surrey  impostor, 
were  all  cases  of  possession  rather  than  of 
true  witchcraft :  though  all  three  were  after- 
wards confessed  to  be  proved  cheats.  In 
fifteen  hundred  and  ninety-three,  the  ter- 
rible tragedy  of  the  Witches  of  Warbois  was 
played  before  the  world  ;  and  with  that  be- 
gins our  record  of  English  witchcraft,  pro- 
perly so  called. 

In  the  parish  of  Warbois  lived  an  old  man 
and  his  wife,  called  Samuel,  with  their  only 
daughter :  a  young,  and,  as  it  would  seem, 
high-spirited  and  courageous  woman.  One 
of  the  daughters  of  a  Mr.  Throgmorton,  see- 
ing Mother  Samuel  in  a  black  knitted  cap, 
and  being  nervous  and  unwell  at  the  time, 
took  a  fancy  to  say  that  she  had  bewitched 
her  ;  and  her  younger  sisters,  taking  up  the 
cry,  there  was  no  help  for  the  Samuels  but 
to  brand  them  as  malignant  sorcerers.  The 
Throgmorton  children  said  they  were  haunted 
by  nine  spirits,  "  Pluck,  Hardname,  Catch, 
Blue,  and  three  Smacks,  cousins."  One  of 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  WITCHES  OF  ENGLAND. 


[August  8, 1857.]       139 


the  Smacks  was  in  love  with  Miss  Joan,  the 
eldest  Throgmorton  girl,  and  fought  with 
the  others  ou  her  account.  Once,  he  came  to 
her  from  a  terrible  round,  wherein  Pluck 
had  his  head  broken,  Blue  was  set  limping, 
and  Catch  had  his  arm  in  a  sling  ;  the  results 
of  Mr.  Smack's  zeal  on  behalf  of  his  young 
mistress.  "I  wonder,"  says  Mrs.  Joan, 
"that  you  are  able  to  beat  them:  you  are 
little  and  they  are  very  big."  But  the 
valiant  Smack  assured  her  that  he  cared 
not  for  that ;  he  would  beat  the  best  two 
of  them  all,  and  his  cousins  would  beat  the 
other  two.  The  Throgmorton  parents  were 
naturally  anxious  to  free  their  children  from 
this  terrible  visitation  :  more  especially  Mrs. 
Joan  who,  being  but  just  fifteen,  was  getting 
no  good  from  the  addresses  of  her  spiritual 
adorer.  The  father,  therefore,  dragged 
.Dame  Samuel,  the  sender  of  the  spirits  and 
the  cause  of  all  the  mischief,  to  the  house  by 
force :  and  when  they  saw  her,  these  lying 
children  desired  to  scratch  and  torment  her 
and  draw  her  blood,  as  the  witch-creed  of 
the  time  allowed.  The  poor  old  woman  was 
submissive  enough.  She  only  asked  leave  to 
quit  the  house  ;  but  otherwise  she  made  no 
resistance.  Not  even  when  Lady  Cromwell, 
her  landlady,  taking  part  with  the  children, 
tore  her  cap  from  her  head,  and  with  foul 
epithets  and  unstinted  abuse  cut  off  part  of 
her  hair  to  be  used  in  a  counter-charm.  Lady 
Cromwell  died  a  year  and  a  day  after  this 
outrage :  and  this  was  additional  proof  of 
the  wicked  sorcery  of  Dame  Samuel ;  who 
of  course  had  killed  her.  Terrified  out  of  her 
few  poor  wits,  Dame  Samuel  was  induced  to 
repeat  expressions  dictated  to  her,  which  put 
her  life  in  the  power  of  those  wretched  girls. ' 
She  was  made  to  say  to  the  spirit  of  one  of 
them:  "As  I  am  a  witch,  and  a  causer  of 
Lady  Cromwell's  death,  I  charge  thee  to  come 
out  of  this  maiden."  As  the  girl  gave  no 
sign  of  life,  being  so  holdeu  by  the  spirit  as 
to  appear  dead,  the  poor  old  woman  had  only 
confessed  herself  a  witch  without  getting  any 
credit  for  her  skill,  or  any  mercy  because  of 
her  exorcism.  At  last,  tortured,  confused, 
bewildered,  she  made  her  confession,  and  was 
condemned.  Her  husband  and  daughter 
were  condemned  with  her.  The  last  was 
advised  to  put  in  a  plea  for  mercy,  at  least 
for  respite,  by  declaring  that  she  was  about  to 
become  a  mother.  The  proud  disdainful 
answer  of  that  ignorant  English  girl,  who 
refused  to  buy  her  life  by  her  dishonour,  may 
be  classed  among  those  unnoted  heroisms  of 
life  which  are  equal  in  grandeur,  if  not  in 
importance,  to  the  most  famous  anecdotes  of 
history.  But,  what  the  high-minded  courage 
of  the  daughter  refused  to  do,  the  baffled 
weakness  of  the  poor  old  mother  consented 
to :  to  gain  time,  in  the  hope  that  popular 
opinion  would  turn  to  her  favour,  she  an- 
nounced her  own  approaching  maternity.  A 
loud  laugh  rang  through  the  court,  in  which 
the  old  victim  herself  joined ;  but,  it  was  soon 


gravely  argued  that  it  might  be  so,  and  that  if 
it  were  so,  the  Devil  was  the  father.  However 
the  plea  was  set  aside  ;  and  on  the  fourth  of 
April,  fifteen  hundred  and  ninety-three,  the 
whole  family  was  condemned.  Sir  Samuel 
Cromwell  left  an  annual  rent-charge  of  forty 
shillings  for  a  sermon  on  witchcraft  to  be 
preached  every  year  by  a  D.D.  or  a  B.D.  of 
Queen's  College,  Cambridge. 

In  sixteen  hundred  and  eighteen,  Margaret 
and  Philip  Flower,  daughters  of  Joan  Flower, 
deceased,  were  executed  at  Lincoln,  for  hav- 
ing destroyed  Henry  Lord  Rosse  by  witch- 
craft, and  for  having  grievously  tormented 
Francis,  Earl  of  Rutland.  It  seems  that 
Joan  and  her  two  daughters  were  much 
employed  at  Beavor  Castle,  as  charwomen, 
and  Margaret  was  finally  taken  into  the 
house  as  keeper  of  the  poultry-yard.  Their 
good  fortune  raised  them  up  a  host  of  enemies, 
who,  discovering  that  Joan  was  an  Atheist 
and  a  witch,  Margaret  a  thief,  and  Philip  no 
better  than  she  should  be,  at  last  so  wrought 
on  the  Countess,  that  she  turned  against  her 
former  favourites,  and  making  Margaret  a 
small  present,  dismissed  her  from  her  service. 
Which,  says  the  pamphlet  containing  the 
account  of  the  whole  transaction,  "did  turne 
her  lone  and  liking  toward  this  honourable 
earle  and  his  family,  into  hate  and  rancour," 
and  the  death  of  one  and  all  was  decided  on. 
Philip,  in  her  confession,  deposed  that  "her 
mother  and  sister  maliced  the  Earle  of  Rut- 
lande,  his  Countesse,  and  their  children,  be- 
cause her  sister  Margaret  was  put  out  of 
the  ladies  seruice  of  Laundry,  and  exempted 
from  other  seruices  about  the  house,  where- 
upon, our  said  sister,  by  the  commaundement 
of  her  mother,  brought  from  the  castle  the 
right  hand  gloue  of  the  Lord  Henry  Rosse, 
which  she  delivered  to  her  mother,  who  pre- 
sently rubbed  it  on  the  backe  of  her  Spirit 
Rutterkin,  and  then  put  it  into  hot  boyling 
water ;  afterwai'd  she  prick'd  it  often,  and 
buried  it  in  the  yard,  wishing  the  Lorde 
Rosse  might  neuer  thriue,  and  so  her  sister 
Margaret  continued  with  her  mother,  where 
she  often  saw  the  Cat  Rutterkin  leape  on 
her  shoulder  and  sucke  her  necke."  Philip 
herself  had  a  spirit  like  a  white  rat.  Mar- 
garet was  soon  brought  to  confess  also ;  there 
was  no  examination  of  the  mother,  who  had 
died  on  her  way  to  the  gaol.  She  had  two 
spirits,  she  said,  and  she  had  in  very  deed 
charmed  away  Lord  Henry's  life  by  means  of 
his  right  hand  glove.  She  tried  the  same 
charm  on  Lord  Francis,  but  without  success, 
beyond  tormenting  him  with  a  grievous  sick- 
ness; but,  when  she  took  a  piece  of  Lady 
Katherine's  handkerchief,  and  putting  it  into 
hot  water,  rubbed  it  on  Rutterkin,  bidding 
him  "  flye  and  goe,  Rutterkin  whined  and 
cryed  mew  ; "  for  the  evil  spirits  had  no 
power  over  Lady  Katherine  to  hurt  her. 
The  two  women  were  executed,  Margaret 
raving  wildly  of  certain  apparitions,  one  like 
an  ape,  with  a  black  head,  which  had  come  to 


140       [August  8, 185;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


her  in  gaol,  muttering  words  that  she  conld 
not  understand  :  as  how  indeed  should  she, 
poor  raving  maniac  that  she  was  ! 

In  sixteen  hundred  and  thirty-four,  a  boy 
called  Edmund  Robinson  deposed  that  while 
gathering  bullees  (wild  plums)  in  Peiulle 
Forest,  he  snw  two  greyhounds,  with  no  one 
following  them.  Liking  the  notion  of  a  course, 
he  started  a  hare  ;  but  the  dogs  refused  to 
run  :  when,  as  he  was  about  to  strike  them, 
Dame  Dickenson,  a  neighbour's  wife,  started 
up  instead  of  one  hare,  and  a  little  boy  in- 
stead of  the  other.  The  dame  offered  the 
lad  a  bribe  if  he  would  conceal  the  matter, 
but  our  virtuous  Edmund  refused,  saying, 
"nay  thou  art  a  witch,  Mother  Dickenson  ;" 
•whereon  taking  a  halter  out  of  her  pocket,  she 
shook  it  over  the  hare-boy's  head,  whoinstantly 
changed  into  a  horse ;  and  the  witch  mount- 
ing her  human  charger,  took  Robinson  before 
her,  and  set  off.  They  went  to  a  large  house 
or  barn  called  Hourstoun,  where  there  were 
several  persons  milking  ropes  ;  which  as 
they  milked,  gave  them  meat  ready  cooked, 
bread,  butter,  milk,  cheese,  and  all  the  ad- 
juncts of  a  royal  feast.  The  lad  said 
they  looked  so  ugly  while  thus  milking  out 
their  dinner,  that  he  was  frightened.  By 
many  more  lies,  as  impossible  but  as  damna- 
tory as  this,  the  boy  procured  himself  and 
his  father  a  good  liveliliood,  and  caused  some 
scores  of  innocent  people  to  be  carried  off  to 
prison.  The  magistrates  and  clergy  adopted 
him ;  he  was  taken  about  the  country  to 
identify  any  hapless  wretch  he  might  choose 
to  swear  he  had  seen  at  these  witch  meetings; 
and  he  and  his  father  lived  at  free  charges, 
with  money  in  their  pockets  besides,  all  the 
time  the  imposture  lasted.  Only  Mr.  Web- 
ster, Glanvil's  great  opponent,  had  the  sense 
and  courage  to  examine  him,  with  the  view 
of  eliciting  the  truth,  rather  than  of  confirm- 
ing his  report ;  but  the  boy  -was  rudely  taken 
out  of  his  hands.  At  last  he  confessed  the 
truth — That  he  had  been  put  up  to  the  whole 
thing  by  his  father  and  others  ;  that  he  had 
never  seen  or  heard  a  word  of  all  he  had 
deposed  ;  and  that  when  he  swore  he  was  at 
Hourstoun,  he  was  stealing  plums  in  a  neigh- 
bour's orchard.  This  was  the  second  great 
Lancashire  witch  trial  ;  the  first  was  in 
sixteen  hundred  and  thirteen  ;  the  prin- 
cipal witch  of  this,  Shad  well's  Mother  Dem- 
dike,  died  during  the  trial,  and  several  of  the 
meaner  sort  escaped. 

And  now  the  reign  of  Matthew  Hopkins, 
witch-finder,  begins.  This  infamous  wretch 
was  in  Manningtree  in  sixteen  hundred  and 
forty-four,  when  the  great  witch  persecution 
arose,  and  was  mainly  instrumental  in 
exciting  that  persecution.  He  practised  his 
trade  as  a  legal  profession,  charging  so  much 
for  every  town  he  visited,  besides  his  journey- 
ing expenses  and  the  cost  of  his  two  assist- 
ants. He  and  John  Kincaid  in  Scotland 
were  the  great  "prickers;"  that  is,  with  a 
pin  about  three  inches  long,  they  pricked  a 


suspected  witch  all  over  her. body,  until  they 
found  the  mark — or  said  they  found  it— 
which  mark  was  conclusive  and  irrefragable 
evidence  of  the  Satanic  compact.  The  fol- 
lowing was  his  mode  of  treatment ;  quoting 
Mi1.  <>aul,  the  clergyman  of  Houghton  ;  who, 
like  \Vebster,  was  what  Glanvil  calls  a  "  Sad- 
ducee,"  an  "Atheist,"  and  believed  very 
sparsely  in  witchcraft. 

"  Having  taken  the  suspected  witch,  she  is 
placed  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  upon  a 
stool  or  table,  cross-legged,  or  in  some  other 
uneasy  posture,  to  which  if  she  submits  not 
she  is  bound  with  cords  ;  there  she  is  watched 
land  kept  without  meat  or  sleep  for  four- 
and  -  twenty  hours,  for  they  say  they 
shall,  within  that  time,  see  her  imp  come 
and  suck.  A  little  hole  is  likewise  made  iu 
the  door  for  the  imps  to  come  in  at ;  and, 
lest  they  should  come  in  some  less  discern- 
ible shape,  they  that  watch  are  taught  to  be 
ever  and  anon  sweeping  the  room,  and  if 
they  see  any  spiders  or  flies  to  kill  them,  and 
if  they  cannot  kill  them  then  they  may  b» 
sure  they  are  imps." 

Sucli  as  was  the  familiar  of  Elizabeth 
Styles,  which  was  seen  by  her  watchers  to 
settle  on  her  poll  in  the  form  of  a  "large 
fly  like  a  millar,"  or  white  moth.  Speaking 
of  familiars,  Hopkins  found  several  belonging 
to  Elizabeth  Clarke,  whose  deposition  he 
took  down,  March  the  twenty-fifth,  sixteen 
hundred  and  forty-five.  She  had  Holt,  like 
a  white  kitling ;  Jarmara,  a  fat  spaniel 
without  legs  ;  Vinegar  Tom,  "  a  long-legged 
grey-hound,  with  a  head  like  an  oxe,  with  a 
'  long  taile  and  broad  eyes,  who,  when  this 
j  Discoverer  (Hopkins)  spoke  to,  and  bade  him 
goe  to  the  place  provided  for  him  and  his 
angels,  immediately  transformed  himself  into 
the  shape  of  a  childe  of  foure  yeares  old  with- 
out a  heade,  gaue  half  a  dozen  turnes  about; 
the  house  and  vanished  at  the  door."  Sack- 
and-Sugar  was  like  a  rabbit,  and  Newes  like 
a  polecat :  all  of  which  imps,  Matthew 
Hopkins,  of  Manningtree,  gent.,  deposes  on 
oath  to  having  seen  and  spoken  to.  There 
were  others  of  which  he  gives  only  the 
names:  as  Elemauzer,  Pyewacket,  Pe^k-in- 
the-Crown,  Grizel  Greedigut,  &c.  Elizabeth 
Clarke  was  executed,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
following  on  the  disclosures  of  the  witch- 
finder  respecting  her  imps.  Ann  Leech  was 
executed  the  next  month,  chiefly  because  of 
the  sudden  death  of  Mr.  Edwards'  two  cowa 
and  a  child  :  also  because  of  her  possessing  a 
grey  imp.  Anne  Gate  had  four  imps  :  James, 
Prickeare,  Robyn,  like  mouses  ;  and  Sparrow, 
like  a  sparrow.  For  the  which  crime,  besides 
their  having  killed  divers  children,  she  was 
executed  at  Chelmsford  in  that  same  year  of 
sixteen  hundred  and  forty-five.  Rebecca 
Jones  had  three,  like  moles,  having  four  feet 
apiece,  but  without  tails  and  black ;  she 
shared  the  usual  fate.  Susan  Cock  had  two, 
one  like  a  mouse,  called  Susan,  the  oti>er 
yellow  and  like  a  cat,  called  Bessie.  Joyce 


Charles  Dickens.] 


POWERS  OF  CALCULATION. 


1S57.]      141 


Boanes  had  only  one,  a  mouse-like  imp  called  I  land.     A  woman  was  hanged  at  Exeter  on 


Rug ;  Rose  Hallybread  one,  a  small  grey 
bird  ;  while  Marian  Hocket  had  Little-nian, 
Pretty-man,  and  Dainty ;  and  Margaret 
Moore  had  twelve,  all  like  rats.  With  many 
more  in  that  fatal  session  than  we  can  give 
the  smallest  note  of.  Six  witches  wei'e  hung 
in  a  row  at  Maidstone,  in  sixteen  hundred 
and  fifty-two  ;  and  two  months  after,  three 
were  hung  at  Faversham  ;  but,  before  this, 
Hopkins  had  been  seized  and  "swum"  for  a 
wizard,  in  Ms  own  manner — cross-bound — his 
left  thumb  tied  to  his  right  great  toe,  and 
his  right  thumb  to  his  left  great  toe.  From 
that  time  no  more  is  heard  of  that  worst  and 
vilest  of  impostors,  and  cruelest  of  popular 
tyrants. 

One  of  the  most  melancholy  things   con- 
nected with  this   delusion,  was  the  fearful 


part  which  children,  by  their  falsehoods  and  |  to  raise  a  storm,  by  which  a  certain  ship 
fancies,  bore  in  it.     An  old  woman  named   "almost  "lost,  and  for  other  impossible  cri 


Jane  Brooks,  was  executed  because  one 
Richard  Jones, "  a  sprightly  youth  of  twelve," 
cried  out  against  her  for  having  bewitched 
him  and  counterfeited  epileptic  convulsions. 
Elizabeth  Styles,  the  owner  of  the  Millar  imp, 


no  other  testimony  but  that  of  a  neighbour, 
"  who  deposed  that  he  saw  a  cat  jump  into 
the  accused  person's  cottage  window  at 
twilight  one  evening,  and  that  he  verily  be- 
lieved the  said  cat  to  be  the  devil."  And 
another  witch,  lying  in  York  gaol,  had  the 
tremendous  testimony  against  her  of  a  scroll 
of  paper  creeping  from  under  the  prison-door, 
then  changing  itself  into  a  monkey,  and 
then  into  a  turkey.  To  which  veracious  ac- 
count the  under-keeper  swore. 

The  last  execution  in  England  for  witch- 
craft was  in  seventeen  hundred  and  sixteen, 
when  Mrs.  Hicks  and  her  little  daughter, 
aged  nine,  were  hanged  at  Huntingdon  for 
sellingtheir  souls  to  the  devil;  for  making  their 
neighbours  vomit  pins  ;  for  pulling  off  their 
own  stockings  to  make  a  lather  of  soap,  and  so 

was 

sible  crimes. 

It  was  not  until  after  seventeen  hundred  and 
fifty-one  that  the  final  abolition  of  James  the 
First's  detestable  statute  was  obtained.  On  the 
thirtieth  of  July  in  that  year,  three  men  were 
tried  for  the  murder  of  one  suspected  witch, 


was  condemned  chiefly  on  account  of  a  girl  j  and  the  attempted  murder  of  another.   One  of 


of  thirteen,  who  played  the  part  of  "possessed" 
to  the  life.  Julian  Coxe  was  judicially 
murdered  because — besides  its  being  proved 
that  she  had  been  hunted  when  in  the  form 
of  a  hare  ;  that  she  had  a  toad  for  a  familiar ; 
that  she  had  been  seen  to  fly  out  of  her 
window ;  and  that  she  could  not  repeat  the 
Lord's  Prayer — she  had  bewitched  a  young 
maid  of  scrofulous  tendencies  and  nervous 


the  men,  named  Colley,  was  executed.  The 
rabble  cursed  the  authorities,  and  made 
a  riot  about  the  gallows,  praising  Colley  for 
having  rid  their  parish  of  a  malignant  witch, 
and  holding  him  tip  as  deserving  of  reward, 
not  punishment.  And  this  murder  led  to 
the  abolition  of  the  Witch  Laws. 

All  these  are  histories  of  long  ago  ;  so  long 
as  to  be  almost  out  of  cognisance  as  belonging 


excitability,  who  would  have  sworn  to  the  j  to  ourselves.     Yet,  how   many   weeks  have 
first  falsehood  that  presented  itself  to  her  passed  since  those  letters  on  modern  witch- 


imagination.  And  these  are  only  three  out 
of  hundreds  and  thousands  of  instances  where 
those  miserable  afflicted  children,  as  they 
were  called,  swore  away  the  lives  of  harmless 
and  unoffending  people  !  During  the  Long- 
Parliament  alone,  about  three  thousand  people 
were  executed  in  England  for  witchcraft ; 
about  thirty  thousand  were  executed  in  all. 

The    year    after    Julian's    execution,    Sir 
Matthew  Hale  tried  and  condemned  Anny 

Dui;ny  and  Rose  Callender,at  Saint  Edmonds- 1  witchcraft  ?      With   such   instances   against 
bury,  on  evidence  and  for  supposed  offences    us,  we  have  little  cause  of  aelf-gratulation  on 
which   a   child   of  this   century   would    not 
admit.     One  of  the  charges  made  against  the 
first-named  witch,  was  the  sending  of  a  bee 
with  a  nail  to  a  child  of  nine  years  of  age, 
which  nail  the  bee  forced  the  girl  to  swallow ; 


craft  appeared  in  the  Times  1  Since  some  not 
despicable  intellects  among  us  have  openly 
adopted  all  the  silliness  and  transparent 
deception  of  the  so-called  spirit-rappers? 
Since  miracles  have  been  publicly  pro- 
claimed in  certain  Catholic  countries  ? 
Since  one  journal  of  this  country  gravely 
argued  for  the  truth  and  the  reality  of  diabo- 
lical possession,  and  distinct  Satanic  agency, 
as  exemplified  by  the  popular  notion  of 


the  score  of  national  exemption  from  super- 
stition. 


POWERS  OF  CALCULATION. 


to  one  of  eleven,  she  sent  flies  with  crooked  WHAT  an  immense  difference  there  is 
pins  ;  once  she  sent  a  mouse,  on  what  errand  between  hearing  of  an  extraordinary  fact — 
does  not  appear ;  and  once  the  younger  j  between  even  believing  it  ;  that  is,  simply 
child  ran  about  the  house  flapping  her  apron  j  saying  to  yourself;  "  Yes,  I  suppose  it  must  be 
and  crying  hush !  hush  !  saying  she  saw  a  !  true,  because  everybody  seems  to  take  it  for 
duck.  There  were  numerous  counts  against  granted,"  and  witnessing  the  same  fact  in 
the  two  women,  of  the  same  character  as  j  proper  person  !  Reading  about  the  sea,  for 
these;  without  any  better  evidence,  with-  |  instance,  and  making  your  first  sea-voyage; 
out  any  sifting  of  this  absurd  testimony,  rapidly  perusing  a  book  of  travels,  and 
without  any  medical  inquiry,  the  grave,  beholding  for  yourself  a  tropical  country ; 
learned,  and  pious  Sir  Matthew  Hale  con-  glancing  at  the  report  of  an  execution  or  a 
denmed  them  to  death  by  the  law  of  the  battle,  and  being  actually  present  at  the 


142       [Aujrust  S,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


horrid  scene,  are,  respectively,  two  quite 
different  affairs.  We  read  Captain  Cook's 
adventures  amongst  various  savage  islanders, 
and  even  his  death  by  their  hands,  without 
any  very  startling  or  exceptional  impression. 
It  is  an  amusing  romance,  a  terrible  tragetly, 
no  nioi-e.  We  figure  to  ourselves  savages  in 
general  as  enemies  merely — as  holding  with 
civilised  man  relations  similar  to  those  of  the 
French  and  English  of  old, — as  antagonistic 
powers,  that  is  all.  But  an  acute  observer, 
who  went  round  the  world  with  his  eyes 
wide  open,  says,  that  what  impressed  him 
most  during  the  whole  of  that  vast  tour,  was 
the  sight,  face  to  face,  of  a  real  savage  man. 

Lately,  a  similar  surprise  awaited  myself, 
though  not  from  any  fierce,  untamed  fellow- 
creature,  but,  on  the  contrary,  from  a  remark- 
ably inoffensive  and  well-trained  person.  I 
had  heard  of  George  Bidder  in  his  time, 
that  is,  when  his  powers  were  publicly  exhi- 
bited. Recently,  the  fame  of  the  mathema- 
tical shepherd,  Henri  Mondeux,  had  reached 
my  ears.  I  had  regarded  the  reputation  of 
those  celebrities,  as  mental-arithmeticians, 
with  the  same  nonchalance  with  which  people 
always  regard  things  of  which  they  are  igno- 
rant. But  the  other  evening  I  was  present, 
by  invitation,  at  a  private  assembly,  held  to 
witness  the  exploits  of  a  young  man  who  was 
said  to  solve  wonderful  problems  in  his  head, 
and  I  was  also  requested  to  prepare  an  arith- 
metical question  or  two.  I  did  so,  chuckling 
all  the  while  to  myself,  "  If  you  get  through 
that,  my  good  sir,  without  help  of  pen  or 
paper,  you  are  a  cleverer  fellow  than  I 
expect."  The  meeting  was  numerous,  the 
majority  (though  far  from  the  totality)  being 
schoolboys,  with  a  sharp-set  appetite  for  a 
display  of  cyphering  skill.  The  hero  of  the 
night  was  standing  in  the  midst,  in  the  atti- 
tude common  to  blind  people  and  extremely 
absent  and  thoughtful  persons.  He  requested 
silence  to  be  kept  while  he  was  making  his 
calculations,  which  he  did  walking  backwards 
and  forwards,  with  a  sort  of  short,  quarter- 
deck step. 

"What  shall  we  begin  with?"  was  a 
natural  inquiry. 

"  Suppose  we  take  addition  first,  and  mount 
gradually  through  the  rules.  Will  any  one 
name  any  sums  they  think  fit  to  be  added 
together  1 " 

Hereupon  various  individuals  dictated 
items  of  hundreds  of  thousands,  a  million  and 
odd,  a  few  hundreds,  and  even  units,  to 
render  the  task  the  more  puzzling,  till  some 
ten  or  twelve  lines  of  figures  were  taken 
down  by  the  gentleman  who  acted  as  secre- 
tary. Before  he  could  finish  the  addition  on 
paper,  the  phenomenon  gave  the  total  accu- 
rately. I  began  to  tremble  for  my  questions, 
fearing  that  they  would  not  prove  posers. 

Next  was  proposed  a  sum  of  subtraction, 
in  which  trillions  were  to  be  deducted  from 
trillions.  The  remainder  was  given  as  easily 
as  an  answer  to  What  o'clock  is  it  1  Cer- 


tainly my  questions  would  turn  out  no  posers 
at  all. 

"  Can  you  extract  cube-roots  mentally  ?  " 
I  asked. 

"  Yes,  give  me  one." 

"  What  is  the  cube-root  of  nineteen  thou- 
sand six  hundred  and  eighty-three  ?  " 

"  Oh,  that  is  too  easy.  It  is  twenty- 
seven." 

Later  in  the  evening  he  extracted  a  cube- 
root  of  four  figures.  The  schoolboys  were 
delighted  and  astonished.  If  they  had  not 
applauded  heartily,  as  they  did,  they  would 
not  have  been  schoolboys. 

"  I  have  a  little  calculation  to  propose,"  I 
said,  "  which  involves  multiplication  princi- 
pally. A  fleet  of  seventy-three  fishing-boats 
start  from  Dunkerque  on  the  first  of  April, 
to  catch  cod  in  the  North  Sea.  They  return 
on  the  thirty-first  of  July  ;  that  is,  they  are 
absent  four  months." 

"I  understand  ;  they  are  out  at  sea  a  hun- 
dred and  twenty-two  days." 

"Each  boat  carries  nineteen  men.  How 
many  men  are  there  in  the  whole  fleet  ?  " 

"  One  thousand  three  hundred  and  eighty- 
seven." 

"  And  if  each  man  eats  four  pounds  of 
bread  per  day,  how  much  bread  per  day  is 
eaten  on  board  all  the  boats  '?  " 

"Of  course,  five  thousand  five  hundred 
and  forty-eight  pounds." 

"  With  how  much  bread,  then,  must  the 
fleet  be  provisioned,  to  supply  it  during  the 
whole  of  its  four-months'  voyage  ?  " 

The  calculator,  who  had  stood  still  during 
the  previous  questions,  resumed  his  quarter- 
deck pacing  to  and  fro,  and  put  on,  a» 
country  people  say,  his  considering-cap.  In 
a  few  instants  he  stopped  short,  and  said, 
"  They  must  take  out  with  them  six  hundred 
and  seventy-six  thousand,  eight  hundred  and 
fifty-six  pounds  of  bread." 

"  Perfectly  correct !     Quite  right !  " 

The  boys  were  in  ecstacies,  which  found 
vent  in  another  round  of  applause. 

"  But  these  hard-working  fishermen,"  I 
continued,  "  keep  up  their  strength  with 
something  else  besides  bread.  Each  man 
drinks  a  glass  of  gin  every  morning  ;  how 
many  drams  are  drunk  during  the  course  of 
the  four  months  ?  " 

Another  short  promenade,  and  then  the 
answer,  "  One  hundred  and  sixty-nine  thou- 
sand, two  hundred  and  fourteen." 

"  But  that  is  not  all ;  the  gin  is  kept  in 
bottles,  and  each  bottle  holds  thirty-seven 
petits  verres  or  drams.  How  many  bottles 
must  the  fleet  carry  out  1 " 

"  It  must  take  out — let  us  see — it  must 
take  out  four  thousand  five  hundred  and 
seventy-three  bottles,  and  a  fraction  consist- 
ing of  thirteen  drams  over." 

And  so  ended  my  question  number  one  ; 
no  poser  nor  ass's  bridge  at  all.  The 
interest  of  the  audience  was  highly  excited. 
To  give  a  short  repose  to  the  calculator's 


Charles  Dickens.] 


POWERS  OF  CALCULATION. 


[August  8,  1357.]        143 


brain,  a  young  lady  treated  us  to  a  charming 
divertissement  on  the  piano. 

"  Are  you  tired  ? " 

"  Oh  no ;  not  at  all." 

"  Shall  we  try  something  with  a  greater 
number  of  figures  1 " 

"  If  you  please." 

"Listen,  then.  I  have  a  bottle  of  ditch- 
water,  the  contents  of  which,  as  near  as  I  can 
estimate,  amount  to  eighty-seven  thousand, 
five  hundred  and  sixty-two  drops.  In  every 
drop,  on  examining  it  with  the  microscope,  I 
find  three  species  of  animalcules — large, 
middle-sized,  and  small,  namely,  seventeen 
large  ones,  thirty-nine  middle-sized,  and  two 
hundred  and  sixty-four  small.  First,  tell  me 
how  many  large  animalcules  I  have  in  ray 
bottle." 

After  a  few  paces  the  correct  answer  is 
given  :  "  You.  have  one  million,  four  hundred 
and  eighty-eight  thousand,  five  hundred  and 
fifty-four." 

"  And  how  many  middle-sized  ones  ?  " 

"  Three  millions,  four  hundred  and  four- 
teen thousand,  nine  hundred  and  eighteen." 

"  Exactly.     And  how  many  small  ones  1 " 

"  Twenty-three  millions,  one  hundred  and 
twenty-six  thousand — " 

"  No  ;  you  have  made  an  error  there." 

"  Stop  ;  let  me  see.  It  is  twenty-three 
millions,  one  hundred  and  sixteen  thousand, 
three  hundred  and  sixty-eight." 

"  Perfectly  correct.  And  now,  if  you 
please,  how  many  animalcules,  large,  small, 
and  middle-sized,  have  I  altogether  in  my 
bottle  of  ditch-water  1  " 

"  You  have  twenty-eight  millions,  nineteen 
thousand,  eight  hundred  and  forty." 

"  Eight.  But  I  observe,  on  watching  them, 
that  each  large  animalcule  eats,  per  day,  one 
middle-sized  and  three  little  animalcules. 
How  many  animalcules  shall  I  have  left  at 
the  end  of  a  couple  of  days?" 

"  There  will  be,  altogether,  sixteen  millions, 
one  hundred  and  eleven  thousand,  four  hun- 
dred and  eight  survivors." 

After  a  few  other  arithmetical  lucubrations, 
the  calculating  performer  made  a  proposition 
which  not  a  little  startled  his  auditors. 

"  Dictate  to  me,"  he  said,  "  from  a  written 
paper,  a  hundred  and  fifty  figures,  any  you 
please,  in  any  order,  and  I  will  repeat  them 
to  you  by  heart.  Bead  them  aloud  to  me,  by 
sixes." 

A  gentleman  present  took  pencil  and  paper, 
and  wrote  down  a  string  of  figures  as  they 
came  into  his  head,  by  chance.  "  Seven, 
nought,  nine,  five,  three,  one." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  phenomenon,  "  go  on." 

"  Nought,  five,  seven,  six,  two,  three." 

"  Yes  ;  go  on." 

And  so  on,  till  there  \vere  a  hundred  and 
fifty  figures  on  the  list. 

"  "Will  you  like  to  make  it  two  hundred  ? " 
asked  the  imperturbable  calculator. 

"  No,  no  ;  that's  quite  enough,"  shouted 
the  humane  audience. 


"  Now,  repeat  them  once  again,  quick." 

The  figures  were  repeated  accordingly. 

'•  I  am  ready  ;  they  are  nailed  fast  in  my 
head.  If  I  make  a  mistake,  say  '  False,'  but 
don't  correct  me.  Which  way  will  you  like 
to  have  them  said  1 — beginning  from  the 
beginning,  or  beginning  from  the  end  ?  The 
great  number  of  zeros  in  the  list  makes  it 
more  difficult ;  but  never  mind." 

"  Begin  from  the  beginning,"  was  the  con- 
siderate word  of  command. 

The  wonder  resumed  his  pacing  step,  and, 
with  half-shut  eyes  and  forefinger  vibrating 
by  the  side  of  his  forehead,  close  to  the 
phrenological  organ  of  number  (a  favourite 
action  with  him),  commenced  his  repetition  : 
"  Seven,  nought,  nine,  five,  three,  one ; 
nought,  five,  seven,  six,  two,  three,  etcetera  ; 
until  the  hundred  and  fifty  figures  were  run 
off  the  roll-call,  in  much  the  same  tone  as  a 
little  child  recites  "  How  doth  the  little  busy 
bee  improve  each  shining  hour."  There 
were  only  one  or  two  errors,  owing,  he  said, 
to  the  treacherous  zeros  ;  and,  on  the  admo- 
nition "  False,"  they  were  corrected  without 
aid.  And  then  he  repeated  the  list  back- 
wards, with  the  same  monotonous  ease.  And 
then  he  offered  to  name  any  one  given  figure 
on  the  list. 

"What  is  the  forty-fifth  figure,  counting 
from  the  end  1 " 

"A  seven,  between  a  one  on  the  right 
hand,  and  a  nine  on  the  left." 

"  What  is  the  twenty-first  figure  from  the 
beginning  ? " 

"A  five,  with  a  zero  to  the  right,  and  a 
three  to  the  left." 

And  then  he  sat  down,  amidst  crowning 
applause,  wiping  the  perspiration  from  his 
brow,  as  well  he  might.  And  then  he  rose, 
and  gave  a  detailed  summing  up  (with  the 
figures)  of  all  the  problems  he  had  gone 
through  during  the  evening. 

Jean  Jacques  Winkler,  the  person  who 
executes  these  prodigies  of  mental  gymnas- 
tics, according  to  his  own  account,  was  born 
at  Zurich,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty- 
one.  He  is  one  of  a  family  of  eight — four 
sons  and  four  daughters.  His  father  is  a 
retired  bill-broker,  living  on  his  income  a 
sort  of  animal  life  (the  son's  expression),  and 
wishing  to  keep  the  wanderer  at  home. 
Jean  Jacques,  from  his  earliest  childhood, 
studied  all  sorts  of  subjects  by  night  and  by 
day,  possessing  a  peculiar  aptitude  for  calcu- 
lation, combined  with  a  prodigious  memory. 
He  studied  in  various  places,  and  under 
various  instructors,  even  under  Arago, 
amongst  others.  This  hard  study  gradually 
weakened  his  eyesight,  till  he  became  quite 
blind,  and  continued  so  for  two  years  and 
a-half,  namely,  from  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-three  to  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-five, 
when  he  was  twenty-two  to  twenty-five 
years  of  age.  The  blindness  came  on  "  comi- 
cally," he  says,  without  headache  or  pain  in 
the  eyes  ;  in  short,  he  has  never  beeii  ill  in 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[August  8,  1857.] 


his  life.  As  long  as  the  deprivation  of  sight  great  power  of  observation  by  the  sense  of 
continued,  his  great  amusement  was  to  calcu-  heaving.  Re  forms  his  opinion  of  the  persons 
late  problems  in  his  head.  Eyesight  returned  with  whom  he  is  brought  into  contact  by  the 
gradually,  as  it  had  departed,  but  only  par-  tone  and  inflexions  of  their  voices.  In  the 
tially.  Medical  men  promise  him  its  com-  course  of  his  adventurous  and  cosmopolite 
plete  restoration,  if  he  would  renounce  mental  existence,  he  has  always  had  recourse  to  this 
mathematics ;  but  the  propensity  is  too  method  of  appreciating  his  connections,  and 
strong.  He  performs  in  his  head  all  sorts  of  he  is  never,  he  asserts,  deceived  in  the  esti- 
calculations  in  spherical  trigonometry,  curves,  mate  of  character  to  which  it  leads  him. 
and  other  brandies  of  high-science.  But,  for  German  is  his  native  language  ;  French  he 
himself,  the  most  difficult  operation  is  simple  speaks  neither  with  ease  nor  accuracy  ; 
multiplication  on  a  somewhat  extended  scale,  English,  still  more  imperfectly.  The  exbibi- 
say  the  multiplication  of  twenty  figures  by  a  tion  described  in  this  article  was  spoken  out 
multiplier  consisting  of  fifteen  or  twenty.  A  in  French  ;  the  calculations  and  the  exercise 
sum  like  this  takes  him  ten  or  twelve  of  memory  were  carried  on  in  German  (some- 
minutes  to  work  mentally — the  only  way  times  whispered  audibly),  which  increased 
possible  ;  for  he  cannot  see  cleai'ly  enough  the  difficulty  of  the  performance.  People 
even  to  sign  his  name  without  having  his  given  to  entertain  doubts  may  ascribe  the 
hand  guided.  above  peculiarities  partly  to  charlatanism  or 

Contrary  to  most  of  the  calculators  hitherto  ,  trick,  and  partly  to  eccentricity  ;  but  it  is 
exhibited  to  the  public,  and  who,  like  Mon-  impossible  that  any  deception  should  exist  in 
deux,  are  mathematicians  by  instinct,  and  respect  to  the  extraordinary  talent  for  calcu- 
cannot  explain  how  they  arrive  at  their  lation. 

results,  M.  Winkler  is  perfectly  acquainted  j  It  seems  a  pity  that  such  exceptional 
with  the  theory  of  numbers,  and  arrives  powers  should  not  be  turned  to  some  account, 
at  the  solution  of  the  strangest  problems  by  as  those  of  our  own  George  Bidder  have 
means  of  a  methodical  mental  operation,  j  been.  The  misfortune  of  blindness  is  a  great 
He  has  formulae  of  his  own  for  the  extraction  [  impediment.  He  has  refused,  by  his  own 
of  cube  roots,  for  instance,  and  short  cuts  for  :  statement,  offers  of  engagement,  for  fear  of 


trigonometry.  A  power  consisting  of  thirty 
figures  takes  him  four  or  five  minutes  to 
extract  its  cube  root  mentally — an  astound- 
ing feat ;  for  a  good  arithmetician  will  re- 
quire three-quarters  of  an  hour  to  do  the 
same  thing  with  pencil  and  slate.  He  has 
projected  a  mathematical  book,  to  facilitate 
and  shorten  intricate  operations  of  the  kind, 
but  has  hitherto  been  prevented  by  the  diffi- 


the  responsibility ;  his  defective  sight  not 
enabling  him  to  verify  the  exactness  of  the 
figures  given  him  to  work  with,  and  thus 
placing  him  at  the  mercy  of  designing  persons 
to  produce  false  results  of  the  most  serious 
importance  and  gravity. 

Travelling,  or,  really,  vagabonding,  without 
method  or  plan,  quite  alone  and  unaided,  he 
does  not  even  derive  the  profit  he  might 


culty  of  producing  in  writing  his  imagined   from  the  proceeds   of  public   seances  as   a 


symbols. 


show.     An  arrangement  with  a  clever  leader 


return  to  the  surface  never  more. 


In  many  respects  M.  Winkler  differs  much  j  might  prove  a  good  speculation  for  both,  if 
from  ordinary  men.  He  is  of  middle  stature,  I  he  is  not  fixedly  wedded  to  gipsy-like  habits, 
with  straight  black  hair,  but  little  beard,  I  — restless,  roving,  impatient  of  all  control, 
and  a  countenance  which  would  be  agreeable  |  Brussels  is  likely  to  be  his  whereabouts  from 
but  for  its  wan  and  faded  look,  and  the  sad-  |  this  time  to  the  end  of  August ;  but  the 
ness  impressed  upon  it  by  a  pair  of  sunken  :  frequent  fate  of  these  erratic  phenomena  is, 
lack-lustre  eyes.  He  is  far  from  being  sad, '  to  sink  suddenly  to  the  lowest  depths  of 
nevertheless.  He  is,  he  says,  passionless, ;  want  and  obscurity,  and  there  to  remain,  to 
and  altogether  elastic  as  to  his  everyday 
requirements.  He  can  live  on  one  slight 
meal  a  day,  and  take  to  his  bed  and  sleep  or 
doze  for  any  given  time, 
bread,  and  quite  no  potatoes,  declaring  that 
the  latter  article  of  diet  only  makes  people 
phlegmatic  and  stupid.  He  loves  strong  tea, 
without  milk,  saturated  with  as  much  sugar 
as  it  will  hold  in  solution.  He  is  indifferent 
to  flowers  and  gardens,  or  rather  has  a  dislike 
to  them,  and  thinks  taking  a  walk  one  of  the 
most  irksome  ways  of  wasting  time.  He  is 
exceedingly  fond  of  music,  plays  the  piano 
fairly,  and  sings  in  a  steady  bass  voice  that 
descends  to  an  unusual  depth.  Being  as 
nearly  as  may  be  blind,  he  has  acquired  a 


Now  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  and  Sixpence,  neatly 

He  eats  almost  no  bound  in  cloth, 

THE  FIFTEENTH  VOLUME 

OP 

HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

Containing  the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  Juuo  of  the  present 
year. 

Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One 
Guinea, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  AVILKIE  COLLINS. 

'bury  and  Evans,  AVhiteiviars. 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Published nt  the  OfTre.TCo.  IP.AVoP.irgton  Stife!  Xorlh.Sirand.    Trinted by  BRAIIBI'IIT  &Ev*ns,  WMtefriars,  London, 


"Familiar  in  their  MoutJis  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS."— 


-  386.] 


A   WEEKLY   JOUENAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 

SATURDAY,  AUGUST  15,  1857. 


f  Pares  2cl. 
(  STAMPED  3d. 


THE  STAB  OF  BETHLEHEM. 


Six  hundred  and  ten  years  ago  a  sheriff  of 
London,  named  Simon  Fitz-Mary,  founded 
and  built,  in  the  parish  of  Bishopsgate,  near 
the  north-east  corner  of  Lower  Moorfields,  a 
priory  dedicated  to  St.  Mary  of  Bethlehem. 
It  was  required  that  the  prior,  canons,  bro- 
thers and  sisters  maintained  upon  this  foun- 
dation should  represent  the  darkness  of  night 
in  their  robes ;  each  was  to  be  dressed  in 
complete  black,  and  wear  a  single  star  upon 
the  breast.  Into  the  darkness  of  the  clouded 
mind  of  the  poor  lunatic,  no  star  then  shone. 
He  lived  the  life  of  a  tormented  outcast. 

The  priory  of  St.  Mary  of  Bethlehem  in 
Bishopsgate,  was  within  two  dozen  years  of 
completing  the  third  century  of  its  life  as  a 
religious  house,  when  there  were  great 
changes  at  work  among  religious  houses  in 
this  country,  and  a  London  merchant-tailor 
— Stephen  Genuings — offered  to  pay  forty 
pounds  towards  buying  the  house  of  Bethle- 
hem and  turning  it  into  a  hospital  for  the 
insane. 

Twenty-two  years  later,  King  Henry  the 
Eighth  made  a  gift  of  the  house  to  the  City 
of  London,  and  it  then  first  became,  by  order 
of  the  city  authorities,  a  lunatic  asylum. 
Only  the  faintest  glimmer  of  the  star  that 
was  the  harbinger  of  peace  then  pierced  the 
night  of  the  afflicted  mind.  The  asylum  was 
a  place  of  chains,  and  manacles,  and  stocks. 
In  one  of  the  last  years  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, Avhen  Bethlehem,  as  a  place  of  refuge — 
or  rather  of  custody — for  the  insane,  was 
fifty-three  years  old,  a  committee  appointed 
to  report  upon  it,  declared  the  house  to  be  so 
loathsome  and  filthy  that  it  was  not  fit  for 
any  man  to  enter. 

Seventy  more  years  went  by,  and  the  old 
house  was  then  not  only  loathsome  in  all  its 
cells,  but  as  to  the  very  substance  of  its  walls 
decayed  and  ruinous.  A  new  building 
became  necessary,  land  was  granted  by  the 
mayor  and  corporation,  in  Coleman  Street 
•ward,  and  funds  for  a  new  building  were  col- 
lected. A  pleasant  little  incident  is  told 
of  the  collection.  The  collectors  came  one 
day  to  the  house  of  an  old  gentleman, 
whose  front  door  was  ajar,  and  whom  they 
heard  inside  rating  his  servant  soundly, 
because,  after  having  lighted  a  fire  with  a 


match,  she  had  put  the  match  into  the  fire, 
when  it  could  have  been  used  a  second  time, 
|  because  it  was  tipped  with  sulphur  at  both 
ends.  To  their  surprise  this  old  gentleman 
— when  the  collectors  asked  him  for  some 
money — counted  out  to  them,  quite  cheer- 
fully, four  hundred  guineas.  They  remarked 
upon  what  they  had  overheard. 

"  That  is  another  thing,"  said  he.  "  I  do 
not  spend  this  money  in  waste.  Don't  be 
surprised  again,  masters,  at  anything  of  this 
sort ;  but  always  expect  most  'from  prudent 
people  who  mind  their  accounts." 

Partly  with  charitable  purpose,  partly 
with  selfish  purpose,  to  provide  a  place  of 
confinement  for  the  lunatics,  whom  it  was 
not  safe  to  leave  loose  in  the  streets  of  Lon- 
don, abundant  funds  were  raised ;  and,  in  the 
year  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-five,  the 
first  stone  of  a  new  Bethlehem  was  laid — 
south  of  Moorfields — on  London  Wall.  The 
building  was  a  large  one,  with  two  wings 
devoted  to  incurables.  It  had  garden-ground, 
and  at  its  entrance -gate  were  set  up  the  two 
stone  figures  of  madness  carved  by  Gibber — 
Colley  Gibber's  father — who  is  nearly  as  well- 
known  by  them  as  by  the  emblematical 
figures  at  the  base  of  the  monument  on  Fish 
Street  Hill,  of  which  also  he  was  the  sculp- 
tor. One  of  the  figures  representing  madness, 
is  said  to  have  been  modelled  from  Oliver 
Cromwell's  big  door-keeper  who  became 
insane.  The  two  figures — repaired  by  Bacon 
— stand  in  the  entrance-hall  of  the  existing 
Bethlehem. 

But  the  existing  Bethlehem  is  not  that 
which  was  built  in  sixteen  hundred  and 
seventy-five,  facing  the  ground  in  Moorfields 
then  a  pleasaunce  to  the  citizens,  laid 
out  with  trees,  grass,  railings,  and  fine 
gravel-paths,  and  traversed  by  a  broad  and 
shady  walk  parallel  to  the  hospital,  that 
was  known  as  the  City  Mall.  Bethlehem, 
while  the  pleasaunce  lasted,  was  a  part  of  it. 
For  a  hundred  years  an  admission  fee — first, 
twopence  and  then  of  a  penny — was  the 
charge  for  a  promenade  among  the  lunatics.- 
The  more  agreeable  of  the  sufferers  were 
lodged  conveniently  on  the  upper  stories,  and 
the  more  afSicted  kept  in  filth  within  the 
dungeons  at  the  basement. 

Bethlehem,  as  an  asylum  for  the  insane, 
even  in  its  first  state  of  sixteenth  century 


VOL.  xvr. 


3.SG 


14G 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


loathsomeness,  while  it  was  still  half  a  reli- 
gious house,  had  been  a  show-place.  Thus, 
certain  gentlemen  in  one  of  Dekker's  plays 
ask  : 

"  May  we  see  some  of  those  •wretched  souls 
That  are  here  in  your  keeping?" 

And  the  answer  is  from 

(i  FRIAH.  ANSELMO  (in  charge  of  BelJderti). — Yes 

you  shall : 

But,  gentlemen,  I  must  disarm  you,  then. 
There  are  of  madmen,  as  there  are  of  tame,— 
All  humour' d  not  alike.     We  have  here  some 
So  apish  and  fantastic,  play  with  a  feather  : 
And  tho'  'twould  grieve  a  soul  to  see  God's  image 
So  blemished  and  defaced,  yet  do  they  act 
Such  an  tick  and  such  pretty  lunacies, 
That  spite  of  sorrow  they  will  make  you  smile. 
Others,  asrain,  we  have,  like  angry  lions, 
Fierce  as  wild  bulls,  untameable  as  flies  : 
And  these  have  oftentimes  from  strangers'  sides 
Snatch'd  rapiers  suddenly,  and  done  much  liar  in  ; 
Whom,  if  you'll  see,  you  must  be  weaponless." 

No  doubt  a  like  rule  was  imposed  also : 
upon  the  promenaders  who  strolled  into , 
Bethlem  from  the  City  Mall.  It  was  only  • 
in  the  year  seventeen  hundred  and  seventy, ' 
that  the  asylum  ceased  to  be  included  among 
penny-shows. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  present  century, 
the  second  hospital  being  of  not  more  than  j 
about  one  hundred  and  thirty  years'  standing, ! 
it  was   found  necessary  to    rebuild    it    on ! 
another  site.    The  City  of  London  granted 
eleven    acres    on    the    Surrey  side    of   the  j 
Thames,   which    were    part    of   its  Bridge-  j 
House  estate,  for  eight  hundred  and  ninety-  ! 
five  years,  dating    from  the    year   eighteen 
hundred  and  ten.      Two    years    later,    the 
first   stone   of  the   existing  Bethlehem  was 
laid    by  the    Lord  Mayor,   and  the   build- 
ing was  completed — two-and-forty  years  ago 
— at  an  expense  of  about  one  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  pounds,  of  which  sum  more 
than  half  was  contributed  by  the  country  in 
successive  grants  from  parliament.     As  the 
united  hospital  of  Bridewell  and  Bethlehem, 
the  establishment  is  well  endowed,  drawing 
from    its   estates    and   funded   property   an 
income    of  about    thirty    thousand   pounds 
a-year.      That    is    the    first    material    fact 
in    a  case    which    we    shall    presently    be 
stating. 

But  even  at  the  time,  so  recent  as  it  is, 
when  the  new  Bethlehem  was  built,  and  for 
some  yeai*s  after,  the  star  of  Bethlehem  was 
set  in  the  deep  blackness  of  night.  Simon 
FItz-Mary'a  priors,  in  the  dress  he  prescribed 
for  them,  might  b"e  emblems  of  the  light  that 
had  shed  no  ray  into  the  darkness  round 
about.  None  needed  more  than  the  lunatic 
to  know,  and  none  knew  less  than  he  did,  of 
a  star  that  should  lead  to  peace  on  earth  and 
goodwill  among  men.  Afflicted  with  a  disorder 
which  we  now  understand  to  result  mainly, 
perhaps  invariably,  from  depressing  causes, 
he  was,  till  the  beginning  of  this  century  and 
after  it,  submitted  to  depressing  treatment 


that  alone  would  have  sufficed  to  drive  the 
healthiest  to  madness.  The  remedy  for  lunacy 
which  we  now  find  in  cheerfulness  and  hope 
was  sought  in  gloom  and  terror.  It  was  the 
accepted  doctrine  as  regards  the  lunatic,  that 
he  should  not  find  peace  on  earth  or  meet 
with  goodwill  among  men.  At  the  beginning 
of  this  century  insane  people  were  chained 
up,  and  even  flogged  at  certain  periods  of  the 
moon's  age.  Treacherous  floors  were  con- 
trived that  slipped  from  under  them,  and 
plunged  them  into  what  were  called  baths  of 
surprise.  One  device,  supposed  to  be  reme- 
dial in  its  effect,  was  to  chain  the  unhappy 
sufferer  inside  a  well  contrived  so  that  water 
should  creep  slowly,  slowly  from  his  feet  up 
to  his  knees,  from  his  knees  to  his  arms,  from 
his  arms  to  his  neck,  and  stop  only  in  the 
moment  that  it  threatened  him  with  instant 
suffocation.  Dr.  Darwin  invented  a  wheel  to 
which  lunatics  were  fastened  on  a  chair,  and 
on  which  they  were  set  revolving  at  a  pace 
varying  up  to  one  hundred  revolutions  in  a 
minute.  Dr.  Cox  suggested  an  improvement 
applicable  in  some  cases,  that  was  to  consist 
in  whirling  round  the  lunatic  upon  this 
wheel  in  a  dark  chamber,  and  assailing  his 
senses  at  the  same  time  with  horrid  noises 
and  foul  smells. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  tell  the  his- 
tory of  that  great  change  in  the  treatment 
of  insanity  which  is  one  of  the  most  welcome 
signs  of  the  advance  of  knowledge  and  civi- 
lisation in  the  present  century.  Only  forty 
years  ago,  when  in  France  the  experience  of 
Pinel  at  the  Bicetre  had  already  gone  far  to 
reverse  in  many  minds  and  in  some  places 
the  old  doctrine  of  restraint  and  terror,  at 
Bethlehem  there  were  found  ten  women  in  one 
side  room  chained  to  the  wall,  wearing  no 
dress  but  a  blanket,  and  without  even  a 
girdle  to  confine  the  blanket  at  the  waist. 
There  were  other  such  spectacles,  and  there  was 
a  man  whose  situation  is  the  subject  of  one  of 
the  plates  in  the  work  of  Esquirol.  In  the  wise 
and  good  Dr.  Conolly's  recent  book  upon  the 
treatment  of  the  insane,  the  case  of  this  man, 
buried  in  thick  darkness  beneath  the  star  of 
Bethlehem,  is  thus  described.  His  name  was 
Novris.  "  He  had  been  a  powerful  and  vio- 
lent man.  Having  on  one  occasion  resented 
what  he  considered  some  improper  treat- 
ment by  his  keeper,  he  was  fastened  by  a 
long  chain,  which  was  ingeniously  passed 
through  a  wall  into  the  next  room,  where  the 
victorious  keeper,  out  of  the  patient's  reach, 
could  drag  the  unfortunate  man  close  to  the 
wall  whenever  he  pleased."  To  protect  him- 
self, Norris  wrapped  straw  about  his  fetters. 
A  new  torment  was  then  invented.  "  A  stout 
iron  ring  was  riveted  round  his  neck,  from 
which  a  short  chain  passed  to  a  ring  made  to 
slide  upwards  and  downwards  on  an  upright, 
massive  iron  bar,  more  than  six  feet  high, 
inserted  into  the  wall.  Round  his  body  a 
strong  iron  bar,  about  two  inches  wide,  was 
riveted  ;  on  each  side  of  the  bar  was  a  cir- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  STAR  OF  BETHLEHEM. 


[August  15,  US;.]        147 


cular  projection,  which,  being  fastened  to  and 
enclosing  each  of  his  arms,  pinioned  them 
close  to  his  sides.  The  effect  of  this  appa- 
ratus was  that  the  patient  could  indeed  raise 
himself  np  so  as  to  stand  against  the  wall, 
but  could  not  stir  one  foot  from  it,  could  not 
walk  one  step,  and  could  not  even  lie  down 
except  on  his  back  ;  and  in  this  thraldom  he 
had  lived  for  twelve  years  !  During  much  of 
that  time  he  is  reported  as  having  been 
rational  in  his  conversation.  But  for  him,  in 
all  those  twelve  years,  there  had  been  no 
variety  of  any  kind,  no  refreshing  change,  no 
relief ;  no  fresh  air,  no  exercise  ;  no  sight  of 

fields,  or  gardens,  or  earth,  or  heaven 

It  is  painful  to  have  to  add,  that  this  long- 
continued  punishment  had  the  recorded  ap- 
probation of  all  the  authorities  of  the  hos- 
pital." 

But  the  star  of  Bethlehem  had  then  already 
begun  to  shine  effectually.  Slowly  the  dark- 
ness melted  into  light,  but  it  lurked  long  in 
many  corners  of  the  place — so  long,  that  only 
five  or  six  years  ago  Bethlehem  Hospital  was, 
on  account  of  offences  against  light  and 
knowledge,  which  it  was  said  to  shelter, 
made  the  subject  of  a  parliamentary  inquiry. 
By  that  inquiry  the  authorities  were  roused 
to  energetic  action.  They  had  unwittingly 
allowed  the  hospital  to  fall  in  several  respects 
behind  some  kindred  institutions  that  kept 
pace  with  the  improving  knowledge  of  the 
day.  In  a  liberal  and  earnest  spirit  they  have 
since  been  working  to  make  good  their  error  ; 
aided  by  a  new  superintendent  at  once 
thoughtful  and  energetic,  they  now  lead 
where  they  used  to  lag  upon  the  road. 

One  change  that  has  been  rather  lately 
made  is  characteristic  enough  of  the  rest. 
The  brickwork  which,  except  a  round  hole  or 
a  fanlight,  used  to  fill  up  the  outlines  of  what 
would  have  been  windows  in  an  ordinary 
house,  has  all  been  knocked  away  ;the  bars  and 
double  bars  between  the  patient  and  the  light 
have  been  uprooted ;  large  well-glazed  windows 
with  the  glass  set  in  light  iron  frames,  that 
look  even  less  prison-like  than  thicker  frames 
of  wood,  have,  throughout,  been  substituted 
for  the  grated  crannies  which  are  still  pre- 
served by  Government  in  that  part  of  the 
hospital  devoted  to  state  prisoners ;  and  in 
this  way  the  quantity  of  light  and  sunshine 
let  into  all  the  rooms  and  wards  has  been 
increased  sevenfold,  or  even  tenfold.  It  gives 
life  to  the  flowers  in  the  wards,  sets  the  birds 
singing,  and  brightens  up  the  pictures  and 
pleasant  images  with  which  the  walls  are  all 
adorned.  Light  has  been  let  into  Bethlehem 
in  more  senses  than  one.  It  is  now  an 
a9ylum  of  the  most  unexceptionable  kind. 
That  is  the  second  material  fact  in  the  case 
which  we  shall  presently  be  stating. 

For,  we  have  a  special  case  to  state  nearly 
concerning  a  large  section  of  society,  and 
we  are  coming  to  it  surely,  although  slowly. 
But  we  must  dwell  for  a  little  while  upon  the 
pleasantness  of  Bedlam.  We  went  over  the 


hospital  a  week  or  two  ago.  Within  the 
entrance  gates,  ns  we  went  round  the  lawn 
towards  the  building,  glancing  aside,  we  saw 
several  groups  of  patients  quietly  sunning 
themselves  in  the  garden,  some  playing  on  a 
grass-plat  with  two  or  three  happy  little 
children.  We  found  afterwards  that  these 
were  the  children  of  the  resident  physician 
and  superintendent,  Dr.  Hood.  They 
are  trusted  freely  among  the  patients,  and 
the  patients  take  great  pleasure  in  their 
presence  among  them.  The  sufferers  feel  that 
surely  they  are  not  cut  off  from  fellowship  with 
man — not  objects  of  a  harsh  distrust — when 
even  little  children  come  to  play  with  them, 
and  prattle  confidently  in  their  ears.  There 
are  no  chains  nor  strait  waistcoats  now  in 
Bethlehem  ;  yet,  upon  the  staircase  of  a  ward 
occupied  by  men — the  greater  number  of 
whom  would,  in  the  old  time,  have  been  beheld 
by  strong-nerved  adults  with  a  shudder — 
there  stood  a  noble  little  boy,  another  frag- 
ment of  the  resident  physician's  family, 
with  a  bright  smile  upon  his  face,  who  looked 
like  an  embodiment  of  the  good  spirit  that 
had  found  its  way  into  the  hospital,  and 
chased  out  all  the  gloom. 

Except  the  detached  building  for  women 
which  is  under  the  direction  of  the  State, 
and  in  which  are  maintained  criminals  dis- 
charged from  punishment  on  the  ground  of 
lunacy — and  this  dim  building,  full  of  bolts 
and  bars,  in  which  male  patients  are  herded 
without  system,  is  a  bit  of  the  old  obsolete 
gloom  deserving  of  the  heaviest  censure,  and 
disgraceful  alike  to  the  Governors  of  the 
Hospital  and  the  Governors  of  the  State—- 
except this,  all  the  wards  of  Bethlehem  are 
airy  and  cheerful.  In  the  entrance  hall 
there  is  a  sharp  contrast  manifest  upon 
the  threshold  between  past  and  present. 
Gibber's  two  hideous  statues  of  the  mad- 
men of  old,  groaning  in  their  chains,  are 
upon  pedestals,  to  the  right  hand  and  the 
left.  Before  us  is  a  sunny  staircase,  and  a 
great  window  without  bar  or  grating,  except 
that  made  by  the  leaves  of  growing  plants. 
The  song  of  a  bird  is  the  first  sound  that 
greets  the  ear.  We  pass  from  room  to  room, 
and  everywhere  we  find  birds,  flowers,  books, 
statuettes,  and  pictures.  Thousands  of  middle 
class  homes  contain  nothing  so  pretty  as  a 
ward  in  Bedlam.  In  every  window  growing 
plants  in  pots,  ferneries  in  Ward's  cases. 
Singing  birds  in  cages,  and  sometimes,  also, 
baskets  of  flowering  plants,  are  hung  in  two 
long  lines  on  each  side  of  the  room,  and  in. 
the  centre  of  one  wall  there  is,  in  every  ward, 
an  aviary.  All  spaces  between  the  windows 
are  adorned  with  framed  engravings ; — spoiled 
prints,  that  is  to  say,  impressions  from,  for 
the  most  part,  valuable  and  costly  plates,  in. 
which  there  is  some  flaw  that  might  easilyescape 
the  inexperienced  eye,  have  been  presented  to 
the  hospital  in  great  numbers  by  considerate 
printsellers,  and  hundreds  of  these  ornament 
its  walls,  varnished,  framed,  and  screwed  per- 


148       [August  15,  1557.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


mauently  iu  their  places  by  the  patients  them- 
selves. Scarcely  less  numerous  are  the 
plaster  busts  and  statuettes  on  little  brackets. 
The  tables  in  every  room  are  brought  to  a 
bright  polish  by  the  hand-labour  of  its 
tenants,  and  their  bright  surface  adds  much 
to  the  elegance  and  lightness  of  the  general 
effect.  Upon  the  tables  are  here  and  there 
vases,  containing  fresh  or  artificial  flowers, 
newspapers,  and  other  journals  of  the  day, 
books,  chess-boards,  and  draught-boards.  A 
bagatelle-board  is  among  the  furniture  of 
every  ward  ;  generally  it  includes  also  a 
piano  or  an  organ.  We  have  spoken  gene- 
rally of  a  ward,  but  the  word  does  not  mean 
only  one  long  room  or  portion  of  a  gallery. 
There  is  that  common  room  ;  there  is  a  not 
less  cheerful  dining-room ;  there  is  a  bath- 
room, an  infirmary ;  and  there  are  the  old 
dungeon-cells,  once  lighted  by  a  round  hole, 
and  supplied  with  a  trough  on  the  floor  for 
bed,  and  with  an  open  drain-hole  for  toilet  fur- 
niture,— now  transformed  into  light  and  airy 
little  bedrooms,  with  a  neat  wooden  bedstead 
duly  equipped  to  take  rest  upon,  and 
carpet  on  the  floor.  Dismal  old  stoves  have 
been  removed,  and  the  hot  air  apparatus,  by 
which  the  building  is  warmed,  is  assisted,  for 
the  sake  of  ventilation  and  of  cheerfulness, 
with  open  fires. 

Again,  there  is  at  the  top  of  the  build- 
ing, with  glass  walls,  and  supplied  with 
lights  for  evening  and  foggy  weather,  one 
of  the  best  billiard-rooms  iu  the  thi-ee 
kingdoms,  maintained  for  the  use  of  the 
patients.  It  is  fully  adapted  for  its  purpose, 
and  is  comfortably  furnished  ;  a  large  table, 
upon  which  are  arranged  magazines  and 
newspapers,  not  being  forgotten.  Out  of 
doors  there  are  pleasant  airing  grounds ; 
there  is  the  poultry  to  feed  ;  there  are  sundry 
fittiugs  destined  to  provide  amusement  ; 
there  is  a  good  bowling-green  and  skittle- 
ground. 

Furthermore,  there  is  good  diet.  The  die- 
tary at  Bethlehem  has  been  liberal  for  many 
years ;  it  being  now  clearly  understood  that 
full  nourishment  to  the  body  is  of  important 
service  in  the  treatment  of  insanity.  There 
is  a  liberal  allowance  daily  of  good  meat  and 
beer,  with  no  omission  of  the  little  odds  and 
ends  that  make  eating  and  drinking  burdens 
upon  life  not  altogether  unendurable,  and 
take  the  idea  of  prison-commons  quite  out  of 
the  hospital  allowance.  In  one  cool  room 
we  found  a  nest  of  plates  containing  goose- 
berry pie,  which  had  been  deposited  there  by 
their  owners,  simply  because  the  room 
was  cool  and  the  day  hot.  If  there  be  two 
ideas  that  never  before  came  into  association 
in  our  minds,  they  are  gooseberry-pie  and 
Bedlam. 

As  to  all  the  small  comforts  of  life,  patients 
in  Bethlehem  are  as  much  at  liberty  to  make 
provision  for  themselves  as  they  would  be  at 
home.  The  restraint  to  which  they  are 
subject  is,  in  fact,  that  to  which  thev  would 


be  subjected  at  home,  if  they  could  there,  as 
in  the  hospital,  put  their  case  under  the  direc- 
tion of  a  competent  physician.  Their  pleasures 
are  not  even  always  bounded  by  the  hospital 
walls.  They  go  in  little  knots,  with  an 
attendant,  to  enjoy  the  sights  of  London  and 
the  country  round  about. 

When  we  compare  with  such  details  the 
tale  of  Norris,  twelve  years  bound  in  iron 
hand  and  foot  within  these  Avails,  and  that 
within  the  present  century,  we  marvel  at  the 
quickness  and  completeness  of  the  change 
made  by  a  reversal  of  old  superstitions  on  the 
treatment  of  insanity.  The  star  of  Beth- 
lehem shines  out  at  last.  So  sure  is  th& 
influence  of  faith  and  kindness,  that  we  found 
even  in  the  refractory  ward,  glass  ferncases 
laid  handy  to  the  fist,  and  all  the  little  orna- 
ments and  pleasures  to  be  found  elsewhere. 
Not  a  case  had  been  cracked ;  not  a  plaster 
image  had  been  broken. 

Thus  we  have  in  Bethlehem  a  hospital 
endowed  for  the  service  of  society  by  bene- 
factions that  began  six  hundred  years  ago,  in 
which  poor  lunatics  can  be  maintained  and 
treated  quite  apart  from  any  system  throwing 
them  on  county  or  on  parish  rates,  not  as  the 
objects  of  a  charity,  but  as  the  receivers  of  a 
legacy  from  men  who  wished  to  be  of  use  to 
persons  who  would  find  the  legacy  an  aid  to* 
them.  The  money  was  not  left  to  the  rich 
who  need  it  not.  The  charter  of  the  hospital 
requires  therefore  that  the  patients  who  are 
admitted  should  be  poor.  This  was  inter- 
preted to  mean  chiefly  paupers,  but  the  care 
of  pauper  lunatics  devolves  on  the  society  in 
which  they  live,  and  is  accepted  by  it.  The 
great  county  lunatic  asylums  now  receive 
them,  and  for  this  reason  the  number  of 
admissions  into  Bethlehem  was  diminishing, 
when  Dr.  Hood,  the  last  appointed  resident 
physician  and  superintendent,  made  a  sug- 
gestion to  the  governors,  which,  after  careful 
inquiry,  they  found  to  be  not  only  wise, 
but  practicable  without  violation  of  their 
charter,  and  which  they  have  accordingly 
adopted. 

Bethlehem  is  not  for  the  rich  :  and,  for  the 
pauper  lunatics  of  the  community,  there  is 
now  ample  and  satisfactory  provision.  But 
there  is  an  educated  working  class,  hitherto: 
left  to  bear  its  own  sorrow  in  sickness  of  the 
mind,  or  else  be  received  among  the  paupers : — • 
curates  broken  by  anxiety  ;  surgeons  earning 
but  a  livelihood  who,  when  afflicted  with 
insanity,  are  helpless  men ;  authors  checked 
by  sudden  failing  of  the  mind  when  bread  is 
being  earned  for  wife  and  children  ;  clerks, 
book-keepers,  surveyors,  many  more  ;  wha 
often  battle  against  trouble  till  the  reason 
fails,  and  then  must  either  come  upon  the 
rates,  or,  as  far  oftener  happens,  be  supported 
by  the  toil  of  a  brave  wife's  fingers,  or  by  a 
sister  who  from  scanty  earnings  as  a  gover- 
ness pays  the  small  fee  that  can  be  afforded 
to  a  third-rate  private  lunatic  asylum.  How 
often  does  the  toiling  governess  herself  break 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  STAR  OF  BETHLEHEM, 


[August  15,  1857.]       14!) 


, — and  is  she  also,  whose  calling  proves 
that  she  has  been  compelled  to  sell-depen- 
dence, is  she,  when  her  dependence  on  her- 
self is  lost,  to  be  thrown  as  a  pauper  on  the 
county  lunatic  establishment  ?  Here  is  a 
new  use  for  Bethlehem,  and  it  is  owing 
mainly,  we  believe,  to  the  wise  thoughtful- 
ness  of  Dr.  Hood  that  upon  such  wan- 
derers as  these,  and  upon  such  only,  the 
star  of  Bethlehem  now  shines.  To  make  that 
fact  distinctly  known,  is  the  whole  object  of 
the  present  notice. 

For  the  last  twelve  months  and  always 
henceforward,  Bethlehem  Hospital  has  been 
and  will  be  an  institution  for  the  reception 
and  cure  of  no  person  who  is  a  proper  object 
for  admission  to  a  county  lunatic  asylum  ;  but 
it  will  admit  persons,  chiefly  of  the  educated 
•classes,  who  with  the  loss  of  reason  so  far 
lose  the  means  of  livelihood  that  they  cannot 
obtain  suitable  maintenance  in  a  good  pri- 
vate establishment.  They  will  be  maintained 
and  treated  while  in  Bethlehem,  free  of  all 
cost  to  themselves,  and  also  not  at  the  cost 
of  any  living  man,  but  as  the  just  receivers 
of  a  legacy  intended  for  their  use  and  benefit. 
It  is  to  be  understood  that  now,  as  hereto- 
fore, patients  in  Bethlehem  Hospital  are  of 
three  kinds.  Until  Government  shall  have 
brought  to  their  fulfilment  certain  plans 
which  it  is  said  to  cherish  secretly  for  the 
independent  custody  of  criminal  lunatics, 
there  will  be  criminal  lunatics  in  Bethlehem  ; 
but  the  building  occupied  by  them  is  per- 
fectly detached  from  the  main  structure,  and 
is  not  under  the  control  of  the  hospital  autho- 
rities. In  Bethlehem  proper,  it  is  necessary 
that  a  certain  portion  of  the  yearly  income, 
arising  from  gifts  made  expressly  upon  that 
condition,  should  be  spent  upon  the  suste- 
nance and  relief  of  incurable  patients.  The 
number  supported  by  this  fund  is  limited, 
and  there  are  always  candidates  for  admis- 
sion to  the  wards  of  the  incurables  awaiting 
any  vacancy  that  may  occur.  The  rest  of 
the  hospital  and  the  main  part  of  it,  the 
leading  design  also  of  the  institution,  is  for  the 
cure,  not  the  mere  harbouring,  of  the  insane. 
It  is  only  to  cases  which  there  is  fair  reason  to 
hope  may  prove  curable,  that  admission  will 
be  given.  Nobody  will  be  received  as  curable 
who  has  been  discharged  uncured  from  any 
other  hospital  for  lunatics,  or  whose  case  is 
of  more  than  twelve  months'  standing  ;  or 
who  is  idiotic,  paralytic  or  subject  to  any 
convulsive  fits  ;  or  who  is  through  disease  or 
physical  infirmity  unfit  to  associate  with 
other  patients.  On  behalf  of  any  person  of 
the  class  we  have  specified  who  has  become 
insane  and  whose  case  does  not  appear  to  be 
ineligible  on  any  of  the  accounts  just  named, 
application  may  be  made  to  the  resident 
physician  of  Bethlehem  Hospital,  Southwark,  | 
London,  for  a  form  which  will  have  to  be 
filled  up  and  returned.  The  form  includes 
upon  one  large  sheet  all  the  certificates , 
required  by  the  hospital,  and  every  informa-  j 


tion  likely  to  be  required  by  the  patient  and 
his  friends,  or  hers. 

A  patient  having  been  admitted,  is  main- 
tained and  treated  for  one  year.  If  he  (or 
she)  be  not  cured  at  the  expiration  of  a  year, 
and  there  remain  hope,  that  appointed  limit 
of  time  is  extended  by  three  months,  and 
perhaps  again,  and  once — but  only  once — 
again,  by  three'  months  ;  but  the  rule  of  the 
institution  is,  that  patients  be  returned  to 
their  friends,  if  uncured  at  the  expiration  of 
a  twelvemonth. 

We  did  not  know  until  we  read  a  little 
book  on  the  statistics  of  insanity,  by  Dr. 
Hood — in  which  ten  years  of  the  case-books 
of  Bethlehem  are  collated,  with  the  experience 
of  other  hospitals  for  the  insane — how  con- 
stantly insanity  is  to  be  referred  to  a  de- 
pressing influence.  Three  in  five  of  the  men, 
and  a  still  greater  proportion  of  the  women, 
who  have  come  and  gone  through  Bethlehem 
during  a  space  of  ten  years,  were  maddened 
simply  by  distress  and  anxiety.  The  other 
assigned  causes  operate  also  by  depression,— 
disappointment,  over-work,  death  of  relatives, 
bodily  illness,  the  gloom  which  some  account 
religious,  and  intemperance.  In  ten  years, 
all  Bethlehem  furnished  only  six  cases  of 
lunacy  through  sudden  joy;  and  Esquirol 
remarks  that  the  excess  of  joy  which  destroys 
life  never  takes  away  the  reason  ;  "  and," 
Dr.  Hood  adds,  "he  sets  himself  to  explain 
away  certain  cases  which  are  supposed  to 
support  a  contrary  conclusion."  Every  case 
in  his  own  experience  that  looked  like  mad- 
ness through  excess  of  joy,  he  traced,  upon 
investigation,  to  a  reaction  that  produced  the 
opposite  emotion.  The  depressing  influence 
of  solitude  is  also  a  frequent  cause  of  insanity ; 
for  which  reason  insanity  prevails  in  lonely 
mountain  districts,  and  is  much  more  com- 
mon in  England  among  people  who  live  in 
the  country  than  among  inhabitants  of 
towns.  A  cheerful  temper  and  a  busy  life, 
with  generous  and  wholesome  diet,  are  the 
best  preservatives  of  mental  health.  Against 
them  it  is  hard  work  even  for  hereditary 
tendency  to  make  any  head. 

Another  most  important  fact,  which  is 
expressed  very  clearly  in  the  Bethlehem 
tables,  urges  every  one  who  has  contemplated 
taking  advice  for  any  friend  become  insane,  to 
lose  no  time  about  it.  Every  month  of 
duration  carries  the  disorder  farther  from  a 
chance  of  cure.  The  chances  of  cure  are  four 
to  one  in  cases  admitted  for  treatment  within 
three  months  of  the  first  attack  ;  but  after 
twelve  months  have  elapsed,  the  chances  are 
reversed,  and  become  one  to  four.  Of  the 
whole  number  of  patients  admitted  for  cure 
into  Bethlehem,  cure  follows  in  three  cases 
out  of  five. 

In  saying  this,  however,  we  should  give  a 
false  impression  if  we  did  not  transfer  an 
estimate  founded  by  Dr.  Thurnam  upon  the 
traced  history  of  two  hundred  and  forty-four 
patients  of  the  York  Eetreat,  which  we  find 


150       Uugust  15,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


quoted  without  dissent  in  one  of  the  Beth-  conscious  of  a  strange  presence  in  the 
lehem  Hospital  reports :  "  In  round  numbers,  room,  which  faded  out  of  it  as  I  listened 
of  ten  persons  attacked  by  insanity,  five  I  breathless  for  some  voice  to  speak  to  me- 


recover,  and  five  die,  sooner  or  later,  during 
the  attack  ;  of  the  five  who  recover,  not  more 
than  two  remain  well  during  the  rest  of  their 
lives  ;  the  other  three  sustain  subsequent 
attacks,  during  which  at  least  two  of  them 
die.  But,  although  the  picture  is  thus  an 
unfavourable  one,  it  is  very  far  from  justify- 
ing the  popular  prejudice,  that  insanity  is 
virtually  an  incurable  disease  ;  and  the  view 
which  it  presents  is  much  modified  by  the 
long  intervals  which  often  occur  between  the 
attacks,  during  which  intervals  of  mental 
health  (in  many  cases  of  from  ten  to  twenty 
years'  duration),  an  individual  has  lived  in 
all  the  enjoyments  of  social  life." 

It  may  be  worth  while,  also,  now  that  we 
speak  of  English  insanity,  to  correct  the 
common  error  which  ascribes  a  tendency  to 
produce  insanity  and  suicide  to  our  November 
weather.  In  England  as  in  France,  in 
Bethlehem  as  in  the  Salpetriere,  the  greatest 
number  of  insane  cases  occur  in  the  six 
summer  months,  especially  in  May,  June, 
and  July.  In  London,  the  greatest  number 
of  recoveries  occur  in  November. 


Nelly's  voice  to  cheer  me — when  sound  there 


MY  WINDOW. 


I  AM  a  very  quiet  man,  fond  of  idle  dream- 
ing, fond  of  speculative  studies,  fond  of  a 
great  many  things  that  rarely  make  headway 
in  this  practical  world,  but  which  fitly  fur- 
nish forth  a  life  that  has  been  almost  blank 


was  none. 

When  Nelly  died,  I  was  a  young  man.  I 
had  hopes,  prospects,  interests,  even  ambi- 
tions in  life.  But,  after  that,  worldly  matters 
became  irksome  to  me  ;  and  worldly  pros- 
perity failed  me.  Friends  and  acquaintances 
looked  shyly  on  one  who  had  not  elasticity 
enough  to  rise  up  under  the  weight  of  a 
crushing  sorrow  ;  they  turned  their  backs  on 
me  ;  I  turned  my  back  on  them.  Henceforth 
our  ways  lay  wide  apart :  theirs,  in  amongst 
the  struggle,  the  toil,  the  great  weariness  of 
life  ;  mine,  by  the  quiet  waters  that  flow 
down  peacefully  to  death.  The  love  of  seclu- 
sion has  grown  upon  me  as  moss  grows  upon 
a  rooted  stone ;  I  could  not  wrench  myself 
away  from  it,  even  if  I  would.  Of  worldly 
pelf  I  have  little,  but  that  little  suffices  me  ; 
and,  although  my  existence  seems  selfish — nay, 
is  so — I  lack  not  interest  in  my  kind.  I 
catch  hold  of  a  slight  thread  of  reality,  and 
weave  it  into  a  tissue  of  romance.  The  facts 
that  I  cannot  know,  imagination  supplies  me 
with  ;  and  my  own  temperament,  still  and 
melancholy,  suffuses  the  story  with  a  tender 
twilight  hue,  which  is  not  great  anguish,  but 
which  takes  no  tint  of  joy. 

My  abode  is  in  one  of  the  retired  streets  of 
London.  I  know  not  where  a  man  can  be  so 
utterly  alone  as  in  this  great  Babylon.  My 
favourite  room  has  a  bay  window  overhang- 
ing the  pavement,  and  in  its  cornices,  its 


of  incident, — a  life  that  parted  with  hope '  door-frames,  and  its  lofty  carved  mantelshelf^ 
early — that  may,  in  fact,  be  said  to  have  lost  testifies  to  better  days  than  it  is  ever  likely 
the  better  part  of  its  vitality  when  Nelly  to  see  again.  The  rents  in  this  quarter  are 
died.  low  ;  and  though,  at  certain  long  intervals, 


Nelly  was  not  my  wife,   but   she   would 


the  street  is  as  forsaken  and  silent  as  Taclmor 


have  been  if  she  had  lived.     I  can  speak  of  Jin   the   wilderness,   still,  the    surging  rush, 
her  calmly  now,  but  time  was  when  my  very  the  rattle,  the  hum  of  the  vast  city,°echoes 

1-1  IP  j    i  •»  i  V       .  i  ' 


soul  sickened  for  sorrow  at  her  loss  ;  when  I 
would  have  rushed  with  eagerness  to  the 
grave  as  a  door  through  which  I  must  pass 
to  behold  her  dear  face  again.  Sometimes  a 
spasm  of  anguish  thrills  me  even  yet,  when  I 
recal  her  image,  as  she  was  when  she  left  me 
nearly  forty  years  ago ;  most  winning  fair, 
most  beautiful,  that  image  seems,  glowing 
with  innocent  youth,  palpitating  with  ten- 
derness and  joy.  Then  I  ask  myself,  will 
she  know  me  ?  will  she  love  me  ? — me,  worn 
old  and  grey — in  that  other  world,  where  we 
two  shall  surely  meet  ?  Will  the  bright 
spirit-girl  recognise  the  love  of  her  earthly 


through  my  solitude  from  dawn  till  dark.  I 
love  that  echo  in  my  heart.  It  is  company. 
If  I  had  been  a  happy,  I  should  have  been  a 
busy  man — a  worker  instead  of  a  dreamer 
That  little  IF — that  great  impassable  gulf — 
between  the  Actual  and  the  Possible  ! 

I  do  not  begin  and  end  my  romances  in  a 
day,  in  a  week,  in  a  month,  or  even  in  a  year, 
as  story-tellers  do.  The  threads  run  on  and 
on  :  sometimes  smoothly,  sometimes  in  hope- 
less entanglement.  The  merest  trifle  may 
suggest  them ;  now,  it  is  the  stealthy,  startled 
looking  back  of  a  man  over  his  shoulder,  as 
he  hurries  down  the  street,  as  if  Fate  with 


youth  in  the  man  of  full  three-score  years  I  her  sleuth-hounds,  Vengeance,  and  Justice, 
and  ten  ?     Will  her  countenance — will  mine   were  following  close  upon  his  traces ;  now, 


—be  changed  and  glorified  ?  The  angels 
cannot  be  purer  than  Nelly  was  :  purer  or 
lovelier.  I  cannot  help  thinking  of  this  re- 
union. I  cannot  help  speculating  whether 
she  is  waiting  for  me  to  come  to  her  as  iiu- 


the  downcast  grey  head  of  a  loiterer,  hands 
in  pockets,  chin  on  breast,  drivelling  aim- 
lessly nowhere  :  again,  it  is  the  pitiful  face 
of  a  little  child  clad  in  mourning ;  or,  it  is 
the  worn  figure  of  a  woman  in  shabby  gar- 


patiently  as  I  am  waiting  to  depart.  In  the  !  ments,  young,  toilsome,  hopeless  ;  or,  it  is 
dead  of  the  night  I  have  awakened  with  a !  the  same  figure  flaunting  in  silks  and  laces, 
low  trembling  at  my  heart,  and  have  been  I  but  a  hundredfold  more  toilsome,  more 


J: 


Charles  Dickens.] 


MY  WINDOW. 


[August  15,  1857.]       151 


hopeless.  Occasionally  I  take  told  of  a 
golden  thread  that  runs  from  a  good  and 
a  happy  life.  Such  a  thread  I  caught  three 
years  ago,  and  the  tissue  into  which  I 
wrought  it  is  completed  at  last.  This 
is  it : — 

I  have  mentioned  my  bay  window  over- 
hanging the  street ;  in  this  window  is  a 
luxuriously  cushioned  old-fashioned  red 
settee.  By  this  settee,  a  solid -limbed  table, 


one  of  her  pupils,"  I  said  to  myself;  and,  when 
she  was  gone  by,  I  fell  into  my  mood,  and 
sought  an  interpretation  of  that  thought- 
ful upcast  look  that  I  had  seen  upon  her  face 


under  the  trees. 

"She  was  born  in  the  country,"  I 


made 


out,  "  in  some  soft,  balmy,  sheltei*ed  spot, 
where  all  was  pretty  in  the  summer  weather. 
There  were  acacias  there,  and  these  reminded 
her  of  them.  Perhaps  some  one  she  knew 


on  which  my  landlady  every  morning  I  and  dearly  loved  had  loved  those  trees,  and 
lays  my  breakfast,  and  the  newly-come-in  !  she  saw  in  the  rippling  shadows  a  long  train 
newspaper.  It  was  while  leisurely  enjoying  ;  of  reminiscences  that  I  could  not  see — things 
my  coffee  and  unconsciously  watching  the  j  past  because  her  expression  was  tender,  yet 
tremulous  motion  of  the  acacias  which !  things  not  sad  altogether,  because  a  smile 
overtop  the  low  garden  wall  of  a  house  i  succeeded  the  little  wistful  look." 
a  little  higher  up  the  street,  that  I  first  laid  \  After  that  Thursday  morning  I  watched 
my  hand  upon  the  gleaming  thread  which  for  her  coming  twice  in  the  week,  each  time 
shines  athwart  this  grey  cobweb  romance  with  increased  interest.  I  always  give  my 
— cobweb,  I  say,  because  so  slight  is  it,  so  dream-folk  names,  such  as  their  appearance 
altogether  fancy-spun,  that  perhaps  the  and  general  air  suggest.  I  gave  her  the 
knowledge  of  one  actual  fact  of  the  case  name  of  Georgie.  She  seemed  to  have  a 
would  sweep  it  down  as  ruthlessly  and  en- ;  certain  stability  and  independence  of  cha- 
tirely  as  a  housemaid's  brush  destroys  the  racter  which  spring  out  of  an  early — possibly 
diligent  labours  of  arachne.  i  an  enforced — habit  of  self-reliance.  This  I 

Perhaps  it  was  the  quivering  green  of  deduced  from  externals,  such  as  that  though 
the  light  acacia  leaves,  with  the  sunshine  her  dress  was  always  neat  and  appropriate, 
flitting  through  and  lying  upon  the  pave-  \  it  was  never  fashionable.  She  looked  what 
ruent  like  net- work  of  gold,  that  began  my  women  among  themselves  call  nice.  I  should 
romance.  say  her  tastes  were  nice  in  the  more  correct 

Every  Thursday  and  every  Saturday  morn-   acceptation  of  the  word,  and  by  no  means 


ing,  for  some  months,  I  had  seen  a  girl  come 
round  the  street  cornel*,  without  much 
observing  her.  I  could  have  certified  that 


capricious.  She  wore  usually  a  grey  shade  of 
some  soft  material  for  her  dress ;  and,  that 
summer,  she  wore  a  plain  silky  white  shawl, 


she  was  tall  and  lissome  in  figure,  and  that  j  which  clung  to  her  figure,  a  straw-bonnet 


she  was  scrupulously  neat  in  her  dress,  but 
nothing  further.     That  me  ruing  to  which  I 


with  white  ribbon,  and  a  kerchief  of  bright 
rose   or  blue.     Her   shoes    and  her  gloves 


refer  iu  particular  was  early  in  June.     The  j  were  dainty ;    and,  from  the  habitual  plea- 


sun  was  shining  in  our  quiet  street ;  the 
birds  were  singing  blithely  in  that  over- 
grown London  garden  beyond  the  wall ;  the 
acacias  were  shivering  and  showering  the 


santness  of  her  countenance,  I  knew  that 
if  she  were,  as  my  familiar  suggested,  music 
and  singing-mistress,  the  times  went  well 
with  her.  She  had  plenty  to  do,  and  was  well. 


broken  beams  upon  the  white  stones  as '  paid, 
cheerily,  as  gaily,  as  if  the  roar  of  the  vast  Her  coming  was  as  good  as  a  happy  thought 
city  were  a  hundred  miles  away,  instead  of;  to  me.  Her  punctuality  was  extraordinary, 
floating  down  on  every  breeze,  filling  every  j  I  could  have  set  my  watch  by  her  move- 
ear,  chiming  in  like  a  softened  bass  to  the  ments  those  two  mornings  in  each  week.  I 
whisper  of  the  leaves  and  twitter  of  the  birds,  j  watched  for  her  as  regularly  as  I  watched 
My  window  was  open,  and  I  was  gazing  \  for  my  breakfast,  and  should  have  missed 


dreamily  on  the  branches  above  the  wall, 
when  a  figure  stopped  beneath  it  and  looked 
up  ;  it  was  the  young  girl  who  passed  every 
Thursday  and  Saturday  morning.  I  observed 
her  more  closely  than  I  had  yet  done,  and 
saw  that  she  was  good  and  intelligent  in 
face — pretty,  even,  for  she  had  a  clear,  stead- 
fast brow,  fine  eyes,  and  a  fresh  complexion. 
As  she  stood  for  a  minute  gazing  up  into  the 


her  much  more.  By  whatever  way  she  re- 
turned home,  it  was  not  by  my  street.  For 
two  full  months  she  came  round  the  corner 
at  ten  minutes  before  nine,  and,  glancing 
up  at  the  garden-trees,  passed  down  the  op- 
posite 
sight. 


side    of   the  pavement,  and  out   of 
All  this  time  I  could  not  add  another 


chapter  to  my  romance.     She  had  ever  the 
same  cheerful  brow,  and  quiet,  placid,  uudis- 


trees  there  was  a  curious,  wistful,  far-away  ;  turbed  mouth ;  the  same  dauntless,  straight- 
look  upon  her  countenance,  which  brightened  looking,  well-opened  eyes  ;  the  same  even, 
into  a  smile  as  she  came  on  more  quickly  for '  girlish  step,  as  regular  and  calm  as  the  beat 
having  lost  a  minute  watching  the  acacia  j  of  her  own  young  heart.  I  could  but  work 
leaves.  She  carried  in  her  hand  a  roll  out  the  details  of  the  country  home  where  the 
covered  with  dark-red  morocco,  and  walked  j  rose  on  her  cheek  bloomed,  and  where  the 
with  a  decisive  step — light  yet  regular — as  if  j  erect  lithe  shape  developed  ;  where  the  honest 
her  foot  kept  time  to  a  march  ringing  in  her !  disposition  grew  into  strength  and  principle, 
memory.  "  She  is  a  music-teacher,  going  to  >  and  where  loving  training  had  encouraged 


]~>'2       [Ansrust  15,  1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


and  ripened  the  kiudly  spirit  that  looked  out 
n.t  her  eyes.  Two  or  three  little  traits  that 
showed  her  goodness,  I  did  observe.  Never  a 
beggar  asked  of  her  in  the  street  whom  she 
did  not  either  relieve  or  speak  to  with 
infinite  goodness.  I  have  seen  her  stop  to 
comfort  a  crying  child,  and  look  after  a 
half-starved  masterless  dog  picking  about 
the  kennel  for  a  bone,  with  a  look  on  her 
face  that  reminded  me  of  my  lost  one — 
so  tender,  so  compassionate,  so  true,  pure 
womanly. 

One  evening  at  the  commencement  of 
August — it  was  about  half-past  six,  and  all 
the  sun  was  out  of  our  street — I  saw  Georgie, 
as  I  called  her  in  my  own  mind,  come  down 
the  pavement,  still  carrying  the  music  roil ; 
but  not  alone.  There  was  with  her  a  young 
man.  He  might  be  a  clerk,  or  a  doctor,  or 
a  lawyer,  or  any  other  profession  almost, 
from  his  appearance  ;  I  could  not  tell 
what.  He  was  tall,  and  certainly  well-look- 
ing ;  but  his  face  was  rather  feeble,  and  its 
complexion  too  delicate  for  a  man.  Georgie 
seemed  his  superior,  in  mind  even  more  than 
in  person.  There  was  a  suggestive  slouch  in 
liis  gait,  a  trail  of  the  foot,  that  I  did 
not  like.  He  carried  his  head  down,  and 
•walked  slowly  ;  but  that  might  be  from  ill 
health,  or  that  he  wanted  to  keep  Georgie's 
company  longer,  or  a  thousand  things  rather 
than  the  weakness  of  character  with  which, 
from  the  first  glance,  I  felt  disposed  to  charge 
him.  He  was  perhaps  Georgie's  brother,  I 
said  at  first ;  afterwards  I  felt  sure  he  was 
her  lover,  and  that  she  loved  him. 

Three  weeks  passed.  Georgie's  morning 
transits  continued  as  regularly  as  the  clock- 
stroke  ;  but  I  had  not  seen  her  any  more  in 
the  evenings,  when  I  became  aware  that  I 
had  the  young  man,  her  companion,  for  an 
opposite  neighbour.  From  the  time  of  his 
daily  exits  and  returns,  I  made  out  that  he 
must  be  employed  as  clerk  somewhere.  He 
used  to  watch  at  the  window  for  Georgie  ; 
and,  as  soon  as  he  saw  her  turn  the  corner, 
he  would  rush  out.  They  always  met  with  a 
smile  and  a  hand-shake,  and  walked  away 
together.  In  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour  he 
came  back  alone,  and  left  the  house  again  at 
ten.  This  continued  until  the  chilly  autumn 
days  set  in,  and  there  was  always  a  whirl  of 
the  acacia  leaves  on  the  pavement  under  the 
wall.  Georgie  did  not  often  look  up  in 
passing  them  now.  Perhaps  she  was  think- 
ing of  the  meeting  close  at  hand. 

The  young  clerk  I  called  Arthur.  Now 
that  I  had  him  as  a  daily  subject  of  study, 
I  began  to  approve  of  him  more.  I  do 
not  imagine  that  he  was  a  man  of  any 
great  energy  of  character  ;  and  even,  what 
little  he  might  have  possessed,  originally, 
must  have  been  sapped  by  ill  -  health 
long  since  ;  but  there  was  a  certain  intel- 
lectual expression  on  his  pale,  large  brow 
that  overbalanced  the  feebleness  of  the 
lower  part  of  his  face.  I  could  fancy  Georgie, 


in  her  womanly  faith  and  love,  idealising 
him  until  his  face  was  as  that  of  an  angel  to 
her — mild  as  St.  John's,  and  as  beautiful. 
Indolent  and  weak,  myself,  what  I  approve 
is  strength  of  will,  power  to  turn  and  bend 
ch-cumstances  to  our  profit ;  in  Arthur,  I 
detected  only  a  gentle  goodness  ;  therefore  he 
did  not  satisfy  me  for  Georgie  who,  I  said  to 
myself,  could  live  a  great,  a  noble  life,  and 
bear  as  well  the  strivings  of  adversity  as  she 
now  bore  the  sunshine  of  young  happiness. 
If  I  could  have  chosen  Georgie's  lover  he 
should  have  been  a  hero  ;  but  truth  placed 
him  before  my  eyes  too  gravely  for  miscon- 
ception. 

The  winter  was  very  harsh,  very  cold,  very 
bitter  indeed ;  but  all  the  long  months  I 
never  missed  the  bi-weekly  transits  of 
that  brave-eyed  girl.  She  had  a  thick  and 
coarse  maud  of  shepherd's  plaid,  and  a 
dark  dress  now ;  but  that  was  the  only 
change.  She  seemed  healthy-proof  against 
the  cruel  blasts  that  appeared  almost  to 
kill  poor  Arthur.  He  was  always  enveloped 
in  coat  upon  coat ;  and,  round  his  throat,  he 
wore  a  comforter  of  scarlet  and  white 
wool,  rather  gaudy  and  rather  uncommon  ; 
but  I  did  not  wonder  why  he  was  so  con- 
stant to  its  use.  when  I  remembered  that 
it  was  a  bit  of  woman's  work,  and  that 
Georgie's  fingers  had  knitted  it,  most  pro- 
bably. 

ill  or  well,  the  winter  got  over,  and  the 
more  trying  east-winds  of  spring  began. 
Arthur  did  not  often  issue  forth  to  meet 
Georgie  then,  and  I  believe  he  had  been 
obliged  to  give  up  his  situation  ;  for,  I  used  to 
see  him  at  all  times  of  the  day  in  the  par- 
lour of  the  opposite  house ;  occasionally, 
when  the  sun  was  out,  he  would  come  and 
saunter  wearily  up  and  down  the  flags  for  half 
an  hour,  and  then  drag  himself  feebly  in-doors 
again.  He  sometimes  had  a  companion  in 
these  walks,  on  whose  stalwart  arm  he 
leaned — a  good  friend,  he  seemed  to  be. 

"Ah  !  if  Georgie  had  only  loved  him!"  I 
thought,  foolishly. 

He  was  older  than  Arthur,  and  totally  differ- 
ent :  a  tall,  strong  young  fellow  with  a  bronzed 
face,  a  brisk  blue  eye,  and  a  great  brown 
beard.  The  other  looked  boyish  and  simple 
beside  him  ;  especially  now  that  he  was  so 
ill.  The  two  seemed  to  have  a  great  affec- 
tion for  each  other.  Perhaps  they  had  been 
school-fellows  and  playmates  ;  but,  at  any 
rate,  there  was  a  strong  bond  between  them, 
and  Georgie  must  have  known  it. 

I  remember  one  warm  afternoon,  at  the  be- 
ginning of  June,  I  saw  Arthur  and  Robert 
(that  was  my  gift-name  to  the  brown 
stranger)  come  out  and  begin  walking  and 
talking  together  up  and  down  the  pavement. 
They  were  going  from  the  corner  when 
Georgie,  quite  at  an  unusual  hour,  came  hurry- 
ing round  it.  She  had  in  her  hand  one  of 
those  unwieldy  bunches  of  moss-roses  with 
stalks  a  foot  long,  which  you  can  buy  iu  Lon- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


MY  WINDOW. 


[August  15,  18SM       153 


don  streets  for  sixpence,  and  she  was  busy 
trimming  them  into  some  shape  and  order  as 
she  advanced.  She  reached  the  door  of 
Arthur's  lodgings  before  they  turned  ;  and, 
just  as  she  got  to  the  step  and  seemed  about  • 
to  ring,  she  descried  them  in  the  distance. 
Spy  that  I  was,  I  detected  the  blush  that 
fired  her  face,  and  the  quick  smile  of  pleasure  | 
with  which  she  went  to  meet  them  as  they  i 
returned.  Arthur  took  the  flowers  listlessly. ' 
I  could  see  that  he  was  getting  beyond  any 
strong  feelings  of  pleasure  or  pain,  through 
sheer  debility.  In  fact,  he  was  melting  away 
in  the  flame  of  consumption  as  rapidly — to 
use  a  homely  saying — as  a  candle  lighted  at 
both  ends.  I  wondered,  more  than  once, 
whether  Georgie  was  blind  to  his  state;  for  she 
still  seemed  as  cheerful  as  ever,  and  still  wore 
that  calm,  good  expression  which  I  have  men- 
tioned before  as  characteristic  of  her.  I  believe 
she  was  quite  in  the  dark,  or  else  so  full  of 
hope  that  she  could  not  and  would  not  admit  a 
sad  presentiment.  Arthur  stood  silent  and 
tired,  while  Robert  and  she  spoke  to  each 
other;  and,  after  a  minute  or  two,  lie  grew 
impatient  and  would  go  in-doors.  I  thought 
Georgie  looked  chagrined  as  the  door  shut, 
and  she  was  left  outside.  I  could  not  quite 
interpret  that  bit.  She  remained  hesitating 
a  second  or  two,  and  then  started  very 
quickly — as  if  she  had  forgotten  something, — 
back  in  the  direction  from  which  she  had 
come. 

Sometimes  in  my  romances  I  should  like  to 
alter  the  few  certainties  that  impose  them- 
selves as  checks  on  my  fancy.  I  would  fain 
alter  here,  for  instance,  and  make  out  that 
Robert  fell  instantaneously  in  love  with 
Georgie,  and  that  poor  Arthur  was  only  a 
cousin  for  whom  she  had  a  quiet,  sisterly 
affection,  and  nothing  more, — but  I  cannot. 
They  were  surely  lovers,  whose  hearts  were 
each  bound  up  in  the  other,  and  there  was  a 
parting  preparing  for  them,  such  as  had 
severed  my  darling  and  me. 

The  Thursday  after  the  little  incident  of 
the  moss-roses  I  missed  Georgie  for  the  first 
time.  Could  she  have  passed  by  earlier,  I 
asked  myself  ?  I  was  certainly  late  for  break- 
fast. On  the  following  Saturday  it  was 
the  same.  "  She  has  given  up  her  pupil  in 
this  direction,  or  she  is  ill,"  I  said  ;  but  the 
next  week  I  watched,  with  an  anxiety 
that  quickened  every  pulse,  for  her  com- 
ing. I  took  up  my  post  on  the  settee 
early,  and  kept  my  eye  on  the  corner; 
but  never  saw  her.  On  the  succeeding 
Saturday  I  almost  gave  up  my  hope  ;  for  she 
was  still  absent,  and  I  lost  many  an  hour  in 
devising  explanations  why.  But  the  following 
Thursday  my  romance  was  continued.  When 
I  went  into  my  sitting-room  and  threw  up 
the  window  I  saw  the  thin,  pale  hand  of 
my  opposite  neighbour  holding  back  the 
curtain  of  the  window  as  he  lay  on  his  bed 
and  presently  Georgie  went  by  on  my  side, 
that  his  eyes  might,  for  a  moment,  be  cheered 


as  he  saw  her  pass.  After  that,  I  often 
saw  the  wan  face  of  Arthur  at  the  glass, 
and  sometimes  Robert's  healthy  brown 
visage  beside  it.  One  afternoon,  Georgie 
came,  as  it  were,  stealthily  to  the  door 
and  rang  the  bell.  She  had  a  little  basket 
and  some  flowers  which  she  gave  to  the 
woman  of  the  house,  with  whom  she  spoke 
for  a  while,  and  then  she  went  away  very 
grave,  downcast,  sad.  I  was  sure  that  she 
knew  at  last. 

Every  day  now,  two  incidents  recurred 
regulariy.  One,  was  the  arrival  of  the  doctor 
in  his  green  chariot ;  the  other,  the  arrival  of 
Georgie  with  her  little  basket  and  her  nose- 
gay of  flowers.  She  always  went  iu-doora 
and  stayed — sometimes  only  a  few  minutes, 
sometimes  an  hour  or  more.  At  this  time 
my  romance  got  a  new  light,  or  rather  a 
new  shadow.  I  began  to  think  that  Arthur 
was  all  Georgie  had  iu  the  world ;  for  nobody 
ever  came  with  her :  nobody  ever  spoke  to 
her,  but  the  woman  of  the  house,  and 
Robert. 

Occasionally  Robert  would  come  out  with 
her  on  the  door-step,  and  they  would  converse 
together  for  a  little  while.  It  was  about 
Arthur,  I  knew,  from  their  serious  looks  and 
glances  up  to  the  room  where  he  lay.  I  can- 
not tell  how  much  I  felt  for  Georgie,  in 
the  loneliness  by  which  my  imagination  sur- 
rounded her.  I  began  to  see  in  Arthur  many 
virtues,  many  merits,  which  must  have  made 
her  love  him,  that  I  had  never  seen  in  him 
before.  His  wan  face  looked  patient,  his  great 
brow  more  spiritual  than  ever,  and  I  was 
sure  she  would  cling  to  him  with  a  keener 
affection  as  she  beheld  him  passing  away. 
Did  I  not  remember  how  it  had  been  with  me 
and  Nelly  ! 

I  suppose  when  death  conies  amongst  us  ; 
no  matter  how  long  we  have  been  warned  ; 
how  long  we  have  used  ourselves  to  think 
that  he  might  knock  at  our  door  any 
day  —  his  coming  appears  sudden,  —  unex- 
pected. I  rose  one  morning  as  usual ;  and, 
on  looking  at  the  opposite  house,  saw  that 
the  shutters  were  closed  and  the  blinds  all 
down.  Arthur,  then,  was  dead.  The  milk- 
man came  to  the  door,  the  baker,  the  post- 
man with  his  letters  —  letters  for  a  dead 
man. 

It  was  Thursday  morning.  Georgie  would 
pass  early.  A  little  before  nine  she  came, 
ran  swiftly  up  the  house-steps  and  rang.  At  the 
same  moment,  advanced  in  another  direction, 
the  man  with  the  board  on  which  the  dead 
are  laid.  He  was  but  just  gone,  then  !  Georgie 
stood  by  to  let  him  pass  in  before  her,  and  I 
saw  the  shiver  that  ran  through  her  frame 
as  she  watched  him  up  the  stairs,  and  thought 
what  he  was  going  to  do.  Robert  came  out 
to  her ;  his  manly  face,  grief-stricken  and 
pale,  was  writhing  as  he  recounted  to  her, 
perhaps,  some  dying  message  from  Arthur, 
perhaps  some  last  token  of  his  love — I  know 
not  ^yhat. 


154       [August 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Nelly's  last  momenta, — Nelly's  death,  over 
again  to  me  ! 

Then  Georgie  came  out  crying — crying,  O  ! 
so  bitterly  ;  and  in  going  down  from  the 
door  she  dropped  the  flowers  that  she  had 
brought  in  her  hand  to  gladden  eyes  that 
the  sight  of  her  would  never  more  gladden 
on  this  earth.  Robert  picked  them  up ;  and, 
after  watching  her  a  few  minutes  on  her  way, 
went  in  again  and  shut  the  door.  But,  in  the 
afternoon,  she  returned  and  went  up-stairs  to 
see  what  had  been  her  lover.  It  is  good  to 
look  at  the  cast-off  mould  of  what  we  love  : 
it  dissevers  us  so  coldly,  so  effectually  from 
their  dust.  It  forces  us  to  look  elsewhere  for 
the  warm,  loving  soul  that  animated  it.  There 
is  nothing  in  that  clay  that  can  respond  to 
us.  That  which  we  idolised,  exists  else- 
where. 

Every  day — sometimes  at  one  hour,  some- 
times at  another  —  Georgie  came  to  the 
opposite  house,  was  admitted  by  Robert  and 
visited  the  relics  of  her  beloved.  She  seemed 
to  be  more  than  ever  alone  ;  for,  even  in  these 
melancholy  comings  and  goings,  she  was 
always  unaccompanied.  On  the  sixth  day 
from  Arthur's  death,  there  was  a  funeral ; 
and  Georgie  and  Robert  were  the  only 
mourners  who  attended  it.  Seeing  the  girl 
in  her  black  clothing,  white  and  tearful, 
I  said,  "  She  did  love  him,  and  I  hope  she 
will  stav — for  his  sake — a  widow  all  her 
life  !  " 

The  Thursday  and  Saturday  morning  tran- 
sits were  now  resumed.  Georgie  looked 
graver,  loftier,  more  thoughtful ;  like  a  wo- 
man on  whom  sorrow  has  lighted,  but  whom 
sorrow  cannot  destroy.  Robert  left  the 
opposite  house  and  sometimes  my  fancy  went 
home  with  the  poor,  lonely  girl,  and  I  won- 
dered whether  she  had  any  friend  in  the 
world  who  was  near  to  her  and  dear  to  her 
now. 

For  upwards  of  six  months  I  never  missed 
her  with  her  roll  of  music  twice  in  the  week; 
but,  at  the  end  of  that  time,  she  suddenly 
ceased  to  appear  iu  our  quiet  street,  and  I 
saw  her  no  more  for  a  long  time.  I  thought 
that  this  romance  of  mine,  like  many 
others,  was  to  melt  away  amongst  the  crowd 
of  actualities  ;  but,  yesterday,  behold  !  there 
came  upon  me  its  dramatic  conclusion. 
Georgie  and  Robert,  he  strong  and  handsome 
as  ever,  she  fair  and  lovely,  and  wearing 
garments  that  had  the  spotless  air  of  belong- 
ing to  a  new  bride,  came  like  a  startling  sun- 
break  into  its  gloom.  They  paused  opposite 
the  house  where  Arthur  died,  seemed  to 
recall  him  each  to  the  other,  and  then  walked 
on  silently  and  more  slowly  than  before;  but 
before  they  turned  the  corner  I  could  see 
Georgie  smiling  up  in  Robert's  face,  and 
Robert  looking  down  on  Georgie  with  such 
a  love  as  never  shone  in  Arthur's  cold, 
spiritual  eyes. 

For  an  instant  I  had  a  little  regret, — 
a  little  anger  against  her — but  it  passed. 


Let  Georgie  live  her  life,  and  be  happy  !  Did 
I  not  at  the  first  wish  that  Robert — and  not 
Arthur — had  been  her  choice  ? 


A  MUTINY  IN  INDIA. 


YEARS  ago,  a  brigade  of  irregular  cavalry 
lay  at  a  station  not  very  remote  from  Poona. 
It  was  composed  of  three  regiments,  in  which 
Mahomedans  and  Hindoos  were  mingled,  and 
was  renowned  for  the  very  high  state  of  its 
discipline.  In  the  war  that  had  not  very 
long  terminated,  these  troops  had  repeatedly 
distinguished  themselves,  and  by  acts  of  the 
utmost  gallantry  and  heroism  had  won  the 
highest  eulogies  from  the  commander-in-chief 
and  the  rest  of  the  army.  The  brigadier  in 
command  was  a  dare-devil  old  officer  named 
Daintry,  a  grim  soldier,  who  loved  a  tussle, 
sword  iu  hand,  as  dearly  as  Coeur  de  Lion 
himself,  and  who,  with  his  long  white  mous- 
tachios  and  scarred  face,  looked  superb  when 
in  the  saddle.  One  of  the  best  horsemen  and 
hog-hunters  in  India,  he  performed  such  won- 
ders with  the  boar-spear  as  are  still  spoken  ot 
in  the  hunting-camp,  and  I  have  myself  seen 
him  overtake  and  transfix  almost  the  whole 
of  a  sounder  of  wild  pigs  that  by  some  strange 
chance  had  galloped  right  through  our  can- 
tonments. In  the  day  of  battle,  the  bri- 
gadier was  as  full  of  fire  as  his  own  mettled 
charger  ;  his  voice  rang  like  a  trumpet,  and 
his  troopers  followed  him  with  an  unhesi- 
tating ardour  that  nothing  could  daunt. 

But,  peace  came,  and  mischief  came  with  it. 
Daintry's  great  misfortune  simply  was  this  : 
he  had  been  born  five  hundred  years  too 
late.  As  a  feudal  baron,  unable  to  read  and 
unused  to  think,  most  likely  spent  a  dull 
spell  of  rainy  weather  in  yawning  about  his 
castle  halls  and  kicking  his  unoffending  vas- 
sals, so  did  Daintry  fall  foul  of  his  vassals  as 
soon  as  there  were  no  enemies  to  be  pom- 
melled. The  brigadier  had  received  an  old- 
fashioned  education  ;  that  is  to  say,  he  wrote 
badly,  spelt  worse,  and,  as  a  matter  of  choice, 
read  not  at  all.  Indeed,  a  bookish  man  was 
the  brigadier's  abhorrence.  So,  as  he  was  an 
abstemious  drinker,  and  could  not  always  be 
hunting,  he  turned  martinet  and  tyrant  from 
sheer  idleness. 

He  worked  the  brigade  pitilessly.  Morn- 
ing, noon,  and  eve,  there  were  inspections, 
foot  and  mounted  drills,  sword  exercises,  and 
so  forth.  By  night,  though  the  country  was 
profoundly  quiet,  patrols  were  kept  in  motion, 
and  the  stony  roads  rang  to  the  clattering 
hoofs  of  the  cavalry.  Each  regiment  was 
perfect  in  its  evolutions,  but  the  men  were 
kept  day  by  day  grinding  at  their  manoeuvres 
as  if  they  had  been  the  most  awkward  squad 
of  bumpkins  alive.  Then  the  uniforms  were 
altered,  the  saddle-cloths  meddled  with,  the 
soldiers  kept  hard  at  work  sharpening  swords 
and  pointing  spears.  Once  a-week  the  sabres 
were  inspected,  and  any  blade  not  of  razor 
i  keenness  was  snapped  across  the  brigadier's 


Charles  Dickens.l 


A  MUTINY  IN  INDIA. 


[August  15,  is-tf.]       155 


knee.    In   short,  he  worried  them  as  Paul 
worried  his  Russian  guards. 

Now,  a  soldier  grows  rusty  in  idleness, 
no  doubt ;  but  when  he  is  harassed  by  cause- 
less and  perpetual  toil  he  is  apt  to  become 
sulky.  When  the  war  ended,  every  rider 
of  the  brigade  would  have  died  in  Dain- 
try's defence.  A  few  months  of  annoyance 
changed  this  devotion  into  dislike,  fast 
ripening  into  hatred.  It  was  then  that  I  was 
appointed  to  be  Daintry's  brigade-major,  to 
his  great  disgust,  for  he  was  not  above  the 
weakness  of  nepotism.  Two  of  his  regiments 
were  commanded  by  his  sons-in-law,  both  of 
whom  were  young  for  such  a  trust,  and  he 
had  solicited  my  post  for  his  wife's  nephew, 
on  the  laudable  principle  of  taking  care  of 
Dowb.  However,  rumours  of  the  discontent 
among  the  men  had  reached  head-quarters, 
and  it  was  preferred  to  select  a  brigade-major 
who  might  mediate  between  the  brigade  and 
its  rash  chief,  and  who  would  not  be  a  mere 
mouthpiece  to  the  commandant. 

I  had  been  chosen,  as  being  well  acquainted 
•with  the  language  and  the  native  habits  of 
thought;  and,  found  little  difficulty  in  gaining 
the  confidence  of  many  of  the  soldiers  and 
havildars.  But,  with  the  brigadier  I  had 
another  sort  of  task.  He  disliked  me,  as 
having  accepted  the  post  his  nephew  had 
asked  for,  on  which  account  he  offered  me  a 
hundred  petty  slights,  and  even  requested 
the  mess  to  send  me  to  "  Coventry."  Also, 
he  quietly  made  up  his  mind  to  neglect 
every  suggestion  or  remonstrance  I  could 
possibly  make.  For  me  to  oppose  an  inno- 
vation was  enough  to  confirm  the  brigadier 
in  his  decision.  As  the  old  officers  dropped 
off  or  were  got  rid  of,  their  places  were  filled 
by  boys,  who  knew  no  more  of  Hindus- 
tani than  of  Swedish,  and  were  utterly  igno- 
rant of  Hindoo  or  Mussulman  usages.  And 
before  long,  Daintry  announced  the  advent 
of  a  thorough  and  sweeping  reform.  The 
irregular  troopers  were  to  learn  infantry  drill, 
and  to  SHAVE  OFF  THEIR  BEARDS.  When  I 
fh'st  heard  this,  I  could  not  believe  the  com- 
mander to  be  serious.  But  he  swore  he 
would  not  rest  until  the  chins  of  his  grim 
Patans  and  Eajpoots  were  as  destitute  of 
beard  or  moustache  as  the  palm  of  his  hand. 

The  youngsters  who  had  just  joined,  ap- 
plauded mightily.  Fresh  from  Addiscombe 
or  Rugby,  they  thought  it  would  be  "  such  a 
capital  joke  to  shave  the  old  bearded  billy- 
goats."  In  vain  I  remonstrated,  argued, 
and  begged  for  delay.  Daintry's  headstrong 
nature  would  bear  no  check.  He,  long  as 
he  had  been  in  India,  had  learned  but  one- 
half  of  the  native  character.  Many  fall  into 
the  same  error.  They  see  the  submissive 
timidity,  the  ductile  obedience,  of  the  native ; 
his  deference  to  authority  or  assump- 
tion ;  his  childish  reverence  for  rank  ;  and 
they  think  there  are  no  limits  to  his  en- 
durance. Some  day  they  are  terribly  unde- 
ceived. So  it  was  in  this  case.  The  order 


was  read  out  on  parade ;  and  even  the 
instincts  of  discipline  could  not  restrain  a 
murmur  that  gradually  swelled  into  a  shout 
of  indignation.  One  regiment  in  especial, 
sent  in  a  memorial,  which  I  read  with  sur- 
prise, sojust  and  temperate  was  its  language. 
"  We  are  horsemen,"  said  the  soldiers,  "  and 
the  sous  of  horsemen,  and  have  shed  our 
blood  under  your  banners.  If  you  are  dis- 
pleased with  us,  give  us  our  discharge.  We 
will  go,  blessing  you  for  your  bread  and  salt 
that  we  have  eaten.  But  we  were  not  hired 
for  the  drill  of  foot  soldiers,  and  to  that 
degradation  we  cannot  submit."  Daiutry 
swore  like  a  Bedlamite.  To  crown  all,  he" 
ordered  the  regiment  to  come  on  parade 
SHAVED.  The  regiment  paraded,  but  not  a 
man  had  complied.  The  brigadier  selected 
two  sergeants,  both  Mahometans,  a  Patau 
and  a  Belooch,  and  ordered  his  servants  to 
hold  them  down  on  the  ground  while  their 
beards  were  shaved  off  by  a  barber. 

To  realise  the  full  effect  of  this  most 
unwise  order,  one  should  remember  that  a 
Mahometan  invests  his  beard  with  a  species 
of  sanctity,  tends  it  with  jealous  care,  values 
it  above  his  life,  swears  by  it  his  most  solemn, 
oaths,  and  resents  an  affront  to  it  as  the 
worst  of  insults.  One  should  remember, 
also,  that  these  men  were  all,  Moslem  and 
Hindoo,  of  good  parentage,  sons  of  land- 
holders, Potails  and  Zemindars :  military 
adventurers,  in  fact,  who  possess  horses  and 
weapons  of  their  own,  and  by  themselves 
and  their  officers  are  styled  and  considered 
gentlemen,  being  all  of  a  class  far  superior 
to  that  which  furnishes  the  sepoy.  The 
regiment  looked  on  in  sullen  silence,  and  no 
immediate  outbreak  took  place. 

But,  at  dawn  next  morning,  I  was  awakened 
by  finding  Daintry  in  full  dress,  spurred  and 
booted,  at  my  bedside. 

"Up  with  you,"  said  he,  more  good- 
humouredly  than  usual ;  "  your  horse  is 
being  saddled.  You  must  ride  with  me,  for 
there's  a  mutiny,  by ." 

"  I  told  you  how  it  would  turn  out,"  said 
I,  rubbing  my  eyes,  and  reluctantly  rising. 
I  was  not  five  minutes  dressing,  and  off  we 
galloped,  with  a  dozen  troopers  and  armed 
peons  at  our  heels.  There,  on  a  round  hill, 
a  red  flag  was  flying,  the  flag  of  mutiny.  A 
drum  was  beating  and  already  a  crowd  of 
disaffected  soldiers  had  collected,  and  more 
were  gathering  by  twos  and  threes. 

The  ringleaders,  conspicuous  among  the 
others,  were  the  two  Mussulmans  who  had 
been  so  roughly  used  the  day  before.  When, 
we  approached,  a  hundred  carbines  were 
pointed  at  us.  Daintry  tried  to  address  the 
mutineers.  A  yell  drowned  his  voice.  I  made 
the  next  essay,  and  succeeded  better. 

"  The  brigadier  may  approach,"  called  out 
the  Patan  ringleader,  "but  no  armed  men 
shall  come  near  us,  only  the  chief  and  his 
brigade-major." 

And  they  presented  their  weapons  at  the 


156       ['.ugutt  15,  1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


sewars  who  pressed  behind  us.  Daintry, 
who  was  as  brave  as  a  lion,  bade  his  followers 
fall  back,  and  advanced.  I  tried  in  vain  to 
dissuade  him,  knowing  how  little  fit  he  was 
to  conciliate.  But  he  persisted,  and  so  in 
among  them  we  went.  , 

"  You  have  won  great  honours  by  our 
valour,"  cried  the  irregulars  to  Daintry, 
"  and  you  have  oppressed  us  since  the  foe 
was  conquered.  Now  we  will  serve  no  more. 
We  ask  our  discharge.  Give  it  us." 

A  parley  ensued.  Daintry  would  yield 
nothing.  The  affair  was  hopeless.  The  bri- 
gadier retired,  to  give  me  a  chance  of  per- 
suasion. 

"  Now,  sahibs  and  comrades,"  said  I,  "you 
know  me,  and  I  understand  you.  I  cannot 
treat  with  armed  mutineers,  but  go  and  pile 
your  arms  before  my  house,  and  I  pledge 
you  my  honour  as  an  English  officer,  you 
shall  have  your  discharge." 

After  a  long  discussion,  I  won  them  over 
to  this,  and  they  were  already  moving  from 
the  hill-top,  when  the  brigadier  returned. 
Briefly  I  explained  the  bargain,  and  asked 
him  to  ratify  the  compact,  and  end  the  affair. 
Daintry  electrified  me  by  exclaiming  in  Hin- 
dustanee  :  "  No  !  the  others  may  have  their 
discharge,  but  I'll  punish  the  cursed  ring- 
leaders !  " 

In  one  moment,  all  my  diplomacy  was 
rent  to  pieces.  Sabres,  carbines,  pistols, 
menaced  us  on  all  sides. 

"  Are  the  other  regiments  to  be  trusted  ?  " 
asked  I,  at  last. 

"  Yes  !  "  cried  Daintry  suddenly  ;  "  ride 
and  bring  them  up,  and  we'll  pepper  this 
swarthy  scum." 

He  spoke  in  English,  so  was  not  under- 
stood. I  started  on  my  errand ;  but,  by  some 
strange  infatuation,  Daintry  remained  in  the 
heart  of  the  mob.  Hard  by,  was  a  road, 
Winding  between  two  lofty  banks.  I  was 
scarcely  in  it,  when  I  met  the  leading  files 
of  a  mounted  column,  commanded  by  one  of 
Daintry's  sons-in-law.  The  colonel  had 
turned  his  regiment  out  on  hearing  of  the 
mutiny.  I  lifted  my  hand  as  a  signal.  The 
trumpeters  raised  their  instruments,  and 
sounded  the  call  to  trot.  The  blast  was 
answered  by  a  pistol-shot,  a  wild  cry,  and  a 
random  volley  of  carbines  from  the  crowd  of 
mutineers  on  the  hill  I  had  left.  Wheeling, 
I  rode  back  at  full  gallop,  the  regiment  pelt- 
ing at  my  heels.  The  mutineers  fired  again, 
but  harmlessly,  and  then  broke  and  ran. 
Many  were  cut  down,  speared,  or  trampled  : 
others  were  driven  into  the  j  uugles,  where  they 
perished  miserably,  between  fevers  and  wild 
beasts.  Few,  probably,  reached  their  homes 
again. 

We  found  Daintry  on  the  ground,  still 
breathing,  but  in  desperate  case. 

"  O  ! "  said  the  poor  fellow,  as  I  knelt  by 
him,  "  I  wish  I  had  taken  your  advice  ;  for- 
give me,  my  boy.  They've  murdered  me." 

When  the  trumpet  sounded,  the  ringleader 


had  clutched  Daintry's  bridle,  and,  as  his 
horse  reared,  shot  him  with  a  pistol.  While 
on  the  ground,  he  had  received  sixteen 
ghastly  sabre-cuts  from  blades  of  razor  keen- 
ness ;  yet  he  lived  thirty  hours,  to  the  won- 
der of  every  surgeon  in  the  cantonments, 
though  he  never  spoke  after  the  first  five 
minutes.  The  regiment  was  disbanded,  its 
name  was  blotted  out  of  the  Company's  books, 
and  the  matter  was  hushed  up  ;  a  proceed- 
ing, as  recent  events  show,  about  as  sensible 
as  screwing  down  a  safety-valve  to  guard 
against  explosions. 

Surely,  we  may  make  some  use  of  the 
follies  of  the  past,  to  serve  as  beacons  for  the 
future  ;  and  surely  those  have  much  to- 
answer  for,  who  are  prevented  by  a  foolish 
punctilio  from  exposing  the  true  causes  of  the 
rottenness  of  our  Indian  civil  and  military 
system. 


A  QUEEN'S  EEVENGE. 

THE  name  of  Gustavus  Adolphus,  the 
faithful  Protestant,  the  great  general,  and 
the  good  king  of  Sweden,  has  been  long  since 
rendered  familiar  to  .readers  of  history.  We 
all  know  how  this  renowned  warrior  and 
monarch  was  beloved  by  his  soldiers  and 
subjects,  how  successfully  he  fought  through 
a  long  and  fearful  war,  and  how  nobly  he 
died  on  tile  field  of  battle.  With  his  deathr 
however,  the  interest  of  the  English  reader 
in  Swedish  affairs  seems  to  terminate.  Those 
who  have  followed  the  narrative  of  his  life 
carefully  to  the  end,  may  remember  that  he 
left  behind  him  an  only  child — a  daughter 
named  Christina ;  but  of  the  character  of 
this  child,  and  of  her  extraordinary  adven- 
tures after  she  grew  to  womanhood,  the 
public  in  England  is,  for  the  most  part, 
entirely  ignorant.  In  the  popular  historical 
and  romantic  literature  of  France,  Queen 
Christina  is  a  prominent  and  a  notorious 
character.  In  the  literature  of  this  country 
she  has,  hitherto,  been  allowed  but  little 
chance  of  making  her  way  to  the  notice  of 
the  world  at  large. 

And  yet,  the  life  of  this  woman  is  in  itself 
a  romance.  At  six  years  old  she  was  Queen 
of  Sweden,  with  the  famous  Oxenstiern  for 
guardian.  This  great  and  good  man  governed 
the  kingdom  in  her  name  until  she  had  lived 
through  her  minority.  Four  years  after  her 
coronation  she,  of  her  own  accord,  abdicated 
her  rights  in  favour  of  her  cousin,  Charles 
Gustavus.  Young  and  beautiful,  the  most 
learned  and  most  accomplished  woman  of  her 
time,  she  resolutely  turned  her  back  on  the 
throne  of  her  inheritance,  and,  publicly  be- 
traying her  dislike  of  the  empty  pomp  and 
irksome  restraint  of  royalty,  set  forth  to 
wander  through  civilised  Europe  in  the 
character  of  an  independent  traveller  who 
was  resolved  to  see  all  varieties  of  men  and 
manners,  to  collect  all  the  knowledge  which 
the  widest  experience  could  give  her,  and  to 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  QUEEN'S  REVENGE. 


[Aagust  15,  IS', M       157 


measure  her  mind  boldly  against  the  greatest 
minds  of  the  age  wherever  she  went.  So  far, , 
the  interest  excited  by  her  character  and  her 
adventures  is  of  the  most  picturesquely- 
attractive  kind.  There  is  something  strikingly 
new  in  the  spectacle  of  a  young  queen  who 
prefers  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  to  the  pos- 
session of  a  throne,  and  who  barters  a  royal 
birthright  for  the  privilege  of  being  free. 
Unhappily,  the  portrait  of  Christina  cannot 
be  painted  throughout  in  bright  colours  only. 
It  is  not  pleasant  to  record  of  her  that,  when 
her  travels  brought  her  to  Some,  she  aban- 
doned the  religion  for  Avhich  her  father  fought 
and  died.  It  is  still  less  agreeable  to  add, 
that  she  freed  herself  from  other  restraints 
besides  the  restraint  of  royalty,  and  that,  if 
she  was  mentally  distinguished  by  her  capa- 
cities, she  was  also  morally  disgraced  by  her 
vices  and  her  crimes. 

The  events  in  the  strange  life  of  Christina — 
especially  those  which  are  connected  with 
her  actions  and  adventures  in  the  character 
of  a  queen-errant — present  the  freshest  and 
the  most  ample  materials  for  a  biography, 
which  might  be  regarded  in  England  as  a 
new  contribution  to  our  historical  literature. 
Within  the  necessarily  limited  space  at  our 
command  in  these  columns,  it  is  impossible 
to  follow  her,  with  sufficient  attention  to 
details,  through  the  adventures  which  at- 
tended her  travelling  career.  One,  however, 
among  the  many  strange  and  startling  pas- 
sages in  her  life,  may  profitably  be  introduced 
in  this  place.  The  events  of  which  the  narra- 
tive is  composed,  throw  light,  in  many  ways, 
on  the  manners,  habits,  and  opinions  of  a 
past  age,  and  they  can,  moreover,  be  presented 
in  this  place  in  the  very  words  of  an  eye- 
witness who  beheld  them  two  centuries  ago. 

The  scene  is  Paris,  the  time  is  the  close  of 
the  year  sixteen  hundred  and  fifty-seven,  the 
persons  are  the  wandering  Queen  Christina, 
her  grand  equerry,  the  Marquis  Monaldeschi, 
and  Father  le  Bel  of  the  Convent  of  Fontaine- 
bleau,  the  witness  whose  testimony  we  are 
shortly  about  to  cite. 

Moualdeschi,  as  his  name  implies,  was  an 
Italian  by  birth.  He  was  a  handsome,  ac- 
complished man,  refined  in  his  manners, 
supple  in  his  disposition,  and  possessed  of  the 
art  of  making  himself  eminently  agreeable  in 
the  society  of  women.  With  these  personal 
recommendations,  he  soon  won  his  way  to 
the  favour  of  Queen  Christina,  Out  of  the 
long  list  of  her  lovers,  not  one  of  the  many 
whom  she  encouraged  caught  so  long  and 
firm  a  hold  of  her  capricious  fancy  as  Monal- 
deschi. The  intimacy  between  them  pro- 
bably took  its  rise,  on  her  side  at  least,  in  as 
deep  a  sincerity  of  aifection  as  it  was  in 
Christina's  nature  to  feel.  On  the  side  of 
the  Italian,  the  connection  was  prompted 
solely  by  ambition.  As  soon  as  he  had  risen 
to  the  distinction  and  reaped  all  the  advan- 
tages of  the  position  of  chief  favourite  in  the 


queen's  court,  he  wearied  of  his  royal  mistress, 
and  addressed  his  attentions  secretly  to  a 
young  Koman  lady,  whose  youth  and  beauty 
powerfully  attracted  him,  and  whose  fatal 
influence  over  his  actions  ultimately  led  to 
his  ruin  and  his  death. 

After  endeavouring  to  ingratiate  himself- 
with  the  Roman  lady,  in  various  ways, 
Monaldeschi  found  that  the  surest  means  of 
winning  her  favour  lay  in  satisfying  her 
malicious  curiosity  on  the  subject  of  the 
private  life  and  the  secret  frailties  of  Queen 
Christina.  He  was  not  a  man  who  was 
troubled  by  any  scrupulous  feelings  of  honour 
when  the  interests  of  his  own  intrigues  hap- 
pened to  be  concerned  ;  and  he  shamelessly 
took  advantage  of  the  position  that  he  held 
towards  Christina,  to  commit  breaches  of 
confidence  of  the  most  inexcusably  ungrateful 
and  the  most  meanly  infamous  kind.  He 
gave  to  the  Roman  lady  the  series  of  the 
queen's  letters  to  himself,  which  contained 
secrets  that  she  had  revealed  to  him  in  the 
fullest  confidence  of  his  worthiness  to  be 
trusted  ;  more  than  this,  he  wrote  let- 
ters of  his  own  to  the  new  object  of  his 
addresses,  in  which  he  ridiculed  the  queen's 
fondness  for  him,  and  sarcastically  described 
her  smallest  personal  defects  with  a  heartless 
effrontery  which  the  most  patient  and  long- 
suffering  of  women  would  have  found  it 
impossible  to  forgive.  While  he  was  thus 
privately  betraying  the  confidence  that  had 
been  reposed  in  him,  he  was  publicly  affecting 
the  most  unalterable  attachment  and  the 
most  sincere  respect  for  the  queen. 

For  some  time  this  disgraceful  deception 
proceeded  successfully.  But  the  hour  of  the 
discovery  was  appointed,  and  the  instrument 
of  effecting  it  was  a  certain  cardinal  who  was 
desirous  of  supplanting  Monaldeschi  in  the 
queen's  favour.  The  priest  contrived  to  get 
possession  of  the  whole  correspondence  which 
had  been  privately  placed  in  the  hands  of  the 
Roman  lady,  including,  besides  Christina's 
letters,  the  letters  which  Monaldeschi  had 
written  in  ridicule  of  his  royal  mistress, 
The  whole  collection  of  documents  was 
enclosed  by  the  cardinal  in  one  packet,  and 
was  presented  by  him,  at  a  private  audience, 
to  the  queen. 

It  is  at  this  critical  point  of  the  story  that 
the  testimony  of  the  eye-witness  whom  we 
propose  to  quote,  begins.  Father  Le  Bel  was 
present  at  the  fearful  execution  of  the  queen's 
vengeance  on  Monaldeschi,  and  was  furnished 
with  copies  of  the  whole  correspondence 
which  had  been  abstracted  from  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Roman  lady.  Having  been 
trusted  with  the  secret,  he  is  wisely  and 
honourably  silent  throughout  his  narrative 
on  the  subject  of  Moualdeschi's  offence.  Such 
particulars  of  the  Italian's  baseness  and  in- 
gratitude as  have  been  presented  here,  have 
been  gathered  from  the  somewhat  contradic- 
tory reports  which  were  current  at  the  time, 
and  which  have  been  preserved  by  the  old 


158       [August 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEBS. 


[Conducted  by 


French    collectors   of    historical    anecdotes. ' 
Such  further  details  of  the   extraordinary ; 
punishment  of  Moualdeschi's  offence  as  are 
now  to  follow,  may  be  given  in  the  words  of 
Father  Le   Bel  himself.     The   reader  will 
understand  that  his  narrative  begins  imme- 
diately after  Christina's  discoveiy  of    the 
perfidy  of  her  favourite. 

The  sixth  of  November,  sixteen  hundred 
and  fifty-seven  (writes  Father  Le  Bel),  at  a 
quarter  past  nine  in  the  morning,  Queen 
Christina  of  Sweden,  being  at  that  time 
lodged  in  the  Royal  Palace  of  Fontainebleau, 
sent  one  of  her  men  servants  to  my  convent, 
to  obtain  an  interview  with  me.  The  mes- 
senger, on  being  admitted  to  my  presence, 
inquired  if  I  was  the  superior  of  the  convent, 
and  when  I  replied  in  the  affirmative,  in- 
formed me  that  I  was  expected  to  present 
myself  immediately  before  the  Queen  of 
Sweden. 

Fearful  of  keeping  her  Majesty  waiting,  I 
followed  the  man  at  once  to  the  palace,  with- 
out waiting  to  take  any  of  my  brethren  from 
the  convent  with  me.  After  a  little  delay  in 
the  antechamber,  I  was  shown  into  the 
Queen's  room.  She  was  alone  ;  and  I  saw, 
by  the  expression  of  her  face,  as  I  respect- 
fully begged  to  be  favoured  with  her  com- 
mands, that  something  was  wrong.  She 
hesitated  for  a  moment ;  then  told  me, 
rather  sharply,  to  follow  her  to  a  place 
where  she  might  speak  with  the  certainty  of 
not  being  overheard.  She  led  me  into  the 
Galerie  des  Cerfs,  and,  turning  round  on  me 
suddenly,  asked  if  we  had  ever  met  before. 
I  informed  her  Majesty  that  I  had  once  had 
the  honour  of  presenting  my  respects  to  her  ; 
that  she  had  received  me  graciously,  and 
that  there  the  interview  had  ended.  She 
nodded  her  head  and  looked  about  her  a 
little  ;  then  said,  very  abruptly,  that  I  wore 
a  dress  (referring  to  my  convent  costume) 
which  encouraged  her  to  put  perfect  faith  in 
my  honour  ;  and  she  desired  me  to  promise 
beforehand  that  I  would  keep  the  secret  with 
which  she  was  about  to  entrust  me  as  strictly 
as  if  I  had  heard  it  in  the  confessional.  I 
answered  respectfully  that  it  was  part  of 
my  sacred  profession  to  be  trusted  with 
pecrets  ;  that  I  had  never  betrayed  the 
private  affairs  of  any  one,  and  that  I  could 
answer  for  myself  as  worthy  to  be  honoured 
by  the  confidence  of  a  queen. 

Upon    this,  her    Majesty  handed    me   a 

Eacket  of  papers  sealed  in  three  places,  but 
aving  no  superscription  of  any  sort.  She 
ordered  me  to  keep  it  under  lock  and  key, 
and  to  be  prepared  to  give  it  her  back  again 
before  any  person  in  whose  presence  she 
might  see  fit  to  ask  me  for  it.  She  further 
charged  me  to  remember  the  day,  the  hour, 
and  the  place  in  which  she  had  given  me  the 
packet  ;  and  with  that  last  piece  of  advice 
she  dismissed  me.  I  left  her  aloue  in  the 
gallery,  walking  slowly  away  from  me,  with 


her  head  drooping  on  her  bosom,  and  her 
mind,  as  well  as  I  could  presume  to  judge, 
perturbed  by  anxious  thoughts.* 

On  Saturday,  the  tenth  of  November,  at 
one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  I  was  sent  for 
from  Fontainebleau  again.  I  took  the  packet 
out  of  my  private  cabinet,  feeling  that  I 
might  be  asked  for  it ;  and  then  followed  the 
messenger  as  before.  This  time  he  led  me 
at  once  to  the  Galerie  des  Cerfs.  The 
moment  I  entered  it,  he  shut  the  door 
behind  me  with  such  extraordinary  haste 
and  violence,  that  I  felt  a  little  startled. 
As  soon  as  I  recovered  myself,  I  saw  her 
Majesty  standing  in  the  middle  of  the 
gallery,  talking  to  one  of  the  gentlemen  of 
her  Court,  who  was  generally  known  by  the 
name  of  The  Marquis,  and  whom  I  soon, 
ascertained  to  be  the  Marquis  Monaldeschi, 
Grand  Equerry  of  the  Queen  of  Sweden.  I 
approached  her  Majesty  and  made  my  bow , 
then  stood  before  her,  waiting  until  she 
should  think  proper  to  address  me. 

With  a  stern  look  on  her  face,  and  with  a 
loud,  clear,  steady  voice,  she  asked  me, 
before  the  Marquis  and  before  three  other 
men  who  were  also  in  the  gallery,  for  the 
packet  which  she  had  confided  to  my  care. 
As  she  made  that  demand,  two  of  the  three 
men  moved  back  a  few  paces,  while  the 
third,  the  captain  of  her  guard,  advanced 
rather  nearer  to  her.  I  handed  her  back 
the  packet.  She  looked  at  it  thoughtfully 
for  a  little  while  ;  then  opened  it,  and  took 
out  the  letters  and  written  papers  which  it 
contained,  handed  them  to  the  Marquis 
Monaldeschi,  and  insisted  on  his  reading 
them.  When  he  had  obeyed,  she  asked  him, 
with  the  same  stern  look  and  the  same 
steady  voice,  whether  he  had  any  knowledge 
of  the  documents  which  he  had  just  been 
reading.  The  Marquis  turned  deadly  pale, 
and  answered  that  he  had  now  read  the 
papers  referred  to  for  the  first  time. 

"  Do  you  deny  all  knowledge  of  them  ?  " 
said  the  Queen.  "Answer  me  plainly,  sir. 
Yes  or  no  'I " 

The  Marquis  turned  paler  still.  "  I  deny 
all  knowledge  of  them,"  he  said,  in  faint 
tones,  with  his  eyes  on  the  ground. 

"  Do  you  deny  all  knowledge  of  these 
too  ? "  said  the  Queen,  suddenly  producing 
a  second  packet  of  manuscript  from  under 
her  dress,  and  thrusting  it  in  the  Marquis's 
face. 

He  started,  drew  back  i  little,  and 
answered  not  a  word.  The  packet  which 
the  Queen  had  given  to  me  contained  copies 
only.  The  original  papers  were  those  which 
she  had  just  thrust  in  the  Marquis's  face. 

"  Do  you  deny  your  own  seal  and  your 
own  handwriting  ?"  she  asked. 

He  murmured  a  few  won!?,  acknowledging 


*  Although  Father  Le  Bel  discreetly  abstains  from 
mentioning  the  fact,  it  seems  clear  from  the  context 
that  he  was  permitted  to  read,  and  that  he  did  read,  the 
papers  contained  in  the  packet. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  QUEEN'S  BEVENGE. 


[August  13, 


both  the  seal  a«d  the  handwriting  to  be  his 
own,  and  added  some  phrases  of  excuse,  in 
which  he  endeavoured  to  cast  the  blame  that 
attached  to  the  writing  of  the  letters  on  the 
shoulders  of  other  persons.  While  he  was 
speaking,  the  three  men  in  attendance  on 
the  Queen  silently  closed  round  him. 

Her  Majesty  heard  him  to  the  end.  "  You 
are  a  traitor,"  she  said,  and  turned  her  back 
on  him. 

The  three  men,  as  she  spoke  those  words, 
drew  their  swords. 

The  Marquis  heai'd  the  clash  of  the  blades 
against  the  scabbards,  and,  looking  quickly 
round,  saw  the  drawn  swords  behind  him. 
He  caught  the  Queen  by  the  arm  immedi- 
ately, and  drew  her  away  with  him,  first 
into  one   corner  of  the   gallery,  then  into 
another,  entreating  her  in  the  most  moving 
terms  to  listen  to  him,  and  to  believe  in  the  j 
sincerity  of  his  repentance.     The  Queen  let ' 
him  go  on  talking  without  showing  the  least ! 
sign  of  anger  or  impatience.    Her  colour  never 
changed  ;  the  stern  look  never  left  her  coun- 
tenance.    There  was  something  awful  in  the  i 
clear,  cold,  deadly  resolution  which  her  eyes 
expressed  while  they  rested  on  the  Marquis's  i 
face. 

At  last  she  shook  herself  free  from  his 
grasp,  still  without  betraying  the  slightest 
irritation.  The  three  men  with  the  drawn 
swords,  who  had  followed  the  Marquis 
silently  as  he  led  the  Queen  from  corner  to 
corner  of  the  gallery,  now  closed  round  him 
again,  as  soon  as  he  was  left  standing  alone. 
There  was  perfect  silence  for  a  minute  or 
more.  Then  the  Queen  addressed  herself 
to  me. 

"  Father,"  she  said,  "  I  charge  you  to  bear 
witness  that  I  treat  this  man  with  the 
strictest  impartiality."  She  pointed,  while 
she  spoke,  to  the  Marquis  Monaldeschi  with 
a  little  ebony  riding-whip  that  she  carried  in 
her  hand.  "  I  offer  that  worthless  traitor  all 
the  time  he  requires — more  time  than  he  has 
any  right  to  ask  for — to  justify  himself  if 
he  can." 

The  Marquis  hearing  these  words,  took 
some  letters  from  a  place  of  concealment  in 
his  dress,  and  gave  them  to  the  Queen,  along 
with  a  small  bunch  of  keys.  He  snatched 
these  last  from  his  pocket  so  quickly,  that  he 
drew  out  with  them  a  few  small  silver  coins 
which  fell  to  the  floor.  As  he  addressed 
himself  to  the  Queen  again,  she  made  a  sign 
with  her  ebony  riding-whip  to  the  men  with 
the  drawn  swords  ;  and  they  retired  towards 
one  of  the  windows  of  the  gallery.  I,  on  my 
side,  withdrew  out  of  hearing.  The  con- 
ference which  ensued  between  the  Queen  and 
the  Marquis  lasted  nearly  an  hour.  When  I 
it  was  over,  her  Majesty  beckoned  the  men  ! 
back  again  with  the  whip,  and  then  ap- 
proached the  place  where  I  was  standing. 

'  Father,"  she  said,  in  her  clear,  ringing, 
resolute  tones,  "  there  is  no  need  for  me  to 
remain  here  any  longer.  I  leave  that  man," 


she  pointed  to  the  Marquis  again,  "  to  your 
care.  Do  all  that  you  can  for  the  good  of 
his  soul.  He  has  failed  to  justify  himself, 
and  I  doom  him  to  die." 

If  I  had  heard  sentence  pronounced  against 
myself,  I  could  hardly  have  been  more  ter- 
rified than  I  was  when  the  Queen  uttered 
these  last  words.  The  Marquis  heard  them 
where  he  was  standing,  and  flung  himself  at 
her  feet.  I  dropped  on  my  knees  by  his 
side,  and  entreated  her  to  pardon  him,  or  at 
least  to  visit  his  offence  with  some  milder 
punishment  than  the  punishment  of  death. 

"I  have  said  the  words,"  she  answered, 
addressing  herself  only  to  me ;  "  and  no 
power  under  Heaven  shall  make  me  unsay 
them.  Many  a  man  has  been  broken  alive 
on  the  wheel  for  offences  which  were  inno- 
cence itself  compared  with  the  offence  which 
this  perjured  traitor  has  committed  against 
me.  I  have  trusted  him  as  I  might  have 
trusted  a  brother ;  he  has  infamously  be- 
trayed that  trust  ;  and  I  exercise  my  royal 
rights  over  the  life  of  a  traitor.  Say  no  more 
to  me.  I  tell  you  again,  he  is  doomed  to 
die." 

With  these  words  the  Queen  quitted  the 
gallery,  and  left  me  alone  with  Monaldeschi 
and  the  three  executioners  who  were  waiting 
to  kill  him. 

The  unhappy  man  dropped  on  his  knees  at 
my  feet,  and  implored  me  to  follow  the 
Queen,  and  make  one  more  effort  to  obtain 
his  pardon.  Before  I  could  answer  a  word, 
the  three  men  surrounded  him,  held  the 
points  of  their  swords  to  his  sides,  without, 
however,  actually  touching  him,  and  angrily 
recommended  him  to  make  his  confession  to 
me,  without  wasting  any  more  time.  I 
entreated  them,  with  the  tears  in  my  eyes,  to 
wait  as  long  as  they  could,  so  as  to  give  the 
Queen  time  to  reflect,  and,  perhaps,  to  falter 
in  her  deadly  intentions  towards  the  Marquis. 
I  succeeded  in  producing  such  an  impression 
on  the  chief  of  the  three  men,  that  he  left  us, 
to  obtain  an  interview  with  the  Queen,  and 
to  ascertain  if  there  was  any  change  in  her 
purpose.  After  a  very  short  absence  he 
came  back,  shaking  his  head. 

"There  is  no  hope  for  you,"  he  said, 
addressing  Monaldeschi.  "  Make  your  peace 
with  Heaven.  Prepare  yourself  to  die  !  " 

"  Go  to  the  Queen ! "  cried  the  Marquis, 
kneeling  before  me  with  clasped  hands. 
"  Go  to  the  Queen  yourself ;  make  one  more 
effort  to  save  me !  O,  my  father,  my 
father,  run  one  more  risk — venture  one  last 
entreaty — before  you  leave  me  to  die  ! " 

"  Will  you  wait  till  I  come  back  ? "  I  said 
to  the  three  men. 

"We  will  wait,"  they  answered,  and 
lowered  their  sword-points  to  the  ground. 

I  found  the  Queen  alone  in  her  room, 
without  the  slightest  appearance  of  agitation 
in  her  face  or  her  manner.  Nothing  that  I 
could  say  had  the  slightest  effect  on  her. 
I  adjured  her  by  all  that  religion  holds 


160       [August  15,  1S67.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


most  sacred,  to  remember  that  the  noblest 
privilege  of  any  sovereign  is  the  privilege  of 
granting  mercy  ;  that  the  first  of  Christian 
duties  is  the  duty  of  forgiving.  She  heard 
me  unmoved.  Seeing  that  entreaties  were 
thrown  away,  I  ventured,  at  my  own  proper 
hazard,  on  reminding  her  that  she  was  not 
living  now  iu  her  own  kingdom  of  Sweden, 
but  that  she  was  the  guest  of  the  King  of 
France,  and  lodged  in  one  of  his  own  palaces  ; 
and  I  boldly  asked  her,  if  she  had  calculated 
the  possible  consequences  of  authorising  the 
killing  of  one  of  her  attendants  inside  the 
walls  of  Fontainebleau,  without  any  prelimi- 
nary form  of  trial,  or  any  official  notification 
of  the  offence  that  lie  had  committed.  She 
answered  me  coldly,  that  it  was  enough  that 
she  knew  the  unpardonable  nature  of  the 
offence  of  which  Monaldeschi  had  been 
guilty ;  that  she  stood  in  a  perfectly  inde- 
pendent position  towards  the  King  of  France  ; 
that  she  was  absolute  mistress  of  her  own 
actions,  at  all  times  and  in  all  places ;  and 
that  she  was  accountable  to  nobody  under 
Heaven  for  her  conduct  towards  her  subjects 
and  servants,  over  whose  lives  and  liberties 
she  possessed  sovereign  rights,  which  no  con- 
sideration whatever  should  induce  her  to 
resign. 

Fearful  as  I  was  of  irritating  her,  I  still 
ventured  on  reiterating  my  remonstrances. 
She  cut  them  short  by  hastily  signing  to  me 
to  leave  her.  As  she  dismissed  me,  I  thought 
I  saw  a  slight  change  pass  over  her  face  ; 
and  it  occurred  to  me  that  she  might  not 
have  been  indisposed  at  that  moment  to 
grant  some  respite,  if  she  could  have  done  so 
without  appearing  to  falter  in  her  resolution, 
and  without  running  the  risk  of  letting 
Monaldeschi  escape  her.  Before  I  passed 
the  door,  I  attempted  to  take  advantage  of 
the  disposition  to  relent  which  I  fancied  I 
had  perceived  in  her  ;  but  she  angrily  reite- 
rated the  gesture  of  dismissal  before  I  had 
spoken  half-a-dozen  words ;  and,  with  a 
heavy  heart,  I  yielded  to  necessity,  and 
left  her. 

On  returning  to  the  gallery,  I  found  the 
three  men  standing  round  the  Marquis,  with 
their  sword-points  on  the  floor,  exactly  as  I 
had  left  them. 

"  Is  he  to  live  or  to  die  1 "  they  asked  when 
I  came  in. 

There  was  no  need  for  me  to  reply  in 
words  ;  my  face  answered  the  question.  The 
Marquis  groaned  heavily,  but  said  nothing. 
I  sat  myself  down  on  a  stool,  and  beckoned 
to  him  to  come  to  me,  and  begged  him,  as 
•well  as  my  terror  and  wretchedness  would 
let  me,  to  think  of  repentence,  and  to  prepare 
for  another  world.  He  began  his  confession 
kneeling  at  my  feet,  with  his  head  on  my 
knees.  After  continuing  it  for  some  time, 
he  suddenly  started  to  his  feet  with  a  scream 
of  terror.  I  contrived  to  quiet  him,  and  to 
fix  his  thoughts  again  on  heavenly  things. 
He  completed  his  confession,  speaking  some- 


times in  Latin,  sometimes  in  French,  some- 
times in  Italian,  according  as  he  could  best 
explain  himself  in  the  agitation  and  misery 
which  now  possessed  him. 

Just  as  he  had  concluded,  the  Queen's 
chaplain  entered  the  gallery.  Without  wait- 
ing to  receive  absolution,  the  unhappy  Mar- 
quis rushed  away  from  me  to  the  chaplain, 
and,  still  clinging  desperately  to  the  hope  of 
life,  he  besought  him  to  intercede  with  the 
Queen.  The  two  talked  together  in  low- 
tones,  holding  each  other  by  the  hand. 
When  their  conference  was  over,  the  chaplain 
left  the  gallerj'  again,  taking  with  him  the 
chief  of  the  three  executioners  who  were 
appointed  to  carry  out  the  Queen's  deadly 
purpose.  After  a  short  absence,  this  man 
returned  without  the  chaplain.  "  Get  your 
absolution,"  he  said  briefly  to  the  Marquis, 
"  and  make  up  your  mind  to  die." 

Saying  these  words,  he  seized  Monaldeschi, 
pressed  him  back  against  the  wall  at  the  end 
of  the  gallery,  just  under  the  picture  of  Saint 
Germain  ;  and,  before  I  could  interfere,  or 
even  turn  aside  from  the  sight,  aimed  at  the 
Marquis's  right  side  with  his  sword.  Monal- 
deschi caught  the  blade  with  his  hand, 
cutting  three  of  his  fingers  in  the  act.  At 
the  same  moment  the  point  touched  his  side 
and  glanced  off.  Upon  this,  the  man  who 
had  struck  at  him  exclaimed,  "  He  has 
armour  under  his  clothes,"  and,  at  the  same 
moment,  stabbed  Monaldeschi  in  the  face. 
As  he  received  the  wound,  he  turned  round 
towards  me,  and  cried  out  loudly,  "  My 
father  !  My  father  !  " 

I  advanced  towards  him  immediately  ;  and, 
as  I  did  so,  the  man  who  had  wounded  him 
retired  a  little,  and  signed  to  his  two  compa- 
nions to  withdraw  also.  The  Marquis,  with 
one  knee  on  the  ground,  asked  pardon  of 
God,  and  said  certain  last  words  in  my  ear. 
I  immediately  gave  him  absolution,  telling 
him  that  he  must  atone  for  his  sins  by  suffer- 
ing death,  and  that  he  must  pardon  those 
who  were  about  to  kill  him.  Having  heard 
my  words,  he  threw  himself  forward  on  the 
floor,  and,  as  he  fell,  one  of  the  three  execu- 
tioners who  had  not  assailed  him  as  yet, 
struck  at  his  head,  and  wounded  him  on  the 
surface  of  the  skull. 

The  Marquis  sank  on  his  face  ;  then  raised 
himself  a  little,  and  signed  to  the  men  to> 
kill  him  outright,  by  striking  him  on  the 
neck.  The  same  man  who  had  last  wounded 
him  obeyed  by  cutting  two  or  three  times  at 
his  neck,  without,  however,  doing  him  any 
great  injury.  For  it  was  indeed  true  that  he 
wore  armour  under  his  clothes,  which  armour 
consisted  of  a  shirt  of  mail  weighing  nine  or 
ten  pounds,  and  rising  so  high  round  his- 
neck,  inside  his  collar,  as  to  defend  it  success- 
fully from  any  chance  blow  with  a  sword. 

Seeing  this,  I  came  forward  to  exhort  the 
Marquis  to  bear  his  sufferings  with  patience, 
for  the  remission  of  his  sins.  While  I  was 
speaking,  the  chief  of  the  three  executioners 


Charlei  Dickens.] 


A  QUEEN'S  REVENGE. 


[August  15,  1357.] 


advanced,  and  asked  me  if  I  did  not  think  it 
was  time  to  give  Monaldesclii  the  finishing 
stroke.  I  pushed  the  man  violently  away 
from  me,  saying  that  I  had  no  advice  to 
offer  on  the  matter,  and  telling  him  that  if  I 
had  any  orders  to  give,  they  would  be  for  the 
sparing  of  the  Marquis's  life,  and  not  for  the 
hastening  of  his  death.  Hearing  me  speak 
in  those  terms,  the  man  asked  my  pardon, 
and  confessed  that  he  had  done  wrong  in 
addressing  me  on  the  subject  at  all. 

He  had  hardly  finished  making  his  excuses 
to  me,  when  the  door  of  the  gallery  opened. 
The  unhappy  Marquis  hearing  the  sound, 
raised  himself  from  the  floor,  and,  seeing 
that  the  person  who  entered  was  the  Queen's 
chaplain,  dragged  himself  along  the  gallery, 
holding  on  by  the  tapestry  that  hung  from 
the  walls,  until  he  reached  the  feet  of  the 
holy  man.  There,  he  whispered  a  few  words 
(as  if  he  was  confessing)  to  the  chaplain, 
who,  after  first  asking  my  permission,  gave 
him  absolution,  and  then  returned  to  the 
Queen. 

As  the  chaplain  closed  the  door,  the  man 
who  had  struck  the  Marquis  on  the  neck 
stabbed  him  adroitly  with  a  long  narrow 
sword  in  the  throat,  just  above  the  edge  of 
the  shirt  of  mail.  Monaldesclii  sank  on  his 
right  side,  and  spoke  no  more.  For  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  longer  he  still  breathed,  during 
which  time  I  prayed  by  him,  and  exhorted 
him  as  I  best  could.  When  the  bleeding 
from  this  last  wound  ceased,  his  life  ceased 
with  it.  It  was  then  a  quarter  to  four 
o'clock.  The  death  agony  of  the  miserable 
man  had  lasted,  from  the  time  of  the  Queen's 
first  pronouncing  sentence  on  him,  for  nearly 
three  hours. 

I  said  the  De  Profundis  over  his  body. 
While  I  was  praying,  the  three  men  sheathed 
their  swords,  and  the  chief  of  them  rifled  the 
Marquis's  pockets.  Finding  nothing  on  him 
but  a  prayer-book  and  a  small  knife,  the  chief 
beckoned  to  his  companions,  and  they  all 
three  marched  to  the  door  in  silence,  went 
•out,  and  left  me  alone  with  the  corpse. 

A  few  minutes  afterwards  I  followed  them, 
to  go  and  report  what  had  happened  to  the 
•Queen.  I  thought  her  colour  changed  a  little 
when  I  told  her  that  Monaldeschi  was  dead ; 
but  those  cold,  clear  eyes  of  her's  never  soft- 
ened, and  her  voice  was  still  as  steady  and 
firm,  as  when  I  first  heard  its  tones  on  enter- 
ing the  gallery  that  day.  She  spoke  very 
little,  only  saying  to  herself  "  He  is  dead,  and 
he  deserved  to  die  !  "  Then,  turning  to  me, 
she  added,  "Father,  I  leave  the  care  of  bury- 
ing him  to  you  ;  and,  for  my  own  part,  I  will 
charge  myself  with  the  expense  of  having 
masses  enough  said  for  the  repose  of  his 
soul."  I  ordered  the  body  to  be  placed  in  a 
coffin,  which  I  instructed  the  bearers  to 
remove  to  the  churchyard  on  a  tumbril,  in 
consequence  of  the  great  weight  of  the  corpse, 
of  the  misty  rain  that  was  falling,  and  of  the 
bad  state  of  the  roads.  On  Monday,  the 


twelfth  of  November,  at  a  quarter  to  six  in. 
the  evening,  the  Marquis  was  buried  in  the 
parish  church  of  Avon,  near  the  font  of  holy 
water.  The  next  day  the  Queen  sent  one 
hundred  livres,  by  two  of  her  servants,  for 
masses  for  the  repose  of  his  soul. 

Thus  ends  the  extraordinary  narrative  of 
Father  Le  Bel.  It  is  satisfactory  to  record, 
as  some  evidence  of  the  progress  of  humanity, 
that  the  barbarous  murder,  committed  under 
the  sanction  and  authority  of  Queen  Chris- 
tina, which  would  have  passed  unnoticed  in 
the  feudal  times,  as  an  ordinary  and  legiti- 
mate exercise  of  a  sovereign's  authority  over 
a  vassal,  excited,  in  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  utmost  disgust  and 
horror  throughout  Paris.  The  prime  mini- 
ster at  that  period,  Cardinal  Mazarin  (by  no 
means  an  over-scrupulous  man,  as  all  readers 
of  French  history  know),  wrote  officially  to 
Christina,  informing  her  that  "  a  crime  so 
atrocious  as  that  which  had  just  been  com- 
mitted under  her  sanction,  in  the  Palace  of 
Fontahiebleau,  must  be  considered  as  a  suffi- 
cient cause  for  banishing  the  Queen  of 
Sweden  from  the  court  and  dominions  of  his 
sovereign,  who,  in  common  with  every  honest 
man  in  the  kingdom,  felt  horrified  at  the 
lawless  outrage  which  had  just  been  com- 
mitted on  the  soil  of  France." 

To  this  letter  Queen  Christina  sent  the 
following  answer,  which,  as  a  specimen  of 
spiteful  effrontery,  has  probably  never  been 
matched  : 

MONSIEUR  MAZARIN, — Those  who  have  communi- 
cated to  you  the  details  of  the  death  of  my  equerry, 
Monaldeschi,  knew  nothing  at  all  about  it.  I  think  it 
highly  absurd  that  you  should  have  compromised  so 
many  people  for  the  sake  of  informing  yourself  about 
one  simple  fact.  Such  a  proceeding  on  your  part, 
ridiculous  as  it  is,  does  not,  however,  much  astonish 
me.  What  I  am  amazed  at,  is,  that  you  and  the  king 
your  master  should  have  dared  to  express  disapproval 
of  what  I  have  done. 

Understand,  all  of  you — servants  and  masters,  little 
people  and  great — that  it  was  my  sovereign  pleasure  to 
act  as  I  did.  I  neither  owe,  nor  render,  an  account  of 
my  actions  to  any  one, — least  of  all,  to  a  bully  like 

you. 

*»»**# 

It  may  be  well  for  you  to  know,  and  to  report  to 
any  one  whom  you  can  get  to  listen  to  you,  that 
Christina  cares  little  for  your  court,  and  less  still  for 
you.  When  I  want  to  revenge  myself,  I  have  no  need 
of  your  formidable  power  to  help  me.  My  honour 
obliged  me  to  act  as  I  did ;  my  will  is  my  law,  and 
you  ought  to  know  how  to  respect  it.  .  .  .  Under- 
stand, if  you  please,  that  wherever  I  choose  to  live, 
there  I  am  Queen;  and  that  the  men  about  me, 
rascals  as  they  may  be,  are  better  than  you  and  the 

myrmidons  whom  you  keep  in  your  service. 

****** 

Take  my  advice,  Mazarin,  and  behave  yourself  for 
the  future  so  as  to  merit  my  favour ;  you  cannot,  for 
your  own  sake,  be  too  anxious  to  deserve  it.  Heaven 
preserve  you  from  venturing  on  any  more  disparaging 
remarks  about  my  conduct !  I  shall  hear  of  them,  if 
I  am  at  the  other  end  of  the  world,  for  I  have  friends 


1G2        [August  15,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


and  followers  in  my  service  who  are  as  unscrupulous ' 
and  as  vigilant  as  any  in  yours,  though  it  is  probable 
enough  taut  they  are  not  quite  so  heavily  bribed. 

After  replying  to  the  prime  minister  of 
France  in  these  terms,  Christina  was  wise 
enough  to  leave  the  kingdom  immediately. 

For  three  years  more,  she  pursued  her 
travels.  At  the  expiration  of  that  time,  her 
cousin,  the  king  of  Sweden,  in  whose  favour 
she  had  abdicated,  died.  She  returned  at 
once  to  her  own  country,  with  the  object  of 
possessing  herself  once  more  of  the  royal 
power.  Here  the  punishment  of  the  merci- 
less crime  that  she  had  sanctioned  overtook 
her  at  last.  The  brave  and  honest  people  of 
Sweden  refused  to  be  governed  by  the 
Woman  who  had  ordered  the  murder  of 
Moualdeschi,  and  who  had  forsaken  the 
national  religion  for  which  her  father  had 
died.  Threatened  with  the  loss  of  her 
revenues  as  well  as  the  loss  of  her  sove- 
reignty, if  she  remained  in  Sweden,  the 
proud  and  merciless  Christina  yielded  for  the 
first  time  in  her  life.  She  resigned  once 
more  all  right  and  title  to  the  royal  dignity, 
and  left  her  native  country  for  the  last 
time.  The  final  place  of  her  retirement 
was  Eome.  She  died  there  in  the  year  six- 
teen hundred  and  eighty-nine.  Even  in  the 
epitaph  which  she  ordered  to  be  placed  on 
her  tomb,  the  strange  and  daring  character 
of  the  woman  breaks  out.  The  whole  record 
of  that  wild,  wondrous,  wicked  existence, 
was  summed  up  with  stern  brevity  in  this 
one  line : 

CHRISTINA  LIVED  SEVENTY-TWO  YEARS. 


CHIP. 


A  SCHOOL  FOB  COOKS. 

INNCTRITIOUS,  wasteful,  and  unsavoury 
cooking,  is  our  national  characteristic.  No 
school  of  cookery  has  ever  yet  thoroughly 
answered  in  this  country.  The  school  of  ad- 
versity teaches  the  poor  to  hunger  patiently 
when  the  cupboard  is  empty,  but  to  reward 
themselves,  by  hasty  cooking  and  large  meals, 
when  they  have  the  chance  of  filling  it.  The 
food  they  throw  away  from  ignorance  of  correct 
culinary  principles,  when  food  is  to  be  had, 
would,  properly  husbanded  and  prepared, 
satisfy  the  cravings  of  hunger  when  money  is 
scarce.  Prosperity  is  also  a  bad  school  for 
the  middle  classes,  whose  gastronomic  ambi- 
tion is  literally  bounded  by  roast  and  boiled. 
The  roasting-jack  and  the  saucepan,  with  an 
occasional  mess  or  two  out  of  the  frying-pan, 
so  thoroughly  satisfy  their  desires,  that  they 
make  it  a  boast  not  to  like  soup,  nor  made- 
dishes,  nor  stews,  nor  any  of  the  more  whole- 
some and  succulent  modes  of  enlarging  their 
narrow  range  of  taste. 

No  doubt  a  juicy  portion  of  roast  beef  or 
roast  mutton  is  an  excellent  dish.  Yet, 
if  the  Englishman  become  too  poor  to 
buy  these  prime  joints,  what  then  ?  Prac- 


tically, he  goes  without  meat ;  for  his  wife, 
not  knowing  how  to  cook  inferior  parts 
properly,  he  must  either  abstain,  or  lay 
in  a  solid  stock  of  indigestion.  Most  of  the 
meat  in  France  is— except  veal— lean,  hard, 
and  stringy,  but  none  the  less  nutritious; 
because  French  cooks  know  how  to  extract 
the  best  qualities  of  the  meat,  how  to  make 
it  nutritive,  more  than  tempting — even  deli- 
cious— and  how  to  utilise  what,  here,  is 
utterly  thrown  away.  Amongst  the  very 
poor  in  this  country,  there  are  whole  classes 
who  do  not  taste  animal  food  from  one  year's 
end  to  another,  chiefly  in  consequence  of 
the  prevalent  ignorance' respecting  effectual 
modes  of  economising  and  cooking  it. 

When  provisions  are  dear,  this  subject 
(a  -very  important  one  ;  but  seldom  spoken 
of  without  a  smile,  for  some  curious  and 
inexplicable  reason)  occupies  attention.  Why, 
it  is  then  asked,  are  not  our  national  school 
girls  taught  to  cook  ?  The  answers  to  this 
question  are  as  innumerable  as  the  diffi- 
culties to  be  surmounted  in  effecting  such 
an  object,  and  which  are  too  apparent  to  be 
more  than  alluded  to.  However,  a  small  and 
unpretending  effort  has  been  made  by  a  few 
ladies  of  rank  to  afford  means  of  such  in- 
struction. Near  to  the  Christ  Church 
schools,  in  Albany  Street,  Eegent's  Park,  this 
inscription  appears  upon  an  otherwise  blank 
shop  window:  SCHOOL  OF  COOKERY  AND 
RESTAURANT.  The  objects  of  the  little  esta- 
blishment are  set  forth  in  a  prospectus  which 
we  begged  from  its  intelligent  superin- 
tendant : 

First :  To  open  a  kitchen  for  the  poor,  where  they 
may  buy  their  food  at  little  more  than  cost  price,  and 
go  themselves  or  send  their  children  for  instruction  in 
the  elements  of  cookery.  Secondly  :  A  class  of  girls 
desirous  of  service  will  he  educated  under  an  expe- 
rienced man  cook,  and  at  the  same  time  receive  moral 
training  from  the  matron  and  ladies  connected  -with 
the  institution.  Thirdly :  a  special  class  will  be 
taught  cookery  for  the  sick,  to  qualify  them  to  be- 
come sick  nurses. 

Young  women  wishing  to  receive  lessons,  will  bo 
taught  at  a  much  lower  price  than  they  now  have  to 
pay  at  clubs  and  elsewhere. 

It  is  proposed  to  give,  as  rewards,  certificates  of 
competency  to  those  young  women  who  distinguish 
themselves  as  pupils,  and  who  will  thus  carry  with 
them  into  service  the  surest  evidences  of  their 
proficiency. 

Persons  becoming  subscribers  will  have  the  advan- 
tage of  sending  their  own  cooks  to  receive  lessons,  or 
of  nominating  a  girl  to  the  class.  They  will  also  be 
entitled  to  have  a  cook  from  the  school  when  wanting 
help  at  their  own  houses. 

The  plan  is  answering  well.  The  food  is  much 
prized  by  the  poor,  and  many  families  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood are  giving  orders  for  dinners,  and  dishes  of  a 
better  description  to  be  sent  to  their  own  houses. 

Aid,  either  in  money  or  custom,  is  asked.  Any 
lady  ordering  soups,  jellies,  &c.,  will  benefit  the 
school,  and,  as  a  thoroughly  good  cook  is  employed, 
the  orders  will  be  propurly  attended  to. 

Orders  from  medical  men  for  sick  persons  will  be 
received,  and  the  food  sent  to  them  if  required. 


THE  EINDERPEST ;  OB,'  STEPPE  MURRAIN.      LAugu8t  is.  1*57.1     163 


The  success  of  this  scheme  depends  wholly 
upon  the  manner  in  which  it  is  carried  out. 
It  removes  the  difficulty  of  finding  means  and 
materials  for  training  pupils  in  national 
schools,  to  become  good  cooks,  and  it  provides 
a  market  for  the  produce  of  their  skill.  As 
it  should  be  looked  upon  as  a  mission-house 
for  cooks,  the  doctrines  taught  in  this  culi- 
nary academy  must  be  sound,  and  the  prac- 
ticable results  profitable ;  or  failure  will  be 
inevitable.  The  few  who  may  be  its  cus- 
tomers will  not  excuse  bad  cooking,  or  ill- 
chosen  raw- mate  rial,  from  an  establishment 
which  professes  to  be  a  model ;  and  un- 
less, eventually,  it  become  even  more  than 
self-supporting,  bad  economy  will  be  sus- 
pected,— the  very  worst  trait  in  the  character 
of  any  cook,  whether  she  be  of  the  class 
"  good  plain  "  or  the  class  "  professed." 


THE  EINDERPEST ;  OR,  STEPPE 
MURRAIN. 

MAN,  whether  savage  or  civilised,  whether 
clad  in  broadcloth  and  dwelling  at  Clapham, 
or  naked  and  wandering  over  the  wilds  of 
Australia,  dotes  on  gossip,  and  demands  and 
obtains  a  supply  of  horrors. 

No  traveller  has  ever  wandered  into  a 
savage  country  but  there  have  been  a  hun- 
dred reports  among  the  tribes  through  which 
lie  has  passed,  of  his  death  by  violence. 
Every  African  traveller  has,  according  to 
Sir  E.  Murchison's  authority,  thus  died  many 
deaths.  More  than  once,  a  friend  of  ours,  a 
colonist  in  the  bush,  has  been  surprised  by  a 
visit  at  a  gallop  from  friends  with  spades,  who, 
on  the  information  of  an  old  black  woman, 
have  arrived  to  bury  him,  but  who  have  re- 
mained to  dine.  Every  season  the  town  is 
agitated  by  the  reported  death  by  drowning, 
or  railroad  accident,  or  foreign  banditti,  of 
some  distinguished  character.  On  a  larger 
scale  are  the  rumours  of  earthquakes,  comets, 
plagues,  pestilence,  and  famine,  which  for- 
merly frightened  good  people  out  of  their 
senses,  and  sent  town  citizens,  in  Horace 
Walpole's  time,  to  encamp  in  the  country. 
Now,  they  do  nothing  more  than  alarm  old 
women,  and  generate  a  swarm  of  pamphlets 
and  newspaper  paragraphs.  We  have  had 
•within  our  times  some  real  terrors.  We  have 
had  the  cholera  twice,  and  the  influenza, 
which,  on  its  first  advent,  killed  more  than 
the  cholera.  We  have  had  the  potato-rot 
and  short  harvest,  more  fatal  in  its  effects 
than  any  epidemic  or  contagious  disease, 
although  my  worthy  agricultural  friend  and 
fossil  protectionist,  Brittle,  of  Essex,  still  main- 
tains that  the  Irish  famine  was  a  political 
device  concocted  between  Sir  Robert  Peel 
and  Mr.  Cobden.  More  recently  we  have  had 
the  panic  created  by  the  Californian  and 
Australian  gold  diggings,  when  stout  gentle- 
men, large  holders  of  three  per-cents.,  gravely 
deplored  the  coming  time  when  the  Chancel- 
lor of  the  Exchequer  would  pay  them  off  with, 


worthless  sovereigns,  of  no  more  value  than 
the  shankless  buttons  with  which  ragged 
boys  play  at  chuckfarthing. 

The  two  last  favourite  future  terrors  and 
horrors  have  been  the  comet  and  the  cattle 
murrain ;  the  comet  has  been  the  pecu- 
liar perquisite  of  the  more  ignorant  of  the 
Stiggins  fraternity,  while  the  doctors  have 
have  had  the  monopoly  of  the  talk  about 
cattle  murrain. 

The  comet  terror  has  passed  away,  to 
be  renewed  at  some  convenient  opportunity. 
The  cattle  murrain  mania,  with  which  was 
allied  the  diseased  meat  mania,  has  just 
been  put  at  rest,  or  in  a  fair  way  extin- 
guished, by  the  same  means  that  created  it ; 
that  is  to  say,  by  the  facilities  of  railway 
travelling  and  the  news-diffusing  powers  of 
the  press. 

Ever  since  common-sense  triumphed,  and 
Englishmen  wlio  send  what  they  manufac- 
ture all  over  the  world,  were  permitted  to 
buy  food,  alive  or  dead,  wherever  they  could 
get  it  cheapest,  we  have  been  doing  a  large 
business  in  foreign  live-stock.  They  come  to 
Hull.  They  come  chiefly  from  Spain  and 
Portugal,  to  Liverpool  and  Southampton ; 
and  they  come  by  hundreds  and  even  thou- 
sands a-week  to  London  from  the  Baltic  and 
northern  ports,  from  Belgium,  and  by  excep- 
tion from  France.  The  importation  does  not 
increase  at  present.  At  first  it  rose  rapidly, 
until  it  reached  some  seventy  thousand 
a-year.  It  has  since  declined  to  about  fifty 
thousand.  For,  after  we  had  exhausted  the 
'  surplus  stock  of  working  oxen  that  our  con- 
'  tinental  neighbours  had  on  hand  (their  for- 
tunes made  out  of  Spanish  bullocks)  ;  after 
we  had  raised  the  price  of  meat  all  over 
Europe,  from  the  Elbe  to  the  Danube,  from 
the  Scheldt  to  the  Garonne,  and  for  ever 
extinguished  those  mountains  of  beef  at  two- 
pence per  pound,  which  used  to  disturb  the 
rest  of  our  hardacred  and  ungeographical 
baronets  and  squires  between  Norfolk  and 
Devonshire  ;  after  we  had  compelled  France, 
in  self-defence,  to  permit  what  French  pro- 
tectionist journalists  called  "the  fatal  inva- 
sion of  foreign  beasts  ; "  our  supplies  of  con- 
tinental beef  and  mutton  fell  off,  with  no 
chance  of  increase  until  Russian,  Spanish, 
and  Portuguese  railroads  shall  open  up  fresh 
fields  and  pastures  new. 

Nevertheless,  the  supply  of  foreign  cattle 
to  Islington  market  was,  in  eighteen  hun- 
dred and  fifty-five  and  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-six,  nearly  one-fourth  of  the  whole 
weekly  sale,  when  there  came  a  succession  of 
despatches  from  our  foreign  consuls,  and  even 
ambassadors,  announcing  that  the  close  of 
the  Russian  war  had  left  behind,  a  truly 
Russian  cattle  disease — the  rinderpest  or 
steppe  murrain — more  fatal  and  contagious 
than  anything  hitherto  known  in  England. 
These  despatches,  in  which  three  or  four 
different  diseases  were  mingled  in  one  fright- 
ful description,  followed  each  other  so 


164       [August  15,  185?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


quickly,  and  were  accompanied  by  newspaper 
paragraphs,  giving  such  horrible  pictures  of 
the  new  disorder,  that  the  public  meat-eating 
community  was  completely  overset.  In 
spite  of  the  remonstrances  of  cattle  sales- 
men, the  Government  felt  bound,  not  only  to 
strengthen  the  veterinary  inspection  and 
quarantine  arrangements,  but  to  absolutely 
prohibit  the  importation  of  cattle  from 
certain  northern  ports.  In  the  then  state  of 
knowledge,  nothing  less  would  have  been 
satisfactory  or  right ;  though  subsequent 
authoritative  veterinary  information  has 
shown  that  ordinary  veterinary  inspection 
would  have  been  quite  sufficient,  and  that 
total  prohibition  was  altogether  superfluous. 

The  publication  of  the  diplomatic  and  con- 
sulate information  on  continental  cattle 
disease,  brought  out  a  cloud  of  medical 
prophets  and  professors  vaticinating  all 
.sanitary  evils,  unless  grown-up  England 
was  immediately  placed  under  medical  super- 
intendauce,  as  complete  as  Saucho  Panza's 
when  he  was  promoted  to  the  governorship 
of  Barataria,  and  sent  in  state  famished  and 
dhmerless  to  bed. 

Among  no  class  are  so  many  devoted,  earnest, 
charitable,  ill-paid,  unrequited  philanthropists 
to  be  found  as  among  the  medical  profes- 
sion. In  the  ascetic  ages  no  order  of  monks 
vowed  to  poverty  and  works  of  charity,  ever 
worked  harder  for  the  poor,  without  reward 
or  hope  of  reward,  than  do  many  of  our  un- 
appreciated general  practitioners.  Doctors 
are  but  men,  however,  and  it  is  very  natural 
that  when  they  have  nothing  to  do,  and  have 
the  faculty  of  fluency,  they  should  try  to  make 
something.  Hence,  we  have  warnings  so 
frightful  on  the  air  we  breathe,  the  water  we 
•drink,  the  food  we  consume,  that  if  they 
•were  half  true,  we  ought  to  have  been  all 
poisoned  years  ago  ;  every  village  pump 
would  be  more  dangerous  than  liquid  arsenic, 
and  every  mutton-pieman's  shop  would  be  the 
distributary  centre  of  unnumbered  diseases. 
Every  ten  houses  ought  to  be  under  the 
special  care  of  a  medical  inspector,  and  every 
man  of  fortune  ought,  like  Sancho  Panza,  to 
have  a  physician  and  an  analytical  chemist 
in  constant  communication  with  his  cook. 

For  instance,  on  the  strength  of  the  terrors 
excited  by  the  continental  murrain  or  rinder- 
pest, Dr.  Gamgee,  medical  member  of  many 
learned  societies,  described  in  one  of  his 
advertisements  as  "  enthusiastically  fond  of 
diving  into  every  question  of  pathology  .... 
the  more  obscure  the  more  deeply,"  addressed 
two  letters  to  the  Home  Secretary,  in  which 
real  evils  are  surrounded  by  a  framework 
of  artificial  terrors,  and  remedies  are  sug- 
gested infinitely  more  baneful  to  public 
health  and  comfort  than  anything  that  could 
occur  from  leaving  the  public  to  take  care  of 
itself. 

The  antidote,  the  oil  upon  the  waters  of 
public  feeling,  excited  by  the  alarming  blasts 
of  the  amateurs  of  obscure  pathological  inves- 


tigations, is  to  be  found  in  a  blue  book  con- 
taining a  report  by  Dr.  Greenhow,  prepared 
under  the  orders  of  the  Board  of  Health, and  in 
a  statement  made  by  Mr.  Siminouds,  professor 
of  veterinary  art  to  the  Royal  Agricultural 
Society  of  England,  of  the  results  of  a  journey 
he  has  just  made  through  the  continent  in 
search  of  the  steppe  murrain  or  rinderpest, 
which,  as  before  observed,  gave  rise  to  the 
meat  panic. 

Mr.  Simmonds  visited  in  turn  Belgium, 
Holland,  the  free  cities  of  Hamburgh,  Bremen, 
andLubeck,  and  proceeded  through  Mecklen- 
burgh  and  Hanover  into  Prussia,  without 
finding  a  single  case,  or  hearing  of  a  single 
authentic  case  of  rinderpest.  In  Prussia  he 
at  last  made  out  a  rumour  of  a  case  ;  but  it 
was  doubtful,  and  accompanied  by  the  un- 
pleasant information,  that  if  he  did  once 
penetrate  into  an  infected  or  even  suspected 
district,  he  would  only  be  allowed  to  return 
after  a  quarantine  of  twenty-one  days,  on 
condition  of  leaving  all  his  clothes  and  paper- 
money  behind  him. 

Not  desiring  to  make  so  long  a  stay  or  pay 
such  a  penalty  for  the  benefit  of  science  and 
the  credit  of  the  Eoyal  Agricultural  Society, 
Professor  Simmonds  preferred  travelling  on 
into  Austria,  where  the  Government  was 
able  to  relax  the  quarantine  in  favour  of  the 
curious  strangers  ;  and  so,  after  travelling 
one  thousand  three  hundred  miles  from  home, 
after  leaving  the  districts  of  railroads  and 
highroads,  after  enduring  the  excitement  of 
being  whirled  along  mountain  tracks  at 
full  speed,  in  a  springless  cart,  drawn  by 
half- wild  ponies  and  driven  by  half- wild 
men,  after  reposing  their  bruised  limbs  iu 
huts  alive  with  entomological  curiosities, 
after  satisfying  the  pangs  of  hunger  with 
black  sour  bread  and  potato  brandy,  fetid 
and  fiery,  the  Professor  and  his  party  reached 
Karamenia,  a  village  in  Austrian  Poland, 
some  hundred  miles  beyond  Krakow,  and 
passing  the  circle  of  sentinels  set  around  the 
afflicted  district,  found  themselves  in  a  village 
in  which  the  rinderpest  had  recently  raged. 
The  last  victim  had  died  and  been  buried, 
sixty-eight  hours.  Science  was  not  to  be 
balked.  Professor  Simmonds  made  use  of 
his  authorisation,  and  had  the  body  exhumed. 
He  dissected  it,  and  immediately  found  a 
contradiction  of  all  popular  opinion  on  the 
subject. 

The  flesh  was  sound  and  by  no  means  dis- 
coloured or  offensive  ;  the  marks  of  disease 
were  confined  to  certain  internal  organs.  He 
afterwards  had  an  opportunity  of  examining 
two  living  animals,  one  of  which  died  within 
three  days  ;  the  other  was  slaughtered  when 
about  to  recover.  In  these  animals  the 
symptoms  and  gradations  from  apparent 
health  to  death  were  the  same  and  agreed 
perfectly  with  the  authentic  accounts  he 
gathered  on  the  spot,  where  the  disease  is 
familiar.  The  beast  seems  at  first  to  have 
caught  a  severe  cold,  and  stands  still  and  dull 


THE  RINDERPEST ;  OR,  STEPPE  MURRAIN.       [August  is,  is;.]     165 


without  eating ;  then  a  discharge  from  the 
nostrils  and  eyes  sets  in ;  then  diarrhoea 
comes  on,  which  quickly  turns  to  dysentery, 
and  if  this  does  not  cease  (which  it  does  not 
once  in  twenty  cases)  death  follows — usually 
•within  a  week.  It  is  firmly  believed  that  the 
rinderpest  may  lie  doi'mant  twenty-one  days  ; 
there  is  no  doubt  that  it  will,  ten  days.  The 
slightest  contact  with  the  skin  or  breathing 
the  breath  of  an  infected  beast  is  sufficient  to 
communicate  the  disorder  ;  and  the  peasantry 
believe  that  a  herdsman  can  convey  it  from 
one  herd  to  another  without  himself  suffering. 
Under  this  belief,  the  Austrian  government, 
whenever  the  rinderpest  breaks  out,  esta- 
blishes a  cordon  militaire,  cutting  off  all 
communication  not  only  bet\veen  all  the 
animals,  but  between  all  the  inhabitants,  of 
the  infected  and  uninfected  districts.  The 
cattle  dying  within  the  cordon  are  buried 
immediately,  and,  in  many  instances,  all  the 
other  cattle  of  the  herd  are  slaughtered  by 
way  of  precaution  :  the  owner  being  compen- 
sated for  the  cattle  so  slaughtered,  by  the 
government,  but  not  for  those  dying  of 
disease. 

In  the  district  visited  by  Professor  Sim- 
moiids  the  rinderpest  had  been  brought  by 
ten  Russian  oxen,  purchased  at  a  fair  a 
hundred  miles  distant,  which  were  placed 
among  some  of  the  owner's  herd  in  a  stable, 
as  they  seemed  dulled.  There  seems  to  be 
no  authentic  case  of  the  rinderpest  having 
broken  out  anywhere  in  Europe,  except 
Russia,  and  wherever  it  has  made  its  ap- 
pearance in  other  parts  of  Europe  it  may 
be  distinctly  traced  to  the  importation  of 
the  cattle  of  the  steppes.  Thus,  it  followed 
the  track  of  the  Russian  army  to  Belgium  in 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirteen,  and  has  never 
been  known  since.  In  Prussian  Poland  it 
breaks  out  from  time  to  time,  and  some 
ravages  occur  every  three  or  four  years  in 
the  Esterhazy  estates  and  other  parts  of 
Hungary  from  the  same  cause — importation 
of  steppe  cattle.  But,  it  is  always  extinguished 
by  the  rigid  quarantine  which  the  peasantry 
eagerly  assist  the  military  in  maintaining. 

In  consequence  of  the  distant  origin  of  this 
disease — at  least  twelve  hundred  miles  from 
any  part  from  which  we  receive  cattle — and 
of  the  stringent  completely-organised  arrange- 
ments of  all  the  continental  governments  for 
excluding  suspected  cattle  from  their  domi- 
nions, it  is  the  opinion  of  Professor  Simmonds 
that  it  is  quite  impossible  that  the  rinderpest 
can  ever  reach  England.  The  murrain  which 
carried  off  so  many  thousand  cattle  in  England 
in  the  last  century,  was  what  is  commonly 
called  the  lung  disease  (Pleuro-pneumonia) 
Pulmonary  murrain,  which  is  contagious  in  a 
certain  advanced  stage,  but  which  in  no  way, 
as  regards  the  flesh,  partakes  of  a  malignant 
or  poisonous  nature. 

Dr.  Greenhow's  Report  to  the  President  of 
the  Board  of  Health,  which  was  prepared  in 
consequence  of  the  alarming  account  given 


by  one  of  the  new  officers  of  health — a  gentle- 
man of  more  zeal  than  veterinary  or  carcase- 
butcher  knowledge — drawn  up  with  admi- 
rable skill  and  clearness,  would,  had  some 
gentleman  experienced  in  the  diseases  of 
cattle  been  joined  with  so  skilful  a  writer 
and  acute  investigator  as  Dr.  Greenhow, 
have  been  a  complete  and  permanent 
authority  on  all  the  sanitary  questions  con- 
nected with  the  meat  and  milk  of  crowded! 
cities.  But  the  doctor,  we  are  told,  on  the 
authority  of  Professor  Simmonds,  had  to 
learn  the  characteristics  of  cattle  disease 
when  he  commenced  his  task. 

Dr.  Greenhow  found,  contrary  to  the 
popular  opinion  of  his  medical  brethren,  the 
cows  of  London  cowhouses  generally  healthy. 
It  is  natural  that  they  should  be  so,  because  it 
would  not  pay  to  keep  unhealthy  cows. 
Whenever  a  cow  becomes  sick,  she  falls  off  in 
her  milk,  so  the  cowkeeper  who  has  to  buy 
food  will,  if  wise,  sell  an  unprofitable  animal ; 
but  no  experienced  veterinary  surgeon  will 
concur  in  the  opinion  expressed  in  the  report, 
that  situation  and  ventilation  have  very  little- 
to  do  with  the  spread  of  the  lung  disease. 
Professor  Dick  of  Edinburgh  told  the  Royal 
Agricultural  Society,  the  other  day,  that,, 
with  satisfactory  drainage  and  ventilation, 
the  pulmonary  disease  rarely  appeared  unless 
introduced  by  contact  with  animals  in  an 
advanced  state  of  disease,  and  might  be 
driven  from  byres  in  which  it  already  existed. 
Cowkeepers  told  Dr.  Greenhow  just  the 
reverse  ;  but,  then,  no  stock-owner  ever  will 
admit  that  there  is  any  defect  in  his  buildings. 
We  could  point  out  a  celebrated  model-dairy 
where  the  ravages  of  pulmonary  disease  have 
been  terrible,  and  where  they  might  have  been 
anticipated  by  any  one  who  could  use  his  nose 
when  he  entered  the  byre.  But,  the  owner 
will  not  admit  that  his  ceilings  are  too  low; 
Many  cowkeepers,  to  avoid  all  chance  of  con- 
tagion, adopt  the  expensive  plan  of  breeding 
all  their  cows  instead  of  buying. 

In  Holstein  and  the  territory  of  the  free 
city  of  Hamburg  the  precautions  against  pul- 
monary murrain  are  as  severe  as  in  Prussia 
against  rinderpest.  The  death  of  one  animal 
condemns  the  whole  herd  to  slaughter  and 
burial ;  nevertheless,  after  being  apparently 
extinguished,  the  disease  again  broke  out  in 
the  marshes  of  the  Elbe,  two  years  ago,;aud 
has  raged  ever  since. 

Dr.  Greenhow  shows  that  the  cattle-mur- 
rain terror,  which  lately  prevailed  among 
medical  and  agricultural  circles,  arose  from 
mistaking  the  pulmonary  murrain,  which  has- 
prevailed  for  some  years  past,  here  as  well  a& 
on  the  continent,  for  the  rinderpest. 

As  to  the  sale  of  the  meat  of  animals  which 
have  died  of  disease,  or  of  other  causes  than 
the  knife,  the  report  makes  it  plain  that  a 
great  deal  is  sold  for  soup  and  sausages  in 
London,  although  the  new  market  has  put 
an  end  to  the  open  sale  of  diseased  animals. 
It  is  very  lamentable  and  disgusting  that  any 


166       [August  15,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


part  of  our  countrymen  should  eat  diseased 
meat.  The  practicable  remedy  lies  in  new  meat 
markets  and  in  extended  education  in  Common 
Things  ;  but  it  is  satisfactory  to  learn,  that 
Dr.  Greenhow,  although  favoured  with  many 
general  and  positive  statements  by  officers  of 
health  as  to  the  poisonous  effects  of  unsound 
meat,  "foimd  on  inquiry  that  none  of  the 
gentlemen  were  able  to  furnish  any  specific 
facts  on  the  subject."  From  which  we  may 
conclude  that  cooking  generally  neutralises 
the  injurious  effects  which  might  be  expected 
from  the  meat  of  diseased  animals. 

Dr.  Greenhow  concludes  his  report  by 
giving  a  resumS  of  the  result  of  his  investi- 
gations, which,  as  regards  the  murrain,  is 
entirely  confirmed  by  Professor  Simmonds's 
personal  investigations  on  the  continent.  As 
to  meat,  he  says  that  although  "  meat  derived 
from  animals  suffering  from  pulmonary  mur- 
rain and  probably  other  diseases,  is  commonly 
and  extensively  sold  both  in  London  and  else- 
where for  human  food,  there  is  no  satis- 
factory proof  that  the  consumption  has  been 
productive  of  injurious  consequences  to  those 
who  have  eaten  it." 

Thus  it  would  seem  that,"as  regards  London, 
well-arranged  dead-meat  markets  are  of  more 
importance  than  an  increased  army  of  in- 
spectors, and  that,  as  regards  the  country, 
generally  good  drainage  and  sufficient  ven- 
tilation in  our  cattle  byres  will  do  more  to 
prevent  disease  than  the  most  stringent 
quarantine  laws.  This  seems  to  be  the 
common  sense  of  the  question. 


DOCTOE  GAEEICK. 


THE  Germans  have,  in  their  repository  of 
plays,  an  ingenious  little  piece,  founded  on  an 
imaginary  incident  in  the  career  of  one  of  the 
greatest  of  actors — David  Garrick. 

The  plot  and  story  are  simply  these : 
Shortly  after  Garrick's  genius  had  astounded 
the  play-going  world,  and  attracted  persons 
of  all  ranks  to  witness  his  performances,  a 
country  baronet — a  widower — came  to  Lon- 
don with  his  daughter,  an  only  child,  and  a 
rich  heiress,  for  the  purpose  of  introducing 
the  young  lady  at  court. 

During  Sir  John's  stay  in  town  he 
took  his  daughter  to  the  theatre,  where  she 
saw  Garrick,  then  a  young  man,  play  the 
part  of  Eomeo  ;  before  the  performance 
was  over,  she  fell  in  love  with  the  actor. 
On  her  return  to  the  country  the  girl 
began  to  pine,  and  eventually  became  ill. 
A  physician  was  called  in,  but  to  no  purpose. 
The  young  lady  became  worse  instead  of 
better,  and  it  was  now  feared  that  she  was 
in  a  rapid  decline.  One  day,  however,  a 
suspicion  crossed  the  mind  of  the  doctor, 
which  he  communicated  to  Sir  John.  He 
suspected  that  the  girl  was  in  love.  Sir 
John  employed  a  lady  friend  to  question 
her,  and  endeavour  to  ascertain  the 
truth.  The  lady  friend  succeeded.  The 


fair  Amelia  confessed  she  was  in  love  with 
Eomeo. 

The  baronet's  horror  and  disgust  knew  no 
bounds.  He  was,  upon  all  occasions,  violent 
when  angry ;  but  upon  this  occasion  he 
stormed  and  raved  like  a  madman.  Sir  John 
raved  when  he  contemplated  the  idea  that 
his  Amelia,  upon  whose  brow  he  had  hoped 
to  see  a  coronet,  should  have  fallen  in 
love  with  a  poor  player,  on  the  boards 
of  a  theatre.  It  would  have  been  idle 
to  inform  Sir  John  that  Garrick's  birth 
was  quite  equal,  if  not  superior,  to  his  own  ; 
and  that  he  was  a  gentleman  by  education, 
as  well  as  by  birth.  Sir  John,  however,  soon 
became  sensible  that  his  anger,  so  far  from 
effecting  a  cure,  only  made  matters  worse, 
and  he  accordingly  consulted  several  friends 
whom  he  considered  best  qualified  to  advise 
him  and  guide  him  in  his  difficulty,  or  cala- 
mity, as  he  described  it.  One  of  his  shrewdest 
friends,  suggested  that  "  he  who  had  caused 
the  malady  could  alone  devise  a  cure  for  it." 

"  How  1 "  inquired  Sir  John. 

"  Let  Garrick  see  her." 

"  See  her  ?  But  what  if  he  should  take 
advantage  of  the  knowledge  that  she  loves 
him  1  What  if  he  should  encourage  her 
passion  ?  Is  she  not  beautiful  and  accom- 
plished ?  Has  she  not,  apart  from  this  folly, 
ability  and  sense  ?  Is  she  not  rich,  and  a 
person  of  rank  ?  Would  not  the  temptation 
be  too  great  for  the  actor  to  withstand  1  " 

"  It  is  a  difficult  position,  truly,"  conceded 
the  baronet's  adviser,  "  but  you  must  either 
do  what  I  have  recommended,  or  be  prepared 
shortly  to  follow  your  daughter's  remains  to 
the  grave." 

In  despair,  Sir  John  consented.  But  then 
came  the  difficulty,  how  and  where  was  the 
meeting  to  take  place  ?  This  was  eventually 
managed  by  the  baronet's  adviser,  who  knew 
intimately  a  barrister,  named  Bingham,  who 
had  studied  under  the  same  professor  with 
Garrick,  at  Cambridge,*  and  who  subse- 
quently lived  with  him  in  the  same  chambers 
in  Lincoln's  Inn,  when  Garrick  was  studying 
for  the  bar. 

Garrick,  at  first,  thought  that  his  old 
friend  and  fellow-student  was  jesting  with 
him,  and  resorted  to  a  playful  sarcasm  : 

"  You  say  that  it  is  not  with  me,  but  with 
the  part  of  Eomeo  that  she  is  in  love  1  " 

"Yes." 

"  Then  the  remedy  is  in  your  hands,  rather 
than  in  mine." 

"  How  so  1 " 

"Come  upon  the  boards,  and  play  the  part 
yourself." 

When  assured,  however,  of  the  truth, 
Garrick  willingly  undertook  to  cure  the  fair 
Amelia  of  her  fancy,  and  set  his  ingenuity 
to  work,  in  order  to  devise  the  means. 

Sir  John,  with  his  lovesick  daughter,  came 


•*  Garrick    read    at    Cambridge  ;    but,    query,    if    he 
matriculated? 


Charles  Dickens.] 


DOCTOR  GARRICK 


[August  15,  1=57.]       167 


to  town,  and  hired  a  house  in  a  fashionable   All  eyes  were  now  on  the  child,  whose  little 
square.     Mr.  Garrick  called  upon  Sir  John, 


and  was  received  with  coldness,  hauteur,  and 
perhaps  rudeness.  But  the  lofty  soul  and 
generous  heart  of  the  great  actor,  who  had 
studied  human  nature  and  human  passions 
so  deeply,  would  not  permit  him  to  take 
umbrage  or  offence  at  this  conduct  of  the 
girl's  father.  In  a  Christian  spirit,  he  made 
every  allowance  for  Sir  John's  wrath  ;  but, 
at  the  same  time,  respectfully  pointed  out 
that  he  was  in  no  way  to  blame  for  the 
young  lady's  infatuation. 

"  You  are  to  blame,  sir,"  vociferated  the 
baronet.  "The  entire  drama  is  to  blame, 
sir.  It  is  all  unreal.  I  am  disgusted  with  it. 
Here  are  men  without  a  shilling  in  the  world 
represented  as  persons  of  rank  and  fortune. 
Others,  of  ordinaiy  looks,  if  not  actually 
plain,  are  painted  up  to  seem  handsome. 
With<rat  your  paints,  your  tinselled  garments, 
and  your  gilded  walls,  you  could  do  nothing. 
Appear  in  your  own  clothes,  and  as  your 


own  selves,  and  few,  I 
in  love  with  vou." 


warrant,  would  fall 


"  That  may  be,  Sir  John,"  replied  Garrick, 
meekly,  to  this  silly  and  insulting  speech. 
"  But  I  think  the  attributes  of  an  actor  are 
not  quite  so  mean  and  contemptible  as  you 
imagine.  I  cannot,  however,  at  this  moment 
discuss  the  subject  with  you ;  for,  within 
the  past  five  minutes,  and  in  this  very  square, 
I  have  witnessed  a  scene  which  has  occa- 
sioned my  feelings  a  very  severe  shock. 
The  bare  recollection  of  it  makes — as  you 
may  see,  Sir  John — the  colour  recede  from 
my  cheek,  my  heart  to  quiver,  and  my  pulse 
to  tremble." 

"  What  is  it,  sir,  that  has  so  affected  you  1 " 
asked  Sir  John,  with  great  curiosity,  ear- 


nestness, and  emotion. 

"  Picture     to    yourself, 
child  !  " 

"  Yes." 


sir,    a    beautiful 


"  A  beautiful  child,  scarcely  three  years  of 


age  !'' 

""Yes." 


"As  lovely  a  child  as  the  eye  of  man  ever 
beheld  !  " 
"Yes,  yes." 
"  Fancy  that  child  having  climbed  from  an 


body  was  half-over  the  parapet,  where  the 
flower  was  growing." 

"  Yes,  yes." 

"  The  child  snapped  the  flower  from  its 
stem — had  it  in  its  little  hand — was  smiling 
at  the  people  in  the  street,  when — " 

"  It  fell !  " 

"Amongst  the  crowd  it  beheld  its  own, 
mother.  The  poor  woman  was  watching  with, 
the  rest,  but  afraid  to  speak—" 

"The  child  observing  its  mother,  sprang 
off?" 

"Nothing  of  the  kind,  Sir  John,"  said 
Garrick,  laughing,  "the  child  threw  the 


flower    to    its    mother, 
the  window,    and    was 


crawled 
lifted 


back    to 
by    the 


"  What  do  you  mean,  Mr.  Garrick,"  said 
the  Baronet,  on  recovering  himself,  "  by 
thus  trifling  with  my  feelings  ]  " 

"To  prove  to  you,  Sir  John,"  returned 
Garrick,  calmly,  "  that  without  any  assistance 
from  dress  and  scenery  an  actor  may  easily 
move  our  passions.  I  have  no  paint  upoa 
my  face,  no  tinsel  on  my  coat,  and  am  not 
surrounded  by  gilded  walls.  It  was  the  tone 
of  my  voice,  the  manner  of  my  delivery,  the 
expression  of  suspense  and  agouy  that  I 
threw  over  my  features,  that  fluttered  your 
heart  and  made  you  feel  what  I  affected  to 
feel,  while  narrating  that  story  of  my  own, 
invented  for  the  occasion.  Now,  Sir  John, 
why  should  you  marvel  that  a  young  lady  of 
spirit  and  feeling  should  be  charmed  with 
the  Romeo  that  I  enact  on  the  stage  1  But 
I  am  not  here  to  argue,  but  to  cure  your 
daughter  of  the  malady  of  which  I  am  said 
to  be  the  cause.  When  can  I  see  my 
patient  ? " 

"When  you  please,  sir." 

"Then  at  five  this  afternoon  I  will  call 
again,  disguised  as  a  physician — a  very  old 
man.  You  will  introduce  me  as  Doctor 
Robin  to  your  daughter.  I  am  a  physician 
whom  you  have  called  in  to  see  her.  Your 
role  is  a  very  simple  one.  There  must  be 
bottles  of  wine  and  glasses  left  on  the  side- 
board." 

At  the  appointed  hour  Garrick  was  in 

_  attendance,  and  was  introduced  to  the  young 

attic  window,  out  upon  a  parapet,  attracted  |  lady,  with  whom  he  was  left  alone.  He  took 


by  a  flower  which  was  growing  on  the  very 


"  Good  heavens  !  " 

"The  child  stooping  over  to  pluck  the 
flower — " 

"Horrible!" 

"The  nurse,  looking  out  of  the  window, 
and  observing  the  child  in  that  dangerous 


position — " 

"  Called  to  the  child,  and—" 

"No  !     She  remained,  speechless,  at  the 
window,  with  her  hands  upraised — thus." 

"  Yes,  yes." 

"  Some  people  in  the  street  observed  the   You  have  been  to  Covent   Garden, 
child,  and  ere  long  a  crowd  was  assembled. '  Romeo,  perhaps  ?      You    must   have 


her  hand  with  great  gentleness  and  felt  her 
pulse. 

"  I  am  not  ill,  doctor,"  said  she.  "  It  is  an 
idea — a  fancy  of  my  father's." 

"  You  must  allow  me  to  be  the  best  judge 
of  your  health,"  said  Garrick.  "  You  are  ill, 
very  ill !  Feverish — very  feverish  !  Where 
is  the  pain  1  In  the  head  1 " 


No." 

"In  the  heart?" 
The  girl  blushed  and  sighed. 
"  I  see  ;  I  see.     You  have  seen  too  much, 
gaiety  of   late :    balls,  masquerades,   plays. 

Seea 
quiet 


168 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[August  15,  1857-1 


—  perfect  quiet  —  repose.  No  more  of 
Borneo." 

"  O,  Doctor,"  exclaimed  Amelia,  "  I  am 
dying  to  see  Borneo  once  more.  Tell  them 
it  will  do  me  good.  Doctor !  Doctor  !  Dear 
doctor  !  Komeo  is  the  only  medicine  for  my 
complaint,  Borneo  !  Dear  Borneo  ! " 

"  Nonsense  !  You  must  not  talk  in  this 
way." 

"I  shall  go  mad  if  I  do  not  see  Borneo 
again.  His  voice  and  his  words  are  still 
ringing  in  my  ears : 

By  a  name 

I  know  not  how  to  tell  thce  who  I  am  : 
My  nauie,  dear  saint,  is  hateful  to  myself, 
Because  it  is  an  enemy  to  thee  ; 
Had  I  it  written,  I  would  tear  the  word." 

"  Pooh  !  pooh  !  "  cried  Garrick.  "  Old  as 
I  am,  I  could  make  a  better  Borneo  than  the 
one  you  are  raving  about ! " 

"  Ah,  no,  doctor.  There  cannot  be  another 
Borneo." 

"  Indeed  ?     Now,  listen  ! — 

With  love's  light  wings  did  I  o'erperch  these  walls; 

For  stony  limits  cannot  hold  love  out. 

And  what  love  can  do,  that  dares  love  attempt: 

Therefore  thy  kinsmen  are  no  let  to  me. 

Alack  !  there  lies  more  peril  in  thine  eye, 

Than   twenty    of  these   swords;     look    thou    but 

sweet, 
And  I  am  proof  against  their  enmity." 

Here  Garrick  threw  aside  his  wig  and 
cloak,  and  continued : 

"  I  have  night's  cloak  to  hide  me  from  their  sight  ; 
And  hut  thou  love  me,  let  them  find  me  here  : 
My  life  were  hotter  ended  by  their  hate, 
Than  death  prorogued,  wanting  of  thy  love." 

The  girl  rose  from  the  couch  and  threw 
herself  into  the  arms  of  Garrick,  whom 
she  now  recognised  as  the  real  Borneo.  The 
scene  that  ensues  is  admirably  conceived 
and  well  worked  out  by  the  German  drama- 
tist, and  is,  on  the  whole,  the  best  scene  in 
the  piece.  "Whilst  holding  the  beautiful  girl, 
senseless  with  her  emotion,  in  his  arms,  he 
reproaches  himself  with  having  gone  too  far  ; 
with  having  strengthened  the  love  he  had 
pledged  himself  to  extinguish.  His  heart 
returns  the  passion,  and  he  asks  himself  the 
question  whether  he  dare  be  faithless  to  his 
word  '?  Then  comes  the  struggle  between 
love  and  honour,  passion  and  faith  ;  and  for 
a  while  it  is  hard  to  say  which  will  have  the 
mastery.  The  "situation"  is,  in  some  respects, 
quite  as  fine  as  that  at  the  end  of  the 
First  Act  of  Bulwer's  play,  The  Lady  of 
Lyons.  Conscience,  however,  gains  the  day 
over  Inclination,  and  Garrick  restores  the 
pleasing  burden,  which  he  has  sustained  in 
his  arms,  to  the  couch  on  which  she  had  been 
sitting.  He  then  continues  to  act  the  part  of 


Borneo ;  but  holds  in  one  hand  a  decanter, 
and  in  the  other  a  tumbler,  stopping  occa- 
sionally to  drink.  Presently  lie  affects  in- 
toxication, talks  incoherently,  and  suddenly 
begins  to  act  the  scene  between  Bichard  the 
Third  and  Lady  Anne. 

"  And  who  is  Lady  Anne  1 "  inquires  the 
girl,  not  a  little  jealous,  and  rather  disgusted. 

"  She  that  I  am  going  to  woo  to-night," 
replies  Garrick. 

"  But  you  have  sworn  to  me." 

"  For  that  matter  I  swear  to  everybody.'* 

"  Then,  you  are  perjured." 

"  Not  at  all.  I  am  an  actor,  and  I  play  all 
parts.  To-night  I  shall  be  a  king  ;  to-morrow 
night  I  shall  be  a  beggar  ;  the  night  after,  a. 
thief.  Yes,  I  swear  to  everybody.  Some- 
times to  queens,  duchesses,  and  countesses, 
and  not  unfrequently  to  chambermaids  and 
fish-fags." 

"  Then,  you  are  not  Borneo  1 " 

"  Only  on  the  stage ;  and  off  the  stage 
there  is  no  Borneo." 

Here  the  play  (of  which  the  above  is  but  a 
bare  outline),  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
ends.  The  young  lady  is  awakened  from  her 
delusion,  and  returns  to  the  country,  pre- 
pared, of  course,  to  accept  the  hand  of  a 
suitor  whom  she  has  recently  slighted.  The 
old  baronet  is  delighted,  and  the  rest  of  the 
dramatis  personae  are  perfectly  satisfied  and 
happy.  And  so  was  the  audience  on  the  occa- 
sion when  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the 
piece  represented  in  Berlin  some  few  years 
ago. 

Since  the  above  was  written,  the  axithor 
has  had  a  conversation  with  a  gentleman  of 
eighty-two  years  of  age — a  gentleman  whose 
name  is  a  sufficient  guarantee  for  the  truth  of 
his  statement.  He  says  :  "  I  knew  Mrs. 
Garrick  (the  actor's  widow)  in  the  evening  of 
her  life,  and  a  very  charming  and  clever 
woman  she  was — devoted  to  the  memory  01 
her  husband,  whom  she  idolised  during  his 
lifetime.  She  was  a  German,  who  came  to 
England  under  the  protection  and  auspices 
of  the  Countess  of  Burlington,  at  whose 
mansion  Garrick,  a  favoured  guest,  first  met 
her.  I  have  frequently  heard  Mrs.  Garrick 
tell  the  story  of  which  the  German  dramatist 
has  availed  himself,  and  therefore  I  know  it 
to  be  a  fact,  and  not  a  fiction.  It  was  Gar- 
rick's  noble  conduct  on  this  occasion  that 
induced  the  Countess  of  Burlington  to  give 
her  consent,  for  a  long  time  withheld,  to  their 
nuptials — the  nuptials  of  Garrick  and  his 
wife ;  for,  although  the  countess  received 
Garrick  as  a  guest,  and  had  vast  admiration 
for  his  talents  and  his  genius,  nevertheless 
she  Avas  opposed  to  his  marriage  with  a  lady 
under  her  protection,  and  one  whom  she 
expected  would  form  a  matrimonial  alliance 
of  a  loftier  character  in  the  worldly  sense  of 
that  phrase." 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  ly  the  Authors. 


fubli»hed»<  the  Office,  No.  16,  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  BBAUBUBI  &EVASS,  Whitefriaxs,  London, 


"  Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS"—  SHAKESPSAM. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

A   WEEKLY   JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


°-  387.] 


SATURDAY,  AUGUST  22,  1857. 


STAMPED  3d. 


PRUSSIAN  POLICE. 


THE  British  constitution  unites  firmly  the 
principle  of  hereditary  monarchy  with  a 
respect  for  the  liberty  of  the  people  :  mainly 
because  the  people  of  England,  not  the 
monarch,  has  the  key  of  the  exchequer.  The 
constitutions  granted  to  their  subjects  by 
hereditary  monarchs  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  are  gifts  easily  revoked,  because  those  , 
monarchs  have  in  their  power  the  revenues  j 
of  the  state,  by  help  of  which  they  may 
'become  masters  of  the  people.  The  key  of 
the  money-box  is  a  great  talisman.  The 
king  or  queen  of  England  represents  the 
country.  When  we  sing  God  save  the  Queen, 
we  mean  willing  devotion  to  a  sovereign 
who  merits  our  most  loyal  affection,  but  we 
mean  not  less,  God  save  Us  All.  The  Queen 
is  ours  not  less  than  we  are  hers.  In  a 
German  state,  the  people  belongs  to  the 
prince  ;  but  the  prince  does  not  belong  to  the 
people.  It  is  their  duty  to  look  upon  him  as 
their  owner. 

The  British  army  exists  co  protect  Britain 
from  foreign  enemies.  Our  constables  and 
police  officers  exist  to  protect  the  lives  and 
liberties  of  all  at  home  from  the  aggressions 
of  the  lawless.  German  armies  and  police 
exist  chiefly  for  the  protection  of  the  prince 
against  the  people.  Their  more  onerous 
task  is  to  suppress  the  people  as  a 
power  in  the  state.  Every  Prussian,  for 
instance,  is  stamped  and  registered  by  the 
police  at  birth ;  goes  about  with  a  label,  like  a 
sheep  with  a  mark  of  ruddle  on  his  back,  all 
his  life  long ;  and  if  found  without  such  label, 
may  be  almost  worried  to  death.  To  make 
monarchy  a  despotism  is  one  main  duty  of 
the  police  in  Prussia.  It  se.ts  about  its 
duty  in  a  way  that  brings  the  police  force 
into  secret  and  deep  contempt  among  the 
people. 

There  are  good  men  in  it.  Be  quiet  in 
Prussia,  mind  only  your  own  private  busi- 
ness— if  it  be  business  not  dangerous  to  the 
state,  as  authorship  or  anything  implying 
exercise  of  independent  thought — illuminate 
loyally  on  royal  birthdays,  read  the  govern- 
ment newspaper,  go  to  the  government 
church,  and  you  may  enjoy  in  many  things 
more  freedom  in  Germany  than  can  be  had 
in  England.  "I  have  often  thought,"  says 


an  English  writer  who  knows  Germany  well, 
"  I  have  often  thought  and  felt  that,  while  in 
England  we  have  political  liberty,  we  have 
nothing  like  the  personal  and  individual  free- 
dom, the  social  liberty  of  the  Germans,  even 
under  their  worst  governments."  Go  to 
Prussia  without  political  opinions  and  with 
a  passport  well  covered  with  authenti- 
cations of  the  harmless  object  of  your  visit, 
and  you  will  find  the  police  considerate  and 
faithful  in  performance  of  their  duties.  A 
subordinate  policeman  will  here  and  there — 
as  a  gift,  not  as  a  bribe — quite  harmlessly 
accept  a  coin  as  drink-money  for  service  done ; 
but,  usually,  even  that  would  be  refused. 
The  Prussian  police,  seen  from  this  point 
of  view,  is  the  best  on  the  continent.  It 
fs  superior,  perhaps,  to  the  police  of  England. 

BUT 

BUT,  the  work  which  is  the  whole  work  of 
the  police  in  England  is  not  half  the  work  of 
the  police  in  Prussia.  Go  to  Prussia  as  an 
Englishman  without  a  passport ;  go  with  a 
good  passport  and  express  freely  and  boldly 
your  own  constitutional  ideas  ;  let  it  be  seen, 
whether  Englishman  or  German,  that  you 
care  more  about  a  people  than  about  a 
people's  king  ;  then  you  are  a  rat,  and  the 
police  are  terriers  by  whom  you  will  assu- 
redly be  worried.  A  Prussian  subject  takes. 
in  the  wrong  newspaper,  goes  to  the  wrong- 
church,  stays  away  from  church  for  too  many 
successive  Sundays,  or  talks  liberal  politics 
within  the  hearing  of  a  servant.  No  legal 
offence  may  have  been  committed ;  but  he  will 
be  liable  to  an  arrest,  on  suspicion  of  having 
tried  to  make  people  discontented  with  the 
government.  He  will  be  fortunate  if,  in  such 
case,  he  escape  with  only  a  few  weeks'  impri- 
sonment during  his  "arrest  for  investigation." 
There  are  persons  so  arrested  who  have 
been  several  years  in  prison  without  having; 
been  brought  up  for  an  examination.  Against 
the  proceedings  of  the  police,  in  all  matters 
affecting  the  government's  care  of  itself,  no 
appeal  is  of  any  use.  A  man's  house  may  be 
ransacked  from  garret  to  cellar  ;  any  or  all 
of  his  papers  may  be  seized,  upon  the  simple 
assertion  of  the  police  that  they  are  sus- 
picious. Ifseized,they  are  not  often  returned; 
and  should  he  lay  any  complaint  at  the  tribu- 
nals of  justice,  he  will  be  told  only  that 
these  are  "  affairs  of  the  police,"  in  which  the 


VOL.  XVI. 


387 


170     [.\usu«t  •:•:, 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


judges  can  do  nothing.     Not  the  police  only/ 
but  all  persons  who  receive  government  pay, 
the  j  udges  themselves— nay,  the  very  clergy — 
are  put  to  a  degrading  use  as  spies  upon  the 
people. 

Against  a  man  suspected  of  small  con- 
tentment \vith  the  government,  no  treachery 
is  too  base  to  be  ^employed  by  the  police 
in  Prussia.  His  friendship  and  familiar 
intercourse  will  be  courted  assiduously,  for 
purposes  of  betrayal.  Agents  of  the  police 
-will  even  be  instructed  to  pay  their  addresses 
to  his  cook  or  housekeeper,  for  the  sake  of 
arriving  at  the  secrets  of  his  home.  His 
letters  will  be  opened  secretly  ;  if  by  chance 
any  difficulty  should  arise  in  the  reclosing 
of  any  one  of  them,  it  \vill  be  sent  on  to  him 
with  the  effrontery  which  only  irresponsible 
authorities  can  venture  to  display,  sealed 
with  a  great  official  seal. 

The  Prussian  clergy,  too,  do  not  receive 
the  king's  money  without  being  required  to 
do  their  duty  on'behalf  of  absolutism  ;  where- 
fore they  are  distrusted  by  large  masses  of 
the  people,  and  are  known  disrespectfully  as 
Black  Police.  They  are  bound  to  keep  lists 
of  all  persons  in  their  respective  parishes,  and 
to  observe  how  often  each  attends  the  state 


church  or  sacrament, 
warned  once  and  again 


Defaulters    will    be 
after  which,  if  they 


be  government  functionaries,  they  will  be 
dismissed  ;  if  they  be  private  persons,  they 
will  suffer  social  blight  from  the  displeasure 
of  the  police.  Well-affected  subjects  will  be 
counselled  to  avoid  them,  and  they  will  be — 
in  a  quiet,  mean  way,  and  without  open  accu- 
sation— forced  to  choose  for  themselves  be- 
tween the  alternatives  of  banishment  or  ruin. 
The  political  use  of  the  police  was  brought 
to  its  most  complete  state,  and  to  its  point 
of  utmost  oppression,  by  the  chief  president 
of  police,  the  Herr  von  Hinckeldey,  who  wa; 
shot,  not  very  long  ago,  in  a  duel.  He  was 
a  very  clever  man,  well  versed  in  many 
sciences,  and  was  personally  amiable  ;  but,  in 
the  carry  ing  out  of  his  political  theory,  he  wa 
thorough-going  and  remorseless.  His  object 
was  to  recover  for  the  king  every  shred  of 
that  robe  of  irresponsible  supremacy  that 
had  been  torn  in  the  struggle  of  the  wild 
year  'forty-eight.  He  bribed  whatevei 
writers  would  receive  a  bribe ;  issued  com- 
mands to  journalists;  and  threatened  what 
was  virtually  ruin  to  those  who  were  inde- 
pendent. He  established,  even  in  London 
an  office  for  procuring  letters  that  miserable 
scribblers  could  be  got  to  forward — in  the 
name  of  English  opinion,  favourable  to  the 
cause  he  had  at  heart— to  the  German  news- 
papers. This  office  was  an  establishment 
distinct  from  the  spy  office  established  here  to 
watch  the  emigration  ;  being  so  purely  one  o 
Hinckeldey's  own  private  speculations,  that 
it  tumbled  to  the  ground  when  he  was  shot 
But  the  organisation  of  the  police  force  in 
Prussia,  as  a  pillar  of  the  royal  state  per- 
fected by  him,  remains.  This,  of  which  we 


are  now  speaking,  is  his  monument ; — but,  as 
to  the  durability  of  it,  it  is  not  well  to  pro- 
phesy with  any  confidence. 

At  present  it  is  strong,  and  is  supported 
al^o  by  stout  buttresses.  The  Prussian 
police  system  connects  itself  more  or  less 
with  the  police  of  all  North  Germany. 
Strong  governments  are  persuaded  ;  weak 
ones  intimidated — as  in  the  case  of  Ham- 
burgh, which  may  be  a  free  city  in  name,  but 
is  the  vassal  of  Prussia  whenever  questions 
arise  of  throwing  back  into  the  jaws  of  the 
Prussian  terriers,  any  small  head  of  the  game 
they  have  been  trained  to  worry. 

Now  let  me  illustrate  what  I  have  been 
saying,  by  help  of  a  few  facts  that  happen 
sither  to  lie  within  my  own  private  experi- 
ence, or  to  have  been  witnessed  by  trust- 
worthy friends.  I  do  not  tell  real  names ; 
but  I  do  tell  what  I  know  to  be  the  literal 
and  simple  truth.  Let  me  begin  with  a  pass- 
port case. 

M.  Henry,  an  old  gentleman,  who  lived  for 
more  than  twenty-five  years  in  Prussia,  fell 
ill,  and  his  wife  wrote  to  their  son — who  was 
established  in  the  United  States  of  America, 
— to  come  over  and  see  his  old  father  once 
more,  before  his  end.  The  dutiful  son  threw 
all  his  business  aside,  went  on  board  the  first 
steamer  bound  to  Hamburgh ;  where  he 
arrived  in  due  time.  By  the  first  train  he 
set  off  for  Berlin.  Here,  he  was  stopped 
by  the  police;  who  asked  for  his  passport. 
Young  Mr.  Henry,  littlefl.  versed  in  police 
matters,  had  not  even  thought  of  a  passport. 
When  he  left  home  he  had  none.  A  repub- 
lican without  a  passport,  what  a  horror  ! 
Of  course  he  was  arrested  on  the  spot  a?  a 
vagabond,  put  into  prison,  and  compelled  to 
spin  wool.  In  this  agreeable  situation  he 
remained  for  ten  days  ;  after  which  time  he 
became  free,  by  the  interposition  of  the  Ame- 
rican consul  in  Hamburgh ;  to  whom  he 
wrote  immediately  after  his  arrest.  The 
Prussian  police  did  not  even  apologise  to 
him.  They  simply  told  him,  "All  right  ; 
you  have  told  us  the  truth,  and  may  go."  The 
misused  gentleman  was  almost  killed  by  this 
vexation,  and  took  the  product  of  his  labours 
in  the  spinning-house  (a  large  clew  of  worsted) 
home  with  him,  to  show  it  to  his  children 
and  to  keep  it  in  his  family  as  a  token  of 
Prussian  liberty. 

Another  gentleman  I  know  well,  remained 
in  prison  a  whole  year  for  having  irreverently 
observed,  upon  one  occasion,  that  the  king 
was  tipsy. 

I  was  intimately  acquainted  with  a  lite- 
rary man  who  conducted  a  weekly  news- 
paper :  the  cheapness  of  which  (three  shillings 
a-year)  was  thought  more  dangerous  even 
than  its  contents.  It  was  written  under  cen- 
sure ;  that  is  to  say,  the  proof-sheets  were  sent 
to  the  censor,  who  struck  out  every  tiling  which 
he  considered  disloyal.  Having  thus  received 
the  sanction  of  the  government,  the  paper 
was  published,  and  common  sense  would 


Charles  Dichcas.] 


PRUSSIAN  POLICE. 


[August  22. 1857-1       171 


have  induced  every  editor  to  think  himself 
safe.  It  was  not  so.  My  friend  had  an  im- 
mense success  with  his  paper,  and  got,  in  a 
few  months,  no  fewer  than  fifteen  thousand 
subscribers.  This  would  have  yielded  him 
a  considerable  income,  even  after  English 
notions.  All  the  German  governments  ;  and, 
most  of  all,  that  of  Prussia,  became  almost 
frantic ;  for  my  friend  was  as  cautious  as 
clever,  and  they  could  not  get  at  him  under 
any  legal  pretext.  It  was  before  the  year 
eighteen  hundred  and  forty-eight,  and  such 
pretexts  were  still  required.  One  day,  how- 
ever, when  I  was  at  dinner  wondering  at  my 
friend's  vacant  place,  I  received  a  hurried, 
open,  pencil-note  from  him,  dated  from  prison ; 
by  which  he  informed  me  of  his  having  been 
arrested,  and  of  the 'judge's  having  very  re- 
luctantly consented  to  let  him  go,  on  depositing 
five  hundred  thalers  in  cash.  Fortunately 
the  money  was  to  be  had.  I  took  it  myself 
to  the  judge,  and  delivered  my  friend. 

Of  course,  I  was  curious  to  know  his 
offence,  and  was  not  a  little  amused  when  he 
showed  me  the  lines  of  his  paper  for  which 
the  Austrian  government  had  impeached 
him.  He  had  spoken  of  an  Austrian  chief  of 
Artillery  having  opposed  the  reducing  of 
military  service  from  fourteen  years  to  eight, 
objecting  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  re- 
cruits to  become  good  artillerymen  in  eight 
years ;  and  the  writer  exclaimed,  "that  a  fellow 
who  could  not  learn  his  service  in  eight  years 
must  be  indeed  a  potenzirter  Austrian;"  which 
meant,  that  he  must  be  many  times  sillier 
than  the  Austrians  generally  are  thought  to 
be  in  the  north  of  Germany.  My  friend  was 
condemned  to  three  months'  imprisonment, 
without  being  allowed  to  compound  for  his 
punishment  by  a  payment  of  money  ;  which 
was  customary  in  press  transgressions.  Very 
soon  afterwards  the  paper  was  prohibited 
without  any  legal  proceeding — nay,  against 
law  and  the  constitution.  With  the  same 
right  they  might  have  shut  up  the  shop  of 
any  grocer  for  selling  cigars  manufactured  by 
the  special  consent  of  the  government. 

When  my  friend  pxiblished  another  journal, 
that  was  prohibited  also,  and  we  got  a  hint 
that  he  would  be  arrested.  By  stratagem,  I 
got  his  passport  from  the  bureau  where  it 
was  deposited,  and  he  left  Leipzig,  going  to 
the  next  Prussian  town;  for  he  was  a  subject 
of  Prussia.  Taught  by  necessity,  my  friend 
was  well  versed  in  the  law,  and  adhered  so 
strictly  to  it,  that  they  could  find  no  "  legal 
pretexts"  for  a  long  time ;  but  he  was  annoyed 
in  every  manner.  At  last,  the  Prussian 
government — who  would  put  him  aside  at 
.any  cost — sent  one  of  his  books  to  Magdeburg, 
that  the  law  officers  and  judges  there  might 
pick  out  from  it  matter  to  impeach  him  for 
high  treason,  or  any  other  nonsense  that  pro- 
mised a  rich  harvest  of  prison.  The  Magde- 
burg courts  were  much  puzzled  by  this  desire 
of  the  government ;  for  they  could  find  no 
crime  iu  the  book,  and  returned  it  at  last  to 


Berlin.  But  very  soon  it  came  back,  with  a 
reproof,  and  many  passages  in  the  book 
marked  with  a  red  pencil.  Cardinal  Eiche- 
lieu  said,  "  Give  me  five  written  words  of 
a  man,  and  I  shall  find  matter  in  them  to 
have  him  hanged."  My  friend  was  summoned 
before  the  court,  and  impeached  on  Majestats- 
Beleidigung — lesse  majestatis,  is  I  think  the 
technical  name.  When  the  judges  showed 
him  the  offending  passage,  he  took  the 
Landrecht  (provincial  law)  smilingly  up 
from  the  table,  turned  up  the  paragraph  re- 
lating to  the  offence  attributed  to  him,  and 
read  aloud,  "  Such  a  criminal  shall  be 
dragged  to  the  place  of  execution  sitting 
upon  a  cowskin  and  there  crushed  by  a 
wheel,  &c.  (gera'dert  werden  von  uuten  auf)." 
And  all  this,  for  the  flesh-coloured  tricots  of 
Lola  Montez  !  The  whole  court  of  justice 
could  not  help  laughing  outright ;  for  the 
thing  was  too  ludicrous. 

In  his  paper  my  friend  had  mentioned  how- 
Lola  Montez  had  horsewhipped  an  officer  of 
the  police,  and  how  she  had  been  condemned 
to  half  a  year  in  the  house  of  correction,  but 
had  been  pardoned  by  the  king, and  concluded, 
"  Well,  I  wonder  whether  I  should  have  been 
pardoned  also,  for  having  committed  such  a 
crime  ?  Possibly,  but  not  very  likely  ;  for  if, 
even  in  the  scale  of  justice,  a  pair  of  flesh- 
coloured  tricots  weighs  heavier  than  my  steel- 
pen,  how  much  the  more  will  they  not  put  out 
of  its  equilibrium  the  balance  of  grace  ?" 

Yes  ;  the  judges  condemned  him,  laugh- 
ingly, to  two  years'  imprisonment,  and  the 
loss  of  the  national  cockade.  About  this  hated 
sign  of  bondage  to  an  absolute  Hohenzollern 
my  friend  cared  not  a  pin ;  but  its  loss  involved 
the  loss  of  most  of  his  civil  rights.  There- 
fore he  laid  an  appeal  against  this  verdict, 
and  it  was  altered  to  only  one  year  of  im- 
prisonment, which  he  endured,  in  the  citadel 
of  Magdeburg. 

So  much  for  the  press.  Now  I  shall  show- 
how  the  police  work  in  the  vineyard  of  the 
Lord. 

There  was,  in  Konigsberg,  a  dissenting 
congregation  of  about  eight  thousand  mem- 
bers, belonging  to  a  Protestant  sect  spread 
all  over  the  empire.  Of  course  any  legal 
pretexts  to  be  met  with  were  available  for 
annoying  and  vexing  these  dissenters  ;  but 
the  police  used  the  most  dastardly  and  base 
means  to  ruin  them,  besides.  They  induced, 
for  instance,  all  persons  employed  in  the 
police,  and  even  private  persons,  to  give  no 
work  to  any  tradesmen  ;  to  buy  no  goods  of 
merchants  belonging  to  this  persecuted  sect 
— nay,  keepers  of  public-houses  and  tea  or 
coffee  gardens  were  forbidden  to  sell  anything 
to  members  of  it,  under  pain  of  the  with- 
drawal of  theft-  licences.  This  was  a  serious 
thing  for  these  innkeepers,  and  they  requested 
the  .Reverend  Mr.  Kupp,  then  minister  of 
the  congregation,  to'communicate  these  police 
measures  to  his  parishioners,  lest  they  might 
briusc  innocent  men  to  trouble  and  ruin. 


172       [August  •J2, 18!i7.3 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


f  Conducted  &y 


One  of  tiie  dissenters,  having  no  fewer  than 
ten  children,  happened  to  be  employed  in  the 
police,  and  lost  his  place  for  his  religion.  To 
get  another  existence  this  man  competed  to 
rent  the  house  of  the  shooters'  company 
belonging  to  the  city,  and  therefore  depending 
on  the  city  authorities.  When  the  police 
became  aware  of  his  intention,  they  managed 
things  with  the  corporation  so,  that  he  was 
offered  the  house  only  if  he  would  receive 
the  Lord's  Supper  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
most  fanatical  parson  of  the  state  church. 
The  poor  man,  having  no  other  hope  of  sup- 
porting his  large  family,  was  weak  enough 
to  comply  ;  but  he  was  afterwards  very  much 
troubled  in  his  mind  ;  wretched  for  life  in  fact. 

A  young  respectable  girl,  having  a  very  large 
connection  as  a  seamstress,  against  whom  no 
one  in  Konigsberg  could  say  a  word,  belonged 
to  the  dissenters  ;  and,  not  being  a  native  of 
Konigsberg,  although  of  Prussia,  was  ordered 
to  leave  the  city  in  a  fortnight.  The  girl, 
whose  nimble  fingers  supported  an  old  mother, 
•was  not  base  enough  to  disown  her  faith,  and 
prepared  weepingly  to  leave  her  friends  and 
her  snug,  although  humble  position.  However 
she  was  not  only  clever  and  good,  but  pretty, 
and  a  young  master-joiner  offered  her  his  hand. 
She  accepted  him  at  once.  There  was  no  time 
for  simpering ;  a  fortnight  with  three  Sundays 
being  just  sufficient  to  fulfil  the  requisites  of 
the  law.  The  night  before  the  day  she  was 
ordered  to  leave  her  home,  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Hupp  performed  the  marriage  service,  and 
they  sat  joyously  at  supper,  laughing  at  the 
police  ;  for  now,  being  the  bride  of  a  citizen 
of  Konigsberg,  she  was  legally  a  denizen  of  that 
city.  A  loud  knock  was  heard  at  the  door. 
Police  entered,  and  one  of  them  said,  "  This 
assembly  is  dissolved  !"  This  interruption 
was  disagreeable  ;  but  so  ludicrous  that 
everybody  was  amused.  The  bridegroom 
said,  "Well,  good  night,  friends — sorry  for 
the  good  victuals,  but  they  might  dissolve  as 
much  as  they  like ;  this  society  "  (he  took 
the  hand  of  his  bride)  "I  think  shall  never  be 
dissolved  ;  neither  by  any  policeman  nor  by 
any  other  functionary,  whether  in  blue  or  in 
black." 

With  this  dissolving  of  assemblies  the 
police  annoyed  the  dissenters  most.  Some 
of  them  had  little  meetings  to  take  tea  and 
read  the  German  classics.  Almost  always 
they  were  disturbed  by  policemen  dissolving 
the  assembly;  sometimes  followed  by  soldiers 
•with  their  muskets  and  bayonets.  The 
next  day,  each  member  of  this  circle  was 
summoned  before  the  police  and  reproved. 
Remonstrance  was  useless  ;  and,  when  they 
at  last  asked  the  president  of  the  police 
to  give  them  a  definition  of  a  prohibited 
assembly,  (for  they  had  no  idea  why  the 
government  should  prohibit  every  tea  party,) 
he  told  them  their  meeting  was  not  to  be 
taken  for  a  tea  party,  but  for  an  assembly  ; 
because  the  different  persons  forming  it  were 
neither  friends  nor  neighbours,  nor  relations, 


nor  of  the  same  station  in  life.  When 
the  Reverend  Mr.  Rupp  once  invited  some 
poor  people  of  his  congregation  to  a  public 
garden,  to  keep  holiday  there,  he  was  re- 
proved by  the  police.  He  remonstrated, 
and  said  these  persons  had  been  his  guests. 
He  was  answered  rudely,  that  they  were  low 
people  and  no  society  for  him.  Mr.  Rupp 
took  out  his  Bible,  and  read  a  passage  in 
St.  Luke,  in  which  something  was  said  about 
not  inviting  the  rich,  who  could  give  dinner* 
in  return,  but  the  poor  and  needy.  The 
magistrate  looked  confused,  and  Mr.  Rupp- 
escaped,  unfined. 

Even  children-gardens  were  forbid  by  the 
police,  and  an  assembly  of  babies,  from  three 
to  five  years'  old,  was  once  dissolved.  The 
little  ones  did  not  know  the  way  home;  for  it 
was  not  yet  time  to  be  fetched  by  the  ser- 
vants of  their  parents  ;  and,  when  the  police- 
asked  them  the  names  of  their  fathers, 
they  answered,  "Papa."  Then  the  little 
lambs  were  seen  walking  with  the  wolves, 
quite  confidently,  about  the  streets,  inquiring 
where  they  did  belong  to. 

Such  dissenters  as  belonged  to  official 
families  were  persecuted  most.  The  Lieut.- 
Colonel  von  L.,  who  died  in  the  year  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-eight,  left  two  orphan  girls, 
without  a  penny.  However,  the  younger 
sister  had  the  expectancy  of  a  place  as 
canonesse  in  a  foundation  for  spinsters  of  noble 
birth,  which  had  been  restored  and  richly 
bestowed  by  the  late  grandfather  of  the 
young  lady  ;  who  was  a  very  rich  man.  The 
elder  of  the  two  sisters  got,  .after  much  ado, 
a  small  pension  from  the  government,  by  the 
interest  of  the  minister  of  Auerswald,  who 
was  connected  with  the  family.  Angelina, 
the  younger  sister,  while  expecting  her 
canouesse-place,  tried  to  get  her  livelihood  by 
giving  lessons  in  French,  and  writing  books 
for  young  people.  Heaven  blessed  her  brave 
endeavours  :  she  got  a  situation  at  a  school, 
and  many  private  lessons.  She  had,  indeed,  so 
much  to  do,  that  almost  her  only  recreation 
was  to  visit  the  religious  congregations  of 
the  dissenters,  to  hear  Mr.  Rupp. 

Thus  she  went  on  very  well  till  the  year 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-two ;  when  it  was 
ordered  by  Polizei-President  Peters  that 
Miss  von  L.  should  forbear  giving  any  lessons  ; 
secondly  it  was  decreed  that  Miss  Leo,  the 
mistress  of  the  school,  should  dismiss  Miss  A.. 
von  L.  directly,  and  without  any  fuss  (ge- 
raeuschlos)  ;  thirdly,  Miss  von  L.  was  to  leave 
Kouigsberg,  and  informed  that  the  interdict 
to  give  any  lessons  applied  to  the  whole 
Prussian  monarchy. 

In  vain  the  unhappy  lady  tried  the  law, — 
nay,  wrote  even  twice  to  the  king,  com- 
plaining of  the  wrongs  practised  on  her. 
She  was  answered  by  the  Minister  of  the 
Interior,  that  all  the  proceedings  against 
her  had  been  strictly  lawful.  Notwithstand- 
ing, Miss  von  L.  tried  to  give  lessons  in 
Danzig,  where  the  first  magistrate  was  a 


Ch&rles  Dickens/] 


THE  AMPHLETT  LOVE-MATCH. 


[August  M,  133-.]       173 


friend  of  her  family  ;  but  this  gentleman, 
although  wishing  her  well,  found  himself 
obliged  to  repeat  the  proceedings  of  Konigs- 
berg.  She  left  the  Prussian  empire  for  Dres- 
den, where  she  found  pupils  ;  but  there  came 
a  telegraphic  dispatch  from  Berlin,  and  she 
was  ordered  by  the  police  of  Saxony  to  leave 
Dresden  in  twenty-eight  hours.  To  fill  the 
chalice  of  sorrow  to  the  brim,  she  received  a 
letter  from  the  abbess  of  the  Earth-founda- 
tion, telling  her  to  give  up  all  expectation  of 
a  canonesse-place,  "if  she  adhered  to  the  dis- 
senters. Thus  she  lost  home,  existence — even 
the  only  hope  left  her  for  old  age  —  for  her 
faith. 


THE  AMPHLETT  LOVE-MATCH, 
i. 

"  FORGIVENESS,  Arthur  ?  You  surely  need 
not  ask  for  that !  "  said  the  lady,  with  a  cold 
smile.  "  You  were  of  age,  and  free  to  choose 
as  you  would  ;  and,  if  by  that  choice  you  have 
disappointed  my  hopes  and  frustrated  my 
intentions,  it  is 'scarcely  a  matter  for  which 
to  ask  my  forgiveness — my  recognition,  if 
you  will ;  and  that  I  have  granted." 

"  I  wish  you  would  say  that  in.  a  more 
cordial  tone,  mother,"  said  Arthur,  earnestly ; 
"  in  spite  of  your  kind  words  my  heart  feels 
chilled  and  heavy." 

"Do  you  re-assure  your  husband,  then, 
since  his  mother's  words  have  no  longer  any 
power  over  him,"  said  Mrs.  Amphlett,  still 
with  the  same  strange,  hard  smile  on  her 
face,  turning  to  a  pretty,  young  girl  who 
stood  timidly  in  the  background,  and  taking 
her  stiffly  by  the  hand. 

"  It  is  only  his  love  for  you  that  makes 
him  doubtful,"  stammered  the  girl,  looking 
appealingly  to  her  husband. 

"  I  asked  you  to  combat  the  effect — not 
to  explain  to  me  the  cause,"  replied  Mrs. 
Amphlett.  "  I  am  afraid  you  do  not  under- 
stand very  quickly.  You  are  embarrassed, 
and  want  self-possession,  I  see ;  you  blush, 
too,  and  lose  your  grace  of  outline  in  the 
awkward  angularity  of  confession.  We  shall 
have  some  training  to  go  through,  before  you 
will  be  tit  for  the  drawing-rooms  of  my 
friends  and  yoiir  husband's  associates." 

She  laughed; — a  low,  forced,  contemptuous 
laugh,  that  completed  poor  Geraldine's  dis- 
may. Turning  to  her  husband  she  retreated 
into  his  ai-ms;  and,  burying  her  face  in  his 
bosom,  exclaimed  piteously : 

"Oh,  Arthur!  take  me  away — take  me 
away  !  "  then  burst  into  tears. 

Mrs.  Amphlett  quietly  rang  the  bell. 

"  A  glass  of  cold  water,  Jones ;  and  ask 
Gryce  for  the  sal-volatile,  which  is  in  my 
room,"  she  said,  when  the  man  entered. 
"  This  young  lady  is  hysterical." 

The  lady's  tone  and  manner  of  unutter- 
able contempt  roused  Geraldine  from  her 
weakness  more  than  cold  water  or  sal- 
volatile.  She  felt,  too,  Arthur's  heart  throb 


under  her  hand  ;  and  though  he  passed  his 
arm  round  her  and  pressed  her  kindly  to 
him,  as  if  mutely  assuring  her  of  his  protec- 
tion, she  feared  she  had  annoyed  him,  more 
because  she  felt  she  had  been  silly,  than  be- 
cause she  showed  displeasure. 

"  No,  never  mind  now,"  she  said,  trying  to 
laugh,  and  shaking  back  the  bright,  brown 
hair  which  had  fallen  in  disorder  over  her 
face.  "  I  am  quite  well  now — it  is  nothing — 
I  am  very  sorry,"  she  added,  with  a  running 
accompaniment  of  small  sobs. 

"  Are  you  often  hysterical  1 "  asked  Mrs. 
Amphlett,  her  light  hazel  eyes  fixed  sternly 
on  her.  "  It  must  be  very  inconvenient  to 
you,  I  should  think,  and  scarcely  befitting 
Mrs.  Arthur  Amphlett.  You  may  take  it 
away  again,  Jones,"  she  said  to  the  footman, 
who"  bustled  in  with  the  cold  water  and  a 
small  phial  on  a  silver  stand  ;  "  or — no,  stay, 
— you  had  better  leave  them.  You  may  be 
attacked  again,"  she  added,  to  Geraldine. 

"  I  assure  you,  mother,  I  never  before  saw 
my  wife  so  nervous,"  exclaimed  Arthur.  "  In 
general,  she  is  both  brave  and  cheerful.  I 
never  knew  her  so  shaken." 

"  Indeed  ?  It  is  unfortunate  then,  that  she 
should  have  selected  me,  and  our  first  inter- 
view, for  the  display  of  a  weakness  which 
some,  I  believe,  call  interesting  ;  but  which 
to  me  is  puerile  ;  which,  in  fact,  I  regard  as 
temporary  insanity.  Come  !  "  she  added,  ar- 
ranging herself  in  her  easy -chair,  and  speak  ing 
with  a  little  less  pitiless  deliberation ;  "_we 
have  nowgot  through  the  first  meeting;  which, 
as  you  were  the  delinquents,  I  presume,  you 
dreaded  more  than  I.  Understand  then,  that 
I  overlook  all  the  personal  disrespect  there 
has  been  in  your  secret  marriage,  Arthur : 
all  the  disappointment,  and  wounded  pride  I 
have  had  in  your  marrying  so  far  beneath 
you.  I  am  a  woman  of  plain  words,  Geral- 
dine. Your  name  is  Geraldine,  is  it  not? 
I  thought  you  started  and  looked  surprised 
when  I  called  you  so.  No  matter  ! — and  I 
invite  you  both  to  remain  with  me  as  long  as 
it  suits  you  to  make  Thornivale  your  home. 
Now  let  the  subject  be  dropped.  Gryce 
will  show  you  to  your  room,  young  lady, 
if  you  ring  the  bell  twice ;  and,  I  dare  say, 
in  time,  we  shall  become  tolerably  well  ac- 
quainted." 

"  Arthur  !  dear  Arthur  !  what  will  become 
of  me  if  your  mother  does  not  soften  towards 
me  !  "  cried  poor  Geraldine,  when  she  was 
alone  with  her  husband. 

"Be  patient,  love,  for  a  few  days,"  said 
Arthur,  soothingly.  "  She  has  had  much 
sorrow  in  her  lite,  and  that  has  made  her 
harder  than  she  was  by  nature.  But  I  cannot 
believe  she  will  be  always  so  strange  as  she 
is  to-day.  I  cannot  believe  but  that  my 
Geraldine's  sweetness  and  goodness  will 
soften  her,  and  lead  her  to  love  and  value  one 
who  cannot  be  known  without  being  loved." 

"  Oh,  Arthur  !  I  never  prized  your  dear 
words  so  much  as  to-day,"  exclaimed  tha 


174       [August  M,  1S5T.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


young  wife,  with  a  look  and  gesture  of  most 
touching  devotion.  "While  you  love  me,  and 
believe  in  me,  and  are  not  ashamed  of  me. 
all  the  world  might  scorn  me, — I  should  still 
be  proud  and  blessed." 

"All  the  world  shall  honour  you,"  said 
Arthur,  laughing.  "  But,  come,  bathe  those 
great,  blue  eyes,  and  draw  a  veil  between 
their  love  and  the  outside  world.  Meet  my 
mother  with  as  much  composure  and  ease, 
and  with  as  little  show  of  feeling  as  you  can. 
Hern  ember,  she  respects  strength  more  than 
she  sympathises  with  feeling.  She  would 
liouour  a  victorious  foe — however  vile — more 
than  she  would  pity  a  prostrate  one,  how- 
ever virtuous.  Strength,  will,  self-assertion 
she  respects,  even  when  in  direct  opposition 
to  herself :  timidity,  obedience,  and  excita- 
bility she  simply  despises  and  tramples  under 
foot.  Don't  be  afraid  of  her.  Assert  yourself 
and  all  will  come  right.  Is  not  your  husband 
by  to  support  you  ?  " 

"  Arthur  !  I  wish  you  would  give  me 
something  terrible  to  do  for  you  !  I  feel  as  if 
I  could  go  through  the  fiercest,  wildest  mar- 
tyrdom for  you  and  your  love.  I  could  die 
for  you " 

"  But  you  dare  not  oppose  my  mother  ?  Is 
that  it  1  Darling  !  you  shall  live  for  and  with 
me  ;  and  that  is  better  than  dying.  Ah  !  I 
wonder  if  you  will  say  such  words  after  we 
have  been  married  as  many  years  as  now 
days.  Let  me  see, — how  many  ?  Twenty-six. 
We  are  almost  at  the  end  of  our  honeymoon, 
Geraldine ! " 

II. 

"I  THINK  Geraldine  is  slightly  improved 
since  she  came,"  said  Mrs.  Amphlett,  one 
morning,  to  her  sou.  "  She  is  rather  less 
awkward  and  mannerless  than  she  was." 

"Awkward  was  never  the  word  for  her," 
said  Arthur,  briskly.  "  She  is  only  shy 
and  unused  to  the  world.  She  is  singularly 
graceful,  I  think." 

Mrs.  Amphlett  lifted  her  eyebrows. 

"  Think  how  young  she  is  ! "  continued 
Arthur,  answering  his  mother's  look, — "  not 
quite  twenty,  yet — and  was  never  in  society 
before  she  came  here." 

"  How  strange  it  is,"  continued  the  mother, 
as  if  speaking  to  herself,  "  to  see  the  marriages 
which  some  men  make  ! — men  of  intellect, 
wealth,  education,  standing, — all  that  you 
imagine  would  refine  their  tastes  and  render 
them  fastidious  in  their  choice.  Yet  these 
are  the  very  persons  who  so  often  marry 
beneath  them.  Instead  of  choosing  the  wife 
who  could  best  fulfil  their  social  require- 
ments, they  think  only  of  pleasing  the  eye, 
which  they  call  love  —  as  you  have  done, 
Arthur,  hi  choosing  Geraldiue  in  place  of 
Miss  Vaughan." 

"Miss  Vaughan  !  Why  you  might  as  well 
have  asked  me  to  marry  a  statue.  A  hand- 
some girl,  I  confess  ;  but  without  a  spark  of 
life  or  a  drop  of  human  blood  in  her." 


"  That  may  be.  Yet  she  was  the  right  and 
natural  wife  for  you.  She  was  a  woman  of your 
own  age  and  your  own  standing  ;  formed  to  be 
the  leader  of  her  society  as  bents  your  wife  ; 
rich,  well  born  ;  in  short,  possessing  all  the 
requisite  qualifications  of  the  future  mistress 
of  Thornivale.  You  disregard  such  patent 
harmony  of  circumstances  for  what  1 — for  a 
good  little  blue-eyed  nobody ;  who  cannot 
receive  like  a  gentlewoman,  and  who  steps 
into  her  carriage  with  the  wrong  foot." 

"  But  who  has  goodness,  love,  innocence, 
constancy — —  " 

"  Don't  be  a  fool,  Arthur,"  interrupted  Mrs. 
Amphlett.  "  What  do  you  get,  pray,  with 
this  excessive  plasticity  of  nature  1  All  very- 
delightful,  I  dare  say,  when  confined  to  you., 
and  while  you  are  by  her  side  to  influence  her  ; 
but,  when  you  are  away,  will  not  the  same  faci- 
lity which  renders  her  so  delightful  to  yon, 
place  her  as  much  under  the  influence  of 
another,  as  she  is  under  yours  ?  Foolish  boy  ! 
you  have  burdened  yourself  with  that  most  in- 
tolerable burden  of  all — the  weakness  and 
incapacity  of  a  life-long  companion.  There  ! 
don't  protest,  or  you  will  make  me  angry.  I 
know  she  is  very  amiable  and  beautiful,  and 
charming,  and  good,  and  all  that ;  but  she  has 
no  more  strength,  self-reliance,  common  sense 
nor  manner  than  a  baby.  And  you  know 
this  as  well  as  I.  Here  she  is. — I  was  just 
talking  of  you,  Geraldiue.  Are  you  well  to 
day  1 "  she  asked  suddenly. 

"  Yes,  thank  you,  quite  well,"  said  Geral- 
dine, always  nervous  when  speaking  to  her 
mother-in-law. 

"  I  thought  not ;  you  are  black  under  the 
eyes,  and  your  hair  is  dull.  Will  you  drive 
with  me  to-day  1 " 

"If  you  please,"  said  Geraldine. 

"  Or  ride  with  your  husband  ? " 

"  Whichever  you  and  Arthur  like  best." 

"  My  dear  young  lad}',"  said  Mrs.  Amph- 
lett, with  one  of  her  stony  looks,  "  when  will 
you  learn  to  have  a  will  of  your  own  1 " 

"  Yes,  Geraldine  !  I  wish  you  would  always 
say  what  you,  yourself,  really  prefer,  when 
you  are  asked,"  said  Arthur,  with  a  shadow 
of  testiness. 

"  I  am  afraid  of  being  selfish  and  inconside- 
rate to  others,"  said  Geraldine,  hastily.  '•  But, 
if  you  please,  then,  I  would  rather  ride  with 
Arthur." 

"  You  know  I  am  going  to  Croft  to  look  at 
young  Vaughau's  stud,"  returned  Arthur, 
still  with  the  same  accent  of  irritability. 
"  How,  then,  can  I  ride  with  you  to-day  ?  " 

"  Ah,  see,  now  !  what  use  in  giving  ine  my 
choice  1 "  cried  Geraldiue,  making  a  s;id 
attempt  to  smile  and  to  seem  gay ;  tears 
rushing  into  her  eyes,  instead  ;  for,  the  three 
weeks  during  which  she  had  been  under  her 
lady-mother's  harrow,  had  reduced  her  to  a 
state  of  chronic  depression. 

"Would  it  not  be  more  dignified  if  you 
did  not  cry  whenever  you  are  spoken  to  '$  '* 
said  the  pitiless  hawk-eyed  lady. 


Cliai  lei  Dickens.] 


THE  AMPHLETT  LOVE-MATCH. 


[August  22,1357.]        175 


"  I  am  not  crying,"  said  Geraldine,  boldly. 

"  No  1 — What  is  that  on  your  hand,  if  it  be 
not  a  tear  ?  Fie  !  you  must  not  be  untruth- 
ful, according  to  the  common  vice  of  the 
weak." 

Arthur  went  to  the  window,  pale  with 
suppressed  passion.  For  the  moment  he 
hated  Geraldine.  The  young  wife  had  passed 
a  sleepless  night.  She  was  nervous  and 
unwell.  She  tried  to  calm  herself,  but  she 
felt  as  if  something  gave  way  within  her,  and 
sighing  gently  she  sank  very  quietly  back 
against  the  pillows  of  the  ottomau  where  she 
was  sitting,  in  a  dead  swoon. 

A  loud  knock  came  to  the  door.    • 

"  Geraldine  !  "  exclaimed  Mrs.  Amphlett, 
"  Geraldiue  !  Why,  bless  my  soul,  Arthur, 
the  girl  has  fainted  !  " 

Before  any  order  or  aid  could  be  given  the 
footman  threw  open  the  door,  and  a  lady,  all 
flounces,  rustling  silk,  dignity,  and  statuesque 
beauty  —  Arthur's  natural  wife,  as  Mrs. 
Amphlett  called  her — Miss  Vaughan,  of  Croft, 
walked  leisurely  forward. 

Calmly  surveying  the  fainting  Geraldine 
through  her.  eye-glass,  the  visitor  turned 
gracefully  away,  saying,  as  Mrs.  Amphlett 
herself  had  once  said  :  "  How  very  inconve- 
nient for  her  !  " 

Arthur  reddened  and  turned  pals  by 
turns  ;  "  Good  !  "  said  Mrs.  Amphlett,  to 
herself,  with  a  cruel  smile,  "  the  first  blow  is 
really  struck  now  !  " 

She  led  Miss  Vaughan  into  the  inner 
drawing-room,  while  Gryce  attended  on 
Geraldiue. 

"  You  had  better  leave  my  maid  with 
your  wife,  Arthur,"  she  said,  speaking  as 
she  stood  between  the  rooms,  holding  the 
curtain  in  her  hand.  But  Arthur  refused. 
No  !  he  would  rather  attend  to  her  him- 
self. 

"  What    a    model    husband,"    said    Miss 
Vaughan  ;  but,  in  a  voice  so  calm,  so  sweet,  j 
so    silvery    and    even,  that    no    one    could  j 
know     whether     she    spoke    ironically     or  j 
admiringly.     Arthur  was  in  a  bad  humour, ! 
and  disposed  to  see  all  in  shadow.     He  took  j 
her  words  as  a  cutting  satire  ;  and  Geraldine 
fared  none  the  better  in  his  heart  for  the 
belief.     This  was  the  first  time,  since  he  had 
known    Geraldine,    that    a  thought   of  un- 
favourable  criticism  had  crossed  his  mind  ; 
the  first  time  that  he  had  said  to  himself,  "I 
•wish  I  had  waited." 

Mrs.  Amphlett  had  the  art — no  one  exactly 
knew  how — of  making  every  person  appear 
illogical,  ridiculous,  ungraceful,  ill-bred  ;  yet, 
not  from  any  special  amount  of  grace  or 
good  breeding  in  herself ;  rather  the  reverse. 
Her  manners  were  chiefly  noticeable  for 
their  undisguised  contempt,  and  their  immo- 
vable assumption  of  superiority  ;  though  she 
was,  certainly,  a  handsome  woman,  yet  it  was 
not  of  a  kind  to  throw  any  other  beauty  into 
the  shade.  She  was  pale  to  bloodlessness,  with 
a  fierce  eye  and  a  cruel  jaw.  She  wore  her 


white  hair  braided  low  on  her  square  fore- 
head ;  but  her  thick,  straight  eyebrows  were 
still  black  as  ebony,  and  the  light-hazel,  deep 
set  eyes  beneath  them  had  lost  none  of 
their  fire  or  power.  The  lines  between 
her  brows  were  deep  and  harsh.  The  centre 
furrow — the  Amphlett  cut,  it  was  called — 
with  the  heavy  brow  swelling  on  each  side, 
was  especially  forbidding.  Her  nose  was 
sharp,  high  and  handsome ;  her  thin  lips 
closed  lightly  over  small  and  even — but 
discoloured — teeth  ;  and  her  chin  was  square- 
cut,  massive,  and  slightly  protruding.  Not 
then  from  grace  or  beauty  came  her  special 
power  of  moral  oppression ;  but  from  her 
cruelty.  She  was  infinitely  cruel  and 
harsh.  She  said  exactly  what  she  thought, 
be  it  ever  so  painful ;  and  no  one  ever  knew 
her  to  soften  her  words  for  pity,  grace,  or 
delicacy.  She  prided  herself  on  her  honesty, 
her  directness,  her  absence  of  false  sentiment, 
and  her  ruthless  crusade  against  all  forms  of 
weakness.  In  her  first  interview  with  any- 
one she  measured  that  pel-son's  power  of  self- 
assertion.  If  the  stranger  yielded  to  her, 
whetherfrom  timidity  or  amiability,  she  set  her 
foot  on  the  stranger's  neck  and  kept  it  there. 
If  opposed,  she  hated,  but  still  respected  her 
opponent.  The  only  thing  in  the  world  that 
she  respected  was  strength  ;  and  the  only 
person  in  her  neighbourhood  to  whom  she 
was  not  insolent  was  Miss  Vaughau.  For, 
Miss  Vaughan,  though  of  a  different  nature, 
was  as  dauntless  and  self-asserting  as  Mrs. 
Amphlett,  and  suffered  no  one  to  come  too 
near  her.  They  were  co-queens — not  rivals 
— and  regarded  each  other's  rights. 

As  for  Geraidine,  she  simply  despised  her  : 
honouring  her  with  only  a  reflective  hatred, 
because  of  her  marriage  with  her  sou.  Had 
it  not  been  for  that,  she  would  have  quietly 
walked  over  her  and  have  trodden  her  out  of 
her  path.  But  she  could  not  do  this  now  ; 
so  Geraldine  was  promoted  to  the  dignity  of 
her  intense  hatred  and  ceaseless,  fierce  dis- 
pleasure. The  girl  felt  her  position  and  pined 
under  it.  Hence  she  was  losing  those  merely 
outside  physical  graces  she  had  promised  when 
she  married ;  and  which  had  counted  for  some- 
thing in  her  husband's  love.  Arthur,  too, 
was  influenced  by  his  mother's  perpetual 
harping  on  Geraldine's  faults.  Soon  he  learnt 
to  apologise  for  her ;  then  to  criticise  her 
himself — not  always  favourably — and  lastly, 
to  feel  slightly  ashamed  of  her.  His  pride 
and  manhood  prevented  his  falling  very  low 
there ;  but  a  great  peril  lay  before  him  : 
none  the  less  perilous  because  not  con- 
fessed. 

In  the  midst  of  all  these  dangerous  begin- 
nings Arthur  was  called  away  on  business, 
cunningly  provided  for  him,  and  Geraldiue 
was  left  to  the  care  of  her  mother-in-law. 
The  heavy  gates  had  scarcely  swung  back  for 
her  son  to  pass  out,  when  Mrs.  Amphlett  sat 
down  to  write  a  letter  to  Cousin  Hal — the 
scapegrace  of  the  family  —  the  handsomest 


176       [August  17,  l-*;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  V 


life-guardsman  anil,  by  repute,  the  most  suc- 
cessful lady-killer  of  his  generation. 


in. 


GERALDINE,  who  had  been  piteously  terrified 
at  the  prospect  of  keeping  house  alone  with 


present ;  and  facts  take  wide  dimensions. 
Now,  between  Arthur  and  Cousin  Hal  there 
had  always  been,  since  very  boyhood,  a  dis- 
tinct and  decided  enmity.  Not  explosive  nor 
exploded  ;  but  none  the  less  fierce  because 
subdued  and  smouldering.  He  called  Arthur 


her  Gorgonic  mothei-,  was  surprised  to  find 'surly;  Arthur  called  him  frivolous  :  he  said 
how  suddenly  the  old  lady  changed.  She  laid  Arthur  should  have  been  a  priest  ;  Arthur 
aside  her  harsh  and  insolent  manner,  was  !  said  that  he  should  have  been  an  actor,  if  nob 
kind,  considerate,  gentle, — ceased  to  find  fault  j  a  Merry  Andrew.  So  Arthur  was  furious 


— nay,  was  almost  flattering  ;  and  Geraldine, 
who  was  as  loving  as  she  was  timid,  soon 
became  quite  playful  and  filial,  and  thought, 


when  he  heard  of  his  being  at  Tlioruivalc. 
He  wondered  at  his  mother,  abused  Hal, 
called  Geraldine  silly  ;  and  then  he  thought 


perhaps,  after  all  she  had  been  to  blame,  or  I  of  what  his  mother  had  once  said  about 
had  beeu  only  fanciful.  They  had  passed  a  I  the  girl's  facility  of  obedience  and  im- 
iew  happy  days  thus — happy  days,  in  spite  possibility,  and  he  was  doubly  jealous.  In 
of  the  strange  desolation  which  her  husband's  which  amiable  frame  of  mind  he  received  a 
first  absence  makes  for  the  young  wife — when  letter  from  his  mother.  After  some  business 


a  carriage  drove  up,  and  out  dashed  a  fine, 
handsome,  young  fellow,  all  bright  blue-eyes, 


preliminaries  the  letter  said  : 

"  It  is  quite  pleasant  to  sec  Geraldine  and  Henry; 


moustache,  white  teeth,  military  swagger  and  !  they  play   together  as  if  they  were  still  children  iu 
merriment  ;    who   kissed   Mrs.   Amphlett   as    the   nursery.       Geraldine    has   grown  so    pretty,  and 

is  all  life  and  vivacity:  she  is  quite  a  different 
person  to  the  lachrymose,  nervous,  depressed  schoolgirl 
she  was  when  you  were  here.  I  fear  you  kept  her 
down  too  much  :  Henry,  on  the  contrary,  encourages 
her.  He  is  charmed  by  her  frankness  and  playfulness, 
she  with  his  good  temper  and  affectionate  ways.  And 
certainly  he  is  a  very  charming  fellow,  though  I  can- 
not go  to  Gcraldine's  extent  of  enthusiasm,  when  she 
said  last  night  that  she  wished  you  were  more  like 
him.  To  me,  every  one's  individuality  is  sacred,  and 
I  would  have  no  moral  patchwork  if  I  could.  Miss 
Vanghan  vexes  me  that  she  dislikes  Henry  so  much. 
She  spoke  quite  sternly  to  your  wife  last  evening  ahout 
her  evident  partiality,  which  Geraldiue  calls  '  cousin- 
ship  ;  '  but  Miss  Vaughan  crushed  her  with  one  of  her 
lofty  looks,  and  little  Geraldine  van  off  to  Henry — 
cousin  Hal,  as  she  calls  him — for  shelter  and  pro- 
tection." 

Arthur  read  no  more.  He  crushed  the 
letter  in  his  hand  and,  covering  his  face, 
groaned.  Neither  that  day  nor  the  next, 


if  lie  liked  to  kiss  her,  and  seemed  at  home 
in  the  house,  and  master  of  every  one  in  it, 
before  he  had  fairly  crossed  the  threshold. 
This  was  Cousin  Hal. 

Never  was  there  such  a  delightful  com- 
panion as  Cousin  Hal !  Full  of  fun  and 
anecdote ;  always  lively ;  the  most  good- 
natured  person  in  the  world  ;  possessing  the 
largest  amount  of  chivalry  to  women  of 
which  modern  manners  are  capable  ;  respect- 
ful while  familiar,  and  his  familiarity  itself 
so  affectionate  and  manly,  that  no  one  was 
ever  known  to  quarrel  with  him,  and  many 
were  found  to  love  him — in  fact  it  was  his 
speciality,  and  the  motive  of  his  many  tri- 
umphal preans.  All  these  characteristics  made 
him  a  dangerously  delightful  companion  for 
most  young  ladies.  But  Hal,  though  a  scape- 
grace, had  his  heart  in  the  right  place  ;  and, 
fond  as  he  was  of  mischief,  had  no  love  for 
evil,  nor  for  vice. 

At  first  Geraldine  was  shy  towai'd  him, 
intending  to  be  matron-like  and  dignified ; 


but   Cousin 
her  ;     rind, 


Hal    laughed    all   that   out   of 
in    an    incredibly    short    time 


established  himself    on    the  most    comfort- 
able  footing   imaginable  ;     Aunt  Amphley, 


into  his  care  in  the  oddest  way  possible : 
especially  odd  in  her,  one  of  the  strictest 
known  dragons  of  propriety  extant.  For 
instance,  Geraldine  demurred  at  riding  alone 
with  him—"  Would  Arthur  like  it  ?  "  And 
Mrs.  Amphlett  answered,  "  Who  is  the  best 
judge  of  propriety,  you  or  I  ?  And  if  I  say 
that  you  may  ride  with  your  cousin,  is  it 
fitting  in  you  to  virtually  tell  rue  that  I  am 
an  insecure  guide  to  you,  and  that  my  habits 
and  views  are  improper  for  you  to  adopt  ?  " 

( Icralilino  wrote  daily  to  her  husband. 
She  had  very  little  to  write  about,  excepting 
her  love  for  him,  and  how  pleasant  Cousin 
Hal  made  gloomy  old  Thornivale  ;  and,  natu- 
rally, Cousin  Hal  came  in  for  a  large  share  of 
the  canvas.  He  was  the  only  iact  in  the 


nor  the  next,   again, 


he   write   to    his 


wondering  wife.  Hitherto  he  had  written 
every  day,  according  to  the  fashion  of  hus- 
band-lovers ;  but  now,  too  suspicious  to  write 
naturally,  too  proud  to  betray  his  suspicions, 
he  chose  not  to  write  at  all,  as  the  easiest 
solution  of  the  difficulty.  Whereby  he 


he  called  her,  giving  the  pretty  young  wife   nearly  broke  poor  Gcraldine's  heart,  which, 


not  reproving  her,  furnished  her  with  no  clue 
to  the  enigma.  She  was  sure  he  was  ill — he 
had  met  with  some  accident — he  had  been  run 
over  by  an  omnibus  or  by  one  of  those  immense 
waggons — he  had  been  garotted — he  was 
dying — he  was  dead.  This  was  her  ascending 
scale  of  horrors;  at  which  her  mother  scoffed 
grimly,  but  which  kind-hearted  Hal  tried 
to  cheer  and  soothe  away.  On  the  fourth 
day  the  letter  came — short,  reserved,  cold.  It 
said  nothing  to  wound,  but  nothing  to  delight, 
the  young  wife.  Geraldine  almost  wished  he 
had  not  written  at  all  ;  though  she  was  glad 
and  grateful  to  find  he  was  well,  and  that 
nothing  had  happened  to  him. 

She  answered  as  if  no  cloud  had  fallen  be- 
tween them;  noticing  nothing.    She  told  him 


Charles  Dicken ?.] 


THE  AMPHLETT  LOVE-MATCH. 


[August  22.  185?.]       177 


all  that  she  had  been  doing,  both  with  and  j  argument  (which  was  more  properly  a  wrangle), 
without  Cousin  Hal's  name  intermixed  ;  Geraldine  put  her  hand  in  Henry's,  and  told  him  to 
amongst  other  things,  how  kind  his  mother  j  ^iss  it,  in  token  of  his  fealty.  But  I  thought  this 
was  to  her,  and  how  agreeable  Miss  Vaughan  j  Soi"o  rather  too  far,  and  interfered.  I  desire  you  not 
could  be  when  she  was  not  alfected  and  j to  take  an?  notice  of  what  *  liave  said-  There  is 
on  stilts  ;  as  she  was  the  other  day,  when  ??*inl  »P«*enBibla  in  your  wife's  conduct,  and  only 
she  and  his  cousin  rode  over  to  Croft. 
"  My  mother  was  right,"  said  Arthur, 

grinding  his  teeth,  "  Geraldine  has  the  com- 
mon vice  of  the  weak  ;  she  is  not  truthful. 

And  this  letter  —  boasting  of  my  mother's 

kindness,  and  Miss  Vaughan's  cordiality,  is  a 

proof  of  it.     I  have  been  a  fool.     How  could 

I  expect  a  woman  not  of  my  own  station  to 

have  the  feelings  of  a  thorough-bred  gentle- 
woman, and  to  be  delicate  and  faithful  under 

the  coarse  lure  of  such  a  popinjay  as  that  ! 

How  coldly  she  writes  !      She  does  not  even 

allude  to  my  long  silence.     Of  course,  there 

must  be  separation  now  :    yes,   before   this 

very  month   is  out   it  must    be    arranged. 


Miss  Vaughan's  excessive  prudery  would  have  found 
cause  of  blame  in  it.  If  I  do  not,  you  need  not  be 
alarmed." 

But  this  last  paragraph  destroyed  Mrs. 
Amphlett's  whole  web.  She  forgot  that,  by 
giving  a  tangible  shape  to  the  suspicions  she 
wished  only  to  insinuate,  she  put  the  game  out 
of  her  own  hands.  That  very  night  Arthur 
left  London,  his  business  yet  unfinished  and 
his  lawyers  busy  in  still  further  entangling 
a  very  plain  case. 

IV. 

THE  next  morning,  while  the  Thornivale 
party  were  quietly  seated  at  breakfast,  Ai'thur 


Three  months  after  marriage,  and  to  sepa-  strode  into  the  room  like  some  melo-drauiatic 
rate ;  what  a  testimony  to  the  wisdom  tyrant :  pale,  haggard,  dark-browed,  and 
of  love-matches  !  If  I  had  that  fellow  angry.  Geraldine,  with  a  glad  cry— too  glad 

here "  he   continued  above  his   breath,    t°  notice  her  husband's  looks— flung  herself 

taking  up  a  table»kuife  that  lay  near  his  i"to  her  husband's  arms.  Henry  rose,  half 
untasted  breakfast.  Then,  with  a  sudden  perplexed  and  half  amused ;  he  sa\v  by 
impulse,  he  flung  it  savagely  from  him.  The  I  Arthur's  lowering  brow  that  a  storm  was 
knife  fell  quiveringly  in  the  door,  and  for  that  i  brooding,  and — man  of  the  world  like — 


moment    Arthur    was  a    murderer  in    his 
heart. 

Together  with  Geraldine's  letter,  lay  one 
from  Mrs.  Amphlett,  as  yet  unopened.  He 
broke  the  seal  almost  mechanically,  but 
drank  in  every  word  with  thirsty  passion,  as 
soon  as  he  set  in  fairly  to  the  reading. 

"  I  hope  your  business  is  progressing  favourably, 
and  that  those  perplexing  lawyers  have  nearly  come  to 
the  end  of  obscuring  so  plain  a  question  as  this  was. 
We  shall  all  be  glad  to  see  you  at  home  again,  though 
indeed  I  cannot  say  that  your  wife  has  been  silly  in 
fretting  for  you,  as  I  expected.  On  the  contrary,  she 
is  in  higher  spirits  than  ever,  and  every  day  adds  to  her 
exuberant  happiness.  She  made  even  me  laugh ; 
although,  as  you  know,  I  am  riot  much  given  to  that 
exercise  J  but  her  manner  for  these  last  three  days 
has  been  so  irresistibly  comic  when  speaking  of  your 


silence    that_  even    I   could   not  help  joining  in  the    He         fc   aside  the  ]iule  han(j   tbafc  hfc  t 

general  merriment.     She  is  a  good  mimic,  I  find;    for 

in  the  scenes  which  she  gave  —  one  representing  you  as 

garottcd  by  some  of  those  horrid  men,  another  as  run 

over  by  one   of  Barclay's   beer  waggons,   another  as 

lying    with   a    splitting   headache,    calling    for    soda- 

water  and  ices  —  she  really  acted  with  wonderful  spirit 

and  character.     I  thought   Henry   would  have  gone 

into    a    fit    with    laughing;    and   it   was   really   very 

droll.     Of  course  I  knew  that  you  were  perfectly  safe, 

or  else  I  should  not  have  allowed  such  levity  on  her 

part  ;    but  I  have  given  her  of  late  very  great  scope, 

for  the  purpose  of  studying  her  character  ;  and  I  think 

I  have  come  to  the  end  of  what  I  wanted  to  know. 

Your  judgment  on  Miss  Vaughan  was,  I  fear,  more 

correct  than  mine.     She  is  a  statue.     When  Geraldine 

was  acting  those  scenes,  as   I  tell  you,  she  sat  with  a 

settled  frown  on  her  face  ;  and  at  the  end  rose  very 

haughtily,  and  lectured  your  wife   for  her  levity  and 

want  of  feeling.     Henry  took  Geraldine's  part;  and 


he  and    Miss  Vaughan 


spoke  more    truthfully    than 


politely   to   each  other.      At  the  conclusion   of  the 


clasp  his  silently  and  moodily.  Reaching  a 
garden-chair  he  motioned  her  to  seat  her- 
self, while  he  placed  himself  by  her  side. 
He  was  agitated ;  and,  though  resolved 
to  finish  all  to-day,  did  not  well  know 
how  to  begin.  She  looked  so  lovely,  and  he 
was  but  a  young  husband,  and  this  their 
first  meeting  after  some  three  weeks  of  sepa- 
ration. She  had  been  so  uufeignedly  glad  to 
see  him,  too,  and  that  did  not  look  like  cool- 
ness :  nor  had  Cousin  Hal  looked  annoyed  or 
guilty  ;  and,  though  he  had  watched  them 
— looking  for  evil — he  had  not  seen  a  glance 
pass  between  them  that  wore  the  shadow  of 
undue  intelligence  :  they  seemed  good  friends, 
as  was  natural,  but  there  was  nothing 
more  ;  so  that  he  felt  at  a  loss  now  ;  for  his 
grievances  had  vanished  marvellously. 
Geraldine  was  the  first  to  speak. 


guessed  the  cause,  instinctively.  Mrs.  Arnph- 
lett,   for    the    first    time    in    her    life,    felt 
baffled.     She  had   counted   on   Arthur's  re-      !| 
serve,  and  in   Geraldiue's  timidity,   not   to 
come  to  an  explanation  together. 

After  a  sulky  breakfast,  Arthur  told 
Geraldiue  to  accompany  him  into  the  park. 
He  did  not  ask  her — he  commanded  her; 
much  as  if  she  had  been  a  slave  or  a  child. 

"  Let  me  speak  to  you  first,  Arthur," 
said  Mrs.  Amphlett,  trying  to  be  autho- 
ritative. 

"  No  ! "  replied  Arthur,  sternly  ;  "  my 
business  is  with  my  wife." 

"And  your  cousin  too,  I  suspect,"  muttered 
Cousin  Hal  to  himself. 

Arthur  and  his  wife  paced  down  the 
broad-walk  leading  to  the  beech  avenue. 


178       [Anawit  22. 185?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


"Something  is  wrong  with  you,  Arthur  ?' 
she  paid  quickly,  but  trembling. 

"Yes,  Geraldine — very  wrong." 

"  With  me  ?"  and  her  hand  stole  softly  up 
to  his  face. 

"  Yes,  with  you — only  with  you." 

"Why  do  you  not  look  at  roe  when  you 
say  so  '?"  she  said,  creeping  closer  to  him. 

He  turned  his  eyes  upon  her.  Her  eyes 
were  so  full  of  love,  her  whole  manner  and 
attitude  so  eloquent  of  child-like  devoted- 
ness,  that  his  heart  overflowed  and  over- 
whelmed all  his  jealous  fancies,  like  feverish 
dreams  drowned  in  the  morning  sunlight. 
He  took  her  hands  in  both  of  his,  and  looked 
fixedly  and  lovingly,  but  sadly,  into  her  eyes. 

"  So  beautiful  and  so  false  !"  he  said,  half 
aloud.  "  Can  she  be  really  faithless  with 
eyes  so  full  of  love  and  innocence  ?  And, 
yet — has  my  mother  lied  to  me  1" 

"  Why  do  you  speak  so  low,  Arthur  ?  I 
cannot  hear  you.  Tell  me  frankly,  what  it  is 
that  lies  on  your  heart  against  me.  What- 
ever it  may  be,  tell  me  openly  ;  and  I  will 
answer  you  from  my  very  soul,  as  I  have 
always  answered  yoii.  I  have  never  deceived 
you,  Arthur  ;  and  I  would  not  begin  a  career 
of  falsehood  and  hypocrisy  to-day.:' 

"  You  must  read  these.  I  can  tell  you 
nothing  more."  Arthur  put  his  mother's 
letters  into  her  hands.  • 

Geraldine  read  them  through — all  of  them 
— and  they  were  numerous.  Her  colour 
deepened  and  her  eyes  dai-kened  ;  but  she 
read  them  to  the  end  quite  quietly.  She 
gave  them  back  to  him  with  the  same  un- 
natural stillness  :  sitting  for  a  moment  in 
utter  silence.  Then  she  rose. 

"Arthur,"  she  said,  "you  must  come  with 
me  to  your  mother.  Your  cousin  and  Miss 
Vaughan  must  be  there,  too." 

"  Nonsense,  Geraldine,"  said  Arthur,  who 
had  a  constitutional  horror  of  demonstrations ; 
"  I  will  have  no  foolish  scene  for  the  whole 
county  to  talk  of.  What  we  have  to  do  must 
be  done  quietly,  and  between  ourselves :  alone. 
Henry  and  Miss  Vaughan,  indeed  !  I  will 
not  hear  of  such  folly  !  " 

"  I  insist  !  "  said  Geraldine,  in  a  deep,  still 
voice,  and  with  heavy  emphasis. 

"  I  insist,  Geraldine  !     That  is  strange  Ian- 


guage  from  you  to  me  !  " 

"  The  occasion  is  strange,  Arthur. 


Ah! 


she  added  bitterly  ;  "  and  you,  too,  have  made 
that  old,  blind  mistake  !  Because  I  am  not 
exacting  nor  selfish,  in  my  daily  life  ;  because 
I  am  naturally  timid  and  easily  depressed  : 
you  think  that  I  could  have  no  sense  of 
justice  to  myself;  no  self-respect;  no  firm- 
ness. If  you  h:ive  made  that  mistake,  you 
must  unlearn  your  lesson  to-day.  Come!  this 
affair  must  be  explained  at  once  !  " 

"  But,   Geraldine " 

"Are  you  in  league  with  your  mother 
to  defame  me  ? "  said  Geraldine,  her  lips 


laid  on  his  arm  ;  and,  without  uttering 
another  word,  strode  gloomily  by  her  side 
into  the  house. 

At  the  hall-door  they  encountered  Miss 
Vaughan.  Geraldine  knew  that  she  was 
coming  early  to  ride  with  her  and  cousin  Hal 
to  the  Dripping  Well ;  so  that  there  was 
nothing  remarkable  in  her  arrival  at  this 
moment ;  nor  in  cousin  Hal's  standing  there 
at  the  door,  assisting  her  to  dismount. 

"You  are  not  read}',  I  see,"  said  Miss 
Vaughan,  as  Gei-aldiue  came  up.  "Ah!  Mr. 
Amphlett !  When  did  you  come  ? " 

"  This  morning,"  said  Arthur,  in  his 
sulkiest  tone. 

Miss  Vaughan  was  struck  by  his  unusual 
tone  and  manner,  and  put  up  her  eye-glass  ; 
looking  from  him  to  Geraldine,  in  that  most 
graceful,  affected,  and  imperturbable  way  of 
hers,  which  would  have  made  an  excitable 
person  angry. 

"Some  family  business  on  hand,  I  see," 
she  then  said.  "  I  am  in  the  way." 

"  No,  if  you  please,  Miss  Vaughan,"  said 
Geraldine,  quickly.  "  You  are  necessary  here  ; 
you  also,  cousin  Henry."  9 

Miss  Vaughan  made  an  almost  impercep- 
tible movement  with  her  eyebrows,  and 
slightly  bowed.  Cousin  Hal  flung  back  his 
head,  smoothed  his  moustache,  showed  his 
white  teeth,  and  laughed  out, "  very  happy  ;" 
but  not  in  quite  so  confident  and  merry 
a  voice  as  usual.  Then  they  all  passed 
through  the  hall  into  the  library,  where 
Mrs.  Amphlett  usually  sat  in  the  morning. 
She  knew  what  was  coming  as  soon  as  they 
entered  in  such  a  strange  phalanx.  She  was 
pale,  and  her  face  looked  harder  and  sterner 
than  ever,  with  even  more  than  the  old  fire 
of  secret  passion  in  her  fierce  eyes.  But,  for 
the  first  time,  Geraldine  did  not  quail  before 
them.  Mrs.  Amphlett  felt  that  the  sceptre 
of  her  power  was  falling  from  her  hand. 

"  What  is  all  this,  young  lady  ?  "  she 
asked,  as  Geraldine  came  near  to  the  table, 
in  advance  of  the  rest.  "  What  is  the  mean- 
ing of  the  ridiculous  air  you  have  assumed 
this  morning  ?  Can  you  explain  this  comedy  ?" 
she  said,  turning  to  Miss  Vaughan. 

"M#  foi,  non  !  "  replied  that  lady,  gather- 
ing up  her  riding  skirt,  and  seating  herself 
with  singular  grace  on  the  sofa,  flirting  open 
her  little  -French  lorgnon,  and  watching  the 
party  as  steadily  as  if  she  were  the  audience 
and  they  actors  on  the  stage. 

"It  means,"  began  Geraldine,  her  voice 
slightly  trembling,  but  from  agitation,  not 
timidity  ;  "  that  you  have  written  to  my 
husband  letters  concerning  me,  which  it  is 

due  to  myself  to  demand — demand "  she 

repeated,  "  an  explanation  of,  before  those 
whom  your  have  quoted  as  witnesses  and 
authorities. ' 

"  Good  heavens,  Arthur !  how  can  you 
suffer  this  low-minded  young  person  to 


quivering    and    her    eyes    almost     flashing,  i  degrade  you — a  gentleman — into  complicity 
Arthur  put  away  the  hand  which  she  had  I  with   anything  so  vulgar  and  improper  a3 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  AMPHLETT  LOVE-MATCH. 


[August  2:,  1S57  ]        179 


this!"  said  Mrs.  Ampblett,  angrily.  "Was 
there  ever  an  underbred  girl  who  was  not 
always  ready  for  a  scene  !  "  she  added,  as  if 
making  a  reflection  to  herself. 

"  Leave  the  question  of  vulgarity  alone," 
said  Geraldine  in  a  new  tone  of  her  voice — 
one  of  command,  "and  come  to  that  of 
truth.  I  will  speak,"  she  continued,  silencing 
Mrs.  Amphlett  by  her  uplifted  hand  and 
dilating  eyes  ;  "it  is  my  right,  and  I  will 


"Upon  my  word,  this  is  a  natural  phe- 
nomenon ! "  sneered  Mrs.  Amphlett,  leaning 
forward,  fixing  her  eyes  on  the  girl,  as  if 
trying  to  subdue  her  by  her  look.  Bnt 


with  me :  your  wife  can  stay  with  Miss 
Vaughan.  Why,  bless  my  soul,  man  !  "  he 
cried,  as  soon  as  they  were  outside  the  door, 
"how  could  you  be  such  a — ahem  ! — well,  so 
weak  as  to  believe  in  such  obvious  misrepre- 
sentations ?  Your  wife  and  I  have  been  on 
kindly  friendly  terms  enough  ;  but,  bless  my 
heart !  what's  that  to  make  a  row  about  ] 
When  I  came,  I  saw  that  she  had  been 
regularly  bullied  since  her  marriage,  and  I 
took  her  part  in  a  quiet  way,  and  paid  her 
all  the  attention  I  could  ;  trying  simply  to 
give  her  self-confa'dence.  But,  I  hope  indeed 
that  I  am  not  so  bad  a  fellow  as  ever 
to  take  advantage  of  such  a  young  thing's 


Geraldine  was  roused ;  and,  like  most  timid  \  innocence  and  candour, — still  less,  to  plan  or 
people,  was  more  reckless,  more  careless  of:  plot,  as  the  guest  of  a  relative,  for  the 
consequences  and  more  impossible  to  over-  j  dishonour  and  misery  of  the  family.  Your 
bear  than  the  naturally  brave  and  self-asser-  |  mother  threw  Geraldine  (excuse  me,  you 
tive.  Her  latent  power  of  will  must  have  know  my  way)  under  my  protection  entirely. 
been  roused  indeed,  when  it  could  sweep  \  I  was  astonished  at  the  first ;  but  I  have  not 
down  Mrs.  Amphlett's  sternest  and  angriest :  studied  my  aunt  for  all  these  yeai-s,  not 


opposition. 


to  be  able  to  understand  her  now.     I  soon 


"  You  wrote  these  letters,"  continued  Ge-  suspected  that  something  was  in  the  wind  by 
raldine,  laying  her  finger  on  the  packet;  her  over-graciousness  to  me — whom  she  never 
"  and  as  you  have  spoken  of  Miss  Vaughan  :  liked — and  by  her  flattery  of  Geraldine — 
and  cousin  Henry,  I  wish  them  to  give  whom  I  saw  she  hated.  And  I  was  not  long 
Arthur  their  version  of  the  same  stories. .  in  finding  out  the  drift  of  it  all.  But  she  lose 
Miss  Vaughan,"  she  said,  speaking  in  the  her  game  ;  for  Geraldine  had  no  inclination 
same  rapid  and  positive  voice,  "  did  you  ever  to  flirt  with  me,  nor  had  I  the  smallest  in- 
reprove  me  for  undue  familiarity  with  my ;  tention  of  running  away  with  her."  He 
cousin  Henry  ? "  And  she  read  the  passage  j  laughed  as  if  he  had  said  a  good  thing,  and 
from  the  letter,  referring  to  Miss  Vaughan '  ran  his  finger  through  his  hair,  with  a  plea- 
having  crushed  Geraldine  with  one  of  her  sant  kind  of  debonuaire  vanity,  not  at  all 
lofty  looks,  because  of  cousin  Hal.  •  offensive.  "All  that  nonsense  about  Geral- 

"  Why,  no,"  said  that  lady  deliberately,  dine's  acting  is  a  perfect  fabrication.  Shs 
dropping  her  lorgnon,  and  unbuttoning  her  was  very  anxious  about  you  when  you  did 
gauntlet  gloves  ;  "I  do  not  remember  ever  not  write,  and  spoke  of  all  sorts  of  fears,  such 
speaking  to  you  on  the  subject  ;  but  I  cer-  as  my  aunt  mentions,  truly  enough  in  sab- 
tainly  did  say  to  Mrs.  Amphlett,  that  I  stance;  but  she  spoke  of  them  in  sorrow,  not 
thought  it  scarcely  proper  that  you  should  |  in  jest ;  and  Miss  Vaughan's  anger  with  her 
ride  so  much  with  Captain  Aztler  :  and  was  for  her  folly  in  fretting  at  your  silence  so 
indeed,  to  tell  the  truth,  it  was  to  prevent  much.  I  felt  for  the  poor  little  girl,  and 
anything  unpleasant  being  said  that  I  have  defended  her,  and  then  Miss  Vaughan  put 


gone  so  much  with  you  of  late.     I  thought 


me  down  ; "  and  he  laughed  again.     "  Cer- 


you  were  ignorant  of  the  world,  and  I  could   tainly    she    did    come    across    the    room — 
not   understand  your  mother's  indifference    Geraldine,  I  mean — and  put  her  hands  into 


to  appearances — or  probabilities,"  she  added 
in  the  same  careless  way  as  she  would  have 
spoken  of  a  rent  opera  cloak  or  a  damaged 
riding  whip. 

"  Mrs.  Amphlett !  "  cried  Geraldine,  turn- 
ing full  on  her  mother-in-law,  '•'  was  it  not 
you — yourself — who,  when  I  objected  to  ride 
alone  with  my  cousin,  scolded  me  for  my 
presumption  in  holding  an  opinion  contrary 
to  yours  1  Have  you  not  thrown  me 
into  my  cousin's  way  as  you  would  into  a 
brother's  ]  Those  were  your  words :  you 
said  he  was  to  be  my  brother,  and  that  I  was 
to  treat  him  with  unreserved  affection." 

"I  am  afraid,  Aunt  Amphlett,  that  you 
have  been  playing  rather  a  double  game  !  " 
said  Harry  ;  whose  good-humoured,  frank, 
manly  voice  came  like  a  charm  into  the  midst 
of  all  this  tense  and  nervous  feminine  excite- 
ment. "  Arthur,"  he  added,  "  do  you  come 


mine,  and  say,  '  Thank  you,  cousin  Henry, 
for  you  kind  championship  ; '  but  her  eyes 
were  full  of  tears,  and  her  poor  little  heart 
was  almost  breaking  about  you." 

"  I  am  afraid,  Hemy,  I  have  been  a  fool,'* 
said  Arthur. 

Cousin  Hal  looked  grave,  and  not  in  the 
least  contradictory. 

T. 

ARTHUR  was  humiliated,but  still  sufficiently 
generous  to  acknowledge  that  he  had  been  ia 
error.  He  could  not  apologise,  nor  enter  into 
any  lengthened  defence  with  Geraldiue  ;  that 
would  not  have  been  Arthur  ;  but,  meeting 
her  in  the  hall,  he  held  out  his  arms,  and, 
calling  her  by  her  name,  strained  her  ten- 
derly to  his  heart,  whispering  : 

"  Will  my  own  true  wife  forgive  me  1 " 
She  held  up  her  fresh  face  and  stood  on. 


]  80       [Augiut  K,  1857.J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conaucled  by 


tiptoe  to  get  nearer  to  him.  Arthur  had 
110  need  to  ask  again  whether  she  loved  him 
and  forgave  him. 

Arthur's  private  interview  with  his  mother 
was  more  violent.  The  passions  of  both  were 
roused,  and  ran  riot.  He  openly  accused 
her  of  falsehood,  and  heaped  on  her  re- 
proaches the  most  wounding  to  bear  ;  but 
they  were  merited,  if  harshly  worded  and 
not  befitting  him  to  make,  with  such  unfilial 
passion  :  she,  losing  dignity,  self-respect,  and 
maternal  feeling,  retorted  on  him  with  taunts 
and  insinuations  that  curdled  the  man's 
blood  round  his  heart.  Of  course,  Arthur 
must  find  a  new  home  for  his  young  wife,  she 
said. 

Unfortunately  Geraldine  entered  the  room 
nt  this  climax  of  the  discussion,  from  the 
drawing-room,  the  door  of  which  was  open  : 

"  I  will  not  leave  this  house,  Mrs.  Amphlett," 
she  exclaimed,  passionately.  "  Thornivale 
being  entailed  property,  belongs  to  my  hus- 
band. I  am,  therefore,  its  lawful  mistress. 
You  are  my  guest ;  I  am  not  your  guest." 

"  Geraldiue  !  Geraldine  !  "  expostulated 
Arthur, 

"  Hush  !  "  said  the  young  wife,  imperiously. 
"  This  affair  is  mine,  not  yours.  I  do  not 
expect  you  to  defend  me  against  your  mother. 
I  must  defend  myself." 

With  which  words  she  turned  away,  and 
passed  back  into  the  drawing-room  again. 

"You  are  right,  Geraldine,"  said  Miss 
Vaughan,  who  had  heard  all  that  passed,  and 
who  was  shaken  off  her  stilts,  and  out  of  her 
starch  and  buckram  by  the  gravity  of  the 
scene.  "  If  you  leave  Thornivale,  your  cha- 
racter is  lost  ;  you  need  never  attempt  to 
show  your  face  in  the  neighbourhood 
again." 

"  I  will  not  leave  Thornivale,"  said  Geral- 
dine, positively,  and  working  rapidly  at  her 
embroidery,  but  making  nothing  but  false 
stitches. 

"  My  wife  has  spoken  the  truth,  mother," 
said  Arthur.  "I  would  not  have  said  so, 
even  now  ;  but  it  is  the  truth." 

"  Must  I  abide  by  it,  Arthur  ? "  sneered 
Mrs.  Amphlett.  "Must  I  leave  Thornivale 
for  that  worthless  creature  you  call  your 
wife  ?  Please  yourself  with  the  thought, 
my  boy  ;  for,  as  I  live,  you  will  have  nothing 
but  the  thought !  " 

<;  I  will  have  the  deed,  mother,"  said 
Arthur.  "  Remember  !  What  I  assert  I 
generally  fulfil.  Understand,  then,  that  since 
you  cannot  live  with  my  wife  in  such  respecta- 
bility as  you  deem  due  to  you,  you  must 
leave  us.  You  shall  not  banish  her  from 
hers.  I  have  no  more  to  say ;  I  leave  you 
to  think  of  what  I  have  said."  Arthur  strode 
into  the  drawing-room,  closing  the  door  after 
him. 

Thus  left  to  herself,  old  Mrs.  Amphlett's 
passion  swept,  without  check  or  barrier, 
through  her  soul.  It  was  awful  to  witness. 
She  strode  up  and  down  the  long  oaken 


library  ;    her    hard -drawn    breathing    was 

heard  in  the  drawing-room,  through  all  the 

massive  doors   and  heavy  curtains   made  to 

shut    out    louder  sounds    than   a    woman's 

breathing.  Her  face  was  distorted  ;  her  teeth 

set,  and  her  hands  clenched  tightly  together ; 

while    the    "  Amphlett    cut "   in    her    fore- 

'  head  was  deep,  and  the  brows  knotted  and 

j  swollen.     She  was  more  like  a  panther  than 

a  human  being,  as  she  raged  and  chafed  in 

j  that   den-like    room ;  her    passionate  heart 

wearing  itself  fiercely  against  her  fate.    That 

j  she  should  have  been  baffled  by  such  a  girl  as 

Geraldine :  that  her  power,  her  very  will,  her 

plans,  her  words,  should  all  have  been  torn 

and  scattered  to  the  winds  by  the  simple, 

ignorant  breath  of  one  whom  she  persisted  in 

believing  half  an  idiot !  *• 

Suddenly  a  heavy  fall  was  heard  ;  Arthur 
and  Geraldine  rushed  in.  They  found  her 
lying  speechless  on  the  ground,  in  a  fit — a  fit 
produced  by  passion.  Gradually  recovering, 
her  eyes  turned  on  Arthur  and  Geraldine 
standing  near  her :  Geraldine  occupied  in  some 
little  womanly  office  about  her,  and  Arthur 
looking  on  in  genuine  distress.  She  tried  to 
speak,  but  failed  ;  though  she  made  several 
attempts.  At  last  a  strange  unnatural  voice 
issued  from  her  lips  ;  and,  with  her  fiery  eyes 
still  fierce  if  even  somewhat  subdued,  and  her 
stern  black  brows  still  swollen,  she  said, 
"  Ah  !  well,  you  are  not  quite  such  a  fool  as 
I  thought  you  were  ; "  and,  after  a  short 
time,  adding,  "  I  have  almost  a  respect  for 
you." 

Mrs.  Amphlett  never  rallied  from  this  fit. 
She  did  not  die  ;  but  she  was  never  the  same 
woman  again,  as  the  servants  said.  By  force 
she  was  obliged  to  let  her  daughter  reign  in 
her  stead  ;  she  living  helpless  and  inactive  in 
a  wheeled  chair.  She  kept  up  her  old  privi- 
lege of  "  truth-telling,"  and  was  to  the  last  a 
fierce,  cruel,  passionate  woman  ;  but  she- 
treated  her  daughter-in-law  with  respect :  for 
Geraldine  had  received  a  lesson  she  never 
foi-got,  and,  while  dutiful  and  thoughtful  and 
kind  and  bright,  she  made  both  her  husband 
and  her  mother  feel  that  something  had  been, 
fairly  developed  in  her  nature  which  could 
never  fail  her  again.  It  is  a  doubt  whether 
Arthur  loved  her  as  he  loved  her  when  she  was 
more  timid  and  submissive  ;  but  he  respected 
her  more  and  treated  her  with  greater  con- 
sideration. He  was  his  mother's  true  son,, 
and  inherited  her  nature  and  temperament,, 
though  softened  and  modified.  But,  by  virtue 
of  this  inheritance,  he  was  disposed  to  tyran- 
nise over  the  weak,  as  Geraldiue  would  have 
found  out  when  the  youth  of  her  marriage 
had  fled,  had  she  not  changed  as  has  been 
described ;  and  she  could  not  have  changed 
without  some  such  vital  crisis  as  she  had 
passed  through.  Thus,  on  the  whole,  she- 
got  on  very  well  between  the  fierce  old  crip- 
pled woman  and  the  moody,  jealous  man. 
Mrs.  Amphlett  was  never  weary  of  saying, 
"  Bless  me  !  I  thought  that  girl  a  perfect 


Charles  Dickens.] 


OPIUM. 


|A»KUSt  22,  1S57/1       181 


fool,  and  she  has  really  quite  something  of  a 
character  after  all ;"  and  Arthur  never  dared 
to  hint  a  jealous  thought  or  to  give  a  gloomy 
look  when  Cousin  Hal  and  his  wife — nee  Miss 
Vaughan  of  Croft — came  over  to  Thornivale, 
and  when  Cousin  Hal  made  "  Gerald  "  laugh 


present  century,  the  opium  clippers  were 
accustomed  to  proceed  as  far  as  Whampoa, 
and  there  anchor,  fifteen  miles  below  the  city 
of  Canton,  but  far  up  Canton  river.  The 
opposition  offered  by  the  Chinese  authorities, 
however,  was  such,  that  the  merchants  aban- 


till  the  tears  ran  over  her  eyes,  or  quoted  I  doned  Whampoa,  and  established  a  rendez- 


her  before  all  the  world  as  "  the  bravest  and 
best  little  woman  living." 


OPIUM. 

CHAPTER  THE  SECOND.      CHINA. 

WE  have  briefly  traced  the  course  of  the 


vous  at  Macao,  some  miles  lower  down 
here,  they  encountered  Portuguese  jealousy, 
which  was  effective  enough  to  drive  them  to 
the  Bay  of  Lintiu,  near  the  mouth  of  the  river. 
In  that  Bay,  the  opium  was  transferred  to 
ten  or  twelve  stationary  vessels  called  receiv- 
ing ships ;  and  the  clippers,  perhaps  with 


opium  question  in  India,  so  far  as  concerns  j  cargoes  of  silk  or  tea,  returned  to  India, 
the  native  cultivators,  the  East  India  Com-  j  This  system  lasted  until  the  change  in  the 
pany,  and  the  merchants  at  Calcutta  and  East  India  Company's  charter,  in  eighteen 
Bombay.  We  now  direct  attention  to  China,  hundred  and  thirty-four  ;  the  Company's  own 
where  the  matter  presents  itself  for  notice  servants  then  ceased  to  manage  the  trade, 

which  was  thenceforth  carried   on  by 


under  many  different  aspects. 

Among  various  tribes  and  nations  on  the 
eastern  margin  of  Asia,  opium  is  readily  sale- 
hindrance    from   the 
Thus,  the  chests  ex- 


able    without    bar   or 
governing  authorities. 


ported  from  India  find  their  way  to  the 
Malay  peninsula,  Sumatra,  Borneo,  Celebes, 
and  other  islands  of  the  Eastern  Archipelago  ; 
the  augmentation  of  price  is  enormous,  for 
either  the  article  pays  a  heavy  duty,  or,  as  at 
Java,  the  native  princes  monopolise  the  sale, 
and  farm  it  out  to  the  Dutch  at  an  annual 
rental.  In  China,  however,  the  government 
in  a  formal  manner  prohibits  the  traffic  and 
indulgence  in  opium  ;  we  say  in  a  formal 
manner,  for  much  discrepancy  exists  touch- 
ing the  sincerity  of  this  course  of  policy. 
Certain  it  is,  that  prohibitory  regulations  have 
now  existed  for  sixty  years,  and  that  the 
trade  in  opium  on  the  Chinese  coast  has, 
during  this  period,  been  nothing  less  than 
contraband — in  violation  of  the  expressed 
laws  of  the  empire.  Nothing  but  the  extra- 
ordinary corruption  of  the  Chinese  authori- 
ties can  account  for  the  recent  vast  increase 
of  a  trade  prohibited  by  the  laws;  this  in- 


independent  English,    and    American, 


the 
and 

other  merchants  above  adverted  to.  Another 
change  was  at  the  same  time  made  ; 
instead  of  proceeding  to  the  mouth  of  the 


Canton 
strong, 


river    only, 
swift,    well 


the    opium    clippers — 
commanded,   and    well 


armed — were  despatched  to  various  points  on 
the  south-east  coast  of  China,  where  receiv- 
ing ships  were  at  anchor,  ready  to  receive 
the  opium  and  to  serve  as  market  depdts  for 
the  smuggling  purchasers. 

At  Canton,  the  head  quarters  of  foreign 
trade  with  the  Chinese,  various  European 
and  American  nations  have  trading  posts,  or 
factories,  in  a  particular  part  of  the  suburbs 
of  the  town  appropriated  by  the  authorities 
to  that  purpose.  A  select  number  of  dealers, 
or  brokers,  called  Hong  merchants,  are  alone 
permitted  to  conduct  the  negotiations  between 
the  natives  and  the  barbarians  ;  these  negoti- 
ations relate,  fairly  and  openly,  to  tea  and 
other  Chinese  produce  on  the  one  hand,  and 
to  European  and  American  goods  and  manu- 
factures on  the  other ;  but  they  also  include, 
illegally,  if  not  secretly,  dealings  in  the  for- 


crease  is  one  among  many  proofs  of  the  difti-   bidden  opium.     Or,  if  the  Hong  merchants 
culty   of    putting    in    force,   regulations    at  j  may  not  venture  to  do  this,  there  are  other 


variance  with  popular  habits  and  tastes  ;  and 
it  at  the  same  time  shows  the  probability 
that  the  Emperor's  servants  like  the  forbidden 
indulgence  itself,  as  well  as  the  bribes  admin- 
istered by  others. 

Let  us  see,  however,  in  what  way  the  trade 
is  managed. 

The  English  merchants,  and  to  a  smaller 
extent  the  American,  in  whose  hands  the 
trade  is  principally  centred,  keep  a  fleet  of 
opium  clippers,  or  runners,  remarkable  for 
their  complete  appointments  and  great  swift- 
ness— scarcely  paralleled  by  any  sailing  ships, 
except  the  liners  between  Britain  and  the 
United  States.  These  clippers  convey  the 
chests  of  opium  from  Calcutta  or  Bombay 
to  the  China  coast ;  and  as  there  is  an 
atmosphere  of  illegality  surrounding  them, 
they  are  armed  for  self-defence,  like  smug- 
glers' or  pirates'  ships.  Early  in  the 


Chinese  dealers  who  will,  and  with  whom  the 
English  and  American  agents  make  bargains. 
When  a  purchase  has  been  thus  made  at 
Canton,  an  order  is  given  to  a  Chinese  smug- 
gler, the  captain  of  a  swiftly  rowed  and. 
strongly  ai'ined  junk  ;  he  descends  the  river 
to  the  depot,  gives  the  order,  receives  the 
opium,  and  ascends  the  river  with  it  to  Can- 
ton. Every  step  of  his  progress  is  illegal ; 
but  there  are  certainly  two  reasons  why  the 
imperial  war -junks  seldom  attack  him — 
because  his  crew  are  determined  fellows, 
well  paid  and  well  armed  ;  and  because 
the  officials  have  been  bribed  to  keep 
quiet.  There  may  be  other  reasons  on  the 
part  of  a  Government  so  full  of  chicanery 
and  evasion  as  the  Chinese.  The  mandarins 
and  the  smugglers  occasionally  concoct  a 
sham  fight,  to  give  the  former  an  appeai'ance 
of  obeying  the  imperial  mandates.  Some- 


182 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


times  the  smuggler  does  a  little  business  on 
his  own  account  ;  buying  opium  at  the  ship's 
side,  and  paying  for  it  money  down.  This 
money-down  system  is  characteristic  of  the 
•whole  trade ;  the  opium  is  paid  for,  before 
deliver}',  and  the  payment  is  in  nothing  less 
than  Sycee  silver,  lumps  of  the  purest  silver, 
estimated  by  weight  at  so  much  per  ounce : 
no  bills,  no  bonds,  no  barter  :  Sycee,  and  no- 
thing but  Sycee,  in  exchange  for  the  opium. 
The  history  of  commerce  presents  nothing 
more  solid  or  direct  than  the  purchase  price  of 
opium.  At  other  places  along  the  coast,  there 
are  depot  ships  kept  well  supplied  with  opium 
by  the  clippers  ;  and  to  these  depot  ships 
brokers  come  from  native  merchants  on  shore  ; 
or  else  smaller  vessels  go  as  near  the  posts  as 
prudence  will  justify,  where  the  opium  is 
sold  to  traders  over  the  ship's  side,  and  silver 
received  in  payment ;  the  silver  being  brought 
by  the  same  junks  that  take  away  the  opium. 
The  English  merchants  and  their  agents  do 
not,  must  not,  go  on  shore  •with,  or  concerning 
the  opium  ;  nor  are  any  of  the  Chinese  junks 
that  maintain  intercourse  between  the  ships 
and  the  shore,  allowed  by  law  so  to  do  ;  the 
junk  crews  know  that  they  are  disobeying 
the  imperial  mandates  from  h'rst  to  last,  and 
the  English  merchants  are  just  as  fully  con- 
versant with  the  same  fact.  The  junks  not 
only  carry  the  opium  from  the  ships  to  the 
posts,  but  convey  it  likewise  up  the  great 
rivers,  for  surreptitious  sale  at  various  inland 
towns.  The  price  received  by  the  English 
merchants  may  vary  from  a  hundred  and 
twenty  to  two  hundred  pounds  sterling  per 
chest,  according  to  the  varying  circum- 
stances of  the  trade  at  the  time  and  place  ; 
but  how  much  addition  is  made  to  this 
price,  by  the  time  the  drug  reaches  the 
hands  of  the  consumers,  the  Chinese  only 
can  tell. 

That  the  trade  is,  as  above  denoted,  illegal 
or  contraband,  no  one  pretends  to  doubt, 
whatever  may  be  the  interpretation  given  to 
the  imperial  motives.  The  edicts  issued  by 
the  government  have  been  numerous  and 
strongly  worded.  The  following,  quoted  by 
Sir  J.  F.  Davis,  as  being  promulgated, in 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-three,  is  as  un- 
mistakeable  as  can  well  be  imagined:  "Let 
the  buyers  and  smokers  of  opium  be  punished 
•with  one  hundred  blows,  and  pilloried  for 
two  months.  Then  let  them  declare  the 
seller's  name  ;  and  in  default  of  this  declara- 
tion, It-t  the  smoker  be  punished,  as  an  ac- 
complice of  the  seller,  with  a  hundred  blows 
and  three  years'  imprisonment.  Let  manda- 
rins and  their  dependents  -who  buy  and 
smoke  opium,  be  punished  one  degree  more 
severely  than  others  ;  and  let  governors  and 
lieutenant-governors  of  provinces,  as  well  as 
the  magistrates  of  subordinate  districts,  be 
required  to  give  security  that  there  are  no 
opium-smokers  in  their  respective  depart- 
ments. Let  a  joint  memorial  be  sent  in  at 
the  close  of  every  year,  representing  the 


conduct  of  those  officers  who  have  connived 
at  the  practice." 

Before  noticing  the  manifestations  of  im- 
perial displeasure  against  the  barbarian 
opium-sellers,  it  will  be  well  to  know  what 
the  Chinese  do  with  the  opium  when  they 
have  bought  it ;  what,  in  fact,  ia  the  nature 
of  the  indulgence,  and  of  the  effect  produced 
by  it. 

The  Chinese  rarely  eat  opium ;   they  ge- 
nerally smoke   it,  and  are   very  particular 
concerning    its    quality.     When    opium    is 
j  bought  at  the  depot  ships,  the  Chinese  agents 
I  or  brokers  test  it  by  taking  samples   from 
three  balls,  mixing  them  with  water,  simmer- 
ing and  straining  the  liquid,  evaporating  it 
by  heat  to  the  consistence  of  treacle,  and  then 
smoking  all  the  three  samples  separately  or 
'  together,  to  determine  the  probable  average 
quality  of  the  whole  chestful.     In  by-gone 
years,   the   ryot   cultivators  in   India  were 
wont  to  increase  the  weight  of  the  lumps  of 
opium  by  adulteration  with  sugar,  molasses, 
j  catechu,   cow-dung,   soft   clay,   or    pounded 
I  poppy-seeds  ;  but  the  vigilance  of  the  Com- 
:  pany's  servants  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the 
!  Chinese  purchasers  on  the  other,  have  lessened 
this  practice.     When  the  opium  is  about  to 
be  prepared  for  the  smokers,  the  balls   are 
cut  open,   and   are  steeped  and   simmered, 
strained  and  boiled,   till    they  assume  the 
state  of  a  pasty  mass  ;  this  paste  is  spread 
with   a  spatula  in  pans,   and  dried  over  a 
fire.     Again  is  the  drug  steeped,  simmered, 
strained,  boiled,  evaporatedj  and  dried,  by 
which  it  is  released  from  many  impurities  ; 
and  finally,  it  is  put  into  small  buffalo-horn 
boxes,  the  Chinese  representatives  of  tobacco 
or  snuff  boxes. 

The  prepared  opium  is  smoked  in  pipes, 
as  we  smoke  tobacco.  The  Chinese  believe 
that  the  effects  of  the  drug  —  the  exhila- 
rating effects,  at  any  rate — are  more  apparent 
by  inhaling  the  fumes  than  by  chewing  the 
solid  itself,  and  they  give  themselves  up  to  the 
indulgence  in  the  following  way :  The  pipe 
emplo3red  is  formed  of  heavy  wood,  having 
an  earthenware  bowl  at  one  end,  and  a  cup 
that  serves  to  collect  the  residuum  or  ashes 
after  the  combustion  of  the  opium.  The 
smoker,  lying  upon  a  couch  or  bench,  holds 
the  pipe,  or  smoking-pistol,  with  the  bowl 
near  a  lamp,  the  lamp  and  the  couch  being 
so  placed  that  the  opium  can  be  kindled 
without  disturbing  the  lazy  smoker  in  his 
position.  A  piece  of  opium  about  as  large  as 
a  pea  or  a  pill  is  taken  up  by  a  sort  of  spoon- 
headed  needle,  placed  in  the  hole  in  the 
bowl,  and  kindled  at  the  lamp  ;  then  one  or 
two  whiffs  suffice  to  draw  in  all  the  smoke 
emitted  by  the  burning  drug.  Old  smokers 
will  retain  the  breath  a  long  time,  filling  the 
lungs  and  exhaling  the  smoke  gradually 
through  the  nostrils.  When  the  pipe  has 
burnt  out,  the  smoker  lies  still  for  a  moment, 
thinking  of  his  dreamy  delights,  while  the 
fumes  are  dissipating,  and  then  repeats  the 


r 


CKirles  DicVens.] 


OPIUM. 


[August  C2.  1S57.]    183 


charge  until  his  pi-escribed  dose  is  exhausted, 
or  until  his  means  of  purchase  are  expended. 
There  are  smoking-shops  by  hundreds  in  the 
towns  within  moderate  distance  of  the  coast  ; 
and  these  shops,  we  are  told,  are  kept  open 
day  and  night,  each  being  furnished  with  a 
number  of  couches  formed  of  bamboo-cunes 
and  covered  with  mats  and  rattans  ;  a  sort  of 
wooden  stool  serves  as  a  bolster  or  pillow  ; 
and  in  the  centre  of  the  shop  is  a  lamp  that 
serves  for  many  smokers,  each  of  whom  is 
-enabled  to  turn  the  bowl  of  his  pipe  towards 
it.  Mr.  Pohlman,  an  American  resident  at 
Amoy,  has  stated  that  there  are  a  thousand 
of  these  opium-smoking  shops  in  that  town 
alone.  If  the  account  of  these  shops  rested 
only  on  the  testimony  of  missionaries,  it 
might  be  supposed  that  a  heightened  colour 
was  given  to  the  effects  by  men  who  regard 
the  indulgence  as  an  irreparable,  uncompen- 
sated  evil ;  but  Lord  Jocelyn,  who  accom- 
panied the  Chinese  expedition  as  military  I 
secretary  seventeen  years  ago,  and  wh/>,  as  a 
military  man,  may  not  be  suspected  of  over- 
sensitiveness  on  snch  a  matter,  gives  testi- 
mony that  ought  not  to  be  overlooked.  He  is 
speaking  of  the  opium-shops  of  Singapore, 
analogous  to  those  of  China :  "  In  these 
houses  devoted  to  their  ruin,  these  infatuated 
people  may  be  seen  at  nine  o'clock  in  the 
•evening,  in  all  the  different  stages.  Some 
entering  half  distracted  to  feed  the  craving 
appetite  they  have  been  obliged  to  subdue 
during  the  day  ;  others  laughing  and  talking 
wildly  under  the  effects  of  a  first  pipe  ;  whilst 
the  couches  round  are  filled  with  their 
different  occupants,  who  lie  languid,  with  an 
id>ot  smile  upon  their  countenances — too 
much  under  the  influence  of  the  drug  to  care 
for  passing  events,  and  fast  emerging  to  the 
wished-for  consummation.  The  last  scene  in 
the  tragic  play  is  generally  a  room  in  the 
rear  of  the  building,  a  species  of  dead-house, 
where  lie  stretched  those  who  have  passed 
into  the  state  of  bliss  which  the  opium- 
smoker  madly  seeks,  an  emblem  of  the  long 
sleep  to  which  he  is  blindly  hurrying."  Dr. 
Ball,  many  years  a  resident  in  China,  speaks 
of  "walking  skeletons,  families  wretched  and 
beggared  by  drugged  fathers  and  husbands, 
and  who  have  lost  house  and  home,  may  be 
seen  dying  in  the  streets,  in  the  fields,  on  the 
banks  of  the  river,  without  even  a  stranger 
to  care  for  them  while  alive,  and,  when  dead, 
left  exposed  to  view  till  they  become  offensive 
masses."  This  last  quotation,  however,  is  of 
insufficient  value  ;  since  any  husband  or 
father  who  became  beggared  and  wretched  in 
China,  and  rendered  his  family  beggared  and 
wretched,  whether  by  spirit-drinking  or  by 
opium-smoking,  would  produce  almost  the 
same  amount  of  evil ;  the  question  is,  not  as 
to  the  wretchedness  of  such  a  state,  but  as  to 
the  tendency  of  opium-smoking  to  produce 
it.  On  this  point  it  is  impossible  to  avoid 
noticing  the  concurrence  of  opinion  that  the 
confirmed  opium-smoker  may  be  known  "  by 


his  inflamed  eyes  and  haggard  countenance, 
by  his  lank  and  shrivelled  limbs,  tottering 
gait,  sallow  visage,  feeble  voice,  and  the 
death-boding  glance  of  his  eye.  He  seems 
the  most  forlorn  creature  that  treads  the 
earth." 

Now,  however  much  we  may  laugh  at  the 
pretensions  of  the  Emperor  of  China  to  be 
brother  to  the  sun 'and  moon,  and  to  be  in- 
effably superior  in  all  points  to  the  barbarians 
of  Europe,  we  may  reasonably  ask  ourselves 
whether  we  are  to  give  him  any  credit 
for  sincerity  in  regard  to  the  welfare  of 
his  own  subjects.  The  missionaries  give 
him  much  of  this  credit,  the  merchants 
give  him  little  or  none ;  it  may  perhaps 
be  found  that  a  medium  estimate  between 
the  two  is  more  nearly  correct  than  either. 
It  is  known  that,  about  eighteen  years  ago, 
the  Emperor  and  his  council  discussed  fully 
the  opium-question ;  it  was  found  that  all 
attempts  to  check  the  contraband  trade  with 
the  British,  were  rendered  futile  by  the  self- 
interested  energy  of  the  merchants,  by  the 
growing  love  of  the  Chinese  for  the  drug,  and 
by  the  venality  of  the  Emperor's  officers. 
Some  of  his  ministers,  seeing  the  impracti- 
cability of  prohibition,  proposed  the  legalised 
admission  of  opium  into  China  under  an 
import  duty,  so  as  to  render  it  a  source  of 
revenue  ;  but  this  was  overruled,  and  an  in- 
creased rigour  of  prohibition  adopted.  Know- 
ing imperfectly,  as  we  in  England  must 
necessarily  do,  the  motives  that  led  to  the 
decision,  we  cannot  say  how  far  self-interest 
prompted  it ;  but,  at  any  rate,  the  Chinese 
government  did  not  snatch  at  a  source  of 
revenue  from  a  commodity  which  they  had 
already  and  unequivocally  condemned.  The 
decision  once  made,  the  government  sent  Lin, 
an  officer  of  high  distinction  and  in  high 
command,  from  Pekin  to  Canton,  as  a  com- 
missioner empowered  to  put  down  at  once 
and  completely  the  opium  trade  at  that  port. 
Commissioner  Lin,  in  the  month  of  March, 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-nine,  startled 
the  opium  traders  by  suddenly  seizing  a 
number  of  British  merchants  at  Canton,  and 
retaining  them  as  prisoners  until  the  whole 
of  the  opium  belonging  to  all  foreigners  at 
that  port  was  delivered  into  his  hands.  It 
has  since  been  frequently  asserted,  that  if  the 
merchants  had  been  left  to  themselves,  they 
would  in  some  way  have  got  out  of  the 
scrape,  perhaps  with  a  partial  loss  ;  knowing 
that  they  were  abettors  of  smuggling,  so  far 
as  concerned  opium,  they  would  perhaps  have 
yielded,  in  order  to  save  their  trade  in  tea 
and  other  commodities.  But,  whatever  this 
amount  of  probability  may  have  been,  the 
merchants  were  not  left  to  themselves.  On 
the  ending  of  the  East  India  Company's 
monopoly,  five  years  before,  a  superintendent 
of  trade  in  China  was  appointed  by  the 
British  government,  and  this  superintendent 
was  perpetually  embroiled  with  the  authori- 
ties. He  was  not  permitted  to  address  the 


184       [AugtKt  i5.  195-.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


governor  of  Canton  <os  an  equal ;  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  was  commanded  to  check, 
with  all  the  British  power  he  might  possess, 
the  arrival  of  British  opium  ships  from  India. 
Throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  years 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-four,  five,  six, 
seven,  aud  eight,  the  superintendent  was  in 
constant  hot  water  on  these  matters  ;  Lord 
Napier  aud  Sir  J.  F.  Davis  successively  tried 
to  conciliate  the  authorities,  but  failed  ;  and 
it  fell  to  the  lot  of  Captain  Elliott  to  be  super-  ! 
intendent  of  trade  at  the  time  of  Liu's  coup  j 
d'etat.  Elliott  advised  the  merchants  to  give  i 
up  the  opium.  This  was  done  ;  more  than 
twenty  thousand  chests  were  delivered  up. 
Lin  and  his  imperial  master  were  at  least 
sincere  in  this  matter,  for  the  opium,  instead 
of  being  made  profitable  to  official  pockets, 
was  all  destroyed  in  the  presence  of  the 
foreign  merchants  and  agents,  at  the  rate  of 
three  hundred  chests  per  day.  The  opium 
was  converted  into  a  kind  of  brown,  fetid 
mud  by  the  agency  of  salt,  lime,  and  water, 
and  was  then  sluiced  into  the  river.  Elliott 
gave  receipts  or  notes  to  the  merchants,  pro- 
mising indemnity  for  the  loss  of  their  opium. 
During  the  remainder  of  the  year,  frequent 
quarrels  and  scuffles  took  place  between  the 
Chinese  authorities  and  the  foreigners  at 
Macao  and  Hong  Kong.  When  all  these 
things  were  known  in  England,  the  sword 
was  determined  on,  and  the  opium  war  com- 
menced. This  war,  the  details  of  which  may 
be  sufficiently  in  the  reader's  recollection, 
lasted  nearly  three  years,  and  was  terminated 
by  the  Treaty  of  Nankin,  in  August,  eighteen 
hundred  aud  forty-two. 

Let  the  opium  war  pass  in  all  its  political 
and  military  relations  ;  let  us  say  nothing 
about  Lin,  Keshen,  Kwan,  and  Ke-quy,  on 
the  Chinese  side,  or  about  Elliott,  Maitland, 
Bremer,  Gough,  Parker,  and  Pottinger,  on 
the  English  side  ;  let  us  pass  over  the  dis- 
putes between  the  English  government  and 
the  merchants  concerning  the  proper  price  to 
be  paid  for  the  opium  destroyed ;  let  us 
admit  that  the  Chinese  carried  on  war  in  a 
barbarous  and  outrageous  way  ;  but,  at  the 
same  time,  let  us  remark  how  great  was  the 
tendency  of  the  Chinese  government  through- 
out the  whole  affair  to  point  to  the  opium 
trade  as  a  source  of  evil.  They  asked  at  the 
outset  of  the  war,  during  the  war,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  war,  that  the  English  government 
would  assist  in  putting  down  this  contraband 
trade.  The  treaty  justified  the  expectation, 
that  this,  at  least  in  intention,  would  be  done. 
A  proclamation  from  the  superintendent, 
issued  some  months  after  the  signing  of  the 
treaty,  formally  disapproved  of  the  clandes- 
tine opium  trade.  Again,  the  superin- 
tendent issued  another  proclamation  soon 
afterwards,  addressed  chiefly  to  English  mer- 
chants and  traders  at  Hong  Kong,  Canton, 
Amoy,  Foo-choo-foo,  Ningpo,  aud  Shang-hae, 
in  which  he  said  :  "  It  having  been  brought 
to  my  notice  that  such,  a  step  has  been  con- 


templated as  sending  vessels  with  opium  on 
board  into  the  ports  of  China  opened  by 
treaty  to  foreign  trade,  and  demanding  that 
the  opium  shall  be  admitted  to  importation 
by  virtue  of  the  concluding  clause  of  the 
new  tariff,  I  think  it  expedient  by  this  pro- 
clamation to  point  out  to  all  whom  it  may 
concern,  that  opium  being  an  article  the  traffic 
in  which  is  well  known  to  be  declared  illegal 
and  contraband  by  the  laws  and  imperial 
edicts  of  China,  any  person  who  will  take 
such  a  step  will  do  so  at  his  own  risk,  and 
will,  if  a  British  subject,  meet  with  no  sup- 
port or  protection  from  Her  Majesty's  consuls 
or  other  officers." 

Without  any  reference  to  wars  present, 
past,  or  future,  or  to  the  ins  and  outs  of 
statesmen,  or  to  the  disruption  of  ministries 
and  parliaments,  we  may  present  the  argu- 
ments on  both  sides  of  the  opium  question, 
in  the  following  condensed  form  : 

The  denouncer  of  opium  addresses  the 
British,  nation  thus  :  You  entice  the  Chinese 
to  ruin  their  fortune  and  health,  that  you 
may  make  money.  You  condemn  the  Ame- 
ricans for  encouraging  and  extending  sla- 
very ;  and  yet  you  wink  at  a  traffic  quite  as 
iniquitous,  for  a  reason  quite  as  selfish.  You 
adduce  drunkenness  as  a  parallel  evil  in  our 
own  country  ;  but  opium  holds  its  victim  by 
a  tighter  grasp  than  does  any  kind  of  drink. 
If  you  will  not  attend  to  English  objections, 
at  least  give  ear  to  a  distinguished  man  in, 
China,  who,  speaking  of  the  corroding  in- 
fluence of  the  drug,  says,  "  It  is  not  man  that 
eats  the  opium,  but  opium  that  eats  the 
man."  If  you  think  Christian  missions  to 
China  good,  look  around  you  ;  for  reasonable 
men  among  the  Chinese  laugh  with  bitter 
scorn  when  you  bring  the  Bible  in  one  hand 
and  opium  in  the  other.  You  should  re- 
member that  opium-smoking  is  not  an  ancient 
habit  in  China  ;  it  is  comparatively  modern, 
aud  therefore  more  easily  eradicated.  You 
should  regard  it  as  cruel  to  tempt  the  Chi- 
nese with  this  mind-destroyer  just  now, 
when  they  are  distracted  with  insurrections 
and  civil  wars.  You  should  give  the  Chinese 
j  government  credit  for  sincerity  in  their 
abhorrence  of  opium  as  a  national  evil ;  since 
they  have  submitted  to  costly  compromises 
of  fiscal  interests,  and  have  severely  punished 
their  own  servants  detected  in  prosecuting 
the  trade :  they  might  obtain  an  enormous 
revenue  by  legalising  the  import  of  opium  at 
a  duty,  or  might  benefit  their  country  by 
cultivating  opium  at  home,  at  one -fifth  of  the 
present  cost  price;  but  they  refuse  to  pander  to 
immorality  for  the  sake  of  profit.  You  should 
consider  that  China  pays  us  twenty  million 
dollars'  worth  of  silver  annually,  besides  the 
tea  aud  silk  and  other  articles  sold,  to  pay 
for  the  opium  ;  that  this  drain  of  silver  im- 
poverishes the  country ;  that  the  sale  of 
British  manufactures  to  the  Chinese  is  not  so 
large  as  had  been  hoped  and  expected  ;  and 
,  that  if  the  trade  in  opium  were  discouraged 


Chnrlcs  Tickcns.] 


BEE  ANGER. 


[AuSn»t  12,  1S57.]        185 


the  Chinese  would  have  more  silver  at  com- ' 
maud  to  purchase  our  cutler}7,  cottons,  ma-  ' 
chinery,  and  other  goods.     And   as  to  your 
India  :  let  the  Company  make  canals,  rail- 
ways,  and    telegraphs ;    let   them   develope 
the   immense   resources   of   that  rich   coun- 
try ;     let    them,   above   all,    encourage    the 
growth  of  cotton — and  they  would  soon  find 
that  the  opium  revenue  might  be  dispensed 
with. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  objector  is  objected 
to  thus :  You  over-rate  the  ill  effects  of  opium; 
opium-smoking  is  deemed  by  medical  men 
riot  so  pernicious  as  opium-eating,  since  many 
of  the  worst  qualities  are  softened  by  the 
processes  the  drug  undergoes  ;  and  to  that 
extent  the  Chinese  are  in  better  case  than 
the  Turks.  Smoked  in  moderation,  opium 
neither  produces  dreams  nor  disturbs  the ' 
mind  ;  it  is  served  round,  in  smoke-whiffs,  at 
Chinese  entertainments,  as  wine  is  in  Eng- 
land. Bear  in  nriud  that  opium  is  provided, 
as  one  of  the  naval  stores,  in  Chinese  emi- 
grant ships  ;  that  the  highly  coloured  ac- ; 
counts  of  the  evils  of  opium  have  been 
written  by  men  who  have  neither  tasted  nor  ] 
smoked  it  themselves  ;  that  a  drunkard, 
whatever  else  may  be  said,  is  more  violent, 
maudlin,  and  disgusting  than  an  opium- 
smoker.  As  to  the  ruinous  effects  of  excess, 
these  are  observable  in  all  indulgences,  and 
should  not  be  laid  specially  to  the  account  of 
opium  ;  and  if  you  were  to  check  or  prohibit 
this  drug,  a  craving  would  ai'ise  for  some 
other  stimulus,  like  as  in  England,  where  an  in- 
temperate advocacy  of  temperance  often  leads 
to  a  secret  indulgence  in  something  fully  as  bad 
as  ardent  spirits.  The  mandarins  themselves 
smoke  opium,  and  they  take  bribes,  and  they 
allow  pipe-selling  shops  and  opium-smoking 
shops  in  the  open  streets  in  enormous  numbers. 
How,  therefore,  could  you  stop  the  trade  ? 
Smugglers  would  be  too  strong  for  you  under 
such  circumstances.  You  censure  the  East 
India  Company  as  a  great  corporation  un- 
worthily deriving  revenue  from  the  sale  of  a 
poisonous  drug  to  an  infatuated  people  ;  but 
remember  these  three  facts — that  the  Com- 
pany have  no  control  over  the  demand  for 
opium  ;  that  if  the  Company  withdrew  from 
the  trade,  or  rather  from  the  culture  in 
India,  China  woidd  probably  be  flooded  with 
opium  more  in  quantity  and  worse  in  quality 
than  at  present ;  and  that  as  the  opium 
revenue  is  now  five  millions  sterling  annually, 
you  cannot  fairly  demand  of  the  Company 
such  a  sacrifice  without  a  previous  re-adjust- 
ment of  the  strange  relations  existing  between 
the  Company  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Crown 
or  the  nation  on  the  other. 

The  reader  will  find  the  opium  question  one 
not  to  be  answered  with  off-hand  readiness  ; 
and  on  that  account  we  have  presented 
above,  the  chief  ai-guments  used  on  either 
side,  that  he  may,  at  any  rate,  appreciate 
the  largeness  and  complexity  of  the  matter. 
It  is  safe  to  predict  that  opium  will  have 


something  to  do  with  any  future  settlement 
of  the  relations  between  the  barbarian  English 
and  the  Celestial  Empire. 

BERANGER. 


A  PLEASANT  picture  has  recently  died  out 
like  a  dissolving  view  in  one  of  the  stately 
streets  of  Paris — at  number  seven  in  the 
Rue  de  Venddme.  A  quaint  and  beautiful 
group,  long  familiar  to  us  all,  has  there, 
but  just  now,  been  abruptly  scattered.  The 
central  figure  in  it  was  buried  with  great 
pomp  on  the  seventeenth  of  July  under  the 
sacred  dust  of  Pere  la  Chaise.  And  yet  that 
group,  or  we  are  much  mistaken,  will  very 
long  survive  in  the  world's  remembrance. 
It  was  one  in  many  ways  quainter  even 
and  more  beautiful  than  any  with  which 
the  eccentricities  of  genius  have  hitherto 
rendered  iis  so  strangely  and  yet  so  inti- 
mately acquainted  in  the  animated  and  picto- 
rial records  of  literature.  Quainter  even  and 
more  beautiful  than  that  glimpse  we  catch  in. 
one  direction  of  Cowper  in  his  velvet  day- 
cap  and  brocaded  gown  sauntering  among 
his  tame  hares,  over  the  green  lawn  at 
Olney  !  Or,  yonder  again,  that  other  of 
white-haired  Sir  Walter  in  his  leathern  gait- 
ers and  his  "  carvelled  "  chair,  seated  among 
the  shaggy  deer-hounds  in  the  laird's  writing 
room  at  Abbotsford !  Or  Voltaire,  with  a 
face  wizened  and  wrinkled  like  a  last 
autumn's  apple,  tripping  with  a  mincing 
step  and  a  lacquered  cane,  with  a  stereo- 
typed sneer  on  his  lips  and  an  everlasting 
scorn  in  his  eyes,  among  the  box  hedge- 
rows and  quincunxes  of  Ferney  !  Or  Cha- 
teaubriand, brooding  with  dreamful  eyes 
under  his  disordered  locks,  in  the  midst  of 
the  wizard-conclave  of  cats  littered  habitually 
about  his  chairs  and  tables,  among  his  books 
and  manuscripts !  But  this  group — the  group 
of  Passy  and  the  Hue  de  Vendorne  1  Ah, 
what  a  charming  group  it  was,  what  a 
picture  it  made,  how  it  still  contrives  to 
shine  out  vividly  before  the  mind's  eye  in 
the  dim  perspective  of  one's  remembrance  ! 

Loitering  among  his  flower-beds,  or  seated 
by  his  garden-porch,  see  dear  old  Pierre  Jean 
de  Beranger  !  A  comfortable  old  gentleman 
to  look  upon, — clad  after  the  homeliest 
fashion  in  an  ample  and  broad-skirted  coat, 
rather  worn,  it  must  be  told,  and  even 
threadbare.  Has  he  not  sung  of  it  in  one 
of  his  most  famous  ditties  ?  An  easy  waist- 
coat and  loose-fitting  trousers,  altogether 
reminding  one  of  that  preposterously  good 
line  in  Rejected  Addresses  : 

"  Loose  in  his  gaiters,  looser  in  liis  gait." 
His  feet  thrust  into  slippers   trodden  down, 
at   heel  ;    his    head    bald    and    smooth,  and 
glossy  as  appeal's  somehow  to  beiit  best  your 
true  bacchanalian  singer  ;  a  very 

"  Beaded  bubble  winking  at  tlie  brim  ! " 
bald,  and  smooth,  and  glossy,  as  the  sculp- 


186       [August  •:.,  is:,;/] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


tured  froiit  of  his  own  brother  of  the  classic 
age — Anacreon  !  The  dearest  old  face  in  the 
world — the  simplest  form — the  kindliest  fea- 
tures. Yet  withal  a  face,  a  form,  and  features 
about  which  notwithstanding  their  exceeding 
simplicity  and  homeliness,  nothing,  absolutely 
nothing,  seemed  to  come  incongruously  in  the 
way  of  even  the  loveliest,  the  most  aerial, 
or  the  most  fantastically  exquisite  associa- 
tions. One  could  fancy  the  Fairies  playing 
at  hide-and-seek  between  his  slippers,  or  a 
stray  Cupid  secreting  itself  on  the  sly  in 
one  of  his  pockets.  His  voice  sounded  with  ; 
a  tender  intonation,  thrilling  alternately  j 
with  tears  and  laughter.  His  eyes  brimmed  j 
with  the  pathetic,  or  sparkled  with  the  j 
humorous.  His  cheek  flushed  with  the ! 
])<•;>  ise  rather  than  with  the  quaffing  of  the 
delicious  draughts  of  the  love  and  the  wine 
and  the  glory  he  sang  of.  For,  this  old  man 
iu  the  old  coat — slipshod  and  bald-pated — was 
the  Song-writer  of  his  Age,  the  boast  of 
French  literature,  the  darling  of  the  French 
population  !  During  nearly  half  a  century, 
throughout  a  long  delightful  interval  of  more 
than  forty  years,  his  poetry,  the  poetry  of 
his  Great  Heart,  has  been  to  the  entire  mass 
of  the  people  in  his  native  land,  whether 
gentle  or  simple,  grey-beards  or  little  chil- 
dren, at  once  a  joy  and  a  consolation.  And 
no  wonder — for,  of  all  song-writers,  Beran- 
ger  was  undoubtedly  both  the  most  natural 
and  the  most  national :  more  so  even,  if  that 
be  possible,  than  Moore  was  to  Erin,  or 
Burns  to  Caledonia !  His  very  style,  in 
truth,  was  so  intrinsically  naturalised  and 
nationalised  ;  it  was,  so  to  speak,  in  the  very 
grain  and  colour  of  it,  so  intensely  idiomatic 
and  indigenous,  as  absolutely  to  defy  any- 
thing like  adequate  translation.  Insomuch 
that  the  happiest  foreign  version  of  any  one 
of  his  songs  ever  yet  accomplished,  is,  at  the  I 
best,  but  as  a  plum  that  has  been  fingered  ! 
A  butterfly — caught,  no  doubt,  but  with  the 
golden  bloom  draggled  off  its  purple  wings 
in  the  catching.  A  flower  with  the  dew  \ 
shaken  out  of  it,  and  the  aronia  gone,  and  \ 
the  petals  withered. 

What  songs  they  are,  these  Chansons  ofi 
Boranger !  Expressive  of  every  kind  of, 
emotion  that  can  ever  stir  our  heart. 
Songs  of  love  and  battle  ;  of  grief  and  gaiety  ; 
of  sarcasm  and  tenderness.  Celebrations 
of  glory  and  of  beauty,  of  victory  and  de- 
feat, of  the  homely  and  the  heroic.  Dit- 
ties that  have  often  and  often  been,  that 
will  again  and  yet  again  be  (how  many  a 
time  to  come  !)  crooned  gently  by  the  cradle, 
and  chanted  dolefully  by  the  bier, — music 
thrilling  deeply  and  tenderly  into  the  heart  i 
of  a  great  people,  listened  to  by  them,  and 
loved  by  them,  as  S  uil  listened  to  and  loved 
the  harp-tones  of  the  Shepherd  of  the  Tere- 
byiithine  Valley. 

How  it  happened  that  Bcranger  came  to 
be  a  song-writer  at  all,  he  himself  has  re- 
lated, and  this  moreover  in  some  of  the  love-  i 


liest  of  his  many  noble  effusions.  lie  has 
embalmed  the  flies  and  straws  of  his  lowly 
experience  in  the  amber  of  his  verse:  and 
for  once  we  don't  "wonder  how  the  devil 
they  got  there  !  "  Very  precious  memorials 
they  are  of  the  man  to  those  who  love  him 
— and  who  among  us  all  has  not  an  auvction 
for  this  Trouvdre  in  the  home-spun  broad- 
cloth, this  Bard  of  the  Guinguette?  Above 
all,  they  are  inestimable  attestations  of  the 
unaffected  simplicity  and  nobility  of  his 
character. 

It  was  in  Paris  (of  all  places),  at  num- 
ber fifty  in  the  Rue  Montorgueil,  on  the 
nineteenth  of  August,  seventeen  hundred 
and  eighty,  that  Pierre  Jean  de  Beranger 
was  born — Paris  ("  full  of  gold  and  woe  "  ) 
being  appropriately  the  birthplace  and  the 
deathplace  of  this  most  intensely  French  of 
Frenchmen.  He  breathed  his  first  breath, 
he  tells  us,  in  the  house  of  a  poor  tailor — 
his  maternal  grandfather.  He  not  merely 
tell  us  this — he  sings  it  —  sings  the  very 
names  and  dates  (precisely  as  we  have  here 
given  them),  the  humble  trade  and  the  lowly 
parentage. 

"  Dans  ce  Paris  plcin  (Tor  et  de  misere, 
En  I'sm  du  Christ  mil  sept  cent  quatre-vingt 
Chez  un  tailleur,  mon  puuvre  et  vicux  grand-pere, 
Moi  nouveau-ne,  sachez  ce  qui  m'advint." 

And  thereupon  he  chants  to  us  (how 
melodiously  ! )  the  surprise  of  his  old  grand- 
sire,  the  Snip,  on  finding  him  one  day  ten- 
derly rocked  iu  the  arms  of  a  Fairy,  "  who 
with  gay  refrains  lulled  the  cry  of  his  first 
sorrows  : " 

"  Et  cette  fee  avec  des  gai's  refrains, 
Calmait  le  cri  de  uies  premiers  chagrins." 

Another  of  these  charming  little  autobio- 
graphic Chansons,  recounts  the  awful  source 
of  this  holy  mission  of  the  Song-writer. 
It  is  called  Ma  Vocation.  And  it  relates 
how  a  mournful  wail  issuing  from  his  new- 
born lips,  the  dear  God  said  to  him — "  Sing, 
sing,  poor  little  one  !  "  Everything  is  touch- 
ingly  and  truthfully  particularise:  1  in  this 
manly  and  modest  egotism  of  Beranger. 
Even  the  drowsy  lullaby  sung  to  him  by  the 
pretty  bonne,  Ma  Nourice,  who  hushed  him 
to  rest  in  his  infancy. 

"  Dodo,  1'enfant  do, 
L'enfant  dormira  tan  tot." 
"  Bye-bye,  Laity,  bye  ! 
Sleep,  my  baby,  byc-and-bye  !  " 

So  likewise  in  the  Recollections  of  Child- 
hood, Souvenirs  d'Enfauce,  he  commemo- 
rates the  games  and  tasks  of  the  dear  school- 
days, when,  from  his  tenth  to  his  sixteenth 
years,  from  seventeen  hundred  and  ninety  to 
seventeen  hundred  and  ninety-six,  he  lived 
during  those  troublous  times  among  his 
friends  and  relatives  in  the  town  of  Peronne. 
Later  on,  he  sings  regretfully  of  the  joyous 
hours  passed  in  his  garret,  see  Le  Grenier, 
when  a  healthful  and  hopeful  stripling.  Nay, 


Charles  Dickens.] 


BERANGER. 


[August  "2,  1S57.]        187 


even  (as  already  intimated),  the  perishable 
Old  Coat,  with  the  pile  brushed  off  it  and  the 
seams  whitened  by  age,  has  a  charm  for  him — 
vide  Mon  Habit — becomes  endeared  to  him 
by  the  simple  force  of  association.  It  is  not, 
however,  Ave  need  scarcely  add.  by  any  means 
exclusively  to  the  celebration  of  littlenesses 
even  thus  genially  domestic,  that  Beranger 
restricts  his  incomparable  genius  as  a  song- 
writer. He  lias,  on  the  contrary,  sounded  in 
some  sort  the  whole  gamut  of  the  Human 
Passions,  from  the  Treble  to  the  Diapason. 
Religion  and  Patriotism,  Glory  and  Beauty, 
Love  and  Friendship,  have  been  his  themes 
alternately.  And  it  would  be  difficult  to  say, 
upon  the  instant,  in  which  department  of 
song  his  Muse  has  proved  the  most  eminently 
successful. 

His  immense  popularity  can  scarcely  be 
matter  of  surprise  to  us,  when  we  remember 
that  others  have,  before  now,  been  rewarded 
with  Fame  for  the  production  of  a  single 
copy  of  verses.  Not  to  allude  more  than 
casually  to  Wolfe,  as  having  secured  remem- 
brance for  his  name  in  the  world  of  letters 
by  his  one  solitary  Elegy  about  Sir  John 
Moore  at  Corunna — precisely  as  Beckfbrd 
has,  by  Vathek  alone,  gained  for  himself  no 
fleeting  reputation  as  a  romancist — did  not 
the  Lady  Anne  Barnard  (God  bless  her ! ) 
win  renown  by  her  single  ballad  of  Auld 
Robin  Gray?  Did  not  Rouget  de  Lisle, 
the  young  artillery  officer  in  the  garrison 
at  Strasbourg,  half-starved  during  the 
scarcity  of  seventeen  hundred  and  ninety- 
two,  flushed  with  wine  and  improvising  to 
the  sound  of  his  clavicord  in  the  silence 
and  solitude  of  his  barrack-chamber  upon 
one  memorable  midnight  before  that  first 
stormy  dawn  of  the  Great  French  Revolu- 
tion— did  not  Rouget  de  Lisle  there  and 
then  immortalise  himself,  in  that  one  effort, 
by  the  composition,  the  creation,  rather  be 
it  said,  the  rapturous  revelation,  of  that 
glorious  Hymn  of  Revolt,  the  Marseillaise  ? 
It  is  no  marvel  whatever,  that,  with 
celebrity  thus  not  unfrequently  achieved  be- 
fore now,  by  one  single  triumph  on  the  part 
of  a  song-writer,  Beranger  by  so  many 
triumphs,  triumphs  so  signal  and  so  re- 
iterated, should  have  won  for  himself  this 
unrivalled  popularity,  and  this  all  but  un- 
paralleled reputation. 

And  this  for  the  most  part  simply  be- 
cause his  marvellous  lyrical  genius  was 
throughout  so  perfectly  truthful,  so  entirely 
unaffected,  so  wholly  natural  and  unstudied 
in  its  manifestation.  He  never  pretends  or 
exaggerates.  What  he  thinks,  he  says— 
what  he  feels,  he  expresses — he  Is  simply 
what  he  appears  To  Be.  His  Muse,  so  to 
speak,  is  never  hysterical.  His  fun  declares 
itself,  not  in  a  roar  of  merriment,  but  in  a 
laughter  like  that  of  Old  Fezziwig,  who,  we 
are  told,  "  laughed  all  over  himself  from  his 
shoes  to  his  organ  of  benevolence."  His 
rage  and  his  pathos  have  neither  the  howl 


of  a  Cassandra,  nor  the  shriek  of  a  Deiphobe- 
Rejoicing,  sorrowing,  believing,  feeling,  think- 
ing, in  every  way  intensely — he  is  never  in 
extremes.  Affectation,  it  may  be  said,  was 
his  antithesis.  He,  we  may  be  sure,  could 
never 

"  Die  of  a  rose  in  aromatic  pain." 

He  would  r-ave  inhaled  its  fragrance  with  a 
sort  of  rapture,  and  then  have  stuck  it  jaun- 
tily in  his  button-hole.  And  so  the  people 
loved  him — the  man  was  so  true  at  the  same 
time  that  he  was  so  intense  ! 

The  purest  love-songs  of  Beranger — alas  t 
that  we  should  have  to  regret  his  occasionally 
chanting  licentious  ditties  to  the  zon-zou  of 
the  flute  and  the  violin — how  exquisitely  de- 
licate they  are  in  their  refined  and  chas- 
tened tenderness  !  Loveliest  of  them  all,  per- 
haps, the  one  in  which  he  cries  out  con- 
tinually That  she  is  beautiful,  Qu'elle  est 
jolie  !  Pre-eminently  above  all  his  exhilarat- 
ing convivial  songs,  or  Bacchanalians,  com- 
mend us  to  his  jovial  Trinquous,  in  which 
he  bids  the  whole  world  hob-nob  socially 
together  !  Trinquons  !  with  its  chinking  re- 
frain, better  even  than  the  drinking  chorus 
of  Mine  Ancient  in  Othello. 

"  Et  pour  cLoquer, 
Nous  provoquer, 

Le  vcrre  en  main,  en  rond  nous  attaquer, 
D'abord  nous  trinquerons  pour  boire, 
Et  puis  nous  boirons  pour  trinquer." 

Very  freely  translated  thus  : 

"  Cans  we  clatter, 

Tables  batter, 

Glass  in  hand,  each  other  flatter : 
First  of  all  we  chink  to  drink. 
And  presently  we  drink  to  chink  !  " 

But  what  refrains  they  all  are,  the  won- 
derful refrains  of  Berauger  ;  as  provocative 
of  singing  in  unison  to  the  voice  of  those 
who  listen,  as  the  stirring  sound  of  Scottish 
dance-music  ever  proves  to  be  an  irresistible 
incentive  to  movement  among  the  feet  of  a 
gathering  of  Highlanders.  Listen  to  the  close 
of  each  verse  of  the  Vivandiere,  with  her 
choral  rub-a-dub — 

"  Tintin,  tin  tin,  tintin,  r'lin,  tintiu  ! " 

Or  hearken  to  his  comically  serious  expostu- 
lation with  Grimalkin  in  his  stanzas  entitled 
Ma  Chatte  (asking  Pussy  What  ails  her  ?) — 

"  Mia-mia-ou  !     Que  veut  Miuette  ?  " 

Above  all,  sit  silently,  with  a  grave  face,  if 
you  can,  Avhile  some  friend  from  Over  the 
Water  chuckles  out  the  laughing  refrain 
of  any  one  among  the  drollest  of  these  chan- 
sons !  say,  for  example,  that  about  The  Little 
Grey  Man : 

"  Qui  dit :    Moi,  je  m'en  .  .  • 

Et  dit  :   Moi,  je  m'en  .  . . 
Ma  foi,  moi,  je  m'en  ris  ! 
Oh  !    qu'il  cst  gai  le  petit  honime  gris !" 
"  Who  said  :   As  for  me  .  .  . 
And  said  :  As  for  me  .  .  . 


1S8       [August  I-:.  1S57.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WOHDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Faith,  as  for  me,  I  lau<:h  ! 
Oh  !  but  the  Little  Grey  Man  loves  chaff !" 

or,  better  still,  that  of  the  famous  King  of 
Yvetot : 

"  Pour  toute  gnvde  il  n'avait  rien 

Qu'un  cliion. 

Oh!   oh!  oh!   oh!    ah!    ah!    ah!    ah! 
<Jucl  bon  petit  roi  c'e'tait  la  ! 

La,  la  ! " 

"  Whose  only  guard  was  a  clog — 

Queer  dog  ! 

[Quite  a  Punch  with  Toby  !] 
Oh  !  oh!  oh!  oh  !  ah  !  alii  ah  !  ah! 
What  a  funny  little  king  was  that — 

La,  la ! " 

His  pensive  and  purely  meditative  songs, 
however,  must  always  be  regarded  as  amongst 
his  most  eminently  beautiful.  The  exquisite 
little  poem  about  The  Shooting  Stai-s,  espe- 
cially, with  its  closing  couplet : 

"  Ce  n'est  qu'une  etoile  qui  file, 
Qui  file,  tile,  et  disparait." 

"  'Tis  only  a  star  that  shoots, 
That  shoots,  shoots,  and  disappears  !" 

Daintiest  among  the  daintiest  of  these  parti- 
cular compositions  of  his,  moreover,  being  his 
far-lamed  song,  If  I  were  a  little  Bird  !  That 
graceful  freak  of  fancy,  iu  which  he  exclaims 
continually,  like  a  voice  from  the  boughs, 

"Jo  volerais  vile,  vitc,  vite, 

Si  j'etais  petit  oiseau." 
"I  would  fly  quick,  quick,  quick, 

If  I  were  a  little  bird." 

Several  of  these  world-renowned  chansons 
are  nevertheless,  in  reality  strange  to  tell, 
about  mere  abstractions.  But  how  much 
Beranger  could  make  of  themes  thus  appa- 
rently vague  and  impalpable,  those  will  very 
well  remember,  who  are  familiar  Avith  his 
songs  on  Fortune  and  on  Happiness.  Yet 
to  understand  thoroughly  that  he  loves  to 
deal  in  something  better  than  mere  abstrac- 
tions, it  is  only  necessary  to  contemplate  for 
A  moment,  his  celebration  of  such  exceedingly 
substantial  personages  as  Roger  Bontemps, 
or  Madame  Grcgoire  ;  or  to  look  at  his  in- 
£0)110118  delineation  of  Jean  de  Pai-is  and 
:-f:eur  Judas  ;  to  say  nothing  of  that  won- 
derful scapegrace  Paillasse.  Sometimes,  as 
in  the  half-playful,  half-pathetic  equivoque 
about  The  Blind  Mother — wherein  Lise,  with 
inimitable  effrontery,  attributes  the  opening 
window  to  the  heat !  and  the  opening  door 
to  the  wind!  and  the  sound  of  kisses  to 
the  bird  in  its  osier  cage  !  (Colin,  the  rogue, 
all  the  while  at  her  elbow,  invisible  to  La  Mere 
Aveugle,  but  suspected  !)  —  Boranger  CQIII- 
]>!•  ,-xes  within  half-a-dozen  sparkling  stanzas, 
the  interest  of  a  little  romance,  and,  with  the ; 
interest  also,  the  resistless  fascination. 

His  chief  glory  as  a  song-writer,  however, ' 
springs  iucontestably  from  his  wondrous  iden- 
tification of  himself  with  the  patriotic  ardour, 
and  the  national  enthusiasm,  and  the  warlike 


splendour,  of  his  Fatherland.  Especially,  and 
beyond  all,  from  his  intimate,  it  should  rather 
be  said,  his  inextricable,  interweaving  of  his 
own  poetic  fame  with  the  heroic  renown  of 
Napoleon.  Henceforth  their  names  will  live 
together  in  the  popular  remembrance— cele- 
brities so  strangely  contrasting,  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  so  curiously  harmonious  !  The 
founder  of  an  empire  and  of  a  dynasty,  con- 
queror at  once  and  lawgiver :  and,  side  by 
side  witli  that  new  Sesostris,  the  homely 
poet  who  sang  of  his  glory,  who  loved  to 
call  himself  simply  by  his  one  enviable  but 
unpretending  title  of  Chansonnier.  Boranger, 
more  even  than  Manzoni,  has  acquired  for 
himself  the  right  of  being  designated  the 
Poet  of  Napoleon.  Already  that  right  has, 
during  a  very  long  interval,  been  uni- 
versally recognised — already  !  and  yet  there 
are  some  fifty  songs,  relating  exclusively  to 
the  memories  of  the  Empire,  which  have 
never  yet  appeared.  Fifty  original  chansons 
written  by  Beranger  about  Napoleon  ;  depo- 
sited several  years  ago  by  their  author  in  the 
hands  of  a  Paris  notary,  with  an  ulterior 
view  to  their  posthumous  publication.  Need 
any  one  hint  with  what  eagerness  that  post- 
humous publication  is  at  this  moment  antici- 
pated 1  Scarcely ;  to  those  at  least,  who 
know  familiarly  the  glorious  songs  chanted 
long  since  to  the  memory  of  Napoleon  the 
Great  by  the  thrilling  voice  of  Pierre  Jean 
de  Boranger  !  Songs  in  which  it  is  curious 
to  note  that  never  once  is  the  name  of  Napo- 
leon articulated.  He  is  only  spoken  of  in 
them  as  "  le  grand  homine,"  or  "  le  bon 
empereur,"  or  by  some  such  phrase — lovingly 
and  reverently.  The  merest  allusion  is 
enough  ;  the  Hero  shines  forth  through  the 
verse  of  the  Songwriter  too  distinctly  to 
require  one  solitary  syllable  with  a  view  to 
his  identification.  Besides  which,  the  cata- 
strophe of  Mont  Saint  Jean  and  the  sorrow- 
ful exile  in  Saint  Helena  were  altogether  too 
freshly  and  too  painfully  in  the  popularremem- 
brance  when  Beranger  wrote,  to  admit  of  his 
articulating  without  a  pang,  through  such 
cries  of  homage  and  affection  as  rang  out 
wildly  in  those  impassioned  songs,  the  name 
of  all  others  consecrated  to  the  love  and  ad- 
miration of  France  :  first  of  all  by  many 
unparalleled  achievements  :  afterwards,  and 
yet  more,  by  sufferings  profound  and 
overwhelming.  His  evidently  intentional 
suppression  of  Napoleon's  name  in  all  the 
war-songs,  appears  indeed  to  be  born  of  the 
same  profound  emotions  of  grief,  dictating,  in 
one  of  his  songs,  the  avowedly  intentional 
suppression  of  the  name  of  Waterloo.  Ke- 
meriiberiug  the  anguish  with  which  it  is 
associated,  he  cries  out  that  "  by  that  name 
his  verse  shall  never  be  saddened."  Is  not 
the  reticence  as  significant  in  regard  to 
Napoleon  as  in  regard  to  Waterloo  1 

"  Son  nom  janiais  n'attristcra  mcs  vers." 
Yet,  though  he  sings  of  him  thus  merely 


Charles  Dickens.] 


BERANGER 


[August  22.  1857.]     189 


inferentially,  with  what  fervour  he  sings, 
nevertheless  !  His  words  ring  through  these 
noble  war-songs  as  with  the  resonance  of  a 
trumpet.  What  a  tender  and  elevated  pathos 
there  is  in  the  commemoration  of  the  Hero's 
Death,  Le  Cinq  Mai,  eighteen  hundred  and 
twenty-one,  at  Longwood  !  What  a  tenacity 
of  love  and  admiration  in  the  colloquy  be- 
tween the  old  soldiers  of  the  grand  army, 
les  Deux  Grenadiers !  How  evidently  the 
old  man  delights  to  sing  of  the  Old  Times  in 
respect  of  the  Old  Flag,  and  the  Old  Ser- 
geant, and  the  Old  Corporal !  The  Old  Flag 
treasured  up  in  secret,  dusty  and  faded,  under 
the  mattress  ;  the  Old  Sergeant  talking  rap- 
turously of  the  ensanguined  past,  to  his 
pretty  daughter ;  the  Old  Corporal  marching 
to  death,  with  the  pipe  between  his  teeth, 
muttering  to  the  young  troopers  through  the 
puffs  of  tobacco,  as  they  move  on  with 
measured  tread  towards  the  place  of  execu- 
tion : — 

"  Consents  au  pas ; 

Ne  pleurez  pas, 

Ne  pleurez  pas ; 

March  ez  au  pas, 

Au  pas,  au  pas,  au  pas,  au  pas !  " 

"  Recruits — march  free  ! 
Weep  not  for  me, 
Weep  not  for  me, 
Keep  step — march  free  ! 
Keep  step,  keep  step,  keep  step,  keep  step  ! " 

The  grandest  of  all  these  heroic  chansons, 
however,  yet  remains  to  be  particularised, 
the  glorious  Kecollections  of  the  People, 
called  simply  Souvenirs  du  Peuple,  in  which 
(as  usual,  without  a  whisper  of  his  name) 
the  historic  form  of  Napoleon  gleams  forth 
vividly  before  the  popular  imagination, 
transfigured  !  An  old  grandame  is  the  nar- 
rator ;  and  a  party  of  villagers,  clustered 
around  her  as  she  sits  in  the  evening 
twilight,  are  the  listeners  and  interlocutors. 
The  refrain  of  this  song  in  particular 
has  something  wonderful  in  its  strange 
and  scarcely  definable  blending  of  variety 
with  monotony.  Monotony  in  effect  as  all 
tending  to  the  one  purpose  ;  variety  of  treat- 
ment as  helping  to  keep  alive,  at  its  utmost 
intensity,  the  interest  first  awakened.  The 
villagers  entreat  the  old  grandame  to  talk  to 
them  about  the  Great  Man,  whose  deeds 
long  past,  still,  like  events  of  yesterday, 
captivate  the  popular  heart  in  their  re- 
membrance. And  she  talks — talks  of  her 
own  personal  recollections.  She  has  seen 
him  herself :  they  are  full  of  wonder.  He 
has  given  her  Good-day  at  her  cottage  door, 
as  he  passed  through  the  village  with  a  re- 
tinue of  kings.  "  What  !  "  they  exclaim. 
"  He  has  spoken  to  you,  mother  ?  He  has 
spoken  to  you  ?  "  Everything  is  described 
by  the  old  grandame  minutely,  with  all  the 
particularity  of  a  photograph.  The  grey 
great-coat,  the  three-cornered  hat,  the  smile 
which  she  says  was  so  sweet,  "etait  bien 


doux."  They  hang  upon  every  syllable,  ex- 
claiming again,  "  What  brave  days  for  you, 
mother  !  What  brave  days  for  you  !  "  Her 
recollections  now  change  in  their  tone  ;  she 
talks  no  longer  of  his  glory,  but  of  the  disas- 
ters portending  his  downfal.  One  evening, 
"as  it  might  be  this,"  she  tells  them,  he  came 
again  to  her  cottage,  and  entered.  No  re- 
tinue of  kings  at  his  heels  then,  but  a  feeble 
escort,  weary  and  dejected.  "  Seated  in  this 
very  chair,"  she  says,  he  sighed,  "  Oh  !  War, 
War!"  "What!"  they  exclaim.  "Then 
he  sat  there,  mother  ?  Then  he  sat  there  1  " 
It  ends,  this  apotheosis  of  a  popular  hero  in 
song — as  such  a  song  should  end — with  tears 
and  words  of  benediction.  In  every  way  it 
is  Beranger's  master-piece. 

It  was  not,  of  course,  by  a  single  bound 
that  Pierre  Jean  de  Beranger  attained  this 
conspicuous  elevation,  or  rather  this  abso- 
lute pre-eminence  as  a  song- writer.  As  might 
be  said  in  the  instance  of  almost  every  self- 
made  man  on  record,  his  were  indeed  but 
very  small  beginnings.  At  the  outset,  a  boy- 
waiter  at  a  little  tavern  or  auberge  kept  by 
a  prim  old  aunt  of  his  at  Peromie.  After- 
wards, like  Franklin,  or  our  own  gifted  and 
lamented  Jerrold,  a  compositor  ;  this  also  at 
the  town  of  Peronne,  at  a  M.  Laisney's 
printing  establishment.  Here,  handling  the 
type,  he  seems  to  have  caught  from  them 
the  old  ineradicable  disease  of  writing,  the 
cacoethes  scribendi,  and  to  have  instinctively 
aspired  to  the  dignity  of  authorship.  Ani- 
mated by  his  new-born  ambition,  Boranger 
hastened  from  the  provinces  to  his  native 
capital,  and  there,  in  that  "golden  and  mise- 
rable Paris,"  boldly  tried  his  fortunes  in 
literature.  It  was  at  this  most  critical  period 
of  his  history  that  he  passed  through 
many  and  bitter  hardships.  Hardships  from 
which  he  was  only  extricated  by  means- 
of  the  sole  patronage  he  is  known  to  have 
ever  accepted  —  patronage  coming  to  him 
appropriately  from  the  First  Consul's  bro- 
ther, afterwards  known  as  the  Prince 
di  Canino,  M.  Lucien  Bonaparte.  Having  in 
eighteen  hundi'ed  and  three,  by  a  fortunate 
inspiration,  enclosed  some  of  his  MS.  verses 
to  this  amiable  cultivator  of  the  fine  arts. 
and  of  letters,  the  young,  unfriended,  and 
impoverished  adventurer,  received  three  days 
afterwards  the  exquisite  consolation  of  the 
verbal,  and,  with  it,  the  substantial  sympathy 
of  his  new-found  Mecaenas.  How  amply  and 
abundantly  he  repaid  the  author  of  the  epic 
of  Charlemagne  for  that  sympathy,  every 
one  knows  who  has  chanced  to  read  the 
grateful  note  of  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty- 
three,  in  most  eloquent  prose  explanatory  of 
his  ever-memorable  Dedication. 

It  has  been  observed  in  reference  to  Btiran- 
ger,  as  something  in  every  way  most  remark- 
able, that  he  of  all  men  remained  to  the  last 
without  the  cross  and  ribbon  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour,  in  a  land  where  merit,  however 
insignificant  —  sometimes,  indeed,  de-merit 


190       [August  1C,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


the  most  flagrant  and  disgraceful — is  in  the 
habit  of  being  signalised  by  decorations.  This 
in  truth,  however,  is  not  by  any  means,  as 
lias  been  supposed,  remarkable  in  regard  to 
Beranger.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  strictly 
in  keeping  and  perfectly  characteristic.  It 
is  a  circumstance  in  its  way  as  perfectly 
characteristic  as  the  incident  embellishing 
his  whole  life — that,  namely,  of  his  support- 
ing existence  to  the  end,  exclusively  with  the 
proceeds  of  a  trifling  annuity  derived  from 
his  publisher,  and  his  warm-hearted  friend  j 
mid  associate,  M.  Perrotin.  Had  lie  not  won  ' 
a  popularity  beyond  all  decorations  ?  He 
who  has  been  voted  the  Poet  of  France  by 
national  acclamation  ?  He  who  comes  to  us, 
bearing  in  one  hand  the  bay-wreath  of  a  Bard 
of  the  People,  and  in  the  other  the  undying 
laurel-crown  woven  by  himself,  the  greenest 
and  the  brightest  ever  laid  in  votive  offering 
upon  the  imperial  tomb  of  Napoleon  1  As  for 
himself,  he  had  long  since  received  the  old 
anacreontic  coronation :  crowned  with  the 
song- writer's  garland  of  roses — roses  droop- 
ing about  his  bald  head  voluptuously — heavy 
with  their  aromatic  perfume — the  dew  upon 
them,  wine-drops  !  It  is  exclusively  upon  his 
trauscendant  merits  as  a  song-writer  that 
his  fame  rests,  as  upon  an  indestructible 
foundation.  Of  the  absolute  reality  of  this 
truth  lie  himself  was  so  entirely  satisfied, 
that  he  is  known  to  have  spontaneously  com- 
mitted to  the  flames,  one  by  one  at  intervals, 
his  more  ornate  and  more  ambitious  contri- 
butions to  literature.  Conspicuous  among 
the  works  thus  destroyed  by  his  own  hand, 
in  manuscript,  were — his  epic  on  Clovis,  his 
dithyrambics  on  the  Deluge,  his  idyll,  descrip- 
tive of  a  Pilgrimage,  his  comedy  of  the  Her- 
maphrodites, his  Memoirs  of  his  Own  Times, 
find  a  compendious  critical  and  biographical 
Dictionary  of  his  Contemporaries.  Even 
now,  his  ingenious  labours,  between  eighteen 
hundred  and  five  and  eighteen  hundred  and 
six,  as  the  compiler  of  the  Annals  of  the 
Museum,  are  forgotten  by  the  world  at  large, 
almost  as  entirely  as  his  assiduous  applica- 
tion subsequently  in  the  office  of  M.  de  Fon- 
tmies,  the  Grand  Master  of  the  University, 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  whose  department 
lie  occupied  for  twelve  years  the  position  of  sub- 
secretary,  or  rather  the  minor  post  of  comrnis- 
ex;  jditionnaire. 

Bcrnnger,  we  repeat,  was  fully  conscious, 
immediately  after  the  occasion  pf  his  earlier 
successes,  that  the  one  fruitful  toil  of 
his  life  was  that  adventured  upon  by  him 
simply  in  his  character  as  a  Chan  son  nier. 
"My  songs,"  said  he,  "are  myself"  (Mes 
chansons,  c'est  moi).  And  as  attestations  of 
his  really  national  importance  as  a  song- 
wj-iter,  twice  we  find  him  subjected,  in  that 
•icity,  to  fine  and  incarceration.  First  of 
all',  in  eighteen  hundred  and  twenty-one, 
when  he  was  mulcted  of  five  hundred  francs, 
and  imprisoned  for  three  months  in  Saint 
Pelajjie.  Secondly,  in  eighteen  hundred  and 


twenty-nine,  when  he  was  in  durance  for  as 
many  as  nine  months  at  La  Force,  having 
incurred,  under  the  same  sentence,  a  penalty 
of  no  less  than  ten  thousand  francs — a  sum 
which  was  at  once  raised  (at  the  suggestion 
of  his  friend,  Lafitte,  the  banker),  by  national 
subscription.  "  The  happiness  of  mankind 
has  been  the  dream  of  my  life,"  wrote  B6- 
ranger,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-three. 
And  strangely  enough,  it  was  the  destiny  of 
that  philanthropic  genius  to  watch  from  the 
very  commencement  the  momentous  struggle 
of  France  towards  that  day-dream,  with  a 
view  to  its  social  and  political  realisation. 
He  who  remembered,  as  an  incident  of  yes- 
terday, following  (when  himself  but  a  little 
nine-year-old  gamin  of  the  Quartier  des 
Halles)  the  tumultuous  mob  of  Parisians  on 
the  renowned  fourteenth  of  July,  seventeen 
hundred  and  eighty-nine,  to  the  Storming 
of  the  Bastille ;  nearly  sixty  years  later 
found  himself  in  his  old  age  returned  by 
two  hundred  and  four  thousand  four  hundred 
and  seventy-one  votes  to  a  seat  in  the 
National  Assembly,  as  representative  of  the 
Seine,  the  eighth  upon  the  list  of  Popular 
Favourites,  his  name  coming  immediately 
after  those  of  the  leading  members  of  the 
Provisional  Government.  It  was  only,  how- 
ever, at  one  single  sitting  of  that  Republican 
Chamber  that  the  reserved  and  simple- 
hearted  song-writer  took  his  place  among 
the  chosen  legislators  of  France :  namely, 
upon  Thursday,  the  fourth  of  May,  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-eight,  the  day  upon  which 
the  National  Assembly  was  solemnly  in- 
augurated. Withdrawing  into  the  privacy 
most  congenial  to  the  noble  simplicity  of  his 
character,  Beranger  there  survived,  in  unin- 
terrupted calm,  very  nearly  to  the  patriarchal 
age  of  an  octogenarian.  He,  who  by  a  memo- 
rable accident  was  almost  destroyed  in  his 
childhood  at  Peronne  by  a  thunderbolt, 
breathed  his  last  peacefully,  on  Thursday,  the 
fifteenth  of  July,  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-seven ;  expiring  from  the  sheer  ex- 
haustion of  nature,  but  one  month  short 
of  his  seventy-seventh  anniversary.  The 
national  honours  subsequently  paid  to  his 
memory  in  France  are,  at  this  moment, 
freshly  in  the  general  remembrance.  The 
ceremonial  of  a  great  public  funeral  upon 
the  morrow  of  his  demise,  was  the  first 
tribute  offered  to  the  fame  of  the  poor 
tailor's  grandson  of  the  Rue  Montorgueil  by 
the  People  and  the  Government.  A  monu- 
ment, provided  by  the  latter,  is  to  be  raised 
over  the  grave  where  'his  honoured  remains 
lie,  side  by  side  with  those  of  his  old  friend 
Manuel.  The  street  where  the  national 
song- writer  expired,  is  henceforth  to  be  called 
(no  longer  the  Rue  de  Vendome  but)  the 
Rue  tie  Beranger.  His  portrait,  moreover, 
is  forthwith  to  be  placed  in  the  gallery 
at  Versailles,  where  are  already  grouped 
the  effigies  of  MoliSre,  Corneille,  and  Lafon- 
taiue.  But,  sorrowfully  again  be  it  said, 


ChwlesDickens.l 


A  VOICE  FROM  THE  CLOISTER 


[August  22, 1357.]       191 


the  group  has  at  length  but  just  now  been 
scattered,  of  which  the  Original  of  that 
Portrait  was  so  long  the  central  figure,  the 
group  so  well-known  and  so  familiar  !  Be- 
ranger,  the  white-haired  and  bald-headed — 
his  old  coat  and  slippers  clustered  about  by 
Fays  and  Cupids — swallows  circling  cheerily 
at  hia  open  lattice — a  cup  of  wine  in  his  hand 
and  a  song  upon  his  lips — the  wine  and  the 
song  both  tributes  to  the  love  and  beauty 
of  Lisette. 


A  VOICE  FROM  THE  CLOISTER. 


I  AM  a  Fellow  of  no  mean  college  in  an 
university  that  yields  to  none.  It  is  possible 
that  my  little  work  upon  the  Greek  particles 
may  not  be  altogether  unknown  to  the  clas- 
sical public.  I  have  done,  perhaps,  some- 
thing in  relation  to  the  text  of  the  Choephorse 
which  the  world  will  not  willingly  let  die. 
I  may  or  may  not  be  the  humble  instrument 
through  which  the  editions  of  a  certain 
German,  who  has  been  for  some  time  exer- 
cising a  malign  influence  in  this  country, 
have  suffered  a  blow — in  their  choral  parts 
especially — from  which  they  will  not  recover. 
Let  that  pass.  All  that  I  wish  to  make 
clear,  is,  that  I  am  not  altogether  a  nobody, 
and  that  I  have  a  right  to  be  heard. 

Was  it  ever  before  contemplated — in  any 
country,  however  barbarous,  under  any 
government,  however  despotic — to  pass  a  law 
whereby  the  wives  of  many  innocent  persons 
should  be  suddenly  divorced,  their  children 
forcibly  carried  away,  their  homes  and 
hearths  made  desolate,  and  the  whole  tenor 
of  their  lives  put  violently  out  of  tune  1  It 
is  surely  without  precedent  that  many  hun- 
dreds of  gentlemen,  scholars,  divines,  who 
had  looked  forward  unsuspectingly  to  a 
domestic  life  from  their  earliest  manhood,  j 
should  be  all  at  once  rendered  celibate,  and  j 
compelled  to  live  in  rooms  without  bells  ! 
And  yet  such  a  proposal  as  this,  or  rather, 
one  precisely  the  reverse  of  this  (which,  of 
course,  does  not  affect  the  injustice  of  the 
case  supposed)  is  even  now  about  to  be 
brought  forward  for  the  consideration  of  a 
British  legislature.  I  say,  it  is  actually  in 
contemplation  that  our  universities  shall 
not  only  be.  what  they  at  present  claim  to 
be,  the  mighty  training-grounds  of  British 
youth,  but  shall  also  become  enormous 
nurseries  for  British  babies  !  A  petition 
having  for  its  object  the  removal  of  our 
celibate  restriction,  numerously  signed  by 
Fellows  of  colleges,  and  countersigned  (as  I 
believe)  by  their  respective  beloved  objects, 
is  at  this  moment  in  the  hands  of  the  Uni- 
versity Commission  ! 

These  engaged  young  men — so  intoxicated 
with  love,  so  blinded  with  passion — are 
unaware  (or,  if  aware,  are  prepared  to  run 
any  risk)  of  the  awful  change  which  they 
must  experience  if  they  succeed  in  this. 
Still  less  do  they  consider  (with  such  selfish- 


ness has  this  sentiment  already  inspired 
them)  the  case  of  scores  of  associates  like 
myself,  who,  being  far  too  old  or  too  wise  for 
matrimony,  will  yet  be  exposed  by  this 
abominable  scheme  to  all  the  discomforts  of 
an  hymeneal  career.  It  is  in  vain  for  them 
to  attempt  to  dazzle  our  eyes  with  the  idea 
that  this  privilege  (?  sic  prospectus)  of  mar- 
riage will  only  be  extended  to  non-residents 
at  the  university.  I  happen  to  know  that 
a  proposition  the  direct  contrary  of  this  is 
already  cherished,  and  that  the  entire  elimi- 
nation of  bachelors  from  our  collegiate  system 
is  the  malicious  hope  of  hundreds. 

I  am  myself  an  old  man,  having  taken  my 
degree  years  before  some  of  these  enthusiastic 
boys  were  out  of  longclothes,  and  I  shall 
probably  never  live  to  be  turned  out  of  my 
dear  old  rooms  in  order  that  they  may  be 
fitted  up  as  nurseries  :  to  see  little  gates  put 
up  at  the  doors,  little  holes  punched  in  the 
chairs,  little  bars  set  across  the  windows,  and 
little  rocking-horses  cutting  up  the  carpets 
in  all  directions.  But  I  speak  for  posterity 
against  the  introduction  of  babies  while  there 
is  yet  time.  Once  grant  the  right  of  matri- 
mony, and  there  is  no  limit  to  the  incon- 
veniences that  may  follow. 

I  used  to  have  confidence  in  Blank,  the 
man  who  keeps  the  rooms  above  mine  ;  a 
steady  fellow,  although  not  nearly  of  my 
standing,  and  who  has  held  an  official  station 
in  the  college  for  several  years.  Six  months 
ago  he  took  to  pacing  his  apartment  to  and 
fro  for  hours  together,  and  one  always  had 
to  speak  to  him  twice  before  he  answered. 
I  positively  caught  him,  upon  one  occasion, 
reading  my  last  notes  upon  "Wellauer'a 
Eumenides,  with  the  book  turned  upside 
down — which,  however,  although  the  thing 
was  quite  unaccountable,  did  not  raise  my 
suspicions.  Now,  the  murder's  out.  Blank 
put  his  name  down  to  the  petition  last 
Wednesday,  and  is  evidently  noosed.  This 
parading  of  hia  room  all  night  will  be  a  good 
deal  worse  for  me  when  he  comes  to  have  a 
sleepless  child  in  his  paternal  arms.  I  should 
not  v\ronder  if,  as  an  old  friend  of  poor  B.'s, 
he  made  me  a  godfather  ;  and  then  I  shall 
have  to  kiss  a  baby, — perhaps  a  couple  of 
them.  I  foresee  as  many  fatal  troubles  as 
Cassandra  herself,  and  only  trust  that  1  may 
be  listened  to  before  they  actually  arrive. 
My  bedmaker  will  be  continually  in  hot 
water  about  things  that  are  missing — for  the 
good  old  soul  can't  be  expected  to  give  over 
all  her  little  privileges  at  once — and  there 
will  be  a  tumult  upon  the  stairs  all  day. 
Mrs.  Blank  will  be  sending  down  her  com- 
pliments, whenever  I  am  making  myself  par- 
ticularly comfortable,  and  be  sorry  to  say 
that  the  smell  of  tobacco  affects  her  very 
seriously,  and  would  I  mind  smoking  out  of 
doors.  All  my  pupils  will  be  making  love  to 
the  pretty  nursemaids, — for  all  nursemaids 
are  pretty,  although  some  are  not  so  pretty 
as  others.  The  most  convivial  party  will 


192 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.August  22, 1837.] 


have  to  retire  by  eight  p.m.  or  so,  for  fear  of 
waking  a  child  above,  below,  or  on  one  side  of 
ihcin.  A  nightcap  will  be  thrust  forth  from 
this  or  that  door,  as  we  unwillingly  come 
In niio,  with  a  "Hush,  sir  !  Please  to  take  off 
your  shoes  at  the  bottom  stair."  The  most 
hideous  reports  will  pervade  this  peaceful 
community,  and  a  couple  of  elopements, 
perhaps,  will  actually  occur  per  term, — just 
enough  to  keep  scandal  well  alive.  We  who 
have  lived  well  and  quietly  so  long,  without 
the  breath  of  censure  dulling  us,  will  then 
have  our  every  action  criticised  over  crochet, 
and  our  every  sentence  dissected  over  Berlin 
wool. 

The  Dean's  wife  will  favour  the  handsome 
under-graduates,  and  forbid  their  being 
"gated."  What  a  shock,  too,  would  it  cause 
to  modest  freshmen  sent  for  by  that  func- 
tionary about  their  chapels,  to  find  inside  the 
sporting  den  a  white  kid  glove  tied  delicately 
round  the  knocker  !  Wrapped  up  in  the 
new  arrival,  his  Eeverence  may  tell  them 
perhaps  that  they  have  gone  to  church,  he 
thinks,  as  well  as  can  be  expected. 

The  tutors  and  assistant-tutors  will  be 
liable  to  be  summoned  in  their  lecture-rooms 
from  the  woes  of  a  Medea,  or  from  the  condi- 
tions of  equilibrium,  at  any  domestic  crisis  of 
Jemmy's  teeth  or  Lucy's  tears.  Again,  is  it 
likely  that  Mrs.  Blank,  the  brewer's  wife, 
will  give  up  precedence  without  a  struggle 
to  Mrs.  Asterisk,  the  auditor's  lady  1  Will 
not  the  dean's  helpmate  sniff  contemptuously 
at  the  vice-master's,  and  the  spouse  of  the 
public  orator  patronise  the  university 
preacher's  1  Will  Blank  and  Asterisk  them- 
selves escape  being  drawn  into  personal  con- 
flict, sooner  or  later,  and  may  not  we  very 
bachelors  be  pressed  into  the  fight  as  arbi- 
trating parties  ? 

Crinoline  will  usurp  all  our  official  seats  in 
chapel,  and  the  master  himself  be  lucky  if  he 
is  permitted  to  keep  his  stall.  How  meagre, 
on  the  contrary,  will  our  gathering  be,  in  hall 
and  combination-room  !  What  vacant  chairs 
there  will  be — what  absent  faces  ! 

"  Smith  !  what  has  become  of  Smith  ? " 
we  sli all  ask. 

"  Mr.  Smith  is  gone,  sir,"  the  butler  will 
solemnly  reply  ;  "  he  took  his  name,  last 
week,  poor  gentleman,  off  the  buttery-book, 
sir  ;  and  dinner  for  two  is  to  be  sent  hence- 
forward to  his  rooms." 

The  unmarried  will  regard  the  married 
with  a  certain  uneasy  suspicion,  for  we  shall 
be  doubtful  whether  they  tell  their  consorts 
everything  or  no.  Fancy  our  combination- 
room  stories  circulating  all  over  the  female 
population  !  Then,  if  we  decide  upon  ad- 
mitting ladies  into  hall,  things  will  be  even 
worse.  Our  conversation  will  then  be  solely 
directed  into  channels  of  domesticity  ;  the 
economy  of  the  kitchen  will  fall  into  feminine 


hands  ;  and  we  shall  have  leg  of  mutton  upon 
the  high  table  in  the  three  stages  of  roast  and 
hashed  and  cold.  The  children— bless  their 
little  hearts,  say  I,  but  I  like  to  see  them  in 
their  proper  places— will  be  admitted  to  dessert 
in  combination-room.  I  know,  too,  how  short 
a  time  will  be  permitted  to  us  for  enjoying 
ourselves  when  the  ladies  have  withdrawn. 
Married  men  who  have  been  Fellows,  revisit 
us  here  not  seldom  upon  furlough,  and  the 
way  in  which  they  look  towards  the  door 
after  d  inner  is  positively  distressing.  "  Please, 
sir,  mistress  says  that  the  tea  has  been  served 
in  the  drawing-room  some  minutes,"  is  what 
they  are  expecting  to  hear  ;  and  when  our 
good  old  butler  brings  in  more  Port  instead, 
their  relief  is  pleasant  to  witness. 

Lastly,  leaving  our  personal  comforts  out 
of  the  question,  will  not  our  practical  useful- 
ness be  seriously  impaired  by  this  intro- 
duction of  the  feminine  element  ?  Is  it  to  be 
supposed  that  we  shall  be  permitted  to  carry 
on  our  present  educational  course,  for  in- 
stance, without  interference  1  Will  there 
not  be  ladies  with  a  turn  for  classics,  and 
with  a  talent  for  mathematics,  and  (especially) 
with  a  peculiar  view  upon  theology,  Avhich 
they  will  insist  on  an  opportunity  of  dis- 
playing, and  of  imparting  to  our  youth? 
Shall  we  not  have 

"  upon  the  lecture  slate 
The  circle  rounded  under  female  hands 
With  flawless  demonstration  ?  " 

or  (as  is  still  more  likely  to  be  the  case),  all 
wrong  1  Shall  we  not  have 

"  Classic  lectures,  rich  in  sentiment, 

With  scraps  of  thunderous  epic  lilted  out 

By  violet-hooded  doctors  ?  " 

Nay,  shall  we  not  quite  possibly  have  some- 
poor  Fellow's  strong-minded  mother-in-law 
usurping  the  chair  of  the  professor  of  political 
economy,  and  expounding  her  ideas  upon 
woman's  rights  and  population,  in  large  green 
spectacles  and  an  ugly  ? 

We  have  had  some  stormy  scenes  lately  at 
our  college  meetings  ;  but  I  fancy  they  have 
been  nothing  to  what  they  will  be  when 
the  seniority  comes  to  be  half  composed  of 
females !  By  that  time  it  is  possible  that 
more  than  one  of  those  impassioned  young 
persons  who  are  at  present  so  desirous  of 
doing  away  with  our  old  Salic  laws,  will 
look  up  fondly,  but  in  vain,  to  the  image  of 
the  royal  founder  over  our  gateway,  and  envy 
that  bluif  King  Hal,  who,  although  he  did 
marry  half-a-dozen  wives  or  so,  became  a 
Bachelor  Fellow  whenever  he  chose. 


Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo.,  price  One 
Guinea, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILKIE  COLLINS. 

Bradbury  and  Evaus,  AVhitcfriars. 


TJie  Rigid  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  ly  the  Authors. 


IMMIO-rd  «t  Hi*  Office,  Vo.  16,  Wellington  Street  North. Strand.    Printed  by  BB&DBUBY  &  Evins,  \Vhitefriarf,  London. 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD    WORDS.1'— SHAKESPEARE. 


HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY   JOUENAL 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES     DICKENS. 


SATURDAY,  AUGUST  29,  1857. 


'  PMCE  2<i!. 
;  STAMPED  3d. 


A  HEALTHY  YEAE  IN  LONDON. 


BY  the  one  hundred  and  thirty-second  sec- 
tion of  the  Metropolis  Local  Management 
Act,  it  was  ordained  about  two  years  ago 
that  there  should  be  appointed  by  the  Board 
of  Works,  which  represents  the  vestry  in 
each  London  parish,  a  Medical  Officer  of 
Health,  whose  duty  it  should  be  "  to  ascertain 
the  existence  of  diseases,  more  especially  epi- 
demics increasing  the  rate  of  mortality,"  and 
who  also  should  "take  cognisance  of  the 
fact  of  the  existence  of  diseases." 

By  an  instructional  minute  of  the  General 
Board  of  Health,  dated  on  the  twentieth  of 
the  December  before  last,  the  duties  of  these 
medical  officers  of  health  were  further  de- 
fined :  they  were  not  only  to  show  the  exist- 
ence of  preventible  diseases,  to  point  out 
methods  of  removing  them,  and  to  insist  on 
their  removal,  but  they  were  also  to  collect 
and  diffuse  general  information  upon  sanitary 
matters,  and  to  serve  as  sanitary  referees  to 
the  parishioners  on  whose  behalf  they  were 
retained.  The  raising  of  the  covps  of  sani- 
tary soldiers  thus  established  was  not  com- 
pleted until  March,  in  the  year  eighteen 
'fifty-six.  Some  vestries  had  their  officers 
of  health  appointed  earlier,  but  the  first 
year's  work  for  the  improved  health  of 
London  was  supposed  to  begin  in  March  of 
last  year,  and  to  end  in  March  of  this  year  ; 
when  the  Act  of  Parliament  required  that 
each  officer  of  health,  in  addition  to  any 
weekly,  monthly,  or  half-yearly  reports  that 
he  might  furnish  to  the  board  with  which  he 
worked,  should  write  an  annual  report  for 
publication  by  the  vestry.  The  publication 
of  these  annual  reports,  by  the  several  Lon- 
don parishes,  has  been  recently  completed. 
We  have  made  it  our  business  to  read  them 
all,  together  with  many  of  the  monthly  and 
half-yearly  reports  by  which  they  were  pre- 
ceded. We  have  not  only  read,  but  we  have 
also  marked  them  and  digested  them,  and 
the  result  of  our  study  is  now  at  the  service 
of  the  reader. 

It  gives  us  much  of  the  story  of  a  healthy 
year  in  London.  There  is  not  a  fact  or  a 
suggestion  in  the  sketch  we  are  now  writing 
which  has  not  been  drawn  from  the  recent 
reports  of  the  London  officers  of  health,  and 
there  has  been  hardly  a  report  issued  that 


will  not  contribute  to  it,  indirectly  or  di- 
rectly, some  fact  or  opinion.  The  year  in 
question  was  a  healthy  one.  In  'fifty-six, 
deaths  from  all  causes  in  town  fell  short 
of  the  average  of  the  four  former  yeai*s 
by  five  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty- 
eight  ;  and  in  the  spring  of  this  year  the  mor- 
tality was  five  hundred  and  forty-six  below 
the  average.  We  do  not  attribute  this  to- 
the  exertions  of  the  health  officers  and  sani- 
tary inspectors  ;  but  when  we  come  presently 
to  ta.ke  a  glance  at  the  work  actually  done 
for  the  improvement  of  our  wholesomeness, 
it  will  be  evident  that  some  of  the  life  saved 
has  been  saved  by  the  increase  of  attention 
paid  to  what  is  necessary  for  the  maintenance 
of  health. 

Lei;  us  confirm  our  minds  upon  this  subject, 
and  at  the  same  time  fortify  them  against 
any  undue  despondency  when  we  fall  upon 
details  of  our  present  state  that  are  disheart- 
ening and  sickening,  by  looking  at  the  in- 
crease of  health  and  duration  of  life  actually 
produced  by  improvement  in  the  public  sense 
of  what  is  wholesome.  In  London,  in  the 
year  seventeen  hundred,  one  person  died 
out  of  every  twenty-five.  Fifty  years  later 
one  died  out  of  every  twenty-one.  In  the 
first  year  of  the  present  century  there  died 
only  one  in  thirty-five,  and  in  eighteen  'thirty 
one  in  forty-five.  Mr.  Bianchi,  of  St.  Sa- 
viour's, reminds  us  of  that.  Again,  Mr. 
Eendle,  the  health  officer  for  the  parish  of 
St.  George  the  Martyr,  Southwark,  reminds 
the  public,  that  in  the  great  plague  year  of 
sixteen  'fifty-five  there  died  out  of  that  parish 
one  person  in  every  four  ;  but  that  the  loss 
in  modern  pestilences  is  one  in  thirty,  forty, 
or  sixty.  His  district  is  now  one  of  the 
worst  in  London,  and  one  of  the  most  densely 
peopled  ;  but  he  does  not  look  back  with 
envy  to  the  day  when  its  population  was 
much  thinner — a  century  and  a-half  ago ; 
when  all  the  alleys  were  blind  alleys,  and 
thoroughfares  gloried  in  tilthiuess ;  when 
people  had  an  address  by  Harrow  Dung-hill, 
or  in  Dirty-lane,  or  Melancholy-walk,  and 
Labour-in-vain-alley — dens  of  life  interspersed 
among  good  buildings  and  spacious  gardens. 

At  the  present  time  we  may  represent  the 
effect  of  unwholesome  influences  on  a  town 
population  by  the  evidence  of  Dr.  Letheby, 
that  in  some  parts  of  the  City  of  London  the 


VOL,  XVI. 


388 


194       [Angmt  »,  1SS7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


death  rate — in  all  parts  high — is  actually 
doubled.  While  in  England  the  mean  dura- 
tion of  life,  with  men  who  have  reached  the 
age  of  twenty,  will  be  forty  years,  in  the 
City  of  London  it  will  be  but  thirty,  and  iu 
the  western  divisions  of  it  only  twenty-eight. 
He  who  -starts  upon  a  city  life  and  residence 
at  the  age  of  twenty,  says  the  city  officer  of 
health,  "  hardly  stands  a  better  chance  of 
existence  than  do  the  average  of  infants  when 
they  are  a  year  old ;  for  in  the  one  case  he 
only  reaches  to  the  age  of  forty-eight,  and  in 
the  other,  with  all  the  dangers  of  early  life, 
they  will  get  to  be  forty-seven." 

But  these  averages  are  struck  between  the 
well-to-do  and  the  ill-to-do  ;  the  great  mor- 
tality in  courts  and  alleys  is  made  to  suggest 
a  diminution  of  life  that  does  not  really  take 
place  in  the  mansions  of  the  rich. 

Well,  but  it  does  sometimes.  Dr.  Druitt 
is  the  medical  officer  of  health  for  Saint 
George's,  Hanover  Square.  Small-pox  ap- 
peared in  his  district.  One  of  the  places  in 
which  it  appeared,  was  the  room  of  a  journey- 
man who — in  this  room,  surrounded  by  his 
sick  children — was  making  coats  for  the 
customers  of  a  fashionable  tailor  in  a  fashion- 
able street.  Another  was  the  room  of  a 
laundress,  employed  in  getting  up  gentle- 
men's white  ties.  Another  was  inhabited  by 
the  family  of  an  upper  servant  in  a  house  in 
Berkeley  Square. 

That  is  a  broad  fhint  to  the  selfish,  but 
God  knows,  we  are  not  selfish  as  a  people  in 
this  matter.  When  we  are  told  that  at 
Dulwich,  where  the  high  ground  secures 
light  and  air,  where  money  secures  all  the 
wants  of  life,  and  where  the  population  is 
but  at  the  rate  of  one  person  in  one  acre, 
there  died  last  year  only  thirteen  persons 
in  a  thousand,  two  of  them  children,  and 
not  one  from  a  preventible  disease  ;  while  in 
Feckham — to  go  no  farther — there  died 
twenty  iu  a  thousand,  we  do  not  fail  to  see 
the  influence  of  a  man's  dwelling-place  on 
the  duration  of  his  life.  We  are  not  blind 
to  the  meaning  of  a  comparison  like  this 
between  neighbour  and  neighbour.  Between 
Hanover  Square  and  Hyde  Park  are  the 
hundred  and  thirty-seven  houses  of  Lower 
and  Upper  Brook  Street,  besides  thirteen 
mansions  at  the  north  of  Grosvenor  Square. 
The  deaths  in  them  all  between  the  first  of 
April  last  year  and  the  same  date  this  year 
were  nine.  Shepherd's  Court  in  Upper 
Brook  Street  contains  nine  houses,  and  there 
were  as  many  deaths  in  those  houses  alone. 
We  give  some  more  of  these  comparisons 
which  carry  their  own  lesson  with  them  too 
distinctly,  and  appeal  too  surely  to  our 
hearts,  to  need  enforcement.  In  the  west 
Ward  of  Mile  End,  the  deaths  are  at  the  rate 
of  thirty-two  in  every  thousand ;  in  the 
centre  ward,  which  is  not  much  less  densely 
crowded,  there  die  out  of  the  thousand  only 
twenty-one.  The  Medical  Officer  of  Health 
for  Mile  End,  Mr.  Freeman,  looks  for  the 


cause  of  this  excessive  destruction  of  life 
in  his  west  ward,  and  finds  that  it  takes 
place  in  a  new  town,  which  has  sprung  up 
during  the  last  few  years  at  the  rear  of  Castle 
Tavern,  sometimes  called  the  Rhodeswell 
estate.  These  houses  form  a  main  part  of 
the  ward  ;  they  have  been  inhabited  several 
years,  yet  the  roads  were  not  made  up  and 
the  district  was  undraiued.  Under  recent 
laws  the  drainage  of  a  new  street  is  made 
before  houses  are  built,  instead  of  afterwards. 

At  Chelsea,  Dr.  Barclay,  local  Officer  of 
Health,  prudently  doubtful  of  conclusions 
drawn  from  a  comparison  between  popula- 
tions of  only  one,  two,  or  three  thousand  for 
a  single  year,  yet  sets  down  certain  facts  in 
a  table  of  the  rate  of  mortality  from  epide- 
mics in  different  corners  of  the  parish.  In 
the  parish  as  a  whole  there  do  not  die  of 
epidemic  and  infectious  diseases  so  many  as 
two  in  a  thousand,  but  in  various  districts 
of  small  streets  and  courts,  the  deaths  from 
this  cause  amount  to  six  or  even  a  little  more 
than  seven  in  a  thousand.  Now,  this  table 
shows  that  among  such  courts  the  death  rate 
has  been  by  far  the  lowest  where  the  year's 
course  of  sanitary  improvement  was  begun 
first,  and  even  then  has  been  made  up  almost 
entirely  of  deaths  in  a  street  that  was  not 
inspected  until  very  late  in  the  season,  and 
of  some  that  occurred  before  any  alterations 
were  begun.  We  need  not  hesitate  to  accept 
the  inference  suggested.  The  effect  of  changes 
made  in  Rotherbithe  shows  most  empha- 
tically, if  any  men  could  doubt,  how  life  is  to 
be  saved  by  making  homes  less  poisonous. 
In  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-nine,  cholera 
mowed  down  the  inhabitants  of  the  eastern 
part  of  Rotherhithe,  which  was  without 
sewers,  almost  without  drains,  and  without 
other  water  than  the  people  dipped  up  from 
the  Thames  or  from  some  filthy  tidal  wells. 
The  ravages  of  cholera  caused  the  construc- 
tion of  a  sewer  and  the  bringing-in  of  an 
abundant  supply  of  good  water.  When  the 
cholera  returned  in  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-four,  there  was  no  part  of  London  south 
of  the  Thames  more  free  from  it  than  the 
eastern  part  of  Rotherhithe :  while  the  new 
streets  on  the  Deptford  Lower  Road,  built 
upon  undrained  garden  ground,  suffered 
severely.  Again,  writes  Mr.  Murdoch,  Me- 
dical Officer  of  Health  for  Rotherhithe,  a 
few  years  ago  the  upper  part  of  Swan  Lane 
was  intersected  by  foul  open  ditches.  Typhus 
fever  then  reigned  constantly  on  that  spot. 
As  many  as  ninety  cases  of  fever  were 
attended  by  the  parish  surgeon  in  twelve 
months.  But,  since  the  ditches  have  been 
arched  over,  the  disease  has  entirely  dis- 
appeared, and  the  place  is  one  of  the  health- 
iest in  the  parish. 

Again,  there  is  in  Rotherhithe  a  group  of 
ten  houses  called  Dodd's  Place.  In  those  ten 
houses,  with  a  population  of  about  fifty,  ten 
persons  died  of  cholera  iu  eighteen  hundred 
and  forty-nine.  There  was  then  a  stagnant 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  HEALTHY  YEAR  IN  LONDON. 


[August  59, 185M       195 


ditch  before  the  houses.  That  has  been  filled 
up,  and  Dodd's  Place  has  since  been  remark- 
ably free  from  disease.  In  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty-four,  only  three  persons  in  it  were 
attacked  by  cholera,  and  not  one  died.  We 
come  to  a  more  fashionable  quarter  for 
one  other  instance.  Dr.  Lankester  is  medical 
officer  of  health  for  St.  James's,  Westminster. 
He  tells  us  that  in  the  unhealthy  Berwick 
Street  division  are  the  model  lodging-houses, 
called  Ingestre  Buildings.  Their  mortality 
last  year  was  at  the  rate  of  sixteen  in  a 
thousand.  With  that  he  contrasts  a  part  of 
the  St.  James's  Square  division — Burlington 
Arcade.  The  rooms  there  are  narrow  and 
small,  imperfectly  ventilated,  and,  although 
not  overcrowded,  shorten  life.  The  mortality 
last  year  among  residents  in  Burlington 
Arcade  was  at  the  rate  of  thirty  in  a  thousand. 

Now,  let  us  turn  from  Saint  James  to  Saint 
Giles. 

Dr.  George  Buchanan,  Medical  Officer  of 
Health  for  Saint  Giles,  tells  us  that  "  the 
present  mortality  among  infants  in  Saint 
Giles's  is  such,  that  a  child  two  years  old 
has  a  better  chance  of  living  to  be  fifty, 
than  a  child  at  its  birth  has  of  living  to  be 
two  years  old."  And  so  we  turn  over  a  new 
leaf  in  the  history  of  London  during  this  its 
healthy  year.  The  little  children  form  by 
far  the  largest  class  of  victims  to  the  poison- 
ing or  stinting  of  our  air  and  food.  In  fuul 
homes  the  mortality  of  children  tends  to 
multiply  itself,  for  where  more  children  die, 
more  children  are  born  to  feed  the  jaws  of 
death.  Partly  this  happens,  because  the 
perishing  of  uu weaned  infants  from  the 
mother's  breast  is  followed  speedily  by  new 
creations.  But  there  must  be  another  law  of 
nature  working,  to  produce  a  result  so  strik- 
ing as  that  in  healthy  districts,  where  there 
is  one  death  in  fifty-six  people,  there  is  one 
birth  in  forty-two  ;  but  that  in  unhealthy  dis- 
tricts where  there  is  one  death  in  thirty-three 
people,  there  is  one  birth  in  twenty-eight.  We 
take  this  into  account  then,  in  considering  the 
large  sum  of  the  mortality  of  infants.  Were 
everything  as  it  should  be,  the  death  of  a 
young  child,  except  by  accident,  would  be  a 
rar?  event.  Little  ones  inheriting  no  weak- 
ness from  their  parents,  breathing  pure  air, 
eating  pm%e  bread,  and  drinking  the  due 
quantity  of  wholesome  milk,  would  grow  to 
sturdy  manhood,  and  to  comely  womanhood, 
but  there  would  not  be  so  many  of  them 
growing.  Families  would  be  little  larger 
than  they  now  are,  but  they  would  be  com- 
posed more  entirely  of  children  upon  the 
knee,  and  by  the  fireside :  not  many  would  be 
moved  into  the  little  coffin  from  the  cot. 
We  know  what  the  truth  is.  Dr.  Pavy, 
Medical  Officer  of  Health  for  Saint  Luke's, 
tells  that  in  the  Old  Street  district  of  his 
parish,  the  actual  number  of  the  deaths 
during  the  healthy  year  of  which  we 
write,  was  forty-four,  twenty-six  of  them 
being  deaths  of  children  under  five  years  old, 


and  eighteen  the  sum  of  deaths  at  every 
other  age.  In  the  City  Eoad  district,  there 
died  forty-one  infants,  against  twenty-six 
persons  of  every  age  older  than  five.  In  the 
Whitecross  Street  distinct,  there  were  seventy- 
seven  deaths,  '  f  which  no  less  than  fifty-nine 
were  deaths  of  infants  under  five  years  old. 
Three  burials  in  every  four  were  burials  of 
little  children. 

This  is,  by  far,  the  worst  fact  of  its  kind 
to  be  found  in  the  whole  budget  of  sanitary 
reports  now  before  us.  The  worst  that  can 
be  generally  said  (and  with  all  its  local  varia- 
tions, it  is  a  distressing  feature  in  each  parish 
account)  is,  that  one  half  the  deaths  are 
deaths  of  children  under  five.  And  then,  as 
Dr.  Barnes  reminds  the  vestry  at  Shoreditch, 
of  all  the  children  born  among  us,  only  one 
half  live  to  the  age  of  fifteen ;  only  one  in 
three  lives  to  be  older  than  forty  ;  only  one 
in  five  lives  to  be  sixty-one. 

To  account  for  such  figures  as  these,  we 
will  now  take  from  the  reports  one  or  two 
illustrations  of  what  may  be  found  in  London 
in  a  healthy  year,  to  warn  us  how  much 
wholesomer  and  healthier  we  may  become. 
Turner's  Retreat,  Bermondsey,  is  cited  by 
Dr.  Challice,  officer  of  health  for  that  parish, 
as  a  fever-nest  inhabited  by  persons  not  of 
the  poorest  description,  many  of  whom  are 
very  cleanly  in  their  habits,  but  who  are 
poisoned  by  want  of  drainage,  who  live  beset 
by  their  own  offscourings  in  a  court  soaked 
by  a  neighbouring  yard  in  which  a  manu- 
facturer keeps  a  strong  solution  of  dogs'  ex- 
crement (technically  called  pure)  adjacent  to 
the  public  thoroughfare.  We  will  quote 
only  one  passage  more — it  is  from  the  Rother- 
hithe  report.  We  sicken  as  we  read  of  such 
homes.  They  sicken  and  die,  who  have  to 
live  in  them.  In  Spreadeagle  Court  "  almost 
all  the  houses  were  overcrowded  with  in- 
mates, dilapidated,  and  swarming  with  bugs. 
Many  of  the  inhabitants  complained  that  the 
quantity  of  water  forced  on  by  the  company 
was  not  sufficient,  and  certainly  the  recep- 
tacles for  it  were  not  generally  large  enough, 
and  often  dirty  and  leaky.  The  drainage  has 
been  originally  good,  but  is  everywhere 
choked  up.  Not  a  house  had  an  ashpit,  the 
vegetable  and  animal  refuse  being  strewn 
about  the  yards,  and  mixing  their  effiuvia  with 
those  from  the  overflowing  cesspools." 

We  can  quote  no  more  of  such  details. 
They  abound  in  the  reports,  and  we  know 
that  they  must  abound.  The  late  Sir  Henry 
de  la  Beche  informed  me,  writes  Dr.  Lan- 
kester of  the  court  district,  that  when  the 
School  of  Mines  was  built  on  the  space  be- 
tween Jermyn  Street  and  Piccadilly,  for- 
merly known  as  Derby  Court,  no  less  than 
thirty-two  cesspools  had  to  be  emptied  and 
filled  up.  There  is  plenty  of  work,  then,  to 
be  done  everywhere  by  the  boards  of  works, 
medical  officers  of  health,  and  inspectors  of 
nuisances  ;  and  in  each  of  the  reports  before 
us  there  is  an  accurate  chronicle  of  work 


196       t  August  M.  18670 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


done,  which  suggests  the  strong  conviction  to  ' 
which  we   have   before   referred,  that   even 
already  some  part  of  the  diminution  in  the  j 
rate  of  our  mortality  is  due  to  recent  exer- 
tion for  the    removal  of   a  few   causes  ofj 
disease — faint  as  it   is  in  comparison   with 
the  great  mass  of  evil  to  be  overcome.     In 
one    parish    alone    (Whitechapel)     thirteen 
hundred  cesspools  have  been  abolished,  and 
nearly  four  hundred,    for    which   sewerage 
could  not  be  substituted,  have  been  cleansed. 

In  the  same  parish,  more  than  three  hun- 
dred  dwellings  have  been  lime-whited  and 
cleaned ;    as   many  yards  and  cellars  have 
been  paved ;   improvement   has  been  made 
in   forty   slaughter-houses ;    dust-bins    have 
been  built,  water  supply  has  been  amended  in 
some  houses,  and  connected  with  soil-pans  in 
seven    hundred    and    fifty.      This    kind    of 
activity,    various    in   degree,  is  everywhere 
shown  ;  out   of  these  reports  we   might  fill 
two  or  three  columns  with  such  local  records 
of  work  done.      A  large  proportion  of  it  is 
the  result  of  the  activity  of  the  inspectors  of 
nuisances.     The   business   of  the   officer    of 
health  is  to  supply  in  each  district  the  help- 
ing  mind,  and  we  have  not  read  our  heap  ofj 
reports  without  acquiring  a  very  high  respect  j 
for  the  intelligence  of  the  body  of  gentlemen  j 
by  whom  they  have  been  furnished.    They 
vary,  of  course,  very  much  in  ability,  but  they 
are  all  written  in  earnest.     Except  one  or  two  | 
instances   of  subservience  to   vestries,  they 
take  a  liberal,  high-minded  tone  ;  are  firm  in 
pursuit  of  their  object,  but  make  few  extra- ! 
vagant  demands  ;  and  if  they  now  and  then  l 
misread  a  fact  into  theory,  they  far  more  than 
compensate  for  the  occasional  error  by  the ! 
frequency  and  force  of  their  warnings  against ! 
generalisation  from  a  few  facts,  or  from  many  j 
facts  without  taking  incidental  circumstances 
into  consideration. 

Thus  Dr.  Druitt  tells  the  inhabitants  of 
Saint  George's,  Hanover  Square,  that  they 
must  look  beyond  dry  tables  of  mortality  to 
see  that  half  the  parish  is  like  a  vast  hotel, 
with  shifting  population.  He  learns  from 
the  bakers,  that  there  is  from  twice  arid 
a-half  to  four  times  as  much  bread  eaten 
there  in  June  as  in  September.  Many  people, 
if  sick,  g"o  into  the  country.  Into  certain 
streets,  many  sick  people  come  as  lodgers, 
attracted  by  the  excellence  of  the  medical  and 
surgical  advice  to  be  had  in  the  parish,  so  that, 
apart  from  that  consideration,  we  might  sup- 
pose, from  tables,  that  those  streets  were 
particularly  fatal  to  persons  in  the  prime  of 
life.  Again,  the  immunity  from  sickness  and 
death  among  the  rich  is  made  to  appear 
greater  than  it  is,  because,  in  the  population 
of  their  houses,  are  reckoned  the  domestic 
servants,  who  leave,  if  unhealthy,  go  away  to 
their  friends  in  the  alleys  to  be  ill  ;  and  who, 
having  given  their  lives  to  swell  the  life- 
table  of  the  rich,  add  their  deaths  to  the 
death-tables  of  the  poor. 

The  Medical  Officers  of  Health  in  London, 


very  soon  after  their  appointment,  formed 
themselves  into  an  Association,  in  order  that 
since  their  office  was  new,  its  duty  ill-defined, 
and  its  usefulness  very  dependent  upon  their 
all  collecting  and  arranging  facts  upon  a 
common  system,  they  might  work  har- 
moniously "for  mutual  assistance  and  infor- 
mation, and  for  the  advancement  of  medical 
science."  The  good  spirit  which  produced 
such  an  association  has  maintained  it  now 
for  fifteen  months,  not  only  as  a  bond  of  union 
among  fellow- workers,  but  as  a  means  of 
making  work  effective  for  the  public  service. 

We  have  shown  how  the  reports  before  us 
teach  the  need  of  sanitary  work  in  London, 
and  that  they  tell  something  of  work  done.  It 
remains  for  us  to  refer  to  the  curious  facts  and 
valuable  suggestions  in  which  they  abound. 

As  to  particular  diseases,  there  are  strange 
things  to  be  learnt.  Why  is  consumption 
the  disease  most  fatal  at  Mile-end,  as  Mr. 
Freeman  shows  us  that  it  is  ;  and  why  has 
Dr.  Buchanan  to  report  that  the  great  feeder 
of  the  grave  is  measle  in  Saint  Giles's  ?  Ths 
last  fact  reminds  us  of  a  sentence  iu  Mr. 
Wilkinson's  report  for  the  Lewisham  district. 
"  Closely  surrounding  a  courtyard,  in  which 
are  placed  a  stable,  slaughter-house,  and  dung- 
heap,  draining  into  a  well  (which  was,  until 
lately,  used  for  drinking)  there  have  been 
sixteen  or  seventeen  severe  cases  of  measles." 

In  Mr.  Pittard's  district  of  Saint  George's- 
in-the-East,  there  are  the  London  Docks. 
and  into  these  docks,  clearly  and  easily 
preventible  as  the  disease  is,  "hardly  a 
month  passes  without  the  coming  of  a  ship 
with  frightful  sickness  and  death  on  board 
from  scurvy."  In  one  case  that  came  under 
Mr.  Pittard's  notice,  the  captain  perfectly 
well  knew  by  what  means  to  prevent  scurvy, 
"  and,  after  the  first  culpable  neglect  in  leav- 
ing India  without  them — when  scurvy  was 
spreading  in  the  ship,  and  one  man  hud 
already  died  of  it — they  lay  to  at  the  Azores, 
where  oranges  (a  well-known  preventive) 
were  selling  at  threepence  the  dozen,  and  the 
captain  purchased  some  for  his  own  use,  of 
which  he  subsequently  sold  a  few  to  the  sick 
men  at  two-pence  a-piece.  The  outlay  of  a 
pound  or  two  would  have  enabled  him  to  put 
his  crew  in  perfect  health  ;  but  he  only  took 
care  of  himself.  Two  more  men  died  before 
the  ship  reached  England,  and  the  survivors 
contrasted  with  the  captain,  who  was  hale 
and  hearty,  it  was  painful  to  see.  The  law, 
as  it  now  stands,  I  fear,  cannot  be  brought 
directly  to  bear  on  such  a  case.  I  had  no 
vent  for  my  indignation,  but  to  upbraid  this 
captain,  in  no  measured  terms,  on  his  own 
deck,  in  the  presence  of  the  men  he  had  so 
foully  wronged." 

Among  the  suggestions  scattered  about 
these  reports,  are  some  for  the  establishment 
of  public  playgrounds  ;  some,  tending  to 
enforce  the  fact,  that  the  pulling  down  of 
here  and  there  a  house,  when  to  do  so  would 
make  an  open  thoroughfare  of  a  blind  alley, 


Charles  Dickens.] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[August  29, 185-.]        197 


would  bring  the  blessing  of  air  home  to  the 
poor,  as  surely  as  the  laying  out  of  parks  ; 
some,  urging  that  houses  should  be  built  for 
the   poor  in  flats,  or  proving  the  value  of 
good  model  lodging-houses  as  investment — 
sick  tenants  being  often  unable  to  pay  their 
rents.     One  gentleman  wishes  that  coroners' 
inquests  should  be  made  of  reasonable  use  to 
science,    and    thinks   it   a   scandal    that   in 
framing   tables   of  mortality   he   should   be 
baulked  noW-a-days   by  such  a   register  as 
"  Found  dead,"  or  "  Died  by  the  visitation 
of    God."      Nearly    all    specially    denounce 
the  watering  of  milk,  which  is  no  harmless 
adulteration,  but,  as  one  writer  puts  it,  a  far 
worse  crime  than  the  poisoning  of  pickles. 
Milk  is  almost  the  sole  food  of  the  infant,  and 
should  be  the  main  article  of  food  for  the  child. 
The  milkman  who  waters  his  cans,  is  a  starver 
of  children.     In  a  town  where   the   morta- 
lity of  children  is  so  frightful  as  in  London, 
and  where  so  great  a  number  of  the  deaths 
is  caused  by  defective  nutrition,  that  a  large 
part  of  what  food  the  children  do  get  should 
be  surreptitiously  withdrawn,  is  not  a  trifling 
matter.      In   one    report   it   is   urged   upon  | 
respectable  householders  that  they  should  use  ' 
the  very  cheap  and  simple  instrument  which  ] 
tells  tales  on  the  milkman,  and  determinedly  I 
— not  for  their  own  sakes,  but  for  the  sake  j 
of  all  the  children  dying  round  about  iis — i 
refuse  to  buy  milk  that  has  been  watered,  j 
Again,  we  are  told  that  the  practice  of  giving  \ 
drink-money  to  dustmen  leads  such  men  to  ' 
refuse  to  empty  the  bins  of  the  poor,  except 
when  they  can  extort  pence  for  the  service, 
and  that  in  this  way  a  considerable  element 
of  unwholesomeness  is  added  to  their  narrow 
homes.     The  Paddington  Vestry  prints   on 
the  cover  of  its  report  a  special  request  that 
the  inhabitants  will  not  give  money  to  the 
parish  dustmen  for  the  mere  performance  of; 
their    duties.     Upon    drainage   and    water-  ! 
supply,  the   reports  are  of  course   rich   in 
information    and    suggestion.      Dr.   Barnes, 
officer  of  health  for  Shoreditch,  who  happens 
also  to  be  senior  physician  to  the   Dread- > 
nought,  knows,  from  his  Dreadnought  expe- 
rience, that  the  deposit  on  the  banks,  not  the 
filth  held  suspended  in  the  river,  is  that  by 
which  fever  is  bred  ;  and  he  has  made  obser- 
vations of  his  own  on  Thames  water,  with 
these  results. — He  finds  that  the  river  never 
is  so  filthy  to  the  eye  as  during  the  flood  and 
high-water,  precisely  when  it  contains  the 
minimum  of  sewage  matter.     At  low  water, 
on  the  contrary,  when  there  is  the  maximum 
of  sewage,  the  water  is  often  almost  bright, 
yielding  comparatively  little  earthy  sediment. 
But,  that  admixture  of  earth  and  inorganic 
matter   from  the   banks,   which  makes   the 
Thames  water    turbid  and    opaque,   serves 
really  for  the  conversion  and   the  disinfec- 
tion  of  the  sewage.     It  is  the   blessing  of 
the  river  :  not,  as  most  people  suppose,  its 
curse.     It  exerts  its  disinfecting  power  best 
on  sewage  matter  entering  the  river,  as  it 


now  does,  gradually,  by  various  small  outlets. 
But  if  the  whole  drainage  of  London  on. 
either  side  of  the  Thames  be  brought  into 
one  great  sewer,  and  discharged  thence  into 
the  river  in  a  single  torrent,  Dr.  Barnes 
believes  that  it  will  form  a  stream  too  power- 
ful and  rapid  to  unite  soon  with  the  river 
water,  or  to  be  in  any  sensible  degree  disin- 
fected by  the  earths  contained  in  them.  It 
would  run  into  the  Thames  as  the  water  of 
the  River  Plata  runs  into  the  sea,  holding  its 
own  for  miles,  or  as  the  red  waters  of  the 
river  Maine,  after  entering  the  bed  of  the 
Rhine,  may  be  seen  flowing  side  by  side  with 
the  green  Rhine  water,  and  distinctly  sepa- 
rate therefrom.  If  that  be  the  case,  the 
outfall  of  the  sewer  flood  cannot  be  situated 
too  far  from  the  town. 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL  FOR 
TEN  YEARS. 

IN  FOUR   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE    FIRST. 

BURNBANK  COTTAGE,  July  ike  seventh, 
Eighteen  hundred  and  forty-four. — Mrs.  Lake 
said  to  me  this  morning  in  her  grave,  im- 
pressive fashion,  "  My  dear  love,  it  is  a  very 
serious  responsibility  to  be  an  heiress." 

She  was  looking  straight  into  me,  as  it, 
were,  and  I  felt  that  she  was  in  such  solemn 
earnest  that  I  dared  not  turn  it  off  with  a 
laugh,  as  I  could  have  done  if  anybody  else 
had  made  the  remark.  Indeed,  fora  moment, 
a  perfect  spasm  of  terror  made  my  heart 
quiver  again  ;  I  could  scarcely  get  my 
breath,  and  went  red  and  white,  hot  and 
cold,  half-a-dozen  times  in  as  many  minutes. 

I  cannot  be  glad  as  I  know  some  girls 
would.  I  never  knew  what  it  was  to  want 
money,  and  so  don't  set  much  store  by  it — 
I  don't  see  how  it  can  make  me  any  happier 
than  I  have  been,  but  I  do  see  how  it  can 
make  me  a  very  great  deal  more  miserable. 

Ever  since  Mrs.  Lake  said  that  about  its 
being  a  serious  responsibility,  I  have  felt  as 
if  I  had  got  a  great  heavy  yoke  about  my 
neck.  I  wonder  what  Uncle  Robert  meant 
by  laying  such  a  burden  upon  me,  when  there 
were  Cousin  Henry  and  Cousin  Jane  who 
would  have  borne  it  with  so  much  more 
dignity  —  who  would  have  rejoiced  in  it, 
sleeping  and  waking,  which  I  shall  never, 
never  do  !  He  might  have  built  a  church 
(and  sorely  they  want  one  at  Burnshead),  or 
endowed  a  hospital ;  he  might  have  done  a 
thousand  things  with  it  more  sensible  and 
profitable  than  bequeathing  it  to  me  whom 
he  had  never  seen,  and  who  am  not  the  least 
bit  grateful  for  it. 

What  am  I  to  do  with  eighty  thousand 
pounds  ?  If  I  were  a  man  I  would  go  into 
business,  and  speculate  with  it,  and  get  rid, 
of  it :  I  hate  trouble  and  anxiety  about 
money,  and  I  love  to  sit  with  dear 
Grannie  in  this  pretty  old  drawing-room, 
and  read,  or  sew,  or  idle,  just  as  it  pleases 
me.  I  never  felt  to  want  anything  grander 


198       [August  29, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


or  better :  our  life  seemed  quite  sufficient 
for  me,  and  now  it  will  be  changed  —  all 
changed  ! 

I  am  a  very  common-place,  unambitious  body, 
no  doubt,  but  I  can't  help  it.  I  don't  want 
to  be  magnificent  and  do  great  deeds:  I 
never  had  an  aspiration  in  my  life  !  I  like 
to  give  Ailie  Martin  five  shillings  and  a 
flannel  petticoat  at  Christmas,  or  to  help 
anybody  whose  cow  or  donkey  dies ;  but  as 
for  having  my  name  put  in  charitable  sub- 
scription-lists, as  other  people's  are,  with 
great  sums  of  money  after  them,  it  would 
make  me  want  to  hide  my  head  for  shame 
at  my  ostentation !  I  said  yesterday  to 
Grannie  and  Cousin  Jane,  that  I  believed 
this  fine  fortune  would  prove  the  plague  of 
my  life,  and  Cousin  Jane  bade  me  not  talk 
so  wildly,  I  should  be  glad  enough  of  it 
some  day ;  Grannie  only  sighed  :  in  her 
heart  she  thinks  as  I  do — that  I  shall  be 
neither  the  happier  nor  the  better  for  it. 

It  has  already  made  me  have  some 
disagreeable  thoughts  :  —  the  Curlings,  who 
are  generally  so  high  and  mighty,  and 
scarcely  vouchsafe  me  a  word,  when  they 
called  the  other  day  literally  abased  them- 
selves before  me ;  it  would  have  delighted 
me  to  throw  a  sofa-cushion  at  Mary  Jane 
when  she  began  to  praise  what  she  styled 
my  beautiful  indifference  to  sordid  dross  ; 
and  if  I  had  done  it,  I  believe  she  would 
only  have  called  it  a  charming  outbreak  of 
girlish  vivacity !  They  asked  me  to  tea, 
and  I  said  I  would  not  go  ;  Grannie  scolded 
me  afterwards  for  being  rude  and  abrupt  to 
them  :  well, — I  dare  say  I  was  rude  and  ab- 
rupt, and  I  will  never  be  anything  else  to 
people  I  dislike. 

Then,  poor  Miss  Lawson  and  her  sister 
Betsy  took  the  other  view  of  me,  and  the  last 
time  I  saw  them  were  quite  stiff  and  cold. 
They  hoped  I  should  not  be  uplifted  and 
proud  in  my  new  position,  and  pretended  to 
think  that  I  should  despise  coming  to  have 
tea  at  five  o'clock  in  their  dingy  little  parlour. 
It  was  not  kind,  for  I  am  fond  of  Betsy,  and 
I  should  like  to  give  them  a  couple  of  nice 
easy  chairs  to  rest  their  backs,  only  I  am 
such  an  awkward  creature,  I  don't  know  how 
to  do  it.  If  I  have  to  give  anybody  any- 
thing, I  always  want  to  do  it  without  being 
seen  ;  and  if  ever  what  I  offered  was  refused, 
I  am  sure  I  would  never  venture  to  offer 
again.  I  am  very  stupid  !  It  is  to  be  hoped 
I  shall  grow  used  to  being  rich,  and  I  am 
sure  I  aay  my  prayers  that  I  may  do  no 
harm  with  my  money,  even  if  I  cannot  do 
much  good  ;  but  it  is  all  so  new  to  me  yet, 
and  it  eases  me  to  tell  my  difficulties  to  niy 
little  books  ;  they  are  so  silly,  I  dare  not  in- 
flict them  even  on  Grannie,  who  looks  sac 
and  serious  whenever  I  attempt  it. 

I  should  like  to  get  some  method  of  spend- 
ing my  income  regularly  ;  it  shall  not  accu- 
mulate if  I  can  help  it.  When  Cousin  Henry 
comes  down  to-morrow  there  will  be  a  gram 


onsultation  over  me  ;  I  should  not  wonder 
.f  I  were  to  be  sent  off  to  school  somewhere  : 
the  threat  has  been  looming  in  Grannie's 
eyes  for  long.  But  I  shall  not  like  leaving 
home.  Burnbauk  will  always  be  home  to  me. 
It  looks  so  lovely  from  the  window  just 
now  !  There  is  a  little  vessel  with  its  white 
sails  set,  gliding  across  the  glimpse  of  sea 
between  the  trees  beyond  the  green  ;  then 
the  sun  is  out,  and  the  wind  is  strong  enough 
to  keep  up  a  continual  whispet  among  the 
leaves  :  there  are  two  charming  little  baby 
donkeys  with  their  mothers,  and  flocks  of 
geese,  and  a  few  children  on  the  grass — now, 
one  of  the  baby  donkeys  is  taking  maternal 
refreshment,  and  the  clerk's  yelping  terrier, 
Spite,  is  making  a  scurry  amongst  the  geese  ! 
Ferndell  Park  may  be  very  grand  and  very 
beautiful,  but  it  will  be  transportation  to  go 
away  from  Burnbauk  for  the  grandest  and 
most  beautiful  place  in  the  world — but  I  shall 
not  need  to  live  there  yet ! 

JvZy  the  ninth. — It  has  ended  as  I  expected. 
I  am  to  go  to  school !  Cousin  Henry  is  very 
decided,  and  it  was  of  no  use  to  rebel.  He  is 
my  guardian.  He  reminded  me  that  I  am  not 
sixteen  years  old  yet,  and  that  my  education 
has  been  of  the  plainest.  Grannie  spoke  up 
for  me,  and  said  that  though  I  was  home- 
taught,  I  was  not  ignorant  of  common  things, 
and  that  what  I  had  learnt,  I  had  learnt 
thoroughly.  It  was  good  of  her  ;  but,  of 
course,  I  must  be  far  behind  other  girls  who 
have  had  immense  advantages.  So  this  is 
my  sentence :  banishment  from  Burnbank^ 
and  hard  labour  at  the  long  roll  of  accom- 
plishments for  two  years  :  these  are  the  first- 
fruits  of  my  heiress-ship  !  There  is  a  little 
respite,  however,  for  none  of  the  schools  open 
until  August. 

Since  I  have  seen  Cousin  Henry  and  lis- 
tened to  his  sage  talk,  I  am  more  than  ever 
impressed  by  the  mistake  Uncle  Robert  made 
in  leaving  his  money  to  me  instead  of  to  him, 
and  I  believe  Cousin  Henry  thinks  it  a  mis- 
take too.  He  had  not  anything  very  pleasant 
to  say,  and  appeared  to  consider  his  task  of 
guardian  to  my  wilful  self  anything  but  a, 
delightful  office.  When  I  opposed  one  of 
his  schemes  because  I  did  not  like  it,  he  re- 
torted sharply,  "  Wealth  has  its  penalties, 
Eleanor  Clare,  and  you  must  just;  take  them 
along  with  its  satisfactions.  As  long  as  you 
were  a  portionless  country  damsel,  110  one 
cared  much  what  you  did — now,  as  a  rich 
heiress,  there  will  be  many  scrutinising  eyes 
upon  you." 

I  shall  go  and  talk  to  Mrs.  Lake  about  it : 
if  I  am  to  do  this  and  not  to  do  that,  different 
to  myself,  I  shall  loathe  my  fortune  :  I  think 
Cousin  Henry  might  have  left  that  unsaid. 
People  who  call,  ask  what  I  am  going  to  do  ; 
aud  when  they  are  told,  some  say  it  is  the 
most  sensible  and  best  plan,  but  others  won- 
der why  I  do  not  immediately  plunge  into 
fashionable  revelry — I  shall  never  do  for 
that! 


Charles  Dickens.] 


ELEANOE  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


lAugust  29,  1857.]       199 


Cousin  Jane  has  invited  herself  over  to 
Burnbank  to  spend  a  week  or  two :  I  hope 
she  will  not  bring  a  Dorcas  basket  to  sew  at, 
as  she  did  the  last  time  she  came.  I  want  to 
be  out  of  doors  this  glorious  weather. 

It  was  such  fun  once  in  Cousin   Henry's 


July  the  twelfth. — Last  night  I  went  to 
have  tea  with  Miss  Lawson  and  Betsy.  I 
had  bought  two  very  nice  easy  chairs  the  day 
before  at  Compton,  and  sent  them  with  a 
little  note  and  my  love.  Next  morning,  Miss 
Betsy  came  and  asked  me  to  go  in  the  even- 


magnificent  laying  down  of  the  law  for  my  j  ing  ;   they  were  both  so  pleased  with    my 
rule  and  guidance  !     When  he  had  settled   present,  and  each  sat  in  her  chair   all   the 


that  I  was  to  go  to  school,  he  added  precisely : 
"And  until  Eleanor's  education  is  finished 
her  allowance  need  not  be  more  than  three 


time  to  show  me  how  they  appreciated  them. 
I  had  felt  afraid  they  might  be  affronted, 
but  Miss  Lawson  said,  "  Never  fear  to  do 


hundred  a-year.     Afterwards,  until  she  is  of  i  a  kind  action,  Eleanor,  now    you  have    the 


age,  and  my  duty  ceases,  six  hundred  will  be 
about  the  mark." 

I  spoke  up  immediately,  and  said;  "No, 
Cousin  Henry,  it  will  not.  I  shall  have  five 
hundred  a-year  now,  and  immediately  I  leave 
school,  I  shall  choose  to  enjoy  the  whole  of 
my  income." 

Grannie  looked  so   startled,  and   Cousin 


means.  "We  never  could  have  bought  these 
chairs  ourselves,  as  Betsy  knows,  if  our 
backs  had  been  broken  with  rheumatism. 
We  shall  always  think  of  you  when  we  are 
resting  in  them."  And  she  did  not  snap  once 
all  the  while  I  was  there. 

Cousin  Jane    is   here,  as  full  of  business 
and  care  as  she  usually  is.  I  have  subscribed 


Henry  sat  bolt  upright  in  his  chair,  drew  a  j  to  every  one  of  her   baskets,    and    all    her 
very  long  breath,  and  glared  as  if  I  had  struck  |  schools,   but    I    had   hard  work    to  beg  off 


him.  After  a  minute's  pause,  he  asked,  "  But 
what  can  you  do  with  five  hundred  a-year 
now  ? " 

I  replied,  "  I  want  to  have  a  pretty  little 
carriage  and  a  pair  of  ponies,  like  Mrs.  Lake's, 
for  us  at  Burnbank  ;  and  in  my  holidays,  I 
want  a  horse  to  ride  myself — then  I  want  to 
re-furnish  the  drawing-room,  and  put  up  a 
little  conservatory  at  the  glass-door  end, — I 
want  to  hire  Mary  Burton  to  wait  on  Grannie 
and  me,  and  Mary's  brother  to  attend  to  the 
ponies,  and  drive  Grannie  about  when  I 
am  away.  All  that  can  be  done,  Cousin 
Henry  ? " 

"  Certainly,  it  can  be  done,"  said  he  with  a 
great  deal  of  hesitation,  and  keeping  his  eye 
watchfully  upon  me. 

"  Then,  it  must  be  done — there,  Grannie, 
the  carriage  and  ponies  for  you  !  "  cried  I, 
and  really  lor  the  first  time  I  felt  what  a  good 


making  sun-bonnets  for  the  little  girls  of 
Central  Africa  ;  and  whether  1  would  or  no, 
I  have  had  to  make  two  bazaar  pincushions 
and  a  doll  pen- wiper.  I  offered  her  ten 
shillings  to  let  me  off,  but  she  lectured  me 
for  idleness,  and  made  me  set  to  work. 
The  Curlings  came  to  invite  us  to  join  a 
pic-nic  of  theirs  to  the  Abbey  at  Downham, 
but  Grannie  said  No  for  me,  and  afterwards 
explained  that  she  did  not  want  me  to  be 
acquainted  with  the  people  I  should  meet 
there.  I  should  have  liked  to  go  very  well, 
not  that  I  care  for  any  of  the  people,  but 
because  the  drive  there  is  pleasant,  and  the 
old  ruins  are  so  beautiful. 

The  Curlings  have  undergone  a  wonderful 
transformation  lately  ;  their  civility  is  op- 
pressive ;  how  I  do  dislike  them !  That 
Mary  Jane  asked  me  if  I  should  continue 
to  visit  the  Lawsons,  and  actually  had  the 
insolence  to  add  :  "  The  reason  we  never 
took  you  up  so  cordially  as  we  were  inclined 
to  do,  Eleanor  dear,  was  because  we  really 
could  not  associate  with  such  common 
people — you  know  they  used  to  keep  a  little 
shop  in  Compton,  where  they  sold  coffee  and 
tea." 

I  put  on  my  grand  air,  which  Grannie 
always  says  repels  as  decidedly  as  if  I  said, 
"  Stand  back  !  "  and  told  her  that  my  lov- 
ings  and  hatings  had  undergone  no  change, 
and  that  I  should  certainly  go  to  Miss 
Lawson's  as  much  as  I  had  ever  done. 
She  reddened,  and  tried  to  talk  about  my 
position  (she  and  I  taking  diametrically 
opposite  views  of  how  the  said  position  is 

book,  but  nobody  else.  I  have  been  trying  to  best  respected),  and  opined  that  I  should  soon 
calculate  the  interest  of  eighty  thousand  learn  my  own  value. 

pounds  at  four  per  cent,  and  I  can't  do  it!  How  sick  it  all  makes  me  !  as  if  directly  this 
I  know  nothing  of  sums  except  the  four  first  mis-fortune  happened  to  me  I  had  lost  my 
rules  and  long  division,  and  I  am  ashamed  |  identity,  and  ceased  to  be  that  Eleanor  Clare 
to  ask  what  my  income  will  ultimately  be  who  went  on  her  way  rejoicing  and  unmo- 
— yet,  I  wish  to  know — and  when  I  do  lested  !  I  don't  like  to  think  it  can  be  true, 
know  I  will  spend  it  every  year  up  to  the  j  but  I  have  fancied  that  two  or  three  people 
last  shilling  !  I  whom  I  have  known  since  I  was  a  child  have 


thing  money  is. 

Cousin  Henry  did  not  look  half  satisfied, 
but  he  refrained  from  arguing  the  matter — 
perhaps  he  felt  a  little  glad,  because  he  is 
very  fond  of  Grannie,  and  he  has  far  too 
large  a  family  himself  for  there  to  be  any 
likelihood  of  his  making  her  old  age  more 
comfortable.  He  could  not  reasonably  oppose 
me,  because  I  know  Uncle  Robert  left  his 
estate  free  from  incurnbrance  and  in  perfect 
order  ;  consequently  there  can  be  no  pretence 
for  accumulating  money  to  clear  or  improve 
it. 

I  believe  I  am  going  to  develop  into  a 
woman  of  business,  after  all.  But  would 
anybody  believe  it  1  I  will  tell  you,  my  old 


200     (August  M,  ia-,7.! 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


liking  me  as  well  «as  they  did.  Cousin 
Jane,  for  instance :  she  sneers  at  me  con- 
tinually. I  do  hope  I  shall  not  grow  suspi- 
cious :  I  have  often  heard  of  people  with 
money  thinking  they  were  not  loved  for  them- 
selves, and  1  should  not  like  it  to  be  my  own 
case — but  as  little  should  I  approve  of  being 
envied  lor  it.  Nobody  knows,  and  I  suppose 
nobody  ever  will  know,  for  1  am  not  going  to 
prate  about  what  I  cannot  do — how  much 
better  pleased  and  how  much  happier  I 
should  have  been,  if  Uncle  Robert  had 
divided  his  property  among  the  three  of  us, 
instead  of  leaving  it  all  to  me.  Grannie 
says  my  mother  was  always  his  pet,  but  she 
evidently  thinks  that  Ferndell  ought  to  have 
been  Cousin  Henry's,  so  that  it  might  have  ! 
been  kept  in  the  name  of  Favell  instead  of  j 
passing  to  the  Clare's — to  be  sure,  it  was  not 
family  property  :  Uncle  Robert  earned  it  for  | 
himself;  and  had,  therefore,  an  indisputable 
right  to  bequeath  it  as  he  would,  but  his  will 
has  not  given  satisfaction  to  any  of  us — not 
even  to  me,  his  heiress. 

I  should  like  to  know  what  made  him  pass 
over  Cousin  Henry  and  Cousin  Jane.  If  I 
might  hazard  such  a  thought,  I  could  almost 
fancy  that  Grannie  loved  Uncle  Robert  less 
than  her  other  children.  He  never  came 
amongst  us  here,  and  except  for  the  present 
he  sent  to  me  at  Christmas,  I  never  should 
have  known  I  had  such  a  relative. 
Cousin  Jane  does  not  talk  of  him  as  if  she 
had  ever  seen  him,  but  only  says  that  she 
understood  he  was  a  shy,  reserved  man,  who 
led,  from  choice,  an  extremely  secluded  life,  j 
I  don't  like  to  ask  Grannie,  for  she  never ' 
mentions  him  first. 

July  the  sixteenth. — We  have  heard  of  a 
pair  of  beautiful  bay  ponies,  that  will  just 
suit  us  ;  Grannie  says  she  shall  be  able  to 
drive  them  herself.  They  belonged  to  Lady 
Singleton  at  Deerhill :  the  carriage  is  to 
come  from  London,  next  week :  I  hope  we 
shall  have  one  or  two  drives  in  it  before  I  go 
to  school. 

Cousin  Henry  has  decided  upon  the  place 
to  which  I  am  to  be  sent.  It  is  a  Miss 
Thoroton's  at  Stockbridge — a  very  excellent 
school,  he  says,  where  1  shall  have  every 
opportunity  of  becoming  what  he  desires 
to  see  me  !  O  !  what  does  he  desire  to  see 
me  ?  A  paragon,  a  peri,  a  nonpareil !  My 
firm  belief  is,  that  if  I  am  cultivated  for  a 
score  years  I  shall  revert  to  my  natural 
pleasures  and  quiet  idlenesses  the  moment 
the  guard  is  off.  I  cannot  be  always  think- 
ing of  what  is  proper  and  fitting  to  be  done. 

""July  the  seventeenth, — I  have  had  a  long 
•walk  with  Mrs.  Lake,  who  told  me  about 
Uncle  Robert.  He  was  Grannie's  eldest 
son,  Cousin  Henry's  father  is  the  second,  and 
Uncle  Tom  was  the  youngest ;  my  mother 
•was  the  youngest  of  all.  Uncle  Robert  made 
a  low  marriage — that  is,  our  family  felt  it  so 
— and  they  would  not  acknowledge  his  wife, 
or  see  him  at  Burubank  after :  only  my 


mother  wrote  him  kind  letters.  Uncle 
Robert's  wife  was  very  pretty,  and  Mrs.  Lake 
says,  very  good,  too,  and  neither  ignorant  nor 
vulgar  ;  but  Grannie  would  not  forgive  him, 
and  his  two  brothers  kept  up  the  estrange- 
ment, instead  of  trying  to  heal  it.  Uncle 
Robert  loved  her  devotedly,  but  he  soon  lost 
her ;  and  when  she  lay  dying,  it  was  my 
mother  (then  unmarried,  and  quite  a  girl) 
who  visited  and  nursed  her.  This  explains 
why  he  left  his  property  to  me,  and  why 
Grannie  so  very  much  dislikes  to  speak  of 
him.  I  am  glad  I  know  about  it,  for  myste- 
ries are  always  in  the  way. 

I  am  surprised  Grannie  should  have  been 
so  harsh,  but  it  often  seems  as  if  the  best 
people  were  the  most  tyrannical  in  trying  to 
make  others  be  good  and  happy  exactly  after 
their  fashion.  Cousin  Jane  has  that  ;way. 
She  says  to  me  often, — "  Eleanor,  do  so  and 
so,  I  am  sure  it  is  the  right  way,  the  only 
right  way,  and  it  will  bet'al  better  than  if 
you  followed  your  own  head  ;  " — and  she  will 
talk  and  argue  until  I  am  fairly  beaten  down 
by  an  avalanche  of  words.  If  I  am  resolved 
to  do  as  I  like,  there  is  nothing  for  it  but 
running  out  of  hearing,  and  that  I  do  some- 
times. 

Then  I  had  some  talk  with  Mrs.  Lake 
about  myself,  and  she  bids  me  turn  a  deaf 
ear  to  all  warnings,  doubts,  and  promptings, 
and  to  go  straightforward  in  my  own  natural 
way,  just  as  if  the  fortune  had  never  come  to 
me  ;  and  I  will,  if  I  can.  There  is  one  good 
thing  at  school — there  we  are  all  equal,  for- 
tunes or  no  fortunes — no,  not  all  equal  !  I 
begin  to  feel  as  if  I  should  turn  out  a  fearful 
dunce,  and  rather  to  dread  the  beginning. 
I  don't  know  why,  but  I  always  feel  more 
awkward  in  a  company  of  young  girls  about 
my  own  age  than  I  ever  do  elsewhere ;  I 
think  they  quizz  and  make  remarks,  and  then, 
I  have  such  a  silly  trick  of  blushing ;  how- 
ever, it  has  to  be,  and  so  my  courage  must 
bear  me  through  as  well  as  it  may. 

July  the  twenty-fourth. — To-day  Grannie 
and  I  had  our  first  drive  together  in  the 
pony  carriage  ;  it  was  so  cosy,  so  charming, 
and  will  be  such  an  ease  and  comfort  to 
Grannie,  now  that  she  cannot  walk  far,  but 
still  finds  the  fresh  air  necessary  to  keep  hex- 
in  health.  We  went  round  by  Deerhill,  and 
the  ponies  wanted  to  turn  in  at  the  gate. 
Poor  little  things  !  They  remembered  their 
old  home. 

The  Singletons  are  quite  ruined,  and  are 
gone  abroad,  we  hear.  That  odious  Mary 
Jane  Curling  suggested  to  me  that  if  they 
had  stayed  at  home,  young  Sir  Edward  might 
have  married  me — I  should  have  been  my 
lady,  and  my  fortune  would  have  restored 
Deerhill. 

I  can  scarcely  control  myself  when  she 
begins  to  show  her  teeth,  roll  her  eyes,  and 
talk  in  that  way.  I  should  like  to  beat  her, 
she  makes  me  feel  worse  than  anything  or 
anybody  I  ever  saw.  I  dislike  her  present 


diaries  Dickens  ] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[August  29,  1357.]       201 


free-and-easy  tone  far  more  than  her  former 
lofty  one.  I  shall  have  to  encase  myself  in ; 
my  unapproachable  armour  whenever  we ! 
meet,  if  we  are  to  remain  on  civil  terms,  but  ] 
I  would  much  rather  quarrel  with  her,  and1 
have  done  with  it ;  it  would  be  naughty,  but' 
it  would  save  a  world  of  trouble  and  hypocrisy.  \ 

A  man  came  this  morning  to  plan  the  con-  I 
servatory  ;  there  is  to  be  a  glass  door  out  of 
the  drawing-room  into  it,  and  it  is  to  be  | 
made  on  the  same  principle  as  Mrs.  Lake's. 
It  will  be  finished  when  I  come  home  at 
Christmas. 

It  is  arranged  for  Cousin  Jane  to  stay  at 
Eurobank  with  Grannie  while  I  am  away. 
This  is  very  nice  ;  she  would  have  been  dull ! 
alone,  for,  though  Mary  Burton  is  a  good  i 
attentive  girl,  she  wants  some  one  to  read 
aloud  to  her,  and  to  drive  or  walk  out  with. 
Jane  is  too  bustling  and  active  for  me — too 
fussy  ;  but  Grannie  seems  not  to  mind  it,  or 
else  she  has  a  way  of  making  her  sit  still  and 
keep  quiet.  I  had  to  sew  at  a  son-bonnet  to- 
day for  peace  and  quietness'  sake  ;  but  it  is 
not  a  charitable  bonnet,  for  I  did  it  with  the 
greatest  ill-will  possible. 

July  the  twenty -seventh. — Grannie  pro- 
posed a  few  days  since,  that  to  celebrate  my 
going  to  school  (I  saw  nothing  to  rejoice 
over)  we  must  have  a  tea-drinking  at  Burn- 
bank.  I  said,  if  we  did,  it  should  be  a  tea- 
drinking  for  the  children,  and  anybody  else 
who  chose  to  come  without  an  invitation 
might  come,  but  I  would  not  have  a  solemn 
party  for  talk,  compliments,  and  scandal. 

I  managed  the  affair  myself.  It  was  beau- 
tiful weather,  so  the  children  had  tea  in  the 
orchard  at  three  o'clock,  and  the  old  women 
had  tea  too.  Grannie  thought  we  should 
have  it  all  to  ourselves,  but  I  knew  better. 
I  told  our  advertising  Post,  Miss  Briske,  that 
I  should  be  glad  to  see  any  of  my  friends 
Avho  could  dispense  with  formality ;  that 
there  would  be  plenty  of  strawberries,  and 
other  ripe  fruit,  and  tea,  coifee,  and  cakes,  at 
five  o'clock  for  them,  but  that  I  did  not  mean 
to  give  anybody  anything  unless  they  arrived 
in  time  to  help  to  amuse  the  children. 

I  was  sure  they  would  come,  if  it  was  only 
for  the  novelty,  and  come  they  did, — all  the 
Curlings,  the  Prices,  Lucy,  and  Ellen  Cooper, 
the  Lawsons,  Mrs.  Lake,  Mrs.  and  Miss 
Cranworth,  Dr.  Rayson  and  his  wife,  and  a 
troop  of  people  from  the  Charltons.  John 
Burton  and  little  Tom  had  quite  enough  to  do 
to  pick  fruit  all  the  afternoon,  and  every  one 
seemed  to  enjoy  the  freedom  of  walking 
about  the  house  and  grounds,  and  talking  to 
their  friends  ;  indeed,  my  Strawberry  Party, 
as  they  called  it,  gave  so  much  satisfaction 
that  the  Prices  are  to  have  one  next  Satur- 
day. 

But  I  must  not  forget  the  children,  who 
were  my  chosen  gues*,s.  They  all  arrived  in 
due  time,  with  mug  and  saucer,  and  sat  down 
to  regale  on  the  tea  and  spice-buns  we  had 
provided  ;  vastly  they  enjoyed  them,  too,  if 


we  might  judge  from  the  consumption  that 
took  place.  At  one  time  or  another,  I  have 
taught  every  child  in  the  school ;  so  not  to 
cause  any  distinction  between  past  and  pre- 
sent pupils,  I  made  each  one  a  little  present, 
and  they  chose  them  from  the  trays  as  they 
stand  in  their  classes.  My  class,  we  call  it 
the  Encouragement  Class,  because  Thompson 
always  sent  me  the  dull  and  backward,  or 
idle  and  tiresome  children,  had  the  post  of 
honour,  and  chose  first. 

There  will  be  plenty  of  cut  fingers  in  Burn- 
bank  for  some  days  to  come  !  For  the  boys 
I  had  provided  a  number  of  strong  clasp 
knives,  pencil  cases  and  books  ;  for  the  girls, 
little  cases  with  thimble,  scissors,  and  other 
working-tools  ;  and  for  the  small  fry,  gaily 
dressed  dolls,  squeaking  toy  sheep,  dogs,  and 
cats,  «&c.  Cousin  Jane  thought  it  a  frightful 
waste  of  money,  and  lectured  me  seriously  on 
the  folly  of  giving  poor  folks'  children  toys, 
— "  wanton  extravagance,"  she  designated  it, 
but  I  am  sure  it  was  pleasant  to  see  how 
glad  they  most  of  them  were  ;  it  never  is 
possible  to  satisfy  all. 

Knives  were  in  great  request  amongst  the 
boys,  and  when  they  were  all  gone,  and  the 
little  fellows  came  up  to  choose,  some  few 
looked  marvellously  discontented.  Auty 
Craggs  was  very  hard  to  pacify.  When  I  said, 
"  Now,  Auty,  it  is  your  turn  ;  what  will  you 
have  1 "  he  replied  in  his  native  Doric,  "  I'll 
ha'  a  knoife,"  though  all  the  knives  were 
gone.  I  told  him  he  must  try  to  be  pleased 
with  something  else,  but  still  he  would  only 
keep  on  reiterating,  "  I'll  ha'  a  knoife,"  so  at 
last  I  proposed  the  alternative  of  sixpence, 
which,  after  a  little  hesitation  he  con- 
descended to  accept.  Another  boy,  Simmy 
Deane,  would  only  be  contented  with  a 
Dutch  doll  dressed  in  pink  glazed  calico  and 
white  muslin,  and  Betty,  his  sister,  chose  a 
drum. 

When  all  the  presents  were  distributed, 
we  Avent  upon  the  green,  and  the  children 
ran  races  and  played  games.  Some  of  the 
fine  folk  came  out  to  encourage  iis  with 
their  presence,  but  the  Curlings,  and  Charl- 
tous,  and  Prices  kept  quite  to  themselves. 
Cousin  Jane  started  the  racers,  and  I  gave 
the  prizes.  Then  we  had  scrambles  for 
sweeties  and  halfpence.  In  everything  Auty 
Craggs  was  conspicuously  unsuccessful.  His 
fat  freckled  face  and  red  hair  were  always 
panting  up  at  the  fag  end  of  each  race  ;  and 
totally  eclipsed, — flattened  on  the  ground, 
most  likely  —  in  the  thickest  of  every 
scramble.  When  beaten  in  the  races,  he 
vociferated  defiantly,  "I'll  run  'em  again, 
I'll  run  'em  again ! "  and  when  he  rose 
empty-handed  from  the  melee  over  the 
sweeties,  he  still  cried  out,  "  Gi'e  us  another 
chance,  Miss  Eleanor,  I'll  ha'  some  yet." 

I  could  not  help  laughing,  and  liking  the 
little  fellow  who  would  not  give  in,  though  I 
know  he  is  the  moat  perverse  and  naughty 
boy  iu  the  school. 


202      [August  29,  1557.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


When  all  the  sweeties,  and  halfpence,  and  so  right  in  what  she  said.     I  am  becoming 


toys  were  gone,  the  children  went  too,  gradu- 
ally dispersing  down  to  Ferny  Bank  and  the 
shore  ;  then  our  other  company  assembled  in 


positively  odious,  I  know  I  am.  All  the 
while  that  I  have  been  trying  to  persuade 
myself  that  I  cared  nothing  about  my  money 


the   house,   and  the   early  tea  (remarkable  ;  I  have  been  puffing  myself  up  into  a  very 
innovation  on  Burnbank  customs)  took  place   balloon  of  arrogance.     How  I  should  have 


for  those  who  chose  to  remain.  A  few,  who 
dine  at  half-past  six  and  seven  o'clock, 
departed,  after  expressing  regret  that  they 
had  had  so  little  of  my  company.  I 
believe  a  great  many  people, — all,  perhaps, 
except  Mrs.  Lake  and  the  Lawsons — took 
away  an  impression  that  Miss  Eleanor  Clare 


remarks  and  insinuations.     I  shall  have  to 

am 
is  to 
I   wonder  what  it   will    all   be 


has  a  taste  for  low  company.     Mary  Jane 

Curling  said  they  were  surprised  I  had  not  wait  on  myself,  and  work  hard,  too.     I 

chosen  to  give  a  dance  !     As  if  I  cared  for  a  going  on  the  first  of  August ;  Grannie  i 

dance  in  this  hot  weather  !    And  where  were 

the  partners  to  come  from,  if  I  had  ?     I  like 

the  children's  parties  the  best  yet,  whatever 

I  may  do  by-and-by.     I  will  give  a  dance, 

maybe,  when  I  leave  school,  or  when  I  am 

of  age. 


Dr.  Eayson  was  very  much  gratified  ;  he 
likes  the  poor  things  to  be  pleased,  and  says 
it  does  them  good,  and  I  would  rather  he 
thought  me  right  than  all  the  Curlings, 
Charltons,  and  Prices  put  together.  I  do  not 
value  their  opinion  at  all. 

I  am  not  quite  sure  whether  Grannie  likes 
me  to  act  as  I  do — I  have  doubts.  She  said 
to  me,  when  I  remarked  about  my  indif- 
ference to  what  people  think  :  "  There  is  no 
need  to  be  so  violently  independent,  Eleanor  ; 
you  will  become  harsh  and  brusque  in 
manner  if  you  live  in  such  a  defiant  frame  of 
mind  as  you  have  adopted  lately." 

Can  it  be  true  that  I  am  (notwithstanding 
my  indifference  to  its  possession)  actually 


ridiculed  anybody  else  if  they  had  done  so  ; 
and  I  daresay  people  are  laughing  at  me ! 
And  if  they  are,  I  deserve  it !  There  will 
be  some  good  in  going  away  from  Burnbank, 
after  all.  At  Miss  Thoroton's,  no  one  knows 
I  am  an  heiress,  no  one  will  be  constantly 
calling  the  fact  to  my  mind,  therefore,  by 


take   me. 
like? 


A  HINT  FEOM  SIAM. 


WE  are  indebted  to  Doctor  Bowring  for 
the  following  information  regarding  the 
Hereditary  Aristocracy  of  Siam,  one  at  least 
of  whose  attributes,  it  seems  to  us,  might  be 
most  advantageously  adopted  by  our  own. 
It  appeal's,  in  that  favoured  country,  wherein, 
as  in  this  our  beloved  land,  the  principal 
nobility  are  never  approached  by  the  middle 
and  lower  classes,  except  upon  their  stomachs 
and  all  fours,  that  persons  of  gentle  birth  are 
always  recognisable  by  means  of  a  certain 
artificial  twist  in  their  left  arms.  This  pecu- 
liarity is  not  as  many  of  the  more  abject 
Siamese  are  prepared  to  swear,  exactly  born 
with  them,  but  it  is  cultivated  very 


assiduously 
from    their 


by  the 
earliest 


upper    Ten 
infancy  ; 


Thousand 
that    at 


deteriorating    since  this  fortune   befel  me  ?  last,  and  when  the  young  aristocrat  is  old 


I  believe  I  am.  I  have  thoughts  I  never  had 
before.  It  is  true,  six  months  ago,  I  was  shy 
of  these  fine  folks  whom  I  care  nothing  about 


enough  to  fill  the  high  office  of  state  which 
of  course  awaits  him,  the  palm  of  his  hand 
can  be  turned  upward  after  two  revolutions, 


now  ;  and  I  know  that  it  is  because  they  think  j  in  which  position  it  possesses  all  the  ability 
more  of  me  on  account  of  my  money  that  the  i  for  receiving  and  retaining  the  public  money 


change  has  come.  It  will  be  a  very  good 
thing  for  me  to  be  sent  off  to  school,  where  I 
shall  have  something  to  do  to  keep  my  head 
steady.  I  believe  I  could  have  borne  a  good 
strong  shock  of  adversity  a  great  deal  better 
than  I  am.  bearing  my  prosperity.  Now  I 
should  hate  myself  if  I  became  what  I  so 
particularly  detest,  a  strong-minded,  dis- 
agreeable woman — and  there  seems  a  danger 


which  pertains  to  it,  in  England,  after  one. 
There  is  a  very  interesting  engraving  in 
Doctor  Bowring's  book,  which  I  regret  that 
the  unpictorial  character  of  this  journal  for- 
bids me  to  copy,  representing  a  noble  lord 
with  this  dislocated  left  elbow  sitting  super- 
ciliously before  an  empty  desk  (which  typifies, 
after  the  eastern  manner,  the  colonies  per- 
haps, or  the  war  department),  and  awaiting, 
as  it  seems,  the  Morning  Post  of  his  country, 


while  a  number  of  individuals  are  crawling 


of  it. 

July  the  twenty-ninth. — I  am  not  a  crying 

body  generally,  but  last  night,  after  I  got !  towai-ds  him  upon  hands  and  knees,  offering, 
to  bed,  I  had  a  thorough  good  cry,  and  feel  I  suppose,  votes  of  confidence  and  testi- 
all  the  better  for  it  now  it  is  over.  Cousin  monials,  and  boasting  without  doubt  of  their 
Jane  said  to  me:  "Eleanor,  you  are  quite  Siamese  Sion  and  the  freedom  of  election, 
spoilt ;  I  never  saw  such  a  conceited,  dogma- 1  I  do  not  for  one  instant  intend  to  magnify 


tical  puss  as  you  are  turning  into  in  all  my 
life  !  And  you  used  to  be  a  simple-minded 
girl  enough  once." 

I  cannot  express  how  intense  my  mortifi- 


the  Siamese  nobility  at  the  expense  of  my  own 
dear  country  ;  but  I  think  that  the  eastern 
aristocracy  have  an  advantage  over  them  in 
this  matter  of  arm  turning.  It  is  the  single 


cation  was,  but  I  contrived  to  keep  it  still  attribute,  if  I  may  be  allowed  to  say  so, 
Tintil  I  got  to  bed,  and  then  I  did  cry.  I  was  which  it  seems  to  me  the  governing  classes 
all  the  more  vexed,  because  Cousin  Jane  was ,  in  this  country  need  to  make  them  perfect. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  HINT  FROM  SIAM. 


[August  29, 1857.]       203 


At  present  it  is  often  next  to  impossible  to 
tell  lords  from  commoners. 

When  a  noble  lord,  for  instance,  comes 
upon  the  platform  at  a  missionary  meeting, 
amidst  a  crowd  of  wholesale  tradespeople 
and  clergymen,  who  on  earth  is  to  pick  him 
out  ?  The  society  has  had  trouble  enough, 
perhaps,  to  get  him  there.  Five  noblemen 
beginning  with  A — we  fish  for  them  alpha- 
betically for  religious  meetings — have  refused 
point  blank  to  attend,  and  this,  maybe,  is 
our  last  chance  of  feasting  our  eyes  upon 
this  one  (for  they  do  not  often  come  twice)  ; 
but  who  is  to  tell  which  is  he  ?  I  protest, 
that  during  the  whole  of  the  opening  prayer 
at  our  last  Central  African,  more  than  half 
of  us  mistook  the  missionary — a  solemn,  dig- 
nified-looking person  enough — for  Lord  Vis- 
count A.  himself ;  mistook  a  preaching  fellow 
with  seventy-five  pounds  a-year,  and  who 
had  spent  three  parts  of  his  life  among  the 
vulgarest  savages,  for  his  noble  lordship,  the 
particular  pink  of  Belgraviau  society,  and 
who  ran  away  not  six  months  ago  with  Mrs. 
K.,  the  greatest  beauty  in  Ireland.  "When 
we  were  set  right,  o£  course  we  made  up  for 
it  as  well  as  we  could,  by  cheering,  by  waving 
our  handkerchiefs,  and  by  stamping  with  our 
umbrellas.  When  he  bowed,  my  wife,  who 
is  impressionable,  was  even  affected  to  tears  ; 
but,  still,  the  mistake  was  very  annoying. 
Now,  if  his  lordship  had  but  adopted  the 
device  which  I  have  adverted  to,  and  had 
entered  the  room  with  his  left  arm  turned 
quite  round  with  the  palm  of  his  hand  up- 
ward, no  error  could  possibly  have  oc- 
curred. I  must  say  I  like  the  custom 
prevalent  in  the  universities,  of  the  aristo- 
cracy going  about  in  gold  or  silver  or  silk 
gowns,  so  as  to  be  easily  recognised — although, 
at  Cambridge  at  least,  there  is  still  room  for 
improvement — for  one  may  possibly  confuse 
a  real  nobleman  who  takes  an  honorary 
degree  (as  his  lordship  should,  God  bless 
him  !)  with  a  mere  classical  or  mathematical 
master  of  arts  who  has  had  to  work  for  it ; 
still,  if  my  suggestion  be  ever  carried  into 
effect,  it  is  my  pride  to  believe  that  the  first 
dislocated  arm  in  this  country  will  certainly 
be  nourished  at  one  of  our  two  ancient  seats 
of  learning. 

Advantages  would  ensue  from  what  I  pro- 
pose in  every  point  of  view  ;  it  would  settle  all 
those  social  squabbles  which  embitter  the 
whole  of  middle  class  life  at  once ;  that  great 
question  for  instance,  whether  Mrs.  General 
Ruff,  or  Mrs.  Reeve,  the  Vicar's  wife,  shall  be 
first  taken  down  to  dinner  ;  the  one  being 
the  second  cousin  of  a  marquis  (Irish),  and 
the  other  being  the  daughter  of  a  baronet. 
There  would  be  no  question  whose  arm  the 
master  of  the  house  should  prefer  ?  The 
arm  which  has  most  turn  in  it,  clearly  ; 
for  when  the  thing  is  once  systernatised, 
there  will,  of  course,  be  the  nicest  grada- 
tion of  twist  imaginable.  What  would 
become  then  of  the  De  Brouns,  who  persist 


in  setting  the  Plantagenet  crest  upon  their 
page's  buttons,  under  pretence  of  relation- 
ship to  that  exalted  family  ?  How  much 
distinction  will  Mrs.  Major  Callaghan  be 
able  to  derive  from  her  ancestors,  the  Kings 
of  Connaught,  we  wonder  ?  But,  what  pleases 
me  most  in  the  contemplation  of  this  ingenious 
device,  is,  that  all  the  people  who  have,  as 
the  phrase  is,  raised  themselves  from  nothing, 
must  needs  be  thus  entirely  put  a  stop  to. 
We  shall  then  say  boldly,  We  don't  want  to 
know  what  you  have  done  (who  does  ?),  and 
we  don't  care  in  the  least  what  you  are  ;  but 
let  us  see,  upon  the  instant,  what  you  were, 
good  people.  Can  you  turn  your  left  arm 
twice  with  the  palm  of  the  hand  upward,  or 
can't  you  turn  it  at  all  ?  To  descend  to 
minor  advantages,  it  will  be  surely  no  slight 
satisfaction  to  a  Briton  from  the  country,  to 
be  able,  from  the  strangers'  gallery  of  the 
Lower  House,  to  separate  for  himself  the 
true  scions  of  aristocracy  from  the  mere 
working  members  ;  and  again,  under  this 
new  system,  what  a  peculiar  and  impres- 
sive appearance  would  be  presented  by  the 
House  of  Lords  !  Nay,  instead  of  the  clumsy 
machines  called  open  examinations,  and  the 
other  absurd  blinds  which  we  have  had  to 
put  up  between  state  offices  and  the  public, 
let  the  test  of  merit  be  unblushingly  declared 
to  be,  not  birth,  but  a  dislocated  elbow  ;  and 
then  we  should  see,  what  is  now  not  so  clear 
as  is  desirable,  that  those  who  are  born  as  it 
were  to  great  offices  are  also  the  fittest- 
persons  to  fill  them. 

One  more  suggestion  regarding  this  pro- 
jected improvement,  and  I  have  done.  No 
sooner  shall  the  thing  be  established,  than 
there  will  be  countless  attempts  made 
by  unprivileged  persons  to  dislocate  their 
left  arms.  How  many  hours  would  not  the 
pastor  spare  from  his  duties  in  order  to 
become  honourable  as  well  as  reverend ! 
And  rightly  enough,  for  with  that  left  arm 
oratorically  extended,  what  limit  would  there 
be  to  his  congregation  ?  Do  the  attorneys 
care  for  none  of  these  things,  or  would  it  not 
be  worth  a  counsel's  while  to  devote  his 
Sundays  to  this  twisting  process  ?  The 
medical  man  would  surely  gain  in  popularity 
through  his  additional  rank  far  more  than  he 
could  lose  through  any  decreased  efficiency 
as  an  operator  in  consequence  of  a  twist  too 
much.  And  as  for  the  soldier,  what  end  to 
the  staff  appointments  and  good  things  which 
assiduity  at  this  practice  would  ensure  him. 
Let  him  remember  Dowb  ! 

Nay,  leaving  any  mere  gain  out  of  the 
question,  the  vast  majority  of  my  own  pri- 
vate acquaintance,  male  as  well  as  female, 
would,  1  am  convinced,  go  through  almost 
any  amount  of  torture  in  order  to  assimi- 
late themselves  to  the  nobility.  I  can 
fancy  our  Aunt  Betty — whose  husband,  the 
alderman,  was  knighted  this  last  winter — 
sitting  patiently  with  her  comely  arm  in  a 
vice  for  days  and  days,  on  the  chance  of 


204    [August  M,  ISS7J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


Conducted  by 


being  taken  for  "  the  Lady  Elizabeth."  While, 
therefore,  I  once  more  strenuously  recommend 
that  the  Siamese  attribute  be  adopted  by  the 
British  aristocracy ;  I  also  suggest  that  its 
imitation  by  any  of  a  lower  class  shall  be 
made  penal. 

OUK  Ps  AND  Q's. 

WHEN  the  jackdaw  of  Eheims,  in  the  plea- 
sant legend  of  Mr.  Barham's,  is  discovered  by 
the  monks  to  be  moulting,  bald,  and  mise- 
rable, after  the  curse  pronounced  by  their 
abbot,  upon  whomsoever  had  stolen  his  ring, 
they  are  said  to  have  thus  expressed  their 
belief  in  the  jackdaw's  guilt : 
"Regardless  of  grammar,  they  all  cried,  That's  him!" 
We  moderns,  also,  under  the  influence  of 
excitement,  are  too  apt  to  give  vent  to  our 
feelings  in  expressions  which  Home  Tooke 
and  Lindley  Murray  would  equally  reprobate  ; 
such  as,  "  It's  me — just  open  the  door  ; "  or, 
"It's  them — say  we  are  not  at  home." 

Mistakes  in  speech  are  of  continual  occur- 
rence, and  are  perpetrated  in  all  classes  of 
society.  Our  neighbour,  the  barrister,  pro- 
claims that  he  shall  summons  the  fellow : 
the  M.P.  over  the  way  is  perpetually  de- 
claiming upon  the  exports  and  imports  of 
the  United  .Kingdom  :  the  author  in  our 
second-floor  front,  boasts  of  selling  no  less 
than  five  thousand  copies  of  his  latest  pro- 
duction :  and  the  clergyman  at  the  chapel, 
yonder,  declares  superfluously,  every  Sun- 
day, that  he  shall  sink  down  into  the  pit. 

Still — before  we  set  eyes  upon  a  little 
volume  here  present,  whose  title  is,  Never 
Too  Late  to  Learn — we  had  no  conception  that 
persons  who  have  received  what  is  supposed 
to  be  a  fair  education  (to  whom  the  book  is 
addressed)  are  wont  to  fall  into  wordy  snares 
and  pit- falls  such  as  these  :  "1  thro  wed  my 
box  away,  and  never  took  no  more  snuff." 

Our  esteemed  uncle,  an  officer  in  her 
Majesty's  service,  of  twenty  years  standing, 
and  one  who  has,  throughout  that  period, 
looked  forward  to  being  a  field-martial,  spelt 
with  a  t  and  an  i,  used  many  bad  expressions 
when  deprived,  by  our  aunt,  of  his  favourite 
relaxation  of  snuff-taking  ;  but  none  so  bad 
as  this.  Our  mother  readily  admits  that  she 
has  not  sung  without  accompaniment  tin, 
ten  years,  but  she  does  not  call  it  singing 
extempore,  nor  does  she  pronounce  that  wore 
so  as  to  rhyme  with  sore.  This  author,  how- 
ever, evidently  conceives  that  these  accuracies 
of  my  beloved  relatives  are  very  unusual,  auc 
instances  more  than  three  hundred  mistakes 
of  daily  occurrence  to  prove  this.  A  certain 
school-mistress  of  his  acquaintance,  in  speak- 
ing of  the  minister  she  "  sat  under,"  and  who 
had  incurred  her  displeasure,  remarked,  thai 
"  He  didn't  ought  to  have  his  salary  rose.' 
If  such  be  really  the  school-mi-stress,  wha 
then  must  be  the  pupils  ?  and  why  shouk 
we  wonder  at  reading  upon  this  title-page 
the  twenty -eighth  thousand  ? 


241.  "  Rinse  your  mouth;  pronounce  rinse,  as  it  is 
vrittcn, — never  reuse." 

Who  ever  does  pronounce  it  rense  ?  cries 
,he  astonished  reader.  Thousands  of  fairly 
educated  persons,  is  the  reply  ;  and  even, 
'  Wrench  your  mouth,"  observed  a  fashionable 
dentist  once  to  the  author  of  this  little  volume. 

154.  "  Never  say  kiver  for  cover  ;  afeard  for  afiaid  ; 
or  debbuty  for  deputy;  which  are  three  very  common 
mistakes  among  the  citizens  of  London." 

Is  this  a  fact  or  a  malicious  scandal  ? 
Does  the  Lord  Mayor  talk  like  this  1  Do  the 
ilderraeu  ?  The  sheriffs  1  The  debbuty  she- 
riffs ?  Does  the  recorder  1  Here,  again  : 

182.  "  I  saw  him  somewheres  in  the  city  ;  say,  some- 
where. N.B.  Nowheres,  everyvvheres,  and  any- 
wheres, are  also  very  frequent  errors  in  London." 

If  this  be  true,  then  we  congratulate  our- 
selves upon  living  in  the  country.  What 
dismal  depths  of  ignorance  does  a  little  rush- 
light of  information,  such  as  this,  exhibit  to 
us  ! 

381.  "I  met  him  quite  permiscuous ;  say,  quite 
accidentally." 

We  should  rather  think  so,  indeed  ;  and 
yet  No.  383  is,  if  possible,  a  still  more  ter- 
rible warning. 

"  He  is  still  a  bacheldor ;  say,  bachelor." 

Why,  goodness  gracious !  in  what  county,, 
town,  or  hamlet,  in  this  distracted  kingdom 
are  the  inhabitants  accustomed  to  confuse 
unmarried  persons  with  battledores  ?  Hear 
a  few  more  choice  examples  of  the  school- 
master abroad. 

385.  "I  called  on  him  every  day  in  the  week,  suc- 
cessfully ;  very  common  (?)  but  very  incorrect ;  say,, 
successively." 

356.  "  I  was  necessitated  to  do  it  ;  a  vile  expres- 
sion, and  often  (?)  made  worse  by  necessiatcd ;  say,, 
obliged,  or  compelled." 

These,  however,  are  classical  expressions- 
in  comparison  with  : 

306.  "  Pronounce  January  ns  it  is  written,  and 
not  Jcnnivery  ;  and  beware  of  leaving  out  the  u 
iu  February,  or  of  calling  the  word  Fcbbiverry." 

Conceive  a  lover's  horror  at  hearing  from 
the  lips  of  the  most  charming  of  her  sex, 
when  asked  to  name  the  nuptial  month,  such 
a  word  as  Febbivery  ! 

Three  ungrainmatlcal  expressions  (it  ap- 
pears) are  almost  universal  in  trade,  business, 
and  in  the  scholastic  profession  : 

340.  "  Equal  to  bespoke,  instead  of  equal  to  be- 
spoken." 

365.  "  Received  of  Mr.  Brown  ten  pounds,  instead 
t>f  from. 

And  185.  "Bills  are  requested  to  be  paid  quar- 
terly ;  instead  of,  it  is  requested  that  bills  be  paid 
quarterly." 

We  trust  that  bootmakers,  merchants,  and 
schoolmasters,  committing  this  error,  do  nob 


Charles  Dickens.] 


OUR  Ps  AND  Q's. 


[August  29,  1857.]        205 


at  least  give  way  to  the  powerful  temptation 
instanced  in  Number  three  hundred  and 
forty-six,  and  salute  one  another  with  "How's 
yourself,  this  morning  1  " 

This  "  Never  Too  Late  to  Learn "  seems 
sometimes  to  raise  ungrammatical  ghosts 
for  the  mere  fun  of  laying  them,  and  to 
exhibit  the  ignorance  of  our  fairly  edu- 
cated classes  through  the  medium  of  a  mag- 
nifier. This  manner  of  treatment  is  how- 
ever reversed  in  the  case  of  another  work  of 
the  same  nature,  also  before  us,  called  The 
New  Letter  Writer,  which  gives  the  public 
the  credit  of  the  first  moral  culture,  and  aims 
at  the  adoption  of  even  a  higher  standard  of 
correctness  than  is  quite  desirable. 

Think  of  a  young  gentleman  at  a  Hudders- 
field  (sic)  preparatory  school,  expressing  his 
feelings  after  this  fashion,  when  he  writes 
home  to  say  when  the  holidays  begin  : 

"  DEAR  PARENTS, — It  is  with  mingled  feelings  of 
regret  at  leaving  my  kind  preceptor,  and  of  delight  at 
the  prospect  of  our  speedy  meeting,  that  I  announce  to 
you  the  conclusion  of  one  half-year's  stay  at  school." 

We  remember  some  such  form  of  words 
in  a  certain  holiday  letter,  composed  by  our 
schoolmaster,  and  written  by  us  immediately 
under  his  naked  eye,  but  we  don't  think  that 
our  original  sentiments  were  by  any  means 
appropriately  expressed  thereby.  There  is 
another  academy  at  Huddersfield,  it  seems 
(or  is  it  possible  it  can  be  the  same  ?),  which 
has  a  second  lusus  naturae  in  it. 

"My  schoolfellows 'are,  generally  speaking,  very 
agreeable  and  well-disposed  hoys,  and  we  are  so  well 
treated,  that  I  almost  feel  as  happy  as  though  I  were 
at  home.'' 

The  little  hypocrite  concludes  many  pattern 
remarks  of  the  like  nature  with  a  hope  that 
he  shall  "enjoy  the  Christmas  festivities  in 
the  accustomed  manner." 

When  a  young  gentleman  of  ten  years  old 
acknowledges  a  cake  from  his  mother  in 
such  terms  as  these  "  Knowing,  as  I  do, 
that  your  whole  life  is  occupied  in  promoting 
my  improvement  and  happiness,  I  can  only 
feel  that  each  fresh  token  of  your  affection 
lays  an  additional  claim  upon  my  gratitude," 
— we  think  it  probable  that  he  would  be 
just  the  boy  who  would  take  that  welcome 
present  into  the  seclusion  of  his  own  apart- 
ment, and  devour  the  whole  of  it,  without 
giving  a  single  slice  away.  When  he  grows 
up,  we  most  sincerely  wish  that  he  may 
marry  the  young  woman  who  at  present 
writes  from  Cappe  House  Seminary,  alter  the 
following  manner : — "  No  pains  have  been 
spared  by  any  of  my  teachers  to  render  me 
worthy  of  your  good  opinion  ;  and  I  must 
ever  feel  grateful  both  to  them  and  to  your- 
selves, dear  parents,  for  the  pains  bestowed 
upon  my  education." 

As  a  father  who  has  both  boys  and  girls 
of  his  own,  I  should  receive  any  such  epistles 
as  these  with  a  prolonged  whistle. 

No  university  man,  not  even  a  freshman, 


writes  of  "moving  in  the  best  set"  in  his 
college ;  and  very  few,  we  regret  to  say, 
gladden  a  parent  with  such  a  sentence 
out  of  The  New  Letter  Writer  as  this : 
"  The  cheque  you  so  kindly  sent  rue 
arrived  in  due  course,  and  was  not  only  fully 
adequate  to  the  expenses  of  my  entrance,  but 
has  left  me  a  surplus  which  will  last  me 
throughout  the  term."  Happy  the  country 
which  produces  an  author  who,  believing  in 
the  universality  of  such  sentiments  as  these, 
can  express  them,  for  the  use  of  the  virtuous, 
so  tersely  and  so  well  !  It  is  pleasant  to  see, 
too,  how  a  moralist  of  this  exalted  descrip- 
tion can  unbend,  and  stoop  even  to  give  a 
specimen  of  an  invitation  to  a  bachelor  party  ; 
"  Myself  and  half-dozen  other  good  fellows 
are  going  to  devote  a  few  hours  on  Tuesday 
evening  to  the  enjoyment  of  a  few  glasses  of 
wine,  chit-chat,  and  so  on  ;  I  hope  you  will 
make  one."  This,  we  are  convinced,  is  the 
pattern  boy  and  pattern  undergraduate, 
grown  up  to  be  a  pattern  young  barrister  in 
chambers  in  Gray's  Inn.  Who  else  would 
have  written  "a  few  hours,"  limiting  the 
time  during  which  a  bachelor  party  should 
enjoy  itself?  |,Or  "a  few  glasses  of  wine," 
limiting  the  amount  which  they  should  be 
suffered  to  imbibe  1  The  same  contemptible 
person,  married  and  settled  in  Clarendon, 

Square,   asks   his  "  dear  • "  to  "  take  a 

chop  "  with  him,  and  "  knowing  dear is 

not  partial  to  large  dinner  parties,"  trusts  the 
host  and  hostess  will  be  sufficient  company. 
This  is  however  in  later  life.  During  his 
young  days,  we  delight  in  thinking  that  the 
young  lady  who  "felt  almost  distracted  at 
leaving  that  delightful  place,"  her  school,  is 
corning  up  to  him,  as  sure  as  fate,  and  will 
certainly  at  last  be  his  wedded  wife.  It  was 
she,  in  after  years,  who  caused  him  to  refuse 
the  subscription  to  the  charity  in  letter  eighty- 
six,  upon  the  ground  of  poverty,  although, 
with  his  parsimonious  habits  and  hers,  he 
must  needs  have  been  very  rich.  He  "  pre- 
sents his  compliments "  to  the  reverend 
gentleman  who  applies  to  him, "  but  regrets 
that  in  consequence  of  many  similar  claims 
upon  his  purse,  he  is  unable  to  contribute  to 
a  design,  the  excellence  of  which  he  fully 
recognises."  That  last  sentence  we  think  to 
be  exceedingly  characteristic  of  our  pattern 
friend  ;  he  is  always  ready  at  the  call  ot 
charity  to  give  to  the  uttermost — his  compli- 
ments and  his  good  wishes.  It  is  our  firm 
and  unalterable  conviction  that  he  never 
sent  the  following  letter  to  the  father  of 
our  young  woman  (late  of  Cappe  House 
Seminary),  until  every  dishonourable  means 
for  effecting  his  purpose  had  been  resorted 
to.  It  reads  so  ferociously  respectable. 

114.  "  SIR. — As  I  scorn  to  act  in  any  manner  that 
may  bring  reproach  upon  myself  and  family,  and  to 
hold  clandestine  proceedings  unbecoming  any  man 
of  character,  I  take  the  liberty  of  distinctly  avowing 
my  love  for  your  daughter,  and  humbly  request 
your  permission  to  pay  her  my  addresses,  as  1  flatter 


206      [  August  M,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted 


myself  my  family  and  expectancies  are  not  unworthy 

of  your  notice I  have  not,  I  assure  you,  as  yet 

endeavoured  to  win  her  affections,  for  fear  it  might  be 
repugnant  to  a  father's  •will." 

"When  he  has  obtained  this  desirable  old 
gentleman's  consent,  he  proceeds  to  break  off 
•with  another  lady  to  whom  he  had  engaged 
himself;  bnt  who  is  not  so  wealthy  as  the 
second,  in  just  such  a  style  as  we,  his 
Enemies,  should  have  expected  of  him. 

119 "  My  dear,— With  pain   I   ntter  it— I 

must  resign  nil  hopes  of  our  future  union  ;  ask  me 
not  wherefore  ;  my  answer  would  inflict  an  additional 
pang  in  the  breasts  of  both.  This  is  no  hasty  resolve 
....  it  is  essential  to  our  mutual  happiness  and  wel- 
fare  I  will  send  your  letters  under  seal,  en- 
treating, however,  that  you  will  grant  me  the  indul- 
gence of  being  allowed  to  keep  only  one  as  a  memo- 
rial of  the  past !  and  with  this  request  I  bid  you  a 
painful  but  affectionate  adieu." 

Observe,  how,  when  he  is  committing  a 
baseness,  his  style,  like  Maryborough's,  rises 
always  higher,  and  his  tone  becomes  addi- 
tionally moral  and  improving.  Our  female 
friend,  however  (of  Cappe  House  Seminary), 
will  be  fully  a  match  for  him  ;  she  is  far  from 
being  one  of  those  enthusiastic  young  ladies 
ready  to  marry,  off-hand,  without  at  least  a 
tolerable  prospect. 

"  We  are  both  young,"  she  writes  in  letter  67,  and 
adds  sarcastically,  "  myself  especially  ;  arid  it  is  of  no 
use  for  us  to  rush  into  a  state  of  life  which  we  have 
not  the  means  of  supporting."  (This  all  arises,  we 
are  confident,  from  some  false  statement  made  by  the 
pattern  young  man  in  reference  to  his  pecuniary  posi- 
tion, and  to  prevent  his  having  to  make  settlements). 
"  Should  you  be  so  fortunate,  however,  as  to  obtain 

the  situation  of  which   Mr. •  has  held  out  hopes, 

we  shall  be  able  to  marry  without  fear." 

However,  as  we  have  said,  this  marriage 
did  certainly  come  off,  as  is  proved  by  the 
following  sentences  culled  from  letters  117 
and  143 :  the  former  is  from  an  old  friend 
proposing  a  day  for  his  nuptials :  always 
with  the  same  delicate  modesty  and  respect- 
ful sensitiveness  for  the  feelings  of  others  : 

"  The  happy  day  to  which  I  have  looked  forward  as 
the  blissful  reward  of  our  mutual  constancy  is  not  far 
distant,  if  the  proposal  I  am  now  about  to  make  should 
meet  the  approbation  of  yourself  and  parents." 

In  letter  143,  of  a  much  later  date,  we  find 
him  excusing  himself  very  characteristically 
from  paying  a  bill ;  he  sends  one-tenth  or  so 
of  what  is  due  and  accompanies  the  scanty 
instalment  with  these  words  : 

"  I  fully  expected  to  be  able  to  meet  your  bill  in 
full  when  I  last  wrote  to  you,  and  should  have  done 
so  but  for  a  severe  domestic  affliction  which  has 
interfered  with  my  paying  my  usual  attention  to 
business." 

He  mnde  capital,  as  we  fully  expected 
our  pattern  letter-writer  would  do,  out 
of  even  the  death  of  his  wife  ;  and  our  im- 
pression is,  not  only  that  he  poisoned,  or 


otherwise  made  away  with  her,  but  also  that 
she  richly  deserved  it. 

There  is  yet  another  little  book  to  be 
studied  on  the  customs  of  society  and  the 
manners  of  the  best  circles,  called  Etiquette 
for  Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  and  then  we  shall 
have  perhaps  received  all  the  information 
regai'ding  our  P's  and  Q's,  which  the  human 
mind  is.  capable  of  retaining.  This  last 
work  lias  the  advantage  of  having  been 
originally  French  ;  but  it  has  been  translated 
into  our  own  language  and  disseminated  to 
the  extent  of  two  editions  in  this  savage 
country,  through  the  influence,  as  it  seems, 
of  some  good  missionary  society  of  the  Fau- 
bourg St.  Germain.  The  author — we  have 
his  own  word  for  it — is  himself  personally 
acquainted  with  people  of  the  highest  rank 
and  reputation,  and  has  found  it  sometimes 
hard  to  preserve  that  calm  judgment  which 
he  recommends  [so  strongly  to  others,  in 
the  intoxication  produced  by  beauty,  har- 
mony, and  perfume.  Let  us  then,  by  all 
means,  attend  to  the  instructions  of  such  a 
monitor. 

The  hand  of  a  gentleman  should  be  always 
gloved ;  what  would  be  thought  of  a  man 
who  was  seen  at  church,  without  those  articles, 
or  of  another  who  could  dance  without  kids  \ 
On  a  visit  of  condolence,  attire  yourself  in  a 
grave-coloured  suit ;  for  a  friendly  call,  dress 
neatly  but  not  with  costliness ;  and  reserve 
all  splendour  of  costume  for  your  visits  of 
ceremony. 

To  place  your  hat  on  any  article  of  fur- 
niture is  ungenteel — to  lay  it  on  a  bed(!) 
is  unpardonable.  Crossing  the  legs  or 
stretching  them  out  at  full  length  is 
equally  improper.  Perfect  cleanliness  not 
only  affords  an  agreeable  sensation  of  com- 
fort, but  imparts  an  air  of  confidence  springing 
from  the  consciousness  that  you  need  not 
fear  investigation.  But  our  author  is  far 
from  being  exacting  in  this  respect  after 
all;  only,  let  your  face  and  neck  be  clean, 
he  says,  "and  I  particularly  recommend 
attention  to  your  ears."  This  unnecessary 
minuteness  (as  one  would  think)  upon  such 
a  subject  is  more  than  counterbalanced, 
however,  by  the  grace  and  delicacy  he  ex- 
hibits in  the  art  of  choosing  a  bouquet. 
For  a  young  girl  the  recipe  is  as  follows  : 
Take  a  white  rose-bud  just  ready  to  unfold, 
a  spray  of  jessamine  and  some  violets,  never 
intermixing  with  these  dahlias,  peonies, 
ranunculuses,  or  scabias.  A  branch  of  the 
orange-tree,  in  blossom,  will  be  an  appro- 
priate present  for  a  young  lady  ;  for  a  young 
wife,  you  may  smilingly  cull  a  spray  of 
myrtle.  Camellias,  rose-laurels,  and  large 
roses  you  must  reserve  for  ladies  of  maturer 
age.  The  delicate  flower  of  the  Bengal  rose, 
open  or  otherwise,  may  be  offered  to  a  young 
girl. 

Everybody  in  the  best  circle  says,  "Sir,may 
I  offer  you  "  this  or  that,  which  may  happen  to 
be  before  him  ;  not,  "  will  you  take,"  or  "  will 


Charles  Dickens.] 


OUE  Ps  AND  Q's. 


[August  29,  ia-;r.]  207 


you  liavc,"  which  are  nngenteel  phrases.  It  is 
bad  manners  to  raise  your  knife  in  putting 
food  into  your  mouth ;  "  but  it  is  worse," 
observes  our  editor, "  to  use  your  fingers,"  for 
that  purpose.  He  objects,  too  (and  we  think 
rightly),  to  your  taking  "  anything  out  of  your 
pocket," — a  quid  of  tobacco,  a  small  tooth 
comb,  for  instance,  "  and  laying  it  upon  the 
table  by  your  plate." 

Turning  up  your  sleeves  when  sitting 
down  to  table  is  also  to  be  carefully  avoided. 
When  made  dishes  or  vegetables  are  handed 
to  you, be  careful  not  to  turn  them  over  fasti- 
diously with  your  fork.  Experience  will  soon 
teach  you  to  select  the  best  piece  for  yourself 
at  a  single  glance.  Our  author  does  not 
confine  his  valuable  advice  to  the  upper 
classes  only,  nor  disdain  to  throw  a  point  or 
two  of  elegant  example  for  the  consideration 
of  operatives.  The  revolutionary  spirit  has 
done  much  to  brutalise  the  lower  orders  in 
France,  he  says,  but  he  has  hopes  of  them 
still.  He  trusts  to  see  amongst  them 
less  frequently  these  pugilistic  encounters 
which  make  them  resemble  the  English 
of  Box  Hall  (!  !)  When  a  workman  is 
more  genteel  than  his  associates,  he  should 
not,  on  that  account,  be  called  a  spy  or  a 
Jesuit. 

A.  well-bred  physician,  it  appears,  will 
always  say  to  a  husband  at  the  fashion- 
able season,  "It  is  indispensable,  sir,  that 
your  wife  should  enjoy  the  waters  of  Chel- 
tenham, or  the  air  of  Brighton,"  as  the  case 
may  be.  And  again,  in  the  provinces, 
where  dress — to  be  called  such — is  not  to  be 
procured, 

"  A  husband  is  quite  inexcusable  if  lie  do  not  bring 
his  wife  up  to  town  with  him  to  choose  her  apparel ; 
and,  indeed,  by  negligence  of  this  sort,  gives  her  a 
right  to  be  sulky  with  him  on  his  return  ;  his  own 
taste  can  never  be  sufficiently  light  and  airy  to  select, 
for  her,  appropriate  garments." 

Here  is  some  advice  to  young  ladies 
about  spoiling  their  own  good  looks,  which 
cannot  be  too  much  insisted  upon,  and  which 
is,  at  least,  as  applicable  to  our  own  fair 
countrywomen  as  to  the  beauties  of  France  : 

"  Be  not  angry ;  for,  if  so,  your  nose  contracts, 
your  upper-lip  is  elongated,  your  eyes  are  half  covered 
by  their  lids;  you  are  frightfully  ugly.  And  look  not 
starved  of  cold,  for  then  all  your  features  are  con- 
tracted, every  muscle  of  your  face  is  in  a  state  of  ten- 
sion,—your  neck  sinks  between  your  shoulders — you 
are  hump-backed ;  consequently,  the  blood,  less  active 
in  this  semi-circular  position,  makes  you  still  colder 
than  if  you  walked  on  boldty,  and  you  have  further  the 
disadvantage  of  looking  like  a  little,  old  man." 

A  variety  of  information  is  afforded  to  us 
upon  the  ceremonies  of  baptism,  burial,  and 
marriage,  as  regards  both  our  manners  and 
morals.  Upon  the  latter  (and  we  suppose 
upon  the  second)  occasion  it  is  permitted  to 
a  gentleman  to  divest  himself,  temporarily, 
of  one  of  his  gloves — the  right-hand  one. 


"  We  renounce,"  says  the  author,  "  upon  this  day 
(that  of  our  marriage)  a  certain  good  for  an  uncertain 
happiness,  and  the  event  should  therefore  awaken  in 
us  serious  thought  and  some  emotion.  However, 
there  is  nothing  in  it  of  so  much  importance,  after  all, 
as  in  another  French  ceremony  held  in  much  higher 
repute — that  of  the  Duello.  It  is  indispensable  that 
we  should  know  how  to  behave  ourselves  iu  this 
respect." 

Punctuality  is  to  be  strictly  observed  in 
coming  to  the  place  of  meeting.  The  princi- 
pals should  keep  silence.  The  challenger 
tires  first.  Alter  the  first  two  shots  the 
seconds  should  make  an  attempt  at  recon- 
ciliation ;  but,  if  the  principals  insist  upon 
a  renewal  of  the  combat,  it  must  be  per- 
mitted. Before  commencing  to  fight  with 
swords  the  salutations  must,  of  course,  be 
interchanged. 

"  When  the  duel  ends  without  serious  mischief, 
justice  usually  takes  no  notice  of  the  affair  ;  but  let  it  be 
remembered,  if  a  man  is  killed  or  even  seriously 
wounded,  prosecution  and  a  prison  are  the  inevitable 
results  of  this  foolish  escapade." 

Our  author  we  have  observed  can  be  moral, 
and  all  that  now  remains  is  to  prove  him  to 
be  equally  religious. 

"  It  is  fashionable,  in  the  country,  as  well  as  in 
Paris,  to  be  charitable ;  and  it  is  certainly  a  fashion 
worthy  of  observance  on  its  own  merits." 

It  cannot  but  be  gratifying  to  learn  that  a 
custom  which  has  already  met  with  some  ap- 
proval amongst  us,  has  .thus  received  the 
sanction  of  the  Parisian  editor  of  Etiquette 
for  Ladies  and  Gentlemen. 


FEENCH  TAVERN  LIFE. 

CHAPTER  THE  SECOND. 

WITH  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century 
a  new  era  in  French  tavern-life  began.  The 
race  of  bacchanalian  poets,  whose  Helicon 
was  in  the  wine  vat,  ended  with  Saint  Amand 
and  Chapelle,  and  the  cabaret  became  the 
home  of  those  who  went  there  only  to  feast 
and  carouse,  with  no  thought  of  cultivating 
the  Muses.  Freed  from  the  restraints  of  the 
court  of  Madame  de  Maintenon,  the  great 
people  who  had  danced  ante-chamber  there 
availed  themselves  of  the  example  set  by  the 
Regent  Orleans,  and  hurried  to  the  tavern, 
where  their  days  and  nights  were  mostly 
spent.  There  was  no  place  so  obscure,  no 
haunt  so  degraded,  but  was  filled  with  what 
people  called,  at  that  time,  the  best  com- 
pany. The  low  and  dirty  cabaret  kept  by 
the  notorious  Rousseau,  in  the  Rue  d'  Avig- 
non, held  a  bad  pre-eminence,  and  the  noble 
dukes  and  marquises  took  shame  to  them- 
selves if  they  got  drunk  anywhere  else. 
Neither  were  they  particular  what  kind  of 
wine  they  drank,  provided  they  had  it  in 
Rousseau's  den.  The  popular  tavern-keeper 
quickly  turned  this  mania  to  account,  and 
adulterated  his  wares  to  an  extent  sufficient 


208     [August  29,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


to  excite  the   admiration  of  those  London 
dealers  who  sell  you  :i  naked  sherry  or  a  dry 
port  at  twenty-six  shillings  per  dozen.     To 
tickle   his   customers'   hot   palates,    lie  g:ivo 
tli  in,  instead  of  the  Burgundy  of  the   Cote 
d'Or,   that  harsh,  bastard   Burgundy  which 
is  grown  at  Auxerre,  made  harsher  by  the ! 
infusion  of  alum,   and  further  disguised  by  ' 
being  mixed  with  the  wine  of  Orleans.     But ( 
Rousseau  was  not  the  only  celebrated  fre- 
lateur,   or  brouilleur  de  vin  (as  those  who 
adulterated  liquors  were  called).  Forel,  whose 
cabaret  was  close  to  the  Palais  Royal,  and  j 
Lam  v,  who  kept  the  sign  of  the  Trois  Cuil-  I 
lers  (Three  Spoons),  contested  the  palm  with  I 
him.     All  three  were  gibbeted  in  an  epigram  ; 
written   upon   them   by  Boursaut,  who  fre-  I 
quented  their  respective  houses  :   the  gist  of 
which  was,  that  although  they  were  allowed  [ 
to  rob  their  guests  with  impunity,  they  were 
not  yet  permitted  to  poison  them. 

The  picture  that  might  be  drawn  of  the 
drunkenness  of  the  nobles  during  the  period  i 
of  the  Regency,  would  be  bad  enough,  but  j 
its  worst  features   could  be  rendered  still ; 
more  repulsive  by  showing  that  many  of  the 
ladies  imitated  their  lords  in  their  devotion 
to  the  bottle.      Madame   de  Villedieu,  the 
authoress  of  a  number  of  romances,  now  for- 
gotten, died  from  the  results  of  a  drinking  i 
bout  ;  and  the  last  moments  of  the  Princess 
de  Conde,  the  widow  of  the  Duke  de  Ven- 
d6me,  were   passed  in  her  private  cabinet, 
where,  surrounded  by  well-filled  flasks,  she 
was  in  the  habit  of  indulging  in  solitary  in- 
toxication.     This   princess   was   only    forty 
years  old  when  she  died,  in  the  year  seven- 
teen hundred  and  eighteen.     It  may  readily  j 
be  supposed  that  the  epigrammatists  of  the 
day  did  not  spare  such  ladies.     The  Moulin  j 
de  Javelle,  a  suburban  guingette,  was  the 
chief  scene  of  these  feminine  irregularities. 
There  was,  however,  a  whole  village  of  such 
guingettes,  called  the  Port  a  1'  Anglais   (The 
Englishman's    Port),    situated    beyond    the 
Plaine  d'  Ivry,  to  the  south-west  of  Paris. 

Although  the  tavern  had  ceased  to  be  a 
source  of  inspiration,  dramatic  poets  still 
found  consolation  there  —  none  more  fre- 
quently than  Danoourt,  whose  plays  were  so 
often  damned.  As  a  matter  of  course,  he 
was  always  in  the  pit  on  the  first  night  of 
representation,  and  as  soon  as  symptoms  of 
dissatisfaction  on  the  part  of  the  audience 
began  to  manifest  themselves,  he  invariably 
took  himself  off  to  his  favourite  cabaret  to 
drown  his  disappointment  in  wine.  The 
house  he  patronised  was  La  Cornemuse  (The 
Uaupipe),  kept  by  one  Cheret.  The  guests 
who  used  to  assemble  there,  knew  Dancourt's 
habits,  and  respected  the  silence  he  observed 
while  he  drank  his  first  bottle  ;  but  when  he 
•was  beginning  to  see  daylight  through  the 
second,  and  his  melancholy  gradually  disap- 
peared, they  rallied  him  upon  his  failure,  and 
none  were  merrier  on  the  subject  than  he. 
He  then  continued  his  libations  as  joyously 


as  if  no  mischance  had  befallen  him,  and 
drew  from  his  discomfiture  the  materials  of 
future  success.  Dancourt  was  in  the  habit, 
of  reading  his  pieces  to  his  family  before  he 
took  them  to  the  green-room.  On  one  occa- 
sion— it  was  the  first  night  of  a  comedy  un- 
happily named  The  Eclipse — he  assembled 
his  wife  and  children  to  learn  their  candid 
opinion,  that  he  might  form  some  notion  of 
that  of  the  public.  It  was  a  packed  audience, 
but  this  did  not  save  the  piece  from  failure. 
The  first  scene  appeared  dull  ;  during  the 
second  the  children  yawned  ;  in  the  third  his 
wife  fell  asleep.  Dancourt  saw  it  was  of  no 
use  to  go  on  ;  he  put  his  manuscript  in  his 
pocket,  and  rose  to  leave  the  house.  His 
youngest  child,  a  little  girl,  perceived  the 
movement,  and  going  behind  her  father, 
pulled  him  by  the  sleeve.  The  poet  turned. 
"  I  suppose,  papa,"  she  said,  "  you  mean  to 
sup  at  Cheret's  this  evening  !  "  Dancourt 
laughed,  kissed  his  daughter,  and,  safe  in  the 
conclusion  that  his  play  would  indeed  be 
eclipsed,  did  not  go  to  the  theatre  to  witness 
the  fact,  but  waited  for  the  event  at  the 
Cornemuse,  and,  when  the  news  arrived,  was 
so  well  primed,  that  it  produced  no  effect 
whatever  upon  him,  except,  perhaps,  of  in- 
creasing his  gaiety.  He  had,  in  fact,  dis- 
counted his  defeat,  and  in  doing  so  had  only 
followed  the  advice  which  Molidre  so  hu- 
morously gives  to  those  whom  ill-fortune 
pursues. 

The  chief  places  of  resort  for  the  fashion- 
able tipplers  of  Paris,  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  since,  were  the  cellars  of  the  quarter 
of  the  Temple  known  as  the  salle  basse  of 
the  famous  Fite,  and  the  cave  of  La  Morel- 
liere  ;  and  they  corresponded,  in  many  re- 
spects, to  the  modern  Coal-hole  of  the  Savoy, 
and  the  Cider  Cellar  in  Maiden  Lane. 
Amongst  the  company,  were  always  to 
be  found  Chaulieu,  La  Fare,  the  Chevalier 
de  Bouillon,  the  Abbe  Courtin,  Palaprat,  and 
occasionally  the  Grand  Prior,  M.  de  Ven- 
dome;  their  Mfecenas.  But  even  the  site  of 
these  haunts  is  now  forgotten,  and  nothing 
remains  of  them  but  the  names  of  the  occu- 
pants. 

There  is,  however,  as  much  caprice  in 
tavern-seeking  as  in  courting  ;  and  the  poe- 
tical bons-vivants  aforesaid  at  one  time 
quitted  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Temple  for 
the  filthy  Rue  Quincampoix,  in  which  Law 
had  established  his  famous  bubble  bank. 
They  installed  themselves  in  this  street  at 
the  Wooden  Sword  (L'Epee  de  Bois),  which 
occupied  the  corner  made  by  its  intersection 
with  the  Rue  de  Venise  ;  and  in  this  retreat 
the  stirring  drama  of  the  Mississipi  scheme 
was  ever  before  them.  From  satirising  the 
all  absorbing  mania,  the  tippling  poets, 
seduced  by  the  splendid  promises  of  Law 
and  his  agents,  became  objects  of  satire 
themselves  ;  free  from  the  malady  of  specu- 
lation, when  first  they  went  to  the  Wooden 
Sword,  they  soon  became  diseased  and  lent 


Charles  Dickens.] 


FRENCH  TAVERN  LIFE. 


[Ausust  29, 1S57.]        209 


a  ready  ear  to  the  Delphic  promise  of  the 
Scottish  adventurer,  who  calmed  the  eager 
mob  by  telling  them  that,  if  they  would  have 
a  little  patience,  he  would  take  all  they  had 
(soyez  tranquilles,  on  vous  prendra  tout, 
on  prendra  tout  a  tout  le  monde  !).  Amongst 
the  miracles  which  Law  performed,  in  the 
way  of  extracting  money,  that  certainly  was 
the  greatest  which  drew  gold  from  the 
pockets  of  the  poets.  Amongst  those  who 
lost  their  all  in  this  way,  were  Louis  Racine, 
the  son  of  the  great  dramatist,  and  the  writer 
Marivaux  :  the  latter,  however,  was  the 
more  fortunate  of  the  two,  for  his  patrimony 
being  entirely  engulfed  in  the  Mississipi 
scheme,  he  turned  his  attention  to  the  stage, 
and  not  only  recovered  himself  by  his  writ- 
ings, but  acquired  an  enduring  fame.  Fatal 
as  the  bank  in  the  Rue  Quincampoix  was  to 
thousands,  there  is  no  more  tragic  story 
connected  with  it  than  that  which  attaches 
to  the  name  of  the  Count  de  Horn.  It  is  as 
follows : 

In  the  early  part  of  the  month  of 
March,  of  the  year  seventeen  hundred  and 
twenty,  there  lodged  at  Paris,  at  the  Hotel 
de  Flandre,  in  the  Rue  Dauphine,  the  Count 
de  Horn,  twenty-three  years  of  age,  a  younger 
son  of  the  Prince  de  Horn,  a  relative  of  the 
Emperor  of  Germany,  of  the  Dowager  Duchess 
of  Orleans,  and  of  the  Duke-Regent  himself. 
He  had  a  yearly  allowance  from  his  father 
of  twelve  thousand  livres.  As  he  had  lost 
much  money  at  the  fair  of  Saint  Germain, 
where  play  was  very  high  that  year,  owing 
to  the  great  quantity  of  banknotes  that  were 
in  circulation,  two  rascals,  old  officers  of  the 
count's  acquaintance  (Dulaure,  in  his  History 
of  Paris,  names  them  as  Laurent  de  Milly 
and  De  1'Estang),  put  him  up  to  a  way  of 
filling  his  pockets  again,  by  suggesting  the 
robbery  and  assassination  of  a  rich  stock- 
jobber, who  always  carried  a  great  deal  of 
money  on  his  person.  This  man  occupied  a 
room  on  the  second  floor  of  the  Wooden 
Sword  in  the  Rue  de  Venise,  and  thither,  on 
the  twentieth  of  March,  De  Horn  and  his 
confederates  secretly  repaired.  They  found 
their  victim  seated  at  a  table,  with  a  sum  of 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  crowns 
spread  out  before  him,  of  which  he  had, 
apparently,  been  taking  an  account.  De 
Horn  seized  and  tried  to  strangle  him  with 
a  napkin,  but  the  poor  wretch  made  so  much 
noise  and  resistance,  that  the  assassins  had 
recourse  to  other  means  and  stabbed  him  in 
twenty  places.  At  the  first  outcry,  De 
1'Estang,  who  was  keeping  watch  on  the 
stairs,  made  off  to  his  own  hotel  in  the  Rue 
de  Tournon,  where  he  collected  every  thing 
that  was  portable,  and  effected  his  escape 
But  the  noise  had  alarmed  a  waiter  of  the 
cabaret,  who  ran  up  to  the  stockbroker's 
room,  and  seeing  him  stretched  on  the  floor, 
bathed  in  blood,  raised  a  hue  and  cry  and 
hastily  double-locked  the  door  :  not,  however, 
in  time  to  prevent  De  Milly  from  rushing 


past  him.  The  Count  de  Horn,  finding  him- 
self shut  in,  attempted  to  escape  by  the  win- 
dow, and,  favoured  by  some  timber  which, 
shored  up  the  house,  reached  the  ground  in 
safety  ;  but  he  committed  the  inconceivable 
folly  of  going  straight  to  the  commissary  of 
police  to  lay  a  complaint  against  the  owner 
of  the  cabaret  for  having  attempted  to  assas- 
sinate him  i  His  story  was  scarcely  told, 
when  a  crowd  of  people  brought  in  his 
accomplice,  De  Milly,  whom  they  had 
arrested  as  he  was  escaping  by  the  Rue 
Quincampoix.  Thereupon,  the  commissary 
sent  them  both  to  prison.  The  greatest 
exertions  were  made  by  all  the  nobility  to 
save  De  Horn  :  the  families  of  Chatillon, 
Egmont,  Epinay,  and  others,  interceded  for 
him  in  vain,  for  Law  was  implacable — having 
the  rights  of  property  so  dearly  at  heart, — 
and  the  regent  was  inflexible.  De  Horn  and 
De  Milly  were  convicted  and  condemned  to 
be  broken  alive  on  the  wheel  and  afterwards 
beheaded,  and  the  sentence  was  carried  into 
execution.  Amongst  the  solicitations  made 
to  the  Duke  of  Orleans  to  save  the  life  of 
De  Horn  was  the  representation  that  he  was 
the  regent's  kinsman.  "  Very  well,"  said  the 
prince,  "I  will  take  my  share  of  the  dis- 
grace :  that  ought  to  console  the  rest  of  his 
relations."  He  then  recited  the  well-known 
line  of  Coriieille,  "  Le  crime  fait  la  honte, 
et  non  pas  Fechafaud  "  (the  crime  and  not 
the  scaffold  makes  the  shame). 

The  inn  called  the  Hotel  Royal,  in  the  Rue 
des  Mathurins,  was  also  the  scene  of  a  very 
bloody  adventure.  In  the  month  of  January, 
seventeen  hundred  and  fifty-three,  a  person 
wearing  the  dress  of  an  abbe,  and  giving 
himself  out  as  one,  went  to  the  shop  of  a  rich 
jeweller,  named  Vallat,  and  telling  him  that 
he  had  an  immense  quantity  of  gold  lace  to 
dispose  of,  made  an  appointment  at  the  hotel 
mentioned.  Vallat,  punctual  to  the  time  agreed 
on,  drove  in  his  coach  to  the  place,  and  went 
upstairs  to  the  abbe,  whose  first  inquiry  was 
if  he  had  brought  the  money  1  Vallat  showed 
him  a  bag  containing  three  thousand  livres  in 
gold  which  he  had  brought,  on  which  the 
reverend  man  seized  the  jeweller  by  the 
throat,  and,  drawing  out  a  dagger,  threatened 
him  with  instant  death  unless  he  delivered 
up  the  money,  for  that,  for  his  part,  he  had 
no  lace  to  sell.  Vallat  struggled,  and  got 
hold  of  the  dagger  ;  the  abbe  then  caught  up 
a  razor,  and  inflicted  gashes  innumerable  on 
the  unhappy  jeweller,  whose  cries  at  length 
brought  some  one  to  his  aid.  The  abbe 
escaped  by  the  window,  and  took  refuge  on 
the  roof,  hiding  behind  a  stack  of  chimneys, 
but  so  placing  himself  that  his  shadow  be- 
trayed his  place  of  concealment.  He  was 
quickly  captured,  and,  judgment  in  such 
uses  being  speedy,  soon  afterwards  closed 
his  clerical  career  on  the  square  of  theGre've. 
Barbier,  who  tells  this  story  in  his  amusing 
journal,  quaintly  adds  that  he  thinks  "  it  was 
very  imprudent  on  the  part  of  Vallat,  to  go 


210    [AugOBt  29, 1S&7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


alone  to  see  a  man  whom  he  knew  nothing 
of  in  a  furnished  apartment." 

All  to  whom  the  lives  of  celebrated  crimi- 
nals are  familiar,  must  have  heard  of  the 
robber  Cartouche.  He  had,  as  may  be 
supposed,  no  private  residence  of  his  own  in 
Paris,  preferring  this  or  that  cabaret,  where 
the  tavern-keeper  and  himself  had  business- 
relations.  The  police,  arriving  at  a  know- 
ledge of  his  movesnents,  laid  a  plot  to  catch 
him,  which  at  last  succeeded.  On  the  night 
of  the  twentieth  of  October,  seventeen  hun- 
dred and  twenty-one,  he  went  to  a  cabaret 
in  the  quarter  of  Courtille,  called  La  Haute 
Borne  (the  high  boundary-stone),  which 
was  kept  by  one  Master  Germain  Saward, 
and,  after  giving  the  pass-word,  "  Are  there 
four  women  ?"  (Ya-t-il  quatre  femmes?),  was 
admitted,  ate  his  supper,  and  went  to  bed, — 
with  six  loaded  pistols  on  the  night-table 
beside  him.  The  police,  who  were  in  league 
with  the  tavern-keeper,  remained  concealed 
until  they  thought  Cartouche  was  asleep, 
when  they  entered  his  room,  and  seized  him 
before  he  was  able  to  defend  himself,  or  his 
resistance  would  have  been  desperate.  At 
his  trial,  which  occupied  some  time,  he 
revealed  the  name  of  a  number  of  his  accom- 
plices, the  keepers  of  cabarets,  the  principal 
being  two  brothers  named  Liard,  who,  in 
spite  of  the  poverty-stricken  appellation, 
were  worth  at  least  fifty  thousand  crowns 
each, — the  whole  of  it  acquired  by  fraud  and 
robbery,  and  connivance  in  crime. 

The  cabarets  in  the  suburbs  of  Paris,  a 
hundred  years  ago,  were  more  dangerous 
even  than  the  taverns  in  the  heart  of  the 
city.  At  the  head  of  one  of  the  bands  of 
robbers  that  infested  the  environs  of  Belle- 
ville, was  the  son  of  an  innkeeper  of  that 
place,  whose  place  of  concealment  was  in  the 
adjacent  quarries.  It  chanced,  in  the  year 
seventeen  hundred  and  sixty -three,  that  a 
citizen  of  Paris,  with  his  wife  and  daughter, 
were  robbed  one  day  by  two  of  this  band. 
Returning  sadly  homeward,  they  stopped  at  a 
road-side  inn  to  ask  for  some  refreshment, 
and  while  it  was  being  prepared,  two  young 
men  entered  the  house.  The  citizen  looking 
round,  saw  them,  and  exclaimed,  "  Ah,  there 
are  the  fellows  who  robbed  us  !  "  In  one  of 
them,  the  innkeeper  recognised  his  own  son  ; 
in  the  other,  the  son  of  a  neighbour.  At  the 
citizen's  exclamation,  up  started  three  or 
four  archers  of  the  police,  who  were  drinking 
at  the  cabaret,  and  arrested  them  on  the 
spot. 

Dulaure  tells  rather  an  amusing  story  of  a 
certain  innkeeper  of  Paris,  named  Blanchard, 
who  kept  the  Hotel  d'Yorck,  in  the  time  of 
Louis  the  Fifteenth.  A  celebrated  figurante 
of  the  opera,  La  Grandi,  had  received  from 
her  lover,  who  was  a  Polish  nobleman,  a 
carriage  and  horses  amongst  his  numerous 
gifts.  This  equipage  had  not  been  paid  for, 
and  Blanchard,  who  had  trusted  the  Pole, 
was  desirous  of  getting  it  back  again.  He 


accordingly  waited  upon  Mademoiselle 
Graudi,  and  she,  fancying  he  came  to  ask  her 
some  favour,  put  on  all  the  airs  of  a  fine  lady, 
and  began  to  find  fault  with  the  horses. 
Blanchard  most  respectfully  a>sured  her  that 
they  were  the  finest  in  Paris,  and  to  prove  it, 
offered  to  drive  her  himself  to  Longchamps, 
if  she  would  allow  him.  The  lady  consented, 
and  when  they  reached  the  boulevards,  the 
horses  began  to  caper  at  such  a  rate,  that 
Blanchard  advised  Mademoiselle  Grandi, 
whose  nerves  were  delicate,  to  get  out  of  the 
carriage  until  he  had  quieted  them.  She 
fell  at  once  into  the  snare.  No  sooner  had 
her  foot  touched  the  ground,  than  Blanchard, 
laying  on  the  whip,  galloped  off  to  his  own 
stables,  and  left  the  lady  to  walk  houie  how 
she  could. 

Rarnponneau  is  the  name  of  a  tavernkeeper 
of  Paris,  who  in  the  year  seventeen  hundred 
and  sixty,  was,  the  talk  of  all  the  world,  on 
account  of  an  affair  in  which  Voltaire  amus- 
ingly interposed.  In  conformity  with  the 
Horatian  precept,  Ramponneau,  who  had 
been  very  successful  as  an  aubergiste,  was 
not  content  with  the  reputation  which  had 
made  him  so  popular  in  his  own  quarter  of 
the  town  that  the  women  wore  ribbons  called 
after  his  name,  but  desired  to  change  his 
profession  and  become  an  actor.  He  was  a 
fellow  who  by  his  jokes  and  grimaces,  and 
taverukeeper's  assurance,  was  wont  to  keep 
his  guests  in  a  roar  of  laughter.  Hearing 
a  good  deal  about  the  burlesque  actor  Vo- 
lauge,  who  at  that  time  entertained  the  town, 
he  fancied  he  had  talents  at  least  equal  to 
Volange's,  and  resolved  to  put  his  opinion  to 
the  proof.  On  the  Boulevard  of  the  Temple 
there  dwelt,  just  then,  a  certain  Master  Gau- 
don,  who  gave  a  kind  of  theatrical  represen- 
tation every  evening,  which  was  very  much 
in  vogue.  The  demand  for  "great  talent" 
was  then,  as  now,  an  object  which  managers 
of  all  degrees  were  anxious  to  meet ;  and 
Master  Gaudon  thought  he  could  make  no 
arrangement  more  profitable  than  that  of 
listening  to  a  proposal  made  to  him  by  the 
Sieur  Rampouneau  to  bring  him  out  as  the 
star  of  the  day.  They  accordingly  entered 
into  a  mutual  treaty,  Ramponneau  under- 
taking to  play  for  the  behoof  of  Master 
Gaudon,  who  was  to  advertise  his  appear- 
ance, cause  his  portrait  at  full  length  to  be 
displayed  outside  his  booth  or  place  of  repre- 
sentation, and  prepare  the  necessary  songs 
and  entertainments  during  an  engagement 
which  was  to  last  for  two  months  and  a  half, 
from  the  fourteenth  of  April  to  the  twenty- 
eighth  of  June.  For  the  services  of  Ram- 
pounean,  Master  Gaudon  stipulated  to  give 
four  hundred  livres,  half  of  which  was  to  be 
paid  a  week  after  his  appearance,  and  the 
other  half  at  the  end  of  five  weeks;  and  in 
addition  to  this  salary,  the  Sieur  Rampon- 
neau, in  consideration  of  the  vast  amount  of 
theatrical  ability  with  which  he  was  supposed 
to  be  endowed — was  to  share  the  profits  of 


Charles  Dickens. 


FRENCH  TAVERN  LIFE. 


[August  19,  18570      211 


the  enterprise.  On  his  part  Ramponneau 
agreed  to  appear  and  play  at  the  hours  fixed 
upou,  aud  a  forfeit  of  a  thousand  livres 
bound  each  to  the  contract.  If  Rarnpon- 
neau  had  possessed  the  genius  of  Robson 
he  could  scarcely  have  made  better  terms  ; 
and  Gaudon  felt  so  sure  of  the  great 
card  he  held  in  his  hand,  that  instead  of 
waiting  for  the  opening  week's  success,  he 
paid  the  first  two  hundred  livres  down,  and 
Rampouneau  laid  out  the  money  in  a  mag- 
nificent comic  wardrobe,  with  no  end  of 
figured  waistcoats  and  red-tailed  wigs.  As 
a  little  time  would  intervene  before  his  de- 
but  on  the  Boulevard  of  the  Temple,  Ram- 
ponueau  decided  on  making  an  experimental 
rehearsal  in  public  ;  for  that  purpose,  accom- 
panied by  a  citizen  friend,  named  Haget, 
who  swore  by  the  aubergiste,  he  set  off 
for  Versailles,  and  close  to  the  very  palace- 
gates  came  forward  to  seek  the  applause  he 
fully  reckoned  on.  But  never  was  man  more 
deceived.  As  a  tavern-keeper  his  sallies 
made  people  laugh  ;  as  a  comic  actor  he  was 
voted  execrable ;  he  was  hissed,  hooted,  all 
but  pelted  off  the  boards  ;  and,  shaking  the 
dust  of  Versailles  off  his  feet,  made  the 
best  of  his  way  back  to  Paris.  Everything 
was  in  readiness  for  his  appearance ;  but 
a  single  night  intervened,  and  during  that 
night  Ramponneau  took  counsel  with  himself 
as  to  his  future  proceedings.  It  seems  almost 
incredible  that  an  amateur  actor,  and  a 
Frenchman  to  boot,  should  have  entertained 
any  misgiving  as  to  his  success ;  but  such 
appears  to  have  been  the  case  with  our 
would-be  comedian,  and  he  took  his  resolu- 
tion accordingly.  On  the  following  morning 
Master  Gaudon  received  a  letter  from  the 
Sieur  Ramponneau.  It  was  delivered  to 
him  by  a  solemn  notary  attired  in  profes- 
sional black.  Gaudon  fancied  at  first  that 
some  exquisite  joke  was  intended  by  his 
facetious  friend ;  but  when  he  had  read 
Ramponneau's  letter,  he  found  there  was 
nothing  to  laugh  at.  The  comic  aubergiste 
declined  to  fulfil  his  engagement ;  it  was 
against  his  conscience  to  do  so ;  he  dreaded 
the  censures  which  the  Church  visited  upon 
comedians  and  all  that  class  of  people,  and 
had  resolved  to  renounce  a  profession,  the 
exercise  of  which  imperilled  his  hopes  of 
salvation, — with  a  great  deal  more  of  the 
same  kind,  all  formally  drawn  out  by  the 
pale-faced  notary  in  a  formal  "  acte  de  de- 
sistement,"  in  which,  however,  no  mention 
was  made  of  returning  the  two  hundred 
livres,  which  Ramponneau  had  pocketed. 
But  it  was  not  altogether  the  fear  of  failure 
that  had  led  to  this  rupture  of  the  tavern- 
keeper's  contract.  He  had  had  an  eye  to  his 
interest  in  the  matter,  having  privately  sold 
the  goodwill  of  his  guingette  to  a  man 
named  Martin,  for  fen  annuity  of  fifteen 
hundred  livres,  this  condition  being  attached 
to  the  sale — that  Ramponneau  should  remain 
for  a  time  in  the  exercise  of  hia  usual 


(comic)  function,  in  order  to  keep  up  the 
attraction  of  the  place.  Master  Gaudon,  of 
course,  was  furious,  when  this  intimation 
reached  him,  and  a  lawsuit  was  the  imme- 
diate consequence.  Besides,  the  lawyers  ou 
either  side,  a  third  party  took  up  the  quarrel. 
Tliis  individual  was  Voltaire,  to  whom  the 
whole  affair  appeared  full  of  fun,  and  he 
covered  it  accordingly  with  ridicule,  in  a 
small  pamphlet  in  which  he  ironically  de- 
fended Ramponneau,  and  gave  several  of  hia 
friends,  Jean  Jaques  among  the  rest,  some 
of  his  hardest  hits.  The  trial  which,  ac- 
cording to  Grimon,  was  the  great  event  of 
the  year,  ended  simply  in  a  decree  to  the 
effect  that  Ramponneau  should  pay  back  the 
money  he  had  received  from  Gaudon,  and  he 
returned  to  his  cabaret  with  a  vast  accession 
of  popularity. 

That  Ramponneau's  celebrity  has  not  been 
exaggerated,  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that 
one  of  the  barriers  near  Belleville  still  bears 
his  name,  though  that  of  La  Courtille  is  more 
popularly  applied  to  it.  In  our  own  day, — • 
and  it  may  even  still  exist — "  La  descente  de 
la  Courtille  "  was  the  place  for  strangers  to 
visit,  who  were  in  search  of  low  life  in  Paris  : 
the  night  of  Shrove  Tuesday  being  kept  up 
there  as  the  great  holiday  of  the  year.  In 
Ramponueau's  time,  the  guingettes  of  La 
Villette  and  Les  Porcherons,  along  the  same 
line  of  barriers,  were  aa  celebrated  as  his 
own,  and  have  also  been  immortalised  in 
verse, — the  Hudibrastic  verse  of  the  poet 
Vad6.  At  the  barrier  of  La  Rapee,  situated 
on  the  right  bank  of  the  Seine  above  the 
Bridge  of  Austerlitz,  was  a  tavern  of  a  more 
aristocratic  description  than  any  of  those 
last  mentioned,  and  in  connection  with  it  is 
told  the  following  story  : 

The  Duke  de  la  Vauguyou,  French  am- 
bassador in  Holland  in  the  time  of  Louis  XV., 
while  living  at  the  Hague  had  a  fancy  one 
day  to  go  with  a  party  to  Schevening  to  eat 
"  watervisch,"  the  equivalent  to  our  "  white- 
bait," though  not  to  be  confounded  with  it. 
Having  fixed  the  day,  engaged  a  room,  and 
ordered  an  ample  supply  of  the  famous 
ragout,  M.  de  le  Vauguyon  sent  his  cook  and 
other  servants  to  prepare  the  rest  of  the 
dinner,  so  that  the  tavern-keeper  at  Scheve- 
ning had  only  to  supply  the  fish  and  get 
ready  the  place  in  which  it  was  to  be  eaten. 
The  party  dined,  and  no  doubt  dined  well, 
and  the  Duke's  steward  called  for  the  bill. 
The  "  mauvais  quart  d'heure "  of  Rabelais 
(the  disagreable  moment  for  paying)  was 
never  more  fully  realised :  the  innkeeper 
handed  in  an  account  of  fifteen  hundred 
florins  (one  hundred  and  twenty  pounds). 
The  steward  was  at  his  wit's  end  and  showed 
it  to  his  master,  who  flew  into  a  furious 
passion  at  the  exorbitance  of  the  amount. 
The  host  was  sent  for,  but  in  reply  to  the 
Duke's  remonstrances  the  phlegmatic  Dutch- 
man merely  said,  "  That  was  his  charge  !  " 
M.  de  la  Vauguyon  immediately  despatched 


212        [AuRiut  20,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  tjr 


a  messenger  to  the  resident  magistrate, 
•whose  first  question  was,  whether  the  Ani- 
h:>ssa<lor  hail  come  to  any  xmderstanding 
beforehand  1  The  Duke  said  he  had  not. 
The  magistrate  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that 
the  bill  was  a  great  deal  too  much,  but  the 
host  returned  that  he  had  a  right  to  charge 
what  he  pleased,  and  this  being  the  law  in 
Holland,  in  cases  where  no  previous  stipu- 
lation is  made,  the  Duke  was  cast.  He 
•would  not  give  in,  however,  until  he  had 
appealed  to  the  Dutch  government,  but  their 
High  Mightinesses  sided  with  the  inn-keeper, 
and  M.  de  ia  Vauguyon  was  obliged  to  pay 
the  bill.  He  thereupon  made  a  representa- 
tion to  his  own  government,  who  "  made  a 
note  of  it."  Some  time  afterwards,  the 
Dutch  ambassador  in  Paris,  proposed  to 
some  frieuds  to  give  them  a  dinner  at  La 
Eapoe — where  the  eels  were  famous — and,  as 
was  the  recognised  custom  then,  supplied 
the  remainder  of  the  banquet  himself,  with 
cook  and  servants,  as  M.  de  la  Vauguyon 
had  done  at  Scheveniug  :  forgetting  like  him 
to  make  a  bargain.  Of  course,  the  same 
thing  happened  with  respect  to  this  bill :  it 
came  to  exactly  three  thousand  francs  (an 
hundred  and  twenty  pounds).  Although  a 
Dutchman.  M.  de  Berkenroode  got  into  a 
rage,  stormed  at  the  host,  and  stormed  in 
vain  ;  he  was  told  that  an  arbitrary  charge 
was,  under  certain  circumstances,  the  law  in 
France.  The  Ambassador  cooled  down  in 
a  moment  :  he  recollected  the  affair  of 
Schevening,  on  which  he  had  formerly 
made  merry  :  and  turning  round  observed 
to  one  of  his  friends,  "  I  understand  I  must 
pay  for  the  'watervisch'  of  Monsieur  de  la 
Vauguyon ! " 

It  was  a  curious  feature  in  the  manners  of 
the  French  a  century  ago,  how  much,  with  all 
their  pride,  the  people  of  rank  frequented  the 
same  places  of  amusement  as  the  lower 
orders.  Even  the  ladies  visited  the  guin- 
gettes.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  par- 
ties of  this  kind  that  has  been  recorded, 
is  that  which  was  made  at  a  cabaret  at 
Chaillot,  called  La  Maison  Eouge  (The 
Heel  House),  where  were  assembled  half-a- 
dozen  of  the  greatest  beauties  and  strong- 
minded  women,  disciples  of  the  new  philo- 
sophy. Their  names  were,  Madame  de  Bou- 
fflers,  Madame  du  Chatelet,  Madame  de  la 
Popeliuiere,  and  the  Marchionesses  de  Mailly, 
de  Gouvernet  and  Dudeffant.  The  Memoirs 
of  Longchamps,  who  had  at  that  time  just 
entered  the  service  of  Madame  du  Chatelet, 
give  one  strange  ideas  of  the  notions  of  pro- 
priety which  these  ladies  must  have  enter- 
tained. His  description  need  not  be  quoted 
in  detail,  but  when  he  tells  us  that  they 
treated  their  male-servants  as  if  they  had 
been  mere  automata,  the  freedom  of  their 
manners  may  be  imagined.  "  I  am  sure," 
he  says,  "  that  my  individuality  was  of  no 
more  account  in  their  eyes  than  the  kettle 
which  I  held  in  my  hand."  And  he  adds  : 


"They  must  have  amused  themselves  at  a 
great  rate,  for  we  heard  them  laughing  and 
singing  all  the  night  ;  indeed,  they  did  not 
leave  the  cabaret  till  five  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing." Nice  ladies,  and  nice  times  !  Was  it 
wonderful  that  there  should  have  been  a 
revolution  ! 

The  last  cabaret  of  which  I  have  to 
speak  is,  that  which  has  been  emphati- 
cally called  "  Le  dernier  Cabaret."  It  was 
kept  by  La  More  Saguet,  the  "  Madame 
Gregoire"  of  one  of  Btkanger's  songs,  and 
served  as  the  literary  and  artistic  focus  for 
the  generation  now  fast  disappearing.  It 
was  established  in  the  year  seventeen  hun- 
dred and  eighty-four,  in  the  Rue  du  Mou 
lin-de  Beurre,  close  to  the  barrier  du  Maine, 
on  the  south  side  of  Pai-is.  Its  celebrity 
began  under  the  Empire,  but  its  culminating 
fame  was  under  the  Restoration,  when  the 
sculptor  David,  the  poet  Victor  Hugo,  the 
painter  Deveria,  the  journalist  Thien-;,  the 
novelist  Dumas,  the  politician  Armand  Carre], 
and  a  list  of  artists  and  men  of  letters,  includ- 
ing Charlet,  Romieu,  Tony  Johaunot,  Reffet, 
Gavarui,  and  Fontan,  were  its  habitual  fre- 
quenters. There  was  one  odd  fellow  among 
them,  a  hard-drinking  sign-painter,  who 
chiefly  evinced  his  talents  in  painting 
bunches  of  grapes  over  the  doors  of  the 
wine-sellers  of  Paris  and  the  suburbs.  It 
was  he  who  had  decorated  the  cabaret  of  the 
Mere  Saguet,  both  within  and  without,  and 
there  his  gay  companions  received  the  news 
of  his  death  from  the  lips  of  the  caricaturist 
Charlet.  It  was  a  cruel  moment  for  the 
jovial  crew,  but  they  paid  the  poor  sign- 
painter  the  only  honour  they  had  it  in  their 
power  to  offer  ;  they  clubbed  verses  for  his 
epitaph,  the  greatest  number  of  rhymes  being 
furnished  by  Victor  Hugo.  That  the  strain 
in  which  they  were  written  was  not  a  very 
sad  one  may  be  supposed,  if  the  opening  lines 
be  taken  as  a  sample.  They  ran  thus  : 

"  Tu  nous  as  fait  trop  rirc  dans  la  vie, 
Pour  qu"  a  la  mort  on  pense  b,  la  pleurer." 

(You  have  made  us  laugh  too  much  in  your 
life-time  to  allow  us  to  .  think  of  weeping  at 
death).  Couplet  after  couplet  was  added 
until  the  funeral  hymn  was  completed  ;  it 
was  then  set  to  music  on  the  spot,  and  the 
illustrious  Collinet  accompanied  the  air  on 
his  flute. 

But  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty 
came,  dispersing  the  boon  companions  to 
find  their  places  in  the  world — most  of  them 
high  ones — and  la  Mere  Saguet  no  longer 
taking  a  pride  in  her  cabaret  relinquished  it 
to  the  Sieur  Bourdon,  and  withdrew  to  a 
small  pavilion  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden 
where,  only  three  years  ago,  she  was  still 
living,  a  hale  old  woman,  who  every  year,  on 
her  birthday,  returned  to  the  cabaret,  took 
her  place  behind  the  counter,  looked  after 
the  cooking,  and  stirred  the  pot  ("  remuait 
la  castrolle,"  so  she  called  it),  with  all  the 


Charles  nickens.J 


THE  DATCHLEY  PHILHAEMONIC. 


[August  29,  1857.]      213 


vigour  of  her  youthful  days.  Cabarets 
aboiiud  all  over  France,  but  la  MSre  Saguet 
is  the  last  of  her  race. 


THE  DATCHLEY  PHILHAEMONIC. 


I  AM  of  opinion  that  an  impartial  narrative 
of  our  Datchley  Philharmonic  Union,  traced 
conscientiously  from  its  original  inception  in 
the  early  part  of  the  year  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty  blank,  to  its  final  extinction  in  the 
autumn  of  that  same  year,  would  form  an 
humble,  but  interesting  page  in  the  great 
history  of  the  musical  human  family.  I, 
myself,  have  peculiar  facilities  for  this  task, 
having  in  a  manner  stood  by  its  cradle  and 
followed  its  hearse.  Perhaps  I  may  add, 
modestly,  that  I  paid  my  share  towards  the 
expenses  of  these  obsequies,  the  concern 
being,  so  to  speak,  insolvent  at  the  period  of 
its  collapse. 

It  was  at  Tritouville,  at  a  select  party 
of  Mrs.  Lightbody's,  that  the  idea  originated. 
Beluiore  Jones  was  the  immediate  originator; 
and  I,  with  the  two  Miss  Withers,  and  Wee- 
sond  (who  blew  a  little  on  the  cornet),  seized 
on  the  project  greedily  and  worked  it 
promptly  into  shape.  No  doubt  the  rap- 
turous applause  accorded  to  the  two-part 
song  for  equal  voices,  so  sweetly  rendered  by 
the  Misses  Withers,  had  put  Belmore  Jones 
upon  the  notion.  No  less  satisfactory  had 
been  his  own  performance  in  the  early  por- 
tion of  the  evening,  giving  his  famous  bass 
song  with  singular  force  and  effect.  The 
well-known  Orphean  quartett,  in  which  we 
had  obtained  quite  a  provincial  reputation, 
had  also  formed  part  of  the  evening's  en- 
tertainment :  the  components  thereof  (the 
Misses  Lightbody,  Belmore  Jones,  and  my- 
self— tenor)  falling  in,  regimentally,  in  front 
of  the  piano,  had  been  delighting  the  com- 
pany with  miracles  of  sound,  full  of  strange 
and  pleasing  contrasts.  At  one  moment, 
our  voices  were  lulled  to  the  very  faintest 
whisper,  sending  abroad  doubts  as  to  whether 
the  chaunt  was  not  now  prematurely  con- 
cluded ;  at  the  next,  bursting  with  startling 
effect  into  proclamation  respecting  the 
Hun-ter  on  the  Alpin'  Heighths  !  From 
rock  to  rock  He  gaily  Boundeth — gaily 
Boundeth  !  Indeed  the  Manner-Gesung- 
Verein,  from  Cologne,  were  held  by  a  com- 
petent judge,  who  had  been  lately  up  in 
London,  to  sing  very  much  after  our  manner. 

"  I  can  assure  you,  Jones,  when  I  heard 
those  Cologne  men  last  year,  the  Ma'nner- 
Gesang-Verein,  you  know,  give  that  very 
Jager-Lied ;  I  thought  it  a  coarse  perfor- 
mance— a  very  coarse  performance." 

Jones  was  excited  by  the  triumphs  of  the 
evening.  "  Suppose," "said  he,  panting  with 
eagerness.  "Suppose,  we  form  a  society, 
and  give  concerts  in  the  Assembly  Rooms, 
and  issue  complimentary  tickets  !  " 

It  was  a  vast  conception,  and  we  stood 
looking  at  each  other  for  some  moments, 


without  venturing  to  speak.  It  was  opening 
up  a  new  vein,  as  yet  undreamt  of.  We  had, 
in  a  manner,  sung  out  our  whole  circle  of 
friends,  and  were  secretly  craving  for  a  move 
expanded  sphere.  It  was  welcomed,  there- 
fore, with  enthusiasm.  Miss  Bandoline,  who 
was  held  to  have  an  unrivalled  soprano- 
voice  and  Mrs.  Lightbody's  eldest,  was  in 
raptures,  as  was  Mrs.  Lightbody,  herself. 
All  she  stipulated  foi*,  Mrs.  Lightbody  said, 
was,  "  that  it  should  be  select." 

We  became  then  resolved  into  a  committee 
of  the  entire  party :  Belmore  Jones  on  the- 
piano-stool,  and  a  number  of  hasty  resolutions- 
were  passed,  the  essence  of  which  was,  that 
there  should  be  as  many  concerts  as  possible, 
and  that  everybody  should  have  opportunity 
for  displaying  his  or  her  peculiar  gift.  The 
exclusion  of  all  professionals  was  sternly 
pressed  by  Mrs.  Ligbfcbody,  saving  always 
Mendelssohn  Jackson,  local  organist  and 
director  of  the  well-known  Guild  Band  of 
the  place.  He  would  be  indispensable  for 
moulding  into  shape,  the  harmonious  raw- 
material  ;  and  so  was  taken  in,  under  pro- 
test. At  an  adjourned  meeting,  held  the 
following  day,  the  capabilities  of  this  raw 
material  were  looked  more  into,  and  classi- 
fied :  Mendelssohn  Jackson  being  in  attend- 
ance on  the  occasion.  There  was  Miss  Bando- 
line, first  woman  and  leading  soprano,  beyond 
dispute,  having  but  newly  come  from  the- 
hands  of  Polonio,  the  eminent  lady's  teacher, 
and  bon  ton  composer.  It  was  marvellous 
to  hear  her  taking  that  C  in  alt — swooping 
at  it  gymnastically,  with  visible  mus- 
cular action  and  swelling  of  veins.  It  was 
whispered  mysteriously,  that  it  had  been 
manufactured,  by  the  ingenious  Polonio,  he 
having  with  infinite  pains  so  worked  on  the 
delicate  organs  in  the  regions  about  the 
thorax,  as  to  bring  about  this  remarkable 
result.  It  must  be  admitted,  certainly,  that 
the  note,  so  eliminated,  was  of  thin  and  wiry 
texture ;  perhaps  owing  to  the  physical  con- 
figuration of  Miss  Bandoline's  person,  which 
was  of  the  same  character.  Still,  had  not 
Polonio  decreed  her  organ  to  have  been  of 
the  character  known  as  the  Veiled  Voice,  or 
Voix  Voil6"e,  as  the  French  have  it — which 
quite  explained  it  ?  There  was  Miss  Bando- 
line's sister — contralto — who  was  held  to  put 
in  a  sweet  second  in  Polouio's  own  admired 
duets,  dedicated  each  to  a  noble  pupil  of 
Polonio's  in  London.  There  was  Belmore 
Jones's  basso  profondo,  which  seemed  to 
issue  from  many  miles  below  the  surface  of 
the  earth.  The  lowest  note  on  his  register 
was  famous  in  the  parish,  it  being  reported 
to  make  the  windows  vibrate  like  the  pedal- 
pipes  of  an  organ. 

Looking,  however,  to  the  instrumental 
department,  it  was  truly  cheering  to  see- 
what  abundant  promise  was  held  out  to  us 
from  all  quarters.  It  came  to  be  a  positive 
embarrassment  of  riches.  Locock,  in  the  hand- 
somest manner,  came  to  lay  his  cornet,  Sax- 


214       [August  S9,  1967.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


horn  and  other  brass  ordnance  at  our  feet,  he 
being  indifferently  skilled  in  each.  The  Re- 
verend Alfred  Hoblush,as  it  fell  out, could  do  a 
little  on  the  violoncello,  as  could  his  excellent 
vicar  upon  the  violin.  Only  age  had  im- 
parted a  sort  of  quaveriness  to  the  reverend 
incumbent's  tone,  which  was  discovered  too 
late  to  admit  of  his  exclusion.  There  were 
•whispers  too  of  a  contra-basso  or  double 
bass,  lying  cast  away  in  some  upper  chamber, 
which  awful  engine  Mendelssohn  Jackson 
promised  to  have  looked  up  speedily,  and 
brought  down  from  its  dust.  Lastly  there 
were  a  few  floating  elements  of  music,  up  and 
down  the  neighbourhood, —  mild  men  who 
had  had  to  do  with  flutes  in  early  life — 
one  or  two  who  were  familiar  with  brass 
instruments,  Sax  and  poly-twist,  who  only 
needed  bringing  together,  to  form  a  very 
available  and  respectable  force. 

Finally  it  was  agreed  that  the  various 
great  works  intended  for  representation 
should  be  put  in  rehearsal  without  delay. 

There  was  extraordinary  excitement  in 
the  town  when  it  became  known  that  the 
Philharmonic  Union  was  an  accomplished 
fact.  Quite  a  crowd  followed  the  Reverend 
Hoblush's  violoncello-case,  as  it  was  borne 
through  the  street  on  men's  shoulders.  But, 
curious  to  say,  there  was  a  strange  apathy 
abroad  with  regard  to  the  subscription.  The 
shares  were  dull  in  the  market,  thoxigh 
Jones  went  about  diligently ;  whispering, 
puffing,  stimulating,  and  otherwise  rigging 
the  market.  The  constitution  of  the  society 
had  therefore  to  be  modified ;  it  being  thought 
better  that  members  alone  should  have  the 
privilege  of  subscribing,  and  introducing 
friends  on  principles  of  love  and  favour, 
which  happy  ordinance  at  once  set  the  insti- 
tution rig  lit  with  the  public.  Then  the 
business  of  rehearsal  began. 

Properly  speaking,  there  was  a  rehearsa' 
en  permanence  at  Mrs.  Lightbody's.  In  the 
halls  of  Tritonville  was  perpetual  concert 
and  the  hunter  bounded  from  rock  to  rock 
eternally.  Locock's  unwearing  manipulation 
of  his  instrument  became  a  nuisance,  crying 
aloud  to  Heaven,  and  it  was  whispered  in 
dissenting  circles, — not  without  a  certain 
gri'a  satisfaction, — that  the  Reverend  Hob- 
lu.-h  was  being  led  away  carnally,  to  the  cer- 
tain imperilment  of  his  soul  and  great  scanda 
of  his  parish. 

Against  the  day  of  assembling  for  firsl 
rehearsal,  a  very  important  auxiliary  was 
known  to  have  arrived  at  Tritonville  ;  to  have 
come  down  specially  for  the  great  festival, 
it  was  confidently  stated.  There  was  a  sort 
of  awful  respect  attendant  on  the  name  of 
Mrs.  Grey  Malkyn,  own  aunt  to  Miss  Jxui- 
doline,  and  trained  under  the  late  Mr.  Bra- 
ham.  She  had  heard  that  incomparable  ai'ti.st 
interpret  My  Dog  and  my  Gun,  in  the 
cheerful  trolling  style  so  much  esteemed  in 
that  age  ;  also  the  lusty,  vein-distending 
reading  of  the  death  of  Nelson,  when  England 


was  brought  to  confess  that  every  man  that 
lay  had  done  his  duty.  She  had,  as  it  were,  sat 
under  the  great  master  at  the  Theatre  Royal 
Dovent  Garden,  where  he,  together  with 
matchless  Mistress  Mattocks,  oft  chanted 
through  Love  in  a  Village,  and  other  divert- 
ing pieces.  With  such  pleasing  memories,  it 
was  only  natural  that  Mrs.  G.  Malkyn  should 
be  always  struggling  for  the  restoration  of 
that  defunct  but  famous  style — hopelessly,  it 
would  seem. 

Never  shall  I  forget  those  earlier  meetings 
after  Mrs.  G.  Malkyn's  arrival — days  of 
storm  and  contention,  on  which  the  whole 
project  had  well  nigh  made  shipwreck.  For, 
it  unhappily  fell  out  that  Jones  also  had 
strong  musical  tradition  to  hold  by,  and 
when  great  farmers  of  musical  talent  brought 
round  the  provinces  their  troupe  of  singing 
birds,  set  free  from  gilded  cages  at  Hay- 
market  and  Lyceum,  he  contrived  to  establish 
relations  with  conductors  and  such  folk,  being 
made  free  of  the  little  chamber  behind  the 
concert-room,  and  occasionally  introduced  to 
the  singing  birds  themselves.  Therefore  did 
Jones  incline  to  the  modern  romantic  school, 
and  was  for  a  step  in  the  Verdi  direction. 
In  short,  nothing  less  than  a  revival  in  its 
entirety  of  the  famous  Troubadour  of  that 
master.  But  Mrs.  G.  Malkyn  was  in  strong 
dissent,  holding  that  nothing  could  approach 
the  florid  beauties  of  such  old-established 
favourites  as  Norma,  the  Druid  priestess  and 
her  sisters,  and  being  a  person  of  much  con- 
sideration, and  having  funded  and  other 
moneys,  it  was  resolved  to  bring  out  the 
injured  priestess,  who  was  put  in  rehearsal 
without  delay.  O,  those  rehearsals !  Who 
shall  realise  to  himself  the  incredible  change 
they  wrought  in  that  circle,  once  so  full  of 
peace  and  goodwill.  It  was  astonishing  the 
heat  and  temper  they  stirred  up  in  the  breasts 
of  gentle-minded  and  inoffensive  beings. 
There  was  a  fierce  and  contentious  spirit 
abroad  during  those  few  hours,  enough  to 
scandalise  any  impartial  Christian  that  might 
chance  to  be  present.  Thus,  Miss  Bandoline, 
whom  I  had  always  held  to  be  about  as 
sweet-tempered  a  girl  as  had  ever  come  in 
my  way,  became  of  a  sudden  filled  with  fury, 
and  turned  quite  red  in  the  face,  if  her  air 
was  taken  too  slow  or  too  fast,  or  otherwise 
improperly  treated.  Even  the  Reverend 
Hoblush  would,  at  times,  so  far  cast  off  his 
sacred  character  as  to  stamp  upon  the  ground 
and  brandish  his  bow  fiercely  in  the  air. 
His  cravat  was  observed  to  get  loose  and  his 
collar  to  open,  in  the  excitement  of  the 
moment.  But  the  most  painful  part  of  the 
whole  was  when  the  two  leaders — as  Mrs. 
Grey  Malkyn  and  Jones  might  fairly  be 
styled — came  in  hostile  collision.  They  were 
to  be  seen  stationed,  one  on  either  side  of  poor 
Jackson — mildest  of  created  beings — and 
over  his  person  were  their  battles  fought.  In 
the  midst  of  the  deafening  m61ee,  Druid 
priests,  next  the  window,  hoarsely  shouting 


Charles  Dietens-] 


THE  DATCHLEY  PHILHARMONIC. 


[August  29,  1857.]       215 


for  their  victim,  with  craven  Pollio  straining 
his  larynx  to  top  the  horrid  din,  all  would  be 
brought  up  suddenly  by  harsh  and  repeated 
strokes  of  a  ruler  on  the  piano. 

"  Stop,  stop,  stop  ! "  Mrs.  Malkyn  would 
be  heard  to  exclaim.  "  Mr.  Jackson,  be  so 
good  as  to  take  that  passage  just  one-third  as 
slow  again.  See,  thus  :  one — two — three!" 

To  her  Jones,  bridling  with  secret  rage  and 
mortification. 

"Pardon  me,  Mrs.  Malkyn,  but  I  took 
especial  pains  with  Jackson  about  that  very 
passage — it  is  the  way  they  do  it  in  London." 

"I  have  heard  Pasta,"  ripostes  Mrs.  Mal- 
kyn, taking  off  her  spectacles,  and  clearing 
away  for  action,  "  and  Malibran,  and  Grisi, 
and  not  one  of  them — no,  not  one  of  them — 
ever  took  it  that  way." 

"Costa  does,"  says  Belmore  Jones,  with 
ashy  lips. 

"  Never ! "  says  Mrs.  Malkyn,  trembling  ; 
"  would  you  turn  it  into  a  jig  ?" 

"  Or  make  it  a  slow  march  ? "  says  Jones, 
tauntingly. 

At  this  stage,  the  Druids  and  others  desi- 
rous of  peace  would  interpose,  and,  under  cover 
of  a  hurly-burly  of  "  Go  on  !  Never  mind  ! " 
bewildered  Jackson,  who  was  by  nature  a 
trimmer,  would  start  with  a  sort  of  neutral 
tempo.  And  so  the  difficulty  would  be  got  over. 

Sometimes,  I  grieve  to  say,  Jones  utterly 
forgot  himself,  and  being  drunk,  as  it  were, 
with  the  fumes  of  music,  would  utter  lan- 
guage disrespectful  to  Mrs.  Malkyn.  At 
which  outrage  the  injured  lady  would  retire 
to  a  remote  sofa,  and  there  and  then  beg  to 
be  relieved  of  all  further  responsibility  in  the 
concern.  They  could  do  very  well  without 
her,  she  saw  ;  there  were  wiser  heads  than 
hers  to  direct  them.  At  which  prospect  of 
being  utterly  stranded,  and  abandoned  to 
their  own  devices,  the  whole  company  would 
be  aghast.  Horrid  visions  of  the  funded 
moneys,  now  diverted  to  charitable  and  other 
uses,  began  to  loom  upon  the  Lightbody 
family ;  and  Miss  Bandoline,  with  her 
priestesses,  would  gather  distractedly  round 
the  remote  sofa,  and  offer  such  gentle  allevia- 
tion as  was  in  their  power.  At  last,  the 
pupil  of  the  great  Braham  would  give  way, 
and  suffer  herself  to  be  led  again  to  the 
instrument,  and  Mendelssohn  Jackson  took 
up  once  more  the  suspended  strain. 

The  great  day  drew  gradually  near.  The 
demand  for  tickets, — under  the  new  system  ! 
— grew  up  to  an  amazing  height ;  and  the 
committee,  sitting  daily  at  Triton ville,  found 
themselves  whelmed  in  a  heavy,  but  not  un- 
pleasing  press  of  business.  The  difficulty 
was,  said  the  Reverend  Hoblush,  where  you 
were  to  draw  the  line, — outside  the  general 
practitioner's  wife,  whose  social  status  was 
unhappily  not  so  clearly  denned ;  while 
his  licensed  brother,  with  letters  of  marque 
from  St.  Andrew's,  was  to  be  privileged  to 
deposit  his  vulgar  person  upon  one  of  our 
reserved  seats  without  stop  or  hindrance  ? 


Such  questions  were  of  grave  moment,  and,  I 
believe,  caused  Mrs.  Lightbody  many  a 
sleepless  night. 

At  length  the  great  day,  long  expected  and 
desired,  had  come  round.  Belmore  Jones, 
and  others,  had  spent  it  journeying  inces- 
santly between  Mrs.  Lightbody's  and  the 
rooms.  There  was  a  wild  excitement  about 
his  movements  that  made  it  hazardous  to 
cross,  or  otherwise  interfere  with  him.  West- 
minster Abbey  or  a  peerage,  he  was  heard 
to  mutter  to  himself  many  times, — uncon- 
sciously identifying  himself  with  one  of 
England's  greatest  heroes.  It  was  often  told 
afterwards  how  the  Reverend  Hoblush  had 
hurried  through  certain  christening  cere- 
monials that  came  thickly  on  him  that 
morning,  despatching  them  with  haste  and 
manifest  impatience.  How,  too,  he  had  cast 
from  him  his  surplice,  and  has  hurried  away 
with  the  rest  in  the  direction  of  the  rooms. 
Half  the  town  were  looking  on  at  the  prepa- 
rations. The  whole  of  that  day  there  was 
a  stream  of  chairs,  and  upholstery,  directed 
on  the  concerts  ;  and  men,  with  hammers 
and  baize  aprons,  were  known  to  have  been 
at  work  up  to  a  late  hour. 

At  precisely  half-past  seven  o'clock  the 
doors  were  thrown  open,  and  almost  imme- 
diately, the  company  began  to  pour  in.  They 
were  marshalled  and  conducted  to  convenient 
sittings  by  the  stewards,  who  might  be 
styled,  not  improperly,  the  great  Institution 
of  the  night.  Everybody  was  a  steward, 
and  bore  a  white  wand.  I  was  a  steward  ; 
Belmore  Jones  was  a  steward  ;  the  Reverend 
Hoblush  was  a  steward,  and  bore  a  white 
wand.  Even  the  bulk  of  singing  and  play- 
ing-men,  found  decent  excuse  to  slip  down, 
and  fill  for  a  short  span  the  duties  of  that 
office.  It  was  a  sight  to  see  us  stand- 
ing at  intervals,  leaning  on  our  staves, 
used  much  after  the  manner  of  Spanish 
piccadores,  inflaming  remote  and  choleric 
gentlemen  by  repeated  lunges  in  the  regions 
of  the  breast,  I  have  my  suspicions  that 
the  stewards  must  have  been  found  an  out- 
speaking nuisance,  that  night — their  deport- 
ment being  in  many  instances  tyrannical. 
As  each  lady  and  gentleman  passed  the 
threshold,  a  courteous  steward,  specially 
selected  for  his  insinuating  manners,  stepped 
forward  with  a  programme  containing  the 
events  of  the  night.  A  copy  still  remains  to 
me  of  which  the  following  is  a  faithful 
transcript : 

DATCHLEY 
AMATEUR   PHILHARMONIC    UNION. 

UNDER   DISTINGUISHED    PATRONAGE. 

Parte  Prima. 

Overture Full  Orchestra. 

Scotch  Ballad,  "  Cam'  hame  wi'  the  "1     Miss  Bando- 

Kail "  .         .         .        J  line  Lightbody. 

Solo,  Violoncello.     Reverend  Alfred  1  Mendelssohn 

Hoblush  .         .        J      Jackson. 

Orphean    Quartette,  "  The    Alpine  "1 

Hunter " .        .        .         . 


216 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[August  29, 18o7.] 


Voluntary,  Piano-Forte  .     Mr.  Men-  ~[  Mendelssohn 
(lolssolm  Jarkson         .          .        J      Jackson. 

Grand  Aria,  "  Tc-nibiK1."     Mr.  Bel-  t  p      ,  j 
more  Jones        .          .  J 

Symphony,  compressed  and  adapted  \  Mendelssohn 
by     .          .         .         .  J     Jackson. 

(An  interval  of  ten  minutes). 


Parte  Seconda. 


1  Mendelssohn 

>     T    , 

J     Jackson. 


Trio.  Saxe-IIorns       .         . 

MSS.  Ballad,  "  My  heart,  my  heart  is 

breaking!"  Miss  B.  Lightbody  .  J 
Orplican  Quartetto,  "  Sing  tra  la  la!  " 
Grand   Sccna,   "Ah,  Perche  !  "   (by  "1  Mrs.  Grey 

desire)  J    Malkyn. 

Selections  from  the  grand  opera  of  "  Nornia." 

One  thing  strikes  me  as  I  look  fondly  over 
this  memorial,  and  that  is  the  singularly  fre- 
quent recurrence  of  the  name  of  Mendelssohn 
Jackson.  The  works  of  that  master  seemed 
to  constitute  the  chief  aliment  of  the  evening, 
no  doubt  owing  to  the  natural  popularity  of 
local  talent.  When  he  was  seen  to  come  for- 
ward to  his  desk,  baton  in  hand  and  all  be- 
gloved,  there  was  a  very  gratifying  display  of 
local  feeling  —  acknowledged  by  the  maestro 
gracefully  —  and  the  overture  set  in.  And 
here,  at  the  outset,  I  had  sore  misgivings 
that  the  whole  thing  was  about  to  break 
down  prematurely,  and  go  to  pieces  at  once. 
From  the  very  post,  as  it  were,  there  came 
of  a  sudden  an  alarming  thinness  in  the  in- 
strumentation —  the  violin  apparently  bearing 
the  whole  burden  of  the  piece.  This,  I  was 
afterwards  informed,  was  owing  to  the  vari- 
ous players  having  lost  their  places  through 
nervousness  or  other  cause.  I  saw  Mendels- 
sohn Jackson  become  of  an  ashy  paleness, 
but  still  holding  on,  without  faltering,  to  his 
beat,  making  believe,  with  sickness  in  his 
heart,  as  though  all  were  going  well,  until 
the  Reverend  Hoblush,  who  had  been  ram- 
bling up  and  down  his  music  distractedly, 
struck  in  desperately  to  the  rescue,  and  re- 
stored the  day.  Rome  was  saved. 

Miss  Bandoline's  song,  which  came  next, 
was  beautiful.  Elderly  gentlemen  were  ob- 
served beating  their  fingers  rhythmically  to 
the  soft  burden,  Cam'  ham'  wi'  the  kail, 
which  recurred  deliciously  at  each  verse. 
Long  will  that  hymn  be  chanted  of  winter 
nights  in  Datchley  homesteads  —  mothers 
voicing  it  softly  to  their  infants  by  the  fire- 
light. It  was,  of  course,  re-demanded  franti- 
cally —  florid,  elderly  gentlemen  giving  strong 
signs  of  adhesion.  Jones's  Terribile,  intro- 
ducing the  well-known  E  flat,  was  an  awfully 
impressive  performance. 

The  trio  for  Sax-horns  left  a  horrible  feel- 
ing on  the  mind,  as  though  we  had  been 
hearkening  to  the  cries  of  souls  in  agony  —  of 
men  being  broke  upon  the  wheel.  There  was 
a  tinny  mail-coach  quality  about  their  tones, 
with  now  and  again  strange  sounds,  as  of 


braying,  very  distressing.  But  there  was  that 
in  store  which  Avas  to  make  up  for  all  short 
comings. 

It  had  been  kept  a  profound  secret,  and 
only  suffered  to  leak  out — designedly — within 
the  last  twenty-four  hours,  that  Mrs.  Grey 
Malkyn  had  been  induced  to  come  before  the 
public,  and  give  a  faint  reflex  of  the  late  in- 
comparable Mr.  Braham's  manner.  Inde- 
scribable, therefore,  was  the  excitement  when, 
at  this  particular  juncture,  Mrs.  Grey  Mal- 
kyn, in  rich  black  velvet  and  bugles,  was 
seen  to  step  forward  from  a  front  row,  and 
to  be  assisted  on  to  the  platform  by  two 
stewards  with  wands. 

People  in  the  back  rows  stood  up,  stretch- 
ing forward  eagerly  to  catch  a  view  of  the 
famous  lady  who  had  sat  at  the  feet  of  the 
departed  Braham.  Greater  still  was  the  sen- 
sation when,  as  Mendelssohn  Jackson  allowed 
his  fingers  to  wander  carelessly  over  the  keys 
by  way  of  preludio,  she  gathered  herself  up 
in  all  her  strength  and  beauty,  looking  round 
on  the  company  assembled  with  infinite  graue 
and  composure. 

When  perfect  stillness  had  been  restored, 
it  became  xinderstood — from  a  certain  thril- 
ling sound  heard,  as  it  were,  afar  off,  beyond 
the  area  of  the  concert-room  —  that  Mrs. 
Malkyn  was  already  on  the  first  note  of  her 
air.  Men  looked  at  each  other  and  at  the 
ceiling,  in  astonishment.  What  did  it  mean  ? 
This  was  Mr.  Braham's  happy  method  of 
surprise  ;  for  she  was  elaborating  that  note 
in  a  fashion  truly  marvellous — making  capital, 
as  it  were,  of  it ;  now  swelling  on  it,  now 
letting  it  subside,  now  swelling  on  it  again, 
now  imparting  to  it  a  fluttering  motion. 
The  slow  movement  was  lengthened  out  with 
infinite  skill.  The  quicker  portion  led  off  in 
the  old  roysteriug  Trafalgar's  Bay  manner. 
Altogether,  it  was  a  fine  reading.  At  its 
close  tumultuous  applause,  and  a  bouquet 
observed  to  wing  its  flight  from  the  centre  of 
the  house.  Re-demanded,  of  course. 

That  was    the  pearl  and  flower   of  our 

concerts.     There  were    others ;   but  it   was 

to  that  opening-night  we  looked  back  with 

fond  and  reverential  feelings.     Afterwards, 

I    grieve    to    say,    a    sort    of    indifference 

sprang  up  in  the  public  mind,  which  did  not 

encourage    us    to    pursue    the   experiment. 

In    course    of    time,    Belmore    Jones    was 

drafted  away  to  London,  which  blow  may  be 

said  to  have  extinguished  the  society.     And 

though  we  brought  down  Mrs.  G.  Malkyn 

once  more — feeling  that  there  was  much  in 

the  prestige  of  her  name — yet,  the  attend- 

!  ance   was  so    scant,   the   public  apathy   so 

1  marked,  to  say  nothing  of  the  heavy  charges 

!  for  hire  of  rooms,  lighting,  and  the  like,  that 

!  we   saw  at  once  it  was  no  use  casting  our 

pearls  before the  ungracious  word  had 

best  be  left  unspoken. 


Tfie  Riylit  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


PuMUhed  «t  the  Office.  No.  16.  Wellington  Street  Nortb.Strand.   Printed  by  BBIBBOKT  &  KVAH«,  Whltefriars,  London. 


Familiar  m  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS."— 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A   WEEKLY   JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


-  389.] 


SATURDAY,  SEPTEMBER  5,  1857. 


(  PRICI 
(  STA.M 


FED  3d. 


A  JOURNEY  IN  SEARCH  OF 
NOTHING. 

NOTE  THE  FIRST.      TRYING  FOR  QUIET. 

"  YES,"  said  the  doctor,  pressing  the  tips  of 
his  fingers  with  a  tremulous  firmness  on 
my  pulse,  and  looking  straight  forward  into 
the  pupils  of  my  eyes,  "  yes,  I  see :  the 
symptoms  all  point  unmistakably  towards 
one  conclusion — Brain.  My  dear  sir,  you  have 
been  working  too  hard  ;  you  have  been  fol- 
lowing the  dangerous  example  of  the  rest  of 
the  world  in  this  age  of  business  and  bustle. 
Your  brain  is  over-taxed — that  is,  your  com- 
plaint. You  must  let  it  rest  —  there  is  your 
remedy."  ~ 

"  You  mean,"  I  said,  "  that  I  must  keep 
quiet,  and  do  Nothing  1 " 

"  Precisely  so,"  replied  the  doctor.  "  You 
must  not  read  or  write  ;  you  must  abstain 
from  allowing  yourself  to  be  excited  by 
society  ;  you  must  have  no  annoyances  ;  you 
must  feel  no  anxieties  ;  you  must  not  think  ; 
you  mu^lkbe  neither  elated  nor  depressed  ; 
you  must  l^eep  early  hours  and  take  an  occa- 
sional tonic,  with  moderate  exercise,  and  a 
nourishing,  but  not  too  full  a  diet — above  all, 
as  perfect  repose  is  essential  to  your  resto- 
ration, you  must  go  away  into  the  country, 
taking  any  direction  you  please,  and  living 
just  as  you  like,  so  long  as  you  are  quiet  and 
so  long  as  you  do  Nothing." 

"  I  presume  he  is  not  to  go  away  into  the 
country  without  me  ]  "  said  my  wife,  who 
was  present  at  the  interview. 

"  Certainly  not,"  rejoined  the  doctor  with 
a  gallant  bow.  "  I  look  to  your  influence,  my 
dear  madam,  to  encourage  our  patient  to 
follow  my  directions.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
repeat  them,  they  are  so  extremely  simple 
and  easy  to  carry  out.  I  will  answer  for  your 
husband's  recovery  if  he  will  but  remember 
that  he  has  now  only  two  objects  in  life 
— to  keep  quiet,  and  to  do  Nothing. 

My  wife  is  a  woman  of  business  habits. 
As  soon  as  the  doctor  had  taken  his  leave, 
she  produced  her  pocket-book,  and  made 
a  brief  abstract  of  his  directions  for 
our  future  guidance.  I  looked  over  her 
shoulder  and  observed  that  the  entry  ran 
thus  : — 

"  Rules  for  dear  William's  restoration 
to  health.  No  reading ;  no  writing ;  no 


excitement ;  no  annoyance  ;  no  anxiety  ;  no 
thinking.  Tonic.  No  elation  of  spirits. 
Nice  dinners.  No  depression  of  spirits. 
Dear  William  to  take  little  walks  (with  me). 
To  go  to  bed  early.  To  get  up,  ditto.  N.B. — 
Keep  him  quiet.  Mem :  Mind  he  does 
Nothing." 

Mind  I  do  Nothing  ?  No  need  to  mind 
about  that.  I  have  not  had  a  holiday  since  I 
was  a  boy.  Oh,  blessed  Idleness,  after  the 
years  and  years  of  industry  that  have  sepa- 
rated us,  are  you  and  I  to  be  brought 
together  again  at  last !  Oh,  my  weary  right 
hand,  are  you  really  to  ache  no  longer  with 
driving  the  ceaseless  pen  ?  May  I,  indeed, 
put  you  in  my  pocket,  and  let  you  rest  there, 
indolently,  for  hours  together  ?  Yes  !  for  I 
am  now  at  last  to  begin — doing  Nothing. 
Delightful  task  that  performs,  itself.  Welcome 
responsibility  that  carries  its  weight  away 
smoothly  on  its  own  shoulders.  Doing 
Nothing  ?  What  an  ease  there  is  in  the  mere 
sound  of  the  words  !  what  a  luxurious  con- 
viction I  feel  that  in  this  one  object  of  my 
life  at  least,  I  am  certain,  before-hand,  of 
achieving  the  completest  success. 

These  thoughts  shine  in  pleasantly  on  my 
mind  after  the  doctor  has  taken  his  departure, 
and  diffuse  an  easy  gaiety  over  ray  spirits 
when  my  wife  and  I  set  forth,  the  next  day, 
for  the  country.  We  are  not  going  the  round 
of  the  noisy  watering-places,  nor  is  it  our  in- 
tention to  accept  any  invitations  to  join  the 
gay  circles  assembled  by  festive  coxintry 
friends.  My  wife,  guided  solely  by  the 
abstract  of  the  doctor's  directions  in  her 
pocket-book,  has  decided  that  the  only  way 
to  keep  me  absolutely  quiet,  and  to 
make  sure  of  my  doing  Nothing,  is  to  take  mo 
to  some  pretty  retired  village  and  to  put  me 
up  at  a  little  primitive,  unsophisticated  coun- 
try-inn. I  offer  no  objection  to  this  project — 
not  because  I  have  no  will  of  my  own  aiid  am. 
not  master  of  all  my  movements,  but  only 
because  I  happen  to  agree  with  my  wife. 
Considering  what  a  very  independent  man  I 
am,  naturally,  it  has  sometimes  struck  me, 
as  a  rather  remarkable  circumstance,  that  I 
always  do  agree  with  her. 

We  find  the  pretty,  retired  village.  A 
charming  place,  full  of  thatched  cottages  with 
creepers  at  the  doors,  like  the  first  easy  lessons 
in  drawing-masters'  copy-books.  We  find  the 


VOL.SVI. 


389 


218       [September  5,  185?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conductri  bj 


unsophisticated  inn — just  the  sort  of  house 
that  the  novelists  are  so  fond  of  writing 
about,  with  the  snowy  curtains  and  the 
sheets  perfumed  by  lavender,  and  the 
matronly  landlady  and  the  amusing  sign- 
post. This  Elysium  is  called  the  Nag's  Head. 
Can  the  Nag's  Head  accommodate  us  1  Yes, 
with  a  delightful  bedroom  and  a  sweet 
parlour.  My  wife  takes  off  her  bonnet  and 
makes  herself  at  home,  directly.  She  nods 
her  head  at  me  with  a  look  of  triumph.  Yes, 
dear,  on  this  occasion  also  I  quite  agree 
with  you.  Here  we  have  found  perfect 
quiet ;  here  we  may  make  sure  of  obeying 
the  doctor's  orders  ;  here  we  have,  at  last, 
discovered  Nothing. 

Nothing  ?  Did  I  say  Nothing  1  We  ar- 
rive at  the  Nag's  Head  late  in  the  evening, 
have  our  tea,  go  to  bed  tired  with  our 
journey,  sleep  delightfully  till  about  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and,  at  that  hour, 
begin  to  discover  that  there  are  actually 
noises  even  in  this  remote  country  seclusion. 
They  keep  fowls  at  the  Nag's  Head  ;  and, 
at  three  o'clock,  the  cock  begins  to  crow  and 
the  hens  to  cluck  under  our  window.  Pas- 
toral, my  dear,  and  suggestive  of  eggs  for 
breakfast  whose  reputation  is  above  suspi- 
cion ;  but  I  wish  these  cheerful  fowls  did  not 
wake  quite  so  early.  Are  there,  likewise, 
dogs,  love,  at  the  Nag's  Head,  and  are  they 
trying  to  bark  down  the  crowing  and  cluck- 
ing of  the  cheerful  fowls  1  I  should  wish  to 
guard  myself  against  the  possibility  of  making 
a  mistake,  but  I  think  I  heard  three  dogs.  A 
small,  shrill  dog  who  barks  rapidly ;  a  melan- 
choly clog  of  uncertain  size,  who  howls  mono- 
tonously ;  and  a  large  hoarse  dog  who  emits 
barks  at  intervals  like  minute  guns.  Is  this 
going  on  long  ?  Apparently  it  is.  My  dear, 
if  you  will  refer  to  your  pocket-book,  I  think 
you  will  find  that  the  doctor  recommended 
early  hours.  We  will  not  be  fretful  and  com- 
plain of  having  our  morning  sleep  disturbed  : 
we  will  be  contented,  and  will  only  say  that 
it  is  time  to  get  up. 

Breakfast.  Delicious  meal,  let  us  linger 
over  it  as  long  as  we  can, — let  us  linger,  if 
possible,  till  the  drowsy  midday  tranquillity 
begins  to  sink  over  this  secluded  village. 
Strange !  but  now  I  think  of  it  again,  do  I, 
or  do  I  not,  hear  an  incessant  hammering 
over  the  way  1  No  manufacture  is  carried 
on  in  this  peaceful  place,  no  new  houses  are 
being  built ;  and  yet  there  is  such  a  hammer- 
ing that,  if  I  shut  my  eyes,  I  can  almost  fancy 
myself  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a  dock-yard. 
Waggons,  too.  Why  does  a  waggon  which 
makes  so  little  noise  in  London,  make  so 
much  noise  here  1  Is  the  dust  on  the  road 
detonating  powder,  that  goes  off  with  a 
report  at  every  turn  of  the  heavy  wheels  ? 
Does  the  waggoner  crack  his  whip  or  fire  a 
pistol  to  encourage  his  horses  1  Children, 
next.  Only  five  of  them,  and  they  have  not 
been  able  to  settle  for  the  last  half  hour  what 
game  they  shall  play  at.  On  two  points 


alone  do  they  appear  to  be  unanimous — they 
are  all  agreed  on  making  a  noise  and  on 
stopping  to  make  it  under  our  window.  I 
think  I  am  in  some  danger  of  forgetting  one 
of  the  doctor's  directions :  I  rather  fancy  I 
am  allowing  myself  to  be  annoyed.  Let  us 
take  a  turn  in  the  garden,  at  the  back  of  the 
house.  Dogs  again.  The  yard  is  on  one 
side  of  the  garden.  Every  time  our  walk 
takes  us  near  it,  the  small  shrill  dog  barks 
and  the  large  hoarse  dog  growls.  The  doctor 
tells  me  to  have  no  anxieties.  I  am  suffering 
devouring  anxieties.  These  dogs  may  break 
loose  and  fly  at  us,  for  anything  I  know  to  the 
contrary,  at  a  moment's  notice.  What  shall 
I  do  ?  Give  myself  a  drop  of  tonic  ?  or 
escape  for  a  few  hours  from  the  perpetual 
noises  of  this  retired  spot  by  taking  a  drive  1 
My  wife  says,  take  a  drive.  I  think  I  have 
already  mentioned  that  I  invariably  agree 
with  my  wife. 

The  drive  is  successful  in  procuring  us  a 
little  quiet.  My  directions  to  the  coachman 
are  to  take  us  where  he  pleases,  so  long  as 
he  keeps  away  from  secluded  villages.  We 
suffer  much  jolting  in  by-lanes,  and  en- 
counter a  great  variety  of  bad  smells.  But 
a  bad  smell  is  a  quiet  nuisance,  and  I  am 
ready  to  put  up  with  it  patiently.  Towards 
dinner-time  we  return  to  our  inn.  Meat, 
vegetables,  pudding,  all  excellent,  clean  and 
perfectly  cooked.  As  good  a  dinner  as  I 
wish  ever  to  eat ; — shall  I  get  a  little  nap 
after  it  ?  The  fowls,  the  dogs,  the  hammer, 
the  children,  the  waggons,  are  quiet  at  last. 
Is  there  anything  else  left  to  make  a  noise  ] 
Yes :  there  is  the  working  population  of 
the  place.  It  is  getting  on  towards  evening, 
and  the  sons  of  labour  are  assembling  on 
the  benches  placed  outside  the  inn  to  drink. 
What  a  delightful  scene  they  would  make 
of  this  homely  e very-day  event  on  the  stage  ! 
How  the  simple  creatures  would  clink  their 
tin  mugs  and  drink  each  other's  healths,  and 
laugh  joyously  in  chorus!  How  the  pea- 
sant maidens  would  come  tripping  on  the 
scene  and  lure  the  men  tenderly  to  the 
dance  !  Where  are  the  pipe  and  tabour  that 
I  have  seen  in  so  many  pictures  ;  where  the 
simple  songs  that  I  have  1'ead  about  in  so 
many  poems  I  What  do  I  hear  as  I  listen, 
prone  on  the  sofa,  to  the  evening  gathering 
of  the  rustic  throng  ?  Oaths, — nothing,  on 
my  word  of  honour,  but  oaths  !  I  look  out, 
and  see  gangs  of  cadaverous  savages,  drink- 
ing gloomily  from  brown  mugs,  and  swearing 
at  each  other  every  time  they  open  their 
lips.  Never  in  any  large  town,  at  home  or 
abroad,  have  I  been  exposed  to  such  an 
incessant  fire  of  unprintable  words  as  now 
assail  my  ears  in  this  primitive  village.  No 
man  can  drink  to  another  without  swearing 
at  him  first.  No  man  can  ask  a  question 
without  adding  a  mark  of  interrogation  at 
the  end  in  the  shape  of  an  oath.  Whether 
they  quarrel  (which  they  do  for  the  most 
part),  or  whether  they  agree  ;  whether  they 


Charles  Dickens.  I 


A  JOURNEY  IN  SEARCH  OF  NOTHING.     [September  6.  ISSM     219 


their  troubles  in  removed 


talk  of  weather  or  wages,  of 
this  place  or  their  good  luck  in  that ;  whether 
they  are  telling  a  story,  or  proposing  a  toast, 
or  giving  an  order,  or  finding  fault  with  the 
beer,  these  men  seem  to  be  positively  in- 
capable of  speaking  without  an  allowance  of 
at  least,  five  foul  words  for  every  one  fair 
word  that  issues  from  their  lips.  English  is 
reduced  in  their  mouths  to  a  brief  vocabulary 
of  all  the  vilest  expressions  in  the  language. 
This  is  an  age  of  civilisation ;  this  is  a 
Christian  country ;  opposite  me  I  see  a 
building  with  a  spire,  which  is  called,  I 
believe,  a  church ;  past  my  window,  not  an 
hour  since,  there  rattled  a  neat  pony  chaise 
with  a  gentleman  inside,  clad  in  glossy  black 
broad  cloth,  and  popularly  known  by  the 
style  and  title  of  clergyman — and  yet,  under 
all  these  good  influences,  here  sit  twenty  or 
thirty  men  whose  ordinary  table-talk  is  so 
outrageously  beastly,  and  blasphemous  that 
not  one  single  sentence  of  it,  though  it  lasted 
the  whole  evening,  could  be  printed,  as  a 
specimen,  for  public  inspection,  in  the  pages 
of  this  journal.  When  the  intelligent  foreigner 
conies  to  England,  and  when  I  tell  him  (as  I 
am  sure  to  do)  that  we  are  the  most  moral 
people  in  the  universe,  I  will  take  good  care 
that  he  does  not  set  his  foot  in  secluded 
British  village  when  the  rural  population  is 
reposing  over  its  mug  of  small-beer  after  the 
labours  of  the  day. 

I  am  not  a  squeamish  person,  neither  is 
my  wife,  but  the  social  intercourse  of  the 
villagers  drives  us  out  of  our  room,  and  sends 
us  to  take  refuge  at  the  back  of  the  house. 
"We  gain  nothing,  however,  by  the  change.  The 
back  parlour,  to  which  we  have  now  re- 
treated, looks  out  on  a  bowling-green ;  and 
there  are  more  benches,  more  mugs  of  beer, 
more  foul-mouthed  villagers  on  the  bowling- 
green.  Immediately  under  our  window  is  a 
bench  and  table  for  two,  and  on  it  are  seated  a 
drunken  old  man  and  a  drunken  old  woman. 
The  aged  sot  in  trousers  is  offering  marriage 
to  the  aged  sot  in  petticoats,  with  frightful 
oaths  of  endearment.  Never  before  did  I 
imagine  that  swearing  could  be  twisted  to 
the  pui'poses  of  courtship.  Never  before  did 
I  suppose  that  a  man  could  make  an  offer  of 
his  hand  by  bellowing  imprecations  on  his 
eyes,  or  that  all  the  powers  of  the  infernal 
regions  could  be  appropriately  summoned  to 
bear  witness  to  the  beating  of  a  lover's  heart 
under  the  influence  of  the  tender  passion. 
I  know  it  now,  and  I  derive  so  little  satis- 
faction from  gaining  the  knowledge  of  it, 
that  I  determine  on  having  the  two  intoler- 
able old  drunkards  removed  from  the  window, 
and  sent  to  continue  their  cursing  courtship 
elsewhere.  The  ostler  is  lounging  about  the 
bowling-green,  scratching  his  bare  brawny 
arms  and  yawning  grimly  in  the  mellow 
evening  sunlight.  I  beckon  to  him,  and  ask 
him  if  he  does  not  think  those  two  old  people 
have  had  beer  enough  ?  Yes,  the  ostler  thinks 
they  have.  I  inquire  next  if  they  can  be 


from  the  premises,  before  their  lan- 
guage gets  worse,  without  the  risk  of  making 
any  great  disturbance.  The  ostler  says,  Yes, 
they  can,  and  calls  to  the  potboy.  When 
the  potboy  comes,  he  says,  "Now  then, 
Jack  !"  and  snatches  the  table  away  from 
the  two  ribald  old  people  without  another 
word.  The  old  man's  pipe  is  on  the  table  ; 
he  rises  and  staggers  forward  to  possess  him- 
self of  it  ;  the  old  woman  rises,  too,  to  hold 
him  by  the  arm  for  fear  he  should  fall  flat  on 
his  face.  The  moment  they  are  off  the  bench, 
the  potboy  snatches  their  seat  away  from 
behind  them,  and  quietly  joins  the  ostler  who 
is  carrying  their  table  into  the  inn.  None  of 
the  other  drinkers  laugh  at  this  proceeding, 
or  pay  any  attention  to  it ;  and  the  two  in- 
toxicated old  people,  left  helpless  on  their 
legs,  stagger  away  feebly  without  attracting 
the  slightest  notice.  The  neat  stratagem 
which  the  ostler  and  the  potboy  have  just 
performed  is  evidently  the  customary  and 
only  possible  mode  of  letting  drinkers  know 
when  they  have  had  enough,  at  the  Nag's 
Head.  Where  did  those  savage  islanders 
live  whose  manners  a  certain  sea-captain 
once  upon  a  time  described  as  no  manners  at 
all,  and  some  of  whose  customs  he  reprobated 
as  being  very  nasty  ?  If  I  did  not  know  that 
we  are  many  miles  distant  from  the  coast,  I 
should  be  almost  disposed  to  suspect  that  the 
seafaring  traveller  whose  opinion  I  have  just 
quoted  had  been  touching  at  the  Nag's 
Head. 

As  it  is  impossible  to  snatch  away  all  the 
tables  and  all  the  benches  of  all  the  company 
drinking  and  swearing  in  front  of  the  house 
and  behind  it,  I  inquire  of  the  ostler,  the 
next  time  he  comes  near  the  window,  at  what 
time  the  tap  closes  1  He  tells  me  at  eleven 
o'clock.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that 
we  put  off  going  to  bed  until  that  time.  At 
eleven  we  retire,  drenched  from  head  to  foot, 
if  I  may  so  speak,  in  floods  of  bad  language. 
I  cautiously  put  my  head  out  of  window,  and 
see  that  the  lights  of  the  tap-room  are  really 
extinguished  at  the  appointed  time.  I  hear  the 
drinkers  oozing  out  grossly  into  the  pure 
freshness  of  the  summer  night.  They  all 
growl  together  ;  they  all  go  together.  All  ? 
Sinner  and  sufferer  that  I  am,  I  have  been 
premature  in  arriving  at  that  happy  conclu- 
sion !  Six  choice  spirits,  with  a  social  horror 
in  their  souls  of  going  home  to  bed,  prop 
themselves  against  the  wall  of  the  inn,  and 
continue  the  evening's  conversazione  in  the 
darkness.  I  hear  them  cursing  at  each  other 
by  name.  We  have  Tom,  Dick,  and  Sam, 
Jem,  Bill,  and  Bob  to  enliven  UE  under  our 
window,  after  we  are  in  Led.  They  begin 
improving  each  other's  minds,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  by  quarrelling.  Music  follows  and 
soothes  the  strife,  in  the  shape  of  a  local  duet, 
sung  by  voices  of  vast  compass,  which  soar  in 
one  note  from  howling  bass  to  cracked  treble. 
Yawning  follows  the  duet ;  long,  loud,  weary 
yawning  of  all  the  company  in  chorus.  Then 


220      [September  B.  1S57-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOBDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Tom  asks  Dick  for  "  baccer,"  and  Dick  denies 
that  he  has  got  any,  and  Tom  tells  him  he 
lies,  and  Sam  strikes  in  and  says,  "  No,  he 
doan't,"  and  Jem  tells  Sam  he  lies,  and  Bill 
tells  him  that  if  he  was  Sam  he  would  punch 
Jem's  head,  and  Bob,  apparently  snuffing  the 
battle  from  afar  off'  and  not  liking  the  scent 
of  it,  shouts  suddenly  a  pacific  good-night  in 
the  distance.  The  farew«ll  salutation  seems  to 
quiet  the  gathering  storm.  They  all  roar  re- 
sponsive to  the  good-night  roar  of  Bob.  A  mo- 
ment of  silence,  actually  a  moment,  follows — 
then  a  repetition  of  the  long,  loud,  weary 
yawning  in  chorus — then  another  moment  of 
silence — then  Jem  suddenly  shouts  to  the 
retiring  Bob  to  come  back — Bob  refuses, 
softened  by  distance — Jem  insists,  and  his  four 
friends  join  him — Bob  relents  and  returns.  A 
shriek  of  indignation,  far  down  the  village — 
Bob's  wife  has  her  window  open,  and  has  heard 
him  consent  to  go  back  to  his  friends.  Hearty 
laughter  from  Bob's  five  friends ;  screams 
from  Bob's  wife  ;  articulate  screams,  inform- 
ing Bob  that  she  will  "  cut  his  liver  out,"  if 
he  does  not  come  home  directly.  Answering 
curses  from  Bob  ;  he  will  "  mash  "  his  wife,  if 
she  does  not  hold  her  tongue.  A  song  in 
chorus  from  Bob's  five  friends.  Outraged  by 
this  time  past  all  endurance,  I  spring  out  of 
bed  and  seize  the  water-jug.  My  wife, 
having  the  doctor's  directions  ever  present  to 
her  mind,  implores  me  in  heart-rending  tones 
to  remember  that  I  am  under  strict  medical 
orders  not  to  excite  myself.  I  pay  no  heed 
to  her  remonstrances,  and  advance  to  the 
window  with  the  jug.  I  pause  before  I 
empty  the  water  on  the  heads  of  the  assembly 
beneath  ;  I  pause,  and  hear — O  !  most  melo- 
dious, most  welcome  of  sounds  ! — the  sudden 
fall  of  rain.  The  merciful,  bountiful  sky  has 
anticipated  me  ;  the  "  clerk  of  the  weather  " 
has  been  struck  by  my  idea  of  dispersing  the 
Nag's  Head  Night  Club,  by  water.  By  the 
time  I  have  put  down  the  jug  and  got  back 
to  bed,  silence — primeval  silence,  the  first, 
the  foremost  of  all  earthly  influences — falls 
sweetly  over  our  tavern  at  last.  That  night, 
before  sinking  wearily  to  rest,  I  have  once 
mora  the  satisfaction  of  agreeing  with  my 
wife.  Dear  and  admirable  woman  !  she  pro- 
poses to  leave  this  secluded  village  the  first 
thing  to-morrow  morning.  Never  did  I  share 
her  opinion  more  cordially  than  I  share  it 
now.  Instead  of  keeping  myself  composed,  I 
have  been  living  in  a  region  of  perpetual  dis- 
turbance ;  and,  as  for  doing  nothing,  my  mind 
has  been  so  agitated  and  perturbed  that  I 
have  not  even  had  time  to  think  about  it. 
We  will  go,  love — as  you  so  sensibly  suggest 
— we  will  go  the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  to 
any  place  you  like,  so  long  as  it  is  large 
enough  to  swallow  up  small  sounds.  Where, 
over  all  the  surface  of  this  noisy  earth,  the 
blessing  of  tranquillity  may  be  found,  I 
know  not ;  but  this  I  do  know  ;  the  present 
secluded  English  village  is  the  very  last  place 
towards  which  any  man  should  think  of  turn- 


ing his  steps,  if  the  main  object  of  his  walk 
through  life  is  to  discover  quiet. 

NOTE  THE  SECOND.      NOTHING. 

The  next  morning  we  continue  our  journey 
in  the  direction  of  the  coast,  and  arrive  at  a 
large  watering-place.  Observing  that  it  is, 
in  every  respect,  as  unlike  the  secluded  viL- 
lage  as  possible,  vre  resolve  to  take  up  our 
abode  in  this  populous  and  perfectly  tranquil 
town.  We  get  a  lodging  fronting  the  sea. 
There  are  noises  about  us — various  and  loud 
noises,  as  I  should  have  thought,  if  I  had  not 
just  come  from  a  village  ;  but  everything  is 
comparative,  and,  after  the  past  experience  I 
have  gone  through,  I  find  our  new  place  of 
abode  quiet  enough  to  suit  the  moderate 
expectations  which  I  have  now  learnt  to 
form  on  the  subject  of  getting  peace  in  thia 
world.  Here  I  can  at  least  think  almost  un- 
interruptedly of  the  doctor's  orders.  Here  I 
may  surely  begin  my  new  life,  and  enjoy  the 
luxury  of  Nothing. 

I  suppose  it  is  a  luxury ;  and  yet  so  per- 
verse is  man,  I  hardly  know  whether  I  am 
not  beginning  to  find  it  something  more  like, 
a  hardship  at  the  very  outset.  Perhaps  my 
busy  and  active  life  has  unfitted  me  for  a  due 
appreciation  of  the  happiness  of  being  idle. 
Perhaps  I  am  naturally  of  a  restless,  feverish, 
constitution.  However  that  may  be,  it  is 
certain  that  on  the  first  day  when  I  seriously 
determine  to  do  nothing,  I  fail  to  find  in  the 
execution  of  my  resolution  such  supreme 
comfort  and  such  easy  enjoyment  as  I  had 
anticipated.  I  try  hard  to  fight  against  the 
conviction  (which  will  steal  on  me,  neverthe- 
less) that  I  have  only  changed  one  kind  of 
hard  work  for  another  that  is  harder.  I  try 
to  persuade  myself  that  time  does  not  hang  at 
all  heavily  on  my  hands,  and  that  I  am. 
happier  with  nothing  to  do  than  ever  I  was 
with  a  long  day's  work  before  me.  Do  I 
succeed  or  do  I  fail  in  this  meritorious 
attempt  ?  Let  me  write  down  the  results  of 
my  first  day's  experience  of  Nothing,  and  let 
the  reader  settle  the  question  for  me. 

Breakfast  at  nine  o'clock,  so  as  not  to  make 
too  long  a  day  of  it.  Among  the  other 
things  on  the  table  are  shrimps.  I  find 
mysilf  liking  shrimps  for  an  entirely  new 
reason — they  take  such  a  long  time  to  eat.. 
Weil,  breakfast  is  over  at  last :  I  have  had 
quite  enough,  and  yet  I  am  gluttonously 
sorry  when  the  table  is  cleared.  If  I  were  in 
health  I  should  now  go  to  my  desk,  or  take 
up  a  book.  But  I  am  out  of  health,  and  I  must 
do  Nothing.  Suppose  I  look  out  of  window  I 
I  hope  that  is  idle  enough  to  begin  with. 

Sea,  Ha  !  sea !  Very  large,  very  grey, 
very  calm  ;  very  calm,  very  grey,  very  large. 
Ha! 

Ships.  One  bio;  ship  in  front,  two  little 
ships  behind.  (What  time  shall  we  have 
dinner,  my  dear  ?  At  five  ?  Certainly  at 
five  !)  One  big  ship  in  front,  two  little  ships 
behind.  Nothing  more  to  see  1  No,  Nothing. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  JOURNEY  IN  SEARCH  OF  NOTHING.     [September  5. 1357.1     221 


Let  me  look  back  into  the  room,  and  study 
the  subjects  of  these  prints  on  the  walls. 
First,  Death  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  after  Copley,  R.A.  Just  so. 
Curious  idea  this  picture  suggests  of  the 
uniformity  of  personal  appearance  which 
must  have  distinguished  the  Peers  in  the  last 
century.  Here  is  a  house  full  of  noble  lords, 
and  each  one  of  them  is  exactly  like  the  other. 
Every  noble  lord  is  tall,  every  noble  lord  is 
portly,  every  noble  lord  has  a  long  receding 
forehead,  and  a  majestic  Roman  nose.  Odd  ; 
and  leading  to  reflections  on  the  physical 
changes  that  must  have  passed  over  the 
peerage  of  the  present  day,  in  which  I  might 
respectfully  indulge,  if  the  doctor  had  not 
ordered  me  to  abstain  from  thinking. 

Circumstanced  as  I  am,  I  must  mournfully 
dismiss  the  death  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham, 
and  pass  from  the  work  of  Copley,  R.A.,  to 
the  other  prints  on  the  walls.  Dear,  dear 
me  !  Now  I  look  again,  there  is  nothing  to 
pass  to.  There  are  only  two  other  pi-inta, 
and  they  are  both  classical  landscapes.  Sadly 
deteriorated  as  the  present  condition  of  my 
faculties  may  be,  my  mind  has  not  sunk  down 
yet  to  the  level  of  Classical  Landscape.  I 
have  still  sense  enough  left  to  disbelieve  in 
Claude  and  Poussin  as  painters  of  Italian 
scenery.  Let  me  turn  from  the  classical 
counterfeit  to  the  modern  reality.  Let  me 
look  again  at  the  sea. 

Just  as  large,  just  as  grey,  just  as  calm  as 
ever.  Any  more  ships  ?  No  ;  still  the  one 
big  ship  in  front ;  still  the  two  little  ships 
behind.  They  have  not  altered  their  relative 
positions  the  least  in  the  world.  How  long 
is  it  to  dinner-time  ?  Six  hours  and  a  quar- 
ter. "What  on  earth  am  I  to  do  ?  Nothing. 

Suppose  I  go  and  take  a  little  walk  ?  (No, 
dear,  I  will  not  tire  myself ;  I  will  come  back 
quite  fresh  to  take  you  out  in  the  afternoon.) 
Well,  which  way  shall  I  go,  now  I  am  on  the 
door-step  1  There  are  two  walks  in  this 
place  :  first  walk,  along  the  cliff  westward  ; 
second  walk,  along  the  cliff  eastward.  Which 
direction  shall  I  take  ?  I  am  naturally  one  of 
the  most  decided  men,  in  the  world  ;  but 
doing  nothing  seems  to  have  deprived  me 
already  of  my  usual  resolute  strength  of 
will.  I  will  toss  up  for  it.  Heads,  west- 
ward ;  tails,  eastward.  Heads  !  Ought  this 
to  be  considered  conclusive  ]  or  shall  I 
begin  again,  and  try  the  best  of  three  ?  I  will 
try  the  best  of  three,  because  it  takes  up 
more  time.  Heads,  tails,  heads  !  Westward 
still.  Surely  this  is  destiny.  Or  can  it  be 
that  doing  nothing  has  made  me  superstitious 
aa  well  as  irresolute  ?  Never  mind ;  I  will 
go  westward,  and  see  what  happens. 

Along  the  path  by  the  iron  railings  ;  then 
down  a  little  dip,  at  the  bottom  of  which 
there  is  a  seat  overlooking  a  ship-builder's 
yard.  Close  under  me  is  a  small  «oastiug- 
vessel  on  the  slips  for  repair.  Nobody  on 
board,  but  one  old  man  at  work.  At  work, 
did  I  say  ?  Oh,  happy  chance  !  This  aged  re- 


pairer of  ships  is  the  very  man,  of  all  others, 
whom  I  had  most  need  of  meeting,  the  very 
man  to  help  me  in  my  present  emergency. 
Before  I  have  looked  at  him  two  minutes,  I 
feel  that  I  am  in  the  presence  of  a  great  pro- 
fessor of  the  art  of  doing  nothing.  Towards 
this  sage,  to  listen  to  his  precepts  and  profit 
by  his  example,  did  destiny  gently  urge  me, 
when  I  tossed  up  to  decide  between  eastward 
and  westward.  Let  me  watch  his  proceed- 
ings ;  let  me  learn  how  to  idle  systematically, 
by  observing  the  actions  of  this  venerable 
man. 

He  is  sitting  on  the  left  side  of  the  vessel 
when  I  first  look  at  him.  In  one  hand  he 
holds  a  crooked  nail ;  in  the  other,  a  hammer. 
He  coughs  slowly,  and  looks  out  to  sea ;  he 
sighs  slowly,  and  looks  back  towards  the 
land ;  he  rises  slowly,  and  surveys  the  deck 
of  the  vessel ;  he  stoops  slowly,  and  picks  up 
a  flat  bit  of  iron,  and  puts  it  on  the  bulwark, 
and  places  the  crooked  nail  upon  it,  and 
then  sits  down  and  looks  at  the  effect  of 
the  arrangement  so  far.  When  he  has 
had  enough  of  the  arrangement,  he  gives 
the  sea  a  turn  again,  then  the  land.  After 
that,  he  steps  back  a  little  and  looks  at 
the  hammer,  weighs  it  gently  in  his  hand, 
moistens  his  hand,  advances  to  the  crooked 
nail  on  the  bit  of  iron,  groans  softly  to  him- 
self and  shakes  his  head  as  he  looks  at  it, 
administers  three  deliberate  taps  with  the 
hammer,  to  straighten  it,  finds  that  he  does  not 
succeed  to  his  mind ;  again  groans  softly,  again 
shakes  his  head,  again  sits  down  and  rests 
himself  on  the  left  side  of  the  vessel.  Since 
I  first  looked  at  him  I  have  timed  him  by  my 
watch :  he  has  killed  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
over  that  one  crooked  nail,  and  he  has  not 
straightened  it  yet !  Wonderful  man,  can  I 
ever  hope  to  rival  him  ?  Will  he  condescend 
to  talk  to  me  ?  Stay  !  I  am  not  free  to  try 
him  ;  the  doctor  has  told  me  not  to  excite 
myself  with  society  ;  all  communion  of  mind 
between  me  and  this  finished  and  perfect 
idler  is,  I  fear,  prohibited.  Better  to  walk  on, 
and  come  back,  and  look  at  him  again. 

I  walk  on  and  sit  down ;  walk  on  a 
little  farther  and  sit  down  again ;  walk  on 
for  the  third  time,  sit  down  for  the  third 
time,  and  still  there  is  always  the  down 
on  one  side  of  me,  and  the  one  big  ship  and 
the  two  little  ships  on  the  other.  I  retrace 
my  steps,  occupying  as  much  time  as  I  pos- 
sibly can  in  getting  back  to  the  seat  above 
the  coasting-vessel.  Where  is  my  old  friend, 
my  esteemed  professor,  my  bright  and  shining 
example  in  the  difficult  art  of  doing  nothing  ? 
Sitting  on  the  right  side  of  the  vessel  this 
time,  with  the  bit  of  flat  iron  on  the  right 
side  also,  with  the  hammer  still  in  his  hand, 
and,  as  I  live,  with  the  crooked  nail  not 
straightened  yet !  I  observe  this,  and  turn 
away  quickly  with  despair  in  my  heart. 
How  can  I,  a  tyro  Do  Nothing,  who  has  had 
no  practice  in.  the  mystery  of  idleness  until 
to-day,  expect  to  imitate  that  consummate 


222       [September  5, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


old  niiiu  >  It  is  vain  to  hope  for  success 
here — vain  to  hope  for  anything  but  dinner- 
time. How  many  hours  more  ?  Four.  If  I 
return  home  now,  how  shall  I  go  on  doing 
nothing  ?  Lunch,  perhaps,  will  help  me 
a  little.  Quite  so  !  Let  us  say  a  glass  of  old 
ale  and  a  biscuit.  I  should  like  to  add 
shrimps — if  I  were  not  afraid  of  my  wife's 
disapprobation — merely  for  the  purpose  of 
trying  if  I  could  not  treat  them,  in  my  small 
imperfect  way,  a.s  my  old  friend  of  the  coasting- 
vessel  treated  the  crooked  nail. 

Three  hours  and  a  half  to  dinner-time.  I 
have  had  my  biscuit  and  my  glass  of  old  ale. 
Not  being  accustomed  to  malt  liquor  in  the 
middle  of  the  day,  my  lunch  has  more  than 
supported  me, — it  has  fuddled  me.  There  is 
a  faint  singing  in  my  ears,  an  intense  sleep- 
ishness  in  my  eyelids,  a  genial  warmth  about 
my  stomach,  and  a  sensation  in  my  head  as 
if  the  brains  had  oozed  out  of  me  and  the 
cavity  of  my  skull  was  stuffed  with  cotton- 
wool steeped  in  laudanum.  Not  an  unplea- 
sant feeling  altogether.  I  am  not  anxious  ; 
I  think  of  nothing.  I  have  a  stolid  power  of 
staring,  immovably,  out  of  window  at  the 
one  big  ship  and  the  two  little  ships,  which  I 
had  not  hitherto  given  myself  credit  for  pos- 
sessing. If  my  wife  would  only  push  an  easy- 
chair  up  close  behind  me,  I  could  sink  back 
in  it  and  go  to  sleep  ;  but  she  will  do  nothing 
of  the  sort.  She  is  putting  on  her  bonnet  : 
it  is  the  hour  of  the  afternoon  at  which  we 
are  to  take  each  other  out  fondly,  for  our 
little  walk. 

The  company  at  the  watering-place  is 
taking  its  little  walk  also  at  this  time.  But 
for  the  genial  influence  of  the  strong  ale,  I 
should  now  be  making  my  observations  and 
flying  in  the  face  of  the  doctor's  orders  by 
allowing  my  mind  to  be  occupied.  As  it  is,  I 
march  along,  slowly,  lost  in  a  solemn  trance 
of  beer.  One  circumstance  only,  during  our 
walk,  is  prominent  enough  to  attract  my 
sleepy  attention.  I  just  contrive  to  observe, 
with  as  much  surprise  and  regret  as  I 'am 
capable  of  feeling  at  the  present  moment, 
that  my  wife  apparently  hates  all  the  women 
we  meet,  and  that  all  the  women  we  meet,  seem, 
judging  by  their  looks,  to  return  the  compli- 
ment by  hating  my  wife.  We  pass  an  infinite 
number  of  girls  all  more  or  less  plump,  all 
more  or  less  healthy,  all  more  or  less  over- 
shadowed by  eccentric  sea-side  hats  ;  and  my 
wife  will  not  allow  that  any  one  of  these 
young  creatures  is  even  tolerably  pretty.  The 
young  creatures  on  their  side,  look  so  dis- 
paragingly at  my  wife's  bonnet  and  gown, 
that  I  should  feel  uneasy  about  the  propriety 
of  her  costume,  if  I  were  not  under  the 
comforting  influence  of  the  strong  ale. 
What  is  the  meaning  of  this  unpleasant  want 
of  harmony  among  the  members  of  the  fair 
sex  ?  Does  one  woman  hate  another  woman 
for  being  a  woman — is  that  it  ?  How  shocking 
if  it  is !  I  have  no  inclination  to  disparage  other 
men  whom  I  meet  on  my  walk.  Other  men 


cast  no  disdainful  looks  on  me.  We  lords  of  the 
creation  are  quite  content  to  be  handsome 
and  attractive  in  our  various  styles,  without 
i  snappishly  contesting  the  palm  of  beauty  with 
!  one  another.  Why  cannot  the  women  follow 
I  our  meritorious  example  ?  Will  any  one 
solve  that  curious  problem  in  social  morals  ? 
Doctor's  orders  forbid  me  from  attempting 
the  intellectual  feat.  The  dire  necessity  of 
doing  nothing  narrows  me  to  one  subject  of 
mental  contemplation — the  dinner-hour.  How 
long  is  it — now  we  have  returned  from  our 
walk  —  to  that  time  1  Two  hours  and  a 
quarter.  I  can't  look  out  of  window  again, 
for  I  know  by  instinct  that  the  three  ships 
and  the  calm,  grey  sea  are  still  lying  jn  wait 
for  me.  I  can't  heave  a  patriot's  sigh  once 
more  over  the  "  Death  of  the  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham." I  am  too  tired  to  go  out  and  see  how 
the  old  man  of  the  coasting-vessel  is  getting 
on  with  the  crooked  nail.  In  short,  I  am 
driven  to  my  last  refuge.  I  must  take  a  nap. 
The  nap  lasts  more  than  an  hour.  Its 
results  may  be  all  summed  up  in  one  signifi- 
cant and  dreadful  word — Fidgets.  I  start 
from  the  sofa  convulsively," and  vainly  try  to 
walk  off  this  scourge  of  humanity.  I  sit  down, 
bold  upright  in  a  chair ;  my  wife  is  oppo- 
site to  me,  calmly  engaged  over  her  work.  It 
is  an  hour  and  five  minutes  to  dinner-time. 
What  am  I  to  do  ?  Shall  I  soothe  the  fidgets 
and  soften  my  rugged  nature  by  looking  at  my 
wife,  to  see  how  she  gets  on  with  her  work  ] 

She  has  got  a  strip  of  calico,  or  something- 
of  that  sort,  punched  all  over  with  little 
holes,  and  she  is  sowing  round  each  little  hole 
with  her  needle  and  thread.  Monotonous,  to 
a  masculine  mind.  Surely  the  punching  of 
the  holes  must  be  the  pleasan  test  part  of  this 
style  of  work  ?  And  that  is  done  at  the  shop, 
is  it,  dear  1  Ha  ! 

Does  my  wife  lace  too  tight  1  I  have  never 
had  leisure  before  to  look  at  her  so  long  and 
so  attentively  as  I  am  looking  now ;  I  have 
been  uncritically  contented  hitherto,  to  take 
her  waist  for  granted.  Now  I  have  my 
doubts  about  it.  I  think  the  wife  of  my 
bosom  is  a  little  too  much  like  an  hour-glass. 
Does  she  digest  ?  Good  Heavens  !  How  do 
I  know  whether  she  digests  ?  Then,  as  to 
her  hair  :  I  do  not  object  to  the  dressing  of  it, 
but  I  think — strangely  enough,  for  the  first 
time  since  our  marriage — that  she  uses  too 
much  bear's  grease  and  bandoline.  I  see  a 
thin  rim  of  bandoline,  shining  just  outside  the 
line  of  hair  against  her  temples,  like  varnish 
on  a  picture.  This  won't  do — oh,  dear,  no — 
this  won't  do  at  all.  Will  her  hands  do  ? 
certainly  not !  I  discover,  for  the  first  time, 
that  her  hands  won't  do,  either.  I  am  mer- 
cifully ready  to  put  up  with  their  not  being 
quite  white  enough,  but  what  does  the  wo- 
man mean  by  having  such  round  tips  to  her 
fingers  1  Why  don't  they  taper  ?  I  always 
thought  they  did  taper  until  this  moment.  I 
begin  to  be  dissatisfied  with  her ;  I  begin 
to  think  my  wife  is  not  the  genuine  article 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  SELF-MADE  POTTER. 


[September  5,  1S57-]       223 


I  took  her  for.  What  is  the  matter  with 
me  ?  Am  I  looking  at  her  with  percep- 
tions made  morbid  already  by  excessive  idle- 
ness ?  Is  this  dreadful  necessity  of  doing 
nothing  to  end  by  sapping  the  foundations  of 
my  matrimonial  tranquillity,  and  letting  down 
my  whole  connubial  edifice  into  the  bottom- 
less abyss  of  Doctors'  Commons  1  Horrible  ! 

The  door  of  the  room  opeus,  and  wakes  me, 
as  it  were,  from  the  hideous  dream  in  which 
my  wife's  individuality  has  been  entirely 
altered  to  my  eyes.  It  is  only  half  an  hour 
to  dinner  ;  and  the  servant  has  come  in  to  lay 
the  cloth.  In  the  presence  of  the  great  event 
of  the  day  I  feel  myself  again.  Once  more 
I  believe  in  the  natural  slimness  of  my  wife's 
waist;  once  more  I  am  contented  with  the  tops 
of  her  fingers.  Now,  at  last,  I  see  my  way 
to  bed-time.  Assuming  that  we  can  make 
the  dinner  last  two  hours  ;  assuming  that  I 
can  get  another  nap  after  it ;  assuming • 

No  !  I  can  assume  nothing  more,  for  I  am 
really  ashamed  to  complete  the  degrading 
picture  of  myself  which  my  pen  has  been 
painting  up  to  this  time.  Enough  has  been 
written — more  than  enough,  I  fear — to  show 
how  completely  I  have  failed  in  my  first 
day's  attempt  at  Nothing.  The  hardest 
labour  I  ever  had  to  get  through,  was  not  so 
difficult  to  contend  with  as  this  enforced  idle- 
ness. Never  again  will  I  murmur  under  the 
wholesome  necessities  of  work.  Never  again 
— if  I  can  only  succeed  in  getting  well — will 
a  day  of  doing  nothing  be  counted  as  plea- 
sant holiday-time  by  me.  I  have  stolen 
away  at  the  dead  of  the  night  in  fht  de- 
fiance of  the  doctor's^directions,  to  relieve 
my  unspeakable  weariness  by  writing  these 
lines.  I  cast  them  on  the  world  as  the 
brief  personal  narrative  of  a  most  unfor- 
tunate man.  If  I  systematically  disregard 
medical  orders  I  shall  make  myself  ill.  If  I 
conscientiously  obey  them,  how  am  I  to  get 
through  to-morrow  ?  Will  any  kind  reader, 
who  possesses  a  recipe  for  the  killing  of  time, 
benevolently  send  me  a  copy  of  the  docu- 
ment 1  I  am  known  and  pitied  at  the  office 
of  this  Journal ;  and  any  letters  addressed  to 
me  under  the  name  of  Nobody,  and  endorsed 
on  the  outside  of  the  envelope  Nothing, 
would  be  sure  to  reach  the  watering- 
place  in  which  I  am  now  vainly  trying  to 
vegetate. 


THE  SELF-MADE  POTTER. 


"M.  BABINET,"  say  the  annals  of  the  French 
Institute,  in  the  report  of  the  session  of  the 
Academy  of  Sciences  of  the  twenty-third  of 
March  last,  "presented  in  the  name  of  M. 
Pull  some  specimens  of  Delft  -  ware  imi- 
tating those  of  Bernard  Palissy,  and  worthy 
of  attracting  attention  by  the  fineness  and 
hardness  of  the  earths  employed,  as  by  the 
perfection  of  the  figures  of  animals  which 
adorn  them.  All  the  parts  which  are  in  relief 
above  are  hollow  beneath,  giving  great  light- 


ness to  these  products,  which  are,  notwith- 
standing, remarkably  solid." 

La  Revue  des  Beaux  Arts  of  the  first  of 
June  last  admires  the  dishes  in  the  mediaeval 
style  made  by  M.  Pull,  and  praises  the  little 
figures  upon  them  representing  fish,  reptiles, 
crustaceans,  and  vegetables,  moulded  after 
nature,  and  imitating  the  movements  and 
colours  of  life, — for  the  solidity  and  lightness 
of  the  paste,  the  elegance  and  finish  of  the 
modelling,  and  the  brilliancy  and  hardness  of 
the  enamel. 

M.  Pull,  who  is  not  literate,  has  dictated 
the  following  autobiography. 

My  name  is  George  Pull  ;  I  was  born  at 
Wissembourg,  in  the  department  of  the  lower 
Rhine,  upon  the  tenth  of  May,  eighteen  hun- 
dred and  ten.  My  father  followed  in  that 
town  the  trade  of  a  locksmith.  Without 
being  able  to  lay  by  anything,  he  knew  how 
to  find  in  his  labour  and  his  economical  habits 
the  means  of  maintaining  his  family  honour- 
ably ;  but  he  never  had  the  pretension,  which, 
besides,  his  resources  would  scarcely  have 
permitted,  of  making  me  greater  than  him- 
self by  a  more  brilliant  education.  He  did 
well,  for  in  my  young  years  I  did  not  give 
signs  of  any  predilection  for  the  studies 
which  demand  head-work  ;  and  it  was  with 
great  difficulty  I  succeeded  in  comprehending 
and  retaining  the  little  they  tried  to  teach 
me.  My  intelligence  was  completely  asleep 
in  regard  to  questions  of  science,  but  in  regard 
to  handiwork  —  the  knack  of  reproducing, 
counterfeiting,  imitating,  the  form,  the  figure 
of  the  first  object  which  came  to  hand — my 
intelligence  awoke  instantly ;  she  came  out 
of  her  ordinary  lair  (glte),  and  came  and 
placed  herself  entirely  at  the  end  of  my  ten 
fingers.  Inspiration,  ideas,  everything  then 
came  to  me  at  once  :  I  fashioned,  I  manipu- 
lated many  baubles  and  little  figures  ;  those 
who  prided  themselves  upon  their  taste  or 
their  knowledge  did  me  the  honour  to  call 
them  all  little  master-pieces.  I  very  often 
heard  them  say,  in  their  admiration,  "If 
George  had  masters,  he  would  go  far."  I 
often  expressed  a  wish  to  learn  drawing,  but 
they  could  not  pay  for  the  lessons  of  a  master. 
It  was  thus,  it  may  be  said,  having  learned 
nothing,  without  a  fixed  plan,  only  feeling 
within  me  a  decided  taste  for  sculpture,  a 
very  decided  one  for  working  with  my  fingers 
— an  inclination  which,  unhappily,  did  not 
receive  any  help — I  saw  my  young  years  pass 
without  taking  to  any  occupation,  and  with- 
out learning  any  trade.  That  inaction  was 
not  at  all  the  wish  of  my  father ;  he  com- 
plained of  it,  and  was  even  uneasy  about  it. 
More  by  necessity  than  enthusiasm,  I  en- 
gaged myself,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  as  a 
military  musician  in  the  Eighth  regiment  of 
Light  Infantry,  which  was  then  in  garrison  at 
Wissembourg.  As  I  had  received  some  les- 
sons in  instrumental  music,  I  obtained  easily 
the  appointment  of  second  cor  d'harmonie, 


22-1       [September  5,  1S5;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


The  life  of  a  soldier  was  scarcely  of  a 
nature  likely  to  give  an  impulse  to  my  intelli- 
gence— SHE  slept  always  ;  only  I  had  within 
me  a  vague  feeling  of  some  unknown  thing 
for  which  I  searched.  What,  I  would  then 
have  been  much  embarrassed  to  say.  But 
already  at  Wissembourg  1  had  had  something 
like  a  forerunner — like  a  slight  indication  of 
the  awakening  of  my  ideas. 

When  walking  in  the  country,  if  I  saw  the 
terrace-makers  occupied  in  hollowing  the 
earth,  a  feeling  of  curiosity — or,  to  say  it 
better,  an  instinct  of  which  I  took  no  heed — 
pushed,  me  to  examine  the  heaps  of  earth  of 
different  kinds  and  aspects  ;  I  took  morsels 
in  my  hand,  I  picked  out  grains,  I  crumbled 
them  in  my  fingers.  I  would  then  have  given  • 
two  months'  pay  to  any  man  who  would  have 
explained  to  me  the  nature  and  properties  of 
these  different  sorts  of  earth  and  clay  ;  but 
the  terrace-makers  never  have  been  members 
of  the  Academy  of  Sciences. 

After  the  revolution  of  July,  the  Eighth 
light  regiment  quitted  Wissembourg,  and 
went  into  garrison  in  Paris.  It  was  the  first 
time  I  saw  the  capital.  One  day,  my  long- 
ings brought  me  before  the  windows  of  a 
marine  store — un  marchand  de  bric-a-brac. 
In  the  midst  of  the  curiosities,  of  the  strange 
objects  displayed  in  that  shop,  I  saw  only,  I 
remarked  but  one  thing — a  superb  enamelled 
dish  with  figures  of  animals  and  plants  in 
relief.  Something  like  a  dazzling  seized  at 
once  my  eyes  and  my  intelligence.  Twenty 
times  I  was  tempted  to  enter  the  shop  to  be 
near,  to  touch,  to  handle,  that  marvellous 
work,  to  question  the  dealer  respecting  the 
price,  the  value  of  the  thing,  the  name  of  the 
man  who  had  made  it.  But  I  did  not  dare. 
They  would  have  laughed  at  the  amateur  in 
red  pantaloons  and  a  police  cap.  That  never 
was  the  costume  of  the  antiquary.  During 
eight  days  I  returned  and  stationed  myself 
before  the  shop  of  this  dealer,  absorbed  in 
my  reflections.  I  did  not  stop  there  ;  I  went 
in  search  of  all  the  brie  a-brac  or  odds*  and 
ends'  shops  in  Paris.  What  was  then  my  joy 
when  I  succeeded  in  discovering — here  an 
ewer  with  its  basin,  there  a  baptistery  ;  with 
this  one  a  plate,  with  that  one  a  salt-cellar,  a 
candlestick,  or  any  other  utensil  of  the  table 
— all  objects  elegant  in  form,  brilliant  in  tone, 
and  rich  in  tasteful  ornaments.  Unable  to 
resist  any  longer  the  desire  of  instructing 
myself,  I  finally  decided  upon  questioning  the 
dealers,  and  learned  that  all  these  marvels 
were  called  Bernard  Palissy's.  To  see  them, 
to  admire  them,  was  the  thought  of  all  my 
days,  the  dream  of  all  my  nights.  Isolating 
myself  from  my  comrades,  1  passed  all  my 
time  in  contemplation  before  my  dear  enamels. 
Thus  time  passed  until  my  regiment  quitted 
Paris  to  make  the  campaigns  of  eighteen 
hundred  and  thirty-one  and  eighteen  hundred 
and  thirty-two.  After  the  capitulation  of  the 
citadel  of  Anvers,  I  went  to  Lille  ;  thence 
from  garrison  to  garrison,  and  from  canton- 


ment to  cantonment ;  but,  always  thinking  of 
my  dear  enamels,  I  reached  the  time  when, 
my  engagement  having  expired,  I  quitted  the 
service.  We  were  in  the  year  eighteen  hun- 
dred and  thirty-six. 

I  returned  to  my  native  town,  but  ennui 
seized  me,  and  the  desire  to  see  again  the 
Bernard  Palissy  specimens  soon  brought  me 
to  Paris.  As  I  have  already  said,  I  had  not 
learned  any  trade,  and  yet  I  must  work  to 
live.  I  sought  for  a  place,  for  any  employ- 
ment whatever,  and  I  did  not  find  it.  Want 
forced  me  to  go  to  Havre,  where  I  received 
an  offer  of  employment  in  the  wine  trade. 
My  stay  in  that  town  was  of  short  duration. 
As  at  Wissembourg,  ennui  seized  me,  and  I 
returned  to  Paris,  resolved  never  to  quit  it. 
I  then  entered  as  errand-boy  the  office  of  M. 
Guerin,  proprietor  and  director  of  the  Gazette 
Medicale.  That  place  leaving  me  some  leisure 
time,  I  took  the  firm  resolution  to  make  it 
useful. 

Nevertheless,  prior  to  beginning  anything, 
I  sat  myself  to  reflect  seriously,  and  to  in- 
terrogate myself.  I  now  felt  that  a  small 
degree  of  fixity  had  succeeded  to  the  vague- 
ness of  the  ideas  in  rny  mind.  For  a  long- 
time had  I  searched  without  knowing  very 
well  what  I  sought ;  already  some  morsels  of 
clay  crumbled  in  my  fingers  had  given  me  a 
forewarning,  and  then  the  blossoming  of  my 
intelligence  at  the  sight  of  the  works  of  Ber- 
nard Palissy  had  given  me  a  presentiment 
of  the  unknown  which  perplexed  my  thoughts. 
At  least,  I  thus  began  to  comprehend  it,  but 
all  that  was  only  a  feeble  germ.  To  produce 
itself,  it  must  first  ferment  still  longer  in  my 
head.  An  idea  then  occurred  to  me,  without 
doubt  as  a  step  towards  the  great  work  which 
I  should  afterwards  have  the  temerity  to  un- 
dertake ;  I  recollected  that  my  intelligence 
was  never  more  alert  than  when  SHE  went 
and  placed  herself  at  the  tips  of  my  ten 
fingers,  and  I  took  measures  to  cut  out  work 
for  her. 

I  bought  a  few  dead  birds  and  I  stuffed 
them  ;  my  attempts  succeeded.  I  took  a 
taste  for  it.  I  studied  anatomy  and  a  little 
natural  history,  and  at  the  end  of  a  certain 
time  I  had  made  a  varied  collection  of  nearly 
four  hundred  birds.  They  advised  me  to 
take  a  shop  and  establish  myself ;  this  was 
in  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-one.  I  met,  by 
chance,  an  old  comrade  who  had  a  booth  iu 
the  Place  du  Carousel,  where  he  was  not 
thriving  in  his  business.  He  let  it  to  me, 
and  I  left  M.  Jules  Guerin  and  opened  shop. 
My  collection  of  birds  was  sold  in  a  twinkling, 
and  promptly  replaced.  My  trade  prospered, 
and  I  began  to  acquire  a  certain  reputation 
for  ability.  Every  Monday  fifteen  or  twenty 
specimens  were  brought  to  me  from  the 
country  to  be  stuffed.  High  personages 
visited  more  than  once  my  little  cabinet  of 
natural  history.  The  Prince  de  Joinville 
came  often  incognito,  into  my  shop,  inquired 
the  prices  without  bargaining,  and  immedi- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  SELF-MADE  POTTER 


[September  5,  1357.]       225 


ately  after  sent  a  footmau  to  buy  different 
things.  When  the  Prince  shot  any  birds  of 
importance,  he  ordered  them  to  be  carried  to 
Pull  to  be  mounted.  I  have  still  flie  foot  of 
a  stag  which  I  ought  to  have  prepared  to 
form  a  bell-rope  handle.  I  was  in  vogue.  I 
married  in  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-four. 
In  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-one,  orders 
were  issued  to  remove  all  the  booths  from 
the  Place  du  Carousel,  and  I  opened  in  the 
Eue  de  Seine  a  large  magazine  of  birds, 
stuffed  animals,  antiquities,  curiosities,  and 
Delft-wares. 

The  prosperity  of  my  business,  by  inspiring 
me  with  confidence  in  myself,  gave  the  last 
step  to  my  ideas.  When  I  recollected  the 
progress  I  had  made  and  the  knowledge  I 
Lad  acquired  ;  when  I  reflected  that  without 
having  a  notion  of  anatomy  or  natural  his- 
tory I  had  tried  an  industry  of  which  I  was 
practically  and  entirely  ignorant,  and  that, 
nevertheless,  I  had  succeeded  ;  boldness  came 
to  me  by  little  and  little.  I  said  to  myself, 
"  The  hand  which  can  give  the  look  of  life  to 
these  charming  little  dead  birds,  could  it  not 
knead,  mould  or  model  little  rustic  figures, 
and  give  them  the  gestures  and  the  colours  of 
life  ? "  This  thought  warmed  and  boiled  in  my 
head.  From  the  time  when  ic  was  in  fusion 
nothing  could  prevent  the  explosion,  and  at 
length  the  day  came  when  I  dared  to  believe 
in  the  possibility  of  imitating  the  works  of 
the  master.  From  this  time  my  resolution 
was  firm  and  unshakeable.  Prior  to  com- 
mencing experiments,  I  resolved  to  make 
every  imaginable  sacrifice,  and  even  to  de- 
prive myself  of  necessaries  to  attain  my 
object.  The  date  of  this  epoch  was  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-two. 

What  would  be  the  use  of  telling  all  my 
trial  and  attempts,  and  above  all  my  dis- 
appointments ?  They  were  innumerable,  or, 
what  is  more  exact,  they  were  all  the  result 
I  had  of  all  my  days  of  labour  in  these  first 
apprentice  times.  They  are  easily  under- 
stood. It  was  out  of  Paris,  in  the  provinces, 
and  in  a  secluded  spot,  that  I  made  my  first 
batches,  because  I  wished  my  experiments  to 
be  surrounded  with  the  greatest  mystery.  I 
remained  there  sometimes  fifteen  daj's,  and 
sometimes  six  weeks.  At  home,  in  Paris,  I 
began  studying  the  ai-gillaceous  earths,  to  find 
out  the  secret  of  the  enamels,  but,  like  a 
man  groping  in  the  dark.  I  pounded  all  the 
materials  which  I  supposed  likely  to  be 
useful  to  my  projects ;  I  mixed  them  at 
random,  but  took  care  to  note  down  the  sub- 
stances and  the  doses  employed.  Some  of 
my  specimens  came  out  of  the  fire  imperfectly 
cooked,  and  others  of  them  burned.  I  made 
nothing  of  the  least  value.  I  did  not  know 
what  to  do,  and  had  always  to  begin  again. 
I  consulted  the  works  of  Bernard  Palissy, 
reading  and  re-reading  them  until  I  had 
them  almost  by  heart,  but  they  did  not  guide 
me,  for  I  could  not  as  yet  understand  any- 
thing in  them,  they  are  so  full  of  hidden 


meanings.  It  is  only  now  that  the  light  has 
broken  upon  me,  and  I  understantl  them 
perfectly.  Thus  I  employed  several  years 
searching  for  the  unknown,  paying  to  human 
infirmity  my  tribute  of  moments  of  dis- 
couragement ;  and  sometimes  I  caught  myself 
doubting  if  I  were  in  my  senses.  In  the  eyes 
of  my  friends  and  acquaintances  I  passed  for 
a  visionary  ;  and  my  wife  was  told  continu- 
ally that  poor  Pull  had  gone  crack.  But 
these  hours  of  doubt  and  discouragement 
were  of  short  duration  ;  and,  as  Bernard 
Palissy  said  of  himself,  "  the  hope  which  I 
had,  made  me  proceed  in  my  business  more 
manfully  than  ever." 

After  so  many  researches,  attempts,  and 
mishaps,  although  I  had  not  produced  any- 
thing which  in  the  least  satisfied  me,  and 
although  I  had  not  as  yet  found  the  last 
word  of  my  art,  an  inward  voice  seemed  to 
tell  me  that  I  had  found  my  clay  and  my 
enamel,  and  the  only  thing  wanting  was  a 
good  method  of  baking  them.  While  making 
all  my  preparations,  and  taking  all  my  pre- 
cautions, judging  from  the  state  of  my  head, 
I  seemed  to  be  mad  or  becoming  it.  But 
when  I  saw  the  earth  coming  out  of  the  fire 
clothed  in  a  brilliant  enamel  and  lively 
colours,  when  I  saw  running  lizards,  swimming 
fishes,  leaping  frogs,  budding  plants,  growing 
grass,  upon  my  dishes,  I  thought  my  eyes 
were  deceiving  me.  Not  that  I  had  obtained 
a  complete  success,  which  is  not  reached  at 
the  first  throw,  but  from  having  obtained  a 
result  which  announced  to  me  what  I  should 
accomplish  when  I  could  give  myself  entirely 
up  to  the  fabrication  of  my  dear  potteries.  I 
sold  my  collection  of  birds  and  my  store  of 
antiquities,  and  established  myself,  in  April, 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-six,  at  Vaugirard. 

Ever  since  I  have  tried  to  improve  my  pro- 
ductions, to  acquire  more  perfect  models,  and 
the  science  and  harmony  of  colours.  More- 
over, when  I  had  dared  to  believe  that  my 
work  might  be  accepted  as  a  happy  con- 
tinuation of  the  admirable  Delfts  of  the 
master,  when  I  thought  it  was  admitted  that 
I  had  re-discovered  an  art  entirely  lost,  I  sub- 
mitted my  productions  with  confidence  to 
men  of  eminence  in  the  arts,  and  subse- 
quently to  the  public.  Their  judgment  has 
been  very  favourable  to  me,  and  I  have 
found  in  it  my  recompense  for  long  and 
painful  years  of  labour.  With  regard  to 
publishing  my  mode  of  manufacture,  I  must 
upon  this  point  also  follow  the  example  of 
my  celebrated  predecessor.  His  work  is  full 
j  of  reservations  ;  I  also  ought  to  have  mine  ; 
and  I  say — 

"  After  meditating  and  struggling  unceas- 
ingly, after  fatiguing  body  and  mind,  solving 
problems  patiently,  the  destiny  of  the  potter 
of  Saiutes,  who  carried  with  him  to  the  tomb 
the  practice  of  his  best  discoveries,  one  has  a 
good  right  certainly  not  to  vulgarise  the 
secret  of  his  processes — not  to  throw  to  the 
wind  of  publicity  the  fruit  of  his  pains ;  a 


226       [September  5.  1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


man  is  quite  free  to  bury  his  treasures  with 
hunielf." 

Brilliant  propositions  have  been  made  to 
me  to  carry  my  industry  abroad  ;  but  I  cling 
to  my  country,  and  shall  not  emigrate. 


BURNING,  AND  BURYING. 

IN  the  reports  of  the  Medical  Officers  of 
Health  for  London,  we  read  that  in  the  Vic- 
toria Park  Cemetery,  last  year,  every  Sunday, 
one  hundred  and  thirty  bodies  were  interred ; 
which  fact  one  of  the  medical  journals  ex- 
pressed by  saying  that  there  were  sixteen 
thousand  pounds  of  mortal  matter  added  on 
that  day  alone  to  the  already  decomposing 
mass.  At  the  time  when  we  were  reading 
about  such  things,  "  A  Member  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons "  issued  a  pamphlet 
upon  an  old  subject  of  ours,  Burning  the 
Dead,  or  Urn  Sepulture.  Our  own  arguments 
upon  that  subject  we  have  used  already;  but 
the  surgeon  proves  to  be  a  most  intelligent 
ally  ;  and  a  brief  statement  of  his  argument 
may  be  of  service  in  these  columns.  This 
it  is  : 

The  soul  of  a  man  ia  indestructible,  and  at 
death  parts  from  the  body.  Of  matter  only 
the  elements  are,  humanly  speaking,  inde- 
structible. The  body  of  man  is  made  up  of 
oxygen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  and  carbon,  with 
small  quantities  of  phosphorus,  sulphur, 
calcium,  iron,  and  some  other  metals.  By 
the  law  to  which  all  matter  is  subject,  man's 
body,  when  done  with,  decomposes  into  these 
elements,  that  they  may  be  used  for  other 
purposes  in  nature.  Can  it  matter  to  him 
whether  the  process  be  effected  rapidly  or 
slowly  ? 

Upon  the  doubt  as  to  the  possibility  of 
resurrection  when  our  bodies  have  been 
burnt  instead  of  rotted,  the  surgeon  lays  the 
balm  of  texts :  "  That  which  thou  sowest, 
thou  sowest  not  the  body  that  shall  be ;" 
and  "  we  shall  be  changed."  But  he  adds  : 
those  who  claim  to  have  hereafter  the  whole 
identical  body  back  again,  must  remember, 
that  in  life  it  wastes  and  is  renewed,  so  that 
if  every  particle  that  ever  belonged  to  the 
frame  of  an  old  man  were  returned  to  him, 
he  would  get  matter  enough  to  make  twelve 
or  twenty  bodies.  It  is  just  possible  that 
somebody  may  be  comforted  with  a  theory 
which  the  surgeon  quotes  in  a  note,  that 
the  soul  carries  away  with  it  out  of  the  world 
one  atom  of  matter  which  is  the  seed  of  the 
future  body,  and  that  these  seminal  atoms 
not  being  here,  need  not  be  included  in  our 
calculations  about  things  material. 

If  we  could,  by  embalming,  keep  the  form 
of  the  departed  upon  earth,  that  would  be 
much  ;  but,  for  any  such  purpose,  embalming 
fails.  Decay  will  use  its  effacing  fingers. 
"In  the  museum  of  the  College  of  Surgeons 
in  London,  may  be  seen  the  tirst  wife  of  one 
Martin  Van  Butchell,  \vho,  at  her  husband's 
request,  was  embalmed  by  Dr.  William 


Hunter  and  Mrs.  Carpenter,  in  the  year 
seventeen  hundred  and  seventy-five.  No 
doubt  extraordinary  pains  were  taken  to 
preserve  both  form  and  feature  ;  and  yet, 
what  a  wretched  mockery  of  a  once  lovely 
woman  it  now  appears,  with  its  shrunken 
and  rotten-looking  bust,  its  hideous,  maho- 
gany-coloured face,  and  its  remarkably  fine 
set  of  teeth  !  Between  the  feet  are  the  re- 
mains of  a  green  parrot — whether  immolated 
or  not  at  the  death  of  its  mistress  is  uncer- 
tain ;  but  as  it  still  retains  its  plumage,  it  ia 
a  far  less  repulsive  object  than  the  larger 
biped."  There  was  a  law-suit  once,  to  try 
the  right  of  a  dead  man  to  an  iron  coffin, 
when  Lord  Stowell  decided  that,  "All  con- 
trivances that,  whether  intentionally  or  not, 
prolong  the  time  of  dissolution  beyond  the 
period  at  which  the  common  local  under- 
standing and  usage  have  fixed  it,  form  an  act 
of  injustice,  unless  compensated  in  sqnie  way 
or  other."  And  when  an  iron  coffin  has  been 
opened,  after  lapse  of  years,  what  has  been 
found  1  Chiefly  dry  grubs  of  worms  and 
other  insects  that  have  fed  upon  the  flesh. 
Socrates  exhorted  his  friends,  "  Let  it  not 
be  said  that  Socrates  is  carried  to  the  grave 
and  buried ;  such  an  expression  were  an 
injury  done  to  my  immortal  part."  Not  very 
long  ago,  a  hardened  murderer  being  told 
by  the  judge  that  his  body,  after  hanging, 
would  be  given  for  dissection,  said,  "  Thank 
you,  my  lord  ;  it  is  well  you  cannot  dissect 
my  soul."  We  should  look  upward,  and 
not  downward,  when  we  stand  beside  the 
grave. 

The  surgeon  replies  to  those  who  regard 
cremation  as  a  heathen  custom,  it  is  not 
more  heathen  than  burying  in  holes.  Sprink- 
ling earth  on  the  coffin  is  a  heathen  custom 
based  upon  a  heathen  superstition,  but  con- 
verted to  a  Christian  use.  He  gives  interest- 
ing illustrations  of  the  use  of  urn-burial 
by  many  nations,  but  reminds  us  that  the 
cost  of  fuel  was  one  obstacle  to  its  general 
adoption  in  old  times.  Ground  was  to  be 
had  more  cheaply  than  the  materials  neces- 
sary for  the  humblest  burning,  when  it  was 
requisite  to  burn  on  large  piles  in  the  open 
air.  "  The  Christians,  however,"  gays  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  "abhorred  this  way  of 
obsequies ;  and  though  they  «tickt  not  to 
give  their  bodies  to  be  burnt  in  their  lives, 
detested  that  mode  after  death."  But  what- 
ever reason  Christians  had  in  the  first  days 
of  Christianity  against  the  burning  of  their 
bodies,  they  have  left  behind  them  no  objec- 
tion founded  on  a  permanent  religious  prin- 
ciple. We,  now,  bury  in  graves  and  build 
funeral  urns  in  stone  as  emblems. 

The  report  of  the  French  Academy  of 
Medicine  upon  the  effect  of  cemeteries  on  the 
health  of  Paris,  lias  led  in  France  to  the 
bestowing  of  much  serious  attention  on  the 
subject  of  cremation  ;  and  there  is  sober  dis- 
cussion of  the  plan  of  M.  Bonneau,  who 
proposes  to  replace  all  cemeteries  near  great 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  LEAF. 


[September  8,  1857.]      227 


cities,  by  a  building  called  the  Sarcophagus. 
"  Thither  the  corpses  of  both,  rich  and  poor, 
should  be  conveyed,  and  laid  out  on'a  metallic 
tablet,  which,  sliding  by  an  instantaneous 
movement  into  a  concealed  furnace,  would 
cause  the  body  to  be  consumed  in  the  space 
of  a  few  minutes."  Like  a  true  Frenchman, 
he  urges  the  bearing  of  his  plan  on  the 
interests  of  art,  "  for  who  would  not  wish 
to  preserve  the  ashes  of  his  ancestor  ?  The 
funeral  urn  may  soon  replace  on  our  consoles 
and  mantelpieces  the  ornaments  of  bronze 
clocks  and  china  vases  now  found  there." 
"  This  may  seem  a  misplaced  pleasantry  to 
English  minds,"  says  the  Edinburgh  Medical 
Journal,  "  but  we  cannot  help  being  startled 
at  reading  the  sanitary  report  leading  to 
it." 

The  surgeon  then  dwells  briefly  on  the  one 
valid  objection  to  the  burning  of  the  dead. 
It  destroys  evidence  in  case  of  secret  murder. 
Now,  the  dead  speak  under  the  spells  of  the 
chemist.  If  cremation  be  adopted,  greater 
accuracy  in  the  registration  and  closer  scru- 
tiny into  each  doubtful  case  of  death  will 
be  imperatively  called  for.  While  we  write 
this,  a  man  lies  sentenced  to  death  against 
whom  the  condemning  witness  was  the 
disinterred  corpse  of  his  mother. 

The  surgeon  in  his  next  chapter  shows 
what  the  pollution  of  a  graveyard  is.  Over 
this  familiar  ground  we  do  not  follow  him, 
except  to  take  up  the  testimony  of  the 
French  Academy  of  Medicine  that  "no 
matter  from  what  quarter  the  wind  blows, 
it  must  bring  over  Paris  the  putrid  emana- 
tions of  Pe"re  la  Chaise,  Montmartre,  or  Mont- 
parnasse,  and  the  very  water  which  we  drink, 
being  impregnated  with  the  same  poisonous 
matter,  we  become  the  prey  of  new  and 
frightful  diseases  of  the  throat  and  lungs,  to 
which  thousands  of  both  sexes  fall  victims 
every  year.  Thus  a  dreadful  throat  disease, 
which  baffles  the  skill  of  our  most  experienced 
medical  men,  and  which  carries  off  its  victims 
in  a  few  hours,  is  traced  to  the  absorption  of 
vitiated  air  into  the  windpipe,  and  has  been 
observed  to  rage  with  the  greatest  violence 
in  those  quarters  situated  nearest  to  ceme- 
teries." There  need  not  be  foul  smell  in 
poisoned  air.  The  deadly  malaria  of  the 
Pontine  marshes,  we  are  reminded,  blows 
soft  and  balmy  as  the  air  of  a  Devonshire 
summer.  In  his  last  chapter,  the  surgeon 
shows  how  cremation  of  the  dead  would  give 
even  increased  solemnity  to  the  funeral  ser- 
vice, and  increased  truth  to  the  words,  "  ashes 
to  ashes,  dust  to  dust."  In  the  centre  of  the 
chapel  used  for  burials,  he  would  erect  a 
shrine  of  marble,  at  the  door  of  which  the 
coffin  should  be  laid — so  constructed  and 
arranged  that  at  the  proper  time,  by  unseen 
agency,  the  body  should  be  drawn  from  it 
unseen,  into  an  inner  shrine,  where  it  would 
cross  a  sheet  of  furnace-flame,  by  which  it 
would  be  instantly  reduced  to  ashes.  Within 
the  chapel,  nothing  would  be  seen  ;  outside, 


there  would  be  seen  only  a  quivering  trans- 
parent ether,  floating  away  from  the  chapel 
spire.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  service,  the 
ashes  of  the  dead  would  be  reverently 
brought,  enclosed  in  a  glass  vase,  which  might 
be  again  enclosed  in  a  more  costly  urn  for 
burial,  for  deposit  in  a  vault,  or  in  a  con- 
secrated niche,  prepared  for  it  after  the 
manner  of  those  niches  for  the  urns  of  the 
departed  which  were  called,  from  their 
appearance,  columbaria — dove-cotes — by  the 
Eomans.  The  ashes  of  those  who  loved  each 
other  tenderly  might  mingle  in  one  urn,  if 
we  would  say : 

Let  not  their  dust  be  parted, 
For  their  two  hearts  in  life  were  single-hearted. 

There  is  nothing  irreverent  to  the  dead 
in  cremation.  Southey  expressed  very  em- 
phatically why  a  man  might  desire  it  for  his 
friends  :  "  The  nasty  custom  of  interment," 
he  says,  "makes  the  idea  of  a  dead  friend 
more  unpleasant.  We  think  of  the  grave, 
corruption,  and  worms.  Burning  would  be 
much  better."  The  true  feeling  is  that  with 
which  the  surgeon  ends  his  pamphlet,  using 
the  words  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  :  "  'Tis  all 
one  where  we  lye,  or  what  becomes  of  our 
bodies  after  we  are  dead,  ready  to  be  any- 
thing in  the  extasie  of  being  ever." 

THE  LEAF. 


THOU  art  curl'd  and  tender  and  smooth,  young  leaf ! 

With  a  creamy  fringe  of  down, 
As  thou  slippest  at  touch  of  the  light,  young  leaf, 

From  thy  cradling  case  of  brown. 

Thou  art  soft  as  an  infant's  hand,  young  leaf, 

When  it  fondles  a  mother's  cheek  ; 
And  thy  elders  are  cluster'd  around,  young  leaf, 

To  shelter  the  fair  and  weak. 

To  welcome  thee  out  from  the  bud,  young  leaf, 
There  are  airs  from  the  east  and  the  west  ; 

And  the  rich  dew  glides  from  the  clouds,  young  leaf, 
To  nestle  within  thy  breast. 

The  great  wide  heaven,  and  the  earth,  young  leaf, 

Are  around,  and  thy  place  for  thee. 
Come  forth  !  for  a  thread  art  thou,  young  leaf, 

In  the  web-work  of  mystery  ! 


Thou  art  full  and  firmly  set,  green  leaf, 

Like  a  strong  man  upon  the  earth  ; 
And  thou  showest  a  sturdy  front,  green  leaf, 

As  a  shield  to  thy  place  of  birth. 

There  is  pleasant  rest  iu  thy  shade,  green  leaf, 
And  thou  makest  a  harp  for  the  breeze  ; 

And  the  blossom  that  bends  from  thy  base,  green  leaf, 
Is  loved  by  the  summer  bees. 

The  small  bird's  nest  on  the  bough,  green  leaf, 

Has  thee  for  an  ample  roof; 
And  the  butterflies  cool  their  wings,  green  leaf, 

On  thy  branching  braided  woof. 


228       [Septimber  5,  1867J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


Thou  art  doing  thy  part  of  good,  green  leaf, 
And  shedding  thy  ray  of  grace  : 

There's  a  lesson  written  in  tliec,  green  leaf, 
For  the  eye  of  man  to  trace. 


Thou  art  rough,  aud  shrivell'd,  and  dry,  old  leaf, 

And  hast  lost  the  fringe  of  down  : 
And  the  green  of  thy  youth  is  gone,  old  leaf, 

And  turn'd  to  yellow  and  brown. 

There  are  sisters  of  thine  trod  in  clay,  old  leaf, 

And  in  swollen  rivers  drown'd  ; 
Ah,  but  thou  tremhlest  much,  old  leaf, 

Looking  down  to  the  greedy  ground. 

The  autumn  blast,  with  thy  doom,  old  leaf, 
Cometh  quickly,  and  will  not  spare, 

Thou  art  kin  to  the  dust  to-day,  old  leaf, 
And  to-morrow  thou  liest  there. 

For  thy  work  of  life  is  done,  old  leaf, 
And  now  there  is  need  of  thy  death. 

Be  content !     'Twill  be  all  for  the  best,  old  leaf, 
There  is  love  in  the  slaying  breath. 

SEPOY  SYMBOLS  OF  MUTINY. 


THE  conspiracy  which  broke  out  in  British 
India,  by  the  mutinies  of  Sepoys,  in  the 
month  of  June,  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty- 
seven,  was  first  shown  by  the  circulation  of 
symbols  in  the  forms  of  cakes  and  lotus- 
flowers. 

Herodotus  described  the  lotus  under  the 
name  of  the  lily  of  the  Nile,  and  Theophrastus 
portrayed  it  as  the  Egyptian  bean.  The 
first  historian  and  the  first  botanist  have  botl 
described  it  with  extreme  precision,  and  it  is 
mentioned  by  the  first  geographer,  Strabo. 
The  Arabs  call  it  the  bride  of  the  Nile. 

Herodotus  says,  the  lotus  grows  in  the 
country  when  it  is  flooded.  Its  flowers  are 
white,  and  have  petals  like  those  of  the  lily. 
The  lotus-plants  grow  in  great  numbers,  and 
crowded  together.  Their  flowers  close  at 
sunset,  and  hide  their  fruit,  and  they  open 
again  when  the  sun  re-appears,  and  rise  up 
above  the  surface  of  the  water.  They  con- 
tinue to  do  this  until  the  fruit  is  entirely 
formed,  and  the  flower  has  fallen.  The  fruit 
is  as  large  as  that  of  a  large  poppy,  and  con- 
tains a  great  number  of  seeds,  like  millet 
seed.  The  Egyptians  pile  the  fruit  in  heaps 
and  allow  the  bark  to  rot,  and  they  then 
separate  the  seed,  wash  it  in  the  Nile,  anc 
after  drying  it,  convert  it  into  bread.  The 
root  of  the  lotus,  which  is  called  corsion,  is 
round,  and  about  the  size  of  a  quince ;  anc 
its  bark  is  black,  like  that  of  the  chesnut 
the  root  is,  moreover,  white  inside,  and  it  is 
eaten  either  raw  or  cooked. 

Theophrastus  says,  this  bean  grows  in  the 
marshes  and  ponds  ;  its  stalk  is  about  four 
arms  long,  and  is  of  the  thickness  of  a  finger 
It  resembles  a  rush  which  is  not  knotted 
The  fruit  it  bears,  is  of  the  shape  of  a  wasp's 
nest,  and  contains  as  many  as  thirty  beans 
each  in  a  separate  cell.  The  flower  is  once 


or  twice  larger  than  that  of  the  poppy,  and 
s  pink.  The  fruit  gi-ows  above  the  surface 
of  the  water;  the  leaves  are  borne  upon 
talks  like  those  of  the  fruit ;  they  are  large, 
and  they  resemble  a  Thessaliau  hat.  The 
root  is  thicker  than  the  root  of  a  stout  rush, 
and  is  partitioned  like  the  stalk.  It  serve« 
as  nourishment  to  those  who  live  near  the 
marshes.  This  plant  grows  spontaneously 
and  abundantly,  and  can,  moreover,  be  sown 
n  mud,  with  a  bed  of  straw  to  prevent  ita 
rotting. 

After  giving  the  accounts  of  the  father  of 
listory  and  the  father  of  botany,  it  would 
not  be  well  to  omit  what  is  said  by  the  father 
of  geography. 

Strabo  says,  the  ancient  Egyptians  used  to 
sail  iu  barks  over  the  lakes  which  were 
covered  with  the  beans,  and  shade  themselves 
with  the  leaves  ;  as  their  descendants,  in  the 
present  day,  shade  themselves  with  the  leaves 
of  the  sedges  and  date  trees. 

Pliny  the  elder  mentions  the  lotus,  which, 
he  compares  to  a  poppy :  showing  that  the 
lily  of  the  Nile  was  known  to  the  Romans, 
although  it  began  to  disappear  in  Egypt  from 
their  time — it  has  been  supposed  with  the 
religion  of  which  it  was  a  symbol. 

Strabo  says,  the  leaves,  which  were  about 
the  size  of  Thessalian  hats,  were  used  as 
goblets  and  plates,  and  the  shops  were  sup- 
plied with  them.  Travellers  of  the  present 
day  tell  us,  that  the  Hindoos  use,  as  platea 
and  dishes,  the  leaves  of  the  plantain  tree 
and  those  of  the  nymphtea  lotus — the  beautiful 
lily  which  abounds  upon  their  lakes.  The 
leaves  are  large  enough  in  Bengal  to  be  used 
by  the  people  without  having  been  subjected 
to  any  artificial  preparation.  At  each  repast 
they  renew  these  fresh  and  beautiful  vessels, 
which  cost  them  nothing  but  the  trouble  of 
gathering.  In  the  upper  provinces,  where 
the  leaves  are  smaller,  several  of  them  are 
plaited  together  to  make  plates,  and  the  per- 
sons who  make  this  work  their  trade  are 
called  "barbi."  Just  as  in  upper  Bengal 
there  are  still  to  be  seen  the  barbi,  who  made 
the  lotus-dishes  described  by  Strabo.  The 
French  traveller,  Jacquemont,  found  upon 
the  banks  of  the  lakes  of  Pentapotamus  and 
Cachemire,  poor  people  living  upon  the  lotus- 
roots,  just  as  poor  people  lived  upon  their 
roots  in  Egypt  in  the  time  of  Herodotus.  In 
some  parts  of  India  the  nut  is  eaten  green, 
and  preserved  as  a  sweetmeat ;  the  Fellahs 
of  Damietta  eat  both  the  roots  and  seeds. 
When  cooked,  the  leaves  are  said  to  taste 
like  the  best  cabbages,  and  the  roots  like 
chesnuts. 

The  disappearance  of  the  lotus  from  Egypt 
has  been  ascribed  to  the  disappearance  of  the 
religion  of  which  it  was  a  symbol.  The 
scientific  commission  which  accompanied  Na- 
poleon, and  whose  services  to  science  have 
won  far  more  honour  to  France  than  Napoleon, 
lost  under  the  shadows  of  the  Pyramids, 
could  not  find  any  traces  of  the  lotus  in  the 


Charles  Diekjni 


SEPOY  SYMBOLS  OF  MUTINY. 


[September  5, 1857.1       229 


waters  of  the  Nile.  The  plant  has  vanished 
from  the  habitat  where  it  flourished  when  it 
was  celebrated  by  Strabo,  Theophrastus,  and 
Herodotus.  Men  of  science  have  not  failed 
to  notice  the  refutation  of  the  development 
theory  contained  in  the  exact  accordance  of 
the  lotus  of  the  present  day  in  the  minutest 
details  of  its  structure  and  vegetation  with 
the  careful  descriptions  of  it  which  were 
written  two  thousand  years  ago.  The  fact  is 
one  of  the  many  proofs  of  the  fixity  of  species. 
The  lotus  which  is  represented  upon  the  an- 
cient monuments  and  altars  of  Egypt  is  no 
longer  found  in  the  lakes  and  marshes  where 
it  was  first  described  ;  but,  when  it  is  met 
i  with  in  still  warmer  climes  it  is  seen  to  be 
cyxactly  the  species  of  the  most  ancient  de- 
scriptions and  delineations.  The  botanists 
are  considerably  puzzled  to  explain  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  lotus  from  the  canals  of 
lower  Egypt,  where  it  formerly  grew  almost 
spontaneously.  The  supposition  of  the  dis- 
appearance of  a  plant  with  the  religion  of 
which  it  was  a  symbol,  is  far  from  satisfac- 
tory, and  there  is  more  feasibility  in  imagin- 
ing the  phenomenon  to  be  due  to  mechanical 
or  chemical  changes  in  the  waters,  the  effects 
of  clearings  and  cultivation,  or  of  a  change  in 
the  climate.  The  lotus  grows  spontaneously 
where  the  average  summer  heat  is  twenty- 
one  degrees  centigrade  above  zero  ;  the  aver- 
age heat  of  a  climate  has,  however,  less  effect 
upon  the  lives  of  plants  than  the  average 
variability  ;  an  increase  in  the  violence  of  his 
floods,  or  of  the  suddenness  of  his  changes, 
of  the  dryness  of  his  droughts,  or  of  the  ra- 
pidity of  his  currents,  may,  therefore,  be  the 
reason  why  Father  Nile  has  lost  his  lily.  The 
Arabs  having  called  the  lotus  the  bride  of  the 
Nile,  this  may  be  only  another  case  of  separa- 
tion on  account  of  incompatibility  of  temper. 
The  lotus  is  a  vivacious  plant.  Plants 
which  go  through  all  the  changes  of  their 
lives  from  the  seed  to  the  seed  in  a  year  are 
called  annuals,  and  plants  which  propagate 
themselves  by  their  roots  are  called  vivacious. 
The  distinction  is,  however,  less  a  botanical 
than  a  meteorological  distinction  ;  for  the 
wheat  and  corn,  for  example,  which  are  an- 
nual in  our  temperate  climates,  are  vivacious 
in  the  tropical  latitudes.  The  daily  bread, 
which  is  the  best  and  most  beautiful  thing 
upon  our  tables,  is  thus  literally  given  us  by 
the  degrees  of  heat  and  cold,  by  the  north- 
east winds,  and  the  hoar-frosts  of  our  boreal 
1  skies.  The  greater  heat  of  the  tropics  gives 
an  excessive  vivacity  to  the  cereals,  which 
impedes  t,he  development  of  the  seed.  In  our 
colder  regions,  and  at  the  approach  of  the 
frosts  and  snows  of  our  winters,  the  cereals 
assume  the  only  forms  in  which  they  can  sur- 
vive the  rigorous  winters  of  the  temperate 
and  septentrional  climates.  If  it  is  the  spring 
and  summer  sun  which  pushes  and  ripens  the 
corn,  it  is  the  autumn  and  winter  frost  which 
determines  the  annual  metamorphoses  of  the 
grain. 


The  roots  of  the  lotus  resemble  the  white 
articulated  climbing  roots  of  the  reeds  (aruudo 
phragmites)  of  our  marshes.  The  Nymphosa 
family  have  subterranean  stalks,  called 
rhizomes.  The  subterranean  and  subaqueous- 
stalks  are  confounded  with  the  roots  in 
popular  language,  but  the  botanists  call 
these  stalks  rhizomes,  from  a  Greek  word 
signifying  roots.  While  the  leaves  decay 
annually,  the  rhizomes  persist  alive  at  the 
bottom  of  the  water  in  the  wet  mud.  At 
each  articulation  there  is  a  bunch  of  fibrous 
roots  and  a  bud  which  sends  forth  a  leaf.  The 
leaves  are  in  shape  like  a  basin,  and  when 
wetted  the  water  rolls  off  them  like  drops  of 
mercury. 

This  phenomenon  is  not  caused,  however, 
by  a  coating  of  wax,  like  that  secreted 
upon  the  surface  of  the  leaves  of  the  cab- 
bage. The  water  rolls  off  the  leaves  of  the 
lotus,  because  they  are  covered  with  innu- 
merable papillae,  which  are  not  wetted  by  the 
water,  and  from  which  the  drops  roll  off  and 
run  from  place  to  place.  An  easy  experiment 
proves  that  the  lotus  leaf  breathes  only 
through  its  petiole  or  stalk,  which  is  a  curi- 
ous peculiarity,  for  the  leaves  of  plants 
breathe  generally  through  little  mouths,  like 
button-holes,  upon  their  superior  and  inferior 
epiderms.  In  the  herbaceous  plants  there  are 
more  of  these  little  mouths  upon  the  upper 
than  upon  the  under  sides  ;  and  there  are 
none  upon  the  upper  surfaces  of  the  leaves- 
of  the  forest  trees.  The  Nymphaea,  or  water- 
lily  family,  nearly  all  have  their  breathing- 
mouths  upon  the  upper  surface  of  the  leaves 
which  is  exposed  to  the  air.  But  the  lotus — 
having  a  turn  for  eccentricity,  I  suppose — 
does  not  choose  to  breathe  like  its  kindred. 
Recently,  a  nymphaga  is  said  to  have  been  dis- 
covered which  breathes  by  the  lower  surfaces 
of  the  leaves,  which  turn  back  to  expose  the- 
little  mouths  or  stomates  to  the  air.  This 
plant  and  the  lotus  are  the  only  members  of 
the  family  who  indulge  in  respiratory  pecu- 
liarities, and  the  lotus  is  by  far  the  more 
eccentric  and  original  of  these  peculiar  species 
of  water-lilies.  The  stomates  of  the  lotus 
are  all  accumulated  upon  the  top  of  the  stalk 
just  where  it  joins  the  leaf.  A  whitish  central 
spot  amidst  the  velvety  green  of  the  fresh 
young  leaves  marks  the  locality  of  their 
stomates.  But  I  must  not  forget  the  expe- 
riment. If  you  cut  one  of  these  leaves  and 
pour  water  into  the  cup  which  it  forms,  and 
then  blow  through  the  stalk,  you  will  see 
the  air  raising  up  the  water  and  escaping 
through  it  in  bubbles. 

The  lotus  leaves  have  another  peculiarity. 
The  leaves  of  the  Nymphaea  family  generally 
have  leaves  resembling  the  leaves  of  the 
lotus,  only  their  lobes  are  not  soldered  toge- 
ther. The  leaves  of  the  lotus,  on  the  con- 
trary, have  their  two  lobes  soldered  together, 
and  a  trace  of  their  joining  can  be  seen  upon 
the  inferior  surface  and  the  outer  edge  of 
the  leaf. 


230       [September  5, 1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


It  is  the  soldering  of  the  lobes  which  gives 
the  lotus  leaves  their  singular  form, — the  re- 
semblance to  basins  or  flat  hats  which  makes 
them  serviceable  as  vessels  in  India.  In 
addition  to  having  the  lobes  soldered  together 
like  the  hellebore,  the  limb  of  the  lotus  leaf 
is  round,  with  the  nervures  branching  off 
equally  from  the  central  stalk  or  petiole, 
like  the  water-porringer  (hydrocotyle  vul- 
garis). 

The  leaves  become  flowers,  and  the  flowers 
fruits,  in  the  lotus,  as  in  other  plants.  Goethe, 
the  poet,  made  the  most  interesting  observa- 
tion upon  the  flowering  plants  which  has 
enriched  science  since  Ray  discovered  and 
Linnaeus  demonstrated  their  sexes.  He 
showed  the  transformation  of  the  leaves  into 
flowers.  He  described  how,  by  successive 
transformations,  the  leaves  form  the  calix, 
the  calix  the  corolla,  and  the  corolla  the 
organs  which  reproduce  the  plant.  Botanists 
now  know  how  to  surprise  and  view  these 
processes  in  many  plants,  and  they  are  most 
easily  seen  on  the  wild  as  compared  with 
the  cultivated  strawberries. 

The  lotus  leaves  and  flowers  are  supported 
upon  stalks  about  a  yard  long,  which  rise  up 
out  of  the  water.  The  asperities  upon  the 
stalks  resemble  those  of  the  Nymphseacese, 
generally,  and  especially  the  Euryalea  and 
the  Victoria.  The  orbicular  and  singular 
leaves  of  the  lotus  transform  themselves  into 
a  flower  resembling  an  enormous  tulip,  or  a 
gigantic  magnolia  flower,  the  ideal  of  elegant 
cups  or  vases,  a  foot  in  diameter,  or  three  feet 
in  circumference,  of  a  rosy  colour,  becoming 
very  brilliant  towards  the  edges  of  the 
petals.  These  rosy  leaves  of  the  corolla  are 
a  dozen  or  fifteen  in  number,  and  overlap 
each  other  like  tiles  upon  a  roof.  The  observer 
who  should,  day  by  day,  watch  and  witness 
the  transformations  of  the  lotus  leaves  into 
lotus  flowers,  would  share  the  pleasure  with 
which  Goethe  must  have  first  divined  these 
beautiful  changes.  Their  fragrance  like  their 
colour  resembles  the  rose.  When  the  ancient 
Egyptians  twined  these  leaves  and  flowers 
into  canopies  over  their  canoes,  they  must 
have  formed  unrivalled  shady  bowers,  or 
matchless  gondolas,  or  strangely  and  ravish- 
ingly  delicious  combinations  of  the  bower 
and  the  gondolas.  No  wonder  the  rosy  lily 
of  the  Nile  struck  with  admiration  the 
great  observers  of  thousands  of  years  ago  ! 
The  lotus  flower  rising  up  out  of  the  lakes 
upon  which  the  tropical  sunbeams  blaze,  and 
across  which  the  flame  breezes  blow,  is  well 
fitted  to  strike  and  haunt,  as  it  has  done  in 
all  ages,  the  imaginations  of  the  yellow  races 
of  the  human  family.  Most  certainly,  con- 
spiracy never  had  a  more  magnificent 
symbol  ! 

There  are  white  and  yellow,  as  well  as 
pink  lotus  flowers.  They  are  but  a  short 
time  in  blow,  and  close  at  night.  The  sta- 
mens are  very  numerous,  and  the  pistils  are 
from  fifteen  to  thirty  in  number.  Each 


pistil  becomes,  in  course  of  time,  a  fruit, — a 
little  black  nut  like  an  acorn,  without  its 
cup.  The  pistils  are  borne  upon  a  recep- 
tacje,  which  is  the  botanical  name  for  the 
base  upon  which  all  the  parts  of  the  flower 
Test.  From  fifteen  to  thirty  pistils  nestle 
upon  the  fleshy  sea-green  receptacle  of  the 
lotus.  The  form  of  it  has  been  compared  to 
the  knob  of  the  spout  of  a  watering-can. 
The  ancients  called  the  fruit,  a  bean.  Theo- 
phrastus  has  described  it  exactly,  with  the 
embryon  folded  upon  itself,  and  the  little 
leaf  which  characterises  it.  "  On  breaking  a 
bean,"  he  says,  "  a  little  body  is  seen  folded 
upon  itself,  from  which  the  fruit-leaf  grows." 
This  primordial  leaf  is  the  cotyledon  which 
plays  such  a  grand  part  in  the  tables  of  the 
system-makers. 

I  have  sketched  the  biography  of  the  lotua 
from  the  seed  to  the  seed.  The  Egyptians 
used  to  take  the  bean,  and,  after  enclosing  it 
in  a  lump  of  mud  to  make  it  sink,  throw  it 
into  the  water.  When  the  temperature  of 
the  season  prompted  germination,  the  little 
body  folded  upon  itself  put  forth  the  leaf  and 
the  root.  The  horizontal  subaqueous  stalks 
sent  up  leaves  and  sent  down  roots  at  each 
knot  or  joint.  As  the  increasing  heat  sent  a 
quickened  vitality  through  the  plant,  the 
round  leaves  rose  above  the  water.  The 
leaves  became  flowers,  and  the  pistils  trans- 
formed themselves  into  fruits ;  "the  fruits 
containing  the  beans,  and  the  beans  the 
erabryons.  Such  is  the  perpetual  round  of 
life  in  the  lotus  species,  and  such  it  has 
been  ever  since  the  fiat  of  the  Creator  sum- 
moned into  existence  this  marvel  of  the 
vegetal  world. 

The  lotus  flourished  for  the  first  time  in 
Paris  in  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-two ; 
and  it  has  sometimes  produced  its  fruits  in 
the  open  air  in  the  Botanical  Garden  of 
Montpellier. 

I  do  not  know  the  meaning  nor  the  deriva- 
tion of  the  word  lotus.  Many  Egyptian 
plants  are  called  lotus,  and  there  is  a  town 
which  bears  the  name.  But  the  plant  which 
has  given  its  name  to  this  town  is  a  tree, — 
the  tree  whose  fruit  the  confectioners  imitate 
in  their  jujubes.  Of  the  Rhamnus  lotus  of 
Linnaeus  Pliny  says  :  "  its  fruit  is  so  sweet 
that  it  gives  its  name  to  the  country  and  the 
people  where  it  grows." 

I  fear  I  may  have  indulged  in  too  long  an 
excursion  into  the  realms  of  Botany,  to  suit 
the  reader  who  merely  wishes  to  know  why 
the  Indian  rebels  choose  lotus  flowers  as 
symbols  of  conspiracy.  I  am  sure  I  am  as 
innocent  of  the  knowledge  as  of  the  rebellion, 
but  I  will  try  to  help  my  readers  to  a  guess. 

Four-fifths  of  the  human  species  worship  a 
god-woman.  I  confess  I  have  but  a  limited 
interest  in  the  discoveries  of  antiquarians, 
for  the  best  mines  of  antiquities  are  not  the 
ruins  of  buried  cities,  but  the  minds  of  living 
populations.  Four-fifths  of  the  human  species 
worship  a  god-woman  ;  and  the  vestiges  of 


Charles  Dickens.] 


SEPOY  SYMBOLS  OF  MUTINY. 


[September  5, 1857.]       231 


this  worship  are  found  in  the  most  ancient 
monuments,  documents,  and  traditions, 
stretching  backwards  into  the  past  eternity, 
from  millennium  to  millennium,  towards  an 
epoch  beyond  the  records  of  the  Deluge,  and 
almost  co-eval  with  the  loss  of  Eden.  The 
Tentyrian  planisphere  of  the  ancient  Egyp- 
tians represents  the  Virgin  and  child  rising 
out  of  a  lotus  flower.  The  Egyptian  hiero- 
glyphics depict  the  goddess  Asteria,  or  Jus- 
tice, issuing  out  of  a  lotus,  and  seating  herself 
upon  the  centre  of  the  beam  of  Libra,  or  the 
Scales.  Pictorial  delineations  of  the  Judg- 
ment of  the  Dead,  represent  Osiris  as  Amenti 
swathed  in  the  white  garments  of  the  grave, 
girt  with  a  red  girdle,  and  sealed  upon  a 
chequered  throne  of  white  and  black  spots, 
or  good  and  evil.  Before  him  are  the  vase  of 
nectar,  the  table  of  ambrosia,  the  great 
serpent,  and  the  lotus  of  knowledge — the 
emblems  of  Paradise.  There  are  Egyptian 
altar-pieces  upon  which  the  lotus  figures  as 
the  tree  of  life.  The  Hindu  priests  say  that 
the  lotus  rising  out  of  the  lakes  is  the  type 
of  the  world  issuing  out  of  the  ocean  of  time. 

Travellers  who  have  observed  the  worship  of 
the  Hindus  and  Parsees,  tell  us  that  they  give 
religious  'honours  to  the  lotus.  The  Budhist 
priests  cultivate  it  in  precious  vases,  and 
place  it  in  their  temples.  The  Chinese  poets 
celebrate  the  sacred  bean  of  India,  out  of 
which  their  goddess  Amida  and  her  child 
arose,  iu  the  middle  of  a  lake.  We  can  be  at 
no  loss  to  imagine  the  appearance  of  the 
Budhist  pagodas,  for  our  Gothic  cathedrals 
are  just  those  pagodas  imitated  in  stone. 
Their  pillars  copy  the  trunks  of  the  palm- 
trees  and  the  effects  of  the  creeping  plants  of 
the  pagodas  ;  their  heaven-piercing  spires  are 
the  golden  spathes  of  palm-flowers,  and  the 
stained  glass  reproduces,  feebly,  the  many- 
coloured  brilliancies  of  the  tropical  skies. 
Every  pious  Budhist,  giving  himself  up  to 
devout  meditations,  repeats,  as  often  as  he 
can,  the  words,  "  On  ma  ni  bat  me  Klom." 
When  many  worshippers  are  kneeling  and 
repeating  the  sound,  the  effect  is  like  counter- 
bass  or  the  humming  of  bees  ;  and  profound 
sighs  mingle  with  the  repetitions.  The 
Mongolian  priests  say  these  words  are  en- 
dowed with  mysterious  and  supernatural 
powers  ;  they  increase  the  virtues  of  the 
faithful ;  they  bring  them  nearer  to  divine 
perfection,  and  they  exempt  them  from  the 
pains  of  the  future  life.  When  the  priests 
are  asked  to  explain  the  words,  they  say 
volumes  would  be  required  to  tell  all  their 
meanings.  Klaproth,  however,  says  that  the 
formula  is  nothing  but  a  corruption  of  four 
Hindu  words,  "  Om  man'i  padma  houm," 
signifying  "  Oh !  precious  lotus  !  " 

Without  pretending  that  the  volume  of  the 
Hindu  fakirs,  on  the  significations  of  the  lotus, 
might  not  throw  more  light  upon  the  use  of 
it  as  a  symbol  of  conspiracy,  there  are  hints 
enough  in  the  facts  I  have  stated,  to  warrant 
the  conclusion  that  it  serves  as  a  sign  of  a 


great  and  general  rising  on  behalf  of  Bud- 
hisrn.  The  flower  was  circulated  to  rally 
the  votaries  of  the  goddess  of  the  lotus. 

And  the  cakes  have  precisely  the  same 
significance  as  the  lotus  flowers.  These  cakes 
are  very  ancient  symbols.  Corn  and  lotus 
seeds  were  baked  into  cakes,  offered  to  Isis 
the  goddess  of  Fei'tility  and  Abundance.  The 
principle  which  deems  a  god  to  be  just  what 
his  worshippers  believe  him,  is  the  only 
one  likely  to  surmount  the  difficulties  which 
surround  the  study  of  the  gods.  The  diffi- 
culties in  identifying  the  divinities  of  mytho- 
logy come  chiefly  from  their  numerous 
metamorphoses  and  their  innumerable  aliases. 
The  Grecian  Jupiter,  the  Persian  Ormuzd, 
the  Egyptian  Osiris,  are  but  different  names 
and  modifications  of  the  god  of  light  and 
darkness  ;  and  Venus,  Astarte,  and  Isis,  are 
all  names  which  designate  the  evening-star, 
— the  queen  of  heaven.  The  worship  of  a 
divine  woman  is  of  zodiacal  origin.  Students 
of  the  picture  language  of  the  Egyptians 
ascribe  the  invention  of  the  zodiacal  signs  to 
Seth  the  son  of  Adam.  Virgo  and  Leo  are 
united  in  the  Sphynx,  and  their  child  is 
Horns  the  sun-god,  whose  symbol  was  the 
mistletoe  branch  of  the  Druids.  The  epithet 
virgin  was  particularly  applied  to  Diana, 
Minerva,  and  Themis — Chastity,  Wisdom, 
and  Justice.  There  can  scarcely  be  a  doubt, 
I  think,  of  the  identity  of  the  zodiacal 
virgin  with  Kouan-Yin,  the  Budhist  God- 
dess of  Mercy,  and  with  the  Queen  of 
Heaven,  the  object  of  the  idolatries  de- 
scribed by  the  Prophet  Jeremiah,  in  the 
seventh  chapter,  and  in  the  seventeenth 
to  the  twentieth  verse.  "  Seest  thou  not  what 
they  do  in  the  cities  of  Judah  and  in  the 
streets  of  Jerusalem  ?  The  children  gather 
wood,  and  the  fathers  kindle  the  fire,  and 
the  women  knead  their  dough,  to  make  cakes 
to  the  Queen  of  Heaven,  and  to  pour  out 
drink  offerings  unto  other  gods,  that  they 
may  provoke  me  to  anger.  Do  they  provoke 
me  to  anger  ?  saith  the  Lord  :  do  they  not 
provoke  themselves  to  the  confusion  of  their 
own  faces  ?  Therefore,  thus  saith  the  Lord 
God  ;  Behold,  mine  anger  and  my  fury  shall 
be  poured  out  upon  this  place,  upon  man,  and 
upon  beast,  and  upon  the  trees  of  the  field, 
and  upon  the  fruit  of  the  ground  ;  and  it 
shall  burn,  and  shall  not  be  quenched." 

Cakes  and  lotus  flowers  are  the  symbols  of 
the  Queen  of  Heaven,  the  Hindu  goddess  of 
mercy  and  mother  of  god.  Such  is  the  meaning 
of  the  symbols,  and,  in  as  far  as  they  were 
circulated,  such  is  the  purport  of  the  con- 
spiracy. 

The  use  of  these  ancient  symbols  to  pre- 
pare a  plot  against  British  sway,  is  well 
titted  to  strike  the  student  of  history.  For 
there  is  in  the  incidents  a  junction  of  wonders, 
the  most  picturesque  emblems  of  the  most 
ancient  and  universally  prevalent  religions 
being  brought  into  collision  with  the  most 
marvellous  empire  the  world  has  ever  seen. 


232      [September  5,  18570 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bj 


Four  hundred  years  ago  a  horde  of  fierce  and 
barbarous  barons  were  busy  in  England, 
painting  the  white  rose  red.  Having  happily 
weakened  the  feudal  aristocracy  and  the 
despotic  monarchy  by  their  exterminating 
feuds,  the  smaller  proprietors  and  the  indus- 
trious orders  were  enabled,  in  these  highly 
favoured  British  islands,  to  grow  up  in  inde- 
pendence and  liberty,  and  to  flourish  in  wealth 
and  intelligence.  A  hundred  yeai's  ago, 
in  seventeen  hundred  and  fifty-seven,  a  com- 
pany of  traders  had  received  a  grant  of  about 
five  thousand  square  miles  of  territory  upon 
the  coast  of  Malabar  and  Coromandel,  and 
now,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-seven, 
their  empire  consists  of  about  six  hundred 
thousand  square  miles  of  territory.  Only  three 
or  four  centuries  ago  the  loveliest  flowers  in 
the  British  islands  were  the  symbols  of  the 
wretched  feuds  of  the  rival  pretenders  ;  and 
in  June,  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-seven, 
one  of  the  most  magnificent  products  of  the 
vegetable  world  is  the  symbol  of  a  struggle 
between  Budhism  and  Christianity.  Other 
and  coarser  elements,  no  doubt,  abound  in  the 
strife  ;  the  ambition  of  princes,  the  intrigues 
of  rival  nations ;  but,  under  atrocities  and 
mutinies,  the  student  of  races  and  religions 
can  scarcely  fail  to  discern  the  signs  of  a 
revolt  of  the  lotus  against  the  cross. 

ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL  FOR 
TEN  YEARS. 

IN   FOUR   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER   THE   SECOND. 

STOCKBRIDGE,  August  the  fourth. — This  is 
the  first  chance  I  have  got  since  I  came  to 
Stockbridge,  of  writing  a  word  in  my  journal 
— and  now  it  is  on  the  sly.  I  came  four  days 
ago,  and  seem  to  have  been  in  a  whirl  and 
confusion  ever  since  ;  I  am  only  just  begin- 
ning to  settle  down. 

At  first  it  seemed  as  if  I  never  should 
settle.  Everything  was  so  strange.  There 
was  only  one  girl  here  when  I  arrived  (Miss 
Alice  they  call  her,  and  she  is  the  half- 
boarder)  ;  but  a  great  many  have  come  in 
yesterday  and  to-day — twenty-three  in  all. 
From  what  I  have  seen,  there  is  not  one 
whom  I  feel  inclined  to  like  much,  but  I  can 
tell  with  certainty  one  person  I  do  not  like, 
and  that  is  Miss  Alice — I  cannot  bear  her. 
She  helped  the  English  teacher,  Miss  Small- 
wood  (a  gaunt,  very  disagreeable-looking 
•woman)  to  unpack  my  boxes,  make  inven- 
tories of  my  clothes,  and  put  them  in  the 
drawers  as  if  she  were  a  servant ;  and  when 
it  was  time  to  dress  for  dinner  (we  dine  at 
four)  she  came  and  asked  me  if  I  could  do 
my  own  hair  1  When  I  told  har  I  could,  she 
said,  "That's  a  blessing  !  "  and  went  away. 

She  is  apparently  there  to  serve  everybody 
—girls,  teachers,  and  mistresses.  Some  of 
the  girls  seem  great  friends  with  her,  but 
most  of  them  are  afraid  of  her.  She  is  not 
cross  or  ill-natured,  but  she  is  so  satirical  she 
makes  me  cringe.  If  she  only  looks  at  me,  I 


begin  to  dread  that  the  next  moment  she 
will,  as  it  were,  spit  out  a  sharp,  stinging 
phrase  at  me,  and  make  everybody  laugh. 
It  is  her  way.  I  was  talking  to  Emily  Clay 
about  her,  and  asking  whether  she  were  not 
a  disagreeable  person  ;  Emily  said  she  was 
very  odious  to  those  she  disliked,  but  by  one 
or  two  there  was  nobody  so  much  loved.  It 
seems  strange  how  anybody  can  love  her. 
She  does  not  look  very  formidable  ;  she  is 
middle-sized  and  dark-complexioned,  with  a 
quantity  of  beautiful  hair,  and  very  bright 
eyes  ;  Emily  calls  her  pretty,  but  I  do  not. 
Miss  Thoroton  does  not  like  her,  and  is  very 
harsh  to  her,  and  she  even  dares  to  retort 
and  defend  herself.  Miss  Smallwood  and 
she  are  at  daggers  drawn,  and  are  engaged 
in  little  wordy  fights  ever  so  many  times 
a-day  ;  the  girls  seem  to  think  it  fun.  I 
should  not  like  to  be  Miss  Alice  for  any- 
thing, but  I  shall  take  care  not  to  offend  her. 

August  the  ninth. — This  is  my  first  Sunday 
at  school,  and  this  evening  we  have  some- 
rest  in  the  garden,  where  I  am  writing  upon 
my  knee  with  a  pencil  Emily  Clay  has  lent 
me.  On  week-days  we  have  scarcely  time 
to  breathe  between  each  lesson.  We  get  up 
at  six,  and  must  be  in  the  school-room  at 
!  seven.  Then  lessons  till  eight,  prayers,  and 
breakfast.  After  that,  ten  minutes  out  here,, 
and  in  again  to  work  until  twelve.  Then 
dry  bread  and  toast-and-water  for  luncheon, 
and  half-an-hour's  recreation.  Lessons  again 
i  till  two  :  then  a  walk  up  Stockbridge-lane, 
or  by  the  river-side.  Back  to  dinner  at  four : 
a  quarter  of  an  hour's  rest  to  save  our  com- 
plexions, then  to  lessons  again  till  half-past 
seven,  tea  at  eight,  prayers  after,  and  to  bed 
at  nine ;  very  thankful  am  I  to  get  to  bed  too,  I 
am  so  weary  of  the  incessant  hum  and  work. 

Miss  Thoroton  is  a  very  fashionable-looking 
lady,  but  she  drops  her  h's  occasionally  :  she 
addresses  us,  collectively  and  individually, 
upon  the  conduct  of  gentlewomen,  and  cites 
to  us  as  shining  examples  for  our  imitation, 
certain  stars  of  surpassing  brilliance,  who 
formerly  illumined  the  horizon  of  Stock- 
bridge,  but  who  have  since  gone  in  their 
glory  to  other  spheres.  There  is  one  — 
Maggie  Dickson,  whom  I  never  will  forgive  I 
Her  grace,  her  elegance,  her  patience,  her 
laborious  industry,  her  talent,  her  doing  her 
steps  up-stairs,  her  perfect  propriety  of  man- 
ner, and  her  French  accent  are  a  continual 
reproach  to  me.  I  believe  all  the  girls  hate 
her  sublime  and  inimitable  virtues.  What- 
ever we  do  ill,  Maggie  Dickson  would  scorn 
to  have  done  :  whatever  we  do  well,  Maggie 
Dickson  would  have  done  a  hundred  times 
better  !  All  the  genius  and  goodness  seem 
to  have  been  absorbed  by  past  generations  of 
school-girls,  while  we  are  left  lamentably  de- 
ficient. I  ventured  to  say  so  to  Miss  Alice, 
and  she  with  her  sruile  replied,  "  O  !  we 
shall  be  past  generations,  next  half  or  next 
year,  and  shall  become  shining  lights  in  our 
turn  !  When  Maggie  Dickson  was  here,  Miss 


Charles  Dickens  ] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[September  5,  135'.]        233 


Thoroton  used  to  say  she  was  like  an  over- 
grown stable-boy,  and  she  was  ;  she  came  to 
Stockbridge  when  I  did,  arid  got  into  as  many 
scrapes  as  any  of  us." 

This  is  consolatory,  but  I  do  wish  Miss 
Thoroton  would  allow  us  to  have  one  little 
germ  of  goodness,  so  that  there  might  be  a 
hope  of  something  sprouting  up  by-and-by  ; 
but  she  will  not.  She  says  my  language  is 
made  up  of  the  most  frightful  provincial- 
isms, which  never  can  be,  and  never  ought 
to  be,  tolerated  in  polite  society,  and  she  in- 
quires almost  daily,  where  I  have  been 
brought  up,  and  to  what  place  I  expect  to  go 
ultimately,  if  I  continue  to  persevere  in  my 
present  evil  ways.  I'm  sure  I  don't  know. 

Emily  Clay  is  such  a  sweet,  good,  kind 
creature  ;  she  never  says  an  ill  word  of  any- 
body ;  not  even  of  that  every-day-more-to-be- 
avoided  Miss  Alice.  Miss  Alice  spares  no 
one  and  no  thing.  She  deliberately  (and  I 
must  acknowledge  very  amusingly)  carica- 
tures us  all — teachers,  masters,  mistress,  and 
pupils  indiscriminately.  She  has  a  book  full 
of  quaint  sketches,  and  somebody  says  she 
keeps  a  locked  diary  :  this  is  esteemed  a 
great  mystery  and  wickedness,  as  I  suppose 
mine  would  be  were  it  known,  but  so  far 
no  one  is  cognisant  of  it.  I  have  not  even 
told  Emily  Clay,  and  she  is  my  favourite 
above  all  the  school.  Miss  Alice  does  a  great 
many  civil  offices  for  me,  indeed  sometimes  I 
am  ashamed  to  make  use  of  her  services, 
disliking  her  as  I  do,  but  I  cannot  help 
myself.  Yesterday  she  had  to  hear  me  prac- 
tise my  new  piece,  and  I  tried  to  say  I  was 
obliged,  but  did  it  with  such  a  bad  grace,  that 
fihe  laughed  and  said  :  "  You  need  not  thank 
me  ;  I  shall  attend  to  you  whether  you  do 
or  not,  and  I  hate  sham  !  " 

September  the  second.  —  I  scarcely  ever 
get  time  to  write  a  line  in  my  book  now,  but 
I  must  set  down  what  passed  yesterday. 

Miss  Alice  has  always  had  to  help  me  a 
great  deal  with  my  lessons  because  I  am  so 
low  in  my  class,  and  I  thought  it  was  only 
right  (especially  as  I  don't  like  her)  that  I 
should  make  her  some  acknowledgment  for 
her  services.  I  wrote  to  consult  Grannie 
about  it,  and  so,  when  she  and  Cousin  Jane 
drove  over  to  see  me  last  week,  I  asked  them 
to  bring  a  pretty  white  enamelled  work-box 
from  Compton  for  me  to  give  to  her.  I  never 
saw  her  by  herself  so  as  to  offer  it  until 
yesterday  afternoon,  half-holiday.  She  was 
in  one  of  the  arbours  alone,  reading,  ao  I 
fetched  it  out  of  my  drawer  in  the  school- 
room, and  carried  it  to  her ;  I  felt  shy  of 
presenting  it,  and  looked  as  awkward  as  could 
be  when  1  said,  "  Miss  Alice,  here  is  a  little 
work-box  for  you,  if  you  will  accept  it." 

She  looked  up  at  me  in  her  queer  way,  but 
without  ever  glancing  at  the  box,  and  replied, 
"  Eleanor  Clare,  I  never  accept  gifts  except 
from  those  who  love  me,"  and  then  she  went 
on  reading. 

I  turned  scarlet,  but  I  was  not  going  to 


enter  into  any  protestations  of  my  gratitude, 
so  I  lejt  the  parcel  on  the  seat  and  marched 
off.  Miss  Alice  presently  came  out  of  the 
arbour,  but  she  did  not  bring  the  box  with 
her,  nor,  so  far  as  I  observed,  did  she  even 
glance  at  it.  There  it  stayed  all  night,  and 
as  it  rained  heavily,  it  is  almost  spoiled  ; 
Miss  Smallwood  brought  it  in,  and  asked 
publicly  to  whom  it  belonged.  I  had.  never 
expected  that,  and  feeling  desperately  guilty 
got  behind  my  slate,  and  feigned  not  to  hear. 
Miss  Alice,  however,  spoke  and  said  : 

"  It  is  a  present  which  Miss  Eleanor  Clare 
offered  to  me,  and  which  I  declined." 
,,   Miss  Thoroton  looked  up  in  amazement 
and  stared  at  both  of  us,  then  at  the  box. 

"  It  was  an  expensive  present  for  you  to 
buy,  Miss  Eleanor,"  said  she  ;  "  but  it  shows 
a  good  spirit  of  gratitude  ;  you  have  given 
Miss  Alice  much  additional  work,  but  she 
has  no  claim  on  you  on  that  account." 

"  I  wanted  to  pay  her  for  her  trouble,"  I 
blundered  out  stupidly. 

"  That  you  cannot  do,"  said  Miss  Thoroton  ; 
"there  is  no  question  of  payment  between 
Miss  Alice  and  any  of  the  pupils  ;  you  are  all 
entitled  to  her  services,  and  she  is  entitled 
to  your  thanks,  but  nothing  more.  If  she 
had  chosen  to  accept  the  present,  offered  no 
doubt  in  a  right  spirit,  there  could  have  been 
no  objection;  but,  as  the  matter  stands,  I 
must  desire  Miss  Smallwood  to  take  charge 
of  it  until  you  go  home,  when  she  will  pack 
it  in  your  trunk.  There  is  no  need  to  cry, 
Miss  Eleanor." 

Yes,  that  final  admonition  was  to  me  !  I 
had  begun  to  cry — to  cry  publicly  ;  all  the 
girls  stared  and  whispered,  and  even  Miss 
Alice  began  to  look  red  and  vexed.  It  was 
just  time  to  go  out  to  walk,  and  everybody 
began  to  move  ;  at  last  they  all  went,  except 
Miss  Alice  and  myself,  and  there  I  sat  at 
my  desk  crying  like  a  baby — I  could  not 
stop,  and  for  very  shame  I  dropped  my  face 
into  my  two  hands :  I  could  have  stamped 
with  passion.  In  a  minute,  perhaps,  I  felt 
Miss  Alice  lay  her  hand  on  my  neck,  and  she 
said,  "  Don't  be  silly,  Eleanor  Clare,  it  is  not 
as  if  you  loved  me,  and  I  had  rejected  your  pre- 
sent— then  you  might  cry  ;  but  you  know  you 
hate  me  worse  than  any  girl  in  the  school."  < 

I  shook  her  off  and  replied,  "  Yes,  I  do  ! " 
so  vehemently.  I  was  sorry  after  I  had  said 
it,  for  all  her  colour  went  except  two  red 
spots  on  her  cheeks,  and  her  eyes  looked 
strange  as  if  tears  had  flashed  into  them ; 
but  the  next  moment  she  laughed  in  her  old 
way,  and  observed  that  she  had  known  it  all 
along,  and  did  not  care.  "  I  don't  care,"  is 
for  ever  on  her  lips. 

September  the  fourteenth.  —  What  tire- 
some, disagi'eeable  subjects  we  have  to  write 
about! — This  week's  is,  The  Four  Seasons, 
invited  to  dine  with  Time,  dispute  which  is 
the  most  valuable  to  men.  Half  the  girls 
are  running  to  and  fro  in  a  state  of  dis- 
traction :  they  cannot  borrow  from  books, 


234       [September  5,  i 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


1  Conducted  by 


and  Miss  Alice  is  in  one  of  her  lofty  moods, 
and  declines  to  help  anybody,  or  else  the 
common  cry  when  we  are  in  a  difficulty 
over  our  subjects  is,  "  O  I  Miss  Alice,  do 
give  me  an  idea  !  "  and  sometimes  she  will 
write  us  a  good  half-page. 

Ever  since  that  scene  about  the  box  she 
and  I  have  scarcely  spoken.  I  do  feel  a 
little  bit  vexed  and  ashamed  of  myself  when 
I  remember  it,  and  some  of  the  girls  have 
taken  upon  themselves  to  quarrel  with  me 
about  it.  They  say  I  insulted  her — I  did 
not  intend  it,  and  I  don't  believe  she  thinks 
I  did.  I  fancy  often  since  I  began  to  observe 
her  that  she  has  a  heart  under  her  satire,  but 
she  takes  a  great  deal  of  pains  to  keep  it 
hidden.  Emily  Clay  does  not  dislike  her ; 
indeed,  she  insists  upon  it  that  if  she  had 
not  been  so  harshly  treated  when  she  was  a 
child  and  since  she  came  to  Stockbridge,  she 
would  have  been  more  affectionate  and 
faithful  than  any  of  us.  Miss  Smallwood  is 
horrid  to  her,  but  she  never  seems  to  care, 
and  though  she  is  slaving  from  morning  till 
night,  Miss  Thoroton  scolds  her  every  day. 
She  is  dreadfully  impertinent  sometimes  — 
indeed,  she  always  appears  ready-armed  for 
repelling  an  attack,  and  such  cutting,  bitter 
things  she  can  say  !  So  very  different  from 
Emily  Clay  !  she  is  nice. 

September  the  nineteenth. — Miss  Alice  has 
been  put  into  my  room,  and  Emily  Clay 
moved  to  another.  Miss  Thoroton  said  she 
would  not  have  any  clanning  in  the  school, 
and  Emily  and  I  were  too  much  together. 
Then  we  are  not  allowed  to  be  companions 
in  our  walks,  but  each  of  us  is  classed  with 
a  girl  we  care  nothing  about.  Now,  I  call 
this  enough  to  make  us  deceitful  and  under- 
hand !  Why  cannot  we  be  allowed  our 
natural  affections  as  we  are  elsewhere  ?  I 
will  walk  with  Emily,  and  I  will  talk  with 
her  too,  whenever  I  can,  for  all  the  Miss 
Thoroton 's  in  the  universe  !  Miss  Small- 
wood,  too,  has  taken  a  spite  against  us,  and 
if  we  are  together  in  recreation  time,  she 
immediately  sends  one  of  us  off  to  the  piano 
or  elsewhere.  Miss  Alice  is  quite  as  much 
vexed  as  we  are,  but  we  have  to  submit. 
This  is  such  oppressive  hot  weather,  and  we 
have  had  ever  so  many  bad  thunderstorms 
lately.  I  don't  like  Stockbridge  as  a  place — 
letting  alone  its  being  a  school.  There  is  a 
great,  ugly  marsh  beyond  our  garden,  and  it 
is  damp  and  steamy,  so  different  to  dear  old 
Burnbank.  Some  of  the  girls  are  not  well, 
and  I  am  not  well  either,  though  I  don't  in 
the  least  know  what  ails  me  ;  I  get  tired  with 
nothing,  and  my  head  aches  miserably  often, 
but  I  don't  like  to  complain. 

October  the  twenty-ninth. — O  !  what  a  time 
I  have  had  of  it !  And  now  I  am  all  full 
of  aching  bones,  and  pains,  and  languors! 
I  can  scarcely  trail  one  foot  after  another, 
and  the  least  noise  almost  makes  me  scream. 
I  have  had  a  rheumatic  fever  for  nearly  six 
weeks,  and  have  suffered  so  very,  very  m.uch 


— it  was  like  being  racked.  Now  I  can  sit 
up  in  the  little  music-room,  and  Grannie  is 
I  staying  in  the  town  to  be  near  me.  They 
took  great  care  of  me  and  were  very  kind. 
Miss  Thoroton,  Miss  Smallwood,  Mademoi- 
selle, Emily,  and  all  of  them  ;  but  it  was 
Miss  Alice  who  nursed  me  best.  The  two 
girls  who  slept  in  the  other  bed  were  moved, 
and  she  and  I  were  left  alone  for  quiet.  I 
don't  know  how  I  can  have  thought  all  the 
cruel  things  of  her  that  I  have  done  ever 
since  I  came  to  Stockbridge  until  1  began  to 
be  ill.  She  is  so  patient  and  good.  One 
night  when  I  was  the  weakest  I  cried,  and 
made  confession  to  her,  and  asked  her  to 
forgive  me.  I  was  so  weighed  down  with  the 
remembrance  of  what  I  used  to  feel  against 
her,  that  I  could  not  rest  until  she  kissed 
me.  I  awoke  and  found  her  sitting  on  the 
floor,  with  her  face  resting  against  my  bed, 
watching  me,  and  stroking  my  hand.  I  knew 
she  had  been  practising  hi  the  drawing-room 
until  after  ten,  and  that  she  would  have  to 
be  at  her  lessons  for  herself  by  five,  and  it 
pained  me  inexpressibly  to  see  her  wasting 
her  few  hours  of  sleep  in  guarding  me. 
Since  that  night  I  have  found  her  out ;  she 
never  can  be  cold  and  repellant  to  me  again, 
for  I  must  love  her  whether  she  will  or  no. 
She  did  not  say  very  much,  but  she  kept  still 
a  long  while,  and  knelt  by  the  bed  with  her 
face  on  my  hand,  and  I  could  feel  it  wet 
with  tears.  At  last  she  asked  me  not  to 
talk  any  more,  she  could  not  bear  it,  and  got 
into  her  own  bed.  I  thought  at  first  she 
was  gone  to  sleep,  but  by-aud-by  I  heard  a 
sob,  and  another,  and  O  !  how  she  cried  !  I 
thought  she  would  kill  herself;  I  never 
heard  anybody  cry  so  bitterly,  or  so  long.  I 
sat  up — move  I  could  not — and  prayed  her  to 
be  calm,  but  she  seemed  to  have  lost  all 
control  over  herself,  and  could  not  cease.  I 
know  that  feeling  :  I  wanted  to  put  my  arms 
about  her  and  comfort  her,  and  to  tell  her 
there  was  one  person  would  love  her  always, 
always,  but  I  might  as  well  have  been  tied  to 
my  bed,  so  utterly  helpless  was  I  with  pain 
and  weakness. 

She  fell  asleep  at  length,  and  so  did  I,  and 
the  next  morning  she  said  very  quietly, 
"  You  must  not  tell,  Eleanor  Clare,  what  a 
fool  I  was  last  night ;  you  see  I  can  bear 
any  amount  of  scolding  and  hatred  with 
equanimity,  but  the  moment  I  get  a  glimpse 
of  affection  I  am  broken  up — it  is  the  hazel 
divining  rod  which  shows  where  lie  the 
fountains  of  tears  in  me — don't  you  use  it 
again  just  yet."  And  away  she  went  to  the 
school-room. 

I  feel  as  if  I  loved  her  just  now  better 
than  any  one  else  in  the  whole  world  ;  she 
has  a  kind  of  power  over  me  which  I  don't 
acknowledge  in  anybody  besides :  whatever 
she  bade  me  do  I  should  do  it.  I  like  to 
watch  her  face  as  she  sits  by  the  window  at 
her  frame-work  (she  gets  a  dispensation  from 
school  business  and  keeps  me  company  now 


Charles  I 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


September  5, 1857.]       235 


and  then),  it  changes  from  that  quick  vivacity 
and  satirical  expression  that  made  me  dislike 
her  once  to  a  very  placid,  mournful  look — 
she  has  a  large  forehead  and  dark  eyes,  but 
she  looks  ill  and  worn ;  in  fact,  I  believe 
she  has  a  great  deal  too  much  work  for  her 
age  and  strength.  She  does  twice  as  much 
as  Miss  Smallwood  or  Mademoiselle,  besides 
learning  her  own  lessons ;  she  says  to  me 
that  she  never  sleeps  above  an  hour  at  a 
time,  and  that  this  wakeful  habit  she  acquired 
when  she  first  came  to  Stockbridge,  through 
a  dread  of  lying  too  long,  and  being  up  late, 
and  not  having  time  for  her  lessons.  She 
will  not  talk  about  herself  much,  but  occa- 
sionally I  hear  a  little  bit  of  her  former 
history.  She  has  neither  father  nor  mother, 
sister  nor  brother,  and  she  is  here  to  be 
trained  for  a  teacher. 

November  the  twelfth. — O  !  I  think  Miss 
Smallwood  the  lowest-minded  woman  !  She 
took  me  to  task  this  morning  about  my 
infatuated  fondness,  as  she  called  it,  for 
Miss  Alice.  She  said  that  when  we  leave 
school  our  social  positions  will  be  widely  dif- 
ferent, and  that  it  would  be  awkward  for  me 
to  have  her  for  my  intimate  friend.  I  cannot 
express  the  utter  disgust,  the  wrath  that  I 
felt.  I  said  something  violent,  too,  and  for 
that  I  was  vexed,  because  it  gave  Miss  Small- 
wood  occasion  to  point  out  what  she  malici- 
ously phrased  "  a  sign  of  the  deterioration  of 
my  character  through  our  association."  To 
blame  Alice  ! — that  angered  me  more  than 
ever,  and  I  told  Miss  Smallwood  that  she  was 
quite  incapable  of  understanding  the  beautiful 
nature  of  my  dearest  schoolfellow,  to  whom  I 
was  attached  equally  by  my  gratitude  and 
my  love.  Miss  Smallwood  looked  very  red, 
called  me  an  impetuous  silly  girl,  and  threat- 
ened to  tell  Miss  Thoroton  :  whether  she  has 

done  so  or  not  I  neither  know  nor  care,  but — 

***** 

At  this  part  of  the  journal  there  is  a  blank 
half  page,  and  the  writing  is  not  resumed 
until  two  years  later,  when  Eleanor  Clare 
left  school :  the  sudden  break-off  she  then 
explains. 

MEADOWLANDS,  June  nineteenth,  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-six. — O  !  how  vividly 
the  sight  of  my  old  book,  that  scrawl,  that 
smeared  line,  and  the  avalanche  of  blots 
bring  back  the  remembrance  of  early  school- 
times  !  Miss  Thoroton  gave  it  to  me  yester- 
day when  I  was  packing  up  to  leave  Stock- 
bridge  for  good  and  all ;  she  did  not  make 
any  remark  about  the  awful  moment  when 
she  pounced  down  upon  me  as  I  was  making 
the  entry  which  conies  to  such  an  abrupt 
conclusion  ;  she  just  laid  it  down  and  said, 
"  This  is  your  property,  Eleanor  Clare,"  and 
marched  off  with  an  air  of  intense  dignity. 

1  have  been  reading  a  few  pages — I  wonder 
what  has  become  of  Alice,  and  where  she  is 
now — she  promised  to  write  to  me  when  she 
was  settled,  and  she  has  never  done  so. 


Emily  Clay  and  I  are  together  at  Meadow- 
lands,  where  her  father  lives :  it  is  a  pretty 
place,  but  not  so  pretty  as  Burnbank. 
Grannie  gave  permission  for  me  to  pay  my 
visit  of  a  fortnight  here  before  joining  her, 
and  afterwards,  I  suppose,  we  move  to  Fern- 
dell.  When  I  was  at  Meadowlaiids,  last 
midsummer,  Herbert  Clay  was  at  home ; 
but  now  he  is  away  on  one  of  his  journeys, 
and  is  not  likely  to  come  back  until  Monday. 
I  wish  he  were  here.  Meadowlaiids  is  rather 
dull,  notwithstanding  dear  Emily  does  all  she 
can  to  amuse  me  without  breaking  any  of  the 
laws  of  the  establishment.  Mrs.  Clay  is  the 
strangest  woman — if  she  were  not  Emily's 
mother,  I  believe  I  should  say  the  most  un- 
pleasant, tiresome,  tyrannical  woman  I  ever 
saw ;  she  has  a  set  of  rules  for  the  guidance 
of  servants,  husband,  children,  and  visitors, 
all  equally  harsh  and  equally  unrelaxing. 
How  other  people  support  her  yoke,  I  cannot 
tell,  but  to  me  it  is  insufferable — the  order  at 
Stockbridge  was  anarchy  in  comparison. 
Emily  submits  with  the  patience  and  resig- 
nation of  an  angel,  but  1  often  feel  tempted 
to  rebel ;  I  should  rebel  but  for  grieving  her, 
good  soul. 

Mademoiselle,  who  has  come  for  a  fort- 
night, is  not  so  conscientious.  She  audaciously 
proclaims  to  Mrs.  Clay's  face,  '"De  stitch- 
work  I  dislike,  de  'broidery  I  'bominate,  de 
stocking-darn  I  cannot  abear!"  and  Mrs. 
Clay  responds,  smiling  frigidly,  "  Idleness, 
mademoiselle,  idleness,  and  nothing  else." 
But  mademoiselle  folds  her  hands,  yawns  in 
the  middle  of  dreary  paragraphs,  and  sud- 
denly breaks  out  with  irrelevant  remarks  or 
suggestions  as  to  the  beauty  of  the  day  and 
the  propriety  of  taking  some  active  exercise 
instead  of  sitting  "  sew  like  mantu-makera 
in  dat  penitential  dressing-room  " — "  dat 
penitential  dressing-room,"  the  scene  of  our 
labours  and  dulness,  being  a  prettily-fitted 
room  adjoining  Mrs.  Clay's  bed-room,  where 
she  does  everything  except  take  her  meals, 
although  there  are  two  cheerful  drawing- 
rooms  and  a  capital  library  down-stairs. 

I  wish  Emily  had  gone  to  Burnbank  with 
me  instead  of  my  coming  to  Meadowlands 
with  her,  as  Herbert  is  away. 

June  twentieth. — Herbert  Clay  is  coming 
home  to-morrow,  instead  of  Monday.  I  am 
glad  !  for  now,  surely,  we  shall  have  a  drive 
out  somewhere — perhaps  to  Carlton  Lakes  ; 
that  was  a  delightful  drive  we  had  to  Carlton 
last  year  when  the  Brookes  were  staying 
here.  I  should  like  to  go  again.  I  have 
been  at  loss  to  understand  what  Mrs.  Clay 
was  hinting  at  all  this  morning  while  we 
were  "  in  purgatory ;"  sometimes,  from  her 
tone  and  glances,  I  imagined  it  might  be  at 
myself;  but,  then,  her  remarks  were  so 
plainly  irrelevant  that  I  must  have  been 
mistaken.  She  talked  about  designing  chits 
of  girls  with  intense  asperity,  and  said  once 
very  emphatically,  si  propos  of  nothing, 

"  When  Herbert  marries,  he  must  have 


236      [September  5,  1?37.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


money  with  his  wife ;  his  father  can  make 
him  no  allowance  now  !" 

Emily  laughed,  and  asked  if  anybody  had 
proposed  for  her  brother,,  that  she  was  speci- 
fying conditions.  Mrs.  Clay  reddened,  and 
waid  in  reply : 

"  It  is  well  those  things  should  be  under- 
stood ;  young  girls  are  apt  to  deceive  them- 
selves as  to  the  actual  position  of  men  whom 
they  see  in  a  luxurious  home." 

Mademoiselle  was  very  wrath,  and  she  has 
been  to  me  since,  indignantly  repelling  any 
suspicion  that  she,  Aimee  Louise  de  Chalfbnt, 
should  have  designs  matrimonial  on  the  son 
of  any  "  canaille  manufacturier  !"  I  appeased 
her  wrath  by  pointing  out  that  I  as  well  as 
herself  might  be  hinted  at. 

I  am  so  rejoiced  that  I  never  let  it  out  at 
Stockbridge  about  Fern  dell  being  mine — 
Miss  Thoroton  and  all  of  them  suppose  it  to 
belong  to  Grannie  ;  but  she  evidently  felt  the 
insult  aimed  particularly  at  herself ;  she  was 
for  packing  her  box  and  departing  a  1'instant 
menie,  but  I  prevailed  on  her  to  stay.  She 
acceded,  threatening  to  present  a  visage  de 
glace  a  ce  beau  monsieur  !  Herbert  will  not 
be  long  in  thawing  the  crust  if  he  is  as  he 
was,  and  Mademoiselle's  wrath  never  lasts 
more  than  ten  seconds  at  a  time — no  fear  of 
a  quarrel  therefore. 

June  twenty-first. — Of  all  hateful  places, 
that  dressing-room  is  the  most  hateful ! 
There  have  we  been  toiling  the  whole  of  the 
long  sunshiny  morning,  and  now,  at  three 
o'clock,  the  sky  is  overcast  and  threatens  rain. 
"We  might  have  gone  to  Carlton  so  beautifully 
If  Mrs.  Clay  would  have  let  us.  Herbert 
came  in  at  half-past  ten,  saying  he  had  a 
holiday  from  the  office,  and  would  drive  us 
anywhere  we  chose  to  go.  Mademoiselle 
shrieked  aloud  for  joy,  and  I  began  to  fold 
up  my  work,  when  Mrs.  Clay  bade  us  be 
tranquil,  she  could  not  spare  us  till  the 
-afternoon  ;  she  really  must  set  her  face 
against  such  distracted  ways. 

How  poor  Emily  is  to  pass  her  life  in  this 
dreary  fashion  is  more  than  I  can  tell ;  she 
will  become  as  tame  and  spiritless  as  a 
mouse  ;  she  is  far  too  yielding  and  unselfish 
already.  Mrs.  Clay  tyrannises  for  the  mere 
love  of  power.  When  she  had  refused  us 
this  reasonable  pleasure,  she  ordered  Herbert 
to  go  off,  but  he  said  he  had  nothing  in  the 
world  to  do  ;  he  had  made  over  his  work  for 
the  day  to  his  father,  and  so  he  would  wait 
till  we  were  at  liberty.  And  there  he  stayed 
leaning  against  the  side  of  the  door,  looking 
chagrined  and  uncomfortable,  until  his 
mother  found  him  a  task  to  walk  into  the 
town  to  match  some  wool  to  work  her  red 
parrot  with.  We  have  not  seen  him  since,  and 
I  do  not  suppose  he  went  near  the  wool-shop. 

Mrs.  Clay  treats  her  son  as  if  he  were  a 
little  school-boy,  although  he  is  nearly  of  age. 
Tt  is  marvellous  how  he  submits  to  it.  I 
would  not.  But  there  is  so  much  in  habit. 
Mrs.  Clay  is  not  actively  unkind,  but  she  is 


like  flint,  and  her  character  is  as  tough  as 
leather ;  she  seems  to  have  no  sentiments, 
no  emotions,  no  soft  amenities  of  dis- 
position ;  I  could  not  love  her  if  I  tried  for 
centuries,  and  I  do  not  think  she  could  love 
me.  I  cannot  tell  why,  but  she  seems  to 
have  taken  a  positive  dislike  to  me  just  now. 
She  shows  it  continually. 

June  the  twenty-second. — Last  night  we 
had  a  walk  down  by  the  river — Herbert  and 
I,  Emily  and  Mademoiselle.  It  was  almost 
in  the  gloaming,  and  I  think  I  never  shall 
forget  that  dreary,  wild  scene.  Though,  in 
early  spring,  the  water  pours  down  in  a  flood, 
at  this  season  the  bed  of  the  river  is  almost 
dry ;  the  white  stones  gleamed  ghastly 
against  the  low  dark  lines  of  wood  beyond, 
and  there  was  a  sad  moaning  undertone  in 
the  wind  such  as  I  never  heard  before. 
Then  the  trickling  flow  of  the  springs  amongst 
the  rocky  fragments,  the  rush  of  the  mill- 
stream,  and  the  stirring  of  the  leaves  seemed 
to  deepen  the  silence  ;  there  was  a  strange 
effect,  too,  in  the  clouds — all  purple  bars 
against  a  golden  sky,  which  reminded  me  of 
what  some  wretched  prisoner  might  feel 
looking  through  his  grated  window  at  the 
unattainable  liberty  beyond.  As  the  currents 
of  air  swept  down  the  rivei'-bed,  they  brought 
a  briny  scent  as  of  the  sea-shore.  I  almost 
expected  to  see  tangle  hanging  on  the  stones, 
and  shells  lying  about. 

Herbert  and  I  sat  on  the  bank,  while 
Emily  and  Mademoiselle  strayed  further 
down  towards  the  plantations,  and  he  began 
to  talk  about  his  school-days  ;  I  do  not  think 
he  is  happy  at  home  ;  nobody  could  be  happy 
so  crushed  and  fettered  as  he  and  Emily  are. 
I  do  not  think  Mr.  Clay  observes  how  tied 
down  his  children  are  ;  if  he  did,  surely  he 
would  alter  it;  but  he  evidently  regards  his 
wife  as  the  best  and  cleverest  of  women — a 
very  proper  conjugal  sentiment,  no  doubt,  but 
aggravating  if  it  blinds  him  to  paternal  duty. 

I  wonder  what  would  be  the  effect  of  a 
little  steady,  passive  resistance,  or  a  crisis  of 
rebellion — salutary,  most  likely.  It  does 
annoy  me — stirs  up,  indeed,  the  very  blackest 
drop  in  me — to  watch  Mrs.  Clay's  placidly 
self-satisfied  countenance  as  she  contradicts 
us  all,  and  rules  us  all,  and  chafes  us  all  to 
the  limit  of  human  endurance.  Her  eyes  are 
big  and  prominent,  her  features  are  flat,  her 
mouth  is  thin-lipped,  and  when  it  is  dropping 
pearls  of  moral  sentiments,  it  opens  and  shuts 
like  the  steel  snap  of  a  purse.  It  was  cer- 
tainly an  unaccountable  freak  of  nature  to 
give  her  two  such  fine  children  as  Herbert 
and  Emily.  Emily  is  very,  very  pretty,  and 
Herbert  has  a  noble  face  and  carries  his  head 
well ;  Mademoiselle  styles  him  Jeune  Apollo, 
and  he  certainly  has  a  claim  to  the  com- 
parison, but  I  would  rather  call  him  Phaeton, 
for  there  is  a  very  considerable  element  of 
rashness  in  him,  and,  once  his  mother's  sway 
cast  off,  he  will  do  some  foolish  things  by 
i  way  of  trying  his  power.  Emily  is  rather 


Charles  Dickens.] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[September  5, 1857.]       237 


afraid  of  him,  but  I  should  never  be  that ; 
las  heart  aud  principles  are  sterling  both,  and 
will  not  let  him  go  far  wrong. 

June  the  twenty-third. — This  little  book  is 
my  safety-valve  :  but  for  it  I  must  break  out 
in  some  unseemly  fashion  during  those  inter- 
minable seances  in  the  dressing-room.  This 
morning  I  have  stitched  my  finger  as  rough 
as  a  nutmeg-grater  with  making  coarse  baby 
clothes  for  a  charitable  basket.  I  hope  poor 
folks'  babies  come  into  the  world  with  tougher 
skins  than  gentlefolks,  or  else  they  will  have 
a  miserable  rasping  from  those  little  stiff 
shirts.  Mademoiselle  asked  if  they  were  for 
a  "  bebi  rhinoceros  ? "  and  Mrs.  Clay  told  us 
that  "  the  offspring  of  labour  must  not  be 
trained  in  luxurious  ease  ! "  Herbert  came 
in  while  we  were  sewing  at  the  sackcloth 
garments,  and  he  gave  his  opinions,  too, 
which  made  his  mother  angry,  and  she  for- 
bade him  the  dressing-room.  He  looked  mis- 
chievous as  he  went  out,  as  if  a  spirit  of  revolt 
were  beginning  to  burn  in  his  breast.  I  am 
wicked  enough  to  wish  that  it  would  break 
out,  and  as  for  Mademoiselle  she  incites  him, 
both  by  word  and  act,  to  set  his  tyrant  at 
defiance. 

June  the  twenty -fourth. — I  must  work  off 
a  little  of  my  effervescent  fidgetiness  by 
scribbling  in  my  journal  how  the  days  pass 
here.  Mrs.  Clay  appears  to  have  set  %11  her 
faculties  to  hard  labour  to  devise  expedients 
for  thwarting  and  vexing  her  children  at  this 
juncture.  What  for,  nobody  can  tell — merely 
through  a  natural  perversity,  I  suspect. 
To-daj"  we  have  missed  a  beautiful  chance  of 
going  to  the  ruins  at  Springfield  Priory.  I 
have  not  seen  them,  and  should  have  enjoyed 
it,  but  Mrs.  Clay  was  sure  her  husband  had 
said  he  should  want  the  horse  this  afternoon, 
and,  after  all,  it  turns  out  that  he  never  men- 
tioned it !  I  did  not  think  before  that  she 
would  have  invented  a  story  to  serve  her 
purpose.  Such  miserable,  paltry  ways  she 
takes  to  annoy  first  one  and  then  the  other  ; 
at  dinner  she  would  only  allow  preserved 
plums  to  the  mould  of  rice,  which  nobody 
but  herself  likes,  though  there  were  both 
raspberry  and  strawberry  jam  on  the  side- 
board. Herbert  ventured  on  a  word  of  re- 
monstrance, and  all  his  mother  would  say 
was,  she  wanted  the  plums  eating  up.  Made- 
moiselle thereupon  shrugged  her  shoulders, 
looked  wicked,  took  an  infinitesimal  portion 
of  rice  and  half  the  dish  of  plums  all  to 
herself,  and  ate  them  with  great  apparent 
gusto.  Mrs.  Clay's  face  was  a  picture  of 
dismay,  and  when  she  saw  Mademoiselle 
about  to  help  herself  a  second  time  she 
warned  her  that  she  would  certainly  be  ill ; 
but  Mademoiselle  smiled  benignly,  replied 
that  nothing  ever  disagreed  with  her,  and 
did  not  desist  until  she  had,  as  our  hostess 
desired,  "eaten  them  up."  I  daresay  we 
shall  see  no  preserved  fruit  but  plums  for  all 
the  remainder  of  our  visit. 

The  pleasantest  time  we  have  here  is  the 


evening.  Mr.  Clay  is  then  at  home,  and  he 
likes  to  have  his  wife  to  himself  to  read  the 
newspapers  to  him  aloud.  Then  we  four  can 
effect  our  escape,  and  we  either  take  a  walk 
down  by  the  river  or  across  the  fields  towards 
Springfield.  Sometimes  we  meet  Mr.  Hugh 
Cameron,  the  curate,  and  he  and  Emily  have 
a  talk.  I  believe  I  have  discovered  a  secret 
about  them  ;  I  am  sure  he  likes  Emily  very 
much,  whatever  she  thinks  of  him,  and  I  am 
inclined  to  suspect  she  returns  his  affection,, 
from  her  careful  avoidance  of  talking  about 
him.  They  know  nothing  of  it  at  Meadow- 
lands,  anyway,  for  he  is  received  there  very 
cordially  as  the  curate  ;  but  Mrs.  Clay  is  too 
fond  of  money  to  let  Emily  marry  a  poor 
man,  and  he  has  only  a  hundred  a-year. 
Every  day  I  expect  Emily  to  come  and  say 
something  to  me  about  it.  To-night,  up  in 
Redbank,  Mademoiselle  left  them  to  them- 
selves, and  when  we  all  wen';  home  Emily/ 
rushed  off  to  her  room  without  saying  a  word, 
and  did  not  come  down  to  tea  ;  I  am  sure 
something  happened  in.  the  walk !  I  should 
like  to 

June  the  twenty-f/ih. — I  was  stopped  last 
night  by  Emily's  com  :.ng  in  to  me  to  tell  me  all 
about  it.  Mr.  Hugh  Cameron  made  her  an 
offer  last  night,  and  she  accepted  him.  He 
is  to  see  her  father  to-day.  Poor  Emily  was 
very  white  and  anxious,  but  very  happy,  too.. 
We  cannot  imagine  what  her  mother  will 
say,  but  dread  disapproval.  I  think  Mr.. 
Clay  would  consent  if  left  to  himself,  for  he- 
likes  Hugh  Cameron.  Emily  will  make  such 
a  good,  quiet,  pretty  clergyman's  wife  ! 

June  the  twenty-sixth. — All  yesterday  was 
a  series  of  scenes — painful  scenes.  Mrs. 
Clay  is  harder  and  more  unfeeling  than  I 
could  possibly  have  conceived ;  she  is  art 
atrocious  woman  !  She  behaved  most  in- 
sultingly to  Hugh  Cameron,  and  most  cruelly 
to  Emily.  I  never  saw  or  imagined  any 
woman  so  devoid  of  proper  consideration  for 
others.  Emily  has  been  telling  me  that  the- 
first  thing  she  did  when  she  heard  of  the 
proposal  was  to  shriek  with  laughter,  as  if  it 
were  an  excellent  jest  got  up  for  her  amuse- 
ment. Mr.  Clay  was  surprised,  but  might 
easily  have  been  induced  to  consent  to  the 
marriage,  if  his  wife  had  not  taken  the  other 
side  so  vehemently.  She  denounced  the- 
curate  as  a  wolf  in  sheep's  clothing,  an  up- 
start, a  beggar,  a  designing  underling,  a 
miserable  poverty-bitten  Scotchman,  and 
ended  by  declaring  that  if  her  daughter  ever 
spoke  to  Hugh  Cameron  again  she  would 
renounce  her  at  once  and  for  ever.  Emily  was 
crushed  with  shame  and  pain,  for  he  waa 
there  all  the  time,  and  saw  the  sordid  soul  of 
her  mother. 

Mr.  Clay  is  ruled  by  his  wife  almost  as 
completely  as  his  children  are,  and  when  he- 
saw  her  violent  dislike  to  the  match,  he  just 
said  quietly : 

"  You  see,  Emily,  it  won't  do — you  raust 
give  him  up.  Mr.  Hugh  Cameron,  you  have 


238      [September  5.  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


my  respect,  but  vow  visits  to  Meadowlands 
m\ist  cease  for  the  preseiit." 

Mrs.  Clay  added,  furiously : 

"  For  ever,  sir  !  do  not  let  your  shadow 
darkeu  our  doors  again  while  I  live." 

Emily  said  she  sat  as  still  as  a  statue  her- 
self, but  Hugh  Cameron  looked  savage,  and 
she  feared  he  would  break  out  into  some  un- 
pardonable retort,  for  which,  in  point  of 
family  and  origin,  there  is  scope  enough  in 
the  Clay's  annals.  But  he  controlled  himself, 
and  shook  hands  with  Emily  before  her 
mother's  face,  and  each  made  some  kind  of 
promise,  there  and  then,  which  Emily  regards 
as  an  engagement. 

When  Herbert  came  in  from  the  office  at 
noon,  he  had  to  be  told  all  about  it,  and  he 
was  angry  that  Emily  should  be  made  mise- 
rable as  she  is  for  any  paltry  considerations, 
such  as  his  mother  cites.  He  would  have 
liked  her  to  marry  Hugh  Cameron,  who,  if 
he  be  poor,  is  a  fine-spirited  gentleman,  and 
a  very  clever  man,  who  will  rise  in  his  pro- 
fession before  he  is  many  years  older.  Her- 
bert thinks  that  even  in  a  worldly  point  of 
view,  if  no  other,  the  rejection  is  short-sighted 
and  wrong  in  the  extreme.  He  told  his 
mother  so,  and  she  began  to  cry  hysterically, 
and  invoke  maledictions  on  her  children,  in  a 
spasmodic  way  that  would  have  been  ridi- 
culous if  one  had  not  known  the  sad  cause. 
Mr.  Clay  was  vexed  with  Herbert  for  con- 
tradicting his  mother,  and  altogether  it  was 
a  miserable  time.  Emily  has  gone  to  lie 
down  now,  literally  worried  to  exhaustion  by 
her  mother's  tongue  and  her  own  griefs  ; 
and  Mademoiselle,  in  a  spirit  which  I  feel 
inclined  to  laud,  has  given  herself  up  to  the 
task  of  boring  Mrs.  Clay,  and  keeping  her 
quiet  in  the  dressing-room  while  Emily  has  a 
little  rest.  There  will  be  revolution  in  Mea- 
dowlands ere  long.  The  small  end  of  the 
wedge  of  liberty  has  been  inserted  by  Her- 
bert; and  to-day,  my  impression  is,  that  he 
will  push  it  further  and  further  in  until  the 
prison-doors  of  his  mother's  will  are  broken 
wide  open — the  sooner  the  better,  both  for 
his  happiness  and  Emily's. 

June  twenty-sixth. — I  am  going  away  from 
Meadowlands  immediately.  Last  night  Her- 
bert, and  I  went  up  Redbank  together. 
M  idemoiselle  stayed  to  guard  Emily  from 
her  mother,  and  when  we  returned  we  found 
that,  an  awful  storm  had  been  brewing  for  us 
while  we  were  gone. 

But  first  I  must  write  what  happened  on 
Redbank.  I  have  known  since  last  Midsum- 
mer that  Herbert  Clay  liked  me  better  than 
any  one  ;  but  to-night  he  told  me  he  must 
have  me  for  his  wife,  or  nobody.  I  am  quite 
sure  I  love  him  enough  to  marry  him,  because 
I  love  him  enough  to  die  for  him,  or,  perhaps, 
what  is  in  the  long-run  much  more  difficult, 
to  bear  a  great  many  lively  annoyances  for 
his  sake  from  his  mother.  It  made  me  very 
proud  and  happy  to  hear  him  say  he  loved  me, 
because  he  is  good  and  true-hearted  :  he  has 


no  mean  suspicions  and  no  worldly  vanities. 
One  thing  he  said  amused  me,  while  it  glad- 
dened me  with  the  certainty  that  I  was  loved 
for  myself  alone. 

This  was  it.  "  T  know  you  have  no  money, 
Eleanor,  and  my  mother  will  make  the  same 
objections  as  she  did  to  Hugh  Cameron  ;  but 
never  mind,  I  shall  be  one-and-twenty  and 
my  own  master  in  September." 

I  smiled  to  myself,  and  thought  I  would 
keep  my  secret,  and  not  tell  him  about  Fern- 
dell.  He  talked  of  our  living  in  that  pretty 
little  cottage  by  Brookend,  where  there  are 
ivy,  andj  roses,  and  earwigs  in  such  plenty, 
and  I  let  him  have  his  fancy,  thinking  how  I 
would  surprise  him  when  the  time  came. 
But  the  fact  is,  I  should  be  far  happier,  as 
Herbert  Clay's  wife,  in  that  tiny  cot,  than  as 
anybody  else's  at  Ferndell. 

We  had  a  delicious  hour  straying  over  the 
Redbank  and  in  the  wood,  but  at  last  it 
began  to  grow  dusk,  and  we  said  we  really 
must  go  back.  We  made  the  walk  as  long 
as  we  could,  but  Meadowlands  was  reached 
at  length,  and  there,  on  the  door-step,  stood 
waiting  for  us,  armed  with  all  her  terrors, 
Mrs.  Clay  herself.  I  am  not  like  Eruily;  I 
don't  weep  and  faint,  or  else  it  is  impossible 
to  say  what  might  have  been  the  conse- 
quences of  her  opening  address.  She  is  a 
coarse,  vulgar-minded  woman,  or  she  could 
not  have  spoken  to  any  girl  as  she  did  to  me. 
"  Go  in,  you  forward  puss  !  "  was  her  excla- 
mation, the  moment  she  saw  me ;  "and 
to-morrow  you  shall  be  sent  home !  I  will 
not  have  you  contriving  mischief  in  my  peaceful 
dwelling,  making  my  daughter  rebel,  and  in- 
veigling my  silly  son,  as  I  see  you  are  doing  ! " 

Herbert  cried  out  passionately,  "  Mother ! " 
And  she  added,  in  a  frightened  tone,  "  Have' 
you  been  imitating  that  fool,  Emily's  ex- 
ample, and  seeking  a  partner  without  a 
shilling  ?  "  and  then  she  ran  screaming  into 
the  drawing-room,  flung  herself  on  the  couch, 
and  behaved  like  an  insane  person. 

Herbert  told  me  to  go  away  to  my  own 
room  quietly,  he  could  manage  her  the  best 
alone,  and  so  I  left  them.  Tins  morning  I 
have  seen  him  again.  His  father  objects  to 
his  marrying  at  all  now ;  and  T  tell  him  I 
will  never  enter  any  family  except  with  the 
consent  of  its  members. 

I  feel  strangely  confused — happy  and  sorry, 
glad  and  sad. 

The  carriage  is  to  take  me  to  S'ockbridge 
directly  after  luncheon  ;  and  I  shall  get  to 
Burnbank  by  tea-time.  Grannie  will  be  sur- 
prised to  see  me,  but  more  surprised  when  I 
tell  her  what  has  brought  my  visit  to 
Meadowlands  to  such  a  summary  conclusion. 
I  don't  feel  to  care  much  for  Mrs.  Clay's 
rudenesa  ;  if  she  had  known  of  Ferndell  she 
would  have  been  almost  down  on  her  knees 
to  me,  for  she  worships  money  ;  but  I  wish 
Herbert's  mother  was  a  woman  I  could  love. 
Emily  is  ill  this  morning,  from  the  fatigue  of 
yesterday,  but  she  will  soon  rally;  she  says 


Charles  Dickens.]      HOW    THE   WBITEB,   WAS    DESPATCH-BOXED.         [.September  5,  185?.]       £39 


she  knew  Herbert  meant  to  propose  to  me 
last  night,  and  feared  how  it  would  end. 
Being  in  much  the  same  case,  we  sympathised 
with  each  other,  and  combined  to  keep  up  our 
spirits  for  better  times.  I  should  have  liked 
to  leave  Meadowlands  good  friends  with 
everybody,  but  that  cannot  be. 

Herbert  has  given  me  a  little  ring  set  with 
five  turquoises,  like  a  forget-me-not,  which  I 
am  always  to  wear ;  and  I  have  given  him 
my  plain  signet  with  the  blood-stone.  We 
intend  to  write  to  each  other  often. 


HOW  THE  WEITER  WAS  DESPATCH- 
BOXED. 

DURING  the  late  war,  I  was  despatched  to 
the  East,  together  with  thirty-nine  other 
persons,  on  a  sort  of  irregular  service.  We 
were  on  pay  for  about  fifteen  months ;  and 
we  cost  the  country,  in  that  time,  something 
like  forty  thousand  pounds.  There  were 
certain  phenomena  of  our  brief  corporate 
existence  that  some  of  us  attributed  to 
jobbery,  and  even  the  most  indulgent  of  us 
to  neglect.  For  eight  months  we  were  not 
employed,  and  should  have  been  recalled 
Our  nominal  head  spent  the  liberal  stipend 
of  his  office  in  Saint  James's ;  and  occu- 
pied himself  with  some  reforms  in  the  ma- 
nagement of  his  club.  Our  storekeeper 
could  not  produce  his  original  invoices  ;  and 
property  to  a  large  amount  was  left  to  be 
wasted  without  check  or  responsibility.  The 
official  arrangements  for  our  rations,  our  pay, 
our  transport  from  place  to  place,  were  cha- 
racterised by  recklessness,  wastefulness,  con- 
fusion, and  mismanagement,  such  as  we  have 
never  seen  paralleled.  But  we  felt  our  own 
insignificance ;  we  knew  what  great  affairs 
required  the  attention  of  the  executive  ;  and 
we  could  scarcely  wonder  at  the  scant  notice 
we  received. 

So,  when  some  numbers  of  a  certain  book 
reached  a  certain  town  in  Asia  Minor,  and 
were  there  discussed,  we  agreed  that  the 
Circumlocution  Office  was  hardly  used.  We 
bore  united  witness  to  the  personal  courtesy 
with  which  we  had  been  treated  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Whitehall.  But  still  :— 

Penny  related  how  three  young  gentlemen 
of  prepossessing  personal  appearance  had  been 
hopelessly  unable  to  spell  the  classical  name 
of  the  steamer  in  which  he  voyaged.  They 
consulted  together,  made  various  guesses,  tried 
the  look  of  several  phonetic  readings  upon 
scraps  of  paper  ;  and  at  last  applied  to  him, 
before  they  could  accomplish  "  BACCHANTE." 

Twopenny  mentioned  that  he  was  ordered 
to  join  a  certain  steamer  at  Deptford  on  a 
certain  day.  The  vessel  was  detained  in  the 
river  for  fully  a  week  afterwards  ;  and  the 
authorities  on  shore  would  not  condescend  to 
explain  the  cause  of  the  detention  to  the 
captain.  They  told  him  he  was  waiting  for 
orders — for  their  orders,  that  was  to  say  ;  and 
intimated  that  his  inquiries  were  improper. 


At  length  he  mollified  a  clerk  by  the  gift  of 
a  superlatively  good  cigar  ;  and  the  following 
dialogue  took  place  : 

"  Why  is  it  that  you  keep  me  here  ?  " 

"  Captain,  if  you  must  know,  we  are  keep- 
ing you  to  receive  a  small  lot  of  medicine 
stores  for  Malta." 

''Indeed  !     How  many  packages  ?  " 

"Six." 

"  Where  from  1 " 

"  Green  and  Watson's." 

"  Indeed  1 "  replied  the  captain,  dryly ; 
"  they  were  the  first  goods  I  shipped,  and  they 
have  been  in  the  hold  these  three  weeks." 

The  clerk  upset  a  stool,  and  rushed  into 
the  office  of  his  superior.  The  captain 
thought  he  heard  mention  of  the  name  of 
Lindsay.  At  all  events,  the  clerk  returned 
quickly  with  an  order  to  get  up  steam  and 
to  be  off  with  all  speed.  The  anchor  was 
weighed  in  an  hour,  and  Twopenny  narrowly 
escaped  being  left  behind. 

Groat  said  that  when  his  transport  an- 
chored in  the  Golden  Horn,  they  were  hailed 
by  a  sister  ship,  and  asked  what  cargo  they 
brought  ?  "  Beef  and  pork  "  was  the  answer. 
The  sister  ship  had  been  four  months  in  the 
transport  service  ;  busy,  during  the  first  two 
months,  in  conveying  beef  and  pork  from 
Constantinople  to  Balaklava ;  busy,  during 
the  last  two  months,  in  conveying  beef  and 
pork,  in  the  same  casks,  back  from  Balaklava 
to  Constantinople. 

Shortly  after  the  talk  related  above,  the 
little  party  in  Asia  was  broken  up  by  the 
peace,  and  I  found  myself  once  more  iu 
England.  My  pay  ceased  on  my  arrival,  so 
I  had  orders  to  report  myself  immediately  ; 
as  I  had  parted  with  my  money  freely  on 
the  way  home,  I  was  by  no  means  indiffer- 
ent to  the  speedy  payment  of  a  considerable 
balance  due  to  me.  Following  my  instruc- 
tions, I  turned  into  Whitehall  Place,  and 
inquired  for  Mr.  A. 

A  messenger  showed  me  into  a  room  occu- 
pied by  a  most  courteous  and  gentlemanly 
man,  with  whom  I  had  transacted  business 
prior  to  my  departure.  Mr.  A.  remembered 
me,  congratulated  me  on  my  safe  return,  and 
then  addressed  himself  to  his  official  duties. 
He  asked  for  my  order  to  return  to  England, 
for  my  order  for  a  passage,  for  my  last  pay 
certificate  ;  when  all  these  had  been  handed 
to  him  and  inspected,  he  said, 

"  Who  told  you  to  come  to  me  ?  " 

I  mentioned  the  name  of  my  immediate 
superior. 

"  I  am  not  by  any  means  sure  that  he  was 
right,"  replied  Mr.  A.  He  spoke  very 
slowly  and  gently,  taking  off  his  spectacles 
the  while,  and  deliberately  folding  them. 
"  In  fact,  I  am  nearly  sure  that  he  waa 
wrong.  I  think  your  affair  belongs  to  Mr. 
B.,  at  the  Horse  Guards.  Yes,  certainly,  if 
you  will  take  the  trouble  to  go  across  to  Mr. 
B.,  you  will  find  that  he  has  precedents,  and 
knows  exactly  what  to  do  for  you.  Should 


240 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[September  5,1857.1 


he  be  in  any  difficulty,  it  will  save  me  a  letter 
if  you  will  tell  him  to  write  to  me  for 
instructions." 

I  gathered  up  my  papers,  walked  quickly 
across  the  street,  pushed  open  the  heavy 
door  under  the  dark  old  archway,  and  said, 
briskly  to  the  first  messenger, 

"  I  want  Mr.  B." 

"Certainly,  sir  ;  which  Mr.  B.  ?  "<• 

Now,  although  B.  (with  its  complement) 
is  among  the  commonest  of  names,  I  was 
totally  unprepared  for,  and  totally  taken 
aback  by,  this  simply  worded  question.  My 
positive  air,  as  of  a  man  intent  upon  trans- 
acting business,  was  plainly  unsuited  to 
the  atmosphere  of  the  place.  I  explained 
my  wants  to  the  messenger,  and  consulted 
him  with  regard  to  the  department  by 
which  they  could  be  supplied.  After  con- 
sidering with  knitted  brow,  he  advised"  an 
application  to  Mr.  R.  B.,  and  ushered  me  into 
the  room  over  which  that  gentleman  pre- 
sided. 

Mr.  R.  B.  listened  with  polite  attention  to 
my  statement,  asked  for  and  inspected  the 
several  papers,  which  Mr.  A.  had  already 
passed  under  review,  and  said  : 

"  I  think  it  is  scarcely  possible  that  I  can 
be  the  Mr.  B.  to  whom  Mr.  A.  intended  to 
refer  you.  Tl»e  matter  is  really  quite  foreign 
to  my  department.  Perhaps  Mr.  W.  B. 
might  help  you ;  but,  for  my  own  part,  I 
should  think  Mr.  C.  the  right  person  to  apply 
to.  I  mention  only  my  private  impression." 

I  left  the  room  with  a  certain  hopefulness, 
arising  out  of  the  fact  that  the  two  last- 
named  gentlemen  were  in  some  slight  degree 
acquainted  with  me,  and  that  I  expected 
more  from  personal  friendliness  than  from 
official  courtesy.  Returning  to  my  old  ally, 
the  messenger,  I  asked  for  Mr.  W.  B. 

Inquire  again  on  the  first  floor. 

The  first  floor  was  guarded  by  another 
messenger,  who  answered  niy  inquiry  by 
saying,  slightly  : 

"  Mr.  W.  B.  is  out  of  the  way." 

"  Oat  of  the  way,  is  he  1  When  will  he  be 
back?" 

If  I  had  levelled  a  revolver  at  the  man's 
head,  he  could  scarcely  have  exhibited  more 
consternation. 

"  When  will  he  be  back  ?  I  am  sure  I 
don't  know  when  he  will  be  back.  When 
will  he  be  back  !  "  this  last  being  an  ob- 
structed and  sotto  voce  repetition  of  my 
innocent  sentence,  in  a  style  like  an  imitation 
of  the  Siddons  whisper. 

"Well,  then,"  I  rejoined  impatiently,  "I 
want  Mr.  C." 

"  He  is  at  the  department  in  Pall  Mall." 

The  ignorance  displayed  in  asking  for 
him  at  the  Horse  Guards  apparently  con- 
vinced the  messenger  that  I  was  one  to  whom 
he  need  pay  no  more  attention.  So  he 


sauntered  behind  a  screen,  murmuring  in  an 
absent  manner  :  "  When  will  he  be  back  ? " 

At  the  department  in  Pall  Mali,  I  found 
Mr.  C.,  a  cordial  and  good-humoured  person, 
who  knew  nothing  whatever  about  my  busi- 
ness, but  who  advised  me  not  to  waste  time  in 
pursuing  other  initial  letters. 

"Go  home,"  said  he;  "get  the  largest  sheet 
of  paper  and  the  biggest  envelope  you  can, 
report  your  arrival  and  state  your  claim  in 
writing,  address  the  letter  to  the  Right 
Honorable  Her  Majesty's  Secretary  of  State 
for  War ;  and,  in  about  five  weeks,  you  will 
be  likely  to  get  an  answer,  containing  instruc- 
tions for  your  further  conduct." 

So  it  befell.  About  six  weeks  elapsed 
before  my  letter  was  officially  acknowledged, 
and  many  more  before  claims  were  settled 
about  which  there  was  not  the  smallest 
dispute  or  question,  except  that,  as  a  matter 
of  form,  they  were  to  be  certified  by  some- 
body who  was  daily  expected  from  Scotland, 
or  Avho  had  just  started  for  Constantinople. 
When  these  matters  were  finally  adjusted, 
my  experience  of  government  offices  ceased, 
with  one  trifling,  though  notable  exception. 

In  the  mouth  of  August  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty-six,  I  was  desirous  to  obtain  im- 
mediately, a  certain  piece  of  information, 
which  I  knew  any  clerk  in  a  particular 
department  in  Downing  Street  could  furnish, 
and  which,  as  one  of  the  public,  I  thought  I 
had  a  right  to  ask.  Mindful  of  past  adven- 
tures with  Messrs.  A.,  B.  and  C.,  and  believ- 
ing that  the  five  weeks  arrear  of  correspon- 
dence had  been  an  exceptional  circumstance, 
arising  out  of  the  war,  I  put  my  inquiry 
in  writing,  and  despatched  it.  Receiving  no 
answer,  I  applied  myself  to  private  sources, 
ascertained  what  I  wanted  to  know,  acted 
upon  the  knowledge,  and  forgot  the  circum- 
stance. In  March  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-seven,  I  received  a  very  large  letter, 
with  a  large  intimation  on  the  cover  that  it 
came  ON  HER  MAJESTY'S  SERVICE,  in  which 
a  gentleman  declared  that  he  was  directed 
by  one  of  Her  Majesty's  Secretaries  of  State 
to  inform  me  &c.,  &c.,  giving,  in  short,  a 
polite,  distinct,  and  straight-forward  answer 
to  my  question.  As  if  I  were  to  write  to-day 
to  the  publishers  of  the  Edinburgh  Review, 
asking  for  advertising  space  in  the  next  number 
of  that  journal,  and  were  to  receive,  in  March 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-nine,  an  assurance 
that  the  required  space  should  be  reserved  ! 

I  may  mention  that  I  returned  from  the 
East  with  a  claim  against  a  gigantic  commer- 
cial establishmeut,as  well  as  against  a  govern- 
ment department.  The  former  was  investi- 
gated, acknowledged,  and  paid,  in  fewer 
minutes  than  Mr.  A.  consumed  in  twiddling 
his  spectacles,  and  in  asking  me  to  ask  some- 
body else  (across  the  street)  to  write  to  him 
for  instructions. 


The  Rigid  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Fubliihed  at  the  Office*  No.  18,  Wellington  Street  Nortb.Str&ad.   Printed  by  BJUDDUKT  &  HVAKI,  Whitefrinr;,  London. 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD    WORDS"—  SHAKESPEARE. 


HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY   JOURNAL 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES     DICKENS. 


-  390.] 


SATURDAY,  SEPTEMBER  12,  1857. 


(  PKICE  2d. 
1  STAMPED  3d. 


LONDONERS  OVER  THE  BORDER. 


LONDON  does  not  end  at  the  limits  as- 
signed to  it  by  those  acts  of  parliament  which 
take  thought  for  the  health  of  Londoners. 
More  suburbs  shoot  up,  while  official  ink  is 
4rying.  Really,  there  is  no  limit  to  London  ; 
but  the  law  must  needs  assign  bounds  ;  and, 
by  the  law,  there  is  one  suburb  on  the 
border  of  the  Essex  mai'shes  which  is  quite 
cut  off  from  the  comforts  of  the  Metropo- 
litan Buildings  Act  ; — in  fact,  it  lies  just 
without  its  boundaries,  and  therefore  is 
chosen  as  a  place  of  refuge  for  offensive 
trade  establishments  turned  out  of  town, — 
those  of  oil-boilers,  gut-spinners,  varnish- 
makers,  printers'  ink-makers  and  the  like. 
Being  cut  off  from  the  support  of  the  Me- 
tropolis Local  Managing  Act,  this  outskirt  is 
free  to  possess  new  streets  of  houses  without 
drains,  roads,  gas,  or  pavement.  It  forms 
part  of  the  parish  of  West  Ham,  and  con- 
sists of  two  new  towns  ;  Hallsville,  called 
into  existence  some  ten  years  since  by  the 
Messrs.  Mare  and  Company's  ship-building 
yard,  and  half  depopulated  by  the  recent 
bankruptcy  of  that  firm  ;  and  Canning  Town, 
very  recently  created  by  the  works  in  pro- 
gress at  the  new  Victoria  Docks.  Halls- 
ville and  Canning  Town  are  immediately 
adjacent  to  the  Barking  Road  station  of  the 
Eastern  Counties  line.  That  station  is  con- 
nected by  a  junction  with  the  North  London 
Railway,  and  is  to  be  reached  by  a  sixpenny 
ride  from  Fenchurch  Street,  Carnden  Town, 
or  any  of  the  intermediate  stations.  Any 
Londoner  may,  in  dry  summer  weather,  at 
the  cost  of  very  little  time  and  money,  go 
out,  as  we  have  done,  to  see  this  patch  of 
the  land  over  the  border. 

If  he  should  ;go  out  in  wet  weather,  or  in 
winter, for  that  purpose,  he  will  doubt  whether 
it  be  land  that  he  has  come  to  see.  It  is  a 
district,  at  such  times,  most  safely  to  be  ex- 
plored on  stilts.  The  clergyman  of  the  parish 
says,  that  he  once  lost  his  shoes  in  the  mud 
while  visiting  in  Hallsville,  and  did  not 
know  that  they  were  gone  till  some  time 
afterwards  ;  so  thickly  were  his  feet  encased 
in  knobs  of  mud.  The  parish  doctor  tells  us 
that  he  means,  next  winter,  to  wear  fishing- 
boots  that  shall  reach  to  his  thighs.  The  j 
inspector  of  schools,  when  he  goes  to  Halls-  [ 


ville  in  the  winter,  puts  on  shooting-boots  as 
a  particular  precaution.  He  may  need  a 
coracle  sometimes.  The  whole  of  the  ground 
on  which  Hallsville  and  Canning  Town  are 
built  is  seven  feet  below  high-water  mark. 
Bow  Creek  borders  both  colonies,  and  its 
water,  at  high  tide,  is  dammed  out  from  them 
by  very  ancient  banks  of  earth.  The  embank- 
ment is  attributed  to  Danes,  Saxons  or 
Romans.  When  we  first  visited  the  place, 
the  water  in  the  creek  was  actually,  to  the 
stature  of  a  man,  higher  than  the  ground  on 
which  we  walked. 

Our  second  visit  was  paid  at  the  time  of 
low-water,  on  one  of  Nature's  baking-days. 
From  the  slight  elevation  of  the  railway- 
station  or  the  bridge  over  the  creek,  the 
district,  on  such  a  day,  seems  more  inviting 
than  repulsive.  The  wide  plain  of  valuable 
pasturage — for  the  marshes  that  give  ague 
to  men,  give  grass  to  beasts  —  is  dry  to 
the  foot  and  green  to  the  eye.  There  are 
pleasant  belts  of  trees,  with  here  a  spire, 
there  a  church-tower,  upon  the  horizon  ; 
and,  in  the  foreground,  groups  of  cattle  feed 
as  Cuyp  used  to  paint  them  feeding.  There 
are  a  good  many  tall  smoking  chimneys  that 
mark  out  the  line  of  the  creek,  and  there  is  a 
forest  of  masts  to  tell  of  the  adjacent 
Thames  and  of  the  docks  ;  but,  to  the  eye,  the 
broad,  green  Essex  plain  is  master  of  the 
situation. 

Such  a  plain  suggests  a  feeling  of  repose. 
Hallsville  and  Canning  Town  seem  to  be 
enviable  townlets,  their  small  houses  ap- 
pearing, in  the  hot  season,  to  be  the  happy 
homes  of  men  who  pasture  flocks  and  herds 
safe  from  the  wear  and  worry  of  the  world. 

But  let  us  go  down  into  either  townlet.  It 
does  not,  in  the  smallest  degree,  matter  which. 
The  houses  are  built  in  rows  ;  but,  there 
being  no  roads,  the  ways  are  so  unformed 
that  the  parish  will  not  take  charge  of  them. 
We  get,  then,  upon  a  narrow  path  of  gravel 
raised  about  two  feet  above  the  grass — such 
paths  enable  men  to  walk  not  more  than 
mid  leg  deep  about  the  place  in  rainy  weather 
— and  we  come  to  a  row  of  houses  built  with 
their  backs  to  a  stagnant  ditch.  We  turn 
aside  to  see  the  ditch,  and  find  that  it 
is  a  cesspool,  so  charged  with  corruption, 
that  not  a  trace  of  vegetable  matter  grows 
upon  its  surface — bubbling  and  seething 


VOL.  XVI. 


390 


242       [September  12,  1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


with  the  constant  rise  of  the  foul  pro- 
ducts of  decomposition,  that  the  pool  pours 
up  into  the  air.  The  filth  of  each  house 
passes  through  iv  short  pipe  straight  into  this 
ditch,  jmd  stays  there.  Upon  its  surface, 
to  our  great  wonder,  a  few  consumptive- 
looking  ducks  are  swimming,  very  dirty; 
very  much  like  the  human  dwellers  in  foul 
alleys  as  to  their  depressed  and  haggard  phy- 
siognomy, and  to  be  weighed  by  ounces,  not 
by  pounds.  Some  of  them  may  be  ducklings  ; 
but  they  look  as  old  as  the  most  ancient 
raven. 

lYrhnps  this  row  of  houses  is  a  poor  back 
settlement — a  slum  of  Hallsville.  We  go  on, 
and  are  abruptly  stopped  by  another  ditch- 
full  of  stagnating  corruption,  bubbling  as  the 
last  bubbled  ;  while,  at  a  little  distance,  is 
another  row  of  houses  built  so  that  they  may 
pour  all  their  solid  and  liquid  filth  into  it  in 
the  most  convenient  way,  and  receive  it  back 
as  air,  with  the  least  possible  dilution.  Near 
those  houses  we  find  a  plank  by  which  the 
ditcli  is  crossed.  There  is  a  path  across  a 
patch  of  green,  and  the  path  is,  in  one  place, 
made  up  of  planks  rotted  with  wet,  now  dried 
into  the  soil  on  which  they  float  in  spongy 
weather.  The  planks  tell  a  tale,  so  does  the 
bloated  and  corrupt  body  of  a  drowned  dog 
that  lies  baking  in  the  middle  of  that  patch 
of  green.  We  smell  the  dog,  we  smell  the 
ditches,  and  we  smell  the  marsh,  dry  as  it  is. 
As  we  go  on  exploring,  we  find  the  same 
system  of  building  everywhere. 

Rows  of  small  houses,  which  may  have  cost 
for  their  construction  eighty  pounds  a-piece, 
are  built  designedly  and  systematically  with 
their  backs  to  the  marsh  ditches  ;  which,  with 
one  exception,  are  all  stopped  up  at  their 
outlet ;  and,  in  many  parts  of  their  course  also, 
if  there  were  an  outlet,  or  if  it  could  be  said 
that  they  had  any  course  at  all.  Two  or 
three  yards  of  clay  pipe  "  drain  "  each  house 
into  the  open  cess-pool  under  its  back  win- 
dows, when  it  does  not  happen  that  the  house 
is  so  built  as  to  overhang  it.  We  feel  a  qualm 
in  calling  houses  built  when  they  are  laid 
like  band-boxes  upon  the  soil.  In  winter 
time  every  block  becomes  now  and  then  an 
island,  and  you  may  hear  a  sick  man,  in  an 
upper  room,  complain  of  water  trickling 
down  over  his  bed.  Then  the  flood  cleans 
the  ditches,  lifting  all  their  filth  into  itself, 
and  spreading  it  over  the  land.  No  wonder 
that  the  stench  of  the  marsh  in  Hallsville 
and  Canning  Town  of  nights,  is  horrible.  A 
fetid  mist  covers  the  ground.  If  you  are 
walking  out  and  meet  a  man,  you  only  see 
him  from  the  middle  upwards,  the  foul  ground 
mist  covering  his  legs.  So  says  the  parish 
surgeon,  an  intelligent  man  and  a  gentleman, 
by  whom  the  day-work  and  the  night-work 
of  a  wide  district  of  this  character  has  not 
been  done  without  cost  to  his  health.  He 
was  himself  for  a  time  invalided  by  fever, 
upon  which  ague  followed.  Ague,  of  course, 
is  one  of  the  most  prevalent  diseases  of  the 


district :  fever  abounds.  When  an  epidemic 
comes  into  the  place,  it  becomes  serious  in  ita 
form,  and  stays  for  months.  Disease  comes 
upon  human  bodies  saturated  with  the  in- 
fluences of  such  air  as  this  breathed  day  and 
night,  as  a  spark  upon  touchwood.  A  case 
or  two  of  small-pox  caused,  in  spite  of  vacci- 
nation, an  epidemic  of  confluent  small-pox, 
which  remained  three  or  four  months  upon, 
the  spot.  "  I  have  had  twenty  cases  of  it  in  one 
day,"  the  doctor  said.  The  clergyman  of  the 
parish — whose  church  is  beyond  the  reach  of 
the  Hallsville  people,  but  who  is  himself  fami- 
liar to  their  eyes — told  us  that  during  a  half- 
year,  when  the  population  of  Plaistow  proper 
and  of  Hallsville  were  equal,  he  counted 
the  burials  in  each.  There  were  sixteen 
deaths  in  Plaistow,  and  in  Hallsville  seventy- 
two. 

Let  us  not  abstain  from  recording  the  zeal 
of  the  clergyman  of  this  parish.  In  it,  there 
are  places  four  miles  distant  from  each  other, 
together  with  thousands  of  almost  untaught 
parishioners.  At  a  time  when  his  incumbency 
was  worth  only  one  hundred  and  eighty 
pounds  a-year,  in  aid  of  which  he  had  but 
another  seventy  pounds  a-year  of  private 
means,  he  for  two  years  and  a-half  paid  at 
the  rate  of  one  hundred  a-year  for  a 
curate's  help,  and  struggled,  by  a  pinch  in 
his  own  household,  to  relieve  part  of  the 
pinch  among  the  poor.  He  was  obliged, 
after  a  long  tight,  to  abandon  his  endeavour  ; 
for  he  was  outrunning  his  income,  "although 
living  as  economically  as  possible,  making 
Lent  to  extend  considerably  over  forty 
days."  These  are  the  clergy  who  support 
the  church  ;  and  there  is  only  one  way  in 
which  such  men  usually  ask  the  church  to 
support  them  in  turn  ; — by  giving  nothing  to 
themselves,  only  more  succour  to  the  poor. 
Thus,  in  the  present  case,  appeal  is  made  on 
behalf  of  the  ignorance  of  Hallsville  and 
Canning  Town,  inhabited  by  dock-labourers 
and  men  employed  in  neighbouring  works 
and  manufactories,  who  live  surrounded  by 
all  circumstances  of  degradation.  The  church 
is  far  from  them ;  churchmen  are  asked  to 
bring  it  nearer  and  in  the  best^way,  by  esta- 
blishing a  mission.  Thus  comes  into  life  a 
plea  on  behalf  of  the  Plaistow  and  Victoria 
Dock  Mission.  We  allude  to  that  in  passing ; 
our  concern  here  being  with  the  bodily  con- 
dition of  the  people. 

Though  there  is  no  church  near  Hallsville 
or  Canning  Town,  there  is  a  small  dissenting 
chapel,  to  the  door  of  which  we  were  at- 
tracted by  a  large  placard  touching  the  elec- 
tion of  a  local  BOARD  OF  HEALTH.  The 
Board  of  Health  shone  in  such  mighty  capi- 
tals, and  the  details  as  to  the  manner  of  voting 
and  the  qualifications  of  the  voters  were  de- 
scribed with  such  circumlocution  on  so 
large  a  poster,  that  we  lost  the  smell  of  the 
place  out  of  our  noses  for  a  quarter  of  a 
|  minute.  Then  it  came  back  again.  We  walked 
I  on  a  few  steps  and  were  beside  another  pesti- 


Chailes  Dickens.] 


LONDONERS  OVER  THE  BORDER.          [September  12, 1*17.]     243 


lential  ditch,  bubbling  as  if  there  were  a 
miraculous  draught  of  fishes  just  below.  A 
row  of  houses  was  arranged  with  little  back 
y;»rds  dipping  into  it ;  and,  in  one  of  the  back- 
yards, three  ghostly  little  children  lying  on 
the  ground,  hung  with  their  faces  over  it, 
breathing  the  poison  of  the  bubbles  as  it  rose, 
and  fishing  about  with  their  hands  in  the 
filth  for  something — perhaps  for  something 
nice  to  eat. 

We  went  to  the  old  national  school,  a  small 
wooden  lean-to,  built  at  the  side  of  the 
last  house  in  an  unfinished  row.  The  poor 
in  Rotherhithe,  aud  here  too,  describe  any 
line  of  very  crazy  cottages  as  Rabbit-hutch 
Row.  The  old  Hallsville  national  school  is 
certainly  a  sort  of  rabbit-hutch ;  and  not  a 
large  hutch  either.  When  it  was  first  knocked 
up,  there  were  but  thirty  houses  in  this  part 
of  the  marsh,  and  accommodation  was  re- 
quired for  but  eleven  scholars.  The  new  town 
grew  rapidly,  and  there  were  no  means  of 
building  a  new  school ;  so  that,  at  last,  one 
might  see  the  mistress  on  a  wet  day,  with 
her  umbrella  up,  teaching  a  hundred  children 
in.  the  dripping  hutch.  We  are  told  that 
there  have  been  one  hundred  and  seventy 
scholars  crammed  into  it ;  although,  if  it  were 
a  fowl-house,  nobody  would  suppose  it 
able  to  accommodate  that  number  of  fowls. 
By  fortune,  a  long  room,  built  by  a  publican 
as  an  American  bowling-alley  for  dock 
labourers  and  sailors,  was  bowled  down  as 
an  alley  and  set  up  again  as  a  new  national 
school.  It  is  spacious  and  clean.  The  sky- 
lights open  and  secure  sufficient  ventilation. 
There  is  a  ditchfull  of  filth  sleeping  at  full 
length  (we  must  not  say  running)  along  one 
side  of  the  building,  and  it  branches  into 
another  ditch  of  the  same  character  that 
stinks  immediately  under  the  back  window  ; 
which,  therefore,  is  a  closed  shutter  and  no 
window  at  all.  Over  the  two  ditches,  at  the 
place  where  they  meet,  a  wooden  house  is 
built ;  it  seems  by  its  form  to  have  been  con- 
structed as  a  pleasure-house  on  the  ground 
of  the  publican  who  speculated  in  the  bowl- 
ing-green. But  now  it  is  a  home.  The 
white  blind  was  down,  at  the  window. 
Was  there  death  as  well  as  deadly  air 
inside  ? 

Of  course  the  ditches  were  inevitable  to 
the  school ;  for  there  is  no  escaping  them  in 
Hallsville  or  Canning  Town.  The  local  Board 
of  Health  appears,  from  answers  made  to 
inquiries,  to  care  more  about  Stratford,  where 
its  members  live,  than  about  colonies  out  in  the 
marsh.  On  the  occasion  of  our  first  visit, 
however,  the  board  had  been  active  ;  for  we 
learnt  that  a  ton  of  deodorising  matter  had 
been  recently  scattered  about  the  vilest  pools. 
The  stench,  when  we  paid  our  second  visit, 
was  unmitigated. 

Two  years  ago,  when  application  was  made 
by  more  than  a  tenth  of  the  rate-payers  of 
the  parish  of  West  Ham  for  an  inquiry  into 
the  sanitary  condition  of  the  district,  with  a 


view  to  bringing  it  under  the  conditions  of 
the  Public  Health  Act,  Mr.  Alfred  Dickens 
was  the  civil  engineer  sent  by  the  general 
Board  of  Health  as  an  inspector.  His  report 
and  the  evidence  at  his  inquiry  is  before  us 
as  we  write,  and  it  dwells  very  much  upon 
the  state  of  CanningTown  and  Hallsville.  We 
learn  from  this  report  that  the  area  of  the 
ditches  in  the  parish  amounted  to  not  less 
than  one  hundred  and  forty  acres,  according 
to  a  surveyor's  book  upwards  of  thirty-five 
years  old,  and  that  area  has  been  increased 
by  side-cuttings  at  the  railway  and  new  cut- 
tings of  open  sewer.  Disease  had  cost  the 
parish  six  hundred  pounds  in  the  year  pre- 
vious to  the  inquiry.  There  was  then,  of 
course,  as  now,  no  drainage  or  paving  in 
Canning  Town  ;  the  roads  in  winter  were 
impassable  ;  but  the  inhabitants  were  paying, 
(for  what  they  did  not  get)  an  eighteen-penny 
rate  under  the  Commissioners'  Act,  not  for 
works  done  in  accordance  with  it,  but  "  for 
the  expenses  of  the  act."  Also,  although  the 
parish  did  not  take  charge  of  their  roads, 
they  were  paying  a  highway  rate  for  the 
parishioners  elsewhere.  One  horrible  detail 
in  Mr.  Dickens's  report  has,  happily,  to  be 
omitted  from  our  sketch.  Two  years  ago, 
there  was  in  Hallsville  and  Canning  Town 
no  water  supply.  Good  water  is  now  laid 
on.  In  all  other  respects,  the  old  offences 
against  civilised  life  cleave  to  the  district. 
The  local  Board  of  Health  which  the  in- 
habitants of  the  parish  sought  and  obtained, 
whatever  it  may  have  done  for  Stratford, 
seems  to  have  done  nothing  for  Hallsville, 
unless  it  be  considered  something  to  in- 
dulge it  with  an  odd  pinch  of  deodorising 
powder. 

Canning  Town  is  the  child  of  the  Victoria 
Docks.  The  condition  of  this  place  and  of 
its  neighbour  prevents  the  steadier  class  of 
mechanics  from  residing  in  it.  They  go  from 
their  work  to  Stratford  or  to  Plaistow.  Many 
select  such  a  dwelling-place  because  they  are 
already  debased  below  the  point  of  enmity  to 
filth  ;  poorer  labourers  live  there,  because 
they  cannot  afford  to  go  farther,  and  there 
become  debased.  The  Dock  Company  is 
surely,  to  a  very  great  extent,  answerable  for 
the  condition  of  the  town  they  are  creating. 
Not  a  few  of  the  houses  in  it  are  built  by 
poor  and  ignorant  men  who  have  saved  a 
hundred  pounds,  and  are  deluded  by  the 
prospect  of  a  fatally  cheap  building  invest- 
ment. But  who  was  it  that  named  one  row 
of  these  houses  Montesquieu  Place  ?  We 
should  like  to  see  in  Canning  Town  some  of 
the  engineering  works  suggested  by  a  place 
where  on  one  spot  you  may  pass  out  of  Ark- 
wright  Street  into  Brunei  Street  and  turn 
your  back  upon  Graves  Terrace.  Was  it  an 
undertaker  who  had  made  his  money  in  these 
parts,  and  spent  it  in  a  profitable  investment 
upon  houses  that  would  further  freshen  up 
his  trade,  who  built  Graves  Terrace  in 
Canning  Town  ? 


244       [September  12, 185?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Not  to  be  unjust  to  the  district,  let  us  own 
that  we  found  one  ditch  behind  a  row  of 
houses  covered  with  green  matter ;  thus 
proving  that  it  was  not  poisonous  to  organic  life 
to  the  last  degree.  In  one  there  was  an  agita- 
tion which  suggested  that  its  course  was  open, 
and  we  found  this  to  be  really  the  one  ditch  that 
has.  at  certain  hours,  a  flow.  It  has  tidal  com- 
municatiou  with  the  river  Lea.  We  understood 
that  a  few  of  the  best  houses,  five  or  six 
perhaps,  are  drained  into  this  ditch,  when  it 
is  at  some  distance  from  their  windows,  and 
thus  have  what  is,  in  those  parts,  to  be  con- 
sidered decent  drainage. 

We  need  hardly  say,  that  the  level  of  the 
marsh  ought  to  be  no  obstacle  to  the  proper 
drainage  of  a  town  built  over  it.  If  it  be 
•worth  while  to  put  a  purnp  over  a  coal-mine, 
certainly  it  is  worth  while  to  put  one  over 
the  place  by  the  river-side  to  which  the 
sewage  of  a  little  town  may  fall,  until  the  great 
out-fall  question  is  decided. 


INDIAN  IEEEGULAES. 


WHEN  people  hear  of  these  famous  Irregu- 
lars, of  Jacob's,  Mayne's,  and  Chamberlain's 
Horse,  they  probably  form  rather  vague 
ideas  as  to  their  appearance  and  discipline, 
and  most  likely  set  them  down  as  a  band  of 
rough-riders,  more  picturesque  than  orderly, 
and,  like  the  Turkish  Bashi  Bazouks,  less 
agreeable  as  neighbours,  than  as  subjects  for 
a  sketch  in  the  Illustrated  London  News. 

Such  is  not,  however,  the  case.  There  is 
nothing  "  irregular  "  in  these  corps,  with  the 
exception  of  their  designation.  They  are 
simply  bodies  of  cavalry,  recruited  from  a 
class  much  superior  to  any  from  which  the 
"  regular  "  regiments  draw  their  supplies  of 
men,  and  with  a  certain  elasticity  (not  laxity) 
in  their  discipline,  which  gives  more  latitude 
to  individual  talent  and  personal  qualities 
than  the  rigid  precision  of  ordinary  regu- 
lations will  permit  of. 

I  cannot  better  express  what  I  mean  than 
by  saying  that  the  commanding  officer  of  an 
irregular  corps  finds  he  has  elbow-room. 
Much  is  left  to  his  discretion — and  wisely  so, 
if  he  be,  as  he  generally  is,  an  able  and 
dashing  officer  ;  zealous  for  the  well-being  of 
his  regiment.  He  is  allowed  to  choose  the  arms 
of  the  corps,  to  pick  out  from  the  infantry  such 
officers  as  are  best  fitted  to  a  service  so  smart 
and  active  as  that  of  the  Irregular  Horse,  and 
to  promote  deserving  privates,  irrespective  of 
that  system  of  seniority  which  renders  the  Su- 
bahdars  and  Jemadars  of  Sepoy  regiments  so 
wretchedly  inefficient. 

A  colonel  of  irregulars  has  a  wide  latitude 
allowed  him  in  matters  concerning  which  the 
commandant  of  a  line  regiment,  whetherinthe 
Queen's  or  Company's  service,  is  a  mere 
automaton.  He  may  attire  the  corps  in  red, 
in  green,  in  blue,  or  in  orange,  at  his  pleasure, 
and  every  cavalry  officer  knows  well  what  an 
advantage  is  a  markedly  distinct  uniform 


when  troopers  of  various  regiments,  mixed  up 
with  enemies,  are  straying,  skirmishing,  and 
galloping  up  hill  and  down  dale,  over  a 
broken  country.  He  may  furnish  the 
ioldiers  with  lances,  carbines,  or  rifle  car- 
bines, as  he  thinks  best  ;  or,  he  may 
divide  the  whole  force  into  lancers  and  car- 
bineers ;  so  as  to  unite  the  advantages  of 
both  arms  of  the  service.  In  matters  re- 
lating to  remounts,  forage,  cantonments,  and 
so  on,  he  is  little  hampered  by  interference. 
He  has  the  power,  at  any  time,  of  procuring 
the  very  flower  of  the  linesmen  to  be  his 
subordinate  officers,  and  hundreds  of  gallant 
young  fellows  are  always  ready  to  enlist  in 
his  favoured  force.  Of  course  his  responsi- 
bility is  great  in  proportion  to  his  powers, 
and  these  may  now  and  then  be  abused. 
Nepotism  prevails  in  every  part  of  the 
world  ;  and  if  Mrs.  Wheedle  do  but  write 
sufficiently  moving  letters  to  her  cousin,. 
Major  or  Colonel  Sabretasch,  that  officer  will 
give  young  Bobby  Wheedle  a  commission  in 
his  command,  though  Bobby  cannot  ride 
without  provoking  even  the  grave  Hindoos 
to  laughter,  and  knows  little  more  of  Hin- 
dustani than  "  Mana  lao  "  (pale  ale),  and  a 
few  choice  terms  of  abuse.  Moreover,  a 
young  fellow  in  good  odour  at  Government 
House,  be  he  a  milksop  or  blockhead, 
may  be  certain  of  donning  the  martial  garb 
of  the  Irregulars  ;  but  this  is  no  fault  of 
the  commandant ;  who,  you  may  be  sure, 
will,  when  left  to  himself,  prefer  Jack  Spur- 
rier, of  the  Fiftieth  Native  Infantry,  who  has 
no  qualifications  but  brains,  pluck,  and  horse- 
manship, to  all  the  Honourable  Frederick 
Fitznoodles  in  the  peerage. 

Of  the  system  of  promotion  by  merit  among 
the  natives  of  the  corps,  it  is  impossible  to 
speak  too  highly.  To  reward  the  longest 
liver  and  to  ignore  personal  qualifications  is- 
certainly  not  the  way  to  get  an  army  well 
governed.  In  the  Sepoy  regiments,  seniority 
carries  the  day  over  merit ;  and  the  conse- 
quence is,  that,  not  only  are  most  of  the 
native  commissioned  officers  a  set  of  worn- 
out,  puffy,  ghee-bloated  cripples,  but  their 
fellow  feeling  is  wholly  with  the  privates ; 
among  whom  most  of  their  lives  have  been, 
spent.  Thus,  in  the  recent  mutiny,  the  same 
story  was  heard  everywhere.  A  Subahdar 
countenanced  the  first  outrage  of  the  insur- 
rection ;  and,  in  every  station,  the  native 
officers  seem  to  have  been  the  ringleaders  or 
the  puppets  of  the  rebels.  As  to  the  question 
of  its  being  politic  to  give  commissions  to 
natives  at  all,  that  will  doubtless  receive  con- 
sideration ;  but,  if  thus  promoted,  it  should 
certainly  not  be  for  mere  length  of  service. 
In  the  Irregulars,  the  stimulus  of  merit- 
promotions  works  well.  The  intelligent 
character  of  the  men  tends  to  foster  emu- 
lation, and  they  yield  a  willing  obedience 
to  all  necessary  restrictions  of  discipline. 
They  are,  as  I  said  before,  volunteers  selected 
from  a  class  very  superior  to  any  which 


Charles  Dickens.] 


INDIAN  IRREGULAES. 


[September  12,  1337.]       245 


is    some    flaw    in 
officers.      I   could 


furnishes  recruits  to  an  army  in  Europe- 
It  is  usual  to  address  them  as  "  Sahib  ! "  and 
they  never  forget,  nor  allow  their  chiefs  to 
forget,  that,  in  becoming  soldiers,  they  have 
not  ceased  to  be  gentlemen.  An  attempt  to 
degrade  them  or  to  interfere  with  their  religion 
would,  of  course,  produce  an  outbreak  ;  but 
whatever  bad  news  may  be  wafted  to  us  from 
India,  I  believe,  and  always  shall  believe, 
that  the  Irregulars,  well  led  by  officers  they 
like  and  respect,  will  be  found  as  true  as 
steel.  If  they  mutiny,  depend  upon  it  there 
the  personnel  of  their 
cite  a  hundred  cases  in 
which  these  troopers  have  shown  a  devo- 
tion to  officers  whom  they  really  loved  and 
esteemed,  that  has  few  parallels  in  European 
history.  And  I  am  sure  that  if,  in  the 
Russian  war,  their  offers  to  volunteer  for  the 
Crimea  had  been  accepted,  the  Cossacks 
Avould  have  been  thoroughly  checkmated  in 
their  own  Parthian  style  of  fighting.  The 
class  of  military  adventurers  from  which  the 
Irregulars  are  drawn  is  one  peculiar  to  Asia, 
and  reminds  one  strongly  of  the  feudal  ages. 

Younger  sons  of  courtly  noblemen,  whose 
ancestors  stood  around  the  peacock  throne  of 
Aurungzebe,  sons  of  Zemindars,  Potails, 
Omrahs,  and  so  forth — some  from  Rajpootana, 
but  mostly  children  of  Mahometan  land- 
holders— come  in  and  offer  themselves,  with 
horse,  weapons,  and  accoutrements,  to  the 
recruiting  agents  of  the  Irregular  Cavalry. 
Nothing  would  tempt  these  proud  youngsters 
— most  of  whom  are  first-rate  horsemen, 
familiar  with  arms  from  childhood  —  to 
shoulder  a  musket  in  the  line,  or  to  take 
service  in  the  regular  cavalry.  But,  in  the 
Irregulars — where  they  retain  their  eastern 
dress  and  saddle,  and  associate  only  with 
their  equals — they  are  so  willing  to  engage, 
that  at  a  month's  notice  the  existing  force 
might  be  trebled.  Every  man  is  obliged, 


master  of  his  weapons  and  his  charger.  He 
is  required  to  manage  a  horse  at  full  speed, 
with  a  saddle  and  without,  to  strike  a  spear 
into  a  tent-peg  at  full  gallop  and  to  draw  it 
from  the  ground,  to  hit  a  mark  with  carbine 
and  pistol,  and  to  cut  through  a  roll  of  felt 
lying  on  the  ground,  as  he  dashes  by  at  the 
full  stride  of  his  horse,  and  bends  over  his 
saddle-bow  to  use  the  razor-like  sword.  The 
swords  of  the  Irregulars  are  always  of  a 
keenness  that  contrasts  wonderfully  with  the 
"blunt  reaping-hooks  of  English  dragoons. 
Not  that  they  are  all,  or  even  usually,  of 
Khorassan  manufacture.  Most  of  them  are 
of  English  steel,  and  owe  all  their  sharpness 
to  careful  grinding  and  leathern  scabbards. 
The  skill  to  which  some  of  the  Irregulars 
attain,  both  with  the  lance  and  sword,  is 
extraordinary.  Long  ago,  in  the  Madras 
presidency,  I  witnessed  a  sort  of  mock  tour- 
nament given  by  the  privates  of  Skinner's 
Horse,  in  which  such  horsemanship  was  dis- 
played as  would  have  astounded  Astley's 


performers ;  while  some  of  the  troopers 
carried  awayatent-peg  on  their  spears,  twenty 
times  running,  at  full  speed. 

In  horsemanship,  the  Indian  Mahometans 
far  surpass  the  more  broad-breasted  and 
robust  Affghans ;  and,  although  in  the  Punjab, 
we  could  draw  any  number  of  stout  recruits 
from  the  mountains,  yet  the  natives  of  the 
peninsula  are  generally  preferred.  In  one 
manoauvre,  the  Oriental  horseman  is  inimit- 
able. He  keeps  his  horse  (with  a  murderous 
bit)  so  well  in  hand  that,  when  an  English 
dragoon  charges  him,  he  wheels  off  as  if  on  a 
pivot,  and  deals  a  cut  across  the  back  of  his 
enemy's  neck  that  generally  puzzles  the  sur- 
geon. I  myself  remember  a  Sikh  cavalier,  who, 
in  one  of  the  Sutlej  affairs,  cut  down  three 
European  troopers — two  dragoons,  namely, 
and  a  lancer — whose  lance  was  cut  through  as 
well  as  his  neck,  and  I  saw  the  fellow  killed, 
not  far  from  where  Lord  Gough  was  standing, 
by  a  native  trooper,  who  outwitted  him  at 
his  own  game  of  back-blows.  Then  the 
wonderful  lightness  of  these  riders,  compared 
with  European  dragoons  or  hussars,  is  one 
reason  for  the  great  length  of  the  marches 
they  perform  ;  which  have  often  amounted  to 
eighty,  and,  in  one  or  two  cases,  to  a  hundred 
miles,  in  twenty-four  hours.  But,  then,  the 
Irregulars  ride,  on  an  average,  some  twelve 
or  thirteen  stone,  while  our  Light  Dragoons 
are  seldom  less,  in  marching  order,  than 
twenty  or  two-and- twenty  stone  ;  a  pretty 
tax  on  the  powers  of  an  Indian  horse  of  not 
above  fourteen  hands  and  a-half  in  height, 
the  usual  stature !  The  Irregulars  might 
march  round  and  round  a  European  regiment 
on  a  journey  without  the  latter  even  dis- 
covering it. 

In  many  corps,  the  privates  are  allowed  to 
choose  their  own  saddles,  which  are  of  wood, 
cloth,  leather,  felt,  or  velvet,  as  the  rider 
pleases ;  but  which  must  be  covered  by  a 


before   enlisting,  to    prove    himself   perfect  uniform  regimental  saddle-cloth.     Felt  and 


cloth  saddles,  made  without  trees  or  wood- 
work, are  generally  preferred ;  though  of  a 
somewhat  heating  texture,  and,  if  made 
much  lighter  than  twenty-eight  pounds  Eng- 
lish, they  wring  a  horse's  withers  and 
rub  his  back.  All  light  felt  or  cloth  saddles 
turn  out  failures.  The  bits  are  murderous 
things,  with  prickles  of  steel  that  subdue  a 
charger  in  a  moment ;  but,  if  the  bridle  be 
unskilfully  used,  a  tortured  horse  will  often 
fling  himself  down,  or  rear  till  he  falls  back 
and  crushes  his  rider.  The  great  aim  of 
Orientals  is  to  break  a  horse  down,  and  get 
him  so  under  control  as  to  check  or  wheel 
him  in  a  moment ;  and,  for  military  purposes, 
this  answers  well,  although  it  ruins  the 
animal's  stride  for  a  gallop.  In  some  corps, 
soldiers  have  been  allowed  to  wear  chain, 
armour,  after  the  old  Indian  fashion  ;  but, 
besides  spreading  a  bad  spirit  among  the 
men,  the  chain-mail  is  sure  to  be  driven  in  by 
a  ball,  and  so  render  fatal  a  gun-shot  wound 
that  might  otherwise  have  been  trifling. 


246      [September  II,  lift?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conductsd  by 


On  the  whole,  no  branch  of  the  Indian 
army  deserves  greater  praise  or  greater 
reliance  than,  the  Irregular  Cavalry. 


THE  SWEETEST  OF  WOMEN. 

THAT  accomplished  gentleman  and  elegant 
poet,  Mr.  Edmund  Waller,  of  Beaconstield, 
—Member  of  Parliament  for  the  borough  of 
Agmoudesham,  courtier,  wit  and  orator,  man 
of  wealth  and  man  of  fashion — loved  and 
sang,  upwards  of  two  centuries  ago,  the 
charms  of  Sacharissa. 

Hereupon  the  majority  may  probably  in- 
quire, Who  was  she  1  Who  was  she,  this  beau- 
tiful and  charming  Sacharissa?  She  whose 
name  has  thus,  by  the  honeyed  words  of  her 
lover,  been  sweetened  for  ever  in  the  world's 
remembrance  —  literally  preserved  in  the 
sugary  compliments  of  verse — candied  with 
poetry  like  a  very  sweetmeat  in  the  bouquet  of 
our  national  literature.  For,  at  once,  be  it  re- 
marked, in  regard  to  this  fantastic  and  deli- 
cious name  of  Sacharissa,  that  Dr.  Johnson 
has  observed  in  reference  to  it,  speaking  of  it 
with  characteristic  reprehension,  and  in  no 
less  characteristic  phraseology,  "  The  name  is 
derived  from  the  Latin  appellation  of  sugar, 
and  implies,  if  it  means  anything,  a  spiritless 
mildness  and  dull  goodnature."  Whereas 
Mr.  Elijah  Fenton  has  described  it,  however, 
much  more  ingeniously  and  judiciously,  as  a 
name  recalling  to  mind  (to  his  antiquarian 
mind,  that  is  to  say  !)  "  what  is  related  of  the 
Turks "  (he  does  not  inform  us  where !) 
"  who,  in  their  gallantries,"  quoth  he  quaintly, 
"  think  Sucar  Birpara,  i.  e.,  bit  of  sugar,  to 
be  the  most  polite  and  endearing  compliment 
they  can  use  to  the  ladies."  Delightful  Mr. 
Fenton — it  is  the  very  key  to  the  enigma — 
the  solution  (of  course,  figuratively)  of  the 
delicate  love-puzzle  of  this  melting  saccharine 
"appellation"  of  Sacharissa.  Bit  of  sugar — 
Sucar  Birpara — let  us  nibble  at  it.  It  gives 
one  the  whole  flavour  of  the  poetic  flattery 
conveyed  in  those  rhythmic  words  of  him 
whom  Mr.  Addison  has  appropriately  desig- 
nated the  "  Courtly  Waller  " — words  rained 
down  by  him  at  the  feet  of  his  mistress,  not, 
as  in  the  instance  of  the  Arabian  princess  of 
the  fairy  tale,  like  a  shower  of  pearls  and 
precious  stones,  but  rather  in  this  instance, 
like  a  sprinkling  of  comfits  and  sugar-plums. 

Almost  all  that  the  world-at-large  really 
appears  to  know  about  Sacharissa,  might, 
we  conjecture,  be  summed  up  thus  suc- 
cinctly :  that  she  was,  when  her  lover  sang 
of  her,  very  young,  very  charming,  very 
beautiful.  Scarcely  anything  besides  ;  and 
that  assuredly,  as  far  as  it  goes,  might 
safely  enough  have  been  taken  for  granted 
without  requiring  one  syllable  in  the  way 
of  verification.  Not  but  what  these  Loves 
of  the  Poets  have  occasionally  been  very 
startling  personages  indeed,  by  reason  some- 
times even  of  the  absolute  incongruity  of 
their  appearance.  Appalling  justifications  of 


the  bandage  significantly  bound  over  the 
eyes  of  Eros  in  the  antique  mythology  ! 
Abominable  pendants,  in  their  way,  to  the 
classic  legend  of  Beauty  wedded  to  the  god 
of  the  splintered  thigh  and  the  splaw-foot  i 
However  it  may  have  been  thus,  with  rare 
exceptions,  these  Loves  of  the  Poets  have, 
nevertheless — almost  invariably — appeared, 
upon  investigation,  to  be  what  we  have  but 
just  now  very  briefly  described  Sacharissa. 
Yet,  invariably,  they  have  been  better  than 
merely  visibly  beautiful :  they  have  been 
beautiful,  all  of  them,  ideally  ;  some  of  them 
mentally  ;  a  few  of  them,  in  a  very  high  de- 
gree, spiritually.  Types  of  excellence,  exist- 
ing now  and  then  exclusively,  it  is  true,  in 
the  singer's  imagination  ;  but,  at  any  rate, 
existing  there,  and,  consequently,  as  such, 
admitting,  if  merely  as  the  creations  of  genius, 
of  these  elevated  poetic  celebrations.  "A 
Thing  of  Beauty  "  each  has  proved  to  be  in 
some  particular,  several  in  many  particulars  : 
as  all  know  since  the  golden  truth  was  first 
articulated,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  eighteen, 
by  one  John  Keats,  son  of  a  livery-stable 
keeper,  down  in  Moorfields — a  truth  but  very 
recently  emblazoned,  with  appositeness,  over 
the  grand  entrance  of  the  Manchester  Fine 
Arts  Exhibition — 

"  A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  for  ever  !  " 

So,  no  less  than  with  her  lovely  compeers, 
has  it  proved  with  Sacharissa.  Her  graces, 
thanks  to  Waller,  have  become  perennial. 
Her  charms— reflected  in  his  pellucid  verse 
as  in  a  mirror — have  been  perpetuated.  She 
has  surpassed  Diana  of  Poictiers  without  an 
effort :  retaining  her  beauty  unimpaired,  the 
sparkle  of  her  glance,  and  the  bloom  of  her 
complexion  :  not  only  through  the  wrinkling 
and  withering  ordeal  of  old  age,  but — after 
death — beyond  the  grave — when  her  dust 
itself  has  long  since  mouldered  away  and 
perished  out  into  absolute  nothingness. 

At  the  period  when  Edmund  Waller  first 
ventured  to  raise  his  voice  in  the  impassioned 
language  of  a  suitor  aspiring  to  the  hand  of 
Sacharissa,  he  was  still  very  young,  although 
a  widower.  Moreover,  he  was  in  his  worldly 
fortunes  affluent ;  having  enhanced  rather 
considerably  by  the  addition  to  it  of  his  first 
wife's  property  his  own  ample  and  even 
splendid  patrimony.  Beyond  this,  he  was 
vain  enough  to  imagine  himself  to  be  little 
less  than  irresistible,  and  gii'ted  enough  to 
account,  in  some  measure,  for  this  not  abso- 
lutely unparalleled  hallucination.  It  was 
scarcely  seven  years  from  the  date  of  the 
premature  demise  of  Edmund  Spencer,  when, 
upon  the  third  of  March,  sixteen  hundred 
and  five,  Edmund  Waller  first  drew  breath 
at  Cobshill,  in  Hertfordshire.  His  father, 
Robert  Waller,  of  Agmondesham,  in  the 
county  of  Buckingham,  dying  during  the 
future  poet's  infancy,  bequeathed  to  him 
somewhere  about  three  thousand  five  hun- 
dred pounds  a-year,  an  amount  then  equiva- 


Charles  Dickens.! 


THE  SWEETEST  OF  WOMEN. 


[September  12. 1S57.1      247 


lent,  it  has  been  calculated,  to  an  annual 
income,  now-a-days,  of  ten  thousand  pounds 
sterling.  Obviously  all  of  which,  beyond 
what  was  absolutely  requisite  for  the  expenses 
of  his  education,  must,  throughout  the  period 
of  his  pupilage,  have  been  in  due  course  ac- 
cumulating. Increased  thus  by  compound 
interest  during  the  lapse  of  a  score  of  years, 
Waller's  pecuniary  resources  were  soon  ap- 
preciably extended  still  more,  as  already 
hinted,  by  his  early  marriage  with  Miss 
Banks,  a  rich  city  heiress.  In  the  suit  for 
whose  heart  (and  purse)  it  should  be  recorded 
that  he  signally  triumphed  over  one  Mr. 
Crofts — a  rival  so  far  formidable,  that  he  was 
reputed  to  be  backed  by  very  powerful  court 
influence. 

Glorified  by  these  doubled  riches — viva- 
cious, vain,  and  convivial — with  an  oratorical 
repute  rising  rapidly  within,  and  a  literary 
repute  rising  no  less  rapidly  without,  the  walls 
of  parliament,  Waller  (bereaved  of  his  fine  city 
madame  thus  prematurely)  ventured,  at 
twenty-five,  to  fix  his  audacious  gaze  upon 
the  haughty  and  patrician  Sacharissa.  Am- 
bitious and  affluent  himself,  he  probably  re- 
cognised no  disparity  whatever  between  their 
relative  positions :  the  status  respectively — 
here  of  an  earl's  daughter — there  of  a  com- 
moner, well  born,  well-bred,  rich,  comely,  as- 
piring, and,  in  many  ways,  rarely  accom- 
plished. Such  was  the  vain  glory  of  the  man 
who  spoke  in  the  House  of  Commons  with 
the  sell-possession  of  a  practised  debater  at 
the  age  of  eighteen  ;  and  who,  while  yet  a 
stripling,  took  within  his  grasp  the  poetic 
lyre  then  in  vogue,  and  struck  its  chords 
boldly  from  the  first  with  the  skill  of 
a  practised  and  almost-perfected  musician. 
It  can  scarcely  be  wondered  that,  successful 
thus  in  various  ways  at  the  very  outset,  his 
confidence  in  his  own  capacities  should 
speedily  have  become,  in  a  manner,  supreme 
and  consummate.  Educated  successively  at 
Eton  and  at  King's  College,  Cambridge,  he 
took  his  place  at  the  early  period  already  in- 
timated, among  the  national  legislators  at 
Westminster,  as  M.P.  for  his  father's  birth- 
place, the  little  Buckinghamshire  borough  of 
Agmondesham.  At  sixteen  (observe  !  two 
years  earlier),  he  had  already  found  his  way 
to  Whitehall,  among  the  gadflies  of  the  court 
of  King  James  the  First — overhearing,  there, 
upon  one  occasion,  at  the  royal  dinner-table, 
a  contest  of  wits,  since  then  recorded  upon 
the  pages  of  history  as  in  many  respects 
curiously,  even  portentously,  characteristic. 
The  air  of  the  court  infected  him  :  it  influ- 
enced successively  his  muse,  his  heart,  and 
his  ambition.  His  first  poetic  effort  was  in 
loyal  celebration  of  the  escape  of  the  Prince 
(afterwards  King  Charles  the  First)  at  St. 
Andero.  His  second  was  in  commemoration 
of  his  Majesty's  wonderful  equanimity  on  re- 
ceiving intelligence,  on  the  twenty-third  of 
August,  sixteen  hundred  and  twenty-eight, 
of  the  assassination  of  the  royal  favourite, 


the  handsome  and  profligate  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham. It  is  amusing  to  note  in  the  former 
piece,  that  earliest  of  Waller's  literary  per- 
formances, how  fragrantly  the  soil  of  the 
fancied  Parnassus  breathes,  so  to  speak,  of 
the  freshly-dinted  turf  of  the  playground  ! 
Witness  this,  the  schoolboy  metaphor  (verses 
forty-five  to  forty-six)  comparing  the  gilded 
barge  in  which  the  Prince  of  Wales  was 
nearly  foundering  among  the  Spanish  waters, 
off  Saint  Andero,  to  the  perilous  tossing  to 
and  fro  of  the  leather-covered  and  elastic 
bladder  in  the  game  of  football.  Witness 
this,  moreover,  hardly  less,  the  whole  of  the 
egregiously  academic  illustrations,  referring 
now  to  the  painter  Timanthes,  now  to  the 
floral  death  of  Cyparissus,  and  so  forth, 
throughout  the  scholastic  souvenirs  of  some 
well-thumbed  page  of  Ovid  or  Thucydides — 
scattered  abundantly  among  the  scanty  verses 
relating  to  the  bloody  deed  of  Lieutenant 
Felton,  by  whose  red  right  hand  George  Vil- 
liers  was  basely  done  to  death  at  Ports- 
mouth. But  if  the  style  spoke  of  the  schools, 
the  themes  thus  celebrated  spoke  also  in 
their  turn  of  the  court  no  less  distinctly. 
Waller  had  become  a  courtier  and  a  poet  not 
only  prematurely  but  simultaneously.  And 
precisely  as  the  mere  contagion  of  the  golden 
ringing  of  the  broad  pieces  in  the  ample 
purse  caused  him  apparently  to  grasp,  in  the 
first  instance,  at  the  money-bags  of  the  City 
Heiress  avariciously,  so,  likewise,  in  the 
second  and  more  notable  venture  of  his  affec- 
tions, the  impulse  seemed  to  be  imparted 
from  without  to  this  creation,  half  of  hot 
impetuosity,  half  of  cool  deliberation.  It 
should  be  remembered  of  him,  that  he  was 
born  with  a  ponderous  gold  spoon  in  his 
mouth,  rather  than  with  the  mere  matter-of- 
fact  silver  one,  lightly  attenuated,  and  plainly 
fiddle-patterned.  His  fortune  was  ready 
made,  and  waiting  for  him.  So  might  it  be 
said  of  his  style,  whether  in  regard  to  rheto- 
ric, or  in  regard  to  versification.  "  What 
was  acquired  by  Denham,"  said  the  great 
Doctor,  "  was  inherited  by  Waller."  It  ap- 
peared as  though  to  have  he  had  but  to  ask. 
Wherefore,  as  he  had  previously  wooed  and 
won  Miss  Banks,  and  that  too  against  consi- 
derable odds,  so  now  again  he  dared  to  woo, 
and  hoped  to  win,  the  lofty  and  far  more 
desirable  Sacharissa.  Likely  enough,  he 
plumed  himself  still  more  upon  his  lineage 
than  upon  either  his  parts  or  his  possessions ; 
for  with  this  poet,  at  least,  it  was  no  russet 
bird  of  song  warbling  under  the  eaves  of  a 
garret.  It  was  here,  rather  that  scarcely 
conceivable  phenomenon,  the  vanity  and 
splendour  of  the  peacock,  enhanced  by  the 
glorious  voice  and  thrilling  cadence  of  the 
nightingale. 

Through  the  maternal  line,  he  claimed 
kindred  with  the  Great  English  People,  as 
represented  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  yeomanry; 
and  this,  moreover,  by  the  strongest  thews 
and  sinews  of  relationship  :  his  mother  being 


248       [September  12, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Bister  to  John  Hampden,  the  Hero  of  Pa- 
triotism, martyred  in.  the  green  meadow 
near  Chalgrove,  and  consequently  cousin 
of  his  Highness  the  Lord  Protector,  Oliver 
Cromwell,  the  uncrowned  king  of  the  Com- 
monwealth. Through  the  paternal  line,  on 
the  contrary,  our  love-sick  aspirant  to  the 
blending  by  marriage  of  his  own  "divine 
ichor"  with  the  "blue  blood  "  of  the  Percies 
and  the  Sydney,  traced  back  his  ancestry  by 
direct  ascent  up  to  the  Golden  Age  of  Chi- 
valry— in  simple  truth,  to  that  valiant  Sheriff 
of  Kent,  Richard  Waller  of  Spendhurst,  who, 
in  fourteen  hundred  and  fifteen,  with  his  own 
hand,  took  the  Duke  of  Orleans  prisoner 
upon  the  memorable  twenty-fifth  of  October, 
when  King  Henry  gave  the  battle-signal, 
"  Banners  Advance,"  upon  the  famous  field 
of  Agincourt.  Wherefore,  probably,  the 
knightly  sheriff's  descendant  deemed  it  in  no 
•way  incongruous  that  he  also,  in  due  course, 
should  in  the  lists  of  love  dream  of  capturing 
an  earl's  daughter,  even  though  that  earl's 
daughter  wore  a  mail  of  proof  as  impene- 
trable to  the  shafts  of  his  passion,  even,  be  it 
said,  as  the  pride  of  Sacharissa.  A  suspicion 
of  that  repellant  pride,  Waller  seems,  in 
spite  of  his  own  matchless  self-reliance,  to 
have  entertained  actually  at  the  very  outset ; 
so  that  we  absolutely  find  him  muttering  to 
himself  "sour  grapes"  with  a  qualm  like 
that  of  an  agonising  presentiment,  in  the 
earliest  utterance  of  his  newly-awakened 
admiration.  It  is  where  he  hints  (in  the 
Verses  upon  the  Picture  of  his  Beloved)  at 
the  fate  of  the  emotions  inspired  by  her 
graces.  "  As  doubtful,"  he  sighs, 

"  As  -when,  beyond  our  greedy  reach,  we  see 
Inviting  fruit  on  too  sublime  a  tree." 

Never  does  he  sing  to  her  as  he  sang  to 
Chloris  afterwards : 

"  So  the  fair  tree  which  still  preserves 
Her  fruit  and  state  when  no  wind  blows, 
In  storms  from  that  uprightness  swerves, 
And  the  glad  earth  about  her  strews 
With  treasure  from  her  yielding  boughs." 

Unconsciously,  indeed,  he  confirms  Sacha- 
rissa in  her  scorn  by  a  premature  revelation 
of  his  hopelessness.  Cupid,  with  him,  shoots 
his  darts  like  a  Parthian  in  flight.  Besides, 
the  manner  in  which  his  ardour  found 
expression,  bore  about  it  the  appearance  at 
last  of  affectation.  Writing,  as  he  did,  at 
long  intervals — this  naturally  enough  becom- 
ing a  habit  with  one  altogether  without  the 
necessity  of  toiling  at  the  pen  for  his  subsist- 
ence— Waller  invariably  wrote  and  re-wrote 
with  the  most  exquisite  care,  and  the  most 
painful  deliberation.  Has  he  not  acknow- 
ledged naively,  in  his  comment  upon  the  Earl 
of  Roscommon's  version  of  Horace  ? 

"Poets  lose  half  the  praise  they  should  have  got 
Could  it  be  known  what  they  discreetly  blot." 

Unlike  Paganini,  who  was  never  once 
heard  by  his  familiar  friends  to  string  an 


instrument,  Waller  was  always  applying 
fresh  rosin  to  his  bow,  and  screwing  the 
strings  a  little  tighter.  According  to  the 
assurance  given  by  the  Duke  of  Buckingham 
to  the  Annotation  of  our  author's  Quarto 
Edition,  he  was  known  to  have  consumed 
the  greater  part  of  an  entire  summer  in 
composing  and  correcting  just  ten  lines  to  be 
inscribed  in  a  rare  copy  of  Tasso,  belonging  to 
her  Royal  Highness  the  Duchess  of  York. 
Yet  the  cherrystone  was  not  worth  much, 
after  all,  even  when  rubbed  into  a  gloss  and 
carved  thus  elaborately.  It  may  be,  doubt- 
less, in  explanation  of  the  fastidious  caution 
lavished  upon  these  verses,  for  the  fly-leaf  of 
the  Jerusalem  Delivered,  that  he  designed 
them,  possibly  as  a  tribute  of  reverent  grati- 
tude to  the  memory  of  Torquato,  to  whose 
melodious  epic,  done  into  English  by  Mr. 
Fail-fax,  he  avowed,  in  the  hearing  of  Mr. 
Dryden,  that  he  owed  whatever  smoothness 
might  be  discernible  in  his  own  flowing  and 
harmonious  versification.  In  testimony,  how- 
ever, of  the  poetic  faith  that  was  in  him,  this 
significant  couplet  may  be  not  inaptly  cited 
from  one  of  his  Prologues  : 

"  Our  lines  reformed,  and  not  composed  in  haste, 
Polished  like  marble,  would  like  marble  last." 

Hardened  and  polished  lines  like  these 
same  marble  numbers  of  Waller,  howbeit, 
were  scarcely  the  fittest  medium  for  a  pas- 
sion imperatively  demanding  at  all  times 
more  penetrable  stuff  for  its  manifesta- 
tion. Sacharissa,  we  may  presume,  wanted  a 
heai't,  and  she  was  offered  a  gem  selected 
with  the  taste,  and  cut  with  the  adroitness, 
of  the  most  exquisitely  tasteful  and  cunningly 
adroit  of  lapidaries. 

Sacharissa,  the  haughty  and  the  debon- 
naire,  was  the  first-born  of  eight  fair 
daughters — offsprings  of  the  marriage  of 
Robert  Sidney,  Earl  of  Leicester,  with  the 
Lady  Dorothea  Percy,  sister  of  the  celebrated 
Countess  of  Carlisle.  Sacharissa,  chief  flower 
of  all  this  blooming  stock, 

"  Queen  rose  in  this  rosebud  garden  of  girls  ;" 

was  known  and  admired,  during  her  radiant 
maidenhood,  as  the  Lady  Dorothea  Sydney. 
Subsequently,  however,  her  name  was  ren- 
dered otherwise  familiar  ;  first  of  all,  during 
nearly  half  a  century,  by  her  husband's  title, 
to  her  contemporaries;  afterwards,  by  the 
sweetest  appellation  lover  ever  bestowed  on 
his  beloved,  to  all  after  generations.  During 
her  life-time,  Countess  of  Sutherland  !  Per- 
petually, to  all  generations,  Sacharissa  !  De- 
lectable, old,  bright-eyed  Elia,  would  infalli- 
bly have  called  her  (coining  a  superlative  for 
the  nonce)  Fortuuatest  of  Ladies  !  this — at 
any  rate  in  one  important  particular — happy- 
go-lucky  Dorothea,  Countess  of  Sutherland. 
And  why  1  Simply,  be  it  confessed,  because 
there  is  not  anywhere  discoverable  the  faint- 
est vestige  of  a  clue  to  the  date  of  her  birth, 
leaving  that  mystery  as  a  problem  to  be 


Charles  Dicken«.] 


THE  SWEETEST  OF  WOMEN. 


[September  12,  1S57-]      249 


solved  with  the  quadrature  of  the  circle,  or 
the  accurate  definition  of  the  longitude. 
"Nowhere  has  the  record  of  that  date  proved 
discernible,  or  even  within  the  reach  of  pro- 
bable conjecture,  scrutinising  the  annals  of 
the  lady  Dorothea's  life  from  its  commence- 
ment to  its  termination.  It  appears,  neither 
down  in  the  Wealde  of  Kent,  upon  the 
register  at  Penshurst,  nor  yet  again  upon  the 
sepulchral  monument  raised  over  her  dead 
lord  and  herself  at  Brinton,  in  Northampton- 
shire. As  well  attempt,  now,  to  denote  the 
age  of  Sacharissa,  as  to  be  quite  certain 
(within  a  century  or  two)  about  that  of 
Cagliostro,  or  perfectly  satisfied,  again,  in 
regard  to  the  real  name  or  the  real  country 
of  Psalmanazar.  Her  years  baffle  us,  not  a 
jot  less  bewilderingly  than  the  identity  of 
that  comely  White  Rose  of  England,  Perkin 
War  beck,  or  of  that  ever  grimly  and  ghostly 
personage,  the  Man-in-the-iron-mask  !  At 
any  rate,  if  it  be  impossible  even  to  guess 
when  she  was  born,  we  know  accurately 
enough  when  she  was  married,  when  she  was 
widowed,  and  when  she  died.  Married — 
not,  Oh,  doleful  Muse  of  Beaconsfield  !  to 
Edmund  Waller,  poet,  legislator,  and  what 
not — but,  upon  the  eleventh  of  July,  sixteen 
hundred  and  thirty-nine,  to  Henry,  Lord 
Spencer,  subsequently  created,  by  Charles 
the  First,  Earl  of  Sutherland!  Widowed 
but  four  years  after  her  gay  bridal  morn, 
when  her  husband,  in  the  bloom  of  his  man- 
hood (being  then  but  twenty-three),  was  slain 
by  a  cannon-ball  while  fighting  in  arms  for 
his  king,  like  a  gallant  cavalier  as  he  was,  on 
the  notable  twentieth  of  September,  sixteen 
hundred  and  forty-three,  in  the  bloody  strife 
at  Newbury.  Surviving  her  young  lord  full 
forty  years,  until  the  eve  of  her  sepulture,  on 
the  twenty-fifth  of  February,  sixteen  hundred 
and  eighty-three,  in  the  stately  vault  of  the 
Earls  of  Sunderland.  By  Sacharissa  the 
young  cavalier  noble,  notwithstanding  his 
premature  demise,  left  three  children  :  one  of 
them  a  son,  heir  to  his  title  and  possessions. 
And  so  the  story  of  her  proud  life  is  told  in 
few  words :  leaving  her  for  forty  years  in 
weeds  and  for  ever  afterwards  in  flowers — 
flowers  blooming  with  an  eternal  fragrance, 
the  flowers  of  love  and  poetry  woven  deftly 
by  the  hand  of  Waller  into  a  coronal  for 
Sacharissa. 

The  incense  of  his  encomiums  he  flung  to 
her  with  a  lavish  hand  (how  affluently!) 
from  the  swinging  thurible  of  his  verse.  Re- 
membering her  relationship  with  that  Bayard 
of  Britain,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  author  of  the 
Arcadia,  he  exclaimed,  while  gazing  upon 
the  portrait  of  his  mistress,  rapt  in  admira- 
tion : 

"  This  glorious  piece  transcends  what  he  could  think, 
So  much  his  blood  is  nobler  than  his  ink  ! " 

Describing  her  under  the  leafy  covert,  sur- 
rounding her  ancestral  home  at  Penshurst, 
he  makes  the  very  branches  lacquey  her  as 


she  saunters,  or  cluster  above  her  head  iu 
loving  obeisance : 

"  If  she  sit  down,  with  tops  all  towards  her  bow'd, 
They  'round  about  her  into  harbours  crowd  ; 
Or  if  she  walk,  in  even  ranks  they  stand, 
Like  some  well-marshalled  and  obsequious  band." 

Hearing  that  some  one  has  infamously 
accused  her  of  rougeing  :  Yes,  Heaven  !  he 
cries  out  in  scornful  ire  : 

"  Paints   her,   'tis  true,  with  the  same  hand  which 

spreads 

Like  glorious  colours  thro'  the  flowery  meads, 
When  lavish  Nature,  with,  her  best  attire, 
Clothes  the  gay  Spring,  the  season  of  desire. 
Paints  her,  'tis  true,  and  does  her  check  adorn 
With  the  same  art  with  which  she  paints  the  inorn ; 
With  the  same  art  wherewith  she  gildeth  so 
Those    painted    clouds    which    form    Thaumantia's 

how." 

If  he  beholds  her  in  his  dreams,  he  thus 
apostrophises  the  lovely  vision  bearing  her 
semblance  : 

"  In  heaven  itself  thou  sure  wcre't  drest 
With  that  angelic-like  disguise  : 
Thus  deluded  am  I  blest, 
And  see  my  joy  with  closed  eyes." 

Deprecating  her  evident  wrath  at  his 
audacity  all  the  while  he  is  singing,  by  re- 
minding her  that  his  passion  is,  after  all, 
merely : 

"  His  humble  love  whose  hope  shall  ne'er  rise  higher 
Than  for  a  pardon  that  he  dares  admire." 

Chloris,  he  commands  ;  Zelinda,  eulogises  ; 
Amoret,  loves ;  but  —  he  confesses  even 
while  proffering  his  tenderness  to  the  gentle 
nymph  last  mentioned — he  adores  Sacharissa. 
He  suspects  it  to  be  for  him  an  idle  and 
profitless  infatuation.  Yet  he  feels,  too,  at 
the  same  moment,  that  it  is  of  all  his  noblest 
inspiration.  Conscious  of  this  he  draws  an 
exquisite  comparison  between  his  own  tanta- 
lising pursuit  of  her,  and  that  of  Daphne 
by  Apollo  :  proudly  predicting  his  own  Fame 
(by  way  of  consolation)  through  an  imagery 
as  beautiful,  as  it  as  proved  in  his  and  many 
another  kindred  instance,  marvellously  pro- 
phetic : 

"  Yet  what  he  sung  in  his  immortal  strain, 
Tho'  unsuccessful,  was  not  sung  in  vain  : 
All  but  the  nymph  that  should  redress  his  wrong, 
Attend  his  passion,  and  approve  his  song. 
Like  Phoebus  thus,  acquiring  unsought  praise, 
He  catched  at  love,  and  fitted  his  arms  with 
bays." 

It  is  the  epitome  of  the  story  of  Waller's 
idolised  passion  for  Sacharissa.  A  tender- 
ness in  the  metrical  effusion,  of  which  we 
find  him  occasionally,  we  had  almost  said 
repeatedly,  anticipating  some  of  the  loveliest 
fancies  of  various  after-poets  of  yet  larger 
reputation.  Who  shall  say  but  that  Waller 
first  suggested  to  Pope  the  elfin  phantasy  of 
his  Eape  of  the  Lock,  through  the  following 


250       [September  13. 1567-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


couplet.  It  occurs  in  his  epistle  to  Mrs. 
Broughton,  the  Abigail  to  Sacharissa  : 

"A  thousand  Cupids  in  those  curls  do  tit 
(Those  curious  nets!  thy  slender  fingers  knit)." 

Was  not  Grey's  memorable  quatrain  in 
the  elegy : 

"  Some  village  Hampden,  that  with  dauntless  breast 
The  little  tyrant  of  his  fields  withstood  ; 
Some  mute  inglorious  Milton  there  may  rest, 
Some  Cromwell  guiltless  of  his  country's  blood," 

anticipated  by  those  lines  of  Waller,  de- 
noting the  need  Genius  has  of  Opportunity  ? 

"  Great  Julius,  on  the  mountains  bred, 
A  flock,  perhaps,  or  herd  had  led. 
He  that  the  world  subdued,  had  been 
But  the  best  wrestler  on  the  green." 

And  is  not  the  principal  charm  of  Byron's 
famous  commemoration  of  Kirke  White,  in 
English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,  but  a 
literal  transcript  from  Waller's  ejaculation 
to  his  lady-love,  singing  a  song  of  his  com- 
posing ? 

"  That  eagle's  fate  and  mine  are  one, 
Which,  on  the  shaft  that  made  him  die, 
Espy'd  a  feather  of  his  own, 
Wherewith  he  wont  to  soar  so  high." 

Thus,  eloquently,  did  Waller  breathe 
through  his  oaten  reed  the  tones  of  love  and 
flattery.  Vainly,  however,  as  we  have  seen 
•when  those  notes  were  syllabled  to  Sacharissa. 
Immediately  upon  her  rather  conclusive 
rejection  of  his  addresses,  it  has  been  conjec- 
tured that,  for  the  purpose  of  dissipating  his 
anguish,  he  accompanied  the  Earl  of  Warwick 
in  an  expedition  to  the  Bermudas.  He  con- 
soled himself  in  effect  rather  differently, 
however,  under  the  poignancy  of  his  disap- 
pointment. And  Sacharissa  knew  it !  He 
fled  for  comfort  to  the  arms  of  a  second 
wife,  a  sort  of  French  Wilfrid  (a  personage, 
it  may  be  remembered,  described  by  Lord 
Jeffreys  as  "  a  tame  rabbit  boiled  to  rags,") 
— a  lady,  in  truth,  of  such  absolute  insignifi- 
cance, individually,  that  it  remains,  to  this 
day  a  moot  question,  whether  her  maiden- 
name  were  really  Bresse  or  Breaux.  Terrible 
is  the  comment,  uttered  by  Dr.  Johnson  upon 
this  incident  in  Waller's  history,  where  he 
observes,  in  one  of  those  sonorous  sentences  so 
provokingly  equipoised,  "he  doubtless  praised 
one  whom  he  would  have  been  afraid  to 
marry,  and  perhaps  married  one  whom  he 
would  have  been  ashamed  to  praise."  So 
ridiculous  was  Waller's  second  wife  in  the 
eyes  of  Johnson,  even  with  Tetty,  his  own 
red-faced  Blowsabella  vividly  surviving  in 
his  remembrance  ! 

Yet,  while  Waller's  first  wife  brought  him 
but  two,  his  second  probably  astonished  him 
•with  no  less  than  thirteen  children, — five 
sons  and  eight  daughters.  First  Consul 
Bonaparte  would  certainly  have  called  her  no 
mediocrity  ! 

Politically,  Edmund  Waller  was  a  Trim- 
mer of  the  most  shameless  effrontery,  proffer- 


ing his  allegiance  to  whatever  power  chanced 
to  be  in  the  ascendant — a  courtier  with  the 
most  flexible  knees  and  the  most  suppfe 
vertebrse.  His  existence,  it  should  be  borne 
in  remembrance — beginning  in  the  early 
spring  of  sixteen  hundred  and  five  and 
ending  in  the  late  autumn  of  sixteen 
hundred  and  eighty-seven — extended  over 
an  interval  embracing  within  it,  as  by  a  sort 
of  monopoly,  the  principal  part  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  During  the  lapse  of  nearly 
eighty-three  years  he  enjoyed  the  privilege 
of  a  personal  intercourse  with  five  remark- 
alle  sovereigns,  with  four  of  whom  he  is  even 
recorded  to  have  interchanged  familiar  com- 
pliments. His  intimacy  with  the  greatest  of 
them  all — liis  kinsman,  Cromwell — he,  him- 
self, immediately  upon  the  death  of  the  Lord 
Protector,  crowned  with  that  glorious  pane- 
gyric, which  is  universally  recognised  as  in- 
comparably his  poetic  masterpiece.  Yet,  with 
scarcely  a  momentary  pause  between,  we  find 
him,  directly  afterwards,  chaunting  raptur- 
ously over  the  event  of  the  Restoration  ;  and 
when  rallied,  good-humouredly,  by  the  Merry 
Monarch,  upon  the  inferiority  of  the  Royalist 
verses  when  contrasted  with  their  Republican 
predecessors,  with  the  coui'tliest  grace  prof- 
fering in  extenuation  that  memorable  rejoin- 
der, "  Poets,  Sire,  succeed  better  in  Fiction 
than  in  Truth."  His  wit,  indeed,  has  few 
better  attestations  of  its  brilliancy  than  those 
furnished  by  other  equally  well-known  and 
well-authenticated  palace  anecdotes.  While, 
as  delightfully  illustrative  of  his  humorous 
extravagancies,  it  will  be  sufficient  to  parti- 
cularise the  reason  extracted  from  him  in 
palliation  of  his  monstrous  eulogium  upon  the 
Duchess  of  Newcastle's  elegiac  lines  on  the 
Death  of  a  Stag  (verses  which  he  had  pro- 
tested he  would  have  given  up  all  his  own 
compositions  to  have  penned).  "Nothing," 
said  he,  when  charged  with  the  flattery,  "  was 
too  much  to  be  given  that  a  lady  might  be 
saved  from  the  disgrace  of  such  a  vile  perform- 
ance." But — ah,  the  vengeance  upon  Sacha- 
rissa !  A  vengeance  drawn  down  upon  her- 
self in  the  old  age  of  both — of  the  quondam 
lover  and  the  whilome  beauty.  When  would 
Mr.  Waller  again  write  verses  upon  her  ? 
asked  Sacharissa.  Fancy  the  bow  of  the  old 
beau  among  his  rustling  lace  and  his  flowing 
knots, — among  his  wrinkles  and  his  love- 
locks, as  he  replied  with  the  frostiest  smile 
upon  his  withered  lips,  "  When  you  are  as 
young,  Madam,  and  as  handsome  as  you  were 
then  !  " 

The  slighted  poet  was,  indeed,  avenged. 
If,  however,  the  lady  Dorothea  possessed 
within  herself  the  slightest  sense  of  a  preten- 
sion to  anything  like  decent  consistency  of 
character,  it  could  scarcely  have  been  aught 
else  to  her  but  matter  for  earnest  self-gratu- 
lation  that  she  had  once,  in  her  sagacious 
youth,  rejected  a  man  whose  whole  life,  after 
that  rejection,  might  be  accurately  designated 
one  long  series  of  startling  antitheses  and  dis- 


Charles  Oickeni.] 


ANGELA. 


[September  12,  135?.]       251 


graceful  contradictions.  His  political  tergi- 
versation was,  to  the  very  last  degree,  flagrant 
and  unblushing.  Upon  no  palliative  or 
explanatory  hypothesis  that  could  possibly  be 
dreamed  of,  can  his  principles  be  reconciled,  or 
his  actions  harmonised.  As  a  Parliamentary 
representative  he  could  so  energetically  con- 
duct the  prosecution  of  Sir  Francis  Crawley, 
one  of  the  twelve  judges  who  had  declared 
the  legality  of  levying  ship-money,  that,  of  the 
famous  speech  in  which  he  advocated  the 
interests  of  the  nation  and  the  cause  of  the  le- 
gislature— an  outburst  of  rhetorical  logic  and 
eloquent  vituperation,  in  the  midst  of  which 
he  strikingly  compares  the  beggary  of  the 
realm  for  the  mere  purpose  of  supplying  the 
navy  to  the  barbarity  of  seething  a  kid  in  its 
mother's  milk — there  were  sold  in  a  single 
day  copies  to  the  number  of  not  less  than 
twenty  thousand.  Yet  this  enthusiastic  and 
impassioned  conductor  of  Crawley's  impeach- 
ment could  afterwards,  with  admirable  con- 
sistency, send  a  thousand  broad  pieces  to 
the  king  when  Charles  the  First  set 
up  the  royal  standard  at  Nottingham, 
and  could  subsequently  allow  himself  to  be 
so  bewitched  by  his  Majesty's  kind  reception 
of  him  at  Oxford  after  the  battle  of  Edgehill, 
that  he  is  notoriously  known  to  have  engaged 
a  little  later,  in  a  treasonous  conspiracy 
against  the  Commonwealth.  The  particulars 
of  tli at  futile  plot — a  plot  so  futile  that  Hume 
speaks  of  it  simply  as  a  project,  Lingard  even 
mentioning  it  as  imaginary — are  altogether 
too  familiar  to  the  students  of  our  national 
history  to  be  here  recapitulated.  Its  dis- 
covery, while  it  cost  two  of  Waller's  accom- 
plices their  heads,  cost  the  poet  himself  a 
temporary  incarceration,  a  fine  of  ten  thou- 
sand pounds,  and  eventually  banishment. 
Worse  than  all,  it  cost  him  his  reputation. 
During  the  period  of  his  exile  in  France,  an 
event  of  interest  befell  the  pardoned  but 
disgraced  conspirator.  There  appeared  at 
London  in  sixteen  hundred  and  forty-eight 
the  very  first  edition  of  his  works  ever  pub- 
lished :  an  enterprise  originated  by  some 
unknown  lady  who  had  written  to  him  in  his 
foreign  seclusion,  requesting  him  to  send  her 
all  his  various  poems  collected  together  in 
manuscript.  Could  this  nameless  fair  one  by 
any  wild  possibility  have  been  Sacharissa  ? 

Ultimately  Waller  was  permitted  to  return 
homeward,  a  blot  on  his  escutcheon,  and 
considerably  reduced  in  his  circumstances. 
It  was  then  he  took  up  his  abode  upon  the. 
last  remnant  of  his  fortunes  at  Hallbarn,  near 
his  mother's  residence  and  his  own  former 
estate  at  Beaconstield.  He  subsequently  re- 
sumed his  old  position  in  the  legislature,  con- 
tinuing throughout  another  generation  to  be 
the  delight,  and,  in  some  sort  also,  the  boast  of 
Parliament.  His  literary  reputation  was 
securely  established.  It  obtained — a  marvel 
in  those  days — a  continental  recognition  among 
his  own  immediate  contemporaries.  He  him- 
self, it  is  true,  by  coolly  writing  in  one  of  his 


letters  :  "The  old  blind  schoolmaster  John 
Milton  hath  published  a  tedious  poem  on 
the  fall  of  man,"  could  perfectly  justify,  in 
that  one  sentence,  the  accusation  of  envy 
directed  against  him  by  Atterbury.  But 
Envy  was  not  the  Shadow  of  his  own  Merit. 
He  was  on  the  contrary  the  very  Schlemil 
of  popularity.  Alexander  Pope  has  taught 
the  merest  tyro  in  verse  to 

"  praise  the  easy  vigour  of  a  line 
Where    Denhata's   strength  and    Waller's   sweetness 
join." 

Mr.  Addison  has  declared  the  perpetuity  of 
his  renown  as  synonymous  with  the  existence 
of  the  language,  when  he  has  predicted, 

*  So  long  shall  Waller's  strains  our  passion  move, 
And  Sacharissa's  beauty  kindle  love." 

On  the  twenty-first  of  October  sixteen 
hundred  and  eighty-seven,  he  peacefully 
breathed  his  last  at  Beaconsfield. 


ANGELA. 

HER  brow  is  set  in  mellow  light, 
Young  Angela's  !     The  happy  mind 

That  dwells  within  is  raying  out 
Its  beauty  ;  and  as  fruits  behind 

Her  bower  ripen,  so  her  face 

And  form  grow  perfect  to  the  mind. 

Oh,  ever  so,  through  days  and  nights, 

Be  clear  and  smooth  that  rounding  brow ! 

And  ever,  moulded  from  within, 

Glow  brightly  pure  and  mild  as  now 

The  loveliness  where  soul  is  all 
Upon  the  snowy-polish'd  brow  ! 

Her  braidless  hair  swims  down  her  neck, 
Sweet  Angela's  !     No  tresses  on 

The  richest  tropic  tree  that  drinks 
The  gold  breath  of  the  central  sun, 

Can  vie  with  all  that  curled  wave 
That  sways  her  bending  neck  upon. 

Oh,  soft  and  deep,  on  cheek  and  neck, 
Fall  ever  so  the  peerless  brown  ! 

No  rougher  air  than  floats  to-day 
Disturb  it  as  it  clusters  down  ; 

Nor  earth  distain  with  sadder  tint 
The  glossy  crest  of  golden  brown  ! 

Her  drooping  eyes  are  full  of  dreams, 
Rapt  Angela's  !     The  dewy  eyes 

Of  those  bright  buds  her  hands  are  in, 
Upon  her  lap,  in  all  their  dyes 

Have  not  a  match  for  their  serene 
And  holy  blue — my  dreamer's  eyes  ! 

Oh,  let  them  droop,  and  melt,  and  dream, 
Blue  eyes !     And  let  her  hands  be  hid 

In  blossoms  !     May  no  touch  of  pain 
Bedim  a  marbled  silky  lid, 

Nor  stir  with  need  to  dry  a  tear, 
A  rosy  palm  in  roses  hid  ! 

Her  down-tipp'd  lashes  quiver  oft, 
Bright  Angela's  !  and  melts  a  smile 

Around  the  temples,  down  the  cheek 
And  chin,  and  bathes  the  lips  awhile ; 

Till,  past  the  gold  drops  in  her  ears, 

The  white  neck  steals  the  sliding  smile. 


252      [September  12.  185/.) 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS 


[Conducted  is 


Oh,  like  the  circles  on  a  stream, 

That  pass  from  touches  of  the  flowers 

Upon  the  bank,  may  smiles  play  on 

About  her  heart,  through  all  her  hours, 

And  o'er  her  face,  as  now  within 

Her  summer-arbour  lawn'd  with  flowers! 

Her  lips  begin  to  murmur  now, 

Child  Angela's  !     The  lisping  words 

Are  full  of  music,  like  the  low 

Soft  whisperings  of  dreaming  birds; 

And  with  her  tiny  foot  the  time 
Is  beaten  to  the  measured  words. 

Oh,  ever  so  be  near  to  soothe 

Her  soul,  some  poet's  sweetest  song  ! 

And  never  harsher  note  afflict 
Her  ear ;  but,  all  her  life  along, 

Be  round  her  steps  and  in  the  air, 
When  man  is  mute,  an  angel's  song  > 

She  knows  not  of  my  watch  of  love, 
Dear  Angela  !     And  soon  away 

From  this  deep  hillock-girdled  glen 
Must  pass  the  heart  that  beats  to-day 

So  near  her  ;  but  her  picture  throbs 
For  ever  in  it  far  away. 

In  lustrous  midnights  of  the  south, 

When  star-shine  sleeps  among  the  vines, 

And  silver'd  ripples  crown  the  lakes, 
My  thoughts  shall  soar  across  the  lines 

Of  Alps,  and  zones  of  earth  and  sky, 
To  her  from  out  the  land  of  vines. 


ELEANOE  CLAEE'S  JOUENAL  FOE 
TEN  YEAES. 

IK  FOUR  CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE  THIRD. 

June  twenty-seventh.  I  am  at  bonnie 
Burnbank  once  more,  glad  of  its  peace  and 
quietness  and  loving  ways.  Grannie  is  angry 
—(a  very  remarkable  frame  of  mind  for  her) 
— very  angry,  at  my  treatment  at  Meadow- 
lands.  I  have  just  done  all  my  confession  to 
her,  and  she  is  bent  on  writing  to  Mrs.  Clay, 
but  I  shall  try  to  persuade  her  not.  Old 
Mr.  Clay  shook  hands  with  me  very  kindly 
when  I  left,  but  his  wife  would  not  even  see 
me.  Emily  fretted,  and  Herbert  drove  me 
down  to  Stockbridge  to  meet  the  train.  We 
consider  ourselves,  and  his  family  consider 
us  engaged,  but  there  is  to  be  no  thought  oi 
our  marrying  at  present,  or  for  years  to  come 
This  makes  me  look  on  life  with  strangely 
different  eyes ;  so  much  is  accomplished 
that  there  is  no  scope  for  the  fancies  anc 
visions  which  make  up  some  girls'  youth.  ] 
am  glad  it  is  so  ;  now  I  must  set  mysel 
some  work  to  do.  Uncle  Henry  comes  ovei 
soon  to  talk  about  our  settling  at  Ferndell 
but  I  have  begged  Grannie  not  to  speak  to 
him  of  Herbert  and  Meadowlands.  Consi 
dering  how  matters  are,  I  think  the  engage 
ment  had  better  be  kept  quiet.  I  hate  being 
speculated  upon  and  watched,  as  I  should  bi 
were  it  known— especially  so  much  as  ther 
is  to  know. 

June  twenty-ninth.  Mary  Jane  Curling 
arrived  here  this  afternoon,  overflowing  witl 
happiness  and  consequence,  to  announce  her 


ipproaching  marriage  with  old  Sir  Simou 
Peering.  It  is  a  great  thing  for  the  family — 
he  connection,  I  mean ;  for  Sir  Simon  is 

supposed  to  have  influential  friends,  who  will 
lelp  the  Curling  boys  forward  in  their  pro- 

"essions.  She  has  asked  me  to  be  one  of  the 
>ridesmaids  on  the  occasion,  and  Grannie 

says  I  cannot  decline  without  giving  offence  ; 

0  I  suppose  I  must ;  but  if  my  choice  were 
riven  me,  I  certainly  should  not.     I  have 
.>een  over  to  see  Miss  Lawson  and  Betsy  since 
ea,  and  found  them  much  as  they  used  to  be  j 
joth  reverted  to  their  chairs,  which  I  gave 
;hem  when  I  came  into  possession  of  Uncle 
Robert's  property.    What  a  dreadful  burden 
[  found  that  property  in  idea  then  !     Now,  I 
am  quite  used  to  its  possession,  and  bear  it 
meekly  enough.     I  don't  think,  by  the  bye,  if 
[  were  to  lose  it  to-morrow,  the  loss  would 
afflict  me. 

Mrs.  Lake,  who  knows  some  people  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Stockbridge  who  are 
acquainted  with  all  the  Clay  family,  was 
asking  me  about  them  yesterday  in  an  inqui- 
sitive anxious  manner,  which  caused  me 
to  suspect  that  she  had  heard  a  distorted 
version  of  recent  events  at  Meadowlands,  so 

1  told  her  what  had  really  occurred. 

She  felt  about  it  much  as  Grannie  feels ; 
that  is  to  say,  very  indignant  ;  and  besides, 
she  did  not  refrain  from  insinuating  that  the 
heiress  of  Ferndell  might  look  higher  in  the 
world  than  to  the  son  of  a  manufacturer. 
Mrs.  Lake  does  not  know  Herbert  Clay,  or 
she  would  not  say  that.  I  might  have 
answered  that  once  a  gentleman,  always  a 
gentleman  would  apply  to  him,  but  I  re- 
frained. To  compare  him  with  such  men  as 
young  Curling,  Freddy  Price,  or  Sir  Edward 
Singleton,  seems  a  positive  degradation.  But 
it  vexes  me  to  feel  that  it  is  possible  for  any- 
body to  look  down  upon  him.  If  I  could 
once  show  him  here — his  fine  countenance, 
his  intelligent,  good  countenance — no  one 
would  ever  think  of  speaking  slightly  of  him 
again !  But  I  see  no  chance  of  that  while 
our  engagement  is  unsanctioned. 

I  had  a  long  letter  from  him  to-day,  chiefly 
written  the  night  of  the  day  I  left  Meadow- 
lands.  He  still  harps  on  the  little  rustic 
cottage,  and  says  it  has  taken  such  a  fast 
hold  on  his  imagination,  that  he  must  go 
forthwith  and  examine  its  interior  capabili- 
ties of  comfort.  He  hopes  I  do  not  mind 
grandeur ! 

I  almost  wish  now  I  had  told  him  about 
Ferndell  at  once  ;  but  as  I  did  not  do  it  per- 
sonally, I  shall  not  tell  him  by  letter — that 
would  seem  to  attach  more  importance  to  it 
than  it  deserves.  I  am  rather  afraid  of  how 
the  intelligence  may  strike  him.  He  is  a 
proud  man,  and  I  remember  hearing  him 
speak  once  of  a  person  who  had  his  money 
through  his  wife,  as  a  fettered  being,  who 
had  sold  his  liberty  for  ready  cash.  At  the 
same  time  he  declared  that  he  would  never 
be  indebted  to  his  wife  for  anything  ! 


Charles  Dickens.] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[September  12, 185?.]       253 


But  it  is  of  no  use  to  fret  myself  with  a 
thousand  vain  fancies.  All  will  come  right 
in  the  end  ;  I  know  I  was  not  born  to  be 
miserable.  Once,  Mary  Jane  Curling  would 
tell  me  my  fortune  by  the  cards,  and  she  said 
I  should  be  one  of  the  most  lucky  people  in 
the  world,  both  as  regards  love  and  money. 
It  would  be  nonsense  to  say  I  believe  her, 
but  I  really  was  pleased,  and  very  much 
pleased  too  ;  I  like  to  look  forward  to  bright 
things. 

July  tenth.  Uncle  Henry  has  been  and  is 
gone  again.  He  and  I  had  one  thorough 
good  battle.  It  seems  some  meddlesome 
person  had  told  him  about  Herbert  Clay,  and 
he  was  so  insulting  on  the  matter  that  I  said 
to  him,  there  were  two  or  three  points  on 
which  I  would  bear  no  interference,  and  this 
was  the  chief.  I  would  marry  where  and 
whom  I  chose.  He  insisted  upon  it  that 
mine  was  a  mere  girlish  whim,  and  that 
when  I  had  seen  a  little  more  of  the  world  I 
should  be  ashamed  of  my  first  fancy.  Evil 
befal  me  if  I  am  ashamed  of  Herbert ! 

July  seventeenth.  Mary  Jane  Curling 
was  married  yesterday.  Lady  Deering,  I 
must  call  her  henceforward,  with  becoming 
respect.  I  went  over  the  day  before,  all  the 
company,  or  nearly  all,  being  assembled. 
Anna  Curling,  the  two  Prices,  and  the  two 
Coopers  and  myself  were  bridesmaids.  None 
of  Sir  Simon's  family  were  present ;  indeed, 
it  is  a  fact  generally  known,  that  this  mar- 
riage has  given  the  greatest  dissatisfaction. 
He  has  a  son  five-and-forty  years  old,  and 
seven  grandchildren,  two  of  them  as  old,  if 
not  older  than  Mary  Jane.  She  was  in  the 
most  exuberant  spirits,  and  bade  us  all 
address  her  in  private  as  Grandmama.  It- 
would  be  affectation  to  try  to  think  that  she 
loves  Sir  Simon.  He  is  a  very  sour,  ill-tem- 
pered person  from  his  face,  and  as  jealous  of 
Mary  Jane  as  he  can  be.  It  was  very  wrong, 
I  know,  but  I  could  not  forbear  smiling  as 
they  stood  together  in  church.  It  was  a  sun- 
shiny morning  which  dragged  every  contrast 
forcibly  into  light.  She  looked  broad  and 
blooming — very  blooming  ;  her  eyes  rolled 
more,  and  her  teeth  glittered  more  than 
usual  even.  Then  he  trembled  as  if  he  had 
an  ague  fit,  and,  by  some  unlucky  accident, 
the  brown  wig  with  which  it  has  recently 
pleased  him  to  hide  his  bald  pate,  had  got 
pushed  a  little  too  high  up  on  his  head,  and 
showed  the  poor  white  hairs  cut  close  to  his 
neck.  One  of  Mary  Jane's  Scotch  cousins 
remarked  to  me  that  he  wasna'  a  bonnie  man 
at  a'.  And  she  is  right  there. 

After  the  ceremony  there  was  a  grand 
breakfast  and  the  usual  amount  of  speechi- 
fying. Sir  Simon  (it  was  very  bad  taste  in 
him)  had  chosen  young  Sir  Edward  Single- 
ton for  his  best  man ;  and,  whether  his 
tender  recollections  were  too  much  for  him, 
or  he  is  always  so  tongue-tied,  a  very  mise- 
rable oration  he  made  for  the  bridesmaids. 
He  is  much  improved  in  appearance  since  he 


came  from  abroad  ;  he  has  lost  hia  clownish 
air  and  gait,  and  looks,  what  he  never  seemed 
likely  to  do,  a  very  fine  gentleman  indeed. 
He  has  a  little  affected  insouciante  manner, 
which  would  become  him  better  if,  instead  of 
being  six  feet  two  in  height,  he  were  a  little 
man  ;  then  he  speaks  with  a  lisp  and  a  drawl, 
and  nervously  twirls  his  bit  of  watch-chain, 
or  pushes  up  his  tawny  hair  until  he  looks  as 
fierce  as  a  lion.  Mary  Jane  would  have 
found  him  a  much  more  suitable  mate  than 
her  decrepit  Sir  Simon.  I  never  saw  her 
countenance  change  but  once,  and  that  was 
when  in  his  speech  he  made  an  awkward  allu- 
sion to  past  events.  She  looked  terrified  and 
Lady  Singleton  went  ghastly  white.  Sir  Simon 
said,  "  Eh  !  What  ?  what  1 "  and  there  was 
a  little  titter  as  Sir  Edward  recovered  him- 
self, and  stammered  out  a  few  more  broken 
phrases,  and  dropped  into  his  chair  like  a 
man  exhausted  with  some  tremendous  phy- 
sical exertion.  Everybody  felt  relieved  ;  for 
it  was  no  secret  why  Lady  Singleton  was  so 
anxious  to  get  her  son  away  from  Deerhill 
two  years  ago.  For  my  part  I  don't  think  it 
would  have  been  a  bad  match  for  him,  all 
things  considered.  She  is  a  dashing,  self- 
possessed  woman,  and  would  have  set  the 
estate  to  rights  much  better  than  Lady 
Singleton  is  capable  of  doing.  After  the 
breakfast  we  had  to  collect  all  the  old  white 
satin  shoes  that  could  be  found,  and  when  th& 
happy  couple  drove  off,  a  shower  was  pelted 
after  them  with  hearty  good  will.  One 
slipper  was  sent  with  such  true  aim,  that  it 
knocked  off  the  postilion's  hat,  and  another 
struck  Mary  Jane's  maid.  After  they  were 
gone,  Captain  Curling  would  have  some 
games  and  races  amongst  the  villagers  who 
had  assembled  in  the  paddock  below  the 
house ;  and,  as  the  day  was  fine,  we  got 
through  it  well  enough,  and  without  weari- 
ness. Lady  Singleton  joined  me  as  I  waa 
going  up  the  wood  with  Anna  Curling.  Anna 
was  glad  to  return  to  the  crowd,  so  Lady 
Singleton  and  I  took  a  walk  together.  She 
is  what  people  combine  to  call  a  very  charm- 
ing, fascinating,  worldly  woman  ;  and  so  I 
think  she  is.  She  natters  with  her  tongue, 
as  if  the  practice  were  nothing  new  to  her, 
and  also  as  if  there  were  something  to  be 
gained  by  it.  She  said  some  amiable  things 
to  me  that  made  me  feel  angry  and  ashamed, 
yet  I  scarcely  knew  how  to  check  her,  there 
is  so  much  earnestness  of  manner  mingled 
with  her  plausibility  and  smoothness.  She 
clasps  her  hands  enthusiastically  and  says, 
"  My  dear,  you  must  believe  me  ;  I  always 
speak  the  literal  truth — sometimes  the  too 
literal  truth,  and  give  offence  ;  for  you  must 
know  I  have  a  reputation  for  making  the 
harshest  judgments  " — a  reputation  I  never 
heard  of  before,  though  it  may  be  a  fact, 
nevertheless.  There  is  a  snakiness  about  her 
that  I  distrust.  After  she  had  catechised  me 
closely,  and  uttered  as  many  graceful  com- 
pliments as  I  might  be  supposed  capable  of 


254       [September  15.  W67.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bjr 


bearing  at  one  time,  she  turned  the  conversa- 
tion upon  Sir  Edward.  He  was  the  dearest 
son — the  best,  the  most  unselfish,  the  most 
affectionate  of  sons.  So  thoughtful  for  her  ; 
so  generous  to  his  tenants  ;  so  staid  and  me- 
thodical in  his  own  personal  expenses.  I 
could  have  asked  Lady  Singleton  Miss  Thorn- 
ton's celebrated  question,  "  Where  she  ex- 
Eected  to  go  to  for  telling  so  many  palpable 
ilsehoods  1 "  but  I  did  not ;  for,  after  all,  she 
is  a  woman  whom  one  had  better  call  friend 
than  enemy.  I  dare  say  she  can  slander  as 
well  as  she  can  natter. 

After  our  walk  she  had  her  carriage  and 
drove  home  to  Deerhill,  but  only  to  return  in 
the  evening  to  the  ball.  A  great  many  more 
people  assembled  for  that  than  had  come  for 
the  breakfast.  The  scene  was  very  gay,  and 
I  really  enjoyed  it.  My  first  ball — that  was  a 
ball !  I  had  partners  enough ;  but  Sir 
Edward  Singleton  was  the  person  who  chose 
to  distinguish  me  the  most — indeed,  he  never 
danced  with  anybody  else.  His  mother 
incited  him  to  the  disagreeable  exhibition,  I 
know  ;  but  if  she  thought  that,  because  I  am 
young,  I  should  be  gratified  by  attracting 
the  attention  of  the  chief  person  there,  she 
was  lamentably  mistaken.  I  hate  to  attract 
any  particular  notice,  and  then  Sir  Edward  is 
not  so  intelligent  or  amusing  as  he  would  fain 
appear.  In  fact,  I  was  exceeding  weary  of 
him.  I  wonder  how  all  these  people  — 
who  lay  themselves  out  to  pay  me  so  much 
deference — would  treat  me  if  I  lost  Ferndell 
to-morrow?  In  a  very  different  style,  indeed, 
I  am  quite  sure. 

July  the  twenty-fourth. — This  morning  I 
had  a  letter  again  from  Herbert ;  it  has 
made  me  restless  and  unhappy.  What  can 
he  mean  by  saying  I  have  not  shown  confi- 
dence in  him  ?  Can  it  refer  to  Ferndell  ? 
That  is  the  only  explanation  I  can  discover. 
It  would  have  been  better  to  tell  him  myself 
when  I  was  at  Meadowlands,  and  I  regret 
now  that  I  did  not  do  so.  The  best  way  to 
make  amends  will  be  to  write  at  once  and 
confess — no  easy  matter  ! 

August  the  first. — According  to  the  post, 
I  might  have  had  a  letter  from  Herbert  yes- 
terday morning,  or  again  this  morning,  but 
none  has  come.  Perhaps  he  is  away  ou  one 
of  his  business  journeys,  and  has  missed 
mine.  The  Singletons — Sir  Edward  espe- 
cially— are  very  diligent  in  their  visits  at 
Burnbank.  I  am  as  stitf  and  disagreeable  as 
I  can  be,  because  it  is  very  easy  to  perceive 
that  he  and  his  mother  are  laying  vigorous 
siege  to  Ferndell,  and  I  by  no  means  intend 
the  fortress  should  capitulate  on  any  terms. 
Grannie  encourages  them,  and  occasionally 
throws  out  hints  about  the  Clays  ;  Cousin 
Jane  asks,  satirically,  after  "  the  commercial 
traveller"  whenever  I  receive  a  letter,  and 
yesterday,  feigning  ignorance  of  what  Her- 
bert is,  she  said,  "Eleanor  is  your  chosen  a 
sort  of  bagman,  or  packman,  like  Wandering 
Willie,  who  comes  to  sell  the  damsels  gowns 


at  the  back-door  ?  "  I  said  he  was  what  our 
grandfather  was,  and  her  father  is,  a  cotton- 
spinner, — neither  more  nor  less  ;  and  she  held 
her  peace  at  once. 

It  is  so  silly  to  look  at  people's  progenitors 
instead  of  themselves.  I  never  can  clearly 
understand  on  what  principle  it  is  done.  I  do 
not  pretend  to  undervalue  having  come  of  a 
good  stock,  as  the  saying  is.  I  should,  for 
instance,  feel  ashamed  and  angry  to  hear  that 
my  great  grandfather  had  been  hanged  for 
sheep  stealing  ;  but  I  should  feel  just  a3 
much  ashamed  and  just  as  angry  if  I  were 
told  that — standing  in.  the  class  of  gentlemen. 
— he  had  been  shot  in  a  duel  for  cheating  at 
play.  Happily  he  was  neither.  He  was  a 
decent  mechanic — a  West  Riding  of  York- 
shire man — very  stubborn,  very  persevering, 
and  very  honest — qualities  that  I  hope  he 
has  transmitted  to  his  descendants.  The 
Clays  are  of  just  the  same  class.  Old  grand- 
father Clay  was  a  quarryman,  and  worked  as 
such  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Stockbridge. 
He  married  a  beautiful  factory- girl,  and  then 
was  himself  engaged  in  one  of  the  great  mills. 
For  some  improvement  that  he  suggested  in 
the  machinery,  his  master  gave  him  a  good 
situation,  and  afterwards  a  share  in  the  busi- 
ness. He  and  his  wife  had  a  large  and  fine 
family.  All  the  sons  are  cotton-spinners,  and 
the  three  daughters — beautiful  as  their 
mother — married  cotton-spinners.  In  fact, 
all  the  family  is  cotton.  Herbert  and  Emily 
have  inherited  the  personal  beauty  and  fine 
moral  character  which  raised  their  grand- 
father and  grandmother  from  a  low  to  a  high 
position — yes,  a  high  position  !  for  even  yet 
the  kindliness  and  liberality  of  the  first  Clays 
are  proverbial  in  Stockbridge,  and  the  pre- 
sent family  inherit  the  respect  they  won. 

Now,  I  cannot  be  persuaded  that  Herbert 
Clay  is  not  a  better  man  and  better  gentle- 
man than  Sir  Edward  Singleton,  whose 
father's  baronetcy  was  an  election  bribe ; 
whose  education  was  neglected  at  home,  and 
finished  abroad  amongst  the  worst  company. 
I  suppose  it  would  be  a  shame  even  to  know 
the  life  that  young  man  has  led  since  he 
came  into  the  property.  I  have  heard  it 
hinted  at  years  ago,  when  he  wanted  to 
marry  Mary  Jane  Curling,  and  I  have  not 
forgotten  it — I  am  glad  I  have  not.  I  can 
see  very  plainly — though  I  choose  to  appear 
not  to  see — that  even  good  old  Grannie  would 
like  me  to  marry  Sir  Edward  Singleton 
better  than  Herbert  Clay.  As  if  there  was 
anything  in  that  man  to  win  a  girl's  love  !  I 
revolt  from  his  idea  ;  ever  since  his  visits  here 
have  become  frequent,  and  their  object  pal- 
pable, I  have  experienced  a  species  of  loath- 
ing for  him  which  is  indescribable.  I  should 
be  very  glad  if  he  were  never  again  to  come 
to  Burnbank  while  we  stay. 

About  the  middle  of  September  we  move 
to  Ferndell.  The  preparations  are  being  made 
now.  I  wish  I  knew  how  Herbert  received 
the  intelligence  my  last  letter  conveyed  to  him. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[September  12, IS5".]       255 


August  the  second. — No  letter  from  Her- 
bert, ag;tin,  this  morning.  What  can  it  mean  1 
Surely'he  is  not  angry  ! 

August  the  third. — No  letter. 

August  the  fourth. — Nothing  again  this 
morning !  It  is  not  kind  in  Herbert.  He  might 
be  perfectly  sure  that  my  anxiety  to  hear  from 
him  would  be  intense.  Cousin  Jane  teases  me 
mercilessly  about  my  "  faithless  bagman,"  as 
she  persists  in  calling  him,  and  wants  to  know 
when  his  professional  travels  may  be  ex- 
pected to  bring  him  to  Burnbank,  as  she  in- 
tends to  patronise  him  to  the  extent  of  ten 
shillings  worth  of  cheap  calico.  If  he  only 
would  come,  this  silly,  vexing  talk  would  be 


set  at  rest  for  ever. 

Sir   Edward    Singleton 


inflicted    himself 


upon  us  this  morning 
such  an  incubus  ! 


for  full  two  hours — 
feel  very  dull  to-day, 


and  cannot  help  harassing  myself  with  idle 
specula 

August  the  fifth. — While  I  was  writing  in 
my  journal,  yesterday  afternoon,  Mary  Bur- 
ton came  up  and  knocked  at  the  door, 
saying : 

"If  you  please,  Miss  Eleanor,  there  is  a 
gentleman  who  wishes  to  see  you.  I  have 
showed  him  into  the  library ; "  and  she 
handed  me  in  a  card,  "  Mr.  Herbert  Clay." 

I  ran  down-stairs  in  "an  instant,  full  of 
delight  and  happiness  ;  but  there  was  soon 
an  end  to  all  that !  He  received  me  frigidly. 


I  can't  describe  how  it  was,  or  how  I 
Only  I  sat  down,  and  all  my   colour 


Oh! 
felt! 

went  as  I  looked  in  his  face.  He  began  to 
speak  in  a  stiff,  constrained  way,  about  that 
being  the  earliest  opportunity  he  had  had  of 
seeing  me  since  he  had  received  my  letter, 
and  before  he  had  time  to  say  three  sentences, 
Cousin  Jane  appeared — curiosity  brought 
her.  I  introduced  them,  and  the  next 
moment  Grannie,  having  learnt  from  Mary 
Burton  who  was  come,  entered  too.  She 
looked  her  loftiest  and  sat  down  opposite  to 
Herbert,  as  if  she  intended  to  stay  as  long  as 
he  did.  Cousin  Jane  was  laughing  internally, 
for  she  had  discernment  enough  to  see  that 
she  had  interrupted  a  very  critical  interview, 
and  having  possessed  herself  of  a  book  she 
went  away.  Grannie  made  a  few  general 
observations  on  the  state  of  the  atmosphere, 
and  then  plunged  into  the  main  subject  by 
observing  that  Mr.  Herbert  Clay's  visit  was 
an  unexpected  honour — her  tone  implied 
that  it  was  also  undesired.  Herbert  kept  his 
temper  wonderfully,  and  his  countenance 
too  ;  as  for  me,  there  was  nothing  to  do  but 
to  sit  it  out  as  well  as  I  could.  1  saw  Grannie 
meant  that  any  explanation  there  might  be 
to  make  should  pass  in  her  presence.  I  held 
my  peace,  and  Grannie  said  that  she  had  un- 
derstood from  me  he  sought  an  alliance  with 
her  family,  but  that  his  strongly  objected  to 
it ;  for  her  part,  her  objections  were  equally 
strong — stronger  possibly  than  any  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Clay  entertained. 


her    position    is    diifer- 
relations  to   each  other 


Herbert  passed  that  over,  and  came 
straight  to  the  pith  of  what  he  had  to  say, 
and  said  it  with  a  manly  pride  and  feeling 
which  made  my  heart  thrill.  "  When  I  asked 
Eleanor  Clare  to  be  my  wife  I  did  so  under 
the  impression  that  I  should  be  able  to  raise 
her  to  an  independent  home, — that,  in  fact, 
she  was  without  fortune,  and  that  I  could 
make  her  happy.  Since  then,  I  have  learnt 
from  herself  that 
eut, — changes  our 
entirely, — " 

"  Our  positions  are  what  they  always  were," 
I  interrupted,  but  Grannie  stopped  me  with 
a  warning  look,  and  he  went  on  as  if  I  had 
never  spoken, — "  and  this  being  the  case,  I  am 
ready,  if  she  desire  it,  to  release  her  from 
her  engagements." 

I  was  startled,  shocked  inexpressibly,  and  the 
blood  flew  into  my  face  ;  but,  standing  up,  I 
replied  with  as  much  pride  and  dignity  as 
I  could  muster,  "  I  accept  your  resignation, 
sir." 

I  did  believe,  until  he  said  that,  his  love  for 
me  would  have  outweighed  all  other  conside- 
rations ;  but  it  seemed  that  I  deceived  myself. 

Grannie  added, "  I  must  say  that  my  grand- 
child has  replied  as  is  most  fitting  she  should 
reply  to  your  curt  rejection  of  her."  Her- 


permit  him.  "  It  is  a  rejection,  sir, — it  is  an 
insult  !  If  I  had  been  in  your  place  I  would 
have  known  how  to  value  her  better  than  to 
lose  her  for  a  scruple  of  pride  !  " 

To  think  of  Grannie  saying  that !  and  so 
fierce  she  looked  !  Herbert  would  have  his 
word  now,  and  said  a  few  phrases  which 
showed  all  he  felt ;  but  Grannie  did  not  take 
them  in  their  right  sense  ;  so  I  said,  "  Fear 
no  misunderstanding  from  me,  Herbert  Clay,  I 
know  your  sentiments.  You  will  give  your 
wife  all,  and  accept  from  her  nothing  but 
herself — it  may  be  very  chivalrous  ; "  and 
then  I  felt  sarcastic  and  bitter,  and  miser- 
able, and  Grannie  gave  him  a  haughty, "  Good 
day  to  you,  sir,"  and  he  departed.  Did  I  not 
always  say  that  Fern  dell  would  be  the 
plague  and  sorrow  of  my  life  ?  but  I  did  not 
think  it  would  take  this  turn  of  all  others.  So 
that  is  over  and  done  with — Love's  young 
dream  ! 

August  the  sixth. — Last  night  I  felt  angry, 
proud,  and  stung  to  the  quick.  It  was 
honourable  in  Herbert  Clay,  but  somehow  I 
would  rather  he  had  not  found  it  so  easy  to 
give  me  up,  that  he  had  proved  more  selfish 
in  fact ;  but  that  would  not  have  been  like 
himself.  There  has  been  a  total  silence  on 


the  subject  since  he  went.  Grannie  is  relieved 


probably,    but  she   will  not  show  it ;    an 


d 


Cousin  Jane  has  given  up  teasing.  I  could 
not  bear  it.  I  don't  feel  disposed  to  fret  or 
seek  retirement  for  what  has  happened  ;  my 
spirit  is  up  and  resentful.  I  wonder  how 
Herbert  bears  it,  for,  say  what  he  will,  I 
know  he  loves  me.  We  are  a  pair  of  proud 
I  young  fools !  Perhaps  he  expected  me  to 


256      [September  13,  1867.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


say  that  I  would  not  desire  our  engagement 
broken. 

I  make  a  vow  to  myself  I  will  write  his 
name  in  my  book  no  more.  I  will  not  be  a 
pining  love-sick  maiden  for  anybody  ?  To- 
morrow night  I  shall  dine  at  Deerhill  with 
Grannie,  and  flirt  with  Sir  Edward. 

August  the  thirtieth. — I  have  a  mind  to 
score  out  that  last  sentence  ;  but  it  would 
show  if  I  did,  so  it  may  even  stand  as  it  is — the 
wilful  suggestion  of  a  very  miserable  moment. 
I  did  dine  at  Deerhill,  but  I  did  not  flirt  with 
Sir  Edward.  I  cannot  do  as  other  girls  do 
in  that  way.  I  am  not  a  born  flirt.  There 
is  a  troublesomely  strong  element  of  adhe- 
siveness in  my  composition  which  makes  me 
cling  fast  to  one  idea  and  one  affection.  We 
have  hastened  our  preparations  for  going  over 
to  Ferndell.  I  want  to  be  there  now,  to  get 
into  the  midst  of  fresh  scenes,  and  to  begin 
some  of  my  manifold  duties  as  squiress  of  a 
considerable  village.  Mrs.  Curling  suggested 
to  me  a  trip  abroad,  but  I  could  not  enjoy 
that  now  ;  I  want  to  get  into  quiet  routine 
work.  I  feel  as  steady  and  as  phlegmatic  as 
an  old  horse  in  a  mill. 

FERNDELL,  October  the  twenty -fifth. — We  have 
been  here  nearly  six  weeks,  and  in  all  that 
time  my  book  has  laid  on  my  desk  unopened. 
There  is  nothing  particular  to  chronicle  ;  it 
seems  as  if  I  could  write  most  fluently  about 
my  feelings,  and  for  the  present  my  feelings 
have  got  a  rest.  One  cannot  go  on  suffering 
pain  and  regret  for  ever  ;  after  a  while  they 
lose  their  prominence  in  the  day's  experience, 
and  gradually  fade  and  fade  until  they  only 
return  in  melancholy  moments — in  the  night- 
time, perhaps — when  we  lie  awake,  longing 
for  the  sleep  that  will  not  come. 

Ferndell  is  beautiful  —  very  beautiful. 
There  are  beechwoods  where  the  crisp  leaves 
are  falling  already.  I  like  to  walk  in  the 
open  glades, — the  sun  falls  in  broad  yellow 
layers  over  the  turf,  and  the  birds  up  in  the 
branches  sing  as  I  never  heard  birds  sing  else- 
where ;  there  must  be  thousands  of  them  ! 

I  am  trying  to  become  a  practical  and 
useful  person  in  my  generation,  and  in  that 
view  have  given  orders  for  rebuilding  and 
enlarging  the  village  schools,  and  attaching 
thereto  a  master's  house.  I  cannot  do  all 
I  should  like  to  do  yet,  for  I  want  nearly 
three  years  of  being  of  age,  and  uncle  Henry 
does  not  seem  to  think  he  can  fulfil  his  duty 
as  guardian  correctly  without  thwarting 
some  of  my  reasonable  desires,  which  he 
stigmatises  as  Quixotic  extravagancies.  My 
own  personal  wants  are  so  few  that  I  shall 
be  at  a  loss  to  spend  my  income  unless  1  give 
it  away. 

Dear  Grannie  does  so  enjoy  Ferudell !  She 
proposed  yesterday  to  invite  some  company, 
but  I  only  feel  disposed  to  ask  Mrs.  Lake  and 
Betsy  Lawson,  and  her  sister.  So  I  shall  ask 
them  next  week. 

January  the  sixth,  eighteen  hundred  and 


forty-seven. — Christmas  at  Ferudell  ought 
to  be  a  merry  time,  but  it  was  not.  Out- 
wardly there  was  rejoicing,  but  inwardly 
to  me  it  all  lacked  heart.  From  time  im- 
memorial the  tenants  on  the  estate  and 
the  hall  servants  have  been  accustomed 
to  a  dinner  and  ball  at  this  season,  and 
though  I  care  little  enough  for  sucli  meet- 
ings, it  was  best  to  keep  up  the  custom  ;  so 
I  filled  the  house  with  people  for  the  occa- 
sion, gave  them  plenty  to  eat  and  drink,  and 
let  them  divert  themselves  after  their  own 
tastes.  Sir  Edward  Singleton  and  his  mother 
came,  and  Sir  Simon  and  Lady  Deering. 
Mary  Jane  makes  the  utmost  of  her  new 
dignity,  and  conducts  herself  with  a  puncti- 
lious watchfulness  over  the  old  man's  whims 
that  is  really  very  creditable  to  her  :  she  has 
accomplished  already  what  nine  women  out 
of  ten  could  not  have  done, — namely  recon- 
ciled herself  to  his  family. 

Common  report — false-tongned  jade  that 
she  is — has  been  making  up  a  match  for  me 
with  Sir  Edward.  Lady  Deering  asked  me 
if  it  were  true.  I  denied  it  emphatically,  and 
told  her  it  was  not  true,  or  ever  likely  to  be 
true.  I  trust  she  will  consider  it  her  duty 
to  carry  my  words  to  Lady  Singleton's  ears, 
so  that  she  may  abandon  her  fruitless  pur- 
suit of  me  ;  it  is  she  who  really  does  all  the 
courting,  Sir  Edward  stands  by,  looking  vast 
and  handsome,  and  occasionally  dropping  a 
gem  of  inanity  from  his  tongue, — anything  so 
big  ought  not  to  be  so  foolish,  so  intensely 
vacant.  The  poor  giant  has  not  yet  come 
out  of  his  bewilderment  for  Lady  Deering, 
and  he  confided  to  me  yesterday  that  he 
thought  her  the  finest  woman  in  all  creation. 
She  was  at  the  moment  showing  to  very 
large  advantage  :  her  crimson  velvet  dress 
enhanced  the  whiteness  of  her  arms  and 
neck,  and  her  complexion  was  a  shade  or 
two  less  glowing  than  ordinary.  Sir  Edward 
suggested  that  Rubens  was  the  man  to  paint 
her ;  no  one  with  a  more  timid  brush  could 
do  her  justice;  and  I  quite  agree  with  him. 
there. 

Some  of  our  party  would  get  up  private 
theatricals,  but  they  failed  through  lack  of 
brilliant  actors  ;  so  there  was  dancing  each 
night,  and  that  the  young  people  enjoyed. 
I  get  a  good  deal  rallied  for  my  sober  way, 
and  am  asked  why  I  do  not  do  this,  and  why 
I  do  not  do  that,  for  the  embellishment  of 
Ferndell.  I  don't  care  for  the  grand  echoing 
state-rooms,  and  never  enter  them  except 
when  I  have  company.  Grannie  and  I  use 
the  garden  apartments  :  dining-room,  draw- 
ing-room, and  book-room,  all  furnished  en 
suite,  and  as  cosy  and  unpretending  as  Burn- 
bauk.  But  my  favourite  spot  is  this  little 
eyrie  in  the  tower — bedroom  and  sulky.  I 
brought  Lady  Deering  up,  and  she  was 
bewildered  by  my  monastic  taste, — wondered 
what  it  meant.  I  chose  the  locality  for  its 
quietness,  and  the  beautiful  prospects  from 
the  four  windows.  I  can  see  across  the 


Charles  Dickens.] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[September  12,  1857.]       257 


wolds  for  miles,  and  over  the  deer-park  and 
beech-woods.  Sometimes  on  a  very  clear 
day  I  can  also  distinguish  an  opaque  cloud 
hanging  low  down  in  the  west, — a  cloud 
issuing  from  those  Stockbridge  mill  chim- 
neys. It  is  very  silent  up  here,  but  not 
lonely,  and  it  is  furnished  according  to  my 
own  whim  ;  a  Turkey  carpet  on  the  stone- 
floor,  a  heavy  old  table  with  drawers,  some 
plain  comfortable  easy-chairs,  a  couch,  and 
dwarf  book-cases  fitted  into  the'  walls,  and 
crimson  draperies  for  the  windows, — not 
very  hermit-like,  I  think.  Indeed,  I  like  per- 
sonal comfort  and  luxury  in  a  quiet  way  : 
glitter  and  grandeur  oppress  me.  Here  I 
do  my  business,  make  my  plans,  and  dream 
what  I  will  do  some  day  by  way  of  benefiting 
my  fellow-creatures.  I  spend  a  great  deal  of 
time  in  dreaming. 

In  all  this  time  I  have  never  heard  from 
Alice  ;  I  cannot  conceive  what  has  become 
of  her  ;  it  is  now  eighteen  months  since  she 
left  me  at  Miss  Thoroton's,  promising  to 
write, — I  don't  understand  her  failing  in  her 
promises. 

January  the  tenth. — Sir  Edward  Singleton 
is  done  with  at  last.  He  rode  over  from 
Mr.  Napier's  at  Burley  this  morning,  pro- 
posed in  due  form,  and  departed  a  rejected 
man.  I  am  relieved  that  is  over,  as  it  had 
to  happen  ;  now,  I  shall  be  delivered  from 
the  smooth  flatteries  of  his  mother  and  the 
burden  of  his  presence  wherever  I  go.  He 
professed  a  good  amount  of  lumbering, 
honest  affection,  but  as  I  knew  privately  he 
cared  not  a  sou  for  me,  I  did  not  commise- 
rate him  in  the  smallest  degree.  When  he 
was  gone,  Grannie  came  up  to  me  curious 
and  anxious.  She  was  disappointed  at  the 
issue,  and  said  she  had  thought  for  some 
time  past  that  I  was  relenting  towards  the 
poor  gentleman,  and  asked  if  I  did  not  mean 
to  reconsider  it.  I  said  No,  decidedly  No  ! 

February  the  fifteenth.  —  Cousin  Jane  is 
going  to  be  married  to  Mr.  Scrope,  the 
rector  at  Burnshead.  This  will  be,  what 
folks  call,  a  most  suitable  and  equal  mar- 
riage, and  I  am  glad  of  it ;  even  Cousin 
Henry,  who  is  generally  so  more  than  hard 
to  please,  expresses  himself  fully  satisfied. 
Jane  proposes,  half  in  jest  and  half  in  earnest, 
that,  as  a  matter  of  course,  I  shall  make 
them  a  wedding  present.  I  shall  in  my 
munificence  give  them  a  new  church — why 
should  I  not  ?  Whatever  sum  Wastelands, 
that  Johnson  wants  to  buy  for  the  erection 
of  his  new  mill  and  cottages,  brings  in,  shall 
go  to  Burnshead  for  the  church.  Uncle 
Henry  says  that  with  the  fine  timber  upon 
it,  and  the  water-power,  it  is  worth  from 
four  to  five  thousand  pounds  for  building 
land.  I  wish  it  were  a  mile  or  two  further 
from  Ferndell ;  I  like  Stockbridge  at  a  dis- 
tance, but  have  no  desire  to  see  it  walking 
up  to  my  park  gates.  Jane  is  to  be  married 
in  April. 

May   the    twentieth. — To-day  we  laid  the 


foundation-stone  of  Burnshead  church.  It  is 
to  be  built  upon  a  beautiful  knoll  at  the  back 
of  the  village,  which  it  will  overlook.  The 
grave-yard  is  to  slope  down  to  the  pasture- 
fields,  which  are  divided  from  it  by  the 
beck.  I  intend  to  be  buried  there  myself 
some  day.  I  stayed  with  Grannie  at  the 
rectory  for  a  week,  and  enjoyed  it.  Since 
Jane  was  married,  she  has  quite  lost  her 
fussy  old-maidish  ways,  and  has  bloomed 
into  a  very  pleasing,  sensible,  active  wife. 
Her  house,  old  and  inconvenient  as  it  is, 
looks  exquisitely  clean  and  pretty  ;  but,  I 
think,  I  must  give  them  a  new  rectory  too. 
Mr.  Scrope  is  a  very  good  man,  and  sets  im- 
mense store  by  Jenny,  as  he  calls  her.  I  have 
a  nook  in  my  eye,  not  far  from  the  church, 
where  the  new  rectory  would  look  charming ; 
the  garden  is  almost  ready  made,  for  the 
trees  there  are  beautiful.  Next  year  I  will 
!  improve  the  schools. 

September  the  seventeenth.  —  Ferndell  is 
loveliest  in  the  early  autumn  ;  there  can  be 
nothing  lovelier  than  the  view  from  the  south 
window  of  my  tower.  There  are  the  red  and 
yellow  tints  in  the  woods,  and  the  golden 
fields  of  ripe  corn  still  uncut.  Yesterday  I 
rode  for  the  first  time  since  we  left  Burn- 
bank,  and  I  took  the  Stockbridge  road  ;  I 
wanted  to  see  with  my  own  eyes  if  all  the 
reports  we  hear  about  the  people  are  true. 
It  was  perfectly  quiet :  indeed,  there  were 
fewer  idle  folks  about  than  usual.  Burton 
told  me  they  met  on  the  Marsh  every 
evening ;  but  I  could  not  go  so  far,  because 
Grannie  would  have  fidgeted  if  I  had  been 
long  away,  and  within  six  miles  of  Stock- 
bridge  I  returned  home.  Mr.  Scrope  tells 
me  that  the  reports  are  much  exaggerated,— 
they  always  are  in  these  cases. 

December  the  seventh. — The  strike,  which 
was  only  partial  in  the  autumn,  is  now  gene- 
ral throughout  Stockbridge  ;  it  is  very 
lamentable,  for  the  people  cannot  but  suffer, 
and  suffer  greatly  in  this  inclement  season. 
I  pity  the  people,  and  the  masters  too  ;  both 
have  their  grievances,  but  I  do  think  they 
might  be  accommodated  readily  enough,  but 
for  these  speechifying  demagogues  who, 
while  calling  themselves  the  working  man's 
friends,  are  in  fact  his  bitterest  enemies. 
They  ought  to  be  drummed  out  of  the 
county  with  all  possible  speed  and  ignominy ! 
I  heard  one  of  them  myself  yesterday  hold- 
ing forth  on  the  Marsh  to  several  hundreds 
of  hollow-faced  men  and  haggard  women. 
It  was  pinching  cold ;  but  they  stood 
patiently,  drinking  in  his  rant  as  if  it  was 
gospel  truth.  Burton  begged  me  not  to  go 
near,  lest  I  should  be  insulted  ;  but  I  rode 
round  to  where  I  could  hear  the  speaker, 
and  nobody  took  any  notice  of  me ;  I  sup- 
posed that  I  must  be  personally  known  to 
many  amongst  the  crowd.  The  fellow  saw 
me — a  low,  black-browed  man  he  was  — 
nature  had  writ  him  villain  on  his  face,— 
and  he  forthwith  launched  into  a  philippic 


258      [September  I-.',  1357.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


against  "the  purse-proud  aristocracy,  who 
ride  over  the  poor  man's  neck  and  filch  'is 
bit  of  bread  from  'is  lips."  Burton  renewed 
his  entreaties  that  I  would  come  away,  but 
it  was  such  a  novelty  to  be  abused  that  I 
stayed  to  hear  it.  After  a  few  general  denun- 
ciations which  seemed  to  take  well  enough, 
the  man  thought  to  point  a  moral  personally 
at  me,  and  with  a  curiously  sarcastic  air 
spoke  of  "  snorting  horses  and  chariots,  and 
pampered  menials  in  the  livery  of  slaves ; 
acres  of  corn  growing  for  the  wastry  of  one 
fine  lady,  while  their  children  fainted  for 
bread." 

There  was  a  hiss  in  the  crowd,  whether  for 
me  or  for  him  I  neither  knew  nor  cared ;  I 
sat  still  waiting  for  what  would  come  next. 
This  came.  The  tub-orator  proceeded  to  say 
that  I  had  come  there  to  gloat  over  their 
misery,  and  the  hiss  rose  to  a  yell ;  as  soon 
as  that  ceased  a  voice  called  out  in  the  crowd, 
*  Thou  lees  !  keep  a  civil  tongue  i'  thee  head. 
Yon's  Miss  Clare  fra'  Ferndell  ? "  and  one  or 
two  of  those  nearest  to  me  touched  their  caps 
respectfully.  Burton  brought  tidings  this 
morning  that  this  famous  orator  had  been 
beaten  by  the  mob,  and  ducked  in  Black- 
moss  for  making  offensive  remarks  about  the 
Clay  family,  who  are  at  present  the  only 
mill-owners  in  Stockbridge  who  are  not  out 
of  favour.  The  man  had  not  learnt  his  lesson 
thoroughly,  and  struck  out  right  and  left  at 
popular  and  unpopular  with  a  very  unlucky 
impartiality.  I  must  say  that  I  was  gratified 
to  learn  that  he  had  met  with  condign  pun- 
ishment at  the  hands  of  his  worshippers. 

May  the  twenty -ninth,  eighteen  hundred  and 
forty-eight. — It  is  a  very  rare  thing  for  me 
now  to  take  out  my  old  journal ;  I  forget 
it,  and  it  lies  by  for  months,  until  I  see  some 
one  who  recalls  it  to  my  memory,  or  some- 
thing happens  of  which  I  want  to  keep  a 
record.  I  have  been  over  at  Burnshead  to 
the  Scropes,  w.ho  have  just  got  settled  in 
their  new  house  :  the  old  one  is  occupied  by 
the  curate,  who  came  at  Christmas,  and  who 
should  this  curate  be  but  Mr.  Hugh  Cameron! 
I  was  glad  to  meet  him  again,  but  sorry  to 
find  that  he  had  no  preferment.  He  has  no 
patron  to  give  him  anything,  and  the  church 
cannot  always  provide  as  amply  as  they  de- 
serve for  her  sons.  He  spoke  of  Emily  Clay 
with  a  melancholy  smile,  and  said  they  lived 
in  hope — that  is  something. 

This  morning  two  gentlemen  waited  upon 
me  from  Stockbridge,  to  ask  if  I  would  per- 
mit the  working  people  to  come  out  to  Fern- 
dell  for  a  holiday — give  them  the  run  of  the 
park  and  woods  for  the  day.  I  consented,  on 
condition  that  no  intoxicating  drinkables 
should  be  sold  in  the  grounds,  and  they  pro- 
mised to  see  to  the  stipulation  being  ob- 
served. 

June  the  third. — The  Stockbridge  people's 
holiday  went  off  satisfactorily.  As  early  as 
six  in  the  morning  they  began  to  arrive,  but 
the  men  hud  put  up  the  flags  and  decorations 


over  night,  and  manufactured  an  arch  of 
evergreens  over  the  gateway,  with  "  Wel- 
come "  in  letters  of  daffodils,  so  that  all  was 
in  readiness.  I  am  told  that  there  were  as 
many  as  six  thousand,  but  as  the  day  was 
brilliantly  fine,  and  they  scattered  themselves 
over  the  woods  and  park  in  detachments,  I 
should  not  myself  have  guessed  them  at  more 
than  half  the  number.  They  brought  with 
them  two  bands  of  music,  and  in  the  after- 
noon there*  was  a  dance  on  the  level  field 
near  the  cricket-ground  ;  some  of  the  young 
men  played  cricket.  I  had  out  the  pouy- 
carriage,  and  drove  Grannie  about  to  see 
them  ;  she  was  rather  alarmed  at  first,  but 
when  she  saw  how  perfectly  quiet  and  well- 
conducted  everybody  was  she  enjoyed  it. 

Some  of  the  neighbouring  gentry  are  in 
high  dudgeon  at  rny  bringing  what  they 
style  "  the  riff-raff"  into  the  country  ;  but 
there  was  no  "  riff-raff;"  they  were,  as  a  whole, 
the  respectable  class  of  mechanics  and  factory 
folks.  I  confess  that  I  did  expect  myself  to 
find  some  destruction  amongst  the  trees,  but 
there  is  none  ;  and  as  for  the  grass — nature 
and  the  first  shower  will  restore  that. 

June  the  twenty-seventh.  —  Next  month 
there  is  to  be  a  great  bazaar  at  Stockbridge 
towards  defraying  the  expenses  of  rebuilding 
the  old  church.  I  have  been  requested  to 
provide  a  stall.  It  is  a  thing  I  do  iiofe  relish 
at  all ;  I  would  much  rather  give  them  a 
couple  of  hundred  pounds,  and  have  done 
with  it ;  but  this,  it  seems,  would  not  do  so 
well ;  Lady  Mary  Vernon  and  I  are  therefore 
to  join. 

The  venerable  rector  of  Ashby-on-the- 
Hill  died  last  week,  and  I  have  given  the 
living  to  Hugh  Cameron  ;  it  is  worth  four 
hundred  a-year,  so  now  he  and  Emily  Clay 
can  marry  and  live  happily  ever  afterwards. 
When  I  was  in  Stockbridge  last  Monday  I 
met  Emily,  but  as  I  was  in  the  carriage  and 
she  was  walking  on  the  pavement  with  seve- 
ral ladies,  she  did  not  see  me.  She  looked 
prettier  than  ever  ;  her  face  was  always  re- 
fined and  full  of  intelligence,  and  years  have 
improved  it. 

August  the  seventeenth. —  The  bazaar  is 
over.  Lady  Mary  Vernon  was  a  most  active 
saleswoman  all  the  three  days,  (but  I  did  not 
fill  my  post  very  well.  The  heat  and  bustle 
were  almost  too  much  for  me,  and  I  was  glad 
when  the  whole  affair  came  to  a  successful 
conclusion.  Mrs.  Clay  from  Meadowlauds 
had  the  next  stall  to  ours,  and  as  Emily  was 
with  her  we  had  the  opportunity  of  several 
talks  ;  she  thanked  me  very  fervently  for 
Hugh  Cameron,  and  whispered  that  her 
mother  had  at  last  been  persuaded  to  con- 
sent, and  they  were  to  be  married  in  Sep- 
tember. 

There  was  a  beautiful  dark-haired  girl 
with  Emily.  I  inquired  of  Lady  Mary  who 
she  was,  and  she  told  me  her  name  was 
liargrave,  and  she  was  going  to  marry  one  of 
the  Clays,  but  whether  Herbert  Clay  or  his 


Charlen  DiclensJ 


ELEANOR  CLAEE'S  JOURNAL. 


(September  13.  1857.]      259 


cousin  Frank  she  did  not  know  ;  she  believed 
Herbert.  I  could  not  Lelp  watching  her 
with  some  curiosity  :  she  appeared  an  ani- 
mated creature,  and  had  great  success  with 
buyers  of  fancy  things,  especially  with  the 
gentlemen.  Lady  Mary  wished  several  times 
that  we  had  her  to  help  us,  and  she  had  to 
scold  me  more  than  once  for  not  pushing  and 
pressing  as  she  did.  For  the  last  day  we 
aired  one  of  the  German  girls  from  the  Ber- 
lin-wool shop,  and  then  we  managed  much 
better. 

Mr.  Herbert  Clay  was  to  and  fro  in  the 
room  often  during  the  three  days  :  he  came 
to  his  mother's  stall,  and  talked  to  that  pretty 
Miss  Hargrave  for  a  long  while  one  after- 
noon towards  the  hour  for  closing,  and  waited 
to  take  her  away.  I  heard  her  whisper, 
"  Stop  for  me,  Herbert ; "  so  he  sat  down  on 
a  chair  with  his  back  to  us,  and  stayed  till 
she  was  ready  to  go.  He  bowed  to  Lady 
Mary  in  passing,  but  I  don't  think  he  saw 
me,  for  I  was  behind  the  drapery  that  divides 
our  stalls.  He  looks  several  years  older  and 
better  than  he  used  to  do,  for  he  has  lost  the 
boyish  air  he  had.  Lady  Mary  said  he  was 
a  fine  young  fellow,  and  that  since  he  brought 
the  strike  to  that  happy  ending  he  was  very 
highly  thought  of  in  the  county.  Some  one 
wished  him  to  stand  for  Stockbridge  at  the 
last  election,  but  he  declined :  his  father's 
health  is  failing,  and  he  must  supply  his 
place  in  the  business.  I  was  not  introduced 
to  Miss  Hargrave,  and  Emily,  in  all  her  con- 
versations, never  alluded  to  her.  On  the 
closing  day  of  the  bazaar,  Mrs.  Clay  condes- 
cended to  acknowledge  me  with  a  bow :  she 
must  have  seen  me  before,  but  our  eyes  never 
met,  and  neither  could  possibly  feel  disposed 
to  make  any  advance  to  the  other.  She  is 
become  very  grey,  and  begins  to  look  quite 
the  old  woman,  but  the  tyrannical,  domineer- 
ing spirit  is  not  dead  in  her. 

Miss  Thoroton,  Miss  Smallwood,  Made- 
moiselle, and  all  the  'young  ladies  paid  our 
stall  a  visit,  and  poor  Miss  Thoroton  observed 
that  it  was  the  proudest  day  of  her  life  in 
which  she  learnt  that  she  had  had  the  train- 
ing of  the  heiress  of  Ferndell ;  then  she  pre- 
tended to  scold  me  for  the  reticence  that  had 
kept  it  a  secret  all  the  while  I  was  at  school, 
and  ended  by  inviting  me  to  renew  Stock- 
bridge  reminiscences  by  going  to  dine  with 
her.  I  could  not  accept  then,  but  I  promised 
to  go  some  day  next  week,  and  hear  all  her 
gossip  about  my  former  companions — perhaps 
she  will  be  able  to  tell  me  something  about 
Miss  Alice. 

August  the  twenty-fourth.— Oh,  I  was 
sadly  shocked  yesterday  !  It  was  one  of  the 
furthest  things  from  my  thoughts  that  Alice 
should  be  dead,  and  I  have  been  all  along 
reproaching  her  for  never  writing  to  me.  So 
quietly  as  Miss  Thoroton  told  it,  too— so  un- 
feelingly. 

I  said,  as  she  was  talking  on  and  on  about 
one  girl  and  another,  for  whom  I  never  cared, 


"But  can  you  tell  me  what  has  become  of 
Miss  Alice" ?"  and  she  replied,  "My  dear, 
did  you  not  know  ?  She  has  been  dead  these 
two  years,  and  more  !  When  was  it  Miss 
Smallwood — in  March  or  April  ? " 

"I  believe  it  was  in  August,"  said  Miss 
Smallwood. 

I  was  so  painfully  struck,  that  for  several 
minutes  I  could  not  speak  at  all,  and  Miss 
Thorotou  went  on  : — 

"  We  heard  of  her  death  by  the  merest 
chance  :  it  was  in  this  way.  When  che  left 
us,  I  could  not  reconcile  it  with  my  conscience 
either  to  find  her  a  situation  or  recommend 
her  to  any  family  (her  conduct  had  been  so 
very  insubordinate  while  with  us),  but  she 
obtained,  by  her  own  arts  (she  was  a  talented 
girl,  and  there  were  those  who  liked  her),  a 
situation  in  a  clergyman's  house,  as  governess 
to  two  children.  She  was  with  them  eighteen 
months,  and  they  conceived  a  true  respect 
for  her,  and  if  she  had  stayed  with  them  she 
might,  in  time,  have  quite  redeemed  herself, 
but  there  was  some  love  affair,  some  disap- 
pointment which  affected  her  mind  for  awhile. 
When  she  recovered  she  was  possessed  with 
a  desire  to  travel  on  the  continent,  and  en- 
gaged herself  as  companion  to  a  lady  going 
thither.  This  lady  fell  ill  of  an  infectious 
fever  at  Brussels,  and  it  was  in  nursing  her 
Miss  Alice  contracted  the  disease  of  which 
she  died  there.  Who  was  it  told  us  the  whole 
story,  Miss  Smallwood — was  it  not  the  Drakes 
when  they  came  from  their  wedding  tour  1 " 

Miss  Smallwood  thought  it  was  tke 
Drakes. 

"  It  could  not  have  been  anyone  else — they 
were  in  Brussels  at  the  time.  It  seemed  that 
Mrs.  Hardfast  was  just  recovered  when  Miss 
Alice  fell  sick,  and  she  left  her  alone  at  the 
hotel  where  they  had  been  staying,  and  al- 
most without  money — a  very  inconsiderate, 
and,  I  may  say,  cruel  act — however,  Miss 
Alice  sank  rapidly,  and  died  there.  Who 
buried  her,  Miss  Smallwood,  do  you  recol- 
lect 1 " 

"It  was  a  charitable  English  gentleman, 
the  Drakes  said,  but  I  cannot  call  to  mind 
his  name.  Was  it  a  Sir  Edward  Singleton — 
I  really  believe  it  was  ?  I  know  it  was  a 
baronet,  a  wild  young  fellow  who  was  staying 
at  the  inn,  and  who  had  been  struck  by  her 
pretty  face — yes,  he  paid  for  her  funeral,  and 
I  must  say  that  his  heart  was  in  the  right 
place,  wherever  his  wits  might  be." 

And  the  two  passed  their  comments  on 
other  circumstances  which  now  revived  in 
their  minds  without  an  atom  of  commisera- 
tion, till  the  tears  began  to  drop  from  my 
eyes  at  the  remembrance  of  how  good  she 
was  to  me. 

Miss  Thoroton  expressed  surprise  at  my 
feeling  the  news  so  deeply,  and  said,  by  way 
of  consolation,  "My  dear  Miss  Eleanor,  it 
was  a  mercy  she  was  taken  :  she  had  such  an 
intolerable  spirit  that  she  never  could  have 
done  any  good  in  the  world!  " 


260       [September  12,  1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


I  asked  where  she  was  buried. 

"  Was  it  in  the  cemetery  at  Brussels,  Miss 
Smallwood,  or  was  it  at  Laaken  1 " 

Miss  Smallwood  was  not  certain,  but  she 
thought  Laaken. 

"  I  can  learn  by  writing  to  the  Drakes,  if 
you  wish  it,  dear  Miss  Eleanor,"  Miss  Tho- 
roton  proposed. 

I  thanked  her,  but  said  I  could  obtain 
direct  information  from  Sir  Edward  Single- 
ton— I  did  not  think  there  was  that  goodness 
and  generosity  in  him.  Poor  Alice  !  to 
live  and  die  so  friendless !  oh,  if  I  had  but 
known  ! 


ROMANTIC  BREACH  OF  PROMISE. 


IN  fifteen  hundred  and  thirty-eight,  when 
France  happened  to  be  at  peace ;  and  nothing 
was  talked  of  at  Court,  say  the  memoir- 
writers,  but  festivals,  tournaments,  carnivals, 
masquerades,  and  so  forth,  one  incident  oc- 
curred to  supply  the  town-folks  with  talk. 
This  was  no  other  than  the  action  for  breach 
of  promise  of  marriage,  brought  by  the 
Marquis  Jehan  -  Loys,  of  Saluces,  against 
Madame  Philippes  de  Montespedon,  widow 
of  Marshal  Monte-Jan,  who  had  been  govern- 
ing Piedmont.  Some  of  the  details  of  this 
case  are  singular  enough  to  deserve  a  nar- 
rative on  their  own  account :  others  are 
amusing  chiefly  because  of  their  odd  simi- 
larity with  sentimental  passages  in  the  lives 
of  our  own  country-folks,  from  time  to  time 
revealed  to  us  in  courts  of  law. 

Marshal  Monte-Jan  died  in  Piedmont, 
leaving  no  children.  His  wife  was  instantly 
besieged  with  offers  of  marriage  by  various 
great  lords  of  that  state — a  circumstance  at 
which  we  are  requested  by  the  chroniclers 
"not  to  marvel."  For,  Madame  Philippes 
was  a  very  respectable  and  virtuous  lady, 
adorned  with  great  beauty,  and  in  the 
flower  of  her  youth  j  she  possessed,  more- 
over, in  addition  to  all  these  perfections, 
sixty  thousand  livres  of  revenue  in  her  own 
right,  besides  considerable  expectations.  First 
among  the  suitors,  who  followed  so  closely  on 
the  funeral,  was  the  above-mentioned  Mar- 
quis of  Saluces,  who  seems  to  have  been  a 
foolish  fellow,  and  who  was  certainly  most 
scandalously  treated.  The  narrator  was  on 
the  lady's  side,  but  he  naively  states  very 
damaging  facts.  Madame  Philippes  feigned 
to  accept  the  marquis's  service,  because  it 
would  be  convenient  to  make  use  of  his 
«scort  on  the  way  back  to  France,  whither 
he  was  going  by  express  order  of  the  king. 
Despite  of  her  riches,  the  fair  widow  seems 
to  have  been  accidentally  without  ready  cash. 
She  allowed  her  suitor  to  pay  her  expenses 
all  the  way  from  Turin  to  Paris  ;  and  these 
expenses  were  by  no  means  light.  All  the 
household  of  her  late  husband,  besides  her 
own,  accompanied  her.  The  marquis  thought 
he  had  the  game  in  his  own  hands,  and 
assumed  the  tone  of  a  master  by  anticipation 


intimated  that  the  gentlemen,  servants, 
and  officers  of  the  deceased  should  be  dis- 
missed, item  half  those  of  the  lady  herself, 
especially  the  women — for  she  had  besides 
dames  and  demoiselles,  femmes  de  chambre, 
and  others  for  different  kinds  of  work,  as 
many  as  fifteen  or  sixteen.  But  Madame 
Philippes  was  so  prudent  that  she  never,  it 
is  alleged,  allowed  a  word  to  escape  that 
would  bind  her  ;  and  yet  so  clever  that  she 
obtained  all  the  assistance  she  wanted. 

The  marquis,  as  soon  as  they  got  upon 
French  ground,  had  ordered  (Italian  that  he 
was)  all  his  people  to  be  on  the  watch  to 
prevent  any  communication  being  brought 
from  a  rival ;  for,  he  did  not  doubt  that  such 
a  rare  pearl  would  be  eagerly  sought  after. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  all  precautions,  as  soon  as 
the  party  arrived  at  Lyons,  a  courier  came 
from  M.  de  Vieilleville,  a  relative  of  the  lady, 
and  delivered  his  letters  so  secretly  that  no 
one  ever  suspected  their  existence.  These 
letters  contained  the  information  that  the 
court  had  heard  of  the  proposed  mai'riage 
with  the  Marquis  of  Saluces,  and  believed 
the  couple  were  coming  to  Paris  for  the 
wedding.  The  news  had  much  pleased  the 
king,  because  he  had  always  heard  that  love 
bound  a  man  to  a  country  more  than  any- 
thing, and  thought  that  the  marquis,  having 
become  a  Frenchman  by  this  alliance,  would 
be  more  faithful  ever  afterwards.  This  was 
a  sentimentality  not  to  have  been  expected 
from  Francis  the  First.  However,  said  the 
correspondent,  "I  think  you  are  going  to 
marry  more  for  the  good  of  your  own 
country  than  your  own  good — if  what  I  hear 
be  true  :  but  I  cannot  yet  believe  it ;  for  it 
is  not  likely  that  you  would,  after  having 
been  so  happy  in  your  first  marriage,  enter 
on  another  so  hurriedly  without  even  warning 
your  friends." 

Madame  de  Monte-Jan  in  reply  wrote  a 
very  characteristic  letter.  Among  other 
things,  she  said :  "  I  would  rather  die  than 
do  anything  of  which  I  might  have  reason  to 
repent ;  yet  I  will  confess  that  the  extreme 
necessity  in  which  the  death  of  the  late 
marshal  left  me,  almost  made  me  trip  in 
words.  But  heaven  has  so  helped  me,  that 
here  I  am  arrived  in  France,  without  being 
affianced,  promised,  or  contracted  to  living 
man.  ...  I  am  very  much  surprised  the 
king  should  think  I  am  going  to  bring  him 
servants  at  the  expense  of  my  good  fortune, 
and  against  my  tastes.  I  will  never  be  an 
Italian ;  and,  if  I  were,  the  last  man  I 
should  choose  to  make  me  so  would  be  the 
Marquis  Jehan-Loys — for  reasons  which  I 
will  give  you  when  we  meet,  but,  especially, 
because  he  is  not,  and  never  will  be,  a  true 
Frenchman." 

But  in  spite  of  this  declaration,  the  beauti- 
ful Madame  Philippes  remained  at  Lyons, 
under  the  charge  of  this  marquis,  who  spent 
twelve  days  in  making  the  preparations, 
intending  to  arrive  at  court  in  magnificent 


Charles  Dickens.] 


[September  12,  1857.]      261 


style.  When  the  party  at  length  set  out, 
their  baggage  was  so  enormous,  and  their 
train  so  numerous,  that  six  great  boats  were 
filled.  They  aid  all  their  cooking  on  board. 
With  them  they  took  a  band  of  fiddlers, 
engaged  by  the  marquis  to  amuse  him  on 
the  river,  and  alleviate  the  ennui  of  the  lady 
for  the  loss  of  her  husband.  They  embarked 
on  the  Loire  at  Bonanne,  and  sent  by  land 
the  horses  and  mules,  which  arrived  as  soon 
as  they  did  at  Briare. 

M.  de  Vieilleville  had  news  of  their  move- 
ments nearly  every  day,  by  the  couriers  who 
constantly  passed  on  their  way  from  Pied- 
mont to  the  court ;  he  went  out  from  Paris 
as  far  as  Corbeil,  with  about  eighty  horse, 
on  the  evening  when  the  travellers  arrived 
at  Ersonne.  He  sent  a  messenger  directly  to 
Madame  Philippes,  informing  her  of  his 
movements,  and  got  back  an  answer  not  to 
show  himself  until  the  next  day,  at  the 
dinner  that  was  to  take  place  at  Juirzy.  The 
lady  appears  to  have  been  afraid  that  if  the 
slightest  suspicion  of  his  intention  had  come 
to  the  marquis,  he  would  have  seized  her 
and  married  her  by  force. 

Vieilleville  politely  kept  out  of  the  way 
until  the  dinner  was  over,  and  then  rode  up 
with  his  troop.  There  were  great  reverence 
and  salutations  ;  and  all  those  men  began  to 
talk  as  well  about  the  good  cheer  they  had 
enjoyed  by  the  road,  as  about  the  adventures 
that  necessarily  happen  in  so  long  a  journey. 
At  a  fitting  opportunity,  however,  the  lady 
slipped  away  ;  and,  secretly  calling  the  Sieur 
Plessis-au-Chat,  a  Breton  gentleman  in  her 
service,  ordered  him  as  soon  as  they  reached 
the  Porte  Saint  Marceau,  to  disentangle  her 
train  from  that  of  her  suite,  and  move  along 
the  moat,  in  the  direction  of  the  Porte  Saint- 
Gagnes,  where  they  were  to  stop  whilst  she 
bade  adieu  to  the  marquis. 

Soon  afterwards  every  one  mounted,  ladies 
and  all ;  and  this  gorgeous  brilliant  train 
arrived  in  good  time  at  Paris.  At  the  gate 
Plessis-au-Chat  carried  out  his  instructions, 
and  dextrously  separated  the  lady's  people 
from  the  others.  The  marquis,  surprised, 
called  out  that  they  mistook  the  way.  But 
now,  Madame  Philippes  pulling  up,  said  : 
"  Sir,  they  are  going  where  they  ought ;  for 
your  lodging  is  in  the  Hostel  des  Ursins,  in 
the  Cloister  of  Notre  Dame,  and  mine  is  in 
the  Hostel  Saint  Denys,  near  the  Augustines. 
My  honour  commands  me  not  to  lodge  in 
your  house,  but  to  separate  myself  from  you, 
which  is  why  I  now  bid  you  adieu  ;  but  not, 
sir,  without  thanking  you  very  humbly  for 
your  good  company  by  the  road.  As  to  my 
part  of  the  expense,  I  have  it  all  down  in 
writing.  Your  Maistre  d'Hotes  and  Plessis- 
au-Chat  will  settle  matters  so  well  together, 
that  before  a  week  is  over  we  shall  be  quits  ; 
I  mean  as  far  as  regards  money ;  for,  my 
obligation  to  you  will  be  eternal.  Now,  I 
beg  you  to  consider  that  this  separation  is 
only  a  bodily  separation ;  I  leave  you  my 


heart,  which  you  will  be  pleased  to  keep." 
So  saying,  she  kissed  him  and  said,  "Adieu, 
sir,  we  shall  meet  to-morrow  at  the  king's 
lodging." 

The  marquis  was  so  astonished  at  this 
sudden  change,  that  for  a  long  time  he  could 
not  utter  a  single  word.  His  sighs  and  sobs, 
however,  showed  his  anguish  and  his  sad- 
ness. At  last  his  presence  of  mind  returned, 
and,  looking  at  the  lady  in  anything  but  a 
loving  manner,  he  said  :  "  Madam,  your  adieu 
gave  my  heart  a  pang  ;  but  your  last  words, 
and  the  kiss  with  which  you  have  honoured 
me,  have  somewhat  revived  me,  though 
this  sudden  change  and  prompt  resolution 
seem  strange.  To-morrow,  as  you  say,  we 
shall  meet ;  but  bear  in  mind  the  promises 
you  have  given  me.  Adieu,  madam  !" 

Then  the  two  companions  parted ;  and 
Madame  Philippes  joyfully  took  her  way  in 
liberty  to  the  Hotel  Saint  Denys.  The  same 
evening,  Vieilleville  brought  to  her  and  intro- 
duced as  a  suitor  the  Prince  de  la  Boche- 
suryon,  who  was  of  royal  blood,  being  brother 
of  the  Duke  of  Montpensier,  "  If  you  will  be- 
lieve me,  make  this  gentleman,  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible, master  of  your  person  and  your  wealth, 
for  all  delay  will  be  perilous,"  said  he. 
The  prince  and  Madam  Philippes  were 
pleased  with  one  another,  and  exchanged 
promises. 

Meanwhile  the  Marshal  Dannebund,  who 
had  succeeded  Marshal  Monte-Jan  in  his 
governorship,  had  formed  the  project  of 
succeeding  also  to  his  widow  and  property. 
He  therefore  had  written  to  the  dauphine  to 
plead  his  cause,  and  to  represent  that  by 
putting  their  revenues  together  they  might 
make  up  a  hundred  thousand  livres  a-year, 
a  very  rare  thing  in  France  for  any  one  but 
a  prince.  The  dauphine  came  with  this  pro- 
posal, and  strongly  spoke  in  favour  of  Danne- 
bund. "  I  know,"  said  she,  "  that  the  Mar- 
quis of  Saluce  is  three  times  as  rich,  but  his 
position  is  more  uncertain.  Besides,  he  is 
very  disagreeable  in  person,  with  a  big  belly, 
fat,  dirty,  swarthy,  and  awkward.  Whereas 
my  candidate,  as  you  know,  is  a  very  pre- 
sentable fellow." 

To  this,  Madame  Philippes  replied  by  con- 
firming her  engagements  with  the  prince, 
and  the  dauphine  accordingly  withdrew  her 
proposal,  and  recommended  her  to  marry  a* 
fast  as  possible,  because  the  king  laid  great 
stress  on  the  alliance,  and  might  exercise  his- 
absolute  authority. 

The  marquis  never  passed  a  day  without 
calling  to  see  his  mistress  ;  instead  of  find- 
ing her  alone,  he  always  met  the  Prince  de 
la  Eochesuryon,  who  thus  became  a  very 
thorn  in  his  side.  By  no  means  whatever 
could  he  obtain  a  t£te-a-tete  interview.  So 
at  last,  unable  to  put  up  with  his  annoying- 
position  any  longer,  he  suddenly  began  a 
legal  action,  and  arraigned  the  lady  before 
the  parliament  of  Paris.  This  he  did  by 
express  command  of  the  king,  who  had  the- 


2(52      [September  II,  1SB7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


tConducted  by 


marriage  very  much  at  heart,  though  he  did 
not  like  to  use  his  own  authority  against  the 
interests  of  a  prince  of  his  own  blood. 

Madame  Philippes  was  much  disturbed  by 
the  prospect  of  being  forced  to  ally  herself 
with  her  obstinate  suitor  ;  and  we  may  be 
sure  there  were  anxious  consultations  at  the 
Hotel  Saint  Denys.  When  the  day  of  trial 
came,  she  appeared,  accompanied  by  M.  de 
Vieilleville,  and  many  other  lords  and  gen- 
tlemen, ladies  and  maidens.  Every  one 
expected  a  long  and  scandalous  discussion. 
The  First  President  began  the  proceedings 
by  telling  Madame  Philippes  to  raise  her 
hand  and  swear  to  tell  the  truth  ;  one  then 
asked  her  if  she  had  not  promised  marriage 
to  Monsieur  le  Marquis  Jehan-Loys  de 
Saluces,  then  present.  The  lad}-,  forgetting 
all  her  hints  and  inuendoes,  replied,  on  her 
faith,  No.-  The  president  was  about  to 
examine  her  closely,  and  the  greffier  had 
taken  up  his  pen,  when  the  fair  defendant 
stepped  forward,  and  in  a  firm  voice  uttered 
tlxe  following  speech  : 

"  Messieurs,  this  is  the  first  time  I  have 
ever  been  before  a  court  of  justice  ;  and  there- 
fore, I  am  afraid  that  timidity  may  make  me 
contradict  myself  in  my  answers.  But,  to 
cut  short  all  the  subtleties  in  which  you  are 
so  proficient,  I  now  say  and  declare,  before 
you,  gentlemen  and  all  present,  that  I  swear 
to  God  and  the  king — to  God  on  the  eternal 
damnation  of  my  soul — to  the  king  on  the 
confiscation  of  my  honour  and  my  life — that 
I  never  gave  any  promise  of  marriage  to 
Monsieur  le  Marquis  Jehan-Loys  of  Saluces  ; 
and  what  is  more,  never  thought  of  doing  so 
in  my  life.  And  if  any  one  says  the  con- 
trary, here  (taking  M.  de  Vieilleville  by  the 
hand),  here  is  my  knight  who  is  ready,  sav- 
ing the  honour  of  this  court,  to  prove  that  he 
villanously  lies  ! " 

This  warlike  demonstration,  so  much  in 
harmony  with  the  character  of  the  period, 
and  the  chivalry  which  Francis  the  First 
was  trying  to  revive,  met  with  complete 
success. 

"Here's  a  business  !"  exclaimed  the  Pre- 
sident, familiarly.  "  Greffier  you  can  pack 
up  your  papers.  There  is  no  writing  to  do. 
Madame  la  Marlchale  has  taken  another 
re  id  ;  and  a  much  shorter  one."  Then  ad- 
dressing the  Marquis,  he  said  :  "  Well,  sir, 
what  observation  do  you  make  on  this  in- 
cident ? " 

The  Marquis  had  glanced  at  his  own  portly 
person,  and  compared  it  with  the  martial 
aspect  of  the  lady's  knight. 

"  I  don't  want  a  wife  by  force,"  said  he. 
"If  she  won't  have  me,  why  I  won't  have 
her  ;  and  there's  an  end." 

With  these  words  he  made  a  low  bow  and 
left  the  Court.  Then  M.  de  Vieilleville  asked 
if  the  lady  were  not  free  to  rnarry  whom  she 
liked,  and,  being  answered  in  the  affirmative, 
invited  the  whole  company  to  come  and  be 
present  at  the  betrothal '  between  Madame 


Philippes  and  the  Prince  de  la  Rochesuryon, 
i  which  would  take  place  immediately.  But 
i  the  wily  lawyers  declined,  saying  that  they 
;  must  deliberate  and  send  a  deputy  to  acquaint 
the  king  with  what  had  taken  place.  One  of 
them  also  whispered  to  the  knight:  "You 
|  had  a  six  months'  trial  before  you  if  you  had 
j  not  been  so  clever.  The  Marquis  had  an 
j  interrogatory  of  forty  articles  prepared  as  to 
expressions  that  had  been  publicly  used  by 
the  lady  to  him  and  his  people ;  as  to  the 
kisses  she  had  given  him  by  the  way,  espe- 
cially the  kiss  at  Porte  Saint  Marceau  ;  and  as 
to  her  saying  to  one  Saint-Julien  (a  circum- 
stance that  would  have  gone  much  against 
her),  that  she  would  give  him  a  chain  of 
five  hundred  6cus  for  the  wedding." 

"Well,  well,"  said  Vieilleville  smiling,  "all 
we  need  say  now  is,  that  a  Frenchwoman  has 
outwitted  a  hundred  Italians." 

Thereupon,  the  betrothal  between  Madame 
Philippes  and  the  prince,  immediately  took 
place ;  and  in  two  or  three  days  they  were 
married  at  the  Augustins  without  much  cere- 
mony, the  bride  being  a  widow.  They  lived 
happily  together  for  twenty-five  years,  and 
had  a  son  and  a  daughter  ;  but  the  princess 
survived  both  her  husband  and  her  children, 
and  died  in  fifteen  hundred  and  seventy-eight, 
forty  years  after  her  curious  journey  from 
Turin  to  Paris. 

EOGUES'  WALK. 

ON  the  twenty-third  of  October  eighteen, 
hundred  and  twenty-three  a  murder  was 
committed  in  England  under  circumstances 
of  such  coldly-planned  atrocity  and  terrible 
detail,  that  even  now,  after  a  lapse  of  thirty- 
four  years,  its  incidents  are  fresh  and  vivid 
to  those  who  remember  it,  through  the  chro- 
nicle of  other  and  perhaps  even  greater 
crimes.  The  name  of  the  murdered  man 
was  Weare,  that  of  his  murderer,  Thurtell ; 
and  there  were  two  associates  respectively 
called  Hunt  and  Probert. 

They  belonged  to  that  somewhat  doubtful 
but  peculiarly  English  class  of  individuals 
known  as  sporting  men,  as  distinguished 
from  sportsmen ;  that  is  to  say,  they  took  an 
interest  in  sports  rather  for  what  could  be 
made,  or  won,  or  juggled  out  of  them,  than 
from  an  inherent  love  of  any  of  the 
popular  pastimes  of  the  people  of  England. 
They  were  known  at  wine  rooms,  gambling 
houses,  and  fighting  taverns,  and  as  such 
were  considered  "  upon  town."  Their  society 
came  under  the  happily  decaying  denomina- 
tion of  Flash,  which,  started  under  the 
lacquered  blackguardism  of  the  Tom-and- 
Jerry  epoch  as  Corinthian  ;  gradually  sank 
through  the  phases  of  nobby,  bang-up,  kiddy 
and  the  fancy  ;  until  its  flame  sputtered  out 
in  the  last  dull  flicker  of  gentism. 

All  now  living  who  remember  the  imirder 
of  Mr.  Weare,  remember  also  its  details. 
Those  not  old  enough  to  do  so  will  be  at 


Charles  Dickens-] 


BOOTIES'  "WALK. 


[September  12,  1857.1       263 


once  told  on  inquiring  of  their  seniors,  of 
its  terrible  plot : — How,  Thurtell,  one  fine 
afternoon,  drove  his  friend  Weare  twelve  or 
fourteen  miles  out  of  town  into  Hertford- 
shire, to  pay  a  visit  to  Probert,  buying  a  loin 
of  pork  on  the  way  for  supper,  and  taking 
also  a  sack,  a  cord,  some  dice,  and  a  back- 
gammon-board, that  they  might  all  be  plea- 
sant and  agreeable. — How, in  Gill's  Hill  Lane, 
Thurtell  shot  Weare  in  the  head,  as  he  sat 
by  him  in  the  gig  ;  but,  as  "  the  pistol  was 
no  better  than  a  pop-gun,"  did  not  Succeed 
so  perfectly  as  he  could  have  desired  ;  where- 
upon Weare,  struck  with  a  sudden  notion 
of  intended  mischief,  jumped  out  of  the  gig 
and  ran  along  the  lane,  until  Thurtell  over- 
took him,  knocked  him  down,  hacked  at  his 
throat  with  a  penknife,  still  without  killing 
him,  and,  finally,  with  great  force,  jammed 
the  pistol-barrel  into  his  brain,  and  turned  it 
round  and  round  until  his  man  was  dead — 
How,  also,  after  dragging  the  body  into  the 
roadside  fern,  Thurtell  went  on  to  Probert's 
house,  meeting  him  and  Hunt,  who  had  also 
come  down  in  a  gig  and  knew  what  was 
going  on  ;  and  how  they  cooked  the  loin  of 
pork,  and  Hunt  sang  songs  to  Mrs.  Probert, 
and  her  sister,  Miss  Noyes,  and  they  had, 
altogether,  a  very  merry,  and  convivial 
evening,  whilst  the  ghastly  body  was  lying, 
stark  and  bloody,  within  sound  of  their 
voices,  under  the  fern. 

So  far  the  actual  murder.  When  the 
ladies  went  to  bed,  the  others  went  to  fetch 
the  body,  which  they  brought,  hanging  across 
a  horse,  to  Probert's  cottage,  and  threw  into 
his  garden  pond,  whence  Thurtell  subse- 
quently removed  it  to  a  pond  at  Elstree, 
where  it  was  found.  On  the  morning  after 
the  murder,  Thurtell  was  seen  by  some 
labourers  in  Gill's  Hill  Lane,  "  grabbling  " 
amongst  the  fern.  Thinking  they  might  find 
what  he  appeared  to  have  lost,  they  waited 
until  he  had  departed,  and  then  commenced 
a  search  themselves.  The  blood,  the  pen- 
knife, and  the  pistol  were  the  first  wit- 
nesses. Suspicion  pointed  to  the  murderer, 
and  he  was  arrested  with  his  friends :  Pro- 
bert turned  King's  Evidence ;  Hunt  also 
split,  but  not  to  the  same  extent,  and  was 
transported  ;  and  Thurtell  was  hung,  after 
a  bombastic  defence  that  touched  upon  every- 
thing but  the  murder.  We  may  add  that 
Probert,  convicted  some  time  afterwards  for 
horse-stealing,  also  finished  his  life  with  the 
assistance  of  Jack  Ketch. 

As  black  satin  altogether  went  out  after 
Mrs.  Manning  selected  that  glossy  fabric  for 
her  last  toilette — even  with  that  landlady- 
looking  race  of  lusty  flush-faced  women  with 
whom,  by  some  mysterious  affinity,  it  always 
appeared  to  be  identified— so,  it  might  have 
been  expected,  that  sporting  men  would  not 
altogether  have  been  so  attached  to  their 
status  and  appearance,  after  this  terrible 
reflection  had  been  thrown  upon  their  order. 
But,  it  was  quite  the  contrary.  Night-kouses, 


wine  rooms,  and  fighting  public-houses  became 
more  popular  than  ever  ;  and  the  ruffians  of 
the  ring  especially  rose  to  celebrities.  If  a 
nod  from  a  lord  was  a  breakfast  for  a  fool, 
a  wink  from  a  boxer  was  a  supper  for  a 
snob.  For,  the  noble  art  of  self-defence  must 
indeed  have  stood  high  above  mundane 
matters,  when  Thurtell,  during  his  last 
dreary  meal  of  tea  and  toast — of  which, 
according  to  custom,  he  partook  heartily- 
asked  :  "  Who  won  the  fight  yesterday  ? " 
The  late  lamented  Mr.  Palmer,  of  Eugeley, 
is  reported  to  have  put  a  similar  question, 
under  similar  circumstances,  with  respect  to 
horse-racing. 

Well,  night-houses  of  every  description 
maintained  their  popularity.  The  murderers 
and  the  victim  had  been  known  at  most  of 
them,  and  people  went  there  to  hear  anec- 
dotes of  their  private  lives — as  private,  that 
is  to  say,  as  such  men  can  lead — and  to 
talk  about  their  visit  to  the  Surrey  Theatre, 
where  the  murder  had  been  dramatised,  and 
the  manager  had  purchased  the  identical 
gig  in  which  Weare  had  been  shot  away 
from  the  loin  of  pork  under  his  seat.  Fight- 
ing men  almost  conceded  that  Thurtell  was 
"  always  a  good  un,"  and  "  know'd  he'd  die 
game."  Gamblers  pronounced  their  verdict 
on  the  victim  instead  of  the  murderer,  which 
was  "  Serve  him  right  !  "  and  sporting  men, 
of  this  caste  generally  went  the  rounds, 
which  consisted  in  getting  gradually  more 
intoxicated  at  a  lower  haunt  than  the  last 
between  midnight  and  day-break,  and  sparred, 
and  wagered,  and  did  bills,  and  swindled, 
and  drove  fast  mares  in  light  gigs  to  fights, 
and  gambled,  and  drank  saloon  champagne, 
and  kept  the  world  twirling  in  a  wonder- 
fully lively  and  festive  manner,  to  the  ad- 
miration of  all  beholders. 

This  must  have  been  a  sad  state  of  things, 
we  think  ;  must  it  not  1  How  considerably 
we  have  improved  !  Gambling-houses  have 
been  put  down — almost ;  for  that  cannot  be 
called  gambling  where  twenty  or  thirty 
highly  respectable  persons  meet  in  a  back 
parlour  behind  a  tobacco  shop,  dealing  en- 
tirely in  empty  cigar  boxes,  to  play  a  quiet 
hit  at  backgammon  and  hear  the  news,  at 
two  in  the  morning.  Prize-fights  have  been 
put  down — almost ;  for  no  railway  nor  steam- 
boat company  can  possibly  imagine,  when  two 
or  three  hundred  very  ill-looking  travellers, 
the  scum  of  London,  take  return  tickets  on  a 
day's  notice,  to  some  spot  entirely  uninha- 
bited, that  they  are  going  to  do  anything 
else  than  see  their  relations  who  live  some- 
where about  there.  The  saloons  of  the 
theatres  have,  to  be  sure,  quite  mouldered 
away,  with  their  woolly  oranges,  and  muddy 
coffee,  and  warm  soda-water,  and  brandy, 
dit  "burnt  sherry,"  and  stale  macaroons. 
There  are  no  "rounds"  to  "go."  What  a 
charming  thing  to  reflect  upon — a  great  city 
thus  purified  ! 

Wait  a  while.    If  Thurtell  could  be  per- 


264 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[September  12,  ISS?.] 


mitted  to  revisit  metropolitan  earth,  he 
would  be  quite  at  home ;  he  would  find  a 
congenial  neighbourhood  of  old  associations 
draw  him  towards  the  cellar  which  his  friend, 
Probert,  once  inhabited,  opposite  to  where 
the  swell-mobsman  shot  the  policeman  some 
weeks  ago,  a  few  doors  down  on  the  right 
hand  side  of  the  Haymarket. 

Aboutthe  top  of  this  thoroughfare  is  diffused, 
every  night,  a  very  large  part  of  what  is  black- 
guard, ruffianly,  and  deeply  dangerous  in  Lou- 
don.  If  Piccadilly  may  be  termed  an  artery 
of  the  metropolis,  most  assuredly  that  strip  of 
pavement  between  the  top  of  the  Haymarket 
and  the  Regent's  Circus  is  one  of  its  ulcers. 
By  day,  the  greater  part  of  the  shops  and 
houses  betray  the  character  of  the  locality. 
Some  there  are,  indeed,  respectable  ;  but  they 
appear  to  have  got  there  by  chance,  and 
must  feel  uncomfortable  ;  the  questionable 
ones  preponderate.  Observe  the  stale  droop- 
ing lobsters,  the  gaping  oysters,  the. mummi- 
fied cold  fowl  with  its  trappings  of  flabby 
parsley,  and  the  pale  fly-spotted  cigars  ;  and 
then  look  into  the  chemists'  windows,  and 
see,  by  the  open  display,  in  which  direction 
his  chief  trade  tends.  Study  the  character 
of  the  doubtful  people  you  see  standing  in 
doorways — always  waiting  for  somebody  as 
doubtful  as  themselves — and  wonder  what  the 
next "  plant "  is  to  be,  which  they  are  now  co- 
gitating. It  is  always  an  offensive  place  to 
pass,  even  in  the  daytime  ;  but  at  night  it  is 
absolutely  hideous,  with  its  sparring  snobs, 
and  flashing  satins,  and  sporting  gents, 
and  painted  cheeks,  and  brandy-sparkling 
eyes,  and  bad  tobacco,  and  hoarse  horse- 
laughs, and  loud  indecency.  Cross  to  the 
other  side  of  the  way,  go  out  into  the 
mud,  get  anywhere  rather  than  attempt 
to  force  your  passage  through  this  mass  of 
evil ;  for  it  will  most  probably  happen — as  if 
this  conglomeration  of  foul  elements  was  not 
enough  to  stop  the  polluted  stream  trying  to 
flow  on — that  a  brass  band  has  formed  a 
regular  dam  before  the  gin-shop,  so  dense 
that  nothing  can  disturb  it,  except  the 
tawdry  bacchantes  blundering  about  the 
pavement  to  its  music.  I  am  not  an  ultra- 
moralist.  I  have  been  long  enough  fighting 
the  battles  of  life  upon  town,  to  stand  a 
great  deal  that  is  very  equivocal,  unflinch- 
ingly :  but  I  do  say,  that  this  corner  of 
the  Haymarket  is  a  cancer  in  the  great 
heart  of  the  metropolis,  and  a  shame  and 
a  disgrace  to  the  supervision  of  any  police. 
A  convivial  "  drunky,"  who  inclines  to  har- 
mony as  he  goes  home  at  night,  when  there  is 
not  a  soul  in  his  way  to  be  annoyed,  by  ex- 
pressing his  confidence,  through  all  changes,  in 
dog  Tray's  fidelity,  has  been  quieted,  before 
this,  by  a  knock  on  the  head  from  a  trun- 
cheon. A  poor  apple-woman,  striving  to 
earn  a  wretched  pittance  against  the  birth  of 


an  infant  evidently  not  far  off,  is  chased  from 
post  to  pillar  by  any  numbered  letter  of  the 
alphabet  ;  but  here,  wanton  wickedness  riots 
unchecked.  The  edge  of  the  pavement  is 
completely  blockaded.  If  you  happen  to  be 
accompanied  by  wife,  daughter,  sister,  any 
decent  woman,  and  to  be  waiting,  or  not 
waiting  for  one  of  the  omnibuses  that  must 
pass  there — go  anywhere,  do  anything,  rather 
than  attempt  to  elbow  through  the  phalanx 
of  rogues,  and  thieves,  and  nameless  shames 
and  horrors. 

From  an  extensive  continental  experience 
of  cities,  I  can  take  personally  an  example 
from  three  quarters  of  the  globe  ;  but  I  have 
never,  anywhere,  witnessed  such  open  ruffian- 
ism and  wretched  profligacy  as  rings  along 
those  Piccadilly  flagstones  any  time  after  the 
gas  is  lighted. 

It  is  during  the  weeks  of  Epsom,  Ascot, 
and  Hampton,  that  the  disciples  of  Thur- 
tell's  school  of  pursuits  hold  high  festival, 
Two  or  three  years  back,  there  were  various 
betting  houses  here,  with  their  traps  always 
set  open  to  catch  their  prey  ;  but  although 
these  are  abolished,  something  of  the  kind  is 
still  going  on,  which  the  police  know  (or  pre- 
tend to  know)  nothing  about.  The  swarm  of 
low  sporting  ruffians  hovering  about  here,  at 
all  times,  is  incredible.  You  know  they  have 
all  figured,  are  figuring,  or  will  figure,  in 
card-cheating  cases  and  dirty  bill  transactions. 
They  have  all  the  bandy  legs  and  tight 
trousers,  the  freckled  faces  and  speckled 
hands,  and  grubby,  dubby  nails  that  distin- 
guish this  fraternity.  Theirs  are  the  strong- 
flavoured  cigar  and  highly-coloured  brandy, 
the  snaffle  coat-links,  and  large  breast-pin, 
the  vulgar  stock,  and  the  hat-band — always 
the  hat-band  ;  is  it  a  last  clinging  to  respect- 
ability, to  show  that  there  was  somebody 
belonging  to  them  once  ?  And  when  to  this- 
unsavoury  locust-cloud  the  closing  casino- 
adds  its  different  but  equally  obstructive 
swarm,  and  they  all  flutter  about  in  the 
lamp-lights,  amidst  an  admiring  audience  of 
pickpockets,  flower-sellers,  rich  country  fools, 
who  think  they  are  "  seeing  life,"  and 
poor  scamps  who  show  it  to  them,  such 
'a  witch's  cauldron  is  seething  in  the  public 
eye,  and  splashing  in  the  face  of  decency, 
as  is  quite  intolerable  in  this  land  at  this 
date. 

I  entreat  the  intelligent  magistrates  in 
whose  division  ROGUES'  WALK  lies,  to  leave 
their  dinner-tables  some  evening,  and  go  and 
judge  for  themselves  whether  it  is  anybody's 
business  to  do  anything  towards  the  cor- 
rection of  this  scene  of  profligacy.  Why 
should  no  quiet  person  be  able  to  walk  upon 
its  skirts,  unmolested,  and  why  should  all 
modest  ears  and  eyes  be  shocked  and  out- 
raged in  one  of  the  greatest  thoroughfares  of 
this  metropolis  1 


The  Ri(j~ht  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Published  at  the  Office,  No,  19,  Wellington  Street  North, Strand.    Printed  by  BHABBCHI  &  Ev*>  »,  Whitefriars,  London. 


" Familiar iii  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS"—  SUAXESMAM. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A   WEEKLY   JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


°-  891.] 


SATU11DAT,  SEPTEMBER  19,  1857. 


(PKICB   2tJ. 
(STAMPEDScf. 


THE  BRAVE  COUCOU  DRIVEE. 

AT  this  dead  time,  when  everybody  is 
making  a  tour  somewhere,  an  idle  remem- 
brance of  an  idle  incident,  in  an  old  tour, 
may  not  be  out  of  season. 

About  fourteen  years  ago,  a  wedding  tour 
which  had  been  rather  brilliantly  inaugurated 
with  four  greys,  two  postilions  in  bright  blue 
jackets,  and  the  usual  accompaniment  of 
white  satin  favours,  terminated  in  a  manner 
which,  considering  the  difference  of  style, 
might  almost  be  called  ignominious.  We 
had  taken  Amiens  on  our  way  home  from 
Paris,  and  had  proceeded  thence  to  Abbe- 
ville, where,  having  passed  the  night,  and 
soon  exhausted  the  wonders  of  the  town  on 
the  following  morning,  we  began  to  look 
about  us  for  the  means  of  reaching  Boulogne. 
To  wait  until  midnight  for  the  Diligence  from 
Paris,  on  the  chance  of  obtaining  two  places, 
was  out  of  the  question,  and,  in  all  proba- 
bility, would  have  answered  no  purpose,  as 
it  was  generally  booked  full  all  the  way 
through.  To  post  was  not  desirable  with 
finances  somewhat  exhausted — such  things 
will  happen  on  wedding  tours  when  Paris 
is  included  in  them — and  there  remained 
only  the  option  of  proceeding  by  whatever 
cheap  conveyance  we  might  manage  to  pick 
up. 

Assured  on  inquiry  that  we  should  be  cei'- 
tain  to  find  some  conveyance,  we  set  out  on  a 
voyage  of  discovery,  trying  the  market-place 
first,  then  the  little  square  in  front  of  the  old 
church  of  St.  Wolfram,  then  certain  Remises 
which  promised  much  but  performed  nothing, 
till  with  our  patience  nearly  exhausted  we 
were  informed  at  last,  that  one  Monsieur 
Jerome,  if  he  could  be  found,  was  the  man 
for  our  purpose  :  he  being  the  proprietor  of  a 
vehicle  with  which  he  traversed  the  country 
in  all  directions. 

The  person  who  gave  us  this  information, 
an  idler  in  a  blouse  and  cotton  nightcap, 
added  to  his  civility  by  conducting  us  down 
a  very  narrow,  dirty  lane  to  the  residence  of 
Monsieur  Jerome,  who — of  course — was  not 
at  home. 

_"  But  it's  very  extraordinary,"  said  his 
wife,  desisting  for  a  moment  from  her  occu- 
pation of  scraping  and  cutting  up  carrots  for 
her  pot  au  feu.  "  But  it's  very  extraordinary. 


Only  a  little  quarter  of  au  hour  ago,  he  was 
sitting  on  that  chair  !  " 

If  Monsieur  Jerome  had  occupied  the 
chair  unexpectedly,  like  Banquo's  ghost,  I 
could  have  understood  his  wife's  cause  for 
wonderment ;  but  as  he  was  the  master  of 
the  house,  it  seemed  only  a  natural  thing  that 
he  should  sit  down  in  it ;  equally  natural 
that  he  should  no  longer  be  there  if  he  felt  a 
desire  to  go  out. 

The  friend  in  the  blouse  suggested  the 
possibility  of  unearthing  Monsieur  Jerome 
at  a  neighbouring  house  of  entertainment, 
known  as  the  Good  Sportsman. 

It  was  very  singular  that  idea  had  never 
come  into  her  head.  Yes,  it  was  possible  ! 
Would  monsieur  and  madame  object  to  wait 
one  single  instant,  while  her  husband  was 
sent  for  ?  Monsieur  Pierre,  that  was  the 
gentleman  in  the  blouse,  would  run  and  call 
him.  He  was  an  old  friend. 

Monsieur  Pierre,  with  an  eye  perhaps  to 
the  future,  in  which  there  loomed  a  petit 
verre,  was  all  alacrity.  He  merely  requested 
ine  to  be  calm,  and  straightway  disappeared. 

In  the  mean  time  monsieur  and  madame 
would  take  seats,  such  as  they  were.  It  was 
a  poor  place,  that  was  not  a  difficult  thing  to 
see,  but  what  would  you  have  ?  One  must 
live  where  one  could  ;  rents  were  high  ;  and 
those  people  (meaning  the  landlord)  never 
waited  for  their  money,  it  must  be  ready  in 
the  hand  when  called  for.  She  had  three 
children — the  eldest  a  girl,  who  would  soon 
be  old  enough  to  do  something  for  herself—- 
she was  now  at  school,  but  was  next  month  to 
take  her  first  sacrament ;  the  other  two,  both 
boys,  had  lately  had  the  measles,  and  were 
staying,  for  the  sake  of  change  of  air,  at  their 
grandmother's,  near  the  sea  ;  it  was  said  that 
sea-air  was  good  for  children 

The  family  history  was  cut  short  by  a 
clattering  of  sabots  in  the  lane,  and,  at  the 
sound,  Madame  Jerome  rushed  out,  without 
relinquishing  either  knife  or  carrot,  and  cried 
out  at  the  top  of  her  voice,  for  her  husband 
to  make  haste.  A  gentleman  and  lady  desired 
to  speak  to  him.  Already  a  whole  hour  had 
they  been  waiting ! 

This  hyperbolical  declaration  had  scarcely 
been  uttered,  before  Monsieur  Jerome  stood 
on  his  own  threshold. 

Like  the  friend  who  seemed  familiar  with 


VOL.  XVI. 


391 


266      [September  IS,  1?57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


his  noon-tide  haunt,  he,  too,  was  attired  in 
blouse  and  nightcap.  He  doffed  the  latter 
as  he  entered  the  cottage,  and,  addressing 
himself  to  me,  inquired  what  there  was  for 
my  service  :  that  is  to  say,  what  did  I  happen 
to  require  1 

This  was  soon  told.  I  had  heard  from  his 
friend,  Monsieur  Pierre — who,  at  this  allusion 
stepped  in  and  pulled  off  his  nightcap  also — 
that  he,  Monsieur  Jerome,  was  the  proprietor 
of  a  cabriolet  de  louage,  or  carriage  of  some 
kind,  an/1  that  I  wished  to  hire  the  same  to 
go  from  Abbeville  to  Boulogne. 

Yes,  monsieur  was  perfectly  right ;  he  had, 
indeed,  a  famous  carriage  ;  they  were  wrong 
who  called  it  a  cabriolet — it  was  far  more 
convenient,  much  more  roomy,  infinitely  more 
solid.  Certainly  that  carriage  was  at  the 
disposition  of  monsieur  and  madarne — 
rnadame  was  to  be  of  the  journey  also? 
Good  ! — and  the  baggage.  As  for  that,  the 
carriage  could  take  any  quantity — without 
doubt — but 

Here  Monsieur  Jerome  paused,  and  was 
constrained  to  admit  that  a  difficulty  existed. 
Of  the  three  horses  he  possessed,  two 
were  already  on  distant  journeys,  and  the 
third — the  unfortunate  beast — was  dead  lame. 
Nothing  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life  had 
ever  put  him  out  so  much  before.  It  was  for 
the  purpose  of  speaking  to  the  veterinary 
surgeon  on  the  subject  of  that  horse's  lame- 
ness— there  was  no  other  motive — that  he 
had  just  run  over  to  the  Good  Sportsman. 
What  was  to  be  done  1 

Monsieur  Pierre,  who  seemed  to  be  a  sort 
of  good  genius  to  the  Jerome  family,  threw 
in  a  second  suggestion.  Might  not  his  friend 
contrive  to  borrow  a  horse  1  There  was 
Poirot  the  miller ;  he  had  one  that  was 
superb,  an  animal  unacquainted  with  fatigue; 
that  horse,  if  it  could  be  obtained,  would 
remove  all  cause  of  anxiety. 

Monsieur  Jerome  admitted  that  the  quali- 
ties of  the  horse  in  question  were  such  as 
Monsieur  Pierre  had  described.  He  had 
himself  been  thinking  of  another  noble 
quadruped — the  mare  belonging  to  Madame 
Morel,  the  marchande  de  bois  ;  but,  perhaps, 
the  miller's  horse  would  be  the  better  one — 
at  all  events,  it  was  closer  at  hand.  In  any 
case,  monsieur  and  madame  might  rest  con- 
tented a  horse  should  be  found  ;  in  less  than 
half  an  hour  he  would  present  himself  with 
his  equipage  at  the  door  of  monsieur's  hotel. 

The  next  question  was,  the  price  to  be  paid 
for  the  hire  of  Monsieur  Jerome's  convey- 
ance. After  a  little  haggling — based  on  the 
part  of  Monsieur  Jerome  upon  the  usual 
grounds,  exaggerated  distance,  mountains,  and 
so  forth — the  terms  were  settled,  including  a 
pour-boirs  for  skilful  driving,  yet  to  be 
demonstrated — and  an  agreement  was  made, 
it  being  now  eleven  in  the  forenoon,  that  we 
should  be  safely  deposited  in  Boulogne  before 
the  clock  struck  ten  that  night. 

On  the  faith  of  these  assurances  we  hurried 


back  to  the  hotel,  a  little  flustered  by  the 
apprehension  of  not  being  quite  ready,  paid 
our  bill,  had  the  luggage  brought  down  into 
the  courtyard,  and  waited  for  Monsieur 
Jerome's  arrival.  There  was  no  need  to  have 
been  in  a  hurry,  for  the  promised  half-hour 
went  by,  and  another  was  added  to  it,  with- 
out the  slightest  indication  of  his  appearance. 
We  began  to  be  impatient,  sent  out  twice  to  the 
market-place  to  see  if  the  carriage  was  coming, 
discussed  the  probabilities  of  the  case  with  an 
unoccupied  waiter  who,  when  he  had  heard 
my  story,  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  Monsieur 
Jerome  would  not  come  at  all,  and  was  in  the 
act  of  recommending  a  heavy  berline  that 
stood  in  a  corner  which,  with  post-horses 

He,  too,  was  cut  short  by  a  noise  :  a  noise 
of  excessive  rumbling,  mingled  with  urgent 
vociferation,  and  presently  a  vehicle  entered 
the  court-yard,  which  proved  to  be  the  one  I 
expected ;  Monsieur  Jerome  driving,  Monsieur 
Pierre  by  his  side,  and  both  gesticulating 
with  much  vehemence. 

When  I  make  use  of  the  word  expected,  I 
do  not  exactly  state  a  fact.  To  say  the 
truth,  the  carriage  of  Monsieur  Jerome  was 
not  of  the  kiiTd  which  I  had  pictured  to  my- 
self, neither  was  the  animal  that  drew  it. 
With  respect  to  the  former,  on  one  or  two 
points  Monsieur  Jerome  wan  certainly  right. 
It  WAS  infinitely  moi'e  solid  than  any  cabriolet 
that  ever  was  built ;  more  roomy,  too,  there 
could  be  no  doubt  of  it ;  the  fact  of  its  being 
more  convenient  remained  to  be  seen.  There 
are  some  things  which  command  respect  on 
the  score  of  antiquity,  but  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  a  travelling-carriage  be- 
longs to  that  category.  If  so,  Monsieur 
Jerome's  conveyance  put  in  a  strong  claim 
for  veneration.  Its  age  was  proclaimed  by 
its  creaks  and  blurs  and  patches  ;  its  wrinkled 
hood  was  stony  white  with  dust ;  its  heavy 
wheels  and  faded  body  were  clogged  and 
smeared  with  mire.  No  English  word  can 
clearly  describe  its  form,  so  a  French  one 
must  suffice — I  can  call  it  nothing  but  a 
veritable  coucou.  As  to  the  horse,  I  might 
name  fifty  things  which  it  was  not,  leaving 
it  to  be  inferred,  from  accumulated  negatives, 
what  it  really  was.  One  saw  at  a  glance,  for 
instance,  that  it  was  not  a  splendid,  scarcely 
a  high,  stepper  ;  its  action  was  neither  grand 
nor  superior  ;  it  did  not  appear  fast ;  I  should 
have  declined  to  warrant  it  sound  ;  easy  to 
drive  seemed  more  than  doubtful  ;  quiet  in 
harness — well,  that  was  just  possible.  Of  its 
antecedents  I  was  left  in  ignorance,  as  Mon- 
sieur Jerome  refrained  from  stating  whether 
his  horse  came  out  of  the  mill  or  the  wood- 
cart.  Enough  for  him  to  crack  his  whip  and 
exclaim  : 

"  Voila,  monsieur  !"  with  an  air  of  intense 
satisfaction. 

That  satisfaction  was  not  shared  by  the 
partner  of  my  journey  and  bosom.  She 
regarded  Monsieur  Jerome's  turn-out  with  a 
look  of  so  much  astonishment  and  dismay 


Charles  Dickens. 


THE  BRAVE  COUCOU  DEIVEPw 


[September  19,  1357.]       267 


that,  if  I  had  given  her  time  to  express  either, 
he  never  would  have  had  the  honour  of  being 
her  charioteer.  So  I  anticipated  whatever 
she  intended  to  say  by  observing  that  there 
was  no  help  for  it,  as  we  must  go  to  Bou- 
logne that  night,  and  I  ordered  the  men  to 
stow  away  the  baggage.  That  readiness  to 
submit  to  almost  any  inconvenience  rather 
than  make  a  fnsa,  that  willingness  to  meet 
difficulties  more  than  half-way,  that  cheer- 
fulness of  disposition  which  makes  every  ill 
fall  lightly — all  of  which  have  since  been 
tested  on  many  a  long  day's  journey,  in  many  a 
trying  hour — were  manifested  on  this  occa- 
sion ;  not  a  word  of  remonstrance  was 
uttered,  and  when  Monsieur  Jerome  an- 
nounced that  his  arrangements  were  com- 
plete, my  companion  smiled  assent  to  his 
proposition  that  we  should  ascend,  as  readily 
as  if  he  had  invited  us  to  take  our  seats  in  a 
triumphal  car. 

But  before  we  climbed  into  the  coucou— 
such,  literally,  was  the  process — I  reminded 
Monsieur  Jerome  that  he  was  an  hour  later 
than  the  time  he  had  appointed,  and  that  I 
expected  he  would  fulfil  his  promise  as  to 
the  period  of  our  arrival  at  Boulogne. 

"Have  no  fear,"  he  replied  (the  French- 
man's stereotyped  answer).  "  With  such  a 
hoi'se  " — pointing  to  it — "distance  is  nothing." 

The  waiter  who  had  recommended  the 
berline,  smiled  and  shrugged  his  shoulders  as 
he  held  a  chair  for  madarne  to  step  on,  to 
reach  her  place  in  the  carriage.  I  affected  not 
to  notice  his  gesture,  and,  after  bestowing  a 
franc  upon  Monsieur  Pierre  for  the  trouble  he 
had  taken,  followed  my  wife  into  the  depths  of 
the  coucou.  Monsieur  Jerome  then  resumed 
his  place  in  front,  and,  much  to  my  surprise, 
the  light  was  suddenly  obscured  by  Monsieur 
Pierre  seating  himself  beside  him. 

"  Stop  ! "  I  exclaimed,  touching  Monsieur 
Jerome  on  the  shoulder,  as  he  was  giving 
the  reins  a  preliminary  shake.  "  What  does 
tins  person  want  here  i" 

"  Ah  ! "  returned  Monsieur  Jerome,  with 
a  familiar  nod,  "  he  is  my  friend — he  means 
to  accompany  us." 

This  arrangement  was  rather  too  cool, 
and  I  immediately  upset  it. 

"Your  friend,"  said  I,  "  may  travel  with 
you,  but  not  with  us.  Tell  him  to  get  down." 

Monsieur  Jerome  stared. 

"  It  will  make  no  difference  to  the  horse," 
lie  observed. 

"  But  it  makes  a  considerable  difference," 
I  retorted,  "  to  me." 

"  He  is  only  going  to  see  his  aunt,  about 
tsvo  leagues  off,"  persisted  Monsieur  Jerome. 

"  Let  him  pay  her  a  visit  on  foot,"  I  re- 
plied. "Listen,  Monsieur  Jerome  !  Either 
your  friend  gets  out,  or  we  do.  Choose 
between  us ! " 

This  was  an  alternative  for  which  he  was 
not  prepared  ;  he  muttered  something,  gave 
his  companion  a  dig  with  his  elbow,  the  space 
in  front  was  cleared,  and  laving  on  his  beast 


with  a  little  more  emphasis  than  he  might, 
under  other  circumstances,  have  done,  Mon- 
sieur Jerome  set  the  coucou  in  motion. 
Monsieur  Pierre's  eviction  had  not,  however, 
caused  Monsieur  Pierre  to  lose  his  temper ;  for 
as  the  vehicle  twirled  round  at  the  gateway  I 
caught  a  glimpse  of  him,  nightcap  in  hand, 
grinning  a  very  polite  adieu.  The  waiter, 
the  porter,  and  several  others  in  the  court- 
yard, were  grinning. 

for  the  first  mile  or  two,  the  horse  went 
at  a  lazy  jog-trot ;  my  wife  and  I  talked 
laughingly  about  this  new  mode  of  travelling, 
but  Monsieur  Jerome  preserved  a  strict,  if 
not  a  sullen,  silence.  As,  however,  it  is  not 
in  a  Frenchman's  nature  to  refrain  from, 
talking,  if  he  have  anybody  to  speak  to,  he 
took  advantage  of  the  first  incline  that 
caused  his  animal  to  walk — it  was  a  gradient 
against  the  collar,  of  one  foot,  perhaps,  in  a 
thousand  —  and  turned  round  with  the 
evident  resolve  to  make  himself  agreeable. 

Monsieur  Jerome  was  a  gaunt-looking  man 
with  large  whiskers  and  a  big  voice ;  anJ  but 
for  a  certain  unsteadiness  in  his  eye,  might 
have  passed  for  one  of  the  fiercest  fellows 
that  ever  flourished  a  whip. 

"  Eh  bien,  monsieur  ! "  he  began,  "  have  I 
not  kept  my  word  ?" 

It  was,  1  thought,  rather  early  in  the  day 
to  put  this  question,  so  I  asked  him  in  what 
respect. 

"  Dam' ! "  he  replied.  "  Monsieur  perceives 
what  an  excellent  jument  (mare)  I  have  pro- 
cured." 

"  I  have  no  objection  to  make  to  her,  as 
yet,"  I  answered  ;  "  only  I  should  say  she  is 
rather  fond  of  walking." 

"  Monsieur  would  not  gallop  up  the  hills  ?" 
was  the  somewhat  reproachful  exclamation 
of  Monsieur  Jerome. 

"You  don't,  I  hope,  call  this  a  hill?"  I 
rejoined. 

"  It  is  true  there  are  others  more  difficult, 
which  we  shall  come  to  by-and-by,  but  you 
see  I  am  careful  of  her  at  first — I  husband 
her  strength.  Hi !  forward,  la  Maligne  ! 
we  are  no  longer  in  the  mill.  Hi !  hi !" 

At  this  hint  la  Maligne  jogged  on  again, 
and  Monsieur  Jerome  remarked  triumph- 
antly : 

"  See  there,  monsieur  !  She  is  capable  of 
doing  all  things  ! " 

It  might  be  so  ;  but  it  was  quite  clear  that 
of  the  two  things  in  question,  la  Maligne 
preferred  walking  to  trotting. 

Monsieur  Jerome  having,  as  he  supposed, 
sufficiently  established  the  reputation  of  his 
borrowed  beast,  now  changed  the  subject. 

"  Apparently,  from  his  desire  to  get  to 
Boulogne,  monsieur  is  English  ?  And 
madame  1" 

"  English  also." 

"And  yet  monsieur  and  madame  both 
speak  French  as  I  do.  That  is  singular  ! 
for  although  I  have  been  many  times  to 
Boulogne.  I  do  not  at  all  speak  English." 


2G8       [September  19,  1867.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


This  fact  was  less  surprising  to  me 
than  it  appeared  to  Monsieur  Jerome  ;  but, 
without  commenting  on  bis  presumed  in- 
capacity to  acquire  a  language,  of  which,  in 
all  likelihood,  he  had  never  heard  more  than 
half  a  dozen  words,  I  asked  him  if  his  occu- 

Etion  as  a  voiturier  often  took  him  to 
ulogne. 

Yes  ;  it  happened  now  and  then.  Twice 
or  three  times,  perhaps,  within  the  year. 
But  he  had  once  stayed  there  some  time.  Ah  ! 
an  event  happened  there  which  he  should 
never  forget !  Monsieur  probably  knew  the 
large  barrack  in  the  lower  town,  not  far  from 
the  port  1  Well ;  once  he  was  laid  up  there, 
in  the  military  hospital,  with  wounds,  for 
three  months. 

'•'  You  have  seen  service,  then  ? "  I  re- 
marked. 

"  Dam' !  Yes.  In  Algeria,  with  General 
Bugeaud.  Hi !  La  Maligne  !  Keep  straight 
on  !  But  those  wounds  were  not  inflicted 
by  the  Arabs.  They  were  obtained  in  a 
different  sort  of  warfare — yes,  'faith !" 

If  Monsieur  Jerome  desired  to  excite  our 
curiosity,  he  succeeded.  He  saw  that  he  had 
done  so ;  and,  taking  for  granted  that  we 
wished  to  know  all  about  it,  he  began  his 
story,  which  I  shall  repeat  without  the  occa- 
sional interruptions  that  took  place  while  he 
told  it. 

"In  the  first  place," he  said,  "I  possess  one 
great  fault.  I  have  too  much  courage.  It 
very  often  gets  me  into  trouble.  When  the 
blood  mounts  to  my  eyes,  I  hesitate  not  to 
attack  an  army  !  A  thousand  enemies  are 
to  me — nothing  !  not  the  shake  of  that  whip. 
Well,  then.  Six  years  ago  I  was  quartered  at 
Boulogne,  in  the  Thirty-seventh  of  the  Line — 
a  regiment  well  enough  known.  I  was,  with- 
out flattering  myself,  the  best  swordsman  in 
the  garrison.  Had  I  chosen  to  teach  fencing, 
my  pupils  would  have  been  without  number. 
On  that  account,  and  for  my  moral  character, 
I  was  respected.  The  colonel,  when  he  re- 
buked the  men,  would  say,  'Take  example 
by  Jerome  Premier '  (there  was  another 
Jerome  in  the  regiment,  a  person  of  no 
account),  '  he  is  a  pattern  ! '  Consequently,  I 
was  a  mark  for  envy.  More  than  one  would 
have  liked  a  quarrel  with  me,  had  he  dared 
to  encourage  the  idea.  Well !  What  a  man 
has  not  the  hardihood  to  imagine  of  his  own 
accord,  is,  you  see,  sometimes  forced  upon 
him  by  circumstances — above  all,  when  one 
has  to  do  with  the  fair  sex.  If  I  was  respected 
and  feared  by  my  comrades,  those  were  not 
alone  the  sources  of  my  pride.  I  had  other 
successes :  madame  will  permit  me  the  ex- 
pression !  There  was  a  charming  young  girl, 
her  name  was  Georgette — such  a  figure  ! 
such  a  face  !  How  she  danced  !  with  me,  too, 
more  than  with  any  one  else — no  matter  for 
the  reason.  More  cause  for  envy.  Monsieur 
has  heard  of  the  ducasses — the  country  fetes — 
near  Boulogne  ?  It  was  at  one  of  these,  on 
the  festival  of  the  Assumption,  out  of  which ' 


the  affair  I  am  going  to  speak  of  arose. 
Georgette  and  I  had  already  danced  together 
three  times,  and  she  had  promised  me  her 
hand  again.  In  the  mean  while,  reposing 
from  exertion,  I  offered  her  a  bottle  of  Biere 
de  Mars  in  an  alcove.  Tiiat  was  a  simple 
politeness.  Having  poured  out  to  her  ho- 
nour, I  naturally  proposed  a  toast,  and 
while  she  sipped  from  her  glass  I  smoked  a 
cigar.  In  fine,  we  enjoyed  a  supreme  happi- 
ness. It  was  not  to  last  long.  Apart  from 
where  we  sat,  stood  a  knot  of  men  belonging- 
to  the  Thirty-seventh.  They  threw  at  me 
glances  of  fury — I  had  robbed  them  in  turn: 
of  Georgette.  That  was  their  grievance. 
Slowly  they  approached,  in  a  body,  towards 
the  alcove  ;  the  foremost  amongst  them,  a 
sergeant  in  the  regiment,  a  man  of  gigantic- 
stature.  '  Will  mani'seir  dance  1 '  he  said, 
addressing  Georgette  ;  '  I  claim  her  hand  for 
the  next  set.'  Before  she  could  reply  I  ob- 
served, '  You  are  too  soon,  sergeant,  niam'sell* 
is  engaged  '  '  And  to  whom,  then  1 '  he  asked, 
frowning  like  a  drum-major  at  the  head  of  a 
battalion  ; '  I  see  none  here  better  than  myself.' 
'To  me,  sergeant,'  I  replied,  with  an  admirable 
calmness  ; '  I  am  the  better  man  on  this  occa- 
sion.' '  You  ! '  exclaimed  the  sergeant— his 
name  was  Bousingot — 'a  pleasant  fellow  this !  * 
I  felt  my  blood  heating,  but  yet  appeared  cooL 
'  Permit  me  to  cause  you  to  observe,  Sergeant 
Bousingot,'  I  said,  'that  you  interrupt  a  con- 
versation which  you  were  not  invited  to  join.' 
Still  polite,  you  see,  monsieur.  '  I  require  no 
invitation,'  he  replied,  rudely,  'Mani'seir 
Georgette  is  my  acquaintance  no  less  than 
yours  ! '  '  The  laws  of  society,  sergeant,'  I 
remarked,  '  are  then  unknown  to  you  ! '  His- 
face  became  redder  than  the  beet-root  you 
see  in  yonder  field.  He  uttered  an  expression 
which  I  dare  not  repeat  before  madam e. 
That  provoked  me.  I  reminded  him  that  his 
manners  were  those  of  a  cabaretier.  His  in- 
solence then  passed  all  bounds.  He  conceived 
to  himself  the  idea  of  striking  the  cigar  from 
my  mouth,  but  I  arrested  his  hand  in  time 
— he  did  not  dishonour  me  before  a  lady. 
'  Enough,  sergeant,'  I  said, '  this  lias  become 
a  question  for  Mam'selP  Jacqueline.'  You 
understand,  monsieur ;  that  is  our  term  for 
a  sabre.  'When  I  have  had  the  honour  to 
dance  once  more  with  Mam'selP  Georgette,* 
I  continued,  in  an  xinder  tone,  '  I  am  at  your 
disposition.'  He  withdrew,  scowling,  to  join 
his  companions,  with  each  of  whom  I  foresaw 
an  affair.  I  conducted  Mam'selP  Georgette 
from  the  alcove,  the  beer  being  now  finished,, 
and  we  returned  to  the  dance.  I  never 
danced  better.  'You  will  not  quarrel 
on  my  account  1 '  said  Georgette,  ready  to 
cry.  'Do  not  dream  of  it,'  I  answered. 
This  I  was  obliged  to  say.  One  does  not 
speak  the  truth  in  such  matters  to  women. 
Pardon,  madame  !  Monsieur  will  readily  con- 
ceive what  followed.  In  half-au-hour  from 
that,  time  I  was  engaged  in  single  combat 
with  Sergeant  Bousiugot.  We  fought  on  the 


CharlfsBicVensJ 


THE  BRAVE  COUCOU  DRIVER. 


[September  19, 1337.]       269 


sea-shore.  That  affair  was  speedily  decided. 
He  fell,  pierced  through  the  sword-arm, 
•while  I  remain  untouched.  My  next  antago- 
nist was  Corporal  Bossouville,  an  old  African. 
This  second  combat  was  long  and  bloody  : 
severe  wounds  were  given  on  both  sides ;  at 
last  I  was  the  victor.  Heedless  of  my 
injuries  I  then  engaged  a  third — this  was 
Crugy,  a  voltigeur,  like  myself.  Our  weapons 
were  both  broken  :  wo  each  lay  for  dead  on 
the  sands,  falling  at  the  same  moment.  I 
refrain  from  shocking  madame  with  the  par- 
ticulars. When  I  regained  my  senses,  I  found 
myself  lying  on  a  bed  in  the  military  hospital, 
where  also  were  my  three  foes.  Now,  how- 
ever, we  were  all  friends  again,  for  blood 
washes  away  enmity.  At  the  end  of  three 
months,  not  before,  as  I  had  the  honour  to 
observe,  I  cast  aside  my  crutches  and  took 
my  place  on  the  right  of  my  company.  That 
day  was  a  holiday  in  the  regiment." 

"And  Mam'sell'  Georgette?"  I  asked. 
"I  suppose  she  is  uo\v  the  present  Madame 
Jerome  !  " 

"  Ah,  ah  !  La  Maligne,  keep  up  there  !  " 
shouted  Monsieur  Jerome,  giving  the  mare 
&  sharp  cut  over  the  withers, 

I  repeated  my  question. 

"  No,"  replied  Monsieur  Jerome,  looking  a 
little  confused.  "Mam'sell'  Geoi'gette  died 
of  a  fever,  brought  on  by  anxiety  on  my 
account,  while  I  was  in  the  hospital.  That 
•catastrophe  decided  me  to  renounce  a  military 
life  :  moreover,  my  period  of  service  had  ex- 
pired. Hi !  hi !  La  Maligne,  forward  ! " 

He  jumped  down  at  these  words  and  walked 
in  the  road  beside  his  mare,  leaving  us  to  dis- 
cuss the  narrative  which  we  had  just  heard. 

"  What  dreadful  people  these  Frenchmen 
!  are  for  lighting  !  "  said  my  wife. 

"  Very  dreadful !  "  I  answered. 

She  noticed  the  tone  in  which  I  spoke. 

"  You  don't  believe  him  1 "  she  asked. 

"  Not  a  bit,"  I  replied.  "  From  what  his 
wife  said  this  morning,  their  daughter  must 
be  thirteen  at  least,  and  this  wonderful 
cutting  and  slashing  occurred,  according  to 
his  account,  only  six  years  ago,  before  he  was 
married.  It  is  not,  however,  a  bad  story  to 
tell :  it  helps  one  over  the  ground." 

"  Not  very  much,  I  imagine  ;  for  we  seem 
to  me  to  get  on  very  slowly.  How  shocking 
it  is  that  people  should  be  such  story-tellers ! 
I  have  taken  quite  a  dislike  to  that  man.  I 
hope  to  gracious  he  won't  upset  us." 

"  That  is  my  least  fear,  for  as  you  say,  we 
don't  travel  over  fast.  Halloa !  Jerome ! 
Get  up  again,  and  drive  on.  We  shall  be  all 
night  on  the  road !  " 

''Ah,  pardon,"  was  his  reply.  "We  are 
now  within  sight  of  Nouvion.  We  have 
already  accomplished  thirteen  kilos,  and  I 
do  not  yet  intend  to  bait  my  horse.  At 
Bernay,  seven  kilos  further,  she  must 
have  something,  and  then  thei-e  remain  only 
twenty-three  kilos  to  Montreuil,  where  mon- 
sieur intends,  I  suppose,  to  dine  1 " 


"  And  when  do  you  think  we  shall  reach 
Montreuil  1 " 

"  O,  before  six,  without  doubt,  unless  any- 
thing happens." 

"  How  much  is  a  kilo  ?  "  asked  my  wife. 
I  told  her  about  three-fifths  of  a  mile.  She 
then  began  to  count  on  her  fingers,  first 
three,  then  five,  but  it  was  plain  she  could 
make  nothing  of  it,  for  she  shut  up  her  hand 
in  despair.  "Whatever  they  are,"  she  ex- 
claimed, "  I  am  sure  we  shall  never  get 
there ! " 

Monsieur  Jerome  did  not  understand  her 
words,  but  appeared  to  catch  her  meaning. 

"  Be  tranquil,  madame,"  he  said,  "  we  shall 
arrive  very  soon." 

We  entered  Nouvion,  a  hamlet  of  six  or 
seven  houses, — one  of  them  a  cabaret,  with 
the  withered  branch  of  a  fir-tree,  rusty  red, 
over  an  inscription  which  told  of  the  travellers' 
repose.  Monsieur  Jerome  looked  wistfully  at 
the  branch,  but  resisted  the  temptation ; 
that  is  to  say,  he  drove  past ;  but  his  resolu- 
tion lasted  only  ten  seconds.  A  few  yards 
further,  he  pulled  up,  reminding  himself 
aloud  that  he  had  a  message  to  deliver  to  the 
proprietor  of  that  cabaret.  It  must  have 
been  almost  as  long  as  a  president's  message, 
for  it  was  a  good  quarter  of  an  hour  before 
he  came  back.  He  then  made  a  show  of 
great  bustle,  cracked  his  whip,  shouted  at 
La  Maligne,  and  expended  much  breath,  im- 
pregnated with  brandy  of  not  the  very  best 
quality.  Aa  soon  as  he  got  on  his  seat,  he 
began  to  talk  again,  with  the  intention,  appa- 
rently, of  relating  some  more  adventures,  but 
he  roared  so  loud  (some  Frenchmen  do  roar 
tremendously)  that  my  wife  begged  me  to 
desire  him  to  be  quiet,  for  his  voice  "  went 
through  her  head."  Monsieur  Jerome  inter- 
preted this  request  as  an  interdiction  on 
speech  only,  and  forthwith  broke  out  into 
song,  indulging  us  with  the  somewhat  mono- 
tonous history  of  Cadet  Rousselle  and  his 
three  ruined  houses  in  which  the  swallows 
built  their  nests.  That  song,  with  a  few  in- 
termissions, during  which  la  Maligne  was  the 
object  of  Monsieur  Jerome's  attention,  lasted 
until  we  got  to  Bernay.  I  looked  at  my  watch 
and  fonud  that  it  was  nearly  five  o'clock. 
Twelve  miles  in  four  hours,  and  only  a  quarter 
of  the  distance  done  !  Small  chance,  thought 
I,  of  our  getting  to  Boulogne  to-night !  And  I 
called  myself  a  fool  for  supposing  such  a 
thing  possible.  I,  however,  kept  my  own 
counsel  for  the  present,  assisted  my  wife  to 
descend  from  the  coucou,  walked  with  her 
into  the  stable-yard,  and  listened  to  a  long 
account  of  the  performances  of  the  numerous 
pigeons  which,  at  that  time,  used  to  bring  the 
Stock  Exchange  expresses  from  London,  on 
their  way  to  Paris  ;  then  we  strolled  to  a 
slight  eminence  near  the  high  road,  in  the 
hope  of  getting  a  distant  view  of  the  field  of 
Crecy.  Some  twenty  minutes  or  so  were 
spent  in  these  occupations,  and  if  we  had  con- 
sumed twenty  more,  Monsieur  Jerome  would 


270       [September  ID,  1S5;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


still  have  been  as  far  from  ready  to  proceed 
as  when  we  returned  we  found  him. 

La  .Maligne,  lie  said,  could  not  eat  her 
provender  anywhere  but  in  the  stable,  and 
had  been  taken  out  of  the  shafts  for  that  pur- 
pose. It  was  a  work  of  time  to  restore  her 
to  that  position,  and  truss  her  up  for  farther 
exertion. 

There  were  cravings  of  appetite,  also,  on  the 
part  of  Monsieur  Jeionie,  which  could  not  be 
disregarded.  In  short,  a  whole  hour  was  frit- 
tered away  before  we  resumed  our  journey. 

It  was  now  six  o'clock.  We  might  as  well 
h;ive  dined,  but  neither  of  us  was  in  the 
humour  to  do  so,  though  it  would  have  been 
better  to  have  accepted  the  landlady's  obliging 
invitation. 

"  We  shall  get  on  famously  now ! "  was 
Monsieur  Jerome's  encouraging  exclamation, 
as  he  drove  out  of  Bernay.  And  so  we  did, — 
for  nearly  half  a  kilo.  Then  came  a  hill, — a 
mountain  I  should  say, — up  which  it  was  im- 
possible, as  Monsieur  Jerome  said,  for  the 
stoutest  horse  to  trot.  La  Maligne  never 
tried  ;  but  zigzagged  leisurely  till  she  gained 
the  summit,  where  she  thought  it  prudent  to 
rest,  before  she  exerted  herself  further.  At 
the  season  of  the  year  when  this  journey  was 
undertaken,  day  and  night  were  nearly  of  an 
equal  length,  and  half  an  hour  after  we  left 
Bernay  it  got  dark.  Monsieur  Jerome's 
desire  for  conversation  had  returned,  but 
wlu-ther  he  remembered  my  wife's  objection 
to  the  loudness  of  his  voice,  or  subdued  it  on 
account  of  a  change  of  feeling  within  himself, 
I  cannot  exactly  say.  Certain  it  is,  that  his 
tone  was  pitched  several  notes  lower  ;  indeed 
he  might  be  said  to  be  at  a  much  lower  pitch 
altogether,  for  scarcely  a  subject  arose  about 
which  he  did  not  betray  some  apprehension. 
If  I  could  have  supposed  such  a  thing  of  the 
niau  who  had  too  much  courage,  I  should 
have  said  that  Monsieur  Jerome  was  afraid 
of  being  in  the  dark.  He  excused  La  Maligne 
for  not  going  at  her  best  pace — whatever  that 
was — on  account  of  the  ruts,  the  stones,  the 
general  condition  of  the  road.  He  invited 
me,  from  time  to  time,  to  look  out,  and  see  if 
anything  was  following  or  approaching, — on 
the  ground  that,  possibly,  my  eyes  were  better 
than  his.  When  I  informed  him  that  I  was 
extremely  short-sighted,  and  could  hardly 
see  beyond  his  horse's  ears,  he  gave  way  to 
open  lamentation. 

The  malle-poste,  he  said,  or  some  other 
furiously  driven  carriage,  might  come  tearing 
along  and  be  down  upon  us  before  we  knew 
where  we  were  ;  in  fact,  there  was  no  saying 
what  might  not  happen,  and  really,  unless 
monsieur  was  particularly  anxious  to  get  on, 
he  thought  it  would  be  better  for  us  to  turn 
back  at  once,  and  put  up  for  the  night  at 
Bernay.  He  would  undertake  to  say  that  no 
time  should  be  lost  by  this  arrangement. 

Overlooking  for  the  moment  the  cool  im- 
pudence of  the  proposition,  I  simply  desired 
him  to  get  011  as  last  he  cuuld,  and  if  he  had 


any  doubts  as  to  the  safety  of  the  road,  to 
keep  them  to  himself;  for,  although  they  did 
not  affect  me,  they  might  make  the  lady  un- 
comfortable. Finding  me  inflexible  on  the 
subject  of  retracing  our  steps,  he  made  a 
virtue  of  necessity,  insulted  La  Maligne  by 
heaping  upon  her  as  many  terms  of  oppro- 
brium as  lie  could  think  of,  and  accompanied 
those  insults  by  a  practical  application  of  his 
whip  in  a  manner  that  must  have  been  any- 
thing Lut  pleasant  to  the  unhappy  animal. 
This  mode  of  proceeding  had  the  effect  of 
keeping  up  his  spirits  until  we  reached 
Nampont,  nine  kilos  further.  Luckily 
there  was  no  possible  excuse  for  stopping  at 
this  village,  immortalised,  as  we  all  remem- 
ber, by  Sterne's  Dead  Ass  ;  so  we  pushed  on 
for  Montreuil,  evidently  our  resting-place  for 
the  night.  To  ourselves  it  was  the  most 
hopeful  part  of  the  journey,  as  every  moment 
brought  us  nearer  to  our  long-delayed  dinner, 
but  that  was  not  the  case  with  Monsieur 
Jerome.  He  had  become  the  prey  of  far 
worse  apprehensions  than  the  chance  of  being 
run  down  in  the  dark,  and  did  not  hesitate  to 
communicate  them  to  me  when,  having- 
wrapped  up  my  wife  in  a  large  cloak,  and 
disposed  her  for  a  nap  in  the  recesses  of  the 
coucou,  I  took  a  seat  in  front  by  his  side.  I 
believe  I  provoked  the  disclosure  of  his 
thoughts,  by  asking  him  casually  if  there 
were  many  wolves  in  that  part  of  the  coun- 
try. He  replied  that  in  winter  they  abounded, 
particularly  in  a  certain  lar^e  wood  called 
the  Bois  Jean,  which  we  should  shortly  come 
to  ;  but  that  he  did  not  care  for  wolves,  as 
they  only  showed  themselves  in  the  depths  of 
winter,  and  luckily  that  season  was  gone  by, 
though  he  admitted,  and,  as  it  seemed  to  me, 
in  no  very  assured  tone,  that  "  those  beasts 
were  very  fond  of  horse-flesh,  and  might  be 
tempted  by  it  at  any  time."  He  made  a 
pause  after  this  dark  allusion  to  the  possible 
fate  of  La  Maligne,  but  presently  added  : 

"After  all,  one  might  keep  them  off,, 
perhaps,  with  one's  whip,  or  frighten  them 
away  by  shouting  ;  but  there  are  other  cus- 
tomers on  this  part  of  the  road,  sometimes, 
not  so  easily  got  rid  of." 

I  asked  him  what  kind  of  customers  he 
meant  ?  Not  robbers,  surely  '? 

In  a  voice  scarcely  above  a  whisper,  he 
begged  me  to  speak  lower.  That,  in  effect, 
was  it.  There  had  been  terrible  doings  in 
that  neighbourhood.  At  Verton,  about  half 
a  league  off  the  high  road  on  the  left  hand 
side — we  could  see  the  place  easily  in  the 
day-time ;  he  wished  he  saw  it  now — the 
chateau  had  been  broken  into,  the  year  before, 
by  a  ferocious  baud,  who,  it  was  known,  or 
suspected,  still  haunted  thereabouts.  He 
had  heard  that  a  garde  champetre  had  once 
been  murdered  ia  the  hollow  there  at  1'Epine, 
which,  thank  Glod  !  we  had  just  passed.  He 
should  not  care  a  straw  for  a  dozen  robbers 
at  a  time,  if  he  could  only  see  them,  but 
when  they  came  upon  you  unawares 


Charic*  Dickens.] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[September  19, 1357.]      271 


"  Good  night ! "  cried  a  voice  close  to  Mon- 
sieur Jerome's  ear,  before  he  could  conclude 
the  sentence.  He  dropped  both  reins  and 
whip,  and  nearly  fell  backward  into  the 
coucou.  It  was  _a  mounted  gendarme  on  his 
way  towards  Bernay,  whose  approach  had 
been  concealed  by  the  darkness.  I  returned 
the  man's  salutation — fear  had  completely 
taken  away  all  power  of  speech  from  Mon- 
sieur Jerome — and  he  rode  on.  La  Maligue 
had  taken  advantage  of  the  loose  rein  to  stop. 
I  told  Monsieur  Jerome  to  get  down  and 
pick  up  his  whip,  but  he  did  not  offer  to 
stir.  At  last  he  whispered,  "  One  of  those 
fellows  ! " 

I  explained  who  it  was,  having  been  quite 
near  enough  to  see. 

"Ah,  why  did  not  monsieur  tell  him  that 
before  ?  So  it  was  one  of  the  lepins  ferres  " 
(a  popular  name  for  the  gendarmes).  ''  Yes, 
he  would  soon  pick  up  his  whip.  What  a 
pity  the  fellow  was  going  the  other  way  !  He 
would,  after  all,  have  been  some  company. 
Besides,  they  were  always  armed." 

Monsieur  Jerome  speedily  recovered  his 
property,  and  again  we  moved  on.  I  could 
perceive  through  the  indistinctness  of  the 
night  that  we  were  skirting  a  wood ; 
doubtless,  the  terrible  Bois  Jean,  for  not 
a  word  did  our  valiant  driver  utter — not 
a  single  malediction  did  he  bestow  on  La 
Maligue.  On  a  sudden,  a  gleam  of  light  shot 
up  in  the  distance,  and  as  speedily  disap- 
peared. Monsieur  Jerome  observed  it,  and 
exclaimed  that  it  was  the  malle-poste  coming. 

Yes,  it  was  the  time  he  expected  it  to 
appear.  It  did  not  carry  many  passengers — 
only  two  besides  the  couducteur — but  then 
there  was  the  postilion,  he  made  four ;  and 
four  people  could  make  a  good  stand  against 
anybody  who  attacked  them.  The  malle- 
poste  would  soon  be  very  near,  but  before  it 
came  up  we  should,  he  hoped,  have  left  this 
accursed  wood  behind  us,  and  then  the  road 
was  open  all  the  way  to  Moutreuil.  Hi,  hi ! 
la  Maligne.  En  avant ! 

I  could  perceive  that  Monsieur  Jerome 
was  straining  his  eyes  to  get  another  glimpse 
of  the  malle-poste  lamps,  and  presently  an- 
other gleam  appeared.  He  was  greatly  re- 
joiced, and  gave  vent  to  his  exultation  so 
noisily  that  my  wife  woke  up  and  looked 
about  her.  She  asked  what  was  the  matter  1 
I  told  her  what  Monsieur  Jerome  expected. 
In  about  a  minute  the  light  showed  itself 
again.  "  There  !  "  said  I. 

"  That  is  not  a  carriage-lamp,"  returned 
my  wife,  whose  eyesight  was  remarkable  ; 
"  that  is  lightning.  I  have  seen  several 
flashes." 

As  she  spoke  in  French,  Monsieur  Jerome 
understood  her.  He  would  wager  anything 
it  was  not  lightning.  It  must  be  the  malle- 
poste  ;  it  could  not  be  anything  else.  At 
last  there  came  a  terrific  peal  of  thunder  ; 
and,  sorely  against  his  will,  he  became  con- 
vinced that  a  storm  was  approaching,  and 


not  the  malle-poste.  I  think  he  would  have 
pulled  up  at  once  if  he  had  dared,  but  the 
dreaded  contents  of  the  Bois  Jean  impelled 
him  onward ;  and,  as  I  knew  he  had  no 
choice,  I  left  him  to  be  pelted  on  by  the  raiu, 
while  I  went  back  to  the  interior  of  the 
coucou.  It  was  but  a  slight  punishment  for 
his  cowardice — nothing,  indeed,  to  a  fellow 
accustomed  to  all  weathers,  if  it  had  not  been 
accompanied  at  every  step  by  the  direst  mis- 
givings as  to  being  waylaid  and  murdered. 

I  need  not  say  that  no  such  tragical  event 
occurred.  We  jolted  along,  too  slowly  for 
our  impatient  hunger — far  too  slowly  for  the 
fears  of  Monsieur  Jerome.  But  everything 
comes  to  an  end  at  last,  even  a  journey  in  a 
French  coucou  ;  and,  within  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  of  midnight,  other  corruscations  than 
those  of  the  elements  were  visible.  They 
proved  to  be  the  lights  of  Montreuil  ;  and, 
amidst  such  an  amount  of  whip  cracking  and 
shouting  as  had  not  been  heard  in  that  town 
for  many  a  day,  we  drove  across  the  draw- 
bridge, passed  through  the  fortifications,  tra- 
versed the  square,  and  closed  our  pilgrimage 
at  the  door  of  the  H6tel  de  la  Cour  de 
France. 

The  woodcock  pie  on  which  we  supped,  the 
excellent  Bordeaux  in  which  we  drank  each 
other's  healths,  the  admirable  bed  we  slept 
in,  the  capital  breakfast  with  which  we  for- 
tified ourselves  next  morning,  need  not  be 
recorded.  Neither  is  it  necessary  to  describe 
any  further  particulars  of  our  journey  ;  but 
it  may  be  as  well  to  mention,  lest  a  notion  to 
the  contrary  should  prevail,  that — with  re- 
turning daylight  and  nothing  to  fear — Mon- 
sieur Jerome  once  more  showed  himself  to  be 
a  man  of  courage. 

ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL  FOR 
TEN  YEARS. 

IN  FOUR  CHAPTERS.   CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH. 

SEPTEMBER  the  first. — This  morning  I  had 
an  answer  to  my  letter  from  Sir  Edward 
Singleton,  and  some  few  details  concerning 
Alice.  He  says  she  was  not  neglected  in  her 
illness  and  death,  for  though  Mrs.  Hardtast 
left  her,  there  was  an  Englishwoman,  resident 
in  Brussels  (a  teacher,  he  believes,  named 
Mervin),  who  was  with  her  to  the  last,  and 
who  followed  her  coffin  to  the  grave.  She  is 
buried  at  Brussels,  and  there  is  a  cross  put 
up  as  on  the  other  tombs,  and  a  slab  with 
her  name  and  the  date  of  her  death.  There 
is  then  no  tribute  of  love  or  gratitude  that  I 
can  pay  her — strangers  have  done  all !  I  do 
not  remember  ever  feeling  so  saddened,  so 
depressed  by  any  event  as  by  this.  To  think 
E  have  been  breathing  my  reproaches  to  a 
dead  heart,  hungering  for  a  sight  of  one  who 
has  been  dust  these  two  years.  Did  she  re- 
member me  when  she  died,  I  wonder  ?  O, 
Alice,  and  so  hard  as  I  was  to  you  once ! 

September  the  twelfth.— Emily  Clay  and 
Hugh  Cameron  were  married  the  day  before 


272       fSi>pteml)Ct  19,  1S5?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted 


yesterday  at  Stockbridge  old  church — the 
last  marriage;  that  will  take  place  there  pre- 
vious to  its  being  pulled  down.  I  am  told 
that  it  was  a  very  gay  and  very  pretty  •wed- 
ding, but  I  did  not-  see  it.  At  first  I  thought 
I  would  go  and  sit  in  one  of  the  galleries  as 
a  looker-on,  but  when  the  time  came  I 
changed  my  mind,  and  stayed  away.  They 
sent  me  cards,  and,  besides,  there  was  a  little 
letter  written  by  Emily  after  they  came  from 
church,  and  before  they  set  off  on  their  tour. 
The  good,  kind  heart  her's  is  !  She  said  she 
looked  round  as  she  came  out  in  the  hope  of 
seeing  my  face,  and  was  disappointed  not  to 
do  so. 

Since  I  wrote  to  Sir  Edward  Singleton 
about  Alice  he  has  been  over  here  again  on 
the  old  subject,  but  I  told  him  it  was  of  no 
avail :  I  respect  the  kindness  there  is  in  him, 
but  love  him  I  never  could  ! 

September  the  twenty-ninth. — Grannie  and 
I  are  going  to  become  travellers ;  it  is  re- 
markable to  see  the  old  lady's  spirit,  and 
how  she  enters  into  all  my  plots  and  plans  ! 
We  are  to  go  by  way  of  Belgium,  stop  at 
Brussels,  that  I  may  see  Alice's  grave,  and 
then  proceed  to  Paris,  and  spend  the  winter 
there.  Ferndell,  meanwhile,  is  to  be  shut  up, 
for  it  is  impossible  to  tell  how  long  we  may 
remain  away.  Uncle  Henry  insists  on  my 
returning  for  my  coming  of  age  next  year, 
but  we  shall  consider  of  that  when  the  time 
arrives. 

I  had  one  of  those  great  surprises  yester- 
day, which,  perhaps,  fall  to  the  lot  of 
all  women,  of  fortune.  Colonel  Vernon 
made  me  an  offer.  He  is  a  man  whom  I 
admire  and  respect,  but  love  him,  no  !  In- 
deed, let  all  around  me  speculate  as  they 
Tvill,  urge  as  they  will,  plead  as  they  will, 
single  I  remain  unless  my  whole  heart  can 
go  with  my  hand,  and  that  it  can  never, 
never  do.  I  never  can  love  any  one  again  as 
I  loved  Herbert  Clay.  I  have  never  had  a 
moment's  freak  of  liking  for  any  one  else, 
and  never  shall.  It  was  a  sti'ange  oversight 
of  us  when  we  broke  our  engagement  in  that 
abrupt  and  silly  way,  not  to  exchange  letters, 
and  those  pledge  rings  we  gave  each  other. 
I  do  not  wear  mine,  but  I  keep  it  very  safely 
— and  his  letters  too — perhaps  he  has  burnt 
mine.  Miss  Thoroton  knew  nothing  about 
his  marriage  with  any  Miss  Hargrave  ;  she 
thought  it  must  be  his  cousin,  Mr.  Frank 
Clay  at  Grassleap — it  may  be.  I  have  asked 
several  people  about  her,  and  they  all  agree 
as  to  her  amiability  and  accomplishments, — 
her  beauty  I  saw  for  myself. 

I  have  just  been  glancing  over  some  former 
entries,  and  I  see  that  I  once  made  a  vow  to 
myself  never  more  to  write  his  name  in  my 
book.  I  have  broken  it  without  thinking, 
but  my  vow  shall  be  renewed  again  here. 
To  all  maundering  regrets,  to  all  lingering 
follies,  a  long  farewell ;  a  final  farewell ! 
I  will  leave  thee  at  Ferndell,  my  old  book,  and 
not  drag  my  records  of  past  pain  into  future 


scenes.  Some  day,  perhaps,  when  I  come 
home  again,  a  little  stronger,  or  a  little  colder 
in  heart,  I  will  inquire  of  thee  what  I  used 
to  be,  and  tell  thee  truly  what  I  am 
become. 

FEUNDELL,  March  the  first,  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty-four. — It  is  six  years  since  I  wrote 
the  last  word  on  the  opposite  page.  Six 
years !  There  it  stands  in  yellow-brown 
characters,  the  written  promise  pledged  to 
my  old  book,  that  I  will  tell  it  what  I  have 
become !  There  is  that  voluminous  note- 
book that  I  kept  Avhen  I  was  abroad ;  five 
years  and  a-half  of  travellers'  experiences. 
What  shall  I  write  1  I  think  I  will  bring  up 
events  to  this  date :  more  matter  will  arise 
out  of  that,  perchance. 

Grannie,  there,  is  as  flourishing  as  ever 
Cousin  Jane  has  a  houseful  of  children  ;  Mrs. 
Cameron  has  three ;  the  widowed  Lady 
Deering  has  become  Lady  Singleton  ;  poor 
Betsy  Lawson  is  dead  ;  Miss  Thoroton  has 
retired  from  the  Stockbridge  school,  and  Miss 
Smalhvood,  who  has  succeeded  her  does  not 
make  things  answer  ;  Mr.  Clay,  of  Meadow- 
lands  is  dead,  and  his  son  Herbert  is  the 
liberal  member  for  Stockbridge. 

Ferudell  is  looking  wild  and  desolate,  and 
this  great  house  is  dreary,  dreary  as  the 
Moated  Grange  where  Mariana  dwelt  and 
pined.  And  I,  my  faithful  confidant,  I  am 
Eleanor  Clare  still,  and  likely  so  to  remain — 
wait  till  to-morrow,  and  I  will  tell  thee  some- 
thing more. 

March  the  second. — I  fear   I  am  passing 
into  a  frame  of  promise  and  non-performance, 
my  dear  book.     I  promised  yesterday  more 
intelligence  of  myself — yet,  what  news  have 
I  1     Yes ;  there  is  one  bit  of  vital  interest 
,  which  shall  not  escape  the  chronicle.     This 
morning,  Mary  Burton  discovered  my  first 
1  gray  hair,  and  maliciously  twitched  it  out ! 
I  forbade  her  sternly,  ever,  at  her  peril,  to 
!  repeat  the  offence  !     Then  I  may  communi- 
cate that  my  schools  are  going  on  well,  and 
!  that  I  often  lack  employment.     I  wish  I  had 
I  to  work  for  my  bread  a  month  or  two,  just 
to  try  what  it  feels  like. 

March  the  third. — Last  night  I  was  dining 
at  the  Crawfords,  and  met  Mr.  Herbert  Clay. 
Philip  Crawfurd  brought  him  up,  and  intro- 
duced us  as  strangers,  and  the  first  thing  I 
saw  was  my  signet-ring  with  the  bloodstone, 
on  his  little  finger ;   what  right  has  he  to 
!  wear  it,  I  should  wish  to  know  ?     Possibly 
[  he  never  gave  it  up.    He  sat  down  on  the 
I  couch  near  me,  but  he  did  not  talk  at  all,  and 
'  scarcely  looked  at  me  ;  at  dinner  it  was  the 
j  same.     I  inquired  after  his  mother,  and  he 
said  she  was  gone  to  live  at  Ashby,  to  be  near 
'  Emily,  and  that  he  was  alone  at  Meadowlands 
j  now.     The  Cousin  Frank  and  his  wife  (she 
was  the  Miss    Hargrave  whom   I   thought 
I  Mr.  Herbert  Clay  was  to  marry)  were  there  ; 
:  she  is  handsomer  than  ever.     I  was  glad  to 
!  see  in  what  respect  Herbert  is  held,  young 


Charles  Dickens.1 


ELEANOE  CLAKE'S  JOUENAL. 


[September  19, 1857.1       273 


as  he  still  is,  but  I  felt  surprised  at  his 
extreme  reserve.  It  may  not  be  his  ordinary 
manner,  however,  for  I  overheard  Mrs. 
Crawford  ask  him  if  he  were  ill,  and  he  con- 
fessed to  being  tired. 

April  the  first, — My  visit  at  Burnshead  is 
over,  and  on  Saturday  I  go  to  Ashby-on-the 
hill.  Emily  tells  me  she  has  set  her  heart  on 
it ;  so,  with  one  or  two  qualms,  I  have  con- 
sented to  please  her  :  but  it  will  be  a  great 
pleasure  to  me,  too.  I  drove  into  Stock- 
bridge  a  day  or  two  since,  and  made  a  call 
upon  Miss  Thoroton,  She  begins  to  be  quite 
decrepit,  and  her  hand  shakes  almost  as  if 
she  were  stricken  with  the  palsy.  Her 
memory  is  failing  her  too,  because  she  spoke 
of  Miss  Alice  as  "  a  poor  dear  girl," — "  a 
clever,  high-spirited  creature,  whom  I  edu- 
cated, my  dear,  and  who  died  abroad,"  and 
then  she  repeated  the  story  of  her  death 
and  burial  very  minutely — but  as  if  Alice  had 
been  a  favourite,  instead  of  the  butt  of  all  her 
persecutions.  I  thought  it  was  as  well  to  keep 
her  in  that  frame  of  mind,  and  I  told  her  in 
how  desolate  and  neglected  a  condition  I  had 
found  her  grave.  "  Ah  !  did  you  put  her  a 
wreath  of  everlastings  on  it !  There  are  ever- 
lastings on  graves — graves — what  were  we 
talking  about  ?"  she  began  to  maunder  in  a 
pitiable  helpless  way  ;  at  last,  she  cried  with 
energy  !  "  I  would  have  asked  her  forgive- 
ness if  she  had  lived  :  I  did  not  like  her, 
and  I  believe  I  did  wrong  by  her.  I  know  I 
said  what  was  not  true,  and  it  has  been  on 
my  conscience  a  long  while.  So  she  is  buried 
at  Brussels  ;  very  strange — Brussels  !  I  was 
once  in  that  cemetery.  I  should  wish  to 
go — "  and  then  she  became  quite  indistinct 
and  babbling  again.  Miss  Smallwood  came 
in  while  I  was  there,  and  made  a  pitiable 
statement  of  her  affairs.  She  said  the  old 
school  was  all  gone  to  pieces  ;  she  had  but 
three  pupils  ;  and  one  of  them  had  never 
paid  anything  for  two  years.  She  looked 
very  gaunt  and  shabby,  but  I  did  not  see 
that  I  could  do  her  any  good  ;  certainly,  I 
cannot  recommend  her  school ;  I  do  not 
think  her  fitted  to  have  the  sole  charge  of 
children,  she  is  so  extremely  harsh  and  un- 
pleasant in  her  manner.  When  she  was 
going  away  she  signed  to  me  to  speak  to 
her  outside  the  room,  and  then  asked  me 
to  lend  her  five  pounds.  I  was  very  glad 
to  give  it  to  her  to  soothe  my  conscience 
for  thinking  so  ill  of  her. 

April  the  fifth,  Ashly-on-the-Hill. — I  have 
been  here  with  the  Camerons  three  days,  and 
shall  leave  on  Thursday.  They  are  very 
happy,  and  have  two  of  the  dearest  little 
children — a  boy,  Herbert,  and  a  girl,  Eleanor. 
Herbert  is  a  very  fine  fellow — said  to  be 
more  like  his  great  grandfather  Clay  than  any 
branch  of  the  family  that  has  appeared 
since  him.  Emily  has  a  sensible,  nice  way 
with  her  children.  They  are  both  rather 
wilful  and  headstrong ;  but  she  can  be  so 
quietly  firm,  and  yet  withal  so  kind,  that  there 


is  never  the  sound  of  a  dispute  in  the  house . 
Hugh  Cameron  has  found  a  great  treasure 
in  her,  and  they  are  both  extremely  liked  at 
Ash  by.  Mr.  Herbert  Clay  is  absent  in 
London  on  his  parliamentary  duties,  and  will 
not  be  down  again  until  the  Easter  recess.  I 
have  met  old  Mrs.  Clay  several  times,  but  her 
manner  is  just  as  lacking  in  cordiality  to  me 
as  it  always  was.  She  cannot  hide  her  bitter 
dislike. 

April  the  sixth. — A  terrible  event  occurred 
to-day  !  Emily  was  at  the  school,  and  Hugh 
gone  over  the  hill  to  Deanswalk,  when  Mrs. 
Clay  arrived  at  the  rectory.  I  thought  she 
looked  very  wild  and  bewildered  when  she 
came  into  the  drawing-room  where  I  was 
sitting,  and  her  face  was  quite  suffused,  but 
at  first  I  imagined  she  had  over-heated  her- 
self by  walking  fast.  She  rested  on  the  sofa, 
and  loosed  her  bonnet.  I  had  only  turned 
away  a  moment  to  pick  up  something  be- 
longing to  my  work,  when  I  heard  a  gurg- 
ling, struggling  noise,  and  on  looking  hastily 
up,  I  saw  that  she  was  in  a  fit.  I  rang  the 
bell  and  the  servant  came  in,  and  laid  her  on 
the  couch,  and  the  gardener  ran  for  the 
doctor.  Mrs.  Clay  had  not  altogether  lost 
consciousness,  and  she  had  taken  a  convulsive 
grip  of  my  hand  which  I  could  not  extricate. 
She  rolled  her  eyes  fearfully,  and  muttered 
detached  sentences,  in  which  her  son's  name 
was  often  repeated,  but  I  could  not  make 
out  any  sense.  The  doctor  presently  arrived, 
and  Hugh  and  Emily  came  home,  and  she  was 
carried  to  a  bed  ;  but  she  never  revived,  and 
to-night,  about  seven  o'clock,  she  died.  A 
death  so  sudden  and  painful  has  been  a  ter- 
rible shock  to  Emily.  Hugh  entreats  me  not 
to  leave  her  at  present,  and  if  I  can  be  either 
use  or  comfort  to  her  I  shall  be  glad  to  stay. 
Herbert  has  been  written  to  to  come  down 
immediately,  but  we  cannot  expect  him  before 
to-morrow  evening. 

April  the  seventh. — Herbert  Clay  arrived 
late  last  night,  and  is  much  affected  by  the 
manner  of  his  mother's  death.   He  is  anxious 
and  miserable  that  she  should  have  had  no 
warning,  as  he  calls  it, — no  time  for  prepara- 
tion.    Hugh  Cameron  looks  serious,  and  bids 
him  leave  her  cause  in  God's  hands,  now  we 
can  help  her  nothing.  Emily  weeps  pitiably. 
What  a  strange,  strange  thing  this  death  in 
a  house  is  !     We  go  stealthily  by  the  closed 
door  where  the  dust  lies,  as  if  our  natural 
step     could     disturbe    it.       AVe     speak     in 
whispers,    as    if    our    natural    tone    would 
wake    it.      With    what    awe    we    look    on 
the  vacant  mask  of  clay,  whose  animating 
spirit  has  already  stood  face  to   face  with 
God,   and    learnt*  the    great    mystery    and 
!  secret  of  death  !   The  mystery  and  secret  we 
i  shall  learn  ourselves,  anon.    I  paused  on  the 
•  mat  outside  the  door,  to-night,  on  my  way  to 
I  bed,  and  listened.     I  think  there  is  no  hush 
like  the  hush  that  pervades  the  air  where  a 
corpse  lies.     I  had  my  hand  on  the  handle  to 
t  go  in,  bat  at  the  remembrance  of  how  she 


£74       [September  19,  1S57J 


HOUSEHOLD  WOBDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


hated  me,  I  refrained.  I  wish  she  had  died, 
at  peace  with  me. 

April  the  fourteenth. — I  came  home  to 
Ferndell  the  day  after  Mrs.  Clay's  funeral. 
I  was  reluctant  to  stay  for  several  reasons. 
Herbert  was  not  at  his  ease  with  me,  and 
then  the  will — such  a  will  !  Mrs.  Frank 
Clay  said  she  considered  it  infamous.  It  is 
difficult  to  understand  how  a  dislike  to  me 
could  have  carried  her  the  lengths  it  has 
done.  Mr.  Clay  left  his  wife  sole  guardian 
ami  executrix  when  he  died,  with  unlimited 
power  over  every  farthing  of  his  invested  pro- 
perty, over  Meadowlands,  and  even  over  the 
mill  and  capital  embarked  in  it.  Neither 
Herbert  nor  Emily  possessed  a  single  shil- 
ling independently  of  her.  She  had  taken 
advantage  of  the  confidence  reposed  in  her 
by  her  husband  to  devise  the  property  in 
the  following  way.  Herbert  and  Emily  to 
share  equally  in  the  invested  property, 
Herbert  to  have  Meadowlands  and  the  busi- 
ness ;  but — (and  this  is  put  in  the  strongest 
and  clearest  tei-ms),  but  should  Herbert  Clay 
marry  Eleanor  Clare,  he  is  instantly  to  forfeit 
every  interest  of  every  nature  in  the  estate, 
and  his  share  to  be  equally  divided  betwixt 
Herbert  and  Eleanor  Cameron,  whose  rights 
are  to  be  vested  in  trustees,  duly  named 
and  appointed.  Thus,  if  Herbert  Clay  de- 
sired to  return  to  me  he  woxild  have  to  do 
it  as  a  penniless  man.  His  mother  knew 
her  son's  pride  well  when  she  dictated  this 
clause  of  her  will  ! 

I  was  glad,  then — O  !  very  glad — to  escape 
from  Ashby  where  he  was;  but  I  cannot — 
no,  I  cannot  yet  forgive  that  miserable  dead 
woman  for  pursuing  me  with  her  malignity, 
even  beyond  her  grave !  Herbert  and  I 
love  each  other  still — never  shall  we — never 
shall  I,  at  least,  let  any  other  affection 
nsm*p  the  place  of  the  first  !  Now,  if  I  had 
been  the  portionless  girl  at  Burnbank,  I 
might  have  been  a  happy  woman — wife  and 
mother — as  other  women  are,  but  as  heiress 
of  Ferndell,  there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed  be- 
tween my  love  and  me.  I  should  not  write 
this.  I  would  not  even  confess  it  to  my- 
self, but  that  in  those  few  mournful  days 
at  Ashby,  though  we  were  both  so  silent — 
both  so  constrained,  I  knew — I  felt — all  the 
time  that  Herbert  was  thinking  only  of  me 
as  I  thought  of  him.  Nobody  named  the 
will  to  me  but  Mrs.  Frank,  and  she 
could  not  restrain  her  anger.  Mrs.  Clay 
ruled  her  children  despotically  enough, 
while  she  was  alive.  Surely  the  yoke  should 
have  been  broken  from  oif  their  necks  at 
her  death  !  It  is  too  much  ! — too  much  ! 
To  feel  that  Herbert  loves  me  as  fondly 
ns  over  he  did ;  that  now  -we  had  met — and 
his  position  rises  to  what  the  most  fastidi- 
ous and  worldly  could  have  desired  for 
me — this  frightful  bar  must  be  put  up 
between'  us.  I  wish  I  could  know  that  he 
regrets  it  as  bitterly  as  I  do  !  I  have  told 
Grannie,  and  she  said,  "My  dear  love!  if 


it  is  to  be,  it  will  be  ! "  but  that  does  not  con- 
sole me. 

April  the  twenty-fourth, — I  have  had  Mrs. 
Frank  Clay  over  to  see  me.  She  says  that 
Herbert  is  bent  on  giving  up  all  at  Stock- 
bridge,  taking  the  few  hundreds  he  has  laid 
by  since  a  seventh  share  of  the  business  has 
been  in  his  hands  (and  which  he  may  truly  con- 
sider his  own  as  he  would  have  done,  had  his 
father  been  alive),  and  going  to  New  Zealand. 

She  says  he  declared,  in  the  homely,  west- 
country  phrase :  "  If  Eleanor  Clare  would 
come  to  me  in  her  smock,  then  I  would  take 
her  and  be  the  most  contented,  poor  man  in 
the  three  kingdoms  ;  but  marry  the  rich 
heiress  of  Ferndell — myself  almost  destitute 
— I  never  will ;  so  help  me  God  !  " 

Why  does  he  not  come  and  tell  me  that 
to  my  face  1  Does  he  think  I  love  Ferndell 
as  I  love  him  ?  Does  he  think  I  should  be 
happier  in  this  great,  dreary  house,  fading 
into  old  maidenhood  alone,  pining  and  tin- 
satisfied,  than  I  should  be  with  him  in  that 
little  rustic  cottage  he  used  to  fancy  when  we 
were  scarcely  more  than  boy  and  girl — the 
dear  wife  of  his  heart,  the  mother  of  his  child- 
ren. He  ought  to  have  the  courage  to  come 
!  and  speak  to  me  honestly,  as  I  would  speak  to 
him  were  I  Herbert  Clay  and  he  Eleanor  Clare. 

0  !    he  knows — he  must  know — I  love  him  ; 
and  if  he   understands   at  all  what  a  true 
woman  is,  he  must  know,  too,  that  she  will 
set  no  wealth,  no  rank,  in  competition  with 
her  love.     Why  does  he  not  dare  to  speak  to 
me  ?     Can  he  have  conceived  some  false  idea 
of  me  since  we  have   been  so  long  apart  ? 
Can    he   think     I    would    scorn    him  ?      I 
would  honour  him  if  he  could  make    the 
vast  sacrifice  which  his  mother  has  attached 
as  the  penalty  of  our  marriage.     It  would  be 
noble — it  would  be  grand  !     Then  would  I 
know  how  much  he  loved  me  ;  and  I  would 
give  up  Ferndell  to  Jane's  and  Henry's  chil- 
dren.    It  should  be  sold,  and  they  should  all 
share  in  it  alike.      O,  Avhat    an   infatuated 
fool  I  am,  feeding  my  heart  on  dreams,  as  if 
this  could  ever  be  !  . 

May  the  sixth. — I  have  not  been  out  of 
Ferndell  since  I  returned  from  Ashby  ;  I 
think  I  am  losing  heart,  losing  health  !  I 
know  I  shall  never  live  if  I  am  to  be  miser- 
able like  this.  Emily  Cameron  writes  me  al- 
most daily  about  her  brother.  What  can  I 
do  ?  Is  it  for  me  to  beseech  him  to  stay  ?  I 
cannot,  I  will  not  do  it !  If  he  love  me  let 
him  come  and  tell  me  so,  and  I  will  forgive 
him  all  the  rest — all  his  doubts,  all  the  pain 

1  have  had  to  suffer  for  him — and  keep  him 
here.     If  he  is  proud,  I  am  proud,  too  ;  but 
it  is  easier  for  him  to  bend  than  for  me.     He 
can  come  to  me,  and  say,  "  Eleanor,  we  two 
love  each  other  ;  thus  much  must  I  sacrifice 
to  obtain  yon,  but  I  count  it  nothing  in  com- 
parison with  my  love — "    I   do  not  think 
men's  hearts  are  like  ours.     I  begin  to  fear 
that  the  time  has  come  when  Herbert  has 
ceased  to  care  for  me.     That  is  a  miserable 


Charles  lliekens.] 


ELEANOR  CLARE'S  JOURNAL. 


[September  19, 1857.1      275 


thought !  O,  why  did  we  meet  again  after 
I  came  from  abroad  ?  I  had  not  forgotten 
him,  not  ceased  to  prefer  him,  but  I  had  be- 
come quite  still  and  resigned  to  being  alone  ; 
now  it  seems  to  me  as  if  there  were  neither 
hope  nor  joy  in  life  apart  from  him. 

May  the  tenth. — This  is  a  bitter  struggle ; 
I  sicken  over  it ;  if  it  last  much  longer 
scarcely  shall  I  survive  it.  Yesterday  Emily 
Cameron  came  over  here  and  brought  her 
boy.  It  was  torture  to  me.  There  the  little 
fellow  sat  drumming,  with  the  toy  he  had 
brought  in  the  carriage,  and  innocently 
prattling,  while  I  longed  to  hear  of  Herbert. 
It  was  not  until  she  was  leaving  that  I  could 
ask  if  he  still  persisted  in  going  to  New  Zea- 
land, and  she  replied,  "  Yes,  she  believed  his 
preparations  were  very  forward ; "  then  asked 
me  if  I  did  not  think  it  a  wild  scheme.  I  did 
think  it  wild. 

"  Then  bid  him  stay,  Eleanor,"  replied  she, 
looking  at  me  meaningly.  I  felt  faint  and  ill, 
but  I  did  not  open  my  lips,  and  she  drove  away. 

This  morning's  post  brought  me  a  letter 
from  her.  She  says  my  haggard  face  haunts 
her — what  does  it  mean  ?  Let  her  guess 
what  it  means.  She  has  known  heart-sick- 
ness herself ! 

May  the  twelfth. — Peace  at  lasb !  I  was 
straying  this  afternoon  down  into  the  beech- 
wood  alone,  so  solitary,  so  utterly  desolate, 
when  I  came  suddenly  on  Herbert  Clay.  He 
said  he  had  seen  me  from  the  road  :  he  had 
left  his  horse  at  the  lodge,  and  had  come  up 
to  meet  me. 

"  And  what  have  you  to  say  to  me,  Herbert 
Clay  ?  "  I  asked  as  proudly  as  I  could,  but 
my  throat  swelled,  and  I  know  my  face  was 
pitiful.  "We  were  in  amongst  the  trees,  no 
one  could  see  us,  and  he  just  took  me  in  his 
arms  and  kissed  me  as  if  I  were  his  wife. 
"  Eleanor,  I  would  lose  the  world  for  you  !  " 
said  he,  passionately;  and  I  told  him  I  would 
come  to  him  as  poor  as  himself. 

Then  all  that  blank  of  years  seemed  to  fall 
away  out  of  being  and  out  of  memory — to  say 
that  I  was  happy  is  not  enough :  I  was  too 
contented,  too  joyful  for  words  to  express ! 
And  it  is  all,  all  true  ;  no  dream,  no  frenzy 
has  bewildered  me.  I  shall  be  Herbert's 
own  faithful,  loving  wife  ! 

"  And  shall  we  go  out  of  England  ? "  I 
asked  him. 

"It  should  be  just  as  I  desired,"  he  said. 

"  Then  we  will  live  amongst  our  own  people 
here  at  Stock  bridge,"  I  answered,  "  in  that 
cottage  by  Brookend,  where  there  are  the 
roses  and  the  earwigs — your  old  fancy,  Her- 
bert, shall  we  1 " 

He  said,  "If  I  liked  it,  we  should." 

I  can  scarcely  have  patience  to  sit  still  and 
write  and  remember  how  completely  the  old 
spirit  came  into  us  both  after  that ;  there 
was  no  more  doubt,  no  more  anxiety.  I  be- 
lieve we  shall  go  hand  in  hand  through  our 
chosen  poverty  up  to  our  present  estate  again 
.before  we  are  old — not  that  I  care  to  be  rich 


— all  my  sorrows  have  risen  out  of  that ;  but 
I  should  like  Herbert  restored  to  his  place — 
I  should  like  him  to  be  to  others  what  he  is 
to  me — the  best  and  highest-hearted  of  men ! 

After  we  had  walked  in  the  beechwood 
till  I  was  tired,  we  went  in  to  Grannie — of 
course,  she  understood  it  all  the  moment  we 
appeared,  and  she  clasped  her  hands  in  great 
agitation.  "  You  will  not  surely  be  so  silly !" 
was  her  remark. 

We  could  neither  of  us  help  smiling,  bat 
Herbert  said,  we  were  bent  on  marrying  each 
other,  and  we  should  begin  life  together 
afresh  at  Brookend  Cottage. 

"  At  Brookend  Cottage !  and  what  is  to 
become  of  Ferudell  ?  "  asked  she,  dismayed. ' 

"  It  is  going  to  be  transferred  to  Henry's 
and  Jane's  children,"  said  I,  "  leaving  you  as 
life  tenant." 

"  Nothing  of  the  kind.  I  shall  go  back  to 
Bnrnbank  ;  I  always  liked  it  better  than  this 
wilderness  place."  And  Grannie  knitted 
very  fast  and  carelessly. 

I  put  my  face  down  and  looked  at  her  ; 
"  Tell  me,  Grannie,  that  you  are  glad  to  see 
me  happy  ? "  said  I. 

There  were  tears  in  her  dear  old  eyes  ; 
"  My  love,  did  I  not  tell  you  if  it  was  to  be, 
it  would  be  1 "  replied  she.  "  "Well,  I  am 
happy ;  I  would  not  have  liked  to  see  Eleanor 
Clare  wither  into  an  old  maid." 

Now,  then,  to  strengthen  myself  for  the 
battle  that  I  foresee  betwixt  the  Scropes  and 
cousin  Henry  and  myself !  I  shall  fully  ex- 
pect to  be  called  insane  for  what  I  am  going 
to  do,  and  Herbert  will  not  escape  either  ; 
but  what  matters  it  ?  "We  shall  have  each 
other,  and  shall  be  happy.  I  believe  we  are 
two  Solomons,  myself. 

May  the  seventeenth. — Cousin  Henry  and 
Mr.  Scrope  are  just  gone,  in  the  impression 
that  I  am  the  most  obstinate,  unreasonable, 
foolish  woman  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  I 
am  not  certain  that  they  really  think  so,  but 
they  said  so,  and  said  the  world  would  say 
so,  too.  What  care  I  for  the  world  ?  It  has 
done  nothing  for  me,  and  I  do  not  choose  to 
sacrifice  my  life  to  it.  Why  should  I  ?  My 
little  circle  of  it  will  talk,  and  wonder,  and 
premise,  and  settle  for  nine  days,  and  then 
they  will  be  quiet ;  unless  they  choose  to 
profit  by  the  moral  lesson,  that  there  exist  in 
the  world  one  man  and  one  woman  who  love 
each  other  sufficiently  to  give  up  wealth  for 
poverty.  Herbert  is  up  here  every  day, 
nearly,  and  we  are  making  our  own  arrange- 
ments quietly.  He  has  bought  that  Brook- 
end  Cottage  for  two  hundred  and  seventy 
pounds,  and  it  is  now  undergoing  thorough 
repairs.  I  went  over  it,  and  found  it  con- 
tained a  pretty  little  bay  window  drawing- 
room  opening  upon  the  lawn,  a  dining-room, 
and  four  bedrooms — quite  enough  for  us. 
The  owner  told  him  it  was  quite  -a  fancy 
avticle,  and  so  it  is  :  one  of  those  pretty,  pic- 
turesque, flowery  cottages,  to  which  disap- 
pointed heroines  in  novels  retire  to  spin  out 


276       [Stptemb«r  19,  1SS7.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


IConducted  by 


the  rest  of  their  days.  Its  situation  is  very 
secluded — about  two  miles  out  of  Stock- 
bridge,  in  the  Meadowlauds  direction.  I  pro- 
posed to  take  into  it  some  of  the  furniture  out 
of  my  "  sulky  here,"  but  Herbert  said  "  No  ;" 
and  I  am  obedient.  He,  however,  gives  me 


having  baptised  me  ;  but  as  both  Mr.  Scrope 
and  Hugh  Cameron  think  they  have,  at  least, 
an  equal  right,  they  are  each  to  assist  the 
other,  and  all  be  satisfied.  They  tell  us  it  ia 
only  ouce  in  a  life -time  they  can  expect  to 
perform  the  service  for  so  romantic  a  pa  if, 

a  dispensation  in  favour  of  my  own  books,  I  and    they  will    not    lose    the    opportunity, 
and  of  all  the  pretty  trifles  we  brought  from  [  Herbert  is  very  passive  in  the  matter,  for 
my  room  at  Burnbank  ;    and  Grannie  will   his  hands  are  full  of  business.     I  want  to  get 
take   back    thither    the    plenishing  of   the  !  the  papers  signed  that  make  over  Ferndell  to 
garden  apartment  that  we  have  in  daily  use,  i  my  cousins'  children  ;  but  both  Mr.  Scrope 
and  which  she  furnished  herself,  as  all  the   and  Cousin  Henry  insist  that  I  shall  not  put 
Burnbank  things  were  sold  when   we  left,   pen  to  paper  until  the  very  morning  of  my 
She  says  it  will  feel  like  going  home  again  ;   marriage,  just  before  we  go  to  church,  when 
she  has  never  considered  herself  more  than  a  j  it  will  be  still  time  to  change  my  mind,  if  I 
visitor  at  Ferndell.      There  was  only  one   feel  so  disposed.     Grannie  and  I  have  beeu 
thing  grieving  me,  and  that  was  her  pony  to  Stockbridge,  to  see  my  future  home,  now 
carriage  ;  but  Uncle  Henry  says,  of  course  she   it  is  finished.     I  think  it  a  gem  of  elegant 
shall  keep  it ;  and  the  present  suggestion  is, ;  simplicity.      O,   I   shall    be    happy  there  f 
that  CJara  Favell,  his  eldest  girl, should  go  and  \  The  day  fixed  for  our  marriage  is  the  sixth 
live  with  her  as  I  used  to  do.    Clara  is  a  nice,  I  of  September.     It  is  to  be  very  quiet :  only 
merry  body,  and  Grannie  likes  cheerfulness,     the  Camerons,  Scropes,  Cousin  Henry  and 
There  is  some  speculation  afloat  as  to  how,   his  wife,  and  Clare,  old  Mrs.  Lake,  and  Dr. 
when,   and   where  I  am  to  be   married  to  j  Rayson  are  to  be  invited.     This  is  Herbert's 
Herbert.    We   have  arranged  it  ourselves,   wish,  and  mine  too.     The  school  children  at 
Burnbank  will  be  ready  to  receive  us  in  a  Ashby,  Ferndell,  Burnshead,  and  this  place,, 
month  from  this  time.     Grannie  and  I   go !  are  to  have  a  tea-drinking  on  the  occasion  ; 
thither  by  oui-selves.     The  papers  are  to  be  j  that  is  all  the  lively  rejoicing  we  intend, 
prepared   for   transferring    Ferndell   to  the  |  Lady  Deering  and  Lady  Singleton  express 
Scrope  and  Favell  children.     Herbert  is  to   the  profoundest  wonderment  at  Herbert  Clay 
get  a  lease  as  tenant  of  the  mill ;  and  in   and  myself ;  and  Lady  Mary  Vernon  vows 
September  we  are  to  be  married.     A  brief  she  shall  take  us  for  the  hero  and  heroine  of 
space  it  seems  since  his  mother's  death  ;  but  her  next  book,  for  she  is   sure  ours  is  a 
her  wicked  will  has  so  unsettled  him,  that  it   sweetly  pretty  story,  and  a  very  good  plot, 
cannot  be  wrong  or  disrespectful  to  make  it       My  wedding-day.     Come  and  almost  gone ! 
as  speedily  as  possible  lose  its  evil  influence  ;   Ferndell  belongs  to  the  Scropes  and  Favells, 
and  as  he,  as  it  were,  begins  life  afresh,  the   and  I  belong  to  my  own  love,  that  is,  true 
sooner  he  begins  it  the  better.     He  resigns   Herbert.     I  have  nothing  to  write  but  that 
his  seat  in  parliament.     He  is  much  commi- '  I   am  happy,  happy,  too  happy  for  many 
serated  by  some,  much  blamed  by  others  ; ,  words !     I  see  before  me  the  years  of  a  life 


but  never,  I  pray  God,  shall  either  of  us  live 
to  regret  the  step  we  are  about  to  take. 

June  the  twenty-ninth. — Cousin  Henry  has 
been  over  to  see  how  we  have  settled  at 
Burnbank.  "Perfectly,"  I  tell  him;  "we 
are  quite  at  home  again."  Grannie  looks 
remarkably  cheerful  and  contented ;  and, 
when  Henry  talks  about  my  wildness  in 
giving  up  Ferndell  to  please  Herbert  Clay, 
she  cuts  him  short  with  :  "  Well,  Henr}r,  it 
will  only  come  to  those  who  ought  to  have 
had  it  from  the  beginning."  And  when  he 
persists  that  I  lose  my  share,  being  one  of  the 
three  heirs,  she  just  bids  him  hold  his  tongue. 

When  we  left  Ferndell,  Burton  thought  he 
could  not  comedown  to  the  "small  doings" 
at  Burnbank  again  ;  so  he  went  up  to  town 
to  get  a  better  situation  ;  and  we  have  hired 
that  beautiful  Anty  Craggs  as  our  "  odd  man." 
His  face  is  fatter  and  more  freckled,  and  his 
hair  is  redder  than  ever  ;  but  he  is  a  civil 
servant,  and  very  careful  in  driving  Grannie 
up  and  down  the  hills,  which  is  the  chief  thing 
he  has  to  do.  Herbert  comes  down  on  Satur- 
day evening,  and  stays  with  us  over  Sunday. 

August  the  fifteenfli. — Dr.  Rayson  has  hud 
claim  to  his  paramount  right  to  marry — 


that  will  suffice  my  heart  better,  a  thousand- 
fold better,  than  all  the  rank  and  money  in 
the  world.  Herbert,  who  is  watching  me 
impatiently  while  1  write,  says  it  shall  lack 
nothing  he  can  give  to  make  it  blest ;  and  I 
believe  it.  With  him  it  can  lack  nothing  ; 
without  him  it  lacks  all.  Now,  let  me  sign 
myself  by  his  name,  and  leave  the  rest  of  the- 
page  blank.  ELEANOR  CLAY. 


THE  FIRST  SACK  OF  DELHI. 


IN  a  wretched  little  tent,  which  was  pitched 
near  the  fortress  of  Kelat,  in  the  Persian 
province  of  Khorassan,  a  poor  woman  gave 
birth  to  a  son  who  was  named  Nadir  Koolf, 
or  the  slave  of  the  Almighty,  in  the  year 
sixteen  hundred  and  eighty-eight.  The 
child's  father  earned  his  livelihood  by  making 
sheep-skin  coats  for  the  peasants,  and  Nadir 
was  brought  up  as  a  shepherd  until  the  age 
of  thirteen,  when  his  father  died. 

An  ass  and  a  camel  were  his  only  patri- 
mony, and  he  kept  his  mother  by  gathering 
sticks  in  the  woods  and  carrying  them  to 
market. 

In  seventeen  hundred  and  four,  a  maraud- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  FIRST  SACK  OF  DELHI. 


[September  19, 1357.]       277 


ing  band  of  Toorkmans  carried  himself  and 
his  mother  away  into  slavery.  The  latter 
died  j  but  young  Nadir  escaped  after  four 
years  of  servitude,  and,  having  stolen  a  flock 
of  sheep,  fled  into  the  mountains  of  Kho- 
rassan,  and  adopted  the  life  of  a  robber.  His 
reputation  for  daring  and  bravery  soon 
spread  abroad  over  the  country.  In  seven- 
teen hundred  and  fourteen,  he  received  the 
command  of  a  large  force  from  the  governor 
of  his  native  province,  "with  which  he  re- 
pulsed sin  invasion  of  the  Toorkmans. 

At  this  time  Persia  was  groaning  under 
the  yoke  of  the  conquering  Aflghans,  and  the 
rightful  Shah  was  a  fugitive  in  the  mountains 
which  border  on  the  southern  coast  of  the 
Caspian  Sea. 

The      intrepid      robber-chief,     therefore,  j 
offered  his  services  to  his  unfortunate  sove- 
reign,   and   received  the    command    of    his 
armies.     He  now  displayed  most  extraordi- 
nary  ability,  and,  in  two  years,  had  conquered 
the  Affghans  in  several  hard-fought  battles, 
thus  completely  ridding  Persia  from  foreign 
invasion.     Shah  Tahmasp  was  restored  to  the  : 
throne,  with  the  powerful  Nadir  as  general 
of    his    armies.     But  the   ambition    of   the ; 
robber  could  never  rest  satisfied  with  the ! 
position  of  a  subject.     In  seventeen  hundred 
and  thirty-two  he  dethroned  the  Shah,  and 
in  seventeen  hundred  and  thirty-six  he  was 
proclaimed  sovereign  of    Persia   by  a  vast 
assemblage  of  chiefs  on  the  plains  of  Mogau, 
near  the  shores  of  the  Caspian. 

This  extraordinary  man  was  rude  and 
illiterate,  but  possessed  a  magical  influence 
over  the  soldiers,  and  an  intuitive  instinct  j 
which  seemed  to  point  out  to  him  the  exact 
moment  for  action.  He  was  six  feet  high, 
with  round  shoulders,  and  large  expressive 
eyes  fixed  under  a  broad  expanse  of  forehead. 
His  voice  was  thundering,  and  a  terrible 
battle-axe  was  his  favourite  weapon. 

Having  defeated  the  Turks,  and  put  down 
every  attempt  at  revolt  amongst  the  restle.-  s 
tribes  of  the  mountains  of  Persia,  Nadir 
Shah  turned  an  eye  of  longing  cupidity  on 
the  rich  but  now  almost  powerless  Indian 
empire  of  the  Great  Mogul. 

The  empire  of  the  Moguls  in  India,  which 
had  been  founded  by  the  brave  aud  learned 
Baber,  most  charming  of  autobiographers, 
had  risen  to  the  height  of  its  splendour 
during  the  reign  of  Aurungzebe,  who  died  in 
seventeen  hundred  aud  seven,  and  at  the 
time  of  Nadir's  rise  was  sunk  to  the  lowest 
ebb  of  degradation.  Mohammed  Shah,  the 
reigning  Great  Mogul,  passed  his  time  in 
sensual  pleasures  in  the  palace  of  Delhi, 
while  the  Mahratta  tribes  plundered  his 
southern  frontier,  and  the  fcjikhs  and  Eohillas 
assumed  virtual  independence  in  the  north 
and  west.  One  of  the  great  omras,  or  lords, 
who  enjoyed  the  title  ef  Nizam-ool-Moolk  I 
(regulator  of  the  state),  governed  the  im-! 
portaut  province  of  the  Deccan  ;  while  Dev- 1 
ran  Khan,  the  chief  adviser  of  the  Mogul,  i 


exposed  his  pusillanimous  weakness  by  bribing 
the  Mahrattas  with  large  sums  to  desist 
from  their  incursions. 

The  rich  and  splendid  city  of  Delhi,  tho 
centre  of  all  this  pitiable  weakness,  was 
founded  by  the  Mogul  Shah  Jehau, in  sixteen 
hundred  and  thirty-one,  on  the  west  side  of 
the  river  Jumna,  in  the  midst  of  a  fertile 
plain.  The  palace,  surrounded  by  a  wall 
thirty  feet  high,  of  reddish  stone,  is  built 
along  the  banks  of  the  river,  with  gardens 
planted  with  orange  groves  and  apricot  trees 
surrounding  it.  The  Dewan-i-khass,  or  hall 
of  audience,  was  the  chief  pride  of  the  palace, 
and  an  inscription  proclaimed,  "  If  there  be 
an  elysium  on  earth,  it  is  this — this  is  it  !" 
In  its  palmy  days  it  contained  the  famous 
throne  which  stood  on  six  legs  of  massy  gold 
set  with  rubies,  emeralds,  and  diamonds, 
while  golden  peacocks  covered  with  precious 
stones  and  pearls  formed  its  canopy.  The 
ceiling  of  this  superb  hall  consisted  of  satin 
canopies,  and  the  walls  were  hung  with  silken 
tapestries  embroidered  with  gold.  Here  the 
Great  Mogul,  surrounded  by  omras  in  gor- 
geous dresses,  gave  audiences  to  governors 
and  ambassadors.  On  these  state  occasions 
he  was  attired  in  white  satin  covered  with 
gold  embroidery,  a  turban  of  cloth  of  gold 
surmounted  by  the  figure  of  a  heron  whose 
feet  were  covered  with  large  diamonds,  and  a 
collar  of  enormous  pearls. 

The  other  chambers  of  the  palace  were  no 
less  magnificent,  and  the  vaults  were  filled 
with  countless  treasure.  The  houses  of  tho 
rich  and  luxurious  omras  beautified  the  two 
principal  streets  of  the  city,  but  the  houses 
of  the  poorer  classes  were  mean,  and  thatched 
with  straw. 

It  can  be  no  matter  for  wonder  that  these 
vast  treasures  were  coveted  by  the  victorious 
Nadir,  and  that  the  Great  Mogul  and  his 
effeminate  Court  should  have  been  suddenly 
startled,  in  the  midst  of  their  pleasures,  by 
the  news  that  a  Persian  army  was  on  the 
frontier.  1 

The  detention  of  an  ambassador  gave  a 
pretext  ,  for  invasion.  Having  captured 
Candahar,  Nadir  invested  the  city  of  Cabul, 
which  was  bravely  defended  by  a  chief  named 
Sherzih  Khan.  But  his  applications  for  aid 
were  neglected  by  the  Court  of  Delhi,  and, 
after  a  month's  siege,  Cabul  was  taken  by 
storm,  in  June,  seventeen  hundred  aud  thirty- 
eight.  The  Persian  army  then  advanced 
through  the  narrow  niountainons  passes  be- 
tween Cabul  aud'Peshawur,  and  Nadir  suc- 
ceeded in  bribing  the  warlike  Affghau  tribes 
to  remain  neutral.  He  thus  conducted  his 
forces  in  safety  through  those  dangerous 
denies,  and  captured  Peshawur.  Having 
surmounted  this  difiiculty,  the  invader  led 
his  army  across  the  Indus  at  Attock,  by 
means  of  two  iron  chains,  to  which  inflated 
skins  were  made  fast,  and  covered  with 
planks,  thus  forming  a  bridge  of  boats. 

The  Court   of  the   Mogul  was  at  length 


278       [Septunber  19, 1887J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


thoroughly  alarmed.  A  vast  army  of  two 
hundred  thousand  men,  under  the  joint  com- 
mand of  Devran  Khan  and  Nizam-ool-Moolk 
(who  hated  each  other  most  cordially),  was 
collected  outside  the  walls  of  the  capital ; 
and,  having  been  joined  by  Mohammed  Shah 
in  person,  with  a  splendid  court,  they  ad- 
vanced to  the  plain  of  Kurnaul,  about  sixty 
miles  north  of  Delhi. 

J laving  crossed  the  Indus,  Nadir  Shah 
)v><  rd  liis  army  for  a  few  days  at  Lahore,  and 
then  advanced  towards  the  plain  of  Kurnaul. 
In  twenty-eight  months  he  had  marched 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  and  more. 

At  the  same  time  the  Mogul  was  re- 
inforced by  Saadit  Khan,  a  powerful  omra, 
with  twenty  thousand  men :  but  the  vast 
assemblage  of  Indians,  without  discipline, 
valour,  or  unanimity,  had  little  chance 
against  the  veterans  of  Nadir. 

The  engagement  commenced  by  a  party  of 
six  thousand  Kurds,  who  began  to  pillage 
the  baggage  of  Saadit  Khan's  division,  on 
the  extreme  right  of  the  Indian  army. 
Devran  Khan  led  his  men  up  to  strengthen 
Saadit,  and  Nadir  advancing  at  the  same 
time  with  a  thousand  chosen  horse,  the  action 
became  warm ;  but  the  Indians,  by  the 
judicious  arrangement  of  the  Persian,  were 
also  attacked  in  flank,  their  brigade  of 
elephants  was  routed  by  the  clever  con- 
trivance of  placing  stages  full  of  blazing 
tow  on  the  backs  of  camels,  and  a  panic 
seized  their  army.  In  the  thick  of  the  light, 
Devran  Khan  was  mortally  wounded,  and 
fell  back  senseless  on  his  elephant. 

Night  put  an  end  to  the  strife,  but  only  a 
small  portion  of  the  Indian  right  wing  had 
been  engaged,  and  the  Great  Mogul  was 
desirous  of  renewing  the  battle  on  the  follow- 
ing day.  But  the  cowardly  or  treacherous 
counsel  of  Nizam-ool-Moolk  prevailed,  and 
the  Emperor  of  India  submitted  to  the  terms 
of  the  rude  conqueror. 

Mohammed  Shah,  the  following  day,  was 
conducted  to  Nadir's  tent  by  the  Persian 
vizier  Tahmasp  Khan  ;  where  he  was  re- 
ceived with  courtesy,  but  upbraided  for 
having  given  the  conqueror  the  trouble  to 
march  so  far  £o  chastise  him.  The  Mogul 
listened  with  silence  and  shame,  and  the  next 
day  the  melancholy  march  to  Delhi  com- 
menced. 

The  Great  Mogul  was  attended  by  twelve 
thousand  Persians,  followed  by  Nadir  with 
the  bulk  of  his  army,  and  in  six  days  the 
disgraced  monarch  found  himself  a  prisoner 
iu  his  own  capital.  On  the  following  morn- 
in<.',  Nadir  Shah  made  his  entry  into  the  city, 
where  every  house  was  closed,  and  proceeded 
straight  to  the  palace.  Here  the  Indian 
lords,  with  true  oriental  servility,  vied  with 
each  other  in  obsequious  flattery  of  their 
new  master.  Saadit  Khan,  alone,  preferred 
a  dose  of  poison. 

Next  day,  Tahmnsp  sent  some  Persian 
cavalry  to  open  the  granaries,  which  caused 


the  assemblage  of  a  mob,  and  several  Persians 
were  killed.  Nadir  issued  out  of  the  palace 
to  suppress  the  tumult,  but  moderation  only 
increased  the  insolence  of  the  cowardly 
Indians  ;  and  at  length  the  fierce  warrior's 
wrath  was  kindled.  He  ordered  the  whole 
city  to  be  given  up  to  pillage  and  massacre, 
and,  drawing  his  sword,  stationed  himself 
on  the  roof  of  a  mosque  with  three  gilded 
domes,  near  the  centre  of  the  city,  whence  he 
overlooked  the  work  of  destruction  in  grim 
and  sullen  silence.  He  had  ordered  that  in 
any  street  where  the  dead  body  of  a  Persian 
was  found,  no  soul  should  remain  alive. 
Neither  age  nor  sex  was  spared,  rivers  of 
blood  flowed  through  the  streets,  and  every 
house,  from  the  palace  to  the  hovel,  was 
filled  with  mourning. 

At  length  the  wretched  emperor  threw 
himself  at  Nadir's  feet  and  implored  him  to 
spare  his  people.  The  cruel  conqueror  an- 
swered that  the  Mogul's  prayer  was  granted. 
He  sheathed  his  sword,  and  the  massacre 
ceased.  It  had  lasted  from  eight  a.m.  to 
three  p.m.,  and  not  less  than  one  hundred 
and  twenty  thousand  souls,  or,  according  to 
another  account,  two  hundred  thousand,  had 
perished  ;  while  many  women  had  suffered 
most  infamous  treatment  before  they  were 
relieved  by  death. 

Next  day — under  threat  of  punishment- 
all  persons  were  ordered  to  pursue  their 
usual  employments,  and  a  festival  celebrated 
the  betrothal  of  Nadir's  second  son  to  a  niece 
of  the  Great  Mogul. 

The  etiquette  of  the  Imperial  Court  re- 
quired that  the  bridegroom  should  prove 
seven  generations  of  noble  ancestry.  "Tell 
them,"  said  Nadir,  "that  he  is  the  son  of 
Nadir,  the  son  of  the  sword,  the  grandson  of 
the  sword,  and  so  on  for  seventy — instead  of 
seven — generations,  if  they  like."  The  fallen 
monarch  was  satisfied  with  the  nobility  of 
this  terrible  pedigree. 

Tahmasp  Khan,  the  Persian  vizier,  was 
commissioned  to  inspect  the  collection  of  the 
treasure  to  be  extorted  from  the  court  and 
people  of  Delhi.  The  contributions  were 
exacted  from  high  and  low,  with  the  utmost 
rigour  ;  no  cruelties  were  left  unpractised  ; 
and  at  length  an  enormous  sum  was  amassed. 
The  jewels  taken  from  the  Mogul  himself 
and  his  nobles,  amounted  to  forty-two  million 
five  hundred  thousand  pounds  ;  the  famous 
peacock  throne  being  alone  valued  at  eleven 
million  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
pounds.  Gold  and  silver  plate,  melted  into 
large  ingots,  came  to  thirty-seven  million  five 
hundred  thousand  pounds  ;  and  other  spoils, 
consisting  of  rich  furniture,  cannon,  and 
warlike  stores,  brought  the  amount  of  the 
spoils  up  to  the  gigantic  sum  of  eighty- 
seven  million  five  hundred  thousand  pounds. 
Another  account  gives  it  at  seventy  million 
pounds  ;  and  the  lowest  estimate  is  con- 
siderably above  thirty  millions. 

This  wholesale  spoliation  gives  some  idea 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  DEBTOE'S  BEST  FRIEND. 


[September  19, 1857-]      279 


of  the  splendour  of  the  Court  of  Delhi,  pre- 
vious to  the  ruinous  invasion  of  the  Persians. 

Before  leaving  Delhi,  Nadir  SUah  replaced 
the  crown  on  the  head  of  the  Great  Mogul 
with  his  own  hand,  and  gave  him  a  long  lec- 
ture on  the  government  of  India,  conducting 
•with  these  alarming  -words  :  "  If  necessary,  I 
can  be  with  you,  myself,  in  forty  days  from 
Candahar.  Never  reckon  me  far  off." 

On  the  fourth  of  May,  seventeen  hundred 
and  thirty-nine,  the  conqueror  mustered  his 
army  in  the  gardens  of  Shalimar,  on  the  north 
side  of  Delhi,  with  a  vast  train  of  camels, 
horses,  and  elephants  laden  with  the  spoils, 
and  the  following  day  he  commenced  his 
inarch  towards  Persia. 

It  is  estimated  that,  besides  the  treasure 
taken  away,  the  Indians  lost  thirty  million 
pounds  by  damage  done  to  houses  burnt  and 
fields  laid  waste.  At  least  two  hundred 
thousand  human  beings  perished  in  this  ter- 
rible visitation ;  forty  thousand  between 
Peshawur  and  Kurnaul,  one  hundred  and  ten 
thousand  in  the  massacre,  and  fifty  thousand 
by  a  famine  caused  by  the  ravages  of  the 
invaders. 

It  would  have  been  well,  for  the  fame  of  the 
once  mighty  family  of  Timour,  if  Mohammed 
Shah  had  fallen,  sword  in  hand,  at  Kurnaul,  in- 
stead of  lingering  on  a  disgraced  existence  in 
his  ruined  capital.  His  pitiable  descendants 
sank  lower  and  lowei-,  first  in  the  power  of 
Afghans  and  Mahrattas,  then  as  pensioners 
of  the  British  government;  and  now  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  mighty  Timour,  the  accom- 
plished Shah  Eokh,  the  brave  and  learned 
Baber,  and  the  magnificent  Aurungzebe,  has 
become  the  miserable  puppet  of  that  gang  of 
inhuman  miscreants  who  await  their  doom  in 
the  city  of  Delhi. 

Nadir  Shah  returned  to  Persia  with  his 
vast  treasure,  and  deposited  it  in  the  castle 
of  Kelat,  close  to  the  place  of  his  birth,  and 
Meshed,  the  capital  of  his  native  province  of 
Khorassan,  became  his  capital.  But  the  rob- 
bery of  the  riches  of  Delhi  proved  a  curse  to 
him.  From  the  time  of  his  return,  he  became 
avaricious,  and  so  unjust  and  cruel  that  his 
tyranny  at  length  became  intolerable. 

In  the  year  seventeen  hundred  and  forty- 
seven,  he  encamped  his  army  on  the  plains  of 
Sultan  Meydan,  about  a  day's  journey  north- 
west of  Meshed  ;  where  he  meditated,  with 
the  assistance  of  his  Unbeg  and  Toorkman 
forces,  the  massacre  of  all  the  Persians  whose 
fidelity  he  suspected. 

But  the  plot  was  overheard,  and  recoiled 
upon  himself.  At  dead  of  night  an  officer 
named  Saleh  Beg  passed  the  guard,  and 
having  discovered  Nadir's  tent,  cut  him  with 
a  sabre  while  asleep.  The  tyrant  sprang  up  ; 
but,  in  retiring  from  the  tent,  he  tripped 
over  the  cords,  and  Saleh  gave  him  a  mortal 
wound. 

"  Spare  me,"  he  cried,  "  and  I  will  forgive 
you  all ! " 

The  assassin  answered : 


"You  have  not  shown  any  mercy,  and 
therefore  merit  none." 

His  head  was  sent  to  his  nephew  Ali 
Kooli ;  but  the  courier  lost  it  on  the  road, 
and,  to  screen  his  negligence,  substituted 
that  of  some  other  man.  The  body  was 
buried  at  Meshed,  under  a  small  tomb  with 
a  garden  planted  round  it  ;  but  the  founder 
of  the  present  reigning  dynasty  of  Persia, 
whose  family  had  been  persecuted  by  the 
mighty  conqueror,  desecrated  his  tomb,  de- 
stroyed the  garden,  dug  up  his  body,  and 
placed  his  bones  under  the  steps  of  the  throne 
at  Teheran,  that  all  who  passed  might  trample 
on  them.  Over  his  grave  at  Meshed  some 
industrious  peasant  has  planted  a  crop  of 
turnips. 

THE  DEBTOE'S  BEST  FEIEND. 

THE  philanthropist  whom  I  have  ventured 
to  distinguish  by  this  title,  flourished  at  the 
beginning  of  the  last  century,  and  enrolled 
himself  among  the  ranks  of  English  authors  by 
writing  a  book,  which  I  purpose  to  examine 
briefly,  with  a  view  to  the  reader's  edifica- 
tion on  the  subject  of  imprisonment  for  debt, 
as  it  was  practised  more  than  a  century  ago. 
The  work  is  called  "  An  Accurate  Descrip- 
tion of  Newgate,  with  the  rights,  privileges, 
allowances,  fees,  dues,  and  customs  thereof ; 
together  with  a  parallel  between  the  Master 
Debtors'  side  of  the  said  prison,  and  the 
several  Sponging-houses  in  the  County  of 
Middlesex.  Wherein  are  set  forth  the  cheap- 
ness of  living,  civility,  sobriety,  tranquillity, 
liberty  of  conversation,  and  diversions  of  the 
former,  and  the  expensive  living,  incivility, 
extortions,  close  confinement,  and  abuses  of 
the  latter.  Together  with  a  faithful  account 
of  the  impositions  of  Bailiffs  and  their  vile 
usage  of  all  such  unfortunate  persons  as  fall 
into3  their  hands.  Written  for  the  public 
good,  by  B.  L.,  of  Twickenham." 

Under  these  mysterious  initials  does  the 
Debtor's  Best  Friend,  with  the  modesty  of 
true  merit,  hide  himself  from  discovery  by  a 
grateful  public.  In  the  first  pages  of  his 
work  he  apologises  for  the  lively  sympathy 
with  insolvent  humanity  which  induced  him 
to  turn  author,  in  these  terms  : — "  I  am  not 
insensible  that  many  persons  who  perfectly 
know  me  will  be  not  a  little  surprised  to  see 
my  first  public  appearance  in  a  treatise  of  this 
kind,  which  is  so  infinitely  foreign  from  those 
eminent  parts  of  Mathematics  and  Philosophy 
in  which,  for  many  years  past,  I  have  been 
familiarly  conversant."  Here,  then,  is  a  pro- 
found mathematician  and  philosopher,  per- 
fectly acquainted  (as  we  shall  soon  see)  with 
the  insides  of  sponging-houses  and  the  habits 
of  bailiffs  ;  resident  (when  at  large)  in  the 
delightful  seclusion  of  Twickenham,  at  the 
commencement  of  the  last  century ;  and  pub- 
licly willing  to  acknowledge  that  his  initials 
are'  B.  L.  A  more  interesting  subject  of 
literary  investigation  than  an  inquiry  after 


280       [September  13.  1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


the  name  of  tliis  illustrious  and  anonymous 
man,  it  is  himlly  possible  to  conceive.  When 
learned  and  eminent  antiquarians  have  settled 
the  question  whether  Shakspeare's  Plays 
•\\vre  written  by  Shakspeare,  and  when  they 
have  also  found  out,  for  positively  the  last 
time,  who  Juiiius  actually  was,  will  they  be 
so  obliging  as  to  grapple  with  the  mystery 
of  B.  L. ?  The  writer  of  these  lines 
abandons  the  new  voyage  of  literary  disco- 
very to  their  superior  spirit  of  enterprise  ; 
and,  abstaining  from  any  further  digression 
about  the  anonymous  author  of  Twickenham, 
returns  to  the  work  which  B.  L.  has  left  behind 
him,  and  to  that  special  part  of  it  which  is 
devoted  to  the  parallel  between  the  Sponging- 
houses  of  Middlesex,  and  the  Debtors'  side  of 
Newgate  Prison,  in  the  year  seventeen  huu- 
'dred  and  twenty-four. 

Will  the  reader — the  gentle  and  solvent 
reader — be  so  good  as  to  imagine  that  he  was 
alive  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago,  and  that 
he  was  arrested  for  debt  1  Perhaps  the 
favour  is  too  great  to  ask  ;  perhaps  the  sug- 
gestion may  give  offence.  It  will  be  fitter 
and  better  if  the  writer  places  himself,  purely 
for  the  sake  of  illustrating  the  parallel  of 
B.  L.,  in  a  position  of  supposititious  insol- 
vency, and  breaks  down  under  pressure  of  his 
tradesman's  bills,  in  the  year  seventeen  hun- 
dred and  twenty-four.  Very  good.  I  wear, 
let  us  say,  a  long  wig  and  a  short  sword  ; 
broad  coat-skirts  spread  out  with  buck- 
ram ;  little  breeches,  hidden  at  the  top  by 
the  ends  of  my  waistcoat,  and  at  the  bottom 
by  my  long  stockings,  pulled  up  over  my 
knees.  I  have  had,  'fore  Gad,  sir  !  a  wild 
night  of  it, — have  got  drunk,  bullied  citizens, 
frightened  their  wives,  beaten  the  watch,  and 
reeled  home  to  bed  with  my  sword  broken 
and  half  my  embroidery  scratched  off  my 
coat-ciiffs.  After  a  heavy  sleep,  I  am  just 
cooling  my  fevered  tongue  with  a  morning 
draught  of  small  beer,  when,  plague  take  it ! 
who  should  come  in  on  the  heels  of  my  little 
black  page  bearing  my  Indian  dressing-gown, 
but  the  bailiff  with  my  arrest-warrant.  Re- 
sistance is  hopeless.  I  use  the  necessary 
imprecations.  The  bailiff  gives  me  the  neces- 
sary tap  on  the  shoulder,  and  asks  where  I 
•will  go — to  Newgate  or  to  the  spouging- 
house '{  The  treatise  of  B.  L.  has  unhappily 
not  attracted  my  attention.  I  am  unac- 
quainted with  the  important  truth,  divulged 
for  my  benefit  by  the  Debtor's  Best  Friend, 
that  Newgate  offers  me,  with  the  one  trifling 
exception  of  liberty,  all  the  charms  of  home 
on  the  most  moderate  terms.  The  very  name 
of  the  famous  prison  terrifies  me.  I  weakly 
imagine  that  the  spouging-house  is  more 
genteel,  more  luxurious,  more  fit,  in  every 
way,  for  a  man  of  my  condition ;  and  to  the 
sponging-house  I  declare  that  I  will  go. 

On  the  way  to  our  destination,  the  bailiff 
(B.  L.  calls  him  a  Crocodile,  among  other 
hard  names)  insists  on  stopping  at  a  tavern, 
under  pretence  of  waiting  to  see  if  I  can  pro- 


cure bail.  Here,  the  Crocodile  and  his 
followers  (called  Swine  by  B.  L.)  "plentifully 
swig  and  carouse"  (vide  Treatise)  at  my 
expense.  When  I  have  paid  the  whole 
reckoning,  no  matter  whether  I  have  taken 
any  drink  myself  or  not,  I  am  politely  carried 
on  to  the  sponginp-house,  and  am  told,  all  the 
way,  what  a  horrible  place  Newgate  is, and  how 
grateful  I  ought  to  be  to  my  kind  Crocodiles 
and  Swine  for  saving  me  from  incarceration 
in  the  county  gaol.  Arrived  at  the  spong- 
ing-house, I  am  received  with  the  greatest 
civility ;  and  my  dear  friend,  the  bailiff 
(without  troubling  me  with  any  previous 
consultation  on  the  subject)  orders,  at  my  ex- 
pense, a  bottle  of  wine  and  half-a-dozen  roast 
fowls.  This  banquet  prepared,  he  and  all 
his  crocodile  family,  together  with  the  whole 
herd  of  unconscionable  swine  in  attendance 
on  them,  sit  down  to  table,  leaving  me  the 
lowest  and  worst  place,  cutting,  carving, 
raking,  tearing  the  fowls  in  the  most  unman- 
nerly way,  helping  everybody  before  me, 
absorbing  wings,  breasts,  merrythoughts  and 
thighs,  and  leaving  nothing  to  my  share  but 
the  drumsticks  and  the  bones.  When  the 
wine  is  all  drunk,  and  the  fowls  are  all  eaten, 
the  head  of  the  crocodiles  winks  at  the  head 
of  the  swine,  and  each  declares  that  he  has 
got  the  colic.  The  families  on  either  side 
catch  the  infection  of  that  distressing  malady 
immediately,  and  brandy  is  called  for  (medi- 
cinally), and  again  at  my  expense.  After 
the  sharp  pangs  of  colic  have  been  sufficiently 
assuaged,  the  table  is  cleared.  Pipes,  tobacco, 
and  a  bowl  of  punch  (price  half-a-guinea  in 
the  sponging-house  ;  price  three  and  sixpence 
out  of  doors)  are  ordered  by  the  company  for 
themselves,  in  my  name.  While  my  free 
guests  are  drinking,  I,  their  prisoner-host, 
am  called  on  to  amuse  them  by  telling  the 
story  of  my  misfortunes.  When  the  bowl  is 
empty,  I  am  carried  off  to  my  own  room,  and 
am  visited  there,  shortly  after,  on  private 
business,  by  the  head  crocodile,  with  his  pipe 
in  his  mouth.  His  present  object  is  to  inform 
me  that  my  paying  the  bill  for  the  wine, 
fowls,  brandy,  pipes,  tobacco,  and  punch,  has 
not  by  any  means  freed  me  from  my  obliga- 
tions to  his  kindness,  and  that  I  must  posi- 
tively go  to  Newgate  at  once,  unless  I  settle 
forthwith  what  I  am  going  to  pay  him  in  the 
way  of  Civility-money.  My  doctor  has  a  fee 
for  giving  me  physic  ;  why  should  my  bailiff 
not  have  a  fee  for  treating  me  kindly  1  He 
declines  to  mention  any  precise  amount,  but 
he  laughs  in  my  face  if  I  offer  less  than  a 
guinea,  and  I  may  consider  myself  very 
lucky  if  he  does  not  take  from  me  three 
times  that  sum.  If  I  submit  to  this  extor- 
tion, and  if  I  am  sufficiently  liberal  after- 
wards in  the  matter  of  brandy,  I  am  treated 
with  a  certain  consideration.  If  I  object  to 
be  swindled,  I  am  locked  up  in  one  small 
filthy  room  ;  am  left  without  attendance, 
whenever  I  happen  to  knock  or  call,  by  the 
hour  together  ;  am  denied  every  necessary  of 


Cl.grlcs  Dickens.] 


THE  DEBTOR'S  BEST  FRIEND. 


[September  19, 1S57.]        281 


life  ;  am  "scoffed  and  snapped  at,  and  used, 
in  short,  with  a  great  deal  of  ill  manners." 

My  Civility-money  being  paid,  I  am  charged 
two  shillings  for  my  first  night's  lodging. 
(The  reader  will  be  good  enough  to  remem- 
ber, whenever  money  is  spoken  of,  that  the 
value  of  a  shilling,  a  century  and  a  quarter 
ago,  was  a  very  different  thing  from  the  value 
of  a  shilling  at  the  present  day.)  For  every 
night's  lodging  afterwards  I  am  charged  one 
shilling,  and  for  my  firing  one  shilling  also 
per  diem.  This  is  about  six  times  the  real 
value  of  the  latter  article  of  convenience; 
and  yet,  forgetful  of  the  large  profit  he  gets 
out  of  me,  my  excellent  friend,  the  bailiff 
(B.  L.,  after  calling  him  a  Crocodile  for  five 
pages,  varies  the  epithet  at  the  sixth,  and 
speaks  of  him  as  a  Cannibal),  comes  in  at ' 
eight  o'clock  every  night  and  puts  out  my  j 
fire  and  extinguishes  my  candle,  whether  I  i 
am  ready  to  go  to  bed  at  that  early  hour  or  j 
not.'  Finally,  when  I  retire  for  the  night,  it ' 
is  more  than  probable  that  I  shall  find  I! 
have  to  share  my  bed  with  one — sometimes,  j 
even,  with  two — of  my  fellow-debtors  ;  the  j 
cannibal's  only  object  being  to  prey,  to  the 
utmost  possible  extent,  upon  his  prisoners' 
purses,  and  to  give  them  as  little  comfort  and 
convenience  in  return  as  he  possibly  can. 
_  At  breakfast,  the  next  morning,  I  pay  four 
times  as  much  as  I  ought  for  my  tea,  coffee, 
or  chocolate.  I  am  charged  a  shilling  for 
bread,  cheese,  or  butter.  The  regular  con- 
tract price  for  my  dinner  is  two  shillings,  or 
three  shillings,  or  as  much  more  as  will  in- 
clude the  expense  of  the  cannibal-bailiff's 
meal  along  with  mine.  If  he  has  a  wife  and 
daughters  I  pay  more,  because  the  tea  and 
sugar  for  the  ladies  becomes,  in  that  case,  a 
necessary  part  of  my  bill.  If  I  complain, 
dreadful  threats  of  calling  a  coach  and  taking 
me  to  Newgate  forthwith,  silence  me  in  a 
moment,  I  must  object  to  nothing — not  even 
to  the  quality  of  the  liquors  of  which  I  con- 
sume such  large  quantities  by  deputy.  Though 
the  brandy  is  "a  composition  of  diverse 
spirituous  liquids,"  though  "  the  Geneva  is 
fourpence  per  quartern,  and  short  in  mea- 
sure," though  "  the  wine  is  horrid  base,"  I 
must  still  pay  hugely  for  all,  and  be  particu- 
larly careful,  on  every  occasion,  to  hold  my 
tongue.  If  I  want  to  vent  my  repressed 
feelings  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  I  must  first 
beg  and  pray  for  liberty  to  compose  that 
document,  and  must  then  pay  double  price  to 
the  messenger  who  takes  it  to  its  address.  li 
I  only  give  him  a  penny  to  put  it  into  the 
post-office,  he  indignantly  puts  it  into  the 
fire  instead.  Even  when  I  fee  him  liberally 
he,  or  some  other  among  the  swine,  croco- 
diles, and  cannibals  of  the  establishment, 
opens  my  letter  and  reads  it,  and  declines  to 
deliver  it  if  there  is  anything  that  he  hap- 
pens to  dislike,  or  to  consider  as  personally 
offensive  in  the  contents.  He  takes  a  pre-| 
cisely  similar  liberty  with  any  letters  which  j 
my  friends  send  to  me,  unless  they  are  wise  i 


enough  to  have  them  delivered  straight  into 
my  own  hands.  Last  and  sorest  aggravation 
of  all,  I  am  charged  half-a-crown  a  day  for 
the  luxury  of  having  a  bailiff's  follower  to 
look  me  up  in  my  room,  with  a  shilling  a  day 
extra  for  the  victuals  which  the  monster 
eats. 

Against  this  exposure  of  the  cruelty  and 
extortion  of  a  sponging-house,  the  Debtor's 
Best  Friend  sets  the  companion-picture  of  the 
hospitality,  the  economy,  and  the  happiness 
of  Newgate ;  earnestly  and  affectionately 
entreating  all  his  embarrassed  fellow-crea- 
tures to  flock  to  that  delightful  prison  for 
the  future,  whenever  they  are  arrested  by 
their  unfeeling  creditors.  How  different  are 
the  events,  how  varied  is  the  scene  on  the 
new  stage  !  I  am  arrested,  we  will  say,  again 
— or,  no,  let  the  reader  take  his  turn  now, 
for  the  writer  has  surely  suffered  enough  in 
the  sponging-house  to  justify  him  in  resuming, 
at  this  point  of  the  narrative,  his  natural 
character  of  a  solvent  man.  With  your  kind 
permission,  therefore,  you,  reader,  arearrested, 
this  time.  You  have  read  the  inestimable 
Treatise  of  B.  L.  Thanks  to  the  warning  of 
that  philanthropic  man,  you  are  too  sharp  to 
be  deceived  as  I  have  been. ;  and  when  the 
bailiff  taps  you  on  the  shoulder,  and  asks  you 
where  you  will  go,  you  answer  with  a  prompt- 
ness that  confounds  the  fellow  :  "  Crocodile  ! 
to  Newgate.  Cannibal !  to  my  happy  home 
in  my  county  gaol."  You  are  taken  to  the 
Lodge  at  Newgate,  informing  the  inferior 
swine  all  the  way  that  not  one  of  them  will 
get  half-a-crown  a  day  for  keeping  you.  The 
Turnkey  advances  to  meet  you,  with  friendly 
sympathy  beaming  in  every  line  of  his  re- 
spectable and  attractive  face.  You  pay  him 
six  shillings  and  sixpence,  which  is  all  the 
Civility-money  he  expects  from  you.  You 
pass  on  to  your  Ward,  and  pay  ten  and  six- 
pence more  to  the  Steward — generally  selected 
from  among  the  ranks  of  the  most  charming 
and  accomplished  men  of  the  age  in  which  he 
lives.  Out  of  this  sum  he  distributes  two 
shillings  among  the  Prisoners  of  your  Ward 
— who  love  you  as  their  brother  in  return. 
The  remaining  eight  and  sixpence  goes  into 
the  pocket  of  the  steward,  and  for  that  small 
srnn  he  supplies  you  with  good  fires,  candles, 
salt,  and  brooms,  during  the  whole  time  of 
your  imprisonment,  no  matter  how  long  it 
may  be.  Compare  this  with  the  sponging- 
house,  where  I  paid  a  shilling  a  day  for  iny 
fire  and  candle,  and  was  left  in  the  dark  every 
evening  at  eight  o'clock  ! 

As  for  your  meals  in  Newgate,  it  is 
a  luxury  only  to  think  of  them.  You 
mess  sociably  with  the  prisoners  of  your 
Ward  who  have  had  your  two  shillings 
divided  among  them,  and  who  love  you 
like  a  brother  in  return.  You  have 
an  excellent  dinner  of  roast  or  boiled ; 
you  pay  fourpence  or,  at  most,  sixpence  for 
it ;  and  you  order  what  you  like  to  drink  and 
are  not  required  to  pay  for  a  drop  more  than 


282       [September  19,  i«7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOIIDS. 


[Conducted  by 


you  have  actually  consumed.  When  your 
free  and  solvent  friends  from  outside  come 
to  pay  you  a  visit,  they  are  allowed  access  to 
you  from  eight  iu  the  morning  till  nine  at 
night,  you  are  at  perfect  liberty  to  talk  to 
them  as  long  as  you  please,  and  need  have  no 
fear  that  any  prison  authority  will  be  mean 
enough  to  listen  outside  your  door.  When  I 
was  in  the  spougiug-house,  and  when  my 
friends  came  to  see  me,  a  crocodile  with  his 
ear  at  the  key-hole  was  part  of  the  necessary 
furniture  of  the  establishment.  Oh,  the  hap- 
piness of  being  in  Newgate  !  you  remember 
how  my  letters  were  treated  by  the  swine  of 
the  spouging-house  ?  Your  letters  are  carried 
for  you  with  the  swiftest  despatch  by  the 
safest  of  special  messengers  for  any  small 
gratuity  you  please  to  offer.  Oh,  the  privi- 
lege of  inhabiting  one's  county  gaol !  Can 
words  describe  your  life  of  comfort  and 
economy  as  contrasted  with  my  wretched 
existence  of  squalor  and  expense  ?  No,  words 
cannot  describe  it ;  but  the  superior  elo- 
quence of  figures  may  compass  the  achiev- 
ment.  Let  us,  to  complete  the  parallel, 
examine  and  compare  (under  the  authority 
of  B.  L.)  the  respective  daily  bills  that  you 
and  I  have  to  pay — I  for  staying  four  and 
twenty  hours  in  a  spongiug-house  :  you,  for 
staying  four  and  twenty  hours  in  the  Debtors' 
side  of  Newgate  prison. 

This  is  the  Bill  paid  by  the  insolvent  author 
to  the  Cannibal  of  a  Spougiug-House  in  the 
year  seventeen  hundred  and  twenty-four,  for 
one  night's  lodging  and  one  day's  expense  : 

£   s.    d. 

For  my  night's  lodging       .         .020 

For  niy  breakfast  .          ..010 

For  one  quart  of  drink  at  my 
breakfast,  of  which  I  did  not 
swallow  one  drop  .  .  .004 

For  half-a-pint  of  brandy,  which 
likewise  never  approached  my 
lips 014 

For  my  dinner          .         .         .020 

For  my  drink  at  dinner :  one 
glass  to  me,  and  all  the  vest 
to  the  bailiff  .  .  ..020 

Brandy  after  dinner,  half-a-pint : 
entirely  used  in  assuaging  the 
bailiff's  colic  .  .  .014 

Tobacco  and  pipes  :  to  quiet  the 
bailiffs  nerves  after  lie  had  re- 
covered from  the  colic  ..010 

My  keeper's  dinner  (and  a  much 

better  one  than  mine)  .  .010 

My  keeper's  day's  attendance  on 

me 026 

My  supper        .          .         .         .010 

My  drink  at  supper       .         ..008 

Brandy  at  supper  :  for  the 

keeper's  colic  .  .  .014 

My  total         .    .     0  17     6 

This  is  the  Bill  paid  by  the  insolvent  reader 
to  the  paternal  authorities  of  Newgate,  in  the 
year  seventeen  hundred  and  twenty-four,  for 
one  night's  lodging  and  one  day's  expense : 


£   *.  d. 

For  your  night's  lodging    .         .004^ 
For  your  breakfast        .         .     .     0     0     3£ 
For  your  dinner        .         .         .     0     0     (i 
For  your  supper  .         .         ..004 
For  your  drink,  all  day,  allowing 

you  three  quarts  of  beer,  and 

remembering  that  none  of  your 

keepers  are  officially  attacked 

with  colic  .         .         .009 


Your  total 


,.023 


From  this  comparison  of  bills  it  appears 
that  you  save  (in  the  year  seventeen  hun- 
dred and  twenty-four)  fifteen  shillings  and 
three-pence  a  flay  by  going  straight  to  New- 
gate instead  of  going  into  a  sponging-house. 
Having  carried  his  parallel  safely  forward 
to  this  striking  and  unanswerable  result, 
B.  L.  wisely  leaves  his  facts  and  figures  to 
speak  for  themselves,  and  closes  that  park 
of  his  Treatise  which  has  established  his 
claim  to  the  honorable  title  of  The  Debtor's 
Best  b'riend.  It  would  be  a  curious  sub- 
ject for  investigation  to  ascertain  how  far 
the  parallel  instituted  by  B.  L.  might  hold 
good  in  the  present  day.  The  author  can 
only  excuse  himself  for  not  making  the  in- 
quiry, by  confessing,  to  his  shame,  that  he 
has  not  public  spirit  enough  to  qualify  him- 
self for  properly  collecting  the  necessary 
facts,  by  becoming  a  debtor  and  entering  a 
sponging-house.  He  is  as  anxious,  iu  his 
way,  as  the  anonymous  "  B.  L.,  of  Twick- 
enham" to  promote  "the  public  good,"  bub 
his  patriotism  has  its  limits,  and  he  finds 
that  bailiffs  and  turnkeys  stand  at  some 
distance  on  the  outer  side  of  his  mental 
boundary-line.  Having  confessed  his  weak- 
ness in  these  plain  terms,  he  will  ask  per- 
mission to  abandon  the  topic  of  imprison- 
ment for  debt,  content  with  having  given 
the  reader  some  idea  of  the  abuses  of 
sponging-houses  and  the  merits  of  county 
gaols  in  the  last  century,  and  perfectly 
willing  to  resign  the  honour  of  discussing 
the  subject  in  its  modern  bearings,  to  any 
other  gentleman  who  can  speak  from  that 
superior  position  of  practical  experience  to 
which  he  most  devoutly  hopes  that  he  himself 
may  never  attain.  


THOB  AND  THE  GIANTS. 


A  PORTION  of  the  Edda,  or  chief  religious 
book  of  the  Pagan  Scandinavians,  is  en 
grossed  by  the  adventures  on  earth  of  the 
God  Thor,  the  Thunderer,  who  seems  to 
combine  some  of  the  attributes  of  the  Greek 
Jupiter  and  Hercules.  Like  the  former,  he 
was  the  mightiest  of  the  Gods,  at  least  iu  the 
estimation  of  some  of  the  northern  nations, 
though  others  regarded  Odin  as  the  chief, — • 
like  the  latter,  he  went  about  from  land  to  land 
performing  extraordinary  feats  of  valour  and 
clearing  the  world  of  evil  things.  There  svas 
something  of  a  celestial  prize-fighter  charac- 
ter about  him,  as  there  was  about  the  per- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THOR  AND  THE  GIANTS. 


[September  19, 1S57-]       2S3 


former  of  the  Twelve  Labours  ;  but  lie  was 
revered  by  the  old  Scandinavians  as  a  divine 
embodiment  of  strength  and  courage  working 
towards  noble  ends.  Worshipped,  ages  ago, 
as  a  heavenly  being  veritably  existing  in  some 
far-off  Paradise,  he  has  now  passed  into  the 
region  of  phantoms  and  dead  faiths  ;  but  he 
has  left  his  mark  on  Europe.  We  call  a 
day  of  the  week  after  him  to  this  moment, 
and  scholars  write  books  to  explain  his  wor- 
ship and  his  attributes. 


great  giants  and  wild  beasts,  and  other 
strange  creatures),  and  stood  at  the  entry 
until  the  noise  ceased,  and  the  echoes  sick- 
ened and  died  among  the  mountains.  After 
this  the  four  companions  slept  quietly  until 
morning. 

Now,  when  the  light  began  to  dawn,  Thor 
walked  out,  and  lo  !  he  saw,  coming  towards 
him,  a  giant  very  grim  and  terrible,  whose 
height  and  breadth  were  marvellous  to  be- 
hold. And  Thor  said  to  this  giant  (whose 


One  of  the  most  striking  stories  related  of  j  snoring  during  the  night  was  what  they  had 
him  in  the  Edda,  is  that  which  refers  to  his  i  heard),  "  What  is  thy  name  ? "  The  giant  told 


adventures  in  the  Laud  of  the  Giants.  It 
appears  to  have  been  the  origin  of  all  the 
northern  fairy-tales  in  which  portentously 
big  men  are  introduced ;  and  one  of  its 
incidents  manifestly  suggested  a  trick  played 
by  our  old  friend  Jack  the  Giant- Killer  on 
his  treacherous  host,  the  Welsh  monster — a 
trick  which,  in  the  days  of  long  ago,  used  to 
excite  in  us  a  mingled  feeling  of  appi'ehen- 
siou  and  merriment.  Giauts  are  very  com- 
mon in  Scandinavian  fuble  and  mythology. 
The  first  inhabitants  of  the  world,  according 
to  the  Edda,  were  giants,  the  chief  of  whom 
— Yrnir — was  slain  by  Odin  and  the  other 
sons  of  Bor,  who  converted  his  body  into  the 
earth,  his  blood  into  the  sea,  his  bones  into 
mountains,  his  teeth  into  rocks,  his  hair  into 
trees,  his  skull  into  the  heavens,  and  his 
brains  into  clouds.  At  the  same  time,  all 
the  other  giants  were  destroyed,  excepting 
one,  from  whom  we  may  imagine  proceeded 
those  Titanic  anomalies  which,  in  subsequent 
ages,  lurked  in  caverns  and  lonely  places 
until  exterminated  by  the  knights-errant  and 
other  heroes  of  mediaeval  romance. 

Our  present  purpose,  however,  is  not  to 
discourse  about  these  matters,  but  to  recite 
the  story  of  Thor  and  the  giants, 

It  happened,  in  the  early  ages  of  the  world, 
that  the  God  Thor  and  his  two  male  com- 


hiiu  his  name  was  Skrymir.  "  But,"  he  added, 
"  I  need  not  ask  thy  name,  for  I  know  thou 
art  the  God  Thor."  He  then  asked  Thor  if 
he  had  seen  his  glove  lying  about.  Thor  said 
he  had  not ;  but,  anon,  the  giant  stretched 
forth  his  hand,  and  took  up  the  house  where- 
in they  had  been  sleeping,  as  any  ordinary 
man  might  a  bird-cage  ;  and  then  Thor  per- 
ceived that  that  was  the  giant's  glove,  and 
not  a  mansion,  as  he  had  supposed  ;  and  that 
the  side  chamber  in  which  his  companions 
had  taken  refuge  was  the  thumb.  But,  pre- 
sently, agreeing  that  they  would  all  join 
company,  Thor  threw  his  wallet  over  his 
shoulder,  and  they  set  out.  They  passed 
through  many  strange  countries,  and  over 
great  rugged  mountains,  and  across  valleys, 
and  through  black  forests  of  oak  and  pine 
trees,  where  the  wild  creatures  leapt  up  from 
their  lairs  and  secret  dwellings,  and  fled  be- 
fore them  like  gusts  of  wind.  But  every  place 
was  solitary  and  deserted,  as  far  as  human 
creatures  were  concerned  ;  and  the  laud  ap- 
peared as  if  it  slept  under  enchantment,  and 
the  silence  that  drooped  heavily  over  all  things 
seemed  to  sing  and  whisper  in  their  ears. 

And  so  they  inarched  all  day  till  night 
came  round  again,  and  they  found  themselves 
in  a  deep  forest :  wherefore,  and  because  of 
the  darkness,  they  laid  them  down  beneath 


the  trees,   and  rested. 


panions,   Thialfi  and  Loki,   and  his  female  |  sayed  to  undo  his  wallel 


companion,  Easka,  were  wandering  about 
from  place  to  place  iu  search  of  adven- 
tures. One  day,  after  they  had  been 
walking  man)-  miles,  they  found  themselves, 


Presently,  Thor  es- 
but  could  not  ;  and, 


being  enraged  at  the  giant  (whom  he  accused 
in  his  mind  of  having  tampered  with  the 
knots),  he  seized  his  mallet,  and  launched  it 
at  Skrymir's  head.  But  Skrymir  only  turned 


about  night-fall,    in  a  great  open   country  |  in  his  sleep,  and  asked,  "  What  leaf  has  fallen 
which  seemed  all  waste,  and  silent,  and  soli-  on  me  ?  "     Then  Thor,  answering  nothing, 


tary.  However,  after  much  wandering,  they 
lit  upon  a  vast  empty  house,  and  entering  the 
gate  (which  was  of  so  prodigious  a  size  that  it 
occupied  one  whole  side  of  the  building), 
slept  there  soundly  for  a  time.  But,  in  the 
middle  of  the  night,  there  came  upon  them  a 


went  beneath  an  oak  tree,  and  tried  to  sleep  ; 
and  his  three  companions  also  retired  under 
the  shelter  of  overhanging  branches,  and  fell 
straightway  into  deep  repose.  But  sleep 
came  not  to  the  weary  eyelids  of  Thor  ;  for 
the  snoring  of  the  giant,  as  on  the  previous 


sound  of  roaring,  as  when  the  sea- waves  j  night,  made  such  gusty  clamours  up  and 
wrestle  with  the  winds  on  the  wild  northern  i  down  the  dark  avenues  of  the  wood,  that  it 
shores.  And  the  walls  of  the  house  were  j  was  as  if  a  tempest  had  hurtled  round  the 
violently  shaken  therewith,  and  the  earth  place.  And  Thor  lay  listening  to  the  horrible 
quaked  beneath  them,  and  the  caverns  in  riot,  and  the  no  less  horrible  echoes,  that 
some  mountains  nigh  at  hand  gave  back  the  |  leapt  up  barking  from  the  black  distances, 
sound  in  a  very  strange  and  ghostly  iashion.  '•  as  if  the  hell-wolf  Fenrir  were  there  with  a 
So  Thor's  three  companions  crept  into  a  side  thousand  throats  ;  and  anon  his  heart  swelled 
chamber  for  safety  ;  but  Thor  caught  up  his  within  him  with  the  greatness  of  his  wrath, 
heavy  mallet  (wherewith  he  had  slain  many  and  he  wished  that  Skrymir  were  iu  the 


284       [September  19, 1«57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  br 


lowest  ]>it  of  Niflheira  (abode  of  anguish). 
And  in  the  midst  of  his  wrath  he  rose,  and, 
nigh  blind  with  passion,  dashed  hia  mallet 
iuto  the  giant's  skull,  insomuch  that  it  sank 
up  to  the  handle.  But  Skrymir  only  turned 
as  before,  and  cried,  "  What  grain  of  dust 
has  fallen  on  my  head  ? "  Whereupon,  Thor, 
being  utterly  astounded,  went  back  beneath 
the  oak  ;  and,  watching  the  giant  till  he  was 
asleep  again,  essayed  once  more  to  crush  his 
skull  to  dust.  Grasping  his  mallet  with  both 
hands  till  the  knuckles  became  white,*  he 
launched  the  weapon  at  Skrymir's  head,  as 
if  it  had  been  a  thunderbolt  out  of  Valhalla  ; 
but  the  giant  only  rose  to  his  feet,  and  called 
out,  "The  feather  of  some  small  bird  has 
dropt  upon  my  cheek."  Then,  perceiving  it 
was  day,  he  forbore  to  lie  down  again  ;  and, 
telling  Thor  and  his  three  companions  that 
they  were  not  far  from  the  city  of  Utgard,  he 
gave  them  a  few  words  of  advice.  "  If  you 
think  of  going  thither,"  he  said,  "  I  would 
recommend  you  not  to  be  too  forward  or  self- 
confident  ;  for  the  followers  of  Utgard-Loki 
are  all  giants  like  myself,  and  will  not  brook 
the  insolence  of  little  fellows  like  you.  Your 
way  to  the  city  lies  eastward :  for  myself, 
my  road  is  to  the  north,  beyond  those  rocks 
in  the  far  distance."  And,  bidding  them 
farewell,  he  vanished  away  into  the  thickest 
part  of  the  wood. 

Now,  as  soon  as  he  was  gone,  the  four 
companions  went  their  way,  and  came  at  last, 
about  noon,  to  a  wide  plain,  in  the  middle 
•whereof  they  beheld  the  city  of  which  the 
giant  had  spoken,  with  many  fair  towers  and 
palaces,  and  all  shut  in  with  a  wall  and  a 
great  gate.  And,  when  they  came  to  the 
gate,  they  crept  between  the  bars  (which 
were  very  wide  apart),  and,  entering  the 
city,  beheld  dwellings  that  were  like  the 
cliffs  of  the  Northern  Sea  for  height  and  mas- 
siveness,  and  men  whose  heads  were  exalted 
like  the  roofs  of  temples,  and  children  that 
•were  bigger  than  the  men  of  other  lands. 
Then  Thor  and  his  followers  went  into  the 
king's  palace,  and  saluted  the  king,  who  re- 
garded them  with  a  scornful  smile,  and  said 
to  his  courtiers,  "  That  sti-ipling  there  must 
be  Thor."  Turning  to  the  god,  he  asked, 
"  What  feats  can  you  and  your  male  friends 
perform  1  for  we  allow  no  one  to  stay  here 
who  cannot  surpass  all  men  in  prowess." 
Then  Loki  said  he  could  eat  faster  than  any 
one,  and  Thialfi  said  he  could  vanquish  the 
whole  world  in  running.  But,  upon  being 
put  to  the  trial,  they  were  both  defeated  ;  for 
the  adversary  of  Loki,  who  was  called  Logi, 
consumed  not  merely  the  flesh  that  was  set 
before  them,  but  the  bones  too,  which  Loki 
could  in  no  wise  compass  ;  and  Thialfi  could 
not  at  all  keep  pace  with  a  young  man  named 
Hugi,  against  whom  he  was  matched. 

Then  the  king  commanded  Thor  to  give 
him  some  proof  of  those  great  powers  for 
which  he  was  renowned  among  all  the  nations 
*  This  fine  and  truly  vital  image  occurs  iu  the  Edda. 


of  the  earth.  So  Thor  replied  that  he  would 
drink  with  any  max1,  in  that  company.  Where- 
upon, the  cupbearer,  filling  a  large  horn  to 
the  brim,  gave  it  to  Thor  ;  and  the  king  com- 
manded him  to  empty  it  at  a  draught.  Then 
Thor  raised  it  to  his  mouth,  and  drank  long 
and  mightily,  even  such  a  draught  as  the  sons 
of  Bb'r  might  have  taken  after  the  great  la- 
bour of  fashioning  the  heavens  and  the  earth 
from  the  body  of  Ymir ;  but,  when  he  had 
done,  he  seemed  scarcely  to  have  drunken  a 
single  drop.  At  this,  the  king  taunted  him, 
and  bade  him  try  again,  and  do  better  ;  and 
he  drank  till  his  breath  failed  him  and  his 
ribs  ached.  Yet  still  the  liquor  was  scarcely 
diminished,  and  wonder  and  wrath  strove 
within  him  for  the  mastery,  and  his  face  was 
a  battle-field  of  passions. 

"  Why,  how  now,  Thor  ? "  cried  the  king, 
his  visage  wrinkling  with  laughter  as  he 
spoke.  "  Thou  mayst  be  a  mighty  man 
among  the  gods  ;  but  thou  art  a  small  man 
here.  Yet  try  one  more  ere  thou  quite  de- 
spairest."  And  Thor  clutched  again  at  the 
cup,  and  drank  till  his  sides  collapsed  with 
the  vehement  in-drawing  of  his  breath  ;  but, 
as  the  liquor  still  seemed  near  the  top,  he 
resolved  to  give  up  the  attempt.  So  all  the 
courtiers  declared  that  he  was  worsted. 

"  You  shall  next  try  to  lift  my  cat  from 
the  ground,"  said  the  king  ;  and,  as  he  spoke, 
a  great  black  cat  came  leaping  into  the  hall. 
Then  Thor  advanced  scornfully  towards  the 
cat,  thinking  to  lift  her  with  a  single  hand  ; 
but,  though  lie  strained  all  his  sinews,  he 
could  only  raise  one  paw.  So  he  was  again 
declared  to  be  vanquished ;  and  his  choler 
was  roused  mightily,  and  his  face  grew  white 
with  rage.  But,  seeing  all  the  people  laugh- 
ing at  him,  he  spoke  out,  and  said,  "  Let  me 
see  who  will  wrestle  with  me  in  my  wrath." 
And  the  king  answered,  "Thou  art  so  poor  a 
hand  iu  all  feats  of  strength  and  skill  that 
none  of  my  men  would  condescend  to  wrestle 
with  thee  ;  but  let  some  one  bring  hither  my 
nurse,  Hela.  The  old  crone  will  do  well 
enough  to  encounter  the  god  Thor."  And 
there  entered  into  the  hall  a  haggard  old 
woman,  and  she  was  as  thin  as  any  leaf  in 
autumn-tide,  and  her  head  was  a  skull,  very 
ghastly  and  amazing  to  look  at.  Thor 
wrestled  with  her  valiantly  and  long  ;  but  at 
last  the  old  woman  brought  him  upon  one 
knee.  So  Thor  was  once  more  branded  with 
defeat ;  and  he  gnawed  his  lips  with  vexation. 

However,  they  all  supped  richly  together, 
and  next  day  the  king  took  his  guests  beyond 
the  gates,  and  said  to  Thor,  "  You  are  indeed 
a  mighty  one  ;  for,  ever  since  you  met  with 
me,  you  have  been  under  enchantment.  But 
I  must  now  make  all  things  plain  unto  you. 
Know,  then,  first  of  all,  that  I  am  the  giant 
Skrymir  whom  you  met  in  the  desert,  where, 
by  the  secret  power  of  my  spells,  I  fastened 
your  wallet  with  a  magic  chain,  so  that  the 
knot  thereof  was  impossible  to  be  nutied. 
Secondly,  when,  in  the  forest,  you  thought 


Charles  Dickens.] 


WASTDALE  HEAD. 


[September  19,  1857.]       285 


you  smote  me  with  your  mallet,  you  did  in 
truth  but  smite  a  great  rock  •which  lieth 
thereabout,  but  which  you  could  not  perceive, 
because  of  the  enchantment  I  had  put  upon 
you  ;  and,  when  you  pass  that  way  again, 
you  will  behold  three  narrow  valleys  in  the 
rock,  which  were  caused  by  the  blows  of  your 
mallet.  So  with  your  companions  in  their 
trials  of  skill  in  my  palace.  It  was  no  won- 
der that  Loki  could  not  vanquish  Logi,  or 
that  Thialfi  should  have  been  beaten  by  Hugi ; 
for  both  the  victors  were  spirits.  Logi  was  a 
Devouring  Flame,  Hugi  was  Thought.  As 
for  yourself,  the  horn  which  you  essayed  to 
empty  reached  at  one  end  even  to  the  great 
main  of  waters  itself;  and,  when  you  next  go 
by  the  sea-side,  you  will  see  that  the  ocean 
is  marvellously  diminished.  The  cat  whose 
paw  you  lifted  from  the  ground  was  no  cat, 
but  the  great  Midgard  Serpent,  which  en- 
compasseth  all  this  earth.*  Strong  was  our 
terror  when  we  saw  you  drag  that  old  snake 
so  high  towards  heaven  that  scarcely  could 
he  maintain  his  coils  about  the  world.  Lastly, 
it  was  truly  amazing  that  the  haggard  woman 
could  only  bring  you  upon  one  knee  ;  for 
know,  O  son  of  the  gods  !  it  was  Death  you 
wrestled  with."  f 

Then  Thor  marvelled  greatly,  and  wrath 
was  strong  within  him,  and  he  poised  his 
mallet  with  a  view  to  launching  it  at  the 
head  of  the  king  ;  but  the  giant  and  the  city 
had  vanished,  and  nothing  was  about  but  a 
great  solitude,  and  the  grass  grew  rank  and 
wild  all  round. 

And  so  the  four  companies  went  silently 
on  their  way,  thinking  of  many  things. 


WASTDALE  HEAD. 


WET-FOOTED,  weary,  and  with  a  mountain 
appetite,  we,  a  Reading  party  of  four,  arrived 
at  Wastdale  from  the  sea-coast,  after  mid- 
night, and  were  directed  to  the  little  farm- 
house by  its  whiteness,  and  not  by  candle 
gleam.  The  good  folks  are  not  fashionable 
in  those  parts,  and  had  all  gone  to  bed. 

"  Wow,  wow,  wow,  wow  ! "  cried  the  sheep- 
dog very  shrilly,  and  adding  something  to 
himself  against  us  in  his  throat,  which  we 
could  not  quite  catch.  "Wow,  wow,  wow, 
wow  ! "  bayed  the  deep-mouthed  hound,  who 
is  fox-hunter,  hare-hunter,  and  vermin-killer, 
all  iu  one,  amongst  the  Cumberland  fells. 
But  neither  of  these  woke  their  master. 
When  we  knocked  at  the  door,  however,  a 
female  servant  opened  one  of  those  hinged 
panes  which  still  do  duty  in  the  lake  country 
for  window  sashes,  and  inquired  what  was 
our  «  Wall1 " 

"Beds,"    demanded    the    Reading    party, 

*  Tlus  serpent,  according  to  the  ancient  Scandinavian 
belief,  is  t®  remain  clasped  round  tho  world  until  the 
last  day,  when  Thor  is  to  bruise  his  head. 

t  In  a  translation  of  the  Kdda  now  before  tho  writer, 
the  crone  is  called  El!i,  or  Old  Age  ;  but  in  anothei 
version  of  the  story  sho  is  described  as  Hela,  or  Death 
This  is  the  more  striking  idea,  and  is  therefore  here 
adopted. 


with  one  voice.     "  Beds,  and  a  supper ;  we 
lope  the  house  isn't  full." 

"There  is  but  one  bed,  sirs,"  replied  the 
maiden,  pityingly. 

"  We  hope  it's  a  Bed  of  Ware  ! "  ejaculated 
the  party,  piously. 

"  I  dinna  ken,"  rejoined  she ;  "'tisa  mattrass 
bed,  and  holds,  may  be,  two  ;  but  I'll  wake 
the  mistress." 

Good  William  Ritson  of  Wastdale  Head 
and  his  wife  are  the  last  two  persons  in  the 
world  to  make  difficulties  or  to  be  put  out  of 
temper.  They  both  got  up  immediately,  and, 
by  their  help  and  the  maiden's,  a  fire  was 
kindled  and  bacon  and  eggs  were  on  the  table 
in  the  pleasant  eating-room  beside  the  kitchen 
in  an  inconceivably  short  time.  As  for  beer 
and  spirits,  such  accommodation  we  well 
knew  could  not  be  there  supplied,  and  we 
had  alleviated  that  misfortune  by  bringing 
some  with  us  from  the  inn  at  the  foot  of 
Wastwater,  besides  which  the  milk  was 
divine.  Then,  for  sleeping,  there  were  two 
beds  after  all ;  and  university  men  who  will 
pedestrianise  in  out-of-the-way  valleys  after 
midnight  must  be  content  with  indifferent 
lodging.  Some  visitors  were  to  leave  in  the 
morning  ;  so,  for  the  next  night,  the  tempta- 
tion of  a  bed  apiece  was  offered  to  us.  If 
acres  of  down,  however,  had  been  spread 
upon  this  occasion  for  our  especial  use,  none 
of  us  could  possibly  have  slept  sounder,  nor — 
some  of  us — longer. 

I  declare  I  was  down-stairs  the  first,  and 
had  the  first  view  of  what  is,  without  question, 
the  finest  valley  in  England.  The  highest 
mountains  which  we  boast  of  are  all  clust- 
ered about  its  head,  which  forms  the  centre 
knot  of  the  great  mesh-work  of  the  northern 
fells.  Scawfell  Pike,  three  thousand  one 
hundred  and  sixty  feet,  is  of  course  the 
loftiest;  but  its  giant  companions,  Yew- 
barrow,  Kirkfell,  and  the  Pillar,  are  very 
little  short  of  it ;  while  all  of  them  are  in- 
vested with  a  certain  savage  grandeur  denied 
to  most  English  hills  from  their  descending 
sheer,  almost  perpendicularly,  into  the  valley, 
and  being  composed  entirely  of  crags  without 
any  turf.  Great  Gable,  however,  is  an  ex- 
ception to  this  ;  one  side  of  its  huge  pyramid 
being  an  enormous  steep  of  grass-land, 
looking  very  tempting  and  even  easy  to  the 
climber— until  he  begins  to  climb._  The 
lake  is  dark  and  terrible  enough,  and  its  far- 
famed  rainbow-coloured  screes  are  very  bad, 
although  not  impossible  walking  ;  but  the 
view  is  fiat  in  that  direction,  and  very  inferior 
to  that  up  Wastdale  Head.  This  valley  has 
the  appearance  of  a  complete  cul-de-sac  from 
the  enormous  height  of  its  passes ;  and,  ii 
truth,  we  were  so  happy  in  it,  that  we  should 
have  scarcely  cared  had  there  been  no  way 
out  of  it.  The  pass  to  Ennerdale — not  that 
of  Black  Sail,  which  is  Piccadilly  compared 
to  it,  but  the  Dalesmen's  Pass— looks  just 
like  two  or  three  thousand  feet  of  walL 
After  the  trout  was  eaten— which  is  caught 


286      [September  19, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


in  greater  numbers  here,  perhaps,  than  .any- 
where in  the  north  country — and  the  eggs 
and  bacon  (again),  and  the  oat-cake,  and  the 
excellent  honey,  we  started  to  spend  our  day 
in  Wastdale. 

The  hamlet,  consisting  of  five  houses,  is  six 
miles  from  the  little  village  of  Strands,  and 
about  tliree  times  that  distance,  even  aci'oss 
the  fells,  from  anything  like  a  town  ;  but  it 
is  not  behindhand  in  civilisation.  There  is  a 
church — less,  surely,  than  any  church  save 
those  upon  mantel-pieces,  with  a  slit  in  the 
roof  for  missionary  coppers — and  a  school- 
house  smaller  still.  William  Eitson,  who  has 
much  natural  cleverness,  and  a  simple  honesty 
such  as  no  education  can  bestow,  laments 
that  he  is  no  "  scholard  "  himself,  allowing 
that  he  should  not  get  on  very  well  without 
his  glide  wife's  laming  ;  but  the  next  gene- 
ration is  erudite  enough.  Upon  seeing  an 
apparition  afar  off,  of  a  person  in  a  black  coat 
—a  rare  bird  in  such  a  place,  and  like  unto  a 
black  swan — we  asked  of  a  native  what  it 
might  mean.  "  Yon's  priest !"  was  the  reply  ; 
that  old  designation  still  clinging  to  the 
clergy  in  these  out-of-the-way  fell  parishes. 

It  was  not  the  first  visit  of  two  of  our 
party  to  Wastdale,  so  we  took  our  way 
towards  Pease  Gill,  under  Scawfell  Pike, 
without  any  hesitation.  The  guide-books 
of  the  lake  district  place  the  highest  water- 
fall upon  Buttermere,  and  call  it  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty  feet ;  but  it  is  plain  that 
their  authors  never  saw  Greta  Forces  ;  they 
fall  down  from  those  roofless,  rocky  grandeurs 
yonder,  which  bold  Professor  Wilson  calls 
"  the  devil's  suite  of  show  apartments  in 
Scawfell,"  that  really  (now  he  has  mentioned 
it)  have  very  much  an  appearance  of  that 
kind,  and  there  were  six  gentlemen  ushers  of 
his — ravens — in  his  outer  chambers  during 
the  whole  of  our  visit. 

"Now,  don't — don't  be  a  fool!"  cried  the 
rest  of  us,  while  Hotspur  would  come  down 
the  shelving  tongue  which  separates  these 
two  roaring  ghylls  that  take  their  dreadful 
leaps  upon  either  hand.  I,  for  my  part,  could 
not  look  at  him  ;  he  never  could  get  over 
that  neck  of  land  where  it  narrows  between 
the  abysms,  I  felt  sure,  slippery  as  it  was 
with  recent  rains,  uud  affording  only  one 
huge  stone  for  a  certain  footing.  He  was 
nearing  it,  I  knew,  from  my  friends'  silence. 
Presently  a  sharp  cry  arose,  and  the  sound  of 
a  heavy  body  falling,  striking  as  it  fell 
against  the  rocks,  and  so  into  the  torrent. 
My  knees  were  loosened,  my  brain  whirled 
round  and  round,  and  I  felt  positively  sick 
with  horror. 

"  Jim-a-long-a-Josey  ! "  hollaed  Hotspur, 
from  a  place  of  safety,  and  by  way  of  en- 
couragement to  the  bounding  stone.  He  had 
but  just  touched  this  reliable-looking  monster 
with  his  foot  when  it  served  him  that  trick, 
and  he  had  had  to  creep  down  backwards 
upon  hands  and  knees  over  the  difficult  spot. 
However,  this  incident  suggested  to  us  one 


of  the  most  glorious  pleasures  which  I  ever 
experienced  ;  an  enjoyment  which  not  the 
metropolis  of  the  world  could  have  afforded 
us,  and,  indeed,  few  places  in  England  so 
well  as  Wastdale  Head.  Passing  on  to  Pease 
Gill,  close  by  where  the  ravine  is  many 
hundred  feet  sheer,  and  the  torrent  fills  up 
the  gully  under  a  huge  natural  archway,  we 
took  up  our  station  a  long  distance  up  the 
steep  side  leading  to  the  chasm,  and  using 
indiscriminately  our  sticks  and  legs  for 
screws,  loosened  the  mightiest  stones  from 
their  moist  beds,  and  set  them  rolling.  It 
was  hard  work  enough  with  the  very  large 
ones,  it  is  true  ;  but  what  a  rich  repayment ! 
The  huge  mass  set  on  end  first  revolves 
slowly,  then  faster,  then  faster,  then  bounds, 
then  leaps  like  a  very  antelope,  leaps  higher 
and  broader,  setting  this  and  that  boulder, 
almost  as  large  as  itself,  in  motion  likewise, 
leading  a  great  army  of  boulders,  bounding 
and  splitting,  to  the  very  edge  of  the  preci- 
pice, then  springing  right  out  into  space—- 
and hark  ! — perhaps  crashing  on  some  unseen 
projection,  and  rending  the  very  fibres  of  the 
rock,  or  falling,  after  a  long  silence,  plomb 
into  the  centre  of  the  abysm — into  the  depths 
of  the  mountain-stream. 

At  first  we  were  too  drunk  with  the  new 
wine  to  proceed  scientifically ;  it  was  grand 
1  enough  to  deafen  ourselves  with  the  sullen 
'  echoes  which  we  forced  out  of  grey  Scawfell, 
1  to  listen  to  that  solemnest  of  sounds,  the 
|  "  noise  of  rocks  thrown  down  "  a  steep  place 
into  the  void  ;  but  presently  we  went  about 
'  the  matter  more  designedly ;  we  began  to 
calculate  to  a  tolerable  nicety  what  road 
these  terrible  fellows  would  travel,  what 
track  they  would  lay  bare  and  ruinous  upon 
their  pitiless  way,  and  the  sight  of  the 
destruction  which  they  wrought  at  random 
set  us  upon  more  ravage  and  better  planned; 
upon  the  verge  of  the  precipices  were  many 
trees  of  various  hardy  kinds,  but  chiefly 
mountain  ashes,  growing  out,  some  quite 
horizontally,  some  at  an  inclination  with  their 
tops,  and  part  of  their  trunks  exposed  to  us; 
we  directed  our  natural  artillery  for  the 
especial  destruction  of  these  beautiful  gifts  of 
nature,  the  only  peaceful  features  of  the 
rugged  scene ;  of  one  fit  a  time  of  course, 
and  I  am  ashamed  to  say  that  we  killed  two 
of  them  upon  the  spot,  and  left  a  third  in  an 
almost  hopeless  condition.  It  took  a  very  long 
time,  however,  to  accomplish  this  ;  the  mis- 
siles sometimes  missed  their  mark  altogether, 
or  sheared  a  branch  or  two  off,  as  though  they 
had  been  cut  with  a  knife,  or  leapt  rightover 
the  very  tree-top  with  too  high  a  range  ;  01% 
using  up  all  our  shot  and  shell  in  that  parti- 
cular battery,  we  had  often  to  bring  our  ma- 
terial from  a  distance,  and  with  the  greatest 
labour  ;  but  we  enjoyed  ourselves  at  it  most 
thoroughly,  nor  can  I  imagine  a  more  poetical 
and  filtingrneansof  defending  one's  nativeland 
than  these  similar  weapons  which  the  Tyrolese 
provided  for  their  Austrian  invaders. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


WASTDALE  HEAD. 


[September  19,  1557.}      287 


"  I  rather  wish  there  were  a  few  Austrians 
in  Pease  Gill  to-day,"  cried  one  of  us. 

"I  should  rather  prefer  Russians,"  said 
another. 

"  If  I  could  be  sure  of  the  right  men," 
quoth  Hotspur,  setting,  with  his  foot,  half  a 
hill  in  motion  as  he  spoke,  "I  should  like  it 
to  be  choke  full  of  Delhi  Sepoys." 

But,  for  my  part,  I  thought  killing  the 
mountain  ashes  -was  bad  enough.  It  gave  us 
a  tremendous  appetite  for  the  trout  and  fowls, 
and  broiled  ham  and  eggs  (again),  when  we 
got  home  (home  is  just  the  word  for  that 
clean  and  pleasant  farmhouse,  with  all  its 
handsome  inmates  anxious  to  do  their  best  to 
please) ;  and  after  dinner,  before  the  sports 
began,  which  take  place  in  Wastdale  upon 
most  evenings,  I  felt  inclined  to  sit  a  little 
•with  a  cigar  and  read. 

The  things  most  wanted  here,  however, 
where  it  sometimes  rains,  are  books,  nor  did 
I  chance  to  find  one,  with  the  exception  of  a 
Shepherd's  Guide.  This  is  a  large,  pictorial 
work,  and  promises  very  well  upon  first  ap- 
pearance, but  from  every  wood-cut  having 
the  same  subject — a  sheep — and  all  the  letter- 
press treating  solely  of  the  different  marks 
by  which  the  ownership  of  stray  wanderers 
may  be  discovered,  the  volume  is  on  the 
whole  monotonous.  To  an  unpastural  stu- 
dent, indeed,  its  information  is  even  unintel- 
ligible. "Twinters  are  generally  redded," 
says  the  Guide,  but  how  am  I  to  know  that 
this  means  that  two-year-olds  have  a  red 
mark  across  them,  or  how  should  I  recognise 
these  nice  distinctions  if  I  met  with  a  stray 
mutton  in  my  field,  "  cropped  near  ear,  upper 
key  bitted  far,  a  pop  on  the  head,  and  another 
at  the  tail  head,  ritted,  and  with  two  red 
strokes  down  both  shoulders."  Putting  this 
work  aside  I,  therefore,  asked  for  the  Visitors' 
Book,  which  is,  of  course,  kept  everywhere 
in  the  Lake  District.  I  wanted  it  chiefly  for 
its  poetry,  having  recently  committed  to  me- 
mory a  pleasing  stanza  (forming  the  whole 
poem),  written  at  the  Swan  Inn  at  Grasmere, 
and  hoping  to  find  something  similar  by  the 
same  author  ;  the  lines  ran  thus  : 

"  Where  lake  and  mountain  lay  in  sweet  unite, 
And  Terra  yields  to  many  a  spreading  tear; 
Where  fleecy  clouds  adorn  each  swelling  height, 
And  form  the  neighbourhood  we  call  Grasmere." 

Besides  this  particxilar  expectation,  I  con- 
fess I  like  dipping  into  a  Visitors'  Book.  One 
reads  in  it  the  name,  perhaps,  of  some  dear 
friend,  and  the  knowledge  that  he  too  has 
enjoyed  the  scenes  in  which  we  are  delight- 
ing is  very  pleasant :  or  our  own  name,  per- 
haps, occurs  in  it  written  years  and  years 
ago  under  different  circumstances,  when  we 
were  younger,  but  not  blyther  either,  which 
is  a  consoling  reflection,  and  even  if  our  con- 
dition is  changed  for  the  worse,  the  memory 
of  the  days  that  are  no  more,  though  sad,  is 
always  sweet. 

There  is  not  a  great  deal  of  poetry  in  the 


Wastdale  volume,  not  even  of  those  huge 
extracts  from  the  Excursion,  which  embellish 
most  of  these  books  in  Lakeland,  and  of  the 
original  verses  I  am  afraid  these  are  the  best : 

"  The  vehicles  here  are  rather  scarce, 
There  is  not  even  a  one-horse  hearse  ; 
But  Willy  Ritson's  a  merry  old  chap, 
And  knows  all  the  country  without  a  map." 

One  does  not  at  first  see  how  the  want  of 
conveyances  can  be  made  up  in  any  way 
by  the  goodnature  of  our  good  landlord,  but 
upon  looking  further  into  the  book,  the  coup- 
lets seem  to  have  some  connection  too. 

"  James  S.,  John  S.,  and  Miss  J.  were  con- 
veyed over  Sty  Head  Pass  by  an  experienced 
guide,"  they  write ;  a  statement  which  cer- 
tainly speaks  very  highly  for  the  robust  cha- 
racter of  the  north  country  dalesmen.  Some 
other  persons  give  us  to  understand  that  they 
are  "upon  a  pedestrian  tour,  and  have  be- 
come a  little  tired."  Upon  Avhich  a  critic 
appends  this  note — "  We  advise  these  people 
to  read  Walkings  Dictionary."  One  peculi- 
arity of  all  writers  in  Visitors'  Books  is,  that 
they  tell  us  where  they  were  yesterday,  and 
where  they  are  going  to-morrow,  with  the 
most  elaborate  distinctness,  as  though  they 
were  playing  some  game  of  Follow-my- 
Leader  with  the  universal  tourist.  It  is 
extremely  rare  to  find  so  undetailed  a  state- 
ment of  a  gentleman's  movements  as  the  fol- 
lowing : 

"  Mr.  R.,  upon  his  return  after  a  protracted 
tour  to  the  Hampshire  Lowlands."  Where- 
upon the  censor  who  always  haunts  works  of 
this  kind  inquires  pertinently,  "where  are 
the  Hampshire  Highlands  1 "  This  gentle- 
man has  all  the  severity,  if  not  the  acuteness, 
of  a  Ci'oker.  At  the  conclusion  of  some  lines 
beginning — 

"  Oh,  happy  day  that  fix'd  our  choice 

To  come  and  see  this  beautiful  place," 

he  writes, "  Extract  from  Shakspeare,  Milton, 
or  some  other  swell,  we  suppose."  Where  a 
learned  tourist  has  chosen  to  sign  his  name 
in  Hebrew  or  in  Arabic,  he  notes, "  This  man 
is  a  snob  for  his  pains  ; "  and  thereupon  a 
second  critic,  more  satirical  still,  rejoins, 
"Don't  be  jealous,  you  snob."  Here  again, 
where  W.  and  N.  inform  us  that  they 
"walked  over  from  Keswick,  cum  equus, 
were  much  pleased  with  the  scenery  and  the 
lamb  chops ;  and  washed  in  the  stream  be- 
hind the  house."  Number  One  remarks, 
"  Bad  Latin,"  as  information  to  the  illiterate ; 
but  upon  the  whole  he  prefers  to  confine 
himself  to  writing  the  words  "  Shut  up  ! ' 
wherever  he  considers  a  visitor's  remarks 
have  exceeded  their  proper  limit. 

Almost  everybody  laments  the  want  of 
beer  at  Westdale  Head.  Poor  William  Bit- 
son  is  very  particular  in  denying  us  this 
luxury  since  an  infamous  exciseman,  pretend- 
ing to  faint,  in  order  to  get  a  drop  of  malt 
liquor  out  of  him,  informed  against  his 


283 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[September  10, 1857.? 


host,  and  got  him  fined  twenty  pounds  ;  one 
person  even  bewails  the  lack  of  beer  in  im- 
mortal verse,  or  verses : 

"  There  was  a  farm  house  at  "W:\stdule, 
"Where  the  one  tiling  they  wanted  was  ale  ; 
You  could  have  milk  and  water, 
But  not  ale  and  porter, 

At  that  snug  little  house  at  Wastdale." 

But  there  are  weak  brethren,  too,  upon  the 
other  side  of  the  question,  who,  in  soberest 
prose,  "  are  glad  to  find  a  village  without  a 
public-house  in  it,  yet  affording  such  good 
entertainment  for  man  and  horse." 

The  best  of  all  the  remarks,  perhaps,  and 
the  most  to  the  purpose  is  that  of  Joseph  W., 
Liverpool,  who  informs  us  that  "  Parties  at  a 
loss  for  a  bell  in  the  parlour,  will  find  the 
attendant  tractable  when  whistled  on ! " 
"With  which  the  Visitors'  Book  concludes. 

Towards  evening  the  whole  population — 
about  thirty  souls — repaired  to  a  small 
green  field  in  the  centre  of  the  vast  moun- 
tain amphitheatre,  to  take  part  in,  or  be 
spectators  of  the  games.  There  was  a  great 
deal  of  good  practice  wrestling,  and  we  our- 
selves were  very  good-naturedly  initiated  by 
the  AVestdale  youth  in  the  seven  scientific 
ways  of  being  thrown.  Young  John  Ritson 
took  us  all — one  down  another  come  on — and 
felled  us  all  very  satisfactorily.  He  is  a 
rising  athlete  in  those  parts,  and  exhibited 
to  us  several  belts  he  had  gained  at 
various  neighbouring  meetings,  of  which  his 
father  seemed  to  be  to  the  full  as  proud  as 
he.  Jumping,  too,  we  had,  of  a  rare  kind, 
the  performers  starting  with  a  couple  of 
huge  stones,  which  they  cast  from  them  just 
as  they  made  their  spring,  in  order  to  give 
them  an  extra  impetus ;  and  we  also  had 
jumping  on  all  fours, — an  importation  into 
Westdale  of  our  own,  and  one  which  very 
much  delighted  the  aborigines. 

Not  till  the  giant  shadows  of  the  Western 
Fells  had  started  across  the  little  field,  and 
presently  filled  all  the  vale  with  gloom,  did 
we  leave  that  merry  scene,  which  was  uudis- 
figured  by  drunkenness  or  quarrel ;  then, 
gladly  vacating  our  stately  parlour,  we 
joined  the  good  folks  in  the  kitchen  for  the 
remainder  of  the  evening,  with  their  pipes 
and — tea.  Very  pleasant  hearing  were  the 
tales  William  Ritson  told  us  of  beck  and 
fell,  new  and  interesting  of  themselves,  and 
not  the  less  attractive  because  now  and  then 
we  were  obliged  to  ask  the  meaning  of  a 
term  or  two — better  Saxon  than  we  South- 
erners knew  how  to  speak.  He  told  us 
many  a  story  of  old  Scawfeli  Top  yonder, 
whereon  the  sappers  built  their  nests  at 
survey  time,  which  once  were  blown  about 
their  ears  at  midnight,  so  suddenly  that  the 
whole  sixteen  men  came  stumbling,  how  they 
could,  through  storm  and  darkness,  down  to 


Wastdale  Head,  transformed  to  Highlanders 
— without  their  nether  garments.  After 
this,  they  built  their  stations  on  the  Pikes, 
one  upon  each  side,  so  that  they  might 
change  their  quarters  with  the  wind  ;  but  in 
later  times,  the  soldiers  lived  below,  and 
only  climbed  up  to  their  eyrie  in  the  day- 
time ;  one  of  whom,  by  long  custom,  was 
wont  to  ascend  those  three  steep  cragset 
miles  in  sixty  minutes,  and  to  descend  in 
forty.  Years  ago,  a  sergeant,  who  had  been 
employed  here  upon  survey,  and  had  marked 
how  solitary  a  spot  the  hamlet  was,  desert- 
ing from  his  regiment  afterwards,  came  to 
this  lone  valley  with  wife  and  child,  and 
dwelt  there  for  a  great  space  of  time,  after 
which  he  leisurely  crossed  the  seas. 

Then  we  had  descriptions — such  as  I  have 
sometime  read  in  old  books  of  pastimes — of 
fox  and  hare-hunting  among  the  fells,  and  in 
particular  of  hunting  the  sweetmeart,  which  is 
a  sort  of  polecat  without  the  unpleasant  smell. 
Best  of  all,  perhaps,  were  the  incidents  of 
mountain  travel  in  the  winter  times.  How 
statesmen — that  is,  small  farmers,  such  as 
Ritson  himself — and  shepherds  had  alike  to 
explore  the  perilous  icy  fells  for  sheep,  crag- 
fast  or  injured  ;  and  still  more  how,  when  one 
of  their  small  society  was  missing,  or  behind 
his  expected  time,  the  whole  dale  would 
sally  out  with  lights,  and  searching  for  him 
diligently  over  these  inhospitable  "hills,  iior 
often  fail  to  find  him. 

"  Surely,"  said  we,  "  if  a  man  fell  down 
Pease  Gill,  or  any  such  place,  it  would  be 
useless  enough  to  go  to  look  for  him." 

"  Nay,  but,"  said  William,  "one  of  our  folk 
did  fall  there,  when  I  was  a  young  chap,  and 
I  helped  to  fetch  him  home." 

_The  poor  fellow  had  set  off  to  look  afte? 
his  sheep  upon  Scawfeli,  and  did  not  return  at 
evening ;  therefore,  four  men,  his  neighbours  in 
the  scriptural  sense,  turned  out  into  the  snow 
and  night  with  lanterns,  and  tracked  his  foot- 
marks  up  the  very  becksicle  we  had  gone 
that  morning,  and  along  the  shelving  bank 
bordering  the  chasm,  at  the  brink  of  which 
the  footmarks  ceased. '  Then  they  knew  he 
had  fallen  over,  and  must  needs  be  a  dead 
man  ;  but  still,  retracing  their  steps  a  little, 
they  struggled  up  the  icy  beck  until  they 
found  spots  of  blood  upon  it,  and  blood  upon 
the  snow,  and  soon  the  man  himself,  insen- 
sible, and  with  fractured  skull,  but  not 
without  breath  ;  his  iron  boot-heel  had 
caught  in  a  cleft  as  he  descended,  and, 
though  torn  right  off  from  the  sole,  had 
greatly  broken  his  fall.  The  four  men  got  a 
ladder,  carried  him  home,  as  if  upon  a  bier, 
and  sent  some  sixteen  miles  or  so  for  the 
nearest  doctor.  The  life  of  the  man  was 
saved,  so  that  he  lived  ten  years  afterwards, 
although  such  had  been  the  shock  that  he 
was  never  rightly  "  hissell "  any  more. 


The  Riylt  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  ly  the  Authors. 


r  iblUttd  a<  ta«  Office,  No.  1«,  Wellington  Street  North.Strund.    Printed  by  BBABBUIIT  S  t.vis>,  Whiterriar?,  LonJon, 


"Familiar  in  their  Moutlis  as  HOUSEHOLD    WORDS."— SHAKESPEAMJ. 


HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

,A  WEEKLY   JOURNAL 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES     DICKENS. 


°-  392.] 


SATURDAY,  SEPTEMBER  26,  1857. 


(  PRICE  Id. 
\  STAMPED  3d. 


MRS.  BADGERY. 


Is  there  any  law  in  England  which  will 
protect  me  from  Mrs.  Badgery  ? 

I  am  a  bachelor,  and  Mrs.  Badgery  is  a 
widow.  Let  nobody  rashly  imagine  that  I 
am  about  to  relate  a  common-place  grievance, 
because  I  have  suffered  that  first  sentence  to 
escape  my  pen.  My  objection  to  Mrs.  Bad- 
gery is,  not  that  she  is  too  fond  of  me,  but 
that  she  is  too  fond  of  the  memory  of  her 
late  husband.  She  has  not  attempted  to 
marry  me  ;  she  would  not  think  of  marrying 
me,  even  if  I  asked  her.  Understand,  there- 
fore, if  you  please,  at  the  outset,  that  my 
grievance  in  relation  to  this  widow  lady  is  a 
grievance  of  an  entirely  new  kind. 

Let  me  begin  again.  I  am  a  bachelor  of  a 
certain  age.  I  have  a  large  circle  of  acquain- 
tance ;  but  I  solemnly  declare  that  the  late 
Mr.  Badgery  was  never  numbered  on  the 
list  of  my  friends.  I  never  heard  of  him  in 
my  life  ;  I  never  knew  that  he  had  left  a 
relict ;  I  never  set  eyes  on  Mrs.  Badgery 
until  one  fatal  morning  when  I  went  to  see 
if  the  fixtures  were  all  right  in  my  new 
house. 

My  new  house  is  in  the  suburbs  of  London. 
I  looked  at  it,  liked  it,  took  it.  Three  times 
I  visited  it  before  I  sent  my  furniture  in. 
Once  with  a  friend,  once  with  a  surveyor, 
once  by  myself,  to  throw  a  sharp  eye,  as  I 
have  already  intimated,  over  the  fixtures. 
The  third  visit  marked  the  fatal  occasion  on 
which  I  first  saw  Mrs.  Badgery.  A  deep 
interest  attaches  to  this  event,  and  I  shall  go 
into  details  in  describing  it. 

I  rang  at  the  bell  of  the  garden-door.  The 
old  woman  appointed  to  keep  the  house 
answered  it.  I  directly  saw  something 
strange  and  confused  in  her  face  and  manner. 
Some  men  would  have  pondered  a  little  and 
questioned  her.  I  am  by  nature  impetuous 
and  a  rusher  at  conclusions.  "  Drunk,"  I 
said  to  myself,  and  walked  oil  into  the  house 
perfectly  satisfied. 

_  I  looked  into  the  front  parlour.  Grate  all 
right,  curtain-pole  all  right,  gas  chandelier 
all  right.  I  looked  into  the  back  parlour- 
ditto,  ditto,  ditto,  as  we  men  of  business  say. 
I  mounted  the  stairs.  Blind  on  back  window 
right?  Yes;  blind  on  back  window  right. 
I  opened  the  door  of  the  front  drawing-room 


— and  there,  sitting  in  the  middle  of  the  bare 
floor,  was  a  large  woman  on  a  little  camp- 
stool  !  She  was  dressed  in  the  deepest 
mourning,  her  face  was  hidden  by  the  thickest 
crape  veil  I  ever  saw,  and  she  was  groaning 
softly  to  herself  in  the  desolate  solitude  of  my 
new  unfurnished  house. 

What  did  I  do  ?  Do  !  I  bounced  back 
into  the  landing  as  if  I  had  been  shot,  utter- 
ing the  national  exclamation  of  terror  and 
astonishment :  "  Hullo  ! "  (And  here  I  par- 
ticularly beg,  in  parenthesis,  that  the  pi-inter 
will  follow  my  spelling  of  the  word,  and  not 
put  Hillo,  or  Halloa,  instead,  both  of  which 
are  base  compromises  which  represent  no 
sound  that  ever  yet  issued  from  any  English- 
man's lips.)  I  said,  <:  Hullo  ! "  and  then  I 
turned  round  fiercely  upon  the  old  woman 
who  kept  the  house,  and  said  "Hullo  !" 
again. 

She  understood  the  irresistible  appeal  that 
I  had  made  to  her  feelings,  and  curtseyel, 
and  looked  towards  the  drawing-room,  aud 
humbly  hoped  that  I  was  not  startled  or  put 
out.  I  asked  who  the  crape-covered  woman 
on  the  camp-stool  was,  and  what  she  wanted 
there.  Before  the  old  woman  could  answer, 
the  soft  groaning  in  the  drawing-room  ceased, 
and  a  muffled  voice,  speaking  from  behind 
the  crape  veil,  addressed  me  reproachfully, 
and  said : 

"  I  am  the  widow  of  the  late  Mr.  Bad- 
gery." 

What  did  I  say  in  answer  1  Exactly  the 
words  which,  I  flatter  myself,  any  other  sen- 
sible man  in  my  situation  would  have  said. 
And  what  words  were  they  1  -  These  two  : 

"Oh,  indeed!" 

"Mr.  Badgery  and  myself  were  the  last 
tenants  who  inhabited  this  house,"  continued 
the  muffled  voice.  "  Mr.  Badgery  died  here." 
The  voice  ceased,  and  the  soft  groans  began 
again. 

It  was  perhaps  not  necessary  to  answer 
this ;  but  I  did  answer  it.  How  ?  In  one 
word  : 

"  Ha !  " 

"Our  house  has  been  long  empty,"  re- 
sumed the  voice,  choked  by  sobs.  "Our 
establishment  has  been  broken  up.  Being 
left  in  reduced  circumstances,  I  now  live  in 
a  cottage  near  ;  but  it  is  not  home  to  me. 
This  is  home.  However  long  I  live,  wherever 


VOL.  xvi. 


392 


290       [September  SB.  1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


I  go,  whatever  changes  may  happen  to  this  |  the  proprietor  and  I  had  been  the  intruder, 
beloved  house,  nothing  can  ever  prevent  me  she  could  not  have  been  more  mournfully 
from  looking  on  it  as  my  home.  I  came  magnanimous.  All  this  time,  too,  she  never 
here,  sir,  with  Mr.  Badgery  after  our  honey-  j  raised  her  veil — she  never  has  raised  it,  in  my 
moon.  All  the  brief  happiness  of  my  life ;  presence,  from  that  time  to  this.  I  have  no 
was  once  contained  within  these  four  walls,  idea  whether  she  is  young  or  old,  dark  or  fair, 
Every  dear  remembrance  that  I  fondly  handsome  or  ugly :  my  impression  is,  that 
cherish  is  shut  up  in  these  sacred  rooms."  !  she  is  in  every  respect  a  finished  and  perfect 
Again  the  voice  ceased,  and  again  the  soft  |  Gorgon,  but  I  have  no  basis  of  fact  on  which 

I  can  support  that  dismal  idea.  A  moving 
mass  of  crape,  and  a  muffled  voice — that,  if 
you  drive  me  to  it,  is  all  I  know,  in  a  per- 
sonal point  of  view,  of  Mrs.  Badgery. 

"  Ever  since  my  irreparable  loss,  this  has 
been  the  shrine  of  my  pilgrimage,  and  the 


oozed    out    past  me  down  my  uncarpeted 


staircase. 

I  reflected. 

ness  and   dear  remembrances  were  not  in- 
cluded in  the  list   of  fixtures.     Why  could 


Mrs.  Badgery's  brief  happi- 


she  not  take  them  away  with  her?  Why  j  altar  of  my  worship,"  proceeded  the  voice, 
should  she  leave  them  littered  about  in  the  ;  "One  man  may  call  himself  a  landlord,  and  say 
way  of  my  furniture  ?  I  was  just  thinking  that  he  will  let  it ;  another  man  may  call  him- 
how  I  could  put  this  view  of  the  case  strongly  i  self  a  tenant,  and  say  that  he  will  take  it.  I 
to  Mrs.  Badgery,  when  she  suddenly  left  off ,  don't  blame  either  of  those  two  men  ;  I  don't 
groaning,  and  addressed  me  once  more.  I  wish  to  intrude  on  either  of  those  two  men  ; 

"  While  this  house  has  been  empty,"  she  ;  I  only  tell  them  that  this  is  my  home;  that 
said,  "  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  looking  in  my  heart  is  still  in  possession,"  and  that  no 
from  time  to  time,  and  renewing  my  tender  j  mortal  laws,  landlords,  or  tenants  can  ever 
associations  with  the  place.  I  have  lived,  as  turn  it  out.  If  you  don't  understand  this, 
it  were,  in  the  sacred  memories  of  Mr.  Bad-  sir  ;  if  the  holiest  feelings  that  do  honour  to 
gery  and  of  the  past,  which  these  dear,  these  :  our  common  nature  have  no  particular  sane- 
priceless  rooms  call  up,  dismantled  and  dusty  j  tity  in  your  estimation,  pray  do  not  scruple 
as  they  are  at  the  present  moment.  It  has  to  say  so  ;  pray  tell  me  to  go." 
been  my  practice  to  give  a  remuneration  to  "  I  don't  wish  to  do  anything  uncivil, 
the  attendant  for  any  slight  trouble  that  I  ma'am,"  said  I.  "  But  I  am  a  single  man, 
might  occasion "  and  I  am  not  sentimental."  (Mrs.  Badgery 

"Only  sixpence,  sir,"   whispered  the  old  groaned.)     "Nobody  told  me  I  was  coming 
woman,  close  at  my  ear.  into  a  Shrine  when  I  took  this  house  ;  no- 

"  And  to  ask  nothing  in  return,"  continued  body  warned  me,  when  I  first  went  over  it, 
Mrs.  Badgery,  "  but  the  permission  to  bring  that  there  was  a  Heart  in  possession.  I  re- 
my  camp-stool  with  me,  and  to  meditate  on  gret  to  have  disturbed  your  meditations,  and 
Mr.  Badgery  in  the  empty  rooms,  with  every  1  arn  sorry  to  hear  that  Mr.  Badgery  is  dead, 
one  of  which  some  happy  thought,  or  eloquent  j  That  is  all  I  have  to  say  about  it ;  and,  now, 
word,  or  tender  action  of  his,  is  so  sweetly  with  your  kind  permission,  I  will  do  myself 
associated.  I  came  here  on  my  usual  errand  j  the  honour  of  wishing  you  good  morning, 
to-day.  I  am  discovered,  I  presume,  by  the  j  and  will  go  up-stairs  to  look  after  the  fixtures 
new  proprietor  of  the  house — discovered,  I 
am  quite  ready  to  admit,  as  an  intruder.  I 
am  willing  to  go,  if  you  wish  it  after  hearing 


my  explanation.     My  heart  is  full,  sir  ;  I  am 


on  the  second  floor." 

Could  I  have  given  a  gentler  hint  than 
this  1  Could  I  have  spoken  more  compas- 
sionately to  a  woman  whom.  I  sincerely 


quite  incapable  of  contending  with  you.  You  i  believe  to  be  old  and  ugly  ?  Where  is  the 
would  hardly  think  it,  but  I  am  sitting  on !  man  to  be  found  who  can  lay  his  hand  on  his 
the  spot  once  occupied  by  our  ottoman.  I  i  heart,  and  honestly  say  that  he  ever  really 
am  looking  towards  the  window  in  which  my  j  pitied  the  sorrows  of  a  Gorgon  1  Search 


flower-stand  once  stood.  In  this  very  place, 
Mr.  Badgery  first  sat  down  and  clasped  me 
to  his  heart,  when  we  came  back  from  our 
honey-moon  trip.  '  Matilda,'  he  said,  '  your 
drawing-room  has  been  expensively  papered, 
carpeted,  and  furnished  for  a  month  ;  but  it 
has  only  been  adorned,  love,  since  you  entered 
it.'  If  you  have  no  sympathy,  sir,  for  such 
remembrances  as  these  ;  if  you  see  nothing 
pitiable  in  my  position,  taken  in  connection 
with  my  presence  here  ;  if  you  cannot  enter 
into  my  feelings,  and  thoroughly  understand 
that  this  is  not  a  house,  but  a  Shrine — you 
have  only  to  say  so,  and  I  am  quite  willing 
to  go." 

She   spoke   with  the   air  of  a  martyr — a 
martyr  to  my  insensibility.     If  she  had  been 


through  the  whole  surface  of  the  globe  ;  and 
you  will  discover  human  phenomena  of  all 
sorts,  but  you  will  not  find  that  man. 

To  resume.  I  made  her  a  bow,  and  left 
her  on  the  camp-stool,  in  the  middle  of  the 
drawing-room  floor,  exactly  as  I.  had  found 
her.  I  ascended  to  the  second  floor,  walked 
into  the  back  room  first,  and  inspected  the 
grate.  It  appeared  to  be  a  little  out  of  re- 
pair, so  I  stooped  down  to  look  at  it  closer. 
While  I  was  kneeling  over  the  bars,  I  was 
violently  startled  by  the  fall  of  one  large 
drop  of  warm  water,  from  a  great  height, 
exactly  in  the  middle  of  a  bald  place,  which 
has  been  widening  a  great  deal  of  late  years 
on  the  top  of  my  head.  I  turned  on  my 
knees,  and  looked  round.  Heaven  and  earth ! 


Charles  Dickeni.] 


MRS.  BADGEEY. 


[September  2B,  18570      291 


the  crape-covered  woman  had  followed  me 
up-stairs — the  source  from  which  the  drop 
of  warm  water  had  fallen  was  no  other  than 
Mrs.  Badgery's  eye. 

"I  wish  you  could  contrive  not  to  cry  over 
the  top  of  my  head,  ma'am,"  said  I.  My 
patience  was  becoming  exhausted,  and  I 
spoke  with  considerable  asperity.  The  curly- 
headed  youth  of  the  present  age  may  not  be 
able  to  sympathise  with  my  feelings  on  this 
occasion ;  but  my  bald  brethren  know,  as 
well  as  I  do,  that  the  most  unpardonable  of 
all  liberties  is  a  liberty  taken  with  the  un- 
guarded top  of  the  human  head. 

Mrs.  Badgery  did  not  seem  to  hear  me. 
"When  she  had  dropped  the  tear,  she  was 
standing  exactly  over  me,  looking  down  at 
the  grate  ;  and  she  never  stirred  an  inch  after 
I  had  spoken.  "  Don't  cry  over  my  head, 
ma'am,"  I  repeated,  more  irritably  than  before. 

"  This  was  his  dressing-room,"  said  Mrs. 
Badgery,  indulging  in  muffled  soliloquy.  "He 
•was  singularly  particular  about  his  shaving- 
water.  He  always  liked  to  have  it  in  a  little 
tin  pot,  and  he  invariably  desired  that  it 
might  be  placed  on  this  hob."  She  groaned 
again,  and  tapped  one  side  of  the  grate  with 
the  leg  of  her  camp-stool. 

If  I  had  been  a  woman,  or  if  Mrs.  Badgery 
had  been  a  man,  I  should  now  have  pro- 
ceeded to  extremities,  and  should  have  vin- 
dicated my  right  to  my  own  house  by  an 
appeal  to  physical  force.  Under  existing 
circumstances,  all  that  I  could  do  was  to  ex- 
press my  indignation  by  a  glance.  The  glance 
produced  not  the  slightest  result — and  no 
wonder.  Who  can  look  at  a  woman  with 
any  effect,  through  a  crape  veil  1 

I  retreated  into  the  second-floor  front 
room,  and  instantly  shut  the  door  after  me. 
The  next  moment  I  heard  the  rustling  of  the 
crape  garments  outside,  and  the  muffled  voice 
of  Mrs.  Badgery  poured  lamentably  through 
the  keyhole. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  make  that  your  bed- 
room ?  "  asked  the  voice  on  the  other  side  of 
the  door.  "  Ob,  don't,  don't  make  that  your 
bedroom  !  I  am  going  away  directly — but, 
oh  pray,  pray  let  that  one  room  be  sacred ! 
Don't  sleep  there  !  If  you  can  possibly  help 
it,  don't  sleep  there  !  " 

I  opened  the  window,  and  looked  up  and 
down  the  road.  If  I  had  seen  a  policeman 
within  hail  I  should  certainly  have  called 
him  in.  No  such  person  was  visible.  I  shut 
the  window  again,  and  warned  Mrs.  Badgery, 
through  the  door,  in  my  sternest  tones,  not 
to  interfere  with  my  domestic  arrangements. 
*'  I  mean  to  have  my  bedstead  put  up  here," 
I  said.  "  And  what  is  more,  I  mean  to  sleep 
here.  And,  what  is  more,  I  mean  to  snore 
here  !  "  Severe,  I  think,  that  last  sentence  ? 
It  completely  crushed  Mrs.  Badgery  for  the 
moment.  I  heard  the  crape  garments  rust- 
ling away  from  the  door  ;  1  heard  the  muffled 
groans  going  slowly  and  solemnly  down  the 
stairs  again. 


In  due  course  of  time,  I  also  descended  to 
the  ground-floor.  Had  Mrs.  Badgery  really 
left  the  premises  ?  I  looked  into  the  front 
parlour — empty.  Back  parlour — empty.  Any 
other  room  on  the  ground-floor  ?  Yes ;  a 
long  room  at  the  end  of  the  passage.  The 
door  was  closed.  I  opened  it  cautiously,  and 
peeped  in.  A  faint  scream,  and  a  smack  of 
two  distractedly-clasped  hands  saluted  my 
appearance.  There  she  was,  again  on  the 
camp-stool,  again  sitting  exactly  in  the  middle 
of  the  floor. 

"  Don't,  don't  look  in,  in  that  way  !  "  cried 
Mrs.  Badgery,  wringing  her  hands.  "  I  could 
bear  it  in  any  other  room,  but  I  can't  bear  it 
in  this.  Every  Monday  morning  I  looked 
out  the  things  for  the  wash  in  this  room.  He 
was  difficult  to  please  about  his  linen ;  the 
washerwoman  never  put  starch  enough  into 
his  collars  to  satisfy  him.  Oh,  how  often  and 
often  has  he  popped  his  head  in  here,  as  you 
popped  yours  just  now  ;  and  said,  in  his 
amusing  way,  '  More  starch ! '  Oh,  how  droll 
he  always  was — how  very,  very  droll  in  this 
dear  little  back  room  ! " 

I  said  nothing.  The  situation  had  now  got 
beyond  words.  I  stood  with  the  door  in  my 
hand,  looking  down  the  passage  towards  the 
garden,  and  waiting  doggedly  for  Mrs.  Badgery 
to  go  out.  My  plan  succeeded.  She  rose, 
sighed,  shut  up  the  camp-stool,  stalked  along 
the  passage,  paused  on  the  hall  mat,  said  to 
herself,  "  Sweet,  sweet  spot !  "  descended  the 
steps,  groaned  along  the  gravel -walk,  and 
disappeared  from  view  at  last  througli  the 
garden-door. 

"  Let  her  in  again  at  your  peril,"  said  I  to 
the  woman  who  kept  the  house.  She  curt- 
seyed and  trembled.  I  left  the  premises, 
satisfied  with  my  own  conduct  under  very 
trying  circumstances,  delusively  convinced 
also  that  I  had  done  with  Mrs.  Badgery. 

The  next  day  I  sent  in  the  furniture.  The 
most  unprotected  object  on  the  face  of  this 
earth  is  a  house  when  the  furniture  is  going 
in.  The  doors  must  be  kept  open  ;  and  em- 
ploy as  many  servants  as  you  may,  nobody 
can  be  depended  on  as  a  domestic  sentry  so 
long  as  the  van  is  at  the  gate.  The  confusion 
of  "  moving  in "  demoralises  the  steadiest 
disposition,  and  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
properly-guarded  post  from  the  top  of  the 
house  to  the  bottom.  How  the  invasion  was 
managed,  how  the  surprise  was  effected,  I 
know  not ;  but  it  is  certainly  the  fact,  that 
when  my  furniture  went  in,  the  inevitable 
Mrs.  Bailgery  went  in  along  with  it. 

I  have  some  very  choice  engravings,  after 
the  old  masters ;  and  I  was  first  awakened 
to  a  consciousness  of  Mrs.  Badgery's  presence 
in  the  house  while  I  was  hanging  up  my 
proof  impression  of  Titian's  Venus  over  the 
front  parlour  fire-place.  "  Not  there  !  "  cried 
the  muffled  voice  imploringly.  "  His  portrait 
used  to  hang  there.  Oh,  what  a  print — what 
a  dreadful,  dreadful  print  to  put  where  his 
dear  portrait  used  to  be  !  "  I  turned  round 


2f>2       [September  *6, 1857-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 


[Conducted  hy 


in  a  fury.  There  she  was,  still  muffled  up  in 
crape,  still  carrying  her  abominable  camp- 
Btool.  Before  I  could  say  a  word  in  remon- 
strance, six  men  in  green  baize  aprons 
staggered  in  with  ray  sideboard,  and  Mrs. 
Badgery  suddenly  disappeared.  Had  they 
trampled  her  under  foot,  or  crushed  her  in 
the  doorway  ?  Though  not  an  inhuman  man 
by  nature,  1  asked  myself  those  questions 
quite  composedly.  No  very  long  time  elapsed  j 
before  they  were  practically  answered  in  the 
negative  by  the  reappeai'ance  of  Mrs.  Badgery 
herself,  in  a  perfectly  unruffled  condition  of 
chronic  grief.  In  the  course  of  the  d.iy  I  had  j 
my  toes  trodden  on,  I  was  knocked  about  by  i 
my  own  furniture,  the  six  men  in  baize  j 
api-ons  dropped  all  sorts  of  small  articles 
over  me  in  going  up  and  down  stairs  ;  but 
Mrs.  Badgery  escaped  unscathed.  Every 
time  I  thought  she  had  been  turned  out  of 
the  house  she  proved,  on  the  contrary,  to  be 

froaning  close  behind  me.  She  wept  over 
Ir.  Badgery's  memory  in  every  room,  per- 
fectly undisturbed  to  the  last,  by  the  chaotic 
confusion  of  moving  in.  I  am  not  sure,  but 
I  think  she  brought  a  tin  box  of  sandwiches 
with  her,  and  celebrated  a  tearful  pic-uic  of 
her  own  in  the  groves  of  my  front  garden. 
I  say  I  am  not  sure  of  this  ;  but  I  am  posi- 
tively certain  that  I  never  entirely  got  rid  of 
her  all  day  ;  and  I  know  to  my  cost  that  she 
insisted  on  making  me  as  well  acquainted 
wii.h  Mr.  Badgery's  favourite  notions  and 
habits  as  I  am  with  my  own.  It  may  inte- 
rest the  reader  if  I  report  that  my  taste  in 
carpets  is  not  equal  to  Mr.  Badgery's  ;  that 
my  ideas  on  the  subject  of  servants'  wages 
are  not  so  generous  as  Mr.  Badgery's  ;  and 
that  I  ignorantly  persisted  in  placing  a  sofa 
in  the  position  which  Mr.  Badgery,  in  his 
time,  considered  to  be  particularly  fitted  for 
an  arm-chair.  I  could  go  nowhere,  look 
nowhere,  do  nothing,  say  nothing,  all  that 
day,  without  bringing  the  widowed  incubus 
in  the  crape  garments  down  upon  nie  imme- 
diately. I  tried  civil  remonstrances,  I  tried 
rude  speeches,  I  tried  sulky  silence — nothing 
had  the  least  effect  on  her.  The  memory  of 
Mr.  Badgery  was  the  shield  of  proof  with 
which  she  warded  off  my  fiercest  attacks. 
Not  till  the  last  article  of  furnitur?  had  been 
moved  in.  did  I  lose  sight  of  her  ;  and  even 
then  she  had  not  really  left  the  house.  One 
of  my  six  men  in  green  baize  aprons  routed 
her  out  of  the  back-garden  area,  where  she 
was  telliug  my  servants,  with  floods  of  tears, 
of  Mr.  Badgery's  virtuous  strictness  with  his 
housemaid  in  the  matter  of  followers.  My 
admirable  man  in  green  baize  courageously 
saw  her  out,  and  shut  the  garden-door  after 
her.  I  gave  him  half-a-crown  on  the  spot ; 
and  if  anything  happens  to  him,  I  am  ready 
to  make  the  future  prosperity  of  his  father- 
less family  my  own  peculiar  care. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday.  I  attended 
morning  service  at  my  new  parish  church. 
A  popular  preacher  had  been  announced,  and 


the  building  was  crowded.  I  advanced  a 
little  way  up  the  nave,  and  looked  to  my 
right,  and  saw  no  room.  Before  I  could 
look  to  my  left,  I  felt  a  hand  laid  persuasively 
on  my  arm.  I  turned  round — and  there  was 
Mrs.  Badgery,  with  her  pew-door  open, 
solemnly  beckoning  me  in.  The  crowd  had 
closed  up  behind  me  ;  the  eyes  of  a  dozen 
members  of  the  congregation,  at  least,  were 
fixed  on  me.  I  had  no  choice  but  to  save 
appearances,  and  accept  the  dreadful  invita- 
tion. There  was  a  vacant  place  next  to  the 
door  of  the  pew.  I  tried  ty  drop  into  it,  but 
Mrs.  Badgery  stopped  me.  "  His  seat,"  she 
whispered,  and  signed  to  rne  to  place  myself 
on  the  other  side  of  her.  It  is  unnecessary 
to  say  that  I  had  to  climb  over  a  hassock, 
and  that  I  knocked  down  all  Mrs.  Badgery's 
devotional  books  before  I  succeeded  in  passing 
between  her  and  the  front  of  the  pew.  She 
cried  uninterruptedly  through  the  service  ; 
composed  herself  when  it  was  over ;  and 
began  to  tell  me  what  Mr.  Badgery's  opinions 
had  been  on  points  of  abstract  theology* 
Fortunately  there  was  great  confusion  and 
crowding  at  the  door  of  the  church ;  and  I 
escaped,  at  the  hazard  of  my  life,  by  running 
round  the  back  of  the  carriages.  I  passed 
the  interval  between  the  services  alone  in 
the  fields,  being  deterred  from  going  home  by 
the  fear  that  Mrs.  Badgery  might  have  got 
there  before  me. 

Monday  came.  I  positively  ordered  my 
servants  to  let  no  lady  in  deep  mourning 
pass  inside  the  garden-door,  without  first 
consulting  me.  After  that,  feeling  tolerably 
secure,  I  occupied  myself  in  arranging  my 
books  and  prints.  I  had  not  pursued  this 
employment  much  more  than  an  hour,  when, 
one  of  the  servants  burst  excitably  into  the 
room,  and  informed  me  that  a  lady  in  deep 
mourning  had  been  taken  faint,  just  outside 
my  door,  and  had  requested  leave  to  come  in 
and  sit  down  for  a  few  moments.  I  ran 
down  the  garden-path  to  bolt  the  door,  and 
arrived  just  in  time  to  see  it  violently  pushed 
open  by  an  officious  and  sympathising  crowd. 
They  drew  away  on  either  side  as  they  saw 
me.  There  she  was,  leaning  on  the  grocer's 
shoulder,  with  the  butcher's  boy  in  attend- 
ance, carrying  her  camp-stool !  Leaving  my 
servants  to  do  what  they  liked  with  her,  I 
ran  back  and  locked  myself  up  in  my  bedroom. 
When  she  evacuated  the  premises,  some 
hours  afterwards,  I  received  a  message  of 
apology,  informing  me  that  this  particular 
Monday  was  the  sad  anniversary  of  her 
wedding-day,  and  that  she  kad  been  taken 
faint,  in  consequence,  at  the  sight  of  her  lost 
husband's  house. 

Tuesday  forenoon  passed  away  happily,, 
without  any  new  invasion.  After  lunch,  I 
thought  I  would  go  out  and  take  a  walk. 
My  garden-door  has  a  sort  of  peep-hole  in  it, 
covered  with  a  Avire  grating.  As  I  got  close 
to  this  grating,  I  thought  I  saw  something 
mysteriously  dark  on  the  outer  side  of  it.  I 


Charles  Dickens.! 


A  VEEY  BLACK  ACT. 


[September  26,  l«r.]       293 


bent  my  head  down  to  look  through,  and  in- 
stantly found  myself  face  to  face  with  the 
crape  veil.  "Sweet,  sweet  spot!"  said  the 
muffled  voice,  speaking  straight  into  my  eyes 
through  the  grating.  The  usual  groans  fol- 
lowed, and  the  name  of  Mr.  Badgery  was 
plaintively  pronounced  before  I  could  recover 
myself  sufficiently  to  retreat  to  the  house. 

Wednesday  is  the  day  on  which  I  am 
writing  this  narrative.  It  is  not  twelve 
o'clock  yet,  and  there  is  every  probability 
that  some  new  form  of  sentimental  persecu- 
tion is  in  store  for  me  before  the  evening. 
Thus  far,  these  lines  contain  a  perfectly  true 
statement  of  Mrs.  Badgery's  conduct  towards 
me  since  I  entered  on  the  possession  of  my 
house  and  her  shrine.  What  am  I  to  do  ? — 
that  is  'the  point  I  wish  to  insist  on — what 
-am  I  to  do  1  How  am  I  to  get  away  from  the 
memory  of  Mr.  Badgery,  and  the  unappeas- 
able grief  of  his  disconsolate  widow  ?  Any 
other  species  of  invasion  it  is  possible  to  re- 
sist ;  but  how  is  a  man  placed  in  my  unhappy 
and  unparalleled  circumstances  to  defend 
himself  'I  I  can't  keep  a  dog  readyto  fly  at  Mrs. 
Badgery.  I  can't  charge  her  at  a  police-court 
with  being  oppressively  fond  of  the  house  in 
•which  her  husband  died.  I  can't  set  man- 
traps for  a  woman,  or  prosecute  a  weeping 
widow  as  a  trespasser  and  a  nuisance.  I  am 
helplessly  involved  in  the  unrelaxing  folds 
of  Mrs.  Badgery's  crape  veil.  Surely  there 
•was  no  exaggeration  in  my  language  when  I 
said  that  I  was  a  sufferer  under  a  perfectly 
new  grievance  !  Can  anybody  advise  me  1 
Has  anybody  had  even  the  faintest  and  re- 
motest experience  of  the  peculiar  form  of 
persecution  under  which  I  am  now  suffering  ? 
If  nobody  has,  is  there  any  legal  gentleman 
in  the  united  kingdom  who  can  answer  the 
all-important  question  which  appears  at  the 
head  of  this  narrative  ]  I  began  by  asking 
that  question  because  it  was  uppermost  in 
my  mind.  It  is  uppermost  in  my  mind  still, 
and  I  therefore  beg  leave  to  conclude  appro- 
priately by  asking  it  again : 

Is  there  any  law  in  England  which  will 
protect  me  from  Mrs.  Badgery  ? 


A  VERY  BLACK  ACT. 


I  AM  an  Editor — an  Indian  Editor — that  is 
to  say,  the  editor  of  a  Mofussilite  or  pro- 
vincial paper  in  British  India.  It  does  not 
much  signify,  I  fancy,  what  my  weekly  is 
called,  nor  where  published,  though  I  may 
mention  by  the  way  that  it  is  in  one  of  the 
disturbed  districts  where  murder,  pillage, 
and  burnings  are  just  now  the  principal 
items  of  intelligence. 

The  duties  of  an  editor  in  the  Mofussil  are 
generally  multifarious  and  onerous  enough, 
comprising  as  they  do  the  financial,  the 
printing,  the  correspondence,  the  gossiping 
work  of  the  establishment,  in  addition  to  the 
ordinary  labours  pertaining  to  the  editorial 
chair.  At  present,  as  for  some  time  past,  I 


have  tacked  to  my  functions  the  duties  of 
armed  volunteer,  policeman,  special  messen- 
ger, and  anything  else  required  by  the  state 
at  this  critical  juncture.  To  use  the  Irish- 
man's metaphor,  I  may  be  said  to  write  my 
editorials  with  a  pistol  in  one  hand  and  a 
sword  in  the  other  ;  my  workpeople  are  all 
armed  to  the  teeth,  and  my  weekly  issues  are 
actually  delivered  at  the  point  of  the  sword. 

Many  an  editorial  effusion  is  interrupted 
by  an  armed  sortie  against  some  of  our  vil- 
lainous Budmashes,  who  make  their  tooting 
forays  at  all  hours  of  the  day  or  night. 
Last  week  I  had  to  fling  down  my  pen, 
mount  my  nag,  and  gallop  off  to  escort,  with 
other  of  my  townsmen,  a  goodly  parcel  of 
government  treasure,  there  being  no  Euro- 
pean troops  at  our  station.  My  last  issue 
was  delayed  eighteen  hours  by  my  absence  on 
special  military  duty  ;  and,  unless  matters 
mend  considerably,  I  may  shortly  be  com- 
pelled to  publish  my  little  "  weekly  "  as  a 
"monthly." 

Seeing  what  I  have  seen  enacting  about 
me,  and  hearing  from  my  correspondents  in 
the  north-west  of  the  horrible  atrocities  per- 
petrated there  by  the  scoundrels  of  Sepoys 
and  the  Mohammedans  of  the  country,  and 
meeting  on  many  sides  with  glaring  proofs  of 
the  incompetency  of  our  officials  and  the 
genei-al  unfitness  of  John  Company,  to  go- 
vern aright  this  vast  country,  I  natu- 
rally enough  jot  down  my  floating  ideas  on 
those  matters,  and  imagine  that  in  so  doing  I 
am  rendering  the  state  some  service  by  pen 
and  ink,  as  I  also  do  with  pistol  and  sword. 

had  some  faint  hope  of  emulating  iu  a 
humble  sphere  and  in  a  limited  manner,  the 
usefulness  of  William  Russell,  of  the  Times. 
The  wavering  irresolution  of  our  Governor- 
General,  the  timid  counsels  pervading  the 
Indian  Cabinet,  the  weak  truckling  to  inci- 
pient mutineers,  the  false  condonement  of 
treason,  the  pampering  of  doubtful  Sepoys, 
the  cruel  neglect  of  our  own  British  soldiery; 
these  and  many  other  topics  have  been  and 
would  still  have  formed  the  subject-matter 
of  my  editorial  comments. 

But  my  career  in  this  work  of  duty  has 
been  suddenly  cut  short  by  what  I  cannot 
designate  by  any  other  name  than  a  very 
black  act.  We  have  before  been  favoured 
with  what  was  termed  a  Black  Act — an 
enactment  for  levelling  the  white  European 
to  the  depths  of  the  black  Asiatic — in  our 
criminal  courts,  criminal  in  more  senses  that 
one ;  but  this  new  legislative  production 
leaves  the  former  far  behind,  in  the  deep  in- 
tensity of  its  blackness.  The  newspaper  press 
of  India  has  been  gagged,  bound  down,  and 
delivered  over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  tx 
governmental  censorship — the  censorship  of 
Cannon  Row  and  Leadenhall  Street. 

Be  it  known  to  all  whom  it  may  concern, 
that  in  the  city  of  Calcutta  there  have  been 
printed  and  published,  for  some  time  past, 
sundry  newspapers  in  the  Bengalee  and 


294       [Srptember  •:<• 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


L Conducted  by 


Persian  languages,  of  a  low  and  scurrilous 
character.  Unheeded  by  the  authorities,  they 
have  lately  indulged  in  the  dainty  article  of 
treason  :  one  of  them  going  so  far  as  to  put 
forth  a  proclamation  emanating  from  the 
rebel  king  of  Delhi,  offering  premiums  to 
deserters  from  our  army,  &c. 

Our  government  could  find  no  other  re- 
medy for  this  evil  than  a  general  gagging  of 
the  press,  British  and  native  :  we  English 
editors  are  accordingly  Canningised.  The 
equality  of  the  subject  is  nobly  vindicated 
by  dealing  out  the  self-same  treatment  to  the 
loyal  British  editor  and  the  Mohammedan 
traitor.  From  the  Punjab  to  Cape  Comorin, 
from  Scinde  to  Singapore,  there  is  one  huge 
gag  placed  on  the  thoughts  and  expressions 
of  the  press  of  British  India.  Henceforth, 
we  must  hold  no  opinions  on  matters  poli- 
tical, or  military,  but  such  as  are  directly 
favourable  to  the  government  of  India.  It  is 
not  alone  the  acts  of  the  local  executive  that 
must  be  protected  by  this  extreme  measure. 
The  Governor-General  has  a  mind  to  shield 
from  editorial  comments  the  conduct  of  the 
Imperial  Government.  We  are  prohibited 
by  this  very  Black  Act  from  impugning  the 
motives  or  designs  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment, either  in  England  or  India  ;  and  this 
prohibition  extends  equally  to  original 
matter  and  to  matter  copied  from  other 
publications. 

From  this  time,  then,  I  dare  not  copy  a 
leading  article  from  the  Times  or  Daily  News 
in  any  way  impugning  the  acts  of  the  British 
Government.  I  dare  not  report  a  speech  of 
any  opposition  member.  I  must  publish  at 
my  peril  the  thoughts  and  language  of  our 
most  eminent  statesmen  not  Her  Majesty's 
advisers. 

Fortunately  for  myself,  I  am  not  tied  to 
my  editorial  chair.  I  have  other  occupations 
quite  as  profitable,  if  not  so  dignified.  To 
them  I  shall  now  devote  all  my  energies, 
will  not  take  out  my  licence,  like  any  retailer 
of  beer  and  spirits.  I  shall  sell  my  press,  my 
types,  and  my  office  furniture,  resign  my  post 
hi  the  volunteer  corps  and  the  escort  service, 
and,  reversing  the  step  taken  by  Cincinnatus 
of  old,  leave  the  camp  for  the  field — resign 
my  pen  and  pistol  for  the  ploughshare. 


FOREBODINGS  OF  THOMAS  EAIKES 
ESQUIRE. 

DIARISTS  may  be  the  most  slovenly — but 
they  are  also  at  the  same  time,  without 
doubt — the  most  candid  of  autobiographers. 
We  may  picture  them  as  sitting  down  to  the 
entry  of  their  daily  jottings  with  that  excru- 
tiatingly  starched  cravat,  called  Conventional 
Reserve,  thrown  aside  (with  what  a  sigh  of 
relief ! ),  and  the  old  abominable  straight- 
waistcoat  of  Social  Formality,  just  for  once 
in  the  twenty-four  hours,  luxuriously  un- 
buckled. 

One   fancies   the    mere  journal-scribbler 


writing  invariably  as  Oliver  Goldsmith  loved 
to  write — in  his  dressing-gown  and  slippers. 
Certainly  never  preparing  himself  for  his  task 
after  the  fastidious  fashion  of  the  musician 
Haydn,  who  is  related  to  have  occasionally 
arrayed  himself  in  full  Court  costume — his 
peruke  sprinkled  with  a  fresh  bloom  of  powder, 
bis  wrists  clouded  with  delicate  ruffles  of 
cobweb-lace,  his  fingers  radiant  with  diamond, 
amethyst,  and  carbuncle  —  simply  for  the 
purpose  of  composing  choruses  and  sonatas 
in  the  privacy  of  his  own  apartment ;  creak- 
ing on  his  red-heeled  shoes  alternately,  to 
and  fro  between  his  desk  and  his  harpsi- 
chord. The  Muse  of  the  Diarist,  if  he  have 
one,  ought  always  assuredly  to  be  pourtrayed 
in  deshabille.  As  assuredly  as  the  manu- 
script volumes,  penned  by  him  in  such'  care- 
less and  straggling  characters,  lay  bare  at  a. 
glance  to  the  inspection,  of  every  one  who 
lists,  not  merely  the  writer's  individual  tem- 
perament, but  with  it  also  that  intimate 
inner-self,  which  we  have  all  of  us  learned 
to  call  respectively  each  one's  own  peculiar 
idiosyncrasy. 

The  journal  of  the  Diarist  is  in  reality, 
of  his  own  especial  idiosyncrasy,  the  most 
vivid  and  uncompromising  revelation.  It  is 
the  very  window-iu-a-man's  breast,  which  was 
longed  for  so  many  ages  ago  by  the  old 
Greek  philosopher.  It  is  that  window,  more- 
over, with  the  shutters  flung  wide  open,  and 
the  blind  drawn  up.  We  can  see  through  it 
all  instantaneously — the  medium  being  very 
thin,  and  transparent.  We  are  privileged,  each, 
one  amongst  us,  to  pry  at  our  own  free  will 
and  pleasure  into  the  every  crevice  and  invo- 
lution of  the  complicated  human  hearts  of 
these  poor  dead  and  buried  Diarists.  While 
they,  in  turn — the  spirits  of  these  dear 
brothers  departed — seem  to  reveal  most 
clearly  and  distinctly  through  that  same 
mysterious  loophole,  their  own  natural  fea- 
tures, stamped  with  their  own  real  and 
genuine  expression.  Some  looking  out  upon 
us  laughingly — like  Holbein's  jocund  portrait 
of  Will  Somers,  the  King's  jester,  peeping, 
with  a  merry  twinkle  in  his  eyes,  through  the 
lattice  in  the  picture-gallery  at  Hampton 
Court.  Others  appearing  before  us  dole- 
fully— like  the  beautifully  shrouded  face  ot 
St.  Amelia,  the  nun,  wistfully  gazing  between 
the  conventual  bars  in  the  famous  French 
lithograph.  The  former  category  implying, 
what  may  be  termed,  the  purely  anecdotal 
Diarists  :  such  as  might  be  instanced  through 
the  journals  of  Thomas  Moore — journals 
kept  apparently,  somewhat  as  the  squirrel 
keeps  his  teeth  for  cracking  nuts,  chiefly  for 
the  pleasure  of  cracking  jokes  flavoured 
with  the  wine  of  wit,  and  the  salt  of  good- 
fellowship.  The  second  category  referring, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  such  outpourings  of 
effervescent  lamentation  as  those  in  the  midst 
of  which  Madame  D'Arblay  has  unwittingly 
sprinkled,  not  as  she  fancied,  the  rose-water 
of  compliment,  but  the  nitric  acid  of  satire, 


Charle.  Dickens.]     FOEEBODINGS    OF   THOMAS    EAIKES,   ESQUIEE.    [September  26,1367.]       295 


upon  the  memory  of  old  straight-laced  Queen 
Charlotte. 

Besides  these,  however,  there  are  others 
of  the  most  motley  kind,  Diarists  the 
most  widely  contrasting  and  the  most  pictu- 
resquely diversified.  There  are  those  number- 
less and  nameless  multitudes,  for  example,  who 
might  be  accurately  described  according  to 
lago's  phrase,  as  doing  little  else  with  their 
journals  than  "chronicle  small  beer" — scoring 
off  their  days  in  ponderous  books  about  as 
monotonous  in  their  general  effect,  and  not  by 
any  means  one  half  as  interesting  as  the  far- 
famed  sticks  Kobinson  Crusoe  used  to  notch 
for  a  calendar.  There  are,  however,  on  the 
contrary,  those  extremely  rare  and  inesti- 
mable exceptions,  Diarists  who  come  con- 
scientiously, night  by  night,  to  their  self-im- 
posed duty ;  come  with  their  periodical 
gatherings  of  revelations,  telling  their 
secrets  right  out,  and  making  a  clean  breast 
of  it  ;  Diarists  whose  writings  are  like 
the  whisperings  of  devotees  at  the  con- 
fessional. The  value  of  the  treasures 
picked  up  from  time  to  time  by  these  way- 
farers, depending  entirely,  of  course,  upon 
the  nature  of  the  ground  they  happen  to 
have  traversed.  Sometimes  they  almost 
seem,  from  the  contents  of  their  wallet,  to 
have  been  wandering  at  large  over  the  fabu- 
lous possessions  of  that  redoubtable  million- 
aire of  the  nursery,  Mr.  Thomas  Tiddler, 
originally,  of  course,  of  Cathay  and  El  Dorado; 
but  latterly,  no  doubt,  of  the  Australian  gold 
diggings,  or  those  of  California.  Occasion- 
ally, even  a  few  appear  to  have  descended, 
like  our  old  friend,  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  into 
another  wondrous  valley  of  diamonds  ;  and, 
like  him,  to  have  cunningly  availed  them- 
selves of  the  very  tempting  opportunity. 
These,  it  should  be  observed,  have  not 
always  emptied  out  before  us,  clumsily  and 
pell-mell,  the  precious  store  of  their  girdles 
— pouring  forth  their  accumulations  con- 
fusedly in  most  admired  disorder,  just  as 
they  may  have  been  first  collected,  hap- 
hazard. One,  perchance,  instead  of  this,  has 
clustered  them  hastily  together  in  a  glitter- 
ing mass  as  a  pendant  to  the  Life  they  may 
appear  designed  to  illustrate.  Precisely  in 
this  way,  for  example,  it  is  that  the  history 
of  Alexander  Pope  has  been  embellished  by 
Spence's  Anecdotes.  Another,  setting  more 
ingeniously,  and  with  a  greater  amount  of 
elaboration,  the  gems  of  price  he  has  care- 
fully gathered  up,  and  yet  more  carefully 
selected,  transforms  them  from  a  mere  heap 
of  resplendent  particles  into  a  very  aigrette 
or  aureole — that  radiant  diadem  of  genius,  a 
perfected  biography.  It  was  thus,  for  in- 
stance, with  James  Boswell's  ever-memorable 
masterpiece. 

Incidentally,  moreover,  there  has  ap- 
peared upon  occasion,  some  more  amus- 
ing egotist,  with  a  self-sufficiency  resembling 
that  of  ^Esop's  fly  upon  the  wheel :  some 
personage  of  such  supreme  importance  in 


his  own  estimation,  that  out  of  the  loose 
memorabilia  of  his  notebook,  he  has  delibe- 
rately compiled  the  History  of  His  Own 
Times — a  title  equivalent  in  His  Own  mind, 
probably,  to  the  Georgian  Era,  or  the  Au- 
gustan Age,  or  the  epoch,  say  of  the  Carlo- 
viugians.  As  a  notable  representation  of 
these  rather  entertaining  class  of  Diarists, 
may  be  particularised  Sir  William  Wraxall 
— an  observer  of  His  Own  contemporaries, 
chiefly  remarkable  now,  as  the  individual 
who  first  suggested  to  the  British  Govern- 
ment the  selection  of  the  Island  of  Saint 
Helena  as  the  fittest  place  of  exile  for  the 
discrowned  Emperor  and  King,  Napoleon 
Bonaparte.  Journal-writers  of  a  much 
nobler,  because  of  a  much  more  modest 
description,  however,  have  assumed  to  them- 
selves like  John  Evelyn — the  learned  and 
accomplished  Evelyn — the  character  as  it 
may  be  termed  of  Gentlemen  Ushers  to 
History.  And  ONE,  the  most  delightful 
Diarist  of  all — meaning,  of  course,  Mr. 
Samuel  Pepys,  Secretary  to  the  Admiralty — 
has  he  not  achieved  for  himself  a  recognised 
pre-eminence  in  his  craft,  as  a  systematic 
collector  of  unconsidered  trifles,  solely  by  the 
evidence  on  his  part,  through  his  incomparable 
journals,  of  a  supreme  faculty  for— what? 
Well,  plainly  and  candidly,  for — Blabbing  ! 

It  is,  frankly  be  it  spoken,  as  about  the 
honestest  blab  in  the  world  that  Mr.  Samuel 
Pepys  has  taken  his  place  among  Diarists, 
the  Saul  among  that  multitude — higher  than 
the  highest  of  them  all,  by  a  head  and 
shoulders.  Little,  in  truth,  was  it  conjec- 
tured (not  so  very  many  years  ago),  when 
the  manuscript  diary  of  Mr.  Pepys  was  first 
discovered  down  at  Oxford,  poked  away, 
dusty  and  yellow,  in  a  corner  of  an  old 
ram-shackle  bookcase,  what  very  strange 
secrets  were  lying  hid  there  under  the  imisk 
of  that  queer,  and  fantastic,  and  apparently 
inscrutable  specimen  of  short-hand.  Hap- 
pily, the  key  being  almost  simultaneously 
brought  to  light,  we  have  ever  since  then 
enjoyed  the  privilege  of  peeping,  with  a 
happier  fate  than  that  of  Fatima,  as  often  as 
we  have  felt  disposed,  into  the  forbidden 
chamber  of  this  comical  and  perfectly  harm- 
less Bluebeard. 

Fortunately  for  every  individual,  who,  like 
ourselves — shame  be  it  said — delights  in  the 
colloquial  scandal  and  conversational  tittle- 
tattle  of  old  Sam  Pepys,  formerly  of  the 
Admiralty,  and  now  for  ever  of  the  book- 
shelves, there  has  recently  appeared  a 
kind  of  kindred  diary,  a  companion-pic- 
ture, though  one,  of  course,  not  by  any 
means  so  highly  coloured  —  a  similarly 
social  banquet,  yet,  it  must  be  confessed, 
one  not  to  any  comparable  extent  so 
highly  seasoned.  Nevertheless,  tamed  down, 
cooled  —  even,  it  might  be  said,  iced — in  its 
general  eifect,  by  the  refrigerating  influence 
of  the  proprieties,  the  journal  here  particu- 
larly alluded  to  may  hoaestly,  we  fancy,  come 


296      [September  IS.  18S7.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


•within  the  range  of  this  really  alluring  and  neckcloth  lapped  about  his  throat  appears  to 
appetising  description.  A  portion  of  the  have  been  put  on  as  tenderly  as  if  it  were  a 
journal  kept  by  the  late  Thomas  Kaikes,  j  poultice,  and  though  evidently  one  who,  in 
Esquire,  the  title-page  of  these  four  garrulous  his  younger  days,  must,  without  doubt,  have 
volumes  announces  their  contents  to  be  |  been  what  was  variously  designated  in  those 
Thomas  IJaikes,  Esquire,  proving  to  be  him-  times  a  blood,  a  buck,  or  a  dandy,  sub- 
self — before  we  have  penetrated  very  far  into  ordinating  coxcombry  to  comfort  that, 
his  lucubrations — what  may  be  designated  despite  all  that  still  tightly-fitting,  fasluon- 
a  most  amiable,  old  Toryfied  Prig,  and  an  able  raiment,  he  seems  at  last  to  have 
extremely  self-contented  and  self-important  vindicated  his  title  in  a  more  literal 
Chatterbox.  Consisting,  as  it  does,  of  merely  '  sense  to  the  modern  appellation  of  the  brother- 
a  portion  of  his  journal — extending  from  i  hood,  by  an  amplitude  of  girth  decidedly 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-one  to  eighteen '  more  compatible  than  any  wasp-like  waist 
hundred  and  forty-seven  —  the  work  re-  with  the  enjoyment  of  a  fare,  lusciously  alter- 
cently  issued  from  the  press,  under  this  j  nating  between  truffles  and  ortolans.  Yet, 
somewhat  unattractive  title,  will  be  found  after  all,  this  personage  was  not,  in  truth,  as 
to  extend  over  four  volumes  of  really  j  one  might  have  been  disposed  to  imagine 
interesting,  social,  and  political  remini-  i  from  his  air  of  innate  ton,  any  descendant  of 
scences.  Entertaining  they  are,  for  a  the  Courtenays,  any  scion  of  a  patrician. 


reason  or  two  hereupon  to  be  immediately 
specified.  The  production  being  altogether 
the  counterpart  presentment  of  the  indi- 


house,  tracing  back  his  lineage  to  the  Tudors 
or  Plantagenets,  one  who,  if  Italian,  might 
have  claimed  kindred  with  the  Coloimas,  if 


vidual  who  penned  it — to  wit,  Thomas  Eaikes, •  Spanish,  with  the  Medina-Sidonias,  or  if 
Esquire.  The  production  itself  never  tiring  i  French,  with  the  Grammonts  and  the  Mont- 
by  the  way  of  reminding  ns  that  he  was  i  morencies. 

Esquire — T.  Raikes,  Esq.,  figuring  away  on  Excellent,  honest  Mr.  Thomas  Raikes, 
every  leaf — T.  Raikes,  Esq.,  being  lettered  was  in  reality  the  eldest  son  of  a  wealthy 
in  gold  upon  the  back  of  the  volume,  and !  and  respected  merchant  of  our  good  city  of 
Thomas  Raikes,  Esquire,  in  full,  being  London,  as  the  preface  to  his  son's  diary  tells 
engraved  with  a  nourish  \mderthe  author's  us,  "a  personal  friend  of  Mr.  Pitt  and  Mr. 
portrait,  prefixed  to  volume  one,  by  way  of  Wilberforce,"  and  descended  from  an  ancient 


frontispiece.  This  wonderful  portrait  was 
taken,  one  might  suppose,  from  one  of  Deigh- 
ton's  full-length  profile  miniatures.  What  a 
characteristic  sketch  of  the  man  it  mani- 
festly is  ! — as  characteristic  as  his  own  diary, 


family  of  Yorkshire.  Nevertheless,  if  Thomas 
Raikes,  Esquire,  were  not  himself  of  noble 
origin,  one  can  only  picture  him  (after  read- 
ing this  journal  of  his  recollections)  as  one 
who  had  somehow  contrived  to  soar  into 


and  that  surely  is  his  alter  ego,  his  other  self,  |  such  social  altitudes  that  he  seems  through- 
his  ghostly  adumbration.  Looking  at  the !  out  the  four  volumes  to  be  floating  in  the 
portrait  and  at  the  journal,  we  know  at  once  i  seventh  heaven  of  fashion  —  wandering  at 
what  sort  of  a  man  this  was ;  we  catch  the  large  in  the  rarefied  empyrean  of  what  is 


notion  of  him  perfectly.  A  Spence,  maunder- 
ing about  continually,  without  a  Pope.  A 
Bosvvell  never  stumbling  upon  his  Johnson, 
but  ever  and  ever  self-conscious,  as  though 
he  stood  always  in  the  midst  of  a  cluster  of 
cheval-glasses,  full  of  his  own  reflections  ! 
An  Evelyn,  whose  Sylva  had  (only  semi- 
officially) something  or  other  to  do  with  the 
woods  and  foi*ests.  Briefly  and  more  accu- 
rately— Mr.  Pepys's  shadow  modernised. 

Examining  the  man  more  carefully  in  his 
picture  as  well  as  in  his  journal,  it  is  amus- 
we  may  venture 
Peel-Turveydrop 
of  the  incarna- 
tion of  Deportment.  A  gentleman,  in 
fact,  bearing  such  a  strong  family  likeness 
to  that  particular  prototype,  that,  look- 
ing at  his  well-strapped  and  well- 
buttoned  figure,  one  might,  here  again,  almost 
expect  to  see  "  creases  in  the  whites  of  his 
eyes  "  when  he  bowed  !  It  is  easy  enough 
even  to  imagine  the  gait  of  the  man  when  he 
walked,  to  see  him  tumbling  over  the  pave- 
ment of  St.  James's  and  Piccadilly,  with  a 
heavy-go-light  kind  of  ambling  pace,  as 
though  his  corns  were  wadded.  The  very 


ing   to     recognise   what 
to  style     a     kind    of    a 
in     this     comely     double 


emphatically  termed  society  —  hanging  on 
by  his  eyelashes,  as  the  saying  is,  to 
the  skirts  of  the  aristocracy.  Running  our 
glance  over  his  pages,  don't  we  find  that  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  was  his"  very  faithfully?" 
That  he  not  only  corresponded  with  the  Duke 
of  York,  but  that  he  was  even  familiarly  the 
"  Dear  Raikes  "  of  his  royal  highness  ?  That 
the  Royal  Duchess  (of  York)  signed  herself  his 
friend  and  servant  very  affectionately,  "  votre 
tres  affectionnee  amie  et  servante  ?  "  He  was 
manifestly,  in  truth,  a  pleasant  companion,  a 
good  listener,  an  agreeable  retailer  of  an 
anecdote.  He  was  obviously  also  a  man 
whose  mind  was  so  intensely  flavoured 
with  the  atmosphere  of  Pall  Mall,  that  he 
might  have  been  said  to  be  of  the  clubs, 


clubb}'. 

Mr.  Raikes  was 


clearly   one  who   dearly 


loved  a  gossip.  He  had  a  finger  for  every 
man's  button-hole.  He  was  intrinsically  by 
nature,  what  the  Parisians  call  a  flaneur,  a 
saunterer  about  the  west-end  causeways — in 
the  height  of  the  season — in  the  pick  of  the 
afternoon.  As  a  conversationalist  he  did,  by 
word  of  mouth,  fur  love,  what  the  news- 
writers  of  Queen  Anne's  time  did  by  scrawls 


Chadea  Dickens.]    FOREBODINGS   OF   THOMAS   EAIKES,   ESQUIRE.  [September  25,1857.]      297 


of  letters  for  money, — he  helped  to  distri- 
bute, wherever  he  could,  the  chit-chat  of 
the  hour,  social,  political,  and  miscellaneous. 
He  could  swallow,  upon  occasion,  without 
even  a  momentary  qualm  of  suspicion,  those 
delicate  little  gilded  bon-bons  of  white-lies, 
called  canards,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
channel.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  he  appears 
to  have  had  an  instant  relish  and  a  very  keen 
appreciation  of  a  pun  or  a  witticism,  or  as  he 
preferred  to  express  it,  a  bon-mot  or  a 
calembourg.  Particularly  if,  by  good  fortune, 
the  happy  saying  chanced  to  be  in  French — 
a  pasquinade  from  Le  Cosaire,  or  a  jest  of 
Talleyrand's.  His  mother-tongue,  indeed,  he 
seems  to  have  dropped,  whenever  he  could 
contrive  to  do  so,  upon  every  possible  and 
impossible  opportunity.  His  fastidious  taste 
— we  doubt  not  the  least  in  the  world — 
would  have  been  absolutely  shocked  by  a 
vulgarised  translation  into  plain  English  of 
such  a  frequent  expression  of  his,  let  us  say, 
as  "un  pen  fort."  How  he  would  have  shud- 
dered— from  his  old-fashioned  Bond  Street 
beaver  down  to  the  soles  of  his  Hoby's — 
if  the  familiar  phrase  had  chanced,  by  some 
miracle,  to  resolve  itself  on  falling  from  his 
lips  into  our  own  common  vernacular,  as 
coming  it  a  little  too  strong  !  No  ;  the 
Anglo-Saxon  tongue  was  for  him  seemingly 
too  coarse  and  unmannerly.  He  flavoured 
his  style  with  a  sprinkling  of  Gallic  idioms, 
and  to  those  exotic  blossoms  of  speech  we 
must  attribute,  of  course,  whatever  that  style 
has  (Heaven  knows  it  is  little  enough  !)  of 
piquancy.  And  so,  for  example,  we  find  him 
everlastingly  "going  to  see,"  in  French,  those 
perpetual  nous  verrous  dropping  from  his 
pen  portentously  as  the  nods  oi  Lord  Bar- 
leigh.  That  he  was  undeniably — in  spite  of  all 
his  exquisite  grace  a-la-mode — a  Prig  (as 
already  intimated),  may  be  rendered  suffi- 
ciently apparent  upon  the  instant,  we  con- 
ceive, by  a  mere  casual  reference  to  his 
sedate  elaboration,  preparatory  to  the  re- 
tailing of  some  wretched  little  joke.  As, 
for  instance,  where  we  read  in  this  journal 
of  his,  under  the  heading.  Joke  of  Holmes 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  following  : 
"When  Mr.  Morrison,  the  member  for 
Leicester,  who,  being  a  haberdasher,  had 
made  himself  conspicuous  by  a  speech  on  the 
foreign  glove  question,  came  up  to  him  and 
asked  him  if  he  could  get  him  a  pair  for  the 
evening.  [Italics  sic  in  the  original.]  '  Of 
what ! '  said  Holmes,  'gloves  or  stockings  ? '  " 
Altogether,  one  of  those  appalling  failures  in 
the  way  of  a  jest,  when  only  the  perpetrator 
of  the  atrocity  grins  horribly  a  ghastly  griu  ; 
while  the  miserable  victims  of  it — meaning  the 
mere  listeners  and  lookers-on — are  simply  over- 
whelmed with  a  painful  depression  ot  spirits, 
as  though  they  were  being  subjected  to  some 
dead-lock  or  dread-agony,  such  as  a  stutter- 
ing after-dinner  speech.  Yet  Thomas  Raikes, 
Esquire,  not  only  retails  the  joke  upon 
paper,  in  cold  blood,  to  be  posthumously 


|  printed  some  quarter  of  a  century  afterwards, 
but  probably  liked  it !  It  is  precisely  in  the 
same  marvellously  innocent  way  that  we 
find  him,  five-and-twenty  years  ago  talking 
politics.  Talking  them ;  be  it  at  once 
observed,  not  the  least  that  can  be  imagined 
like  a  politician,  but  simply  like  what  is 
termed  in  English,  a  Busybody  ;  in  Latin,  a 
Quidnunc ;  and  in  French,  a  Gobemouche. 
Besides  this,  he  was  the  very  embodiment — 
and  a  rather  substantial  one,  it  should  be 
added — of  the  social  phenomenon,  popularly 
known  as  an  alarmist.  But  then,  certainly, 
it  must  be  remembered,  as  some  sort  of  ex- 
tenuation, that  from  the  period  at  which  this 
fragment  of  the  journal  kept  by  Thomas 
Raikes,  Esquire,  begins— namely,  eighteen 
hundred  and  thirty-one,  dates  the  veritable 
commencement  of  the  decadence  of  Toryism. 
Thomas  Raikes,  Esquire,  merchant's  son 
though  he  is,  being  in  truth  a  Tory,  pur 
sang — through  and  through — to  the  back- 
bone. 

Naturally  enough,  everything  looked  in- 
auspicious then,  even  to  the  most  staunchly 
sanguine  adherents  of  the  grand,  old,  obdu- 
rate cause  of  Toryism  ;  a  cause  which  might 
|  perhaps  have  been  not  inaptly  typified  at 
'  the  period  by  a  grimly  \isaged  idol,  bearing 
an  awful  resemblance  to  Lord  Eld  on,  squat- 
ting eternally  upon  an  ungainly  altar-throne 
shaped  like  the  woolsack  !  Panic  the  most 
dire  was  in  the  very  midst  of  those  upon 
whom  the  cloak  of  Lord  Eldon  had  floated 
down,  less,  it  seemed,  as  a  robe  of  party, 
than  as  a  winding-sheet.  Trades'  unions 
were  "  frighting  the  isle  from  its  propriety," 
over  the  whole  of  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts. Toryism  Proper  had  not  yet  given 
place  to  that  colourless  phantom  of  it  subse- 
quently known  as  Conservatism.  The  for- 
mer was  in  the  agonies  of  dissolution  ;  the 
latter  was  to  be  born  of  it  by  a  sort  of  Ciesa- 
rian  operation,  posthumously.  Meanwhile 
the  tide  was  running  up  so  strongly  all 
along  the  political  coast-line,  that  poor 
Mrs.  Partington's  broom  was — not  less 
than  the  ruck  on  the  Derby  day  —  no- 
where. 

According  to  the  sombre  view  taken  of 
events  by  all  the  more  orthodox  believers  in  a 
certain  heaven-born  minister  deceased,  the 
national  escutcheon  had  become  so  blotted 
by  disgraceful  demands  on  the  part  of  the 
people,  a*  well  as  by  still  more  disgraceful 
concessions  on  the  part  of  the  government, 
that  its  entire  field  might  be  described  as 
sable,  with,  looming  out  of  it,  a  fearful 
heraldric apparition,  never  dreamod  of  before, 
even  by  the  dreamers  of  all  the  hideous 
gryphons  and  other  zoological  hobgoblins 
peopling  the  imaginative  brains  of  Rouge- 
dragon,  or  Clarencieux.  A  novel  symbol — 
only  dimly  definable  as  Radicalism  rampant 
—monopolising,  it  appeared  to  the  distracted 
Tories,  at  that  most  alarming  crisis  in  our 
history,  the  whole  of  the  tarnished  and 


298       [September  16, 1^,7.  ] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


blackened  shield  of  Britannia.  Conspiracies 
dark  and  sinister  -were  supposed  to  be  lurk- 
ing among  the  Whigs,  somewhere  in  a  little 
back-room  at  Boodle's.  Simultaneously  with 
which,  by  a  sort  of  chronic  fatality,  everyone  at 
"W  hite's  looked  (strange  to  tell)  unmistakeably 
in  the  bines.  Conspicuous  among  these — 
Thomas  Raikes,  Esquire:  that  ill-starred  gen- 
tleman, judging  from  the  records  of  his  Note- 
book, groaning  continually  under  a  species  of 
waking  nightmare  of  the  most  agonising  pre- 
sentiments. Several  of  his  associates,  more- 
over, seem  to  have  administered,  at  this 
time,  to  his  morbid  fears,  rather  maliciously  ; 
some,  probably  participating  in  them  to  the 
uttermost  themselves.  "Charlton,"  he  writes, 
"who  dined  with  me  to-day,  said,  aptly 
enough,  without  some  reform  we  should 
have  a  rebellion  in  the  country  ;  but,  with 
the  present  extravagant  plan,  we  shall  have  a 
revolution."  A  member  of  the  Cabinet  having, 
shortly  before,  observed  most  rationally, 
"  The  Tories  must  concede,  as  we  cannot 
retract ;  the  people  would  not  let  us,"  our 
sagacious  Diarist  remarks  immediately,  with 
a  manifest  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  as  much 
as  to  say,  I  told  you  so !  "  This  speaks 
volumes  as  to  the  dilemma  in  which  they  have 
got  not  only  themselves  but  the  country." 
Everything  betokens,  under  his  austere  and 
searching  scrutiny,  the  folly  of  Earl  Grey's 
Administration. 

A  sympathising  correspondent,  Count  Ma- 
tuscewitz,  had  written  to  Thomas  Eaikes, 
Esquire,  a  little  while  previously,  in  re- 
gard to  the  monstrous  ministerial  project  of 
a  wholesale  emancipation  of  the  negroes, 
reprehending  it  as  a  scheme  "  pregnant  with 
danger  and  bloodshed ;"  but  adding,  with  a 
Mawworm  casting-up  of  the  eyes,  however, 
"  I  sincerely  wish  I  may  be  deceived  in  these 
forebodings  !  " — when  lo  !  at  once  the  de- 
jected recipient  of  the  letter  has  caught  from 
it  the  fever  of  the  new  alarm  instantaneously 
A  fortnight  afterwards,  he  is  swallowing  al 
imaginable  and  unimaginable  kinds  of  sharp 
things,  in  the  shape  of  the  Latest  News 
from  Jamaica — another  Ramo  Samee  bolting 
knife-blades  and  dagger-points.  "  A  serious 
insurrection  of  the  slaves,"  he  scribbles  down 
in  his  journal,  "which  had  been  repressed  by 
the  troops  ;  but  it  is  said  that  fifty  estates  have 
been  destroyed."  Fancy  fifty  estates  destroyed 
Nothing  occurs  but  what  chimes  in  with  his 
dull  monotony  of  depression.  Even  a  hopefu 
spirit  in  the  stronghold  of  Toryism  fails  t< 
inspire  him  with  the  most  evanescent  sense  o 
exhilaration.  "  The  Tories  at  White's  are  in 
spirits."  he  records  upon  one  occasion,  "  anc 
begin  to  talk  of  throwing  out  the  bill ;"  bu 
to  this,  quoth  he, lugubriously,  "Spes  vana!' 
Another  while,  he  writes,  "  The  Speaker  tolc 
me  this  morning  that  Ellice  had  assured  him 
the  night  before,  that  the  Government  never 
was  so  strong  as  at  present ;"  and  here  it  is 
that  he  claps  on  to  the  old  wound  which  this 
untoward  remark  has  opened  afresh,  one  of 


lis  favourite  little  Gallic  anodynes.  "  This,'1 
aith  he,  in  his  pet  way,  or,  at  any  rate,  in  a 
)et,  "  is  un  peu  fort."  He  was  incredulous 
— the  poor  old-world  and  woe-begone  Tory 
— utterly  incredulous  of  the  capacity  of  the 
Whig  Reformers  to  do  the  mischief  they 
ntended  ;  yet,  at  the  same  instant,  he  abso- 
utely  despaired  of  the  discovery  for  the 
loomed  nation  itself,  of  any  means  of  extrica- 
tion from  its  difficulties.  At  one  moment  he 
writes,  somewhat  as  one  might  suppose  a 
reveller  of  Old  Rome,  fresh  from  a  banquet 
of  the  patricians,  might  have  mused  when 
musing  in  the  Forum,  and  looking  down 
nto  the  abyss  ultimately  destined  to  be  the 
grave  of  Curtius.  In  this  temperament  we 
ind  him  observing : 

"  There  is  much  alarm  in  some  branches  of  the 
cabinet  about  the  future ;  they  begin  to  i'eel  that  they 
ave  raised  a  power  which  they  can  never  put  down, — 
a  power  that  will  only  go  with  them  as  long  as  they 
"ollow  its  impulse.  The  political  unions  have  spoken 
too  loudly  now  ever  to  be  silenced  again,  and  they 
will  eventually  overturn,  not  only  this  government, 
but  any  other  which  may  succeed." 

Adding,  almost  immediately  afterwards,  as 
though  he  had  made  his  mind  up  for  the 
worst,  and  had  fairly  screwed  his  courage  to 
the  stick  ing-place  : 

"  The  die  is  cast  ;  to  go  back  is  impossible :  the 
tide  of  innovation  has  set  in,  and  who  shall  say  where 
it  will  carry  us  ?  From  this  day  dates  a  new  era  for 
England.  Placards  are  streaming  about  the  streets 
with  '  Glory  and  Honour  to  the  People  !' " 

"  And  what  ?  "  asks  Thomas  Raikes,  Esquire, 
son  of  the  London  merchant : 

"  What  is  the  People?  What  has  the  people 
always  been ?  The  most  capricious,  the  most  cruel, 
the  most  ungrateful,"  &c.  &c. 

His  own  clay,  of  course,  being  moulded  like 
the  rarest  porcelain  of  humanity,  out  of  quite 
other  materials — out  of  the  holy  dust  from 
some  remote  and  sacred  region — out  of  the 
red  earth  of  Mesopotamia!  Evidently  the 
poor  ecstatic  tufthuuter  had  been  living  so 
long  among  the  cream-of-the-cream — the 
Nobs  of  Nobland— that  he  had  actually 
come  at  last  to  look  upon  himself  as  one 
of  the  same  divine  fraternity.  Metamor- 
phosed to  that  extent  at  least,  as  the  cater- 
pillar gets  coloured  with  the  hue  of  the  leaf 
it  feeds  on.  The  People  1  Paugh  !  "  Here's 
the  smell  of  the  blood  still !— all  the  per- 
fumes of  Arabia  will  not  sweeten  this  !  " 

Mr.  Raikes's  terrors  meantime,  in  the  midst 
of  his  mock-patrician  disgust,  increase,  appa- 
rently as  the  hour  advances  :  the  terrible 
Reform  Bill,  in  proportion  to  its  drawing 
nearer  and  yet  nearer,  enlarging  its  horrors 
to  his  affrighted  imagination,  like  some  odious 
head  in  a  phantasmagoria  : 

"  All  parties  now,"  he  writes,  "  seem  to  agree  that 
we  are  in  a  dreadful  state,  and  even  the  government 


Charles  Dicker.]    FOREBODINGS   OF   THOMAS   BAIKES,    ESQUIRE.    [September  26.195?.]      299 


people  lower  their  tone,  and  hope  that  the  common 
danger  may  ultimately  unite  Whigs  and  Tories  to 
resist  the  common  enemy.  They  have  done  the  mis- 
chief, and  feel  too  late  their  incapacity  to  remedy  it." 

Continuing  thus,  a  little  further  on: 

"  Glad  would  the  government  now  be,  if  they  could 
dissolve  the  political  unions;  but  of  this  there  is  little 
chance;  on  the  contrary,  success  seems  only  to  have 
raised  their  tone,  and  Lord  Grey  will  find  that  he  has 
used  a  dangerous  auxiliary,  who  will  only  serve  under 
him  as  long  as  he  will  lead  them  on  to  further  con- 
quest. They  have  got  their  reform  ;  what  will  be 
their  next  war  cry  ?  The  repeal  of  the  Corn  Bill, 
•which  will  reduce  the  income  from  land  one-half. 
Will  that  satisfy  them  ?  No  !  Then  comes,"  &c. 
&c.  "annual  parliaments,  ballot." 

Observing  in  a  similar  strain,  when  the  last 
faint  Tory  hopes  thafc  the  bill  might  be 
quashed,  or  at  any  rate  amended,  have  been 
finally  dissipated : 

"A  new  era  may  be  dated  from  this  day  for 
England,  and  who  can  tell  the  changes  that  may 
ensue  ?  The  House  of  Peers  as  a  deliberative  body  is 
trampled  under  foot ;  it  never  again  can  be  a  check  to 
popular  innovation,  as  the  same  threat  of  a  fresh 
creation  may  be  used  by  a  reckless  minister  to  carry 
any  other  point  in  opposition  to  their  opinion  and 
feeling." 

But,  ah  !  the  secret  peeps  out  at  last,  the 
secret  of  this  intense  political  excitation  in 
the  mind  of  the  exquisitely  tasteful  and  con- 
summately refined  West  End  diner-out.  It  is 
in  the  middle  of  the  Reform  agitation,  when 
Thomas  Raikes,  Esquire,  enters  in  his  diary 
this  startling  but  wholly  unintended  revelation, 
— "I  do  not  think,"  he  says,  "that  in  all  my 
experience  I  ever  remember  such  a  season  in 
London  as  this  has  been  ;  so  little  gaiety,  so 
few  dinners,  balls,  arid  fetes."  The  murder 
is  out — a  bas  the  Reform  Bill,  away  with 
the  Whigs,  down  with  Radicalism !  No 
wonder  the  sleek  Sybarite  abhorred  a 
movement  carrying  such  desolation  and 
languor  into  the  salons  of  Mayfair,  and  to 
the  kitchens  of  Belgravia.  No  wonder  he 
exclaimed,  when  commenting  on  Lord  Grey 
with  such  bitterness,  and  originality :  "  He 
has  sown  the  winds,  and  must  reap  the 
tempests."  Or  that,  repeating  himself  in 
his  sorrowful  indignation,  he  should  cry  out 
with  the  guttural  voice  of  a  well-fed  Cas- 
sandra, "  From  this  day  commences  a  new 
era  for  England  " — This  Day  being .  the  date 
of  the  dissolution  of  the  last  unreformed 
parliament.  He  very  considerately  obliges 
us  upon  the  opposite  page  to  the  one  contain- 
ing the  last-mentioned  most  touching  ejacu- 
lation, with  his  own  axiomatic  definition  of 
the  Great  End  of  all  Good  Government, 
namely, — To  combine  the  maximum  of  liberty 
with  the  minimum,  of  democracy.  (Some~- 
thing  tantamount  to.  The  Wide  Ocean,  with 
as  little  water  as  possible  !)  It  is  a  philo- 
sophical and  statesmanlike '  epitome  of  his 
political  creed,  worthy  of  so  extremely  well- 


preserved  a  frequenter  of  White's  and*  the 
Carlton. 

It  is  positively  affecting  to  note  that  the 
first  shock  of  the  consequences  produced  by 
this  miserable  Reform  Bill,  upon  the  nerves  of 
Thomas  Raikes,  Esquire,  he  himself  indicates 
with  a  spasm  of  loathing,  when  he  observes 
that,  "the  bone-grubber,  W.  Cobbett,  is  re- 
turned for  Oldham,"  and,  a  little  lower  down 
the  same  page,  that  "  the  famous  pugilist  and 
better  at  Newmarket,  Gully,  has  been  re- 
turned for  Pontefract."  A  month  later,  and 
this  revolting  parliament  has  actually  as- 
sembled at  Westminster.  What  is  the 
earliest  anguish  of  it  to  our  afflicted  Diarist  ? 
"The  first  object  which  presented  itself, 
was  Mr.  Cobbett  seated  on  the  Treasury 
Bench  with  the  ministers ;  from  which  he 
refused  to  move,  as  he  said  he  knew  of  no 
distinction  of  seats  in  that  house."  The 
wretchedness  of  all  this  being  to  Thomas 
Raikes,  Esquire,  not  so  much  its  revolutionary 
aspect,  as  its-abominable  vulgarity.  In  testi- 
mony of  which  he  makes  the  following  illus- 
trative remarks  afterwards  upon  (as  will  be 
seen)  high  authority : 

"  Sir  Robert  Peel  said  to  me  that  he  was  very  much 
struck  with  the  appearance  of  this  new  parliament, 
the  tone  and  character  of  which  seemed  quite  different 
from  any  .other  he  had  ever  seen;  there  was  an 
asperity,  a  rudeness,  a  vulgar  assumption  of  inde- 
pendence, combined  with  a  fawning  deference  to  the 
people  out  of  doors,  expressed  by  many  new  mem- 
bers, which  was  highly  disgusting.  My  friend  R- , 

who  has  been  a  thick-and-thin  reformer,  and  voted 
with  th§  government  throughout,  owned  to  me  this 
evening  that  he  began  to  be  frightened." 

So  atrociously  vulgar,  in  point  of  fact,  is 
the  whole  transaction  from  first  to  last,  that 
he  ultimately  arrives  at  the  deliberate  con- 
clusion that,  "none  can  deny  that  a  great 
revolution  in  the  state  is  advancing."  Ex- 
plaining the  character  and  tendency  of  that 
revolution  thus  :  "  The  aristocracy  are  hourly 
going  down  in  the  scale  ;  royalty  is  become  a 
mere  cipher."  Finally,  he  expresses  himself 
explicitly  in  these  appalling  words  : 

"  The  revolution  so  long  predicted  seems  to  be 
approaching.  No  real  government  can  henceforward 
exist  in  this  country." 

In  reality,  he  appears  to  have  thought 
pretty  much  as  Pozzo  di  Borgo  thought  in 
eighteen  hundred  and  thjrty-ibur  :  to  wit, 
that,  "  the  British  constitution  of  king,  lords, 
and  commons,  which  had  for  ages  been  the 
admiration  of  the  world,  had  been  destroyed 
by  a  stroke  of  the  pen : "  that,  "  the  only 
government  which  remained  for  England  waa 
the  reformed  House  of  Commons,  or,  in  other 
words,  a  democracy."  Nevertheless,  Thomas 
Raikes,  Esquire,  survived  until  the  third  of 
July,  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-eight,  when 
he  peacefully  expired  in  the  seventieth  year 
of  his  age  at  Brighton ,  leaving  his  fatherland 
I  still  out  of  the  clutches  of  an  uutameable 


300      [September  •:«,  1857-1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  t*T 


democracy,  still  presided  over  by  a  sovereign, 
still  with  Lords  and  Commons,  still  with  a 
hale  constitution. 


UP  many  flights  of  crazy  stair*, 
Where  oft  one's  head  knocks  unawares  ; 
Wi:h  a  rickety  table,  and  without  chairs, 
And  only  a  stool  to  kneel  to  prayers, 
Dwells  my  sister. 

There  is  no  carpet  upon  the  floor, 

The  wind  whistles  in  through  the  cracks  of  the  door  ; 

One  might  reckon  her  miseries  by  the  score, 

But  who  feels  interest  in  one  so  poor? 

Yet  she  is  my  sister. 

She  was  blooming,  and  fresh,  and  young,  and  fair, 
With  bright  blue  eyes,  and  auburn  hair; 
But  the  rose  is  eaten  with  canker  care, 
And  her  visage  is  mnrk'd  with  a  grim  despair. 
Such  is  my  sister  ! 

When  at  early  morning,  to  rest  her  head, 
Slie  throws  herself  on  her  weary  bed, 
Longing  to  sleep  the  sleep  of  the  dead, 
Yet  fearing,  from  all  she  has  heard  and  read ; 
Pity  iny  sister. 

But  the  bright  sun  shines  on  her  and  on  me, 
And  on  mine  and  hers,  and  on  thine  and  thce, 
Whatever  our  lot  in  life  may  be, 
Whether  of  high  or  low  degree, 

Still,  she 's  our  sister. 

Weep  for  our  sister, 

Pray  for  our  sister, 

Succour  our  sister. 


BOURBON  PARIS,  PHOTOGRAPHED. 

THERE  is  a  certain  unscrupulosity  abroad 
as  regards  the  rights  of  generations  departed 
this  life,  and  unable  to  help  themselves. 
There  is  a  species  of  craze  afloat  for  knowing 
the  little  ways  and  habits  of  those  who  have 
gone  on  before.  The  public  roads  of  litera- 
ture have  grown  to  be  infested  with  bauds  of 
Free  Lances,  ranging  the  whole  country  for 
such  booty  as  the  defunct  may  have  left  be- 
hind them.  That  an  Englishman's  house  is 
his  castle  appears  to  be  sound  and  accepted 
doctrine  so  long  only  as  the  castellan  is  in 
the  flesh  and  able  to  make  good  his  right. 
Let  the  Englishman,  or  generation  of  English- 
men— for  they  have  their  keeps  and  castles 
too — have  slept  but  a  decent  interval  under 
ground,  and  these  lawless  condottieri  have 
set  forth  on  their  unholy  errand,  and  have 
drawn  a  cordon  round  the  stronghold,  and, 
before  long,  have  made  their  way  in.  Then 
may  be  seen  streaming  up  the  broad  stair- 
case floods  of  antiquarian  spoilers,  who 
forthwith  disperse  about,  prying  curiously 
into  choice  cabinets  and  secret  drawers,  and 
fingering  greedily  all  relics  of  the  departed. 
Not  even  the  blue  chamber,  or  famed 
skeleton  closet,  is  held  sacred  ;  no,  nor 
defunct's  private  escritoire  and  papers  and 
faded  writings.  For  such  are  the  very  spolia 


opima  of  the  raid,  to  be  rifled  feloniously, 
borne  away,  and  deciphered,  and  imprinted, 
and  brought  forth  into  the  light  of  day.  It 
is  very  certain  that  facts  exhumed  in  this 
questionable  fashion — facts  thut  concern  the 
innermost  life  of  a  deceased  Respectability — 
have  always  been  desiderated  exceeding!}'. 
Such,  when  wrought  into  book-shape,  may 
be  looked  for,  not  in  the  dusty  banishment  of 
the  library,  but  in  the  snug  retirement  of  the 
study,  on  the  table  by  the  tire,  to  be  taken  up 
at  choice  moments.  Where,  too,  with  eternal 
patent  of  precedence,  shall  repose  the  famous- 
Boswellian  chronicle,  in  company  with  sundry 
of  the  Anas,  and  some  few  others,  wherein 
men's  minds  have  been  most  exactly  photo- 
graphed. And  very  natural  it  is,  that  men 
should  turn  from  bare,  angular  traditions — 
the  dry  bones,  as  it  were,  of  history — to  such 
waifs  and  strays  and  chips  of  great  men's 
talk,  still  breathing  life  and  vitality,  giving 
to  us  the  very  shape  and  complexion  of  their 
garments,  what  they  delighted  to  have  about 
them,  with  a  hundred  other  strokes  that 
raise  them  up  again  before  us,  even  as  they 
were  in  the  flesh.  It  was  some  such  feeling, 
no  doubt,  that  made  the  caustic  satirist  of 
our  day  yeai-n  to  have  been  born  some  centu- 
ries back,  that  he  might  have  looked  on  th& 
face  of  Shakespere,  and  run  his  errands  for 
him,  and  been  his  shoeblack. 

But  there  is  a  pleasant  people  separated 
from  us  but  by  a  strip  of  sea,  whose  "  vie 
intime,"  as  it  may  be  called,  of  some  seventy 
or  eighty  years  back,  we  would  gladly  know 
more  of.  There  is  a  gorgeousness  and 
abundance  of  detail  belonging  to  that  time  ; 
a  crowd  of  figures,  in  costly  raiment,  ever 
crossing  and  re-crossing  ;  galaxies  of  beauty  ; 
strange  shows  and  pageantries ;  sparkling 
mots,  wit,  and  wealth  ;  which  render  that 
fairy-like  season  a  tempting  oasis  for  all  ex- 
plorers of  treasures  of  past  history.  Though 
such  matters  would  seem  to  have  been  treated 
copiously  in  the  memoires  of  the  time,  still  it 
is  mostly  the  little  schemes  and  intrigues,  the 
incomings  and  outgoings  that  are  set  forth  in. 
their  pages,  while  the  minute  touches  before 
spoken  of,  which  lend  true  vitality  to  the 
picture,  are  passed  by.  Thus,  reading  over 
that  entry  in  Mr.  Filby's  ledger  concerning 
Dr.  Goldsmith's  bloom-coloured  suit,  and 
tracing  out  the  history  of  those  vestments  j 
how  they  were  ordered  to  do  honour  to  a. 
bright  festive  occasion  long  looked  for  ;  how 
he  hoped  with  their  aid  to  render  his  queer 
ungainly  little  person  more  acceptable  to  the 
cherished  Jessamy  Bride  :  this  simple  entry 
in  Mr.  Filby's  ledger  seems  to  bring  him 
back  before  us,  Avith  all  his  gentle  foibles, 
more  effectually  than  a  whole  diary  of  his 
life  and  actions.  Were  points  like  these, 
relative  to  that  French  generation,  preserved 
to  us  in  some  Boswellian  note-book,  how  near 
a  prospect  would  it  help  us  to  of  that  gay  and 
garish  period  of  French  life.  Even  so  has 
the  great  Whig  chronicler,  from  ballads, 


Charlee  Dickens.] 


BOURBON  PARIS,  PHOTOGRAPHED. 


[September  26. 1857J      301 


broadsides,  and  caricatures,  set  forth  his 
famous  picture  of  English  ways  and  manners 
two  hundred  years  ago  ;  so,  too,  has  Thomas 
Carlyle  drunk  inspiration  for  his  vivid 
chronicle  from  the  flood  of  wild  pamphlets 
abroad  in  that  age  :  it  is  like  looking  at 
Napoleon's  St.  Helena  hat,  or  at  Marie  An- 
toinette's slipper,  or  at  the  faded  characters 
of  an  old  letter.  Very  gladly  would  we  learn 
in  what  guise  this  fifteenth  Louis  went  forth 
to  hunt  of  a  morning,  how  he  whiled  away 
an  evening  at  the  Trianon,  what  were  his 
books,  his  jokes  at  the  little  suppers  ?  We 
would  have  those  glittering  'Versailles  recep- 
tions brought  up  again  before  us  ;  we  would 
know  how  the  stately  company  found  amuse- 
ment, how  they  sat,  and  played,  and  flirted  ; 
how  Richelieu  sneered,  and  Dubarry  flaunted ; 
how  the  queer  medley  of  courtiers,  soldiers, 
queans,  dwarfs,  and  players  moved  onward 
through  the  gay  and  gilded  Versailles  gal- 
leries, toward  the  Revolution.  Such  prospect 
is  not  altogether  unattainable. 

It  is  natural  enough  that  the  world  should 
be  curious  to  know  in  what  guise  this  Paris 
beau-monde,  male  and  female,  went  forth 
upon  those  neatly  sanded  boulevard  pro- 
menades, and  showed  themselves  at  spectacle, 
ball,  or  opera  ;  in  what  rich  material  the 
Richelieus  and  D'Aiguillons  came  flocking  to 
Versailles  assembly  ;  what  the  latest  device 
in  style  and  cut  introduced  by  Monsieur  le 
Due — king's  own  tailor — from  the  Quai  de 
1'Ecole,  or  by  Lemaitre,  of  the  Rue  des 
Foss6s  ;  wbat  were  the  fashionable  charges 
of  ihose  artistes  ;  what  was  the  "  castor " 
most  a  la  mode,  with  a  few  little  secrets  con- 
cerning the  lace  and  jewellery  then  most 
worn,  would  all  have  their  place  in  a  surface- 
sketch,  or  coloured  photograph,  of  sunshiny 
Paris  some  seventy  or  eighty  years  ago. 

Monsieur  le  Due,  then — tailleur  ,de  sa  Ma- 
jest6 — reigned  on  the  Quai  de  FEcole,  and 
his  salons  were  dailed  peopled  with  lions  and 
exquisites  of  the  very  first  water  :  herr 
Schellington,  who  had  the  true  German 
talent  for  fashioning  garments,  came  in  for 
his  share  of  high  patronage — being,  perhaps, 
taken  up  by  the  officers  of  the  Royal  Alle- 
mand  and  other  German  regiments. 

For  sitting  in  of  a  morning,  when  under 
the  coiffeur's  or  valet's  hands,  Monsieur  le 
Duccouldfurnish  ahandsomerobe  de  chambre, 
of  rich  cloth  of  gold  fabric,  with  flower  pat- 
tern interwoven,  at  very  reasonable  cost — 
say,  from  one  to  six  guineas  per  French  yard. 
How  many  yards  such  loose  flowing  robes 
absorb  is  not  to  be  determined  here  ;  but,  if 
a  rough  guess  may  be  hazarded,  twenty-five 
to  thirty  guineas  must  have  been  the  figure. 
Truly  luxurious  is  this  notion  of  being  shaved 
and  coified  in  cloth  of  gold  and  rich  flower 
pattern.  In  the  winter  season  he  could  send 
forth  Monsieur  le  Marquis  upon  town,  arrayed 
in  cloth,  plain  black  Paguou  or  bright  scarlet 
Gobelins,  or  else  in  velvets  covered  over 
with  embroidery,  and  set  off  gorgeously  by  a 


waistcoat  of  cloth  of  gold  and  silver  pro- 
fusely flowered.  These  famous  waistcoats 
were  meant  to  be  perfect  cynosures — all 
other  portions  of  the  dress  being  sacrificed  to 
their  splendours.  Monsieur  le  Due  had  such 
things  by  him,  at  from  six  to  twelve  guineas 
a-piece.  But  for  light  summer  wear,  for  that 
promenade  en  carosse  in  the  Boulevards,  cam- 
lets and  flowered  silks  were  mostly  worn.  But 
any  special  embroidering  of  Monsieur's  suit 
was  a  very  costly  business — not  to  be  at- 
tempted handsomely  under  twenty-five 
guineas.  Monsieur  le  Due — being  tailleur  de 
sn  Majeste — was,  of  course,  well  skilled  in  the 
nice  complexities  of  court  mourning.  He 
must  have  known  how  to  apportion  the  shade 
and  tint  according  to  the  precise  affinity. 
He  could  prescribe  the  moment  when  pas- 
sionate grief  was  to  glide  from  sombre 
woollens  into  silks  and  black  ornaments,  and 
from  these  again  subside  gently  into  little 
grief  and  diamonds.  Such  decoration  was, 
of  course,  for  the  ladies — the  gentlemen 
appearing  in  silver  swords  and  buckles, 
Perhaps  he  could  not  so  readily  have  fur- 
nished a  reason  why  madarne  was  expected 
to  mourn  monsieur  a  year  and  six  weeks, 
while  monsieur's  sorrow  for  niadaine  was 
supposed  to  heal  in  six  months. 

For  ladies'  dresses,  the  materials  most  in 
fashion  were  the  native  Lyons  silks,  and  rich 
Indian  stuffs  brought  over  by  the  great 
French  company — such  as  Pekins  and  Armo- 
sins — not  to  mention  taffetas,  mostly  of  British 
make — evidence  of  the  Anglomania  shortly 
to  set  in.  There  was  also  a  British  moire, 
sold  by  the  dress  at  from  four  to  sixteen 
guineas.  Lace,  too,  in  the  shape  of  superb 
manchettes,  was  much  affected  by  the  haughty 
Parisian  belles,  who  thought  little  of  giving 
twenty  or  even  fifty  guineas  for  a  single  pair. 
On  those  fair  arms  might  be  seen  the  famed 
point  d'Argentan — better  known  as  Alencon 
lace— or  the  no  less  costly  point  d'Angleterre 
— familiar  to  us  as  Brussels  point — and 
Valenciennes,  even  then  noted  for  its  ochre 
tint.  No  doubt  the  magasins  in  the  Rue  de 
PEcu  and  Place  Dauphine,  where  such  dainty 
articles  abounded,  were  well  frequented  by 
those  fair  but  lavish  customers.  But  it  was 
at  the  gorgeous  Versailles  assemblies  that 
the  marvels  of  female  dress  were  displayed  in 
all  their  splendour.  On  such  occasions,  the 
rich  modistes  of  the  Rue  St.  Honor6,  the 
Rue  de  Roule,  and  Palais  Marchand,  fur- 
nished forth  their  choicest  stores.  They  could 
supply  the  new  fashionable  caps  or  turbans, 
known  as  bonnets  au  cabriolet  and  bonnets 
a  la  comdte.  There  might  be  some  grounds 
for  likening  a  head-dress  to  the  vast  hood  of 
a  vehicle  then  common  enough  in  Parisian 
streets,  but  the  significance  of  the  comete  cap 
is  not  quite  so  apparent.  Such  gear,  too,  as 
blondes  de  Soye,  ajustemeus  de  blondes, 
fichus,  scrupuleuses  (whatever  they  might  be), 
mantelets,  gazes,  entoilages,  gazes  d'ltalie, 
might  be  all  had  in  abundance,  and  at  reason.- 


302       [September  :«,1S57.J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


able  cost.  A  handsome  pelisse  was  attainable 
at  about  three  guineas — a  mantelet  at  so  low 
as  thirty  shillings.  At  the  same  time,  these 
prices  were  susceptible  of  startling  expansion 
— a  pelisse  of  rich  satin,  or  kind  known  as 
Vraye  Mart  re,  running  up  to  ten  and  twenty 
guineas.  That  must  have  been  a  day  o; 
storm  and  trouble  when  Madame's  bill  came 
in  to  Monsieur  le  Baron — when  Monsieur 
le  Baron  requested  a  few  moments'  conver- 


sation in  Madame's  private  chamber. 
Who  shall  say  whether  these   same 


St 


Honor6  modistes  ever  came  by  their  money  i 
Or  whether  this,  with  many  more  accounts 
was  wiped  off  and  extinguished  for  ever  in 
the  great  crash  then  just  at  hand  ?  At  those 
great  Versailles  gatherings,  very  striking 
to  the  provincial's  eyes  was  the  blaze  ol 
diamonds  and  precious  stones  ;  stars,  sword- 
hilts,  shoe-buckles,  ear-rings — all  reflected 
back  the  snowy  light  of  the  royal  lustres 
On  a  few  milliormaire  fingers  were  to  be  seen 
rings  of  inestimable  value ;  and  in  the  ears 
of  some  fermier-g6neral's  wife  glittered  ear- 
rings one  thousand  guineas  in  price.  On  the 
Quais  de  1'Horloge  and  des  Orfevres,  and  in 
Place  Dauphiue,  and  in  the  gay  show-rooms 
of  Boehmer  and  Bossange  (Parisian  Hunt  and 
Roskell),  whence  was  to  come  forth  hereafter 
the  fatal  queen's  necklace,  all  such  glittering 
treasures  abounded  plentifully.  But  in  this 
scene  of  dazzling  splendours  disturbing 
doubts  suggest  themselves.  For  we  are  told 
that  the  tiny  buckles  on  beauties'  shoes, 
scintillating  like  brilliants,  were  commonly, 


alack  !  of  paste — at  best  of  strass  ! 
too,   were  the  bracelets  round   the 


False, 
snowy 


wrists  !  False,  too,  the  brooch  with  all  its 
sprays  and  pendants  !  Provincial  will  admire 
lovingly  the  cunningly  wrought  chain  at- 
taching Madame's  watch  to  her  side  ;  how 
shall  he  learn  that  this  is  but  another  delu- 
sion, being  nothing  save  plain  familiar  pinch- 
beck, costing  at  most  twelve  francs.  Monsieur 
—curiously  enough — fancies  a  steel  chain 
which  stood  him  no  more  than  three  francs  ! 
Here  are  strange  anomalies,  significant  in 
their  little  way,  of  the  utter  rottenness  of  those 
days  of  impending  doom  ;  "  beautiful,"  as 
has  been  nobly  written  of  this  same  time, 
"  beautiful,  if  seen  from  afar,  resplendent 
like  a  sun — seen  near  at  hand,  a  mere  sun's 
atmosphere,  hiding  darkness,  a  confused  fer- 
ment of  ruin  ! "  With  which  false  japannery 
may  be  matched  the  mode  of  conveyance  to 
these  same  royal  parties— for  such,  at  least, 
as  are  so  poor  as  to  be  utterly  coachless. 
From  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  on  tbe  evenings  of 
such  festivities  set  forth  coaches  holding  four 
passengers  each,  who,  for  the  charge  of  three 
francs  and  a-half,  ai'e  set  down  at  Versailles 
gate.  True  omnibus  mode  this  of  going  to 
court. 

A  not  unusual  toy  for  ladies'  fingers,  to  be 


gentlemen.  In  the  Rue  St.  M6ry  was  a 
temple  known  as  the  Hotel  de  Tabac,  conse- 
crated exclusively  to  the  sale  of  these  delicate 
trifles.  Here  were  they  to  be  found  in  be- 
wildering variety,  and  of  all  materials — of 
tortoiseshell.  gold,  silver,  mother-of-pearl, 
and,  strange  to  say,  of  a  substance  known  as 
cuir  d'Irelande,  or  Irish  leather.  Ladies' 
gold  snuff-boxes  ran  from  fifteen  to  forty 
guineas  ;  but  a  cheaper  article,  a  gilt  substi- 
tute at  thirty  shillings,  was  found  to  answer 
amazingly  well,  and  had  all  the  look  of  the 
genuine  ware.  Wonderful,  too,  were  the 
shapes  and  devices  of  bijouterie  to  be  had  on 
another  story  of  this  same  Hotel  de  Tabac. 
Lacquered  almanacs,  mounted  in  gold,  golden 
garters,  screen-canes,  canes  with  golden, 
apple  tops,  golden  dice,  secret  cases  for 
carrying  portraits — (is  there  not  a  certain 
significance  in  this  item,  too  1) — with  a  host 
of  costly  trinkets  and  clinquillerie,  the  use 
and  meaning  whereof  it  would  be  hard  to 
divine.  It  is  not  written  whether  it  was 
here  were  kept  on  sale  these  famous  sachets, 
the  mere  wearing  of  which  was  supposed  to 
keep  away  the  stroke  of  apoplexy. 

Nor  was  evidence  of  growing  Anglomania 
wanting,  even  in  such  small  matters  as  these. 
There  were  to  be  had  portfolios  a  1'Angloise, 
and  in  the  Eue  Notre  Dame,  a  certain  Mon- 
sieur Tranchant,  traiteur  a  1'Angloise,  pre- 
pared marvels  of  rosbif  and  bifteak.  One 
Materflint,  then  lodging  with  a  cart-maker  in 
the  Rue  du  Tour  St.  Germain,  gave  lessons 
in  the  English  tongue.  So,  too,  did  O'Reillii, 
who  was  to  be  heard  of — and  truly  Celtic 
was  his  choice  of  abode — at  a  wine-shop  at 
the  Cafe  Bertheau.  But  there  was  a  rival 
in  the  field — a  compatriot  wearing  the  name 
of  Reilli — who  professed  to  instruct  in  English 
pronunciation  only.  How  strangely  does 
this  recal  one  other  Irishman — father  of  the 
great  Brinsley  Sheridan — who  went  north- 
ward to  Edinburgh  town  with  richest  of 
brogues,  and  schooled  Wedderbum  and  others 
in  all  the  niceties  of  English  pronunciation  ! 

It  was  perhaps  interesting  to  citizens  of 
the  great  republic  to  know  that  Jefferson, 
as  he  is  written  down  with  stern  simplicity, 
was  to  be  seen  every  day  at  his  residence, 
Rue  Neuve  de  Berri,  near  the  Grille  de 
Chaillot.  Those,  too,  who  had  commissions 
for  the  delicate  pencils  of  Greuze  and  Boucher 
might  seek  those  artists  in  the  Louvre  gal- 
leries. There,  too,  were  to  be  seen  Carl 
Vanloo  and  Vernet  the  marine  painter  ;  but 
Oudry — Oudry  of  the  graceful  brush— was 
aest  met  with  at  his  own  residence,  H6tel  de 
Grammont,  Rue  de  Clichi,  where  many  a 
sretty  paysage  and  graceful  face  waited  the 
inishing  touch  upon  his  easel.  But  it  is  time 
to  have  done,  else  we  might  run  oil  for  many 
lages  to  come  with  more  of  these  Purple 
Tints. 

brought  forth  and  played  with  in  pauses  of  I  Though  it  was  once  said  that  history  in 
conversation  or  the  dance,  was  the  souft-box,  certain  hands  was  little  better  than  an  old 
of  a  different  make  and  price  from  those  of  i  almanac — thereby  depreciating  calendars  in 


Cbatlea  Dickene.1 


OUE  FAMILY  PICTURE. 


[September  26,  1337.]       303 


general — still  most  of  the  matters  given 
above  have  been  gleaned  from  sundry  little 
almanacs  purchased  on  the  parapet  book- 
shelves of  the  Pont  Neuf. 


OTJE  FAMILY'  PICTUEE. 

IN    SIX    CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER    I. 

OTHER  heir-looms  have  come  down  to  me — 
the  large  family  Bible,  my  father's  heavy 
old-fashioned  watch,  a  set  of  china  that  be- 
longed to  my  mother — but,  much  as  I  value 
those  dear  relics,  none  of  them  are  so  dear  to 
me  as  our  family  picture. 

It  has  hung  above  my  chimney-piece  these 
many  years,  shedding  a  benignant  influence 
over  a  hearth  long  solitary  and  deserted.  I 
know  not  why  my  thoughts  should  dwell  on 
it  to-night  more  than  they  usually  do,  nor 
why  my  memory  should  at  this  time,  more 
than  any  other,  take  to  itself  wings,  and  live 
again,  for  a  brief  while,  in  the  pleasant  days 
ot  my  youth  ;  except  that  this  is  the  anniver- 
sary of  an  event  too  sorrowful  even  to  be 
forgotten  by  me,  which  the  picture  serves  to 
bring  more  vividly  before  my  mind. 

It  cannot  boast  of  a  very  superb  frame,  this 
dear  old  picture ;  and  many  people  would 
pronounce  it  to  be  little  better  than  a 
daub  ;  for  although  the  faces  are  beautifully 
and  carefully  finished,  each  being  a  striking 
individual  likeness,  yet  the  drapery  of  the 
figures,  and  the  accessories,  have  rather  a 
blotchy  and  slovenly  appearance  on  close  in- 
spection. It  was  painted,  half  a  century  ago, 
by  a  wandering  artist— a  man  of  talent, 
certainly,  but  a  drunkard,  as  I  have  been 
told — who  disappeared  from  the  town  before 
he  had  quite  finished  it,  having  persuaded 
my  father  to  pay  him  in  advance.  Time  has 
imparted  to  it  a  rich  mellow  tint,  turning  the 
white  into  light  yellow,  and  deepening  the 
shadows. 

It  represents  my  father  and  mother, 
their  five  children,  and  my  cousin,  Philip 
Delmer.  The  first  thing  about  it  that 
attracts  the  attention  of  strangers  is  the 
quaint  attire  of  the  figures.  It  makes  one 
smile  to  see  how  the  children  of  those  days 
were  dressed ;  the  elder  boys  in  nankeen 
vests,  and  trowsers  of  the  same,  short  enough 
to  display  their  ankles  ;  short-waisted,  high- 
collared,  swallow-tailed  blue  coats  with  bright 
buttons ;  high  black  stocks,  frilled  shirt 
bosoms,  white  socks  and  pumps  ;  the  younger 
lads  in  jacket  suits  of  blue.  But  the  girls 
are  the  oddest  figures.  My  sister  Euth,  who 
may  be  taken  as  a  pattern  of  the  rest,  is  re- 
presented as  a  tall,  thin  girl,  with  her  waist 
two  inches  below  her  armpits  ;  clad  in  a  low- 
bosomed,  short-sleeved,  white  robe,  rather 
scanty  in  length,  with  none  of  that  volumin- 
ous width  of  skirt  in  which  the  young  ladies 
of  the  pi'esent  day  delight — leaving  visible 
two  pretty  feet  covered  with  red  morocco 
shoes.  The  hair,  both  of  girls  and  boys,  is 
cut  short,  and  combed  straight  down  over  the 


forehead  without  either  parting  or  curl,  giv- 
ing them  a  strangely  quiet,  puritanical  look. 
The  principal  figure  in  the  picture  is  my 
father,  seated,  as  I  well  remember  him,  in 
his  chair  of  black  oak,  with  a  volume  of 
Tacitus  on  his  knees,  and  his  silver  snuff-box 
in  one  hand.  The  artist  has  caught  his  ex- 
pression admirably.  There  is  a  long,  thin, 
scholar-like  face,  on  which  the  memory  of  a 
smile  seems  still  to  linger ;  the  black  hair, 
prematurely  thin  and  grey  about  the  tem- 
ples ;  the  very  stoop  is  preserved.  The 
dress  is  such  as  he  usually  wore — black  coat, 
the  collar  reaching  to  his  ears  ;  black  small- 
clothes, nankeen  vest,  silk  stockings,  and 
shoes  with  large  silver  buckles,  with  just  a 
hint  of  the  queue  that  hung  straight  down 
his  shoulders  behind.  My  mother  comes 
next — portly  and  comfortable  in  person, 
cheerful  and  good-tempered  in  countenance, 
as  the  mother  of  such  a  family  ought  to  be. 
She  is  painted  in  her  wedding-dress,  a  silver- 
grey  silk.  A  muslin  kerchief,  fastened  with 
a  gold  pin,  and  surmounted  by  a  thick  crimped 
frill,  covers  her  neck  and  bosom ;  on  her  head 
is  a  close-fitting  cap,  peaked  up  somewhat  at 
the  crown,  which  I  am  not  skilful  enough  to 
describe,  but  only  worn,  as  I  remember,  on 
Sundays  and  days  of  high  state  and  ceremony. 
Six  short  glossy  curls  crown  her  forehead. 
Without  these  curls  I  should  hardly  recog- 
nise my  mother,  for  they  were  as  much  a 
part  of  herself  as  her  good  temper  or  her  plea- 
sant smile.  I  never  remember  her  without 
them  ;  for,  even  in  after  life,  when  the  rest  of 
her  hair  had  become  thin  and  grey,  the  six 
short  curls  still  shone,  firm  and  glossy,  above 
her  silver-rimmed  spectacles. 

My  father,  Amos  Eedfern,  was  master  of 
the  only  grammar  school  in  the  little  town  of 
Dingwell.  It  was  a  private  foundation,  the 
result  of  a  bequest  by  one  John  Dalrymple, 
alderman  and  twice  mayor  of  Dingwell ;  who, 
dying  without  issue  in  the  year  fifteen  hun- 
dred and  sixty-two,  and  having  no  relatives 
to  whom  to  bequeath  his  fortune,  left  it  for 
the  endowment  of  a  grammar  school  for  the 
education  of  thirty  poor  boys  of  his  native 
town.  But  the  trustees  of  the  charity,  in  the 
course  of  the  next  generation,  wiser  than 
simple  John  Dalrymple,  and  considering  that 
poor  boys  are  better  without  a  knowledge  of 
grammar,  determined  to  send  their  own  sons, 
and  the  sous  of  their  wealthy  friends,  to  par- 
take of  the  mental  loaves  and  fishes  thus 
gratuitously  provided  ;  so  for  a  long  time 
before  my  father  became  master,  it  had 
been  considered  as  the  fashionable  prepara- 
tory school  of  the  district.  My  father  often 
deplored  his  inability  to  remedy  this  abuse  ; 
although  in  the  course  of  his  long  career  he 
did  contrive  to  smuggle  into  the  school  three 
or  four  poor  boys  whose  abilities  had  attracted 
his  attention,  by  interesting  some  of  the  more 
charitable  of  the  trustees  in  their  behalf,  but 
not  without  risking  the  favour  of  many 
powerful  friends. 


304      [September  16, 1957.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bj 


There  was  one  anecdote  that  my  father 
•was  fond  of  relating,  with  that  quiet  humour 
•which  was  the  nearest  approach  to  mirth  he 
ever  indulged  in.  He  had  succeeded,  after 
ranch  trouble  and  opposition,  in  filling  up 
one  of  the  vacancies  in  the  school  with  a  poor 
but  quick-witted  lad,  the  son  of  a  journeyman 
shoemaker  of  the  town.  A  day  or  two  after 
the  election,  a  certain  rich  Mrs.  Savory, 
whose  handsome  son,  Adolphus  George,  was 
at  that  time  one  of  my  father's  scholars,  paid 
him  a  visit  of  expostulation.  She  swept  into 
the  study,  all  satin  and  musk,  as  my  father 
used  to  say,  and  seating  herself,  haughtily 
desired  to  have  an  explanation  of  my  father's 
extraordinary  conduct,  and  demanded  the 
immediate  expulsion  of  the  shoemaker's  son. 
My  father  heard  her  quietly  to  the  end,  and 
then  unlocking  his  bureau,  drew  from  its 
recesses  a  roll  of  yellow,  timeworn  parch- 
ment, and  unfolding  it  before  the  great  iady, 
pointed  to  certain  passages  therein,  and  read, 
in  a  low  distinct  voice,  the  whole  of  the  clause 
relating  to  the  thirty  poor  boys.  Mrs.  Savory 
rustled  her  satins  and  feathers,  pressed  her 
handkerchief  to  her  nose,  said  that  it  was  a 
most  extraordinary  circumstance,  remarked 
that  the  weather  was  very  fine  for  the  season, 
and  that  she  should  be  happy  to  see  my 
father  to  dinner  ;  and  sailing  slowly  out  of 
the  room,  was  assisted  into  her  carriage,  and 
quietly  disappeared.  It  was  this  same  shoe- 
maker's son  who  afterwards  won  so  many 
honours  at  the  university,  and  finally  became 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  preachers  of  the 
day. 

Our  house,  which  was  a  large,  old-fashioned, 
inconvenient  residence,  was  separated  from 
the  school  by  a  considerable  piece  of  ground, 
— half  garden,  half  orchard.  My  father  was 
no  gardener  ;  but  my  mother,  with  the  aid 
of  an  old  man  one  day  in  the  week  and  the 
forcible  impressment  of  any  idle  lads  she 
could  catch  about  the  premises,  contrived  to 
keep  it  in  a  very  tolerable  state  of  cultivation ; 
as  we  children  grew  up,  half  our  leisure 
hours  were  spent  in  it,  and  in  our  youth- 
ful eyes  it  was  ever  a  most  wonderful  place. 
There  were  fruits  in  abundance  of  nearly 
every  kind  that  will  grow  in  England  in  the 
open  air,  and  as  my  mother  considered  her- 
self a  woman  of  some  taste,  flowers  were  not 
neglected,  though  they  were  mostly  of  an  old- 
fashioned  and  stately  kind,  such  as  sun- 
flowers, hollyhocks,  cabbage-roses,  sweet- 
williams,  and  gillyflowers.  But  the  gooseberry 
and  currant-trees  were  the  pride  of  my 
mother's  heart ;  and  certainly  I  have  never 
seen  elsewhere  fruit  equal  in  size  and 
flavour  to  that  I  was  used  to  at  home. 

If  my  mother  could  be  said  to  be  pos- 
sessed by  a  mania  for  anything,  it  was  for 
making  preserves,  which,  as  we  had  always 
a  superabundance  of  fruit,  she  was  enabled 
to  'ndulge  to  her  heart's  content.  As  the 
preserving  season  approached,  we  always 
noticed  that  my  mother's  temper  grew 


!  slightly  acrimonious,  that  she  gave  sharp 
:  answers  to  pacific  questions,  and  that  the 
j  kitchen  was  dangerous  ground.  Pickles,  she 
would  observe,  might  be  a  responsibility, 
!  and  home-made  wines  a  serious  undertaking; 
;  but  their  weight  on  her  mind  was  nothing 
in  comparison  to  that  imposed  by  preserves. 
She  had  a  secret  connected  with  the  boiling 
of  them,  which  her  mother  had  bequeathed 
to  her  on  her  death-bed — a  spell  or  incan- 
tation, we  children  thought  it ;  though  what 
it  really  was  I  never  learnt,  having  no  occa- 
sion to  make  use  of  such  knowledge.  But 
when  the  last  jar  was  filled  and  covered, 
all  the  sugar  of  my  mother's  good-nature 
came  back  in  a  lump,  and  we  might  have 
lived  on  preserves  for  the  next  six  months, 
if  such  a  diet  would  have  agreed  with  our 
constitutions.  Then  followed  a  short  but  busy 
season  of  packing-up,  when  immense  jars  had 
to  be  sent  off  to  remote  aunts  and  cousins — 
whose  addresses  we  scarcely  knew — and  to 
a  host  of  other  people  who  claimed  us  as 
friends.  The  people  of  Dingwell  came  in  for 
their  share  in  the  general  distribution,  not 
forgetting  many  poor  families,  and  the  old 
widows  in  the  almshouse. 

I  speak  of  these  things  as  I  remember  them 
when  a  lad  ;  but  it  now  becomes  necessary 
to  go  back  a  little  farther  still.  My  poor 
father  and  mother  had  been  married  for  ten 
years  before  they  had  any  children  ;  but,  at 
the  end  of  that  time,  two  came  together,  as  if 
to  make  up  for  the  long  delay — my  brother 
Neville  and  my  sister  Ruth.  As  some  years 
elapsed  after  this  startling  event,  without 
any  likelihood  of  a  further  increase  to  his 
family,  my  father  sketched  In  bis  imud  a  plan 
of  education  for  these  two.  which  he  de- 
termined they  should  pursue  together.  It 
may  appear  singular  that  he  should  wish 
to  give  his  daughter  the  same  education  as 
his  son  ;  but  that  was  one  of  his  minor 
crotchets,  though  based,  indeed,  upon  his 
principal  one. 

My  father  being  the  head  of  a  grammar- 
school  was,  as  a  matter  of  course,  a  good 
classical  scholar,  in  fact,  no  one  could  have 
been  better  fitted  for  such  a  situation,  for  not 
only  was  he  acquainted  with  all  the  extant 
literature  of  Greece  and  Rome,  but  he  loved 
and  admired  the  ancient  authors  to  an  extent 
that  was  almost  fanatical.  In  all  school 
labours  that  had  no  connection  with  the 
classics  he  was  invariably  kind  and  indul- 
gent in  the  extreme  ;  but  when  the  ancif-nts 
came  in  question,  he  at  once  became  stem 
and  inflexible,  and  woe  to  any  wretched 
wight  who  stuttered  over  his  conjugations, 
or  stumbled  in  his  declensions.  Long  crabbed 
tasks  were  in  certain  store  for  him,  ;uul  the- 
cane  was  not  always  spared.  Yet  the  lads 
loved  him  for  his  simplicity  and  good-nature 
in  everything  else.  He  used  to  carry  marbles 
in  his  pocket,  which  he  would  distribute  to 
unfortunate  gamesters  who  had  lost  their 
all ;  and  he  was  always  ready  to  mend  any 


Chivies  Didcens.] 


[September  26, 1S5'  ]       305 


broken  toy  or  instrument  of  amusement  far  short  and  painful  illness,  a  calm  death,  and 
better  than  the  lads  themselves  could  do  it.  j  a  solemn  funeral,  when  the  snow  lay  thick 
He  was  not  very  particular,  either,  on  the  on  the  ground.  How  it  affected  us  all !  For 
subject  of  caricatures,  of  which  several  per-  long  afterwards,  through  the  dark  frostynights 
sonal  ones  adorned  the  walls  of  the  school,  of  that  winter,  in  the  more  cheerful  nights 
There  was  one  which  represented  Lira  as  of  spring,  and  even  in  the  hot  windless  nights 
ci'ushed  to  a  pancake  beneath  a  pyramid  of:  of  summer,  we  children  used  to  whisper  to 
ancient  authors.  In  another  he  was  repre-ieach  other  about  the  strange  mystery  of 
sented  as  a  conjuror,  about  to  swallow  the  death,  and  wonder  what  the  heaven  was 
ancients  bodily,  in  the  form  of  a  string  of  like  where  they  told  us  little  Katie  now 
sausages;  while  a  third  depicted  him,  attired !  lived  ;  and  whether  she  ever  watched  the 
in  a  toga,  flogging  a  youth,  who  was  weeping  bright  stars,  as  we  did,  when  they  glinted  in 


very  blotchy  tears,  up  the  side  of  an  almost 
perpendicular  hill — Parnassus,  I  presume. 

But  while  my  father  was  pluming  himself 
with  the  idea  of  employing  his  future  leisure 
hours  in  imparting  to  his  two  children  a 


through  our  bedroom  window. 


CHAPTER  THE  SECOND. 

WHEN  I  go  back  in  memory  to  the  period 
of  my  childhood,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  marked 


sound  classical  education,   the  tenor  of  his  I  by  certain  epochs  or  points  of  time,  which, 
meditations  was  disturbed  by  the  birth  of  i  owing  to  some  circumstance  or  event  that 


another  son — I,  Caleb  Eedfern,  to  wit ;  and 
the  catalogue  was  closed  by  the  birth,  at 
brief  intervals,  of  my  sisters,  Helen  and 
Kate. 

My  father  took  more  snuff  than  ever — 
grew  fonder  of  the  society  of  the  gentlemen 
of  the  toga,  and  did  with  one  suit  of  clothes 
less  a  year.  My  mother  no  longer  gave 
away  her  old  gowns,  and  had  a  sharper  eye 
after  affairs  in  the  kitchen. 

I  have  mentioned  my  cousin,  Philip  Del- 
mer,  as  forming  one  of  the  group  in  our 
family-picture.  He  was  the  only  child  of  my 
father's  only  sister.  Both  his  parents  died  at 
Jamaica,  of  yellow  fever,  when  he  was  only 
two  years  old.  A  short  time  before  he  died, 
my  uncle  contrived  to  pen  a  few  broken 
lines,  bequeathing  Philip  to  the  care  of  his 
brother-in-law,  in  England,  and  the  child 
arrived  at  our  house  some  six  months  after- 
wards,having  been  brought  over  in  charge  of  a 
captain's  wife.  My  parents  received  the  little 
stranger  as  though  he  were  another  child  of 
their  own ;  and  he  grew  up  among  us,  treated 
in  every  respect  as  one  of  ourselves. 

Neville  alone  was  disposed  to  regard  him 
with  a  somewhat  jealous  eye,  and  to  consider 
that  he  usurped  the  place  which  he  himself 
should  have  held  in  his  parents'  affections  ; 
an  opinion  most  unfounded.  Phillip  was 
nearly  two  years  older  than  Neville,  and  his 
abilities  were  certainly  superior  to  those  of 


impressed  me  at  the  moment  of  its  occur- 
rence, still  live  vividly  in  my  recollections, 
and  raise  themselves  above  the  dull  surface 
by  which  they  are  surrounded.  Like  scat- 
tered lamps,  seen  on  a  dark  night,  they  shine, 
showing  here  and  there  a  speck  of  bright- 
ness, while  the  wide  spaces  intervening  are 
full  of  vague  shadows  and  dim  forms,  that 
need  the  daylight  to  form  them,  into  familiar 
things.  With  such  an  epoch,  which  claims 
to  itself  a  prominent  place  in  my  recollections, 
I  have  now  to  deal. 

It  was  little  Olive  Graile's  birthday.  Olive, 
only  child  of  Doctor  Graile,  oldest  medical 
practitioner  in  Dingwell ;  and  there  was  to 
be  a  children's  party  to  celebrate  the  event. 
We  were  all  invited,  as  a  matter  of  course  ; 
for  the  doctor  and  my  father  were  very  inti- 
mate, and  Olive  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  our 
house.  We  children  were  to  go  early  in  the 
afternoon,  and  our  parents  were  to  follow,  so 
as  to  be  in  time  for  tea.  It  was  a  bleak  day, 
towards  the  end  of  October — a  windy  day 
withal,  as  I  remember,  seeing  that  it  required 
the  united  strength  of  Helen  and  myself  to 
close  the  heavy  front  door  after  us  as  we  went 
out.  The  sere  leaves  were  blown  thickly 
round  our  heads  as  we  walked  down  the  lane  ; 
and  Philip  and  Neville  went  scouring  off 
with  merry  shouts,  chasing  them  as  they  fell 
from  the  trees.  Helen  seemed,  from  her 
eyes,  as  if  she  would  like  to  join  them,  but 


my  brother  ;  he  got  on  better  at  school,  and  j  restrained  herself,  clasping  her  hands  tightly 
put  Neville's  humble  acquirements  into  the  in  her  muff,  and  walking  on  in  silence  like  a 

A1.AJA    .  _£•_    _  j_         _.l    •     l  111  r>          i          •  ..-    ...      .- 


shade :  a  fact  which,  probably,  first  in- 
duced Neville  to  regard  him  with  jealousy 
and  distrust.  As  a  boy,  Philip  was  grave 
and  quiet  beyond  his  years,  with  a  manner 
cold  and  haughty  towards  all  except  those 
•with  whom  he  was  very  intimate,  so  that 
he  was  not  generally  liked  ;  but  we  who 
lived  in  daily  communion  with  him,  felt 
and  appreciated  his  really  fine  qualities.  To 
my  parents  he  was  most  dutiful  and  loving  ; 
no  son  could  have  been  more  so. 

The  first  shadow  that  darkened  our  hitherto 


staid  little  princess. 

Euth  took  my  hand  in  hers,  and  walked 
beside  me  all  the  way  ;  for  I  was  only  just 
recovering  from  a  severe  cold,  and  still  wore 
a  piece  of  flannel  round  my  neck,  which  I 
was  pained  to  think  I  should  be  unable  to 
hide  from  the  strange  children  at  Doctor 
Graile's.  Perhaps  they  might  laugh  at  me! 
What  should  I  do  in  such  a  case  ?  I  felt 
myself  blushing  to  the  eyes  with  shame  when 
I  thought  of  it. 

Doctor  Graile  received  us  in  his  merry, 


happy  hearth  was  the  death  of  my  little  sister   kindly  way,  at  the  door.     He  picked  me  out 
Kate.     I  was  six  years  old  at  that  time.    A  •  in   a  moment.    "  Well,  young  gentleman," 


306       (September  28, 18»7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


said  he,  "  how  do  you  feel  to-day  ?  Better, 
eh  I  Almost  too  cold  for  you  to  venture  out. 
You  look  sadly  blue  and  pinched  about  the 
nose.  The  rest  of  you  can  bundle  up-stairs 
into  the  play-room,  where  you  will  find  Olive 
and  lots  more  friends  ;  but  Caleb,  you  must 
come  with  me  into  the  parlour."  He  had 
felt  my  wrist,  looked  at  my  tongue,  and 
chucked  me  under  the  chiu  by  this  time.  I 
followed  him  with  some  trepidation.  Would 
Mrs.  Graile  notice  the  piece  of  flannel  round 
my  neck  1  I  hoped  not. 

In  another  moment  I  was  in  the  presence 
of  that  imposing  lady.  She  was  one  of.  the 
tallest  women  I  have  ever  seen,  but  very  spare 
and  bony  ;  to  hide  which  defects  as  much  j 
as  possible  ahe  used  to  dress  in  black  velvet, ; 
with  an  amount  of  padding  and  an  amplitude 
of  skirt  that  scandalised  the  ladies  of  those 
days.  Still,  the  sterile  nature  of  the  ground 
would  show  itself  here  and  there — in  the  bony 
knuckles  and  joints  of  her  fingers,  for  in- 
stance, which  no  black  silk  mits  could  quite 
conceal, — in  the  protruding  shoulder-blades, 
in  the  prominent  cheek-bones,  and  in  the 
frosty  aquiline  nose,  thrust  up  like  a  thin 
ridge  of  slate  between  the  flinty  depths  of  her 
eyes.  She  ruled  over  the  little  doctor  most 
imperiously,  a  fact  observable  even  to  a 
child  like  me.  What  little  individuality  he 
had  ever  possessed  had  been  absorbed  long 
ago  in  her  more  powerful  nature.  But  what 
could  be  expected  from  such  a  frail,  shadowy 
little  man — from  such  a  flutteringly  polite 
man,  with  his  thin  hair  and  whiskers  of  a 
weak  straw  colour,  as  though  they  had  once 
been  red,  but  were  having  the  colour  gradu- 
ally washed  out  of  them, — with  his  blue  coat 
buttoned  tightly  round  his  spare  person,  the 
collar  invariably  sticking  out  several  inches, 
as  though  an  invisible  hand  were  clutching 
him  from  behind, — from  such  a  shrill- voiced 
piping  little  man,  who,  when  he  had  nothing 
better  to  do,  would  sit  by  the  hour,  gently 
rubbing  the  palms  of  his  hands  together,  as 
though  he  were  making  imaginary  pills  ? 
Mrs.  Graile's  expectations  were  evidently  of 
a  limited  character.  She  thought  the  best 
thing  that  could  be  done  was  to  keep  him 
under.  Therefore,  keep  him  under  she  did. 

"This  is  little  Caleb  Redfern,  my  dear," 
pushing  me  gently  by  the  shoulders  before 
him,  as  a  sort  of  breast-work,  under  cover  of 
which  he  might  approach  the  enemy  in  safety. 

Mrs.  Graile  was  busily  engaged  on  some 
elaborate  piece  of  needlework.  She  glanced 
down  severely  as  her  husband  spoke. 

"  Why  bring  him  in  here '? "  she  asked, 
speaking  from  among  the  glaciers,  where  she 
seemed  habitually  to  reside,  so  chilling  was 
her  voice,  so  cold  and  lofty  her  manner. 

"  He  is  not  well,  my  love,"  said  the  doctor, 
deprecatingly.  "I  thought  he  had  better  sit 
by  the  fire  for  a  few  minutes,  and  warm  him- 
self before  going  up-stairs.  Indeed,  I  think 
a  glass  of  wine  would  do  him  good." 

"  Stuff  and  nonsense  !  "  said  Mrs.  Graile, 


with  severity.  "  I  don't  agree  with  people 
coddling  up  children  in  such  a  foolish  manner. 
I  hope  you  rubbed  your  feet,  little  boy,  before 
coming  into  the  room  1 " 

"  Yes,  ma'am." 

"  Try  to  speak  up,  next  time  you  are  asked 
a  question.  Well,  sir  ? "  to  her  husband, 
"  why  don't  you  find  the  child  a  seat  1  I 
understood  that  you  were  going  to  give  him 
a  glass  of  wine  ?  " 

"  I  thought,  my  dear " 

"  You  thought !  You  are  always  thinking 
instead  of  doing.  Come  here,  little  boy,  and 
sit  down  on  this  hassock  at  my  feet ;  and 
see  you  don't  spill  any  of  your  wine  on  the 
carpet." 

The  doctor,  after  rolling  a  few  imaginary 
pills,  sidled  out  of  the  room,  and  I  was  left 
alone  with  the  terrible  lady.  I  drank  my 
wine  drop  by  drop,  glancing  timidly  upward 
every  minute  or  two,  but  not  daring  to  go 
and  set  down  my  glass  when  it  was  empty. 
We  sat  in  silence  for  some  time ;  only  now 
and  then,  to  my  great  dismay,  I  could  not 
keep  back  a  little  tickling  cough,  which  woxild 
burst  out  in  spite  of  all  my  endeavours.  Every 
time  I  coughed  I  felt  Mrs.  Graile's  severe 
glance  rest  on  me  for  a  moment,  and  I  deter- 
mined not  to  offend  again.  The  fire  was  a 
large  one,  and  I  was  soon  thoroughly  warmed 
through,  but  durst  not  move  from  my  seat. 
Gradually,  Mrs.  Graile  herself  seemed  to 
feel  the  soothing  influence  of  the  fire  ;  for, 
after  a  while,  her  work  dropped  languidly  on 
her  knees ;  her  eyes  closed,  opened,  closed 
again  ;  her  head  dropped  forward,  started 
back  with  a  jerk,  fell  forward  again  ;  and 
Mrs.  Graile  was  asleep.  There  could  be  no 
mistake  about  it ;  her  breathing  was  too 
deep  and  regular  to  permit  of  any  doubt  on 
the  point  ;  nevertheless,  I  sat  for  a  full 
quarter  of  an  hour  longer  before  I  ventured 
to  stir,  and  then  on  tiptoe  only,  with  my 
handkerchief  stuffed  into  my  mouth  to  stifle 
the  rising  cough.  Once  out  of  the  room,  and 
the  door  gently  closed,  I  bounded  up-stairs, 
and  burst  into  the  play-room  with  all  the 
eagerness  of  a  prisoner  set  free. 

The  room  was  in  an  uproar  when  I  entered. 
The  central  figure  was  my  brother  Neville, 
who  was  standing  with  one  foot  pressed  on  a 
gaily-dressed  maunikin,  which  was  bleeding 
saw-dust  from  several  severe  wounds  ;  his 
hands  clenched,  his  eyes  flashing,  defying 
the  whole  assembly.  Near  him  stood  the 
pretty  little  Olive,  with  pouting  lips  and 
tear-bedewed  eyes ;  and  my  cousin  Philip, 
looking  on  with  grave  displeasure  in  his 
young  face.  The  rest  of  the  company  formed 
an  outer  circle  that  took  care  not  to  ap- 
proach the  bellicose  Neville  too  closely. 

"  It  is  mine,  I  repeat !  "  said  Neville,  pas- 
sionately, as  I  opened  the  door.  "  She  gave 
it  me,  herself,  not  half  an  hour  ago." 

"  I  gave  it  you  to  keep ;  not  to  pull  to 
pieces,"  pouted  Olive.  * 

"You  gave  it  me  to  keep,  so  I  could  do 


CharLs  Diokem.] 


OUR  FAMILY  PICTURE. 


{.September  26,  1857.]       307 


•what  I  liked  with  it.  I  hate  girls  !  "  he 
said,  turning  to  the  company  generally. 
"  They  are  fit  for  nothing,  but  eating  bread 
and  butter.  They've  nothing  manly  about 
them.  They're  always  changing  their  minds." 

"  For  shame,  Neville  !  "  said  Philip.  "  Re- 
member where  you  are.  Give  the  Punch 
back  to  Olive  at  once,  or  I  shall  tell  papa  as 
soon  as  he  comes." 

"Tell-tale!"  hissed  Neville,  turning  like 
lightning  on  Philip.  "You  dare  not  come 
and  take  it !  None  of  you  dare  !  You  are 
all  cowards  !  You  can  do  nothing  but  carry 
tales !  I  hate  girls  !  I  hate  you  all !  I  don't 
care  for " 

"  Neville  !  "  said  a  grave  voice  behind  him 
— my  father's.  Poor  Neville  dropped  down 
at  onca  from  the  height  of  his  passion — 
•wavered,  and  turned  pale.  "Yes,  sir,"  he 
muttered  with  downcast  eyes. 

"I  am  surprised  that  any  son  of  mine 
should  behave  in  such  a  manner.  Take 
your  hat,  sir,  and  begone  this  moment. 
You  and  I  will  settle  this  matter  between 
us,  afterwards." 

Neville  took  his  hat  without  a  word, 
flashed  up  one  black  look  at  his  father,  walked 
slowly  down-stairs,  closed  the  door  after  him 
with  a  bang  that  echoed  through  the  house, 
and  was  gone. 

"  I'm  glad  he's  gone,"  said  Olive  ;  "  aren't 
yon,  Philip  ?  He  is  such  a  rude  boy." 

The  excitement  caused  by  this  scene  was 
quickly  over,  and  the  afternoon  sped  away 
in  the  midst  of  games  and  amusements  of 
various  kinds.  Tea-time,  much  desired 
season,  with  its  numerous  good  things,  came 
and  went;  and  we  were  just  organising  a 
game  at  blind-man's  buff,  in  which  both 
young  and  old  were  to  join — always  ex- 
cepting Mrs.  Graile,  who  looked  with  no 
favourable  eyes  on  such  amusements,  but 
had  been  won  over  as  a  spectator  by  Olive's 
importunity — when  a  messenger,  pale  and 
breathless,  rushed  into  the  room,  and  beck- 
oned my  father  on  one  side.  To  them 
were  quickly  joined  my  mother  and  Doctor 
Graile ;  and  a  whisper  passed  round  the 
room  that  some  terrible  accident  had  hap- 
pened to  my  brother  Neville.  My  father 
and  Doctor  Graile  were  out  of  the  house 
in  a  moment,  and  my  mother  quickly 
followed.  The  proposed  game  was  given 
up,  and  we  children  crowded  into  a  corner, 
whispering,  and  asking  one  another  for 
particulars.  Philip  and  Ruth  were  too  im- 
patient to  stay  any  longer ;  so  Helen  and 
I  got  ready  to  accompany  them  home,  and 
we  departed  together,  after  a  frigid  fare- 
well from  Mrs.  Graile,  who  was  still  residing 
among  the  glaciers.  It  was  quite  dark  by 
the  time  we  reached  home  ;  but  there  were 
lights  flashing  up  and  down,  from  room  to 
room,  portending  something  unusual.  We 
made  our  way  at  once  into  the  kitchen,  and 
crowding  round  old  Betty,  the  housekeeper, 
besought  her  to  tell  us  what  had  occurred. 


"  Hush,  my  honies  !  "  said  the  old  woman, 
with  a  shaking  voice.  "  You  mustn't  make 
the  least  bit  of  noise,  for  Master  Neville's 
lying  up-stairs  insensible,  with  his  leg  broken, 
and  a  great  hole  in  his  head." 

"  But  how  did  it  happen,  Betty  ?  That's 
what  we  want  to  know." 

"  I  don't  rightly  know  how  it  was,"  said 
the  old  woman.  "  But  from  what  I've  heard,. 
Master  Neville  parted  from  his  father  in  a 
bit  of  a  passion,  and  went  and  climbed  up- 
some  big  tree  or  other  to  have  a  swing  in  the 
branches,  as  you  know  he  often  does  when 
he's  put  out ;  and  either  climbing  too  high,  or 
trusting  to  a  rotten  branch,  he  fell  down,  and 
cue  his  head  open,  and  broke  his  leg,  and  was 
found  without  sense  or  feeling  ;  and  so  you're 
all  to  go  to  bed,  my  dears,  for  he's  very  bad, 
and  Doctor  Graile  says  the  house  must  be 
kept  quiet." 

We  went  up-stairs  quietly  and  sadly  with- 
out another  word.  Philip  and  I  lay  awake 
for  a  long  time,  talking  the  matter  over  in 
our  boyish  way  ;  and  when  Doctor  Graile 
quitted  the  room,  we  were  lying  in  wait  for 
him  on  the  landing,  and  quite  startled  the 
little  man  by  appearing  suddenly  before  him 
in  our  night-dresses. 

"  Bless  my  heart  !  "  exclaimed  the  doctor. 
"What  are  you  young  rascals  doing  out  of 
bed  at  this  time  of  the  night  1  Neville  1  Why 
he's  very  poorly,  indeed,  at  present ;  but  I 
hope  that  with  care  we  shall  soon  set  him  oil 
his  legs  again.  But  you  must  keep  quiet, 
very  quiet,  all  of  you,  and  be  careful  not  to- 
disturb  him.  Here's  a  ginger  lozenge  a-piece 
to  warm  your  mouths  with  :  and  now  be 
off  to  bed  with  you,  or  I  shall  have  to 
warm  you  with  my  cane."  And  laughing 
softly,  and  nodding  a  pleasant  good-night, 
the  little  doctor  disappeared  down-stairs  ;  the 
invisible  hand  clutching  at  his  collar  behind, 
as  he  went. 

Many  weary  weeks  elapsed  before  Neville 
could  be  pronounced  convalescent,  or  even 
out  of  danger.  I  am  afraid  to  think  that  at 
that  time  my  father  sometimes  reproached 
himself  with  having  been  too  severe  with 
Neville  ;  and  deemed  himself,  in  some ,  mea- 
sure, the  cause  of  the  accident :  I  judged  so, 
at  least,  from  his  sad,  drooping  manner,  and 
from  certain  words  which  he  let  fall  on  one 
or  two  occasions.  If  such  were  the  ease, 
how  must  his  bitterness  have  been  increased 
when,  as  Neville  grew  slowly  better  in  body, 
his  mind  became  gradually  weaker  ;  till  at 
last  my  brother  emerged  from  his  sickness,  as 
strong  and  handsome,  in  his  boyish  way,  as 
before,  but  with  a  vacant  eye,  a  wandering 
reason,  and  a  powerless  memory.  Gradually 
he  became  the  prey  of  a  dull,  brooding  me- 
lancholy :  looking  on  all  who  were  nearest 
and  dearest  to  him  with  distrustful  but  in- 
different eyes,  and  falling  into  the  most  fear- 
ful fits  of  passion,  if,  by  accident,  any  of  his 
little  whims  were  slighted.  I  think  Doctor 


308      [September  -.-6, 1S57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[.Conducted  by 


Graile  was  puzzled  how  to  deal  willi  such  a 
case,  lie  shook  his  head,  and  prescribed, 
and  said  we  must  trust  to  time,  rather  than 
to  medicine,  to  work  a  cure.  But  when  my 
father  coming  suddenly  upon  Neville  one  day, 
found  him  with  his  handkerchief  knotted 
round  his  neck,  and  knew  that  had  he  come 
three  minutes  later,  he  would  have  found 
him  dead,  all  the  doctor  could  do  was  to 
recommend  change  of  air — the  sea-side,  if 
possible — and  constant  supervision. 

So  Neville  went  at  once  to  the  sea-side,  to  a 
quiet  little  village  on  the  east  coast,  in  charge 
of  my  mother  and  Philip  ;  my  father  being 
unable  to  leave  home  on  account  of  his  duties. 
The  letters  we  received  were  cheerless  enough 
at  first;  and,  indeed,  it  must  have  been  a 
trying  period  both  to  my  mother  and  Philip. 
But,  gradually,  a  vein  of  silver  hope  ran 
through  my  mother's  letters,  which  slowly 
broadened  week  by  week,  till  at  last  came 
the  golden  assurance  that  Neville's  health 
was  almost  restored,  and  that  they  would 
return  home  in  about  a  month.  It  was  an 
anxious  time  for  my  father.  He  used  to  look 
for  the  postman's  visits  more  eagerly  than  a 
girl  expecting  to  hear  from  her  lover  ;  and 
as  the  accounts  he  received  became  gradually 
more  favourable,  his  old,  cheerful,  sunny 
manner  came  back  to  him  in  a  way  that  was 
pleasant  to  see. 

We  all  stood  crowding  round  the  gate 
on  the  day  that  was  to  restore  Neville 
to  us ;  and  when  the  coach  stopped,  and 
my  brother  swung  himself  quickly  down, 
and  when  my  father  met  his  bright  affection- 
ate smile,  and  the  full,  proud  glance  of  his 
fearless  eyes,  he  took  the  lad's  hands  in  his, 
and  kissed  him  on  both  cheeks,  and  bursting 
into  happy  tears,  turned  back  into  the  house, 
and  retired  for  a  little  space  to  his  study. 

OLD  HAWTREY. 


As  I  walked  out  in  June,  to  take  a  rural 
stroll  on  the  country  side  of  Windsor, 
and  not  far  from  the  remarkable  and ! 
most  fantastic  group  of  trees,  the  Burnham  ! 
beeches,  I  foregathered,  as  they  used  to 
say  in  Scotland,  with  an  old  man,  who  was 
seated  on  the  step  of  a  stile,  and  breathing  j 
the  odours  of  some  new-mown  hay  mingled 
with  the  fragrance  of  hawthorn  and  a 
variety  of  wild  flowers  scattered  along  the 
hedgerow,  and  peeping  through,  or  hiding 
themselves  under  the  tufty  grass.  It  Avas 
evening,  and  the  scene  was  delicious  The 
sun  had  swollen  into  a  mighty  globe  of 
ruddy  hue,  so  rich  in  the  line  of  beauty  that 
you  could  fancy  you  saw  round  it  to  the 
other  side  ;  and  you  wondered  who,  what,  or 
whence,  there  might  be  any  intelligent  beings 
gazing  on  that  other  aspect  of  the  glorious 
orb.  The  old  man  was  admiring  it ;  cheered 
by  the  gentle  warmth  and  tempered  light, 
whilst,  in  the  lustre  of  its  parting  rays,  his 
dim  eyes  shone  as  if  with  the  fire  of  youth. 


After  a  kindly  salute,  I  entered  into  con- 
versation with  him,  and  having  disposed  of 
the  crops  and  the  weather,  soon  lapsed  into 
the  natural  theme  of  old  age,  self !  I  found 
my  ancient  friend  garrulous  and  communica- 
tive ;  and,  as  I  encouraged  him  in  his 
favourite  topic,  speedily  learnt  his  history, — 
which,  though  told  by  fits,  like  Othello's,  I 
shall  endeavour,  as  it  interested  me,  to  com- 
prise in  a  connected  narrative. 

I  have  seen  fourscore  and  four  years,  he 
said,  and  am  stiffer  than  I  were,  but  not 
thorough  (a  smile)  so  strong.  I  can  walk 
the  matter  of  two  miles  or  more,  with  my 
staff,  without  being  overtired,  provided  the 
weather  ben't  too  hot,  or  too  wet,  or  too 
windy.  My  hearing  is  not  zactly  what  it 
used  to  be,  but  I  can  hear  what  them  do  say 
that  I  am  'custorned  to,  and  they  speak  loud 
enough — not  too  loud.  .As  for  my  sight,  that 
is  but  very  so  so.  I  cannot  see  to  read,  in- 
deed, I  never  could,  over  well  (another 
smile)  ;  nor  things  far  off';  but  a  little  bit 
round  about  me  I  can  manage  deftly,  so  as 
not  to  run  iny  head  agen  a  wall,  or  tumble 
over  a  truck  or  a  wheelbarrow  in  the  way. 

My  memory,  be  sure,  is  about  the  worst ; 
it  fails  me  sadly.  I  forget  the  names  of 
everybody,  and  what  was  done  yesterday  and 
last  week,  and  the  week  before.  And  I  can- 
not make  the  stories  join  fitly  when  I  try  to 
tell  about  aught  strange  that  happened 
thirty,  or  forty,  aye,  or  fifty  years  agone. 
But  bless  ye,  how  I  do  remember  when  I 
was  younger.  I  remember  once  seeing 
George  the  Third,  whose  birthday  we  used  to 
keep  on  this  very  day.  Lord,  what  firing  o' 
guns  and  pistols,  and  drinking  his  health, 
and  the  boys  letting  off  squibs  and  crackers, 
and  the  gentry,  after  toasting  his  Majesty, 
breaking  the  glasses,  never  to  be  drunk  out 

of  agen  ;  and- let  me  see, — oh,  I  remember 

it  was  once  seeing  the  king,  not  over  a  mile 
or  so  from  this  very  spot,  nearer  the  palace 
at  Windsor  like,  go  out  a-huuting  on  a  fine 
horse;  [and  a  jolly  good  farmer  looking 
sportsman  he  were,  only  to  be  known  for 
king,  by  the  star  glittering  on  his  breast. 
His  scarlet  coat,  and  his  yellow  leather 
smalls,  not  so  small  either  (a  ghost  of  a 
laugh)  and  his  shiny  top-boots,  and  his  black 
velvet  cap,  and  his  rosy  face  was  all  very 
seemly ;  and  all  the  lords  about,  a  leetle 
beside  and  behind,  as  it  were,  as  grandly- 
dressed  as  himsel',  only  not  with  stars  on 
their  breasts ;  and  the  huntsmen,  and  the 
whippers-in,  and  the  dogs,  beautiful  hounds, 
altogether  made  a  spleuderous  show  ;  when 
somebody  shouted  out,  and  pointed  to  the 
stag,  which  had  just  been  turned  out  o'  the 
cart,  two  or  three  fields  off,  and  was  staring 
about  with  his  great  eyes  ia  his  great  horned 
head,  as  if  bewildered  like  on  seeing  the 
King  of  England.  And  then  there  was  such 
a  hallooing,  and  barking,  and  howling  (the 
gift  of  tongues,  I  think  they  called  it),  and 
scampering  off,  the  king  first  and  foremost  ia 


Charles  Dickene.j 


OLD  HAWTREY. 


[September  26, 1857.1       309 


tlie  rush  ;  and  the  deer  took  to  his  heels  like 


Eh  ?  did  I  tell  you  about  the  hells  ringing, 


mad,  as  if  he  warn't,  after  all,  thinking  on't  cannons  firing,  and  grand  illuminations  for 
like  one  of  us,  very  wishful  to  see  his  the  Peace  with  Bonnyparty  ?  I  should 
Majesty.  Tt  was  wonderful  grand.  I  hallooed  remember  that,  for  it  was  the  first  time  I  see 
and  shouted  till  I  was  as  red  in  the  face  as  <  Luunun.  It  was  a  long  journey,  to  be  sure  ; 


the  king  himseP,  and  my  throat  like  to 
burst !  I  shall  never  forget  the  royal  hunt. 
I  was  little  more  than  a  hobbledehoy  in 
them  days  ;  but  a  stout  stirring  chap,  that 
could  take  his  own  part  and  hold  his  own  any- 
ways. I  could  plough,  or  wrastle,  or  thrash,  or 
—or,  let  me  see,  do  anything  in  work  or  play 
with  any  other  lad  of  my  age  in  the  sheere  ; 
and  I — excuse  me  bragging — am  bold  to  say 
that  I  was  not  an  ill-looking  shaver  besides. 


but  master  had  bought  a  lot  of  wood  at  a 
felling,  nearly  ten  miles  on  the  road  ;  and  as 
we  got  leave,  John  Carter  gave  us  a  lift  far 
on  to  beyond  Egham.  We  walked  the  rest. 
There  was  me,  and  Job  Aston,  and  Turley, 
and  Peter,  I  forget  his  name.  He  had  been 
there  afore,  and  was  our  leader,  like. 

Well,  we  started  at  peep  o'  day.  I  got  to 
Litnnun  before  dark.  And  when  night  fell, 
what  a  blaze,  and  noise,  and  confusion  there 


And  so  it  came  to  pass — where  was  I  ? !  was,  surely  !  We  held  firm  together  ;  but,  in 
Oh,  the  royal  hunt.  I'm  certified  I  cannot  spite  of  it,  were  all  but  crushed  and  torn  to 
tell  whether  they  took  the  deer  or  not.  I  pieces  by  the  mob.  We  see  the  public  offices 
think  I  heard  say  that  they  did;  but  at  any  :  and  Monsieur  Otter's  (that  was  the  French 
rate  it  was  not  long  after,  that,  young  as  I  ambassador)  illuminations,  and  was  a'most 
were,  I  fell  into  company  with  a  nice  sort  o'  j  drowned  by  the  awful  thunderstorm  that 
lass,  my  poor  Marget,  and  I  had  a  deer  of  brake  out.  We  gave  our  money  to  Peter  to 
ruy  own  (as  they  joked)  to  chase  (another  pay  for  us  all  as  we  goed  on ;  but  lo  and 
smile  recalled  from  the  abyss  of  last  century), !  behold  !  it  was  most  misfortunate  ;  for  just 
and  was  as  happy  as  a  king !  Master  and  '  as  we  stood  gaping  at  Monsieur  Otter'* 
the  parson  both  said  we  were  not  old  enough  transparents  in  some  great  square,  the 
to  have  charge  of  a  family,  and  advised  us  to  Lunnun  thieves  picked  Peter's  pocket,  and 
bide  a  while  ;  but  we  were  lithesome  and  did  not  leave  us  a  groat  to  pay  for  lodgings 
healthy,  and  thought  we  could  manage  well !  or  to  carry  us  home.  So  we  had  a  weary 
enough,  even  if,  by  good  luck  or  bad,  we ;  and  a  hungry  trudge  of  it.  Troth  I  cannot 
might  chance  to  have  any  childer.  And  so  ',  forget  the  Peace  of  Amens  ! 


we  got  married.  I  was  over  one-and-twenty, 
and  Marget  was  over  nineteen.  Bless  ye,  I 
remember  it  as  if  it  was  yesterday  now, 


Marget,  I  warrant  ye,  had  a  good  laugh. 
She  was  nursing  Cissy  then,  I  think,  but  am 
not  sure — it  might  be  one  of  the  others,  that 


though  it  is  a  long  time  agone,  sure-ly.  Let  died  young.  I'm  to!d  there  has  been  more 
me  see,  it  was  the  year  seventeen  hundred  and  fighting  since,  in  spite  of  the  Peace  and  the- 
— something — ninety.  Ninety  !  It  could  not !  'Luminations  ;  and  I  do  remember  the  re- 
be  ninety  years  since  I  was  married  to  Marget  ? 'joicings  for  the  Jubily  ;  but  that  were  not 
Well,  well,  never  mind,  we  had  a  parcel  of,  for  peace,  but  because  the  old  king  had 
bairns,  and  the  small-pox  thinned  off  the  '  reigned  for  fifty  years.  There  were  grand 
poor  little  things.  They  tell  me  there  is  no  •  doings  at  Windsor,  and  an  ox  roasted  whole 
small-pox  now,  but  it  was  a  sore  destroyer  j  in  Bachelor's  Acre  ;  but  it  was  awful  dirty 
then ;  only  measles  and  hooping-cough,  which, !  cooked,  and  I  remember  I  could  not  eat 


however,  are  bad  enough,  and  should  also  be 
got  rid  on.  Of  all  ours,  John,  and  Reuben, 
and  Cicely  grew  up.  John,  our  first-born, 


a  bit  on't ;  but  took  a  rawish  dollop  home  to 
please  my  wife,  who  threw  it  to  Towzer. 
Eh  !  them  be  things  to  remember,  yet  it  be  a. 


was  the  last  left.  Poor  child,  he  was  scarce  long  way  to  look  ;  and,  for  years  and  years 
over  sixty-two  when  he  died ;  it  is  for  him  after  them,  I  forgot  a'most  everything  but 
I  wear  this  black  band  on  my  hat.  It  re-  little  bits  here  and  there,  along  the  road  like. 


minds  me  of  him,  though  it  was  only  the 
other  day  that  they  buried  him.  He  was 
long  sickly  and  unfit  for  work — old  Daddy 
John,  as  they  used  to  call  him,  my  sturdy  boy  ! 
So  you  see  I  am  all  alone  now — all  alone. 
Reuben  is  dead,  and  Cicely  is  dead,  and 
Marget  is  dead  long  ago,  and  everybody  is 
dead  but  me.  And  it  is  God's  mercy  to  spare 
me  ;  but  I  do  not  know  that  I  am  of  any  use 
in  the  world,  only  a  trouble.  And  the  rheu- 
matize  is  so  painful,  and  the  cramps  so  bad, 
that  I  get  little' rest  o'  nights.  I  am  thank- 
ful my  appetite  is  very  good.  I  seldom  want ; 
for  the  folks  about  are  very  kind  to  me,  and 
I  enjoy  my  bite  of  bread  famously,  and  'speci- 
ally when  there  is  a  cut  of  bacon  or  butchers" 


Lord  !  to  think  what  noble  creatures  were 
the  king's  children  at  the  Jubily.  There- 
were  the  gallant  Prince  o'  Wales  and  the 
Duke  of  York,  and  I  cannot  tell  how  many 
other  brothers  and  sisters,  dukes  and  princes 
and  princesses,  and  they  were  so  civil  and 
kindly  spoken ;  and  the  Princess  Eliza- 
beth and  the  Queen,  and  all  the  courtiers  so 
handsome  and  proud,  with  ribbons  and  stars, 
and  glittering  gold-lace,  and  feathers,  and  .  . 
.  .  .  .  lack-a-day,  they  are  all  gone  now, — all 
gone  ;  and  me,  a  poor,  useless  old  man,  am 
left— left  alone— for  all  rny  children  are  gone, 
too,  though  I  cannot  quite  clearly  say  how 
and  when, — before  the  royal  family  or  after  ? 
It  does  not  matter  so  much,  now.  Only  them 


meat  with  it.     If  so  be  there   be  a  drop  of  were  our  troubles  and  our  sorrows,  to  Mar- 
beer— that's  really  a  treat  (a  chuckle).  [  get  and  me,  and  sometimes  we  were  badly  off, 


310       [September  56, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


fCondnetea  by 


and  sometimes  metmisforfcunate  accidents,  as 
when  Reuben  broke  his  arm,  and  the  little 
one  was  tossed  by  Farmer  Reycroft'a  bull. 
To  be  sure  he  bellowed  louder  than  the  bull, 
and  gin  us  a  terrible  fright,  but  were  not  so 
desperate  lamed  after  all.  Warrant  ye,  after 
he  came  down  to  the  ground,  he  never  tried 
to  pull  the  bull's  nose  by  the  ring  in  it, 
again.  But  it's  all  the  same  now,  sir,  Jubily 
and  all  ;  and  it  must  be  some  years,  they  say, 
before  the  people  can  enjoy  another  Jubily  ; 
and  so  all  over  again,  and  over  again.  Well, 
•well  !  I  don't  fancy  I  shall  have  a  shive  off 
that  ox  !  (A  short  laugh.) 

Oh,  aye,  aye,  though  1  cannot  see,  I  can 
feel  by  the  air  and  the  hush,  that  the  golden 
sun  is  gone  down,  too.  ,1  dare  say  there  is  a 
dark  cloud  ;  may-be  a  storm  a  brewing,  just 
•where  the  sky  was  all  so  bright  and  beau- 
tiful. And  I  must  toddle.  We  living  men 
want  to  go  down  to  rest,  like  the  sun,  when 
the  wearysome  day  and  the  ploughing,  and 
the  labour  is  over.  It  is  quite  different  from 
the  morning  and  nuncheon-time.  We  are 
brisk  as  the  bees,  and  buz  and  fancy  we  shall 
never  be  tired,  and  we  do  our  work  cheer- 
fully, and  come  to  be  fed  and  refreshed.  And 
we  hope  our  lot  will  be  mended,  and  we 
return  to  the  work,  and  we  work  on  ahvay 
looking  forward  for  easier  times,  and  more 
wages  and  holidays.  And  so  we  wear  on 

till but  it  is  drawing  late,  and  I  must 

not  go  on  talking.  I  must  get  home.  I  have 
but  a  very  short  way  to  go, — only  'cross  that 
wee  bit  of  scrub-common,  and  close  agen  the 
church.  Umph,  umph,  I  am  stiff  with  sitting. 
Thank  you,  sir  !  You  be  going  the  same  road  ? 
Your  help  is  very  kind,  to  a  poor,  weakly 
old  man,  four  score  and  four. 

[Pausing  at  the  fence.]  Thank  you,  thank 
you  !  Good  night,  sir  !  Oh,  yes,  I  shall  have 
my  bit  of  bread  and  cheese,  and  drop  of  beer 
for  my  supper  ;  and  then  say  my  prayers  and 
go  to  sleep.  Indeed  and  indeed,  it  is  a  sweet- 
ening of  life  for  an  old  man  to  say,  "  Our 
Father  which  art  in  Heaven."  It  is  not  like 
the  young  who  repeat  the  words  without 
much  thinking  about  the  meaning  ;  but  as  if 
you  were  close  to  your  Father,  neighbourly, 
could  find  him  directly,  and  were  a'most 
speaking  to  him  face  to  face,  so  that  He'd  be 
sure  to  hear  you.  The  older  men  grow, — it 
is  the  nearer  to  Heaven.  The  old  man  then 
whispered  the  prayer  to  himself;  but  gave 
out  "  Amen  !  "  aloud. 

The  summer  passed  away.  The  new-mown 
hay  of  June  had  long  been  stacked  :  the  corn 
had  ripened  and  was  yielding  to  the  sickle  : 
the  hedge-row  flowers  had  all  withered  away 
and  been  succeeded  by  another  odorous 
bloom,  the  glorious  sun  was  setting  in  the 
•west  upon  the  first  Sunday  in  August,  when 
I  happened  to  turn  my  steps  again  towards 
the  spot  where  my  ancient  friend  had  solilo- 
quised and  prayed.  I  thought  I  would  call 
and  inquire  about  his  health  :  perhaps  indulge 


in  another  senile  colloquy.  The  door  of  the 
adjacent  church  was  open.  I  hurried  up  to 
the  paling  within  which  his  dwelling  lay,  and 
where  I  had  listened  to  his  tremulous  and 
solemn  Amen.  Four  bearers  issued  from  the 
door,  and  walked  slowly  past  me  towards  the 
church-yard,  with  a  humble  deal  coffin,  on. 
which,  however,  I  read,  rudely  inscribed  : 

THOMAS  HAWTREY, 
AGED  84  YEARS. 


HER  GRACE  OF  THE  HOBNAILS. 


WE  believe  that,  out  of  England,  the  name 
commonly  assigned  to  a  young  English  lady, 
or  to  an  'English  racer,  is  Miss  Fanny.  In 
the  case  of  the  fast  young  lady  who  travelled 
last  year  with  her  mamma,  all  by  herself 
through  some  of  the  rough  paths  of  Norway, 
as  we  have  to  speak  of  her,  and  do  not  know 
how  she  is  called,  we  will  assume  for  her  the 
title  of  Miss  Fanny — but,  no  !  "  titles  are  a 
weak  point  with  all  Swedes,  and  for  fear  of 
going  below  the  mark  (in  Gottenburg)  they 
dubbed  us  duchesses  at  once,  with  the  style 
and  title  of  Your  Grace."  We  will  not  be 
behind  the  Swedes  in  courtesy,  and  since  we 
do  not  know  the  lady's  title,  let  us  take  for 
granted  that  she  is  one  of  our  English  duch- 
esses— the  Duchess  Fan.  She  is  a  lady  cer- 
tainly of  independent  means,  for,  she  tells  us, 
she  will  maintain  that  "  ladies  alone  get  on. 
in  travelling  much  better  than  with  gentle- 
men :  they  set  about  things  in  a  quieter 
manner,  and  always  have  their  own  way ; 
while  men  are  sure  to  go  into  passions  and 
make  rows,  if  things  are  not  right  imme- 
diately ....  The  only  use  of  a  gentleman 
in  travelling  is  to  look  after  the  luggage,  and 
we  take  care  to  have  no  luggage."  This  fact 
is,  however,  modified  by  the  statement  that 
each  lady  took  her  bag,  into  which  she  packed 
one  change  of  everything.  The  Duchess 
thus  describes  her  travelling  attire  :  A  solid 
plaid  shirt,  a  polka  coat,  a  light  waterproof 
cloak,  woollen  stockings,  and  hob-nail  shoes. 
In  the  course  of  the  journey  we  learn  that 
she  bought  herself  some  scarlet  flannel  out 
of  which  she  made  herself,  or  caused  to  be 
made  for  herself,  a  pair  of  fascinating  trou- 
sers. "  They  can  be  of  any  colour  or  fancy, 
only  red  looks  pretty  among  the  trees, 
charms  the  peasants,  and  frightens  the 
wolves  :  mine  wei'e  quite  a  success,  so  I  can 
recommend  them.'' 

"  Now,"  she  cries,  presently,  with  enthu- 
siasm, "  now  the  non-talk- aboutables  proved 
their  usefulness,  bagging  all  my  clothes  in 
their  ample  folds,  1  at  once  mounted  a  la 
1  Zouave,  and  can  assure  every  one  for  a  long 
i journey  this  attitude  has  double  comforts: 
j  while   mamma  sat   twisted  sideways  on  a 
saddle  which  would  not  keep  its  balance,  I 
was    easy  and  independent,  with  a  foot  in 
each  stirrup ;   besides  the  scarlet  having  the 
most  beautiful  effect  through  the  green  trees." 
But  to  go  back  to  the  first  equipment  of  her 


Cliar'.ee  Dickens.] 


HER  GRACE  OF  THE  HOBNAILS. 


September  26,  1837.  ]      311 


grace,  she  took  with  her,  it  appears,  her  bag 
in  one  hand,  and  in  the  other  hand  an  um- 
brella, driving-whip,  and  fishing-rod.  The 
driving-whip  is  generally  represented  only 
by  a  switch  at  the  Norwegian  posting-houses, 
and  it  is  the  "  greatest  resource  in  the  world  " 
to  have  the  fishing-rod  "  to  throw  into  the 
nearest  stream  without  fear  of  aloud  holloa  ! 
if  kept  waiting  for,  or  in  want  of  a  meal." 
Her  Grace  regretted  afterwards  that  she  had 
not  also  carried  a  gun.  "  The  wild  fowl,"  she 
tells  us,  "  were  flying  about  in  the  most  pro- 
voking manner,  and  could  be  had  for  the 
shooting,  and  I  vowed  I  never  would  set  foot 
in  Norway  again  without  a  gun,  nor  should 
any  lady  do  so,  unless  she  has  some  one  to 
shoot  for  her." 

A  general  rule  given  by  her  grace  to  those 
of  her  sex  who  follow  her  :  "Ladies,  I  must 
impress  upon  you,  you  must  wear  short  petti- 
coats in  Norway,  and  see  your  high  boots 
rubbed  with  cream  every  morning."  Duchess 
Fan  of  the  Hobnails  adds  a  few  more  touches 
to  the  picture  of  herself.  She  carried  slung 
over  her  shoulders,  on.  one  side,  a  box  of 
colours,  on  the  other  side  a  sketching-board. 
She  became  very  hungry  in  the  northern  air, 
and  "  five  meals  hardly  satisfied  her  appetite." 
Having  made  tea  in  a  mountain  hut  we  learn 
incidentally  that  "after  six  wooden  bowls' 
full,  I  felt  quite  equal  to  sketching  this  new 
phase  of  habitation."  She  has  beautiful  long 
hair,  and  she  is  comely  to  look  upon.  She 
expressly  tells  us  that  she  is  not  skinny. 
"  What  would  one  think,"  she  asks  trium- 
phantly, "  of  two  French  ladies,  or  two  of 
any  other  nation,  penetrating  into  the  wildest 
recesses  of  Norway,  and  finding  out  new 
roads  for  the  natives  ?  Who  but  English 
could  do  it  ?  Madame  Ida  Pfeiffer  has  been 
rather  active,  but  then  she  confesses  to  be- 
ing skinny  and  wiry,  and  was  able  to 
wriggle  about,  unmolested ;  the  English  or 
Americans  are  rarely  of  that  make,  and  so 
generally  blooming  and  attractive,  that  it 
must  be  a  certain  inborn  right  of  conquest 
that  makes  them  nearly  always  the  first  to 
penetrate  into  the  arcana  of  countries  tri- 
umphantly." We  learn  that  while  supping 
at  a  station,  the  circle  of  spectators,  "  looked 
on  in  the  most  innocent  manner  at  the 
English  ladies,  occasionally  whispering  pynt, 
megget  pynt ;  which  expression,  fair  reader, 
should  you  be  at  all  good  looking  (and  if 
British  or  American  you  must  be  so,  the 
proportion  of  ugliness  to  either  being  one 
in  a  million),  you  will  hear  every  five 
minutes  in  Norway."  Every  five  minutes, 
therefore,  her  grace  heard  the  Norwegians 
in  admiration  of  her  beauty.  In  another 
chapter  we  find  that  she  opens  her  eyes  in 
the  morning  on  a  party  of  Norwegians  who 
admire  her  in  her  sleep,  and  whisper  "  Eng- 
lish, fairy,  no  !  take  care,  hush  l'.  ...  At 
length,  a  hand  was  stretched  forth  to  touch 
a  lock  of  my  streaming  hair." 

The  English  fairy  thinks    "it  would   not 


be  a  bad  plan  to  drive  one's  own  horse  in, 
Norway  two  stations  at  a  time,  and  fish  for 
one's  dinner  while  he  is  resting."  She  likes 
the  Norwegians  much,  but  considers  that 
"the  women  are  certainly  rather  too  do- 
mestic, and  look  upon  their  husbands  with 
awe,  as  if  they  were  another  sort  of  creature." 
And  of  the  Lutheran  custom  which  allows 
marriage  between  an  uncle  and  a  niece,  she 
observes,  "how  superior  the  old  Norwegian 
way  was  of  piraticaliy  taking  off  s'ome 
stranger  bride,  as  King  Haco  did  the  Greek 
princess  Ida." 

The  Duchess  Fan  is  in  fact,  according  to 
her  book,  an  extraordinarily  fast  person,  and 
she  writes,  in  character,  in  a  brisk  and  lively 
way,  with  no  more  than  a  fast  person's 
regard  for  grammar : — "  So,  gentlemen,  unless 
you  like  pommelling  with  the  trunk  of  a  tree, 
do  not  go  '  trying  it  on  '  in  Norway."  "  They 
kept  such  a  mysterious  distance  off  at  the 
same  time,  and  looked  so  awe-struck,  that, 
knowing  their  superstitions,  we  thought  they 
might  take  us  for  water-spirits,  arriving  at  so 
unearthly  an  hour ;  and,  to  dispel  the  illu- 
sion, which  was  inconvenient,  being  hungry, 
1  seized  a  spade  and  dug  up  a  good  dish  of 
I  potatoes,  which  the  kone  (goodwife)  then  at . 
;  once  consented  to  allow  the  spirits  to  break- 
i  fast  off,  nicely  boiled,  and  served  with  her 
i  best  fresh  butter.  It  was  the  first  crop,  and 
i  they  were  quite  new  ;  but  no  one  knows  the 
flavour  there  is  in  a  potato  unless  they  have 
dug  it  up  themselves  in  the  fresh  morning 
air.  Being  rather  convinced  now  we  were, 
alas  !  only  poor  mortals  ;  and,  even  if  angels 
in  disguise,  had  been  obliged  to  take  off  our 
wings  and  leave  them  behind,  so  could  not 
fly,  they  ordered  a  horse  and  little  reise 
kjewe,  in  which,  the  road  being  tolerable,  we 
went  off  to  the  house  of  a  good  Norwegian 
couple  we  had  become  acquainted  with  at 
Icrhin,  on  their  journey  from  Trondhjem,  and 
who  gave  us  a  warm  invitation  to  their 
dwelling,  which  lay  in  the  direct  route  of  our 
outlandish  expedition.  He  was  the  priest  of 
the  district,"  &c. 

We  have  allowed  her  Grace  to  sketch  her- 
self, and  now,  as  friendly  critics,  may  say 
what  kind  things  we  please  about  the  picture. 
That  two  ladies  could  get  on  famously,  as 
travellers,  without  escort,  over  the  Dovrefjeld 
and  the  Sognefjeld,  over  the  roughest  ground, 
among  the  most  unkempt  of  the  Norwegians, 
is  a  fact  creditable  not  only  to  Norway,  but 
to  human  nature. 

We  call  attention  to  the  book  as  one  more 
illustration  of  a  doctrine  we  have  often 
preached,  that  men  and  women  are  good 
fellows  in  the  main.  Our  friend,  the  duchess, 
has,  we  are  quite  sure,  a  frank,  good-tem- 
pered face,  and,  whatever  she  may  make  of 
scarlet  flannel,  she  knows  how  to  become 
friends  with  those  whom  chance  makes 
neighbours  to  her.  By  expecting  good  of 
them  she  gets  it.  At  the  stations,  hi  the 
cottages,  with  guides  on  the  road,  in.  the 


312 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[September  :G,  1857.) 


country  parsonages,  the  duchess  and  her  mo- 
ther get  the  honour  nnd  trust  that  they  give. 

But  the  remarkable  success  of  her  grace  as 
an  independent  tourist,  we  would  humbly 
observe,  is  not  due  to  her  being  "the  same 
sort  of  a  creature  "  as  a  man  :  it  is  not  due  to 
the  natural  self-dependence,  but  to  the  help- 
lessness of  her  sex.  This  she  took  with  her, 
and  displayed  everywhere  as  a  passport. 
Instead  of  one  travelling  protector,  who 
would,  in  dealing  with  his  own  sex,  "  make 
rows,"  she  committed  herself  to  the  care  of  a 
long  chain  of  stationary  protectoi's,  who  were 
bound  in  gallantry  to  take  care  that  she  had 
her  way.  At  each  station  the  women  would 
make  common  cause  with  her  against  every 
nude  traveller ;  the  men  would  owe  her 
everything  that  was  chivalrous.  In  the  very 
worst  place  they  stopped  at  on  the  road,  our 
"  Unprotected  Females  in  Norway  "  (so  they 
are  called  by  the  title  of  the  book)  record 
that  the  people  "  showed  that  they  had  some 
refinement  about  them,  by  politely  charging 
us  much  less  than  the  gentlemen  ;  and  what 
was  our  surprise  and  their  disgust  at  finding 
that  such  had  been  the  case  at  all  the  stations 
•where  we  had  stopped  ;  and  they  had  worse 
accommodation  into  the  bargain !  Fancy 
gallantry  being  carried  to  such  a  point — 
almost  to  chivalry,  which  it  actually  attained 
at  some  places,  where  we  were  charged 
nothing."  If  the  two  ladies  arriving  at  some 
place  found  that  gentlemen  had  already 
bespoken  the  best  beds,  they- took  those  beds 
by  the  connivance  of -the  landlady,  and  turned 
the  gentlemen  into  worse  quarters.  When- 
ever horses  were  waited  for  at  a  station ; 
whatever  gentlemen  might  be  in  a  hurry, 
the  ladies  were  always  despatched  in  advance; 
and,  says  the  duchess,  "we  saw  quite  a  row 
at  one  of  the  stations  through  the  postmaster 
insisting  upon  giving  us,  without  our  sug- 
gestion, a  horse  which  arrived  the  first." 

Here  is  a  scene,  showing  how  wise  it  is 
for  ladies,  when  they  travel,  to  depend  upon 
their  helplessness: — "The  fat  of  the  land 
was  spread  before  us :  fish,  melted  butter, 
potatoes,  coffee,  and  sweet  and  brown  bread, 
which  we  thought  a  delicious  finish  ;  when, 
as  dessert,  what  should  come  in  but  a 
joint  of  cold  meat !  We  felt  jolly — actually 
jolly — over  a  Norske  meal ;  and  when  at 
length  we  left  off,  and  went  into  the  kitchen 
to  congratulate  the  inestimable  kone,  our 
dismay  was  great  at  finding  her  in  tears. 
The  daughter  maliciously  told  us  we  ought 
to  console  her,  being  the  cause  of  them  ;  for 
the  kind  soul  had  not  only  marched  the 
gentlemen  out  of  the  pretty  little  parlour, 
that  we  might  eat  in  quiet,  but  carried  her 
feminine  tenderness  so  tar  as  to  help  us  first, 
while  they  were  taken  up  with  smoking  and 
grumbling  ;  and  when  they  saw  even  the 
coffee  carried  out,  disregarding  her  prejudices 
about  ladies  first,  one  jumped  up  with  such 

The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOIJDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


menacing  gestures,  that,  though  she  could 
not  understand  a  word  he  said,  she  sat  down 
and  wept,  taking  a  bitter  lesson  in  civilised 
politeness."  This  may  mean  the  politeness 
of  the  gentleman,  or  the  politeness  of  the 
duchess  ;  we  are  not  quite  sure  which  is  the 
more  admirable.  To  be  unwilling  that  gentle- 
men should,  for  their  greater  enjoyment  of 
quiet,  be  "  marched  out  of  the  pretty  little 
parlour,"  and  that  other  people  should  be 
baulked  of  their  dinners  until  they  had  them- 
selves done,feeling  "jolly — actually  jolly,"  was 
not  in  the  nature  of  the  Unprotected  Females. 
There  were  the  gentlemen  making  rows,  as 
usual ;  there  were  the  ladies  perfectly  con- 
tent. Here  we  have,  from  the  pen  of  the 
duchess  herself,  the  whole  theory  of  Unpro- 
tectedness,  which  consists,  at  bottom,  in  a 
constant  demand  on  the  general  protection, 
and  on  something  more  than  that,  upon 
unlimited  service  and  indulgence.  "  It  is 
astonishing,"  says  her  grace,  in  the  very  first 
chapter  of  her  story,  "  it  is  astonishing,  if 
ladies  look  perfectly  helpless  and  innocent, 
how  people  fall  into  the  trap,  and  exert  to 
save  them.  Unprotecteds  cannot  do  better 
than  keep  firm  to  the  old  combination  of  the 
qualities  of  the  serpent  and  the  dove." 

We  doubt  very  much  whether  even  the 
Norwegian  peasantry  would  allow  male 
travellers,  on  entering  their  houses,  to  put  ou 
their  clothes,  open  and  shut  their  drawers 
and  cupboards  at  discretion,  and  make  them- 
selves wholly  at  home  on  the  premises,  after 
the  manner  allowed  to  the  unprotected  sex, 
when  taking  its  own  way  about  the  land. 
"  Except  at  one  or  two  places,"  her  grace 
tells  us,  "you  must  help  yourself  to  every- 
thing, and  ought  never  to  arrive  late  and 
fatigued.  It  is  no  light  matter  hunting  for 
things  in  a  strange  house,  pulling  out  all  the 
drawers,  and  making  excursions  to  half-a- 
dozen  different  buildings,  where  things  are 
indiscriminately  kept,  while  it  is  still  more 
fatiguing  bawling  to  the  people  to  do  it  for 
you.  But  if  you  can  manage  to  arrive  in 
tolerable  time,  and  enter  into  the  spirit  of  it, 
becoming  completely  a  peasant  for  the  occa- 
sion, it  is  quite  a  part  of  Norwegian  travel, 
and  can  fairly  rank  as  fun,  the  people  always 
good-naturedly  resigning  the  premises  en- 
tirely into  your  hands.  When  we  had  done, 
we  put  out  our  cups  and  teapot,  hearing 
awful  groans  proceeding  from  the  opposite 
room,  occasioned,  perhaps,  by  the  gentlemen 
having  to  compress  themselves  into  an  excru- 
ciatingly small  space." 

Had  these  two  possessors  of  the  "only  toler- 
able bedroom  "  and  the  teapot,  been  of  the  un- 
privileged— not  of  the  unprotected — sex,  it  is 
possible  that  a  more  even  division  of  the  space 
might  have  been  necessary,  and  that  their 
brethren  in  the  other  room  would  not  have 
been  content  humbly  to  wait  until  it  was 
convenient  for  them  to  "  put  out  the  teapot." 


Published  at  the  Oflict,  No.  1(5,  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  BBADBUBY  &  EYAHS,  AVhitefriars,  London, 


"Familiar  in  their  MoutJis  as  HOUSEHOLD  WOBDS"—  SHAKESPEARE. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

A   WEEKLY   JOUENAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


0<  393-] 


SATURDAY,  OCTOBER  3,  1857. 


/PBICK 


THE  LAZY  TOUE  OF  TWO  IDLE 
APPRENTICES. 

IN   FIVE   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE   FIRST. 

IN  the  autumn  month  of  September, 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-seven,  wherein 
these  presents  bear  date,  two  idle  appren- 
tices, exhausted  by  the  long  hot  summer  and 
the  long  hot  work  it  had  brought  with  it, 
ran  away  from  their  employer.  They  were 
bound  to  a  highly  meritorious  lady  (named 
Literature),  of  fair  credit  and  repute,  though, 
it  must  be  acknowledged,  not  quite  so  highly 
esteemed  in  the  City  as  she  might  be.  This 
is  the  more  remarkable,  as  there  is  nothing 
against  the  respectable  lady  in  that  quarter, 
but  quite  the  contrary  ;  her  family  having 
rendered  eminent  service  to  many  famous 
citizens  of  London.  It  may  be  sufficient  to 
name  Sir  William  Walworth,  Lord  Mayor 
under  King  Richard  the  Second,  at  the  time 
of  Wat  Tyler's  insurrection,  and  Sir  Richard 
Whittington  :  which  latter  distinguished  man 
and  magistrate  was  doubtless  indebted  to 
the  lady's  family  for  the  gift  of  his  celebrated 
cat.  There  is  also  strong  reason  to  suppose 
that  they  rang  the  Highgate  bells  for  him 
with  their  own  hands. 

The  misguided  young  men  who  thus  shirked 
their  duty  to  the  mistress  from  whom  they 
had  received  many  favors,  were  actuated  by 
the  low  idea  of  making  a  perfectly  idle  trip, 
in  any  direction.  They  had  no  intention  of 
going  anywhere,  in  particular  ;  they  wanted 
to  see  nothing,  they  wanted  to  know  nothing, 
they  wanted  to  learn  nothing,  they  wanted 
to  do  nothing.  They  wanted  only  to  be  idle. 
They  took  to  themselves  (after  HOGARTH), 
the  names  of  Mr.  Thomas  Idle  and  Mr. 
Francis  Goodchild ;  but,  there  was  not  a 
moral  pin  to  choose  between  them,  and  they 
were  both  idle  in  the  last  degree. 

Between  Francis  and  Thomas,  however, 
there  was  this  difference  of  character  :  Good- 
child  was  laboriously  idle,  and  would  take 
upon  himself  any  amount  of  pains  and  labour 
to  assure  himself  that  he  was  idle  ;  in  short, 
had  no  better  idea  of  idleness  than  that  it 
was  useless  industry.  Thomas  Idle,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  an  idler  of  the  unmixed 
Irish  or  Neapolitan  type  ;  a  passive  idler,  a 
born-and-bred  idler,  a  consistent  idler,  who 
practised  what  he  would  have  preached  if  he 


had  not  been  too  idle  to  preach  ;  a  one  entire 
and  perfect  chrysolite  of  idleness. 

The  two  idle  apprentices  found  themselves, 
within  a  few  hours  of  their  escape,  walking 
down  into  the  North  of  England.  That  is  to 
say,  Thomas  was  lying  in  a  meadow,  looking 
at  the  railway  trains  as  they  passed  over  a 
distant  viaduct — which  was  his  idea  of  walk- 
ing down  into  the  North  ;  while  Francis  was 
walking  a  mile  due  South  against  time—- 
which was  his  idea  of  walking  down  into  the 
North.  In  the  meantime  the  day  waned,  and 
the  milestones  remained  unconquered. 

"  Tom,"  said  Goodchild,  "  The  sun  is  get- 
ting low.  Up,  and  let  us  go  forward  !  " 

"  Nay,"  quoth  Thomas  Idle,  "  I  have  not 
done  with  Annie  Laurie  yet."  And  he  pro- 
ceeded with  that  idle  but  popular  ballad,  to  the 
effect  that  for  the  bonnie  young  person  of 
that  name  he  would  "lay  him  doonanddee," — 
equivalent,  in  prose,  to  lay  him  down  and  die. 

"  What  an  ass  that  fellow  was  ! "  cried 
Goodchild,  with  the  bitter  emphasis  of  con- 
tempt. 

"  Which  fellow  1 "  asked  Thomas  Idle. 

"  The  fellow  in  your  song.  Lay  him  doon 
and  dee !  Finely  he'd  show  off  before  the 
girl  by  doing  that.  A  Sniveller  !  Why  couldn't 
he  get  up,  and  punch  somebody's  head  !  " 

"  Whose  ? "  asked  Thomas  Idle. 

"  Anybody's.  Everybody's  would  be  better 
than  nobody's  !  If  I  fell  into  that  state  of 
mind  about  a  girl,  do  you  think  I'd  lay  me 
doon  and  dee  ?  No,  sir,"  proceeded  Good- 
child,  with  a  disparaging  assumption  of  the 
Scottish  accent,  "I'd  get  me  oop  and  peetch 
into  somebody.  Wouldn't  you  1 " 

"  I  wouldn't  have  anything  to  do  with  her," 
yawned  Thomas  Idle.  "  Why  should  I  take 
the  trouble  ? " 

"It's  no  trouble  Tom,  to  fall  in  love," 
said  Goodchild,  shaking  his  head. 

"  It's  trouble  enough  to  fall  out  of  it,  once 
you're  in  it,"  retorted  Tom.  "  So  I  keep  out 
of  it  altogether.  It  would  be  better  for  you, 
if  you  did  the  same." 

Mr.  Goodchild,  who  is  always  in  love  with 
somebody,  and  not  unfrequently  with  several 
objects  at  once,  made  no  reply.  He  heaved 
a  sigh  of  the  kind  which  is  termed  by  the 
lower  orders  "  a  bellowser,"  and  then,  heav- 
ing Mr.  Idle  on  his  feet  (who  was  not  half  so 
heavy  as  the  sigh),  urged  him  northward. 


VOX,.  XVI. 


393 


314      [October  3,  1S57-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


These  two  had  sent  their  personal  baggage 
on  by  train  :  only  retaining,  each  a  knap- 
sack. Idle  now  applied  himself  to  constantly 
regretting  the  train,  to  tracking  it  through 
the  intricacies  of  Bradshaw's  Guide,  and 
finding  out  where  it  was  nov; — and  where 
now — and  where  now — and  to  asking  what 
was  the  use  of  walking,  when  you  could 
ride  at  such  a  pace  as  that.  Was  it  to 
see  the  country  ?  If  that  was  the  object, 
look  at  it  out  of  carriage-windows.  There 
was  a  great  deal  more  of  it  to  be  seen  there, 
than  here.  Besides,  who  wanted  to  see  the 
country  ?  Nobody.  And,  again,  who  ever 
did  walk  ?  Nobody.  Fellows  set  off  to  walk, 
but  they  never  did  it.  They  came  back  and 
said  they  did,  but  they  didn't.  Then  why 
should  he  walk  ?  He  wouldn't  walk.  He 
swore  it  by  this  milestone  ! 

It  was  the  fifth  from  London,  so  far  had 
they  penetrated  into  the  North.  Submitting 
to  the  powerful  chain  of  argument,  Good- 
child  proposed  a  return  to  the  Metropolis, 
and  a  falling  back  upon  Enston  Square 
Terminus.  Thomas  assented  with  alacrity,  and 
so  they  walked  down  into  the  North  by  the 
next  morning's  express,  and  carried  their 
knapsacks  in  the  luggage-van. 

It  was  like  all  other  expresses,  as  every 
express  is  and  must  be.  It  bore  through  the 
harvested  country,  a  smell  like  a  large  wash- 
ing-day, and  a  sharp  issue  of  steam  as  from  a 
huge  brazen  tea-urn.  The  greatest  power  in 
nature  and  art  combined,  it  yet  glided  over 
dangerous  heights  in  the  sight  of  people  look- 
ing up  from  fields  and  roads,  as  smoothly 
and  unreally  as  a  light  miniature  plaything. 
Now,  the  engine  shrieked  in  hysterics  of  such 
intensity,  that  it  seemed  desirable  that  the 
men  who  had  her  in  charge  should  hold  her 
feet,  slap  her  hands,  and  bring  her  to  ;  now, 
burrowed  into  tunnels  with  a  stubborn  and 
undemonstrative  energy  so  confusing  that  the 
train  seemed  to  be  flying  back  into  leagues 
of  darkness.  Here,  were  station  after 
station,  swallowed  up  by  the  express  without 
stopping  ;  here,  stations  where  it  fired  itself 
in  like  a  volley  of  cannon-balls,  swooped 
away  four  country-people  with  nosegays  and 
three  men  of  business  with  portmanteaus, 
and  fired  itself  off  again,  bang,  bang,  bang  ! 
At  long  intervals  were  uncomfortable  refresh- 
ment rooms,  made  more  uncomfortable  by 
the  scorn  of  Beauty  towards  Beast,  the 
public  (but  to  whom  she  never  relented,  as 
Beauty  did  in  the  story,  towards  the  other 
Beast),  and  where  sensitive  stomachs  were 
fed,  with  a  contemptuous  sharpness  occasion- 
ing indigestion.  Here,  again,  were  stations 
with  nothing  going  but  a  bell,  and  wonder- 
ful wooden  razors  set  aloft  on  great  posts, 
shaving  the  air.  In  these  fields,  the  horses, 
sheep,  and  cattle  were  well  used  to  the 
thundering  meteor,  and  didn't  mind  ;  in 
those,  they  were  all  set  scampering  to- 
gether, and  a  herd  of  pigs  scoured  after 
them.  The  pastoral  country  darkened,  be- 


came coaly,  became  smoky,  became  infernal, 
got  better,  got  worse,  improved  again,  grew 
rugged,  turned  romantic  ;  was  a  wood,  a 
stivam,  a,  chain  of  hills,  a  gorge,  a  moor,  a 
cathedral  town,  a  fortified  place,  a  waste. 
Now,  miserable  black  dwellings,  a  black 
canal,  and  sick  black  towers  of  chim- 
neys ;  now,  a  trim  garden,  where  the 
flowers  were  bright  and  fair  ;  now,  a  wilder- 
ness of  hideous  altars  all  a-blaze  ;  now,  the 
water  meadows  with  their  fairy  rings  ;  now, 
the  mangy  patch  of  unlet  building  ground 
outside  the  stagnant  town,  with  the  larger 
ring  where  the  Circus  was  last  week.  The 
temperature  changed,  the  dialect  changed, 
the  people  changed,  faces  got  sharper,  man- 
ner got  shorter,  eyes  got  shrewder  and 
harder  ;  yet  all  so  quickly,  that  the  spruce 
guard  in  the  London  uniform  and  silver  lace, 
had  not  yet  rumpled  his  shirt-collar,  delivered 
half  the  dispatches  in  his  shining  little  pouch, 
or  read  his  newspaper. 

Carlisle  !  Idle  and  Goodchild  had  got  to 
Carlisle.  It  looked  congenially  and  delight- 
fully  idle.  Something  in  the  way  of  public 
amusement  had  happened  last  month,  and 
something  else  was  going  to  happen  before 
Christmas  ;  and,  in  the  meantime  there  was 
a  lecture  on  India  for  those  who  liked  it— 
which  Idle  and  Goodchild  did  not.  Like- 
wise, by  those  who  liked  them,  there  were 
impressions  to  be  bought  of  all  the  vapid 
prints,  going  and  gone,  and  of  nearly  all  the 
vapid  books.  For  those  who  wanted  to  put 
anything  in.  missionary  boxes,  here  were  the 
boxes.  For  those  who.  wanted  the  Reverend 
Mr.  Podgers  (artist's  proofs,  thirty  shillings), 
here  was  Mr.  Podgers  to  any  amount.  Not 
less  gracious  and  abundant,  Mr.  Codgers, 
also  of  the  vineyard,  but  opposed  to  Mr. 
Podgers,  brotherly  tooth  and  nail.  Here, 
were  guide-books  to  the  neighbouring  anti- 
quities, and  eke  the  Lake  country,  in  several 
dry  and  husky  sorts  ;  here,  many  physically 
and  morally  impossible  heads  of  both  sexes, 
for  young  ladies  to  copy,  in  the  exercise  of  the 
art  of  drawing;  here,  further,  a  large  im- 
pression of  Mr.  SPURGEON,  solid  as  to  the 
flesh,  not  to  say  even  something  gross.  The 
working  young  men  of  Carlisle  were  drawn 
up,  with  their  hands  in  their  pockets,  across 
the  pavements,  four  and  six  abreast,  and 
appeared  (much  to  the  satisfaction  of  Mr. 
Idle)  to  have  nothing  else  to  do.  The  work- 
ing and  growing  young  women  of  Carlisle, 
from  the  age  of  twelve  upwards,  promenaded 
the  streets  in  the  cool  of  the  evening,  and 
rallied  the  said  young  men.  Sometimes  the 
young  men  rallied  the  young  women,  as  in 
the  case  of  a  group  gathered  round  an 
accordion-player,  from  among  whom  a  young 
man  advanced  behind  a  young  woman  for 
whom  he  appeared  to  have  a  tenderness,  and 
hinted  to  her  that  lie  was  there  and  playful, 
by  giving  her  (he  wore  clogs)  a  kick. 

On  market  morning,  Carlisle  woke  up 
amazingly,  and  became  (to  the  two  Idle 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPEENTICES.        [October  3. 1857.1    315 


Apprentices)  disagreeably  and  reproachfully 
busy.  There  were  its  cattle  market,  its  sheep 
market,  and  its  pig  market  down  by  the 
river,  with  raw-boned  and  shock-headed  Rob  j 
Roys  lading  their  Lowland  dresses  beneath 
heavy  plaids,  prowling  in  and  out  among  the 
animals,  and  flavouring  the  air  with  fumes  of 
whiskey.  There  was  its  corn  market  down 
the  main  street,  with  hum  of  chaffering  over 
open  sacks.  There  was  its  general  market 
in  the  street  too,  with  heather  brooms  on 
which  the  purple  flower  still  flourished,  and 
heather  baskets  primitive  and  fresh  to  be- 
hold. With  women  trying  on  clogs  and  caps 
at  open  stalls,  and  "  Bible  stalls  "  adjoining. 
With  "Doctor  Mantle's  Dispensary  for  the 
•cure  of  all  Human  Maladies  and  no  charge 
for  advice,"  and  with  Doctor  Mantle's  "Labo- 
ratory of  Medical,  Chemical,  and  Botanical 
Science  " — both  healing  institutions  esta- 
blished on  one  pair  of  trestles,  one  board, 
and  one  sun-blind.  With  the  renowned 
phrenologist  from  London,  begging  to  be 
favoured  (at  sixpence  each)  with  the  com- 
pany of  clients  of  both  sexes,  to  whom, 
on  examination  of  their  heads,  he  would 
make  revelations  "  enabling  him  or  her  to 
know  themselves."  Through  all  these  bar- 
gains and  blessings,  the  recruiting-serjeant 
watchfully  elbowed  his  way,  a  thread  of  War 
in  the  peaceful  skein.  Likewise  on  the  walls 
were  printed  hints  that  the  Oxford  Blues 
might  not  be  indisposed  to  hear  of  a  few  fine 
active  young  men  ;  and  that  whereas  the 
standard  of  that  distinguished  corps  is  full 
six  feet,  "  growing  lads  of  five  feet  eleven  " 
need  not  absolutely  despair  of  being  accepted. 

Scenting  the  morning  air  more  pleasantly 
than  the  buried  majesty  of  Denmark  did, 
Messrs.  Idle  and  Goodchild  rode  away 
from  Carlisle  at  eight  o'clock  one  forenoon, 
bound  for  the  village  of  Heske,  Newmarket, 
some  fourteen  miles  distant.  Goodchild  (who 
had  already  begun  to  doubt  whether  he  was 
idle  :  as  his  way  always  is  when  he  has 
nothing  to  do),  had  read  of  a  certain  black 
old  Cumberland  hill  or  mountain,  called 
Carrock,  or  Carrock  Fell ;  and  had  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  the  culmi- 
nating triumph  of  Idleness  to  ascend  the 
same.  Thomas  Idle,  dwelling  on  the  pains 
inseparable  from  that  achievement,  had 
expressed  the  strongest  doubts  of  the  expe- 
diency, and  even  of  the  sanity,  of  the  enter- 
prise ;  but  Goodchild  had  carried  his  point, 
and  they  rode  away. 

Up  hill  and  down  hill,  and  twisting  to  the 
right,  and  twisting  to  the  left,  and  with  old 
Skiddaw  (who  has  vaunted  himself  a  great 
deal  more  than  his  merits  deserve  ;  but  that 
is  rather  the  way  of  the  Lake  country),  dodg- 
ing the  apprentices  in  a  picturesque  and 
pleasant  manner.  Good,  weatiier-proof,  warm, 
peasant  houses,  well  white-limed,  scantily 
dotting  the  road.  Clean  children  coming  out 
to  look,  carrying  other  clean  children  as 
big  as  themselves.  Harvest  still  lying  out 


and  much  rained  upon  ;  here  and  there,  har- 
vest still  unreaped.  Well  cultivated  gardens 
attached  to  the  cottages,  Avith  plenty  of  pro- 
duce forced  out  of  their  hard  soil.  Lonely 
nooks,  and  wild  ;  but  people  can  be  born,  and 
married,  and  buried  in  such  nooks,  and  can 
live  and  love,  and  be  loved,  there  as  else- 
where, thank  God  !  (Mr.  Goodchild's  re- 
mark.) By-and-by,  the  village.  Black,  coarse- 
stoned,  rough-windowed  houses  ;  some  with 
outer  staircases,  like  Swiss  houses  ;  a  sinu- 
ous and  stony  gutter  winding  up  hill  and 
round  the  corner,  by  way  of  street.  All 
the  children  running  out  directly.  Women 
pausing  in  washing,  to  peep  from  doorways 
and  very  little  windows.  Such  were  the 
observations  of  Messrs.  Idle  and  Goodchild, 
as  their  conveyance  stopped  at  the  village 
shoemaker's.  Old  Carrock  gloomed  down 
upon  it  all  in  a  very  ill-tempered  state  ;  and 
rain  was  beginning. 

The  village  shoemaker  declined  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  Carroek.  No  visitors 
went  up  Carrock.  No  visitors  came  there 
at  all.  Aa'  the  world  ganged  awa'  yon.  The 
driver  appealed  to  the  Innkeeper.  The  Inn- 
keeper had  two  men  working  in  the  fields, 
and  one  of  them  should  be  called  in,  to  go  up 
Carrock  as  guide.  Messrs.  Idle  and  Goodchild, 
highly  approving,  entered  the  Innkeeper's 
house,  to  drink  whiskey  and  eat  oakcake. 

The  Innkeeper  was  not  idle  enough — was 
not  idle  at  all,  which  was  a  great  fault  in 
him — but  was  a  fine  specimen  of  a  north- 
country  man,  or  any  kind  of  man.  He  had  a 
ruddy  cheek,  a  bright  eye,  a  well-knit  frame, 
an  immense  hand,  a  cheery  outspeaking 
voice,  and  a  straight,  bright,  broad  look.  He 
had  a  drawing-room,  too,  up-stairs,  which 
was  worth  a  visit  to  the  Cumberland  Fells. 
(This  was  Mr.  Francis  Goodchild's  opinion, 
in  which  Mr.  Thomas  Idle  did  not  concur.) 

The  ceiling  of  this  drawing-room  was  so 
crossed  and  re -crossed  by  beams  of  unequal 
lengths,  radiating  from  a  centre  in  a  corner, 
that  it  looked  like  a  broken  star-fish.  The 
room  was  comfortably  and  solidly  furnished 
with  good  mahogany  and  horsehair.  It  had 
a  snug  fire-side,  and  a  couple  of  well-cur- 
tained windows,  looking  out  upon  the  wild 
country  behind  the  house.  What  it  most 
developed  was,  an  unexpected  taste  for  little 
ornaments  and  nick-nacks,  of  which  it  con- 
tained a  most  surprising  number.  They 
were  not  very  various,  consisting  in  great 
part  of  waxen  babies  with  their  limbs  more 
or  less  mutilated,  appealing  on  one  leg  to  the 
parental  affections  from  under  little  cupping- 
glasses  ;  but,  Uncle  Tom  was  there,  in  crock- 
ery, receiving  theological  instructions  from 
Miss  Eva,  who  grew  out  of  his  side  like  a 
wen,  in  an  exceedingly  rough  state  of  profile 
propagandism.  Engravings  of  Mr.  Hunt's 
country-boy,  before  and  after  his  pie,  were 
on  the  wall,  divided  by  a  highly-coloured 
nautical  piece,  the  subject  of  which  had  all 
her  colors  (and  more)  flying,  and  was  making 


316       [October  3,  185?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[.Conducted  by 


pi-eat  way  through  a  sea  of  a  regular  pattern, 
like  a  lady's  collar.  A  benevolent  elderly 
gentleman  of  the  last  century,  with  a 
powdered  head,  kept  guard,  in  oil  and 
varnish,  over  a  most  perplexing  piece  of 
furniture  on  a  table  ;  in  appearance  between 
a  driving  seat  and  an  angular  knife- box,  but, 
when  opened,  a  musical  instrument  of 
tinkling  wires,  exactly  like  David's  harp 
packed  for  travelling.  Everything  became  a 
nick-nack  in  this  curious  room.  The  copper 
tea-kettle,  burnished  up  to  the  highest  point 
of  glory,  took  his  station  on  a  stand  of  his 
own  at  the  greatest  possible  distance  from 
the  fire-place,  and  said,  "  By  your  leave,  not  a 
kittle,  but  a  bijou."  The  Staffordshire-ware 
butter-dish  with  the  cover  on,  got  upon  a 
little  round  occasional  table  in  a  window, 
with  a  worked  top,  and  announced  itself  to 
the  two  chairs  accidentally  placed  there,  as 
an  aid  to  polite  conversation,  a  graceful  trifle 
in  china  to  be  chatted  over  by  callers,  as 
they  airily  trifled  away  the  visiting  moments 
of  a  butterfly  existence,  in  that  rugged  old 
village  on  the  Cumberland  Fells.  The  very 
footstool  could  not  keep  the  floor,  but  got 
upon  the  sofa,  and  therefrom  proclaimed 
itself,  in  high  relief  of  white  and  liver-colored 
wool,  a  favourite  spaniel  coiled  up  for  repose. 
Though,  truly,  in  spite  of  its  bright  glass 
eyes,  the  spaniel  was  the  least  successful 
assumption  in  the  collection  :  being  perfectly 
flat,  and  dismally  suggestive  of  a  recent  mis- 
take in  sitting  down,  on  the  part  of  some  cor- 
pulent member  of  the  family. 

There  were  books,  too,  in  this  room  ;  books 
on  the  table,  books  on  the'  chimney-piece, 
books  in  an  open  press  in  the  corner.  Field- 
ing was  there,  and  Smollett  was  there,  and 
Steele  and  Addison  were  there,  in  dispersed 
volumes  ;  and  there  were  tales  of  those  who 
go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  for  windy  nights  ; 
and  there  was  really  a  choice  of  good  books 
for  rainy  days  or  fine.  It  was  so  very  plea- 
sant to  see  these  things  in  such  a  lonesome 
by-place — so  very  agreeable  to  find  these 
evidences  of  a  taste,  however  homely,  that 
went  beyond  the  beautiful  cleanliness  and 
trimuess  of  the  house — so  fanciful  to  imagine 
what  a  wonder  the  room  must  be  to  the  little 
children  born  in  the  gloomy  village — what 
grand  impressions  of  it  those  of  them  who 
became  wanderers  over  the  earth  would 
carry  away  ;  and  how,  at  distant  ends  of  the 
world,  some  old  voyagers  would  die,  cherish- 
ing the  belief  that  the  finest  apartment 
known  to  men  was  once  in  the  Hesket- 
Newmarket  Inn,  in  rjjre  old  Cumberland — 
it  was  such  a  charmingly  lazy  pursuit  to 
entertain  these  rambling  thoughts  over  the 
choice  oat-cake  and  the  genial  whiskey,  that 
Mr.  Idle  and  Mr.  Goodchild  never  asked 
themselves  how  it  came  to  pass  that  the  men 
in  the  fields  were  never  heard  of  more,  how 
the  stalwart  landlord  replaced  them  without 
explanation,  how  his  dog-cart  came  to  be 
waiting  at  the  door,  and  how  everything 


was  arranged  without  the  least  arrangement, 
for  climbing  to  old  Carrock's  shoulders,  and 
standing  on  his  head. 

Without  a  word  of  inquiry,  therefore, 
The  Two  Idle  Apprentices  drifted  out  re- 
signedly into  a  fine,  soft,  close,  drowsy,  pene- 
trating rain  ;  got  into  the  landlord's  light 
dog-cart,  and  rattled  off,  through  the  village, 
for  the  foot  of  Carrock.  The  journey  at  the 
outset  was  not  remarkable.  The  Cumber- 
land road  went  up  and  down  like  other  roads  ; 
the  Cumberland  curs  burst  out  from  backs  of 
cottages  and  barked  like  other  curs,  and  the 
Cumberland  peasantry  stared  after  the  dog- 
cart amazedly,  as  long  as  it  was  in  sight,  like 
the  rest  of  their  race.  The  approach  to  the 
foot  of  the  mountain  resembled  the  approaches 
to  the  feet  of  most  other  mountains  all  over 
the  world.  The  cultivation  gradually  ceased, 
the  trees  grew  gradually  rare,  the  road  be- 
came gradually  rougher,  and  the  sides  of  the 
mountain  looked  gradually  more  and  more 
lofty,  and  more  and  more  difficult  to  get  up. 
The  dog-cart  was  left  at  a  lonely  farm-house. 
The  landlord  borrowed  a  large  umbrella,  and, 
assuming  in  an  instant  the  character  of  the 
most  cheerful  and  adventurous  of  guides,  led 
the  way  to  the  ascent.  Mr.  Goodchild  looked 
eagerly  at  the  top  of  the  mountain,  and,  feel- 
ing apparently  that  he  was  now  going  to  be 
very  lazy  indeed,  shone  all  over  wonder- 
fully to  the  eye,  under  the  influence  of 
the  contentment  within  and  the  mois- 
ture without.  Only  in  the  bosom  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Idle  did  Despondency  now  hold 
her  gloomy  state.  He  kept  it  a  secret ;  but 
he  would  have  given  a  very  handsome  sum, 
when  the  ascent  began,  to  have  been  back 
again  at  the  inn.  The  sides  of  Carrock 
looked  fearfully  steep,  and  the  top  of  Carrock 
was  hidden  in  mist.  The  rain  was  falling 
faster  and  faster.  The  knees  of  Mr.  Idle — 
always  weak  on  walking  excursions — shivered 
and  shook  with  fear  and  damp.  The  wet 
was  already  penetrating  through  the  young 
man's  outer  coat  to  a  bran  new  shooting- 
jacket,  for  which  he  had  reluctantly  paid  the 
large  sum  of  two  guineas  on  leaving  town  ; 
he  had  no  stimulating  refreshment  about  him 
but  a  small  packet  of  clammy  gingerbread 
nuts  ;  he  had  nobody  to  give  him  an  arm, 
nobody  to  push  him  gently  behind,  nobody 
to  pull  him  up  tenderly  in  front,  nobody  to 
speak  to  who  really  felt  the  difficulties  of  the 
ascent,  the  dampness  of  the  rain,  the  dense- 
ness  of  the  mist,  and  the  unutterable  folly  of 
climbing,  undriven,  up  any  steep  place  in  the 
world,  when  there  is  level  ground  within  reach 
to  walk  on  instead.  Was  it  for  this  that  Thomas 
had  left  London  1  London,  where  there  are  nice 
short  walksin  level  public gardens,with benches 
of  repose  set  up  at  convenient  distances  for 
weary  travellers  —  London,  where  rugged 
stone  is  humanely  pounded  into  little  lumps 
for  the  road,  and  intelligently  shaped  into- 
smooth  slabs  for  the  pavement !  No  !  it  was 
not  for  the  laborious  ascent  of  the  crags  of 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUE  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPRENTICES.       [October 3,1857.1     317 


Carrock  that  Idle  had  left  his  native  city  and 
travelled  to  Cumberland.  Never  did  he  feel 
more  disastrously  convinced  that  he  had 
committed  a  very  grave  error  in  judgment  than 
when  he  found  himself  standing  in  the  rain 
at  the  bottom  of  a  steep  mountain,  and  knew 
that  the  responsibility  rested  on  his  weak 
shoulders  of  actually  getting  to  the  top  of  it. 
The  honest  landlord  went  first,  the  beam- 
ing Goodchild  followed,  the  mournful  Idle 
brought  up  the  rear.  From  time  to  time, 
the  two  foremost  members  of  the  expedition 
changed  places  in  the  order  of  march  ;  but 
the  rearguard  never  altered  his  position.  Up 
the  mountain  or  down  the  mountain,  in  the 
water  or  out  of  it,  over  the  rocks,  through 
the  bogs,  skirting  the  heather,  Mr.  Thomas 
Idle  was  always  the  last,  and  was  always  the 
man  who  had  to  be  looked  after  and  waited 
for.  At  first  the  ascent  was  delusively  easy : 
the  sides  of  the  mountain  sloped  gradually, 
and  the  material  of  which  they  were  com- 
posed was  a  soft  spongy  turf,  very  tender 
and  pleasant  to  walk  upon.  After  a  hundred 
yards  or  so,  however,  the  verdant  scene  and 
the  easy  slope  disappeared,  and  the  rocks 
began.  Not  noble,  massive  rocks,  standing 
upright,  keeping  a  certain  regularity  in  their 
positions,  and  possessing,  now  and  then,  flat 
tops  to  sit  upon,  but  little,  irritating,  com- 
fortless rocks,  littered  about  anyhow  by 
Nature  ;  treacherous,  disheartening  rocks  of 
all  sorts  of  small  shapes  and  small  sizes, 
bruisers  of  tender  toes  and  trippers-up  of 
wavering  feet.  When  these  impediments 
were  passed,  heather  and  slough  followed. 
Here  the  steepness  of  the  ascent  was  slightly 
mitigated ;  and  here  the  exploring  party  of 
three  turned  round  to  look  at  the  view  below 
them.  The  scene  of  the  moorland  and  the  fields 
was  like  a  feeble  water-colour  drawing  half 
sponged  out.  The  mist  was  darkening,  the 
rain  was  thickening,  the  trees  were  dotted 
about  like  spots  of  faint  shadow,  the  division- 
lines  which  mapped  out  the  fields  were  all 
getting  blurred  together,  and  the  lonely  farm- 
house where  the  dog-cart  had  been  left, 
loomed  spectral  in  the  grey  light  like  the 
last  human  dwelling  at  the  end  of  the  habit- 
able world.  Was  this  a  sight  worth  climbing 
to  see  1  Surely — surely  not ! 

Up  again — for  the  top  of  Carrock  is  not 
reached  yet.  The  landlord,  just  as  good- 
tempered  and  obliging  as  he  was  at  the 
bottom  of  the  mountain.  Mr.  Goodchild 
brighter  in  the  eyes  and  rosier  in  the  face 
than  ever  ;  full  of  cheerful  remarks  and  apt 
(quotations  ;  and  walking  with  a  springiness 
of  step  wonderful  to  behold.  Mr.  Idle, 
farther  and  farther  in  the  rear,  with  the 
water  squeaking  in  the  toes  of  his  boots, 
•with  his  two-guinea  shooting-jacket  clinging 
damply  to  his  aching  sides,  with  his  over-coat 
so  full  of  rain,  and  standing  out  so  pyramidi- 
cally  stiff,  in  consequence,  from  his  shoulders 
downwards,  that  he  felt  as  if  he  was  walking 
in  a  gigantic  extinguisher — the  despairing 


spirit  within  him  representing  but  too  aptly 
the  candle  that  had  just^been  put  out.  Up 
and  up  and  up  again,  till  a  ridge  is  reached, 
and  the  outer  edge  of  the  mist  on  the  summit 
of  Carrock  is  darkly  and  drizzlingly  near. 
Is  this  the  top  1  No,  nothing  like  the  top. 
It  is  an  aggravating  peculiarity  of  all  moun- 
tains, that,  although  they  have  only  one  top 
when  they  are  seen  (as  they  ought  always  to 
be  seen)  from  below,  they  turn  out  to  have  a 
perfect  erruption  of  false  tops  whenever  the 
traveller  is  sufficiently  ill-advised  to  go  out 
of  his  way  for  the  purpose  of  ascending  them. 
Carrock  is  but  a  trumpei-y  little  mountain  of 
fifteen  hundred  feet,  and  it  presumes  to  have 
false  tops,  and  even  precipices,  as  if  it  was 
Mont  Blanc.  No  matter  ;  Goodchild  enjoya 
it,  and  will  go  on  ;  and  Idle,  who  is  afraid  of 
being  left  behind  by  himself,  must  follow. 
On  entering  the  edge  of  the  mist,  the  landlord 
stops,  and  says  he  hopes  that  it  will  not  get 
any  thicker.  It  is  twenty  years  since  he  last 
ascended  Carrock,  and  it  is  barely  possible, 
if  the  mist  increases,  that  the  party  may  be 
lost  on  the  mountain.  Goodchild  hears  this 
dreadful  intimation,  and  is  not  in  the  least 
impressed  by  it.  He  marches  for  the  top 
that  is  never  to  be  found,  as  if  he  was  the 
Wandering  Jew,  bound  to  go  on  for  ever,  in 
defiance  of  everything.  The  landlord  faith- 
fully accompanies  him.  The  two,  to  the  dim 
eye  of  Idle,far  below,look  in  the  exaggerative 
mist,  like  a  pair  of  friendly  giants,  mounting 
the  steps  of  some  invisible  castle  together.  Up 
and  up,  and  then  down  a  little,  and  then  up, 
and  then  along  a  strip  of  level  ground,  and 
then  up  again.  The  wind,  a  wind  unknown 
in  the  happy  valley,  blows  keen  and  strong  ; 
the  rain-mist  gets  impenetrable  ;  a  dreary 
little  cairn  of  stones  appears.  The  landlord 
adds  one  to  the  heap,  first  walking  all  round 
the  cairn  as  if  he  were  about  to  perform  an 
incantation,  then  dropping  the  stone  on  to 
the  top  of  the  heap  with  the  gesture  of  a 
magician  adding  an  ingredient  to  a  cauldron 
in  full  bubble.  Goodchild  sits  down  by  the 
cairn  as  if  it  was  his  study-table  at  home  ; 
Idle,  drenched  and  panting,  stands  up  with 
his  back  to  the  wind,  ascertains  distinctly  that 
this  is  the  top  at  last,  looks  round  with  all  the 
little  curiosity  that  is  left  in  him,  and  gets,  iu 
return,  a  magnificent  view  of — Nothing ! 

The  effect  of  this  sublime  spectacle  on  the 
minds  of  the  exploring  party  is  a  little 
injured  by  the  nature  of  the  direct  conclusion 
to  which  the  sight  of  it  points — the  said  con- 
clusion being  that  the  mountain  mist  has 
actually  gathered  round  them,  as  the  land- 
lord feared  it  would.  It  now  becomes  impe- 
ratively necessary  to  settle  the  exact  situation 
of  the  farm-house  in  the  valley  at  which  the 
dog-cart  has  been  left,  before  the  travellers 
attempt  to  descend.  While  the  landlord  is 
endeavouring  to  make  this  discovery  in  his 
own  way,  Mr.  Goodchild  plunges  his  hand 
under  his  wet  coat,  draws  out  a  little  red 
morocco-case,  opens  it,  and  displays  to  the 


318       [October  8, 1S&7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


view  of  his  companions  a  neat  pocket-com~ 
pass.  The  north  is  fouuil,  the  point  at  which 
the  farm-house-  is  situated  is  settled,  and  the 
a  little  downward 
as  usual)  sees  his 


descent   begins.      A  i'ter 
walking,    Idle    (behind 


fellow-travellers  turn  aside  sharply — tries  to 
follow  them — loses  them  in  the  mist — is 
shouted  after,  waited  for,  recovered — and 
then  finds  that  a  halt  has  been  ordered, 
partly  on  his  account,  partly  for  the  purpose 
oi';iuain  consulting  the  compass. 

The  point  in  debate  is  settled  as  before  be- 
tween Goodchild  and  the  landlord,  and  the 
expedition  moves  on,  not  down  the  mountain, 
but  marching  straight  forward  round  the 
slope  of  it.  The  difficulty  of  following  this 
new  route  is  acutely  felt  by  Thomas  Idle. 
He  finds  the  hardship  of  walking  at  all, 
greatly  increased  by  the  fatigue  of  moving 
his  feet  straight  forward  along  the  side  of  a 
slope,  when  their  natural  tendency,  at  every 
step,  is  to  turn  off  at  a  right  angle,  and  go 
straight  down  the  declivity.  Let  the  reader 
imagine  himself  to  be  walking  along  the  roof 
of  a  barn,  instead  of  up  or  down  it,  and  he  j 


mist,  all  sorts  of  points  reached  except  the 
"  certain  point  ;"  third  loss  of  Idle,  third 
shouts  for  him,  third  recovery  of  him,  third 
consultation  of  compass.  Mr.  Goodchild 
draws  it  tenderly  from  his  pocket,  and  pre- 
pares to  adjust  it  on  a  stone.  Something 
falls  on  the  turf — it  is  the  glass.  Something 
else  drops  immediately  after — it  is  the 
needle.  The  compass  is  broken,  and  the  ex- 
ploring party  is  lost ! 

It  is  the  practice  of  the  English  portion  of 
the  human  race  to  receive  all  great  disasters 
in  dead  silence.  Mr.  Goodchild  restored  the 
useless  compass  to  his  pocket  without  saying 
a  word,  Mr.  Idle  looked  at  the  landlord,  and 
the  landlord  looked  at  Mr.  Idle.  There  was 
nothing  for  it  now  but  to  go  on  blindfold, 
and  trust  to  the  chapter  of  chances.  Accord- 
ingly, the  lost  travellers  moved  forward,  still 
walking  round  the  slope  of  the  mountain, 
still  desperately  resolved  to  avoid  the  Black 
Arches,  and  to  succeed  in  reaching  the 
"  certain  point." 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  brought  them  to  the 
brink  of  a  ravine,  at  the  bottom  of  which 


will  have   an  exact  idea  of  the  pedestrian  I  there  flowed  a  muddy  little  stream.     Here 

_1  •  /Y» 1J__*___1'1.1j  11  1  T  •  .  *  11.  111 


difficulty  in  which  the  travellers  had  now  in- 
volved themselves.  In  ten  minutes  more 
Idle  was  lost  in  the  distance  again,  was 
shouted  for,  waited  for,  recovered  as  before  ; 
found  Goodchild  repeating  his  observation  of 
the  compass,  and  remonstrated  warmly 
against  the  sideway  route  that  ,  his  com- 
panions persisted  in  following.  It  appeared 
to  the  uniustructed  mind  of  Thomas  that 
when  three  men  want  to  get  to  the  bottom 
of  a  mountain,  their  business  is  to  walk  down 
it ;  and  he  put  this  view  of  the  case,  not  only 
with  emphasis,  but  even  with  some  irrita- 
bility. He  was  answered  from  the  scientific 
eminence  of  the  compass  011  which  his  com- 
panions were  mounted,  that  there  was  a 
frightful  chasm  somewhere  near  the  foot  of 
Carrock,  called  The  Black  Arches,  into  which 
the  travellers  were  sure  to  march  iu  the  mist, 
if  they  risked  continuing  the  descent  from 
the  place  where  they  had  now  halted.  Idle 
received  this  answer  with  the  silent  respect 
which  was  due  to  the  commanders  of  the 
expedition,  and  followed  along  the  roof  of  the 
barn,  or  rather  the  side  of  the  mountain, 
reflecting  upon  the  assurance  which  he  re- 
ceived on  starting  again,  that  the  object  of 
the  party  was  only  to  gain  "a  certain  point," 
and,  this  haven  attained,  to  continue  the 
descent  afterwards  until  the  foot  of  Carrock 
was  reached.  Though  quite  unexceptionable 
as  an  abstract  form  of  expression,  the  phrase 
"a  certain  point"  has  the  disadvantage  of 
sounding  rather  vaguely  when  it  is  pro- 
nounced on  unknown  ground,  uuckr  a  canopy 
of  mist  much  thicker  than  a  London  fog. 
Nevertheless,  after  the  compass,  this  phrase 
was  all  the  clue  the  party  had  to  hold  by, 
and  Idle  clung  to  the  extreme  end  of  it  as 
hopefully  as  he  could. 

More  side  way  walking,  thicker  and  thicker 


another  halt  was  called,  and  another  con- 
sultation took  place.  The  landlord,  still 
clinging  pertinaciously  to  the  idea  of  reaching 
the  "  point,"  voted  for  crossing  the  ravine 
and  going  on  round  the  slope  of  the  moun- 
tain. Mr.  Goodchild,  to  the  great  relief  of 
his  fellow-traveller,  took  another  view  of  the 
case,  and  backed  Mr.  Idle's  proposal  to- 
descend  Carrock  at  once,  at  any  hazard—- 
the rather  as  the  running  stream  was  a  sure 
guide  to  follow  from  the  mountain  to  the 
valley.  Accordingly,  the  party  descended  to 
the  rugged  and  stony  banks  of  the  stream ; 
and  here  again  Thomas  lost  ground  sadly, 
and  fell  far  behind  his  travelling  companions. 
Not  much  more  than  six  weeks  had  elapsed 
since  he  had  sprained  one  of  his  ancles,  and 
he  began  to  feel  this  same  ancle  getting 
rather  weak  when  he  found  himself  among 
the  stones  that  were  strewn  about  the 
running  water.  Goodchild  and  the  landlord 
were  getting  farther  and  farther  ahead  of 
him.  He  saw  them  cross  the  stream  and 
disappear  round  a  projection  on  its  banks. 
He  heard  them  shout  the  moment  after  as  a 
signal  that  they  had  halted  and  were  waiting 
for  him.  Answering  the  shout,  he  mended 
his  pace,  crossed  the  stream  where  they  had 
crossed  it,  and  was  within  one  step  of  the 
opposite  bank,  when  his  foot  slipped  on  a 
wet  stone,  his  weak  ankle  gave  a  twist  out- 
wards, a  hot,  rending,  tearing  pain  ran 
through  it  at  the  same  moment,  and  down 
fell  the  idlest  of  the  Two  Idle  Apprentices, 
crippled  in  an  instant. 

The  situation  was  now,  in  plain  terms,  one 
of  absolute  danger.  There  lay  Mr.  Idle 
writhing  with  pain,  there  was  the  misfc  as 
thick  as  ever,  there  was  the  landlord  as  com- 
pletely lost  as  the  strangers  whom  he  was 
conducting,  and  there  was  the  compass 


Charle,  Dicjcens.]  INDIAN    RECRUITS    AND    INDIAN    ENGLISH.  [October  3, 1857.]       319 


broken  in  Gooclchild's  pocket.  To  leave  the 
wretched  Thomas  on  unkuosvu  ground  was 
plainly  impossible  ;  and  to  get  him  to  walk 
with  a  badly  sprained  ankle  seemed  equally 
out  of  the  question.  However,  Goodchild 
(brought  back  by  his  cry  for  help)  bandaged 
the  ankle  with  a  pocket-handkerchief,  and 
assisted  by  the  landlord,  raised  the  crippled 
Apprentice  to  his  legs,  offered  him  a  shoulder 
to  lean  on,  and  exhorted  him  for  the  sake  of 
the  whole  party  to  try  if  he  could  walk. 
Thomas,  assisted  by  the  shoulder  on  one  side, 
and  a  stick  on  the  other,  did  try,  with  what 
pain  and  difficulty  those  only  can  imagine 
who  have  sprained  an  ankle  and  have  had  to 
tread  on  it  afterwards.  At  a  pace  adapted 
to  the  feeble  hobbling  of  a  newly-lamed 
man,  the  lost  party  moved  on,  perfectly 
ignorant  whether  they  were  on  the  right 
side  of  the  mountain  or  the  wrong,  and 
equally  uncertain  how  long  Idle  would  be 
able  to  contend  with  the  pain  in  his  ancle, 
before  he  gave  in  altogether  and  fell  down 
again,  unable  to  stir  another  step. 

Slowly  and  more  slowly,  as  the  clog  of 
crippled  Thomas  weighed  heavily  and  more 
heavily  on  the  march  of  the  expedition,  the 
lost  travellers  followed  the  windings  of  the 
stream,  till  they  came  to  a  faintly-marked 
cart-track,  branching  off  nearly  at  right 
angles,  to  the  left.  After  a  little  consulta- 
tion it  was  resolved  to  follow  this  dim  vestige 
of  a  road  in  the  hope  that  it  might  lead  to 
some  farm  or  cottage,  at  which  Idle  could 
be  left  in  safety.  It  was  now  getting  on  to- 
wards the  afternoon,  and  it  was  fast  becoming 
more  than  doubtful  whether  the  party,  de- 
layed in  their  progress  as  they  now  were,  might 
not  be  overtaken  by  the  darkness  before  the 
right  route  was  found,  and  be  condemned  to 
pass  the  night  on  the  moimtain,  without  bit 
or  drop  to  comfort  them,  in  their  wet  clothes. 

The  cart-track  grew  fainter  and  fainter, 
until  it  was  washed  out  altogether  by  another 
little  stream,  dark,  turbulent,  and  rapid. 
The  landlord  suggested,  judging  by  the  colour 
of  the  water,  that  it  must  be  flowing  from 
one  of  the  lead  mines  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Carrock  ;  and  the  travellers  accordingly  kept 
by  the  stream  for  a  little  while,  in  the  hope  of 
possibly  wandering  towards  help  in  that  way. 
After  walking  forward  about  two  hundred 
yards,  they  came  upon  a  mine  indeed,  but 
a  mine,  exhausted  and  abandoned  ;  a  dismal, 
ruinous  place,  with  nothing  but  the  wreck  of 
its  works  and  buildings  left  to  speak  for  it. 
Here,  there  were  a  few  sheep  feeding.  The 
landlord  looked  at  them  earnestly,  thought 
he  recognised  the  marks  on  them — then 
thought  he  did  not — finally  gave  up  the  sheep 
in  despair — and  walked  on,  just  as  ignorant 
of  the  whereabouts  of  the  party  as  ever. 

The  march  in  the  dark,  literally  as  well  as 
metaphorically  in  the  dark,  had  now  been 
continued  for  three-quarters  of  an  hour  from 
the  time  when  the  crippled  Apprentice  had 
met  with  his  accident.  Mr.  Idle,  with  all  the 


will  to  conquer  the  pain  in  his  ankle,  and  to 
lobble  on,  found  the  power  rapidly  failing 
him,  and  felt  that  another  ten  minutes  at 
most  would  find  him  at  the  end  of  his  last 
physical  resources.  He  had  just  made  up  his 
mind  on  this  point,  and  was  about  to  com- 
municate the  dismal  result  of  his  reflections 
bo  his  companions,  when  the  mist  suddenly 
brightened,  and  began  to  lift  straight  ahead. 
In  another  minute,  the  landlord,  who  was  in 
advance,  proclaimed  that  he  saw  a  tree. 
Before  long,  other  trees  appeared — then  a 
:ottage — then  a  house  beyond  the  cottage, 
and  a  familiar  line  of  road  rising  behind  it. 
Last  of  all,  Carrock  itself  loomed  darkly  into 
view,  far  away  to  the  right  hand.  The  party 
bad  not  only  got  down  the  mountain  without 
knowing  how,  but  had  wandered  away  from 
it  in  the  mist,  without  knowing  why — away, 
far  down  on  the  very  moor  by  which  they  had 
approached  the  base  of  Carrock  that  morning. 
The  happy  lifting  of  the  mist,  and  the 
still  happier  discovery  that  the  travellers 
had  groped  their  way,  though  by  a  very 
round-about  direction,  to  within  a  mile  or 
so  of  the  part  of  the  valley  in  which  the 
farm-house  was  situated,  restored  Mr.  Idle's 
sinking  spirits  and  reanimated  his  failing 
strength.  While  the  landlord  ran  off  to  get 
the  dog-cart,  Thomas  was  assisted  by  Good- 
child  to  the  cottage  which  had  been  the  first 
building  seen  when  the  darkness  brightened, 
and  was  propped  up  against  the  garden-wall, 
like  an  artist's  lay-figure  waiting  to  be  for- 
warded, until  the  dog-cart  should  arrive 
from  the  farm-house  below.  In  due  time — 
and  a  very  long  time  it  seemed  to  Mr.  Idle — 
the  rattle  of  wheels  was  heard,  and  the 
crippled  Apprentice  was  lifted  into  his  seat. 
As  the  dog-cart  was  driven  back  to  the  inn, 
the  landlord  related  an  anecdote  which  he 
had  just  heard  at  the  farm-house,  of  an  un- 
happy man  who  had  been  lost,  like  his  two 
guests  and  himself,  on  Carrock  ;  who  had 
passed  the  night  there  alone  ;  who  had  been 
found  the  next  morning,  "scared  and 
starved  ;"  and  who  never  went  out  after- 
wards, except  on  his  way  to  the  grave.  Mr. 
Idle  heard  this  sad  story,  and  derived  at 
least  one  useful  impression  from  it.  Bad  as 
the  pain  in  his  ankle  was,  he  contrived  to 
bear  it  patiently,  for  he  felt  grateful  that  a 
worse  accident  had  not  befallen  him  in  the 
wilds  of  Carrock. 

INDIAN  EECRUITS  AND  INDIAN 
ENGLISH. 

IN  Europe,  the  task  of  recruiting-sergeant 
is  anything  but  a  sinecure.  In  fact,  scarcely 
any  nation  relies  on  any  other  than,  forced 
conscription  to  replenish  its  armies.  England 
alone  seems  able  to  furnish  an  adequate 
number  of  volunteers,  and  even  in  England, 
the  demand  is  often  much  beyond  the  supply. 

In  India,  on  the  other  hand,  the  usual 
difficulties  vanish,  and  new  ones  take  .their 
place.  There,  the  supply — drawn  as  it  is  from 


320       [October  3.  1SS7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


a  swarming  population  of  almost  two  hun- 
dred millions — appears  illimitable.  The  re- 
cruiting agent  has  but  to  pick  and  choose 
among  innumerable  applicants.  On  his  deci- 
sion rest  interests  of  vast  importance  to 
the  security  and  well-being  of  the  empire. 
The  most  natural  candidates  for  preferment 
in  any  capacity,  are,  of  course,  the  classes 
that  happen  to  be  dominant.  The  comely, 
well-grown  Brahmin,  and  the  fiery-tempered 
Mahometan  presented  themselves  as  appli- 
cants for  military  service,  nor  can  we  blame 
the  government  which  accepted  them. 

When  the  Bengal  army  was  first  organised, 
nothing  was  known  respecting  the  strange 
aboriginal  races  that  crouched  in  the  jungles 
or  ranged  the  hills.  Their  numbers,  their 
dispositions,  wei'e  matters  about  which 
Leadenhall  Street  knew  nothing.  No 
European  could  speak  their  uncouth  lan- 
guages or  had  ever  cared  to  explore 
the  haunts  of  Gonds,  and  Bheels,  and 
Jats  ;  nations  as  unlike  the  Hindoos  as  the 
Highlanders  of  a  hundred  years  back  were 
unlike  the  inhabitants  of  Kent  and  Surrey. 
The  only  races  with  whom  the  British  con- 
querors of  India  had  any  intercourse  were 
the  Hindoos  and  Mussulmans.  The  only 
language  in  which  they  attained  to  any  pro- 
ficiency was  that  curious  conventional  tongue, 
the  Hindustani.  Even  Hindustani  has  not 
been  half  as  much  studied  as  policy  and  good 
sense  would  have  prescribed.  Twenty  years 
ago,  it  was  a  wonder  to  find  one  officer  in  a 
Company's  regiment  who  could  write  and 
converse  fluently  in  good  Oordoo. 

The  barbarous  jargon  called  Moors,  a 
tongue  made  up  of  English,  and  various 
Asiatic  languages,  and  wonderfully  fertile  in 
abusive  epithet,  was  in  general  use.  Even  of 
Moors,  many  young  officers  knew  but  just 
enough  to  curse  a  bearer,  or  order  lunch. 
Since  that  time  a  great  change  has  taken 
place.  Oriental  literature  has  been  made  a 
study  ;  all  sorts  of  quaint  dialects  have  been 
mastered ;  and  there  are  many  military 
officers  at  present,  not  only  able  to  hold  their 
own  with  the  glibbest  Mooushee,  but  compe- 
tent, if  need  be,  to  "  drink  with  every  tinker 
in  his  own  language "  throughout  India. 
But  these  accomplished  linguists  are,  un- 
luckily for  the  service,  snapped  up  for  all 
sorts  of  staff  employments,  and  extra  duties  ; 
whole  regiments  being  left  to  be  governed  by 
half-a-dozen  superiors,  not  two  of  whom, 
perhaps,  can  speak  Hindustani  without  blun- 
dering and  stammering.  The  result  has  been 
a  lesson  written  in  fire  and  blood. 

Now  that  the  Bengal  army  only  exists  as 
a  horde  of  blood-thirsty  enemies,  it  might 
surely  be  reconstructed  on  more  rational 
principles.  The  high  caste  Hindoo  and  the 
Mahomedan  have  been  trusted  too  long,  and 
it  seems  the  most  wilful  folly  to  trust  them 
again.  Yet  every  proposal  to  raise  a  native 
army  among  the  low  caste,  or  no  caste, 
people  of  the  hills  and  forests  seems  to  be,' 


resisted  on  the  ground  that  a  race  long 
enslaved,  must  have  had  all  merit  crushed 
out  of  it.  Certainly,  to  have  recruited 
among  the  Helots  for  an  army  to  keep  in 
their  old  masters  of  Sparta,  would  have  been 
hopeless  enough.  The  redeeming  feature  is, 
that  the  Helots  of  India  are  no  household 
slaves,  no  servile  race,  mixed  up  with  their 
rulers,  and  dwelling  under  their  yoke. 

The  real  truth  is,  that  the  high  caste  na- 
tives have  always  given  the  cold  shoulder  to 
their  unclean  neighbours.  The  Hindoo  has 
kept  the  rich  paddy-fields  and  corn-plains, 
the  stately  cities  and  the  villages  nestling 
among  groves  and  gardens,  while  the  Bheel 
and  the  Coolie  were  driven  to  the  tangled 
mountain  and  the  swampy  jungle.  There,  in 
untrodden  forests,  reside  a  hundred  hardy 
tribes  whose  existence  we  have  as  yet  almost 
ignored,  but  to  whom  England  may,  if  she 
pleases,  appear  in  the  character  of  a  deliverer, 
Among  the  Neilgherry  Mountains,  in  a  climate 
where  the  thermometer  seldom  reaches  se- 
venty degrees,  even  in  summer,  dwell  a  tribe  of 
highlanders — the  Todahs — who  are  almost  as 
robust  and  courageous  as  Europeans.  These 
people,  who  are  rich  in  cattle,  and  to  whom 
Government  pays  an  annual  subsidy  for  the 
occupation  of  Ootacamund,  look  with  con- 
tempt on  the  Hindoos  of  the  hot  country, 
and  would  make  first-rate  grenadiers. 

The  Coolies  of  Northern  India  are  not 
only  a  strong  and  enduring  race,  but  have 
intellectual  qualities  that  seldom  fail  to  de- 
velop themselves  when  a  chance  is  afforded 
them.  In  the  West  Indies,  Cooly  immigrants 
not  only  make  industrious  labourers,  but 
when  employed,  as  servants,  by  [officers  of 
regiments  quartered  there,  have  proved 
intelligent  and  trustworthy.  Yet  the 
Coolie  in  India  is  looked  on  merely  as  a 
two-legged  beast  of  burden,  fit  to  carry 
loads  for  unheard-of  distances,  or  to  run  for 
days  with  the  poles  of  a  heavy  dooly  on  his 
shoulders  ;  but  unfit  for  any  higher  duty  than 
that  of  a  pack-horse. 

Coolies,  Bheels,  Gonds,  and  the  like,  are 
very  inferior  in  personal  showiuess  and 
elegance  of  deportment,  to  the  proud  Raj- 
poots and  glossy-skinned  Brahmins,  redo- 
lent of  ghee  and  sanctity.  Very  likely,  if 
regiments  of  these  were  raised,  their  officers 
would  at  first  be  apt  to  draw  very  unfavourable 
comparisons  between  their  uncouth  habits 
and  swarthy  ugliness,  and  the  sleek  supple- 
ness of  the  Bengal  Sepoy.  But  any  asper- 
sion on  the  courage  of  au  oppressed  race  is 
based  on  false  principles,  and  the  contempt  of 
the  Brahmins  for  the  low  caste  tribes  has 
been  unjust  from  the  beginning.  Men  of  the 
most  despised  septs  have  fought  valiantly 
under  our  standards,  and  won  the  applause 
of  the  most  famous  Indian  commanders. 
Hillmen,  accustomed  from  youth  to  the  chase, 
to  pursue  large  game,  to  struggle  with  wild 
beasts,  and  to  cut  through  jungles  which 
would  make  a  twice-born  Hindoo  shudder,  is 


INDIAN  RECRUITS  AND  INDIAN  ENGLISH.       loctobcr  3, 1357.]     321 


surely  better  trained  for  soldiership  than  the 
lazy  ryot  of  Bengal. 

Moat  hill-meu  and  junglewallahs  are  ex- 
cellent shots  with  bow  and  matchlock.  The 
hardiest  Shikarees  that  ever  tracked  a  buffalo 
or  a  tiger,  belong  to  these  neglected  clans, 
and  every  Indian  sportsman  is  glad  to  pro- 
cure such  guides  on  a  hunting  expedition.  It 
is  no  slight  recommendation,  also,  that  these 
people  are  in  no  way  particular  as  to  food 
or  work.  Mangs,  Meeturs,  and  Palankeen 
bearers,  are  never  so  happy  as  when  some 
English  master  rewards  them  with  a  sheep, 
and  are,  in  fact,  almost  omnivorous. 

No  task  degrades  them,  no  toil  is  too 
much  for  them,  and  their  constitutions 
are  seasoned  to  the  effects  of  a  poisonous 
jungle  climate  that  would  be  the  death 
of  a  common  Sepoy.  It  is  worth  sacrificing 
a  few  inches  in  the  standard  of  height 
to  get  rid  of  caste  with  all  its  dangers  and 
troubles.  Of  this  we  have  ample  proof  even 
now.  The  stumpy  Sipahis  of  the  Bombay 
and  Madras  armies  remain  faithful  while 
Hindostan  is  in  a  blaze ;  the  Ghoorkas  and 
the  Sikhs,  too,  whom  the  Bengalees  deem 
almost  as  unclean  as  ourselves,  are  kept 
steady  for  want  of  high  caste  sympathies, 
and  the  mere  sympathy  of  colour  goes  for 
little.  How,  indeed,  should  it  ?  The  Brah- 
mins are  the  lightest  complexioned  of  the 
Hindoo  race,  and  while  the  olive-skinned 
man  is  the  bitterest  foe  of  the  white,  the 
latter  finds  an  ally  in  the  poor  despised  black 
fellow,  whose  interests  he  has  for  years  been 
sacrificing  to  the  high  caste  grandee.  An 
extraordinary  belief  seems  to  have  gained 
ground  in  England  to  the  effect  that  the 
Sikhs  are  heterodox  Mahommedans.  Their 
tenets  and  their  Grunth  are  little  known  ; 
but  that  they  are  Hindoo  heretics,  and  not 
Moslems  at  all,  is  certain  enough.  The 
founder  of  their  sect  mixed  with  his  doctrines 
just  enough  of  Islam  to  turn  his  followers 
away  from  Brahminism,  and  there  seems 
little  chance  that  Sikh  and  Hindoo  will  ever 
be  reconciled.  The  Goorkhas,  an  Indo- 
Chinese  race,  have  behaved  capitally ;  and, 
no  doubt,  from  Nepaul  and  Thibet  might  be 
drawn  numbers  of  sturdy  recruits  whose 
Buddhist  faith  will  for  ever  render  them 
aliens  from  the  Hindoo  sympathies.  It  is  a 
pity  for  our  purposes  that  Brahminism  has 
been  able  thoroughly  to  conquer  Buddhism 
in  India.  The  former  faith  must  ever  be 
hostile,  actively  or  passively,  to  our  rule  and 
the  progress  of  European  ideas,  while  Budd- 
hism has  no  caste  to  guard,  and  is  emphati- 
cally a  religion  of  proselytes.  But  in  the 
morose  exclusiveness  of  the  Brahmin  religion 
is  one  of  our  greatest  safeguards.  If  a  Bom- 
bay or  Madras  regiment  were  to  mutiny 
to-morrow,  and  by  mutinying  give  over  India 
for  ever  to  native  rule,  the  successful  rebels 
could  never  be  accepted  among  the  haughty 
Rajpoot  and  Brahmin  aristocracy.  No  one 
can  become  a  Brahmin,  no  one  can  become  a 


pure  Hindoo.  Brahminism  wishes  for  no 
converts,  and  can  receive  none,  or  it  would 
cease  to  be  Brahminism.  Whatever  services 
may  be  rendered  to  this  strange  religion, 
there  is  no  place  for  a  neophyte  in  its  system. 
The  clean  may  be  defiled,  but  all  Ganges 
cannot  purify  the  unclean.  Therefore,  while 
four-fifths  of  Asia  may  be  reckoned  Buddhist, 
Hindooisin  remains  in  its  old  limits.  But  as 
for  the  Bheels,  Gonds,  Todahs,  and  hill-men 
in  general,  I  am  sure  that  in  six  months  a 
hundred  regiments  of  excellent  light  infantry 
might  be  raised  among  them, who  might  be 
relied  on,  for  why  should  they  prefer  their 
old  contemptuous  oppressors,  the  high  caste 
Hindoos,  to  a  race  equally  vile  in  Hindoo 
sight,  but  placed  in  the  van  of  civilisation, 
and  masters  of  all  the  arts  of  Europe.  Any 
longer  to  defer  to  the  insane  prejudices  of 
caste,  any  longer  to  hesitate  about  enfran- 
chising and  employing  the  hundred  tribes 
from  whom  an  inexhaustible  supply  of  re- 
cruits can  be  drawn,  would  be  worse  than 
foolish — it  would  be  a  crime  and  a  blunder. 
With  an  irregular  cavalry  mostly  raised 
north  of  the  Sutlege,  with  plenty  of  bat- 
talions, composed  not  only  of  Sikhs  and 
Ghoorkas  but  of  the  disinherited  races  of 
India,  we  may  afford  to  laugh  at  the  pros- 
pect of  another  Bengal  mutiny. 

INDIAN  ENGLISH. 

IT  is  curious,  and  must  be  sorely  per- 
plexing to  that  "  intelligent  foreigner  "  who 
goes  about  observing  everything,  and  is 
always  appealed  to,  in  and  out  of  Parliament, 
whenever  any  question  of  national  manners 
arises,  to  see,  or  rather  to  hear,  with  what 
avidity  John  Bull  displays  any  scraps  of  a 
foreign  tongue  that  he  may  have  picked  up 
in  his  travels.  Probably  the  consciousness 
of  our  national  deficiency  as  linguists  has 
something  to  do  with  this  display  of  know- 
ledge on  the  part  of  those  who  consider 
themselves  more  learned  than  their  neigh- 
bours. I  do  not  now  allude  to  our  well- 
known  partiality  for  Gallicisms.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  argue  that  the  French  papers 
never  tell  us  that  "  Hier  soir  S.  A.  J. 
le  Prince  Jerome  donnait  un  'jolly  shine,'  " 
or  iliat  "  Demain  aura  lieu  le  '  hop '  de 
Madame  de  Rondpoint,"  or  that  "  II  est  ques- 
tion d'un  'match'  entre  M.  de  Morny  et 
une  '  heiress '  Russe."  Nor  do  I  insist  that 
none  but  the  fastest  section  of  Young  France 
make  "des  bet  sur  le  stipleshase,"  or  go 
down  to  that  amusement  "  dans  rnon  dogue- 
car  avec  uii  jocki."  I  really  must  protest 
against  the  bi-monthly  irruption  of  barbaric 
words  from  dialects  spoken  by  those  hundred 
and  eighty  millions  who  eat  rice  and  worship 
idols  between  the  Himalayas  and  Cape 
Comorin.  The  evil,  we  all  know,  on  a  small 
scale,  is  not  a  new  one.  Everybody  has  met 
old  Indians  who  were  always  bringing  strange 
words  neck  and  crop  into  their  conversation ; 
but,  then,  it  did  not  so  much  matter,  because 


October 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


one  did  not  always  care  to  understand  what 
they  wore  talking  all  m',and  if  one  did,  there 
a  chance  oi'  asking  at  once.  But,  now, 
that  Indian  news  eclipses  every  other  sort  of 
iv,  it  is  a  decided  nuisance  to  be 
pulled  up  in  the  middle  of  the  most  interest- 
ing narrative  by  some  unintelligible  word. 
Am  I  to  sit  down  to  my  Times  with  a  Tamil 
lexicon  on  one  side  and  a  Teloogoo  on  the 
other  1  Am  I  to  waste  my  substance  on 
Sanscrit  and  Persian  vocabulai-ies  before  I 
can  sympathise  with  the  sufferings  of  my 
countrymen  ?  Or  must  I  go  on,  as  at  present, 
stumbling  blindly  from  one  guess  to  another  ? 
Why  do  the  mutineers  never  rob,  or  steal,  or 
thieve,  or  plunder  1  Why  do  they  always  loot  1 
The  practice,  at  least,  is  old,  and  why  should 
the  word  be  new  ?  Again,  why  do  they  cut 
off  the  daks,  and  why  is  thei'e  a  circumflex 
accent  over  the  a  ?  What  is  a  dak  1  Is  it 
alive  ?  Or  is  it  a  road,  or  a  river,  or  a  water 
course,  or  something  perfectly  dissimilar  to 
anything  in  England  ?  And  is  a  dacoit  any- 
thing connected  with  it  ?  I  pass  by  Sepoys 
and  Peons,  as  we  know  all  about  them,  and 
Griffs,  I  understand,  are  greenhorns,  as  yet 
uninitiated  into  the  mysteries  of  India.  But 
it  would  be  satisfactory  to  know  whether 
Baboos  are  of  the  same  genus,  and  whether 
a  comparison  is  meant  to  be  instituted  be- 
tween the  ape  tribe  and  the  newly  caught 
cadets.  Paddy  fields,  I  presume,  are  fields  of 
potatoes ;  but  the  name  must  be  annoying 
to  those  gallant  sons  of  Erin  who  happen  to 
hold  the  company's  commission  ;  and  at  the 
appearance  of  such  words  as  deen  and  paigah, 
conjecture  stands  aghast,  and  despair  throws 
down  the  newspaper. 

Now  and  then,  however,  there  is  an  advan- 
tage in  the  air  of  mystery  thrown  over  a 
communication  by  these  enigmatical  phrases, 
and  a  massacre  committed  with  swords  and 
bayonets  hardly  seems  so  bad  as  one  perpe- 
trated with  tulwars — a  doubly  diabolical 
weapon.  But  when  the  English  in  a  station 
escape  to  the  cutcherry,  it  would  surely  be 
desirable  to  know  what  sort  of  a  place  that 
may  be,  and  whether  our  apprehensions  ought 
to  be  increased  or  allayed  by  the  fact  of  the 
said  cutcherry  being  pukka. 

Here  comes  my  dear  friend  Jones,  whose 
daughter  has  been  in  India  scarcely  a  year, 
complaining  that  he  cannot  make  out  her 
letters.  He  knew,  of  course,  that  his  little 
grandson  would  have  an  ayah,  and  so  forth  ; 
but  he  is  informed  that  bftby  has  an  almah, 
and  wants  to  know  if  it  is  a  cradle,  or  a  bottle, 
or  a  perambulator,  or  a  hare-lip,  or  a  straw- 
berry mark.  And  will  not  the  child's  legs 
suffer,  if,  being  only  six  months  old,  it  is 
already  put  into  a  bandy  ?  I  own  I  am  in- 
clined to  advise  Jones  to  be  unpaternal  enough 
to  retaliate  in  a  similar  strain,  and  to  tell 
Mrs.  Hukkab  that  he  is  going  to  the  poly- 
pliloisbeio  thalasses,  or,  in  the  slang  which 
another  class  of  verbal  contrabandists  are 
trying  to  smuggle  into  our  newspapers,  to  say 


that  her  last  letter  was  rather  nethographic, 
and  ask  if  she  would  like  to  have  a  crupha- 
berna  sent  out,  or  whether  her  cook  uses  an 
anhydrohepseterion. 


HERRICK'S  JULIA. 


EVERYONE  who  chrmces  to  know  anything 
about  either  the  poet  or  the  painter  must 
be  tolerably  familial',  we  presume,  with 
Hngnrth's  famous  imaginary  portrait  of 
Churchill,  the  satirist.  It  represents  Bruin, 
a  rather  formidable  specimen  of  the  great 
grizzly  bear,  hugging  (as  if  he  loved  it)  an 
enormous  gnarled  bludgeon  with  a  brand  of 
infamy  labelled  on  every  knot— such  ,13,  Lie 
Twelve,  Lie  Fifteen,  Fallacy,  and  so  forth 
throughout.  About  his  throat  a  clerical 
band — torn,  awry,  and  crumpled.  At  his 
muzzle  a  foaming  measure  of  porter,  over 
which  he  is  slobbering  in  a  sort  of  ursine 
rapture  very  ludicrous  to  see.  Altogether 
a  monstrous  distortion,  and  yet — tradition 
saith — somehow  as  like  to  the  original  as 
two  peas,  in  spite  of  all  its  fantastic  exagger- 
ation and  extravagance. 

A  companion  picture,  sketched  after  a 
similar  fashion,  though  conceived  in  a  very 
different  mood,  might,  we  fancy,  be  readily 
enough  drawn  in  pen  and  ink — presenting  to 
view  a  sort  of  a  Minasi-portraiture  of  another 
demi-semi-reverend.  As  characteristic  a 
likeness  it  might  be  rendered  in  its  way  as 
even  that  terrible  one  entitled,  The  Bruiser, 
Charles  Churchill,  in  the  character  of  a  Rus- 
sian Hercules  regaling  himself  after  having 
killed  the  Monster  Caricatura.  Not  cer- 
tainly, as  in  that  instance,  savagely  etched  in 
with  the  deadly  needle  of  a  Hogarth's  scorn, 
or  bit  into  copper  with  the  aquafortis  of  his 
marvellous  genius  for  ridicule  ;  but  lightly 
touched  off,  on  the  contrary,  with  the  fluent 
carelessness  of  some  genial  and  unpretending 
goosequill.  The  portraiture  we  mean  of  a  no 
less  uureverend  reverend  than  jovial  Robert 
Herrick,  vicar  for  some  thirty-four  years  of 
the  pleasant  little  village  of  Dean  Prior, 
down  in  Devonshire.  Not  a  jot  of  a  bruiser, 
but  a  glorious  boon  companion.  No  more 
appalling  club  at  his  elbow  than  that  fur- 
nished, may  be,  by  a  shepherd's  crook  twined 
about  with  ivy,  and  turned  into  a  kind  of 
impromptu  thyrsus — a  rustic  mockery,  in 
fact,  of  the  old  classic  wand  of  your  true 
epicurean.  No  pewter  pot  of  XXX  frothed 
up  before  him ;  but  a  flagon  of  ripe  canary 
and  a  bowl  of  aromatic  hippocras.  Yet  with 
his  clerical  band,  too,  not  only  torn,  awry, 
and  crumpled,  but,  beyond  that,  fragrantly 
and  rosily  wine-stained !  Roystering  old 
Robin  Herrick  !  there  he  sits  eternally  at 
table,  with  his  doublet  unbuttoned,  his 
cheek  flushed,  and  his  hair  disordered  ; 
just  as  he  sat  two  centuries  ago  in  the 
merry  days — and  nights — of  King  Charles 
the  Second  ;  just  as  any  one  may  still  see  him 
drinking  and  singing  over  his  cups  to  this 


Charles  IMcVens.] 


HEEEICK'S  JULIA. 


[October  3,  1857.]       323 


moment — any  one  who  cares  to  turn  over 
tenderly,  the  leaves  of  that  garden  of  sweets, 
lib  song-book,  called  the  Hesperides.  Ap- 
propriately so  called,  indeed,  collectively — 
for,  among  them,  are  there  not  golden  apples 
of  beauty  enough  and  to  spare  1  Yet, 
guarding  every  access  to  this  green  plea- 
saunce,  lying  in  ambush  at  every  turn,  lurk 
the  foul  dragons  of  licentiousness !  Inso- 
much that  here,  we  should  almost  feel  dis- 
posed to  welcome  for  once,  with  a  sense 
of  satisfaction,  that  general  object  of  our 
abhorrence  a  revised  or  excerpted  edition 
— what  Southey  aptly  designated,  when 
speaking  of  some  of  these  very  ditties,  a  few 
"  beautiful  pearls  raked  from  the  dunghill" — 
a  project  Dr.  Nott  once  actually  attempted  ; 
though  very  inadequately.  It  would  ^  be 
tantamount  to  a  dash  of  soda-water  to  a  wine- 
bibber  far  gone  in  his  potations.  It  would 
be  literally  setting  delightful  old  Master 
Herrick  on  his  feet  again  in  the  world's 
estimation,  enabling  him  to  loiter  down  his 
page  without  reeling,  and  to  sing  without  a 
hiccup.  What  a  delicious  way  he  has — this 
charming  old  world  song  writer — whenever 
he  moves  with  a  seejnly  gait  and  talks  to  us 
coherently  ! 

Although  apparently  but  the  offspring  of  a 
well-to-do  goldsmith  and  banker  of  Cheapside, 
Eobert  Herrick  was  in  reality  directly 
descended  from  an  ancient  and  honourable 
family  in  Leicestershire.  His  genealogy  has 
been  minutely  traced  back  to  the  middle 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  by  the  learned  and 
laborious  annalist  of  that  county,  Mr.  John 
Nichol.  Nevertheless,  it  was  at  the  pater- 
nal home  over  the  goldsmith's  shop  in  Cheap- 
side,  that  Eobert  Herrick  was  born  on  the 
twentieth  of  August,  fifteen  hundred  anc 
ninety-one,  being  baptised  four  days  later  in 
the  parish  church  of  St.  Nicholas  Vedast 
Foster  Lane.  A  little  more  than  a  twelve- 
month afterwards,  namely  on  Lord  Mayor's 
Day  in  the  year  following,  Nicholas  Herrick 
liis  father,  expired  prematurely :  not  only 
prematurely,  but  under  rather  suspicious 
circumstances.  For  dying,  as  it  is  stated,  in 
consequence  of  injuries  received  from  tum- 
bling from  an  upper  window  of  his  house 
upon  the  great  public  thoroughfare,  it  has 
been  conjectured — from  the  significant  cir 
cumstance  of  his  having  made  his  will  bu 
just  forty-eight  hours  previously — that  th< 
event  was  not,  in  reality,  entirely  accidental 
However  caused,  his  demise,  at  any  rate 
occurred  thus  unexpectedly :  leaving  ab 
ruptly  widowed  with  some  half-a-dozen 
orphan  children  (one  of  them  even  then  un 
born)  the  young  wife  to  whom  he  had  been 
married  only  eleven  years  before  —  Julia 
daughter  of  William  Stone,  of  Seghenoe,  ii 
Bedfordshire.  The  goldsmith's  property,  esti 
mated  by  himself  at  nearly  three  thousanc 
pounds,  realised  as  many  as  five  thousand  ster 
ling.  This  was  the  sole  provision  left  to  his 
family  :  yet  it  proved  sufficient  to  establish  his 


eldest  son,  Thomas,  as  a  farmer,  and  his  second, 
Nicholas,    as  a  Levant  merchant ;   Eobert, 
,he  third  or  fourth  son,  being  left,  almost 
exclusively,  to  the  guardianship  of  his  uncle, 
Sir  William  Heyrick,  of  Beaumanor.     It  has 
)een  supposed — from  certain  allusions  to  its 
'  beloved "    sports    and    pastimes  scattered 
lere  and  there  through  the  Hesperides — that 
,he  poet's  education  in  childhood  was  con- 
ducted in  the  old  classic  seminary  at  West- 
minster.    It  is,  however,  undoubted  that  in 
sixteen  hundred  and  fifteen  he  was  entered  a 
Fellow  of  St.  J  ohn's  College,  Cambridge.     It 
,s  equally  certain  that,  some  three  years  later, 
:ie  was  removed  to  Trinity,  where  he  took  his 
degree  in  arts.    As  ultimately  in  his  choice 
of  a  profession,  so  previously  in  his  change  of 
colleges,    Eobert  Herrick  appears  to   have 
been  capricious.     Aspiring  first  of  all  to  dis- 
tinction in  the  law,  he  finally  entered  holy 
orders :    although    it    has   never    been   dis- 
covered when,  or  by  whose  hands,  this  right 
clerkly   bacchanalian   was    ordained.     Ulti- 
mately, through  the  patronage  of  the  Earl 
of  Exeter — though  not,  it  should  be  observed, 
until  he  was    thirty-eight  years    of    age — 
Eobert    Herrick    was     presented   by    King 
Charles  the  First  to  the  vicarage  of  Dean 
Prior,  in  Devonshire.     His  predecessor,  Dr. 
Burnaby  Potter,  had,  but  just  then,    been 
promoted  to  the  see  of  Carlisle.  _  The  nest 
into  which  our  poor  middle-aged  bird  of  song 
fluttered  for  repose  and  shelter  must  have 
seemed  to  him  provokingly  warm  from  the 
translation  from  it  of  that  phrenix  of  the 
episcopacy.     From  this  period  the  germs  of 
Herrick's  ambition  appear  only  to  have  blos- 
somed in  disappointment.  He  was  as  entirely 
out  of  his  element  as  Sidney  Smith  proved 
to  be  a  couple  of  hundred  years  afterwards, 
when  banished  to  the  lonely  curacy  on  Salis- 
bury plain. 

Herrick  chafed  under  his  exile  for  nineteen 
years,  uninterruptedly.  So  bitterly  and  so 
regretfully,  that  we  find  him  actually  exulting 
over  his  ejection  from  his  living,  in  sixteen 
hundred  and  forty-eight,  when  the  Puritans 
were  purging  the  church  of  even  a  suspicion 
of  royalism  ;  when  Zeal-of-the-land-busy,  and 
Praise-God-bare-bones  with  their  congenial 
associates  were,  as  one  might  say,  distribut- 
ing the  fat  pluralities  of  the  Crown  among  the 
lean  singularities  of  the  Commonwealth. 

Trundled  out  of  his  snug  home — the  com- 
forts of  which  during  the  actual  time  of 
their  enjoyment  he  appears  scarcely  to 
have  appreciated — our  jovial  ex-vicar,  bound 
London-ward,  muttered  to  himself,  we  are 
told,  almost  exultingly,  even  in  the  midst  of 
the  loving  regrets  of  his  parishioners,  as  he 
crossed  the  little  river  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
village : 

"  Dean-bourn,  farewell ;  I  never  look  to  see 
Dean,  or  thy  warty  incivility." 

Twelve  years  afterwards,  however,  he  again 
visited  the  old  home  and  the  old  haunts, 


324       [October  S.  1P57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


never  more  to  leave  them.  Returning  to  the 
familiar  vicarage  in  sixteen  hundred  and  six- 
teui,  when  lie  was  reinstated  in  it  by  King 
Charles  the  Second,  immediately  after  the  Res- 
toration. Puritan  John  Sym,  or  Sim,  who  had 
held  the  post  pretty  tightly  during  the  inter- 
val, being  thereupon,  of  course,  very  summarily 
translated  from  Sim  into Eram, from  a  nodoubt 
extremely  agreeable  present  tense,  into  one 
decidedly  and  most  unpleasantly  imperfect. 
There,  in  his  accustomed  bed-chamber  in  the 
homely,  vicarial  tenement  at  Dean  Prior, 
Robert  Herrick  breathed  his  last,  eventually 
in  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-four,  having 
attained  no  less  than  three  summers  beyond 
the  ripe  old  age  of  an  octogenarian !  A 
memorandum  in  the  old  parish-register  still 
informing  us  that  "Robert  Herrick,  Vicker," 
was  buried  in  that  year,  on  the  fifteenth  of 
October. 

It  was  during  the  period  of  his  first  sojourn 


adroit  conceivable,  he  deliberately,  and 
with  malice  aforethought,  transformed  what 
was  almost  prudish  into  what  was  abso- 
lutely prurient, — not  only  giving  the  reins 
to  his  own  skittish  fancy  upon  every  pos- 
sible opportunity,  but  even  applying  the 
most  superfluous  goad  to  the  unbridled 
imagination  of  a  licentious  age.  It  is  some- 
thing strangely  lamentable  to  think  of  this 
wanton  sullying  of  his  raiment,  both  as  a 
priest  and  as  a  poet,  trailing  it  wilfully,  as  he 
did,  in  the  mire  of  the  squalid  kennel  by  the 
way-side  !  Particularly  lamentable,  remem- 
bering how  accurately  it  has  been  said  of 
him  by  Southey,iu  the  Quarterly,  that  "  when- 
ever he  wrote  to  please  himself,  he  wrote 
from  the  heart  to  the  heai't ;  "  recollecting 
also  that  he  has  been  described  no  less  grace- 
fully than  truthfully  by  another  reviewer  in 
the  Retrospective,  as  being  "fresh  as  the 
spring,  blithe  as  the  summer,  and  ripe  as  the 


for  nearly  twenty  years  at  the  rural  vicarage  j  autumn  " — this  gay  celebrant  of  everything 
near  Totness,  that  Robert  Herrick  penned  j  in  nature  most  fair  and  beautiful !  Neverthe- 
those  fourteen  hundred  little  melodious  j  less,  when  we  have  scattered  aside,  as  so 
poems,  through  the  medium  of  which  his  j  much  dross,  all  that  is  foul  in  this  poet's 

wreath  of  the  Hesperides — precisely  as  one 


name  is  still  held  in  remembrance — his  Noble 
Numbers  and  his  Hesperides.  It  was  during 
his  twelve  years'  residence  in  London  under 
the  commonwealth  that  he  published  those 
poems  collectively  under  the  title  of  his 
Works,  both  Human  and  Divine,  in  hxmior- 
ous  comment  upon  which  title  Campbell  re- 
marks as  quaintly,  as  truly  and  sententiously, 
"  What  is  divine  has  much  of  poetry,  that 
which  is  human  has  the  frailty  of  flesh."  Im- 
mediately, indeed,  upon  the  Reverend  Robert 
Herrick's  arrival  in  the  capital,  after  the 
abrupt  dismissal  from  his  vicarage,  it  should 
be  observed  that  he  dropped  both  the  clerical 
gown  and  the  clerical  appellation,  resuming 
the  lay  habit  and  reverting  to  the  title  (such 
as  it  is)  of  Esquire.  He  dropped  some- 
thing more,  however,  than  his  vicar's  gown, 
when  he  went  to  live  first  of  all  upon  his 
Fifths  and  afterwards  (when  cruelly  deprived 
of  that  small  proportion  of  the  church 
revenues  usually  conceded  to  the  royalist 
clergy  upon  their  ejectment)  upon  his  Wits, 
somewhere  down  in  the  back  slums  of  St. 
Anne's  parish,  in  the  city  of  Westminster. 
Alas  !  be  it  said,  then  also  he  let  fall  with 
his  clerical  bands  and  frock  his  whole  sense 
of  decency.  Driven  by  necessity  to  eke  out 
a  subsistence,  as  he  best  could,  upon  the  pro- 
ceeds of  his  poetical  writings — to  the  end 
that  he  might  tickle  the  palates  of  those  he 
hoped  would  feed  upon  them — he  purposely 
interlarded  a  wholesome  banquet  of  sweets 
•with  the  hottest  and  the  most  highly  spiced 
of  all  imaginable  literary  condiments.  Design- 
ing to  provide  some  intellectual  meat  for 
appetites  the  most  notoriously  depraved,  he 
literally — to  employ  an  expressive  idiom 
—made  no  bones  at  all  about  it ;  or,  if  he 
did,  he  certainly  had  them  very  thoroughly 
devilled. 

By  turns  of  the  pen  the  most  villainously 


might  shake  out  of  some  luxuriant  orange- 
bough  may-bug,  and  larvae,  and  blight,  and 
caterpillar — what  a  gloss  and  verdure  re- 
main upon  the  leaves,  what  a  ruddy  gold 
upon  the  fruit,  what  a  silvery  bloom  and 
fragrance  in  the  flowers  ! 

Herrick  we  love  to  think  of  alternately 
under  two  very  different  phases  of  character. 
Now,  as  a  comfortable  rustic  parson,  domes- 
ticated in  his  secluded  vicarage  in  Devon- 
shire. Now,  again,  as  a  spurious  lay-gentle- 
man, a  gay  gallant  of  sixty — never  (we  may 
be  sure  of  that !)  at  his  wit's  end,  though 
very  often,  doubtless,  sadly  out  at  elbow — 
rollicking  with  other  Wild  Wits  of  the  town 
at.  the  merry  taverns  in  London,  or  in  the- 
boisterous,  suburban  bowling-greens  and 
quoit-grounds  of  Westminster.  A  glorious 
company  they  must  have  made,  those  famous 
friendsof  Herrick,  gathering  about  him  fitfully 
in  his  strange  city-life — associates,  including 
among  them,  twenty  years  earlier,  Rare  Ben 
Jonson,  poet,  orator,  and  bricklayer  ;  Cotton, 
translator  of  Montaigne  ;  Denhatu,  author  of 
Cooper's  Hill ;  Selden,  most  sociable  of 
antiquaries.  To  the  prince  amongst  them 
all,  has  not  our  writer  sung  in  the  clear, 
ringing  voice  of  love — love  for  the  mere 
remembrance  of  their  renowned  wit-combats 
and  drinking-bouts  at  the  Mermaid  and  else- 
where— 

"Ah,  Ben! 

Say  how  or  when 
Shall  we,  thy  guests, 
Meet  at  those  lyric  feasts, 
Made  at  the  Sun, 
The  Dog,  the  Triple  Tun ; 
Where  we  such  clusters  had, 
As  made  us  nobly  wild,  not  mad? 
And  yet  each  verse  of  thine 
Outdid  the  meat,  outdid  the  frolic  wine." 


Charles  Dickens.] 


HERRICK'S  JULIA. 


[October  3,  1857.]       325 


Most  of  all,  however,    do  \ve  delight   to 
picture   Herrick   to   ourselves,   as   he  must 
have  looked  habitually  when  he  lived,  and 
loved,  and  laughed,  for  nearly  forty  years 
down  at  the  old  Dean  Prior  Vicarage.    A 
reverend  parson  of  the  days  of  the  merry 
Monarch,  no  longer  disguised  in  the  puri- 
tanical   doublet  and  hose  of    coarse   cloth, 
turned  up   with  velvet  of  a  dull  drab  or 
mouse-colour — but  flaunting  it  on  gala-days 
among  his  parishioners,  with  a  sly  shoulder- 
knot,  or  a  new-fangled  shoe-buckle  !    Yonder 
he  sits  in  his  porch,  under  the  honey-suckle, 
not  the  least  bit  in  the  world  like  a  clergy- 
man.    Precisely  as  Marshall's  uncompromis- 
ing graver  has  depicted  him  in  the  original 
edition  of  the  Hesperides — with  a  wonderful 
Roman-nosed  Brutus-shaped  profile  ;  a  mous- 
tache like  an  eyebrow,  and  no  forehead  at 
all  to   speak  of!     His  eyes    still    lustrous 
(though  their  sight,  he  says,  begins  to  fail 
him)  under  the  shadow  of  his  close  curling 
hair;    hair  grizzled  like  that  of  the  royal 
ghost  in  Hamlet,  "  a  sable  silvered  ! "     His 
whole  form  and  features  "  fat  and  smooth," 
according  to  his  own  accurate  description  of 
them,  and  his  voice  fat  too,  and  weak — in 
spite  of  his  broad  bull-throat.    At  his  feet, 
curled  up  into  a  ball  asleep,  his  little  spaniel 
Tracie.   In  the  trim  privet  hedgerow  border- 
ing the  lawn  hard  by — preening  itself,  with 
an  occasional  flutter — the  tiny  tame  sparrow, 
Phil ;     whose    death    the    vicar    will    have 
to  sing   of    tenderly   hereafter.     From    the 
house-room  within,  however,  glides  out  into 
the  sunshine  with  his  afternoon  potation,  the 
one  faithful  and  favourite  domestic,  pretty 
Mistress  Prudence  Baldwin,  his  housekeeper, 
simply  Prue  in  the  Hesperides.     As  he  takes 
the  cup  from  her,  you  perceive  at  a  glance, 
that  it  is  not  without  reason  the  author  oi 
that  Book  of  the  Golden  Apple  Garden  has 
there  bewailed,  in  verse,  the  "  losse  "  of  one 
of  his  fingers  ;  those  remaining  to  him,  how- 
ever, on  that  plump  hand  of  his,  yet  enabling 
him   to  hold  a    tankard  as  firmly  and  as 
lovingly  as  the  grasp  of  a  Bardolph,  or  a 
Silenus.     But,  see  where  conies  grunting  to 
him  to  drink  the  dregs  out  of  that  tankard_ 
the  pet  pig  to  whom  the  merry  parson  has 
taught  that  same  fantastic  accomplishment 
It  is  a  quaint  scene  enough  altogether,  anc 
one  that  betrays  at  once  in  its  every  odd  par- 
ticular the  queer  old  bachelor,  who,  but  for 
the  simplicity  of  his  habits,  and  the  tendency 
of  his  creed,  would  most  assuredly  have  dege- 
nerated into  the  mere  sensual  voluptuary 
As  it  is,  quoth  he  himself,  right  honestly, 

"  I  could  never  walk  alone, 

Put  a  shirt  of  sackcloth  on,"  &c. 
Trust  him  for  that !     Rather  than  sackcloth 
a  robe  of  eider-down,  with  the  pile  inwards 
Candidly,  too,  he  sings  of  himself  like  a  new 
Epicurus : 

u  I  fear  no  earthly  powers ; 
But  care  for  crowns  of  flowers  5 


And  love  to  have  my  beard 
With  wine  and  oil  besmeared." 

Protesting  frankly,  in  his  Hymn  to  Venus, 
lespite  those  draggled  and  canary-stained 
lands  of  cambric  on  his  bosom  : 

"  Goddess,  I  do  love  a  girl 
Ruby-lipped,  and  toothed  with  pearl!" 

And  she  ?  Why,  mark  !  where  she  passes 
>y  upon  the  instant,  tripping  daintily  along 
he  brown  and  grassy  pathway  of  the  village 

road.  You  catch  delightful  glimpses  of  her 
hrough  the  lattice-work  paling  of  the 
•icar's  garden,  and  in  among  the  green  light 

_>f  the  fragrant  and  dancing  branches.  It  is 
Tulia — his  muse,  his  inspiration.  What, 
asks  himself,  shall  he  sing  of  her  briefly  1 

And  thus  answers : 

"  Black  and  rolling  is  her  eye, 
Double-chinned,  and  forehead  high, 
Lips  she  has  all  ruby  red, 
Cheeks  like  cream  enclaretted." 

Her  blush  he  likens  to  a  rose  when 
•  blowing."  Her  kiss,  he  says,  is  a  miraculous 
anodyne.  The  very  warmth  of  her  com- 
plexion he  compares  to  oil  of  lilies  and  to 
spikenard.  Her  voice — has  he  not  sung 
of  it? 

"  So  smooth,  so  sweet,  so  silvery  is  thy  voice, 
As,  could  they  hear,  the  damned  would  make  no 

noise, 

But  listen  to  thee  walking  in  thy  chamber 
Melting  melodious  words  to  lutes  of  amber." 

Her  mere  shadow,  saith  he,  breathes  of 
pomander.  If  he  bids  her  make  a  bridecake 
he  tells  her  she  has  but  to  knead  the  dough, 
and  'twill  be  turned  to  almond-paste  ;  to  kiss 
it,  and  'twill  be  spiced.  He  sees  the  babies 
in  her  eyes  as  vividly  as  Camoens  saw  them 
in  the  eyes  of  his  Katarina,  as  so  many 
another  poet  has  done  (before  and  since)  in 
those  of  his  ladyelove.  He  describes,  as  be- 
witchingly  as  did  Sir  John  Suckling,  in  the 
famous  stanzas, — her  little  feet  playing  at 
bo-peep  under  the  hem  of  her  petticoat. 
That  silken  petticoat  itself  he  sings  ;  and 
sings,  too,  the  very  manner  of  its  wearer's 
walking  movement.  Describing  thus  the 
perfect  walking  of  a  perfect  lady,  where, 
speaking  of  what  he  calls  "  that  liquefaction, 
of  her  clothes,"  he  exclaims : 

"  Next  when  I  cast  my  eyes,  and  see 
That  brave  vibration  each  way  free, 
O  how  that  glittering  taketh  me  !" 

Everything  about  her,  indeed,  furnished 
him  with  themes  for  poetical  eulogium,  as 
almost  everything  around  himself  appeared 
to  abound  more  or  less  with  sources  to  him 
of  rapturous  delight  and  admiration.  Sil- 
vered though  his  own  locks  were  by  the 
winters  of  considerably  more  than  half  a 
century,  he  could,  nevertheless,  in  one  of  the 
most  fairy-like  of  his  little,  pastoral  ditties, 
dandle  a  cowslip-ball  as  gleefully  as  any 


326       [October  3, 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


f  Conducted  by 


golden-pate. 1  urchin  of  the  village-green. 
His  verses  throughout  are  fragrant  with  the 
daffodil  and  the  jessamine,  with  the  sweet- 
briar,  and  the  eglantine,  and  the  almond-bud, 
and  the  clove-blossom  !  Verses  in  which  lie 
sings  to  us  at  delicious  intervals  how  roses 
first  came  red,  and  violets  blue,  and  lilies 
white,  and  primroses  green,  and  marygolds 
yellow — another  Ovid  eai'olling  the  wonders 
of  the  Floral  Metamorphoses.  He  pours  the 
blossoms  out  upon  us  in  a  flowery  cascade,  or 
sprinkles  them  before  him  in  delicate  hand- 
fulls,  while  his  fancies  dance  on  gaily  down 
his  page  in  motley  procession.  But,  if  he 
crops  a  pansy,  or  a  tulip  from  the  parterre,  if 
he  culls  a  trail  of  woodbine  from  the  cop- 

Eice,  or  plucks  a  ladysmock  from  the  verdant 
ip  of  the  meadow — it  is  never  idly  done :  it 
is  always  either  as  a  love  offering,  or  as  a 
wooing  compliment.  Emblematic  tokens  of 
affection  they  always  are — the  very  largess 
of  his  love — flung  with  an  overflowing  bounty 
to  the  right  hand  and  to  the  left,  not  to  One 
but  to  a  Hundred.  For  he  perpetually  moves 
in  an  imaginary  hareem,  this  blithe  old  poet 
bachelor!  Surrounded  by  nymphs  like 
Electra,  and  Perilla,  and  Dianeme  —  even 
when  there  is  only  little  Phil  twittering  on 
the  gravel,  or  Tracie  yelping  over  the  pick  of 
his  carnations  in  chase  of  a  butterfly.  Several, 
howbeit,  among  these  fair  demoiselles  were 
really  no  mere  empty  imaginings,  but 
blooming  and  blushing  verities.  Such,  for 
example,  were  those  he  so  often  celebrated 
under  the  euphonious  names  of  Althsea  and 
Corinna.  Above  all — she  who  first  snared 
him,  he  says,  by  "  a  ringlet  of  her  hair  " — she 
of  whom,  in  truth,  we  possess  no  other  re- 
cords than  those  incidentally  scattered 
through  the  Hesperides  —  the  queenliest 
among  the  radiant  concourse  of  his  real  and 
ideal  mistresses  : 

"  Stately  Julia,  prime  of  all ! " 

according  to  his  own  notable  apostrophe.  An 
exquisite  name — and  nothing  more — in  the 
History  of  Poetic  Literature,  she  at  least 
among  all  these  nymphs  of  Herrick,  we  may 
rest  assured,  is  no  mere  "  airy  nothing  "  to 
whom  he  has  endearingly  awarded,  in 
these  same  poems  of  his,  both  that  perennial 
name  and  that  everlasting  local  habitation. 
A  true  woman  she  is  throughout — with  na- 
tural pulses  throbbing  warmly  under  all  that 
frostwork  of  delectable  artifice  :  in  spite  of 
plashed  sleeves  and  jewelled  stomacher,  of  all 
the  cunning  witcheries  she  used  so  deftly — 
the  mysteries  of  gorget  and  wimple,  of  lawn 
and  musks, of  jessaiuy-butterandrose-powder. 
It  was  in  celebration  of  those  charms  of 
Julia  (whether  artful  or  natural  it  matters 
not),  that  Robert  Herrick  sang  the  sweetest 
of  his  dulcet  love-lays,  those  musical  songs 
of  the  Hesperides  which  have  not  inaptly 
been  likened  to  the  Carmina  of  Catullus, 
itiful,  no  doubt,  are  many  of  these 
elfin  verses  in  no  way  relating  to  her,  such, 


for  example,  as  the  Mad  Maid's  Song,  or  Co- 
rinna going  a-Maying.  But  "best  beautiful" 
among  them  after  all  are  those  assuredly  re- 
ferring to  Julia  herself  directly  or  indirectly. 
Wonderfully  popular  many  of  them  proved 
during  Herrick's  lifetime,  when  set  to  music 
by  the  master  composers  of  his  age,  by  Henry 
Lawes  and  by  Laniere,  by  Wilson  and  by 
Eamsay — the  Arnes  and  Purcells  of  that 
generation.  A  few,  indeed,  still  preserve  to 
this  present  moment  a  reflex  of  that  far-off 
halo  of  popularity.  It  will  doubtless  be  yet 
remembered  by  many  a  reader  how  charm- 
ingly Madame  Vestris  used  to  warble 
"Cherry  Ripe,"  it  seems  but  yesterday  ! 
And  where  lovelier  words  than  those  written 
two  hundred  years  ago  by  Robert  Herrick, 
"  Gather  ye  rosebuds  while  ye  may,"  as  the 
theme  of  a  still  favourite  madrigal  1  Better, 
doubtless,  the  Poems  than  the  Discourses  of 
this  mad  wag  of  an  ecclesiastic.  In  corro- 
boration  of  which  very  reasonable  conjecture, 
is  there  not  that  ludicrous  tradition  picked 
up  in  eighteen  hundred  and  ten  by  Dr. 
Southey  down  at  Dean  Prior  from  the 
recollections  of  old  Dorothy  King,  the 
village  crone  whose  age  was  but  a  few 
months  short  of  an  entire  century  ?  A 
marvellous  anecdote  relating  how  once  upon 
a  time,  Vicar  Herrick — with  a  curse  for 
their  inattention — flung  his  sermon  at  the 
congregation  !  An  incident,  no  doubt,  hor- 
ribly indecorous,  but  at  the  same  time  laugh- 
ably characteristic.  A  sudden  flashing  up  in 
the  rural  pulpit,  of  the  frolic,  and  the  passion, 
and  the  horse-play  of  the  roysterer  in  the 
taverns  of  Eastcheap.  One  would  like  to 
have  caught  a  glimpse  of  lovely  Mistress  Julia 
in  her  pew,  and  to  have  scanned  the  startled 
faces  of  the  rustic  parishioners. 


OUR  FAMILY  PICTURE. 

IN   SIX   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER   THE  THIRD. 

IN  pursuance  of  his  crotchet  that  girls 
ought  to  receive  precisely  the  same  education 
as  boys,  my  father  inducted  Philip,  Neville, 
and  Ruth  into  the  mysteries  of  the  Latin 
grammar  at  the  same  time,  and  taught  them 
together,  and  as  if  they  were  one  person,  till 
they  were  about  fourteen  years  old  ;  at  which 
time,  owing  to  her  retentive  memory,  I  doubt 
whether  Ruth  were  not  the  best  scholar  of 
the  three,  but  am  certain  that  there  was  no 
one  in  the  school,  of  the  same  age  as  herself, 
who  could  equal  her  in  classical  attainments. 
My  father  was  intensely  proud  of  his  achieve- 
ment, and  pointed  it  out  as  a  triumphant  ex- 
ample of  what  might  be  accomplished  in  the 
way  of  female  education.  It  must  have  been 
about  this  period  that  he  published  his 
pamphlet  advocating  the  enactment  of  a  law 
to  permit  young  ladies  to  graduate  at  the 
universities,  take  degrees,  and  use  honorary 
initials  after  their  names. 

Having  succeeded  so  well  with  his  elder 
daughter,  he  determined  that  the  younger 


Charles  Dickens.] 


[October  3, 1337.]       327 


should  follow  in  the  same  path  ;  but  his  suc- 
cess in  this  instance  was  as  limited,  as  in  the 
former  it  had  been  complete.  Helen  could 
not  learn  the  Latin  grammar.  It  was  not  for 
want  of  capacity,  for  she  was  quick  enough 
iu  other  things  ;  nor  for  want  of  industry,  for 
she  studied  it,  and  pored  over  it  morning, 
noon,  and  night.  Each  day's  task  was  cor- 
rectly repeated  ;  but  the  very  fact  of  knowing 
that  one  so  well,  confused  and  nullified  the 
previous  day's  lesson,  and  left  it  floating  in 
her  memory,  a  wild  chaos  of  incomplete  sen- 
tences and  disconnected  words.  My  father 
at  length  gave  up  the  attempt  in  despair  ;  and, 
with  a  groan  of  discontent,  ordered  that 
Helen  should  be  sent  to  Miss  Thimbleton's 
seminary  ;  though  he  must  say  he  was  afraid 
she  would  prove  to  be  an  incorrigible  dunce. 
Miss  Thimbleton,  however,  made  no  com- 
plaint, but  turned  my  sister  out  at  the  end  of 
five  years,  tolerably  well  versed  in  all  the 
learning  and  accomplishments  which  are 
usually  taught  in  seminaries  for  young  ladies. 
My  father  soon  got  over  his  disappointment, 
and  loved  Helen  not  a  whit  the  less  by  reason 
of  it.  I  have  always  been  inclined  to  think 
she  was  my  father's  favourite  child,  as  Neville 
was  my  mother's  favourite — if,  where  all 
were  loved  so  well,  any  could  claim  a  degree 
more  than  another  ;  indeed,  the  gradation  in 
excess  was  so  fine  that  I  am  sure  both  my 
father  and  mother  were  unaware  of  it.  It 
was  only  natural  that  Helen  should  be  my 
father's  favourite.  She  was  a  girl,  and  the 
youngest  ;  besides  being  the  fairest  of  the 
flock.  He  called  her  his  wild  rose,  his  sum- 
mer child,  the  prop  of  his  old  age  ;  and  it 
was  ever  her  dearest  study  to  please  him. 
Whenever  my  father  was  ill,  or  in  trouble, 
Helen  was  the  one  to  comfort  him  most  effec- 
tually. The  correspondence  between  their 
natures  was  so  fine  and  subtle,  that  she  could 
read  him,  and  understand  him,  better  than 
my  mother.  Her  insight  was  clearer,  her 
power  of  observation  finer,  his  half-ex- 
pressed thoughts  found  an  echo  in  her  heart ; 
and  she  could  walk  with  charmed  feet 
on  that  ground  where  no  one  else  might 
tread,  sacred  to  the  best  and  holiest  feelings 
of  his  nature.  She  was  a  famous  little  house- 
keeper, too,  and  my  mother's  assistant  in  all 
domestic  matters  ;  and  I  have  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  the  great  secret  connected  with  the 
manufacture  of  preserves  was  communicated 
to  her  at  the  early  age  of  sixteen — a  fact  un- 
exampled in  our  domestic  history. 

It  was  precisely  in  this  latter  qualification 
of  housekeeper  that  Ruth  was  most  deficient. 
The  robust  education  imparted  to  her  by  my 
father,  in  addition,  perhaps,  to  her  natural 
bias  for  study,  disinclined  her  from  meddling 
in  household  matters.  My  mother  fretted 
and  fumed  considerably  at  finding  her  elder 
daughter  of  so  little  use  to  her ;  and  was 
hardly  consoled  by  perceiving  in  Helen  all 
those  domestic  qualifications  which  she  missed 
in  Ruth.  As  the  bent  of  her  mind  was  so 


decidedly  evinced,  my  father  determined  to 
send  Ruth  from  home  to  finish  her  education, 
and  acquire  those  accomplishments  which  he 
was  unable  to  teach  her,  with  a  view  to  her 
becoming  eventually  either  a  governess,  or  a 
teacher  in  some  large  school.  So  she  left 
home  by  coach,  one  bitter  January  morning. 
This  was  the  first  break  in  our  little  house- 
hold since  Katie's  death,  many  years  before, 
and  it  made  us  all  very  sad  for  some  time. 
My  mother  was  full  of  presentiments  and 
forebodings  for  several  weeks  ;  and  beheld, 
in  every  trivial  circumstance  that  disturbed 
her  equanimity,  an  omen  of  evil  to  come.  My 
father  regretted  that  he  could  not  teach  Ruth 
music  and  singing,  and  thus  keep  her  at 
home  a  while  longer  ;  and  he  said  he  felt,  at 
times,  half  inclined  to  send  for  her  back.  But 
Ruth's  letters,  full  of  energy  and  hope,  and 
liking  for  her  new  life  without  forgetting  the 
old,  soon  dissipated  these  affectionate  fears. 

The  year  following  Ruth's  departure  saw 
that  of  Philip.  He  had  decided  to  become  a 
doctor,  and  was  to  go  to  London  for  the  pur- 
pose of  studying.  I  fancy  that  his  frequent 
visits  to  Doctor  Graile's  had  some  influence 
on  his  decision.  The  little  man  used  to  talk 
to  him  on  medical  subjects,  and  show  him  his 
specimens,  imbuing  him  with  the  idea  that 
the  art  of  healing  was  one  of  the  noblest  in 
the  world. 

Neville  still  remained  at  home,  and  what 
profession  he  should  adopt  was  becoming  a 
serious  question  with  my  father.  The  lad  at 
length  settled  it  himself,  by  deciding  that  he 
would  go  to  sea.  My  father  at  first  inter- 
posed a  peremptory  refusal ;  and  my  mother 
assisted  on  the  same  side,  by  many  tearful 
requests  to  Neville  to  chose  another  profes- 
sion, as  she  had  a  presentiment  that  he  would 
be  drowned,  and  that  his  first  voyage  would 
also  be  his  last.  But  Neville  had  a  will  of 
his  own,  impervioits  alike  to  threats  and 
tears,  when  any  great  occasion  was  to  be 
served  ;  and  to  sea  he  averred  that  he  would 
go,  in  spite  of  everybody.  It  was,  perhaps, 
the  fittest  place  for  him,  and  his  choice  was 
not  an  unwise  one  ;  but  neither  my  father 
nor  mother  could  bear  the  idea  of  such  a 
separation.  That  strange  malady  to  which 
he  had  been  a  victim  in  his  childhood  seemed 
to  have  left  its  traces  in  his  disposition,  which 
was  marked  by  an  occasional  wildness,  both 
of  speech  and  action,  breaking  out  at  times 
in  some  strange  freak  that  alarmed  every- 
one about  him.  Even  my  father  had  very 
little  command  over  him  when  he  was  iu 
these  wild  moods.  He  cared  but  little  for 
books  or  study,  and  would  steal  away,  when- 
ever he  could,  for  a  wild  scamper  across  the 
country,  with  some  young  scapegrace  like 
himself,  rifling  birds'-nests,  robbing  orchards, 
and  snaring  rabbits,  as  opportunity  served. 
Often,  in  summer,  lie  would  remain  out  all 
night  on  the  hills,  and  return  in  the  morning 
pale,  languid,  and  weary,  as  though  he  were 
overcome  with  fatigue.  Still  his  heart  was 


328       [October  3,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


in  the  right  place,  as  we  country  people  say, 
and  no  one  could  be  near  him  long  without 
learning  to  love  him. 

A  quiet  war  went  on  for  some  time  between 
my  father  and  him.  Neither  of  them  would 
yield  ;  but  Neville  at  length  settled  the  ques- 
tion by  running  away,  and  entering  himself 
as  cabin  boy  on  board  a  ship  sailing  from 
Liverpool  for  Antigua.  We  received  a  letter 
from  him,  dated  the  day  the  vessel  was  to 
sail,  informing  us  of  what  he  had  done.  I 
think  my  father  now  regretted  that  he  had 
not  yielded  in  time,  and  obtained  for  Neville 
a  more  creditable  position  to  start  from. 

There  were  only  Helen  and  I  now  left  at 
home  ;  she  assisting  my  mother  in  domestic 
matters,  and  I,  as  I  grew  up,  gradually  as- 
suming the  position  of  assistant  to  my  father 
in  the  school. 

And  so  some  years  glided  quietly  away. 
Philip  and  Ruth  came  over  every  Christmas 
and  midsummer,  and  Neville  also,  for  a  few 
weeks,  at  the  conclusion  of  each  voyage.  The 
latter  expressed  himself  perfectly  satisfied 
with  the  career  he  had  chosen  ;  and  said  that 
in  a  few  years  he  should  be  made  captain, 
and  that  his  ambition  would  then  be  sa- 
tisfied. 

The  friendship  between  Doctor  Graile's 
household  and  ours  seemed  only  to  ripen 
with  time.  It  is  true  that  Mrs.  Graile  was 
too  cold  and  reserved  to  win  anything 
warmer  than  distant  regard  from  the  most 
impulsive  of  individuals  ;  but  what  was  defi- 
cient in  her  was  amply  atoned  for  by  the 
doctor.  My  father  and  he  seemed  necessary 
to  each  other's  happiness.  In  winter  they 
played  at  chess  together ;  in  summer  they 
opposed  each  other  on  the  bowling-green ; 
and  few  evenings  in  the  year  were  passed  by 
them  apart.  And  there  was  fair  Olive,  who 
was  the  golden  link  between  the  two  houses, 
—a  wayward  little  beauty,  with  long,  flaxen 
ringlets,  and  the  merriest  laugh  in  the  world. 
Very  accomplished,  too,  she  was  generally 
considered  to  be  ;  for  she  had  passed  some 
years  at  an  eminent  boarding-school.  And 
then  her  taste  in  dress  was  so  good !  A 
flower,  a  ribbon,  a  bit  of  lace  that  no  one  else 
would  care  about,  became,  in  her  plastic 
fingers,  a  thing  of  beauty,  and  added  another 
charm  where  none  seemed  wanting  before. 
I  believe  everybody  loved  her  and  admired 
her,  she  was  so  fresh  and  fair — except,  per- 
haps, ancient  Miss  Grooby,  who  lived  near 
the  toll-bar,  and  who  was  heard  to  declare, 
on  one  occasion,  that  Miss  Olive's  beauty  was 
all  outside,  and  that  she  was  nothing  more 
than  a  little  cold-hearted,  empty-headed  flirt. 

"  A  spiteful  old  thing  !  "  said  Olive,  when 
they  told  her.  "  Everybody  knows  that  she 
never  had  any  beauty,  either  of  heart  or 
face." 

CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH. 

IT  was  a  proud  day  for  all  of  us  when 
Philip  obtained  his  diploma.  My  father  left 


his  breakfast  half-finished,  the  morning  he 
received  the  news  ;  and  hurried  off  to  Doctor 
Graile's  to  communicate  the  joyful  intelli- 
gence, carrying  the  open  letter  in  his  hand. 
A  friend  of  my  father,  an  eminent  London 
surgeon,  offered  to  take  Philip  as  an  assis- 
tant, till  an  eligible  opening  could  be  found 
for  him  to  commence  practice  on  his  own 
account ;  so  my  cousin  came  down  to  spend  a 
few  weeks  with  us,  before  going  to  his  new 
home.  It  was  some  time  since  we  had  seen 
him  last,  and  he  seemed  to  have  grown  sud- 
denly into  a  man.  "We  were  all  proud  of  himr 
my  mother  especially  so  ;  and  on  Sunday 
when  we  went  to  church,  she  quitted  my 
father's  side,  and  walked  down  the  aisle  lean- 
ing on  Philip's  arm,  her  dear  face  beaming 
with  love  and  pride  ;  but  when  the  minister 
prayed  for  those  who  travel  by  land  and 
by  water,  there  came  a  moisture  into  her 
eyes,  and  we  knew  that  she  was  thinking  of 
Neville. 

It  was  during  this  visit  of  Philip  that  I 
first  suspected  that  the  intimacy  between 
him  and  Olive  Graile  was  becoming  one  of 
a  tenderer  nature  than  mere  friendship  would 
warrant.  It  was  not  anything  which  Philip 
said  that  led  me  to  think  so,  for  he  was  not 
a  person  to  talk  about  such  things,  even  to 
those  most  intimate  with  him  ;  but  being 
about  this  time  possessed  by  a  mania  for 
spinning  verses,  and  seeking  my  inspiration 
in  solitude,  I,  several  times  during  my  even- 
ing rambles,  met  Philip  and  Olive  walking 
arm  in  arm  through  the  meadows  by  the 
river  side.  Besides  which,  the  rogue  spent 
half  his  time  at  Doctor  Graile's,  under  pre- 
tence of  keeping  up  his  knowledge,  and 
obtaining  information  which  would  be 
useful  to  him  in  his  profession.  I  dare  say 
my  father  took  it  all  for  granted,  and  never 
suspected  anything  beyond  what  was  implied 
by  Philip's  words  ;  but  whether  or  no  my 
mother  and  Helen  knew  of  his  growing  at- 
tachment, I  cannot  say.  If  they  were  aware 
of  it,  they  never  mentioned  it ;  and  as 
Philip  did  not  speak  of  it,  I  kept  my  counsel, 
and  was  silent  like  the  rest.  Once  or  twice 
I  was  on  the  point  of  questioning  Philip,  for 
I  had  all  a  boy's  curiosity  on  the  subject ; 
but  then  you  see  he  was  not  a  person  to  be 
questioned  with  impunity.  He  had  a  quiet, 
haughty  way  of  putting  down  the  slightest 
impertinence — a  word  and  a  look  merely,  but 
far  more  effective  than  the  noisiest  demon- 
strations of  others.  Then  again,  he  was  a  man, 
while  I  was  still  a  mere  boy,  imbued  with  such 
a  boyish  admiration  of  him,  that  I  determined, 
when  I  should  become  a  man,  to  imitate  my 
cousin  as  much  as  possible :  and,  indeed,  I  made 
a  beginning  at  once  by  training  my  hair,  with 
much  painful  labour,  to  follow  the  fashion  of 
his,  and  by  tying  my  cravat  in  the  same  way 
that  his  was  tied.  Whenever  I  thought 
about  Philip's  love  affairs,  which,  after  his 
departure,  was  not  often,  for  I  was  busy 
about  that  time  writing  an  epic  poem  in 


Charles  Dickens.] 


OUE  FAMILY  PICTURE. 


[October  3, 185?.]       329 


twenty  cantos,  I  remember  it  was  with  a 
vague  feeling  that  Olive  was  not  the  sort  of 
person  calculated,  as  a  wife,  to  make  him 
happy.  She  was  so  light  and  volatile,  so 
changeful  and  full  of  whims,  so  different 
from  Philip  in  disposition  and  temper,  that 
for  all  her  beauty  and  pretty,  saucy  ways,  it 
was  a  mystery  to  me  how  an  attachment  could 
ever  have  sprung  up  between  them.  But, 
then,  Philip  was  not  the  first  man  of  sense 
that  has  been  entangled  by  a  pretty  face  with 
nothing  behind  it. 

Philip  came  over  frequently  for  a  day  or 
two  at  a  time  ;  and  though  half  of  each  visit 
was  spent  at  Doctor  Graile's,  there  was  no- 
thing either  in  his  words  or  looks  which 
betrayed  that  anything  more  than  profes- 
sional tastes  induced  him  to  go  there  so 
frequently. 

We  had  not  seen  Neville  for  nearly  two 
years  ;  but  he  came  at  last — a  tall,  sunburnt 
sailor,  full  of  fire  and  energy — and  there  was 
much  joy  at  home  when  he  arrived.  My 
father  gave  the  scholars  a  half-holiday,  in 
honour  of  the  event ;  and  my  mother  at 
once  issued  invitations  to  our  friends  for  a 
party  to  celebrate  my  brother's  return.  It 
was  to  be  merely  a  quiet  country  tea-party, 
with  a  dance  afterwards  for  us  young  folk, 
and  sixpenny  whist  for  our  elders.  Philip 
wrote  to  say  that  he  could  not  come,  having 
a  very  critical  case  in  hand,  which  required 
his  undivided  attention.  Olive  came,  as  a 
matter  of  course  ;  and  very  pretty  she  looked. 
Neville  started  with  surprise  when  she  en- 
tered the  room  ;  she  had  grown  so  tall,  and 
was  so  much  improved  since  he  had  seen  her 
last,  that  he  scarcely  knew  her.  He  seemed 
rather  bashful  and  timid  at  first,  but  she 
soon  put  him  at  his  ease.  He  hardly  ever 
took  his  flashing  black  eyes  off  her  during 
the  evening  ;  and  after  all  the  company  were 
gone,  I  saw  him  sitting  in  a  corner  smooth- 
ing out  a  little  white  kid  glove  between  his 
great  palms  ;  neither  do  1  think  it  difficult 
to  guess  to  whom  it  had  belonged.  He  was 
off  next  morning,  immediately  after  break- 
fast, to  Doctor  Graile's,  to  inquire  how  the 
family  were ;  and  I  believe  he  never  after- 
wards during  his  visit  passed  a  day  without 
going  in  the  same  direction.  As,  during  the 
previous  summer,  I  had  met  Philip  and 
Olive  walking  together  in  the  meadows,  so  it 
was  now  Neville  and  Olive  whom  I  met  arm 
in  arm,  taking  the  same  walks.  Was  the 
little  beauty  merely  flirting  with  Neville  ;  or 
had  she  given  up  Phillip  for  the  sake  of  the 
handsome  sailor  ;  or  was  there  on  her  part 
no  attachment  for  either  of  them  ?  I  knew 
not  what  to  think  :  and  as  it  was  certainly  no 
business  of  mine,  I  considered  it  best  to  keep 
silent  on  the  matter.  Neville  was  evidently 
over  head  and  ears  in  love ;  his  warm  im- 
pulsive nature  could  not  conceal  the  fact ;  he 
betrayed  it  daily  in  his  words  and  actions. 
As  a  proof  of  his  infatuation,  I  may  mention 


that  he  professed  to  like  Mrs.  Graile  ex- 
tremely ;  and  he  did,  indeed,  contrive  to  thaw 
that  icy  lady,  and  to  win  his  way  into  her 
chill  favour  in  an  unexampled  manner. 

One  morning,  some  weeks  before  he  ex- 
pected it,  came  a  peremptory  summons  to 
join  his  ship  without  delay.  It  would  not 
do  to  disobey  orders  ;  so  he  prepared,  rue- 
fully enough,  for  immediate  departure.  On 
one  point  I  am  certain — that  Olive  and  he  had 
a  long  interview  the  evening  before  he  left 
us  ;  and  when  he  joined  me  in  the  garden 
after  parting  from  her,  there  was  such  a 
happy  loving  look  on  his  face,  as  I  had  never 
seen  there  before.  He  asked  me,  after  we 
got  up-stairs,  to  assist  him  in  cording  his 
large  trunk ;  and  as  he  stooped  to  fasten 
the  knob,  a  piece  of  paper  fell  from  his 
pocket,  which  opening  when  it  reached  the 
ground,  displayed  a  lock  of  hair  vastly  like 
Olive's  in  colour,  tied  with  blue  ribbon  in  a 
true-lover's-knot.  He  coloured  to  the  fore- 
head, stammered  out  some  words  about  a 
West  Indian  damsel  (as  if  the  ladies  of  that 
part  of  the  world  had  flaxen  locks),  and 
replaced  it  carefully  in  his  pocket. 

Neville  was  never  fond  of  letter-writing ; 
and  if,  during  his  voyages,  we  received  a  few 
lines  from  him  once  in  six  months,  we  thought 
ourselves  fortunate.  After  his  departure 
this  time,  whenever  he  wrote  he  sent  "  affec- 
tionate regards  to  Doctor  and  Mrs.  Graile," 
but  never  said  a  word  about  Olive  ;  an 
omission  on  his  part  which  gave  me  the 
idea  that  he  corresponded  with  her,  direct. 

Some  two  or  three  years  elapsed  after 
Neville's  departure  without  the  occurrence 
of  any  event  in  our  quiet  family  circle  neces- 
sary to  linger  over  here.  Philip  came  at 
intervals  to  see  us,  and  Ruth  always  spent 
her  vacations  at  home.  My  sister  Helen  was 
engaged  to  be  married  to  Peter  Sykes,  the 
shoemaker's  son,  whom  I  mentioned  before 
as  having  been  smuggled  by  my  father  into 
the  school,  and  who  had  just  taken  his  degree, 
with  high  honours,  at  the  university.  I 
also  was  enacting  my  own  little  romance 
about  this  time — I  and  pretty  Rose  Allan, 
whom  I  hoped  to  marry  after  a  while,  but 
never  did.  As  for  Ruth,  so  plain  of  person, 
so  neat  of  dress,  so  prim,  so  quiet,  so  metho- 
dical, she  was  always  set  down,  laughingly, 
in  our  family  conclaves,  as  an  old  maid.  She 
accepted  the  lot  we  assigned  to  her  with  un- 
disturbed serenity.  Sometimes  she  would 
reply,  with  a  quiet  smile,  that  women  were 
foolish  to  encumber  themselves  with  hus- 
bands, when  they  might  live  happy  and  inde- 
pendent without  them. 

We  were  seated  round  the  fire  one  chill 
October  evening,  Helen,  my  father,  and 
myself,  when  we  heard  a  knock  at  the  front 
door.  Helen  sprung  to  open  it,  thinking  it 
was  my  mother  returned  from  shopping.  We 
heard  a  sudden  exclamation  in  the  passage, 
and  then  Helen  rushed  back  into  the  room. 
"  Father,  here's  Neville  !"  she  cried,  clapping 


330       fOctobet  S,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


her  hands  ii..r  joy,  and  turning  round  to 
embrace  her  brother  a_ruin.  i  !<>  followed  her 
closely  into  the  room,  and  then  stood  staring 
blankly  around,  and  shading  his  eyes  with 
one  hand,  as  though  the  light  were  too  strong 
for  him  ;  but  with  never  a  smile  of  greeting 
on  his  face.  Could  this  pale,  hollow-cheeked 
figure,  dusty  and  unshaven,  with  close- 
cropped  hair,  be  our  Neville,  our  gay,  young 
sailor  ?  Alas !  there  could  be  no  doubt 
about  it.  "  Neville,  my  boy,  welcome  home," 
said  my  father,  starting  up  and  grasping  his 
hand.  "  But  you  look  pale  !  You  are  ill ! 
Is  it  not  so  ?  Helen,  some  refreshment,  im- 
mediately !  "  No,  he  was  not  ill,  he  replied, 
but  in  such  a  dry,  husky  voice,  as  made  me 
shiver  t4  hear.  My  father  gazed  earnestly 
into  his  eyes,  put  away  a  tear  that  dimmed 
his  own,  and,  pulling  him  forward,  pressed 
him  down,  with  gentle  violence,  into  the  arm- 
chair in  the  corner. 

"  Why  did  you  not  write,  my  boy  ?  You 
look  pale,  and  thin,  and  far  from  well.  Now, 
tell  me  truly,  are  you  really  well  1 " 

'•  Quite  well,  father,  thank  you.  But 
where's  my  mother  I  I  want  to  see  my 
mother  !  " 

"  Here  I  am,  Neville  !  Here  I  am,  dear  ! " 
exclaimed  niy  mother,  who  had  entered  at 
the  moment  without  being  perceived. 

He  sprang  to  her  heart  in  a  moment,  as  he 
had  done  when  a  child  ;  and  mother  and  son 
stood  locked  in  a  loving  embrace.  Then  my 
mother,  taking  him  gently  by  the  shoulders, 
and  holding  him  at  arm's  length,  scanned  his 
pale  lace  with  anxious  eyes.  "  O  my  darling ! 
what  is  it  ? "  she  asked,  in  such  tender  tones 
as  an  angel  might  have  used.  Her  motherly 
eye  saw  that  his  ailing  was  not  mere  bodily 
illness.  She  sat  down  without  leaving  hold 
of  his  hand,  and  he  sank  down  at  her  knees, 
and  laid  his  weary  head  in  her  lap.  Softly 
stroking  his  hair  with  one  hand,  and  bending 
over  him,  she  spoke  again  :  "  Tell  me,  what 
it  is  that  ails  you  1  "  A  sob  broke  from  his 
heart.  "  O  mother  !  "  he  cried,  with  a  low, 
despairing  wail,  "  O  mother,  they  flogged 
me!" 

My  father  directed  a  look  towards  Helen 
and  me.  We  rose  and  left  the  room.  My 
father  followed  us  the  next  minute,  closing 
the  door  gently  behind  him,  and  left  mother 
and  son  to  the  sacred  solitude  of  their  grief. 

I  retired  to  my  own  room  up-stairs,  and 
sat  there,  sadly  enough,  for  some  time.  About 
ten  o'clock  there  came  a  tap  to  my  door,  and 
lie  entered.  "I  want  to  talk  to  you  a 
bit,  Caleb,"  he  said  ;  "  but  put  that  light  out, 
please  ;  it  dazzles  my  eyes  ;  and  \ve  can  talk 
as  well  without  it."  So  I  blew  out  the  candle, 
and  drew  up  the  blind,  and  let  the  mild  .star- 
light stream  into  the  room.  I  noticed, 
before  putting  out  the  light,  that  he  did  not 
look  so  despairing  as  on  his  arrival,  and  that 
his  eyes  shone  with  a  calmer  lustre. 

;t  Caleb/'  he  began,  "  you  know  why  I 
have  returned  home,  a  disgraced  and  ruined  , 


man  ;  but  you  don't  know  what  led  me  up 
to  the  point  which  made  such  a  thing  pos- 
sible ;  that  is  wh.it  I  want  now  to  tell  you. 
I  sailed  the  last  time  under  a  fresh  captain. 
He  was  a  brute,  and  treated  his  crew  as  if 
they  were  the  same.  I  was  first  mate  ;  and, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  we  did  not  long  agree. 
You  know  that  my  temper  is  a  somewhat 
passionate  one  ;  that  it  always  has  been  so  ; 
and  that  I  never  would  calmly  accept  the 
slightest  injustice  or  insult.  Well  ;  our 
voyage  out  was  nothing  but  a  series  of  quar- 
rels and  hollow  truces.  When  we  had  got 
about  half-way  on  the  voynge  home,  we  had 
a  more  violent  quarrel  than  ever.  He  gave 
me  the  lie,  and  1  knocked  him  down.  When 
he  rose  he  ordered  the  crew  to  put  me  in 
irons.  I  lay  all  night  handcuffed  and  in 
chains ;  early  the  following  morning  they 
forced  me  on  deck,  stripped  me  to  the 
waist,  lashed  me  to  the  mast,  and  flogged  me 
— flogged  me,  Caleb,  till  the  blood  fell  from 
my  back  in  clotted  masses  on  the  deck — 
flogged  me  till  I  fell  down  insensible,  and  had 
to  be  carried  like  a  log  of  wood  to  my  ham- 
mock. I  had  but  few  intervals  of  conscious- 
ness after  that  for  several  weeks — intervals 
full  of  horrible  agony ;  for  I  lapsed  into  a 
violent  fever,  and  was  raging  mad  for  I 
know  not  how  long.  It  is  enough  to  state 
that  when  I  came  back  to  consciousness  and 
comparative  ease,  I  found  myself  in.  the  hos- 
pital at  Liverpool,  where  I  lay  as  weak  and 
lifeless  as  a  child  for  several  weeks  longer. 
And  now,  you  see  me  here." 

"  Dear  Neville  !  what  you  must  have 
suffered  ! " 

"I  lingered  all  day,  Caleb,  in  the  fields 
round  about.  For  the  first  time  in  my  life,  I 
was  ashamed  to  venture  here.  I  durst  riot 
come  till  dark.  O,  brother !  those  burn~ 
ing  stripes  have  eaten  into  my  soul  !  To 
think  that  I  stand  here  unavenged,  with 
those  marks  on  my  back  !  But  the  day  will 
come  !  Caleb,  it  is  dark,  and  you  cannot  see 
my  face.  Lend  me  your  hand — here — so — 
under  my  waistcoat.  Do  you  feel  them  ? 

He  guided  my  fingers  with  his  hand,  and  I 
felt  the  great  wales  on  his  back,  scored  across 
from  side  to  side,  thick  as  the  lines  on  a 
music  sheet.  I  recoiled,  sick  at  heart,  and 
almost  fainting. 

"  Good  night,  Caleb,"  he  said,  with  tremu- 
lous voice.  "  Would  that  the  last  Good 
Night  were  said,  for  I  am  weary  of  my 
life  ! " 

"Good  night,  dear  Neville,"  I  replied, 
squeezing  his  hand.  My  heart  was  full,  and 
I  could  not  say  another  word. 

When  he  came  down  next  morning,  the 
daylight  revealed  to  us  still  more  plain  the 
great  change  that  had  taken  place  in  his  ap- 
pearance. Worn  and  ghastly,  haggard  and 
despairing,  his  looks  told  us,  clearer  than  any 
words,  through  what  depths  of  suffering  he 
must  have  struggled.  He  sat  silently  among 
us,  heedless  of  all  around,  with  the  dreamy 


Charles  Dickens.] 


OUR  FAMILY  PICTURE. 


^October  3,  1857.]       331 


vacancy  in  las  eyes,  of  a  man  whose  thoughts 
are  far  away.  My  mother's  eyes  were  red 
with  weeping  ;  but  iu  his  presence  she  showed 
the  love  and  hid  the  sorrow,  knowing  that  to 
display  the  latter  would  only  distress  him 
still  more.  All  that  day,  and  for  several 
days  afterwards,  he  went  wandering  up  and 
down  the  house  and  garden,  never  going 
outside  the  gate  ;  moody,  unobservant,  and 
rarely  speaking  to  anyone ;  never  sitting  down 
from  daylight  to  dark  for  more  than  a  minute 
or  two  at  a  time.  My  heart  misgave  me  ; 
and  in  these  signs  I  thought  I  discerned 
the  sad  forerunners  of  his  old  malady.  I 
watched  him  closely,  without  seeming  to  do 
so. 

We  all  tried  to  engage  him  in  cheerful 
conversation,  and  to  win  him  back  to 
some  of  the  interests  of  everyday  life. 
He  repulsed  our  proffered  sympathy,  gently 
but  firmly ;  replied  in  monosyllables,  and 
retreated  into  solitude  as  quickly  as  possible. 
It  was  a  continual  heart-ache  to  us  to  see  one 
whom  we  loved  so  well  thus  build  up  of  his 
own  free  will  a  barrier  between  us.  He 
would  stay  out  till  late  at  night,  pacing  to 
and  fro  on  the  garden  terrace,  musing,  and 
muttering  sadly  to  himself.  My  bedroom 
window  looked  on  this  terrace.  On  going  to 
bed  one  night  I  found  the  window  open,  and 
approaching  to  shut  it,  heard  Neville  walking 
backwards  and  forwards  beneath  it.  I  looked 
out,  and  could  jiist  distinguish  his  tall  gaunt 
figure.  He  was  muttering  to  himself,  and 
tossing  his  arms  wildly  as  he  walked. 

"  Disgraced  !  disgraced  ! "  he  exclaimed 
despairingly  as  he  approached.  "  Can  I  see 
her  thus  'I  Can  I  ask  her  to  love  me,  to 
comfort  me,  to  be  my  wife  1  Ah,  me  !  I  see 
no  light,  no  way  out  of  this  dreary  valley. 
But  I  will  go  to-morrow !  This  torture  is 
killing  me  !  I  will  see  her,  and  know  the 
truth— I  will  tell  her " 

Here  his  voice  died  to  a  whisper  in  the 
distance.  I  closed  my  window  gently,  and 
prayed  heaven  to  comfort  this  unhappy  soul. 
The  words  I  had  overheard  struck  cold  to  my 
heart.  Scant  comfort  would  he  find  where 
he  looked  for  it  most :  that  I  knew.  What 
was  the  fascination  that  drew  two  strong 
men  to  the  side  of  this  girl  ?  And  how  would 
such  rivalry  end  ]  Vain  questions  which 
Time,  the  great  solver  of  riddles,  alone  could 
answer. 

He  dressed  himself  more  carefully  than 
usual  the  following  morning  ;  and,  at  an 
early  hour  in  the  forenoon,  left  home  for 
Doctor  Graile's.  He  did  not  return  till  after 
dark,  and  going  directly  up-stairs,  without 
seeing  any  one,  locked  himself  in  his  own 
room.  We  all  retired  at  the  usual  time.  I 
sat  down  in  my  bedroom,  waiting  for  I  knew 
not  what.  The  clock  struck  twelve.  The 
sound  had  scarcely  died  away  before  I  heard 
Neville's  door  opened,  and  then  stealthy  foot- 
steps descending  the  stairs.  I  followed  after 


as  close  as  I   durst  go.     Opening  the  back 

j  door,   Neville  stepped  out  into  the  garden. 

1 1   did   the   same,    and   then  cowered   down 

behind  some  bushes,  waiting  to  see  what  he 

would  do  next.     Instead  of  going  out  of  the 

!  garden,  as  I  had  half  expected,  he  began  to 

|  walk  up  and  down  on  the  terrace.     I  could 

not  leave  my  concealment  without   certain 

discovery.     Again  his  wild  words  fell  upon 

my  ears. 

"  Engaged  to  another ! "  he  muttered. 
"  Well,  well,  it's  only  the  way  of  the  world — 
to  deceive,  and  to  be  deceived.  Fool  that  I 
was  to  believe  anything  she  told  rue  !  Never 
cared  for  me,  she  says.  Her  promises,  open 
and  implied,  were  lies  all.  0,  heaven !  to 
think  of  that  fair  face,  and  all  so  black 
within !  She  tore  my  heart  out  of  me, 
and  now  she  flings  it  back  smilingly  in 
my  face.  But  let  her  beware  !  let  them 
both  beware !  The  fiend  and  I  are  good 
friends  now,"  and  he  laughed  loudly,  a 
wild  hollow  laugh.  "  We  have  joined  hands 
on't,  and  nobody  knows  our  secret.  And 
now  to  bed,  for  we  shall  want  all  our  wits 
to-morrow.  O,  sweetheart !  the  reckoning 
shall  be  a  bitter  one." 

He  took  one  more  turn  along  the  terrace, 
and  then  went  in,  bolting  the  door  behind 
him.  Thus  shut  out,  I  slunk  round  to  the 
scullery  window,  and  finding  it  unfastened, 
crept  through,  aud  so  up-stairs  to  bed. 
Neville  was  sleeping  heavily  already. 

Never  since  his  return  home  had  Neville 
been  so  gay,  so  talkative,  so  full  of  spirits  as 
he  was  on  the  following  morning.  But  with 
his  words  of  last  night  ringing  iu  my  ears,  I 
liked  his  present  mirth  less  than  his  previous 
depression.  My  mother  was  charmed  to  see 
him  so  much  better  ;  and  my  father  forgot 
the  time,  and  stayed  talking  till  half-past 
nine — a  thing  he  had  never  been  guilty  of 
before,  and  which  astonished  the  scholars  as 
much  as  it  did  himself.  I  mentioned  my 
suspicions  to  my  father  as  we  walked  towards 
the  school.  He  could  not  see  any  foundation 
for  them  until  I  told  him  what  I  had  over- 
heard on  the  previous  night.  He  looked 
grave  at  this. 

"  I  think,"  said  he,  "  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  take  the  opinion  of  Doctor  Graile  in  the 
matter,  as  Philip  is  sure  to  be  here  either 
to-night  or  in  the  morning  ;  and  as  he  has 
devoted  much  of  his  time  to  the  study  of 
mental  derangements,  it  will  be  as  well  to 
take  his  advice  first.  But,  Caleb,  stay  you 
at  home  to-day,  and  keep  a  watchful  eye  on 
niy  poor  boy.  I  hope  truly  that  it  will  nut 
be  necessary  to  employ  coercive  measures. 
Good-bye  !  The  boys  will  think  I  am  either 
dead  or  ill." 

So  I  returned  home  ;  and  all  forenoon  and 
all  afternoon,  I  kept  by  Neville's  side.  He 
was  boisterously  gay  the  whole  time.  He 
did  not  seem  to  have  any  suspicion  why  I 
kept  so  near  him  ;  but  once  or  twice  he  fixed 
a  glittering  eye  on  me,  and  asked  me  sharply 


332      [October  ?.  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


why  I  was  not  at  the  school.  The  chill  after- 
noon was  waning,  and  twilight  was  drawing 
on  apace,  when,  as  we  were  sitting  together 
in  the  parlour,  Neville  rose  up  suddenly. 

•'  ( 1aleb,"  he  said,  in  a  gentle  voice,  fumbling 
About  his  waistcoat,  "I  have  left  my  watch 
lip-stairs  on  the  dressing-table.  AVill  you  be 
kind  enough  to  fetch  it  me  1  " 

I  went,  in  a  moment,  without  thinking.  I 
found  the  watch  as  he  had  stated,  and 
returned  with  it  in  my  hand  ;  but  Neville 
was  no  longer  in  the  parlour.  I  sought  him 
through  the  house  and  through  the  garden, 
calling  his  name  ;  but  he  was  not  to  be 
found.  The  thought  then  flashed  across  me 
that  he  had  sent  me  for  his  watch  that  he 
might  rid  himself  of  my  company,  and  get  away 
unobserved.  Seizing  my  hat,  I  sallied  forth  ; 
but  I  had  not  got  a  hundred  yards  before  I 
discovered  how  futile  any  attempt  at  pur- 
suit would  be.  Darkness  was  closing  in  fast ; 
Neville  had  been  gone  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
and  he  might  have  gone  in  any  one  of  a 
dozen  different  directions.  And  what  if  I 
found  him  1  It  was  evident  that  he  did  not 
want  my  company  just  then,  and  to  anger 
him  in  such  a  mood  would  be  unwise. 
Philip  would  be  here  in  the  morning,  and 
then  something  decisive  might  be  done.  Rea- 
soning thus,  1  returned  home. 

The  evening  crept  on.  We  were  all 
assembled,  as  usual,  in  the  sitting-room. 
Now  and  then  my  father  looked  at  his 
watch.  At  last  he  said  : 

"  Philip  will  hardly  come  to-night.  It  is 
past  coach-time,  now." 

I  did  not  mention  to  him  how  Neville  had 
left  me,  not  seeing  that  it  would  do  any  good 
to  disturb  his  equanimity.  My  mother  sat 
knitting,  and  humming  an  old  ballad-tune  to 
herself.  Helen  was  writing  to  her  betrothed. 
At  once  there  came  the  sound  of  hurrying 
feet  along  the  passage  ;  the  door  was  thrown 
open,  and  Olive  Graile  burst  into  the  room, 
pale,  horror-struck,  with  wide-staring  eyes. 

"  O  Mr.  Redfern  !  "  she  shrieked,  wringing 
her  hands  wildly.  "  Philip  !  He  lies  dead  ! 
murdered  in  the  meadows  ! " 

She  gasped  for  breath,  stared  wildly  round, 
and  fell  insensible  to  the  floor. 

Leaving  Helen  and  my  mother  to  attend 
to  her,  my  father  and  I  rushed  out  of  the 
house  at  once  and  ran,  as  for  our  lives,  to- 
wards the  fields  by  the  river-side.  There  was 
a  young  moon  shining  dimly  over  head,  and 
in  the  vague  light,  houses  and  trees,  fields 
and  river,  all  looked  ghastly  as  we  sped 
along  ;  but  far  more  ghastly  than  all,  the 
dead  Philip,  when  we  found  him,  lying 
directly  in  our  path,  close  to  a  thick  clump  of 
willows.  I,  being  somewhat  in  advance,  was 
the  first  to  discover  him  ;  and  when  my 
father  saw  me  stoop  down  by  the  dark 
object,  his  limbs  trembled  like  a  child's,  and 
the  foundations  of  life  were  shaken  within 
him.  The  body  was  rigid  already  ;  and  we 


saw  at  a  glance,  but  would  not  acknowledge, 
that  it  was  beyond  all  earthly  aid. 

There  was  no  wound  perceptible  as  he  lay 
there  on  the  grass.  The  fatal  bullet  had 
pierced  through  the  coat  and  vest  to  his  heart. 
He  lay  with  one  arm  across  his  chest,  and 
the  other  outstretched  with  clenched  fingers. 
A  dark  frown  had  settled  on  his  pale  fea- 
tures, as  though,  even  in  death,  he  defied  his 
murderer. 

Looking  round  to  see  if  there  were  any 
traces  of  the  murderer,  my  father  saw  some- 
thing glittering  in  the  moonlight.  He  took 
it  up.  It  was  a  pistol.  He  approached  me 
without  a  word,  and  held  the  weapon 
close  to  my  face.  I  knew  it — we  both  knew 
it  —  Neville's  pistol.  There  was  his  name 
engraven  on  a  small  silver  plate  let  into  the 
stock,  and  I  had  seen  it  in  his  hands  the  pre- 
vious morning.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
terrible  expression  of  anguish  that  passed 
like  a  ripple  over  my  father's  face  when  he 
saw  that  I  recognised  it. 

"  Caleb,"  he  said,  looking  me  steadily  in 
the  face,  and  speaking  in  a  low  voice  that 
thrilled  through  me  ;  "no  one  must  know 
of  this.  It  must  be  a  secret  between  you 
and  me.  It  is  enough  that  I  have  this 
night  lost  one  dear  to  me  as  my  own 
son.  Repentance  —  not  sacrifice  —  is  now 
needed." 

So  speaking,  he  placed  the  pistol  in  the 
breast-pocket  of  his  coat,  and  carefully  but- 
toned it  up.  We  then  took  up  our  dear  dead, 
tenderly  and  reverentially,  having  first  laid 
a  handkerchief  over  the  still  features,  and 
so  carried  him  home  between  us.  The  first 
person  we  met  we  sent  off  to  Doctor 
Graile 's,  requesting  his  immediate  presence. 
We  saw  my  mother  standing  at  the  door,  as 
we  advanced  up  the  garden. 

She  had  not  the  courage  to  come  any  fur- 
ther, and  yet  could  not  remain  in  the  house. 
She  read  the  dread  news  in  our  faces,  and 
waited  for  no  more. 

"  Dead  !  dead  !  "  she  cried  aloud.  "  O  my 
poor  heart ;  what  shall  I  do  ! — what  shall  I 
do!" 

We  carried  the  body  up-stairs,  and  laid  it 
on  the  best  bed.  It  would  have  added  to  my 
mother's  misery  if  we  had  laid  it  on  any 
other.  Doctor  Graile  arrived  at  this  moment, 
and  with  him  came  two  policemen  ;  for  the 
news  had  spread  by  this  time  from  end  to 
end  of  the  little  town. 

"The  bullet  has  gone  direct  to  his  heart," 
said  the  doctor,  after  a  brief  examination. 
"  Death  must  have  been  instantaneous." 

*'  If  you  please,  sir,"  said  one  of  the  officers, 
"  we  should  like  to  have  a  few  words  with 
the  young  lady  who,  we  understand,  was  with 
him  when  the  affair  took  place.  She  might  be 
able  to  throw  some  light  on  it,  and  give  us  a 
clue  to  the  murderer." 

So  we  went  down  stairs,  all  except  my 
father. 

"  I  dare  not  go,  Caleb,"   he   whispered ; 


Charles  Dickf  ns-l 


LOED  W.  TYLER. 


[October  3, 1337.]       333 


"  come  aud  tell  me  the  result  -when  it  is 
over." 

We  found  Olive  lying  on  the  sofa,  moaning, 
and  shivering  like  one  stricken  with  fever. 

"  My  dear,"  said  the  doctor  addressing  her, 
"  we  want  you  to  give  us,  as  concisely  and 
clearly  as  possible,  a  full  account  of  all  that 
passed  between  the  late  Mr.  Philip  Delmer 
and  yourself,  from  the  time  you  met  him  this 
evening  till  the  moment  he  was  so  barbar- 
ously murdered." 

"  O  papa  !  "  she  exclaimed,  sobbing  out 
afresh.  "  I  cannot  bear  to  apeak  of  it.  I  can 
only  think  about  it  at  present.  Do  please 
spare  me ! " 

"It  is  necessary  for  several  important 
reasons,"  said  the  doctor  very  gravely,  "  that 
you  should  do  as  I  ask  you.  So  summon  all 
your  firmness  to  your  aid  for  a  few  minutes, 
and  relate  to  us,  as  closely  as  you  can  re- 
member, everything  that  passed  between 
you." 

Thus  adjured,  Olive  was  obliged  to  com- 
ply, and  with  many  sobs  and  tears  she  began 
as  follows : 

"  Philip  wrote  me  a  short  note  yesterday, 
asking  me  to  meet  him  this  evening  on  the 
other  side  of  the  bridge,  as  he  wished  to 
see  me  before  going  home,  having  something 
of  importance  to  relate  to  me.  I  met  him  as 
he  had  requested,  and  it  was  nearly  dark. 
We  went  walking  gently  up  and  down  the 
meadows  for  about  two  hours,  talking  cheer- 
fully to  each  other.  I  never  saw  him  in 
better  spirits." 

"  What  was  fhe  matter  of  importance  he 
had  to  relate  to  you  ? " 

"He  told  me  that  he  should  be  obliged  to 
return  to  London  the  following  evening,  and 
that  he  had  written  to  me  to  meet  him  before 
he  went  home,  because  it  was  his  intention  to 
ask  the  consent  of  Mr.  Eedfern  and  yourself 
— to-morrow  morning — to  our  marriage  ;  and 
he  wanted  to  tell  me  beforehand." 

"What  was  he  saying  and  doing  at  the 
moment  you  heard  the  pistol  fired  1  Had  you 
hold  of  his  arm  at  the  time  1 " 

"  O  papa,  spare  me  !  "  she  exclaimed,  hiding 
her  head  in  the  pillows  of  the  sofa. 

"  My  child,  there  are  none  but  friends  here, 
and  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  that  you 
should  be  explicit.  Speak  the  truth  without 
shame  or  fear." 

"I  had  hold  of  his  arm,"  she  went  on. 
"He  had  just  said,  'Olive,  this  day  six 
mouths  we  shall  be  man  and  wife,'  and 
stooped  down  to  kiss  me  as  he  said  it.  As  he 
was  raising  his  head  again,  there  came  a 
sudden  flash  and  explosion.  He  flung  up  his 
arms  exclaiming,  '  O  my  God  ! '  and  then  fell 
to  the  earth.  He  only  spoke  once  more,  say- 
ing, '  Olive,  tell  my  aunt '  but  could  not 

finish.  Then  a  great  shiver  ran  through  his 
body,  and  I  knew  that  he  was  dead." 

"Did  you  see  any  one  near  or  at  a  dis- 
tance, while  you  were  in  the  meadows,  either 
before  or  after  the  shot  was  fired  ?  " 


"  I  did  not  see  any  one." 

"  There  are  a  clump  of  willows  close  to 
where  the  murder  took  place.  Could  any  one 
be  concealed  there,  and  you  not  see  him, 
when  you  went  past  it  ?  " 

"  Certainly  ;  especially  after  nightfall." 

"Did  you  see  any  one  step  out  of  the 
willows  at  the  moment  the  shot  was  fired  1 " 

"  I  seemed  to  see  a  great  black  shadow 
start  up  with  outstretched  arm  ;  but  the 
flash  blinded  my  eyes,  so  that  I  could  be- 
certain  of  nothing." 

"  Are  you  acquainted  with  any  one  who,  in 
your  judgment,  had  any  cause  or  reason  to 
commit  such  a  deed  ?  " 

To  this  question,  after  some  hesitation,  she 
answered,  "  I  am  not." 

My  father  only  sighed  when  I  told  him  ; 
then  beckoning  me  to  follow  him,  he  led  the 
way  into  his  study,  and  going  up  to  his 
bureau — an  old  and  massive  piece,  of  furni- 
ture-— touched  a  secret  spring,  which  opening 
a  pigeon-hole,  revealed  to  me  the  place  where 
he  had  concealed  the  pistol. 

"  Only  you  and  I,  Caleb,  know  of  this.  It 
may  be  wanted  some  day  after  I  am  gone.  If 
so,  you  know  where  to  find  it." 


LOED  W.  TYLEE. 

ONCE  upon  a  time — on  a  day  in  the  remote 
past,  when  there  were  inhabitants  in  London,, 
and  a  parliament  was  sitting,  and  the  shrimps 
had  Margate  to  themselves,  and  the  Pharaohs 
were  alive,  and  the  Chaldeans  were  looking 
out  of  their  telescopes  upon  the  plains  of 
Waterloo  to  watch  the  rising  of  Arcturus 
over  a  world  inhabited  only  by  plesiosauruses 
— there  was  a  member  of  the  British  House 
of  Commons  who  informed  a  despotic  British 
Minister  that  he  had  better  not  attempt  to 
play  Wat  Tyler  with  the  British  nation.  Old 
as  I  am,  I  can  remember  little  of  what  hap- 
pened at  so  remote  an  age  in  the  world'* 
history,  but  the  fact  dwells  in  my  memory,  as 
I  sit  here  with  Canute  by  the  seashore,  saying 
to  my  shrimpwoman,  who  over-rates  the 
market  value  of  those  centipedes,  thus  far 
will  I  go  and  no  farther.  As  Judith  hit  the 
nail  upon  the  head  of  the  tyrant  Holothuria, 
who  hung  Jupiter  Arnmon  high  upon  a  gibbet 
after  invading — Judas-like — the  castle  of  his 
house,  so  the  member  for  Fiusbury,  helped 
by  the  member  for  the  Tower  Hamlets  and 
some  other  revered  metropolitans,  drove  the 
nail  home  into  the  bill  of  that  Strafford  of 
the  ninetieth  century,  her  Majesty's  Prime 
Minister,  Lord  W.  Tyler. 

Some  persons  are  easily  confused  by  that 
which  is  confusing.  Thus  it  happens  that  to 
me  when  I  think  of  Mr.  Cox,  M.P.  for  the 
borough  of  Finsbury,  in  connexion  with  the 
History  of  England,  all  history  becomes  a 
chaos,  trains  of  ideas  come,  into  collision  or 
slip  off  the  line,  old  associations  come  to 
loggerheads  in  all  their  sections,  black  is 
white,  and  white  is  crooked.  There  is  nothing 


334      [October  3, 1»7J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


Conducted  by 


straight.  Let  me  endeavour  so  far  to  put 
matters  straight  as  to  make  clearly  known,  if 
I  can,  the  cause  of  this  disorder.  There 
have  been  in  operation  during  the  last  four 
or  five  years  certain  scraps  of  law  which  pro- 
vide for  the  decent  oi-dering  of  common 
lodging-houses  in  all  towns  of  England.  The 
provision  thus  made  for  the  decent  ordering 
of  those  lodgings  which  are  let  to  the  poor 
trampcr  at  the  cheapest  rate  has  proved  a 
blessing  not  only  to  the  lodgers  whom  the 
law  in  this  manner  protected,  but  to  the 
community  of  which  they  form  a  part.  But 
the  operation  of  the  Common  Lodging-houses 
Act  was  very  limited.  It  applied  only  to  a 
small  class  of  lodgers,  and  left  unprotected 
the  poor  families  to  whom  a  money-making 
landlord  lets  in  single  rooms  a  house  unfit 
for  decent  occupation.  To  ensure  to  such 
families  possession  of  the  right  that  had  been 
•won  already  for  people  a  step  lower  in  the 
social  scale,  and  to  fill  up  one  or  two  notable 
omissions  in  the  former  acts  of  legislation  on 
this  subject,  was  a  duty  that  had  been 
pressed  earnestly  upon  the  government,  and 
that  the  government  accepted.  During  the 
last  session  of  parliament  a  bill  to  prevent 
overcrowding  in  a  dwelling  let  off  room  by 
room  to  many  families  went  through  the 
House  of  Lords  and  was,  in  the  last  week  of 
the  session,  under  care  of  government  passing 
its  last  stage  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
warmly  supported  by  Lord  Palmerston,  who 
denned  its  subject  as  "a  question  between 
speculating  builders,  v^-.o  wished  to  over- 
crowd the  houses  they  erected,  and  the  poor 
•who  were  the  victims  of  their  cupidity."  But 
in  that  its  last  stage,  the  bill  was  opposed 
violently  by  certain  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  chiefly  representatives  of  London 
boroughs.  One  gentleman  asked  for  a  new 
name  to  the  bill,  another  thought  that  "  at 
that  period  of  the  session  it  should  be 
abandoned,"  and  another  thought  its  object 
"  hardly  urgent  enough  to  induce  the  House 
to  pass  it  at  that  period  of  the  session,"  and 
another  thought  it  "  not  of  sufficient  im- 
portance to  keep  the  House  sitting  at  one 
o'clock  in  the  morning,"  and  another  pro- 
tested that  it  interfered  "  as  to  the  mode  in 
v  hich  every  man  chose  to  live  in  his  own 
house,"  whereas  "  every  Englishman's  house 
was  his  castle,"  and  another  said  that  it  was 
"  unintelligible,"  and  another  said  by  such 
measures  "the  same  system  of  gradual  en- 
croachment which  had  enslaved  the  nations 
of  the  continent  would  be  insidiously  extended 
to  this  country,"  and  the  opposition  was 
wound  up  by  Mr.  Cox,  who  said  to  Lord 
Palmerston  "Had  the  noble  lord  ever  read 
the  History  of  England  ?  If  he  meant  to 
play  AVat  Tyler  with  the  people  of  England 
they  v/ould  be  able  to  play  the  tyrant  against 
hiui."  This  opposition  being  put,  when  time 
pressed,  into  an  obstructive  form,  the  bill  had 
to  be  withdrawn. 

Chaos   is  come    again  !     Lord  Tyler  had 


risen  in  a  despotic  way  on  behalf  of 
the  homes  of  the  people.  He  had  in  his 
mind  what  had  been  done  for  the  worst 
of  them  by  W.  Rufus's  Common  Lodging 
Houses  Act,  14  &  15  Viet,  c.  28,  and  16  &  17 
Viet.,  c.  41.  He  pasted  that  act  round  his 
hat  after  the  manner  of  a  catch-'em-alive-O  ! 
and  getting  upon  London  Stone,  thus  ad- 
dressed Eichard  Whittington,  thrice  Lord 
Mayor  of  London,  and  the  humpbacked 
Richard  the  First,  senior  alderman,  before  he 
felled  him  with  his  mace,  and  rode  up  to  the 
rioters,  exclaiming,  Take  away  that  bauble. 

O  yes,  O  yes,  O  yes,  people  of  London  and 
England,  common  people,  hear  what  has  been 
done  in  common  lodging-houses,  and  how 
they  have  become  more  decent  than  your 
common  homes,  because  a  wicked  govern- 
ment secures  the  tramp  against  the  griping 
of  a  landlord,  and  yet  will  not  stir  a  finger 
to  secure  decency  and  health  for  the  hard- 
working artisan  who  makes  out  of  a  little 
room  the  heaven  of  an  independent  home. 

Rise  and  bestir  yourselves  !  Take  up  your 
lime-pails  and  your  whiting-brushes  !  Shout 
help,  ho  !  Soap  for  England !  To  the  rescue, 
water  and  fresh  air ! 

Comrades,  yoit  see  this  Act.  I  take  this 
Act,  and  lay  this  Act  upon  the  floor  of  yonder 
common  lodging-house.  Behold  a  room  ten 
feet  square,  with  no  partitions  between  beds 
that  it  makes  the  flesh  creep  to  look  at,  and 
the  stomach  turns  to  smell.  Seven  men,  nine 
women,  and  a  child  are  crammed  by  the 
landlord  of  that  common  lodging-house  upon 
those  foul  beds,  in  yonder  foul  room,  ten  feet 
square.  I  lay  this  Act  down  within  yonder 
room.  That  landlord  is  fined  four  pounds, 
or  goes  to  prison  for  six  weeks.  That  house 
becomes  a  clean  house.  The  Act  causes  it  to 
be  kept  in  a  clean  state.  Poor,  independent 
artisans  !  many  of  you  cannot  compass  such 
a  wholesome  place  of  daily  rest  as  tyranny 
has  given  to  the  scamp,  and  tramp,  and  out- 
cast of  society,  who,  in  the  common  lodging- 
house,  is  taken  in  and  done  for.  Rise,  there- 
fore, and  bestir  yourselves !  Take  up  your 
lime-pails  and  your  whiting-brushes  !  Shout, 
help,  ho  !  Soap  for  England  !  To  the  rescue, 
water  and  fresh  air  ! 

Britons,  I  bid  you  follow  me  to  war  against 
all  landlords  who  think  to  acquire  wealth  by 
denying  you  what  they  are  bound  to  give  in 
any  rooms  they  let.  A  landlord  is  a  retail 
dealer  in  homes.  The  fishmonger  is  forbidden 
by  the  law  to  sell  you  stinking  fish  ;  the 
butcher  may  not  sell  bad  meat.  The  land- 
lord shall  not  sell  you  poisonous  and  stinking 
homes,  if  Tyler  can  prevent  it.  Let  the  law 
in  this  matter  also  exercise  an  oversight  in 
your  behalf.  It  is  needed.  Take  Lord 
Tyler's  word  for  it ;  but  he  won't  ask  you  to 
take  it — not  he — until  he  has  proved  it  good. 
Hear,  then,  what  has  been  done  by  the  law 
in  declaring  itself  to  be  on  the  side  of  the 
poor  lodger,  before  you  join  in  claiming  that 
it  shall  extend  also  its  care  to  the  poor  tenant. 


Charles  Pickens.l 


LORD  W.  TYLER. 


[October  3,  ISo?.]       335 


Forty-five  Lascars  smoking  opium  together 
in  a  little  house  in  Shadwell  ;  twenty-nine 
Lascars  and  women  huddled  up  together  in 
another  little  house,  with  a  dead  Lasc;tr 
under  an  old  rug,  and  another,  almost  dead, 
put  by  to  finish  dying  in  a  cupboard.  Two 
hundred  and  fifty  persons  in  a  large  house, 
having  the  requisites  of  decency  supplied  not 
quite  in  the  measure  necessary  for  a  single 
family  ;  that  is  the  sort  of  evil  now  abated 
by  the  law.  Keepers  of  such  houses  are 
bound  to  register  their  lodgings,  taught  in  a 
considerate  manner  how  to  keep  them  whole- 
some, told  how  many  persons  can  be  safely 
housed  in  them,  and  then  kept  with  a  firm 
hand  to  the  performance  of  their  duty.  In 
London  alone  fifteen  thousand  persons  have 
been  called  upon  to  register  the  lodgings 
that  they  keep  for  the  homeless  aud  wander- 
ing population  that  remains  not  more  than  a 
week  under  one  roof.  Eight  and  twenty 
thousand  of  the  poor  class  of  Londoners, 
once  littered  in  filth  of  nights,  now  are  lodged 
in  a  becoming  way  ;  are  better  lodged,  in 
truth,  than  their  poor  neighbours  fixed  in 
little  homes.  During  the  five  years  of  the 
new  system  of  oversight,  the  number  of  visits 
of  inspectors,  paid  in  London,  have  amounted 
to  more  than  seven  hundred  thousand  ;  they 
have  been  paid  among  people  thought  to  be 
incorrigible,  yet  there  never  has  been  one 
instance  of  the  assault  of  an  officer  in  the 
performance  of  his  duty.  The  inspection  was 
at  first  very  distasteful  to  the  lodgers  ;  now 
they  look  for  it  and  prize  it  as  a  right.  To 
the  improved  common  lodging-houses  in 
London  we  must  add  the  model  lodging- 
houses,  the  number  of  which  slightly  exceeds 
a  hundred.  They  accommodate  about  a 
thousand  families,  and  not  quite  a  thousand  i 
single  persons,  all  of  a  higher  class  than  that 
of  people  who  frequent  the  common-lodging. 
The  removal  of  two  or  three  thousand 
nuisances  connected  with  the  common  lodg- 
ing-houses has  been  secured  by  magistrates' 
order  ;  and  when  it  has  been  found  that  the 
owner  of  such  a  house  has  been  compelled  to 
abate  a  nuisance,  neighbouring  landlords 
have,  in  many  instances,  removed  similar 
nuisances,  in  order  that  the  use  of  their  pre- 
mises, as  a  lodging-house,  may  not  bring  them 
•within  arm's  length  of  the  law. 

During  the  operation  of  the  acts  in  ques- 1 
tion,  nearly  five  hundred  cases  of  contagious  • 
disease  have,  by  the  powers  they  give,  been ! 
removed  from  the  lodging-house  to  the  iufir- ; 
rnary  or  hospital.     After  the  removal  of  a 
fever-case,  the  room  is  closed  for  fumigation 
and  lime-washing  before  lodgers  are  again 
admitted.    The  bedclothes  are  disinfected  or 
destroyed. 

But  this  kind  of  law  which  has  done  so 
much  for  the  protection  both  of  life  and  j 
morals,  has  an  extremely  narrow  field  of1 
action.  Not  only  are  the  pot-houses  exempt ' 
from  its  jurisdiction,  but  even  the  most  im-  i 
moral  lodging-house  has  an  immunity  from 


oversight,  because  it  makes  a  special  busi- 
ness of  its  immorality,  and  is  an  establish- 
ment which  the  law  cannot  be  asked  to 
license. 

Then  again,  in  the  case  of  single  rooms, 
the  inspecting-ofiicers  finding  them  over- 
crowded by  reckless  subletting,  are  told  that 
the  tenants  are  all  uncles  and  aunts,  nephews 
and  nieces,  brothers-in-law  and  cousins  to 
each  other.  The  room  claims  to  be  a  private 
castle,  and  the  law,  as  it  now  stands,  cannot 
compel  the  owner  of  the  room  to  do  his  duty 
in  the  letting  of  it.  Houses  or  rooms  occu- 
pied by  one  family  are  exempt  from  the 
operation  of  the  law.  Now,  there  are  certain 
regulations  respecting  ventilation,  supply  of 
water,  &c.,  with  which  every  owner  or  sub- 
owner  of  a  house  sub-let  in  rooms,  should  be 
bound  to  comply.  The  application  of  these 
rules  to  your  case,  poor  and  faithful  citizens 
of  England,  crammed  into  crowded  dwellings 
where  you  can't  be  healthy  and  you  can't  be 
clean,  you  ought,  says  Lord  Tyler,  to  demand 
as  your  right  from  the  government.  Also, 
there  should  be  somebody  to  see  that  persons 
do  not  be  sick  of  contagious  fevers  in  the 
midst  of  crowded  rooms,  and  to  secure  their 
removal  to  a  place  where  they  themselves 
have  infinitely  more  chance  of  recovery,  while 
their  friends  and  neighbours  are  saved 
from  the  imminent  risk  of  contracting  like 
disease.  This  cries  Lord  Tyler,  is  what  I 
would  contrive  for  you,  O  people,  with  what 
I  call  my  Crowded  Dwellings  Prevention 
Bill ;  but  there  comes  John  Ball  Cox  with 
a  leaden  tail,  who  stops  the  run  of  my  in- 
tentions. 

What  say  your  medical  officers  of  health, 
who  admire  the  great  change  made  in  the 
common  lodging-houses  and  their  tenants  ? 
"I  am  quite  sure,"  says  Mr.  Gill  of  Islington, 
"could  the  same  laws  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  that  class  of  the  population  tenanting 
single  rooms,  disease  would  be  mitigated  in 
its  effects,  the  process  of  incubation  very 
much  destroyed,  and,  what  is  socially  im- 
portant too,  public  morals  would  be  im- 
proved." "  I  have  remarked  lately,"  says 
Dr.  Greggs  of  Westminster,  "  much  less  dis- 
ease in  the  common  lodging-houses  than  in 
the  private  dwellings  of  the  poor."  "It  is 
highly  necessary,"  says  Mr.  Cogan  of  Green- 
wich, "  that  this  act  should  be  extended  to 
the  class  of  lodging-houses  inhabited  by  many 
families,  but  only  one  family  in  each  room  ; 
these  are  the  only  houses  now  where  we  get 
the  old  types  of  fever  that  used  to  pervade 
the  lodging-houses."  "I  sincerely  wish," 
says  Dr.  Arthur  of  Deptford,  "  this  act  could 
be  extended  to  those  other  lodging-houses 
which  are  let  out  to  families  in  rooms.  They 
are  frequently  crowded  to  excess,  causing 
disease,  morally  as  well  as  physically,  amongst 
the  inmates."  "  I  am  sure,"  says  Mr.  Sequeiue 
of  Whitechapel,  "  a  great  improvement  would 
be  effected  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor,  if  the 
property  let  out  in  tenements  were  also  under 


330 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.October  3, 1857. J 


the  surveillance  of  the  police  inspectors,  to 
compel  landlords  to  allow  in  every  sleeping 
apartment  a  certain  amount  of  space  for  eacli 
individual,  :unl  thus  prevent  many  diseases 
now  arising  from  overcrowding."  As  to  the 
common  lodging-houses,  Mr.  Faulkner,  Re- 
gistrar of  Births  and  Deaths  for  part  of  St. 
Giles's,  says,  "  I  perfectly  well  remember  the 
dirty,  filthy,  overcrowded  state  they  were 
formerly  kept  in  ;  the  odour  of  the  rooms  in 
many  houses  compelled  me  to  relinquish  my 
registration  duties,  from  the  feeling  of  faiut- 
uess  and  sickness  caused  by  the  disgusting 
places  I  visited.  Most  of  the  walls  were 
swarming  with  vermin,  and  decorated  by 
endless  numbers  smashed  ou  and  around  the 

heads  of  the  bedsteads Now  the  case 

is  far  different ;  there  is  an  air  of  perfect 
cleanliness  imparted  to  the  whole  by  the 
whitewash  so  liberally  used  ;  the  boards  and 
staircases  are  paragons  of  cleanliness  com- 
pared to  what  they  were."  Rise,  then,  poor 
tenants,  comrades — rise,  and  bestir  your- 
selves !  Take  up  your  lime-pails  and  your 
whiting-brushes  !  Shout,  help,  ho  !  Soap 
for  England  !  To  the  rescue,  water  and 
fresh  air  !  Hear  what  is  said  by  Dr.  Barnes 
of  Shoi-editch  :  "  As  fever  cases  are  not  at  all 
uncommon  in  other  houses  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  registered  houses,  I  cannot  but  at- 
tribute the  immunity  of  these  latter  to  the 
excellent  provisions  for  cleanliness,  the  pre- 
vention of  overcrowding  and  the  ensuring 
a  due  supply  and  renewal  of  air  enforced." 
Hear  what  is  said  by  Mr.  Rendle  of  St. 
George's,  Southwark.  He  was  "  parish  sur- 
geon for  seventeen  years  before  he  was  ap- 
pointed officer  of  health,  and  he  can,  there- 
fore, personally  speak  to  this  fact.  Then  the 
worst  cases  of  fever  occurred  in  the  common 
lodging-houses,  and  a  very  large  proportion, 
and  by  far  the  worst  part  of  the  duty  of  the 
parish-surgeon  was  the  visiting  of  the  sick  in 
these  houses.  Now  very  few  cases  of  disease 
occur  ;  and  by  cleanliness  and  prompt  re- 
moval in  case  of  attack,  the  spread  of  disease 
is  prevented.  It  is  almost  impossible."  he 
adds,  "  to  over-rate  the  good  that  has  resulted 
from  the  operation  of  these  acts."  Hear 
•what  is  said  by  Mr.  Lovett  of  the  Strand  : 
"  The  common  lodging-houses  in  Newcastle 
Court  are  cleaner,  better  conducted,  and, 
above  all,  there  is  a  less  amount  of  sickuess 
in  them  than  in  the  remaining  houses  in  the 
court."  In  Pentonville,  says  Mr.  Butler  of 
such  registered  houses,  "they  are  in  every 
respect  far  cleaner  and  healthier  than  the 
rooms  or  houses  occupied  by  those  persons 
over  whom  the  Common  Lodging  Houses' 
Act  has  no  control."  "  The  common  lodging- 
houses  of  this  town  are  clean,"  says  Mr. 
Walker  at  Woolwich.  "  I  wish  I  could  say  as 
much  for  those  houses  which  are  inhabited 
by  the  poor,  and  let  out  in  tenements  to 


single  families ;  there  I  meet  with  disease, 
filth,  overcrowding  to  a  frightful  extent."  "  I 
rarely,"  says  Mr.  Cleland  of  Limehouse, 
"  meet  with  epidemic  diseases  in  a  common 
lodging-house."  "  A  few  months  since," 
says  Dr.  Leete,  "typhus  fever  broke  out  in  a 
small  house  in  my  parish,  occupied  by  two 
families,  comprising  eighteen  individuals  ; 
every  one  suffered  from  the  disease  and 
several  died  ;  the  poison  was  present  in  the 
most  highly  concentrated  form  ;  it  was  posi- 
tively dangerous  to  pass  the  house.  Much  of 
this  evil  might  have  been  prevented  had  the 
inspector  authority  to  remove  the  first  case 
that  occurred."  And  so  the  doctors  all  might 
set  their  hands  to  the  certificate  of  one  of 
them,  which  I,  Lord  Tyler,  call  on  each  of 
you  to  repeat  after  me.  And  here  Richard 
Whittington,  Lord  Mayor,  called  for  silence, 
and  Richard  Coaur  de  Lion,  his  alderman, 
shrugging  his  hump-back,  seconded  his  wor- 
ship's call,  and  Lord  Tyler,  planting  firmly 
one  foot  upon  London  Stone,  raising  the 
other  foot  into  the  air,  gave  the  time  with  it 
to  the  people,  as  he  and  each  one  of  them 
after  him  lifted  up  a  voice  that  was  like 
the  lowing  of  a  number  of  sheep  pastured  on 
the  green  slopes  of  Niagara,  to  this  effect : 
"  I  certify  that  it  is  my  firm  convictiou  that 
the  present  system  of  common  lodging-houses 
is  working  the  desired  end,  and  were  it  tho- 
roughly developed  and  extended,  the  benefits 
to  society  would  be  enhanced." 

Then  up  starts  Mr.  Cox,  member  for 
Finsbury,  and  says  "  Ha,  ha  ! — Had  the 
noble  lord  ever  read  the  History  of  Eng- 
land 1  If  he  meant  to  play  Wat  Tyler  with 
the  people  of  England,  they  would  be  able 
to  find  persons  to  play  the  tyrant  against 
him."  And  as  the  noble  lord  had  (like  the 
Wat  Tyler  that  he  was),  been  stirring  up 
the  people  to  defend  their  homes,  and  to 
assert  their  rights  against  the  grasp- 
ing of  a  landlord,  Mr.  Cox,  playing  the 
tyrant  at  once,  kicked  over  the  lime- 
wash  pail,  and  helped  by  a  few  kindred 
bloods  drove  back  the  lower  orders  to  the 
dens  in  which  it  is  vouchsafed  to  them  to 
live  their  dirty  lives. 


Now  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  and  Sixpence,  neatly 
bound  in  cloth, 

THE  FIFTEENTH  YOLUME 

HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

Coutaining  the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  June  of  the  present 
year. 

Juat  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One 
Guinea, 

THE     DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILKIE  COLLINS. 
Bradbury  and  Evans,  Whiteiriars. 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  ly  the  Authors. 


Publiihed  at  the  Office,  No.  16,  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  BRADBURT  &EVAXS,  WLitefriars,  London, 


"Familiar  in  their  Months  as  HOUSEHOLD    WORDS."— s 


HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY   JOURNAL, 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


-  394.] 


SATURDAY,  OCTOBER  10,  1857. 


FnicE  Id. 
.  STAMPED  3d. 


THE  LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE 
APPRENTICES. 

IN   FIVE   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER   THE   SECOND. 

THE  dog-cart,  with.  Mr.  Thomas  Idle  and 
his  ankle  on  the  hanging  seat  behind,  Mr. 
Francis  Goodchild  and  the  Innkeeper  in 
front,  and  the  rain  in  spouts  and  splashes 
everywhere,  made  the  best  of  its  way  back 
to  the  little  Inn  ;  the  broken  moor  country 
looking  like  miles  upon  miles  of  Pre- Adamite 
sop,  or  the  ruins  of  some  enormous  jorum 
of  antediluvian  toast-and-water.  The  trees 
dripped  ;  the  eaves  of  the  scattered  cottages 
dripped ;  the  barren  stone-walls  dividing 
the  land,  dripped  ;  the  yelping  dogs  dripped  ; 
carts  and  waggons  under  ill- roofed  penthouses, 
dripped  ;  melancholy  cocks  and  hens  perch- 
ing on  their  shafts,  or  seeking  shelter  under- 
neath them,  dripped ;  Mr.  Goodchild  dripped ; 
Francis  Idle  dripped  ;  the  Innkeeper  drip- 
ped ;  the  mare  dripped  ;  the  vast  curtains 
of  mist  and  cloud  that  passed  before  the 
shadowy  forms  of  the  hills,  streamed  water 
as  they  were  drawn  across  the  landscape. 
Down  such  steep  pitches  that  the  mare 
seemed  to  be  trotting  on  her  head,  and 
up  such  steep  pitches  that  she  seemed  to 
have  a  supplementary  leg  in  her  tail,  the 
dog-cart  jolted  and  tilted  back  to  the  village. 
It  was  too  wet  for  the  women  to  look  out,  it 
was  too  wet  even  for  the  Children  to  look 
out ;  all  the  doors  and  windows  were  closed, 
and  the  only  sign  of  life  or  motion  was  in 
the  rain-punctured  puddles. 

Whisky  and  oil  to  Thomas  Idle's  ankle, 
and  whisky  without  oil  to  Francis  Good- 
child's  stomach,  produced  an  agreeable 
change  in  the  systems  of  both  :  soothing  Mr. 
Idle's  pain,  which  was  sharp  before,  and 
sweetening  Mr.  Goodchild's  temper,  which 
was  sweet  before.  Portmanteaus  being  then 
opened  and  clothes  changed,  Mr.  Goodchild, 
through  having  no  change  of  outer  garments 
but  broadcloth  and  velvet,  suddenly  became 
a  magnificent  portent  in  the  Innkeeper's 
house,  a  shining  frontispiece  to  the  Fashions 
for  the  month,  and  a  frightful  anomaly  in  the 
Cumberland  village. 

Greatly  ashamed  of  his  splendid  appear- 
ance, the  conscious  Goodchild  quenched  it  as 
much  as  possible,  in  the  shadow  of  Thomas 
Idle's  ankle,  and  in  a  corner  of  the  little 


covered  carriage  that  started  with  them  for 
Wigton — a  most  desirable  carriage  for  any 
country,  except  for  its  having  a  flat  roof  and 
no  sides  ;  which  caused  the  plumps  of  rain 
accumulating  on  the  roof  to  play  vigorous 
games  of  bagatelle  into  the  interior  all  the 
way,  and  to  score  immensely.  It  was  com- 
fortable to  see  how  the*  people  coming  back 
in  open  carts  from  Wigton  market  made  no 
more  of  the  rain  than  if  it  were  sunshine  ; 
how  the  Wigton  policeman  taking  a  country 
walk  of  half-a-dozen  miles  (apparently  for 
pleasure),  in  resplendent  uniform,  accepted 
saturation  as  his  normal  state  ;  how  clerks 
and  schoolmasters  in  black,  loitered  along  the 
road  without  iimbrellas,  getting  varnished 
at  every  step  ;  how  the  Cumberland  girls, 
coming  out  to  look  after  the  Cumberland 
cows,  shook  the  rain  from  their  eyelashes 
and  laughed  it  away ;  and  how  the  rain 
continued  to  fall  upon  all,  as  it  only  does  fall 
in  hill  countries. 

Wigton  market  was  over,  and  its  bare 
booths  were  smoking  with  rain  all  down  the 
street.  Mr.  Thomas  Idle,  melo-dramatically 
carried  to  the  Inn's  first  floor,  and  laid  upon 
three  chairs  (he  should  have  had  the  sofa,  if 
there  had  been  one),  Mr.  Goodehild  went  to 
the  window  to  take  an  observation  of  Wigton, 
and  report  what  he  saw  to  his  disabled 
companion. 

"  Brother  Francis,  brother  Francis,"  cried 
Thomas  Idle.  "  What  do  you  see  from  the 
turret  ? " 

"  I  see,"  said  Brother  Francis,  "  what  I 
hope  and  believe  to  be  one  of  the  most  dismal 
places  ever  seen  by  eyes.  I  see  the  houses 
with  their  roofs  of  dull  black,  their  stained 
fronts,  and  their  dark-rimmed  windows,  look- 
ing as  if  they  were  all  tti  mourning.  As 
every  little  pun0  of  wind  comes  down  the 
street,  I  see  a  perfect  train  of  rain  let  off 
along  the  wooden  stalls  in  the  market-place 
and  exploded  against  me.  I  see  a  very  big 
gas-lamp  in  the  centre  which  I  know,  by  a 
secret  instinct,  will  not  be  lighted  to-night. 
I  see  a  pump,  with  a  trivet  underneath  its 
spout  whereon  to  stand  the  vessels  that  are 
brought  to  be  filled  with  water.  I  see  a  man 
corae  to  pump,  and  he  pumps  very  hard,  but 
no  water  follows,  and  he  strolls  eiu  pty  away." 

"  Brother  Francis,  brother  Francis,"  cried 
Thomas  Idle,  "  what  more  do  you  see  from 


VOL. 


394 


338       [October  10,1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


the  turret,  besides  the  man  and  the  pump, 
and  the  trivet  and  the  houses  all  in  mourn- 
ing and  the  rain  1 " 

"  I  see,"  said  Brother  Francis,  "  one,  two, 
three,  four,  five,  linen-drapers'  shops  in  front 
of  me.  I  see  a  linen-draper's  shop  next  door 
to  the  right — and  there  are  five  more  linen- 
drapers'  shops  down  the  corner  to  the  left. 
Eleven  homicidal  linen-drapers'  shops  within 
a  short  stone's  throw,  each  with  its  hands  at 
the  throats  of  all  the  rest !  Over  the  small 
first- floor  of  one  of  these  linen-drapers'  shops 
appears  the  wonderful  inscription,  BANK." 

"  Brother  Francis,  brother  Francis,"  cried 
Thomas  Idle,  ''  what  more  do  you  see  from 
the  turret,  besides  the  eleven  homicidal  linen- 
drapers'  shops,  and  the  wonderful  insci-iption 
'  Bank  '  on  the  small  first-floor,  and  the  man 
and  the  pump  and  the  trivet  and  the  houses 
all  in  mourning  and  the  rain  ?  " 

"  I  see,"  said  Brother  Francis,  "  the  depo- 
sitory for  Christian  Knowledge,  and  through 
the  dark  vapour  I  think  I  again  make  out 
Mr.  Spurgeon  looming  heavily.  Her  Majesty 
the  Queen,  God  bless  her,  printed  in  colours, 
I  am  sure  I  see.  I  see  the  Illustrated  Lon- 
don News  of  several  weeks  ago,  and  I  see  a 
sweetmeat  shop — which  the  proprietor  calls 
a  '  Salt  Warehouse ' — with  one  small  female 
child  in  a  cotton  bonnet  looking  in  on  tip-toe, 
oblivious  of  rain.  And  I  see  a  watchmaker's, 
with  only  three  great  pale  watches  of  a  dull 
metal  hanging  in  his  window,  each  in  a  sepa- 
rate pane." 

"  Brother  Francis,  brother  Francis,"  cried 
Thomas  Idle,  "what  more  do  you  see  of 
Wigton,  besides  these  objects,  and  the  man 
and  the  pump  and  the  trivet  and  the  houses 
all  in  mourning  and  the  rain  I " 

"  I  see  nothing  more,"  said  Brother  Francis, 
"and  there  is  nothing  more  to  see,  except  the 
curlpaper  bill  of  the  theatre,  which  was 
opened  and  shut  last  week  (the  manager's 
family  played  all  the  parts),  and  the  short, 
square,  clunky  omnibus  that  goes  to  the  rail- 
way, and  leads  too  rattling  a  life  over  the 
stones  to  hold  together  long.  O  yes  !  Now, 
I  see  two  men  with  their  hands  in  their 
pockets  and  their  backs  towards  me." 

"  Brother  Francis,  brother  Francis,"  cried 
Thomas  Idle,  "  what  do  you  make  out  from 
the  turret,  of  the  expression  of  the  two  men 
with  their  hands  in  their  pockets  and  their 
backs  towards  you  1 " 

"  They  are  mysterious  men,"  said  brother 
Francis,  "  with  inscrutable  backs.  They 
keep  their  backs  towards  me  with  persis- 
tency. If  one  turns  an  inch  in  any  direction, 
the  other  turns  an  inch  in  the  same  direction, 
and  no  more.  They  turn  very  stiffly,  on  a 
very  little  pivot,  in  the  middle  of  the  market- 
place. Their  appearance  is  partly  of  a  mining, 
partly  of  a  ploughing,  partly  of  a  stable,  cha- 
racter. They  are  looking  at  nothing — very 
hard.  Their  backs  are  slouched,  and  their 
legs  are  curved  with  much  standing  about. 
Their  pockets  are  loose  and  dog's-eared,  on 


account  of  their  hands  being  always  in  them. 
They  stand  to  be  rained  upon,  without  any 
movement  of  impatience  or  dissatisfaction, 
and  they  keep  so  close  together  that  an  elbow 
of  each  jostles  an  elbow  of  the  other,  but 
they  never  speak.  They  spit  at  times,  but 
speak  not.  I  see  it  growing  darker  and 
darker,  and  still  I  see  them,  sole  visible  popu- 
lation of  the  place,  standing  to  be  rained  upon 
with  their  backs  towards  me,  and  looking  at 
nothing  very  hard." 

"  Brother  Francis,  brother  Francis,"  cried 
Thomas  Idle,  "  before  you  draw  down  the 
blind  of  the  turret  and  come  in  to  have  your 
head  scorched  by  the  hot  gas,  see  if  you  can, 
and  impart  to  me,  something  of  the  expres- 
sion of  those  two  amazing  men." 

"  The  murky  shadows,"  said  Francis  Good- 
child,  "  are  gathering  fast ;  and  the  wings  of 
evening,  and  the  wings  of  coal,  ai*e  folding 
over  Wigton.  Still,  they  look  at  nothing 
very  hard,  with  their  backs  towards  me. 
Ah  !  Now,  they  turn,  and  I  see — " 

"  Brother  Francis,  brother  Francis,"  cried 
Thomas  Idle,  "  tell  me  quickly  what  you  see 
of  the  two  men  of  Wigton  !  " 

"I  see,"  said  Francis  Goodchild,  "that 
they  have  no  expression  at  all.  And  now 
the  town  goes  to  sleep,  undazzled  by  the 
large  unlighted  lamp  in  the  market-place  ; 
and  let  no  man  wake  it." 

At  the  close  of  the  next  day's  journey, 
Thomas  Idle's  ankle  became  much  swollen 
and  inflamed.  There  are  reasons  which 
will  presently  explain  themselves  for  not 
publicly  indicating  the  exact  direction  in 
which  that  journey  lay,  or  the  place  in  which 
it  ended.  It  was  a  long  day's  shaking  of 
Thomas  Idle  over  the  rough  roads,  and  a 
long  day's  getting  out  and  going  on  before 
the  horses,  and  fagging  up  hills,  and  scouring 
down  hills,  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Goodchild, 
who  in  the  fatigues  of  such  labours  congra- 
tulated himself  on  attaining  a  high  point  of 
idleness.  It  was  at  a  little  town,  still  in 
Cumberland,  that  they  halted  for  the  night, 
— a  very  little  town,  with  the  purple  and 
brown  moor  close  upon  its  one  street ;  a 
curious  little  ancient  market-cross  set  up  in 
the  midst  of  it ;  and  the  town  itself  looking, 
much  as  if  it  were  a  collection  of  great  stones 
piled  on  end  by  the  Druids  long  ago,  which 
a  few  recluse  people  had  since  hollowed  out 
for  habitations. 

"  Is  there  a  doctor  here  ? "  asked  Mr. 
Goodchild,  on  his  knee,  of  the  motherly 
landlady  of  the  little  Inn  :  stopping  in  his 
examination  of  Mr.  Idle's  ankle,  with  the 
aid  of  a  candle. 

"Ey,  my  word!"  said  the  landlady,  glancing 
doubtfully  at  the  ankle  for  herself;  "there's 
Doctor  Speddie." 

"  Is  he  a  good  Doctor  1 " 

"  Ey !  "  said  the  landlady,  "  I  ca'  him  so. 
A'  cooms  efther  nae  doctor  that  I  ken. 
Mair  nor  which,  a's  just  THE  doctor  heer." 

"  Do  you  think  he  is  at  home  !  " 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPKENTICES.        [October  10,  »7.]     339 


Her  reply  was,  "  Gang  awa',  Jock,  and 
bring  him." 

Jock,  a  white-headed  boy,  who,  under 
pretence  of  stirring  up  some  bay  salt  in  a 
basin  of  water  for  the  laving  of  this  unfor- 
tunate ankle,  had  greatly  enjoyed  himself 
for  the  last  ten  minutes  in  splashing  the 
carpet,  set  off  promptly.  A  very  few  mi- 
nutes had  elapsed/when  he  showed  the  Doctor 
in,  by  tumbling  against  the  door  before  him 
and  bursting  it  open  with  his  head. 

"  Gently,  Jock,  gently,"  said  the  doctor  as 
he  advanced  with  a  quiet  step.  "  Gentlemen, 
a  good  evening.  I  am  sorry  that  my  presence 
is  required  here.  A  slight  accident,  I  hope  1  A 
slip  and  a  fall  ?  Yes,  yes,  yes.  Carrock,  indeed? 
Hah  !  Does  that  pain  you,  sir  1  No  doubt, 
it  does.  It  is  the  great  connecting  ligament 
here,  you  see,  that  has  been  badly  strained. 
Time  and  rest,  sir !  They  are  often  the  re- 
cipe in  greater  cases,"  with  a  slight  sigh,  "  and 
often  the  recipe  in  small.  I  can  send  a  lotion 
to  relieve  you,  but  we  must  leave  the  cure  to 
time  and  rest." 

This  he  said,  holding  Idle's  foot  on  his 
knee  between  his  two  hands,  as  he  sat  over 
against  him.  He  had  touched  it  tenderly 
and  skilfully  in  explanation  of  what  he  said, 
and,  when  his  careful  examination  was  com- 
pleted, softly  returned  it  to  its  former  hori- 
zontal position  on  a  chair. 

He  spoke  with  a  little  irresolution  whenever 
he  began,  but  afterwards  fluently.  He  was  a 
tall,  thin,  large-boned,  old  gentleman,  with  an 
appearance  at  first  sight  of  being  hard- 
featured  ;  but,  at  a  second  glance,  the  mild 
expression  of  his  face  and  some  particular 
touches  of  sweetness  and  patience  about  his 
mouth,  corrected  this  impression  and  assigned 
his  long  professional  rides,  by  day  and  night, 
in  the  bleak  hill-weather,  as  the  true  cause  of 
that  appearance.  He  stooped  very  little, 
though  past  seventy  and  very  grey.  His 
dress  was  more  like  that  of  a  clergyman  than 
a  country  doctor,  being  a  plain  black  suit, 
and  a  plain  white  neck-kerchief  tied  behind 
like  a  band.  His  black  was  the  worse  for 
wear,  and  there  were  darns  in  his  coat,  and 
his  linen  was  a  little  frayed  at  the  hems  and 
edges.  He  might  have  been  poor — it  was 
likely  enough  in  that  out-of-the-way  spot — 
or  he  might  have  been  a  little  self-forgetful 
and  eccentric.  Anyone  could  have  seen 
directly,  that  he  had  neither  wife  nor  child  at 
home.  He  had  a  scholarly  air  with  him,  and 
that  kind  of  considerate  humanity  towards 
others  which  claimed  a  gentle  consideration 
for  himself.  Mr.  Goodchild  made  this  study 
of  him  while  he  was  examining  the  limb,  and 
as  he  laid  it  down,  Mr.  Goodchild  wishes  to 
add  that  he  considers  it  a  very  good  likeness. 

It  came  out  in  the  course  of  a  little  con- 
versation, that  Doctor  Speddie  was  ac- 
quainted with  some  friends  of  Thomas  Idle's, 
and  had,  when  a  young  man,  passed  some 
years  in  Thomas  Idle's  birthplace  on  the 
other  side  of  England.  Certain  idle  labours, 


the  fruit  of  Mr.  Goodchild's  apprenticeship, 
also  happened  to  be  well  known  to  him.  The 
lazy  travellers  were  thus  placed  on  a  more  inti- 
mate footing  with  the  Doctor  than  the  casual 
circumstances  of  the  meeting  would  of  them- 
selves have  established ;  and  when  Doctor 
Speddie  rose  to  go  home,  remarking  that  he 
would  send  his  assistant  with  the  lotion, 
Francis  Goodchild  said  that  was  unnecessary, 
for,  by  the  Doctor's  leave,  he  would  accom- 
pany him,  and  bring  it  back.  (Having  done 
nothing  to  fatigue  himself  for  a  full  quarter 
of  an  hour,  Francis  began  to  fear  that  he  was 
not  in  a  state  of  idleness.) 

Doctor  Speddie  politely  assented  to  the 
proposition  of  Francis  Goodchild,  "  as  it  would 
give  him  the  pleasure  of  enjoying  a  few  more 
minutes  of  Mr.  Goodchild's  society  than  he 
could  otherwise  have  hoped  for,"  and  they 
went  out  together  into  the  village  street. 
The  rain  had  nearly  ceased,  the  clouds  had 
broken  before  a  cool  wind  from  the  north- 
east, and  stars  were  shining  from  the  peaceful 
heights  beyond  them. 

Doctor  Speddie's  house  was  the  last  house 
in  the  place.  Beyond  it,  lay  the  moor,  all 
dark  and  lonesome.  The  wind  moaned  in  a 
low,  dull,  shivering  manner  round  the  little 
garden,  like  a  houseless  creature  that  knew 
the  winter  was  coming.  It  was  exceedingly 
wild  and  solitary.  "  Roses,"  said  the  Doc- 
tor, when  Goodchild  touched  some  wet 
leaves  overhanging  the  stone  porch ;  "  but 
they  get  cut  to  pieces." 

The  Doctor  opened  the  door  with  a  key  he 
carried,  and  led  the  way  into  a  low  but  pretty 
ample  hall  with  rooms  on  either  side.  The 
door  of  one  of  these  stood  open,  and  the  Doctor 
entered  it,  with  a  word  of  welcome  to  his 
guest.  It,  too,  was  a  low  room,  half  surgery 
and  half  parlor,  with  shelves  of  books  and 
bottles  against  the  walls,  which  were  of  a 
very  dark  hue.  There  was  a  fire  in  the  grate, 
the  night  being  damp  and  chill.  Leaning 
against  the  chimney-piece  looking  down  into 
it,  stood  the  Doctor's  Assistant. 

A  man  of  a  most  remarkable  appearance. 
Much  older  than  Mr.  Goodchild  had  expected, 
for  he  was  at  least  two-and-fifty  ;  but,  that  was 
nothing.  What  was  startling  in  him  was 
his  remarkable  paleness.  His  large  black 
eyes,  his  sunken  cheeks,  his  long  and  heavy 
iron-grey  hair,  his  wasted  hands,  and  even, 
the  attenuation  of  his  figure,  were  at  first  for- 
gotten in  his  extraordinary  pallor.  There 
was  no  vestige  of  color  in  the  man.  When  he 
turned  his  face,  Francis  Goodchild  started 
as  if  a  stone  figure  had  looked  round  at 
him. 

"  Mr.  Lorn,"  said  the  Doctor.  "  Mr.  Good- 
child." 

The  Assistant,  in  a  distraught  way — as  if 
he  had  forgotten  something — as  if  he  had 
forgotten  everything,  even  to  his  4own  name 
and  himself — acknowledged  the  visitor's  pre- 
sence, and  stepped  further  back  into  the 
shadow  of  the  wall  behind  him.  But,  he  was 


340          [Octobtr  10,  1S5;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[.Conducted  by 


BO  pale  that  his  face  stood  out  in  relief 
against  the  dark  wall,  aud  really  could  not 
be  hidden  so. 

".Mr.  Goodchild's  friend  has  met  with 
an  accident,  Lorn,"  said  Doctor  Speddie. 
"  We  want  the  lotion  for  a  bad  sprain." 

A   pause. 

"  My  dear  fellow,  you  are  more  than 
usually  absent  to-night.  The  lotion  for  a 
bad  sprain." 

"  Ah  !  yes  !     Directly." 

He  was  evidently  relieved  to  turn  away, 
and  to  take  his  white  face  and  his  wild  eyes 
to  a  table  in  a  recess  among  the  bottles.  But, 
though  he  stood  there,  compounding  the 
lotion  with  his  back  towards  them,  Good- 
child  could  not,  for  many  moments,  withdraw 
his  gaze  from  the  man.  When  he  at  length 
did  so,  he  found  the  Doctor  observing  him, 
with  some  trouble  in  his  face.  "  He  is 
absent,"  explained  the  Doctor,  in  a  low  voice. 
"  Always  absent.  Very  absent." 

"  Is  he  ill  ? " 

"  No,  not  ill." 

"  Unhappy  ? " 

"  I  have  my  suspicions  that  he  was," 
assented  the  Doctor,  "  once." 

Francis  Goodchild  could  not  but  observe 
that  the  Doctor  accompanied  these  words 
with  a  benignant  and  protecting  glance  at  their 
subject,  in  which  there  was  much  of  the 
expression  with  which  an  attached  father 
might  have  looked  at  a  heav.ily  afflicted  son. 
Yet,  that  they  were  not  father  and  son  must 
have  been  plain  to  most  eyes.  The  Assistant, 
on  the  other  hand,  turning  presently  to  ask 
the  Doctor  some  question,  looked  at  him 
with  a  wan  smile  as  if  he  were  his  whole 
reliance  and  sustainment  in  life. 

It  was  in  vain  for  the  Doctor  in  his  easy 
chair,  to  try  to  lead  the  mind  of  Mr.  Good- 
child  in  the  opposite  easy  chair,  away  from 
•what  was  before  him.  Let  Mr.  Goodchild 
do  what  he  would  to  follow  the  Doctor, 
his  eyes  and  thoughts  reverted  to  the  As- 
sistant. The  Doctor  soon  perceived  it,  and, 
after  falling  silent,  and  musing  in  a  little 
perplexity,  said : 

"  Lorn  !  " 

"  My  dear  Doctor." 

^  Would  you  go  to  the  Inn,  and  apply  that 
lotion  ?  You  will  show  the  best  way  of 
applying  it,  far  better  than  Mr.  Goodchild 
can." 

"  With  pleasure." 

The  Assistant  took  his  hat,  and  passed  like 
a  shadow  to  the  door. 

"Lorn!"  said  the  Doctor,  calling  after 
him. 

He  returned. 

"  Mr.  Goodchild  will  keep  me  company  till 
you  come  home.  Don't  hurry.  Excuse  my 
calling  you  back." 

"  It  is  not,"  said  the  Assistant,  with  Us 
former  smile,  "  the  first  time  you  have  called 
me  back,  dear  Doctor."  With  those  words 
he  went  away. 


"Mr.  Goodchild,"  said  Doctor  Speddie,  in 
a  low  voice,  aud  with  his  former  troubled  ex- 
pression of  face,  "  I  have  seen  that  your  at- 
tention has  been  concentrated  on  my  friend." 

"  He  fascinates  me.  I  must  apologise  to 
you,  but  he  has  quite  bewildered  and  mas- 
tered me." 

"I  find  that  a  lonely  existence  and  a  long 
seci-et,"  said  the  Doctor,  drawing  his  chair  a 
little  nearer  to  Mr.  Goodchild's,  "  become  in 
the  course  of  time  very  heavy.  I  will  tell  you 
something.  You  may  make  what  use  you 
will  of  it,  under  fictitious  names.  I  know  I 
may  trust  you.  I  am  the  more  inclined  to 
confidence  to-night,  through  having  been  un- 
expectedly led  back,  by  the  current  of  our 
conversation  at  the  Inn,  to  scenes  in  my 
early  life.  Will  you  please  to  draw  a  little 
nearer  1 " 

Mr.  Goodchild  drew  a  little  nearer,  and 
the  Doctor  went  on  thus  :  speaking,  for  the 
most  part,  in  so  cautious  a  voice,  that  the 
wind,  though  it  was  far  from  high,  occasion- 
ally got  the  better  of  him. 

When  this  present  nineteenth  century  waa 
younger  by  a  good  many  years  than  it  is  now,  a 
certain  friend  of  mine,named  Arthur  Holliday, 
happened  to  arrive  in  the  town  of  Doncaster, 
exactly  in  the  middle  of  the  race-week,  or,  in 
other  words,  in  the  middle  of  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember. He  was  one  of  those  reckless,  rattle- 
pated,  open-hearted,  and  open-mouthed  young 
gentlemen,  who  possess  the  gift  of  familiarity 
in  its  highest  perfection,  and  who  scramble 
carelessly  along  the  journey  of  life  making 
friends,  as  the  phrase  is,  wherever  they  go. 
His  father  was  a  rich  manufactiu'er,  aud  had 
bought  landed  property  enough  in  one  of  the 
midland  counties  to  make  all  the  born  squires 
in  his  neighbourhood  thoroughly  envious  of 
him.  Arthur  was  his  only  sou,  possessor  in 
prospect  of  the  great  estate  and  the  great 
business  afte"r  his  father's  death  ;  well  sup- 
plied with  money,  and  not  too  rigidly  looked 
after,  during  his  father's  lifetime.  Eeporfc, 
or  scandal,  whichever  you  please,  said  that 
the  old  gentleman  had  been  rather  wild  in 
his  youthful  days,  and  that,  unlike  most 
parents,  he  was  not  disposed  to  be  violently 
indignant  when  he  found  that  his  son  took 
after  him.  This  may  be  true  or  not.  I 
myself  only  knew  the  elder  Mr.  Holliday 
when  he  was  getting  on  in  years  ;  and  then 
he  was  as  quiet  and  as  respectable  a  gentle- 
man as  ever  I  met  with. 

Well,  one  September,  as  I  told  you,  young 
Arthur  comes  to  Doncaster,  having  decided 
all  of  a  sudden,  in  his  hare-brained  way,  that 
he  would  go  to  the  races.  He  did  not  reach 
the  town  till  towards  the  close  of  the  evening, 
and  he  went  at  once  to  see  about  his  dinner 
and  bed  at  the  principal  hotel.  Dinner  they 
were  ready  enough  to  give  him  ;  but  as  for  a 
bed,  they  laughed  when  he  mentioned  it.  In 
the  race-week  at  Doucaster,  it  is  no  uncom- 
mon thing  for  visitors  who  have  not  bespoken 


Chitrlea  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUE  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPRENTICES.       [October  10,  ia;j    341 


apartments,  to  pass  the  niglit  in  their  car- 
riages at  the  inn  doors.  As  for  the  lower 
sort  of  strangers,  I  myself  have  often  seen 
them,  at  that  full  time,  sleeping  out  on  the 
doorsteps  for  want  of  a  covered  place  to  creep 
under.  Eicli  as  he  was,  Arthur's  chance  of 
getting  a  night's  lodging  (seeing  that  he  had 
not  written  beforehand  to  secure  one)  was 
more  than  doubtful.  He  tried  the  second 
hotel,  and  the  third  hotel,  and  two  of  the 
inferior  inns  after  that ;  and  was  met  every- 
where by  the  same  form  of  answer.  No 
accommodation  for  the  night  of  any  sort  was 
left.  All  the  bright  golden  sovereigns  in  his 
pocket  would  not  buy  him  a  bed  at  Don- 
caster  in  the  race-week. 

To  a  young  fellow  of  Arthur's  temperament, 
the  novelty  of  being  turned  away  into  the 
street,  like  a  penniless  vagabond,  at  every 
house  where  he  asked  for  a  lodging,  presented 
itself  in  the  light  of  a  new  and  highly 
amusing  piece  of  experience.  He  went  on, 
with  his  carpet-bag  in  his  hand,  applying  for 
a  bed  at  every  place  of  entertain  ment  for 
travellers  that  he  could  find  in  Doncaster, 
until  he  wandered  into  the  outskirts  of  the 
town.  By  this  time,  the  last  glimmer  of 
twilight  had  faded  out,  the  moon  was  rising 
dimly  in  a  mist,  the  wind  was  getting  cold, 
the  clouds  were  gathering  heavily,  and  there 
was  every  prospect  that  it  was  soon  going  to 
rain. 

The  look  of  the  night  had  rather  a  lowering 
effect  on  young  Holliday's  good  spirits.  He 
began  to  contemplate  the  houseless  situation 
in  which  he  was  placed,  from  the  serious 
rather  than  the  humorous  point  of  view ; 
and  he  looked  about  him,  for  another  public- 
house  to  enquire  at,  with  something  very 
like  downright  anxiety  in  his  mind  on  the 
subject  of  a  lodging  for  the  night.  The 
suburban  part  of  the  town  towards  which  he 
had  now  strayed  was  hardly  lighted  at  all, 
and  he  could  see  nothing  of  the  houses  as  he 
passed  them,  except  that  they  got  progres- 
sively smaller  and  dirtier,  the  farther  he 
went.  Down  the  winding  road  before  him 
shone  the  dull  gleam  of  an  oil  lamp,  the  one 
faint,  lonely  light  that  struggled  ineffectually 
with  the  foggy  darkness  all  round  him.  He 
resolved  to  go  on  as  far  as  this  lamp,  and 
then,  if  it  showed  him  nothing  in  the  shape 
of  an  Inn,  to  return  to  the  central  part  of 
the  town  and  to  try  if  he  could  not  at  least 
secure  a  chair  to  sit  down  on,  through  the 
night,  at  one  of  the  principal  Hotels. 

As  he  got  near  the  lamp,  he  heard  voices  ; 
and,  walking  close  under  it,  found  that  it 
lighted  the  entrance  to  a  narrow  court,  on 
the  wall  of  which  was  painted  a  long  hand  in 
faded  flesh-colour,  pointing,  with  a  lean  fore- 
finger, to  this  inscription  : — 

THE  Two  ROBINS. 

Arthur  turned  into  the  court  without 
hesitation,  to  see  what  The  Two  Robins  could 
do  for  him.  Four  or  five  men  were  standing 


together  round  the  door  of  the  house  which 
was  at  the  bottom  of  the  court,  facing  the 
entrance  from  the  street.  The  men  were 
all  listening  to  one  other  man,  better  dressed 
than  the  rest,  who  was  telling  his  audience 
something,  in  a  low  voice,  in  which  they  were 
apparently  very  much  interested. 

On  entering  the  passage,  Arthur  was 
passed  by  a  stranger  with  a  knapsack  in 
his  hand,  who  was  evidently  leaving  the 
house. 

"  No,"  said  the  traveller  with  the  knap- 
sack, turning  round  and  addressing  himself 
cheerfully  to  a  fat,  sly-looking,  bald-headed 
man,  with  a  dirty  white  apron  on,  who  had 
followed  him  down  the  passage.  "  No,  Mr. 
Landlord,  I  am  not  easily  scared  by  trifles  ; 
but,  I  don't  mind  confessing  that  I  can't 
quite  stand  that." 

It  occurred  to  young  Holliday,  the  moment 
he  heard  these  words,  that  the  stranger  had 
been  asked  an  exorbitant  price  for  a  bed  at 
The  Two  Eobins  ;  and  that  he  was  unable 
or  unwilling  to  pay  it.  The  moment  his 
back  was  turned,  Arthur,  comfortably  con- 
scious of  his  own  well-filled  pockets,  ad- 
dressed himself  in  a  great  hurry,  for  fear 
any  other  benighted  traveller  should  slip  in 
and  forestall  him,  to  the  sly-looking  land- 
lord with  the  dirty  apron  and  the  bald 
head. 

"  If  you  have  got  a  bed  to  let,"  he  said, 
"and  if  that  gentleman  who  has  just  goue 
out  won't  pay  you  your  price  for  it,  I  will." 

The  sly  landlord  looked  hard  at  Arthur. 

"  Will  you,  sir  '?  "  he  asked,  in  a  meditative, 
doubtful  way. 

"  Name  your  price,"  said  young  Holliday, 
thinking  that  the  landlord's  hesitation  sprang 
from  some  boorish  distrust  of  him.  "  Name 
your  price,  and  I'll  give  you  the  money  at 
once,  if  you  like  1 " 

"  Are  you  game  for  five  shillings  1 "  en- 
quired the  landlord,  rubbing  his  stubbly 
double  chin,  and  looking  up  thoughtfully  at 
the  ceiling  above  him. 

Arthur  nearly  laughed  in  the  man's  face  ; 
but  thinking  it  prudent  to  control  himself, 
offered  the  five  shillings  as  seriously  as  he 
could.  The  sly  landlord  held  out  his  hand, 
then  suddenly  drew  it  back  again. 

"  You're  acting  all  fair  and  above-board  by 
me,"  he  said :  "  and,  before  I  take  your 
money,  I'll  do  the  same  by  you.  Look  here, 
this  is  how  it  stands.  You  can  have  a  bed 
all  to  yourself  for  five  shillings  ;  but  you 
can't  have  more  than  a  half-share  of  the 
room  it  stands  in.  Do  you  see  what  I  mean, 
young  gentleman  ?  " 

"Of  course  I  do," returned  Arthur,  a  little 
irritably.  "  You  mean  that  it  is  a  double- 
bedded  room,  and  that  one  of  the  beds  is 
occupied  1 " 

The  landlord  nodded  his  head,  and  rubbed 
Ids  double  chin  harder  than  ever.  Arthur 
hesitated,  and  mechanically  moved  back  a 
step  or  two  towards  the  door.  The  idea  of 


342       [October  ID,  1S37- 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted 


sleeping  iu  the  same  room  with  a  total 
stranger,  did  not  present  an  attractive  pros- 
pect to  him.  lie  felt  more  than  half-in- 
clined to  drop  his  five  shillings  into  his 
pocket,  and  to  go  out  into  the  street  once 
inon-. 

"  Is  it  yes,  or  no  ? "  asked  the  landlord. 
"Settle  it  us  quick  as  you  can,  because  there's 
lots  of  people  wanting  a  bed  at  Doucaster  to- 
night, besides  you." 

-A  rthur  looked  towards  the  court,  and  heard 
the  rain  falling  heavily  in  the  street  outside. 
He  thought  he  would  ask  a  question  or  two 
before  he  rashly  decided  on  leaving  the  shelter 
of  The  Two  Robins. 

"  What  sort  of  a  man  is  it  who  has  got  the 
other  bed?"  he  inquired.  "Is  he  a  gentle- 
man 1  I  mean,  is  he  a  quiet,  well-behaved 
person  1  " 

"The  quietest  man  I  ever  came  across," 
said  the  landlord,  rubbing  his  fat  hands 
stealthily  one  over  the  other.  "  As  sober  as 
a  judge,  and  as  regular  as  clock-work  in  his 
habits.  It  hasn't  struck  nine,  not  ten  mi- 
nutes ago,  and  he's  in  his  bed  already.  I 
don't  know  whether  that  comes  up  to  your 
notion  of  a  quiet  man  :  it  goes  a  long  way  a- 
head  of  mine,  I  can  tell  you." 

"  Is  he  asleep,  do  you  think  1 "  asked 
Arthur. 

"  I  know  he's  asleep,"  returned  the  land- 
lord. "And  what's  more,  he's  gone  off  so 
fast,  that  I'll  warrant  you  don't  wake  him. 
This  way,  sir,"  said  the  landlord,  speaking 
over  young  Holiday's  shoulder,  as  if  he  was 
addressingsome  new  guest  who  was  approach- 
ing the  house. 

"  Here  you  are,"  said  Arthur,  determined 
to  be  before-hand  with  the  stranger,  whoever 
he  might  be.  "  I'll  take  the  bed."  And  he 
handed  the  five  shillings  to  the  landlord,  who 
nodded,  dropped  the  money  carelessly  into 
his  waistcoat-pocket,  and  lighted  a  candle. 

"  Come  up  and  see  the  room,"  said  the 
host  of  The  Two  Robins,  leading  the  way  to 
the  staircase  quite  briskly,  considering  how 
i'at  he  was. 

They  mounted  to  the  second-floor  of  the 
house.  The  landlord  half  opened  a  door, 
fronting  the  landing,  then  stopped,  and  turned 
round  to  Arthur. 

"  It'*  a  fair  bargain,  mind,  on  my  side  as 
well  as  on  yours,"  he  said.  "  You  give  me 
five  shillings,  I  give  you  iu  return  a  clean, 
comfortable  bed  ;  and  I  warrant,  beforehand, 
that  you  won't  be  interfered  with,  or  annoyed 
in  any  way,  by  the  man  who  sleeps  in  the 
same  room  with  you."  Saying  those  words, 
he  looked  hard,  for  a  moment,  in  young 
Holliday's  face,  aud  then  led  the  way  into  the 
room. 

It  was  larger  and  cleaner  than  Arthur  had 
expected  it  would  be.  The  two  beds  stood 
parallel  with  each  other — a  space  of  about 
six  feet  intervening  between  them.  They 
Were  both  of  the  same  medium  size,  and  both 
had  the  same  plain  white  curtains,  made  to 


draw,  if  necessary,  all  round  them.  The 
occupied  bed  was  the  bed  nearest  the  window. 
The  curtains  were  all  drawn  round  this,  ex- 
cept the  half  curtain  at  the  bottom,  on  the 
side  of  the  bed  farthest  from  the  window. 
Arthur  saw  the  feet  of  the  sleeping  man 
raising  the  scanty  clothes  into  a  sharp  little 
eminence,  as  if  he  was  lying  flat  on  his  back. 
He  took  the  candle,  and  advanced  softly  to 
draw  the  curtain — stopped  half  way,  and 
listened  for  a  moment — then  turned  to  the 
landlord. 

"  He  is  a  very  quiet  sleeper,"  said  Arthur. 

"Yes,"  said  the  landlord,  "very  quiet." 

Young  Holliday  advanced  with  the  candle, 
and  looked  in  at  the  man  cautiously. 

"  How  pale  he  is  !  "  said  Arthur. 

"Yes,"  returned  the  landlord,  "pale 
enough,  isn't  he  1 " 

Arthur  looked  closer  at  the  man.  The 
bed-clothes  were  drawn  up  to  his  chin,  and 
they  lay  perfectly  still  over  the  region  of  his 
chest.  Surprised  and  vaguely  startled,  as  he 
noticed  this,  Arthur  stooped  down  closer  over 
the  stranger  ;  looked  at  his  ashy,  parted  lips  ; 
listened  breathlessly  for  an  instant ;  looked 
again  at  the  strangely  still  face,  and  the 
motionless  lips  and  chest ;  and  turned  round 
suddenly  on  the  landlord,  with  his  own  cheeks 
as  pale  for  the  moment  as  the  hollow  cheeks 
of  the  man  on  the  bed. 

"  Come  here,"  he  whispered,  under  his 
breath.  "  Come  here,  for  God's  sake  !  The- 
man's  not  asleep — he  is  dead  !  " 

"You  have  found  that  out  sooner  than  I 
thought  you  would,"  said  the  landlord  com- 
posedly. "  Yes,  he's  dead,  sure  enough.  He- 
died  at  five  o'clock  to-day." 

"  How  did  he  die  ?  Who  is  he  1 "  asked 
Arthur,  staggered,  for  the  moment,  by  the 
audacious  coolness  of  the  answer. 

'  s  to  who  is  he,"  rejoined  the  landlord, 
"I  know  no  more  about  him  than  you  do. 
There  are  his  books  and  letters  and  things, 
all  sealed  up  in  that  brown  paper  parcel,  for 
the  Coroner's  inquest  to  open  to-morrow  or 
next  day.  He's  been  here  a  week,  paying 
his  way  fairly  enough,  and  stopping  in-dooi's, 
for  the  most  part,  as  if  he  was  ailing.  My 
girl  brought  him  up  his  tea  at  five  to-day ; 
and  as  he  was  pouring  of  it  out,  he  fell  down 
in  a  faint,  or  a  fit,  or  a  compound  of  both, 
for  anything  I  know.  We  could  not  bring 
him  to — and  I  said  he  was  dead.  And  the 
doctor  couldn't  bring  him  to — and  the  doctor 
said  he  was  dead.  And  there  he  is.  And 
the  Coroner's  inquest's  coming  as  soon  as  it 
can.  And  that's  as  much  as  I  know  about 
it." 

Arthur  held  the  candle  close  to  the  man's 
lips.  The  flame  still  burnt  straight  up,  as 
steadily  as  ever.  There  was  a  moment  of 
silence  ;  and  the  rain  pattered  drearily 
through  it  against  the  panes  of  the  window. 

"  If  you  haven't  got  nothing  more  to  say 
to  me,"  continued  the  landlord,  "  I  suppose  I 
may  go.  You  don't  expect  your  five  shillings 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUE  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPKENTICES.       [October  10,  u»r.]     343 


back,  do  you  ?  There's  the  bed  I  promised 
you,  clean  and  comfortable.  There's  the 
man  I  warranted  not  to  disturb  you,  quiet  in 
this  world  for  ever.  If  you're  frightened  to 
stop  alone  with  him,  that's  not  my  look  out. 
I've  kept  nay  part  of  the  bargain,  and  I  mean 
to  keep  the  money.  I'm  not  Yorkshire,  my- 
self, young  gentleman  ;  but  I've  lived  long 
enough  in  these  parts  to  have  my  wits 
sharpened  ;  and  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  you 
found  out  the  way  to  brighten  up  yours,  next 
time  you  come  among  us."  With  these 
words,  the  landlord  turned  towards  the  door, 
and  laughed  to  himself  softly,  in  high_satis- 
faction  at  his  own  sharpness. 

Startled  and  shocked  as  he  was,  Arthur 
had  by  this  time  sufficiently  recovered 
himself  to  feel  indignant  at  the  trick  that 
had  been  played  on  him,  and  at  the  in- 
solent manner  in  which  the  landlox-d  exulted 
in  it. 

"Don't  laugh,"  he  said  sharply,  "till  you 
are  quite  sure  you  have  got  the  laugh  against 
me.  You  shan't  have  the  five  shillings  for 
nothing,  my  man.  I'll  keep  the  bed." 

"  Will  you  ?  "  said  the  landlord.  "  Then  I 
wish  you  a  good  night's  rest."  With  that 
brief  farewell,  he  went  out,  and  shut  the  door 
after  him. 

A  good  night's  rest !  The  words  had 
hardly  been  spoken,  the  door  had  hardly 
been  closed,  before  Arthur  half-repented  the 
hasty  words  that  had  just  escaped  him. 
Though  not  naturally  over-sensitive,  and  not 
wanting  in  courage  of  the  moral  as  well  as 
the  physical  sort,  the  presence  of  the  dead 
man  had  an  instantaneously  chilling  effect  on 
his  mind  when  he  found  himself  alone  in  the 
room — alone,  and  bound  by  his  own  rash 
words  to  stay  there  till  the  next  morning. 
An  older  man  would  have  thought  nothing 
of  those  words,  and  would  have  acted,  with- 
out reference  to  them,  as  his  calmer  sense 
suggested.  But  Arthur  was  too  young  to 
treat  the  ridicule,  even  of  his  inferiors,  with 
contempt — too  young  not  to  fear  the  momen- 
tary humiliation  of  falsifying  his  own  foolish 
boast,  more  than  he  feared  the  trial  of 
watching  out  the  long  night  in  the  same 
chamber  with  the  dead. 

"It  is  but  a  few  hours,"  he  thought  to 
himself,  "  and  I  can  get  away  the  first  thing 
in  the  morning." 

He  was  looking  towards  the  occupied  bed 
as  that  idea  passed  through  his  mind,  and 
the  sharp  angular  eminence  made  in  the 
clothes  by  the  dead  man's  upturned  feet 
again  caught  his  eye.  He  advanced  and 
drew  the  curtains,  purposely  abstaining,  as 
he  did  so,  from  looking  at  the  face  of  the 
corpse,  lest  he  might  unnerve  himself  at  the 
outset  by  fastening  some  ghastly  impression 
of  it  on  his  mind.  He  drew  the  curtain 
very  gently,  and  sighed  involuntarily  as  he 
closed  it.  "  Poor  fellow,"  he  said,  almost  as 
sadly  as  if  he  had  known  the  man.  "Ah, 
poor  fellow ! " 


He  went  next  to  the  window.  The  night 
was  black,  and  he  could  see  nothing  from  it. 
The  rain  still  pattered  heavily  against  the 
glass.  He  inferred,  from  hearing  it,  that 
the  window  was  at  the  back  of  the  house  ; 
remembering  that  the  front  was  sheltered 
from  the  weather  by  the  court  and  the  build- 
ings over  it. 

While  he  was  still  standing  at  the  window 
— for  even  the  dreary  rain  was  a  relief,  be- 
cause of  the  sound  it  made  ;  a  relief,  also, 
because  it  moved,  and  had  some  faint  sugges- 
tion, in  consequence,  of  life  and  companion- 
ship in  it — while  he  was  standing  at  the 
window,  and  looking  vacantly  into  the  black 
darkness  outside,  he  heard  a  distant  church- 
clock  strike  ten.  Only  ten  !  How  was  he 
to  pass  the  time  till  the  house  was  astir  the 
next  morning  ? 

Under  any  other  circumstances,  he  would 
have  gone  down  to  the  public-house  parlour, 
would  have  called  for  his  grog,  and  would 
have  laughed  and  talked  with  the  company 
assembled  as  familiarly  as  if  he  had  known 
them  all  his  life.  But  the  very  thought  of 
whiling  away  the  time  in  this  manner  was 
now  distasteful  to  him.  The  new  situation 
in  which  he  was  placed  seemed  to  have 
altered  him  to  himself  already.  Thus  far, 
his  life  had  been  the  common,  trifling,  prosaic, 
surface-life  of  a  prosperous  young  man,  with 
no  troubles  to  conquer,  and  no  trials  to 
face.  He  had  lost  no  relation  whom  he 
loved,  no  friend  whom  he  treasured.  Till 
this  night,  what  share  he  had  of  the  immortal 
inheritance  that  is  divided  amongst  us  all, 
had  lain  dormant  within  him.  Till  this 
night,  Death  and  he  had  not  once  met,  even 
in  thought. 

He  took  a  few  turns  up  and  down  the 
room — then  stopped.  The  noise  made  by  his 
boots  on  the  poorly  carpeted  floor,  jarred  on 
his  ear.  He  hesitated  a  little,  and  ended  by 
taking  the  boots  off,  and  walking  backwards 
and  forwards  noiselessly.  All  desire  to  sleep 
or  to  rest  had  left  him.  The  bare  thought  of 
lying  down  on  the  unoccupied  bed  instantly 
drew  the  picture  on  his  mind  of  a  dreadful 
mimicry  of  the  position  of  the  dead  man. 
Who  was  he  1  What  was  the  story  of  his 
past  life  1  Poor  he  must  have  been,  or  he 
would  not  have  stopped  at  such  a  place  as 
The  Two  Kobins  Inn — and  weakened,  pro- 
bably, by  long  illness,  or  he  could  hardly 
have  died  in  the  manner  which  the  landlord 
had  described.  Poor,  ill,  lonely, — dead  in  a 
strange  place ;  dead,  with  nobody  but  a 
stranger  to  pity  him.  A  sad  story :  truly, 
on  the  mere  face  of  it,  a  very  sad  story. 

While  these  thoughts  were  passing  through 
his  mind,  he  had  stopped  insensibly  at  the 
window,  close  to  which  stood  the  foot  of  the 
bed  with  the  closed  curtains.  At  first  he 
looked  at  it  absently ;  then  he  became  con- 
scious that  his  eyes  were  fixed  on  it  ;  and 
then,  a  perverse  desire  took  possession  of  him 
to  do  the  very  thing  which  he  had  resolved 


3 '4      iOctobcrlo.  i?s;.i 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(•Conducted  faj 


r.ot  to  do,  up  to  this  time — to  look  at  the 
dead  man. 

He  stretched  out  his  hand  towards  the 
curtains  ;  but  checked  himself  in  the  very 
act  of  undrawing  them,  turned  his  back 
sharply  on  the  bed,  and  walked  towards  the 
chimney-piece,  to  see  what  things  were 
placed  on  it,  and  to  try  if  he  could  keep  the 
dead  man  out  of  his  mind  in  that  way. 

There  was  a  pewter  inkstand  on  the 
chimney-piece,  with  some  mildewed  remains 
of  ink  in  the  bottle.  There  were  two  coarse 
china  ornaments  of  the  commonest  kind  ; 
and  there  was  a  square  of  embossed  card, 
dirty  and  fly-blown,  with  a  collection  of 
wretched  riddles  printed  on  it,  in  all  sorts  of 
zig-zag  directions,  and  in  variously  coloured 
inks.  He  took  the  card,  and  went  away,  to 
read  it,  to  the  table  on  which  the  candle  was 
placed  ;  sitting  down,  with  his  back  reso- 
lutely turned  to  the  curtained  bed. 

He  read  the  first  riddle,  the  second,  the 
third,  ail  in  one  corner  of  the  card — then 
turned  it  round  impatiently  to  look  at  an- 
other. Before  he  could  begin  reading  the 
riddles  printed  here,  the  sound  of  the  church- 
clock  stopped  him.  Eleven.  He  had  got 
through  an  hour  of  the  time,  in  the  room 
with  the  dead  man. 

Once  more  he  looked  at  the  card.  It  was 
not  easy  to  make  out  the  letters  printed  on 
it,  in  consequence  of  the  dimness  of  the  light 
which  the  landlord  had  left  him — a  common 
tallow  caudle,  furnished  with  a  pair  of  heavy 
old-fashioned  steel  snuffers.  Up  to  this 
time,  his  mind  had  been  too  much  occupied  to 
think  of  the  light.  He  had  left  the  wick  of 
the  candle  unsnuffed,  till  it  had  risen  higher 
than  the  flame,  and  had  burnt  into  an  odd 
pent-house  shape  at  the  top,  from  which 
morsels  of  the  charred  cotton  fell  off,  from 
time  to  time,  in  little  flakes.  He  took  up 
the  snuffers  now,  and  trimmed  the  wick. 
The  light  brightened  directly,  and  the  room 
became  less  dismal. 

Again  he  turned  to  the  riddles  ;  reading 
them  doggedly  and  resolutely,  now  in  one 
corner  of  the  card,  now  in  another.  All  his 
efforts,  however,  could  not  fix  his  attention 
on  them.  He  pursued  his  occupation  mecha- 
nically, deriving  no  sort  of  impression  from 
what  he  was  reading.  It  was  as  if  a  shadow 
from  the  curtained  bed  had  got  between  his 
mind  and  the  gaily  printed  letters  —  a 
shadow  that  nothing  could  dispel.  At  last, 
he  gave  up  the  struggle,  and  threw  the  card 
from  him  impatiently,  and  took  to  walking 
softly  up  and  down  the  room  again. 

The  dead  man,  the  dead  man,  the  hidden 
dead  man  on  the  bed !  There  was  the  one 
persistent  idea  still  haunting  him.  Hidden  ! 
Was  it  only  the  body  being  there,  or  was  it 
the  body  being  there,  concealed,  that  was 
preying  on  his  mind  1  He  stopped  at  the 
window,  with  that  doubt  in  him  ;  once  more 
listening  to  the  pattering  rain,  once  more 
looking  out  into  the  black  darkness. 


Still  the  dead  man  !  The  darkness  forced 
his  mind  back  upon  itself,  and  set  his  memory 
at  work,  reviving,  with  a  painfully-vivid 
distinctness  the  momentary  impression  it  had 
received  from  his  first  sight  of  the  corpse. 
Before  long  the  face  seemed  to  be  hovering  out 
in  the  middle  of  the  darkness,  confronting 
him  through  the  window,  with  the  paleness 
whiter,  with  the  dreadful  dull  line  of  light 
between  the  imperfectly-closed  eyelids  broader 
than  he  had  seen  it — with  the  parted  lips 
slowly  dropping  farther  and  farther  away 
from  each  other — with  the  features  growing 
larger  and  moving  closer,  till  they  seemed  to 
fill  the  window  and  to  silence  the  ram,  and  to 
shut  out  the  night. 

The  sound  of  a  voice,  shouting  below  stairs, 
woke  him  suddenly  from  the  dream  of  his 
own  distempered  fancy.  He  recognised  it  as 
the  voice  of  the  landlord.  "  Shut  up  at 
twelve,  Ben,"  he  heard  it  say.  "  I'm,  off  to 
bed." 

He  wiped  away  the  damp  that  had 
gathered  on  his  forehead,  reasoned  with  him- 
self for  a  little  while,  and  resolved  to  shake 
his  mind  free  of  the  ghastly  counterfeit  which 
still  clung  to  it,  by  forcing  himself  to  confront, 
if  it  was  only  for  a  moment,  "the  solemn 
reality.  Without  allowing  himself  an  instant 
to  hesitate,  he  parted  the  curtains  at  the  foot 
of  the  bed,  and  looked  through. 

There  was  the  sad,  peaceful,  white  face, 
with  the  awful  mystery  of  stillness  on  it,  laid 
back  upon  the  pillow.  No  stir,  no  change 
there  !  He  only  looked  at  it  for  a  moment 
before  he  closed  the  curtains  again — but  that 
moment  steadied  him,  calmed  him,  restored 
him — mind  and  body — to  himself. 

He  returned  to  his  old  occupation  of 
walking  up  and  down  the  room  ;  persevering 
in  it,  this  time,  till  the  clock  struck  again. 
Twelve. 

As  the  sound  of  the  clock-bell  died  away, 
it  was  succeeded  by  the  confused  noise,  down 
stairs,  of  the  drinkers  in  the  tap-room  leaving 
the  house.  The  next  sound,  after  an  inter- 
val of  silence,  was  caused  by  the  barring  of 
the  door,  and  the  closing  of  the  shutters,  at 
the  back  of  the  Inn.  Then  the  silence 
followed  again,  and  was  disturbed  no 
more. 

He  was  alone  now  —  absolutely,  utterly, 
alone  with  the  dead  man,  till  the  next 
morning. 

The  wick  of  the  candle  wanted  trimming 
again.  He  took  up  the  snuffers — but  paused 
suddenly  on  the  very  point  of  using  them, 
and  looked  attentively  at  the  candle — then 
back,  over  his  shoulder,  at  the  curtained  bed 
— then  again  at  the  candle.  It  had  been 
lighted,  for  the  first  time,  to  show  him  the 
way  up  stairs,  and  three  parts  of  it,  at  least, 
were  already  consumed.  In  another  hour  it 
would  be  burnt  out.  In  another  hour — unless 
he  called  at  once  to  the  man  who  had  shut  up 
the  Inn,  for  a  fresh  caudle — he  would  be  left 
in  the  dark. 


ck«ie.  Dteken..]         LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPRENTICES.         [Oc.ob«  w.  issr.i     345 


Strongly  as  his  mind  had  been  affected 
since  he  had  entered  the  room,  his  unreason- 
able dread  of  encountering  ridicule,  and  of 
exposing  his  courage  to  suspicion,  had  not 
altogether  lost  its  influence  over  him,  even 
yet.  He  lingered  irresolutely  by  the  table, 
waiting  till  he  could  prevail  on  himself  to 
open  the  door,  and  call,  from  the  landing,  to 
the  man  who  had  shut  up  the  Inn.  In  his 
present  hesitating  frame  of  mind,  it  was  a 
kind  of  relief  to  gain  a  few  moments  only  by 
engaging  in  the  trifling  occupation  of  snuffing 
the  candle.  His  hand  trembled  a  little,  and 
the  snuffers  were  heavy  and  awkward  to  use. 
When  he  closed  them  on  the  wick,  he  closed 
them  a  hair's  breadth  too  low.  In  an  instant 
the  candle  was  out,  and  the  room  was 
plunged  in  pitch  darkness. 

The  one  impression  which  the  absence 
of  light  immediately  produced  on  his  mind, 
was  distrust  of  the  curtained  bed — distrust 
which  shaped  itself  into  no  distinct  idea,  but 
which  was  powerful  enough,  in  its  very 
vagueness,  to  bind  him  down  to  his  chair,  to 
make  his  heart  beat  fast,  and  to  set  him  lis- 
tening intently.  No  sound  stirred  in  the 
room  but  the  familiar  sound  of  the  rain 
against  the  window,  louder  and  sharper  now 
than  lie  had  heard  it  yet. 

Still  the  vague  distrust,  the  inexpressible 
dread  possessed  him,  and  kept  him  in  his 
chair.  He  had  put  his  carpet-bag  on  the 
table,  when  he  first  entered  the  room  ;  and 
he  now  took  the  key  from  his  pocket, 
reached  out  his  hand  softly,  opened  the  bag, 
and  groped  in  it  for  his  travelling  writing- 
case,  in  which  he  knew  that  there  was  a 
small  store  of  matches.  When  he  had 
got  one  of  the  matches,  he  waited  before  he 
struck  it  on  the  coarse  wooden  table,  and 
listened  intently  again,  without  knowing 
why.  Still  there  was  no  sound  in  the  room 
but  the  steady,  ceaseless,  rattling  sound  of 
the  rain. 

He  lighted  the  candle  again,  without 
another  moment  of  delay ;  and,  on  the 
instant  of  its  burning  up,  the  first  object  in 
the  room  that  his  eyes  sought  for  was  the 
curtained  bed. 

Just  before  the  light  had  been  put  out,  he 
had  looked  in  that  direction,  and  had  seen  no 
change,  no  disarrangement  of  any  sort,  in  the 
folds  of  the  closely-drawn  curtains. 

When  he  looked  at  the  bed,  now,  he  saw, 
hanging  over  the  side  of  it,  a  long  white 
hand. 

It  lay  perfectly  motionless,  midway  on  the 
side  of  the  bed,  where  the  curtain  at  the 
head  and  the  curtain  at  the  foot  met.  No- 
thing more  was  visible.  The  clinging  curtains 
hid  everything  but  the  long  white  hand. 

He  stood  looking  at  it  unable  to  stir,  un- 
able to  call  out ;  feeling  nothing,  knowing 
nothing  ;  every  faculty  he  possessed  gathered 
up  and  lost  in  the  one  seeing  faculty.  How 
long  that  first  panic  held  him  he  never  could 
tell  afterwards.  It  might  have  been  only  for 


a  moment;  it  might  have  been  for  many 
minutes  together.  How  he  got  to  the  bed— 
whether  he  ran  to  it  headlong,  or  whether  he 
approached  it  slowly — how  he  wrought  him- 
self up  to  unclose  the  curtains  and  look  in,  he 
never  has  remembered,  and  never  will  re- 
member to  his  dying  day.  It  is  enough  that 
he  did  go  to  the  bed,  and  that  he  did  look 
inside  the  curtains. 

The  man  had  moved.  One  of  his  arms  was 
outside  the  clothes ;  his  face  was  turned  a 
little  on  the  pillow  ;  his  eyelids  were  wide 
open.  Changed  as  to  position,  and  as  to  one 
of  the  features,  the  face  was  otherwise, 
fearfully  and  wonderfully  unaltered.  The 
dead  paleness  and  the  dead  quiet  were  on  it 
still. 

One  glanceshowed  Arthur  this — one  glance, 
before  he  flew  breathlessly  to  the  door,  and 
alarmed  the  house. 

The  man  whom  the  landlord  called  "  Ben," 
was  the  first  to  appear  on  the  stairs.  In 
three  words,  Arthur  told  him  what  had  hap- 
pened, and  sent  him  for  the  nearest  doctor. 

I,  who  tell  you  this  story,  was  then  stay- 
ing with  a  medical  friend  of  mine,  in  prac- 
tice at  Doncaster,  taking  care  of  his  patients 
for  him,  during  his  absence  in  London  ;  and 
I,  for  the  time  being,  was  the  nearest  doctor. 
They  had  sent  for  me  from  the  Inn,  when  the 
stranger  was  taken  ill  in  the  afternoon ;  but 
I  was  not  at  home,  and  medical  assistance 
was  sought  for  elsewhere.  When  the  man 
from  The  Two  Robins  rang  the  night-bell,  I 
was  just  thinking  of  going  to  bed.  Naturally 
enough,  I  did  not  believe  a  word  of  his  story 
about  "a  dead  man  who  had  come  to  life  again." 
However,  I  put  on  my  hat,  armed  myself 
with  one  or  two  bottles  of  restorative  medi- 
cine, and  ran  to  the  Inn,  expecting  to  find 
nothing  more  remarkable,  when  I  got  there, 
than  a  patient  in  a  fit. 

My  surprise  at  finding  that  the  man  had 
spoken  the  literal  truth  was  almost,  if  not 
quite,  equalled  by  my  astonishment  at  find- 
ing myself  face  to  face  with  Arthur  Holliday 
as  soon  as  I  entered  the  bedroom.  It  was 
no  time  then  for  giving  or  seeking  explana- 
tions. We  just  shook  hands  amazed ly  ;  and 
then  I  ordered  everybody  but  Arthur  out 
of  the  room,  and  hurried  to  the  man  on  the 
bed. 

The  kitchen  fire  had  not  been  long  out. 
There  was  plenty  of  hot  water  in  the  boiler, 
and  plenty  of  flannel  to  be  had.  With  these, 
with  my  medicines,  and  with  such  help  as 
Arthur  could  render  under  my  direction,  I 
dragged  the  man,  literally,  out  of  the  jaws  of 
death.  In  less  than  an  hour  from  the 
time  when  I  had  been  called  in,  he  was 
alive  and  talking  in  the  bed  on  which  he 
had  been  laid  out  to  wait  for  the  Coroner's 
inquest. 

You  will  naturally  ask  me,  what  had  been 
the  matter  with  him  ;  and  I  might  treat  you, 
in  reply,  to  a  long  theory,  plentifully  sprinkled 
with,  what  the  children  call,  hard  words.  I 


346      [Octobei  10,1957.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


prefer  telling  you  that,  in  this  case,  cause 
aud  effect  could  not  be  satisfactorily  joined 
together  by  any  theory  whatever.  There  are 
mysteries  in  life,  and  the  conditions  of  it, 
which  human  science  has  not  fathomed  yet  ; 
anil  I  L'.-mdidly  confess  to  you,  that,  in 
bringing  that  man  back  to  existence,  I  was, 
morally  speaking,  groping  hap-hazard  in  the 
dark.  I  know  (from  the  testimony  of  the 
doctor  who  attended  him  in  the  afternoon) 
that  the  vital  machinery,  so  far  as  its  action 
is  appreciable  by  our  senses,  had,  in  this 
case,  unquestionably  stopped ;  and  I  am 
equally  certain  (seeing  that  I  recovered  him) 
that  the  vital  principle  was  not  extinct. 
When  I  add,  that  he  had  suffered  from  a  long 
and  complicated  illness,  and  that  his  whole 
nervous  system  was  utterly  deranged,  I  have 
told  you  all  I  really  know  of  the  physical 
condition  of  my  dead-alive  patient  at  the 
Two  Eobins  Inn. 

When  he  "  came  to,"  as  the  phrase  goes, 
he  was  a  startling  object  to  look  at,  with  his 
colourless  face,  his  sunken  cheeks,  his  wild 
black  eyes,  and  his  long  black  hair.  The 
first  question  he  asked  me  about  himself, 
when  he  could  speak,  made  me  suspect  that 
I  had  been  called  in  to  a  man  in  my  own  pro- 
fession. I  mentioned  to  him  my  surmise ; 
and  he  told  me  that  I  was  right. 

He  said  he  had  come  last  from  Paris, 
where  he  had  been  attached  to  a  hospital. 
That  he  had  lately  returned  to  England,  on 
his  way  to  Edinburgh,  to  continue  his  studies  ; 
that  he  had  been  taken  ill  on  the  journey  ; 
and  that  he  had  stopped  to  rest  and  recover 
himself  at  Doncaster.  He  did  not  add  a 
word  about  his  name,  or  who  he  was :  and, 
of  course,  I  did  not  question  him  on  the  sub- 
ject. All  I  inquired,  when  he  ceased  speaking, 
was  what  branch  of  the  profession  he  intended 
to  follow. 

"Any  branch,"  he  said  bitterly,  "which 
will  put  bread  into  the  mouth  of  a  poor 
man." 

At  this,  Arthur,  who  had  been  hitherto 
watching  him  in  silent  curiosity,  burst  out 
impetuously  in  his  usual  good-humoured 
way  : — 

"  My  dear  fellow  ! "  (everybody  was  "  my 
dear  fellow  "  with  Arthur)  "  now  you  have 
come  to  life  again,  don't  begin  by  being  down- 
hearted about  your  prospects.  I'll  answer 
for  it,  I  can  help  you  to  some  capital  thing  in 
the  medical  line— or,  if  I  can't,  I  know  my 
father  can." 

The  medical  student  looked  at  him  steadily. 

"  Thank  you,"  he  said  coldly.  Then  added, 
"  May  I  ask  who  your  father  is  ?" 

"  He's  well  enough  known  all  about  this 
part  of  the  country,"  replied  Arthur.  "  He 
is  a  great  manufacturer,  and  his  name  is 
Holliday." 

My  hand  was  on  the  man's  wrist  during 
this  brief  conversation.  The  instant  the 
name  of  Holliday  was  pronounced  I  felt  the 
pulse  under  my  fingers  flutter,  stop,  go 


on  suddenly  with  a  bound,  and  beat  after- 
wards, for  a  minute  or  two,  at  the  fever 
rate. 

"How  did  you  come  here?"  asked  the 
stranger,  quickly,  excitably,  passionately 
almost. 

Arthur  related  briefly  what  had  happened 
from  the  time  of  his  first  taking  the  bed  at 
the  inn. 

"  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Holliday 's  son  then 
for  the  help  that  has  saved  my  life,"  said 
the  medical  student,  speaking  to  himself, 
with  a  singular  sarcasm  in  his  voice.  "  Come 
here ! " 

He  held  out,  as  he  spoke,  his  long,  white, 
bony  right  hand. 

"  With  all  my  heart,"  said  Arthur,  taking 
the  hand  cordially.  "  I  may  confess  it 
now,"  he  continued,  laughing,  "  Upon  my 
honour,  you  almost  frightened  me  cut  of  my 
wits." 

The  stranger  did  not  seem  to  listen.  His 
wild  black  eyea  were  fixed  with  a  look  of 
eager  interest  on  Arthur's  face,  and  his  long 
bony  fingers  kept  tight  hold  of  Arthur's 
hand.  Young  Holliday,  on  his  side,  re- 
turned the  gaze,  amazed  and  puzzled  by 
the  medical  student's  odd  language  and  man- 
ners. The  two  faces  were  close  together ;  I 
looked  at  them ;  and,  to  my  amazement,  I 
was  suddenly  impressed  by  the  sense  of  a 
likeness  between  them — not  in  features,  or 
complexion,  but  solely  in  expression.  It 
must  have  been  a  strong  likeness,  or  I 
should  certainly  not  have  found  it  out,  for 
I  am  naturally  slow  at  detecting  resem- 
blances between  faces. 

"  You  have  saved  my  life,"  said  the  strange 
man,  still  looking  hard  in  Arthur's  face,  still 
holding  tightly  by  his  hand.  "  If  you  had 
been  my  own  brother,  you  could  not  have 
done  more  for  me  than  that." 

He  laid  a  singularly  strong  emphasis  on 
those  three  words  "  my  own  brother,"  and  a 
change  passed  over  his  face  as  he  pronounced 
them, — a  change  that  no  language  of  mine  is 
competent  to  describe. 

"I  hope  I  have  not  done  being  of  service 
to  you  yet,"  said  Arthur.  "I'll  speak  to  my 
father,  as  soon  as  I  get  home." 

"  You  seem  to  be  fond  and  proud  of  your 
father,"  said  the  medical  student.  "  I  sup- 
pose, in  return,  he  is  fond  and  proud  of 
you  1 " 

"  Of  course,  he  is !  "  answered  Arthur, 
laughing.  "  Is  there  anything  wonderful  in 
that  ?  Isn't  your  father  fond — " 

The  stranger  suddenly  dropped  young 
Holliday's  hand,  and  turned  his  face  away. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Arthur.  "I 
hope  I  have  not  unintentionally  pained  you. 
I  hope  you  have  not  lost  your  father  ? " 

"  I  can't  well  lose  what  I  have  never  had," 
retorted  the  medical  student,  with  a  harsh 
mocking  laugh. 

"  What  you  have  never  had  ! " 

The  strange  man  suddenly  caught  Arthurs 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUE  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPEENTICES.       [October  I<U«M     347 


hand  again,  suddenly  looked  once  more  hard 
in  his  face. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  with  a  repetition  of  the 
bitter  laugh.  "You  have  brought  a  poor 
devil  back  into  the  world,  who  has  no  busi- 
ness there.  Do  I  astonish  you1?  Well!  I 
have  a  fancy  of  my  own  for  telling  you  what 
men  in  my  situation  generally  keep  a  secret. 
I  have  no  name  and  no  father.  The  merci- 
ful law  of  Society  tells  me  I  am  Nobody's 
Son  !  Ask  your  father  if  he  will  be  my 
father  too,  and  help  me  on  in  life  with  the 
family  name." 

Arthur  looked  at  me,  more  puzzled  than 
ever.  I  signed  to  him  to  say  nothing,  and 
then  laid  my  fingers  again  on  the  man's 
wrist.  No  !  In  spite  of  the  extraordinary 
speech  that  he  had  just  made,  he  was  not,  as 
I  had  been  disposed  to  suspect,  beginning 
to  get  light-headed.  His  pulse,  by  this  time, 
had  fallen  back  to  a  quiet,  slow  beat,  and 
his  skin  was  moist  and  cool.  Not  a  symptom 
of  fever  or  agitation  about  him. 

Finding  that  neither  of  us  answered  him, 
he  turned  to  me,  and  began  talking  of 
the  extraordinary  nature  of  his  case,  and 
asking  my  advice  about  the  future  course  of 
medical  treatment  to  which  he  ought  to 
subject  himself.  I  said  the  matter  required 
careful  thinking  over,  and  suggested  that  I 
should  submit  certain  prescriptions  to  him 
the  next  morning.  He  told  me  to  write 
them  at  once,  as  he  would,  most  likely,  be 
leaving  Doncaster,  in  the  morning,  before  I 
was  up.  It  was  quite  useless  to  represent  to 
him  the  folly  and  danger  of  such  a  proceed- 
ing as  this.  He  heard  me  politely  and 
patiently,  but  held  to  his  resolution,  without 
offering  any  reasons  or  any  explanations,  and 
repeated  to  me,  that  if  I  wished  to  give  him 
a  chance  of  seeing  my  prescription,  I  must 
write  it  at  once.  Hearing  this,  Arthur 
volunteered  the  loan  of  a  travelling  writing- 
case,  which,  he  said,  he  had  with  him  ;  and, 
bringing  it  to  the  bed,  shook  the  notepaper 
out  of  the  pocket  of  the  case  forthwith 
in  his  usual  careless  way.  With  the  paper, 
there  fell  out  on  the  counterpane  oi 
the  bed  a  small  packet  of  sticking-plaster, 
and  a  little  water-colour  drawing  of  a  land- 
scape. 

The  medical  student  took  up  the  drawing 
and  looked  at  it.  His  eye  fell  on  some  ini- 
tials neatly  written,  in  cypher,  in  one  corner. 
He  started,  and  trembled  ;  his  pale  face  grew 
whiter  than  ever  ;  his  wild  black  eyes  turned 
on  Arthur,  and  looked  through  and  through 
him. 

"  A  pretty  drawing,"  he  said,  in  a  remark- 
ably quiet  tone  of  voice. 

"  Ah  !  and  done  by  such  a  pretty  girl,"  said 
Arthur.  "  Oh,  such  a  pretty  girl !  I  wish  it 
was  not  a  landscape — I  wish  it  was  a  portrait 
of  her  !  " 

"You  admire  her  very  much  1 " 
_  Arthur,  half  in  jest,  half  in  earnest,  kissed 
his  hand  for  answer. 


"  Love  at  first  sight !  "  he  said,  putting  the 
drawing  away  again.  "  But  the  course  of  it 
loesn't  run  smooth.  It's  the  old  story.  She's 
monopolised  as  usual.  Trammelled  by  a  rash 
ngagement  to  some  poor  man  who  is  never 
likely  to  get  money  enough  to  marry  her. 
It  was  lucky  I  heard  of  it  in  time,  or  I 
should  certainly  have  risked  a  declaration 
when  she  gave  me  that  drawing.  Here, 
doctor  !  Here  is  pen,  ink,  and  paper  all  ready 
for  you." 

"  When  she  gave  you  that  drawing  ?  Gave 
it.  Gave  it."  He  repeated  the  words  slowly 
to  himself,  and  suddenly  closed  his  eyes.  A 
momentary  distortion  passed  across  his  face, 
and  I  saw  one  of  his  hands  clutch  up  the 
bedclothes  and  squeeze  them  hard.  I  thought 
he  was  going  to  be  ill  again,  and  begged  that 
there  might  be  no  more  talking.  He  opened 
his  eyes  when  I  spoke,  fixed  them  once  more 
searchingly  on  Arthur,  and  said,  slowly  and 
distinctly,  "  You  like  her,  and  she  likes 
you.  The  poor  man  may  die  out  of 
your  way.  Who  can  tell  that  she  may  not 
give  you  herself  as  well  as  her  drawing, 
after  all  ? " 

Before  young  Holliday  could  answer,  he 
turned  to  me,  and  said  in  a  whisper,  "  Now 
for  the  prescription."  From  that  time, 
though  he  spoke  to  Arthur  again,  he  never 
looked  at  him  more. 

When  I  had  written  the  prescription,  he 
examined  it,  approved  of  it,  and  then  aston- 
ished us  both  by  abruptly  wishing  us  good 
night.  I  offered  to  sit  up  with  him,  and  he 
shook  his  head.  Arthur  offered  to  sit  up 
with  him,  and  he  said,  shortly,  with  his  face 
turned  away,  "  No."  I  insisted  on  having 
somebody  left  to  watch  him.  He  gave  way 
when  he  found  I  was  determined,  and  said 
he  would  accept  the  services  of  the  waiter  at 
the  inn. 

"  Thank  you,  both,"  he  said,  as  we  rose  to 
go.  "  I  have  one  last  favour  to  ask — not  of 
you,  doctor,  for  I  leave  you  to  exercise  your 
professional  discretion — but  of  Mr.  Holliday." 
His  eyes,  while  he  spoke,  still  rested  steadily 
on  me,  and  never  once  turned  towards  Ar- 
thur. "I  beg  that  Mr.  Holliday  will  not 
mention  to  any  one — least  of  all  to  his  father 
— the  events  that  have  occurred,  and  the 
words  that  have  passed,  in  this  room.  I  en- 
treat him  to  bury  me  in  his  memory,  as, 
but  for  him,  I  might  have  been  buried  in  my 
grave.  I  cannot  give  my  reasons  for  making 
this  strange  request.  I  can  only  implore 
him  to  grant  it." 

His  voice  faltered  for  the  first  time,  and 
he  hid  his  face  on  the  pillow.  Arthur,  com- 
pletely bewildered,  gave  the  required  pledge. 
I  took  young  Holliday  away  with  me,  im- 
mediately afterwards,  to  the  house  of  my 
friend  ;  determining  to  go  back  to  the  inn, 
and  to  see  the  medical  student  again  before 
he  had  left  in  the  morning. 

I  returned  to  the  inn  at  eight  o'clock,  pur- 
posely abstaining  from  waking  Arthur,  who 


3J8      ^October  10,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


was  sleeping  off  the  past  night's  excitement 
on  one  of  my  friend's  sofas.  A  suspicion 
had  occurred  to  me,  as  soon  as  I  was  alone 
in  my  bedroom,  which  made  me  resolve  that 
Holliday  and  the  stranger  whose  life  he 
had  saved  should  not  meet  again,  if  I 
could  prevent  it.  I  have  already  alluded  to 
certain  reports,  or  scandals,  which  I  knew 
of,  relating  to  the  early  life  of  Arthur's 
lather.  While  I  was  thinking,  in  my  bed,  of 
what  had  passed  at  the  Inn — of  the  change 
in  the  student's  pulse  when  he  heard  the 
name  of  Holliday ;  of  the  resemblance  of 
expression  that  I  had  discovered  between  his 
face  and  Arthur's  ;  of  the  emphasis  he  had 
laid  on  those  three  words,  "my  own  brother ;" 
and  of  his  incomprehensible  acknowledgment 
of  his  own  illegitimacy — while  I  was  think- 
'  ing  of  these  things,  the  reports  I  have  men- 
tioned suddenly  flew  into  my  mind,  and 
linked  themselves  fast  to  the  chain  of  my 
previous  reflections.  Something  within  me 
whispered,  "It  is  best  that  those  two  young 
men  should  not  meet  again."  I  felt  it  before 
I  slept ;  I  felt  it  when  I  woke  ;  and  I  went, 
as  I  told  you,  alone  to  the  Inn  the  next 
morning. 

I  had  missed  my  only  opportunity  of 
seeing  my  nameless  patient  again.  He  had 
been  gone  nearly  an  hour  when  I  inquired 
for  him. 

I  have  now  told  you  everything  that  I 
know  for  certain,  in  relation  to  the  man 
whom  I  brought  back  to  life  in  the  double- 
bedded  room  of  the  Inn  at  Doncaster.  What 
I  have  next  to  add  is  matter  for  inference 
and  surmise,  and  is  not,  strictly  speaking, 
matter  of  fact. 

I  have  to  tell  you,  first,  that  the  medical 
student  turned  out  to  be  strangely  and  unac- 
countably right  in  assuming  it  as  more  than 
probable  that  Arthur  Holliday  would  marry 
the  young  lady  who  had  given  him  the 
water-colour  drawing  of  the  landscape.  That 
marriage  took  place  a  little  more  than  a 
year  after  the  events  occurred  which  I  have 
just  been  relating.  The  young  couple  came 
to  live  in  the  neighbourhood  in  which  I  was 
then  established  in  practice.  I  was  present 
at  the  wedding,  and  was  rather  surprised 
to  find  that  Arthur  was  singularly  reservec 
with  me,  both  before  and  after  his  marriage 
on  the  subject  of  the  young  lady's  prioi 
engagement.  He  only  referred  to  it  once 
when  we  were  alone,  merely  telling  me,  on 
that  occasion,  that  his  wife  had  done  all  that 
honour  and  duty  required  of  her  in  the 
matter,  and  that  the  engagement  had  beei 
broken  oft*  with  the  full  approval  of  hei 
parents.  I  never  heard  more  from  him  than 
this.  For  three  years  he  and  his  wife  livec 
together  happily.  At  the  expiration  of  tha 
time,  the  symptoms  of  a  serious  illness  firs 
declared  themselves  in  Mrs.  Arthur  Holliday 
It  turned  out  to  be  along,  lingering,  hopeles 
malady.  I  attended  her  throughout.  We 


ad  been  great  friends  when  she  was  well, 
md  we  became  more  attached  to  each  other 
han  ever  when  she  was  ill.  I  had  many 
ong  and  interesting  conversations  with  her 
n  the  intervals  when  she  suffered  least.  The 
•esult  of  one  of  those  conversations  I  may 
jriefly  relate,  leaving  you  to  draw  any 
nferences  from  it  that  you  please. 

The  interview  to  which  I  refer,  occurred 
shortly  before  her  death.  I  called  one  even- 
ng,  as  usual,  and  found  her  alone,  with  a 
ook  in  her  eyes  which  told  me  that  she  had 
:>een  crying.  She  only  informed  me  at  first, 
.hat  she  had  been  depressed  in  spirits  ;  but, 
3y  little  and  little,  she  became  more  commu- 
nicative, and  confessed  to  me  that  she  had 
3een  looking  over  some  old  letters,  which, 
lad  been  addressed  to  her,  before  she  had 
seen  Arthur,  by  a  man  to  whom  she  had 
seen  engaged  to  be  married.  I  asked  her 
low  the  engagement  came  to  be  broken  off. 
She  replied  that  it  had  not  been  broken  off, 
aut  that  it  had  died  out  in  a  very  mysterious 
way.  The  person  to  whom  she  was  engaged 
— her  first  love,  she  called  him — was  very 
poor,  and  there  was  no  immediate  prospect 
of  their  being  married.  He  followed  my 
profession,  and  went  abroad  to  study.  They 
had  corresponded  regularly,  until  the  time 
when,  as  she  believed,  he  had  returned  to 
England.  From  that  period  she  heard  no 
more  of  him.  He  was  of  a  fretful,  sensitive 
temperament ;  and  she  feared  that  she  might 
have  inadvertently  done  or  said  something 
that  offended  him.  However  that  might  be, 
he  had  never  written  to  her  again  ;  and,  after 
waiting  a  year,  she  had  married  Arthur.  I 
asked  when  the  first  estrangement  had  begun, 
and  found  that  the  time  at  which  she  ceased 
to  hear  anything  of  her  first  lover  exactly 
corresponded  with  the  time  at  which  I  had 
been  called  in  to  my  mysterious  patient  at 
The  Two  Robins  Inn. 

A  fortnight  after  that  conversation,  she 
died.  In  course  of  time,  Arthur  married 
again.  Of  late  years,  he  has  lived  princi- 
pally in  London,  and  I  have  seen  little  or 
nothing  of  him. 

I  have  many  years  to  pass  over  before  I 
can  approach  to  anything  like  a  conclusion  of 
this  fragmentary  narrative.  And  even  when 
that  later  period  is  reached,  the  little  that 
I  have  to  say  will  not  occupy  your  atten- 
tion for  more  than  a  few  minutes.  Between 
six  and  seven  years  ago,  the  gentleman 
to  whom  I  introduced  you  in  this  room, 
came  to  me,  with  good  professional  recom- 
mendations, to  fill  the  position  of  my  assis- 
tant. We  met,  not  like  strangers,  but  like 
friends — the  only  difference  between  us  being, 
that  I  was  very  much  surprised  to  see  him. 
and  that  he  did  not  appear  to  be  at  all  sur- 
prised to  see  me.  If  he  was  my  son,  or  my 
brother  I  believe  he  could  not  be  fonder  of 
me  than  he  is ;  but  he  has  never  volunteered 
any  confidences  since  he  has  been  here,  on  the 
subject  of  his  past  life.  I  saw  something  that 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  MANCHESTER  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


[October  10,  1857.]       345) 


•was  familiar  to  me  in  his  face  when  we  first 
met ;  and  yet  it  was  also  something  that  sug- 
gested the  idea  of  change.  I  had  a  notion 
once  that  my  patient  at  the  Inn  might  be  a 
natural  son  of  Mr.  Holliday's  ;  I  had  another 
idea  that  he  might  also  have  been  the  man 
who  was  engaged  to  Arthur's  first  wife  ;  and 
I  have  a  third  idea,  still  clinging  to  me,  that 
Mr.  Lorn  is  the  only  man  in  England  who 
could  really  enlighten  me,  if  he  chose,  on 
both  those  doubtful  points.  His  hair  is  not 
black,  now,  and  his  eyes  are  dimmer  than 
the  piercing  eyes  that  I  remember,  but,  for 
all  that,  he  is  very  like  the  nameless  medical 
student  of  my  young  days — very  like  him. 
And,  sometimes,  when  I  come  honie  late  at 
night,  and  find  him  asleep,  and  wake  him,  he 
looks,  in  coming  to,  wonderfully  like  the 
stranger  at  Doncaster,  as  he  raised  himself  in 
the  bed  on  that  memorable  night ! 

The  doctor  paused.  Mr.  Goodchild  who 
had  been  following  every  word  that  fell 
from  his  lips,  up  to  this  time,  leaned  for- 
ward eagerly  to  ask  a  question.  Before  he 
could  say  a  word,  the  latch  of  the  door  was 
raised,  without  any  warning  sound  of  foot- 
steps in  the  passage  outside.  A  long,  white, 
bony  hand  appeared  through  the  opening, 
gently  pushing  the  door,  which  was  prevented 
from  working  freely  on  its  hinges  by  a  fold 
in  the  carpet  under  it. 

"  That  hand  !  Look  at  that  hand,  Doctor  ! " 
said  Mr.  Goodchild,  touching  him. 

At  the  same  moment,  the  doctor  looked  at 
Mr.  Goodchild,  and  whispered  to  him,  signi- 
ficantly : 

"Hush  !  he  has  come  back." 


THE  MANCHESTER  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


No  longer  ago  than  when  Hazlitt  wrote, 
English  connoisseurs  were  stigmatised  as  a 
selfish  class,  who  chiefly  valued  their  treasures 
because  nobody  else  could  derive  pleasure 
from  them.  They  played  the  Blue  Beard 
with  all  the  beauty  they  could  get  into 
their  possession.  They  locked  it  up  ;  would 
admit  only  a  chosen  few  to  a  share  of  their 
enjoyment,  and  even  those  under  stringent 
conditions  and  vigilant  surveillance.  Fre- 
quent exposure  to  the  basilisk  eyes  of  the 
vulgar  world,  would,  they  believed,  strike  it 
dead.  They  had  a  not  unreasonable  horror  of 
the  hands  of  the  vulgar  also  ;  for,  it  was  then 
alleged,  that  the  uneducated  would  resent  the 
rarity  of  such  opportunities,  by  carving  their 
names  on  statues  and  defacing  pictures,  the 
beauties  of  which  they  could  have  no  cogni- 
sance of. 

Times  have  changed.  The  Great  Exhibi- 
tions that  have  come  into  vogue  since  eighteen 
hundred  and  fifty-one,  have  induced  many 
of  the  wealthy  cheerfully  to  commit  their 
most  cherished  Art-objects  to  the  risks  of 
packing  and  rough  handling  in  transit,  for 


the  very  purpose  of  disseminating  the  enjoy- 
ment, which  is,  by  strict  but  churlish  right, 
solely  their  own.  In  their  belief — contrary 
to  that  of  their  fathers — that  the  value  of 
their  Art-possessions  is  increased  rather 
than  diminished  by  wide  appreciation,  instead 
of  confining,  they  feel  a  pride  in  extending, 
the  bounds  of  sympathy  with  their  own  tastes 
— a  sympathy  which  flatters  the  judgment 
that  made  the  objects  of  it  their  property. 

Limits,  however,  ought  to  be  set  to  bor- 
rowing by  the  promoters  of  Great  Exhibitions ; 
otherwise,  the  generosity  of  lenders  may  be 
greatly  abused  by  the  application  of  an  unwar- 
rantable sort  of  pressure.  Will  you  incur  the 
odium  of  refusing  your  countenance,  and  your 
cherished  valuables,  to  a  glorious  enterprise 
that  is  to  awaken  the  million  to  a  sense  of 
the  beautiful  in  Art  ?  Will  you  refuse  what 
Royalty  itself  has  granted  1  Have  you  the 
courage  to  despise  the  noble  example  of  His 
Grace  of  This,  or  of  My  Lord  That  ?  Queries 
of  this  kind  have,  we  believe,  forced  valuable 
loansfrom  unwilling  but  facile  collectors,  which 
their  owners  had  strong  and  legitimate 
private  reasons  for  wishing  to  keep  at  home, — 
reasons  quite  independent  of  a  want  of  con- 
fidence in  the  million-fingered  public  ;  the 
old  theories  concerning  whom,,  experience 
has  thoroughly  reversed.  Despite  the  extra- 
vagant predictions  of  ruin  and  devastation 
that  were  vented  when  the  national  galleries 
and  parks  were  unrestrictedly  thrown  open 
to  the  people,  no  grave  abuse  of  the  privilege 
has  been  detected  :  the  maniacal  destruction 
of  the  Portland  vase  in  the  British  Museum 
alone  excepted  ;  an  exception  which  proves 
the  rule,  for  that  crime  might  as  readily 
have  been  committed  in  the  old  time.  The 
reports  of  the  Minister  of  Public  Works  show, 
that  nearly  every  wilful  act  of  wantonness  in 
public  places  and  in  public  galleries  has  beea 
perpetrated,  not  by  the  uneducated,  but  by 
the  so-called  respectable  :  not  by  the  suspected 
poor,  but  by  the  vulgar  rich. 

The  metropolitan  lieges  having  come  out  of 
such  ordeals  with  honour,  a,  new  and  strik- 
ing instance  of  the  respect  which  large  num- 
bers of  people  show  for  works  of  Art  has 
been  furnished  by  the  Exhibition  of  Art 
Treasures  at  Manchester.  This  well-fulfilled 
project  has  proved,  that  the  provincial  public 
do  not,  as  their  enemies  asserted  they  would 
do,  misbehave  themselves  while  partaking 
of  a  tempting  Art-banquet ;  and,  although 
fewer  of  the  poor  class  have  partaken  of  it 
than  were  bidden  to  the  feast  (at,  be  it  re- 
membered, a  shilling  a  head),  yet  it  is  no 
light  additional  contradiction  of  the  old  slan- 
der about  the  destructive  propensities  of  the 
English  mob  that  nearly  one  million  indivi- 
duals of  all  classes  have  passed  through  the 
Manchester  building,  without  any  perceptible 
damage  having  been  done  to  any  one  of  the 
ten  thousand  Art-objects  of  various  descrip- 
tions that  have  been,  for  six  mouths,  placed 
within  their  reach. 


350 


i-i 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


I  Conducted  by 


Although  the  originators  of  the  great  Art 
Exhibitinn  cannot  have  been  disappointed 
at  the  general  results  of  their  scheme,  it  is 
notorious  that  the  hope  of  its  attracting 
the  humbler  classes  iu  sufficient  numbers  to 
occasion  a  great  impulse  to  their  sluggish 
appreciation  of  the  Fine  Arts,  lias  nearly 
failed.  The  working  man  has  not  come  for- 
ward eagerly,  neither  with  his  shilling,  nor 
with  that  glow  of  enthusiasm  for  the  thing 
of  beauty,  which,  it  was  promised  him,  would 
be  a  joy  for  ever.  Even  when  he  has  been 
admitted  gratis,  the  attractions  of  Knott-Mill 
Fair  and  Belle  Vue  Gardens  have  beaten  the 
Art  Treasures  hollow.  Many  of  the  large 
manufacturers  in  the  north — to  their  honour 
be  it  spoken — paid,  not  only  the  admission 
fees,  but  the  railway  fares,  for  their  work- 
people and  their  families.  One  gentleman 
gave  each  man,  in  addition,  a  neat  little 
manual  of  his  own  composition  to  guide  him 
to  the  subjects  to  be  selected  for  especial 
notice,  from  the  gorgeous  array  of  colour  and 
canvas.  Another  gentleman  —  a  Sheffield 
manufacturer  —  gave  more  material  pro- 
vender. Having  franked  fourteen  hundred 
of  his  men  and  their  relatives  to  the  Man- 
chester Exhibition,  he  calculated  that  the 
odd  four  hundred  would,  perhaps,  after 
a  hasty  glance,  wander  away,  and  not  pre- 
sent themselves  at  dinner  time.  He  there- 
fore prudently  ordered  dinner  in  the  refresh- 
ment department  of  the  building,  for  no  more 
than  the  remaining  thousand.  But,  when  the 
hour  of  repast  arrived,  so  far  from  there  being 
a  remaining  thousand,  only  two  hundred  had 
stayed  to  dine.  It  was  Whit  Monday,  and 
other  more  congenial  diversions,  had  ab- 
stracted the  great  majority  of  his  guests. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  perceive  why  the  Man- 
•  Chester  Exhibition  has  not  proved  such  a 
powerful  propaganda  of  Art  as  its  promoters 
predicted.  The  plain  fact  is,  that  a  collection 
of  pictures  of  various  "  schools  "  excites  no 
interest,  and  affords  but  little  pleasure  to  the 
uninstructed  eye.  The  ancient  way  of  imi- 
tating nature  at  different  epochs,  or  the 
manner  of  copying  her  in  various  countries, 
is,  to  the  factory- worker  or  the  farm-labourer, 
simply  unintelligible.  The  only  school  he 
has  the  wit  to  recognise,  is  the  school  of 
Nature  ;  and  that  era  or  that  nation  in  which 
she  is  imitated  with  the  greatest  truth  and 
fervour  presents  the  only  school  which  his  un- 
learned taste  can  appreciate.  The  touch  of  the 
Italian  painter  or  of  the  Flemish  painter,  of 
the  German,  French,  or  English  painter, 
offers  to  him  no  subject  for  discrimination. 
It  is  the  one  touch  of  Nature  which  makes 
the  whole  world  kin.  And  even  that  touch 
must  be  distinct :  must  appeal  at  once  to  his 
comprehension.  If  he  could  pick  out  from 
amidst  a  tangle  of  grotesque  forms,  in  some 
of  the  examples  of  early  Christian  art,  one 
of  those  faces  which  abound  in  them,  ex- 
pressing with  astonishing  fidelity,  suffering, 
or  adoration,  or  intense  piety,  no  doubt  even 


his  emotions  would  be  excited.  But  he  can- 
not. He  sees  groups  of  figures  in  hard 
and  falsely-contrasted  colours,  with  hands 
like  gloves,  arms  growing  angularly  out  of 
trunks  like  ill-grafted  branches,  and  he  looks 
no  longer  and  no  further.  Not  having 
the  gift  of  connoisseurship,  he  would  not 
forgive  what  he  knows  to  be  gross  departures 
from  real  forms,  in  one  part  of  a  figure,  for 
the  sake  of  the  exquisite  pathos  and  vrai- 
semblance  which  shines  forth  in  another 
part  of  it ;  supposing  he  could  discover 
them.  Nor  is  he  blessed  with  the  power  of 
finding  sources  of  inspiration  in  distorted 
anatomy  and  distracting  perspective.  If  he 
were,  he  would  probably  leave  the  plough 
and  the  loom  and  take  to  lecturing  young 
painters  to  imitate  the  defects,  as  a  means 
of  emulating  the  genius,  of  the  pre-Kaphaelite 
masters. 

Precisely  the  same  case  holds  with  modern 
pictures.  The  general  public — especially  the 
humbler  sections  of  it — being  totally  unin- 
formed on  the  subject  of  technicalities,  take 
not  the  faintest  interest  in  it.  They  concern 
themselves  solely  with  results,  and  they  refer 
those  results  to  the  test  of  those  objects  and 
scenes  with  which  they  are  most  familiar. 
That  picture  delights  them  most,  which  most 
vividly  recalls  familiar  scenes  or  familiar 
faces  to  their  imagination. 
.  Small  blame,  therefore,  to  the  Lancashire 
folk  for  not  fulfilling  the  flattering  predictions 
respecting  their  supposed  desire  to  be  made 
acquainted  with  Art.  The  gigantic  Art  Trea- 
sury at  Manchester  can  only  be  enjoyed  by 
persons  who  have  habitually  seen  pictures,  and 
whohave  acquired  aknowledgeof  the  painters 
and  of  the  subjects.  These  are  few  in  num- 
ber, in  every  station  of  life.  The  experience 
of  the  regular  frequenter  of  the  Manchester 
galleries  was,  that  the  majority  of  the 
well-dressed  crowd  gossiped  and  grouped 
round  the  music,  promenaded  and  looked  at 
and  admired  each  other, — did  everything,  in 
short,  except  examine  the  pictures.  Those 
who  did  vary  their  amusements  by  glancing 
at  the  walls,  were  generally  found  studying 
the  portraits.  The  experience  of  the  true 
amateur  was  no  less  curious.  Amongst  the 
lounging  many,  he  scarcely  could  distinguish 
the  same  face  twice  ;  but,  after  a  few  visits, 
he  got  to  know,  by  sight,  the  picture-loving 
few,  by  meeting  them  frequently  lingering, 
as  he  lingered,  at  the  most  notable  master- 
pieces. 

To  such  visitors,  their  trip  to  the  Man- 
chester Exhibition  of  Art-Treasures  will 
hereafter  be  remembered  as  an  era  in  their 
lives.  It  is  scarcely  possible  that  such  an 
assemblage  of  all  they  most  desire  to  see, 
can  ever  again  be  brought  together.  Certainly 
no  such  collection  will  ever  be  better  ar- 
ranged. The  chronological,  was  the  only 
plan,  capable  of  evolving  order  out  of  chaos  ; 
and  great  clearness  was  attained  in  this 
object  by  Mr.  Scharf  the  younger,  who  hung 


Charles  Dickens.1 


THE  MANCHESTER  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


[October  10,  1S57.]      35] 


the  ancient  works  ;  and  by  Mr.  Egg,  who 
arranged  the  modern  pictures.  Mr.  Peter 
Cunningham's  mode  of  placing  the  portraits, 
affords,  by  the  aid  of  his  catalogue,  a  biogra- 
phical History  of  England,  much  more  strik- 
ing and  instructive  than  that  by  Granger  and 
Noble.  In  truth,  the  whole  Exhibition  is,  in 
itself,  a  history.  The  annals  of  Historical 
Art  are  distinctly  written  on  its  walls,  that 
those  who  understand  its  palpable  language 
may  read. 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
define  popular  attractions  of  the  show, 
apart  from  the  paintings.  They  are  nume- 
rous and  captivating.  Three  long,  well-pro- 
portioned galleries  ;  cases  filled  with  priceless 
Art-objects  in  the  precious  metals,  in  ivory 
and  in  wood,  and  with  jewels,  bijouterie, 
and  rare  carvings :  trophies  of  warlike 
Art  composed  of  arms  and  armour ;  an 
admirable  orchestra  discoursing  most  ex- 
cellent music  ;  and,  lastly,  the  moving  spec- 
tacle of  well-dressed,  ever-changing  com- 
pany, always  delightfully  sprinkled  with 
Lancashire  witchcraft,  which  spreads  its 
incantations  (and  its  ample  drapery)  broad- 
cast over  the  scene. 

Few  who  witness  it  dream  possibly  of  the 
energy  and  perseverance,  the  administrative 
and  executive  skill,  which,  in  no  more  time 
than  palaces  are  built  in  story-books,  con- 
verted a  cricket-ground  into  this  enormous  and 
unsurpassed  casket  of  gems.  On  the  tenth  of 
June  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-six,  the  two 
elevens  of  a  Manchester  cricket  club  played 
a  match  in  their  own  field  at  Old  Trafford,  a 
couple  of  miles  west  of  Manchester.  Before 
the  first  anniversary  of  that  game  was  com- 
pleted, the  ground  was  not  only  occupied  by 
an  edifice  that  would  have  covered  every  one 
of  the  twenty-two  at  his  post,  including  long- 
stop  and  field-scout ;  but  it  had  been  made 
the  terminus  of  a  railway  communicating 
with  every  part  of  Great  Britain,  and  by 
which  it  was  already  filled  with  works  of 
Art.  How,  by  the  first  of  May  in  the  pre- 
sent year,  these  were  conveyed  and  unpacked 
without  a  scratch ;  how  arranged  in  their 
proper  places, — the  tinyest  miniature  and 
the  biggest  historical  picture,  the  smallest 
signet  ring  and  the  hugest  suit  of  armour, — 
how  registered,  ticketed,  catalogued  and 
placed,  the  executive  committee,  and  Mr. 
John  Deane,  the  general  commissioner,  'can 
only  tell. 

The  modest  assurance  essential  to  solicit, 
from  the  least  accessible  people  in  this  land, the 
loan  of  objects  they  cherish  more  tenderly  and 
guarded  more  jealously  than  most  of  their 
material  possessions  ;  the  thousand  and  one 
well-considered  details  necessary  to  be  accu- 
rately carried  out  for  the  packing  and  con- 
veyance of  these  priceless  loans  ;  the  pre- 
cautions necessary  for  their  safe  custody  and 
preservation  ;  the  contrivances  for  admitting 
vast  crowds  of  entrants,  for  feeding  them 
when  hungry,  and  seating  them  when  tired, 


the  arrangements  for  bringing  them  not  only 
from  Manchester  and  all  Lancashire,  but 
from  every  corner  of  this  island,  are  seldom 
thought  of,  even  by  the  most  inquisitive 
visitor.  He  hardly  suspects  that  he  treads 
over  an  arterial  system  of  water-supply, 
capable  of  quenching  an  outburst  of  fire  in 
one  moment  in  any  part  of  the  building,  at 
any  height,  and  no  fire-engine  required.  Al- 
though he  dines  in  the  refreshment-room,  he 
Little  wots  of  the  kitchen,  and  the  cooks,  and 
the  bewilderingapparatnscapable  of  producing 
a  dinner  of  any  reasonable  number  of  courses, 
for  ten  thousand  guests  at  six  hours'  notice. 
He  does  not  suspect  the  near  neighbourhood 
of  a  police  barrack,  or  imagine  the  acres  of 
shed,  and  pyramids  of  packing-cases  so  ar- 
ranged, that  each  case  shall  be  promptly  mated 
with  its  containee,  when  the  great  day  of  resti- 
tution arrives.  In  short,  he  does  not  realise  a 
tithe  of  the  clever  and  untiring  pre-arrange- 
ment  by  which  the  great  Art-Treasures'  feat 
has  been  accomplished.  Then  the  expense  ! 
In  no  other  place,  could  seventy  gentlemen 
be  found  to  guarantee  one  thousand  pounds 
each  to  carry  out  an  undertaking  promising 
no  hope  of  profit,  but  every  prospect  of  loss. 
Unhappily,  that  prospect  will  be  fulfilled, 
and  these  gentlemen  will  be  losers  in  money, 
in  consequence  of  their  miscalculation  of 
support  from  the  working  classes ;  but 
they  have  conferred  a  distinction  on  their 
city  which  no  money  could  buy.  They  have 
shown  themselves  to  be  true  patrons  of  art. 
The  methodical,  business-like,  energetic 
manner  in  which  their  money  has  been  spent 
and  their  original  intentions  realised,  affords  a 
profitable  lesson  to  the  bungling  incapability 
with  which  the  simplest  state  transaction  is 
mismanaged  at  head-quarters.  The  first  idea 
of  the  Exhibition  was  conceived  by  Mr.  Deane 
in  conjunction  with  Mr.  Peter  Cunningham, 
and  the  general  details  of  its  management 
have  been  thoroughly  superintended  (under 
the  direction  of  the  executive  committee 
headed  by  Mr.  Thomas  Fairbairn  junior)  by 
Mr.  Deane ;  who  presents  a  rare  instance  of 
the  union,  in  one  person,  of  a  bold  and  com- 
prehensive projector  with  an  exact  and  able 
executant. 

In  five  days  from  the  date  of  the  present 
number  of  Household  Words  this  grand 
treasury  of  art  will  be  closed.  In  due  time 
its  treasures  will  be  dispersed  ;  the  building, 
like  its  predecessors  in  London  and  Dublin, 
removed,  and  the  cricketers  put  in  possession 
of  their  cricket-ground  again  as  quietly  as  if 
they  had  awoke  from  a  bright  and  sparkling 
dream  after  that  excellent  supper  which 
usually  follows  a  well-played  game.  The 
effects  of  the  short-lived  enterprise  will, 
however,  be  permanent  ;  for  some  of  the 
seed  it  has  sown  will  assuredly  bear  fruit. 
Setting  aside  the  sight  of  so  many  beautiful 
objects  enjoyed  by  a  million  pair  of  eyes,  the 
mere  talk  and  discussion  about  art  which  it 
occasions,  will  materially  conduce  to  the 


352       [October  10, 185?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bj 


spread  of  a  taste  for  and  appreciation  of  art, 
among  persons  over  whom  it  will  exercise  an 
especially  good  influence. 


PJIOTOGRAPHEES. 


THROUGH  a  variety  of  causes,  over  which,  it 
seems  to  me,  I  have  had  no  control,  I  have  been 
rather  unfortunate  in  life.  I  was  expelled 
from  "Wartoii  Grammar-school  immediately 
after  the  great  Rebellion  (I  mean,  of  course, 
the  barring  out  there,  and  not  the  more  gene- 
rally known  affair  of  sixteen  hundred  and 
forty-two),  although  I  protest  I  was  led  into 
it  by  my  seniors.  I  was  plucked  in  honours 
at  Cambridge  through  the  malignancy  of 
the  examiners,  who,  because  I  did  not  gra- 
duate the  Steel-yard,  refused  to  graduate 
me  ;  partly  through  a  pecuniary  embarrass- 
ment, partly  through  a  misunderstanding  of 
a  mere  legal  subtlety,  I  was  unable  to  obtain 
my  attorney's  certificate.  Then,  naturally, 
turning  my  attention  to  bill-discounting,  I 
was  unfortunate  there  ;  and,  finally,  upon  the 
turf — last  scene  of  all,  wherein  the  Unsuc- 
cessful plays — my  private  Tart  gave  me  false  in- 
telligence, and  I  laid  the  whole  of  my  remain- 
in »  store  against  the  winning  favourite,  which 
I  had  most  conscientiously  believed  to  have 
been  safely  poisoned  the  night  before. 
"  When,"  as  the  bard  has  observed,  "  a  man 
is  like  me,  sans  six  sous,  sans  souci,  bankrupt 
in  purse,  and  in  character  worse,  with  a 
shocking  bad  hat  and  his  credit!  at  zero," 
what  on  earth  can  he  now-a-days  hope  to 
become  save  a  photographer  ?  This  profes- 
sion, which  requires  little  capital,  but  great 
assurance ;  no  book  learning,  but  considerable 
knowledge  of  character,  was  the  very  thing 
to  suit  me,  and  I  may  say  that  I  have  suc- 
ceeded in  it :  when  generations  yet  unborn 
shall  speak  with  fervour  of  the  leafy  wood- 
lands of  Creswick,  the  breezy  moorlands  of 
Landseer,  the  peaceful  kine  of  Cooper,  and  a 
great  number  of  other  things  of  a  great 
number  of  other  people,  they  will  not,  per- 
haps, be  altogether  silent  concerning  Jones 
the  photographer ;  his  judicious  groupings 
will  not,  I  venture  to  affirm,  be  then  for- 
gotten, whether  they  be  his  domestic — grand- 
mother in  centre  with  a  baby  on  each  arm, 
Paterfamilias,  L.  c.,  mother  of  the  family,  R.  c., 
eldest  son,  left  of  male  parent ;  eldest 
daughter,  left  of  female  parent ;  and  miscel- 
laneous offspring  promiscuously  disposed  :  or 
his  classical — tallest  girl  in  sheet  and  wreath, 
with  bread-knife  and  salad-bowl,  as  Melpo- 
mene the  Tragic  Muse.  Second  ditto,  in  ditto, 
ditto,  with  backgammon-board  under  the  left 
arm,  as  Clio,  Muse  of  History.  Small  fat  brother, 
upon  one  leg,  in  act  of  flying,  with  wreath 
and  bow-and-arrow,  complete,  as  God  of  Love ; 
and  Materfamilias  in  arm-chair  with  hired 
peacock,  as  Juno,  Queen  of  Heaven.  Or  his 
romantic  —  only  son  with  exposed  throat, 
Ready  Reckoner  for  small  edition  of  Byron 
apon  adjacent  pillar,  quill  pen  in  the  left, 


with  back-ground  of  wood  and  water,  with 
turret  —  in  any  case,  I  say,  my  groupings 
will  challenge  criticism,  and  their  com- 
bined effects  set  competition  at  defiance. 
All  amateur  artists  and  many  professionals 
forget  that  the  situations  are  reversed  in  the 
photographic  process,  and  the  family  ensign 
is  but  too  often  represented  with  his  drawn 
sword  in  the  wrong  hand,  and  the  domestic 
poet  composing  from  right  to  left,  after  the 
manner  of  the  literati  of  Japan. 

Before  a  man  can  become  a  first-rate  pho- 
tographer I  hold  it  necessary  that  he  should 
have  had  some  experience  as  a  photographee. 
I  made  my  living  in  the  latter  capacity  for 
the  first  two  years  after  my  little  Turf  trans- 
action, and  laid  by  enough  to  purchase  the 
instruments  of  my  present  profession  as  well. 
I  was  that  hussar,  whom  you  know  so  well 
in  the  stereoscopic  pictures,  who  is  making 
love  to  the  young  lady  in  ball  costume  in  the 
conservatory  ;  I  was  perpetually  doing  it  for 
upwards  of  a  fortnight,  and  then  (as  you  also 
remember)  I  married  her  with  considerable 
pomp,  and  that  venerable  divine  who  per- 
formed the  ceremony  is  the  very  man  whom 
I  now  employ  in  superintending  my  appa- 
ratus. 

Many  and  many  a  time  have  I  formed  one 
of  those  delicious  pic-nic  parties,  which  look 
to  you,  my  public,  so  pleasant  and  so  real, 
with  pasteboard  tongue  and  fowls,  artificial 
smiles,  and  a  painted  screen  for  New  Forest 
scenery  up  two  pair  of  stairs  in  the  New 
Road. 

I  was  the  bishop  who  is  baptising  the  child 
in  presence  of  that  magnificently  apparelled 
company  at  two  shillings  an  hour,  and  to 
provide  their  own  costumes  ;  -and  I  was  the 
groom  who  is  biting  the  puppy's  tail  off  with 
an  expression  of  enjoyment  (price  six  shil- 
lings and  sixpence,  and  cheap  at  the  price, 
besides  the  hire  of  the  puppy),  who  is  marked 
at  the  back  of  the  stereoscopic  slide — "A 
Study." 

I  learnt  thereby  how  persons  in  every  rank 
of  life  are  to  be  most  characteristically  com- 
posed for  pictorial  representation,  besides 
qualifying  myself,  better  perhaps  than  most 
place-holders,  to  fill  almost  any  position 
which  the  state  has  to  offer.  Is  it  a  govern- 
ment office  ?  Here  is  our  newspaper  and  our 
official  expression  with  the  "  I  really  don't 
know,  sir,"  pleasantly  balancing  in  it  the  "  I 
really  don't  care,"  tape  and  pamphlets  to  any 
amount  in  the  back-ground,  and  the  govern- 
ment coals  seen  blazing  between  our  depart- 
mental legs  as  we  stand  with  our  back  to 
the  fire,  with  our  coat-tails  under  our  arms. 
Or  is  it  the  colonies  themselves  1  Here  is  the 
table  of  the  house  (dresser,  sideboard,  or 
other  convenience,  as  occasion  offers),  upon 
which  the  fingers  of  our  right  hand  are  impres- 
sively doubled  up  ;  those  of  our  left  upon  the 
despatch-box — missionary  or  other — with  slit, 
the  second  finger  just  touching  it,  and  the  "  1 
hold  in  my  hand,  sir,  the  refutation  "  order 


Charles  Dickens.] 


PHOTOGKAPHEES. 


[October  10,  H57-]      353 


of  countenance  after  original  on  view  every 
night  at  the  exhibition  just  closed  <it  St. 
Stephens',  or  is  it  a  mere  Queen's  counselship  ? 

Here  is  our  handkerchief,  and  our  hand 
upon  our  heart,  and  the  "  upon  my  word  and 
honour,  gentlemen  of  the  jury,  I  do  believe 
my  unhappy  client  innocent,"  written  in 
every  lineament  of  an  expressive  visage,  so 
that  you  can  alrhost  hear  our  broken  tones. 

If,  however,  as  is  but  too  probable,  none 
of  these  appointments  should  be  conferred 
upon  me,  photography  is  still  to  me  its  own 
reward.  There  are  but  few  professions  which 
combine,  as  this  does,  pleasure  and  profit, 
enjoyment  and  a  stroke  of  business.  While 
I  wander  amongst  the  fairest  scenes  of 
nature,  and,  transfer  them  without  robbery  to 
ray  cabinet,  by  aid  of  her  clever  little  hand- 
maid, Art,  making  for  me  a  sort  of  illustrated 
autobiography  which  re-animates,  whenever  I 
set  eyes  upon  any  leaf  of  it,  some  by -gone 
scene  with  its  associations,  I  do  not  feel 
much  less  joyous,  because  I  am,  at  the  same 
time,  earning  my  bread.  When  I  mirrored, 
indestructibly,  that  nook's  green  coolness 
by  the  river's  side,  or  arrested  in  its  decay, 
for  years  and  years,  yon  blood-red  ruin 
crumbling  away  in  the  deep  stillness  of  its 
woods,  my  admiration,  though  perhaps  weak- 
ened, was  not  annihilated  by  the  reflection 
that  trees  were  in  demand  and  abbeys  rising 
in  the  photographic  market.  I  am,  by 
nature,  I  believe,  a  man  of  sentiment,  and 
though  my  past  life  has  been  of  a  sort  to  give 
the  main  chance  a  too  prominent  position, 
my  present  certainly  tends  to  mitigate  that 
experience.  I  have  room,  I  hope,  for  tender- 
ness and  disinterested  pity,  yet.  I  felt  for 
that  kind  lady  and  her  family,  yonder,  in 
deepest  mourning,  whom  I  took  but  a  month 
ago. 

"  I  must  have  two  pictures  of  each  of 
these,"  she  said,  pointing  to  her  children,  "  all 
that  are  left  to  me,  so  that  in  case  of " 

She  saw  the  poor,  wandering  artist  had  a 
heart,  I  think,  for  she  made  no  effort  to 
restrain  her  tears,  and  presently  told  him 
her  sad  story.  Her  son  had  lately  fallen — 
been  butchered — at  an  Indian  station,  and  all 
she  had  of  him  now  was  a  small  portrait — 
lifelike,  real,  of  a  soldierly,  fine  lad,  whom  any 
mother  well  might  have  been  proud  of ;  and 
this  she  must  needs  part  with  to  his  widowed 
bride,  left  more  forlorn  even  that  she  herself. 
When  I  assured  her  that  I  could  give  her  a 
copy  of  this  in  a  few  moments,  and  presently 
succeeded  in  producing  a  most  accurate  one, 
I  learnt,  for  the  first  time,  how  great  a 
benefactress  is  this  simple  art  of  mine,  and 
how  gracious  a  giver,  indeed,  is  the  glorious 
sun. 

Once,  when  I  had  been  engaged  one  morn- 
ing at  a  country  house,  taking  likenesses  of  all 
its  in-dwellers,  I  was  ridden  after,  upon  my 
road  home,  by  one  of  the  young  gentlemen, 
who  asked  me  if  I  would  be  so  kind  as 
to  take  him  once  again ;  when  I  said 


'•'  Yes,  certainly  " — since  I  travel  in  a  shut-up 
fly  with  yellow  blinds  (smelling,  by-the-bye, 
very  horribly  of  collodion),  and  so  am  always 
ready  for  a  subject.  He  produced,  from 
round  the  corner  of  the  road,  his  pretty 
cousin  Caroline,  and,  getting  off  their  horses, 
they  were  there  ami  then  grouped  together 
very  prettily,  with  his  arm  turned  round  her 
"  dainty  dainty  waist,"  and  his  eyes  looking 
at  her  with  an  expression  with  a  good  deal 
more  of  "  kind  "  than  "  kin  "  in  it.  Poor  young 
fellow  !  He  little  knows  that  I  have  an  ex- 
cellent copy  of  this  which  has  been  much  ad- 
mired, and  a  very  singular  contrast  it  presents 
to  that  which  I  took  of  him  at  his  uncle's 
house  a  few  hours  before,  where  he  has  a 
manuscript  sermon  (roll  of  music)  in  that 
left  hand  instead  of  Carry's  fingers,  and  is 
supposed  to  be  preaching  his  first  discourse 
to  his  first  congregation. 

Again,  shall  I  ever  forget  the  young  lady 
of  thirty-five  or  so,  who  wished  to  know 
whether  I  would  mind  taking  her  by  moon- 
shine instead  of  vulgar  daylight !  Or  that 
whole  family  of  females  who,  being  informed 
by  their  Httie  nephew  who  had  pressed  under 
my  black  curtain,  that  they  appeared  upside 
down,  refused  to  be  taken  at  all !  Another 
feminine  circle  once  jumped  up  from  their 
chairs  and  insisted  upon  seeing  how  they 
grouped  in  the  camera  before  they  were 
printed  off,  and  very  much  surprised  they 
were  to  find  that  when  they  were  in  my  place 
there  was  no  group  to  look  at. 

Gentlemen,  I  must  confess  however,  have 
given  me  quite  as  much  trouble  as  ladies  ; 
their  portraits  are  quite  as  often  pro- 
nounced by  them  to  be  "  unnatural,  inexpres- 
sive, unlike,"  as  those  of  the  other  sex  are 
held  to  have  given  them  "  too  old  an  expres- 
sion," or  to  have  "very  much  exaggerated 
the  feet."  One  Paterfamilias  who  won't  be 
taken  with  a  lot  of  babies,  "  to  look  like  a 
scene  in  a  pantomime,"  and  the  Paterfamilias 
who  will,  are  both  inexorable  sitters,  and 
very  hard  to  please.  "  Why,  you  have  actu- 
ally made  my  hair  grey  !"  cried  one  indignant 
parent  of  five-and-nfty  ;  and  "  You  have  posi- 
tively given  dearest  Edward  John  no  nose  at 
all  !  "  complained  another,  as  querulous  about 
his  little  two-year-old  as  any  grandmother. 

Handsome  old  gentlemen,  with  one  ex- 
pression, are  my  best  photographees ;  then, 
young  men  ;  then,  old  ladies ;  and  worst  of 
all,  I  am  obliged  to  say  (save  babies)  are 
young  ladies.  Their  features  are  generally 
too  rounded,  and  they  have  rarely  any 
medium  between  trying  to  look  intellectual 
and  giggling.  This  is  my  usual  monologue 
with  the  majority  of  them  :  "  Not  so  much 
up  at  the  sky,  Miss  Smith ;  look  at  me,  if  you 
please,  and  be  so  good  as  to  part  your  lips  ; 
don't  frown  ;  your  ankle  is  too  exposed,  it 
will  be  of  a  frightful  size  ;  thank  you  :  don't 
purse  your  mouth  up  as  though  you  were 
going  to  whistle,  and  oblige  me  likewise  by 
not  laughing,  or  you'll  have  such  a  mouth ; 


354       [October  10,  1867.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


now,  steady — there  you  are  you  see,  my  dear 
]\Iis.s  Smith,  squinting  abominably  ;  I  told 
you  how  it  would  be,  if  you  would  wink  your 
eyes." 

Spoilt  children  are  perhaps  a  trifle  worse  ; 
aome  of  them  taking  advantage  of  my  ab- 
sence under  the  curtain  to  throw  stones  at 
the  camera,  and  others  screaming  with  terror 
because  they  consider  it  to  be  a  deadly 
weapon  provided  for  their  special  destruction, 
which  I  have  sometimes  devoutly  wished  it 
was.  But  the  most  unwilling  sitters  whom  I 
ever  took  were  a  couple  of  dozen  gentlemen 
who  were  accepting,  for  various  terms  of 
years,  the  hospitalities  of  the  governor  of  a 
certain  north  country  gaol.  More  than  one 
of  them  had  recently  shown  a  disposition  to 
leave  the  place,  and  not  to  be  burthensome  to 
him  any  longer ;  but  their  host  was  deter- 
mined not  to  hear  of  such  a  thing  ;  he  was 
even  prepared,  in  case  of  their  departure,  to 
go  the  length  of  fetching  them  back  again, 
and  applied  to  me  to  assist  him  in  such  a  case 
by  enabling  his  servants  to  recognise  them. 
The  photographees  did  not  like  my  inter- 
ference one  bit.  The  machine  seemed  to 
remind  them  exceedingly  of  a  bull's-eye 
lantern,  to  which  they  had  a  very  natural 
repugnance  ;  their  positions  were  far  from 
graceful,  their  expressions  such  as  had  no 
parallel  in  all  my  photographic  experience. 
I  never  saw  folks  so  disinclined  to  look  the 
sun  in  the  face  before.  There  was,  however, 
one  among  them,  a  mere  lad,  expiating  his 
first  offence  in  the  prison,  who  had  one  of  the 
most  honest  countenances  I  ever  beheld  ;  he 
was  the  only  one  who  did  not  tell  me  he  was 
innocent,  and  the  only  one  who  appeared  to 
me  as  being  possibly  not  guilty ;  he  took 
occasion  to  entreat  of  me  not  to  put  him 
amongst  a  portrait-gallery  of  felons  for  the 
remainder  of  his  days,  because,  if  his  mother 
should  come  to  hear  of  it,  it  would  surely 
break  her  heart — it  was  almost  broken  now, 
he  said.  I  thought  of  the  poor  lady  in 
mourning  then,  and  how  much  worse  than  to 
lose  a  son  it  must  be  to  have  a  son  in  such  a 
plight  as  this ;  and,  whether  there  was  some- 
thing wrong  about  the  collodion,  or  whether 
I  handled  this  particular  photograph  rather 
clumsily,  it  is  very  certain  that  the  young 
lad's  face  is  smudged,  and  by  no  means  to  be 
recognised. 


FALLING  LEAVES. 

NATURE'S  gay  day  is  now  drawing  rapidly 
to  a  close :  she  has  already  divested  herself 
of  many  of  her  brighter  and  sweeter  habili- 
ments, and  is  now  preparing  to  cast  her  robe 
of  many-shaded  green  into  the  dust.  Silent 
type  of  human  glory,  bright  and  fair  to  see  in 
the  sunshine  of  prosperity,  mean  and  dejected 
aa  the  sport  of  adverse  wind.  Paterfamilias 
of  The  Vegetable  World,  shalt  thou  lie  in- 
glorious, rotting,  will  no  friendly,  speculative 
hand  grind  thee  into  snuif,  or  twist  thee  into 


the  exhilarating  Pickwick  ? — there  should  be 
no  preference  amongst  equals — surely  were  thy 
inorganic  worth  but  known,  guano  and  other 
factors  of  manure,  would  become  competitors 
for  thy  metempsychosis. 

Botanical  theorists  offer  two  explanations 
of  the  fall  of  the  leaf ;  one,  that  it  is  conse- 
quent upon  the  rupture  of  that  delicate  spiral 
coil,  or  vessel,  which  sprang  at  the  birth  of 
the  leaf  from  the  very  centre  of  the  interior 
of  the  stem  to  form  the  leaf-stalk  and  veins, 
and  return  hence  into  the  bark  ;  the  frac- 
ture taking  place  at  the  very  moment  when 
the  fully  uncoiled  fibre  refuses  further  accom- 
modation to  the  rapidly  fattening  sides  of  its 
parent  stem  ;  the  other,  that  it  ensues  on  the 
obliteration  of  its  cell-bulk  from  the  gradual 
deposit  therein  of  the  various  earthy  matters 
of  the  sap,  so  freely  submitted  to  the  leaf, 
both  for  aeration  and  digestion,  and  its  con- 
sequent inability  longer  to  discharge  its 
function.  These  causes  combined  may  have 
the  advantage  of  either  in  the  explanation  of 
the  effect. 

Functionally  the  leaf  is  both  the  lung  and 
stomach  of  the  plant :  its  cell-substance  be- 
tween the  veins  of  the  upper  surface  i«  close 
and  compact,  and  into  this  is  poured  by  the 
vessels  from  the  centre  of  the  stem,  the  rising 
sap,  whence  having  undergone  digestion  it 
passes  to  the  lower  stratum  of  loose  cellular 
tissue,  to  be  submitted  to  the  process  of  aera- 
tion, ere  it  is  removed  by  the  returning  ves- 
sels into  the  bark  where  it  receives  its  final 
elaboration.  The  upper  surface  of  the  leaf, 
therefore,  represents  the  stomach,  the  lower, 
the  lungs. 

It  is  not,  however,  an  active  agent  merely 
in  the  maturation  of  food  obtained  for  it  by 
the  root,  but  exercises  a  wonderful  energy  in 
abstracting  from  the  atmosphere  the  most 
essential  article  of  its  own  diet ;  that  which, 
being  given  out  largely  in  man  and  animal's 
breathing  could  not  be  rebreathed  by  either 
without  entailing  their  destruction ;  that 
which,  as  the  result  of  combustion  (both 
natural  and  artificial),  would  long  since  have 
put  an  end  to  animal  life — carbonic  acid  gas  ; 
were  it  not  that  the  ever  active  function  of 
the  leaf  is  and  has  been  incessantly  engaged 
in  removing  the  poisoning  carbon  from  the 
vapour,  and  restoring  it  as  lung-nutriment, 
in  the  form  of  pure  oxygen.  By  this  means 
was  the  volcanic  earth  prepared  for  man's 
habitation  ;  thus  is  the  quiet  globe  still  sup- 
ported as  his  dwelling-place. 

But,  it  may  be  demanded,  if  plants  are 
purifiers  of  the  atmosphere,  how  comes  it 
that  they  are  excluded  from  the  bed-room  on 
the  supposition  that  they  prejudicially  affect 
the  respiration  of  the  sleeper  ?  To  this  it 
may  be  replied,  that  their  ill  effects  on  the 
night-air  are  certainly  much  exaggerated ; 
during  the  sleep  of  plants,  however,  when 
their  leaves  are  drooping,  their  function  is 
suspended,  light  being  the  grand  stimulant 
to  the  exercise  of  the  plant's  vitality  ;  the 


Charles  Dickem.] 


[October  10, 1857.]       355 


consequence  of  this  is,  that  some  portion  of 
the  carbonic  acid  gas  previously  absorbed 
both  by  the  leaves  and  other  green  portions 
of  the  plant,  escapes  through  the  tissue 
unchanged  in  its  prejudicial  character :  the 
fact  is,  however,  unquestionably  physical 
rather  than  physiological ;  the  old  doctrine 
of  plants  entirely  reversing  their  respiration 
by  night  is  now  known  to  be  fallacy. 

As  we  have  previously  applied  the  term 
Paterfamilias  to  the  leaf,  it  is  only  right 
that  we  should  explain  the  grounds  on 
which  we  have  given  him  the  patriarchal 
character,  for  at  first  sight  these  may  not 
be  very  obvious.  In  the  first  place  then, 
at  the  base  of  every  true  leaf,  that  is 
to  say,  on  the  stem  immediately  above  the 
leaf-stalk  or  petiole,  will  be  found  a  bud, 
consisting  of  a  growing  point  or  fixed  embryo, 
covered  over  most  delicately  with  a  series  of 
very  small  leaves  for  its  protection.  This  is 
the  leaf's  posterity,  nurtured  from  his  loins, 
to  become  a  scion  when  the  parent's  glory 
has  passed  away.  It  may  seem  stranger  to 
speak  of  the  leaf  as  father  to  the  fruit ;  yet 
such  is  really  the  case  most  unpoetically, 
that  is  to  say,  most  truthfully.  The  flower 
consists  of  four  whorls,  or  circles  ot  parts, 
each  a  little  above  tha  other,  the  lower  circle 
being  that  of  the  green  leaf-like  bodies,  the 
sepals,  forming  in  the  whole  the  calyx  ;  the 
second  consisting  of  the  beautifully  coloured 
petals,  constituting  the  corolla  ;  the  third, 
long  delicate  stalks  crowned  with  little 
boxes  which  eventually  emit  a  coloured 
powder,  the  stamens  ;  the  fourth  and  central, 
a  body  or  bodies  somewhat  similar  to  the 
former  without  the  case,  gibbous  or  swelled 
at  the  lower  portion,  the  pistil.  Now,  it  will 
be  readily  appreciated  that  the  sepals  are  but 
leaves  in  a  different  position  ;  their  anatomy 
is  that  of  the  leaf,  and  their  function  pre- 
cisely identical.  We  have  not  much  more 
difficulty  in  imagining  that  the  variegated 
petal  may  be  nothing  more  than  a  delicately- 
formed  leaf  with  different  colouring  matter 
in  its  tissue,  and  we  are  organically  right  in 
the  supposition.  How  about  the  little 
columns,  however,  pinnacled  with  their  small 
oval  pounce-boxes,  can  these  have  any  rela- 
tion with  the  leaf  ?  Unquestionably,  a  very 
close  one.  Guided  still  by  anatomy  to  the 
decision,  the  stalk  of  the  stamen  is,  to  all 
intents  and  purposes,  a  leaf-stalk,  its  case 
above  really  and  truly  a  leaf-blade  infolded 
so  that  its  edges  meet.  After  this,  may  we 
not  readily  believe  that  the  pistil  is  nothing 
more  than  a  leaf-blade  folded  round  to  meet 
at  the  edges  ?  Its  origin  is  that  of  the  leaf, 
it  developes  as  the  leaf  would  develope  in 
the  same  situation,  the  mark  of  union  of  the 
edges,  or  ventral  suture,  is  always  apparent, 
and  when  it  is  transformed,  as  it  eventually 
is,  into  the  fruit,  it  frequently  becomes  very 
leaf-like  in  its  appearance,  as  in  the  pod  of 
the  common  pea.  Moreover,  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  causes  sometimes  operate  to 


produce  a  retrogression  of  development,  in 
which  case  each  of  these  parts  actually 
reverts  to  its  original  type,  and  becomes  a 
leaf.  If,  then,  the  pistil  be  a  leaf,  the  fruit 
or  matured  pistil  can  be  nothing  more.  If 
this  be  the  case  in  the  pea,  it  must  be  equally 
so  in  the  cocoa-nut,  the  plum,  and  the  orange; 
for  it  is  scarcely  likely  that  nature  would 
vary  her  laws  for  the  fulfilment  of  the  same 
purpose  in  different  individuals. 

To  complete  our  present  gossip  about 
leaves,  it  must  be  explained,  with  reference 
to  the  fruit,  that  botanists  divide  it  into 
simple  and  compound  ;  the  former,  as  in  the, 
plum,  the  pea,  and  the  almond,  is  formed  of 
one  leaf  only,  «,nd  presents  along  the  face  of 
it  the  mark  of  the  suture  or  junction  of  the 
edges  of  the  leaf;  the  latter  is  made  up  of 
several  leaves  grown  together,  side  by  side, 
as  in  the  orange,  each  division  in  which  is  a 
separate  leaf  or  pistil.  In  the  poppy,  the 
margins  of  the  leaves  have  never  grown 
together,  and  the  seeds  are  borne  from  the 
sides  of  the  projecting  walls,  instead  of  from 
the  line  of  junction  of  the  leaf-margins,  as 
would  otherwise  be  the  case.  Fruit  divided 
internally  into  several  cells,  is,  for  the  most 
part,  compound  ;  whilst  that  which  consists 
of  but  one  cell  should  be  simple.  There  are 
numerous  deviations  from  this  rule,  however. 
The  ripe  cocoa-nut  consists  of  but  one  cell, 
although  it  is  a  compound  fruit ;  whilst  the 
wild  honey-pod,  divided  into  many  cells,  is 
simple.  The  former,  however,  is  really  made 
up  of  three  leaves,  and  originally  contained 
three  compartments,  but,  from  some  invari- 
able peculiarity  in  its  growth,  one  ovule  or 
embryo  seed  grows  so  rapidly  in  advance  of 
the  other  ovules  in  the  neighbouring  apart- 
ments, as  entirely  to  destroy  them,  and  by 
forcing  down  the  walls,  to  perfectly  obliterate 
their  chambers.  In  the  wild-honey  pod  the 
horizontal  partitions  are  subsequent  develop- 
ments from,  the  inner  wall  of  the  fruit- 
chamber. 


OUR,  FAMILY  PICTURE. 

IN  SIX   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE  FIFTH. 

AFTER  the  first  great  burst  of  grief  was 
over,  consequent  on  the  bringing  home  of  the 
body  ;  and  when  Doctor  Graile  and  Olive  had 
departed  ;  my  father  desired  the  rest  of  the 
household  to  retire  to  their  rooms,  and  obtain 
what  sleep  they  could. 

"  Caleb,"  he  said,  when  we  were  left  .alone, 
"  do  you  think  it  likely  that  Neville  will  come 
home  to-night  ? " 

"  There  is  no  accounting,  sir.  for  what  he 
may  do  while  the  present  mood  is  on  him." 

"  Then  we  must  sit  up  for  him.  Take  the 
candles  into  the  front  sitting-room,  and  leave 
the  shutters  unfastened,  so  that  he  may  see 
we  have  not  retired,  in  case  he  should  come 
near  the  house.  I  will  join  you  presently." 

So  my  father  and  I  sat  up  through  the  long 
October  night,  waiting  for  Neville,  who  never 


356       [October  10,  1857-1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


came.  About  two  o'clock  my  father  left  me, 
and  going  up-stairs  in  the  dark,  passed  into 
the  chamber  of  the  dead.  Presently  a  door 
opened,  and  my  mother  joined  him.  And  so 
those  two  passed  their  vigil  in  tears  and 
prayer  till  break  of  day.  Then  my  father 
came  down  to  me. 

"  Neville  will  not  come  now,"  he  said. 
"  Your  mother  is  asking  for  him.  Go  and 
account  to  her  for  his  absence." 

So  I  went  to  my  mother,  and  told  her  a 
plausible  lie  to  account  for  Neville's  absence, 
shrinking  before  her  clear  eyes  while  I  did 
so.  But  she  did  not  doubt  me,  and  was 
satisfied.  Oh,  who  could  have  been  so  cruel 
as  to  break  her  heart  with  the  stern  truth  ? 

I  have  no  call  to  linger  over  the  events  of 
the  next  few  days.  Even  at  this  distance  of 
time,  I  cannot  recall  them  without  pain.  The 
coroner's  inquest,  with  its  verdict  of  Wilful 
Murder  against  some  person  or  persons  un- 
known ;  the  police  investigations  ending  in 
nothing  ;  and  even  the  last  sad  scene  in  the 
churchyard,  when  we  .bade  farewell  to  our 
loved  one  ;  all  these  passed  weakly  over  us, 
wounded  too  deeply  at  first,  as  we  were,  to 
feel  very  much  any  after-blow.  Then  came 
the  painful  wrenching  back  of  our  thoughts 
and  attention  from  the  solemn  business  of 
death  to  the  ordinary  duties  of  every-day 
life. 

Doctor  Graile  thinking  that  his  daughter's 
health  was  suffering  from  the  shock  of 
Philip's  sudden  death,  and  that  change  of 
scene  might  prove  beneficial  to  her ;  sent 
her  to  stay  with  a  relative  near  London. 
She  had  scarcely  been  there  a  mouth,  when 
a  wealthy  tallow-merchant  fell  in  love  with 
her,  and  made  her  an  oiler  of  marriage. 
Mrs.  Graile  thought  this  too  advantageous 
an  opportunity  to  be  refused,  and  as  Olive 
knew  no  will  beyond  that  of  her  mother, 
the  tallow-merchant  was  accepted  ;  and  six 
months  after  Philip's  death,  Olive  and  he 
were  married.  The  little  doctor  came  him- 
self to  tell  us  of  it.  He  was  almost  in 
tears  about  it,  and  seemed  truly  miserable; 
but  we  knew  that  he  had  had  no  hand  in 
the  matter.  My  mother  took  it  rather  to 
heart,  and  fretted  about  it  a  good  deal. 

"If  there  is  one  person  more  than 
another,"  she  said,  "  who  should  have 
cherished  the  memory  of  my  noble  boy,  it 
is  Olive  Graile.  But  she  is  not  worthy  of 
him  !  " 

On  their  return  from  their  wedding-tour, 
the  newly-married  couple  took  Dingwell  by 
storm  in  a  carriage-aud-four.  I  happened 
to  be  passing  through  the  town  when  they 
dashed  into  it.  Olive's  quick  eyes  caught 
toe  in  a  moment.  Of  course,  the  carriage 
must  be  stopped  ;  and.  of  course,  we  must 
shake  hands  ;  and  how  was  I  in  health  ? 
and  how  were  papa  and  mamma,  and  all 
the  family  1  And  was  it  not  charming 
•weather  1  And  then — 

"  Good  bye  !  "    We  shall  be  happy  to  see 


you,  Mr.  Caleb,  if  you  will  honour  us  with 
a  call  whenever  you  come  to  town." 

And  so  away,  kissing  her  hand  ;  she  all 
silk,  blonde,  feathers,  and  rosy  smiles ;  the 
fat  man  by  her  side,  all  frowns  and  surly 
jealousy  at  such  unwarrantable  familiarity 
on  the  part  of  his  property. 

Month  after  month  sped  away,  and  still  no 
news  of  Neville.  This  long  silence  began  to 
prey  upon  my  mother's  health.  She  had  lost 
one  son,  for  in  such  light  she  regarded  Philip; 
and  now  another  seemed  to  have  deserted 
her — deserted  her  ?  perhaps,  he,  also,  was 
dead, — drowned, — never  to  be  seen  more  of 
loving  eyes.  And  the  moisture  came  into  her 
own  eyes,  and  dimmed  her  spectacles  when 
she  thought  of  such  a  fate  ;  and  then  she 
had  to  stop  knitting  while  I  wiped  the  glasses 
for  her ;  and  waiting  for  them,  she  would 
fall  a-thinkiug  again,  and  forget  her  work, 
and  have  to  retire  to  bed,  at  last,  overcome 
by  the  pictures  she  had  conjured  up.  She 
was  becoming  weak  and  nervous,  and  fast 
losing  the  cheerfulness  which  she  had  only 
lately  recovered  since  Philip's  death.  So 
my  father  determined  to  reveal  the  secret  to 
her  and  my  sister. 

"  I  was  wrong  to  conceal  it  at  the  time," 
he  said.  "  Better  that  they  should  suffer 
under  a  knowledge  of  the  truth,  than  perish 
slowly  from  the  effects  of  a  lie.  The  task  of 
telling  them  now  is  twice  as  hard  as  it  would 
have  been  at  first." 

So  he  told  them  the  dread  secret  one  quiet 
Sabbath  evening  in  spring,  as  we  all  sat  to- 
gether in  the  twilight ;  not  able  to  see  each 
other's  faces  clearly,  but  yet  having  light 
sufficient  to  show  us  that  we  were  all  there 
together. 

"  I  hold  it  as  Heaven's  truth,"  said  my 
father,  solemnly,  as  he  concluded,  "  that  my 
poor  boy  was  not  master  of  his  actions  when 
he  committed  that  terrible  deed ;  that,  for 
some  mysterious  purpose,  his  reason  had  been 
taken  from  him.  Who,  then,  shall  stand  for- 
ward and  blame  him — stricken  by  an  invisible 
hand  1  Let  us  rather  pray  for  him,  in  silence." 

There  had  been  a  great  change  in  my  father 
ever  since  the  sad  night  on  which  Philip  was 
brought  home.  That  sunny  cheerfulness  of 
manner,  that  quiet  sarcastic  humour,  which 
were  habitual  to  him  before,  now  showed 
themselves  in  rare  flashes  only,  at  distant  in- 
tervals. His  grey  hair  was  turning  white, 
his  lithe  erect  figure  was  becoming  bowed 
at  the  shoulders  ;  and  his  favourite  game  at 
bowls  had  to  be  given  up,  because  it  fatigued 
him  too  much.  He  took  more  snuff  than 
ever,  and  would  sit  for  hours  at  a  time 
with  his  box  in  his  hand,  buried  in  reverie, 
and  speaking  to  no  one.  Yet  the  change  in 
him,  at  first,  was  so  gradual  and  impercep- 
tible that  we,  living  beneath  the  same 
roof,  and  in  daily  communion  with  him, 
did  not  perceive  it  for  some  time.  Doctor 
Graile  was  the  first  to  point  it  out.  My 
father  yielded  to  his  importunity,  and  took 


Charles  Dickens.] 


DUE  FAMILY  PICTURE. 


[October  10, 185?.]       357 


all  the  draughts  and  pills  that  he  sent,  -with 
a  smile  and  a  shake  of  the  head,  which  im- 
plied that  he  had  but  little  faith  in  their 
efficacy.  Week  by  week,  and  month  by 
mouth,  he  grew  feebler,  and  more  in  need  of 
our  care.  He  would  persist  in  attending  the 
school  so  long  as  he  could  walk  as  far  ;  but 
there  came  a  morning  when  he  was  too 
weak  to  leave  his  arm-chair.  Even  then  he 
insisted  on  having  the  first  form  sent  to  him, 
and  heard  them  repeat  their  lessons  while  he 
sat  propped  up  with  pillows. 

He  still  retained  his  affection  for  the 
classics  ;  and  when  his  eyes  became  so  weak 
that  he  could  no  longer  see  to  read  above  a 
few  minutes  at  a  time,  I  used  to  read  aloud 
to  him  the  full-flowing  sonorous  lines  of  some 
of  the  Latin  poets.  Ovid's  Tristia  was  a 
book  which  he  grew  particularly  fond  of  at 
this  time.  There  is  the  echo  of  a  great  sor- 
row in  its  lines,  and  it  tells  of  the  dangers 
and  troubles  of  those  whose  way  is  on  the 
deep  waters.  At  length,  even  the  pleasure 
of  sitting  in  his  arm-chair  was  denied  to  him  : 
he  was  confined  to  his  bed.  Now  it  was 
that  the  sterling  womanly  qualities  of  my 
sister  Helen  were  seen  to  most  advantage. 
With  a  father  who  required  constant  atten- 
tion, and  a  mother  who  was  far  from  well, 
she  assumed  at  once  her  natural  position  of 
nurse  and  housekeeper,  as  though  she  had 
never  been  anything  else ;  with  untired 
patience  and  unwearied  vigilance  attending 
to  the  wants  of  everyone.  With  what  tender 
affection,  with  what  quiet  sympathy,  she 
waited  on  my  father  during  his  long  and 
tedious  illness,  it  is  beyond  my  skill  to  portray. 
Many  a  time  as  she  went  softly  about  her 
duties  in  his  room,  I  saw  his  lips  move,  and 
heard  the  whispered  blessing. 

Still  he  grew  weaker  and  weaker,  till  it 
became  evident  that  the  end  was  not  distant. 
Cheerful  and  uncomplaining  in  everything 
else,  he  now  began  to  long  for  Neville  more 
than  ever.  "  Where's  Neville  ?  "  he  would 
sometimes  ask  when  he  woke  up  from  sleep, 
with  momentary  forgetfulness  of  what  had 
occurred.  "Why  does  he  not  come  to  see 
me  ?  "  Then,  like  a  flash  of  light,  the  past 
would  overwhelm  him,  and  he  would  sink 
back  with  a  groan  of  anguish,  exclaiming, 
"  Go,  seek  my  boy,  some  of  you  !  I  want  to 
see  him  again  before  I  die." 

I  had  made  inquiries,  at  the  commence- 
ment of  his  illness,  in  every  direction  where  I 
thought  there  was  any  likelihood  of  hearing- 
tidings  of  my  brother ;  and  these  inquiries 
I  repeated  from  time  to  time,  but  to  no 
purpose. 

Doctor  Graile's  visits  became  more  fre- 
quent, and  his  looks  graver.  As  the  spring 
advanced,  my  father's  illness  grew  upon 
him ;  and  by  the  time  midsummer  had 
come,  it  was  evident  that  he  had  but  a  short 
time  to  live.  When  the  school  broke  up  for 
the  vacation,  he  would  have  the  lads  into  his 
bedroom,  and  address  a  few  words  to  them, 


and  shake  hands  with  them  individually. 
Tasks  and  punishments  were  forgotten  for 
that  day  ;  they  only  remembered  how  kind, 
how  like  a  father,  the  old  master  had  been 
to  them.  Before  the  opening  day  came 
round,  he  was  gone  from  among  us ;  and 
when  I  told  them,  on  the  morning  of  our 
meeting,  how  he  had  said,  only  half-an-hour 
before  he  died,  "  Remember  me  to  my  dear 
pupils,  and  tell  them  I  hope  to  see  them  all. 
again,"  it  did  me  good  to  see  the  soft  April 
tears  dropping  quietly  from  their  young 
eyes. 

Meanwhile  my  father's  daily  cry  was  for 
Neville — "Oh,  that  he  would  come!"  One 
evening,  at  the  conclusion  of  his  usual  visit, 
Doctor  Graile  took  me  on  one  side.  "  My 
dear  young  friend,"  he  said,  "  it  is  my  duty  to 
inform  you  that  I  do  not  think  your  father 
can  last  many  hours  longer.  His  pulse  is 
sinking  rapidly " 

"  Oh,  sir,  we  thought  him  better  to-day. 
He  has  been  more  cheerful  than  for  some 
time  past.  It  is  only  during  the  last  hour 
that  he  has  fallen  off  so." 

"  Mere  febrile  excitement  and  consequent 
exhaustion.  It  rests  with  you  to  determine 
whether  you  will  communicate  what  I  have 
told  you  to  your  mother  and  sisters  ;  but,  my 
dear  Caleb,  I  have  no  expectation  of  finding 
my  old  friend  alive  at  my  next  visit.  He  is 
beyond  my  skill  now.  Ah  me  !  what  shall  I 
do  without  him  ?  We  have  been  like  bro- 
thers for  thirty  years  ;  and  no  one  can  ever 
be  to  me  what  he  has  been.  Good  night. 
Remember  those  who  will  soon  have  you 
alone  to  look  to  for  protection,  and  bear  up 
under  your  affliction." 

It  was  a  summer  evening,  balmy  and 
warm.  My  father  would  have  the  window 
open ;  and  the  scent  of  new-mown  hay, 
mingled  with  that  of  flowers,  came  floating 
into  the  room.  The  setting  sun  shot  his 
golden  shafts  through  the  open  casement, 
and  the  dying  man  basked  in  their  glory. 
Slowly  the  darkness  grew  upon  us,  creeping 
up  with  soft  gradations,  till  everything  was 
shrouded  in  its  sable  folds.  The  rushlights 
were  lighted,  and  we  prepared  for  our  usual 
watch.  This  night  I  and  Ruth  (who  had  now 
been  at  home  for  some  weeks)  were  to  watch. 
In  spite  of  what  Doctor  Graile  had  told  me, 
I  still  hoped  that  the  end  was  not  so  neai'. 
My  unpractised  eye  could  not  detect  that  my 
father  was  worse  than  usual ;  and  so,  build- 
ing on  this  slight  foundation,  I  kept  the  fatal 
intelligence  to  myself.  My  mother  and 
Helen  retired  to  rest  as  usual  ;  and  Ruth 
and  I  took  our  seats,  one  on  each  side  the 
bed.  The  hush  of  night  fell  over  everything ; 
only,  from  a  distant  wood,  we  heard  at  inter- 
vals, the  faint  notes  of  a  nightingale.  At 
length  this  too  ceased  ;  and  then  the  short 
breathing  and  troubled  exclamations  of  our 
dying  father  were  the  only  sounds  that 
broke  the  silence.  He  slept  by  brief 
snatches,  and  when  he  was  awake,  he 


358       [October  10, 1967-1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[.Conducted  by 


sometimes  -wandered  a  little  in  his  mind. 
His  thoughts  were  continually  -with  Neville  : 
"  Oh,  that  he  would  come,  ere  it  be  too 
late  !  " 

The  dark  hours  passed,  one  by  one,  each 
struck  out  by  the  clock  below,  with  startling 
loudness.  Twice  during  the  night  my  mother 
glided  in,  nightcapped,  and  enveloped  in  a 
large  shawl.  At  length  the  signs  of  morning 
became  apparent.  The  grey  dawn  smote  the 
windows,  and  put  to  shame  the  waning  rush- 
light. Little  birds  came  fluttering  out  of 
their  warm  nests ;  far  across  the  meadow 
stretched  the  tiny  river  like  a  belt  of  cloud  ; 
and  the  purpling  sky  became  beautiful  to 
look  upon.  Suddenly  rny  father  sat  up  in 
bed.  "  Draw  up  the  blinds  and  open  the 
windows,"  he  said.  "  So.  The  morning  air 
tastes  sweet.  Hush  !  I  hear  him  coming  ! 
I  know  his  footstep.  It  is  Neville's  !  At 
last  he  is  here  !  " 

I  looked  out.  There  was  no  one  to  be  seen 
but  a  solitary  haymaker  toiling  along  the 
white  road.  Again  the  sick  man  dozed. 
Helen  came  in  to  resume  her  post  as  watcher ; 
and,  after  one  lingering  look  I  left  the  room, 
accompanied  by  Ruth.  Suddenly  there  came 
a  ring  at  the  front  door.  With  a  beating 
heart  I  hastened  down  to  open  it.  There 
stood  Neville.  By  what  fine  intuitive  sense 
my  father  had  foreknown  his  coming,  it  is 
impossible  for  me  to  say.  Or  was  it  merely  a 
coincidence  ?  A.  fervent  grasp  of  the  hand 
was  our  only  greeting.  I  led  the  way  up 
stairs.  My  father  was  awake,  and  lying 
with  his  face  towards  the  door. 

"  Bring  him  in,  Caleb,"  he  said,  as  I  paused 
on  the  threshold.  "  I  knew  that  my  boy 
would  come,"  he  added,  while  a  happy 
smile  spread  over  his  thin  face.  "I  was 
searching  for  him  long,  last  night ;  but 
I  found  him  at  last,  and  I  knew  that  he 
would  come ! " 

"  O  father  !  "  was  all  that  Neville  could 
cry,  as  he  sank  down  by  the  bedside,  and 
buried  his  face  in  the  clothes. 

My  father  stretched  forth  a  pallid  hand, 
and  laid  it  gently  on  his  head.  "  Kiss  me, 
Neville,  as  you  used  to  do  when  a  child. 
Ah  me !  how  the  old  times  rush  back  over 
my  memory,  when  you  were  all  children 
together,  and  no  black  shadow  had  blighted 
our  hearth ! " 

Neville  groaned. 

"  Hush,  poor  boy,"  said  my  father,  gently. 
"  Month  after  month  I  have  longed  and 
prayed  for  this  hour  to  come.  It  has  come, 
and  with  it,  the  time  to  clear  up  our  doubts. 
Neville,  answer  me  truly  ;  did  your  cousin 
Philip  fall  by  your  hand  ?  " 

"  Oh,  believe  me,  I  knew  not  what  I  did  !  " 
cried  Neville.  "  Guilty  I  must  be,  since  you 
say  that  he  was  murdered,  but  not  knowingly 
guilty.  I  was  dragged  to  it,  forced  to  it,  by 
a  power  within  me  which  I  could  not  con- 
trol. But  let  me  confess  everything.  Bear 
with  me  a  short  time,  while  I  relate  to 


you  my  dark  story  of  passion  and  crime. 
You  all  know  that  I  loved  Olive  Graile — 
from  a  child  I  loved  her ;  at  first  as 
children  love,  unknowing  and  uncaring  why  ; 
and  afterwards,  as  boys  love,  with  more  of 
worship  than  of  earthly  passion.  It  was 
partly  her  wilful  and  capricious  disposition, 
and  partly  her  beauty  that  captivated  me. 
I  had  reason  to  believe  that  my  affection  was 
not  unrequited.  Thus  the  matter  went  on, 
till,  on  coming  back  from  a  two  years' 
voyage,  I  met  her  for  the  first  time  after 
my  return  at  a  party  at  our  house.  She  had 
shot  up  into  a  charming  woman  during  my 
absence.  A  few  minutes  were  sufficient  to 
let  her  see  that  I  still  loved  her  as  warmly 
as  ever.  For  the  first  few  days  after  our 
meeting,  her  manner  was  gentle,  retiring, 
and  full  of  maidenly  coyness.  She  was 
luring  me  on.  That  fortnight  was  the 
happiest  of  my  life.  I  ventured  one  after- 
noon to  tell  her  all  that  I  hoped  and  feared. 
She  smote  me  with  a  haughty  stare,  and  a 
curl  on  her  lip  ;  wondered  what  could  have 
induced  me  to  talk  in  that  absurd  fashion  ; 
hoped  that  she  should  never  hear  again  of 
anything  so  ridiculous  ;  and  left  me  speech- 
less, confused,  and  burning  with  anger  and 
shame.  When  I  next  saw  her,  she  treated 
me  exactly  as  she  had  treated  me  before 
the  afternoon  on  which  I  told  her  that  I 
loved  her. 

"  Her  treatment  of  me  was  a  puzzle  which, 
I  could  not  solve  ;  but  I  had  too  much  faith 
in  the  sincerity  of  my  own  attachment  to 
think  for  a  moment  that  she  was  coquetting 
with  me.  Suddenly  I  was  summoned  to  re- 
join my  ship.  I  sought  her  for  a  last  inter- 
view. She  seemed  sorry  that  I  was  going, 
and  said  she  hoped  I  would  not  forget  her 
when  far  away  ;  adding  that  she  should  often 
think  of  me,  and  long  for  my  return.  The 
old  passionate  words  sprang  to  my  lips  ;  but 
bearing  in  mind  my  previous  lesson,  I  re- 
strained them,  and  crushed  them  back  into 
my  heart.  At  parting,  she  gave  me  a  little 
packet,  desiring  that  I  would  not  open  it  till 
she  was  gone.  It  contained  that  lock  of  hair 
which  you,  Caleb,  accidentally  saw.  What  was 
I  to  think  ?  How  was  I  to  regard  this  token 
after  what  had  occurred  between  us  ?  I  did 
as  I  suppose  most  lovers  do — I  looked  on  the 
rosy  side  of  the  question,  and  went  away 
with  a  buoyant,  loving  heart,  holding  her 
sweetly  in  my  thoughts  as  my  future  wife. 
At  that  time  she  was  positively  engaged  to 
Philip  :  that  I  learnt  afterwards,  when  it 
was  too  late.  All  that  voyage  her  image 
was  with  me  continually,  keeping  me  com- 
pany in  the  lonely  night-watches  ;  in  sun- 
shine, and  in  storm,  ever  by  my  side — all  that 
voyage,  till  the  fatal  quarrel  with  my  cap- 
tain took  place  ;  after  which,  I  lay  for  many 
weeks  unconscious  of  everything.  After  my 
arrival  at  home,  disgraced  as  I  thought  for 
ever,  I  struggled  long  and  fiercely  against 
my  passion,  striving  to  wrench  it  out  of 


Charles  Dickens.] 


OUR  FAMILY  PICTURE, 


[October  10,  183;.]       359 


my  heart;  and  did  not  go  near  Olive  for 
several  days.  But  I  had  not  strength 
enough  to  give  her  up  of  my  own  accord.  I 
had  read  and  heard  of  young  girls,  who  had 
kept  to  their  promises  through  disgrace  and 
sorrow,  only  clinging  the  firmer  to  the  object 
of  their  affections  when  the  world  frowned 
around  them.  Perhaps,  Olive  might  be 
one  of  those  heroic  spirits.  You  see  how 
selfishly,  how  weakly  I  acted  throughout. 
Worn  out  at  length  in  body  and  mind,  torn 
by  two  opposite  passions — burning  desire  to 
avenge  myself  on  the  man  who  had  wronged 
me  so  foully,  and  fear  that  my  love  would 
be  rejected — I  felt  the  gradual  approach  of 
that  demon  of  madness  whose  prey  I  had 
been  before  ;  and  who  required  at  times,  even 
•when  I  was  in  the  full  flush  of  health,  the 
utmost  strength  of  my  will,  and  power  of  my 
reason,  to  keep  him  at  bay.  I  felt  his  ap- 
proach, and  I  trembled.  I  knew  that  there 
was  only  one  thing  which  could  save  me — 
the  sweet  assurance  that  I  was  still  loved. 
My  mind  made  up  how  to  act,  I  went  at  once 
and  sought  an  interview  with  Olive.  I  told 
her  my  love,  but  not  my  disgrace.  I  meant 
to  tell  her  that  afterwards,  but  she  never 
gave  me  an  opportunity.  She  cut  short  my 
confession  before  I  had  uttered  above  a  dozen 
words,  by  telling  me  that  she  was  engaged 
to  another,  and  shortly  to  be  married  ;  that 
anything  which  had  passed  between  us  here- 
tofore merely  arose  out  of  friendship  on  her 
part  ;  that  she  was  astonished  to  find  how  it 
had  been  construed  by  me  ;  and  had  given 
me  credit  for  more  sense  than  she  now  found 
I  possessed.  All  this  she  said  in  cold,  mea- 
sured sentences,  with  a  heartless  smile  of 
triumph  on  her  face  that  maddened  me  even 
more  than  her  words.  I  would  not  trust  myself 
to  reply,  for  I  was  no  longer  my  own  master  ; 
but  quitted  her  at  once.  What  happened  for 
a  long  time  after  this,  remains  in  my  memory 
only  like  the  fragments  of  a  troubled  dream, 
recalled  with  effort  the  next  day.  The  mad- 
ness that  had  long  lurked  in  my  brain  burst 
forth  in  a  moment,  armed  and  full  grown, 
and  I  lay  powerless  in  its  grasp.  I  must 
avenge  myself  somehow — that  was  my  upper- 
most thought.  By  some  strange  mental  pro- 
cess which  I  am  unable  to  explain,  the  captain 
who  had  disgraced  me,  and  the  rival  who 
had  supplanted  nje,  had  become  merged  into 
one  individual  in  my  thoughts,  and  him  I 
must  slay.  It  was  necessary  that  I  should 
kill  him.  My  recollections  are  so  broken  and 
confused  that  I  cannot  recall  even  these  frag- 
ments without  painful  effort. 

"  With  a  madman's  keenness,  I  knew  that 
Caleb  suspected  me,  and  had  set  himself  to 
watch  me.  I  smiled  at  the  idea,  and  got  rid 
of  him  by  a  simple  device.  Next  I  am  under 
the  willows,  waiting  for  the  lovers  ;  though  I 
cannot  now  tell  what  made  me  think  they 
would  pass  that  way.  It  is  dark,  or  only 
vague  moonlight.  I  see  them  approaching — 
a  dark,  tall  figure,  my  double  enemy  ;  a  frail 


shrinking  figure,  my  lost  darling.  I  hear 
their  whispered  words  of  love.  He  stoops 
down  to  kiss  her.  A  wave  of  fire  rushes 
over  my  brain  at  the  sight,  and  from  this 
moment  my  recollection  ceases.  A  terrible 
blank,  that  lasted  for  several  weeks,  ensued  ; 
and  I  knew  nothing  more  till  I  one  day  found 
myself  lying  in  a  strange  bed,  with  two  pity- 
ing eyes  bent  over  me  that  I  had  never  seen 
before.  I  have  done.  Oh  Father  !  have  you 
no  words  of  comfort  for  me  1  Tell  me,  am  I 
forgiven  ? " 

"  Bear  witness,  all  of  you  !  "  said  my  father, 
appealing  to  us.  "You  hear  how  he  was 
afflicted.  Philip's  voice,  at  this  hour,  speaks 
through  me,  and  pronounces  him  innocent. 

0  wife  !  O  children  !  take  him  to  your  hearts 
once  moi'e,  guiltless  of  the  crime  of  blood  as 
on  the  day  he  was  born  ! " 

Here  my  pen  must  stop.  A  father's  last 
words  are  sacred,  and  not  to  be  lightly  told. 
At  ten  o'clock  that  morning  he  died  ;  his  arm 
laid  lovingly  round  the  wanderer's  neck. 

CHAPTER  THE  SIXTH. 

IT  was  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which 
my  father  was  buried.  Neville  took  rny  arm, 
and  we  walked  out  together  in  the  direction 
of  the  churchyard.  The  mound  was  already 
formed,  and  covered  with  square  patches  of 
turf  roughly  joined.  The  grey  quiet  of  the 
summer  eve  was  broken  only  by  the  soft 
rustle  of  the  poplar  leaves  on  the  tall  trees 
that  grew  around,  and  by  the  grave  cawing 
of  a  cloud  of  distant  rooks,  returning  from 
some  predatory  excursion. 

"  The  dead  sleep  well,"  said  Neville,  as  we 
stepped  into  the  churchyard.  "  They  neither 
see  nor  hear  what  passes  above  their  dark 
homes.  Tears  of  sorrow,  words  of  remorse, 
affect  them  not.  They  are  beyond  our  touch 
— beyond  our  call — gone  from  us  for  ever. 

1  also  must  depart.     I  cannot  remain  here, 
in  a  spot  where  I  have  been  the  cause  of  so 
much  misery  to  others,  and  which  teems  with 
such  recollections  for  myself." 

"  Surely,  Neville,  you  will  not  leave  us, 
now  we  are  so  few  on  the  ground  !  " 

"  To  remain  here,  Caleb,  would  kill  me, 
not  bodily,  but  mentally.  In  work,  and  con- 
stant action,  and  ceaseless  endeavour,  lie  my 
only  resources  against  my  enemy.  In  another 
land,  amid  the  growing  powers  of  a  new- 
country,  I  may,  perhaps,  find  what  I  should 
seek  here  in  vain.  In  a  few  days  more  I 
shall  bid  farewell  to  the  home  where  I  was 
born,  to  all  on  earth  who  love  me,  and  to 
these  holy  graves.  Somewhat  of  the  heavy 
weight  of  guilt  seems  to  have  been  lifted  off 
my  soul  since  my  father  spake  to  me  those 
comforting  words,  and  pronounced  me  guilt- 
less in  intention  of  my  cousin's  death.  And 
now  I  must  wander  forth :  it  is  my  doom. 
Come ;  the  dew  is  falling,  and  it  is  almost 
dark.  They  will  be  looking  for  us  at 
home." 

Next  morning,  as  we  all  sat  together  after 


360 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[October  10, 1S5;.] 


breakfast,  Neville  gently  broke  his  intention 
of  departing  in  a  few  days. 

"  Neville  !  Neville  !  I  cannot  spare  you  !  " 
cried  my  mother.  "  I  have  not  very  long  to 
live.  A  fe\v  short  years,  and  then  you  will 
be  entirely  free.  But  do  not  desert  me  in  my 
old  age.  Let  my  eyes  rest  on  you  when  I 
die  ;  and  see  me  laid  by  your  father's  side." 

"Mother,  you  will  still  have  three  children 
left  when  I  am  gone — children  who  have 
never  caused  you  the  pain  and  grief  I  have. 
They  will  comfort  you  better  than  I  could. 
But  for  me  thei-e  is  a  different  lot.  I  cannot 
stay — I  dare  not  !  Mother,  do  not  think  me 
unkind  ;  Heaven  knows  I  would  serve  you 
with  my  life  ;  but  here  I  must  not  remain. 
If  I  do,  I  shall  go  mad." 

"  Then,  be  it  so,  Neville,"  she  replied.  "Be 
guided  by  the  counsel  of  your  own  conscience. 
I  know  that  you  love  me,  and  I  would  fain 
have  you  near  me ;  but  if  it  must  be  other- 
wise, I  say  Go  in  peace,  and  may  my  blessing 
be  about  you  wherever  you  go  ! " 

"  Do  you  go  alone,  Neville  '< "  asked  Euth, 
who  had  not  spoken  hitherto. 

"  Surely,  Euth,  I  go  alone.  Who  would  be 
the  companion  of  a  guilty  wretch  like  me  1 " 

"Neville,  I  will  be  your  companion.  You 
shall  not  go  alone." 

"  What,  another  !  "  said  my  mother,  rock- 
ing herself  gently  in  her  chair,  while  the 
tears  followed  one  another  down  her  worn 
cheeks.  "  One  by  one  they  are  leaving  me, 
and  soon  I  shall  be  childless." 

"  It  must  not  be,  dear  Ruth,"  said  Neville, 
firmly,  but  tenderly.  "  Do  not  fear,  mother  ; 
I  will  not  rob  you.  I  will  go  alone." 

"  Neville,  I  will  go  with  you !  "  repeated 
Euth  in  her  downright,  positive  way,  as 
though  she  were  getting  angry  about  it. 
"  Listen,  mother !  Listen,  Caleb  !  Neville  is 
going  far  away,  among  strangers  who  have 
no  thought  or  care  for  him  as  we  have. 
Afflicted  as  he  has  been,  and  as  he  may  be 
again,  is  it  kind,  is  it  loving,  to  let  him  go 
alone  while  there  is  one  of  us  free  to  accom- 
pany him  ?  He  might  fall  ill  in  a  strange 
land,  and  perish  for  want  of  some  one  to 
tend  him.  I  am  the  one  who  can  best  be 
spared  for  this  holy  duty.  Helen  will  be 
married  in  a  short  time  ;  and  on  Caleb,  now 
that  he  has  become  master  of  the  school,  will 
devolve  the  maintenance  of  our  mother.  I 
am  bound  to  home  by  fewer  ties  than  any  of 
you ;  therefore  my  duty  in  this  matter  lies 
clear  and  straight  before  me.  Tell  me,  am  I 
wrong  in  what  I  have  stated  1" 

"  Ruth  is  right,  as  usual,"  said  my  mother. 
'•'  She  must  accompany  Neville.  I  may,  per- 
haps, never  see  her  again  ;  but  I  shall  know 
that  my  poor  boy  has  one  by  his  side  who  will 
never  desert  him,  come  what  may  ;  and  in 
that  thought  lies  my  only  comfort." 

"  O,  mother,  I  am  unworthy  of  so  much 


love  and  care ! "  exclaimed  Neville,  as  he 
kissed  Euth  again  and  again.  "  Dear  little 
sister  !  it  is  I  who  will  watch  over  and  pro- 
tect you  ;  and  strive  in  all  that  I  can,  to 
lighten  the  weight  of  the  great  burden  which 
you  have  taken  on  yourself  for  me.  Now 
I  have  something  to  live  for  ;  something  to 
care  for  beyond  myself !  " 

A  few  days  saw  the  preparations  completed. 
I  will  not  linger  over  the  farewells  that  were 
uttered,  or  the  wishes  and  hopes  that  were 
wafted  after  the  wanderers  by  the  sorrowing 
hearts  they  left  behind. 

A  few  months  after  their  departure,  Helen 
was  married,  and  went  to  reside  in  the  south 
of  England.  She  is  still,  as  she  deserves  to 
be,  happy  aad  prosperous. 

The  old  house  seemed  very  desolate,  now 
that  there  were  only  my  mother  and  I  left 
to  occupy  it.  For  both  of  us  it  was  haunted 
by  many  sweet  memories  of  the  past ;  and  in 
those  memories,  as  age  crept  over  her,  my 
mother  almost  entirely  lived.  Years  have 
elapsed  since  she  was  laid  by  my  father's  side 
in  the  little  churchyard  ;  one  of  my  plea- 
santest  recollections  lies  in  the  thought  that 
I  did  all  I  could  to  make  her  last  days  com- 
fortable and  happy. 

It  was  the  anniversary  of  Philip's  death 
when  I  penned  the  first  lines  of  this  humble 
history.  Several  weeks  have  elapsed  since 
that  day.  In  the  interval  I  have  received  a 
letter  from  Euth  ;  and  with  an  extract  from 
her  letter  I  cannot  do  better  than  conclude. 
She  writes  : 

"  Wild,  lonely,  and  uncivilised,  as  this 
place  was  when  we  to  it  first  came,  comforts 
have  sprung  up  around  us  one  by  one,  until 
now  we  have  scarcely  anything  to  wish  for 
in  the  way  of  temporal  blessings.  Neville 
has  flocks  and  herds  without  number,  and 
large  tracts  of  land  to  call  his  own.  The 
untamed  energies  of  his  nature  find  a  vent 
in  the  vigilance,  activity,  and  hard  work 
required  in  the  management  of  his  affairs. 

"  He  planted  his  foot  in  a  wild  solitude, 
farther  in  advance  than  any  white  man  had 
done  before.  Society  followed  him,  and  now 
has  overtaken  him.  He  is  looked  up  to,  as 
the  founder  of  the  community,  and  is  re- 
spected by  every  one.  He  is  happy  in  the 
idea  that  he  is  working  for  the  good  of 
others  as  well  as  himself ;  and  if  the  dark 
shadow  ever  crosses  his  mind  for  a  moment, 
I  hope  I  know  how  to  chase  it  away,  and 
bring  back  the  sunshine,  and  hearten  him  on 
to  fulfil  the  great  task  of  his  life." 


Just  published,  iu  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One 
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THE     DEAD    SECRET. 

!!Y  WILKIE  COLLINS. 
Bradbury  and  Evans,  Whitcinm>:. 


TJie  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOB.DS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors, 


PubHihedat  the  Office,  No.  16,  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  BSADBUHT  &  EVAHS,  TVhitefriars,  London, 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS"— 


HOUSEHOLIWORDS. 

A   WEEKLY    JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


-  395.] 


SATURDAY,  OCTOBER  17,  1857. 


\  STAMPED  3d. 


THE  LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE 
APPRENTICES. 

IN  FIVE   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE  THIRD. 

THE  Cumberland  Doctor's  mention  of 
Doncaster  Eaces,  inspired  Mr.  Francis  Good- 
child  with  the  idea  of  going  down  to  Don- 
caster  to  see  the  races.  Doncaster  being  a 
good  way  off,  and  quite  out  of  the  way  of 
the  Idle  Apprentices  (if  anything  could  be 
out  of  their  way,  who  had  no  way),  it  neces- 
sarily followed  that  Francis  perceived  Don- 
caster  in  the  race-week  to  be,  of  all  possible 
idlenesses,  the  particular  idleness  that  would 
completely  satisfy  him. 

Thomas,  with  an  enforced  idleness  grafted 
on  the  natural  and  voluntaiy  power  of  his 
disposition,  was  not  of  this  mind  ;  objecting 
that  a  man  compelled  to  lie  on  his  back  on  a 
floor,  a  sofa,  a  table,  a  line  of  chairs,  or 
anything  he  could  get  to  lie  upon,  was  not  in 
racing  condition,  and  that  he  desired  nothing 
better  than  to  lie  where  he  was,  enjoying 
himself  in  looking  at  the  flies  on  the  ceiling. 
But,  Francis  Goodchild,  who  had  been  walk- 
ing round  his  companion  in  a  circuit  of 
twelve  miles  for  two  days,  and  had  begun  to 
doubt  whether  it  was  reserved  for  him  ever 
to  be  idle  in  his  life,  not  only  overpowered 
this  objection,  but  even  converted  Thomas 
Idle  to  a  scheme  he  formed  (another  idle  in- 
spiration), of  conveying  the  said  Thomas  to 
the  sea-coast,  and  putting  his  injured  leg 
under  a  stream  of  salt-water. 

Plunging  into  this  happy  conception  head- 
foremost, Mr.  Goodchild  immediately  re- 
ferred to  the  county-map,  and  ardently  dis- 
covered that  the  most  delicious  piece  of  sea- 
coast  to  be  found  within  the  limits  of  England, 
Ireland,  Scotland,  Wales,  The  Isle  of  Man, 
and  the  Channel  Islands,  all  summed  up  to- 
gether, was  Allouby  on  the  coast  of  Cumber- 
land. There  was  the  coast  of  Scotland 
opposite  to  Allonby,  said  Mr.  Goodchild  with 
enthusiasm  ;  there  was  a  fine  Scottish  moun- 
tain on  that  Scottish  coast;  there  were 
Scottish  lights  to  be  seen  shining  across  the 
glorious  Channel,  and  at  Allonby  itself  there 
was  every  idle  luxury  (no  doubt),  that  a 
watering-place  could  olfer  to  the  heart  of  idle 
man.  Moreover,  said  Mr.  Goodchild,  with  his 
finger  on  the  map,  this  exquisite  retreat  was 
approached  by  a  coach-road,  from  a  rail  way- 


station  called  Aspatria — a  name,  in  a  manner, 
suggestive  of  the  departed  glories  of  Greece, 
associated  with  one  of  the  most  engaging  and 
most  famous  of  Greek  women.  On  this 
point,  Mr.  Goodchild  continued  at  intervals 
to  breathe  a  vein  of  classic  fancy  and  elo- 
quence exceedingly  irksome  to  Mr.  Idle,  until 
it  appeared  that  the  honest  English  pronun- 
ciation of  that  Cumberland  country  shortened 
Aspatria  into  "  Spatter."  After  this  supple- 
mentary discovery,  Mr.  Goodchild  said  no 
more  about  it. 

By  way  of  Spatter,  the  crippled  Idle  was 
carried,  hoisted,  pushed,  poked,  and  packed, 
into  and  out  of  carriages,  into  and  out  of 
beds,  into  and  out  of  tavern  resting-places, 
until  he  was  brought  at  length  within  sniff 
of  the  sea.  And  now,  behold  the  apprentices 
gallantly  riding  into  Allonby  in  a  one-horse 
fly,  bent  upon  staying  in  that  peaceful  marine 
valley  until  the  turbulent  Doncaster  time 
shall  come  round  upon  the  wheel,  in  its  turn 
among  what  are  in  sporting  registers  called 
the  "  Fixtures  "  for  the  month. 

"  Do  you  "see  Allonby  1 "  asked  Thomas 
Idle. 

"  I  don't  see  it  yet,"  said  Francis,  looking 
out  of  window. 

"  It  must  be  there,"  said  Thomas  Idle. 

"  I  don't  see  it,"  returned  Francis. 

u  It  must  be  there,"  repeated  Thomas  Idle, 
fretfully. 

"  Lord  bless  me ! "  exclaimed  Francis, 
drawing  in  his  head,  "  I  suppose  this 
is  it ! " 

"  A  watering-place,"  retorted  Thomas  Idle, 
with  the  pardonable  sharpness  of  an  in- 
valid, "  can't  be  five  gentlemen  in  straw- 
hats,  on  a  form  on  one  side  of  a  door,  and 
four  ladies  in  hats  and  'falls,  on  a  form  on 
another  side  of  a  door,  and  three  geese  in  a 
dirty  little  brook  before  them,  and  a  boy's 
legs  hanging  over  a  bridge  (with  a  boy's 
body  I  suppose  on  the  other  side  of  the  para- 
pet), and  a  donkey  running  away.  What  are 
you  talking  about  ? " 

"Allonby,  gentlemen,"  said  the  most  com- 
fortable of  landladies,  as  she  opened  one  door 
of  the  carriage  ;  "  Allonby,  gentlemen,"  said 
the  most  attentive  of  landlords,  as  he  opened 
the  other. 

Thomas  Idle  yielded  his  arm  to  the  ready 
Goodchild,  and  descended  from  the  vehicle. 


vot,  xvr. 


395 


362      [October  17, 1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Thomas,  now  just  able  to  grope  his  way 
along,  in  a  doubled-up  condition,  with  the  aid 
of  two  thick  sticks,  was  no  bad  embodiment 
of  Commodore  Trunnion,  or  of  one  of  those 
many  gallant  Admirals  of  the  stage,  who 
have  all  ample  fortunes,  gout,  thick-sticks, 
tempers,  waids,  and  nephews.  With  this 
distinguished  naval  appearance  upon  him, 
Thomas  made  a  crab-like  progress  up  a  clean 


bulk-headed    staircase,    into    a   clean 
bulk-headed   room,  where   he   slowly 


little 

little 

deposited  himself  on.  a  sofa,  with  a  stick  on 

either    hand    of    him,    looking    exceedingly 

grim. 

"  Francis,"  said  Thomas  Idle,  "  what  do 
you  think  of  this  place  ?  " 

"  I  think,"  returned  Mr.  Goodchild,  in  a 
glowing  way,  "it  is  everything  we  ex- 
pected." 

"  Hah  !  "  said  Thomas  Idle. 

"There  is  the  sea,"  cried  Mr.  Goodchild, 
pointing  out  of  window  ;  "and  here,"  point- 
ing to  the  lunch  on  the  table,  "  are  shrimps. 
Let  us — "  here  Mr.  Goodchild  looked  out  of 
window,  as  if  in  search  of  something,  and 
looked  in  again, — "let  us  eat  'em." 

The  shrimps  eaten  and  the  dinner  ordered, 


Mr.    Goodchild 
watering-place. 


went    out 
As  Chorus 


survey    the 
the  Drama, 


without  whom  Thomas  could  make  nothing 
of  the  scenery, he  by-and-bye  returned,  to  have 
the  following  report  screwed  out  of  him. 

In  brief,  it  was  the  most  delightful  place 
ever  seen. 

"But,"    Thomas    Idle    asked, 
it?" 

"  It's  what  you  may  call  generally  up  and 
down  the  beach,  here  and  there,"  said  Mr. 
Goodchild,  with  a  twist  of  his  hand. 

"  Proceed,"  said  Thomas  Idle. 

It  was,  Mr.  Goodchiid  went  on  to  say,  in 
cross-examination,  what  you  might  call  a 
primitive  place.  Large  1  No,  it  was  not 
large.  Who  ever  expected  it  would  be  large  ? 
Shape?  What  a  question  to  ask  !  No  shape. 
What  sort  of  a  street  ?  Why,  no  street. 
Shops  ?  Yes,  of  course  (quite  indignant). 
How  many  ?  Who  ever  went  into  a  place  to 
count  the  shops  ?  Ever  so  many.  Six  ? 
Perhaps.  A  library  ?  Why,  of  course  !  (in- 
dignant again).  Good  collection  of  books  ? 
Most  likely — couldn't  say — had  seen  nothing 
in  it  but  a  pair  of  scales.  Any  reading-room  ? 
Of  course,  there  was  a  reading-room.  Where  ? 
Where  !  why,  over  there.  Where  was  over 
there  ?  Why,  there  !  Let  Mr.  Idle  carry 
his  eye  to  that  bit  of  waste-ground  above 
high  water-mark,  where  the  rank  grass  and 
loose  stones  were  most  in  a  litter  ;  and  he 
would  see  a  sort  of  a  long  ruinous  brick  loft, 
next  door  to  a  ruinous  brick  outhouse,  which 
loft  had  a  ladder  outside,  to  get  up  by.  That 
was  the  reading-room,  and  if  Mr.  Idle  didn't 
like  the  idea  of  a  weaver's  shuttle  throbbing 
under  a  reading-room,  that  was  his  look  out. 
He  was  not  to  dictate,  Mr.  Goodchild  sup- 
posed (indignant  again),  to  the  company. 


"  By-the-bye,"  Thomas  Idle  observed  ;  "the 
company  ?" 

Well !  (Mr.  Goodchild  went  on  to  report) 
very  nice  company.  Where  were  they  ? 
Why,  there  they  were.  Mr.  Idle  could  see 
the  tops  of  their  hats,  he  supposed.  What? 
Those  nine  straw  hats  again,  five  gentlemen's 
and  four  ladies'  ?  Yes,  to  be  sure.  Mr. 
Goodchild  hoped  the  company  were  not  to 
be  expected  to  wear  helmets,  to  please  Mr. 
Idle. 

Beginning  to  recover  his  temper  at  about 
this  point,  Mr.  Goodchild  voluntarily  reported 
that  if  you  wanted  to  be  primitive,  you  could 
be  primitive  here,  and  that  it  you  wanted  to 
be  idle,  you  could  be  idle  here.  In  the  course 
of  some  days,  he  added,  that  there  were  three 
fishing-boats,  but  no  rigging,  and  that  there 
were  plenty  of  fishermen  who  never  fished. 
That  they  got  their  living  entirely  by  looking 
at  the  ocean.  What  nourishment  they  looked 
out  of  it  to  support  their  strength,  he  couldn't 
say  ;  but,  he  supposed  it  was  some  sort  of 
Iodine.  The  place  was  full  of  their  children, 
who  were  always  upside  down  on  the  public 
buildings  (two  small  bridges  over  the  brook), 
and  always  hurting  themselves  or  one  an- 
other, so  that  their  wailings  made  more  con- 
tinual noise  in  the  air  than  could  have  been 
pjot  in  a  busy  place.  The  houses  people  lodged 
in,  were  nowhere  in  particular,  and  were  in 
capital  accordance  with  the  beach  ;  being  all 
more  or  less  cracked  and  damaged  as  its 
shells  were,  and  all  empty — as  its  shells  were. 
Among  them,  was  an  edifice  of  destitute  ap- 
pearance, with  a  number  of  wall-eyed  win- 
dows in  it,  looking  desperately  out  to  Scotland 
as  if  for  help,  which  said  it  was  a  Bazaar 
(and  it  ought  to  know),  and  where  you  might 
buy  anything  you  wanted — supposing  what 
you  wanted,  was  a  little  camp-stool  or  a  child's 
wheelbarrow.  The  brook  crawled  or  stopped 
between  the  houses  and  the  sea,  and  the 
donkey  was  always  running  away,  and  when 
he  got  into  the  brook  he  was  pelted  out  with 
stones,  which  never  hit  him,  and  which  always 
hit  some  of  the  children  who  were  upside 
down  on  the  public  buildings,  and  made  their 
lamentations  louder.  This  donkey  was  the 
public  excitement  of  A  lion  by,  and  was  pro- 
bably supported  at  the  public  expense. 

The  foregoing  descriptions,  delivered  in 
separate  items,  on  separate  days  of  adven- 
turous discovery,  Mr.  Goodchild  severally 
wound  up,  by  looking  out  ot  window,  looking 
in  again,  and  saying,  "  But  there  is  the  sea, 
and  here  are  the  shrimps — let  us  eat  'eiu." 

There  were  fine  sunsets  at  Allonby  when 
the  low  flat  beach,  with  its  pools  of  water 
and  its  dry  patches,  changed  into  long  bars 
of  silver  and  gold  in  various  states  of  bur- 
nishing, and  there  were  fine  views — on  fine 
days— of  the  Scottish  coast.  But,  when  it 
rained  at  Allonby,  Allonby  thrown  back  upon 
its  ragged  self,  becaaie  a  kind  of  place  which 

the  donkey  seemed  to  have  found  out,  and  to 

have  his  highly  sagacious  reasons  for  wishing 


Chartet  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPRENTICES.      [October  17,  mr.]     363 


to  bolt  from.  Thomas  Idle  observed,  too,  that 
Mr.  Cioodcliild,  with  a  noble  show  of  dis- 
interestedness, became  every  day  more 
ready  to  walk  to  Maryport  and  back,  for 
letters  ;  and  supsicions  began  to  harbour  in 
the  mind  of  Thomas,  that  his  friend  de- 
ceived him,  and  that  Maryport  was  a 
preferable  place. 

Therefore,  Thomas  said  to  Francis  on  a 
day  when  they  had  looked  at  the  sea  and 
eaten  the  shrimps,  "  My  mind  misgives  me, 
Goodchild,  that  you  go  to  Maryport,  like  the 
boy  in  the  story-book,  to  ask  it  to  be  idle  with 
you." 

"Judge,  then,"  returned  Francis,  adopting 
the  style  of  the  story-book,  "  with  what  suc- 
cess. I  go  to  a  region  which  is  a  bit  of 
water-side  Bristol,  with  a  slice  of  Wapping,  a 
seasoning  of  Wolverhampton,  and  a  garnish 
of  Portsmouth,  and  I  say, '  Will  you  come  and 
be  idle  with  me  ?'  And  it  answers,  'No  ;  for 
I  am  a  great  deal  too  vaporous,  and  a  great 
deal  too  rusty,  and  a  great  deal  too  muddy, 
and  a  great  deal  too  dirty  altogether ; 
and  I  have  ships  to  load,  and  pitch  and  tar 
to  boil,  and  iron  to  hammer,  and  steam  to  get 
up,  and  smoke  to  make,  and  stone  to  quarry, 
and  fifty  other  disagreeable  things  to  do,  and 
I  can't  be  idle  with  you.'  Then  I  go  into  jag- 
ged up-hill  and  down- hill  streets,  where  lam 
in  the  pastrycook's  shop  at  one  moment,  and 
next  moment  in  savage  fastnesses  of  moor 
and  morass,  beyond  the  confines  of  civilisa- 
tion, and  I  say  to  those  murky  and  black- 
dusky  streets,  '  Will  you  come  and  be  idle 
with  me  ? '  To  which  they  reply,  '  No,  we 
can't,  indeed,  for  we  haven't  the  spirits,  and 
we  are  startled  by  the  echo  of  your  feet  on 
the  sharp  pavement,  and  we  have  so  many 
goods  in  our  shop-windows  which  nobody 
wants,  and  we  have  so  much  to  do  for  a 
limited  public  which  never  comes  to  us  to  be 
done  for,  that  we  are  altogether  out  of  sorts 
and  can't  enjoy  ourselves  with  any  one.'  So 
I  go  to  the  Post-office,  and  knock  at  the 
shutter,  and  I  say  to  the  Post-master,  '  Will 
you  come  and  be  idle  with  me  ? '  To  which  he 
rejoins,  '  No,  I  really  can't,  for  I  live,  as  you 
may  see,  in  such  a  very  little  Post-office,  and 
pass  my  life  behind  such  a  very  little  shutter, 
that  my  hand,  when  I  put  it  out,  is  as  the 
hand  of  a  giant  crammed  through  the  win- 
dow of  a  dwarfs  house  at  a  fair,  and  I  am  a 
mere  Post-office  anchorite  in  a  cell  much  too 
small  for  him,  and  I  can't  get  out,  and  I  can't 
get  in,  and  I  have  no  space  to  be  idle  in,  even 
if  I  would.'  So,  the  boy,"  said  Mr.  Goodchild, 
concluding  the  tale,  "  comes  back  with  the 
letters  after  all,  and  lives  happy  never  after- 
wards." 

But  it  may,  not  unreasonably,  be  asked — 
while  Francis  Goodchild  was  wandering 
hither  and  thither,  storing  his  mind  with  pei> 
petual  observation  of  men  and  things,  and 
sincerely  believing  himself  to  be  the  laziest 
creature  in  existence  all  the  time — how  did 
Thomas  Idle,  crippled  and  confined  to  the 


house,  contrive  to  get  through  the  hours  of 
the  day  ? 

Prone  on  the  sofa,  Thomas  made  no  attempt 
to  get  through  the  hours,  but  passively 
allowed  the  hours  to  get  through  him.  Where 
other  men  in  his  situation  would  have  read 
books  and  improved  their  minds,  Thomas 
slept  and  rested  his  body.  Where  other 
men  would  have  pondered  anxiously  over 
their  future  prospects,  Thomas  dreamed 
lazily  of  his  past  life.  The  one  solitary  thing 
he  did,  which  most  other  people  would  have 
done  in  his  place,  was  to  resolve  on  making 
certain  alterations  and  improvements  in  his 
mode  of  existence,  as  soon  as  the  effects  of 
the  misfortune  that  had  overtaken  him  had 
all  passed  away.  Remembering  that  the 
current  of  his  life  had  hitherto  oozed  along 
in  one  smooth  stream  of  laziness,  occasionally 
troubled  on  the  surface  by  a  slight  passing 
ripple  of  industry,  his  present  ideas  on  the 
subject  of  self-reform,  inclined  him — not  as 
the  reader  may  be  disposed  to  imagine,  to 
project  schemes  for  a  new  existence  of  enter- 
prise and  exertion — but,  on  the  contrary,  to 
resolve  that  he  would  never,  if  he  could  pos- 
sibly help  it,  be  active  or  industrious  again, 
throughout  the  whole  of  his  future  career. 

It  is  due  to  Mr.  Idle  to  relate  that  his 
mind  sauntered  towards  this  peculiar  conclu- 
sion on  distinct  and  logically-producible 
grounds.  After  reviewing,  quite  at  his  ease, 
and  with  many  needful  intervals  of  repose, 
the  generally-placid  spectacle  of  his  past  ex- 
istence, he  arrived  at  the  discovery  that  all 
the  great  disasters  which  had  tried  his  pa- 
tience and  equanimity  in  early  life,  had  been 
caused  by  his  having  allowed  himself  to  be 
deluded  into  imitating  some  pernicious  ex- 
ample of  activity  and  industry  that  had  been. 
set  him  by  others.  The  trials  to  which  he 
here  alludes  were  three  in  number,  and  may 
be  thus  reckoned  up  :  First,  the  disaster  of 
being  an  unpopular  and  a  thrashed  boy  at 
school  ;  secondly,  the  disaster  of  falling 
seriously  ill  ;  thirdly,  the  disaster  of  becom- 
ing acquainted  with  a  great  bore. 

The  first  disaster  occurred  after  Thomas 
had  been  an  idle  and  a  popular  boy  at  school, 
for  some  happy  years.  One  Christmas-time, 
he  was  stimulated  by  the  evil  example  of  a 
companion,  whom  he  had  always  trusted  and 
liked,  to  be  untrue  to  himself,  and  to  try  for 
a  prize  at  the  ensuing  half-yearly  examina- 
tion. He  did  try,  and  he  got  a  prize — how, 
he  did  not  distinctly  know  at  the  moment, 
and  cannot  remember  now.  No  sooner,  how- 
ever, had  the  book — Moral  Hints  to  the 
Young  on  the  Value  of  Time — been  placed 
in  his  hands,  than  the  first  troubles  of  his  life 
began.  The  idle  boys  deserted  him,  as  a  trai- 
tor to  their  cause.  The  indus  trious  boys  avoided 
him,  as  a  dangerous  interloper  ;  one  of  their 
number,  who  had  always  won  the  prize  on 
previous  occasions,  expressing  just  resent- 
ment at  the  invasion  of  his  privileges  by 
calling  Thomas  into  the  play-ground,  and 


364       [October  17.  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  ty 


then  and  there  administering  to  him  the  first 
sound  and  genuine  thrashing  that  he  had 
received  in  his  life.  Unpopular  from  that 
moment,  as  a  beaten  boy,  who  belonged  to 
no  side  and  was  rejected  by  all  parties,  young 
Idle  soon  lost  caste  with  his  masters,  as  he 
had  previously  lost  caste  with  his  school- 
fellows. He  had  forfeited  the  comfortable 
reputation  ot  being  the  one  lazy  member  of 
the  youthful  community  whom  it  was  quite 
hopeless  to  punish.  Never  again  did  he 
hear  the  head-master  say  reproachfully  to 
an  industrious  boy  who  had  committed  a 
fault,  "  I  might  have  expected  this  in  Thomas 
Idle,  but  it  is  inexcusable,  sir,  in  you,  who 
know  better."  Never  more,  after  winning 
that  fatal  prize,  did  he  escape  the  retributive 
imposition,  or  the  avenging  birch.  From 
that  time,  the  masters  made  him  work,  and 
the  boys  would  not  let  him  play.  From  that 
time  his  social  position  steadily  declined,  and 
his  life  at  school  became  a  perpetual  burden 
to  him. 

So,  again,  with  the  second  disaster.  While 
Thomas  was  lazy,  he  was  a  model  of  health. 
His  first  attempt  at  active  exertion  and  his 
first  suffering  from  severe  illness  are  con- 
nected together  by  the  intimate  relations  of 
cause  and  effect.  Shortly  after  leaving 
school,  he  accompanied  a  party  of  friends  to 
a  cricket-field,  in  his  natural  and  appro- 
priate character  of  spectator  only.  On  the 
ground  it  was  discovered  that  the  players  fell 
short  of  the  required  number,  and  facile 
Thomas  was  persuaded  to  assist  in  making 
up  the  complement.  At  a  certain  appointed 
time,  he  was  roused  from  peaceful  slumber 
in  a  dry  ditch,  and  placed  before  three 
wickets  with  a  bat  in  his  hand.  Opposite  to 
him,  behind  three  more  wickets,  stood  one  of 
his  bosom  friends,  filling  the  situation  (as  he 
was  informed)  of  bowler.  No  words  can 
describe  Mr.  Idle's  horror  and  amazement, 
•when  he  saw  this  young  man — on  ordinary 
occasions,  the  meekest  and  mildest  of  human 
beings  —  suddenly  contract  his  eyebrows, 
compress  his  lips,  assume  the  aspect  of  an 
infuriated  savage,  run  back  a  few  steps,  then  run 
forward,  and,  without  the  slightest  previous 
provocation,  hurl  a  detestably  hard  ball  with 
all  his  might  straight  at  Thomas's  legs.  Stimu- 
lated to  preternatural  activity  of  body  and 
sharpness  ot  eye  by  the  instinct  of  self-pre- 
eervatiou,  Mr.  Idle  contrived,  by  jumping 
deftly  aside  at  the  right  moment,  and  by 
using  his  bat  (ridiculously  narrow  as  it  was 
for  the  purpose)  as  a  shield,  to  preserve  his 
life  and  limbs  from  the  dastardly  attack  that 
had  been  made  on  both,  to  leave  the  full 
force  of  the  deadly  missile  to  strike  his 
wicket  instead  of  his  leg  ;  and  to  end  the 
innings,  BO  far  aa  his  side  was  concerned,  by 
being  immediately  bowled  out.  Grateful  for 
his  esc;ipe  he  was  about  to  return  to  the  dry 
ditch,  when  he  was  peremptorily  stopped,  and 
told  that  the  other  side  was  "  going  in,"  and 
that  he  was  expected  to  "field."  His  con- 


ception of  the  whole  art  and  mystery  of 
"  fielding,"  may  be  summed  up  in  the  three 
words  of  serious  advice  which  he  privately 
administered  to  himself  on  that  trying  occa- 
sion— avoid  the  ball.  Fortified  by  this  sound 
and  salutary  principle,  he  took  his  own  course, 
impervious  alike  to  ridicule  and  abuse. 
Whenever  the  ball  came  near  him,  he  thought 
of  his  shins,  and  got  out  of  the  way  imme- 
diately. "  Catch  it !  "  "  Stop  it !  "  "  Pitch 
it  up  !  "  were  cries  that  passed  by  him  like 
the  idle  wind  that  he  regarded  not.  He 
ducked  under  it,  he  jumped  over  it,  he 
whisked  himself  away  from  it  on  either 
side.  Never  once,  throughout  the  whole 
innings  did  he  and  the  ball  come  to- 
gether on  anything  approaching  to  intimate 
terms.  The  unnatural  activity  of  body  which 
was  necessarily  called  forth  for  the  accom- 
plishment of  this  result  threw  Thomas  Idle, 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  into  a  perspira- 
tion. The  perspiration,  in  consequence  of  his 
want  of  practice  in  the  management  of  that 
particular  result  of  bodily  activity,  was  sud- 
denly checked ;  the  inevitable  chill  succeeded; 
and  that,  in  its  turn,  was  followed  by  a  fever. 
For  the  first  time  since  his  birth,  Mr.  Idle 
found  himself  confined  to  his  bed  for  many 
weeks  together,  wasted  and  worn  by  a  long 
illness,  of  which  his  own  disastrous  muscular 
exertion  had  been  the  sole  first  cause. 

The  third  occasion  on  which  Thomas  found 
reason  to  reproach  himself  bitterly  for  the 
mistake  of  having  attempted  to  be  indus- 
trious, was  connected  with  his  choice  of  a 
calling  in  life.  Having  no  interest  in  the 
Church,  he  appropriately  selected  the  next 
best  profession  for  a  lazy  man  in  England — • 
the  Bar.  Although  the  Benchers  of  the  Inna 
of  Court  have  lately  abandoned  their  good 
old  principles,  and  oblige  their  students  to 
make  some  show  of  studying,  in  Mr.  Idle's 
time  no  such  innovation  as  this  existed. 
Young  men  who  aspired  to  the  honourable 
title  of  barrister  were,  very  properly,  not 
asked  to  learn  anything  of  the  law,  but  were 
merely  required  to  eat  a  certain  number  of 
dinners  at  the  table  of  their  Hall,  and  to  pay 
a  certain  sum  of  money  ;  and  were  called  ta 
the  Bar  as  soon  as  they  could  prove  that  they 
had  sufficiently  complied  with  these  ex- 
tremely sensible  regulations.  Never  did 
Thomas  move  more  harmoniously  in  concert 
with  his  elders  and  betters  than  when  he  was 
qualifying  himself  for  admission  among  the 
barristers  of  his  native  country.  Never  did 
he  feel  more  deeply  what  real  laziness  was  in 
all  the  serene  majesty  of  its  nature,  than  on 
the  memorable  day  when  he  was  called  to 
the  bar, after  having  carefully  abstained  from 
opening  his  law-books  during  his  period  of 
probation,  except  to  fall  asleep  orer  them.  How 
he  could  ever  again  have  become  industrious, 
even  for  the  shortest  period,  after  that  great 
reward  conferred  upon  his  idleness,  quite 
passes  his  comprehension.  The  kind  benchers 
did  everything  they  could  to  show  him  the 


Charle,  Dicken..]  LAZY   TOUR   OF   TWO    IDLE   APPRENTICES.  LOetober  17, 1857.]      365 


folly  of  exerting  himself.  They  wrote  out 
hia  probationary  exercise  for  him,  and  never 
expected  him  even  to  take  the  trouble  of 
reading  it  through  when  it  was  written. 
They  invited  him,  with  seven  other  choice 
spirits  as  lazy  as  himself,  to  come  and  be 
called  to  the  bar,  while  they  were  sitting  over 
their  wine  and  fruit  after  dinner.  They  put 
his  oaths  of  allegiance,  and  his  dreadful  offi- 
cial denunciations  of  the  Pope  and  the  Pre- 
tender so  gently  into  his  mouth,  that  he 
hardly  knew  how  the  words  got  there. 
They  wheeled  all  their  chairs  softly  round 
from  the  table,  and  sat  surveying  the  young 
barristers  with  their  backs  to  their  bottles, 
rather  than  stand  up,  or  adjourn  to  hear  the 
exercises  read.  And  when  Mr.  Idle  and  the 
seven  unlabouring  neophytes,  ranged  in 
order,  as  a  class,  with  their  backs  con- 
siderately placed  against  a  screen,  had  be- 
gun, in  rotation,  to  read  the  exercises  which 
they  had  not  written,  even  then,  each 
Bencher,  true  to  the  great  lazy  principle  of 
the  whole  proceeding,  stopped  each  neophyte 
before  he  had  stammered  through  his  first 
line,  and  bowed  to  him,  and  told  him  politely 
that  he  was  a  barrister  from  that  moment. 
This  was  all  the  ceremony.  It  was  followed  by 
a  social  supper,  and  by  the  presentation,  in 
accordance  with  ancient  custom,  of  a  pound 
of  sweetmeats  and  a  bottle  of  Madeira, 
offered  in  the  way  of  needful  refreshment, 
by  each  grateful  neophyte  to  each  beneficent 
Bencher.  It  may  seem  inconceivable  that 
Thomas  should  ever  hare  forgotten  the  great 
do-nothing  principle  instilled  by  such  a  cere- 
mony as  this ;  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  true, 
that  certain  designing  students  of  industrious 
habits  found  him  out,  took  advantage  of  his 
easy  humour,  persuaded  him  that  it  was  dis- 
creditable to  be  a  barrister  and  to  know 
nothing  whatever  about  the  law,  and  lured 
him,  by  the  force  of  their  own  evil  example, 
into  a  conveyancer's  chambers,  to  make  up 
for  lost  time,  and  to  qualify  himself  for  prac- 
tice at  the  Bar.  After  a  fortnight  of  self- 
delusion,  the  curtain  fell  from  his  eyes ;  he 
resumed  his  natural  character,  and  shut  up 
his  books.  But  the  retribution  which  had 
hitherto  always  followed  his  little  casual 
errors  of  industry  followed  them  still.  He 
could  get  away  from  the  conveyancer's  cham- 
bers, but  he  could  not  get  away  from  one  of 
the  pupils,  who  had  taken  a  fancy  to  him, — a 
tall,  serious,  raw-boned,  hard-working,  dis- 
putatious pupil,  with  ideas  of  his  own  about 
reforming  the  Law  of  Real  Property,  who  has 
been  the  scourge  of  Mr.  Idle's  existence  ever 
since  the  fatal  day  when  he  fell  into  the 
mistake  of  attempting  to  study  the  law. 
Before  that  time  his  friends  were  all  sociable 
idlers  like  himself.  Since  that  time  the  bur- 
den of  bearing  with  a  hard-working  young  man 
has  become  part  of  his  lot  in  life.  Go  where 
he  will  now,  he  can  never  feel  certain  that 
the  raw-boned  pupil  is  not  affectionately 
waiting  for  him  round  a  corner,  to  tell  him  a 


little  more  about  the  Law  of  Real  Property, 
Suffer  as  he  may  under  the  infliction,  he  can 
never  complain,  lor  he  must  always  remem- 
ber, with  unavailing  regret,  that  he  has  his 
own  thoughtless  industry  to  thank  for  first 
exposing  him  to  the  great  social  calamity  o! 
knowing  a  bore. 

These  events  of  his  past  life,  with  the 
significant  results  that  they  brought  about, 
pass  drowsily  through  Thomas  Idle's  memory, 
while  he  lies  alone  on  the  sofa  at  Allonby 
and  elsewhere,  dreaming  away  the  time 
which  his  fellow-apprentice  gets  through  so 
actively  out  of  doors.  Remembering  the 
lesson  of  laziness  which  his  past  disasters 
teach,  and  bearing  in  mind  also  the  fact  that 
he  is  crippled  in  one  leg  because  he  exerted 
himself  to  go  up  a  mountain,  when  he  ought 
to  have  known  that  his  proper  course  of  con- 
duct was  to  stop  at  the  bottom  of  it,  he  holds 
now,  and  will  for  the  future  firmly  continue 
to  hold,  by  his  new  resolution  never  to  be 
industrious  again,  on  any  pretence  whatever, 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  The  physical  results 
of  his  accident  have  been  related  in  a  previous 
chapter.  The  moral  results  now  stand  on 
record  ;  and,  with  the  enumeration  of  these, 
that  part  of  the  present  narrative  which  is 
occupied  by  the  Episode  of  The  Sprained 
Ankle  may  now  perhaps  be  considered,  in  all 
its  aspects,  as  finished  and  complete. 

"  How  do  you  propose  that  we  get  through, 
this  present  afternoon  and  evening  1 "  de- 
manded Thomas  Idle,  after  two  or  three 
hours  of  the  foregoing  reflections  at  Al- 
lonby. 

Mr.  Goodchild  fauttered,  looked  out  of 
window,  looked  in  again,  and  said,  as  he  had 
so  often  said  before,  "  There  is  the  sea,  and 
here  are  the  shrimps  ; — let  us  eat  'em  !  " 

But,  the  wise  donkey  was  at  that  moment 
in  the  act  of  bolting  :  not  with  the  irresolu- 
tion of  his  previous  efforts  which  had  been, 
wanting  in  sustained  force  of  character,  but 
with  real  vigor  of  purpose  :  shaking  the  dust 
off  his  mane  and  hind-feet  at  Allouby,  and 
tearing  away  from  it,  as  if  he  had  nobly  made 
up  his  mind  that  he  never  would  be  taken 
alive.  At  sight  of  this  inspiring  spectacle, 
which  was  visible  from  his  sofa,  Thomas  Idle 
stretched  his  neck  and  dwelt  upon  it  raptu- 
rously. 

"  Francis  Goodchild,"  he  then  said,  turning 
to  his  companion  with  a  solemn  air,  "  this  is 
a  delightful  little  Inn,  excellently  kept  by 
the  most  comfortable  of  landladies  and  the 

most  attentive  of  landlords,  but the 

donkey's  right ! " 

"  The  words,  "  There  is  the  sea,  and  here 

are  the ,"  again  trembled  on  the  lips  of 

Goodchild,  unaccompanied  however  by  any 
sound. 

"  Let  us. instantly  pack  the  portmanteaus," 
said  Thomas  Idle,  "  pay  the  bill,  and  order  a 
fly  out,  with  instructions  to  the  driver  to 
follow  the  donkey  ! " 

Mr.  Goodchild,  who  had  only  wanted  en- 


366      [October  17,  1<570 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


couragement  to  disclose  the  real  state  of  his 
feelings,  and  who  had  been  pining  beneath 
his  weary  secret,  now  burst  into  tears,  and 
confessed  that  he  thought  another  day  in  the 
place  would  be  the  death  of  him. 

So,  the  two  idle  apprentices  followed  the 
donkey  until  the  night  was  far  advanced. 
Whether  he  was  recaptured  by  the  town- 
council,  or  is  bolting  at  this  hour  through  the 
United  Kingdom,  they  know  not.  They  hope 
lie  may  be  still  bolting  ;  if  so,  their  best 
•wishes  are  with  him. 

It  entered  Mr.  Idle's  head,  on  the  borders 
of  Cumberland,  that  there  could  be  no  idler- 
place  to  stay  at,  except  by  snatches  of  a  few 
minutes  each,  than  a  railway  station.  "  An 
intei mediate  station  on  a  line — a  junction — 
anything  of  that  sort,"  Thomas  suggested. 
Mr.  Goodchild  approved  of  the  idea  as  eccen- 
tric, and  they  journeyed  on  and  on,  until 
they  came  to  such  a  station  where  there  was 
an  Inn. 

"Here,"  said  Thomas,  "  we  maybe  luxu- 
riously lazy  ;  other  people  will  travel  for  us, 
as  it  were,  and  we  shall  laugh  at  their 
folly." 

It  was  a  Junction-Station,  where  the  wooden 
razors  before  mentioned  shaved  the  air  very 
often,  and  where  the  sharp  electric-telegraph 
bell  was  in  a  very  restless  condition.  All 
manner  of  cross-lines  of  rails  came  zig-zaging 
into  it,  like  a  Congress  of  iron  vipers  ;  and,  a 
little  way  out  of  it,  a  pointsman  in  an  elevated 
signal-box  was  constantly  going  through  the 
motions  of  drawing  immense  quantities  of 
beer  at  a  public-house  bar.  In  one  direction, 
confused  perspectives  of  embankments  and 
arches  were  to  be  seen  from  the  platform  ; 
in  the  other,  the  rails  soon  disentangled 
themselves  into  two  tracks,  and  shot  away 
under  a  bridge,  and  curved  round  a  corner. 
Sidings  were  there,  in  which  empty  luggage- 
vans  and  cattle-boxes  often  butted  against 
each  other  as  if  they  couldn't  agree  ;  and 
warehouses  were  there,  in  which  great  quan- 
tities of  goods  seemed  to  have  taken  the  veil 
(of  the  consistency  of  tarpaulin),  and  to  have 
retired  from  the  world  without  any  hope  of 
getting  back  to  it.  Refreshment  -rooms  were 
there  ;  one,  for  the  hungry  and  thirsty  Iron 
Locomotives  where  their  coke  and  water  were 
ready,  and  of  good  quality,  for  they  were 
dangerous  to  play  tricks  with  ;  the  other,  for 
the  hungry  and  thirsty  human  Locomotives, 
who  might  take  what  they  could  get,  and 
whose  chief  consolation  was  provided  in  the 
form  of  three  terrific  urns  or  vases  of  white 
metal,  containing  nothing,  each  forming  a 
breastwork  for  a  defiant  and  apparently 
much-injured  woman. 

Established  at  this  Station,  Mr.  Thomas 
Idle  and  Mr.  Francis  Goodchild  resolved  to 
enjoy  it.  But,  its  contrasts  were  very  violent, 
and  there  was  also  an  infection  in  it. 

First,  as  to  its  contrasts.  They  were  only 
two,  but  they  were  Lethargy  and  Madness. 
The  Station  was  either  totally  unconscious,  or 


wildly  raving.  By  day,  in  its  unconscious 
state,  it  looked  as  if  no  life  could  come  to  it, 
— as  if  it  were  all  rust,  dust,  and  ashes — as  if 
the  last  train  for  ever,  had  gone  without 
issuing  any  Return-Tickets — as  if  the  last 
Engine  had  uttered  its  last  shriek  and  burst. 
One  awkward  shave  of  the  air  from  the 
wooden  razor,  and  everything  changed.  Tight 
office-doors  flew  open,  panels  yielded,  books, 
newspapers  travelling-caps-  and  wrappers 
broke  out  of  brick  walls, moneychinked,  con- 
veyances oppressed  by  nightmares  of  luggage 
came  careering  into  the  yard,  porters  started 
up  from  secret  places,  ditto  the  much-injured 
women,  the  shining  bell,  who  lived  in  a 
little  tray  on  stilts  by  himself,  flew  into  a 
man's  hand  and  clamoured  violently.  The 
pointsman  aloft  iu  the  signal-box  made  the 
motions  of  drawing,  with  some  difficulty, 
hogsheads  of  beer.  Down  Train  !  More 
beer.  Up  Train!  More  beer.  Cross  Junc- 
tion Train  !  More  beer.  Cattle  Train  !  More 
beer.  Goods  Train!  Simmering,  whistling, 
trembling,  rumbling,  thundering.  Trains  on 
the  whole  confusion  of  intersecting  rails, 
crossing  one  another,  bumping  one  another, 
hissing  one  another,  backing  to  go  forward, 
tearing  into  distance  to  come  close.  People 
frantic.  Exiles  seeking  restoration  to  their 
native  carriages,  and  banished  to  remoter 
climes.  More  beer  and  more  bell.  Then,  in 
a  minute,  the  Station  relapsed  into  stupor  as 
the  Btoker  of  the  Cattle  Train,  the  last  to 
depart,  went  gliding  out  of  it,  wiping  the 
long  nose  of  his  oil-can  with  a  dirty  pocket- 
handkerchief. 

By  night,  in  its  unconscious  state,  the 
station  was  not  so  much  as  visible.  Some- 
thing in  the  air,  like  an  enterprising  chemist's 
established  in  business  on  one  of  the  boughs 
of  Jack's  beanstalk,  was  all  that  could  be 
discerned  of  it  under  the  stars.  In  a  mo- 
ment it  would  break  out,  a  constellation  of 
gas.  In  another  moment,  twenty  rival 
chemists,  on  twenty  rival  beanstalks,  carne 
into  existence.  Then,  the  Furies  would  be 
seen,  waving  their  lurid  torches  up  and 
down  the  confused  perspectives  of  embank- 
ments and  arches  —  would  be  heard,  too, 
wailing  and  shrieking.  Then,  the  Station 
would  be  full  of  palpitating  trains,  as  in  the 
day  ;  with  the  heightening  difference  that 
they  were  not  so  clearly  seen  as  in  the  day, 
whereas  the  station  walls,  starting  forward 
under  the  gas,  like  a  hippopotamus's  eyes, 
dazzled  the  human  locomotives  with  the 
sauce-bottle,  the  cheap  music,  the  bedstead, 
the  distorted  range  of  buildings  where  the 
patent  safes  are  made,  the  gentleman  in  the 
rain  with  the  registered  umbrella,  the  lady 
returning  from  the  ball  with  the  registered 
respirator,  and  all  their  other  embellish- 
ments. And  now,  the  human  locomotives, 
creased  as  to  their  countenances  and  pur- 
blind as  to  their  eyes,  would  swarm  forth  in 
a  heap,  addressing  themselves  to  the  mys- 
terious urns  and  the  much-injured  women  ; 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  SNOW  EXPRESS. 


[October  17. 1857.]       367 


while  the  iron  locomotives,  dripping  fire  and 
water,  shed  their  steam  about  plentifully, 
making  the  dull  oxen  in  their  cages,  with 
heads  depressed,  and  foam  hanging  from  their 
mouths  as  their  red  looks  glanced  fearfully 
at  the  surrounding  terrors,  seem  as  though 
they  had  been  drinking  at  half-frozen  waters 
and  were  hung  with  icicles.  Through  the 
same  steam  would  be  caught  glimpses  of 
their  fellow-travellers,  the  sheep,  getting 
their  white  kid  faces  together,  away  from 
the  bars,  and  stuffing  the  interstices  with 
trembling  wool.  Also,  down  among  the 
wheels,  of  the  man  with  the  sledge-hammer, 
ringing  the  axles  of  the  fast  night-train  ; 
against  whom  the  oxen  have  a  misgiving 
that  he  is  the  man  with  the  pole-axe  who  is 
to  come  by-and-  bye,  and  so  the  nearest  of  them 
try  to  back,  and  get  a  purchase  for  a  thrust  at 
him  through  the  bars.  Suddenly,  the  bell 
would  ring,  the  steam  would  stop  with  one  hiss 
and  a  yell,  the  chemists  on  the  beanstalks 
would  be  busy,  the  avenging  Furies  would 
bestir  themselves,  the  fast  night-train  would 
melt  from  eye  and  ear,  the  other  trains  going 
their  ways  more  slowly  would  be  heard  faintly 
rattling  in  the  distance  like  old-fashioned 
watches  running  down,  the  sauce-bottle 
and  cheap  music  retired  from  view,  even 
the  bedstead  went  to  bed,  and  there  was 
no  such  visible  thing  as  the  Station  to  vex 
the  cool  wind  in  its  blowing,  or  perhaps  the 
autumn  lightning,  as  it  found  out  the  iron 
rails. 

The  infection  of  the  Station  was  this  : — 
When  it  was  in  its  raving  state,  the  Appren- 
tices found  it  impossible  to  be  there,  with- 
out labouring  under  the  'delusion  that 
they  were  in  a  hurry.  To  Mr.  Goodchild, 
whose  ideas  of  idleness  were  so  imperfect, 
this  was  no  unpleasant  hallucination,  and 
accordingly  that  gentleman  went  through 
great  exertions  in  yielding  to  it,  and  running 
up  and  down  the  platform,  jostling  everybody, 
under  the  impression  that  he  had  a  highly 
important  mission  somewhere,  and  had  not 
a  moment  to  lose.  But,  to  Thomas  Idle,  this 
contagion  was  so  very  unacceptable  an  inci- 
dent of  the  situation,  that  he  struck  on  the 
fourth  day,  and  requested  to  be  moved. 

"This  place  fills  me  with  a  dreadful  sen- 
sation," said  Thomas,  "  of  having  something 
to  do.  Remove  me,  Francis." 

"  Where  would  you  like  to  go  next  1 "  was 
the  question  of  the  ever-engaging  Good- 
child. 

"  I  have  heard  there  is  a  good  old  Inn  at 
Lancaster,  established  in  a  fine  old  house  : 
an  Inn  where  they  give  you  Bride-cake  every 
day  after  dinner,"  said  Thomas  Idle.  "  Let 
us_  eat  Bride-cake  without  the  trouble  of 
being  married,  or  of  knowing  anybody  in 
that  ridiculous  dilemma." 

Mr.  Goodchild,  with  a  lover's  sigh,  as- 
sented. They  departed  from  the  Station  in 
a  violent  hurry  (for  which,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  observe,  there  was  not  the  least  occasion), 


and  were  delivered  at  the  fine  old  house  at 
Lancaster,  on  the  same  night. 

It  is  Mr.  Gooduhild's  opinion,  that  if  a 
visitor  on  his  arrival  at  Lancaster  could  be 
accommodated  with  a  pole  which  would  push 
the  opposite  side  of  the  street  some  yards 
farther  off,  it  would  be  better  for  all  parties. 
Protesting  against  being  required  to  live  in 
a  trench,  and  obliged  to  speculate  all  day 
upon  what  the  people  can  possibly  be  doing 
within  a  mysterious  opposite  window,  which 
is  a  shop-window  to  look  at,  but  not  a  shop- 
window  in  respect  of  its  offering  nothing  for 
sale  and  declining  to  give  any  account  what- 
ever of  itself,  Mr.  Goodchild  concedes  Lan- 
caster to  be  a  pleasant  place.  A  place 
dropped  in  the  midst  of  a  charming  landscape, 
a  place  with  a  fine  ancient  fragment  of  castle, 
a  place  of  lovely  walks,  a  place  possessing 
staid  old  houses  richly  fitted  with  old  Hon- 
duras mahagony,  which  has  grown  so  dark 
with  time  that  it  seems  to  have  got  some- 
thing of  a  retrospective  mirror-quality  into 
itself,  and  to  show  the  visitor,  in  the  depths 
of  its  grain,  through  all  its  polish,  the  hue  of 
the  wretched  slaves  who  groaned  long  ago 
under  old  Lancaster  merchants.  And  Mr. 
Goodchild  adds  that  the  stones  of  Lancaster 
do  sometimes  whisper,  even  yet,  of  rich  men 
passed  away — upon  whose  great  prosperity 
some  of  these  old  doorways  frowned  sullen  in 
the  brightest  weather — that  their  slave-gain 
turned  to  curses,  as  the  Arabian  Wizard's 
money  turned  to  leaves,  and  that  no  good 
ever  came  of  it,  even  unto  the  third  and 
fourth  generations,  until  it  was  wasted  and 
gone. 

It  was  a  gallant  sight  to  behold,  the  Sun- 
day procession  of  the  Lancaster  elders  to 
Church — all  in  black,  and  looking  fearfully 
like  a  funeral  without  the  Body — under  the 
escort  of  Three  Beadles. 

"  Think,"  said  Francis,  as  he  stood  at  the 
Inn  window,  admiring,  "of  being  taken  to 
the  sacred  edifice  by  three  Beadles  !  I  have, 
in  my  early  time,  been  taken  out  of  it  by  one 
Beadle  ;  but,  to  be  taken  into  it  by  three, 
O  Thomas,  is  a  distinction  I  shall  never 
enjoy  ! " 


THE  SNOW  EXPRESS. 

MANY  years  ago,  while  a  subaltern,  I  was 
stationed  at  Blockhouse  Point,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Green  Snake  River,  on  the  north  side 
of  Lake  Huron.  This  now  dilapidated 
stronghold  was  originally  erected,  on  a  sandy 
point  stretching  out  into  the  lake,  in  the  days 
of  the  Indian  wars,  and  I  could  fancy  its 
slender  garrison  of  sharpshooters  watching 
from  their  loopholes  the  clustering  forms  of 
their  Indian  foes  as  they  stole  along  the  bor- 
ders of  the  forest.  The  bullet-holes  that 
riddled  its  massive  walls,  and  its  charred  and 
blackened  surface,  suggested  grim  conjectures 
respecting  its  brave  defenders  who  filled  the 
graves  around  its  foot. 


368      [October  17. 1967.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


But  now  there  were  no  Indians  to  employ 
the  leisure  of  the  unfortunate  company  of 
regular  troops,  that  grumbled  away  their  days 
within  the  humble  fortification  that  now 
surrounded  the  old  blockhouse.  Our  only 
enemies  were  bears  and  foxes  which  skulked 
about  the  woods,  and  the  only  Indians  who 
sought  admission  to  the  post  were  those  from 
a  little  village  about  seven  miles  up  the  Green 
Snake  River,  where  a  peaceable  party  of 
Ojibbeways  had  taken  up  their  abode. 

In  this  dot  in  the  wilderness,  I  and  two 
brother-officers  lived  the  lives  of  anchorites  : 
only  less  contented,  and  by  no  means  for- 
getting the  world  by  which  we  seemed  very 
nearly  forgotten.  Not  but  what  letters  reached 
us — sometimes — during  the  summer,  by  an 
occasional  schooner  coming  up  along  the 
lakes.  It  was  during  the  other  half  of  the 
year,  when  the  lakes  were  bound  by  the  uni- 
versal fetter  of  ice,  that  we  lived  in  unblissful 
ignorance.  Twice,  however,  during  each 
long,  long  winter,  great  excitement  prevailed 
at  Blockhouse  Point.  It  was  when  Indians, 
travelling  over  the  snow  on  snowshoes,  were 
expeuted  to  arrive  with  the  ''express."  Day 
after  day  we  used  to  walk  for  miles,  hoping 
to  meet  our  bronze  Mercuries  ;  and,  when  at 
length  they  came  in  sight,  with  what  trem- 
bling hearts  we  returned  to  the  post,  to  await 
the  opening  of  their  sealed  wallets  by  the 
proper  authority,  in  ignorance  of  what 
tidings  "  the  mail  "  might  contain  for  us! 

On  one  occasion  the  news  I  got  was  sad 
enough.  My  dearest  friend  was  to  be  tried 
by  court-martial  on  a  serious  chai'ge.  He 
had  not  written  to  me  himself,  but  a  mutual 
friend  informed  me  that,  before  another 
month  was  past,  Lowther's  fate  would  be 
sealed  ;  and  this  month's  delay  had  only  oc- 
curred in  consequence  of  an  important  wit- 
ness being  required  from  the  lower  province. 
I  saw  at  once  that  it  was  in  my  power  to 
disprove  the  gravest  part  of  the  charge,  al- 
though Lowtherdid  not  know  it.  Yet,  before 
the  spring  should  come  and  the  lakes  be  open 
to  enable  me  to  reach  head-quarters,  the  trial 
would  be  over,  and  my  friend,  in  all  proba- 
bility, condemned. 

The  dreadful  thought  that  he  might  be 
sacrificed  for  the  want  of  my  testimony 
haunted  me.  I  could  not  sleep  that  night. 
Many  plans  disturbed  my  mind.  Could  I 
not  write  my  statement,  and  send  it  by  an 
Indian  express  ?  Undoubtedly  I  could.  But, 
when  I  came  to  count,  I  found  it  would  not 
arrive  in  time,  unless  some  one  was  ever  at 
hand  to  hurry  the  messengers  on.  Why 
should  not  I  be  ot  the  express  party  ?  I  was 
young,  strong,  active,  and  accustomed  to  ex- 
ertion. Surely  what  Indians  could  do,  I 
could  do.  There  was  not  an  hour  to  be  lost. 
At  daylight  I  obtained  leave  from  my  com- 
manding officer — a  mere  matter  of  form — 
for  both  he  and  my  junior  heartily  rejoiced 
at  the  prospect  of  Lowther's  acquittal.  Two 
Indians  were  quickly  obtained,  and  every- 


thing was  made  ready  for  departure  in.  a  few 
hours. 

We  were  a  strange  looking  party.  Our 
object  being  speed,  each  carried  his  own 
traps,  and  as  few  of  them  as  possible.  I  was 
clad  in  a  beaver  coat  and  fur  cap.  My  kit 
consisted  of  a  blanket,  a  bearskin,  and  a 
wallet  to  hold  provisions.  The  two  Indians, 
who  were  brothers,  were  similarly  equipped. 
With  rifles  ready  loaded  for  any  game 
that  might  present  itself,  and  snow-shoes  on 
our  feet,  we  set  out. 

In  case  we  succeeded  in  getting  to  head- 
quarters at  the  time  appointed,  a  gratuity  had 
been  promised  to  the  Indians  (which  Iresolved 
to  give,  whether  won  or  not),  and  they  unmur- 
muringly  pressed  on,  nearly  the  whole  day,  on 
their  cumbrous  snow-shoes,  scarcely  giving 
themselves  time  to  cook  the  game  we  killed  : 
then,  shouldering  their  packs,  and  starting 
off  again.  They  endeavoured  to  beguile  the 
weariness  of  the  way  by  lively  sallies,  at 
which  they  laughed  till  the  silent  woods  rang 
with  their  merriment.  Chingoos  (the  ermine), 
the  younger  brother,  was  the  most  joyous 
as  well  as  most  active  of  us  all ;  and, 
however  wearied  he  might  be  when  we 
stopped  for  the  night,  he  laughed  and  jested 
as  he  cut  with  his  tomahawk  the  evergreens 
which  were  to  form  our  not  uncomfortable 
shelter,  and  be  strewn  beneath  the  bearskins 
on  which  we  slept.  Shegashie  (the  cray-fish) 
was  our  cook  and  firemaker  ;  and  the  rapid 
way  in  which  he  heaped  on  scores  of  dry 
branches,  and  raised  a  blazing  pile  above  the 
snow,  always  excited  my  admiration. 

When  we  had  accomplished  nearly  half 
our  journey,  we  had  not  overstepped  the 
time  we  allowed  ourselves ;  but  the  continuous 
exertion  was  beginning  to  affect  our  limbs, 
and,  the  perpetual  glare  of  the  sun  on  the 
snow,  inflamed  our  eyes.  This  we  found  by 
far  the  greater  hardship  of  the  two.  I  shall 
never  forget  the  joy  we  felt,  one  morning, 
when  the  sun  remained  hidden  beneath 
heavy  cloud-banks  in  the  east.  Almost 
forgetting  our  swollen  limbs  in  the  glad- 
ness of  being  delivered  from  his  dazzling 
rays,  we  travelled  merrily  on  through  leafless 
forests  of  gigantic  trees ;  through  tracts  of 
smaller  trees,  thickly  studded  with  the  larch, 
the  spruce,  and  the  fir,  whose  dark  foliage 
gloomed  almost  black  against  the  stainless 
snow ;  through  woods  tangled  with  wild 
vines,  and  fragrant  with  juniper  bushes, 
until  at  length  we  reached  the  shores  of  a 
small  frozen  lake. 

Once  more  we  rejoiced  that  the  day  was 
dim  ;  for,  in  crossing  lakes  and  rivers,  we 
always  suffered  most,  being  deprived  of  the 
network  of  branches,  which  yielded  us  a 
shade  ;  sometimes  almost  impenetrable.  But 
our  exultation  was  short-lived.  An  excla- 
mation of  disappointment  burst  from  the 
Indians,  and,  looking  up,  I  saw  a  few 
large  snow-flakes  floating  slowly  through 
the  air. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  SNOW  EXPRESS. 


[October  17,  1337.]       3G9 


"  Let  us  put  off  our  snow-shoes,"  said 
Shegashie  ;  "  we  must  halt  here." 

"  Why  ? " 

"  Because  the  snow  will  bliud  our  eyes  to 
the  path." 

The  path,  however,  was  an  Indian  figure  of 
speech.  We  were  travelling  through  an  un- 
trodden wilderness,  guided  from  point  to 
point  by  some  rock,  or  bank,  or  quaintly 
formed  tree.  But,  these  objects  dwelt  vividly 
in  the  Indians'  recollections.  They  had  tra- 
velled this  road  twice  before  ;  and,  whatever 
an  Indian  once  sees,  remains  imprinted  in  his 
memory  for  ever. 

At  Shegashie's  announcement  I  looked 
over  the  lake  longingly.  I  could  not  bear  to 
lose  an  hour,  far  less  a  day  ;  and  I  said  that 
perhaps  we  might  get  across  before  the 
violence  of  the  snow-storm  came  on.  My 
guides  shook  their  heads.  However,  after  a 
time,  they  agreed  to  make  the  attempt. 

Accordingly,  off  we  started  across  the  lake, 
the  snow  flakes  floating  and  playing  lazily 
around  us  ;  and,  more  than  once,  we  congra- 
tulated ourselves  that  their  appearance  had 
not  deterred  us.  But,  when  we  had  got  about 
half-way  across,  the  snow-storm  came  dashing 
down  in  our  faces  with  a  fierce  gust  that 
almost  threw  us  off  our  feet.  Staggered  and 
breathless,  we  stopped.  Near  as  the  brothers 
were,  I  could  see  no  more  than  the  outlines 
of  their  dark  forms  through  the  thick  curtain 
of  snow  which  fell  between  us  ;  while  nothing 
was  visible  beyond,  but  dazzling  snow-flakes 
tumbling,  whirling,  and  rushing  down  to 
overwhelm  us. 

"  We  must,"  cried  Shegashie,  "  keep  the 
wind  in  our  faces,  or  we  shall  never  reach  the 
shore." 

He  at  once  led  the  way,  his  brother  and  I 
following,  and  with  difficulty  distinguishing 
him  as  he  shuffled  heavily  on  before  us. 
Already  the  weight  of  snow  upon  our  snow- 
shoes  impeded  us  greatly,  and  it  increased 
each  moment,  until  we  could  scarcely  drag 
them  along.  The  snow  blew  in  our  faces, 
sharp  as  icicles,  whirling  past  us  in  wild 
eddies,  almost  beating  us  down.  As  the 
storm  increased,  the  wind,  which  had  hitherto 
blown  steadily  in  our  faces,  began  to  waver, 
and  to  dash  the  snow  down  upon  us  in  every 
direction.  It  was  impossible  to  go  on. 

The  last  faint  lingering  shadow  of  a  hope 
passed  away,  and  we  felt  there  was  nothing 
left  but  to  die.  Once  or  twice  I  wondered 
I  did  not  feel  the  torpor,  which  is  the  pre- 
cursor of  death  among  the  snow,  steal  over 
my  senses ;  but  we  determined  not  to  die 
inactive,  and  the  violence  of  my  exertions 
heated  me  to  such  a  degree,  that  more  than 
once  I  found  myself  wiping  the  moisture 
from  my  brow,  as  I  fought  the  hopeless  battle 
against  the  whirlwind. 

That  I  am  alive  to  write  this,  is  a  proof  of 
the  unslumbering  Providence  watching  over 
all ;  for  there  was  no  earthly  hope  for  us, 
when  an  unseen  hand  guided  us  to  safety. 


How  we  reached  the  shore  none  of  us 
ever  knew ;  but,  at  length,  still  battling  against 
the  blinding  snow,  Shegashie's  snow-shoes 
struck  against  a  tree.  Close  beside  it  was  a 
thicket  of  dwarf  firs,  and  we  shrank  into  its 
shelter — saved  for  the  time. 

For  hours,  the  snow  continued  to  fall,  as  if 
inexhaustible  ;  at  length,  however,  it  ceased, 
and  the  setting  sun  shone  out  in  the  western 
sky,  red  and  angrily.  The  Indians  said  that 
another  snowstorm  was  at  hand.  So  we  set 
about  making  the  best  preparations  we  could 
for  the  night.  Our  friendly  thicket  was  no 
bad  shelter,  and  Chingoos  and  I  set  to  work 
with  our  tomahawks  to  cut  away  the 
branches,  until  the  place  somewhat  resem- 
bled a  bower  ;  then,  shaking  the  cut  branches 
free  from  snow,  we  laid  them  up  in  soft  piles 
to  sleep  upon.  Meantime  Shegashie  busied 
himself  in  making  a  fire  and  collecting  fuel. 
We  were  short  of  food ;  for,  during  the  last 
day  or  two,  game  had  been  unusually  scarce. 
But  we  had  sufficient  for  the  night,  and 
hoped  to  obtain  more  on  the  morrow ;  She- 
gashie having  set  several  snares  round  our 
camp  for  the  small  Arctic  hares  which  abound 
in  those  forests. 

Soon  after  dark  the  snow  recommenced ; 
and,  although  we  were  unusually  well  shel- 
tered, I  never  felt  cold  so  intense  as  I  did  that 
night.  I  have  rarely  felt  more  rejoiced 
than  I  did  when  I  saw  the  early  dawn  steal 
over  the  landscape,  and  was  able  to  rise 
from  my  freezing  couch  and  waken  my  com- 
panions, who  rose  looking  as  comfortless  as 
myself:  especially  Chiugoos,  who  trembled  as 
if  he  had  an  ague  fit.  But  a  little  hot  coffee 
revived  him. 

Shegashie  went  to  inspect  his  snares ;  and, 
to  his  great  disappointment,  he  found  that 
they  had  not  been  disturbed  ;  so  there  was 
nothing  for  it  but  to  start  afresh  without 
breakfast.  Just  as  we  had  tied  on  our  snow- 
shoes,  a  few  flakes  of  snow,  like  tiny  birds, 
came  floating  between  us  and  the  clear  blue 
sky.  They  were  true  harbingers ;  and, 
within  a  few  minutes,  the  clouds  began 
to  gather  and  the  snow  to  darken  the  atmo- 
sphere. Warned  by  the  past  day's  experience, 
we  remained  in  our  camp.  Hour  after  hour 
the  snow  poured  down  in  driving  masses ; 
but  we  were  sheltered  from  its  fury.  We  had 
fire,  and  the  snow  settling  on  the  roof  and 
sides  of  our  bower  made  it  warm  ;  so  we  felt 
that  we  had  more  cause  to  be  thankful  than 
to  complain,  .though  we  were  compelled  to 
fast. 

Before  long,  Chingoos's  indisposition  of 
the  morning  returned ;  and,  as  day  wore  on,  he 
continued  to  get  worse ;  until,  by  evening,  it 
was  quite  evident  that  he  was  in  the  first 
stage  of  a  fever.  We  did  the  best  we 
could  for  him,  by  giving  him  hot  coffee  and 
such  other  trifling  comforts  as  our  slender 
stock  afforded. 

The  next  morning  broke  bright  and  beau- 
tiful ;  but  it  was  at  once  evident  that  poor 


370      [October  17, 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted 


Chingoos  could  not  travel  that  day.  The  fever 
increased,  and  the  ague  so  sliook  him,  that  it 
was  with  the  greatest  difficulty  ho  could 
take  the  coffee  from  our  hands.  The  snares 
were  still  empty,  and  this  day  also  waa  passed 
without  food. 

On  the  third  morning,  Chingoos  was  still 
worse.  No  game  had  been  snared  or  shot, 
and  hunger-pangs  were  now  becoming  very 
fierce.  We  were  so  weak  that  we  could 
scarcely  creep.  -About  mid-day  a  hare  came 
leaping  by,  through  the  snow.  I  shot  it,  and 
we  dressed  it  immediately.  To  this  day  I 
think  that  that  was  the  sweetest  meal  I  ever 
tasted.  We  made  a  part  of  the  hare  into 
soup  for  our  poor  patient ;  but  he  was  unable 
to  take  it — to  our  surprise,  for  it  seemed  to 
us  delicious  beyond  expression. 

From  that  day  we  never  wanted  food,  and 
were  able  to  give  all  our  thoughts  and 
anxieties  to  Chingoos ;  whose  last  hour 
was  evidently  drawing  near.  He  held  out 
his  hand  to  his  brother,  and  Shegashie,  forget- 
ting the  stoical  demeanour  of  his  race  which  he 
had  tried  hard  to  maintain,  burst  into  tears  as 
he  folded  it  in  his  bosom.  When  he  released  it, 
it  fell  cold  and  stiffened  upon  the  snow. 

Shegashie  did  not  speak  for  hours,  but  wept 
incessantly.  The  earth  was  frozen  too  hard 
to  admit  of  our  digging  a  grave.  We  were 
therefore  compelled  to  lay  the  lifeless  Indian 
deep  in  the  snow  in  a  shady  place,  until  his 
brother  could  return  in  the  spring  to  bury  him. 

On  the  following  morning  we  resumed  our 
journey  ;  but  it  had  now  become  a  melancholy 
pilgrimage.  The  day  seemed  long  and  dreary 
without  the  joyous  youth,  whose  lively  jests 
and  ringing  laughter  had  echoed  among 
the  old  trees.  Towards  evening,  for  the 
first  time  in  all  our  travels,  we  came  on 
the  signs  of  a  human  being.  The  broad 
trail  of  a  pair  of  snow-shoes  preceded  us 
along  the  course  we  had  to  follow. 

My  guide,  judging  by  the  tracks,  announced 
the  wearer  to  be  an  Indian,  and  not  one  of 
the  white  hunters  who  are  sometimes  to  be 
met  in  these  forests.  He  was  right.  The 
wearer  of  the  gaily  trimmed  hunting-shirt 
whom  we  overtook  about  two  hours  after, 
with  his  dirty  blanket,  rifle,  tomahawk,  and 
knife,  his  arms  covered  with  bracelets,  and 
bunches  of  ear-rings,  weighing  down  the  lobes 
of  the  eais,  fully  attested  the  accuracy  of 
Shegashie's  fore-knowledge. 

The  Indians  greeted  each  other  with  grave 
courtesy,  and  the  same  polite  reception  was 
extended  to  me.  But,  in  spite  of  all  their  gra- 
vity. I  fancied  I  perceived  a  gleam  of  joy  in 
the  wild  eyes  of  the  stranger.  No  wonder, 
poor  fellow  !  I  thought.  Perhaps  he  has  passed 
the  whole  winter  without  looking  on  one 
human  face.  He  belonged  to  a  party  of 
Indians  living  far  to  the  north  of  Green  Snake 
River,  and  his  dialect  was  a  great  trial  to  my 
Indian  erudition. 

As  his  path  for  the  next  day  or  two  would 
be  the  same  as  ours,  the  stranger  proposed 


to  join  us.  Though  I  must  confess  that  the 
sight  of  his  blanket,  caked  with  iilth,  made 
me  feel  a  repugnance  to  his  company,  yet  I 
was  too  prudent  to  object;  and  afterwards, 
when  we  stopped  for  the  night,  and  I  found 
that,  leaving  the  fire-making  to  Shegashie, 
he  was  content  to  bustle  about  to  collect 
fuel,  and  to  assist  me  in  forming  our  night's 
shelter,  I  felt  more  charity  towards  him,  and 
was  more  resigned  to  his  raising  his  pile  of 
branches  near  my  own. 

As  we  sat,  that  evening,  round  our  camp 
fire,  I  had  a  better  opportunity  of  observing 
our  new  acquaintance.  He  was  a  tall,  finely 
formed  Indian,  and  more  muscular  than  I 
had  ever  seen  any  of  his  race.  Moreover, 
there  was  an  unusual  fierceness  in  his  de- 
meanour and  a  strange  fire  gleamed  from  his 
eye.  He  took  the  tobacco  we  gave  him  with 
great  pleasure,  but  he  was  disappointed  that 
our  fire-water  was  all  expended.  However, 
he  did  not  let  that  damp  his  spirits,  but 
talked  on  with  more  than  Indian  volubility. 
Shegashie's  stock  of  news,  for  which  he 
asked,  was  soon  exhausted.  Poor  fellow !  he 
had  little  heart  to  talk  of  anything  except 
his  beloved  brother,  to  whose  story  the 
stranger  listened  with  a  contracted  brow ; 
but  with  few  indications  of  sympathy.  In 
his  turn,  he  treated  Shegashie  to  a  number 
of  amazing  and  horrible  stories  which  were 
current  in  the  woods. 

1  lost  the  gist  of  many  of  these  through  not 
being  able  clearly  to  comprehend  his  language. 
But  there  was  one  I  understood  somewhat 
better  than  the  others  :  it  was  concerning  a 
very  fierce  Indian  called  Mamiskogahjhe 
(Great  red-nailed  Bear),  who  came  from  far 
beyond  the  Great  Lake  (Superior),  and  who, 
on  his  return  home  from  a  hunting  expe- 
dition, had  found  his  squaw  and  children  the 
prey  of  a  band  of  cannibal  Indians.  Enraged 
at  the  sight,  this  hero  fell  upon  them  single- 
handed,  and  took  the  scalps  of  all  except  one. 
That  one  had  fled  ;  and,  ever  since,  Ma,misko- 
gahjhe  had  prowled  through  the  woods, 
gnashing  his  teeth  and  seeking  him  every- 
where. The  missing  Indian  had  shrouded 
himself  in  every  sort  of  disguise,  "  But  all 
to  no  purpose,"  said  the  stranger  savagely, 
"  for  Mamiskogahjhe  slays  every  Indian  he 
meets,  so  that  that  villain  must  fall  beneath 
his  knife  at  last." 

When  I  had  got  over  the  novelty  of  the 
stranger's  excited  manner  and  gleaming  eye, 
I  became  somewhat  weary  of  this  Indian 
hyperbole  ;  but,  Shegashie  listened  to  every 
word  with  breathless  attention.  I  was  loung- 
ing beside  the  fire,  more  asleep  than  awake, 
when  I  was  aroused  by  the  stranger  abruptly 
demanding  of  my  guide  if  he  had  ever  seen 
this  redoubtable  brave,  the  great  red-nailed 
bear :  to  which  the  young  Indian  replied  in. 
the  negative. 

"  Liar  ! "  thundered  the  savage,  springing 
to  his  feet.  "I  amMamiskogalijhe!  "  and  in  a 
moment  he  stabbed  my  companion  in  the  chest. 


Charles  Dicttefti.l 


THE  SNOW  EXPRESS. 


[October  17, 185?.]      371 


I  sprang  upon  him  in  an  instant,  and 
seized  his  right  arm;  which,  by  a  violent 
effort,  he  succeeded  in  disengaging.  He 
aimed  a  deadly  blow  at  me  with  his  knife, 
but  I  evaded  it,  and  drew  my  own.  With  a 
yell  at  his  disappointment,  he  began  to  draw 
his  tomahawk  from  his  belt  with  the  view  of 
hurling  it  at  my  head;  bnt  I  darted  upon 
him,  pinioning  his  arms.  His  feet  gave  way, 
and  we  both  rolled  together  on  the  snow.  A 
struggle  for  life  between  us  succeeded.  The 
Indian  kept  making  little  digs  at  me  with  his 
knife,  but  he  could  not  get  purchase  enough 
to  do  more  than  penetrate  my  clothes  and 
inflict  slight  wounds  upon  me.  He  rolled  over 
with  me,  hoping  to  get  me  undermost ;  but  I 
always  rolled  farther  than  he  wished,  and  got 
on  the  upper  side  again.  At  length  I  lost  pa- 
tience ;  and.  still  holding  his  right  arm  tightly 
down,  I  loosened  the  hand  which  held  my 
knife.  But,  quick  as  thought,  Mamiskogahjhe 
changed  his  knife  into  his  left  hand  also. 
Then  commenced  another  rolling  and  tearing 
struggle,  more  like  that  of  tigers  than  of 
men,  for  my  foe  assailed  me  fiercely  with  his 
teeth.  We  stabbed  at  each  other  wildly,  and 
many  a  wound  I  gave  and  received.  At 
length  the  Indian  relaxed  his  hold,  fell  back, 
and  I  arose  victorious. 

My  first  thought,  now,  after  a  fervent 
prayer  for  my  deliverance,  was  for  my  poor 
guide.  I  found  that,  though  desperately 
wounded  and  bleeding  profusely,  he  was  not 
dead.  I  bound  up  his  wounds  as  I  best 
could,  and  placed  him  on  his  bed.  My  own 
wounds,  though  numerous,  were  marvellously 
slight  ;  more  cuts  than  stabs,  and  even  those, 
my  thick  clothing  had  prevented  from  doing 
much  damage.  1  dressed  them,  and,  heaping 
more  wood  on  the  fire,  sank  down  beside  it 
to  watch  my  poor  Shegashie. 

The  next  morning  Shegashie  was  so  weak 
from  loss  of  blood  that  each  moment  I  ex- 
pected to  see  him  pass  away,  and  leave  me 
alone  in  the  woods,  to  die  in  my  turn. 
I  now  bitterly  regretted  that  I  hud  ever 
entered  on  this  disastrous  enterprise.  How- 
ever, there  I  was,  and  I  had  nothing  for  it 
but  to  make  the  best  of  it ;  so  I  set  to  work, 
buried  my  dead  enemy  in  a  snow  bank,  col- 
lected wood,  shot  a  hare,  dressed  it,  and 
returned  to  my  sad  task  of  watching  my 
wounded  guide. 

_  At  the  end  of  ten  days,  despite  every  adverse 
circumstance,  Shegashie  was  a  great  deal 
better  ;  yet  it  was  evident  to  both  of  us  that 
it  would  be  a  long  time  before  he  could  travel. 
The  poor  fellow  earnestly  entreated  me  not 
to  stay  with  him,  but  to  leave  him  to  his  fate; 
and  he  directed  me  in  the  right  way  to  pursue 
my  journey.  I  would  not  have  deserted  an 
enemy  thus,  much  less  one  with  whom  I  had 
faced  sorrow,  danger,  and  death.  Yet  powder 
and  shot  were  rapidly  failing.  After  much 
cogitation,  I  took  all  the  spare  snow  shoes,  and, 
by  the  aid  of  a  bearskin,  succeeded  in  making 
a  sleigh  capable  of  holding  Shegashie  very 


comfortably,  as  well  as  all  our  belongings.  I 
rose  proudly  the  next  morning  ;  and,  placing 
my  companion  in  the  sleigh,  re-commenced 
my  journey. 

It  was  weary  work  to  drag  that  clumsy 
sleigh,  the  wasted  Indian  looking  out  now 
and  then  to  direct  me  on  our  way.  I  was 
often  obliged  to  make  long  detours  to  avoid 
thickets  and  places  where  the  trees  grew  too 
close  to  admit  my  sleigh  between  them. 
When  day  was  done,  I  had  the  fuel  to  collect, 
the  fire  to  make,  shelter  to  prepare,  She- 
gashie to  move,  his  wounds  to  dress,  and  then 
the  game  to  cook  which  I  had  killed  during 
the  day.  Many  a  time  I  thought  I  should 
be  obliged  to  give  up  the  struggle.  When  I 
lay  down  to  rest  I  was  sometimes  so  tired 
that  I  could  not  have  resisted  another 
Mamiskogahjhe, had  he  come  to  end  the  work 
the  first  one  had  begun  ;  and,  when  morning 
reappeared,  I  re-commenced  my  tugging  and 
dragging  with  arms  so  weary,  that  I  did  not 
care  if  another  snow-storm  came  and  sent 
us  to  sleep  till  the  great  day  of  awakening. 

Neither  Indian  nor  snow-storm  came,  and  I 
was  compelled  to  go  on  from  day  to  day  enact- 
ing by  turns  the  parts  of  horse,  forager,  fire- 
maker,  cook,  builder,  and  nurse.  At  length  I 
became  so  exhausted,  that  one  morning,  though 
it  was  scarcely  mid-day,  I  began  to  look  about 
me  for  a  suitable  place  to  encamp  for  the  re- 
mainder of  the  day  and  night :  hoping,  after 
such  a  rest,  to  start  fresher  on  the  following 
morniag.  Suddenly,  a  thin  column  of  smoke 
ascending  from  the  trees  at  a  short  distance, 
caught  my  eye  ;  and,  turning  off  from  our 
route,  I  made  the  best  of  my  way  towards  it. 
It  rose  from  the  hut  of  a  newly-arrived  set- 
tler. The  man  gave  us  a  hearty  welcome, 
and  we  slept  beneath  a  roof,  for  the  first 
time  for  considerably  more  than  a  month. 
The  next  day  he  put  his  horse  to  his  wood- 
train  ;  and,  in  two  days  more,  brought  us  to 
head-quarters — less,  I  believe,  for  the  reward 
I  promised,  than  from  pity  for  our  worn  and 
miserable  condition. 

The  time  appointed  for  the  trial  was  now 
nearly  three  weeks  past,  and  I  did  not  doubt 
that  it  was  over.  But  the  severe  illness  of 
the  accused  had  again  deferred  it.  The  pro- 
ceedings were  only  now  coming  to  a  close.  So 
far,  they  left  on  the  minds  of  all  who  wit- 
nessed them,  but  one  impression — that  my 
poor  friend's  military  career  was  ended. 
Suddenly  I  entered  the  court,  attired  in  worn- 
out  rags,rnyface  haggard,  my  eyes  inflamed, my 
swollen  feet  hobbling  awkwardly  on  the  floor. 

Order  restored,  my  testimony  was  received 
with  the  greatest  attention ;  and  Lowther 
was  acquitted  with  honour. 

Poor  Shegashie  !  When  the  spring  came, 
he  left  me,  and  returned  by  a  schooner  to 
Green  Snake  River ;  whence,  accompanied 
by  his  relatives,  he  travelled  down  to  the 
scene  of  his  only  brother's  death.  They  dug  a 
deep  grave  for  Chingoos,  and  laid  him  in  it  on, 
the  spot  where  his  life  had  departed.  But 


372      (October  17.  18&7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  t/y 


Shegashie  never  -more  returned  to  his  native 
village.  Parting  from  his  relatives  at  the 
grave,  he  returned  to  me,  and  remained  with 
me — a  gentle,  unobtrusive,  faithful  friend, — 
until  consumption,  the  bane  of  his  race,  took 
him  from  me  a  few  years  ago. 


TOUCHING  THE  LORD  HAMLET. 


MANY  persons  are  aware  that  the  story  of 
Hamlet  is  taken  from  the  Danish  historian 
Saxo-Grammaticus.  At  the  same  time,  few 
persons  have  read  so  much  as  a  line  of  Saxo- 
Grammaticus,  for  he  wrote  in  Latin,  and  his 
book  is  a  folio.  By  writing  in  Latin  a  man 
secures  immortality  at  the  expense  of  popu- 
j  larity.  What  he  gains  in  duration  he  loses 
in  extension.  Nor  are  folios  opened  with 
avidity  at  the  present  day.  People  like  to 
read  in  an  easy  position,  possibly  with  legs 
horizontally  placed,  and  to  hold  a  light 
volume  in  their  hands.  A  folio,  resting 
against  a  reading-desk,  defies  every  attempt 
at  luxurious  indolence. 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  probable 
that  many  persons  know  exceedingly  little  of 
the  traditionary  character  of  Hamlet,  and 
that  when  they  hear  him  hint  to  his  friends 
that  he  is  about  "to  put  an  antick  dispo- 
sition" on,  they  fancy  that  the  grave 
pleasantries  of  the  tragedy  were  the  sole 
consequences  of  his  voluntary  eccentricity. 
Hence,  at  the  risk  of  offending  antiquaries  by 
the  narration  of  a  (to  them)  well-known  tale, 
we  shall  show  to  the  general  reader  what  a 
funny  person  Hamlet  really  was— thatis  to  say, 
if  Saxo-Grammaticus  be  a  faithful  historian. 

Once  upon  a  time — and  a  very  Ion?  time 
ago  it  was,  for  Ruric  was  the  son  of  Hoder, 
who  killed  Balder,  son  of  the  god  Odin — once 
upon  a  time,  when  Ruric  reigned  over  Den- 
mark, the  province  of  Jutland  was  governed 
by  two  brothers,  in  the  capacity  of  joint-vice- 
roys. One  of  these,  named  Horwendil,  slew 
the  King  of  Norway  in  single  combat,  and 
presented  so  large  a  share  of  Norwegian 
booty  to  Ruric,  that  the  grateful  monarch 
bestowed  upon  him  the  hand  of  his  daughter 
Gerutha.  Of  this  marriage  Hamlet  was  the 
result. 

Fengo,  the  other  viceroy,  instead  of  re- 
joicing at  his  brother's  good  fortune,  murdered 
mm  out  of  sheer  envy,  and  married  Gerutha 
himself.  To  account  for  this  singular  pro- 
ceeding, he  explained  to  King  Ruric,  that  the 
deceased  was  in  the  habit  of  maltreating  his 
•wife  to  such  a  degree  that  his  murder  was 
absolutely  necessary,  in  order  to  relieve  a 
most  charming  and  inoffensive  lady  from  an 
exceeding  disagreeable  position.  King  Ruric, 
who  tenderly  loved  his  daughter,  found  this 
explanation  perfectly  satisfactory,  and  con- 
firmed the  second  marriage. 

Thus,  for  a  time,  the  matter  blew  over  ; 
but,  in  the  meanwhile  the  boy  Hamlet, 
thinking  that  he  might  be  murdered  in  his 
turn,  began  to  feign  idiocy,  that  he  might 


thus  appear  too  insignificant  for  his  uncle's 
suspicions.  He  jabbered  a  great  deal  of  non- 
sense ;  he  contrived  that  his  figure  should 
approach  as  nearly  as  possible  to  that  of  a 
scarecrow,  and  he  smutted  over  his  face,  so 
that  his  features  were  scarcely  discernible. 
However,  when  he  made  certain  wooden 
hooks,  and  having  baked  them  in  the  fire, 
concealed  them  carefully,  saying  that  they 
were  arrows  for  his  father's  murderer,  the 
more  shrewd  persons  of  the  court,  notwith- 
standing the  laughter  of  the  fools,  deemed 
there  was  some  "  method  in  his  madness,"  and 
communicated  their  doubts  to  the  viceroy. 

Fengo,  therefore,  determined  to  watch 
his  nephew  closely  ;  and,  on  one  occasion 
when  Hamlet  took  a  ride  into  the  woods 
with  some  youths  of  his  own  age,  it 
was  expected  that  his  true  character  would 
be  revealed.  But  his  foster-brother  warned 
him  that  he  was  surrounded  by  spies,  and 
accordingly,  to  sustain  his  character  for  im- 
becility, he  mounted  his  horse  with  his  head 
towards  the  tail — which  he  used  as  a  bridle — 
thereby  causing  much  laughter  and  diversion. 

Had  Hamlet  lived  at  the  end  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  instead  of  flourishing  at  the 
commencement  of  the  year  nothing,  we 
should  have  concluded  that  he  framed  his 
sham  character  on  the  model  of  Charles  the 
Second,  as  described  by  that  famous  epigram, 
which  says  that  the  Merry  Monarch 

"  never  said  a  foolish  thing, 
And  never  did  a  wise  one." 

Since,  while  by  the  excessive  stupidity  of  his 
acts  he  maintained  his  reputation  for  in- 
sanity, he  constantly  shook  the  very  belief 
he  wished  to  establish  by  sayings  of  remark- 
able shrewdness.  Thus,  on  the  occasion  of  tho 
notable  ride  into  the  wood,  a  wolf  happened 
to  cross  his  path  : 

"What's  that  ]"  said  Hamlet. 

"  A  young  foal,"  replied  one  of  the  attend- 
ants ;  winking,  no  doubt,  at  the  rest. 

"  Aha,"  quoth  Hamlet,  "  there  are  many 
such  foals  at  Fengo's  court." 

Ere  the  sting  occasioned  by  this  sarcasm 
had  quite  ceased  to  tingle,  the  party  arrived 
at  the  sea-shore,  where  the  rudder  of  a 
wrecked  ship  was  the  first  object  that  met 
their  gaze.  The  graceless  youths,  intending 
once  more  to  "poke  their  fun  "at  the  demented 
prince,  exclaimed  : 

"  Look,  what  a  big  knife  we  have  found  !  " 

But  Hamlet  reflected  for  a  while,  and  then 
said,  gravely :  "  Of  a  truth  the  ham  must 
have  been  large,  that  such  a  knife  was  inten- 
ded to  cut,"  thereby  referring  to  the  sea,  and 
possibly  the  saltuess  thereof.  But,  not  quieted 
by  this  sharp  retort,his  facetious  comrades  pro- 
ceeded to  explain  to  him  that  the  sand  on  the 
shore  was  flour,  and  that  the  pebbles  were 
groats.  But  Humlet  said  :  "  Such  flour  as 
that  has  been  ground  by  the  storm  and  the 
white-foaming  billows." 

These  jokes  may  not  appeal'  very  brilliant 


Charles  Dickens.] 


TOUCHING  THE  LORD  HAMLET. 


[October  17.  18*;.]       373 


now,  but  they  made  a  great  sensation  in  the 
year  nothing,  and  the  court  of  King  Ruric 
was  often  convulsed  with  laughter  on  hearing 
of  "Hamlet's  last."  Indeed,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  Hamlet  and  Yorick  were  historically  one 
and  the  same  person. 

However,  delightful  as  the  mad  prince's 
jokes  were  considered  by  other  persons,  they 
were  not  liked  by  his  uncle,  Fengo,  who 
always  suspected  that  some  mischief  was 
brooding,  and  was  determined  to  worm  out 
his  nephew's  real  character.  He,  therefore, 
by  the  counsel  of  a  friend,  feigned  to  leave 
the  country  on  some  urgent  matter,  that 
during  his  supposed  absence,  Hamlet  might 
have  an  interview  with  his  mother,  at 
which  the  same  friend  engaged  to  be  present, 
unseen.  The  interview  took  place,  and 
Fengo's  friend,  according  to  promise,  hid  him- 
self under  a  heap  of  straw,  that  constituted 
an  important  part  of  the  furniture  of  the 
royal  apartment.  With  his  usual  shrewdness 
Hamlet  guessed  there  was  something  wrong 
in  the  room,  and  to  ascertain  whether  his 
suspicions  were  correct,  danced  upon  the 
straw,  clapping  his  hands  and  crowing  like  a 
cock,  to  the  great  astonishment  of  his 
mother  and  to  the  infinite  annoyance  of  the 
listening  friend,  who  had  to  endure  all 
the  weight  of  the  prince's  eccentricities. 
Naturally  enough  something  began  to  move 
beneath  the  straw,  and  that  something — 
which  the  reader  may,  if  he  pleases,  call 
Polonius — was  immediately  transfixed  by 
the  sword  of  Hamlet.  Queen  Gerutha, 
shocked  at  this  new  manifestation  of  mad- 
ness, began  to  weep  aloud,  but  Hamlet, 
dropping  the  mask,  read  her  a  severe  lecture 
on  the  impropriety  of  her  position.  His 
words  seemed  to  have  an  effect,  as,  indeed, 
well  they  might,  for  they  were  marked  by  a 
ruffianly  coarseness  which  could  not  be  ex- 
ceeded, and  of  which  Shakspeare  does  not 
convey  the  slightest  idea.  In  the  fullest 
sense  of  the  expression,  Hamlet  gave  his 
mother  a  "  bit  of  his  mind,"  and  a  very  un- 
savoury bit  of  a  very  gross  mind  it  was. 

Fengo,  on  his  return,  missed  his  friend,  for 
Hamlet  had  not  only  killed  that  most  unfor- 
tunate of  courtiers,  but  had  boiled  down  his 
limbs,  and  thrown  them  into  the  sewer  to  be 
devoured  by  the  pigs.  This  deed  the  prince 
openly  avowed,  but  those  who  heard  him 
merely  thought  that  he  was  uttering  one  of 
his  mad  pleasantries,  and  laughed  as  usual. 
Indeed,  at  the  court  of  Jutland  everybody 
seems  to  have  been  an  arrant  blockhead,  with 
the  single  exception  of  Fengo  himself.  That 
worthy  viceroy  would  have  killed  his  nephew 
without  further  ado,  had  he  not  feared  to 
offend  King  Ruric,  who,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  the  lad's  maternal  grandfather.  To  get 
rid  of  Hamlet  stratagem  was  necessary,  and 
accordingly  the  good  youth  was  sent  on  an 
embassy  to  Britain — a  proceeding  which,  as 
he  was  a  reputed  maniac,  must  have  been 
deemed  highly  complimentary  to  the  British 


court.  Two  Danish  gentlemen — whom  the 
;  reader  may,  if  he  pleases,  call  Roseucrantz 
j  and  Guildeustern — were,  moreover,  appointed 
to  accompany  him,  and  they  secretly  carried 
with  them  (by  turns,  we  presume),  a  bit  of 
wood,  with  certain  letters  carved  upon  it, 
requesting  the  king  of  Britain  to  put  Hamlet 
to  death.  It  may  be  observed  that,  in  the 
days  of  King  Ruric,  bits  of  carved  wood  were 
the  approved  means  for  carrying  on  an 
epistolary  correspondence.  With  all  that 
cleverness  that  seems  to  have  been  inherent 
in  the  Jutland  Court,  the  two  confidential 
gentlemen  went  to  sleep  one  night  in  Hamlet's 
presence  with  the  precious  document  in  one 
of  their  pockets.  Of  course  the  pockets  were 
rummaged  by  the  artful  prince,  and  of  course 
he  found  the  wooden  dispatch,  which  he  had 
no  sooner  read  than  he  shaved  off  the  inscrip- 
tion and  carved  another,  in  which  he  not 
only  named  the  two  sleepers  as  the  persons 
to  be  killed,  but  also  forged  a  request  from 
Fengo,  that  the  king  of  Britain  would  be 
kind  enough  to  give  his  daughter  to  Hamlet 
for  a  wife. 

The  policy  pursued  by  Hamlet  during  his 
sojourn  in  Britain  was  the  very  reverse  o-t 
that  which  he  had  adopted  while  he  was  at 
home  in  Jutland.  Among  the  Danes  he 
wished  to  pass  for  a  fool  or  a  madman;  by  the 
Britons  he  wished  to  be  thought  a  model  of 
wisdom.  He  first  excited  the  general  wonder 
by  refusing  to  taste  a  single  morsel,  or  to 
drink  a  single  drop  at  the  very  munificent 
banquet  which  the  king  of  Britain  had  pro- 
vided for  his  reception.  Indeed,  so  much 
was  the  hospitable  monarch  surprised  by  an 
abstinence  so  unusual  in  the  good  old  times, 
that  when  Hamlet  and  his  attendants  had 
retired  to  their  sleeping-apartment  he  ordered 
one  of  his  servants  to  listen  at  the  door,  and 
pick  up  as  much  as  he  could  of  the  conver- 
sation. Hamlet's  attendants,  who  shared  the 
general  curiosity,  no  sooner  found  themselves 
alone  with  him,  than  they  inquired  into  the 
cause  of  his  mysterious  abstinence.  He 
quietly  told  them  that  the  bread  was  stained 
with  blood,  that  the  drink  tasted  of  iron,  and 
that  the  meat  smelt  like  a  human  corpse — 
all  good  and  weighty  reasons  for  not  making 
a  hearty  meal.  His  companions  further 
asked  him  what  he  thought  of  the  king  and 
queen  of  Britain  ;  and  his  answer  showed 
that  his  opinion  of  the  illustrious  pair  was 
not  very  exalted.  The  king,  he  said,  had  the 
eyes  of  a  serf,  and  as  for  the  queen,  she 
betrayed  her  slavish  origin  by  three  distinct 
signs. 

Now,  the  king  of  Britain  was  naturally 
of  a  kindly  and  pacific  disposition,  with 
the  additional  qualification  of  that  laudable 
spirit  of  curiosity  that  in  later  days  has  been 
styled  the  desire  for  knowledge.  So,  instead 
of  flying  into  a  passion  when  his  servants 
informed  him  of  Hamlet's  disrespectful 
observations,  he  thought  they  were  worthy 
of  a  cool  and  serious  inquiry.  Beginning 


374       [October  17, 1»7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


with  the  subject  of  dinner,  he  asked  where 
the  bread  came  from,  and  presently  learned, 
on  the  authority  of  the  court-bakei',  that  the 
corn  of  which  it  was  made  was  the  produce 
of  a  field  in  which  a  great  battle  had  been 
fought,  and  which  had  been  selected  by 
judicious  agriculturists  on  account  of  its 
excessive  fertility.  Clearly,  Hamlet  was  not 
so  wrong  about  the  bread  ;  so  the  admiring 
king  pursued  his  investigations  with  refe- 
rence to  the  bacon,  when  it  turned  out  that 
the  pigs  of  the  royal  stye  had,  on  one  occa- 
sion, broken  loose,  and  feasted  on  the  corpse 
of  a  malefactor  who  had  paid  the  last  penalty 
of  the  law.  Moreover,  in  the  well  from 
which  the  water  had  been  drawn  for  the 
supply  of  the  royal  table,  sundry  rusty 
swords  were  found,  and  this  accounted  for 
the  taste  of  iron.  The  fine  taste  and  the  fine 
nose  of  Hamlet  could  not  be  sufficiently 
admired  by  the  excellent  king  of  Britain, 
who  was  resolved  to  look  into  those  little 
family  matters  that  had  been  likewise 
touched  upon  by  his  Danish  guest.  Accord- 
ingly, he  sent  for  his  mother,  the  Queen- 
dowager  of  Britain,  and  having  asked  her, 
very  seriously,  why  he  had  the  eyes  of  a  serf, 
received  the  agreeable  information  that  a 
certain  slave,  who  had  been  made  prisoner  of 
war,  held  a  more  important  position  in  the 
royal  pedigree  than  had  generally  been 
imagined.  Hamlet  was  right  again!  He 
was  therefore  personally  questioned  as  to  the 
thrpe  signs  of  slavish  origin  he  had  remarked 
in  the  behaviour  of  the  queen- consort.  Not 
in  the  least  daunted,  Hamlet  replied,  that  in 
the  first  place  the  illustrious  lady  was  in  the 
habit  of  wearing  the  hood  of  her  cloak  over 
her  head,  contrary  to  the  usages  of  what 
Osric  calls  "soft  society  ;"  that  in  the  second 
place,  when  she  walked  she  tucked  up  her 
gown  by  the  girdle  ;  and  that  in  the  third 
place,  when  after  dinner  she  used  her  tooth- 
pick, she  swallowed  the  extracted  particles 
of  food  instead  of  spitting  them  out  with  royal 
dignity. 

Oh,  happy  were  the  days  when  Ruric  was 
king  of  Denmark,  when  Fengo  was  lord-lieu- 
tenant of  Jutland,  and  when  What's-  his- 
name  reigned  over  this  island  !  Talent  had  a 
chance  of  being  rewarded  then,  especially 
at  the  British  court.  Far  from  reproving 
Hamlet  for  his  matchless  impertinence,  the 
enlightened  king  of  Britain  was  in  ecstacies 
at  his  acnteness,  and  at  once  gave  him  his 
daughter  in  marriage,  thanking  the  gods  for 
sending  him  such  a  clever  son-in-law.  That 
the  wedding  might  not  want  its  proper  solem- 
nity, the  two  attendants  were  duly  hung  up 
on  the  very  day  after  the  ceremony.  The 
advantage  which  Hamlet  took  of  this  latter 
circumstance  can  scarcely  be  called  hand- 
some. Although  he  had  artfully  contrived 
the  destruction  of  his  comrades,  he  pretended 
to  be  excessively  enraged  at  their  death,  and 
the  king  of  Britain,  who  ft-lt  great  awe  at 
Danish  indignation,  gave  him,  by  way  of 


compensation,  a  large  sum  in  gold,  which  the 
astute  Hamlet  melted,  and  poured  into  two 
hollow  sticks. 

After  he  had  lived  in  Britain  about  a-year, 
he  thought  he  would  like  to  see  his  native 
Jutland  once  more,  so,  having  asked  the  king 
for  leave  of  absence,  and  obtained  the  same, 
he  set  off  with  his  two  loaded  sticks,  to  visit 
the  "  Old  folks  at  home."  The  first  spectacle 
that  met  his  eye  in  the  royal  palace,  was  the 
celebration  of  his  own  funeral,  held  on  the 
strength  of  a  report  that  he  had  died  in 
Britain ;  and  greatly  astounded  were  the 
mourners,  when  he  reappeared  amongst  them, 
looking  as  silly  and  as  dirty  as  ever.  When 
he  was  asked  what  had  become  of  his  two 
companions,  he  showed  the  two  sticks,  and 
said,  "  Here  they  are,  the  pair  of  them."  Of 
course  this  reply  was  set  down  to  the  account 
of  the  old  imbecility,  and  caused  explosions 
of  laughter,  for  these  Jutlanders  were  not 
aware  that  the  sticks  contained  the  worth  in 
bullion  of  the  two  executed  gentlemen  ;  nor 
had  they  reached  the  high  philosophy  of 
Hamlet,  which  taught  him  that  a  man's 
money-value  is,  in  fact,  the  man  himself. 

Neither  was  it  suspected  in  Denmark,  that 
the  funeral  ceremonies,  which  were  so 
strangely  interrupted  by  the  safe  return  of 
the  deceased,  had  been  contrived  by  that 
very  person.  Before  Hamlet  had  set  out  for 
Britain,  he  had  had  a  second  interview  with 
his  mother,  in  the  course  of  which  he 
requested  her  to  pretend,  after  his  absence 
for  a  year,  that  she  had  received  news  of  his 
death,  to  perform  as  much  of  a  funeral  as  is 
possible  when  the  corpse  is  wanting,  and  to 
hang  the  great  hall  of  the  palace  with  netted 
tapestry.  By  Queen  Gerutha,  who  was  of  a 
remarkably  pliant  disposition,  all  these  orders 
were  carefully  followed,  though  she  knew 
well  enough  that  she  would  see  her  son  again 
at  the  end  of  a  twelvemonth. 

Most  obstreperous  was  Hamlet  in  congra- 
tulating himself  on  his  own  happy  re  turn.  The 
quantity  of  wine  that  he  procured  for  the 
refreshment  of  the  courtiers  was  enormous, 
and  he  added  a  practical  joke  to  his  verbal 
pleasantries,  dancing  about  with  a  drawn 
sword,  that  he  flourished  in  the  most  reckless 
fashion,  so  that  all  were  at  their  wits' end  for 
fear  they  might  receive  some  unlucky  gash 
or  thrust.  His  own  fingers  he  really  did  cut, 
and  the  courtiers  took  advantage  of  the  cir- 
cumstance to  fasten  the  sword  to  the  scab- 
bard with  a  nail. 

Through  all  these  proceedings,  a  great  deal 
of  drinking  went  on,  till  at  last  every  one  of 
the  courtiers  had  fallen  from  his  bench,  and 
was  lying  senseless  on  the  floor.  Hamlet 
now  took  from  their  hiding-place  the  wooden 
hooks  that  had  caused  so  much  mirth  in 
early  days,  removed  the  net-hangings  from 
the  walls,  and  so  fastened  them  over  t\\<- 
sleepers,  by  means  of  the  hooks,  that 
escape  was  impossible.  This  done,  he  simply 
set  lire  to  the  palace,  and  proceeding  to 


Charles  Plekem.l 


TOUCHING  THE  LOKD  HAMLET. 


[October  17.13570      375 


Fengo's  chamber,  took  down  the  sword  that 
was  banging  over  the  sleeping  king,  and 
hung  up  his  own  in  its  place.  Great  was  the 
consternation  of  Fengo  when  he  was  awakened 
by  a  voice  that  said,  in  no  pleasing  tone, 
<£  Fengo,  your  brave  men  are  burning  to 
ashes,  and  Hamlet  is  here  to  avenge  the 
death  of  his  father."  The  first  impulseof  Fengo 
was  to  reach  down  the  suspended  sword,  but 
as  that  unlucky  weapon  was  fastened  to  its 
sheath,  it  proved  a  sorry  defence  against  the 
sharp  blade  wielded  by  Hamlet,  and  the 
fratricide  viceroy  now  received  his  mortal 
blow. 

Now,  it  was  quite  possible  that  Hamlet's 
conduct  on  this  eventful  night  might  not  be 
in  accordance  with  the  views  of  Jutland  gene- 
rally. With  that  prudence  that  was  his  lead- 
ing virtue  he  retired,  therefore,  to  a  safe 
hiding-place,  whence  he  could  watch  the 
aspect  of  the  political  horizon.  When  the 
break  of  day  revealed  the  gloomy  spectacle 
of  a  palace  in  ruins  and  a  heap  of  half- 
burned  corpses,  the  early  rising  part  of  the 
population,  not  seeing  any  one  who  could  tell 
them  how  it  had  all  happened,  were  not  a 
little  puzzled.  Sentiments  were  varied — 
some  were  indignant  at  the  wholesale 
slaughter,  some  wept,  while  a  third  party, 
which  seems  to  have  been  that  of  the  majority, 
hinted  that  the  event  was  to  be  regarded  as 
rather  fortunate  than  otherwise.  On  this 
hint,  Hamlet  issued  from  his  nook,  and  made 
an  effective  speech,  in  which  he  avowed  what 
he  had  done,  gloried  that  lie  had  avenged  his 
father's  murder ;  and,  in  short,  managed 
matters  so  well,  that  a  general  shout  pro- 
claimed him  the  successor  of  Fengo. 

When  he  was  firmly  established  in  his 
province,  Hamlet  fitted  up  three  ships  in  a 
most  expensive  manner,  and  paid  a  visit  to 
his  father-in-law  in  Britain.  His  numerous 
attendants  carried  gilded  shields,  while  his 
own  target  was  ornamented  with  a  pictorial 
record  of  the  deeds  he  had  done.  Never  had 
the  Britons  seen  so  fine  a  sight.  The  good 
king,  however,  found  himself  in  a  moral  diffi- 
culty. He  had,  it  seems,  solemnly  sworn  to 
Fengo  that  he  would  avenge  his  death,  if  it 
occurred  otherwise  than  by  the  course  of 
nature,  and  now  Fengo  was  slain  by  the 
person  whom  the  king  esteemed  above  every- 
body else  in  the  world.  Hamlet  must  be  got 
rid  of  somehow  or  other  ;  but,  if  he  were  put 
to  death  in  the  palace,  the  laws  of  hospitality 
would  be  shamefully  violated.  It  was  clear 
that  he  must  be  sent  somewhere  else  in  order 
to  be  killed,  and  Scotland  at  last  suggested 
itself  to  the  British  king  as  the  very  place 
fitted  for  the  purpose.  Scotland  was  at  this 
time  governed  by  a  maiden  queen,  named 
Hermutruda,  who  was  so  fierce,  and  withal 
entertained  such  a  dislike  to  matrimony,  that 
if  a  suitor  presented  himself,  the  popping  of 
the  question  was  instantly  followed  by  a 
public  execution.  Hamlet  was  to  solicit  the 
hand  of  this  lady  for  the  King  of  Britain, 


who  had  recently  become  a  widower,  and  the 
Scottish  queen,  it  was  hoped,  would  dispatch 
him  according  to  precedent.  Thus  would 
Fengo  be  avenged,  and  the  British  king  would 
be  released  from  his  moral  difficulty. 

However,  when  Hamlet  reached  the  Scot- 
tish court,  affairs  took  a  turn  which  the  king 
of  Britain  had  not  contemplated.  The  ter- 
rible queen  was  greatly  struck  by  the  picture 
on  Hamlet's  shield,  and  told  him  in  a  few 
words,  that  if  he  would  woo  her  on  his  own 
account,  instead  of  courting  by  proxy,  she 
would  gladly  bestow  her  hand  upon  him. 
The  queen  was  not  only  fierce  but  fair,  and 
Hamlet's  heart  had  ever  been  susceptible  to 
feminine  beauty.  Therefore,  we  grieve  to 
relate,  he  jumped  at  the  offer,  regardless  of 
the  tie  in  the  south  of  the  island,  and  having 
married  the  Queen  of  Scotland,  had  the  con- 
summate assurance  to  return  to  the  king  of 
Britain,  with  his  new  wife,  and  a  train  of 
young  Scots  at  his  heels. 

Hamlet's  first  wife,  the  British  princess, 
was  a  gentle,  forgiving  creature,  who  was  so 
delighted  at  her  husband's  safe  return,  that 
she  vowed  not  only  to  love  him  still,  bub  to 
love  his  second  wife  also.  With  these  profes- 
sions she  met  him  on  the  road,  bearing  in  her 
arms  an  infant  to  which  she  had  lately  given 
birth.  At  the  same  time  she  warned  him  that 
her  father  did  not  entertain  the  same  liberal 
views  on  the  subject  of  family  affronts,  and 
that  he  had  better  be  on  his  guard  against 
stratagem.  When  this  amiable  discourse 
had  proceeded  so  far,  the  old  king  came  up, 
embraced  Hamlet  as  if  nothing  had  hap- 
pened, and  invited  him  to  a  banquet  in  the 
palace.  Hamlet  was  nothing  loth,  but,  as 
his  old  prudence  did  not  forsake  him,  he 
managed  to  put  on  a  suit  of  armour,  which 
was  concealed  by  his  upper  garments.  Nor 
did  this  precaution  prove  useless,  for  no 
sooner  did  Hamlet  make  his  appearance  at 
the  palace-gate,  than  the  king  flung  a  spear 
that  would  have  gone  through  the  body  of 
the  Dane,  had  it  not  been  checked  by  the 
unexpected  obstacle.  The  enmity  of  the 
king  being  thus  revealed,  Hamlet  retreated 
to  the  spot  where  he  had  left  his  Scotish 
adherents  ;  but  was  immediately  pursued  by 
his  enemy,  who  routed  the  little  force  of 
Scotsmen,  and  would  have  destroyed  every 
man  of  them,  had  he  not  been  interrupted 
by  the  approach  of  night.  When  darkness 
had  set  in,  Hamlet  did  one  of  those  clever 
things,  that  have  justly  earned  him  immor- 
tality in  the  Danish  chronicles.  Instead  of 
resting  himself,  lie  carefully  picked  up  the 
bodies  of  the  slain,  and  raising  some  into  the 
perpendicular  with  the  aid  of  sticks  and  big 
stones,  while  he  pL.:Q<1  others  on  horse-back, 
he  made  them  present  a  very  formidable 
appearance.  Hence,  when  morning  broke 
and  the  Britons  saw  the  new  force,  they 
stood  stupidly  staring,  wondering  whence 
the  auxiliaries  could  have  come.  Hamlet 
was  not  the  niau  to  lose  an  opportunity  ; 


376       [October  17.  18570 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


IConductei 


at  the  head  of  his  remaining  Scotsmen,  he 
charged  the  gaping  Britons,  whereupon  a 
general  rout  ensued,  in  which  the  king  was 
slain. 

Matters  being  thus  settled  in  Britain,  Ham- 
let returned  with  both  his  wives  to  Jutland, 
•where  lie  found  himself  involved  in  a  con- 
stitutional difficulty.  The  people  had,  it  is 
true,  raised  him  to  the  head  of  the  provin- 
cial government  on  the  death  of  Fengo, 
but  then  this  post  was  in  the  gift  of  the 
Danish  crown  ;  and  though  Hamlet's  ma- 
ternal grandfather  Ruric,  from  family  con- 
siderations, might  have  been  induced  to 
forego  some  of  his  rights,  that  venerable 
monarch  was  no  more,  and  his  successor 
Wigleth  was  a  person  who  would  not  bate 
an  inch  of  his  privileges.  Indeed,  the  new 
king  had  already  despoiled  Gerutha  of  all 
her  possessions  on  account  of  the  delinquency 
of  her  son.  A  war  between  the  king  and 
the  irregularly  elected  viceroy  resulted 
from  this  false  position,  but  when  the  two 
armies  came  in  sight  of  each  other,  Hamlet, 
who  had  had  several  gloomy  forebodings, 
wished  to  shun  the  contest.  At  last  he 
yielded  to  the  persuasions  of  his  second  wife 
Hermutruda,  who  promised  that  she  would 
follow  him,  and  kill  herself  in  the  event  of 
his  death.  A  conflict  ensued,  in  which 
Hamlet  was  slain,  whereupon  Hermutruda 
immediately  married  Wigletb,  and  thus  be- 
came Queen  of  Denmark. 


CANTON  CITY. 


THREE  hundred  and  forty  years  ago,  the 
first  western  barbarians  went  round  the  Cape 
to  China.  They  were  Portuguese,  who  very 
soon  got  into  difficulties  with  the  Chinamen, 
and  were  restricted  to  Macao  ;  Spanish  ships 
to  Amoy.  The  French  were  early  at  Canton; 
but  their  trade  was  insignificant,  and  for  three 
hundred  years  only  some  three  or  four  ships 
entered  this  port  during  a  twelvemonth.  The 
Chinese  say  that  the  first  Dutch  ships  came 
to  Canton  two  centuries  and  a  half  ago, 
Spaniards  and  Portuguese  opposing  them, 
and  that  the  trade  of  the  Dutch,  in  these 
parts,  fluctuated  for  two  centuries.  Denmark 
and  Sweden  sent  also  annually  a  few  ships ; 
but  of  late  few  have  been  seen. 

Englishmen  first  went  to  China  about  the 
year  sixteen  hundred  and  thirty-five.  We 
found  our  way  thither  by  way  of  the  East 
Indies,  in  several  ships,  the  commander  of 
which  carried  letters  from  the  viceroy  of  Goa 
to  the  governor  of  Macao.  Ignorant  of  Chinese 
manners,  the  Englishmen  thought  these  letters 
sufficient  to  secure  a  trade. 

The  commander  of  this  expedition  was 
Admiral  Wedell.  At  Macao  he  was  told  by 
the  Portuguese,  that  the  Chinese  would  not 
trade  with  the  English.  Wedell,  not  trusting 
much  in  this  information,  sent  Mr.  T.  Robin- 
son and  Mr.  T.  Mounteney,  and  Captain 
Carter,  with  a  bark  and  a  pinnace,  manned 


with  above  fifty  men,  to  the  mouth  of  the  Can- 
ton river  ;  the  approach  to  which  was  utterly 
prohibited  to  the  Portuguese.  Such  audacity 
produced  a  great  stir  in  the  city,  and  a  fleet  of 
about  seventy  junks,  under  an  admiral,  met 
the  English  and  requested  them  to  anchor  ; 
which  they  did.  The  Chinese  having  ascer- 
tained that  no  real  harm  was  meant,  and  that 
these  bold,  outside  barbarians  wished  only  to 
deliver  an  humble  petition  to  the  Chinese 
viceroy  for  trade  purposes,  consented  to  take 
some  of  the  English  to  Canton,  if  they  would 
promise  to  proceed  with  their  boats  no  farther 
up  the  river.  Captain  Carter,  T.  Robinson, 
and  T.  Mounteney,  ventured  therefore  on  the 
journey  to  Canton  on  board  a  junk.  When 
they  came  to  a  place  about  five  leagues  from 
the  town,  where  the  news  of  their  arrival 
produced  great  excitement,  the  Mandarins, 
in  a  friendly  manner,  begged  them  to  return  to 
their  own  ships.  If  they  would  directly  return 
to  Macao,  assistance  would  be  given  them  to 
procure  a  right  of  trade.  These  fair  words 
covered  anxiety  about  a  little  Chinese  fleet 
bound  for  Japan.  When  that  was  out  of 
harm's  way,  there  was  sent  to  the  English  a 
flat  denial  of  their  wish.  The  English  vessels 
then  proceeded  to  the  Canton  river,  where 
they  anchored  before  a  dismantled  castle,  and 
it  was  declared  to  the  Mandarins  that  the 
desire  of  the  Euglish  was  to  be  permitted  to- 
traffic  with  the  Chinese  on  the  terms  granted 
already  to  the  men  from  Portugal. 

The  Mandarins  promised  to  bring  their 
request  before  the  viceroy,  and  desired  them 
to  wait  six  days  for  an  answer.  This  time 
was  employed  by  the  Portuguese  in  blackening 
the  English,  and  denouncing  them  as  beggars, 
thieves,  and  horrible  barbarians.  The  Chinese 
secretly  armed  the  dismantled  fort  with 
forty-six  pieces  of  heavy  ordnance,  besides 
making  other  warlike  preparations.  After 
the  fourth  of  the  six  days,  they  began  to  fire 
against  an  English  ship.  The  shot  did  no 
harm  ;  but,  on  the  provocation  of  it,  the  whole 
English  fleet  weighed  anchor,  and  the  ships 
sent,  during  a  few  hours,  broadside  after 
broadside  against  the  fort.  When  the  boats 
landed  with  about  one  hundred  men,  the 
Chinese  fled,  and  the  fort  was  taken.  The 
English  destroyed  what  they  could,  and 
captured  a  few  junks,  to  give  the  Chinese 
a  sufficient  hint  that  they  were  not  men 
to  be  dealt  treacherously  with.  Having 
done  this,  they  expostulated  with  the  Man- 
darins, and  renewed  their  request  for  liberty 
of  trade.  Two  Englishmen  were  then  admit- 
ted into  Canton,  were  received  courteously  by 
the  high  Mandarins,  and  arrangements  were 
made  to  the  satisfaction  of  both  parties. 
Such  was  the  commencement  of  our  inter- 
course with  China. 

Thus  our  commerce  for  two  hundred  years 
was  limited  to  Canton ;  and,  although  the 
entrance  to  the  inner  city  was  forbidden, 
there  was  not  much  stress  laid  on  this  pro- 
hibition, and  the  foreigner  could  walk  about 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CANTON  CITY. 


[October  17.  1857-1       377 


the  streets  secure  from  molestation.  How 
this  friendly  intercourse  changed  for  the 
•worse,  and  what  turn  matters  have  since 
taken,  we  need  not  tell.  The  course  of 
affairs  has  very  often  brought  Canton  into 
the  public  mind.  The  city  has  a  most  fami- 
liar name.  What  is  it  like  1 

It  is  built  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Choo 
keang,  or  Pearl-river,  about  sixty  miles  from 
the  sea.  The  Chinese  consider  Hoomun  (the 
Bogtie  or  Bocca  Tigris)  as  the  mouth  of  this 
river,  and  the  entrance  to  their  inner  waters. 
Whampoa,  the  anchorage  of  Canton,  is  seven 
miles  from  the  city,  which  is  situated  in  a 
rich  and  diversified  country.  A  very  great 
many  rivers  and  channels  run  through  it ; 
all  teeming  with  a  numberless  spawn  of 
ships  and  vessels  of  all  sorts  and  sizes, 
from  the  lofty,  lumbering  war-junk  to  the 
boats  used  for  fishing  and  duck-breeding. 
On  the  north  and  north-east  of  the  town 
are  hills  and  mountains  ;  but,  in  all  other 
directions,  a  large  prospect  is  before  you. 
Southward,  as  far  as  you  can  see,  you  behold 
water,  which  covers  about  the  eighth  part 
of  the  whole  surface.  The  plain  is  clothed 
with  gardens  and  rice-fields,  and  only  here 
and  there  small  hills,  or  groves  of  trees, 
break  up  into  the  smoothness  of  the  surface. 

Canton  is  said  to  owe  its  origin  to  this 
authentic  fact :  Five  genii,  clothed  in  gar- 
ments of  five  different  colours,  and  riding  on 
rams  of  five  different  colours,  met  at  the 
capital ;  each  of  the  rams  bore  in  his  mouth 
a  stalk  of  grain  having  six  ears,  and  pre- 
sented them  to  the  people  of  the  district,  to 
whom  the  genii  thus  spake  :  Yuen  tsze  hwan 
hwae,yung  woo  kwang  ke  ;  which  means,  May 
famine  and  dearth  never  visit  your  markets. 
Having  uttered  these  words,  the  five  genii 
immediately  disappeared,  and  the  five  rams 
were  changed  into  stone.  They  are  to  be 
seen  to  this  day  in  one  of  the  city  gates, 
called  the  Gate  of  the  Five  Genii;  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  which  stands  a  temple  of  the  same 
name.  From  this  legend  the  city  is  also  called 
*  the  city  of  genii,"  or,  "  the  city  of  grain." 

Always  unruly,  the  people  of  the  south 
rose  in  rebellion,  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
before  our  Christian  era ;  and  the  famous 
emperor,  Tsin  Chehwang,  sent  no  less  than 
five  hundred  thousand  men  against  them. 
These  soldiers  behaved  exceedingly  well, 
for  during  three  years  they  neither  re- 
laxed their  discipline  nor  put  off  their  armour; 
but  they  met  with  a  bad  end ;  for  the  rebels, 
driven  to  fury  by  hunger,  attacked  and 
cut  up  the  imperial  forces  in  so  dreadful  a 
manner,  that  the  blood  flowed  "  several  tens 
of  le,"  or  Chinese  miles. 

With  India,  the  people  of  China  had,  in 
very  early  times,  a  considerable  commerce; 
and  Canton,  favoured  by  its  southern  situa- 
tion, profited  largely  by  it.  Manufactures 
there  must  have  been  more  advanced  than  in 
other  parts  of  China  ;  for  in  the  year  of  our 
Lord  five  hundred  and  forty-three,  the  people 


of  Canton  sent  to  Woote,  "the  martial 
monarch,"  a  very  fine  piece  of  cloth  as  tribute, 
which,  by  its  luxurious  softness,  so  worried 
the  skin  of  this  rough  warrior,  that  he  for- 
bade the  further  manufacture  of  it.  It  was, 
however,  not  until  one  thousand  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago  that  there  was  any  regular 
market  at  Canton  for  foreign  commerce.  The 
then  reigning  emperor  of  the  Tang  dynasty 
appointed  an  imperial  commissioner  to  re- 
ceive the  fixed  duties  ;  and  Canton  gained  so 
much  importance,  that  Chang  Kewling, 
eleven  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  ordered 
the  famous  pass  to  be  cut  through  the 
Meiling,  to  facilitate  intercourse  between 
this  opulent  city  and  the  northern  provinces. 
Curious  manufactures  began  to  be  intro- 
duced, and  merchant  vessels  crowded  in  the 
waters  of  Canton.  But,  for  some  reason, 
merchants  became  disgusted  with  the  city, 
and  removed,  ninety  years  later,  to  Annam 
(Cochin  China).  Enmity  then  sprang  up 
between  Annam  and  Canton ;  and  history 
records  many  wars,  especially  one  at  the  end 
of  the  ninth  century,  when  the  Cochin  Chi- 
nese came  by  land,  and  Canton  was  several 
times  plundered  by  them  ;  but  the  Cantonese 
soon  paid  them  back.  The  first  emperors  of 
the  Sung  dynasty  forbade  expeditions  against 
Cochin  China,  "  reprobating  the  idea  of  dis- 
tressing the  people  from  a  mere  covetous 
desire  of  gaining  useless  territory."  How- 
ever, for  the  protection  of  Canton  against  its 
neighbours,  the  city  was  enclosed,  eight  hun- 
dred years  ago,  within  a  wall  of  about  two 
English  miles  in  circumference,  which  cost 
fifty  thousand  taels,  or  about  seventeen  thou- 
sand pounds. 

After  the  fall  of  the  Tang  dynasty,  China 
had  been  disturbed  by  five  families,  who,  during 
fifty-three  years,  fought  like  unicorns  and 
lions  for  the  crown.  To  one  of  these  families 
Canton  sent  tribute  of  gold,  silver,  ivory,  and 
other  costly  things,  worth  no  less  than  five 
millions  of  taels.  Therewith  the  emperor 
was  so  much  pleased,  that  he  created  the 
chief  promoter  of  the  subscription,  Lew  Yen, 
king  of  Canton,  under  the  title  of  Nanhae- 
waug,  "  king  of  the  southern  sea."  This  new 
king,  however,  was  not  liberal  of  charity 
towards  his  people.  "  Criminals  were  boiled 
alive  like  lobsters,  roasted,  flayed,  and  thrown 
on  spikes  ;  or  forced  to  fight  with  elephants 
and  tigers."  Canton  seems  to  have  been  at  this 
time  a  kind  of  Sodom  or  Gomorrah  ;  for  the 
first  emperors  of  the  Sung  dynasty,  who  cared 
much  about  the  welfare  of  this  city,  issued 
many  edicts,  which  bear  witness  of  the 
luxury  and  wickedness  of  the  inhabitants. 
Witches  and  wizards  were  prohibited  ;  sor- 
cery was  interdicted  ;  and  the  temples,  which 
bad  been  built  for  the  practice  of  supersti- 
tious rites,  were  thrown  down  by  order  of 
government.  The  people  were  forbidden 
also,  to  kill  men  to  sacrifice  to  demons  ; 
and  to  relieve  the  sufferers  from  the  noxious 
diseases  which  were  prevalent,  dispensaries 


378       [October  17. 1847.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bj 


of  medicines  were  established.  Extravagant 
articles  of  apparel  were  blamed,  and  head- 
dresses of  pearls  and  gold  ornaments  were 
disallowed. 

When  the  Yuen  dynasty,  about  six  hundred 
years  ago,  became  masters  of  the  throne,  the 
south  of  Cliiua  had  very  bad  times  ;  but 
during  the  times  of  the  Ming  dynasty, 
China  was  very  happy,  and  Canton  became 
a  most  wealthy  and  powerful  city.  It  suf- 
fered little  by  the  conquest  of  tlie  Tartars. 
The  new  emperors  changed  almost  nothing. 
One  of  the  Ming  dynasty,  however,  Yung- 
leih,  sought  to  supersede  the  conquerors, 
and  the  loyal  people  of  Fuhkeen,  Kwangsd, 
and  Kwangtung  revolted  against  them. 
The  emperor  sent  an  army  composed  of 
Chinese  and  Tartars,  commanded  by  two 
Tartar  officers,  who  had  orders  first  to  sub- 
due, then  to  remain  and  rule  the  southern 
provinces.  These  were  soon  brought  to  sub- 
mission, but  the  city  of  Canton  was  deter- 
mined to  resist  ;  however,  the  city  was  at  last 
captured,  by  help  of  treason.  The  second  in 
command,  Fan  Chingan,  plotted  with  the 
enemy,  and  enabled  them  to  enter.  Many 
rich  people  dug  holes  in  the  ground,  and 
deposited  their  treasures  in  earthen  jars. 
Several  of  them  are  found  even  now,  in  sink- 
ing wells,  or  breaking  up  the  old  foundations 
of  houses  and  temples.  Martin  Martini,  a 
Jesuit,  being  at  this  time  in  the  south  ol 
China,  describes  the  fall  of  Canton  in  these 
words : 

"This  courage  of  the  people  of  Canton 
made  the  Tartars  fall  upon  the  resolution  of 
beating  down  the  walls  of  the  city  with  their 
great  cannon,  which  had  such  an  effect  that 
they  took  it  on  the  twenty-fourth  of  Novem- 
ber, sixteen  hundred  and  fifty  ;  and  because 
it  was  remarked  that  they  gave  to  a  prefect 
of  the  city  the  same  office  he  had  before,  it 
was  suspected  that  it  was  delivered  by 
treason.  The  next  day  they  began  to 
plunder,  and  the  sackage  continued  till  the 
fifth  of  December,  in  which  they  spared 
neither  man,  woman,  nor  child  ;  but  all  who- 
ever came  in  their  way,  were  cruelly  put  to 
the  sword  ;  nor  was  there  heard  any  other 
speech,  but,  '  kill,  kill  these  barbarous  rebels.' 
Yet  they  spared  some  artificers  to  conserve 
the  necessary  arts  ;  as  also  some  strong  and 
lusty  men,  such  as  they  saw  able  to  carry 
away  the  pillage  of  the  city.  But,  finally, 
December  sixth,  came  out  an  edict  which  for- 
bade all  further  vexation,  after  they  had  killed 
a  hundred  thousand  men,  besides  those  that 
perished  in  several  ways  during  the  siege." 

A  Chinese  manuscript  estimates  the  whole 
number  of  slain  during  the  siege  and  plun- 
dering at  no  less  than  seven  hundred  thousand, 
"  every  house  was  left  desolate."  The 
Tartars  took  up  their  quarters  in  the  old 
city,  where  they  still  live,  but  where  now  is  to 
be  seen  only  one  house  that  was  built  before 
the  sack. 

Having  a  native  map  of  Canton  before  me,  I 


shall  give  the  description  of  this  city  as  it 
was  rebuilt.  It  is,  as  said  before,  situated  on 
the  north  bank  of  the  Pearl  River.  That 
part  of  the  city  which  is  inclosed  by  a  wall 
forms  almost  a  square,  and  is  divided  by 
another  wall,  running  from  east  to  west,  into 
two  parts.  The  northern,  called  tlie  old  city, 
is  almost  thrice  as  large  as  the  southern  part, 
the  new  city. 

Once  the  northern  part  was  separated  by 
very  high  walls  into  three  different  towns  ; 
but  now  there  is  no  trace  of  this  division.  On. 
the  south  side  the  wall  runs  parallel  to  the 
river  and  distant  from  it  about  twenty  rods. 
On  the  north  side  the  wall  runs  over  hills, 
and  at  the  highest  points  its  base  may  be  two 
hundred  and  fifty  or  three  hundred  feet  above 
the  surface  of  the  river.  The  entire  circuit 
of  the  wall  cannot  exceed  seven  or  eight 
English  miles  ;  for  at  a  quick  pace,  the  dis- 
tance may  be  walked  in  two  hours.  The 
foundation  of  this  wall,  as  well  as  the  under 
part,  and  the  arches  of  the  gates  are  of  stone ; 
the  rest  are  small,  soft-textured  bricks. 
These  walls  are  built  almost  perpendicularly, 
and  vary  in  height  from  twenty-five  to  nearly 
forty  feet ;  their  thickness  may  be  twenty- 
five  feet.  At  the  north  side  they  are  the 
highest  and  best  in  repair,  but  at  the  east 
side  they  have  become  rather  dilapidated  by 
the  inroads  of  the  elements.  On  the  top  of 
the  wall,  round  the  whole  city,  a  line  of 
battlements  are  raised,  at  intervals  of  a  few 
feet ;  and  in  the  rear  of  them  is  a  broad 
pathway.  The  Chinese  call  these  battlements 
Ching-jin,  literally,  city-men. 

The  suburbs  are  scarcely  less  extensive,  or 
less  populous  than  the  enclosed  city.  On  the 
west  they  spread  out,  nearly  in  the  form  of  a 
long  triangle,  opening  to  the  north-west, 
having  the  river  on  the  south,  and  the  western 
wall  of  the  city  on  the  east,  for  its  two  equal 
sides.  On  the  south,  they  occupy  the  whole 
space  between  the  wall  and  the  river.  On 
the  east  they  are  much  less  extensive  than  on 
the  west ;  and  on  the  north  are  no  buildings, 
except  a  few  small  huts  near  the  principal 
gate.  At  the  south-east  corner  of  the  city  in 
the  river,  stands  a  small  fort  called  the  French 
Folly  ;  another  similar  fort,  called  the  Dutch 
Folly,  stands  further  up  the  river,  not  very 
far  from  the  factories.  Between  these  and 
the  last-mentioned  fort  are  ledges  of  rocks  ; 
which  at  low  water  are  seen  above  the  sur- 
face. Beyond  the  foreign  factories  westward, 
several  small  canals  branch  off  into  the 
suburbs  ;  but  for  a  mile  or  two  the  river  itself 
is  nearly  straight. 

At  the  south-east  and  south-west  corner  of 
the  city  two  wings  stretch  out  from  tlie  main- 
walls  ;  to  defend  the  narrow  space  between 
the  walls  and  ditches.  Through  each  of  these 
is  a  gate.  Twelve  gates  in  the  external 
walls  lead  into  the  city ;  four  others  lead 
through  the  wall,  which  separates  the  old  and 
the  new  city. 

Among  these  Woosecn-mun  is  the  Gate  of 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CANTON  CITY. 


379 


the  Five  Genii,  of  which  I  have  spoken  be- 
fore, and  hi  which  are  to  be  seen  the  iive  rams, 
changed  into  stone.  Yungtsing-mun,  the 
Gate  of  Eternal  Purity,  is  eternally  sur- 
rounded by  very  impure  things  ;  and,  more- 
over, is  the  gate  which  leads  to  the  Field  of 
Blood,  the  place  where  criminals  are  publicly 
decapitated. 

The  gates  are  guarded  by  a  few  soldiers  ; 
closed  at  an  early  hour  in  the  evening,  for 
the  night,  and  opened  again  at  dawn  of  day. 
lSTo  one  is  allowed  to  pass  in  or  out  during 
the  night,  except  on  special  occasions  ;  but  a 
small  lee  will  usually  open  the  door,  yet  like 
our  own  fee  to  a  railway-porter,  always 
exposes  the  receiver  of  it  to  punishment. 

These  gates  are,  however,  not  the  only  en- 
trances to  the  city,  for  there  are  several 
canals  and  ditches,  by  which  are  conveyed  a 
great  many  articles  of  merchandise,  and 
visitors,  and  which  are  called  by  the  Chi- 
nese veins  of  the  city.  One  of  the  largest 
canals  extends  along  the  whole  length  of  the 
wall  on  the  east,  and  there  is  another  on  the 
west  side.  Between  these  two,  and  commu- 
nicating with  them,  is  a  third  canal,  which 
runs  beside  the  wall,  dividing  the  new  city 
from  the  old,  so  that  a  boat  can  enter  on  the 
west,  pass  through  the  town,  and  go  out  at  the 
eastern  side.  Other  canals  are  in  the  eastern 
and  the  western  suburbs  ;  there  is  one  also  in 
the  southern.  Into  these  large  channels  a 
great  number  of  smaller  ones  flow.  Over 
them  all  are  thrown  many  small  bridges  ; 
some  built  of  stone.  Several  of  them  are 
arched,  but  more  frequently  they  are  formed 
of  large  slabs,  laid  horizontally  from  side  to 
side,  supported  by  stone  walls. 

There  are  also  several  tanks  or  reservoirs  ; 
but  none  of  them  are  of  great  size.  Good 
water  is  plentifully  furnished  from  several 
springs  which  break  out  north  of  the  city, 
both  within  and  without  the  walls.  Wells, 
also,  are  numerous  ;  and  there  is  use  made  of 
rain-water,  which  many  prefer  for  tea. 

A  Chinese  catalogue  of  the  streets  of  Can- 
ton contains  above  six  hundred  names  ;  and 
we  find  the  Golden  Flower  Street,  a  Flower 
Street,  a  Golden  Street,  several  Dragons' 
Streeis,  as  the  Flying  Dragon's  Street,  the 
Martial  Dragon's  Street,  the  Straight  Street  of 
Benevolence,  and  others  which  are  too  inde- 
licate to  be  translated.  The  Chinese  artist, 
drawing  the  map  of  the  city,  now  before  me, 
has  drawn  all  the  streets  very  straight ;  but, 
although,  there  are  several  long  streets,  most 
of  them  are  short  and  crooked,  and  they  vary 
in  width  from  two  to  sixteen  feet ;  but,  gene- 
rally, they  are  about  six  to  eight  feet  wide. 
They  are  everywhere  flagged  with  large 
stones,  chiefly  granite. 

We  n'nd  in  Canton  in  the  build  ing*  as 
great  a  variety  of  structure  and  style,  and  as 
fair  specimens  of  Chinese  taste  and  art,  as 
can  be  found  in  the  whole  empire.  This 
taste  is,  indeed,  very  different  from  ours. 
Lord  Macartney  said  of  the  Chinese  archi- 


tect\ire :  "Though  it  is  totally  unlike  any  other, 
and  irreconcileable  to  our  rules,  yet  it  is  per- 
fectly consistent  with  its  own  ;  and,  upon  the 
whole,  it  often  produces  a  most  pleasing 
efl'ect — as  we  sometimes  see  a  person,  without 
a  single  good  feature  in  his  face,  have, 
nevertheless,  a  very  agreeable  countenance." 
In  all  the  Chinese  buildings  there  is  not  to 
be  mistaken  the  original  idea  of  the  tent, 
which,  probably,  was  the  dwelling  of  the 
remote  ancestors  of  the  Chinese  in  their  mi- 
gration eastward.  It  was  their  only  model 
for  a  dwelling.  The  roof,  concave  on  the 
upper  side,  and  the  verandah  with  its  slender 
columns,  reproduce  perfectly  the  original 
features  of  the  tent.  In  fact,  the  whole 
fabric  of  ordinary  buildings,  light  and  slender, 
retains  the  mark  of  primeval  simplicity. 

A  large  part  of  the  city  and  suburbs  is 
built  on  low  ground  or  flats  ;  special  care, 
therefore,  is  requisite  in  order  to  build  on  a 
solid  basis.  Near  the  river,  and  in  all  the 
loose  or  muddy  situations,  houses  are  raised 
on  wooden  piles,  which  make  their  foundations 
nearly  as  secure  as  brick  or  stone  could  make 
them.  We  have  in  Europe  cities  so  built — 
for  example,  Amsterdam.  The  magnificent 
town-hall  there,  now  the  palace  of  the  king 
when  residing  in  the  city,  has  been  built  on 
several  thousands  of  masts  rammed  into  the 
loose  ground.  In  Canton  sometimes  the  piles 
rise  above  the  surface  of  the  ground,  and  then 
the  wooden  buildings  rest  directly  on  them  ; 
but,  in  other  instances,  the  piles  reach  only 
within  a  few  feet  of  the  surface,  and  the  re- 
maining part  of  the  foundation  is  of  mud, 
or  brick,  or  stone.  When  this  is  done,  the 
walls  of  the  houses  are  entirely  baseless,  or 
have  only  a  slender  foundation  of  mud,  of 
which  also  their  walls  are  composed  ;  and 
hence  in  severe  rain-storms  and  overflowings 
of  the  river,  such  as  frequently  happen,  many 
of  the  walls  are  overthrown. 

Three-fifths  of  the  whole  city,  however,  are 

of  brick.     Most  of  the  Tartars  in  the  old  city 

live  in  mud  houses.     Stone  and  wood  are  not 

very   extensively   used   for   walls  ;  gateways 

and   door-posts   are   of  stone,   the   columns, 

beams,  and  ratters  are  of  wood.     Many  of  the 

floors  of  houses  and  temples  are  of  indurated 

mud,  and  marble-flags  are  sometimes  used 

for  the  same  purpose,  often  also  tiles.     These 

latter,  when  made  very  thin,  are  used  for 

roofs.     They  are  laid  on  the  rafters  "  in  rows, 

1  alternately  concave  and  convex,  and  forming 

!  ridges  and  furrows,  luted   by  a  cement  of 

j  clay."   You  may,  however,  see  very  frequently 

I  such  roofs   on   old  houses  on  the  European, 

continent.    The   tiles   are  sometimes  glazed 

and  coloured.     The  windows  are  small,  and 

supplied    seldom  with  glass ;    paper,    mica, 

sheii,  or  some  similar  translucent  substance, 

1  takes  ils  place.     Very  little  iron  is  employed 

in  building  huuses. 

All  these  materials  for  building  are  pro- 
1  curable  here,  at  moderate  prices,  and  in  great 
I  abundance.  Wood — commonly  a  species  of 


380      [October  17. 1957.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


fir — is  floated  down  the  river,  and  brought  to  various  scrolls,  presenting  in  large  and  ele- 
the  city  in  large  rafts,  similar  to  those  you  gant  characters  the  moral  maxims  of  the 
see  on  the  Rhine.  Bricks,  made  in  the  sages  ;  or  perhaps  exhibiting  rude  landscapes, 
neighbourhood  of  Canton,  are  conveyed  or  paintings  of  birds  and  flowers.  The  re- 
thither  in  boats,  and  sold  at  from  three  to  I  maining  part  of  the  enclosure  is  occupied 
eight  dollars  a  thousand.  A  few  only  are  j  with  the  domestic  apartment,  a  garden,  and 
red.  In  more  frequent  use  are  half-burnt  perhaps  also  a  small  school-room, 
bricks,  the  colour  of  which  is  a  leaden  blue,  I  The  houses  of  a  few  of  the  most  opulent  in 


and  the  pale  brown  ones,  which  are  only 
sun-dried.  Excellent  stones,  chiefly  granite 
and  sandstone  in  several  varieties,  are  to  be 
found  in  the  hills  on  the  north  of  the  pro- 
vince, and  also  in  several  of  the  islands 
along  the  coast  southward. 

The  dwellings  of  the  poor  in  Canton  are 
mere  mud-hovels ;  low,  narrow,  dark,  un- 
cleanly, and  without  any  division  of  apart- 
ments. A  whole  family  of  six  or  ten,  and 
sometimes  twice  that  number  of  persons, 
crowd  into  one  of  these  dreary  abodes.  It  is 
surprising  that  people  can  live  and  enjoy 
health,  and  even  long  life,  in  such  circum- 
stances. The  poorest  people  are  to  be  found 
in  the  extreme  parts  of  the  suburbs,  along 
the  banks  of  the  canals,  and  in  the  northern 
part  of  the  old  city. 

Perhaps  one-third  part  of  the  population 
of  Canton  lives  in  habitations  somewhat 
spacious  and,  to  a  moderate  degree,  clean. 
These  stand  close  on  the  street,  and  have 
usually  but  a  single  entrance,  which  is  closed 
by  a  bamboo  screen  suspended  from  the  top 
of  the  door.  Two  rooms  in  these  houses 
serve  for  dormitories ;  while  a  third,  which 
completes  the  number  into  which  the  whole 
enclosure  is  divided,  is  used  by  the  whole 
household  as  a  common  eating-room.  Chinese 
houses  usually  open  to  the  south  ;  but  in 
these,  as  also  in  the  poorer  kind,  this  favourite 
position  is  disregarded.  Houses  of  this  sort 
are  rented  at  four  or  five  dollars  a  month. 

Another  class  of  dwellings,  inhabited  by  a 
more  wealthy  but  less  numerous  part  of  the 
community,  comprises  the  abodes  of  those  in 
easy  circumstances,  who  enjoy  plenty,  with- 
out any  of  the  accompaniments  of  luxury.  A 
house  of  this  class,  together  with  the  plot  of 
ground  on  which  it  stands,  is  surrounded  by 
a  wall  twelve  or  fourteen  feet  high,  that  rises 
and  fronts  close  on  the  street,  so  as  completely 
to  conceal  all  the  buildings  from  sight  of  the 
passers-by.  Indeed,  the  prospect,  as  you  go 
along  the  narrow  streets  which  are  lined 
with  houses  of  this  kind,  is  very  cheerless. 
But  if  allowed  to  enter  some  of  those  dwel- 
lings more  pleasing  scenes  open  before  you  ; 
different  enough,  however,  from  our  own 
house-pictures.  You  enter  the  outer  enclo- 
sure through  a  large  folding -door  into  an 
open  court,  thence  you  are  conducted  by  a 
servant  to  the  visitors'-hall,  which  is  usually 
a  small  apartment,  furnished  with  chairs, 


Canton  are  in  no  respect  inferior,  except  it 
may  be  in  the  space  they  occupy,  to  the  Im- 
perial palaces.  The  residences  of  some  of 
the  Hong  merchants,  who  formerly  had  a 
monopoly  of  trade  with  foreigners,  furnished 
good  specimens  of  this  kind  of  building.  The 
houses  of  the  officers  of  government,  and  nu- 
merous temples  of  the  city,  are  more  spacious 
than  private  dwelling-houses,  but  most  of 
them  are  now  in  very  poor  condition. 

Very  few  of  the  houses  or  temples  of  Can- 
ton are  of  more  than  one  story,  their  halls 
are  usually  of  the  whole  height  of  the  fabric, 
without  any  concealment  of  the  beams  or 
rafters  of  the  roof.  The  beams  are  on  this 
account  often  carved  and,  as  well  as  the 
rafters  and  tiles,  painted.  Terraces  fre- 
quently are  built  above  the  roofs  ;  and  when 
surrounded  by  a  breastwork  they  afford,  iu 
the  cool  hours,  a  pleasant  and  secure  retreat. 
There  has  been  remarked  a  great  coincidence 
between  the  Chinese  houses  and  those  men- 
tioned in  sacred  literature. 

A  very  considerable  part  of  the  population 
of  Canton  lives  in  boats.  Officers  of  the 
government  are  appointed  to  regulate  and 
control  this  class  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
city.  Every  boat,  of  all  the  various  sizes  and 
descriptions  which  are  seen  hei'e,  is  registered ; 
and  it  appears  that  the  whole  number,  on  the 
river  adjacent  the  city,  was  eighty-four  thou- 
sand a  few  years  ago.  They  seem  not  to 
have  diminished  since  this  time,  according  to 
a  letter  of  Sir  John  Bowring,  who  says,  that 
they  cover  some  miles,  in  rows  of  twenty  or 
thirty  boats  behind  each  other.  These  boats 
are  by  no  means  only  temporary  abodes,  but 
the  houses  of  a  very  great  number  of  persons. 
The  floating  city  has  its  floating  theatres, 
concert-halls,  gambling,  and  other  pleasure- 
hells.  A  very  large  number  of  the  boats  are 
tan-kea  (egg-house)  boats.  These  are  gene- 
rally not  more  than  twelve  or  fifteen  feet 
long,  about  six  broad,  and  so  low  that  a  per- 
son can  scarcely  stand  up  in  them ;  their 
covering,  which  is  made  of  bamboo,  is  very 
light,  and  can  be  easily  adjusted  to  the  state 
of  the  weather.  Whole  families  live  in  them, 
and  in  coops  lashed  on  the  outside  of  them, 
they  often  rear  large  broods  of  ducks  and 
chickens,  designed  to  supply  the  city  markets. 
The  plot  of  ground  on  which,  before  the 
last  troubles,  the  factories  were  standing  is 
very  limited,  extending  about  sixty  rods  from 
east  to  west,  and  forty  from  north  to  south. 
It  is  owned,  as  most  of  the  factories  are,  by 
the  Hong  merchants.  The  factories  were 

open  on  one  side  ;  the  other  sides  are  orna-  called  Shihsanhang  (the  thirteen  factories)  ; 

mented    with  carved   work,   or  hung  with '  and,   with  the   exception  of  a  few  narrow 


sofas,  teapoys,   &c. 
you,    and    perhaps 


Here  your  host  meets 
introduces  you  to    the 


younger  members  of  his  family.     The  hall  is 


Charle*  Dickeni.] 


POOE  TOM.— A  CITY  WEED. 


[October  17, 1857.]       381 


lanes,  they  formed  one  solid  block  ;  each  fac- 
tory extending  in  length  through  the  whole 
breadth  of  the  block,  andhavingitsown  proper 
name, — which,  if  not  always  appropriate,  is 
meant  to  be  indicative  of  good  fortune. 

The  first,  beginning  on  the  east,  is 
E-ho-hang  (the  factory  of  justice  and  grace)  ; 
foreigners  call  it  the  Creek-factory.  The 
second  is  the  Dutch,  called  Tseih-e-hang  (the 
factory  of  collected  justice).  The  third  was 
the  British  factory,  Pauho-hang  (the  factory 
that  ensures  tranquillity) — so  called  because 
the  trouble  of  the  Chinese  with  barbarians 
commonly  comes  from  it.  Hog-lane— some 
time  since  closed — separated  it  from  the 
fourth,  called  Fung-tae-hang  (the  great  and 
affluent  factory).  The  fifth  was  the  old 
English  factory,  called  Lungshun-hang.  The 
sixth  the  Swedish  factory,  called  Suy-hang. 
The  seventh  is  Maying-hang,  commonly  called 
the  Imperial  factory.  The  eighth,  Paoushun- 
hang  (the  precious  and  prosperous  factory). 
The  ninth,  the  American  factory,  called 
Kwangyuen-hang  (the  factory  of  wide  foun- 
tain). This  is  separated  by  a  broad  street, 
called  Old  China  Street,  from  the  tenth, 
occupied  by  one  of  the  Hong  merchants. 
The  eleventh  is  the  French  factory.  The 
twelfth,  the  Spanish.  The  thirteenth,  and 
last,  the  Danish.  The  two  latter  are  sepa- 
rated by  a  street,  occupied  by  Chinese  mer- 
chants, and  usually  called  New  China  Street. 
Each  factory  was  divided  into  four  or  more 
houses,  of  which  each  factor  occupied  one  or 
more,  according  to  circumstances.  The 
factories  were  all  built  of  brick,  two  stories 
high,  and  presented  a  rather  substantial 
front ;  and,  with  the  foreign  flags  which  wave 
over  them,  formed  a  striking,  and,  to  the 
stranger,  a  pleasing  contrast  with  the  national 
banner  and  architecture  of  the  celestial  em- 
pire. Some  of  them  are  now  destroyed. 

The  population  of  Canton  is  a  subject  upon 
which  there  has  been  considerable  diversity 
of  opinion.  The  division  of  the  city,  which 
has  placed  a  part  of  it  in  Nanhae  and  a  part 
in  Pwanyu,  precludes  the  possibility  of 
ascertaining  the  exact  number  of  inhabitants. 
We  may  roughly  estimate  the  truth  by  help 
of  some  facts  as  to  the  number  of  persons 
occupied  in  certain  trades,  as  we  find  it 
stated  in  a  native  publication.  Here  we 
read  that  fifty  thousand  persons  were  en- 
gaged in  the  manufacture  of  cloth  ;  also  that 
there  are  seven  thousand  three  hundred 
barbers,  and  four  thousand  two  hundred 
shoemakers.  But  these  three  occupations, 
employing  sixty-one  thousand  five  hundred 
individuals,  probably  do  not  include  more 
than  one-fourth  part  of  the  craftsmen  of  the 
city.  Allowing  this  to  be  the  fact,  the  whole 
number  of  mechanics  will  amount  to  two 
hundred  and  forty-six  thousand.  These,  we 
may  suppose,  are  a  fourth  part  of  the  whole 
population,  exclusive  of  those  living  on  the 
river.  In  each  of  the  eighty-four  thousand 
boats  there  are  not,  on  an  average,  less  than 


three  individuals,  making  a  total  of  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty-two  thousand,  —  Sir  John 
Bowring  estimated  three  hundred  thousand. 
If  now  to  these  we  add  four  times  two  hun- 
dred and  forty-six  thousand,  as  the  number  of 
mechanics,  we  have  a  total  of  one  million 
two  hundred  and  thirty-six  thousand,  as  a 
rude  estimate  of  the  number  of  people  living 
in  Canton. 


POOK  TOM.— A  CITY  WEED. 


WHEN  I  first  became  acquainted  with  poor 
Tom — Craddock  was  his  surname — he  was 
about  twenty-five  years  of  age.  His  appear- 
ance never  altered.  He  must  have  been  the 
same  at  fifteen  as  he  was  at  forty.  Imagine 
a  short,  shambling  figure,  with  large  hands 
and  feet,  a  hugh  water-on-the-brain  looking 
head,  surmounted  by  rough,  stubbly,  red  hair ; 
eyes  that  no  mortal  ever  saw  ;  for,  suffering 
from  a  painful  ophthalmic  disease,  they  were 
always  encased,  not  so  much  in  spectacles  as 
in  a  perfect  bandage  of  green  glass  ;  dresa 
which,  though  ill-made  and  of  necessity 
thread-bare,  was  always  clean  and  respect- 
able. Imagine  these  things,  and  you  have  all 
that  I  care  to  dwell  upon  of  the  physical 
characteristics  of  poor  Tom.  He  was  earning 
a  very  scanty  pittance  as  an  usher,  or  rather 
common  drudge  at  a  classical  and  commercial 
academy  at  Hackney,  where  I  was  sent  as  a 
youth  to  learn  the  science  of  book-keeping 
by  single  and  double  entry,  and  to  post  up 
and  arrange  numerous  imaginary  transactions 
of  great  intricacy  and  enormous  magnitude 
in  sugar,  hides,  and  tallow.  Tom's  intellec- 
tual acquirements  were  on  a  par  with  his 
physical  advantages.  Being  sent  out  by  his 
parents  into  the  world  to  shift  for  himself, 
as  his  father  had  done  before  him,  he  had 
shifted  himself  into  a  very  ill-paid  and  mono- 
tonous occupation. 

Tom's  parents  were,  no  doubt,  very  good 
people,  as  the  world  goes.  The  father  was  a 
quiet,  plodding  man,  with  no  ideas  beyond  the 
routine  of  his  office.  He  had  been  put  into- 
an  ordinary  government  situation  in  his  early 
youth,  and  had  trudged  backward  and  for- 
ward on  the  same  old  road  for  eight  and 
fifty  years.  The  mother  was  a  hard,  dry, 
Calvinist,  crammed  to  the  throat  with  doc- 
trine, but  with  neither  head  nor  heart.  Her 
children — and  she  had  eight — were  all  the  same 
to  her  ;  the  girls  went  out  and  kept  schools, 
and  the  boys  went  into  the  world  to  sink  or 
swim,  as  their  father  had  done  before  them. 
They  had  all  been  decently  clothed  and  fed  up 
to  a  certain  age, — they  had  all  had  the  same 
meaningless  education — they  had  all  sat 
under  the  same  minister,  and  had  served  as 
teachers  in  the  same  Sunday-school.  They 
were  all — with  the  exception  of  Tom — cold, 
hard,  selfish,  and  calculating ;  there  was 
nothing  like  love  amongst  them  ;  its  place 
was  supplied  by  a  propriety  of  regard  that 
was  regulated  by  the  principle  of  duty. 


382      [October  17,  10S7-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


Though  poor  Tom,  with  his  half  blind  eyes, 
and  general  physical  disadvantages,  merited 
a  treatment  a  little  removed  from  the  rigid 
equality  which  governed  his  parents  in  their 
family  organisation, fee-newer  met,  with  it ;  he 
•was  one  of  the  fight,  and  he  had  his  eighth 
of  attention — neither  more  nor  less.  His 
mental  training  was  even  below  the  level  of 
his  brothers  and  sisters,  because  the  medical 
attendance,  consequent  upon  his  diseased 
eyes,  took  from  the  fund  that  was  methodi- 
cally set  aside  for  his  education.  If,  as  was 
the  case  in  the  year  when  he  underwent  an 
operation,  the  surgical  expenses  swallowed 
up  the  educational  fund,  and  something 
more,  his  clothes  fund  was  debited  with 
the  difference,  and  he  suffered  for  his 
bodily  failings  in  a  short  supply  of  boots 
and  hats.  The  father  kept  a  book  in 
which  he  had  opened  debtor  and  creditor 
accounts  with  all  his  children,  as  if  they  had 
been  so  many  mercantile  vessels.  When 
Tom  arrived  at  the  same  age  as  his  brothers 
had  arrived  at  when  they  went  out  before 
him,  he  received  the  same  hint  that  it  was 
time  that  he  sought  for  a  means  of  obtaining 
a  livelihood  ;  and,  feeling  his  own  short- 
comings, and  want  of  energy,  he  accepted  the 
offer  of  a  chapel  connection,  and  quietly  sank 
into  the  position  at  the  school  in  which  I 
found  him. 

Poor  Tom's  personal  appearance  gave  rise 
to  all  kinds  of  heartless  jokes,  such  as  only 
self-willed,  thoughtless  schoolboys  make. 
His  eyeglasses  were  always  a  fruitful  source 
of  amusement.  Many  a  lad  in  all  the  full 
glow  of  health,  has  tried  to  break  those 
green  coverings,  to  see  what  kind  of  eyes 
•were  concealed  behind  them.  Tom  bore  all 
with  wonderful  patience  and  amiability  of 
temper.  He  had  small  authority  over  theboys, 
for  want  of  force  of  character,  but  his  uniform 
kindness  did  a  great  deal,  and  many  a  little 
tormentor  has  shed  bitter  tears  of  remorse, 
when  he  found  the  way  in  which  his  annoy- 
ance was  returned.  Tom's  income  was  ex- 
ceedingly small,  far  under  the  average  of 
ushers'  stipends,  but  he  was  very  careful 
and  independent  with  it.  Once  away  from 
home  he  sought  foi-  no  assistance  there  ;  and 
by  great  economy  and  self-denial  he  was 
always  able  to  indulge  in  the  luxury  of  buy- 
ing little  presents  for  his  favourites  in  the 
school.  One  day,  shortly  after  the  mid- 
summer holidays,  Tom  appeared  in  what 
looked  like  a  new  coat,  but  which  he  told  me 
privately  was  a  very  good  secondhand  one, 
that  he  had  been  some  time  raising  the  pur- 
chase-money for.  It  was  the  day  for  clean- 
ing and  replenishing  all  the  inkstands  and 
lamps  in  the  school,  and  this  was  a  duty  that 
Tom  had  to  perform.  While  occupied  in  his 
task,  his  coat  was  carefully  hung  up  behind 
a  door,  though  not  so  carefully  but  what  it 
caught  the  eye  of  a  mischievous  lad  whose 
name  I  forget  now,  and  who,  knowing  that  it 
was  a  new  garment  belonging  to  Tom,  thought ! 


it  would  be  capital  fun  to  fill  the  pockets 
with  oil.  When  Tom  found  out  the  cruel 
trick  that  had  been  played  upon  him,  I 
observed  tears  oozing  from  under  his  green 
spectacles,  and  for  the  first  time  since  he  had 
been  at  the  school,  he  made  a  complaint  to 
the  master.  The  master,  a  stout,  pompous 
man,  replied  in  these  words  :  "  Mr.  Craddock, 
sir  ;  if  you  had  preserved  a  proper  authority 
over  my  boys,  this  event  would  not  have 
happened.  I  shall  chastise  the  offender  to 
preserve  the  discipline  of  my  school ;  but,  at 
the  same  time,  I  do  not  consider  you  free 
from  blame." 

The  chastisement,  to  do  the  master  justice, 
was  severe  enough,  and  poor  Tom,  seeing 
this,  blamed  himself  very  much  for  having 
made  the  complaint,  and  could  not  persuade 
himself  that  he  had  not  been  actuated  by  a 
hasty  and  unchristian  spirit  of  revenge. 

Tom  repaired  the  damage  done  to  his  gar- 
ment as  well  as  he  could  with  my  aid,  and 
would  have  walked  about  in  it  contented 
enough  ;  but  he  had  been  induced  to  buy  the 
coat  sooner  than  he  would  otherwise  have 
done  because  the  master  had  told  him,  that 
"  he  wished  him  to  appear  a  little  more  gentle- 
manly for  the  credit  of  the  school,"  and  Tom, 
now  feared  that  he  should  be  ordered  to  pur- 
chase another.  A  favourite  relaxation  of  the 
tedium  of  study  used  to  be  an  excursion  of 
the  whole  school  to  the  Temple  Mills  at  Tot- 
tenham. An  excursion  of  this  kind  took 
place  about  a  week  after  the  above  occur- 
rence, and  Tom  was  put  quite  at  his  ease 
when  we  started  without  any  remark  being 
made  upon  his  greasy  costume.  It  was  the 
last  excursion  that  we  had,  for  at  the  close  of 
the  day  a  boy  got  away  from  the  ranks — the 
boy  who  had  poured  the  oil  over  Tom's  coat 
— and  was  found  drowned  in  the  river  Lea. 
Of  course,  the  master — who  had  done  nothing 
but  eat  and  lounge  the  whole  day — threw  all 
the  blame  upon  Tom,  who,  poor  fellow,  was 
nearly  worn  to  death  with  his  day's  work, 
for  in  a  conscientious  spirit,  that  no  one  might 
suffer  from  his  bodily  defects,  he  always  de- 
voted a  double  amount  of  labour  to  any  task 
that  he  undertook.  He  passed  a  wretched 
night,  grieving  for  the  lost  boy,  grieving  that 
he  had  caused  him  any  pain  by  the  punish- 
ment that  he  had  procured  him  a  week 
before,  and  racking  himself  with  doubts  as 
to  whether  he  might  not  have  prevented 
the  accident  by  greater  care,  activity,  and 
thoughtfulness,  although  I  knew  that  he  . 
had  borne  nearly  the  whole  fatigue  of  the 
excursion.  As  I  expected,  the  riiaster  dis- 
charged him  the  next  morning,  with  an  im- 
pressive censure  upon  his  carelessness,  and 
some  cruel  remarks  upon  defects  which  poor 
Tom  was  only  too  painfully  conscious  of. 

It  was  some  ten  years  after  this,  that  I  got 
poor  Tom  a  situation  as  junior  clerk,  under 
inc.  in  the  counting-house  of  Biddies  and  Co. 
— old  Biddies — in  the  West  Indian  trade. 
Tom's  father  had  died  shortly  after  he  left 


Charles  Dickens.] 


POOE  TOM.— A  CITY  WEED. 


[October  17,  1857.]       383 


the  school  at  Hackney,  and  Tom  had  come 
into  one  of  a  number  of  small  legacies,  which 
his  father  had  left  in  equal  proportions  to  all 
his  children.  Tom  received  the  amount  from 
his  eldest  brother,  the  executor,  after  a  deduc- 
tion of  about  one-third,  for  loans  and  inte- 
rest, medical  attendance,  &e.,  as  per  account 
rendered,  from  the  family  ledger  before 
alluded  to.  Small  as  the  sum  was,  to  a  per- 
son of  Tom's  humble  ideas  and  inexpensive 
tastes,  it  was  a  mine  of  wealth.  By  great 
good  management  he  contrived  to  live  upon 
it  for  nearly  ten  years,  and  it  was  almost 
drawing  to  an  end  when  I  seized  the  opportu- 
nity that  offered  of  placing  him  in  our  count- 
ing-house. Tom  had  not  been  idle  during 
these  ten  years.  He  had  inserted  advertise- 
ments in  the  papers,  he  had  canvassed  friends, 
he  had  walked  many  times  wearily  and  diffi- 
dently into  offices  and  warehouses,  he  had 
begged  to  be  employed ;  but  his  conscientious 
fidelity,  his  industrious  zeal,  his  noble  and 
valuable  qualities,  were  sent  away  as  if  they 
had  been  the  veriest  drug  in  the  market, 
because  he  could  not  carry  his  heart  upon  his 
sleeve.  And  yet  no  sooner  had  he  left  the 
door,  than  those  who  spurned  him  were 
loudly  asking  for  that  which  had  just  been 
offered  to  them  in  vain.  It  is  useless  to 
preach  about  not  judging  by  appearances  ;  to 
say  that  merit  will  make  itself  discovered 
under  the  most  ungainly  exterior ;  that  if  the 
kernel  be  good  it  matters  little  what  the 
shell  may  be  ;  I  know  better ;  we  all  know 
better.  Qualities  of  the  heart,  far  more 
valuable  than  any  intellectual  gifts,  or  force 
of  will,  embodied  in  weak  and  unsightly 
frames,  may  hover  near  us  like  unseen  angels, 
and  be  unheeded,  trifled  with,  doubted,  and 
despised.  The  brazen  face  and  the  strong 
lungs  are  the  practical  rulers  of  the  world. 
During  Tom's  endeavours  to  get  employment 
he  had  lost  twenty  pounds  of  his  little  store 
by  leaving  it  as  a  "  cash  deposit,"  or  "  guar- 
antee of  fidelity,"  with  a  "general  merchant," 
who  left  him  in  charge  of  a  very  dull,  quiet, 
ill-furnished  office,  for  about  ten  days,  at 
the  end  of  which  time  even  Tom  became 
aware  that  he  had  been  swindled  out  of  his 
money. 

I  got  poor  Tom  into  old  Biddies'  office  in 
this  way.  Old  B.  liked  to  buy  his  labour, 
like  everything  else,  in  the  cheapest  market, 
and  when  a  new  junior  clerk  was  proposed,  I 
introduced  Tom  to  do  a  man's  work  at  a  boy's 
price,  and  that  way  of  putting  it  so  excited 
the  cupidity  of  the  old  fellow,  that  I  had  the 
satisfaction  of  carrying  my  point  at  once. 
Small  as  the  salary  was,  Tom  was  grateful, 
and  never  did  servant  serve  a  master  with 
more  honesty  and  scrupulous  fidelity  than 
Tom  did  old  Biddies.  Punctual  to  a  second 
in  arriving  at  his  desk,  steady  and  industri- 
ous in  his  application  to  work,  religiously 
exact  in  his  economy  of  time  (which  being 
paid  for  employing  he  did  not  consider  his 
own),  considerate  and  correct  in  all  matters 


of  office  expenditure,  treating  other  people's 
property  as  tenderly  as  if  it  had  been  his 
own — a  man  with  few  desires,  no  debts,  and 
with  always  a  little  set  aside  out  of  his  small 
store  for  purposes  of  charity.  What  did  he 
gain  by  all  these  virtues  1  Was  Tom  looked 
up  to  with  more  respect  by  his  fellow  clerks  1 
I  am  afraid  not.  Was  he  advanced  to  any 
position  of  trust  by  his  employer  ?  I  am 
sure  not.  He  was  treated  with  even  more 
than  the  general  suspicion  that  characterised 
old  Biddies'  dealings  with  everyone  in  busi- 
ness— friend  or  foe,  clerk  or  client.  Tom  did 
not  command  admiration  by  any  showy 
abilities,  and  his  solid  virtues  were  left  to  rot 
in  neglect. 

Thus  poor  Tom  did  his  duty  nobly,  from 
year  to  year,  without  any  encouragement, 
though  he  needed  none ;  a  poor  simple- 
hearted,  honest  fellow,  he  had  no  idea  that 
he  was  acting  differently  from  other  people. 
"  You  know,  Kobert,"  he  used  to  say  to  me, 
"  we  are  not  all  gifted  with  talent  ;  I  know  I 
am  neither  active  nor  clever,  but  I  do 
my  best,  and  I  hope  Mr.  Biddies  is  satisfied, 
though  I  sometimes  fear  that  he  is  not." 
This  remark  was  generally  made  after  one  of 
those  miserable  wet,  busy,  muddy  Nov-ember 
days,  when  Tom  was  kept  running  about 
from  nine  to  six,  under  a  short  faded  macin- 
tosh cape,  and  when  old  Biddies  was  more 
than  usually  surly. 

We  passed  in  this  way  something  like  five 
years  together,  until  I  had  a  serious  attack  of 
illness  that  kept  me  away  from  my  office 
many  weeks.  Tom,  after  the  labour  of  the 
day,  seldom  missed  calling  to  inquire  about 
me,  long  as  the  distance  was,  and  very  often 
brought  me  little  delicacies  suited  for  an 
invalid.  I  could  not  prevent  his  bringing 
them,  although  I  felt  that  their  purchase 
must  have  pinched  him  in  various  ways. 
The  nature  of  my  complaint  made  it  neces- 
sary for  me  to  take  a  holiday  of  a  couple  of 
months  ;  and  so  great  was  poor  Tom's  fear 
that  such  a  long  absence  would  lead  to  my 
dismissal  by  old  Biddies — although  even  in 
this  anxiety  there  was  not  a  particle  of  selfish- 
ness— that  I  was  compelled  to  tell  him  that 
my  engagement  was  under  articles  that  could 
not  be  broken. 

When  I  returned  re-invigorated  to  my 
duties,  I  found,  to  my  surprise,  a  marked 
change  in  Tom.  His  manner  was  evidently 
embarrassed,  and  in  his  appearance  there 
was  a  feeble  and  clumsy  attempt  to  be 
buckish.  When  a  man  returns  to  an  office 
after  an  absence  of  some  months  everything 
seems  to  him  cold  and  strange ;  he  does  not 
fit  into  his  accustomed  corners,  his  papers 
look  spectral,  he  hardly  knows  where  to  put 
his  coat,  and  his  hat  tumbles  down  from  its  peg. 
If  the  place  has  been  re-painted  and  furnished 
(as  mine  had  been),  this  makes  matters 
worse.  I  did  not  question  Tom  the  first  or 
second  day,  as  I  thought  much  of  his  altered 
I  appearance  might  have  been  a  partial  delusion 


384 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[October  17,  ISs;.] 


of  my  disordered  imagination.  On  the  third 
day  I  fancied  from  his  nervous  behaviour 
that  he  was  about  to  make  some  explanatory 
disclosure,  and  I  was  not  disappointed.  After 
much  hesitation  and  preamble,  which  he,  poor 
fellow,  was  little  adept  in,  it  came  out  at 
last ;  Tom  was  in  love, — deeply,  earnestly  in 
love.  When  he  had  secured  me  as  his  confidant 
a  load  seemed  to  have  departed  from  his 
mind,  and  he  was  happier  and  gayer  than  1 
had  ever  known  him  before.  As  to  myself, 
I  was  lost  in  various  reflections.  I  laughed 
the  first  and  last  unkind  laugh  at  Tom's 
expense,  when  I  thought  of  him  ogling  his 
chosen  one  through  those  eternal  green 
glasses.  I  wondered  if  the  strong  olive  tint 
which  her  face  of  necessity  bore,  stood  to 
Tom  as  the  rose  upon  the  damask  cheek  of 
beauty  seen  through  the  naked  eye.  Did  he 
kiss  those  taper-fingers  which  must  have 
appeared  to  him  as  if  they  were  fresh  from 
the  dye-tub,  or  the  task  of  walnut  picking  ? 
Did  nature,  which  had  appeared  to  his  faint 
vision,  for  so  many  years,  a  gloomy  picture 
clad  in  one  solemn  tint,  brighten  up  with  a 
more  cheerful  glow,  now  that  this  new  light 
had  fallen  on  his  heart  1  Poor  Tom,  when  I 
looked  at  him  sitting  there  before  me,  his 
awkward  shape  and  disfigured  countenance, 
I  dreaded  lest  his  choice  should  have  fallen 
upon  some  thoughtless,  selfish  girl,  and  felt 
a  foreboding  that  his  passion  would  only  end 
in  misery  and  bitter  disappointment. 

Tom  was  too  happy  to  notice  my  abstrac- 
tion, and  his  only  desire  was  to  consult  me 
about  the  capabilities  of  his  scanty  income 
to  support  a  wife.  Here,  with  hard  figures 
to  deal  with,  I  was  obliged  to  reason  severely, 
but  every  objection  that  I  started  was  over- 
ruled by  Torn's  explanation  of  the  personal 
privations  he  could  undergo  for  the  attain- 
ment of  domestic  happiness.  It  was  needless 
for  him  to  enter  into  details  with  me,  who 
knew  his  qualities  so  well,  to  prove  what  a 
considerate,  devoted  husband  he  would  be. 
I  knew  that  his  income  was  inadequate,  and 
the  tone  of  my  advice  was  to  dissuade  him 
from  nourishing  an  affection  that,  I  felt  as- 
sured, must  be  hopeless. 

The  next  morning,  poor  Tom  appeared 
with  a  long  list  of  figures,  with  which  he  had 
been  working  out  a  problem  over-night,  and 
had  arrived  at  the  conclusion,  that  if  he 
could  obtain  another  twenty  pounds  a-year 
from  old  Biddies,  he  might  attempt  the  step 
he  was  anxious  to  take,  with  perfect  pro- 
priety. When  he  consulted  me  as  to  whether 
I  thought  he  would  get  the  advance,  I  felt 
that  his  mind  was  made  up,  and  knowing 
that  his  long  and  faithful  services  merited 
even  a  greater  reward,  I  told  him  to  go 
boldly  to  old  Biddies  and  ask  at  once.  It 
was  Saturday  morning ;  old  Biddies  was 
late,  and  when  he  came,  he  was  very  busy ; 


he  went  out  several  times,  a  very  unusual 
thing  with  him,  and  when  he  returned,  many 
people  were  waiting  to  see  him.  All  this 
threw  poor  Tom  into  a  fever  of  excitement ; 
he  kept  running  in  and  out  of  Biddies'  pri- 
vate room  in  such  an  unceremonious  manner, 
and  upon  such  frivolous  pretexts,  that  at  last 
the  old  fellow  asked  him  if  he  was  ill  ?  This 
brought  Tom  to  a  stand,  and  he  timidly 
made  his  proposal.  Old  Biddies  took  time 
to  consider.  Tom  augured  favourably  from 
this,  and  the  next  day,  Sunday,  he  prevailed 
upon  me  to  join  him  in  a  visit  to  the  iamily 
of  his  intended  wife. 

She  was  much  younger  than  Tom,  stout, 
florid,  and  rather  vulgar-looking.  I  watched 
her  closely,  and  her  treatment  of  him,  though 
at  times  flighty  and  inconsiderate,  did  not 
appear  unkind.  Tom  was  so  absorbed  in  the 
contemplation  of  his  happiness,  that  I  was 
left  pretty  much  to  my  own  resources,  and 
conversation  with  a  sister.  When  the  visit 
closed,  although  I  had  my  doubts,  I  was 
unable  to  form  a  conclusion  whether  the 
affection  on  the  part  of  the  girl  was  real  or 
simulated.  Monday  passed  over  in  silence  ; 
on  Tuesday  the  blow  fell.  About  ten  o'clock 
a  letter  was  delivered  to  Tom,  which  told  him 
that  she  for  whom  he  was  ready  to  give  up 
all  the  comforts  he  so  much  needed,  for  whom 
he  was  even  then  planning  out  some  little, 
thoughtful  present,  and  to  whom  he  had 
given  all  the  great  affection  of  his  kind  and 
noble  heart,  had  encouraged  his  passion  like 
a  cruel,  wayward  girl,  and  now  threw  it 
aside  without  pity  or  remorse. 

Close  upon  this  shock  followed  a  formal 
discharge  from  old  Biddies.  He  had  weighed 
Tom's  proposal.  Virtue  and  fidelity  which 
were  endurable  at  fifty  pounds  a-year,  were 
not  to  be  tolerated  at  seventy.  The  supply 
was  greater  than  the  demand.  Biddies  was 
a  practical,  business  man. 

Some  few  years  afterwards,  when  poor 
Tom's  shattered  frame  and  broken  heart  were 
lying  peaceably  in  the  grave,  and  his  clerkly 
successor  at  forty  pounds  a-year  had  em- 
bezzled money  to  a  considerable  extent,  old 
Biddies  felt  that  for  once  he  had  made  a 
mistake,  and  thought  of  an  awkward,  green- 
spectacled  clerk  who  used  to  sit  in  his  office, 
and  who,  if  not  brilliant,  was  trustworthy. 

"  Do  you  know  Craddock's  address  ? "  he 
asked,  one  morning,  as  I  entered  his  room. 
(Though  I  know  his  address — somewhere  in 
Heaven,  poor  dear  Tom  ! — I  didn't  say  so). 

"He  has  been  dead  some  time,"  I  re- 
plied. 

"  Hum !  Put  an  advertisement  in  the 
TIMES  for  somebody  like  him." 

We  did  put  au  advertisement  in  the  TIMES 
for  somebody  like  him  ;  but  old  Biddies  found 
he  could  not  get  another  Tom  Craddock 
merely  by  drawing  a  cheque  for  him. 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Publi«hi>d  at  the  Office,  No.  16,  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  BBADBDBT  &  EVAHS,  Whitefriars,  London, 


"Familiar  in  tleir  Mouth  as  HOUSEHOLD    WORDS"— SHAKESPEARE. 

'HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY   JOURNAL 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES     DICKENS. 


-  396.] 


SATURDAY,  OCTOBER  24,  1857. 


'  PRICE  2<2. 
[  STAMPED  3<£. 


THE  LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE 
APPRENTICES. 

IN  FIVE  CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH. 

WHEN  Mr.  Goodchild  had  looked  out 
of  the  Lancaster  Inn-window  for  two  hours 
on  end,  with  great  perseverance,  he  began 
to  entertain  a  misgiving  that  he  was 
growing  industrious.  He  therefore  set  him- 
self next,  to  explore  the  country  from  the 
tops  of  all  the  steep  hills  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. 

He  came  back  at  dinner-time,  red  and 
glowing,  to  tell  Thomas  Idle  what  he  had 
seen.  Thomas,  on  his  back  reading,  listened 
with  great  composure,  and  asked  him  whether 
he  really  had  gone  up  those  hills,  and  bothered 
himself  with  those  views,  and  walked  all 
those  miles  1 

"  Because  I  want  to  know,"  added  Thomas, 
"  what  you  would  say  of  it,  if  you  were  obliged 
to  do  it  1 " 

"  It  would  be  different,  then,"  said  Francis. 
"  It  would  be  work,  then  ;  now,  it's  play." 

"  Play  !  "  repeated  Thomas  Idle,  utterly 
repudiating  the  reply.  "  Play !  Here  is  a 
man  goes  systematically  tearing  himself  to 
pieces,  and  putting  himself  through  an  in- 
cessant course  of  training,  as  if  he  were 
always  under  articles  to  fight  a  match  for 
the  champion's  belt,  and  he  calls  it  Play  ! 
Play  !  "  exclaimed  Thomas  Idle,  scornfully 
contemplating  his  one  boot  in  the  air.  "You 
can't  play.  You  don't  know  what  it  is.  You 
make  work  of  everything." 

The  bright  Goodchild  amiably  smiled. 

"  So  you  do,"  said  Thomas.  "  I  mean  it. 
To  me  you  are  an  absolutely  terrible  fellow. 
You  do  nothing  like  another  man.  Where 
another  fellow  would  fall  into  a  footbath 
of  action  or  emotion,  you  fall  into  a 
mine.  Where  any  other  fellow  would  be  a 
painted  butterfly,  you  are  a  fiery  dragon. 
Where  another  man  would  stake  a  sixpence, 
you  stake  your  existence.  If  you  were  to  go 
up  in  a  balloon,  you  would  make  for  Heaven ; 
and  if  you  were  to  dive  into  the  depths  of  the 
earth,  nothing  short  of  the  other  place 
would  content  you.  What  a  fellow  you  are, 
Francis  !  " 

The  cheerful  Goodchild  laughed. 

"  It's  ail  very  well  to  laugh,  but  I  wonder 
you  don't  feel  it  to  be  serious,"  said  Idle. 


"A  man  who  can  do  nothing  by  halves 
appears  to  me  to  be  a  fearful  man." 

"Tom,  Tom,"  returned  Goodchild,  "if  I 
can  do  nothing  by  halves,  and  be  nothing  by 
halves,  it's  pretty  clear  that  you  must  take 
me  as  a  whole,  and  make  the  best  of  me." 

With  this  philosophical  rejoinder,  the  airy 
Goodchild  clapped  Mr.  Idle  on  the  shoulder 
in  a  final  manner,  and  they  sat  down  to 
dinner. 

"  By  the  bye,"  said  Goodchild,  "  I  have  been 
over  a  lunatic  asylum  too,  since  I  have  been 
out." 

"  He  has  been,"  exclaimed  Thomas  Idle,  cast- 
ing up  his  eyes,  "over  a  lunatic  asylum !  Not 
content  with  being  as  great  an  Ass  as  Captain 
Barclay  in  the  pedestrian  way,  he  makes  a 
Lunacy  Commissioner  of  himself — for  no- 
thing ! " 

"  An  immense  place,"  said  Goodchild, 
"  admirable  offices,  very  good  arrangements, 
very  good  attendants ;  altogether  a  remark- 
able place." 

"  And  what  did  you  see  there  1 "  asked  Mr. 
Idle,  adapting  Hamlet's  advice  to  the  occa- 
sion, and  assuming  the  virtue  of  interest, 
though  he  had  it  not. 

"  The  usual  thing,"  said  Francis  Goodchild, 
with  a  sigh.  "  Long  groves  of  blighted  men- 
and-women-trees ;  interminable  avenues  of 
hopeless  faces  ;  numbers,  without  the  slightest 
power  of  really  combining  for  any  earthly 
purpose  ;  a  society  of  human  creatures  who 
have  nothing  in  common  but  that  they  have 
all  lost  the  power  of  being  humanly  social 
with  one  another." 

"Take  a  glass  of  wine  with  me,"  said 
Thomas  Idle,  "  and  let  us  be  social." 

"In  one  gallery,  Tom,"  pursued  Francis 
Goodchild,  "  which  looked  to  me  about  the 
length  of  the  Long  Walk  at  Windsor,  more 
or  less " 

"  Probably  less,"  observed  Thomas  Idle. 

"  In  one  gallery,  which  was  otherwise  quite 
clear  of  patients  (for  they  were  all  out),  there 
was  a  poor  little  dark-chinned,  meagre  man, 
with  a  perplexed  brow  and  a  pensive  face, 
stooping  low  over  the  matting  on  the  floor, 
and  picking  out  with  his  thumb  and  fore- 
finger the  course  of  its  fibres.  The  afternoon 
sun  was  slanting  in  at  the  large  end-window, 
and  there  were  cross  patches  of  light  and 
i  shade  all  down  the  vista,  made  by  the  unseen 


VOL.   XVI. 


396 


386      [October  14, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


windows  and  the  open  doors  of  the  little 
sleeping  ceils  on  either  side.  In  about  the 
centre  of  the  perspective,  under  an  arch, 
nlless  of  the  pleasant  weather,  regardless 
of  "the  solitude,  regardless  of  approaching  foot- 
steps, \vas  the  poor  little  dark-chinned,  meagre 


received  by  half-a-dozen  noiseless  old  men  in 
black,  all  dressed  exactly  alike,  who  glided 
up  the  stairs  with  the  obliging  landlord  and 
waiter  —  but  without  appearing  to  get  into 
their  way,  or  to  mind  whether  they  did  or 


man,  poring  over  the  matting.     '  What  are  j  no — and  who  had  filed  off  to  the  right  and 


you  doing  there  ?  '  said  my  conductor,  when 
•we  came  to  him.  He  looked  up,  and  pointed 
to  the  matting.  '  I  wouldn't  do  that,  I  think,' 
said  my  conductor,  kindly  ;  '  if  I  were  you,  I 
would  go  and  read,  or  I  would  lie  clown 


left  on  the  old  staircase,  as  the  guests  entered 
their  sitting-room.  It  was  then  broad,  bright 
day.  But,  Mr.  Goodchild  had  said,  when 
their  door  was  shut,  "  Who  on  earth  are 
those  old  men  !  "  And  afterwards,  both 


if  I   felt   tired  ;    but   I    wouldn't   do  that.'  \  on  going  out  and  coming  in,  he  had  noticed 
The    patient     considered    a    moment,    and  that  there  were  no  old  men  to  be  seen. 


vacantly  answered,  '  No,  sir,  I  won't  ;  I'll  — 
I'll  go  and  read,'  and  so  he  lamely  shuffled 


Neither,  had  the  old  men,  or  any  one  of  the 
old  men,  reappeared  since.     The  two  friends 


away  into  one  of  the  little  rooms.  I  turned  I  had  passed  a  night  in  the  house,  but  had 
my  head  before  we  had  gone  many  paces,  j  seen  nothing  more  of  the  old  men.  Mr. 
He  had  already  come  out  again,  and  j  Goodchild,  in  rambling  about  it,  had  looked 
was  again  poring  over  the  matting,  and  j  along  passages,  and  glanced  in  at  doorways, 


tracking  out  its  fibres  with  his  thumb  and 
fore-finger.  I  stopped  to  look  at  him,  and  it 
came  into  my  mind,  that  probably  the  course 
of  those  fibres  as  they  plaited  in  and  out, 
over  and  under,  was  the  only  course  of  things 
in  the  whole  wide  world  that  it  was  left  to 


but  had  encountered  no  old  men ;  neither 
did  it  appear  that  any  old  men  were,  by  any 
member  of  the  establishment,  missed  or 
expected. 

Another  odd  circumstance  impressed  itself 
on  their  attention.    It  was,  that  the  jdoor  of 


him  to  understand — that  his  darkening  intel-  <  their  sitting-room  was  never  left  untouched 
lect  had  narrowed  down  to  the  small  cleft  of  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  It  was  opened 
light  which  showed  him,  '  This  piece  was !  with  hesitation,  opened  with  confidence, 
twisted  this  way,  went  in  here,  passed  under,  \  opened  a  little  way,  opened  a  good  way, — 
came  out  there,  was  carried  on  away  here  to  always  clapped-to  again  without  a  word 
the  right  where  I  now  put  my  finger  on  it,  of  explanation.  They  were  Dreading,  they 
and  in  this  progress  of  events,  the  thing  was  ,  were  writing,  they  were  eating,  they  were 
made  and  came  to  be  here.'  Then,  I  won- 1  drinking,  they  were  talking,  they  were 
dered  whether  he  looked  into  the  matting,  \  dozing ;  the  door  was  always  opened  at  an 
next,  to  see  if  it  could  show  him  anything  of !  unexpected  moment,  and  they  looked  towards 
the  process  through  which  he  came  to  be  j  it,  and  it  was  clapped-to  again,  and  nobody 
there,  so  strangely  poring  over  it.  Then,  1 1  was  to  be  seen.  When  this  had  happened 
thought  how  all  of  us,  GOD  help  us  !  in  our  fifty  times  or  so,  Mr.  Goodchild  had  said  to 
different  ways  are  poring  over  our  bits  of  \  his  companion,  jestingly:  "1  begin  to  think, 
matting,  blindly  enough,  and  what  confusions  |  Tom,  there  was  something  wrong  about 


and  mysteries  we  make  in  the  pattern.     I 


those  six  old  men." 


had  a  sadder  fellow-feeling  with  the  little  Night  had  come  again,  and  they  had  been 
dark-chinned,  meagre  man,  by  that  time,  and  writing  for  two  or  three  hours  :  writing,  in 
I  came  away."  short,  a  portion  of  the  lazy  notes  from  which 

Mr.  Idle  diverting  the  conversation  to  these  lazy  sheets  are  taken.  They  had  left 
grouse,  custards,  and  bride-cake,  Mr.  Good-  i  off  writing,  and  glasses  were  on  the  table  be- 
child  followed  in  the  same  direction.  The  tween  them.  The  house  was  closed  and  quiet, 


bride-cake  was  as  bilious  and  indigestible  as 
if  a  real  Bride  had  cut  it,  and  the  dinner 
it  completed  was  an  admirable  performance. 

The  house  was  a  genuine  old  house  of  a 
very  quaint  description,  teeming  with  old 
carvings,  and  beams,  and  panels,  and  having  an 
excellent  old  staircase,  with  a  gallery  or  upper 
staircase,  cut  off  from  it  by  a  curious  fence- 
work  of  old  oak,  or  of  the  old  Honduras  Maho- 
gany wood.  It  was,  and  is,  and  will  be,for  many 
a  long  year  to  come,  a  remarkably  picturesque 
house  ;  and  a  certain  grave  mystery  lurk- 
iu  ?  in  the  depth  of  the  old  mahogany  panels, 
as  if  they  were  so  many  deep  pools  of  dark 
water  —  such,  indeed,  as  they  had  been  much 
among  when  they  were  trees  —  gave  it  a  very 
mysterious  character  after  nightfall. 

When  Mr.  Goodchild  and  Mr.  Idle  had 
first  alighted  at  the  door,  and  stepped  into 


and  the  town  was  quiet.  Around  the  head  of 
Thomas  Idle,  as  he  lay  upon  his  sofa,  hovered 
light!  wreaths  of  fragrant  smoke.  The 
temples  of  Francis  Goodchild,  as  he  leaned 
back  in  his  chair,  with  his  two  hands  clasped 
behind  his  head,  and  his  legs  crossed,  were 
similarly  decorated. 

They  had  been  discussing  several  idle  sub- 
jects of  speculation,  not  omitting  the  strange 
old  men,  and  were  still  so  occupied,  when 
Mr.  Goodchild  abruptly  changed  his  attitude 
to  wind  up  his  watch.  They  were  just  be- 
coming drowsy  enough  to  be  stopped  in  their 
talk  by  any  such  slight  check.  Thomas  Idle, 
who  was  speaking  at  the  moment,  paused  and 
said,  "  How  goes  it  ?  " 

«  One,"  said  Goodchild. 

As  if  he  had  ordered  One  old  man,  and  the 
order  were  promptly  executed  (truly,  all 


diaries  Dickens.] 


LAZY  TOUE  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPRENTICES.       [October  * 


387 


orders  were  so,  in  that  excellent  hotel),  the 
door  opened,  and  One  old  man  stood  there. 

He  did  not  come  in,  but  stood  with  the 
door  in  his  hand. 

"  One  of  the  six,  Tom,  at  last ! "  said  Mr. 
Goodchild,  in  a  surprised  whisper. — "  Sir, 
your  pleasure  ? " 

"  Sir,  your  pleasure  ? "  said  the  One  old 
man. 

"  I  didn't  ring." 

"  The  Bell  did,"  said  the  One  old  man. 

He  said  BELL,  in  a  deep  strong  way,  that 
would  have  expressed  the  church  Bell. 

"  I  had  the  pleasure,  I  believe,  of  seeing 
you,  yesterday  1 "  said  Goodchild. 

"  I  cannot  undertake  to  say  for  certain," 
was  the  grim  reply  of  the  One  old  man. 

"  I  think  you  saw  me  1    Did  you  not  ?  " 

"  Saw  you  ?  "  said  the  old  man.  "  0  yes, 
I  saw  you.  But,  I  see  many  who  never  see 
me." 

A  chilled,  slow,  earthy,  fixed  old  man. 
A  cadaverous  old  man  of  measured  speech. 
An  old  man  who  seemed  as  unable  to  wink, 
as  if  his  eyelids  had  been  nailed  to  his 
forehead.  An  old  man  whose  eyes  —  two 
spots  of  fire — had  no  more  motion  than  if 
they  had  been  connected  with  the  back  of  his 
skull  by  screws  driven  through  it,  and 
rivetted  and  bolted  outside,  among  his  grey 
hair. 

The  night  had  turned  so  cold,  to  Mr. 
Goodchild's  sensations,  that  he  shivered.  He 
remarked  lightly,  and  half  apologetically,  "  I 
think  somebody  is  walking  over  my  grave." 

" No,"  said  the  weird  old  man,  "there  is  no 
one  there." 

Mr.  Goodchild  looked  at  Idle,  but  Idle  lay 
with  his  head  enwreathed  in  smoke. 

"  No  one  there  ?  "  said  Goodchild. 

"  There  is  no  one  at  your  grave,  I  assure 
you,"  said  the  old  man. 

He  had  come  in  and  shut  the  door,  and  he 
now  sat  down.  He  did  not  bend  himself  to 
sit,  as  other  people  do,  but  seemed  to  sink 
bolt  upright,  as  if  in  water,  until  the  ;  chair 
stopped  him. 

"My  friend,  Mr.  Idle,"  said  Goodchild, 
extremely  anxious  to  introduce  a  third  per- 
son into  the  conversation. 

"  I  am,"  said  the  old  man,  without  looking 
at  him,  "  at  Mr.  Idle's  service." 

"  If  you  are  an  old  inhabitant  of  this  place," 
Francis  Goodchild  resumed : 

"Yes." 

— "Perhaps  you  can  decide  a  point  my 
friend  and  I  were  in  doubt  upon,  this  morn- 
ing. They  hang  condemned  criminals  at  the 
Castle,  I  believe  1 " 

"  I  believe  so,"  said  the  old  man. 

"Are  their  faces  turned  towards  that 
noble  prospect  ? " 

"  Your  face  is  turned,"  replied  the  old  man, 
"  to  the  Castle  wall.  When  you  are  tied  up, 
you  see  its  stones  expanding  and  contracting 
violently,  and  a  similar  expansion  and  con- 
traction seem  to  take  place  in  your  own  head 


and  breast.  Then,  there  is  a  rush  of  fire  and. 
an  earthquake,  and  the  Castle  springs  into 
the  air,  and  you  tumble  down  a  precipice." 

His  cravat  appeared  to  trouble  him.  He 
put  his  hand  to  his  throat,  and  moved  his 
neck  from  side  to  side.  He  was  an  old  man 
of  a  swollen  character  of  face,  and  his  nose 
was  immoveably  hitched  up  on  one  side,  as  if 
by  a  little  hook  inserted  in  that  nostril.  Mr. 
Goodchild  felt  exceedingly  uncomfortable, 
and  began  to  think  the  night  was  hot,  and 
not  cold. 

"  A  strong  description,  sir,"  he  observed. 

"A  strong  sensation,"  the  old  man  re-» 
joined. 

Again,  Mr.  Goodchild  looked  to  Mr. 
Thomas  Idle ;  but,  Thomas  lay  on  his  back 
with  his  face  attentively  turned  towards  the 
One  old  man,  and  made  no  sign.  At  this 
time  Mr.  Goodchild  believed  that  he  saw  two 
threads  of  fire  stretch  from  the  old  man's  eyes 
to  his  own,  and  there  attach  themselves.  (Mr. 
Goodchild  writes  the  present  account  of  his 
experience,  and,  with  the  utmost  solemnity, 
protests  that  he  had  the  strongest  sensation 
upon  him  of  being  forced  to  look  at  the  old 
man  along  those  two  fiery  films,  from  that 
moment.) 

"  I  must  tell  it  to  you,"  said  the  old  man, 
with  a  ghastly  and  a  stony  stare. 

"  What  1 "  asked  Francis  Goodchild. 

"  You  know  where  it  took  place.  Yonder ! " 

Whether  he  pointed  to  the  room  above,  or 
to  the  room  below,  or  to  any  room  in  that 
old  house,  or  to  a  room  in  some  other  old  house 
in  that  old  town,  Mr.  Goodchild  was  not,  nor 
is,  nor  ever  can  be,  sure.  He  was  confused  by 
the  circumstance  that  the  right  fore-finger  of 
the  One  old  man  seemed  to  dip  itself  in  one 
of  the  threads  of  fire,  light  itself,  and  make  a 
fiery  start  in  the  air,  as  it  pointed  some- 
where. Having  pointed  somewhere,  it  went 
out. 

"  You  know  she  was  a  Bride,"  said  the  old 
man. 

"  I  know  they  still  send  up  Bride-cake," 
Mr.  Goodchild  faltered.  "  This  is  a  very 
oppressive  air." 

"  She  was  a  Bride,"  said  the  old  man. 
"  She  was  a  fair,  flaxen-haired,  large-eyed 
girl,  who  had  no  character,  no  purpose. 
A  weak,  credulous,  incapable,  helpless 
nothing.  Not  like  her  mother.  No,  no.  It 
was  her  father  whose  character  she  reflected. 

"Her  mother  had 'taken  care  to  secure 
everything  to  herself,  for  her  own  life,  when, 
the  father  of  this  girl  (a  child  at  that  time) 
died — of  sheer  helplessness ;  no  other  dis- 
order— and  then  He  renewed  the  acquaint- 
ance that  had  once  subsisted  between  the 
mother  and  Him.  He  had  been  put  aside  for 
the  flaxen-haired,  large-eyed  man  (or  non- 
entity) with  Money.  He  could  overlook  that 
for  Money.  He  wanted  compensation  in 
Money. 

"  So,  he  returned  to  the  side  of  that  woman 
the  mother,  made  love  to  her  again,  danced 


388       [October  24, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


attendance  on  her,  and  submitted  himself  to 
her  whims.  She  wreaked  upon  him  every 
whim  she  had,  or  could  invent.  He  bore  it. 
And  the  more  he  bore,  the  more  he  wanted  ; 
compensation  in  Money,  and  the  more  he 
was  resolved  to  have  it. 

"  But,  lo !  Before  he  got  it,  she  cheated 
him.  In  one  of  her  imperious  states,  she 
froze,  and  never  thawed  again.  She  put  her 
hands  to  her  head  one  night,  uttered  a  cry, 
stiffened,  lay  in  that  attitude  certain  hours, 
and  died.  And  he  had  got  no  compensation 
from  her  in  Money,  yet.  Blight  and  Murrain 
on  her  !  Not  a  penny. 

"  He  had  hated  her  throughout  that  second 
pursuit,  and  had  longed  for  retaliation  on 
her.  He  now  counterfeited  her  signature  to 
an  instrument,  leaving  all  she  had  to  leave, 
to  her  daughter — ten  years  old  then — to 
whom  the  property  passed  absolutely,  and  ap- 
pointing himself  the  daughter's  Guardian. 
When  He  slid  it  under  the  pillow  of  the  bed 
on  which  she  lay,  He  bent  down  in  the  deaf 
ear  of  Death,  and  whispered :  '  Mistress 
Pride,  I  have  determined  a  long  time  that, 
dead  or  alive,  you  must  make  me  compensa- 
tion in  Money.' 

"  So,  now  there  were  only  two  left.  Which 
two  were,  He,  and  the  fair  flaxen-haired, 
large-eyed  foolish  daughter,  who  afterwards 
became  the  Bride. 

"  He  put  her  to  school.  In  a  secret,  dark, 
oppressive,  ancient  house,  he  put  her  to  school 
with  a  watchful  and  unscrupulous  woman. 
'  My  worthy  lady,'  he  said,  '  here  is  a  mind 
to  be  formed  ;  will  you  help  me  to  form  it  ? ' 
She  accepted  the  trust.  For  which  she,  too, 
wanted  compensation  in  Money,  and  had  it. 

"  The  girl  was  formed  in  the  fear  of  him, 
and  in  »the   conviction,   that  there  was  no 
escape  from  him.     She  was  taught,  from  the 
first,  to  regard  him  as  her  future  husband — 
the  man  who  must  marry  her — the  destiny  j 
that  overshadowed  her — the  appointed  cer-  j 
tainty  that  could  never  be  evaded.   The  poor  j 
fool  was  soft  white  wax  in  their  hands,  and  • 
took  the  impression  that  they  put  upon  her.  | 
It  hardened  with  time.    It  became  a  part  of  j 
herself.     Inseparable  from  herself,  and  only 
to  be  torn  away  from  her,  by  tearing  life 
away  from  her. 

"  Eleven  years  she  lived  in  the  dark  house 
and  its  gloomy  garden.    He  was  jealous  of 
the  very  light  and  air  getting  to  her,  and 
they  kept  her  close.     He  stopped  the  wide 
chimneys,   shaded    the    little  windows,  left 
the  strong-stemmed  ivy  to  wander  where  it 
would    over    the    house-front,  the    moss  to  j 
accumulate  on  the  untrimmed  fruit-trees  in  j 
the  red-walled  garden,  the  weeds  to  over-run 
its  green  and  yellow  walks.     He  surrounded  j 
her  with  images  of  sorrow  and  desolation,  i 
He  caused  her  to  be  filled  with  fears  of  the 
place  and  of  the  stories  that  were  told  of  it,  I 
and  then   on    pretext    of  correcting    them,  j 
to   be  left  in    it  in    solitude,    or  made  to  , 
shrink  about  it  in  the  dark.   When  her  mind  I 


was  most  depressed  and  fullest  of  terrors, 
then,  he  would  come  out  of  one  of  the  hiding- 
places  from  which  he  overlooked  her,  and 
present  himself  as  her  sole  resource. 

"Thus,  by  being  from  her  childhood  the 
one  embodiment  her  life  presented  to  her 
of  power  to  coerce  and  power  to  relieve, 
power  to  bind  and  power  to  loose,  the  ascen- 
dency over  her  weakness  was  secured.  She 
was  twenty-one  years  and  twenty-one  days 
old,  when  lie  brought  her  home  to  the  gloomy 
house,  his  half-witted,  frightened,  and  sub- 
missive Bride  of  three  weeks. 

"  He  had  dismissed  the  governess  by  that 
time — what  he  had  left  to  do,  he  could 
best  do  alone — and  they  came  back,  upon  a 
rainy  night,  to  the  scene  of  her  long  prepa- 
ration. '  She  turned  to  him  upon  the  thresh- 
hold,  as  the  rain  was  dripping  from  the 
porch,  and  said  : 

"'  O  sir,  it  is  the  Death-watch  ticking  for 
me  !  ' 

" '  Well ! '  he  answered.  '  And  if  it  were  ? v 

" '  O  sir  ! '  she  returned  to  him,  '  look 
kindly  on  me,  and  be  merciful  to  me  !  I  beg 
your  pardon.  I  will  do  anything  you  wish, 
if  you  will  only  forgive  me  ! ' 

"  That  had  become  the  poor  fool's  constant 
song :  '  I  beg  your  pardon,'  and  '  Forgive 
me!' 

"She  was  not  worth  hating ;  he  felt 
nothing  but  contempt  for  her.  But,  she  had 
long  been  in  the  way,  and  he  had  long  been 
weary,  and  the  work  was  near  its  end,  and 
had  to  be  worked  out. 

" '  You  fool,'  he  said.     '  Go  up  the  stairs  ! ' 

"  She  obeyed  very  quickly,  murmuring, 
'  I  will  do  anything  you  wish  ! '  When  he 
came  into  the  Bride's  Chamber,  having  been 
a  little  retarded  by  the  heavy  fastenings  of 
the  great  door  (for  they  were  alone  in  the 
house,  and  he  had  arranged  that  the  people 
who  attended  on  them  should  come  and  go 
in  the  day),  he  found  her  withdrawn  to  the 
furthest  corner,  and  there  standing  pressed 
against  the  paneling  as  if  she  would  have 
shrunk  through  it :  her  flaxen  hair  all  wild 
about  her  face,  and  her  large  eyes  staring  at 
him  in  vague  terror. 

" '  What  are  you  afraid  of  ?  Come  and  sit 
down  by  me.' 

" '  I  will  do  anything  you  wish.  I  beg  your 
pardon,  sir.  Forgive  me  ! '  Her  monotonous 
tune  as  usual. 

" '  Ellen,  here  is  a  writing  that  you  must 
write  out  to-morrow,  in  your  own  hand.  You 
may  as  well  be  seen  by  others,  busily  engaged 
upon  it.  When  you  have  written  it  all  fairly, 
and  corrected  all  mistakes,  call  in  any  two 
people  there  may  be  about  the  house,  and  sign 
your  name  to  it  before  them.  Then,  put 
it  in  your  bosom  to  keep  it  safe,  and  when 
I  sit  here  again  to-morrow  night,  give  it 
to  me.' 

" '  I  will  do  it  all,  with  the  greatest  care. 
I  will  do  anything  you  wish.' 

"'Don't  shake  and  tremble,  then.' 


Dickers]         LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPRENTICES.        [October  24. 1357.]     389 


" '  I  will  try  my  utmost  not  to  do  it — if 
you  will  only  forgive  me  ! ' 

"  Next  day,  she  sat  down  at  her  desk,  and 
did  as  she  had  been  told.  He  often  passed 
in  and  out  of  the  room,  to  observe  her,  and 
always  saw  her  slowly  and  laboriously  writ- 
ing :  repeating  to  herself  the  words  she  copied, 
in  appearance  quite  mechanically,  and  with- 
out caring  or  endeavouring  to  comprehend 
them,  so  that  she  did  her  task.  He  saw  her 
follow  the  directions  she  had  received,  in  all 
particulars ;  and  at  night,  when  they  were 
alone  again  in  the  same  Bride's  Chamber, 
.and  he  drew  his  chair  to  the  hearth,  she 
timidly  approached  him  from  her  distant  seat, 
took  the  paper  from  her  bosom,  and  gave  it 
into  his  hand. 

"  It  secured  all  her  possessions  to  him,  in 
the  event  of  her  death.  He  put  her  before 
him,  face  to  face,  that  he  might  look  at  her 
steadily ;  and  he  asked  her,  in  so  many  plain 
words,  neither  fewer  nor  more,  did  she  know 
that? 

"There  were  spots  of  ink  upon  the  bosom 
•of  her  white  dress,  and  they  made  her  face 
look  whiter  and  her  eyes  look  larger  as  she 
nodded  her  head.  There  were  spots  of  ink 
upon  the  hand  with  which  she  stood  before 
him,  nervously  plaiting  and  folding  her  white 
skirts. 

"  He  took  her  by  the  arm,  and  looked  her, 
yet  more  closely  and  steadily,  in  the  face. 
'  Now,  die  !  I  have  done  with  you.' 

"  She  shrunk,  and  uttered  a  low,  suppressed 
cry. 

" '  I  am  not  going  to  kill  you.  I  will  not 
endanger  my  life  for  yours.  Die  ! ' 

"  He  sat  before  her  in  the  gloomy  Bride's 
Chamber,  day  after  day,  night  after  night, 
looking  the  word  at  her  when  he  did  not 
utter  it.  As  often  as  her  large  unmeaning 
eyes  were  raised  from  the  hands  in  which  she 
rocked  her  head,  to  the  stern  figure,  sitting 
with  crossed  arms  and  knitted  forehead,  in 
the  chair,  they  read  in  it,  'Die  ! '  When  she 
dropped  asleep  in  exhaustion,  she  was  called 
back  to  shuddering  consciousness,  by  the 
whisper,  '  Die  ! '  When  she  fell  upon  her  old 
entreaty  to  be  pardoned,  she  was  answered, 
*  Die  ! '  When  she  had  out-watched  and  out- 
suffered  the  long  night,  and  the  rising  suu 
flamed  into  the  sombre  room,  she  heard  it 
hailed  with,  'Another  day  and  not  dead? — 
Die!' 

"  Shut  up  in  the  deserted  mansion,  aloof 
from  all  mankind,  and  engaged  alone  in  such 
a  struggle  without  any  respite,  it  came  to 
this — that  either  he  must  die,  or  she.  He 
knew  it  very  well,  and  concentrated  his 
strength  against  her  feebleness.  Hours  upon 
hours  he  held  her  by  the  arm  when  her  arm 
was  black  where  he  held  it,  and  bade  her  Die ! 

"  It  was  done,  upon  a  windy  morning,  be- 
fore sunrise.  He  computed  the  time  to  be 
half-past  four  ;  but,  his  forgotten  watch  had 
run  down,  and  he  could  not  be  sure.  She 
had  broken  away  from  him  in  the  night,  with 


loud  and  sudden  cries — the  first  of  that  kind 
to  which  she  had  given  vent — and  he  had 
had  to  put  his  hands  over  her  mouth.  Since 
then,  she  had  been  quiet  in  the  corner  of  the 
paneling  where  she  had  sunk  down  ;  and  he 
had  left  her,  and  had  gone  back  with  his 
folded  arms  and  his  knitted  forehead  to  hia 
chair. 

"Paler  in  the  pale  light,  more  colourless 
than  ever  in  the  leaden  dawn,  he  saw  her 
coming,  trailing  herself  along  the  floor  to- 
wards him — a  white  wreck  of  hair,  and  dress, 
and  wild  eyes,  pushing  itself  on  by  an  irre- 
solute and  bending  hand. 

" '  O,  forgive  me  !  I  will  do  anything.  O, 
sir,  pray  tell  me  I  may  live  ! ' 

"'Die!' 

"  '  Are  you  so  resolved  ?  Is  there  no  hope 
for  me  ? ' 

" '  Die  ! ' 

"  Her  large  eyes  strained  themselves  with 
wonder  and  fear  ;  wonder  and  fear  changed 
to  reproach ;  reproach  to  blank  nothing.  It 
was  done.  He  was  not  at  first  so  sure  it  was 
done,  but  that  the  morning  sun  was  hanging 
jewels  in  her  hair — he  saw  the  diamond, 
emerald,  and  ruby,  glittering  among  it  in 
little  points,  as  he  stood  looking  down  at  her 
— when  he  lifted  her  and  laid  her  on  her 
bed. 

"  She  was  soon  laid  in  the  ground.  And  now 
they  were  all  gone,  and  he  had  compensated 
himself  well. 

"  He  had  a  mind  to  travel.  Not  that  he 
meant  to  waste  his  Money,  for  he  was  a 
pinching  man  and  liked  his  Money  dearly 
(liked  nothing  else,  indeed),  but,  that  he 
had  grown  tired  of  the  desolate  house  and 
wished  to  turn  his  back  upon  it  and  have 
done  with  it.  But,  the  house  was  worth 
Money,  and  Money  must  not  be  thrown  away. 
He  determined  to  sell  it  before  he  went. 
That  it  might  look  the  less  wretched  and 
bring  a  better  price,  he  hired  some  labourers 
to  work  in  the  overgrown  garden  ;  to'cut  out 
the  dead  wood,  trim  the  ivy  that  drooped  in 
heavy  masses  over  the  windows  and  gables, 
and  clear  the  walks  in  which  the  weeds  were 
growing  mid-leg  high. 

"  He  worked,  himself,  along  with  them. 
He  worked  later  than  they  did,  and,  one 
evening  at  dusk,  was  left  working  alone,  with 
his  bill-hook  in  his  hand.  One  autumn 
evening,  when  the  Bride  was  five  weeks 
dead. 

"  '  It  grows  too  dark  to  work  longer,'  he 
said  to  himself,  'I  must  give  over  for  the 
night.' 

"  He  detested  the  house,  and  was  loath  to 
enter  it.  He  looked  at  the  dark  porch 
waiting  for  him  like  a  tomb,  and  felt  that  it 
was  an  accursed  house.  Near  to  the  porch, 
and  near  to  where  he  stood,  was  a  tree  whose 
branches  waved  before  the  old  bay-window 
of  the  Bride's  Chamber,  where  it  had  been 
done.  The  tree  swung  suddenly,  and  made 
him  start.  It  swung  again,  although  the 


390       [October  14. 1867.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


night  was  still.  Looking  up  into  it,  he  saw 
&  figure  among  the  branches. 

"  It  was  the  figure  of  a  young  man.  The 
face  looked  down,  as  his  looked  up  ;  the 
branches  cracked  and  swayed ;  the  figure 
rapidly  descended,  and  slid  upon  its  feet 
before  him.  A  slender  youth  of  about  her 
age,  with  long  light  brown  hair. 

"  'What  thief  are  you1?'  he  said,  seizing 
the  youth  by  the  collar. 

"  The  young  man,  in  shaking  himself 
free,  swung  him  a  blow  with  his  arm  across 
the  face  and  throat.  They  closed,  but  the 
young  man  got  from  him  and  stepped  back, 
crying,  with  great  eagerness  and  horror, 
'  Don't  touch  me  !  I  would  as  lieve  be  touched 
by  the  Devil ! ' 

"  He  stood  still,  with  his  bill-hook  in  his 
hand,  looking  at  the  young  man.  For,  the 
young  man's  look  was  the  counterpart  of  her 
last  look,  and  he  had  not  expected  ever  to 
see  that  again. 

"  '  I  am  no  thief.  Even  if  I  were,  I  would 
not  have  a  coin  of  your  wealth,  if  it  would 
buy  me  the  Indies.  You  murderer ! ' 

"'What!' 

" '  I  climbed  it,'  said  the  young  man, 
pointing  up  into  the  tree,  '  for  the  first  time, 
nigh  four  years  ago.  I  climbed  it,  to  look  at 
her.  I  saw  her.  I  spoke  to  her.  I  have 
climbed  it,  many  a  time,  to  watch  and  listen 
for  her.  I  was  a  boy,  hidden  among  its 
leaves,  when  from  that  bay-window  she  gave 
me  this  !' 

"  He  showed  a  tress  of  flaxen  hair,  tied 
•with  a  mourning  ribbon. 

"  '  Her  life,'  said  the  young  man,  '  was  a 
life  of  mourning.  She  gave  me  this,  as  a 
token  of  it,  and  a  sign  that  she  was  dead  to 
every  one  but  you.  If  I  had  been  older,  if  I 
had  seen  her  sooner,  I  might  have  saved 
her  from  you.  But,  she  was  fast  in  the  web 
when  I  first  climbed  the  tree,  and  what  could 
I  do  then  to  break  it ! ' 

"  In  saying  those  words,  he  burst  into  a  fit 
of  sobbing  and  crying :  weakly  at  first,  then 
passionately. 

"  '  Murderer  !  I  climbed  the  tree  on  the 
night  when  you  brought  her  back.  I  heard 
her,  from  the  tree,  speak  of  the  Death-watch 
at  the  door.  I  was  three  times  in  the  tree 
while  you  were  shut  up  with  her,  slowly 
killing  her.  I  saw  her,  from  the  tree,  lie 
dead  upon  her  bed.  I  have  watched  you, 
from  the  tree,  for  proofs  and  traces  of  your 
guilt.  The  manner  of  it,  is  a  mystery  to  me 
yet,  but  I  will  pursue  you  until  you  have 
rendered  up  your  life  to  tiie  hangman.  You 
shall  never,  until  then,  be  rid  of  me.  I 
loved  her  !  I  can  know  no  relenting  towards 
you.  Murderer,  I  loved  her  ! ' 

"  The  youth  was  bare-headed,  his  hat 
having  fluttered  away  in  his  descent  from  the 
tree.  He  moved  towards  the  gate.  He  had 
to  pass — Him — to  get  to  it.  There  was 
breadth  for  two  old-fashioned  carriages 
abreast  j  and  the  youth's  abhorrence,  openly 


expressed  in  every  feature  of  his  face  and 
limb  of  his  body,  and  very  hard  to  bear,  had 
verge  enough  to  keep  itself  ata  distance  in.  He 
(by  which  I  mean  the  other)  had  not  stirred 
hand  or  foot,  since  he  had  stood  still  to  look 
at  the  boy.  He  faced  round,  now,  to  follow 
him  with  his  eyes.  As  the  back  of  the  bare 
light-brown  head  was  turned  to  him,  he  saw 
a.  red  curve  stretch  from  his  hand  to  it. 
He  knew,  before  he  threw  the  bill-hook,, 
where  it  had  alighted — I  say,  had  alighted, 
and  not,  would  alight ;  for,  to  his  clear  percep- 
tion the  thing  was  done  before  he  did  it.  It 
cleft  the  head,  and  it  remained  there,  and  the 
boy  lay  on  his  face. 

"  He  buried  the  body  in  the  night,  at  the 
foot  of  the  tree.  As  soon  as  it  was  light  in 
the  morning,  he  worked  at  turning  up  all  the 
ground  near  the  tree,  and  hacking  and  hew- 
ing at  the  neighbouring  bushes  and  under- 
growth. When  the  laborers  came,  there  was 
nothing  suspicious,  and  nothing  was  sus- 
pected. 

"  But,  he  had,  in  a  moment,  defeated  all  his 
precautions,  and  destroyed  the  triumph  of 
the  scheme  he  had  so  long  concerted,  and  so 
successfully  worked  out.  He  had  got  rid  of 
the  Bride,  and  had  acquired  her  fortune  with- 
out endangering  his  life ;  but  now,  for  a 
death  by  which  he  had  gained  nothing,  he  had 
evermore  to  live  with  a  rope  around  his 
neck. 

"  Beyond  this,  he  was  chained  to  the  house  of 
gloom  and  horror,  which  he  could  not  endure. 
Being  afraid  to  sell  it  or  to  quit  it,  lest  disco- 
very should  be  made,  he  was  forced  to  live  in 
it.  He  hired  two  old  people,  man  and  wife, 
for  his  servants  ;  and  dwelt  in  it,  and  dreaded 
it.  His  great  difficulty,  for  a  long  time,  was 
the  garden.  Whether  he  should  keep  it 
trim,  whether  he  should  suffer  it  to  fall  into 
its  former  state  of  neglect,  what  would  be 
the  least  likely  way  of  attracting  attention 
to  it? 

"  He  took  the  middle  course  of  gardening, 
himself,  in  his  evening  leisure,  and  of  then 
calling  the  old  serving-man  to  help  him ;  but, 
of  never  letting  him  work  there  alone.  And 
he  made  himself  an  arbour  over  against  the 
tree,  where  he  could  sit  and  see  that  it  was 
safe. 

"  As  the  seasons  changed,  and  the  tree 
changed,  his  mind  perceived  dangers  that 
were  always  changing.  In  the  leafy  time,  he 
perceived  that  the  upper  boughs  were  grow- 
ing into  the  form  of  the  young  man — that 
they  made  the  shape  of  him  exactly,  sitting 
in  a  forked  branch  swinging  in  the  wind.  In 
the  time  of  the  falling  leaves,  he  perceived 
that  they  came  down  from  the  tree,  forming 
tell-tale  letters  on  the  path,  or  that  they  had 
a  tendency  to  heap  themselves  into  a  church- 
yard-mound above  the  grave.  In  the  winter, 
when  the  tree  waa  bare,  he  perceived  that  the 
boughs  swung  at  him  the  ghost  of  the  blow  the 
young  man  had  given,  and  that  they  threat- 
ened him  openly.  In  the  spring,  when  the 


Charles  Dickeas.] 


LAZY  TOUE  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPEENTICES.       [October  24,  ,857.3     391 


sap  was  mounting  in  the  trunk,  he  asked 
himself,  were  the  dried-up  particles  of  blood  | 
mounting  with  it :  to  make  out  more  obvi- 
ously this  year  than  last,  the  leaf-screened 
figure  of  the  young  man,  swinging  in  the 
wind  ? 

"However,  he  turned  his  Money  over 
and  over,  and  still  over.  He  was  in  the 
dark  trade,  the  gold-dust  trade,  and  most 
secret  trades  that  yielded  great  returns. 
In  ten  years,  he  had  turned  his  Money 
over,  so  many  times,  that  the  traders  and 
shippers  who  had  dealings  with  him,  abso- 
lutely did  not  lie — for  once — when  they  de- 
clared that  he  had  increased  his  fortune, 
Twelve  Hundred  Per  Cent. 

"He  possessed  his  riches  one  hundred 
years  ago,  when  people  could  be  lost  easily. 
He  had  heard  who  the  youth  was,  from  hear- 
ing of  the  search  that  was  made  after  him  ; 
but,  it  died  away,  and  the  youth  was  for- 
gotten. 

"  The  annual  round  of  changes  in  the  tree  j 
had  been  repeated  ten  times  since  the  night : 
of  the  burial  at  its  foot,  when  there  was  a  i 
great    thunder-storm    over    this    place.     It  I 
broke  at  midnight,  and  raged  until  morning. 
The  first  intelligence  he  heard  from  his  old 
serving-man  that  morning,  was,  that  the  tree 
had  been  struck  by  Lightning. 

"  It  had  been  riven  down  the  stem,  in  a 
very  surprising  manner,  and  the  stem  lay  in 
two  blighted  shafts  :  one  resting  against  the 
house,  and  one  against  a  portion  of  the  old 
red  garden-wall  in  which  its  fall  had  made  a 
gap.  The  fissure  went  down  the  tree  to  a 
little  above  the  earth,  and  there  stopped. 
There  was  great  curiosity  to  see  the  tree, 
and,  with  most  of  his  former  fears  revived, 
he  sat  in  his  arbour — grown  quite  an  old  man 
— watching  the  people  who  came  to  see  it. 

"They  quickly  began  to  come,  in  such 
dangerous  numbers,  that  he  closed  his  garden- 
gate  and  refused  to  admit  any  more.  But, 
there  were  certain  men  of  science  who  tra- 
velled from  a  distance  to  examine  the  tree, 
and,  in  an  evil  hour,  he  let  them  in — Blight 
and  Murrain  on  them,  let  them  in ! 

"  They  wanted  to  dig  up  the  ruin  by  the 
roots,  and  closely  examine  it,  and  the  earth 
about  it.  Never,  while  he  lived  !  They 
offered  money  for  it.  They  !  Men  of  science, 
whom  he  could  have  bought  by  the  gross, 
with  a  scratch  of  his  pen  !  He  showed  them 
the  garden -gate  again,  and  locked  and 
barred  it. 

"  But,  they  were  bent  on  doing  what  they 
wanted  to  do,  and  they  bribed  the  old  serv- 
ing-man— a  thankless  wretch  who  regularly 
complained  when  he  received  his  wages,  of 
being  underpaid— and  they  stole  into  the 
garden  by  night  with  their  lanterns,  picks, 
and  shovels,  and  fell  to  at  the  tree.  He  was 
lying  in  a  turret-room  on  the  other  side  of 
the  house  (the  Bride's  Chamber  had  been 
unoccupied  ever  since),  but  he  soon  dreamed 
of  picks  and  shovels,  and  got  up. 


"He  came  to  an  upper  window  on  that 
side,  whence  he  could  see  their  lanterns,  and 
them,  and  the  loose  earth  in  a  heap  which  he 
had  himself  disturbed  and  put  back,  when  it 
was  last  turned  to  the  air.  It  was  found  ! 
They  had  that  minute  lighted  on  it.  They 
were  all  bending  over  it.  One  of  them  said, 
'  The  skull  is  fractured ;'  and  another,  '  See 
here  the  bones  ;'  and  another,  'See  here  the 
clothes ;'  and  then  the  first  struck  in  again, 
and  said,  '  A  rusty  bill-hook  ! ' 

"He  became  sensible,  next  day,  that  he 
was  already  put  under  a  strict  watch,  and 
that  he  could  go  nowhere  without  being 
followed.  Before  a  week  was  out,  he  was 
taken  and  laid  in  hold.  The  circumstances 
were  gradually  pieced  together  against  him, 
with  a  desperate  malignity,  and  an  ap- 
palling ingenuity.  But,  see  the  justice  of 
men,  and  how  it  was  extended  to  him  !  He 
was  further  accused  of  having  poisoned  that 
girl  in  the  Bride's  Chamber.  He,  who  had 
carefully  and  expressly  avoided  imperilling 
a  hair  of  his  head  for  her,  and  who  had  seen 
her  die  of  her  own  incapacity  ! 

"  There  was  doubt  for  which  of  the  two 
murders  he  should  be  first  tried ;  but,  the 
real  one  was  chosen,  and  he  was  found 
Guilty,  and  cast  for  Death.  Bloodthirsty 
wretches  1  They  would  have  made  him 
Guilty  of  anything,  so  set  they  were  upon 
having  his  life. 

"  His  money  could  do  nothing  to  save  him, 
and  he  was  hanged.  I  am  He,  and  I  was 
hanged  at  Lancaster  Castle  with  my  face  to 
the  wall,  a  hundred  years  ago  !  " 

At  this  terrific  announcement,  Mr.  Good- 
child  tried  to  rise  and  cry  out.  But,  the  two 
fiery  lines  extending  from  the  old  man's  eyes 
to  his  own,  kept  him  down,  and  he  could  not 
utter  a  sound.  His  sense  of  hearing,  however, 
was  acute,  and  he  could  hear  the  clock  strike 
Two.  No  sooner  had  he  heard  the  clock 
strike  Two,  than  he  saw  before  him  Two  old 
men ! 

Two. 

The  eyes  of  each,  connected  with  his 
eyes  by  two  films  of  fire  :  each,  exactly  like 
the  other :  each,  addressing  him  at  precisely 
one  and  the  same  instant :  each,  gnashing  the 
same  teeth  in  the  same  head,  with  the  same 
twitched  nostril  above  them,  and  the  same 
suffused  expression  around  it.  Two  old 
men.  Differing  in  nothing,  equally  distinct 
to  the  sight,  the  copy  no  fainter  than  the 
original,  the  second  as  real  as  the  first. 

"  At  what  time,"  said  the  Two  old  men, 
"  did  you  arrive  at  the  door  below  1 " 

"  At  Six." 

11  And  there  were  Six  old  men  upon  the 
stairs  !  " 

Mr.  Goodchild  having  wiped  the  perspira- 
tion from  his  »brow,  or  tried  to  do  it,  the 
Two  old  men  proceeded  in  one  voice,  and  in 
the  singular  number : 


392       [October  M,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


"  I  had  been  anatomis<?d,  but  had  not  yet 
had  my  skeleton  put  together  and  re-hung 
on  an  iron  hook,  when  it  began  to  be  whis- 
pered that  the  Bride's  Chamber  was  haunted. 
It  was  haunted,  and  I  was  there. 

"  We  were  there.  She  and  I  were  there. 
I,  in  the  chair  upon  the  hearth  ;  she,  a  white 
•wreck  again,  trailing  itself  towards  rue  on  the 
floor.  But,  I  was  the  speaker  no  more.  She 
was  the  sole  speaker  now,  and  the  one  word 
that  she  said  to  me  from  midnight  until 
dawn  was,  '  Live  ! ' 

"  The  youth  was  there,  likewise.  In  the 
tree  outside  the  window.  Coming  and  going 
in  the  moonlight,  as  the  tree  bent  and  gave. 
He  has,  ever  since,  been  there  ;  peeping  in 
at  me  in  my  torment ;  revealing  to  ine  by 
snatches,  in  the  pale  lights  and  slatey 
shadows  where  he  comes  and  goes,  bare- 
headed— a  bill-hook,  standing  edgewise  in  his 
hair. 

"  In  the  Bride's  Chamber,  every  night  from 
midnight  until  dawn — one  month  in  the  year 
cxcepted,  as  I  am  going  to  tell  you — he  hides 
in  the  tree,  and  she  comes  towards  me  on  the 
floor  ;  always  approaching ;  never  coming 
nearer ;  always  visible  as  if  by  moonlight, 
whether  the  moon  shines  or  no ;  always 
saying,  from  midnight  until  dawn,  her  one 
word, '  Live  ! ' 

"  But,  in  the  month  wherein  I  was  forced 
out  of  this  life — this  present  month  of  thirty 
days — the  Bride's  Chamber  is  empty  and 
quiet.  Not  so  my  old  dungeon.  Not  so  the 
rooms  where  I  was  restless  and  afraid,  ten 
years.  Both  are  fitfully  haunted  then.  At 
One  in  the  morning,  I  am  what  you  saw  me 
•when  the  clock  struck  that  hour — One  old 
man.  At  Two  in  the  moi'ning,  I  am  Two  old 
men.  At  Three,  I  am  Three.  By  Twelve  at 
noon,  I  am  Twelve  old  men,  One  for  every 
hundred  per  cent  of  old  gain.  Every  one  of 
the  Twelve,  with  Twelve  times  my  old  power 
of  suffering  and  agony.  From  that  hour 
until  Twelve  at  night,  I,  Twelve  old  men  in 
anguish  and  fearful  foreboding,  wait  for  the 
coming  of  the  executioner.  At  Twelve  at 
night,  I,  Twelve  old  men  turned  off,  swing 
invisible  outside  Lancaster  Castle,  with 
Twelve  faces  to  the  wall ! 

"When  the  Bride's  Chamber  was  first 
haunted,  it  was  known  to  me  that  this 
punishment  would  never  cease,  until  I  could 
make  its  nature,  and  my  story,  known  to  two 
living  men  together.  I  waited  for  the  coming 
of  two  living  men  together  into  the  Bride's 
Chamber,  years  upon  years.  It  was  infused 
into  my  knowledge  (of  the  means  I  am  igno- 
rant) that  if  two  living  men,  with  their  eyes 
open,  could  be  in  the  Bride's  Chamber  at 
One  in  the  morning,  they  would  see  me 
sitting  in  my  chair. 

"  At  length,  the  whispers  that  the  room 
was  spiritually  troubled,  brought  two  men  to 
try  the  adventure.  I  was*  scarcely  struck 
upon  the  hearth  at  midnight  (I  come  there 
as  if  the  Lightning  blasted  me  into  being) 


when  I  heard  them  ascending  the  stairs. 
Next,  I  saw  them  enter.  One  of  them  was  a 
jold,  gay,  active  man,  in  the  prime  of  life, 
some  five  and  forty  years  of  age  ;  the  other, 
a  dozen  years  younger.  They  brought  pro- 
visions with  them  in  a  basket,  and  bottles. 
A  young  woman  accompanied  them,  with 
wood  and  coals  for  the  lighting  of  the  fire. 
When  she  had  lighted  it,  the  bold,  gay,  active 
man  accompanied  her  along  the  gallery  out- 
side the  room,  to  see  her  safely  down  the 
staircase,  and  came  back  laughing. 

"  He  locked  the  door,  examined  the  cham- 
ber, put  out  the  contents  of  the  basket  on 
the  table  before  the  fire — little  recking  of 
me,  in  my  appointed  station  on  the  hearth, 
close  to  him — and  filled  the  glasses,  and 
ate  and  drank.  His  companion  did  the 
same,  and  was  as  cheerful  and  confident  as 
be  :  though  he  was  the  leader.  When  they 
had  supped,  they  laid  pistols  on  the  table, 
turned  to  the  fire,  and  began  to  smoke  their 
pipes  of  foreign  make. 

"  They  had  travelled  together,  and  had  been 
much  together,  and  had  an  abundance  of 
subjects  in  common.  In  the  midst  of  their 
talking  and  laughing,  the  younger  man 
made  a  reference  to  the  leader's  being 
always  ready  for  any  adventure ;  that  one, 
or  any  other.  He  replied  in  these  words  : 

" '  Not  quite  so,  Dick  ;  if  I  am  afraid  of 
nothing  else,  I  am  afraid  of  myself.' 

"  His  companion  seeming  to  grow  a  little 
dull,  asked  him,  in  what  sense  1  How  1 

" '  Why,  thus,'  he  returned.  '  Here  is  a 
Ghost  to  be  disproved.  Well !  I  cannot, 
answer  for  what  my  fancy  might  do  if  I 
were  alone  here,  or  what  tricks  my  senses 
might  play  with  me  if  they  had  me  to 
themselves.  But,  in  company  with  another 
man,  and  especially  with  you,  Dick,  I  would 
consent  to  outface  all  the  Ghosts  that  were 
ever  told  of  in  the  universe.' 

"'I  had  not  the  vanity  to  suppose  that  I 
was  of  so  much  importance  to-night/  said  the 
other. 

"  'Of  so  much,'  rejoined  the  leader,  more 
seriously  than  he  had  spoken  yet,  '  that  I 
would,  for  the  reason  I  have  given,  on  no 
account  have  undertaken  to  pass  the  night 
here  alone.' 

"It  was  within  a  few  minutes  of  One. 
The  head  of  the  younger  man  had  drooped 
when  he  made  his  last  remark,  and  it 
drooped  lower  now. 

" '  Keep  awake,  Dick  ! '  said  the  leader, 
gaily.  '  The  small  hours  are  the  worst.' 

"  He  tried,  but  his  head  drooped  again. 

" '  Dick  ! '  urged  the  leader.  '  Keep 
awake  ! ' 

"'I  can't,'  he  indistinctly  muttered.  'I 
don't  know  what  strange  influence  is  stealing 
over  me.  I  can't.' 

"His  companion  looked  at  him  with  a 
sudden  horror,  and  I,  in  my  different  way, 
felt  a  new  horror  also  ;  for,  it  was  on  the 
stroke  of  One,  and  I  felt  that  the  second 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CALCUTTA. 


[October  24, 1357.1       393 


watcher  was  yielding  to  me,  and  that  the 
curse  was  upon  me  that  I  must  send  him  to 
sleep. 

"'Get  up  and  walk,  Dick!'  cried  the 
leader.  « Try  !  ' 

"  It  was  in  vain  to  go  behind  the  slum- 
berer's  chair  aud  shake  him.  One  o'clock 
sounded,  and  I  was  present  to  the  elder  man, 
and  he  stood  transfixed  before  me. 

"  To  him  alone,  I  was  obliged  to  relate  my 
story,  without  hope  of  benefit.  To  him  alone, 
I  was  an  awful  phantom  making  a  quite 
useless  confession.  I  foresee  it  will  ever  be 
the  same.  The  two  living  men  together  will 
never  come  to  release  me.  When  I  appear, 
the  senses  of  one  of  the  two  will  be  locked 
in  sleep  ;  he  will  neither  see  nor  hear  me  ;  my 
communication  will  ever  be  made  to  a  solitary 
listener,  and  will  ever  be  unserviceable.  Woe  ! 
Woe!  Woe!" 

As  the  Two  old  men,  with  these  words, 
wrung  their  hands,  it  shot  into  Mr.  Good- 
child's  mind  that  he  was  in  the  terrible  situ- 
ation of  being  virtually  alone  with  the 
spectre,  and  that  Mr.  Idle's  immoveability 
was  explained  by  his  having  been  charmed 
asleep  at  One  o'clock.  In  the  terror  of  this 
sudden  discovery  which  produced  an  inde- 
scribable dread,  he  struggled  so  hard  to  get 
free  from  the  four  fiery  threads,  that  he 
snapped  them,  after  he  had  pulled  them  out  to 
a  great  width.  Being  then  out  of  bonds,  he 
caught  up  Mr.  Idle  from  the  sofa  and  rushed 
down  stairs  with  him. 

"What  are  you  about,  Francis?"  demanded 
Mr.  Idle.  "  My  bedroom  is  not  down  here. 
What  the  deuce  are  you  carrying  me  at  all 
for  ?  I  can  walk  with  a  stick  now.  I  don't 
want  to  be  carried.  Put  me  down." 

Mr.  Goodchild  put  him  down  in  the  old 
hall,  and  looked  about  him  wildly. 

"  What  are  you  doing  ?  Idiotically  plung- 
ing at  your  own  sex,  and  rescuing  them  or 
perishing  in  the  attempt  ? "  asked  Mr.  Idle, 
in  a  highly  petulant  state. 

"  The  One  old  man  !  "  cried  Mr.  Goodchild, 
distractedly, — "  and  the  Two  old  men  !" 

Mr.  Idle  deigned  no  other  reply  than  "  The 
One  old  woman,  I  think  you  mean,"  as  he 
began  hobbling  his  way  back  up  the  stair- 
case, with  the  assistance  of  its  broad  ba- 
lustrade. 

"  I  assure  you,  Tom,"  began  Mr.  Goodchild, 
attending  at  his  side,  "  that  since  you  fell 
asleep " 

"  Come,  I  like  that !  "  said  Thomas  Idle, 
"  I  haven't  closed  an  eye  !  " 

With  the  peculiar  sensitiveness  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  disgraceful  action  of  going  to 
sleep  out  of  bed,  which  is  the  lot  of  all  man- 
kind, Mr.  Idle  persisted  in  this  declaration. 
The  same  peculiar  sensitiveness  impelled 
Mr.  Goodchild,  on  being  taxed  with  the  same 
crime,  to  repudiate  it  with  honourable  re- 
sentment. The  settlement  of  the  question  of 
The  One  old  man  and  The  Two  old  men  was 


thus  presently  complicated,  and  soon  made 
quite  impracticable.  Mr.  Idle  said  it  was  all 
Bride-cake,  and  fragments,  newly  arranged,  of 
things  seen  and  thought  about  in  the  day. 
Mr.  Goodchild  said  how  could  that  be,  when 
he  hadn't  been  asleep,  and  what  right 
could  Mr.  Idle  have  to  say  so,  who  had 
been  asleep  1  Mr.  Idle  said  he  had  never 
been  asleep,  and  never  did  go  to  sleep, 
and  that  Mr.  Goodchild,  as  a  general  rule, 
was  always  asleep.  They  consequently  parted 
for  the  rest  of  the  night,  at  their  bedroom 
doors,  a  little  ruffled.  Mr.  Goodchild's  last 
words  were,  that  he  had  had,  in  that  real  and 
tangible  old  sitting-room  of  that  real  and 
tangible  old  Inn  (he  supposed  Mr.  Idle 
denied  its  existence  1),  every  sensation  and 
experience,  the  present  record  of  which  is 
now  within  a  line  or  two  of  completion  ;  and 
that  he  would  write  it  out  and  print  it  every 
word.  Mr.  Idle  returned  that  he  might  if 
he  liked  —  and  he  did  like,  and  has  now- 
done  it. 


CALCUTTA. 


A  HUNDRED  years  ago  by  the  almanac, 
there  stood — on  the  left  bank  of  the  river 
Hooghly,  ninety  miles  from  its  entrance  into 
the  Bay  of  Bengal — a  fort,  a  ditch,  a  palace, 
and  a  stifling  crowd  of  Hindoo  huts.  To-day 
the  fort,  the  ditch,  the  palace,  still  remain, 
and  so,  too,  the  mud  dwellings,  more  nume- 
rous, but  no  cleaner,  than  of  old.  Neverthe- 
less, the  change  has  been  marked — that  is  to 
say,  for  an  eastern  country,  though  to  western 
minds,  which  have  contemplated  the  progress 
of  Australian  colonies,  of  English  cities,  and 
of  American  states,  the  hundred  years  might 
as  well  have  been  ten  or  a  dozen. 

Calcutta — or,  as  it  is  boastfully  designated, 
the  City  of  Palaces — is,  a  huge  compound  of 
the  grand,  the  filthy,  the  inconvenient,  and  the 
luxurious.  It  is  a  whitened  hybrid  of  the 
East  and  the  West ;  of  barbarism  and  civilisa- 
tion. It  unites  within  it  some  of  the  best 
and  worst  characteristics  of  London,  Paris, 
Cairo,  and  of  a  certain  Western  Babylon, 
which  I  choose  to  designate  Timbuctoo.  The 
Black  Hole,  once  famed  for  its  atrocities, 
is  no  more.  Its  dingy  stones  are  levelled 
with  the  ground ;  but  we  need  not  wander 
far  in  the  metropolis  of  British  India,  to 
find  many  other  Black  Holes,  not  quite  so 
small,  perhaps,  nor  so  very  notorious,  though, 
nearly  as  noxious,  and  wherein  things  as  foul 
are  perpetrated.  The  Ditch  of  eighteen 
hundred  and  fifty-seven,  is  doubtless  a  far 
more  cleanly  sewer  than  that  which  existed 
in  seventeen  hundred  and  fifty-seven  ;  but 
there  is  a  huge  social  ditch  encircling  this 
City  of  Palaces, — fouler,  more  replete  with 
deleterious  and  hurtful  exhalations,  than  any 
physical  swamp  in  any  Timbuctoo,  African 
or  European. 

Steam  up  the  Hooghly  in  the  Eiver  Bird, 
or  the  Dwarkanoutb,  or  the  Megna  and  her 


394        [October  24, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Flat,  smd  you  picture  yourself  being  wafted 
along  the  "bosom  of  Old  Father  Thames. 
Forests  of  tall,  tapering  masts ;  swarma  of 
row-boats  ;  piles  of  stately  warehouses ; 
scores  of  busy  steamboats  waft  you  in  ima- 
gination to  London.  Stroll  into  the  gay  jewel- 
lers' shops,  the  magnificent  refreshment-rooms, 
the  attractive  modistes'  show-rooms,  and 
you  suddenly  find  yourself  amidst  the  gilt, 
the  marble,  the  mirrors,  the  pictures,  the 
vases,  of  the  boulevards  of  Paris.  Squeeze 
yourself  into  one  of  the  perambulating  coffins 
called  palanquins,  and  suffer  yourself  to  be 
borne  and  jostled  through  the  Burra  Bazaar, 
"  Copitollah,"  or,  "Raneemoody  Gulley,"  and 
lo  !  you  feel  that  Cairo  lives,  and  moves,  and 
has  its  being  about  you.  In  the  most  fashion- 
able quarter  of  the  city — Chowringhee,  the 
Belgravia  of  Calcutta — you  find  African 
huts,  and  Caireen  bazaars,  jostling  London 
mansions,  and  Parisian  h6tels.  England 
supplies  this  metropolis  of  the  East  with 
coal,  and  steam ;  with  shipping,  and  ware- 
houses. France  finds  the  dim  street-lamps, 
the  aqueduct,  the  luxury,  the  gaiety.  Cairo 
contributes  the  noise,  and  bustle,  and  dirt. 
Timbuctoo  waters  the  highways  and  byways 
with  the  festering  stream  of  the  Hooghly, 
squirted,  dark  and  loathsome,  from  pigs' 
skins  slung  across  human  backs. 

This  blending  of  nationalities  may  be 
found  in  the  institutions  of  the  land,  not 
less  than  in  its  edifices,  and  in  its  daily  life. 
Europe  imparts  vitality  to  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  the  press,  the  supreme  court. 
Cairo  tinctures,  with  its  effete  despotism,  the 
proceedings  of  the  municipal  commissioners, 
and  the  legislative  council.  Commence  a 
correspondence  with  the  supreme  government, 
and  you  find  yourself  in  close  contact  with  red 
tape,  reeking  with  the  caterpillar  dye  of 
the  Timbuctoo  Downing  Street.  Institute 
proceedings  in  the  Company's  Sudder  Court, 
and  behold  it  presided  over  by  judges  possess- 
ing the  sagacity,  the  soundness,  the  integrity, 
the  industry,  ot'Timbuctoo  lawyers.  Examine 
the  Company's  colleges,  and  you  find  their 
chairs  filled  by  professors,  and  the  depart- 
ment presided  over  by  men  who  have  taken 
exceedingly  high  honours  at  Timbuctoo  ;  the 
tree  of  knowledge  therein  cultivated,  has 
been  transplanted  from  the  Great  Desert  of 
Sahara  ;  the  learning,  the  order,  the  wisdom, 
the  utility,  and,  above  all,  the  cost,  are 
deeply  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Timbuc- 
too. 

If  we  could  weed  out  the  Cairo  and  Tim- 
buctoo thorns  and  thistles,  Calcutta  might 
become  a  garden  of  pretty  palaces.  A  good 
fire  on  a  very  windy  day,  might  answer  the 
purpose  in  some  respects.  But  we  must,  for 
our  present  purpose,  take  it  and  describe  it  as 
existing  in  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-seven. 

After  a  long  voyage  full  of  discomfort,  and 
some  ninety  miles  of  dull,  uninteresting  river 
navigation,  the  traveller  greets  every  novelty 


with  the  warmest  admiration.  Shady  creeks 
become  picturesque  bays.  A  clump  of 
stunted  trees  are  converted  into  a  magni- 
ficent tope  or  grove.  A  knot  of  mud  huts 
are  looked  upon  as  model  villages,  singularly 
picturesque.  A  bungalow  of  larger  dimen- 
sions and  more  than  ordinary  refulgent  green 
and  white,  becomes  a  palace.  The  Bishop's 
College,  with  ample  lawns  and  pretty  landing 
place  ;  the  Botanical  Gardens,  with  towering 
trees  and  shady  walks ;  and  then  the  Mi- 
daun — the  Hyde  Park  of  Calcutta — bounded 
on  one  side  by  the  river  full  of  shipping,  and 
on  the  others  by  lofty  mansions  and  gigantic 
palms — all  these  cannot  but  strike  the  new 
comer  with  some  admiration.  He  must  be, 
indeed,  most  difficult  to  please,  who  can  look 
on  this,  and  remain  indifferent  to  it. 

Take  your  way  along  the  well-watered 
carriage-drive  which  skirts  the  Midaun,  on 
any  fair  November  evening,  and  you  will  find 
the  City  of  Palaces  on  horseback,  lolling 
in  carriages,  or  lounging  in  gigs,  enjoying 
the  cool,  crisp  air  after  the  hot  glare  of  a 
clear  bright  day.  One  might  fancy  it  Eotten 
Eow — so  many  and  gay  are  the  equipages — 
were  it  not  for  the  admixture  of  races.  The 
haughty  civilian,  stiff  with  the  pride  of 
the  covenanted  service — the  white  man's  high 
caste — is  jostled  by  the  haughtier  Baboo, 
reclining  on  velvet  cushions,  and  glistening 
with  gold  and  jewellery.  The  princely  mer- 
chant is  followed  by  the  country-born  clerk 
in  his  humble  gig.  The  general  scowls  upon 
the  wealthy  English  shopkeeper,  who  dashes 
past  his  militai-y  dignity,  only  to  sneer  at  the 
rich  Armenian  dealer  driving  his  grey  Arabs 
at  the  top  of  their  speed  to  the  terror  and 
anger  of  the  "  covenanted "  ladies.  In  ten 
minutes  you  may  behold  on  the  Calcutta 
Midaun  more  gaiety,  more  pride  of  place, 
more  intolerant  barbarism,  than  in  any  dozen 
corsos  and  boulevards,  or  in  any  score  of 
Timbuctoos. 

Had  the  palatial  city  been  emptied  out 
like  a  sack,  it  could  scarcely  have  worn  a 
more  quiet  and  forsaken  air  than  it  does  at 
the  sultry  hour  of  noonday  in  its  most  fash- 
ionable quarters,  say  on  any  day  in  April. 
It  might,  for  any  visible  signs  of  life  about 
Chowringhee,  be  the  city  we  read  of  in 
the  Arabian  Nights ;  every  inhabitant  of 
which  was  changed  into  stone.  The  granite 
masses  must  have  been  removed  by  the 
municipal  commissioners;  for,  in  street,  or 
road,  or  gateway,  there  is  nothing  but 
blinding  sunshine  and  scorching,  choking 
dust.  The  crows  and  hawks,  though  accus- 
tomed to  warmish  weather,  and  seldom 
very  particular  in  their  habits,  have  retired 
for  the  day ;  dead-beaten  by  the  sultry  oppres- 
sion of  the  hour.  One,  only  one  huge-billed 
adjutant,  remains  to  brave  the  terrible  heat : 
perched  aloft  on  the  stone  dome  of  the  Go- 
vernor-General's palace,  it  stands  erect,  stiff, 
and  unyielding,  as  if  instead  of  an  adjutant, 
the  monster  bird  had  been  a  common  soldier, 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CALCUTTA. 


[October  24, 1357.]       395 


ordered  to  die  at  his  post,  and  inflexibly 
determined  to  do  so. 

Sleep  —  hot  and  exhaustive  —  has  set  its 
seal  upon  the  major  part  of  the  City  of 
Palaces.  It  might  be  midnight,  with  the  sun 
shining  down  upon  the  hushed  streets  instead 
of  the  moon,  so  still  is  everything.  Timbuctoo 
dozes  in  the  Presidency  and  Engineering  Col- 
leges. Cairo  sleeps  soundly  in  the  Bazaar  and 
the  Baboo's  court-yard.  Paris  and  Timbuc- 
too slumber  heavily  in  the  darkened  rooms, 
and  shaded  vestibules  of  Park  Street  and 
Theatre  Road.  From  the  Member  of  Council 
on  his  downy  couch,  to  the  swarthy  Syce 
in  the  stable  ;  from  the  pallid  mother  and  her 
infant  shut  in  from  the  light  of  day,  to  the 
stalwart  Durwahu  at  the  gate ;  all  are 
buried  in  mid-day  sleep.  The  unfinished 
letter  on  the  table,  the  toys  upon  the  floor, 
the  open  novel  on  the  couch,  the  empty 
claret  case,  the  neglected  barrel  near  the 
Durwahu's  lodge — whereon  those  spruce 
guardians  of  the  spot  are  wont  for  ten  hours 
in  the  twelve  to  trim  their  sable  whiskers, 
and  twirl  their  gaunt  moustaches — these 
and  other  things  tell  how  completely  the 
temperature  of  noonday  in  the  hot  season 
of  Calcutta  overpowers  the  faculties  of  man- 
kind. 

You  are  still  gazing  upon  the  closed  win- 
dows, the  shaded  doors,  and  wondering  how 
a  fly  or  a  ray  of  daylight  could  steal  into  one 
of  those  heat-barricaded  mansions,  when  you 
hear  a  rumbling  noise  in  the  distance,  pro- 
ceeding from  the  north-west.  It  may  be 
thunder ;  it  may  be  a  salute  of  heavy  artil- 
lery ;  it  may  be  the  explosion  of  some 
powder-magazine,  or  steam-boiler  ;  for,  being 
a  Griffin,  you  know  nothing  of  Nor'-westers 
during  the  hot  season,  nothing  of  their  fury 
and  their  destructiveness.  Whilst  you  are 
turning  the  cause  over  and  over  in  your 
mind,  and  in  less  time  than  I  can  describe 
it,  the  sky  becomes  overcast,  the  distant 
rumbling  noise  approaches,  and  sounds  rush 
down  upon  you  like  a  thousand  wagons 
booming  and  clattering  over  an  iron  bridge. 
The  whirlwind  is  upon  you :  you  stagger  I 
against  a  wall  or  cling  for  safety  to  an  iron 
railing,  and  find  yourself  shrouded  in  a  vast 
winding-sheet  of  brick-red  dust.  The  dust- 
cloud  rises  like  a  mighty  sea  surging  over 
breakers ;  it  covers  and  hides  everything. 
Looking  across  the  Midaun,  from  the  corner 
of  Chowringhee,  you  see  nothing  of  the 
cathedral,  save  the  small  cross  on  its  topmost 
pinnacle,  looking  like  a  stone  star  amidst 
the  blood-red  cloud  and  the  clear  sky  above. 
The  Governor-General's  palace  is  also  en- 
veloped in  one  mighty  rolling  dust-storm 
which  has  swallowed  all  its  grandeur  and  its 
beauty  save  the  round  dome  on  its  summit ; 
which  is  still  visible  like  a  little  globe  floating 
on  a  sea  of  tempest.  The  bold  adjutant 
struggles  with  flapping  wings  and  out- 
stretched neck,  to  keep  his  footing  against 
the  raging  whirlwind ;  but  in  vain.  The 


wagons  dash  on  over  the  iron  bridge  more 
madly  than  ever  ;  the  sky  assumes  an  inky 
darkness ;  the  dust-storm  is  victor  over 
everything  in  its  way ;  the  daring  bird  strug- 
gling and  screaming  is  swept  from  his  post, 
and  the  red  cloud  of  dust-waves  roll  higher 
and  wilder.  Lofty  trees  groan  and  give  up 
the  ghost,  measuring  their  tall  lengths  on 
field  and  road.  Verandahs  are  peeled  away 
from  noble  mansions,  as  the  sail  is  split 
and  torn  from  the  yard.  Huts  are  caught 
up,  shot  high  in  the  air,  and  deposited  in 
tanks,  in  gardens,  in  glass-houses,  and  aboard 
ships.  Houses  are  unroofed  with  the  ease 
and  completeness  that  a  thirsty  negro  peels 
an  orange.  Cattle  are  jostled  and  swept 
off  their  legs  into  the  Hooghly.  Ships  are 
torn  from  their  moorings,  whirled  round  like 
humming-tops  and  swept  away.  Fleets  of 
country  trading-boats  are  crushed,  jammed, 
splintered,  and  rendered  helpless ;  and  such 
of  them  as  do  not  sink  at  the  moment  are 
huddled  into  ruined  masses,  and  thus  driven, 
spinning  and  whirling,  in  mad  imitation  of 
their  bigger  brethren  far  down  the  foaming 
river,  only  to  find  destruction  amidst  the 
myriad  ships  groaning  at  their  anchors,  or 
drifting  out  towards  the  sea. 

Let  us  step  in  and  see  what  is  doing 
at  one  or  two  of  the  City  of  Palaces 
colleges.  These  national  institutions  for 
spending  money  under  false  pretences,  are 
worth  a  passing  glance ;  inasmuch  as  they 
are  the  means  of  filling  several  hundreds  of 
pages  of  letterpress,  annually,  in  the  shape  of 
lieports  on  Palatial  Education.  The  halls 
and  rooms  are  vast  enough ;  the  punkahs 
swing  lazily  enough  ;  the  professors — with 
one  or  two  exceptions — do  little  enough  ;  the 
classes  are  select,  enough  ;  and  truly  the  cost 
is  heavy  enough,  to  satisfy  the  most  highly- 
gifted  of  the  covenanted.  Consequently,  these 
expensive  gardens  for  cultivating  the  Great 
Sahara  tree  of  knowledge,  are  eminently  suc- 
cessful— in  their  way. 

It  is  true  there  are  one  or  two  (certainly 
not  more)  gentlemen  of  distinguished  ability 
and  character  filling  the  chairs,  but  the  bulk 
of  the  Seated  are  worthy  of  the  covenanted 
head  of  the  department  ;  who,  not  long 
since,  maintained  that  chemistry  is  a  branch 
of  electricity !  The  salaries  of  the  pro- 
fessors and  principals  range  between  twelve 
hundred  pounds  and  four  hundred  pounds 
per  annum;  the  highest  rate  securiug  the 
least  amount  of  labour,  namely,  four  hours 
a-week  :  the  average  toil  for  each  professor 
being  eight  hours  weekly.  The  ordinary 
instruction  imparted,  is,  by  means  of  read- 
ing aloud,  and  a  few  questions  asked  by  the 
chair  upon  the  subject  in  hand.  Sometimes 
one  or  two  sentences  may  be  given  the 
youths  of  the  class ;  who  write  their  con- 
struction of  them  on  slips  of  paper.  A  pro- 
fessor of  literature  was  recently  desired  by 
the  head  of  the  department  who  has  such, 
original  ideas  concerning  chemistry,  to  under- 


396      [October  24.  18870 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


take  the  geological  class,  in  addition  to  his 
own.  The  gentleman  pleaded  his  utter 
ignorance  of  geology,  but  was  assured  that 
his  non-acquaintance  with  the  science  did  not 
in  the  least  disqualify  him  in  the  eyes  of  the 
department :  he  could  very  easily  cram,  and 
read  lectures  from  books,  of  which  there 
were  plenty  in  the  library.  All  this  ac- 
counts for  the  immense  proficiency  attained 
by  the  pupils  who  go  to  school  in  the  City  of 
Palaces. 

The  General  Post-Office,  the  Post-Office 
for  all  Eastern,  Central  and  Northern  India 
— with  branch  offices  two  thousand  miles 
distant,  at  the  foot  of  the  snowy  Himalayas, 
in  the  remotest  corner  of  cold  Assam,  on 
the  borders  of  Cabal,  next  door  to  the  Vale 
of  Cashmere,  round  the  corner  of  the  B-AJ 
of  Bengal,  amidst  the  golden  pagodas  of 
Burmah, — is,  indeed,  a  remarkable  establish- 
ment :  an  institution  worthy  of  our  closest 
attention !  There  it  stands,  opposite  to 
Metcalf  Hall,  close  to  the  muddy  banks  of 
the  Hooghly.  Round  the  old  rickety  pair 
of  gates,  are  a  number  of  Indo-Hibernian 
jaunting-cars,  very  dirty,  very  old,  and  very 
crowded  with  dirty  old  Arabs,  or  Hindoos, 
or  Assamese.  It  is  not  easy  to  tell  who 
they  are,  bedecked  with  shabby  many- 
coloured  robes  of  green,  blue,  red,  and 
yellow.  These  are  the  Calcutta  local  post- 
men. Within  the  neglected  gates  you 
gaze  about  the  narrow  crowded  court-yard 
searching  for  the  Lahore  Mail,  or  the  Express 
for  the  Himalayas.  Is  it  a  light  camel-cart, 
an  elephant-coach,  or  a  buffalo  spring- 
wagon  1  Nothing  of  the  kind  is  to  be  seen 
within  these  queer  pent-up  premises.  You 
perceive  nothing  but  a  crowd  of  dirty  carts, 
some  light  and  very  weak  vans,  and  no  end 
of  broken  tin  cases  and  wooden  boxes,  scat- 
tered about  in  all  directions. 

Along  one  side  and  end  of  the  yard  are 
a  series  of  disjointed  tiled  buildings ;  low 
decent-looking  sheds  with  small  doors  and 
wooden-barred  windows.  No  two  of  them 
are  alike.  They  appear  to  have  been  built 
by  masons  of  a  multiplicity  of  tastes;  and, 
were  it  not  for  a  number  of  apertures  for 
Letters  stamped  and  unstamped,  and  News- 
papers for  Europe  in  various  odd  corners  of 
the  yard  under  small  verandahs  and  be- 
hind dwarf-windows,  no  one  could  for  a 
moment  imagine  that  any  postal  transactions 
were  carried  on  within  the  premises.  In 
one  small,  dark  room  a  Bengalee  clerk  is 
busily  occupied  at  a  rickety  table.  The  floor 
is  scattered  in  every  part  with  parcels  enve- 
loped in  yellow  wax-cloth ;  and,  amongst 
them  seated  on  their  haunches,  are  a  brace  of 
half-clad  coolies,  melting,  on  the  parcels,  num- 
berless small  lumps  of  dirty  sealing-wax — 
very  leisurely,  as  though  the  post  was  not 
going  out  before  the  week  after  next.  This 
is  the  despatching  room.  Within  the  unlet- 
tered grasp  of  those  two  coolies,  is  placed 
the  correspondence  of  Europe,  Africa,  and 


America,  with  the  north-west  of  India  and 
the  Punjaub.  You  inquire  of  the  Hindoo 
scribe  at  the  small  table,  where  the  Overland 
Letter-box  is  1  He  has  grown  grey  in  postal 
duties,  yet  pleads  utter  ignorance  of  any 
such  receptacle.  He  does  not  even  know  what 
office  is  next  to  his  own  small,  dark  room  :  so 
small  is  his  own  dark  intellect.  All  he  knows^ 
is,  that  the  largest  bundle  of  yellow,  but- 
toned over  with  lumps  of  wax,  is  for  Agra  ; 
that  the  long  thin  parcel  is  for  Lucknow ; 
and  that  the  Punjaub  claims  the  three  dumpy 
packets. 

In  a  little  narrow  verandah,  before  a  series 
of  barred  apertures,  sits  a  turbaued  youth  at 
a  desk,  retailing  postage-stamps,  from  the 
value  of  three  farthings  to  one  shilling.  In 
no  part  of  the  world  are  letters  conveyed 
more  cheaply  than  in  British  India.  A  half- 
anna,  or  three  farthing  postage-stamp,  will 
frank  a  letter  of  the  proper  weight,  from  the 
northernmost  post-office  in  the  Punjaub  to 
the  most  southern  village  of  Cape  Comorin. 
How  many  hundreds  of  miles  such  an  epistle 
would  have  to  travel,  the  reader  may  soon 
satisfy  himself  by  reference  to  a  map  of  Asia. 
And,  over  all  this  distance,  from  north  to  south, 
the  despatches,  letters,  chits,  hoondies,  and 
other  documents  making  up  an  Indian  letter- 
bag,  or  "  dauk-parcel,"  are  conveyed,  not  by 
fleet  horses,  or  camels,  not  in  coaches,  mail- 
carts,  or  vans.  The  yellow,  wax-cloth  bun- 
dles, in  the  rainy  season  smeared  all  over 
with  resinous  matter,  are  sluug  at  the  oppo- 
site ends  of  a  bamboo  or  other  elastic  stick, 
and  are  so  carried  across  the  shoulders  by 
the  Dauk-runners,  or  letter-carriers,  who 
travel  at  an  easy  run  for  seven  or  eight 
miles,  when  they  pass  the  load  to  the  next 
Runner  in  waiting  for  it.  In  this  way  the 
dauk-coolies  convey  the  Indian  correspond- 
ence across  lofty  mountains,  sandy  plains, 
fierce  rivers,  deep  ravines,  and  dense  jungles 
and  swamps  ;  by  day  and  by  night,  in  fair 
weather  or  foul.  The  Dauk  never  rests ;  yet 
it  rarely  has  happened  that  any  losses  have 
occurred. 

Our  Calcutta  Post-Office  comprises  one  or 
two  long  low  offices  in  which  the  accounts 
are  kept  and  the  correspondence  is  carried 
on.  These  offices  form  a  strange  collec- 
tion of  little  square  courts  with  a  few 
shrubs  and  a  little  grass  growing  in  them, 
each  surrounded  by  its  own  particular  dusty 
verandahs,  heaped  up  with  wooden  boxes, 
old  chairs,  cart-axles,  wagon  wheels,  and, 
in  short,  anything  belonging  to  a  broker's 
shop  or  a  furniture  store.  In  one  room,  a 
knot  of  Bengalees  are  squatting  on  the  ground, 
groping  amidst  a  few  thousands  of  "dead 
letters,"  without  any  perceptible  object  in 
view.  In  a  cool  secluded  room,  at  the 
dusky  extremity  of  the  broker's  verandah, 
there  is  a  group  of  Dauk  officials  listlessly 
watching  the  opening  of  a  packet  just  hi 
from  the  north-west.  The  portly  Baboo 
at  their  head,  with  his  eyes  half-closed, 


Charles  DlcKcns.J 


THE  WAND  OF  LIGHT. 


[October  24, 1357.]       397 


and  nodding  on  his  post,  fanned  by  a  little 
boy,  is  not  a  bad  illustration  of  the  energy 
pervading  most  of  the  public  departments  of 
Calcutta. 

Leaving  the  Post-Office,  we  pass  along  the 
Strand,  busy  scene  of  import  and  export 
trade  :  the  Custom-house  is  on  our  right,  the 
river  and  the  shipping  are  on  our  left.  Tim- 
buctoo  asserts  its  savage  sway  along  our  road. 
Merchandise  of  every  description  ;  manufac- 
tures from  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire  ;  beer, 
wine,  porcelain,  pianofortes,  clocks,  glass- 
ware, jewellery  ;  all  are  brought  to  this  Lon- 
don of  the  East,  in  endless  profusion.  From 
ship  to  boat,  from  boat  to  shore,  the  precious 
goods  are  sent ;  tumbled  over  broken  anchors, 
stone  ballast,  and  old  chain  cables,  the  cases, 
boxes,  and  barrels  are  piled  in  bewildering 
confusion,  and  remain  on  the  muddy  beach 
until  the  coolies,  who  are  enjoying  their 
noon-day  slumber  upon  a  consignment  of 
Lyons'  silks  and  Geneva  watches,  feel  inclined 
to  bundle  them  into  the  bullock-carts  in 
waiting. 

In  like  manner,  chests  of  Indigo,  bales  of 
jute,  bags  of  sugar,  bundles  of  hides,  lie  scat- 
tered on  the  open  beach,  anywhere  and  any- 
how, amidst  barrels  of  American  tar,  and 
Scotch  ale,  and  Spanish  wine.  A  single  shed 
has  been  recently  erected  for  the  reception  of 
goods,  large  enough  for  the  unloading  of  one 
vessel  ;  the  remainder  of  the  shipping  may 
fling  their  cargoes  broad-cast  on  the  filthy 
banks  of  the  Hooghly  ;  and,  when  the 
dark  nor-wester  and  the  October  squalls 
come  down  upon  the  devoted  merchandise,  it 
must  cheer  the  hearts  of  the  faithful  of  Tim- 
buctoo  to  see  the  dire  havoc  that  ensues, 
despite  the  ravings  of  Eurasian  clerks, 
Ooriah  coolies,  and  Mussulmen  bullock- 
drivers. 

Farther  on,  we  have  the  steam-ferry  to 
Howrah  across  the  river,  where  the  railway- 
trains  start  for — not  Agra  and  Allahabad,  and 
other  places  hundreds  of  miles  distant — but 
for  Eaneegange,  just  ninety  odd  miles  off. 
The  whole  line  was  to  have  been  opened  this 
year ;  whereas  we  have  scarcely  a  sixth 
part  of  it  in  operation.  But  then,  the  rail- 
way department  is  presided  over  by  a  high 
military  functionary,  who  studied  railways 
for  several  years  at  a  high  salary  in  Tim- 
buctoo. 

It  was  not  many  weeks  since  that  the  pas- 
sengers by  railway  had  to  cross  in  a  crazy 
little  native  steamer,  reached  by  a  single 
plank  from  the  muddy  beach  to  the  wet 
deck.  Even  now,  with  a  good  platform  and 
a  larger  boat,  the  crowding,  confusion,  and 
haste  are  disgusting  and  disgraceful,  though 
quite  in  keeping  with  the  other  arrangements 
of  this  guaranteed  line. 

Beyond  this,  again,  is  the  Wapping  of  Cal- 
cutta, where  the  native  trading  craft  from 
the  upper  and  eastern  provinces  congregate 
in  vast  masses,  laden  with  all  the  varied  pro- 
duce of  the  country.  A  busier  scene  than 


here  presents  itself  is  not  to  be  met  with  in 
India.  Cotton  and  jute  stores,  rice  sheds, 
linseed  warehouses,  crowd  the  dense  neigh- 
bourhood ;  whilst,  near  at  hand,  an  army  of 
vultures  and  crows  await  at  the  burning 
Ghat,  the  comfortable  pickings  of  the  next 
dead  Hindoo. 

The  whole  of  the  exports  of  Bengal,  with 
few  exceptions,  pass  through  native  agency  ; 
and  we  may  say  nearly  the  same  of  the 
imports.  The  reader  in  the  far  West  may 
perhaps  form  some  idea  of  the  busy  scenes 
daily  enacting  in  the  bazaars  of  Calcutta, 
when  he  learns  that  the  official  (but  by  no 
means  the  real)  value  of  the  exports  of  last 
year,  was  little  short  of  fourteen  millions 
sterling,  while  the  imported  goods  were 
valued  at  over  eight  millions.  To  convey  all 
this  to  and  from  Europe  required  fifteen  hun- 
dred ships  of  an  aggregate  burden  of  nearly 
a  million  of  tons.  To  carry  the  same  to  and 
from  the  ulterior,  has  needed  twice  that  capa- 
city of  tonnage.  Thus  flows  the  great  stream 
of  commerce  in  the  East,  enriching  as  it 
passes  the  many  thousands  who  swarm  in 
and  around  the  City  of  Palaces. 


THE  WAND  OF  LIGHT 

ONE  summer-noon,  a  sad-eyed  man — to  whom 
Life's  road  from  youth,  had  lain  through  grief  and 

gloom, 
And  every  milestone  was  a  loved  one's  tomb — 

Wander'd  a-field,  if  haply  he  might  find, 
Sung  in  the  brook,  or  breathed  upon  the  wind, 
Some  message  from  the  souls  for  whom  he  pined-. 

But,  when  he  found  no  music,  in  the  rill, 
Sun,  dwindled  to  a  thread,  and  each  leaf  still : 
"  See,"  moan'd  he,  "  to  the  sick  all  goeth  ill ! " 

And,  hiding  hig  wet  face  in  the  deep  grass, 

He  pray'd  life's  chalice  from  his  lips  might  pass, 

And  his  last  grain  of  sand  fall  through  the  glass. 

Then,  as  he  rose,  through,  ferns  that  strove  to  hide,, 
Hedged  in  by  weeds,  a  wildflower  he  espied 
Bent  earthward  by  a  dew-drop ;  so  he  cried  : 

"  Frail  bloom,  that  weepest  in  thy  hidden  nook 
Alone,  like  Sorrow  by  the  world  forsook, 
All  the  day  long  no  sun  can  on  thee  look  !" 

But,  while  he  spake,  a  little  wand  of  light 

Pass'd  through  the  leaves,  making  all  faery-bright}. 

And  what  had  seem'd  a  tear  to  his  dull  sight 

Was  now  a  tiny  rainbow  in  a  cup 

Of  thinnest  silver,  whence  the  beam  did  sup, 

And  by  degrees  the  flower  was  lifted  up ; 

And  seem'd  to  follow  with  a  wistful  eye 
A  little  drift  of  mist  into  the  sky, 
Rising  to  join  the  clouds  that  floated  by; 

Perchance,  ere  close  of  day,  to  fall  in  rain 

And  help  some  seaward  stream,  or  thirsty  plain  ! 

Perchance  to  trickle  down  some  window-pane 


398       [October  24. 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Where  a  sick  child  cloth  watch,  and  so  heguile 
The  pain-drawu  lips  to  curve  into  a  smile, 
And  brighten  its  dull  eyes  a  little  while. 

And  seeing  all  that  one  small  drop  might  do, 
He  felt  why  cloister'd  thus  the  blossom  grew, 
And  why  so  late  it  wore  the  morning  dew  ; 

And,  with  a  lighter  heart,  he  went  his  way, 
Trusting,  at  GOD'S  own  time,  some  golden  ray 
Would  gleam  on  him,  and  touch  his  dark  to  day. 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 


IT  is  a  grievous  thing — in  a  certain  sense, 
at  least — to  find  this  earth  so  terribly  bent 
upon  being  practical.  The  rush,  no  longer 
march,  of  intellect  is  lopping  away  every 
pleasing  but  unserviceable  angularity ;  and  is 
bringing  down,  or  up,  the  nations  to  one  good 
working  level :  eminently  practical,  but  un- 
poetic,  unhandsome,  and  monotonous.  This, 
the  wandering  man,  the  Voyageur,  with  taste 
for  colouring  and  bits  of  picturesque,  of  all 
others,  feels  most  acutely.  His  occupation 
is,  in  a  manner,  beginning  to  go  ;  for  the 
world  he  fancies  he  has  left  behind,  travels 
abroad  with  him,  and  reappears  at  odd 
corners  and  unexpected  places  ;  so  that  he 
drags  after  him  that  lengthening  chain,  of 
which  such  piteous  complaint  was  long  since 
made — "nth  a  savour  of  flatness  and  staleness 
and  utter  insipidity.  Most  especially  does 
this  strike  him  in  matters  of  costume  and 
local  colouring  ;  and  he  must  admit  to  him- 
self with  a  sigh,  that  the  hour  is  drawing  on, 
when  the  habiliments  of  all  the  tribes  will 
have  subsided  into  the  sober  working  dress 
of  black  broadcloth  ;  presenting  one  sicken- 
ing waste  of  coating,  waistcoating,  and  their 
inevitable  adjunct :  and  never  forgetting  the 
famous  black  hat,  destined  to  ride  eternally 
a  hideous  show  upon  the  head  of  mortal 
man  :  the  whole  a  hideous  uniformity,  and 
brotherhood  in  ugliness.  Saving  always,  that 
in  the  hat  Continental,  as  borne  by  our 
foreign  brothers,  there  shall  be  some  shade  of 
difference :  being  known  by  that  curious  sinu- 
osity of  brim,  that  queer  droop  fore  and  aft,  and 
shape  pyramidical,  which  comes,  no  doubt, 
of  a  certain  yearning  after  the  old,  old  shape, 
the  departed  cocked  ;  now  passed  away  from 
off  the  heads  of  men,  and  from  off  the  face  of 
the  earth. 

To  this  uniform  Intel-nationality  we  are 
now  fast  coming  :  to  this  complexion  we  must 
come  at  last.  Already  does  the  Moslem 
lounge  through  Pera,  fitted  uneasily  with 
the  cosmopolitan  garment ;  and  at  Cairo, 
the  Dog  of  a  Christian  need  found  no  fears 
of  insult  on  the  Frankish  cut  of  his  apparel. 
The  Howadji  on  the  Nile  is  no  longer  re- 
garded with  curiosity,  and  the  Greek's  snowy 
petticoat  has  altogether  fluttered  away. 
Even  from  the  glittering  Prado — most  cruel 
stroke  this  for  our  travelling  Spanish  colour- 
men — are  falling  away  the  bright  native 
costumes ;  and  the  lace  bonnet  is  encroach- 


ing greedily  on  the  famed  mantilla.  Second- 
hand Parisian  fashions,  modelled  on  ancient 
plates  from  the  costume  magazines,  are  the 
desired  of  the  Madrid  beau  monde.  No  more 
could  excellent  but  twaddlesome  Doctor 
Moore  travel  with  his  Noble  Patron  from 
little  court  to  little  court,  and  find  grist  for 
those  weary  letters  of  his  ;  nor  Tristara,  the 
facetious,  though  he  lay  in  wait  all  day,  on 
that  Moulines  road,  light  on  anything  to 
surprise  him  in  his  Nanette's  pastoral  gar- 
ments ;  nor  in  those  of  his  Maria,  whose 
notes  were  the  sweetest  he  ever  heard. 
From  pole  to  pole  ;  from  Dan  to  Beersheba, 
it  may  come  to  be  all  one  dull  uniform  tint, 
one  unvarying  monotony. 

For  all  this  dispiriting  prospect,  I  do  most 
firmly  believe  that  there  is  a  pretty  large 
section  of  the  English  family  holding  to  a 
dreamy  notion,  that  a  certain  sea-buffeted 
nation  still  conserve  their  old  rights  and 
usages,  and  look  pretty  much  as  they  looked  a 
century  ago.  A  sea-buffeted  race,  slow  of 
speech  and  motion,  that  seem,  through  a  sort 
of  vis  inertise,  to  have  held  back  steadily,  as 
their  neighbours  were  drawn  forward,  and 
so  to  have  retained  a  sort  of  pleasing  rococo- 
hood,  and  curiosity-shop  aspect.  Whence  I 
have  gathered  this  notion,  it  would  be  hard 
to  say  ;  but  I  am  firmly  persuaded  that  your 
modern  Dutchman  must  be  grim  and  full- 
faced,  with  broad-leafed  hat,  with  starched 
collar  and  white  cord  and  tassels,  with  short 
black  cloak  and  jerkin,  profuse  sprinkling  of 
buttons  and  black  silk  bows  about  the  junc- 
tion of  the*  stocking  and  knee  breech.  I  have 
loose  floating  notions  of  burgomasters  — 
Burgomaster  Six  to  wit — of  Echevins,  and  of 
the  Hogen  Mogen.  Of  the  Grand  Pensionary 
— of  Guilder  sacks — and  of  that  starched 
collar  and  jerkin  seen  among  the  spice- 
grounds  and  coffee-trees  of  Java  and  Ceylon. 
Of  Peter  Stuyvesant,  and  those  queer  Dutch 
governors,  and  their  queerer  little  towns 
beyond  the  Atlantic.  There  are  hazy  remi- 
niscences, too,  of  unscrupulous  Captain  Hat- 
teraick  and  his  lugger,  of  his  running  cargos  at 
midnight,  thus  evading  excise  regulations — 
something  eminently  romantic  and  Adel- 
phish  in  that  unlawful  running  of  cargo, 
of  the  ankers  and  runlets  thus  set  on  shore. 
I  bethink  me,  too,  at  times,  of  certain  dim 
and  awful  diablerie  ocean  legends  associ- 
ated peculiarly  with  this  nation.  How  on 
certain  nights,  at  periodic  intervals,  nights 
of  storm  and  fury  when  not  a  strip  of  canvas 
can  be  spread  with  safety,  the  seaman 
keeping  third  watch  upon  the  forecastle  has 
seen  afar  off,  the  Phantom  Ship  bearing  down 
upon  them,  with  every  sail  set.  How  the 
thunder  has  pealed  and  the  lightning  flashed, 
and  how  with  bated  breath  he  and  his 
brethren  have  watched  through  the  darkness 
!  for  its  coming,  until  another  flash  has  re- 
[  vealed  it  close  upon  them,  passing  silently 
across  their  bows.  Then  a  hasty  glimpse  of 
i  ghastly  men  looking  over  the  side  with  stony 


Charles  DickensJ 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 


[October  H  185?.]       399 


lack-lustre  eyes,  and  old-fashioned  dress, 
known  to  them  only  in  pictures.  I  re- 
cal,  too,  with  uncomfortable  feelings, 
the  late  Rip  Van  Winkle's  awakening 
on  the  mountain  side,  with  the  incident 
of  the  rusty  gun  and  tattered  garments, 
all  wrapt  in  a  certain  Dutch  mistiness, 
together  with  faint  echoes  coming  from 
afar,  of  the  old  Bishopian  chaunt — trolled  in 
ancient  roystering  days — showing  how  Myn- 
heer Van  Dunck,  though  he  never  was 
drunk,  sipped  brandy  and  water  gaily.  How, 
without  being  apparently  the  worse  for  it,  he 
would  quench  his  thirst  with  two  quarts  of 
the  first  to  a  pint  of  the  latter,  daily.  With 
which  is  linked  inseparably  that  other 
strain,  said  to  embody  the  history  of  the 
earliest  attempt  at  applying  the  cork-tree 
to  mechanical  uses,  and  the  alleviation  of 
human  infirmity,  all  to  an  unfeeling  ri-too-ra- 
loo  burden.  All  the  world  has  long  since 
learnt  the  story,  and  felt  pity  for  the  hapless 
trader  :  Who,  every  morning,  said,  I  am,  the 
richest  merchant  in  Rotterdam  ;  with  a 
toor-ral,  loor-ral,  loor-ral,  loor-ral,  liddle-toll- 
loor-ral,  RIGHT  tol  loor-ral»  lay  ! 

These  dispiriting  images  come  upon  me  with 
singular  force,  as  I  sit  waiting  the  order  of 
release,  in  a  roomy  glass-house  on  a  certain 
continental  railway,  the  debatable  land  be- 
tween two  distinct  states.  For,  here  there 
is  a  junction — grand  junction — and  from  the 
windows  of  the  glass  prison-house  I  can  look 
forth,  alternately,  on  the  pleasant  German 
wooding,  and  flat  Dutch  campaign.  To  put  it 
Byronically,  a  smiling  valley  and  a  swamp  on 
either  hand.  This  is  the  grand  junction 
between  the  Rhenische  Eisenbahr  and  the 
Rijks  Hollandische  Spoorweg  ;  threshold  of 
the  Dutch  latitudes.  With  a  toor-ral, 
loor-ral,  I  find  myself  chaunting  softly,  with 
thrumming  accompaniment  on  the  window- 
pane,  as  the  durance  begins  to  grow  irksome. 
For  the  green  house  doors  are  fastened  up 
close  under  Politzei  lock  and  key,  and  there  are 
many  voyageurs  of  first  and  second  degree  all 
imprisoned  together.  Not,  however,  without 
some  solace,  for  here  is  to  be  found  res- 
tauration  or  grand  feeding  opportunity,  won- 
derful alleviator  for  the  incarcerated,  who 
are  all  at  work  on  the  cotelettes,  unripe 
fruits  and  neat  wines  of  the  country.  Of  a 
sudden  there  is  a  rumbling  sound  outside, 
betokening  the  arrival  of  the  Dutch,  and 
presently  doors  are  unsealed,  and  all  are 
bidden  to  go  forth.  There  is  a  general  up- 
rising, and  a  hasty,  unaudited  settlement, 
cruelly  to  the  advantage  of  the  Buffet  pro- 
prietor. Forthwith  we  are  driven  out  of  pen, 
as  it  were,  a  disorderly  flock,  and  given  over 
to  the  keeping  of  new  masters. 

There  is  waiting  here  for  the  wayfarer  a 
curious  contrast,  and  even  at  this  early  stage 
he  gathers  some  faint  comprehension  of  the 
great  liddle-toll-loor-ral  mystery.  For,  as  he 
casts  about  uneasily  for  the  carriage  suited  to 
his  order,  he  will  be  miserably  perplexed  at 


having  to  elect  between  Tweede,  Derde,  and 
Erst  Klasse. 

What  is  Tweede  ?  and  what  does  it  pre- 
figure 1  What  does  the  cabalistic  Derde  ? 
Aided  by  a  benevolent  and  intelligent  guard, 
he  may  light  on  the  Corinthian  vehicle 
he  had  destined  for  himself — which,  though 
rusty,  and  of  ancient  mail-coach  aspect, 
with  an  unwholesome  dampness  about  the 
cushions,  has  still  some  significance  of  the 
old-established  type.  Which,  Bezonian? 
does  he  seem  to  say  to  the  oiBcial,  with 
mute,  inglorious,  and  most  wistful  aspect. 
Comforting  it  is,  however,  to  turn  from  the 
hieroglyphics  round  him  —  announcements 
relative  to  Spoorweg  Rijks,  or  Royal  Spoor- 
weg, Rijks  Stoomboot,  and  such  jargon,  to  an 
oasis  in  the  desert,  shaped  as  a  little  brass 
plate  on  the  great  green  dragon  that  is  to 
draw  him  on  his  journey,  whereon  he  reads, 
in  his  own  vernacular,  that  Sharpe  and  Sons, 
Atlas  Works,  Manchester,  are  with  him  in 
that  stranger  land.  Grateful  as  the  fountain 
to  thirsty  traveller,  as  the  sign  of  Entertain- 
ment for  Man  and  Beast  to  the  weaiy 
traveller  on  lonely  high-road,  is  the  homely 
apparition  of  those  cuneiform  characters, 
Sharpe  and  Sons,  Atlas  Works,  Man- 
chester. 

Given  over,  then,  bodily  to  Hollanders — to 
the  mercies  of  new  guards  :  rough  and  ready 
men  with  white  and  tallowy  faces,  with  loose 
slouching  garments  hanging  about  them,  very 
different  to  the  trim  springy  little  beings  on 
the  other  side  of  the  glass  house — he  is 
assisted  into  one  of  the  decayed  mail-coaches. 
The  Hollander  officials — who  are  decidedly 
unclean  of  person,  with  old  battered  bugles 
slung  about  them — make  signal  for  departure 
in  two  curious  flourishes  ;  one  of  which  proves 
an  utter  fiasco,  or  miss-fire  ;  the  other  a  loud 
but  crazy  blast :  the  first  a  mistake,  corrected 
by  the  second. 

The  way  proves  to  be  long,  the  wind 
cold ;  and,  though  the  traveller  was  neither 
infirm  nor  old,  he  could  have  wished  that  the 
Atlas  engines  had  been  put  to  the  full  speed 
they  were  capable  of  in  their  own  country. 
By-aud-by  the  country  begins  to  open  on  him 
— a  vast  expanse  of  green,  rather  ochreish  in 
tone,  stretching  away  for  miles,  chequered 
pleasantly  with  patches  of  tiling — good  red 
tiling — that  stands  out  warmly  upon  the 
green  ground,  with  a  file  of  slim  trees,  so 
often  likened  to  the  Noah's  Ark  pattern, 
straggling  off  to  right  and  left,  and  cutting 
up  the  prospect  most  exactly  into  four  quar- 
ters ;  with  dull  bluish  riband  running  away 
for  miles  under  shelter  of  that  Noah's  Ark 
vegetation,  until  lost  finally  at  the  edge  of 
the  horizon,  with  just  room  in  the  foreground 
for  a  figure  in  scarlet  coat,  periwig,  and 
jack-boots,  on  a  dappled  Wouvermau's  quad- 
ruped, pointing  with  his  whip  to  patch  of 
red  tiling  in  the  distance.  The  famous  land- 
scape, sir,  in  the  Berghem  manner  !  It  was 
to  be  seen — to  be  had  a  bargain — from  the 


400      [October  24. 1857.} 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


window  of  the  decayed  mail-coach.  Pre- 
sently comes  into  view  the  first  Windmill — 
first  of  the  great  grinders,  that  toss  their  arms 
in  eternal  gyration. 

Supposing,  then,  that  he  has  grown 
weary  of  this  staleness,  and  turns  for  a  spell 
to  his  travelling  volume;  and  then  looks  forth 
again,  he  will  rub  his  eyes  with  wonder,  for 
it  will  seem  as  if  the  Berghem  landscape 
had  been  travelling  on  with  him  as  he  read, 
tiling,  trees,  and  all ;  save  only  that  the 
•windmill  element  has  grown  on  him  pro- 
digiously. North  and  south  are  they  now 
crowded  together,  advancing  on  him  like  an 
army  of  huge  monsters.  The  traveller  is  like 
enough  to  get  cloyed  with  windmills :  still,  all 
this  while  he  is  making  progress  along  the 
Spoorweg.  Sharpe  and  Sons  are  taking  him 
past  unhealthy  bits  of  verdure  with  a  stripped 
mangy  aspect,  known  to  natives  as  polders  or 
reclaimed  Dismal  Swamps — past  other  canals, 
reeled  off  interminably  —  past  drowsy  catties 
of  the  Cuyp  pattern — past  more  red  tiling — 
past  the  Noah's  Ark  trees  again — and  past  the 
old-established  original  Dutchman.  O,  here 
truly  was  Peter  Stuyvesant  redivivus,  or  Wil- 
liam the  Testy,  given  up  from  their  graves  in  j 
the  old  Dutch  settlement,  and  coming  forth  to  j 
stare  lazily  at  the  Spoorweg  !  For  his  face 
was  reddish-purple,  and  glistening  as  from  j 
deep  drinking,  his  cheeks  hung  down  after  | 
the  manner  of  dewlaps,  and  his  eyes  were 
twinklesome  and  saucerlike.  Arrayed  in  a 
cool  linen  coat  was  he,  with  pipe  a  yard  long 
in  one  hand  and  a  cigar  in  the  other,  con- 
templating the  brave  work  of  the  Atlas 
Works  with  a  strange  idiot  grin.  And  so 
on  for  many  more  leagues  of  monotony, 
until  the  shadows  begin  to  fall.  And 
finally,  towards  nine  of  the  clock,  lights 
begin  to  flit  by  the  window,  and  houses  to  I 
congregate  abundantly,  and  windmills  to  i 
gather  round  in  threatening  force  ;  all  which 
are  symptoms  that  Amsterdam,  the  great 
pile  city,  is  at  hand.  Voyageurs  are  invited 
to  descend. 

Instant  signal  for  flash  of  lanterns,  bustle, 
Babel  of  tongues,  and  general  confusion. 
Here,  are  porters  in  blue  wagoners'  frocks, 
hauling  travellers'  mails  aside  into  dark 
places.  Everything  here  is  Cimmerian,  with 
here  and  there  a  dull,  dirty  glimmer- 
ing overhead.  Here,  are  gentry  in  would- 
be  uniform,  assaulting  the  traveller  as 
he  stands  distraught  upon  the  steps,  with 
dialect  compounded  mainly  of  oors  and  coins, 
and  such  open  diphthongs.  Who,  failing  with 
that  tongue,  try  him  with  barbarous  French, 
slipping  from  thence  in  rude,  gritty  German, 
and  finally  relapsing  into  uncompromising 
irascible  English.  They  are  touting,  it  seems, 
for  the  Great  Spoorweg  Dienst,  or  railway  slave, 
which  stands  waiting  yonder.  The  railway 
slave  I  discover  to  be  a  huge  omnibus  which 
takes  travellers  to  their  hotels  ;  Amsterdam 
hostelries  lying  all  along  the  same  line  of 
street.  Just  for  one  instant  do  I  look  forth 


from  the  window,  and  can  make  out  nothing 
save  certain  white  posts  or  pillars,  with  huge 
arms  and  chains,  together  with  other  white 
posts  and  chains  a  little  beyond  them,  with 
white  posts  and  chains  on  the  right  and  on 
the  left — draw-bridges  unmistakeably — for 
scarcely  have  we  moved  a  single  perch  when 
I  find  that  we  are  being  heaved  upward 
sensibly,  with  a  hollow  wooden  rumble,  and 
then  depressed.  A  few  seconds  more,  and 
the  white  posts  and  chains  are  flitting  past 
the  window,  and  the  woody  rumble  comes 
once  more  and  again  and  again,  for  some 
thirty  odd  times.  It  is  draw-bridge  eternally, 
and  I  can  see,  as  we  go  up  and  down,  the 
dark  waters  underneath.  Finally,  we  have 
gotten  into  a  long,  narrow  street,  smoothly 
paved  or  rather  flagged — so  narrow  that  it 
seems  to  me  I  can  lay  my  finger  on  the  houses 
as  we  go  by, — and  now  asks  the  Couduktoor 
where  does  Mynheer  choose  to  be  set  down  I 
Ay  !  Where  1  that  is  the  question — scarcely 
thought  on  till  that  very  instant.  There  was 
famous  treatment  at  the  house  of  entertain- 
ment, known  as  the  Oude  Doelen,  or  Old 
Bull's  Eye  ;  likewise  at  the  Nieuwe  Doelen,. 
or  New  Bull's  Eye ;  where,  note,  that  the 
New  Bull's  Eye  takes  in  sovereign  princes 
and  persons  of  quality.  About  these  Doelen 
names  there  was  a  certain  Hibernian  smack 
or  savour,  recalling  strangely  Larry  of  that 
Ilk.  Famous  treatment  too  at  the  Low 
Countries  Inn — perhaps  famous  charges  also. 
But  there  was  a  caravanserai  known  as  The 
Grey-headed  Nobleman, — which  men,  cun- 
ning in  dishes,  had  spoken  of  unctuously  and 
with  mysterious  whisper  ;  where  was  said 
to  be  caves  of  wine  of  surpassing  quality  ;. 
also  set  down  in  the  Livre  Eouge,  or  Bed 
Vade-mecum,  as  a  quiet  house.  Y"es,  a  quiet 
house.  Unobtrusive,  unadvertising.  Ancient 
furniture  of  the  Van  Tromp  era, — huge  four- 
posters,  ancestors  on  the  walls,  mine  host,  of 
the  Stuyvesant  pattern  over  again, — in  fact, 
I  knew  it  as  well  as  though  I  had  been 
sitting  in  one  of  the  old  long-backed  chairs, 
and  not  on  the  hard  board-like  cushion  of 
the  Spoorweg  Dienst.  The  Grey-headed 
Nobleman  then  be  it,  I  say  to  the  Conduk- 
toor.  Good.  He  is  to  be  found  in  the  Kalvat 
Straat  hard  by. 

We  have  halted.  The  Grey-headed  Noble- 
man. Where — up  that  blind  alley  ?  Yes. 
Conduktoor  can  carry  up  the  mails  in  about 
a  second.  Will  the  Mynheer  follow  ]  Myn- 
heer gets  out  incontinently  and  pursues  his 
mails,  now  flying  up  the  blind  alley  on  Con- 
duktoor's  shoulders.  They  are  set  down  on 
the  threshold  of  a  narrow  Barbican  doorway, 
with  a  lamp,  stopping  the  way  effectually. 
This  is  the  Grey-headed  Nobleman — and  I 
have  caught  a  glimpse  of  his  effigy  over  the 
door.  Someway  I  shrink  from  the  Grey- 
headed Nobleman  and  the  general  aspect 
of  his  house.  A  long  narrow  passage, 
white-washed,  of  the  Poor  House  Refor- 
matory pattern,  so  contracted  that  an 


Charles  Dickens.! 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 


[October  24,  18570      401 


individual  who  comes  squeezing  past  me 
from  the  interior,  with  many  excuses, — no 
doubt  curious  as  to  the  quality  of  those 
mails, — has  driven  me  against  the  walls, 
•whitening  me  all  ovei-,  as  I  find  next  morn- 
ing. No  other  than  the  landlord, — not  rubi- 
cund, alack  !  nor  robustious,  nor  unctuous, 
but  a  little  shrivelled  mortal  of  Frenchified 
petit-maitre  pattern.  Yes,  the  landlord  of 
the  Grey-headed  Nobleman  !  At  my  service 
with  infinite  respect,  and  in  elementary 
French.  Presumes  reverentially  that  Myn- 
heer has  come  off  the  Spoorweg  ?  The  Jan 
will  transport  Mynheer's  baggages  to  a  cham- 
ber. Jan ! 

All  along  the  little  reformatory  gallery, 
up  a  wee  flight  of  five  or  six  stairs  of  true 
daisy  or  churn-scoured  hue,  round  a  little 
twist  into  second  model  prison  passage,  rub- 
bing shoulders  pleasantly  with  the  wall,  as  I 
do  so,  and  I  am  before  the  door  of  Myn- 
heer's chamber.  I  have  a  private  opinion 
that  this  must  have  originally  formed  a 
part  of  the  model  prison  passage.  It  seems 
much  about  the  same  width,  and  the  furni- 
ture has  a  narrow  aspect  also,  constructed 
apparently  to  be  looked  at,  lengthways. 
The  bed  is  long,  and  a  narrow  chest  of 
drawers  is  long  and  narrow  ;  and  the  chairs 
lie  in,  curiously,  to  the  wall.  Of  a  sudden 
there  passes  athwart  me  a  strange  soup- 
§on  of  an  effluvia,  something  too  horrible  to 
be  admitted,  and  for  a  long  time  mentally 
waved  off  and  steadily  ignored.  Something 
that  I  should  have  conceived  utterly  impos- 
sible to  be  devised  in  that  line  of  article. 
Something  new,  terrible,  and  undreamed  of. 
It  had  obtruded  itself  faintly,  just  as  I  had 
alighted  from  off  the  Spoorweg,  imparting 
a  strange,  sickening  feel ;  and  has  now  fol- 
lowed me  into  this  upper  chamber,  going 
and  returning  periodically.  Of  which  he 
will  learn  more  hereafter.  A  certain  heavy 
dampness  in  the  linen  of  this  establishment, 
imparting  to  it  that  clinging  ductility  usually 
found  in  the  drapery  of  a  lay  figure — remedy- 
less,  moreover ;  for  the  warming-pan,  only 
eliciting  a  warm  steam  instantly  condenses 
it  in  great  drops — drives  me  to  such  com- 
fort as  may  be  found  in  layers  of  plaid 
and  shawl  carefully  interposed.  Then  to 
wait  wearily  for  long  dreams  welcome  and 
refreshing. 

Just  on  the  verge  of  that  mysterious 
country,  about  the  time  when  the  furniture  is 
growing  into  queer  misty  shapes,  and  the  droll 
jumble  of  the  day's  events  with  grotesque 
and  inconsistent  creatures  is  beginning,  I 
am  rudely  called  back  to  earth  by  horrid 
jangling — such  jangling  ! — apparently  just 
over  my  head.  Carillons  disorderly,  working 
away  pitilessly :  creatures  that  never  sleep 
all  the  night  long,  and  care  not  whom  they 
waken.  Carillons  of  the  great  palace,  round 
the  corner,  now  making  ready  to  ring  in 
the  hour.  Hear  the  music  of  the  bells,  sang 
a  poor  sot  once  on  a  time,  what  a  world 


of  fancies  their  melody  foretells  !  At  any 
other  season  perhaps :  not  when  just  come 
off  the  Spoorweg.  They  should  be  stopped, 
silenced,  I  cry,  indignantly,  as  they  resolve 
themselves  into  a  tune — a  real  tune — Mozar- 
tian,  Handelian,  I  care  not  which ;  at  any 
rate,  now  impossible  to  say.  For  a  stave 
or  so  from  the  tune's  close,  another  Carillon 
hard-by  begins,  and  others  far  and  near  all 
over  the  city  are  getting  into  play,  making 
most  horible  discord.  Vile  hurly  burly  !  con- 
fusion !  distraction  !  ten  thousand  Teufels  ! 
What  does  all  this  mean  1  Is  there  conspiracy 
in  the  town  to  murder  sleep  ?  Where  are  the 
politie,  as  their  vile  jai'gon  has  it — yes  the 
politie  ?  Where,  indeed  !  I  rise  up,  and  look 
towards  the  window,  and  find  that  there  has 
grown  up  in  the  street,  a  din  and  hum  of  many 
voices,  hitherto  drowned  by  the  jingle-jangle. 
Hum  of  voices,  say  I  ?  At  this  moment  there 
are  half-a-dozen  men  full  of  wine  coming 
processionally  down  the  street,  and  roar- 
ing, in  parts,  at  the  top  of  their  voices. 
The  whole  town  has  discharged  itself 
into  that  street — giggling,  laughing,  chat- 
tering like  a  thousand  magpies,  and  call- 
ing to  each  other  from  afar  ;  this  being,  as 
I  am  informed  later,  their  promenade,  or 
Boulevard  ;  and  this  being,  of  all  other  times 
in  the  world,  their  choice  season  for  recreation, 
or  delassement.  I  look  down  on  the  popula- 
tion from  my  window  with  weary  eyes,  and 
find  them  as  thick  as  flies.  Crowded  together 
are  these  Hollanders  and  Hollandaises,  — 
absolutely  jostling  each  other  to  get  through. 
I  look  down  for  some  moments  curiously,  and 
go  back  to  my  lay-figure  drapery,  praying 
heartily  for  their  flying  countryman  to  come 
and  take  them  off  bodily  in  his  ship.  All 
this  while  Carillons  are  at  work  periodically, 
waking  up  every  quarter-of-an-hour,  punc- 
tually. I  liken  them,  with  grim  satisfaction, 
to  the  dogs  in  a  cur-infested  neighbourhood, — 
one  dismal  whine  setting  all  the  rest  off  in 
full  cry. 

Still,  in  course  of  time,  these  nuisances 
abate  ;  the  tramp  of  steps,  and  hum  of  voices, 
die  away  sensibly,  and  I  am  getting  something 
used  to  the  Carillons.  Suddenly,  when  every- 
thing has  subsided  into  the  stillness  proper 
to  the  small  hours — in  well-regulated  towns, 
that  is — a  rattle  is  sprung  tinder  the  window, 
making  me  start  convulsively  ;  and  a  hoarse 
organ  is  heard  to  chaunt  nasally  that  it  is  past 
twelve  o'clock,  and  a  cloudy  night  in  the  Dutch 
tongue,  of  course  ;  a  veritable  fragment  of  a 
vesper  hymn — like  the  famous  Ad  Nos  of  the 
Anabaptist  brethren  in  the  market-place — 
very  musical,  and  suggestive  of  Covent 
Garden  Opera  memories,  at  any  other  season. 
Again  I  am  at  the  window,  and  find  it  to 
be  the  politie  making  their  round.  Creatures 
bearing  on  their  ugly  hats  a  brass  decora- 
tion much  like  the  Following  of  the  London 
milk  delivery  company  :  on  whom  (on  the 
politie,  that  is)  be  eternal  anathema  for  a 
night  of  horrid  dreams  and  broken  slumber ! 


402          [October  24, 185;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Thus  fur  the  chronicle  of  a  traveller's  first 
night  in  the  Low  Countries,  down  among  the 
Dutchmen. 


CHIP. 


EDMUND  WALLER. 

A  CORRESPONDENT,  referring  to  our  recent 
article  on  this  poet,  sends  us  the  following  : 

"  Among  the  many  things  on  which  we  ask 
questions  about  celebrated  men,  is  hand- 
writing. In  this  particular  there  is  very 
little  to  say  about  Waller.  There  is  none  of 
his  penmanship  in  the  British  Museum,  so 
rich  in  the  manuscript  department.  At  least 
there  was  none  five  years  ago.  There  are, 
however,  two  of  his  signatures  known  to  me. 
The  first  is  in  the  possession  of  a  well-known 
bibliographer,  the  second  belongs  to  myself. 
I  have  it  now  before  me,  with  a  good  tracing 
from  the  first,  and  each  proves  the  other. 
The  first  is  Edni.  Waller,  the  second  is 
Edmond  Waller  very  clearly ;  showing  how 
the  poet  spelt  his  name.  It  is  the  owner's 
handwriting  in  a  copy  of  J.  A.  Borelli's 
Euclides  Eestitutus,  published  in  sixteen 
hundred  and  fifty-eight,  when  Waller  was 
fifty-three  years  of  age  :  but  it  bears  marks 
of  being  written  by  aged  fingers.  The  first 
signature  is  much  younger.  The  style  is 
large,  bold,  and  clear,  but  not  regular.  No 
doubt  this  copy  of  Euclid  has  passed  before 
many  eyes  which  have  rejected  the  notion  of 
the  signature  belonging  to  the  great  poet. 
And  with  good  presumptive  reason.  This 
signature,  it  would  be  argued,  never  could 
have  felt  romantic  passion  for  Sacharissa  ;  it 
might,  perhaps,  have  fallen  as  much  in  love 
as  such  common-place  could  do  with  Joan  or 
Sally,  and  have  married  her ;  but  nothing 
more." 


STEPPING-STONES. 


OCCASIONALLY  a  favourite  pastime  with  me 
is — how  shall  I  express  it  ? — striding  up  the 
broad  River  of  Time  like  a  stalwart  traveller 
from  Brobdingnag  ;  taking  a  whole  genera- 
tion in  a  single  giant  step,  and  so  getting 
rapidly  by  half-a-dozen  zig-zags  over  the  dis- 
tance of  two  or  three  centuries.  All  this, 
moreover,  being  accomplished  in  the  most 
natural  way  conceivable,  by  the  homeliest 
exercise  of  memory,  and  not  simply  by  what 
might  be  termed  any  mere  stretch  of  the 
imagination. 

An  ordinary  memory,  indeed,  is  really,  I 
take  it,  about  the  only  endowment  in  any 
way  positively  requisite  for  the  complete 
enjoyment  of  this  new  species  of  intellectual 
recreation.  An  ordinary  memory  meaning 
nothing  more  than  the  average  memory.,  of 
any  moderately  educated  individual.  En- 
dowed so  far  and  no  farther,  any  one — you, 
reader,  or  I,  writer — may,  in  another  sense, 


not  less  than  Julius  Caesar  himself,  according 
to  Snakspere's  definition  of  him, 

Bestride  this  narrow  world  like  a  Colossus. 

To  afford  testimony  at  once  of  the  literal 
truth  of  what  I  assert,  by  a  few  simple  illus- 
trations, accompany  me,  dear  reader,  while  I 
take  one  of  these  same  Titanic  strolls  back 
towards  the  fountain-head  of  antiquity.  And 
so,  without  further  parley,  as  they  say  in  the 
story-books,  let  us  begin  with  the  beginning  : 

STARTING   POINT.      A.D.  1857. 

IT  is  about  four  of  the  clock  upon  an 
afternoon  in  the  early  part  of  this  autumn, 
that  I  am  sauntering  along  the  pavement  in 
front  of  Whitehall,  over  against  the  Hor^e 
Guards,  directing  my  steps  in  a  leisurely 
j  stroll  down  Parliament  Street  towards  West- 
minster. I  know  the  precise  time,  less  by 
means  of  the  dingy  clock-dial  over  the  way— 
a  sort  of  a  tantalising,  opaque  transparency, 
neither  white  by  midday  nor  bright  by  mid- 
night— than  by  a  casual  glance  on  either 
hand  at  my  fellow-footpassengers. 

Honourable  gentlemen  sti-aggling  from  the 
clubs  to  what  may  be  designated  the  rival 
Commons  of  Britain — and — Bellamy.  The 
choicest  residue  of  the  session,  bearing  some- 
what the  same  relation  to  the  House  that 
pure  gold  does  to  the  well-rocked  cradle  of 
the  Californian.  Legislators  who  have  been 
gradually  sifted  down  in  the  cradle  of  debate. 
Everybody  is  familiarly  acquainted  with 
them,  who  knows  anything  about  the  pre- 
cincts of  St.  Margaret's.  They  are  what 
that  Junius  of  St.  James's,  the  mysterious 
and  illustrious  author  of  the  Court  Circular, 
would  term  the  habitues  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  Honourable  gentlemen,  right 
honourable  gentlemen,  and  noble  lords,  who 
stick  to  the  benches  with  as  much  tenacity 
as  Theseus  to  the  diabolical  chair  originally 
handed  to  him  (no  doubt  with  a  polite 
flourish)  by  Radamanthus.  The  limpets  (to 
say  nothing  of  the  Barnacles)  of  the  state 
vessel.  A  select  few,  who  begin  the  dreary 
fun  of  the  session  by  chasing  Black  Rod  to  the 
bar  of  the  Lords  in  February,  and  end  it 
by  meekly  shaking  hands  with  Mr.  Speaker 
in  August.  A  wonderful  set  of  indefati- 
gable s,  grinding  away,  systematically,  on 
committees  with  a  stolid  perseverance  worthy 
of  the  Brixton  treadmills — told  out  into  one 
or  other  of  the  lobbies  on  every  division — 
haunting  the  doorkeeper  like  the  memories  of 
an  evil  conscience — contributing  ever  acertain 
majority  to  every  uncertain  minority  upon 
every  count-out  recorded  in  the  newspapers. 
Everybody  else  has  long  since  pulled  on  his 
fishing-boots,  or  donned  his  tweed-jacket,  off 
to  the  trout-stream,  or  to  the  heathery  region 
of  the  deer-stalker.  With  these  it  is  otherwise  : 
the  only  battue  they  care  for  is  the  one  known 
— in  parliamentary  slang — as  the  Massacre  of 
the  Innocents.  Yet,  look  at  them !  these  men 
who  may  be  regarded  as  the  pick  of  the 


Charles  Dlckens/1 


STEPPING-STONES. 


[October  24,  1347.]       403 


national  representatives.  With  a  few  rare 
exceptions,  they  are,  for  the  most  part, 
as  unlike  senators  in  their  outward  appear- 
ance as  even  Monsieur  Roland  of  the  French 
Revolution — wearing  most  of  them,  figura- 
tively speaking,  ribbons  in  their  shoes,  made 
of  nothing  more  than  red-tape,  dusted  over 
•with  nothing  less  than  pouncet.  Conspicuous 
amongst  these  political  mediocrities,  however, 
as  they  saunter  down  towards  their  accus- 
tomed destination — noticeable,  here  and  there, 
an  orator  with  something  like  an  individuality, 
or  a  statesman  with  something  very  like  a 
reputation.  Yonder  !  perched  in  the  saddle, 
and  guiding  his  horse  at  a  walking  pace  past 
the  Treasury,  moves  by  slowly  but  surely  in 
the  one  inevitable  direction,  the  noble  lord,  the 
ex-premier  with  the  Sphinx-like  profile.  There, 
as  I  come  at  last  within  view  of  the  grey  old 
minster  towers,  flashes  round  the  kerbstone 
in  his  brougham,  the  sprightly  veteran  who 
makes  it  such  a  capital  joke  to  guide  the 
destinies  of  England,  lolling  on  green  cushions 
before  a  green  box  containing  nothing  at  all 
in  particular,  with  a  hat  cocked  rakishly  on 
one  side,  and  a  smart  thing  always  ready  to 
his  lips  for  every  comer — be  he  some  earnest 
patriot  with  a  great  wrong  to  speak  of,  or  the 
discoverer  and  proprietor  in  fee  simple  of 
the  last  new  mare's-nest  of  diplomacy. 

As  I  cross  the  open  space  in  my  careless 
advance  towards  Westminster  Hall,  I  recol- 
lect the  larger  purpose  of  my  purely  mental 
peregrinations.  And  the  fancy  then  takes 
me  that  by  no  more  than  six  or  eight  of  the 
simplest  strides  of  memory,  each  one  naturally 
suggesting  another,  I  shall  have  passed  in 
thought  over  the  heads  of  ten  several  gene- 
rations before  those  valves  of  the  great  state 
engine,  the  glass-doors  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  shall  have  swung  to  at  the  heels 
of  the  leader  of  her  Majesty's  opposition 
member  for  Buckinghamshire,  whom  I  have 
just  encountered  at  the  corner  of  Palace 
Yard.  Half-a-dozen  historic  stepping-stones, 
or  there-abouts,  and  we  shall  be  landed  at  the 
distance  of  three  centuries  ! 

STEP  THE   FIRST.      A.D.    1848- 

AN  interval  of  very  little  more  than  nine 
years'  duration — scarcely  one  classic  decade — 
brings  me  readily  to  a  date  within  the  recol- 
lection of  us  all  :  to  an  occurrence,  as  it  were, 
of  yesterday.  I  am  reminded  of  that 
nineteenth  of  January,  in  eighteen  hundred 
and  forty-eight,  when  yonder  novelist-politi- 
cian lounging  on  before  me  was  witness  to  a 
tranquil  death  he  himself  has  since  then 
gracefully  and  impressively  commemorated — 
that  of  his  venerable  father,  the  accomplished 
author  of  the  Curiosities  of  Literature.  A 
dissolution  so  entirely  in  the  natural  order  of 
things— resulting  .from  a  calm  decay  of  the 
vital  energies  in  a  ripe  old  age,  surrounded 
by  all  the  consolations  of  a  blameless  and, 
still  more,  of  an  eminently  useful  and 
meritorious  life — that  a  son  could  write  of  it 


befittingly  soon  afterwards  in  a  tone  expres- 
sive of  pensive  equanimity.  The  demise  of 
Isaac  Disraeli,  in  his  eighty-second  year,  has, 
in  truth,  been  not  inappropriately  described 
by  his  filial  biographer  as  constituting,  so  to 
speak,  the  very  Euthanasia  of  a  man-of -letters. 
For,  it  is  recorded  of  him,  that  almost  imme- 
diately before  he  laid  himself  down  peace- 
fully to  breathe  his  last  in  the  seclusion  of 
his  country  home  at  Bradenham  House  in 
Buckinghamshire,  his  publisher  had  written 
to  inform  him  that  ALL  his  works  were  out  of 
print,  importuning  him  at  once  to  set  about 
revising  them  for  a  new  edition,  to  appear 
either  piecemeal  or  collectively.  So  ended, 
nearly  ten  years  ago,  that  protracted  literary 
existence  :  a  life  which,  commencing  rather 
unpropitiously  for  a  student-ambition  in  the 
May  of  seventeen  hundred  and  sixty-six,  at 
Enfield,  was  passed,  for  the  most  part,  in  the 
quietude  of  a  library,  in  the  midst  of  a  con- 
tinual and  congenial  litter  of  books  and 
manuscripts. 

STEP  THE  SECOND.      A.D.    1784. 

IT  recurs  to  my  mind,  while  I  am  mus- 
ing over  this  career  of  the  purely  con- 
templative and  entirely  successful  book- 
man, that,  in  the  nineteenth  year  of  his  age, 
this  same  Isaac  Disraeli  who,  sixty- four  years 
afterwards,  was  to  expire  amidst  the  raptures 
of  a  so-called  Euthanasia  of  authorship,  stood 
in  the  winter  of  seventeen  hundred  and 
eighty-four,  upon  the  doorstep  of  Number 
Eight,  Bolt  Court,  Fleet  Street,  a  timorous 
poetic  aspirant  seeking  the  advice  of  Doctor 
Johnson.  It  is  the  forenoon  of  a  foggy  day 
in  November.  A  packet  has  been  left  by  the 
nervous  stripling  at  that  same  door  a  week 
previously ;  and  he  has  called  now,  by  ap- 
pointment, in  the  hope  of  learning  the  success 
of  his  little  enterprise.  A  packet,  this 
appears  to  have  been,  containing  nothing  less 
important  than  a  manuscript  poem  on  Com- 
merce— a  didactic  poem  reprehending  its 
theme  (strange  enough,  this,  from  the  son  of 
a  Hebrew  merchant  I)  as  the  enervater  of 
the  human  race  and  the  corrupter  of  society — 
and  together  with  these  verses  a  suitable 
epistle  addressed  to  the  great  critic,  beseech- 
ing the  aid  of  his  wisdom  as  a  literary  guide 
and  counsellor. 

That  door-step  of  Number  Eight,  Bolt- 
Court,  is  our  second  stepping-stone.  It  has 
carried  us  at  one  stride  across  some  sixty- 
four  years,  over  nearly  two  generations. 

Hesitating,  yet  sanguine,  as  befits  at  once 
the  modesty  and  hopefulness  of  eighteen, 
young  Isaac  Disraeli  is  standing  there  beside 
me,  waiting  the  answer  to  his  faint  uncertain 
knock  of  trepidation.  The  door  opens  at 
last, — it  is  answered  (meaning  the  visitor  is 
answered)  by  the  doctor's  well-known  black 
servant,  Mr.  Francis  Barber,  a  form  with 
which  each  one  is  intimately  acquainted 
through  the  magic  mirror  of  Boswell's  Bio- 
graphy, 


404       [October  2),  1857-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


111  news  for  the  youthful  poetaster, — here 
ia  the  packet  handed  back  to  him,  unopened. 
Ill  news,  ah  me  !  too,  for  the  world  at  large. 
The  Doctor  is  too  ill  to  read  anything. 

The  disheartening  message,  we  are  told  by 
the  sympathising  commemorator  of  the  inci- 
dent, is  accepted  by  the  stripling  of  eighteen, 
in  his  utter  despondency,  as  a  merely 
mechanical  excuse.  But,  alas  !  the  cause 
was  too  true  ;  and  a  few  weeks  after, 
on  that  bed  beside  which  the  voice  of  Mr. 
Burke  faltered,  and  the  tender  spirit  of 
Beunet  Langton  was  ever  vigilant,  the  great 
soul  of  Johnson  quitted  earth.  At  the  mo- 
ment, however,  when  the  young,  eager  face 
of  the  Jew-poet  turns  from  the  door,  clouded 
by  the  first  anguish  of  his  sudden  and 
scarcely  anticipated  disappointment, — there, 
breathing  heavily  and  painfully  in  the  cur- 
tained room  up-stairs,  lies,  still  in  life,  the 
Oracle  of  his  Generation.  Miss  Burney  is 
waiting  anxiously  for  news  of  him  in  the 
quiet  parlour,  and  the  figure  of  Langton  is  | 
softly  creaking  down  the  staircase,  to  sadden 
her  with  the  last  whispered  bulletin. 

STEP   THE  THIRD.      A.D.  1739. 

JOHNSON  expired  soon  afterwards  in  that 
.same  year,  at  the  age  of  seventy-five,  on 
the  thirteenth  of  December  ;  and  I  am  na-  j 
turally  reminded  of  a  notable  incident 
occurring  five  and  forty  years  before  the 
date  of  the  one  last  mentioned.  I  am  in  a 
picturesque  corner  of  a  famous  grotto, — a 
small  study  or  rather  snuggery,  very  cosily  j 
furnished.  It  is  the  first  of  August  in  the , 
year  of  grace  seventeen  hundred  and  thirty- 
nine.  A  poor  little  pale-faced  crooked  man  is 
seated  immediately  before  me,  huddled  up 
in  a  dressing-gown,  leaning  over  a  table, 
scribbling.  A  glance  over  his  shoulder 
shows  me  that  what  he  has  been  writing  is 
just  finished.  It  is  a  courtly  letter  from 
Alexander  Pope,  addressed  to  my  Lord 
Oower,  commending  one  Mr.  Samuel  John- 
son, who  hath  recently  (his  Lordship  is  in- 
formed by  his  correspondent)  penned  an 
ingenious  poem  on  London :  and  for  which 
aforesaid  bard  of  the  capital,  Mr.  Pope 
thinks  my  Lord  might  perhaps,  without 
much  effort, — materially  advancing  the  young  j 
man's  fortunes  thereby, — obtain  a  degree,  at 
his  Lordship's  leisure,  from  one  of  the  rival 
universities.  Generously  thought  of,  O  noble 
heart  in  the  stunted  frame  !  but  thought  of, 
as  it  happens,  in  this  instance  somewhat 
ineffectually.  However  fruitlessly  written, 
it  is  pleasant  to  recal  to  one's  remembrance 
that  kindly  intercession  on  behalf  of  Samuel 
Johnson,  then  thirty,  and  comparatively 
obscure,  spontaneously  made  by  Alexander 
Pope,  then  fifty-one,  and  in  the  full  meridian 
glory  of  his  reputation.  It  imparts — the 
memory  of  that  genial  act,  an  act  worthy 
of  the  literary  brotherhood — an  additional 
pathos  to  the  sorrowful  death-scene  five 
years  afterwards,  when  the  great  poet,  pre- 


maturely decrepit  at  the  age  of  fifty-six,  sat 
silently,  with  his  mind  wrecked,  propped  up 
with  pillows,  slowly  dying !  And  when, 
leaning  over  the  back  of  his  arm-chair, 
weeping  over  the  friend  already  taken  from 
him,  though  still  alive,  Henry,  Lord  Boling- 
broke  sobbed  out,  through  his  tears,  in  broken 
accents : 

"  O  great  God,  what  is  man  !  " 

Remembering  which  woeful  death-scene 
that  was  to  be,  I  like  to  tarry  a  while  over 
the  thought  of  that  fraternal  plea,  but  one 
brief  lustre  earlier  (five  short  years  !  ),  that 
unsolicited  good  service,  by  which  the 
renowned  author  endeavoured,  as  it  were 
by  stealth,  to  aid  the  unknown  writer,  then 
struggling  manfully  to  fame,  through  many 
dismal  misfortunes. 

STEP  THE   FOURTH.      A.D.   1700. 

ANOTHER  interval  has  sped  by,  an  interval 
of  full  forty  years,  when  I  lounge  back  at 
a  stride  into  Will's  Coffee  House  and  the  year 
of  grace  seventeen  hundred,  simultaneously. 
As  I  am  following  our  own  diminutive  Alex- 
ander the  Great  into  that  far-famed  haunt 
of  the  wits  and  witlings,  I  am  ashamed  to 
confess  it,  I  observe  that  my  little  Guide  upon 
Town  is  positively  but  just  in  his  teens,  and 
consequently  in  his  outward  man  (or  rather, 
it  should  be  said,  boy)  appears  to  be  more 
than  ever  a  whipper-snapper.  I  should 
be  still  more  ashamed  to  confess  it,  that 
his  visiting  Will's  Coffee  House  in  this 
way  is  regarded  by  many  as  an  incident, 
to  say  the  least  of  it,  extremely  ques- 
tionable, if  not  an  occurrence,  the  record  of 
which  must  be  pronounced  (as  some  assert) 
absolutely  apocryphal — BUT — that  I  have 
long  since  doggedly  and  deliberately  made  up 
my  mind  to  swallow  henceforth,  without  any 
further  qualms  of  suspicion,  every  one  of  those 
dear  little  dubious  episodes  that  lend  a  charm 
to  our  national  annals,  impart  a  zest  to 
biography,  and  suffuse  a  fascination  over  all 
kinds  of  literary  and  historical  reminiscences. 
-*  Don't  tell  me  they  are  impossible.  I  reply 
they  are  delightful,  and,  so  replying,  pin  my 
faith  to  them,  one  and  all,  with  the  most 
implicit  credulity.  It  may  be  that  Sir  Isaac 
Newton  never  had  a  pet  dog  of  any  kind 
whatever  ;  yet,  in  spite  of  that  newly  dis- 
covered and  perfectly  indisputable  truth, 
I  cherish  still,  with  the  most  obstinate 
and  unshakeable  fidelity,  my  old  schoolboy 
belief  in  that  world-famous  anecdote  about 
the  tiny  spaniel  Diamond  and  the  ruined 
manuscript  calculations.  It  may  be,  again, 
that  the  oak  is  never  known  to  be  in  leaf  at 
the  time  of  year  when  King  Charles  the 
Second  is  so  very  erroneously  supposed  to 
have  hid  himself  among  its  branches  after  the 
battle  of  Worcester.  Possibly  !  I  won't  deny 
it — yet  hide  himself  among  those  green  oak 
boughs  I  am  incorrigibly  satisfied  he  did, 
nevertheless.  The  particular  tree  he  climbed 
must  have  been,  I  will  admit,  a  phenomenon 


Charles  Dickene.l 


STEPPING-STONES. 


[October  24,  1857.]       405 


among  its  species  :  burgeoning  miraculously 
at  a  season  unknown  before  or  since  to  the 
naturalist,  but  burgeoning  then — I  am  quite 
sure  of  it  —  luxuriously  !  Magnificently 
verdant  in  foliage,  from  the  cracks  in  its 
gnarled  and  burly  trunk  up  to  the  minutest 
skyward  twig,  and  full  of  shining  oak  apples 
as  the  pride  of  a  Kent  orchard  is  of  golden 
pippins  in  October.  And  so,  Woodman  Nie- 
buhr  !  lay  your  axe  of  incredulity  to  any  tree 
but  that ;  administer  your  poisoned  bolus  of 
Fact  to  any  dog  but  Diamond.  Under  the 
shadow  of  that  oak  I  must  still  read  Bosco- 
bel.  For  the  frolics  of  that  mischievous 
rascal  of  a  spaniel  I  must  still  have  an  eye,  as 
I  turn  the  oracular  pages  of  the  Novum 
Organum ! 

Whei-efore,  that  Pope  did  go  to  Will's, 
•when  only  a  little  boy  of  twelve,  I  am  reso- 
lutely bent  upon  believing,  down  to  the  very 
end  of  the  chapter.  What  though  the 
statement  of  the  child-poet's  visit  to  the 
old  coffee-house  rests  almost  exclusively  upon 
the  assertion  of  Mr.  Euffhead,  his  biographer? 
As  doubly  corroborative  of  the  probable  ve- 
racity of  which  assertion  howbeit,  hath  not 
Sir  Charles  Wogan  written  distinctly  (in  a 
letter  which  may  be  found  at  page  twenty- 
one  of  volume  eighteen  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
edition  of  the  works  of  Swift) :  "  I  had  the 
honour  of  bringing  Mr.  Pope  from  our  re- 
treat in  the  forest  of  Windsor  to  dress  a  la 
mode,  and  introduce  at  Will's  Coffee-house  ? " 
While  Mr.  Pope  himself  no  less  distinctly 
remarks,  in  his  earliest  epistle  to  Mr.  Wych- 
erley,  "  It  was  certainly  a  great  satisfaction 
to  me  to  hear  you  at  our  first  meeting  doing 
justice  to  our  dead  friend  Mr.  Dryden.  I 
•was  not  so  happy  as  to  know  him  :  Virgilium 
tantum  vidi."  Mark  the  solemn  Latin  as- 
severation or  averment :  "  But  I  have  seen 
Yirgil !  "  It  is  as  explicit  as  possible — "  I 
was  not  so  happy  as  to  know  him  :  but  I  have 
seen  him  !  "  After  which,  I  am  Mr.  Euff- 
head's  most  obedient :  placing  my  hand  in 
his  confidingly,  even  though  it  be  with  eyes 
still  closely  blindfolded.  For,  observe,  as 
glorious  John  died  at  the  ripe  age  of  seventy 
breathing  his  last  upon  Mayday,  seventeen 
hundred  ;  glorious  Alexander,  if  he  saw  him 
at  all  (and  he  says  he  did,  most  distinctly  and 
deliberately),  must  perforce  have  seen  him 
at  the  early  part  of  that  year,  when  he 
(Alexander)  was  still  only  in  his  tender 
childhood  :  And  further,  as  our  English 
Virgil  was  indisputably  dying  through  all 
the  previous  March  and  April,  being  con- 
fined a  close  prisoner  during  the  whole  of 
those  two  spring  months  within  the  privacy 
of  his  house  in  Gerard  Street,  it  follows 
that  the  reputed  interview  at  Will's 
Coffee  House  must  equally  perforce  have 
taken  place,  at  the  very  latest,  during 
the  previous  February.  Scarcely  a  dozen 
years  therefore  have  elapsed  since  the  child- 
beau  before  us — fastidiously  clad  a  la  mode, 
and  tripping  eagerly  across  the  threshold  of 


the  famous  rendezvous — breathed  his  first 
breath  on  the  twenty-first  of  May,  sixteen 
hundred  and  eighty-eight,  in  that  dwelling  in 
Lombard  Street,  where  his  father  then,  light 
of  hand  and  ready  of  whip,  drove  a  thriving 
trade  as  a  linen  merchant. 

After  the  little  red  heels  and  the  toy  cane, 
into  the  old  wainscoted  public  room  of  the- 
great  coffee-house  of  Covent  Garden !  A 
cursory  glance  is  sufficient  to  take  in. 
every  detail  of  the  peculiar  scene — familiar 
as  his  own  haunt,  to  every  reader  of  Captain 
Steele's '  Spectator.  Nothing,  however,  re- 
mains audible  in  all  the  hubbub  and  gossip, 
nothing  visible  among  all  the  moving  lights 
and  shadows,  but  what  at  once  fixes  the  at- 
tention of  our  boy-introducer.  Mr.  Drydeu 
yonder — scrooping  his  chair  round  upon  the 
bare  boarding  of  the  floor  so  as  to  have  his- 
foot  more  easily  upon  the  fender,  and  get 
altogether  at  a  cosier  angle  in  the  time- 
honoured  chimney-corner,  where  for  so  long 
he  has  sat  enthroned  the  master  of  the  gay 
revels  of  conversation.  Wigged  and  ruffled, 
brave  in  velvet  and  gold-lace  as  becomes 
them  both  in  their  contrasting  characters — I 
like  to  think  of  them  thus  as  they  momen- 
tarily confront  each  other,  with  their  keen 
eyes  meeting  casually  but  searchingly  :  the 
eyes  of  the  fragile  child  and  of  the  fast-failing 
septuagenarian. 

STEP  THE  FIFTH.      A.D.   1680. 

PERADVENTURE  another  score  of  years  may 
have  slipped  by,  and  I  have  probably  fixed 
my  staff,  at  the  next  stride,  upon  a  jutting- 
point  in  sixteen  hundred  and  eighty,  when  I 
find  myself  still  standing  by  Mr.  Dryden's 
elbow — he  has  just  completed  his  half- 
century — listening  with  him  to  "  our  famous 
Waller  " — then  but  some  four  years  short  of 
eighty — as  he  chats  pleasantly  in  a  cluster 
of  wits,  about  his  own  varied  literary  expe- 
riences. A  fragment  of  this  sparkling  small- 
talk  Mr.  Dryden  subsequently  preserves  in 
his  Preface  to  the  Fables,  where  he  relates- 
having  overheard  Mr.  Waller  attribute  the 
smoothness  of  his  numbers  to  the  suave  and 
harmonising  influence  of  the  Tasso  done  into 
English  verse  by  Mr.  Fairfax.  While  the 
courtly  lyrist  is  discoursing  with  a  negligent 
drawl  in  his  tone,  I  note  how  vigilantly 
attention  is  awakened  in  at  least  one  listener ;. 
I  see  it  on  that  mobile  brow  and  on  those 
nervous  lips,  so  vividly  and  instantly  impres- 
sionable. 

STEP  THE  SIXTH.      A.D.   1621. 

AN  adventurous  movement  gives  me  at  one 
bound  a  new  foothold  sixty  years  further 
back,  namely,  in  sixteen  hundred  and  twenty- 
one  :  when  I  am  at  the  elbow,  no  longer  of 
Waller's  listener,  but  of  Waller  as  a  listener. 
He  himself  has  not  lived  long  enough  to 
wither  into  greyness  and  wrinkles.  He  is, 
on  the  contrary,  in  the  fresh  bloom  of  sixteen, 
jauntily  attired,  as  becomes  a  courtier 


406       [October  24, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


fConducted  by 


making  one  in  a  brilliant  gathering  of  at- 
tendants grouped  about  the  dais  in  the 
bauqueting-charaber  of  Whitehall.  His 
Majesty  Jamie  the  Sixth  of  Scotland,  James 
the  First  of  England,  according  to  kingly 
•wont  in  those  days,  holds  high  revel,  com- 
paratively in  public,  in  the  presence  of  his 
lieges.  A  customary  royal  dinner  this  is,  in 
the  mere  manner  of  it ;  but,  in  the  curious 
converse  it  elicits,  one  in  many  ways  really 
extraordinary.  A  contest  of  gibe  and  re- 
partee faithfully  recorded  upon  our  national 
annals  by  every  subsequent  historian.  A 
wit-combat  between  the  anointed  clown 
there,  slobbering  over  the  gold  dishes  (with 
the  juices  of  the  food  he  masticates,  running 
in  unseemly  fashion  out  of  the  corners  of  his 
ungainly  mouth  upon  his  dribbled  beard), 
and  sundry  of  the  guests  at  his  regal  board, 
right  honourables  and  right  reverends.  It  is 
not  the  babble  of  king  and  bishops,  however, 
I  am  now  watchfully  observing  ;  it  is  rather 
the  shrewd  listening  face  of  one  spare  and 
delicate  youth,  easily  discernible  among  the 
bystanders.  The  countenance  of  Waller  at 


his  lips — toys  with  the  tassel  of  his  orange 
doublet  and  hearkens  sagaciously. 

STEP  THE  SEVENTH.      A.D.  1566. 

IK  a  twinkling  I  have  strode,  at  a  single 
pace,  forty-five  years*  further  onward  into 
the  past,  and  am  peering  curiously,  upon  a 
summer's  day  of  fifteen  hundred  and  sixty- 
six,  through  a  tapestried  porch  of  an  ante- 
room into  a  sleeping-chamber  in  what  was, 
even  then,  the  time-worn  and  war-worn 
Castle  of  Edinburgh.  James  Stuart  has 
happily  not  yet  developed  from  the  baby- 
prince  into  the  full-grown  kingly  punchinello. 
He  is  indeed  but  newly-born,  having  first 
opened  his  eyes  to  the  light  on  the  nine- 
teenth of  June,  only  a  few  days  previously. 
The  apartment — since  screened  off  into  a 
very  cupboard,  and  displayed  thus  to  wonder- 
ing sight-seers  as  the  birthplace  of  the  first 
sovereign  of  the  United  Kingdom  of  England 
and  Scotland — presents  to  view,  as  I  gaze 
into  it,  a  domestic  group,  pathetic  in  its  way, 
and  singularly  beautiful.  The  handsome 
and  youthful  ne'er-do-weel,  Henry,  the  Lord 


sixteen,  as  Aubrey  has  described  it :  with  a  Darnley,  King  (consort)  of  Scots — sullen  and 
"  fair  thin  skin ;  his  hair,  frizzed,  of  a  brownish  passionate  by  turns,  through  all  his  wayward 
colour  ;  full  eye,  popping  out  and  working  ;  1  married  life — has  unexpectedly  come  to  visit 
his  face  somewhat  of  an  olivaster  " — Waller,  his  queen- wife  during  one  brief  lucid  interval 
in  short,  as  he  was,  before  he  saw  that  of  compunction :  apparently  intent  only  upon 
"  sleepy  eye  "  that  spoke,  for  him  at  least,  j  consoling  her  under  the  depressing  influence 
anything  but  the  "  melting  soul : "  the  Ian- !  of  her  recent  pangs  by  this  unwonted  evidence 
guishing  glance  of  the  blonde  and  voluptuous ,  of  tenderness  :  in  reality  eager  to  see  with 
Sacharissa.  Not,  however,  now  to  the  damask  !  his  own  eyes  and  hold  within  his  own  arms 
cheek  of  beauty  or  to  the  chiming  cadence  of  i  the  offspring  of  their  ill-fated  nuptials.  A 
her  silver  voice  are  Waller's  senses  wakened, '  contemporary  chronicler  tells  full  sadly  the 
as  I  observe  him  leaning  by  the  gorgeous  i  tale  of  the  notable  interview  with  its  slight 
buffet  of  Whitehall,  father  than  that,  >  but  touching  incidents— how  Mary,  lovelier 
they  are  fixed  meditatively  upon  the  drivel- |  than  ever  in  her  maternal  prostration,  her 
ling  of  the  Grotesque  yonder,  lolling  in  the  delicate  complexion  flushing  as  she  spoke, 
state  chair  and  spluttering  over  the  crisp !  swore  a  great  oath  as  to  the  child's  legiti- 
ruff  and  the  jewels  of  sovereignty — that  niacy,  calling  God  to  witness  the  truth  of  her 
farcical  pedant-king,  whose  incongruous  reign  asseveration :  her  eyes  of  witchery  in  a  blaze, 
is,  as  it  were,  nothing  better  than  a  fantastic  i  her  fair  right  hand  pointing  stedfastly  from 
burlesque  between  two  bloody  and  affecting  j  her  couch  to  Heaven  !  How  Darnley,  thrilling 
tragedies.  A  laughable  interlude  played  out !  to  the  words  then  uttered,  yearned  over  the 


upon  the  great  stage  of  history  by  a  low 
comedian,  the  very  type  of  the  king  of  extra- 
vaganzas ;  by  one  whose  offspring  and  succes- 
sor was  nevertheless  afterwards  to  die  upon  a 
scaffold  outside  that  very  banquet-hall ;  whose 
own  immediate  progenitors  were  already  pre- 


little  infant  he  held  at  the  moment  in  his 
arms,  as  he  sat  by  the  bedside,  and  bending 
down,  kissed  it  tenderly  upon  the  forehead. 

STEP  THE  EIGHTH.      A.D.  1542. 

FOLLOWING  a  very  natural  sequence  of  re- 


maturely  slain,  the  one  by  the  headsman's  axe,  I  collections,  I  pass,  still  as  from  stepping-stone 


the  other  by  the  hand  of  the  midnight  assas- 
sin. This  gobbling  farceur,  however,  talking 
perilous  nonsense,  now  in  sixteen  hundred 
and  twenty-one,  to  two  of  the  lords  spiritual 
of  his  realm — sire  and  son,  midway  between 
destinies  so  evil  doomed — has  no  relish  what- 
ever taken  from  the  viands  upon  his  platter 
by  the  shadowy  ghosts  of  two  grimly  memo- 
ries, or  by  the  spectral  phantom  of  one 
momentary  presentiment.  Guttling  his  food 
with  a  zest,  the  King  plays  the  fool  according 
tt)  habit  in  his  accustomed  though  uncon- 
scious capacity  as  his  own  jester,  what  time 
Mr.  Edmund  Waller — the  down  not  yet  upon 


to  stepping-stone,  across  an  interval  of  some 
four-and-twenty  years,  from  the  birthplace  of 
James  to  that  of  his  young  mother,  the  radi- 
ant and  unfortunate  Queen  of  Scots ;  paus- 
ing upon  the  eighth  of  December,  fifteen 
hundred  and  forty-two,  at  the  door  of  another 
royal  bedchamber:  the  room  in  which  the 
thrice-widowed  Mary  began  her  woful  life  of 
love  in  the  palace  of  Linlithgow.  Here  in 
truth. at  last — pausing  !  For,  the  date  alone 
without  one  syllable  of  illustrative  comment, 
is  of  itself,  indeed,  sufficiently  suggestive.  Sug- 
gestive— how  suggestive  !  of  the  first  tender 
budding  of  the  beautiful  passion-flower, 


Charles  Eickem.] 


A  TOUCHING  (AND  TOUCHED)  CHARACTER.     [October  24, 1957.1    407 


sown,  so  to  speak,  by  a  storm-blast  between 
the  chinks  of  a  mouldering  rampart,  stained 
with  the  blood  and  blackened  with  the 
thunder  of  battle. 

And  that  date,  has  it  not  brought  us  (let 
it  be  remembered  distinctly  by  no  more  than 
an  eighth  step)  to  a  period  removed  from  the 
Actual  Present  by  a  lapse  of  more  than  Three 
Centuries  1 

Link  by  link  the  chain  of  memories  might 
be  strung  together,  readily  enough,  indefi- 
nitely onward,  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion :  connecting  the  age  of  Victoria  not  less 
easily  with  that  of  Boadicea,  than  the  former- 
is  here  brought,  by  eight  paces,  within  view  of 
an  epoch  positively  beyond  that  of  Elizabeth. 

Enough.  I  am  suddenly  recalled  from 
fifteen  hundred  and  forty-two  to  this  present 
year  of  our  Lord  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty- 
seven,  as  by  a  jerk,  startling  me  from  my 
meditative  recollections.  The  glass-doors  of 
the  Commons  have  swung-to,  and  I  kick  off 
my  Shoes  of  Swiftness  and  subside  into  mere 
Wellingtons. 


A  TOUCHING  (AND  TOUCHED) 
CHARACTER. 

SOME  few  years  ago,  the  reading-room  of 
the  BibliothSque  Royale,  at  Paris,  was  fre- 
quented by  a  personage  whose  quaint  cos- 
tume could  not  fail  to  attract  the  notice  of 
every  visitor.  Dressed  from  top  to  toe  in  a 
close-fitting  garb  of  red,  or  blue,  or  yellow 
cloth,  with  the  grand  cordon  of  some  unknown 
order  of  knighthood  around  his  neck,  and  his 
hat  adorned  with  artificial  flowers,  bright 
beads,  and  tinsel  ornaments  of  every  descrip- 
tion, the  strangely-accoutred  student  would 
sit  all  day  long  in  one  particular  place,  with 
his  head  bent  over  his  book,  apparently  wrapt 
in  attention  to  the  subject  before  him.  He 
was  a  man  past  middle  life,  his  hair  and 
beard  were  grey,  and  his  countenance,  which 
had  evidently  once  been  handsome,  bore 
'traces  of  long  and  deep  suffering,  in  the  fur- 
rows with  which  it  was  plentifully  seamed. 
The  curiosity  excited  by  the  singularity  of 
his  dress  could  not  fail  to  be  increased  by  the 
ineffable  sorrow  expressed  in  his  face  ;  and 
if  any  one,  interested  by  his  appearance, 
inquired  who  he  was,  he  probably  obtained 
no  other  answer  than  this :  "  It  is  Carne- 
vale." 

Indeed,  Carnevale's  history  was  so  well 
known  to  the  habitues  of  the  library,  that 
they  thought  no  further  answer  was  neces- 
sary ;  but  if  the  inquirer  pursued  his  ques- 
tions, he  might  have  heard  the  following 
account  of  him : 

Carnevale  was  an  Italian,  of  a  highly 
respectable  family  in  Naples.  He  came  to 
Paris  about  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and 
twenty-six,  young,  handsome,  and  well  pro- 
vided with  money.  With  these  advan- 
tages he  had  no  difficulty  in  getting  into 
society,  and  was  received  with  open  arms  by 


his  fellow-countrymen  resident  in  the  French 
capital.  Suddenly,  however,  he  disappeared 
his  friends  lost  sight  of  him ;  no  one 
knew  why  or  whither  he  had  gone,  until 
some  time  afterwards  it  was  discovered  that) 
he  had  fallen  passionately  in  love,  and  had 
sought  solitude  in  order  to  en  joy  undisturbed 
the  sweet  society  of  the  mistress  of  his  affec- 
tions. But  his  happiness  was  of  short  dura- 
tion ;  the  lady  died,  and  her  death  robbed 
poor  Carnevale  not  only  of  all  that  was  dearest 
to  him  on  earth,  but  of  his  reason,  too. 

When  he  had  in  some  degree  recovered 
from  the  first  violence  of  the  shock,  he  went 
daily  to  pray  and  weep  at  her  tomb.  The 
watchman  at  the  cemetery  noticed  that,  at 
every  visit,  he  took  a  paper,  folded  in  the 
shape  of  a  letter,  from  his  pock«t,  and  placed 
it  under  the  stone.  This  was  communicated 
to  Carnevale's  friends,  one  of  whom  went  to 
the  grave,  and  found  five  letters  hidden 
there  :  one  for  each  day  since  her  burial.  The 
last  was  to  this  effect,  though  it  is  impossible 
to  render  in  a  translation  all  the  pathetic 
grace  of  the  original  Italian  : 

DEAREST,  —  You  do  not  answer  my  letters,  and 
yet  you  know  that  I  love  you.  Have  you  forgotten 
me  amid  the  occupations  of  the  other  land  ?  It  would 
be  unkind — very  unkind — if  you  had.  But  now,  for 
five  days — five  long  days — I  have  waited  for  news  of 
you.  I  cannot  sleep,  or  if  I  close  my  eyes  for  an 
instant,  it  is  to  dream  of  you. 

Why  did  you  not  leave  me  your  address  ?  I 
would  have  sent  you  your  clothes  and  trinkets.  .  .  . 
But  no !  do  not  send  for  them  :  for  pity's  sake,  leave 
them  with  me.  I  have  arranged  them  on  chairs,  and 
I  fancy  you  are  in  the  next  room,  and  that  you  will 
soon  come  in  and  dress  yourself.  Besides  these  things, 
which  you  have  worn,  spread  a  perfume  through  my 
little  room  ;  and  so  I  am  happy  when  I  come  in. 

I  wish  I  had  your  portrait,  very  well  done,  very 
much  like  you,  so  as  to  he  able  to  compete  with  the 
other — for  I  have  one  already.  It  is  in  my  eyes,  and 
it  can  never  change.  Whether  I  shut  my  eyes,  or 
open  them,  I  see  you  always.  .  .  Ah,  my  darling ! 
how  skilful  is  the  great  artist  who  has  left  me  this 
portrait. 

Farewell,  dearest!  Write  to  me  to-morrow,T  or 
to-day,  if  you  can.  If  you  are  very  busy,  I  will  not 
ask  you  for  a  page,  or  even  for  a  line, — only  three 
words.  Tell  me  only  that  you  love  me. 

CAHNEVALE. 

His  friend,  imagining  that  he  was  suffer- 
ing from  an  illusive  melancholy  which  every 
day  would  tend  to  decrease,  requested  the 
watchman  to  take  away  the  letters  as 
Carnevale  brought  them  ;  but  the  result  was 
not  as  he  anticipated.  On  finding  that  his 
love  did  not  send  him  any  reply,  Carnevale 
fell  into  a  state  of  gloomy  despair ;  after 
having  written  thirty  letters,  he  ceased  his 
visits  to  the  cemetery. 

It  was  about  this  time  that,  as  he  walked 
along  the  boulevards,  he  saw  a  variety  of 
bright  coloured  cloths  displayed  in  a 
draper's  window.  He  smiled  at  seeing 
them,  and,  entering  the  shop,  purchased 
several  yards  of  each  sort  of  cloth.  A  week 


408 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[October  24, 1857.1 


afterwards,  he  appeared  in  the  streets  in  a 
complete  suit  of  red  ;  hat,  coat,  waistcoat, 
trousers  and  shoes,  all  red,  and  of  a 
fantastic  cut.  A  crowd  soon  gathered  around 
him,  and  he  returned  home  with  at  least  five 
hundred  idlers  at  his  heels.  The  next  day, 
he  came  out  in  a  yellow  suit ;  the  day 
after,  in  a  suit  of  sky-blue  ;  each  day  he  was 
followed  by  a  fresh  crowd  ;  but,  erelong  the 
Parisians  became  familiar  with  the  eccen- 
tricity of  his  attire,  and  none  but  strangers 
turned  to  gaze  at  him.  It  was  noticed,  how- 
ever, that  he  varied  his  dress  from  day  to 
day,  not  in  any  regular  succession,  but  capri- 
ciously, and  as  if  in  accordance  with  his 
frame  of  mind. 

During  the  revolution  of  July,  eighteen 
hundred  and*  thirty,  his  strange  costume 
nearly  proved  fatal  to  him.  As  he  took  no 
interest  in  passing  events,  never  conversing 
with  any  one,  and  never  reading  a  news- 
paper, he  was  perfectly  unaware  of  what  was 
occurring,  and  had  no  idea  that  Paris  was  in 
a  state  of  revolution.  On  the  twenty-eighth 
of  July,  as  he  was  walking  along  the  quays, 
he  fell  in  with  a  band  of  insurgents  from  the 
faubourgs,  who,  not  being  familiar  with  his 
appearance  and  being  misled  by  the  cordon 
round  his  neck,  took  him  for  a  foreign  prince, 
and  were  going  to  throw  him  into  the 
Seine.  He  was  fortunately  recognised  by  a 
cab-driver,  who  explained  who  he  was,  and 
obtained  his  liberation.  It  was  with  great 
difficulty  that  Carnevale  was  brought  to 
understand  that  Paris  was  in  uproar,  and 
that  his  gay  habiliments  had  brought  him 
into  peril  of  his  life ;  but  when,  the  next 
day,  he  once  more  put  on  black  clothes,  he 
relapsed  into  his  former  sadness.  He  felt 
his  brain  grow  disturbed ;  he  remembered 
with  painful  acuteness  the  death  of  his  love  ; 
he  was  conscious  that,  day  by  day,  his  reason 
was  abandoning  him.  As  soon  as  he  found 
this  was  the  case,  he  betook  himself,  of  his 
own  accord,  to  the  hospital  at  Bicetre,  and 
remained  there  for  some  time,  under  treat- 
ment. The  physicians  were  amazed  to  hear 
a  madman  reason  as  calmly  as  he  did  about 
his  condition. 

"  Send  for  my  coloured  clothes,"  said  he 
one  day.  His  request  was  complied  with  ; 
and  as  soon  as  he  had  put  on  his  red  suit,  he 
resumed  his  former  gaiety. 

"  It  was  the  black  clothes,"  he  said,  "that 
made  me  ill.  I  cannot  endure  black.  You  are 
all  very  foolish  to  sacrifice  to  so  ugly  a  fashion. 
You  always  look  as  if  you  were  going  to  a 
funeral.  For  my  part,  when  I  am  very  joyful 
I  put  on  my  red  suit ;  it  becomes  me  so  well 
— and,  besides  my  friends  know  what  it 
means.  When  they  see  me  in  red,  they  say  : 

"  '  Carnevale  is  in  a  very  good  humour  to- 
day.' 

"  When  I  am  not  in  auch  good  spirits,  I  put 


on  my  yellow  suit  ;  that  looks  very  nice  also. 
And  when  I  am  a  little  melancholy,  and  the 
sun  does  not  shine  very  brightly,  I  put  on  my 
blue  clothes." 

When  he  left  the  hospital,  finding  that  his 
fortune  was  somewhat  diminished,  Carnevale 
determined  to  add  to  his  means  by  giving 
lessons  in  Italian.  He  soon  obtained  a  num- 
ber of  pupils — for  his  story  became  known, 
and  gained  him  many  friends.  His  manner 
of  teaching,  too,  was  excellent ;  he  never 
scolded  his  pupils,  or  gave  them  impositions. 
If  they  knew  their  lessons  well,  he  would 
promise  to  come  next  time  in  his  apple-green 
dress  ;  but  if  he  were  dissatisfied  with  them, 
he  would  say : 

"  Ah !  I  shall  be  obliged  to  come  to-morrow 
in  my  coffee-coloured  suit." 

Thus  he  rewarded  and  punished  his  pupils 
always,  and  he  could  easily  do  it,  for  he  had 
more  than  sixty  suits,  each  of  one  colour 
throughout,  all  ticketed  and  hung  up,  with 
the  greatest  care,  in  a  room  which  he  allowed 
no  one  to  enter  but  himself. 

His  circle  of  acquaintance,  towards  the  end 
of  his  life,  became  very  large.  His  gentle 
manners,  and  harmless  eccentricities,  made 
him  welcome  everywhere.  At  the  Neapo- 
litan embassy,  he  was  a  constant  guest  ;  and 
with  the  artistes  of  the  Italian  Theatre  he 
was  a  special  favourite.  Though  not  rich, 
his  income  more  than  sufficed  his  moderate 
wants,  and  he  gave  away  a  great  deal  in 
charity.  No  poor  Italian  ever  applied  to 
him  in  vain  for  assistance  ;  many  have  owed 
success  to  his  zealous  recommendation  of 
them  to  his  influential  friends.  He  de- 
lighted in  being  of  service. 

His  habits  were  very  simple.  Every  morn- 
ing, he  rose  at  five  o'clock  from  the  leathern 
arm-chair  in  which  he  slept ;  for,  he  would  not 
sleep  in  a  bed.  After  a  visit  to  the  fish- 
market,  to  make  purchases  for  his  friends, 
he  would  return  home,  and  prepare  with 
his  own  hands  a  dish  of  potatoes  for  his 
breakfast.  His  day  was  spent  with  his  pupils, 
or  at  the  library,  and  ended  with  a  walk  on. 
the  boulevards.  In  walking,  if  he  met  any 
one  he  knew,  he  would  take  his  arm,'  and 
enter  into  a  long  conversation  about  Italy, 
music,  or  some  other  favourite  topic  ;  and  he 
would  fancy  that  the  person  whom,  he  had 
thus  casually  encountered  was  Bellini,  Na- 
poleon, Malebran,  or  some  equally  illustrious 
deceased.  This  hallucination  was  a  source 
of  great  pleasure  to  him :  it  was  in  vain  to 
tell  him  that  Napoleon,  Malebran,  and  Bellini 
were  dead.  "  They  are  dead  to  you,  I  admit," 
he  would  answer,  "but  not  to  me.  I  am, 
endowed  with  senses  that  you  do  not  possess. 
I  assure  you  they  are  not  dead ;  they  love 
me,  and  frequent  my  company." 

Poor  Carnevale !  May  the  sun  shine 
brightly  on  his  grave. 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


PublMhed  »t  the  Office,  No.  16,  Wellington  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  B  EADUVRY  &  EVAHS,  Whitefriars,  London, 


"  Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS"— SUAKESPF.AEB. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A   WEEKLY   JOUENAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


ISTO-  897.] 


SATURDAY,  OCTOBER  31,  1857. 


f  PRIGB  2(i. 
(STAMPED  3d. 


THE  LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE 
APPRENTICES. 

IN  FIVE  CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE  FIFTH. 

Two  of  the  many  passengers  by  a  certain 
late  Sunday  evening  train,  Mr.  Thomas  Idle 
and  Mr.  Francis  Goodchild,  yielded  up  their 
tickets  at  a  little  rotten  platform  (converted 
into  artificial  touch-wood  bysinoke  and  ashes), 
deep  in  the  manufacturing  bosomof  Yorkshire. 
A  mysterious  bosom  it  appeared,  upon  a 
damp,  dark,  Sunday  night,  dashed  through  in 
the  train  to  the  music  of  the  whirling  wheels, 
the  panting  of  the  engine,  and  the  part-singing 
of  hundreds  of  third- class  excursionists, 
whose  vocal  efforts  "  bobbed  arayound  "  from 
sacred  to  profane,  from  hymns,  to  our  trans- 
atlantic sisters  the  Yankee  Gal  and  Mairy 
Anne,  in  a  remarkable  way.  There  seemed  to 
have  been  some  large  vocal  gathering  near  to 
every  lonely  station  on  the  line.  No  town 
was  visible,  no  village  was  visible,  no  light 
was  visible  ;  but,  a  multitude  got  out  sing- 
ing, and  a  multitude  got  in  singing,  and 
the  second  multitude  took  up  the  hymns, 
and  adopted  our  transatlantic  sisters,  and 
sang  of  their  own  egregious  wickedness,  and 
of  their  bobbing  arayound,  and  of  how  the 
ship  it  was  ready  and  the  wind  it  was  fair, 
and  they  were  bayound  for  the  sea,  Mairy 
Anne,  until  they  in  their  turn  Became  a 
getting-out  multitude,  and  were  replaced  by 
another  getting-in  multitude,  who  did  the 
same.  And  at  every  station,  the  getting-in 
multitude,  with  an  artistic  reference  to  the 
completeness  of  their  chorus,  incessantly  cried, 
as  with  one  voice  while  scuffling  into  the 
carriages,  "  We  mun  aa'  gang  toogither  ! " 

The  singing  and  the  multitudes  had  trailed 
off  as  the  lonely  places  were  left  and  the 
great  towns  were  neared,  and  the  way  had 
lain  as  silently  as  a  train's  way  ever  can, 
over  the  vague  black  streets  of  the  great 
gulfs  of  towns,  and  among  their  branchless 
woods  of  vague  black  chimneys.  These  towns 
looked,  in  the  cinderous  wet,  as  though  they 
had  one  and  all  been  on  fire  and  were  just 
put  out — a  dreary  and  quenched  panorama, 
many  miles  long. 

Thus,  Thomas  and  Francis  got  to  -Leeds  ; 
of  which  enterprising  and  important  com- 
mercial centre  it  may  be  observed  with  deli- 
cacy, that  you  must  either  like  it  very  much 


or  not  at  all.  Next  day,  the  first  of  the 
Race- Week,  they  took  train  to  Doncaster. 

And  instantly  the  character,  both  of  tra- 
vellers and  of  luggage,  entirely  changed,  and 
no  other  business  than  race-business  any 
longer  existed  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  The 
talk  was  all  of  horses  and  "  John  Scott." 
Guards  whispered  behind  their  hands  to 
station-masters,  of  horses  and  John  Scott. 
Men  in  cut-away  coats  and  speckled  cravats 
fastened  with  peculiar  pins,  and  with  the 
large  bones  of  their  legs  developed  under 
tight  trousers,  so  that  they  should  look  as 
much  as  possible  like  horses'  legs,  paced  up 
and  down  by  twos  at  junction-stations, 
speaking  low  and  moodily  of  horses  and 
John  Scott.  The  young  clergyman  in  the 
black  strait-waistcoat,  who  occupied  the 
middle  seat  of  the  carriage,  expounded  in  his 
peculiar  pulpit-accent  to  the  young  and 
lovely  Reverend  Mrs.  Crinoline,  who  occu- 
pied the  opposite  middle-seat,  a  few  passages 
of  rumour  relative  to  "Oartheth,  my  love,  and 
Mithter  John  Eth-coTT."  A  bandy  vagabond, 
with  a  head  like  a  Dutch  cheese,  in  a  fustian 
stable-suit,  attending  on  a  horse-box  and  going 
about  the  platforms  with  a  halter  hanging 
round  his  neck  like  a  Calais  burgher  of  the 
ancient  period  much  degenerated,  was  courted 
by  the  best  society,  by  reason  of  what  he  had 
to  hint,  when  not  engaged  in  eating  straw, 
concerning  "  t'harses  and  Joon  Scott."  The 
engine-driver  himself,  as  he  applied  one  eye 
to  his  large  stationary  double-eye-glass  on 
the  engine,  seemed  to  keep  the  other  open, 
sideways,  upon  horses  and  John  Scott. 

Breaks  and  barriers  at  Doucaster  station 
to  keep  the  crowd  off;  temporary  wooden 
avenues  of  ingress  and  egress,  to  help  the 
crowd  on.  Forty  extra  porters  sent  down 
for  this  present  blessed  Race- Week,  and  all 
of  them  making  up  their  betting-books  in  the 
lamp-room  or  somewhere  else,  and  none  of  them 
to  come  and  touch  the  luggage.  Travellers 
disgorged  into  an  open  space,  a  howling 
wilderness  of  idle  men.  All  work  but  race- 
work  at  a  stand-still ;  all  men  at  a  stand- 
still. "  Ey  my  word  !  Deant  ask  noon  o'  us 
to  help  wi'  t'  luggage.  33ock  your  opinion 
loike  a  mon.  Coom !  Dang  it,  coorn,  t'harses 
and  Joon  Scott !  "  In  the  midst  of  the  idle 
men,  all  the  fly  horses  and  omnibus  horses  of 
Doncaster  and  parts  adjacent,  rampant, 


VOL.  XVI. 


397 


410       [October  31,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


rearing,  backing,  plunging,  shying — appa- 
rently the  result  of  their  hearing  of  nothing 
but  tlieir  own  order  and  John  Scott. 

Grand  Dramatic  Company  from  London 
for  the  Race-week.  Poses  Plastiques  in  the 
Grand  Assembly  Room  up  the  Stable- Yard 
at  seven  and  nine  each  evening,  for  the  Race- 
Week.  Grand  Alliance  Circus  in  the  field 
beyond  the  bridge,  for  the  Race -Week. 
Grand  Exhibition  of  Aztec  Lilliputians,  im- 
portant to  all  who  want  to  be  horrified  cheap, 
for  the  Race-Week.  Lodgings,  grand  and 
not  grand,  but  all  at  grand  prices,  ranging 
from  ten  pounds  to  twenty,  for  the  Grand 
Race- Week  ! 

Rendered  giddy  enough  by  these  things, 
Messieurs  Idle  and  Goodchild  repaired  to  the 
quarters  they  had  secured  beforehand,  and 
Mr.  Goodchild  looked  down  from  the  window 
into  the  surging  street. 

"  By  heaven,  Tom  ! "  cried  he,  after  con- 
templating it,  "I  am  in  the  Lunatic  Asylum 
again,  and  these  are  all  mad  people  under  the 
charge  of  a  body  of  designing  keepers  ! " 

All  through  the  Race- Week,  Mr.  Goodchild 
never  divested  himself  of  this  idea.  Every 
day  he  looked  out  of  window,  with  some- 
thing of  the  dread  of  Lemuel  Gulliver  look- 
ing down  at  men  after  he  returned  home 
from  the  horse-country  ;  and  every  day  he 
saw  the  Lunatics,  horse-raad,  betting-mad, 
drunken-mad,  vice-mad,  and  the  designing 
Keepers  always  after  them.  The  idea  per- 
vaded, like  the  second  colour  in  shot-silk,  the 
whole  of  Mr.  Goodchild's  impressions.  They 
were  much  as  follows : 

Monday,  mid-day.  Races  not  to  begin 
until  to-morrow,  but  all  the  mob-Lunatics 
out,  crowding  the  pavements  of  the  one  main 
street  of  pretty  and  pleasant  Doncaster, 
crowding  the  road,  particularly  crowding  the 
ontside  of  the  Betting  Rooms,  whooping  and 
shouting  loudly  after  all  passing  vehicles. 
Frightened  lunatic  horses  occasionally  run- 
ning away,  with  infinite  clatter.  All  degrees 
of  men,  from  peers  to  paupers,  betting  inces- 
santly. Keepers  very  watchful,  and  taking 
all  good  chances.  An  awful  family  likeness 
among  the  Keepers,  to  Mr.  Palmer  and  Mr. 
Thurtell.  With  some  knowledge  of  expres- 
sion and  some  acquaintance  with  heads  (thus 
writes  Mr.  Goodchild),  I  never  have  seen 
anywhere,  so  many  repetitions  of  one  class  of 
countenance  and  one  character  of  head  (both 
evil)  as  in  this  street  at  this  time.  Cunning, 
covetousness,  secresy,  cold  calculation,  hard 
callousness  and  dire  insensibility,  are  the 
uniform  Keeper  characteristics.  Mr.  Palmer 
passes  me  five  times  in  five  minutes,  and,  as 
I  so  down  the  street,  the  back  of  Mr.  Thur- 
tell's  skull  is  always  going  on  before  me. 

Monday  evening.  Town  lighted  up  ;  more 
Lunatics  out  than  ever ;  a  complete  choke 
and  stoppage  of  the  thoroughfare  outside  the 
Betting  Rooms.  Keepers, having  dined,  per- 
vade the  Betting  Rooms,  and  sharply  snap  at 
the  moneyed  Luuatics.  Some  Keepers  flushed 


with  drink,  and  some  not,  but  all  close  and 
calculating.  A  vague  echoing  roar  of 
"  t'harses "  and  "Traces"  always  rising  in 
the  air,  until  midnight,  at  about  which  period 
it  dies  away  in  occasional  drunken  songs  and 
straggling  yells.  But,  all  night,  some  unman- 
nerly drinking-house  in  the  neighbourhood 
opens  its  mouth  at  intervals  and  spits  out  a 
man  too  drunk  to  be  retained :  who  there- 
upon makes  what  uproarious  protest  may  be 
left  in  him,  and  either  falls  asleep  where  he 
tumbles,  or  is  carried  off  in  custody. 

Tuesday  morning,  at  daybreak.  A  sudden 
rising,  as  it  were  out  of  the  earth,  of  all  the 
obscene  creatures,  who  sell  "correct  cards  of 
the  races."  They  may  have  been  coiled  in 
corners,  or  sleeping  on  door-steps,  and,  having 
all  passed  the  night  under  the  same  set  of 
circumstances,  may  all  want  to  circulate  their 
blood  at  the  same  time  ;  but,  however  that 
may  be,  they  spring  into  existence  all  at 
once  and  together,  as  though  a  new  Cadmus 
had  sown  a  race-horse's  teeth.  There  is 
nobody  up,  to  buy  the  cards  ;  but,  the  cards 
are  madly  cried.  There  is  no  patronage  to 
quarrel  for  ;  but,  they  madly  quarrel  and 
fight.  Conspicuous  among  these  hyaenas,  as 
breakfast-time  discloses,  is  a  fearful  creature 
in  the  general  semblance  of  a  man : 
shaken  off  his  next-to-no  legs  by  drink  and 
devilry,  bare-headed  and  bare-footed,  with  a 
great  shock  of  hair  like  a  horrible  broom, 
and  nothing  on  him  but  a  ragged  pair  of 
trousers  and  a  pink  glazed-calico  coat — made 
on  him — so  very  tight  that  it  is  as  evident 
that  he  could  never  take  it  off,  as  that  he 
never  does.  This  hideous  apparition,  incon- 
ceivably drunk,  has  a  terrible  power  of  making 
a  gong-like  imitation  of  the  braying  of  an 
ass  :  which  feat  requires  that  he  should  lay 
his  right  jaw  in  his  begrimed  right  paw,  double 
himself  up,  and  shake  his  bray  out  of  him- 
self, with  much  staggering  on  his  next-to-no 
legs,  and  jnuch  twirling  of  his  horrible  broom, 
as  if  it  were  a  mop.  From  the  present 
minute,  when  he  comes  in  sight  holding  up 
his  cards  to  the  windows,  and  hoarsely  pro- 
posing purchase  to  My  Lord,  Your  Excel- 
lency, Colonel,  the  Noble  Captain,  and  Your 
Honorable  Worship — from  the  present 
minute  until  the  Grand  Race-Week  is  finished, 
at  all  hours  of  the  morning,  evening,  day,  and 
night,  shall  the  town  revel-berate,  at  capri- 
cious intervals,  to  the  brays  of  this  frightful 
animal  the  Gong-Donkey. 

No  very  great  racing  to-day,  so  no  very 
great  amount  of  vehicles  :  though  there  is  a 
good  sprinkling,  too:  from  farmers'  carts  and 
gigs,  to  carriages  with  post-horses  and  to 
fours-in-hand,  mostly  coming  by  the  road 
from  York,  and  passing  on  straight  through 
the  main  street  to  the  Course.  A  walk  in 
the  wrong  direction  may  be  a  better  thing 
for  Mr.  Goodchild  to-day  than  the  Course, 
so  he  walks  in  the  wrong  direction.  Every- 
body gone  to  the  races.  Only  children  in  the 
street.  Grand  Alliance  Circus  deserted  ;  not 


wekew.]  LAZY  TOUR   OF   TWO   IDLE   APPRENTICES.  [October  31, 1857.]      411 


one  Star-Rider  left  ;  omnibus  which  forms 
the  Pay-Place,  having  on  separate  panels 
Pay  here  for  the  Boxes,  Pay  here  for  the 
Pit,  Pay  here  for  the  Gallery,  hove  down 
in  a  corner  and  locked  up  ;  nobody  near  the 
tent  but  the  man  on  his  knees  on  the  grass, 
who  is  making  the  paper  balloons  for 
the  Star  young  gentlemen  to  jump  through 
to-night.' A  pleasant  road,  pleasantly  wooded. 
No  labourers  working  in  the  fields  ;  all  gone 
"t'races."  The  few  late  wenders  of  their 
way  "  t'races,"  who  are  yet  left  driving  on 
the  road,  stare  in  amazement  at  the  recluse 
who  is  not  going  "  t'races."  Roadside  inn- 
keeper has  gone  "t'races."  Turnpike-man 
has  gone  "  t'races."  His  thrifty  wife,  wash- 
ing clothes  at  the  toll-house  door,  is  going 
"  t'races  "  to-morrow.  Perhaps  there  may 
be  no  one  left  to  take  the  toll  to-morrow  ; 
who  knows  ?  Though  assuredly  that  would 
be  neither  turnpike-like,  nor  Yorkshire-like. 
The  very  wind  and  dust  seem  to  be  hurrying 
"  t'races,"  as  they  briskly  pass  the  only  way- 
farer on  the  road.  In  the  distance,  the  Rail- 
way Engine,  waiting  at  the  town-end,  shrieks 
despairingly.  Nothing  but  the  difficulty  of 
getting  oif  the  Line,  restrains  that  Engine 
from  goisg  "  t'races,"  too,  it  is  very  clear. 

At  night,  more  Lunatics  out  than  last 
night — and  more  Keepers.  The  latter  very 
active  at  the  Betting  Rooms,  the  street  in 
front  of  which  is  now  impassable.  Mr.  Palmer 
as  before.  Mr.  Thurtell  as  before.  Roar  and 
uproar  as  before.  Gradual  subsidence  as 
before.  Unmannerly  drinking  house  ex- 
pectorates as  before.  Drunken  negro-melo- 
dists, Gong-donkey,  and  correct  cards,  in  the 
night. 

On  Wednesday  morning,  the  morning  of 
the  great  St.  Leger,  it  becomes  apparent  that 
there  has  been  a  great  influx  since  yesterday, 
both  of  Lunatics  and  Keepers.  The  families 
of  the  tradesmen  over  the  way  are  no  longer 
within  human  ken ;  their  places  know  them 
no  more  ;  ten,  fifteen,  and  twenty  guinea- 
lodgers  fill  them.  At  the  pastry-cook's  second- 
floor  window,  a  Keeper  is  brushing  Mr. 
ThurtelPs  hair — thinking  it  his  own.  In  the 
wax-chandler's  attic,  another  Keeper  is  put- 
ting on  Mr.  Palmer's  braces.  In  the  gun- 
smith's nursery,  a  Lunatic  is  shaving  himself 
In  the  serious  stationer's  best  sitting-room, 
three  Lunatics  are  taking  a  combination- 
breakfast,  praising  the  (cook's)  devil,  anc 
drinking  neat  brandy  in  an  atmosphere  o; 
last  midnight's  cigars.  No  family  sanctuary 
is  free  from  our  Angelic  messengers — we  pul 
up  at  the  Angel — who  in  the  guise  of  extra 
waiters  for  the  grand  Race-Week,  rattle  in 
and  out  of  the  most  secret  chambers  of  every- 
body's house,  with  dishes  and  tin  covers 
decanters,  soda-water  bottles,  and  glasses 
An  hour  later.  Down  the  street  and  up  the 
street,  as  far  as  eyes  can  see  and  a  good  dea 
farther,  there  is  a  dense  crowd  ;  outside  the 
Betting  Rooms  it  is  like  a  great  struggle  at  a 
theatre  door — in  the  days  of  theatres  ;  or  at 


the  vestibule  of  the  Spurgeon  temple — in  the 
lays  of  Spurgeon.  An  hour  later.  Fusing 
into  this  crowd,  and  somehow  getting  through 
it,  are  all  kinds  of  conveyances,  and  all  kinds 
of  foot-passengers  ;  carts,  with  brick-makers 
and  brick-makeresses  jolting  up  and  down, 
on  planks  ;  drags,  with  the  needful  grooms 
behind,  sitting  crossed-armed  in  the  needful 
manner,  and  slanting  themselves  backward 
from  the  soles  of  their  boots  at  the  needful 
angle ;  postboys,  in  the  shining  hats  and 
smart  jackets  of  the  olden  time,  when  stokera 
were  not ;  beautiful  Yorkshire  horses,  gal- 
lantly driven  by  their  own  breeders  and 
masters.  Under  every  pole,  and  every  shaft, 
and  every  horse,  and  every  wheel  as  it  would 
seem,  the  Gong-donkey — metallically  braying, 
when  not  struggling  for  life,  or  whipped  out 
of  the  way. 

By  one  o'clock,  all  this  stir  has  gone  out  of 
the  streets,  and  there  is  no  one  left  in  them 
but  Francis  Goodchild.  Francis  Goodchild 
will  not  be  left  in  them  long  ;  for,  he  too  is 
on  his  way  "  t'races." 

A  most  beautiful  sight,  Francis  Goodchild 
finds  "  t'raees "  to  be,  when  he  has  left  fair 
Doncaster  behind  him,  and  comes  out  on  the 
free  course,  with  its  agreeable  prospect,  its 
quaint  Red  House  od'lly  changing  and 
turning  as  Francis  turns,  its  green  grass,  and 
fresh  heath.  A  free  course  and  an  easy  one, 
where  Francis  can  roll  smoothly  where  he 
will,  and  can  choose  between  the  start,  or  the 
coming-in,  or  the  turn  behind  the  brow  of 
the  hill,  or  any  out-of-the-way  point  where 
he  lists  to  see  the  throbbing  horses  straining 
every  nerve,  and  making  the  sympathetic 
earth  throb  as  they  come  by.  Francis  much 
delights  to  be,  not  in  the  Grand  Stand, 
but  where  be  can  see  it,  rising  against 
the  sky  with  its  vast  tiers  of  little  white 
dots  of  faces,  and  its  last  high  rows  and 
corners  of  people,  looking  like  pins  stuck 
into  an  enormous  pin-cushion — not  quite 
so  symmetrically  as  his  orderly  eye  could 
wish,  when  people  change  or  go  away.  When 
the  race  is  nearly  run  out,  it  is  as  good 
as  the  race  to  him  to  see  the  flutter  among 
the  pins,  and  the  change  in  them  from  dark 
to  light,  as  hats  are  taken  off  and  waved. 
Not  less  full  of  interest,  the  loud  anticipa- 
tion of  the  winner's  name,  the  swelling,  and 
the  final,  roar  ;  then,  the  quick  dropping  of 
all  the  pins  out  of  their  places,  .the  revela- 
tion of  the  shape  of  the  bare  pin-cushion, 
and  the  closing-in  of  the  whole  host  of 
Lunatics  and  Keepers,  in  the  rear  of  the 
three  horses  with  bright-coloured  riders,  who 
have  not  yet  quite  subdued  their  gallop 
though  the  contest  is  over. 

Mr.  Goodchild  would  appear  to  have  been 
by  no  means  free  from  lunacy  himself  at 
"  t'races,"  though  not  of  the  prevalent  kind. 
He  is  suspected  by  Mr.  Idle  to  have  fallen 
into  a  dreadful  state  concerning  a  pair  of  little 
lilac  gloves  and  a  little  bonnet  that  he  saw- 
there.  Mr.  Idle  asserts,  that  he  did  afterwards 


412       [October  31,  is*-.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  l)j- 


repeat  at  the  Angel,  with  an  appearance  of 
being  lunatically  seized,  some  rhapsody  to  the 
following  effect :  "O  little  lilac  gloves !  And  O 
•winning  little  bonnet,  making  in  conjunction 
•with  her  golden  hair  quite  a  Glory  in  the  sun- 
light round  the  pretty  head,  why  anything  in 
the  world  but  you  and  me  !  Why  may  not 
this  day's  running — of  horses,  to  all  the  rest : 
of  precious  sands  of  life  to  me — be  prolonged 
through  an  everlasting  autumn-sunshine, 
•without  a  sunset !  Slave  of  the  Lamp,  or 
Eing,  strike  me  yonder  gallant  equestrian 
Clerk  of  the  Course,  in  the  scarlet  coat,  mo- 
tionless on  the  green  grass  for  ages!  Friendly 
Devil  on  Two  Sticks,  for  ten  times  ten  thou- 
sand years,  keep  Blink-Bonny  jibbing  at  the 
post,  and  let  us  have  no  start !  Arab  drums, 
powerful  of  old  to  summon  Genii  in  the 
desert,  sound  of  yourselves  and  raise  a  troop 
for  me  in  the  desert  of  my  heart,  which  shall 
so  enchant  this  dusty  barouche  (with  a  con- 
spicuous excise-plate,  resembling  the  Collec- 
tor's door-plate  at  a  turnpike),  that  I,  within 
it,  loving  the  little  lilac  gloves,  the  winning  little 
bonnet,  and  the  dear  unknown-wearer  with 
the  golden  hail-,  may  wait  by  her  side  for  ever, 
to  see  a  Great  St.  Leger  that  shall  never  be 
run ! " 

Thursday  morning.  After  a  tremendous 
night  of  crowding,  shouting,  drinking-house 
expectoration,  Gong-donkey,  and  correct 
cards.  Symptoms  of  yesterday's  gains  in  the 
way  of  drink,  and  of  yesterday's  losses  in  the 
way  of  money,  abundant.  Money-losses  very 
great.  As  usual,  nobody  seems  to  have  won  ; 
but,  large  losses  and  many  losers  are  unques- 
tionable facts.  Both  Lunatics  and  Keepers, 
in  general  very  low.  Several  of  both  kinds 
look  in  at  the  chemist's  while  Mr.  Goodchild 
is  making  a  purchase  there,  to  be  "picked 
up."  One  red-eyed  Lunatic,  flushed,  faded, 
and  disordered,  enters  hurriedly  and  cries 
savagely,  "  Hond  us  a  gloss  of  sal  volatile  in 
wather,  or  soom  dornmed  thing  o'  thot  sart  ! " 
Faces  at  the  Betting-Booms  very  long,  and  a 
tendency  to  bite  nails  observable.  Keepers 
likewise  given  this  morning  to  standing  about 
solitary,  with  their  hands  in  their  pockets, 
looking  down  at  their  boots  as  they  fit  them 
into  cracks  of  the  pavement,  and  then  looking 
up  whistling  and  walking  away.  Grand 
Alliance  Circus  out,  in  procession ;  buxorn 
lady-member  of  Grand  Alliance,  in  crimson 
riding-habit,  fresher  to  look  at,  even  in  her 
paint  under  the  day  sky,  than  the  cheeks  of 
Lunatics  or  Keepers.  Spanish  Cavalier  ap- 
pears to  have  lost  yesterday,  and  jingles  his 
bossed  bridle  with  disgust,  as  if  he  were 
paying.  Re-action  also  apparent  at  the 
Guildhall  opposite,  whence  certain  pickpockets 
come  out  handcuffed  together,  with  that 
peculiar  walk  which  is  never  seen  under  any 
other  circumstances — a  walk  expressive  of 
going  to  jail,garue,  but  s^till  of  jails  being  in  bad 
taste  and  arbitrary, and  how  would  youlike  it 
if  it  was  you  instead  of  me,  as  it  ought  to  be  ! 
Mid-day.  Town  filled  as  yesterday,  but  not 


so  full ;  and  emptied  as  yesterday,  but  not  so 
empty.  In  the  evening,  Angel  ordinary 
where  every  Lunatic  and  Keeper  has  his 
modest  daily  meal  of  turtle,  venison,  and 
wine,  not  so  crowded  as  yesterday,  and. 
not  so  noisy.  At  night,  the  theatre. 
More  abstracted  faces  in  it,  than  one  ever 
sees  at  public  assemblies  ;  such  faces  wearing 
an  expression  which  strongly  reminds  Mr. 
Goodchild  of  the  boys  at  school  who  were 
"  gomg  UP  next,"  with  their  arithmetic  or 
mathematics.  These  boys  are,  no  doubt, 
going  up  to-morrow  with  their  sums  and 
figures.  Mr.  Palmer  and  Mr.  Thurtell  in 
the  boxes  O.  P.  Mr.  Thurtell  and  Mr.  Palmer 
in  the  boxes  P.  S.  The  firm  of  Thurtell, 
Palmer,  and  Thnrtell,  in  the  boxes  Centre. 
A  most  odious  tendency  observable  in  these 
distinguished  gentlemen  to  put  vile  construc- 
tions on  sufficiently  innocent  phrases  in  the 
play,  and  then  to  applaud  them  in  a  Satyr-like 
manner.  Behind  Mr.  Goodchild,  with  a 
party  of  other  Lunatics  and  one  Keeper,  the 
express  incarnation  of  the  thing  called  a 
"  gent."  A  gentleman  born  ;  a  gent  manu- 
factured. A  something  with  a  scarf  round 
its  neck,  and  a  slipshod  speech  issuing  from 
behind  the  scarf;  more  depraveq,  more 
foolish,  more  ignorant,  more  unable  to  believe 
in  any  noble  or  good  thing  of  any  kind,  than 
the  stupidest  Bosjesman.  The  thing  is  but  a 
boy  in  years,  and  is  addled  with  drink.  To  do 
its  company  justice,  even  its  company  is 
ashamed  of  it,  as  it  drawls  its  slang  criticisms 
on  the  representation,  and  inflames  Mr. 
I  Goodchild  with  a  burning  ardour  to  fling  it 
into  the  pit.  Its  remarks  are  so  horrible, 
that  Mr.  Goodchild,  for  the  moment,  even 
doubts  whether  that  is  a  wholesome  Art, 
which  sets  women  apart  on  a  high  floor  before- 
such  a  thing  as  this,  though  as  good  as  its  own 
sisters,  or  its  own  mother — whom  Heaven 
forgive  for  bringing  it  into  the  world  !  But, 
the  consideration  that  a  low  nature  must 
make  a  low  world  of  its  own  to  live  in, 
whatever  the  real  materials,  or  it  could 
no  more  exist  than  any  of  us  could  without 
the  sense  of  touch,  brings  Mr.  Goodchild  to 
reason  :  the  rather,  because  the  thing  soon 
drops  its  downy  chin  upon  its  scarf,  and  slob- 
bers itself  asleep. 

Friday  Morning.  Early  fights.  Gong- 
donkey,  and  correct  cards.  Again,  a  great 
set  towards  the  races,  though  not  so  great  a. 
set  as  on  Wednesday.  Much  packing  going 
on  too,  upstairs  at  the  gunsmith's,  the  wax- 
chandler's,  and  the  serious  stationer's  ;  for 
there  will  be  a  heavy  drift  of  Lunatics  and 
Keepers  to  London  by  the  afternoon  train. 
The  course  as  pretty  as  ever  ;  the  great  pin- 
cushion as  like  a  pincushion,  but  not  nearly 
so  full  of  pins ;  whole  rows  of  pins  want- 
ing. On  the  great  event  of  the  day,  both 
Lunatics  and  Keepers  become  inspired  with 
rage  ;  and  there  is  a  violent  scuffling,  and  a 
rushing  at  the  losing  jockey,  and  an  emer- 
gence of  the  said  jockey  from  a  swaying  and 


Charles  Dickens.! 


LAZY  TOUR  OF  TWO  IDLE  APPRENTICES.      I  October  si,  «SM    413 


menacing  crowd,  protected  by  friends,  and 
looking  the  worse  for  wear ;  which  is  a  rough 
proceeding,  though  animating  to  see  from  a 
pleasant  distance.  After  the  great  event, 
rills  begin  to  flow  from  the  pincushion  to  wards 
the  railroad  ;  the  rills  swell  into  rivers ; 
the  rivers  soon  unite  into  a  lake.  The  lake 
floats  Mr.  Goodchild  into  Doncaster,  past  the 
Itinerant  personage  in  black,  by  the  way-side 
telling  him  from  the  vantage  ground  of  a 
legibly  printed  placard  on  a  pole  that  for  all 
these  things  the  Lord  will  bring  him  tojudg- 
ment.  No  turtle  and  venison  ordinary  this 
evening  ;  that  is  all  over.  No  Betting  at 
the  rooms  ;  nothing  there  but  the  plants  in 
pots,  which  have,  all  the  week,  been  stood 
about  the  entry  to  give  it  an  innocent  ap- 
pearance, and  which  have  sorely  sickened  by 
this  time. 

Saturday.  Mr.  Idle  wishes  to  know  at 
breakfast,  what  were  those  dreadful  groan- 
ings  in  his  bedroom  doorway  in  the  night  1 
Mr.  Goodehild  answers,  Nightmare.  Mr. 
Idle  repels  the  calumny,  and  calls  the  waiter. 
The  Angel  is  very  sorry — had  intended  to 
explain  ;  but  you  see,  gentlemen,  there  was  a 
gentleman  dined  down  stairs  with  two  more, 
and  he  had  lost  a  deal  of  money,  and  he 
would  di'ink  a  deal  of  wine,  and  in  the  night 
he  "  took  the  horrors,"  and  got  up  ;  and  as 
his  friends  could  do  nothing  with  him  he 
laid  himself  down,  and  groaned  at  Mr.  Idle's 
door.  "And  he  DID  groan  there,"  Mr.  Idle 
says;  "and  you  will  please  to  imagine  me 
inside, '  taking  the  horrors  '  too  !  " 

So  far,  the  picture  of  Doncaster  on  the 
occasion  of  its  great  sporting  anniversary, 
offers  probably  a  general  representation  of 
the  social  condition  of  the  town,  in  the  past 
as  well  as  in  the  present  time.  The  sole  local 
phenomenon  of  the  current  year,  which  may 
be  considered  as  entirely  unprecedented  in 
its  way,  and  which  certainly  claims,  on  that 
account,  some  slight  share  of  notice,  consists 
in  the  actual  existence  of  one  remarkable 
individual,  who  is  sojourning  in  Doncaster, 
and  who,  neither  directly  nor  indirectly,  has 
anything  at  all  to  do,  in  any  capacity  what- 
ever, with  the  racing  amusements  of  the 
week.  Banging  throughout  the  entire  crowd 
that  fills  the  town,  and  including  the  inhabi- 
tants as  well  as  the  visitors,  nobody  is  to  be 
found  altogether  disconnected  witli  the  busi- 
ness of  the  day,  excepting  this  one  unparal- 
leled man.  He  does  not  bet  on  the  races, 
like  the  sporting  men.  He  does  not  assist 
the  races,  like  the  jockeys,  starters,  judges, 
and  grooms.  He  does  not  look  on  at  the 
races,  like  Mr.  Goodchild  and  his  fellow- 
spectators.  He  does  not  profit  by  the  races, 
like  the  hotel-keepers  and  the  trades-people. 
He  does  not  minister  to  the  necessities  of  the 
races,  like  the  booth-keepers,  the  postilions, 
the  waiters,  and  the  hawkers  of  Lists.  He 
does  not  assist  the  attractions  of  the  races, 
like  the  actors  at  the  theatre,  the  riders  at 


the  circus,  or  the  posturers  at  the  Poses 
Plastiques.  Absolutely  and  literally,  he  is 
the  only  individual  in  Doncaster  who  stands 
by  the  brink  of  the  full-flowing  race- 
stream,  and  is  not  swept  away  by  it  in  com- 
mon with  all  the  rest  of  his  species.  Who  is 
this  modern  hermit,  this  recluse  of  the  St. 
Leger-week,  this  inscrutably  ungregarious 
being,  who  lives  apart  from  the  amusements 
and  activities  of  his  fellow-creatures?  Surely, 
there  is  little  difficulty  in  guessing  that 
clearest  and  easiest  of  all  riddles.  Who  could 
he  be,  but  Mr.  Thomas  Idle  ? 

Thomas  had  suffered  himself  to  be  taken  to 
Doncaster,  just  as  he  would  have  suffered 
himself  to  be  taken  to  any  other  place  in  the 
habitable  globe  which  would  guarantee  him 
the  temporary  possession  of  a  comfortable 
sofa  to  rest  his  ankle  on.  Once  established 
at  the  hotel,  with  his  leg  on  one  cushion  and 
his  back  against  another,  he  formally  declined 
taking  the  slightest  interest  in  any  circum- 
stance whatever  connected  with  the  races,  or 
with  the  people  who  were  assembled  to  see 
them.  Francis  Goodchild,  anxious  that  the 
hours  should  pass  by  his  crippled  travelling- 
eompanion  as  lightly  as  possible,  suggested 
that  his  sofa  should  be  moved  to  the  window, 
and  that  he  should  amuse  himself  by  looking 
out  at  the  moving  panorama  of  humanity, 
which  the  view  from  it  of  the  principal  street 
presented.  Thomas,  however,  steadily  de- 
clined profiting  by  the  suggestion. 

"  The  farther  I  am  from  the  window,"  he 
said,  "  the  better,  Brother  Francis,  I  shall  be 
pleased.  I  have  nothing  in  common  with 
the  one  prevalent  idea  of  all  those  people 
who  are  passing  in  the  street.  Why  should 
I  care  to  look  at  them  1 " 

"  I  hope  I  have  nothing  in  common  with 
the  prevalent  idea  of  a  great  many  of  them, 
either,"  answered  Goodchild,  thinking  of  the 
sporting  gentlemen  whom  he  had  met  in  the 
course  of  his  wanderings  about  Doncaster. 
"But,  surely,  among  all  the  people  who  are 
walking  by  the  house,  at  this  very  moment, 
you  may  fiud " 

"Not  one  living  creature,"  interposed 
Thomas,  "  who  is  not,  in  one  way  or  another, 
interested  in  horses,  and  who  is  not,  in  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  an  admirer  of  them. 
Now,  I  hold  opinions  in  reference  to  these 
particular  members  of  the  quadruped  crea- 
tion, which  may  lay  claim  (as  i  believe)  to  the 
disastrous  distinction  of  being  uupartaken 
by  any  other  human  being,  civilised  or  savage, 
over  the  whole  surface  of  the  earth.  Taking 
the  horse  as  an  animal  in  the  abstract, 
Francis,  I  coi'dially  despise  him  from  every 
point  of  view." 

"Thomas,"  said  Goodchild,  "confinement 
to  the  house  has  begun  to  affect  your  biliary 
secretions.  I  shall  go  to  the  chemist's  and 
get  you  some  physic." 

"I  object,"  continued  Thomas,  quietly  pos- 
sessing himself  of  his  friend's  hat,  -which 
stood  on  a  table  near  him, — "  I  object,  first, 


414      [October  31, 185?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


to  the  personal  appearance  of  the  horse.  I 
protest  against  the  conventional  idea  of 
beauty,  as  attached  to  that  animal.  I  think 
hia  nose  too  long,  his  forehead  too  low,  and 
his  legs  (except  in  the  case  of  the  cart-horse) 
ridiculously  thin  by  comparison  with  the 
size  of  his  body.  Again,  considering  how 
big  an  animal  he  is,  I  object  to  the  con- 
temptible delicacy  of  his  constitution.  Is  he 
not-the  sickliest  creature  in  creation  1  Does 
any  child  catch  cold  as  ensily  as  a  horse  1 
Does  he  not  sprain  his  fetlock,  for  all  his 
appearance  of  superior  strength,  as  easily  aa 
I  sprained  my  ankle  ?  Furthermore,  to  take 
him  from  another  point  of  view,  what  a 
helpless  wretch  he  is  !  No  fine  lady  requires 
more  constant  waiting-ou  than  a  horse. 
Other  animals  can  make  their  own  toilette  : 
he  must  have  a  groom.  You  will  tell  me 
that  this  is  because  we  want  to  make  his 
coat  artificially  glossy.  Glossy  !  Come  home 
•with  me,  and  see  my  cat, — my  clever  cat, 
•who  can  groom  herself  !  Look  at  your  own 
dog  !  see  how  the  intelligent  creature  curry- 
combs himself  with  his  own  honest  teeth  ! 
Then,  again,  what  a  fool  the  horse  is,  what  a 
poor,  nervous  fool  !  He  will  start  at  a  piece 
of  white  paper  in  the  road  as  if  it  was  a  lion. 
His  one  idea,  when  he  hears  a  noise  that  he 
is  not  accustomed  to,  is  to  run  away  from  it. 
What  do  you  say  to  those  two  common 
instances  of  the  sense  and  courage  of  this 
absurdly  overpraised  animal  ?  I  might  mul- 
tiply them  to  two  hundred,  if  I  chose  to 
exert  my  mind  and  waste  my  breath,  which 
I  never  do.  I  prefer  coming  at  once  to  my 
last  charge  against  the  horse,  which  is  the 
most  serious  of  all,  because  it  affects  his 
moral  character.  I  accuse  him  boldly,  in  his 
capacity  of  servant  to  man,  of  slyness  and 
treachery.  I  brand  him  publickly,  no  matter 
how  mild  he  may  look  about  the  eyes,  or  how 
sleek  he  may  be  about  the  coat,  as  a  systema- 
tic betrayer,  whenever  he  can  get  the  chance, 
of  the  confidence  reposed  in  him.  What  do 
you  mean  by  laughing  and  shaking  your  head 
at  me  ?" 

"  Oh,  Thomas,  Thomas  !  "  said  Goodchild. 
"  You  had  better  give  me  my  hat ;  you  had 
better  let  me  get  you  that  physic." 

"  I  will  let  you  get  anything  you  like,  in- 
cluding a  composing  draught  for  yourself," 
said  Thomas,  irritably  alluding  to  his  fellow- 
apprentice's  inexhaustible  activity,  "  if  you 
will  only  sit  quiet  for  five  minutes  longer, 
and  hear  me  out.  I  say  again  the  horse  is  a 
betrayer  of  the  confidence  reposed  in  him  ; 
and  that  opinion,  let  me  add,  is  drawn  from 
my  own  personal  experience,  and  is  not  based 
on  any  fanciful  theory  whatever.  You  shall 
have  two  instances,  two  overwhelming  in- 
stances. Let  me  start  the  first  of  these  by 
asking,  what  is  the  distinguishing  quality 
which  the  Shetland  Pony  has  arrogated  to 
himself,  and  is  still  perpetually  trumpeting 
through  the  world  by  means  of  popular 
reporc  and  books  on  Natural  History  2  I 


see  the  answer  in  your  face  :  it  is  the  quality 
of  being  Sure-Footed.  He  piofest-es  to  have 
other  virtiu-s,  such  as  hardiness  and  strength, 
which  you  may  discover  on  trial  ;  but  the 
one  thing  which  he  insists  on  your  believing, 
when  you  get  on  his  back,  is  that  he  may  be 
safely  depended  on  not  to  tumble  down  with 
you.  Very  good.  Some  years  ago,  I  was  in 
Shetland  with  a  party  of  friends.  They  in- 
sisted on  taking  me  with  them  to  the  top  of 
a  precipice  that  overhung  the  sea.  It  was  a 
great  distance  off,  but  they  all  determined  to- 
walk  to  it  except  me.  I  was  wiser  then 
than  I  was  with  you  at  Carrock,  and  I  deter- 
mined to  be  carried  to  the  precipice.  There 
was  no  carriage  road  in  the  island,  and  no- 
body offered  (in  consequence,  as  I  suppose,  of 
the  imperfectly-civilised  state  of  the  country) 
to  bring  me  a  sedan-chair,  which  is  naturally 
what  I  should  have  liked  best.  A  Shetland 
pony  was  produced  instead.  I  remembered 
my  Natural  History,  I  recalled  popular  re- 
port, and  I  got  on  the  little  beast's  back, 
as  any  other  man  would  have  done  in  my 
position,  placing  implicit  confidence  in  the 
sureuess  of  his  feet.  And  how  did  he  repay 
that  confidence  1  Brother  Francis,  carry  your 
mind  on  from  morning  to  noon.  Picture  to 
yourself  a  howling  wilderness  of  grnss  and 
bog,  bounded  by  low  stony  hills.  Pick  out 
one  particular  spot  in  that  imaginary  scene, 
and  sketch  me  in  it,  with  outstretched  arms., 
curved  back,  and  heels  in  the  air,  plunging 
headforemost  into  a  black  patch  of  water  and 
mud.  Place  just  behind  me  the  legs,  the 
body,  and  the  head  of  a  sure-footed  Shetland 
pony,  all  stretched  flat  on  the  ground,  and 
you  will  have  produced  an  accurate  repre- 
sentation of  a  very  lamentable  fact.  And 
the  moral  device,  Francis,  of  this  picture  will 
be  to  testify  that  when  gentlemen  put  con- 
fidence in  the  legs  of  Shetland  ponies,  they 
will  find  to  their  cost  that  they  are  leaning 
on  nothing  but  broken  reeds.  There  is  my 
first  instance — and  what  have  you  got  to  say 
to  that  ? " 

"  Nothing,  but  that  I  want  my  hat," 
answered  Goodchild,  starting  up  and  walking 
restlessly  about  the  room. 

"  You  shall  have  it  in  a  minute,"  rejoined 
Thomas.  "  My  second  instance  " — (Good- 
child  groaned,  and  sat  down  again) — "My 
second  instance  is  more  appropriate  to  the 
present  time  and  place,  for  it  refers  to  a 
race-horse.  Two  years  ago  an  excellent 
friend  of  mine,  who  was  desirous  of  pre- 
vailing on  me  to  take  regular  exercise,  and 
who  was  well  enough  acquainted  with  the 
weakness  of  my  legs  to  expect  no  very  active 
compliance  witli  his  wishes  on  their  part, 
offered  to  make  me  a  present  of  one  of  his 
horses.  Hearing  that  the  animal  in  question, 
had  started  in  life  on  the  turf,  I  declined 
accepting  the  gift  with  many  thanks  ;  adding, 
by  way  of  explanation,  that  I  looked  on  a 
race-horse  as  a  kind  of  embodied  hurricane, 
upon  which  no  sane  man  of  my  character  and 


.  Dickens.]  LAZY    TOUR   OF   TWO   IDLE    APPRENTICES.  [October  31, 1837.]       415 


habits  could  be  expected  to  seat  himself. 
My  friend  replied  that,  however  appropriate 
my  metaphor  might  be  as  applied  to  race- 
horses in  general,  it  was  singularly  unsuitable 
as  applied  to  the  particular  horse  which  he 
proposed  to  give  me.  From  a  foal  upwards 
this  remarkable  animal  had  been  the  idlest 
and  most  sluggish  of  his  race.  Whatever 
capacities  for  speed  he  might  possess  he  had 
kept  so  strictly  to  himself,  that  no  amount 
of  training  had  ever  brought  them  out.  He 
had  been  found  hopelessly  slow  as  a  racer, 
and  hopelessly  lazy  as  a  hunter,  and  was  fit 
for  nothing  but  a  quiet,  easy  life  of  it  with  an 
old  gentleman  or  an  invalid.  When  I  heard 
this  account  of  the  horse,  I  don't  mind 
confessing  that  my  heart  warmed  to  him. 
Visions  of  Thomas  Idle  ambling  serenely  on 
the  back  of  a  steed  as  lazy  as  himself,  pre- 
senting to  a  restless  world  the  soothing  and 
composite  spectacle  of  a  kind  of  sluggardly 
Centaur,  too  peaceable  in  his  habits  to  alarm 
anybody,  swam  attractively  before  my  eyes. 
I  went  to  look  at  the  horse  in  the  stable. 
Nice  fellow  !  he  was  fast  asleep  with  a  kitten 
on  his  back.  I  saw  him  taken  out  for  an  airing 
by  the  groom.  If  he  had  had  trousers  on  his 
legs  I  should  not  have  known  them  from  my 
own,  so  deliberately  were  they  lifted  up,  so 
gently  were  they  put  down,  so  slowly  did 
they  get  over  the  ground.  From  that  moment 
I  gratefully  accepted  my  friend's  offer.  I  went 
home  ;  the  horse  followed  me — by  a  slow 
train.  Oh,  Francis,  how  devoutly  I  believed 
in  that  horse  !  how  carefully  I  looked  after 
all  his  little  comforts  !  I  had  never  gone  the 
length  of  hiring  a  man-servant  to  wait  on 
myself;  but  I  went  to  the  expense  of  hiring 
one  to  wait  upon  him.  If  I  thought  a  little 
of  myself  when  I  bought  the  softest  saddle 
that  could  be  had  for  money,  I  thought  also 
of  my  horse.  When  the  man  at  the  shop 
afterwards  offered  me  spurs  and  a  whip,  I 
turned  from  him  with  horror.  When  I 
sallied  out  for  my  first  ride,  I  went  purposely 
unarmed  with  the  means  of  hurrying  my 
steed.  He  proceeded  at  his  own  pace  every 
step  of  the  way  ;  and  when  he  stopped,  at 
last,  and  blew  out  both  his  sides  with  a  heavy 
sigh,  and  turned  his  sleepy  head  and  looked 
behind  him,  I  took  hirn  home  again,  as  I 
might  take  home  an  artless  child  who  said  to 
me,  "  If  you  please,  sir,  I  am  tired."  For  a 
week  this  complete  harmony  between  me  and 
my  horse  lasted  undisturbed.  At  the  end  of 
that  time,  when  he  had  made  quite  sure  of 
my  friendly  confidence  in  his  laziness,  when 
he  had  thoroughly  acquainted  himself  with 
all  the  little  weaknesses  of  my  seat  (and 
their  name  is  Legion),  the  smouldering 
treachery  and  ingratitude  of  the  equine 
nature  blazed  out  in  an  instant.  Without 
the  slightest  provocation  from  me,  with 
nothing  passing  him  at  the  time  but  a  pony- 
chaise  driven  by  an  old  lady,  he  started  in 
ene  instant  from  a  state  of  sluggish  depres- 
sion to  a  state  of  frantic  high  spirits.  He 


kicked,  he  plunged,  he  shied,  he  pranced,  he 
capered  fearfully.  I  sat  on  him  as  long  as  I 
could,  and  when  I  could  sit  no  longer,  I  fell 
off.  No,  Francis  !  this  is  not  a  circumstance 
to  be  laughed  at,  but  to  be  wept  over.  What 
would  be  said  of  a  Man  who  had  requited 
my  kindness  in  that  way  ?  Range  over  all 
the  rest  of  the  animal  creation,  and  where 
will  you  find  me  an  instance  of  treachery  so 
black  as  this  1  The  cow  that  kicks  down  the 
milking-pail  may  have  some  reason  for  it ; 
she  may  think  herself  taxed  too  heavily  to 
contribute  to  tthe  dilution  of  human  tea  and 
the  greasing  of  human  bread.  The  tiger 
who  springs  out  on  me  unawares  has  the 
excuse  of  being  hungry  at  the  time,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  further  justification  of  being  a 
total  stranger  to  me.  The  very  flea  who  sur- 
prises me  in  my  sleep  may  defend  his  act  of 
assassination  on  the  ground  that  I,  in  my 
turn,  am  always  ready  to  murder  him  when 
I  arn  awake.  I  defy  the  whole  body  of 
Natural  Historians  to  move  me,  logically,  off 
the  ground  that  I  have  taken  in  regard  to 
the  horse.  Receive  back  your  hat,  Brother 
Francis,  and  go  to  the  chemist's,  if  you 
please  ;  for  I  have  now  done.  Ask  me  to  take 
anything  you  like,  except  an  interest  in  the 
Doncaster  races.  Ask  me  to  look  at  any- 
thing you  like,  except  an  assemblage  of 
people  all  animated  by  feelings  of  a  friendly 
and  admiring  nature  towards  the  horse. 
You  are  a  remarkably  well-informed  man, 
and  you  have  heard  of  hermits.  Look  upon 
me  as  a  member  of  that  ancient  fraternity, 
and  you  will  sensibly  add  to  the  many  obliga- 
tions which  Thomas  Idle  is  proud  to  owe  to 
Francis  Goodchild." 

Here,  fatigued  by  the  effort  of  excessive 
talking,  disputatious  Thomas  waved  one 
hand  languidly,  laid  his  head  back  on  the 
sofa-pillow,  and  calmly  closed  his  eyes. 

At  a  later  period,  Mr.  Goodchild 
assailed  his  travelling  companion  boldly 
from  the  impregnable  fortress  of  com- 
mon sense.  But  Thomas,  though  tamed  in. 
body  by  drastic  discipline,  was  still  as  men- 
tally unapproachable  as  ever  on  the  subject 
of  his  favourite  delusion. 

The  view  from  the  window  after  Saturday's 
breakfast  is  altogether  changed.  The  trades- 
men's families  have  all  come  back  again.  The 
serious  stationer's  young  woman  of  all  work 
is  shaking  a  duster  out  of  the  window  of  the 
combination  breakfast-room  ;  a  child  is  play- 
ing with  a  doll,  where  Mr.  Thurtell's  hair 
was  brushed  ;  a  sanitary  scrubbing  is  in  pro- 
gress oo  the  spot  where  Mr.  Palmer's  braces 
were  put  on.  No  signs  of  the  Races  are  in 
the  streets,  but  the  tramps  and  the  tumble- 
down carts  and  trucks  laden  with  diinking- 
forms  and  tables  and  remnants  of  booths,  that 
are  making  their  way  out  of  the  town  as  fast 
as  they  can.  The  Angel,  which  has  been 
cleared  for  action  all  the  week,  already  begins 
restoring  every  neat  and  comfortable  article 


416      [October  31, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


of  furniture  to  its  own  neat  and  comfortable 
place.  The  Angel's  daughters  (pleasanter 
angels  Mr.  Idle  and  Mr.  Goodchild  never 
saw,  nor  more  quietly  expert  in  their  busi- 
ness, nor  more  superior  to  the  common  vice 
of  being  above  it),  have  a  little  time  to  rest, 
and  to  air  their  cheerful  faces  among  the 
flowers  in  the  yard.  It  is  market-day. 
The  market  looks  unusually  natural,  com- 
fortable, and  wholesome  ;  the  market-people 
too.  The  town  seems  quite  restored,  when, 


hark ! 
key  ! 


a  metallic    bray  —  The    Gong-doii- 


The  wretched  animal  has  not  cleared  off 
•with  the  rest,  but  is  here,  under  the  window. 
How  much  more  inconceivably  drunk  now, 
how  much  more  begrimed  of  paw,  how  much 
more  tight  of  calico  hide,  how  much  more 
stained  and  daubed  and  dirty  and  dung- 
hilly,  from  his  horrible  broom  to  his  tender 
toes,  who  shall  say  !  He  cannot  even  shake 
the  bray  out  of  himself  now,  without  laying 
his  cheek  so  near  to  the  mud  of  the  street, 
that  he  pitches  over  after  delivering  it.  Now, 
prone  in  the  mud,  and  now  backing  himself 
up  against  shop- windows,  the  owners  of  which 
come  out  in  terror  to  remove  him  ;  now,  in 
the  drinking-shop,  and  now  in  the  tobacco- 
nist's, where  he  goes  to  buy  tobacco,  and 
makes  his  way  into  the  parlor,  and  where 
he  gets  a  cigar,  which  in  half-a-minute 
he  forgets  to  smoke ;  now  dancing,  now 
dozing,  now  cursing,  and  now  compli- 
menting My  Lord,  the  Colonel,  the  Noble 
Captain,  and  Your  Honorable  Worship,  the 
Gong-donkey  kicks  up  his  heels,  occasionally 
braying,  until  suddenly,  he  beholds  the 
dearest  friend  he  has  in  the  world  coming 
down  the  street. 

The  dearest  friend  the  Gong-donkey  has 
in  the  world,  is  a  sort  of  Jackall,  in  a  dull 
mangy  black  hide,  of  such  small  pieces  that 
it  looks  as  if  it  were  made  of  blacking  bottles 
turned  inside  out  and  cobbled  together.  The 
dearest  friend  in  the  world  (inconceivably 
drunk  too)  advances  at  the  Gong-donkey, 
with  a  hand  on  each  thigh,  in  a  series  of 


be  undermost  at  the  time  of  the  capture,  he 
has  vanished  into  air. 

On  Saturday  afternoon,  Mr.  Goodchild 
walks  out  and  looks  at  the  Course.  It  is 
quite  deserted  ;  heaps  of  broken  crockery 
and  bottles  are  raised  to  its  memory ;  and 
correct  cards  and  other  fragments  of  paper 
are  blowing  about  it,  as  the  regulation  little 
paper-books,  carried  by  the  French  soldiers 
in  their  breasts,  were  seen,  soon  after  the 
battle  was  fought,  blowing  idly  about  the 
plains  of  Waterloo. 

Where  will  these  present  idle  leaves  be 
blown  by  the  idle  winds,  and  where  will  the 
last  of  them  be  one  day  lost  and  forgotten  1  An 
idle  question,  and  an  idle  thought ;  and  with 
it  Mr.  Idle  fitly  makes  his  bow,  and  Mr. 
Goodchild  his,  and  thus  ends  the  Lazy  Tour 
of  Two  Idle  Apprentices. 


FRIENDS  OF  THE  PATAGONIAN. 


TWENTY-SEVEN  years  ago,  two  British 
surveying-vessels,  the  Adventure  and  the 
Beagle,  were  engaged  in  mapping  out  the 
wild  coasts,  and  sounding  the  wild  waters  of 
Patagonia  and  Tierra  del  Fuego.  The  chiefs 
of  the  expedition  were  the  late  Admiral  P. 
P.  King,  and  the  present  Rear-Admiral  (then 
Captain)  Fitzroy.  While  engaged  among 
the  islands  of  the  outer  coasts  of  Tierra  del 
Fuego,  the  captain  of  the  Beagle  was  visited, 
on  old  May-day,  in  the  year  eighteen  hun- 
dred and  thirty,  by  some  natives  in  their 
canoes.  Among  them  was  a  lad,  apparently 
fifteen  years  old,  who,  upon  invitation, 
stepped  into  Captain  Fitzroy's  boat,  and  upon 
whose  part  there  was  no  unwillingness  to 
sail  away  for  England.  His  father,  quite 
willing  to  let  him  go,  exchanged  him  for  a 
button.  So  the  young  Fuegian,  who  was 
called,  after  the  pledge  taken  for  him  by  his 
father,  Jemmy  Button,  went  on  board  the 
ship,  where  there  were  other  three  Fuegianr, 
two  boys  and  a  girl,  who  had  been  picked  up 
in  another  place.  It  was  the  captain's  design 
to  educate  these  young  people  in  England, 


humorous    springs   and  stops,  wagging   his  i  and  return  them  then  as  leaven  for  the  rais- 


head  as  he  comes.  The  Gong-donkey  regard- 
ing him  with  attention  and  with  the  warmest 
affection,  suddenly  perceives  that  he  is  the 
greatest  enemy  he  has  in  the  world,  and  hits 
him  hard  in  the  countenance.  The  astonished 
Jackall  closes  with  the  Donkey,  and  they 
roll  over  and  over  in  the  mud,  pummelling 
one  another.  A  Police  Inspector,  superna- 
turally  endowed  with  patience,  who  has  long 


ing  of  their  countrymen. 

Great  care  was  taken  of  the  children.  One 
boy  died  of  smallpox,  but  Jemmy  Button,  and 
a  boy  and  girl,  named  York  Minster  and 
Fuegia  Basket,  were  educated  in  the  infant 
school  of  Walthamstow,  and,  moreover,  were 
presented  at  court  to  King  William  and 
Queen  Adelaide.  After  the  lapse  of  about 
three  years,  Captain  Fitzroy  was  sent  out  to 


been  looking- on  from  the  Guildhall-steps,!  continue  the  survey  in  the  stormy  region  of 
says,  to  a  myrmidon,  "  Lock  'em  up  !  Bring  ;  Cape  Horn.  He  took  with  him  the  three 
'em  in !  "  j  Fuegians,  intending  to  laud  them  at  the 

Appropriate  finish  to  the  Grand  Race  places  whence  they  severally  came.  Circum- 
Week.  The  Gong-donkey,  captive  and  last ;  stances  prevented  this  ;  and  they  were  all 
trace  of  it,  conveyed  into  iimbo,  where  they  j  landed,  by  their  own  request,  at  Woollya,  a 
cannot  do  better  than  keep  him  until  next  pleasant  spot,  where  Jemmy  Button  said  he 
Race  Week.  The  Jackall  is  wanted  too,  and  was  born.  They  had  learnt  English  and 
is  much  looked  for,  over  the  way  and  up  and  sundry  useful  arts,  and  were  dressed  in 
down.  But,  having  had  the  good-fortune  to  English  fashion.  Button  was  a  dandy,  with 


Charles  Bickens.] 


FRIENDS  OF  THE  PATAGONIAN. 


[October  31, 1857.]       417 


a  gentlemanly  air.  York,  rather  a  coarse- 
looking  fellow,  though  not  wanting  in  quick- 
ness ;  and  it  was  he  who  loved  Fuegia, 
the  youngest  and  cleverest  of  the  three,  and 
married  her,  though  she  was  then  only  twelve 
or  thirteen  years  old.  The  young  people 
were  all  settled  at  Woollya^  in  Jemmy  But- 
ton's family ;  which  consisted  of  a  mother  and 
three  brothers,  with  the  usual  accompani- 
ments of  cousins.  Houses  were  built  for 
them,  gardens  planted,  plenty  of  everything 
landed  for  their  use,  even  to  toilette-services 
and  sets  of  cut  glass.  They  had  all  nearly 
foi-gotten  their  own  language,  but  that  they 
would  soon  pick  up.  During  a  three  months' 
stay  of  the  ship  at  Eio  Janeiro,  Fuegia  had 
managed  to  learn  Portuguese,  and  in  Monte 
Video  she  had  added  knowledge  of  Spanish 
to  her  various  accomplishments.  They  were 
not  less  .welcome  to  their  friends  and  rela- 
tions for  oblivion  of  the  mother  tongue  ;  and 
when  Captain  Fitzroy  left  Woollya,  in 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-three,  it  was — 
with  its  gardens,  houses,  and  improvements — 
a  fair  place  to  look  upon. 

Twelve  months  afterwards,  the  same 
officer  revisited  Woollya,  when  he  says : 
"It  was  found  that  the  savages  had  re- 
lapsed very  nearly  into  their  original  state. 
Jemmy  Button  came  paddling  up  in  his 
canoe.  He  was  all  but  naked ;  his  hair 
matted,  and  his  eyes  weak  from  smoke  ; 
the  wigwams  deserted,  and  the  gardens 
trampled  under  foot.  He  could  still  speak 
English  ;  and  indeed,  to  the  astonishment  of 
all,  his  companions,  wife  and  brothers,  also 
mixed  many  English  words  in  their  conversa- 
tion with  him.  He  said  he  was  well,  had 
plenty  of  fruits,  birds,  and  "  ten  guanaco  in 
snow-time"  (the  skin  of  which  furnishes  a 
covering).  He  had  a  wife  besides,  who  was 
decidedly  the  best-looking  female  in  the  com- 
pany. He  had  dressed  a  fine  otter-skin  for 
Captain  Fitzroy,  and  one  for  Bennett,  his 
particular  friend  on  board.  His  story  was 
one  of  misfortune.  He  had  been  twice 
robbed.  York  had  succeeded  in  defending 
his  own  properly  from  the  rapacity  of  the 
natives,  by  standing  with  a  spade  at  his  door 
in  a  threatening  attitude.  He  had  been  en- 
gaged a  long  time  in  building  a  boat  of 
planks,  and,  in  an  unlucky  hour,  he  had 
plundered  Jemmy  of  all  he  had  in  the  world, 
except  a  huge  carving-knife  (which  he  re- 
tained as  an  ornament  round  his  neck),  and 
had  gone  off,  with  his  wife  and  his  plunder, 
to  his  own  country.  It  was  the  opinion  of 
all  on  board  that  the  cunning  rogue  had 
planned  all  this  long  before,  and  that  with 
this  end  in  view  he  had  desired  so  earnestly 
to  be  placed  with  Button,  rather  than  be 
landed  in  his  own  country.  Eight  years 
after,  an  English  vessel  put  into  a  bay  in  the 
Magellan  waters,  and  there  was  found  a 
woman  who  said  :  "  How  do  ?  I  have  been 
to  Plymouth  and  London."  She  was  also 
pointed  out  as  late  as  eighteen  hundred  and 


fifty-one,  to  two  captains,  by  the  governor  of 
a  Chilian  settlement.  York  Minster  also  was 
then  seen. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  year  eighteen  'fifty, 
a  party  of  seven  persons  sailed  from  Liver- 
pool in  a  ship  called  the  Ocean  Queen,  com- 
manded by  Captain  Cooper.  This  party  was 
led  by  Captain  Allen  Gardiner,  R.N.,  the 
founder  of  the  Patagonian  Missionary  So- 
ciety. The  other  six  members  of  it  were 
Mr.  Williams,  a  surgeon,  who  had  abandoned 
a  good  practice  to  go  as  catecliist  (or  teacher) 
to  the  Patagouians  ;  Mr.  Maidment,  another 
catechist ;  Erwin,  a  carpenter,  who  had  been 
to  the  same  place  before  with  Captain  Gar- 
diner ;  Badcock,  Bryant,  and  Pearce,  Cornish 
fishermen.  Picton  Island,  Tierra  del  Fuego,  a 
place  not  far  from  Cape  Horn,  was  their  des- 
tination. There  they  arrived  and  landed  on 
the  fifth  of  December,  and  their  first  care 
was  to  mark  out  a  place  where,  secure  from 
attack  by  the  natives,  they  might  pitch  their 
tents  and  store  their  provisions.  They  had 
brought  supply  enough  for  the  ensuing  win- 
ter, at  the  expiration  of  which  they  depended 
on  the  coming  of  a  ship  that  was  to  be  sent 
out  with  more.  They  trusted  also  for  food 
on  the  sea-birds  which  abounded  in  the  place. 
They  had  brought  with  them  two  large  car- 
vel boats — the  Pioneer  and  the  Speedwell — 
aud  two  smaller  boats,  eight  feet  long,  made  as 
tenders  to  the  launches. 

On  the  third  day  the  Ocean  Queen  re- 
sumed her  voyage,  and  went  round  the  Horn, 
leaving  the  little  band  to  its  appointed  work. 
It  had  begun  work  by  leaving  its  powder  on 
board  ship,  although  the  missionaries  had 
so  far  depended  upon  wild  fowl,  as  to  take 
with  them  but  a  small  stock  of  animal  food. 
The  tents  were  scarcely  pitched  before 
the  natives  became  troublesome,  and  the 
mission  party  betook  itself  to  the  boats ; 
pushing  from  shore,  the  Speedwell,  with  a 
raft  in  tow,  became  entangled  for  four  hours 
among  rocks,  the  crew  suffering  much  from 
cold,  and  wind,  and  sea,  and  rain,  at  last  es- 
caped back  to  the  cove  it  quitted,  while  the 
Pioneer,  having  lost  the  two  lesser  boats  it 
had  in  charge,  and  found  a  harbour,  came 
back  after  a  day  and-a-half's  absence  to  look 
for  the  Speedwell.  They  started  together 
again  for  the  harbour  found  by  Captain 
Allen  and  after  unheard-of  privations,  disap- 
pointments, sickness,  and  bad  management, 
on  the  eighteenth  of  March  they  start, 
and  feeling  their  way  anxiously  from  rock 
to  rock,  reach  Banner  Cove,  and  as  they 
return  with  their  provisions,  write  their 
cry  of  despair  on  the  rocks  wherever  it 
may  catch  a  passing  sailor's  eye  :  "  Hasten  ! 
haste !  We  have  sickness  on  board  !  Our 
supplies  are  nearly  out,  and  if  not  soon  re- 
lieved we  shall  be  starved  !  Go  to  Spaniard's 
Harbour  !  Go  to  Spaniard's  Harbour  ! 
Hasten  !  Haste  !  "  On  the  twenty-ninth  of 
March  they  land  again  in  Spaniard's  Har- 
bour, and  again  divide  into  two  parties. 


418       [October  31,  1»70 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Mismanagement  at  home  delays  the  arri- 
val of  the  vessel  that  was  to  have  taken 
out  to  them  provisions  iu  the  spring. 
They  catch  a  fox,  and  salt  it  for  food. 
They  eat  mice.  They  eat  a  penguin 
and  a  shag.  They  eat  the  few  mussels 
and  limpets  they  can  find,  they  eat  remains 
of  a  dead  fish  that  is  washed  on  shore  ;  finally 
they  eat  sea-weed.  One  of  the  Cornish  fish-  j 
ermeu  dies  first.  They  bury  him  under  a 
tree,  and  then  separate  to  search  feebly  for 
things  eatable.  The  carpenter  dies  next,  and 
then  another  of  the  Cornish  men.  High 
tides  again  sweep  out  of  the  cavern  its  con- 
tents, and  scatter  far  and  wide  the  little  store. 
To  attract  attention  to  their  cave,  they  paint 
upon  the  rocks  a  large  hand  pointing  to  it, 
and  write  underneath  :  "  My  soul  wait  thou  ; 
upon  God.  Trust  in  him  at  all  times,  ye 
people."  In  August,  four  men  only  survive, 
but  the  division  of  parties  survives  with 
them  :  two  linger  and  die  at  Earnest  Cove  : 
two  a  mile  distant  at  Cook's  River.  Captain 
Gardiner,  who  planned  and  led  the  expedi- 
tion, is  the  last  to  die. 

Two  mouths  too  late,  in  October,  a  schooner, 
called  the  John  Davidson,  despatched  from 
Monte  Video  to  the  rescue,  came  to  Spa- 
niard's Harbour.  There  their  captain  found 
the  remains  of  the  Cook's  river  party.  The 
boat  was  on  the  beach,  with  one  person  dead 
inside  ;  another  man  was  dead  on  the  beach 
itself,  completely  washed  to  pieces  ;  and  a 
third  was  buried.  Books,  papers,  medicine, 
clothing,  tools,  were  strewn  about.  In  spite  of 
rain,  and  spray,  and  wind,  upon  the  stormiest 
coast  in  the  world,  all  journals  were  found, 
and  all  were  legible.  Mr.  Williams  said,  in 
his  worst  distress,  "he  would  not  swap  his 
situation  for  or  with  any  man  in  life.  He  is 
happy  beyond  expression  !  "  At  about  the 
same  time,  the  captain  of  the  frigate  Dido, 
who  had  received  orders  from  the  admiralty 
to  ascertain  the  fate  of  Captain  Gardiner  and 
his  party,  went  with  provisions  to  Picton 
Island,  and  was  directed,  by  inscriptions  on 
the  rocks,  written  by  men  certainly  not 
unwilling  to  swap  their  situation.  "Go  to 
Spaniard's  Harbour."  "  You  will  find  us  in 
Spaniard's  Harbour."  "Digbelow."  "Abottle 
under  this  pole."  He  discovered  the  remains 
of  the  party  at  Earnest  Cove,  with  books  and 
papers,  and  gave  Captain  Allen  Gardiner  an 
honourable  burial. 

Encouraged  by  the  wonderfully  practical  re  • 
suit  of  this  first  enterprise,  thePatagonian  Mis- 
sionary Society  began  the  building  of  a  little 
vessel,  doubled  and  strengthened  to  do  service 
in  stormy  seas,  fitted  and  equipped  for  the 
purpose  of  another  mission  to  the  Patagonians 
and  Fuegiaus.  This  was  a  yacht  of  eighty- 
eight  tons  register,  the  Allen  Gardiner.  She 
was  to  sail  from  Bristol,  and  was,  on  the  first 
of  August,  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-four, 
ready  fur  some  one  to  take  charge  of  her,  but 
it  was  not  easy  to  find  a  captain  and  a  crew. 

It  then  happened  that  Captain  W.  Parker 


Snow,  a  gentleman  well  known  to  the  public 
by  his  account  of  a  voyage  on  the  trace  of 
Sir  John  Franklin,  a  mariner  who  has  crossed 
at  divers  times  nearly  all  latitudes,  read  in 
his  newspaper  the  advertisement  of  "  Captain 
wanted,"  for  the  yacht  of  the  Patagouian 
Missionary  Society.  Captain  Snow  is  a  sailor 
who  has  written  sea-sermons  and  prayers  for 
seamen,  and  who  is  as  openly  religious  as 
a  man  may  be  without  seeking  the  special 
homage  of  his  neighbours,  as  a  precious 
vessel.  He  "  did  not  like  to  see  a  mission 
vessel  wanting  a  captain,"  offered  unpaid 
service,  was  accepted,  but  informed  that  the 
society  desired  to  have  all  its  working  mem- 
bers paid  and  under  agreement — received, 
accordingly,  his  salary,  which  was  of  insigni- 
ficant amount.  He  stipulated  that  his  wife 
should  go  with  him,  and  so  she  went.  Before 
sailing,  the  captain  three  times,  in  writing, 
offered  to  resign  his  appointment ;  for,  he 
became  concerned  at  the  unpractical  way  in 
which  everything  was  being  done.  He  was 
directed  to  employ  no  one  who  was  not 
strictly  religious,  and  a  member  of  the 
Church  of  England;  and  "at  length,"  he 
says,  "  I  obtained  two  pious  officers  and  the 
promise  of  two  men.  These,  on  paying  their 
expenses  to  Bristol,  and  giving  them  high 
wages,  joined  the  ship ;  and  afterwards  I 
procured  one  more  indifferent  seaman,  partly 
blind  ;  also  a  young  man,  a  landsman,  and  a 
Hindoo  cook.  These  formed  the  whole  of 
my  crew,  with  the  exception  of  a  boy  sent 
on  board  for  the  cabin.  The  latter,  however, 
proved  so  utterly  useless,  and  was  so  bad,  as  to 
make  it  frequently  necessary  for  me  to  resort 
to  the  authorities  against  him.  In  addition 
to  my  small,  too  small  a  crew,  I  had  to  take 
out  a  young  man  as  surgeon  to  the  land 
party,  another  young  man  as  catechist  (that 
is,  a  sort  of  teacher  to  the  young  members  of 
the  mission  and  to  the  natives),  a  joiner,  as 
house-carpenter,  and  a  mason.  These  four 
formed  the  laud  party,  and  were  to  be  located 
upon  some  place  to  be  selected  on  the  West 
Falkland  islands,  for  a  mission  station  and  a 
depdt." 

From  a  book  recently  published  by  Captain 
Snow,  containing  an  account  of  his  voyage, 
we  derive  the  substance  of  this  article,  and 
we  shall  now  simply  set  down  his  experience 
of  the  benevolence  and  charity  which  find 
their  object  in  the  Patagonians.  His  impres- 
sion may  be  an  erroneous  one  ;  we  give  it  as 
we  find  it,  of  course  noticing  the  fact,  that 
this  report  comes  from  no  scotfer  at  the  prin- 
ciple of  distant  missions  ;  but  from  an  honour- 
able gentleman,  a  sailor  simply  pious,  who 
would  see  nothing  absurd  on  the  face  of  a 
missionary  enterprise  for  the  conversion  of 
Timbuctoo,but  who,  if  he  were  connected  with 
it,  would  denounce  it  fearlessly,  upon  discover- 
ing that  it  concealed  any  unworthy  principle. 

In  getting  the  ship  ready  for  sea,  the 
captain  says,  "  I  must  observe  that  iu  no  one 
instance  were  my  own  expenses  paid.  Every 


Charles  DIckeni.1 


FRIENDS  OF  THE  PATAGONIAN. 


—  fr 
[.Oct. 


ober  31,1357.1      419 


pecuniary  outlay  came  upon  myself."  After 
all,  in  consequence  of  the  newness  to  practical 
life  displayed  by  all  hands,  "  I  admitted — 
I  could  acknowledge — I  knew  the  neces- 
sity of  prayer  and  supplication  ;  but  I  felt 
that  this  might  be  practised  with  as  great 
fervour  and  sincerity  in  proper  places,  and  at 
suitable  seasons,  as  at  frequent  set  times  and 
occasions,  no  matter  what  the  business.  My 
ship  must  be  well  equipped,  cautiously 
trimmed,  carefully  stowed,  and  duly  provi- 
sioned ;  and  to  all  this  I  personally  attended, 
working  hard  witli  my  own  hands,  even  as  a 
seaman.  Yet  I  had  ultimately  to  go  to  sea 
with  the  vessel  leaky,  and  her  decks  covered 
•with  timber,  which  lumbered  her  fore  and  aft." 

The  instructions  with  which  the  captain 
sailed  were,  that  he  was  to  have  authority 
over  the  vessel  and  its  crew,  and  over  the 
men  of  the  land  party,  when  on  board  the 
vessel.  That  the  vessel  was  to  be  employed 
only  with  a  view  to  the  instruction  and  civi- 
lisation of  the  natives  of  South  America. 
That  he  was  to  be  always  ready  to  convey 
the  missionaries  to  Tierra  del  Fuego  and 
Patagonia,  to  aid  their  intercourse  with  the 
natives,  and  to  bring  back  to  the  Falkland 
Island  station  whatever  people  they  might 
induce  to  accompany  them.  That  as  soon  as 
the  station  was  somewhat  arranged,  and  the 
clergyman  or  catechist  could  go  with  him,  he 
•was  to  proceed  to  Woollya,  and  look  for 
Jemmy  Button.  The  clergyman  who  was  to 
have  gone  out  and  acted  as  "  third  mate  on 
board,"  was  not  ready  in  time.  He  was  to 
be  sent  out  afterwards,  by  some  vessel,  to 
join  his  party  at  the  Falklands,  With  twelve 
months'  provisions,  and  a  crew  bound  for 
eighteen  months  (the  men  requiring  then  to 
be  sent  home  free  of  expense)  the  Allen 
Gardiner  left  Bristol  in  the  last  week  of 
October,  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-four, 
much  fortified  with  prayer. 

Of  the  voyage  out,  the  Captain  writes : 
"Except  one  or  two  of  the  seamen,  I  have 
found  that  it  would  have  been  better  to  have 
had  any  kind  of  men,  than  professedly  super- 
excellent  ones — men  who  come  with  heaven 

on  their  lips,  but  not  in  their  heart 

If  there  was  anything  that  could  disgust  me 
with  what  I  inwardly  have  a  sincere  respect 
for,  it  would  have  been  the  amazing  impu- 
dence with  which  a  few  of  my  companions 
and  a  couple  of  the  seamen,  with  the  boy, 
would  take  upon  themselves  to  denounce  me 
to  perdition,  and  put  themselves  in  the  place 
of  a  consecrated  minister  of  God,  whenevertold 
to  do  what  they  chose  to  think  not  right." 

On  Christmas  Day,  the  mission  yacht  was 
entering  Eio  Janeiro,  and  a  Christmas  dinner 
was  then  given  by  the  Captain  and  Mrs.  Snow 
to  all  hands ;  every  extra  being  furnished  from 
their  private  purse  in  this  as  in  all  other  mat- 
ters. On  the  twenty-eighth  of  January  they 
reached  Keppel  Island,  a  small  island  of  un- 
appropriated crown  land  in  the  Falklands, 
which  was  selected  as  the  ground  most  suit- 


able for  purchase  as  the  seat  of  a  mission. 
The  society  had  obtained  fit-cm  the  Crown 
the  privilege  of  purchasing  &$  the  usual  price 
of  eight  shillings  an  acre  t]he  land  chosen, 
without  the  risk  of  losing  it,  attendant  on 
the  usual  auction.  The  selection  made  by 
Captain  Snow  was  "  strongly  approved  of  by 
the  committee." 

Possession  having  been  taken  of  this  little 
island,  one  of  the  crew  accidentally  set  fire 
to  the  dry  tussack  grass,  and  an  extensive 
conflagration  was  the  consequence.  To 
secure  the  purchase,  it  was  then  necessary  to 
go  round  to  Stanley,  the  seat  of  government 
in  the  Falkland  Islands,  and  at  Stanley,  the 
Captain  found  his  cause  a  little  prejudiced. 
At  the  first  interview  with  the  Governor,  his 
Excellency  produced  "letters  from  the  Right 
Honourable  Sir  George  Grey,  wherein  it  was 
said  (and  this  his  Excellency  dwelt  upon  with 
much  natural  indignation),  that  the  secretary 
of  the  Patagonian  mission,  desired  a  location, 
&c.,  away  from  the  depraved,  low,  and  im- 
moral colonists  of  Stanley ! "  "I  have  no  hesi- 
tation," observes  the  Captain,  "in  saying  that 
these  terms  are  not  warranted,  at  least  so  far 
as  my  own  knowledge  went,  of  Stanley.  But 
let  me  ask  the  reader  to  consider  the  absur- 
dity, and  the  harm  to  myself  as  well  as  the 
mission,  in  thus  traducing  a  colony  to  which 
I  and  the  vessel  had  to  go."  It  was  finally 
agreed  that  for  one  year  the  Patagonian  Mis- 
sionary Society  might  occupy  Keppel  Island 
at  the  rental  of  one  pound,  but  that  it  must 
then  buy,  or  give  up  the  right  of  purchase 
without  auction.  No  better  terms  could  be 
made,  " for,"  says  the  Captain,  "we  had  no 
money,  we  had  no  letters  of  credit ;  and  the 
mission,  I  could  soon  see,  was  thought  but 
little  of  at  Stanley.  We  need  not  look  there 
for  help  ;  nor  do  I  wonder  at  it,  after  what 
had  been  said." 

Having  left  the  land-party  on  Keppel 
Island,  and  displayed  his  want  of  "  faith,"  by 
making  an  arrangement  to  prevent  the  risk 
of  its  being  left  helpless  in  case  of  accident, 
Captain 'Snow  went  to  Monte  Video,  earning 
some  money  that  the  vessel  wanted,  by  con- 
veyance of  the  mails.  There,  two  mates 
became  mutinous  because,  there  being  no 
clergyman  on  board,  the  Captain  performed 
once  only  instead  of  twice,  a  daily  service  of 
public  prayer.  These  persons  were  dis- 
charged, it  being  their  wish  to  go  on  shore 
for  the  purpose  of  "  converting  the  wretched 
sailors  and  bigoted  papists." 

Returned  to  Stanley  many  troubles  beset 
the  bold  captain  who  had  undertaken  to  com- 
mand a  crew  of  saints  for  a  society  of  lovers 
of  the  Patagouian.  His  instructions  from, 
home  were  as  ambiguous  as  Delphic  oracles, 
and  the  behaviour  of  his  companions  was 
spiteful  in  proportion  to  the  profession  made 
by  them  of  piety.  Especially  a  thorn  in  the 
side  of  the  captain  was  the  catechist  who  on 
the  passage  out  "  fancied  and  taught  that  re- 
ligfous  duties  made  a  man  independent  of  all 


420       [October  21,  185  M 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


secular  authority  in  a  vessel."  "I  was  alone," 
the  captain  saysj,  "  as  far  as  help  from  home 
was  concerned ;  for  instead  of  vigorously 
supporting  me,  I  was  left  by  myself  to  fight 
every  battle  ;  and  that,  too,  without  money, 
means,  or  countenance  ;  and  often  with  in- 
sidious attempts  to  undermine  everything  I 
did."  Ten  thousand  pounds  had  been  freely 
given  since  the  work  began,  a  few  years 
back  ;  yet  "what  return  was  there  for  any  of 
it,"  the  captain  now  asks,  "  except  the  ship  ?  " 
and  she  could  not  be  retained  unless  they 
sent  out  funds  to  pay  men's  wages  ...  "At 
the  present  time,  therefore,  seeing  that  no 
missionary  was  coming  out,  and  that  large 
sums  had  been  subscribed  with  the  hope  that 
the  Fuegia-os  would  be  visited,  I  determined 
to  follow  oat  that  clause  in  my  instructions 
which  told  me  to  try  and  discover  Jemmy 


Button 


My  letters  from  the  secretary 


were  so  contradictory  that  I  was  puzzled  how 
to  act.  I  was  cautioned  not  to  go,  yet  it  was 
said  that '  the  society  was  at  so  low  an  ebb,' 
that  something  must  be  done  ;  and  '  one 
graphic  and  well-written  account  from  me  of 
a  visit  to  the  natives  would  do  more  to  raise 
it  up  than  anything  else ; '  and,  consequently, 
I  determined  to  try  and  do  this." 

So,  Captain  Snow  visited  in  the  yacht 
Allen  Gardiner  Spaniard's  Harbour,  and 
explored  the  scenes  of  Captain  Gardiner's 
most  miserable  death,  and  he  forgathered  at 
sundry  points  with  natives,  whom  he  found 
to  have  a  terrible  way  of  yelling,  but  to  be 
quite  harmless  and  friendly.  One  group  of 
them,  making  a  ferocious  noise,  was  so 
rejoiced  at  finding  itself  out-shouted  by  the 
j|  white  man  who  set  up  a  holla-balloo  through 
a  speaking  trumpet  that  the  friendliest  rela- 
tions were  established  instantly.  Instead  of 
flying  from  the  sight  of  them,  Captain  Snow 
went  boldly  and  alone  among  the  first  group 
that  he  found ;  when  they  thumped  at  his  back, 
he  laughed  cheerily,  and  thumped  at  their 
backs ;  also,  took  up  and  fondled  their  little 
ones,  whistled  tunes,  danced  like  a  wild  man, 
and  let  any  of  them  hug  him,  though  they 
did  all  stink,  and  though  they  were  all 
covered  with  vermin.  Moreover,  he  found 
Jemmy  Button,  who  is  still  alive,  who  has  a 
second  wife,  speaks  English  still,  and  is  as 
dirty  as  his  neighbours.  He  is  not  even,  by 
virtue  of  his  English  education,  recognised 
as  a  chief  among  them,  but  is  hustled  and 
•worried  by  his  brethren,  as  one  of  the  lower 
orders  of  Fuegians.  Nevertheless,  Jemmy 
declared,  that  if  he  loved  England  well,  he 
loved  Fuegia  better,  pleaded  the  sea  and  the 
big  sick  as  his  reason  for  declaring  that  he 
would  not  himself  quit  again,  neither  would 
he  suffer  any  child  of  his  to  quit  the  native 
shore.  Wherever  he  inquired,  Captain  Snow 
found  the  savages  firm  in  declaration,  that 
they  would  not  let  a  child  be  shipped  away 
from  them.  He  then  finally  abandoned  in 


native  Fuegians  and  Patagonians  shall  be 
conveyed  away  to  their  station  in  the  Falk- 
land Island,  where,  as  one  of  the  Society's 
publications  explains,  ''in  the  care  of  our 
cattle,  the  Patagonians  will  find  congenial 
employment ;  in  fishing  and  sealing,  and  in 
taking  sea-birds,  we  shall  find  work  and  food 
tasteful  to  the  Fuegian  youths...  To  build 
houses,  &c. . .  The  natives  can  be  brought, 
but  they  cannot  run  away."  Practically, 
thinks  the  captain,  this  is  slavery.  On  such 
ground  it  is  vain  to  delight  in  the  hopes  held 
out  as,  he  says,  "  I  saw  done  at  a  meeting  on 
behalf  of  the  mission  the  other  day,  where 
the  secretary  cleverly  turned  a  picture  of 
three  Fuegians,  saying,  '  Here  you  see  on  one 
side  the  savage  in  his  native  state,  and  here 
you  see,  on  the  other  side,  the  same  savage 
in  his  civilised  state,'  as  he  twisted  the  card 
dexterously  in  his  fingers." — "  Thus  then," 
the  captain  presently  writes,  "  I  infer  that  it 
will  be  not  only  a  most  unchristian,  but  a 
dangerous  plan  to  attempt  taking  any  of  the 
natives  away.  If  the  mission  wishes  to  be 
successful,  let  it  go  amongst  them  as  I  did, 
and  by  gaining  their  confidence  and  goodwill 
be  enabled  to  sow  the  seeds  of  future  civili- 
sation and  Christianity,  the  growth  of  which 
must  be  a  work  of  time,  as  well  as  one  of 
watchful  care  and  perseverance.  These 
remarks,  or  something  to  the  same  purport, 
were  sent  home  by  me  when  I  wrote  an 
account  of  this  interview  with  the  Fuegians  ; 
but  I  regret  to  say,  that  the  committee  have 
put  a  quite  different  construction  on  my 
words,  and  made  me  appear  to  say  the  con- 
trary." 

On  the  way  home,  the  captain  called  at 
Monte  Video,  for  the  expected  missionary, 
who  had  not  arrived.  His  report  against  the 
scheme  of  the  society  was  not,  perhaps, 
favourably  considered  at  home.  His  next 
letters  said,  "the  people  wonder  what  the 
vessel  is  doing  so  much  at  Monte  Video," 
and  they  were  written  by  the  person  who 
had  ordered  him  to  go  there.  Returned 
again  to  Stanley,  the  Captain  found  matter 
among  his  companions,  for  a  chapter  of  what 
he  calls  "Disorganisation  and  unpleasant- 
ness." The  catechist  set  himself  up  as  "a 
third  independent  head."  The  carpenter 
and  mason,  having  put  up  the  mission-house, 
were,  says  the  captain,  in  this  condition  : — 
If  they  remained  upon  the  island,  they 
would  be  fed,  and  have  a  certain  pay  ;  if 
they  chose  to  claim  their  discharge,  they 
were  to  be  turned  off — as  was  actually  the 
case  with  both  of  them — without  being  paid 
up,  and  without  the  smallest  aid  or  means  to 
get  back  to  their  native  country."  The 
captain  himself  was  in  a  like  position,  only 
the  men  of  the  crew  were  safe,  who  had 
made  their  agreement  with  the  captain.  Of 
course  we  cannot  follow  all  the  details  of 
dissension  caused  by  the  resistance  of  the 


hi-   own   mind   the  idea  cherished    by  the  laud-party  to  the  captain's  efforts  to  establish 
Patagouian  Missionary  Society,  that  young  i  them  in  a  way  that  he  considered  free  from 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  QUEEN'S  GUEST. 


[October  31, 135;.]       421 


risk  to  life  and  health.  Letters  from  home 
afterwards  tell  him,  "  Even  as  it  was,  had 
you  thought  it  right  to  break  up  the  mission- 
station  for  the  present,  the  committee  would 
have  looked  upon  it  as  a  mere  error  of  j  udg- 
ment,  and  not  allowed  it  to  make  them  feel  a 
whit  less  confidence  in  you."  He  adds : 
"  Would  it  be  credited  that  at  the  very  time 
this  was  written,  a  man  was  at  Stanley,  act- 
ing, as  has  since  appeared,  under  their 
express  orders  to  get  rid  of  me  !  "  At  this 
time,  the  captain  had  been  directed  to  buy 
the  entire  island,  "but  like  other  directions 
sent  to  me,  it  was  useless,  in  consequence 
of  there  being  no  money  transmitted  to  me 
for  that  or  for  any  other  purpose.  Indeed  I 
was  actually  spending  my  own  salary,  little 
as  it  was,  in  keeping  up  the  payments,  and 
the  respectability  of  the  ship." 

Another  voyage  was  made  to  Monte  Video, 
where  there  was  found  waiting  to  join  the 
expedition  a  young,  simple-minded  German, 
who  had  been  announced  as  "linguist  and 
interpreter  to  the  mission  "  in  the  society's 
papers,  who  had  been  sent  out,  we  are  told, 
at  an  annual  salary  of  "  forty  pounds  a-year, 
and  find  himself;"  this  salary,  moreover, 
not  to  commence  till  he  arrived  at  Keppel 
Island.  This  person,  described  as  a  weak- 
minded  but  well-meaning  and  religious  youth, 
was  despatched,  says  the  captain,  with  in- 
structions public  and  private  ;  "  the  private 
cues,  as  he  told  me,  intimating  that  he  should 


cations  with  the  captain,  and  it  appeared 
"  that  there  was  a  sad  division  and  much  un- 
pleasantness existing  between  the  missionary 
and  those  with  him."  The  missionary  came 
out  as  the  superintendent  of  the  entire  enter- 
prise, but  there  were  no  instructions  sent  to 
Captain  Snow,  who,  not  long  afterwards, 
found  himself  cleverly  ejected  from  his  ship, 
and  left  ashore  with  his  wife  on  the  Falkland 
Islands.  "I  asked,"  says  Captain  Snow, 
"  for  money  to  defray  the  expenses  of  myself 
and  wife  home  to  England,  and  also  to  sup- 
port us  on  shore  until  we  could  get  home. 
All  and  everything  was,  however,  refused." 
Thus,  then,  after  two  years'  hard  and  faithful 
service,  the  man  who  had  "  placed  the  society 
in  the  favourable  position  it  now  occupies," 
and  was  ever  applauded  and  spoken  well  of 
by  that  society,  was,  with  his  wife,  thanked, 
indeed,  by  suddenly,  at  one  blow,  reducing 
them  to  next  to  beggary,  and  turning  them  on 
shore  eight  thousand  miles  from  England  1 
The  captain  sold  his  books  and  instruments 
to  buy  a  passage  home. 

We  have  told  the  main  facts  of  the  captain's- 
story  as  we  find  them  stated  in  his  book, 
have  made  no  comments,  and  shall  draw  no- 
inferences. 


THE  QUEEN'S  GUEST. 

I  HAVE  the  honour  of  being  a  guest  of  her 
Majesty,  and  ranking  as  first-class  debtor  of 


act  as  a  spy  upon  his  brother  wolves  in  the !  Lewworth  Prison.  How  1  got  the  invitation, 
mission.  In  proof,  it  will  be  enough  to  men-  which  had  to  be  regarded  in  the  light  of  a 
tion  that  he  really  did  this  ;  and  that,  on  the  command,  and  implicitly  obeyed,  may  form 
passage  out,  he  not  only  opened  the  sealed !  a  curious  chapter  of  contemporary  prison 
letters  entrusted  to  his  care  for  the  consul  j  history, 
and  the  chaplain,  and  one  of  my  crew,  but 
actually  read  them  and  allowed  them  to  be 


read  all  over  the  vessel.  His  excuse  was 
that  his  master  had  bidden  him  study 
epistolary  correspondence,  and  that  he  would 
better  please  his  employers  if  he  carefully 
observed  and  noted,  and  then  reported  home, 
all  the  doings  of  those  with  whom  he  was 
henceforth  to  be  associated." 

The  eighteen  months  for  which  the  crew 
•was  bound,  expired,  and  the  men  claimed  to 
be  sent  home.  No  money  was  sent,  and  the 
return  of  the  vessel  was  forbidden.  "  The 
ship,"  says  the  captain,  "  for  purposes  I  can 
well  understand,  was  to  remain  out,  no  matter 
at  what  expense,  waste  of  time  and  inconveni- 
ence. Thus,  then,  I  had  to  discharge  all  the 
men  and  send  them  home.  What  trouble  I 
had  ; — what  I  went  through — hunting  about 
the  streets  for  money  to  pay  the  men's  wages 
— going  from  place  to  place  and  ship  to  ship, 
trying  to  get  the  men  a  berth  home,  instead 
of  paying  for  their  passage  ; — battling  with 
the  consul  (who  spoke  feelingly,  but  firmly, 
on  the  subject) — none  can  fully  tell  but 
myself." 

At  last  there  came  out  to  Stanley  a  mis- 
sionary with  a  mission  party,  eighteen  in 
number.  lie  was  reserved  in  his  coniniuui- 


off  as  any  literary  man  of  moderate  as- 
pirations could  wish.  Though  not  enjoying 
the  aura  popularis  of  notoriety,  I  had  enough 
of  the  solid  pudding,  and  was  biding  my  time 
to  make  my  notch  in  the  London  catalogue. 
Now,  I  am  a  prisoner  for  debt,  and  doubt- 
lessly held  up  as  a  warning  to  all  honest 
men  in  the  small  watering-place  where  I  re- 
side. Against  this  decision  I  wish  to  protest^ 
and,  know  no  better  opportunity  of  making 
my  story  known,  and  setting  my  character 
right,  than  by  giving  a  straightforward  ac- 
count of  the  circumstances  to  which  I  owe 
my  incarceration. 

Some  malicious  sprite,  envying  my  good  for- 
tune, imbued  me  with  a  feeling  of  patriotism, 
if  I  may  term  it  so,  and  when  an  opportunity 
of  serving  my  country  in  the  East  was  offered 
me,  I  gladly  accepted  it.  I  entered  one  of 
the  foreign  legions,  under  a  verbal  agreement 
that  my  services  would  be  required  for  three 
years,  and  so  much  longer  as  the  war  might 
last, 
bers, 

hundred  and  twenty  to  my  tailor,  and  twenty 
odd  to  my -bootmaker — these  items,  repre- 
senting the  equipment  I  was  directed  to  pro- 
cure by  my  commanding  officer.  I  served  in 


My  outfit  cost  me,  in  round    num- 
one    hundred   and  fifty  pounds — one 


422       [October  31. 1S57-1 


HOUSEHOLD  WOBDS. 


[Conducted 


the  Crimea  just  six  months,  until  the  dogs  of 
war  were  muzzled,  and  during  that  period 
paid  off  ninety  pounds  of  the  amount ;  and, 
considering  that  my  entire  pay  was  under  a 
pound  a  day,  and  I  had  a  wife  and  child  to 
support,  I  do  not  think  I  can  be  accused  of 
extravagance.  I  received  two  months'  gra- 
tuity in  Pera,  as  a  final  acknowledgment  of 
my  services,  and  had  to  await  the  Paymaster's 
good  pleasure  for  three  weeks  at  the  Hotel 
de  1' Europe,  which  made  a  considerable  hole 
in  the  sum  total.  When  I  arrived  at  home. 
I  was  worse  than  penniless,  for  I  had  sixty 
pounds  of  debt  hanging  over  me.  I  naturally 
applied  to  the  War-Office  to  carry  out  the 
arrangement  under  which  I  entered,  and 
was  laughed  at  for  my  pains.  My  agree- 
ment was  verbal,  so  I  had  no  appeal :  while 
a  portion  of  the  men  who  had  served  under 
me,  having  secured  a  written  agreement,  were 
bought  off  with  six  months'  gratuity.  Mind, 
I  do  not  desire  to  raise  any  compassionate 
capital  by  complaining  of  government : 
know  that  government,  to  exist,  must  be 
unjust,  and  that  individual  hardships  weigh 
but  little  against  the  common  weal.  I,  there- 
fore, determined  to  work  off  any  incubus  of 
debt  by  my  own  labours,  and  fortunately 
succeeded  in  recovering  a  portion  of  my  lite- 
rary engagements.  My  tailor  brought  me  a 
bill  to  accept  for  the  amount  I  owed  him, 
which  has  been  renewed  until  it  has  reached 
fifty  pounds,  while  my  bootmaker  took  out  a 
writ.  With  the  latter  I  arranged  for  pay- 
ments by  instalments,  and  set  to  work.  In 
February  last,  I  was  attacked  by  a  dangerou 
illness  which  confined  me  to  my  bed  for  a 
month  ;  and  when  I  recovered,  I  was  ordered 
to  the  sea-side  as  my  only  chance  of  a  perma- 
nent cure. 

I  need  not  remark  that,  in  many  call- 
ings besides  literature,  a  man  may  make 
a  comfortable  livelihood  while  on  the  spot, 
but  once  gone,  his  place  is  soon  filled  up. 
Editors  of  papers  have  something  better  to 
do  than  writing  to  contributors,  and  my  work 
fell  off.  Still  I  succeeded  in  keeping  my  head 
above  water.  I  worked  very  hard  at  a  novel 
and  was  so  fortunate  as  to  sell  it ;  and  this, 
with  periodical  contributions,  kept  the  woli 
from  the  door  till  the  day  before  yesterday.  I 
was  arrested  without  a  moment's  warning  by 
my  bootmaker,  and  carried  off  to  Lewworth 
Gaol,  with  just  five  shillings  in  my  pocket, 
my  wife  and  child  being  left  to  starve,  or  go 
to  the  workhouse.  I  was  carried  off  eighteen 
miles  in  a  gig,  and  handedoverto  the  governor, 
who,  I  am  happy  to  say,  I  found  absorbed  in 
It  is  Never  Too  Late  to  Mend,  and  doubtlessly 
profiting  by  its  lessons.  By  him  I  was  trans- 
ferred to  a  turnkey,  and  soon  found  mysel: 
the  only  first-class  debtor  in  the  place.  Bui 
I  may  as  well  describe  my  habitat  more 
closely. 

I  was  seated  in  a  room,  bearing  consider- 
able resemblance  to  the  kitchen  of  a  country 
inn,  minus  the  beery  smell ;  there  are  two 


semi-circular  windows,  heavily  cased  with 
bars,  two  deal  tables  (on  one  of  which  I  am 
writing),  a  large  range  with  no  fire,  and  a 
few  wooden  benches.  Not  a  single  article 
for  accommodation,  save  a  sink  to  wash  up 
plates,  and  a  tin  bowl  in  which  to  perform  my 
ablutions.  Had  it  not  been  for  a  good  Sama- 
ritan, in  the  shape  of  the  sheriffs-officer  who 
arrested  me,  I  must  have  eaten  such  food  as 
my  five  shillings,  allowed  me  to  buy,  off  the 
table.  I  had  not  even  the  resource  of  chop- 
sticks. In  this  day-room  there  are  two 
doors  with  immense  locks,  and  in  the  centre 
another  open  door  leading  into  the  exercising- 
yard,  which  is  just  thirty  paces  long,  as  I 
can  tell,  from  my  repeated  pacing,  to  a 
nicety.  Were  I  a  pedestrian — in  training  to 
walk  a  thousand  miles  in  a  thousand  hours 
— I  could  not  desire  a  better  ground ;  but 
as  a  poor  scribe,  I  cannot  appreciate  .the 
advantage.  In  this  room,  I  am  locked 
up,  without  books,  almost  without  money — 
for  what  object  I  cannot  presume  to  say — for 
if  my  bootmaker  thinks  to  obtain  his  money 
by  these  means,  I  can  only  remind  him  that 
a  man  who  has  nothing  and  can  gain  nothing, 
can  pay  nothing. 

I  must  say  that  the  turnkeys  do  their 
spiriting  gently.  One  of  them  has  lent  me  a 
volume  of  the  Illustrated  Times,  as  mental 
food,  while  another  buys  me  mutton-steaks, 
which  he  fries,  I  dare  not  ask  in  what  sort  of 
grease,  as  my  bodily  sustenance.  Otherwise 
1  am  perfectly  alone.  It  is  only  fashionable 
bootmakers  who,  now-a-days  take  advantage 
of  imprisonment  for  debt,  and  to  my  punish- 
ment is  added  solitary  confinement.  If  a 
sweep  were  to  be  locked  up  with  me,  I  would 
be  proud  to  shake  his  sooty  hand,  for  his 
presence,  at  any  rate,  would  dispel  many  evil 
thoughts.  I  have  entrusted  my  razor  to  the 
care  of  the  turnkey,  as  I  might  succumb 
to  the  whisperings  of  the  demon,  and  think  it 
better  to  remove  temptation.  But  if  the  day 
time  is  bad,  night  is  incomparably  worse.  At 
nine  o'clock  I  am  conducted  to  a  white- 
washed cell,  twelve  feet  by  eight,  containing 
an  iron-bedstead  with  a  straw  mattrass, 
and  the  usual  appurtenances,  I  presume,  of  a 
criminal's  cell.  Here  I  am  left  to  sleep, 
if  I  can,  till  six  in  the  morning,  securely  kept 
in  by  an  iron  open-work  door  and  a  heavy 
wooden  one  locked  over  that  again.  I  shudder 
to  think  what  would  be  my  fate  if  I  were 
taken  ill,  for  no  shouts  would  penetrate  the 
walls  of  what  is  justly  termed  a  cell.  At 
nine  in  the  morning,  I  am  expected  to  attend 
chapel,  and  I  may  find  solace  for  the  re- 
mainder of  the  day  in  tobacco  and  a  quart  of 
strong  ale.  If  time  hang  heavy  on  my  hands, 
I  can  scrub  out  the  day-room,  which  the 
regulations  order  me  to  do  once  a  day.  How- 
ever, so  long  as  my  five  shillings  last,  I 
prefer  hiring  a  poor  debtor  to  do  this  for  me, 
as  well  as  to  make  up  my  bed,  which  is  so 
mysteriously  packed  up  that  I  cannot  yet 
learn  the  modus  operand!.  During  daylight 


CAPTAIN  DOTNEAU. 


[October  31, 1357.]       423 


e  hours  seem  lengthened  into  days,  but  so 
on  as  the  gas  is  lighted  they  run  away  only 
o  quickly,  and  that  miserable  nine  o'clock 
•rives,  when  I  am  locked  up  for  nine  hours, 
wish  that  I  had  committed  forgery  ;  for, 
that  case,  I  should  not  be  worse  treated, 
id  my  wife,  at  any  rate,  would  have  some- 
ing    to    live  upon   during  my    imprison- 
ent. 
And  now  that  I  have  described  faithfully 
«  treatment  I  experience   because  I  was 
iot  enough  to  run  into  debt,  I  should  like 
be  told  what  benefit  is  derived  from  my 
carceration.     I  dare  say  my  punishment  is 
;ry  well  merited  ;  men  have  no  right  to  owe 
oney  which   they   cannot  pay  ;    but  why 
ould  my  wife  suffer  at  the   same  time  1 
ad  I  been   in  London,  the  imprisonment 
ould  have  been  a  mere  farce.     I  should 
ivebeen  locked  up  at  Sloraans,  then  removed 

WViitfiornss  Sfcr«et,.  or.  if  T  nvpffirrprl  it,.    t,r> 

debt,  because  they  have  not  paid  for  the 
boots  they  wore  out  in  her  Majesty's  ser- 
vice. 

CAPTAIN  DOINEAU. 

THE  few  persons  astir  in  the  streets  of 
Tlemcen,  during  the  night  of  Thursday  the 
eleventh  of  September,  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-six,  observed  several  unusual  appear- 
ances. Tlemcen  is  a  picturesque  Arabian 
town  in  French  Algeria  near  the  frontiers 
of  Morocco,  built  upon  a  hill  whence 
bubble  many  springs,  and  surrounded  by 
a  crumbling  and  broken  mud  wall.  During 
this  night,  several  horsemen  were  seen 
standing  before  the  coffee-house  of  Bel 
Kheir.  Towards  one  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
David  Nemsalem  and  Chaloum  Eoubacha, 
Jews  engaged  in  commerce,  returning  from 
their  prayers  in  the  svnaeosrue,  remarked  men 

the  Queen's  Bench,  sure  to  find  jolly  com-  \  lying  on  their  faces  upon  the  steps  of   the 
panions  in  each  remove.     If  I  wished  to  be  I  doors     of    that    and    another    coffee-house. 


dishonest,  I  could,  by  means  of  a  sharp 
attorney,  file  my  schedule  and  bully  the 
commissioner  out  of  my  protection,  and  then 
step  over  to  France  and  snap  my  fingers  at 
my  creditors.  The  punishment  therefore  is 


Men  asleep  in  the  streets  are  common 
enough  in  Algerian  towns  ;  but  the  Jews 
noticed  with  astonishment  that  these  men 
were  wide  awake.  In  addition  to  the  men 
upon  the  terraces  of  the  coffee-houses,  others 


unequal  ;  because  I  happen  to  be  arrested  in '  "were   observed  to  be  upon  the  look-out,  or 
the  country  I  am  exposed  to  treatment  which  '  watch.    Abdel  Kadir  Lekal,  a  j^oung  shep- 


only  falls  to  the  lot  of  the  criminal  in  London. 
Seated  in  my  cage,  visitors  come  to  stare  at 
me,  and  shake  their  heads  pitifully,  while  I 
cannot  venture  to  raise  any  objection,  or,  in 
all  probability,  my  quart  of  beer  would  be 
stopped.  I  happened  once  to  have  a  friend 
in  \Vhitecross  Street,  and,  faith !  six  quarts  of 


herd,  also  heard  troop-horses  leaving  the 
stable  of  the  koja  or  interpreter  of  the  Arabian 
office  (who  was  the  confidant  of  its  chief,  the 
French  Captain)  during  that  night. 

Towards  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the 
eight  coach-horses  necessary  to  drag  the 
Tlemcen  diligence  through  a  mountainous 


beer  a-day  did  not  satisfy  him.     Lewworth  country   were    attached  to   it.      The   night 


Gaol  is  under  the  inspection  of  the  county 
magistrates,  and  that  fully  accounts  for  the 
difference  of  treatment. 

I  need  not  say  more ;  I  have  tried  to 
describe  one  of  the  phases  of  imprisonment 
for  debt,  and  by  no  means  the  pleasantest, 
and  am  striving  to  regulate  my  mind  into 
the  conviction  that  I  am  fairly  treated.  But 
I  cannot  succeed  ;  and  when  I  remember 
that  directors  of  public  companies  who  have 
lined  their  pockets  at  the  expense  of  share- 
holders, are  walking  about  London  at  their 
ease,  and,  at  the  most,  have  the  Bankruptcy 
Court  to  face,  I  consider  it  harsh  that  I 
should  be  treated  as  a  criminal,  because  I 
cannot  pay  some  eighty  pounds  :  which  I  owe, 
not  through  any  fault  of  my  own,  but  because 
I  yielded  to  the  insane  notion  that  a  British 
government  could,  under  any  circumstances, 
behave  fairly. 

It  is  probable  that  many  men  will  be  dis- 
posed to  enter  the  service  under  the  present 
aspect  of  all'aira  in  the  East.  One  word  of 
warning  to  them.  In  any  arrangement  with 
government  let  them  be  careful  to  have  it 
in  black  or  white,  or  they  may  run  a  strong 
risk  of  being  turned  off  penniless  when  their 
services  are  no  longer  required,  and  of 
finding  themselves  first-class  prisoners  for 


was  still  dark,  but  the  moon  was  up,  and 
helped  the  only  lantern  stretching  out  from 
the  left  of  the  coup6,  to  reveal,  by  glimpses, 
the  appearance  of  the  travellers  who  assem- 
bled to  enter  the  vehicle.  The  elderly 
Arab  who  took  the  right  hand  seat  of  the 
coup6  was  Si  Mahomed  Ben  Abdallah,  the 
Agah,  or  great  chief,  of  the  tribe  of  Beiii 
Snouss  ;  and  the  younger  Arab,  in  the  left 
seat  under  the  lantern,  was  his  interpreter, 
Hamadi  Ben  Chenk.  Four  passengers  occu- 
pied benches  in  the  body  of  the  diligence  ; — 
a  lady,  an  artillery  soldier,  a  medical  man, 
and  a  merchant.  The  coachman,  Aldeguer, 
mounted  the  box  of  the  imperiale  ;  and  the 
conductor,  Damien  Mendes,  took  his  seat 
beside  him.  Both  were  Spaniards.  The  pos- 
tilion, who  bestrode  one  of  the  front  horses, 
was  a  Frenchman.  The  diligence  started  at 
the  usual  hour  of  three,  on  the  Friday  morn- 
ing, in  the  direction  of  Oran.  Some  of  the 
passengers  were  going  to  the  races  at  Mos- 
taganem  ;  and  all  were  in  merry  humour. 
After  the  sentinels  had  opened  the  gates  at 
the  ramparts,  the  diligence  advanced  down 
hill  rapidly,  giuglingly,  and  jovially  for 
about  a  short  quarter  of  an  hour.  The 
suburbs  of  Tlemcen — a  purely  Arabian  town, 
where  Europeans  are  few,  and  those  chiefly 


424       [October  31, 1867.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Spaniards — are  the  most  picturesque  suburbs 
in  Algeria.  The  numerous  springs  falling 
down  the  rocks,  maintain  a  constant  freshness 
and  verdure,  even  under  the  burning  breezes 
of  an  African  sun. 

Another  inhabitant  of  Tlemcen,  besides  the 
Jews  and  also  the  shepherd,  had  seen  things 
•which  surprised  him.  Anglade,  the  black- 
smith, saw,  about  four  seconds  after  the 
departure  of  the  diligence,  a  couple  of  horse- 
men follow  in  its  wake.  One  of  them  rode 
a  white  horse.  The  gate  was  not  shut,  after 
the  diligence,  nor  after  the  horsemen  ;  a  most 
xmusual  circumstance.  The  cavaliers  were 
richly  dressed  in  beautiful  bournouses.  The 
Arab  cloak,  or  bournous,  is  a  very  long  cavalry 
cloak  with  a  hood  ;  and,  when  of  a  fine  qua- 
lity, costs  about  forty  pounds. 

The  diligence  had  arrived  at  the  foot  of 
the  descent  near  the  village  of  Nigrier,  and 
was  passing  through  a  wood  of  olives,  when 
musket  shots  were  heard.  About  a  dozen 
horsemen,  and  several  men  on  foot,  ap- 
proached the  carriage.  Knowing  that  the 
Agah  in  the  coup§  was  a  personage  of  great 
local  importance ;  tbat  he  possessed  consi- 
derable wealth,  and  enjoyed  the  confidence 
both  of  the  Arabian  population  and  of  the 
French  authorities,  the  passengers  in  the 
diligence  fancied  that  the  horsemen  were 
honouring  him  with  the  favourite  national 
sport  (called  a  fantasia),  of  a  mimic  com- 
bat, common  on  all  sorts  of  occasions  ; — at 
weddings  or  at  funerals ;  when  returning 
from  the  chase  ;  or  when  welcoming  a  chief. 
The  merchant,  Valette,  kad  changed  places 
to  oblige  Madame  Ximenes,  who  found  the 
interior  of  the  vehicle  stifling  and  close. 

"  What  is  that  ?  "  asked  Dr.  Lenepven. 

"  It  is  a  fantasia,"  answered  M.  Valette,  the 
merchant. 

"I  don't  believe  it." 

"  But  it  is.     We  have  the  Agah  with  us." 

"Precisely  upon  that  account  I  believe 
that  it  is  something  else,  and  you  ought  to 
do  as  I  do,  and  lie  down,"  said  the  doctor. 

The  words  had  scarcely  been  uttered  when 
M.  Valette  was  struck,  und  fell  upon  Dr. 
Lenepven,  crying,  "  Ah  !  I  am  shot ! " 

An  Arab  on  foot  opened  the  door,  and  Dr. 
Lenepven  cried  to  him — 

"  Would  you  kill  a  medical  man  1 "  In  an 
instant  one  of  the  horsemen  who  was  near  to, 
and  behind  the  diligence,  then  said  in  a  com- 
manding tone : 

"  Macasch  (no),  that  must  not  be  done," 
and  the  menacing  Arab  descended  the 
steps. 

Meanwhile,  the  young  widow  Ximenes, 
saw  that  the  countenance  of  the  man  who  had 
uttered  the  Arabic  negative  "  Macash,"  was 
so  calm  that,  she  held  out  her  hand  to  him  to 
help  her  down  the  steps  of  the  diligence. 
When  Dr.  Lenepven  and  Madame  Xinienes 
got  out,  they  fled,  and  hid  themselves  among 
some  bushes.  Geoffrey,  the  artilleryman, 
followed  them,  hearing  the  noise  of  shots  and 


stabs  in  the  coupe",  but  passed  through  the 
assailants  without  the  slightest  molesta- 
tion. 

A  ball  cut  the  coachman's  whip  in  two  while 
he  was  trying  to  put  the  horses  to  the  gallop, 
to  reach  the  village  of  Negrier  ;  whereupon  a 
horseman,  dashing  in  front  of  the  horses  of  the 
diligence,  discharged  his  musket  at  Vincent 
March«il,  the  postilion,  whose  horse  recoiled  ; 
and,  by  throwing  down  the  horses  behind, 
stopped  the  carriage.  Three  of  the  animals 
were  mortally  wounded.  The  French  posti- 
lion, as  a  Frenchman,  thought  his  best  chance 
of  safety  from  an  attack  of  Arabs  was  under 
the  protection  of  the  Agah,  and  he  got  into  the 
coupe.  At  the  same  instant,  a  brown  man, 
dirty  and  ill-dressed,  veiled,  and  armed  with, 
a  yatighan,  threw  himself  upon  the  interpreter 
Hamadi.  The  postilion  escaped  by  the  oppo- 
site sash,  slightly  wounded  in  the  knee ;  while 
the  assailants  discharged  their  pistols  at  the 
Agah  and  his  interpreter.  The  postilion 
heard  as  many  as  twenty  shots  fired. 

This  man,  the  physician,  soldier,  and  guard, 
after  meeting  together  at  the  village  of  Ne- 
grier, informed  the  mayor  ;  who  aroused  all 
the  inhabitants  of  the  village  ;  and,  having 
collected  as  many  armed  men  as  he  could  find, 
proceeded  to  the  diligence.  On  reaching  it, 
they  perceived  that  six  of  the  horses  had  been 
taken  out  of  harness  and  were  standing  by 
the  roadside.  Hamadi  was  lying  upon  the 
road  against  the  left  fore-wheel,  in  a  pool  of 
blood,  covered  with  wounds,  and  murmuring 
only  unintelligible  sounds.  The  Agah  Abdal- 
lah  was  still  in  his  place  in  the  coupe,  in  the 
attitude  of  a  man  who  resists,  but  quite  dead. 
Monsieur  Valette  was  lying  between  the  seats, 
alive,  quite  conscious  of  his  danger,  talking  in- 
coherently about  his  wife  and  children  ;  but 
unable  to  give  any  information  concerning  the 
assassins.  Dr.  Lenepven  saw  immediately, 
that  both  Hamadi  and  Valette  were  beyond 
the  help  of  his  art.  Many  balls  had  been 
flattened  against  the  panelling  near  where  the 
Agah  sat,  and  one  of  a  large  calibre  had 
passed  right  through  the  side  of  the  diligence. 
There  had  been  no  attempt  at  robbery.  The 
only  article  which  had  disappeared,  was  a 
cross  of  the  legion  of  honour,  which  had  been 
taken  from  the  breast  of  Abdallah. 

Among  the  persons  aroused  by  the  alarm 
at  Negrier,  was  a  Frenchman,  named  Colin  ; 
who,  while  the  diligence,  with  the  corpse  and 
the  wounded  men  were  being  taken  back  to 
Tlemcen,  went  straight  to  the  Arabian 
office  ;  where  he  told  what  had  happened.  The 
answer  he  received  in  French  was,  "  Go 
elsewhere  ;  it  is  no  business  of  ours."  He 
then  went  to  the  justice  of  the  peace. 

Dr.  Lenepven,  on  reaching  Tlemcen,  went 
also  to  the  Arabian  office,  to  arouse  its  chief, 
Captain  Doiueau.  He  was  told  that  the 
captain  was  in  bed,  and  asleep  ;  but  the  doc- 
tor went  into  his  chamber. 

"  The  Agah  Abdallah  has  been  murdered," 
he  cried. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CAPTAIN  DOINEAU. 


[October  81. 1S5'.]       425 


"  It  is  not  possible.  Where  ?  "Who  has  told 
you  that  1 "  Doineau  asked. 

"I  saw  it  done.     I  was  there." 

From  Captain  Doineau  the  doctor  went  to 
General  de  Beaufort,  the  commanding  officer 
of  the  district,  and  then  proceeded  to  the 
hospital,  to  prepare  for  the  reception  of  the 
wounded  men.  When  the  diligence  with  the 
dead  and  (lying,  escorted  by  the  Mayor  of 
Negrier  and  his  followers,  entered  the  town, 
Captain  Doineau  met  them,  and  asked  sharply 
what  direction  the  assassins  had  taken  ]  They 
answered,  that  they  did  not  know  ;  but  he 
continued  to  gallop  on,  followed  by  some 
sphahis — a  sort  of  mounted  zouave. 

Hamadi  died  at  eight  o'clockinthe  morning ; 
the  body  of  Abdallah  was  carried  to  his  house. 
Valette  expired  about  three  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon.  The  news  of  these  murders  made  a 
strong  and  immediate  sensation  in  Tlemcen. 
Even  so  early  as  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the 
lieutenant  of  the  guard  sent  a  quartermaster 
with  a  couple  of  gens-d'armes  to  the  spot. 
They  found  the  remains  of  a  pistol,  which  had 
burst,  and  some  bits  of  paper,  that  had 
served  as  wadding  for  the  fire-arms.  One  of 
these  fragments  had  names  written  upon  it 
with  a  pencil ;  another  piece  was  of  fine  glazed 
bluish  letter  paper  ;  and  a  third  bit  of  paper 
was  of  the  kind  used  for  cartridges  in  the  French 
magazines.  When  the  recognisance  was  over, 
Captain  Doineau  spread  about  the  opinion  that 
the  murderers  were  a  band  of  Moors.  The 
people  who  had  seen  the  suspicious  equestrians 
and  pedestrians  in  the  streets  during  the  night, 
and  certain  others,  who  had  heard  the  tramp 
of  horses  coming  into  the  town  just  after  the 
crime  and  had  recognised  one  of  the  ridei's 
as  belonging  to  the  Arabian  Office,  had,  how- 
ever, good  ground  for  suspecting  that  the 
murderers  belonged  to  the  town  of  Tlemcen, 
and  not  to  the  frontiers  of  Morocco. 

Whilst  the  minds  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Tlemcen  were  in  this  state  of  discussion  and 
suspense,  a  strange  apparition  issued  from  the 
house  of  Abdallah — the  richest  house  in  the 
town  ;  in  which  the  French  generals  were 
accustomed  to  be  entertained  amidst  Arabian 
luxury  and  splendour :  Kokaya,  the  widow 
of  the  murdered  chief,  a  handsome  woman  in 
the  prime  of  life — forgetting,  in  her  distrac- 
tion, the  seclusion  enjoined  by  the  Koran 
upon  Mahometan  women — rushed  into  the 
public  streets,  clothed  in  poor  garments,  and 
veiled  only  by  her  loose  hair,  and  raised  loud 
cries  and  lamentations  : 

"  They  have  brought  my  husband  to  me  in 
his  blood,"  she  cried  :  "  and  his  murderer  is 
Bel  Hadj." 

The  widow  had  good  reasons  for  her  accu- 
sation. The  Agah  Bel  Hadj  was  extremely 
jealous  of  the  Agah  Abdallah, — his  superior 
in  wealth,  authority,  reputation,  and  intel- 
ligence. While  himself  was  only  the  obsequi- 
ous dependent  of  the  director  of  the  Arabian 
Office,  Abdallah  wa|  often  the  host  and  com- 
rade of  the  French  generals  ;  feasting  them  in 


his  house,  and  riding  about  with  them  in  their 
carriages.  There  had  been  a  quarrel  be- 
tween the  rival  Agahs,  during  which  Bel 
Hadj  had  said  to  Abdallah  : 

"  In  a  short  time  your  children  will  be  my 
servants."  Each  then  swore,  with  the  right 
hand  placed  upon  the  beard,  that  he  would 
kill  the  other  ;  and,  when  they  parted,  they 
walked  separately,  although  going  in  the 
same  direction.  Moreover,  Abdallah  had 
told  his  wife  that  he  had  had,  on  the  Wed- 
nesday previous,  a  discussion  with  Captain 
Doineau,  at  the  Arabian  Office,  respect- 
ing Bel  Hadj.  He  told  her,  Bel  Hadj 
and  other  Arabs  were  on  good  terms  with 
that  officer,  because  they  ministered  to 
his  debaucheries,  and  that  the  sole  object  of 
his  own  journey  to  Oran  would  be  to 
lodge  a  complaint  of  the  conduct  of  the 
French  officials  of  the  Arabian  Office,  at 
head-quarters. 

When  General  Montauban,  the  command- 
ing officer  of  the  district,  sent  for  Captain 
Doineau,  to  learn  from  him  the  particulars  of 
the  conspiracy,  the  captain  made  the  most  of 
these  circumstances.  "  It  appears,"  he  said, 
"  that  the  widow,  in  her  wildness,  cries  every- 
where it  is  Bel  Hadj." 

"  I  cannot  believe  that  the  Hadj  is  guilty," 
replied  the  general. 

"  Nor  I,  either.  He  is  unwell.  He  can 
move  neither  hand  nor  foot."  Then  Doineau 
added,  significantly, "  Abdallah  was  the  fourth 
husband  of  his  wife,  and  all  her  three  pre- 
vious husbands  died  mysteriously." 

At  the  conclusion  of  this  interview,  Ge- 
neral Montauban  stepped  into  his  carriage, 
which  had  been  in  waiting  to  take  him  to 
the  races  at  Mostaganem.  Bel  Hadj  had  ex- 
cused himself\from  attending  these  races,  on 
the  plea  of  illness ;  but  it  was  well  known  that 
he  was  in  excellent  health,  having  been  seen, 
on  the  day  of  the  murder,  scouring  the  country 
with  Captain  Doineau  in  search  of  the  mur- 
derers. On  the  return  of  General  Montauban, 
from  the  races  a  letter  arrived  from  the 
governor-general  of  Algeria,  who  had  been 
apprised  of  the  crime  by  telegraph,  saying  : 
"  It  is  absolutely  necessary  to  learn  what  we 
are  to  believe  respecting  that  murder." 

On  the  twenty-first  of  September  Bel 
Hadj  fled  to  Morocco.  His  flight  was 
ascribed  to  his  fear  of  being  assassinated  by 
the  tribe  of  Beni  Snouss,  and  General  de  Beau- 
fort, the  governor-general,  entreated  him  to 
return,  and  General  Montauban  sent  him  an 
aman,  or  letter  of  safe  conduct.  Bel  Hadj, 
however,  remained  in  Morocco  until  his  ab- 
sence convinced  the  general  of  his  guilt.  But, 
in  order  to  have  his  suspicions  fully  con- 
firmed, the  general  consulted  a  certain  Agah 
Ben  Aoud,  whom  he  employed  to  trace  out  the 
culprits.  This  man,  under  a  rough  outside, 
was  very  cunning ;  and  he  began  by  paying  a 
visit  of  condolence  to  the  bereaved  family. 
He  learnt  all  that  could  be  gathered  from, 
them,  and  then  sought  out  the  two  Jews,  the 


426       [October  SI,  iss;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


I  Conducted  ky 


shepherd,  and  the  blacksmith,  -who  had  seen 
the  men  watching,  and  riding  out  of  the  town 
on  the  morning  of  the  murder ;  "finishing  his 
enquiries — which  he  made  in  a  most  artful 
and  diplomatic  manner — at  the  Arabian 
Office.  In  two  or  three  days  Ben  Aoud 
sent  to  the  Arabian  Office  a  letter  con- 
taining a  list  of  suspected  persons.  There 
was  in  this  list  an  Arabic  word,  which  was  at 
first  translated,  Doineau,  the  proper  name  of 
the  chief  of  the  Arabian  Office.  But,  as  the 
general  thought  it  was  impossible  that  that 
gentleman  could  be  meant,  he  begged  the 
procureur-general  to  omit  the  name  from 
the  informations.  The  word  "si  doin"  was 
subsequently  translated  assembly  or  meet- 
ing. 

Some  Arabs,  denounced  by  Ben  Aoud,  hav- 
ing been  arrested,  the  commissary  of  police, 
the  justice  of  the  peace,  and  an  interpreter 
named 'Darmon,  went  early  one  morning  to 
the  general,  and  begged  him  to  assist  them  in 
examining  the  prisoners.  The  general  ac- 
companied them  to  the  prison  with  his  son. 
There  was,  among  the  prisoners,  a  rascal 
named  Mainar  Morktar,  or  the  jackal, 
who  had  made  some  avowals  respecting  the 
crime  to  a  sharpshooter.  Mamar  denied 
what  he  had  said  at  first ;  but,  wheii  he  was 
confronted  with  the  sharpshooter,  his  coun- 
tenance fell  and  he  confessed  that  he  was  one 
of  the  party  who  murdered  the  Agah,  and 
named  some  of  his  accomplices. 

The  avowals  of  the  jackal,  or  golden  wolf, 
were  obtained  by  means  of  "a  sheep,"  or 
police-spy ;  and  were  the  first  important 
helps  towards  ascertaining  the  truth.  M. 
Henri  du  Droulin,  the  justice  of  the  peace, 
gave  his  own  account  of  his  sheep  :  "  1  used 
a  well-known  means.  I  placed  an  individual 
in  each  cell  with  each  prisoner,  hoping  that 
the  prisoner  would  talk.  This  scheme  suc- 
ceeded in  the  case  of  Mamar  el  Mocktar, 
beside  whom  I  had  placed  Ben  Arbi."  Ben 
Arbi,  the  sharpshooter,  thief,  and  sheep, 
described  his  performance  himself :  "  I  was," 
he  says,  "  a  prisoner.  The  jailer  called  me 
to  him,  and  gave  me  a  glass  of  lemonade,  tel- 
ing  me  to  make  up  to  Mamar  and  try  and 
fiud  out  what  he  had  done.  I  went  into 
his  cell,  and  began  by  telling  him  my  affair 
to  gain  his  confidence.  In  this  I  succeeded 
so  well  that  he  said  : 

"As  for  me,  I  am  here  for  the  affair  of  the 
Agah  Ben  Abdallah,  who  was  assassinated. 
Sometime  prior  to  the  murder,  I  was  sent  to 
Sebdou,  to  try  and  meet  the  Agah  and  do 
his  business,  but  I  could  not  find  him.  It 
was  t'n en  that  the  '  captain  '  formed  his  plan 
of  attacking  the  diligence  which  conveyed 
the  Agah  and  his  interpreter  to  Oran."  "VY  hat 
captain  1 

On  that  point,  not  only  the  jackal,  but  the 
other  Arab  prisoners  were  obstinately  silent. 
The  justice  of  the  peace,  therefore,  told 
General  Montauban  that  the  other  Arabs 
would  never  make  any  confessions  whilst 


Captain  Doineau  remained  at  Tlemcen ; 
— so  thoroughly  were  they  always  in  dread  of 
him ;  but,  the  protection  which  Captain 
Doineau  gave  to  Bel  Hadj,  the  bad  terms 
on  which  he  lived  with  Ben  Abdallah,  and 
the  awe  in  which  he  kept  the  Arabs,  ap- 
peared to  the  civil  prosecutors  sufficient 
grounds  for  requesting  his  removal  from 
Tlemcen  to  Oran  ;  in  compliance  with  a  writ- 
ten request  of  the  procureur-general,  Mon- 
tauban promoted  the  captain  to  the  direction 
of  the  Arabian  Office  at  Oran.  On  the  fourth, 
of  October,  the  captain  arrived  at  Oran 
with  his  Kodja  or  secretary,  and  his  negro, 
Barka. 

On  his  return  from  Tlemcen  to  Oran, 
General  Montauban  received  a  visit  from 
Captain  Doineau.  The  dialogue  which  passed 
between  them  was  curious. 

Captain  Doineau  :  "  My  general,  you  have 
called  me  here  to  take  the  direction  of 
Arabian  affairs.  In  present  circumstances 
this  is  ruin  to  me." 

"  General  Montauban  :  "  But  be  calm.  Do 
you  not  understand  that  you  are  called  to  a 
higher  post  ? " 

Captain  Doineau  :  "I  fear  you  are  neither 
equitable  nor  impartial  in  regard  to  me,  before 
the  governor-general." 

General  Moutauban :  "This,  sir,  is  an  in- 
sult ;  and  I  place  you  under  arrest  for  eight 
days." 

Captain  Doineau :  "  I  beg  pardon,  I  am  too 
warm." 

General  Montauban :  "  Very  well ;  the 
only  punishment  I  shall  inflict  upon  you  is, 
to  read  the  notes  I  have  written  in  your 
favour,  and  the  proposal  I  have  made  to 
raise  you  to  the  rank  of  a  chef  de  bataillon. 
Don't  be  over-anxious.  There  are  people, 
who,  knowing  you  to  be  the  friend  of  Bel 
Hadj,  might  think  you  would  be  too  favour- 
able to  him."  "  Look  at  me,  general,  do  I  look 
like  a  highway  robber  ?  "  These  words  were 
spoken  with  such  an  accent  of  truth,  that  the 
general  said  to  one  of  his  staff :  "  Captain 
Doineau  is  as  white  as  snow."  Nevertheless, 
next'  day,  the  general  received  a  telegraphic 
dispatch.  It  was  iu  these  words:  "Arrest 
Captain  Doineau." 

"This  is  very  serious,"  said  the  general  ; 
"but  it  is  not  upon  a  telegraphic  dispatch 
that  we  arrest  a  captain.  I  shall  wait  for 
more  distinct  and  more  formal  information." 

The  procureur-g6n6ral  came  himself  a  few 
days  afterwards  with  the  evidence.  He  said 
to  General  Montauban  : 

"  This  is  so  clear  and  precise  that  I  leave 
with  you  the  responsibility  of  the  whole 
case." 

"  I  do  not  accept  it,"  answered  the  general ; 
"I  shall  have  the  captain  arrested,  only 
on  condition  that  you  issue  the  order  for 
his  capture.  I  only  stipulate  that  he  be 
arrested  with  all  the  respect  due  to  a  French 
officer."  4 

The  warrant  was  placed  in  the  hands  of 


Charlrs  Dickens.} 


CAPTAIN  DOINEAU. 


[October  31.  1857.]      427 


the  commandant,  M.  Chanzy,  who,  on  the 
eighteenth  of  October,  finding  Doineau  at  the 
caf6,  told  him  what  had  been  going  on.  Doi- 
neau treated  it  all  as  a  joke. 

"  No,  the  thing  is  very  serious,"  observed 
Chanzy,  gravely:  "I  am  ordered  to  arrest 
you.  Of  course,  being  innocent,  you  have 
nothing  to  fear."  They  walked  together  to 
the  captain  of  gendarmerie,  and  Doineau  was 
taken  to  prison. 

Doineau 'a  superiors  although  cognisant  of, 
and  indeed  implicated  in,  many  of  his  official 
excesses— could  hardly  have  suspected  him 
of  plotting  the  conspiracy  which  had  ended 
in  the  murder  of  the  Agah  ;  for  here  is  a 
copy  of  the  recommendation  for  Doiueau's  pro- 
motion, which  he  had  forwarded  to  head- 
quarters, and  which  he  had  given  him  to  read. 
It  is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  this  extraor- 
dinary affair  : 

"  Theoretical  instruction  :  very  good, 

"  Practical  instruction  :  good. 

"  He  knows  land-surveying. 

"  He  speaks  Arabic  well  and  with  great  facility,  and 
reads  and  writes  it. 

"  He  speaks  a  little  German. 

"  He  has  occupied  himself  much  with  the  study  of 
this  country,  which  he  knows  perfectly. 

"  Very  apt  for  all  the  functions,  active  or  sedentary, 
which  he  fulfils  in  an  equally  remarkable  manner. 

"  The  most  distinguished  head  of  an  office  and  fit 
for  anything. 

"  Very  zealous  in  the  service,  and  very  assiduous  in 
study. 

"He  has  directed  with  brilliant  success  a  great 
number  of  operations  at  the  head  of  tribe-guards  or 
goums,  and  has  commanded  camps  in  which  there  were 
regular  troops.  Quite  recently  he  has  directed  a  razzia 
(a  levy  of  black  mail),  with  equal  vigour,  intelligence, 
and  prudence,  upon  the  frontier,  at  the  head  of  a 
numerous  goum  and  regular  horsemen.  All  employ- 
ments may  be  confided  to  him,  the  most  difficult  and 
the  most  delicate. 

"  He  has  military  habits  and  the  taste  for  the  pro- 
fession of  arms  :  made  to  rise.  Aa  officer  of  promise. 
Merits  promotion  in  every  way. 

"  Is  a  good  horseman,  well  adapted  to  command  a 
district,  or  for  any  command  corresponding  with  his 
position  j  has  the  intention  to  remain  ia  Arabian 
business. 

"On  very  good  terms  with  the  natives;  being  at 
once  loved,  feared,  and  respected. 

"  Very  good  connections. 

"  Strong  head,  warm  heart,  developed  intelligence. 

"  Eneigetic  and  resolute  character. 

"Physique:  very  good,  very  tall,  good  health  and 
constitution;  n'ue  military  air,  with  perfect  conduct 
and  morals. 

"  26  January  1857.  The  General  Commanding 
the  Sub-division, 

"  BEAUFORT." 

Doineau's  arrest  had  been  occasioned  by 
the  confessions  of  his  secretary  and  the  black 
servant.  Kaddom  Bow  Medine — who  had 
fled  with  his  master,  Bel  Hadj — on  being 
seized  at  a  place  not  far  from  Tlemcen,  im- 
plicated his  master,  and  eventually  all  the 
murderers  to  the  number  of  nineteen,  were 
secured. 


The  trial  took  place  at  Oran.  The  tempo- 
rary court-house  could  only  be  approached 
by  tortuous  steps  cu^  out  of  the  rocks. 
The  inhabitants  of  the  city  saw  daily  the 
procession  of  the  nineteen  prisoners  walking 
slowly  from  their  prison  to  the  old  house  ia 
which  the  court  sat.  They  looked,  as  they 
descended  the  steep  paths  of  the  mountain, 
like  a  procession  of  penitents  in  white.  The 
Arabs  were  chained  together  in  pairs.  Bel 
Hadj  became  so  weak  at  last  that  he 
had  to  be  carried,  and  Bel  Khier  was 
worn  to  a  shadow.  Doineau,  who  was 
dressed  in  the  costume  of  a  captain  of 
Zouaves,  maintained  for  many  days  his 
lofty  looks  and  disdainful  airs ;  but  he 
could  not  command  upon  several  occasions 
the  nervous  twitchings  of  the  mouth,  charac- 
teristic of  persons  trying  to  conceal  violent 
emotion. 

A  place  was  reserved  in  the  court  for  the 
widow  of  Abdallah.  The  Arabs — the  best 
educated  of  whom  had  only  a  slight  knowledge 
of  French — seemed  engaged  in  prayer  during 
the  reading  of  the  indictment.  The  heat  in 
the  court  during  the  trial,  which  lasted  from 
the  sixth  to  the  twenty-third  of  August,  was 
excessive.  The  Arabs  fanned  themselves 
with  the  hems  of  their  burnouses,  and  all  the 
judges  used  fans  in  the  form  of  little  platted 
flags.  I  find  it  noticed  in  the  reports  of  the 
trial,  as  an  augur  of  strange  omen,  that,  upon 
the  last  day,  and  when  the  audience  had 
assembled  to  hear  the  sentences,  and  had 
been  waiting  in  religious  silence  for  some 
time,  a  swallow  flew  in  at  the  window  and 
round  and  round  near  the  roof. 

The  confession  of  Kaddoni  Bou  Medine 
stated,  in  effect,  that  he  had  arrived  in 
Tlemcen  on  the  day  before  the  murder  to 
buy  various  things  for  a  marriage,  when,  on 
passing  before  the  caf6  of  Bel  Kheir,  he  was 
called  in,  and  found  in  it  Bel  Hadj,  Agah  of 
the  Ghossels,  and  the  Caid  Bel  Kheir  with 
the  Bou  Nona  and  Boukra  the  brigadier. 
They  told  him  that  the  captain  had  com- 
manded them  to  take  an  oath  upon  the  koran. 
Bel  Hadj  was  the  first  to  take  the  oath. 
Afterwards,  he  was  walking  before  the  cafe 
at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  when  the 
captain  arrived  with  his  cavalcade  of  Arabs. 
They  followed  the  diligence,  leaving  the 
town  through  the  same  gate.  It  was  the 
captain  who  commanded  the  attack,  and  his 
secretary,  Ahmed,  who  fired  the  first  shot. 
The  sphahis  brigadier  Bourka  followed  him 
by  firing  his  musket. 

But  it  was  the  confessions  of  his  secretary, 
or  kodja,  Sidi  Ahmed,  which  were  most  con- 
vincing of  Doiueau's  guilt.  When  he  met 
the  captain,  by  appointment,  at  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  Doineau  was  accom- 
panied by  Bel  Hadj,  Bel  Kheir,  a  sphahis, 
and  a  horseman  whom  Ahmed  could  not  re- 
cognise. They  followed  the  diligence.  It  was 
the  captain  who  ordered  them,  when  they 
reached  the  olive  wood,  to  take  their  posi- 


428       [October  31,  1SS7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


tions,  and  strike  the  dog  and  the  little  dog, — 
meaning  the  great  chief  and  his  secretary. 
He  recognised  Maruar  by  the  help  of  the 
illumination  from  the  flashes  of  the  muskets  ; 
breaking  the  window-sash  of  the  coup6  with 
the  butt-end  of  his  pistol.  As  for  the  Kodja 
himself,  he  declared  that  he  went  to  strike  ; 
but  it  was  not  the  will  of  God  that  he  should 
kill  anybody.  When  Mamar  said  to  the  cap- 
tain :  "  All  is  over,"  Doineau  cried,  "  Sepa- 
rate !  " 

When  public  rumour  accused  El  Mamar, 
the  jackal,  Captain  Doineau  said  to  his 
kodja : 

"  Go  to  Bel  Kheir  and  tell  him  he  must 
find  witnesses  to  prove  the  alibi  of  Mamar, 
even  if  he  should  have  to  pay  for  them." 

The  jackal  was  thereupon  collusively  ar- 
rested, the  witnesses  were  duly  found,  and 
duly  paid  for,  and  the  alibi  having  been  duly 
sworn,  Mamar  was  released. 

During  the  flight  of  Bel  Hadj  the  captain 
employed  his  secretary  to  write  a  letter  to 
him,  which  contained  this  expression,  "  we 
have  patched  up  everything — demolished 
everything  ; "  meaning  he  might  return  with 
confidence  as  they  have  taken  their  precau- 
tions. 

The  constitution  of  the  Arabian  offices 
being  an  element  of  great  importance  in  this 
affair,  I  may  briefly  mention  here  what  I 
have  learnt  respecting  their  functions.  When 
the  Turks  gained  Algeria,  their  regime 
might  be  described  as  piracy  on  the  sea, 
and  brigandage  upon  land.  The  Turks  em- 
ployed the  native  Arabs  to  plunder  their 
countrymen  in  the  interest  of  the  Ottoman 
-conquerors.  When  the  French  drove  out 
the  Turks,  they  began  to  establish  a  system, 
which  pretended,  and  appeared,  to  be  an 
improvement  upon  the  Turkish  system. 
They  made  laws  abolishing  presents  ;  they 
ordered  that  all  the  proceedings  of  the 
public  authorities  should  be  made  public.  The  ' 
poll  tax,  the  flock  tax,  the  tent  tax,  and  the  ! 
palm  tax  were  ordered  to  be  assessed  j 
by  Arabian  chiefs,  and  verified  by  a  French  j 
officer,  called  the  chief  of  the  Arabian  Office,  j 
A  consulting  committee  and  the  Governor  | 
General  finally  arranged  and  fixed  the  fiscal  j 
lists.  Nobody  except  the  officer  in  command 
of  the  district  had  the  right  to  impose  fines 
or  levy  blackmail — called  euphoniously  mili- 
tary contributions — and  the  general  was  bound 
to  give  an  immediate  and  full  account  of 
the  proceeds  to  the  agent  of  the  treasury  ; 
who  divided  them  between  the  State  budget 
and  the  Algerian  budget.  The  Governor 
General  alone  had  the  right  by  law  of  order- 
ing summary  executions  ;  and  he  could  not 
legally  delegate  this  power,  and  was  obliged 
to  report  immediately  every  exercise  of  it 
to  the  minister  of  war.  But  all  these  rules 
were  constantly  broken  by  subordinates,  and 
Abdallah's  accusation  against  Doineau  was, 
that  he  governed  in  all  respects  like  the  worst 
of  the  Turkish  pachas.  V/ith  more  frank- 


ness than  prudence  ;  with  a  simplicity  rare  in 
men  of  mature  years  of  the  most  out-spoken 
races,  Abdallah  announced  everywhere — even 
to  Doineau  himself — his  intention  of  com- 
plaining to  the  superior  authorities  of  his 
rapacities  and  atrocities.  Never,  certainly, 
in  modern  times  has  an  officer  of  a  European 
army  been  accused  of  a  similar  combination 
of  crimes.  If  M.  Cartouche  had  been  made 
a  Turkish  pacha,  he  probably  would  have 
subjected  himself  to  the  accusation  brought 
against  Captain  Doineau.  Abdallah  accused 
Doineau  of  extravagant  debaucheries,  arbi- 
trary exactions,  levies  of  blackmail,  unautho- 
rised raids  and  murder,  mildly  indicated  by 
the  term,  "summary  executions."  Therefore 
the  motive  for  the  murder  is  easily  found 
in  Doineau's  habitual  and  unscrupulous  abuse 
of  the  power  confided  in  him.  He  was  a 
thorough  despot  in  the  Tlemcen  district. 
He  stuck  at  nothing  to  plunder  and  terrify 
the  Arabs  ;  and,  knowing  that  Abdallah  was 
on  his  way  to  Oran  to  denounce,  in  other 
words,  to  ruin  him,  he  took  the  short  and 
decisive  way  of  silencing  his  accuser. 

The  widow  of  Abdallah  said  in  court  her 
husband  had  told  her  one  reason  of  the  pre- 
ference which  Doineau  accorded  the  Arabian 
chiefs  who  associated  with  him  was  their 
subserviency  to  his  debaucheries. 

Doineau,  who  had  no  private  fortune,  re- 
ceived in  all,  as  captain  and  as  director,  about 
four  pounds  a-week,  and  yet  he  gambled, 
losing  his  hundred  pounds  a-night  sometimes, 
and  showered  jewels  upon  the  companions  of 
his  pleasures  with  the  magnificence  of  an 
Oriental  sultan.  He  pretended  to  be  so  poor, 
that,  being  one  day  with  a  brother-officer,  he 
said,  in  great  agitation,  that  he  had  lost  his 
portmonnaie,  containing  all  his  fortune  ;  ten 
or  twelve  pounds.  But,  when  the  contents  of  a 
certain  casket,  which  his  secretary  had  buried, 
were  detected,  they  were  found  to  consist 
of  seventeen  thousand  francs.  A  carefully 
sealed  packet  was  also  discovered  in  the 
house  of  the  sphahis  Boukra,  addressed  by 
Doineau  to  his  brother  at  Algiers,  which  con- 
tained bank-notes  and  bills  for  twenty-one 
thousand  francs.  Doineau  had  ordered  it  to 
be  put  into  the  post,  but  Boukra  had  kept  it. 
This  sum  of  more  than  sixteen  hundred 
pounds  was  not  likely  to  have  been  saved  out 
of  his  pay. 

The  sources  of  this  wealth  were  laid  bare 
at  the  trial.  Some  of  the  Arabs  are,  it  ap- 
pears, in  the  habit  of  concealing  their  corn  in 
pits,  with  a  view  to  diminish  the  taxes  imposed 
upon  them.  According  to  law,  these  hoards 
were  not  to  be  confiscated  when  discovered  ; 
only  the  taxes  upon  the  corn  were  to  be 
exacted,  and  fines  imposed  for  the  conceal- 
ment. Captain  Doineau  would  not  deny, 
when  questioned  on  his  trial,  that  he  had 
confiscated  many  grain-pits,  to  the  amount  in 
value  of  seven  thousand  francs.  The  Hadj 
may  have  seized  a  wheat-pit  and  a  barley- 
pit  of  El  Mokadem  of  the  Oould-Rials  tribe, 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CAPTAIN  DOINEAU. 


[October  31,  1857.]        42!> 


and  imposed  upon  him  a  fine  of  ten  pounds. 
Ben  Bekka  may  have  had  the  same  fate. 
If  Boukra,  a  police  agent,  took  a  large  quan- 
tity of  barley  from  a  man  of  the  Ghossels 
Boudmin  tribe,  it  must  have  been  found  in 
concealed  pits.  On  one  occasion  Doiueau 
forcibly  seized  and  sold  sixty  of  the  Agah 
Abdallah's  camels,  and  it  was  abundantly 
proved  that  he  had  kept  the  proceeds  of 
these  seizures,  and  spent  them  in  a  manner 
which  caused  his  accusers  to  compare  him  to 
a  young  satrap.  "He  is  our  sultan."  The 
kodja  declared  that  he  had  often  been  em- 
ployed by  Captain  Doineau  to  take  prisoners 
out  of  prison;  and,  after  leading  them  to  alonely 
spot,  put  them  to  death.  The  kodja,  when 
examined  as  a  king's  evidence,  gave  details 
respecting  the  execution  of  one  Mouffock. 
This  man  wished  to  move  his  tent  from  one 
place  to  another,  and  he  was  arrested  by  the 
sphahis  of  the  Arabian  Office.  That  indivi- 
dual ought  to  have  been  sent  before  the 
proper  authorities,  but  the  prisoner  ordered 
him  to  be  executed  ;  "  and  I,"  added  the 
secretary,  "myself  presidedover  his  execution. 
His  head  was  cut  off." 

When  asked,  "Did  you  not  understand 
that  those  savage  executions  were  frightful 
things,  forbidden  even  to  the  Sultan  ?  "  the 
kodja  replied,  with  animation,  "  The  captain 
was  my  sultan  ;  I  was  forced  to  obey  him. 
Besides,  in  a  single  day  he  had  ordered  three 
executions ;  and  then,  as  I  saw  that  the 
superior  authority  said  nothing,  I  thought 
that  he  had  an  uucontested  power  to  do  any- 
thing." This  was  manifestly  the  general 
opinion  of  the  unhappy  Arabs  in  Doineau's 
district.  Indeed,  all  his  summary  executions 
explain  their  surprising  subservience.  Doi- 
neau killed  Arabs  with  a  levity  which  would 
be  inconceivable  and  incredible  if  the  cases 
had  not  been  admitted  with  an  astonishing 
indifference,  or  proved  beyond  contradic- 
tion. A  French  soldier  having  been  attacked 
and  stabbed  by  two  natives,  who  were  after- 
wards caught  by  a  chief,  the  natives  were 
shot  by  Boukra,  the  black,  and  the  chief  was 
fined  eighty  pounds  for  not  catching  them 
sooner. 

Auguste  Doineau  showed  remarkable  acute - 
ness  and  cunning  in  defending  himself.  He 
had  always  managed  to  get,  throughout  his 
trial,  the  last  word  against  his  accusers  and 
his  judge.  The  son  of  an  officer  who  had 
been  a  reporter  for  the  Military  Tribunals, 
he  combined  the  subtle  fluency  of  an  advocate 
with  the  audacity  of  a  great  criminal.  He 
struck  the  key-note  of  his  defence  when  he 
exclaimed,  "  Do  I  look  like  a  cut-throat  ?  " 
His  safety  lay,  he  thought,  in  the  impro- 
bability of  his  crimes,  and  the  unwilling- 
ness of  the  French  authorities  to  convict  a 
French  officer  and  official  of  being  guilty  of 
performing  his  civil  and  military  duties  at 
once  like  a  false  clerk  and  a  highwayman,  a 
pettifogger  and  a  brigand. 

Doiueau,  Bel  Hadj,  and  the  other  prisoners, 


displayed  far  more  public  repugnance  for 
Mamar,  the  jackal,  than  for  the  atrocities 
imputed  to  them  ;  but  the  jackal,  the  filthy 
and  ragged  cut-tliroat,  in  his  tattered  blanket, 
|  had  been  the  trusted,  secret,  and  active, 
although  disavowed  instrument,  agent,  spy, 
and  bravo.  He  retorted  their  disdain  by 
declaring  their  conduct  worse  than  his  ;  being 
without  the  excuses  of  his  poverty  and  igno- 
rance. The  secretary  of  Doineau,  Ahmed, 
was,  as  a  witness,  more  than  a  match  for  his 
master  in  cunning.  His  flattery,  clearness, 
and  shrewdness,  had  a  great  share  in  Doi- 
neau's condemnation.  Salaam  is  an  Arabian 
word ;  and  he  never  addressed  the  court 
without  making  many  salaams,  and  uttering 
many  complimentary  palavers,  such  as,  "  My 
lord,  the  president, — thou  who  art  a  man  of 
head,  a  man  of  science,  a  man  of  wisdom— 
thou  who  knowest  all  things,  thou  wilt  not 
fail  to  unravel  the  truth.  May  God  aid  you, 
and  may  God  bless  you." 

The  Chief,  Bel  Hadj,  was  decorated  with 
the  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  when  in 
Paris,  at  the  Exhibition  of  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty-five.  His  character  is  a  compound 
of  avarice  and  cowardice,  concealed  beneath 
ostentation  and  jealousy,  burnouses  and  deco- 
rations. During  his  trial  he  was  always 
either  in  a  state  of  stupor  or  a  deli- 
rium of  fear  ;  from  which  he  only  awoke 
to  inquire  what  had  been  done  with  his 
money  ? 

When  Doineau  was  asked  if  he  had  any- 
thing to  say  why  the  law  ought  not  to  be 
applied  to  him,  he  answered  : 

"  Nothing." 

Seven  prisoners  were  acquitted  ;  all  the 
others  were  pronounced  guilty.  Pecuniary 
compensation  was  adjudged  to  the  three 
widows  of  the  murdered  men — fifteen  thou- 
sand francs  to  the  widow  of  Hamadi ;  fifty 
thousand  to  Madame  Valette  ;  and  to  the  rich 
widow  of  Abdallah  the  nominal  sum  she  had 
asked,  of  a  hundred  francs.  The  subordinate 
actors  in  the  murders  received  the  penalty  of 
five  years'  imprisonment.  Mamar,  Bel  Hadj, 
and  others,  who  were  convicted  of  having 
taken  an  active  part  in  the  murders,  were 
sentenced  to  twenty  years'  imprisonment 
with  hard  labour.  The  kodja  was  condemned 
to  imprisonment  with  hard  labour  for  life. 
Auguste  Doiueau  was  condemned  to  death, 
the  execution  to  take  place  in  the  public 
square  at  Oran.  After  receiving  their  sen- 
tences, Bel  Hadj  and  Doineau  were  expelled 
from  the  Legion  of  Honour,  although  they 
were  not  stripped  of  their  decorations. 

The  President  said:  "Doineau  the  con- 
demned— you  have  been  deficient  in  honour, 
and  have  therefore  fallen  from  the  dignity  of 
a  member  of  the  Legion  of  Honour." 

Every  criminal  has  his  admirers,  if  he  be 
only  brazen  and  fearless.  When  Doineau 
left  the  court  a  person  from  the  crowd  threw 
himself  into  his  arms.  As  the  procession  of 
the  malefactors  was  returning  to  prison,  Doi- 


ueau  was  observed,  on  reaching  an  elevated 
spot,  to  tear  something  from  his  breast.  It 
was  his  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour. 


430      [October  31,  1<>S7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


TWO  FIRST-CLASS  PASSENGERS. 


I  RFSIDE  upon  the  Great  South  Angular  line 
of  railway,  and  go  to  town,  and  return  from  it 
every  day  ;  the  two  journeys  consume  about 
two  hours,  and  having  taken  them  regularly 
for  the  last  fifteen  years,  I  must  have  spent 
at  least  a  twelvemonth  of  my  existence  in  a 
first-class  carrirge  ;  I,  therefore,  may  be  sup- 
posed to  know  a  little  about  the  passengers. 
I  know  almost  everybody's  name  who  gets  into 
the  train  at  the  half-dozen  stations  between 
my  own  and  London,  and  whether  he  will 
return  by  our  five-thirty,  or  not,  to  a  dead 
certainty.  I  know  which  are  the  stock- 
brokers, and  which  the  lawyers,  and  which 
the  bill  discounters,  and  the  places  of  busi- 
ness of  every  one  of  them,  although  our  ac- 
quaintance is  only  acknowledged  by  a  nod, 
nor  ever  extends  beyond  the  terminus  at 
London  Bridge.  When  A  or  B  is  not  in 
eleven-forty-five  up  twice  running,  we  look 
for  him  in  the  Times,  and  find  him  under 
Deaths  or  Bankrupts  ;  and  when  I  myself, 
X,  am  missing,  I  feel  confident  that  the  rest 
of  the  alphabet  will  as  easily  understand 
what  is  become  of  me.  We  do  not  pretend  to 
entertain  the  sympathetic  feelings  of  a 
Rousseau,  or  a  De  Lamartine,  towards  our 
friends  of  the  South  Angular  ;  our  conversa- 
tions— -which  are  carried  on  under  cover  of 
our  respective  newspapers  —  are  kept  stu- 
diously general,  for  there  is  no  knowing  what 
religion  or  politics  any  of  us  may  profess,  or 
whether  we  profess  them  at  all ;  we  discuss 
principally  the  money-market  only,  and  the 
murders — trusting  that,  it  there  be  a  homi- 
cide or  two  in  the  same  carriage,  any  offen- 
sive remark  may  be  understood  not  to  apply 
to  the  present  company.  We  season-ticket- 
holders  are  of  course  well-known  by  sight 
to  all  the  company's  officers,  so  that  they 
rarely  give  us  the  trouble  of  producing  our 
passes  at  all,  nor  is  one  of  us  more  easily  re- 
cognisable than  C,  the  leviathan  banker,  who 
makes  the  train  stop  in  front  of  his  own 
house,  where  there  is  no  station,  to  the  con- 
centrated disgust  of  the  three  classes.  He 
is  called  by  us  familiarly  "the  Old  Cock ;"  but, 
although  he  knows  this,  it  is  not,  of  course, 
customary  to  address  him  by  that  appella- 
tion. My  brother,  however,  who  is  a  stranger 
to  the  South  Angular,  going  down  with  me 
once  upon  a  visit  by  the  five-thirty,  remarked, 
unhappily,  upon  occasion  of  the  usual  stop- 
page in  front  of  the  huge  red  house,  "  Oh, 
this  is  where  the  Old  Cock  lives,  who  causes 
you  so  much  annoyance,  is  it  ? "  Whereupon, 
the  great  C,  who  was  sitting  opposite,  crim- 
soned excessively,  got  out  slower  than  usual, 
and  has  never  nodded  to  me  since.  A  little 
after  this,  a  new  ticket-collector  having  been 
appointed  by  the  company,  he  called  upon 


the  whole  carriage-full,  which  included  but 
one  casual  passenger,  to  produce  our  tickets  ; 
which,  with  the  exception  of  the  Old  Cock, 
we  readily  did.  He  confessed  that  he  had  it 
in  his  waistcoat  pocket,  but  that  no  human 
power  should  induce  him  to  exhibit  it ;  he 
harangued  the  unfortunate  collector  for  nearly 
a  quarter  of  an  hour  (during  which  the  train 
was,  of  course,  delayed,  and  the  business- 
passengers  goaded  to  frenzy),  on  the  absur- 
dity of  his  (C's)  being  unknown  to  any  per- 
son on  the  South  Angular  railway,  no  matter 
how  newly-appointed,  or  how  forgetful  by 
disposition  ;  he  took  the  official  to  task,  just 
as  though  he,  himself,  the  Old  Cock,  were 
the  aggrieved  party,  and  as  if  he  were  the 
Lord  Chief  Baron  addressing  some  great 
offender  against  the  law. 

"  Nay,  but,"  urged  the  poor  man,  "  it  is 
my  duty  to  see  your  ticket,  sir,  whether  you 
have  compounded  for  the  year,  or  not.  You 
may,  for  all  I  am  supposed  to  know  to  the 
contrary,  have  lent,  or  even  sold  your — " 

"  /sell  my  ticket  ?  /abuse  my  privilege  1 " 
cried  the  old  fellow  in  a  terrible  voice.  "  Give 
the  rascal  into  my  hand,  John."  (To  his  son, 
who  was  sitting  opposite),  whereupon  the 
collector  got  off  the  step  with  great  agility. 

"  What  am  I  to  do  ?  "  said  the  Discomfited, 
appealing  to  the  rest  of  us,  "  I  ought  to  take 
the  gentleman  into  custody." 

C  had  relapsed  behind  his  paper  in  high 
dudgeon,  and  would  reply  to  no  man's  inter- 
cession upon  this  subject  further,  while  his 
sou  John  shook  his  head  very  decidedly, 
saying : 

"  He  won't  give  it  up.  I  have  known  him 
for  forty  years.  He  won't  give  it  up  :  I  know 
him  so  well." 

Indeed,  so  it  happened,  and  after  a  consul- 
tation among  the  officials  upon  the  platform, 
and  a  very  prolonged  stoppage  of  the  train, 
the  Old  Cock  was  carried  on  in  triumph,  still 
stertorous  with  indignation. 

These  little  incidents  are  the  only  ones,  as 
I  have  said,  which  to  my  knowledge  ever  inter- 
fered with  the  strictly  business  character  of 
our  daily  transits  ;  but  when  I  have  chanced 
to  be  detained  longer  than  usual  in  town,  and 
to  miss  the  five-thirty,  I  have  met  with  more 
interesting  companions.  Three  times,  by  the 
evening  express,  I  have  travelled  with  a  gen- 
leman  bound  for  the  other  side  of  the  Chan- 
nel, from  whom  I  always  parted  with  regret : 
a  middle-aged,  rather  ru<idy-complexioned 
man,  spare  and  tall,  with  an  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  foreign  countries,  and  a  fund 
of  stories  of  adventure,  which  it  was  very 
pleasant  to  draw  upon.  Though  we  exchanged 
cards,  Mr.  Settler  never  told  me  what  was 
his  profession  ;  but  I  set  him  down  as  a  tra- 
veller for  some  great  house,  at  a  salary,  per- 
haps, of  seven- hundred  a-year,  and  I  am 
seldom  wrong  in  such  calculations.  He  carried 
a  particularly  beautiful  Geneva  watch,  with 
turquoise  figures  on  it,  which  must  have  cost 
forty  guineas,  at  the  very  least,  but  his  dress 


CliarleiDiekens.] 


TWO  FIRST-CLASS  PASSENGERS. 


[October  31,  1957-1        431 


was  otherwise  plain  and  insignificant.  About 
a  week  after  I  had  met  him  for  the  third 
time,  I  took  a  house  at  Plover  for  the  season, 
for  my  wife  and  family,  to  whom  I  used  to 
run  down  from  London  every  week.  I  was 
returning  to  the  City  by  an  evening  train, 
soon  afterwards,  for  which  the  poor  voy- 
ageurs  from  France  were,  as  usual,  not  in 
time,  in  consequence  of  the  delays  at  the 
Custom  House,  when  I  heard  my  travelling 
friend's  voice  outside  the  window,  and  in- 
stantly looked  forth  to  welcome  him  in. 
Somehow  or  other,  however,  he  had  disap- 
peared at  that  very  instant,  and  I  seemed 
doomed  to  ride  the  whole  way  to  London  in 
company  of  a  solitary  stranger,  who  entered 
at  the  opened  door  instead.  He  was  big 
enough  for  two,  indeed,  but  singularly  un- 
communicative, replying  to  the  few  civilities 
which  I  ventured  upon,  in  gruff  monosyl- 
lables ;  and,  coiling  himself  up  in  a  corner, 
with  his  cap  over  his  eyes,  in  the  manner  of 
the  true  passenger  ruffian.  Still,  I  could  not 
help  thinking  that  at  some  time  and  place, 
both  forgotten,  I  had  seen  this  man  and 
spoken  to  him  before  ;  the  remembrance  of 
him  was  like  one  of  those  mysterious  experi- 
ences which  we  all  have  of  having  previously 
witnessed  some  passing  scene,  which  our 
mortal  eyes  can  never  in  reality  have  beheld  ; 
but  indistinct  as  this  was,  it  was  strong 
enough  to  drive  all  thoughts  from  my  mind, 
except  the  absorbing  one.  "  To  whom  is  he 
like  ?  and  where  have  1  met  this  sulky  fellow 
before  ? " 

Presently,  however,  my  mind  reverted  to 
the  voice  1  had  heard  at  starting,  and  imme- 
diately this  idea  combined  with  it,  and  I  said 
to  myself: 

"  Why  it  is  Mr.  Settler  himself,  to  whom 
the  man  is  somehow  like  after  all !  " 

True,  my  old  acquaintance  was  a  spare  man, 
and  this  a  person  stout  even  to  obesity.  The 
former  had  a  voice  especially  pleasing,  and 
the  latter  a  grunt  that  could  scarcely  be 
reckoned  human  ;  that  a  convivial  visage,  and 
this  a  face  from  which  ill-health  and  ill-hu- 
mour together  had  expelled  every  trace  of 
jollity.  Still,  having  acquired  my  idea  with 
so  much  trouble,  I  was  not  the  man  to  let  it 
easily  go  again,  but  flattered  and  nourished 
it  in  my  mind,  until  it  grew  larger  and 
stronger,  and  at  last  shot  up  into  the  full  be- 
lief that  this  uncommunicative  stranger  was 
not  only  like  Mr.  Settler,  but  was  Mr.  Settler 
himself !  No  other  than  he,  I  now  felt  per- 
suaded, could  have  presented  himself  at  the 
carriage  window,  so  immediately  after  my 
hearing  his  voice  close  beside  it. 

"Sir,"  said  I,  composing  myself  in  my 
corner,  as  if  to  sleep,  "  I  should  like  to  know 
how  long  I  may  hope  to  rest  myself.  Will 
you  kindly  favour  me  with  the  time?  " 

I  shot  through  my  fingers  an  eager  glance, 
as  the  stout  gentleman  pulled  his  watch  out, 
with  an  expression  of  impatience  at  being 
roused.  My  scheme  had  succeeded ;  my  suspi- 


cions were  confirmed.  It  was  the  old  Geneva 
watch  with  the  turquoise  figures. 

"  Mr.  Settler,"  said  I,  quietly,  "  why  do  you 
wish  to  cut  my  acquaintance  1 " 

"  Why,  the  fact  is,"  replied  he,  in  his  natu- 
ral frank  voice,  and  not  without  a  touch  of 
pathos  in  it,  "I  am  so  ill,  and  such  an  object, 
that  I  am  positively  ashamed  to  be  recog- 
nised ;  do  you  observe  how  tremendously 
stout  I  have  grown  1 " 

"  Of  course  I  do,"  said  I ;  "it  would  be 
ridiculous  to  pretend  otherwise  ;  why  you  are 
three  times  your  usual  size  at  the  very  least ! " 

"  There  is  no  need  to  exaggerate,  goodness 
knows,"  rejoined  he,  gravely,  "a  man  with 
such  a  dropsy  as  this  is  no  fit  subject  for 
joking." 

My  old  acquaintance  indeed  exhibited  so 
much  acrimony  and  bad  humour  that  I  was 
sorry  I  spoke  to  him  at  all,  and  felt  quite  re- 
lieved when,  wheezing  and  grumbling  to  the 
last,  he  parted  company  from  me  at  the  ter- 
minus. On  the  next  Saturday  I  again  went 
down  to  Plover,  and  only  reached  the  station 
just  in  time  to  hit  the  train.  I  therefore 
threw  myself  into  the  nearest  first-class  car- 
riage, and  was  off"  before  I  ever  looked  to  see 
who  was  my  companion. 

"  How  are  you,  my  boy  1 "  cried  Mr.  Settler, 
for  he  it  was,  spare  and  hearty  as  ever.  "  I 
am  afraid  I  was  rather  cross  with  you  the 
other  day." 

"  Cross  !  "  said  I,  a  little  grimly,  a  is  not 
the  word  for  it ;  you  were  a  bear  of  the  first 
water  ;  and,  by-the-bye,  what  has  become  of 
your  dropsy  1  " 

"  Well,"  rejoined  he,  "  I  have  been  tapped 
since  I  saw  you." 

"  Tapped  !  "  cried  I,  laughing,  "  why  you 
have  been  emptied — drained  ! " 

"  Yes,"  answered  Mr.  Settler  evasively,  "  I 
dare  say  it  seems  so.  I  am  subject  to  these 
attacks.  They're  hereditary.  Have  you  seen 
to-day's  paper  1 " 

So  we  turned  the  conversation  to  other 
subjects,  and  spent  the  time  between  London 
and  Chokestone,  as  pleasantly  as.  usual. 

A  month  elapsed,  and  then  I  met  my  friend 
once  more  in  the  up-express,  going  to  town 
for  the  best  advice,  he  said,  and  stouter  than 
ever.  However,  he  was  very  good-humoured 
this  time,  observing  that  he  was  not  going  to 
suffer  the  disease  to  prey  upon  his  spirits  any 
longer ;  only  from  his  late  voyage  and  its 
accompaniments  he  was  really  very  exhausted 
and  presently  fell  asleep,  looking,  as  I  thought, 
like  Falstaff  after  a  fit  of  sea-sickness. 

As  I  sat  close  by  him,  whistling  softly,  and 
staring  at  his  right  leg,  a  very  singular  sight 
presented  itself.  I  saw  Mr.  Settler's  right 
calf  sink  gradually  down,  and  presently  re- 
pose about  his  ancle.  I  stooped  down  to  in- 
vestigate this  sliding  phenomenon,  and  dis- 
covered it  to  be  entirely  composed  of  the  best 
French  kid  gloves ;  the  other  calf  I  pricked 
with  my  scarf-pin,  and  concluded  it  to  be 
composed  of  the  same  unfeeling  material. 


432 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


^October  31, 1S37.1 


Elated  by  these  revelations  I  cautiously  ap- 
plied the  same  ingenious  instrument  to  my 
friend's  waistcoat ;  it  penetrated  at  least 
three  inches,  up  to  the  fox's  head  which  sur- 
mounted it,  without  meeting  with  any  flesh 
and  blood ;  the  sleeper  never  so  much  as 
winked  an  eye.  I  then  took  the  liberty  of 
unfastening  the  iirst  and  second  buttons 
about  his  ample  chest,  whereupon  I  came 
upon  fine  cambric  ;  I  turned  back  case  after 
case,  and  then  pressed  forth  an  end  of  Valen- 
ciennes lace.  I  took  hold  of  this  very  deli- 
cately and  gave  it  a  gentle  pull — one  yard  ! 
two  yards  !  ten  yards  !  twenty  yards  of  such 
a  trimming — as  I  have  only  seen  in  books 
upon  the  fashions — rewarded  my  dexterity. 
Throughout  this  operation  the  stout  party, 
sleeping  like  a  child,  reminded  me  of  the 
spider  who,  out  of  his  own  interior,  supplies 
such  charming  gossamer  work.  Then,  having 
pocketed  the  Valenciennes,  replaced  the  cam- 
bric, and  fastened  the  buttons,  I  woke  my 
still  stout  but  somewhat  reduced  acquaint- 
ance, and  observed,  "  I  beg  your  pardon,  but 
your  right  calf  has  slipped  down  from  the 
usual  place,  Mr.  Settler." 

"It  is  a  false  one,"  answered  he  with  frank- 
ness ;  "  it  is,  in  fact,  French  kid  gloves.  Mrs. 
Settler  compels  me  to  do  it,  although  I  abomi- 
nate the  practice.  A  man  in  my  dangerous 
state  of  health  should  think  of  something 
else  than  defrauding  the  revenue." 

"Don't  you  feel  somewhat  relieved, 
though  1 "  inquired  I,  producing  the  Valen- 
ciennes. 

"Sir,"  said  he,  in,  some  confusion,  and 
twitching  at  his  waistcoat,  "  I  am  sure  that  I 
am  in  the  hands  of  a  man  of  honour." 

"  Perhaps,"  said  I,  blushing  a  very  little  ; 
"but  I  have  the  sternest  possible  sense  of 
duty." 

"  Custom  House  duty  1 "  inquired  he,  good- 
naturedly  ;  then,  with  his  old  pathos  he 
added, 

"You  have  a  wife,  a  loving  wife  yourself, 
sir." 

"  I  have,"  said  T ;  and  I  confess  I  was  a  good 
deal  moved. 

"  How  well  she'd  look  in  that  old  Valen- 
ciennes !  "  urged  Mr.  Settler,  and  that  with 
an  air  of  such  sincere  admiration,  that  I 
really  could  not  find  it  in  my  heart  to  give 
the  poor  fellow  up.  I  never  saw  him  again 
from  that  day  to  this,  and  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  after  that  clemency  of  mine 
he  did  not  give  up  his  contraband  habits,  and 
became  an  honest  man. 

It  was  in  a  collar  and  sleeves  trimmed 
with  that  very  Valenciennes  that  my  wife 
went  up  with  me  to  town  for  the  Handel 
Festival ;  we  were  a  large  party  in  the 
carriage, and  enjoyed  the  journey  very  much. 
Amongst  others  was  a  strange  young  gentle- 
man, very  well-informed  and  agreeable,  who 


kept  us  in  peals  of  laughter  with  his  lively 
sallies.  Mrs.  X  had  seen  the  address  upon 
his  portmanteau,  and  whispered  to  us  that 
he  was  a  viscount,  and  perhaps  we  did  not 
appreciate  them  the  less  upon  that  account ; 
he  had  all  that  abandon  and  keen  animal 
spirits  -which  distinguish  the  young  English 
aristocracy,  and  make  them  the  pleasantest 
tellows  in  the  world  to  travel  with,  and  he 
had  also  a  diamond  ring  which  he  was  kind 
enough  to  let  us  examine,  of  very  great  bril- 
liancy and  value  ;  such  a  hand  too,  delicate, 
graceful,  thin,  and  such  an  exquisite  curling 
ear  ;  in  short,  as  my  wife,  judging  from  these 
symptoms,  observed,  with  an  irrepressible 
enthusiasm,  "a  youthful  Cavendish,  all  over." 
When  we  arrived  at  London  Bridge, 
he  bade  adieu  to  us  in  the  most  affable 
manner,  and  drove  away  in  a  simple  Hansom, 
with  all  the  air  of  a  man  accustomed  to  keep 
his  carriage.  On  our  road  to  Sydenham  we 
were  all  loud  in  his  praises,  when  suddenly 
my  wife  threw  up  her  hands,  and  cried  out 
that  her  purse  was  gone,'  with  half  her 
quarter's  allowance  in  it ;  there  must  have 
been  a  hole  in  her  pocket,  or  one  of  the  rail- 
way porters  had  taken  it,  or  she  had  never 
brought  it  with  her  at  all  ;  we  would  believe 
anything  in  fact,  rather  than  suffer  the 
breath  of  suspicion  to  sully  that  mirror  of 
nobility  the  viscount.  Judge,  then,  our  sur- 
prise when  at  the  bottom  of  this  pocket  was 
discovered  the  identical  ring,  which  had 
evidently  slipped  off  those  aristocratic  fingers 
while  they  were  appropriating  the  purse. 
Upon  our  return  to  town,  I  took  the  trinket 
to  a  jeweller's,  fully  expecting  to  find  that 
the  precious  stone  was  made  of  glass,  but  to 
my  astonishment  and  pleasure  it  turned  out 
to  be  a  real  diamond,  and  that  of  a  value 
very  considerably  greater  than  the  stolen 
money.  We  advertised  it  for  a  few  days  in 
the  newspapers,  but,  as  we  expected,  without 
its  being  inquired  after  by  its  late  proprietor ; 
so,  besides  the  Valenciennes  trimming  for 
her  collar  and  sleeves,  my  wife  has  a  hand- 
some diamond  ring  for  her  middle  finger, 
both  presented  to  her,  indirectly,  by  two  of 
my  fellow  passengers. 


Now  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  and  Sixpence,  ueatly 
bound  in  cloth, 

THE  FIFTEENTH  YOLUME 

HOUSEHOLD  WORDS, 

Containing  the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  June  of  the  present 
year. 

Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  Oue 
Guinea, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILKIE  COLLINS. 

Bradbury  and  Evans,  Whitefriars. 


Tlie  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Published  at  the  Office,  J\o.  16,  AVellinictoa  Street  North,  Strand.    Printed  by  BBADBUKY  &  EVAIU,  \Vuitefriars,  London, 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD    WOEDS."— SHAKESPEARE. 


HOUSEHOLD    WOKDS. 

A  WEEKLY   JOURNAL, 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES     DICKENS. 


398.] 


SATURDAY,  NOVEMBER  7,  1857. 


'  PHICE  2d. 
[  STAMPED  3d. 


BEOTHER    MULLER    AND 
ORPHAN-WORK. 


HIS 


AMONG  the  curiosities  of  literature  in  our 
day  is  a.  work,  of  which  four  parts  have  ap- 
peared at  intervals,  entitled  The  Lord's 
Dealings  with  George  Mttller.  The  first 
edition  of  the  first  part  was  published  twenty 
years  ago,  the  fourth  part  appeared  only  last 
year.  The  tone  of  this  very  singular  book  is 
like  that  of  the  author  of  the  Bank  of  Faith, 
who,  when  he  wanted  a  new  pair  of  trousers, 
prayed  for  them  over-night,  and  found  them 
by  his  bedside  in  the  morning.  But  Hunting- 
ton  prayed  generally  for  himself,  George 
Miiller  takes  thought  of  the  orphan,  and  has 
accomplished  in  his  own  way  a  substantial 
work  that  must  secure  for  him  the  respect  of 
all  good  men,  whatever  may  be  the  form  of 
their  religious  faith. 

George  Miiller,  believing  himself  to  be 
elect,  is  one  of  those  who  thank  the  Lord 
that  they  are  not  as  other  men  are ;  it 
grieves  him  to  think  that  in  the  other  world 
lie  shall  be  parted  from  his  natural  father 
and  his  brother,  who  are  not  among  the 
chosen.  He  does  not  believe  in  any  gradual 
amelioration  of  the  world,  but  looks  for  the 
return  of  the  Lord  to  reign  on  earth,  and  is 
not  without  expectation  that  the  return  may 
be  in  his  own  day.  In  holding  these  opinions 
he  is  perfectly  sincere,  and  he  believes,  with  a 
liveliness  of  faith  perhaps  unequalled  in  our 
time,  that  all  things  fitting  for  His  children 
will  be  supplied  by  our  Father  in  heaven 
in  direct  answer  to  trustful  prayer.  He 
points  to  the  Orphan-house  on  Ashley  Down, 
near  Bristol,  for  the  justification  of  his  faith. 
He  has  now  been  labouring  in  Bristol  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  He  has  undertaken 
large  works  of  benevolence.  He  has  established 
that  asylum  for  destitute  orphans,  which 
for  some  time  maintained  three  hundred  in- 
mates, and  to  which  a  new  wing  has  just  been 
added  for  the  reception  of  four  hundred  more. 
He  expects  to  add  another  wing  and  find 
room  for  a  thousand.  For  the  prosecution 
of  this  orphan- work,  as  he  calls  it,  he  has 
received  ninety  thousand  pounds,  without 
once  asking  for  a  penny.  When  he  wants 
money  he  prays  for  it,  and  in  his  annual 
reports,  which  are  summed  up  in  the  publi- 
cation we  have  named,  shows  how  it  comes. 
His  reports  make  no  appeal.  The  spirit  and 


intention  of  them  is  to  bear  testimony  to  the 
truth  of  which  he  is  convinced,  that  "  the 
Lord  will  provide,"  and  so  completely  is  this 
their  intention  that  on  one  occasion  when 
the  annual  meeting  and  report  happened  to 
fall  due  at  a  time  when  his  distress  for  funds 
was  very  urgent,  and  to  make  the  fact 
known  would  procure  instant  relief,  that 
very  circumstance  compelled  him  to  post- 
pone for  a  few  months  the  issue  of  the 
report.  At  another  time  of  great  want, 
shortly  before  the  expiration  of  a  year's 
housekeeping  at  the  Orphan-house,  when 
Brother  Miiller  did  not  know  at  breakfast- 
time  how  he  should  buy  the  orphans'  milk 
for  tea,  a  rich  friend  asked  him  whether  the 
balance  in  his  accounts  would  be  as  good  as 
heretofore.  A  sign  of  want  would  have  pro- 
duced a  cheque  immediately,  but  George 
Miiller  only  said  the  balance  will  be  as  the 
Lord  shall  please.  Of  course  by  the  annual 
publication  of  such  facts  as  these  an  appeal  is 
made  to  the  religious  sensibilities  of  thou- 
sands. If  Brother  Miiller  never  told  his 
prayers,  and  never  worked  to  produce  their 
fulfilment,  could  he  depend  on  them  for  the 
production  of  an  income  ?  In  his  own  house- 
keeping Brother  Miiller  followed  the  same  sys- 
tem. He  destroyed  the  pews  in  his  chapel ; 
and  because  he  felt  that  subscriptions  to  the 
salary  of  a  minister  were  called  for  when  it  was 
not  convenient  to  some  to  pay  them,  and  were 
not  always  given  cheerfully,  he  refused  to 
accept  any  salary  at  all.  Again,  because  free 
gifts  paid  to  his  hand  might  be  made  on  some 
compulsion  of  pride,  for  the  sake  only  of  ap- 
pearing to  do  right,  and  he  could  accept  only 
what  was  given  cheerfully,  he  caused  a  box 
to  be  set  up  in  his  chapel,  and  depended  on 
the  anonymous  gifts  dropped  into  it  by  mem- 
bers of  his  congregation.  His  deacons  opened 
the  box  about  once  every  five  weeks.  Some- 
times he  had  no  bread  at  home,  and  there 
was  money  in  the  chapel-box.  Perhaps  he 
might  then  pray  that  a  deacon's  heart  should 
be  stirred  up  to  open  it,  but  he  gave  no  sign 
of  his  want  to  any  man,  and  never  asked  that 
the  box  should  be  opened,  never  if  money 
was  owing  to  him  asked  his  debtor  for  it. 
Trusting  in  prayer  only,  he  never  starved, 
and  has  obtained  more  than  a  hundred 
thousand  pounds  for  pious  uses. 

So  much  we  have  said,  at  once  to  secure 


VOL.  XVI. 


328 


434      [Member  7, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


respect  for  Brother  Miiller,  and  to  separate  him 
from  self-seeking  men,  who  trade  upon  reli- 
gion. A  precarious  subsistence—  one  obtained 
by  living  upon  prayer — is  a  safe  one  in  his 
eyes,  but  it  is  accompanied  by  him  with  the 
most  energetic  labour  to  do  good  work  in  the 
world.  It  will  be  seen,  too,  as  we  tell  the 
main  facts  of  his  story,  that  whatever  error 
we  find  in  his  theology,  his  view  of  a 
Scriptural  life  tallies  with  some  of  the  best 
precepts  of  wordly  wisdom.  Contention  is 
unscriptural.  Giving  offence  to  the  consci- 
ences of  others  is  unscriptural.  Debt  is  un- 
scriptural. Two  bills  he  was  once  obliged  to 
give,  payable  at  a  future  day  ;  but  he  did  not 
give  them  until  he  had  the  amount  of  them 
already  in  his  house,  and  what  seemed  to  be 
most  urgent  temporary  need  afterwards 
failed  to  tempt  him  to  the  borrowing  of  a 
pound  from  that  fund,  for  a  day  or  two.  The 
delay  of  an  hour  in  payment  of  his  rent  lay 
on  his  conscience  as  debt.  The  tradesmen 
who  supplied  the  Orphan-house,  compelled 
him  by  their  strong  wish  to  accept  of  weekly 
bills  for  daily  service,  but  whenever  the 
supply  of  money  ebbed,  instead  of  covering 
his  day  of  need  by  help  of  credit,  he  stopped 
even  weekly  payment,  and  allowed  nothing 
whatever  to  be  bought  that  was  iiot  paid  for 
at  the  moment. 

Now  we  will  tell  his  story.  He  was  born 
near  Halberstadt,  in  Prussia,  in  the  year 
eighteen  hundred  and  five,  so  that  he  is  now 
only  fifty-two  years  old.  His  father,  when  he 
was  five  years  old,  removed  to  Heimersleben, 
four  miles  from  George  Mailer's  native  town. 
He  was  then  in  government  employment  as 
collector  of  excise.  Of  course,  we  are  told 
by  Mr.  Miiller,  bad  things  of  his  life  as  an 
unconverted  boy  and  youth,  and  it  does  cer- 
tainly appear  that  he  was  more  unprincipled 
than  boys  and  young  men  usually  are.  He 
was  destined  for  the  Church,  and  educated  at 
good  classical  schools,  acquitting  himself  with 
great  credit  as  a  scholar.  In  due  time  he 
became  a  student  of  the  University  ot 
Halle,  and  as  a  member  of  that  uni- 
versity was  entitled  to  preach  in  the 
Lutheran  establishment.  Halle  was  at 
that  time  frequented  by  twelve  or  thirteen 
hundred  students,  of  whom  niue  hundred 
studied  divinity,  and  were  allowed  to  preach. 
At  Halle,  when  twenty  years  old,  George 
Miiller  was  taken  by  a  fellow-student  to  a 
prayer-meeting  at  the  house  of  "a  believing 
tradesman."  His  conversion  then  began, 
and  was  assisted  by  the  arrival  at  the  uni- 
versity of  Dr.  Tholuck,  as  Professor  of 
Divinity.  George  Muller's  father  became 
angry  at  the  changed  tone  of  his  mind,  and 
at  his  desire  to  quit  the  regular  Prussian 
Church,  in  which  only  he  could  minister  in 
Prussia  without  danger  of  imprisonment. 
Miiller  supported  himself  then  by  teaching 
German  to  some  American  professors  who 
had  come  to  Halle  for  literary  purposes, 
being  recommended  to  them  by  Professor 


Tholuck.  He  desired  to  be  a  missionary;  but, 
without  his  father's  consent,  could  not  be 
received  in  any  of  the  German  missionary 
institutions.  Soon  afterwards,  at  the  instance 
of  a  pious  schoolmaster,  he  began  to  preach 
in  a  village  some  six  miles  from  Halle,  using 
the  pulpit  of  an  aged  and  "  unenlightened 
clergyman." 

It  was  in  Halle  that  Augustus  Herman 
Frank  £  had  been  a  professor  of  divinity 
at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
had  done  charitable  deeds,  had  shown  a 
very  lively  faith  in  prayer,  and  helped 
by  that  faith  had  maintained  an  orphan- 
house  that  grew  almost  to  the  dimensions 
of  a  street.  "About  the  time  that  I  first 
began  to  preach,"  says  Mr.  Miiller,  "  I  lived 
for  about  two  months  in  free  lodgings,  pro- 
vided for  poor  students  of  divinity  in  the 
Orphan-house,  built  in  dependence  upon 
God  by  that  devoted  and  eminent  servant  of 
Christ,  A.  H.  Franke,  Professor  of  Divinity 
at  Halle,  who  died  1727."  The  Orphan-house 
at  Halle  prompted  afterwards  the  founding 
of  the  Orphan-house  on  Ashley  Down ;  but 
FrankS,  when  he  built,  like  most  builders  of 
hospitals,  anticipated  coming  funds,  and  sent 
a  box  round  for  subscriptions.  George 
Miiller  never  spent  a  penny  till  he  had  it 
actually  in  his  hand,  and  as  we  have 
said,  made  it  a  further  point  of  conscience 
never,  in  a  direct  way,  to  ask  for  a  subscrip- 
tion. 

Vacations  at  Halle  left  George  Miiller  free 
to  visit  the  Moravian  settlement  at  Gnadau, 
where  he  had  communion  with  men  who  were 
in  very  many  respects  like-minded  with  him- 
self. In  Halle,  too,  he  joined  himself  with 
sundry  brothers  who  were  of  his  own  way 
of  mind.  When  at  the  age  of  twenty-two 
Brother  Miiller  heard  that  the  Continental 
Society  in  England  meant  to  send  a  minister 
to  Bucharest,  to  help  an  aged  missionary, 
he  desired  to  go,  and  had  the  consent  of  his 
father.  Then  there  appeared  to  him  an 
opening  for  work  as  a  missionary  in  the  con- 
version of  the  Jews,  and  the  result  of  prayer 
and  negotiation  was  that,  after  much  delay 
caused  by  the  refusal  of  the  Prussian  govern- 
ment to  let  a  young  man  leave  the  country 
before  he  had  paid  his  due  in  military  ser- 
vice, Brother  Miiller  came  to  London.  He 
had  been  reported  at  Berlin  unfit  for  military 
duty.  The  London  Society  for  the  Conver- 
sion of  the  Jews  received  the  German  student 
on  probation,  and,  good  scholar  as  he  already 
was,  placed  him  for  six  months  at  their  semi- 
nary, where  he  was  excused  from  learning 
anything  but  Hebrew.  He  had  also  to  study 
English.  He  was  encouraged  at  that  time 
by  hearing  of  a  Mr.  Groves,  dentist,  of  Exeter, 
who  had  given  up  a  practice  yielding  fifteen 
hundred  pounds  a-year  to  go  to  Persia  as  a 
missionary.  A  sister  of  that  gentleman 
afterwards  became  Brother  Muller's  wife. 
While  at  thesemiuary  Brother  Muller's  energy 
was  not  to  be  restrained.  He  began  work 


BROTHER  MOLLER  AND  HTS  ORPHAN-WORK.   [November  •}.  IBM     436 


among  the  Jews,  and  read   the  Scriptures 
regularly  with  about  fifty  Jewish  boys. 

After  a  serious  illness  Brother  Miiller  was 
obliged  to  go  into  the  country  for  recovery  of 
his  health.  He  went  to  Teignmouth,  there 
preached  at  the  opening  of  Ebenezer  Chapel, 
and  became  linked  in  friendship  with  the 
Brother  Henry  Craik,  who  afterwards  was 
the  associate  of  all  his  labours.  Doubt  was 
arising  in  George  Miiller's  mind  as  to  the 
Scriptural  nature  of  his  connection  with  the 
Society  for  the  Conversion  of  the  Jews.  In 
serving  the  society  he  should  serve  men  ; 
whereas,  was  he  not  bound  to  do  only  the 
bidding  of  the  Lord  1  Again,  he  would 
need  to  be  ordained,  and  he  could  not  con- 
scientiously submit  to  be  ordained  by  uncon- 
verted men,  professing  to  communicate  what 
they  have  not  themselves.  Also,  he  was  not 
satisfied  with  the  position  of  a  religious 
society  so  constituted  that  it  sought  for  its 
heads,  not  the  best  men,  but  the  most 
wealthy,  or  those  highest  in  worldly  rank. 
There  was  no  instance  of  a  poor  good  man 
presiding  over  any  of  its  meetings.  After 
much  prayer  and  consideration,  he  expressed 
his  doubts,  and  his  connexion  with  the 
society  thenceforward  ceased.  He  was  at 
that  time  preaching  in  Devonshire,  and  de- 
signing to  preach  as  a  wandering  missionary 
in  divers  parts  of  the  country  ;  but  he  was 
eventually  persuaded  to  accept,  on  condition 
that  he  was  not  to  be  held  bound  to  the  post, 
the  fixed  office  of  minister  to  ,Ebenezer 
Chapel,  Teignmouth,  with  fifty-five  pounds  as 
subscription  from  his  flock.  Thirty  pounds 
of  that  he  soon  afterwards  perilled  by  a 
change  of  view  on  the  subject  of  baptism. 
Nearly  at  the  same  time,  being  twenty-five 
years  old,  he  married  the  lady  before-men- 
tioned, and  about  three  weeks  after  marriage 
upon  conscientious  scruples,  gave  up  alto- 
gether the  receipt  of  a  fixed  salary  ;  after  a 
few  more  days,  he  established  the  box  in  his 
chapel,  and  not  long  afterwards,  after  a  much 
harder  struggle  of  faith,  he  and  his  wife 
determined  thenceforth  to  ask  no  man  for  help, 
also  to  lay  up  no  treasure  upon  earth,  but,  giving 
all  in  alms,  to  have  no  care  about  the  morrow, 
and  trust  wholly  in  prayer  for  the  supply  of 
every  want.  Thus,  for  a  day  of  sickness,  or 
for  expected  births  of  children,  nothing  ever 
was  laid  by.  Excess  as  it  came  was  distri- 
buted to  those  who  needed.  For  some  years 
even  the  rent-day  at  the  Orphan-house  was 
left  uncared-for  till  it  came,  when  means  of 
paying  the  rent  could  be  prayed  for.  But  in 
one  year  prayer  failed  ;  the  rent  was  not 
provided  until  three  days  after  the  time 
when  it  lawfully  fell  due,  and  that  being 
accepted  as  a  Divine  admonition  to  lay  by 
every  week  the  portion  due  on  such  account, 
it  afterwards  was  cared  for  from  week  to 
week  as  conscientiously  as  it  had  fornierlv 
been  left  out  of  account. 

In  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty- 
two,    Brother    Craik     having    already    left 


Devonshire  for  Bristol,  Brother  Miiller  felt 
that  the  call  on  him  to  go  also  to  Bristol  was 
from  Heaven.  He  was  then  travelling  and 
preaching  in  various  parts  of  Devonshire.  A 
few  days  before  his  first  journeying  to  Bristol 
he  went  one  day  to  preach  at  Dartmouth, 
when,  he  says  in  his  journal: — "I  have  five 
answers  to  prayer  to-day  :  1.  I  awoke  at 
five,  for  which  I  had  asked  the  Lord  last 
night.  2.  The  Lord  removed  from  my  dear 
wife  an  indisposition  under  which  she  had 
been  suffering,  and  it  would  have  been  trying 
to  me  to  have  had  to  leave  her  in  that  state. 
3.  The  Lord  sent  us  money.  4.  There  was 
a  place  vacant  on  the  Dartmouth  coach.  5. 
This  evening  I  was  assisted  in  preaching, 
and  my  own  soul  refreshed." 

At  Bristol,  Brother  Miiller  shortly  after- 
wards joined  Brother  Craik  in  ministry  at 
Gideon  chapel,  establishing  there  (and  after- 
wards at  another  chapel  in  the  town  pro- 
vided for  them,  called  Bethesda),  their  pecu- 
liar system  of  dependence  for  the  supply  of 
temporal  wants  wholly  on  free-will  offerings. 
In  the  beginning  of  next  year,  Brother 
Miiller  was  reading  the  life  of  Franke",  and 
longing  to  live  as  he  lived,  that  so  "  we  might 
draw  much  more  than  we  have  as  yet  done  out 
of  our  Heavenly  Father's  bank,  for  our  poor 
brethren  and  sisters."  At  the  close  of  the 
year  he  writes  : — "It  is  just  now  four  years 
since  I  first  began  to  cast  myself  upon  the 
Lord,  trusting  in  him  for  the  supply  of  my 
temporal  wants.  My  little  all  I  then  had,  at 
most  worth  one  hundred  pounds  a-year,  I 
gave  up  for  the  Lord,  having  then  nothing 
left  but  five  pounds.  The  Lord  greatly 
honoured  this  little  sacrifice,  and  he  gave  me 
in  return,  not  only  as  much  as  I  had  given 
up,  but  much  more.  For  during  the  first 
year  he  sent  me  already,  in  one  way  or 
other  (including  what  came  to  me  through 
family  connection),  about  one  hundred  and 
thirty  pounds.  During  the  second  year,  one 
hundred  and  fifty-one  pounds,  eighteen  shil- 
lings and  eight  pence.  During  the  third 
year,  one  hundred  and  ninety-five  pounds, 
three  shillings.  During  this  year,  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty-seven  pounds,  fifteen  shillings 
and  eightpence  farthing.  This  income  of 
donations  from  the  brethren,  apart  from  the 
large  contribution  now  sustaining  missionary 
undertakings  and  the  Orphan-house,  now 
exceeds  six  hundred  pounds  a-year.  But 
from  first  to  last,  at  the  end  of  each  year  all 
is  gone,  excess  having  been  always  given  to 
the  poor." 

It  was  in  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and 

thirty-four  that  Brother  Miiller  founded,  at 

Bristol,  the  "  Scriptural  Knowledge  Institution. 

for  Home  and  Abroad."  He  thought  believers 

bound  to  help  in  the  extension  of  the  faith, 

although  the  world  was  not  to  be  converted 

until  after  the  ingathering  of  the  elect  at  the 

second   coming.     He   could  not  work  with 

,  any  established  society,  because  such  societies 

I  bow  before  unconverted  persons  for  the  sake 


436       [November  7. 1?57.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


of  profit  from  their  rank  or  wealth,  and  ask 
money  of  unbelievers,   as   Abraham   would 
not  have  done.     He  rejected  altogether  the 
help  of  unbelievers  in  the  conduct  of  his 
institution  ;  but  if  they  gave    him  money 
for  it  freely  and   unasked,  he  \vas  not,  by 
Acts,     twenty-eighth    chapter,     second     to 
tenth  verses,  warranted  in  refusing  to  accept 
their  contributions.     He  rejected  as  unscrip- 
tural  the  practice  of  contracting  debts,  and 
then  asking  the  charitable  to  assist  iu  paying 
them.     He    based  all  hope   of   success  on 
prayer.     The  object  of  the  institution  was  to 
assist   "  godly "    schcfols ;    to    circulate    the' 
Scriptures  ;  and  to  help  those  missionaries 
•who    worked    most   in  what  the    brethren 
•would  consider  a  true  Scriptural  way.   After 
only  seven  months  of  work,  this  little  insti- 
tution, which  has  now  become  a  large  one, 
\vas    instructing    one  hundred  and    twenty 
children  in  the  Sunday  school,  two  hundred 
and  nine  in  the  day  schools,  and  forty  adults 
iu  the  adult  school.     It  had  circulated  about 
five  hundred  Bibles,  and  contributed  about 
fifty-seven  pounds  to  the  help  of  missionaries. 
Evidently  Brother  Muller  is  an  energetic  man. 
"  September  eighteen. — A  brother,  a  tailor, 
was  sent  to  measure  me  for  new  clothes.   My 
clothes  are  again  getting  old,  and  it  is  there- 
fore very  kind  of  the  Lord  to  provide  thus. 
September  twenty-five. — A  brother  sent  me 
a  new  hat  to-day."     A  few  mouths  later,  a 
fifth  day-school  was  established.     In  March, 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirty,  Brother  Muller 
went  on  missiouary  business  to  the  Continent. 
"At  Dover,"  he   says,  "we  left  the  hotel 
before  break  of  day,  to  go  to  the  packet.    All 
being  in  a  great  hurry,   whilst    we    went 
towai'ds    the    sea,    I    was    separated    from 
Brothers   G.  and  Y.     I  now  lifted  up  my 
heart  to  the  Lord,  as  he  generally  helps  me 
to  do  on  such  occasions,  to  direct  my  steps 
towards  the  boat  which  went  out  to  meet  the 
packet,  and  "  (the  italics  are  his)  "1  found  it 
almost  immediately.     We  had,  in  answer  to 
prayer,  a  good  passage."     On  his  way  back, 
by   way   of  Hamburg,   the  sea  being  very 
rough,  the  good  brother  says  : — "  At  ten  I  was 
taken  with  sea-sickness,  from  which  I  had 
been  kept,  during  my  four  previous   short 
voyages,  in  answer  to  prayer  ;  but  this  time 
I  on  purpose  refrained  from  praying  about 
it,  as  I  did  not  know  whether  it  was  better 
for  my  health  to  be  sea-sick  or  not."    Defect 
of  health  caused  Brother  Muller  to  go,  in  the 
next  autumn,  to  Portishead,  walk,  bathe,  and 
take  horse-exercise.     But  he  writes  : — "  Sep- 
tember fifteen. — To-day,  as  1  clearly  under- 
stood that  the  person  who  lets  his  horse  has 
no   licence,   I  saw  that,  being  bound  as  a 
believer  to  act  according  to  the  laws  of  the 
country,  I  could  use  it  no  longer ;  and  as  horse- 
exercise   seems    most    important,    humanly 
speaking,  for  my  restoration,  and  as  this  is 
the   only  horse  which   is  to  be  had  in  the 
place,  we  came  to  the  conclusion  to  leave 
Portishead  to-morrow." 


And  now  we  come  to  the  main  fact :  One 
day   in    November,    eighteen   hundred    and 
thirty-five,   George   Miiller   writes  : — "  This 
evening  I  took  tea  at  a  sister's  house,  where 
[  found  Franke's  life.     I  h;ive  frequently,  for 
;his  long  time,   thought   of  labouring  in  a 
similar  way,  though  it  might  be  on  a  much 
smaller  scale  ;    not  to  imitate  Franke,  but  in 
reliance  on  the  Lord."     In  five  days  he  has 
made  up  his  mind  to  begin.      He  is  thirty 
years  old.     Humanly  speaking,  there  is  lite 
oefore  him  for  the  work.      He  says  : — "  The 
three  chief  reasons  for  establishing  an  Orphan- 
bouse  are  :    1.  That    God  may  be  glorified,, 
should  He  be  pleased  to  furnish  me  with  the 
means,  on  its  being  seen  that  it  is  not  a  vain 
thing  to  trust  in  Him,  and  that  thus  the 
faith  of  His  children  may  be  strengthened. 
2.   The   spiritual  welfare   of  fatherless  and 
motherless  children.     3.  Their  temporal  wel- 
fare."    He  prays  ;    he  calls  a  public  meeting 
at  which  he  will  state  his  plan,  and  says  on 
the  fifth  of  December,  eighteen  hundred  and 
thirty-five, — "This  evening  I  was  struck  in 
reading  the   Scriptures   with  these   words  ;• 
'  Open  thy  mouth  wide,  and  I  will  fill  it.'  Up 
to  this  day  I  had  not  at  all  prayed  concern- 
ing the  means  or  individuals  needed  for  the 
Orphan-house.  I  was  led  to  apply  these  words 
to  the  Orphan-house,  and  asked  the  Lord  for 
premises,  a  thousand  pounds,  and   suitable 
individuals  to  take  care  of  the  children."    At 
the  public  meeting  there  was  no  collection — 
no  money  asked  for,  and  after  the  meeting 
only  ten  shillings  were  given  ;  but  gifts  soon 
flowed  in.     The  design  was  to  receive  only 
such  children  as  were  fatherless,  motherless, 
and  wholly  destitute  ;  to  feed  them,  clothe 
them,  teach  them,  and  to  put  them  out  where 
they  could  earn  an  honest  living  in  the  world. 
There  should  be  no  voting  or  canvassing  for 
admissions — no  restriction  of  the  charity  to 
children  of  one  corner  of  the  country.  Orphan- 
age  and  destitution  were  to  form  the  simple 
claims  which  had  only  to  be  stated  to  procure 
admission  for  a  child  as  long  as  there  was 
house-room  left  to  give.     Any  donation  for 
this    object  was    received,  —  odd    shillings, 
pence,   basons,   mugs,  four  knives  and   five 
forks,  a   blanket,  fifty  pounds,  twenty-nine 
yards  of  print,  one  plate,  six  teaspoons,  one 
skimmer,  one  toasting-fork,  one  pillow-case, 
one  sovereign,  fifty-five  yards  of  sheeting,  a 
clothes-horse,  two  pewter  salt-cellars,  three 
frocks,  four  pinafores,  six  handkerchiefs,  from 
one    friend    a    flat-iron     stand    and     from 
another  friend  a  flat-iron,  six  pots  of  black- 
ing-paste, four  combs,  a  hundred  pounds,  a 
piece  of  blind-line  and  one  dozen  of  blind- 
tassels,  a  ton  of  coals,  premises  worth  two  or 
three  thousand  pounds  as  a  gift  conditional 
on  five  hundred  pounds  being  raised  to  adapt 
them  for  the  orphans'  use,  six  little  shirts,  a 
hundred  weight  of  treacle,  two  metal  spoons, 
a   kitchen-fender    and   a  pie-dish,   fifty-fivo 
thiiubles  and  five  parcels  of  hooks  and  eyes  ; 
such  were  the   gifts  that    flowed  in  upon 


Charles  Dickens.]         BROTHER   MULLER   AND   HIS    ORPHAN-WORK.    [November  7,  135M      437 


Brother  Miiller.  He  took  charge  of  them  all 
for  his  orphans.  Before  the  conditions  which 
would  make  a  gift  of  the  large  premises  had 
been  fulfilled,  the  good  brother  rented  the 
house  which  he  had  himself  been  occupying  in. 
Wilson  Street,  for  the  use  of  the  orphans, 
fitted  it  for  thirty  little  orphan  girls, 
between  the  ages  of  seven  and  eleven,  and 
opened  it  on  the  twenty-first  of  April,  eight- 
teen  hundred  and  thirty-six.  It  began  work 
with  six-and-twenty  little  girls,  a  matron,  and  j 
a  governess.  At  the  same  time,  Brother  Miil- 
ler's  heart  was  set  upon  the  opening  of  a  like 
liome  for  little  orphan  boys  ;  but,  first  of  all, 
he  would  set  to  work  upon  an  Infant  Orphan- 
house  for  desolate  poor  children  of  each  sex 
from  the  tenderest  age  up  to  the  seventh  year. 
Aided  by  gifts,  little  and  large — fourpence,  a 
gallon  of  dry  peas,  tippets,  old  clothes,  bits  of 
bacon,  sugar,  money, — the  work  went  on,  and 
before  the  end  of  the  following  November, 
more  than  seven  hundred  pounds  had  been 
raised  without  one  contribution  having  been 
asked  for,  in  a  direct  way,  by  Miiller  himself, 
and  the  Infant  Orphan-house  was  opened. 
At  the  end  of  the  year  sixty-six  orphans 
were  in  Brother  Miiller's  keeping,  and 
seven  hundred  and  seventy  pounds  had 
been  the  income  of  the  Orphan-houses. 
Brother  Miiller  was  at  work,  then,  for  the 
establishment  of  the  third  Orphan-house,  that 
for  the  boys. 

At  the  end  of  the  year  following  he  has 
established  it,  and  writes,  "  There  are  now 
eighty-one  children  in  the  three  Orphan- 
houses,  and  nine  brethren  and  sisters  who 
have  the  care  of  them.  Ninety,  therefore, 
daily  sit  down  to  table.  Lord,  look  on  the 
necessities  of  thy  servant ! "  At  the  same 
time  there  are  the  day  and  Sunday  schools, 
Tivith  more  than  three  hundred  children  in 
attendance  upon  each.  The  establishment 
increases,  but  the  pressure  on  each  day  for 
money  to  buy  bread  is,  now  and  then,  intense. 
The  children  never  miss  their  usual  supply, 
though  sometimes,  even  at  dinner-time, 
there  is  no  money  to  pay  the  milkman  in  the 
afternoon,  and  without  money  no  milk  would 
be  taken  ;  yet  the  money  comes.  When 
things  are  at  the  worst,  one  of  the  teachers 
has  some  shillings  in  reserve,  and  gives  them. 
At  one  such  time  every  brother  or  sister  en- 
gaged in  the  Orphan-houses,  had  given  up  all 
to  supply  the  daily  wants  before  there  came 
another  offering  to  help  them,  from  without. 
Under  pressure  of  this  kind  Brother  Miiller 
writes  in  September,  eighteen  hundred  and 
thirty-eight : — "  I  have  about  two  hundred 
and  twenty  pounds  in  the  bank,  which,  for 
other  purposes  in  the  Lord's  work,  has  been 
intrusted  to  me  by  a  brother  and  a  sister. 
I  might  take  of  this  money,  and  say  but  to 
the  sister,  and  write  but  to  the  brother, 
that  I  have  taken,  in  these  my  straits, 
twenty,  fifty,  or  a  hundred  pounds  for 
the  orphans,  and  they  would  be  quite 
satisfied  (for  both  of  them  have  liberally 


given  for  the  orphans,  and  the  brother  has 
more  than  once  told  me,  only  to  let  him 
know  when  I  wanted  money)  ;  but  that 
would  be  a  deliverance  of  my  own,  not 
God's  deliverance." 

In  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-one,  the 
consciences  of  Brothers  Craik  and  Miiller 
found  that  there  was  spiritual  assumption  in 
the  box  inscribed  with  their  names  put-up 
for  free-will  offerings  in  the  chapel.  Other 
brethren  were  not  less  able  to  teach  from 
their  experiences,  why  should  they  stand 
apart  from  the  rest,  as  if  they  were  the  only 
pastors  ?  Their  names  were  expunged,  there- 
fore, and  they  assigned  to  the  poor  all  money 
found  in  the  box  that  was  not  screwed  up 
in  paper  as  especially  placed  in  it  for  them- 
selves. In  their  own  houses,  as  in  the 
Orphan-house,  there  was  the  same  system  of 
living,  and  the  same  occasional  necessity  of 
selling  books  or  furniture  to  obtain  food. 
Nevertheless,  all  prospered.  In  December, 
eighteen  hundred  and  fifty,  the  expenses  of 
Brother  Miiller's  institution  were  at  the  rate 
of  six  thousand  a-year,  and  they  were  met. 
The  new  Orphan-house  on  Ashley  Down  had 
gathered  under  its  roof  three  hundred 
orphans, — three  hundred  and  thirty-five  in- 
mates. There  were  two  hundred  and  thirty 
applicants  for  admission.  Brother  Miiller 
had  felt  the  extent  of  the  desolation  he  is 
working  to  relieve.  He  was  encouraged  by 
the  blessing  on  his  orphan  work,  and  so  we 
find  him  writing  :  "  It  has  passed  through 
my  mind  to  build  another  Orphan-house, 
large  enough  for  seven  hundred  orphans,  so 
that  I  might  be  able  to  care  for  one  thou- 
sand altogether." 

For  a  time  he  does  not  speak  to  any  human 
being — not  even  to  his  wife — about  this 
matter  ;  but  he  prays  that  he  may  act  not  as 
one  led  away  by  ambition  to  do  good,  that 
he  may  avoid  mistake  and  delusion.  His 
mind  being  made  up,  he  states  his  plan,  and 
waits  on  Heaven  for  a  building  fund.  He  will 
not  begin  to  build  till  he  has  counted  the  cost 
and  laid  by  the  requisite  provision  ;  now  it  ia 
thirty-five  thousand  pounds  that  he  requires. 
In  large  and  small  sums  money  flows  in,  and 
he  looks  upon  it  as  some  trial  of  faith  that, 
at  the  end  of  two  years,  he  has  received 
towards  his  new  object  donations  only  to  the 
amount  of  twelve  or  thirteen  thousand. 
This  fund  increasing,  it  at  last  is  found 
prudent  to  begin  the  work  by  adding  to  the 
original  house  for  the  three  hundred  orphans 
a  wing  that  will  accommodate  four  hundred, 
leaving  the  other  wing  for  three  hundred  to 
be  afterwards  supplied.  The  building  there- 
fore was  commenced,  and  will  be  opened,  we 
believe,  before  the  expiration  of  the  present 
year.  More  than  twelve  months  ago,  at  the 
close  of  the  volume  from  which  we  have 
drawn  these  very  curious  facts,  George 
Miiller  wrote  as  follows  : — "  Without  any 
one  having  been  personally  applied  to  for 
anything  by  me,  the  sum  of  eighty-four 


438      [November  7,  1847.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


thousand  four  hundred  and  forty-one  pounds 

the  menagerie  —  the  objects  of  his  severity  — 

six    shillings    and   threepence   farthing   has 

with  rage  and  jealousy. 

been  given  to   me   for  the   orphans."     Pro- 

Now, Karabouffi  the  First  was  in  love  with 

bably,  by  Christmas  next,  the  sura  will  have 

Saimira. 

amounted   to    about    a    hundred    thousand 

The  Vice-Admiral  made  some  purchases, 

pounds  ! 

and  the  ship's  crew  followed  his   example. 

Each  man  bought  a  male  and  female  monkey, 

THE  MONKEY-KING. 

in  exact  imitation  of  the  commander.     He, 

himself    took   l^arabouffi    the  First.     J^Trs. 

AT  Macao,  a  few  years  ago,  lived  Polydore 

Campbell  insisted   on  buying  Mococo  and 

Marasquin,  son  and  heir  of  Juan  Perez  Ma- 

Saimira  ;   and,  after   a  few  struggles  of  the 

rasquin,  proprietor  of  one  of  the  most  famous 

heart,  the  keeper  of  the  menagerie  —  "  mer- 

menageries in  the  world,  and  celebrated  for 

chant  before  all  else  "  —  sold  her  his  pretty  fa- 

his skill  in  taxidermy.     Unfortunately  Juan 

vourites  :  beseeching  the  purchaser,  however, 

w.-is  killed   one  day,  while  endeavouring  to 

to  keep  them  out  of  the  way  of  Karabouffi 

take  a  young  tiger  alive.     On  his  death-bed 

the  First.  The  little  lovers  wept  like  children 

he  made  his  son  swear  that  he  would  relin- 

at parting  with  their  friend  ;  they  clung  to 

quish   his   dangerous   profession.      Polydore 

him  and  embraced  him  piteously  ;  but,  finally, 

took  the  oath  ;  and  committed  perjury.     Far 

the  embarkation  of   the  monkey  host  was 

from   abandoning  his   menagerie   he  embel- 

effected :  and  Macao  confessed  to  having  never 

lished  and  added  to  it,  until  it  became  one  of 

witnessed  such  a  day.   The  rage  of  Kurabouffi 

the   wonders   of    the   Eastern  world.      He 

the  Second,  at  being  thus  deprived  of  his  com- 

lighted it  with  gas  ;  until  then  unheard-of  in 

panions,  knew  no  bounds.     He  yelled,  and 

Macao.     He  gilded  and  burnished  the  cages 

howled,  and  tore  about  his  cage  like  a  demon  ; 

until  they  shone  like  gold,   and  tilled  them 

and,fromthat  hour,  conceived  the  most  deadly 

with  the  rarest  specimens  of  wild  animals  to 

hatred  against  Marasquin.     But  a  hatred 

be  found  in  the  two  hemispheres.     But  his 

that  showed  itself  rather  by  extreme  sullen- 

chief  speciality  was  in  monkeys  ;  of  which  he 

ness  and  a  black  kind  of  dumb  revenge,  than 

had  innumerable    hosts  of   every  race  and 

by  any  overt  act  of  violence. 

species. 

A    year  after  this   sale,  Marasquin  was 

It  is  as  well  to  mention  here,  the  notable 

awakened  one  night  by  the  suffocating  smell 

change  of  character  which  came  over  Poly- 

of  fire.     He   started  up  to  find  the  whole 

dore  after  his  father's  death.     From  being 

place  in  a  flame.     His  mother  conld  not  be 

the  friend,  companion,  confidant,  and  student 

rescued  ;  his  menagerie  blazing  ;  his  superb 

of  his   animals,    he   became    their    tyrant  : 

birds  fluttering  and  screaming  ;  his  magnifi- 

his   former     government   of    kindness,    pa- 

cent tigers  howling  and   writhing.    In  the 

tience,     sympathy,    and    comprehension    he 

midst    of    all,    grinned,    chattered,    leaped, 

exchanged  for  one  of  mere  brute  force,  of 

and  danced,   the  demon  KaraboufB,  with  a 

whips  and  scourges  :  seeing  in  them  all,  ac- 

lighted torch  in  each  hand.     He  had  stolen 

complices  of  the  tiger  who  had  so  murderously 

matches  from  the  pocket  of  the  gas-lighter  ; 

objected  to  being  taken  alive.   In  consequence 

and,  in  imitation  of  him,  had  turned  on  the 

of  this  change,  instead  of  being  able  to  enter 

gas,  lighted  it,  and  set  fire  to  the  place.   Some 

the  cages  as  formerly,  without  weapon  and 

one   shot  him   as  he   capered  through  the 

without    fear,    he  dared  not  trust  himself 

flames  :    but  Marasquin  was  none  the  less 

within    paw's    reach  of   one  :    so     that   he 

ruined,  and  his  mother   was  none  the   less 

and  his  beasts  lived  in  a  state   of  enmity 

bm-ut  to  death. 

and  warfare  which  boded  no  good  to  either 

To  recruit  his  fortupes,  and  restock  his 

side. 

menagerie,  Marasquin  set  out  for  New  Hol- 

The    English     Vice-Admiral     Campbell, 

land,  chartering    a    Chinese   junk    for    the 

landed  at  JNJacao.     He  went  to  Marasquin 

voyage.     But    his   crew   of  Chinamen   and 

for  pets  wherewith  to  beguile  his  voyage 

Lascars  quarrelled  ;    a  storm  came  on,  the 

when  Malay  pirates  were  scarce.  Now  among 

men    got    drunk,    and    the    unhappy   junk 

his  monkeys  Polydore  had  four  of  especial 

foundered  in  mid  seas.     After  battling  with 

mark.      Two    were    male    baboons,  named 

the  waves  for  a  miraculous  length  of  time, 

Karabouffi  First  and  Second  ;  tall,  powerful, 

Marasanin,  half-dead,  was  cast  upon  a  small 

and  intelligent  as  men,  but  horribly  wicked 

island  :  the  only  man  saved  of  the  whole 

and  cruel  ;  the  other  two  were  chimpanzees, 

ship's     company.       Recovering     from     his 

swoon,  he  found  himself  lying  on  the  shore, 
alone  ;  not  a  human  being  near  him,  not 
a  human  habitation  in  sight.  Gathering 
his  scattered  senses  together,  he  walked 
slowly  forward  into  the  interior  of  the 
island  ;  when  suddenly  he  saw  a  human  form 
at  an  immense  distance, — he  made  for  it — the 

invited,  ate  at  the  same  table,  with  unfailing  j  man,  or  savage,  fled — he  pursued — the  savage 
grace  and  distinction.  The  master's  love  for ;  darted  like  lightning  in  and  out  among  the 
the  two  little  Chimpanzees  nlkd  the  rest  of  |  trees,  until  at  last  Marasquiu  found  him- 


male  and  female,  called  Mococo  and  Saimira  ; 
mild,  melancholy,  intelligent,  and  beautiful, 
deeply  enamoured  of  each  other,  perfectly 
well-bred,  and  holding  the  poet's  place  in 
the  world  of  apes.  Mococo  was  Marasquin's 
"groom."  He  waited  at  table,  changed  the 
plates,  poured  out  the  wine,  and,  when 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  MONKEY-KING. 


[November  7,  1857.]       439 


self  at  the  spot  where  he  first  beheld  him. 
But  the  savage  had  disappeared.  While  look- 
ing about  for  him  and  searching  for  his  trail, 
something  large,  supple,  and  hairy,  dropped 
from  the  tree  at  his  feet.     It  was  an  ape  ; 
who,  putting  himself  before  him,  seemed  to 
forbid  his  further  advance.      Not  liking  this, 
Marasquin  broke  off  a  bough  with  which  he 
advanced  threateningly.      The   brute   chat- 
tered and  grinned,  then  uttered  a  peculiar 
cry.     In  the    twinkling    of    an    eye,   from 
all  points  of  the  compass,  trooped  a  crowd 
of  monkeys,  darkening  the   horizon  like  a 
cloud,  and  forming  a  phalanx  round  Maras- 
quin.   impenetrable    and    invincible.      Dead 
with   heat  and  thirst    he   tried  to  retreat, 
but  the  monkeys  pressed  thicker  and  closer 
upon  him,  so  that  he  could  not  stir.  On  every 
bough,  on  every  inch  of  ground, — hanging, 
trailing,  walking,  leaping, — in  every  attitude 
of  motion  ;  of  every  size,  shade,  and  species, 
they  surrounded  him,  ready  to  tear  him  to 
pieces  on  the  smallest  pretext.     At  last,  one 
— a  baboon — advancing  from  the  company, 
came  closer  yet  to  Marasquin.      Picking  up 
the  stick  which  he  had  let  fall,  he  gravely, 
before  them  all,  gave  the  unhappy  ex-keeper 
such  a  flogging  that  he  would  soon  have  de- 
parted this  life  had  it  been  prolonged.     But 
a  thought  struck  him.   His  bright  red  cravat 
— bought  at  a  costly  price  a  short  time  ago — 
that  would  do.     He  tore  it  off  his  neck  and 
flung  it  in  the  midst  of  his  persecutors.     The 
stratagem    succeeded.     What   monkey   ever 
resisted  finery  and  red  ?     While  the  entire 
mass  were  occupied  in  fighting  for  the  cravat, 
he  ran  off,  often  looking  back  and  finding  to  his 
joy  that    no    monkeys    followed   him.     At 
last  he  reached  a  beautiful  little   lake,  to 
which  he   rushed,  half   frantic  with  thirst 
and  delight ;  he  knelt  down  on  the  brink, 
and  drank  such  draughts  as  the  gods  never 
received  from  Hebe.     On  raising  his  head 
he  found  the   whole  lake  lined  wi£h  apes, 
all  drinking  and  all  kneeling  like  himself. 
They  had  followed  him  silently  upon  the  trees, 
swinging  from  branch  to  branch  like  squirrels, 
and  noiseless  as  birds.     Alarming  as  his  ad- 
venture  was  becoming,  he  could  not  help 
laughing  aloud  at  the  grotesqueness  of  their 
imitation.     Immediately    all    the    monkeys 
laughed    aloud,   too ;    and    Marasquin  was 
almost  deafened.     Some  fruit  grew  tempting, 
but  too  high  for  him  to  reach.     He  flung  a 
stone  to  bring  some  down  ;  and  every  monkey 
flung  a  stone.     In  a  moment  the  ground  was 
strewn  with  luscious  fruit  and  broken  boughs  ; 
all  the  monkeys  eating  exactly  as  Marasquin 
ate, — tearing  off  the  rind,  rejecting  the  seeds ; 
choosing,  selecting,  like  so    many  distorted 
images  of  himself. 

Night  drew  on.  Hoping  to  profit  by  this 
spirit  of  imitation,  Marasquin  made  himself 
a  bed  of  leaves  ;  and  all  the  monkeys  made 
themselves  beds  of  leaves.  He  then  laid 
down,  stretched  Ms  arms  and  yawned  ;  and, 
turning  round,  pretended  to  sleep.  But  the 


monkeys  were  not  to  be  caught.  They 
stretched  their  arms  and  yawned  ;  yet,  not  an 
ape  among  them  closed  his  eyes  ;  on  the  con- 
trary, they  gathered  closer  and  watched  him 
with  redoubled  vigilance.  In  about  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  two  great  orang-outangs — each  of 
which  could  have  conquered  ten  unarmed 
men — came  on  each  .  side  of  him.  They 
examined  him  all  over,  smelt  him,  looked 
in  his  hair  after  the  manner  of  mon- 
keys, poked  his  eyes,  pulled  off  his  shoes, 
which  they  tried  to  fit  on  to  their  hands  ; 
then  pulled  off  his  stockings,  whereby  they 
got  to  his  feet.  They  were  charmed  !  They 
played  with  his  toes,  doubled  them,  un- 
doubled  them,  grinning  and  chattering  with 
delight  to  find  the  monster  as  well  made  as 
themselves ;  they  got  hold  of  his  arms 
and  used  them  in  Dutch-doll  fashion. 
Finally  they  proceeded  to  strip  him.  Maras- 
quin knew  that  this  would  be  the  signal 
for  death.  He  glided  his  hands  into  his 
waistcoat-pockets  and  seized  his  pistols. 
Another  moment  and  his  tormentors  would 
have  been  shot ;  but  he  would  have  stood 
revealed  and  torn  to  pieces,  when  suddenly  a 
long  sharp  whistle  was  heard,  and  eric  !  eric  ! 
— not  an  ape  was  to  be  seen  ! 

A  night  of  awful  fear  passed.  Day,  at 
last,  broke.  Marasquin  followed  the  lake  and 
came  to  its  outlet,  where  he  found  the  'shore 
strewn  with  half-opened  oysters.  The  mon- 
keys had  opened  them  by  watching  when  the 
oyster  gaped,  then  flinging  a  small  pebble 
between  the  shells.  Polydore  profited  by  the 
invention,  ate  five  or  six  dozen,  sank  down  on 
the  strand,  and  slept  for  twenty-four  hours. 
He  dreamed.  He  dreamed  of  being  still  sur- 
rounded and  persecuted  by  these  detestable 
apes.  He  seized  his  pistols  and  fired.  The  noise 
awoke  him,  and  he  found  himself,  in  truth, 
again  surrounded,  his  discharged  pistol  in  his 
hand,  and  a  dead  monkey  at  his  feet.  Ano- 
ther was  wounded.  The  monkeys — all  of  whom 
were  of  a  gentle,  playful,  and  innocuous  kind 
— after  great  lamentations,  retired,  carrying 
their  wounded  comrade  mournfully  in  the 
midst.  Whereupon  Marasquin  had  a  fit  of 
conscience,  and  reproached  himself  with  mur- 
der. But  he  had  got  rid  of  his  companions. 
Left  alone  he  wandered  again  into  the 
island,  hoping  at  last  to  find  some  traces  of 
humanity.  He  went  on,  meeting  nothing, 
until  he  came  upon  a  colossal  skeleton  swing- 
ing in  the  wind  ;  the  skeleton  of  a  malefactor 
who  had  been  hanged,  and  left  there  as  a 
warning.  Surely  here  was  man  and  man's 
work  !  No  ;  it  was  still  a  monkey  world. 
The  skeleton  was  'that  of  a  huge  mandrill ; 
one  of  the  largest  species  of  ape. 

At  last,  however,  still  wandering  forward, 
Polydore  saw  smoke  and  fire.  Here,  of 
course,  was  man.  Overjoyed  and  grateful  he 
walked  towards  it,  when,  arrested  by  a  most 
singular  noise,  he  concealed  himself  behind  a 
tree,  and  beheld  an  assemblage  of  apes, 
dressed  in  the  shreds  and  rags  of  the  English. 


440      [November  7. 1837.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


naval  uniform.  In  the  midst  was  a  huge 
baboon  with  an  admiral's  cocked  hat  on  his 
head.  It  was  Karabouffi  the  First,  passing 
judgment,  in  the  midst  of  the  court,  on  some 
misdemeanants.  Farther  off  was  a  row  of 
houses,  which  had  been  evidently  pillaged 
and  destroyed.  A  light  touch  on  his  arm 
recalled  Marasquin  from  his  wondering  re- 
verie. He  turned ;  and  Saimira,  making  a 
sign  of  silence,  led  him  gently  away.  Stoop- 
ing her  head  to  show  him  where  he  was  also 
to  stoop  his,  she  led  him  in  safety  from  that 
frightful  assembly,  until  they  came  to  some 
cages.  Strongly  secured  in  one  was  the  un- 
fortunate Mococo.  Saimira  asked  plaintively 
to  have  that  cage  opened,  and  Marasquin 
comprehended  and  obeyed.  The  bolt  was 
shot  back,  and  Mococo  was  free.  The  lovers 
embraced  ;  but,  even  in  the  midst  of  his  joy, 
Mococo  rushed  to  Marasquin,  and  hung  about 
him  like  a  child ;  caressing  and  embracing 
him  with  eager  affection.  Their  tenderness 
was  at  its  height  when  Saimira  heard  a  noise. 
She  hastily  thrust  Mococo  back  into  his  cage, 
and  motioned  Polydore  to  secure  it  as  before. 
She  then  signed  to  him  to  follow  her,  and  led 
him  to  a  grotto  ;  where,  by  looks  and  gestures 
as  eloquent  as  words,  she  assured  him  he  was 
safe.  But,  notwithstanding  Sa'imira's  atten- 
tions, and  notwithstanding  his  terror  of  the 
apes  he  had  escaped,  the  tedium  of  his  situa- 
tion gained  upon  Polydore.  After  a  week's 
confinement  he  ventured  forth,  directing  his 
steps  to  the  fire  and  smoke,  which  again  he 
sees  at  a  distance.  He  gains  it ;  and  finds  it 
to  be  the  crater  of  a  volcano,  round  which 
innumerable  apes  are  standing  in  perfect 
silence,  throwing  in  leaves,  sticks,  branches, 
trees — all  they  can  find  wherewith  to  feed  it. 
In  a  moment  their  silence  is  exchanged  for  a 
simultaneous  cry  ;  and  once  more  Marasquin 
is  in  their  hands.  As  they  seize  him,  push, 
hustle,  and  ill-treat  him,  he  is  enabled  to  per- 
ceive that  the  buttons  on  the  uniform,  in 
shreds  and  rags  of  which  they  are  all  fantas- 
tically dressed,  bear  the  impress  of  the  Hal- 
cyon— Vice-Admiral  Campbell's  vessel. 

Karabouffi  appears,  accompanied  by  his 
ministers,  two  kindred  orang-outangs  ;  and 
the  punishment  of  his  old  enemy  is  ordered. 
He  is  seized  by  a  chain  of  monkeys  and  swung 
madly  over  the  crater  ;  higher,  higher,  faster 
faster,  the  fierce  flames  leaping  up,  the  fierce 
forms  round  him  growing  darker  and  more 
frantic  ;  higher,  faster,  madder,  until  at  last, 
when  the  swing  is  at  the  wildest,  he  is  flung 
from  the  chain,  and  falls  bleeding  and  bruised 
on  the  ground.  He  is  not  suffered  to  swoon 
at  leisure,  but  is  dragged  up  and  forced  into 
one  of  the  houses  he  has  seen  before.  The 
most  pitiable  scene  of  devastation  meets  him. 
Windows  broken,  furniture  smashed,  torn, 
and  heaped  in  disorder  about  the  rooms, 
fragments  of  ladies'  dresses,  rags  of  British 
uniform,  books,  all  one  mass  of  ruin  and 
confusion,  as  if  the  place  had  been  delivered 
into  the  hands  of  madmen.  As  indeed  it 


had  been  ;  "  the  eternal  madmen  of  the  uni- 
verse," as  Marasquin  calls  his  captors.  He 
is  thrust  into  a  room,  where  Karabouffi 
appears  covered  with  feathers,  like  some  mon- 
strous ogreish  bird.  On  a  nearer  examination, 
Polydore  discovers  that  the  feathers  are 
quill  pens,  which,  in  exaggerated  imitation  of 
clerks  and  secretaries,  he  has  stuck  about 
him  wherever  a  quill  would  stick.  At  a  sign 
and  a  sound,  the  former  keeper  is  buffetted 
into  a  smaller  room,  where  two  monkeys  are 
already  at  work,  busily  scrawling  over  sheets 
of  paper,  which  then  are  caught  by  two  older 
monkeys,  signed,  sealed,  and  thrown  away. 
Marasquin  is  ordered  to  do  the  like,  and  for 
thrice  twenty-four  hours  is  kept  unremit- 
tingly at  his  labours,  as  secretary  to  his 
Majesty,  Karabouffi  the  First. 

It  was  hard  work.  If  at  any  moment 
the  poor  human  creature  was  failing  from 
want  of  sleep  and  weariness,  the  attendant 
apes  pinched  and  scratched  him,  and  pulled 
his  hair,  and  drummed  on  his  back,  and 
would  have  gone  to  still  worse  extremities 
had  he  not  roused  himself,  and  resumed 
his  labours.  On  the  fourth  day  a  bell 
rang,  and  all  the  world  rushed  out,  Maras- 
quin with  them ;  expecting  surely  to  find 
a  human  hand  this  time  near  his.  No ! 
An  ape  had  pulled  the  dinner-bell,  and  apes 
assembled  to  dine  at  the  sound.  Marasquin 
followed  the  stream,  and  found  Karabouffi 
and  his  ministers  at  table.  They  suffered 
him  to  eat  with  them,  but  he  relished  neither 
their  food  nor  their  companionship,  and, 
profiting  by  their  pre-occupation,  he  rambled 
through  the  apartments. 

He  came  upon  the  kitchens :  half-dead 
with  hunger  as  he  was,  the  discovery  made 
him  forget  his  miseries.  But  the  court  of 
the  Monkey-king  had  been  before  him,  and 
the  larder  was  empty.  He  found,  though, 
some  closets,  locked  and  secured  ;  he  opened 
them,  and  fell  into  the  midst  of  a  world  of 
edible  wealth.  A  very  mine  of  potted  meats, 
essences,  jams,  preserves,  wines,  and,  though 
not  edible,  yet  valuable,  wax  candles.  He 
flung  himself  upon  the  viands,  and  devoured 
the  meal  of  a  dozen  men  in  a  trice.  But,  not 
to  be  greedy,  he  presented  his  majesty  with 
a  colossal  pot  of  quince  marmalade ;  and 
Karabouffi  the  First  plunged  himself  up  to 
his  shoulders  therein.  By  an  inadvertence 
the  closet  was  forced  open,  and  the  monkey- 
world  began  the  pillage.  Marasquin  had 
broken  the  neck  off  a  bottle  of  wine,  and 
drank  the  contents  ;  and  all  the  apes  broke 
the  necks  off  all  the  bottles  of  wine  they  could 
find,  and  drank  the  contents  too.  Here  was 
a  scene  !  The  monkey-world  verging  into  a 
state  of  universal  drunkenness  !  Night  was 
coming  on  ;  it  was  growing  dark ;  Polydore 
was  becoming  mad  with  horror,  when  he 
remembered  the  wax  candles.  He  lighted 
one  ;  and  the  apes,  seizing  the  whole  store, 
lighted  every  one  in  imitation.  After  nearly 
setting  fire  to  the  house,  they  seemed  to 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  MONKEY-KING. 


[NoTember7,1857.]      441 


remember  a  past  scene,  and,  sticking  them  in 
the  chandeliers,  lighted  the  salon  for  a  ball. 
So  they  had  a  ball,  and  Polydore  had  to 
play  for  them.  One  ape  thrummed  the 
piano,  another  the  accordion ;  Polydore, 
after  having  been  beaten  about  the  head,  was 
forced  to  attempt  the  guitar. 

Worse  than  thia.  When  the  amuse- 
ments of  the  evening  grew  rather  slack,  the 
unhappy  man  was  ordered  to  enliven  the 
monkey-guests  by  gymnastics  ;  much  of  the 
same  description  of  exercises  as  men  force 
from  monkeys.  In  vain  he  refused  ;  he  was 
beaten  till  he  was  black  and  blue.  In  vaiu 
he  was  unsuccessful,  and  fell  instead  of 
climbing  to  the  top  of  la  perche ;  he  was 
beaten  again.  He  had  a  taste  now  of  cap- 
tivity, indeed,  and  knew  better  than  he  had 
ever  done  before,  what  moukies  feel  when 
they  fall  into  the  hands  of  men. 

Karabouffi  had  mysteriously  quitted  the 
ball  some  time  ago.     He  now  returned,  bear- 
ing on  his  arm  Saimira,  weeping,  plaintive,  | 
and  disconsolate.     It  was  plain  that  the  king ! 
had  divorced  the  lovers,   and    forced    poor , 
faithful  Sa'imira  to  himself.     That  was  the  i 
reason,  then,  why  the  unhappy  Mococo  was ! 
confined  ;  that  the  monarch  might  both  feed  \ 
his  revenge,   and   hold    the    threat    of   his 
hostage  over  Sa'imira,  should  she  be  recalci- 
trant and  disobliging.    The  little  chimpanzee 
could  only  look  hei\  tender    plaintive  sym- 
pathy with  her  former  master,  undergoing 
these  indignities.     At  last  a  thought  seemed 
to    strike    her.      She    became    gay,    lively, 
coquettish  ;    roused  the  jealousy  of  Kara- 
bouffi ;  flirted  openly  before  his  eyes  ;    until 
the  king,  in  a  passion,  dragged  her  rudely 
from  the  ball-room  ;    and    the  whole  court 
fled  in  his  train.     This  was  Saimira's  mode 
of  delivering  Marasquin. 

To  barricade  himself  in  the  verandah,  as 
this  portion  of  the  house  was  called,  was  not 
a  work  of  time.  In  ten  minutes  Polydore 
'was  safe  from  all  attacks  from  the  monkey- 
world  outside.  He  had  food  and  lights  here  ; 
what  more  did  he  require  ?  He  laid  himself 
down  and  slept  as  tranquilly  as  if  he  had 
been  in  his  apartment  at  Macao.  The  next 
day  he  ascended  a  small  spiral  staircase,  which 
led  to  Admiral  Campbell's  private  study. 
Looking  out  through  the  lattice-work,  he 
saw  the  whole  army  of  apes  drawn  up  about 
his  castle,  strongly  armed  with  sticks  and 
bludgeons,  silently,  and  patiently,  and  watch- 
fully, besieging  him.  But  he  knew  that  he 
was  safe,  and  despised  them.  Searching 
about,  he  found  Lord  Campbell's  journal, 
where,  among  other  things  too  long  to  men- 
tion here,  he  learned  the  mystery  of  the 
skeleton.  It  was  that  of  a  mandrill,  the 
former  monkey-king  of  the  island,  who,  dis- 
puting the  admiral's  possession,  had  been  first 
shot,  then  hung  as  a  terror  to  all  recusants 
and  rebels.  The  journal  mentioned  where 
the  rifle  was  placed,  and  Marasquin  thus  saw 
himself  in  possession  of  a  formidable  weapon 


of  offence.  On  the  strength  of  the  good  news 
he  went  to  dine.  But,  a  new  difficulty  had 
arisen — there  was  no  water  to  be  had ;  and 
Polydore  was  beginning  to  suffer  from  the 
strong  and  fiery  wine  of  the  British  sailor. 
This  difficulty  though  not  immediately  press- 
ing, was  not  wholly  \ despicable.  Peeping 
again  through  the  lattice-work,  Polydore 
beheld  the  besieging  army  still  at  their  posts, 
but  with  an  increase  of  weapons.  Before 
each  ape,  lay  a  heap  of  stones. 

Days  passed.  Polydore  portioned  out  his 
provisions,  and  found  that  he  could  live  for 
three  years,  at  the  least,  on  the  Vice- 
Admiral's  stores.  But  for  water  ?  Not  a 
drop !  Champagne  and  fiery  wines  in 
abundance,  but  of  pure  water — not  a  drop. 
This  wine-drinking  made  the  temperate 
keeper  ill  and  mad.  After  about  a  month  of 
it,  in  a  fit  of  frenzy,  he  rushed  to  the  arm- 
chest,  seized  thirty  rifles,  loaded  them  all, 
broke  out  two  loopholes  in  the  wall,  and 
prepared  to  deal  death  on  all  who  opposed 
him  in  the  search  for  water.  But  what  a 
sight  met  his  eyes  !  He  had  last  looked  on 
two  or  three  thousand  apes  ;  now,  there  were 
twenty  thousand,  at  least,  and  their  stone 
heaps  had  risen  into  mountains,  piled  up 
higher  than  the  top  of  the  bell-tower.  Mad- 
dened and  in  desperation,  Polydore  fired : 
and  the  battle  began.  Each  rifle  was  loaded 
with  six  balls,  and  each  shot  slew  multitudes  ; 
but  multitudes  appeared  to  take  the  places 
of  those  who  fell ;  while,  like  hail,  came 
thundering  down  showers  of  huge  stones, 
battering  walls  and  roofs,  and  threatening  to 
end  the  siege  in  quicker  time  than  was  agree- 
able to  the  besieged.  However,  night  came 
on,  and  a  truce  came  with  it. 

Marasquin  was  in  a  state  of  habilimentary 
destitution.  His  clothes  had  left  him,  even 
to  the  last  shred,  and  he  was  dying  of 
cold.  Turning  over  the  few  chests  yet  un- 
rifled  in  the  apartment,  he  came  upon  the 
magnificent  skin  of  Campbell's  slaughtered 
mandrill.  The  very  thing  for  the  poor 
naked,  shivering  combatant.  He  thrust  his 
arms  into  the  mandrill's  arms,  his  legs  into 
the  mandrill's  legs,  he  pulled  the  hairy  scalp 
over  his  forehead,  then  sewed  himself  up 
with  twine — an  ape  complete. 

When  day  dawned  he  ascended  to  his  post ; 
but  a  few  minutes'  bombardment  set  the 
question  of  the  siege  at  rest ;  the  walls  were 
falling  about  his  ears.  Kesolved  to  die  like 
a  man,  he  seized  a  Malay  kreese  in  one  hand 
and  a  revolver  in  the  other,  then  leaped  from 
the  verandah  into  the  midst  of  his  enemies. 
But  what  a  miracle  !  The  army,  instead  of 
falling  on  him  and  tearing  him  to  pieces,  slunk 
back  in  reverent  dismay.  It  was  a  panic — a 
superstitious  awe.  After  a  moment  Karabouffi, 
crawling  on  all-fours,  and  full  of  the  most 
terrible  fear,  writhed  and  crept  up  to  him  at 
the  head  of  the  prostrate  forces.  He  licked 
his  hands  and  feet,  and  all  the  army  licked 
his  hands  and  feet.  He  abased  himself 


442      [November?,  1»?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


[Conducted  by 


in  a  kind  of  mute  adoration  mingled  with 
abject  terror,  and  the  army  abased  itself  in 
like  manner.  Polydore  saw  it  all.  He  was 
their  Fetisch,  their  Avatar,  their  King  Arthur 
Redivivus — their  resuscitated  Mandrill  Mo- 
narch !  What  could  be  done,  but  accept  the 
r61e  which  chance  and  superstition  had 
thrust  upon  him  1  Karabouffi  resigned ; 
and  Polydore  reigned  in  his  stead.  His 
first  act  of  regal  power  was  to  reunite 
Salmira  and  Mococo,  in  spite  of  the  ex- 
monarch's  jealousy  and  despair  ;  and,  his  first 
of  prudence  was,  to  escape  from  his  body- 
guards, one  heavy  night  full  of  electricity, 
when  every  monkey  slept  as  if  dead,  and  to 
bury  the  bones  of  his  defunct  self. 

Time  passed  on,  and  monarch  and  subjects 
were  mutually  well  pleased  and  on  eminently 
fraternal  terms  ;  when,  one  day,  as  Polydore 
was  enforcing  some  useful  lesson  on  his  court, 
crack  !  went  the  mantle  of  royalty  behind,  and 
with  it  his  chances  of  monkey  deification.  After 
an  agonising  day  the  rent  was  repaired  at 
night — but  not  very  stoutly  or  enduringly. 
A  disturbed  dream  completed  the  catastrophe, 
and  behold  Polydore  Marasquin  with  bis 
monkey-skin  in  two  !  His  reign  was  over  ; 
his  life  would  also  soon  be  over,  for  there 
was  no  possibility  of  sewing  himself  up  again ; 
and  Polydore,  without  his  skin,  was  a  demon 
and  no  demigod  to  the  monkey  world.  What 
should  he  do  ?  What  could  he  do,  indeed, 
but  fortify  himself  once  more  within  the 
verandah,  while  his  subjects  assembled  in 
troops  and  howled  forth  their  fond  dismay  at 
his  disappearance  ? 

At  last,  out  of  guiding  love,  they  began 
their  bombardment  as  of  old,  and  Poly- 
dore felt  that  his  hours  were  numbered.  The 
walls  were  cracking  ;  the  roof  was  falling  ; 
death,  in  the  shape  of  twenty  thousand  fm-ious 
apes,  pressed  close  upon  him — when  boom! 
boom!  boom!  three  cannon-shots.  After 
waiting  and  watching,  peering  curiously  this 
way  and  that,  Karabouffi  gave  his  signal — 
the 'same  long,  shrill,  strange  whistle  which 
Polydore  had  heard  before  ;  and,  swift  as  a 
flash  of  lightning,  the  whole  monkey  world 
vanished.  Not  a  trace  was  to  be  seen ;  not 
the  tip  of  a  tail  nor  the  point  of  an  ear, 
where  two  minutes  before  had  swarmed  an 
army  of  twenty  thousand  howling,  fighting, 
desperate,  and  king-deserted  apes.  The  cannon 
announced  the  return  of  Admiral  Campbell 
from  a  cruise  after  the  Malay  pirates,  and 
Polydore  Marasquin  was  saved.  Returning 
to  Macao,  he  married,  became  rich,  was  in- 
dependent and  happy;  but  often  he  was 
heard  to  sigh  to  himself,  and  whisper  softly  : 
"  Ah  !  when  I  was  an  ape  ! "  He  wrote  his 
"emotions,"  and  made  Le"on  Gozlan  his 
editor. 

M.  Le"on  Gozlan,  in  a  word,  is  an  excellent 
French  writer,  who  has  written  an  excellent 
and  odd  book.  It  has  been  published  at 
Pari^by  M.  Michel  Le"vy,  under  the  title  of 
Les  Emotions  de  Polydore  Marasquin;  and 


the  perusal  of  these  emotions  of  Polydore 
Marasquin  has  led  to  the  present  account  of 
the  Monkey  King. 


THE  TWO  JANES. 

I  DWELL  in  Coketown,  but  I  am  thankful 
to  say  I  do  not  work  for  a  Bounderby.  All 
day  long — summer  and  winter,  for  six  days 
a-week— I  stand  behind  a  stocking-frame 
watching  its  unvaried  movement  and  listen- 
ing to  its  monotonous  march.  Under  my 
feet  the  hugh  floor  trembles  with  the  roar  of 
the  machinery,  and  the  ceiling  vibrates  over 
my  head.  Visitors  who  come  to  see  us — • 
thirty,  forty  in  a  room  at  our  continual  toil 
— go  away  dazed  and  deafened,  and  athirst. 
There  are  thin  fibres  floating  about  the 
atmosphere  in  which  we  live,  they  say,  that 
half  frightens  them.  For  our  part  we  know 
nothing  of  this  ;  but  when  we  get  out  into 
the  summer  evening,  we  feel  a  change  such 
as,  perhaps,  no  riches  of  man  could  purchase, 
save  at  the  cost  price, — the  blood  from  his 
cheeks,  the  flesh  from  his  bones,  the  light 
from  his  eyes,  which  is  what,  for  the  most 
part,  each  one  of  us  has  had  to  pay  for  it.  The 
mere  fresh  air  and  the  blue  sky  thus  gladdens 
us,  and  not  any  peculiar  beauty  of  our  Coke- 
town  streets  which,  although  clean  and  neat 
are  red  and  staring,  and  bear  the  appearance 
of  having  been  built  yesterday ;  nor  have 
they  any  garden-ground  whatever  attached 
to  them  beyond  that  which  may  cling  to  the 
scrapers ;  no  house  which  we  workmen 
inhabit  is,  in  thickness,  more  than  a  single 
brick  ;  but  there  is  no  such  thing — even  in. 
the  outskirts — as  a  cottage. 

Every  man  who  can  afford  it,  however,  has 
a  little  plot  of  ground  without  the  town,  the 
merest  strip  of  kitchen-garden,  perhaps,  but 
which  bit,  never  so  small,  has  got  au  arbour  at 
one  end  of  it.  This  is  a  tool-house  as  well,  to  be 
sure,  but  therein  we  sit  after  mill-hours,  each 
with  his  pipe  in  his  mouth,  and  from  fifteen  to 
twenty  of  us  may-be  to  the  acre.  They  call 
mine — because  I  have  a  little  melon-frame 
belonging  to  me — the  lodge  iu  the  garden  of 
cucumbers.  It  is  partly  this,  I  think,  that 
gives  the  Coketowners  such  a  passiou  for  the 
country  ;  for,  there  are  folks  in  other  places 
worked  as  hard  as  we,  who  are  content  with 
their  public-house  and  skittle-ground  all  the 
year  through,  though  the  sun  shine  never  so 
brightly  and  all  the  Jand be  in  leaf.  Forme, 
who  work  on  my  own  account  and  hire  my 
stocking-frame,  I  cannot  help  playing  the 
truant  now  and  then,  and  running  right  away 
into  the  woods  and  fields.  One  Wednesday 
out  of  three,  perhaps,  in  the  summer  months 
I  spend  in  this  fashion.  Rising  at  five  I  take 
with  me  a  poetry  book — of  which  I  have 
several — or  one  of  Mr.  Hewitt's  pleasant 
breezy  volumes  ;  and,  wrapping  up  a  great 
hunch  of  bread  and  cheese  in  my  pocket- 
handkerchief,  am  furnished  and  provisioned 
for  the  whole  day.  I  have  always  some  place 


Charles  IHckenj.l 


THE  TWO  JANES. 


[November  7, 1357.]      443 


in  view  as  my  journey's  end ;  but  I  like  to 
linger  upon  the  way,  stopping  as  long  as  it 
pleases  me  wherever  I  will,  and  always 
bathing  in  the  first  clear  stream  I  come  to. 
After  that,  I  quite  forget  I  am  a  frame- 
worker,  and  believe  that  my  calling  is  to 
build  the  finest  possible  castles  in  the  air : 
which  I  set  about  doing  at  once,  very  as- 
siduously. My  final  intention,  however,  is 
generally  to  capture,  in  reality,  some  ruined 
hall  or  abbey,  of  which  there  are  but  a  few 
in  Coketown,  and  to  try  to  people  them 
again  with  their  old  inhabitants.  I  read 
about  them  first,  for  this  purpose,  in  books, 
at  the  Mechanics'  Institute,  before  I  start,  and 
then  I  need  no  help  from  the  professional 
guides  about  these  places,  whom  indeed  I 
could  not  afford  to  pay ;  only  I  give 
them  twopence  or  so,  sometimes,  to  let 
me  go  in  by  myself,  and  stay  within  the 
grand  old  tottering  walls  as  long  as  I  will. 
Some  ruins  are  quite  free  and  open  to  all, 
which  is  a  boon,  to  such  as  I,  greater 
than  the  good  proprietors  can  possibly 
imagine. 

There  are  the  skeletons  of  two  ancient 
mansions,  in  particular,  near  Coketown, 
which  are  my  especial  delight.  The  homes 
of  two  of  the  fairest  women  of  the  olden 
time,  and  I  have  often  wondered  how  it 
happened  that  Mr.  Alfred  Tennyson  (and 
long  life  to  him  !)  should  not  have  beheld  one 
of  them  at  least,  in  his  famous  Dream.  When 
one  has  got  off  the  dusty  high-road,  the  way 
to  Bradgate  Hall  is  very  pleasant :  through 
leafy  lanes,  where  there  is  scarcely  room  for 
the  market-carts  to  pass  each  other,  with  gate- 
ways here  and  there,  disclosing  delicious 
peeps  of  meadow,  wood,  and  upland.  By  the 
side  of  shady  pools  with  islands  in  them,  and 
waterfowl  that  skirl  over  the  still  surface, 
with  strange"  cries,  as  you  pass  by.  Small 
villages  quite  hidden  in  green  hollows  till 
one  comes  close  upon  them,  whose  cottages 
have  honeysuckle  porches  where  women  sit 
and  spin — I  could,  myself,  work  all  the  year 
round  in  that  fashion  without  a  wish  for 
holiday — and  old  folks  smoke  their  pipes 
contentedly.  And  long,  white,  low-built 
roadside  inns  with  cool  brick  floors  and  the 
large  room  for  picnic  visitors.  Then,  at 
last  comes  the  park  itself  of  Bradgate, 
although  its  tower  upon  the  hill  has  stood 
up  well  in  sight  of  you  for  miles. 

I  take  the  second  gateway  on  the  right, 
because  the  path  there  strays  at  once  among 
the  oak-trees.  These  are  'not  very  tall,  but 
large  in  growth  and  old  enough,  I  doubt  not, 
to  have  sheltered  her.  Tis  likely  that  she 
walked  here  many  times  in  her  young  days 
— days  that  were  fated  never  to  be  old — 
and  studied  her  dear  books  amongst  these 
shadows.  How  beautiful  (all  chronicles 
agree  about  her),  how  good  she  was  !  What 
stores  of  learning  lay  in  that  little  head 
which  the  axe  laid  low!  The  streamlet 
here  is  sluggish,  for  the  long  drought  has 


robbed  it  of  its  force,  but  doubtless  sang  the 
self-same  song  to  her,  three  centuries  ago, 
which  it  now  sings  to  my  mechanic  ears.  An 
old  thought,  as  1  fancy,  but  a  very  solemn 
one.  She  sang,  herself,  like  any  nightingale, 
until  her  cruel  father  bade  that  sweet  voice 
cease,  for  there  was  no  singing  after  great- 
ness was  once  thrust  upon  her.  Now, 
the  deer  crop  the  herbage  with  swift 
stealthy  bite,,  and  eyes  cast  timidly  behind 
them  ;  but  they  had  no  fear,  I  warrant, 
when  her  little  feet  came  tripping  up 
this  path  ;  for  she  was  loved,  they  say,  by 
every  living  thing.  This  ruined  chamber 
looking  to  the  south,  was  once,  perhaps, 
Lady  Jane's — I  like  at  least  to  think  so  ;  it 
was  from  this  very  window  that  she  looked 
forth  upon  that  hunting-party,  starting  with 
hawk  and  hound  to  slay  her  favorites.  Here, 
instead  of  joining  in  their  sports,  she  com- 
muned with  the  soul  of  the  divine  Plato, . 
Roger  Ascham  says  (the  Pheedo  I  have 
read  myself  in  English,  but  could  make 
nothing  out  of  it).  Here  is  the  chapel  where 
her  pious  knees  knelt  often  on  the  cold  grey 
stones,  and  I  should  like  to  fancy  where  they 
knelt,  but  that  the  place  is  locked  and  needs 
a  silver  key  to  open  the  door.  The  Tiltyard  is, 
however,  free  to  all ;  the  places  where  the 
high-born  dames  did  sit,  the  entrance  for  the 
knights  on  either  side;  the  level  space  where 
they  met  lance  to  lance  ;  the  slopes  where 
the  eager  common  people  stood,  these  are  all 
plain  to  me  ;  she,  may  be,  was  forced  to  sit 
there  with  the  rest  and  hear  the  shock  of 
arms,  and  see  both  horse  and  man  go  down ; 
but  I  can  scarce  imagine  that.  Sometimes, 
perhaps,  she  had  to  give  away  the  prize  as 
queen  of  the  tourney ;  the  duke  and  the 
duchess  on  either  side  quick  to  find  fault, 
and  old  Northumberland  appraising  her, 
how  much  the  girl  was  worth  to  him  and 
his.  I  eat  my  bread  and  cheese  upon  this 
spot,  and  conjure  in  my  mind  these  noble 
personages  of  the  far  back  time  to  life  again, 
whether  they  will  or  no.  I  dare  say,  Guild- 
ford  Dudley  tilted  here,  the  handsome  weak 
young  lord  ;  she  must  have  been  pleased 
indeed,  to  put  the  conqueror's  wreath  upon 
him  and  to  find  him  safe  !  Did  they  plight 
troth,  I  wonder,  in  this  wood  1  Married 
at  sixteen,  in  three  months  made  sovereign 
lady  of  the  realm,  and  in  nine  murdered  on 
the  scaffold  !  I  like  to  be  made  sad  with 
thinking  of  these  things  so  long,  long  past. 
She  went  to  Heaven  the  quicker,  and  inhe- 
rited by  right,  I  doubt  not,  a  far  better 
crown ;  I  sometimes  think  that  she  must 
know  I  take  delight  to  come  to  this  fair 
scene  because  of  her.  Perhaps  it  pleases 
her,  even  where  she  is,  that  a  poor  frame- 
working  lad  like  me,  who  never  saw  her 
picture,  is  yet  gladdened  by  the  mere  remem- 
brance of  her,  in  the  ruins  of  her  ancient 
home  ;  twice  have  I  lain  down  and  slept  in 
that  same  grassy  tiltyard  and  dreamed  of 
her  each  time,  and  so  in  some  sort  I  may 


444       IN oTcmbcr  7,1857-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOilDS. 


[Conducted  by 


say  her  presence  still  haunts  old  Bradgate 
Hall. 

I  might  go  on  to  Kerby  from  this  place, 
but  that  I  hoard  my  pleasures;  much  as  a 
hungry  and  hardworking  bee,  who  having 
found  some  bell-flower  exceeding  sweet, 
lurks  within  it  for  half  a  summer's  day, 
murmuring  delight,  and  swung  to  sleep 
by  the  drowsy  wind.  I  grudge  the  swift 
•winged  hours  that  bring  the  night  upon 
these  holidays  of  mine,  and  make  the  very 
most  of  every  joy  ;  no  sense  of  happiness 
escapes  me,  not  a  single  drop  of  dew  which 
evening  shakes  from  her  dark  wing  to  recom- 
pense me,  nor  the  cool  fresh  feel  of  a  footstep 
dragged  through  the  dewy  grass.  And  when 
at  last  I  catch  sight  of  the  tall  Coketown 
chimneys,  and  hear  the  roar  which  I  must 
help  to  swell,  the  next  day  and  the  next  for  ( 
three  long  weeks,  I  whisper  to  myself,  "  there  J 
is  Kerby  Castle  still — to  come." 

This  is  by  no  means  so  grand  a  place  as 
Bradgate,  but  I  seem  to  love  it  quite  as  well. 
The  great  gateway  and  two  of  its  other  towers 
are  all  that  remain  of  it,  and  it  has  no  park. 
Some  cattle-sprinkled  fields,  much  fine  old 
hedgerow  timber,  the  spires  of  village 
churches,  a  winding  brook,  and  far,  far  off,  a 
range  of  wooded  hills, — that  is  all  the  view 
from  Kerby-tower  upon  the  brightest  day  ; 
but  it  is  enough  ;  dewy  pastures,  dewy  fields, 
a  haunt  of  ancient  peace, — the  poet  who  drew 
that  picture  might  have  drawn  it  from  this 
very  spot.  A  fair  woman  of  the  olden  time 
lived  here  also,  and  she  was  a  Jane  likewise, 
but  not  a  Lady  Jane.  They  pretend  that  in 
yonder  tower  was  her  room  ;  here  she  was 
feasted,  and  loved  too  after  her  wanton 
manner.  Nay,  but  amongst  that  wicked 
court,  she  was  the  least  to  blame  perhaps  of 
all.  It  was  the  king  himself  who  ruined  her. 
She  was  never  cruel,  never  base  ;  she  alone 
of  all  the  venal  crowd  about  him  took  no 
bribe,  used  all  her  power  for  good,  pleaded 
for  the  poor,  prayed  pardon  for  the  erring. 
I  know  no  name  for  all  the  sin  which  clings 
to  it,  which  shines  more  brightly  out  from 
that  dark  time  than  hers ;  not  her  royal 
seducer's,  nor  her  second  lover's,  the  Lord 
Hastings,  who  dwelt  in  this  very  castle  ; 
nor,  still  less,  that  of  her  foul  foe  who  reigned 
afterwards,  the  murderer  Richard.  Perhaps 
King  Edward  may  himself  have  come  to 
Kerby  to  see  his  favorite,  and  perhaps  that 
Humpback  also,  not  as  yet  venturing  to 
flicker  with  his  serpent  tongue ;  certainly, 
Hastings  and  she  were  here.  Did  she  weary 
amongst  these  pleasant  scenes,  I  wonder,  or 
were  they  balm  to  her,  reminding  that  poor 
misused  heart  of  earliest  days,  when  she  had 
innocent  dreams  before  they  wedded  her,  so 
unwilling,  to  the  rich  trader  ?  Or  did  they 
drive  her,  rather,  to  think  of  the  deep  moat 
that  skirts  these  walls,  deeming  it  sweet  to 
die  1  Did  any  hideous  dream  befall  her  here 
of  a  great  throng,  of  a  whole  staring  city, 
poured  out  to  see  her  tread  the  streets 


barefoot,  shameful,  to  do  public  penance  ?  A 
dream  of  misery,  starvation,  and  forty  years 
of  wandering  out  of  doors,  forgotten,  hideous, 
old  1  And  did  she  wake  up,  with  these 
Kerby  pasture-land  and  fair  home  scenes  in 
sight,  assuring  her  that  this  was  but  a  dream  ? 
I  trust,  that  somewhere,  long  ago,  the  Jane 
I  speak  of,  and  the  pure  spirit  who  had  as 
fair  a  fleshly  home  as  she,  the  Lady  Jane, 
have  met  in  blessedness.  So  different,  I  still 
think  of  them  together,  and  pity  equally  the 
great  reverse  and  long,  long  pain  of  her  of 
Kerby  Castle,  and  the  cruel  but  speedy  end 
of  her  of  Bradgate  Hall. 


TWENTY  SHILLINGS  IN  THE 
POUND. 

THE  firm  of  Petty,  Larceny  and  Co.,  the 
great  haberdashers,  is  a  monument  of  remark- 
able trading  skill.  It  has  been  established 
more  than  a  century.  Old  Petty  retired 
with  a  colossal  fortune,  and  young  Petty,  the 
old  Petty  of  the  present  firm,  was  member 
of  Parliament  for  a  cotton  district.  Some  of 
the  Larcenies  have  been  at  the  bar,  and  one 
is  a  very  high  dignitary  in  the  Church,  while 
he  who  stands  in  the  place  of  the  old  original 
Larceny,  and  manages  the  business,  has  the 
reputation  of  being  one  of  the  smartest 
traders  in  the  City  of  London.  The  first 
stone  of  their  prosperity  was  laid  by  the 
purchase  of  job-lots,  or  goods  sold  at  a  sacri- 
fice. They  found  a  mine  of  wealth  under 
their  feet,  and  they  did  not  neglect  to  work 
it.  They  got  a  double  reputation  :  one  for 
always  being  ready  with  cash  for  goods  to 
any  extent,  the  other  for  always  selling  goods 
thirty  per  cent,  under  the  market-price.. 
They  always  paid  twenty  shillings  in  the 
pound,  but  it  was  for  forty  shillings'  worth 
of  goods,  and  that,  my  simple  friend,  is  a 
very  diiferent  thing  from  buying  forty  shil- 
lings' worth  of  goods,  and  paying  twenty 
shillings  for  them.  In  the  first  instance, 
you  are  a  keen  trader,  buying  at  a  discount 
of  fifty  per  cent. ;  in  the  second,  you  are  a 
worthless,  broken  scamp,  paying  ten  shil- 
lings in  the  pound.  You,  who  possess  a 
mathematical  head,  cannot  probably  find 
much  difference  in  the  two  things,  but  act 
upon  your  conviction,  and  see  the  result. 
You,  as  the  payer  of  the  despised  ten 
shillings  in  the  pound,  the  payer  of  one 
pound  for  two,  shall  enter  one  of  our  pala- 
tial receptacles  of  merchandise  in  company 
with  Mr.  Larceny,  the  payer  of  twenty 
shillings  in  the  pound,  the  buyer  of  two 
pounds  for  one.  Not  an  assistant  in  the 
place,  not  a  head  of  a  department,  but  what 
will  be  at  once  at  the  humble  service  of 
Mr.  Larceny,  ready  to  throw  at  his  feet 
the  rich  cashmeres  of  India,  the  soft  sables 
of  the  North,  the  costly  fabrics  of  the 
South,  perfumes  of  Araby  the  blest,  jasper, 
onyx,  and  all  precious  stones.  Let  him 
take  them  at  his  own  price,  and  upon  his 


Clur 


TWENTY  SHILLINGS  IN  THE  POUND.       [November  7,  WM     445 


own  terms.  Now  comes  your  turn,  my 
simple  friend,  and  the  rich  full  stream  of 
commerce  does  not  flow  so  freely  at  your 
feet.  Will  you  be  kind  enough  to  give  your 
name  1  They  cannot  find  exactly  what  you 
want,  although  your  desires  are  not  extra- 
vagant. You  fancy,  you  heard  your  name 
going  down  a  pipe,  and  you  were  right. 
Will  you  have  the  goodness  to  step  down  to 
the  counting-house  ]  You  step  down,  and 
see  a  managing  clerk.  Another  time  they 
will  be  most  happy,  &c.  You  have  learnt 
the  difference,  my  simple  friend,  between 
paying  ten.  shillings  for  a  pound,  and  buying 
a  pound  for  ten  shillings. 

Messrs.  Petty,  Larceny  and  Co.  thrive 
apace,  and  suck  up  in  their  vortex  many 
spiritless  businesses  of  the  same  kind  in  the  | 
neighbourhood.  They  buy  up  a  pile  of  build-  | 
ings ;  they  cover  with  their  warehouses  \ 
half  a  street.  Sometimes  it  happens  in  the  ! 
course  of  trade  that  complications  arise  j 
between  principal  and  agent,  consignor  and 
consignee,  buyer  and  seller ;  the  money- 
market  is  tight,  cash  is  scarce,  and  a  few 
thousand  pounds'  worth  of  goods  is  sold,  in 
consequence,  at  a  sacrifice  much  more  alarm- 
ing than  usual.  What  makes  matters  worse 
is,  that  Messrs.  Petty,  Larceny's  cheque, — 
which  though  dishonourable  was  never  dis- 
honoured,—  does  not  find  its  way  to  the 
rightful  owner,  the  agent  employed  in  the 
matter  having  put  a  finish  to  dishonest  pro- 
ceedings by  an  act  of  embezzlement.  This 
brings  the  transaction  into  open  court,  and 
some  virtuous  counsel,  whose  wholesome 
indignation  has  been  paid  for  as  per  brief 
delivered,  does  not  hesitate  to  stigmatise  the 
conduct  of  Messrs.  Petty,  Larceny  and  Co.  as 
immoral  and  dishonest,  to  call  a  sacrifice  a 
downright  robbery ;  job-lots  nothing  but  stolen 
goods,  and  to  say  that  the  receiver  is  as  bad 
as  the  thief.  Poor  fellow  !  he  knows  when 
he  utters  the  last  sentiment,  that  his  law  is 
the  reverse  of  sound,  and  that  he  is  the 
veriest  stump-orator 'that  ever  stood  in  a 
Court  of  Justice.  Perhaps  he  is  thinking  of 
some  miserable  fence,  or  marine-store  dealer, 
whose  limited  capital,  want  of  enterprise, 
and  wretched  habitation,  under  the  constant 
surveillance  of  the  police,  render  him  in  the 
eyes  of  the  law  a  receiver  in  every  respect 
as  bad  as  the  thief ;  but  the  splendid  pile  of 
warehouses  that  bears  the  names  of  Messrs. 
Petty,  Larceny  and  Co.  can  never  be  the 
receptacle  of  any  goods,  but  what  have  been 
bought  in  a  respectable  manner,  and  under  the 
laws  of  supply  and  demand.  When  Mr. 
Larceny  leaves  his  business,  about  five  in  the 
afternoon,  the  policeman  on  the  beat  runs 
to  open  the  door  of  his  carriage,  which  he 
certainly  would  not  do  for  a  man  that  was 
obnoxious  to  the  law. 

Some  people  there  may  be,  who  gossip 
about  the  story  in  the  City,  and,  like  good 
members  of  society  as  they  are,  profess  a 
moral  repugnance  to  any  man  who  stoops  to 


make  money  by  such  dishonest  practices ;  but 
their  words  lose  something  of  their  weight 
when  we  find  them,  in  a  few  days  afterwards, 
in  Mr.  Larceny's  private  counting-house,  with 
a  piece  of  coloured  paper  in  their  hands, 
evidently  torn  from  a  banker's  cheque-book. 
Sundry  old  ladies  and  highly  respectable 
mothers  of  families  profess  to  be  greatly 
shocked  when  they  read  the  account  in  the 
newspapers,  and  exclaim.  "  What  an  immoral 
place  Messrs.  Petty,  Larceny's  shop  must  be 
for  the  young  men ! "  But  if  we  lounge  towards 
the  shop  in  question,  about  three  o'clock  on 
a  July  afternoon,  we  shall  find  the  same 
ladies  in  great  force,  seated  on  the  short- 
backed  chairs,  and  asking  the  attendants  to 
show  them  "  some  of  those  stolen — ahem, 
that  is,  remarkably  cheap  goods  that  they 
have  to  sell."  When  Mr.  Larceny  goes  into 
the  markets  on  the  next  occasion,  his  friends 
cluster  round  him  more  attentive  than  ever, 
probably  from  joy  that  so  dear  a  friend  has 
not  been  rudely  snatched  from  them.  Society 
does  not  turn  its  back  upon  Mr.  Larceny  ;  far 
from  it,  its  doors  are  always  open  to  any 
man  who  can  send  his  own  footman  to  knock 
at  them.  Prisons  of  all  kinds,  Houses  of  Cor- 
rection, Silent  Systems,  Penal  Servitudes, 
Hulks,  Queen's  Benches,  Old  Baileys,  Bank- 
ruptcy Courts,  and  lastly,  Workhouses,  were 
never  built  or  organised  for  men  like  Mr. 
Larceny.  It  is  the  fools  who  suffer,  while 
the  rogues  thrive. 

Third-class  bankrupts,  with  certificates 
suspended  for  two  years,  with  protection 
refused  for  six  months  ;  transported  felons 
and  oakum-pickers  of  various  degrees,  become 
what  they  are,  that  Larceny  House  may  have 
its  much-admired  stone  facade,  designed  by 
Bubble  Walling,  Esq.,  F.S.A.,  that  Mr.  Lar- 
ceny's mansion  in  Huckaback  Square  may 
be  adorned  with  the  latest  JRubenses, 
Raffaelles,  and  Correggios,  and  that  Larceny 
Park,  Richmond,  Surrey,  may  be  one  of  the- 
great  landscape  features  of  the  county. 

Such  is  the  brazen  image  of  twenty  shil- 
lings in  the  pound,  before  which  men  fall 
down  and  worship.  If  any  one  doubts 
how  much  better  it  is  to  sin  than  to  be 
sinned  against,  let  him  look  at  a  commercial 
adventurer  of  a  different  stamp. 

We  have  heard  a  good  deal  of  the  fraudu- 
lent debtor.  We  know  his  picture  pretty 
well  by  this  time.  He  never  keeps  a  cash- 
book.  He  makes  away  with  stock  in  a  mys- 
terious manner,  and  his  furniture  is  always 
settled  on  his  wife.  He  has  been  insolvent 
once — a  bankrupt  once,  and  he  has  com- 
pounded with  his  creditors  several  times. 
He  is,  of  course,  a  great  scamp,  because — he 
cannot  pay  twenty  shillings  in  the  pound. 
But  has  ever  any  one  looked  calmly  and  dis- 
passionately into  his  conduct,  to  see  whether 
there  is  any  substratum  of  honesty  under- 
lying the  surface  of  his  character  ?  Has 
anyone  ever  tried  to  discover  the  original 
character  of  his  misfortunes — I  beg  pardon, 


446       [NoTember  7,1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


his  rogueries  1  Are  his  creditors  aware, 
when  they  are  so  loud  in  their  complaints 
against  him,  that  in  many  cases  his  numerous 
failures  spring  out  of  the  one  original  insol- 
vency ;  because  he  was  weak  and  considerate 
enough  to  grant  fraudulent  preferences  and 
renew  old  debts  ?  Are  they  aware  that  they 
have  been  supplying  him  with  goods  and 
money,  for  many  years,  at  an  enormous  pro- 
fit and  interest  that  act  as  an  insurance 
against  risk,  and  make  ten  shillings  in  the 
pound  a  remunerative  dividend  ?  I  am  afraid 
not.  He  may  walk  about  in  a  leaky  shoe 
and  a  battered  hat,  but  he  is  always  assumed 
to  have  a  snug  competency  put  on  one  side  in 
a  quiet  way.  If  he  is  really  fraudulent,  the 
law  has  provided  for  his  punishment  in  a 
very  peculiar  manner.  He  goes  before  a 
Bankruptcy  Commissioner  with  a  balance- 
sheet,  and  a  variety  of  accounts  which,  as  far 
as  totals  are  concerned,  are  made  to  agree  with 
each  other,  with  wonderful  accuracy,  and  the 
said  Commissioner,  knowing  nothing  of 
figui-es,  and  ascertaining  from  the  official 
assignee,  that  he  has  not  been  too  fraudulent 
to  provide  for  the  expenses  of  the  court,  does 
not  see  any  good  that  can  arise  to  the  estate 
from  further  delay,  and  grants  a  common 
certificate  or  licence  to  trade,  as  a  matter  of 
course.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  not 
fraudulent  but  unfortunate,  and  flies  to  the 
sanctuary  of  the  court,  under  the  pressure  of 
unavoidable  loss  and  misfortune,  having 
allowed  the  commercial  whirlwind  to  over- 
take him  before  providing  payment  for  the 
shelter  as  the  act  directs,  he  will  find  surly 
officials,  a  severe  Draconian  judge,  and,  in  all 
probability,  a  suspension  of  certificate.  Woe 
upon  him,  if  at  any  time  under  the  influence 
of  pressure,  a  sense  of  honour,  or  for  increased 
facilities  of  trade,  he  has  given  what  the  law 
calls  a  fraudulent  preference  ;  he  will  then 
find  to  his  cost  how  much  more  culpable  it  is 
in  the  eye  of  justice  to  give  than  to  receive. 
He  will  suffer  for  his  ill-advised,  though 
well-intentioned  act,  while  the  receiver  of  the 
benefit — the  fraudulent  creditor — will  walk 
away  respected  and  unscathed  in  all  the  im- 
maculate invulnerability  of  twenty  shillings 
in  the  pound.  The  fraudulent  creditor  is  a 
person  that  does  not  come  so  prominently 
before  us  ;  he  does  not  stink  in  the  nostrils 
of  commerce,  for  his  cheques  are  always  paid, 
and  he  never  had  a  bill  sent  back  in  his  life. 
He  is  an  oily  man,  who  has  made  many  bad 
debts  during  his  commercial  life,  and  who 
always-  seems  to  extract  nourislmient  from 
them.  He  has  generally  been  very  badly 
treated  by  the  fraudulent  debtor,  but  while 
the  latter  has  scarcely  a  bed  to  lie  down  upon, 
tli e  fraudulent  creditor  manages  to  keep  a  good 
balance  at  his  banker's.  He  seldom  attends, 
and  will  never  take  the  chair  at  a  meeting  of 
creditors.  When  an  arrangement  is  proposed, 
he  always  declines,  at  present,  to  come  in. 
He  has  scruples  and  objections,  and  he 
takes  time  to  consider.  He  likes  to  be 


treated  with  individually.  God  forbid, 
that  he  should  be  the  means  of  carry- 
ing the  affair  to  the  Bankruptcy  Court,  and 
injuring  others  ;  but  he  does  not  think  that 
there  has  been  a  fair  statement  rendered, 
and  he  would  rather  lose  the  whole  of  his 
debt — ill  as  he  can  afford  it — than  accept  a 
dividend  less  than  the  estate  ought  to  pay. 
He  holds  out  firmly,  and  when  others  get 
ten  shillings,  he  gets  fifteen  ;  when  others  get 
fifteen,  he  gets  twenty.  Failing  this,  he  stands 
over  until  the  debtor  begins  trade  again, 
and  then  he  advances  his  claim  upon  the  new 
estate,  to  the  injury  of  the  new  creditors.  He 
is  one  of  the  most  obstructive  and  dishonest 
men  in  trade,  and  yet  who  would  refuse 
his  acceptance  for  five  thousand  pounds  ?  It 
may  be  that  the  twenty  shillings  in  the  pound, 
with  which  the  bill  will  be  paid,  will  be  very 
dirty  shillings — shillings  that  ought  to  have 
been  in  the  pockets  of  other  people,  but  they 
fulfil  the  commercial  requirements  as  to 
weight,  and  the  code  of  trading  morality 
exacts  no  other  condition. 

If  I  have  shocked  the  political  economist 
by  exhibiting  any  irreverence  for  the  laws 
which  regulate  the  operations  of  commerce, 
the  theory  of  trade,  exchange,  markets, 
supply  and  demand,  I  humbly  apologise. 
My  purpose  was  not  to  question  the  dogmas 
of  economical  science,  but  to  put  my  finger 
upon  some  of  the  moral  blots  in  commerce, 
and  to  ask  that  those  who  are  always  crying 
out  aloud  for  purification,  should  not  strain 
at  a  bankrupt  gnat,  and  swallow  a  felonious 
camel. 

DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN, 
ii. 

I  GO  forth  betimes  next  morning  to  note 
the  general  bearings  of  the  town  :  first 
breakfasting  after  the  Dutch  manner.  This 
breakfasting  after  the  Dutch  manner  is  a 
curious  process.  I  being  led  into  the  grand 
eating-room, — plainly  thought  much  of  in  the 
Grey-headed  Nobleman's  family,  but  still  of 
the  old  reformatory  proportions — the  mate- 
riel, machinery  and  appliances  are  brought 
in.  First,  there  is  introduced  an  ingeniously 
contrived  furnace,  filled  with  live  charcoal, 
set  down  on  the  floor  by  me  with  great 
pomp  and  circumstance.  Next  makes  entry 
a  second  coolie  with  prodigious  kettle,  to  be 
fitted  onto  the  ingeniously  contrived  furnace, 
filled  with  live  charcoal,  and  set  down  on  the 
floor  by  me  with  great  pomp  and  circum- 
stance.' Reappear  then,  original  coolie  with 
groaning  tray,  tea-cups  and  tea-pot,  here- 
after to  be  filled  from  the  prodigious  kettle, 
fitted  on  to  the  ingeniously  contrived  furnace 
of  live  charcoal,  set  down  on  the  floor  by  me 
with  great  pomp  and  circumstance.  Coolie 
stirs  up  the  furnac6  briskly  and  asks,  will  I 
have  flesch  1  Flesch,  by  all  means.  And 
forthwith  is  set  down  a  saucer  of  what,  at 
first  sight,  I  take  to  be  mahogany  shavings, 
but  which,  I  am  afterwards  informed,  is  one 


Clurlei  Dickens.] 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 


(November  7. 1837-1      447 


of  the  city's  strong  points,  being  beef  cured 
and  otherwise  prepared  until  it  arrive  at  the 
consistence  of  that  costly  wood  alluded  to. 
Excellent  as  a  relish,  says  Coolie,  or  Jan, 
rather,  for  there  is  no  reason  in  the  world 
why  an  unoffending  fellow-creature  should 
be  fitted  with  a  name  of  such  ill  odour, 
and  exceedingly  affected  by  all  strangers. 
Another  of  the  city's  strong  points  is  lying 
before  me  :  a  segment  of  Dutch  cheese,  very 
strong — offensive,!  may  say  at  once — removed 
promptly  at  my  special  request.  There  was 
a  whole  squadron  of  night-mares  lurking  in 
its  hard  soapy  texture.  The  service  I  find 
to  be  a  coarse  yellow  ware,  popular  through 
the  country,  and  floated  down  per  canal- 
boat  from  Delft.  In  course  of  time,  I  come 
to  make  discoveries  : — that  the  bread  is  of 
a  coarse,  greyish  tint,  and  would  take  rank 
in  the  British  Islands  as  thirds  or  even 
fourths  ; — that  the  butter  has  a  fierce  strength 
and  is  of  kin  to  the  cheese,  that  it  would 
require  nothing  short  of  savage  mountain 
appetites  to  do  that  repast  justice.  I  see,  too, 
that  I  am  to  have  eggs  of  the  country  besides, 
for  a  little  porcelain  egg-cup  has  been  placed 
on  the  table  before  me.  With  a  sigh  I  open 
the  small  tin  snuff-box,  which  contains  the 
exact  measure  of  tea  for  a  single  consumer, 
and  proceed  to  distil.  Through  inexperience 
I  all  but  upset  the  furnace  ;  and,  when  on 
the  point  of  pouring  out,  discover  that  Jan 
has  forgotten  such  a  thing  as  a  tea-cup. 
Quite  uncivilised,  these  people,  really — much 
troubled  in  mind, — when  suddenly  I  begin 
to  perceive  how  it  is.  The  Ijttle  egg-cup ! 
In  it  lay  the  mystery.  I  laugh  grimly  and 
enjoy  the  joke  wonderfully,  very  much  as 
the  Major  Dalgetty  did  the  notion  of  em- 
ploying bows  and  arrows  in  modern  warfare. 
As  he  laughed,  however,  the  Major  was 
cruelly  stricken  by  one  of  those  missiles, — 
and  I  had  henceforth  to  do  sore  penance 
by  much  weary  replenishing  of  the  egg-cup, 
which  was  as  near  as  possible  about  the  capa- 
city of  three  thimbles. 

This  meal  being  thus  unprofitably  de- 
spatched, I  next  find  myself  standing  under 
the  portal  of  the  Grey-headed  Nobleman, 
meditating  a  plunge  into  the  great  Kalvat 
Straat,  regarded  by  its  inhabitants  with  a 
just  pride  and  reverence — similarly  confident 
are  New  Yorkers  on  the  score  of  their 
Broadway,  Dubliners  on  that  of  the  great 
Sackville  Causeway,  Berliners  on  that  of 
Unter  den  Linden.  It  really  did  appear  to 
me,  as  regarded  width,  pretty  much  of  the 
capability  of  the  useful  thoroughfare  that 
leads  into  Lincolu's-Inn-Fields,  and  is  known 
as  Little  Turnstile.  Or,  not  to  be  too 
nice,  suppose  I  name  at  once  doomed  Holy- 
well  Street,  as  approximating  nearest  in 
aspect  and  complexion,  only  smoothly  paved 
— flagged  rather — as  though  intended  solely 
for  trottoir  purposes.  Here  are  all  the  city 
folk  hurrying  by,  with  no  risk  of  being  run 
down  by  cruel  driver.  For,  only  at  long  and 


rare  intervals  does  a  vehicle  pass  that  way, 
at  a  sober  family  snail's  pace — the  quadruped 
threading  its  way  in  easy  familiarity  among 
the  foot-passengers,  rubbing  shoulders  with 
them,  and  all  but  whispering,  "  By  your 
leave,  Gossip  ;"  here  is  no  furious  driving  or 
perilous  crossing,  but  universal  liberty, 
equality,  and  the  rest  of  it,  for  man  and 
beast. 

A  glance  down  that  Holywell  Street  elon- 
gation was  good  entertainment  certainly — re- 
munerative too,  for  any  trouble  so  taken.  To 
take  first  the  houses — such  bright,  dazzling, 
spick  and  span  tenements  were  surely  never 
guttered  together.  The  material,  painted 
brick  that  would  stand  good  washing  and 
wholesome  scrubbing  down,  dry-polishing, 
scraping,  buraishing,  with  any  other  cleans- 
ing process  that  the  heart  of  woman  can 
devise, — altogether  the  complexion  of  so 
many  great  baby-houses.  But  alack  !  with- 
out the  roominess  and  vast  accommodation  of 
those  costly  edifices  ;  for  your  Dutch  houses 
are  but  thin  attenuations,  stretching  away  to 
the  heavens,  with  scarcely  any  sensible 
breadth  ;  long  thin  windows,  or  slits,  rather 
— three  in  a  row  usually — were  only  in  keep- 
ing ;  and  I  do  protest  that  the  space  between 
each  window  never  on  any  pretence  exceeded 
half  a  cubit.  How  these  structures  contrive 
to  keep  upon  their  feet,  and  avoid  being 
flattened  up  prematurely  by  each  other's 
weight,  is  only  one  other  of  the  marvels  of 
this  great  city.  However,  here  was  at  once 
made  manifest  the  whole  secret  of  those 
penitential  galleries  in  the  Grey-headed 
Nobleman — the  plain  truth  being,  that  every 
rood  of  mother  earth,  or  mother  marsh, 
rather,  not  only  maintains  its  man,  but  is 
found  to  be  so  precious,  that  burghers  are* 
driven  to  build  where  room  is  cheap,  and 
accommodation  unlimited.  Therefore  do  they 
hold  by  that  old  maxim  of  the  Civil  Law 
which  runs  :  "  Cujus  solum-  est,  ejus  est 
usque  ad  coelum."  That  is  to  say,  The  owner 
of  the  soil  may  build  thereon  to  the  clouds, 
even — may  build  Babel  Tower,  if  he  can 
manage  it. 

The  Saturday  purification  of  their  Amster- 
dam homes  becomes,  after  all,  not  quite  so 
Augean  in  character — the  field  of  labour  be- 
ing comparatively  small.  Which  hebdomadal 
washing  is  certainly  a  notable  sight — inge- 
nious little  force-pumps  being  brought  and 
set  up  straight  in  great  tubs  of  water,  with 
all  the  little  Dutch  women,  in  washing  uni- 
form, working  the  handles  vigorously,  as 
though  extinguishing  a  conflagration.  Hissing 
streams  fly  upward  to  the  roofs,  rattling 
noisily  on  the  window  panes,  reflecting  co- 
pious showers  of  spray  upon  the  unsuspect- 
ing stranger.  More  perilous  to  him  is  the 
procedure  of  the  thriftier  housewife,  whose 
means  cannot  compass  hydraulic  power.  She 
may  be  seen  stretching  far  from  h\?r  window, 
and,  bowl  in  hand,  deluging  the  wall  on  each 
side.  Her  whole  soul  is  in  the  work.  She 


448      [November  7,  ISi;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


has  become  blind  and  deaf.  Blind  to  the 
hapless  mooner,  who  may  chance,  at  that  in- 
stant, to  be  deep  in  his  Complete  Guide  to 
the  City  and  surrounding  parts ;  deaf  to  the 
shriek  of  anguish  and  unchecked  malediction, 
that  follows  on  the  receipt  of  water  down  the 
back,  and  utter  wreck  of  travelling  apparel. 

Looking  upward,  I  find  that  every  house 
has  a  housetop  decoration  of  its  own,  pyra- 
mid-shaped, being  scooped  away  as  it  were 
on  both  sides,  and  finished  off  handsomely 
with  scroll-work,  griffins,  and  such  decora- 
tion. Oftentimes  a  stone  ribbon,  or  garter, 
meanders  across,  exhibiting  the  date  of  erec- 
tion, in  most  instances  Anno  Domini  sixteen 
hundred  and  eighty-nine,  or  thereabouts,  and 
every  tenement  is  furnished  in  this  region 
with  a  door  opening  into  a  magazine,  or  store, 
and  fitted  with  projecting  block  and  pulley 
for  hoisting  up  heavy  burdens.  Every  dwell- 
ing has,  therefore,  a  sort  of  'warehouse  com- 
plexion. By  aid  of  this  pulley  every  object 
of  bulk  makes  entry.  By  it,  the  piano  is 
swung  aloft,  and  got  in  cleverly  at  the  draw- 
ing-room window;  by  it,  unmanageable  trunks 
and  such  gear  are  lifted  with  infinite  ease  to 
regions  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  chimney- 
pots. 

This  chimney-pot  dispensation  is,  in  itself, 
a  marvellous  feature.  Never,  during  the 
whole  period  of  my  sojourn,  was  I  weary  of 
admiring  the  prodigious  fertility  of  shape 
displayed  in  those  important  instruments  of 
ventilation.  Chimney-pots  they  were  not, 
strictly  speaking ;  but,  mainly  square  wooden 
tubes,  like  the  pedal-pipes  of  an  organ, 
stretching  in  every  direction  and  at  all 
angles  with  a  wildness  of  purpose  truly  mys- 
tifying. There  were  chimneys  of  the  camp- 
stool  order,  of  the  star-fish  pattern,  and  very 
many  copied  unmistakeably  from  the  arms  of 
the  Isle  of  Man  dependency,  as  may  be 
gathered  from  its  copper  tokens.  Now,  they 
struggled  like  the  sails  of  a  windmill ;  now, 
grew  out  from  a  boss  like  the  feelers  of  Polypi. 
They  were  a  great  mystery,  those  chimneys. 
Wherefore  those  tortuous  shapes,  that 
spasmodic  tossing  of  arms,  which  to  one 
casting  his  eyes  down  the  perspective  of  the 
street,  seem  to  belong  to  legions  of  doomed 
souls,  struggling  painfully  in  their  pool  of 
fire,  as  depicted  in  those  frightful  Last 
Judgment  pieces  of  the  old  masters  ?  Per- 
haps to  Hollanders  the  wind  is  as  impracti- 
cable as  their  old  enemy,  the  ocean  ;  and  has 
to  be  courted  and  kept  in  humour  with  all 
manner  of  twists  and  fancies,  which  do  duty 
as  aerial  dykes  and  sluices. 

Going  down  this  Kalvat  Straat,  I  find  that 
every  house  is  a  house  of  trade  :  which  is  only 
to  be  expected.  Many  cafes  are  there,  all 
after — a  long  way  after,  that  is — the  French 
model — spurious  lacquered  attempts,  which 
leave  only  painful  impressions.  Truly  dis- 
piriting was  it  to  note  their  little  seats  and 
little  tables  squeezed  in  between  the  lowest 
window  and  the  street — a  span  no  wider 


than  the  door-step — where  folk  would  come 
later,  and  make  affectation  of  sitting  and 
sipping  coffee  after  the  French  fashion, — 
exactly  as  they  do  in  Paris,  you  will  be  told  ; 
comme  on  fait  a  Paris  explains  the  hulking 
Dutch  elegant,  with  a  sham  shrug.  I  used 
to  compassionate  these  poor  martyrs  to  bon 
ton,  as  they  sat  wedged  together,  with  kneea 
bent  to  one  side  angularly,  from  straightness 
of  their  position.  I  see  that  one  of  these 
places  of  entertainment,  much  in  favour,  is 
entitled  Het  Poolische  Coffi  jhuis,  and  is  con- 
veniently situated  next  door  to  a  kautoor  or 
warehouse,  where  tabak,  suuif,  and  sigaren 
are  dispensed.  These  snuif  and  tabak  kaii- 
toors  abound  plenteously,  as  is  only  to  be 
expected,  and  may  be  always  known,  even  to 
such  as  run  and  cannot  read,  by  a  fine  effigy 
of  a  stark  man,  very  much  after  the  antique,, 
with  a  club  and  epigraph,  "  De  Wilde  Man." 
And  wherefore  not  De  Wilde  Man  1  With 
us,  gentlemen  of  North  Britain,  in  the  scant 
but  picturesque  garb  of  their  country,  are 
chosen,  in  effigy,  for  like  duty.  And  the 
noble  salvage  man  may  have  about  as  much, 
if  not  more,  significance.  Hard  by,  stands  a 
drug  kantoor,  with  a  peculiar  sign  for  itself 
— a  huge  Moor's  head,  whose  mouth  is  ever 
wide  open,  and  whose  whole  expression  is 
a  horrid  leer.  Gapers  are  these  heads  ap- 
propriately styled,  abounding  in  the  city  to 
a  nauseous  extent.  Where'er  I  roam,  what- 
ever streets  I  see,  I  am  pretty  sure  to  meet 
one  of  these  monsters  ogling  me  from  his 
high  elevation  ;  a  marvel  truly  of  this  city. 
Second  only  to  that  other  chimney-pot 
marvel,  is  the  strange  and  horrible  variety  in. 
the  features — an  eternal  grinning  through 
horse-collar  for  premiums.  I  am  credibly 
informed  that  there  are  geniuses  in  this  walk 
of  art — fellows  of  infinite  skill  and  talent  in 
devising  frightful  twists  and  revolting  leers 
— mute  inglorious  Matsys,  as  it  were,  and 
capable  of  yet  higher  things.  One  sur- 
prising head,  attached  to  an  establishment 
over  the  way,  and  labelled  De  Gekroonde 
Gaper,  which  may  perhaps  signify  gaper 
of  gapers,  or  gaper  par  excellence,  I  take 
a  secret  pleasure  of  likening  to  the  great 
Domenichino  Death  of  Saint  Jerome,  to 
the  printed  copies  of  which  it  has  an  ex- 
traordinary resemblance  ;  and  whenever  I 
shall  be  privileged  with  view  of  that  excel- 
lent masterpiece,  I  have  no  doubt  that  I 
shall  be  observed  to  turn  away  in  most 
irreverent  laughter,  bethinking  me  of  Gek- 
roonde Gaper. 

There  are  not  many  abroad  at  this  hour  ; 
so  there  is  very  easy  walking  in  the  streets. 
I  am  pursuing  steadily  the  windings  of  Dutch 
Holywell  Street,  when  I  am  constrained  to 
step  aside  and  let  a  strange  unintelligible 
construction — put  together  in  defiance  of  all 
known  Long  Acre  principles — go  by.  I  step 
aside,  and  stare  stupidly  after  vehicle,  horse, 
and  driver;  for  the  driver,  he  walks  along  at  the 
side,  not  from  any  notion  of  being  merciful  to 


Charles  Dickens.] 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 


[November  7,  1357.]      449 


his  beast,  but  because  there  is  no  coach-box  ; 
the  vehicle,  it  lumbers  along  on  a  sledge, 
a  dismounted  cab,  utterly  wheeless ;  the 
horse,  poor  quadruped,  long-rib  gridirons 
upon  his  flanks,  being  full  ripe  for  the 
knacker.  I  mark  that,  as  it  moves  along,  the 
driver  casts  from  him  adroitly  a  long  line 
with  oiled  rag  attached,  which  passes  under 
the  sledge,  and  has  the  effect  of  easing  the 
friction. 

This  notable  conveyance  is  known  as  a 
sleepkoets,  and  the  present  specimen,  though 
about  as  rusty  and  decayed  an  article  as 
could  be,  had  certain  affecting  associations 
connected  with  it;  being,  in  a  manner,  the 
last  of  all  its  tribe — a  sort  of  Hackney  Selkirk 
or  Selkirk  Hackney.  The  benevolent  and 
those  who  can  feel,  may  here  bethink  them  of 
certain  memories  associated  with  the  last 
days  of  the  doomed  hackney-coaches,  and  the 
mournful  aspect  of  the  few  decayed  survivors 
holding  on  desperately — wandering  about, 
hoping  against  all  hope.  To  which  sledging, 
however,  Hollanders  have  a  strong  leaning, 
as  I  find  all  heavy  goods,  such  as  monster 
hogsheads  and  the  like,  transported  by  pre- 
ference on  sledges,  each  with  a  small  keg  in 
front,  pierced  with  many  holes,  through 
which  water  is  splashed  forth  at  every  motion 
of  the  horse,  thus  lightening  the  friction. 

Hurrying  on,  and  striving  to  get  clear  of 
this  interminable  Kalvat  Straat,  1  come  sud- 
denly upon  one  of  the  wooden  drawbridges, 
and  upon  an  old  red  brick  clock  or  Carillons 
Tower,  running  up  with  many  stories  into 
the  favourite  Black  Dutch  Steeple.  In  its 
uppermost  story  I  can  make  out  whole  files 
of  my  old  jangling  enemies,  ranged  symmetri- 
cally according  to  size.  One  side  of  the  brick 
tower  flanks  the  street,  the  other  rises  up 
frowningly  from  a  great  waste  of  green  fluid 
that  laves  its  base  with  languid  green  waves, 
upon  whose  surface  float  straws,  scraps  of 
paper,  bits  of  wood,  ashes,  hair,  wool — any- 
thing that  good  housewives  find  in  their  way 
at  home.  This  was,  as  it  were,  the  Amsterdam 
dogana,  and  here  the  prospect  of  bridge  and 
struggling  water  began.  And  here,  too,  was 
I  made  sensible  of  that  other  enemy — he  who 
last  night  had  only  given  stray  hints  of  his 
presence — but  who  now  came  boldly  rising 
from  his  green  slime,  and  declared  himself. 
It  was  horrible,  searching,  penetrating,  sick- 
ening unto  death  ! — never  to  leave  me  more. 
Compared  with  that  savour,  the  breath  of 
Cologne  became  pure  frangipani,  and  the 
Frankfort  Ghetto  a  sweet  spice-grove .  Had 
there  been  only  a  class  or  subdivision  for 
such  an  article  at  some  of  our  late  great 
industrial  exhibitions,  the  claims  of  this  city 
to  a  grand  council  medal  might  have  been 
respectfully  submitted.  Still,  it  is  nothing 
in  its  present  shape — mere  undeveloped  power 
— nothing  to  what  it  will  be  when  the  sun 
is  nigh  in  the  heavens  towards  midday.  For, 
the  weather  has  been  sultry,  and  it  may  be 
imagined  what  power  for  evil  those  hot 


scorching  rays  must  have,  slowly  stewing  that 
green  compound,  with  such  aid,  too,  as 
certain  barges  now  making  way  down  the 
dogana,  may  in  their  humble  way  afford. 
Very  diligently  do  the  bargemen,  like  true 
gondoliers,  propel  their  boat  with  poles,  two 
at  each  side,  stirring  up  a  rich  loamy  sedi- 
ment which  follows  in  their  wake,  and  is 
stewed  up  and  duly  fermented  in  its  turn. 

Looking  over  the  bars  of  the  drawbridge, 
I  find  that  the  green  water  strays  away 
round  the  corner  on  the  right ;  that  it  falls 
back  likewise  in  a  sort  of  creek  upon  the 
left ;  also,  that  it  is  fringed  with  long  slim 
houses,  packed  very  close,  and  rising  straight 
from  out  of  the  green  fluid.  Some  have  a 
door  opening  out  conveniently  on  the  green 
fluid,  with  a  neat  little  scaffolding  supported 
on  a  couple  of  stakes,  where  the  proprietor 
may  come  forth  of  an  evening  and  inhale  the 
fragrance.  Many  are  furnished  with  such 
stages,  and  very  often  are  the  owners  to 
be  seen  taking  their  ease  there.  Mar- 
vellous is  this  love  of  pestilential  waters. 
I  go  round  the  corner  to  the  left,  following 
the  edge  of  the  dogana,  and  find  the  green 
lake  spreading  out  wider  and  wider,  bounded 
with  more  slim  houses  rising  out  of  the 
slough,  some  rickety  and  heeling  over  like 
a  Pisan  structure,  others  with  a  smug  gaudy 
air,  proud  of  their  paint  and  gay  colouring. 
More  straggle  out  on  a  promontory  towards 
the  centre,  greedily  encroaching  on  the  slimy 
element.  In  the  middle  are  gathered  a  clump 
of  masts  and  cordage,  belonging  to  those 
quaint,  low-hulled  luggers,  with  their  gilt 
vanes  and  streamers  garnishing  the  masts — • 
graceful  always  in  or  out  of  a  picture.  Their 
swelling  bows  and  yellow  varnished  timbers 
shine  pleasantly  in  the  sun.  Opposite,  are 
little  openings  spanned  with  drawbridges, 
which  are  entrances  to  other  canals,  long 
watery  lanes  and  alleys  straggling  off  irregu- 
larly. I  can  see,  too,  afar  off,  a  long,  light 
bridge,  supported  on  stakes,  which  looks 
crazy  enough,  but  which  is,  nevertheless,  a 
grand  thoroughfare,  and  crowded  with  heavy 
burdened  sledges.  Beyond  that  again,  the 
houses  close  in  thickly  in  a  sort  of  rabble 
rout  as  it  were — an  .  irregular  show  with 
jagged,  zigzag  outline.  Beyond  which,  rise 
up  many  more  of  those  brick  spires,  with  a 
stray  windmill  or  so  hazily  standing  out 
against  the  sky.  This  prospect,  repeated 
many  times  over,  may  be  taken  as  a  fair 
sample  of  this  noble  Amsterdam  town. 

Taking,  then,  the  first  alley  to  the  right, 
through  desperate  resolve  of  getting  free  from 
that  pestilential  dogana,  I  find  myself  utterly 
lost  in  a  long  lane  that  has  literally  no  turn- 
ing, and  which  loses  itself  finally  in  a  sort  of 
slime — dark,  narrow,  and  unwholesome. 

Here  is  a  long  white  building ;  green, 
yellow,  and  every  colour  from  damp  ;  the 
plaster  stripped  from  its  side  as  if  from 
scurvy,  with  a  line  of  smurched  and  faded 
characters  setting  forth  that  here  of  all 


450      [NoTember7,1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


places  in  the  universe  is  Frascati's — a  poor 
pinch-beck  copy — where  Amsterdam  folk 
may  hold  dismal  al  fresco  jollity,  after  the 
true  Parisian  pattern.  This  is  more  of  the 
wretched  gallophobia  before  spoken  of.  They 
must  have  their  Salon  des  Vari6t6s  and 
Vaudeville  Theatre  also — situated  in  other 
slimes.  I  get  free  of  the  long  lane  eventually, 
and  am  estopped  at  the  bottom  by  the  green 
fluid  again.  Here  is  canal  and  drawbridge 
all  over  again  with  the  line  of  the  Noah's 
Ark  vegetation ;  sickly  canal-side  growth, 
drawing  what  nutriment  it  can  from  dry 
red  bricks  and  Dutch  paving  stones.  Here, 
too,  I  catch  the  flavor  of  that  fine  old  joke 
of  Messire  Desiderius  Erasmus,  when  he 
facetiously  described  his  countrymen  as  liv- 
ing on  the  tops  of  trees.  For,  the  whole 
canal  was  being  ripped  up  and  of  the  con- 
sistence of  a  huge  dirt-pie,  and  the  air  was 
filled  with  the  old  frangipani  —  only  this 
time  extrait  double — exhaled  from  the  mass 
of  slush,  mire  and  black  bog,  in  which  a 
gang  of  men  paddled,  busy  at  the  work  of 
pile-driving.  A  curious  proceeding,  and 
truly  racy  of  the  soil,  or  rather  of  the  swamp. 
Curious  to  see  the  huge  lump  of  iron  swung 
up  by,  say  twenty  sturdy  navvies  standing 
up  to  their  middles  in  the  great  dirt-pie, 
and  all  to  a  certain  tune,  chanted  dismally 
by  an  ancient  fugleman  in  a  red  jerkin,  so 
that  the  strokes  of  the  hammer  fell  in 
rhythmically  at  the  pauses  of  the  song.  It 
was  as  though  some  one  should  entone : 
Gregoriamy,  sing  yo  mann  yo  (crash),  sing 
ja  mann  ja  (crash) :  which  ictus  or  beat 
melodious  seemed  to  help  on  their  sludgy 
work  surprisingly. 

Once  on  a  time  I  was  standing  on  the  boom- 
tijes  pier  at  Rotterdam,  watching  the  inloading 
of  corn  from  a  barge,  and  the  men  who  were 
working  with  great  wooden  shovels  had  just 
such  another  lilt  to  lighten  their  labour.  One 
fellow  at  the  head  of  the  line  of  shovellers 
gave  the  time,  the  rest  taking  one  long  and 
strong  pull  all  together  when  he  ceased,  and 
recovering  their  spades  with  admirable  pre- 
cision when  he  began  to  chant.  Their  song 
might  run :  Sing  jo  mann  jo  (shovel),  sing 
ja  mann  ja  (shovel).  It  is  a  miracle  how 
the  pie  ever  attains  consistence,  even  with 
such  aids.  For,  often  does  the  long  Nor- 
wegian stat-tree,  full  forty  feet  in  length, 
slip  down  utterly  in  the  gruelly  compost  at 
the  first  stroke  of  the  pile-driver,  and  is  lost 
altogether.  Latterly  there  have  come  new 
lights  in  this  science  of  sludge  ;  and  wooden 
arches,  sunk  in  a  peculiar  fashion,  have  beeii 
tried  with  tolerable  success. 

I  leave  that  horrid  slough  and  its  miasma 
far  behind  rne,  and  go  on  up  another  long 
lane,  and  so  it  comes  in  a  sort  of  round, — 
slimes,  frangipani,  canals,  drawbridges,  blind 
alleys,  and  slimes  again.  But,  the  two  great 
features  for  ever  and  aye  shall  be  the  fran- 
gipani extract,  and  the  great  chimney-pot 
eccentricities.  This,  friends,  is  Amsterdam, 


and  this  you  will  find  very  much  the  pro- 
spect in  every  little  Dutch  town,  should  you 
travel  down  from  the  Metropolis  Dan  unto 
the  Rotterdam  Beersheba. 

THE  LIGHTNING  DOCTOR. 


THERE  was  a  time  when  thunder  and  light- 
ning were  looked  on  as  the  most  awful  and 
sacred  manifestations  of  God,  even  by  Chris- 
tians ;  and  when  there  was  a  thunder-storm, 
people  knelt  trembling  down,  and  prayed 
with  their  teeth  chattering.  But  in  elec- 
tricity we  have  a  latent  power  which  seems 
to  be  the  grandsire  to  a  noble  family.  Mag- 
netism and  galvanism  are  of  it.  Faradism  is 
its  youngest  born. 

If  I  only  observe  myself  and  my  neighbours 
during  a  thunder-storm,  when  the  air  is 
loaded  with  electricity,  I  become  aware  that 
it  is  operating  in  some  way  or  other  on  our 
bodies.  Indeed,  the  human  body  is  what  is 
called  a  good  conductor ;  and  the  whole 
family  of  electrical  sciences  seerus  to  have 
more  to  do  with  us  than  we  can  yet  clearly 
understand.  I  do  not  think  that  this  quality 
of  our  body  comes  from  our  blood's  contain- 
ing iron,  although  I  "have  read  that  in  the 
blood  of  twenty-four  men  there  is  enough 
iron  to  make  a  sword. 

There  are  weaker  and  stronger  magnets  ; 
and  with  human  bodies,  in  their  relation  to 
electricity,  there  is  like  difference.  Many 
persons  seem  to  be  more  loaded  with,  or  more 
sensible  to,  electricity  than  others.  Although 
the  names  of  animal  magnetism  and  mes- 
merism are  but  of  a  new  date,  the  general 
idea  expressed  by  them  is  as  old  as  history. 
We  had  magnetisers  long  before  Mesmer ; 
and  kings  have  pretended  that  they  could, 
by  a  touch,  cure  scrofula  or  croup. 

Electricity  in  the  simple  form,  as  produced 
by  an  electrifying  machine,  has  been  used  for 
healing  purposes ;  but  the  young  lightnings 
are  such  lively  sparks,  that  doctors  have 
despaired  of  keeping  them  in  order.  Gal- 
vanic electricity  has  been  more  manageable. 
For  a  long  time  it  was  not  practised  on  living 
bodies,  because  men  did  not  know  one  of  the 
chief  virtues  of  the  electro-galvanic  current, 
namely,  its  decomposing  power,  which  was 
first  discovered,  I  believe,  by  Mr.  Jacob!  of 
Petersburg,  the  reinventor  of  galvanoplastic. 
I  say  reinventor,  because  we  have  good 
reason  to  believe  that  the  art  of  extracting 
solid  metal  from  the  solution  of  metallic 
salts,  and  depositing  it  in  any  form  by  galvanic 
electricity,  was  not  unknown  to  the  ancient 
Egyptians,  whose  priests  knew  much  of 
natural  science. 

The  electro-galvanic  lightnings  act  upon 
the  nerves  in  some  way  ;  but  their  reckless 
and  wild  nature  is  not  yet  to  be  trusted. 
Sometimes  these  half-tamed  lightnings  play 
mysterious  tricks.  I  know  a  case  in  which 
the  galvanic  current  was  applied  against 
palsy  of  the  muscles  of  the  face  with  a  most 


Charles  Dickens  J 


THE  LIGHTNING  DOCTOR. 


[NoTember7,18s;.]    4,51 


lamentable  effect.  The  patient  cried  out  to  the 
operator,  "  Stop,  sir  ;  I  see  your  whole  room 
in  a  blaze  !  "  The  operator  stopped,  but  the 
unhappy  patient  lost  his  sight  for  ever  ! 

It  was  Mr.  Faraday  who  brought  another 
principle  into  the  education  of  the  lightning 
family,  and  taught  the  once  wild  sparks  more 
sedate  behaviour,  by  discovering  the  electri- 
city by  induction,  which,  as  the  electricity  by 
contact  was  named  Galvanism  after  its  disco- 
verer, may,  with  all  deference  to  a  great 
name  taken  perhaps  in  vain,  be  entitled 
Faradism. 

At  the  last  annual  meeting  of  the  Eoyal 
College  of  Physicians,  a  new  apparatus, 
was  exhibited  for  applying  Faradism  to 
the  treatment  of  neuralgia  and  paralysis,  as 
first  proposed  by  Dr.  Duchenne,  at  Paris. 
The  other  day,  Faradism  was  brought  to  my 
notice  in  the  manner  following.  In  Portman 
Square,  I  saw  a  donkey-cart  minus  its  driver. 
The  donkey  being  in  high  glee,  treated  the 
whole  neighbourhood  with  a  discordant 
hymn ;  and  I  looked  with  amazement  on 
a  fashionably  dressed  gentleman  standing 
before  the  vocalist.  He  seemed  to  enjoy  the 
music  mightily,  clapping  his  hands  and 
laughing  like  a  child.  I  recognised  in  this 
gentleman  a  foreign  friend,  whom  I  had  not 
seen  for  several  months,  and  whom  I  should 
have  been  very  glad  now  to  encounter,  but 
for  his  absurd  behaviour,  although  a  con- 
versation with  him  was  no  pleasant  thing  ; 
for  many  years  ago"  he  lost  his  hearing, 
nobody  could  tell  him  why.  I  tapped  my 
friend  on  his  shoulder,  asking  him  with  eyes, 
nose,  fingers  and  arms,  what  was  the  matter. 
He  sobbed  with  an  almost  child  like  smile. 

"  It  is  s-o  very  ve-ry  long  I  have  n-ot  heard 
an  ass  crow." 

"  Heard  an  ass  crow  !  " 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  heard  an  ass.  I  heard 
you  pretty  well,  and  so  you  need  not  ply  the 
telegraph." 

We  shook  hands  heartily,  and  I  congratu- 
lated him  sincerely  on  the  benefit  he  had 
derived  from  the  salines  of  Kissingen. 

"  We  won't  bless  Kissingen ! "  he  an- 
swered. "  I  have  been  bored  almost  to  death 
there.  If  you  want  anybody  to  bless,  let  it 
be  the  lightning  doctor." 

"What  doctor!" 

"  Well,  the  lightning  doctor.  He  takes  out 
of  a  tea-caddy  a  tame  lightning,  sends  it  into 
my  ear,  where  it  softly  scrapes  and  buzzes 
like  a  blue-bottle.  I  am  on  my  way  to  see 
the  doctor.  Come  with  me." 

I  went  with  him  to  his  physician,  whom 
he  had  the  kindness  to  inform  that  I  had 
a  sadly  benumbed  brain,  and  that  a  couple 
of  lightnings  sent  into  it  would  make  it 
work  more  briskly.  No  other  patients 
waiting,  the  lightning  doctor  kindly  showed 
his  apparatus,  and  explained  his  way  of 
using  it.  The  whole  machinery  is  con- 
tained in  a  chest  not  larger  than  a  tea- 
caddy.  It  consists  of  a  pile  of  charcoal  and 


zinc.  The  latter  is  placed  in  a  porous 
earthen  vase,  which  is  placed  in  a  cylinder  of 
zinc,  covered  by  one  of  copper.  Nitric  acid 
being  poured  into  the  porous  vase,  and  salt 
water  into  the  zinc  cylinder,  the  pile  or 
battery  is  charged.  A  wire  of  platinum, 
upon  which  acids  do  not  act,  conducts  the 
electric  current  to  the  bobbin  of  induction. 
It  consists  of  two  copper  wires  of  different 
diameters,  covered  by  silk.  The  thicker 
wire  has  a  diameter  of  about  three  hun- 
dredths  of  an  inch,  and  is  rolled  round  a  soft 
iron  in  the  centre.  The  thinner  wire, 
having  a  diameter  but  half  as  great,  is  rolled 
round  the  thick  wire.  The  silk  covering 
serves  to  isolate  each  wire,  silk  being  no 
conductor. 

When  the  pile  is  put  in  communication 
with  the  extremities  of  one  of  the  copper 
wires,  a  modification  is  instantaneously 
effected  in  the  electric  state  of  the  wire  and 
the  central  soft  iron.  The  first  is  traversed 
by  the  current  of  the  pile,  and  the  second 
becomes  temporarily  magnetic.  When  the 
circle  is  again  opened,  the  central  soft  iron 
loses  its  magnetism,  and  the  natural  elasticity 
of  the  wire  resumes  its  usual  state. 

The  electric  current  of  the  thick  and  that 
of  the  thin  wire — called  that  of  the  first 
and  the  second  order — have  not  the  same 
physiological  effects.  That  of  the  first  order 
acts  chiefly  on  the  contractile  powers  of  the 
muscles  ;  whilst  that  of  the  second  order 
acts  upon  the  sensibility.  The  reason  of  this 
is  unknown. 

In  the  application  of  this  electricity  it  is 
possible  to  make  the  dose  proportionate  to 
the  requirement  of  the  case.  The  chief 
moderator  of  the  force  of  the  current  in  this 
apparatus  is  a  cylinder  of  copper  covering 
the  bobbin.  When  this  is  taken  away  alto- 
gether the  current  is  strongest,  and  the  more 
the  bobbin  is  covered  with  the  cylinder,  the 
weaker  is  the  current.  This  is  a  fact,  but 
the  reason  of  it  is  a  mystery. 

But,  even  when  the  cylinder  covers  the 
bobbin  altogether,  the  electric  current  is 
sometimes  too  strong  for  some  persons,  as 
women  and  children,  and  needs  to  be  modified 
yet  more.  This  is  done  by  a  clever  litlle 
instrument,  a  tube  of  glass,  the  end  of  which 
is  joined  to  a  metallic  screw,  which  fastens  it 
to  one  of  the  conductors.  A  metallic  rod  can. 
be  moved  in  the  tube,  which  is  to  be  filled 
with  water,  an  indifferent  conductor.  The 
more  this  rod  is  taken  out  of  the  glass  tube, 
the  more  water  is  of  course  brought  between 
the  end  of  the  rod  and  the  screw,  with  the 
conductor  fastened  to  it :  the  more,  therefore, 
is  the  power  of  the  current  diminished,  until 
at  a  certain  point  it  is  hardly  to  be  felt. 

Again,  there  is  a  way  of  forcing  the 
electric  sparks,  which  form  a  current,  to 
keep  at  a  certain  distance  from  each  other. 
This  is  done  with  a  small  strip  of  soft  iron, 
put  in  movement  by  the  temporary 
magnetism  of  the  central  iron  j  when  the 


452      I  November  7,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


strip  is  attracted  by  it,  the  current  of  the 
pile  is  interrupted,  and  the  ruagnetism  of  the 
central  iron  disappears.  Then,  the  small 
strip,  not  forced  any  longer  by  the  magnetic 
power  of  the  central  iron  to  remain  in  its 
usual  position,returns  by  its  own  elasticity  to 
its  natural  one  ;  but,  in  the  moment  when  this 
is  done,  the  current  of  the  pile  is  restored,  and 
with  it  the  magnetism  of  the  central  iron, 
which  again  uses  its  attractive  power  on  the 
strip,  which  in  this  manner  is  kept  in  a  per- 
petual vibration.  The  strip  is  moved  nearer 
to,  or  further  from,  the  point  of  attraction, 
by  means  of  a  screw,  which  thus  controls  the 
rate  of  its  vibration.  This  is  important,  for 
the  effects  of  the  faster  or  slower  succession 
of  the  sparks  are  very  different. 

With  the  old  methods  of  applying  electri- 
city, it  was  not  easy  to  act  on  diseased  parts 
without  endangering  the  healthy  organs,  and 
sometimes  the  whole  nervous  system.  Now, 
by  "Faradism,"  I  am  told,  it  is  possible  to 
localise  electricity  in  the  skin  without  irri- 
tating the  organs  covered  by  it,  or  to  traverse 
the  skin  without  irritating  it,  for  concen- 
trating electricity  in  any  nerve  or  muscle. 

Faradisation  of  the  skin,  namely,  of  the 
sensory  nerves,  is  to  be  practised  by  means 
of  dry  excitors,  applied  to  the  dry  skin,  and 
is  capable  of  exciting  in  the  highest  degree 
the  sensibility  of  the  nerves  of  the  skin,  with- 
out injuring  the  skin  itself. 

Some  people  are  more  sensible  to  electri- 
city than  others,  and  it  is  the  same  even  with 
different  parts  of  our  body.  For  this  reason 
are  invented  the  beforementioned  modifying 
arrangements.  With  these  are  combined,  for 
the  same  purpose,  different  manners  of  appli- 
cation. 

The  methods  of  exciting  the  sensory  nerves 
differing  totally  from  those  of  exciting  mus- 
cular contractility,  I  shall  do  best  to  speak  of 
the  two  separately,  hoping  you  will  not  be 
too  much  bored  by  such  a  long  interruption 
of  my  own  sparkling  electric  current. 

The  first  proceeding  on  the  skin  by  Faradism 
Is  by  the  electric  hand.  The  lightning  doctor 
takes  in  one  of  his  hands  a  conductor,  united 
to  one  of  the  two  poles  of  the  pile ;  and  another 
conductor,  or  excitor,  united  to  the  opposite 
pole,  is  placed  in  the  hand  of  the  patient, 
because  this  part  of  the  body  is  generally 
little  excitable.  After  having  dried  the  skin 
by  application  of  some  rice-powder,  the  ope- 
rator passes  rapidly  the  back  of  his  disengaged 
hand  over  the  places  to  be  excited,  and  the 
patient  has  a  brisk  sensation  of  it,  if  a  some- 
what strong  current  is  applied  ;  if  it  be  feeble, 
then  only  a  lively  crepitation  over  the  excited 
points  is  felt  and  heard. 

The  second  degree  of  Faradisation  of  the 
skin  is  exercised  by  solid  metallic  excitors, 
which  the  doctor  keeps  in  his  hands,  and 
which  are  isolated  by  wooden  handles.  The 
third  degree  is  produced  by  bundles  of 
metallic  wire,  which,  in  form  of  a  shaving- 
brush,  are  fastened  in  metallic  cylinders,  aud 


screwed  to  isolating  handles.  The  skin  is 
lightly  beaten  by  these  brushes  of  wire  ; 
or  in  some  cases,  the  ends  of  the  wires  are 
kept  for  a  longer  time  over  the  suffering 
part ;  which,  as  patients  say  who  have  tried 
it,  produces  more  sensation  than  a  red-hot  iron. 

This  Faradisation  of  the  skin  has  been  ex- 
tremely useful  (I  am  told)  in  both  exalted 
and  dejected  states  of  the  sensory  nerves  ;  in 
nervous  headache,  tic-douloureux,  sciatica, 
irritable  breast,  and  anaesthesia,  in  which 
diseases  "the  most  wonderful  results  have 
been  effected,  after  all  other  treatments 
having  proved  unsuccessful."  It  is  the  same 
with  muscular  rheumatism,  even  in  pro- 
tracted cases,  the  entire  removal  of  which  is 
promised  after  a  few  applications. 

For  exciting  muscular  contractility  by 
Faradic  electricity,  the  operator  uses  two 
different  methods  ;  either  concentrating  the 
electric  action  in  the  nervous  plexuses,  or  in 
the  branches — which  communicate  their  ex- 
citation on  the  muscle  itself.  In  both 
methods  the  skin  and  the  excitors  must  be 
wet.  On  the  muscles  of  the  trunk  and  most 
of  the  limbs,  wet  sponges  are  applied,  thrust 
in  metallic  cylinders  screwed  upon  isolating 
handles.  For  limiting  the  electric  power  to 
the  muscles  of  a  small  surface,  as  the  muscles 
of  the  face  aud  the  hand,  use  is  made  of 
conical  metallic  excitors,  covered  with  wet 
leather. 

Many  interesting  facts  have  been  evolved 
from  the  application  of  Faradism  to  the 
study  of  the  functions  of  the  muscles  of  the 
living  body.  It  has  become  possible  to  create 
thus  a  kind  of  living  anatomy. 

The  expression  of  a  face,  said  the  lightning 
doctor,  depends  on  the  muscles  which  are  put 
in  action  by  thoughts,  passions,  and  character  ; 
they  preserve,  during  muscular  repose,  the 
predominance  of  tonic  force,  and  stamp  on 
every  fphysiognomy  its  particular  expression. 
If  there  were  not  in  every  face  tonic  predo- 
minance of  this  or  that  muscle,  all  physio- 
gnomies would  be  like  each  other,  as  the 
muscles  have  the  same  direction,  the  same 
attachments  and  strength,  and  the  bones  only 
differ  from  each  other  by  their  volume. 

Meanwhile  the  lightning  doctor  had  pre- 
pared his  tools,  and  touched  with  an  excitor 
the  frontal  muscle  of  my  friend,  who  directly 
looked  against  his  will,  much  pleased,  but 
became,  very  soon  doubtful  and  at  last  sur- 
prised. Now,  the  lightning  doctor  touched 
the  physiognomical  antagonist  of  the  frontal 
muscle,  the  pyramidalis  nasi,  and  in  a  moment 
my  friend  became  sad  of  aspect^  and  then 
looked  us  if  he  threatened  to  knock  down  the 
operator. 

Faradisation  has  been  very  successful  in 
nervous  deafness,  which  very  often  results 
only  from  relaxation  of  the  drum  of  the  ear. 
To  modify  the  force  of  the  current,  the  exter- 
nal opening  of  the  ear  is  to  be  filled  with 
water,  a  metallic  excitor  is  then  put  into  the 
fluid,  and  the  current  closed  by  putting  the 


Charles  Dickens.] 


CAT'S  GREASE. 


[November  7, 1857.]       453 


other  -wet  excitor  on  the  nape  of  the  neck. 
As  soon  as  this  has  been  done,  the  patient 
will  hear  a  little  noise  like  scratching,  aad 
•when  the  intermissions  of  the  current  are 
more  rapid,  these  noises  approach  each  other 
and  imitate  the  buzzing  of  a  fly  on  the  window. 
Lost  smell  may  be  also  sometimes  restored 
by  exciting  the  mucous  membrane  of  the  nose ; 
and  the  nerves  of  the  tuste  are  made  active 
by  metallic  excitors,  conducted  to  the  edges  of 
the  tongue  and  the  palate.  As  the  current 
of  the  second  order  exercises  a  specific  effect 
on  the  retina  of  the  eye,  it  may  be  used  in 
amaurosis  without  changes  of  structure. 

The  muscles  of  the  pharynx  can  also  be 
excited,  and  when  paralysed,  may  be  benefi- 
cially affected.  The  larynx  has  been  excited 
in  cases  of  loss  of  voice,  produced  by  paralysis 
of  the  muscles  of  the  larynx.  Direct  Fara- 
disation of  the  stomach,  the  liver,  the  heart, 
and  the  lungs,  is  not  possible,  but  they  can 
be  excited  indirectly  by  electrifying  the  tenth 
pair  of  nerves,  accessible  through  the  pharynx. 

Excitation  of  the  diaphragm  can  be  easily 
produced  by  electrifying  the  phrenic  nerves, 
which  are  to  be  reached  on  the  sides  of  the 
neck.  Instantly,  when  the  current  is  closed, 
the  artificial  respiration  is  provided,  the 
thorax  is  expanded  and  the  air  rushes  into 
the  lungs  with  considerable  noise.  It  is  pos- 
sible to  maintain  respiration  in  a  body  even 
some  time  after  death,  and  it  may  easily  be 
conceived  how  vei*y  important  this  agent 
may  become  in  asphyxia,  whether  produced 
by  charcoal  fumes,  by  opium,  by  chloroform, 
by  drowning,  or  by  cholera.  In  all  these 
cases  the  first  indication  is  to  induce  respira- 
tion, which  is  often  to  save  life. 


CAT'S  GEEASE. 


AMONG  the  various  products  of  the  animal 
kingdom  we  are  not  aware  that  cat's  grease 
holds  a  very  high  rank.  However,  when  the 
people  of  a  certain  Swiss  town — meaning  that 
a  person  has  made  a  bad  bargain — declare 
that  "  he  has  bought  cat's  grease,"  we  might 
be  inclined  to  suppose  that  the  proverbial 
expression  was  based  in  the  small  value  of 
the  article  said  to  be  purchased.  At  least, 
we  may  be  inclined  to  adopt  this  hypothesis, 
were  we  not  aware  of  the  strange  incident  to 
which  the  expression  owes  its  origin. 

One  day,  some  few  centuries  ago,  the 
witch-finder  of  the  town  in  question — him- 
self secretly  a  wizard — was  taking  his  after- 
noon's walk,  when  he  suddenly  perceived 
a  cat,  of  the  male  sex,  sitting  in  the  warm 
sun  and  looking  very  thin  and  miserable.  He 
had  known  this  cat  in  better  days  ;  he  had 
been  the  chief  favourite  of  a  rich  old  maid, 
who  had  trained  him  up  in  luxurious  living, 
so  that  he  had  been  regarded  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood as  a  sort  of  prize  cat.  But  the 
ruthless  scythe  of  death  had  mowed  down  the 
ancient  virgin,  and  had  thus  soon  brought 
Tom's  happy  d;iys  to  a  disastrous  end.  Per- 


secution at  the  hands  of  boys  and  dogs  had 
taken  the  place  of  universal  adulation,  and 
he  was  now  as  shaggy  and  as  meagre  as  he 
had  formerly  been  sleek  and  fat.  However, 
though  Tom's  body  had  wasted,  the  pride  of 
his  heart  had  not  diminished,  and  therefore 
when  the  wizard  said  to  him,  "  How  much 
shall  I  offer  you  for  your  fat  ? "  he  looked 
not  a  little  fierce,  and  gave  the  conjuror  to 
understand  that  the  remark,  in  his  opinion, 
revealed  a  large  amount  of  bad  taste.  He 
considered,  in  fact,  to  use  a  sadly  vulgar 
expression,  that  he  was  being  "  chaffed  "  for 
his  lean  condition. 

Tom  was  mistaken.  The  worthy  necro- 
mancer was  perfectly  serious  with  his  ques- 
tion, and  was  really  thinking  how  he  should 
transact  a  little  business  with  the  fallen 
favourite.  Cat's  grease  was  an  invaluable 
ingredient  for  certain  magical  preparations, 
provided  the  cat,  to  whom  it  belonged,  wil- 
lingly made  a  donation  of  it.  This  proviso 
rendered  good  efficient  cat's  grease  an  ex- 
ceedingly rare  commodity  ;  for  though  there 
might  be  no  great  difficulty  in  finding  a  fat 
tabby  or  tortoiseshell,  the  discovery  of  a 
tabby  or  tortoiseshell,  willing  to  part  with  its 
fat  was  no  such  easy  matter. 

Now,  here  was  a  cat  in  a  state  of  despera- 
tion— a  cat  to  whom  the  vicissitudes  of 
fortune  had  rendered  life  a  burden.  Such  a 
cat,  with  the  tested  capability  of  growing  fat, 
when  well  fed,  seemed  exactly  suited  to  the 
purpose  of  the  wizard.  So,  in  round  terms, 
he  offered  Tom  a  whole  lunar  month's  luxuri- 
ous living,  on  condition  that,  at  the  expiration 
of  the  said  mouth,  the  said  Tom  would  volun- 
tarily lay  down  his  life,  yielding  up  all  the  fat 
that  he  had  acquired  through  the  high  feed- 
ing of  four  successive  weeks.  Tom,  who  saw 
no  alternative  besides  dying  of  hunger,  and 
being  killed  from  repletion,  chose  the  better 
mode  of  terminating  his  existence,  and  with- 
out hesitation  accepted  the  wizard's  proposal.. 
A  contract  signed  by  both  parties,  gave  due 
formality  to  the  transaction. 

Such  high  importance  did  the  arch-wizard 
attach  to  an  abundant  supply  of  cat's  grease, 
that  as  soon  as  he  had  taken  Tom  to  his  own 
house,  he  resolved  to  spare  no  pains  in  making 
hinVas  fat  as  possible.  The  apartment  destined 
for  his  lodging  was  fitted  up  as  an  artificial 
landscape.  A  little  wood  was  perched  on  the 
top  of  a  little  mountain,  which  rose  from  the 
backs  of  a  little  lake.  On  the  branches  of  the 
trees  were  perched  dainty  birds,  all  roasted, 
and  emitting  a  most  savoury  odour.  From  the 
cavities  of  the  mountain  peered  forth  sundry 
baked  mice,  all  seasoned  with  delicious 
stuffing  and  exquisitely  larded  with  bacon. 
The  lake  consisted  of  the  newest  milk  with  a 
small  fish  or  two  at  the  bottom.  Thus,  to 
the  enjoyment  of  the  epicure,  was  added  the 
excitement  of  imaginary  sportsmanship. 

Enjoying  freely  all  the  luxuries  that  the 
arch -wizard  had  provided,  Tom  now  became 
as  fat  as  that  worthy  necromancer  could 


454      [N«Temb«r  7, 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


I Conducted  by 


desire  ;  but,  as  he  grew  fat,  he  also  grew  re- 
flective, and  the  thought  that  the  next  moon 
would  bring  with  it  the  termination  of 
his  life,  was  far  from  comfortable.  So  differ- 
ent are  the  views  respecting  life  and  death 
entertained  by  the  same  individual  in  a 
state  of  desperation  and  a  state  of  comfort ! 

As  he  was  to  be  killed  for  his  fatness, 
Tom  rationally  concluded  that  any  expedient 
tending  to  reduce  or  check  his  growing  obesity 
would  be  as  good  as  a  reprieve.  He  there- 
fore began  to  scorn  the  dainty  food  set  before 
him.  The  roasted  larks,  and  the  stuffed 
mice  had  lost  their  charm  ;  so,  likewise,  had 
the  cushion,  placed  for  the  repose  of  his  luxu-  j 
rious  limbs, — the  wizard  having  wisely  con- 
sidered that  nothing  is  more  favourable  to 
the  increase  of  fat  than  absolute  uninter- 
rupted laziness.  Tom  now  preferred  a  run 
upon  the  housetop,  and  such  a  meal  as  was 
afforded  by  the  capture  of  a  live  mouse  or 
sparrow.  Thus  he  maintained  himself  in  a 
good  vigorous  state,  but  it  was  not  the  state 
desired  by  the  wizard,  who  wanted  feline  fat, 
and  not  feline  muscle. 

Seeing  the   cat  obstinately  adhere   to    a  | 
certain  mediocrity  of  stoutness,  the  wizard,  i 
like  Eodrigo,  began,  at  last,  to  suspect  that  j 
he  was  fobbed.     He  expostulated  with  the 
cat,  representing  to  him  that  he  was  bound 
by  all  the  laws  of  honour  to  get  as  fat  as  he  j 
could  by  the  appointed  time,  and  explaining ; 
that  this  morbid  love  of  health  was  extremely  j 
unhandsome.     Tom  sulkily  defended  himself ! 
by  remarking  that  there  was  no  claim  in  the 
contract  binding  him  to  adopt  any  particular 
mode  of  diet,  and  that  he  had,  consequently, 
a  right  to  live  just  as  he  pleased,  which  right 
he  most  assuredly  intended  to  exercise.    This 
reasoning    was  extremely  cogent,    but  the 
wizard  deprived  it  of  all  practical  value,  by 
declaring  that  he  would  kill  the  cat  at  the 
appointed  period — which  had  now  only  five 
days  to  run — whether  he  were  fat  or  not. 
Tom  would  gain  nothing  by  being  thin,  and 
therefore  it  was  hoped  that  his  good  taste, 
unchecked  by  other    considerations,   would 
induce  him  to  enjoy  himself. 

Far  from  being  ruled  by  the  discourse  of 
the  wizard,  Tom  no  sooner  found  himself 
alone,  than  he  rush  'd  out  of  window  upon 
the  tiles,  and  there  devoted  himself  to  such  a 
pugnacious  existence,  that  when  the  moon 
•was  at  the  full,  and  he  returned  home  in 
answer  to  the  wizard's  summons,  he  looked  j 
in  worse  condition  than  ever  :  a  dissipated, 
abandoned,  shaggy  scamp  of  a  cat,  without ' 
an  ounce  of  fat  upon  his  bones.  Loud  was 
the  indignation  with  which  he  was  received  ! 
by  the  wizard,  who,  determined  to  be  fooled 
110  longer,  thrust  him  into  an  empty  coop, 
and  placed  before  him  a  sausage  of  such 
delicious  odour,  that  abstinence  was  impos- 
sible. 

Want  of  exercise,  and  a  course  of  irresist- 
ible sausages  at  last  brought  Tom  to  the 
degree  of  obesity  required  by  the  arch-wizard, 


and  awful  preparations  were  made  for  carry- 
ing out  the  contract  to  its  full  extent.  The 
kitchen  tire  was  lighted,  and  a  pot  was 
placed  thereon  to  boil  down  the  feline  car- 
case, and  extract  the  precious  material,  while 
poor  Tom  looked  wistfully  through  the  bars 
of  his  coop,  at  the  menacing  blaze.  Despe- 
rate, indeed,  seemed  his  case,  when  the 
wizard  sharpened  a  knife,  and  took  him  out 
of  his  prison ;  nor  was  he  particularly 
touched  by  the  considerate  question  of  the 
wise  man,  whether  he  would  be  beheaded 
first,  and  skinned  afterwards,  or  whether 
the  process  of  flaying  should  precede  that  of 
decapitation.  He  decided,  however,  on  re- 
flection, that  it  would  be  less  painful  to  lose 
his  head  before  his  skin,  than  to  have  the 
operation  reversed,  and  his  choice  was  gene- 
rously allowed  by  the  wizard. 

Notwithstanding  this  satisfactory  arrange- 
ment, no  sooner  did  Tom  perceive  the  knife 
waving  over  his  head,  that  he  began  to  utter 
such  singular  expressions  of  contrition,  that 
the  wizard  was  checked  in  his  proceedings 
by  the  sheer  force  of  curiosity.  For,  the  cat, 
in  wild  terms,  alluded  to  a  certain  sum  of 
ten  thousand  florins,  the  property  of  his  late 
mistress,  which,  he  said,  lay  like  a  heavy 
burden  on  his  conscience ;  and  then,  suddenly 
changing  the  subject,  he  hinted  that  it  would 
be  expedient  for  the  wizard  to  take  a  wife. 
The  conjuror,  after  staring  for  some  time,  de- 
liberately laid  down  the  implement  of  death, 
and  requested  an  explanation  of  the  cat's 
meaning.  Hereupon  Tom  most  provokingly 
uttered  a  wail  of  despair,  and  requested  to  be 
beheaded  without  further  questioning,  nor 
did  he  cease  this  tantalising  conduct  until 
the  wizard  informed  him  that  if  he  did  not 
reduce  his  wild  ejaculations  to  something 
like  an  intelligible  narrative,  the  loss  of  his 
head  should  be  preceded  by  that  of  his  ears 
and  tail. 

Thus  prompted  to  become  historical,  Tom 
began  an  exceedingly  long  and  dismal  story 
respecting  his  late  mistress,  who,  it  seems, 
had  been  a  great  beauty  in  her  younger  days, 
and  who  being,  moreover,  exceedingly  rich, 
suspected  that  every  lover  who  solicited  the 
honour  of  her  hand  wooed  her  for  her  wealth 
alone.  To  one  young  gentleman,  whom  she 
really  loved,  she  behaved  very  shabbily 
indeed  for  the  mere  purpose  of  testing  his 
sincerity  :  answering  his  offer  of  marriage  by 
assuring  him,  most  untruly,  that  she  was 
betrothed  to  a  poor  man,  who  could  not 
espouse  her  on  account  of  his  pecuniary  em- 
barrassments. The  deluded  youth,  in  a 
perfect  frenzy  of  magnanimity,  ruined  himself 
by  placing  in  the  lady's  hands  a  sum  sufficient 
to  cover  the  debts  of  her  imaginary  lover,  and 
even  allowed  himself  to  be  cajoled  into  a 
promise  that  lie  would  be  present  at  the  wed- 
ding of  his  rival,  which  was  to  take  place  on 
such  and  such  a  day.  The  lady  was,  of 
course,  delighted  to  find  that  she  had  at 
length  met  with  a  purely  disinterested  heart, 


diaries  Dirtens.] 


CATS  GREASE. 


INovember  7,  1857.]      455 


and  intended  when  the  appointed  day  arrived 
to  bring  the  fiction  to  a  happy  termination 
by  declaring  that  the  supposed  insolvent  was 
a  mere  phantom  of  her  own  invention,  and 
that  her  heart  belonged  exclusively  to  his 
(the  phantom's)  generous  benefactor.  Un- 
happily, however,  the  only  disinterested 
creature  in  the  world  filled  up  his  time  by 
going  to  the  wars,  and  his  death  on  the 
battle-field  prevented  him  from  keeping  his 
appointment.  News  of  the  sad  event  was 
brought  to  the  lady,  who,  in  an  agony  of 
contrition,  flung  the  money  given  to  her  by 
the  deceased  into  a  deep  well,  declaring  that 
it  should  never  be  the  property  of  mortal 
man.  However,  as  death  approached,  she 
changed  her  mind,  and  informing  her  cat  of 
the  place  where  the  treasure  was  concealed, 
told  him  there  was  one  case  in  which  it  might 
be  lawfully  used.  Should  he  find  a  perfectly 
beautiful  and  penniless  maiden,  whom  a  per- 
fectly honest  man  was  inclined  to  wed,  in 
spite  of  her  poverty,  then — and  then  only — 
slxould  he  employ  the  contents  of  the  well  as 
a  marriage-portion.  So  the  lady  died,  and 
left  the  cat  sole  executor.  The  torments  of 
Tom's  conscience  were  now  easily  explained. 
He  feared  to  die,  leaving  his  trust  unfulfilled. 

We  grieve  to  say  that  this  charming  tale, 
so  replete  with  delicate  sentiment,  so  whole- 
some in  its  moral  tendency,  was  neither  more 
nor  less  than  a  wiredrawn  falsehood  devised 
by  the  cat  for  the  express  purpose  of  deceiving 
the  arch-wizard.  There  was  indeed  the  sum 
of  ten  thousand  florins  at  the  bottom  of  the 
well  in  question,  but  it  had  come- into  the 
possession  of  the  old  lady's  family  by  some 
unrighteous  means,  and  she,  being  a  person 
of  superstitious  integrity,  had  flung  it  into 
the  well  that  it  might  bring  her  no  ill-luck, 
uttering,  as  she  did  so,  an  imprecation  on  the 
head  of  any  one  who  might  remove  it.  As 
for  the  story  of  the  young  gentleman,  she  had 
never  had  an  admirer  in  her  life. 

The  wizard  nibbled  at  the  bait,  but  before 
he  proceeded  further  in  the  business,  he  said 
he  would  have  a  peep  into  the  well  to  ascer- 
tain if  the  treasure  was  actually  in  existence. 
Accordingly  he  made  the  cat,  whom  he 
secured  with  a  strong  cord,  guide  him  to  the 
garden  of  the  deceased  lady,  when,  with  the 
help  of  a  lantern,  he  saw  the  coin  glittering 
at  the  bottom  of  the  well.  Being  thus  certain 
of  the  main  fact,  he  began  to  inquire  after 
particulars,  asking  the  cat  whether  he  was 
quite  sure  that  the  shining  treasure  amounted 
precisely  to  ten  thousand  florins.  Tom 
replied  drily,  that  he  really  could  not  tell, 
that  he  had  never  been  down  into  the  well 
himself,  and  that,  for  all  he  knew  to  the 
contrary,  the  lady  might  have  dropped  a  few 
pieces  by  the  way  when,  in  an  agony  of  con- 
trition, she  rushed  with  the  sum  of  money  to 
its  present  place  of  concealment. 

All  this  sounded  so  honest  that  the  wizard 
declared  himself  perfectly  satisfied,  professing 
at  the  same  time  his  anxiety  to  become  the 


disinterested  bridegroom  of  a  portionleaa 
damsel,  if  such  a  being  could  be  found.  Tom 
averred  that  a  specimen  of  virtuous  poverty 
was  already  in  his  eye,  and  that  he  would  be 
most  happy  to  render  his  services  to  the 
wizard  if  he  found  himself  in  an  unembar- 
rassed condition.  But  how  could  any  mortal, 
whether  human  or  feline,  go  a-wooing  by 
proxy  with  any  degree  of  spirit,  while  aware 
that  there  was  a  contract  in  existence  by 
which  his  life  might  be  demanded  at  a 
minute's  notice  ? 

Cat's-grease  was  valuable,  but  the  yield  of 
a  single  cat,  however  plump,  was  not  worth 
ten  thousand  florins ;  so,  the  wizard,  grumbling 
not  a  little,  slowly  drew  from  his  pocket  the 
treasured  contract,  which  Tom  no  sooner 
perceived  than  he  pounced  upon  it",  and 
swallowed  it  whole,  making  at  the  same  time 
the  two  several  reflections  that  he  had  never 
tasted  so  delicious  a  morsel  in  his  life,  and 
that  an  arch-wizard  is  as  likely  to  prove  an 
arch-dupe  as  a  less  sagacious  individual. 

Now,  directly  opposite  to  the  wizard's  resi- 
dence, was  a  remarkably  clean-looking  house, 
inhabited  by  an  old  lady,  who  was  equally 
renowned  lor  her  ugliness  and  her  piety. 
Her  dress  was  scrupulously  neat,  and  she 
went  to  church  three  times  every  day,  but 
this  did  not  prevent  the  children  from  scam- 
pering away,  whenever  she  came  in  sight, 
and  even  grown-up  folks,  who  extolled  her 
as  a  model  of  feminine  goodness,  did  not 
much  care  to  meet  her  in  the  shade  of  the 
evening.  Moreover,  it  was  said,  that  the 
back  of  her  house  was  as  grim  and  unclean, 
as  the  front  was  bright  and  spotless,  though 
the  circumstance  that  this  part  of  the  editice 
was  concealed  by  a  high  wall,  rendered  any 
opinion  on  the  subject  exceedingly  doubtful. 
Still  more  serious  was  the  report,  that  a  witch 
with  black  dishevelled  hair,  might  sometimes 
be  seen  at  midnight  issuing  from  the  chimney 
on  a  broom.  Had  not  the  old  lady's  character 
stood  exceedingly  high,  through  her  conduct 
in  the  day-time,  this  report  might  have 
damaged  it  not  a  little. 

To  the  roof  of  the  house,  thus  respectably 
inhabited,  did  the  liberated  Tom  betake  him- 
self. Close  to  the  chimney,  solemnly  musing, 
sat  a  venerable  owl,  whom  he  accosted  as  an 
old  friend,  and  to  whom  he  presented  a  fat 
mouse,  that  he  had  caught  by  the  way.  The 
owl  was  delighted  with  the  mouse,  and  pleased 
to  see  Tom,  whom  she  invited  to  partake  of  a 
choice  bird,  and  to  the  recital  of  whose  adven- 
tures she  lent  a  willing  ear. 

Being  a  bird  of  somewhat  lax  principles, 
the  owl  when  she  heard  Tom's  narrative 
throughout,  was  not  a  little  surprised  to  find 
that  he  really  meant  to  fulfil  his  contract 
towards  the  wizard  by  providing  him  with  a 
wife,  and  giving  him  the  money  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  well.  However,  when  she  heard 
further  that  the  chosen  bride  was  to  be  t-he 
old  lady  of  the  house ;  and,  moreover,  was 
reminded  that  her  own  liberation  would  be  a 


456 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[November  ".  1857.1 


natural  consequence  of  the  marriage  of  that 
ancient  maiden,  she  entered  readily  into  the 
scheme,  and  when  the  cat  asked  how  the  coy 
fair  one  could  be  captured,  informed  him  that 
the  operation  might  be  easily  effected  with  a 
net,  spun  by  a  man  of  sixty  years  old,  who 
had  never  set  eyes  on  the  face  of  woman. 
"  Such  a  net  would  be  hard  to  find,"  thought 
Tom.  No.  Such  a  net  was  not  at  all  hard 
to  find.  A  net-maker,  who  had  been  blind 
from  his  birth,  was  iu  the  habit  of  making 
nets  every  day,  aud  the  owl  undertook  to 
steal  one,  if  the  cat  would  in  the  meanwhile 
keep  guard  against  the  chimney.  Tom's 
duty,  while  at  this  post,  was  to  give  such 
answers  to  the  old  lady,  if  she  spoke  from 
below,  as  would  prevent  her  from  popping  out 
of  the  chimney  before  the  owl's  return.  That 
the  old  lady  and  the  witch  were  one  and  the 
same  person,  our  readers  have  guessed  long 
ago. 

The  absence  of  the  owl  was  of  no  long  du- 
ration, and  as  soon  as  she  had  returned  with 
the  i-equired  article,  she  and  the  cat  placed 
it  carefully  over  the  aperture  of  the  chimney. 

"  Is  all  right  up  there  1 "  shrieked  a  harsh 
voice  from  below. 

"  Perfectly,"  replied  the  owl,  "  the  fog  is  of 
surpassing  thickness." 

Satisfied  with  this  answer,  up  went  the 
witch  like  a  sky-lark,  and  was  surprised  to 
find  herself  held  fast  by  the  net,  which  the 
allied  animals  pulled  with  all  their  might. 
Then  began  a  kicking,  and  a  plunging,  and  a 
struggling,  in  the  course  of  which  poor  Tom 
received  such  a  punch  in  the  nose  from  the 
broom-stick  that  projected  through  one  of  the 
interstices  of  the  net,  that  the  tears  came  into 
his  eyes,  and  he  was  on  the  point  of  relaxing 
his  hold,  and  thus  losing  all  his  advantage. 
However,  the  witch  was  at  last  fairly  tired 
out,  and  asked  her  captors,  in  a  tolerably 
humble  voice,  what  was  their  will  and 
pleasure  ? 

"  I  desire  my  liberty,"  said  the  owl,  in  a 
lofty  tone,  worthy  of  William  Tell. 

"  Take  it  and  welcome,"  replied  the  witch, 
with  a  titter.  "  You  might  have  had  it 
without  all  this  trouble.  Good  riddance  of 
bad  rubbish." 

"  But  we  require  something  more,"  said 
the  owl.  "  You  must  marry  the  old  gentle- 
man over  the  way." 

Now,  if  there  was  a  being  in  the  world 
that  the  venerable  lady  detested,  it  was  our 
worthy  friend,  the  wizard  ;  and  hence,  when 
she  heard  the  project  of  the  two  criminals, 
she  naturally  renewed  her  plunging  and 
kicking  with  increased  violence.  However, 
she  was  reminded  that  the  gentleman  in 
question,  although  secretly  a  wizard,  was 
employed  by  the  town  as  a  witch-finder,  and 
further  informed,  that  if  she  did  not  consent 
to  the  very  reasonable  request  of  the  owl  and 


the  cat,  she  should  be  swung  dangling  from 
the  house-roof,  so  that  her  character  as  a 
sorceress  would  be  revealed  before  all  the 
world.  If  she  hated  the  wizard,  she  might 
easily  gratify  her  hatred  by  making  him 
perfectly  miserable  in  the  marriage-state  ; 
whereas  if  she  refused  to  marry  him,  he 
would  certainly  terminate  her  existence  by 
means  of  the  stake  and  the  tar-barrel.  This- 
argument  was  irresistible  ;  the  witch  con- 
sented, though  unwillingly,  to  the  marriage- 
scheme,  and  having  bound  herself  by  snch 
oaths  as  sorcerers  deem  sacred,  to  the  due 
fulfilment  of  her  promise,  was  set  at  liberty 
by  her  two  captors.  Upon  this  she  mounted 
her  usual  vehicle,  and  sailed  through  the  air, 
with  the  owl  sitting  behind  on  the  stick-end, 
and  the  cat  sitting  before  on  the  bi*oom-end, 
until  the  whole  party  arrived  safely  at  the 
well,  into  which  the  old  lady  descended,  to 
fetch  up  the  hidden  treasure. 

How  the  witch,  by  magical  art,  put  on  an 
appearance  of  youth  and  beauty ;  how  the 
wizard  married  her  in  an  ecstacy  of  delight ; 
how  the  cat  and  the  owl  took  to  their  heels 
as  soon  as  the  ceremony  was  over,  and  never 
were  heard  of  more  ;  how  the  witch  resumed 
her  pristine  ugliness  when  evening  ap- 
proached ;  and  how  the  wizard  was  not  only 
disgusted  at  his  biide,  in  spite  of  the  treasure 
that  she  brought,  but  was  miserably  hen- 
pecked all  the  rest  of  his  days,  we  need  not 
relate  in  detail.  We  have  shown  what  the . 
people  of  a  certain  Swiss  town  mean,  when, 
wishing  to  indicate  that  a  person  has  made  a 
bad  bargain,  they  say  that  he  has  bought 
cat's  grease. 

The  historical  value  of  the  above  legend  is 
considerably  diminished  by  the  fact,  that  the 
town  in  which  the  proverb  is  said  to  be 
especially  current,  does  not  exist  at  all  :  the 
whole  story  being  the  invention  of  a  living 
German  writer,  named  Gottfried  Heller,  who 
has  written  a  very  choice  book,  called  "  Die 
Leute  von  Seldwyla,"  but  is  not  known  to 
the  extent  of  his  deserts.  From  this  book 
we  have  taken  the  substance  of  our  tale,  but 
its  form  is  entirely  our  own. 


Now  ready,  price  Five  Shillings  and  Sixpeuce,  neatly 
bound  in  cloth, 


Containing  the  Numbers  issued  between  the  Third  of 
January  and  the  Twenty-seventh  of  June  of  the  present 

year. 


!    Just  published,  in  Two  Volumes,  post  Svo,  price  One 
Guinea, 

THE    DEAD    SECRET. 

BY  WILKIB  COLLINS. 

Bradbury  and  Evans,  Whitefriars. 


TJie  Rigid  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  ly  the  Authors. 


t ublithed  at  the  Office,  rs'o.  If,  WellhiKtoa  Street  North, Strand.    Printed  by  BnABBum  &  ETASS,  Wbitefriar?,  1-onJon, 


"  Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS"— SHAKESPBARB. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A    WEEKLY    JOUKNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


°-  899.] 


SATURDAY,  NOVEMBER  14,  1857. 


WANDERINGS  IN  INDIA. 


IT  is  some  yeai's  since  I  first  landed  in 
Calcutta.  I  was  iu  no  way  connected  with 
the  government,  and  was  consequently  an 
"  interloper  "  or  "  adventurer."  These  were 
the"  terms  applied  by  certain  officials  to 
European  merchants,  indigo-planters,  shop- 
keepers, artisans,  barristers,  attorneys,  and 
others. 

It  was  not  long  before  I  made  up  my  mind 
to  become  a  wanderer  in  the  East.  I  had 
no  occupation,  was  my  own  master,  and  had  a 
large  tract  of  country  to  roam  about  in.  My 
first  step  was  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  Hin- 
doostanee  and  of  Persian.  By  dint  of  hard 
study,  at  the  end  of  six  months  I  found 
myself  capable,  not  only  of  holding  a  conver- 
sation, but  of  arguing  a  point  in  either  of 
these  languages  ;  and,  with  a  light  heai't,  I 
took  my  departure  from  the  City  of  Palaces, 
and  proceeded  to  Monghyr,  on  the  Ganges. 

The  chief  civilian  of  that  district  had  invited 
me  to  spend  a  month  with  him.  Every  day 
I  accompanied  my  friend  to  his  court,  and 
thereby  got  some  insight  into  the  administra- 
tion of  justice  in  India,  both  civil  and  cri- 
minal. Here,  too,  I  first  made  acquaintance 
with  Thugs.  Several  most  notorious  charac- 
ters of  that  tribe  were  at  Monghyr, — not 
imprisoned,  but  permitted  to  move  about. 
They  had  been  pardoned  on  condition  that 
they  would  become  informers,  and,  to  a  certain 
extent,  detectives,  in  the  suppression  of 
Thuggee^  in  the  British  dominions.  It  was  a 
curious  feeling  to  be  in  conversation  with 
men  who  had  each  committed  his  ninety  or  a 
hundred  murders — to  see  the  fingers  that  had 
strangled  so  many  victims — to  watch  the  pro- 
cess, for  they  were  good-natured  enough  to 
act  it.  There  was  the  unsuspecting  traveller 
with  his  bundle ;  the  decoy  Thug,  who  engaged 
him  in  conversation  ;  the  two  men,  who  at  the 
given  signal,  were  to  seize  ;  the  executioner, 
standing  behind  with  the  handkerchief,  ready 
to  strangle  the  victim.  They  even  went  through 
the  operation  ot  searching  the  "deceased," 
upon  whom  they  found  nothing  in  this  case  ; 
but  they  assured  me  this  frequently  happened 
in  reality.  The  reader  is  of  course  aware 
that  it  is  a  part  of  the  Thug's  religion  not  to 
rob  a  live  body.  The  crime  of  murder  must 
precede  that  of  theft.  The  play— the  tragedy 


— over  (to  these  domesticated  demons  it  was 
a  mere  farce),  they  laughed  at  the  solemn 
expression  which,  I  doubt  not,  was  stamped 
upon  my  features. 

These  Thugs  were  permitted  to  have  their 
families  at  Moughyr  ;  and  one  morning,  when 
I  -strolled  down  to  their  camp,  an  old  man 
made  five  children,  the  eldest  boy  not  more 
than  eight  years  old,  go  through  the  business 
of  strangling  and  robbing  a  victim.  In  one 
respect  these  urchins  outdid  their  proge- 
nitors in  the  acting.  They  not  only  went 
through  the  ceremony  of  searching  the 
dead  body,  but,  that  done,  they  dragged  it 
by  the  legs  to  a  well,  and,  in  dumb  show, 
threw  it  down,  and  then  uttered  a  prayer  to 
Heaven ! 

"  "Was  that  good  ? "  said  one  of  the  chil- 
dren, running  up  to  me  for  applause  and  a 
reward.  I  scarcely  knew  what  to  reply. 
Before  I  had  time  to  give  any  answer,  the 
child's  father  said,  "  No  ;  it  was  not  good. 
You  used  the  handkerchief  before  the  signal 
was  given.  Go  through  it  again,  and  remem- 
ber, this  time,  that  you  must  have  patience." 
The  boys  began  again,  much  in  the  same 
spirit  that  an  actor  and  actress  would  go 
through  the  strangling  scene  in  Othello,  to 
please  a  fastidious  manager. 

Approaching  a  very  interesting  looking 
woman,  of  about  tvvo-and-twenty  years  of  age, 
I  said  to  her,  "  What  do  you  think  of  this  ?  " 

She  replied,  in  a  proverb,  "  The  mango 
always  falls  beneath  the  shade  of  the  parent 
tree." 

"  But  the  crime  ?"  said  I.  "What  think 
you  of  that  1 " 

She  looked  up  with  as  lovely  a  pair  of 
eyes  as  ever  saw  the  light,  smiled,  and  re- 
sponded : 

"  Heaven  will  hole7  us  all,  Sahib  !" 

I  was  about  to  reason  with  her,  but  her 
husband,  with  an  expression  of  pride,  inter- 
fered, and  informed  me  that  she  had  taken 
eighteen  lives. 

"  Twenty-one  !  "  she  exclaimed. 

"  Eighteen  only,"  said  he.       f 

"  Twenty-one ! "  she  persisted,  and  ran  them 
over,  counting  on  her  fingers  the  places  and 
the  dates  when  the  murders  were  committed. 
Her  husband  then  admitted  that  she  was 
in  the  right,  and,  turning  to  me,  remarked, 
"  She  is  a  very  clever  woman,  Sahib." 


VOL.  XVI. 


399 


458      [Norember  14, 1857.) 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(Conducted  by 


"Were  your  victims  men  or  women?"  I 
said  to  her. 

"  All  women,"  she  answered  me.  "  Some 
old  and  some  young." 

I  was  tempted  to  ask  her  to  show  me  how 
it  was  done  ;  and,  after  considerable  coaxing 
she  complied  with  my  wishes.  To  my  sur- 
prise, she  was  the  only  actor  in  the  scene, 
except  the  victim,  with  whom  she  went 
through  the  process  of  strangling  with  a 
piece  of  cord.  The  victim,  another  Thuggess, 
was  supposed  to  be  sleeping,  when  the  oper- 
ation was  performed,  and  I  could  not  help 
admiring — horrible  as  the  sight  was — the 
accuracy  with  which  she  performed  the 
throes  and  agony  of  Death.  To  borrow  an 
idea  from  Juuius,  "  None  but  those  who  had 
frequently  witnessed  such  awful  moments 
could  describe  them  so  well." 

At  the  house  of  my  Monghyr  friend,  I  met 
a  French  gentleman,  an  indigo-planter  of 
Tirhoot,  in  Behar.  He  invited  me  to  pay 
him  a  visit,  and  to  accompany  him  in  his  boat. 
He  was  about  to  sail  on  the  following  day. 
I  say  "sail,"  for  at  that  time  (the  month 
of  August),  the  country  was  inundated 
and  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  travel 
by  land.  I  accepted  the  invitation,  and  we 
sailed  from  Monghyr  to  Hajeepore  without 
going  near  the  Ganges  for  several  days. 

Monsieur  Bardon,  the  French  planter,  was 
one  of  the  most  accomplished  and  agreeable 
men  I  had  ever  met,  and,  in  truth,  one  of  the 
greatest  characters.  The  hospitality  of  the 
Tirhoot  planters  is  proverbial  in  India,  and 
I  believe  I  might  have  lived  in  that  Garden 
of  the  East,  as  it  is  called,  from  that  day 
to  this,  as  a  welcome  guest  of  the  various 
planters,  if  I  had  chosen  still  to  be  their 
guest.  As  it  was,  I  was  eight  months  in 
the  district,  and  then  had  very  great  diffi- 
culty in  getting  away.  A  now  celebrated 
officer,  at  that  time  commanding  the  Irregu- 
lar Cavalry  at  Segowlie,  induced  me  to 
follow  him  ;  and,  after  leaving  his  abode, 
I  went  to  the  Bettiah  Rajah,  who  initiated 
me  into  the  mysteries  of  tiger-shooting.  It 
was  in  the  dominions  of  this  small  chief  that 
iny  hands  and  face  were  so  browned  that  I 
became  far  less  fair  than  many  natives  of  the 
country.  Before  leaving  Tirhoot,  however, 
I  paid  a  visit  to  Rooder  Singh,  the  Rajah  of 
Durbungah,  the  richest  native,  perhaps,  in 
all  India.  He  has  two  hundred  thousand 
pounds  a-year  net  revenue  ;  and,  in  a  tank  in 
his  palace  there  is  lying,  in  gold  and  silver, 
upwards  of  a  million  and  a  half  sterling. 
Chutter  Singh,  the  father  of  the  Rajah  of 
Durbungah,  was  a  firm  friend  of  the  British 
Government  during  the  Nepal  war.  He 
raised  a  regiment  of  horse  and  provisioned 
it.  When  asked  by  the  authorities  for  his 
bill,  he  replied  that  the  Government  owed 
him  nothing. 

After  leaving  the  Bettiah  Rajah,  I  pro- 
ceeded to  Lucknow,  where  I  improved  my- 


self greatly  in  Hindostanee.  In  this  city, 
and  in  Delhi,  the  purest  is  spoken.  At 
Luckuow  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Ally 
Nucky  Khan  (the  prime  minister  of  the 
King  of  Oude,  who  is  now  imprisoned  in 
Fort  William),  of  Wuzy  Ally  Khan  (a  cele- 
brity of  Ou«ie,  who  is  srtnce  dead),  and  of 
Rugburdiall,  the  eldest  son  of  the  late  Shah 
Beharee  Lall,  one  of  the  richest  bankers  in 
India.  Shah  Beharee  Lall  is  said  to  have 
died  worth  seven  millions  in  cash  ;  but  I 
have  reason  to  believe  that  three  millions 
sterling  was  the  utmost  that  he  died  pos- 
sessed of.  Rugburdiall  held  the  office  of 
treasurer  to  the  King  of  Oude.  Ally  Nucky 
Khan  gave  me  the  idea  of  a  man  of  small 
mental  capacity,  but  of  immense  cunning 
and  inordinate  vanity.  The  late  Mr.  Beechy, 
the  King  of  Oude's  portrait-painter,  must 
have  taken  at  least  a  score  of  likenesses  of 
Ally  Nucky,  who,  to  say  the  truth,  is  a 
remarkably  good-looking  personage.  Wuzy 
Ally  Khan  was  a  tall  and  handsome  man  of 
about  five-and-forty.  His  manners  were 
refined,  his  address  charming,  and  his  bear- 
ing altogether  that  of  a  well-bred  gentleman. 
Of  his  talents  there  could  be  no  questiou  ; 
and  he  was,  moreover,  a  learned  and  well- 
informed  man.  There  could  be  no  doubt 
that  Wuzy  Ally  Khan,  in  point  of  fact,  ruled 
the  kingdom.  The  conversational  powers  of 
this  man  were  immense,  and  he  was  both 
witty  and  humorous.  A  more  agreeable 
companion  it  would  be  difficult  to  meet  with 
in  any  country.  When  I  first  made  his 
acquaintance,  he  was  in  great  favour  with 
the  then  resident  at  the  court  of  Oude  ;  but, 
on  the  appointment  of  Colonel  Sleeman,  he 
fell  into  disrepute  with  the  British  officials 
and  continued  so  up  to  the  time  of  his  death, 
which  occurred  about  two  years  ago.  I  was 
five  months  in  Oude  ;  and,  during  that  period 
spoke  nothing  but  Hindostanee,  or  Persian. 
I  made  a  point  of  avoiding  my  own  country- 
men, and  of  associating  only  with  the  natives 
of  India. 

Previous  to  leaving  Lucknow,  a  letter  was 
despatched  to  Nena  Sahib,  informing  him 
that  a  gentleman  of  distinction,  a  most  in- 
timate friend  of  the  governor-general,  and 
related  by  birth  or  marriage  to  every  mem- 
ber of  the  council  in  Calcutta,  as  well  as  a 
constant  guest  of  the  Queen  of  England,  was 
travelling  through  Hindostan  in  disguise, 
and  would  most  probably,  by  his  presence, 
illumine  the  abode  of  the  Maharajah  Baha- 
door,  and  it  was  hoped  that  every  respect 
would  be  paid  to  the  dignity  of  the  Sahib's 
exalted  position,  &c.,  &c.  When  the  draft  of 
this  epistle  was  read  aloud  by  the  moonshee 
who  had  written  it  from  dictation,  I  expostu- 
lated, on  the  ground  that  the  contents  were 
not  in  accordance  with  the  truth.  My 
scruples,  however,  were  eventually  overcome, 
and  I  took  leave  of  my  Lucknow  friends, 
after  being  provided  with  all  that  I  should 
require  on  my  journey  (of  about  forty-five 


Charles  Dickens/) 


WANDERINGS  IN  INDIA. 


[November  14. 1857.]      459 


miles),  and  an  escort  of  fifteen  sowars  (horse- 
men) ;  for  the  road,  at  that  time,  between 
Lucknow  and  Cawnpore  was  infested  by  rob- 
bers. About  a  mile  from  Blutoor  my  palkee 
was  placed  upon  the  ground.  I  was  asleep, 
but  awoke,  and  inquired,  "  Kia  hua  ? "  (what 
is  the  matter  ? ) 

I  was  infoi-med  by  the  bearers  of  my 
palkee  that  the  Maharajah  Peishwa  Baha- 
door  had  sent  out  an  escort  in  honour  of  my 
approach,  and  presently  there  appeared  at 
the  door  of  my  palkee  a  soldier-like  looking 
Hindoo,  who  made  me  a  very  respectful 
salaam.  The  escort  consisted  of  eight  foot- 
soldiers  with  drawn  swords,  and  four  sowars. 
The  former,  running  by  the  side  of  my 
palkee,  encouraged  the  bearers  to  make 
haste  ;  while  the  latter  caused  their  horses 
to  curvet  and  prance,  and  thus  kick  up  a 
frightful  dust.  At  the  abode  of  the  Maha- 
rajah Bahadoor,  I  was  met  by  several  of  his 
musahibs  (courtiers),  who  were  exceedingly 
polite,  and  conducted  me  to  a  suite  of  apart- 
ments which  had  apparently  been  made  ready 
for  my  reception ;  and  so  far  as  servants  were 
concerned,  I  was  literally  surrounded.  A 
sirdar  bearer  (personal  attendant,  or  Indian 
valet)  took  charge  of  my  two  boxes  which  con- 
tained my  wearing  apparel.  A  khansamah 
(butler),  followed  by  three  khidmutghars 
(table  servants),  asked  me  if  I  would  take 
some  iced  water,  and  in  the  same  breath 
informed  me  that  every  kind  of  European 
drink  was  at  hand.  Brandy,  gin,  champagne, 
claret,  sherry,  port,  beer,  cherry-brandy  and 
aoda-water.  And  what  would  I  take  for 
dinner  ?  Whatever  the  Sahib's  heart  might 
desire,  was  in  readiness.  Turkey  1  goose  1 
duck  1  fowl  ?  beefsteak  1  mutton-chop  1 
ham  and  eggs?  And  here  the  khans- 
amah  (a  venerable  Mussulman)  informed  me, 
sotto  voce,  that  the  Maharajah  was  con- 
stantly in  the  habit  of  entertaining  European 
gentlemen  ;  and  that,  although  his  Highness 
was  himself  a  strict  Hindoo,  he  had  no  kind 
of  prejudice,  so  that  if  I  preferred  beef  to  any 
other  kind  of  meat,  I  had  only  to  give  the 
order.  I  assured  the  khansamah  that  since 
my  arrival  in  India,  I  had  never  tasted  beef, 
or  hog's  flesh,  and  that  if  he  would  have  pre- 
pared for  me,  as  speedily  as  possible,  some 
rice  and  vegetables  I  should  be  quite  satisfied. 
With  a  profound  salaam  the  khansamah  took 
his  departure,  followed  by  the  khidmutghars. 
The  sirdar  bearers,  and  four  other  men,  then 
approached  me,  reverentially,  and  begged  to 
conduct  me  to  my  sleeping  apartment  and  the 
bathing  rooms. 

There  is  something  peculiarly  quaint  about 
the  arrangement  of  European  furniture  in 
the  house  of  a  native  gentleman.  In  the 
house  of  a  European,  the  servants  are,  of 
course,  taught  how  to  arrange  tables,  chairs, 
and  beds,  according  to  European  ideas  ;  but 
it  is  otherwise  with  the  servants  of  a  rajah,  i 
or  native  gentleman.  The  consequence  is 
that  in  the  dining,  or  drawing-room,  you  will  I 


find  a  wash-hand  stand,  and  a  chest  of 
drawers,  and  a  toilet-table,  while  in  the  bed- 
room you  will,  perhaps,  discover  an  old 
piano,  an  organ,  a  card-table,  or  cheffonier. 
The  furniture  has,  for  the  most  part,  been 
purchased  at  various  sales,  and  has  belonged 
to  officers  of  all  grades,  civil  and  military. 
There  are  the  tent-table  and  the  camp-stool  ot 
a  dead  ensign,  in  the  same  room  with  the 
marble-topped  table  and  a  crimson  damask- 
covered  easy  chair  of  some  luxurious  judge. 
On  the  mantel-piece  you  will  find  a  costly 
clock  of  the  most  elegant  design  and  work- 
manship, and  on  each  side  of  it,  a  pair  of 
japan  candlesticks,  not  worth  half-a-crown. 
In  this  way  are  arranged  the  pictures  on  the 
walls.  Immediately  underneath  a  proof  print 
of  Landseer's  "  Bolton  Abbey,"  or  "  Hawk- 
ing," you  will  observe  a  sixpenny  coloured 
print  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  or  Napo- 
leon Bonaparte.  The  pictures  also  have 
been  bought  indiscriminately  at  various 
sales,  and  have  been  as  indiscriminately  sus- 
pended on  the  walls.  There  are  the  print- 
shop  ballet  girls  intermingled  with  engrav- 
ings of  the  most  serious  character.  Fores'a 
sporting  collection  with  the  most  classical 
subjects.  Foot-stools,  musical-boxes,  and  ele- 
gantly bound  books,  writing-desks,  work- 
boxes,  plated  dishes,  sugar-basins,  and  tea- 
pots, are  arranged  in  the  most  grotesque 
fashion  imaginable.  Upon  an  elegant  maho- 
gany sideboard  you  will  find  decanters  and 
glasses  of  every  description  and  quality. 
Upon  another  sideboard,  in  the  drawing-room, 
you  will  find  a  variety  of  dinner-services,  and 
earthen  fragments  thereof,  all  mixed.  There 
was  but  one  set  of  rooms  at  Bhitoor  for  the 
reception  of  "  Sahib  logue,"  and  this  was  the 
set  that  I  then  occupied. 

I  had  scarcely  made  myself  comfortable, 
when  the  khansamah  informed  me  that  din- 
ner was  on  table.  This  was  welcome  intelli- 
gence, for  I  had  not  tasted  food  since  morn- 
ing and  it  was  half-past  five  P.  M.  I  sat 
down  to  a  table  twenty  feet  long  (it  had 
originally  been  the  mess  table  of  a  cavalry 
regiment),  which  was  covered  with  a  damask 
table  cloth  of  European  manufacture,  but 
instead  of  a  dinner-napkin  there  was  a 
bed-room  towel.  The  soup  —  for  he  had 
everything  ready — was  served  up  in  a  trifle 
dish,  which  had  formed  part  of  a  dessert- 
service  belonging  to  the  Ninth  Lancers — at 
all  events,  the  arms  of  that  regiment  were 
upon  it ;  but  the  plate  into  which  I  ladled 
it  with  a  broken  tea-cup,  was  of  the  old 
willow-pattern.  The  pilaw  which  followed 
the  soup,  was  served  upon  a  huge  plated 
dish  ;  but  the  plate  from  which  I  ate  it,  was 
of  the  very  commonest  description.  The 
knife  was  a  bone -handled  affair ;  the  spoon  and 
the  fork  were  of  silver,  and  of  Calcutta  make. 
The  plated  side  dishes,  containing  vegetables, 
were  odd  ones ;  one  was  round,  the  other 
oval.  The  pudding  was  brought  in  upon  a 
soup-plate  of  blue  and  gold  pattern,  and  the 


460       [November  14,  185-.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


cheese  was  placed  before  me  on  a  glass  dish  f 
belonging   to    a    dessert-service.    The    cool 
claret  I  drank  out  of  a  richly  cut  champagne 
glass,    and    the    beer    out  of  an  American 
tumbler,  of  the  very  worst  quality. 

I  had  not  yet  seen  "  the  Maharajah."  It 
was  not  until  past  eight  that  a  moonshee 
came  and  inquired  if  I  would  have  an  inter- 
view with  his  highness.  I  replied  that  it 
would  give  me  great  joy,  and,  was  forthwith 
conducted  through  numerous  narrow  and 
gloomy  passages  to  an  apartment  at  the 
corner  of  the  building.  Here,  sat  the  maha- 
rajah  on  a  Turkey  carpet,  and  reclining 
slightly  on  a  huge  bolster.  In  front  of  him 
were  his  hookah,  a  sword,  and  several  nosegays. 
His  highness  rose,  came  forward,  took  my 
hand,  led  me  to  the  carpet,  and  begged  of 
me  to  be  seated  on  a  cane-bottomed  arm- 
chair, which  had  evidently  been  placed  ready 
for  my  especial  ease  and  occupation.  After 
the  usual  compliments  had  passed,  the  Ma- 
harajah inquired  if  I  had  eaten  well.  But, 
perhaps,  the  general  reader  would  like  to 
know  what  are  "  the  usual  compliments." 

Native  Rajah.  "  The  whole  world  is  ring- 
ing with  the  praise  of  your  illustrious 
name." 

Humble  Sahib.  "Maharaj.  You  are  very 
good." 

Native  Rajah.  "  From  Calcutta  to  Cabul — 
throughout  the  whole  of  Hindoostan — every 
tongue  declares  that  you  have  no  equal.  It 
is  true." 

Humble  Sahib  (who,  if  he  knows  anything 
of  Asiatic  manners  and  customs,  knows  that 
he  must  not  contradict  his  host,  but  eat  his 
compliments  with  a  good  appetite).  "Ma- 
haraj." 

Native  Rajah.  "The  acuteness  of  your  per- 
ceptions, and  the  soundness  of  your  under- 
standing, have,  by  universal  report,  become 
as  manifest  as  even  the  light  of  the  sun 
itself."  Then,  turning  to  his  attendants  of 
every  degree,  who,  by  this  time,  had  formed  a 
circle  round  me  and  the  Rajah,  he  put  the 
question,  "  Is  it  true,  or  not  ? " 

The  attendants,  one  and  all,  declare  that 
it  was  true  ;  and  inquire  whether  it  could  be 
possible  for  a  great  man  like  the  Maharajah 
to  say  that  which  was  false. 

Native  Rajah.  "The  Sahib's  father  is 
living  ? " 

Humble  Sahib.  "No,  he  is  dead,  Maharaj." 

Native  Rajah.  "  He  was  a  great  man." 

Humble  Sahib.  "Maharaj.  You  have 
honoured  the  memory  of  my  father,  and 
exalted  it  in  my  esteem,  by  expressing  such 
an  opinion." 

Native  Rajah.  "And  your  mother?  She 
lives  ? " 

Humble  Sahib.  "By  the  goodness  of  God, 
such  is  the  case." 

Native  Rajah.  "She  is  a  very  handsome 
woman  1 " 

Humble  Sahib.  "  On  that  point,  Maharaj, 
I  cannot  ofler  an  opinion." 


Native  Rajah.  "You  need  not  do  so.  To 
look  in  your  face  is  quite  sufficient.  I  would 
give  a  crore  of  rupees  (one  million  sterling) 
to  see  her  only  for  one  moment,  and  say  how 
much  I  admired  the  intelligent  countenance 
of  her  son.  I  am  going  to  England  next 
year.  Will  the  Sahib  favour  me  with  her 
address  ? " 

Humble  Sahib.  "Maharaj." 

Here  the  Native  Rajah  calls  to  the  moon- 
shee to  bring  pen,  ink,  and  paper.  The 
moonshee  conies,  sits  before  me,  pen  in  hand, 
looks  inquiringly  into  my  eyes,  and  I  dictate 
as  follows,  laughing  inwardly  all  the  while  : 
"Lady  Bombazine,  Munnymunt  ka  uper, 
Peccadilleemee,  Bilgrave  Isqueere,  Sunjons 
wood-Cumberwill;"  which  signifies  this: 
"  Lady  Bombazine,  on  the  top  of  the  Monu- 
ment, in  Piccadilly,  Belgrave  Square,  St. 
John's  Wood,  Cam  her  well."  This  mystifica- 
tion must  be  excused  by  the  plea  that  the 
Rajah's  intentions  are  as  truthful  as  Lady 
Bombazine's  address. 

The  Maharajah  then  gives  instructions 
that  that  document  shall  be  preserved 
amongst  his  most  important  papers,  and 
resumes  the  conversation. 

Native  Rajah.  "  The  Sahib  has  eaten 
well  1  " 

Humble  Sahib.  "Maharaj." 

Native  Rajah.  "  And  drank  ? " 

Humble  Sahib.  "  Maharaj." 

Native  Rajah.  "The  Sahib  will  smoke 
hookah  ? " 

Humble  Sahib.  "The  Maharajah  is  very 
good." 

A  hookah  is  called  for  by  the  Rajah  ;  and 
then  at  least  a  dozen  voices  repeat  the  order : 
"  Hookah  lao  Sahib  ke  waste "  (Bring  a 
hookah  for  the  Sahib).  Presently  the  hookah 
is  brought  in.  It  is  rather  a  grand  affair, 
but  old,  and  has  evidently  belonged  to  some 
European  of  extravagant  habits.  Of  course, 
no  native  would  smoke  out  of  it  (on  the 
ground  of  caste),  and  it  is  evidently  kept  for 
the  use  of  the  Sahib  logue.* 

While  I  am  pulling  away  at  the  hookah, 
the  musahibs,  or  favourites  of  the  Rajah, 
flatter  me,  in  very  audible  whispers.  "How 
well  he  smokes  !  "  "  What  a  fine  forehead 
he  has !  "  "And  his  eyes  !  how  they  sparkle  ! " 
"  No  wonder  he  is  so  clever ! "  "  He  will  be 
governor-general  some  day."  "  khuda-kurin ! " 
(God  will  have  it  so). 

Native  Rajah.  "Sahib,  when  you  become 
governor-general,  you  will  be  a  friend  to  the 
poor  ? " 

Humble  Sahib  (speaking  from  the  bottom 
of  his  heart).  "Most  assuredly,  Maharaj." 

Native  Rajah.  "  And  you  will  listen  to  the 
petition  of  every  man,  rich  and  poor  alike." 

Humble  Sahib.  "It  will  be  my  duty  so 
to  do." 


*  The  word  "logue"  simply  signifies  people;  but, 
when  applied  as  above,  it  is  nothing  more  than  a  plural. 
"Sahib  logue"  (sahibs)  "merulogue"  (ladies)  "baba 
loguu  "  (children). 


Charles  Dickens.] 


WANDERINGS  IN  INDIA. 


[November  14,  1S57.1        461 


Native  Rajah  (in  a  loud  voice).  "Moon- 
shee ! " 

Moonshee  (who  is  close  at  hand).  "  Maha- 
raj,  Protector  of  the  Poor." 

Native  Rajah.  "Bring  the  petition  that  I 
have  laid  before  the  Governor-General." 

The  Moonshee  produces  the  petition,  and 
at  the  instance  of  the  Rajah,  reads,  or  rather 
sings  it  aloud.  The  Rajah  listens  with  plea- 
sure to  its  recital  of  his  own  wrongs,  and  I 
alfect  to  be  astounded  that  so  much  injustice 
can  possibly  exist.  During  my  rambles  in 
India,  I  have  been  the  guest  of  some  scores 
of  rajahs,  great  and  small ;  and  I  never 
knew  one  who  had  not  a  grievance.  He 
had  either  been  wronged  by  the  govern- 
ment, or  by  some  judge,  whose  decision  had 
been  against  him.  In  the  matter  of  the 
government,  it  was  a  sheer  love  of  oppression 
that  led  to  the  evil  of  which  he  complained  ; 
in  the  matter  of  the  judge,  that  functionary 
had  been  bribed  by  the  other  party. 

It  was  with  great  difficulty  that  I  kept  my 
eyes  open  while  the  petition — a  very  long  one — 
was  read  aloud.  Shortly  after  it  was 
finished,  I  craved  permission  to  retire,  and 
was  conducted  by  a  bearer  to  the  sleeping- 
room,  in  the  centre  of  which  was  a  huge  bed- 
stead— a  four-poster — but  devoid  of  curtains. 
Ou  either  side  were  large  looking-glasses  in  gilt 
frames ;  not  suspended  on  the  walls,  but 
placed  against  them.  Over  the  bed  was  a 
punkah,  which  was  immediately  set  in  mo- 
tion. The  movement  of  the  punkah  served  a 
double  purpose.  It  cooled  the  room  and 
drove  away  the  musquitoes.  Having  thrown 
myself  on  the  bed,  the  bearer,  who  was 
in  attendance  inquired  if  I  would  be 
shampooed  1  This  was  a  luxury  to 
which  I  was  always  partial ;  and,  having 
signified  that  I  desired  it,  four  men  were 
shouted  for.  Each  took  an  arm  or  a  leg,  and 
began  to  press  it,  and  crack  the  knuckle 
joints  of  my  fingers  and  toes.  This  continued 
for  an  hour,  when  I  fell  asleep,  and  did  not 
wake  until  eight  o'clock  on  the  following 
morning ;  when  I  was  waited  upon  by  the 
khansamah,  who  wished  to  know  my  plea- 
sure, with  respect  to  breakfast.  He  informed 
me  that  he  had  "Futnum  and  Meesum's," 
Yorkshire  pie,  game  pie,  anchovy  toast, 
mutton  chop,  steak,  sardines — in  short,  all 
that  the  sahib  logue  were  accustomed  to  take 
for  breakfast. 

My  breakfast  over  and  my  hookah  smoked, 
I  lighted  a  cheroot,  and  walked  out  into  a 
verandah,  where  I  was  soon  joined  by  some 
the  Maharajah's  favourites  and  dependants  ; 
who  poured  into  my  ear  a  repetition  of  the 
flattery  to  which  I  had  listened  on  the  previ- 
ous night.  It  is  not  very  tedious  when  you  be- 
come used  to  it,  and  know  that  it  is  a  matter  ol 
course,  and  is  applied  to  every  European  guest 
of  any  real  or  supposed  importance.  Whilst 
thus  engaged,  smoking  and  listening,  I  wai 
joined  by  the  Maharajah,  who  held  in  his  hanc 
the  Delhi  Gazette,  the  Mofussilite,  and  the 


'alcutta  Englishman.  Of  their  entire  con- 
tents he  had  been  made  acquainted  by  a  half- 
aste,  whom  he  kept  (so  he  informed  me)  for 
;he  sole  purpose  of  translating,  orally,  into 
Eindoostanee,  the  Indian  journals  and  the 
overnment  gazettes,  published  in  the  English 
language.  There  was  no  occasion  for  me  to 
read  these  papers,  for  the  Maharajah  gave 
me  a  very  accurate  resume  of  them ;  hav- 
ing done  this  he  asked  me  to  play  a  game 
of  billiards  1  I  am  not  a  bad  billiard  player. 
On  the  contrary,  I  have  the  vanity  to 
think  that  I  play  remarkably  well ;  but 
it  was  quite  evident  to  me  that  the  Maha- 
rajah did  not  play  his  best,  and  that  he 
suffered  me  to  beat  him  as  easily  as  I  did — • 
simply  out  of  what  he  considered  to  be  po- 
liteness. All  the  while  we  were  playing, 
the  favourites  or  courtiers  of  the  Maharajah 
were  praising  us  both.  Neither  of  us  made 
a  stroke — good  or  bad — that  did  not  bring 
down  a  shower  of  compliments.  My  impres- 
sion is,  that  if  I  had  ran  a  cue,  and  cut  the 
cloth  at  the  same  time,  the  bystanders 
would  have  shouted  in  praise  of  my  skill 
and  execution.  I  had  already  seen  enough 
of  native  character  to  know  exactly  how 
I  was  to  act.  I  feigned  to  be  channed 
with  my  success — childishly  charmed.  Whilst 
I  was  thus  (to  the  delight  of  my  host)  osten- 
sibly revelling  in  my  triumph,  the  marker 
— a  native,  a  Hindoo — took  up  a  cue,  and 
began  to  knock  the  balls  about.  He  cannoned 
all  over  the  table,  went  in  off  the  red  and 
white,  screwed  back  under  the  cushion,  and, 
in  short,  did  whatever  he  pleased  andjjwith 
perfect  ease. 

I  could  not  help  expressing  to  the  Rajah 
my  astonishment  at  the  Hindoo  marker's 
skill,  whereupon  he  informed  me  that,  when 
he  was  a  mere  boy,  he  had  been  taught  by  the 
best  player  (an  officer  in  the  Light  Cavalry) 
that  ever  came  to  India,  and  that  for  several 
years  past  he  had  been  marker  at  various 
mess-rooms  where  billiards  were  played.  The 
name  of  this  Hindoo  Jonathan,  was  Runjeet. 
He  was  six-and-twenty  years  of  age,  about 
five  feet  five  in  height,  remarkably  slim,  had 
a  very  handsome  face,  and  eyes  full  of  fire 
and  spirit.  He  was  for  a  long  time  marker 
to  the  Horse  Artillery  mess  at  Meerut,  where 
I  once  saw  him  play  a  game  with  an  officer 
celebrated  for  his  skill.  Runjeet  gave  his 
adversary  sixty  points  out  of  a  hundred, 
and  won  easily.  What  with  his  pay,  or 
salary,  the  presents  he  received  from  gentle- 
men to  whom  he  taught  the  game,  and  the 
gold  mohurs  that  he  occasionally  had  given 
to  him  when  he  won  bets  for  his  backers, 
Runjeet  was  in  possession  of  some  six  hun- 
dred pounds  a-year  ;  but  he  was  so  extrava- 
gant in  his  habits  that  he  spent  every  anna, 
and  died,  I  was  told,  "not  worth  money 
enough  to  buy  the  wood  to  burn  him." 

The  Maharajah,  on  leaving  the  billiard- 
room,  invited  me  to  accompany  him  to  Cawn- 
pore.  I  acquiesced,  and  the  carriage  was 


462       [NOTcmber  14, 1S57-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


ordered.  The  carriage  was  English  built — a 
very  handsome  landau — and  the  horses  were 
English  horses ;  but  the  harness !  It  was 
country-made,  of  the  very  commonest  kind, 
and  worn  out;  for  one  of  the  traces  was  a 
piece  of  rope.  The  coachman  was  filthy  in 
his  dress,  and  the  whip  that  he  carried  in  his 
hand  was  an  old  broken  buggy-whip,  which 
some  European  gentleman  must  have  throw*) 
away.  On  the  box,  on  either  side  of  the 
coachman,  sat  a  warlike  retainer,  armed 
with  a  sword  and  a  dagger.  In  the  rumble 
were  two  other  retainers  armed  in  the  same 
manner.  Besides  the  Rajah  and  myself  there 
were  three  others  (natives  and  relatives  of 
the  Eajah)  in  the  vehicle.  On  the  road  the 
Rajah  talked  incessantly,  and  amongst  other 
things  that  he  told  me  was  this — in  reference 
to  the  praises  that  I  bestowed  on  his  equi- 
page : 

"  Not  long  ago  I  had  a  carriage  and  horses 
very  superior  to  these.    They  cost  me  twenty- 
five  thousand  rupees  ;  but  I  had  to  burn  the 
carriage  and  kill  the  horses." 
"Why  so?" 

"The  child  of  a  certain  Sahib  in  Cawnpore 
was  very  sick,  and  the  Sahib  and  the  Mem- 
sahib  were  bringing  the  child  to  Bhitoor  for 
a  change  of  air.  I  sent  my  big  carriage  for 
them.  On  the  road  the  child  died  ;  and,  of 
course,  as  a  dead  body  had  been  in  the 
carriage,  and  as  the  hoi'ses  had  drawn  that 
dead  body  in  that  carriage,  I  could  never  use 
them  again."  The  reader  must  understand 
that  a  native  of  any  rank  considers  it  a  dis- 
grace to  sell  property. 

"  But  could  you  not  have  given  the  horses 
to  some  friend — a  Christian  or  a  Mussul- 
man?" 

"  No  ;  had  I  done  so,  it  might  have  come 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  Sahib,  and  his  feelings 
would  have  been  hurt  at  having  occasioned 
me  such  a  loss." 

Such  was  the  Maharajah,  commonly  known 
as  Nena  Sahib.  He  appeared  to  be  not  a 
man  of  ability,  nor  a  fool.  He  was  seltish, 
but  what  native  is  not  ?  He  seemed  to  be 
far  from  a  bigot  in  matters  of  religion  ;  and, 
although  he  was  compelled  to  be  so  very 
particular  about  the  destruction  of  his  car- 
ri;ige  and  horses,  I  am  quite  saitsfied  that  he 
drank  brandy,  and  that  he  smoked  hemp  in 
the  chillum  of  his  hookah. 

It  was  half-past  five  o'clock  when  we 
arrived  at  Cawnpore.  The  officers,  civil  and 
military,  and  their  wives,  were  just  coming 
out  for  their  evening  drive  on  the  mall. 
Some  were  in  carriages,  some  in  buggies, 
some  on  horseback.  Every  soul  saluted  the 
Maharajah ;  who  returned  the  salute  according 
to  Eastern  fashion — raising  the  hands  to  the 
forehead.  Several  gentlemen  approached  the 
carriage  when  it  was  drawn  up  near  the 
band-stand,  and  inquired  after  the  Maha- 
rajah's health.  He  replied  that  it  was  good ; 
and  then  introduced  me  to  them  in  the 
following  manner,  and  in  strict  accordance 


with  the  letter  he  had  received  from  Luck- 

w  :  "  This  Sahib  who  sits  near  me  is  a 
great  friend  of  the  Governor-General,  and  is 
a  relation  of  all  the  members  of  Council — a 
constant  guest  of  the  Queen  of  England " 
(then  came  this  addition  of  his  own)  "  and  of 
both  Houses  of  Parliament."  I  need  scarcely 
say  that  I  wished  my  Lucknow  friends  had 
not  covered  me  with  such  recommendations  ; 
for,  wherever  we  went,  and  to  whomsoever  we 
spoke — no  matter  whether  it  was  an  Euro- 
pean shopkeeper  or  an  official  magnate  of 
Cawnpore — I  was  doomed  to  hear,  "This 
Sahib  who  sits  (or  stands)  near  me  is  a  great 
friend,"  &c.  &c.  Having  exhibited  me  suffi- 
ciently in  Cawnpore,  the  heads  of  the  horses 
were  turned  towards  Bhitoor,  and  we  were 
dragged  along  the  road  at  a  slow  pace,  for 
the  animals  were  extremely  fatigued.  The 
natives  of  India  have  no  mei-cy  on  their 
cattle,  especially  their  horses.  During  the 
ride  back,  I  was  again  bored  with  the  Rajah's 
grievance  ;  and,  to  quiet  him — for  he  became 
very  much  excited — I  was  induced  to  pro- 
mise that  I  would  talk  to  the  Governor- 
General  and  the  Council  on  the  subject ;  and 
that  if  I  did  not  succeed  in  that  quarter,  I 
would,  on  my  return  to  England,  take  the 
earliest  opportunity  "  some  day,  quietly,  after 
dinner  "  (this  was  his  suggestion),  of  repre- 
senting to  her  Majesty  the  exact  state  of  the 
case,  and  that  an  adopted  son  of  a  Hindoo 
was  entitled  to  all  the  rights  and  privileges 
of  an  heir  born  of  the  body.  I  furthermore 
promised  him  most  solemnly  that  I  would 
not  speak  to  the  Board  of  Control,  or  to  the 
Privy  Council  on  the  subject ;  for,  the  Maha- 
rajah assured  me  that  he  had  the  most 
positive  proof  that  both  these  institutions 
had  eaten  bribes  from  the  hand  of  the  East 
India  Company  in  respect  of  his  claim.  On 
probing  him,  however,  I  discovered  that  his 
positive  proof  was  a  letter  from  a  villainous 
agent  in  England,  who  had  written  to  him  to 
say  that  "the  Company hadi>ribed  the  Board 
of  Control  and  the  PrivyCouncil,  and  that  if 
his  Highness  expected  to  succeed,  he  must 
bribe  over  the  head  of  the  Company.  Three 
lacs  (thirty  thousand  pounds)  would  do  it 
all." 

The  Maharajah  gave  a  nautch  (native 
dance  by  women)  that  night. 

On  the  following  morning  I  awoke  with  a 
very  bad  head-ache,  and  in  a  philosophic 
mood.  The  various  perfumes  which  had  been 
sprinkled  over  my  dress  had  somewhat  over- 
powered me,  and  it  may  have  been  that  the 
story  told  me  in  whispers  by  one  of  the  three 
slaves  who  came  to  sing  me  to  sleep  had  dis- 
ordered my  imagination.  I  was  told  that 
two  women  of  rank  were  kept  in  a  den  riot 
far  from  my  apartments,  and  treated  like  wild 
beasts ;  and  a  third — a  beautiful  young 
creature — had  recently  been  "  bricked  up  in 
a  wall,"  for  no  other  fault  than  attempting 
to  escape. 

After  breakfast,  the  Rajah  showed  me  his 


Charles  Dickens.] 


POLARISATION. 


[November  14, 1857-1       463 


elephants,  his  camels,  his  horses,  his  dogs, 
his  pigeons,  his  falcons,  his  wild  asses,  his 
apes,  his  aviary  full  of  birds,  and  all  the  rest 
of  hia  curiosities.  Then  he  exhibited  his 
guna  and  pistols — by  Purdy,  Egg,  and  other 
celebrated  makers — his  swords,  and  his  dag- 
gers, of  every  country  and  age,  and  when  he 
had  observed  that  he  was  very  happy,  tinder 
the  influence  of  some  stimulant  recently 
imbibed,  I  took  an  opportunity  of  discours 
ing  on  the  vanity  of  human  wishes,  and 
especially  with  reference  to  his  Highness's 
grievance.  I  translated  many  sentiments  of 
Juvenal  and  Horace  into  Hindoostanee  ;  but, 
I  regret  to  say,  they  had  no  effect  on  Nena 
Sahib. 


POLARISATION. 


I  WOULD  venture  to  define  Man,  in  eighteen 
hundred  and  fifty-seven,  as  the  animal  who 
turns  everything  in  creation  to  his  own  advan- 
tage. 

To  instance  one  thing  by  which  he  has  so 
profited,  let  us  confine  ourselves  to  the  article 
Light.  None  of  the  elements  by  which  we  are 
surrounded  appears  to  the  uninstructed  eye 
so  simple  as  light.  It  is  less  material  than 
air  ;  it  is  infinitely  less  gross  and  mechanical 
than  water,  which  lends  itself  to  human  pur- 


waves  that  are  formed  when  a  stone  ^  is 
thrown  into  a  still  pond  of  water),  which 
travel  at  a  certain  rate  ;  so,  light  is  nothing 
more  than  the  vibrations  or  undulations  in  a 
thin  and  elastic  ether,  which  ether  must  per- 
vade all  known  space  ;  that,  as  the  impres- 
sion of  the  ear-waves  on  the  ear  produces 
the  sense  of  hearing ;  so,  the  impression  of 
the  ether-undulations  on  the  eye,  produces 
the  sense  of  sight.  Hence,  this  hypothesis 
as  to  the  nature  of  light  is  called  the  Undu- 
latory  Theory.  But  Newton  and  his  imme- 

«      _  **  t      .  n 


diate  followers,   held 
minute    particles    or 


that   light  consists  of 
corpuscles,    shot    out 


by  luminous  bodies  with  an  immense 
velocity,  which  (whether  undulations  or 
material  atoms)  has  been  proved  to  be  at 
the  rate  of  a  hundred  and  ninety-two 
miles  in  a  second.  Newton's  hypothesis, 
therefore,  is  called  the  Corpuscular  Theory. 
His  supporters  urge  that  there  ia  no  proof  of 
the  existence  of  the  all- pervading  ether  ;  and 
that  if  light,  like  sound,  were  the  pulsations- 
of  waves,  it  would  travel  round  corners  and 
through  curved  tubes  ;  but  that,  instead,  it 
follows  the  same  rectilinear  course  as  would 
be  taken  by  a  cannon-ball  uninfluenced  by 
the  earth's  attraction. 

What  is  most  strange  is,  that  several  of  the 
phenomena  of  light  may  be  equally  explained 


on   either  theory ;    that    neither  theory  is 

poses  under  the  energetic  and  substantial  j  without  its  difficulties ;  and  that  even  by 
forms  of  vapour  and  ice.  Apparently,  light  1  the  help  of  the  modern  favourite,  the  undu- 
comes  and  goes  at  regulated  intervals  ;  but  latory  scheme,  many  optical  facts  are  ^to  be 
really,  it  issues  in  an  uninterrupted  stream ;  accounted  for,  only  by  mere  assumption  as 
from  the  sun  and  from  Sirius,  as  well  as  from  |  to  the  manner  and  direction  in  which  the 
the  faint  fixed  stars  that  are  with  difficulty  ethereal  particles  vibrate.  The  visible  phe- 
visible  in  the  abyss  of  space.  What,  then,  is '  nomena  are  constantly  reproduced  ;  but 
that  unceasing  influence,  Light, — "  Ethereal,  j  the  essential  nature  of  light  is  probably 
first  of  things,  quintessence  pure  ? "  We  j  still  unknown.  Meanwhile,  the  undulatory 
don't  exactly  know,  nor  is  it  necessary  for  theory  may  with  advantage  be  provisionally 


our  welfare  that  we  should, 
lutely  want   to  understand 


We  don't  abso- 
the    nature    of 


light  (though  it  would  be  pleasant,  certainly, 
to  understand  it),  any  more  than  we  require 
an  exact  cognisance  of  the  electric  fluid, — if 
fluid  there  be.  Electricity  gives  us  a  pleasing 
titillation,  or  a  smart  shock,  or  strikes  us 
dead  ;  it  masks  our  ignoble  spoons  and  forks 
with  a  crust  of  silver  ;  it  generates  rotatory 
motion,  by  which  we  can  work  machinery ; 
it  brings  us  instantaneous  tidings  of  weal  or 
woe  ;  it  turns  blackest  midnight  into  bright 
noon  day  ;  it  will  keep  the  clocks  of  a  whole 
community  going  in  unison  ;  all  according  to 
fixed  laws,  which  we  can  register  and  calcu- 
late to  a  nicety.  We  cannot  nearly  guess 
what  it  may  do  for  us  yet,  without  our  know- 
ing what  electricity  is.  The  same  is  true  of 
light. 

It  would  be  easy  to  excite  a  disciission 
about  the  nature  of  light,  which  woulS  fill 
the  columns  of  this  journal  for  the  next  three 
months.  Huyghens  and  several  other  philo- 
sophers suggested  that,  as  sound  is  known  to 


admitted,  if  only  as  a  sort  of  artificial  me- 
mory by  which  the  details  of  optical  facts 
may  be  classed  and  impressed  upon  the  stu- 
dent's mind. 

Happily,  as  with  electricity,  numerous 
physical  properties  of  light  have  been  dis- 
covered in  spite  of  our  uncertainty  as  to  its 
nature.  That  more  hidden  powers  remain  to 
be  divulged,  we  can  hardly  for  a  moment 
doubt.  In  the  so-believed  simple  ray  of 
light,  there  have  been  traced  the  co-existence 
of  a  variety  of  component  rays  ;  and  self- 
serving  man  has  turned  them  to  his  own 
advantage.  A  ray,  instead  of  being  one  uni- 
form beam,  is  now  known  as  a  complicated 
bundle,  made  up  of  a  collection  of  magic 
wands  of  very  discrepant  efficiency.  Newton 
first  employed  the  prism  to  split  the  solar 
beam  into  seven  rays,  coloured,  three  with 
the  primary  colours,  red,  yellow,  and  blue, 
and  four  with  their  compounds,  orange, 
green,  indigo,  and  violet, — although  the  rain- 
bow had  displayed  the  experiment  long 
before  him.  Botanists,  chemists,  and  photo- 


be  the  effect  of  vibrations  or  spherical  waves  graphers,  have  derived  special  service  from 
in  the  air  (resembling  in  some  degree   the  i  the  generative  ray,   the  heat  ray,  and   the 


464      [November  14.  IS*;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


actinic  ray,  which  shine  in  modes  differing 
from  each  other  and  from  the  rest  of  their 
sun-born  brethren  ;  it  is  even  said  that  the 
photographic  ray  is  more  powerful  in  the 
New  World  than  in  the  Old.  Amongst  the 


native   collection  of  silks,  gems  and  other 
finery. 

Students  are  now  guided  in  their  manipu- 
lations of  the  microscope  by  various  treatises, 
amongst  which,  Dr.  Carpenter's  wonderful 


modern  dissection  of  light  may  be  named  ;  book,  and  Scale's  lectures,  ai-e  specially  excel- 
\vhat  is  called  the  polarised  ray,  and  which  lent ;  the  catalogues  of  the  principal  makers 


has  been  especially  pressed  into  the  ranks  of 
the  microscope's  auxiliaries.  Man,  the  all- 
appropriating  animal,  has  thus  cunningly 


are  also  well  worth  careful  perusal  and 
reference  ;  but  there  is  one  set  of  shining 
microscopic  baubles  on  which  I  should  like 


forwarded   his   ends    by   catching    at   what  to  say  a  few  words,  both  on  account  of  their 


might  l;e  called  the  impurities  of  the  "quint- 
essence pure." 

The  modern  improvements  of  the  micro- 
scope (one  of  the  most  important  of  which 
is  the  construction  of  achromatic  object- 
glasses,  first  successfully  attempted  by  Mon- 
sieur Selligues,  of  Paris,  in  eighteen  hundred 
and  twenty-three)  have  rendered  the  diil'er- 


beiug  somewhat  charily  mentioned  by  the 
writers  referred  to,  and  mainly  because  they 
constitute  a  talisman  whose  influence  is 
magical,  if  natural  magic  be  still  allowed  to 
exist. 

In  a  former  article  in  this  volume,  it  was 
stated*  that  if  the  reader  wished  to  test 
the  attractiveness  as  well  as  the  portability 


ence  between  old  and  modern  treatises  on !  of  modern  microscopes,  he  should  arrive  some 
the  microscope,  and  old  and  modern  acces- !  rainy  day  at  a  country  house  full  of  company, 


sory  apparatus,  immense.  Even  the  best  of 
compound  microscopes,  a  hundred  years  ago, 
were  simple  and  obvious  in  their  construc- 
tion and  uses.  Even  with  the  overflowing 
luxury  of  half-a-dozen  different  object-glasses, 
as  in  Cuff's  chef-d'oeuvre  described  by  Baker, 
there  was  no  combination  of  their  power,  no 
union  of  their  effect  ;  they  could  merely  be 


when  the  guests  were  prevented  from  enjoy- 
ing out-door  amusements,  with  one  of 
Amadio's  forty  guinea  instruments,  accom- 
panied by  a  boxful  of  good  preparations,— 
on  producing  which,  he  would  work  wonders. 
One  of  the  means  of  displaying  his  marvels 
would  be  the  apparatus  for  the  polarisation 
of  light.  The  price  and  the  maker  are  thus 


used  in  succession,  on  separate  occasions, !  specially  named  in  order  to  speak  of  what  I 
according  as  each  respective  object  investi- ,  know, — as  also  to  indicate  that  the  .polnri- 
gated  required  to  be  more  or  less  magnified.  I  scope  is  only  affixed  to  instruments  of  a 
They  had  a  glass  for  a  flea,  and  a  glass  for  a  superior  order,  and  not  to  students'  micro- 


wheel  animalcule  ;  but  they  dared  not  at- 
tempt the  feat  which  Nature  is  said  to  have 
executed  when  she  required  an  improved 
specimen  of  epic  poet, — to  make  a  third,  they 
ventured  not  to  join  the  other  two  ;  for  the 
result  would  have  been  coloured  fringes  and 
confusion.  While,  of  many  modern  optical 
luxuries,  our  forefethers  no  more  dreamt  than 


scopes  of  moderate  price,  which  latter  may 
yet  be  eminently  useful  for  working  with 
ordinary  light.  Amadio's  lowest  priced  in- 
strument, capable  of  carrying  a  polariser,  is 
seven  pounds  ten  shillings,  Smith  and  Beck's 
educational  microscope  admits  the  addition 
of  a  polarising  apparatus  complete,  at  the 
additional  charge  of  a  cjuinea  and  a-half.  Of 


they  did  of  collodion  photography,  or  At-  the  efficiency  of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt, 
lantic  electric  cables.  Indeed,  so  varied  and  j  any  more  than  of  those  supplied  by  the 
numerous  are  now  the  aids  to  the  micro- 1  other  great  makers,  as  Mr.  Koss,  or  Messrs, 
scopist,  that  their  very  purpose  and  mode  of :  Powell  and  Lealand.  The  instrument  em- 


application  is  a  difficult  puzzle  to  observers, 
who  have  looked,  and  been  edified  by  look- 
ing, through  simples  and  compounds  of 
eighteenth-century  construction.  You  may 
even  put  the  possessor  of  a  modern  micro- 
scope of  only  moderate  pretensions  before  a 
first-class  instrument,  costing  from  thirty  to 
a  hundred  guineas  with  its  fitting,  in  its 
sleek  Spanish  mahogany  case  ;  and,  on  bring- 
ing his  hidden  treasure  to  light,  he  will  find 
the  utmost  difficulty  in  directing  its  move- 
ments, so  as  to  see  anything  with  it.  He 
will  open  its  richly  stored  drawer  or 
drawers,  and  be  dazzled  by  the  glittering 
trinkets  within,  and  will  have  as  little  idea 
as  to  how  they  are  to  be  worn  by  the  regal 
microscope  (that  is,  where  they  are  to  be 


ployed  for  polarisation  mostly  consists  of 
three  articles ;  videlicet,  a  prism  of  Ice- 
land spar,  called  the  polariser,  fixed  in  a 
revolving  cylinder,  to  go  below  the  object ; 
a  selenite  object-carrier,  to  be  laid  on  the 
stage,  and  on  which  the  object  to  be  examined 
is  laid ;  and  thirdly,  the  body-prism,  or 
analyser,  also  of  Iceland  spar,  which  is  in- 
serted at  the  bottom  into  the  body  of  the 
microscope,-,  and,  consequently,  above  the 
object.  Suppose,  then,  that  your  microscope 
stands  before  you,  and  that  you  are  wishing 
to  observe  with  polarised  light ;  remove  the 
diaphragm  plate,  and  take,  with  the  inten- 
tion of  putting  it  in  its  place,  the  one  that 
has  the  rack  adjustment,  or  cylinder-fitting 
(used?  also  with  the  achromatic  condenser, 


screwed  "  on,   inserted,   and   placed),    as    an  and  the  spotted  lens).     Into  this  plate,  screw 
Addiscombe  cadet  would  have,  on  inspecting  the  polariser,  and  then  insert  them  beneath 


the  jewel-box  of  an  Indian  begum,  or  a 
Mautchoo  princess  whom  he  were  suddenly 
called  upon  to  deck  appropriately  with  her  k 


the  stage  ;  unscrew  the  adapter  at  the  bot- 


Tage  1SS. 


Charles  Diciens.] 


POLARISATION. 


[November  14,  I?.i7.j       465 


torn  of  the  microscope,  and  the  body-prism  i  density  or  elasticity  in  the  various  parts  of 
screws  inside,  the  object-glass  screwing  be-  tissues.  Indeed,  as  a  detector,  polarised 
neath  it  and  outside.  The  selenite  is  laid  011  light  is  invaluable,  acting  the  part  of  a 


the  stage,  and  on  it  the  object ;  the  focus  is 
found  ;  and  you  have  then  only  to  peep  your 


traitorous  spy  under  the  most  unexpected 
circumstances.     It  denounces  as  cotton  what 


fill,  causing  the  polariser  to  revolve  occasion-  you  believed  to  be  silk  ;  it  demonstrates 
ally.  In  many  French  microscopes,  and  in  disease  where  you  supposed  health.  It 
certain  English  ones,  the  analyser,  whether  a  adorns  objects  that  are  vile  and  mean,  whose 
pi'isrn  or  a  tourmaline,  is  fitted  to  the  eye- j  destiny  is  only  to  be  cast  out  —  such  as 


piece  instead  of  to  the  lower  end  of  the  body 
of  the  microscope ;  but  in  either  case  it  is 
still  above  the  object-glass.  These  details  are 
not  amusing,  but  they  will  be  welcome  to 
unpractised  manipulators,  who  are  puzzling 
over  a  newly-arrived  instrument,  which 


parings  of  nails,  shavings  of  animals'  hoofs, 
cuticle  rubbed  or  peeled  from  the  stems  of 
plants,  offscouring  of  our  kitchens  and  store- 
rooms, sugar,  acids,  and  salts — with  the  most 
magnificent,  the  most  resplendent  tints, 
such  as  are  seen  when  the  sun  streams 


their  love   of  natural  history  has  induced  •  through  the  stained  glass  windows  of  a  Nor- 


thern to  order. 

But    I  may  be   expected  to  answer  the 
reasonable  question,  "  Pray,  what  is  polarised 


light?'       The    reply 
exactly  know  ; 
know  exactly." 


ready  ;    "  I    don't 


man  cathedral. 

Light  is  thrown  into  this  magical  condition. 
First, — "When  it  is  reflected  from  glass  at  an 
angle  of  incidence  of  fifty-six  degrees,  forty- 


nor  do   I  know  who   does  j  five  minutes  from  the  perpendicular.     This 
The  term  polarised,  as  will  i  only  describes  one  of  the  modes  of  producing 
polarised  light,  and  is  no  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion, "  What  is  it  ?  "   It  was  thus  that  the  phe- 


be  explained  by-and-by,  affords  no  explana- 
tion, description,  or  clue.  Polarised  light  is 
light  that  has  been  subjected  to  certain 
modes  of  treatment,  by  which  it  acquires,  or 
more  properly  loses,  certain  qualities.  This 
is  not  a  very  precise  or  graphic  definition, 
but  I  cannot  help  it.  There  are  secrets  of 
nature  which  lie  beyond  mortal  ken.  Pola- 
rised light  is  a  sort  of  superfine  light, — to 
use  familiar  terms, — from  which  all  the 
coarser  properties  have  been  winnowed, 
strained,  sifted,  or  beaten  out.  If  common 
light  were  wheat  immediately  after  being 
ground  between  the  millstones,  polarised 
light  would  be  the  finest  flour  obtained  there- 
from. Light,  after  having  undergone  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  discipline,  or  torturing,  is 
said  to  be  polarised  ;  about  which  process  of 
polarisation  great  and  doughty  battles  might 
be  fought.  But,  as  no  professor  has  plunged 
as  yet  to  the  truth-containing  bottom  of  the 
well  of  light,  I  content  myself  with  the  un- 
deniable statement  that  polarised  light  is  a 
very  pretty  thing.  Fancy  yourself  living  in 
a  region  solely  illuminated  by  Auroras  bore- 
ales — and  it  is  not  proved  that  polarisation 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  said  Auroras, — 
imagine  a  country  where  every  passing  cloud 
throws  a  diverse-coloured  shadow  of  gorgeous 
hues  across  your  path  ;  where  the  air  breeds 
rainbows  without  the  aid  of  a  shower,  and 
where  the  summer  breeze  breaks  those  rain- 
bows into  irregular  lengths,  fragments,  and 
glittering  dust,  scattering  them  broad-cast  over 
the  laud,  like  autumnal  leaves  swept  by  a  gale 
from  the  forest,  and  you  have  an  approxi- 
mate, ard  by  no  means  exaggerated  idea  of 
the  effects  of  polarised  light  on  substances 
capable  of  being  affected  by  it.  For,  it  is 
light  endowed  with  extra  delicacy,  subtlety, 
and  versatility.  It  renders  visible  minute 
details  of  structure  in  the  most  glaring 
colours  ;  it  gauges  crystalline  films  of  infini- 
tesimal thinness  ;  it  betrays  to  the  student's 
searcn,  otherwise  inappreciable  differences  of 


nomenou  was  actually  discovered  in  eighteen 
hundred  and  eight,  by  professor  Malus, 
while  viewing,  through  a  doubly-refracting 
prism,  the  light  of  the  setting  sun  reflected 
from  the  glass  panes  of  a  French  window, 
called  a  croise"e,  which  happened  to  stand 
open,  like  a  door  on  its  hinges,  at  an  angle 
which  must  have  very  closely  approximated 
to  that  which  has  since  been  ascertained  to 
be  the  polarising  angle  for  glass.  The 
ray  so  reflected  is  found  to  have  acquired  the 
property  of  possessing  different  sides.  If  the 
original  ray  be  supposed  to  be  a  cylindrical 
rod,  polished  or  white  all  round,  which  is 
capable  of  being  reflected  from  a  polished 
surface  whatever  part  of  its  circumference 
may  strike  that  surface,  the  polarised  ray 
may  be  compared  to  a  square-shaped  rod  with 
four  flat  sides,  two  of  which  (opposite)  bright 
and  polished,  are  capable  of  reflection,  while 
two — black  or  dull — are  not.  Now,  the  word 
"  poles,"  in  physical  science,  is  often  used  to 
denote  the  ends  or  sides  of  any  body  which 
have  acquired  contrary  properties,  as  the  op- 
posite ends  of  a  magnet,  which  are  called  the 
positive  and  negative  poles.  By  analogy,  the 
ray  of  light,  whose  sides  lying  at  the  right 
angles  with  each  other,  were  found  to  be 
reduced  with  opposite  physical  properties, 
was  said  to  be  polarised.  The  term  remains, 
and  can  scarcely  be  changed  now  ;  but  it 
subsists  in  books  as  a  monumental  specimen 
of  unfortunate  nomenclature.  On  the  un- 
dulatory  theory,  common  light  is  assumed  to 
be  produced  by  vibrations  of  the  ethereal 
particles  in  two  planes  at  right  angles  to  the 
progress  of  the  wave  ;  there  are  perpendicular 
vibrations,  and  there  are  horizontal  vibra- 
tions— which  is  analogous  to  the  motions  of 
the  waves  of  the  sea,  as  experienced  by  those 
who  have  crossed  the  Channel  in  a  steamboat 
during  a  brisk  gale,  when  the  rectangular 
vibrations  occasioned  by  the  alternate  pitch- 


466      [NovembM  14, 18S7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


ings  and  rockings  of  the  vessel  have  caused 
the  mast  head  to  describe  a  circle  or  an  oval, 
as  the  case  might  be.  In  the  language  of  the 
same  hypothesis,  polarised  light  is  light 
propagated  only  by  one  plane  of  vibrations  ; 
the  effect  of  whatever  causes  polarisation, 
being,  to  suppress  the  vibrations  in  the  plane 
at  right  angles  to  the  former.  Hence,  they 
say,  the  different  properties  possessed  by  the 
opposite  sides  or  poles  of  the  ray.  The  theory 
is  beautifully  ingenious  ;  but,  if  the  existence 
of  the  other  be  more  than  doubtful,  soon  to 
be  classed  with  the  fixity  of  the  earth  and  the 
crystal  orbs  of  the  older  astronomers,  what 
becomes  of  all  these  complicated  vibrations  1 
Light  polarised  by  reflection  is  rarely  applied 
to  microscopic  purposes. 

Secondly,  Light  may  be  polarised  by 
transmission  through  a  bundle  consisting  of 
from  sixteen  to  eighteen  plates  of  thin 
glass.  Of  this  nature  is  the  polariscope 
employed  in  Woodward's  hydro-oxygen 
microscope. 

Thirdly,  Light  is  polarised  by  passing 
through  certain  transparent  crystals.  Some 
of  these,  called  double-refracting  crystals, 
split  the  ray  in  two.  Place  them  over  an 
object — a  printed  paragraph  for  instance — 
and  you  suddenly  see  double ;  duplicate 
paragraphs  astonish  your  gaze.  They  are 
carried  to  your  retina  by  the  divided  ray,  and 
each  half-ray  is  polarised.  Iceland  spar  is 
the  crystal  generally  employed  by  the  micro- 
scope maker  for  the  prisms  already  men- 
tioned, although  others  would  serve.  By  an 
ingenious  optical  operation,  only  one  of  the 
half-rays  is  allowed  to  traverse  the  body  of 
the  microscope.  By  interposing  between  the 
two  prisms  a  plate  of  selenite  or  other 
doubly-refracting  medium,  colour  is  produced 
by  "interference,"  in  undulatory  language, 
by  turning  the  moveable  collar  of  the 
polariser,  the  polarised  ray  is  made  to  revolve, 
and  an  extraordinary  succession  and  variety 
of  hues  is  the  result.  These  effects  will  be 
produced,  as  far  as  the  ground  tint  is  con- 
cerned, even  if  the  objects  through  which 
the  light  is  transmitted  to  the  eye  have 
themselves  no  polarising  influence ;  but,  if 
they  have,  other  phantasmagoric  effects 
will  be  developed,  of  which  no  conception 
can  be  conveyed  by  printed  words.  The 
eye  actually  cloys  of  the  spectacle,  if 
long-continued  ;  dazzled  and  spent  with  an 
alternating  contest  of  iridescent  hues,  it  is 
glad  to  repose  on  the  homely  colouring  of 
things  as  they  appear  in  their  rainy-day 
dress. 

"  Where'er  I  peep,  whatever  sights  I  see, 
My  heart,  untravelkd,  still  returns  to  thee ; 
Still  to  fair  daylight  turns,  quintessence  pure." 

Amongst  my  private  treasures  is  the  com- 
pound eye  of  a  beetle,  parts  of  which  change 
colour  under  polarised  light.  It  would  be 
curious  to  ascertain  whether  any  individual 
creatures — including  certain  of  mankind — are 


not  gifted  with  eyes  that  are  more  or  less 
polariscopes. 

If  there  exist  insects  or  crustaceans, 
whose  eyes,  besides  being  microscopes,  are 
also  polariscopes,  what  a  highly-seasoned 
view  of  nature  they  must  have,  compared 
with  ours  !  We  hear  of  cases  of  people  being 
affected  by  colour-blindness,  as  if  the  grey 
ray  were  the  only  one  that  reached  their 
retina, — of  mercers  confounding  green  with 
scarlet,  and  of  shopmen  obliged  to  have  their 
coloured  skeins  of  silk  ready  sorted  to  their 
hand  over-night.  We  have  the  phenomenon 
of  painters  whose  pictures  make  perfect  en- 
gravings,— they  are  irreproachable  in  respect 
to  light  and  shade,  perspective,  and  drawing, 
— but  in  point  of  colour,  look  like  the  work 
of  madmen.  We  have  aged  oaks  rearing 
their  azure  stag-heads  into  a  cloudless  grass- 
green  sky,  and  overshadowing  a  group  of 
yellow  bandits  who  fiercely  bestride  their 
purple  steeds.  Most  of  our  integuments  exert 
a  marked  action  on  polarised  light :  one 
would  think  that,  in  the  case  of  those  artists, 
the  capricious  faculty  was  extended  to  the 
integument  of  the  eye. 

As  to  what  special  objects  polarised  light  is 
applicable — like  the  microscope  itself — it  em- 
braces every  material  thing  in  nature, 
whether  belonging  to  the  animal,  the  vege- 
table, or  the  mineral  kingdom.  It  is  recom- 
mended to  examine  everything  with  po- 
larised light,  in  the  certainty  of  its  leading  to 
valuable  discoveries ;  by  it,  the  internal 
structure  of  various  transparent  objects  is 
rendered  evident,  although  they  may  not  be 
recognisable  by  ordinary  illumination  ;  by  its 
delicate  indications,  the  science  of  optics  has 
become  the  handmaid  to  almost  every  other 
branch  of  physics.  Integumentary  substances 
in  particular  form  a  brilliant  and  interesting 
class  of  objects.  A  section  of  a  horse's  hoof 
has  the  effect  of  the  richest  Brussel's  carpet, 
with  a  symmetrical  pattern  that  might  be 
copied  by  the  loom  ;  the  same  of  the  rhino- 
ceros's horn,  which,  however,  is  said  not  to  be 
horn,  but  a  tuft  of  hairs  naturally  glued  toge- 
ther. Kam's  horn,  a  deer's  hoof,  sheep's  hoof, 
have  each  its  characteristic  elegances.  If  the 
substance,  called  whalebone,  could  be  made  to 
display,  when  beamed  on  by  the  rays  of  gas 
or  wax  candles,  the  ornamental  structure  and 
the  harmonious  shades  which  it  offers  when 
viewed  by  the  micro-polariscope,  it  would 

soon  become  the  fashion  for  ladies  to  wear 

dare  I  write  it  ? — stays  outside,  instead  of 
beneath,  their  dress. 

The  elegant  structure  of  fishscales  is  admi- 
rably seen  by  means  of  the  polariser.  Agas- 
siz  has  classed  fish  according  to  their  scales  ; 
and  the  student  should  have  a  representative 
of  each  class  for  comparison.  Perhaps  the 
most  striking  are  the  ctenoid,  or  comblike, 
scales ;  namely  those  which  Uave  rows  of 
teeth  at  the  edge  by  which  they  are  at- 
tached to  the  skin,  as  in  the  sole,  the 
pike,  the  perch,  and  the  red  mullet.  The 


Charles  Dickens.1 


POLARISATION. 


November  14, 1867.]       467 


scale-teeth  glitter  with  some  decided  hue, 
red,  'green,  or  blue,  while  the  body  of  the 
scale  is  clouded  with  colour  and  covered  with 
wavy  stripes  of  wrinkles.  In  the  important 
question  of  scales  or  no  scales,  the  micro- 
polariser  has  the  power  of  extending  both 
culinary  reform  and  religious  liberty.  Till 
the  nineteenth  century,  the  Jews  have  be- 
lieved themselves  forbidden  by  their  law  to 
eat  that  savoury  and  nutritious  fish,  the  eel, 
on  the  erroneous  assumption  that  it  is  scale- 
less  ;  because,  that  the  eel  has  fins  (the  other 
condition  of  its  edibility  in  Israel),  is  patent 
to  the  nakedest  eye.  But,  I  have  now  under 
my  polaro-microscopic  eye  some  beautiful 
eel  scales, — like  elongated  oval  shields,  bur- 
nished with  brass,  and  studded  with  emer- 
alds, sapphires,  and  topazes,  grouped  in 
triangles  whose  points  meet  in  the  centre  of 
the  shield, — which  might  persuade  Jews  to 
eat  and  infidels  to  enjoy.  Before  quitting 
the  fishy  tribes,  be  it  proclaimed  to  the  epi- 
curean world,  that  amongst  the  prettiest  of 
polariscope  objects  are  young  oysters  ;  not 
the  little  delicious  natives  which  are  eaten 
in  London,  but  a  much  smaller  sample,  with 
which  your  microscopic  preparer  will  supply 
you.  These  are  as  lovely  on  the  slide  as  their 
elders  are  dainty  on  the  dish.  Everybody 
knows'  that  when  there  is  no  r  in  the  month, 
oysters  are  out  of  season,  or  sick.  The  milki- 
ness,  which  then  gives  them  their  distasteful 
quality,  consists  of  swarms  of  oysterlings 
•which  migrate  from  the  maternal  bosom  and 
wander  till  they  acquire  some  fixed  position 
in  the  world.  Marvellous  to  behold,  each  of 
these  organised  particles  of  oyster-milk  is 
furnished  with  a  pair  of  shells  quite  as 
perfect,  though  not  so  big,  as  those  of  its 
grandmother,  and  considerably  more  trans- 
parent. 

Again,  the  palates  of  many  gasteropod 
mollusks,  such  as  periwinkles,  whelks,  slugs, 
and  snails,  are  highly  sensitive  to  our  extra- 
ordinary luminous  agent.  But,  note  that 
these  and  numerous  other  objects  for  the 
polariscope,  with  the  exception  of  sections, 
are  best  expressly  ordered  of  the  preparer, 
as  such  ;  because  many  of  the  parts  of  an 
object,  which  would  only  add  to  its  interest 
if  viewed  by  ordinary  transmitted  light,  are 
better  removed  when  they  would  only  dull 
or  obscure  the  details  whose  special  nature 
is  to  exhibit  it.  This  is  particularly  the 
case  with  the  palates  of  mollusks,  which 
polarise  best  the  nearer  they  are  brought  to 
a  transparent  state.  The  same  circumstance 
renders  it  desirable  for  the  amateur  to 
possess  two  preparations  of  the  same  organic 
object  (with  crystals  the  case  is  different),  if 
it  be  interesting  without  the  polariser  as  well 
as  with  it. 

The  vegetable  world  has  a  less  brilliant  dis- 
play to  make,  but  is  still  replete  with  interest. 
There  are  spiral  cells  and  vessels,  sections  of 
wood,  proving  coal  to  be  of  terrestrial  origin 
and  not  to  have  rained  from  the  preadamite 


sky,  as  a  philosopher  of  the  day  maintains  ; 
fibres,  hairs,  and  scales,  and  the  very  curious 
minute  crystals  found  in  the  cells  of  plants, 
called  raphides,  from  the  Greek  word  for 
needle,  bodkin,  or  awL  Of  these  there  are 
examples  in  the  onion,  iu  rhubarb,  in  the 
American  aloe,  and  others.  Cuticles  con- 
taining flint  are  often  very  beautiful ;  that  of 
the  common  marestail  presents  a  remarkably 
neat  shawl  pattern  in  stripes.  Very  curious 
optical  effects  are  presented  by  the  various 
starches.  The  starch  called  tous-les-mois, 
having  the  largest  grains,  is  usually  selected 
for  exhibition. 

Crystalline  forms,  however,  are  the  target 
against  which  polarised  light  delights  to 
discharge  its  most  splendid  fireworks.  Sali- 
cine,  a  salt  extracted  from  willow  trees, 
which,  it  was  once  hoped,  might  supersede 
quinine  in  the  cure  of  fever,  offers,  when 
almost  an  imperceptible  film,  the  appearance 
of  a  pavement  consisting  not  merely  of  gold, 
but  of  lapis  lazuli,  ruby,  emerald,  and  opal. 
Chlorate  of  potash  strews  the  field  of  view 
with  liberal  handfuls  of  pyramidal  jewels. 
Chromate  of  potash,  which  forms  a  bright 
yellow  solution,  offers  a  remarkable  choice  of 
club-shaped  crystals,  irregularly  thrown  to- 
gether, as  if  a  vast  army  of  theatrical  special 
constables  had  thrown  their  tinselled  staves 
into  a  heap,  swearing  to  prevent  breaches  of 
the  peace  no  more.  Oxalate  of  potash,  like 
several  other  combinations  of  oxalic  acid,  is 
a  salt  of  such  variety  and  brilliancy,  that  its 
crystals,  floating  and  glowing  in  a  few  drops 
of  solution  on  the  slide,  look  as  if  their  form 
and  colour  were  the  result  of  a  Chinese  ima- 
gination in  its  happiest  moments. 

The  worthies  of  the  last  century — and 
amongst  them  the  ingenious  Henry  Baker- 
derived  great  entertainment  from  watching 
the  configurations  of  crystallisation  under 
the  microscope.  How  some  divide  and  sub- 
divide after  a  wonderful  order,  representing 
at  the  last  a  winter  scene  of  trees  without 
leaves  :  how  others  perform  shootings  into  the 
middle  of  the  drop  so  as  to  make  a  figure  not 
unlike  the  framework  for  the  flooring  or  the 
roofing  of  a  house  :  how  distilled  verdigrease 
assumes  an  appearance  like  four  leaves  of 
fern  conjoined  by  their  stalks,  made  them 
marvel  greatly ;  for  they  had  no  suspicion  of 
the  flashing  lights  that  were  latent  in  the 
subjects  of  their  observation.  To  them,  a 
rose- shaped  group  of  crystals  had  beauty 
of  form  only  ;  but,  now,  if  we  catch  one  in 
the  act  of  self-formation,  we  see  it  spread 
like  an  opening  flower  whose  petals  are 
striped  and  blotched  with  every  imaginable 
tint. 

Still,  it  is  not  every  saline  solution  that 
readily  renders  up  crystals  sensitive,  to  the 
impression  of  the  polarised  ray.  Common, 
table  salt,  and  alum,  although  they  form 
beautiful  cubes  and  pyramids,  are  apt  to 
show  but  the  faintest  blush  of  colour ;  so  sa- 
voury and  astringent  to  the  palate,  they  are 


468       [November  14. 1957.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


insipid  to  the  eye.  While  Epsom  salt,  nau- 
seous to  swallow,  is  richly  magnificent  to 
behold.  Washerwoman's  soda  displays  gaudy 
blotches  with  a  tendency  to  an  irregular  leaf- 
like  shape.  Sugar  offers  but  a  faint  sensibi- 
lity to  polarised  light,  unless  you  know  how 
to  manage  it.  The  crystals  show  touches  of 
coloured  light,  but  they  are  too  minute  to 
have  much  effect.  To  get  sugar  crystals,  the 
evaporation  must  be  slow,  requiring  perhaps 
four  and  twenty  hours ;  if  you  hasten  the 
process  by  heating  the  syrup  on  the  slide, 
you  get,  instead,  an  amorphous  crust  of  sugar 
barley.  Use  neither  powder  sugar  nor  white 
lump  sugar,  but  sugar  candy,  to  form  your 
solution  ;  then,  -with  patience,  you  will  ob- 
tain a  crop  of  lovely  crystals,  arranged  either 
in  circular,  or  in  fan-like  groups,  which  will 
well  reward  your  pains.  Many  of  these 
caudy  crystals  are  striped  transversely,  or 
diagonally,  zebra-fashion,  not  with  black  and 
white,  but  with  the  seven  prismatic  colours. 
Nitre,  although  repulsive  to  the  taste,  is  ex- 
tremely attractive  to  the  view.  Put  a  drop 
of  warm  solution  of  nitre  on  a  heated  slip  of 
glass  ;  introduce  it  to  polarised  light,  and 
you  will  see  glittering  sword-blades,  flashing 
dirks  and  bayonets,  steel-blue  battle-axes, 
and  bloody  tomahawks,  darting  across  the 
field,  as  if  they  were  stabbing  at  some  unseen 
enemy.  The  very  crystals  of  nitre  are  sug- 
gestive of  battle  and  storm.  You  get  perma- 
nent representations  of  flashes  of  lightning. 
An  artist  about  to  paint  either  a  Jovine,  or 
an  imperial  eagle,  will  do  well  to  consult  a 
crystallisation  of  nitre  as  a  model  for  his 
thunderbolts. 

The  several  vitriols  of  the  Alchymists — 
blue,  green,  and  white — the  sulphates  of  cop- 
per, iron,  and  zinc — are  three  lovely  daugh- 
ters of  Iris,  bom  to  fathers  each  more  re- 
spleudently  rich  than  the  other,  with  gnomes 
and  sylphs  for  their  godfathers  and  god- 
mothers. These  beauties  should  always  be 
kept  in  attendance,  ready  to  display 'their 
charms,  and  to  dazzle  the  inexperienced 
stranger  by  their  wondrous  hues.  The  first, 
sulphate  of  copper,  is  gorgeously  attired  ;  on 
her  robe,  the  supplemental  colours  come  out 
with  striking  contrast  and  alternation.  The 
second,  sulphate  of  iron  (rumoured  to  have 
occasional  dealings  with  London  porter), 
looks  as  if  her  parent,  the  king  of  the  gnomes, 
had  been  trying  how  fine  he  could  make  his 
offspring.  White  vitriol,  the  progeny  of  zinc, 
is  clothed  in  a  spangled  mantle  that  far  out- 
shines the  starry  heavens. 


Anil  now  and  again  would  flutter 

A  dead  leaf  to  the  ground, 
Which  sun  should  never  gladden, 

Nor  rain  with  a  summer  sound. 
The  fern  was  red  on  the  mountain, 

The  cloud  was  low  in  the  sky, 
And  we  knew  thai  the  year  was  failinrr, 

That  the  wintry  time  was  nigh. 

But  we  thought,  as  thinks  the  lover 

With  his  loved  one  near  her  grave, 
"  O,  Death,  leave  her  here  for  a  little, 

Leave  her,  whom  nought  can  save." 
A  little  more  warmth  and  brightness, 

And  tarrying  of  the  green, 
Had  left  no  content  with  the  future, 

Thankful  for  what  had  been ; 
We  dreamt  not  of  Winter,  standing 

As  to-day  wo  see  him  stand, 
In  the  midst  of  the  mountains  yonder, 

With  Helvellyn  in  his  hand. 
Though  he  dares  not  come  to  the  valley: 

Though  he  leaves  the  hill  ere  noon, 
His  foot  will  be  on  the  lake's  breast, 

lie  will  hush  the  river  soon. 
Yon  print  of  his  hoary  finger 

We  Northerns  know  full  well, 
Our  sign  that  summer  is  over, — 

The  first  snow  on  the  Fell. 


THE  FIEST  SNOW  ON  THE  FELL. 

OUR  days  bad  begun  to  darken ; 

The  shadows  upon  the  lawn 
To  fall  from  the  elm-trees  early, 

To  linger  long  for  dawn  ; 
The  leaves  of  the  elm  to  redden, 

And  tremble  to  the  wind, 
With  its  bitter  news  and  whiskers 

Of  the  wu-sc  that  lay  behind. 


LYNDON  HALL. 

IN    SEVEN   CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER   THE  FIRST., 

NORAH  LYNDON  sat  under  the  great  beech- 
tree  at  the  end  of  the  long  walk  with  her 
cousin  Gregory.  Norah  was  fair,  pale,  timid, 
and  depressed  ;  Gregory  fiery  as  an  Arab  and 
almost  as  swarthy  :  Norah  Avas  gentle  and 
cold,  loving  no  one  and  harming  nothing, 
while  Gregory's  very  caresses  were  less  ten- 
der than  the  reproaches  of  other  men,  and  his 
love  more  fierce  than  ordinary  hate.  Yet 
though  so  singularly  uusuited  to  each  other, 
these  two  creatures  were  betrothed  ;  because 
Norah's  father  wished  to  unite  the  estates, 
and  because  Gregory  had  a  savage  kind  of 
love  for  his  beautiful  little  cousin — that  love 
which  thinks  only  of  itself,  and  looks  only  to 
its  own  fulfilment.  As  for  Norah,  she  had 
simply  been  required  to  say  "  I  will,"  after 
her  father's  stern  "you  shall."  No  one 
dreamed  of  any  spontaneous  wish  on  her  part 
as  either  desirable  or  necessary  ;  and  it  never 
occurred  even  to  herself  that  she  might  by 
chance  do  more  than  obey — that  she  might 
claim  the  common  birthright  of  humanity, 
and  desire  and  will  for  herself.  Her  father 
had  not  ground  her  down  through  all  the 
facile  years  of  her  early  youth  to  leave  her 
such  dangerous  thoughts  as  these.  He  had 
not  suppressed  every  spark  of  self-assertion 
to  no  purpose.  He  had  made  her  what  he 
willed  her  to  be — a  passive  machine  that  did 
as  it  was  bidden — walking  by  rule  and  living 
by  law,  but  devoid  of  all  the  impulse,  passion, 
strength,  and  will,  which  spring  from  an 
independent  inner  life. 

This  suited  Colonel  Lyndon.     To  his  ideas 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LYNDON  HALL. 


[November  14.  1857.]       469 


Norah  was  a  model  daughter,  and  he  almost 
loved  her  for  the  feebleness  he  had  created 
in  her.  But  Colonel  Lyndon  was  not  prone 
to  love  anything :  and  this,  his  nearest  ap- 
proach, was  but  a  poor  imitation  at  the  best. 
Gregory,  too,  was  a  man  who  demanded  im- 
plicit obedience  from  a  woman.  With  his 
oriental  temperament  he  had  imbibed  orien- 
tal ideas,  and  could  never  reconcile  himself 
to  the  independence  of  Western  women.  But 
he  was  of  a  widely  different  nature  to  the 
colonel,  even  while  seemingly  at  one  with 
him  in  the  proper  treatment  and  condition  of 
women.  He  wanted  love  together  with  obe- 
dience :  his  slave  must  feel  as  well  as  act 
according  to  his  desires  ;  and  souls  must  yield 
as  well  as  breathe  if  he  would  be  satisfied. 
The  colonel  looked  only  for  practical  obedi- 
ence ;  Gregory,  younger,  more  impassioned, 
and  in  love,  desired  emotional  sympathy  as 
well.  Thus,  while  Norah's  submissiveness ' 
charmed  him,  her  coldness  and  want  of  de-  | 
moustration  often  nearly  maddened  him  ;  and 
few  men,  perhaps,  ever  underwent  greater 
torture  than  Gregory  had  done  since  his 
engagement  with  his  cousin. 

He  often  questioned  her  fiercely  about  her 
love  for  him ;  and  to-day  the  conversation 
beneath  the  beech-tree  led  again  over  the  old 
ground. 

"  Of  course,  I  love  you,"  said  Norah,  in  her 
strange,  timid  way,  not  looking  up,  and 
speaking  without  emphasis  or  intonation. 

"Why  don't  you  look  as  if  you  did,  then?" 
cried  Gregory,  impatiently. 

"  I  cannot  help  my  looks,  cousin  :  they  are 
always  against  me.  I  look  pale,  but  I  am  not 
ill,  and  I  believe  I  always  look  cross  and 
unhappy,  but  I  am  not  either." 

"  No,  no,  not  cross,  Norah,  but  unhappy. 
What  makes  you  unhappy  1 "  He  spoke 
quickly,  bending  his  great  black  eyes  eagerly 
on  her. 

"  I  am  not  unhappy,"  said  Norah,  quietly. 

"  You  are,   Norah  !   you  know  you   are ! 
Every  look,  every  movement,  the  tones  of 
your  voice,  your  gestures — everything  tells  I 
me  that  you  are  wretched,  dejected,  broken-  \ 
hearted.     I  see  it.      I  see  it.     O  heaven  !  1 
that  face  !  and  on  the  eve  of  our  marriage !  " 
There  was  a  certain  deep  vibration  in  the 
tones  of  his  voice  which  was  always  the  pre- 
lude to  a  fit  of  frenzy. 

Norah,  constitutionally  afraid  of  passion, 
began  to  tremble. 

'•  There  !  there  !  see  !  I  cannot  speak  to 
you  in  the  tenderest  way — I  cannot  even 
show  you  any  love  or  care,  without  mak- 
ing you  tremble  and  shrink  from  me. 
You  cannot  call  this  love.  Norah  !  Why, 
my  very  dog  returns  my  caress,  and  my  horse 
knows  my  hand.  These  dumb  creatures  love 
me,  while  you — you — you  fear  me,  you  shiver 
with  dread  and  disgust  before  me,  you  abhor 
me,  Norah  ! — you  wish  I  was  dead  and  swept 
from  your  path  for  ever !  I  see  it — I  know 
it— I  feel  it !  " 


He  started  up  from  the  garden  seat,  and 
began  pacing  the  walk,  and  folding  his  arms 
over  his  breast ;  but  more  as  if  he  were  a 
modern  Laocoon  crushing  a  boa-constrictor, 
than  an  ordinary  English  gentleman  assum- 
ing an  ordinary  English  attitude. 

"Please,  cousin,  sit  down,"  said  Norah, 
timidly. 

"  O,  this  is  torture  !  "  he  exclaimed,  in  a 
voice  of  genuine  anguish  :  then  flinging  him- 
self on  his  knees  before  her,  he  seized  her 
hands,  and  burst  into  such  a  wild  strain  of 
despair  and  anguish  that  Norah  felt  almost 
faint  to  hear  him.  Moreover,  he  had  grasped 
her  so  harshly,  that,  had  she  not  been  too 
timid  even  for  cowardice,  she  would  have 
screamed  aloud.  His  nervous  muscular 
hands  closing  like  a  vice  over  those  tiny  de- 
licate fingers  of  hers,  nearly  crushed  thera. 
Little  frail  Norah  was  no  fit  plaything  for  a 
swarthy  savage  six  feet  high,  and  as  powerful 
as  he  was  passionate.  But  now  his  despair 
was  so  intense,  and  Norah  felt  in  her  own 
soul  that,  though  exaggerated,  it  was  not 
entirely  groundless.  She  was  too  timid  to 
make  an  end  of  it  herself.  She  could  only 
wait,  trembling  and  terrified,  until  Gregory's 
passion  had  burnt  itself  out,  and  he  had  be- 
come calm  by  force  of  exhaustion.  So  she 
sat  still  and  silent ;  white  and  rigid  like  a 
little  marble  statue. 

At  last  the  storm  cleared  off,  and  Gregory 
tried  to  soothe  her.  She  bore  her  cousin's 
soothings  passively,  as  she  bore  everything- ; 
but  her  sole  thought  during  the  infliction 
was,  "  When  will  this  be  over  ?  O  !  when 
will  he  go  away  1 " 

At  last,  passing  through  the  shrubbery, 
Norah  saw  a  tall,  great,  spare  military  figure 
coming  towards  them — a  figure  she  never 
remembered  seeing  with  pleasure  or  grati- 
tude before. 

"  My  father,  cousin  !  "  she  said  quietty,  but 
with  a  little  sigh  of  relief. 

Gregory  had  just  time  to  start  to  his  feet, 
before  Colonel  Lyndon  turned  into  the  Long 
Walk :  for  Gregory,  half  a  savage,  was  almost 
as  much  in  awe  of  his  uncle  as  Norah 
herself. 

With  a  stern,  undeviating  step,  and  a  stern, 
unchanging  face,  the  Colonel  came  up  to 
them,  and  silently  sat  down  on  the  other  side 
of  Norah.  No  one  spoke.  Gregory  was 
occupied  in  regaining  his  self-possession,  and 
Norah  waited,  as  she  had  been  taught,  until 
her  father  should  first  address  her. 

"  A  beautiful  day,"  said  Colonel  Lyndon, 
after  a  time  :  speaking  curtly  and  impera- 
tively, as  if  he  were  on  parade  giving  orders,^ 
and  as  if  the  weather  were  on  the  verge  of 
his  displeasure.  That  was  his  way  with 
everything. 

"  Very,"  said  Norah. 

"  Too  close,"  muttered  Gregory,  wiping  his 
upper  lip — that  tell-tale  upper  lip — with  the 
Nubian  blood  seen  so  plainly  in  its  thickened 
lines  and  "lowing  red  ! 


470       [November  14,  18S7-] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  j,y 


Then  there  was  a  dead  silence  again  :  the 
Colonel  had  exhausted  his  first  series  of  sub- 
jects ;  for  the  Colonel  was  not  a  talkative 
mau  :  and  Norah  was  always  too  thankful  to 
take  refuge  in  the  peace  of  silence  to  break 
it  of  her  own  free  will ;  even  if  she  had  not 
been  taught  that  such  infraction  was  the 
highest  possible  disrespect  to  paternal  ma- 
jesty. At  last  the  Colonel  spoke  again. 

"  When  does  Miss  Thorold  conie,  Norah  ?  " 

"  To-inorrow,  sir,"  said  Norah. 

"  I  hear  she  has  grown  a  handsome  and  a 
pleasant  person,"  remarked  Colonel  Lyndon, 
condescendingly.  "  As  a  child  she  was  too 
forward  and  not  sufficiently  feminine,  but  I 
hear  she  has  improved.  What  say  you, 
Norah  ?  it  is  not  long  since  you  left  school  ? 
You  can  remember  her  distinctly,  I  presume. 
She  is  not  disagreeable,  I  believe  1 " 
'  Not  at  all,  sir,"  said  Norah. 

'  And  handsome  1 " 
'  Very  handsome." 

{ Accomplished,  too,  and  lady-like  ?  " 

'  Both,  sir." 

'  Handsome,  agreeable,  accomplished — yet 
you  are  not  afraid  of  her  ?  You  are  not 
jealous  ? "  said  Gregory  with  a  forced 
laugh. 

"  No,  cousin,  not  in  the  least." 

"  Ah  !  "  he  cried,  with  a  bitter  sneer  on 
his  face.  "  Only  those  who  love  are  jealous  !  " 

"  You  speak  bitterly,  Gregory,"  said  Colo- 
nel Lyndon,  sharply,  turning  on  his  nephew 
those  cruel,  cold  grey  eyes. 

"  I  feel  strongly,  uncle." 

"  By  what  right,  sir  1 " 

"  The  right  of  suffering,"  said  Gregory, 
moodily. 

"  Strange  words ! "  cried  the  Colonel. 
"  Are  you  not  my  daughter's  affianced  hus- 
band 1  What  '  suffering '  is  there  in  your 
position,  pray  1 " 

"  O  !  to  be  accepted  is  not  enough !  I 
would  be  loved  !  " 

"  Miss  Lyndon  knows  her  duty  too  well,  not 
to  do  as  she  is  bidden  ;  Gregory,  I  have  told 
her  she  must  love  you,  and  she  does  love  you  : 
for  she  has  never  yet  presumed  to  disobey  me. 
Tell  me,  Norah — you  love  your  cousin,  do 
you  not  ? " 

"  Yes,"  said  Norah,  looking  down. 

"  Don't  be  a  fool,  Gregory  !  "  said  the  Co- 
lonel, with  a  small  laugh ;  "  else  you  may 
lose  what  I  have  made  and  gained.  I  give 
up  to  you  a  model  of  submission  and  obe- 
dience ;  be  thankful  for  this  result  of  a  life 
of  discipline  and  training,  and  do  not  blame 
the  instrument  if  you  are  a  bad  musician.  I 
never  found  it  fail  under  my  touch :  be  wise, 
and  it  will  not  fail  under  yours  ! " 

He  rose  as  he  said  this,  cast  a  sharp  glance 
at  the  downcast  eyes  of  his  daughter,  and 
walked  away,  with  the  same  measured  tread 
and  military  precision  as  when  he  came. 
Norah  looked  after  him  almost  regretfully. 
Her  two  tyrants  neutralised  each  other  when 
they  were  together :  and,  indeed,  anything  • 


was  preferable  to  a  t&e-a-tSte  with  Gregory, 
when  he  was  in  one  of  his  jealous  and  excited 
moods. 

"Cousin,"  she  said, quite  quietly,  "I  wish 
that  you,  or  my  father,  would  kill  me  at  once. 
It  would  be  better  for  me  than  to  live  as  I 
do  now." 

Gregory  heard  no  more,  but  bounded 
away,  and  Norah  saw  him  no  more  for  that 
day.  But  her  father  scolded  her  for  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour,  and  told  her  she  was 
ungrateful  and  insubordinate. 

CHAPTER    THE   SECOND. 

"  WHY,  Norah  !  you  do  not  look  much  like 
a  bride  !  "  cried  Lucy  Thorold,  when,  after 
the  necessary  public  greetings  were  over,  she 
and  her  friend  were  closeted,  like  school- 
girls talking  mysteries  again.  "  How:  is  this  ? 
— is  not  your  cousin  kind  to  you  ?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Norah.     "  I  believe  so." 

"What  a  strange  speech  !  "  laughed  Lucy, 
handsome,  positive,  dauntless  Lucy — hand- 
some, bold,  worldly,  Lucy — who  thought 
Norah  the  luckiest  of  women,  to  be  engaged 
to  a  handsome  cousin,  with  five  thousand  a- 
year.  As  for  the  savage  blood  in  him,  five 
thousand  a-year  would  purify  that. 

"  But  you  are  so  pale,  Norah ! "  said 
Lucy,  glancing  in  the  glass  at  her  own 
velvety,  rose-red  cheeks,  round  which  her 
dark  hair  turned  back  in  a  gorgeous  roll 
was  set  like  a  shining  frame :  while  Norah's 
small,  pallid  face  crowded  up  with  a  profusion 
of  colourless  hair  looked  like  that  of  a  little 
ghost. 

"  I  am  always  pale,"  said  Norah,  "  but 
never  mind  me  now.  Tell  me  of  yourself, 
Lucy.  Think  how  long  it  is  since  I  have 
seen  you  ! — two  long  years  !  Tell  me  all  that 
has  happened  to  you  siuce  we  left  Madame 
Cosson's.  Are  you  going  to  be  married  ? — 
are  you  engaged  yet  ?  " 

"  I  ?  No,  Norah  !  I  have  not  had  five 
thousand  a  year  laid  at  my  feet,  as  you  have 
at  your's." 

"  I  should  care  more  about  the  man  than 
the  money,"  said  Norah  gently,  "  though,  in- 
deed," she  added  below  her  breath,  "they 
are  all  alike  !  "  And  she  sighed. 

"  Is  that  your  experience,  Norah  ? "  laughed 
Lucy.  "  Mine  is  just  the  reverse.  They  talk 
of  the  dissimilarity  of  women,  and  of  our 
chameleon-like  characters, but  we  are  the  very 
representatives  of  monotony  compared  to  men. 
Why  do  you  say  that  they  are  all  alike  1  " 

"  They  are  all  such  tyrants,"  said  Norah. 

Lucy  looked  at  her  intently ;  then  going 
up  to  her  she  smoothed  back  her  fair  hair 
gently,  saying : — 

"  Is  that  your  experience,  my  poor  Norah  ? 
Ah  !  I  understand  it  all  now  ! " 

Norah's  lip  quivered,  and  her  eyes  filled  ; 
but  her  hard  life  had  taught  the  little 
creature  self-command,  and,  after  a  moment, 
the  spasm  passed,  and  left  her  face  as  still 
and  calm  as  ever. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LYNDON  HALL. 


[November  14, 1SS7.]       471 


"  And  your's,  Lucy  ?" 

"  Mine  ! — dear  little  girl,  what  a  question  ! 
Don't  you  know  me  well  enough  to  know 
that  the  man  does  not  live  on  this  earth  who 
could  or  should  play  the  tyrant  over  me  1 
No,  Norah  !  not  the  strongest  will  or  the 
fiercest  temper  could  conquer  me.  Let  them 
try !  There  is  not  a  man  in  England  that  I 
could  not  make  my  slave  if  I  chose." 

And  she  laughed — half  in  deprecation  of 
her  imperial  boast,  half  in  conscious  power — 
such  power  as  women  when  they  are  young, 
beautiful,  and  self-willed,  alone  feel. 

"  Not  your  father,  Lucy  1" 

"  My  father  1  Bless  his  dear  gentle  heart ! 
he  would  not  hurt  a  fly,  much  less  offend  his 
daughter,  of  whom  he  is  so  extravagantly 
proud  and  fond.  Dear,  good-tempered  papa  ! 
he  never  said  '  No,'  to  my  '  Yes,'  in  his  life  ; 
nor  to  mamma's  either.  No  ;  mamma  is  more 
inclined  to  be  tyrannical  than  papa,  but  she 
is  not  difficult.  I  can  soon  kiss  her  into  a 
good  humour  ;  and  then  I  gossip  with  her, 
and,  dear  soul !  she  likes  that.  So  I  get 
round  her,  too  ;  if,  with  a  little  more  manage- 
ment, yet  quite  as  effectually  as  round  papa  ; 
and  they  never  dream  of  thwarting  me — 
never  ! " 

"  And  your  brothers  ?  Am  I  troublesome  1 
Bat  it  is  so  long  since  I  have  seen  you,  that  I 
understand  nothing  of  your  family  or  your 
position  now." 

Norah  spoke  so  timidly,  as  one  accustomed 
to  refusals. 

'•'Ask  what  you  like,  dear,"  said  Lucy,  in 
her  fine,  patronising  way.  "  I  shall  be  very 
happy  to  tell  you  anything.  Well !  my 
brothers — they  are  the  best  creatures  in  the 
world  !  I  have  two — as  you  may  remember. 
Launce  is  the  eldest :  he  is  like  papa — a  dear, 
soft,  large,  good-tempered  thing,  more  like  a 
big  old  dog  than  anything  else.  I  call  him 
Doggie  when  he  is  particularly  good.  Ed- 
mund is  the  youngest  of  us  all ;  he  is  a  year 
younger  than  I — by  the  bye,  just  your  own 
age,  Nory — and  one  of  the  gentlest  beings 
breathing.  He  is  a  spiritual,  etherial  morsel, 
into  whom  nature  forgot  to  put  both  bones 
and  evil — a  perfect  angel,  dear  boy,  and  such 
a  sweet  poet !  But  he  would  have  been  better 
as  a  girl  than  as  a  man.  He  is  too  fair  ;  and 
really,  without  nonsense,  he  has  not  enough 
wickedness  in  him  for  a  true  man.  As  he  is, 
he  holds  very  much  the  office  of  the  bards  of 
old  with  us  all.  We  ask  his  views  on  all 
intellectual  matters,  never  his  advice  on 
worldly  affairs;  and,  if  he  were  not  incor- 
ruptible, he  would  have  been  spoilt  years 
ago,  with  all  the  love  and  petting  he  has  had. 
But,  to  go  back  to  myself.  You  may  see  by 
this  sketch  of  home,  Norah,  that  I  have  no 
very  formidable  opponents  to  encounter. 
Launce  is  too  soft-hearted ;  Edmund  too 
good — besides  being  too  abstracted — to  oppose 
me  ;  so  that,  in  fact,  Nory,  I  rule  the  house — 
and  that  is  just  the  truth." 

"  What  a  happy  life  ! "  said  Norah,  eadly. 


"  Now  tell  me  yours,  Nory." 

"  O  !  no,  no  !  never  mind  mine  !  It  is 
too  tame  after  yours,"  said  Norah  hurriedly. 
"  I  have  nothing  to  tell  but  what  you 
know." 

"  Why,  child  !  I  know  nothing.  Come  ! 
your  history  or  your  life,  rebel !" 

At  that  moment  a  bell  rang  imperiously, 
as  everything  was  done  at  Lyndon  Hall. 

"  The  first  dinner-bell,  Lucy,"  said  Norah, 
looking  frightened.  "  1  must  go,  dear.  Do 
not  be  a  minute  too  late,  papa  is  very  par- 
ticular, and  punctual  to  a  moment.  Mind 
you  are  in  time,  for  I  want  you  to  be 
a  favourite  here,"  she  added  with  a  sad 
smile. 

"Very  well,  I  will  be  punctual,"  said 
Lucy,  hurrying  about  her  room  and  ring- 
ing for  her  maid.  Then,  when  Norah  had 
fairly  closed  the  door,  she  laughed  aloud  and 
said — 

"  For  to-day  only,  just  to  feel  my  ground." 

True  to  her  promise,  down  she  came,  five 
minutes  before  the  time,  all  radiant  in  peach- 
blossom  and  silver.  Little  Norah  glided  in 
ailmost  immediately  after,  in  a  floating  light 
blue  robe  ;  the  one  self-possessed  and  queenly, 
the  other  timid  and  retiring  ;  the  one  with 
her  broad  black  brows  and  open  eyes,  her 
rich  complexion  and  her  ruddy,  laughing 
mouth,  the  other  with  shy,  melancholy  orbs 
always  hidden  by  their  d'rooping  lids,  with 
small  and  delicate  lips  that  smiled  more  sadly 
than  Lucy's  wept. 

The  Colonel  and  Gregory  were  waiting  to 
receive  them.  The  Colonel  stood  near  the 
fire-place,  severely  watchful  of  the  hour ; 
Gregory  lounged  against  the  chimney-piece, 
eagerly  looking  for  Norah.  The  Colonel, 
with  his  iron-grey  hair  and  keen  grey  eyes, 
his  hawk  nose,  thin  face,  and  military  bear- 
ing, looked  the  impersonation  of  severity 
turned  gentleman  ;  while  Gregory,  swarthy 
and  excited,  his  large  black  eyes  taking  every 
shade  of  feeling  as  mirrors  throw  back  forms, 
his  thick  red  lips  and  small  white  teeth 
beneath,  looked  like  what  he  was — the  half- 
caste,  with  the  savage  element  predominant. 
Between  them  both,  no  wonder  was  it  that 
frail,  fair  Norah's  life  was  slowly  dying  out 
of  her  ;  it  was  a  greater  wonder  how  it  had 
been  preserved  so  long.  As  Lucy  said — 
writing  home  to  her  mother  that  night,  and 
exaggerating  in  consideration  of  her  mother's 
weakness  for  gossip — "she  looked  like  a  little 
white  lamb  between  a  lion  and  a  jaguar — 
the  jaguar  was  the  Colonel "  (added  _  in  a 
footnote).  "But,"  continued  Lucy,  with  a 
burst  of  heroism  by  no  means  common  to 
her,  "  I  will  save  her  !  I  feel  that  I  have  had 
this  mission  given  to  me,  and  that  I  am  sent 
to  effect  poor  Norah's  release." 

When  the  party  separated  that  night, 
Colonel  Lyndon  reviewed  himself  anxiously 
in  his  dressing-glass — specially  about  his 
eyes  and  round  his  mouth.  After  a  few 
minutes  he  drew  himself  up,  saying  : — "  Not 


472       [November  14,  1SS70 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[.Conducted  by 


so  many  after  all !  Ah  !  who  knows  but 
that  I  may  even  outlast  Gregory." 

Norah  accompanied  Lucy  to  her  room.  It 
was  such  a  novelty  to  her  to  have  one  of  her 
own  sex  near  her,  that  she  clung  to  Lucy  as 
if  she  had  been  her  sister.  She  seemed  so 
kind  and  gentle  and  soft-hearted  to  poor 
Norah,  crushed  by  her  father,  scorched  by 
her  lover,  and  terrified  by  both,  that,  if  she 
could,  she  would  never  have  left  her  side. 
Yet  Lucy  was  only  a  year  older  than  her 
young  hostess,  for  all  she  patronised  and 
played  mother  over  her  to  such  perfection. 

Lucy  spoke  of  Gregory.  Her  lids  fluttered 
for  a  moment  over  her  dark  blue  eyes,  as  she 
said  with  girlish  frankness  : — 

"  O,  Norah !  what  a  magnificent  person 
your  cousin  is  ! " 

"  Yes,  he  is  very  handsome,"  said  Norah  ; 
"  or,  at  least,  people  say  so." 

"But  don't  you  think  him  so  yourself, 
Nory  1  " 

"  I  do  not  admire  that  dark  style," 
answered  Norah.  "  His  mother  was  a  Nu- 
bian, I  believe,  and  the  mark  of  his  race  is 
too  visible." 

"  Well,  I  like  it,"  cried  Lucy.  "  It  gives 
a  life  and  animation  which  our  red  and  white 
Saxon  men  want.  His  features  are  regularly 
and  beautifully  cut,  and  I  think  that  the  dark 
blood  improves  them.  It  would  have  been 
different  if  he  had  been  like  a  negro  in  fea- 
ture." 

"I  am  glad  you  like  him,"  said  Norah 
simply.  "  And  he  thinks  you  beautiful, — too 
beautiful  to  go  about  the  world  alone.  He 
said  so." 

"  Did  he  !  "  laughed  Lucy,  looking  more 
pleased  than  proud.  "  Rather  an  imperti- 
nent speech  to  a  bride-elect,  was  it  not, 
Nory  1  What  did  you  say  to  him  in  return  ? 
Did  you  not  scold  him  ?  " 

"  No  ;  I  said  to  him  just  what  I  said  to 
you — that  I  was  glad  he  admired  you." 

'•'  How  charmed  he  must  have  been  with 
your  good  sense  !  "  said  Lucy. 

"  No,  he  was  not,"  answered  Norah,  not 
as  if  making  a  complaint,  but  speaking  quite 
tranquilly,  as  if  it  was  a  normal  condition  of 
things,  and  she  was  used  to  it.  "  On  the 
contrary,  he  was  angry  and  excited.  He 
wanted  me  to  be  jealous  :  but  I  am  not  of  a 
jealous  nature,  and  if  he  thought  every 
woman  in  the  world  handsomer  than  I,  it 
would  not  disturb  me.  Indeed,  I  would  be 
very  glad  if  it  quieted  him,  and  took  him  a 
little  more  out  of  himself,  and  away  from  me. 
Well !  I  must  not  keep  you  up  after  your 
journey.  Good  night,  dear.  O  !  how  glad 
I  am  that  you  are  here !  " 

She  bent  her  forehead  to  her  friend's  lips, 
and  then  went  up  to  her  own  bed-room ; 
where,  the  sad  formula  of  the  night,  she  cried 
herself  to  sleep  like  a  child. 

"  Poor  Norah  !  "  said  Lucy.  «  She  does 
not  love  that  man  as  much  as  I  love  my 
parrot !  What  a  tragedy  is  preparing  for 


them  all !  But  what  a  superb  fellow  he 
is!" 

Gregory,  riding  home,  could  not  help 
giving  a  thought  to  Lucy.  He  was  living 
over  the  evening  again,  and  the  new  guest 
came  in  for  her  rightful  share  of  the 
canvas. 

"  She  is  excessively  handsome,"  he  thought, 
"but  I  do  not  like  her.  Something  about 
her  repels  me.  Her  eyes  are  too  free  and  her 
manners  too  confident ;  but  she  can  love, — if 
indeed  any  man  could  be  found  to  care  for  a 
love  which  would  give  itself  without  being 
sought.  O  !  Norah's  iciest  coldness  is  more 
enchanting  to  me  than  this  over-freedom  of 
giving,  this  prodigal  generosity  of  love  in 
this  bold-eyed  beauty.  But  Norah  !  Norah  ! 
can  I  ever  make  you  love  rne  as  I  would  be 
loved !  " 

He  took  off  his  hat,  so  that  the  night-wind 
might  blow  cool  upon  his  feverish  forehead, 
and  setting  spurs  to  his  horse,  galloped 
many  a  long  mile,  seeking  by  violent  exercise 
to  counteract  the  tumult  within  him. 

Norah,  pale  and  weeping  in  her  sleep, 
murmured,  "  Why  may  I  not  die  !  O!  why 
cannot  I  die  now  !  " 

CHAPTER  THE  THIRD. 

LUCY  threw  the  light  of  a  new  life  into 
Lyndon  Hall.  Before  she  had  been  there 
four  days,  the  Colonel  was  in  love  with  her. 
Seldom  has  there  been  so  swift  a  fall,  so 
sudden  a  conquest.  And  now,  with  the 
insolence  of  youth,  she  showed  his  fetters  to 
all  the  world.  There  was  not  a  petty  girlish 
act  of  tyranny  and  self-will  of  which  she  was 
not  guilty.  She  deranged  all  his  habits  and 
overthrew  his  authority.  She  made  him 
wait  for  dinner,  contradicted  him  before  the 
whole  household,  beat  him  at  chess,  scolded 
down  his  assertions  respecting  woman's 
inferiority  and  the  good  of  absolute  sub- 
mission, shook  all  the  starch  out  of  his  mili- 
tary demeanor,  and  made  him  a  pliant 
nobody,  whom  she  twisted  round  her  fingers 
at  her  pleasure.  But  all  was  done  so  gra- 
ciously, her  insolence  was  accomplished  by 
means  of  such  beaming  eyes  and  sunny 
smiles,  it  was  such  a  graceful  cruelty  and 
played  by  such  a  lovely  comedian,  that  the 
Colonel  was  forced  to  submit,  despot  and 
autocrat  as  he  was.  But  he  apologised  to 
himself  for  his  loss  of  dignity  on  the  same 
plea  that  a  grave  man  would  use  if  caught 
romping  with  his  child.  It  was  his  pleasure, 
his  will.  He  suffered  these  petty  pretty 
liberties  because  he  liked  them :  they  were 
not  taken  by  force,  they  were  granted.  He 
submitted,  like  Hercules  to  Omphale,  to  a 
tyranny  he  could  crush  between  his  fingers 
and  thumb  to-morrow,  if  he  chose.  He  was 
Samson  bound  by  Dalilah  ;  but  not  asleep, 
nor  with  his  locks  shorn.  The  threads  round 
him  were  but  the  fragile  threads  of  a  wo- 
man's caprice,  which  he  could  break  at  a 
moment,  if  he  put  forth  his  strength  in  never 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LYNDON  HALL. 


[November  14, 1357-]        473 


so  minute  degree.  This  disguised  lord  was 
still  the  lord,  though,  he  might  masquerade 
in  the  slave's  attire  for  his  own  good 
pleasure  :  and  he — his  will  was  none  the 
less  iron  nor  his  purpose  adamant,  because 
he  made  himself  the  supple  toy  of  a  pretty 
woman  ;  let  her  go  an  inch  too  far,  and 
then  she  would  find  how  much  of  this 
cruelty  was  based  on  her  intrinsic  power, 
and  how  much  on  his  complaisance.  So 
he  comforted  his  damaged  dignity  with 
such  soliloquies  as  those  ;  and  sat  at  the 
feet  at  his  Omphale  while  she  rated  him, 
or  followed  while  she  led  him  hither  and 
thither,  and  took  his  lion's  skin  for  her 
footstool,  and  laughed  at  his  demi-godship  to 
his  face. 

Norah  looked  on  in  silent  wonder.  To 
see  her  father,  of  whom  she  stood  in  almost 
superstitious  awe,  cajoled  and  trifled  with 
by  a  girl  only  a  year  older  than  herself, 
seemed  a  miracle.  She  felt  almost  afraid  as 
if  some  new  and  mysterious  power  had  risen 
up  beside  her.  It  was  so  strange  that  her 
father,  who  had  so  crushed  her,  who  laid 
his  own  will  so  heavily  on  the  household, 
should  now  be  paraded  before  them  all  like 
a  tame  monster,  and  pushed  to  the  very 
verge  of  ridicule  by  his  facility.  She  did 
not  recognise  him.  Lucy  could  do  any- 
thing she  pleased  with  him.  After  keeping 
dinner  waiting  a  full  half-hour — a  slight 
which  Colonel  Lyndon  had  once  resented 
from  a  peer  —  Lucy  would  come  down 
into  the  drawiiig-rooni  all  smiles  and  com- 
posure, conscious  power,  all  exquisite  attire 
and  fabulous  perfumes,  sailing  in  as  tran- 
quilly as  if  she  were  no  delinquent ;  then 
saying,  if  the  Colonel  looked  haughty  and 
sulky  ; 

"  Has  the  dinner-bell  sounded  yet  ? " 

What  her  motive  was  for  her  conduct, 
Norah  never  asked  ;  and  even  if  she  had, ! 
Lucy  would  have  been  puzzled  for  an 
answer  ;  for  she  had  no  definite  plans  as 
yet  —  no  actual  motive.  And  as  Norah 
i|  was  too  quiet  and  indifferent  to  trouble  her- 
self much  about  what  any  one  did,  LUCY 
found  no  very  officious  censor  or  inquirer  in 
her. 

The  person  most  perplexed  of  all  was 
Gregory.  He,  as  all  the  world,  saw  Lucy's 
evident  flirtation  with  the  Colonel,  and  he, 
like  Norah,  let  it  pass  without  comment.  He 
was  too  much  absorbed  in  his  own  real  love 
to  care  about  the  mock-play  of  others.  Why 
did  those  strange  fixed  looks  meet  his  when 
no  one  was  by] — looks  that  left  a  very  sound 
of  words  behind  them.  Why  did  she  start 
when  he  came  upon  her  suddenly  ?  Why 
did  she  look  after  him  so  earnestly  or  so 
sadly  when  he  withdrew  ]  Why  did  she 
surround  him  with  her  influence,  so  that  he 
could  not  escape  from  her,  and  was  forced, 
as  if  by  mesmeric  will,  to  turn  to  her, 
and  at  least  to  watch  her  ?  Why,  in  the 
midst  of  all  this  possession — for  it  was  a  I 


real  possession — did  he  hate  her  fiercely, 
and  wish  that  she  had  never  entered  Lyndon 
Hall  1 ' 

Gregory  was  restless  and  distracted  at  his 
unusual  state  of  feeling.  He  chafed  and 
raged  under  it  as  under  a  concealed  wound  ; 
for  if  Gregory  had  the  faults,  he  had  also  the 
virtues  of  a  savage.  If  he  believed  in  the 
right  of  might,  he  believed  also  in  the  beauty 
of  truth,  and  he  practised  the  virtue  of  sin- 
cerity. It  was  only  sincere  then  in  him.  to 
hate  Lucy,  while  fascinated  in  a  strange 
repellant  way  by  her.  It  was  only  natural  to 
him  that,  while  dreaming  of  her  beauty  and 
her  love,  which  he  did  so  often  now,  he  should 
also  dream  of  hatred.  For,  true  to  his  origin, 
he  believed  in  spells  and  witchcraft,  and  he 
had  no  doubt  that  Lucy  was  casting  a  spell 
round  him  now,  which  he  did  not  feel  quite 
sure  of  resisting,  and  which  he  had  full  right 
to  abhor. 

Such  a  mute  world  of  passion  and  fierce 
forbidden  thought  as  it  all  was  in  this  dim 
old  stately  Lyndon  Hall !  Such  a  stormy 
world,  surging  and  boiling  up  round  little 
Norah  as  the  centre  figure  ;  she,  the  only 
calm  one  of  them  all,  though  the  saddest  of 
them  all ;  but  still  aud  motionless,  as  philo- 
sophers say  is  the  characteristic  of  storm- 
centres. 

What  could  Colonel  Lyndon  do  to  please 
his  beautiful  guest  ?  He  had  presented  her 
with  a  bridesmaid's  bracelet ;  that  was  some- 
thing, for  Lucy  adored  jewellery.  But  what 
more  could  he  do  for  her  ?  The  Colonel  was 
a  cautious  rn&n,  and  went  by  easy  marches. 
He  did  not  know  Lucy's  family :  and,  infa- 
tuated though  he  was,  his  pride  was  greater 
than  his  love  ;  and  he  would  sacrifice  even 
Lucy,  rather  than  make  a  mesalliance.  He  was 
anxious  to  win  her  heart — to  thoroughly  gain 
her  mental  consent — and  then,  on  further 
knowledge,  he  would  decide  on  what  was 
best  for  himself.  He  did  not  wish  to  commit 
himself  too  early ;  but  he  wanted  to  be 
secure.  This  was  his  programme.  Lucy  ? 
what  was  hers  ? 

But  what  could  he  do  to  please  her  1  Ah ! 
he  had  it  ! — the  very  thing  ! — and  good  policy 
too.  He  would  ask  her  brothers  to  Norah's 
wedding,  as  an  attention  to  herself,  and  for 
his  own  private  inspection.  That  would  do 
— a  fitting  clasp  to  the  diamond  bracelet — 
perhaps  a  clasp  never  to  be  unloosed.  Lucy 
was  charmed.  She  caught  at  the  idea  with, 
eagerness  ;  for  it  flashed  a  thought,  a  means, 
a  way,  into  her  mind  which  hitherto  she  had 
not  been  able  to  seize.  Yes  ;  Launce  and 
Edmund  must  come.  Edmund  was  pining  to 
find  his  ideal ;  Norah  was  dying  under  Gre- 
gory's love.  If  they  found  what  each  was 
seeking  for  in  the  other — then,  Gregory's 
first  anger  over  ;  then — Lucy  buried  her 
face  in  her  hands  ;  but  the  very  roots  of  her 
hair  were  crimson,  and  her  heart  beat  so 
loud,  that  she  might  have  counted  the 
strokes. 


474      [Noiember  14. 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


When  she  came  to  herself,  the  second 
dinner-boll  had  rung,  and  her  hair  was 
hanging  loose  over  her  shoulders. 

CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH. 

LAUNCELOT  and  Edmund  Thorold  came  to 
Lyndon  Hall.  They  were  both  exceedingly 
handsome,  though  very  unlike  each  other, 
and  quite  unlike  Lucy,  excepting  indeed  a 
certain  genial  expression  in  Launce's  face, 
which  was  like  Lucy's  when  she  was  at  her 
best — when  she  was  not  acting  a  part  and 
not  thinking  of  herself.  But  of  the  two, 
Launce  was  the  more  manly,  as  Lucy  had 
said,  and  Edmund  the  better  looking.  Both 
were  very  gentle  :  Launce  from  that  good 
nature  and  mental  indolence  which  belongs 
to  a  certain  type  of  large-built,  stout,  strong- 
limbed  young  Saxons ;  Edmund,  from  a  refined 
nature,  and  from  the  absence  of  combative- 
ness.  Launce  was  the  more  affectionate  ; 
Edmund,  the  more  loving.  Launce  would 
make  the  kind  husband,  the  good  master,  and 
the  indulgent  father. 

The  Colonel  liked  them.  Their  quiet 
manners  pleased  him,  as  did  their  manly 
deference  to  himself.  For  Lucy  had  warned 
them  of  his  character,  and  had  besought 
them  to  be  extraordinarily  respectful.  And 
they  always  did  what  Lucy  told  them.  Gre- 
gory stood  aloof,  watching  his  rivals.  He 
surrounded  Norah  with  more  jealous  cares 
than  ever,  hardly  letting  her  out  of  his  sight 
for  a  moment ;  sitting  by  her ;  talking  to  her 
exclusively,  or  rather  suffering  no  one  else  to 
speak  with  her  ;  breathing  defiance  and  dis- 
trust in  every  glance  and  gesture  ;  chained 
to  her  side  like  a  fierce  gaoler  standing 
between  the  very  sun  and  her.  It  was  a 
hard  time  for  Norah  :  it  very  nearly  killed 
her. 

The  marriage -day  was  drawing  near. 
Norah  was  growing  thin  and  pale  ;  Gregory 
more  restless  and  more  violent.  It  was  no 
secret  now,  that  he  was  eating  his  heart  out 
for  despair  at  Norah's  want  of  love  for  him, 
or  that  Norah  was  literally  dying  of  terror 
and  oppression.  But  no  one  spoke ;  not  even 
Lucy.  She  did  not  feel  the  ground  beneath 
her  firm  enough  yet  for  such  a  hazardous 
chance. 

The  young  men  had  been  a  week  at  the 
hall,  and  the  marriage  was  to  take  place 
now  in  ten  days,  when  Gregory  received  a 
letter  from  his  lawyer  which  threatened  to 
destroy  all  existing  engagements  whatsoever. 
A  cousin  of  his,  the  son  of  his  father's 
younger  brother,  suddenly  claimed  the  estate, 
on  the  plea  that  Gregory's  Nubian  mother 
had  never  been  legally  married.  A  doubt 
had  always  existed  in  that  branch  of  the 
family  ;  for,  if  true,  the  estates  would  be 
theirs,  and  self-interest  marvellously  sharpens 
suspicion. 

Colonel  Lyndon  was  only  half-brother  to 
Gregory's  father,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  rest 
of  the  family.  In  no  case,  then,  could  the  estates  i 


devolve  on  him  ;  consequently,  he  had  never 
questioned  the  validity  of  his  half-nephew's 
title.  Had  he  received  only  a  hint  of  such  a 
possibility  as  the  want  of  those  important 
marriage  lines,  which  change  so  many 
destinies,  he  would  have  thoroughly  inves- 
tigated the  matter  before  he  had  suffered 
him  to  stand  suitor  to  his  daughter.  For 
he  cared  only  for  the  estates — not  the  man, 
and  he  would  give  Norah  quite  as  willingly 
to  the  new  owner  as  he  had  given  her  to 
Gregory  ;  a  great  deal  more  willingly  if  he 
had  a  better  income.  Gregory  knew  this 
well  enough,  and  foresaw  all  that  would 
happen  if  he  could  not  overcome  this  diffi- 
culty— a  difficulty  not  wholly  contemptible, 
for,  .though  he  had  been  brought  up  and  con- 
sidered as  the  lawful  heir,  he  had  no  legal 
or  documentary  evidence  of  his  father's 
marriage,  and  could  not  prove  his  title,  if 
disputed ;  at  least,  not  with  the  proofs  in 
his  hands.  He  would  have  to  search  for 
more. 

After  thinking  over  his  position  for  full 
five  minutes — which  was  a  long  time  for 
Gregory  to  reflect — he  determined  on  going 
at  once  to  London,  and  seeing  the  matter  to 
the  end.  Nothing  but  the  certainty  of  losing 
Norah  altogether  —  should  his  opponent's 
claim  be  made  good — could  have  spurred  him 
to  this  extreme  step.  But  he  felt  it  was 
better  to  risk  a  few  weeks'  absence  than  a 
life's  loss  ; — better  to  suffer  anxiety  for  a 
term  than  anguish  for  ever. 

He  rode  over  to  Lyndon  Hall,  taking 
the  letter  with  him.  It  was  early  morn- 
ing, and  he  found  the  family  assembled  at 
breakfast.  Lucy  in  the  most  wonderful  elabo- 
ration of  lace  and  muslin  that  the  genius  of 
Parisian  artist  could  invent,  was  sitting  by 
the  Colonel,  whom  she  was  drugging  with 
her  pleasant  poison.  Norah  was  between 
Launce  and  Edmund,  and  assiduously  at- 
tended to  by  both.  It  was  the  only  hour 
they  had  with  her  unmolested,  and  as  they 
both  wished  to  become  really  acquainted  with, 
her,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  made  the 
•aost  of  it.  In  the  midst  of  this  delightful 
ease  and  dangerous  pleasure,  Gregory's  step 
was  heard  in  the  hall.  Not  suffering  the 
servant  to  announce  him,  he  opened  the 
door  of  the  breakfast-room  and  strode  rapidly 
forward.  Norah  was  just  handing  a  cup  of 
tea  to  Edmund,  at  whom  she  was  looking 
earnestly,  smiling  at  an  anecdote  he  was 
relating ;  Launce,  on  her  other  side,  was 
bending  forward,  listening,  but  putting  in  a 
laughing  commentary.  Both  the  young  men 
were  animated  ;  Norah  unembarrassed  and 
pleased.  The  instant  Gregory  appeared  the 
smile  faded  from  her  lips,  her  eyelids  drooped, 
her  hand  trembled,  her  breath  was  checked, 
and  she  turned  pale.  Launce  and  Edmund 
both  stopped  speaking,  and  Edmund  half 
drew  away,  looking  a  shade  guilty  and  caught. 
Lucy  flushed  crimson,  a  welcome  springing 
like  a  word  to  her  eyes  ;  Colonel  Lyndon 


Charles  Dickens. 


LYNDON  HALL. 


[November  14, 1857.]       475 


looked  surprised  and  bored  by  the  interrup- 
tion. 

Not  a  shade,  not  a  change,  in  the  counten- 
ances of  that  unsuspecting  breakfast-party, 
but  had  been  marked  by  Gregory.  He 
thought  he  detected  a  look  of  intelligence 
between  Norah  and  Edmund.  He  was 
mistaken,  as  the  jealous  always  are.  Norah 
could  not  have  established  a  good  intelligence 
with  any  man.  But  for  a  moment  this  sus- 
picion made  him  waver.  Should  he  go  and 
leave  her  to  the  designing  people  about  her  ? 
Was  he  not  mad  and  suicidal  to  think  of  such 
a  .thing  'I  Then,  again,  if  Colonel  Lyndon 
heard  a  breath  of  his  difficulty,  adieu  to 
Norah  for  ever,  unless  he  could  overcome  it. 
Perhaps,  already  he  had  received  intimation 
of  the  matter  from  that  miserable  cousin  of 
his,  whose  life  would  not  be  worth  much  if 
ever  he  fell  within  the  grasp  of  those  hands. 
No !  Gregory  crushed  back  his  transient 
hope  and  set  himself  to  his  task.  To  say 
the  least  of  it,  a  difficult  and  a  painful  one  to 
any  man. 

The  Colonel — when  he  and  Gregory  were 
closeted  in  his  study  —  took  the  news 
quietly. 

"  Of  course,"  he  said,  "unless  you  can  per- 
fectly substantiate  your  claim  and  clear  your 
position,  you  need  not  expect  to " 

Gregory  anticipated  tke  end  of  the  un- 
finished sentence. 

"  But  love — love "  he  urged  passion- 
ately. 

"  Bah  !  Acres,  not  love,  my  dear  boy,  when 
you  talk  to  a  father  !  "  said  the  Colonel.  "Do 
you  think  it  possible  for  me  to  give  my  child 
to  a  penniless 1  Well!  we  will  not  dis- 
cuss the  question.  Now,  silence  !  not  ano- 
ther word  !  "  For  Gregory  was  raging  about 
the  room  on  the  point  of  committing  some 
excess.  "  Leave  us,  now,"  he  continued,  in 
that  cold,  haughty,  non-bound  way  of  his, 
which  always  stilled  the  poor  passionate 
savage  like  a  spell.  "  Go  to  London,  investi- 
gate this  matter  ;  go  to  Egypt,  if  need  be, — 
probe  the  affair  to  the  end,  and  substantiate 
your  claim  to  the  estates,  or  leave  this  coun- 
try for  ever.  I  will  take  care  that  Norah 
remains  free  and  unsought  till  your  return — 
but,  on  that  return,  unless  indeed  you  are 
wise  enough  never  to  come  back  if  unsuccess- 
ful— however,  as  I  was  saying,  on  that  return, 
your  good  or  ill-fortune  will  determine  your 
relations  with  her.  Go.  Lose  no  time.  The 
longer  you  delay  here  the  longer  you  delay 
your  possible  marriage."  And  the  Colonel 
waved  him  from  the  room. 

Gregory  went  to  find  Norah.  She  and 
Lucy  were  in  the  drawing-room,  sitting  in 
the  bay  window  working  ;  Norah  in  a  low 
prie-dieu  cunningly  isolated,  Lucy  on  the 
ottoman,  with  plenty  of  space  on  the  cushions 
beside  her.  He  clanked  into  the  room  with 
even  more  than  his  usual  indifference  to 
forms,  looking  dark  and  agitated,  not  quite 
unlike  the  popular  notions  of  demon  lovers, 


when  those  gentlemen  first  threw  off  their 
fascinations  and  plunged  into  revelation. 

"  I  must  speak  with  you,  Norah,"  he  said, 
abruptly,  sitting  down  by  Lucy. 

"  And  I  am  de  trop  1 "  said  Lucy  in  her 
sweetest  voice,  bending  forward,  and  letting 
her  hand  rest  lightly  on  his. 

Gregory  turned  and  looked  into  her  face, 
and  their  eyes  met.  When  she  withdrew 
hers,  Lucy  felt  that  she  had  told  too  much. 
Single-hearted  and  absorbed  as  Gregory  was, 
that  look  disturbed  him,  and  for  a  moment 
he  could  not  speak. 

"  Do  you  wish  to  say  anything  to  me  1 " 
then  asked  Norah,  submissively. 

"  Yes,  Norah,  yes !  "  he  answered  hur- 
riedly ;  "  I  must  speak  with  you." 

"  Shall  I  go,  then  ? "  said  Lucy,  with  the 
same  smile  and  the  same  caressing  accent. 

Norah  looked  at  her  imploringly. 

"  My  cousin  has  no  secrets  from  you,"  she 
said,  in  her  timid  voice,  asking  her  to  remain. 
But  she  went  out  of  the  room. 

When  the  door  was  closed,  Gregory  ex- 
claimed :  "  Swear  that  you  will  be  faithful, 
whatever  may  happen  !  " 

"I  do,  cousin,"  said  Norah.  She  might  as 
well  have  said,  I  am  cold,  or  I  am  hot, 
for  any  emphasis  or  soul  that  lay  on  her 
words. 

"  More  fervently  — more  passionately !  " 
cried  Gregory. 

"  I  am  not  fervent,  or  passionate,  cousin," 
said  Norah,  quietly,  "  were  I  to  pretend  to 
be  so,  I  should  be  untrue." 

"  Say  it  to  me  again,  then — let  me  hear 
those  blessed  sounds  once  more !  You  vow 
on  your  eternal  salvation  that  nothing  shall 
tempt  you  from  me — that  no  one  shall  steal 
you  away." 

"  No  one,  cousin.     I  love  no  one  else." 

"  But  me  1 " 

"  Cousin,  I  am  bound  to  love  yon." 

"  And  if  you  were  not  bound  I — if  you 
were  free  ?  Would  you  love  me  then, 
Norah  ? " 

"  Yes,"  she  gasped,  faintly. 

"  O  !  I  can  go  now  !  "  cried  Gregory.  "I 
will  go  while  that  word  still  vibrates  on  my 
ear  !  No  colder  sound  shall  disturb  the 
echo  of  that  word,"  and  he  rushed  through 
the  rooms,  and  departed  without  any  leave- 
taking  whatever. 

Norah  clasped  her  hands  together.  "  Is  it 
true  !  can  it  be  true — has  he  really  gone  !  " 
she  exclaimed.  Then  hiding  her  face  she  too 
burst  into  tears.  Were  they  tears  of  grief, 
or  joy  ? 

She  waited  until  she  had  quite  recovered 
herself,  and  until  the  last  echo  of  the  horse's 
hoofs  had  died  away  in  the  distance,  before 
she  sought  Lucy.  Finding  her,  she  kissed 
her  and  clung  to  her,  like  a  happy  child,  and 
though  they  both  were  silent,  Lucy  had 
scarcely  seen  her  smile  since  she  .came  to 
the  Hall. 

"  What  is  to  be  done  1 "  said  Lucy  to  her- 


476      LNorember  14,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


self.  "  People  would  call  me  very  dishonour- 
able if  they  knew  ;  but  what  can  I  do  ?  There 
is  no  forcing  these  things — and  no  prevent- 
ing them." 


THE  NEW  COLONISTS  OF  NOEFOLK 
ISLAND. 

THE  story  of  the  Pitcairn  islanders,  the 
descendants  of  the  mutineers  of  the  Bounty, 
is  well  known.  Having  so  multiplied  that 
they  have  outgrown  the  agricultural  resources 
of  Pitcairn  Island,  they  have  lately  been 
removed  at  their  own  request,  at  the  expense 
of  the  British  government,  to  Norfolk  Island, 
a  place  hitherto  only  known  as  a  crowded 
convict  settlement — a  horror  of  horrors.  The 
following  description  is  extracted  from  a  pam- 
phlet published  by  the  Komau  Catholic 
Bishop  Ullathorne,  about  twenty  years  ago. 
It  will  be  seen  that  the  descendants  of  Adams 
are  now  planted  on  a  fertile  soil  under  a 
genial  suu.  We  have  a  right  to  expect  re- 
markable agricultural  and  horticultural  re- 
sults from  their  industry. 

"Norfolk  Island  is  one  thousand  miles 
from  Sydney,  about  twenty-one  miles  in  cir- 
cumference, of  volcanic  origin,  and  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  spots  in  the  world. 

"  Eising  abruptly  on  all  sides  but  one  from 
the  sea,  clustering  columns  of  basalt  spring 
out  of  the  sea,  securing  at  intervals  its  en- 
durance with  the  strong  architecture  of  God. 

"  That  one  side  presents  a  low  sandy  level, 
on  which  is,  or  was  formerly,  situated  the 
penal  settlement.  It  is  approachable  only  by 
boats,  through  a  narrow  bar  in  the  reef  of 
coral,  which,  visible  here,  invisibly  circles  the 
island. 

"The  island  consists  of  a  series  of  hills 
curiously  interfolded,  the  green  ridges  rising 
one  above  another  until  they  reach  the  craggy 
sides  and  crowning  summit  of  Mount  Pitt,  at 
the  height  of  three  thousand  feet  above  the 
level  of  the  sea. 

"  The  establishment  consists  of  a  spacious 
quadrangle  of  buildings  for  the  prisoners,  the 
military  barracks,  and  a  series  of  offices  in 
two  ranges.  A  little  further  beyond,  on  a 
green  mound,  the  mansion  of  the  commandant, 
with  barred  windows,  guarded  by  cannon  and 
a  pacing  sentinel. 

"  Straying  some  distance  along  a  footpath, 
we  came  upon  the  cemetery,  closed  in  ou 
three  sides  by  close,  thick,  melancholy  groves 
of  tear-dropping  manchineel ;  the  fourth  is 
open  to  the  booming  sea.  The  graves  are 
numerous  ;  most  of  the  tenants  have  reached 
their  last  abode  by  an  untimely  end.  I  my- 
self have  witnessed  fifteen  descents  into  those 
houses  of  mortality  :  in  every  one  is  a  hand 
of  blood. 

"  Passing  on  by  a  ledge  cut  in  the  cliff  that 
hangs  over  the  resounding  shore,  we  suddenly  i 
turn  into  an  amphitheatre  of  hills,  which  ! 
rise  all  around  until  they  close  in  a  circle  of  i 
the  blue  cloudless  heavens  above,  their  sides  ' 
being  thickly  clothed  with  curious  wild  i 


shrubs,  wild  flowers,  and  wild  vines.  Passing 
a  brawling  brook,  and  long  and  slowly  as- 
cending, we  again  reach  the  open  varied 
ground  :  here  a  tree-crested  mound,  there  a 
plantation  of  pines,  and  yonder  below,  de- 
scending into  the  very  bowels  of  the  earth, 
and  covered  with  an  intricacy  of  dark  foliage, 
interluminated  with  chequers  of  sun-light, 
until  beyond  it  opens  a  receding  vista  to  the 
blue  sea.  And  now  the  path  closes,  so  that 
the  sun  is  almost  shut  out ;  whilst  giant 
creepers  shoot,  twist,  and  contort  themselves 
upon  your  path ;  beautiful  lories,  parrots, 
paroquets,  and  other  birds,  rich  and  varied 
in  plumage,  spring  up  at  your  approach. 

"  We  next  reach  a  valley  of  exquisite 
beauty,  in  the  middle  of  which,  where  the 
winding  gurgling  stream  is  jagged  in  its 
course,  spring  up  a  cluster  of  some  eight 
fern-trees,  with  a  clear,  black,  mossy  stem, 
from  the  crown  of  which  shoots  out  on  every 
side  one  long  arching  fern-leaf. 

"  Ascending  again  through  the  dank  forest, 
we  meet  rising  on  every  side,  amongst  other 
strange  forest  trees,  the  gigantic  pine  of  Nor- 
folk Island  ;  which,  ascending  with  a  clear 
stem  of  vast  circumference  some  twelve  feet, 
shoots  out  a  coronal  of  dark  boughs,  each  in 
shape  like  the  feathers  of  the  ostrich  indefi- 
nably prolonged,  until  rising  with  clear  inter- 
vals, horizontal,  stage  above  stage,  the  green, 
pyramid  cuts  with  its  point  the  blue  ether  at 
the  height  of  two  hundred  feet. 

"  Through  these  groves  we  at  length  reach 
the  summit  of  Mouut  Pitt.  Bslow  us  lies  a 
wondrous  scene  in  a  narrow  space — rock, 
valley,  forest,  corn-field,  islet,  alive  with 
purple,  crimson,  snow-white  birds  of  land 
and  sea,  in  a  light  of  glowing  sunshine 
framed  in  the  vast  expanse  of  the  Pacific 
Ocean. 

"Descending,  we  take  a  new  path.  After 
awhile,  emerging  from  the  deep  gloom  of  the 
forest,  amid  glades  and  openings  may  be  seen 
the  guava  and  the  lemon,  the  fern  and  the 
palmetto,  rising  to  the  height  of  twenty-five 
feet,  and  then  spreading  into  a  shade  of 
bright  broad  green  fans. 

"  Then  parasite  creepers  and  climbers  rise 
up  in  columns,  shoot  over  arch  after  arch, 
and  again  descend  in  every  variety  of  Gothic 
fantasy — now  form  a  high,  long  wall,  dense, 
impenetrable  ;  then  tumble  down  in  a  cascade 
of  green  leaves,  frothed  over  with  the  deli- 
cate white  convolvulus. 

"Our  way  at  length  becomes  a  long  vista 
of  lemon-trees,  forming  overhead  an  arcade 
of  green,  gold,  and  sunlight.  Orange-trees 
once  crowded  the  island  as  thickly,  but  were 
cut  down  by  a  former  commandant,  as  too 
great  a  luxury  for  the  convict. 

"On  the  farms,  the  yellow  hulm  bends 
with  the  fat  of  corn  ;  in  the  gardens,  by 
the  broad-breasted  English  oak,  grows  the 
delicate  cinnamon-tree,  the  tea,  the  coffee- 
shrub,  the  sugarcane,  the  banana,  with  its 
long  weeping  streamers  and  creamy" trait, — the 


Charles  Dickem.1 


A  DISCUESIVE  MIND. 


[November  14,133;.!       477 


fig.    All  tropical  fruits  in  perfection ;  English 
vegetables  of  gigantic  growth. 

"  The  air  is  pure,  ambient ;  the  sky  brilliant. 
At  night  refreshing  showers  of  dew  descend." 


A  DISCUESIVE  MIND. 

MY  mind  is  a  discursive  mind  ;  a  flitting, 
restless,  jumping  mind  ;  a  mind  that  rambles 
into  such  odd  corners,  takes  such  strange 
nights,  and  leaps  with  such  suddenness  from 
one  subject  to  another,  that  sometimes  I  am 
atfa  loss  to  discover  where  my  mind  has  flown 
to.  I  sit  down  this  morning  with  the  intention 
of  writing  an  article  ;  and,  after  chasing  and 
dodging  my  mind  for  days,  I  have  reduced  it 
to  something  like  obedience.  The  result  of 
the  victory  is,  that  I  have  arranged  the 
programme  of  a  paper,  to  be  called  the  His- 
tory of  an  Article. 


developed  in  our  motleys,  and  asserts,  that 
their  fun  never  arises  solely  from  an  over- 
flow of  pure  animal  spirits,  but  springs  from 
a  love  of  devilry  that  can  only  exist  in  a 
depraved  mind.  The  harmless  mirth  of  the 
Italian  Arlechino  and  the  French  Pierrot  is 
very  different  from  the  mischievous  fun 
of  the  English  Clown  and  of  Punch  ;  the  two 
former  direct  their  satire  against  that  which 
is  considered  inimical  to  the  interests  of 
the  people ;  but  the  latter,  with  wanton 
cruelty,  turn  into  ridicule  and  maltreat  those 
who  deserve  our  respect  or .  appeal  to  our 
love  and  sympathy.  Hence,  I  suppose,  it  is 
a  question  worth  considering  whether  or  not 
the  wife-beating  that  we  hear  so  much  of,  may 
be  traced  to  the  impressions  made  upon  the 
juvenile  mind  by  Punch.  I  would  even 
go  a  step  further,  and  ask  if  we  may  not 
attribute  the  committal  of  graver  crimes  to 


This  article  is  not  to  be   the  history  of;  the  same   source.     The  Olympian  games  of 


any  object  that  ministers  to  our  creature 
comforts ;  for,  honestly  speaking,  I  have 
little  or  no  sympathy  with  manufactures. 
It  is  a  matter  of  indifference  to  me  whe- 


the  Greeks  ;  the  gladiators  and  naumachia  of 
the  Romans  ;  the  bull-fights  of  the  Spanish  ; 
the  military  pageants  of  the  French,  are 
simply  indices  of  the  tastes  of  the  people. 


ther    a 

best  sewing-thread;   or  Boar's    Head  knit-  i  wickedness  as  indication  of  a  want  of  healthy 

ting-cotton.    I  would  much  rather  witness  moral  tone  in  our  lower  orders  1 


cotton    lord    is    made    of    Clarke's  Shall  I  not  then  cite  the  enjoyment  of  Punch's 
/mar-thread!    or    "Roar's    Head    knit,-  i  wickedness  as  inclination  of  a.  want  of  healthv 


the   drama  of  Punch,  than  be  taken  over 


I  regret  to  be  obliged  to  be  egotistical,. 


a  factory  and  have  all  the  intricacies  of  its  and  repeat  most  emphatically  that  my  mind 
machinery  explained  to  me.  It  is  possible  j  is  as  unstable  as  running  water,  as  fleet- 
that  this  confession  of  an  interest  in  Punch  ing  as  the  winds — and  here  let  me  ask, 
and  Judy  may  be  regarded  as  a  symptom  of ,  where  you  will  find  the  author  who  is 
an  ill-regulated  (in  other  respects  than  as  •  not  egotistical  ?  Goethe  is  the  incarnation 
being  discursive)  mind,  seeing  that  it  can  [  of  "  Ich  ;"  Johnson  is  his  English  prototype ; 
extract  amusement  from  that  which  is  radi- '  Bacon  is  as  bad.  Indeed,  whether  it  is 
cally  wrong  in  its  teachings  ;  for  I  con-  \  shown  in  a  preface,  in  a  particular  character 
tend  that  the  moral  of  the  play  exhibited  at  of  a  novel,  or  in  pages  of  sickly  verse,  you 
our  national  perambulating  theatres  is  utterly  will  still  find  that  "  I "  plays  a  very  import- 
bad,  and  calculated  to  vitiate  the  taste  of  the  ant  part.  I  rise  in  the  morning  deter- 
audience.  If  we  analyse  the  character  of  the  j  mined  to  work,  energetically  resolved  to 
hero,  we  find  he  is  devoid  of  every  good  i  perform  a  certain  duty,  I  breakfast  with  that 
quality.  It  is  true  that,  at  the  opening  of  determination  strong  upon  me  ;  and  here  let 
the  play,  he  is  represented  as  a  boisterous,  i  me  observe,  that  breakfast  with  me  is  one  of 
rollicking  blade,  full  of  fun ;  but  a  few  j  the  most  delightful  meals  in  the  world.  I 
minutes  suffice  to  show  that,  under  the  fro-  cannot  be  brought  to  regard  it  as  a  mere 
licking  spirit,  lies  every  bad  passion  that  repast  for  the  deglutition  of  a  certain  amount 


can  disfigure  human   nature.     As 
an  opportunity  arises,  these    bad 


passions 


manifest  themselves,  and  Punch  throws 
his  child  out  of  window,  murders  his  wife, 
beats  his  friends,  quarrels  with  every- 
body, and  when  justice  condemns  him  to 
death,  escapes  his  just  punishment  by 
hanging  Calcraft !  Only  once,  in  the  whole 
course  of  the  drama  does  he  display  any- 
thing like  remorse,  and  that  is  when  the  ghost 
appears  to  him ;  but,  even  the  turn  excited  by 
this  unearthly  visitant  is  of  short  duration,, 
and  the  play  concludes  with  the  triumph  of 
the  unmitigated  villain,  who  takes  his  leave 
of  the  audience  in  a  ribald  song. 

A  French  writer  has  cleverly  pointed 
out  the  difference  that  exists  between  our 
Clowns  and  Punches  and  their  continental 
equivalents.  He  remarks  severely  upon 
the  brutal  element  which  is  so  strongly, 


of  aliment.  I  look  upon  it  as  a  mental  as 
well  as  physical  meal ;  as  an  operation  to  be 
lingered  over,  and  read  over,  and  I  have  a 
number  of  books  that  I  call  my  breakfast- 
table  books,  all  of  which  I  have  chosen  with  an 
eye  to  promoting  digestion.  History  (except 
Lord  Macaulay's)  and  philosophy  I  find  too 
heavy.  They  cause  me  to  neglect  my  food 
until  my  coffee  is  utterly  ruined  aud  the  but- 
tered toast  tastes  like  damp  leather  or  those 
suckers  which  boys  play  in  the  streets  with. 
Novels,  on  the  other  hand,  can  be  skimmed 
over  so  rapidly  that  1  find  I  consume  my 
edibles  at  equal  speed,  and  thus  give 
myself  a  villainous  indigestion.  I  therefore 
select  those  books  that  have  just  so  much 
thought  in  them  that  the  eyes  can  be  taken 
from  them,  and  one  can  pleasantly  reflect  on 
the  last  sentence,  while  you  take  a  gentle  sip 
of  coffee  or  eat  a  mouthful  of  bacon.  Of 


478       [November  14, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


this  class  are  the  Essays  of  Elia  and  Haz- 
litt's  Table  Talk  I  would  willingly  include 
Carlyle's  French  Revolution ;  but,  despite 
its  picturesqueness,  it  is  so  crammed  with 
grand  suggestive  truths,  that  I  dare  not 
open  it. 

Imagine  me  then  at  the  breakfast  table.  I 
calmly  pour  out  my  coffee,  cut  the  top  off  my 
egg,  prop  up  my  volume  against  the  sugar- 
basin,  and  commence  a  meal,  which  tires  out 
the  patience  of  the  maid  of  all  work,  and 
•would  excite  the  ire  of  my  landlady,  but  that 
I  pay  my  rent  regularly,  and  seldom  grumble. 
If  I  am  at  all  ruffled  in  temper,  I  take 
Hazlitt.  There  is  something  in  the  pervei-- 
sity  of  this  author,  that  at  such  times  strikes 
an  harmonious  note  in  my  breast.  His  in- 
tense hatreds,  his  strong  expressions,  and 
his  wilfulness,  are  delightful.  Imagine  the 
gratification  it  is  to  an  angry  man  to  read 
the  following :  "  Most  men's  minds  are  to  me 
like  musical  instruments  out  of  tuue.  Touch 
a  particular  key,  and  it  jars  and  makes  harsh 
discord  with  your  own."  Where  can  you  find 
any  greater  sympathy  than  these  words  con- 
vey to  you,  when  you  are  ill  tempered  ?  They 
are  not  harsh  discords  to  an  angry  man  ;  but 
the  most  enchanting  harmony,  expressing  to 
a  nicety,  what  he  in  his  savageness  feels 
thoroughly  :  it  is  almost  worth  being  out  of 
temper  to  meet  with  such  consolation.  Where- 
ever  I  come  in  contact  with  Hazlitt's  works, 
I  cannot  help  noticing  how  strongly  he 
allowed  his  feelings  to  overcome  his  judgment. 
For  twenty  years,  in  nearly  every  essay 
that  he  wrote  on  art,  he  trumpeted  the 
praises  of  a  certain  portrait  by  Titian  in  the 
Louvre,  known  as  the  man  with  the  glove 
(which,  by  the  way,  Visconti  only  attributed 
to  Titian).  It  was  Hazlitt's  master-piece  ;  the 
picture  that  he  swore  by  :  Velasquez,  Rem- 
brandt, Vandyke,  Sir  Antonio  More,  Rey- 
nolds, Gainsborough,  may  all  have  painted 
portraits  ;  but  the  man  with  the  glove  was 
the  portrait,  the  ideal  standard  of  this  branch 
of  pictorial  art.  But  mark  the  change !  My 
author  was,  as  every  one  knows,  a  worship- 
per of  Napoleon  I.,  and  when  Hazlitt  visited 
Paris  again,  after  his  hero  had  fallen,  he  re- 
garded everything  with  so  jaundiced  an  eye, 
that  he  could  no  longer  appreciate  the  excel- 
lences of  the  man  with  the  glove,  and  threw 
off  his  allegiance  to  it,  by  ealumnioualy  as- 
serting that  it  must  "have  been  painted 
upon  ! " 

When  I    am    in  a  gentle  mood,   I  love 
Charles    Lamb    at    my    breakfast.       There 
is    something    so    kindly,     so     humanising ! 
in  every  word  he   wrote,  and   his  humour  I 
never  parades,  or  obtrudes  itself,  but  ripples  ' 
through  his  writings  with  a  pleasant  mur-  ! 
mur,  harmonising  with  the   gentleness  and  ! 
good-heartedness   of   the  sentiments.      The 
simple  and   single-mindedness  of  the   man  ; 
permeate  his  writings  and  give  them  one  of 
their  most  lasting  charms,  and  one  of  the 
foremost  of  their  graces  ;  perhaps,  in  none 


of  the  essays  are  these  more  apparent  than  in 
"  My  First  Play,"  and  "  Old  China."  These 
are  complete  Dutch  pictures  (much  exalted)  of 
the  habits  and  tastes  of  a  quiet,  studious,  and 
yet  genial  man  whom  you  can  love  and  re- 
spect. The  quaint  grace  and  kindliness  with 
which  he  treated  everything  he  touched  led 
him  to  handle  subjects  that  no  one  else  would 
have  cared  to  take  up.  We  have  had,  Heaven 
knows !  millions  upon  millions  of  songs, 
praising  earth,  air,  and  water,  women  and 
wine  ;  but  who,  besides  Charles  Lamb,  has  re- 
cited the  praises  of  chimney  sweeps  ?  Not  the 
sweeps  in  their  tinsel  and  dirty  May-day 
finery,  which  a  ray  of  the  glorious  sun  that 
shone  on  May-days  of  the  olden  time  might 
light  up  with  a  touch  of  fancy,  but  grimy 
young  sweeps  ;  Ethiopic  dwarfs,  dirty  with 
soot,  and  tired  with  climbing.  Charles 
Lamb  has  sung  the  praises  of  such  as  these, 
with  a  tenderness,  a  poetic  and  a  graceful 
fancy,  that  washes  the  soot  off  their  faces, 
and  makes  cherubims  of  them.  Boswell's 
Johnson  was  one  of  ,my  breakfast  books, 
but  I  got  to  be  a  little  tired  of  the  sen- 
tentious "  Sir,"  and  the  sententious  "  I ;"  so 
I  have  shut  out  Boswell  from  my  morning 
repast,  and  have  placed  the  book  on  a  high 
shelf  in  my  library.  Honest,  gossipping 
Pepys  is  a  favourite  with  me,  but  Evelyn  is 
a  greater.  If  Pepys  gives  me  an  amusing 
picture  of  his  times,  Evelyn  affords  me 
more  food  for  reflection,  and  presents  a  por- 
trait of  manners  and  customs  embracing  a 
wider  field. 

But  to  resume,  or  I  shall  never  get  through 
my  article  or  my  breakfast.  I  say  that  when 
I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  work,  I 
hurry  over  breakfast,  scald  myself  with  the 
coffee,  choke  myself  with  dry  toast,  and 
gobble  up  my  egg  in  a  manner  that  after- 
wards shocks  me.  For,  in  the  matter  of 
eating  eggs  I  am  a  true  epicure.  I  consider 
that  an  egg  should  be  eaten  slowly,  so  that 
each  spoonful  yields  its  full  amount  of 
flavour.  Indeed,  I  am  not  sure  whether  eating 
an  egg  is  not  an  art  upon  which  a  treatise 
might  be  written  with  advantage  to  mankind. 
Having  brought  my  breakfast  to  a  hasty 
conclusion,  I  hurry  to  my  writing-table  and 
seize  a  pen,  but  unfortunately,  just  at  that 
precise  moment,  the  discursiveness  of  my 
mind  is  fatal  to  my  plans,  for  I  suddenly 
remember  that  last  night  a  friend  asked  me 
where  a  particular  couplet  was  to  be  found. 
I  contended  it  was  in  Dryden  :  he  asserted, 
with  equal  vehemence,  it  was  in  Cowley  ;  my 
discursive  tendency  therefore  at  once  com- 
pels me  to  look  for  the  passage,  and  I  mount 
the  ladder  and  take  down  Dryden.  Now, 
searching  through  the  Annus  Mirabilis  is 
not  done  in  a  moment.  But,  the  evil  does  not 
end  there ;  for,  no  sooner  have  I  found  the 
desired  passage,  than  I  dip  into  other  parts 
of  the  volume,  and  am  lost  for  a  time  in  the 
satire  of  Absolom  and  Achitophel,  and  only 
reclaim  my  mind  from  that,  to  spend  the 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  DISCURSIVE   MIND. 


[November  14, 1857.]       479 


morning  in  re-reading  favourite  bits  from  all 
my  favourite  poets. 

I  think  I  may  trace  most  of  this  discur- 
siveness to  idleness.  I  grieve  to  have  to 
make  the  confession,  but  that  apprentice, 
Thomas  Idle,  whom  I  have  read  of  in  this 
journal,  is  a  fellow  completely  after  my  own 
heart.  I  love  to  do  nothing,  specially  when  I 
know  I  ought  to  be  doing  a  great  many  things. 
What  can  be  more  delightful,  when  I  know 
work  is  waiting  for  me  that  must  be  done, 
than  to  lie  flat  on  my  back  on  the  grass  with 
the  hot  summer  air  fanning  me  into  luxu- 
rious repose,  while  I  dream  such  golden  dreams, 
that  they  become  hazy  with  their  own  gor- 
geousness  ?  Or,  what  is  more  luxurious  than 
to  sit  lazily  before  the  fire  with  a  book  near 
me,  which,  as  Doctor  Folliot  says  in  Crotchet 
Castle,  "  you  may  open  if  you  please,  and 
need  not  open  unless  you  please,"  and,  giving 
myself  up  to  the  thoughts  that  are  gently 
wandering  through  my  mind — thoughts  that 
die  away  almost  before  they  have  made  me 
aware  ot  their  existence.  What  dreams  the 
idler  dreams  !  He  is  the  true  mental  vaga- 
bond ;  who  can  turn  his  rags  and  tatters  into 
kingly  robes,  and  can  build  palaces  of  the 
veriest  hovels.  He  is  the  lotus  eater  of  life, 
ever  singing : 

Surely,  surely,  slumber  is  more  sweet  than  toil — the 

shore 
Than,  labour  in  the  deep  mid-ocean,  wind,  and  wave, 

and  oar ; 
O !  rest   ye,   brother  mariners,    we  will   not    wander 

more. 

I  resume  my  subject :  the  history  of  an 
article,  and  the  article  in  question  this  paper. 
I  seat  myself  to  reflect,  and,  tojassist  reflection, 
I  take  down  the  large  German  pipe  that  I 
bought  at  Frankfort;  but,  almost  before  I 
have  lighted  it,  my  wretched  mind  starts  off" 
at  a  tangent  to  Fatherland.  Visions  of  the 
Rhine  come  stealing  over  me,  and  I  recal  a 
glorious  sunset  which  I  saw  from  the  top  of 
the  Drachenfels,  that  bathed  all  the  plains 
around  Bonn  and  the  town  itself  in  a  golden 
haze,  that  toned  down  every  sharp  angle, 
and  gave  a  softness  and  an  immaterial  look 
to  the  whole  landscape,  lifting  me  away  from 
every  day  life  and  sending  me  wandering 
through  kingdoms  of  air,  peopled  with  spirits 
divine  in  form  and  radiant  in  beauty.  No 
sooner  have  I  come  down  with  a  bump  from 
this  vision  than,  by  an  easy  process,  I  slip 
away  to  Weimar,  and,  as  a  natural  sequence, 
come  face  to  face  with  the  mighty  Goethe. 
As  a  matter  of  course  the  sight  of  him 
calls  to  my  remembrance  his  correspond- 
ence with  Schiller,  and  conversations  with 
Eckermann.  The  latter  is  an  especially  de- 
lightful book.  For  the  life  of  me  I  cannot 
help  taking  a  peep  at  it.  Happening  to  open 
it  upon  the  passage  where  Goethe  gives  his 
opinion  of  old  fashioned  furniture,  my  mind 
emits  a  feeble  spark,  and  suggests  for  a  sub- 
ject that,  as  we  have  had  histories  of  pins  and 


walking-sticks,  we  might  furbish  up  an  in- 
teresting paper  on  the  history  of  a  chair. 
Forthwith  with  a  start  and  a  plunge,  my  mind 
impetuously  rushes  into  an  old  castle  to  find 
a  chair  worthy  of  its  attention ;  but,  at 
that  point,  I  fall  foul  of  the  buttress  on  the 
seat,  and  that  brings  to  my  recollection  a 
picture  I  once  saw  at  Cologne  by  one  of  the 
masters  of  the  old  Cologne  school.  The  sub- 
ject is  Hades,  and  the  lost  human  beings  are 
represented  as  the  strangest  monsters  out  of 
creation  ;  one  with  a  boar's  head  and  eagle's 
body,  another  with  the  legs  of  an  ostrich,  the 
body  of  a  scorpion,  and  the  head  of  a  turkey- 
cock.  fcThe  principal  figure  is  a  fish — a  plaice, 
but  unlike  every  plaice  in  creation  ;  it  is  open 
down  the  front,  with  neat  rows  of  buttons 
and  button-holes  to  do  itself  up  when  it  feels 
cold. 

Thus  I  sat,  one  day  last  week,  the  victim  of 
my  wretched  habit.  I  felt  it  was  useless  to 
endeavour  that  day  to  settle  the  question, 
and  I  began  to  doze  and  dream  upon  my  mis- 
fortunes ;  and  here  let  me  remark,  that  I 
have  never  met  with  a  satisfactory  treatise 
on  the  psychology  of  dreams.  I  would  gladly 
undertake  the  treatment,  but  my  discursiveness 
totally  unfits  me  for  grasping  so  fleeting  a  sub- 
ject. I  feel  certain  that  my  labours  would 
result  in  airy  nothings.  A  dream,  however, 
suggested  to" me  a  subject  for  this  periodical. 
I  dreamed  of  an  old  old  story  that  I  had  half 
worked  out,  years  ago  :  one  of  those  fragments 
that  lie  dormant  in  my  brain,  growing 
mouldy  with  neglect,  and  gradually  losing 
all  the  force  and  vitality  that  gave  them 
their  charms  when  they  first  dawned  on 
it.  I  drew  it  forth,  and  a  wretched,  tat- 
tered, dusty  fragment  it  was ;  like  an 
piece  of  old  finery  that  had  lain  by  for 
years,  being  suddenly  brought  out,  and  all 
its  faded  colours  and  moth-eaten  silk  dis- 
played. Although  the  idea  was  a  mere 
dry  skeleton,  I  conquered  my  troublesome 
mind  sufficiently  to  force  it  to  dwell  upon 
the  story  ;  not  merely  during  the  time  1  was 
dressing,  but  even  up  to  the  fourth  page 
of  my  writing  ;  but  I  was  doomed  to  dis- 
appointment, for  just  as  I  had  penned  one 
of  the  neatest  turned  sentences  in  the  world, 
down  the  street  came  the  organ  man  playing, 
to  waltz  time,  the  air  Dame  e  mebile.  Now, 
my  story  happening  to  be  a  modern  domestic 
one,  it  was  utterly  impossible  for  me  to  con- 
tinue writing  it  to  the  accompaniment  of  a 
tune  from  an  opera,  the  story  of  which  is 
in  every  way  opposed  to  the  quiet  current 
of  my  novelette,  and  I  found  my  mind 
gradually  slipping  into  a  mediaeval  train  of 
thought  in  every  way  incompatible  with 
Todd,  the  hero  of  my  tale,  and  Laura  Myddle- 
ton,  the  heroine,  who  loved  and  lived  in  Hyde 
Park  Gardens. 

What  was  to  be  done  ?  I  was  determined 
to  write  the  article  ;  but  my  wretched  mind 
stubbornly  refused  to  yield  to  my  resolve.  It 
was  a  battle  royal  between  Will  and  Habit  ; 


480 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[November  14,  is;,;.] 


and,  for  three  mortal  hours,  the  conflict  ragec 
until,  with  a  sudden  coup  de  main,  Will  up 
set  Habit,  aad  gained  so  decided  a  victory 
that  the  conquered  absolutely  gave  indica- 
tions of  servile  obedience.  It  was,  however, 
rescued  from  that  disgrace  by  making  a 
feeble  digression  on  the  sagacity  of  cats 
generally  ;  and,  of  my  own  in  particular,  who 
was  at  that  moment  sitting  on  the  table, 
calmly  stealing  the  milk  from  the  jug  by 
putting  its  paw  down  the  narrow  neck  of  the 
vessel,  and  licking  off  the  fluid  with  which  it 
had  saturated  its  coat.  Will,  with  a  tre- 
mendous frown,  brought  the  desultory  wan- 
derer back  to  its  allegiance,  and  to  work  I 
set,  drew  forth  a  dozen  clean  sheets,  flourished 
my  pen,  and  began  to  think  about  writing. 
I  thought  of  this  and  that ;  rejected  this, 
and  refused  that ;  when,  just  as  I  had  hit 
upon  the  most  divine  idea,  the  stupid  servant 
entered  with  a  letter,  aud  forthwith  the  little 
notion  dissolved  into  thin  air.  I  opened  the 
epistle,  and  found  it  was  an  invitation  to  din- 
ner ;  but  it  mentioned  a  haunch  of  mutton,  so 
my  mind,  with  a  wild  lurch  and  a  tremendous 
bound,  shot  clean  into  the  middle  of  Gold- 
smith's Haunch  of  Venison.  Vainly  Will  tried 
to  keep  it  back — away  flew  Mind.  Burke, 
Reynolds,  Garrick,  Johnson,  Langton,  all 
came  out  in  a  great  mass,  so  mixed  up 
with  Fleet  Street  taverns,  debating-clubs, 
fops  and  hoops,  that  I  found  it  utterly  impos- 
sible to  write  a  line  for  the  next  half-hour. 
At  length,  with  a  sharp  pull,  I  brought  my- 
self back  to  the  nineteenth,  century,  and,  by 
way  of  commencement,  I  put  the  figure  One 
on  the  blank  paper.  Figures  are  to  me  a 
very  interesting  study.  I  do  not  mean  the 
contemplation  of  the  total  of  an  unpaid  bill, 
or  the  acquirement  of  any  rule  of  arith- 
metic ;  but  the  different  methods  of  writing 
figures.  The  man  of  business  never  makes 
with  his  peu  such  a  misshapen  five,  that  it 
can  be  mistaken  for  an  eight  or  a  six.  On 
the  other  hand,  some  artists  and  literary 
men  make  fives  that  may  be  taken  for  sixes, 
eights,  or  anything  else.  Indeed,  I  can  gene- 
rally judge  from  the  distinctness  or  indistinct- 
ness of  a  man's  figures,  whether  he  be  a 
man  of  business  or  not.  There,  you  see, 
I  cannot  even  page  an  article  without  my 
wretched  mind  cutting  off,  like  mad,  into  a 
special  little  theory  of  its  own ;  and  my 
paper  lies  before  me,  a  dull,  white  blank. 

Again  I  resolve  to  write  ;  I  know  the 
danger  of  delays,  and  remember  that  the  wise 
Bacon  quaintly  says,  "Occasion  turneth  a 
bald  noddle  after  she  bath  her  locks  in  front, 
aud  no  hold  taken."  This  exactly  describes 
my  case.  I  have  the  offer  to  write,  and,  if  I 
neglect  it,  the  occasion  is  gone.  Once  more 
I  settle  myself  sternly  to  work.  I  begin  to 
imagine  that  I  have  at  last  seized  upon  a 
subject !  We  have  the  histories  of  every 


manufacture ;  why  not,  then,  the  history  of  the 
manufacture  of  an  article  itself?  Let  me 
begin  ;  let  me  revel  in  the  goodly  work. 

I  do  begin  ;  but,  before  the  first  sentence  is 
finished,  Mind  has  slipped  off  to  the  conside- 
ration of  the  hieroglyphic  inscriptions  of 
Egypt,  aud  becomes  confused  in  the  company 
of  hawk-headed  gods,  cow-faced  Venuses,  aud 
papyrus  columns,  from  which  we  may,  perhaps, 
have  derived  our  newspaper  columns.  I 
have  no  sooner  taken  leave  of  Thoth  the  god 
of  letters,  than,  with  a  skip,  I  am  burrowing 
amidst  the  ruins  of  Persepolis,  and  puzzling 
over  the  cuneiform  characters  of  Assyria ; 
and,  in  two  seconds,  Mind  has  stuck  itself 
hard  and  fast  amidst  the  illuminated  missals 
of  the  middle  ages,  and  leads  me  into  an 
uncontrollable  fit  of  laughter,  by  picturing 
myself  following  out  Mr.  Euskin's  idea  of 
true  happiness,  by  devoting  the  remainder  of 
my  days  to  the  task  of  illuminating  missals. 

I  rise  from  my  chair  in  a  rage,  disgusted  at 
my  own  folly,  and  resolved  to  make  another 
effort;  but  Mind,  with  the  greatest  noncha- 
lance and  utter  indifference  to  its  own  mis- 
conduct, at  once  plunges  from  the  manual 
labour  of  writing,  to  the  mechanical  labour 
of  printing  ;  and  forthwith  I  have  before 
me  Guteniberg,  Faust,  and  Schoeffer,  \vith 
all  their  clumsy  machinery,  working  man- 
fully in  the  good  cause.  With  the  speed 
of  lightning,  I  am  in  England,  settled  in 
Westminster  Abbey  with  William  Caxton — 
which  naturally  enough  brings  Richard  the 
Third  on  the  scene,  and  he  as  naturally 
suggests  Shakspeare,  and  then  I  am  utterly 
lost.  With  book  in  hand,  and  pen  laid  down, 
I  read  and  read  until  I  stumble  on  a  passage 
in  Richard  the  Second,  which  seems  to  ine 
peculiarly  applicable  to  my  dilemma  : 

If  thou  would'st, 
There  should  you  find  one  heinous  article. 

Would  that  I  could  find  one  article,  even 
though  it  should  be  heinous  !  but,  do  what  I 
will  I  cannot ;  or,  if  I  do  discover  one,  it  is 
gone  again  before  I  have  had  time  to  note  its 
form  or  discover  its  fashion.  I  am  the 
wretched  slave  of  my  discursive  mind. 

Let  me  make  one  more  effort.  All  things 
perform  their  allotted  work.  Why  should 
I  be  an  exception  to  the  golden  rule  ? 
Cannot  I  learn  a  lesson  from  the  insect 
in  the  fields  and  the  bird  in  the  air  ?  Shall 
I  be  worse  than  the  productive  earth  ?  Shame 
on  me  !  I  will  take  my  staff  in  my  hand, 
and  go  forth  into  the  country,  a  humble  re- 
verential student  of  nature  ;  aud,  in  the  plea- 
saut  silence  of  some  leafy  wood,  I  will  learn 
Torn  the  weed  beneath  my  feet  and  the  waving 
wind-brushed  foliage  above  my  head,  to  work 
patiently  aud  perseveringly.  But,  until  I  can 
naster  my  mind,  my  history  of  an  article 
must  remain  unwritten. 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Publiihed  at  the  Office,  No.  16,  Wellinzton  Street  North, Strand.    Printed  by  BEADBUBT  &  ETAHS,  Whitefrian,  London, 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as   HOUSEHOLD    WORDS"— $* 


HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY   JOURNAL 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES     DICKENS. 


400.] 


SATURDAY,  NOVEMBER  21,  1857. 


;  PRICE  2d. 

;  STAMPED  3d. 


AT  HOME  IN  SIAM. 

AT  Singapore,  we  embarked  on  board  the 
H.  E.  I.  Co.'s  new  steamer  Auckland,  which 
was  to  convey  us  to  Siam.  The  captain  had 
received  orders  to  cruise  about  in  certain 
latitudes,  in  search  of  pirates,  real  or  ima- 
ginary. Much  to  my  comfort,  they  remained 
invisible.  Upon  our  voyage,  there  occurred 
only  one  incident  worth  telling.  One  evening, 
just  before  sunset,  we  anchored  off  Tringam, 
the  chief  town  of  a  small  territory  on  the 
Malayan  peninsula.  A  party  was  ordered  off 
in  search  of  fresh  provisions,  while  the  cap- 
tain took  us  on  shore  in  his  gig,  that  we 
might  enjoy  the  luxury  of  a  walk  and  a  peep 
at  the  natives.  We  were  received  by  a 
crowd  of  half-clad  men,  women,  and  children. 
I  believe  I  was  the  first  Englishwoman  who 
had  ever  been  there  ;  but  as  for  our  little 
girl  of  three  years  old,  it  was  she  who  most 
mightily  excited  curiosity.  We  were  in- 
formed of  the  Sultan's  wish,  that  we  should 
immediately  proceed  to  the  palace,  or  audience 
hall,  where  he  was  waiting  to  know  why  a 
war-steamer  had  anchored  off  the  town,  and 
more  especially,  for  what  reason  so  many 
officers  and  men  had  landed.  Three  boats 
had  left  our  vessel ;  there  were  therefore  six 
or  more  officers  present,  as  well  as  the 
captain,  C.,  myself,  Maud,  and  her  native 
nurse. 

On  arriving  at  the  audience  hall,  followed 
by  the  rabble,  we  found  his  highness  the 
Sultan  seated  on  an  elevated  platform,  at  one 
end  of  his  shed ;  around  him  knelt,  or 
sprawled,  his  officers  and  immediate  atten- 
dants, while  about  three  feet  lower,  on  a 
boarded  floor,  by  which  the  building  was 
surrounded,  crouched  the  people,  as  if  they 
were  all  playing  at  toads,  for  that  was  the 
effect  of  the  peculiar  manner  in  which  they 
prostrated  themselves.  The  captain  and  0. 
advanced  first,  side  by  side,  while  I,  having 
no  fancy  to  be  left  among  the  crowd,  stole  in 
between  them,  and  the  group  of  officers 
closed  the  procession.  After  every  one  had 
bowed,  and  the  Sultan  had  solemnly  signed 
each  to  a  seat,  he  addressed  C.  in  Malay,  and 
inquired,  naturally  enough,  who  we  were, 
and  why  we  had  come?  There  was  some 
difficulty  in  making  suitable  reply,  since  I 
alone  of  the  party  knew  anything  of  the 


language.  But,  I  rose  to  my  position,  and 
informed  his  Majesty,  that  a  treaty  of  com- 
merce had  been  concluded  between  England 
and  Siam,  that  a  consul  had  been  nominated, 
and  that  C.  was  on  his  way  in  the  Auckland, 
to  commence,  in  that  character,  his  duties 
at  Bangkok.  The  fact  was  new  and  of  some 
interest  to  the  Sultan,  as  his  country  is  tri- 
butary to  Siam,  and  he  is  bound  yearly  to 
present  a  golden  tree  to  the  King  of  the 
White  Elephant. 

Little  Maud  was  much  noticed  and 
honoured  by  a  place  on  the  great  man's  knee. 
There  she  gravely  sat  throughout  the  inter- 
view, not  a  bit  astonished  or  perturbed  by 
the  strange  scene  around  her.  The  Sultan 
broke  off,  now  and  then,  his  endless  string  of 
questions,  while  he  stroked  her  head  or  hands, 
and  admired  her  complexion. 

During  the  day  his  Majesty  and  his  suite 
visited  the  steamer,  by  which  they  were 
received  with  a  salute,  that  greatly  shook 
their  nerves.  It  was  amusing  to  see  the 
terror  expressed  in  their  faces  at  the  quick 
succession  of  the  loud  reports.  The  Sultaii 
earnestly  begged  of  me  to  tell  the  captain, 
that  he  was  quite  sensible  of  the  honour 
intended,  but  would  rather  not  have  any 
more.  He  had,  however,  the  benefit  of  a  full 
salute,  which  was  continued  by  the  sailors  for 
the  love  of  fun. 

On  the  first  of  June  we  came  to  an  anchor 
off  the  bar  of  the  river  Menam.  The  vessel 
lay  at  anchor  nearly  ten  miles  from  the 
shore,  which  was  so  low  and  flat,  that  it 
could  be  scarcely  traced,  even  with  the  aid 
of  a  glass.  The  bar  is  an  extensive  shoal 
across  the  entrance  of  the  river,  and  there  is 
generally  a  heavy  swell  on  it  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  twenty-four  hours.  Here 
we  remained  tossing  and  rolling  four  long 
days,  vainly  expecting  some  means  of  con- 
veyance up  to  Bangkok,  the  Auckland  being 
a  vessel  too  large  for  the  river. 

At  length  two  paddle-boats  came  along- 
side. The  royal  paddlers,  selected  by  his 
Majesty  the  King  of  Siam  to  transport  us  to 
Bangkok,  were  all  clad  in  a  kind  of  livery, 
consisting  of  scarlet  calico  jackets  and  caps, 
much  the  worse  for  wear,  and  terribly  in 
need  of  soap  and  water.  The  boats  were 
long  narrow  canoes,  with  a  square  platform 
exactly  in  the  centre,  for  the  accommodation 


VOL.  XVI. 


400 


482      [NoTember  II,  1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


of  the  passengers.  Forward  and  aft  stood 
the  rowers,  sixty  in  number,  ranged  on  either 
side.  They  rowed  standing,  and  at  each 
stroke  of  the  paddle  the  sixty  gave  a  stamp 
on  the  deck  with  one  foot.  The  steersman 
occasionally  varied  the  performance  by  utter- 
ing, in  a  high  key,  a  prolonged  yell,  to  which 
the  other  fifty-nine  responded  by  a  short 
sharp  bark.  Only  kings  and  nobles  have 
the  right,  in  Siaiu,  to  indulge  in  howling 
boatmen. 

For  the  first  quarter  of  an  hour  we  were 
amused  by  our  new  friends  ;  but,  as  we  pro- 
ceeded, and  the  hours  wore  on,  the  natural 
effect  was  produced  by  such  continued  howl- 
ing and  stamping  on  our  wearied  nerves  and 
aching  heads.  When,  however,  at  our 
request,  the  boatmen  left  it  off,  they  also 
relaxed  in  their  pulling,  so  that  we,  finding 
their  exertions  to  depend  upon  the  noise, 
submitted  to  the  renewal  of  it ;  and,  for  ten 
mortal  hours — the  greater  number  of  them 
endured  under  a  burning  sun — we  submitted 
to  be  yelled  and  barked  over. 

At  its  mouth,  the  river  may  be  about  a 
mile  and  a-half  in  width,  but  it  gradually 
narrows  ;  and  at  Packnam,  a  military  station 
about  ten  miles  up,  the  distance  across  can 
scarcely  be  more  than  three-quarters  of  a 
mile.  Here  the  scenery  becomes  charming. 
In  the  centre  of  the  stream  is  an  island,  on 
which  is  a  temple  prettily  decorated,  gleam- 
ing like  a  pearl  in  its  bright-green  setting  ; 
while,  on  either  side,  are  formidable-looking 
fortifications,  which  increase  the  picturesque 
effect.  The  interior  of  these  fortifications  is, 
however,  so  dilapidated,  that  they  could  not 
be  made  available  as  they  now  stand.  The 
banks  of  the  river  are  perfectly  flat,  and 
covered  with  jungle  to  the  water's  edge. 
Near  the  mouth,  this  jungle  is  composed  of 
mangrove  trees  ;  but,  a  few  miles  higher  up, 
the  vegetation  improves,  and  the  eye  is  re- 
lieved by  a  great  variety  of  foliage.  The 
bread-fruit  tree  and  cocoa-nut  palm  are  the 
most  numerous;  the  one,  with  its  large, 
curiously  indented  leaf,  offers  a  tempting 
shade  from  the  glare  of  a  tropical  sun,  while 
the  other,  with  its  feathery  crown,  towers 
aloft  over  its  companions  in  the  forest.  The 
graceful  bamboo,  in  all  its  beautiful  varieties, 
also  fixes  the  attention — seen  at  one  time  in 
short  full  clumps,  then  again  with  its  droop- 
ing branches  and  long  stem  of  lance-like 
leaves  quivering  in  the  breeze  ;  the  peculiar 
beauty  of  the  picture  is  much  enhanced  by 
the  variety  and  richness  of  tints  of  an  eastern 
sky  glittering  in  the  sunlight. 

Settled  at  the  Siamese  capital,  the  city  o1 
Bangkok,  the  fact  of  there  being  absolutely 
no  roads,  is  certainly  the  one  most  imme- 
diately brought  home,  as  I  experienced  ere  1 
had  been  many  hours  established  in  my  new 
abode. 

"Boy,    you    must    fetch    some    chickens, 
1 1  " 

With  many  such  orders,  and  a  few  oddly- 


shaped  coins,  the  boy  departed,  only  to  return, 
however,  in  distress. 

"  Missis,  how  x;an  go  ?  No  got  boat ;  me 
no  can  walkee."  This  unforeseen  difficulty 
obliged  me  at  once  to  apply  to  my  nearest 
neighbour  for  advice.  The  necessity  of 
establishing  a  market-boat  as  a  first  step  in 
housekeeping  became  evident. 

This  boat  is  very  small,  being,  indeed,  cal- 
culated to  hold  only  one  human  being,  and 
about  a  dozen  chickens.  At  every  turn, 
occurs  the  same  wayfaring  difficulty.  Do 
you  long  for  a  chat  with  your  next  door 
neighbour  (next  door,  but  for  a  creek  with 
no  bridge  across),  you  must  needs  order  the 
boat,  manned  with  eight,  ten,  or  twelve  men, 
or  stay  at  home. 

The  markets  consist  of  a  number  of  boats 
moored  together  in  certain  quarters,  each 
displaying  its  commodity.  The  floating 
houses  line  either  side  of  the  river  for  five 
miles,  and  they  line,  also,  numerous  creeks 
that  branch  off  in  every  direction. 

Bamboos  lashed  firmly  together,  form  a 
substantial  raft,  some  four  or  five  feet  in 
thickness,  with  a  platform  of  from  fifteen  feet 
to  twenty  square.  On  this  is  built  the  house 
either  of  bamboos  or  thin  planks.  If  the 
structure  be  intended  for  a  shop,  the  front  is 
left  open,  and  the  wares  arranged  on  benches 
and  shelves,  are  exposed  to  the  public  view. 
If  it  be  a  dwelling-house,  it  is  closed  in,  and 
surrounded  by  a  verandah.  The  raft  is 
secured  to  the  shore  by  ropes  and  chains, 
or  it  is  fixed  to  beams  anchored  in  the 
bed  of  the  river.  These  latter  have  been 
known  to  give  way  when  the  tide  has  been 
unusually  strong  ;  and,  in  that  case,  the  house 
of  course,  floats  down  the  stream.  A  casualty 
of  this  nature  occurred  to  a  gentleman  who 
told  me  his  adventure.  He  had  retired  for 
the  night,  and  was  suddenly  awakened  by  a 
rushing  sound.  On  leaving  his  room,  he 
found  that  the  moorings  of  his  domicile  had 
given  way,  and  a  strong  tide  was  bearing  his 
house  merrily  towards  the  sea.  Assistance 
was,  with  some  trouble,  procured,  and  the 
establishment  again  firmly  tied  to  the  shore, 
though  at  some  distance  from  its  former 
anchorage.  Notwithstanding  such  risk,  mis- 
sionaries who  had  tried  these  houses  told  me, 
they  were  not  unpleasant  residences.  Most 
of  them  are  shops,  inhabited  by  emigrant 
Chinese.  Should  a  shopkeeper  think  that 
by  removing  to  another  situation  he  can 
benefit  his  business,  he  has  only  to  unlash  his 
moorings,  and  work  up  or  down  the  river, 
until  settled  to  his  mind.  The  water-houses 
pay  rent  for  the  portion  of  the  stream  they 
occupy. 

The  river  being  thus  the  chief  highway, 
boats  of  course  abound  ;  boats  of  all  kinds, 
from  the  small  market-boat,  paddled  by  a 
little  boy  or  girl,  to  the  canoe  of  the  noble, 
who,  reposing  at  full  length  under  the 
canopy,  smokes,  and  chews  betel,  while  his 
forty  or  fifty  rowers  vigorously  move  him 


Charles  Dickens.] 


AT  HOME  IN  SIAM. 


[November  21, 1»7-]       483 


on,  comforting  him  with  the  howlings  al- 
ready described.  It  was  pleasant  to  see,  in 
the  early  morning,  women  on  their  way  to 
market.  Love  of  gossip,  so  dear  to  us 
daughters  of  Eve,  is  not  checked  by  any 
difficulties  attendant  on  the  steering  of  a 
small  boat  heavily  laden,  that  it  needs  all  the 
owner's  skill  to  keep  well  out  of  harm's  way, 
in  the  middle  of  the  stream.  Siamese  women 
chat  at  ease  upon  their  highway.  Two  and 
three,  or  even  more,  of  their  little  boats  may 
be  seen  fastened  together,  and  thus  floating 
along  swiftly  with  the  tide,  their  owners 
apparently  indifferent  as  to  the  fate  of 
their  craft.  But  the  indifference  is  only  ap- 
parent ;  their  skill  being  so  great  that  a  mere 
turn  of  the  broad-bladed  scull,  from  time  to 
time,  is  enough  to  prevent  any  variation  in 
their  coarse. 

Swimming  is,  of  course,  a  general  accom- 
plishment. The  Siamese  spend  three-fourths 
of  their  existence  in  the  water.  Their 
first  act  on  awakening,  is  to  bathe  ;  they 
bathe  again  at  eleven  o'clock  ;  they  bathe 
again  at  three ;  and  bathe  again  about 
sunset  ;  there  is  scarcely  an  hour  in  the 
day  when  bathers  may  not  be  seen  in  all 
the  creeks,  even  the  shallowest  and  mud- 
diest. Boys  go  to  play  in  the  river,  just  as 
poor  English  children  go  to  play  in  the  street. 
I  once  saw  a  Siamese  woman  sitting  on  the 
lowest  step  of  a  landing-place  ;  while,  by  a 
girdle,  she  held  in  the  water  her  infant  of 
a  few  months  old,  splashing  and  kicking 
about  with  evident  enjoyment.  "Were  not 
these  people  expert  swimmers,  many  lives 
would  be  lost ;  for  the  tide  flows  so  swiftly, 
that  it  needs  the  greatest  skill  and  care  to 
prevent  boats  from  running  foul  of  one 
another  ;  and,  of  course,  they  are  frequently 
upset.  On  one  occasion,  our  boat  (an  English 
built  gig)  ran  down  a  small  native  canoe, 
containing  a  woman  and  two  little  children. 
In  an  instant  they  were  all  capsized,  and 
disappeared.  We  were  greatly  alarmed, 
and  C.  was  on  the  point  of  jumping  in  to 
their  rescue,  when  they  bobbed  up,  and  the 
lady,  with  the  first  breath  she  recovered, 
poured  forth  a  round  volley  of  abuse.  Thus 
relieved  in  her  mind,  she  coolly  righted  her 
canoe — which  had  been  floating  bottom  up- 
wards— ladled  out  some  of  the  water,  and 
bundled  in  her  two  children,  who  had  been 
meanwhile,  composedly  swimming  round  her, 
regai'ding  with  mingled  fear  and  curiosity  the 
barbarians  who  had  occasioned  the  mishap. 

But,  there  is  land  at  Bangkok,  and  that  land 
is  built  upon.  The  Wats,  or  temples,  are  the 
most  conspicuous  edifices ;  and,  from  a  dis- 
tance, appear — what  they  are  not — very  beau- 
tiful. The  grounds  around  them  are  often 
prettily  laid  out,  and  planted  with  the  banyan, 
which  here,  as  in  India,  is  the  favourite  tree. 
Salas,  or  buildings  for  the  benefit  of  travellers 
and  strangers,  are  likewise  scattered  here  and 
there.  The  Siamese  appear  to  be  extremely 
fond  of  the  carvings  in  stone,  and  other 


grotesque  ornaments  peculiar  to  China.  At 
the  entrance  of  a  temple  there  often  stands, 
on  either  side,  a  colossal  figure  in  stone,  or 
composition,  brilliantly  coloured,  representing 
some  enraged  personage  ready  to  demolish 
the  intruder.  Stone  lions  and  dragons  are 
also  general ;  and,  upon  the  ornamental  rock- 
work  around,  miniature  lakes  and  ponds,  are 
to  be  seen  figures  of  every  animal  and  creep- 
ing thing.  These  are  brought  from  China  at 
a  great  cost,  and  the  money  and  labour 
expended  in  such  decorations  must  be  very 
great ;  for  all  these  religious  buildings  abound 
in  them.  One  temple  that  we  visited,  when 
first  observed,  seemed  to  be  painted,  and  we 
admired  the  skill  and  patience  spent  upon  its 
walls  ;  but,  as  we  approached,  we  discovered 
the  stars,  large  and  small,  with  which  the 
entire  building  was  covered,  to  be  composed 
of  blue  china  plates  (of  the  old  willow 
pattern),  fixed  in  plaster,  and  surrounded  by 
a  radiance  of  ladles  of  the  same.  Each  star 
consisted  of  one  plate  with  about  twelve  or 
fourteen  ladles.  There  were  also  some 
pillars  richly  capped  with  soup  tureens. 

A  temple  generally  consists  of  six  or  more 
distinct  buildings,  within  a  large  enclosure  ; 
each  contains  a  shrine,  and  is  more  or  less 
decorated.  Around  the  enclosure  are  situ- 
ated the  dwellings  of  the  priests  and  neo- 
phytes. The  number  of  these  structures 
would  be  very  surprising,  were  it  not  for  the 
existing  belief  that  any  man  building  for 
himself  a  temple,  insures  to  himself  in  Para- 
dise a  future  of  unequalled  bliss,  or  a  re-ap- 
pearance upon  earth  in  some  highly  desirable 
form.  It  follows,  therefore,  that  few  blessed 
with  worldly  riches,  neglect  the  reward 
obtained  by  so  simple  a  means,  and  such 
edifices  are  to  be  seen  in  every  direction ; 
usually  placed  in  charming  nooks,  and 
planted  with  fine  shady  trees. 

The  system  of  the  priesthood  is  peculiar. 
None  are  admitted  into  it  before  the  age  of 
twenty-one.  Three  times  seven  being  in 
Siam,  as  in  England,  the  age  mystical.  The 
consent  of  the  parents  is  necessary  before  the 
novitiate  is  entered  upon,  and  a  vow  of 
poverty  is  enforced.  The  priest  leaves  all 
his  possessions,  not  excepting  wife  and  chil- 
dren ;  but  they  may  be  resumed  on  quitting 
the  sacred  calling,  and  the  priest  may  quit  it 
whenever  he  pleases.  His  wife  may,  however, 
if  she  please,  refuse  to  return.  She  may  even 
contract  another  marriage,  since,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  law,  he  is  a  dead  man  who  is  a  member 
of  the  pi-iesthood.  Each  priest  is  compelled 
to  beg  his  daily  food,  and  this  is  the  most 
distasteful  of  all  his  obligations.  It  is  not 
uninteresting  to  observe  the  Siamese  clergy, 
betimes  in  the  morning,  going  by  boat  from 
house  to  house,  to  receive  the  appointed  por- 
tions of  rice,  fruit,  &c.  It  generally  is  the 
duty  of  the  housewife  to  bestow  the  dole,  and 
she  sits  quietly  waiting  for  her  pious  visitor, 
with  the  bowl  of  rice  by  her  side,  and  fre- 
quently a  child  upon  her  lap.  On  the  appear- 


484      [November  21, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  fay 


ance  of  the  priest  she  kneels  and  makes  a  low 
obeisance,  while  he  haughtily  presents  his 


bowl   or   basket,  into  which  her  offering  is   in    China  ;    here   a   yellow   scarf  is   loosely 


and  chin  are  likewise  closely  shaven.    Their 
costume  resembles  that  worn  by  their  class 


emptied.  The  yellow-coated  spiritual  master 
then  proceeds  on  his  voyage,  without  vouch- 
safing her  a  word  or  sign  of  thanks. 

For  more  knowledge  than  I  might  other- 
wise have  had  of  customs  relating  to  the 
priesthood,  I  am  indebted  to  a  young  and 
intelligent  noble  who  became  intimate  with 
us,  and  frequently  joined  our  circle  of  an 
evening.  He  had  himself  been  a  priest,  and 
•was  therefore  familiar  with,  the  priestly 
duties.  He  had  the  ease  and  polished  man- 
ners of  a  gentleman.  He  was  a  prince  by 
birth,  and  had  suffered  much  from  ague  and 
fever.  Under  the  impression  that  he  might 
escape  future  attacks,  if  he  kept  his  feet  dry, 
he  usually  wore  a  dilapidated  pair  of  Oxford 
shoes,  of  course  covering  no  stockings  ;  and 
when  his  legs  were  weary — which  was  often 
the  case — he  tucked  them  up  into  the  chair, 
frequently  cuddling  his  knees  with  his  long 
bare  arms.  In  this  manner  he  would  sit  for 
a  long  time,  talking  excellent  English, — in- 
structing us,  amusing  us,  and  winning  our 
respect.  To  return,  however,  to  the  Chow- 
Kra-Tge's  remarks  on  the  priests. 

The  morning  dole  having  much  excited 
our  interest,  C.  asked  him  if,  while  a 
priest,  he  likewise  daily  begged  his  rice. 
"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  it  was  so  ;  but  I  always 
had  my  slave  with  me — also  a  priest — and 
the  coarse  and  common  rice  I  gave  to  him.  I 
always  went  to  my  father's  house  to  beg,  and 
there  they  gave  me  such  as  I  could  eat." 

Solid  food  is  duly  permitted  the  priests 
until  noon,  after  which  time  they  may  eat 
nothing  but  fruit,  and  drink  tea.  The  observ- 
ance of  this  rule  proved  the  worst  trial  to 
our  friend,  who,  unable  to  gorge  himself,  as 
was  the  habit  of  his  brethren,  genei-ally 

ssed  the    afternoon   and   evening  asleep ; 


fasting  produced  a  lassitude  he  could  not 
overcome.  The  chief  priest  of  each  Wat, 
and  the  high-priest  of  the  kingdom,  hold 
their  appointments  from  the  king,  and  are 
unable  to  quit  the  priesthood.  The  high- 
priest  is  the  only  person  exempted  from  the 
duty  of  making  obeisance  on  his  hands  and 
knees.  He  stands  in  the  presence  of  royalty ; 
the  king  and  he  salute  each  other  by  folding 
hands.  The  priests  employ  their  time  in 
praying,  chanting  services,  instructing  others, 
or  in  reading  bali  books.  They  seem  to  be  a 
less  degraded  class  than  my  old  acquaintances, 
the  priests,  in  China.  This  probably  is  owing 
to  the  liberty  of  entering  the  brotherhood, 
enjoyed  by  all  classes,  who  may  do  so  when, 
and  for  how  long,  they  please ;  such  en- 
trance being  an  act  deemed  meritorious  in 
high  or  low.  There  is»a  striking  similarity  of 
appearance  among  all  of  them,  for  which  1 
could  not  account  till  I  discovered  that  they 


bound  round  shoulders  and  body.  In  China 
they  have  a  long  robe  of  the  same  colour. 
There  are  no  schools  connected  with  the 
temples,  nor  elsewhere  ;  but  boya  under  age 
enter  their  novitiate  for  the  purpose  of  re- 
ceiving instruction  from  the  priests  ;  and, 
during  such  time,  act  as  servants  to  their 
spiritual  masters.  The  vow  of  poverty  may 
be  really  considered  as  a  form  only,  for  a 
trusty  agent  is  appointed  to  carry  on  all 
money  transactions,  and  the  society  depends 
little  on  alms.  The  number  of  priests  in 
Bangkok  is  estimated  at  about  three  thou- 
sand ;  but  it  probably  is  greater. 

I  turn  now  to  another  subject.  When  the 
prospect  of  our  living  in  Siam  tirst  arose,  much 
pity  was  lavished  on  us  by  our  friends  ;  the 
general  impression  seeming  to  be  that  the 
climate  of  Bangkok  is  intensely  hot  and  very 
damp,  and  that  a  poisonous  miasma  hangs 
over  the  shores  of  the  river.  Much  to  our 
surprise  and  pleasure  these  assertions  proved 
imfounded.  From  my.  own  experience,  and 
from  the  testimony  of  others  who  had  long 
been  resident,  I  can  state  that  the  heat  is  not 
so  great,  even  during  the  most  unpleasant 
months,  nor  at  any  time,  as  that  of  the 
north  coast  of  China,  or  even  of  Hong  Kong, 
during  two  of  the  summer  months.  The  hot 
season  in  Siam  begins  in  March  and  lasts  till  the 
end  of  April.  Both  the  missionaries  and  their 
wives  informed  me  that  the  heat  never  ia 
distressing.  With  May  begins  the  rainy  sea- 
son, or  monsoon.  This  is  not  an  Tinpleasant 
time  of  year  ;  the  air  is  deliciously  fresh  and 
cool ;  everything  seems  visibly  to  grow,  and 
even  self-willed  English  constitutions  appear 
as  though  it  were  incumbent  on  them  to 
thrive  and  rejoice  in  the  great  huge  washing- 
day  of  nature.  The  depth  of  rain  falling  at 
Bangkok  during  the  year  must  be  very 
great.  I  never  saw  it  descend  elsewhere 
in  such  determined  torrents.  The  noise 
of  its  fail  was  at  times  so  overpowering  that 
it  was  scarcely  possible  to  make  oneself 
heard  even  when  speaking  round  the  dinner- 
table. 

Rain-water  is  much  prized  by  the  Siamese, 
and  carefully  collected  in  large  jars  by  the 
upper  classes  ;  sixty  or  eighty  of  them  con- 
taining from  twelve  to  fourteen  gallons  each, 
are  considered  to  be  about  sufficient  for  the 
supply  of  a  family  until  the  next  monsoon. 
The  missionaries,  hitherto  almost  the  only 
foreign  residents,  have  adopted  the  custom. 
They  store  the  water  in  large  rooms,  under 
their  houses,  keeping  it  under  lock  and 
key  as  if  it  were  good  wine.  The  longer  it  is 
preserved  in  porous  jars,  the  sweeter  it  be- 
comes. Some  which  bad  been  kept  for  three 
years  had  a  clear  pleasant  flavour  far  surpass- 


all  shave  off  the  eyebrows.  The  effect  ia  most  i  ing  that  of  any  water  I  had  ever  before  drunk, 
singular  ;  the  countenance  gets  an  expression  With  so  broad  and  rapid  a  river,  capable  of  sup- 
of  perpetual  astonishment ;  the  head,  lace,  plying  the  needs  of  three  such  cities  as  Bung- 


Charles  Dickens.] 


AT  HOME  IN  SIAM. 


[NoremberSl,  1857.]       485 


kok,  it  may  seem  an  unnecessary  precaution 
to  preserve  rain-water.  The  river  being,  how- 
ever, thick  and  muddy,  its  water  cannot  be 
used  even  for  washing,  until  it  has  stood  for 
a  day.  When  the  sediment  has  fallen  it  is 
bright  and  clear,  and  some  people  prefer  it. 
The  Roman  Catholic  bishop,  Monsieur  Palle- 
goix,  toLl  me  he  considered  it  the  best,  both  as 
to  taste  and  wholesomeness.  If  his  reverence 
often  partook  of  it,  he  must  have  ignored  the 
fact  that  the  entire  population  of  Bangkok  is 
perpetually  bathing,  and  that  the  river  also 
forms  the  one  great  drain  of  the  city  and 
surrounding  country,  so  that  the  water  must 
necessarily  be  impregnated  with  much  noxious 
matter, — though,  to  be  sure,  the  current  is 
swift,  and  clean  water  is  perpetually  coming 
to  be  dirtied.  Indeed,  the  natives  own  that 
drinking  river-water  causes  diarrhoea. 

The  cool  season  begins  in  November.  I 
had  only  experience  of  it  for  a  few  days,  but 
throughout  December  and  January  the  air 
is  exhilarating  and  healthy ;  it  resembles 
that  of  soft  spring  days  in  England,  with  the 
addition  of  the  brilliant  sky  of  the  tropics. 
All  the  foreigners  to  be  observed  in  and 
around  the  city,  even  those  who  have  resided 
there  for  years,  look  healthier  and  more 
robust  than  the  majority  of  those  at  Hong 
Kong  or  in  the  northern  ports  of  China. 
Fevers,  except  in  connection  with  ague,  are 
unknown  ;  but  one  disease  there  is,  peculiar 
to  the  climate  or  soil, — the  much  dreaded 
dysentery.  If  it  attack  the  European  here, 
it  proves  almost  invariably  fatal.  Should 
the  patient  be  removed  in  time,  recovery 
may  possibly  result,  but  alarming  symp- 
toms seldom  appear  until  it  is  too  late 
for  any  change  to  restore  health  and  life. 
The. natives  hold  it  in  like  dread,  but  their 
fear  does  not  prevent  them  from  eating  fruit 
without  any  precaution,  and  in  unlimited 
quantities.  The  few  foreign  children  in 
"Bangkok,  appear  to  enjoy  health,  and  to  feel 
less  languor,  than  the  generality  of  those  in 
the  hot  climates  of  the  East.  The  epidemic 
diseases  incident  to  childhood,  if  known  at 
all,  assume  their  mildest  forms,  and  occasion 
little  suffering  or  inconvenience. 

Small-pox  is  the  worst  scourge  of  the 
country,  and  vaccination  has  only  been  intro- 
duced lately  by  the  missionaries.  The  diffi- 
culty in  obtaininggood  vaccine  matter,  has  been 
an  impediment  in  their  way ;  but,  now  that 
the  communication  with  Singapore  has  be- 
come much  more  regular  and  easy,  we  may 
hope  the  use  of  lymph  will  become  general. 
The  two  kings,  with  their  favourite  wives  and 
children  have  been  vaccinated,  and  the  natives 
readily  submit  to  the  operation,  under  the 
impression,  that  the  good  derived  from  it  is 
supernatural.  The  study  of  medicine  is  to 
some  extent  pursued,  and  the  native  doctors 
have  no  mean  opinion  of  their  own  skill. 
Each  selects  some  form  of  disease  to  which 
he  devotes  his  sole  attention.  They  use 
their  own  medicines,  which  are  principally 


herbs ;  but  I  saw  a  prescription  of  which 
two  ingredients  were  deer's  horns  and  toads1 
skins. 

It  is  always  an  interesting  experiment  to 
commence  housekeeping  in  a  new  country, 
without  the  resources  usually  at  command  in 
civilised  places.  Of  such  experience  I  had 
the  full  benefit  at  Bangkok.  The  house  re- 
quired that  every  arrangement  and  appoint- 
ment should  be  made  in  it  for  the  comfort 
and  supply  of  a  family,  and  this  without  any 
one  appliance  or  apparent  means  at  hand. 
There  were  no  pots  or  pans,  none  of  the 
numerous  conveniences  the  value  of  which 
is  scarcely  known  or  heeded  till  the  want  of 
them  is  understood.  On  first  essaying  to 
make  some  pastry,  my  dismay  was  great 
at  finding  that  there  was  neither  board 
nor  roller  to  be  had  ;  and,  when  their  place 
was,  for  the  time,  supplied  by  the  lid  of 
a  packing-case  and  an  empty  beer-bottle,  a 
new  difficulty  arose  because  there  was  no 
oven.  In  my  necessity  I  was  proud  to  invent 
one  in  which  two  large  unbaked  earthen 
pans  were  the  main  feature,  and  which  did 
duty  for  six  weeks  in  a  manner  not  to  be 
despised.  To  keep  up  a  certain  amount  of 
appearance  was,  in  our  position,  of  course 
necessary,  and  it  was  impossible  not  to  find 
interest  and  amusement  in  the  absurd  shifts 
to  which  we  were  sometimes  reduced.  The 
market,  though  abundantly  supplied  with 
necessaries,  offered  so  little  variety  of  food 
that  the  task  of  keeping  a  good  table  was  no 
easy  one.  Of  chickens,  ducks,  eggs,  yams, 
and  fruit,  there  was  unlimited  allowance. 
Venison  was  also  easily  procured  during  a 
great  part  of  the  year ;  but  the  demand 
having  been  uncertain,  the  natives  met  it 
with  a  like  uncertainty.  On  one  occasion, 
when  a  dinner-party  was  in  contemplation,  I 
endeavoured  to  provide  against  any  mishap, 
by  seeking  the  assistance  of  the  king's  head 
cook  (Angelina  was  her  name).  Through, 
the  interpreter — a  Portuguese  half-caste, 
named  Victor — it  was  arranged  that  she 
should  have  a  bullock  killed,  on  condition 
of  my  taking  one  quarter  of  the  animal — a 
formidable  joint.  Victor  himself  faithfully 
promised  to  bring  a  supply  of  pigeons  ;  a 
friend  on  whom  he  could  rely  having  engaged 
to  catch  them  at  daybreak.  When  the  day 
arrived,  the  cook  received  his  morning  orders, 
with  the  list  of  dishes  required — all,  or  nearly 
all,  to  be  compounded  of  the  beef  and  pigeons. 
At  eleven  o'clock  I  received  a  message.  No 
meat  of  any  kind  had  appeared.  Victor  was 
therefore  immediately  despatched  to  Ange- 
lina, also  to  his  friend  who  was  responsible 
for  the  pigeons.  After  nearly  an  hour's 
absence,  he  returned,  highly  excited,  to  an- 
nounce that  Angelina  had  forgotten  her 
promise,  but  had  just  sent  into  the  country  to 
catch  a  cow  !  With  regard  to  the  pigeons, 
the  friend  had  been  unsuccessful  in  all  efforts 
to  catch  them  ;  in  fact  had  been  too  idle  to 
take  the  trouble.  This  was  a  dilemma  for 


4S6       [November  21,  1867.} 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


me,  •with  the  prospect  of  guests  who  were  to 
arrive  soon  after  six  o'clock,  arid  no  resource 
left  me  but  chickens  and  the  help  of  Soyer's 
Shilling  Cookery  Book.  Were  that  little 
volume  in  need  of  recommendation,  mine  it 
should  have,  for  never  did  the  cunning  of  a 
cookery  book  come  more  nobly  to  the  rescue 
of  a  distressed  housewife.  Every  ingenious 
contrivance  turned  out  well  ;  and,  of  the 
eighteen  people  who  sat  round  the  table,  two 
only  knew  how  narrowly  the  others  had 
escaped  a  fast. 

Nor  was  it  in  the  commissariat  alone  that 
ingenuity  was  taxed.  Often  I  had  to  turn 
laundress  ;  and  even  carpentering,  cabinet- 
making,  and  the  like,  needed  superinten- 
dence, for,  ideas  as  to  turning  the  legs  of 
a  table  were  none  of  the  clearest  among 
those  professing  skill  in  such  matters. 
In  Siam  furnishing  a  house,  even  in  the 
roughest  and  most  primitive  manner,  is  no 
easy  task.  One  has  first  to  find  a  carpenter — 
or  rather  a  man  who  can  use  a  saw  and  other 
tools  without  cutting  himself.  Having  en- 
gaged his  services  for  a  certain  number  of 
days,  at  a  stipulated  price,  one  has  to  ad- 
vance him  money  for  the  purchase  of  wood, 
nails,  and  other  material,  which  are  all 
brought  into  the  house.  This  done,  it  is 
necessary  to  draw  the  Carpenter  a  picture, 
and  to  give  him  the  exact  measui-ement  of 
everything,  as  he  has  no  designs  whatever  of 
his  own,  and  when  instructed,  commonly  con- 
trives to  do  exactly  the  reverse  of  what  has 
been  directed.  Incessant  watchfulness  is 
required  to  prevent  the  article  in  hand  from 
being  altogether  rendered  Tiseless.  Once, 
•when  a  cupboard  had  been  finished  under 
close  superintendence,  and  our  vigilance  re- 
laxed, the  doors  were  securely  nailed  and 
glued  together,  under  the  belief  that  the 
whole  work  of  art  was  intended  to  stand  in 
the  room  merely  as  an  ornamental  piece  of 
furniture. 

The  Siamese  do  not  make  good  servants, 
for  they  are  by  nature  intensely  idle.  They 
will  serve  for  a  short  time,  until,  having 
earned  a  sufficient  number  of  tirals  (or  half- 
crowns)  to  keep  them  in  food  for  a  few 
months,  they  declare  that  they  are  tired  of 
work,  and  must  go  home  and  rest.  Neces- 
saries of  life  are  so  extremely  cheap,  that  the 
Datives  can  live  on  an  incredibly  small  sum. 
Even  one  tiral  (or  half-crown)  a  month  is  said 
to  be  enough  to  keep  a  Siamese  in  food  ; 
having  food,  he  is  content,  for  anything  in 
the  way  of  tailor's  bill  can  cause  no  very  per- 
ceptible drain  on  the  exchequer.  The  pecu- 
liar system  of  slavery  also  causes  servants  to 
be  either  hired  or  kept  with  difficulty.  Every 
Siamese  below  a  certain  rank  must  be  a 
slave,  and,  if  not  owned  by  anyone  else,  is  the 
king's  property.  It  is  a  mild  form  of  slavery, 
and  when  cause  of  complaint  exists,  the  slave 
can  himself,  at  any  time,  change  masters  by 
bringing  his  purchase-money  to  the  old  one, 
who  is  compelled  to  give  him  up  without  i 


a  question.  The  missionaries  and  other 
foreigners  accepted  the  plan  of  nominally 
purchasing  any  servant  who  wished  to  remain 
in  his  place  and  promised  to  be  useful, 
by  allowing  him  to  work  for  his  purchase- 
money  until  he  redeemed  himself.  The  plan 
is  open  to  some  obvious  objections,  but  it 
seems  to  be  the  only  security  against  the 
annoyance  of  incessant  change.  Slaves  are 
allowed  to  hire  themselves  out,  on  condition 
that  they  pay  the  chief  part  of  their  wages  to 
their  masters,  in  the  hope  of  ultimately  work- 
ing out  their  freedom.  This  hope  owners 
frustrate  by  charging  heavy  interest  upon 
the  value  of  the  slave  and  upon  every  loan 
that  is  made,  so  that  the  debt  grows  rather 
than  diminishes.  Owing  to  these  circum- 
stances, most  of  the  domestic  servants  are  the 
emigrant  Chinese,  who  become  naturalised 
and  form  a  large  portion  of  the  population. 
They  make  excellent  servants  in  all  parts  of 
the  world,  being  unequalled  in  their  readiness 
to  learn  ;  but  they  have  the  drawback  of  a 
like  quickness  in  cheating  their  employers. 
The  Siamese  are  hopeless.  It  may  seem  a 
singular  demand  for  a  servant,  to  be  allowed 
from  two  to  three  hours  at  noon  for  sleep ; 
the  Siamese  will  not  give  up  this  luxury  on 
any  terms,  and  simply  decline  continuing 
their  work  when  the  hour  comes  round  for 
the  siesta.  They  have  a  real  fear  of  labour. 
I  have  frequently,  on  going  into  my  bedroom, 
found  the  apology  of  a  servant  lying  half- 
asleep  against  the  wall,  in  a  state  of  ex- 
haustion :  the  unswept  apartment  testifying 
to  the  limited  extent  of  her  exertions.  A 
remonstrance  only  met  with  the  reply,  "  That 
it  was  very  hot,  she  was  tired,  and  could  do 
no  more."  There  was  need,  then,  to  turn 
chambermaid  on  the  spot,  while  the  poor 
overworked  damsel  sat  coolly  on  the  floor 
watching  the  broom.  Had  I  known  how  to 
scold  in  Siamese,  she  would  most  probably 
have  left,  and  the  trouble  would  have  been 
again  incurred  of  teaching  to  make  beds. 
The  art  of  making  beds,  is  an  unfathomable 
mystery  to  these  people,  whose  only  bed  is  a 
mat  spread  on  the  floor.  It  seemed  to  be  a 
vain  labour  day  after  day,  to  convince  the 
obtuse  maid,  that  the  usual  order  of  arrang- 
ing sheets  and  blankets  was  essential  to  our 
comfort.  She  steadfastly  looked  upon  it  as 
immaterial,  whether  blanket  or  counterpane 
were  placed  first ;  and  her  favourite  system 
was  to  smooth  the  blankets  carefully  over 
the  mattrass,  then  to  spread  the  counterpane 
with  the  sheets  next  over  it,  the  pillows  over 
these,  and  last  of  all,  the  bolster.  Another 
daily  cause  of  vexation  to  her  spirit,  was  the 
dressing  of  her  little  charge  —  the  child 
already  mentioned.  She  looked  down  upon 
it  as  quite  a  work  of  supererogation  ;  and 
the  order  in  which  clothes  were  worn,  ever 
remained  to  her  an  inexplicable  riddle. 
After  some  of  her  attempts  the  child  would 
occasionally  come  down-stairs  with  her 
under  garments  over  her  frock;  once,  her 


Charles  Dickens.] 


AT  HOME  IN  SIAM. 


[Norember  21,  18SM       487 


socks  were  carefully  drawn  over  her  shoes, 
although  that  was  a  feat  not  easy  to  accom- 
plish. 

Much  of  the  healthiness  of  Bangkok,  as  a 
densely  populated  oriental  city,  may  be  attri- 
buted to  the  custom  of  burning  the  dead — 
general  in  Siarn.  Of  the  existence  of  this 
practice  I  had  been  ignorant,  and  it  was  first 
brought  to  my  knowledge  in  a  very  odd 
way.  Ou  the  morning  after  our  arrival, 
while  breakfasting  at  the  house  of  the  Ame- 
rican consul,  much  stir  and  excitement  arose 
among  the  servants.  Chairs  and  tables  were 
conveyed  away  ;  china  and  glass  disappeared  ; 
and  constant  messages  passed  to  and  fro, 
apparently  for  the  benefit  of  The  Prince. 
Curiosity  was  natural  in  us,  and  we  asked 
whether  the  nobles  were  in  the  habit  of  bor- 
rowing the  civilised  appliances  and  property 
of  foreigners  ?  "  No,"  was  the  reply,  "  they 
do  not  generally  do  so  ;  but  the  prince,  being 
a  near  neighbour,  considers  himself  privi- 
leged. He  is  about  to  burn  his  mother,  and 
anxious  to  borrow  any  articles  of  service  to 
him  for  the  festivities  usual  on  such  occa- 
sions." Burn  his  mother !  I  found  that  the 
old  lady  being  dead,  her  body  was  to  be 
burned  in  the  grounds  of  a  neighbouring 
temple,  where  the  funeral  pile  was  already 
arranged.  The  preparations  for  the  ceremony 
occupied  many  days,  as  there  were  three 
royal  bodies  to  be  consumed  together  ;  an 
uncle  of  the  king's,  and  a  princess  having 
died  at  the  same  time.  We  were  invited  to 
the  ceremony.  I  greatly  feared  lest  our  visit 
should  be  so  timed  as  to  oblige  us  to  witness 
the  actual  burning,  naturally  imagining  that 
such  a  sight  could  not  be  very  agreeable. 
Notwithstanding  my  endeavours  to  the  con- 
trary, we  arrived  at  the  moment  when  the 
chief  priest,  with  many  prostrations  and 
much  form,  lighted  the  pile.  The  three 
coffins  were  in  the  form  of  urns,  about  three 
feet  high,  covered  with  gold  leaf,  but  not 
otherwise  ornamented  :  in  these  the  bodies, 
already  embalmed,  had  been  placed  in  a 
sitting  posture,  with  the  knees  bent  closely 
up.  The  urns  were  of  iron,  and  the  bottom 
of  each  urn  was  grated.  The  dead  hidden 
within  them  were  conveyed  in  procession, 
attended  by  a  vast  number  of  priests  and 
mourners,  to  the  spot  on  which  they  were  to 
be  burned.  Here  had  been  erected  a  large 
pavilion,  adorned  with  flags  and  flowers,  and 
hung  with  white  and  crimson  cloth  ;  in  the 
centre  thefe  was  a  raised  platform,  perforated 
with  three  holes,  and  under  each  of  the  holes 
were  laid  the  materials  for  a  large  fire.  The 
urns  having  been  placed  over  them,  the  fires 
were  lighted,  and  the  bodies  rapidly  con- 
sumed, the  ashes  falling  down  into  the  glow- 
ing embers.  The  empty  urns  were  removed 
before  we  left,  and  no  trace  of  their  former 
contents  was  discernible.  All  unpleasant 
odour,  probably,  was  overpowered  by  the 
fumes  of  incense  used  by  the  priests,  and  by 
the  fragrant  woods  of  which  the  fire  was 


made.  This  was  a  grand  ceremony  of  the 
kind,  and  was  attended  by  both  kings  and  all 
their  wives  :  we  were  therefore  fortunate  in 
being  witnesses.  The  priests  and  all  those  in 
the  remotest  degree  connected  with  the  de- 
ceased, wore  white  cloth,  and  girdles  of  the 
same,  instead  of  the  usual  crimson  and  blue 
garments  ;  the  wives  of  the  kings  and  all  the 
women  were  also  clothed  in  white  without 
exception,  but  this  was  the  only  outward 
sign  of  mourning.  Feasting  and  merriment 
succeeded,  plays  and  amusements  of  all  sorts 
being  liberally  provided  for  the  people.  The 
musicians  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood 
of  the  pavilion  played  a  kind  of  dirge,  which 
was  beautifully  plaintive,  though  of  a  wild 
character.  The  effect  was  increased  by  the 
melancholy  tone  of  all  Siamese  instruments, 
which  is  not  unpleasing  even  when  quick  and 
lively  tunes  are  played. 

On  a  public  festival  of  this  sort  the  kings 
and  other  members  of  the  royal  family  pre- 
sent the  invited  guests  with  a  small  bag 
containing  twelve  or  fourteen  of  the  green 
limes  peculiar  to  the  country,  into  each  of 
which  is  thriist  the  smallest  of  silver  coins, 
called  a  fuang,  in  value  about  threepence 
halfpenny  ;  sometimes,  but  very  rarely,  a  gold 
fuang  may  be  found.  Similar  limes  are 
scattered  by  handsful  to  be  scrambled  for 
among  the  rabble.  It  frequently  occurs  on 
examination  that  many  of  the  limes  are 
empty,  the  coin  or  coins  having  been  pur- 
loined by  the  officer  entrusted  with  the  re- 
sponsible duty  of  concealing  them  in  the 
fruit.  One  of  the  amusements  provided  was 
of  a  very  simple  and  primitive  description. 
The  figures  of  many  animals  were  cut,  in  by 
no  means  an  unartistic  manner,  out  of  thick 
stiff  leather,  and  placed  at  the  end  of  long 
sticks  of  bamboo,  and  were  made  to  dance  up 
and  down  in  such  a  way  as  to  cast  their 
shadows  on  a  large  white  screen,  behind 
which  was  a  brilliant  fire.  The  spectators  in 
front  testified  their  delight  by  shouts  and 
screams.  These  rejoicings  were  continued 
for  some  days. 

Another  ceremony  of  the  same  kind  oc- 
curred after  we  had  lived  about  three  months 
in  Bangkok,  and  was  conducted  with  like 
pomp  and  display.  C.'s  invitation  was 
written  in  English  by  the  first  king  himself ; 
and,  like  most  of  his  Majesty's  notes, was  oddly 
expressed.  He  requested  that  her  Britannic 
Majesty's  consul  "  would  attend  the  funeral 
obsequiousness  of  his  pore  little  dear  son." 
Nearly  all  the  foreigners  in  the  city  were 
present  on  this  occasion  ;  and  a  banquet  was 
prepared  for  their  especial  benefit  in  one  of 
the  pavilions.  Several  of  them  amused  them- 
selves by  walking  around  and  watching  the 
arrangements.  Among  these,  a  chief  noble 
was  suddenly  seized  with  a  violent  irritation 
of  the  leg.  For  the  relief  of  his  annoyance, 
he,  without  hesitation,  took  a  knife  from  the 
side  of  a  plate,  and  with  it  deliberately 
scratched  the  offending  member  for  several 


4S8      [Nowmber  21.1857:1 


[Conducted  by 


minutes,  after  which  he  coolly  restored  the 
knife  to  its  place. 

The  decoration  of  one  altai-,  or  rather 
shrine,  at  this  funeral,  was  very  curious. 
The  entire  platform  and  shrine  were  covered 
with  flowers,  and  animals  cut  out  of  the  skins 
of  fruit  ;  often  the  fruit  itself  was  used  as  an 
ornament.  One  Indian  lizard  was  particu- 
larly conspicuous,  and  might  have  been 
greeted  as  a  brother  by  any  bona-fide  lizard 
travelling  that  w:iy.  It  was  formed  of  tlie 
skin  of  a  water-melon,  and  the  peculiar 
yellow  streaks  on  the  rind  served  to  make 
the  deception  perfect.  The  railing  around 
the  shrine  was  composed  of  many  hundreds 
of  small  pint  decanters,  placed  mouth  to 
mouth  (one  standing  inverted  on  the  other), 
and  arranged  in  rows,  the  top  being  bound 
with  a  graceful  wreath  of  flowers. 


THE  BEST  MAN. 


ING,  the  other  evening,  along  a  street 
which  offered  a  short  cut  to  a  spot  we  wished 
to  reach,  we  happened  to  look  up  a  narrow 
court,  and  saw  a  fight.  There  was  probably 
nothing  remarkable  in  the  mere  fact  of  a 
fight  occurring  in  that  spot.  Indeed,  the 
calm  indifference  with  which  a  majority  of 
the  bystanders  looked  on,  conveyed  the  idea 
that  fights  were  rather  the  rule  than  the  ex- 
ception there.  We  ventured  to  inquire  of  a 
bystander  what  it  was  all  about. 

The  individual  whom  we  addressed  (appa- 
rently connected  with  the  costevmongering 
interest)  seemed  rather  surprised  at  our 
question.  On  our  repeating  it,  he  informed 
us  —  smiling  at  our  simplicity  —  that  there 
was  no  quarrel  in  the  business  at  all  ;  but, 
the  combatants  were,  and  had  ever  been,  the 
best  of  friends.  The  present  contest  was 
simply  to  decide  the  question  as  to  which  of 
the  two  was  the  best  man. 

"We  have  already  confessed  our  ignorance 
of  pugilistic  technicalities,  and  therefore  do 
not  mind  running  the  risk  of  being  laughed 
at  by  admitting  that  this  explanation  seemed 
a  strange  one.  The  term  "  best,"  try  it  what- 
ever way  we  would,  could  not  be  brought  to 
suggest  to  our  mind  any  other  meaning  than 
the  superlative  of  "good,"  and  how  the 
greater  or  lesser  goodnese  of  two  men  could 
be  decided  thus,  by  fisticuffs,  we  were  not 
able  to  conceive.  The  stronger  man  we 
thought  might  be  thus  proved,  or  the  more 
ruffianly  man,  but  how  "the  best  "  ? 

"  How  preposterously  illogical  !  "  we  ex- 
claimed, turning  disgusted  from  the  scene. 
'  The  idea  of  making  knock-down  blows  a  test 
of  excellence  !  Judging  of  man's  virtues  or 
goodness  by  the  power  with  which  they  use 
their  fists  !  Well  may  we  talk  of  the  neces- 
sity of  education." 

Can  there  be  anything  more  absurd  ?  Yes, 
when  my  Lord  This,  and  the  Eight  Honour- 
able Captain  That,  get  up  a  fight  between 
themselves,  simply  to  decide  which  is  the 


better  man.  For  what  is  it  when  my  lord 
seeks  to  prove  his  honour  by  discharging  pis- 
l  tols  at  the  gallant  captain — what  is  it  when 
!  the  gallant  captain  endeavours  to  convince  the 
world  of  his  integrity  by  blowing  out  his 
lordship's  brains,  but  a  fight  to  prove  which 
j  is  the  Better  man  ?  The  gentleman  is  no 
less  logical  in  his  proceeding  than  the  costei'- 
monger  ;  the  only  difference  being,  that  the 
gentleman's  tribunal  is  sometimes  a  more 
dangerous  one  to.  appeal  to  than  the  coster- 
monger's. 

A  pistol-bullet  through  the  head  of  him 
who  has  traduced  your  moral  character  ;  at 
any  rate,  it  silences  him  on  the  subject  for 
the  future.  So,  in  like  manner,  if  the  injured 
party  falls,  you  may  be  sure  all  recollection 
of  the  injury  is  completely  blotted  out  from 
his  mind.  But  a  sound  thrashing  settles  a 
disputed  point  of  rival  excellence  almost  as 
finally.  The  costermonger  who  is  hopelessly 
defeated  grants  the  superior  merit  of  his  ad- 
versary, and  ever  afterwards  acknowledges 
him  as  the  better  man. 

True  is  it  that  the  victorious  pugilist  may 
be  a  brutal  husband,  a  more  brutal  father  ; 
a  drunkard,  a  blasphemer,  bad  as  a  citizen, 
dishonest  as  a  man — but  he  has  gained  the 
fight !  His  adversary  may  be  his  opposite 
in  everything  ;  and,  until  now,  may  have  been 
thought  a  pattern  to  Ivis  neighbours ;  but 
then  he  got  his  head  broken.  No  one  denies 
his  virtues  ;  but  the  other  is  the  better  man. 
And  so  the  slanderer,  the  betrayer,  the 
seducer,  has  managed  by  superior  skill  to 
shoot  the  man  he  wronged.  Well,  he  has 
given  satisfaction.  His  honour  is  secured. 
He  is  the  better  man. 

So  lately  as  until  the  beginning  of  this 
very  nineteenth  century  of  ours,  it  was 
the  law  that  questions  affecting  men's  cha- 
racters or  property  might  be  decided  by 
hard  blows.  Before  the  passing  of  the  Act, 
Fifty-ninth  of  George  the  Third,  chapter 
forty-six,  in  the  year  of  Grace  one  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  and  nineteen,  was  it 
not  written  in  the  statute-book  of  England 
that  any  man  might  prove  his  innocence  of 
crimes  alleged  against  him,  might  establish 
his  right  to  a  disputed  property,  by  fighting 
his  accuser  in  the  criminal,  or  his  opponent 
in  a  civil  action  ? — in  other  words,  proving 
him  (the  accused  or  sued)  the  "  better  man." 
Yes  ;  even  within  the  lifetime  of  the  present 
generation,  Trial  by  Battle,  as  the  legal  mode 
of  testing  a  man's  character  or  probity  by 
fighting  was  denominated,  remained  a  por- 
tion of  the  English  law. 

In  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and  eighteen, 
— as  we  mentioned  in  a  recent  article  on 
Duelling — Abraham  Thornton,  charged  with 
the  murder  of  a  young  lady  named  Mary  Ash- 
ford,  astonished  everybody,  and  somewhat 
puzzled  his  judges  by  refusing  to  submit  his 
case  to  be  tried  by  a  jury,  and  by  availing 
himself  of  the  long-since  disused,  and  almost 
forgotten  law  which  allowed  him,  instead,  to 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  BEST  MAN. 


[November;!,  1857.]       489 


summon  bis  accuser  to  a  wager  of  battle,  or 
trial  by  single  combat.  In  vain  was  his 
right  to  do  so  questioned  by  the  adverse 
counsel  on  the  plea  that  the  law  of  trial  by 
battle  was  obsolete,  not  having  been  em- 
ployed for  some  two  centuries.  The  Lord 
Chief  Justice  Ellenborough  at  once  decided 
that  as  the  act  had  never  been  repealed,  it 
still  formed  part  of  the  law  of  the  land.  So, 
Thornton  being  a  powerful  athletic  fellow, 
and  his  accuser — who  was,  by  the  bye,  the 
brother  of  the  murdered  girl — a  weak  strip- 
ling not  more  than  twenty  years  of  age,  the 
latter  declined  the  proffered  combat,  and  the 
suspected  murderer  was  set  at  liberty ;  a 
result  which,  judging  from  the  reported  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case,  and  the  evidence 
against  him,  would  hardly  have  been  pro- 
bable but  for  his  opportune  digging  up  of 
this  long-forgotten  law. 

The  unexpected  termination  of  this  trial 
led  to  the  bringing  into  parliament  the  fol- 
lowing year,  of  a  bill,  "  to  abolish  all  appeals 
of  murder,  treason,  felony,  or  other  offences, 
and  wager  of  battle,  or  joining  issue,  and 
trial  by  battle  in  writs  of  right." 

The  wager  of  battle,  like  the  old  ordeals  of 
fire,  water,  touching  the  murdered  body,  and 
other  extraordinary  and  now  obsolete  modes 
of  finding  out  the  better  or  worse  man,  of 
course  originated  in  the  superstitious  belief 
that  Providence  would  in  all  cases  give 
the  victory  to  him  who  had  the  right  upon 
his  side  ;  yet,  in  spite  of  this  belief,  we  find 
some  rather  singular  regulations  provided 
to  guard  against  the  battle  going  too  ob- 
viously wrong.  Such,  for  instance,  as  that  a 
party  detected  in  the  very  commission  of  the 
act  alleged  against  him,  or  under  circum- 
stances that  left  no  possible  doubt  of  his 
guilt,  could  not  claim  the  right  of  trial  by 
combat.  It  would  have  been  so  very  awk- 
ward if  he  had  been  victor  after  all. 

One  important  difference,  however,  existed 
in  the  conduct  of  the  civil  and  criminal  cases. 
In  criminal  matters,  the  accuser  and  accused 
met  on  the  field,  and  fought  it  out  in  person  ; 
in  civil  suits  the  parties  fought  by  proxy. 
Each  employed  a  sort  of  physical  force 
barrister.  The  reason  for  this, 'as  given  by 
Judge  Blackstone,  is,  that  if  any  party  to 
the  suit  dies,  the  suit  must  abate,  and 
be  at  an  end  for  the  present ;  and  there- 
fore, no  judgment  could  be  given  for  the 
lands  in  question,  if  either  of  the  parties 
were  slain  in  battle.  Another  reason  was, 
that  no  person  should  be  allowed  to  claim 
exemption  from  this  mode  of  trial  in  a 
civil  action,  while  there  were  many  circum- 
stances under  which  the  accused  party  in  a 
criminal  charge,  was  deprived  of  his  choice 
of  trial,  and  compelled  to  submit  the  inquiry 
to  a  jury.  The  fact  of  the  accuser  being  a 
female,  or  under  age,  or  above  the  age  of 
sixty,  or  in  holy  orders,  or  a  peer  of  the 
realm,  or  any  one  expressly  privileged  from 
the  trial  by  battle,  by  some  charter  of  the 


king  (as  were  the  citizens  of  London  amongst 
others),  or  labouring  under  some  material 
personal  defect,  as  blindness  or  loss  of  a 
limb  :  any  of  these,  were  sufficient  ground 
for  refusing  the  wager  of  battle. 

A  brief  account  of  the  solemnities  observed 
on  the  occasion  of  judicial  duels  may  prove 
interesting.  In  a  civil  trial  of  a  writ  of  right 

by  which  it  was  sought  to  obtain  possession 
of  lands  or  tenements,  in  the  occupation  of 
another — the  tenant  pleaded  the  general  issue, 
that  is  to  say,  that  he  had  more  right  to  hold 
than  the  demandant  had  to  recover,  and 
offered  to  prove  it  by  the  body  of  his 
champion.  This  offer  was  accepted,  the 
champion  was  produced,  who  throwing  down 
his  glove  as  a  gage  or  pledge,  waged  OL- 
stipulated  battle,  with  the  champion  of  oppos- 
ing party.  The  latter  accepted  the  challenge 
by  picking  up  the  glove. 

A  piece  of  ground,  sixty  feet  square,  was  set 
out,  enclosed  with  lists,  with  seats  erected  for 
the  Judges  of  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas  ; 
who  presided  at  these  trials  in  their  full 
scarlet  robes,  and  a  bar  was  prepared  for 
the  learned  serjeants-at-law.  As  soon  as 
the  Court  had  assembled,  at  sun-rising, 
proclamation  was  made  for  the  parties  and 
their  champions.  These  were  introduced 
by  two  knights,  and  dressed  in  coats  of 
armour,  with  red  sandals,  bare-legged  from 
the  knee  downwards,  bare-headed,  and 
with  bare  arms  to  the  elbows.  The  wea- 
pons they  were  furnished  with,  though 
formidable  were  not  deadly.  Indeed  a 
fatal  termination  to  these  civil  combats 
was  rarely  if  ever  known.  They  were 
armed  only  witk  batons,  or  staves  of  an  ell 
long,  and  each  carried  a  four-cornered 
leathern  shield . 

On  their  arrival  in  the  lists,  the  champion ' 
of  the  tenant  took  his  adversary  by  the 
hand,  and  made  oath  that  the  tenements  in 
dispute  were  not  the  property  of  the  demand- 
ant, the  champion  of  the  claimant  in  precisely 
the  same  form,  swore  in  answer  that  they 
were.  Next,  both  champions  took  an  oath 
that  they  had  not  made  use  of  any  sorcery 
or  enchantment  to  assist  them  in  the  fight. 
The  usual  form  of  this  was  as  follows : 
"Hear  this,  ye  justices,  that  I  have  this 
day  neither  eat  nor  drank,  nor  have  upon 
me  neither  bones,  stones,  nor  grass  (  !  )  nor 
any  enchantment,  sorcery,  nor  witchcraft, 
whereby  the  law  of  God  may  be  abased,  or 
the  law  of  the  devil  may  be  exulted.  So  help 
me  God  and  his  Saints." 

Then  the  fight  commenced,  and  they  were 
bound  to  fight  the  whole  day  through,  until 
the  stars  appeared,  or  until  one  was  beaten. 
If  the  victory  could  be  achieved  either  by  the 
death  of  a  champion  (a  very  rare  occurrence), 
or  by  either  proving  recreant ;  that  is  by  yield- 
ing, and  pronouncing  the  horrible  word  Craven ; 
a  word  of  no  absolute  meaning  ;  "  but,"  says 
Blackstone,  "  a  horrible  word  indeed  to  the 
vanquished  champion,  since  as  a  punishment 


490      [Nownber  21, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


to  him  for  forfeiting  the  lands  of  his  princi- 
pal by  pronouncing  that  shameful  word,  he  is 
deemed  as  a  recreant  amittere  liberam  legem, 
that  is  to  become  infamous  being  sup- 
posed by  the  event  to  be  foresworn  ;  and 
therefore,  never  to  be  put  upon  a  jury  or 
admitted  as  a  witness  in  any  cause  !  " 

The  proceedings  in  criminal  cases  were 
very  similar  to  the  above,  only  the  oaths  of 
the  two  combatants  were  much  more  striking 
and  solemn.  Blackstone  gives  the  following 
as  the  form  ;  the  accused  party  holding  the 
bible  in  his  right  hand,  and  his  antagonist's 
hand  in  the  other,  said  : — 

"Hear  this,  oh,  man!  whom  I  hold  by  the  hand, 
who  callest  thyself  John  by  the  name  of  baptism,  that 
I,  who  call  myself  Thomas  by  the  name  of  baptism, 
did  not  feloniously  murder  thy  father,  William  by 
name,  nor  am  any  way  guilty  of  the  said  felony,  so 
help  me  God  and  the  Saints,  and  this  I  will  defend 
against  thee  by  my  body  as  this  court  shall  award." 

The  accuser  answered  in  the  same  form, 
making  oath  to  his  antagonist  that  he  was  per- 
jured, which  he  will  defend  with  his  body, 
&c.,  as  before.  The  same  weapons  were  em- 
ployed, and  the  same  oaths,  against  amulets 
and  sorcery  as  in  the  civil  combat.  If  the 
accused  party  yielded,  he  was  ordered  to  be 
hanged  immediately;  but,  if  he  could  vanquish 
his  opponent,  or  maintain  his  ground  from 
sunrise  to  starlight,  he  was  acquitted.  The 
same  penalties  of  infamy  and  loss  of  citizen- 
ship awaited  the  accuser  if  he  yielded,  as  fell 
to  the  lot  of  the  recreant  champion ;  in 
addition  to  which,  the  victor  could  recover 
damages  for  the  false  accusation. 

Such  were  the  laws  which  regulated  the 
old  institution  of  the  wager  of  battle.  But 
all  these  things  have  passed  away,  and 
it  is  left  now  for  poor  unlettered  roughs 
assembled  at  street  corners,  or  disputing  in 
their  tap-rooms,  and  for  duellists,  to  fight  by 
way  of  proving  the  best  man.  Yet  not 
entirely  so,  either.  When  a  despotic  sovereign 
bent  on  self-aggrandisement  lays  claim  to 
territories  not  his  own  :  when  other  nations 
interfere,  and  tell  him  he  has  no  right  to  back 
his  claims,  and  when  at  last  the  question  is 
put  to  the  dread  arbitrement  of  war.  What 
is  this  after  all,  but  a  gigantic  fight  to  prove 
the  better  man  ? 


LUTFULLAH  KHAN. 


AMONG  the  Mahommedans  of  India,  the 
definition  of  the  word  gentleman,  as  applied 
to  a  native,  is  of  a  very  vague  character.  It 
may  mean  merely  what  is  called  a  Bhula 
Admee,  or  respectable  person  ;  and  that  re- 
spectable person  may  exercise  any  calling  not 
absolutely  unclean  or  servile.  Also,  the  gen- 
tleman may  be  a  courtly  noble  of  Delhi  or 
Hyderabad,  proud  of  his  ancestry  and  refined 
manners,  or  a  Moslem  Zemindar,  or  a  great 
Rajpoot  landholder,  compared  with  the  an- 
tiquity of  whose  race  the  Bourbons  and 
Hapsburgha  are  mere  mushrooms.  Lastly, 


the  title  of  gentleman  is  given  to  those 
descendants  of  the  kinsmen  or  companions  of 
the  prophet  who  are  called  Synds  in  Hindo- 
stan,  and  Emirs  in  Turkey,  and  whose  right 
to  wear  turbans  of  the  sacred  colour  is  an 
inheritance,  fruitful  in  the  respect  and  contri- 
butions of  less  holy  believers. 

To  this  last  class  belongs  a  remarkable 
Mahommedan  named  Lutfullah — well  edu- 
cated, intelligent,  and  singularly  devoid  of 
prejudices,  as  compared  with  the  majority  of 
his  brethren  in  the  faith  ;  and  who,  having 
seen  much  of  his  countrymen  and  of  ours ; 
having  Ijad  experience  of  war,  of  diplomacy, 
and  of  adventure,  has  favoured  the  Faith- 
ful with  his  autobiography.  This  has  been 
admirably  edited  by  Mr.  Eastwick,  for  the 
benefit  of  us  Feringhee  Unbelievers.  The 
result  is  a  book,  which  for  every  kind  of 
interest  to  charm  the  reader  who  delights 
in  eastern  advent'ure  and  eastern  manners, 
is  not  equalled  in  modern  literature.  Lut- 
fullah's  manners  are  polished,  his  learning 
unusual  for  an  Asiatic,  and  his  pedigree 
eclipses  any  which  the  Heralds'  College  could 
produce  ;  for  it  commences  with  Adam,  and 
ends,  at  the  ninetieth  descent,  in  Lutful- 
lah himself.  This  distinction,  however,  is 
not  very  uncommon  in  Asia;  where  a  Hindoo 
Rajah,  a  Tartar,  or  an  Arab  horse-dealer  is 
always  prepared  to  furnish  authentic  family 
trees,  equine  or  human,  extending  to  the  first 
man  or  the  first  horse.  Lutfullah's  family 
was  not  only  ancient,  but  had  great  preten- 
sions to  sanctity. 

An  ancestor  had,  in  the  fifteenth  century 
of  our  era,  not  only  been  canonised  as  a 
saint,  but  was  high  in  favour  with  a  pious 
sultan.  Accordingly,  a  superb  shrine  was 
erected  over  his  ashes,  and  his  descendants 
were  appointed  its  guardians,  and  provided 
for  by  a  liberal  endowment.  For  three 
centuries  the  saint's  posterity  were  rich 
and  prosperous ;  but,  when  the  Mahratta 
conquest  occurred,  Anno  Domini  seventeen 
hundred  and  six,  the  pagan  intruders  confis- 
cated the  property  of  the  shrine.  When 
Lutfullah,  therefore,  came  into  the  world,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  he  found 
himself  heir  apparent  to  two  acres  of  land 
which  had  been  left  in  possession  of  his  fore- 
fathers, and  of  a  share  of  such  offerings  as 
might  be  made  at  the  tomb. 

This  heritage,  miserable  as  it  was,  attracted 
to  Lutfullah  the  hatred  of  his  cousins  ;  and 
their  greedy  envy,  as  we  shall  see,  nearly 
proved  fatal  to  him  at  the  outset  of  life.  His 
native  place  was  a  decayed  city  of  Malwa,  in 
Western  Hindostan,  a  part  of  the  country 
where  Synds  are  less  plentiful,  and  where 
they  are  more  considered,  than  in  the  Delhi 
district.  But  the  offerings  of  the  faithful 
were  still  scarcely  enough  to  keep  the  saintly 
family  from  starvation. 

Lutfullah's  father  died,  leaving  him,  at 
the  age  of  four,  to  the  care  of  his  mother 
and  uncle.  Mother  and  uncle  had  enough 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LUTFULLAH  KHAN. 


[November  21. 1857.]      491 


to  do,  as  years  went  on,  to  provide  for 
the  sustenance  of  the  family,  and  to  keep 
in  order  that  little  Mussulman  Pickle,  the 
young  Lutfullah.  His  mother's  dowry  con- 
sisted of  jewels  to  the  modest  value  of 
four  hundred  rupees  (forty  pounds),  and  the 
sale  of  these  warded  off  actual  starvation. 
Meanwhile,  the  uncle  transcribed  manuscripts 
for  sale,  and  attended  carefully  to  the  shrine. 
One  source  of  profit  this  pious  family  of 
Synds  enjoyed,  which  illusti'ates  strangely 
the  morality  of  India  beyond  the  reach  of 
British  power.  Those  were  the  palmy  days 
of  Piudhareeism.  Vast  bodies  of  horsemen 
used  to  assemble  two  or  three  times  a  year, 
but  generally  at  the  end  of  the  rainy  season, 
to  make  a  lubhar,  or  foray,  across  the  richest 
and  most  undefended  provinces.  Any  chief 
of  name  and  energy  could  raise  an  army  in  a 
month.  The  Pindharees  had  no  baggage  ; 
they  had  no  cannon  ;  they  had  no  infantry. 
Avoiding  battles,  shunning  difficult  moun- 
tains, they  swept  over  India  like  a  besom, 
and  destroyed  as  much  or  more  than  they 
carried  away.  On  their  unshod  horses  they 
often  accomplished  eighty  miles  in  a  single 
day.  The  terror  they  spread,  the  damage 
they  did,  were  only  to  be  equalled  by  the 
difficulty  of  catching  them.  Our  heavily 
accoutred  light  horse  pursued  them  in  vain. 
Our  native  sowars  flinched  from  the  sight  of 
their  forests  of  spears.  Infantry  could  never 
reach  them,  except  by  surprise  or  ambuscade. 
Their  cruelty  equalled  their  cunning.  Every 
torture,  from  the  nose-bag  full  of  hot  ashes 
to  the  torments  of  Regulus,  was  used  to  ex- 
tort money,  though  often  the  stubbornness  of 
the  Hindoo  prevailed ;  the  merchant  died 
under  the  infliction,  and  the  knowledge  of  his 
hoard  died  with  him.  Yet,  these  fierce  ma- 
rauders, being  chiefly  Moslems,  not  only 
respected  the  relatives  of  Lutfullah,  but  gave 
them  presents. 

Meanwhile,  the  little  Lutfullah  grew  up,  a 
clever  and  mischief-loving  imp.  He  went 
through  the  approved  course  of  a  believer's 
education,  though  not  many  Mahommedaus 
learn  as  much  as  he  did,  who  was  a  Moulah's 
sou,  and  almost  a  priest  from  the  cradle.  Ko- 
ran chanting,  to  read  and  write  Hindustani 
and  Persian,  with  the  rudiments  of  Arabic  (for 
the  Koran  is  learned  by  rote)  were  his  ac- 
complishments. But  he  played  sundry  pranks, 
which  he  relates  with  infinite  glee.  He  sorely 
singed  and  blew  up  with  gunpowder  the  white 
beard  of  a  holy  man,  Sheikh  Nnsrullah,  and 
for  this  he  was  beaten  by  his  uncle  and 
.schoolmaster  ;  while  his  mother  threatened 
to  burn  him  with  red-hot  pincers  if  he  sinned 
again.  He  did  sin  again  by  hocussing  his 
schoolmaster's  coflee.  Soon  after  this  bis 
envious  cousins,  who  were  well-grown  lads, 
invited  him  to  bathe,  decoyed  him  into  the 
deepest  part  of  a  tank,  in  front  of  a  ruin- 
ous Hindoo  temple,  and  left  him  to  drown. 
He  was  saved  by  a  benevolent  Hindoo,  the 
priest  in  charge  of  the  pagan  temple,  one 


Eajaram,  who  hung  him,  head  downwards, 
from  a  tree,  and,  in  fact,  tormented  him  in 
exactly  the  good  old  English  fashion  of  re- 
covering half-drowned  persons.  But  Eajaram 
tended  the  child  well,  protected  him  from  his 
cruel  cousins,  and  refused  all  recompense, 
though  he  lived  on  alms.  Lutfullah's  health 
next  became  precarious ;  his  relations  told 
him  that  to  eat  meat  was  to  die  ;  he  at  once 
longed  for  meat,  ate  it,  and  recovered.  He 
was  then  recommended  to  addict  himself  to 
the  hookah.  It  would  do  him  good,  would 
be  a  tonic,  an  antidote,  everything.  So,  at 
eight  years  of  age  Lutfullah  became  a  smoker. 

Not  long  after,  the  child  accompanied  his 
uncle  to  Baroda,  where  for  the  first  time  he 
saw  some  of  those  wonderful  Europeans, 
whom  he  had  so  often  heard  abused  or  ridi- 
culed as  absurd  unbelievers,  marvelled  at  as 
white  or  "skinless"  men,  and  reluctantly 
praised  for  the  one  quality  of  inflexible  justice. 
The  dress  of  the  Europeans,  tight  fitting  and 
unoriental,  much  offended  Lutfullah's  young 
eyes.  To  him  it  seemed  ungraceful  and  in- 
delicate. In  after  times  this  impression  wore 
off  in  part ;  but  in  part  only.  In  the  course 
of  a  second  journey,  his  mother  was  persuaded 
to  marry  a  second  time.  Lutfullah's  step- 
father was  a  dark  and  portly  man,  an  officer 
of  the  Mahratta  Prince,  Seindiah,  but  of 
course  a  Mahommedan,  or  he  would  not  have 
been  thought  worthy  a  Synd's  widow.  Lut- 
fullah never  liked  the  subahdar,  who,  how- 
ever, was  kind  to  him  at  first,  and  taught 
him  to  ride  and  to  handle  arms.  Soon  after, 
the  subahdar  fell  into  disgrace,  a  guard  was 
sent  to  secure  his  person  and  property,  and 
nothing  but  Lutfullah's  address  and  boyish 
cleverness  saved  his  stepfather's  life  and 
money-bags.  The  subahdar  rose  again  in  his 
prince's  favour ;  but  soon  after  he  had 
settled  at  Gwalior,  as  one  of  Scindiah's  body- 
guards, and  young  Lutfullah  had  received  a 
handsome  mare,  sword,  spear,  and  shield, 
and  was  becoming  a  little  soldier,  times 
changed.  The  subahdar  became  cruel  and 
exacting,  and  finally  gave  his  stepson  a 
merciless  beating.  The  boy's  mother  was 
absent,  his  spirit  was  high,  and  he  ran  away, 
carrying  with  him  a  loaf  of  bread,  a  rupee  or 
two,  his  little  scimitar,  and  a  beautiful  copy 
of  Hafiz,  which  was  a  gift  from  the  Maha- 
rajah. 

There  is  something  strange  and  touching 
in  the  notion  of  the  lonely  little  Moslem  boy 
threading  the  jungle  paths,  and  venturing  out 
into  the  world  alone.  His  first  encounter  was 
with  a  kind  shepherd,  who  gave  him  milk  j 
his  second  was  with  a  pretty  Rajpoot  maiden, 
drawing  water,  who  gave  him  to  drink,  but 
could  not  suffer  a  Mussulman  to  touch  her 
pitcher.  His  third  acquaintance  was  a  Thug, 
named  Jumaa,  or  Friday,  who  tried  to 
induce  the  boy  to  join  his  mui'derous  gang. 
It  is  very  rare  for  a  Thug  to  be  found  quite 
alone  like  this  Jumaa ;  who  was  probably 
the  decoy-duck,  or  Sothae,  of  a  band.  The 


492      November  SI,  1&17J 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


strangler  was,  however,  very  communicative, 
told  many  anecdotes  of  crime  to  Lutfullah, 
and  tried  to  dazzle  him  by  exhibiting  one 
hundred  and  twelve  gold  mohurs,  which  he 
poured  out  from  a  bag.  He  spared  Lutful- 
lah, as  being  penniless  and  useful.  It  is 
not  a  little  to  Lutfullah's  credit  that  this 
recruiting  sergeant  of  murder  failed  to  enlist 
him,  for  so  plausible  are  the  ringleaders  of 
Thuggee,  that  the  magistrates  who  are  em- 
ployed in  the  suppression  of  the  system  have 
repeatedly  avowed  their  conviction  that  a 
single  adept  is  capable  of  inoculating  an  en- 
tire district  with  the  views  of  Bhowaneeism. 
Jurnaa  exacted  a  solemn  oath  on  the  Koran 
that  his  young  acquaintance  would  never 
betray  him;  but  Lutfullah,  although  well 
aware  that  perjury  was  wrong,  ran  breath- 
less into  the  nearest  town,  and  gasped  out 
"  Jumaa,  the  Thug,"  to  the  soldiers  on  guard, 
at  the  same  time  pointing  towards  the  ruined 
temple  where  the  unlucky  worshipper  of 
Bhowanee  was  yet  asleep.  In  a  very  brief 
time  the  wretched  Jumaa,  bound,  bruised 
with  clubs,  and  gashed  with  sword-cuts,  was 
dragged  before  the  Eajah,  and  straightway 
blown  from  a  great  cannon.  Although 
Orientals  are  but  too  much  vwed  to  lying 
and  deception  from  the  cradle,  Lutfullah  felt 
some  remorse  for  his  broken  oath.  Pity  for 
the  criminal  he  never  thought  of. 

Enriched  by  ten  golden  mohurs,  part  of  the 
booty  of  the  executed  Jumaa,  presented  to  his 
young  betrayer  by  the  Eajah,  Lutfullah  pur- 
sued his  way  to  Agra.  There  he  was  hos- 
pitably cherished  by  the  relations  of  his 
father's  first  wife,  for  five  years,  during  which 
he  pursued  his  studies.  The  hakim,  or  native 
physician,  of  one  of  Scindiah's  brothers-in- 
law,  at  length  took  Lutfullah  into  bis  service 
as  superintendent  of  his  household.  Under 
this  learned  person's  protection  the  boy,  now 
grown  a  handsome  youth,  visited  Delhi,  anc 
was  much  impressed  by  the  grandeur  of  the 
buildings,  the  politeness  of  the  inhabitants 
and  the  rich  cultivation  of  the  district  through 
which  the  caravan  traversed.  Lutfullah  was 
for  a  Modem,  anything  but  fanatical,  yet  he 
cannot,  even  now,  suppress  a  sigh  of  bitter 
regret  for  the  vanished  glories  of  the  Mogu 
empire  and  the  decay  of  that  capital  which  was 
the  trophy  and  bulwark  of  Islamism.  In  fact 
to  a  Mahommedan,  Delhi  is  what  Borne  is  to 
an  Italian,  the  humbled  queen  and  mistress 
of  cities,  a  perpetual  reproach,  and  a  dan 
gerous  memento  of  ages  of  conquest  anc 
splendour. 

Lutfullah  was  reconciled  to  his  stepfather 
but  never  quite  forgave  his  former  ill 
usage.  His  wish  to  see  his  mother  one 
more,  made  him  quit  his  employment,  and  h 
travelled  to  Ujjaiu,  where  he  found  his  onlj 
surviving  parent  living  in  unwonted  comfort 
Soon  the  secret  of  this  prosperity  came  out 
Tiie  subahdar  and  his  brother-in-law  wer< 
robbers,  and  the  house  of  Lutfullah's  mother 
was  the  receptacle  of  their  booty.  Lutfullah 


•eluctant  to  live  on  ill-gotten  gains,  set  off 
once  more  in  quest  of  adventures.  He  fell 
n  with  a  party  of  twenty- five  Pathans,  or 
Affghan  soldiers,  a  race  eminent  for  valour 
and  strength.  The  chief,  who  professed  to  be 
u  military  service  at  Poona,  offered  to  take 
the  clever  young  Lutfullah  as  secretary  and 
accountant  of  his  troop.  The  salary  was 
tempting,  the  chief,  Musa  Khan,  a  civil 
spoken  personage,  and,  in  an  evil  hour,  Lut- 
fullah complied.  The  band  journeyed  through 
a  wild  country,  until,  among  rugged  moun- 
tains and  tangled  ravines,  a  Bheel  village  lay 
before  them.  Then  Lutfullah  discovered  how 
pitiably  he  had  been  entrapped.  This  village 
among  the  mountains  of  Candeish  was  the 
camp  of  Nadir,  a  Bheel  robber  chieftain,  who 
ommanded  five  hundred  marauders  of  his 
own  tribe,  and  under  whose  orders,  also, 
were  the  band  of  Affghans.  Poor  Lutfullah, 
in  fact,  like  Gil  Bias,  had  fallen  among 
thieves. 

To  do  the  savages  justice,  they  did  not  spill 
blood  unless  when  heated  by  resistance.  But 
they  deprived  their  captives  of  all  their  pos- 
sessions, even  to  their  clothes ;  and,  presenting 
them  with  a  cotton  cummerbund  as  a  sub- 
stitute, allowed  them  to  depart.  When  one 
of  the  robbers  was  disabled  by  wounds,  his 
comrades  put  him  to  death  at  once,  and, 
carrying  back  his  head  to  the  mountains, 
burned  or  buried  it.  In  this  manner  they 
avoided  any  chance  of  awkward  recognitions. 
In  none  of  these  forays  did  Lutfullah  share, 
though,  on  one  occasion,  the  freebooters,  in 
high  glee,  rewarded  their  young  secretary 
with  ornaments  and  cash  to  the  value  of  four 
hundred  rupees,  which  were  at  once  buried 
under  a  rock.  Eetribution  soon  fell  on  some 
of  the  guilty.  The  Affghans,  glutted  with 
spoil,  wished  to  leave  the  wilderness  and 
enjoy  their  hard-won  gains.  The  Bheel  chief 
agreed  willingly  enough,  but  declared  he 
would  not  suffer  them  to  depart  until  after  a 
mighty  feast  to  be  held  on  the  fourth  day. 
For  three  days  fat  sheep,  opium,  sweetmeats, 
and  the  like,  were  plentifully  supplied  to  the 
Affghans. 

On  the  fourth  morning  Lutfullah,  who 
had  gone  abroad  before  daybreak,  was  re- 
turning, when  he  suddenly  heard  yells  and 
cries,  and  crashing  blows  of  swords  and 
axes,  and  the  well-known  war-shout  of  the 
Bheels.  It  was  the  old,  drama  of  savage 
treachery.  The  Affghans  were  being  mur- 
dered in  their  huts.  A  wounded  man — one 
Ibrahim  Khan — came  running  swiftly  to- 
wards where  Lutfullah  stood,  cold  and  horror- 
struck.  The  Affghau  cried  out  that  all  the  rest 
were  dead.  Lutfullah  would  have  fled  with 
the  Affghan,  but  the  latter  declined  having  a 
companion.  They  separated,  and  Lutfullah 
plunged  among  the  savage  ravines,  scaling 
heights,  pushing  through  bushes  and  creepers, 
ignorant  of  the  road,  and  knowing  nothing  of 
the  geography  of  the  country.  But  the  yella 
of  the  triumphant  Bheels  rang  behind  him, 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LUTFULLAH  KHAN. 


[November  21, 1817.]      493 


and  spurred  him  on,  panting,  bewildered, — 
without  food  or  \veapons — into  a  region 
only  trodden  by  robbers  and  wild  animals. 

Lutfullah,  even  if  he  had  been  an  expert 
Shikaree,  had  no  gun  or  other  weapon,  than 
a  pellet-bow,  which  an  old  Bheel  had  given 
him,  and  which  the  boys  of  the  tribe  use 
against  feathered  game  with  amazing  skill. 
These  pellet-bows  are  shaped  like  an  ordi- 
nary European  bow,  but  have  two  strings, 
between  which  a  slip  of  network  sustains  a 
pellet  of  hard  clay,  about  the  size  of  a  school- 
boy's marble.  This  curious  contrivance  re- 
quires a  peculiar  twist  at  the  moment  of 
discharging,  to  prevent  the  pellet's  hitting 
the  sportsman's  hand,  and  Lutfullah  missed 
every  shot,  until  he  gave  up  the  hope  of 
maintaining  himself  by  the  chace.  Luckily 
there  were  sufficient  wild  figs  and  other  fruit, 
hanging  from  the  dense  boughs  he  threaded 
his  way  among,  to  preserve  him  from  abso- 
lute starvation.  Water,  too,  was  often  to  be 
procured.  But  he  suffered  much  from  fatigue  ; 
for,  if  he  sank  down  for  awhile  to  rest  or  to 
snatch  a  little  sleep,  the  homed  war-cries  of 
the  Bheels  were  in  his  ears,  and  fancy  repre- 
sented every  rustling  leaf  as  the  tread  of  an 
enemy.  Lutfullab,  therefore,  pushed  on, 
among  clouds  and  crags,  and  through 
thickets,  until  evening  came  on.  With 
the  darkness  new  fears  assailed  him.  The 
long,  whining  howl  of  the  jackal,  and  the 
snarl  of  the  dholes,  or  wild  dogs,  reminded 
him  that  he  was  an  involuntary  trespasser 
on  the  domains  of  the  wild  beasts. 

The  pellet-bow  at  length  brought  down 
three  sparrows  and  a  parrot.  The  sparrows 
were  lawful  food,  but  the  parrot — the  parrot 
was  an  unhallowed  thing !  Necessity  has 
no  law,  and  parrot,  after  all,  is  not  pork ; 
so  poor  Poll  was  plucked,  roasted,  and  eaten. 
Glad  was  Lutfullah  Khan  when  he  caught 
sight  of  human  forms  and  faces  once  more. 
But,  as  Robinson  Crusoe,  after  longing  for 
communion  with  his  kind,  was  yet  obliged 
to  shrink  away  from  his  first  savage  visitors, 
so  Lutfullah  felt  very  ill  at  ease  as  he  ap- 
proached a  party  of  poor  men  and  women, 
of  the  Bheel  race,  gathering  firewood.  To 
his  great  joy,  after  some  miles  of  marching, 
he  beheld  the  gardens  and  roofs  of  a  civilised 
community.  The  village  was  Hasilpoor,  and 
Lutfullah  found  food  and  shelter  with  that 
identical  Sheikh  Nusrullah  whose  beard  he 
had,  in  his  boyish  mischief,  so  wantonly 
singed.  But  the  good  old  Mussulman  bore 
no  malice,  and  tended  and  fed  his  guest,  very 
poorly,  it  is  true,  but  to  the  best  of  his  power. 
Here  evil  news  greeted  him.  His  step-father, 
the  subahclar,  had  quarrelled,  at  Holkar's  capi- 
tal of  Indore,  with  his  brother-in-law.  The 
two  robbers  had  fought,  and  the  subahdar  was 
killed  on  the  spot ;  his  murderer  being  shot 
by  one  of  the  persons  who  tried  to  apprehend 
him.  Then  followed  one  of  those  memorable 
sentences,  so  common  among  native  govern- 
ments, and  which  the  admirers  oi  Oriental 


justice  would  do  well  to  notice.  As  the  two 
brothers-in-law  had  broken  the  peace,  and 
died  in  a  quarrel,  the  widows  and  children 
of  the  deceased  were  deprived  of  all  their  heri- 
tage, and  all  the  property  was  seized  by  the 
peons  of  Government.  Lutfullah  found  his 
mother  impoverished  and  dying.  Physicians 
were  consulted  :  the  sufferer  was  removed  to 
her  native  town  ;  her  son  tended  her  with 
anxiety  and  affection ;  but  she  died  soon  after 
her  arrival  at  Ujjain,  leaving  her  little  boy 
to  Lutfullah 's  care.  Lutfullah's  purse  ran  dry 
at  the  end  of  the  funeral  ceremonies,  and  he 
was  very  thankful  to  obtain  the  postmastership 
of  a  village  called  Dharampoor,  at  the  foot  of 
the  Sindua  Pass.  Thus,  for  the  first  time, 
Lutfullah  ate  the  salt  of  the  English  Govern- 
ment. But  in  four  months  the  post  ceased 
to  traverse  Dharampoor,  and  Lutfullah's 
employment  was  at  an  end. 

Finding  his  way  to  different  European 
stations,  he  procured  employment  of  a  nature 
suited  to  his  abilities,  becoming  a  Moonshee, 
or  language-master,  to  various  European 
officers.  He  continued,  with  a  few  inter- 
ruptions, to  give  instruction  in  the  Oriental 
languages  until  the  year  eighteen  hundred 
and  thirty-five.  At  Surat  he  learned  our 
language,  which  he  styles  the  most  difficult  in 
the  world,  after  eight  years'  study  of  it.  He 
dived  with  eagerness  among  the- treasures  of 
our  literature,  enjoyed  our  poets,  was  en- 
lightened by  our  philosophers,  and  even 
translated  part  of  Goldsmith's  Natural  His- 
tory into  Persian.  Sometimes  he  was  the 
instructor  of  some  young  officer  in  Hindu- 
stani, sometimes  a  clerk  or  translator  in  the 
Company's  pay,  sometimes  the  confidential 
servant  of  a  titular  Nawab  or  Mahratta 
Eajah.  He  never  failed,  however,  to  tire 
speedily  of  the  meanness  and  depravity  of 
his  native  employers,  and  to  return  to  his 
favourite  masters,  the  English.  Under 
British  protection  he  marched  with  armies, 
explored  almost  untrodden  mountains,  made 
repeated  sea  voyages,  and  shared,  as  a  non- 
combatant,  in  several  campaigns. 

Lutfullah's  first  experience  of  actual  war 
was  in  a  skirmish  between  the  detachment 
he  accompanied  and  a  body  of  Sciudians. 
The  latter  were  surprised  and  signally  de- 
feated ;  but  turned  out  afterwards  to  be 
friends,  and,  in  fact,  allies,  whom  a  crafty 
native  had  avenged  some  old  grudge  upon 
by  pointing  them  out  as  enemies  to  the 
British.  The  second  expedition  was  against 
the  revolted  islanders  of  two  sacred  places, 
Dwarka  and  Bet.  Here  Lutfullah  beheld 
some  sharp  fighting,  for  the  idolaters  pos- 
sessed cannon  and  a  strong  fort.  The  place 
was  taken,  but  the  garrison  died  sword  in 
hand,  showing  the  most  stubborn  courage. 
On  exploring  the  sacred  islands,  Lutfullah 
was  surprised  and  affected  at  discovering  the 
shrine  of  a  Mahommedan  saint,  one  Pir 
Patta,  of  beatified  memory,  "a  light  of  Is- 
lam," as  he  says,  "  shining  lustrously  in  the 


494      [November  21,1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WOBDS. 


[Conducted  by 


heart  of  the  darkness  of  paganism."  There 
are  few  nations  in  the  world  who  resemble 
the  Hindoos  in  the  strange  but  decorous 
reverence  they  show  to  every  worship  and 
creed,  however  hostile.  The  Buddhist  shrines, 
it  is  true,  were  destroyed  during  the  long 
struggle  between  Brahminism  and  its  world- 
embracing  offshoot,  the  faith  of  Buddha.  But 
to  pollute  or  injure  a  Mahommedan  minor  or 
musjid,  to  deface  a  Moslem  saint's  mauso- 
leum, or  to  tear  away  the  relics  that  decorate 
a  mosque,  does  not  ever  seem  to  present  itself 
to  the  imaginations  of  the  worshippers  of 
Siva.  They  have  endured,  but,  in  this  respect 
at  least,  they  appear  to  be  wanting  in  the 
very  wish  to  retaliate. 

On  a  third  foray,  directed  against  an 
outlaw  tribe,  the  Kattis,  who  were  to  be 
hunted  up  and  down  the  Ghir  mountains, 
Lutfullah  beheld  one  of  those  Hindoo  her- 
mits, whose  fame  for  sanctity  is  so  great, 
and  who  are  assuredly  no  hypocrites,  for 
they  receive  no  alms,  and  refuse  all  human 
intercourse.  Many,  in  fact  the  majority,  of 
the  Fakeers  of  India,  Hindoo  or  Moslem, 
are  a  mere  noisy  gang  of  bawling  impostors, 
who  take  up  their  trade  simply  to  live  in 
idleness  and  luxury,  and  to  whom  the  su- 
perstitious ryots,  male  and  female,  can  deny 
nothing.  Others  are  mild  and  tolerant  in 
their  conversation  with  a  passing  European  ; 
it  is  seldom  that  any  but  a  bellowing  impostor 
greets  a  foreigner  with  a  curse  or  a  scowl,  and 
they  often  refuse  money,  and  even  food,  scru- 
pulously accepting  enough  for  each  day's  sus- 
tenance, and  giving  the  rest  to  some  hungry 
wayfarer.  One  day,  as  Lutfullah  and  his 
pupil  for  the  time,  Lieutenant  Spencer,  were 
riding  among  the  mountains,  the  small  force 
of  soldiers  being  in  advance,  they  were  sur- 
prised by  finding  a  deserted  fire.  On  inquir- 
ing of  their  syces,  who  ran  beside  the  horses' 
heads,  to  whom  the  fire  belonged,  the  tremb- 
ling Hindoos  replied  that  the  fire  must  have 
been  kindled  by  one  of  the  Aghori  Babas, 
or  Omnivorous  Fathers,  and  that  he  would 
be  angry  if  the  party  lingered.  A  few  paces 
farther  on,  the  travellers  came  to  the  edge  of 
a  prodigiously  deep  valley,  and  saw  the  her- 
mit, already  at  a  great  distance,  and  hurrying 
down  the  steep  declivity  with  the  sure-footed 
swiftness  of  a  mountain  goat.  He  often  looked 
round,  and  Lutfullah's  English  pupil,  being 
very  anxious  to  converse  with  one  of  these 
extraordinary  personages,  beckoned  and 
shouted  lustily,  but  the  holy  man  only  fled 
the  faster.  The  hill-side  being  frightfully 
steep,  the  monk  was  not  followed,  except  by 
the  telescope,  which  revealed  him  as  a  noble- 
looking  old  fellow,  with  a  long  white  beard 
and  shaggy  hair  like  silver  falling  over  his 
shoulders,  keen,  sparkling  eyes,  and  no  cloth- 
ing, save  a  coating  of  wood  ashes,  which  are 
some  protection  from  the  cold  of  winter. 
The  detachment  fixed  its  head -quarters  at 
Tulsi  Sham,  a  Hindoo  monastery  among  the 
mountains.  Here  the  camp-folio  we  ra  and 


non-combatants  suffered  much  from  hunger, 
but  threats  of  sacking  the  monastery  induced 
the  Hindoo  abbot  to  open  his  vast  granaries. 
It  should  be  mentioned,  however,  that  the 
worthy  superior,  when  once  frightened  into 
producing  grain  at  all,  produced  it  as  a  gift ; 
refusing  any  money  payment,  and  feeding  the 
whole  of  his  unwelcome  guests,  gratis,  while 
he  declared  the  corn  was  not  his,  but  en- 
trusted to  his  stewardship  to  relieve  the 
needy. 

The  expedition  lasted  three  months  ;  by 
which  time  the  rebellious  Kattis  were 
utterly  broken  and  destroyed.  Lutfullah's 
pupil  being  now  a  proficient  in  Hindustani, 
the  Moonshee  returned  to  Surat,  which, 
during  all  the  later  part  of  his  life,  he  has 
considered  as  his  home.  His  sojourn  there, 
on  this  occasion,  was  brief,  but  his  curiosity — 
a  rare  quality  with  a  Moslem — prompted  him 
to  visit  by  stealth  one  of  those  curious  ceme- 
teries where  the  Parsee  fire-worshippers 
expose  their  dead  in  roofless  towers,  to  be 
picked  to  the  bone  by  vultures  and  hawks. 
The  Guebres  are  very  jealous  of  the  sanctity 
of  these  places  ;  and  Lutfullah,  who,  after 
clambering  to  the  summit  of  a  tower  full  of 
skeletons,  scattered  bones,  and  half-decayed 
corpses,  had  the  ill-luck  to  fall  from  his  perch 
with  a  noise  that  alarmed  the  warder,  was 
glad  to  escape  without  being  stoned  or  beaten 
to  a  jelly.  Leaving  Surat,  Lutfullah  next  took 
service  with  a  young  Mahratta  prince,  to 
whom  he  was  Persian  translator.  His  salary 
was  small,  but  his  duties  were  light,  being 
chiefly  to  play  chess  with  the  prime  minister, 
and  to  lose  every  game.  But,  the  shabby  con- 
duct of  his  new  masters — who  deprived  him  of 
the  presents  given  him  by  Scindia  at  a  grand 
ceremony — made  him  once  more  abandon 
them  for  his  old  friends  the  English.  He  again 
taught  languages,  never  ceasing  to  learn  as 
well  as  to  teach  ;  and,  after  some  time,  find- 
ing that  his  servants  cheated  him,  he  married, 
as  he  very  naively  relates,  that  he  might 
have  a  housekeeper.  Marriage,  however,  by 
no  means  appeared  to  suit  him,  and  he  in- 
dulged in  many  sage  remarks  on  the  futility 
of  human  wishes.  His  conscience,  however, 
more  tender  than  those  of  most  of  his  co- 
religionists, forbade  him  to  divorce  his  wife 
on  slight  grounds  ;  but  he  complains  bitterly 
of  the  expense  and  responsibility  of  the 
married  state. 

About  this  time  he  went,  with  some  of 
his  English  pupils,  to  witness  a  suttee.  His 
English  friends  did  their  utmost  to  dis- 
suade the  young  widow — a  handsome  girl 
of  fifteen — from  the  sacrifice  she  was  bent 
on  ;  but  public  opinion,  fanaticism,  and  the 
powerful  stimulants  secretly  administered  by 
the  Brahmins,  made  the  victim  defy  reason, 
and  even  pain  ;  for,  before  mounting  the  fatal 
pile  she  actually  wrapped  her  finger  in  oiled 
rags,  and  setting  it  on  fire  so  that  it  burned 
like  a  candle,  triumphantly  exhibited  it  to 
the  Europeans  ;  who  having  no  authority,  as 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LUTFULLAH  KHAN. 


ber  21.  1837.]      495 


at  present,  to  interfere  by  force,  reluctantly 
withdrew. 

Lntfullah's  memory  is  wonderfully  tenaci- 
ous of  acts  of  kindness,  and  alas,  of  affronts, 
especially  when  offered  by  a  foreigner. 
Indeed,  he  judges  the  English  by  a  stricter 
standard,  in  all  their  dealings  with  himself, 
than  he  applies  to  his  own  countrymen  ;  and 
every  hasty  word  of  a  testy  commandant, 
every  instance  of  neglect  by  a  governor  or 
envoy,  is  minutely  registered  at  the  distance 
of  a  quarter  of  a  century.  Yet  Lutfullah, 
so  sensitive  in  his  dealings  with  his  Chris- 
tian masters,  was  not  disposed  to  tolerate 
familiarity  from  the  inferior  classes  of 
his  countrymen  ;  and  on  one  occasion, 
when  a  tired  pedestrian,  in  mean  clothes, 
with  a  valise  on  his  shoulder,  accosted 
him  at  the  door  of  the  Scinde  Residency, 
Lutfullah  roughly  repulsed  him  as  a  beg- 
garly traveller.  However,  seeing  the  man 
sit  down  very  humbly  under  a  tree,  and 
begin  to  eat  a  crust  of  bread,  Lutfullah 
relented,  and  sent  him  some  curry  by  a 
servant,  who  brought  word  that  the  shabby 
pilgrim  had  vanished.  Lutfuilah  was  sum- 
moned to  the  Residency,  and  there,  won- 
der of  wonders  !  sat  beside  the  Resident, 
that  ragged  Moslem  adventurer,  in  a  scarlet 
British  uniform.  The  supposed  poor  pil- 
grim was  merely  an  admirable  linguist, 
making  his  way  from  India  to  Constan- 
tinople on  foot,  and  disguised. 

On  his  return  from  Scinde,  Lutfullah  took 
service  with  Mir  Jafir  Ali  Khan,  a  son-in-law 
of  the  old  Nawab  of  Surat ;  and  when  the  old 
Nawab  died,  and  a  decree  of  Lord  Ellen- 
borough's  abolished  the  titular  dignity  and 
pension  of  the  family,  it  was  resolved  that 
Mir  Jafir  Ali  Khan  should  repair  to  England, 
to  urge  his  claims  in  person.  Accordingly, 
in  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-four,  Lutfullah 
accompanied  his  chief  on  board  a  steamer 
that  the  young  prince  had  chartered,  to  con- 
vey himself  and  his  suite  from  Bombay  to 
Ceylon,  where  they  were  to  be  transferred  to 
a  packet  of  the  Peninsular  and  Oriental 
Company.  Besides  Lutfullah,  an  English- 
man had  been  engaged  as  secretary  and  inter- 
preter, and  a  grave  old  physician,  Badr'ud- 
deen,  accompanied  the  party. 

The  voyage  to  Ceylon  was  rough  but 
short,  and  our  Mahommedan  voyagers  were 
delighted  with  the  island ;  though  fairly 
driven  out  of  an  English  hotel  in  Colombo, 
by  the  agonising  sight  of  a  herd  of  the 
unclean  beasts  that  were  grunting  and 
wallowing  in  the  yard.  Of  swine,  Lutfullah 
had,  in  fact,  a  still  more  rabid  hatred  than 
his  countrymen  in  general  ;  and  tries  very 
hard  to  prove,  by  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments, that  pork  is  prohibited  meat  for 
Christians. 

He  was  charmed  with  the  comforts  he  met 
on  board  the  Bentinck  ;  but,  in  spite  of  all 
the  attention  of  the  officers  and  the  excellence 
of  the  vessel,  his  English  friends  distressed 


him.  They  were  too  great  eaters,  and  could 
make,  he  declares,  six  meals  a-day.  In  India 
he  had  been  used  to  look  on  them  as  a  glut- 
tonous race,  and  to  call  them  the  "  omnivo- 
rous "  English,  the  "carnivorous"  English, 
and  so  forth  ;  but  the  sea-air  had  apparently 
sharpened  their  appetites  to  a  shocking 
extent. 

At  Aden,  when  the  Arabs  brought  donkeys 
for  the  passengers  to  ride  from  the  jetty  to 
the  town,  the  travellers  were  scandalised. 
To  ride  an  ass  in  India  is  a  still  more  dis- 
graceful act  than  it  is  reckoned  among 
Spanish  hidalgos  ;  and  Mir  Jafir  Ali  Khan, 
who  weighed  seventeen  stone,  lifted  up  the 
little  animal,  as  the  Arab  driver  asked  him  to 
mount,  and  called  all  the  imaums  to  witness 
that  he  was  fitter  to  carry  the  beast  than  the 
beast  was  to  carry  him. 

On  the  voyage  up  the  Red  Sea,  at  the 
hour  of  evening  prayer,  Lutfullah,  more 
learned  than  his  comrades,  turned  to  the 
east  to  repeat  his  Namsy.  This  was  too 
much  for  the  more  unlettered  Indians.  It 
was  in  vain  that  Lutfullah  pointed  out  the 
Arab  pilot,  who  was  praying,  with  his 
bronzed  face  turned  eastward.  Jeering  and 
reproach  greeted  the  absurd  heresy  which 
dared  to  assert  that  Mecca  could  be  at  any 
point  of  the  compass,  save  the  west,  as  in 
India.  Lutfullah  must  be  drunk — must  be 
mad — must  be  turning  Kaffir.  However,  the 
rough  old  Arab  pilot  ended  the  dispute  by 
bidding  the  Indians  turn  eastward,  like 
every  true  believer  in  Egypt,  or  else  "  prepare 
themselves  for  hell-fire,"  for  saying  Mecca  lay 
to  the  west. 

In  Egypt  the  voyagers  had  an  interview 
with  Mehemet  Ali,  at  his  palace  of  Shubra, 
and  were  much  impressed  by  the  sight  of  a 
man  so  renowned.  And,  on  the  fourteenth  of 
May,  they  landed  at  Southampton,  and  set 
out  from  their  hotel  to  see  the  town.  The 
curiosity  of  the  crowds  that  collected  an- 
noyed them  so  much  that  old  Doctor  Badr'ud- 
deen  was  desirous  to  pelt  stones  at  the  inha- 
bitants, but  was  checked  by  Lutfullah.  The 
journey  by  railway  to  London  delighted  the 
young  Nawab  and  his  followers.  They  did 
not  know  which  to  admire  most, — the  verdure 
of  the  country  or  the  method  of  travelling  by 
which  fatigue  was  avoided. 

During  their  stay  in  England,  the  Nawab 
and  his  attendants  saw  as  many  lions  as  pos- 
sible, and  were  pleased  with  what  they  saw. 
They  gave  themselves  up  for  lost  at  the  Dio- 
rama, believing  themselves  in  a  wizard's  cave ; 
they  were  charmed  by  Herr  Dobler,  while 
justly  declaring  the  superiority  of  the  jugglers 
of  India ;  and  when  Lutfullah  descended  in  the 
diving-bell,  at  the  Polytechnic,  his  sorrowing 
countrymen  mourned  him  as  one  drowned 
until  by  magic  he  was  restored  to  them.  To 
describe  how  the  Orientals  were  hospitably 
entertained,  night  after  night,  how  they  were 
introduced  to  people  of  high  rank,  how  Lut- 
fullah was  enraptured  by  the  view  of  St. 


.     496      [November  21,1887.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Paul's,  and  by  the  courtesy  of  a  personage 
•whom  he  calls  the  "  Abbot  of  "Westminster," 
how  he  was  scandalised  by  the  Italian  Opera, 
and  delighted  by  the  Hunter  Museum,  it 
would  take  up  too  much  space  to  narrate. 
The  young  Nawab  obtained  compensation 
for  the  loss  of  his  father-in-law's  pensions  and 
dignities,  and  the  party  returned  to  India, 
where  Lutfullah,  being  now  a  widower,  mar- 
ried a  second  time.  He  lives  with  his  family 
at  Surat,  in  a  green  old  age,  respected  by 
Europeans  and  natives,  but  not,  unfortu- 
nately, as  rich  in  worldly  goods  as  his  many 
excellent  qualities  and  services  would  seem 
to  have  deserved.  His  opinions  about  India, 
and  its  condition,  are  certainly  entitled  to 
respect.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to  point  out 
the  cowardice,  sloth,  and  pampered  arro- 
gance of  the  high  caste  sepoy  of  Bengal. 
The  cruelty  that  lay  hidden  under  that  sleek 
exterior  he  does  not  seem  to  have  sus- 
pected. 


LYNDON  HALL. 

IN   SEVEN  CHAPTERS.      CHAPTER  THE  FIFTH. 

WHAT  had  passed  into  Lyndon  Hall  ?  or 
rather,  what  had  passed  from  it  ?  The  very 
birds  seemed  to  sing  more  cheerily  in  that 
hoary  beech-row,  and  the  Colonel  himself  for- 
got his  drill  manners.  Lucy's  fascination 
over  him  was  more  potent  than  ever,  and 
smoothed  him  to  such  pleasant  serenity  that 
even  Norali  was  included  in  the  geuei'al  am- 
nesty, and  her  chain  lengthened  by  a  couple 
of  links  at  the  very  least.  The  young  men, 
of  course,  proposed  to  leave ;  but  the  Colonel, 
prompted  by  Lucy,  would  not  accept  their 
dismissal,  and  insisted  on  their  remaining 
some  weeks  longer. 

The  walks  and  drives  about  Lyndon  were 
very  lovely.  Norah  had  always  taken  great 
delight  in  them,  in  her  little,  quiet,  silent 
way  ;  but  she  thought  them  more  beautiful 
than  ever  now.  But  the  hedgerows  looked 
greener,  the  dew  lay  more  brightly  on  the 
glittering  grass,  the  flowers  were  more  nume- 
rous, the  birds  sang  more  sweetly  this  year, 
than,  on  any  preceding  years :  there  was  a 
life,  a  freshness,  a  luxuriance  she  had  never 
noticed  before  :  it  was  nature  without  her 
mask  of  clouds.  She  did  not  know  that  the 
change  was  in  herself,  not  in  outward  things, 
and  that  the  light  which  lay  so  bright  and 
loving  011  the  world,  was  the  light  of  freedom, 
not  of  heaven.  Every  one  noticed  the  change 
in  Norah.  The  very  servants  discussed  it  in 
their  hall. 

Norah  and  Edmund  were  frequent  com- 
panions. This  was  by  Miss  Lucy's  ma- 
nceuvering.  Having  made  up  her  mind  that 
that  they  were  the  two  Halves  of  which  the 
Germans  speak,  she  did  her  best  to  n't  them 
together.  She  hoped  to  accomplish  her  moral 
masonry  before  Gregory's  retm*n :  when  it 
would  be  too  late  to  "  hark  back." 

"This  is  pleasant,  Lucy,"  said  Norah,  sud- 


denly. She  and  her  friend  were  sitting  on. 
the  lawn  ;  Edmund,  half-lying  at  their  feet, 
reading  aloud.  Launce  was  away  with  the 
Colonel,  inspecting  some  improvements. 

Lucy  looked  down  at  Edmund.  She  saw 
his  face  flush,  and  his  eyes  grow  large  and 
dark. 

"Yes,  very  enjoyable,"  she  answered. 
"  What  do  you  say,  Edmund  1 " 

"I  think  enjoyable  too  cold  a  word,"  said 
Ednumd,  raising  his  eyes  to  Norah. 

"Take  my  advice,"  said  Norah  hastily. 
"Do  not  despise  coldness.  Do  not  strain 
after  excess  of  expression  or  unbridled  feel- 
ing. There  is  nothing  like  self-command. 
Mr.  Thorold,  believe  me." 

Lucy  and  Edmund  exchanged  looks  ;  but 
Edmund's  was  full  of  pain  ;  in  Lucy's  was  a 
slight  sneer,  as  she  thought  what  a  shameful 
trick  Fate  had  played  them  all,  to  throw  Him 
at  the  feet  of  one  who  had  not  strength  or 
power  enough  to  love  him  :  to  waste  all  that 
fire  and  energy  in  watering  desert  sand.  Ah  ! 
if  that  same  fate  had  but  given  Gregory  to 
her — his  love  would  have  met  a  far  different 
return. 

"  My  view  of  life,  and  of  love,  is  sympathy," 
said  Edmund,  gently.  "Sympathy  certainly 
cannot  change  our  natures ;  it  cannot  make 
the  passionate  cold,  or  the  cold  passionate  ; 
it  cannot  bend  the  strong,  or  nerve  the  weak ; 
but  it  can  modify.  If  our  uncontrolled  im- 
pulses wound  the  one  we  love,  it  seems  to  me 
the  manifest  duty  of  the  man,  who  is  the 
stronger,  to  fashion  himself,  so  far  as  he  can, 
into  such  form  as  his  friend  would  have  him 
wear  ;  and  to  check  for  her  sake,  all  outward 
expression  of  what  he  may  not  be  able  to 
destroy  within  him.  I  understand  no  self- 
assertion  in  the  man  who  loves." 

Norah  did  not  answer.  While  Edmund 
spoke,  she  looked  at  him  earnestly  and  sor- 
rowfully, with  something  very  like  tears  in 
her  eyes.  But  Norah's  tears  seldom  passed 
the  boundary  of  her  lids. 

"  Not  many  men  are  like  you,"  at  last  sho 
said,  with  a  gentle  sigh. 

"  O  !  he  is  such  a  gentle,  loving  creature  !  " 
said  Lucy  to  her,  when  they  were  alone. 
"Edmund  always  reminds  me  of  that  statue 
of  the  youthful  genius  you  are  so  fond  of ;  and, 
by  the  bye,  he  is  not  unlike,  in  feature  ;  so 
gentle,  so  kind,  so  considerate  to  others,  so 
full  of  rare  right  feeling."  She  bent  her 
eyes  on  the  little  creature  earnestly. 

"  Yes,  he  is  a  very  interesting  boy,"  Norah 
answered  cordially.  "I  never  knew  one  I 
liked  to  be  with  so  much,  or  who  put  me  so 
entirely  at  my  ease,  And  that  is  no  slight 
praise  from  such  a  nervous  person  as  I  am  ! " 
she  added,  half  laughing. 

Lucy  reported  her  words  to  Edmund,  and 
I  cost  him  a  night's  rest  thereby.  It  wua  not 
only  the  fulfilment  of  his  own  love — for  he 
knew  he  loved  her — that  he  sought,  but  her 
deliverance  from  a  man  who  held  her  by 
force,  and  made  her  very  life  a  burden  to 


F  Dickens.] 


LYNDON  HALL. 


[November  21,  1337.]      497 


her.  We  all  know  what  a  terrible  lever  to 
love  is  fanaticism,  and  the  belief  that  love  is 
duty. 

Norah  saw  nothing.  She  had  been  too 
long  accustomed  to  the  fiery  noon  of  Gregory's 
passion  to  see'  what  forms  were  floating  in 
the  soft  dim  twilight  of  Edmund's  tender 
affection.  Unconsciously  she  encouraged  what 
she  did  not  recognise.  By  her  gentle  kindness 
and  her  evident  preference ;  by  her  silent 
friendship ;  by  her  girlish  confidence,  she 
aided  hourly  in  consolidating  the  fatal  fancy 
she  would  have  destroyed  at  once,  had  she 
known  of  it.  But  it  never  occurred  to  her 
that  he  meant  love  when  she  meant  only  kind- 
ness, or  that  she  was  answering  a  passion 
when  she  gave  back  mere  kindness.  Then,  he 
was  so  young — such  a  mere  boyj — only  just 
her  own  age  ! 

Gregory  had  now  been  away  three  weeks. 
He  wrote  letters  daily  that  might  have  been 
traced  in  fire :  so  fiercely  loving  and  so 
full  of  burning  anguish.  They  were  less 
p;uuful  to  Norah  than  his  presence  ;  but, 
though  only  letters,  they  were  singularly 
trying  to  her.  She  dreaded  them  in  a  weaker 
degree,  but  in  the  same  manner  as  she  used 
to  dread  his  visits  and  his  passionate  prayer  : 
"Norah,  let  me  speak  with  you  !  " 

He  said  nothing  of  his  return,  and  nothing 
of  his  business.  The  Colonel  alone  knew 
what  that  business  was  ;  and  was  discreet. 
Thankfulness  at  his  absence  swallowed  up 
curiosity  in  Norah,  and  hope  in  Lucy  ;  so 
that  days  and  days  wore  on,  and  no  mention 
was  made  of  his  return.  And  still  Lxicy's 
brothers  stayed  at  Lyndon  Hall,  and  Ed- 
mund's soul  went  deeper  beneath  the  waves 
which  give  back  nothing  living. 

But  Launce  ?  O  !  good-tempered,  genial, 
soft-hearted  Launce  looked  on  and  wondered  ; 
and,  when  he  did  not  wonder,  laughed. 
As  for  the  Colonel,  he  thought  his  way  was 
clear  before  him.  Surely  he  had  secured  all 
the  approaches  !  Surely  she  had  not  an  inch 
of  ground  left  for  defence  or  for  retreat ;  but, 
more  surely  than  all,  she  was  willing  to  capi- 
tulate, and  did  not  seek  for  defence  or  retreat. 
And  he — he  would  be  proud  of  his  beautiful 
prize  ;  he  would  parade  her  before  the  eyes 
of  the  world,  as  a  priceless  gem  in  a  gorgeous 
setting.  He  was  satisfied  there  were  no 
flaws  in  the  jewel,  and  that  he  would  not  be 
disgraced  by  wearing  it.  So,  the  sooner  it  was 
set  upon  his  hand  the  better  for  her,  and  the 
happier  for  him.  But  this  was  just  what 
Lucy  did  not  want.  It  was  premature  and 
disorganising.  The  explanation  must  be 
delayed  at  least  till  Norah 's  affair  was  settled ; 
and  yet  the  Colonel  had  grown  so  pressing. 
What  should  she  do  ?  Foolish  girl  that 
she  had  been !  —  why  had  she  heaped  up 
the  coals  so  high  1  What  she  had  lighted 
for  amusement  in  the  first  instance,  threat- 
ened conflagration  now  to  all  around  ;  and 
no  one  was  to  blame  but  herself.  She  could 
have  wept  at  seeing  her  mine  sprung  too 


quickly,  and  at  her  inability  to  stave  off  the 
dreaded  hour.  But  weeping  her  spiteful 
teai-s,  or  smiling  her  most  blandishing  smiles, 
it  was  all  one  to  Fate  and  the  Colonel :  the 
hour  came  on  inexorably.  Colonel  Lyndon 
of  Lyndon  Hall  made  her  a  formal  offer  of 
his  hand  and  fortune,  in  the  bay-window  of 
the  drawing-room  ;  sitting  on  the  ottoman, 
and  offering  this  precious  prize  in  such  a  tone 
of  provoking  certainty,  that  Lucy  could  have 
boxed  his  ears  with  good-will.  As  she  could 
not  afford  herself  that  satisfaction,  she 
accepted  him. 

"  At  all  events,"  said  Lucy  to  herself,  "  if 
Gregory  and  Norah  do  marry,  and  I  do  not 
wish  to  tie  myself  to  this  old  gentleman — but 
Lyndon  is  a  fine  place  ! — I  can  always  break 
it  off  when  I  like.  Better  that  chance,  than 
refusing  him,  and  being  obliged  to  leave 
Lyndon  and  to  have  all  my  plans  destroyed." 
'•  But  no  one  was  to  know  of  it,"  said  Lucy, 
cosily.  "It  was  their  dear  little  secret,  and 
they  would  keep  it  sacred  for  a  few  days 
yet."  And  the  Colonel  assented.  Thus  Lucy 
gained  more  breathing  time. 

CHAPTER  THE   SIXTH. 

"  SEE,  how  beautiful  it  is,"  said  Edmund, 
standing  on  the  flight  of  steps  leading  to  the 
lawn.  "  Will  you  not  come  out  into  the 
garden,  Miss  Lyndon  ]  Pray  do  !  it  is  so 
delicious,  and  it  will  do  you  good." 

He  asked  her  earnestly ;  and  Norah 
smiled,  and  stepped  through  the  open 
window.  They  strolled  on  the  lawn,  Ed- 
mund talking  as  she  loved  to  hear  him,  in 
that  deep,  gentle,  half  poetic,  half  metaphy- 
sical, and  wholly  vague  and  dreamy  way  of  his, 
which,  by  its  very  vagueness,  seemed  to  open 
new  worlds  to  Norah.  She  listening  quietly 
and  with  a  certain  absorption  to  which  poor 
Edmund  gave  a  warmer  parentage  than  simple 
intellectual  pleasure.  Interested  and  uncon- 
scious, Norah  by  degrees  drew  towards  the 
shrubbery.  Still  listening,  she  passed  through 
the  narrow  path,  and  up  the  long  walk,  to 
the  garden-chair  beneath  the  beech-trees. 

"Let  us  sit  here,"  said  Edmund. 

Norah  disregarded  the  omen  of  place,  and 
sat  down.  He  slopped  speaking.  Surprised 
at  his  silence,  she  looked  up.  The  look  which 
met  her's — the  plaintive,  long,  beseeching 
look — surprised  her  still  more.  But  she  did 
not  read  it  correctly. 

"May  I  speak  to  you  candidly  and  without 
reserve?" 

"  Yes,"  answered  Norah,  perplexed. 

"  Miss  Lyndon — "  he  began  ;  but  his  voice 
failed  him.  "  I  am  afraid  of  displeasing  you," 
he  then  said  anxiously. 

"  O,  no !  you  cannot  displease  me,  Mr. 
Thorold.  What  have  you  to  say  ?  I  am  not 
afraid  of  any  explanations  with  you,"  and 
she  smiled. 

"  Thank  you— thank  you  for  that  word  ! 
Then  you  will  hear  me  patiently  and  quietly 
and  without  anger,  whatever  you  may  reply  ? " 


498       [Motemfcer  21. 1867.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


"  Yes,"  said  Norah,  with  a  frank  but  still 
perplexed  expression,  say  ing  to  herself;  "  what 
can  he  mean  ?" 

"  Have  I  deceived  myself  ? "  he  then  began  ; 
"have  I  read  your  heart  only  by  the  light  of 
my  own  ?  But,  no  !  it  cannot  all  be  only 
the  reflection  of  myself !  You  do  feel  for  me 
kindly,  affectionately,  with  sympathy — is  it 
not  so,  Miss  Lyndon  ?  You  do  ! " 

He  spoke  earnestly,  but  0  !  so  gently — his 
soft  voice  failing  like  music  on  the  air,  his 
manner  so  controlled,  so  respectful ! 

"  Yes,"  said  Norah,  looking  frightened,  "  I 
do  feel  all  this  for  you." 

"  No  more  1  Must  I  be  content  only  with 
friendship  1  O,  Norah !  I  can  keep  my 
secret  no  longer.  Promised  though  you  are 
to  another — but  promised  to  one  you  do  not 
love,  and  with  whom  you  are  unhappy  and 
ill-assorted — it  is  no  dishonour  to  seek  to  free 
you.  If  you  can  gain  sufficient  strength  to 
break  off  your  present  engagement,  Miss 
Lyndon,  the  whole  study  of  my  life  will  be 
how  best  to  make  you  happy  ;  how  best  to 
shape  my  life  to  yours." 

He  took  her  hand :  it  was  cold  and  trembled. 

"I  am  sorry  you  have  said  all  this," 
Norah  answered  in  a  low  voice,  "for  now  I 
have  lost  my  companion.  I  do  not  love  you, 
Mr.  Thorold,  and  I  did  not  know  that  you 
loved  me.  You  were  a  prized  companion — 
the  first  I  have  ever  had — and  I  liked  you 
and  felt  grateful  to  you  ;  but,  indeed,  indeed, 
I  do  not  love  you." 

Edmund  made  no  complaint.  He  only 
shivered,  and  turned  paler  than  Norah  her- 
self, his  forehead  and  upper  lip  standing 
thick  with  heavy  drops. 

"Then  you  love  your  cousin,  who  is  ex- 
pected back  so  soon — perhaps  this  very  day — 
to  claim  you  ?" 

Norah  was  silent. 

"  I  did  not  know  that,"  continued  Edmund ; 
"  I  did  not  believe  you  loved  him." 

Still  she  did  not  speak  ;  she  only  shuddered 
slightly  and  looked  down. 

"  But  you  forgive  me  for  my  presumption  ?" 
said  the  poor  youth  grievingly,  doing  his  best 
to  prolong  the  conversation — the  last  he 
might  ever  have  with  her  alone,  or  on  that 
dangerously  dear  topic. 

"  .Forgive  you  1 — yes  ! — but  it  is  not  pre- 
sumption. I  have  been  to  blame  for  not 
having  understood  your  feelings  better. 
Forgive  you  ?  Indeed,  yes  !  but  there  is  no 
forgiveness  needed  ! " 

She  spoke  fast  for  her,  and  almost  with 
warmth. 

He  raised  her  hand  to  his  lips,  without 
any  show  of  passion,  in  a  quiet  subdued 
manner  only,  then  left  her — very  sadly,  but 
patiently  and  calmly — Norah  looking  after 
him  sadly,  too — feeling  as  if  she  should  never 
see  that  young  slight  form  again. 

She  was  still  looking  after  him  when 
Gregory  stood  before  her.  Livid,  haggard, 
woru,  with  a  light  in  his  eyes  as  in  those  of 


a  panther  about  to  spring,  he  stood  before 
Norah  like  an  evil  spirit.  Norah  screamed, 
and  started  to  her  feet.  Then,  summoning 
all  her  self-possession,  she  sat  down  again, 
slowly  stiffening  into  the  statue-like,  passive, 
painful  immobility  which  was  ail  that  Gregory 
knew  of  her. 

"  I  have  heard  your  conversation,"  said 
Gregory,  bitterly.  "  Is  this  the  way  you 
keep  your  vow,  Norah  ?  Answer  me  at 
once,  and  without  subterfuge,  is  this  what 
you  call  faithfulness  ?  " 

"  I  have  broken  no  vow,"  said  Norah. 

"  No  ?  Then  perhaps  my  ears  have  de- 
ceived me  ;  perhaps  I  have  heard  nothing  ; 
perhaps  it  is  a  dream — a  fancy — and  young 
Edmund  Thorold  has  made  you  no  offer  of 
his  love.  Am  I  mad,  Norah  1  Am  I  dream- 
ing ?  Have  I  my  actual  senses,  and  yet  you 
dare  tell  me  to  my  face  that  you  have  kept 
your  faith  with  me  1 " 

"If  you  have  heard  all,  cousin,  you  will 
know  that  I  have  done  so." 

"  Proof  of  which,  I  find  my  rival  pouring 
out  words  of  love  to  you  !  That  looks  like 
woman's  faith,  surely.  O  Norah,  Norah  !  " 
he  cried,  dropping  this  bitter  satire  of  his 
manner  for  the  wild  love  natural  to  him,  "  is 
it  not  maddening  for  any  man  to  have  the 
thing  he  loves  profaned  by  the  love  of 
another  ?  Is  it  not  torture,  think  you,  on 
returning  home  to  claim  the  treasure  of  one's 
life,  to  find  a  rude  hand  laid  on  the  casket, 
and  one's  very  title  disputed  ?  Norah,  what 
did  I  hear  when  my  eager  blood  had  flown  to 
my  heart  for  joy  to  find  myself  so  near  you, 
— what  did  I  hear  ?  A  boy  telling  you  that 
you  did  not  love  me,  and  you  suffering  the  lie 
to  go  forth  uncontradicted  !  Not  love  me  ! — 
not  love  me  !  Ay,  before  God  and  man,  you 
do  !  I  have  come  for  you,  Norah  ;  I  have 
come  to  bid  you  fly  with  me  to-night ;  to 
leave  all,  and  follow  me,  as  you  swore  you 
would  do  ;  to  be  mine — indissolubly  mine — 
before  heaven  and  the  world  ;  never  more  to 
be  taken  from  me — never  more  to  be  sepa- 
rated. Norah,  Norah  !  I  call  on  you  now  to 
fulfil  your  promise,  and  to  come  !  " 

"To-night,  cousin?  Secretly!  Without 
my  father's  knowledge  ?  No,  no  ! "  said 
Norah,  terrified. 

He  seized  her  in  his  arms. 

Despair  and  terror  nerved  Norah.  "No, 
cousin,  no,"  she  said,  "  I  cannot  do  this  with- 
out my  father's  consent." 

"  Then  that  lad  spoke  true.  You  do  not ' 
love  me,"  groaned  Gregory.  "  0  !  what  pre- 
vents my  killing  you  now,  as  you  lie  back 
upon  my  arm  ?  What  better  death  for 
both  ?  "  he  muttered,  passing  his  hand  inside 
his  vest,  and  laying  it  on  the  handle  of  a 
dagger  always  worn  there. 

"  You  may  kill  me  if  you  will,  cousin,"  said 
Norah,  her  terror  lending  her  the  semblance 
of  courage. 

"  Kill  you  !  Not  a  hair  of  that  golden 
head  should  come  to  harm  by  me !  "  "v!arl 


cried 


Charles  Dickens.] 


LYNDON  HALL. 


[November  21, 1SS7-1       499 


poor  Gregory,  pressing  his  lips  upon  her 
head.  "  My  life  !  ray  love  !  Harm  from  my 
hand  ?  Never !  Never !  Harm  to  myself 
first.  But  you  love  me,  too  ]  " 

"No,"  said  Norah,  "I  do  not  love  you, 
cousin." 

"  You  do  not  love  me  ?  Then  you  love 
him  ?  Woe  to  him  !  " 

"Cousin,"  said  Norah,  faintly,  "I  do  not 
love  him.  I  love  no  one." 

Norah  never  knew,  in  after  years,  how 
much  was  true,  and  how  much  fancy,  of  what 
she  thought  she  remembered  of  the  time  when 
her  cousiu  leapt  the  meadow-hedge,  and  she 
told  him,  with  the  courage  of  despair,  that 
she  did  not  love  him. 

Twilight  was  drawing  on.  In  a  distant 
part  of  the  park,  Edmund  Thorold  was  seen 
by  a  pair  of  watchful  eyes  to  walk  by  the 
river-side.  The  youth  was  thinking  of  the 
scene  beneath  the  beech-trees  ;  lamenting 
over  his  ill-fortune  ;  grieving  that  he  had 
tempted  fate  too  soou  ;  but,  above  all,  griev- 
ing that  he  must  leave  the  first  and  only 
woman  he  had  yet  found  to  realise  his  ideal : 
that  he  must  leave  her  to  slavery  and  misery, 
while  he  went  out  to  desolation  and  despair. 
He  sat  down  on  the  branch  of  a  tree  over- 
hanging the  river,  just  where  it  ran  most 
rapidly,  through  the  arches  of  the  bridge, — 
where  it  was  deepest,  wildest,  and  noisiest. 
A  stealthy  step  crept  up  to  him  as  he  sat ; 
but  he  saw  nothing :  his  face  was  pressed 
upon  his  arms,  and  these  were  laid  against 
the  tree,  and  the  rushing  water  deadened 
every  sound.  Suddenly  he  heard  a  cry.  He 
started  up.  A  dark  face  glared  over  him  ;  a 
hand  was  on  his  throat ;  and  he  was  swung 
through  the  air  like  a  child,  then  dashed 
heavily  upon  the  rocks  below.  A  slight 
moan,  a  faint  stirring  of  the  limbs,  the  broken 
eddy  boiling  and  roaring  for  a  moment,  then 
closing  again ;  and  the  river  ran  reddened 
over  a  bleeding  corpse. 

That  night  Lucy  Thorold  eloped  with 
Gregory  Lyndon. 

CHAPTER  THE  SEVENTH. 

THE  next  day  Lyndon  Hall  was  in  con- 
fusion. Edmund  missing, — not  at  home  all 
night ;  Lucy  flown  ;  Norah  like  a  ghost  ; 
Gregory  seen  stealing  about  the  place  in  a 
mysterious  and  burglarious  fashion, — all 
these  wild  reports  met  Colonel  Lyndon  as 
he  descended  to  the  breakfast-room,  where 
Launcelot  Thorold,  agitated  and  abashed, 
was  the  only  one  to  greet  him.  Norah  had 
not  yet  come  down.  It  was  with  great  effort 
that  she  came  at  all,  for  she  was  painfully  ill. 

"  What  does  this  mean  ] "  said  the  Colonel, 
angrily.  "  Is  all  the  household  in  league  to 
bewilder  me  ?  Do  you  understand  it,  Mr. 
Thorold  ?  Where  are  your  brother  and 
sister  ]  Where,  too,  is  Norah  1  What "  (an 
untranslatable  expletive)  "  is  the  meanin"-  of 
all  this,  sir  1 " 

"  I  do  not  know  where  my  brother  is," 


replied  Launcelot.  "  He  has  not  been  at 
home  all  night.  My  sister,  I  grieve  to 
say——"  He  hesitated. 

"  Well,  sir,  what  ?  Speak,  Mr.  Thorold  ! 
Your  sister?"  The  old  Colonel  looked 
stern,  pulled  up  his  stock,  and  scowled,  as  if 
Launcelot  had  been  the  cause  of  it  all. 

"  My  sister "  began  Launcelot.  But 

here  he  was  interrupted  by  a  servant  bringing 
in  a  small  scented  note,  written  in  violet  ink, 

"If  you  please,  sir,  this  is  for  you,"  said 
the  man.  "Justine,  Miss  Thorold 's  maid, 
gave  it  me.  Miss  Thorold  left  it  for  you  on 
her  pincushion." 

The  Colonel  tore  it  open. 

"  My  dear  Uncle,"  it  began — "  for  so  I  may  soon 
hope  to  address  you — at  last,  my  happiness  is  at  hand, 
Your  nephew  Gregory  has,  at  last,  understood  that 
poor  little  Norah  did  not  love  him  ;  no  fault  of  hers, 
dear  child  :  she  did  her  best  to  obey  you  ;  but  hearts 
are  sometimes  disobedient,  and  his  has  followed  the — 
shall  I  say  it? — first  impulse  of  our  introduction  :  ho 
has  loved  me  instead.  I  have  known  this  for  some 
time,  but  thought  it  prudent  to  be  silent.  This  may 
account  to  you,  dear  uncle,  fqr  much  which,  at  the 
time,  you  misunderstood,  but  in  which  I  could  not  set 
you  right,  or  enlighten  you.  To  avoid  unpleasantness 
to  you  and  others,  dear  Gregory  and  I  have  decided 
on  being  married  privately,  away  from  Lyndon.  When 
assured  of  your  approbation — about  which,  however,  I 
have  no  kind  of  doubt — we  shall  return  to  ask  your 
blessing  and  recognition.  From  your  expressed  kind 
feeling  for  me,  I  am  sure  you  will  be  pleased  at  my 
happiness  in  being  made  dear  Gregory's  wife.  For 
Norah,  I  dare  say  she  will  find  a  husband  nearer  to 
her  taste,  and  more  similar  in  nature  ;  and  perhaps  the 
two  families  will  be  even  more  closely  united  yet. 
Ask  Edmund,  dear  uncle,  where  his  heart  is  gone  to ; 
for  it  has  been  quite  a  chasse  aux  coeurs  lately  at 
Lyndon.  I  embrace  you  heartily.  When  Gregory 
and  I  come  home  to  the  Moat,  I  shall  be  very  near 
you,  and  I  shall  hope  to  see  you  often. 

M  Your  affectionate  niece, 

"  LUCY. 

"  P.S. — I  enclose  a  note  which  dear  Gregory  has 
just  given  me  for  you.  Adieu  ! — L.  T." 

Gregory's  note  was  shorter,  and  more  to 
the  point.  It  ran  thus  : 

"  DEAR  SIR, — My  cause  is  lost.  In  searching 
among  the  papers  which  my  father  left  sealed  up  in 
his  lawyer's  hands,  we  found — not  a  certificate  of  his 
marriage,  but  a  confession,  under  his  own  hand  and 
seal,  which  has  left  me  a  beggar,  and  the  declared 
illegitimate  son  of  a  Nubian  slave. 
Yours  truly, 

"  GREGORY  LYNDON." 

The  reason  of  his  marriage  with  Lucy  was 
clear  now. 

Few  persons  would  have  recognised  the 
Colonel  after  he  had  read  Lucy's  insolent 
and  Gregory's  defiant  letter.  His  self-pos- 
session vanished.  Based  on  pride,  not  on  self- 
control,  it  could  not  bear  so  rude  a  shock  as 
this.  His  military  bearing  broke  down,  as  if 
it  had  been  a  pasteboard  mannikin  paraded 
before  the  world.  He  stormed,  he  swore,  he 
raved  and  raged,  and  called  Lucy  naughty 
names,  and  threatened  to  shoot  Gregory 


500       [November21,lSS7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  l>y 


through  the  head,  and  insulted  Launcelot, 
and  abused  Norah  in  really  gross  language, 
and  said  that  if  Edmund  came  near  the  ball 
again  he  would  have  him  horsewhipped  by 
his  groom.  In  short,  he  was  a  wild,  mouthing 
madman,  much  too  occupied  with  his  own 
disappointment  to  feel  any  thankfulness  at 
Norah's  escape,  or  at  his  own.  He  did  not  re- 
member this,  nor  think  howhe  would  have  felt, 
had  Norah  been  married  before  the  crash  and 
exposure  came.  He  only  remembered  that 
his  bewitching  mistress  had  betrayed  him, 
and  that  she  had  been  deceiving  and  laugh- 
ing at  him  during  the  time  of  her  sweetest 
blandishments.  Poor  starched  Colonel,  it 
was  a  rare  fall  for  his  dignity  ! 

At  this  moment  of  supreme  anger  little 
Norah  stole  into  the  room,  deathly  pale  and 
broken,  but  bearing  up  in  the  wonderful 
way  proper  to  frail  little  women,  who  sup- 
port trials  which  would  destroy  the  robust. 
The  sight  of  her  renewed  the  Colonel's  pas- 
sion. He  advanced  to  her  menacingly,  his 
hand  uplifted.  That  gesture,  and  Norah's 
patient,  timid,  half-crouching  attitude  re- 
waled  a  family  secret  to  Launcelot.  It 
seemed  no  new  thing  to  the  girl  to  have 
her  father's  hand  turned  against  her ;  in- 
deed, it  was  so  usual,  that  she  neither 
resented  nor  wondered  at  it.  But  Launce 
started  forward  and  drew  her  hastily  to  his 
side,  holding  her,  quite  unconscious  of  ap- 
pearances, with  his  left  arm  round  her  waist, 
while  prepared  to  defend  her  with  his  right, 
even  against  her  father. 

The  nearest  approach  to  love  which  Norah 
had  ever  felt  was  then,  when  Launcelot 
Thorold  took  her  on  his  arm.  It  was  the 
first  time  in  her  life  that  she  had  ever  known 
the  real  protection  of  a  man  —  that  protec- 
tion of  superior  strength  which  is  so  sweet 
to  women  to  receive.  Her  father  had  beaten 
and  subdued  her  into  mechanical  submis- 
sion ;  Gregory  had  overwhelmed  her  with 
his  passion  and  overcome  her  by  the  force 
of  his  love  ;  young  Edmund  had  worship- 
ped and  reverenced  her  ;  but  no  one  had 
ever  before  protected  her,  no  one  had  made 
her  feel  her  weakness  a  claim  to  aid  and 
care.  If  Lauucelot  had  read  her  heart  at 
this  moment,  perhaps  he,  too,  would  have 
mistaken  and  hoped. 

The  Colonel    baffled    in    his    assault    on 
Norah,  turned  against  Launcelot,  and  a  pain- ! 
ful  and  undignified  scene   was  the   result  ; 
when  in  the  midst  of  their  highest  alterca- 
tion a  small  knot  of  men,  bearing  a  body  in  j 
the  midst,  was  seen  crossing  the  park.     Both  ! 
Laimcelot  and  Norah  were  struck  with   the  ! 
same  foreboding, 

"Stay  here  —  you  are  safe,"  whispered 
Launce,  rushing  from  the  room,  judging  cor- 
rectly that  the  Colonel's  attention  would 
be  diverted,  and  that  Norah  was  therefore 
left  in  no  peril. 

She  saw  him  cross  the  lawn,  and  almost 
meet  the  men.  But  one  of  them,  the  head 


gamekeeper,  stept  forward  and  spoke  to  him, 
l:iying  his  broad  hand  on  his  arm  in  the 
honest  equality  of  sympathy.  Launce  thrust 
him  aside,  hastily  but  notungently  ;  and  then 
she  heard  an  agonised  cry,  as  he  recognised 
his  fair  young  brother,  with  a  deep  wound  on 
his  forehead,  lying  stark  in  the  arms  of  his 
bearers.  That  beautiful  young  face  !  Even 
in  death  the  glory  of  the  love  and  genius 
which  had  animated  it  in  life  lay  like  a  light 
across  it.  Beautiful  young  boy  !  What  a 
fearful  quenching  of  so  much  excellence,  of 
so  much  rare  promise  and  rich  beginnings. 

"  God  bless  my  heart  and  soul !  "  said  the 
Colonel,  when  he  heard  the  particulars. 
"  How  very  unpleasant  for  me.  It  will  be  in 
all  the  newspapers." 

The  verdict  of  the  coroner's  inquest  was, 
"  found  drowned."  Norah  told  no  one  what 
she  knew  and  what  she  suspected.  Her  evi- 
dence would  have  been  priceless  to  the  jury  ; 
but  no  one  dreamed  that  she  could  have 
enlightened  them.  She  had  not  been  ob- 
served walking  with  Edmund  through  the 
shrubbery  ;  and  the  gamekeeper  was  the  last 
man  who  had  seen  him  alive.  It  was  possible 
that  he  had  missed  his  footing  and  fallen 
headlong  into  the  river ;  where,  the  blow- 
having  stunned  him,  it  was  not  difficult  to  be 
drowned.  There  was  no  mark  of  struggling 
on  the  bank,  no  sign  of  personal  violence  : 
he  had  not  been  robbed  ;  it  was  not  known 
that  he  had  an  enemy  in  the  world. 

But,  Launce  was  not  satisfied,  and  Norah 
felt  nearly  certain  of  the  truth.  Launce,  how- 
ever, could  do  nothing.  He  could  not  bring 
his  suspicious  home  to  their  object,  or  con- 
centrate them  into  any  intelligent  act  ;  and 
it  never  occurred  to  Norah  to  say  to  living 
soul  what  she  thought  or  knew.  She  had 
been  too  well  drilled  into  silence  and  reti- 
cence to  get  into  trouble  by  too  much  talking. 
So  the  tragedy  paled  into  the  grey  indistinct- 
ness of  the  past,  and  the  precise  circum- 
stances were  soon  obliterated  and  forgotten. 

Launce  went  back  to  his  own  home  ;  the 
only  one  of  those  three  joyous  young  creatures 
who  had  set  out,so  full  of  pleasure,  for  a  mere 
ordinary  conventional  visit.  But  what  a  ter- 
rible ending  to  that  ordinary  visit  !  What  a 
household  wreck  was  swept  back  to  them  by 
the  storm  that  had  shaken  Lyndon  to  the 
base.  Poor  Launce  !  he  who  had  been,  per- 
haps, the  happiest  of  them  all,  and  the  most 
helpful  to  them  all,  now  left  alone,  as  the 
sole  comfort  of  the  wretched  parents.  How 
often  he  went  over  the  old  walks,  and  sat  in 
the  old  seats,  and  lived  again  and  again 
over  every  happy  hour  of  that  pleasant  family 
life,  which  had  had  few  equals  in  the  county 
for  beauty,  hope,  and  affection  ! 

The  Colonel  never  rallied  after  the  shock. 
He  sank  rapidly  into  the  old  man :  less  stern 
and  violent,  but  more  peevish  and  irritable  ; 
more  wearisome  but  less  terrifying.  He 
would  not  allow  Norah  to  quit  his  presence 
for  half-an-hour,  and  he  found  fault  with  her, 


Charles  Piekens.] 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 


[November  21,  1®?.]       501 


in  a  querulous  way,  all  the  time  she  was 
there.  But  she  lost  all  personal  fear  of  him. 
It  was  a  duller  life  even  than  formerly,  but 
not  so  violent ;  more  wearisome,  but  not  so 
destructive.  Norali  wore  her  fetters  as  pa- 
tiently as  she  used  in  old  times  when  they 
cut  deeper  and  made  scars,  but  were  less 
heavy.  She  changed  in  nothing  ;  she  glided 
through  life  always  the  same  pallid,  timid, 
silent,  retiring  creature  ;  more  like  a  slave 
purchased  by  money  than  the  heiress  of  the 
great  Lyndon  estates. 

In  a  dirty  garret  in  Paris  lived  Mrs. 
Gregory  Lyndon  and  her  husband.  How 
they  lived,  indeed,  no  one  could  have  told  ; 
not  even  themselves.  He  was  a  furious 
gambler,  and  as  furious  a  drunkard  ;  passing 
days,  and  nights,  and  weeks  from  home  ;  not 
jealous,  or  solicitous  for  his  wife,  because 
profoundly  indifferent  to  her.  He  would  have 
been  thankful  for  any  act  of  hers  which 
should  have  allowed  him  to  get  legal,  if 
shameful  deliverance  from  her.  But  poor 
Lucy's  day  of  thoughtlessness  had  gone.  A 
slatternly,  neglected  woman,  she  was  a 
virtuous,  if  a  wretched  oue  ;  and,  though  she, 
had  long  ceased  to  love  her  husband,  she  had 
both  pride  and  early  principle  remaining. 
None  of  her  family  knew  where  she  was. 
They  had  tried  to  trace  her,  but  Lucy  having 
thrown  every  possible  obstacle  iu  the  way, 
after  months  of  weary  search,  they  were 
forced  to  leave  her  to  her  self-appointed  fate. 
And  what  a  fate  !  Drunken  orgies,  squalid 
misery,  vice,  crime,  starvation,  brutality — 
these  were  the  matins  and  the  vespers 
of  Lucy's  marriage  altar.  She  never  knew 
how  her  husband  gained  his  money — for 
all  did  not  come  from  the  gaming-table — 
but  she  dared  not  question  him.  Gregory 
had  learnt  his  uncle's  habit  with  womeu^and 
Lucy  had  more  than  once  had  reason  to 
know  that  her  husband's  hand  was  hard,  and 
her  husband's  arm  strong.  At  last,  a  more 
than  ordinarily  daring  outrage  on  the  public 
code  of  private  possession,  threw  Gregory 
into  the  hands  of  the  police.  False  coinage 
•will  not  always  ring,  and  false  notes  will 
sometimes  betray  unskilful  writing.  He  was 
arrested  as  a  forger,  and  condemned  to  the 
galleys  for  life.  But,  before  he  had  been 
twenty-four  hours  in  prison,  the  latent  ma- 
lady, always  near,  broke  out ;  and  so  Gre- 
gory was  sent  to  Charentou  instead  of  to 
the  Bagnes, — to  the  hospital  for  the  mad,  not 
to  the  stronghold  of  the  criminal. 

When  Lucy  heard  of  this,  and  knew  that 
in  any  case  she  was  practically  divorced  from 
her  husband,  she  wrote  home  to  her  mother  ; 
besought  forgiveness  and  aid,  and— would 
not  Launce  go  to  see  her  1  They  were  too 
glad  to  be  able  to  forgive  her,  and  Launce- 
lot  set  off  for  Paris  ten  minutes  after  the 
letter  reached  the  house.  In  a  few  days, 
Lucy  was  once  more  under  her  father's  roof ; 
and,  by  the  time  she  was  thirty,  not  a  trace 


of  her  terrible  experience  was  left  on  her. 
She  was  handsomer  than  ever,  as  worldly,  as 
self-possessed,  as  luxurious.  No  oue  who 
saw  the  beautiful  young  widow  as  she  lived  and 
moved  in  the  calm  state  of  home,  would  have 
imagined  that  she  had  once  lived  in  a  Pari- 
sian garret,  cooking  her  own  food — when  she 
had  any — but  more  often  going  without ; 
bruised  and  trampled  on  by  a  forger  and 
coiner  ;  with  sometimes  only  a  ragged  gown 
as  her  sole  covering;  sometimes  indebted 
for  the  bare  necessaries  of  life  to  the  poor 
charbonnier  and  the  poorer  portress  —  to 
the  chiffonnier  in  the  room  next  to  hers, 
to  the  little  grisette  a  stage  lower — obliged 
for  dear  life,  to  people  whom  she  would  have 
passed  by,  now,  as  loftily  as  if  her  misery  and 
theirs  had  never  come  together.  But,  she 
used  to  talk  grandly  of  her  Parisian  life,  and 
often  quoted  the  time  "when  I  lived  in  that 
bewitching  Paris."  Which  sounded  well. 

A  short  time  after  Lucy's  return,  Colonel 
Lyndon  died,  arid  Norah  was  left  sole  heiress 
and  proprietor.  Launcelot,  at  her  request, 
went  over  to  the  Hall  to  advise  and  assist  her. 
She  had  no  friends  and  no  relatives,  and  she 
remembered  that  Launcelot  had  once  put  his 
arms  about  her  and  shielded  her  from  her 
father. 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 

in. 

IT  is  Sunday  among  the  Dutchmen — Sun- 
day morning  fresh  and  clear.  So  fresh,  that 
to  stand  upon  a  bridge  and  look  down  along 
the  rows  of  houses  brings  floating  Canaletti 
reminiscences.  It  must  be  some  day  of 
extra  festivity,  for  from  an  early  hour 
bellmen  —  or  whatever  title  professors 
of  those  instruments  rejoice  in — have  been 
hard  at  work,  discoursing  all  manner  of  tunes, 
high  up  in  the  steeple.  That  excellent  bar- 
carole in  Masaniello — or  the  Fish'oman  of 
Naples,  according  to  the  latest  reading — 
where  the  fishing  men  make  mysterious  ges- 
tures and  entreat  of  the  pescator  for  his  life 
to  be  silent,  has  been  rendered  innumerable 
times  with  excellent  effect.  But  for  another 
manipulator,  engrossed  with  Life  let  us 
Cherish  in  a  contiguous  steeple,  the  enjoy- 
ment would  be  unmixed.  Still,  for  them,  it 
must  ever  be  a  spasmodic  and  uneasy  task  ; 
for  they  must  be  always  haunted  painfully 
by  the  idea  of  being  tripped  up  by  the 
quarter  or  half-hour  chime,  and,  like  special 
and  parliamentary  trains,  have  to  be  un- 
ceasingly drawing  up  to  one  side  to  let  the 
regular  traffic  go  by.  The  Fish'oman  of 
Naples  was  many  a  time  and  oft  thus  cut 
short  prematurely,  and  more  than  once  run 
into  and  cruelly  damaged. 

The  streets  are  crowded  with  population, 
all  worship-bound,  looking  the  very  reverse 
of  the  famous  Johnsonian  leg  of  mutton. 
Unlike  that  joint,  they  are  well-fed,  well- 
kept,  well-dressed,  and,  for  aught  I  know, 


502       [NoremberSl,  18&7.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


may  be  as  good  as  good  can  be.  Unmistake- 
ably  well-fed,  with  glossy,  shining  skins. 
Uumistakeably  well-dressed  in  festival  gar- 
ments. Father  o'  family  (as  good  a  word  as 
Pater-familias  any  day) — Father  o'  family, 
toiling  on  in  front,  with  the  stout  Family 
Bible,  shouldered  as  it  were ;  children, 
maids,  servitors,  Dutchmen  and  Dutch- 
women crowding  on  behind,  pell-mell.  Dutch- 
women, ah  !  upon  that  text  might  be  spun 
a  homily  of  infinite  length.  When  first  I 
saw  Sweet  Peggy  (of  Dutch  life  that  is), 
'twas  on  a  market-day,  curiously  enough — 
more  correctly  speaking,  upon  a  washing, 
cleansing,  and  purifying  day — and,  to  say  the 
truth,  I  was  not  disposed,  like  the  gentleman 
in  the  song,  to  envy  the  chicken  or  other 
poultry  Dutch  Peggy  might  choose  to  prepare 
for  table.  My  little  Dutchwoman,  on  week- 
days, when  she  is  busy  working  her  pumps, 
or  scouring  her  house-steps,  or  busy  with  her 
herrings,  will  scarcely  tempt  the  wandering 
man  to  halt  by  the  wayside  and  look  again. 
But,  take  her  of  a  Sunday,  when  house  and 
steps  are  off  her  mind,  when  all  about  her  is 
snow-white  and  crimp  with  starch,  and  I 
will  lay  an  anker  of  schiedam  with  any  man 
that  she  will  not  be  matched  on  either  side 
of  the  British  Straits.  My  little  Dutch- 
woman hath  a  face  fair  and  fat,  fleshy,  yet, 
by  no  means,  inclining  to  the  dewlap  ;  clear, 
jet  tinted  with  a  marvellous  delicacy  ;  fresh, 
as  though  newly  come  from  an  English  hay- 
field,  yet  without  Molly  Seagrim's  blowzabel 
hue,  whose  cheeks  shine  coarsely  with  pippin- 
like  red.  With  her  neatly-frilled  cap  and 
delicate  gold  ear-rings,  her  snowy  cape 
coming  down  peak-shaped  to  the  waist,  her 
white  linen  gloves  reaching  up  to  the  elbow, 
I  declare  she  did  a  man's  heart  good  to  look 
upon,  as  she  tripped  along  to  worship  that 
Sunday  morning. 

My  old  little  Dutchwoman  is  also  un- 
matched of  her  kind,  and  I  am  ready  with 
another  anker  to  stand  up  for  her  against  all 
comers.  Against  the  horrible  thing  that,  in 
France,  sits  and  shrivels  up  iuto  old  age  over 
the  charcoal  chauffe-pied  ;  against  the  ancient 
Irish  crone,  that  is  coiled  into  a  terrible 
bundle  by  the  cottage-door,  drawing  life  and 
oblivion  from  her  short  black  pipe  ;  against 
the  blear-eyed,  palsied  creature,  clothed  with 
infinite  respectability  in  black,  that  chatters 
at  you  from  the  almshouse  windows  of  Old 
England  ;  against  the  whole  world  ;  I  say 
again,  the  claim  of  the  original  Dutch  hag  ! 
The  revolting  whiteness  of  the  skin  retained 
to  the  very  last,  shrunken  jaws,  impending 
junction  at  no  remote  period  of  nose  and 
chin  nut-crackerwise — or,  more  appropri- 
ately, after  the  curved  lines  of  lobster-claws — 
go  to  make  up  an  appalling  apparition,  such 
as  one  might  look  for,  on  a  stormy  night,  on 
Pendle  Hill,  taking  We  fly  by  Night  exercise 
on  a  wooden  steed  trained  to  carry  a  lady. 
Such,  as  in  the  fine  old  days,  would  have 
put  to  proof  her  swimming  powers  in  a 


mill-race  ;  such,  too,  as  both  now  and  for 
ages  back,  have  been  looking  out  upon 
travellers  and  admiring  connoisseurs  from 
acres  of  canvas  in  many  great  picture  col- 
lections. Truly  curious  is  it  what  friends 
and  familiar  faces  have  I  among  my  old  and 
my  young  Dutchwomen.  It  is  but  one  tide 
of  recognition,  and  I  am  being  periodically 
inclined  to  start  and  uncover  respectfully  as 
at  meeting  well-known  features.  That 
shrivelled  head,  all  lines  and  crumples,  all 
knots  and  gnarls  like  an  ancient  walnut,  I 
have  surely  met  before  now,  with  a  huge 
frilled  collar  about  its  neck,  on  some  gallery 
wall,  worked  up  cunningly  by  that  famous 
master  Ferdiuandus  Bol.  So,  too,  in  our 
British  collection  hangs  a  noted  Mieris 
woman,  busy  peeling  carrots,  with  a  little 
child  in  a  skull-cap  at  her  knee,  admiring 
how  the  carrots  are  peeled.  Now,  I  vow  and 
protest,  that  round  the  first  corner  I  have 
come  upon  that  Mieris  carrot- woman  and  the 
admiring  child,  hand  in  hand,  and  cheapening 
pears  at  a  stall.  I  have  other  old  friends 
from  the  Dulwich  Gallery,  chiefly  among  the 
robustious  women  that  bring  in  jugs  of 
punch  to  boors  of  irregular  habits.  They 
present  themselves  in  the  most  surprising  and 
unexpected  manner,  and  at  all  sorts  of  places 
— at  tavern  doors,  at  street  corners,  selling 
you  stale  fish,  questionable  poultry,  stewed 
pears  of  pink  complexion,  and  other  edibles. 

More  of  my  little  Dutchwomen  live  out  in 
the  suburbs,  on  board  barges,  or  far  out  in 
the  country,  and  come  in  only  of  Sundays 
and  festival  days.  Over  such  is  therefore 
spread  a  thin  varnish  of  unsophistication, 
which  makes  their  presence  doubly  welcome 
to  the  curious  stranger  :  I  am  dazzled  with 
their  suburban  magnificence  ;  dazzled  with 
that  golden  belt  running  across  over  the 
eyes,  like  the  forehead-band  of  a  horse  :  with 
the  huge  flowering  rosettes,  one  at  each  side, 
of  the  same  precious  material ;  with  the 
broad  lace  lappets  hanging  so  gracefully ; 
and  with  the  yellow  ear-rings  of  Indian  pat- 
tern ;  all  of  which  pretty  things  become  my 
little  Dutchwoman  amazingly — saving,  per- 
haps, the  forehead-band,  which  looks  a  little 
savage.  With  another  of  my  little  Dutch- 
women I  am  less  satisfied,  she  being  possessed 
of  the  idea  that  those  great  silver  scallop- 
shells — covering  her  head  up  like  the  Poly- 
technic diver's  helmet— are  becoming  to  her 
(which,  beyond  mistake,  they  are  not,  even 
though  glittering  through  a  thin  lace  skull- 
cap). "Unflattering,  too,  is  the  little  straw 
cap,  with  the  droll  coal-scuttle  twist,  which 
fits  just  over  the  forehead,  and  is  known  as  a 
Zealand  bonnet.  And  why,  O  !  little  Teniers 
woman — you  that  have  journeyed  hither  per 
treikschuit  or  canal  boat  for  a  day's  plea- 
suring— say,  why  persevere  in  wearing  those 
spiral  volutes  over  the  region  of  the  ear, 
suggestive  of  only  one  thing  in  the  world — 
patent  appliance  for  defective  hearing  1  Much 
more  grateful  is  the  aspect  of  our  little 


Charles  Uickena.  1 


DOWN  AMONG  THE  DUTCHMEN. 


[November  SI,  1357.]      603 


Amsterdam  Orphelines,  all  fed,  clothed,  and 
provided  for  at  the  city's  chai'ges.  Fed  unto 
shining — being  of  all  little  buxom  women, 
buxomest — and  arrayed  in  the  quaintest 
raiment  that  can  be.  The  Kalvat  Straat  is 
alive  with  them  this  Sunday  morning,  and  I 
meet  them  in  twos  and  threes  tripping  on  to 
worship.  Quaint  and  picturesque  certainly, 
if  there  be  quaintness  in  a  tight  lace  skull- 
cap cut  to  a  point  upon  the  forehead  ;  in  the 
hair,  shaved  close  and  turned  up  under  the 
cap  ;  in  the  snowy  linen  capes  and  black 
body,  the  white  gloves  up  to  the  elbow,  and, 
above  all,  in  the  parti-coloured  skirt — right 
half  black,  left  half  rich  red,  of  the  hue 
affected  by  the  French  army  in  its  pantaloons. 
Pretty  creatures,  Trim,  as  my  uncle  Toby 
said  of  the  Beguims,  chequering  the  streets 
pleasantly  with  gay  colouring.  I  did  not 
near  so  much  fancy  the  Orphan-boy — com- 
panion picture — whose  coat  and  supplemental 
garments  were  after  the  same  Josephan 
pattern — one  half  of  him  red,  the  other  half 
black — to  be  only  likened  to  Punchinello  at  a 
masked  ball. 

Putting  away  such  profanities,  it  is  full 
time  to  think  of  Sabbath  orison.  But  at 
which  house  of  worship,  Bezonian  ?  At  what 
hour  enter ;  under  whom  sit  ?  All  which 
questions  may  be  resolved  by  consulting  the 
Keligious  Bill  of  Fare, — a  neat  tabular  state- 
ment, wherein  is  set  out,  time,  place,  and 
individual, —  published  hebdomadally  ;  duly 
framed,  and  hung  out  at  the  doors  of  book- 
sellers' shops,  for  the  information  of  the 
spiritual  world.  A  few  moments'  consulta- 
tion with  the  tabular  statement,  puts  me 
quite  au  courant  with  the  Sunday  dispensa- 
tion. I  find  that  there  is  the  Nieuwe  Kerke 
and  the  Oude  Kerke,  just  as  we  had  the  old 
Doelen  and  the  new  Doelen,  to  which  belong 
the  brick  towers,  black  steeples,  and  carillons 
before  mentioned.  Where,  too,  is  to  be  found 
doctrine  of  pure  evangelical  tint.  Near  the 
Jews'  quarter  is  the  great  Moses  uns  Aarons 
Kerke,  where  those  of  the  old  religion  have 
their  grande  messe  every  Sunday,  with  full 
orchestra,  and  great  pomp  and  circumstance. 
There  is  the  synagogue,  with  long  Hebrew 
inscription  over  the  door  ;  and  there  is  a  host 
of  minor  temples,  dedicate  to  every  hue  and 
shade  of  doctrine.  From  the  same  source  I 
gather,  that  in  the  matter  of  preachers,  I 
may  have  my  choice  of  Spyker — thus  irreve- 
rently set  down,— of  Lesly,  of  Van  Kampfen, 
of  Meulen,  and  many  more  besides.  Under 
which,  I  ask  again,  Bezonian,  am  I  to  sit  ? 
Who  shall  decide  betwixt  Spyker  and  his 
brethren  ?  What  if  I  go  round  them  impar- 
tially, or  enter  at  the  first  open  door  I  come 
to,  and  trust  to  that  interior  being  a  pattern 
for  the  rest  1  Therefore  do  I  take  the  road 
across  the  Grand  Platz— of  which  Hollanders 
are  mightily  proud,  but  which,  on  the  true 
faith  of  a  Christian,  hath  no  greater  compre- 
hension than  a  moderately-sized  yard — aim- 
ing at  the  porch  of  the  New  Kerke  just 


opposite  ;  not  to  be  attained,  however,  with- 
out knowledge  of  another  feature  of  the 
country's  economy ;  for,  on  turning  my  eyes 
to  the  ground,  to  note  the  peculiar  paving,  of 
a  smooth  and  grateful  order,  the  prospect  is 
shut  out  by  four  huge  black  brushes,  held 
out  by  four  arms  quite  as  black.  To  my 
surprise,  I  find  myself  attended  by  a  whole 
army  of  gentlemen  connected  with  the  shoe- 
black interest,  each  bearing  with  him  the 
instruments  of  his  profession,  and  preferring 
his  claim  in  low  menacing  accents.  By  the 
aid  of  signs,  I  imperfectly  convey  to  them  my 
regret  at  not  being  able  to  avail  myself  of 
their  good-natured  assistance.  1  am  an- 
swered with  more  angry  growling  and  fierce 
gesticulation  of  brushes,  together  with  a 
purpose  undisguised,  of  waiting  on  me  to  the 
church  door.  I  find  myself  gradually  work- 
ing up  to  redness  and  to  wroth,  and  unhap- 
pily allow  a  popular  English  imprecation  to 
escape.  Instantly,  one  of  the  following, 
gifted  with  a  turn  for  foreign  languages, 
addresses  me  in  my  own  native  tongue. 
"  Clean  de  boots,  clean  de  boots,"  says  he, 
many  times  over ;  "  Clean  de  honor's  boots 
beautiful,"  says  he,  perseveringly  ;  the  others 
hearkening  with  wonder  to  their  brother's 
great  gift.  For  long  after,  I  am  to  have  that 
raven's  croak  sounding  hoarsely  in  my  ear ; 
when,  after  wandering  through  many  alleys, 
I  emerge  unconsciously  on  the  Platz,  gazing 
dreamily  at  the  huge  palace,  I  am  cruelly 
awakened  by  the  hateful  burden,  "  Clean  de 
boots  beautiful,  oh  !  "  So  that  I  am  driven, 
at  last,  to  go  round  by  private  ways,  and 
inconvenient  routes,  all  to  avoid  this  crying 
nuisance.  Was  it  too  sinful  to  pray  many 
times  over,  that  the  grave  of  the  nuisance's 
father  might  be  defiled  1  The  whole  Dutch 
world  is  perpetually  having  its  leathers 
made  resplendent  at  the  hands  of  these 
burrs  ;  and  once  I  saw  a  whining  mendicant 
who  had  solicited  an  alms  of  me  but  ten 
minutes  before,  with  his  foot  up,  and  sub- 
mitted to  one  of  the  lacquering  fraternity. 

A  great  waste  of  unspotted  snow — un- 
spotted whitewash,  that  is,  without  fleck  or 
stain — arched  vaulting  overhead,  pure  white 
also,  forming  a  sky  of  pure  whitewash  ;  huge 
swollen  pillars  of  glaring  whitewash,  which 
no  three  men  could  span  (who  had  best  not 
try  such  experiment,  the  guardians  looking 
carefully  to  this  purifying  element) ;  white- 
wash to  the  right,  to  ±he  left,  down  the 
middle,  in  perspective ;  this  is  the  favourite 
tone  of  the  Nieuwe  Kerke,  and  mostly  of 
every  other  kerke  in  the  country.  It  is  as 
though  it  had  been  snowing  within  the 
sacred  edifices.  There  is  a  craving  for  the 
whitening  fluid.  They  thirst  for  it,  eccle- 
siastically, through  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  laud ;  and  at  short  intervals,  periodi- 
cally— when  the  bloom  is  beginning  to  turn, 
and  vigilant  eyes  have  noted  a  few  specks 
— a  rush  is  made  for  the  pails  Bladders  of 
prodigious  extension  are  brought  in  ;  men  in 


504 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[NoTember  21, 1857.] 


besplashed  garments  go  to  work  busily  ;  and 
within  a  short  period,  the  temple  ia  given 
back  to  its  congregation,  spick,  span,  and 
resplendent. 

On  this  cheerless  background,  the  rows  of 
old  black  oak  benches,  ranged  in  amphi- 
theatre shape  between  the  pillars  (dirty  and 
rickety  they  were),  the  gaunt  pulpit,  with 
its  prodigious  overhanging  sounding-board, 
threatening  to  fall  and  crush  the  congrega- 
tion ;  the  sharp  verger  and  pew- opening 
tribe,  noisily  rattling  their  huge  bundles  of 
keys,  and  literally  touting  for  stray  wor- 
shippers ;  the  tall  attenuated  organ,  fitted 
funereally  with  black  and  silver  mountings; 
the  swollen  Dutch  Bibles  ;  the  stray  tomb, 
here  and  there  ;  all  these  things  stood  out 
upon  the  bald  white  background,  making  a 
cold  and  dismal  show.  This  will  be  pretty 
rauc^i  about  the  complexion  of  every  church, 
orthodox  and  dissenting,  down  among  the 
Dutchmen,  into  which  it  will  be  the  inquiring 
traveller's  fate  to  enter. 

One  fine  evening — it  was  on  a  Wednesday 
— after  having  gotten,  by  some  accident,  into 
an  alley  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  Israelites, 
and  after  long  struggling  for  some  mode  of  extri- 
cation, and  after  cruel  usage  by  the  unsavoury 
men  and  women  of  that  tribe,  all  shrieking, 
hustling,  and  importunately  obtruding  their 
wares,  all  gesticulating  and  wrangling  :  with 
the  light  from  stray  lamps  and  candles  falling 
on  an  ivory  Hebrew  conformation,  bending 
over  a  stall,  with  quite  a  Kern  brand  tish  effect 
— after  buffeting  vainly  with  these  unclean 
billows,  I  was  at  last  set  free,  and  found  my- 
self in  a  sort  of  lonely  little  yard,  hard  by  to 
a  bridge,  opposite  a  large  open  door,  like  the 
entrance  to  a  vault.  Here  were  all  manner 
of  little  structures,  laid  up,  as  it  were,  against 
the  wall,  round  about  the  open  door.  Enter- 
ing cautiously,  it  came  to  be  the  old  white- 
washed waste  over  again,  the  heavy,  clumsy- 
ish  pillars,  and  huge  vaulting,  as  before — only 
being  now  dimly  lighted  with  a  few  candles 
up  and  down,  the  white  pillars  cast  awful, 
straggling  shadows,  and  got  lost  afar  off  in  a 
great,  dark  void.  There  was  a  terrible  soli-  i 
tude  in  the  place,  no  one  being  present,  be- 
yond the  touting  vergers,  still  rattling  their  : 
keys  vainly,  through  pressure  of  the  old 
habit.  In  ten  minutes,  say  these  gentlemen, 
service  will  commence,  and  the  congregation 
arrive  :  which  last  remark  is  by  way  of  en- 
couragement to  the  inquirer,  whose  linea- ; 
ments  wear  a  puzzled  expression.  Presently 
enters,  first  old  woman  shuffling  in  sabots  ; . 
after  a  decent  interval,  first  old  man.  j 
To  them,  in  course  of  time,  enter  three  more  • 
older  women,  with  pendants  of  the  other  sex.  • 
And,  after  a  short  delay — the  congregation, 
now  amounting  to  full  eight  or  ten  persons — 
an  ancient  minister  appears  suddenly  in  the 
pulpit,  and  the  service  commences. 


Dreary  and  undevotional  the  whole  scene, 
looking  at  the  gaunt  howling  wilderness 
itself,  or  at  the  ancient  minister  whose  feeble 
accents  barely  travelled  beyond  the  circuit 
of  his  own  pulpit.  Dreary  and  undevotional 
it  was  to  note  the  touting  vergers  afar  off 
on  remote  benches,  fast  bound  in  slumber,  and 
pillowed  on  a  Dutch  Book  of  Prayer.  Dreary, 
certainly,  but  undevotional  was  it,  to  catch 
sight  of,  through  an  opening  in  the  wall,  a 
snug  kitchen  and  blazing  fire,  with  some- 
thing simmering  on  the  hob,  aud  housewife 
bustling  about,  intent  on  supper.  Homestead, 
no  doubt,  of  slumbering  verger  !  which  being 
mere  conjecture, grows  into  positive  certainty, 
as  the  housewife  issues  forth,  bearing  a  large 
tray,  laden  with  tea  equipage  and  steaming 
things,  taking  her  way  across  the  church,  in 
the  rear  of  the  pulpit.  On  which  a  remote 
verger  is  seen  to  lift  his  head,  and  withdraw 
in  a  gentle  and  unassuming  manner,  wishing 
not  to  disturb  the  congregation.  Dreary, 
certainly,  but  more  devotional  in  its  intent, 
if  not  effect,  was  when  ail  the  old  men  and 
women  lifted  up  their  voices  together,  and 
gave  out'  a  hymn  in  feeble  and  quavering 
accents.  With  certain  relief,  however,  in  the 
famous  old  organ  set  up  centuries  ago,  aud 
which  now  proclaimed  itself  in  flowing 
tones,  mellowed  by  years  into  rich  and 
exquisite  sweetness.  Needless  to  say  how  the 
cracked  aud  quavering  voices  were  drowned 
and  swallowed  up,  and  swept  away  down  the 
long  aisle,  among  the  whitewash  pillars,  in  at 
the  warm  kitchen  whence  came  the  verger's 
tea,  and  back  again  by  way  of  the  whitewash 
clouds,  and  the  high  vaulting.  Great,  soul- 
stirring,  satisfying  sounds  !  Worth  an  hour 
of  solitude  and  cracked  voices  !  Glorious, 
too,  the  prospect  of  the  great  instrument 
itself,  rising  with  stateliriess,  from  marble 
gallery,  with  bunches  of  glittering  pipes, 
crowded  together,  in  clumps,  and  bound  hi 
silver  fasces,  until  lost  overhead  in  wild  exfo- 
liation, in  griffins,  and  grotesque  monsters  ; 
with  its  supplement  gathering  of  pipes,  de- 
tached and  hanging  over  the  gallery  in  front, 
like  the  heavy  poop  of  an  old  Spanish  galleon. 
Altogether,  well  worthy  of  being  removed 
and  set  up  in  a  corner  of  a  cathedral  piece 
from  the  hand  of  David  Eoberts,  E.A.,  and 
most  famous  master. 

It  went  to  rest  at  last.  The  vergers  dozed, 
and  the  ancient  minister  piped  and  chattered 
feebly,  as  before,  all  for  the  span  of  a  good 
hour  an  da  half.  Finally,  he  tottered  from 
his  pulpit  as  he  came,  the  service  ended,  and 
the  aged  elements  of  the  congregation  shuffled 
away?  Who  the  ancient  minister  was — he 
bore  a  skull-cap,  like  an  old  Calvinist  por- 
trait— I  never  cared  to  inquire.  Perhaps,  I 
had  been  hearkening  to  Spyker,  or  to  Meulen, 
or  to  some  pillar  of  the  Presbytery.  Who 
shall  tell  ? 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOHDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


at  the  Office,  No.  V.;  \V«llinston  Street  North,  Strand.    Print-ed  by  BBAOIVEI  8  Efins,  Whjtefriars,  London, 


"Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS."— SHAKESPEARE. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 

A   WEEKLY   JOTJENAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


-  401.] 


SATURDAY,  NOVEMBER  28,  1857. 


fPaicu  2d. 
\  STAMPED  3d. 


WANDERINGS  IN  INDIA. 


IT  is  impossible  for  an  English  gentleman 
to  take  his  departure  from  the  house  of  a 
native  of  India,  without  giving  a  number  of 
testimonials,  in  the  shape  of  •'  letters  of  re- 
commendation," addressed  to  no  one  in  par- 
ticular. Nena  Sahib*  had  a  book  containing 
the  autographs  of  at  least  a  hundred  and 
fifty  gentlemen  and  ladies,  who  had  testified 
in  writing  to  the  attention  and  kindness  they 
had  received  at  the  hands  of  the  Maharajah, 
during  their  stay  at  Bhitoor.  Having  ex- 
pressed my  satisfaction  as  emphatically  as 
possible  in  this  book,  the  khansamah  (house- 
steward)  demanded  a  certificate,  which  I  j 
gave  him.  Then  came  the  bearer,  the  men 
who  guarded  my  door,  the  coachman,  the 
grooms,  the  sweeper.  For  each  and  all  of 
these  1  had  to  write  characters,  and  recom- 
mend them  to  such  of  my  friends  as  they 
might  encounter  by  accident  or  otherwise. 
It  is  a  fearful  infliction  —  this  character 
writing;  but  everyone  is  compelled  to  go 
through  it. 

I  was  now  on  my  road  to  Agra,  to  pay  a 
visit  to  a  schoolfellow,  who  was  then  in  the 
civil  service,  and  filling  an  appointment  in  the 
station.  It  was  in  the  m»nth  of  September 
that  I  made  the  journey — the  most  unhealthy 
season  of  the  year.  Opposite  to  the  first 
dak  bungalow,  some  twelve  miles  from  the 
station  of  Cawnpore,  I  was  stopped  by  a  set 
of  twelve  palkee  bearers,  who  informed  me 
that  a  Sahib,  whom  they  were  taking  to 
Alleyghur,  had  been  seized  with  cholera,  and 
was  dying  in  the  bungalow.  I  hastened  to 
the  room  and  there  found,  stretched  upon  the 
couch,  a  young  officer  of  about  nineteen  years 
of  age. 

His  face  was  ashy  pale,  and  a  profuse  cold 
perspiration  stood  upon  his  forehead.  His 
hazels  and  feet  were  like  ice,  and  he  was 
i  very  great  pain.  The  only  person  near 
him  was  tL.«  sweeper,  who  kept  on,  assuring 
me  that  the  yo^th.  W0uld  die.  As  for  the 
youth  himself  he  wa»  past  speech,  and  I 
was  disposed  to  think,  with  tk«  sweeper, 
that  he  was  beyond  cure.  I  administered] 
however,  nearly  a  teaspoonful  of  laudanum 
in  a  wine-glass  half-full  of  raw  brandy,  and 


See  page  457  of  the  present  Volume. 


then  took  a  seat  near  the  patient,  in  order  to 
witness  the  effect.  Ere  long  the  severe  pain 
was  allayed,  and  the  youth  fell  into  a  pro- 
found sleep,  from  which,  I  began  to  fear,  he 
would  never  awake.  To  have  administered 
a  smaller  dose,  at  that  stage  of  the  disease, 
would  have  been  useless,  for  the  body  was 
on  the  very  verge  of  collapse.  Neverthe- 
less, I  began  to  feel  the  awkwardness  of  the 
responsibility  which  I  had  taken  upon  my- 
self. Presently,  a  palanquin  carriage,  pro- 
pelled by  bearers,  came  to  the  bungalow.  An 
elderly  lady  and  gentleman  alighted,  and 
were  shown  into  a  little  room  whicli  happened 
to  be  vacant.  [A  dak  bungalow  has  only  two 
little  rooms.]  To  my  great  joy  I  discovered 
that  the  new  arrival  was  a  doctor  of  a  regi- 
ment ;  who,  with  his  wife,  was  journeying  to 
Calcutta.  I  was  not  long  in  calling  in  the 
doctor  ;  and  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  hearing 
him  pronounce  an  opinion  that  the  young 
ensign  was  "all  right,"  and  that  the  dose  I 
had  administered  had  been  the  means  of 
saving  his  life.  How  readily,  to  be  sure, 
do  people  in  India  accommodate  each  other. 
Although  the  doctor  and  his  wife  were 
hurrying  down  the  country,  and  albeit  the 
youth  was  pronounced  out  of  danger,  they 
remained  with  me  until  the  following  after- 
noon ;  when,  having  dined,  we  all  took  our 
departure  together— the  youth  and  I  travel- 
ling northward,  the  doctor  and  his  wife  in 
the  opposite  direction. 

The  night  was  pitchy  dark  ;  but  the  glare 
from  the  torches  rendered  every  object  near 
to  us  distinctly  visible.  The  light,  shining 
on  the  black  faces  of  the  palkee  bearers, 
they  appeared  like  so  many  demons — but 
very  merry  demons  ;  for  they  chatted  and 
laughed  incessantly,  until  I  commanded  them 
to  be  silent,  in  order  that,  while  we  moved 
along  the  road,  I  might  listen  to  the  ensign's 
story,  which  he  told  me  in  the  most  artless 
manner  imaginable : 

"  I  have  only  been  six.  weeks  in  India,"  he 
began,  "and,  at  present,  only  know  a  few 
words  of  the  language.  How  I  came  into 
the  Bengal  Army  was  this.  My  father  was 
in  the  civil  service  of  the  company,  in  the 
Madras  Presidency;  and,  after  twenty-one 
years'  service,  retired  on  his  pension  of  one 
thousand  pounds  a-year,  and  his  savings 
which  amounted  to  twenty  thousand  pounds, 


VOi,  XYL 


401, 


506       [NoTember  23, IS?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


and  which  was  invested  in  five  per  cent, 
government  securities ;  so  that  his  income  was 
two  thousand  a-year.  We  lived  during  the  | 
winter  near  Grosveuor  Square  :  a  house  of 
which  my  father  bought  the  lease  for  twenty 
years,  and  the  summer  we  used  to  spend  at 
a  little  place  in  Berkshire,  which  he  had 
bought.  It  was  only  a  good  sized  cottage, 
and  the  land  about  it  did  not  exceed  three 
acres.  But  it  was  a  perfect  gem  of  a  resi- 
dence, and  quite  large  enough  lor  our  family  ; 
which  consisted  of  my  father  and  mother, 
myself,  and  a  sister  who  is  a  year  and 
a-half  older  than  I  am.  I  was  at  Harrow. 
My  father  intended  that  I  should  go  to 
Oxford,  and  eventually  be  called  to  the  bar. 
My  sister  had  a  governess,  a  very  clever  and 
accomplished  girl,  and  the  most  amiable 
creature  that  ever  lived.  We  were  not  an 
extravagant  family,  and  saw  very  little  com- 
pany ;  but  we  had  every  comfort  that  a  rea- 
sonable heart  could  desire,  and  I  fancy  that 
we  lived  up  to  the  two  thousand  pounds 
a-year.  You  see  the  education  of  myself  and 
my  sister  was  a  heavy  item.  The  governess 
had  a  hundred  pounds  a  year,  and  then  there 
was  a  singing  master  and  a  drawing  master. 
About  two  years  ago  my  father  died,  and  my 
mother  became  almost  imbecile  from  the 
excess  of  her  grief.  She  lost  her  memory  ; 
and,  for  days  together,  knew  not  what  she 
was  doing.  Under  my  father's  will  she  was 
entitled  to  all  that  he  died  possessed  of,  and 
was  appointed  his  sole  executrix.  The 
house  in  South  Street  was  given  up,  the 
unexpired  portion  of  the  lease  disposed  of, 
and  the  little  place  in  Berkshire  became  our 
only  home.  My  father's  pension,  of  course, 
expired  when  he  died,  and  we,  the  family, 
had  now  to  live  on  the  interest  of  the  govern- 
ment securities.  My  mother,  who  was  as 
ignorant  as  a  child  on  all  matters  of  business, 
was  recommended  to  sell  her  government 
securities,  and  invest  the  proceeds  iu  a  joint- 
stock  bank  which  was  paying,  and  for 
more  than  a  year  did  pay,  eight  per  cent. 
But,  alas,  one  wretched  day  the  bank  failed, 
and  we  were  reduced  suddenly  from  compa- 
rative affluence  to  poverty.  The  cottage, 
furniture,  and  all  that  my  mother  possessed, 
was  seized  and  sold.  This  happened  only  two 
years  ago.  Fortunately  for  me,  my  school 
education  was  pretty  well  completed  ;  but,  of 
course,  the  idea  of  my  going  to  Oxford,  and 
subsequently  to  the  bar,  was  at  once  aban- 
doned. My  sister  was  obliged  to  take  a 
situation,  as  governess,  in  the  family  of  a 
director  of  the  East  India  Company ;  and, 
through  that  gentleman's  influence,  I  ob- 
tained an  ensigncy  in  the  Native  Infantry. 
The  loss  of  her  fortune,  the  parting  with  my 
sister  (who  is  now  on  the  Continent  with  the 
director's  family)  and  myself,  had  such  an 
effect  upon  my  mother,  that  it  was  deemed 
necessary  to  place  her  in  an  asylum  ;  where, 
at  all  events,  she  will  be  taken  care  of, 
and  treated  with  kindness.  But  I  have 


my  plans  !  "  exclaimed  the  young  man  who 
had  just  escaped  the  jaws  of  death.  "In 
ten  years  1  will  save  enough  to  take  me 
home  to  them  ;  for,  if  I  study  hard — and 
I  will  do  so — I  may  get  a  staff  appointment, 
and " 

Here  the  bearers  of  my  palkee  informed 
me  that  two  other  travellers  were  coming 
down  the  road.  They  saw  the  light  in  the 
distance,  more  than  a  mile  off,  and  they — the 
bearers — began  to  talk  loudly,  and  argue  that 
it  was  impossible  for  me  to  hear  what  the 
ensign  was  saying ;  and  all  attempts  to 
silence  them  were  vain.  They  were  discus- 
sing, as  they  carried  us  along,  whether  they 
would  exchange  burdens  with  the  down- 
coming  bearers,  insomuch  as  they  were  nearly 
midway  between  the  stages.  This  is  very 
often  done  by  arrangement  between  them, 
and  thus,  in  such  cases,  they  get  back  more 
speedily  to  their  homes.  It  was  decided 
that  the  exchange  should  take  place,  if  the 
other  party  were  agreeable ;  for,  on  the  down- 
coming  travellers  nearing  us,  the  bearers  of 
us — the  up-going  travellers — called  a  halt. 
Forthwith  the  four  palkees  were  gently 
lowered  (ill  they  rested  on  the  ground.  And 
now  the  chattering  of  the  bearers  became 
something  awful.  A  native  of  Hindostan  can 
settle  nothing  without  a  noise  ;  and,  as  each 
palkee  had  twelve  men  attached  to  it  besides 
the  torch-bearers  and  those  who  carried  our 
boxes,  the  number  of  voices,  whooping,  shout- 
ing, asserting,  contradicting,  scolding  and 
soothing,  exceeded  sixty.  I  and  my  com- 
panion, the  ensign,  shout  to  them  to  "go 
on  !"  At  length  I  got  out  of  my  palkee  in 
a  rage,  and  not  only  screamed  at,  but  shook 
several  of  the  black  disputants.  Whilst 
thus  engaged,  the  doors  of  one  of  the  down- 
ward palkees  were  opened,  and  a  voice — 
that  of  a  lady — thus  greeted  me,  very  good 
humoured  ly:  * 

"  My  good  sir,  depend  upon  it  that  you  are 
retarding  your  own  progress,  and  ours,  by 
attempting,  so  violently,  to  accelerate  it.  Pray 
let  them  settle  their  little  affair  amongst 
themselves." 

"  I  believe  you  are  quite  right,"  I  replied. 

"  Have  you  any  idea  of  the  hour  ?  "  sbe 
asked. 

"  Yes.  It  is  about  a  quarter  to  twelve," 
said  I. 

"  I  have  lost  the  key  of  my  watch.  Per- 
haps the  key  of  yours  would  fit  it." 

I  hastened  to  my  palkee,  brought  forth, 
from  beneath  the  pillow,  my  watch  *ad 
chain  ;  and,  taking  them  to  the  dor"  of  the 
lady's  palkee,  presented  them  trough  the 
opening. 

"  Thanks,"  said  tl»c  lady,  after  winding  up 
her  w«teh,  "  thanks.  It  does  very  well,"  and 
she  returned  the  watch  and  chain.  I  saw,  by 
the  light  of  the  torch,  not  only  her  hand 
— which  was  very  small  and  pretty — but  her 
face,  which  was  more  bewitching  still,  being 
lovely  and  young. 


WANDERINGS  IN  INDIA. 


[November  2^  1;,  7.]        507 


"Is  there  anything  else  you  require,"  I 
asked. 

"  Nothing.  Unless  you  happen  to  have 
with  you  some  freah  bread.  My  children — who 
are  asleep  in  the  other  p;tlkee — are  tired  of 
biscuits,  and  I  imagine  we  shall  not  reach 
Cawnpore  before  mid-day  to-morrow." 

It  happened  that  I  had  a  loaf  in  my 
palkee  ;  and,  with  all  the  pleasure  of  whicli 
the  heart  of  man  is  capable,  placed  it  in 
the  hands  of  the  fair  traveller.  On  this 
occasion  she  opened  the  doors  of  her  palkee 
sufficiently  wide  to  admit  of  my  having  a 
really  good  gaze  at  her  beautiful  features. 
She  was  enveloped  in  a  white  dressing-gown, 
and  wore  a  hood  made  of  black  silk,  and 
lined  with  pink.  Her  hair  was  brushed  back, 
off  the  forehead  ;  but  the  long  dark  tresses 
came  from  behind  the  ears  and  rested  on  her 
covered  shoulders. 

"  Are  you  going  to  Agra  ? "  she  in- 
quired. 

"  Yes."     I  replied. 

"Perhaps  you  would  be  good  enough  to 
return  two  books  for  me  to  the  wife  of  the 
assistant  magistrate.  They  will,  no  doubt, 
afford  you  as  much  amusement  on  your  jour- 
ney as  they  have  afforded  me.  I  finished 
them  this  afternoon,  and  they  are  now  an 
incumbrance."  With  these  words  she 
handed  me  the  volumes,  which  I  faith- 
fully promised  to  return.  By  this  time  the 
bearers  had  settled  their  affair,  and  were 
ready  to  lift  the  palkees.  I  bade  the  fair 
traveller  "  good  night,  and  a  safe  journey." 
We  shook  hands. 

The  reader  may  ask,  "Who  was  your 
friend  1 "  I  did  not  know  at  the  time.  It 
was  not  until  I  had  arrived  at  Agra  that  I 
was  informed  on  this  head.  The  books  which 
she  entrusted  to  my  care  I  had  not  read ; 
and,  after  parting  with  the  ensign  at  the  dak 
bungalow  at  Bewah,  they  were,  indeed,  most 
agreeable  companions.  I  have  mentioned 
this  little  episode  in  my  journey,  not  because 
there  is  anything  in  it  worth  recording,  or 
because  there  is  anything  romantic  therewith 
connected  ;  but  simply  to  show  how  readily 
we  (Christians)  in  India  obliged  one  another 
(albeit  utter  strangers),  and  how  gladly  we 
assist  each  other,  whenever  and  wherever  we 
meet.  Such  an  episode  in  the  journey  of  a 
traveller  in  India  is  one  of  its  most  common- 
place incidents. 

Since  the  news  of  the  recent  deplorable 
disasters  has  reached  this  country,  many 
persons  have  expressed  their  surprise  that  a 
lady  should  be  suffered  to  travel  alone  with 
her  children,  Or  be  accompanied  by  no  more 
than  one  femaU  servant.  The  fact  is 
(or  rather  was),  that,  on  any  dangerous 
road,  a  lady,  utterly  unprotected,  was  oafer 
than  a  gentleman.  The  sex  was,  actually,  its 
own  protection.  During  my  stay  in  India,  I 
knew  of  at  least  a  score  of  instances  in  which 
officers  and  civilians  were  stopped  upon  the 
roads,  plundered,  assaulted  ;  and,  in  one  or 


two  cases,  murdered,  in  the  upper  provinces  ; 
but  I  can  only  bring  to  mind  two  instances 
of  European  ladies  having  been  molested. 
This  is  not  to  be  attributed  to  any  ideas  of 
gallantry,  or  chivalry,  on  the  part  of  marau- 
ders in  the  East ;  but  simply  to  the  fact  that 
they  knew  the  perpetrators  of  an  offence  com- 
mitted against  a  lady  would  be  hunted  down 
to  the  death,  while  the  sympathies  enter- 
tained for  the  sufferings  of  a  Sahib,  would  be 
only  those  of  an  ordinary  character,  and  soon 
"  blow  over."  Even  the  palkee  bearers  knew 
the  amount  of  responsibility  that  attached 
to  them  when  they  bore  away,  from  station 
to  station,  a  female  burden  ;  and,  had  the 
lady  traveller  been  annoyed,  or  interrupted, 
by  an  European  traveller,  they  would  have 
attacked  and  beaten  him,  even  to  the  break- 
ing of  his  bones  and  the  danger  of  his  life, 
had  he  not  desisted  when  commanded  by 
the  lady  to  do  sb.  This  has  happened 
more  than  once,  in  the  upper  provinces  of 
India. 

In  December,  eighteen  hundred  and  forty- 
nine,  the  road  between  Saharumpore  and 
Umballah  was  infested  by  a  gang  of  thieves. 
Several  officers  had  been  stopped,  robbed,  and 
plundered  of  their  money  and  valuables.  I 
had  been  invited  to  Lahore,  to  witness  the 
installation  of  Sir  Walter  Gilbert  and  Sir 
Henry  Elliot  as  Knights  Commanders  of 
the  Bath.  The  danger,  near  a  place  called 
Juggadree,  was  pointed  out  to  me  by  a  mail 
contractor ;  who,  finding  me  determined  to 
proceed,  recommended  me  to  dress  as  a  lady 
for  a  couple  of  stages.  I  did  so.  I  borrowed  a 
gown,  a  shawl,  and  a  night-cap  ;  and,  when  I 
came  near  the  dangerous  locality,  I  put  them 
on,  and  commanded  the  bearers  to  say  that  I 
was  a  "  mem — sahib,"  in  the  event  of  the  pal- 
kee being  stopped.  Sui'e  enough,  the  palkee 
was  stopped,  near  Juggadree,  by  a  gang  of  ten 
or  twelve  armed  men,  one  of  whom  opened 
the  door  to  satisfy  himself  of  the  truth  of 
the  statement  made  by  the  bearers.  The 
moment  the  ruffian  saw  my  night-cap  (a  very 
prettily-frilled  one  it  was  ;  lent  to  me  by  a 
very  pretty  woman),  likewise  a  small  bolster, 
which,  beneath  my  shawl,  represented  a 
sleeping  baby,  he  closed  the  door,  and 
requested  the  bearers  to  take  up  the 
palkee,  and  proceed  ! — aye,  and  what  was 
more,  he  enjoined  them  to  be  "  careful  of  the 
mem  sahib  ! " 

I  have  incidentally  spoken  of  the  installa- 
tion of  Sir  Walter  Gilbert  and  Sir  Henry 
Elliot,  in  December,  eighteen  hundred  and 
forty-nine.  Eight  years  have  not  yet  elapsed, 
and  how  many  of  the  principal  characters  in 
that  magnificent  spectacle  have  departed 
hence  !  Sir  Walter  is  dead.  Sir  Henry  is 
dead.  Sir  Charles  Napier  and  Sir  Dudley 
Hill,  who  led  them  up  to  Lord  Dalhousie, 
are  dead.  Colonel  Mountain,  who  carried 
the  cushion  on  which  was  placed  the  insignia 
of  the  order,  is  dead.  And  Sir  Henry  Law- 
rence is  dead ;  and  poor  Stuart  B'eatson. 


608       [November  28,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Alas  !  how  many  of  that  gay  throng — men 
and  women,  husbands,  fathers,  wives,  and 
daughters,  who  had  assembled  to  witness 
the  ceremony,  have  perished  during  the  re- 
cent revolt  in  the  upper  provinces  of  India  ! 
Those  who  were  present  on  that  sixth  of 
December,  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-nine, 
and,  who,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty-seven, 
quietly  reflect  on  what  has  occurred  since, 
•will  scarcely  believe  in  their  own  existence. 
It  must  appear  to  them — as  it  often  appears 
to  me — as  a  dream :  a  dream  in  which  we  saw 
Sir  Charles  Napier,  with  his  spare  form,  his 
eagle  eyes,  his  aquiline  nose,  and  long,  grey 
beard,  joking  Sir  Dudley  Hill  on  his  corpu- 
lence and  baldness,  and  asking  him  what  sort 
of  figure  he  would  cut  now,  in  leading  a 
forlorn  hope  1  and  Sir  Dudley,  proudly  and 
loudly  replying,  that  he  felt  a  better  man 
than  ever.  Presently,  the  meek  civilian,  in  a 
white  neckcloth,  and  ignorant  of  Sir  Dudley's 
early  deeds,  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  put 
the  question : 

"Did  you  ever  lead  a  forlorn  hope,  Sir 
Dudley  1 "  a  query  which  induced  Sir  Dudley 
Hill  to  groan,  previously  to  exclaiming : 

"  Such  is  fame  !  A  forlorn  hope,  my  dear 
sir,  I  have  led  fifty  ! " 

This  was,  of  course,  an  exaggeration  ;  but 
I  believe  that  Sir  Dudley  Hill  had,  in  the 
Peninsular  "War,  led  more  forlorn  hopes  than 
any  other  officer  in  the  British  army. 

I  have  wandered  away  from  the  high  road 
to  Agra,  and  must  return  to  it.  I  parted 
with  the  ensign  at  Bewah,  and  com- 
menced reading  the  books  which  the 
then  unknown  lady  had  entrusted  to  my 
care.  The  day  towards  noon  became  hot, 
damp,  and  extremely  oppressive ;  and  there 
was  no  dak  bungalow,  or  other  abode,  within 
nine  miles  of  me.  Before  long,  I  heard  thunder 
in  the  distance  ;  and,  presently,  the  bearers 
communicated  to  me  that  a  heavy  storm 
was  approaching,  and  that,  in  order  to  escape 
its  fur}',  they  wished  to  halt  at  a  village 
just  a-head  of  us.  I  consented,  and  was 
now  hurried  along  the  road  at  the  rate 
of  five  miles  an  hour.  My  palkee  was 
placed  beneath  a  shed,  and  the  bearers  con- 
gregated around  it.  One  of  the  number 
lighted  his  pipe  (hubble-bubble),  and  passed 
it  to  his  neighbour  ;  who,  after  three  whiffs, 
passed  it  to  the  next ;  who,  after  three  whiffs, 
sent  it  on,  until  each  had  partaken  of  the 
smoke. 

The  little  village,  which  was  a  short  dis- 
tance from  the  road,  contained  about  sixty 
or  seventy  inhabitants,  and  about  double  that 
number  of  children,  of  various  ages.  My 
presence  excited  no  small  degree  of  curiosity ; 
and  the  whole  of  the  villagers  approached  the 
shed,  to  have  a  look  at  me.  The  men  and 
women,  of  course,  were  not  alarmed,  and 
looked  on  simply  with  that  stupidity  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  cultivators  of  the 
Boil  in  the  upper  provinces  of  India.  But  it 
was  otherwise  with  the  more  youthful,  the 


children.  They  held  aloof,  and  peeped  from 
behind  their  parents,  as  if  I  had  been 
some  dangerous  wild  animal.  My  bearers 
wished  to  drive  them  all  away  ;  but  I  for- 
bade this — partly,  because  I  had  no  desire  to 
deprive  the  villagers  of  whatever  pleasure 
a  long  inspection  of  me  might  afford  them, 
and  partly  because  I  wished  to  sketch  the 
group,  aud  listen  to  their  remarks,  which 
were  chiefly  of  a  personal  character,  and  for 
the  most  part  complimentary,  or  intended 
so  to  be. 

A  vivid  flash  of  lightning,  and  an  awfully 
loud  clap  of  thunder,  accompanied  by  a 
few  large  drops  of  rain,  speedily  dispersed 
the  crowd,  and  I  was  left  to  myself  and 
my  bearers,  who  now  huddled  themselves 
together  for  warmth's  sake.  The  air  had 
become  chilly,  aud  even  I  was  compelled 
to  wrap  my  cloak  and  my  blanket  about 
my  thinly-clad  limbs.  Another  vivid  flash 
of  lightning,  and  another  awful  clap  of 
thunder ;  then  down  came  such  hail- 
stones as  I  had  never  seen  before,  and  have 
never  seen  since  in  the  plains  of  Hindostan. 
In  size  and  weight  they  equalled  those  which 
sometimes  fall  in  the  Himalaya  mountains 
in  June  and  July.  With  these  storms  the 
rains  usually  "  break  up,"  and  then  the  cold 
weather  sets  in  ;  and  with  this  season  of 
the  year  what  climate  in  the  world  is  supe- 
rior to  that  of  the  upper  provinces  of  India  ? 
When  the  thunder,  lightning,  and  hail  had 
ceased — and  their  continuance  did  not  exceed 
fifteen  minutes — the  sun  came  out,  and  the 
face  of  heaven  was  as  fair  as  possible  ;  but 
the  earth  gave  evidence  of  the  severity  of  the 
storm.  Not  only  was  the  ground  covered 
with  leaves  and  small  branches,  intermingled 
with  the  hail,  but  cattle  and  goats  had  been 
killed  by  the  furious  pelting  of  the  huge  stones;, 
whilst  the  electric  fluid  had  descended  on  one 
of  the  mud  huts  of  the  village  in  which  I  had 
taken  refuge,  and  had  stretched  out  in  death 
an  old  man  and  two  of  his  grandchildren,  a 
boy  of  six  years  of  age,  and  a  girl  of  four. 
The  parents  of  these  children  were  absent 
from  the  village,  and  were  not  expected  to 
return  until  the  evening.  On  being  informed 
of  the  accident,  I  expressed  a  desire  to  see 
the  bodies,  and  was  conducted  by  seve- 
ral of  the  villagers  to  the  hut  in  which 
they  were  lying.  I  recognised  at  once  the 
features  of  the  old  man,  who  was  a  promi- 
nent figure  in  my  sketch,  and  of  one  of  the 
children,  the  little  girl,  who  held  the  old  man 
so  tightly  by  the  hand,  while  she  peeped  At 
me.  The  face  of  the  boy  had  not  struck  me. 
There  they  were  lying  dead,  but  atill  warm, 
and  their  limbs,  as  yet,  devoid  of  rigidity. 
The  matter-of-fact  way  in  which  the  natives 
of  India  regard  the  death  of  their  relations 
or  friends,  is  something  wonderful  to  behold. 
It  is  not  that  their  affections  are  less  strong 
than  ours,  or  their  feelings  less  acute.  It  is 
tliat  fatality  is  the  beginning  and  end  of  their 
creed.  They  are  taught  from  their  childhood 


Charles  Dickens.] 


WANDERINGS  IN  INDIA. 


[November  23, 1ST,;.]       509 


to  regard  visitations  of  this  character  as 
direct  and  special  acts  of  God  ;  as  matters 
which  ilis  not  only  futile,  but  improper  to 
bewail.  None  of  the  villagers,  men,  women, 
or  children,  exhibited  any  token  of  grief 
while  gazing  on  the  lifeless  bodies  they  sur- 
rounded. And,  on  asking  my  bearers, 
whether  the  parents  of  the  children  would 
weep  when  they  returned  and  found  their 
offspring  thus  suddenly  cut  off  ?  they  re- 
plied, rather  abruptly:  '"'Why  should  they 
weep  at  God's  will  1" 

As  I  was  preparing  to  leave  the  village, 
a  middle-aged  woman  came  up  to  me,  and 
said  : 

"  Sahib,  the  parents  of  the  dead  children 
are  very  poor,  and  the  expense  of  burning  of 
their  remains  will  press  very  hard  upon  them. 
The  wood  for  the  old  man  will  cost  eight  annas, 
and  the  fuel  for  each  of  the  children  four 
annas  ;  in  all,  one  rupee." 

I  placed  the  coin  in  the  woman's  hand, 
and  left,  besides,  a  donation  for  the  bereaved 
parents  who  were  absent ;  having  previously 
called  several  of  the  villagers  to  witness  the 
proceeding.  This  I  did  at  the  suggestion  of 
the  palkee  bearers  ;  who  entertained  some 
doubts  of  the  woman's  honesty.  We  had 
•not  proceeded  far,  when  I  descried  a  small 
encampment,  beneath  a  clump  of  mango 
trees.  It  consisted  of  an  officer's  tent,  and 
two  long  tents  for  native  soldiers — sepoys. 
One  of  these  long  tents  was  for  the  Hindoos  ; 
the  other  for  the  Mussulmans.  When  we 
came  opposite  to  the  encampment,  I  desired 
the  bearers  to  stop,  and  put  some  questions 
to  a  Sepoy,  who  was  standing  near  the 
road.  I  gleaned  from  him  that  the  encamp- 
ment was  that  of  "a  treasure  party,"  con- 
sisting of  a  lieutenant,  and  a  company  of 
native  infantry,  proceeding  from  Mynpoorie 
to  Agra. 

"  Won't  you  go  and  see  the  Sahib  ? "  asked 
the  Sepoy. 

"  I  don't  know  him,"  said  I. 

"  That  does  not  signify,"  said  the  Sepoy. 
"  Our  Sahib  is  glad  to  see  everybody.  He  is 
the  most  light-hearted  man  in  Hindostan. 
His  lips  are  the  home  of  laughter,  and  his 
presence  awakens  happiness  in  the  breast 
of  the  most  sorrowful.  His  body  is  small, 
but  his  mind  is  great  ;  and,  in  his  eyes,  the 
Hindoo,  the  Mussulman,  and  the  Christian, 
are  all  equal." 

This  description,  I  confess,  aroused  my 
•curiosity  to  see  so  philosophical  a  lieutenant, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  my  curiosity  was 
gratified ;  for  he  made  his  appearance  at 
the  door  of  his  tent ;  and,  observing  my 
palkee.  bore  down,  upon  it. 

The  lieutenant  wore  a  pair  of  white  pyja- 
mahs,  which  were  tucked  up  to  his  knees, 
no  shoes,  or  stockings  ;  a  blue  shirt,  no  coat, 
no  jacket  ;  a  black  neck-tie,  and  a  leather 
helmet  with  a  white  covering,  such  as  one 
sees  labelled  in  the  shop-windows  "  for  India." 
His  person  was  very  small  certainly,  and  the 


calves  of  his  legs  not  bigger  than  those  of 
a  boy  of  twelve  years  of  age.  In  his  mouth 
he  had  a  huge  (number  one)  cheroot,  and,  in 
his  hand,  a  walking-stick,  with  a  waist  nearly 
as  big  as  his  own.  Besting  his  chest  upon 
this  walking-stick,  and  looking  me  full  in  the 
face,  perfectly  ignorant,  and  seemingly  in- 
different, as  to  whether  I  might  be  a  secretary 
to  the  government,  or  a  shopkeeper,  he  thus 
familiarly  accosted  me  : 

"  Well,  old  boy,  how  do  you  feel  after  the 
shower  1 " 

"Very  well,  I  thank  you." 

"  Come  in  and  have  a  cup  of  tea,  and  a 
round  of  toast,  if  you  are  not  in  a  hurry  to 
get  on.  It  will  set  you  up,  and  make  you 
feel  comfortable  for  the  night."  This  offer 
was  so  tempting,  and  so  cordially  made,  that 
I  was  induced  to  accept  it. 

"  Bring  the  Sahib  into  iny  tent,  in  the 
palkee,"  said  Lieutenant  Sixtie  to  my  bearers, 
and  then  addressing  me,  he  remarked :  "  Don't 
get  out.  You'll  wet  your  slippers." 

The  bearers  followed  the  lieutenant,  and 
put  down  my  palkee  upon  two  tiers  of  small 
boxes,  which  were  spread  over  the  space  of 
ground  covered  by  the  tent. 

"  I    was    obliged    to   resort    to    this    box 

dodge,"  said  my  host,   "or    I   should   have 

I  been    drowned.     I    wish   I    owned    only   a 

quarter  of  this  rhino  we  are  treading  on.     If 

I  did,  catch  me  at  this  work  any  longer,  my 

'  masters  !  "  It  was  the  treasure  that  the  boxes 

I  contained,  in  all  about  twenty-five  thousand 

•  pounds.      "  Look    here,   old    boy.       Forego, 

like  a  good  fellow,  the  tea  and    the    toast. 

My  servants  will  have  such  a  bother  to  get 

a  fire  and  boil  water.    Have  some  biscuits 

and    cold    brandy- an d-water  instead.     You 

should  never  drink  tea  while  travelling.    It 

keeps  you   awake  ;   and,    what  is   more,   it 

spoils  the  flavour  of  your  cheroots.     By  the 

bye,  have  one  of  these  weeds." 

I  thanked  my  host ;  and,  without  any  sort 
of  pressing,  yielded  to  his  every  wish- 
even  unto  playing  ecarte  with  him,  while 
smoking  his  cheroots,  and  drinking  his 
brandy-and-water.  The  stakes  were  not 
very  high.  Only  a  rupee  a  game.  Daring 
|  the  deals  my  host  would  frequently 
exclaim  : 

"  By  Jove  !  what  a  god's  send  it  is  to  have 
some  one  to  talk  to  for  a  few  hours  !  I 
have  been  out  for  five  days ;  and,  during 
that  time,  have  not  uttered  a  word  in  my 
own  language.  Haven't  had  the  luck  to 
come  across  a  soul.  This  escorting  treasure 
is  the  most  awful  part  of  an  officer's  duty, 
especially  at  this  season  of  the  year." 

"  But  it  must  be  done,"  I  suggested. 

"  Yes.     But  why  not  by  native  officers  ?  " 

"  Would  the  treasure  be  safe  with  them  ?" 

"  Safe  1  Just  as  safe  as  it  is  now,  if  not 
safer  ;  for,  although  I  am  responsible  for  the 
money  in  these  boxes,  I  don't  know  that  the 
whole  amount  is  there.  I  didn't  count  it ; 
and,  if  there  was  any  deficiency,  I  should  say 


610       [MoTeinber  28. 1867J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


so.  Now,  a  native  officer  would  satisfy  him- 
self on  the  subject  before  he  took  charge. 
Don't  you  see  ?  " 

Here  our  conversation  was  interrupted  by 
a  havildar  (native  sergeant),  who  appeared  at 
the  door  of  the  tent,  saluted  the  lieutenant, 
and  uttered  in  a  deep  and  solemn  tone  of 
voice  the  word  Sa-hib  ! 

"  Well.  What's  the  matter  ? "  said  the 
lieutenant. 

"  Maun  Singh  Sipahee  is  very  ill." 

"What ails  him?" 

"  He  has  fever." 

"  Then  I  will  come  and  see  him  in  one 
moment."  With  these  words  the  lieute- 
nant threw  down  his  cards,  and  invited  me 
to  accompany  him  to  the  tent  wherein  the 
patient  was  lying. 

Maun  Singh  Sipahee  was  a  powerful  Brah- 
min, who  stood  upwards  of  six  feet  two.  He 
was  a  native  of  Oude,  and  had  a  very  dark 
skin.  When  we  entered  the  tent,  he  at- 
tempted to  rise  from  the  charpai  (native  bed- 
stead) on  which  he  was  reclining  ;  but  the 
lieutenant  told  him  to  be  still,  then  felt  the 
sick  man's  pulse,  and  placed  his  small  white 
hand  across  the  broad  black  forehead  of  the 
soldier. 

"  Curry  him  into  my  tent.  The  ground  is 
too  damp  for  him  here,"  said  the  lieutenant, 
and  forthwith  the  bedstead  was  raised  by 
half-a-dozen  of  the  man's  comrades.  In  the 
tent  medicine  was  administered — a  small  quan- 
tity of  tartar  emetic  dissolved  in  water,  and 
given  in  very  small  doses — until  nausea  was 
produced,  and  a  gentle  perspiration  stood 
upon  the  skin  of  the  patient. 

''  You  are  all  right,  now,  Maun  Singh," 
said  the  lieutenant. 

"  No,  Sahib,  I  am  dying.  Nothing  can  save 
me." 

"  Then  you  know  better  than  I  do  ? " 

"Forgive  me,  Sahib." 

"  Listen.  Lie  very  quiet ;  and,  before  we 
march,  I  will  give  you  another  sort  of  medi- 
cine that  will  set  you  up." 

The  sepoy  covered  his  head  over  with  his 
resaiee  (counterpane),  and  lay  as  still  as  pos- 
sible. 

"  They  always  fancy  they  are  going  to  die, 
if  there  is  anything  the  matter  with  them," 
said  the  lieutenant  to  me.  "I  have  cured 
hundreds  of  fever  cases  by  this  treatment. 
The  only  medicines  I  ever  use  in  fever,  sir, 
are  tartar  emetic  and  quinine.  He  has  taken 
the  one,  which  has  had  its  effect ;  the  other 
he  shall  have  by  and  bye.  I  wouldn't  lose 
that  man  on  any  account.  His  death  would 
occasion  me  the  greatest  grief." 

"  Is  he  a  great  favourite  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Not  more  than  any  of  the  rest  of  them, 
who  were  with  the  regiment  in  Affghauistan, 
where  they  not  only  proved  themselves  as 
brave  as  the  European  soldiers ;  but  where 
they  showed  themselves  superior  to  prejudices 
most  intimately  connected  with  theirreligion 
—their  caste.  That  man,  whom  you  see 


lying  there,  is  a  Brahmin  of  the  highest  caste  ; 
yet,  I  have  seen  him,  and  other  Brahmins  now 
in  my  regiment,  bearing  upon  their  shoulders 
the  remains  of  an  officer  to  the  grave.  Of 
course,  you  are  aware  that  to  do  a  thing  of 
that  kind — to  touch  the  corpse  of  an  unbe- 
liever— involves  a  loss  of  caste  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Well,  sir,  these  fellows  braved  the  opinion 
and  the  taunts  of  every  Hindoo  in  the  country, 
in  'order  to  pay  respect  to  the  memory  of 
those  officers  whose  dangers  and  privations 
they  had  cheerfully  shared.  You  are  aware, 
perhaps,  that  at  last  the  government  found  it 
necessary  to  issue  a  general  order  to  the 
effect  that  any  sepoy  of  any  other  regiment 
who  insulted  the  men  of  this  regiment,  by 
telling  them  they  had  lost  their  caste,  would 
be  severely  punished  and  dismissed  the 
service  1  Such  was  the  case,  sir ;  and  many 
courts-martial  were  held  in  various  stations 
for  the  trial  of  offenders  against  this  order  ; 
and  many  Hindoo  sepoys  and  Mussulman 
native  officers  were  very  severely  dealt  with. 
And  the  thing  was  put  down,  sir  ;  and  now- 
a-days  there  is  nothing  more  common  than 
for  the  Hindoo  sepoys,  in  all  the  regiments,  to 
ask  permission  to  carry  the  remains  of  a  po- 
pular officer  to  the  grave.  Indeed,  ladies  are 
often  thus  honoured,  and  children.  They 
seem  to  have  agreed  amongst  themselves 
that  this  does  not  involve  a  loss  of  caste — so 
much  for  caste,  if  it  can  be  got  over  by  an 
understanding  amongst  themselves  !  Caste  ! 
More  than  four-fifths  of  what  they  talk  about 
it  is  pure  nonsense  and  falsehood,  as  any 
straightforward  native  will  confidentially  con- 
fess to  you.  I  don't  mean  to  say  that  some 
Hindoos  are  not  very  strict.  Many,  indeed, 
are  so.  But  I  mean  to  say  that  a  very  small 
proportion  live  in  accordance  with  the  Shat- 
ters, and  that  when  they  cry  out,  "  if  we  do 
so  and  so  we  shall  lose  our  caste,"  it  is 
nothing  more  than  a  rotten  pretext  for  es- 
caping some  duty,  or  for  refusing  to  obey  a 
distasteful  order.  There  are  hypocrites  in 
all  countries,  but  India  swarms  with  them 
more  thickly  than  any  country  in  the  world. 
And  the  fact  is  that  we  foster  hypocrisy.  Our 
fellows,  and  most  of  them  Brahmins,  released 
a  good  many  cats  from  the  bag,  when  they 
were  taunted  with  having  lost  their  caste  ! 
If  you  are  not  in  a  frightful  hurry  to  get  on, 
stay  till  we  march,  and  go  with  us;  and  I'll 
tell  you  and  show  you  something  more  about 
caste.  You  can  send  on  your  palkee  and 
bearers  to  the  next  encampment  ground,  and 
I'll  drive  you  in  my  old  trap  of  a  bug-gy.  It 
is  not  a  remarkably  elegant  affair,  but  it  is 
very  strong  and  roomy.  By  the  bye,  we  shall 
have  to  travel  '  three  in  a  gig  ; '  for  I  must 
put  Maun  Sinyh,  my  sick  sepoy,  between  us  ; 
and  you  will  find  him  a  very  intelligent 
fellow,  I  can  tell  you,  and  the  dose  I  intend 
giving  him  will  make  him  as  chirpy  as  pos- 
sible." 

The    conversation    and   the     manners  of 


Charle,  Dickens.]  NATURE'S    GEEATNESS   IN   SMALL   THINGS.        [How»beran»7.J      511 


the  lieutenant — free  and  easy  as  were  the 
latter — had  fascinated  me,  and  I  accepted  his 
invitation. 


NATURE'S  GREATNESS  IN  SMALL 
THINGS. 

To  the  imagination  of  man,  magnitude 
presents  itself  as  one  of  the  noblest  and  most 
impressive  attributes  with  which  material 
objects  are  clothed.  The  colossal  grandeur 
of  the  Alps,  amid  the  wonders  of  nature  ;  or 
of  the  Pyramids  among  the  master-pieces  of 
Art,  affects  the  sensuous  nature  of  the  be- 
holder with  unrningled  reverence  andawe.  But 
the  refined  intelligence  seeks  for  a  higher 
standard  of  value  than  size  can  afford.  Sense 
bows  before  the  majesty  of  sublime  propor- 
tion ;  reason  first  seeks  to  investigate  all  the 
relations  of  material  things,  and,  in  the  end, 
exalts  to  the  highest  place  those  which  a 
searching  test  has  declared  to  possess  the 
loftiest  significance.  Not  unfrequently  it  is 
seen  that  forms  the  most  minute  are  most 
essential.  They  were  the  Titanic  forces  and 
grander  features  of  nature  which  evoked  the 
admiration  and  the  worship  of  the  earliest 
tribes  of  men.  As  we  descend  along  the 
stream  of  time,  we  may  discover  a  growing 
perception  of  the  greatness  of  small  thing%  ; 
the  marvellous  power  of  minor  organisms  to 
work  immeasurable  changes,  and  the  exqui- 
site beauty  of  minute  structures. 

Many  centuries  ago,  thoughtful  men  fore- 
shadowed the  full  expression  of  this  ripening 
truth,  and  anticipated  the  results  of  modern 
science  in  a  profound  axiom — tota  natura  iu 
minimis — in  smallest  things  is  nature  greatest. 
It  was  reserved  for  this  century  to  develop  a 
saying  of  the  schools  into  a  household  precept. 
This  age  has  cast  down  barriers  that  walled 
round  the  human  vision,  and  has  spread  out 
before  us  a  whole  universe  of  created  things, 
of  which  no  man  knew  before  our  time.  We 
see  now,  by  the  aid  of  the  microscope,  that 
greatness  has  no  existence  but  as  composed 
of  infinite  littleness.  Who  that  bowed  before 
the  oak  could  have  thought  the  lord  of  the 
forest  to  be  a  compound  mass  of  many 
millions  of  independent  organisms,  of  which 
thousands  are  combined  within  an  acorn  ' 
Who  that  looked  upon  the  mountain  chains 
of  western  Asia,  or  the  white  cliffs  of  Dover 
could  surmise  that  they  were  the  handiwork 
of  infusorial  animalcules,  whose  shells  make 
up  the  mass  in  numbers  of  thirty  millions  to 
a  cubic  inch?  These  are  the  revelations  of 
the  microscope. 

lifted  -with  this  new  power,  the  naturalist 
has  traversed  the  material  universe  as  though 
armed  with  a  magician's  wand  ;  and  beneath 
all  diverse  shapes,  amid  all  vnrioua  structures 
he  has  found  one  simple  and  invariable  unit 
the  beginning  of  all  form  ;  the  first  and  main 
element  of  attenuated  organisms.  It  is  the 
organic  cell.  The  loftiest  trees  have  bowec 
their  heads,  and  confessed  this  strange  secre 


of  their  structure.*  The  stubborn  rock  has 
not  withheld  the  same  tale  of  antediluvian 
ore.  The  highest  animal,  and  the  lowliest 
)lant  have  narrated  the  same  self-imprinted 
story  of  their  birth.  Flowers  have  whis- 
kered it, — the  rustling  leaves  hav.s  breathed 
t.  The  butterfly  has  borne  it  on  the  dust  of 
ts  wings,  the  fish  upon  its  scales.  It  i» 
written  in  the  blood  that  circulates  in  our 
veins, — it  is  imprinted  on  the  muscle  which 
ives  motion,  and  the  bones  which  afford  sup- 
jort  to  our  frame.  All  nature  testifies  to  it. 
Due  secret  that  is  the  key  of  all  shapely 
aeauty,  or  deformed  ugliness.  A  hidden 
unity  amidst  all  variety.  A  common  type  for 
every  form.  One  word  which  all  creation 
perpetually  utters ;  a  witness  to  the  one 
source  whence  all  derives. 

The  waters  teem  with  dissimilar  forms 
of  life.  The  air  is  darkened  with  inha- 
bitants, not  one  of  which  has  its  exact 
counterpart.  The  mind  actually  shrinks  from 
the  contemplation  of  endless  dissimilarity, 
and  apparently  inharmonious  difference. 
What  a  chasm  gapes  between  the  shape  and 
function  of  the  stately  old  chesnut-tree  of 
Etna,  whom  time  has  not  subdued  and  age  has 
not  withered,  and  the  ephemeral  fungus  that 
springs  up  to-day,  flowers  to-morrow,  and  dies 
ere  another  sun  has  visited  it !  A  wider  interval 
appears  between  the  noble  form  of  man  him- 
self and  the  green  mould  that  clothes  his 
tomb.  But  the  microscope  resolves  this 
complexity,  and  bridges  easily  this  chasm. 
It  resolves  them  alike  into  simplest  elements, 
and  finds  beneath  all  the  same  type  of  crea- 
tion. It  shows  always,  at  the  foundation, 
that  common  origin  in  cell-growth  which 
binds  all  created  things  in  one  sublime  con- 
nection ;  and  proclaims  a  common  law  of 
growth,  and  a  pervading  fiat  of  creative 
power  as  vice-regent  over  organic  nature. 

It  was  our  own  distinguished  countryman, 
Robert  Brown,  who  initiated  the  observations 
whose  fruitful  results  have  led  to  the  percep- 
tion of  this  universal  law.  But  not  until  the 
researches  of  Schleiden,  in  eighteen  hundred 
and  thirty-seven,  was  any  useful  generalisa- 
tion obtained.  The  efforts  of  naturalists  had, 
before  that  time,  been  chiefly  directed  towards 
the  perception  of  differences,  and  the  creation 
of  species.  But  Schleiden  saw  that  the  philo- 
sophy of  nature  was  darkened  by  our  igno- 
rance of  the  laws  of  natural  development ; 
and  bravely  devoting  himself  to  the  patient 
study  of  growth,  and  the  laws  which  control 
it,  he  travelled  through  a  tangled  forest  of 
prickly  and  entwined  facts,  till  at  last  he  saw 
the  light,  and  could  proclaim  it.  He  watched 
the  secret  processes  of  plants  ;  traced  them  in 
their  reproduction  and  their  birth,  analysed 
their  structures,  and  observed  the  process  of 
their  functional  activities. 

At  the  end  of  a  long  course  of  labour, 
he  was  able  to  tell  to  the  world,  that,  as  the 

*  See  Household  Words,  Volume  the  Eighth,  pages  354 
and  4S3. 


512 


.19S7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


minor  organisms,  which  are  the  lowliest 
members  of  the  vegetable  kingdom  are  each 
in  themselves  an  individual  cell,  having  life 
and  activity,  nutrition  and  reproduction,  so 
the  highest  plants  are  only  congeries  of  such 
individuals,  heaped  one  upon  another, moulded 
into  a  thousand  shapes,  and  adapted  to  dill'er- 
ent  purposes.  It  was  then  that  he  enunciated 
the  principle,  that  the  lite-story  of  a  plant  is 
to  be  studied  through  the  vital  history  of  its 
composing  cell  elements  ;  and,  proclaiming 
the  microscopic  vegetable  cell  as  the  unit  of 
vegetable  creation,  exalted  it  to  the  place  of 
honour  among  the  objects  of  microscopic 
research.  It  was  no  small  thing  that  this 
key  to  the  cabinet  of  vegetable  physiology 
should  be  so  discovered,  and  placed  in  our 
hands  ;  but  his  researches  led  to  yet  another 
result, — for  Schwann  proceeded  to  apply  to 
the  animal  world,  the  same  method  of  in- 
quiry which  Schleiden  had  inaugurated 
among  plants  ;  and,  at  the  close  of  two  years, 
he  made  known,  in  his  turn,  the  sublime 
truth  that  the  law  of  formation  and  repro- 
duction which  prevails  in  the  vegetable,  rules 
also  over  the  animal  creation.  He  showed 
that  the  scheme  is  the  same,  and  the  cell  still 
the  primordial  element  of  being.  Bones, 
cartilages,  muscles,  nerves,  and  every  tissue, 
were  traced  to  their  origin  in  cell-growth  ; 
man  himself  appears  as  a  congeries  of  cells: 
his  growth  the  expression  of  the  sum  of  their 
growth :  the  vital  processes  of  his  body 
carried  on  by  cell-action :  secretion,  absorp- 
tion, exhalation,  nutrition,  chemical  change, 
and  vital  change  ;  so  many  names  which 
only  indicate  phases  in  the  history  of  cell- 
life,  that  epitome  of  all  oi-ganic  life.  These 
splendid  researches  were  the  result  of  ob- 
servations made  with  very  imperfect  and 
inoffensive  instruments ;  they  should  en- 
courage the  poorest  and  simplest  student  of 
microscopic  nature  to  think  and  to  examine 
for  himself.  They  should  inspire  an  abiding 
faith  in  the  noble  simplicity  of  the  inner- 
most mysteries  of  nature,  and  the  power  of 
the  human  intellect  to  master  the  difficulties 
of  all  mere  material  problems  in  the  exercise 
of  its  heaven-descended  reason.  Greatly 
should  the  microscopist  rejoice  to  find,  in  his 
favourite  instrument,  a  facile  power  of  un- 
veiling these  high  secrets.  The  most  inex- 
pensive microscope  gives  him  the  power  to 
interrogate  all  surrounding  objects  on  this 
head,  and  to  draw  from  them  the  confession 
of  their  obedience  to  cell-power.  Sitting  in 
the  poorest  room,  even  on  the  dullest  day, 
he  may  cut  a  chip  from  the  floor,  take  a 
leaf  from  a  flower,  a  thread  from  the  carpet,  | 
a  hair  from  the  chair,  a  fragment  from  his 
tood,  a  coal-chip  from  the  fire,  or  &  drop  of 
blood  from  the  finger,  and  they  will  all  speak 
to  him  in  this  same  language.  Their  variety  l 
will  show  up  a  higher  uniformity,  their 
complexity  a  simple  cellular  unit.  Their 
multiform  shapes  will  betray  one  common 
type.  Uttering  many  voices,  they  sing  one  ' 


grace  and  canticle  of  the  same  purport ;  the 
vastness  and  variety  of  the  results  produced 
by  modifications  of  the  same  unvarying 
means  ;  the  universality  ot  cell-power ;  the 
pervading  existence  of  cell-growth,  the  mil- 
lion development  of  its  resources,  its  shapes, 
its  functions,  its  labours,  and  its  value. 

This  high  law  of  unity  stretches  yet 
further.  It  has  other  applications,  and  has 
found  other  as  illustrious  exponents.  While 
Schleiden  and  Schwann  were  working  humbly 
in  their  vocation  amid  the  mysteries  of  struc- 
ture in  far  parts  of  Germany,  our  own 
countryman,  Owen,  was  studying  the  law  of 
form  here  in  the  heart  of  London.  Tke 
one  was  busied  with  his  microscope  and 
his  needles,  searching  into  the  tissues  of 
plants,  questioning  their  stem,  their  fibres, 
and  their  pollen.  The  other,  arranging  ill- 
smelling  bones,  dissecting  neglected  carcases 
of  wasted  creatures,  scorning  nothing  that 
once  had  life,  and  still  possessed  organisation; 
making  light  of  labour  when  it  promised  a 
new  fact,  or  a  fresh  illustration  :  looking  for 
order  amidst  confusion  ;  waiting  for  light  in 
the  darkness.  At  either  end  of  the  web, 
patient  workers  were  unravelling  the  plaited 
thread  of  science  ;  each  followed  a  widely 
separate  clue,  but  in  the  end,  as  they  held 
fast  to  the  right,  their  paths  have  met,  and 
they  stand,  centrally  amidst  t-he  toiling,  scat- 
tered crowd  of  scientific  labourers,  the  apostles 
of  a  great  truth. 

What  Schleiden  had  done  for  structural 
anatomy,  Owen  did  for  the  anatomy  of  form. 
The  man,  the  bird,  the  reptile,  and  the  fish, 
the  uncouth  saurian,  and  the  strange  griffin 
of  pre- Adamite  times,  seemed  to  be  separated 
by  as  wide  an  interval  as  any  that  distin- 
guished the  structure  of  the  lichen  from 
that  of  the  palm-tree.  But,  the  secret  once 
fathomed,  and  the  type  established,  their 
visible  connection  is  read  off  from  them  as 
from  Nature's  own  primer.  Owen  has  de- 
monstrated to  the  satisfaction  of  the  world, 
that,  by  changes  of  one  form  alone,  the 
archetypal  vertebra,  all  world-wide  varieties 
have  been  effected.  This  is  the  key  of  the 
mammoth  frame — it  is  the  secret  of  the  shape 
of  the  fishy  tribe.  Those  are  expanded  ver- 
tebrae which  inclose  the  brain  of  man ;  they 
are  vertebral  appendages  which  wall  round 
his  heart,  which  afford  levers  of  action  for 
the  arms, — which  supply  bases  of  support, 
and  cavities  of  protection  for  the  organs  of 
motion  and  sense,  so  multiform  and  variously 
endowed.  The  paddle  of  the  seal,  the  wi"g 
of  the  bird,  and  the  fin  of  the  fish,  are  new- 
forms  of  the  same  element.  Th««  it  is,  that 
truth  harmonises  with  truth,  and  law  com- 
bines with  law. 

This  grand  demonstration  of  unity  in 
creation  is  a  new  bulwark  to  religion.  The 
proofs  of  design  have  long  been  a  potent 
weapon  of  defence,  and  an  earnest  souice  of 
delight  in  the  hands  of  rational  and  religious 
men.  But  there  were  many  things  in  nature 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  NIGHT  PORTER. 


[November  23,  1857.]      513 


which  it  failed  to  explain.  What  of  intel- 
ligent and  economic  design  could  be  traced 
in  the  halt-dozen  bones  hidden  beneath  the 
skin  of  the  seal's  flapper.  Those  joints  were 
useless,  and  those  pieces  unavailing.  A  solid, 
single-hinged  mass  were  apparently  far  more 
to  the  purpose  than  this  difficult  complexity 
of  unused  joints.  We  begin  now  to  see  that 
the  apparent  anomalies  bear  reference  to 
economy  of  type,  and  not  of  instrument.  They 
wear  the  livery  of  archetypal  servitude,  they 
are  the  servants  of  a  double  wisdom. 

Thus,  beyond  and  above  the  law  of  design 
in  creation,  stands  the  law  of  unity  of  type, 
and  unity  of  structure.  .  No  function  so 
various,  no  labours  so  rude,  so  elaborate,  so 
dissimilar,  but  this  cell  can  build  up  the 
instrument,  and  this  model  prescribes  the 
limits  of  its  shape.  Through  all  creation, 
the  microscope  detects  the  handwriting  of 
oneness  of  power  and  of  ordnance.  It  has 
become  the  instrument  of  a  new  revelation 
in  science,  and  speaks  clearly  to  the  soul  as 
to  the  mind  of  man. 


THE  NIGHT  PORTER. 

A  GAUNT  man  in  a  gaberdine  sleeps  during 
the  winter  mouths  on  a  mattress  placed  for  him 
in  a  cupboard  near  the  entrance  hall  of  The 
Charles  in  the  Oak  Inn  ;  which,  by  right  of 
him,  inscribes  upon  one  of  its  door-posts,  this 
charm,  indicative  of  constant  business :  "  A 
Night  Porter  —  Always  in  Attendance." 
When  I  first  read  the  inscription  it  appeared 
to  me  as  odd  a  confusion  between  town  and 
counti-y  as  "Bill  Stickers  Beware,"  on  a 
banyan  tree. 

John  Pearmaine  is  the  night  porter's  name. 
By  day  he  is  half-witted ;  perhaps  he  is 
on  that  account  shrewder  than  most  people 
at  night.  His  only  relation,  a  brother,  is  an 
idiot  in  the  county  lunatic  asylum ;  but 
the  half  of  his  wits  left  to  John  enables 
him  to  live  at  large.  He  digs  and  goes 
on  ei'rands  for  a  market  gardener  close 
by,  receiving  food  for  his  labour  ;  and,  at 
rare  intervals,  a  shilling.  The  poor  crea- 
ture is  homeless  ;  and,  in  summer  time,  uses 
his  master's  greenhouses  as  sleeping  rooms  ; 
or,  in  fine  weather,  lies  amongst  the  cucum- 
bers, it  being  his  charge  to  watch  them  and 
the  fruit.  He  is  an  exceedingly  light  sleeper, 
and  deserves  more  pay  than  he  receives,  for 
this  part  of  his  service.  Should  these  lines 
by  any  chance  come  under  his  master's  eye, 
let  him  say,  Dowsie  (they  call  John,  Dowsie, 
which  means,  in  these  parts,  half-witted- 
daft,  as  the  Scotch  say),  Dowsie  shall  certainly 
be  better  paid  next  summer,  if  he  lives  to 
see  it. 

Some  years  ago  the  life  of  this  afflicted 
outcast  must  have  been  very  distressful  in 
the  winter  season.  There  was  no  fruit  to  be 
watched,  and  little  work  provided  by  the 
market  garden.  The  gardener,  indeed,  was 
not  unkind,  and  the  people  of  the  neighbour- 


hood did  not  shut  up  their  hearts.  He  never 
felt  the  want  of  food  except  when  times  were 
hard,  and  then  the  hand  of  common  charity 
among  poor  people  being  closed  perforce, 
Pearmaine  took  refuge  in  the  workhouse. 
But  when  free  during  cold  weather,  the  un- 
happy creature  wandered  always  in  no  little 
uncertainty  as  to  the  whereabout  of  the 
good  Christian  who  would  next  open  to  him 
a  barn  or  an  outhouse  for  the  night,  or  gene- 
rously welcome  him  to  a  warm  horsecloth 
and  the  right  of  lying  down  before  the  ashes 
of  the  house-place  tire. 

The  railway  station  claiming  to  belong  to 
the  next  town,  lands  passengers  at  the  dis- 
tance of  about  a  mile  from  it ;  and,  on  the  road- 
side  between  town  and  station,  stands  The 
Charles  in  the  Oak.  Passengers  to  and  from 
the  trains  go  by  the  door  of  this  modest  inn, 
in  omnibuses,  which  unite  the  railway  to  the 
Biffin's  Arms  Hotel.  All  the  uightwork 
that  the  railway  brought  us,  in  the  first  year 
after  its  establishment— and  a  pretty  piece  of 
work  the  landlady  considered  that  —  was 
caused  by  one  passenger  from  the  mail 
train  passing  at  four  in  the  morning,  who, 
having  missed  or  scorned  the  omnibus, 
knocked  up  the  house  for  a  glass  of  hot  giu- 
and-water ;  and  even  this  customer  appears 
to  have  regarded  the  demand  as  a  mere  pass- 
ing joke.  But,  in  the  second  year  of  the  rail- 
way, nightwork  was  brought  by  it  to  The 
Charles  in  the  Oak,  in  the  shape  of  a  gang — 
mine  host  considers  that  it  must  have  been  a 
gang,  comprising  the  select  of  London  bur- 
glars— who  broke  into  it  ;  and,  without  dis- 
turbing a  mouse,  stole  from  the  bar  six 
teaspoons,  a  rummer  (vulgarly  known  as  a 
tumbler)  ;  a  crown  punch-bowl,  several  hare- 
skins,  a  dish  of  mutton-chops,  and  a  pepper- 
castor.  The  rest  of  the  glass  was  fortunately 
locked  up  in  a  chimney  cupboard,  and  the 
bulk  of  the  plate  was  under  the  host's  bed  ; 
where  it  is  always  kept  of  nights.  I  take 
for  granted  that  no  London  burglars  are 
among  the  readers  of  the  journal  which  con- 
tains this  revelation. 

.  After  the  burglary,  both  landlady  and 
chambermaid  expressed,  after  dark  in  winter 
time,  unusual  alarm.  A  house-dog  was,  for 
their  satisfaction,  turned  loose  in  the  passages 
at  night;  but  he  kept  the  whole  establishment 
awake  for  a  month,  chambermaid  informs 
me,  by  continual  howling.  Then,  every  one 
who  tells  the  history  claims  for  himself  or  her- 
self the  merit — which  belongs  truly,  I  think, 
to  the  ostler — of  having  brought  into  discus- 
sion the  superiority  of  such  a  watch-dog  as 
poor  Dowsie  John.  It  would  be  Christian 
charity,  said  that  somebody,  to  give  him 
settled  lodging  in  the  winter,  and  he  was  so 
light  a  sleeper  that  the  footfall  of  a  cat  would 
wake  him  up  as  surely  as  the  biggest 
gun.  The  only  fault  to  be  found  with  him 
as  a  watcher,  was  that,  if  some  tales  were 
true,  he  had  been  known  once  or  twice  to 
say  that  he  had  heard  and  seen  such  things  as 


514       .Nownber  *».  18S?.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[.Conducted  br 


were  not  to  be  heard  and  seen  by  any  of  his 
neighbours — that  he,  had,  in  fact,  like  other 
dowsie  people,  his  delusions.  "  We  all  have 
our  delusions,"  quoth  the  landlord,  looking 
towards  his  wife  ;  and,  straightway  pluming 
himself  on  his  own  infallible  acuteness,  he 
engaged  Pearmaine  to  sleep  on  his  ground- 
floor  during  the  winter  season.  Then  it  was 
that,  by  a  happy  stroke  of  wit,  and  as  a  potent 
charm  to  allure  the  traveller  or  scare  the 
midnight  thief,  mine  host  of  the  Charles  in 
the  Oak  Hotel,  and — no,  not  Posting  House 
(the  railway  had  scratched  that  off  the  sign) 
— caused  to  be  written  in  small  black  capitals 
upon  its  door-post,  —  "A  Night  Porter — 
Always  in  Attendance." 

I  regarded  this  unhappy  night  porter, 
whenever  I  passed  him  in  his  cupboard, 
with  a  certain  awe  ;  and,  when  I  had  him  up 
into  my  room — he  had  no  awe  of  anybody 
—  and  sat  looking  blue,  and  cold,  and 
hungry,  with  his  feet  upon  my  fender,  and 
his  knees  scorched  by  the  fire,  a  glass  of 
punch  in  one  of  his  long  bony  hands,  and  a 
great  rump-steak  in  his  stomach,  he  scarcely 
seemed  to  be  a  man  of  common  flesh  and 
blood.  A  shimmer  of  something  more  or  less 
than  reason  played  over  his  face ;  and,  as  I 
won  upon  his  confidence,  he  sometimes  made  j 
my  flesh  creep  with  the  things  he  said. 

He  thinks  there  is  plenty  of  good  life  in 
him  for  a  Night  Porter's  business,  though 
(turning  up  his  elbows)  his  bones  are  so  sharp. 
He  sleeps  in  his  clothes,  and  knows  when  a 
step  is  coming  ;  so  that  he  can  spring  up  at 
once,  and  have  the  door  open  as  soon  as  the 
bell  is  touched  ;  or  sooner,  for  the  matter  of 
that.  Sometimes  people  look  surprised  ;  and 
once,  a  man  who  had  not  rung,  took  to  his 
heels  and  ran.  It  was  supposed  that  that 
man  was  a  London  burglar.  Knowing  that 
they  can  get  in  easily  on  winter  nights,  and 
have  a  light  struck,  or  a  kettle  made  to  boil 
at  any  hour  by  the  quick  hands  of  Dowsie 
John, belated  neighbours  often  com&at  strange 
hours  to  the  Charles  in  the  Oak  ;  and  so  the 
good  fellow  conducted  a  little  branch  of  busi- 
ness that  earnt  at  least  his  right  to  a  good 
supper  all  the  winter  through.  The  house 
and  all  within  it  was,  indeed,  of  nights 
wholly  at  his  disposal  ;  the  entire  district 
being  assured  of  John's  trustworthiness.  He 
is  a  man  to  lie  down  and  die  starved  upon  the 
floor  of  a  full  larder,  if  the  owner  of  the  larder 
does  not  say  to  him,  Fall  to  and  eat ! 

Yes,  he  had  seen  some  curious  things,  he 
says,  as  a  Night  Jforter.  There  did  come  a 
thief  once — only  once — he  came  under  pre- 
tence of  being  a  traveller;  but  John  soon 
throttled  him.  Master  came  down  and 
dragged  him  off;  but  only  in  time  to  prevent 
the  vagabond  from  being  throttled  before 
his  time.  But  that  was  nothing.  He  would 
tell  me,  as  a  secret,  an  adventure  that  he 
often  drearrv  1  over  again  after  it  happened, 
and  still  dreamed  about,  and  feared  he  always 
should  dream  about  to  the  end  of  his  days. 


One  December  night,  several  years  ago, 
it  was  bitterly,  bitterly  cold.  It  had  been 
snowing  for  two  days ;  but  it  was  not  snowing 
then.  The  earth  was  white,  and  the  air  was 
black,  and  it  was  bitterly,  bitterly,  bitterly 
cold.  Dowsie  John  lay  in  his  cupboard,  and 
was  kept  awake  by  the  stirring  of  a  cruel 
wind  among  the  snow.  By  and  by  the  wind 
fell.  There  was  a  dead  calm,  and  John  slept 
till  a  sound  of  voices  at  a  distance — beyond 
anybody  else's  earshot ;  but  his  ears  were 
so  very  ready — woke  him  up  again. 

"  God  avenge  this  !  "  said  a  man. 

"This  way  to  the  Charles  in  the  Oak,  I 
think,"  said  another. 

And  then  one  of  the  two  shouted  out  : 
"  John  Pearmaine,  put  a  light  in  the  window. 
We  can't  see  the  house." 

John's  light  was  on  the  window-sill,  and 
the  shutter  was  thrown  back  in  an  instant. 
They  were  the  voices  of  two  neighbours — > 
stout  young  farmers,  brothers,  who  lived 
with  their  father,  and  had  been,  as  he  knew, 
to  a  distant  market-town  with  cattle.  They 
came  slowly,  with  heavy  steps.  The  candle 
sent  a  ray  of  light  across  the  i-oad ;  and, 
through  the  ray,  passed  at  last  the  arms  of 
one  young  man  ;  then,  suddenly,  the  gleam 
flashed  over  the  pale,  still  face  of  a  woman 
whom  the  two  were  carrying,  tenderly,  re- 
verently, dead  as  she  was.  They  brought  her 
in  with  blessings  upon  Dowsie  John's  quick 
ears. 

"  Lost  in  a  snow-drift ;  cold  and  stiff  as 
ice.  There  may  be  life  in  her  yet.  Quick  is 
the  word,  Johnny,  quick  ! " 

The  night-porter  dragged  his  mattress 
from  its  cupboard  to  the  feet  of  the  two 
brothers,  and  they  laid  the  body  down  upon 
it,  just  within  the  threshold  of  the  inn.  One 
brother  darted  out  again,  to  bring  the  nearest 
doctor  to  the  rescue ;  and  the  other,  when  he 
saw  that  Dowsie  John  had  rushed  as  matter 
of  course  to  the  tap  in  search  of  brandy, 
hastened  up-stairs  to  alarm  the  house.  So, 
when  John  brought  his  brandy  to  the  corpse, 
he  and  it  were  alone.  In  stooping  down  to 
it,  he  moved  aside  the  shawl,  the  folds  of  which 
enclosed  long  strips  of  snow ;  and,  under 
it,  saw  that  there  lay  fixed  in  the  woman's 
rigid  arms  a  cold  white  baby.  The  half-witted 
man  knelt  down — he  never  could  tell  why — 
and  picked  away  a  lump  of  snow  that  lay 
unmelted  on  its  little  bosom.  "  Pretty  bird," 
he  said,  and  put  his  gaunt  face  down,  and 
kissed  it  on  the  mouth.  Then  he  turned  to 
the  mother  with  his  brandy,  and  spilt  it ; 
because,  suddenly,  she  opened  her  large 
eyes,  and  looked  at  him. 

The  eyelids  crept  down  over  the  eyes  again, 
and  covered  them.  John  turned  away  to  fill  the 
empty  glass.  At  the  same  moment  landlady 
and  landlord,  chambermaid  and  cook,  were 
hurrying  down  stairs,  the  cook  with  an  arm- 
load of  blankets.  The  body  was  moved,  fires 
were  lighted,  bricks  were  made  hot,  the  set 
teeth  of  the  dead  were  parted.  To  no  purpose. 


THE  NIGHT  PORTER. 


[November  38,18*7.1       515 


The  doctor  came  and  declared  that  life  had 
been  for  many  hours  extinct ;  putting  aside 
John's  evidence  to  the  contrary  as  a  delusion 
of  the  senses.  The  woman  might  have  died 
of  hunger  and  exhaustion  before  she  was 
buried  in  the  snow.  He  could  not  tell.  There 
was  a  wedding-ring  upon  her  finger,  and  the 
child,  which,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  had  expired 
several  hours  later  than  its  mother,  was  of 
about  seven  months  old.  The  rags  that 
covered  them  had  been  good  clothing  once. 
In  the  hope  that  somebody  would  recognise 
this  woman,  she  lay  with  her  child  during  a 
whole  week  at  the  inn  ;  and  the  Charles  in 
the  Oak  itself,  by  the  desire  of  its  landlady 
(who  would  hear  nothing  about  parishes) 
gave  her  decent  burial. 

A  week  afterwards,  a  young  man  came  to 
the  neighbourhood,  obtained  leave  to  have  the 
grave  opened,  and  was  distracted  when  he 
looked  inside  the  coffin.  He  said  she  was  his 
dearest  sister ;  his  bright  Phcebe  :  that  she 
had  gone  away  with  a  bad  husband,  who  had 
ill-used  and  deserted  her ;  that  he  had  lost 
trace  of  them  till  he  heard  that  she  had  set 
out  from  a  distant  place  to  seek  him  in  some 
town  in  this  direction ;  and  when  upon  this 
followed  news  of  the  bodies  of  a  woman  and 
an  infant  having  been  found  here,  he  came  at 
once.  This  man,  though  he  looked  poor 
enough,  (and  was  indeed  a  yeoman  of  small 
means,  named  Thomas  Halston)  paid  all  the 
expenses  incurred  by  the  host  of  the  Charles 
in  the  Oak  on  account  of  his  dead  sister, 
and  gave  Dowsie  John  ten  shillings,  as  in- 
sane an  act  in  poor  John's  eyes  as  the  free  gift 
of  a  million  would  seem  to  you  or  to  me,  if  sud- 
denly made  to  us  by  some  chance  capitalist. 

"  I  shall  face  the  villain  yet,"  said  Halston, 
as  he  galloped  out  of  the  inn-yard. 

"I  would  not  be  in  his  shoes  if  you  do," 
muttered  the  ostler. 

"  I  would  not  be  in  his  shoes  if  you  don't," 
said  Dowsie  John.  "I  wouldn't  go  out  of 
the  world  like  him,  with  such  a  score  chalked 
up  behind  my  door,  and  never  have  met  with 
a  man  willing  to  rub  it  off  for  me  before  I 
went." 

Two  months  afterwards,  at  about  ten 
o'clock  on  one  of  the  last  nights  of  February 
— it  was  a  dull  night,  with  mizzling  rain,  that 
had  accompanied  a  rapid  thaw,  and  the  Charles 
in  the  Oak  was  gone  to  bed  for  very  dreari- 
ness— John  Pearmaine,  before  retiring  to  his 
cupboard,  was  at  work  over  his  last  purchase 
of  a  halfpennyworth  of  new  ballads  by  the 
kitchen  fire.  Intent  upon  The  Soldier  Tired, 
he  did  not  notice  any  sound  outside  until  he 
heard  a  shot.  It  came  from  the  road,  but 
was  not  very  near.  He  was  on  his  feet  in- 
stantly, and  made  all  haste  to  the  front  door; 
but,  after  the  first  bound  into  the  entrance- 
hall,  he  stopped.  Across  the  threshold,  just 
as  it  had  been  on  that  night  in  December, 
lay— or  seemed  to  lie — his  mattress,  with 
dead  Phcebe  and  her  infant  stretched  upon  it. 
The  white  snow  gleamed  among  the  folds  of 


the  dress.  All  was  as  it  had  been  once  before, 
except  that  the  dead  face,  rigid  and  white, 
with  the  eyes  closed,  was  turned  towards 
John,  and  one  hand  was  lifted  from  the  baby, 
and  fixed  in  a  gesture  that  appeared  to  bade 
him  stand  and  listen.  He  did  stand  and 
listen.  After  the  shot,  he  heard  words 
uttered  by  persons  in  the  distance  so  rapidly 
that  he  could  not  catch  their  purport ;  then 
a  sudden  sharp  cry,  followed  by  a  voice  that 
moaned  "  Heaven,  avenge  !  "  The  spectre's 
hand  nickered  slowly,  moved  and  pointed  to 
the  door.  Its  opened  eyes  shone  full  into  the 
face  of  Dowsie  John. 

After  some  minutes  a  step  was  heard  in 
the  wet  road.  It  approached  the  door  of  the 
Charles  in  the  Oak,  but  John,  fixed  by  the 
woman's  gesture,  stood  immoveable,  candle 
in  hand,  his  face  aghast.  The  door  had  not 
been  bolted  for  the  night.  The  stranger 
pulled  the  latch  ;  and,  opening  it,  briskly 
entered.  The  spectre  vanished  ;  but  the  last 
part  of  it  that  vanished  was  the  pointing 
hand.  The  person  who  suddenly  had  come 
in  damp  out  of  the  mist,  stood  where  its 
form  had  lain,  and  shivered  suddenly,  as 
though  a  cold  blast  from  the  ground  had 
whistled  through  his  bones. 

"  Idiot !  "  he  said,  fiercely  ;  "  why  do  you 
stare  ? " 

It  was  evident  to  him,  at  a  glance,  that  no 
one  else  was  stirring  in  the  Charles  in  the 
Oak  ;  and  John  was  for  the  time  an  idiot 
indeed. 

"  If  you  have  any  sense,"  said  the  stranger, 
"remember  what  I  tell  you.  A  man  will 
be  found  dead  in  the  road  to-morrow.  It 
was  I  that  killed  him  ;  but  his  blood  is  not 
upon  my  head.  He  waylaid  me  in  my  road 
from  the  town  to  the  station,  shot  at  me,  and 
was  slain  by  me  in  self-defence.  That  is  my 
name,"  he  added,  throwing  down  a  card ; 
"  I  am  known  to  many  people  in  the  town. 
To-morrow  I  must  be  in  London.  If  an 
inquest  be  held,  give  evidence  before  it,  as 
well  as  your  wits  will  allow,  and  say  that 
if  they  will  adjourn  over  another  day,  I 
shall  appear  to  answer  for  myself  before  the 
jury.  Take  this  to  keep  your  memory  alive." 

The  stranger,  who  was  a  good-looking, 
brawny  man,  advanced  towards  Dowsie 
John,  and,  tossing  a  half-sovereign  into  the 
dish  of  the  chamber  candlestick,  turned  on 
his  heel  and  went  into  the  road  again,  closing 
the  door  tranquilly  after  him. 

The  man  had  brought  much  dirt  into  the 
hall  with  him  ;  but,  where  he  had  been 
standing  longest,  was  a  stain  over  which  John 
bent  till  he  assured  himself  that  it  was  blood. 
He  tried  it  with  a  corner  of  the  card,  and, 
sickening  at  the  bright  red  colour,  slunk 
trembling  and  cowed  into  his  lair. 

Wonderment  followed  wonderment  next 
morning  at  the  Charles  in  the  Oak.  The 
night-porter  had  gone  to  bed,  leaving  the 
outer  door  unbolted.  His  candlestick  was  on 
the  floor  of  the  entrance-hall,  with  the  candle 


616       [November  39,  1S&7.J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


burnt  out  in  the  socket.  There  was  blood 
on  the  floor  ;  the  name  of  Mr.  Robert  Earlby 
on  a  visiting-card,  marked  with  a  blood-stain 
in  the  corner  ;  a  piece  of  money  was  found 
afterwards,  embedded  in  the  tallow  that  had 
guttered  down  over  the  candlestick  ;  and 
John  Fearuiaine,  who  could  have  explained 
all  this,  lay  on  his  mattress  with  the  sound 
half  oi  his  wits  astray. 

Furthermore,  on  the  same  morning,  a 
body,  pierced  through  the  breast,  was  brought 
to  the  Charles  in  the  Oak — the  nearest  inn — 
and  identified  by  the  people  there  as  that  of 
a  man,  Thomas  Halston,  who  had  come  into 


plained  satisfactorily  all  that  had  been  seen 
that  morning  in  the  Inn:  the  blood  was  his 
own,  set  flowing  by  a  shot  which  only  grazed 
the  ribs,  though  it  had  been  aimed  at  his 
heart  by  the  man  whose  body  he  had  on  his 
arrival  gone  up-stairs  to  see.  The  person 
was  a  perfect  stranger.  He  must  have  been 
a  man  well  known  to  the  police  :  for  so  des- 
perate an  assault  as  that  which  had,  in  the 
case,  led  to  the  death  of  the  assailant,  must 
have  been  committed  by  a  footpad  of  no 
ordinary  sort.  After  firing  at  him  from  the 
hedge,  the  fellow  had  leapt  down  into  the 
road  upon  him,  and  would,  as  the  deponent 


those  parts  two  months  before.  A  discharged  j  firmly  believed,  have  killed  him,  had  he  not 
gun  was  found  in  the  lodge  near  him,  and  been  provided  with  the  sword-stick,  which  he 
there  were  obvious  signs  of  a  struggle  in  j  used  in  self-defence. 

the  muddy  road.  An  inquest  was  held  in  j  Every  circumstance  helped  to  support  the 
the  inn  parlour,  at  which  everything  was  statement  of  the  witness  ;  who  after  the  re- 
told and  shown  that  could  be  told  and  j  turn  of  a  verdict  of  Justifiable  Homicide,  was- 
shown.  The  card  was  declared  by  a  jury- !  complimented  by  the  coroner  for  the  high- 


man  named  Philips  to  be  that  of  a  gentleman 
of  good  character  and  most  amiable  disposi- 
tion, living  near  London  on  a  freehold  farm 
that  yielded  him  a  comfortable  income.  "He 
had  been  at  his  house,"  said  this  jui-yman,  "on 
the  preceding  night,  and  had  left  at  about  a 
quarter  before  ten,  in  the  best  of  tempers,  to 
walk  to  the  train  that  passes  at  ten  thirty." 

"How  long  had  Mr.  Philips  known  this 
gentleman  ? " 

"  Only  six  months  ;  but  he  had,  before  that 
time,  made  the  acquaintance  of  his  eldest 
daughter,  Mary,  when  she  was  in  town  last 
Spring  upon  a  visit.  As  her  accepted  suitor, 
he  had  been  lately  a  frequent  visitor  at  his 
house,  and  in  his  character  he  had  reason 
to  place  the  utmost  confidence.  He  would 
not  fail  to  write  to  him  at  once  upon  this 
business." 

"  Is  your  friend  bachelor  or  widower  ? " 

"  A  bachelor." 

The  jury  went  to  John  Pearmaine  as  he 
lay  tossing  in  his  cupboard  ;  but  no  kind  of 
information  could  be  had  from  him.  His 
mind  rambled  over  a  great  number  of  wild 
subjects  ;  but  he  said  not  a  syllable,  insane 


minded  way  in  which  he  had  come  forward, 
despite  all  risk  to  himself,  and  for  the  valour 
which  he  had  shown  in  the  defence  of  his  life 
against  a  desperate  assassin. 

Mr.  Earlby  went  to  the  house  of  the 
Philipses,  and  was  sought  after  as  a  lion  by 
the  townspeople.  He  made  light  of  his 
wound;  which  was  soon  healed.  The  ball,  he 
said,  had  rebounded  frem  a  rib  ;  his  surgeon 
had  found  nothing  to  extract.  He  was  con- 
fined indeed  to  bed  for  a  few  days  at  Philips's 
house  with  sharp  pain  on  the  wounded  side  ; 
but  this  was  for  a  few  days  only,  and  then- 
all  went  well  again. 

Halston  was  duly  buried  in  unconsecrated 
ground ;  and,  in  a  place  where  nobody  had 
known  him,  there  was  nobody  to  take  his 
shame  to  heart ;  except,  perhaps,  our  ostler. 
This  worthy,  who  cut  out  a  large  cross  on  a 
piece  of  an  old  manger,  scrawled  under  it, 
with  irregular  incisions,  "  Thomas  Halston, 
His  Mark,"  and  set  it  up  by  the  neglected 
grave.  His  only  assigned  reason  was  that  he- 
must  pity  a  man  who  had  no  luck  in  shoot- 
ing vermin.  To  the  cook  alone  the  ostler 
would  confide  all  that  he  thought  about  the 


or  sane,  of  anything  that  could  be  supposed  to !  matter  ;  but  she,  too,   was  mysterious,  and 
have  happened  on  the  previous  night.  all  that  she  could  say  was,  that  she  must  pity 


While  they  were  thus  engaged,  news  came 
that  Mr.  Earlby  had  descended  from  the 
omnibus  at  the  inn  door,  and  was  in  the 
parlour  waiting  for  the  jury.  He  was  pale 
and  faint,  he  said,  from  loss  of  blood.  Press- 
ing business,  as  well  as  the  desire  to  submit 
his  wound  at  once  to  the  attention  of  his  own 
Burgeon,  had  caused  him  to  persevere  in  his 
purpose  of  returning  home  on  the  night  in 
question  ;  but  he  was  so  anxious  to  avoid 
every  appearance  of  a  desire  for  secrecy  or 
mystery  upon  the  subject  of  the  unfortunate 
affair,  that  he  had  come  back,  weak  as  he 
was,  without  even  a  day's  delay.  He  had 


poor  Miss  Philips.  Other  misgivings  were 
soon  set  at  rest ;  and,  for  a  time,  I  fear,  the 
hostess  was  to  be  caught  now  and  then 
regretting  the  new  linen  of  her  own  that  she 
had  given  to  "the  burglar's  sister"  for  her 
grave-clothes. 

The  poor  night-porter  said  nothing,  and 
knew  little  more  upon  this  subject.  His  ill- 
ness continued  till  the  Spring,  and  I  must  say 
of  our  hostess  that,  if  ever  she  regretted  kind- 
ness after  it  was  spent,  she  never  grudged  it  in 
the  hour  of  need.  The  Charles  in  the  Oak 
promoted  John  to  a  commodious  bedroom  on 
the  upper-floor,  and,  by  good  nursing,  helped 


been  the  more  anxious  to  do  this,  because  he !  him  to  regain  his  former  health  with  a  fair 
had  doubt  whether  the  message  left  by  him  at  |  portion  of  his  former  wit.  Nobody  spoke  of 
the  Charles  in  the  Oak  would  be  delivered  the  afi'air  which  had  produced  the  painful 
by  the  person  whom  he  saw  there.  He  ex- 1  elfect  upon  his  mind. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  NIGHT  POETER. 


[November  23, 1857.1       517 


Although  incessantly,  as  I  believe,  tor- 
mented by  phantom  shapes  and  such  delusions 
as  are  common  to  disordered  minds,  a  strange 
instinct  kept  all  speech  about  them  from  our 
poor  night-porter's  tongue.  He  lived  alone 
with  his  ghost  world  ;  and,  it  is  only  by 
chance,  or  upon  the  strength  of  a  rare  confi- 
dence, that  any  one  or  two  of  his  experiences 
were  revealed.  I  may  here  state  that  there 
was  one  especial  reason  for  preserving  silence 
with  Daft  John  upon  the  present  matter.  For 
the  market-garden,  in  which  he  found  sum- 
mer-employment, lay  between  the  luu  and 
the  town.  Fifty  paces  down  the  road  — 
measured  from  the  gate  of  the  garden,  going 
town-ward — is  the  spot  where  Phoebe  and 
her  child  were  found  ;  and  against  the  very 
bank  near  which  he  had  been  told  that  she 
lay  covered  by  the  snow-drift,Thomas  Halston, 
when  he  had  tracked  her  destroyer,  stood  to 
shoot  him  down. 

Happily  ignorant  of  this,  Pearmaine 
worked  at  his  summer  duties  among  necta- 
rines and  roses;  gaunt  as  ever.  He  planted, 
pruned,  andgathered,  with  the  same  unearthly 
shimmer  on  his  face.  February  long  since 
gone,  July  was  come,  and  John  was  capering 
in  his  uncouth  way  down  a  gravel- walk 
pursued  by  little  Tabby  Foil  his  master's 
youngest  girl,  and  a  few  other  olive-branches. 
The  children  were  all  dancing  to  the  tune  of 
wedding  bells  that  rung  through  the  pure 
morning  air  from  more  than  one  of  the  town- 
steeples. 

They  were  arrayed  in  muslin,  very  clean, 
except  Tabby,  who  had  twice  been  on 
her  knees,  embroidering  herself  with  gravel. 
All  in  good  time,  came  more  little  girls  in 
white  ;  and  one  or  two  girls  of  a  middling- 
size  appeared  by  ones  and  twos,  and  threes, 
to  swell  the  group.  Finally,  in  the  very  nick 
Mr.  James  Foil,  the  master-gardener,  in 
a  white  waistcoat,  established  himself  as  a 
telegraph-station  at  his  gate,  and  began  work- 
ing in  a  lively  manner. 

Obedient  to  signal,  all  the  fairies  dis- 
appeared within  the  great  conservatory,  each 
quickly  to  re-appear  with  a  bouquet.  Mr. 
Foil,  in  his  character  of  Generalissimo,  then 
formed  his  troop,  and  animated  them  with  this 
harangue  :  "  Now,  girls,  the  happy  pair  are 
coming.  Show  yourselves  worthy  of  your 
fathers  and  mothers.  Honour  the  brave 
and  fair,  your  dear  companion.  Mary  Philips 
— Mrs.  Eobert  Earlby,  now  —  wife  to  our 
noble  and  courageous  friend  —  shall  —  the 
wheels,  ladies  ;  they  are  coming.  Now's 
your  time  ;  form  line  across  the  road,  hand- 
iu-hand,  and  advance.  Pearmaine,  take  this 
bouquet — my  token  of  affection  to  the  bride 
— tell  her  so,  when  you  give  it  through  the 
carriage- window." 

The  damsels,  bent  upon  their  wedding- 
ireak,  formed  a  white  chain,  like  a  living 
wreath  of  snow  across  the  road  :  then  marched 
forward  some  fifty  paces  before  meetin^  the 
carriage  that  contained  the  bridegroom  and 


his  bride.  Of  course,  the  postilions  stopped 
and  straightway  there  appeared  at  either 
window  a  group  of  smiling  eyes  and  lips 
speaking  confusedly  a  babel  of  sweet  language, 
while  dimpled  hands  were  raining  bouquets 
down  upon  the  laps  of  the  much-honoured  pair. 
The  bridegroom  leaned  forward,  laughed,  then 
looked  for  half  a  minute  stern ;  and  in  the 
mind  of  Dowsie  John,  who  stood  aside  under 
the  hedge,  with  the  great  nosegay  of  the 
morning  in  his  hand,  a  wild  memory  was 
startled  into  life.  Unconsciously,  his  lips 
uttered  the  cry  that  had  been  wafted  to  him 
on  the  night  of  his  great  terror.  He  moaned 
it  faintly  just  as  it  had  floated  to  him  through 
the  February  night,  but  struck  its  very  note 
upon  the  bridegroom's  ear :  "  Heaven 
avenge  !  "  Earlby  sank  back  in  the  carriage. 
It  was  not  the  voice  of  a  gardener's  man  in  a 
gaberdine  ;  it  was  the  voice  of  a  dead  man> 
as  he  believed,  or  of  his  blood,  crying  aloud 
from  the  place  where  he  had  fallen. 

The  girls  and  the  bride  in  their  glee  had 
not  noticed  this.  Their  happy  riot  was  nearly 
done,  and  it  was  now  time  for  John  to  do  his 
master's  bidding.  He  stepped,  therefore,  to- 
the  carriage-window,  and,  leaning  with  his 
weird  face  before  Mr.  Earlby  to  present  the 
flowers  to  the  bride,  who  sat  upon  the  other 
side,  said,  true  to  his  text : 

"  I  am  bidden  to  present  these  to  you  as  a 
token." 

"  Beautiful !  "  cried  the  bride.  "  O  do 
tell  me  who  sent  them  1  " 

"  As  a  token  from "  Between  bride 

and  bridegroom  suddenly  appeared  to  his  sick 

fancy  a  spectral  face, — "from Phoebe 

Halston ! "  he  screamed,  and  recoiled  as 
a  man  who  had  been  stung.  A  blow  from 
the  bridegroom,  who  had  risen  in  wild 
fury,  overtook  him  as  he  shrunk  away  ;  and 
the  poor  creature,  staggering  back,  fell  under 
the  hedge. 

He  rose  almost  directly.  Earlby  was  cough- 
ing violently,  with  a  wedding  handker- 
chief before  his  mouth.  It  was  drenched  with 
blood. 

The  horses'  heads'  were  turned,  and  the 
bridegroom  was  conveyed  without  loss  of  time 
to  the  sick-chamber.  The  ball  that  had  not 
been  extracted,  had  indeed  glanced  against 
one  rib  ;  but  it  had  been  only  so  diverted  as 
to  lodge  behind  another  rib.  The  wound, 
healed  externally,  had  made  only  the  more 
certain  way  within.  Sudden  emotion,  and 
the  strong  exertion  of  the  chest  necessary  to 
strike  Dowsie  John,  had  caused  the  ball  to 
make  a  fatal  plunge  into  the  lung  and  to  set 
the  red  blood  flowing. 

Hopeless  illness,  which  endured  for  months, 
intervened,  as  you  might  suppose,  between 
this  accident  and  death.  Those  months  were 
not  ill-spent  by  Eobert  Earlby.  So  fully  did 
he  take  upon  himself  the  shame  due  to  his 
crimes,  that  while  unable  to  restore,  even  by 
his  fervent  prayers  and  ardent  repentance, 
1  the  brother  and  sister  and  the  innocent 


518       t?5o»emb«r  29, 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


tendril  whose  lives  were  either  directly,  or 
indirectly,  on  his  head,  he  did  the  best  he 
could,  as  I  learnt  afterwards,  to  keep  Dowsie 
John  out  of  the  poorhouse  for  the  remainder 
of  his  life. 

THINGS  WITHIN  DE.  CONOLLY'S 
EEMEMBEANCE. 

MOST  of  our  readers  know  that  one  of  the 
best  achievements  of  the  present  century  is  a 
complete  reversal,  in  the  treatment  of  mad- 
ness, of  opinions  and  practice  which  had  pre- 
viously been  in  force  for  five-and-twenty 
centuries  at  least.  The  change  has  been 
justified  in  a  most  striking  manner,  as  we 
have  shown  from  time  to  time,  and  illustrated 
not  very  long  since  by  a  sketch  of  the  present 
state  of  Bedlam.  The  blessing  of  it  has  been 
secured  to  England — and,  by  the  example  of 
England,  more  widely  and  certainly  diffused 
among  civilised  nations — mainly  by  help  of 
the  wise  energy  of  DR.  JOHN  CONOLLT. 

The  change  of  which  we  speak  began  in 
France  and  England  almost  at  one  time.  To 
dark  cells  and  desolate  courts,  sufferers  from 
mental  disease  were  remitted  as  their  fitting 
place  of  habitation  ;  terrible  men,  armed  with 
whips,  were  not  their  servants,  but  their 
masters  ;  they  were  dressed  in  chains  and 
manacles  ;  they  who  most  needed  human 
care,  rotted  on  filthy  litters,  with  the  rats  for 
their  companions,  by  whom  they  were  some- 
times attacked  and  wounded.  Such  care  as 
was  bad  of  the  insane  was  better  in  England 
than  in  France  before  the  time  of  the  first 
great  French  Revolution.  The  two  large 
asylums  of  Paris  were  the  BicStre  and  the 
SalpStridre,  of  which  the  former  was  the 
worse.  Wretched  and  filthy  beings  crouched 
in  cold,  damp  cells  no  larger  than  was  neces- 
sary to  contain  their  bodies — six  feet  square — 
to  which  air  and  light  came  through  the  door 
only  :  in  which  there  was  no  table,  no  chair, 
no  bed,  but  a  dog's  litter  of  straw,  seldom 
renewed.  The  patients,  loaded  with  chains, 
were  defenceless  against  the  brutality  of 
keepers,  who  were  selected  from  among  the 
malefactors  in  the  jails.  But  it  happened,  in 
the  days  of  the  great  Revolution,  that  three 
sensible  men — named  Cousin,  Thouret,  and 
Cabanis,  all  of  them  friends  of  the  physician 
PINEL — were  administrators  of  the  hospitals 
of  Paris.  They  deplored  what  they  saw  at 
the  Bicgtre,  and  they  had  faith  in  their  friend 
Pinel,  whom  they  appointed  the  physician  to 
that  institution.  Towards  the  end  of  the 
year  seventeen  hundred  and  ninety-two,  he 
entered  on  his  duties  there,  and  "  with  him 
entered  pity,  goodness,  and  justice." 

That  was  the  first  faint  ray  of  hope  for  an 
improved  condition  of  the  lunatic  in  France. 
It  is  '.'urious  that  at  precisely  the  same  period 
the  first  step  in  this  path  of  reform  should 
have  been  made — one  might  say,  accidentally 
— in  England.  It  happened  that  in  the  year 
seventeen  hundred  andninety-one,aQuakeress 
was  placed  in  the  York  Asylum  by  friends 


living  at  a  distance.  They  requested  some 
acquaintances  to  visit  her  ;  but  to  these  ad- 
mission was  denied,  and  in  a  few  weeks  the 
patient  died.  The  management  of  the  asylum 
had  been  falling  into  some  discredit  ;  but  the 
Quakers  said  no  evil  of  it,— they  simply  re- 
solved to  establish  an  asylum  of  their  own, 
and  founded  the  Eetreat  at  York,  which,  in 
a  few  years,  they  opened.  Of  this  institution 
the  late  WILLIAM  TUKB  of  York,  and  his 
grandson,  SAMUEL  TUKE,  have  been  the  chief 
promoters.  It  was  the  first  in  Europe — the 
first  in  the  world — at  which  the  right  treat- 
ment of  the  lunatic  was  clearly  indicated. 
Five-and-forty  years  ago,  Samuel  Tuke  told 
his  countrymen,  in  an  account  of  the  Eetreat 
at  York,  not  very  much  less  than  they  have 
now  learnt  to  believe  upon  the  subject.  Es- 
QUIROL  was  at  that  time  in  Paris  the  successor 
of  Pinel.  He  had  succeeded  him  in  the  year 
eighteen  hundred  and  ten,  and,  after  visiting 
almost  every  asylum  in  France,  represented, 
in  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and  eighteen, 
that  he  found  the  insane  naked  or  covered 
only  with  rags,  littered  in  straw  upon  damp 
pavements,  fettered  and  bound  in  iron  belts 
and  collars— chains  being  preferred  to  strait- 
waistcoats  by  reason  of  their  greater  cheap- 
ness— fastened  sometimes  to  the  wall  by  a 
fetter  eighteen  inches  long ;  a  method  of 
treatment  which  was  extolled  as  being  pecu- 
liarly calming.  Esquirol  vigorously  used  his 
influence  for  the  abatement  of  these  evils, 
and  he  was  the  first  who  gave  practical 
instruction  to  students  of  medicine  in  the 
management  of  mental  disorders.  His  name 
ranks  therefore  with  the  foremost  in  the 
history  of  the  reformed  treatment  of  lunacy. 
The  need  of  it  was  almost  as  great  in 
England  as  in  France,  long  after  the  first 
reform  in  the  BicStre  and  the  founding  of 
the  York  Eetreat.  Nearly  forty  years  after- 
wards, in  a  large  private  asylum  near  London, 
several  of  the  pauper  women  were  chained 
to  their  bedsteads,  naked,  or  only  covered 
with  an  hempen  rag  ;  and  this  in  the  month 
of  December.  One  towel  a  week  was  allowed 
for  the  use  of  one  hundred  and  seventy 
patients,  and  some  were  mopped  with  cold 
water  in  the  severest  weather.  Seventy  out 
of  about  four  hundred  were  almost  invariably 
in  irons.  Only  seven  years  ago,  there  were 
some  licensed  houses  in  our  provinces  where 
patients,  male  and  female,  were  confined  at 
night  in  outhouses,  without  fire  or  any  means 
of  warmth,  without  light,  attendance,  or  pro- 
tection ;  there  were  no  baths,  there  was  no 
medical  treatment.  Again,  in  a  report  of  the 
Commissioners  in  Lunacy  not  more  than 
eleven  years  old,  we  read  of  licensed  houses 
which  fed  lunatics  upon  from  four  and  a-half 
to  six  ounces  of  bread,  with  skimmed  milk,  for 
breakfast  and  supper,  and  gave  them  for 
dinner  on  three  days  in  the  week  what  was 
called  a  meat  and  potato  pie  ;  the  proportion 
of  meat  being  less  than  an  ounce  for  each 
patient.  On  two  days  in  the  week  soup  and 


D«*eB8.]         WITHIN  DR.  CONOLLY'S  REMEMBRANCE.       [Number  *,  w,r.]     519 


suet  pudding,  and  on  the  other  two  days 
what  was  called  a  meat  dinner,  the  allowance 
of  meat  to  each  patient  being  only  about  one 
ounce  and  a-half.  Firing  and  other  neces- 
saries of  life  were  supplied  on  the  same  scale. 
Even  at  this  day,  there  is  the  utmost  need 
for  the  continued  vigilance  of  the  Commis- 
sioners in  Lunacy. 

But  we  must  go  back  to  recover  the  thread 
of  our  story.  While  the  York  Retreat  was 
demonstrating  the  excellence  of  the  right 
system  of  treating  the  insane,  the  old  York 
Asylum,  which  by  its  misdeeds  had  brought 
the  Retreat  into  existence,  was  as  conspicuous 
for  the  repulsive  form  which  it  gave  to  the 
wrong.  In  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifteen,  two  little  works  appeared  at  York. 
One  of  them  by  Samuel  Tuke,  explained  in- 
structions for  the  building  of  the  Wakefield 
Pauper  Lunatic  Asylum,  and  illustrated  his 
principles  of  treatment.  "  Chains,"  he  said, 
in  his  preface,  "which  seemed  to  identify  the 
madman  and  the  felon,  are  discarded  from 
some  of  the  largest  establishments ;  and 
maniacs  who  for  many  years  were  manacled  j 
with  irons,  are  on  a  sudden,  under  a  more 
mild  and  vigilant  system  of  management 
found  to  be  gentle  and  inoffensive.  But, 
though  much  has  been  done — much  still  re- 
mains to  be  effected."  Of  violent  patients, 
the  same  public  teacher  says  in  his  pamphlet, 
"the  worst  patients  require  most  attention, 
and  are  most  likely  to  irritate  their  attend- 
ants. A  distinct,  or  very  remote  building, 
exposes  them  to  all  the  evils  of  neglect  and 
abuse  ;  and  there  is,  generally  speaking,  more 
to  fear  for  them  than  from  them.  The  evil 
of  noise  is  not  so  great  as  those  of  filth, 
starvation,  and  cruelty.  I  have  no  doubt, 
however,  that  it  is  possible  so  to  construct 
rooms  as  to  avoid  the  annoyance  of  the  many, 
and  the  injury  of  the  few."  The  founders  of 
the  Retreat  believed  that  the  well-being  of 
an  Asylum  very  much  depended  on  the  open 
doing  of  all  that  was  done  in  it.  "The  regu- 
lations of  an  Asylum,"  says  this  tract, 
"  should  establish  a  system  of  espionage,  ter- 
minating in  the  public.  One  servant  and  one 
officer  should  be  so  placed  as  to  watch  over 
another.  All  should  be  vigilantly  observed 
by  well  selected  and  interested  visitors  ;  and 
these  should  be  stimulated  to  attention,  by 
the  greatest  facilities  being  afforded  to  per- 
sons who,  from  motives  of  rational,  not  idle 
curiosity,  are  desirous  of  inspecting  such  es- 
tablishments." 

When  this  was  written,  there  was  written 
by  another  pen,  also  for  publication  at  York, 
an  account  of  the  old  York  Asylum,  reformed 
only  a  few  months  before,  of  which  the  sub- 
stance is  thus  briefly  sketched  by  Dr.  Conolly, 
in  his  recent  book  upon  the  Treatment  of  the 
Insane.  "  Secresy  had  long  been  the  protec- 
tion of  the  officers.  The  physicians  admin- 
istered medicines  of  which  the  nature  was 
concealed.  Visitors  were,  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, excluded.  The  committee  of  managers 


were  equally  arrogant  and  ignorant.  Every 
abuse  reigned  uncontrolled.  The  poorer  pa- 
tients were  half-starved.  There  was  no  clas- 
sification within  doors,  or  without,  Clean- 
liness and  ventilation  were  disregarded. 
Numbers  of  patients  were  huddled  together 
in  small  day  rooms.  Some  slept  three  in  a 
bed.  The  use  of  chains  seems  to  have  been 
very  general.  The  actual  disappearance  of 
many  patients  was  never  accounted  for ;  and 
some  were  supposed  to  have  been  killed.  In, 
reporting  the  number  of  deaths,  several — 
sometimes  a  hundred  out  of  three  hundred 
— were  taken  from  the  list  of  dead,  and 
placed  in  the  list  of  cured.  A.  general  sys- 
tem of  dishonesty  and  peculation  prevailed. 
The  physician  was  dishonest ;  the  steward 
falsified  his  accounts  and  burnt  his  books  ; 
and  the  matron,  a  worthy  coadjutor,  made  a 
profit  on  the  articles  purchased  by  her  for  the 
use  of  the  house.  Pending  the  inquiry  into 
these  and  various  other  acts  of  impropriety 
and  cruelty,  an  attempt  was  made,  very  con- 
sistently, and  evidently  with  the  knowledge 
of  the  officers,  to  destroy  the  whole  building 
by  fire — books,  papers,  and  patients.  To  a 
certain  extent,  the  design  was  successful. 
Much  of  the  building  was  consumed,  with 
most  of  the  books  and  papers  ;  and  several  of 
the  patients — it  was  never  ascertained  how 
many — perished  at  the  same  time.  It  was 
not  until  eighteen  hundred  and  fourteen,  that 
the  iniquities  of  this  bad  place  were  finally 
put  a  stop  to.  It  was  not  even  until  that 
year  that  secret  cells  were  first  discovered  by 
Mr.  Godfrey  Higgins,  one  of  the  most  inde- 
fatigable of  reformers — cells,  many  in  num- 
ber ;  and,  as  his  report  represented  "in  a 
state  of  filth,  horrible  beyond  description." 
The  very  existence  of  these  cells  had  been 
kept  from  the  knowledge  of  the  committee, 
up  to  that  time." 

Then  began,  also,  the  reform  of  Bethlem. 
Fifteen  years  later,  lunatic  asylums  were  still 
places  of  dread,  and  it  is  hard  now  to  con- 
ceive the  force  that  went  with  the  arguments 
urged  by  Dr.  Conolly,  in  an  "  Inquiry  con- 
cerning the  Indications  of  Insanity,"  when 
that,  his  first  work  on  a  subject  with  which 
his  name  is  now  indissolubly  bound,  was  pub- 
lished. It  appeared  in  the  year  eighteen  hun- 
dred and  thirty,  when  its  author  was  the 
Professor  of  Medicine  in  London  University. 
Its  argument  was  mainly  for  the  complete 
removal  of  asylums  for  the  insane  from  the 
hands  of  the  private  speculator,  by  placing 
them  all  under  the  control  of  the  state,  and 
for  the  combatting  of  that  grave  error  which 
places  in  lunatic  asylums,  men  who  could 
easily  and  happily  be  cared  for  in  their  fami- 
lies ;  many,  even,  who  could  be  active  and 
useful  members  of  society,  requiring  only 
some  humouring  of  this  or  that  harmless  de- 
lusion. Thus,  there  is  an  old,  and  pretty  well 
known  story  of  a  gtntleman  of  fortune,  who 
believed  Queen  Charlotte  to  be  in  love  with 
him.  His  triends  sued  for  a  Commission  of 


520       I  November  28, 1*70 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


Lunacy  in  his  case.  The  Lord  Chancellor 
dined  with  him,  and  was  so  much  pleased 
with  the  clear  wit  and  wisdom  of  his  host, 
that  at  parting  he  alluded  with  ridicule  to 
the  absurd  allegation  made  against  him.  He 
could  now,  he  said,  be  sure  of  its  falsity. 
Thereupon,  the  gentleman  bravely  took  up 
and  defended  his  position.  Why,  he  asked, 


treating  lunacy  it  was  most  difficult  for  the 
great  body  of  society  to  accept  the  idea  that 
mechanical  restraint  could  be  dispensed  with 
in  all  cases.  "  Indeed,"  he  says  in  a  recent 
book  published  for  the  just  assertion  of  his 
claims,  "for  many  years  I  was  stigmatised  as 
one  bereft  of  reason  myself,  a  speculator, 
peculator,  and  a  practical  breaker  of  the 


v/as  it  absurd  for  him  to  believe  the  evidence  j  sixth  commandment,  by  exposing  the  lives  of 
of  his  own  eyes  ?     The  Queen  watched  him,   the  attendants  to  the  fury  of  the  patients. 


and  smiled  at  him  in  the  opera,  noticed  him 
significantly  in  the  parks,  &c.  This  gentle- 
man was  proved  a  lunatic,  and  placed  in  an 
asylum.  Yet,  when  his  estate  in  Chancery 
'  became  embarrassed,  he  was  the  only  man 
able  to  disentangle  all  the  knots,  and  get  it 
out  of  trouble  ;  afterwards  he  was  appointed 
steward  over  it,  wholly  trusted  with  the  ma- 
nagement, and  with  thekeeping  of  the  accounts. 
With  very  many  such  instances,  some  of  them 
very  curious  and  interesting,  Dr.  Conolly  for- 
tified his  position,  that  all  lunatics  ought  not 
— merely  as  such — to  be  immured  in  mad- 
houses. 

At  about  the  same  time  or  a  year  sooner,  it 
happened  that  in  the  Lincoln  Lunatic  Asy- 
lum a  patient  died  in  consequence  of  being 
strapped  to  the  bed  in  a  strait  waistcoat 
during  the  night.  This  accident  led  to  the 


The  system  was  called  'a  piece  of  contempti- 
ble quackery,  a  mere  bait  for  the  public  ear.' 
As  regards  the  Lincoln  Asylum,  it  was  most 
extraordinary,  that  notwithstanding  the  many 
expedients  previously  resorted  to  with  the 
avowed  purpose  of  diminishing  the  number 
of  restraints,  so  great  was  the  opposition, 
both  within  and  without  the  institution,  that 
despite  the  constant  and  strenuous  support  of 
Dr.  Charlesworth,  I  was  ultimately  compelled 
to  resign  my  appointment.  In  fact,  it  was 
impossible  to  remain.  The  attendants  were 
encouraged  in  acts  of  disobedience,  and  all 
control  was  lost.  Had  I  retained  my  appoint- 
ment, I  must  have  sacrificed  my  principles." 

The  first  to  adopt,  freely  and  fully,  the 
principles  laid  down  at  Lincoln  was  Dr. 
Conolly  at  Hanwell.  Mr.  Hill,  who  gives 
this  honour  to  Dr.  Pritchard  of  Northampton, 


establishment  of  a  rule,  that  whenever  re-  j  says  :  "  Next  after  Dr.  Pritchard,  came  that 


straints  were  used  at  night  an  attendant 
should  continue  in  the  room,  and  the  conse- 
quence of  the  rule  was  a  great  diminution  of 
the  use  of  such  restraints.  In  the  same 
asylum  Dr.  Charlesworth,  the  physician, 
gradually  felt  his  way  towards  the  abandon- 
ment of  such  restraints  as  could  be  found 
unnecessary,  and  in  August,  eighteen  'thirty- 
four,  it  was  reported  that  for  many  successive 
days  not  one  patient  had  been  in  mechanical 
restraint  of  any  kind.  At  that  time  Mr. 
Hadwen  was  the  house-surgeon  of  the  asylum. 
He  was  succeeded  in  the  year  following  by 
Mr.  Gardiner  Hill,  who  was  soon  able  to  say 
that  not  one  patient  had  been  in  restraint  for 
four-and-twenty  days.  In  the  year  'thirty- 
six  at  the  Lincoln  Asylum  no  instrument  of 
restraint  was  used  for  three  successive 
months,  and  in  the  year  following  Mr.  Hill 
expressed  his  confident  opinion  that  mechan- 
ical restraints  might  be  abolished  altogether. 

The  new  practice  is  not  yet  accepted  on 
the  continent  of  Europe.  To  the  medical 
practitioners  of  England  belongs  the  honour 
of  having  led  and  won  the  battle  against  a 
prejudice  that  had  been  rooted  in  society  for 
upwards  of  two  thousand  years.  Side  by 
side  with  them  have  marched  their  brethren 
in  America,  who  have  here  and  there  carried 
gallantly  a  strong  advanced  position  by  them- 
selves. Such  an  achievement  —  in  such 
achievements  French  and  Germans  also  have 
excelled  us — was,  for  example,  the  establish- 
ment nine  years  ago  of  the  Massachusetts 
school  for  idiotic  children. 

When  Mr.  Gardiner  Hill  first  cut  himself 
adrift  from  the  whole  system  of  restraint  in 


'  great  and  good  man '  Dr.  Conolly  ;  and, 
perhaps,  but  for  him,  the  system  might  have 
been  strangled  in  its  birth.  It  was  ordained 
otherwise.  Mr.  Serjeant  Adams,  whose  at- 
tention had  been  directed  to  the  new  system 
at  Lincoln,  was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  the 
Lincoln  Asylum  when  on  circuit,  and  the 
result  was,  that  when  Dr.  Conolly  received 
the  appointment  of  physician  to  the  Hanwell 
Asylum,  Mr.  Serjeant  Adams,  who  was  one 
of  the  visiting  justices  at  Hanwell,  recom- 
mended Dr.  Conolly  to  visit  Lincoln.  Dr. 
Conolly  did  so,  and  was  so  pleased  with  the 
quiet  and  order  which  he  observed  there, 
that  on  his  return  to  Hanwell,  he  set  to  work 
vigorously,  with  a  view  to  abolish  restraint  in 
that  giant  establishment." 

We  believe  it  to  be  quite  true  that,  but 
for  this  helper,  Dr.  Couolly,  the  system 
indeed  would  have  been  strangled  in  its 
birth.  His  help  was  all  powerful,  for  he 
was  not  only  the  ablest  man  enlisted  upon 
its  behalf,  but  he  was  prepared  for  it  by  all 
his  previous  reasonings  and  observations. 
The  good  principle  derived  also  from  his 
support  this  great  advantage,  that  he  woi'ked 
it  out  most  wisely  and  vigorously  in  one  of 
the  largest  institutions  of  the  country,  and  in 
the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  London,  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  in  London  under  the 
eye  of  the  ablest  and  most  influential  men 
who  could  be  usefully  impressed  with  a  sense 
of  its  importance.  We  take  nearly  all  the 
present  history  of  the  non-restraint  system 
Jroin  Dr.  Conolly's  book  "  on  the  Treatment 
of  Lunacy  without  Mechanical  Restraints,"  in 
which  he  is  concerned  very  much  to  prove 


Charles  Dickene.1 


WITHIN  DE.  CONOLLY'S  EEMEMBEANCE.    [Notember  23,  IBM     621 


the  soundness  of  the  plan,  and  with  a  rare 
modesty  concerned  very  little  about  his  own 
claims  to  reputation  in  connection  with  it. 
He  gives  to  every  other  man  his  due,  and  is 
for  himself  content  that  he  has  been  a  faithful 
labourer.  Of  the  beginning  of  his  work  at 
Han  well  he  himself  writes  :  "  Although  the 
phenomena  of  insanity  and  the  character  of 
asylums  had  occupied  my  mind  for  many 
years  before  I  was  appointed  to  the  charge  of 
the  Middlesex  Asylum  at  Han  well,  in  1839, 
and  the  defective  management  of  insane 
persons  had  been  commented  upon  in  a 
work  published  by  me  about  ten  years 
before  assuming  such  duties,  I  was  still 
deeply  impressed  with  the  responsibility  of 
what  I  had  undertaken,  and  my  anxiety  to 
avoid  the  abuses  which  I  had  freely  con- 
demned, was  largely  mixed  with  solicitude  as 
to  the  possible  dangers  to  be  incurred  in  the 
attempt  in  an  asylum  containing  eight  hun- 
dred patients.  The  perusal  of  Mr.  Gardiner 
Hill's  lecture  "  (on  the  Management  of  Lu- 
natic Asylums,  delivered  in  June,  eighteen 
hundred  and  thirty-eight,  and  published 
April,  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-nine) 
"  had  almost  convinced  me  that  what  was 
reported  as  having  been  done  at  Lincoln 
might  be  accomplished  in  other  and  larger 
asylums Much  interested  by  these  de- 
tails, I  devoted  the  few  weeks  intervening 
between  my  appointment  to  Hanwell  and  the 
commencement  of  my  residence  there,  in 
visiting  several  public  asylums  ;  in  all  of 
which,  except  in  that  of  Lincoln,  various 
modes  of  mechanical  coercion  continued  to  be 
employed.  My  visit  to  the  Lincoln  Asylum 
(in  May,  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-nine), 
and  conversations  and  correspondence  with 
Dr.  Charlesworth  and  Mr.  Gardiner  Hill,  as 
well  as  frequent  communications  with  the 
late  Mr.  Serjeant  Adams,  at  that  time  a 
member  of  the  Hanwell  Committee,  and  who 
had  been  much  interested  by  the  proceedings 
at  Lincoln,  more  strongly  inclined  me  to  be- 
lieve that  mechanical  restraints  might  be 
safely  and  advantageously  abolished  in  an 
asylum  of  any  size ;  and  I  commenced  my 
duties  as  resident  physician  and  superinten- 
dent of  the  Middlesex  Lunatic  Asylum  at 
Hanwell,  on  the  first  day  of  June.  In  various 
asjlums  some  attention  had  been  drawn  to 
the  subject  of  Mr.  Hill's  lecture  ;  but  I  had 
observed  that  his  views  were  received  unfa- 
vourably, and  sometimes  in  a  spirit  of  hos- 
tility, or  even  of  ridicule  ;  and  I  found  them 
by  no  means  favourably  regarded  by  the 
medical  and  other  officers  at  Hanwell.  The 
agitation,  however,  of  so  novel  a  question  as 
that  of  abolishing  instruments  of  restraint 
which,  from  time  immemorial  had  consti- 
tuted a  part  of  the  daily  treatment  of  numer- 
ous cases  of  insanity,  had  led,  at  Hanwell  at 
least,  to  a  some  what  less  extravagant  employ- 
ment of  coercive  instruments  than  had  before 
been  common.  After  the  first  of  July,  when 
I  required  a  daily  return  to  be  made  to  me 


of  the  number  of  patients  restrained,  there 
were  never  more  than  eighteen  so  treated  in 
one  day — a  number  which  would  seem  rea- 
sonably small,  out  of  eight  hundred  patients, 
but  for  the  facts  that  after  the  thirty-first  of 
July  the  number  so  confined  never  exceeded 
eight ;  and  after  the  twelfth  of  August  never 
exceeded  one  ;  and  that  after  the  twentieth 
of  September  no  restraints  were  employed  at 
all." 

Those  are  quiet  words,  but  how  much 
energy  do  they  express  !  Mr.  Hill  arrived  at 
his  opinion,  and  unable  to  enforce  it  satis- 
factorily, resigned  at  last  his  appointment  in 
the  Lincoln  Lunatic  Asylum.  The  lecture, 
expressing  Mr.  Hill's  extreme  views,  was 
printed  in  April,  of  the  year  eighteen  hun- 
dred and  thirty-nine.  Dr.  Conolly,  then  about 
to  be  placed  in  charge  of  the  Great  County 
Asylum  at  Hanwell,  and  being  strongly 
disposed  against  the  prisoning  and  fettei-ing 
of  the  insane,  read  the  lecture  at  once,  and 
almost  believed  that  its  case  was  made  out  as 
well  for  the  great  asylums  as  for  the  small. 

In  the  month  following  he  went  to  Lin- 
coln, made  observations  for  himself,  and 
came  away  convinced.  In  the  month  following 
that,  he  entered  upon  his  office  at  Hanwell,  re 
solved  to  conquer  quietly  and  quickly  all  the 
strong  prejudices  he  encountered  there,  and 
to  establish,  against  the  opinion  of  his  col- 
leagues and  subordinates,  against  ridicule 
and  abuse,  the  extreme  position  that  he 
had  accepted.  He  did  not  urge  it  theoreti- 
cally in  an  uncomprosing  way  ;  he  did  not 
like  Mr.  Hill  to  deny  that  there  might  be 
cases  to  which  his  principle  was  inapplicable. 
He  said  little,  and  did  all.  When  he  had 
been  a  month  in  office  he  was  receiving  daily 
returns  of  the  number  of  patients  put  under 
mechanical  restraint.  He  had  urged  his 
general  opinions  in  the  meantime  and  the 
restraints  were  not  numerous.  He  watched 
cases  and  pointed  out  the  conclusions  to 
which  they  led.  In  one  month  more,  the 
use  of  such  restraints  —  before  small  —  was 
reduced  by  more  than  half.  In  twelve 
days  more  it  was  reduced  to  the  occasional 
binding  of  one  patient  in  the  course  of  a  day, 
and  after  a  few  more  weeks — by  quarter  day 
— it  was  abolished  altogether. 

Dr.  Conolly 's  predecessor,  at  the  Hanwell 
Asylum,  had  been  Dr.  Millingen,  a  strong 
opponent  of  the  non-restraint  theory.  lu 
the  year  during  which  Dr.  Milligen's  rule 
lasted,  instruments  of  coercion  multiplied. 
There  had  reigned  before  Dr.  Millingen,  Sir 
William  Ellis,  a  wise  and  kindly  man,  who 
is  entitled  to  distinction  in  this  history  as 
the  reformer  who,  first  at  Wakefield  and  after- 
wards at  Hanwell,  made  the  experiment  of  in- 
troducinglaboursystematicallyinto  our  public 
asylums.  "  He  carried  it  out  at  Wakefield," 
says  Samuel  Tuke,  "  with  a  skill,  vigour  and 
kindness  towards  the  patients,  which  were 
alike  creditable  to  his  understanding  and  his 
heart.  He  first  proved  that  there  was  less 


622        (Noiambw  28,  ia.7.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


danger  of  injury  from  putting  the  spade  and 
the  hoe  into  the  hands  of  a  large  proportion 
of  insane  persons,  than  from  shutting  them  up 
together  in  idleness,  though  under  the  guards 
of  straps,  strait-waistcoats,  and  chains." 

At  Han  well  Sir  William  had  been  faintly 
supported  by  the  officers  of  the  Asylum. 
"  When  I  began  to  reside  in  the  Asylum," 
Dr.  Conolly  writes,  "  a  year  after  Sir  William 
Ellis's  residence  there  had  ceased,  the  use  of 
mechanical  restraints  was  by  no  means 
limited  to  cases  of  violent  mania.  Instru- 
ments of  restraint,  of  one  kind  or  other,  were 
so  abundant  in  the  wards  as  to  amount,  when 
collected  together,  to  about  six  hundred — 
half  of  these  being  leglocks  or  handcuffs. 
The  attendants  had  abused,  as  usual,  the 
latitude  of  permission  allowed  them  as  to 
haying  recourse  to  such  methods,  and  employed 
them  for  frivolous  reasons,  chiefly  to  save 
themselves  trouble.  On  the  female  side  of 
the  asylum,  alone,  there  were  forty  patients 
who  were  almost  at  all  times  in  restraints  ; 
fourteen  of  these  were  generally  in  coercion- 
chairs.  All  these  patients  were  freed  from 
restraints  in  September,  eighteen  hundred 
and  thirty-nine  ;  and,  on  a  careful  examina- 
tion of  thirty-seven  of  them,  who  remained 
in  the  asylum  two  years  afterwards,  all  were 
found  improved  in  their  conduct.  Some,  who 
had  before  been  considered  dangerous,  were 
constantly  employed  ;  and  the  rest  were 
harmless  and  often  cheerful." 

The  details  of  personal  experience  given 
by  Dr.  Conolly,  are  often  such  as  cannot  be 
read  without  emotion.  The  doctor's  strong 
heart  (God  bless  and  reward  him  !)  was  in  his 
work,  and  the  hearts  of  his  readers  follow 
him  in  his  account  of  it.  To  carry  on  a  great 
labour  of  civilisation  in  a  wise  and  tender 
spirit,  to  be  in  every  high  sense  a  good  physi- 
cian to  the  broken-minded,  watchful  on  their 
behalf,  made  happy  by  the  happiness  created 
for  them,  is  to  live  above  the  need  of  praise. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  a  noble  thing  for  any  one 
to  win  the  deserved  praise  of  all  his  country- 
men, and  to  be  appreciated  and  respected 
most  perfectly  by  those  who,  had  they  com- 
peted with  him  on  a  meaner  course,  would 
have  been  called  his  rivals. 

In  the  book  of  which  we  speak,  as  in  his 
former  work,  upon  the  Indications  of  Insanity, 
Dr.  Conolly  interests  his  reader  by  the  most 
abundant  store  of  anecdote  and  illustration, 
chiefly  drawn  from  experience,  partly  from 
reading,  with  which  he  defines  every  point  of 
his  argument.  The  practical  tone  of  his  own 
mind  suggests  this  manner  of  writing,  and  it 
is  the  most  effectual  that  can  be  used  by  any 
one  who  would  at  once  interest  and  convince 
the  English  public. 

For  several  years  after  eighteen  hundred 
and  thirty-nine,  the  progress  of  the  non- 
restraint  system  in  England  was  slow,  and,  as 
we  have  said,  a  certain  amount  of  strait- 
•waistcoating  is  still  advocated  by  physicians 
on  the  continent.  Under  the  new  system,  a 


patient  when  unmanageably  violent  is  placed, 
with  every  limb  free,  in  a  light  and  cheerful 
padded  room  where  no  harm  can  be  done,  and 
is  watched  through  an  eye-hole  in  the  door. 
The  consequence  is,  that  the  violence  rapidly 
abatesfor  want  of  exciting  objects  to  sustain  it; 
the  patient  frequently  lies  down  and  sleeps,  and, 
when  quiet, — that  is  to  say,  usually  in  an  hour 
or  two — is  taken  out,  washed,  soothed,  well 
fed  and  trusted.  The  opponents  of  the  system 
makeabugbear  of  the  padded  room  and  preach 
that  patients  are  more  soothed  by  strapping 
up  in  a  straitwaistcoat.  So,  in  the  early  days 
of  the  reform  at  Han  well,  "  physician  and 
superintendents  of  the  asylum  wrote  against 
it,  reasoned  against  it,  expressed  themselves 
angrily  against  it ;  but  scarcely  any  of  them 
devoted  any  time  to  observing  it.  A  few 
reflecting  men  were  happily  found  who  did 
devote  more  than  an  hour  or  two,  or 
than  even  a  day  or  two,  to  watching  the 
results  of  non-restraint.  One  of  these,"  Dr. 
Couolly  writes,  "  was  Mr.  Gaskell,  now  a 
commissioner  in  lunacy  ;  and  it  is  well  known 
that  he  adopted  the  system,  and  carried  it 
out  with  singular  ability  and  success  in  the 
large  Asylum  of  Lancaster,  where  he  had  to 
control  many  patients  whose  provincial  cha- 
racter was  proverbially  rough  and  brutal. 
There — as  at  Hanwell — walls  were  lowered, 
iron  bars  removed,  the  means  of  exercise 
and  recreation  increased,  so  as  to  introduce 
the  whole  system  of  non-restraint  into  an 
asylum  then  containing  six  hundred  patients." 

Equally  good  work  was  done  also  by  the 
late  Dr.  Anderson  in  the  lunatic  asylum 
attached  to  Haslar  Hospital.  In  that  place 
"  the  view  of  the  sea,  of  Portsmouth  harbour 
and  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  was  shut  out  by 
very  high  walls.  Dr.  Anderson  had  not 
been  long  there  before  everything  under- 
went a  favourable  change.  Restraints  were 
entirely  abolished,  iron  bars  disappeared,  the 
boundary  walls  were  lowered,  the  patients 
were  allowed  to  walk  upon  the  grass,  summer- 
houses  were  built  and  pleasant  seats  provi- 
ded commanding  a  view  of  the  sea,  and  the 
cheerful  scenes  most  congenial  to  the  inmates; 
knives  and  forks  were  brought  into  use,  and 
the  whole  of  this  noble  asylum  assumed  au 
air  of  tranquil  comfort.  The  patients  soon 
had  a  large  boat  provided  for  them,  in  which 
their  good  physician  did  not  hesitate  to 
trust  himself  with  parties  of  them,  in  fishing- 
excursions.  In  the  first  of  these  little  voy- 
ages a  patient,  whose  voice  had  not  been 
heard  for  years,  was  so  delighted  with  his 
success  that  he  counted  his  fish  aloud." 

No  inconvenience  or  accident  followed  upon 
these  changes.  Violent  patients  became 
quiet,  and  recovered  bits  of  their  wrecked 
minds ;  the  useless  and  hopeless  became 
trustworthy  and  industrious,  all  exchanged 
misery  for  happiness.  At  Glasgow,  Dr.  Hut- 
cheson  proved  the  immense  importance  of  the 
new  system,  so  thoroughly,  that  when  the  new 
asylum  was  built  at  Gartnavel,  near  Glasgow, 


MARIE  COURTENAY. 


LNo»eml)«r  2S,  18a7.]       523 


au  inscription  on  the  foundation-stone  re- 
corded that  into  that  institution  mechanical 
restraint  was  never  to  be  introduced.  When 
Dr.  Davey  and  Dr.  Hood  took  charge  of 
Colney  Hatch  Asylum,  they  managed  an  in- 
stitution for  the  reception  of  twelve  hundred 
lunatics,  without  thinking  it  necessary  to 
have  a  single  straitwaistcoat  or  any  other  in- 
strument of  restraint  in  the  building.  We 
have  shown  already  how  the  system  is  now 
•worked  by  Dr.  Hood,  at  Bethlem.  Dr.  Hitch- 
man,  in  Derbyshire  ;  Dr.  Palmer,  in  Lincoln- 
shire ;  Dr.  Hitch  and  Dr.  Williams,  in  Glou- 
cestershire ;  Dr.  Bucknill,  in  Devonshire ; 
Dr.  Thurnam,  in  Wiltshire  ;  Dr.  Parsey,  in 
Warwickshire  ;  Dr.  Diamond,  in  Surrey ; 
are  among  those  who  have  publicly  carried 
out  with  the  best  skill,  and  to  most  unex- 
ceptionable results,  the  system  now  esta- 
blished in  this  country  by  the  experience  of 
eighteen  years. 

Except,  that  after  seeing  Hanwell,  Dr. 
Everts  and  Dr.  Van  Leeuwen  established  the 
non-restraint  system,  under  some  disad- 
vantages, at  the  Asylum  of  Meerenberg,  near 
Haerlem  ;  and  except  also  in  the  case  of  Dr. 
Hiibertz,  at  Copenhagen  ;  the  whole  body  of 
physicians  on  the  continent  appears  at  pre- 
sent disposed,  as  we  have  said,  to  resist  the 
complete  adoption  of  the  English  system. 
Simple  experiment  has  overpowered  oppo- 
sition here  ;  abroad,  experiment  remains  yet 
to  be  made. 

MARIE  COURTENAY. 


TOWARDS  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, Lord  William  Courteuay,  the  young 
Earl  of  Devon,  a  descendant  of  the  ancient 
imperial  family  of  Constantinople,  having 
been  convicted  of  felony,  having  had  his  es- 
tates? confiscated,  and  having  been  outlawed, 
left  Powderham  Castle,  near  Exmouth,  and 
fled  from  his  native  land.  A  short  time- 
afterwards,  a  young  stranger  arrived  upon 
the  coast  of  France,  near  Lesparre,  in  the 
department  of  La  Gironde,  and  took  up  his 
residence  in  the  village  of  Saint  Christoly. 
This  foreigner,  who  lived  in  great  seclusion, 
was  first  known  by  the  name  of  Thomas ; 
and  afterwards  was  called  citizen  Thomas,  or 
William  Courtenay. 

While  Thomas  Courtenay  was  living  at 
Saint  Christoly,  the  great  French  Revolution 
of  seventeen  hundred  and  ninety-three  broke 
out ;  and  his  English  accent  having  betrayed 
his  foreign  birth,  Thomas  Courtenay  became 
an  object  of  suspicion  and  persecution.  At 
length,  he  was  arrested  as  a*  supposed  aris- 
tocrat, and  conducted  to  the  Convent  of 
Beysac,  which  had  been  converted  into  a 
prison,  and  which  the  Reign  of  Terror  had 
peopled  with  the  noble  families  of  the  county. 
Although  Thomas  Courtenay  declared  him- 
self to  be  an  Irishman,  he  stood  in  a  very 
perilous  position.  Happily  for  him,  however, 
lie  had  excited  the  interest  and  compassion 


of  a  young  and  beautiful  woman,  named 
Marguerite  Titau,  who  was  the  widow  of  a 
peasant,  named  Jean  Orry.  Marguerite 
Titau  walked  six  miles,  from  Saint  Christoly 
to  Beysac,  every  two  days  to  carry  clean  linen 
and  fresh  food  to  the  unfortunate  young  pri- 
soner. In  those  days  to  be  poor  was  to  be 
powerful,  and  Marguerite  Titau,  by  exerting 
her  influence  with  the  local  authorities  and 
the  country  people,  after  some  time  obtained 
the  release  of  Thomas  Courteuay. 

Gratitude,  it  may  be  easily  imagined,  sooa 
gave  place  to  more  tender  sentiments  in  the 
breast  of  Thomas  Courtenay,  especially  as 
his  devoted  liberatrice  united  to  goodness  of 
heart,  the  charms  of  youth  and  beauty.  The 
simplicity  of  the  republican  forms  making 
mat  riage  easy,  the  youthful  betrothed  in  the 
year  seventeen  hundred  and  ninety-five,  re- 
paired to  Bordeaux  ;  where  their  union  was 
celebi'ated  by  Ysabeau,  a  representative  of  the 
people,  under  the  flags  (sous  les  drapeaux). 
Marriage  under  the  flags,  was  the  only 
existing  form  of  marriage  during  "the  Reign 
of  Wisdom."  It  consisted  in  the  appearance 
of  the  contracting  parties  at  the  head  of  a 
regiment,  under  the  flags ;  where,  in  presence 
of  a  representative  of  the  people,  their  union 
was  announced  by  bugle  blast  and  tuck  of 
drum.  These  marriages  were  afterwards  le- 
galised by  the  Code  Napoleon. 

Two  children  were  the  fruit  of  the  union 
of  Marguerite  Titau  and  Thomas  Courtenay  : 
Jean  Courtenay,  boru  upon  the  twenty-first 
j  Floreal,  year  V.,  and  Marie  Courtenay,  born 
|  upon  the  twentieth  Thermidor,  year  IX.  of 
the  Republic.  Thomas  Courtenay  brought  up 
his  children  modestly  and  respectably ;  and, 
j  when  the  Reign  of  Terror  had  passed,  and 
!  tranquillity  was  restored,  he  announced  to 
his  friends  that  he  was  Lord  William  Cour- 
teuay, the  outlawed  Earl  of  Devon.  This 
announcement  procured  him  admission  as  an 
equal  into  the  best  families  of  the  neighb  our- 
hood  ;  and  he  henceforth  signed  his  name, 
William,  or  Thomas  Courtenay,  Earl  of  Devon. 

Napoleon  the  First  having  been  proclaimed 
First  Consul,  M.  de  Courteuay,  after  the 
rupture  of  the  peace  of  Amiens,  was  sus- 
pected of  being  a  spy  of  England  and  the 
French  princes,  the  brothers  of  Louis  the 
Sixteenth ;  and  was  obliged  once  more  to  seek 
his  safety  in  flight.  He  wished  to  take  his 
family  with  him  ;  but  his  wife,  having  had  a 
daughter  to  whom  she  was  much  attached,  by 
her  first  marriage,  and  who  was  settled  in 
her  village,  refused  to  accompany  him.  Cour- 
tenay on  embarking  alone  for  England  or 
America,  promised  to  provide  for  his  family, 
and  to  return  to  them  as  soon  as  the  political 
horizon  had  somewhat  cleared  up. 

On  arriving  in  England,  Courtenay  wrote 
to  his  wife,  saying,  that  his  family  having 
repudiated  him,  he  was  living  with  a  tailor 
in  Oxford  Street ;  but,  would,  as  soon  as  he 
could,  return  to  France,  to  pass  the  remainder 
ot  his  days  with  his  dear  little  children.  He 


624      [Norombtr  38. 18&70 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bj 


appeared  to  be  particularly  fond  of  little 
Marie  ;  who,  strikingly  resembled  her  father. 
Sometime,  after  the  receipt  of  his  first 
letter.  Courtenay  wrote  from  America, 
announcing  a  remittance,  through  a  third 
party,  of  eight  hundred  franca ;  which,  how- 
ever his  family  never  received.  Marguerite 
Titan,  or  Courtenay,  heard  no  more  of  her 
husband  after  that  letter  ;  and,  at  length, 
believing  herself  to  be  once  more  a  widow, 
and  resigning  herself  to  her  misfortune,  con- 
tinued to  bring  up  her  children  as  well  as  her 
feeble  resources  permitted.  The  eldest,  Jean 
Courtenay,  as  soon  as  he  was  able  to  handle 
an  oar,  became  a  sailor  ;  and  Marie  assisted 
her  mother  in  her  household  occupations. 

Years  rolled  on ;  and,  after  the  peace 
of  eighteen  hundred  and  fifteen,  Lord 
William  Courtenay  appeared  in  England,  and 
had  his  estates  restored  to  him.  A  rumour 
floated  over  the  county  of  Devon,  about  this 
time,  to  the  effect,  that  the  noble  Earl  having 
disguised  himself  as  a  common  sailor,  had 
gone  to  one  of  the  principal  hotels  in  Exeter, 
and  mingled  in  the  conversations  of  the  bar 
and  tap-rooms,  with  a  view  of  finding  out 
the  sort  of  reception  he  might  expect,  if  he 
returned  publicly  to  his  estate  and  lordship 
of  Powderliam  Castle.  Learning,  however, 
that  stoning,  or  tarring  and  feathering, 
would  be  deemed  the  most  appropriate  wel- 
come, Lord  William  Courtenay,  thinking  it 
imprudent  to  venture,  returned  immediately 
to  France.  The  restored  Earl  of  Devon  took 
up  his  residence  in  a  sumptuous  hotel,  in  the 
Place  VendoTne  in  Paris  ;  and  bought  a  most 
beautiful  and  agreeable  country-house,  situ- 
ated near  Corbeil,  in  the  little  village  of 
Draveil.  In  this  country  retreat  he  soon 
won  for  himself  the  name  of  the  Bear  of 
Draveil.  His  only  associates  were  his 
steward,  Mr.  Woods,  and  his  family.  He 
went  out  seldom,  and  was  generally  accom- 
panied by  Miss  Woods,  the  steward's 
daughter ;  and,  of  course,  Lord  William 
Ceurtenay  was  not  spared  by  the  evil 
tongues  of  his  neighbourhood. 

In  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-five,  the 
Earl  of  Devon  died,  leaving  by  his  will  all 
his  property  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Woods,  and 
theirthree  children,  George,  Henry,  and  Jane. 
After  going  through  the  necessary  legal  for- 
malities prescribed  by  French  law,  Mr. 
Woods  came  into  possession  of  the  furniture 
of  the  hotel,  at  number  eighteen  Place  Ven- 
d&me,  and  the  country  seat  of  Draveil.  After 
disposing  of  the  Chateau  of  Draveil  to  a 
Monsieur  and  Madame  Dalloz,  and  after  re- 
alising the  sum  of  eight  thousand  pounds  by 
the  sale  of  the  furniture,  which  was  rich  in 
objects  of  art  vertu,  Mr.  Woods  on  receiving 
the  proceeds  of  these  sales,  hastened  back  to 
England  with  his  family. 

We  must  now  return  to  humble  life,  and 
the  little  village  of  Saint  Chris toly.  In 
eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-six,  Marguerite 


Titau,  or  Courtenay,  was  dead.  Her  son, 
Jean  Courtenay,  had  gone  to  sea,  and  never 
more  been  heard  of ;  and  Marie  Courtenay 
was  supporting  herself  by  her  labour,  when, 
one  day,  she  received  a  letter  from  Paris, 
written  in  English.  Now  Marie,  so  far  from 
knowing  how  to  read  English,  could  not 
speak  French,  knowing  nothing  but  the 
patois  of  her  department.  Luckily,  however, 
she  knew  an  Englishman  who  had  lived 
twenty  years  in  her  native  village,  and  who 
translated  the  letter  for  her.  It  was  from  an 
unknown  person,  informing  her  of  the  death 
of  her  father,  at  number  eighteen  or  nineteen 
Place  Vendome,  leaving  a  large  fortune,  and 
advising  her  to  take  the  steps  necessary  to 
inherit  it. 

!  Marie,  believing  the  letter  to  be  an  ill- 
I  timed  jest,  and  putting  it  into  her  pocket, 
;  kept  it  there  until  the  edges  became  chafed, 
,  and  the  letter  destroyed.  Nevertheless,  in 
1  eighteen  hundred  and  forty-one,  a  M.  Falem- 
piu,  a  lawyer,  having  business  which  called 
him  from  Saint  Christoly  to  Paris,  Marie 
begged  him  to  make  inquiries  respecting  the 
particulars  mentioned  in  the  mysterious 
letter  ;  but,  soon  after  his  arrival  in  Paris, 
the  lawyer  fell  ill,  and  died.  Some  time 
afterwards,  the  Maire  of  Saint  Christoly 
wrote  to  the  English  consul  at  Bordeaux,  to 
enquire  the  fate  of  Lord  William  Courtenay, 
but  he  never  received  any  answer  to  his 
letter.  At  length,  in  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-three,  a  lawyer  who  happened  to  be 
passing  some  time  at  Lespaire,  heard  the 
story  of  the  poor  woman,  said  to  be  the 
daughter  and  heiress  of  Lord  Courtenay. 
Incredulous  at  first,  after  seeing  and  ques- 
tioning Marie,  now  Madame  Baty,  and  after 
having  made  inquiries  in  the  neighbourhood, 
the  lawyer  became  convinced  that  the  story 
told  by  the  poor  woman  was  perfectly  true. 

Of  course  he  was  entrusted  with  the  case, 
and  went  up  to  Paris,  where,  after  having 
ascertained  the  particulars  of  the  death  of 
Lord  Courtenay,  he  commenced  legal  pro- 
ceedings, for  the  purpose,  in  the  first  place, 
of  proving  the  legitimacy  of  Marie  Courtenay, 
and,  in  the  second  place,  of  claiming,  in  her 
name,  the  only  property  of  the  late  Earl 
which  Mr.  Woods  had  not  taken  to  England, 
namely,  the  estate  of  Draveil.  The  estate 
had  gone  into  the  hands  of  third  parties, 
Monsieur  Dalloz  having  sold  it  to  Monsieur 
Seguiu. 

On  the  eighth  of  August,  eighteen  hundred 
and  fifty-seven,  the  case  was  tried  before  the 
First  Chamber  of  the  Civil  Tribunal  of  the 
Seine.  Henry  Woods,  the  only  surviving 
member  of  his  family,  did  not  answer  the 
summons  of  the  court.  M.  Limet,  the  advo- 
cate of  Madame  Baty,  in  her  name  begged 
the  court  to  declare  her  the  legitimate 
daughter  and  heiress  of  Lord  William  Cour- 
tenay,  and  to  condemn  Henry  Woods  to 
restore  to  her  a  third  part  of  the  movable 
and  immovable  property  of  the  late  Lord 


Charles  Dickens.] 


DEBTOR  AND  CREDITOR. 


[November  28, 1357.]       525 


Courtenay,  and  to  declare  nul  the  two  suc- 
cessive sales  of  the  estate  of  Draveil. 

The  third  parties  raised  up  two  objections 
to  the  appeal,  demanding,  firstly  :  Is  Thomas 
Courtenay  the  same  person  as  William  Cour- 
tenay, the  Earl  of  Devon  1  and  secondly  :  If 
Marie  is  the  legitimate  daughter  of  the  Earl 
of  Devon,  can  she  legally  claim  her  inhe- 
ritance 1 

In  answer  to  the  first  objection,  he  produced 
the  written  testimony  of  six  respectable  inha- 
bitants of  the  village  of  Saint  Christoly, 
namely,  Jean  Servant, '  aged  seventy-seven 
years,  formerly  Maire  of  the  village  of  Saint 
Christoly  ;  Guilaume  Grand,  aged  sixty-three 
years ;  M.  Beuillan,  aged  sixty-five  years  ; 
Aruaud  Courrain,  aged  eighty  years  and  six 
months ;  Pierre  Curat,  aged  seventy-three 
years  ;  and  Frangois  Normandine,  aged  se- 
venty-two years  ; — who  all  affirmed,  upon 
oath,  that  they  had  known  Thomas  Courte- 
nay ;  that  they  knew  for  certain,  that  he 
remained  in  the  village  of  Saint  Christoly 
from  fourteen  to  fifteen  yeai's,  until  the  year 
ten  of  the  French  Republic ;  that  during  his 
stay  at  Saint  Christoly  they  saw  and  spoke  to 
him  daily  ;  that  he  was  about  forty  or  forty- 
five  years  of  age  when  he  left  Saint  Christoly 
to  return  to  England  ;  that  during  his  sojourn 
at  Saint  Christoly  he  married  Marguerite 
Titau :  that  Marie  Jeanne  Courtenay  was 
born  of  this  marriage,  and  that  M.  Thomas 
Courtenay  caused  himself  to  be  called  in  the 
country  William  or  Thomas  Courtenay,  Earl 
of  Devon,  &c. 

The  next  document  produced  was  the  only 
piece  of  writing  which  could  be  found  with  the 
signature  of  Thomas  Courtenay.  It  was  a 
promise  to  pay  the  sum  of  four  hundred  and 
fifty-nine  francs  eleven  sous,  written  in  bad 
French,  and  signed  Thomas  Courtenay,  Earl 
of  Devon.  This  document  was  compared,  by 
M.  Limet,  with  the  will  of  Lord  William 
Courtenay  ;  and  he  found,  he  said,  a  manifest 
analogy  between  the  two  handwritings,  by 
making  an  allowance  for  the  difference  thirty- 
five  years  must  make  between  the  hand- 
writing of  a  young  man  and  the  handwriting 
of  an  old  man. 

M.  Limet  having  thus  tried  to  prove  the 
identity  between  Lord  William  Courtenay  and 
Citizen  William  or  Thomas  Courtenay  of  Saint 
Christoly,  went  on  to  prove  the  legitimacy  of 
Marie  Courtenay.  He  presented  to  the 
court  the  declaration  of  her  birth,  made  to 
the  Maire  of  Saint  Christoly,  in  which  she  is 
declared  the  legitimate  daughter  of  Mar- 

fuerite  Titau  and    Thomas    Courtenay,  an 
rishman. 

Great  doubt  having  been  thrown  by  the 
adversaries  of  Marie  Courtenay  on  the  truth 
of  the  romantic  story  of  the  marriage  of  her 
father  and  mother,  M.  Limet  procured  the 
testimony  of  a  lady  who  had  known  Marie 
Courtenay  from  her  childhood,  who  had  often 
played  with  her,  and  whose  grandmother 
had  been  imprisoned  with  Thomas  Courtenay 


in  the  convent  of  Beysac.  Madame  Mazel 
said,  her  grandmother  had  frequently  told 
her  the  history  of  the  romantic  courtship 
and  marriage  of  Marguerite  Titau  and 
Thomas  Courteuay,  and  certified  to  Marie's 
striking  resemblance  to  her  father.  And  she 
herself  had  seen  the  letters  which  Thomas 
Courtenay  had  written  to  his  family.  All 
this  evidence  not  being  considered  conclusive, 
the  tribunal  decided  that  there  was  no  proof 
of  the  identity  of  Thomas  Courtenay,  men- 
tioned in  the  certificate  of  the  birth  o£ 
Marie  Courteuay,  with  William  Courtenay, 
the  Earl  of  Devon,  who  died  upon  the 
twenty-sixth  day  of  May,  eighteen  hundred 
and  thirty-five  ;  and  the  court  accordingly 
rejected  the  appeal  of  Madame  Marie 
Baty,  and  condemned  her  to  pay  all  the  ex- 
penses to  all  parties. 


DEBTOR  AND  CREDITOR. 


I  SUPPOSE  we  are  all  born  with  a  mission. 
Those  who  do  not  find  one  ready-made  to 
their  hands,  are  never  happy  until  they  have 
created  one  ;  and  therefore  it  comes  to  the 
same  thing  in  the  end,  whether  we  are  born 
with  a  mission  or  without  one.  My  mis- 
sion has  been  to  give  credit.  I  am  the 
successor  of  the  late  John  Smirker.  In 
whatever  books  of  account  my  name  stands, 
you  will  always  find  it  on  the  right  side, 
with  a  balance  in  my  favour.  My  father 
thought  the  best  thing  he  could  do  to 
settle  me  in  life  was  to  buy  the  good- 
will of  the  west-end  business  of  the  late 
John  Smirker,  with  branches  in  both  the 
great  University  cities  ;  established  in  seven- 
teen hundred  and  fifty,  and  largely  patronised 
by  the  aristocracy.  I  entered  upon  my  new- 
sphere  in  a  calm  and  dutiful  manner  ;  neither 
desponding  nor  enthusiastic.  I  am  naturally 
of  a  quiet  and  meditative  turn  of  mind  ;  given 
to  inquiry,  and,  perhaps,  rather  quick  in  per- 
ceiving necessary  reforms,  though  the  last 
man  in  the  world  to  have  the  robust  energy 
to  carry  them  out.  My  predecessor,  the  late 
John  Smirker,  in  giving  over  the  long  list  of 
book-debts  that  my  father  had  purchased, 
dilated  very  warmly  upon  the  immense  value 
of  customers  who  quartered,  Heaven  knows 
what,  upon  their  shields,  and  never  took  less 
than  five  years'  credit.  "What  is  a  business," 
he  inquired,  "  without  book-debts  ?  A  thing 
without  root,  sir, — wholly  without  root.  You 
have  no  hold  upon  your  connexion.  In  fact, 
you  have  no  connexion.  Without  book- 
debts,  they  come  to-day,  and  they  go  to- 
morrow." I  did  not  dispute  this  position, 
for  I  never  argue.  He  was  the  born 
tradesman,  and  acted  upon  his  precepts. 
Dear  me,  what  trouble  he  took  to  plant  the 
roots  that  foliated  and  branched  off  into 
every  ramification  of  book-debts  !  How  he 
watered,  and  dibbled,  and  forced  them ! 
Plow  he  nursed  them  up  at  compound  inte- 
rest, till  the  right  time  came  for  him  to  fell 


526       [November  23, 1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


an  oblivious  debtor  with  a  post-obit,  or  to 
cut  down  a  slippery  one  with  a  summary 
judgment  !  With  what  a  bland  smile  he 
would  refuse  the  early  tender  of  a  green 
young  debtor,  for  fear  that,  once  set  free, 
he  would  transplant  his  custom  to  another 
establishment !  What  decoy-ducks  he  let  fly 
among  rich  young  university  and  military 
noodles,  to  get  them  enticed  to  his  shop  ! 
Yet,  when  he  got  them,  and  any  of  them  did 
not  pay — which  was  not  often  ;  (for  old 
Smirker  had  a  keen  scent,  and  seldom  put  his 
fashionable  commission-agents  upon  a  wrong 
one)  how  he  raved  at  the  looseness  of  the 
law  !  Well,  I  rave  at  it  too,  sometimes,  and 
with  good  reason. 

For  a  man  need  not  leave  the  world  for 
the  church  or  a  monkish  seclusion  to  learn 
patience  and  to  mortify  the  passions,  while  the 
ranks  of  trade  are  open  to  him.  Neither 
need  a  man  who  wishes  to  see  the^  world,  as  it 
is  called,  and  study  his  fellow-men,  spend  his 
money  in  travelling  through  Europe,  and  his 
nights  in  the  streets,  while  the  ranks  of  trade 
are  open  to  him.  Neither  need  a  reflective 
law-reformer  retire  with  his  ponderous  tomes 
to  some  eremitical  and  inaccessible  nook  in 
the  innermost  of  all  Inner  Temples,  there  to 
perfect  principles  which,  when  forced  upon 
the  world,  shall  promote  the  greatest  happi- 
ness of  the  greatest  number,  while  the  ranks 
of  trade  are  open  to  him.  Christian  recluse, 
student  of  the  world,  and  ardent  Benthamite, 
may  all  take  their  places  behind  the  glass  of 
my  countinghouse-door,  and  find  their  time 
not  unprofitably  expended. 

The  greatest  difficulty  that  I  labour  under 
is  infants — sturdy  infants.  They  bristle  up 
in  every  other  page  of  my  costly  ledger 
(costly,  I  call  it,  because  it  is  nearly  all  I  got 
for  my  ten  thousand  pounds)  ;  they  are  more 
costly  under  the  head  of  Cambridge  than 
London  ;  and  more  fruitful  under  the  head 
of  Oxford  than  Cambridge.  Physically  they 
seem  to  be  a  very  fine  family  of  robust, 
responsible  young  men ;  legally  they  are  held 
to  be  weak,  an;l  irresponsible  idiots.  Visually 
they  stand  before  me  as  a  race  of  palpable, 
moustached,  solid  giants  ;  but  when  I  try  to 
touch  them  with  the  strong  arm  of  the  law, 
like  the  spectres  of  the  Brocken  they  melt 
into  thin  air,  and  the  strong  arm  of  the  law 
becomes  strangety  paralysed.  Young  Lord 
Merthyr  Tydvil  is  a  fair  average  specimen  of 
the  infant  debtor.  Let  him  sit  for  his  por- 
trait under  two  phases, — out  of  court  and  in 
court.  Out  of  court,  then,  he  rides  a  fine, 
high-spirited  horse,  which  he  manages  with 
the  ease  and  grace  of  an  old  patrician  horse- 
man. In  the  cricket-field  he  bats  like  a 
young  Hercules,  and  bowls  with  the  velocity 
of  ths  catapult.  On  the  river  it  is  a  sight  to 
see  him  pull  the  stroke-oar  against  wind  and 
tide  ;  and  he  is  the  reverse  of  contemptible 
when  he  puts  on  the  gloves  with  a  bargeman 
of  the  Cam.  He  wrestles  and  does  the  back- 
fall better  than  any  man  in  all  lllyria.  His  ! 


age  ia  twenty  years  and  nine  months.  His 
muscles  are  well  set,  and  he  looks  older. 
He  handles  a  skilful  cue  at  the  billiard-table, 
and  makes  an  occasional  bet  upon  horse- 
races with  a  good  deal  of  judgment.  Intel- 
lectually he  seems  to  know  pretty  well  what 
he  ia  about.  I  don't  think  his  name  is  across 
any  accommodation  bills,  but  what  he  has 
received  half  the  cash  for.  As  to  the  amuse- 
ments and  vices  of  the  metropolis,  he  is  one 
of  the  best  judges  of  them  upon  town,  and 
acts  as  mentor  to  many  other  infants.  His 
taste  in  wine  is  considered  good,  and  his 
verdict  on  the  merits  of  a  new  ballet-dancer  ia 
held  to  be  final. 

In  court,  Lord  Merthyr  presents  a  very 
different  appearance.  That  collar,  which 
used  to  stand  up  with  such  unbending  parch- 
ment-like stiffness,  the  admiration  and  envy 
of  Piccadilly,  is  now.  in  the  eyes  of  the  law, 
turned  down  over  each  shoulder  with  infan- 
tine grace,  and  fastened  with  a  ribbon  of 
most  becoming  simplicity.  That  Chesterfield, 
poncho,  sack,  outer-garment,  coat,  cloak,  or 
whatever  it  is  called,  which  had  such  a 
mature,  distinguished,  Tattersall,  club-like 
air  in  Regent  Street  and  Hyde  Pai'k,  is  now, 
in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  converted  into  a  juve- 
nile pinafore,  fastened  round  the  wnist  with 
a  schoolboy's  belt,  and  conferring  on  its 
wearer  the  much-coveted  gift  of  perpetual 
youth.  That  embroidered  cigar-case — suspi- 
cious gift — filled  with  the  choicest  products 
of  Havannah,  at  costly  prices,  vanishes,  in 
the  eye  of  the  law,  or  becomes  transformed 
into  a  box  of  sweetmeats,  provided  by  the 
thoughtful  care  of  a  mother  or  a  sister. 
That  onyx-handled  bamboo-cane,  which  taps 
the  neatest  of  boots  on  the  lounge  in  Eotten 
Row,  is  now,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  a  mere 
rounder  stick,  or  an  implement  used  in  guid- 
ing a  hoop. 

Those  rooms  in  Jermyn  Street,  decorated 
with  pictures  in  the  chastest  taste,  and  lit- 
tered with  boxing-gloves,  broken  pipes,  and 
champagne  corks,  are,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law, 
the  cradle  of  a  child — a  child  who  possesses 
a  charmed  life,  invulnerable  to  the  shafts  of 
the  hateful  sheriff.  Poor,  young,  innocent, 
neglected,  infant  nobleman — type  of  some 
hundreds  of  children  that  I  find  upon  my 
books,  or  rather  the  books  of  the  late  John 
Smirker,  my  predecessor — when  I  hear  that 
thy  aristocratic  father,  Earl  Merthyr  Tydvil, 

is  in  Italy  with no  matter,  I  will  not 

dwell  upon  the  painful  subject,  and  that  the 
paternal  acres  are  safely  lodged  in  a  dingy 
office  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  I  feel  a  sense 
of  pity  for  thee  springing  up  in  my  snobbish, 
tradesman's  heart.  I  have  fed  thee,  and  I 
have  clothed  thee,  and  I  look  upon  thee  as 
my  own.  Even  if  the  law  did  not  throw  its 
protecting  shield  before  thee,  I  would  not 
touch  a  hair  of  thy  patrician,  infant  head  ; 
although  thy  ingratitude  were  ten  times 
greater  than  it  is.  I  am  not  unreasonable, 
and  can  make  allowance  for  the  feelings  of  a 


Charles  Dickens.'! 


DEBTOR  AND  CREDITOR 


[November  28, 1857.]      527 


boy  whose  ancestors  were  descended  from  the 
earliest  Nbrmans  ;  I  do  not  aak  for  positive 
affection,  but  only  for  a  slight  diminution  of 
contempt.  Spoiled  child  of  trade,  and  chosen 
one  of  the  law,  let  thy  commercial  father 
know  thy  wants  and  wishes,  and  he  is  content. 

But  Shadrach,  junior,  when  yon  stand  up 
in  court,  pleading  infancy  with  all  the  childish 
grace  of  an  Israelite  that  knows  no  guile,  I 
am  amused  at  so  clever  an  adaptation  of 
Christian  customs,  but  I  am  astonished  at  the 
learned  credulity  of  the  Bench.  It  is  true 
that  your  people  have  no  registry  of  bap- 
tisms, and  everything,  therefore,  depends 
upon  your  own  assertion  ;  but  I  have  known 
you  so  many  years  about  town,  I  have 
watched  your  fully  developed  frame  standing 
out  prominently  in  most  places  of  public 
resort ;  I  have  witnessed  your  intellectual 
keenness  in  places  where  keenness  was  no 
rare  quality,  that,  in  my  eyes,  your  back  is 
beginning  to  bend,  and  your  hair  becoming 
silvered  with  grey,  and  I  marvel  much  that 
a  paternal  law  gathers  you  as  a  trusting, 
trusted  innocent  in  the  folds  of  its  sheltering 
arms.  There  are  many  octogenarian  debtors 
upon  my  books,  or  rather  the  books  of  the 
late  John  Smirker,  my  beloved  Shadrach,  who 
are  more  in  need  of  legal  protection  than 
your  youthful  self. 

The  next  rose  which  the  law  has  planted 
in  the  path  of  debt — the  next  thorn  which  it 
has  planted  in  the  path  of  credit — is  the 
Statute  of  Limitations.  A  man  of  untutored 
reasoning  powers,  whose  faculties  had  not 
been  sharpened  into  an  unnatural  state  of 
acuteness  by  legal  study,  would  suppose  that 
the  longer  a  debt  stood  unpaid,  the  more 
would  the  obligation  be  increased.  He  would 
be  astonished,  therefore,  to  find  that  just  at 
the  moment  when  he  was  about  to  claim  an 
old  debt  with  interest,  simple  and  compound, 
and  was  probably  going  to  reproach  the 
debtor  with  keeping  out  of  the  way  so  long — 
that  what  he  considered  to  be  a  moral  crime 
was  an  act  of  well  calculated  thriftiness, 
having  the  effect  of  annulling  the  claim  ac- 
cording to  act  of  parliament.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  explain  to  such  a  man  upon  what 
principle  an  act  was  framed,  that  allowed 
every  debtor  to  go  free  who  contrived  to  keep 
out  of  the  way  of  his  creditor  six  years.  The 
wonderful  doctrine  that  the  more  you  wrong 
a  man  in  trade  the  more  you  may  being  em- 
bodied in  a  statute  having  legal  force,  is  en- 
couraging to  that  large  class  that  I  call 
debtors ;  but  is  not  so  encouraging  to  that 
other  large,  and  very  useful,  tax-paying  class 
that  I  call  creditors.  The  inference  is,  that 
the  State  wishes  to  cultivate  the  first  at  the 
expense  of  the  second.  Or,  perhaps,  it  is 
only  a  masked  movement  intended  by  dis- 
couraging the  second  to  destroy  the  first  1 
When  the  Right  Honourable  Lord  Battleaxe, 
K.C.B.,  takes,  as  a  rule,  from  his  tradesmen, 
five  years'  credit,  he  has  only  to  stretch  the 
period  one  year  more  to  carry  it  into  eternity. 


I  certainly  was  delighted  to  find  the  Reve- 
rend Origen  Bilk,  M.A.,  whom  I — or  rather 
the  late  John  Smirker — had  nursed  through 
the  different  stages  of  fighting  Oxonian, 
plucked  undergraduate,  crammed  B.A.  down, 
to  the  living  of  St.  Vitus-in-the-Fens,  pleading 
"  statute  run,"  and  declining  to  pay  for  the 
college  extravagances  which  he  had  indulged 
in  with  such  vigorous  prodigality.  It  is  a 
good  sign  when  a  man — especially  a  clergy- 
man— so  far  reforms  the  errors  of  his  youth, 
as  to  turn  his  back  upon  his  early  dissipa- 
tions, even  to  the  extent  of  repudiating  pay- 
ment for  them.  If  ever  the  protecting  shield 
of  legal  mercy  was  righteously  extended  over 
the  prostrate  form  of  the  suffering  debtor,  it 
is  in  the  case  of  the  Reverend  Origen  Bilk, 
M.A.  He  has  suffered  much  from  the  ruth- 
less hands  of  the  importunate  creditor,  who 
insisted  upon  clothing  him  with  the  richest 
purple  and  the  finest  linen,  feeding  him  with 
the  daintiest  viands,  and  nourishing  him  with 
the  rarest  wines,  and  who  now  would  seek 
him  out  in  the  calm  seclusion  of  his  clerical 
hermitage,  and  who — did  not  a  considerate 
law  most  benevolently  interfere — would  de- 
stroy the  unruffled  serenity  of  that  meditative 
mind,  which  now  dwells  upon  things  that  are 
higher  than  the  tailor's  bill  which  perisheth. 

The  same  tenderness  to  debtors  who  keep 
out  of  the  way,  distinguishes  even  some  of 
the  severest  laws  which  have  been  the  pro- 
duct of  our  recent  legislation.  The  debtor  is 
the  darling  of  the  law,  and  it  cannot  find  it 
in  its  heart  to  deal  harshly  with  him.  The 
new  Bills  of  Exchange  Act,  which  allows  me 
the  tyranny  of  a  judgment  in  the  short  period 
of  twelve  days,  supposing  that  my  victim  has 
no  valid  plea  or  answer  that  he  is  not  in- 
debted to  me,  breaks  down  entirely  if  my 
victim  keeps  out  of  the  way  for  six  clear 
months  ;  and  my  thirst  for  vengeance  is  tan- 
talised with  the  tortures  of  the  old,  tardy, 
and  expensive  mode  of  proceeding.  If  I 
apply  for  the  more  humble  assistance  of  the 
County  Court,  I  find  I  have  still  many  weeks 
to  wait  before  the  pressure  of  business  will 
allow  of  my  obtaining  a  hearing.  When  my 
victim  comes  up  and  tells  a  plaintive  story  of 
his  inability  to  pay  in  less  than  a  given  time 
of  very  long  duration,  the  judge,  imbued  with 
the  proper  spirit  of  the  law,  inclines  his  ear 
to  the  dictates  of  mercy,  checks  the  eager 
tyranny  of  the  heartless  creditor,  and  grants 
an  order  to  pay  in  twelve  easy  instalments. 
When  the  time  for  the  first  and  second  pay- 
ment has  long  passed  without  my  victim 
making  any  attempt  to  keep  to  his  bond,  I 
have  then  the  option  of  procuring  what  is 
called  a  judgment  summons,  which,  if  I  am, 
fortunate  enough  to  get  it  served  personally 
upon  my  victim,  within  a  certain  time,  will 
fix  another  remote  day  for  a  n.ew  trial,  when, 
my  victim  will  have  to  show  cause  why  he 
failed  in  his  contract.  If  the  claim  should  be 
under  twenty  pounds,  and  my  victim  be  a 
single  young  man  victim,  residing  in  fur- 


528 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[November  28, 185? 


nished  lodgings,  with  no  estate,  properly  so 
called,  he  has  merely  to  state  this  fact  to  the 
willing  ear  of  the  court,  and  leave  me,  like  a 
baffled  tiger,  howling  for  my  prey.  If  my 
victim  thinks  proper  to  set  sail  for  the  Cocos 
Islands,  or  some  other  land,  where  creditors 
cease  from  troubling,  and  the  debtor  is  at 
rest,  I  can  watch  him  go  on  board  his  bounding 
bark,  and,  like  Calypso,  mourn  for  the  depar- 
ture of  my  Ulysses  ;  but  alas  !  I  can  do  no 
more,  for  he  only  owes  me  nineteen  pounds 
nineteen  shillings  and  elevenpence.  Two- 
pence more,  and — shades  of  Solon  and  Lycur- 
gus — I  am  avenged  ! 

When  I  turn  over  the  old  unpaid  bills  of 
exchange  of  my  predecessor,  the  late  John 
Smirker,  and  find  amongst  them  many  under 
five  pounds,  I  am  reminded  of  an  old  act 
passed  in  the  time  of  George  the  Third,  and 
never  yet  repealed,  that  is  a  perfect  triumph 
of  protective  legislation.  The  bill  of  ex- 
change— the  pride  and  glory  of  modern  com- 
merce— is  looked  upon  as  a  luxury  intended 
only  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  wholesale 
trade,  and  only  granted  to  the  retail  under 
the  most  praiseworthy  precautions.  Poor 
Srnirker's  bills,  I  need  not  say,  are  so  much 
waste  paper ;  for  he  had  no  idea  of  the 
requirements  of  the  law  touching  the  imple- 
ments he  was  dealing  with.  A  bill  of  ex- 
change, according  to  George  the  Third — I 
say  according  to  him,  because  he  was  any- 
thing but  a  royal  nonentity  in  the  state — if 
under  five  pounds,  must  not  be  drawn  at  a 
longer  period  than  twenty- one  days  ;  it  must 
be  paid  away  on  the  same  day  as  that  on 
which  it  is  drawn  ;  its  endorsement  must  set 
forth  the  name  and  address  of  the  person  to 
whom  it  is  endorsed,  and  such  endorsement, 
with  every  name  upon  it  but  the  acceptors', 
must  bear  the  signature  of  an  attesting 
witness  !  If  any  one  of  these  requirements 
is  neglected,  it  is  fatal  to  the  validity  of  the 
instrument.  When  this  cautious  clause  was 
perfected,  the  old  king  must  have  felt  that 
although  he  had  entrusted  a  dangerous  squib 
in  the  hands  of  the  small  ignorant  traders  of 
the  country,  he  had  taken  every  precaution 
to  issue  directions  for  letting  it  off,  so  that 
the  case  might  not  burst  and  injure  their 
fingers.  Our  present  rulers  must  be  of  the 
same  way  of  thinking,  as  they  allow  the 
clause  to  remain  unexpunged  from  the 
statute-book,  and  deny  the  benefits  of  bills  of 
exchange  as  proofs  of  debts  and  negotiable 
instruments,  to  all  transactions  under  five 
pounds. 

The  next  thing  that  troubles  me  is  a  linger- 
ing remnant  of  feudality.  The  haughty 
baron  of  the  nineteenth  century  does  not 
despoil  his  humble  retainer,  the  tradesman, 
but  he  takes  credit,  which  is  nearly  the  same 
thing.  If  the  haughty  baron  is  a  member  of 
the  royal  household,  the  feudal  element  is 


increased.  The  haughty  baron  rides  rough- 
shod over  all  human  feelings,  and  wears  out 
patience  of  the  most  endurable  kind.  The 
haughty  baron  keeps  me  at  bay  to  the  very 
verge  of  the  Statute  of  Limitations,  and,  in 
self-defence,  I  am  obliged  to  have  recourse 
to  the  law.  The  law  informs  me  that  I 
can  do  nothing  without  the  written  sanc- 
tion of  the  lord  steward  of  her  Majesty's 
household.  I  go  to  Buckingham  Palace, 
and  after  the  usual  delay  and  trouble,  I 
obtain  an  interview  with  an  under-secre- 
tary,  who  tells  me  that  my  application  for 
permission  to  sue  must  be  made  in  writing, 
accompanied  with  full  particulars  of  my 
claim  ;  and  he  kindly  advises  me  to  make  it 
upon  folio  foolscap,  with  a  margin.  I  send 
in  my  claim  upon  the  haughty  baron  in  the 
required  form,  and  in  a  few  days  I  receive  a 
reply  from  the  lord  steward,  stating  that  if 
the  money  be  not  paid  within  a  certain 
liberal  specified  time  from  the  date  of  the 
lord  steward's  communication,  I  have  the 
lord  steward's  permission  to  take  legal  pro- 
ceedings against  the  haughty  baron.  It  is 
amusing  to  find  a  royal  palace  converted  into 
a  sanctuary  for  haughty  but  insolvent  barons. 
It  is  possible  that  if  the  rude  emissary  of  the 
law  was  allowed  free  entrance  to  the  sacred 
precincts  of  the  household,  the  royal  banquet 
in  the  evening  would  be  graced  with  at  least 
one  gold  stick  in  waiting  less  than  the  royal 
eyes  had  whilome  been  accustomed  to  look 
upon. 

I  believe  that  the  best  authorities  on 
government  hold  that  taxes  are  paid  for  pro- 
tection to  person  and  property.  I  will  admit 
that  my  person  is  fairly  protected  ;  but  if  my 
heroic  statesmen  can  spare  a  little  time  from 
those  brilliant  employments  of  ornamental 
government, — Indian  annexations,  colonial 
extensions,  military  campaigns,  diplomatic 
subtleties,  and  foreign  legations — for  the 
more  homely  task  of  protecting  my  property, 
by  looking  into  the  relations  of  debtor  and 
creditor,  the  successor  of  the  late  John 
Smirker,  the  next  time  the  collector  calls, 
will  pay  his  taxes  with  a  more  cheerful 
countenance. 


Early  in  December  will  be  published,  price  Threepence, 
or  stamped  Fourpeuce, 

THE    PERILS 

OF 

CERTAIN    ENGLISH   PRISONERS, 

AND    THEIR    TREASURE 

IN  WOMEN,   CHILDREN,   SILVER,   AND  JEWELS. 

FORMING 

THE    CHRISTMAS    NUMBER 

Of  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS ;  and  containing  Tliirty-six 
pages,  or  the  amount  of  One  regular  Number  and  a  Half. 
Household  Words  Office,  No.  10,  Wellington  Street 
North,  Stnunl.  Sold  by  all  Booksellers,  and  at  all  Bail- 
way  Stations. 


Tlie  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors. 


Published  at  the  Office,  No.  16,  WclliiiKton  Street  North, Strand.    Printed  by  BaADuuhTS  fcvAxs,  Whitefriars,  London. 


"Familiar  in  their   Months  as    HOUSEHOLD 


HOUSEHOLD    WORDS. 

A  WEEKLY    JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES     DICKENS. 


-  402.] 


SATURDAY,  DECEMBER  5,  1857. 


(  PKICK  2d. 
(  STAMPED  3«!. 


MY  LOST  HOME. 

IN  the  still  hours  of  the  night ;  in  the  even- 
ing rest  from  labour — when  the  twilight 
shadows  darken  my  solitary  room,  and  often- 
times in  the  broad  glare  of  day,  amongst  the 
eager  busy  merchants  upon  'Change — it  comes 
before  me  :  the  picture  of  my  lost  shadowy 
home.  So  dim  and  indistinct  at  times  seems 
the  line  that  separates  my  past  from  my  pre- 
sent self;  so  dream-like  seem  the  events 
that  have  made  me  the  hunted  outcast  which 
I  am,  that,  painful  as  my  history  is,  it  is  a 
mental  relief  to  me  to  go  over  it  step  by  step, 
and  dwell  upon  the  faces  of  those  who  .are 
now  lost  to  me  for  evermore. 

It  seems  bub  yesterday — although  many 
years  have  passed  away — that  I  was  in.  a  posi- 
tion of  trust  in  the  counting-house  of  Askew 
Dobell,  and  Pieard.  A  quaint,  old,  red-brick 
house  it  was  ;  standing  in  a  court-yard,  up  a 
gate-way,  in  a  lane  in  the  City  leading  down 
to  the  river.  I  see  it  as  plainly  as  if  it  stood 
before  me  now,  with  the  old  cherubim  carving 
over  the  door- way  ;  the  green  mossy  stones  in 
the  yard  ;  the  twelve  half-gallon  fire-buckets 
hanging  up,  all  painted  with  the  City  arms  ;  J 
the  loug,  narrow  windows,  with  their  broad, 
flat,  wooden  frames  ;  the  dark  oaken  rooms, 
especially  the  one  where  I  used  to  sit,  looking 
out  into  the  small,  square,  burial-ground 
of  a  church,  with  half-a-dozen  decayed, 
illegible  tombstones ;  frail  memorials  of  old 
Turkey  merchants,  who  were  born,  who 
lived,  and  who  died  under  the  shadow  of 
the  one  melancholy  tree  that  waved  before 
•my  window  ;  the  long,  dark  passages,  with 
more  fire-buckets ;  and  the  large  fireplaces, 
with  their  elaborate  fluted  marble  mantel- 
shelves and  pilasters. 

I  entered  the  service  of  those  old  merchants 
about  the  age  of  sixteen,  fresh  from  the  Blue- 
Coat  School ;  a  raw,  ungainly  lad,  with  no 
knowledge  or  experience  of  the  world,  and 
with  a  strong  letter  of  recommendation  from 
the  head  master,  which  procured  me  a  junior 
clerk.ship.     Our  business  was  conducted  with  ; 
a  steady  tranquillity — an  almost  holy  calm — 
in  harmony  with  the  place  ;  which  had  the  ' 
,   air  of  a  sacred  temple  dedicated  to  commerce. ' 
-I  rose  step  by  step  ;  till  at  last,  about  the  age 
of  thirty,  I  attained  the  position  of  a  first- ! 
class  clerk.     My  advance  was  not  due  to  any , 


remarkable  ability  that  I  had  displayed  ;  nor 
because  I  had  excited  the  interest  of  any 
member  of  the  firm,  for  I  seldom  saw  the 
faces  of  my  employers.  It  was  purely  the 
result  of  a  system  which  ordained  a  general 
rise  throughout  the  house  when  any  old  clerk 
died,  or  was  pensioned  off.  Old  Mr.  Askew, 
the  founder  of  the  house — a  man,  so  tradition 
said,  who  had  once  been  a  portei*  at  the 
doorway  which  now  owned  him  for  a  master 
— had  practically  retired  from  business  to  a 
similar  quaint  old  mansion  at  Peckhain.  He 
never  came  to  the  City  more  than  twelve 
times  a-year,  to  inspect  the  monthly  balances ; 
and  then,  he  only  remained  about  an  hour. 
He  did  not  even  know  the  names  of  half  the 
people  in  his  employment.  Mr.  Dobell,  the 
second  partner,  was  twenty  years  younger 
than  Mr.  Askew  ;  active,  decisive,  and  retir- 
ing :  a  man  whose  whole  mind  was  devoted 
to  his  business,  and  who  looked  upon  us  all 
as  only  so  many  parts  of  a  machine  for  carry- 
ing out  his  objects.  The  third  partner  in  the 
firm,  Mr.  Picard,  was  a  man  of  a  very  differ- 
ent stamp  from  the  other  two.  At  one 
period  he  had  been  our  managing  clerk,  and 
he  obtained  his  share  in  the  business  in  the 
same  year  that  I  entered  the  house.  He  was 
of  French  extraction  ;  thin,  sallow,  with  small 
grey  eyes,  and  light  sandy  hair.  His  age,  at 
the  time  I  am  writing  of,  must  have  been 
near  fifty.  Although  his  origin  was  very 
obscure — some  of  our  old  clerks  remembering 
him  walking  about  the  Docks  in  an  almost 
shoeless  state — his  pride  was  very  great,  and 
his  harshness,  sternness,  and  uneasy,  fretful, 
and  ever-conscious  attempts  at  dignity,  were 
a  painful  contrast  to  the  quiet,  off-hand 
manner  of  Mr.  Dobell,  or  the  venerable  and 
dreamy  calmness  of  old  Mr.  Askew.  He  was 
a  bad-hearted,  pold,  calculating  man, — a  man 
with  a  strong,  reckless  will ;  who  allowed 
nothing  to  stand  between  him  and  his  self- 
interest.  When  he  came  into  authority,  and 
had  his  name  put  up  as  one  of  the  firm,  his 
humble  relations  wei*e  removed  to  a  distance ; 
and  a  poor  old  Irishwoman,  who  had  kept  a 
fruit-stall  upon  sufferance  under  our  gateway 
for  many  years,  was  swept  away,  because  he 
felt  that  she  remembered  him  in  the  days  of 
his  poverty. 

My  position  and   duties  required  me   to 
live  in  the  house,  and  to  take  charge  of  the 


VOL.  XVI 


402. 


530       [December  5. 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


place.  When  I  married,  I  took  my  wife, 
Esther,  to  our  old  City  home,  and  our  one 
child,  little  Margaret,  was  born  there.  The 
child  was  a  little  blue-eyed,  fair-haired  thing  ; 
and  it  was  a  pleasing  sight  to  see  her,  between 
two  and  three  years  of  age,  trotting  along 
the  dark  passages,  and  going  carefully  up  the 
broad  oaken  stairs.  On  one  occasion  she  was 
checked  by  the  order  of  Mr.  Picard  for  mak- 
ing a  noise  during  business  hours  ;  and,  from 
ten  to  five,  she  had  to  confine  herself  to  her 
little  dingy  room  at  the  top  of  the  house.  She 
was  a  great  favourite  with  many  of  the  old 
childless  clerks,  who  used  to  bring  her  pre- 
sents of  fruit  in  the  summer  mornings. 
Scarcely  a  day  passed  but  what  I  stole  an 
hour — my  dinner  hour — to  play  with  her  ; 
and,  in  the  long  summer  evenings,  I  carried 
her  down  to  the  river  to  watch  the  boats. 
Sometimes,  on  Sundays,  I  took  her  out  of  the 
city  into  the  fields  about  Canonbury,  and 
carried  her  back  again  loaded  with  butter- 
cups. She  was  a  companion  to  me — often- 
times my  only  companion,  with  her  innocent 
prattle,  and  gentle,  winning  ways — for  my 
wife,  Esther,  was  cold  and  reserved  in  her 
manners,  with  settled  habits,  formed  before 
our  marriage.  She  was  an  earnest  Baptist, 
and  attended  regularly  three  times  a  week,  a 
chapel  for  that  persuasion,  in  Fiusbury.  My 
home  often  looked  cheerless  enough,  when 
little  Margaret  had  retired  to  bed,  and  my 
wife's  empty  chair  stood  before  me ;  but  I 
did  not  complain — it  would  not  have  been 
just  for  me  to  do  so — for  I  knew  Esther's 
opinions  andha.bits  before  I  married  her  ;  yet 
I  thought  I  discerned,  beneath  the  hard  sec- 
tarian crust,  signs  of  a  true,  womanly,  loving 
heart ;  signs,  amongst  the  strict  faith  and 
stern  principles,  of  an  affection  equal  to  my 
own.  I  may  have  been  mistaken  in  her,  as 
she  was  mistaken — O  how  bitterly  mistaken 
— in  me  !  Her  will  was  stronger  than  mine, 
and  it  fretted  itself  silently,  but  incessantly,  in 
vain  endeavours  to  lead  me  along  the  path 
she  had  chosen  for  herself.  She  may  have 
misunderstood  my  resistance,  as  I  may  have 
misapprehended  her  motives  for  desiring 
to  alter  my  habits  and  tone  of  thinking. 
There  were  probably  faults  and  errors  on 
both  sides. 

Thus  we  went  on  from  day  to  day  ;  Esther 
going  in  her  direction  and  I  going  in  mine, 
while  the  child  acted  as  a  gentle  link  that 
bound  us  together. 

About  this  time  Mr.  Askew  finally  retired 
from  business,  and  there  was  a  general  step 
upward  throughout  the  house :  Mr.  Picard 
getting  one  degree  nearer  absolute  authority. 
The  first  use  that  he  made  of  his  new  power 
was  to  introduce  an  only  son  into  the  counting- 
house  who  had  not  been  regularly  brought 
up  to  the  ranks  of  trade ;  but  who  had  re- 
ceived, since  his  father's  entrance  as  a  member 
of  the  firm,  a  loose,  hurried,  crammed,  half-pro- 
fessional education,  and  who  had  hovered  ful- 
some time  between  the  choice  of  alawyer's  office 


and  a  doctor's  consulting- room.  He  was  ahigh- 
spirited  young  man,  whose  training  had  been 
of  that  incomplete  character,  which  had  only 
served  to  unsteady  him.  He  had  his  father's 
fault  of  a  strong,  reckless  will,  unchecked  by 
anything  like  his  father's  cold,  calculating 
head  ;  though  tempered  by  a  virtue  that  his 
father  never  possessed  —  an  open-heai'ted 
generosity.  As  he  had  everything  to  learn, 
and  was  a  troublesome  pupil,  he  was  as- 
signed to  my  care.  His  writing-table  was 
brought  into  my  office,  and  I  had  plenty 
of  opportunity  of  judging  of  his  character. 
With  all  his  errors  and  shortcomings — not 
to  say  vices — it  was  impossible  not  to  like 
him.  There  is  always  a  charm  about  a 
free,  impulsive  nature  that  carries  the  heart 
where  the  judgment  cannot  follow.  Sur- 
rounded, as  I  had  been  for  so  many  years,  by 
the  restraints  imposed  by  persons  who  made 
me  feel  that  they  were  my  masters,  and  with 
little  congeniality  and  sympathy  in  my  do- 
mestic relations,  I  gave  myself  up,  perhaps 
too  freely  and  unreservedly,  to  the  influence 
of  young  Mr.  Picard's  society.  Although 
more  than  ten  years  his  senior,  I  held  and 
claimed  no  authority  over  him  ;  his  more 
powerful  will  and  bolder  spirit  holding  me 
in  subjection.  I  screened  the  fact  of  his  late 
arrivals,  and  his  frequent  absences,  by  doing 
his  work  for  him  ;  and,  for  anything  that  Mr. 
Dobell  or  his  father  knew,  he  was  the  most 
promising  clerk  in  the  house.  Little  Mar- 
garet soon  found  him  out,  and  took  a  childish 
liking  to  him.  He  was  never  tired  of  play- 
ing with  her  ;  and,  seldom  a  week  passed,  that 
he  did  not  bring  her  something  new  in  the 
shape  of  toys  or  sweetmeats.  My  evenings 
at  home,  which  used  to  be  solitary,  were  now 
solitary  no  longer  :  either  he  came  and  kept 
me  company,  unknown  to  his  father — who 
would  have  been  indignant  at  his  associating 
with  one  of  the  ordinary  clerks — or  (which 
was  most  frequently  the  case)  I  accompanied 
him  in  his  evening  rambles  about  town.  The 
gulf  between  me  and  Esther  was  greatly 
widened. 

Thus  our  lives  went  on  in  the  old  city 
mansion,  with  little  variety,  until  our  child 
completed  her  third  year. 

Young  Mr.  Picard  had  been  absent  from 
the  office  for  more  than  a  week,  and  illness, 
as  usual,  was  pleaded  as  the  cause.  In  about 
four  days  more,  he  returned,  looking,  cer- 
tainly, much  thinner  and  paler  than  usual. 
I  did  not  question  him  then  as  to  the  real 
cause  of  his  absence  ;  for  there  were  arrears 
to  work  up,  and  he  did  not  seem  in  a  com- 
municative humour.  This  was  on  a  Satur- 
day. On  the  following  Monday,  at  about  two 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  he  brought  in  a 
cheque  for  five  hundred  pounds,  drawn  by 
the  firm  upon  our  bankers,  Messrs.  Barney, 
Holt,  and  Burney,  of  Lombard  Street.  This, 
he  told  me,  was  an  amount  he  had  got  his 
father  and  Mr.  Dobell  to  advance  him  for  a 
short  period,  to  enter  upon  a  little  specula- 


Charles  Dickens.l 


MY  LOST  HOME. 


[December  5, 1857.]       531 


tiou  on  his  own  account,  and  he  gave  it  to 
me  to  get  changed  when  I  went  down  to 
the  bankers'  to  pay  in  money  on  the  same  j 
afternoon.  In  the  Meantime  he  induced  me , 
to  give  him  two  hundred  pounds  on  account, 
out  of  the  cash  that  I,  as  cashier,  had  re- 
ceived during  the  day.  Shortly  afterwards 
he  went  away,  saying  he  would  receive  the 
other  portion  in  the  morning.  I  went  to 
the  bankers'  that  afternoon,  cashed  the  cheque 
for  five  hundred  pounds,  returned  the  two 
hundred  to  my  cash  charge,  paid  it  in  to 
the  credit  of  the  firm,  and  returned  to  the 
office  with  the  three  hundred  pounds  in  my 
possession,  in  bank  notes,  for  young  Mr. 
Pi  card  when  he  came  in  the  morning.  I 
never  saw  him  again,  and  never  shall,  in 
this  world. 

As  to  the  cheque — it  was  a  forgery.  The 
bankers  had  discovered  it  later  in  the  evening, 
and  I  was  taken  into  custody,  with  the  bank 
notes  in  my  pocket-book,  by  a  Bow  Street 
officer,  acting  under  Mr.  Pi  card  senior's  orders. 
My  wife  was  not  at  home.  Casting,  therefore, 
one  hurried  glance  at  my  poor,  unconscious, 
sleeping  child — a  glance  in  which  were  con- 
centrated the  love  and  agony  of  a  lifetime — I 
turned  my  back  upon  the  old  house  to  go 
with  the  officer  to  the  appointed  prison. 

The  next  morning,  at  the  preliminary  ex- 
amination before  a  magistrate,  the  charge 
was  made  out.  I  gave  my  explanation  ;  but 
young  Mr.  Picard  was  not  to  be  found,  and 
unsupported,  as  I  was,  by  any  evidence ;  with 
a  string  of  circumstances  so  strongly  against 
me,  what  could  I  expect  ?  I  was  fully  com- 
mitted, and  removed  to  Newgate  to  take  my 
trial  at  the  ensuing  sessions. 

Prostrated  with  grief  and  shame,  I  passed 
the  first  night  in  my  dismal  cell,  in  stupor 
rather  than  sleep ;  broken  by  thoughts  of  my 
lost  home.  My  poor  dear  child  seemed  to 
me  to  be  removed  to  an  immeasurable  dis- 
tance— to  belong  to  another  world — and  even 
my  cold,  passionless  wife  appeared  in  warmer 
and  more  wifely  colours,  and  my  heart  was 
softened  towards  her.  I  felt  as  if  I  had  left 
her,  in  the  morning,  full  of  health  and  strength, 
and  had  returned  at  nightfall  to  find  her 
•dead.  I  had  gone  carefully  back  through 
my  past  life,  recalling  opportunities  that  I 
had  purposely  avoided  for  reconciliation ; 
magnifying  little  tendernesses  of  hers  into 
acts  of  great  and  loving  kindness,  and  dwell- 
ing with  self-reproach  upon  those  bitter  hours 
when  I  resented  what  I  thought  was  cold 
indifference. 

In  the  morning  I  was  fully  aroused  from 
my  dream  to  the  horrors  of  my  position.  I 
was  innocent  in  the  eyes  of  Heaven — inno- 
cent in  the  eyes  of  the  law  ;  but,  for  all  that, 
I  had  met  by  anticipation  the  fate  of  the  com- 
monest felon.  I  was  innocent,  at  present, 
in  the  eyes  of  the  law  ;  but  I  was  herded 
without  discrimination  with  the  vilest  out- 
casts of  society.  My  short  diurnal  walk  was 
taken  in  the  common  prison-yard  with  burg- 


lars, pickpockets,  and  all  the  varied  dress  of 
crime,  and  I  was  thankful  when  I  was  not 
dogged  by  the  bloody  footsteps  of  the  mur- 
derer. Although  innocent,  at  present,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  law,  I  had  to  take  my  share  in 
administering  the  internal  economy  of  my 
prison.  I  had  to  scrub  and  wash  and  keep 
cleanly  a  portion  of  the  gaol,  lest  any  physical 
taint  should  come  where  there  was  so  much 
moral  pollution.  I  had  to  take  my  turn  in 
sweeping  the  yard,  that  the  dainty  feet  of 
the  professional  thief  might  not  be  soiled 
with  his  morning's  promenade.  Even  now, 
after  the  lapse  of  years,  worn  down  as  I  am 
by  sorrow  and  long  suffering,  when  I  think 
of  the  treatment  I  received  while  awaiting 
my  trial,  my  blood  boils. 

The  first  morning,  at  the  visiting  half- 
hour  allowed  by  the  prison  regulations,  from 
twelve  to  half-past,  I  was  stopped  in  my 
short  impatient  walk  by  hearing  my  name 
called  by  the  turnkey  :  my  wife  had  come  to 
see  me.  I  went  to  the  grating  where  stood 
many  of  my  fellow-prisoners  talking  to  their 
wives  and  friends,  and,  making  room  against 
the  bars,  I  brought  myself  face  to  face  with 
Esther.  There,  outside  another  barrier,  be- 
tween which  and  my  own  walked  the  officer 
on  duty,  she  stood  with  her  cold,  passionless 
face  looking  sterner  and  paler  than  usual ; 
her  thin  lips  firmly  compressed,  and  her  keen 
grey  eyes  fixed  upon  me  with  a  searching, 
dubious  expression.  Thinking  of  the  place 
I  was  in,  and  the  character  of  my  companions, 
whose  voices,  without  one  tone  of  sorrow  or 
remorse,  were  busy  around  me  ;  feeling  cold, 
dirtyr  and  miserable,  and  looking  from  all 
this  upon  Esther  as  she  stood  there  before 
me  in  her  Quakerish  dress,  and  neat,  clean 
respectability  j  I  wavered  for  a  moment  in 
the  belief  of  my  innocence,  and  felt  that 
there  was  an  impassable  gulf  between  us, 
which  my  desponding  heart  told  me  would 
never  be  bridged  over.  , 

"  Esther,"  I  said,  "  has  young  Mr.  Picard 
been  heard  of  1  Is  little  Margaret  well  ? 
Do  my  employers  really  believe  me 
guilty  1 " 

"  Kandall,"  she  answered,  in  a  calm,  clear 
voice,  "  your  own  heart  must  tell  you  whe- 
ther young  Mr.  Picard  will  ever  be  found. 
Our  child,  thank  God,  is  well,  and  too  young 
to  know  the  great  grief  and  shame  that  have 
fallen  on  us.  Mr.  Dobell  has  carefully 
avoided  speaking  to  me  upon  the  subject  of 
your  suspected  crime,  but  Mr.  Picard  believes 
you  guilty." 

Though  I  could  not  clearly  see  the  expres- 
sion of  her  face,  broken  up  as  it  was  into 
isolated  features  by  the  double  row  of  inter- 
vening bars,  I  felt  that  her  eyes  were  fixed 
curiously  upon  me,  and  the  tone  of  her  voice, 
as  she  said  this,  told  me  that  I  was  suspected 
— suspected  even  of  crime  far  deeper  than 
forgery !  A  cold  shudder  passed  across  my 
heart,  and  the  old  feeling  of  antagonism  came 
back  again  to  harden  me. 


632        [December  8, 185;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  l-jr 


".Randall,"  she  continued  in  the  same  emo- 
tionless tone,  "  some  money  that  1  had  saved 
for  the  child,  I  have  devoted  to  your  defence, 
and  to  procuring  you  certain  comforts  which 
you  will  sadly  need  here.  If  you  are  guilty, 
pray  to  be  forgiven  :  if  you  are  innocent,  pray 
—us  I  and  Margaret  will  pray — that  this 
dark  cloud  may  pass  from  us." 

Her  voice  lingered  in  my  ear,  although  she 
Lad  left  the  place.  I  returned  to  pace  the 
stone  yard  of  the  prison.  At  night,  aa  I  lay 
awake  upon  the  hard  bed,  those  cold  words, 
so  full  of  duty  but  so  wanting  in  love,  still 
rang  in  my  ears,  resting  like  bars  of  lead 
upon  my  heart.  In  a  neighbouring  cell  were 
two  cheerful  rogues,  free  from  all  mental 
care,  calmly  planning  crimes  yet  unpeipe- 
trated.  A  dark,  defiant  spirit  was  on  my 
soul.  I  thought,  perhaps,  I  should  have 
been  as  happy,  if  I  had  been  as  guilty,  as 
they.  I  fell  into  a  short,  uneasy  sleep,  in 
which  little  Margaret  appeared  to  me  stand- 
ing at  the  gateway  of  the  old  mansion,  with 
her  slight  dress  fluttering  in  the  wind.  She 
was  looking  up  and  down  the  lane,  and  cry- 
ing fur  a  missing  friend  who  did  not  come  ; 
and  the  faces  of  the  cherubim  in  the  carv- 
ing over  the  gate  were  turned  in  pity  upon 
her. 

Twice  again  Esther  visited  me  :  still  with 
the  same  story ;  for  young  Mr.  Picard  had 
not  been  found — still  with  the  same  tone —  j 
still  with  the  same  look.     At  length,  the  day  | 
of  trial  came.     As  I  stood  in  the  dock  the  j 
first  person  my  eye  fell  upon  in  the  Court 
was  Mi^  Picard  ;  his  sallow  face  looking  sal- 
lower  than  ever,  his  small  grey  eyes  peering 
quickly   and   sharply   about  him.      He  was ; 
there  to  watch  over  his  family  honour  ;  to  j 
obtain  a  conviction  at  any  cost,  and  to  favour , 
the  belief  that  I  had  either  murdered  his  son, ' 
or  had  compelled  him  to  keep  out  of  the  way.  i 
Esther  was  there,  too,   following  the   pro- 1 
ceedings    with    quiet    intensity ;     her    face  j 
fixed  as  marble,  and  her  eyes  resting  upon  j 
me  the  whole  time  without  a  tear.     It  was 
over  at  last,  the  long  painful  trial,   and  I  i 
was    convicted ;     sentenced    to    trausporta- 1 
tion  for  life.      I  saw  the  triumph  on  Mr. 
Picard's  features ;  and,  with  glazed  eyes  I  saw  j 
Esther  leave  the  Court  with  her  dark  veil  j 
closely  drawn  over  her  face.     She  stooped, ! 
and,  I  thought,  sobbed ;  but  I  saw  her  no 
more.     In  a  few  weeks  I  was  on  the  high 
seas,     proceeding    to    a    penal     settlement. 
Often    in    the    dead  of  night  the  vision  of 
my  fatherless  child  weeping  in  the  gateway 
of  the  old  mansion  passed  before  me,  and 
sometimes  I  heard  her  little  gentle  voice  in 
the  wailing  of  the  wind.     The  veil  had  fallen 
over  my  lost  home  never  to  rise  again— never 
but  once — years  alter. 

Our  vessel  never  reached  her  destination. 
She  was  wrecked  in  the  third  month  of  our 
voyage,  and  all  on  board,  except  myself  ;uid 
another  convict,  were  lost.  We  were  picked 
Up  by  aii  American  vessel ;  and,  keeping  our 


secret  as  to  what  we  were,  we  were  landed 
safely  in  New  York.  My  companion  went 
his  way,  and  I  entered  the  service  of  a  store- 
keeper, and  worked  steadily  for  four  years 
— four  long  years,  in  which  the  vision  of 
my  lost  home  was  constantly  before  i*.\e. 
Any  feeling  of  resentment  that  I  may  have 
felt  at  the  suspicions  of  my  wife,  and  at  her 
seeming  indifference  to  my  fate,  was  now 
completely  obliterated  by  the  operation  of 
time  and  distance,  and  the  old  love  I  gave  to- 
her  as  a  girl  came  back  in  all  its  tender- 
ness and  force.  She  appeared  to  me  as  the 
guardian  and  protector  of  my  dear  father- 
less child,  whom  I  had  left  sleeping  in- 
nocently in  her  little  bed  on  the  night  when 
the  door  of  my  lost  home  closed  upon  me. 
My  dreams  by  night,  my  one  thought  by 
clay,  grew  in  intensity,  until  I  could  resist 
the  impulse  no  longer.  Risking  the  chance 
of  discovery,  I  procured  a  passage,  and 
lauded  in  London  in  the  winter  of  the  fifth 
year  from  that  in  which  I  had  left  Eng- 
land. 

I  took  a  lodging  at  a  small  public-house  at 
Wapping,  near  the  river  ;  and  I  neglected  no 
means  to  escape  observation.  I  waited  with 
a  beating,  anxious  heart  impatiently  for  night,* 
and,  when  it  came,  I  went  forth  well  dis- 
guised, keeping  along  the  line  of  docks  and 
silent  warehouses,  until  I  reached  the  end  r.f 
the  lane  in  which  the  old  mansion  stood.  I 
did  not  dare  to  make  any  inquiry  to  know  if 
Esther  and  the  child  were  still  at  the  old 
home  ;  but  my  knowledge  of  the  character 
and  prospects  of  my  wife,  told  me  that,  if  the 
firm  had  allowed  her  to  stay,  she  would  have- 
accepted  the  offer,  as  her  principles  and  de- 
termination would  have  sustained  her  under 
any  feeling  of  disgrace.  I  walked  slowly  \i;> 
the  old  familiar  lane,  until  I  stood  before  tha 
gateway.  It  was  near  eight  o'clock,  and  tlie- 
gate  was  closed,  but  it  looked  the  same  as  it 
did  when  I  first  knew  it  as  a  boy  ;  so  did  the 
quaint  oak  carving,  and  the  silent  court-yard, 
seen  through  the  small  grating.  There  were 
no  lights  in  the  front,  and  I  went  cautiously 
round,  up  a  side  lane,  and  along  a  narrow  pas- 
sage that  ran  between  the  churchyard  and  the 
back  of  the  house.  At  that  moment  the  church 
clock  struck  eight,  and  the  bells  chimed  the 
Evening  Hymn,  slowly  and  musically,  as  they 
had  done,  perhaps,  for  centuries  ;  slowly  and 
musically,  as  they  had  done  in  the  days  gone 
by,  while  I  sat  at  the  window  with  little  Mar- 
garet in  my  arms,  nursing  her  to  sleep.  A 
flood  of  memories  came  across  my  heart. 
Forgetful  of  the  object  that  had  brought 
me  there  I  leant  against  the  railings  and 
wept. 

The  chimes  censed,  and  the  spell  was  bro- 
ken. 1  was  recalled  to  the  momentous  task 
that  lay  before  me.  I  approached,  with  a 
trembling  step,  the  window  of  what  used  to 
be  our  sitting-room  on  the  ground-floor.  I 
saw  lights  through  the  crevices  of  the- 
closed  shutters.  Putting  my  ear  closely 


Charles  Dickens. 


MY  LOST  HOME. 


[Kccerober  5, 1857.]       533 


against  the  wall  I  heard  the  1mm  of  voices. 


the    principal    clerks    presented    a  note  of 


Faint,  confused  and  indistinct  as  the  sound  sympathy    and    condolence    to    your    good 
was,  something — perhaps  the  associations  of  i  lady.      Mr.   Picard   became,    as    he   is  now, 


the  place — made  me  feel  that  I  was  listen- 
ing to  my  wife  and  child.  I  was  startled 
by  the  sound  of  footsteps ;  and,  turning 
my  eyes  in  the  direction  of  the  entrance 
to  the  passage  (it  had  but  one  entrance), 
I  saw  approaching,  an  old  man,  who  had 
been  in  the  service  of  the  firm,  as  house 
porter  for  fifty  years.  He  was  called  blind 
Stephen ;  for,  though  not  totally  blind,  his 
«yes  had  a  stony,  glazed  appearance.  He 
had  lived  so  long  in  the  house  that  he  would 
have  died  if  he  had  been  removed ;  and,  in 
consideration  of  his  lengthened  service,  he 
was  retained,  by  Mr.  Askew's  special  com- 
mands. This  was  before  I  left,  and  I  pre- 
sumed from  finding  him  there,  that  he  was 
still  at  his  old  duty  ;  coming  round  to  see,  or 
rather  feel,  that  all  was  secure  before  retiring 
for  the  night.  I  shrank  against  the  wall 
with  the  hope  of  avoid  ing  discovery  :  not  that 
I  feared  the  consequences  of  being  recognised 
by  Stephen — for  I  had  many  claims  upon  his 
kindness  and  sympathy — but  that  I  dreaded, 


more  harsh  and  disagreeable  than  ever ;  and, 
at  one  time,  we  thought  Mrs.  Randall  would 
leave  the  place  ;  but  Mr.  Dobell,  we  fancy, 
persuaded  her  to  stay.  She  was  always,  you 
know,  sir,  of  a  very  serious  turn,  and  she 
now  went  more  frequently  to  chapel  than 
ever.  She  took  on  a  great  deal,  we  fancy,  at 
first ;  but  she  is  a  lady,  sir,  of  gi-eat  spirit  and 
firmness,  and  she  concealed  her  feelings  very 
well,  and  held  herself  up  as  proudly  as  the 
best  of  them." 

"And  poor  little  Margaret,  did  she  miss 
me  much  1 " 

"  Indeed,  sir,  she  did  at  first.  Poor  little 
dear,  I  often  heard  her  crying  after  you  in 
the  morning  ;  and,  for  many  weeks,  not  even 
the  fear  of  Mr.  Pi  card  could  keep  her  from 
going  down  in  the  daytime  to  the  gateway 
and  standing  there  looking  up  and  down  the 
lane,  until  she  was  fetched  gently  back  by 
me.  God  forgive  me  for  the  many  falsehoods 
I  told  her,  sir,  about  your  coming  back  !  But 
I  could  not  bear  to  see  her  crying  about  the 


although  I  longed,  to  hear  what  he  might  j  great  lonely  house.     And  she  always  asked 
have  to  tell  me.     He  came  directly  towards  j  after  you  in  such  a  loving,  innocent,  sorrow- 


me,  as  if  by  instinct ;  for  I  was  perfectly, 
breathlessly,  still ;  and  paused  immediately 
opposite  to  \vhere  I  was  partially  hidden, 
under  the  shadow  of  the  wall.  He  seemed 
to  feel  that  some  one  was  there,  and  his 
glazed  eyes  were  directed  full  upon  me, 
looking  now  more  ghastly  than  ever,  as  they 
glistened  in  the  light  of  the  moon,  which 
just  then  had  passed  from  behind  a  cloud. 
Unable  to  restrain  myself  I  uttered  his 
name. 

"  Good  God  !  Mr.  Eandall,  is  it  you  ?  " 
lie  exclaimed,  with  a  start,  recognising  my 
voice.  "  We  thought  you  were  drowned  !  " 

"It  is,  Stephen,"  I  replied,  coming  forward. 
"  Tell  me,  for  Mercy's  sake,  are  Esther  and 
the  child  well  ?  " 

"  They  are." 

"  Are  they  here  ?  " 

"  In  that  room,  Mr.  Eandall,"  pointing  to 
the  one  at  which  I  had  been  listening. 

"Thank  God!" 

"They  are  much  changed,  Mr.  Randall, 
since  you ,  since  you  went  away,"  he  con- 
tinued in  a  sorrowful  tone. 

"Do  they  ever  speak  of  me  in  your  hear- 
ing, Stephen,  when  you  are  about  the  house  ]  " 


"  Never,  now,  Mr.  Randall." 
There    was    something    in     the 


tone  of 


Stephen's  voice  that  weighed  upon  my  heart. 
He  always  was  a  kind  old  fellow,  with  a  de- 
gree of  refinement  above  his  class  ;  but  now, 
his  voice  was  weak,  and  sad,  and  tremulous  ; 
more  so  than  what  he  told  me  seemed  to  de- 
mand. I  conjured  him  to  tell  me  all.  With 
considerable  hesitation  and  emotion,  he  com- 
plied. 

"None  of   us    in  the  office  thought  you 
guilty    of    the   forgery,  sir,  not    one ;    and 


ful  way." 

Poor  old  Stephen's  narrative  was  here 
stopped  by  tears  ;  as  for  me,  I  sobbed  like  a 
child. 

"  Many  of  the  gentlemen,  sir,  would  gladly 
have  taken  her  to  their  own  homes  ;  but 
your  good  lady  would  not  part  with  her.  I 
used  often  to  go  up  to  her  little  room  at  the 
top  of  the  house  and  play  with  her  as  I  had 
seen  you  do,  sir,  in  the  middle  of  the  day. 
She  was  always  very  glad  to  see  me  ;  and 
sometimes  she  would  take  me  to  the  window 
when  the  noonday  chimes  of  our  old  church 
were  playing,  and,  pointing  up  to  the  sky 
above  the  tower,  would  iancy  she  saw  you 
there.  By  degrees  her  inquiries  after  you 
became  less  frequent ;  and  when  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  wreck  of  your  ship  arrived,  and 
your  good  lady  put  her  into  mourning,  sup- 
posing you  dead,  she  had  ceased  to  ask  about 
you." 

"  Has  she  grown  much  ? " 

"Very  much,  sir.  She  is  a  dear,  sweet, 
gentle  thing :  we  all  respect  your  good 
lady,  but  we  love  little  Margaret;  and 
although  I  lost  my  sight  entirely,  four 
years  ago,  and  am  now  stone  blind,  I  know 
her  height  to  a  hair,  for  there  is  not  a  night 
that  she  does  not  kiss  me  before  she  goes  to 
bed,  and  I  have  had  to  stoop  less  for  the  kiss 
every  week  all  that  time." 

"  Has  young  Mr.  Picard  ever  been  heard 
of?" 

"O  yes,  sir.  We  believe  he  was  found 
murdered  in  some  low  house  in  a  remote  part 
of  the  town  ;  but  Mr.  Picard  senior  hushed 
the  matter  up,  so  that  we  never  clearly  knew 
the  facts." 

"  I  thought  he  would  never  have  allowed 


534       [December  5, 1S«7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  by 


me  to  suffer  for  him,"  I  returned,  "if  lie  had 
been  on  this  side  of  the  grave." 

"No,  that  he  would  not,"  replied  Ste- 
phen. 

I  felt  from  Stephen's  manner  that  there 
was  yet  some  disclosure  which  his  nerve  was 
scarcely  equal  to  make.  Painful  or  not,  I 
again  conjured  him  to  tell  me  all.  After 
much  entreaty  I  learned  from  him  the  dread- 
ful truth  that  my  wife  had  married  again. 
It  was  many  minutes  before  I  recovered 
from  the  shock.  My  lost  home  stood  before 
me,  and  I  was  an  outcast  wanderer  on  the 
wide  earth. 

"  They  have  been  married  about  a  twelve- 
month," continued  Stephen,  "and,  although  I 
can  only  feel  what  kind  of  a  man.  he  is,  I 
don't  think  they  are  happy." 

"  Is  he  kind  to  the  child  ?  "  I  inquired, 
almost  sternly. 

"  I  don't  think  he  is  positively  unkind  ; 
but  he  is  very  strict.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  chapel  that  your  good  lady  used  to 
go  to,  and  he  tries  to  mould  little  Mar- 
garet after  his  own  heart.  I  fear  they  are 
not  happy.  Your  good  lady  is  less  reserved 
before  me  as  I  am  blind,  anil  I  feel  sometimes 
that  when  she  is  reading  she  is  thinking  of 
you." 

"  Stephen,"  I  replied,  sadly  and  firmly,  "  I 
have  only  one  more  request  to  make  of  you 
before  I  leave  the  country  again  for  ever. 
Keep  my  secret,  and  let  me  for  one  minute 
see  Esther  and  the  child." 

"  I  will,"  returned  Stephen,  weeping  bit- 
terly, "  that  I  will  ;  and  may  Heaven  sustain 
you  in  your  trouble." 

He  threw  the  old  wooden  shutter  back, 
which  was  not  fastened  on  the  inside,  and 
exposed  the  long,  deep,  narrow  recess,  closed 
in  at  the  end  with  red  curtains  glowing  with 
the  fire  and  light  within. 

"  I  will  now  go  into  the  room,"  he  said, 
"and  deliver  my  keys  ;  and,  while  there,  I  will 
contrive  to  hook  back  the  curtain." 

I  thanked  him  with  a  silent  pressure  of 
the  hand,  and  he  went.  Just  then  the  deep 
church  bell  struck  nine,  and  every  stroke 
sounded  like  a  knell  upon  my  beating 
heart.  I  watched  —  O  how  intensely  I 
watched  !— grasping  the  window-sill  with  my 
hands.  At  length  the  curtain  was  drawn 
back,  and  the  vision  of  my  lost  home  stood 
before  me.  They  were  engaged  in  evening 
prayer.  My  child — my  dear  lost  child — 
now  grown  tall  and  graceful,  was  kneeling 
at  a  chair :  her  long  golden  hair  falling  in 
clusters  over  her  slender,  folded  hands. 
Esther  was  also  kneeling  with  her  face  to- 
wards me.  It  looked  more  aged  and  care- 
worn than  I  expected  to  see  it,  but  it  was 
still  the  old  pale,  statue-like  face  that  I 
had  cherished  in  my  dreams,  and  that  had 
nestled  on  my  shoulder  in  the  days  gone 
by. 

He  who  now  stood  in  my  place  as  the 
guardian  of  my  lost  home  was  kneeling  where  1 


I  could  not  see  his  face  ;  but  I  heard  his  voice 
faintly  muttering  the  words  of  prayer.  Did 
anyone  in  all  that  supplicating  group  think 
of  the  poor,  wrecked,  convict  outcast  ? 
God  alone  knows.  The  curtain  closed,  and 
shut  out  my  Lost  Home  from  my  dimmed 
sight  for  evermore. 


HAED  EOADS. 


MONSIEUR  GOBEMOUCHE,  in  his  interesting 
work  upon  Japan — which  ought  to  be  in  the 
hands  of  at  least  every  one  who  can  read — has 
an  important  chapter  on  Japanese  roads. 
The  substance  of  it  was  communicated, 
as  he  states,  by  the  Pere  Canardeur,  a  worthy 
Jesuit,  who  penetrated  into  the  island  of 
Niphon  in  the  character  of  a  ship-wrecked 
Chinaman,  and  passed  three  years  there,, 
partly  in  the  service  of  an  attorney  at 
Jeddo,  and  partly  in  the  situation  of  clerk  to- 
a  landsurveyor  at  Meaco. 

It  appears  that  the  good  father,  whose 
talents  as  a  traveller  were  soon  recognised,, 
was  much  employed  in  affairs  in  different 
parts  of  the  island.  On  his  first  expedition 
into  the  interior,  he  was  much  surprised 
at  the  system  of  road-management,  so  diffe- 
rent from  anything  he  'had  seen  or  heard 
of  in  any  European  country,  and  he  de- 
termined to  investigate  it  fully,  an  object 
for  which  his  occupations  gave  him  pecu- 
liar facilities.  Hence  the  chapter  of  M. 
Gobemouche. 

The  traveller  in  Japan,  we  are  told,  no 
sooner  attempts  to  leave  a  town  than  he  is 
met  by  what  the  Pere  Cauardeur  calls  a 
barrier,  and  which  he  describes  as  a  high  and 
strong  fence  of  timber,  reaching  across  the 
road,  with  a  gate  at  one  side,  through  which 
passengers,  whether  in  palanquins  or  on 
horseback,  are  slowly  filtered.  By  the  side 
of  the  gate  stands  a  man,  generally  of  the 
lowest  or  Cooly  class,  whose  business  it  is 
to  receive  from  each  passing  vehicle  or 
horseman  certain  small  coins,  equivalent  to 
the  cash  and  candareeu  of  China.  On  his 
first  expedition  the  Pere  took  it  for  granted 
that  this  was  a  kind  of  Custom  House,  though 
he  was  much  struck,  he  tells  us,  by  the  un- 
official appearance  of  the  personage  to  whom 
the  Imperial  Government  had  delegated  the 
ticklish  business  of  collecting  the  duties. 
However,  as  he  had  nothing  which  by  any 
possibility  could  be  considered  contraband, 
he  proceeded  with  a  fearless  mien  to  undergo 
the  ordeal.  To  his  surprise,  no  search  was 
made,  no  questions  were  asked,  except  a 
demand  for  money,  with  which  his  com- 
panion at  once  complied.  The  reverend 
Pdre,  who  seems  at  first  to  have  considered 
the  whole  proceeding  little  better  than  high- 
way robbery,  was  informed  that  it  was  not 
his  baggage,  but  himself  and  his  horse  that 
were  contraband,  and  could  not  pass  without 
paying  duty.  Moralising  on  the  incon- 
venience of  the  thing,  but  comforting  himself 


Charles  Dickens.] 


HAED  EOADS. 


[December  5,  1S»7.1        535 


with  the  idea  that  it  was  only  ouoe  in  a  way, 
he  proceeded  on  hia  journey.  But  what  was 
his  astonishment  when,  after  riding  about 
a  mile,  they  were  stopped  by  a  similar 
obstacle  ?  In  fact,  he  soon  discovered  that 
these  stations  were  planted  all  over  the 
country  at  distances  of  two  or  three  kilo- 
mdtres  apart.  At  each  of  them  they  were 
stopped  and  had  to  produce  a  kind  of  receipt 
which  had  been  given  them  at  the  previous 
barrier.  Sometimes  this  exempted  them 
from  paying  again,  but  at  every  second  or 
third  station  a  new  payment  was  necessary. 
As  the  national  dress  consists  of  a  great 
number  of  loose  gowns  of  silk,  or  cotton,  or 
oilskin,  fastened  round  the  waist  by  a  girdle 
tied  in  numerous  knots,  and  as  money  is 
always  carried  in  the  loose  sleeves  of  the 
innermost  gown,  which  are  sewn  up  so  as 
to  form  pockets,  the  ceremonies  of  untying, 
and  unfolding,  and  hunting  for  cash  in  the 
recesses  of  the  dress,  become  rather  tedious 
by .  frequent  repetition,  especially  during 
the  violent  storms  of  hail  and  lightning 
which  prevail  in  the  islands.  Sometimes, 
too,  a  fretful  or  vicious  horse  will  insist 
on  charging  the  gate,  and  many  fatal  acci- 
dents have  thus  taken  place.  In  the  vici- 
nity of  populous  towns,  where  the  traffic 
is  very  great,  the  crowds  of  horsemen, 
and  palanquins,  and  elephants,  and  droves 
of  oxen,  swine,  and  buffaloes,  all  of 
which  have  to  pay  the  tax,  cause  the 
greatest  confusion  at  every  stopping-place. 
An  inconvenience,  says  M.  Gobemouche, 
that  would  be  intolerable  in  any  country 
where  wheeled  carriages  are  commonly 
employed. 

This  tax,  the  Pe"re  Canardeur  was  in- 
formed, professed  to  be  collected  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  roads.  But  roads  have 
existed  in  Japan  for  many  hundred  years, 
while  this  system  of  taxation  is  compara- 
tively novel.  Neither  the  ancient  laws  of 
the  Dairo  dynasty,  nor  the  enactments  of  the 
great  king  Tay  Koy,  who  reigned  about 
three  hundred  years  ago,  make  any  mention 
of  it.  On  the  contrary,  they  provide  that 
roads  should  be  made  and  maintained  by  the 
proprietors  of  land  in  the  districts  through 
which  they  pass.  But  these  proprietors, 
impatient  of  the  burden,  prevailed  on  one  of 
the  later  emperors  to  lay  this  tax  upon 
passengers.  Had  they  carried  out  their 
object  by  imposing  a  tax  upon  animals  of  all 
descriptions,  to  be  levied  once  in  the  year, 
the  people  would  probably  have  submitted 
to  it  quietly.  But  the  perpetual  annoyance 
of  the  present  system  must  always  make  it 
unpopular.  It  is  as  if  an  European  state, 
instead  of  collecting  a  duty  on  tea  at  the 
port  of  entrance,  were  to  impose  a  tax 
of  a  half-penny  on  every  cup  drank,  and 
were  to  send  an  official  to  every  tea 
party  to  count  the  cups  and  collect  the  half- 
pence. 

The    number    of   officials,  too,    who    are 


necessary  to  carry  on  the  business,  greatly 
increases  the  absurdity  of  the  whole  affair. 
The  management  is  generally  in  the  hands 
of  the  quaus  or  mandarins  of  the  fifth  class, 
who  possess  most  of  the  land,  and  who  derive 
part  of  their  revenue  from  the  tax,  in  return 
for  having  contributed  towards  the  establish- 
ment of  the  roads.  These  petty  lords  let 
out  the  proceeds  to  a  publican.  He  employs 
men  to  collect  for  him,  and  spies  to  see  that 
all  that  is  taken  at  the  barriers  is  brought 
to  him,  and  informers  to  catch  any  one  who 
evades  passing  by  the  barrier.  Considering 
the  number  of  barriers  and  houses  to  be 
kept  up,  and  the  number  of  publicans,  and 
spies,  and  informers,  to  be  fed  at  the  cost  of 
the  public,  we  may  well  believe  that, 
out  of  every  thousand  pounds  of  copper 
collected,  two  hundred  and  fifty  go  in  ex- 
penses. A  result  *  even  more  satisfactory 
than  that  obtained  in  the  States  of  the 
Pope,  where  little  more  than  one  fifth  of 
the  revenue  sticks  to  the  fingers  of  the 
officials. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  some  exemptions 
from  the  tax,  at  least  in  theory,  and  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  towns  there  are  many 
roads  not  subject  to  it.  But  the  publicans 
are  careful  not  to  admit  the  exemptions,  and 
not  to  let  any  one  use  the  other  roads  with 
impunity,  unless  he  first  pay  at  one  of  their 
stations.  Hence  disputes  are  continually 
arising.  But,  as  the  tribunal  for  settling 
these  disputes  is  the  yamun,  or  meeting  ot 
the  provincial  mandarins,  who  are  at  the 
same  time  generally  the  managers  of  the 
impost,  it  is  easy  to  see  which  party  is  likely 
to  be  successful.  And,  as  every  great  abuse 
has  its  little  abuses,  which  cluster  about  it  like 
the  parasites  on  Sydney  Smith's  famous  blue- 
bottle ;  so  the  spies  and  informers  exercise 
a  petty  tyranny  on  their  own  account,  and 
extort  small  sums  by  threatening  to  accuse 
people  of  evading  payment. 

Altogether,  one  can  hardly  imagine  any 
system  more  subversive  of  justice  and  honesty. 
Indeed,  the  Jesuit's  statements  have  met  with 
but  slender  belief  in  his  own  country.  "  We 
venture  to  affirm"  (this sentence  is  translated 
from  the  Journal  des  Chemiiis  de  Pierre) 
"that  the  worthy  Canardeur's  notorious 
facility  of 'belief  has  been  imposed  upon.  The 
ridiculous  impediments  to  free  vehicular 
circulation  which  he  describes,  -could  only  be 
endured  by  a  people  reduced  to  the  lowest 
state  of  besotted  slavery."  A  German  critic, 
also,  occupies  four  hundred  and  seven  pages 
of  a  celobrated  Review  devoted  to  light 
literature,  to  prove  that  such  a  state  of 
things  is  simply  impossible.  These  critics,  it 
is  plain,  were  themselves  deceived  in  conse- 
quence of  their  never  having  crossed  the 
Straits  to  the  country  typified  by  the  trust- 
worthy Jesuit  under  the  name  of  Japan  ;  to 
which,  as  is  well  known,  his  Propaganda 
specially  accredited  him  (disguised,  in  fact,  but 
as  a  cattle-driver),  for  the  purpose  of  converting 


53G       [Decembers,  i 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


turnpike-men  and  country  magistrates  to  his 
way  of  thinking, — a  mission  in  which  this 
Catholic  missionary  miserably  failed.  A  noto- 
rious Scotch  Pagan  has  been  equally  ener- 
getic and  equally  unsuccessful  in  the  same 
object. 


CHIP. 


ONE  OF  SIR  HANS  SLOANE'S  PATIENTS. 

IN  The  Universal  Magazine  of  this  month 
of  September,  a  hundred  years  ago,  we  find 
a  curious  statement  of  the  case  of  one  of  Sir 
Hans  Sloane's  patients,  contributed  by  some 
friend  of  her  family,  the  lady  in  question 
being  then  deceased.  It  is  an  illustration  of 
the  way  in  which  persons  deprived  of  one 
sense,  or  of  more  senses  than  one,  can  receive 
double  help  from  senses  that  remain.  This 
lady  was  recovering  from  confluent  small- 
pox, when,  after  the  last  dose  of  a  final 
course  of  purgatives,  she  had  pain  and  con- 
vulsions, which,  after  a  time  were  subdued, 
but  returned  again  at  eleven  o'clock  on  the 
day  following.  The  fits,  which  were  accom- 
panied with  violent  contraction  of  the 
muscles,  a  complete  twisting  of  the  head, 
change  of  the  features,  and  pulling  of  the 
feet  in  at  the  instep,  returned  daily  at  about 
the  same  hour.  Remedies  were  tried,  and 
among  them,  the  cold  bath,  but  the  daily 
fits  continued,  and  moreover  the  patient 
became  first  blind,  then  deaf  and  dumb. 
Also  there  was  a  spasmodic  stricture  in  the 
throat,  so  permanent  that  the  sufferer  lived 
upon  food  chewed,  or  retained  for  some  time 
in  the  mouth,  from  which  some  of  the  juices 
filtered  down  the  throat,  when  nothing  could 
be  taken  by  an  ordinary  act  of  swallowing. 

"While  this  lady  lived  in  such  affliction, 
the  privation  of  her  powers  of  sight,  hear- 
ing, and  speech  was  partly  compensated 
by  an  exaltation  of  her  powers  of  touch  and 
smell.  We  have  ourselves  often  seen  a  blind 
friend  join  in  a  rubber  of  whist,  sorting  and 
recognising  his  own  cards  easily  by  the  touch, 
and  simply  asking  to  be  told  what  cards  are 
played  by  his  companions.  This  lady  could 
tell  by  touch  the  colours  of  a  piece  of  silk,  or 
of  a  flower,  and  could  instantly  detect  the 
presence  of  a  stranger,  as  a  dog  can,  by  the 
smell.  She  talked  by  the  finger  alphabet, 
her  friends  using  one  of  her  hands  to  form 
the  letters  on,  instead  of  forming  them  en- 
tirely with  their  own.  A  cousin  who  was 
wearing  an  embroidered  apron,  asked  her 
what  its  colours  were.  She  fingered  the 
embroidery  attentively,  and  answered  rightly. 
The  same  lady  had  a  ribbon  on  her  head, 
which  was  found  by  the  touch  to  be  not 
red,  but  pink. 

This  cousin  once  went  up  into  the  sick 
lady's  chamber,  and  begged  her  to  come 
down  and  sit  for  a  short  time  with  the 
family,  no  strangers  being  present.  A  strange 
visitor  had  arrived  in  the  meantime.  Though 


blind  ami  denf,  the  patient,  at  the  moment 
when  the  parlour  door  was  opened,  hurried 
back,  complaining  bitterly  that  she  had  been 
deceived.  Her  cousin  cleared  herself  of  the 
suspicion  of  a  trick,  and  asked  how  the  pre- 
sence of  a  stranger  could  have  been  detected  1 
By  the  smell. 

The  sense  of  smell,  however,  was  but 
an  imperfect  helper.  It  was  chiefly  by 
the  exaltation  of  the  sense  of  touch  that 
the  lost  senses  were  in  pai't  made  good. 
She  distinguished  her  friends  by  the  touch 
of  their  hands.  The  general  shape  and  size, 
and  the  degree  of  warmth  commonly  sufficed 
for  recognition ;  but  sometimes  she  would 
also  span  the  wrist  and  measure  the  fingers. 
Once,  a  lady,  who  was  an  old  friend,  came  in 
from  walking  on  a  hot  day,  and,  as  usual, 
gave  her  hand.  The  patient  felt  it  for  some 
time,  and  seemed  to  be  in  doubt..  Then, 
after  spanning  the  wrist,  and  measuring  the 
fingers,  she  said,  in  her  way  of  finger-talking, 
"  It  is  Mrs.  M.,  but  she  is  warmer  to-day 
than  ever  I  felt  her  before." 

The  same  acuteness  of  the  sense  of  touch 
allowed  this  lady  the  solace  of  both  needle 
and  pen.  Her  needlework  was  usually  neat 
and  exact ;  and,  after  her  death,  many  pieces 
of  it,  especially  one  delicate  pincushion,  were 
treasured  in  her  family.  Her  writing  was 
not  only  neat  and  pretty — all  the  lines  even, 
and  the  letters  placed  at  equal  distances — but 
by  running  a  finger-tip  over  the  words  she 
had  written,  she  could  detect  even  the  omis- 
sion of  a  letter,  and  would  write  it  accurately 
over  the  place  to  which  it  belonged,  marking 
the  omission  with  a  little  caret.  She  had 
been  sent,  for  change  of  air,  to  Bath,  where 
the  convulsions  were  less  frequent,  and  her 
pains  were  less  acute ;  but  she  never  re- 
covered, in  the  least  degree,  voice,  sight,  or 
hearing. 

Experiments  were  often  made  by  friends 
who  could  not  but  think  that  she  had  some 
glimmering  perception  of  sight  or  sound  to 
help  her.  She  allowed  Sir  Hans  Sloane  to 
make  what  experiments  and  observations  he 
thought  proper,  and  the  issue  of  them  was, 
that  he  pronounced  her  to  be  absolutely  deaf 
and  blind.  But  she  was  very  sensitive  of 
being  made  a  subject  of  experiment  by  her 
acquaintance,  and  mental  excitement  gene- 
rally brought  on  an  attack  of  her  convulsions. 
A  clergyman  found  her,  one  evening,  sitting 
at  work  at  a  table,  on  which  was  a  single 
candle.  He  placed  his  hat  between  the 
candle  and  her  thread,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
keep  all  the  light  off :  she  continued  work- 
ing, ignorant  of  what  was  done ;  but  pre- 
sently, raising  her  hand  to  her  forehead,  she 
struck  accidentally  against  the  hat,  and.  at 
once  felt  that  she  was  being  suspected, 
and  became  convulsed.  Pier  family  had 
ample  means  of  knowing  the  reality  of  her 
affliction.  Unconscious  evidence  was  con- 
stantly before  them.  Once  she  sat  tran- 
quilly at  work,  facing  the  window,  during 


Charles  Dickens.] 


PEATTLETON'S  MONDAY  OUT. 


[De.-ember5,18,7.]       537 


a  fearful  storm  of  thunder  and  lightning ; 
although,  when  in  health,  she  would  have 
been  greatly  terrified  by  such  a  storm. 


PEATTLETON'S  MONDAY  OUT. 


I  AM  Isaac  Prattleton,  stonemason  and 
dealer  in  monumental  effigies,  at  Sixteen, 
Longshore  Street,  Lirnehouse.  My  wife  was 
Catherine  Boroo,  and  we  were  married  at 
Poplar  Church,  on  the  sixteenth  of  March, 
one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  thirty-one. 
My  wife's  mother,  Widow  Boroo,  lives  with 
us,  but  pays  her  lodgings.  I  have  one 
daughter,  Kitty,  twenty-three  years  old,  and 
one  boy,  Albert,  named  after  our  gracious 
prince,  aged  ten,  surviving  out  of  a  family  of 
eight  ;  but  there  is  my  son  Jack  at  sea. 

The  object  of  my  addressing  myself  to 
your  valuable  journal — of  which  I  have  been 
a  subscriber  since  the  commencement — is 
because  I  see  you  wish  to  do  good,  and 
I  ask  leave  to  place  before  the  public  and 
my  fellow  workmen  certain  observations. 
I  had  just  completed  an  original  design  of 
my  own  for  a  monument  to  Mrs.  Alderman 
Swallow — two  angels  weeping  over  the  tureen 
supposed  to  contain  the  defunct,  and  in- 
scribed with  the  one  word  Lucy  Jane  (the 
sentiment  was  much  admired) — when  I  pro- 
posed to  my  good  people  a  Monday  out.  I 
will  not  trouble  you,  sir,  with  a  description 
of  the  interesting  contents  of  the  British 
Museum,  where  we  spent  our  morning,  though 
I  could  say  something  about  the  monumental 
stones  of  the  Egyptians.  What  premises  the 
mason  must  have  had  who  turned  out  such 
an  article  as  Eamshackle  the  First !  But  the 
Egyptian  masons  clearly  overdid  the  thing, 
and  what  with  Eamshackle  here  and  Eam- 
shackle there,  the  public,  I  think,  must  have 
been  stoned  to  death.  I  will  throw  together 
for  you  some  remarks  upon  this  subject  at  a 
future  day.  We  were  all  very  much  inte- 
rested with  what  we  saw  at  the  British 
Museum,  except  Mrs.  Boroo,  who  had  saved 
herself  for  the  evening  treat,  and  only  joined 
us  at  five  p.m.,  near  Hungerford  Market, 
where  we  had  tea  at  a  cake-shop,  and  bought 
a  large  crab  and  a  pint  of  shrimps,  to  take 
home  as  a  delicacy  to  my  wife's  sister,  Mrs. 
Starks,  who  is  a  great  invalid.  Mrs.  Boroo 
cai-ried  the  crab  in  her  large  pocket,  and  my 
son  Albert  put  the  shrimps  into  his  jacket, 
as  I  believe  we  are  not  allowed  to  carry 
parcels  in  at  the  South  Kensington  Museum, 
and  I  did  not  think  it  safe  to  trust  a  crab 
with  the  officials  at  the  door. 

This  museum,  sir,  was  established  after  the 
close  of  the  Great  Exhibition,  'fifty-one.  Part 
of  it  is  what  used  to  be  at  Marl  borough 
House  fol-  the  help  and  support  of  those 
Schools  of  Design  which  the  Exhibition 
showed  to  be  a  sort  of  food  that  English 
manufactures  needed.  Part  of  it  is  gifts  from 
foreign  governments  of  articles  contributed 
to  that  same  exhibition  in  illustration  of 


their  industries.    Part  of  it  was  collected  by 
the  Society  of  Arts  through  the  help  of  Pro- 
fessor Solly.     Part  of  it  is  given  or  lent  by 
private  persons,  mercantile  and  royal.     Part 
of  it  is  contributed  by  an  association  for  the 
advancement    of   architecture,    part    by   an 
association  of  the  sculptors.     Part  is  the  be- 
quest of  pictures  left  by  Mr.  Sheepshanks  to 
the  nation,  on  condition  that  use  should  be 
made  of  it  in  the  education  of  the  public 
!  taste,  through  schools  of  design  and  by  way 
!  of  exhibition.    The  whole  stores  of  the  mu- 
seum make  an  exhibition  often  varying.    One 
j  part,  after  travelling  about  the  provinces  to 
i  diffuse  the   ideas   that   belong   to  it,  comes 
j  back  into  barracks  at  Kensington,  to  take  the 
place   of  another  part  that  sets  out  in  its 
I  turn.  Pictures  shift  in  their  frames.    Statues 
,  and  casts  from  them  constantly  change,  and 
\  there  is  a  rule  that  ensures  a  complete  change 
within  every  three  years.     Such  is  the  exhi- 
bition.    At  seven  it  opens,  sir,  and  till  ten  it 
j  remains  open,  and  fourpence  is  the  fare  from 
!  Charing  Cross  by  all  the  omnibuses.     Mon- 
,  days  and  Tuesdays  free,  evening  as  well  as 
morning ;   also   Saturdays.     But,    O  !    Mrs. 
!  Boroo  !     We  went  in  at  the  entrance,  and  I 
;  gave    up   my  stick,   and   she   gave    up    her 
umbrella,  and  my  daughter  Kitty  gave  up 
j  her  parasol  to  a  civil  person,  and  we  went  in 
I  among  the  curiosities,  when  Mrs.  Boroo,  she 
stood  stock-still  and  crouched  up  at  a  wall  as 
if  there  was  a  spider  coming. 

"  Prattleton,"  says  she,  "  what's  that  ?" 
"  Mrs.  Boroo,"  says  I,  "  that  is  a  dustman. 
He  has  washed  his  face,  that's  certain,  and 
has  exchanged  his  shovel-hat  for  a  four-and- 
ninepenny  silk  ;  but  them's  dustman's  boots, 
them's  dustman's  corduroys,  and  that's  a 
dustman's  gaberdine,  with  the  dust  still 
powdered  across  the  shoulders." 

"  Let  us  go  home,"  Mrs.  Boroo  says  ;  "  this 

is  no  fit  place  to  bring  your  wife  and  daughter 

to,  to  say  nothing  of  me,  who,  when  1  was  a 

'  girl,  refused  a  master  baker  doing  one  hun- 

;  dred  and  eighty  sacks  a  week." 

"Well,"  says  I,  "he  seems  quiet  like, 
slouching  about  with  his  hands  in  his 
pockets,  and  he  looks  this  way  and  that  with 
as  much  of  the  air  of  admiring  nothing,  as  if 
he  were  a  gentleman." 

"  Perhaps,"  says  Kitty,  "  he's  a  lord  in 
disguise."  Pie  had  just  looked  at  Kitty  with 
the  air  of  admiring  something.  "  His  coat's 
wonderfully  clean,  though  it  is  dusty  on  the 
shoulders." 

"Monday,  child!"  says  grand  mother  Bo- 
roo, with  disgust.  "  See  him  ou  Saturday." 

My  daughter  looked  as  if  she  wouldn't 
mind,  for  certainly  he  was  a  proper  fellow. 
We  soon  found  that  among  the  throng  in  this 
museum  on  Monday  night  a  dustman  was  no 
oddity.  But  I  do  say  a  line  ought  to  be 
drawn.  I  like  improvement  of  the  mind,  and 
I  do  try  myself  to  elevate  the  taste  of  my  own 
family.  But  a  line  ought  to  be  drawn  some- 
where above  dustmen.  Is  a  respectable 


538      [December  6, 185?] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOEDS. 


[Conducted  b/ 


householder  to  be  expected  to  consort  with 
such  ?  I  have  my  doubts  of  you,  sir,  though 
it  is  through  you  I  make — by  the  wish  of  my 
wife's  mother — this  objection  public.  You're 
the  sort  of  person,  I  fear,  who  would  say  it's- 
right  that  after  he  has  been  ferreting  all  day 
loner,  in  dust-holes,  the  nation  should  invite 
such  a  man,  if  he  will  take  the  trouble  of  a 
walk  to  South  Kensington,  to  give  his  eyes  a 
rest  over  bright  rainbow  thoughts  hung  in 
gill  frames — over  a  sight  of  the  free  gifts  of 
nature  and  the  hard-won  earnings  of  art. 
You  are  a  man  to  ask  that  he  may  have 
something  to  see  worth  seeing  when  he  comes 
out  of  his  dust-hole  for  the  day,  and  to  say 
to  him,  when  you  come  across  him  at  South 
Kensington,  "  God  bless  your  bit  of  well- 
spent  holiday  !"  You'll  tell  me  that  this 
dustman  striving  quietly  to  get  thoughts 
beautiful  or  wise  into  his  head  is,  in  such 
act,  the  equal  of  a  stonemason,  the  equal  of  a 
prin<?e.  The  equal  of  a  prince,  no  doubt. 
I've  often  said  something  to  that  effect  at  our 
Mutual  Instruction-  Club  ;  but  that  he  is  fit 
company  for  anyone  in  our  sphere  I  deny. 
Were  he  to  ask  for  admission  at  the  Mutual 
Instruction,  I  don't  say  he  would  be  black- 
balled, because  question  of  his  admission 
never  would  be  put  to  the  vote.  We'd  laugh, 
and  between  him  and  us  there'd  be  a  Ha-ha 
fence  that  I  should  like  to  see  him  leaping 
over. 

Then  when  we  were  entering  the  archi- 
tectural department,  where  there  are  build- 
ing stones  and  tiles  of  all  ages,  what  should 
we  meet  but  a  couple  of  hodmen  ?  Let  them 
go  up  the  ladder  of  learning,  if  they  please, 
but  not  while  my  wife's  mother  is  upon  it. 
We  came  upon  a  man  more  nearly  assimi- 
lated to  our  sphere,  who  was  all  by  himself 
among  the  modern  tiles  and  drains,  at  work 
with  a  monstrously  sharp  eye.  He  was 
having  close  regard  to  the  main  chance,  I 
_  saw,  although  he  hid  his  eagerness  of  study 
by  getting  out  of  our  way  until  we  had  left 
him  the  coast  clear  again. 

Now,  I  will  tell  you,  sir,  a  wonderful  thing 
that  struck  me  as  a  professional  man  more 
than  anything.  The  modern  sculptors,  my 
contemporaries,  have  liberally  contributed  to 
the  South  Kensington  Museum  a  fine  show 
ot  their  works.  I  should  have  liked  to  see 
among  them  a  few  specimens  of  monumental 
art  :  a  broken  pillar,  a  rose  or  lily  or  so 
parted  from  the  stem,  a  tureen  or  a  teacaddy ; 
but  as  to  the  perfection  attained  in  that 
branch  of  art,  our  cemeteries  will  speak  to 
posterity.  Prattleton,  Limehouse,  at  the 
foot  of  many  a  stone  will  be  observed  by  our 
children's  children.  Non  omnis  moriar,  as 
I  was  once  ordered  to  carve.  Our  works, 
too,  are  all  sacred  to  memory,  announced  and 
admitted  to  be  such  ;  but  as  a  professor  of 
the  sacred  branch  of  our  art,  I  do  not  feel  it 
necessary  to  slight  the  profaner  sculptors. 
I  wish  to  encourage  by  my  approbation  Mr. 
Baily,  Mr.  Marshall,  Mr.  Theed  and  others 


of  that  class.  I  like  their  works,  and  now  I 
come  to  the  wonderful  thing  that  I  observed 
on  Monday  evening  at  Kensington, — nobody 
has  eyes  for  them.  In  Kensal  Green,  on  a 
Sunday,  I  have  stood  at  the  foot  of  my  own 
masterpiece,  and  heard  it  warmly  praised  by 
hundreds  of  couples  who  perambulate  the 
grounds,  examine  the  designs  of  tombs,  and 
criticise  inscriptions.  There  is  a  great  deal 
of  attention  paid  to  sacred  sculpture  by  the 
public,  I  am  proud  to  say.  But  here  at 
South  Kensington  is  a  gallery  of  sculpture 
by  men  who  have  a  rare  cunning  in  expres- 
sion of  all  that  is  most  beautiful  in  form  ;  the 
statues  and  groups  are  arranged  where  each 
can  be  seen  to  good  advantage  ;  and  there  are 
comfortable  settees  from  which  they  can  be 
admired  in  comfort.  The  settees  were  all 
occupied,  but  the  occupants  were  talking  to 
each  other,  resting,  doing  anything  but  looking 
at  the  works  of  art.  Though  every  sitter 
had  a  statue  fully  placed  to  excellent  ad- 
vantage opposite  him,  her  or,  if  a  baby,  it,  I 
made  a  point  of  looking  for  a  pair  of  eyes 
employed  upon  a  statue,  and  did  not  see  one. 
Two  or  three  thousand  people  moved  about 
the  building  while  we  remained  in  it.  I 
went  to  the  sculpture  gallery  from  time  to 
time,  and  once  only  succeeded  in  discovering 
that  anybody  paid  heed  to  the  statues.  Then 
it  did  happen  that  there  was  a  man  in  a 
complete  suit  of  corduroys,  who  passed 
gravely  and  thoughtfully  from  work  to  work, 
before  each  one  settled  himself  at  ease,  and 
stood  gazing  for  some  minutes,  until,  in  fact, 
he  had  drunk  in  through  his  eyes  all  its  pro- 
portions, before  passing  on.  I  like  to  see 
our  art,  in  any  of  its  branches,  duly  reve- 
renced, and  I  said  to  my  wife,  "Well,  for 
that  fellow's  sake  I  shall  say  that  to-night 
the  statues  have  not  been  exhibited  in  vain. 
He  carries  a  precious  sight  of  stoue  oft'  in  his 
head."  And  nobody  shall  say  that  our  mo- 
dern sculptors  fail  to  command  attention, 
because  they  produce  puny  efforts.  Their 
efforts  are  not  puny.  I  wonder  indeed  how 
many  brethren  of  the  profane  branch  have 
achieved  so  much  upon  so  little  encourage- 
ment. Look  there,  in  the  middle  of  this 
exhibition  towers — a  gift  from  the  Grand- 
duke  of  Tuscany — a  cast  of  Michael  Angelo's 
David.  Is  that  puny  1  At  the  foot  of  it 
are  anatomical  wax  models  designed  by  the 
great  master  himself  when  preparing  for  the 
work.  There  the  work  is.  I  claim  Michael 
Angelo  ,as  head  of  our  branch  of  the  pro- 
fession. Look  at  his  tomb-stones !  Well, 
there's  his  heroic  David,  with  the  mighty 
power  and  the  nervous  hands  that  are  to  slay 
the  Philistine  ;  there's  a  work  for  a  poor 
stone-mason  like  me  to  fall  down  and  wor- 
ship ;  there's  by  far  the  biggest  thing  in  the 
whole  exhibition,  and  I  did  not  perceive  a 
single  glance,  even  of  curiosity,  turned  up  at 
it ;  I  watched  in  vain  for  a  man,  woman  or 
child  who  would  take  the  trouble  to  look 
David  in  the  face.  Had  the  statue  been 


Charlet  Dickens.] 


PRATTLETON'S  MONDAY  OUT. 


[December  5.  1857.]        539 


absent,  there  could  scarcely  have  been  less 
heed  paid  to  the  empty  space  than  to  the 
space  now  so  gloriously  tilled.  Two  of  those 
preternaturally  sharp  London  boys,  whose 
eyes  take  everything  in,  glanced  up  at  a  join 
in  the  cast  and  cried,  "I  say,  he's  got  a 
plaister  on  his  back,"  and  that  was  all  the 
notice  David  got. 

Yet,  there's  taste  enough  for  figures,  too,when 
they  are  coloured.  All  honour  to  the  memory 
of  Mr.  Sheepshanks,  whose  collection  of  the 
cabinet  works  of  modern  painters,  delights 
and  refines  the  people.  The  collection  con- 
sists mainly  of  those  works  which  an  un- 
trained public  can  enjoy  before  it  under- 
stands their  highest  claims  upon  attention. 
The  crowds  are  all  before  pictures  made 
up  of  figures  that  tell  some  story  to  the 
eye.  Those  that  touch  the  domestic  feeling 
are  the  most  attractive.  I  think  that  among 
the  landscapes,  those  which  contain  sea 
were  most  sought  and  dwelt  upon.  I  know 
that  I  couldn't  tear  my  Catherine  away 
from  that  picture  of  fresh  sea  in  the  bay, 
looked  at  from  the  cliffs  at  Seaford — William 
Collins  painted  it — and  I  know  well  that 
my  wife  stuck  to  it,  because  she  had  found 


over  it  a  road   for    her    heart 
Jack   away    upon    the    waters. 


pull  her 
along.     She  looks  at  me,  and  points   to   an 


old  woman  in  a  corner,   an 
black,  who  is  rooted  before 


old  woman   in 
one   of  Cope's 


pictures  ;  a  very  simple  little  thing,  only  a 
mother   hushing   a    child  off  to  sleep  upon 
To  please  Catherine  we  stand 
the    woman,   a  very  poor  old 
dress    tells    us,    than 
She  is  rooted  perma- 
nently down  before  the    picture   and    looks 
at  it  fixedly  through    her   spectacles.     Five 


her  shoulder, 
and  look   at 
woman — poorer,    her 
she  was  a  year  ago. 


left  of  it,  it  shot  out  its  rays  clearly,  as  the 
moon  does  through  a  rift  in  clouds.  In  .  all 
the  shiftings  of  the  throng  about  the  room, 
no  sign  of  any  interest  in  that  picture  ap- 
peared until  a  well-dressed  gentleman  and 
lady  stood  some  time  before  it,  and  a  crowd 
then  gathered  to  enjoy  what  they  enjoyed. 

"  Where's  mother  ? " 

Mrs.  Boroo  was  lost.  After  a  wild  hunt  in 
which  Albert  led,  we  found  her  among  the 
Animal  Products — she  is  herself  an  animal 
product  of  considerable  magnitude — before 
a  pair  of  cavalry  boots  of  the  present  period, 
the  legs  made  from  solid  leather  of  ox- 
hide. I  quote  from  the  catalogue  compiled 
by  Mr.  P.  L.  Simmonds — what  a  pleasant 
catalogue  !  Mrs.  Boroo  took  to  the  Animal 
Products.  As  there's  a  museum  of  useful 
stones  in  Jermyn  Street,  a  collection  of  plants 
at  Kew,  and  there  was  a  collection  of  animal 
products  nowhere,  that  is  one  of  the  things 
they  have  begun  establishing  at  Kensington, 
where  you  see  carefully  arranged  all  sorts  of 
woven  goods  in  wool,  alpaca,  and  mohair ; 
manufactures  of  all  manners  of  hair,  bristles, 
and  whalebone ;  domestic  articles  of  bone 
and  ivory,  horn  and  hoofs,  tortoise-shell,  any 
shell ;  the  oils  and  fats  of  commerce  (Mrs. 
B.  greatly  interested  in  the  same),  animal 
paints  and  dyes,  animal  physic  and  perfumes, 
and  animal's  waste,  used  in  men's  business, 
even  down  to  a  selection  of  prepared  ma- 
nures. I  gave  but  sixpence  for  the  catalogue 
of  this  department  of  the  Kensington  Mu- 
seum, and  Albert  has  been  reading  it  to  his 
grandmother  ever  since,  between  tea-time 
and  supper-time.  I  know  all  about  sheep- 
washing,  about  cloths,  and  different  kinds  of 
carpets.  I  know  all  about  silkworms  and 
we  are  now  buried  in  furs,  as  we  have  been 


or  ten  minutes  pass,  and  then  others  who  for  some  time,  thanks  to  the  liberal  contri- 
come  press  against  her,  she  moves  aside  a !  butions  to  the  museum  made  by  Mr.  E.  B. 
few  steps  to  make  room  for  others,  and !  Roberts  and  Mr.  Nicholay.  The  catalogue 
again  stands  looking  at  the  picture  from !  will  send  me  to  South  Kensington  again, 
afar.  because  it  has  made  all  of  us  curious  about 

"  She  has  lost  a  daughter  and  a  grand-  some  things  we  didn't  see  at  all,  and  some  we 
•child,  too,"  Catherine  whispered.  "  She  will  j  didn't  understand  when  we  first  saw  them, 
look  at  nothing  else,  she  will  go  home  j  So  will  Mr.  Redgrave's  sixpenny  guide  to 


when  she  leaves  that  picture." 

So  she  did,  but  how  my  wife  could  know 
she  would  do  that,  I  can't  imagine. 


Kitty 
moving, 


and 
were 


Albert   as   we 
gone    from    us. 


had  not  been 


We   found 


Kitty  looking  at  a  desperately  romantic 
scene,  called  Disappointed  Love — a  white  girl 
among  greens — no  doubt  because  I  had  for- 
bidden the  house  to  a  green- grocer's  young 
man,  who  has  no  prospect  of  getting  into 
independent  business.  Albert  was  in  a 
corner  eating  his  aunt  Starks's  shrimps, 
which  he  swallowed  with  heads,  legs,  and 
tails  attached,  in  order  to  avoid  collision 
with  authorities. 

Let  me  remark  that  for  a  long  time,  no- 
body looked  at  Turner's  picture  of  the 
Yacht  Sqnadron  at  East  Cowes.  Between  a 


the  pictures,  which  tells  interesting  facts 
about  each  painter,  and  shows  ways  of  enjoy- 
ing all  the  pictures  that  we  missed  on  our 
first  visit.  There's  a  penny  guide  to  them, 
too,  and  there's  a  penny  guide  to  the  entire 
museum,  which  tells  the  chief  facts  relating 
to  history  and  mystery.  These  guides  are 
wonderfully  cheap,  but  any  one  who  doesn't 
choose  to  pay  a  penny,  gets  a  handbill  with 
a  plan  of  the  building,  and  particulars  of 
classes  held  in  it — for  there  are  classes  and 
lectures,  too — for  nothing.  The  classes  are 
not  for  nothing,  but  the  handbill  is.  Classes 
are  cheap.  There  are  some  meetings  on  two 
evenings  a  week  for  schoolmasters,  school- 
mistresses, and  pupil  teachers,  which  cost 
only  five  shillings  for  the  session. 

Passing  by  the  library  of  books,   and  the 


crowd,  before  the  pictures  to  the  right  and  I  educational  models — over  which  I  saw  two  or 


640      [Decembers,  1S57.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


three  pale-faced  governesses  making  obaerva-  of  -which  they  have  no  reason  to  be  proud, 
tions  for  themselves — and  a  class-case  full  of  are  neither  greedy  of  flattery  from  foreign 
mathematical  instruments,  whereof  an  eacer  visitors,  uor  over-sensitive  to  a  little  shai-}> 
boy  was  taking  down  some  of  the  prices  in !  criticism  from  the  same  ;  still,  they  may 
his  note-book,  and  the  anatomical  plates  at  reasonably  wish  to  find  their  faults  to  be 
which  a  bevy  of  young  women  were  squint-  considered  faults,  and  their  merits,  merits, 
ing  from  afar,  I  satisfied  the  desire  of  my  instead  of  vice  versS, ;  nor  can  they  highly 
boy  Albert,  by  getting  into  the  space  set  respect  the  acumen  of  those  who  attribute  to- 
apart  for  models  of  patents,  and  a  full  re-  them  faults  and  merits,  both  purely  ima- 
gister  of  specifications.  There  is  the  steam-  ginary. 

engine  first  taken  in  infancy,  then  growing  There  is  a  little  defect,  pervading  this 
and  working,  as  it  gets  upsomewhat  in  years,  book  of  travels,  which,  although  it  belongs 
and  I  found  that  my  son  might  possibly  have  rather  to  the  French  literature  of  the  day 
a  soul  capable  of  better  things  than  longing ',  than  to  this  individual  author,  is  not  the 
after  shrimps.  I  was  obliged  to  promise  less  open  to  remark.  He  is  fond  of 
coffee  to  our  whole  family,  before  I  could  get :  chopping  up  hip  composition  into  short  sen- 
him  out  of  the  machinery.  Obedient  to  pro-  [  fences,  after  the  manner  of  that  worthy 
mise,  we  went,  therefore,  to  the  refreshment-  :  Eugene  Jacquot,  commonly  called  De  Mire- 
room,  where  a  cup  of  good  coffee  is  supplied :  court ;  each  sentence  being  intended  to  be  au 
for  two  pence,  and  comforted  ourselves  before  epigram,  but  mostly  proving  a  platitude  or- 
taking  an  omnibus,  for  the  return  to  Lime-  a  common-place,  and  also,  what  is  worse,  a. 
house.  We  left  Brompton  at  ten,  and  were  would-be  hard-saying,  which  is  simply  stupid. 
all  home  by  twenty-seven  minutes  past  To  give  a  single  instance,  we  are  told  that 
eleven.  With  renovated  spirits,  I  was  mer-  Richard  the  Third,  Henry  the  Eighth,  and 
rily  at  work  on  a  Death's  head,  at  six  o'clock  :  Charles  the  First,  are  the  princes  best  known 

to  the  cockneys  of  London.     It  (England)  is. 

a  country  where  blood  refreshes  the  memory. 
But,  is  there  a  country,  including  France, 

where  blood  does  not  refresh  the  memory  ? 


next  morn  in  ». 


PARIS  ON  LONDON. 


IT  is  a  pleasant  novelty  to  meet  with  a  Are  the  deaths  of  Louis  the  Sixteenth,  or  of 
book  of  travels,*  written  by  a  Frenchman,  in  \  Marie  Antoinette,  forgotten  ?  Or  the  Terror  I 
which  the  Lord  and  Lady  Allcash  of  Fra '  Or  St.  Bartholomew  ?  Are  the  martyrs  of 
Diavolo  are  not  assumed  to  be  veritable  types  our  common  Christianity  forgotten  ]  Will 
of  Britannic  high  society.  It  is  almost  a  not  the  memory  of  Cawnpore  remain  fresh 
startling  discovery  to  read  at  the  very  outset,  for  centuries,  in  consequence  of  the  innocent 
as  here  we  read,  the  candid  confession  that ,  blood  shed  at  that  far-distant  butchery  1 
"  England,  across  which  I  have  made  several ,  Scores  of  similar  schoolboy-sayings  might 
excursions,  is  often  badly  appreciated  and,  ]  be  quoted  from  the  English  at  Home.  With, 
it  must  be  allowed,  little  known  amongst  us.  j  increased  experience,  M.  Wey  will  prefer 
At  the  actual  moment,  the  truth  is  that  writing  like  a  historian,  to  pointing  (query y 
international  prejudices  are  much  stronger  blunting  ?)  periods  like  a  feuilletonist, 
on  our  side  than  they  ai-e  to  the  north  of :  Like  every  other  newly-arrived  stranger,  M. 
the  Channel.  The  French  rarely  quit  their  Wey  is  struck  with  astonishment  by  the 
country,  and  when  they  do  venture  out  of  it,  Thames,  which  is  an  arm  of  the  sea  as  i'ar 
they  travel  too  quickly.  Our  retired  and  as  Gravesend ;  which  from  Graveseud  to- 
domestic  habits  leave  an  empty  gap  in  our  j  London  is  a  port  wherein  the  ships  of  all 
education.  Hence  arise  prejudices,  difficul- ;  nations  are  ranged  by  hundreds ;  which  from 
ties  in  our  relations  with  other  nations,  our !  London  to  its  source  is  an  Arcadian  river 
maladroitness  in  colonising,  the  limited  extent  that  gambols  amidst  meadows,  distributing 
of  our  commerce,  the  narrow  bounds  of  our  grace  and  freshness  to  the  shady  parks  that 
historical  erudition,  and  the  greater  part  of  I  slope  to  its  margin.  He  sees  that  it  is  im- 
the  misapprehensions  which  hamper  our  j  possible  for  London  to  have  the  calm  beauty 
foreign  politics.  The  statesmen  of  England  and  the  imposing  regularity  of  the  quays  of 
are  acquainted  with  the  habitable  globe,  Paris  ;  because,  with  such  a  vast  amount  of 
much  as  our  police-agents  are  acquainted  |  commerce  the  river  itself  is  obliged  to  serve 
with  the  quarters  of  Paris.  If  there  is  both  as  a  quay  and  a  magazine  ;  the  vessela 


example  calculated  to  inspire  us  with 
more  adventurous  tastes,  it  is  that  of  a 
people  who,  although  endowed  with  a  natio- 
nal sentiment  amounting  to  superstition, 
have  nevertheless  chosen  the  whole  world 

for  their  country."  From  such  a  prelude,  we  j  less  street,  the  Thames.  For,  life  on  the 
may  hope  to  receive  a  little  fair  dealing. '  Thames  is  a  pantomime.  No  countenance 
The  English,  although  somewhat  tender  and  laughs  ;  the  lips  are  mute  ;  not  a  cry,  not  a 
even  self-laudatory  in  respect  to  insularities  voice  ;  everyone  remains  isolated  in  the 


unlade  at  the  very  warehouse  door,  as  if  they 
were  perfectly  at  home  ;  while  the  jetties 
and  landing-places  are  necessary  for  the  use 
of  innumerable  water-omnibuses,  the  steam- 
boats, which  run  up  and  down  that  vast 


*  Les   Anglais    chcz    eux,   by    Francis  AYey. 
Michel  L^vy  Frferes.    1857. 


Paris. 


crowd.      The  artisan  does  not  sing.      The 
passengers  who  pass  and  repass  regard  euck 


Charles  Dickens.] 


PAKIS  ON  LONDON. 


[December  5. 1837. 1       541 


other  without  curiosity,   and  scarcely    arti- 
culate a  word. 

M.  Wey  acquired  a  more  accurate  acquain- 
tance with  English  social  etiquette  than   is 
ever  attained  by  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hun- 
dred even  of  his  travelled  countrymen;  while 
our   language   so   nearly  approaches  an  un- ! 
known  tongue,  that  there  is  hardly  a  news- 
paper   or    a    novel     that     can    cite     three 
\vords   of  English,   or    mention   an   English 
surname,  without  the  most  absurd  mistakes. 
There  is  no  occasion  to  search  for  examples  ; 
the    first    that    come  to   hand   will  do.     A ! 
romance,  open  on  rny  table,  makes  a  charm-  ! 
ing  young  lady,  one  Miss  Lucy,  say,   "  John  ! ! 
bring  me  my  album,  if  yeou  pleasse  ; "   and 
to-day's  Courrier  is  very  learned  about  the 
Dig  Diggings,  meaning  the  Dry  Diggings,  in 
California.     Nor  is  our  author   faultless   in 
this    respect.      Not    is    good,    is    not    good 
English  ;     neither     are     boarding -scool,    or 
scool-room.     It  might  be  difficult  to  find  the 
town    of   Herneby    at    the    mouth    of    the 
Thames.     A  waterman  is  not  the  name  of  a ; 
steamboat  in  general,  though  tliere  be  steam-! 
boats   with  Waterman    inscribed    on    their 
paddlebox.     But  those  are  trifles. 

One  of  M.  Wey's  friends  had  given  him  a  • 
letter  of  introduction  to  an  English  mer- 
chant, William  P.,  esquire,  for  whom  he  left 
it  with  his  visiting  card  at  the  bureau  of  the  i 
Reform  Club,  in  Pall  Mall.  Two  hours! 
afterwards,  Mr.  P.  called  at  the  stranger's' 
lodging,  to  find  him  'absent.  He  returned  j 
the  same  evening,  and  as  no  one  was  at  home,  | 
he  wrote  a  note,  in  the  superscription  of 
which  M.  Wey  found  himself  dubbed  Esquire.  ( 
All  the  letters  which  he  afterwards  received 
bore  the  same  title,  with  which  it  is  the ' 
courtesy  to  gratify  every  bourgeois  who  is 
placed  above  the  conditions  of  trade,  that  is ' 
of  little  commerce.  The  shopkeepers  are  not  j 
esquires;  but  the  merchants  who  operate  in 
their  cabinets,  the  speculators,  the  bankers, 
in  one  word  every  one  comprised  in  the 
world  of  affairs,  in  business,  is  received 
esquire  by  condescension  and  by  civility. 

England  is  the  country  of  legal  equality  ; 
but  that  kind  of  equilibrium  has  no  effect 
upon  the  national  manners  ;  and  although 
our  (French)  fondness  for  distinctions  appears 
puerile  to  the  English,  it  is  easy  to  demon- 
strate that  they  are  not  exempt  from  the 
same  weakness.  They  have  not,  like  French- 
men, a  passion  for  uniforms,  epaulettes,  em- 
broidered coats,  or  decorations ;  their  button- 
holes, often  adorned  with  a  flower,  are  never, 
either  in  the  street  or  the  drawing-room, 
dressed  up  with  rosettes  or  knots  of  ribbon  ; 
but  the  rules  of  etiquette,  in  respect  to  the 
titles  which  mark  the  hierarchic  degrees 
established  between  the  different  classes,  are 
inconveniently  strict  and  intolerant. 

Custom,  in  this  matter,  carries  with  it  so 
many  minute  observances,  that  they  always 
escape  the  notice  of  strangers.  Amongst 
the  English  themselves,  the  commission  of 


certain  mistakes  constitutes  a  marked  bouu- 
dary  line  between  vulgarity  and  high  fashion. 
No  branch  of  knowledge  is  less  cultivated  iu 
France  than  the  precepts  of  the  puerile 
courtesy  of  the  other  side  of  the  Channel. 
French  romancers,  comic  writers,  and  editors 
of  journals,  commit,  on  this  subject,  mistakes 
which  greatly  injure  them  in  the  eyes  of  the 
English.  One  of  the  most  common  of  these 
consists  in  investing  with  the  title  "  Sir " 
(exclusively  attributed  to  knights  and  baro- 
nets) the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
in  virtue  of  their  temporary  mandate.  Iu 
the  melodrama  of  Richard  d'Arlington,  they 
are  liberally  bespattered  with  this  dab  of  soft- 
soap.  But  the  heaviest  of  these  offences  is  to 
place  before  a  family  name  the  title  of  "Sir," 
which  ought  never  to  be  immediately  followed 
by  the  surname.  "  Sir  Paxton,"  "  Sir  Rey- 
nolds,"  are  hideous  gallicisms.  Do  not  sup- 
pose that  this  is  nothing  but  the  caprice  of 
custom.  Let  us  go  on,  and  we  shall  have  to 
signalise  a  series  of  shades  more  delicate, 
more  unknown,  and  very  variously  significa- 
tive in  respect  to  the  distinctions  of  caste. 

Formerly,  whoever  was  above  the  servile 
condition,  without  being  provided  with  a 
title,  was  confounded  under  the  designation 
of  "  Master,"  which  now  is  applied  to  none 
but  children:  Master  Lambton  is  the  young 
son  of  Lambtou.  Since  the  time  of  the 
Stuarts,  when  one  has  to  write  to  great 
people,  the  expression  "  master  "  ought  to  be 
abbreviated  thus,  "  Mr."  To  write  it  at  full 
length,  in  so  many  letters,  would  be  uncivil. 
In  speaking,  you  still  pronounce  "  master  " 
for  children  ;  but,  under  pain  of  incongruity, 
it  is  essential,  when  a  man  is  in  the  case,  to 
say  "Mister."  "Mistress "is  never  written 
in  all  its  letters  ;  they  put  "  Mrs.,"  and  pro- 
nounce "  Missis."  The  title  of  "  Miss  "  has 
still  more  characteristic  anomalies  to  show 
us.  In  general,  they  say  "  Miss  Sarah," 
"  Miss  Mary,"  &c.  But  it  must  be  observed  : 
first,  that  the  eldest  daughter  of  a  family 
cannot,  without  impropriety,  be  designated 
by  her  baptismal  name.  Even  a  betrothed 
lover,  on  the  point  of  marrying  Jane,  eldest 
daughter  of  Mr.  Siddons,  would  call  her 
Miss  Siddons,  and  not  Miss  Jane.  Secondly, 
the  eldest  daughter  of  a  family  of  "  gentry  " 
never  bears  her  baptismal  name.  Before 
she  is  weaned,  she  is  already  "  Miss  Craw- 
ford "  or  "  Miss  Burdett."  Thirdly,  the  eldest 
daughter  of  a  younger  branch  loses  the  pre- 
rogative of  being  designated  by  her  surname 
whenever  she  is  in  the  presence  of  her  eldest 
female  cousin  of  the  elder  branch.  She 
suffers  a  sudden  transformation,  and  every- 
body considers  her  as  simply  "Miss  Julia," 
or  "Miss  Isabella."  When  her  cousin  re- 
tires, she  is  Crawford  again.  The  younger 
sons  of  titled  families  receive  (and  it  would 
be  a  great  fault  to  omit  to  give  them)  the 
qualification  of  Hon.  (honourable)  Mr.,  Mrs., 

or  Miss .     In  good  houses,  no  sort  of 

title  whatever  is  given  to  domestics  of  either 


542       [December  5, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


sex.  Valets  are  called  by  their  Christian 
names  ;  chamber-women  and  female  attend- 
ants by  their  family  name,  short  and  plain. 
Thus,  to  address  a  female  servant,  you  say, 
Weber,  Smith,  Wilcox.  Such  is  the  usage. 
[How  would  they  manage  with  a  maid  from 
Jutland,  where  the  peasantry  are  not  allowed 
the  luxury  of  surnames,  and  a  girl  is  simply 
known  as  Gertrude,  the  daughter  of  John  ?] 

The  wifevof  a  knight  or  baronet  joins  the 
title  of  "  Lady "  to  her  family  name,  and 
never  to  her  baptismal  name,  under  pain  of 
incurring  the  censure  due  to  the  most  shock- 
ing usurpation.  To  the  daughters  of  lords, 
counts,  viscounts,  and  dukes  appertains  the 
privilege  of  being  Lady  Louisa,  Lady  Lucy,  &c. 
They  take  the  title  of  lady  from  their  cradle. 
The  daughters  of  lords  are  only  qualified  as 
"  Miss  "  at  the  Theatre-Fran§ais.  This  pri- 
vilege of  birth  is  indelible  ;  a  young  "  lady  " 
does  not  lose  it,  even  by  marrying  a  com- 
moner. •  Nevertheless,  the  tendency  of  man- 
ners towards  equality  struggles  against  the 
vanity  of  customs. 

For  the  last  five-and-twenty  or  thirty 
years,  well-mannered  people  abstain,  in  con- 
versation, from  mentioning  almost  at  every 
sentence,  as  is  the  practice  in  France,  the 
titles  of  the  persons  whom  they  are  address- 
ing. In  reply  to  the  questions  of  a  lady,  a 
lord,  of  a  minister,  or  even  of  the  queen, 
people  limit  themselves  to  saying  "  Yes," 
"  No,"  without  adding  anything  further. 
The  grace  of  the  intonation  takes  the  place 
of  the  titular  vocative,  which  is  understood. 
It  is  this  laconism  of  speech  which  causes  the 
French  to  regard  the  English  as  haughty  and 
disdainful.  French  politeness  would  be  con- 
sidered in  England  as  ignorance  of  fashion- 
able usage.  In  writing  to  a  great  personage, 
it  would  be  equally  vulgar  to  repeat  more 
than  once  or  twice  the  titles  of  "  my  lord,"  or 
"your  lordship."  The  quality  once  men- 
tioned, the  writer  resumes  the  "  you  "  which 
is  common  to  everyone.  Let  us  pursue  a 
little  further  this  chapter,  which  is  curious, 
perhaps,  but  certainly  useful,  and  which  we 
are  far  from  being  in  a  condition  to  exhaust. 

The  English  language  furnishes  us  with  a 
singular  mark  of  the  decided  line  of  separa- 
tion between  the  two  castes  of  the  country. 
Flat,  nasal,  and  unrhythmical  in  the  mouths 
of  the  populace,  the  language  takes,  with 
people  of  quality,  a  delicate  and  expressive 
accent,  a  measured  lightness,  and  an  elegant 
firmness.  Now,  it  is  impossible  for  an  Eng- 
lishman of  low  birth,  were  he  even  a  professor 
of  oratorical  style,  to  attain  the  accent  of 
well-bred  persons.  The  most  careful  educa- 
tion cannot  reach  that  point  without  the  fre- 
quentation  of  the  grand  monde,  which  alone 
conserves  and  perpetuates  purity  of  pronun- 
ciation together  with  elegance  of  language. 
Thus,  on  the  neutral  ground  of  equality,  where 
there  is  an  entire  abstinence  from  outward  <lis- 
tinctiwis,  where  everyone  is  dressed  alike,  it 
suffices  for  you  to  utter  three  words,  to  be 


classed  instantly.  One  of  the  most  notorious 
of  these  differences,  as  delicate  as  ineifaceable, 
consists  in  the  manner  in  which  the  nice 
aspiration  of  the  letter  h  is  given.  The 
common  people  either  suppress  it  or  displace 
it.  Its  omission  is  nothing  less  than  into- 
lerable ;  its  displacement  is  monstrous.  Con- 
sequently, scarcely  more  than  three-fifths  of 
the  population  are  thus  distinguished. 

In  what  regards  the  habits  of  social  life, 
everything  is  regulated  according  to  rank, 
even  in  the  intimacy  of  families,  with  the 
most  rigid  etiquette.  The  precedence  of 
rank  does  not  yield  even  before  a  foreigner. 
If  you  dine  out,  await  a  signal  which  shall 
set  you  in  motion  in  the  direction  of  the 
dining-room ;  then  do  not  hesitate,  and 
eschew  those  ridiculous  ceremonies  to  which 
French  provincial  gentlemen  abandon  them- 
selves in  the  vicinity  of  doors,  especially 
when  ecclesiastics  or  gentlemen  of  the  long 
robe  are  present.  In  England,  all  is  ordained, 
all  foreseen,  all  regulated,  all  limited  ;  which 
is  the  reason  why  nothing  is  starched 
and  stiff,  and  things  seem  to  follow  their 
natural  course.  It  is  uncertainty  which  is 
the  cause  of  confusion  ;  it  is  hesitation  which 
chills  a  friendly  meeting.  An  idea  is  scarcely 
entertained  of  the  minutiae  to  which  usage 
descends.  Thus,  the  number  of  taps  which 
it  is  proper  to  give  with  the  street-door 
knocker,  when  you  pay  a  visit,  is,  as  near  as 
may  be,  determinate.  Nothing  appertaining 
to  trade  or  domestic  service  will  presume  to 
knock  at  the  principal  door.  The  postman 
is  the  object  of  a  solitary  exception  ;  and 
everybody  knows  that,  under  pain  of  repri- 
mand, he  ought  only  to  give  a  couple  of 
knocks.  A  man  comme-il-faut,  if  he  respects 
himself  and  does  not  wish  to  pass  for  a  care- 
less fellow,  will  strike  five,  solidly  planted. 
Ladies  are  announced  by  seven  little  taps 
following  each  other  rapidly.  The  subject 
might  be  continued  without  ever  coming  to 
an  end.  Moreover,  a  meritorious  French  man 
is  permitted  to  be  ignorant  of  some  of  these 
despotic  laws  on  his  entrance  into  the 
English  world.  He  will  meet  with  pardon 
thi-ough  his  quality  of  foreigner ;  but,  if  he 
were  ignorant  of  all,  and  had  not  the  talent 
to  guess  them,  he  would  run  great  risk  of 
passing  for  a  clown. 

The  invariable  foundation  of  an  English, 
dinner  consists  of  a  fish  and  a  roast ;  the 
surplus  is  accessory.  A  character  is  given  to 
the  ceremony,  much  more  by  the  dimensions 
of  these  two  joints  than  by  the  multiplicity 
of  other  dishes.  To  a  guest  of  note,  there 
would  be  served  a  salmon  or  a  sturgeon  a 
yard  in  length — for  the  fish  is  always  pre- 
sented first — with  divers  sauces  and  spicy 
seasonings,  whose  flavour  is  highly  relished 
by  the  English.  To  the  French,  they  have 
the  taste  of  a  display  of  fireworks  that  you 
had  taken  care  to  set  light  to  before  attempt- 
ing to  swallow  them.  Even  the  gingerbeer 
made  Monsieur  Wey  fancy  he  was  drinking 


Charles  Dickens.] 


PARIS  ON  LONDON. 


[December  5, 1957.1       543 


lemonade  seasoned  with  pepper  and  allspice 
instead  of  lemon.  This  fashionable  beverage 
is  a  combination  of  sugar,  seltzer-water,  and 
ginger — amongst  the  most  combustible  of 
spices.  The  refreshment  sets  your  palate  in 
a  blaze.  After  the  fish  succeed  entrees  a  la 
Frangaise,  consisting  of  game  too  much 
roasted,  poultry  too  much  done,  or  pastry  too 
heavy.  The  roast,  proportioned  to  the  quality 
of  the  guests  and  their  number,  is  worthy  of 
the  Homeric  epochs.  The  acme  of  luxury 
consists  in  serving  several  different  fish  at 
the  same  time,  and  several  roasts.  The  hors- 
d'oeuvre  (supplementary  dishes,  such  as  cold 
ham,  tongue,  &c.)  are  numerous,  and  the 
entremets  (kickshaws  which  serve  as  inter- 
ludes to  the  solid  dishes)  are  singular.  One 
of  the  most  common  is  a  cake  illustrated 
with  sourish  herbs,  which  are  the  stalks  of 
rhubarb,  or  perhaps  mackerel- gooseberries, 
gathered  green,  which  are  the  object  of  a 
considerable  sale.  Frequently  salad  is  offered 
on  a  dish,  in  the  shape  of  a  lettuce-heart  cut 
in  two.  Some  people  eat  it  in  this  way  with 
their  fingers,  simply  dipping  the  extremity  of 
the  leaves  in  salt.  The  vegetables  are  gene- 
rally boiled  and  offered  without  any  seasoning ; 
they  are  delivered  over  to  circulation  about 
the  table,  at  the  same  time  with  the  roast 
meat.  At  dessert,  enormous  Chester  and 
Stilton  cheeses  make  their  appearance,  and 
boats'-load  of  fresh  butter  ;  fruit  and  melon 
succeed  to  them  ;  after  which,  everything  is 
cleared  away,  to  the  very  cloth  ;  and  glasses 
and  wine  are  brought. 

Wine  alone  enjoys  the  privilege  of  being 
placed  upon  the  table.  For  beer  and  Scotch 
ale,  family  drinks,  there  is  a  special  ceremo- 
nial. One  of  the  domestics  who  wait  at 
table  comes  and  presents  to  you  an  empty 
tray,  and  if  you  are  not  warned  beforehand, 
you  will  not  fail  to  be  a  little  surprised.  [In 
the  beer  and  cider-drinking  departments  of 
France,  these  liquids  are  placed  on  the  table 
in  carafes — large  glass  decanters  without 
stoppers— and  everyone  helps  his  neighbours 
and  himself.*  It  is  polite  to  fill  your  neigh- 
bour's glass.  In  the  south,  where  beer, 
bitter  ale,  and  porter  are  much  dearer  than 
ordinary  wine,  they  are  placed  on  the  table 
respectfully,  and  with  a  certain  degree  of 
state,  in  the  black  bottle.]  If  such  a  thing 
should  happen,  reader,  to  yourself,  and  you 
bear  no  animosity  to  hops,  take  your  glass, 
place  it  upon  the  tray,  and  the  servant,  after 
having  filled  it  at  the  sideboard,  will  offer  it 
to  you.  "Without  this  ingenious  combination, 
your  tumbler,  O,  reader  !  would  suffer  the 
contact  of  a  valet's  fingers,  which  would 
shock  both  modesty  and  strict  propriety. 

A  dinner  at  the  Trafalgar  Hotel,  Green- 
wich, to  which  Monsieur  Wey  and  several  of 
his  compatriots  were  invited,  greatly  as- 
tonished them  by  its  thirty  entrees  of  fish. 
This  culinary  Odyssey  interested  them  from 
being  such  an  exhibition  of  new,  unknown, 
or  unrecognisable  dishes,  that  it  possessed  all 


the  charm  of  a  museum.  Like  the  tongues 
in  ^Esop's  dinner,  the  fish  underwent  innu- 
merable disguises;  every  species  appeared 
in  several  costumes ;  turbot,  salmon,  sole, 
and  sturgeon  were  bedecked  with  the  most 
splendid  sauces  ;  pepper,  phosphorescent 
gravies  [curry,  possibly,]  and  incendiary 
piments,  excited  wonderment  and  thirst.  But 
these  dishes  of  energetic  condiments  paled 
before  a  certain  friture  or  fry,  composed  of 
little  fishlings  which,  in  point  of  volume, 
bear  the  same  proportion  to  the  bleak  that 
the  pike  does  to  the  whale.  The  whitebait 
are  caught  only  in  the  Thames  before  Green- 
wich (?)  While  analysing  these  various  dishes, 
certain  conscientious  tourists  took  notes,  un- 
willing to  neglect  any  subject  of  study  ;  and, 
with  the  fork  in  one  hand  and  the  pencil 
in  the  other,  they  stuffed  themselves  with 
documents  which,  at  the  same  time,  were 
gravely  annotated. 

England  produces  three  objects  which  are 
met  with  everywhere  ;  but,  which,  in  this 
island,  are  remarkable  for  their  marvellous 
beauty  ;  the  women,  the  trees,  and  the  horses. 
Moreover,  every  place  which  raises  a  race  of 
horses  worthy  of  admiration,  is  also  peopled 
by  pretty  women.  What  is  the  cause  of  the 
coincidence,  it  is  not  easy  to  say  ;  but  this 
strange  correlation  is  not  the  less  real.  Georgia 
rears  the  best  horses  of  the  East.  The  plains 
of  La  Camargue,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Aries,  famous  for  its  lovely  girls,  preserve  the 
blood  of  the  Moorish  coursers  in  a  state  of 
nature  ;  the  Andalusian  maid  attains  her 
perfection  of  form  by  the  side  of  the  most 
symmetrical  steeds  of  the  Peninsula ;  at 
Mecklenburg  you  behold  the  purest  blood  of 
Germany  ;  and,  when  a  phalanx  of  arnazons 
gallop  along  the  avenues  of  the  London  parks, 
the  dazzled  eye  cannot  fix  itself  with  in- 
difference either  on  the  ecuye"re,  or  the -animal 
on  which  she  is  mounted.  Let  a  young  girl 
draw  up  her  horse  beneath  a  lofty  tree,  and 
you  will  contemplate,  grouped  into  a  single 
picture,  the  three  marvels  of  Angleterre. 
[Please  observe,  that  young  girl,  is  not  tau- 
tology, in  French.  French  females  are  filles 
till  they  get  married,  no  matter  what  their 
age  ;  the  same  of  gargon,  and  even  of  jeune 
homme.  The  funeral  of  a  jeune  homme, 
turned  of  seventy-two  has  just  passed  in  the 
direction  of  the  cemetery.  An  old  maid  in 
England  becomes  an  old  girl  in  France.] 

Beauty  under  a  different  aspect  was  to  be 
gazed  at,  at  the  late  Covent  Garden  theatre, 
which  was  as  gay  and  pretty  as  Her  Majesty's 
theatre  is  cold  and  sombre.  It  was  the 
evening  after  a  drawing-room,  though  the 
traveller  did  not  seem  to  know  it.  Court 
etiquette,  he  tells  us,  requires  that  the  ladies 
should  be  coiffed  with  one  or  two  marabout 
plumes,  mostly  placed  in  a  reversed  position, 
and  falling  back  upon  the  neck,  like  the  ears 
of  a  frightened  spaniel.  Few  persons  are  less 
interested  in  the  observance  of  this  usage 
than  Queen  Victoria,  whose  visage  is  round, 


644       '.Pcccnibcr  5,  1857.1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


with  the  nose  to  the  wind,  although  aquiline  ; 
but  the  curve  finishes  too  abruptly  ;  the  nose, 
beginning  <\  la  Bourbon,  finishes  &  la  Roxelaue. 
The  caprice  is  not  accomplished  without 
raising  the  upper  lip,  which  ordinarily  allows 
a  couple  of  white  teeth  to  be  seen. 

The  queen,  whom  every  one  saw  at  Paris, 
has  a  lively  eye,  a  bright  complexion,  and 
prompt  gestures ;  she  becomes  animated 
while  speaking,  and  shakes  her  marabouts, 
which  gives  her  more  of  merry  gracefulness 
than  of  royal  dignity,  especially  as  her  forms, 
rounded  by  a  nascent  embonpoint,  are  better 
suited  for  tranquillity.  The  expression  of 
her  look  is  singular,  and  pre-occupied  by  a 
mixttfre  of  blunt  simplicity  and  of  compressed 
raillery.  Although  short,  she  appears  tall 
when  seated.  She  frequently  changes  colour  : 
has  beautiful  hair,  long  eyelashes,  and  fine 
ej'ebrows,  which  melt  into  the  satin  sleek- 
ness of  her  skin.  There  is  a  vague  aspect  of 
the  plump  Parisienne,  with  an  Anglo-Ger- 
manic head.  Her  portraits,  clumsy  flatter- 
ers, in  order  to  endow  her  with  the  inert 
beauty  of  the  vignettes,  have  robbed  her 
countenance  of  all  its  character  and  vitality. 

On  each  side  of  her  was  a  lady,  chosen  with 
too  much  discernment ;  and,  at  the  back,  the 
Prince  Albert.  His  complexion  grows  lighter 
and   lighter,    in    proportion   as  embonpoint 
raises  and  stretches  the  tissues  of  the  skin ; ; 
at  the  same  time,  his  forehead  loses  its  locks, 
and  the  flower  of  youth  is  giving  place  to 
prosaic  maturity.     You  are  less  struck  with 
the  regularity  of  his  features  than  with  the 
air  of  good   nature   which  distinguishes   his 
countenance.     The  husband  of  the  queen  is 
esteemed ;    he   was  altogether  sympathetic 
before  the   commencement   of  the   Hussian 
war  ;  he  interests  those  who  behold  him  for 
the  first  time,  as  would  any  man  placed  in  a 
difficult  position  in  which  he  acquits  himself 
with  honour.     He  is  reported  to  be  affable  ; 
and,  far  from  seeking  to  make  himself  of  im- 
portance, he  resists  every  temptation  to  put  ( 
his  influence  in  a  conspicuous  light.    Finally, 
he  takes  pains  to  show  that  his  attention  is 
occupied  with  the  progress  of  the  Fine  Arts, 
as  well  as  of  every  institution  that  bears  on  \ 
social  economy  ;  and  to  seek  nobody's  favour 
on  any  other  grounds  than  those  of  his  mo- ! 
desty  and  his  personal  merits.     Such  conduct  i 
evinces  great  talent,  and  something  better  than 
talent.  In  England,  the  positiougiveu  to  Prince 
Albert  is  more  gravely  appreciated  than  in 
France,  on  Salic  ground  ;  and  yet,  in  France, 
especially,  is  there  a  gallant  man,  if  only  he  be  ; 
married,  who  is  not  more  or  less  the  husband  ; 
of  the  queen  1 

Monsieur  Wey  has  doubts  whether  the 
English  take  repose ;  but  London  never 
sleeps — except  once  a  week,  as  he  afterwards 
observes,  on  Sundays.  At  every  hour  of  the 
day,  the  workshops  are  full,  and  the  haunts 
of  idleness  are  thronged  to  overflowing.  One 
knows  that  tlie  town  contains  three  millions 
of  souls  ;  and,  nevertheless,  one  is  surprised  to  ; 


see  so  many  people  everywhere  at  the  same 
time.  The  streets  are  crowded,  whole  popu- 
lations wander  backwards  and  forwards  on 
the  Thames,  the  parks  are  overscattered  with 
promenaders,  the  monuments  with  curious 
I  inquirers  :  the  gardens  and  the  great  houses 
!  of  the  environs  are  invaded  by  nomad  visi- 
tors, and  the  movement  never  stops  as  long 
as  the  week  lasts.  They  eat  at  all  hours,  in 
all  places,  and  without  cessation.  The  iron 
constitution  of  these  complaisant  stomachs 
permits  them  to  repair  their  fatigues,  by 
means  of  an  alimentary  regime  which  would 
satisfy  the  appetite  of  wolves  and  lions.  The 
bill  of  fare  of  a  fair  and  pensive  young  girl 
would  prove  the  delight  of  a  couple  of  Pa- 
risian porters. 

Parisians  don't  eat,  don't  they  1  Nor  Paris- 
iennes  either  ?  If  you  entered  a  restaurant, 
after  a  day  at  the  Exposition,  did  the  parties 
of  French  ladies  and  gentlemen,  who  joined 
your  company  there,  partake  of  merely  a 
Barmecide  feast  1 

Those  strange  places,  the  London,  St.  Ca- 
therine, and  West  India  Docks,  are  the 
theatre  of  a  prodigious  movement.  It  seems 
as  if,  to  make  such  enormous  piles  of  all  sorts 
of  wares,  they  must  have  exhausted  the* 
fecundity  of  the  earth.  There  are  spots 
where  you  walk  on  sugar  of  the  isles,  (con- 
trasted, in  the  French  mind,  with  beet-root 
sugar)  ;  and  the  honied  odour  of  the  saccha- 
rine produce,  in  this  degree  of  concentration, 
seizes  you  by  the  throat.  Moreover,  there 
are  preserved  fruits,  spices  enough  to  convert 
the  Lake  of  Geneva  into  gravy,  and  logwood 
enough  to  dye  it  purple  ;  spirituous  liquors 
and  cottons ;  perfumes  and  evil-smelling 
drugs.  In  short,  the  nose  meets  with  its 
spectacles  and  its  surprises. 

You  contemplate  this  commercial  fair}— 
laud,  beneath  tlie  shade  of  a  forest  of  masts, 
wending  your  way  amongst  clerks,  casks,  and 
cables,  on  a  path  paved  with  plates  of  iron, 
which  are  polished  and  sometimes  broken  by 
the  wheels  of  drays.  It  is  here,  especially, 
that  you  form  an  opinion  of  the  splendour, 
the  preponderance,  and  the  wealth  of  this 
nation,  a  monstrous  polypus,  whose  suckers 
absorb  the  substance  of  every  country,  and 
whose  body  is  here.  But,  almost  imme- 
diately, you  meet  with  contrasts  ;  a  couple  of 
steps  from  this  superabundance  of  everything, 
you  behold  the  deprivation  of  everything. 
After  the  prodigies  of  mercantile  luxury, 
comes  the  hard  and  compulsory  indolence  of 
want.  The  quarter  Wapping,  from  the  Lou- 
don  Docks  to  the  Tunnel,  is  abandoned  to 
frightful  indigence.  You  catch  glimpses,  in 
courts  full  of  filth  and  fetid  sheds,  of  whole 
families,  haggard,  in  rags,  out  of  health,  and 
in  a  state  of  uncleauliness  which  turns  your 
stomach.  After  you  have  seen  the  rags  of 
London,  Callot's  sketches  look  like  plates 
from  the  Journal  des  Modes.  A  man  enters, 
head-first,  by  some  hole  or  other,  into  a  net- 
work of  rags ;  he  finds  some  point  of  issue 


Chsrlos  Dickens.] 


HE-TOUCHING  THE  LOED  HAMLET.          [December  s,  1*7.]     515 


for  each  of  his  four  limbs,  and  he  is  fitted 
with  a  suit  of  clothes.  Of  a  pair  of  trowsers, 
there  is  sometimes  nothing  left,  except  a 
single  button-hole  ;  the  garment  is  philoso- 
phically put  on  ;  the  skin  of  these  miserables 
is  so  bronzed,  thickened,  and  tanned,  that  it 
serves  them  as  a  vestment,  as  far  as  the  eyes 
are  concerned,  and  gives  the  illusion  of  dress 
to  the  passers-by.  Providence,  who,  in  this 
country,  has  put  an  ingot  of  gold  into  so 
many  breasts,  has  clad  its  children  with  a 
skin  of  serge.  Every  mortal,  accoutered  in 
this  fashion,  and  showing  his  naked  flesh, 
would  take  it  as  a  derogation  to  wear  a  night- 
cap, or  a  cap.  They  are  crowned  with  a  little 
bit  of  hat ;  the  same  of  women,  even  of 
beggars. 

Admire,  on  the  cushions  of  that  carriage- 
and-four,  conducted  by  a  postilion  in  silk, 
admire  that  young  duchess,  radiant  with  ele- 
gance. Give  a  rapid  glance  at  her  spangled 
velvet  cloak,  a  master-piece  of  Parisian  art. 
In  a  fortnight  the  cloak  will  be  made  over  to 
her  children's  governess.  (Query,  whether 
the  lady's  maid  would  allow  of  such  an  irre- 
gular transfer  ? )  Fourteen  months  after- 
wards, the  cook  will  sell  it  for  old  clothes  ; 
the  article  gets  greasy  while  becoming  more 
popular.  Some  stall-keeper  will  turn  it,  and 
display  its  brilliant  wrong  side.  Then  it  will 
become  faded,  torn,  unravelled,  with  flutter- 
ing wings,  like  a  wounded  bird.  In  this  state, 
a  mendicant  will  pick  it  up  in  the  gutter,  and 
while  holding  out  her  hand  to  the  duchess 
for  alms,  will  show  her  grace  something 
which  she  will  not  recognise.  But  the  poor 
creature  has  received  three-pence.  That  will 
buy  bread  ?  No  ;  it  will  buy  gin  ;  and,  in 
the  evening,  you  will  see  her  children  naked, 
and  grovelling  on  a  heap  of  offal,  gnawing 
outcast  vegetables,  raw  carrots,  and  cabbage- 
stalks  ;  and  then  the  whole  family  will  go  to 
rest  upon  a  scanty  layer  of  pulverised  straw. 
The  national  delicacy  banishes  such  scenes  of 
famine  to  the  distant  shades  of  unseen  quar- 
ters. An  insufficient  remedy. 

Before  penetrating  into  the  Tunnel,  the 
.subterranean  bridge  which  passes  under  the 
Thames,  we  entered  a  tavern  to  cool  our  ex- 
terior, and  to  warm  our  interior  with  a  cor- 
dial dram.  People  drank,  standing  around 
the  counter ;  and  a  woman  offered  in  the 
same  basket,  by  way  of  refreshments,  little 
Malta  oranges,  as  well  as  cold  sheeps'  feet, 
half-cooked,  which  she  presented  on  the  point 
of  an  iron  fork,  with  a  little  salt  in  a 
paper.  These  light  pastimes  for  the  stomach 
are  intended  to  charm  the  interval  between 
v  meals ;  judge  from  this  of  the  sufferings 
which  hunger  must  inflict  on  such  magnani- 
mous appetites  as  the  English  possess. 

In  the  Tunnel — to  which  you  descend  by 
a  round  hole  some  hundred  feet  in  circum- 
ference, decorated  with  bright  coloured 
paintings,  and  flanked  by  a  couple  of  stair- 
cases— the  necessity  of  earning  a  livelihood 
gives  rise  to  painful  industries.  When  you 


have  entered  the  double  gallery,  whose 
vaults  describe  three  quarters  of  a  circle, 
the  air  becomes  thick  and  chilly ;  a  cold 
and  humid  vapour,  laden  with  sepulchral 
miasms,  shuts  in  the  view  at  twenty  paces' 
distance,  in  spite  of  the  light  of  a  hundred 
and  twenty-six  gas  burners.  It  seems  as 
if  one  would  be  sure  to  die,  if  one  spent  a 
couple  of  hours  in  these  hypogees  (that  is, 
under-earths  ;  but  what  will  the  Academy 
say  to  the  word  ? )  which  distil  water 
drop  by  drop,  till  it  collects  in  black  and 
slippery  puddles.  Between  each  pillar,  there 
are  shops,  kept  by  quite  young  girls  thus 
buried  alive.  Smiling  and  pale,  they  offer 
you  glass  articles,  enchanted  lunettes  (kalei- 
doscopes, perhaps),  panoramas  of  London, 
lots  of  small  tinware,  and  foreign  gewgaws. 
There  are  puppet-shows  and  performances 
on  the  accordion  and  the  serinette  in  this 
subterranean  passage ;  in  short,  they  con- 
trive to  exist  in  this  dwelling  of  death. 
What  maladies  unknown  to  the  land  of 
sunshine,  must  germinate  here  !  What  a 
capital  greenhouse  for  the  production  of 
morbific  rarities  !  But  liberty  is  opposed 
to  the  closing  of  these  stalls,  a  measure  in 
which  the  solicitude  of  the  government 
would  be  doubly  justified,  in  the  interest 
both  of  the  public  health  and  the  public 
morality  ;  for  commerce  here  is  only  a  pre- 
text for  something  less  respectable. 

At  this  humane  proposition  to  close  the 
Tunnel  bazaar,  we  take  our  leave  of  Mon- 
sieur VVey,  with  thanks  and  good  wishes. 

EE-TOUCHING  THE  LOKD  HAMLET. 


THERE  is  a  novel  called  the  Hystorie  of 
Hamblet,  printed  in  sixteen  hundred  and 
eight  for  Thomas  Pavier,  the  stationer  in 
Corne-hill,  of  which  only  one  known  copy 
exists,  and  which  novel  or  hystorie  had 
been  originally  published,  as  we  are  credibly 
informed  by  Mr.  Payne  Collier,  "  consi- 
derably before  the  commencement  of  the 
seventeenth  century."*  It  is  to  this  novel 
that  Shakspeare  is  believed  to  have  been 
partly  indebted — in  other  part,  to  the  older 
play,  generally  attributed  to  Thomas.  Kyd, 
and  which  was  acted  and  printed  before 
fifteen  hundred  and  eighty-seven.  This  novel, 
or  rather  hystorie,  is  a  considerable  improve- 
ment on  the  rough  chronicle  of  Saxo-Gram- 
maticus,  and  shows  how  the  refining  hand  of 
time  ameliorates  the  incidents  of  old  manners 
in  the  process  of  historical  repetition,  and 
that  a  tale  thrice  told  is  in  very  many  re- 
spects a  different  thing  from  one  told  only 
once.  How  the  tale  was  told  in  Kyd's  Ham- 
let, we  have  now  no  opportunity  of  knowing  ; 
but  it  must  have  presented  much  gentler 
features  than  the  draught  of  it  in  the  rude 
pages  of  the  Danish  chronicler,  since  this 

*  Sec  an  article  at  page  372  of  the  present  Volume, 
entitled  Touching  the  Lord  Hamlet. 


54G       [December  5, 1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOKDS. 


rCondueted  by 


second  version  of  the  story  has  received  much 
softening  in  Us  details,  and  much  philosophical 
illustration  in  the  super-added  reflections — 
in  fact,  had  evidently  been  touched  up  for  the 
sake  of  a  moral  application.  It  is  preceded 
•with  an  argument,  and  attended  with  mar- 
ginal indices,  all  affecting  the  profound  and 
solemn — setting  forth  how  "  the  desire  of 
rule  causeth  men  to  become  tray  tors  and 
murtherers,"  with  "  the  miserable  condition 
of  such  as  rule  over  others,"  and  how 
"  Eomulus,  for  small  or  uo  cause,  killed  his 
brother : "  adding  thereto,  the  opinion  of 
Cicero,  the  ambitious  and  seditious  orator  of 
Home,  who,  in  his  Paradoxes,  "  supposed  the 
degrees  and  steps  to  heaven,  and  the  ways  to 
vertue,  to  consist  in  the  treasons,  ravish- 
ments, and  massacres  committed  by  him  that 
first  layd  the  foundations  of  that  citty,"  All 
this  is  but  the  prelude  to  other  classical 
statements,  concerning  Tarquin  the  Elder, 
Servius  Tullius,  Absolon  and  David,  and  the 
Sultans  Zelin  and  Soliman ;  concluding  with 
pertinent  remarks  on  "  the  slowness  of  God's 
judgments,"  ventured  on  the  authority  of 
Plutarch  Opuscules,  and  which  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  an  apology  for  Hamlet's  own  tardy 
manner  of  taking  revenge  for  his  father's 
murder. 

I  will  now  mark  a  few  of  the  differences 
between  the  statements  of  Saxo-Grammaticus 
and  those  of  Belleforest,  from  whose  Histoires 
Tragiques  the  aforesaid  novel  or  hystorie  is 
taken — premising  that  the  novels  of  Belle- 
forest  began  to  be  published  in  fifteen  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four,  and  included  the  story  j 
of  Amleth,  under  the  following  title  :  "  Avec  ! 
quelle  ruse  Amleth,  qui  depuis  fut  Roy  de  j 
Dannemarch,   vengea  la  mort  de  son  pere  j 
Horvvendile,  occis  par  Fengon,  son  frere,  et 
autre  occurrence  de  son  histoire." 

The  assumption  of  madness  on  the  part  of 
young  Hamlet  is  dignified  by  the  novelist! 
with  classic  references.  Accordingly  we , 
are  instructed,  that  though  the  apparently  I 
demented  nephew  of  the  iisurper  "  had  beeue 
at  the  schoole  of  the  Romane  Prince,  who, 
because  hee  counterfeited  himselfe  to  bee  a : 
foole,  was  called  Brutus,  yet  hee  imitated  hia 
fashions  and  his  wisdonie."  He  made  indeed 
"sport  to  the  pages  and  ruffling  courtiers 
that  attended  in  the  court  of  his  uncle  and 
father-in-law  ; "  nevertheless,  "  the  young 
prince  noted  them  well  enough,  minding  one 
day  to  bee  revenged  in  such  manner,  that  the 
memorie  thereof  should  remaine  perpetually 
to  the  world."  For  the  justification  of 
Brutus'  conduct  we  are  then  referred  mar- 
ginally to  Titus  Livius  and  Halicarnassus, 
whom  we  are  directed  to  read.  Whereupon 
to  this  instance,  the  author  adds  the  example 
of  King  David,  "  that  counterfeited  the  madde 
man  among  the  petie  kings  of  Palestii/a  to 
preserve  his  life  from  the  subtill  practices  of 
those  kings."  I  note  these  particulars  be-j 
cause  in  them  are  suggestions  to  the  poet, 
•whether  Kyd  or  Shakspeare,  for  the  dramatic  , 


elevation  ot  the  subject.  Shakspeare  derived 
from  such  his  notion  of  the  famous  scene 
between  him  and  Ophelia  (act  three,  scene 
one).  Those  who  were  of  "quicke  spirits," 
ami  had  begun  to  suspect  that  under  Ham- 
let's seeming  "folly  there  lay  hidden  agreate 
and  rare  subtilty,"  lost  no  time  in  counselling 
"  the  king  to  try  and  know,  if  it  were  possi- 
ble, how  to  discover  the  intent  and  meaning 
of  the  young  prince  ;  and  they  could  find  no 
better  nor  more  fit  invention  to  intrap  him, 
than  to  set  some  f'aire  and  beawtifull  woman 
in  a  secret  place,  that  with  flattering  speeches 
and  all  the  craftiest  meanes  she  could  use, 
should  purposely  seek  to  allure  his  mind." 
But  Hamlet  had  a  friend,  who,  by  timely 
warning,  saved  him  from  the  snare.  "  He 
gave  Hamblet  intelligence  in  what  danger  he 
was  like  to  fall,  if  by  any  meanes  he  seemed 
to  obaye,  or  once  like  the  wanton  toyes  and 
vicious  provocations  of  the  gentlewoman  sent 
thither  by  his  uncle.  Which  much  abashed 
the  prince,  as  then  wholy  beeing  in  affection 
to  the  lady,  but  by  her  he  was  likewise  in- 
formed of  the  treason,  as  being  one  that  from 
her  infancy  loved  and  favoured  him,  and 
would  have  been  exceedingly  sorrowfull  for 
his  misfortune,  whorne  shee  loved  more  than 
herselfe."  In  all  this  (and  more  that  I  do 
not  quote),  we  have  the  two  episodes  of 
Horatio  and  Ophelia  distinctly  foreshai lowed. 
The  scene  of  this  incident  is  a  solitary  place 
within  the  woods,  the  one  evidently  in  which 
Saxo-Grammaticus  locates  the  absurd  eques- 
trian adventure  related  by  him,  but  for  which 
Belleforest,  like  a  true  Frenchman,  appears 
to  have  substituted  an  amorous  temptation. 
That  of  Hamlet's  interview  with  his  mother 
immediately  follows ;  but  there  is,  in  his 
account,  no  Hamlet  "  dancing  upon  the  straw, 
clapping  his  hands,  and  crowing  like  a  cock;" 
but  the  unfortunate  counsellor  of  the  king 
hides  himself  behind  the  veritable  arras  of 
the  play. 

Yet  the  imitations  of  chanticleer  are  not 
altogether  omitted  ;  they  are  cunningly 
modified.  Hamlet,  "  craftie  and  politique," 
according  to  Belleforest,  when  "within  the 
chamber,  doubting  some  treason,  and  fearing 
if  he  should  speake  severely  and  wisely  to 
his  mother  touching  his  secret  practices,  he 
should  be  understood,  and  by  that  means 
intercepted,  used  his  ordinary  manner  of  dis- 
simulation, and  began  to  come  like  a  cocke, 
beating  with  his  armes  (in  such  manner  as 
cockes  use  to  strike  with  their  wings)  upon 
the  hanging  of  the  chamber ;  whereby  feel- 
ing something  stirring  under  them,  he  cried, 
A  rat,  a  rat ! "  &c.  The  speech  thereafter 
made  by  Hamlet  to  his  mother  is,  in  the 
novel  and  improved  version,  quite  a  finished 
oration,  extending  to  several  pages,  au<),  with 
some  coarseness,  containing  not  a  few  poetic 
suggestions.  The  following  paragraph  is 
good  ;  and  reminds  us  of  a  passage  in  Milton, 
as  well  as  of  the  comparison  between  the 
two  brothers  in  Shakspeare's  tragedy. 


CtariesUickens.J 


KE-TOUCHING  THE  LORD  HAMLET.         [December  5>  1357.]    547 


"  It  is  licentiousness  only  that  hath  made 
you  deface  out  of  your  miiide  the  memory  of 
the  valor  and  vertues  of  the  good  king,  your 
husband  and  my  father  :  it  was  an  unbridled 
desire  that  guided  the  daughter  of  Roderick 
to  imbrace  the  tyrant  Feugou,  and  not  to 
remember  Horvendile  (unworthy  of  so 
strange  intertainnieut),  neither  that  he  killed 
Ms  brother  traitorously,  and  that  shee,  being 
his  father's  wife,  betrayed  him,  although  he 
so  well  favoured  and  loved  her,  that  for  her 
sake  he  utterly  bereaved  Norway  of  her 
riches  and  valiant  souldiers  to  augment  the 
treasures  of  Roderick,  and  make  Geruthe  wife 
to  the  hardyest  prince  of  Europe  ;  it  is  not 
the  part  of  a  woman,  much  lesse  of  a  prin- 
cesse,  in  whome  all  modesty,  curtesse,  com- 
passion, and  love,  ought  to  abound,  thus  to 
leave  her  deare  child  to  fortune  in  the  bloody 
and  rnurtherous  hands  of  a  villain  and 
traytor.  Bruite  beasts  do  not  so,  for  lyons, 
tygers,  ounces,  and  leopards  fight  for  the 
safety  and  defence  of  their  whelpes  ;  and 
birds  that  have  beakes,  claws,  and  wings, 
resist  such  as  would  ravish  them  of  their 
young  ones  ;  but  you,  to  the  contrary,  expose 
and  deliver  mee  to  death,  whereas  ye  should 
defend  me.  Is  not  this  as  much  as  if  you 
should  betray  me,  when  you,  knowing  the 
perverseuess  of  the  tyrant  and  his  intents, 
i'ul  of  deadly  couusell  as  touching  the  race 
and  image  of  his  brother,  have  not  once 
sought,  nor  desired  to  nude  the  meanes  to 
save  your  child  (and  only  son)  by  sending 
him  into  Swethland,  Norway,  or  England, 
rather  than  to  leave  him  as  a  pray  to  youre 
infamous  adulterer  1  Bee  not  offended,  I 
praye  you,  Madame,  if  transported  with 
dolour  and  grief,  I  speake  so  boldely  unto 
you,  and  that  I  respect  you  iesse  then  duetie 
requireth !  for  you,  having  forgotten  mee, 
and  wholy  rejected  the  memorye  of  the 
deceased  king,  my  father,  must  not  be 
abashed  if  I  also  surpasse  the  bounds  and 
limits  of  due  consideration." 

The  queen's  reply  to  all  this  is  not  with- 
out a  certain  dignity.  She  assures  her  son 
that  she  had  not  once  "  consented  to  the 
death  and  murther  of  her  husband  ; "  and 
Shakspeare  credits  her  with  this  assurance  in 
the  second  draught  of  his  tragedy.  Further, 
she  complots  with  Hamlet  in  his  purposes  of 
revenge. 

_The  story  of  Hamlet's  voyage  to  England  ; 
his  behaviour  there,  and  his  return,  with  the 
other  matters  to  the  end  of  his  story,  is  much 
the  same  in  both  accounts  :  that,  I  mean,  of 
Saxo-Grammaticus,  and  Belleforest.  But 
one  thing  must  be  especially  noted.  The 
melancholy  of  Hamlet  is  in  the  novel-historie 
treated  of  by  name,  and  the  philosophical 
cause  of  it  assigned— namely,  his  inclination 
for  the  supernatural.  "For  that  in  those 
dayes,  the  north  parts  of  the  worlde,  living 
as  then  under  Sathan's  lawes,  were  fall  of 
iuchanters,  so  that  there  was  not  any  youg 
gentleman  whatsoever  that  knew  not  some- 


thing therein  sufficient  to  serve  his  turue,  if 
need  required  :  as  yet  in  those  days  in  Goth- 
laud  and  Biarmy,  there  ai'e  many  that  knew 
not  what  the  Christian  religion  permitteth, 
as  by  reading  the  histories  of  Norway  and 
Gothland,  you  maie  easilie  perceive  ;  and  so, 
Hamlet,  while  his  father  lived,  had  bin 
instructed  in  that  devilish  art,  whereby  the 
wicked  spirite  abuseth  mankind,  and  adver- 
tiseth  him  (as  he  can)  of  things  past."  Here 
is,  manifestly,  the  suggestion  of  the  ghost, 
and  of  the  hero's  suspicion,  that 
"  The  devil  hath  power 

To  assume  a  pleasing  shape ;  yea,  and,  perhaps, 

Out  of  iny  weakness,  and  my  melancholy, 

As  he  is  very  potent  with  such  spirits, 

Abuses  me  to  damn  me." 

The  following  is  the  passage  that  cites  his 
melancholy  : — 

*'  It  toucheth  not  the  matter  herein  to 
discover  the  parts  of  devinatiou  in  man,  and 
whether  this  prince,  by  reason  of  his  over 
great  melancholy,  had  received  those  impres- 
sions, devining  that,  which  never  any  but 
himself  had  before  declared,  like  the  philo- 
sophers, who,  discoursing  of  divers  deep 
points  of  philosophy,  attribute  the  force  of 
those  divinations  to  such  as  are  saturuists 
by  complection,  who  oftentimes  speake  of 
things  which,  their  fury  ceasing,  they  then 
alreadye  can  hardly  understand  who  are  the 
pronouucers,"  &c. 

Here  we  have  the  melancholy  and  philo- 
sophical prince  and  superuaturalist  depicted 
to  the  life  ;  and,  furthermore,  in  passages 
which  we  have  no  room  to  cite,  the  subject 
enlarged  upon  and  enforced  by  extended 
reasonings,  and  historical  examples  in  refer- 
ence to  magical  operations.  Here,  too,  is 
drawn  out  at  full,  what  Shakspeare  only 
hints  at  in  the  matter  of  Ophelia  ;  that  is, 
the  want  of  self-control  in  Hamlet  with 
regard  to  women.  "This  fault,"  adds  the 
novel-historian,  "  was  in  the  great  Hercules, 
Sampson,  and  the  wisest  man  that  ever 
lived  upon  the  earth,  following  this  traine, 
therein  impaired  his  wit ;  and  the  most 
noble,  wise,  valiant,  and  discreet  personages 
of  our  time,  following  the  same  course,  have 
left  us  many  notable  examples  of  their 
worthy  and  notable  vertues."  In  a  word, 
the  tragedy  of  Hamlet  is  written  in  the  very 
spirit  of  the  Hystorie  ;  the  events  being 
restricted  within  dramatic  limits,  and  the 
action  sublimated  by  the  working  of  the 
poetic  genius  dealing  with  prosaic  and  merely 
didactic  materials,  extracting  their  essence, 
and  re-embodying  it  in  a  new  and  artistic 
form,  of  which  beauty  was  the  principal  and 
a  necessary  feature. 

It  may  thus  appear  that  it  was  not  at  a 
leap  that  the  author  of  the  tragedy  of  Ham- 
let effected  his  transit  from  the  chronicle  of 
Saxo-Grammaticus,  but  that  there  were 
intermediate  stages,  by  which  rude  history 
became  purified  into  philosophy,  and  was  pre- 
pared for  the  high  poetic  purpose  for  which 


548       [Decembers.  1SR7-1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


it  was  finally  destined.  We  thus  see  the 
epirit  of  Shakspeare,  and  perhaps  of  his  pre- 
decessor Kyd,  working  not,  alone,  but  in  com- 
muuion  with  the  spirit  of  the  epoch  in  which 
they  lived ;  while  that  spirit  itself  acknow- 
ledged its  relationship  with  the  past,  and 
the  various  changes  to  which  it  had  been 
liable  in  its  progress  towards  the  state  of 
perfection  in  which  our  poets  found  it.  And 
this  consideration  serves  to  explain  the 
immortality  of  those  works  which  were  the 
results  of  such  influences,  not  by  arbitrary 
creation  of  the  poet,  but  as  the  growths  of 
time,  and  the  products  of  nature  in  the 
appointed  order  of  her  manifestations. 


SAND  AND  ROSES. 


NOT  many  years  ago,  there  came  to  take 
up  his  abode  in  one  of  the  most  unfrequented 
streets  of  the  city  of  Cairo,  between  the 
Kara  Meydan  and  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings, 
an  individual  of  somewhat  mysterious  ap- 
pearance and  deportment.  It  did  not  even 
clearly  appear  to  what  country  he  belonged. 
A  tall  cap  of  a  peculiar  shape,  and  a  long 
gown  of  scarcely  any  shape  answered, 
in  a  certain  degree,  to  the  popular  concep- 
tion of  a  Persian ;  and  as  The  Persian  he 
was  usually  described  by  neighbours  who 
took  an  interest  in  his  proceedings.  Zarouk, 
the  black  coffee-house  keeper,  used,  it  is 
true,  sagaciously  to  remark,  that  the  yel- 
low and  sleek  aspect,  dreamy  eye,  and 
sensual  lip  of  the  sons  of  Ajern,  were  all 
wanting  in  the  stranger  ;  that  his  counte- 
nance might  have  belonged  to  a  true  Masre 
(Caireen),  and  that  his  acquaintance  with  the 
subtleties  of  Arabic,  and,  indeed,  with  Egyp- 
tian slang,  would  be  something  marvellous 
in  a  foreigner.  As  Zarouk  spoke  with  an 
unniistak cable  Suidan  brogue,  and  inter- 
larded his  talk  with  phrases  that  seemed 
borrowed  from  the  language  of  birds,  these 
critical  observations  were  never  received 
without  sarcasm  ;  though  in  the  end  people 
admitted  them  to  be  correct.  The  neigh- 
bouring barber  several  times  wittily  observed 
that  there  was  on  record  a  story  of  a  blind 
man  who  offered  himself  as  guide  in  a  strange 
city,  and  accidentally  went  to  the  right 
place  ;  which  anecdote,  and  an  allusion  to 
the  infinite  power  of  Allah,  were  considered 
exquisite  satire  on  Zarouk.  He  had  been  too 
many  times,  however,  shaved  on  credit  by 
the  barber  to  be  able  to  get  in  a  passion. 

The  Persian — for  so  we  may  call  the 
stranger  until  we  get  behind  the  scenes,  and 
discover  whether  or  not  he  merited  the  title 
— seemed  to  be  suspiciously  anxious  to  avoid 
public  notice.  He  accosted  the  landlord  of 
the  house  he  ultimately  occupied  in  a  ba/ar- 
shop,  came  with  him  to  inspect  the  premises, 
examined  whether  it  was  possible  for  neigh- 
bours to  overlook  his  court-yard,  complained 
that  a  full  view  coul;l  be  obtained  from  the 
gallery  of  a  neighbouring  minaret,  was 


scarcely  reassured  when  told  that  the  said 
minaret  belonged  to  a  ruined  mosque  ;  and, 
in  short,  took  no  pains  to  conceal  that  his 
chief  object  in  living  in  that  out-of-the-way 
place  was  concealment.  The  little  luggage 
he  possessed  was  brought  on  a  camel  from  a 
distant  wakalah  ;  and  the  porters  who  came 
with  some  simple  articles  of  furniture  were 
not  admitted  beyond  the  door,  except  in  the 
case  of  one  who  had  charge  of  a  heavy  divan, 
and  who  was  almost  insulted  by  a  mob  of 
inquisitive  neighbours  for  saying  that  he  saw 
nothing  extraordinary  in  the  house. 

The  Persian  was  not  alone.  He  came  ac- 
companied by  a  child  some  two  or  three  years 
old,  a  negress,  and  a  sturdy,  stout  Egyptian 
servant,  about  the  middle  age. 

"  If  he  will  not  speak  himself,"  observed 
the  barber  to  Zarouk,  "it  is  quite  certain 
that  garrulity  will  be  a  quality  of  one  of  the 
retainers ;  even  when  the  child  grows  a  little 
older  it  may  also  be  made  to  talk." 

All  this  sagacity  was  disappointed.  The 
negress  never  appeared  again,  except  when 
she  leaned  in  her  red  jacket  from  the  roof, 
looking  towards  the  sunset  ;  or  stood  and 
chaffered  for  bread-cakes  at  the  door.  The 
child,  also,  was  almost  constantly  confined, 
and  only  came  out  now  and  then  to  take  a 
few  steps  up  and  down  in  the  narrow  shade 
of  the  house,  holding  on  by  the  long,  thin 
finger  of  the  Persian.  As  for  the  Egyptian 
servant,  by  name  Saleh,  you  might  as  well 
have  tried  to  extract  information  from  a 
tortoise  ;  for,  when  questioned  directly  or 
indirectly,  he  became  as  silent  as  that  medita- 
tive reptile  ;  and  curiosity  was  abashed  by 
his  grave,  reproving  glance.  In  other  re- 
spects he  was  sensible  enough,  going  regu- 
larly to  Zarouk's  coffee-house,  being  sedu- 
lously shaved  every  three  days,  and,  in 
general,  behaving  like  a  man  who  wished  to 
become  popular.  He  might  have  aspired 
to  the  tyranny  of  the  quarter,  if  he  had  not 
indulged  in  the  criminal  luxury  of  a  secret. 

By  careful  computation,  the  barber,  who 
was  a  wise  fellow  in  his  way,  and  bore  the 
name  of  Mohammed,  discovered  that  there 
were  current  sixteen  different  answers  to  the 
question,  "  What  is  the  mystery  of  the  Per- 
sian's house  1 "  Without  counting  the  absurd 
suggestion  of  the  seller  of  melon-pips,  that  he 
might  be  the  pasha  himself,  desirous  of  ascer- 
taining what  was  the  condition  of  his  good 
subjects  of  that  quarter,  with  a  view  of 
making  them  all  a  handsome  present ;  or  the 
romantic  idea  of  the  bread-woman,  who  had 
six  children,  though  only  twenty  years  of 
age,  that  he  was  a  man  of  cannibal  tastes, 
looking  out  for  infants  to  satisfy  his  morbid 
appetite.  As  is  usual  in  such  cases,  however, 
none  of  the  guesses  in  which  idle  neighbours 
indulged  were  anything  like  the  truth. 

Let  us  enter  the  dwelling  of  the  supposed 
Persian,  and  examine  what  goes  on  there  ; 
and  if,  with  this  additional  information  not 
vouchsafed  to  the  barber,  nor  to  Zarouk,  nor 


Charges  Dickens.] 


SAND  AND  EOSES. 


[December  5,  185M       649 


to  the  seller  of  melon-pips,  nor  to  the  bread- 
woman,  we  find  it  impossible  to  arrive  at  a 
rational  conjecture  as  to  the  mystery,  the 
existence  of  which  is  evident,  we  shall  have 
received  a  great  lesson  in  modesty  and  reserve 
of  thought. 

In  the  first  place,  it  was  quite  evident 
that  the  Persian  had  no  occupation  by  which 
to  gain  his  living ;  arid  the  inevitable  in- 
feveiice  was,  that  he  must  be  a  man  of  means. 
These  means,  however,  were  small.  The  meals 
served  up,  morning  and  evening,  by  Saleh 
and  the  negress  to  the  Persian  and  the  boy 
(whom  we  do  not  call  his  son)  were  very 
frugal ;  for,  although  one  said  Aboni,  and 
the  other  Ibni,  it  was  easy  to  see  with  one 
eye  that  their  relations  were  quite  different. 
Even  when  the  boy  was  only  two  or  three 
years  of  age,  the  Persian  treated  him  with 
marked  respect,  and  always  served  him  first, 
under  pretence  of  affection,  but  in  reality 
from  a  feeling  of  duty. 

There  was  little  else  beyond  this  circum- 
stance to  notice  in  the  actions  of  the  inmates 
of  the  house.  In  all  other  particulars,  mat- 
ters went  on  there  very  nearly  as  in  other 
families  similarly  composed.  Morning,  noon, 
and  evening  brought  their  meals ;  and  after 
the  last  the  boy  was  undressed  and  put  to 
bed,  whilst  the  Persian  smoked  his  pipe  and 
looked  on  at  that  ceremony.  Then,  however, 
there  did  seem  something  odd  in  the  circum- 
stance that,  instead  of  retiring  to  rest,  this 
said  Persian  had  his  lantern  lighted,  and 
invariably  sallied  forth,  not  to  return  for 
many  hours.  Such  neighbours  as  were 
awake  to  observe  his  movements,  saw  the 
lantern  go  away  in  the  direction  of  the 
Kara  Meydan  ;  and  learned,  from  the  club- 
armed  watchman,  at  what  time  it  reappeared. 

Before  he  went,  the  Persian  said  to  Saleh  : 
"  Keep  a  good  guard,  Saleh,  and  sleep  with 
one  eye  open  and  one  ear." 

"Hader,"  replied  the  Egyptian.  "May 
this  night  be  more  fortunate  than  the  last !  " 

Then  the  Persian  went  forth  and  performed 
his  errand,  and  came  back. 

"  What  news,  O  master  ?  "  inquired  Saleh, 
as  soon  as  he  had  taken  the  stick  and  the 
lantern  from  the  Persian's  hand. 

The  question  always  excited  a  slight  move- 
ment of  irritation  ;  but,  a  little  while  after- 
wards, the  answer  would  be  given  in  a 
cheerful  voice  : 

"  God  is  great  and  merciful !  The  longer 
the  time  of  sorrow,  the  brighter  will  be  the 
joy  when  it  comes." 

Saleh  on  this  would  shake  his  head,  sigh, 
and  repair  silently  to  his  couch. 

"  I  know  that  curiosity  is  forbidden,  and 
that  chastisement  waits  on  it,"  the  negress 
sometimes  said  to  the  Egyptian  servant,  "but 
I  cannot  help  wondering  what  interest  you  ! 
can  have  in  this  conspiracy."  The  negress  was 
left  in  her  ignorance  by  Saleh ;  who  did  not 
deign  to  open  his  lips  to  satisfy  or  rebuke  her. 

In  this   way  time  passed  oil ;  nut  merely 


weeks  or  months,  but  years.  The  Persian 
never  pretermitted  his  nightly  excursions ; 
and,  although  Zai'ouk  once  tried  to  follow 
him,  no  one  ever  learned  whither  he  went. 
Indeed,  up  to  the  present  day,  the  gossips 
of  that  quarter  know  much  less  about 
the  whole  story  than  many  inhabitants 
of  distant  places  ;  because  very  few  profes- 
sionals have  as  yet  become  acquainted  with 
the  whole  details.  Mohammed-ibn-Davod 
Es-Rasheedi  seems  indeed  the  only  one  whose 
version  can  be  depended  on. 

The  boy  harboured  and  protected  by  the 
Persian,  was,  without  doubt,  remarkable  in 
every  respect.  The  beauty  of  his  counte- 
nance and  grace  of  his  demeanour  were  unde- 
niable even  from  the  earliest  years.  As  he 
grew  up,  moreover,  new  perfections  disclosed 
themselves  every  day.  By  the  time  he  was 
ten  years  old  the  negress  had  come  to  view 
him  as  wisdom  itself.  Saleh  admired  him  : 
even  the  Persian  was  sometimes  astounded 
at  his  remarks.  When  he  reached  the  age  of 
fifteen  he  looked  quite  a  man  ;  and  was  dis- 
tinguished by  gravity  of  mind  and  elegance 
of  manners. 

All  this  time  the  same  mysterious  way  of 
living  was  persisted  in.  The  whole  family 
seemed  perpetually  in  expectation  of  some 
event  that  did  not  happen.  Saleh  remained 
taciturn  with  the  neighbours  ;  and  the  Per- 
sian, regularly  every  evening,  went  out  with 
his  lantern,  and  returned  disappointed. 

From  a  very  early  period  the  youth,  who 
was  called  Hassan,  perceived  that  there  was 
something  abnormal  in  the  way  of  life  led  in 
that  house  ;  and  at  once,  with  childish  frank- 
ness, questioned  the  Persian,  and  endeavoured 
to  ascertain  the  truth. 

"  Ibni,"  was  the  reply,  "  it  is  not  proper 
that  thou  shouldst  know  the  secret  yet.  In 
good  time  I  shall  be  eager  to  tell  thee. 
Have  patience,  and  indulge  not  in  profitless 
curiosity." 

The  Persian  was  in  every  respect  a  good 
man,  but  his  sagacity  did  not  equal  his  good- 
ness. He  felt  the  importance  of  concealment  "r 
but  knew  not  how  to  repress  the  eager  desire 
for  information  natural  to  Hassan's  age.  He 
should  have  turned  the  youth's  attention 
into  other  channels. 

These  things  did  not  suggest  themselves  to 
him.  Hassan  was  allowed  or  compelled  to 
pass  the  whole  of  his  time  in  reading  or  me- 
ditation ;  and  no  one  observed  that  his  fond- 
ness for  the  first  occupation  gradually  dimi- 
nished, and  his  propensity  to  indulge  in  the 
other  became  stronger  every  day.  Woe  to 
him  who,  on  the  threshold  of  manhood,  sud- 
denly pauses  in  the  study  of  the  instruments 
of  future  action,  and  begins  to  anticipate  life, 
and  to  conquer  obstacles  in  thought,  which  he 
may,  perhaps,  never  venture  to  confront  in 
reality  !  Dreams  should  be  fragments  of  the 
past,  not  yearnings  for  the  future.  He  who 
prophesies  delight  to  himself  may  be  recom- 
pensed by  perpetual  sadness. 


550      [CecemberS,1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


(.Conducted  by 


Hassan  began  then  to  indulge  in  this 
dangerous  occupation ;  and  was  constantly 
disturbed  by  recurring  curiosity  as  to  his  own 
history  and  prospects.  After  one  or  two 
attempts,  he  abandoned  the  hope  of  obtaining 
information  from  the  Persian,  and  turned  to 
Saleh  ;  from  -whom  he  received  a  grave 
rebuke.  Being  a  youth  of  virtuous  mind,  he 
was  not  much  offended,  and  easily  persuaded 
himself  to  admit  that  what  was  not  told  him 
it  was  not  fitting  he  should  know. 

It  is  much  easier,  however,  to  make  such  an 
admission  than  to  act  upon  it.  The  thought 
that  there  was  a  mystery  in  his  existence, 
perpetually  recurred  to  Hassan.  It  made  him 
miserable.  What  if  his  own  existence  were 
concealed  with  an  evil  motive  1  What  if  some 
dreadful  conspiracy  were  in  progress,  in  which 
he  was  ultimately  to  be  made  an  instrument  1 
The  restlessness  natural  to  his  time  of  life 
found  occupation  in  the  discussion  of  this 
great  topic.  By  degrees,  encouraging  in  him- 
self a  suspicious  frame  of  mind,  he  began 
to  see  everything  in  a  very  different  light 
from  formerly.  All  the  actions  of  the  Persian 
and  of  Saleh  he  jealously  scrutinised.  The 
discretion  of  the  servant  was  taken  to  be  an 
admission  of  crime  ;  and  the  meditative  hours 
of  the  master,  often  interrupted  by  a  sudden 
start,  were  evidences  of  the  workings  of  a 
guilty  conscience.  Every  act  and  every  word 
of  these  two  men  were  made  to  conceal  a 
poisonous  meaning. 

The  Persian  and  Saleh  had  often  confiden- 
tial conversations  on  the  altered  demeanour 
of  the  young  man.  They  thought  they  dis- 
tinguished the  symptoms  of  incipient  love  ; 
and  wondered  to  themselves  who  could  have 
been  the  object  that  aroused  it. 

"This,  indeed,  would  be  a  misfortune," 
said  the  Persian,  sadly. 

"  It  is  better  not  to  speak  to  him  of  any- 
thing ;  but  to  contrive  that  he  should  re- 
main still  more  closely  confined,"  replied 
Saleh. 

The  increased  unwillingness  exhibited  to 
allow  him  to  move  abroad,  gave  fresh  im- 
pulse to  Hassan's  suspicion  ;  and  at  length 
he  resolved  not  to  remain  prisoner  any  longer, 
but  to  find  out  by  what  dark  projects  he  was 
surrounded.  The  means  which  Hassan  chose 
to  attain  his  object  were  characterised  by 
great  cunning,  and  a  certain  perverseness 
which  could  scarcely  fail  to  lead  to  evil  results. 
Having  once  convinced  himself  that  the 
Persian  was  his  enemy,  he  felt  it  to  be  lawful 
to  employ  all  means  to  over-reach  him.  He 
began  by  feigning  to  be  ill  ;  and  accepted, 
without  remorse,  the  kind  attentions  and  un- 
murmuring devotions  of  those  who  had  so 
long  protected  him.  Hassan  felt  the  bad 
effects  of  want  of  faith  ;  and  was  surprised 
and  distui'bed  by  finding  his  heart  harden 
toward  those  he  had  once  so  loved. 

He  did  not,  however,  desist ;  but  continued 
to  feign  illness;  until  the  learned  doctor  who 
was  called  in — having  ascertained  that  there 


was  no  disease  of  the  body — wisely  inferred 
there  might  be  a  disease  of  the  mind,  and 
recommended  that  Hassan  should  be  sent 
abroad,  to  wander  in  the  desert  and  among 
the  hills.  This  was  what  the  youth  wanted  ; 
and  he  immediately  took  advantage  of  the 
permission  granted  to  him. 

We  need  not  follow  him  in  his  walks 
amidst  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings,  and  in  the 
direction  of  the  Valley  of  the  Wanderings. 
They  often  lasted  the  whole  day,  and  some- 
times until  late  in  the  evening.  Hassan 
wished  to  accustom  his  friends  not  to  expect 
him  at  any  precise  hour,  and  without  regard 
to  him,  to  resume  their  ordinary  course  of 
life.  He  had  noticed  that  the  evening  expe- 
ditions had  been  suspended  during  his  illness ; 
and,  for  his  purpose,  it  was  necessary  that 
they  should  be  continued. 

At  length  all  things  fell  into  their  usual 
places:  except  that  Hassan,  not  without 
some  misgivings  on  the  Persian's  part,  be- 
came almost  a  stranger  in  the  house. 

"  We  shall  not  restore  him  exactly  as  we 
wished,"  said  he,  sadly. 

"Youth  is  difficult  to  guide,"  replied 
Saleh  ;  "  and  it  is  no  wonder  Hassan  begins 
to  long  for  action.  When  placed  on  the 
level  for  which  he  is  destined,  he  will  have 
enough  to  think  of." 

"  Blessings  on  thee  for  saying  so,"  said  a 
gentle  voice,  coming  Saleh  knew  not  whence. 
He  turned  pale,  and  his  teeth  began  to 
chatter ;  for  he  thought  he  was  in  the  pre- 
sence of  some  supernatural  being.  Both 
remained  a  long  time  silent,  and  as  no  other 
words  were  uttered  by  the  strange  voice,  the 
Persian  said : 

"  She  has  departed  ;  but  I  must  now  con- 
fess to  thee,  Saleh,  what  thou  dost  not  know. 
I  should  have  confided  in  thee  long  before, 
had  not  my  tongue  been  tied  by  a  binding 
oath." 

From  this  it  appears  that,  up  to  that  time, 
Saleh  had  known  but  a  very  small  portion  of 
Hassan's  history.  Yet,  when  the  story  of 
Hassan  was  told,  it  did  not  seem  so  won- 
derful as  Saleh  had  expected.  The  lad 
was  the  son  of  a  great  princess  whose  name 
is  not  usually  mentioned  by  the  narrator. 
She  had  secretly,  in  the  absence  of  her 
father,  married  a  young  man  who  had  no 
other  quality  than  goodness.  When  her  im- 
prudence was  discovered  —  or  rather  con- 
fessed ;  for  she  fell  on  her  knees  before  her 
parent,  and  presented  him  with  a  new-born 
babe, — terrible  was  the  anger  which  it  ex- 
cited. Her  father  seized  the  husband  she 
had  chosen,  cast  him  into  a  dungeon,  and 
denied  that  there  had  been  any  marriage.  He 
would  have  slain  the  boy  Hassan  had  not  her 
confidant,  whom  we  know  as  the  Persian, 
contrived  to  take  him  away,  and  convey  him 
for  a  time  to  a  foreign  country.  In  a  couple 
of  years  he  came  back,  and  hired  the  house, 
where  we  have  seen  him  living  ever  since, 
waiting  for  the  accomplishment  of  destiny. 


Charles  Diciens.] 


SAND  AND  ROSES. 


[December  5, 1357.]      551 


Hassan's  mother  was  a  woman  of  strong 
resolution;  but  she  could  not  over-ride  her 
father's  will.  What  else  could  be  done, 
however,  she  did.  Whilst  the  Persian  was 
away  in  Syria  with  her  child,  she  maintained 
a  constant  seci-et  correspondence  with  him. 
At  length  a  letter  was  intercepted  by  her 
father,  in  which  she  expressed  a  longing 
desire  to  behold  Hassan,  and  commanded  the 
Persian  to  return.  His  anger  was  great ;  but 
he  did  not  show  it  except  some  time  after,  by 
saying : 

"  Fatneh  Hanem,  go  down  on  thy  knees, 
and  swear  never  to  speak  to  that  child  of  sin, 
or  its  father  shall  be  at  once  slain  in  his 
dungeon.  Let  us  make  a  covenant  together. 
As  long  as  the  child  is  not  spoken  to  by  thee, 
and  is  ignorant  of  its  parentage,  he  shall  live. 
If  thoti  deceivest  me,  the  order  of  death  shall 
be  given." 

In  obedience  to  this  compact,  the  Lady 
Fatneh  abstained  from  speaking  to  the  little 
Hassan  when  he  was  brought,  according  to 
her  orders,  by  the  Persian  back  to  Cairo  ;  but 
she  hired  a  house  adjoining  that  in  which  she 
lived,  and  caused  an  opening  to  be  made 
through  the  party-wall  high  up,  so  that  she 
could  come  and  look  through,  and  gaze  at 
her  child. 

Thus  had  she  seen  him  grow  up.  It  was 
partly  by  her  influence  that  tlfe  doctor  had 
been  "impressed  with  the  idea  that  exercise 
was  necessary  to  Hassan.  She  first  had 
divined  that  his  mind  was  troubled;  but  it 
was  not  given  her  to  divine  what  was  the 
cause  of  his  trouble. 

"  Wonderful  are  the  ways  of  Providence  !  " 
said  Saleh,  when  he  had  heard  this  story ; 
"  and  it  is  possible  that  happiness  may  yet  be 
the  sequel  to  misfortune.  But  now  that  I 
know  so  much,  may  I  not  know  the  secret  of 
thy  nightly  wanderings  1 " 

"  When  we  were  on  our  way  back  from 
Syria,"  replied  the  Persian,  "  we  rested  at  a 
caravanserai.  I  sat  with  the  boy  on  my 
knees  in  the  light  of  a  lamp,  and  amused  my- 
self by  watching  the  smiles  that  rose  from 
his  young  dreams.  Suddenly  an  old  man, 
with  a  beard  white  as  a  flake  of  snow  that 
has  not  yet  touched  the  ground,  came  and 
stood  near,  and  looked  at  him  and  at  me, 
and  after  a  time,  uttered  a  cry  of  wonder 
and  love,  and  asked  me  my  story,  and  pre- 
vailed on  me  to  tell  it.  I  was  fascinated  by 
him,  and  could  not  resist  his  wishes.  He 
listened  patiently,  now  and  then  strugglin 
with  great  inward  emotion  ;  and  when  1  ha 
ended,  said  to  me,  'There  is  no  need  for 
despair.  All  will  come  right  at  last.  Go 
thou  to  Cairo,  and  obey  the  orders  of  the 
mother  ;  and  promise  me  this,  that  every 
night  without  fail,  thou  wilt  go  and  sit  for 
two  hours  after  the  ashe  under  the  shadow 
of  the  Bab  Yuweileh.  I  will  come  at  last ; 
and  joy  shall  succeed  to  sorrow.'  So  saying, 
he  stooped  and  kissed  the  child  on  the  cheek, 
and  went  his  way." 


"  And  thou  hast  waited,  O  master,  all  this 
time  ? "  exclaimed  Saleh. 

"  And  the  old  man  has  not  come." 

"  Perhaps  the  separator  of  companions  has 
visited  him." 

"  He  did  not  say, '  I  will  come  if  I  live,' 
but '  I  will  come  ; '  and  as  he  was  evidently 
a  pious  person,  there  is  no  doubt  he  was 
assured  thereof." 

These  waiters  on  Providence  then  sepa- 
rated ;  and  it  being  now  near  the  ashe,  the 
Persian  went  forth  in  the  direction  of  the 
Bab  Yuweileh. 

It  happened  that  that  was  the  very  even- 
ing on  which  Hassan  had  determined  to  put 
in  practice  his  plan  of  espionage.  I  He  was 
hiding  under  a  porch  when  the  Persian  eame 
forth  ;  and  having  waited  a  moment  came 
forth,  also,  and  followed  like  a  shadow. 

Another  time  the  Persian,  who  was  of  a 
cautious  temperament,  w&uld  have  looked 
around,  and  seen  that  his  footsteps  were 
dogged,  and  thus  avoided  coming  disaster  ; 
but  he  was  more  than  usually  absorbed  in 
meditation.  He  remembered  that  during 
several  evenings,  when  Hassan  was  ill,  he 
had  omitted  to  go  to  the  rendezvous  ;  and  he 
feared  that  the  old  man,  in  whose  word  he 
profoundly  believed,  might  have  come  on 
one  of  those  evenings.  However,  having 
prayed  with  his  heart  as  he  walked  along, 
he  became  more  calm  ;  and  arriving  near  the 
Bab  Yuweileh,  sat  down  on  the  stone  seat, 
which  he  had  occupied  at  the  same  hour  for 
so  many  years. 

His  patience  was  at  length  rewarded.  He 
had  not  sat  many  minutes  before  a  tall 
negro  bearing  a  huge  lantern,  appeared, 
corning  very  slowly  down  the  street.  Near 
behind  him,  supported  under  the  arms  by 
two  servants,  was  a  very  old  man,  whose 
white  beard  reached  below  his  waist,  and 
who  looked  to  the  right  and  to  the  left 
with  keen,  bright  eyes.  The  Persian  stood  up, 
crossed  his  hands  on  his  breast  and  waited. 
Presently  the  old  man  looked  at  him,  and 
said,  with  a  loud  voice, 

"  This  is  the  hour  I  have  wished  for.  Come 
forward,  O,  my  friend  !  " 

Hassan,  who  had  concealed  himself  in  a 
dark  place,  wondered  at  what  he  saw,  and 
strove  to  hear  the  words  that  were  uttered. 
After  a  while  the  old  man  drew  the  Persian 
out  of  hearing  of  the  servants,  towards 
the  place  where  the  youth  was,  and  said, 
thinking  himself  in  a  desert  place  : 

"  Come  here  again  to-morrow ;  and  we 
will  go  to  the  postern-gate  of  the  harem  ; 
and  when  we  have  said  '  Sand  and  roses,'  he 
who  opens  will  conduct  us  into  the  presence  of 
the  boy's  mother.  Then  we  will  discuss 
what  further  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  do." 

Hassan  was  at  once  convinced  that  it  was 
of  his  mother  they  spoke,  and  felt  marvel- 
lously indignant  that  he  should  have  hitherto 
been  kept  in  ignoi-ance  of  her  very  existence. 
"  I  will  go  and  say  '  Sand  and  roses,'  at 


552 


HOUSEHOLD 


(.Dcce 


the  gate,"  said  lie  to  himself,  "and  enter,  and 
throw  myself  at  her  feet,  and  say  to  her, 
'  Mother,  why  hast  thou  deprived  me  so  long 
of  thy  embraces  1 ' ): 

Full  of  the  idea  Hassan  returned  to  the 
house ;  and,  having  arrived  there  before  the 
Persian,  retired  to  rest.  No  one  suspected 
that  he  had  become  possessed  of  a  portion 
of  the  great  secret ;  not  even  the  mother, 
who  leaned  forward  as  soon  as  he  was 
asleep,  and  threw  deal',  loving  glances  and 
blessings  upon  him. 

Next  evening  Hassan  was  at  the  foot  of  the 
great  wall  of  the  harem  waiting  breathlessly 
for  some  one  to  come  and  open.  He  remained 
there  until  patience  was  nearly  exhausted. 
At  last  he  saw  a  light  coming  along  the 
street.  Presently  it  stopped  and  went  out,  and 
he  knew  that  the  old  man  and  the  Persian 
were  approaching  cautiously.  At  that  mo- 
ment the  postern  door  was  opened  suddenly  : 

"  What  is  the  word  1 "  said  a  voice. 

"  '  Sand  and  roses.' " 

"Then  come  in  quickly,"  said  the  voice  ; 
"  for  there  are  inquisitive  people  skulking 
along  the  wall."  The  door  was  closed  just 
as  the  Persian  and  the  old  man  came  up. 

"  This  is  very  strange,"  said  the  old  man. 
"  I  begin  to  be  afraid.  Some  one  went  in  just 
now." 

"  Let  us  wait,"  replied  the  Persian,  whom 
long  experience  of  disappointment  had  made 
patient. 

They  sat  down  and  waited.  Time  passed 
and  no  one  came  ;  nor  was  there  a  sound  of 
living  tiling  within. 

"Tliis  is  the  time  for  me  to  tell  thee  who  I 
am,"  said  the  old  man,  in  a  sad  and  for- 
boding  tone,  "otherwise  thou  mightst  never 
know." 

"  Is  there  misfortune  coming  1  "  asked  the 
Persian,  Wrapping  his  cloak  around  him  ;  for 
either  the  night  was  cold,  or  he  began  to 
shiver  with  fear. 

"  The  boy  Hassan,  whom  thou  hast 
watched  over,"  proceeded  the  old  man,  "  is  the 
son  of  ruy  son  ;  who  now,  for  twenty  years, 
has  been  a  prisoner  within  those  walls.  "VVe 
were  separated  long — long  jigo ;  and  there  i 
was  a  prophecy  against  our  meeting " 

The  old  man  was  about  to  tell  the  story  of: 
his  separation  from  his  son,  when  a  loud 
shriek  of  pain  resounded  within  the  harem. 
Soon  after,  as  they  looked  up,  a  red  light 
flashed  from  a  terrace  on  the  summit  of  the 
lofty  wall  ;  something  was  hurled  over  ;  it 
fell  heavily  to  the  ground.  Then  all  became 
dark  again,  and  si  lent. 

"  We  hud  better  light  our  lantern  and  see 
who  it  is  that  has  fallen,"  said  the  old  man! 
calmly.  "  I  think  that  nil  is  over." 

They  lighted  the  lantern  and  went  towards 
an  object  that  lay  at  the  foot  of  the  wall. 
It  was  a  human  form.  The  face  was  un- 


covered, but  unmutilated.  It  seemed  to  have 
belonged  to  a  man  in  the  prime  of  life. 

"It  is  difficult  even  for  a  father,"  said  the 
old  man,  ''  to  recognise  in  manhood  the 
offspring  he  has  left  in  early  youth  ;  but  my 
heart  tells  me  this  should  be  my  son.  T  have 
laboured  and  schemed,  and  prayed,  and  had 
visions,  in  vain.  This  should  have  been  the 
night  of  our  re-union  ;  and  we  are  re-unittd 
indeed,  but  not  as  was  promised.  Some 
accursed  one  has  crossed  our  path  and 
blighted  our  hopes." 

As  the  old  man  spoke  to  the  Persian,  who 
looked  on  in  speechless  amazement,  the  pos- 
tern gate  was  once  more  opened,  and  some 
one  was  violently  thrust  forth.  It  was  Hassan; 
who  threw  himself  on  the  dead  body,  weep- 
ing, and  not  uttering  a  word.  The  old  man 
now  made  a  signal,  and  his  servants,  who  had 
been  waiting  near,  came  forward.  They  took 
up  the  corpse,  and  moved  away  with  it. 
All  remained  silent ;  and,  if  their  movements 
were  watched,  no  one  made  a  sign. 

An  hour  afterwards  the  servants  and  the 
Persian,  and  Hassan,  and  the  old  man, 
entered,  bearing  the  body,  a  large  mansion  in 
a  distant  part  of  the  city.  No  one  cared  to 
enquire  of  the  wretched  son  in  what  manner 
this  ill-timed  curiosity  had  been  betrayed  to 
the  prince.  It  was  evident  that  an  interview 
had  taken  plac'e  between  him  and  his  mother  ; 
who  had  broken  her  oath,  carried  away  by 
affection.  The  long-threatened  revenge  had 
followed  immediately. 

The  story  does  not  say  that  Hassan  was 
reproached  in  words  for  the  misfortune  his 
untimely  inquisitiveness  had  caused  ;  but  it 
does  say  that  his  father  and  grandfather  were 
buried  in  one  tomb  on  one  day.  Shortly  after- 
wards there  was  a  magnificent  funeral  for  the 
daughter  of  the  priucessof  the  country.  Hassan 
looked  upon  all  these  misfortunes  as  punish- 
ments by  Heaven,  justly  inflicted  upon  him. 
He  retired  with  the  Persian  to  a  lonely  place 
in  the  desert,  and  spent  the  rest  of  his  life  in 
devotional  exercises ;  by  which  he  hoped  to 
atone  for  the  i-ecklessness  with  which  he 
had  jeopardised  the  existence  of  all  who  were 
near  and  dear  to  him. 

Price  Threepence,  or  stamped  Fourpcnce, 

THE    PE1ULS 

CERTAIN   ENGLISH   PRISONERS, 

AND    THEIR    TREASURE 

IN   W031EN,   I'iilLDREN,   SILVER,   AND  JEWELS. 

FORMING 

THE    CHRISTMAS    NUMBER 

Of  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  ;  and  containing  Thirty-six 
juries,  or  the  nmount  of  One  regular  Number  and  a  naif. 
Household  Words  Office,  No.  16,  Wellington  Street 
NiTtlt,  Strand.  Sold  by  all  Booksellers,  and  at  aQ  Bail- 
way  Stations. 


The  Itiyht  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSDHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  ly  the  Authors. 


Published  utthe  Office, No.  IK,  \Vellinstoo  Street  KOI  tli. Str.-.nd.    I'rimeU  l>v  l!im>,i 


White  (tit 


" Familiar  in  their  Mouths  as  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS."— 


A   WEEKLY   JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED    BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 


°-  403.] 


SATURDAY,  DECEMBER  12,  1857. 


(PBICB  2d. 
\  STAMPED  3d. 


BIDING  THE  WHIRLWIND. 


MY  railway  carriage  this  night  is  not  the 
padded  saloon  with  the  six  chocolate-coloured 
cloth  compartments,  the  blue  and  white  bind- 
ing, the  wicker  hat-rail,  the  cauldron-shaped 
oil-lamp  (reminding  us  of  the  street  lights  of 
our  early  childhood),  the  Scotch  shawls,  the 
Templar  caps,  the  sandwich-boxes,  the  wine- 
flasks,  the  fur  rugs,  the  light  literature,  the 
latest  newspaper,  and  the  languid  Corinthian 
first-class  passengers.  It  is  not  that  worn, 
dusty,  drafty,  bare  wooden  carriage,  which 
in  winter  is  an  ice  refrigerator,  chilblain  nou- 
risher,  and  rheumatism  cherisher,  and  which 
in  summer  is  an  oven  of  baked  varnish,  whose 
walls  are  decorated  with  that  highest  effort 
of  advertisiog  art — the  picture  of  the  man 
•with  the  excruciating  toothache,  who  would 
not  use  the  ointment  of  the  Druids,  and  who 
looks  at  you  and  your  companions,  the  com- 
mercial travellers,  piteously  through  the  long 
hours  of  the  night.  It  is  not  that  large, 
roomy  carriage,  with  the  high  wooden  sides 
and  the  extremely  narrow  doorway,  provided 
by  the  thoughtful  care  of  a  paternal  parlia- 
ment, at  the  rate  of  one  penny  per  mile,  in 
which  the  agricultural  body  is  conveyed  from 
place  to  place,  smelling  very  strongly  of  beer, 
of  cheese,  and  onions,  and  from  which  the 
agricultural  face  smiles  curiously  at  every 
station  out  of  those  small,  high,  barred  win- 
dows, which  remind  one  of  the  travelling 
caravan  which  contained  the  tigers,  or  a 
private  lunatic  asylum  of  very  severe  aspect. 
It  is  not  that  breezy,  open  truck,  in  which  a 
group  of  rough,  cheerful,  vocal  navvies  are 
conveyed  with  pickaxes  and  shovels  to  and 
from  the  scene  of  their  daily  labours.  It  is 
not  that  large,  red,  saloon  carriage,  embla- 
zoned with  the  national  arms,  in  which  busy 
men  are  always  sorting  letters,  and  sticking 
them  into  pigeon-holes,  and  making  up  and 
sealing  leathern  mail-bags.  It  is  not  that 
large  condemned  cell,  or  travelling  ware- 
house-looking carriage,  in  which  fat  carpet- 
bags, hat-boxes,  tin  cases,  and  corded  pack- 
ages are  all  huddled  together  in  close  com- 
panionship. My  railway  carriage  to-night, 
which  is  a  compound  of  the  coal-cellar,  the 
bakehouse  oven,  and  the  fiery  dragon,  is  the 
conductor,  the  ruler,  the  guardian,  and  the 
leader  of  all  these — it  is  the  engine. 


I  have  exchanged  the  comfortable  warm 
interior  of  my  first-class  carriage — with  the 
companionship  of  a  German  baron,  looking 
out  from  the  depths  of  a  cavernous  cloak, 
like  a  veritable  Esquimaux,  and  an  eminent 
French  banker  indulging  in  moody  memories 
of  the  hateful  sea — for  a  position  on  the  edge 
of  the  coke-tender,  sitting  with  one  foot 
upon  the  sand-box,  and  the  other  upon  the 
handle  of  the  coke-shovel, — a  position  which 
no  money  could  purchase,  comfortless  as  it 
may  seem,  but  for  which  I  am  indebted  to 
my  esteemed  friend,  Mr.  Smiles,  who,  honour- 
ably known  and  distinguished  in  the  ranks  of 
literature  himself,  is  always  ready  to  serve  a 
brother-labourer,  without  inquiring  too  curi-( 
ously  into  the  motives  of  his  eccentric  whims 
and  fancies. 

My  companions  are  Tom  Jones  of  Wolver- 
ton,  driver,  and  John  Jones  of  Lambeth, 
stoker ;  men  not  naturally  taciturn, — but 
whose  occupation  combining  constant  care, 
vigilance,  and  attention,  with  the  fact  that, 
on  an  engine  in  full  motion,  you  cannot  hear 
a  voice  above  the  roar  of  wind  and  steam, 
and  the  clatter  of  iron,— have  made  them 
averse  to  conversation.  The  large  clock  at 
the  station  is  at  the  time  for  starting — 
half-past  eight  P.M., — the  carriage-doors  are 
finally  slammed  to,  a  sudden  silence  per- 
vades the  place,  the  guard  blows  his  shrill 
whistle,  Tom  Jones  answers  it  with  a 
responsive  shriek  from  the  engine,  and  we 
start,  slowly  and  gently  from  London,  with 
our  mail  express  train  for  Dover.  The 
lights  are  just  being  extinguished  at  that 
strange-looking  Tooley  Street  Church — union 
of  the  ecclesiastical  and  the  gas-works  order 
of  architecture — as  we  emerge  from  the  iron 
shelter  of  the  station  into  the  outer  wind  and 
darkness.  Not  yet  into  the  darkness,  for  in 
front  of  us  is  a  brilliant  galaxy  of  red,  green, 
and  white  lights,  looking  like  a  railway 
Vauxhall — a  display  of  firewoi'ks — an  illu- 
mination— a  fete  in  honour  of  our  departure, 
or  a  large  variegated  orrery  suspended  in 
mid  air.  Further  on,  as  we  leave  the  discs 
and  semaphores  and  outbuildings  behind  us, 
passing  the  tan- yards,  and  branching  out  on 
the  network  of  rails  into  the  country,  about 
New-Cross,  we  appear  to  chase  a  solitary 
coloured  lamp  with  lightning  speed,  and  my 
imagination  pictures  us  running  towards  a 


VOL.  xvi. 


403 


554      (December  12. 1»7J 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


surgery  for  a  doctor,  in  a  very  energetic 
manner.  I  can  allow  my  fancy  full  play  in 
looking  at  these  signs  ;  but  to  steady,  patient 
Tom  Jones,  the  driver,  they  are  as  the  leaves 
of  a  book  in  •which  he  often  reads  a  lesson  of 
life  and  death  to  himself  and  his  heavy 
responsible  charge — signal  lessons  of  danger, 
caution,  and  safety. 

The  roaring  of  the  wind  and  the  throbbing 
of  the  engine  increase  as  our  speed  increases, 
nutil  I — who  am  seated  on  the  edge  of  the 
coke-tender,  with  my  head  above  the  skreen 
which  protects  the  driver  and  stoker — be- 
come buffeted  and  deafened,  and  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  keep  my  seat.  The  whole  country 
lies  under  a  thick  veil  of  dark  grey  mist,  and 
the  black  trees  and  hedges  rush  past,  casting 
a  momentary  shade  upon  the  vision.  On 
either  side  the  "white  telegraphic  posts  pass 
in  rapid  and  regimental  succession  the  whole 
way  through  the  journey.  The  small  frail 
stations  seem  to  totter  as  they  go  by ;  and 
we  greet  them  with  an  additional  roar,  like 
a  tiger  howling  for  prey.  When  we  rush 
through  an  arch  we  are  covered  for  an  in- 
stant with  a  circle  of  fire,  and  we  leave 
behind  us  wreaths  of  light,  white,  curling 
smoke.  I  look  forward,  and  I  see  a  faint 
glimmer  hovering  round  what  my  reason 
tells  me  must  be  the  funnel  of  the  engine, 
but  what  my  imagination  pictures  as  the  real 
driver  of  the  train,  a  stout,  round-shouldered 
individual,  with  a  short,  thick  neck,  and  a  low- 
crowned,  broad-brimmed  hat,  like  the  stage 
coachman  whom  I  remember  in  my  youth. 
He  sits  up  in  front,  as  if  upon  a  box,  tooling 
with  a  quiet  dignity  worthy  of  a  whip  of  the 
old  school  and  the  first  water. 

We  dart  across  the  country — between  high 
banks — through  valleys  of  chalk  and  sand — 
past  trees — past  roadside  houses  lighted  up 
with  the  fires  of  a  November  night — starting 
away  from  twinkling  villages  like  a  skittish 
horse,  or  rushing  madly  across  the  quiet 
street  with  a  roar  and  a  whirlwind.  While 
I  am  watching  and  speculating,  steady  Tom 
Jones  and  his  mate,  the  stoker,  have  never 
moved  from  their  posts,  looking  through 
their  two  large  glasses  in  the  skreen  before 
them  for  the  various  signals.  Before  me  is 
the  shining  brass,  and  steel,  and  iron  of  the 
engine,  a  tin  teapot  with  a  long  narrow  spout 
full  of  oil,  a  small  bundle  of  cotton  and  wool, 
the  stops  and  valves,  a  hand  lamp  with  a  red 
glass,  and  the  partly  opened  doors  of  two 
glowing,  evercraving  ovens — the  bowels  of 
our  steed — whose  fiery  hunger  John  Jones, 
the  stoker,  is  constantly  trying  to  satisfy 
with  coke.  When  the  doors  of  these  ovens 
are  open  it  is  useless  to  look  at  anything  in 
front,  for  the  eyes  are  blinded  with  the  glare, 
and  I,  therefore,  amuse  myself  by  watching 
the  chromatic  effects  of  the  light  upon  my 
garments  as  John  Jones  shovels  in  the  coke 
from  the  tender  behind  me.  My  brown 
trousers  turn  green,  and  my  reddish-brown 
tweed  overcoat  turns  first  a  whitish  drab, 


and  by  the  time  the  ovens  have  become 
nearly  choked  up  with  fresh  coke,  it  has 
changed  again  to  a  dark  rifle  green. 

A  shrill  whistle  is  given  and  we  enter  our 
first  tunnel.  The  roar  and  clatter  are  louder 
than  ever,  and  the  round-shouldered,  thick- 
necked  driver  in  front  sits  in  holy  calm  with 
a  halo  of  steamy  glory  round  his  head.  The 
light  seems  to  fall  in  streams  on  each  side 
from  the  top  of  the  arch  ;  and  when  we 
emerge  with  another  whistle  into  the  open 
air,  the  sky  spreads  out  suddenly  before  us 
like  a  fan. 

I  cast  a  look  back  at  our  train  and  see  a 
sheet  of  light  stretching  out  on  each  side  like 
a  couple  of  wings,  yellow  as  a  field  of  ripened 
corn,  and  divided  by  black  bars — the  reflec- 
tion of  the  spaces  between  the  carriages — 
falling  as  regularly  as  the  oars  of  a  state 
barge.  I  fancy  in  that  limekiln-shaped 
shadow  which  is  thrown  across  the  light,  and 
which  runs  up  the  chalk  cliff  as  we  go  through 
the  deep  cuttings,  I  trace  the  familiar  out- 
line of  my  friend  the  German  Baron,  who  is 
sleeping  luxuriously  in  his  warm  carriage  ; 
while  the  thin,  uneven  line  that  darkens  the 
cliff  on  the  other  side  must  represent  the 
form  of  the  French  banker,  who  is  probably 
dreaming  of  the  Credit  Mobilier,  and  for- 
getting, for  a  few  moments,  the  memory  of 
the  hateful  sea.  I  turn  to  look  again  at 
steady  Tom  Jones,  the  driver,  and  find 
him  wiping  the  steam  off  his  glass,  and 
keeping  his  never-ceasing,  vigilant  look-out 
a-head.  At  all  hours  of  tlie  day  and  night 
he  is  ready  to  ride  on  the  whirlwind  and 
direct  the  storm  ;  to  cast  into  the  shade  the 
performances  of  the  genii  of  Arabian  fables, 
and  career  through  the  air  at  the  rate  of  a 
mile  a  minute  with  tons  of  animate  and  in- 
animate matter,  for  the  very  humble  reward 
of  from  forty  to  fifty  shillings  a  week.  The 
unwavering  faith  of  the  public  in  Tom  Jones 
is  something  more  than  wonderful.  They  do 
not  know  him — they  do  not  require  even  to 
see  his  face ;  but  the  mother  trusts  him  with 
her  first-born,  the  children  trust  him  with 
their  father,  the  brother  trusts  him  with  his 
sister,  the  husband  trusts  him  with  his  wife, 
and,  what  is  perhaps  a  greater  mark  of  con- 
fidence, trusts  him  with  himself;  and  they 
all  believe  that  while  they  sleep  he  will 
watch — that  fog  and  rain  and  sleet  will  not 
blind  him — that  fatigue  and  exposure  will 
never  cause  him  to  close  his  eyes — that  frost 
and  snow  will  not  benumb  his  faculties — that 
desperation,  excitement,  or  mental  disease 
will  never  shake  the  steady  concentration  of 
his  thoughts  and  senses — and  that  where  the 
swerving  of  a  finger's  breadth,  or  the  care- 
lessness of  an  instant,  would  send  the  whole 
precious  freight  to  utter  destruction,  he  will 
steer  safely  through  all  difficulties,  and  punc- 
tually deliver  his  charge  at  the  appointed 
place  at  the  appointed  time.  And  the 
public  confidence  is  worthily  placed.  As  he 
stands  there  before  me  in  the  glare  of  the 


Charles  Diekeni.] 


RIDING  THE  WHIRLWIND. 


[December  12.185M       655 


coke  oven,  or  the  flickering  light  of  the  sta- 
tion in  the  middle  of  the  night,  carefully 
oiling  the  joints  of  his  engine,  he  is  the 
model  of  an  honest,  conscientious  workman, 
dutiful,  orderly,  and  regular.  May  his  shadow 
never  grow  less,  and  his  engine  never  grow 
rusty  ! 

The  increased  force  of  the  wind  and  fresh- 
ness of  the  air  denote  an  approach  to  the 
sea-coast,  and  in  a  few  minutes  we  are  before 
the  cokfc  ovens  of  Folkestone,  which  remind 
one  more  of  South  Staffordshire  than  of  Kent. 
A  run  through  the  glowing  tunnels,  and 
round  the  cliffs,  carries  us  safely  into  Dover, 
•where  we  part  company  with  the  Esquimaux 
German  Baron,  and  where  the  French  banker 
is  given  up  unconditionally  and  shudderingly 
to  his  natural  enemy  the  hateful  sea.  I  wish 
Tom  Jones  and  his  mate  good-night,  and  I 
sink  for  a  few  hours  into  numerical  insignifi- 
cance as  Number  Two  hundred  and  four,  or 
something  equally  high,  at  the  Lord  Warden 
Hotel,  trying  in  vain  to  sleep,  with  the  roar- 
ing wind,  the  hissing  steam,  and  the  clatter- 
ing engine  ringing  in  my  ears. 

Punctually  at  eight  next  morning,  I  again 
take  up  my  position  by  the  side  of  Tom 
Jones,  on  the  engine  ,of  the  London  express. 
The  morning  is  fine  and  clear  for  November, 
the  sea  is  breaking  quietly  over  the  sand  and 
stones  upon  the  beach,  and  the  sea-gulls  are 
flapping  their  long  wings,  and  circling  round 
the  funnel  of  our  engine,  which  does  not  look 
so  like  a  stage-coach  driver  of  the  old  school 
as  it  did  in  the  night-mist.  The  round 
shoulders  stand  revealed  in  the  morning 
light,  as  the  brass,  beehive-shaped  manhole  ; 
the  broad-brimmed  hat  is  nothing  more 
than  the  overhanging  scroll  top  of  the  engine 
chimney.  We  start  out  of  the  station,  along 
the  coast-curve,  at  a  fair  speed,  and  rush 
towards  what  appears  at  first  sight  to  be  two 
upright  letter-box  slips,  cut  at  the  base  of  the 
high,  steep  cliff,  but  which  develope,  as  we 
draw  nearer,  into  two,  narrow,  pointed 
arches,  like  the  entrance  to  some  old  monas- 
tery, or  cathedral.  They  are  surely  too 
narrow  to  admit  the  round,  broad  shoulders, 
and  the  low-crowned  hat,  and  yet  we  are 
rushing  towards  them,  reckless  of  conse- 
quences !  Tom  Jones  did  not  appear  un- 
steady last  night,  but  now  he  increases  the 
steam  when  he  ought — or  at  least  I  think  he 
ought — to  apply  the  brakes,  and  John  Jones 
seems  equally  careless.  I  see  before  me  the 
prospect  of  being  jammed  up  in  the  centre  of 
a  chalk-cliff,  and  dug  out  at  the  end  of  a  few 
centuries,  a  petrified  mass,  like  those  hares 
which  the  newspapers  tell  us  the  woodman 
sometimes  finds  imbedded  in  the  brave  old 
oak,  or  the  toad  which  the  geologist  discovers 
in  one  of  the  formations.  It  is  useless  for 
the  cold  mathematical  fiction-crusher  to  cry 
"  Fudge,"  and  say  that  I  knew  very  well  we 
were  making  for  an  ordinary  tunnel,  tra- 
versed by  some  sixty  trains  a  day.  Let  him 
put  himself  in  my  position,  on  the  tender  of 


an  engine,  going  at  the  rate  of  forty  miles  an 
hour,  towards  what  appears  to  be  a  common 
rat-hole,  at  the  foot  of  a  hill,  with  certain 
strings  issuing  from  its  mouth,  and  he  will 
find  even  his  sluggish  imagination  stimulated. 
Destruction  or  safety,  there  is  small  time  for 
reflection.  In  an  instant  we  are  at  the 
portals  of  the  cliff,  which  widen  at  our 
approach,  and  I  involuntarily  shrink  as  we 
plunge  through  them  into  the  thick,  black 
darkness. 

The  roar  increases,  and  the  hissing  is  as  if 
our  way  lay  through  Pandemonium,  and 
over  the  prostrate  bodies  of  a  thousand 
serpent  fiends.  There  is  not  a  glimmering 
of  light  now,  it  being  day,  except  when  the 
white  steamy  smoke  is  beaten  down  upon  us 
from  the  roof.  I,  who  look  out  a-head,  can 
at  last  discern  a  very  small  open  church- 
door,  and  through  it  I  can  see  the  faint  grey- 
blue  outlines  of  the  countryi  The  doorway 
appears  to  be  rapidly  advancing  towards  us, 
increasing  in  size,  and  the  country  becomes 
more  distinct,  looking  like  a  bit  of  valley 
scenery,  seen  from  some  large  old  cathedral 
aisle.  I  have  scarcely  time  to  admire  the 
setting  of  the  picture  formed  by  the  sharp, 
well-defined  outline  of  the  arch,  when,  with  a 
whistle,  we  find  ourselves  out  of  the  tunnel 
amongst  the  sea-gulls  and  the  hills.  I  now 
enter  into  the  excitement  of  the  whirlwind 
coach,  which  dashes  with  me  on  the  tops  of  high 
level  mountains,  passes  over  iron  bridges 
that  answer  the  never-ceasing  rushing  noise, 
with  a  responsive  roar,  rushes  down  again 
into  a  deep  valley  with  the  sandy  hills  almost 
closing  overhead ;  past  groups  of  white- 
shirted  labourers,  looking  like  a  flock  of 
sheep  ;  past  pastures,  in  which  the  quiet, 
grazing  cattle,  grown  wise  in  their  genera- 
tion, allow  us  to  rush  by  without  displaying 
either  fear  or  wonder. 

We  now  make  for  another  cliff  at  increased 
speed,  guiding  our  course  towards  a  small, 
round,  black,  target  mark  at  the  base,  about 
the  size  of  a  penny  piece.  As  we  draw 
nearer,  it  assumes  the  proportions  and  ap- 
pearance of  the  entrance  to  a  gas-pipe. 
Although  I  admit  that  our  success  was  very 
great  in  going  through  the  cathedral  aisle, 
still  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  round 
shoulders  are  rather  too  venturesome  in  try- 
ing the  passage  of  such  a  circumscribed 
tunnel.  But  the  railway  architect  delights 
in  a  close  shave.  He  sends  us  round  curves, 
and  under  bridges  within  a  foot  of  the  top 
and  sides — perhaps  a  yard,  but,  as  I  look  at 
it  from  my  point  of  view,  it  seems  about  an 
inch.  He  sends  us  past  walls,  past  stations, 
past  houses,  in  the  same  spirit  of  economising 
space  ;  and  although,  by  a  strong  effort  of  the 
mind,  we  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  it  is 
all  mathematically  correct,  atiU  it  is  very 
difficult  to  convince  the  unreasoning  senses  of 
the  fact,  especially  from  the  outside  of  an 
express  engine.  We  near  the  mouth  of  the 
tunnel,  which  opens  like  the  jaws  of  a  whale 


656      [December  It,  1857.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WOBDS. 


[Conducted  by 


to  receive  us,  and  with  a  wild  shriek  of 
the  steam  whistle,  we  are  again  in  utter 
darkness.  I  do  not  feel  my  hat  battered  in, 
and  I  therefore  conclude  that  the  round 
shoulders  have  received  no  injury.  I  can 
pardon  the  imagination  for  performing  any 
freak,  while  the  body  is  careering  through 
such  a  place.  Where  are  we  1  Where  are 
we  hurrying  to  ?  Are  we  in  a  main  sewer, 
or  a  dark  passage  leading  fathoms  deep  under 
the  sea  ?  Is  that  rushing,  hissing  sound  the 
cry  of  the  great  waters  as  they  pass  us  in 
headlong  fury  on  either  side,  full  of  strange 
and  novel  life  ;  full  of  prickly  star-fish,  and 
dull-eyed,  lai'ge-mouthed  fishy  monsters  ;  full 
of  a  wondrous  net-work  of  animal  vegetables, 
and  vegetable  animals  ;  and  do  I,  with  a 
sense  of  suffocation,  resign  myself  to  the  em- 
braces of  the  clasping  polypi  ?  Should  I  be 
astonished  at  a  merman  asking  for  tickets  1 
Certainly  not ;  Hor  should  I  be  astonished  at 
seeing  a  lurid  glare  coming  from  half-opened 
iron  doors  across  the  darkness,  and  agonised, 
hard-featured,  red-faced  men,  standing  to 
give  a  grim  welcome  to  the  awful  realms 
of 

I  look  out  a-head,  against  the  whirlwind, 
and  in  the  far  distance  I  see  a  small  light 
yellow  disk,  the  termination  of  the  tunnel, 
which  appears  like  a  full  moon  resting  on  the 
waters.  As  we  advance,  the  sides  of  the 
tunnel  glisten  with  a  faint  light,  and  T  appear 
to  be  flying  through  a  gigantic  telescope. 

The  scene  changes  again,  and  the  yellow 
circle  at  the  end  becomes  as  the  reflected 
disk  of  the  large  microscope  at  the  Poly- 
technic. Two  specks  pass  across  the  circle, 
like  the  insects  in  a  drop  of  water  ;  they  are 
railway  labourers  crossing  the  mouth  of  the 
tunnel.  The  disk  becomes  larger,  and  the 
outlines  of  country  are  seen  through  the 
blue  mist.  They  increase  in  distinctness,  and 
the  colours  fill  themselves  in,  one  by  one, 
until  the  whole  stands  revealed  as  a  perfect 
landscape,  into  the  midst  of  which  we  are 
suddenly  shot,  as  if  from  the  mouth  of  a 
cannon. 

On  we  go,  out  of  the  sun-light  into  the 
mist,  and  again  out  of  the  mist  into  the  sun- 
light ;  past  undulating  parks,  rich  with  the 
red-brown  trees  of  autumn  ;  past  quiet  pools 
and  churches  in  among  the  hills ;  past  soli- 
tary signal-men,  and  side  stations,  where 
weary  engines  rest  from  their  labours  ;  past 
hurrying  down-trains  with  a  crash  and  a 
whirl ;  and  at  last  through  arches,  in  amongst 
the  crowd  of  trains,  each  making  for  the 
London  terminus.  Then  come  the  churches 
and  chimneys,  the  line  ot  docks  and  houses, 
the  market-gardens,  the  tan-yards,  and  on 
the  line,  the  signal-houses,  the  coloured  sema- 
phore arms,  extended  like  the  variegated  sails 
of  a  windmill ;  the  men  waving  red  and 
green  flags,  as  if  in  honour  of  our  approach  ; 
the  other  men,  standing  motionless,  with 
projecting  arms,  like  raw  recruits  under 
exercise,  or  a  mesmeric  patient  in  a  state  of 


catalepsy ;  the  disks  hanging  like  enormous 
pairs  of  spectacles  across  bare  poles ;  the 
ringing  of  bells,  the  crowd  of  people,  the  final 
whistle  of  the  engine,  and  grinding  screech 
of  the  train. 

My  trip  has  been  short,  but  it  has  shown 
me  something  of  the  organisation  of  a  rail- 
way ;  and  the  order,  regularity,  care,  vigi- 
lance, and  subordinate  habits  of  the  officials. 
When  our  evening  train  in  future^  is  ten 
minutes  late  at  the  Claypool  Station,  and 
Mrs.  Contributor  hinted  that  the  dinner 
is  again  getting  cold,  I  shall  not  write  an 
indignant  letter  to  the  Times,  but  I  shall  say 
to  her  in  my  blandest  tones,  "  Better  late 
than  never,  my  dear.  I  might  have  been 
punctual  to  a  minute ;  but  as  there  was 
danger  on  the  line,  I  am  sure  you  would 
rather  have  the  mutton  spoiled,  than  have 
me  brought  up  the  lane  on  a  stretcher,  with 
my  lever  watch  beaten  several  inches  deep 
into  my  ribs,  and  my  usually  handsome 
countenance  in  such  a  state  that  it  would 
frighten  the  baby." 

THE  SUN-HOESE. 


WE  often  make  a  great  blunder  when,, 
snatching  up  an  old  fairy-tale  book,  hap- 
hazard, we  fancy  we  can  revive  those  plea- 
sant days  of  our  childhood,  in  which  we 
thought  that  the  absence  of  a  supernatural 
godmother  was  a  serious  defect  in  modern 
christenings  ;  that  a  gentleman's  second  wife 
was  sure  to  persecute  the  progeny  of  the 
first,  who  were  (or  was)  always  pretty,  and 
equally  sure  to  bring  into  the  family  an  ugly 
brat — the  result  of  a  former  marriage  on  her 
own  part — whom  she  spoiled  and  petted,  less 
from  motives  of  affection,  than  from  a  desire 
to  spite  all  the  rest ;  that  where  there  were 
three,  or  seven  children  in  a  household,  the 
youngest  was  invariably  the  shrewdest  of  the 
lot ;  and  that  no  great  and  glorious  end  could 
be  obtained  without  overthrowing  three  suc- 
cessive obstacles,  each  more  formidable  thait 
the  obstacle  preceding. 

It  is  not  to  a  vigorous  freshness  of  imagina- 
tion, but  to  a  total  absence  of  critical  com- 
parison, that  the  delight  with  which  a  child 
will  wade  through  a  thick  monotonous  book 
of  fairy-tales  is  to  be  attributed.  In  ninety- 
nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  neither  the 
imagination  that  creates  the  tale,  nor  the 
imagination  that  is  appealed  to,  is  of  a  very 
lofty  kind.  Ordinary  fairy-laud,  far  from 
displaying  a  wide  field  for  the  capricious- 
sports  of  the  fancy,  is  under  laws  of  the 
strictest  and  most  fettering  kind.  As  the 
ancient  Egyptian  sculptors  were  obliged, 
under  pain  of  death,  perpetually  to  execute 
the  same  figure  of  a  man,  without  being  in. 
the  slightest  degree  influenced  by  the  indivi- 
dual peculiarity  of  the  person  intended  to  be 
represented,  or  rather  symbolised,  so  do  the 
concoctions  of  fairy-tales  all  over  Europe  and 
Asia  seem  compelled  to  follow  certain  normal 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  SUN-HOESE. 


[December  12,  1857.]      557 


types,  very  limited  in  number,  the  essentials  1  story,  that  there  -was  once  a  country  so  pecu- 


of  which  must  never  be  departed  from.  If, 
for  instance,  the  tale-teller  wishes  to  make 
the  services  rendered  by  certain  grateful 
animals,  in  return  for  the  preservation  of 
their  lives,  the  subject  of  his  fiction,  he  may 
indeed  vary  the  description  of  animal,  and 
make  use  of  a  cat  where  another  prose  bard 
has  preferred  a  salmon  ;  but  throughout  all 
tales  on  this  subject,  the  preservation  must 
be  effected  in  the  same  way,  and  in  the  same 
way  must  the  grateful  service  be  rendered. 
The  uniformity,  indeed,  seems  too  prevalent 
to  be  accounted  for  by  tradition  ;  for  the 
same  story,  repeated  without  essential  modi- 
fication, will  frequently  be  found  among 
peoples  of  whom  there  is  no  proof  that  they 
ever  intercommunicated  with  each  other. 
Hence  a  theory  has  been  maintained,  to  the 
effect  that,  by  some  inherent  law  of  the 
human  mind,  the  same  combination  of  inci- 
dents is  framed  by  independent  nations, 
without  any  borrowing  at  all. 

Whatever  was  the  origin  of  the  staple 
fairy-tales — whether  they  were  invented  by 
some  one  nation,  and  then  diffused  by  ap- 
pointed missionaries  over  the  rest  of  the 
habitable  world,  or  whether  they  sprang  up 
spontaneously  and  simultaneously  in  various 
localities,  as  so  many  fungi  of  the  human 
brain — certain  it  is,  that  he  who  has  mastered 
about  a  score  of  these  fictions  will  tind  the 
fairy-reading  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  however 
serviceable  for  antiquarian  purposes,  the  most 
decided  failure,  as  a  source  of  amusement, 
that  the  imagination  could  conceive.  Whether 
the  personages  have  been  clad  in  the  rude 
attire  of  German  peasants,  by  some  for- 
gotten author  of  Marchen,  or  whether  they 
have  been  handsomely  provided  with  court- 
dresses  by  the  Countess  d'Anois  (we  beg 
pardon — "  D'Aulnoy,"  Mr.  Planche"),  they  re- 
main, for  the  most  part,  the  same  personages 
still,  and  they  do  the  same  things.  Occasion- 
ally, indeed,  comes  some  one  particular 
story,  that  stands  out  from  the  rest,  as,  for 
instance,  the  renowned  Countess's  Eameau 
d'Or ;  and  this  is  the  choice  bit  of  citron 
that  the  searcher  for  fanciful  delights  must 
accept  as  an  equivalent  for  huge  mouthfuls 
of  exceedingly  insipid  cake. 

Now,  such  a  bit  of  citron,  we  flatter  our- 
selves, we  discovered  the  other  day,  while 
turning  over  a  heap  of  Sclavonic  tales,  and 
finding  ourselves  bored  to  death  by  the 
constant  reappearance  of  Northern,  Arabian, 
French,  and  German  friends,  who,  because 
they  gave  Bohemian  names  to  their  articles 
of  clothing,  would  fain  pass  themselves  upon 
us  as  something  new  and  surprising.  The 
morceau  in  question  is  entitled  The  Sun- 
horse.  It  makes  its  appearance  as  a  product 
of  the  Slovacks,  and  we  are  indebted  for  its 
preservation  to  the  learned  J.  Eimavski, 
with  whose  name  all  our  readers  are,  of 
course,  perfectly  familiar. 

It  appears,  on  the  authority  of  this  Slovack 


liarly  situated  that  the  sun  never  shone  upon 
it  at  all.  "  What  was  the  cause  of  this  effect, 
or  rather  say  the  cause  of  this  defect,"  is  not 
explained ;  but  we  are  consoled  by  the 
information  that  the  absence  of  the  sun  was, 
in  some  measure,  compensated  by  the  king's 
possession  of  a  certain  horse,  with  a  bright 
star  in  his  forehead,  that  sparkled  in  every 
direction  with  a  light  equal  to  that  of  day. 
That  the  people  might  enjoy  the  benefit  of 
this  inestimable  treasure,  the  time  of  the 
horse  was  occupied  with  a  perpetual  tour 
from  one  end  of  the  land  to  the  other. 
Whatever  nook  or  corner  he  approached  was 
immediately  illumined,  but  it  grew  dark  as 
soon  as  he  had  left  it,  so  that  the  good  folks 
had  but  a  spasmodic  sort  of  day-light  after 
all.  Let  us  hope  that  the  national  pursuits 
were  in  accordance  with  this  singular  order 
of  things  ;  that  the  people  did  not  read  very 
bulky  volumes,  or  cast  up  very  long  sums,  or 
visit  very  large  crystal  palaces  ;  but  that  they 
had  the  wisdom  to  catch  opportunity  by  the 
forelock  with  all  rapidity  as  often  as  it  pre- 
sented itself,  and  as  speedily  to  let  it  go 
again. 

Let  us  resume.  Once  upon  a  time  the 
horse  was  missing,  and  great  was  the  terror 
spread  over  the  land.  The  spasmodic  system 
of  labour  was  brought  to  a  stand-still,  and  no 
work  was  done  by  anybody.  Eevolutionary 
meetings  were  held,  but  they  led  to  no  imme- 
diate result,  for  as  nobody  could  see  anything, 
there  could  be  no  show  of  hands.  However, 
they  served  to  alarm  the  king,  who  at  last 
adopted  the  only  course  that  seemed  con- 
ducive to  practical  utility.  Accompanied  by 
a  picked  body  of  retainers,  he  set  out  to 
search  for  the  horse. 

After  he  had  reached  the  boundary  of  his 
kingdom,  riding  through  pitchy  darkness  all 
the  way,  he  came  to  the  sunlit  part  of  the 
globe,  which  was  at  first  rather  foggy,  but 
brightened  as  he  proceeded.  Nothing,  how- 
ever, was  to  be  seen  but  a  thick  wood  that 
extended  in  all  directions.  For  miles  did  the 
king  travel,  but  still  there  was  the  wood, 
and  only  the  wood.  So  tired  did  he  get  of 
looking  at  trunks  and  leaves,  that  he  almost 
regretted  his  own  country  where  he  could 
see  nothing  whatever. 

At  last,  in  the  thick  of  this  wearisome 
wood,  he  found  a  miserable  cottage,  and, 
opening  the  door,  perceived  a  middle-aged 
man  absorbed  in  the  perusal  of  a  huge  volume 
that  lay  open  before  him  ;  but  not  so  utterly 
absorbed  as  to  prevent  him  thus  volubly 
addressing  the  king,  as  soon  as  the  latter  had 
saluted  him  with  a  bow  : 

"  I'm  reading  about  you.  You  are  looking 
for  the  Sun-horse.  It's  no  use  ;  you'll  never 
find  him  ;  but  trust  to  me,  and  I  will.  Go 
home  as  fast  as  you  can,  and  take  your  fol- 
lowers with  you,  with  the  exception  of  one 
man,  whom  you  will  leave  with  me." 

"  Oh,  wisest  of  the  human  race,"  grandi- 


658      [December  u,  1567.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


loquently  began  the   king     "great,  indeed, 
shall  be  your  reward " 

"I  don't  want  any  reward,"  replied  the 
inhabitant  of  the  hut,  somewhat  peevishly. 
"  I  only  want  you  to  go  home,  and  leave  me 
to  get  through  this  job  as  well  as  I  can." 

On  this  hint,  the  king  departed  with  a 
bow,  which  the  sage — as  we  shall  henceforth 
call  him — did  not  return,  being  re-absorbed 
in  his  big  book,  from  which  he  did  not  raise 
his  eyes  till  nightfall. 

At  day-break  on  the  morrow  he  set  out, 
with  his  single  attendant,  and  rode  straight 
through  six  successive  kingdoms.  At  the 
royal  palace  in  the  seventh  kingdom  he 
stopped,  greatly  to  the  joy  of  the  attendant, 
and  aatd  : 

."  There  lives  the  present  owner  of  the  Sun- 
horse  ;  you'll  have  the  kindness  just  to  wait 
here  while  I  turn  myself  into  a  green  bird, 
and  fly  up  to  yonder  balcony." 

"  Very  good,"  said  the  attendant. 

Accordingly  the  sage  effected  the  proposed 
transformation,  flew  up  to  the  designated 
balcony,  and  tapped  against  the  window  with 
his  beak.  It  was  opened  by  a  young,  hard- 
featured  woman,  royally  attired. 

"  O,  what  a  pretty  bird  ! "  exclaimed  the 
hard-featured  fair  one ;  "  and  what  a  pity  my 
husband  is  not  at  home  to  see  it !  But  no 
matter,  he  will  be  back  in  the  evening,  when 
he  has  finished  his  survey  of  a  third  part  of 
»  the  kingdom." 

Never  was  pet  animal  honoured  with  so 
circumstantial  an  ejaculation. 

"  Out  upon  the  nasty  thing ! "  yelled  a 
hideous  old  woman,  "strangle  it  at  once,  or} 
let  me  do  it  for  you."  And,  without  further 
ado,  she  made  a  sudden  rush  at  the  green 
bird,  who,  resuming  his  human  shape,  quietly 
walked  out  of  the  room. 

And  here,  critical  reader,  you  experience  a 
difficulty.  Granted  that  you  were  a  green 
bird  in  a  room  with  the  window  open,  and 
that  somebody  wanted  to  catch  you,  you 
would  rather  fly  out  of  the  aforesaid  window 
with  the  aid  of  your  good  wings,  than  go 
blundering  down  stairs  on  your  two  clumsy 
feet,  and  you  cannot  conceive  why  this 
method  was  not  adopted  by  the  sage.  We 
think  we  can  find  a  solution  in  the  name  of 
the  old  lady,  which  was  Striga, — obviously 
related  to  the  Greek  word  crrpty^,  signifying  a 
screech-owl, — since,  certainly,  a  man  would 
have  a  better  chance  of  escape  than  a  little 
bird,  if  a  screech-owl  was  the  pursuing 
foe.  Hence,  if  you  please,  you  may  in 
the  above  narrative  substitute  screech-owl 
for  hideous  old  woman,  provided  that  you 
can  satisfy  yourself  that  a  screech-owl  was 
the  probable  mother  of  three  hard-featured 
young  ladies. 

Of  Three  hard-featured  young  ladies  ? 
Yes  ;  because  precisely  the  same  adventure 
occurred  with  two  other  princesses,  resident 
in  the  same  castle.  We  do  not  follow  the 
Homeric  precision  of  the  Bohemian  chronicler 


in  repeating  the  same  story  of  peril  and 
escape  ;  especially  as  the  reader,  if  his  views 
in  this  respect  differ  from  oui's,  may  easily 
supply  the  deficiency,  by  reading  the  para- 
graph about  the  green  bird  three  times  :  so 
far  modifying  it,  as  to  make  the  second  prin- 
cess declare  that  she  expected  her  husband 
(who  had  gone  out  to  survey  two-thirds  of 
the  kingdom)  on  the  morrow  evening ;  and 
the  third  princess,  that  she  expected  hers 
(who  had  gone  out  to  survey  the  whole 
kingdom)  on  the  evening  after  the  morrow. 
By  way  of  elucidating  our  story,  it  is,  how- 
ever, as  well  to  state  that  the  kingdom  was 
under  /the  joint  rule  of  three  muscular 
brothers,  and  that  the  hard-featured  young 
ladies,  who  were  sisters,  and  daughters 
of  the  old  woman,  or  screech-owl,  were  so 
many  queen-consorts. 

The  adventures  of  the  sage  with  the  first 
two  kings  are  miserable  enough.  He  simply 
waylaid  them  and  killed  them,  as  they  came 
on  successive  evenings,  across  a  certain 
bridge.  But,  with  the  arrival  of  the  third 
king,  who  rode  on  the  Sun-horse,  our  story 
revives  again. 

As  soon  as  the  third  king  reached  the 
bridge,  which  was  stained  with  the  blood  of 
his  unfortunate  brothers,  his  first  feeling  was 
one  of  envy,  and  he  exclaimed :  "  What 
rascal  has  snatched  a  victim  from  my  royal 
vengeance  ? " 

Eushing  forward  with  his  sword,  the  sage 
showed  that  he  was  the  rascal  in  question. 
A  fierce  combat  ensued,  and  lasted  until  both 
combatants  were  fairly  tired  out. 

"  This  will  never  do,"  observed  the  sage, 
as  they  both  rested,  panting  ;  "  we  may  go 
on  for  ever,  this  way.  Suppose  we  turn  our- 
selves into  two  wheels,  and  roll  ourselves 
down  a  steep  hill,  on  the  understanding  that 
the  one  who  is  smashed  to  pieces,  is  to  be 
considered  the  loser." 

"  Nothing  can  be  easier  or  more  equi- 
table," replied  the  muscular  king,  and 
accordingly  they  walked  not  unsociabiy 
together,  to  the  top  of  a  steep  hill,  whence, 
having  accomplished  the  transformation 
agreed  upon,  they  rolled  down,  dashing 
against  each  other  by  the  way,  until  the  kingly 
wheel  was  fairly  demolished. 

"  Ha !  ha !  there's  an  end  of  you,"  said 
the  sage,  resuming  his  original  shape. 

"Not  at  all,"  replied  the  king,  going 
through  a  similar  process  ;  "you  have  only 
broken  my  little  finger.  However,  I  have  a 
better  plan  to  propose.  Let  us  change  our- 
selves into  two  flames — I'll  be  red  and  you 
shall  be  white — and  see  which  can  first  put 
out  the  other." 

"  Agreed !  "  replied  the  sage  ;  "  only  you 
shall  be  white,  and  I'll  be  red." 

"  Very  well,"  granted  the  muscular  king  ; 
"so  long  as  we  are  agreed  upon  broad  prin- 
ciples, we  need  not  quarrel  about  details," 

So  they  changed  themselves  into  two 
flames  j  and  began  raging  at  each  other  in  a 


Charlet  Dickens.] 


THE  SUN-HORSE. 


[December  12.  18S7.]      559 


most  frightful  way.  That  the  contest  did 
not  come  to  any  decisive  result  may  easily  be 
surmised,  since  the  faculty  of  burning  up 
another  flame  is  just  the  faculty  a  flame  does 
not  possess.  Luckily,  a  beggar  happened  to 
pass  that  way,  whereupon  the  white  flame 
cried  out : 

"  Pour  a  little  water  on  the  red  flame,  and 
I'll  give  you  a  penny." 

"No,  no,"  cried  the  other.  "Pour  a  little 
water  on  the  white  flame,  and  I'll  give  you  a 
ducat." 

The  beggar,  who  wisely  preferred  a  ducat 
to  a  penny,  extinguished  the  white  flame — 
thus  bringing  the  dynasty  of  the  three  kings 
completely  to  an  end.  The  sage  resumed  his 
original  shape,  swung  himself  on  the  Sun- 
horse,  flung  a  ducat  to  the  beggar,  and  rode 
off  at  full  gallop. 

The  scene  that  occurred  in  the  palace  after 
the  events  above  recorded  was  affecting 
enough.  The  walls  were  at  once  hung  with 
black  cloth  ;  the  three  widows  bewailed  aloud 
the  loss  of  their  three  royal  husbands ;  and 
the  old  lady,  who  seemed  more  in  anger  than 
in  sorrow,  stalked  through  the  rooms,  mut- 
tering, clenching  her  fist,  and  stamping  her 
foot — all  which  gestures  are  utterly  at  vari- 
ance with  the  hypothesis  that  she  was  a 
screech-owl.  Suddenly  she  stopped  ;  a  flash 
of  her  eye  seemed  to  indicate  the  occurrence 
of  a  bright  thought ;  a  stamp  of  the  foot, 
harder  than  those  which  had  preceded  it, 
denoted  revived  energy.  The  three  daugh- 
ters stared  in  the  midst  of  their  tears,  and 
asked  her  what  she  was  going  to  do  '{  By 
way  of  answer  she  calmly  seated  herself  on 
the  poker,  clasped  the  three  young  widows 
in  her  arms,  and  off  they  all  sailed  through 
the  open  air. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  sage  and  his  attend- 
ant had  been  travelling  through  a  desert 
country  with  nothing  to  eat,  and  getting  so 
exceedingly  hungry  that  they  almost  longed 
to  cut  a  steak  from  the  Sun-horse.  At  last 
they  came  to  an  apple-tree  laden  with  the 
most  tempting  fruit,  which  the  ravenous 
attendant  desired  to  taste.  "  Stop  !  "  ex- 
claimed the  sage,  drawing  his  sword  and 
cutting  into  the  apple  tree,  from  which  blood 
copiously  flowed.  "That  is  the  old  lady's 
eldest  daughter  planted  by  her  mother,  on 
purpose  to  work  our  destruction,  and  if  you 
had  eaten  one  of  the  apples  you  would  have 
been  a  dead  man."  A  fountain  and  a  rose 
tree  likewise  offered  their  temptations — less 
potent  we  should  imagine,  considering  the 
appetite  of  the  tempted  party — and  were 
similarly  wounded  by  the  sword  of  the  sage, 
who  explained  that  they  were  the  second  and 
third  daughters  of  the  terrible  old  dame. 
We  purposely  cut  this  part  of  the  narrative 
as  short  as  we  can,  for  trees,  that  bleed 
when  they  are  cut,  are  among  the  commonest 
common-places  of  fairy  lore — to  say  nothing 
of  the  wound  inflicted  upon  poor  Polydore 
by  the  hand  of  the  piuus  Eneas,  as  re- 


corded in  the  third  book  of  Virgil's  immortal 
epic. 

When  the  adventurous  pair  had  proceeded 
beyond  the  limits  of  old  Striga's  domain,  a 
new  difficulty  arose  from  quite  another 
quarter.  A  little  man,  coming  nobody  knew 
whence,  crept  under  the  horse,  and  touched 
his  nose  with  a  bridle  which  he  held  in  his 
hand.  A  tumble  of  the  sage  from  his  steed, 
and  the  instant  departure  of  the  latter  with 
the  small  man  upon  his  back,  was  the  imme- 
diate consequence  of  this  operation.  The 
attendant  was  not  a  little  astonished  at  this 
sudden  change  of  fortune  ;  but  the  sage,  shak- 
ing himself,  quietly  declared  that  it  was  no 
more  than  he  had  expected. 

New  devices  were  now  requisite  for  the 
recovery  of  the  Sun-horse.  Assuming  the 
form  of  a  travelling  countryman,  the  sage 
followed  the  little  man,  and  offered  his  ser- 
vices as  a  groom.  The  offer  was  accepted, 
and  the  sage,  who  went  home  with  the  little 
man,  had  the  privilege  of  grooming  the  Sun- 
horse  every  day,  though,  much  to  his  annoy- 
ance, he  saw  no  chance  of  running  away  with 
him.  Had  the  little  man,  who  was  a  potent 
magician,  been  in  his  right  senses,  he  would 
have  detected  the  real  character  of  his  groom ; 
but,  poor  fellow,  he  was  so  completely  head- 
over-ears  in  love  with  a  certain  princess,  who 
lived  in  a  castle  situated  on  the  top  of  a 
poplar  tree  which  grew  out  of  the  midst  of  the 
sea,  that  he  could  think  of  nothing  else,  and 
even  had  a  notion  of  employing  his  disguised 
enemy  as  an  agent  in  his  hitherto  unpros- 
perous  love-match.  The  thought  soon  re- 
sulted in  action  ;  and  the  sage,  now  habited 
as  a  merchant,  was  despatched  in  a  boat  to 
the  foot  of  the  poplar  tree,  with  the  hint, 
that  if  he  brought  back  the  princess  he  should 
be  richly  rewarded,  but  that,  if  he  failed  in 
the  attempt,  his  punishment  would  be  severe. 

Arrived  at  the  foot  of  the  poplar  tree,  the 
sage  had  recourse  to  the  same  stratagem  that 
was  employed  by  the  Phoenicians  for  the 
abduction  of  lo,  as  narrated  in  the  Clio  of 
Herodotus.  He  tempted  the  princess  down 
into  the  boat  by  offering  sundry  articles  of 
finery  for  sale,  and  then  put  off  for  the  shore. 
At  first,  when  she  perceived  that  she  had 
been  tricked  into  the  power  of  the  little 
magician,  she  began  to  utter  loud  lamenta- 
tions ;  but,  in  the  course  of  conversation,  she 
soon  found  that  the  pretended  merchant 
shared  with  her  a  feeling  of  intense  hatred 
for  her  adorer,  and  before  they  reached  the 
shore,  an  alliance,  offensive  and  defensive, 
was  concluded  between  them. 

Highly  delighted  was  the  little  magician 
at  the  arrival  of  the  princess,  and  so  com- 
pletely was  he  besotted,  when  she  feigned  to 
return  his  affections,  that  he  immediately 
began  to  tell  her  all  his  secrets — one  of  which 
is  the  most  curious  thing  in  the  whole  story. 
He  told  her  that  in  a  wood  hard  by,  there 
was  a  large  tree — that  at  the  foot  of  the  tree 
there  waa  a  stag — that  inside  the  stag  there 


560       [December  12,  1857-1 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


was  ;i  duck — that  inside  the  thick  was  .1  golden 
egg — and  that  inside  the  golden  egg  was  his 
(the  magician's)  entire  strength.  All  this 
information  was  given  to  the  princess,  under 
the  most  solemn  promise  of  secresy,  and 
therefore,  says  the  satirical  Sclavonic  chroni- 
cler, she  communicated  it  to  the  sage,  whose 
course  of  action  was  now  prompt  enough. 
He  went  to  the  wood,  he  found  the  tree,  he 
shot  the  deer,  he  extricated  the  duck,  he  ex- 
tracted the  egg,  all  in  proper  House-that- 
Jack-built  order,  and  by  sucking  the  egg 
terminated  the  power  of  the  little  magician. 
The  princess  was  set  at  liberty;  the  Sun-horse 
was  taken  home  to  his  proper  country,  much 
to  the  delight  of  the  inhabitants  ;  and  the 
king  offered  the  sage  half  his  kingdom  as  a 
reward.  But,  the  sage  slapped  his  hand  on 
his  heart,  in  the  most  heroic  fashion,  and 
saying  that  he  preferred  his  little  hut  and 
his  big  book  to  all  the  kingdoms  in  the  world, 
stalked  out  of  the  court  in  a  high  state  of 
complacency. 

So,  if  our  readers  want  to  fit  a  moral  to 
this  Slovack  rigmarole,  they  may,  if  they 
please,  take  the  good  old  maxim,  "  Virtue  is 
its  own  reward." 


FAIK-TIME  AT  LEIPSIC. 


"HAVE  you  a  lodging  for  the  night, friend  ?" 
enquires  a  kind  voice  near  me,  speaking  to  my 
very  thoughts. 

"  No.     I  am  a  stranger  in  Leipsic." 

"  And  your  herberg  1 "     (House  of  call.) 

"  I  know  nothing  of  it." 

The  enquirer  is  a  little  man  with  a  thin 
face,  and  a  voice  which  might  be  disagreeable, 
were  it  not  mellowed  by  good  nature.  He 
tells  me,  then,  that  he  is  a  jewel-case  maker, 
and  has  no  doubt  that  I  shall  find  a  ready 
shelter  in  the  herberg  of  his  trade  till  the 
morning,  if  I  am  willing  to  accept  of  it.  It  is 
in  the  little  churchyard.  In  spite  of  this 
ominous  direction  I  shake  the  good  man 


him  in  the  darkness  and  confusion  of  the  rail- 
way-station, cling  mentally  to  the  little 
churchyard  as  a  passport  to  peace  and  rest. 
I  don't  know  how  it  is  that  I  escape  inter- 
rogation by  the  police,  but  once  out  of  the 
turmoil  of  the  crowd,  I  find  myself  wander- 
ing by  a  deep  ditch,  and  the  shadowy  outline 
of  a  high  wall,  seeking  in  vain  amid  the  driz- 
zling mist  for  one  of  the  gates  of  the  city. 
When  almost  hopeless  of  success,  a  welcome 
voice  enquires  my  destination  ;  and,  under  the 
gviidance  of  a  worthy  Saxon,  I  find  myself  in 


find  me  a  bed,  but  cannot  break  through 
the  rules  of  his  house  so  far  as  to  give  me 
any  supper.  It  is  too  late. 

Lighting  a  small  lanthorn  he  leads  the 
way  across  a  stone-paved  yard,  and  open- 
ing one  leaf  of  the  folding-doors  of  a 
stable  at  its  upper  end,  inducts  me  at 
once  into  the  interior.  It  also  is  paved 
with  stones,  is  small,  and  is  nearly 
choked  up  with  five  or  six  bedsteads.  The 
vater  points  to  one  which  happily  is  as  yet 
uutenanted,  and  says,  "Now,  make  haste, 
will  you  1  I  can't  stop  here  all  night."  Before 
I  have  time  to  scramble  into  bed  we  are 
already  in  darkness,  and  no  sooner  is  the  door 
closed  than  my  bed-fellows,  who  seemed  all 
fast  asleep  a  moment  before,  open  a  rattling 
fire  of  enquiries  as  to  my  parentage,  birth- 
place, trade,  and  general  condition ;  and  having 
satisfied  all  this  amiable  questioning  we  fall 
asleep. 

We  turn  our  waking  eyes  upon  a  misera- 
ble glimmering  which  finds  its  way  through 
the  wooden  bars  of  our  stable-door  ;  but  it 
tells  us  of  morning,  of  life,  and  of  hope,  and 
we  rise  with  a  bound,  and  are  as  brisk  as 
bees  in  our  summary  toilet.  With  a  dry  crust 
of  bread  and  a  cup  of  coffee,  we  are  fortified 
for  our  morning's  work.  I  have  a  letter  of 
introduction  upon  Herr  Herzlich  of  the 
Briihl,  at  the  sign  of  the  Golden  Horn, 
between  the  White  Lamb  and  the  Brass 
Candlestick. 

Every  house  in  Leipsic  has  its  sign,  and 
the  numbers  run  uninterruptedly  through 
the  whole  city,  as  in  most  German  towns,  so 
that,  the  Clown's  old  joke  of  "Number  One, 
London,"  if  applied  to  them,  would  be  no 
joke  at  all.  I  leave  the  gloomy  precints  of 
little  churchyard,  and  descending  a  slight  in- 
cline over  a  pebbly,  irregular  pavement,  with 
scarcely  a  sign  of  footpath,  arrive  at  the  lower 
end  of  the  Briihl.  There  is  a  murmur  of 
business  about  the  place,  for  this  is  the  first 
week  of  the  Easter  Pair,  but  there  are  none 


heartily  by  the  hand,  and,  although  I  lose  of  those  common  sounds  usually  associated 


with  the  name  to  English  ears.  No  braying 
of  trumpets,  clashing  of  symbols,  or  hoarse 
groaning  of  gongs ;  no  roaring  through 
broad-mouthed  horns,  smacking  of  canvas,  or 
pattering  of  incompetent  rifles.  All  these 
vulgar  noises  belonging  to  a  fair,  are 
banished  out  of  the  gates  of  the  city  :  which 
is  itself  deeply  occupied  with  sober,  earnest 
trading. 

Leipsic  has  the  privilege  of  holding  three 
markets  in  the  year.  The  first,  because  the 
most  important,  is  called  the  Ostermesse,  or 


Kleiue  Kirche  Hof  at  last.  There  is  the  her- !  Easter  Fair,  and  commences  on  Jubilee  Sun- 
berg  in  question,  but  with  no  light  —  ]  day  after  Easter.  It  continues  for  three 
welcoming  aspect  —  for  it  is  already  ten  j  weeks,  and  is  the  great  cloth  market  of  the 
o'clock,  and  its  guests  are  all  in  bed.  Drip-  j  year.  The  second  begins  on  the  Sunday  after 
ping  with  rain,  and  with  a  rueful  aspect,  I  6t.  Michael,  and  is  called  Michialismesse.  It  is 
prefer  my  request  for  a  lodging.  The ''vater"  the  great  book  fair,  is  also  of  thre'e  weeks' 
looks-  dubiously  at  me  out  of  the  corner  of  j  duration,  and  dates,  as  does  the  Easter  Fair, 
one  eye,  till  having  inspected  my  passport, ;  from  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century.  The 
he  brightens  up  a  little,  and  thinks  he  can  I  New  Year's  Fair  commences  on  the  First  of 


Charles  Dickcnt.] 


FAIR-TIME  AT  LEIPSIC. 


[December  12, 1857.1       561 


January,  and  was  established  in  fourteen 
hundred  and  fifty-eight.  Curiously  enough 
the  real  business  of  the  fair  is  negotiated  ia 
the  week  preceding  its  actual  proclamation  ; 
it  is,  then,  that  the  great  sales  between 
manufacturers  and  merchants,  and  their  busy 
agents  from  all  parts  of  the  continent,  are 
effected,  while  the  three  weeks  of  the  actual 
fair  are  taken  up  in  minor  transactions.  No 
sooner  is  the  freedom  of  the  fair  proclaimed 
than  the  hubbub  begins  ;  the  booths,  already 
planted  in  their  allotted  spaces — every  inch 
of  which  must  be  paid  for — are  found  to  be 
choked  up  with  stock  of  every  descrip- 
tion, from  very  distant  countries :  while  every 
town  and  village,  within  a  wide  radius,  finds 
itself  represented  by  both  wares  and  cus- 
tomers. 

It  is  not,  however,  all  freedom  even  at 
fair  time.  The  guild  laws  of  the  different 
trades,  exclusive  and  jealous  as  they  are,  are 
enforced  with  the  utmost  severity.  Jews,  in 
general,  and  certain  trades  in  particular, — 
shoemakers,  for  example, — are  not  allowed 
the  same  privileges  as  the  rest ;  for  their 
liberty  to  sell  is  restricted  to  a  shorter  period, 
and  woe  to  the  ambitious  or  unhappy  jour- 
neyman who  shall  manufacture,  or  expose  for 
sale,  any  article  of  his  trade,  either  on  his  own 
account  or  for  others,  if  they  be  not  acknow- 
ledged as  masters  by  the  Guild.  Every  such 
article  will  be  seized  by  the  public  officers, 
deposited  in  the  Rathhaus,  and  severe  punish- 
ment— in  the  shape  of  fines — inflicted  on 
the  offender.  The  last  week  of  the  Fair  is 
called  the  pay-week  ;  the  Thursday  and  Fri- 
day in  this  week  being  severally  pay  and  as- 
signation days.  The  traffic  at  the  Easter 
Fair,  before  the  establishment  of  railways, 
was  estimated  at  forty  millions  of  dollars,  but 
since,  by  their  means,  increased  facilities  of 
transit  between  Leipsic  and  the  two  capitals 
— Berlin  and  Dresden — have  been  afforded, 
it  has  risen  to  seventy  millions  of  dollars,  or 
ten  millions,  five  hundred  thousand  pounds 
sterling. 

In  the  meantime,  here  we  are  in  the  Briihl, 
a  street  important  enough,  no  doubt,  so  far  as 
its  inhabitants  and  traffic  are  concerned,  but 
neither  beautiful  nor  picturesque.  The 
houses  are  high  and  .fiat,  and,  from  a  pecu- 
liarity of  build  about  their  tops,  seem  to  leer 
at  you  with  one  eye.  Softly  over  the  pebbles ! 
and  mind  you  don't  tread  on  the  pigeons. 
They  are  the  only  creatures  in  Leipsic  that 
enjoy  uncontrolled  freedom.  They  wriggle 
about  the  streets  without  fear  of  molestation ; 
they  sit  in  rows  upon  the  tops  of  houses  ; 
they  whirl  in  little  clouds  above  our  heads  ; 
they  outnumber,  at  a  moderate  estimate,  the 
whole  human  population  of  the  city,  and  are 
as  sacred  us  the  Apis  or  the  Brahmin  bull. 
As  we  proceed  along  the  Briihl,  the  evidences 
of  the  unrestricted  traffic  become  more  per- 
ceptible. Square  sheds  of  a  dingy  black  hue 
line  one  side  of  the  way,  and  are  made  in 
such  a  manner,  that  from  being  mere  closed 


boxes  at  night,  they  readily  become  con- 
verted into  shops  in  the  daytime,  by  a  falling 
flap  in  front,  which  in  some  cases  is  adjusted 
so  as  to  perform  the  part  of  a  counter.  These 
booths  form  the  outer  depositories  of  the 
merchandise  of  the  fair,  and  are  generally 
filled  with  small  and  inexpensive  articles. 
The  real  riches  accumulated  in  Leipsic  during 
these  periods,  are  stowed  in  the  massive  old 
houses:  floor  above  floor -being  filled  with 
them,  till  they  jam  up  the  very  roof,  and  in 
their  plenitude  flow  out  into  the  street.  The 
booths,  where  not  private  property,  are 
articles  of  profitable  speculation  with  the 
master  builders  of  the  city.  They  are  of 
planed  deal  painted,  and  are  neatly  enough 
made.  They  are  easily  stowed  away  in 
ordinaiy  times,  and,  when  required,  are 
readily  erected,  being  simply  clammed 
together  with  huge  hooks  and  eyes. 

We  have  not  proceeded  half-way  down 
the  Briihl,  when  we  are  accosted  by  a  veri- 
table child  of  Israel,  who  in  tolerably  good 
English,  requests  our  custom.  Will  we  buy 
some  of  those  unexceptionable  slippers  ?  In 
spite  of  my  cap  and  blouse,  it  is  evident  that 
I  bear  some  national  peculiarity  about  me  at 
once  readable  to  the  keen  eyes  of  the  Jew  ; 
and  upon  this  point,  I  remember  that  my 
friend  Alcibiade,  of  Argeuteuil,  jeweller,  once 
expressed  himself  to  me  thus:  "You  may 
always  distinguish  an  Englishman,"  said  he, 
"  by  two  things  ;  his  trousers  and  his  gait. 
The  first  never  fit  him,  and  he  always  walks 
as  if  he  was  an  hour  behind  time." 

We  are  at  the  sign  of  the  Golden  Horn. 
Its  very  door-way  is  blocked  up  for  the 
moment  by  an  enormous  bale  of  goods, 
puffy,  and  covered  with  cabalistic  characters. 
When  we  at  length  enter  the  outer  gate  of 
the  house,  we  find  ourselves  in  a  small  court- 
yard paved  with  stone  and  open  to  the  sky, 
but  now  choked  with  boxes  and  packages, 
piled  one  upon  the  other  in  such  confusion, 
that  they  appear  to  have  been  rained  from 
above,  rather  than  brought  by  vulgar 
trucks  and  human  hands.  Herr  Herzlich, 
whose  house  this  is,  resides  on  the  third 
flooi'.  As  we  ascend  the  winding  stair  to 
his  apartments,  we  perceive  that  the  building 
occupies  the  four  sides  of  the  courtyard,  and 
that  on  the  third  floor  a  wooden  gallery  is 
suspended  along  one  side,  and  serves  as  a, 
means  of  connection  between  the  upper 
portions  of  the  house.  Queerly-shaped 
bundles,  and  even  loose  goods,  occupy  every 
available  corner  ;  and  as  we  Jook  down  from 
the  gallery  into  a  deep  window  on  the  oppo- 
site side,  we  perceive  a  portly  moustachoed 
gentleman  busily  counting  and  arranging 
piles  of  Prussian  bank-notes,  while  heaps  of 
golden  coin,  apparently  Dutch  ducats,  or 
French  louis  d'or,  are  built  up  in  a  golden 
barricade  before  him.  We  pause  before  the 
door  of  Herr  Herzlich,  master  goldsmith  and 
house-owner,  and  prepare  to  deliver  our 
letter  of  introduction.  They  are  trying 


562       [December  18,  1867.] 


[Conducted  by 


moments,  these  first  self-presentations ;  but 
Herr  Herzlich  is  a  true-hearted  old  Saxon, 
who  raises  his  black  velvet  skullcap  with  one 
hand,  as  I  announce  myself,  while  with  the 
other  he  lowers  his  silver  spectacles  from  his 
forehead  on  to  his  nose.  Then,  with  all  sort 
of  comforting  words,  as  to  my  future  pro- 
spects in  Leipsic,  he  sends  me  forth  rejoicing. 

Once  more  in  the  open  street,  we  pass  up 
the  crowded  way  into  the  market-place.  A 
succession  of  wooden  booths  lines  the  road ; 
and  many  of  the  houses  have  an  overhanging 
floor  resting  on  sturdy  posts,  which  makes 
the  footpath  a  rude  colonnade.  Here  are 
piled  rolls  and  bales  of  cloth,  while  the 
booths  are  crammed  with  a  heterogeneous 
collection  of  articles  of  use  and  ornament 
diversified  beyond  description.  A  strange 
knot  of  gentlemen  arrests  our  attention  for  a 
moment.  They  are  clad  in  long  gowns  of 
black  serge,  and  wear  highly-polished  boots 
reaching  to  the  knee.  Some  have  low- 
crowned  hats,  others  a  kind  of  semi-furred 
turban,  but  they  all  have  jet  black  hair 
arranged  in  innumerable  wiry  ringlets,  even 
to  their  beards.  They  are  Polish  Jews,  and 
trade  chiefly  in  pearls,  garnets,  turquoise,  and 
a  peculiar  sort  of  ill-cut  and  discoloured  rose- 
diamonds. 

The  market-place  is  scarcely  passable  for 
the  crowd,  and  the  wooden  booths  are  so 
thickly-studded  over  its  whole  space,  as  to 
allow  of  only  a  narrow  footway  between 
them.  Here,  we  see  pipes  and  walking- 
sticks,  enough  not  only  for  the  present,  but 
for  generations  unborn.  Traversing  the 
ground  by  slow  degrees,  we  bend  towards 
the  Dresden  gate,  and  come  upon  the  country 
people,  all  handkerchief  and  waistcoat,  who 
line  the  path  with  their  little  stores  of  toys, 
of  eggs,  butter,  and  little  pats  of  goats'-milk 
cheese.  Here,  is  a  farmer  who  has  straggled 
all  the  way  from  Altenburg.  He  wears  a 
queer  round-crowned  hat,  with  the  rim 
turned  up  at  the  back  ;  a  jacket  with  large 
pockets  outside,  a  sort  of  trunk  hose,  and  black 
boots  reaching  to  the  knee.  A  little  beyond 
him,  is  a  band  of  musicians  with  wind  instru- 
ments, in  the  full  costume  of  the  Berg- 
leute,  or  mountaineers  of  Freiberg.  With 
their  jackets  of  black  stuff,  trimmed  with 
velvet  of  the  same  hue,  and  edged  at  the 
bottom  with  little  square  lappets,  their  dark 
leggings  and  brimless  hats,  they  look  like 
a  party  of  Grindoff  the  miller's  men  in 
mourning. 

As  we  approach  the  gates,  the  stalls  and 
wares  dwindle  into  insignificance,  until  they 
disappear  altogether  ;  and  so  we  pass  out  of 
the  city  to  the  picturesque  promenades  which 
surround  it.  Afar  off  we  hear  the  booming 
and  occasional  squeal  of  the  real  fair.  It  is 
not  without  its  drollery,  and,  if  not  equal  to 
Old  Bartelmy  in  noise  and  rude  humour,  has 
a  "word  to  say  for  itself  on  the  point  of 
decency.  It  is,  however,  but  child's  play 
after  all,  and  abounds  with  toys  and  games, 


from  a  halfpenny  whistle  to  an  electric 
machine.  Leipsic  is  now  in  its  waking  hours ; 
but  a  short  time  hence  her  fitful  three  weeks' 
fever  will  have  passed  away,  and,  weary  with 
excitement,  or  as  some  say,  plethoric  with 
her  gorge  of  profits,  she  will  sink  into  a  soul- 
less lethargy.  Her  streets  will  become  de- 
serted, and  echo  to  solitary  footsteps  ;  and 
whole  rows  of  houses,  with  their  lately  teem- 
ing shops,  will  be  black  and  tenantless,  and 
barred  and  locked  in.  grim  security.  The 
students  will  shine  among  the  quiet  citi- 
zens ;  the  pigeons  will  flap  their  wings  in 
idleness,  an<l  coo  in  melancholy  tones  as  they 
totter  about  the  streets  ;  and  the  last  itine- 
rant player  (on  the  flageolet,  of  course)  will 
have  sounded  his  last  farewell  note  to  the 
slumbering  city. 


GEOEGE  LEVISON  ;    OR,  THE 
SCHOOLFELLOWS. 

THE  noisy  sparrows  in  our  clematis 
Talk'd  about  rain  ;  a  quiet  summer  dusk 
Shadowing  the  little  lawn  and  garden-ground 
Which  part  us  from  the  village  street  below. 
One  pale  pure  star — one  altar  newly  lit, 
Amidst  the  carbuncle  and  beryl  burn'd 
Of  twilight's  vast  cathedral  ;  but  the  cloudg 
Were  gravely  gathering,  and  a  fitful  breeze 
Flurried  the  foliage  that  till  now  had  droop'd 
A  picture,  steadfast  on  the  fading  sky, 
And  wafted,  showering  from  their  golden  boss, 
The  petals  of  the  white-rose  overblowu. 

Our  wall  being  low  upon  the  inner  side, 

A  great  white-rosebush  stoops  across,  to  note, 

Up  to  the  churchyard-gate,  down  to  the  brook, 

And  lifted  fields  beyond  with  grove  and  hedge, 

The  doings  of  the  village,  all  day  long; 

From  when  the  labourers  trudging  to  their  toil 

With  sickle,  scythe,  or  spade,  hear  outpost  cocks 

Whistle  a  quaint  refrain  from  farm  to  farm, 

Until  the  hour  of  shadow  and  repose, 

When  footsteps  cease,  and  every  taper's  quench'd, 

Children  that  pass  to  school,  or  home  again, 

One  with  an  arm  about  another's  neck, 

Point  to  the  fragrant  treasure,  clustering  rich, 

And  for  a  dropping  rosebud  pay  a  smile. 

The  sun  was  down  ;  the  loyal  garden-blooms 
Shut  all  their  dreaming  colours  ;  and  a  Flower 
Was  closing  like  the  rest,  a  Flower  of  Flowers. 
That  herald  star  which  look'd  across  the  world 
Found  nothing  prettier  than  our  little  child 
Saying  his  evening  prayer  at  mother's  knee, 
The  white  skirt  folding  on  the  naked  feet, 
Too  tender  for  rough  ways,  his  eyes  at  rest 
On  his  mother's  face,  a  window  into  heaven. 
Kiss'd  now,  and  settled  in  his  cot,  he's  pleased 
With  murmuring  song,  until  the  large  lids  droop 
And  do  not  rise,  and  slumber's  regular  breath 
Divides  the  soft  round  mouth.     So  Annie's  boy 
And  mine  was  put  asleep.     I  heard  her  foot 
Stir  overhead.     There  would  be  time  to-night, 
Before  the  rain,  to  loiter  half-an-hour 
As  far  as  to  the  poplars  down  the  road, 
And  hear  the  corncrakes  through  the  meadowy  vale, 
And  watch  the  childhood  of  the  virgin  moon 
Over  a  ruddy  sunset's  marge  of  cloud 
Sinking  its  crescent.     Sweetheart  of  my  life  ! 


Charle.Dickens.1      GEOEGE   LEVISON  j    OE,  THE   SCHOOLFELLOWS.    [December 


663 


Green  be  those  downs  and  dells  above  the  sea, 

Smooth-green  for  ever,  by  the  plough  unhurt, 

Nor  overdrifted  by  their  neighbouring  sands, 

Where  first  I  saw  you  !  first  since  long  ago, 

When  we  were  children  at  an  inland  place 

And  play'd  together.     I  had  often  thought, 

I  wonder  should  I  know  that  pleasant  child  ? 

Hardly,  I  doubt.     I  knew  her  the  first  glimpse  ; 

E'en  while  the  flexile  curvature  of  hat 

Kept  all  her  face  in  shadow  to  the  chin. 

And  when  a  breeze  to  which  the  harebells  danced 

Lifted  the  sun  a  moment  to  her  eyes, 

The  ray  of  recognition  flew  to  mine 

Through  all  the  dignity  of  womanhood. 

Like  dear  old  friends  we  were,  yet  wondrous  new  ; 

The  others  chatted,  she  and  I  not  much  ; 

Hearing  her  ribbon  whirring  in  the  wind 

(No  doubting  hopes  nor  whimsies  born  as  yet) 

Was  pure  felicity,  like  his  who  sleeps 

Within  a  sense  of  some  unknown  good-fortune, 

True,  or  of  dreamland,  undetermined  which  ; 

My  spirit  buoyant  as  the  gulls  that  swept 

That  line  of  cliff  above  the  summer  surge, 

Sinooth-wing'd  and  snowy  in  the  blue  of  air. 

Since,  what  vicissitude  !     We  read  the  past 

Bound  in  a  volume,  catch  the  story  up 

At  any  leaf  we  choose,  and  much  forget 

How  every  blind  to-morrow  was  evolved, 

How  each  oracular  sentence  shaped  itself 

For  after  comprehension. 

Even  so, 

This  twilight  of  last  summer,  it  befell ; 
My  wife  and  boy  up-stairs,  I  leaning  grave 
Against  the  window;  when  through  favourite  paths. 
My  memory,  as  if  sauntering  in  a  wood, 
Took  sober  joy  :  an  evening  which  itself 
Returns  distinctly.     Troops  of  dancing  moths 
Brush'd  the  dry  grass  ;  I  heard,  as  if  from  far, 
The  children  playing  in  the  village  street, 
And  saw  the  widow,  our  good  neighbour,  light 
Her  candle,  sealing  up  the  mail.     At  six, 
Announced  by  cheerful  octaves  of  a  horn, 
A  pair  of  winking  wheels  shake  the  white  rose. 
And  just  at  tea-time,  with  the  day's  work  done — 
A  link  of  the  year's  order,  lest  we  lose 
In  floating  tangle  every  thread  of  life — 
Appears  in  happy  hour  the  lottery-bag  ; 
Which,  with  its  punctual  "  Times,"  may  bring  us  wore 
From  Annie's  house  ;  or  some  one  by  the  Thames, 
The  smoky  friendly  Thames,  who  thinks  of  us  ; 
Or  sultry  Ganges,  or  Saint  Lawrence  chill, 
Or  from  the  soil  of  kangaroos  and  gold, 
Magnetic  metal !     Thus  to  the  four  winds 
One's  ancient  comrades  scatter  through  the  world. 
Where's  Georgy  now,  I  thought,  our  dread,  our  pride 
George  Levison,  the  sultan  of  the  school  ? 
With  Greek  and  Latin  at  those  fingers'  ends 
That  sway'd  the  winning  oar  and  bat ;    a  prince 
In  pocket-money  and  accoutrement  ; 
A  Cribb  in  fist,  a  Cicero  in  tongue  ; 
Already  victor,  when  his  eye  should  deign 
To  fix  on  any  summit  of  success. 
For,  in  his  haughty  careless  way,  he'd  hint — 
'  I've  got  to  push  my  fortune,  by-and-by.' 
How  we  all  worshipp'd  Georgy  Levison  ! 
But  when  I  went  to  college  he  was  gone, 
They  said  to  travel,  and  he  took  away 
Mentor  conjoin'd  with  Crichton  from  my  hopes, — 
No  trifling  blank.     George  had  done  little  there, 
But  could — what   could  he  not?     .  .  .     And   now 
perhaps, 


Some  city,  in  the  strangers'  burial-ground, 
Some  desert  sand,  or  hollow  under  sea, 
iides  him  without  an  epitaph.     So  men 
Slip  under,  fit  to  shape  the  world  anew ; 
And  leave  their  trace — in  schoolboy  memories. 

Then  I  went  thinking  how  much  changed  I  am 
Since  those  old  school-times,  not  so  far  away, 
Yet  now  like  pre-existence.     Can  that  house, 
Those  fields  and  trees,  be  extant  anywhere  ? 
Have  not  all  vanish'd,  place,  and  time,  and  men  ? 
!)r  with  a  journey  could  I  find  them  all, 
And  myself  with  them,  as  I  used  to  be  ? 
Sore  was  my  battle  after  quitting  these. 
No  one  thing  fell  as  plann'd  for ;  sorrows  came 
And  sat  beside  me  ;  years  of  toil  went  round ; 
And  victory's  self  was  pale  and  garlandless. 
Fog  rested  on  my  heart ;  till  softly  blew 
The  wind  that  clear'd  it.     'Twas  a  simple  turn 
Of  life, — a  miracle  of  heavenly  love, 
For  which,  thank  God  ! 

When  Annie  call'd  me  up, 
We  both  bent  silent,  looking  at  our  boy ; 
Kiss'd  unaware  (as  angels,  may  be,  kiss 
Good  mortals)  on  the  smoothly  rounded  cheek, 
Turn'd  from  the  window, — where  a  fringe  of  leaves, 
With  outlines  melting  in  the  darkening  blue, 
Waver'd  and  peep'd  and  whisper'd.    Would  she  walk 
Not  yet  a  little  were  those  clouds  to  stoop 
With  freshness  to  the  garden  and  the  field. 
I  waited  by  our  open  door  ;  while  bats 
Flew  silently,  and  musk  geranium-leaves 
Were  fragrant  in  the  twilight  that  had  quench'd 
Or  tamed  the  dazzling  scarlet  of  their  blooms. 
Peace,  as  of  heaven  itself,  possess'd  my  heart. 
A  footstep,  not  the  light  step  of  my  wife, 
Disturb'd  it ;  and,  with  slacker  pace,  a  man 
Came  up  beside  the  porch.     Accosting  whom, 
And  answering  to  my  name  :  "  I  fear,"  he  said, 
"  You'll  hardly  recollect  me  ;  though  indeed 
We  were  at  school  together  on  a  time. 
Do  you  forget  old  Georgy  Levisou  ?" 

He  in  the  red  arm-chair  ;  I  not  far  off, 
Excited,  laughing,  waiting  for  his  face: 
The  first  flash  of  the  candles  told  me  all : 
Or,  if  not  all,  enough,  and  more.     Those  eyeg, 
When  they  look'd  up  at  last,  were  his  indeed, 
Though  mesh'd  in  ugly  threads  as  with  a  snare ; 
And,  while  his  mouth  preserved  the  imperious  curve, 
Evasion,  vacillation,  discontent, 
Droop'd  on  the  handsome  features  like  a  fog. 
His  hair  hung  prematurely  grey  and  thin  ; 
From  thread-bare  sleeves  the  wither'd  tremulous  hands 
Protruded.     Why  paint  every  touch  of  blight? 

Tea  came.     He  hurried  into  ceaseless  chat ; 
Glanced  at  the  ways  of  many  foreign  towns  ; 
Knew  all  those  great  men,  landmarks  of  the  time, 
And  set  their  worths  punctiliously ;  brought  back 
Our  careless  years  ;  paid  Annie  compliments 
To  spare  ;  admired  the  pattern  of  the  cups  ; 
Lauded  the  cream, — our  dairy's,  was  it  not? 
A  country  life  was  pleasant,  certainly, 
If  one  could  be  content  to  settle  down  ; 
And  yet  the  city  had  advantages. 
He  trusted,  shortly,  underneath  his  roof 
To  practise  hospitality  in  turn. 
But  first  to  catch  the  roof,  eh  ?     Ha,  ha,  ha ! 
That  was  a  business  topic  he'd  discuss 
With  his  old  friend  by-and-by 


564      [December  IS.  1»7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


For  mo,  1  long'd 

To  hide  my  face  and  groan  ;  yet  look'd  at  him  ; 
Opposing  pain  to  grief,  presence  to  thought. 

Later,  when  wine  came  in,  and  we  two  sat 
The  dreary  hours  together,  how  he  talk'd  ! 
His  schemes  of  life,  his  schemes  of  work  and  wealth, 
Intentions  and  inventions,  plots  and  plans, 
Travels  and  triumphs,  failures,  golden  hopes. 
He  was  a  young  man  still — had  just  begun 
To  see  his  way.     I  knew  what  he  could  do 
If  once  he  tried  in  earnest.     He'd  return 
To  Law,  next  term  but  one ;  meanwhile  complete 
His  great  work,  "  The  Philosophy  of  Life, 
Or,  Man's  Relation  to  the  Universe," 
The  matter  lying  ready  to  his  hand. 
Forty  subscribers  more,  two  guineas  each, 
Would  make  it  safe  to  publish.     All  this  time 
He  fill'd  his  glass  and  emptied,  and  his  tongue 
Went  thick  and  stammering.    When  the  wine  came  in 
I  saw  the  glistering  eye ;  an  eager  hand 
Made  the  decanter  chatter  on  the  glass 
Like  ague.     He  grew  maudlin  drunk  at  last ; 
Shed  tears,  and  moan'd  he  was  a  ruin'd  man, 
Body  and  soul  ;  then  cursed  his  enemies 
By  name  and  promised  punishment  ;  made  vaunt 
Of  genius,  learning  ;  caught  my  hand  again, — 
Did  I  forget  my  friend — my  dear  old  friend? 
Had  I  a  coat  to  spare  ?     He  had  no  coat 
But  this  one  on  his  back  ;  not  one  shirt — see  ! 
'Twas  all  a  nightmare;  all  plain  wretched  truth. 
And  how  to  play  physician  ?     Where's  the  strength 
Repairs  a  slow  self-vuin  from  without? 
The  fall'n  must  climb  innumerable  steps, 
With  humbleness,  and  diligence,  and  pain. 
How  help  him  to  the  first  of  all  that  steep? 

Midnight  was  past.     I  had  proposed  to  find 
A  lodging  near  us;  for,  to  say  the  truth, 
I  could  not  bid  my  wife,  for  such  a  guest, 
In  such  a  plight,  prepare  the  little  room 
Call'd  "  Emma's"  since  my  sister  first  was  here. 
Then  with  a  sudden  mustering  up  of  wits, 
And  e'en  a  touch  of  his  old  self,  that  quick 
Melted  my  heart  anew,  he  signified 
His  bed  was  waiting,  he  would  say  good-night, 
And  begg'd  me  not  to  stir,  he  knew  his  road. 
But  arm  in  arm  I  brought  him  up  the  street, 
Among  the  rainpools,  and  the  pattering  drops 
Drumming  upon  our  canopy  ;  where  few 
Or  none  were  out  of  doors ;  and  once  or  twice 
Some  casement  from  an  upper  story  shed 
Penurious  lamplight. 

Tediously  we  kept 

The  morning  meal  in  vain  expectancy. 
Our  box  of  clothes  came  back  ;  the  people  said 
He  paid  without  a  word,  and  went  his  way, — 
They  knew  not  whither.     He  return'd  110  more. 
He  now  is  dead. 

Months  changed  about,  or  ere 
The  sudden  frost  of  that  unhappy  guest 
Rose  from  our  life, — which,  like  our  village,  keeps 
The  tranquil  centre  of  a  cultured  vale, 
Guarded  with  hills,  but  open  to  the  sun, 
And  every  star  successive,  east  or  west, 
That  glorifies  the  circle  of  the  year. 
A  grave,  secluded  life,  but  kindly  fill'd 
With  natural  influences ;  neither  void 
Of  strength  and  gladness  from  profounder  springs. 
And  since,  r.t  many  a  meditative  horn- 
By  day  or  night,  or  with  memorial  flash, 


I  see  the  ghost  of  Georgy  Levison ; 
A  shifting  phantom, — now  with  boyhood's  face 
And  merry  cm  Is;  now  haggard  and  forlorn, 
As  when  the  candles  came  into  the  room. 

One  sells  his  soul ;  another  squanders  it ; 
The  first  buys  up  the  world,  the  second  starves. 
Poor  George  was  loser  palpably  enough, — 
Supernal  Wisdom  only  knows  how  much. 


A  PIECE  OF  WORK. 


SOME  months  ago  we  were,  in  this  journal, 
laughing  at  a  gentleman  who  is  very  much 
in  earnest  over  the  establishment  in  Great 
Britain  of  what  is  known  abroad  by  some 
nations,  and  even  accredited  by  one  or  two 
governments,  as  the  Movement  Cure.*  So 
many  twists  of  such  a  finger,  such  and  such, 
turns  of  the  right  or  left  leg,  to  a  certain 
extent,  take  the  place  of  so  many  drachms  of 
such  a  tincture,  powder,  bolus,  or  electuary. 
We  were  amused — not  at  the  notion  of  a 
movement  cure,  but  at  the  ludicrous  minute- 
ness with  which  all  the  movements  of  the  . 
body  were  defined  for  use,  in  prescriptions  to 
be  carefully  compounded  by  the  gymnast  on 
the  patient's  person.  The  general  notion  of 
a  movement  cure  is  to  our  taste.  Stir,  is  the 
best  word  iu  many  a  recipe.  Housekeeper, 
be  careful  not  to  leave  oft'  stirring  till  the  pet 
is  taken  from  the  fire.  Guest,  keep  the  bottle 
moving  while  it  lasts.  Politician,  keep  the 
movement  up,  while  your  cause  has  a  spark 
of  life  in  it.  Man,  if  you  have  any  good 
matter  on  hand,  move  in  that  matter.  To  turn 
seriously  from  a  light  thought  to  an  earnest 
one,  we  know  in  whom  it  is  that  we  are  said 
"  to  live  and  move,  and  have  our  being," — to 
live  and  move. 

Is  there  a  better  human  remedy  against 
obstructions  and  dead-locks—spiritual,  intel- 
lectual, or  bodily — than  to  keep  moving  ?  A 
little  well-sustained  activity  of  movement 
will  enable  us  to  distance  trouble  on  the  road 
of  life,  and  overtake  content.  We  used  to  be 
told  at  school,  by  Quintus  Horatius  Flaccus, 
that  Cai'e  sits  behind  the  man  who  rides  on 
horseback  ;  the  staff  of  the  pedestrian  she 
fears  as  the  rod  by  which  she  has  been  ten 
thousand  times  corrected.  What  is  the  want 
of  the  age,  but  progress — forward  movement  ? 
What  is  a  man's  worldly  gain,  if  not  advance- 
ment—stepping on  ?  What  do  we  say  of  a 
legislator,  who  starts  an  idea  with  which  he 
hopes  to  benefit  the  nation  ?  He  rises  to 
move  something.  When  a  bank  smashes,  we 
say  it  stops.  When  a  friend  is  in  difficulty, 
we  say  he  is  at  a  stand-still.  Our  very  street- 
boys  tell  us  that  a  hopeless  matter  is  No  Go. 

For  all  the  ill  of  life  we  recommend,  then, 
some  form  of  a  movement  cure.  Monsieur 
Ling,  the  Swedish  Movement  doctor,  whose 
disciple  in  our  land  is  Dr.  Roth,  prescribes 
accordingly,  a  great  variety  of  movements, 
which  are  to  be  made  by  us  and  for  us.  He 
*  See  volume  xii.  page  191. 


Chartes  Diel<ern.| 


A  PIECE  OF  WORK. 


[December  12.1S57.]       565 


looks  upon  running,  leaping,  climbing,  row- 
ing, cricket,  as  a  French  cook  might  look  upon 
raw  beef.  He  has  his  own  system  of  fricasseed 
exercise  ;  or,  not  to  abate  anything  of  the 
honour  due  to  his  superior  profession,  he 
measures  it  out  into  mixtures.  Becipe  : — six 
revolutions  of  the  little  finger,  two  cracks  of 
the  great  toe,  one  swing  forward  of  the  right 
leg,  and  six  kneads  or  pinches  in  the  back, 
for  a  dose,  to  be  taken  night  and  morning.  We 
know  very  well  what  Mr.  Burchell  would  j 
have  said  to  that,  and  he  would  have  said 
well ;  for,  it  certainly  is  Fudge. 

But,  like  the  cold  water  cure,  it  is  on  the 
whole,  a  very  wholesome  whim.  It  is  an  ill 
whim  that  blows  nobody  good,  and  such  a 
whim  as  this,  blows  good  to  more  than  its 
projectors.  Stagnant  water  stinks.  The 
running  stream  gathers  no  filth.  The  rolling 
stone  gathers  no  moss  ;  that  is  to  say,  none 
of  the  vegetable  rust  which  shows  that  it  is 
rotting  at  the  surface. 

We  applaud,  therefore,  the  movement  cure 
as  an  idea ;  and,  for  the  support  of  some  ideas 
yet  more  serviceable  to  society,  let  us  ap- 
plaud also  Dr.  Both,  its  propagator  in  Great 
.Britain. 

We  are  not  quite  sure  whether  the  London 
College  of  Physicians  would  not  denounce 
this  one  of  their  brethren  as  a  quack.  We  do 
not.  We  define  a  quack  to  be  a  man  who 
trades  upon  the  false  pretence  that  he  can 
benefit  the  health  of  the  community.  Such  a 
man  may  be  justified  by  all  the  colleges  on 
earth  in  ordering  us  every  day  of  our  lives, 
the  blister  repeated,  a  draught  every  four 
hours,  and  the  pills  to  be  taken  at  bed-time. 
For  his  blister,  his  draughts,  and  his  pills  ;  if  j 
they  sap  the  foundations  of  life — as  in  the 
hands  of  many  a  practitioner  they  do — we 
denounce  him  as  a  quack.  Dr.  Both 
has  some  wholesome  notions,  and  he  makes 
it  the  whole  business  of  his  life  to  urge 
them  indefatigably.  He  writes  about  exer- 
cise to  the  presidents  of  the  Poor  Law 
Board,  and  of  the  Board  of  Health.  He 
says,  A  number  of  adult  disabled  persons 
are  kept,  year  after  year,  in  workhouses  or 
charitable  institutions,  and  very  little  or 
nothing  is  done  to  improve  or  cure  their 
chronic  ailments.  A  number  of  constitu- 
tionally weak  infants  and  children  are  in  the 
workhouses,  who  could  be  cured  or  con- 
siderably improved.  That  is  most  true. 
Nearly  one-half — at  any  rate,  two  in  five — of 
the  inmates  of  workhouses,  are  now  looked 
upon  as  permanently  unfit  for  active  duty  in 
the  world.  That  costs  life,  and  it  costs 
money  to  ratepayers.  Why  in  the  world,  do 
you  sit  down  content  with  such  a  state  of 
things  1  Dr.  Both  asks  us.  We  tell,  in  his 
own  words,  quoted  from  a  tract  four  pages 
long,  the  very  sensible  suggestion  to  which 
such  considerations  lead  him  ; 

"  All  constitutionally  weak  children  of  several  pa- 
rishes should  be  brought  into  an  Union  Sanatorium, 


where  all  the  available  hygienic  and  medical  means, 
according  to  the  present  state  of  science,  should  be 
used,  and  the  education  of  the  children  continued  as 
far  as  their  weakly  state  permits  ;  when  healthy,  these 
children  might  be  sent  to  the  union  or  charity  school. 

"  The  curable  adult  disabled  paupers  suffering  from 
chronic  affections  should  be  also  visited,  for  the  sake 
of  cure  or  improvement. 

"  The  expenses  for  the  cure  of  such  paupers  would 
not  be  much  more  than  the  expenses  in  the  work- 
house, where  such  paupers  are  frequently  kept  for 
years  in  consequence  of  their  having  been  neglected 
at  a  time  when  their  health  could  have  been  restored. 

"In  order  to  prevent  the  increase  of  the  number 
of  disabled  paupers,  it  is  most  important  that  the 
health  of  the  healthy  inmates  should  be  kept  up  to 
the  highest  standard,  for  which  purpose  the  masters 
and  matrons  of  workhouses,  as  well  as  all  school- 
masters and  schoolmistresses,  should  have  an  elemen- 
tary, popular,  and  practical  knowledge  of  the  injurious 
and  beneficial  influences  affecting  health.  This  sani- 
tary knowledge  should  be  imparted  to  the  children, 
whose  bodily  faculties  should  be  developed  simul- 
taneously with  their  mental  faculties. 

"  This  sanitary  knowledge  should  form  a  part  of 
the  instruction  in  the  training-schools  of  schoolmasters 
and  schoolmistresses,  of  whom  we  cannot  expect  that 
they  should  bestow  more  care  on  the  preservation  of 
the  health  of  their  pupils  so  long  as  they  are  entirely 
ignorant  on  the  subject ;  the  preservation  of  individual 
health  depends  upon  the  parents  and  schoolmasters, 
but  not  on  the  medical  man  who  enters  on  his  duties, 
in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  only  after  those  of  the 
educator  have  been  neglected. 

"  The  importance  of  a  large  garden  or  play-ground, 
as  an  indispensable  part  of  a  workhouse,  has  been 
sufficiently  advocated  and  proved  by  the  condition  of 
those  schools  and  workhouses  which  are  not  sufficiently 
provided  in  this  respect. 

"  The  kitchen  fire  in  workhouses  and  charitable 
institutions  can,  by  the  aid  of  hot  water  or  steam, 
provide  the  necessary  warmth  in  the  various  apart- 
ments, and  sufficient  warm  water  or  steam  for  baths, 
which  are  most  important  in  preserving  health,  in  cut- 
ting short  many  diseases  at  the  beginning,  or  in  curing 
them  when  developed. 

"  It  is  most  important  not  only  to  diminish  the 
amount  of  ill-health  at  present  existing  among  our 
poor  population,  but  we  must  prevent,  as  far  as  it 
depends  upon  ourselves,  all  the  causes  artificially  pro- 
ducing  disease  and  deteriorating  the  general  health ; 
the  number  of  inmates  of  our  workhouses  would  thus 
considerably  decrease,  and  a  diminution  of  poor's-rate 
would  go  hand-in-hand  with  the  improved  health  of 
the  paupers." 

Dr.  Both  is  great  also  on  baths,  and  has 
contrived  a  most  ingenious  "  Bussian  bath  " 
for  the  more  perfect  purification  of  the 
public.  Ablution  and  exercise  are  his  two 
main  ideas.  Wash  and  work  would  suit  him 
for  a  motto.  It  should  be  the  motto  of  all 
healthy  folks  who  take  health  by  the  fore- 
lock, and  retain  their  grip  upon  that  fugitive. 
We  often  see  the  lady  to  whom  "  No  Irish 
need  apply,"  advertising  for  a  servant  who, 
among  sundry  other  good  qualities,  is  to  be 
thoroughly  clean  and  active.  Thoroughly 
clean  and  active  !  What  more  can  she  be  ? 
There  is  no  virtue  on  earth  that  man  or  maid 
does  not  possess  who  is  in  every  respect — 


566      [Deeem  her  12,  l»7.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  by 


in  limb,  and   heart,  and  brain — active  and 
clean. 

But  we  go  back  to  the  activity — to  our 
active  doctor's  upholding  of  rational  gym- 
nastics, and  to  his  denunciation  of  that  system 
of  child-crippling  usual  in  schools,  where,  as 
he  quotes  from  Horace  Mann, "  the  child  who 
stands  most  like  a  post,  is  most  approved ; 
nay,  he  is  rebuked  if  he  does  not  stand  like  a 
post.  A  head  that  does  not  turn  to  the  right 
or  left,  an  eye  that  lies  moveless  in  the  socket, 
hands  hanging  motionless  at  the  side,  and 
feet  immoveable  as  those  of  a  statue,  are  the 
points  of  excellence,  while  the  child  is  echoing 
the  senseless  table  of  A,  B,  C." 

And  now,  let  us  be  just  to  "  Ling's  system." 
A  part  of  it,  consisting  of  "  Free  Exercises," 
needing  no  apparatus,  might  really  be  used  in 
England,  more  especially  in  connection  with 
those  unwholesome  forcing  pits  known  as  se- 
minaries for  young  ladies.  On  their  account 
we  should  be  very  glad  to  do  our  part  towards 
bringing  Swedish  gymnastics  into  fashion. 
Herr  Bollcher  (we  have  not  the  most  distant 
idea  who  Bollcher  is),  we  find  quoted  in 
our  doctor's  pamphlets  ;  and  he  says  to  the 
Germans  what  we  have  said  often  enough — 
no,  not  yet  often  enough — to  the  English. 
We  suppose  Bollcher  to  be  a  doctor  at  some 
German  Eational  Gymnasium.  "  We  will  not 
inquire,"  he  says,  "how  a  child  has  been 
brought  up  to  its  sixth  year  with  regard  to 
food,  clothing,  dwelling,  and  exercise  ;  but 
we  will  assume  that  it  has  been  treated  ra- 
tionally, and  is  sent  at  that  age  as  a  healthy 
child  to  the  public  school.  Now  the  childish 
play  ceases ;  instead  of  the  exercise  and  games 
which  had  been  strengthening  the  body,  the 
school  is  substituted  in  all  its  earnestness  and 
rigour  for  six  hours  a  day.  School  is  not  a 
place  where  labour  is  united  with  play,  and 
application  with  pleasure,  but  one  for  labour 
and  application  only.  When  boys,  however, 
return  from  school  they  are  usually  permitted 
to  exercise  themselves  freely,  and  to  find  for 
themselves  opportunities  of  making  their 
bodies  strong,  flexible,  and  healthy  ;  but  this 
is  not  the  case  with  girls ;  they  must  bear 
themselves  from  infancy  with  the  strictest 
propriety,  and  their  out-of-school  hours  are 
therefore  employed  in  sitting  occupations, 
such  as  reading,  writing,  and  sewing.  The 
only  recreation  permitted  them  is  playing 
with  toys,  which  neither  rouses  the  mind  nor 
exercises  the  body.  As  girls  become  older, 
the  requirements  of  the  school  become  greater; 
lessons  to  be  done  at  home  diminish  their 
leisure  time  perhaps  by  two  hours.  If  the 
girl  is  to  be  introduced  into  the  world  in  her 
fourteenth  year  as  a  well-endowed  young 
lady,  she  must  begin  at  least  in  her  tenth 
year  to  play  the  piano  and  to  learn  French. 
Thus  the  lessons  are  spread  over  two  hours 
more,  and  the  mind  is  daily  occupied  for  ten 
hours,  while  nothing  is  done  for  the  body. 

"Can  we,  then,  wonder  that  in  the  fair  sex 
of  the  present  day,  especially  in  large  towns, 


among  the  middle  and  higher  classes,  ailments 
of  the  muscular  and  nervous  system,  deficient 
development  of  the  bones,  and  consequently 
curvatures  of  the  spine,  glandular  and  scro- 
fulous diseases,  green  sickness,  cardialgia, 
fainting  fits,  and  irregularities  occur  so  fre- 
quently ?  No  one  who  does  not  wilfully  shut 
his  eyes  can  fail  to  see  the  evil  of  the  prevail- 
ing fashion  of  female  education." 

Dr.  Roth  does  not  stop  here.  He  is  not 
content  with  stating  evils  and  deploring 
them.  He  has  stirred  up  a  little  company  of 
ladies  to  work  actively  for  its  suppression. 
To  him  we  owe  the  recent  birth  of  a  Ladies' 
Association  for  the  Diffusion  of  Sanitary 
Knowledge,  and  Promotion  of  Physical 
Education.  One  lady  has  given  the  use  of 
a  house  at  Brighton  as  a  contribution  to  the 
cause.  That  house  and  a  room  at  Dr.  Roth's 
in  London  are  at  present  "  Institutions  in 
which  schoolmistresses  and  pupil-teachers, 
belonging  to  any  schools  for  the  working 
classes,  can  attend,  gratuitously,  a  course  of 
theoretical  and  practical  instruction  in  all 
subjects  relating  to  the  preservation  of  health, 
including  the  principles  of  systematic  bodily 
training,  in  order  that  they  may  impart  these 
branches  of  knowledge  to  their  pupils."  _  By 
these  means  it  is  designed  that  schoolgirls, 
the  future  wives  and  mothers  of  the  working 
classes,  shall  obtain  information  which  is  now 
possessed  by  very  few.  Classes  are  also  to 
be  formed  for  private  governesses  and  other 
ladies,  who  would  not  wish  to  receive  gratui- 
tous instruction.  Special  attention  is  to  be 
paid  to  instruction  in  the  management  of 
infants  and  children,  as  being  one  of  the  most 
important  duties  of  women,  and  one,  which 
the  great  mortality  among  infants  proves 
that  she  performs  (often  through  no 
fault  of  her  own)  very  imperfectly.  In 
order  to  make  this  part  of  the  instruction 
thoroughly  practical,  it  is  proposed  that  some 
orphan  infants  be  reared  in  the  institutions  ; 
schoolmistresses  will  thus  have  an  opportu- 
nity of  gaining  a  thoroughly  practical  know- 
ledge of  all  matters  relating  to  the  preservation 
of  infantile  health ;  and,  through  them,  this 
knowledge  will  be  imparted  to  the  working 
classes,  who  have  at  pi-esent  little  opportunity 
for  gaining  it,  except  from  dearly-bought 
experience,  or  from  books,  which,  in  many 
cases,  they  have  neither  inclination  nor 
means  to  purchase,  nor  intelligence  to  com- 
prehend. Nursery-maids  will  be  admitted 
to  this  part  of  the  instruction  ;  and  the 
association  hopes  thus  to  supply  nursery- 
maids to  whom  infants  may  be  safely 
entrusted. 

This  association  desires  also  to  be  service- 
able by  causing  to  be  compiled  and  published 
interesting,  simple,  and  practically-written 
tracts  on  all  subjects  relating  to  the  preser- 
vation of  health— such  as  ventilation,  exer- 
cise, bathing,  clothing,  food,  cooking,  manage- 
ment of  infants  and  children,  &c.  Ladies 
will  thus  be  enabled,  during  their  visitation 


Charles  Dickens.] 


A  PIECE  OF  WORK. 


[December  12, 1857.]       567 


of  the  poor,  to  bring  the  influence  of  tract 
literature  to  bear  upon  the  physical  condition 
of  those  visited,  as  well  as  upon  their 
spiritual  condition,  which,  pre-eminently  im- 
portant though  it  is,  certainly  ought  not  to 
be  the  only  subject  of  the  tracts  distributed. 
Such  an  idea  was  urged,  ten  years  ago, 
upon  the  medical  profession  through  its 
journals  by  another  writer,  who  supported 
his  cause  by  the  issue  of  two  tracts  upon 
health  for  cottage  circulation — one  upon 
Health,  one  upon  Interrupted  Health  and 
Sick-room  Duties.  The  tracts  were  freely 
used,  but  the  idea  on  which  they  were  based, 
although  approved,  was  not  adopted.  As  we 
set  some  store  by  a  general  notion  of  the 
value  of  a  good  supply  of  sanitary  tracts,  we 
will,  in  further  commendation  of  this  part  of 
Dr.  Roth's  subject  to  the  attention  of  the 
public,  cite  the  suggestions  made  in  vain  by 
another  son  of  Galen  to  his  brethren,  through 
the  Medical  Gazette  of  May  the  nineteenth, 
eighteen  hundred  and  forty-eight.  It  was 
proposed : 

One.  That  a  society  be  formed  for  the  diffusion  of 
sanitary  tracts. — Two.  That  the  chief  object  of  the 
society  be  to  issue  tracts  which  may  be  purchased  by 
the  clergy  of  the  Christian  communities,  and  circulated 
by  them  among  their  poor  parishioners,  together  with, 
and  in  the  same  manner  as,  the  religious  tracts  which 
they  are  accustomed  to  distribute.  And  that,  in  order 
to  secure  this  object,  the  tracts  be  written  in  a  broad 
Christian  spirit,  and  be  kept  free  from  all  theology. — 
Three.  That  the  society  consist  exclusively  of  medical 
men.  That  rdembership  be  constituted  by  the  annual 
payment  of  ten  shillings,  and  that  the  members  receive 
back,  in  a  proportionate  supply  of  tracts,  the  whole 
amount  of  their  subscriptions. — Four.  That  members 
subscribing  a  sovereign,  have  a  double  vote  in  the  affairs 
of  the  society  ;  but  that  no  individual  shall  have  more 
votes  than  two. — Five.  That  the  correspondence  of  the 
society  be  transacted  by  an  honorary  secretary,  and 
that  its  funds  be  in  the  hands  of  an  editing  committee; 
the  committee  to  consist  of  three  members,  resident  in 
London,  and  elected  by  vote  of  the  whole  society. — 
Six.  That  no  member  of  the  society  receive  any  remu- 
neration for  services  performed,  and  that  its  officers  be 
reimbursed  only  for  their  actual  outlay. —  Seven.  That 
there  be  published  annually  one  tract  for  every  ten 
pounds  subscribed  to  the  society,  and  that  all  profit 
remaining  after  payment  of  expenses,  and  setting  by  a 
moderate  reserve  fund,  be  devoted  to  the  purpose  of 
diminishing  the  selling  price  of  publications  issued. — 
Eight.  That  the  editing  committee  accept  or  decline 
any  tracts  voluntarily  forwarded  to  them  ;  and  accord- 
ing to  their  discretion,  request  assistance  from  those 
members  of  the  profession,  whose  pens  are  of  acknow- 
ledged value,  and  who  are  zealous  enough  to  write 
gratuitously  for  the  public  good. — Nine.  That  all  other 
business  of  the  Society  be  transacted  by  general  vote; 
the  votes  being  communicated  to  the  secretary  through 
the  post.  And  that  each  member  be  furnished  annu- 
ally with  a  printed  report  of  the  proceedings  of  the 
previous  year. 

Here,  then,  was  a  projector  casting  on 
the  waters  bread,  which  we  find  after  many 
days,  without  any  trace  of  so  much  as  a 
nibble  thereupon.  The  advantage,  he 


said,  of  grafting  sanitary  teachings  upon, 
the  existing  system  of  religious  tracts,  was, 
that  in  no  other  way  could  they  obtain  so 
readily,  a  wide  and  authoritative  distribution 
among  those  who  need  them  most.  The 
necessity  of  avoiding  all  points  open  to  dis- 
sent, was  obvious  enough  ;  cleanliness,  at 
all  events,  he  said,  ought  to  be  common 
among  Christians.  Ten  shillings  he  thought 
better  than  a  pound  as  a  subscription,  be- 
cause half-sovereigns  can  better  be  afforded 
by  members  of  an  underpaid  profession,  and 
the  greater  the  number  of  Tract  distribu- 
tors, the  more  equally,  of  course,  would  the 
publication  be  diffused.  The  doctors  did 
nothing — though  it  is  not  too  late  for  them  to 
take  some  scheme  like  this  in  hand  :  now  let 
us  see  what  Dr.  Roth  can  produce  out  of  the 
exertion  of  the  ladies.  A  fine  thing  is  a 
woman  with  a  will.  There  are  women  with 
wills  to  be  found  up  and  down  the  world. 
If  any  of  them  have  any  of  their  determi- 
nation to  bring  to  the  aid  of  the  Ladies' 
Association,  before  mentioned,  let  them 
address  the  lady  who  is  secretary  thereof, 
and  resides  at  the  house  of  the  Associa- 
tion, number  Seventeen,  Egremout  Place, 
Brighton. 

Furthermore,  may  it  be  permitted  that  we 
write  unto  you,  schoolmasters,  and  that  we 
write  unto  you,  parents,  earnestly  begging 
you  to  help  those  who  shall  come  after  us 
to  make  a  wholesome  piece  of  work  for  the 
promotion  of  the  public  health  in  about  the 
year  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eighty  ? 
Give  the  next  generation  men  who  know 
what  lungs  and  livers  are,  who  understand 
their  duty  to  their  skins,  and  can  overlook 
with  the  mind's  eye  the  process  of  digestion 
in  their  stomachs.  If  there  be  any  sort  of 
machinery  that  a  man  ought  to  know  some- 
thing about,  it  is  that  on  which  he  rides  up 
and  down  in  the  world,  from  the  day  of  his 
first  long-clothes  in  the  cradle,  to  the  day  of 
his  last  long-clothes  in  the  darkened  room. 
Here  we  are  all  riding  about  pell-mell,  on, 
those  engines  of  ours,  so  delicate  and  com- 
plex in  their  structure,  so  wonderfully 
adjusted  to  bear  wear  and  tear,  so  amazingly 
durable,  fine  as  their  structure  is.  But  we 
contrive  to  knock  them  up  too  soon  by  reck- 
less stoking,  by  ignorant  shuttings  off  of 
steam,  by  insufficient  feeding,  by  the  utmost 
carelessness  in  running  off  the  line.  Is  it 
not  worth  while  to  have  some  intelligent 
perception  of  the  nature  of  the  machine  we 
are  directing  or  using  every  minute  of  our 
lives  ?  Let  any  man  walk  in  a  graveyard, 
read  the  ages  on  the  tombstones,  and  ask  his 
heart  what  all  the  graves  of  infants  mean  ? 
Why  the  young  fathers  lie  among  the  old  men 
there,  and  mothers  perish  while  the  little 
ones  are  yet  crying  for  milk  ?  The  men  and 
women  of  a  future  generation,  if  they  are  to 
know  how,  under  artificial  circumstances, 
they  are  to  live  natural  lives,  need  some  dis- 
tinct knowledge  of  the  structure  of  their 


568      [December  12,  IS',;.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  bjr 


bodies,  and  of  those  physical  wants  of  their 
system  which  they  absolutely  must  supply, 
if  they  would  live  vigorous  lives  and  long 
ones.  They  must  know  better  than  to  let 
their  children's  lives  fall  and  be  broken  by  a 
carelessness  really  more  gross  than  that  of 
servants  who  break  plates  and  dishes.  Les- 
sons upon  the  nature  and  requirements  of 
the  human  body  should  be  given  in  all 
common  schools.  Mai?,  iu  a  state  of  nature, 
needs  not  to  establish  and  prolong  life  by  dis- 
cussing how  he  lives  ;  but  man  living  in  civi- 
lised society,  exposed  to  twenty  thousand 
circumstances  that  divert  attention  from  the 
natural  and  healthy  instincts  of  the  flesh, 
must  use  the  same  wit  that  has  produced 
another  atmosphere  of  life,  in  ascertaining — 
as  he  can  with  ease — how  to  bring  it  into  har- 
mony with  all  his  physical  requirements. 
The  preservation  of  robust  health  should  not 
be,  and  is  not,  inconsistent  with  enjoyment  of 
the  most  refined  happiness  that  civilisation 
brings. 

It  is  a  pressing  want  of  civilisation,  then, 
that  a  correct  knowledge  of  the  leading 
truths  of  physiology  should  be  communicated 
in  all  schools.  This  truth  has  been  partly 
recognised  by  government  in  England  and 
America,  but  it  is  not  yet  recognised  fairly 
by  the  public  anywhere.  Mr.  George  Combe 
of  Edinburgh  contributed  a  paper  on  the  sub- 
ject to  the  recent  Conference  of  the  National 
Association  for  Social  Science.  He  was  not 
himself  able  to  be  present  at  Birmingham  ; 
but  the  paper,  printed  for  private  use,  and 
for  convenience  of  reading,  was  to  be  read 
for  him  by  a  friend  in  the  educational  section. 
Hia  friend  began,  when  he  was  stopped,  first, 
by  an  objection  that  the  paper  was  in  print. 
That  difficulty  was  got  over ;  but  it  was  then 
suppressed  upon  the  ground  that  it  was  out 
of  place,  since  physiology  had  nothing  to  do 
with  education.  And  so  the  section  did  not 
hear  what  Mr.  George  Combe  had  to  say. 
The  paper  has  been  since  published ;  we 
have  read  it,  and  are  disposed  to  second 
heartily  all  its  suggestions.  Mr.  Combe  does 
not  want  children  to  be  taught  as  if  they 
were  in  training  for  the  medical  profession. 
His  desire  is,  that  they  should  know  enough 
to  understand  clearly  how  our  bodies  are 
affected  by  our  daily  habits,  what  is  apt  to 
produce  healthy  or  unhealthy  action  in  each 
vital  organ — how  to  economise  the  force  of 
the  machine  they  are  for  ever  working,  and 
to  hinder  it,  under  all  sorts  of  social  accidents, 
from  getting  out  of  gear. 

We  have  said  that  the  wisdom  of  this  pro- 
position has  been  partly  recognised  by  govern- 
ment. The  Committee  of  Council  for  Edu- 
cation in  England  and  the  Commissioners  of 
Education  iu  Ireland  are  co-operating  with 
the  Board  of  Trade  in  the  introduction  of 
physiology  into  schools,  and  it  should  interest 
all  teachers  to  know  that  nine  beautifully 
executed  diagrams,  illustrative  of  such  a 
course  of  study  in  our  common  schools,  have 


now  been  published  by  the  Board.  Dr. 
Hodgson  has,  moreover,  applied  his  con- 
summate talents  as  a  teacher,  to  the  spread 
of  this  sort  of  instruction.  That  gentleman's 
lectures  in  Edinburgh  during  the  three 
winters,  marked  quite  an  era  in  the  spread  of 
physiological  knowledge.  In  our  schools  it 
is  a  novelty  ;  but  for  the  last  six  years  it  has 
been  emphatically  recognised  by  the  legisla- 
ture of  Massachusetts. 


NQMBER  FIVE,  HANBUEY  TERRACE. 

I  WAS  a  stranger  among  some  eight  or  nine 
hundred  pitiless  schoolfellows :  a  country 
bumpkin  amid  the  sharp  lads  of  that  focus  of 
sharp  school  practice,  Christ's  Hospital.  More- 
over, the  natural  wateriness  of  eyes  that 
had  so  lately  bade  adieu  to  all  familiar  objects 
was  increased  by  a  cold  in  the  head,  and  my 
misery  was  not  alleviated  by  a  short  allow- 
ance of  halfpence  to  expend  in  the  one 
licensed  shop,  which  is  supposed  to  contain 
all  the  objects  of  a  Blue-coat  boy's  desire. 
Then  I  felt  ridiculous  in  petticoats,  and 
the  thick  regulation  shoes  which  form  part 
of  that  graceful  costume,  hurt  my  ankles;  and 
my  heels  were  swollen  with  chilblains.  The 
lump  of  gingerbread,  which  I  stood  gnawing, 
was  plentifully  bedewed  with  my  tears,  and 
sometimes  choked  me,  between  the  descent  of 
a  morsel,  and  the  ascent  of  a  sob. 

"Don't  waste  your  time  telling  me  of  your 
rules  and  regulations,"  said  a  quick,  flat,  irri- 
table voice  at  the  gate.  "  I  want  mee  nephew, 

and "     Looking  up,  I  beheld  that  awful 

functionary,  the  porter,stretchingoutonearm, 
with  solemn  indignation,  to  bar  the  way 
(but  vainly)  against  the  little  wiry  figure  that 
coolly  ducked  under  it  with  a  quick,  springy 
step,  her  black  silk  bag  hanging  by  steel 
chains,  and  her  baggy  umbrella  firmly  clasped 
by  the  handle.  She  paused,  looked  round, 
and  defied  the  porter  with  a  withering  look 

and  the  end  of  her  sentence  : "  And  I'll 

find  him !  " 

Her  search  did  not  take  long ;  her  quick  eye 
soon  picked  me  out,  and  she  exclaimed  :  "I  de- 
clare that  poor,  starved  little  fellow  with  the 

red  head,  is  the  image  of "  She  interrupted 

herself  again,  pounced  upon  me,  asked  my 
name,  and  patted  my  damp  red  head 
with  a  diminutive  hand,  nearly  lost 
in  a  large  brown  glove,  the  finger  ends  of 
which  dangled  vacantly  about.  "Yes — of 
mee  poor  Ellen  !  Sure  I'd  know  you 
anywhere  to  be  her  son  !  Did  you  ever 
hear  tell  of  your  mother's  aunt  Honoria, 
from  Ireland?  Well,  I  am  aunt  Honoria. 
Ah  !  I  niver  thought  I'd  live  to  see  a  grand- 
nephew  of  mine  in  yellow  stockings  and  a 
petticoat.  Bless  ye,  mee  poor  child  !  What 
are  ye  crying  for  1 " 

The  tone  in  which  she  spoke  was  a  sort  of 
flat  singing.  Her  utterance  was  so  rapid  that 
her  words  would  have  jostled  each  other  out 
of  all  order,  except  for  her  habit  of  stopping 


Charles  Dickens.] 


NUMBER  FIVE,  HANBURY  TERRACE.       [December  12,  is,?.]     569 


short  now  and  then,  to  give  them  time  to 
arrange  themselves  in  their  proper  places. 
But  the  kindliness  of  her  "  Bless  you !  "  no 
description  could  convey.  It  was  a  gleam  of 
the  pure  gold  that  streaked  the  granite  tex- 
ture of  her  character. 

The  effect  my  aunt  Honoria  made  upon  my 
juvenile  nerves,  was  rather  startling.  I  was 
not  an  heroic  youth  ;  so  I  sobbed  out  some- 
thing about  being  cold,  and  was  immediately 
swept  into  the  shop  by  my  rapid  relative  ; 
who,  to  warm  me,  bought  me  a  peg-top  and 
four-pennyworth  of  marbles,  the  contempla- 
tion of  which  treasures  suspended  my  sobs, 
and  brought  consolation  to  my  wretched  little 
heart. 

A  few  well -put  queries,  soon  revealed  to 
her  the  state  of  my  affairs,  and  she  whisked 
'off  to  startle  the  matron  of  number  Nine 
ward  (to  which  I  belonged),  from  her  after- 
noon nap.  I  slowly  followed — my  progress 
impeded  by  a  broken  chilblain — and  found 
the  restless  spirit  of  my  aunt  already  domi- 
neering over  the  slow  and  saturnine  presi- 
dentess  of  the  ward.  The  moment  I  appeared, 
she  pounced  upon  me,  drew  off  my  yellow 
stocking  with  astonishing  gentleness,  and, 
regarding  it  with  infinite  disgust,  requested 
a  little  warm  water,  winding  up  with  : 

"  Be  quick,  will  you,  please  1  and  I'll  set 
him  to  rights  in  no  time." 

Then,  out  of  the  Uack  bag,  came  a  little 
box  of  ointment,  and  a  neat  roll  of  linen  rag, 
and  I  soon  felt  a  delightful  sense  of  relief  and 
comfort.  Finally,  the  stocking  was  drawn  on 
again. 

"  Have  you  pen  and  ink  here,  my  good 
woman  1  " 

Slowly,  as  if  against  her  will,  the  matron 
produced  writing  materials  ;  and,  again,  the 
black  bag  opened  to  receive  the  roll  and  the 
ointment,  and  to  give  forth  a  large  card  ;  on 
which  my  aunt  Honoria  wrote  in  big  cha- 
racters, with  broad  black  down-strokes,  "  Per 
Paddington  Omnibus — to  be  left  at  shoe- 
maker's shop,  corner  New  Road."  To  this 
she  attached  a  string  : 

"There,"  she  said,  handing  it  to  me. 
"  Hang  that  round  your  neck  on  Wednesday 
next:  it  will  be  a  red-letter  day — a  holiday, 
you  know.  Call  the  omnibus  from  the  gate 
here.  Make  the  conductor  look  at  your  card, 
and  then  you  will  be  sure  to  go  all  right. 
You  must  learn  to  take  care  of  yourself, 
mee  poor  child,  and  the  sooner  the  better. 
Now,  God  bless  you  !  I  cannot  stop  another 
minute." 

Again  the  finger-ends  waved  over  my  head ; 
a  rapid  and  energetic  kiss  shut  up  one  ot  my 
eyes,  and  the  other  beheld  my  aunt  stepping 
away  daintily  through  the  damp  yard  ;  past 
the  grim  porter,  to  whom  she  seemed  to 
jerk  out  some  defiant  words  as  she  went  by. 
Then  she  vanished  through  the  gate  out  into 
the  whirl  and  rush  ot  Newgate  Street. 

On  the  following  Wednesday,  the  omnibus  , 
duly  deposited  me  at  the  shoemaker's.  I  had 


not  long  to  wait  before  being  conducted 
to  my  aunt's  lodging.  I  found  it  a  charm- 
ing place  to  visit,  in  spite  of  perpetual 
injunctions  not  to  touch  what  did  not  belong 
to  me  without  leave.  There  were  such 
drawers  full  of  what  may  most  correctly  be 
termed  odds  and  ends  !  Old  watches,  and 
cases,  and  by-gone  apparatus  for  every  de- 
scription of  needle-work ;  and  faded,  moon- 
shiny,  old  miniatures,  shadowing  forth  fea- 
tures too  aristocratic  to  seem  at  home  in  a 
humble  third-floor  front,  in  Haubury  Terrace, 
New  Road.  Queer  scraps  of  china,  transparent 
and  cracked ;  fragments  of  plate,  forks,  and 
spoons,  cleaned  down  to  a  thin  and  weakly 
condition  ;  duskily-bound  albums  from  which 
the  gilding  was  worn  away,  filled  with  scratchy 
sketches  and  incomprehensible  conundrums. 
Then,  there  was  a  collection  of  books  in 
school-room  binding,  scribbled  over  the  fly- 
leaves with  school-room  caricatures,  and  the 
oft-repeated  name  of  "  Cornelius  M'Mur- 
rough,  his  book,"  in  graceful,  illegible 
writing. 

"  Mee  poor  brother's  hand,  mee  dear,"  aunt 
Honoria  would  say,  "  Ah  !  such  a  man,  mee 
dear.  None  of  your  prosing,  pondering,  cold- 
blooded calculators  ;  but  full  of  love,  and  life, 
and  enjoyment.  How  could  he  be  expected 
to  be  always  thinking  of  the  money  1  No> 
wonder  his  grasping  creditors  got  the  better 
01  him."  O'Donny  brook,  of  the  Daily  Dis- 
seminator, told  me,  in  after-life,  that  the 
M'Murrough  was  the  most  jovial,  disrepu- 
table, and  generally  intoxicated  member  of 
their  staff. 

Aunt  Honoria  would  talk  by  the  hour,  on 
this  exalted  theme,  as  she  sat  at  a  mysterious 
and  complicated  work-frame  which  always 
stood  in  the  window  next  the  fire-place.  It 
was  fringed  all  round  with  little  bags  of 
every  possible  hue  and  texture,  out  of  which, 
she  snatched  at  intervals,  contradictory  mor- 
sels of  floss-silk,  worsted,  Berlin  wool,  braid, 
hooks  and  eyes,  twist,  tape,  twine,  rags,  ends 
of  ribbon,  beads,  buttons,  bugles,  and  every 
material  that  the  wildest  emergency  of 
needle-work  could  demand. 

Questions  were  dangerous  at  number  Five, 
Hanbury  Terrace.  I  therefore  still  remaiii 
ignorant  oi  the  precise  destination  of  those 
acres  of  embroidery,  tapestry,  and  tambour, 
which  I  have  watched  from  time  to  time  in 
progress  in  that  Iratne.  But  mature  reason 
inclines  me  to  believe — as  I  never  saw  any  of 
the  fruits  of  her  labour,  either  worn  by  herself, 
or  displayed  011  her  sofas  or  chairs — that  my 
aunt's  performances  were  exchanged  for  a 
consideration  which  enabled  her  to  exercise 
a  sort  of  highway  and  hedge-hunting  hos- 
pitality towards  youthful  waifs  and  strays, 
cast  out  by  fortune  on  the  ocean  of  London. 
She  was  an  admirable  story-teller ;  and 
often  have  I  and  a  certain  little  co- 
visitor,  sat  listening  entranced  to  her  records 
of  the  M'Murroughs,  the  remarkably  pugna- 
cious, rackety  race  of  which  we  were  scions. 


570      [December  1J,  1887.] 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[Conducted  br 


Their  principal  employment,  according  to 
her  traditions,  when  they  were  not  breaking 
the  heads  of  their  foes,  the  O'Haggertys, 
was  hunting  the  wild  deer  ;  and,  when  both 
these  excitements  palled,  they  were  hurl- 
ing bars,  and  running  foot-races,  or  shouting 
loud  choruses  to  war-songs  over  their  cups. 
No  doubt,  therefore,  perpetual  motion  was 
Miss  Honoria  M'Murrough's  special  patri- 
mony ;  for  which,  in  these  degenerate  days, 
the  embroidery-frame  and  a  succession  of 
incapables  iu  the  shape  of  what  Mrs.  Crump, 
the  landlady  of  Number  Five,  called"gurls," 
offered  the  only  legitimate  excitants. 

These  historic  evenings  did  not  pass  with- 
out a  cloud.  I  frequently  hazarded  a  dis- 
belief in  her  stories,  that  drew  down  the  vials 
of  her  wrath  on  the  unhappy  red  head  which 
had  originally  attracted  her  favourable  notice. 
My  observations  were  imbued  with  what 
she  termed  a  six-and-eightpenny  spirit,  "  very 
unlike  mee  poor  brother.  It  was  he,  sure, 
who  could  tell  all  the  old  stories,  and  sing  the 
old  songs.  If  you  were  not  such  a  quare 
little  fellow,  always  wanting  to  know  the  use 
of  everything,  I  would  not  mind  showing  ye 
some  p6try  he  wrote  about  the  great  Malachi 
M'Murrough,"  a  cheerful  monarch,  I  learnt, 
who  knocked  retainers  on  the  head,  as  readily 
as  he  carried  off  his  enemies'  beef.  And 
then  would  come  a  torrent  of  reminiscences, 
pointedly  addressed  to  Mary  Lyle,  the  other 
little  waif. 

In  spite,  however,  of  my  prosaic  disposition, 
my  handiness  in  joining,  turning,  and  car- 
pentering, proved  useful  in  the  third-floor 
front  of  Number  Five,  Hanbury  Terrace ; 
and,  being  of  use  to  my  aunt,  found  favour 
in  her  eyes.  Moreover,  she  declared  that, 
though  Johnny  was  a  quare  little  fellow,  and 
had  not  the  least  taste  for  the  p6try  of  life, 
yet  he  was  kind-hearted,  and  one  whose 
word  she  would  trust  her  life  to. 

Indeed,  in  spite  of  my  incredulous  question- 
ings, Aunt  Honoria  had  no  truer  admirer 
than  my  practical  self.  I  verily  believe  that 
those  evenings  in  her  "  aportments,"  as  she 
loved  to  term  the  third-floor  in  Number  Five, 
saved  my  better  and  more  genial  spirit  from 
dying  out  in  the  atmosphere  of  cold-hearted 
routine  into  which  I,  a  lonely  little  orphan, 
was  plunged,  Moreover,  my  aunt  had  a  high 
and  chivalrous  notion  of  what  a  gentleman 
should  be,  and  was  anxious  that  every  wearer 
of  broadcloth,  in  whose  veins  a  drop  of  her 
blood  was  supposed  to  flow,  should  uphold  it. 
Although  "  mee  late  brother  "  was  avowedly 
her  beau-ideal  of  an  Irish  Gentleman,  her 
own  maxims  were  calculated  to  form  a  very 
different  model. 

When  the  yellow-stocking  period  of  my 
life  had  merged  into  the  more  serious  epoch 
of  clerkship  in  a  solicitor's  office,  at  so  much, 
or  rather  so  little,  per  week,  Aunt  Honoria 
continued  to  rule  my  destiny.  At  this  time, 
and  for  a  couple  of  years  previously,  she  had 
acquired  an  inmate  in  Mary  Lyle,  my  co- 


listener  to  the    thrilling    traditions   of  the 
ancient  M'Murroughs. 

My  aunt  was  never  communicative,  and 
snapt  up  all  attempts  at  cross-examination 
with  silencing  abruptness.  But  1  found  out 
that  Mary  Lyle's  father  (an  ex-companion  of 
the  ever-deplored  and  gifted  Cornelius,  and 
"  Many  and  many's  the  scrape  mee  poor  bro- 
ther has  been  led  into  by  that  scamp  "),  after 
many  years'  oscillation — scrambling  all-fours 
along  the  path  of  life,  as  Aunt  Honoria  ex- 
pressed it — had  at  length  succumbed  to  re- 
peated fits  of  delirium-tremens.  His  helpless 
daughter,  whose  career  had  hitherto  been  that 
of  general  servant  to  her  father,  was  left  un- 
disputed possessor  of  an  ancient  violoncello 
and  two  bows ;  the  deceased  having  played  on 
that  instrument  at  any  theatre  which  would 
engage  his  services.  There  were  also  several 
manuscript  scores  of  parts,  a  meerschaum 
pipe,  and  a  remarkably  long  file  of  pawn- 
broker's duplicates.  In  less  than  an  hour 
after  the  musician's  decease,  my  Aunt 
Honoria  pounced  upon  the  orphan,  and  swept 
her  into  Number  Five.  Some  well-to-do 
relatives  occasionally  doled  out  a  pittance 
towards  her  support.  I  well  remember  a 
day  of  delightful  and  absorbing  occupation  in 
dusting,  scouring,  glueing,  and  generally 
repairing  an  ottoman-bed  which  my  aunt 
had  drawn  forth  from  the  depths  of  a  second- 
hand furniture  warehouse  in  Tottenham 
Court  Eoad  for  the  use  of  her  prot6g6e,  and 
had  been  a  week  bargaining  about.  This 
purchase  completed  the  solemn  act  of  adop- 
tion. How  my  Aunt  Honoria  managed  to 
dress  that  bewitching  little  figure  with  the 
neat  simplicity  which  was  never  surprised 
out  of  order,  and  to  secure  her  the  basis  of  a 
sound  education,  are  secrets  known  only  to 
the  Re  warder  of  such  secrets;  and  account- 
able for,  only  by  the  rare  combination  of 
activity,  perseverance,  and  all-enduring  hope 
which  were  fused  together  by  the  genial 
warmth  of  my  aunt's  self-denying  charity. 

The  evenings  when  Messrs.  Pluckett  and 
Maule's  office  closed  early,  soon  grew  to  be 
delightful  hours  to  me.  Our  day's  work 
over — for  Mary's  services  were  now  valued 
and  remunerated  at  the  school  at  which  she 
had  been  taught — we  listened  to  the  kettle 
humming  on  the  reddest  and  tiniest  fire 
imaginable.  While  my  aunt  set  out  the  tea-, 
things — a  task  she  never  omitted — and  I  cut 
bread  and  butter,  what  eager  discussions 
arose  on  the  novels  we  admired  and  the 
heroes  we  adored !  Later  on  a  Monday 
evening,  the  "guii"  would  make  her  appear- 
ance with  a  newspaper  (marked  here  and 
there  with  concentric  rings  darkly  indicative 
of  porter,  and  held  carefully,  a  fold  of  her 
apron  intervening  between  it  and  her  fingers) 
to  deliver  the  same  to  my  aunt  with  "  Mr. 
Corrigan's,"  or  sometimes  "the  Parlour's," 
compliments,  and  hopes  Miss  M'Murrough 
is  quite  well. 

To  which  my  aunt  would  reply  suitably ; 


Charles  Dickons.] 


NUMBER  FIVE,  HANBURY  TERRACE.        [Better  12, 1957.]    571 


and,  perhaps,  invite  the  parlour  to  "step  up," 
with  a  running  commentary  to  us :  "A  very 
well-informed  man,  that  Corrigan;  none  of  your 
narrow-minded  bigots.  I  always  think  he 
must  be  connected  with  the  press,  he  has , 
such  a  leading-article  way  of  talking."  Then 
my  aunt,  who  was  a  keen  politician,  would 
draw  the  candle  closer,  hold  up  the  news- 
paper in  dangerous  proximity  to  the  flame, 
and  plunge  into  the  contents  ;  every  now  and 
then  murmuring  loud  comments,  sometimes 
complimentary,  but  more  frequently  the 
reverse,  on  men  and  things ;  occasionally 
reading  out  remarkably  uninteresting  pas- 
sages, which  used  to  clash  drolly  enough 
with  our  young  sentimentalities  whispered 
under  cover  of  the  newspaper. 

I  well  remember  the  fatal  evening  on 
which — grown  by  habit  secure  in  my  aunt's 
absorption — I  ventured  some  more  than 
usually  demonstrative  expression  of  feelings, 
which  not  even  the  unromantic  influence  of 
yellow  stockings  and  the  refrigerating  routine 
of  a  lawyer's  office  had  prevented  from 
growing  up  in  my  heart  towards  my  pretty 
playfellow.  Never  shall  I  forget  the  petri- 
fying effect  of  my  aunt's  keen  black  eyes, 
piercing  through  me  over  the  top  of  the 
paper.  A  startling  silence  and  stillness  fell 
down  at  once  upon  us,  broken  only  by  the 
loud  and  awful  Hem  !  with  which  my  aunt 
cleared  her  throat  for  action. 

What  terrific  address  might  have  followed, 
who  can  tell  1  had  not  a  tap  at  the  door  at  the 
imminent  moment  announced  the  never  more 
welcome  Corrigan.  My  aunt  was  more  than 
commonly  upright  and  stately  on  that  occa- 
sion, and  alluded  frequently  to  "  mee  late 
brother's "  intimacy  with  many  political 
characters.  On  Mr.  C.'s  remarking  that 
the  eloquent  mimber  for  Ballykillruddery 
was,  he  feared,  playing  a  double  game  with 
his  party — his  name  having  been  missed  from 
two  divisions,  and  he  known  to  have  got 
a  cousin  into  the  post-office,  and  his  nurse's 
step-daughter's  nephew  into  the  police — Miss 
M'Murrough  observed :  "  What  was  to  be 
expected  from  the  son  of  a  small  Ballykill- 
ruddery attorney  1  It  was  mee  father  first 
made  a  man  of  him,"  she  continued.  "  Mee 
father  was  always  for  encouraging  cleverness ; 
and  I  well  remimber  Peter  Flyn — mee  father's 
butler,  Mr.  Corrigan — saying  he  thought  the 
sight  would  never  come  back  to  his  eyes 
the  first  time  he  saw  little  Micke  Brady  sitting 
down  to  dinner  with  The  Master.  Times  are 
a  good  deal  changed  since  that,  sir,  but  I  have 
often  heard  mee  late  brother  mention  that 
Micke  Brady  was  not  a  bad  sort  of  fellow,  and 
often  gave  him  orders  to  get  people  into  places 
— I  don't  understand  rightly  where — but  I 
know  he  did  not  quite  forget  what  he  owed 
our  family." 

"Then,  faith,  ma'am,"  said  Mr.  C.,  who 
was  remarkable  for  the  ease  of  his  manners, 
"  you  should  give  the  honourable  mimber  a 
reminder  now,  and  make  him  get  this  young 


gentleman  a  place  under  government ;  for  he  is 
all  and  all  with  the  Marquis  of  Clanjamfrey." 
"  It  would  be  shorter  to  spake  to  the  mar- 
quis meeself,"  replied  my  Aunt  Honoria, 
with  dignity.  "  He  is  only  a  fourth  cousin 
once  removed  on  mee  mother's  side." 

At  this  piece  of  information  Mr.  Corrigan 
twisted  his  mouth  for  one  half  second  into 
the  expression  of  a  whistle  ;  and  then  opened 
it  to  observe,  that,  for  his  part,  though  he 
despised  the  adventitious  glare  of  rank,  he 
would  not  leave  such  a  cousin  in  ignorance 
of  the  lad's  existence,  and  of  his  willingness 
to  serve  his  country.  To  which  my  aunt 
rejoined  sharply,  that  it  was  easy  to  despise 
what  we  did  not  possess  ;  and,  as  to  making 
Lord  Clanjamfrey  of  use,  there  had  been  a 
feud  between  the  families,  and  she  did  not 
know  if  she  would  condescend  to  ask  a 
favour  of  him. 

I  confess  that  my  faith  in  Aunt  Honoria's 
influence  with  cabinet  ministers  and  members 
of  parliament  was  far  from  strong ;  and  the 
only  effect  her  discourse  produced  on  my 
mind  was  to  raise  dim,  hopeless  desires,  that 
some  one  or  other  would,  some  day,  get  me  a 
government  clerkship  with  a  rising-salary 
paid  quarterly. 

After  having  been  transfixed  on  that  fatal 
Monday  evening  by  my  aunt's  keen  optics, 
I  was  naturally  more  prudent  in  my  atten- 
tions to  Mary  Lyle;  who  became  all  the  more 
pensive  and  sad,  in  spite  of  the  sharp,  short, 
burning  little  assurance  of  affection  I  always 
managed  to  snatch  on  the  stairs,  when  she 
lighted  me  down. 

At  last,  dear  old  Aunt  Honoria  could  hold 
out  no  longer  ;  and,  one  Sunday  evening,  there 
was  an  unprecedented  tremulousness  and 
hesitation  in  her  manner.  She  looked  at 
us,  too,  now  and  then,  in  a  tender,  earnest 
way,  that  seemed  to  be  bringing  tears  into 
her  eyes.  Presently,  with  unsteady  voice, 
she  laid  her  hand  upon  my  arm,  and  said, 
"It  looks  a  foolish  business  enough,  mee 
poor  children,  but  I  can't  say  ye  no  !  And 
perhaps  your  love  for  each  other,  and  hoping 
to  be  together,  will  help  you  on  ;  for,  it's 
wearying  to  work  hard  without  any  hope 
beyond  getting  the  bare  food  and  raiment. 
But  now  think  well,  mee  dears,  and  consider 
whether  you  have  the  stuff  in  you  that  can 
wait  patiently  and  faithfully  for  long  years, 
and  whether  you  love  each  other  too  much 
to  do  anything  rash — ay  !  a  long  engagement 
is  a  terrible  trial,  but  where's  the  use  of 
mere  talking  ? — it's  little  a  pair  like  you 
will  mind  advice  now,  so  ye  must  run  the 
chances.  Our  fathers  and  mothers  did  be- 
fore, only  God  guide  ye  through  them, 
mee  darlin',"  she  concluded,  kissing  Mary 
heartily;  and,  giving  her  eyes  a  furtive  rub, 
rushed  intto  a  furious  attack  upon  the  gurl 
for  not  having  brought  up  the  kettle,  'and 
"  it  going  on  for  siven  o'clock." 

From  this  period  I  became,  by  slow  de- 
grees, dimly  conscious  that  a  certain  mystery 


572 


HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 


[December  12, 1857. 


pervaded  my  aunt's  manner,  and  even  her 
movements.  More  than  once,  on  Mary's  ob- 
serving that  she  ought  to  take  another  cup 
of  tea,  because  she  had  come  in  so  very  late  and 
seemed  to  have  been  so  very  far  that  day,  my 
aunt  snapt  her  up  hastily,  declaring  that  she 
had  only  been  round  the  corner  to  rebuke 
the  butterman,  or  to  exhort  the  laundress. 
Twice  also  did  I,  in  the  course  of  my  pro- 
fessional duties,  run  against  her  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  Treasury,  and  once  found 
myself  face  to  face  with  her  black  reticule 
and  baggy  umbrella  at  the  entrance  to  the 
House  of  Commons ;  but,  a  short  and  confused 
account  of  business  connected  with  "mee  late 
brother,"  and  a  recommendation  not  to  in- 
dulge useless  curiosity,  silenced  me. 

One  August  evening,  more  than  a  year 
after  the  above-mentioned  encounters,  I 
mounted  the  stairs  at  Number  Five,  Han- 
bury  Terrace,  with  a  heavy  heart.  Messrs. 
Pluckett  and  Maule  had  that  morning  re- 
fused my  modest  request  for  an  increase 
of  salary  after  five  years'  service,  and  had 
insinuated  a  doubt  as  to  whether  they  would 
require  my  services  much  longer. 

When  I  opened  the  door,  my  aunt,  bolt 
upright,  was  rending  a  letter,  and  Mary,  her 
bright  hair  a  little  disordered,  was  clinging 
round  her  in  tears.  No  sooner  did  they 
perceive  me  than  they  both  made  a  rush  to 
embrace  me.  My  amazement  was  not  soon 
diminished  ;  for,  during  several  minutes,  I 
could  distinguish  nothing  comprehensible  in 
their  exclamations. 

"  It  was  a  true  word  of  Corrigan's,  that  I 
ought  to  make  use  of  mee  relations  ;  an  old 
stock  like  ours  is  sure  to  have  some  influ- 
ence," exclaimed  my  aunt. 

"  And  you  will  be  free  from  five  every 
evening,  and  have  a  fortnight's  holiday  to  go 
anywhere  you  like  every  year,"  whispered 
Mary. 

"  Eighty  pounds  a-year  to  begin  on,  mee 
precious  boy,"  continued  my  aunt  raptur- 
ously, "  and  a  certain  rise — if  you  behave  well 
— (and  there  is  no  fear  of  ye),  may-be  to  the 
head  clerkship  and  four  hundred  a-year,  and 
all  through  y'r  poor  Aunt  Houoria." 

After  some  urgent  entreaties  and  skilful 
cross-examination,  I  extricated  the  true  state 


of  the  case.  The  letter  contained  an  appoint- 
ment for  me  in  her  Majesty's  Hank  and  Wax 
office,  with  all  the  advantages  incoherently 
set  forth  by  my  aunt  and  Mary.  For  this, 
Miss  Honoria  M'Murrough  had  besieged  the 
eloquent  member  for  Ballykillruddery,  her 
cousin  the  marquis,  and  every  parliamentary 
acquaintance  of  "  mee  poor  brother,"  with  a 
pertinacity  which  she  confessed  that  evening, 
over  a  raking  pot  of  tea,  had  but  little  food 
for  hope  at  the  outset.  "  But,  mee  dear, 
'  nothing  venture  nothing  have  ; '  so  I  went 
on  and  on,  through  rain  and  storm,  and 
waiting-rooms  and  impudent  flunkies,  till, 
what  with  old  letters  to  mee  poor  brother 
about  his  newspaper,  and  what  with  being 
tired  of  the  sight  of  me,  and  little  Micke  Brady 
acting  like  a  rale  friend  at  last,  I  got  the 
appointment,  and  your  fortune's  made." 

What  a  joyous  confused  tea-drinking ! 
What  castles  in  the  air  !  What  overleaping 
all  intermediate  steps  !  What  arranging  of 
furniture  in  our  future  domicile,  and  settling 
how  my  aunt  should  keep  house  when  we 
went  on  our  summer  tours. 

In  another  year  I  was  able  to  take  my 
pretty  Mary  to  a  cosy  little  home  of  our 
own  ;  where,  before  long,  my  aunt  found 
her  presence  so  really  useful  as  well  as  wel- 
come, that  she  yielded  to  our  entreaties  to 
tear  herself  away  from  Number  Five,  Han- 
bury  Terrace,  and  to  take  up  her  abode  for 
the  rest  of  her  active  life  with  us. 

And  this  was — and  is — the  end  of  Number 
Five,  Hanbury  Terrace,  aforesaid. 


Now  Ready,  Price  Threepence,  or  stamped  Fourpunoe, 

THE    PERILS 

CEETAIN   ENGLISH  PKISONERS, 

AND    THEIR   TREASURE 

IN  WOMEN,  CHILDREN,  SILVER,  AND  JEWELS.. 

FORMING 

THE    CHRISTMAS    NUMBER 

Of  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS ;  and  containing  Thirty-six 
pages,  or  the  amount  of  One  regular  Number  and  a  Half. 
Household  Words  Office,  No.  16,  Wellington  Street 
North,  Straud.  Sold  by  all  Booksellers,  and  at  all  Kail- 
way  Stations. 


THE  END   OF   VOLUME  THE  SIXTEENTH. 


The  Right  of  Translating  Articles  from  HOUSEHOLD  WORDS  is  reserved  by  the  Authors, 


PubliiheJ  at  the  Office,  No.  lf>.  Wellingion  Street  North.Strand.    Primed  by  BBADBURY  &  KVAHS,  Wbitefriars,  London. 


THE    PERILS 

Off 

CERTAIN   ENGLISH    PRISONERS, 

AND  THEIR  TREASURE 

IN  WOMEN,  CHILDREN,  SILVER,  AND  JEWELS. 


THE  EXTRA  CHRISTMAS   NUMBER  OF   HOUSEHOLD  WORDS. 
CONDUCTED     BY    CHARLES    DICKENS. 

CONTAINING   THE   AMOUNT   OP   ONE   NUMBER   AND   A   HALF. 


CHRISTMAS,    1857. 


Prico 

3d. 


INDEX. 

CHAPTER  I.     The  Island  of  Silver-Store  . 
,,        II.     The  Prison  in  the  Woods 
III.     The  Rafts  on  the  River      . 


Page    1 

„      I* 

30 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  ISLAND   OF  SILVER- STORE. 

IT  was  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  one  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  and  forty-four,  that  I, 
Gill  Davis  to  command,  His  Mark,  having 
then  the  honor  to  be  a  private  in  the  Royal 
Marines,  stood  a-leaning  over  the  bulwarks 
of  the  armed  sloop  Christopher  Columbus,  in 
the  South  American  waters  oif  the  Mosquito 
shore. 

My  lady  remarks  to  me,  before  I  go  any 
further,  that  there  is  no  such  christian-narne 
ay  Gill,  and  that  her  confident  opinion  is, 
that  the  name  given  to  me  in  the  baptism 
wherein  I  was  made,  &c.,  was  Gilbert.  She 
is  certain  to  be  right,  but  I  never  heard  of 
it.  I  was  a  foundling  child,  picked  up  some- 
where or  another,  and  I  always  understood 
niy  christian-nanie  to  be  Gill.  It  is  true  that 
I  was  called  Gills  when  employed  at  Snor- 
ridge  Bottom  betwixt  Chatham  and  Maid- 
stone,  to  frighten  birds  ;  but  that  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  Baptism  wherein  I  was  made, 
&c.,  and  wherein  a  number  of  things  were 
promised  for  me  by  somebody,  who  let  me 
alone  ever  afterwards  as  to  performing  any  of 
them,  and  who,  I  consider,  must  have  been 
the  Beadle.  Such  name  of  Gills  was  entirely 
owing  to  my  cheeks,  or  gills,  which  at  that 
time  of  my  life  were  of  a  raspy  description. 

My  lady  stops  me  again,  before  I  go  any 
further,  by  laughing  exactly  in  her  old  way 
and  waving  the  feather  of  her  pen  at  me. 
That  action  on  her  part,  calls  to  my  mind  as 

I  look  at  her  hand  with  the  rings  on  it 

Well  !  I  won't !  To  be  sure  it  will  come  in,  in 
its  own  place.  But  it's  always  strange  to  me, 
noticing  the  quiet  hand,  and  noticing  it  (as  I 
have  done,  you  know,  so  many  times) 


a-fondling  children  and  grandchildren  asleep, 
to  think  that  when  blood  and  honor  were 
up — there  !  I  won't !  not  at  present ! — 
Scratch  it  out. 

She  won't  scratch  it  out,  and  quite  honor- 
able ;  because  we  have  made  an  understand- 
ing that  everytWbg  is  to  be  taken  down,  and 
that  nothing  that  is  once  taken  down  shall  be 
scratched  out.  I  have  the  great  misfortune 
not  to  be  able  to  read  and  write,  and  I  am 
speaking  my  true  and  faithful  account  of  those 
Adventures,  and  my  lady  is  writing  it,  word 
for  word. 

I  say,  there  I  was,  a-leaning  over  the  bul- 
warks of  the  sloop  Christopher  Columbus  in 
the  South  American  waters  off  the  Mosquito 
shore :  a  subject  of  his  Gracious  Majesty 
King  George  of  England,  and  a  private  hi 
the  Royal  Marines. 

In  those  climates,  you  don't  want  to  do 
much.  I  was  doing  nothing.  I  was  thinking 
of  the  shepherd  (my  father,  I  wonder  ?)  on 
the  hill-sides  by  Suorridge  Bottom,  with  a 
long  staff,  and  with  a  rough  Avhite  coat  in  all 
weathers  all  the  year  round,  who  used  to  let 
me  lie  in  a  corner  of  his  hut  by  night,  and 
who  used  to  let  me  go  about  with  him  and 
his  sheep  by  day  when  I  could  get  nothing 
else  to  do,  and  who  used  to  give  me  so  little 
of  his  victuals  and  so  much  of  his  staff,  that 
I  ran  away  from  him — which  was  what  he 
wanted  all  along,  I  expect — to  be  knocked 
about  the  world  in  preference  to  Suorridge 
Bottom.  I  had  been  knocked  about  the 
world  for  niue-and-twenty  years  in  all,  when 
I  stood  looking  along  those  bright  blue 
South  American  waters.  Looking  after  the 
shepherd,  I  may  say.  Watching  him  in  a 
halt-waking  dream,  with  my  eyes  half-shut, 
as  he,  and  his  flock  of  sheep,  and  hia  two 


btr  T,  18570    THE  PERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS. 


dogs,  seemed  to  move  away  from  the  ship's 
side,  far  away  over  the  blue  water,  and  go 
right  down  into  the  sky. 

"It's  rising  out  of  the  water,  steady,"  a 
voice  said  close  to  me.  I  had  been  thinking 
on  so,  that  it  like  woke  me  with  a  start, 
though  it  was  no  stranger  voice  than  the 
voice  of  Harry  Charker,  my  own  com- 
rade. 

"  What's  rising  out  of  the  water,  steady  ? " 
I  asked  my  comrade. 

"  What  ?  "  says  he.    "  The  Island." 

"  O  !  The  Island  ! "  says  I,  turning  my 
eyes  towards  it.  "  True.  I  forgot  the  Island." 

"  Forgot  the  port  you're  going  to  1  That's 
odd,  au:t  it  ? " 

"  It  is  odd,"  says  I. 

"And  odd,"  he  said,  slowly  considering 
with  himself,  "  an't  even.  Is  it,  Gill  1 " 

He  had  always  a  remark  just  like  that  to 
make,  and  seldom  another.  As  soon  as  he 
had  brought  a  thing  round  to  what  it  was 
not,  he  was  satisfied.  He  was  one  of  the 
best  of  men,  and,  in  a  certain  sort  of  a 
way,  one  with  the  least  to  say  for  himself. 
I  qualify  it,  because,  besides  being  able  to 
read  and  write  like  a  Quarter-master,  he  had 
always  one  most  excellent  idea  in  his  mind. 
That  was,  Duty.  Upon  my  soul,  I  don't 
believe,  though  I  admire  learning  beyond 
everything,  that  he  could  have  got  a  better 
idea  out  of  all  the  books  in  the  world,  if  he 
had  learnt  them  every  word,  and  been  the 
cleverest  of  scholars. 

My  comrade  and  I  had  been  quartered 
in  Jamaica,  and  from  there  we  had  been 
drafted  off  to  the  British  settlement  of 
Belize,  lying  away  West  and  North  of  the 
Mosquito  coast.  At  Belize  there  had  been 
great  alarm  of  one  cruel  gang  of  pirates 
(there  were  always  more  pirates  than  enough 
in  those  Caribbean  Seas),  and  as  they  got 
the  better  of  our  English  cruisers  by  running 
into  out-of-the-way  creeks  and  shallows,  and 
taking  the  land  when  they  were  hotly 
pressed,  the  governor  of  Belize  had  received 
orders  from  home  to  keep  a  sharp  look-out 
for  them  along  shore.  Now,  there  was  an 
armed  sloop  came  once  a-year  from  Port 
Royal,  Jamaica,  to  the  Island,  laden  with 
all  manner  of  necessaries,  to  eat  and  to  drink, 
and  to  wear,  and  to  use  in  various  ways ;  and 
it  was  aboard  of  that  sloop  which  had 
touched  at  Belize,  that  I  was  a-standing,  lean- 
ing over  the  bulwarks. 

The  Island  was  occupied  by  a  very  small 
English  colony.  It  had  been  given  the  name 
of  Silver-Store.  The  reason  of  its  being  so 
called,  was,  that  the  English  colony  owned 
and  worked  a  silver  mine  over  on  the  main- 
land, in  Honduras,  and  used  this  island  as  a 
safe  and  convenient  place  to  store  their  silver 
in,  until  it  was  annually  fetched  away  by  the 
sloop.  It  was  brought  down  from  the  mine 
to  the  coast  on  the  backs  of  mules,  attended 
by  friendly  Indians  and  guarded  by  white 
men  ;  from  thence,  it  was  conveyed  over  to 


Silver-Store,  when  the  weather  was  fair,  in 
the  canoes  of  that  country ;  from  Silver- 
Store,  it  was  carried  to  Jamaica  by  the  armed 
sloop  once  a-year,  as  I  have  already  men- 
tioned ;  from  Jamaica  it  went,  of  course,  all 
over  the  world. 

How  I  came  to  be  aboard  the  armed  sloop, 
is  easily  told.  Four-and-twenty  marines  under 
command  of  a  lieutenaot — that  officer's  name 
was  Linderwood — had  been  told  off  at  Belize, 
to  proceed  to  Silver-Store,  in  aid  of  boats 
and  seamen  stationed  there  for  the  chace 
of  the  Pirates.  The  island  was  considered 
a  good  post  of  observation  against  the 
pirates,  both  by  laud  and  sea;  neither  the 
pirate  ship  nor  yet  her  boats  had  been  seen  by 
any  of  us,  but  they  had  been  so  much  heard  of, 
that  the  reinforcement  was  sent.  Of  that 
party,  I  was  one.  It  included  a  corporal  and  a 
Serjeant.  Charker  was  corporal,  and  the  ser- 
jeant's  name  waa  Drooce.  He  was  the  most 
tyrannical  non-commissioned  officer  in  His 
Majesty's  service. 

The  night  came  on,  soon  after  I  had  had 
the  foregoing  words  with  Ch.irker.  All  the 
wonderful  bright  colors  went  out  of  the  sea 
and  sky,  in  a  few  mimites,  and  all  the  stars 
in  the  Heavens  seemed  to  shine  out  together, 
and  to  look  down  at  themselves  in  the  sea.  over 
one  another's  shoulders,  millions  deep.  Next 
morning,  we  cast  anchor  off  the  Island.  There 
was  a  snug  harbor  within  a  little  reef ;  there 
was  a  sandy  beach ;  there  were  cocoa-nut  trees 
with  high  straight  stems,  quite  bare,  and 
foliage  at  the  top  like  plumes  of  magnificent 
green  feathers  ;  there  were  all  the  objects 
that  are  usually  seen  in  those  parts,  and  I 
am  not  going  to  describe  them,  having  some- 
thing else  to  tell  about. 

Great  rejoicings,  to  be  sure,  were  made 
on  our  arrival.  All  the  flags  in  the  place 
were  hoisted,  all  the  guns  in  the  place  were 
fired,  and  all  the  people  in  the  place  came 
|  down  to  look  at  us.  One  of  those  Sambo  fel- 
lows— they  call  those  natives  Sambos,  when 
they  are  half-negro  and  half-Indian  —  had 
come  off  outside  the  reef,  to  pilot  us  in, 
and  remained  on  board  after  we  had  let  go 
our  anchor.  He  was  called  Christian  George 
King,  and  was  fonder  of  all  hands  than 
anybody  else  was.  Now,  I  confess,  for  my- 
self, that  on  that  first  day,  if  I  had  been  cap- 
tain of  the  Christopher  Columbus,  instead  of 
private  in  the  Royal  Marines,  I  should  have 
kicked  Christian  George  King — who  was  no 
more  a  Christian,  than  he  was  a  King,  or  a 
George — over  the  side,  without  exactly  know- 
ing why,  except  that  it  was  the  right  thing 
to  do. 

But,  I  must  likewise  confess,  that  I  was  not 
in  a  particularly  pleasant  humor,  when  I  stood 
under  arms  that  morning,  aboard  the  Chris- 
topher Columbus  in  the  harbor  of  the 
Island  of  Silver-Store.  I  had  had  a  hard 
life,  and  the  life  of  the  English  on  the  Island 
seemed  too  easy  and  too  gay,  to  ple'ase  me. 
"  Here  you  are,"  I  thought  to  myself,  "  good 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SILVER-STORE. 


[December  7,  1857.] 


scholars  and  good  livers  ;  able  to  read  what 
you  like,  able  to  write  what  you  like,  able 
to  eat  aud  drink  what  you  like,  and  spend 
what  you  like,  and  do  what  you  like  ;  and 
much  you  care  for  a  poor,  ignorant  Private 
in  the  Royal  Marines  !  Y«t  it's  hard,  too,  I 
think,  that  you  should  have  all  the  half- 
pence, and  I  all  the  kicks  ;  you  all  the  smooth, 
and  I  all  the  rough  ;  you  all  the  oil,  and  I 
all  the  vinegar."  It  was  as  envious  a  thing 
to  think  as  might  be,  let  alone  its  being  non- 
sensical ;  but,  I  thought  it.  I  took  it  so 
much  amiss,  that,  when  a  very  beautiful  young 
English  lady  came  aboard,  I  grunted  to  my- 
self, "  Ah !  you  have  got  a  lover,  I'll  be 
bound  !  "  As  if  there  was  any  new  offence 
to  me  in  that,  if  she  had  ! 

She  was  sister  to  the  captain  of  our  sloop, 
who  had  been  in  a  poor  way  for  some  time, 
and  who  was  so  ill  then  that  he  was  obliged  to 
be  carried  ashore.  She  was  the  child  ot  a  mili- 
tary officer,  and  had  come  out  there  with 
her  sister,  who  was  married  to  one  of  the 
owners  of  the  silver-mine,  aud  who  had  three 
children  with  her.  It  was  easy  to  see  that 
she  was  the  light  and  spirit  of  the  Island. 
After  I  had  got  a  good  look  at  her,  I  grunted 
to  myself  again,  in  an  even  worse  state  of 
mind  than  before,  "I'll  be  damned,  if  I 
don't  hate  him,  whoever  he  is !  " 

My  officer,  Lieutenant  Linderwood,  was  as 
ill  as  the  captain  of  the  sloop,  and  was 
carried  ashore,  too.  They  were  both  young 
men  of  about  my  age,  who  had  been  delicate 
in  the  West  India  climate.  I  even  took 
that,  in  bad  part.  I  thought  I  was  much 
fitter  for  the  work  than  they  were,  and 
that  if  all  of  us  had  our  deserts,  I  should 
be  both  of  them  rolled  into  one.  (It  may  be 
imagined  what  sort  of  an  officer  of  marines  I 
should  have  made,  without  the  power  of 
reading  a  written  order.  And  as  to  any 
knowledge  how  to  command  the  sloop — Lord  ! 
I  should  have  sunk  her  in  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  !) 

However,  such  were  my  reflections ;  aud 
when  we  men  were  ashore  aud  dismissed,  I 
strolled  about  the  place  along  with  Charker, 
making  my  observations  in  a  similar  spirit. 

It  was  a  pretty  place :  in  all  its  arrange- 
ments partly  South  American  and  partly 
English,  and  very  agreeable  to  look  at  on 
that  account,  beiug  like  a  bit  of  home  that 
had  got  chipped  oif  and  had  floated  away  to 
that  spot,  accommodating  itself  to  circum- 
stances as  it  drifted  along.  The  huts  of  the 
Sambos,  to  the  number  of  five-and-twenty, 
per  I  laps,  were  down  by  the  beach  to  the  left 
of  the  anchorage.  On  the  right  was  a  sort 
of  barrack,  with  a  South  American  Flag 
and  the  Union  Jack,  flying  from  the  same 
staff,  where  the  little  English  colony  could 
all  come  together,  if  they  saw  occasion.  It 
was  a  walled  square  of  building,  with  a  sort 
of  pleasure-ground  inside,  and  inside  that 
again,  a  sunken  block  like  a  powder  magazine, 
with  a  little  square  trench  round  it,  and 


steps  down  to  the  dooi-.  Charker  and  I 
were  looking  in  at  the  gate,  which  was 
not  guarded  ;  and  I  had  said  to  Charker, 
in  reference  to  the  bit  like  a  powder  maga- 
zine, "  that's  where  they  keep  the  silver, 
you  see  ;  "  and  Charker  had  said  to  me,  after 
thinking  it  over,  "  Aud  silver  an't  gold.  Is  it, 
Gill  ?  "  when  the  beautiful  young  English 
lady  I  had  been  so  bilious  about,  looked  out 
of  a  door,  or  a  window— at  all  events  looked 
out,  from  under  a  bright  awning.  She  no 
sooner  saw  us  two  in  uniform,  than  she  came 
out  so  quickly  that  she  was  still  putting  on 
her  broad  Mexican  hat  of  plaited  straw  when 
we  saluted. 

"  Would  you  like  to  come  in,"  she  said, 
"  and  see  the  place  ?  It  is  rather  a  curious 
place." 

We  thanked  the  young  lady,  and  said  we 
didn't  wish  to  be  troublesome  ;  but,  she  said 
it  could  be  no  trouble  to  an  English  sol- 
dier's daughter,  to  show  English  soldiers 
how  their  countrymen  aud  countrywomen 
fared,  so  far  away  from  England;  and  con- 
sequently we  saluted  again,  aud  went  in. 
Then,  as  we  stood  in  the  shade,  she  showed 
us  (being  as  affable  as  beautiful),  how  the 
different  families  lived  in  their  separate 
houses,  and  how  there  was  a  general  house 
for  stores,  and  a  general  reading-room,  and  a 
general  room  for  music  and  dancing,  and  a 
room  for  Church  ;  aud  how  there  were  other 
houses  on  the  rising-ground  called  the  Signal 
Hill,  where  they  lived  in  the  hotter  weather. 

"  Your  officer  has  been  carried  up  there," 
she  said,  "  and  my  brother,  too,  for  the  better 
air.  At  present,  our  few  residents  are  dis- 
persed over  both  spots :  deducting,  that  is  to 
say,  such  of  our  number  as  are  always  going 
to,  or  coming  from,  or  staying  at,  the  Mine." 

("  lie  is  among  one  of  those  parties,"  I 
thought,  "  and  I  wish  somebody  would  knock 
his  head  off.") 

"  Some  of  our  married  ladies  live  here," 
she  said,  "  during  at  least  half  the  year,  as 
lonely  as  widows,  with  their  children." 

"  Many  children  here,  ma'am  1 " 

"  Seventeen.  There  are  thirteen  married 
ladies,  and  there  are  eight  like  me." 

There  were  not  eight  like  her — there  was 
not  one  like  her — in  the  world.  She  meant, 
single. 

"  Which,  with  about  thirty  Englishmen  of 
various  degrees,"  said  the  young  lady,  "  form 
the  little  colony  now  on  the  Island.  I  don't 
count  the  sailors,  for  they  don't  belong  to  us. 
Nor  the  soldiers,"  she  gave  us  a  gracious 
smile  when  she  spoke  of  the  soldiers,  "  for 
the  same  reason." 

"Nor  the  Sambos,  ma'am,"  said  I. 

"No." 

"  Under  your  favor,  and  with  your  leave, 
ma'am,"  said  I,  "  are  they  trustworthy  ?  " 

"  Perfectly !  We  are  all  very  kind  to 
them,  and  they  are  very  grateful  to  us." 

"  Indeed,  ma'am  1  Now — Christian  George 
King? " 


4     [Dumber  ?,  1857.1     THE  PERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS, 


"Very  much  attached  to  us  all.  "Would 
die  for  us." 

She  was,  as  in  my  uneducated  way  I  have 
observed  very  beautiful  women  almost 
always  to  be,  so  composed,  that  her  com- 
posure gave  great  weight  to  what  she  said, 
and  I  believed  it. 

Then,  she  pointed  out  to  us  the  building 
like  a  powder  magazine,  and  explained  to 
us  in  what  manner  the  silver  was  brought 
from  the  mine,  and  was  brought  over  from 
the  mainland,  and  was  stored  there.  The 
Christopher  Columbus  would  have  a  rich 
lading,  she  said,  for  there  had  been  a  great 
yield  that  year,  a  much  richer  yield  than 
usual,  and  there  was  a  chest  of  jewels  besides 
the  silver. 

When  we  had  looked  about  us,  and  were 
getting  sheepish,  through  fearing  we  were 
troublesome,  she  turned  us  over  to  a  young 
woman,  English  born  but  West  India  bred, 
who  served  her  as  her  maid.  This  young 
woman  was  the  widow  of  a  non-commissioned 
officer  in  a  regiment  of  the  line.  She  had 
got  married  and  widowed  at  St.  Vincent,  with 
only  a  few  months  between  the  two  events. 
She  was  a  little  saucy  woman,  with  a  bright 
pair  of  eyes,  rather  a  neat  little  foot  and  figure, 
and  rather  a  neat  little  turned-up  nose.  The 
sort  of  young  woman,  I  considered  at  the 
time,  who  appeared  to  invite  you  to  give  her 
a  kiss,  and  who  would  have  slapped  your 
face  if  you  accepted  the  invitation. 

I  couldn't  make  out  her  name  at  first ; 
for,  when  she  gave  it  in  answer  to  my  in- 
quiry, it  sounded  like  Beltot,  which  didn't 
sound  right.  But,  when  we  became  better 
acquainted — which  was  while  Charker  and  I 
were  drinking  sugar-cane  sangaree,  which 
she  made  in  a  most  excellent  manner — I 
found  that  her  Christian  name  was  Isabella, 
which  they  shortened  into  Bell,  and  that  the 
name  of  the  deceased  non-commissioned 
officer  was  Tott.  Being  the  kind  of  neat 
little  woman  it  was  natural  to  make  a  toy  of, 
—I  never  saw  a  woman  so  like  a  toy  in  my 
life — she  had  got  the  plaything  name  of  Bell- 
tott.  In  short,  she  had  no  other  name  on  the 
island.  Even  Mr.  Commissioner  Pordage 
(and  he  was  a  grave  one  !)  formally  addressed 
her  as  Mrs.  Belltott.  But,  I  shall  come  to 
Mr.  Commissioner  Pordage  presently. 

The  name  of  the  captuin  of  the  sloop  was 
Captain  Maryon,  and  therefore  it  was  no 
news  to  hear  from  Mrs.  Belltott,  that  his 
sister,  the  beautiful  unmarried  young  English 
lady,  was  Miss  Maryon.  The  novelty  was,  that 
her  Christian  name  was  Marion  too.  Marion 
Maryon.  Many  a  time  I  have  run  off  those 
two  names  in  my  thoughts,  like  a  bit  of  verse. 
O  many,  and  many,  and  many,  a  time  ! 

We  saw  out  all  the  drink  that  was  pro- 
duced, like  good  men  and  true,  and  then 
took  our  leaves,  and  went  down  to  the  beach. 
The  weather  was  beautiful ;  the  wind  steady, 
low,  and  gentle ;  the  island,  a  picture ;  the  sea, 
a  picture  ;  the  sky,  a  picture.  In  that  country 


there  are  two  rainy  seasons  in  the  year.  One 
sets  in  at  about  our  English  Midsummer  ;  the 
other,  about  a  fortnight  after  our  English 
Michaelmas.  It  was  the  beginning  of  August 
at  that  time  ;  the  first  of  these  rainy  seasons 
was  well  over  ;  and  everything  was  in  its 
most  beautiful  growth,  and  had  its  loveliest 
look  upon  it. 

"  They  enjoy  themselves  here,"  I  says  to 
Charker,  turning  surly  again.  "  This  is 
better  than  private-soldiering." 

We  had  come  down  to  the  beach,  to  be 
friendly  with  the  boat's-crew  who  were 
camped  and  hutted  there  ;  and  we  were  ap- 
proaching towards  their  quarters  over  the 
sand,  when  Christian  George  King  comes 
up  from  the  landing-place  at  a  wolf's-trot, 
crying,  "  Yup,  So-Jeer  !  "  —  which  was  that 
Sambo  Pilot's  barbarous  way  of  saying,  Hallo, 
Soldier  !  I  have  stated  myself  to  be  a  man 
of  no  learning,  and,  if  I  entertain  prejudices, 
I  hope  allowance  may  be  made.  I  will 
now  confess  to  one.  It  may  be  a  right  one 
or  it  may  be  a  wrong  one  ;  but,  I  never  did 
like  Natives,  except  in  the  form  of  oysters. 

So,  when  Christian  George  King,  who  was 
individually  unpleasant  to  me  besides,  comes 
a  trotting  along  the  sand,  clucking  "  Yap,  So- 
Jeer  !  "  I  had  a  thundering  good  mind  to  let 
fly  at  him  with  my  right.  I  certainly  should 
have  done  it,  but  that  it  would  have  exposed 
me  to  reprimand. 

"  Yup,  So-Jeer ! "  says  he.    "  Bad  job." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ] "   says  I. 

"  Yup,  So-Jeer  !  "  says  he, "  Ship  Leakee." 

"  Ship  leaky  ] "  says  I. 

"  Iss,"  says  he,  with  a  nod  that  looked  as  if 
it  was  jerked  out  of  him  by  a  most  violent 
hiccup — which  is  the  way  with  those  savages. 

I  cast  my  eyes  at  Charker,  and  we  both 
heard  the  pumps  going  aboard  the  sloop,  and 
saw  the  signal  run  up,  "Come  on  board; 
hands  wanted  from  the  shore."  In  no  time 
some  of  the  sloop's  liberty-men  were  already 
running  down  to  the  water's  edge,  and  the 
party  of  seamen,  under  orders  against  the 
Pirates,  were  putting  off  to  the  Columbus 
in  two  boats. 

"Oh  Christian  George  King  ear  berry 
sorry ! "  says  that  Sambo  vagabond,  then. 
"  Christian  George  King  cry,  English  fash- 
ion !  "  His  English  fashion  of  crying  was  to 
screw  his  black  knuckles  into  his  eyes,  howl 
like  a  dog,  and  roll  himself  on  his  back  on  the 
sand.  It  was  trying  not  to  kick  him,  but  I 
gave  Charker  the  word,  "Double-quick, 
Harry  !  "  and  we  got  down  to  the  water's 
edge,  and  got  on  board  the  sloop. 

By  some  means  orother,she  had  sprung  such 
a  leak,  that  no  pumping  would  keep  her  free  ; 
and  what  between  the  two  fears  that  she  would 
go  down  in  the  harbor,  and  that,  even  if  she 
did  not,  all  the  supplies  she  had  brought 
for  the  little  colony  would  be  destroyed  by 
the  sea-water  as  it  rose  in  her,  there  was 
great  confusion.  In  the  midst  of  it,  Captain 
Maryon  was  heard  hailing  from  the  beach. 


Cbarlei  Dickens.] 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SILVER-STORE. 


[December  7. 1857.1        5 


He  had  been  carried  down  in  his  hammock, 
and  looked  very  bad  ;  but,  he  insisted  on 
being  stood  there  on  his  feet  ;  and  I  saw 
him,  myself,  come  off  in  the  boat,  sitting  up- 
right in  the  stern-sheets,  as  if  nothing  was 
wrong  with  him. 

A  quick  sort  of  council  was  held,  and 
Captain  Maryon  soon  resolved  that  we  must 
all  fall  to  work  to  get  the  cargo  out,  and, 
that  when  that  was  done,  the  guns  and  heavy 
matters  must  be  got  out,  and  that  the  sloop 
must  be  hauled  ashore,  and  careened,  and 
the  leak  stopped.  We  were  all  mustered 
(the  Pirate-Chace  party  volunteering),  and 
told  off  into  parties,  with  so  many  hours  of 
spell  and  so  many  hours  of  relief,  and  we  all 
went  at  it  with  a  will.  Christian  George  King 
was  entered  one  of  the  party  in  which  1 
worked,  at  his  own  request,  and  he  went 
at  it  with  as  good  a  will  as  any  of  the 
rest.  He  went  at  it  with  so  much  hearti- 
ness, to  say  the  truth,  that  he  rose  in  my 
good  opinion,  almost  as  fast  ns  the  water 
rose  in  the  ship.  Which  was  fast  enough, 
and  faster. 

Mr.  Commissioner  Pordage  kept  in  a  red 
and  black  japanned  box,  like  a  family 
lump-sugar  box,  some  document  or  other 
which  some  Sambo  chief  or  other  had  got 
drunk  and  spilt  some  ink  over  (as  well  as  I 
could  understand  the  matter),  and  by  that 
means  had  given  up  lawful  possession  of  the 
Island.  Through  having  hold  of  this  box, 
Mr.  Pordage  got  his  title  of  Commissioner. 
He  was  styled  Consul,  too,  and  spoke  of  him- 
self as  "Government.'" 

He  was  a  stiff-jointed,  high-nosed  old  gen- 
tleman, without  an  ounce  of  fat  on  him,  of  a 
very  angry  temper  and  a  very  yellow  com- 
plexion. Mrs.  Commissioner  Pordage,  making 
allowance  for  difference  of  sex,  was  much  the 
same.  Mr.  Kitten,  a  small,  youngish,  bald, 
botanical  and  miueralogical  gentleman,  also 
connected  with  the  mine — but  everybody 
there  was  that,  more  or  less — was  sometimes 
called  by  Mr.  Commissioner  Pordage,  his 
Vice-commissioner,  and  sometimes  his  De- 
puty-consul. Or  sometimes  he  spoke  of  Mr. 
Kitten,  merely  as  being  "under  Government." 

The  beach  was  beginning  to  be  a  lively 
scene  with  the  preparations  for  careening  the 
sloop,  and,  with  cargo,  and  spars,  and  rigging, 
and  water-casks,  dotted  about  it,  and  with 
temporary  quarters  for  the  men  rising  up  there 
out  of  such  sails  and  odds  and  ends  as  could  be 
best  set  on  one  side  to  make  them,  when  Mr. 
Commissioner  Pordage  comes  down  in  a  high 
fluster,  and  asks  for  Captain  Maryon.  The 
Captain,  ill  as  he  was,  was  slung  iu  his  ham- 
mock betwixt  two  trees,  that  he  might 
direct ;  and  he  raised  his  head,  and  answered 
for  himself. 

"  Captain  Maryon,"  cries  Mr.  Commissioner 
Pordage,  "this  is  not  official.  This  is  not 
regular." 

"Sir,"  says  the  Captain,  "it  hath  been 
arranged  with  the  clerk  and  supercargo, 


that  you  should  be  communicated  with,  and 
requested  to  render  any  little  assistance  that 
may  lie  in  your  power.  I  am  quite  certain 
that  hath  been  duly  done." 

"  Captain  Maryon,"  replies  Mr.  Commis- 
sioner Pordage,  "  there  hath  been  no  written 
correspondence.  No  documents  have  passed, 
no  memoranda  have  been  made,  no  minutes 
have  been  made,  no  entries  and  counter- 
entries  appear  in  the  official  muniments. 
This  is  indecent.  I  call  upon  you,  sir,  to  desist, 
until  all  is  regular,  or  Government  will  take 
this  up." 

"  Sir,"  says  Captain  Maryon,  chafing  a 
little,  as  he  looked  out  of  his  hammock  ;  "  be- 
tween the  chances  of  Government  taking  this 
up,  and  my  ship  taking  herself  down,  I  much 
prefer  to  trust  myself  to  the  former." 

"  You  do,  sir  ? "  cries  Mr.  Commissioner 
Pordage. 

"I  do,  sir,"  says  Captain  Maryon,  lying 
down  again. 

"  Then,  Mr.  Kitten,"  says  the  Commissioner, 
"  send  up  instantly  for  my  Diplomatic  coat." 

He  was  dressed  in  a  linen  suit  at  that 
moment ;  but,  Mr.  Kitten  started  off  himself 
and  brought  down  the  Diplomatic  coat,  which 
was  a  blue  cloth  one,  gold-laced,  and  with  a 
crown  on  the  button. 

"Now,  Mr.  Kitten,"  says  Pordage,  "I 
instruct  yon,  as  Vice-commissioner1,  and 
Deputy-consul  of  this  place,  to  demand  of 
Captain  Maryon,  of  the  sloop  Christopher 
Columbus,  whether  he  drives  me  to  the  act 
of  putting  this  coat  on  ?  " 

"Mr.  Pordage,"  says  Captain  Maryon, 
looking  out  of  his  hammock  again,  "  as  I  can 
hear  what  you  say,  I  can  answer  it  without 
troubling  the  gentleman.  I  should  be  sorry 
that  you  should  be  at  the  pains  of  putting  on 
too  hot  a  coat  on  my  account ;  but,  otherwise, 
you  may  put  it  on  hind-side  before,  or  inside- 
out,  or  with  your  legs  in  the  sleeves,  or  your 
head  in  theskirts,for  any  objection  that  I  have 
to  offer  to  your  thoroughly  pleasing  yourself." 

"  Very  good,  Captain  Maryon,"  says  Por- 
dage, in  a  tremendous  passion.  "  Very  good, 
sir.  Be  the  consequences  on  your  own  head ! 
Mr.  Kitten,  as  it  has  come  to  this,  help  me 
on  with  it." 

When  he  had  given  that  order,  he  walked  off 
in  the  coat,  and  all  our  names  were  taken,  and 
I  was  afterwards  told  that  Mr.  Kitten  wrote 
from  his  dictation  more  than  a  bushel  of 
large  paper  on  the  subject,  which  cost  more 
before  it  was  done  with,  than  ever  could  be 
calculated,  and  which  only  got  done  with 
after  all,  by  being  lost. 

Our  work  went  on  merrily,  nevertheless, 
and  the  Christopher  Columbus,  hauled  up, 
lay  helpless  on  her  side  like  a  great  fish  out 
of  water.  While  she  was  in  that  state,  there 
was  a  feast,  or  a  ball,  or  an  entertainment,  or 
more  properly  all  three  together,  given  us  in 
honor  of  the  ship,  and  the  ship's  company, 
and  the  other  visitors.  At  that  assembly,  I 
believe,  I  saw  all  the  inhabitants  then  upon 


6    [December r,  las;.]     THE  PERILS  OF  CEETAIN  ENGLISH  PEISONERS.      [conducted  t>, 


the  Island,  without  any  exception.  I  took  no 
particular  notice  of  more  than  a  few,  but  I 
found  it  very  agreeable  in  that  little  comer 
of  the  world  to  see  the  children,  who  were  of 
all  ages,  and  mostly  very  pretty — as  they 
mostly  are.  There  was  one  handsome  elderly 
lady,  with  very  dark  eyes  and  grey  hair, 
that  I  inquired  about.  I  was  told  that  her 
name  was  Mrs.  Venning  ;  and  her  married 
daughter,  a  fair  slight  thing,  was  pointed 
out  to  me  by  the  name  of  Fanny  Fisher. 
Quite  a  child  she  looked,  with  a  little  copy 
of  herself  holding  to  her  dress ;  and  her 
husband,  just  corne  back  from  the  mine, 
exceeding  proud  of  her.  They  were  a 
good-looking  set  of  people  on  the  whole,  but 
1  didn't  like  them.  1  was  out  of  sorts  ; 
in  conversation  with  Charker,  I  found  fault 
with  all  of  them.  I  said  of  Mrs.  Venning, 
she  was  proud  ;  of  Mrs.  Fisher,  she  was  a 
delicate  little  baby-fool.  What  did  I  think  of 
this  one  1  Why,  he  was  a  fine  gentleman. 
What  did  I  say  to  that  one  ?  Why,  she  was 
a  fine  lady.  What  could  you  expect  them  to 
be  (I  asked  Charker),  nursed  in  that  climate, 
with  the  tropical  night  shining  for  them, 
musical  instruments  playing  to  them,  great 
trees  bending  over  them,  soft  lamps  light- 
ing them,  fire-flics  sparkling  in  among  them, 
bright  flowers  and  birds  brought  into  exis- 
tence to  please  their  eyes,  delicious  drinks  to 
be  had  for  the  pouring  oat,  delicious  fruits  to 
be  got  for  the  picking,  and  every  one  dancing 
and  murmuring  happily  in  the  scented  air, 
with  the  sea  breaking  low  on  the  reef  for 
a  pleasant  chorus. 

"  Fine  gentlemen  and  fine  ladies,  Harry  1 " 
I  says  to  Cliarker.  "  Yes,  I  think  so  !  DollsJ 
Dolls  !  Not  the  sort  of  stuff  for  wear,  that 
comes  of  poor  private  soldiering  in  the  Eoyal 
Marines !  " 

However,  I  could  not  gainsay  that  they 
were  very  hospitable  people,  and  that  they 
treated  us  uncommonly  well.  Every  man  of 
us  was  at  the  entertainment,  and  Mrs.  Bell- 
tott  had  more  partners  than  she  could  dance 
with  :  though  she  danced  all  night,  too.  As 
to  Jack  (whether  of  the  Christopher  Colum- 
bus, or  of  the  Pirate  pursuit  party,  it  made 
no  difference),  he  danced  with  his  brother 
Jack,  danced  with  himself,  danced  with  the 
moon,  the  stars,  the  trees,  the  prospect,  any- 
thing. I  didn't  greatly  take  to  the  chief- 
officer  of  that  party,  with  his  bright  eyes, 
brown  face,  and  easy  figure.  I  didn't  much 
like  his  way  when  he  fii'st  happened  to  come 
where  we  were,  with  Miss  Maryon  on  his  arm. 
"  Oh,  Captain  Carton,"  she  says,  "  here  are 
two  friends  of  mine  !  "  He  says,  "Indeed  ? 
These  two  Marines  ?  " — meaning  Charker 
and  self.  "  Yes,"  says  she,  "  I  showed  these 
two  friends  of  mine  when  they  first  came,  all 
the  wonders  of  Silver-Store."  He  gave  us  a 
laughing  look,  and  says  he,  "You  are  in  luck, 
men.  I  would  be  disrated  and  go  before  the 
m:ist  to-morrosv,  to  be  shown  the  way  upward 
again  by  such  a  guide.  You  are  in  luck,  I 


men."  When  we  had  saluted,  and  he  and 
the  young  lady  had  waltzed  away,  I  said, 
"  You  are  a  pretty  fellow,  too,  to  talk  of  luck. 
You  may  go  to  the  Devil !  " 

Mr.  Commissioner  Pordage  and  Mrs.  Com- 
mLssioner,  showed  among  the  company  on 
that  occasion  like  the  King  and  Queen  of  a 
much  Greater  Britain  than  Great  Britain. 
Only  two  other  circumstances  in  that  jovial 
night  made  much  separate  impression  on 
me.  One  was  this.  A  man  in  our  draft 
of  marines,  named  Tom  Packer,  a  wild 
unsteady  young  fellow,  but  the  son  of  a 
respectable  shipwr  ght  in  Portsmouth  Yard, 
and  a  good  scholar  who  had  been  well 
brought  up,  comes  to  me  after  a  spell  of 
dancing,  and  takes  me  aside  by  the  elbow, 
and  says,  swearing  angrily  : 

"  Gill  Davis,  1  hope  1  may  not  be  the  death 
of  Serjeant  Drooce  one  day  !  " 

Now,  I  knew  Drooce  always  had  borne 
particularly  hard  on  this  man,  and  I  knew 
this  man  to  be  of  a  very  hot  temper :  so,  I 
said  : 

"  Tut,  nonsense  !  don't  talk  so  to  me  !  If 
there's  a  man  in  the  corps  who  scorns  the 
name  of  an  assassin,  that  man  and  Tom 
Packer  are  one." 

Tom  wipes  his  head,  being  in  a  mortal 
sweat,  and  says  he  : 

"I  hope  so,  but  I  can't  answer  for  myself 
when  he  lords  it  over  me,  as  he  has  just  now 
done,  before  a  woman.  I  tell  you  what, 
Gill !  Mark  my  words  !  It  will  go  hard  with 
Serjeant  Drooce,  if  ever  we  are  in  an  engage- 
ment together,  and  he  has  to  look  to  me  to 
save  him.  Let  him  say  a  prayer  then,  if  he 
knows  one,  for  it's  all  over  with  him,  and  he 
is  on  his  Death-bed.  Mark  my  words  !  " 

I  did  mark  his  words,  and  very  soon  after- 
wards, too,  as  will  shortly  be  taken  down. 

The  other  circumstance  that  I  noticed  at 
that  ball,  was,  the  gaiety  and  attachment  of 
Christian  George  King.  The  innocent  spirits 
that  Sambo  Pilot  was  in,  and  the  impos- 
sibility he  found  himself  under  of  showing 
all  the  little  colony,  but  especially  the  ladies 
and  children,  how  fond  he  was  of  them,  how 
devoted  to  them,  and  how  faithful  to  them 
for  life  and  death,  for  present,  future,  and 
everlasting,  made  a  great  impression  on  me. 
If  ever  a  man,  Sambo  or  no  Sambo,  was 
trustful  and  trusted,  to  what  may  bo  called 
quite  an  infantine  and  sweetly  beautiful  ex- 
tent, surely,  I  thought  that  morning  when  I 
did  at  last  iie  down  to  rest,  it  was  thatSanibo 
Pilot,  Christian  George  King. 

This  may  account  for  my  dreaming  of  him. 
He  stuck  in  my  sleep,  cornerwise,  and  I 
couldn't  get  him  out.  He  was  always  flitting 
about  me,  dancing  round  me,  and  peeping 
in  over  my  hammock,  though  I  woke  and 
dozed  off  again  fifty  times.'  At  last,  when  I 
opened  my  eyes,  there  he  really  was,  looking 
in  at  the  open  side  of  the  little  dark  hut  ; 
which  was  made  of  leaves,  and  had  Charker's 
hammock  slung  in  it  as  well  as  mine. 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SILVEH-STOEE. 


[December  7.  185;.] 


"  So- Jeer  ! "  says  he,  in  a  sort  of  a  low 
croak.  "  Yup  !  " 

"  Hallo  !  "  says  I,  starting  up.  "  What  ? 
You  are  there,  are  you  1  " 

"  Iss,"  says  he.  "  Christian  George  King 
got  news." 

'•  What  news  has  he  got  1 " 

"  Pirates  out !  " 

I  was  on  ray  feet  in  a  second.  So  was 
(Jliarker.  We  were  both  aware  that  Captain 
Carton,  in  command  of  the  boats,  constantly 
watched  the  main  laud  for  a  secret  signal, 
though,  of  "course,  it  was  not  known  to  such 
as  us  what  the  signal  was. 

Christian  George  King  had  vanished  before 
we  touched  the  ground.  But,  the  word  was 
already  passing  from  hut  to  hut  to  turn  out 
quietly,  and  we  kuew  that  the  nimble  bar- 
barian had  got  hold  of  the  truth,  or  some- 
thing near  it. 

In  a  space  among  the  trees  behind  the  en- 
campment of  us  visitors,  naval  and  military, 
was  a  snugly-screened  spot,  where  we  kept 
the  stores  that  were  in  use,  and  did  our 
cookery.  The  word  was  passed  to  assemble 
here.  It  was  very  quickly  given,  and  was 
given  (so  far  as  we  were  concerned)  by 
Serjeant  Drooce,  who  was  as  good  in  a 
soldier  point  of  view,  as  he  was  bad  in  a 
tyrannical  one.  We  were  ordered  to  drop 
into  this  space,  quietly,  behind  the  trees,  one 
by  one.  As  we  assembled  here,  the  seamen 
assembled  too.  Within  ten  minutes,  as  I 
should  estimate,  we  were  all  here,  except  the 
USUH!  guard  upon  the  beach.  The  beach  (we 
could  see  it  through  the  wood)  looked  as  it 
always  had  done  in  the  hottest  time  of  the 
day.  The  guard  were  in  the  shadow  of  the 
sloop's  hull,  and  nothing  was  moving  but  the 
sea,  and  that  moved  very  faintly.  Work  had 
always  been  knocked  off  at  that  hour,  until 
the  sun  grew  less  fierce,  and  the  sea-breeze 
rose  ;  so  that  its  being  holiday  with  us,  made 
no  difference,  just  then,  in  the  look  of  the 
place.  But,  I  may  mention  that  it  was  a 
holiday,  and  the  first  we  had  had  since  our 
hard  work  began.  Last  night's  ball  had 
been  given,  on  the  leak's  being  repaired,  and 
the  careening  done.  The  worst  of  the  work 
was  over,  and  to-morrow  we  were  to  begin 
to  get  the  sloop  afloat  again. 

We  marines  were  now  drawn  up  hei'e, 
under  arms.  The  chace-party  were  drawn 
up  separate.  The  men  of  the  Columbus 
were  drawn  up  separate.  The  officers 
stepped  out  into  the  midst  of  the  three 
parties,  and  spoke  so  as  all  might  hear. 
Captain  Carton  was  the  officer  in  command, 
and  he  had  a  spy-glass  in  his  hand.  His 
coxswain  stood  by  him  with  another  spy- 
glass, and  with  a  slate  on  which  he  seemed 
to  have  been  taking  down  signals. 

"  Now,  men ! "  says  Captain  Carton ;  "I  have 
to  let  you  know,  for  your  satisfaction :  Firstly, 
that  there  are  ten  pirate-boats,  strongly-man- 
ned and  armed,  lying  hidden  up  acreek  yonder 
on  the  coast,  under  the  overhanging  branches 


of  the  dense  trees.  Secondly,  that  they 
will  certainly  come  out  this  night  when  the 
moon  rises,  on  a  pillaging  and  murdering 
exped:rtion,  of  which  some  part  of  the  main 
land  is  the  object.  Thirdly — don't  cheer, 
men  ! — that  we  will  give  chace,  and,  if  we 
can  get  at  them,  rid  the  world  of  them, 
please  God  !  " 

Nobody  spoke,  that  I  heard,  and  nobody 
moved,  that  I  saw.  Yet  there  was  a  kind  of 
ring,  as  if  every  man  answered  and  approved 
with  the  best  blood  that  was  inside  of  him. 

"  Sir,"  says  Captain  Maryon,  "  I  beg  to 
volunteer  on  this  service,  with  my  boats.  My 
people  volunteer,  to  the  ship's  boys." 

"In  His  Majesty's  name  and  service,"  the 
other  answers,  touching  his  hat,  "  I  accept 
your  aid  with  pleasure.  Lieutenant  Lindev- 
wood,  how  will  you  divide  your  men  1 " 

I  was  ashamed — I  give  it  out  to  be  written 
down  as  large  and  plain  as  possible — I  was 
heart  and  soul  ashamed  of  my  thoughts  of 
those  two  sick  officers,  Captain  Maryon  and 
Lieutenant  Linderwood,  when  I  saw  them, 
then  and  there.  The  spirit  in  those  two 
gentlemen  beat  down  their  illness  (and 
very  ill  I  knew  them  to  be)  like  Saint 
George  beating  down  the  Dragon.  Pain  and 
weakness,  want  of  ease  and  want  of  rest,  "had 
no  more  place  in  their  minds  than  fear  itself. 
Meaning  now  to  express  for  my  lady  to  write 
down,  exactly  what  I  felt  then  and  there,  I 
felt  this :  "  You  two  brave  fellows  that  I  have 
been  so  grudgeful  of,  I  know  that  if  you  were 
dying  you  would  put  it  off  to  get  up  and  do 
your  best,  and  then  you  would  be  so  modest 
that  in  lying  down  again  to  die,  you  would 
hardly  say, '  I  did  it ! ' " 

It  did  rue  good.    It  really  did  me  good. 

But,  to  go  back  to  where  I  broke  off.  Says 
Captain  Carton  to  Lieutenant  Linderwood, 
"  Sir,  how  will  you  diviue  your  men  1  There 
is  not  room  for  all ;  and  a  few  men  should,  in 
any  case,  be  left  here." 

There  was  some  debate  about  it.  At 
last,  it  was  resolved  to  leave  eight  Marines 
and  four  seamen  on  the  Island,  besides 
the  sloop's  two  boys.  And  because  it  was 
considered  that  the  friendly  Sambos  would 
only  want  to  be  commanded  in  case  of 
any  danger  (though  none  at  all  was  appre- 
hended there),  the  officers  were  in  favour 
of  leaving  the  two  non-commissioned  offi- 
cers, Drooce  and  Charker.  It  was  a  heavy 
disappointment  to  them,  just  as  my  being 
one  of  the  left  was  a  heavy  disappointment  to 
me — then,  but  not  soon  afterwards.  We  men 
drew  lots  for  it,  and  I  drew  "Island."  So 
did  Tom  Packer.  So,  of  course,  did  four 
more  of  our  rank  and  file. 

When  this  was  settled,  verbal  instructions 
were  given  to  all  hands  to  keep  the  intended 
expedition  secret,  in  order  that  the  women 
and  children  might  not  be  alarmed,  or  the 
expedition  put  in  a  difficulty  by  more 
volunteers.  The  assembly  was  to  be  on  that 
same  spot,  at  sunset.  Every  man  was  to  keep 


8 


7,  IBM     THE  PEBILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PPJSONEBS.      [Conducted  by 


up  an  appearance,  meanwhile,  of  occupying 
himself  in  his  usual  way.  That  is  to  say, 
every  man  excepting  four  old  trusty  seamen, 
who  were  appointed,  with  an  officer,  to  see  to 
the  arms  and  ammunition,  and  to  muffle  the 
rullocks  of  the  boats,  and  to  make  every  thing  as 
trim  and  swift  and  silent  as  it  could  be  made. 

The  Sambo  Pilot  had  been  present  all  the 
while,  in  case  of  his  being  wan  ted,  and  had  said 
to  the  officer  in  command,  five  hundred  times 
over  if  he  had  said  it  once,  that  Christian 
George  King  would  stay  with  the  So-Jeers, 
and  take  care  of  the  booffer  ladies  and  the 
booffer  childs — booifer  being  that  native's 
expression  for  beautiful.  He  was  now  asked 
a  few  questions  concerning  the  putting  off  of 
the  boats,  and  in  particular  whether  there 
was  any  way  of  embarking  at  the  back  of  the 
Island :  which  Captain  Carton  would  have 
half  liked  to  do,  and  then  have  dropped  round 
in  its  shadow  and  slanted  across  to  the  main. 
But,  "No,"  says  Christian  George  King. 
"No,  no,  no!  Told  you  so,  ten  time.  No, 
no,  no  !  All  reef,  all  rock,  all  swim,  all 
drown  !  "  Striking  out  as  he  said  it,  like  a 
swimmer  gone  mad,  and  turning  over  on 
his  back  on  dry  land,  and  spluttering  himself 
to  death,  in  a  manner  that  made  him  quite 
an' exhibition. 

The  sun  went  down,  after  appearing  to 
be  a  long  time  about  it,  and  the  assembly 
was  called.  Every  man  answered  to  his 
name,  of  course,  and  was  at  his  post.  It 
was  not  yet  black  dark,  and  the  roll  was 
only  just  gone  through,  when  up  comes  Mr. 
Commissioner  Pordage  with  his  Diplomatic 
coat  on. 

"  Captain  Carton,"  says  he,  "  Sir,  what  is 
this  ? " 

"This,  Mr.  Commissioner,"  (he  was  very 
short  with  him)  ''is  an  expedition  against 
the  Pirates.  It  is  a  secret  expedition,  so 
please  to  keep  it  a  secret." 

"Sir,"  says  Commissioner  Pordage,  "I 
trust  there  is  going  to  be  no  unnecessary 
cruelty  committed  ? " 

"Sir,"  returns  the  officer,  "I  trust  not." 

"  That  is  not  enough,  sir,"  cries  Commis- 
sioner Pordage,  getting  wroth.  "  Captain  Car- 
ton, I  give  you  notice.  Government  requires 
you  to  treat  the  enemy  with  great  delicacy, 
consideration,  clemency,  and  forbearance." 

"Sir,"  says  Captain  Carton,  "I  am  an 
English  Officer,  commanding  English  Men, 
and  I  hope  I  am  not  likely  to  disappoint  the 
Government's  just  expectations.  But,  I  pre- 
sume you  know  that  these  villains  under  their 
black  flag  have  despoiled  our  countrymen  of 
their  property,  burnt  their  homes, barbarously 
murdered,  them  and  their  little  children, 
and  worse  than  murdered  their  wives  and 
daughters  ? " 

"Perhaps  I  do,  Captain  Carton,"  answers 
Pordage,  waving  his  hand,  with  dignity ;  "per- 
haps I  do  not.  It  is  not  customary,  sir,  for 
Government  to  commit  itself." 

"It    matters    very   little,   Mr.    Pordage, 


whether  or  no.  Believing  that  I  hold  my 
commission  by  the  allowance  of  God,  and  not 
that  I  have  received  it  direct  from  the  Devil, 
I  shall  certainly  use  it,  with  all  avoidance  of 
unnecessary  suffering  and  with  all  merciful 
swiftness  of  execution,  to  exterminate  iXiese 
people  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  Let  me 
recommend  you  to  go  home,  sir,  and  to  keep 
out  of  the  night-air." 

Never  another  syllable  did  that  officer  say 
to  the  Commissioner,  but  turned  away  to  hid 
men.  The  Commissioner  buttoned  his  Diplo- 
matic coat  to  the  chin,  said,  "  Mr.  Kitten,  at- 
tend me  !  "  gasped,  half  choked  himself,  and 
took  himself  off. 

It  now  fell  very  dark,  indeed.  I  have  seldom, 
if  ever,  seen  it  darker,  nor  yet  so  dark.  The 
moon  was  not  due  until  one  in  the  morning, 
and  it  was  but  a  little  after  nine  when  our 
men  lay  down  where  they  were  mustered. 
It  was  pretended  that  they  were  to  take  a 
nap,  but  everybody  knew  that  no  nap  was  to 
be  got  under  the  circumstances.  Though  all 
were  very  quiet,  there  was  a  restlessness 
among  the  people  ;  much  what  I  have  seen 
among  the  people  on  a  race-course,  when  the 
bell  has  rung  for  the  saddling  for  a  great  race 
with  large  stakes  on  it. 

At  ten, they  put  off;  only  one  boat  putting 
off  at  a  time ;  another  following  in  five  mi- 
nutes ;  both  then  lying  on  their  oars  until 
another  followed.  Ahead  of  all,  paddling  his 
own  outlandish  little  canoe  without  a  sound, 
went  the  Sambo  pilot,  to  take  them  safely 
outside  the  reef.  No  light  was  shown  but 
once,  and  that  was  in  the  commanding  offi- 
cer's own  hand.  I  lighted  the  dark  lantern 
for  him,  and  he  took  it  from  me  when  he 
embarked.  They  had  blue  lights  and  such 
like  with  them,  but  kept  themselves  as  dark 
as  Murder. 

The  expedition  got  away  with  wonderful 
quietness,  and  Christian  George  Kiug  soon 
came  back,  dancing  with  joy. 

"  Yup,  So- Jeer,"  says  he  to  myself  in  a  very 
objectionable  kind  of  convulsions,  "  Christian 
George  King  sar  berry  glad.  Pirates  all  be 
blown  a-pieces.  Yup  !  Yup  !  " 

My  reply  to  that  cannibal  was,  "  However 
glad  you  may  be,  hold  your  noise,  and  don't 
danoe  jigs  and  slap  your  knees  about  it,  for  I 
can't  abear  to  see  you  do  it." 

I  was  on  duty  then  ;  we  twelve  who  were 
left,  being  divided  into  four  watches  of  three 
each,  three  hours'  spell.  I  was  relieved  at 
twelve.  A  little  before  that  time,  I  had 
challenged,  and  Miss  Maryon  and  Mrs. 
Belltott  had  come  in. 

"  Good  Davis,"  says  Miss  Maryou,  "  what 
is  the  matter  ?  Where  is  my  brother  ?" 

I  told  her  what  was  the  matter,  and  where 
her  brother  was. 

"  O  Heaven  help  him  ! "  says  she,  clasping 
her  hands  and  looking  up — she  was  close  in 
front  of  me,  and  she  looked  most  lovely  to  be 
sure  ;  "  he  is  not  sufficiently  recovered,  not 
strong  enough,  for  such  strife  ! " 


Charles  Dickens.] 


[December  7,  1857-]       9 


"  If  you  had  seen  him,  miss,"  I  told  her,  "  as 
I  saw  him  when  he  volunteered,  you  would 
have  known  that  his  spirit  is  strong  enough 
for  any  strife.  It  will  bear  his  body,  miss,  to 
•wherever  duty  calls  him.  It  will  always  bear 
him  to  an  honorable  life,  or  a  brave  death." 

"  Heaven  bless  you ! "  says  she,  touching 
my  arm.  "  I  know  it.  Heaven  bless  you  ! " 

Mrs.  Belltott  surprised  me  by  trembling 
and  saying  nothing.  They  were  still  stand- 
ing looking  towards  the  sea  and  listening, 
after  the  relief  had  come  round.  It  con- 
tinuing very  dark,  I  asked  to  be  allowed  to 
take  them  back.  Miss  Maryon  thanked  me, 
and  she  put  her  arm  in  mine,  and  I  did  take 
them  back.  I  have  now  got  to  make  a  con- 
fession that  will  appear  singular.  After  I  had 
left  them,  I  laid  myself  down  on  my  face  on 
the  beach,  and  cried,  for  the  first  time  since  I 
had  frightened  birds  as  a  boy  at  Snorridge 
Bottom,  to  think  what  a  poor,  ignorant,  low- 
placed,  private  soldier  I  was. 

It  was  only  for  half  a  minute  or  so.  A 
man  can't  at  all  times  be  quite  master  of 
himself,  and  it  was  only  for  half  a  minute  or 
so.  Then  I  up  and  went  to  my  hut,  and 
turned  into  my  hammock,  and  fell  asleep  with 
wet  eyelashes,  and  a  sore,  sore  heart.  Just 
as  1  had  often  done  when  I  was  a  child,  and 
had  been  worse  used  than  usual. 

I  slept  (as  a  child  under  those  circum- 
stances might)  very  sound,  and  yet  very  sore 
at  heart  all  through  my  sleep.  I  was  awoke 
by  the  words,  "  He  is  a  determined  man."  I 
had  sprung  out  of  my  hammock,  and  had 
seized  my  firelock,  and  was  standing  on  the 
ground,  saying  the  words  myself.  "  He  is  a 
determined  man."  But,  the  curiosity  of  my 
state  was,  that  I  seemed  to  be  repeating 
them  after  somebody,  and  to  have  been 
wonderfully  startled  by  hearing  them. 

As  soon  as  I  came  to  myself,  I  went  out  of 
the  hut,  and  away  to  where  the  guard  was. 
Charker  challenged  :  "Who  goes  there  ?"  "A 
friend."  "Not  Gill  ?"  says  he,  as  he  shoul- 
dered his  piece.  "  Gill,"  says  I.  "  Why,  what 
the  deuce  do  you  do  out  of  your  hammock  ? " 
says  he.  "  Too  hot  for  sleep,"  says  I ;  "  is  all 
right  T'  "Eight!"  says  Charker,  "yes, 
yes ;  all's  right  enough  here  ;  what  should 
be  wrong  here  ?  It's  the  boats  that  we  want 
to  know  of.  Except  for  fire-flies  twinkling 
about,  and  the  lonesome  splashes  of  great 
creatures  as  they  drop  into  the  water,  there's 
nothing  going  on  here  to  ease  a  man's  mind 
from  the  boats." 

The  moon  was  above  the  sea,  and  had 
risen,  I  should  say,  some  half-an-hour.  As 
Charker  spoke,  with  his  face  towards  the 
sea,  I,  looking  landward,  suddenly  laid  my 
right  hand  on  his  breast,  and  said,  "  Don't 
move.  Don't  turn.  Don't  raise  your  voice  ! 
You  never  saw  a  Maltese  face  here  ?" 

"  No.  What  do  you  mean  2 "  he  asks, 
staring  at  me. 

"Nor  yet  an  English  face,  with  one  eye  and 
a  patch  across  the  nose  ?  " 


"No.  What  ails  you?  What  do  you 
mean  1 ''' 

I  had  seen  both,  looking  at  us  round  the 
stem  of  a  cocoa-nut  tree,  where  the  moon 
struck  them.  I  had  seen  that  Sambo  Pilot, 
with  one  hand  laid  on  the  stem  of  the  tree, 
drawing  them  back  into  the  heavy  shadow. 

had  seen  their  naked  cutlasses  twinkle 
and  shine,  like  bits  of  the  moonshine  in 
the  water  that  had  got  blown  ashore 
among  the  trees  by  the  light  wind.  I  had 
seen  it  all,  in  a  moment.  And  I  saw  in  a 
moment  (as  any  man  would),  that  the  sig- 
nalled move  of  the  pirates  on  the  main-land 
was  a  plot  and  a  feint ;  that  the  leak  had 
been  made  to  disable  the  sloop ;  that  the 
boats  had  been  tempted  away,  to  leave  the 
Island  unprotected  ;  that  the  pirates  had 
landed  by  some  secreted  way  at  the  back  ; 
and  that  Christian  George  King  was  a 
double-dyed  traitor,  and  a  most  infernal 
villain. 

I  considered,  still  all  in  one  and  the  same 
moment,  that  Charker  was  a  brave  man,  but 
not  quick  with  his  head  ;  and  that  Serjeant 
Drooce,  with  a  much  better  head,  was  close 
by.  All  I  said  to  Charker  was,  "  I  am  afraid 
we  are  betrayed.  Turn  your  back  full  to  the 
moonlight  on  the  sea,  and  cover  the  stem  of 
the  cocoa-nut  tree  which  will  then  be  right 
before  you,  at  the  height  of  a  man's  heart. 
Are  you  right  ? " 

"I  am  right,"  says  Charker,  turning  in- 
stantly, and  falling  into  the  position  with 
a  nerve  of  iron;  "and  right  a'nt  left.  Is 
it  Gill  1 " 

A  few  seconds  brought  me  to  Serjeant 
Drooce's  hut.  He  was  fast  asleep,  and  being 
a  heavy  sleeper,  I  had  to  lay  my  hand  upon 
him  to  rouse  him.  The  instant  I  touched 
him  he  came  rolling  out  of  his  hammock,  and 
upon  me  like  a  tiger.  And  a  tiger  he  was, 
except  that  he  knew  what  he  was  up  to,  in 
his  utmost  heat,  as  well  as  any  man. 

I  had  to  struggle  with  him  pretty  hard  to 
bring  him  to  his  senses,  panting  all  the  while 
(for  he  gave  me  a  breather),  "Serjeant,  I 
am  Gill  Davis  !  Treachery !  Pirates  on  the 
Island!" 

The  last  words  brought  him  round,  and  he 
took  his  hands  off.  "I  have  seen  two  of 
them  within  this  minute,"  said  I.  And  so  I 
told  him  what  I  had  told  Harry  Charker. 

His  soldierly,  though  tyrannical,  head  was 
clear  in  an  instant.  He  didn't  waste  one 
word,  even  of  surprise.  "  Order  the  guard," 
says  he,  "  to  draw  off  quietly  into  the  Fort." 
(They  called  the  enclosure  I  have  before 
mentioned,  the  Fort,  though  it  was  not  much 
of  that.)  "  Then  get  you  to  the  Fort  as 
quick  as  you  can,  rouse  up  every  soul 
there,  and  fasten  the  gate.  I  will  bring  in 
all  those  who  are  up  at  the  Signal  Hill.  If 
we  are  surrounded  before  we  can  join  you, 
you  must  make  a  sally  and  cut  us  out  if  you 
can.  The  word  among  our  men  is, '  Women 
and  children!'" 


10     [Dec-ember  r.  IK:-]    THE  PERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS.     [Conduct^  by 

He  burst  away,  like  fire  going  before  the 
wind   over    dry  reeds.     He    roused   up   the 
seven  men  who  were  off  duty,  and  had  them 
bursting  away  with  him,  before  they  knew 
they  were  not  asleep.     I  reported  orders  to 
Charker,  and  ran  to  the  Fort,  as  I  have  never 
run  at  any  other  time  in  all  niy  life  :  no,  not 
even  in  a  dream. 
The  gate  was  not  fast,  and  had  no  good 
fastening  :  only  a  double  wooden  bar,  a  poor 
chain,  and  a  bad  lock.    Those,  I  secured  as 
well  as  they  could   be  secured    in   a    few 
seconds  by  one  pair  of  hands,  and  so  ran  to 

you  see  it  done  ?"     "  I'll  willingly  help  to  do 
it,"  says  I,  "  unless  or  until  my  superior,  Ser- 
jeant Drooce,  gives  me  other  orders."    He 
shook    me   by  the   hand,   and    having  told 
off  some  of  his  companions  to  help  me,  be- 
stirred himself  to  look  to  the  arms  and  am- 
munition.    A  proper  quick,   brave,   steady, 
ready  gentleman  ! 
One  of  their  three  little  children  was  deal 
and  dumb.     Miss  Maryon  had  been  from  the 
first  with  all  the  children,  soothing  them,  and 
dressing  them  (poor  little  things,  they  had 
been  brought  out  of  their  beds),  and  making 

that  part  of  the  building  where  Miss  Maryon 
lived.  I  called  to  her  loudly  by  her  name 
until  she  answered.  I  then  called  loudly  all 
the  names  I  knew  —  Mrs.  Macey  (Miss 
Maryou's  married  sister),  Mr.  Macey,  Mrs. 
Venuing,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Fisher,  even  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Pordage.  Then  I  called  out,  "  All 
you  gentlemen  here,  get  up  and  defend  the 
place  !  We  are  caught  in  a  trap.  Pirates 
have  landed.  We  are  attacked  !" 

At  the  terrible  word  "  Pirates ! " — for,  those 
villains  had  done  such  deeds  in  those  seas  as 
never  can  be  told  in  writing,  and  can  scarcely 
be  BO  much  as  thought  of — cries  and  screams 
rose  up  from  every  part  of  the  place.  Quickly, 
lights  moved  about  from  window  to  window, 
and  the  cries  moved  about  with  them,  and 
men,  women  and  children  came  flying  down 
into  the  square.  I  remarked  to  myself,  even 
then,  what  a  number  of  things  I  seemed  to 
aee  at  once.  I  noticed  Mrs.  Macey  coming 
towards  me,  carrying  all  her  three  children 
together.  I  noticed  Mr.  Pordage,  in  the 
greatest  terror,  in  vain  trying  to  get  on  his 
Diplomatic  coat ;  and  Mr.  Kitten  respect- 
fully tying  his  pocket-handkerchief  over  Mrs. 


and  shrink    upon    the 


Pordage's  nightcap. 

run    out   screaming, 

ground  near  me,  and  cover  her  face  in  her 

hands,  and  lie,  all  of  a  bundle,  shivering. 

But,  what  I  noticed  with  the  greatest  pleasure 


them  believe  that  it  was  a  game  of  play,  so 
that  some  of  them  were  now  even  laughing. 
I  had  been  working  hard  with  the  others 
at  the  barricade,  and  had  got  up  a  pretty 
good  breastwork  within  the  gate.  Drooce 
and  the  seven  had  come  back,  bringing  in 
the  people  from  the  Signal  Hill,  and  had 
worked  along  with  us  :  but,  I  had  not  so 
much  as  spoken  a  word  to  Drooce,  nor  had 
Drooce  so  much  as  spoken  a  word  to  me,  for 
we  were  both  too  busy.  The  breastwork 
was  now  finished,  and  I  found  Miss  Maryon 
at  my  side,  with  a  child  in  her  arms.  Her 
dark  hair  was  fastened  round  her  head  with 
a  band.  She  had  a  quantity  of  it,  and  it 
looked  even  richer  and  more  precious,  put 
up  hastily  out  of  her  way,  than  I  had  seen 
it  look  when  it  was  carefully  arranged.  She 
was  very  pale,  but  extraordinarily  quiet  and 
still. 

"  Dear  good  Davis,"  said  she,  "  I  have  been 
waiting  to  speak  one  word  to  you." 

I  turned  to  her  directly.  If  I  had  received 
a  musket-ball  in  the  heart,  and  she  had  stood 
there,  I  almost  believe  I  should  have  turned 
to  her  before  I  dropped. 


I  noticed  Mrs.  Belltott  i      "  This  pretty  little    creature," 


said 
who 


she, 
was 


kissing  the  child  in  her  arms, 
playing  with  her  hair  and  trying  to  pull  it 
down,  "  cannot  hear  what  we  say — can  hear 
nothing.  I  trust  you  so  much,  and  have 


was,  the  determined  eyes  with  which  those  such  great  confidence  in  you,  that  I  want  you 
men  of  the   Mine   that  I  had  thought  fine !  to  make  me  a  promise." 


gentlemen,  came  round  me  with  what  arms 
they  had  :  to  the  full  as  cool  and  resolute  as  I 
could  be,  for  my  life — aye,  and  for  my  soul, 
too,  into  the  bargain  ! 

The  chief  person  being  Mr.  Macey,  I  told 
him  how  the  three  men  of  the  guard  would 
be  at  the  gate  directly,  if  they  were  not 
already  there,  and  how  Serjeant  Drooce  and 
tho  other  seven  were  gone  to  bring  in  the 
outlying  part  of  the  people  of  Silver-store. 
I  next  urged  him,  for  the  love  all  who  were 
dear  to  him,  to  trust  no  Sambo,  and,  above 
all,  if  he  could  get  any  good  chance  at 
Christian  George  King,  not  to  lose  it,  but  to 
put  him  out  of  the  world.  "  I  will  follow 
your  advice  to  the  letter,  Davis,"  says  he  ; 
"what  next?"  My  answer  was,  "I  think, 
sir,  I  would  recommend  you  next,  to  order 
down  such  heavy  furniture  and  lumber  as  can 
be  moved,  and  make  a  barricade  within  the 
gate."  "  That's  good  again,"  saya  he  ;  "  will 


"  What  is  it,  Miss  1 " 

"  That  if  we  are  defeated,  and  you  are 
absolutely  sure  of  my  being  taken,  you  will 
kill  me." 

"  I  shall  not  be  alive  to  do  it,  Miss.  I  shall 
have  died  in  your  defence  before  it  conies  to 
that.  They  must  step  across  my  body,  to  lay 
a  hand  on  you." 

"  But,  if  you  are  alive,  you  brave  soldier." 
How  she  looked  at  me  !  "  And  if  you  cannot 
save  me  from  the  Pirates,  living,  you  will 
save  me,  dead.  Tell  me  so." 

Well !  I  told  her  I  would  do  that,  at  the 
last,  if  all  else  failed.  She  took  my  hand 
— my  rough,  coarse  hand — and  put  it  to  her 
lips.  She  put  it  to  the  child's  lips,  and  the 
child  kissed  it.  I  believe  I  had  the  strength 
of  half  a  dozen  men  in  me,  from  that  moment, 
until  the  fight  was  over. 

All  this  time,  Mr.  Commissioner  Pordage 
had  been  wanting  to  make  a  Proclamation  to 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SILVER-STOKE. 


[December  7,  1857.]     11 


the  Pirates,  to  lay  down  their  arms  and  go 
away  ;  and  everybody  had  been  hustling  him 
about  and  tumbling  over  him,  while  he  was 
calling  for  pen  and  ink  to  write  it  with. 
Mrs.  Pordage,  too,  had  some  curious  ideas 
about  the  British  respectability  of  her  night- 
cap (which  had  as  many  frills  to  jit,  growing 
iu  layers  one  inside  another,  as  if  it  was  a 
white  vegetable  of  the  artichoke  sort),  and 
she  wouldn't  take  the  nightcap  off,  and  would 
be  angry  when  it  got  crushed  by  the  other 
ladies  who  were  handing  things  about,  and, 
in  short,  she  gave  as  much  trouble  as  her 
husband  did.  But,  as  we  were  now  forming 
for  the  defence  of  the  place,  they  were  both 
poked  out  of  the  way  with  no  ceremony. 
The  children  and  ladies  were  got  into  the 
little  trench  which  surrounded  the  silver- 
house  (we  were  afraid  of  leaving  them  in  any 
of  the  light  buildings,  lest  they  should  be  set 
on  fire),  and  we  made  the  best  disposition  we 
could.  There  was  a  pretty  good  store,  in 
point  of  amount,  of  tolerable  swords  and  cut- 
lasses. Those  were  issued.  There  were,  also, 
perhaps  a  score  or  so  of  spare  muskets. 
Those  were  brought  out.  To  my  astonish- 
ment, little  Mrs.  Fisher  that  I  had  taken  for 
a  doll  and  a  baby,  was  not  only  very  active 
in  that  service,  but  volunteered  to  load  the 
spare  arms. 

"For,  I  understand  it  well,"  says  she, 
cheerfully,  without  a  shake  in  her  voice. 

"  I  am  a  soldier's  daughter  and  a  sailor's 
sister,  and  I  understand  it  too,"  says  Miss 
Mary  on,  just  in  the  same  way. 

Steady  and  busy  behind  where  I  stood, 
those  two  beautiful  and  delicate  young  women 
fell  to  handling  the  guus,  hammering  the 
flints,  looking  to  the  locks,  and  quietly  direct- 
ing others  to  pass  up  powder  and  bullets 
from  hand  to  hand,  as  unflinching  as  the  best 
of  tried  soldiers. 

Serjeant  Dvooce  had  brought  in  word  that 
the  pirates  were  very  strong  in  numbers — 
over  a  hundred,  was  his  estimate — and  that 
they  were  not,  even  then,  all  landed  ;  for,  he 
had  seen  them  in  a  very  good  position  on  the 
further  side  of  the  Signal  Hill,  evidently 
waiting  for  the  rest  of  their  men  to  come  up. 
In  the  present  pause,  the  first  we  had  had 
since  the  alarm,  he  was  telling  this  over 
again  to  Mr.  Macey,  when  Mr.  Macey  sud- 
denly cried  out : 

"  The  signal !  Nobody  has  thought  of  the 
signal  !  " 

We  knew  of  no  signal,  so  we  could  not 
have  thought  of  it.  "  What  signal  may  you 
mean,  sir  1 "  says  Serjeant  Drooce,  looking 
sharp  at  him. 

"  There  is  a  pile  of  wood  upon  the  Signal 
Hill.  If  it  could  be  lighted — which  never 
has  been  done  yet — it  would  be  a  signal  of 
distress  to  the  mainland." 

Charker  cries,  directly  :  "Serjeant  Drooce, 
dispatch  me  on  that  duty.  Give  me  the  two 
men  who  were  on  guard  with  me  to-night, 
and  I'll  light  the  fire,  if  it  can  be  done." 


"  And  if  it  can't,  Corporal "  Mr.  Macey 

strikes  in. 

"  Look  at  these  ladies  and  children,  sir  !  " 
says  Charker.  "  I'd  sooner  light  myself,  than 
not  try  any  chance  to  save  them." 

We  gave  him  a  Hurrah ! — it  burst  from  us, 
come  of  it  what  might — and  he  got  his  two 
men,  and  was  let  out  at  the  gate,  and  crept 
away.  I  had  no  sooner  come  back  to  my 
place  from  being  one  of  the  party  to  handle 
the  gate,  than  Miss  Maryon  said  in  a  low 
voice  behind  me : 

"  Davis,  will  you  look  at  this  powder.  This 
is  not  right  1 " 

I  turned  my  head.  Christian  George  King 
again,  and  treachery  again  !  Sea-water  had 
been  conveyed  into  the  magazine,  and  every 
grain  of  powder  was  spoiled  ! 

"Stay  a  moment,"  said  Serjeant  Drooce, 
when  I  had  told  him,  without  causing  a  move- 
ment in  a  muscle  of  his  face  :  "  look  to  your 
pouch,  my  lad.  You  Tom  Packer,  look  to 
your  pouch,  confound  you !  Look  to  your 
pouches,  all  you  Marines." 

The  same  artful  savage  had  got  at  them, 
somehow  or  another,  and  the  cai'tridges  were 
all  unserviceable.  "Hum!"  says  the  Ser- 
jeant, "  Look  to  your  loading,  men.  You  are 
right  so  far  1 " 

Yes  ;  we  were  right  so  far. 
"  Well,  my  lads,  and  gentlemen  all,"  says  the 
Serjeant,  "  this  will  be  a  hand-to-hand  affair, 
and  so  much  the  better." 

He  treated  himself  to  a  pinch  of  snuff, 
and  stood  up,  square-shouldered  and  broad- 
chested,  in  the  light  of  the  moon — which 
was  now  very  bright — as  cool  as  if  he  was 
waiting  for  a  play  to  begin.  He  stood  quiet, 
and  we  all  stood  quiet,  for  a  matter  of  some- 
thing like  half-an-hour.  I  took  notice  from 
such  whispered  talk  as  there  was,  how  little 
we  that  the  silver  did  not  belong  to,  thought 
about  it,  and  how  much  the  people  that  it 
did  belong  to,  thought  about  it.  At  the  end 
of  the  half-hour,  it  was  reported  from  the 
gate  that  Charker  and  the  two  were  falling 
back  on  us,  pursued  by  about  a  dozen. 

"  Sally  !  Gate-party,  under  Gill  Davis," 
says  the  Sergeant,  "  and  bring  'em  in  !  Like 
men,  now  ! " 

We  we're  not  long  about  it,  and  we  brought 
them  in.  "Don't  take  me,"  says  Charker, 
holding  me  round  the  neck,  and  stumbling 
down  at  my  feet  when  the  gate  was  fast, 
"don't  take  me  near  the  ladies  or  the 
children,  Gill.  They  had  better  not  see 
Death,  till  it  can't  be  helped.  They'll  see 
it  soon  enough." 

"Harry ! "  I  answered,  holding  up  his  head. 
"  Comrade ! " 

He  was  cut  to  pieces.  The  signal  had 
been  secured  by  the  first  pirate  party  that 
lauded  ;  his  hair  was  all  singed  off,  and  his 
face  was  blackened  with  the  running  pitch 
from  a  torch. 

He  made  no  complaint  of  pain,  or  of  any- 
thing. "  Good  bye,  old  chap,"  was  all  he 


12       [December  7.  1857-]     THE   PEEILS    OF   CERTAIN   ENGLISH   PRISONERS.       [Conducted  by 


said,  with  a  smile.    "  I've  got  my  death.   And 
Death  a'nt  life.     Is  it,  Gill '{  " 

Having  helped  to  lay  his  poor  body  on  one 
side,  I  went  back  to  my  post.  Serjeant 
Drooce  looked  at  me,  with  his  eyebrows  a 
little  lifted.  I  nodded.  "  Close  up  here,  men, 
and  gentlemen  all ! "  said  the  Serjeant. 
"  A  place  too  many,  in  the  line." 

The  Pirates  were  so  close  upon  us  at  this 
time,  that  the  foremost  of  them  were  already 
before  the  gate.  More  and  moi'e  came  up 
with  a  great  noise,  and  shouting  loudly. 
When  we  believed  from  the  sound  that  they 
were  all  there,  we  gave  three  English  cheers. 
The  poor  little  children  joined,  and  were  so 
fully  convinced  of  our  being  at  play,  that 
they  enjoyed  the  noise,  and  were  heard  clap- 
ping their  hands  in  the  silence  that  followed. 

Our  disposition  was  this,  beginning  with 
the  rear.  Mrs.  Veuning,  holding  her  daugh- 
ter's child  in  her  arms,  sat  on  the  steps  of  the 
little  square  trench  surrounding  the  silver- 
house,  encouraging  and  directing  those  women 
and  children  as  she  might  have  done  in  the 
happiest  and  easiest  time  of  her  life.  Then, 
there  was  an  armed  line,  under  Mr.  Macey, 
across  the  width  of  the  enclosure,  facing  that 
way  and  having  their  backs  towards  the  gate, 
in  order  that  they  might  watch  the  walls 
and  prevent  our  being  taken  by  surprise. 
Then,  there  was  a  space  of  eight  or  ten  feet 
deep,  in  which  the  spare  arms  were,  and  in 
which  Miss  Maryon  and  Mrs.  Fisher,  their 
hands  and  dresses  blackened  with  the  spoilt 
gunpowder,  worked  on  their  knees,  tying 
such  things  as  knives,  old  bayonets,  and 
spear-heads,  to  the  muzzles  of  the  useless 
muskets.  Then,  there  was  a  second  armed 
line,  under  Serjeant  Drooce,  also  across  the 
width  of  the  enclosure,  but  facing  to  the 
gate.  Then,  came  the  breastwork  we  had 
made,  with  a  zig-zag  way  through  it  for  me  ! 
and  my  little  party  to  hold  good  in  retreat-  j 
ing,  as  long  as  we  could,  when  we  were  j 
driven  from  the  gate.  We  all  knew  that 
it  was  impossible  to  hold  the  place  long, 
and  that  our  only  hope  was  in  the  timely 
discovery  of  the  plot  by  the  boats,  and  in 
their  coming  back. 

I  and  my  men  were  now  thrown  forward 
to  the  gate.    From  a  spy-hole,  I  could  see  the 
•whole  crowd  of  Pirates.     There  were  Malays  j 
among  them,  Dutch,  Maltese,  Greeks,  Sambos, ' 
Negroes,  and  Convict  Englishmen  from  the  j 
West   India  Islands  ;   among  the  last,  him  i 
with  the  one  eye  and  the  patch  across  the 
nose.    There  were  some  Portuguese,  too,  and 
a  few  Spaniards.     The  captain  was  a  Portu- 
guese ;  a  little  man  with  very  large  ear-rings 
under  a  very  broad  hat,  and  a  great  briglit 
shawl  twisted  about  his   shoulders.     They 
•were  all  strongly  armed,  but  like  a  boarding 
party,  with  pikes,  swords,  cutlasses,  and  axes. 
I  noticed  a  good  many  pistols,  but  not  a  gun 
of  any  kind  among  them.     This  gave  me  to 
understand  that  they  had  considered  that  a 
continued  roll  of  musketry  might  perhaps 


have  been  heard  on  the  mainland  ;  also,  that 
for  the  reason  that  lire  would  be  seen  from 
the  mainland  they  would  not  set  the  Fort 
in  flames  and  roast  us  alive  ;  which  was  one 
of  their  favorite  ways  of  carrying  on.  I 
looked  about  for  Christian  George  King, 
and  if  I  had  seen  him  I  am  much  mistaken 
if  he  would  not  have  received  my  one  round 
of  ball-cartridge  in  his  head.  But,  no 
Christian  George  King  was  visible. 

A  sort  of  a  wild  Portuguese  demon,  who 
seemed  either  fierce-mad  or  fierce-drunk — 
but,  they  all  seemed  one  or  the  other — came 
forward  with  the  black  flag,  and  gave  it  a 
wave  or  two.  After  that,  the  Portuguese  cap- 
tain called  out  in  shrill  English.  "  I  say  you  ! 
English  fools  !  Open  the  gate  !  Surrender  !  " 

As  we  kept  close  and  quiet,  he  said  some- 
thing to  his  men  which  1  didn't  understand, 
and  when  he  had  said  it,  the  one-eyed  Eng- 
lish rascal  with  the  patch  (who  had  stepped 
out  when  he  began),  said  it  again  in  English. 
It  was  only  this.  "Boys  of  the  black  flag, 
this  is  to  be  quickly  done.  Take  all  the 
prisoners  you  can.  If  they  don't  yield,  kill 
the  children  to  make  them.  Forward  !  " 
Then,  they  all  came  on  at  the  gate,  and,  in 
another  half  minute  were  smashing  and 
splitting  it  in. 

We  struck  at  them  through  the  gaps  and 
shivers,  and  we  dropped  many  of  them,  too  ; 
but,  their  very  weight  would  have  carried 
such  a  gate,  if  they  had  been  unarmed. 
I  soon  found  Serjeant  Drooce  at  my  side, 
forming  us  six  remaining  marines  in  line 
— Tom  Packer  next  to  me — and  ordering 
us  to  fall  back  three  paces,  and,  as  they 
broke  in,  to  give  them  our  one  little  volley 
at  short  distance.  "  Then,"  says  he,  "  receive 
them  behind  your  breastwork  on  the  bayonet, 
and  at  least  let  every  man  of  you  pin  one  of 
the  cursed  cockchafers  through  the  body." 

We  checked  them  by  our  fire,  slight  as  it 
was,  and  we  checked  them  at  the  breast- 
work. However,  they  broke  over  it  like 
swarms  of  devils — they  were,  really  and 
truly,  more  devils  than  men — and  then  it 
was  hand  to  hand,  indeed. 

We  clubbed  our  muskets  and  laid  about 
us  ;  even  then,  those  two  ladies — always  be- 
hind me — were  steady  and  ready  with  the 
arms.  I  had  a  lot  of  Maltese  and  Malays 
upon  me,  and,  but  for  a  broadsword  that 
Miss  Maryon's  own  hand  put  in  mine,  should 
have  got  my  end  from  them.  But,  was  that 
all  ?  No.  I  saw  a  heap  of  banded  dark  hair 
and  a  white  dress  come  thrice  between  me 
and  them,  under  my  own  raised  right  arm, 
which  each  time  might  have  destroyed  the 
wearer  of  the  white  dress  ;  and  each  time  one 
of  the  lot  went  down,  struck  dead. 

Drooce  was  armed  with  a  broad-sword, 
too,  and  did  such  things  with  it,  that  there 
was  a  cry,  in  half-a  dozen  languages,  of 
'•'  Kill  that  serjeant  !  "  as  I  knew,  by  the  cry 
being  raised  in  English,  and  taken  up  in. 
other  tongues.  I  had  received  a  severe  cut 


Chailes  DiekenB.] 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SILVEK-STORE. 


[December  7,  IStf.]      13 


across  the  left  arm  a  few  moments  before, 
and  should  have  known  nothing  of  it,  except 
supposing  that  somebody  had  struck  me  a 
smart  blow,  if  I  had  not  felt  weak,  and  seen 
myself  covered  with  spouting  blood,  and,  at 
the  same  instant  of  time,  seen  Miss  Maryon 
tearing  her  dress,  and  binding  it  with  Mrs. 
Fisher's  help  round  the  wound.  They  called 
to  Tom  Packer,  who  was  scouring  by,  to  stop 
and  guard  me  for  one  minute,  while  I  was 
bound,  or  I  should  bleed  to  death  in  trying 
to  defend  myself.  Tom  stopped  directly,  with  • 
a  good  sabre  in  his  hand. 

In  that  same  moment — all  things  seem  to 
happen  in  that  same  moment,  at  such  a  time — 
half-a-dozen  had  rushed  howling  at  Serjeant 
Drooce.  The  Serjeant,  stepping  back  against 
the  wall,  stopped  one  howl  for  ever  with 
such  a  terrible  blow,  and  waited  for  the  rest 
to  come  on,  with  such  a  wonderfully  unmoved 
lace,  that  they  stopped  and  looked  at  him. 

"  See  him  now ! "  cried  Tom  Packer. 
"  Now,  when  I  could  cut  him  out !  Gill ! 
Did  I  tell  you  to  mark  my  words  1 " 

I  implored  Tom  Packer  in  the  Lord's 
name,  as  well  as  I  could  in  my  faint-ness,  to 
go  to  the  Serjeant's  aid. 

'•'  I  hate  and  detest  him,"  says  Tom,  moodily 
wavering.    "  Still,  he  is  a  brave  man."    Then 
he    calls    out,    "  Serjeant  Drooce,    Serjeant 
Drooce  !     Tell  me  you  have  driven  me  too ; 
hard,  and  are  sorry  for  it." 

The  Serjeant,  without  turning  his  eyes  j 
from  his  assailants,  which  would  have  been  j 
instant  death  to  him,  answers  : 

"No.     I  won't." 

"  Serjeant  Drooce  !  "  cries  Tom,  in  a  kind 
of  an  agony.  "  I  have  passed  my  word  that  I  j 
would  never  save  you  from  Death,  if  I  could, 
but  would  leave  you  to  die.  Tell  me  you 
have  driven  me  too  hard  and  are  sorry  for  it, 
and  that  shall  go  for  nothing." 

One  of  the  group  laid  the  Serjeant's  bald 
bare  head  open.  The  Serjeant  laid  him 
dead. 

"  I  tell  you,"  says  the  Serjeant,  breathing 
a  little  short,  and  waiting  for  the  next  at- 
tack. "  No.  I  won't.  If  you  are  not  man 
enough  to  strike  for  a  fellow-soldier  because 
he  wants  help,  and  because  of  nothing  else, 
I'll  go  into  the  other  world  and  look  for  a 
better  man." 

Tom  swept  upon  them,  and  cut  him  out. 
Tom  and  he  fought  their  way  through  another 
knot  of  them,  and  sent  them  flying,  and  came 
over  to  where  I  was  beginning  again  to  feel, 
with  inexpressible  joy,  that  I  had  got  a 
sword  in  my  hand. 

They  had  hardly  come  to  us,  when  I  heai'd, 
above  all  the  other  noises,  a  tremendous  cry 
of  women's  voices.  1  also  saw  Miss  Maryon, 
with  quite  a  new  face,  suddenly  clap  her  two 
hands  over  Mrs.  Fisher's  eyes.  I  looked 
towards  the  silver-house,  and  saw  Mrs.  Ven- 
ning — standing  upright  on  the  top  of  the  steps 
of  the  trench,  with  her  grey  hair  and  her 
dark  eyes — hide  her  daughter's  child  behind 


her,  among  the  folds  of  her  dress,  strike  a 
pirate  with  her  other  hand,  and  fall,  shot  by 
his  pistol. 

Tiie  cry  arose  again,  and  there  was  a 
terrible  and  confusb-g  rush  of  the  women 
into  the  midst  of  the  struggle.  In  another 
moment,  something  came  tumbling  down 
upon  me  that  I  thought  was  the  wall.  It 
was  a  heap  of  Sambos  who  had  come  over 
the  wall ;  and  of  four  men  who  clung  to  my 
legs  like  serpents,  one  who  clung  to  my  right 
leg  was  Christian  George  King. 

''  Yup,  So-Jeer  !  "  says  he,  "  Christian 
George  King  sar  berry  glad  So-Jeer  a  pri- 
soner. Christian  George  King  been  waiting 
for  So-Jeer  sech  long  time.  Yup,  yup  !  " 

What  could  I  do,  with  five-and-twenty  of 
them  on  me,  but  be  tied  hand  and  foot  1  So, 
I  was  tied  hand  and  foot.  It  was  all  over 
now — boats  not  come  back — all  lost !  When 
I  was  fast  bound  and  was  put  up  against 
the  wall,  the  one-eyed  English  convict  came 
up  with  the  Portuguese  Captain,  to  have  a 
look  at  me. 

"  See  !  "  says  he,  "  Here's  the  determined 
man  !  If  you  had  slept  .sounder,  last  night, 
you'd  have  slept  your  soundest  last  night,  my 
determined  man." 

The  Portuguese  Captain  laughed  in  a  cool 
way,  and,  with  the  flat  of  his  cutlass,  hit  me 
crosswise,  as  if  I  was  the  bough  of  a  tree 
that  he  played  with :  first  on  the  face,  and 
then  across  the  chest  and  the  wounded  arm. 
I  looked  him  steady  in  the  face  without 
tumbling  while  he  looked  at  me,  I  am  happy 
to  say  ;  but,  when  they  went  away,  I  fell, 
and  lay  there. 

The  sun  was  up,  when  I  was  roused  and 
told  to  come  down  to  the  beach  and  be  em- 
barked. I  was  full  of  aches  and  pains,  and 
could  not  at  first  remember  ;  but,  I  remem- 
bered quite  soon  enough.  The  killed  were 
lying  about  all  over  the  place,  and  the 
Pirates  were  burying  their  dead,  and  taking 
away  their  wounded  on  hastily-made  litters, 
to  the  back  of  the  Island.  As  for  us  prisoners, 
some  of  their  boats  had  come  round  to  the 
usual  harbour,  to  carry  us  off.  We  looked 
a  wretched  few,  I  thought,  when  I  got  down 
there  ;  still,  it  was  another  sign  that  we  had 
fought  well,  and  made  the  enemy  suffer. 

The  Portuguese  Captain  had  all  the  women 
already  embarked  in  the  boat  he  himself  com- 
manded, which  was  just  putting  off  when  I 
got  down.  Miss  Maryon  sat  on  one  side  of 
him,  and  gave  me  a  moment's  look,  as  full 
of  quiet  courage,  and  pity,  and  confidence,  as 
if  it  had  been  an  hour  long.  On  the  other 
side  of  him  was  poor  little  Mrs.  Fisher, 
weeping  for  her  child  and  her  mother.  I 
was  shoved  into  the  same  boat  with  Drooce 
and  Packer,  and  the  remainder  of  our  party 
of  marines :  of  whom  we  had  lost  two  privates, 
besides  Charker,  my  poor,  brave  comrade.  We 
all  made  a  melancholy  passage,  under  the  hot 
sun,  over  to  the  mainland.  There,  we  lauded 
in  a  solitary  place,  and  were  mustered  on  the 


14 


7,  ISM  THE  PERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS,    [conducted  by 


sea  sand.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Macey  and  their 
children  were  amongst  us,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Pordage,  Mr.  Kitten,  Mr.  Fisher,  and  Mrs. 
Belltott.  We  mustered  only  fourteen  men, 
fifteen  women,  and  seven  children.  Those 
were  all  that  remained  of  the  English  who 
had  lain  down  to  sleep  last  night,  unsuspect- 
ing and  happy,  on  the  Island  of  Silver-Store. 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  PRISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 

THERE  we  all  stood,  huddled  up  on  the 
beach  under  the  burning  sun,  with  the 
pirates  closing  us  in  on  every  side — as  forlorn 
a  company  of  helpless  men,  women,  and 
children  as  ever  was  gathered  together  out 
of  any  nation  in  the  world.  I  kept  my 
thoughts  to  myself;  but  I  did  not  in  my 
heart  believe  that  any  one  of  our  lives  was 
worth  five  minutes'  purchase. 

The  man  on  whose  will  our  safety  or 
our  destruction  depended  was  the  Pirate 
Captain.  All  our  eyes,  by  a  kind  of  instinct, 
fixed  themselves  on  him — excepting  in  the 
case  of  the  poor  children,  who,  too  frightened 
to  cry,  stood  hiding  their  faces  against  their 
mothers'  gowns.  The  ruler  who  held  all 
the  ruffians  about  us  in  subjection,  was, 
judging  by  appearances,  the  very  last  man  I 
should  have  picked  out  as  likely  to  fill  a 
place  of  power  among  any  body  of  men,  good 
or  bad,  under  heaven.  By  nation,  he  was  a 
Portuguese  ;  and,  by  name,  he  was  generally 
spoken  of  among  his  men  as  The  Don.  He 
was  a  little,  active,  weazen,  monkey-faced  man, 
dressed  in  the  brightest  colours  and  the 
finest-made  clothes  I  ever  saw.  His  three- 
cornered  hat  was  smartly  cocked  on  one  side. 
His  coat-skirts  were  stiffened  and  stuck  out, 
like  the  skirts  of  the  dandies  in  the  Mall  in 
London.  When  the  dance  was  given  at  the 
Island,  I  gawno  such  lace  on  any  lady's  dress 
there  as  I  saw  on  his  cravat  and  ruffles. 
Round  his  neck  he  wore  a  thick  gold  chain, 
with  a  diamond  cross  hanging  from  it.  His 
lean,  wiry,  brown  fingers  were  covered  with 
rings.  Over  his  shoulders,  and  falling  down 
in  front  to  below  his  waist,  he  wore  a  sort  of 
sling  of  broad  scarlet  cloth,  embroidered  with 
beads  and  little  feathers,  and  holding,  at  the 
lower  part,  four  loaded  pistols,  two  on  a  side, 
lying  ready  to  either  hand.  His  face  was 
mere  skin  and  bone,  and  one  of  his  wrinkled 
cheeks  had  a  blue  scar  running  all  across  it, 
which  drew  up  that  part  of  his  face,  and 
showed  his  white  shining  teeth  on  that  side 
of  his  mouth.  An  uglier,  meaner,  weaker, 
man-monkey  to  look  at,  I  never  saw  ;  and 
yet  there  was  not  one  of  his  crew,  from  his 
mate  to  his  cabin-boy,  who  did  not  obey  him 
as  if  he  had  been  the  greatest  monai-ch  in 
the  world.  As  for  the  Sambos,  including 
especially  that  evil  -  minded  scoundrel, 
Christian  George  King,  they  never  went  near 
him  without  seeming  to  want  to  roll  before 
him  on  the  ground,  for  the  sake  of  winning 


of  having  one  of  his  little  dancing- 
jet    set    on    their    black   bullock 


the  honour 
master's   feet 
bodies. 

There  this  fellow  stood,  while  we  were 
looking  at  him,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
smoking  a  cigar.  His  mate  (the  one-eyed  Eng- 
lishman), stood  by  him  ;  a  big,  hulking  fellow 
he  was,  who  might  have  eaten  the  Captain 
up,  pistols  and  all,  and  looked  about  for 
more  afterwards.  The  Don  himself  seemed, 
to  an  ignorant  man  like  me,  to  have  a  gift  of 
speaking  in  any  tongue  he  liked.  1  can 
testify  that  his  English  rattled  out  of  his 
crooked  lips  as  fast  as  if  it  was  natural  to 
them ;  making  allowance,  of  course,  for  his 
foreign  way  of  clipping  his  words. 

"  Now,  Captain,"  says  the  big  mate,  running 
his  eye  over  us  as  if  we  were  a  herd  of  cattle, 
"  here  they  are.  What's  to  be  done  with 
them  ?" 

"Are  they  all  off  the  Island]"  says  the 
Pirate  Captain. 

"  All  of  them  that  are  alive,"  says  the 
mate. 

"  Good,  and  very  good,"  says  the  captain. 
"Now,  Giant-Gcorgy,  some  paper,  a  "pen, 
and  a  horn  of  ink." 

Those  things  were  brought  immediately. 

"  Something  to  write  on,"  says  the  Pirate 
Captain.  "  What  ?  Ha  !  why  not  a  broad 
nigger  back  ?" 

He  pointed  with  the  end  of  his  cigar  to 
one  of  the  Sambos.  The  man  was  pulled 
forward,  and  set  down  on  his  knees  with  his 
shoulders  rounded.  The  Pirate  Captain  laid 
the  paper  on  them,  and  took  a  dip  of  ink — then 
suddenly  turned  up  his  snub-nose  with  a  look 
of  disgust,  and,  removing  the  paper  again,  took 
from  his  pocket  a  fine  cambric  handkerchief 
edged  with  lace,  smelt  at  the  scent  on  it,  and 
afterwards  laid  it  delicately  over  the  Sambo's 
shoulders. 

"  A  table  of  black  man's  back,  with  the 
sun  on  it,  close  under  my  nose — ah,  Giant- 
Gcorgy,  pah  !  pah  !"  says  the  Pirate  Captain, 
putting  the  paper  on  the  handkerchief,  with 
another  grimace  expressive  of  great  disgust. 

He  began  to  write  immediately,  waiting 
from  time  to  time  to  consider  a  little  with 
himself;  and  once  stopping,  apparently,  to 
count  our  numbers  as  we  stood  before  him. 
To  think  of  that  villain  knowing  how  to 
write,  and  of  my  not  being  able  to  make  so 
much  as  a  decent  pothook,  if  it  had  been  to 
save  my  life ! 

When  he  had  done,  he  signed  to  one  of  his 
men  to  take  the  scented  handkerchief  off  the 
Sambo's  back,  and  told  the  sailor  he  might 
keep  it  for  his  trouble.  Then,  holding  the 
written  paper  open  in  his  hand,  he  came 
forward  a  step  or  two  closer  to  us,  and  said, 
with  a  grin,  and  a  mock  bow,  which  made 
my  fingers  itch  with  wanting  to  be  at  him  : 

"  I  have  the  honour  of  addressing  myself 
to  the  ladies.  According  to  my  reckoning 
they  are  fifteen  ladies  in  all.  Does  any  one  of 
them  belong  to  the  chief  officer  of  the  sloop  1 " 


Charles  Dickons.) 


THE  PEISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


[December  7,  18570        15 


There  was  a  momentary  silence. 

"You  don't  answer  me,"  says  the  Pirate 
Captain.  "Now,  I  mean  to  be  answered.  Lookj 
here,  women."  He  drew  one  of  his  four  pistols 
out  of  his  gay  scarlet  sling,  ami  walked  up 
to  Tom  Packer,  who  happened  to  be  standing 
nearest  to  him  of  the  men  prisoners.  "This 
is  a  pistol,  and  it  is  loaded.  I  put  the  barrel 
to  the  head  of  this  man  with  my  right  hand, 
and  I  take  out  my  watch  with  my  left.  I 
wait  five  minutes  for  an  answer.  If  I  don't 
get  it  in  five  minutes,  I  blow  this  man's  brains 
out.  I  wait  five  minutes  again,  and  if  I 
don't  get  an  answer,  I  blow  the  next  man's 
brains  out.  And  so  I  go  on,  if  you  are  obsti- 
nate, and  your  nerves  are  strong,  till  not  one 
of  your  soldiers  or  your  sailors  is  left.  On 
my  word  of  honour,  as  a  gentleman-buc- 
canier,  I  promise  you  that.  Ask  my  men  if  j 
I  ever  broke  my  word." 

He  rested  the  barrel  of  the  pistol  against 
Torn  Packer's  head,  and  looked  at  his  watch, 
as  perfectly  composed,  in  his  cat-like  cruelty, 
as  if  he  was  waiting  for  the  boiling  of  an 

egg- 

"  If  you  think  it  best  not  to  answer  him, 
ladies,"  says  Tom,  "never  mind  me.  It's 
my  trade  to  risk  my  life  ;  and  I  shall  lose  it 
in  a  good  cause." 

"A  brave  man,"  said  the  Pirate  Captain, 
lightly.  "  Well,  ladies,  are  you  going  to  sacri- 
fice the  brave  man  1 " 

"  We  are  going  to  save  him,"  said  Miss 
Maryon,  "  as  he  has  striven  to  save  us.  1 
belong  to  the  captain  of  the  sloop.  I  am  his 
sister."  She  stopped,  and  whispered  anxiously 
to  Mrs.  Macey,  who  was  standing  with  her. 
"Don't  acknowledge  yourself,  as  I  have  done  | 
— you  have  children." 

''  Good !  "  said  the  Pirate  Captain.  "  The 
answer  is  given,  and  the  brains  may  stop  in 
the  brave  man's  head."  He  put  his  watch  and 
pistol  back,  and  took  two  or  three  quick  puffs 
at  his  cigar  to  keep  it  alight — then  handed  the 
paper  he  had  written  on,  and  his  penfull  of 
ink,  to  Miss  Maryon. 

"  Read  that  over,"  he  said,  "  and  sign  it 
for  yourself,  and  the  women  and  children 
with  you." 

Saying  those  words,  he  turned  round 
briskly  on  his  heel,  and  began  talking,  in  a 
whisper,  to  Giant  Georgy,  the  big  English 
mate.  What  he  was  talking  about,  of  course, 
I  could  not  hear ;  but  I  noticed  that  he 
motioned  several  times  straight  into  the  inte- 
rior of  the  country. 

"  Davis,"  said  Miss  Maryon,  "  look  at 
this." 

She  crossed  before  her  sister,  as  she  spoke, 
and  held  the  paper  which  the  Pirate  Captain 
had  given  to  her,  under  my  eyes — my  bound 
arms  not  allowing  me  to  take  it  myself. 
Never  to  my  dying  day  shall  I  forget  the 
shame  I  felt,  when  I  was  obliged  to  ac- 
knowledge to  Miss  Maryon  that  I  could  not 
read  a  word  of  it ! 

"There  are  better  men  than  me,  ma'am," 


I  said,  with  a  sinking  heart,  "who  can  read 
it,  and  ad  vise  yn  for  the  best." 

"None  better,"  she  answered,  quietly. 
"  None,  whose  advice  I  would  so  willingly 
take.  I  have  seen  enough,  to  feel  sure  of 
that.  Listen,  Davis,  while  I  read." 

Her  pale  face  turned  paler  still,  as  she  fixed 
her  eyes  on  the  paper.  Lowering  her  voice 
to  a  whisper,  so  that  the  women  and  children 
near  might  uot  hear,  she  read  me  these 
lines : 

"  To  the  Captains  of  English  men-of-war,  and  to 
the  commanders  of  vessels  of  other  nations,  cruising  in 
the  Caribbean  Seas. 

"The  precious  metal  arid  the  jewels  laid  up  in  the 
English  Island  of  Silver-Store,  are  in  the  possession  of 
the  Buccanicrs,  at  sea. 

"  The  women  and  children  of  the  Island  of  Silver- 
Store,  to  the  number  of  Twenty-Two,  are  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  Buccaniers,  on  land. 

"  They  will  be  taken  up  the  country,  with  fourteen 
men  prisoners  (whose  lives  the  Buccaniers  have  pri- 
vate reasons  of  their  own  for  preserving),  to  a  place  of 
confinement,  which  is  unapproachable  by  strangers. 
They  will  be  kept  there  until  a  certain  day,  previously 
agreed  on  between  the  Buccanicrs  at  sea,  and  the  Buc- 
caniers on  land. 

"  If,  by  that  time,  no  news  from  the  party  at  sea, 
reaches  the  party  on  land,  it  will  be  taken  for  granted 
that  the  expedition  which  conveys  away  the  silver  and 
jewels  has  been  met,  engaged,  and  conquered  by  supe- 
rior force  ;  that  the  Treasure  has  been  taken  from  its 
present  owners  ;  and  that  the  Buccanicrs  guarding  it, 
have  been  made  prisoners,  to  be  dealt  with  according 
to  the  law. 

"  The  absence  of  the  expected  news  at  the  appointed 
time,  being  interpreted  in  this  way,  it  will  be  the  next 
object  of  the  Buccaniers  on  land  to  take  reprisals"  for 
the  loss  and  the  injury  inflicted  on  their  companions  at 
sea.  The  lives  of  the  women  and  children  of  the 
Island  of  Silver-Store  are  absolutely  at  their  mercy  ; 
and  those  lives  will  pay  the  forfeit,  if  the  Treasure  ia 
taken  away,  and  if  the  men  in  possession  of  it  come 
to  harm. 

"  This  paper  will  be  nailed  to  the  lid  of  the  larger-t 
chest  taken  from  the  Island.  Any  officer  whom  the 
chances  of  war  may  bring  within  reading  distance  of  it, 
is  warned  to  pause  and  consider,  before  his  conduct 
signs  the  death-warrant  of  the  women  and  children  of 
an  English  colony. 

"  Signed,  under  the  Black  Flag, 

"  PEDHO  MF.NDF.Z, 

"Commander  of  the  Buccauiers,  and  Chief  of  the 
Guard  over  the  English  Prisoners." 

'  u  The  statement  above  written,  in  so  far  as  it 
regards  the  situation  we  are  now  placed  in,  may  be 
depended  on  as  the  truth. 

"  Signed,  on  behalf  of  the  imprisoned  women  and 
children  of  the  Island  of  Silver-Store." 

"  Beneath  this  last  line,"  said  Miss  Maryon, 
pointing  to  it,  "  is  a  blank  space,  in  which  I 
am  expected  to  sign  my  name." 

"And  in  five  minutes'  time,"  added  the 
Pirate  Captain,  who  had  stolen  close  up  to  us, 
"  or  the  same  consequences  will  follow  which 
I  had  the  pleasure  of  explaining  to  you  a  few 
minutes  aw." 


16     [D«cemb«r  7,  la;.]    THE  PERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS.     [Conducted  by 


He  again  drew  out  his  watch  and  pistol ; 
but,  this  time,  it  was  my  head  that  he  touched 
with  the  barrel. 

"When  Tom  Packer  spoke  for  himself, 
miss,  a  little  while  ago,"  I  said,  "  please  to 
consider  that  he  spoke  for  me." 

"  Another  brave  man ! "  said  the  Pirate 
Captain,  with  his  ape's  grin.  "  Am  I  to  fire 
my  pistol  this  time,  or  am  I  to  put  it  back 
again  as  I  did  before  1 " 

Miss  Maryon  did  not  seem  to  hear  him. 
Her  kind  eyes  rested  for  a  moment  on  my 
face,  and  then  looked  up  to  the  bright  Heaven 
above  us. 

"  Whether  I  sign,  or  whether  I  do  not  sign," 
she  said,  "  we  are  still  in  the  hands  of  God, 
and  the  future  which  His  wisdom  has  ap- 
pointed will  not  the  less  surely  come." 

With  those  words  she  placed  the  paper  on 
my  breast,  signed  it,  and  handed  it  back  to 
the  Pirate  Captain. 

"  This  is  our  secret,  Davis,"  she  whispered. 
"  Let  us  keep  the  dreadful  knowledge  of  it 
to  ourselves  as  long  as  we  can." 

I  have  another  singular  confession  to 
make — I  hardly  expect  anybody  to  believe 
me  when  I  mention  the  circumstance — but 
it  is  not  the  less  the  plain  truth  that,  even 
in  the  midst  of  that  frightful  situation,  I  felt, 
for  a  few  moments,  a  sensation  of  happiness 
while  Miss  Maryon's  hand  was  holding  the 
paper  on  my  breast,  and  while  her  lips  were 
telling  me  that  there  was  a  secret  between  us 
which  we  were  to  keep  together. 

The  Pirate  Captain  carried  the  signed  paper 
at  once  to  his  mate. 

"Go  back  to  the  Island,"  he  says,  "and 
nail  that  with  your  own  hands  on  the  lid  of  the 
largest  chest.  There  is  no  occasion  to  hurry 
the  business  of  shipping  the  Treasure,  be- 
cause there  is  nobody  on  the  Island  to  make 
signals  that  may  draw  attention  to  it  from 
the  sea.  I  have  provided  for  that ;  and  I 
have  provided  for  the  chance  of  your  being 
outmanoeuvred  afterwards,  by  English,  or 
other  cruisers.  Here  are  your  sailing 
orders"  (he  took  them  from  his  pocket  while 
he  spoke),  "your  directions  for  the  disposal 
of  the  Treasure,  and  your  appointment  of  the 
day  and  the  place  for  communicating  again 
with  me  and  my  prisoners.  I  have  done  my 
part — go  you,  now,  and  do  yours." 

Hearing  the  clearness  with  which  he  gave 
hia  orders ;  knowing  what  the  devilish 
scheme  was  that  he  had  invented  for  prevent- 
ing the  recovery  of  the  Treasure,  even  if  our 
ships  happened  to  meet  and  capture  the 
pirates  at  sea ;  remembering  what  the  look 
and  the  speech  of  him  had  been,  when  he  put 
his  pistol  to  my  head  and  Tom  Packer's  ;  I 
began  to  understand  how  it  was  that  this 
little,  weak,  weazen,  wicked  spider  had  got 
the  first  place  and  kept  it  among  the  villains 
about  him. 

The  mate  moved  off,  with  hia  orders,  to- 
wards the  sea.  Before  he  got  there,  the 
Pirate  Captain  beckoned  another  of  the  crew 


to  come  to  him  ;  and  spoke  a  few  words  in 
his  own,  or  in  some  other  foreign  language. 
I  guessed  what  they  meant,  when  I  saw 
thirty  of  the  pirates  told  off  together,  and  set 
in  a  circle  all  round  us.  The  rest  were 
marched  away  after  the  mate.  In  the  same 
manner  the  Sambos  were  divided  next.  Ten, 
including  Christian  George  King,  were  left 
with  us  ;  and  the  others  were  sent  down  to  the 
canoes.  When  this  had  been  done,  the  Pirate 
Captain  looked  at  his  watch  ;  pointed  to  some 
trees,  about  a  mile  off,  which  fringed  the  laud 
as  it  rose  from  the  beach ;  said  to  an  American 
among  the  pirates  round  us,  who  seemed  to 
hold  the  place  of  second  mate,  "  In  two  hours 
from  this  time  ; "  and  then  walked  away 
briskly,  with  one  of  his  men  after  him,  to 
some  baggage  piled  up  below  us  on  the 
beach. 

We  were  marched  off  at  once  to  the  shady 
place  under  the  trees,  and  allowed  to  sit 
down  there,  in  the  cool,  with  our  guard  in  a 
ring  round  us.  Feeling  certain  from  what  I 
saw,  and  from  what  I  knew  to  be  con- 
tained in  the  written  paper  signed  by  Miss 
Maryon,  that  we  were  on  the  point  of  under- 
taking a  long  journey  up  the  country,  I 
anxiously  examined  my  fellow  prisoners  to 
see  how  fit  they  looked  for  encountering 
bodily  hardship  and  fatigue  :  to  say  nothing 
of  mental  suspense  and  terror,  over  and  above. 

With  all  possible  respect  for  an  official 
gentleman,  I  must  admit  that  Mr.  Com- 
missioner Pordage  struck  me  as  being, 
beyond  any  comparison,  the  most  helpless 
individual  in  our  unfortunate  company. 
What  with  the  fright  he  had  suffered,  the 
danger  he  had  gone  through,  and  the  bewil- 
derment of  finding  himself  torn  clean  away 
from  his  safe  Government  moorings,  his  poor 
unfortunate  brains  seemed  to  be  as  completely 
discomposed  as  his  Diplomatic  coat.  He  was 
perfectly  harmless  and  quiet,  but  also  per- 
fectly light-headed — as  anybody  could  dis- 
cover who  looked  at  his  dazed  eyes  or 
listened  to  his  maundering  talk.  I  tried  him 
with  a  word  or- two -about  our  miserable 
situation  ;  thinking  that,  if  any  subject  would 
get  a  trifle  of  sense  out  of  him,  it  must  surely 
be  that. 

"  You  -will  observe,"  said  Mr.  Pordage, 
looking  at  the  torn  cuffs  of  his  Diplomatic 
coat  instead  of  at  me,  "that  I  cannot  take 
cognisance  of  our  situation.  No  memoran- 
dum of  it  has  been  drawn  up  ;  no  report  in 
connexion  with  it  has  been  presented  to  me. 
I  cannot  possibly  recognise  it  until  the  neces- 
sary minutes  and  memorandums  and  reports 
have  reached  me  through  the  proper  chan- 
nels. When  our  miserable  situation  presents 
itself  to  me,  on  paper,  1  shall  bring  it  under 
the  notice  of  Government ;  and  Government, 
after  a  proper  interval,  will  bring  it  back 
again  under  my  notice  ;  and  then  I  shall 
have  something  to  say  about  it.  Not  a 
minute  before, — no,  my  man,  not  a  minute 
before ! " 


Ct»rte«  Dickens.] 


THE  PRISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


[December  7,  1887.]        17 


Speaking  of  Mr.  Pordage's  wanderings  of' 
mind,  reminds  me  that  it  is  necessary  to  say 
a  word  next,  about  the  much  more  serious 
case  of  Serjeant  Drooce.  The  £  cut  on  hia 
head,  acted  on  by  the  heat  of  the  climate, ! 
Lad  driven  him,  to  all  appearance,  stark  mad.  j 
Besides  the  danger  to  himself,  if  he  broke  out  i 
before  the  Pirates,  there  was  the  danger  to  ' 
the  women  and  children,  of  trusting  him  j 
among  them  —  a  misfortune  which,  in 
our  captive  condition,  it  was  impossible  to 
avoid.  Most  providentially,  however  (as  I 
found  on  inquiry)  Tom  Packer,  who  had 
saved  his  life,  had  a  power  of  controlling 
him,  which  none  of  the  rest  of  us  possessed. 
Some  shattered  recollection  of  the  manner  in 
which  he  had  been  preserved  from  death, 
seemed  to  be  still  left  in  a  corner  of  his ! 
memory.  Whenever  he  showed  v-symptoms 
of  breaking  out,  Tom  looked  at  him,  and 
repeated  with  his  hand  and  arm  the  action 
of  cutting  out  right  and  left  which  had  been 
the  means  of  his  saving  the  sergeant.  On 
seeing  that,  Drooce  always  huddled  himself 
up  close  to  Tom,  and  fell  silent.  We, — that 
is,  Packer  and  I — arranged  it  together  that 
he  was  always  to  keep  near  Drooce,  what- 
ever happened,  and  however  far  we  might 
be  marched  before  we  reached  the  place  of 
our  imprisonment. 

The  rest  of  us  men — meaning  Mr.  Macey, 
Mr.  Fisher,  two  of  my  comrades  of  the  Marines, 
and  five  of  the  sloop's  crew — were,  making 
allowance  for  a  little  smarting  in  our 
wounds,  in  tolerable  health,  and  not  half 
so  much  broken  in  spirit  by  troubles,  past, 
present,  and  to  come,  as  some  persons  might 
be  apt  to  imagine.  As  for  the  seamen, 
especially,  no  stranger  who  looked  at 
their  jolly  brown  faces  would  ever  have 
imagined  that  they  were  prisoners,  and  in 
peril  of  their  lives.  They  sat  together,  chew- 
ing their  quids,  and  looking  out  good- 
humouredly  at  the  sea,  like  a  gang  of  liberty- 
men  resting  themselves  on  shore.  "  Take  it 
easy,  soldier,"  says  one  of  the  six,  seeing  me 
looking  at  him.  "And,  if  you  can't  do  that, 
take  it  as  easy  as  you  can."  I  thought,  at 
the  time,  that  many  a  wiser  man  might  have 
given  me  less  sensible  advice  than  this, 
though  it  was  only  offered  by  a  boatswain's 
mate. 

A  movement  among  the  Pirates  attracted 
my  notice  to  the  beach  below  us,  and  I  saw 
their  Captain  approaching  our  halting- 
place,  having  changed  his  fine  clothes  for 
garments  that  were  fit  to  travel  in. 

His  coming  back  to  us  had  the  effect  of 
producing  unmistakable  signs  of  preparation 
for  a  long  journey.  Shortly  after  he  ap- 
peared, three  Indians  came  up,  leading  three 
loaded  mules  ;  and  these  were  followed,  in  a 
few  minutes,  by  two  of  the  Sambos,  carrying 
between  them  a  copper  full  of  smoking  meat 
and  broth.  After  having  been  shared  among 
the  Pirates,  this  mess  was  set  down  before 
us,  with  some  wooden  bowls  floating  about 


in  it,  to  dip  out  the  food  with.  Seeing  that  we 
hesitated  before  touching  it,  the  Pirate  Captain 
recommended  us  not  to  be  too  mealy-mouthed, 
as  that  was  meat  from  our  own  stores  on  the 
Island,  and  the  last  we  were  likely  to  taste 
for  a  long  time  to  come.  The  sailors,  with- 
out any  more  ado  about  it,  professed  their 
readiness  to  follow  this  advice,  muttering 
among  themselves  that  good  meat  was 
a  good  thing,  though  the  devil  himself  had 
cooked  it.  The  Pirate  Captain  then,  ob- 
serving that  we  were  all  ready  to  accept 
the  food,  ordered  the  bonds  that  confined 
the  hands  of  us  men  to  be  loosened  and 
cast  off,  so  that  we  might  help  ourselves. 
After  we  had  served  the  women  and  chil- 
dren, we  fell  to.  It  was  a  good  meal — 
though  I  can't  say  that  I  myself  had  much 
appetite  for  Jit.  Jack,  to  use  his  own  phrase, 
stowed  away  a  double  allowance.  The  jolly 
faces  of  the  seamen  lengthened  a  good  deal, 
however,  when  they  found  there  was  nothing 
to  drink  afterwards  but  plain  water.  One  of 
them,  a  fat  man,  named  Short,  went  so  far 
as  to  say  that,  in  the  turn  things  seemed 
to  have  taken,  he  should  like  to  make  his 
will  before  we  started,  as  the  stoppage  of  his 
grog  and  the  stoppage  of  his  life  were  two 
events  that  would  occur  uncommonly  close 
together. 

When  we  had  done,  we  were  all  ordered 
to  stand  up.  The  Pirates  approached  me  and 
the  other  men,  to  bind  our  arms  again ;  but, 
the  Captain  stopped  them. 

"  No,"  says  he.  "  I  want  them  to  get  on 
at  a  good  pace  ;  and  they  will  do  that  best 
with  their  arms  free.  Now,  prisoners,"  he 
continued,  addressing  us,  "  I  don't  mean  to 
have  any  lagging  on  the  road.  I  have  fed 
you  up  with  good  meat,  and  you  have  no 
excuse  for  not  stepping  out  briskly — women, 
children,  and  alL  You  men  are  without 
weapons  and  without  food,  and  you  know 
nothing  of  the  country  you  are  going  to 
travel  through.  If  you  are  mad  enough,  in 
this  helpless  condition,  to  attempt  escaping 
on  the  march,  you  will  be  shot,  as  sure  as  you 
all  stand  there, — aijd  if  the  bullet  misses,  you 
will  starve  to  defth  in  forests  that  have  no 
path  and  no  end.'1 

Having  addre|sed  us  in  those  words,  he 
turned  again  to  Jlis  men.  I  wondered  then,  as 
I  had  wondered  once  or  twice  already,  what 
those  private  reasons  might  be,  which  he  had 
mentioned  in  his  written  paper,  for  sparing 
the  lives  of  us  male  prisoners.  I  hoped  he 
would  refer  to  them  now — but  I  was  disap- 
pointed. 

"  While  the  country  allows  it,"  he  went 
on,  addressing  his  crew,  "march  in  a  square, 
and  keep  the  prisoners  inside.  Whether  it 
is  man,  woman,  or  child,  shoot  any  one  of 
them  who  tries  to  escape,  on  peril  of  being 
shot  yourselves  if  you  miss.  Put  the  Indians 
and  mules  in  front,  and  the  Sambos  next  to 
them.  Draw  up  the  prisoners  all  together. 
Tell  off  seven  men  to  march  before  them, 


18    [December  7. 1857.]       THE   PERILS    OF   CERTAIN   ENGLISH   PRISONERS.         [Conducted  by 


and  seven  more  for  each  side  ;  and  leave  the 
other  niue  for  the  rear-guard.  A  fourth 
mule  for  ine,  when  I  get  tired,  aud  another 
Indiun  to  carry  my  guitar." 

His  guitar !  To  think  of  the  murderous 
thief  having  a  turn  for  strumming  tunes,  and 
•wanting  to  cultivate  it  on  such  an  expedition 
as  ours  !  I  could  hardly  believe  my  eyes  when 
I  saw  the  guitar  brought  forward  in  a  neat 
green  case,  with  the  piratical  skull  and  cross- 
bones  and  the  Pirate  Captain's  initials  painted 
on  it  in  white. 

"  I  can  stand  a  good  deal,"  whispers  Tom  , 
Packer  to  me,  looking  hard  at  the  guitar ; ! 
"  but  con-found  me,  Davis,  if  it's  not  a  trifle 
too  much  to  be  taken  prisoner  by  such   a 
fellow  as  that !  " 

The  Pirate  Captain  lights  another  cigar. 

"March  !  "  says  he,  with  a  screech  like  a 
cat,  and  a  flourish  with  his  sword,  of  the  sort 
that  a  stage-player  would  give  at  the  head  of 
a  mock  army. 

We  all  moved  off,  leaving  the   clump  of 
trees  to  the  right,  going,  we  knew  not  whither, 
to  unknown  sufferings  and  an  unknown  fate. 
The  land  that  lay  before  us  was  wild  and ! 
open,  without  fences  or   habitations.     Here ; 
and  there,  cattle  wandered  about  over  it,  and 
a  few  stray  Indians.     Beyond,  in  the  dis- 
tance, as  far  as  we  could  see,  rose  a  prospect ! 
of  mountains  and  forests.   Above  us,  was  the  [ 
pitiless  sun,  in  a  sky  that  was  too  brightly 
blue  to  look  at.     Behind  us,  was  the  calm 
murmuring  ocean,  -with  the  dear  island  home 
which    the  women   and  children   had   lost, 
rising  in  the   distance    like   a  little    green 
garden  on  the  bosom  of  the  sea.     After  half- 
an-hour's  walking,  we  began  to  descend  into 
the  plain,  and  the  last  glimpse  of  the  Island 
of  Silver-Store  disappeared  from  our  view. 

The  order  of  march  which  we  prisoners 
now  maintained  among  ourselves,  being  the 
order  which,  with  certain  occasional  varia- 
tions, we  observed  for  the  next  three  days,  I 
may  as  well  give  som^  description  of  it  in 
this  place,  before  I  get*,  occupied  -with  other 
things,  and  forget  it. 

I  myself,  and  the  saih  I  have  mentioned 
under  the  name  of  She  •,  led  the  march. 
After  us  came  Miss  Mai  on,  and  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Macey.  They  were  ,  'lowed  by  two  of 
my  comrades  of  the  Marine  with  Mrs.  Por- 
dage,  Mrs.  Belltott,  and  two  c  the  strongest  of  j 
the  ladies  to  look  after  them.  Mr.  Fisher,  tlie 
ship's  boy,  and  the  three  remai  ing  men  of  the 
sloop's  crew,  with  the  rest  of  the  women  and 
children  came  next ;  Tom  Packer,  taking 
rare  of  Serjeant  Drooce,  brought  up  the 
rear.  So  long  as  we  got  on  quickly  enough, 
the  pirates  showed  no  disposition  to  in- 
terfere with  our  order  of  march  ;  but,  if 
there  were  any  signs  of  lugging — and  God 
knows  it  was  hard  enough  work  for  a 
man  to  walk  under  that  burning  sun ! — 
the  villains  threatened  the  weakest  of  our 
company  with  the  points  of  their  swords. 
The  younger  among  the  children  gave  out, 


as  might  have  been  expected,  poor  things, 
very  early  on  the  march.  Short  and  I  set 
the  example  of  taking  two  of  them  up,  pick- 
a-back,  which  was  followed  directly  by  the 
rest  of  the  men.  Two  of  Mrs.  Macey'a  three 
children  fell  to  ourshare;the  eldest,  travelling 
behind  us  on  his  father's  back.  Short  hoisted 
the  next  in  age,  a  girl,  on  his  broad  shoul- 
ders. I  see  him  now  as  if  it  was  yesterday, 
with  the  perspiration  pouring  down  his  fat 
face  and  bushy  whiskers,  rolling  along  as  if 
he  was  on  the  deck  of  a  ship,  and  making  a 
sling  of  his  neck-handkerchief,  with  his  clever 
sailor's  fingers,  to  support  the  little  girl  on 
his  back.  "  I  expect  you'll  marry  me,  my 
darling,  when  you  grow  up,"  says  he,  in  his 
oily,  joking  voice.  And  the  poor  child,  in 
her  innocence,  laid  her  weary  head  down  on 
his  shoulder,  and  gravely  and  faithfully  pro- 
mised that  she  would. 

A  lighter  weight  fell  to  my  share.  I  had 
the  youngest  of  the  children,  the  pretty 
little  boy,  already  mentioned,  who  had  been 
deaf  and  dumb  from  his  birth.  His  mother's 
voice  trembled  sadly,  as  she  thanked 
me  for  taking  him  up,  and  tenderly  put 
his  little  dress  right  while  she  walked 
behind  me.  "He  is  very  little  and  light 
of  his  age,"  says  the  poor  lady,  trying 
hard  to  speak  steady.  "  He  won't  give  you 
much  trouble,  Davis — he  has  always  been  a 
very  patient  child  from  the  first."  The  boy's 
little  frail  arms  clasped  themselves  round  my 
neck  while  she  was  speaking  ;  and  something 
or  other  seemed  to  stop  in  my  throat  tUe 
cheerful  answer  that  I  wanted  to  make.  I 
walked  on  with  what  must  have  looked,  I 
am  afraid,  like  a  gruff  silence  ;  the  poor  child 
humming  softly  on  my  back,  in  his  unchang- 
ing, dumb  way,  till  he  hummed  himself  to 
sleep.  Often  and  often,  since  that  time,  in 
dreams,  I  have  felt  those  small  arms  round  my 
neck  again,  and  have  heard  that  dumb  mur- 
muring song  in  my  ear,  dying  away  fainter 
and  fainter,  till  nothing  was  left  but  the  light 
breath  rising  and  falling  regularly  on  my 
cheek,  telling  me  that  my  little  fellow-pri- 
soner had  forgotten  his  troubles  in  sleep. 

We  marched,  as  well  as  I  could  guess, 
somewhere  about  seven  miles  that  day — a 
short  spell  enough,  judging  by  distance,  but 
a  terrible  long  one  judging  by  heat.  Our 
halting  place  was  by  the  banks  of  a  stream, 
across  which,  at  a  little  distance,  some  wild 
pigs  were  swimming  as  we  came  up.  Beyond 
us,  was  the  same  view  of  forests  and  moun- 
tains that  I  have  already  mentioned  ;  and  all 
round  us,  was  a  perfect  wilderness  of  flowers. 
The  shrubs,  the  bushes,  the  ground,  all  blaxed 
again  with  magnificent  colours,  under  the 
evening  sun.  When  we  were  ordered  to 
halt,  wherever  we  set  a  child  down,  there 
that  child  had  laps  and  laps  full  of  flowers 
growing  within  reach  of  its  hand.  We  sat 
on  flowers,  eat  on  flowers,  slept  at  night  on 
flowers — any  chance  handful  of  which  would 
have  been  well  worth  a  golden  guinea  among 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  PEISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


[December  7, 


19 


the  gentlefolks  in  England.     It  was  a  sight  ]  outside  of  all.     In  that  tropical  climate,  and 

not  easily  described,  to  sec  niggers,  savages, 

and  Pirates,  hideous,  filthy,  and  ferocious  in 

the  last  degree  to  look  at,  squatting  about 

grimly  upon  a  natural  carpet  of  beauty,  of 

the  sort  that  is  painted   in  pictures    with 

pretty  fairies  dancing  on  it. 

The  mules  were  unloaded,  and  left  to  roll 
among  the  flowers  to  their  hearts'  content.  A 
neat  tent  was  set  up  for  the  Pirate  Captain,  at 
the  door  of  which,  after  eating  a  good  meal, 
he  laid  himself  down  in  a  languishing  attitude, 
with  a  nosegay  in  the  bosom  of  his  waistcoat, 
and  his  guitar  on  his  knees,  and  jingled  away 
at  the  strings,  singing  foreign  songs,  with  a 
shrill  voice  aud  with  his  nose  conceitedly 
turned  up  in  the  air.  I  was  obliged  to  cau- 
tion Short  and  the  sailors — or  they  would,  to 
a  dead  certainty,  have  put  all  our  lives  in 
peril  by  openly  laughing  at  him. 

We  had  but  a  poor  supper  that  night. 
The  Pirates  now  kept  the  provisions  they 
had  brought  from  the  Island,  for  their  own 
we  had  to  share  the  miserable 
diet  of  the  country,  with  the 
Indians  and  the  Sambos.  This  consisted  of 


use  ;    and 
starvation 


at  that  hot  time,  the  night  was  only  plea- 
santly cool.  The  bubbling  of  the  stream, 
and,  now  and  then,  the  cour.se  of  the  breeze 
through  the  flowers,  was  all  we  heard. 
During  the  hours  of  darkness,  it  occurred  to 
me — aud  I  have  no  doubt  the  same  idea 
struck  my  comrades — that  a  body  of  deter- 
mined men,  making  a  dash  for  it,  might  now 
have  stood  a  fair  chance  of  escaping.  We 
were  still  near  enough  to  the  sea-shore  to 
be  certain  of  not  losiug  our  way  ;  and  the 
plain  was  almost  as  smooth,  for  a  good  long 
run,  as  a  natural  race-course.  However, 
the  mere  act  of  dwelling  on  such  a  notion, 
was  waste  of  time  and  thought,  situated 
as  we  were  with  regard  to  the  women 
and  children.  They  were,  so  to  speak,  the 
hostages  who  insured  our  submission  to  cap- 
tivity, or  to  any  other  hardship  that  might 
be  inflicted  on  us  ;  a  result  which  1  have  no 
doubt  the  Pirate  Captain  had  foreseen,  when 
he  made  us  all  prisoners  together  on  taking 
possession  of  the  Island. 

We  were  roused  up  at  four  in  the  morn- 
ing, to  travel  on  before  the  heat  set  in  ;  our 
march  under  yesterday's  broiling  sun  having 
been  only  undertaken  for  the  purpose  of 
getting  us  away  from  the  sea-shore,  aud  from 
possible  help  in  that  quarter,  without  loss  of 
time.  We  forded  the  stream,  wading  through 
it  waist-deep :  except  the  children,  who  crossed 
on  our  shoulders.  An  hour  before  noon,  we 
halted  under  two  immense  wild  cotton-trees, 
about  half  a  mile  from  a  little  brook,  which 
probably  ran  into  the  stream  we  had  passed 
in  the  morning.  Late  in  the  afternoon  we 
were  on  foot  again,  and  encamped  for  the 
night  at  three  deserted  huts,  built  of  mud 
and  poles.  There  were  the  remains  of  an 
enclosure  here,  intended,  as  I  thought,  for 
cattle  ;  and  there  was  an  old  well,  from  which 
our  supply  of  water  was  got.  The  greater 
part  of  the  women  were  very  tired  and  sorrow- 
ful that  night ;  but  Miss  Maryon  did  wonders 
in  cheering  them  up. 

On  the  third  morning,  we  began  to  skirt 
the  edge  of  a  mountain,  carrying  our  store 
of  water  with  us  from  the  well.  We  men 
prisoners  had  our  full  share  of  the  burden. 
What  with  that,  what  with  the  way  being 
all  up-hill,  and  what  with  the  necessity  of 
helping  on  the  weaker  members  of  our 
company,  that  day's  march  was  the  hardest  I 
remember  to  have  ever  got  through.  To- 
wards evening,  after  resting  again  in  the 
middle  of  the  day,  we  stopped  for  the  night 
on  the  verge  of  the  forest.  A  dim,  lower- 
ing, awful  sight  it  was,  to  look  up  at  the 
mighty  wall  of  trees,  stretching  in  front,  and 
on  either  side  of  us  without  a  limit  and 
without  a  break.  Through  the  night,  though 
there  was  no  wind  blowing  over  our  encamp- 
ment, we  heard  deep,  moaning,  rushing 
sounds  rolling  about,  at  intervals,  in  the 
great  inner  wilderness  of  leaves  ;  and,  now 
relieving  guard  regularly,  ranged  themselves '  and  then,  those  among  us  who  slept,  were 


black  beans  fried,  and  of  things  they  call 
Tortillas,  meaning,  in  plain  English,  flat  cakes 
made  of  crushed  Indian  corn,  and  baked  on  a 
clay  griddle.  Not  only  was  this  food  insipid, 
butthe  dirtymanner  in  which  the  Indianspre- 
pared  it,  was  disgusting.  However,  complaint 
was  useless ;  for  we  could  see  for  ourselves. that 
no  other  provision  had  been  brought  for  the 
prisoners.  I  heard  some  grumbling  among  our 
men,  and  some  little  fretfulness  among  the 
children,  which  their  mothers  soon  quieted. 
I  myself  was  indifferent  enough  to  the  qua- 
lity of  the  food  ;  for  I  had  noticed  a  circum- 
stance, just  before  it  was  brought  to  us, 
which  occupied  my  mind  with  more  serious 
considerations.  One  of  the  mules  was  un- 
loaded near  us,  aud  I  observed  among  the 
baggage  a  large  bundle  of  new  axes,  doubt- 
less taken  from  some  ship.  After  puzzling 
my  brains  for  some  time  to  know  what  they 
could  be  wanted  for,  I  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  they  were  to  be  employed  in  cutting 
our  way  through,  when  we  came  to  the 
forests.  To  think  of  the  kind  of  travelling 
which  these  preparations  promised — if  the 
view  I  took  of  them  was  the  right  one — and 
then  to  look  at  the  women  and  children, 


exhausted    by    the 
sufficient   to   make 


first 
any 


day's  march,  was 
man    uneasy.      It 

weighed  heavily  enough  on  my  mind,  I  know, 
when  I  woke  up  among  the  flowers,  from 
time  to  time,  that  night. 

Our  sleeping  arrangements,  though  we 
had  not  a  single  civilised  comfort,  were, 
thanks  to  the  flowers,  simple  and  easy 
enough.  For  the  first  time  in  their  lives,  the 
women  and  children  laid  down  together,  with 
the  sky  for  a  roof,  and  the  kind  earth  for  a 
bed.  We  men  shook  ourselves  down,  as  well 
as  we  could,  all  round  them  ;  and  the  Pirates, 


7, 1857.1    THE  PEKILS  OF  CEETAIN  ENGLISH  PEISONERS.       [Coveted  b, 


startled  up  by  distant  crashes  in  the  depths 
of  the  forest — the  death-knells  of  falling 
trees.  "We  kept  fires  alight,  in  case  of  wild 
animals  stealing  out  on  us  in  the  darkness  ; 
and  the  flaring  red  light,  and  the  thick, 
winding  smoke,  alternately  showed  and  hid 
the  forest-prospect  iu  a  strangely  treacherous 
and  ghostly  way.  The  children  shuddered 
with  fear ;  even  the  Pirate  Captain  forgot, 
for  the  first  time,  to  jingle  his  eternal  guitar. 

When  we  were  mustered  in  the  morning 
for  the  march,  I  fully  expected  to  see  the 
axes  unpacked.  To  my  surprise  they  were 
not  disturbed.  •  The  Indians  drew  their  long 
chopping-knives  (called  machetes  in  the  lan- 
guage of  that  country) ;  made  for  a  place 
among  the  trees  where  I  could  see  no  signs 
of  a  path  ;  and  begun  cutting  at  the  bushes 
and  shrubs,  and  at  the  wild  vines  and 
creepers,  twirling  down  together  in  all  sorts 
of  fantastic  forms,  from  the  lofty  branches. 
After  clearing  a  few  dozen  yards  inwards 
they  came  out  to  us  again,  whooping  and 
showing  their  wicked  teeth,  as  they  laid 
hold  of  the  mules'  halters  to  lead  them  on. 
The  Pirate  Captain,  before  we  moved  after, 
took  out  a  pocket  compass,  set  it,  pondered 
over  it  for  some  time,  shrugged  his  shoulders, 
and  screeched  out  "March,"  as  usual.  We 
entered  the  forest,  leaving  behind  us  the  last 
chance  of  escape,  and  the  last  hope  of  ever 
getting  back  to  the  regions  of  humanity  and 
civilisation.  By  this  time,  we  had  walked 
inland,  as  nearly  as  I  could  estimate,  about 
thirty  miles. 

The  order  of  our  march  was  now,  of  neces- 
sity, somewhat  changed.  We  all  followed 
each  other  in  a  long  Tine,  shut  in,  however, 
as  before,  in  front  and  in  rear,  by  the  Indians, 
the  Sambos,  and  the  pirates.  Though  none 
of  us  could  see  a  vestige  of  any  path,  it  was 
clear  that  our  guides  knew  where  they  were 
going ;  for,  we  were  never  stopped  by  any 
obstacles,  except  the  shrubs  and  wild-Arines 
which  they  could  cut  through  with  their 
chopping-knives.  Sometimes,  we  marched 
under  great  branches  which  met  like  arches 
high  over  our  heads.  Sometimes,  the  boughs 
were  so  low  that  we  had  to  stoop  to  pass 
under  them.  Sometimes,  we  wound  in  and 
out  among  mighty  trunks  of  trees,  with  their 
gnarled  roots  twisting  up  far  above  the 
ground,  and  witli  creepers  in  full  flower 
twining  down  in  hundreds  from  their  lofty 
branches.  The  size  of  the  leaves  and  the 
countless  multitude  of  the  trees  shut 
out  the  sun,  and  made  a  solemn  dimness 
which  it  was  awful  and  without  hope  to 
walk  through.  Hours  would  pass  without 
our  hearing  a  sound  but  the  dreary  rustle 
of  our  own  feet  over  the  leafy  ground. 
At  other  times,  whole  troops  of  parrots,  with 
feathers  of  all  the  colours  of  the  rainbow, 
chattered  and  shrieked  at  us ;  and  proces- 
sions of  monkeys,  fifty  or  sixty  at  a  time, 
followed  our  progress  in  the  boughs  over- 
head :  passing  through  the  thick  leaves 


with  a  sound  like  the  rush  of  a  steady  wind. 
Every  now  and  then,  the  children  were  startled 
by  lizard-like  creatures,  three  feet  long, 
running  up  the  trunks  of  the  trees  as  we 
passed  by  them ;  more  than  once,  swarms 
of  locusts  tormented  us,  startled  out  of 
their  hiding-places  by  the  monkeys  in  the 
boughs.  For  five  days  we  marched  inces- 
santly through  this  dismal  forest-region, 
only  catching  a  clear  glimpse  of  the  sky 
above  us,  on  three  occasions  in  all  that  time. 
The  distance  we  walked  each  day  seemed  to 
be  regulated  by  the  positions  of  springs  and 
streams  in  the  forest,  which  the  Indiana 
knew  of.  Sometimes  those  springs  and 
streams  lay  near  together  ;  and  our  day's 
work  was  short.  Sometimes  they  were 
far  apart ;  and  the  march  wns  long  and 
weary.  On  all  occasions,  two  of  the  Indians, 
followed  by  two  of  the  Sambos,  disappeared 
as  soon  as  we  encamped  for  the  night  ;  and 
returned,  in  a  longer  or  shorter  time,  bring- 
ing water  with  them.  Towards  the  latter 
part  of  the  journey,  weariness  had  so  com- 
pletely mastered  the  weakest  among  our 
company,  that  they  ceased  to  take  notice  of 
anything.  They  walked  without  looking  to 
the  right  or  to  the  left,  and  they  eat  their 
wretched  food  and  lay  down  to  sleep  with 
a  silent  despair  that  was  shocking.  Mr. 
Pordage  left  oif  maundering  now,  and  Ser- 
jeant Drooce  was  so  quiet  and  biddable,  that 
Tom  Packer  had  an  easy  time  of  it  with  him 
at  last.  Those  among  us  who  still  talked, 
began  to  get  a  habit  of  dropping  our  voices 
to  a  whisper.  Short's  jokes  languished  and 
dwindled  ;  Miss  Maryon's  voice,  still  kind 
and  tender  as  ever,  began  to  lose  its  clear- 
ness ;  and  the  poor  children,  when  they  got 
weary  and  cried,  shed  tears  silently,  like  old 
people.  It  seemed  as  if  the  darkness  and 
the  hush  of  the  endless  forest  had  cast  its 
shadow  on  our  spirits,  and  had  stolen  drearily 
into  our  inmost  hearts. 

On  the  sixth  day,  we  saw  the  blessed  sun- 
shine on  the  ground  before  us,  once  more. 
Prisoners  as  we  were,  there  was  a  feeling  of 
freedom  on  stepping  into  the  light  again,  and 
on  looking  up,  without  interruption,  into  the 
clear  blue  Heaven,  from  which  no  human 
creature  can  keep  any  other  human  crea- 
ture, when  the  time  comes  for  rising  to 
it.  A  turn  in  the  path  brought  us  out 
suddenly  at  an  Indian  village — a  wretched 
place,  made  up  of  two  rows  of  huts  built 
with  poles,  the  crevices  between  them  stop- 
ped with  mud,  and  the  roofs  thatched  in 
I  the  coarsest  manner  with  palm-leaves.  The 
savages  squatted  about,  jumped  to  their  feet 
in  terror  as  we  came  in  view ;  but,  seeing  the 
Indians  at  the  head  of  our  party,  took  heart, 
and  began  chattering  and  screeching,  just  like 
the  pax-rots  we  had  left  in  the  forest.  Our 
guides  answered  in  their  gibberish  ;  some  lean, 
half- wild  dogs  yelped  and  howled  incessantly  ; 
and  the  Pirates  discharged  their  muskets  and 
loaded  them  a'gain,  to  make  sure  that  their 


Chwlei  Dickens.1 


THE  PRISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


[December  7. 188?.]     21 


powder  had  not  got  damp  on  the  march. 
No  want  of  muskets  among  them  now  ! 
The  noise  and  the  light  and  the  confusion, 
after  the  silence,  darkness,  and  discipline  that 
we  had  been  used  to  for  the  last  five  days,  so 
bewildered  us  all,  that  it  was  quite  a  relief 
to  sit  down  on  the  ground  and  let  the 
guard  about  us  shut  out  our  view  on  every 
side. 

"  Davis !  Are  we  at  the  end  of  the  march  1" 
says  Miss  Maryon,  touching  my  arm. 

The  other  women  looked  anxiously  at  me, 
as  she  put  the  question.  I  got  on  my  feet, 
and  saw  the  Pirate  Captain  communicating 
with  the  Indians  of  the  village.  His  hands 
were  making  signs  in  the  fussy  foreign  way, 
all  the  time  he  was  speaking.  Sometimes, 
they  pointed  away  to  where  the  forest  began 
again  beyond  us  ;  and  sometimes  they  went 
up  both  together  to  his  mouth,  as  if  he  was 
wishful  of  getting  a  fresh  supply  of  the  neces- 
saries of  life. 

My  eyes  next  turned  towards  the  mules. 
Nobody  was  employed  in  unpacking  the  bag- 
gage ;  nobody  went  near  that  bundle  of  axes 
which  had  weighed  on  my  mind  so  much 
already,  and  the  mystery  of  which  still  tor- 
mented me  in  secret.  I  came  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  we  were  not  yet  at  the  end  of 
our  joui'ney  ;  I  communicated  my  opinion  to 
Miss  Maryon.  She  got  up  herself,  with  my 
help,  and  looked  about  her,  and  made  the 
remark,  very  justly,  that  all  the  huts  in  the 
village  would  not  suffice  to  hold  us.  At  the 
same  time,  I  pointed  out  to  her  that  the  mule 
which  the  Pirate  Captain  had  ridden  had 
been  relieved  of  his  saddle,  and  was  being  led 
away,  at  that  moment,  to  a  patch  of  grass 
beliind  one  of  the  huts. 

"  That  looks  as  if  we  were  not  going  much 
farther  on,"  says  I. 

"  Thank  Heaven  if  it  be  so,  for  the  sake  of 
the  poor  children !  "  says  Miss  Maryon. 
"  Davis,  suppose  something  happened  which 
gave  us  a  chance  of  escaping  ?  Do  you  think 
we  could  ever  find  our  way  back  to  the  sea  1 " 

"  Not  a  hope  of  getting  back,  miss.  If  the 
Pirates  were  to  let  us  go  this  very  instant, 
those  pathless  forests  would  keep  us  in  prison 
for  ever." 

"  Too  true  !  Too  true  !  "  she  said,  and  said 
no  more. 

In  another  half-hour  we  were  roused  up, 
and  marched  away  from  the  village  (as  I  had 
thought  we  should  be)  into  the  forest  again. 
This  time,  though  there  was  by  no  means  so 
much  cutting  through  the  underwood  needed  as 
in  our  previous  experience,  we  were  accompa- 
nied by  at  least  a  dozen  Indians,  who  seemed 
to  me  to  be  following  us  out  of  sheer  idleness 
and  curiosity.  We  had  walked,  as  well  as  1 
could  calculate,  more  than  an  horn*,  and  I  was 
trudging  along  with  the  little  deaf-and-dumb 
boy  on  my  back,  as  usual,  thinking,  not  very 
hopefully,  of  our  future  prospects,  when  I 
was  startled  by  a  moan  in  my  ear  from  the 
child.  One  of  his  arms  was  trembling  round 


my  neck,  and  the  other  pointed  away  towards 
my  right  hand.  I  looked  in  that  direction—- 
and there,  as  if  it  had  started  up  out  of  the 
ground  to  dispute  our  passage  through  the 
forest,  was  a  hideous  monster  carved  in  stone, 
twice  my  height  at  least.  The  thing  loomed  out 
of  a  ghostly  white,  against  the  dark  curtain  of 
trees  all  round  it.  Spots  of  rank  moss  stuck 
about  over  its  great  glaring  stone-face ;  its 
stumpy  hands  were  tucked  up  into  its  breast ; 
its  legs  and  feet  were  four  times  the  size  of 
any  human  limbs ;  its  body  and  the  flat  space 
of  spare  stone  which  rose  above  its  head, 
were  all  covered  with  mysterious  devices- 
little  grinning  men's  faces,  heads  of  crocodiles 
and  apes,  twisting  knots  and  twirling  knobs, 
strangely  shaped  leaves,  winding  lattice-work; 
legs,  arms,  fingers,  toes,  skulls,  bones,  and 
such  like.  The  monstrous  statue  leaned  over 
on  one  side,  and  was  only  kept  from  falling 
to  the  ground  by  the  roots  of  a  great  tree 
which  had  wound  themselves  all  round  the 
lower  half  of  it.  Altogether,  it  was  as  hor- 
rible and  ghastly  an  object  to  come  upon 
suddenly,  in  the  unknown  depths  of  a  great 
forest,  as  the  mind  (or,  at  all  events,  my 
mind)  can  conceive.  When  I  say  that  the 
first  meeting  with  the  statue  struck  me 
speechless,  nobody  can  wonder  that  the  chil- 
dren actually  screamed  with  terror  at  the 
sight  of  it. 

"  It's  only  a  great  big  doll,  my  darling," 
says  Short,  at  his  wit's  end  how  to  quiet  the 
little  girl  on  his  back.  "We'll  get  a  nice 
soft  bit  of  wood  soon,  and  show  thesa  nasty 
savages  how  to  make  a  better  one." 

While  he  was  speaking,  Miss  Maryon  was 
close  behind  me,  soothing  the  deaf-and-dumb 
boy  by  signs  which  I  could  not  understand. 

"  I  have  heard  of  these  things,  Davis,"  she 
says.  "  They  are  idols,  made  by  a  lost  race 
of  people,  who  lived,  no  one  can  say  how  many 
hundred  or  how  many  thousand  years  ago. 
That  hideous  thing  was  carved  and  wor- 
shipped while  the  great  tree  that  now  sup- 
ports it  was  yet  a  seed  in  the  ground.  We 
must  get  the  children  used  to  these  stone 
monsters.  I  believe  we  are  coming  to  many 
more  of  them.  I  believe  we  are  close  to  the 
remains  of  one  of  those  mysterious  ruined 
cities  which  have  long  been  supposed  to  exist 
in  this  part  of  the  world." 

Before  I  could  answer,  the  word  of  com- 
mand from  the  rear  drove  us  on  again.  In 
passing  the  idol,  some  of  the  Pirates  fired 
their  muskets  at  it.  The  echoes  from  the 
reports  rang  back  on  us  with  a  sharp  rattling 
sound.  We  pushed  on  a  few  paces,  when  the 
Indians  a-head  suddenly  stopped,  nourished 
their  chopping-knives,  and  all  screamed  out 
together  "El  Palacio  !  "  The  Englishmen 
among  the  Pirates  took  up  the  cry,  and,  run- 
ning  forward  through  the  trees  on  either 
side  of  us,  roared  out,  "  The  Palace  !  "  Other 
voices  joined  theirs  in  other  tongues ;  and, 
for  a  minute  or  two,  there  was  a  general  con- 
fusion of  everybody, — the  first  that  had 


22    tPecemi,«7,i«7.]    THE  PERILS  OF  CERTA  IN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS.     [Conducted  b» 


occurred  since  we  were  marched  away,  pri- 
F'Miora,  from  the  sea-shoi-e. 

I  tightened  my  hold  of  Hie  child  on  my 
back ;  took  Miss  Maryon  closer  to  me,  to  save 
her  from  being  roughly  jostled  by  the  men 
about  us ;  and  marched  up  as  near  to  the 
front  as  the  press  and  the  tvees  would  let  me. 
Looking  over  the  heads  of  the  Indians,  and 
between  the  trunks,  I  beheld  a  sight  which  I 
shall  never  forget:  no,  not  to  my  dying  day. 

.A  wilderness  of  ruins  spread  out  before  me, 
overrun  by  a  forest  of  trees.  In  every  direc- 
tion, look  where  I  would,  a  frightful  confusion 
of  idols,  pillars,  blocks  of  stone,  heavy  walls, 
and  flights  of  steps,  met  my  eye  ;  some,  whole 


circles  of  sculptured  flowers.  I  guessed  the 
length  of  the  portico  to  be,  at  the  very  least, 
three  hundred  feet.  In  the  inside  wall  of  it, 
appeared  four  high  gapi-vjj  doorways;  three 
of  them  were  entirely  cUoked  up  by  fallen 
stones  :  so  jammed  together,  and  so  girt  aboxit 
by  roots  and  climbing  plants,  that  no  force 
short  of  a  blast  of  gunpowder,  could  possibly 
have  dislodged  them.  The  fourth  entrance 
had,  at  some  former  time,  been  kept  just 
clear  enough  to  allow  of  the  passing  of  one 
man  at  once  through  the  gap  that  had  been 
made  in  the  fallen  stones.  Through  this, 
the  only  passage  left  into  the  Palace,  or  out 
of  it,  we  followed  the  Indians  into  a  great  hall, 


and  upright ;  others,  broken  and  scattered  on  |  nearly  one  half  of  which  was  still  covered 
the  ground  ;  and  all,  whatever  their  condi-  by  the  remains  of  the  roof.     In  the  unshel- 
tered half:   surrounded    by  broken    stones 


tion,  overgrown  and  clasped  about  by  roots, 
branches,  and  curling  vines,  that  writhed 
round  them  like  so  many  great  snakes. 
Every  here  and  there,  strange  buildings  stood 
up,  with  walls  on  the  tops  of  which  three 
men  might  have  marched  abreast — buildings 


and  with  a  carved  human  head,  five  times 
the  size  of  life,  leaning  against  it :  rose  the 
straight,  naked  trunk  of  a  beautiful  tree, 
that  shot  up  high  above  the  ruins,  and 
dropped  its  enormous  branches  from  the 


with  their  roofs  burst  off  or  tumbled  iu,  and  j  very  top  of  it,  bending  down  towards  us,  in 
with  the  trees  springing  up  from  inside,  and!  curves  like  plumes  of  immense  green  feathers. 


waving  their  restless  shadows  mournfully 
over  the  ruins.  High  in  the  midst  of  this 
desolation,  towered  a  broad  platform  of 
rooky  earth,  scarped  away  on  three  sides, 


unapproachable  except 
On    the    fourth   side, 


so   as    to    make  it 
by  scaling  ladders. 

the  flat  of  the  platform  was  reached  by 
a  flight  of  stone  steps,  of  such  mighty  size 
and  strength  that  they  might  have  been  made 
for  the  use  of  a  race  of  giants.  They  led  to  a 
huge  building  girded  all  round  with  a  row  of 
thick  pillars,  long  enough  and  broad  enough 


In  this  hall,  which  was  big  enough  to  hold 
double  our  number,  we  were  ordered  to  make 
a  halt,  while  the  Pirate  Captain,  accompanied 
by  three  of  his  crew,  followed  the  Indians 
through  a  doorway,  leading  off  to  the  left 
hand,  as  we  stood  with  our  backs  to  the 
portico.  In  front  of  us,  towards  the  right, 
was  another  doorway,  through  which  we 
could  see  some  of  the  Indians,  cutting  away 
with  their  knives,  right  and  left,  at  the 
overspreading  underwood.  Even  the  noise 
of  the  hacking,  and  the  hum  and  murmur 


to  cover  the   whole   flat  space  of  ground  ;  j  of  the  people  outside,  who  were    unloading 


solid  enough,  as  to  the  walls,  to  stand  for 
ever  ;  but  bi'oken  in,  at  most  places,  as  to  the 
roof ;  and  overshadowed  by  the  trees  that 
.sprang  up  from  inside,  like  the  smaller  houses 
already  mentioned,  below  it.  This  was  the 
dismal  ruin  which  was  called  the  Palace  ;  and 
this  was  the  Prison  iu  the  AVoods  which  was 
to  be  the  place  of  our  captivity. 

The  screeching  voice  of  the  Pirate  Captain 
restored  order  in  our  ranks,  and  sent  the 
radians  forward  with  their  choppiug-kuives  to 
the  steps  of  the  Palace.  We  were  directed  to 
follow  them  across  the  ruins,  and  in  and  out 


the  mules,  seemed  to  be  sounds  too  faint 
and  trifling  to  break  the  awful  stillness  of 
the  ruins.  To  my  ears,  at  least,  the  un- 
earthly silence  was  deepened  rather  than 
broken  by  the  few  feeble  sounds  which 
tried  to  disturb  it.  The  wailings  of  the 
poor  children  were  stifled  within  them.  The 
whispers  of  the  women,  and  the  heavy 
breathing  of  the  overlaboured  men,  sank 
and  sank  gradually  till  they  were  heard  no 
more.  Looking  back  now,  .it  the  whole 
course  of  our  troubles,  I  think  I  can  safely 
say  that  nothing — not  even  the  first  disco- 


among  the  trees.  Out  of  every  ugly  crevice  j  very  of  the  treachery  on  the  Island — tried 
crack  in  the  great  stairs,  there  sprouted  up  j  our  courage  and  endurance  like  that  interval 
flowers,  long  grasses,  and  beautiful  large- !  of  speechless  waiting  in  the  Palace,  with  the 


leaved  plants  and  bushes.  When  we  had 
toiled  to  the  top  of  the  flight,  we  could  look 
back  from  the  height  over  the  dark  waving 
top  of  the  forest  behind  us.  More  than  a 
glimpse  of  the  magnificent  sight,  however, 
was  not  allowed :  we  were  ordered  still  to 
follow  the  Indians.  They  had  already  disap- 
peared iu  the  inside  of  the  Palace  ;  and  we 
wont  in  after  them. 

We  found  ourselves,  first, under  a  square  por- 
tico, supported  upon  immense  flat  slabs  of  stone, 


husli  of  the  ruined  city,  and  the  dimness 
of  the  endless  forest,  all  about  us. 

When  we  next  saw  the  Pirate  Captain,  he 
appeared  at  the  doorway  to  the  right,  just 
as  the  Pirates  began  to  crowd  in  from  the 
portico,  with  the  baggage  they  had  taken 
from  the  mules. 

"  There  is  the  way  for  the  Buccaniers," 
squeaks  the  Pirate  Captain,  addressing  the 
American  mate,  and  pointing  to  the  doorway 
on  the  left.  "  Three  big  rooms,  that  will  hold 


which  were  carved  all  over,  at  top  and  bot-j  you  all,  and  that  have  more  of  the  roof  left  on 
torn,  with  death's-heads  set  in  the  midst  of  j  them  than  any  of  the  others.    The  prisoners," 


Charles  Dickeni.] 


THE  PRISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


[December  7, 1*7.]     23 


he  continues,  turning  to  us,  and  pointing  to  the 
doorway  behind  him,  "  will  file  in,  that  way, 
and  will  find  two  rooms  for  them,  with  the 
ceilings  on  the  floor,  and  the  trees  in  their 
places.  I  myself,  because  my  soul  is  big, 
shall  live  alone  in  this  grand  hall.  My 
bed  shall  be  there  in  the  sheltered  corner ; 
and  I  shall  eat,  and  drink,  and  smoke,  and 
sing,  and  enjoy  myself,  with  one  eye  always 
on  my  prisoners,  and  the  other  eye  always  on 
my  guard  outside." 

Having  delivered  this  piece  of  eloquence, 
he  pointed  with  his  sword  to  the  prisoners' 
doorway.  We  all  passed  through  it  quickly, 
glad  to  be  out  of  the  sight  and  hearing  of 
him. 

The  two  rooms  set  apart  for  us,communicated 
with  each  other.  The  inner  one  of  the  two 
had  a  second  doorway,  leading,  as  I  supposed, 
further  into  the  building,  but  so  choked  up 
by  rubbish,  as  to  be  impassable,  except  by 
climbing,  and  that  must  have  been  skilful 
climbing  too.  Seeing  that  this  accident  cut 
off  all  easy  means  of  approach  to  the  room 
from  the  Pirates'  side,  we  determined,  sup- 
posing nobody  meddled  with  us,  to  establish 
the  women  and  chikh'en  here ;  and  to  take 
the  room  nearest  to  the  Pirate  Captain  and 
his  guard  for  ourselves. 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  clear  away 
the  rubbish  in  the  women's  room.  The  ceiling 
was,  indeed,  as  the  Pirate  Captain  had  told  us, 
all  on  the  floor ;  and  the  growth  of  trees,  shrubs, 
weeds,  and  flowers,  springing  up  everywhere 
among  the  fragments  of  stone,  was  so  pro- 
digious in  this  part  of  the  Palace,  that,  but 
for  the  walls  with  their  barbarous  sculptures 
all  round,  we  should  certainly  have  believed 
ourselves  to  be  encamped  in  the  forest,  without 
a  building  near  us.  All  the  lighter  parts  of 
the  rubbish  in  the  women's  room  we  dis- 
posed of,  cleverly,  by  piling  it  in  the  door- 
way on  the  Pirates'  side,  so  as  to  make  any 
approach  from  that  direction  all  but  impos- 
sible, even  by  climbing.  The  heavy  blocks 
of  stone — and  it  took  two  men  to  lift  some 
of  them  that  were  not  the  heaviest — we 
piled  up  in  the  middle  of  the  floor.  Having 
by  this  means  cleared  away  plenty  of 
space  round  the  walls,  we  gathered  up  all 
the  litter  of  young  branches,  bushes,  and 
leaves  which  the  Indians  had  chopped  away  ; 
added  to  them  as  much  as  was  required  of  the 
underwood  still  standing  ;  and  laid  the  whole 
smooth  and  even,  to  make  beds.  I  noticed, 
while  we  were  at  this  work,  that  the  ship's 
boy — whose  name  was  Robert — was  particu- 
larly helpful  and  considerate  with  the  chil- 
dren, when  it  became  necessary  to  quiet  them 
and  to  get  them  to  lie  down.  He  was  a 
rough  boy  to  look  at,  and  not  very  sharp;  but, 
he  managed  better,  and  was  more  naturally 
tender-hearted  with  the  little  ones  than  any 
of  the  rest  of  us.  This  may  seem  a  small 
thing  to  mention ;  but  Bobert's  attentive 
ways  with  the  children,  attached  them  to 
him  ;  and  that  attachment,  as  will  be  here- 


after shown,  turned  out  to  be  of  great  benefit 
to  us,  at  a  very  dangerous  and  very  import- 
ant time. 

Our  next  piece  of  work  was  to  clear  our 
own  room.  It  was  close  at  the  side  of  the 
Palace  ;  and  a  break  in  the  outward  wall 
looked  down  over  the  sheer  precipice  on  • 
which  the  building  stood.  We  stopped  this 
up,  breast  high,  in  case  of  accidents,  with  the 
rubbish  on  the  floor ;  we  then  made  our  beds, 
just  as  we  had  made  the  women's  beds  al- 
ready. 

A  little  later,  we  heard  the  Pirate  Captain 
in  the  hall,  which  he  kept  to  himself  for 
his  big  soul  and  his  little  body,  giving  orders 
to  the  American  mate  about  the,  guard. 
On  mustering  the  Pirates,  it  turned  out 
that  two  of  them,  who  had  been  wounded 
in  the  fight  on  the  Island,  were  unfit  for 
duty.  Twenty-eight,  therefore,  remained. 
These,  the  Pirate  Captain  divided  into 
companies  of  seven,  who  were  to  mount  guard, 
in  turn,  for  a  spell  of  six  hours  each  company  ; 
the  relief  coming  round,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
four  times  in  the  twenty-four  hours.  Of  the 
guard  of  seven,  two  were  stationed  under  the 
portico ;  one  was  placed  as  a  look-out,  on  the 
top  landing  of  the  great  flight  of  steps  ;  and 
two  were  appointed  to  patrol  the  ground 
below,  in  front  of  the  Palace.  This  left  only 
two  men  to  watch  the  three  remaining  sides 
of  the  building.  So  far  as  any  risks  of  attack 
were  concerned,  the  precipices  at  the  back  and 
sides  of  the  Palace  were  a  sufficient  defence 
for  it,  if  a  good  watch  was  kept  on  the  weak 
side.  But  what  the  Pirate  Captain  dreaded 
was  the  chance  of  our  escaping  ;  and  he  would 
not  trust  the  precipices  to  keep  us,  knowing 
we  had  sailors  in  our  compan}r,  and  suspect- 
ing that  they  might  hit  on  some  substitute 
for  ropes,  and  lower  themselves  and  their 
fellow-prisoners  down  from  the  back  or  the 
sides  of  the  Palace,  in  the  dark.  Accordingly, 
the  Pirate  Captain  settled  it  that  two  men  out 
of  each  company  should  do  double  duty,  after 
nightfall :  the  choice  of  them  to  be  decided 
by  casting  dice.  This  gave  four  men  to  patrol 
round  the  sides  and  the  back  of  the  building  : 
a  sufficient  number  to  keep  a  bright  look-out. 
The  Pirates  murmured  a  little  at  the  prospect 
of  double  duty  ;  but,  there  was  no  remedy  for 
it.  The  Indians,  having  a  superstitious 
horror  of  remaining  in  the  ruined  qity  after 
dark,  had  bargained  to  be  allowed  to  go  back 
to  their  village,  every  afternoon.  And,  as 
for  the  Sambos,  the  Pirate  Captain  knew  them 
better  than  the  English  had  known  them  at 
Silver-Store,  and  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  them  in  any  matter  of  importance. 

The  setting  of  the  watch  was  completed 
without  much  delay.  If  any  of  us  had  felt 
the  slightest  hope  of  escaping,  up  to  this  time, 
the  position  of  our  prison  and  the  number  of 
sentinels  appointed  to  guard  it,  would  have 
been  more  than  enough  to  extinguish  that 
hope  for  ever. 

An  hour  before  sunset,  the  Indians — whose 


24     [December  7.  is,?.,    THE  PEEILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PEISONEES.     [Conducted  by 


ouly  business  at  the  Induce  was  to  supply  us 
uith  food  from  the  village,  and  to  prepare1 
the  food  for  eating — made  their  last  batch  | 
of  Tortillas,  and  then  left  the  ruins  in  a  body, : 
at  the  usual  trot  of  those  savages  when 
they  are  travelling  in  a  hurry. 

When  the  sun  had  set,  the  darkness  came 
down  upon  us,  I  might  almost  say,  with  a 
rush.      Bats  whizzed   about,    and    the  low 
warning  hum  of  Mosquitos  sounded  close  to 
our  ears.     Flying  beetles,  with  lights  in  their  j 
heads,  each  light  as   bright  as  the  light   of! 
a  dozen  glowworms,   sparkled   through  the  | 
darkness,  in  a  wonderful  manner,  all  night 
long.     When  one   of  them   settled    on    the 
walls,  he  lighted  up  the  hideous  sculptures ; 
for    a    yard    all    round    him,  at    the    very ' 
least.     Outside,    in    the    forest,   the    dread- ! 
ful  stillness  seemed  to  be  drawing  its  breath, 
from    time  to    time,  when  the    night-wind  i 
swept    lightly   through    the    million-million' 
leaves.     Sometimes,  the    surge    of  monkeys ! 
travelling  through  the  boughs,  burst  out  with 
a  sound  like  waves  on  a  sandy  shore  ;  some- 
times, the  noise  of  falling  branches  and  trunks 
rang  out  suddenly  with  a  crash,  as  if  the  great 
ruins  about    us  were  splitting  into  pieces ; 
rometimes,  when  the  silence  was  at  its  deepest 
—when  even  the  tread  of  the  watch  outside 
had  ceased — the  quick  rustle  of  a  lizard  or  a 
snake,  sounded  treacherously  close  at  our  ears. 
It  was  long  before  the  children  in  the  women's 
room  were  all  quieted  and  hushed  to  sleep — ! 
longer  still  before   we,  their    elders,   could 
compose  our  spirits  for  the  night.    After  all 
sounds  died  away  among   us,  and  when   I 
thought  that  I  was  the  only  one  still  awake, 
I  heard  Miss  Maryon's  voice  saying,  softly, 
"  God  help  and  deliver  us  ! "     A  man  in  our  1 
room,  moving  on  his  bed  of  leaves,  repeated 
the  words  after    her ;   and  the   ship's   boy, 
Eobert,  half-asleep,  half-awake,  whispered  to 
himself  sleepily,  "  Amen  !  "     After  that,  the 
silence  returned  upon  us,  and  was  broken  no ' 
more.    So  the  night  passed — the  first  night  [ 
in  our  Prison  in  the  Woods. 

With  the  morning,  came  the  discovery  of  a '. 
new  project  of  the  Pirate  Captain's,  for  which 
none  of  us  had  been  prepared. 

Soon  _  after    sunrise,   the   Pirate    Captain 
looked  into  our  room,   and   ordered  all  the 
men  in  it  out  into  the  large  hall,  where  he ! 
lived  with  his  big  soul  and  his  little  body. 
After  eyeing  us  narrowly,  he  directed  three 
of  the  sailors,  myself,  and  two  of  my  com- 
rades, to   step  apart  from  the  rest.    When 
we  had  obeyed,  the  bundle  of  axes  which  had 
troubled  my  mind  so  much,  was  brought  into 
the  hall ;  and  four  men  of  the  guard,  then ! 
on  duty,  armed  with  muskets  and  pistols, 
were  marched  in   afterwards.     Six    of   the  [ 
axes  were  chosen  and  put  into  our  hands,  the  i 
Pirate   Captain  pointing  warningly,  as   we 
took  them,  to  the  men  with  fire-arms  in  the  ' 
front  of  us.     He  and  his  mate,  both  armed  to 
the  teeth,  then  led  the  way  out  to  the  steps  ; 
we  followed ;  the  other  four  Pirates  came  after 


us.  We  were  formed,  down  the  steps,  in  single 
file;  the  Pirate  Captain  at  the  head  ;  I  myself 
uext  to  him ;  a  Pirate  next  to  me ;  and  so  on  to 
the  end,  in  such  order  as  to  keep  a  man  with  a 
loaded  musket  between  each  one  or  two  of  us 
prisoners.  I  looked  behind  me  as  we  started, 
and  saw  two  of  the  Sambos — that  Christian 
George  King  was  one  of  them — following  us. 
We  marched  round  the  back  of  the  Palace,  and 
over  the  ruins  beyond  it,  till  we  came  to  a 
track  through  the  forest,  the  first  I  had  seen. 
After  a  quarter  of  an  hour's  walking,  I  saw 
the  sunlight,  bright  beyond  the  trees  in  front 
of  us.  In  another  minute  or  two,  we  stood 
under  the  clear  sky,  and  beheld  at  our  feet  a 
broad  river,  running  with  a  swift  silent  cur- 
rent, and  overshadowed  by  the  forest,  rising 
as  thick  as  ever  on  the  bank  that  was  opposite 
to  us. 

On  the  bank  where  we  stood,  the  trees 
were  young  ;  some  great  tempest  of  past 
years  having  made  havoc  in  this  part  of  the 
forest,  and  torn  away  the  old  growth  to 
make  room  for  the  new.  The  young  tree;; 
grew  up,  mostly,  straight  and  slender, — 
that  is  to  say,  slender  for  South  America, 
the  slightest  of  them  being,  certainly,  as 
thick  as  my  leg.  After  peeping  and  peer- 
ing about  at  the  timber,  with  the  look  of 
a  man  who  owned  it  all,  the  Pirate  Captain 
sat  himself  down  cross-legged  on  the  grass, 
and  did  us  the  honor  to  address  us. 

"Aha!  you  English,  what  do  you  think 
I  have  kept  you  alive  for  1 "  says  he. 
"  Because  I  am  fond  of  you  ?  Bah  !  Be- 
cause I  don't  like  to  kill  you  '?  Bah  !  What 
for,  then  '?  Because  I  want  the  use  of  your 
arms  to  work  for  me.  See  those  trees !  " 
He  waved  his  hand  backwards  and  for- 
wards, over  the  whole  prospect.  "Cut 
them  all  down  —  lop  off  the  branches  — 
smooth  them  into  poles — shape  them  into 
beams — chop  them  into  planks.  Camarado  ! " 
he  went  on,  turning  to  the  mate,  "  I  mean  to 
roof  in  the  Palace  again,  and  to  lay  new 
floors  over  the  rubbish  of  stones.  I  will 
make  the  big  house  good  and  dry  to  live  in, 
in  the  rainy  weather — I  will  barricade  the 
steps  of  it  for  defence  against  an  army, — I 
will  make  it  my  strong  castle  of  retreat  for 
me  and  my  men,  and  our  treasure,  and  our 
prisoners,  and  all  that  we  have,  when  the 
English  cruisers  of  the  devil  get  too  many 
for  us  along  the  coast.  To  work,  you  six  ! 
Look  at  those  four  men  of  mine, — their 
muskets  are  loaded.  Look  at  these  two 
Sambos  who  will  stop  here  to  fetch  help  if 
they  want  it.  Eemember  the  women  and 
children  you  have  left  at  the  Palace — and 
at  your  peril  and  at  their  peril,  turn  those 
axes  in  your  hands  from  their  proper 
work!  You  understand  ?  You  English  fools?" 

With  those  words  he  jumped  to  his  feet, 
and  ordei'ed  the  niggers  to  remain  and  place 
themselves  at  the  orders  of  our  guard. 
1  laving  given  these  last  directions,  and  hav- 
ing taken  his  mate's  opinion  as  to  whether 


Charles  Dickons.] 


THE  PEISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


L  December  7,  18'>7.J      25 


three  of  the  Buccaniers  would  not  be  enough 
to  watch  the  Palace  in  the  day,  when  the 
six  stoutest  men  of  the  prisoners  were  away 
from  it,  the  Pirate  Captain  offered  his  little 
weazen  arm  to  the  American,  and  strutted 
back  to  his  castle,  on  better  terms  with  him- 
self than  ever. 

As  soon  as  he  and  the  mate  were  gone, 
Christian  George  King  tumbled  himself  down 
on  the  grass,  and  kicked  up  his  ugly  heels 
in  convulsions  of  delight. 

"  Oh,  golly,  golly,  golly  !  "  says  he.  "  You 
dam  English  do  work,  and  Christian  George 
King  look  on.  Yup,  Sojeer !  whack  at  them 
tree  !  " 

I  paid  no  attention  to  the  brute,  being 
better  occupied  in  noticing  my  next  comrade, 
Short.  I  had  remarked  that  all  the  while 
the  Pirate  Captain  was  speaking,  he  was 
looking  hard  at  the  river,  as  if  the  sight  of 
a  large  sheet  of  water  did  his  sailorly  eyes 
good.  When  we  began  to  use  the  axes, 
greatly  to  my  astonishment,  he  buckled  to 
at  his  work  like  a  man  who  had  his  whole 
heart  in  it :  chuckling  to  himself  at  every 
chop,  and  wagging  his  head  as  if  he  was  in 
the  forecastle  again  telling  his  best  yarns. 

"  You  seem  to  be  in  spirits,  Short  1 "  I  says, 
setting  to  on  a  tree  close  by  him. 

"The  river's  put  a  notion  in  my  head," 
says  he.  "  Chop  away,  Gill,  as  hard  as  you 
can,  or  they  may  hear  us  talking." 

"  What  notion  has  the  river  put  in  your 
head  ? "  I  asked  that  man,  following  his 
directiops. 

"  You  don't  know  where  that  river  runs 
to,  I  suppose  ? "  says  Short.  "  No  more  don't 
I.  But,  did  it  say  anything  particular  to  you, 
Gill,  when  you  first  set  eyes  on  it  ?  It  said 
to  .me,  as  plain  as  words  could  speak, 'I'm 
the  road  out  of  this.  ( Come  and  try  me  ! ' — 
Steady !  Don't  stop  to  look  at  the  water. 
Chop  away,  man,  chop  away." 

"  The  road  out  of  this  1 "  says  I.  "  A  road 
without  any  coaches,  Short.  I  don't  see  so 
much  as  the  ruins  of  one  old  canoe  lying 
about  anywhere." 

Short  chuckles  again,  and  buries  his  axe 
in  hi?  tree. 

"  What  are  we  cutting  down  these  here 
trees  for  ? "  says  he. 

"  Boofs  and  floors  for  the  Pirate  Captain's 
castle,"  says  I. 

"  Rafts  for  ourselves ! "  says  he,  with  another 
tremendous  chop  at  the  tree,  which  brought 
it  to  the  ground — the  first  that  had  fallen. 

His  words  struck  through  me  as  if  I  had 
been  shot.  For  the  first  time  since  our 
imprisonment  I  now  saw,  clear  as  daylight,  a 
chance  of  escape.  Only  a  chance,  to  be  sure ; 
but,  still  a  chance. 

Although  the  guard  stood  several  paces 
away  from  us,  and  could  by  no  possibility 
hear  a  word  that  we  said,  through  the  noise 
of  the  axes,  Short  was  too  cautious  to  talk 
any  more. 

"Wait  till  night,"  he   said,  lopping  the 


branches  off  the  tree.  "  Pass  the  word  on  in 
a  whisper  to  the  nearest  of  our  men  to  work 
with  a  will ;  and  say,  with  a  wink  of  your 
eye,  there's  a  good  reason  for  it." 

After  we  had  been  allowed  to  knock  off  for 
that  day,  the  Pirates  had  no  cause  to  com- 
plain of  the  work  we  had  done  ;  and  they 
reported  us  to  the  Pirate  Captain  as  obedient 
!  and  industrious,  so  far.     When  we  lay  down 
,  at  night,  I  took  the  next  place  on  the  leaves 
to  Short.     We  waited    till    the   rest  were 
|  asleep,  and  till  we  heard  the  Pirate  Captain 
j  snoring  in  the  great  hall,  before  we  began  to 
j  talk    again  about  the   river    and  the  rafts. 
This  is  the  amount  of  what  Short  whispered 
in  my  ear  on  that  occasion  : 

He  told  me  he  had  calculated  that  it  would 
take  two  large  rafts  to  bear  all  our  company, 
and  that  timber  enough  to  make  such  two  rafts 
might  be  cut  down  by  six  men  in  ten  days,  or, 
at  most,  in  a  fortnight.  As  for  the  means  of 
fastening  the  rafts — the  lashings,  he  called 
them — the  stout  vines  and  creepers  supplied 
them  abundantly ;  and  the  timbers  of  both 
rafts  might  be  connected  together,  in  this 
way,  firmly  enough  for  river  navigation,  in 
about  five  hours.  That  was  the  very  shortest 
time  the  job  would  take,  done  by  the  willing 
hands  of  men  who  knew  that  they  were 
working  for  their  lives,  said  Short. 

These  were  the  means  of  escape.    How  to 
j  turn  them  to  account  was  the  next  question. 
Short  could  not  answer  it ;   and  though  I 
tried  all  that  night,  neither  could  I. 

The  difficulty  was  one  which,  I  think, 
might  have  puzzled  wiser  heads  than  ours. 
How  were  six-and-thirty  living  souls  (being 
the  number  of  us  prisoners,  including  the 
children)  to  be  got  out  of  the  Palace  safely, 
in  the  face  of  the  guard  that  watched  it  ? 
And,  even  if  that  was  accomplished,  when 
could  we  count  on  gaining  five  hours  all  to 
ourselves  for  the  business  of  making  the 
rafts  ?  The  compassing  of  either  of  these 
I  two  designs,  absolutely  necessary  as  they 
|  both  were  to  our  escape,  seemed  to  be 
nothing  more  or  less  than  a  rank  impos- 
sibility. Towards  morning,  I  got  a  wild 
notion  into  my  head  about  letting  ourselves 
down  from  the  back  of  the  Palace,  in  the 
dark,  and  taking  our  chance  of  being  able  to 
seize  the  sentinels  at  that  part  of  the  building, 
unawares,  and  gag  them  before  they  could 
give  the  alarm  to  the  Pirates  in  front.  But, 
Short,  when  I  mentioned  my  plan  to  him, 
would  not  hear  of  it.  He  said  that  men  by 
themselves — provided  they  had  not  got  a 
madman,  like  Drooce,  and  a  maundering  old 
gentleman,  like  Mr.  Pordage,  among  them — 
might,  perhaps,  run  some  such  desperate  risk 
as  I  proposed  ;  but,  that  letting  women  and 
children,  to  saynothingof  Drooce  and  Pordage, 
down  a  precipice  in  the  dark,.with  make-shift 
ropes  which  might  give  way  at  a  moment's 
notice,  was  out  of  the  question.  It  was 
impossible,  on  further  reflection,  not  to  see 
that  Short's  view  of  the  matter  was  the  right 


26     [December  7,  IBS?.]    THE  PEEILS  OF  CEETAIN  ENGLISH  PEISONERS.     .Conducted  t>T 


one.  I  acknowledged  as  much,  and  then  I  put 
it  to  Short  whether  our  wisest  course  would 
not  be  to  let  one  or  two  of  the  sharpest  of  our 
fellow-prisoners  into  our  secret,  and  see  what 
they  said.  Short  asked  me  which  two  I  had 
in  my  mind  when  I  made  that  proposal  ? 

"  Mr.  Macey,"  says  I,  "  because  he  is  natu- 
rally quick,  and  has  improved  his  gifts  by 
learning,  and  Miss  Maryon " 

"  How  can  a  woman  help  us  ?"  says  Short, 
breaking  in  on  me. 

"  A  woman  with  a  clear  head  and  a  high 
courage  and  a  patient  resolution  —  all  of 
which  Miss  Maryon  has  got,  above  all  the 
world — may  do  more  to  help  us,  in  our  pre- 
sent strait,  than  any  man  of  our  company," 
says  I. 

"Well,"  says  Short,  "I  daresay  you're 
right.  Speak  to  anybody  you  please,  Gill ; 
but,  whatever  you  do,  man,  stick  to  it  at  the 
trees.  Let's  get  the  timber  down — that's  the 
first  thing  to  be  done,  anyhow." 

Before  we  were  mustered  for  work,  I  took 
an  opportunity  of  privately  mentioning  to 
Miss  M.aryon  and  Mr.  Macey  what  had 
passed  between  Short  and  me.  They  were 
both  thunderstruck  at  the  notion  of  the  rafts. 
Miss  Maryon,  as  I  had  expected,  made 
lighter  of  the  terrible  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  carrying  out  our  scheme  than  Mr.  Macey 
did. 

"  We  are  left  here  to  watch  and  think, 
all  day,"  she  whispered — and  I  could  almost 
hear  the  quick  beating  of  her  heart. 
"While  you  are  making  the  best  of  your 
time  among  the  trees,  we  will  make  the 
best  of  ours  in  the  Palace.  I  can  say 
no  more,  now — I  can  hardly  speak  at  ail  j 
for  thinking  of  what  you  have  told  me. 
Bless  you,  bless  you,  for  making  me  hope 
once  more  !  Go  now — we  must  not  risk 
the  consequences  of  being  seen  talking  to- 
gether. When  you  come  back  at  night,  look 
at  me.  If  I  close  niy  eyes,  it  is  a  sign  that 
nothing  has  been  thought  of  yet.  If  I  keep 
them  open,  take  the  first  safe  opportunity  of 
speaking  secretly  to  me  or  to  Mr.  Macey." 

She  turned  away  ;  and  I  went  back  to  my 
comrades.  Half  an  hour  afterwards,  we 
were  off  for  our  second  day's  work  among  the 
trees. 

When  we  came  back,  I  looked  at  Miss 
Maryon.  She  closed  her  eyes.  So,  nothing  had 
been  thought  of,  yet. 

Six  more  days  we  worked  at  cutting  down 
the  trees,  always  meriting  the  same  good 
character  for  industry  from  our  Pirate-guard. 
Six  more  evenings  I  looked  at  Miss  Maryon  ; 
and  six  times  her  closed  eyes  gave  me  the 
same  disheartening  answer.  On  the  ninth 
day  of  our  work,  Short  whispered  to  me,  that 
if  we  plied  our  axes  for  three  days  longer,  he 
considered  we  should  have  more  than  timber 
enough  down,  to  make  the  rafts.  He  had 
thought  of  nothing,  I  had  thought  of  nothing, 
Miss  Maryou  and  Mr.  Macey  had  thought 
of  nothing.  I  was  beginning  to  get  low 


in  spirits ;  but,  Short  was  just  as  cool  and 
easy  as  ever.  "Chop  away,  Davis,"  was 
all  lie  said.  "  The  river  won't  run  dry  yet 
awhile.  Chop  away  ! " 

We  knocked  off,  earlier  than  usual  that 
day,  the  Pirates  having  a  feast  in  prospect,  off 
a  wild  hog.  It  was  still  broad  daylight  (out 
of  the  forest)  when  we  came  back,  and  when 
I  looked  once  more  in  Miss  Maryon's  face. 

I  saw  a  flush  in  her  cheeks ;  and  her  eyes 
met  mine  brightly.  My  heart  beat  quicker  at 
the  glance  of  them ;  for  I  saw  that  the  time  had 
come,  and  that  the  difficulty  was  conquered. 

We  waited  till  the  light  was  fading,  and  the 
Pirates  were  in  the  midst  of  their  feast. 
Then,  she  beckoned  me  into  the  inner  room, 
and  I  sat  down  by  her  in  the  dimmest  corner 
of  it. 

"  You  have  thought  of  something,  at  last, 
Miss  ] " 

"I  have.  But  the  merit  of  the  thought 
is  not  all  mine.  Chance— no  !.  Providence — 
suggested  the  design  ;  and  the  instrument 
with  which  its  merciful  Wisdom  has  worked, 
is — a  child." 

She  stopped,  and  looked  all  round  her 
anxiously,  before  she  went  on. 

"  This  afternoon,"  she  says,  "  I  was  sitting 
against  the  trunk  of  that  tree,  thinking  of 
what  has  been  the  subject  of  my  thoughts 
ever  since  you  spoke  to  me.  My  sister's 
little  girl  was  whiling  away  the  tedious  time, 
by  asking  Mr.  Kitten  to  tell  her  the  names  of 
the  different  plants  which  are  still  left  grow- 
ing about  the  room.  You  know  he  is  a 
learned  man  in  such  matters  1 " 

I  knew  that ;  and  have,  I  believe,  formerly 
given  that  out,  for  my  Lady  to  take  in  writing. 

"  I  was  too  much  occupied,"  she  went 
on,  "to  pay  attention  to  them,  till  they 
came  close  to  the  tree  against  which  I  was 
sitting.  Under  it  and  about  it,  there  grew 
a  plant  with  very  elegantly-shaped  leaves, 
and  with  a  kind  of  berry  on  it.  The  child 
showed  it  to  Mr.  Kitten  ;  and  saying,  '  Those 
berries  look  good  to  eat,'  stretched  out  her 
hand  towards  them.  Mr.  Kitten  stopped 
her.  'You  must  never  touch  that,'  he 
said.  '  Why  not  1 '  the  child  asked.  '_ Be- 
cause if  you  eat  much  of  it,  it  would  poison 
you.'  'And  if  I  only  eat  a  little  ] '  said  the 
child,  laughing.  '  If  you  only  eat  a  little,' 
said  Mr.  Kitten,  '  it  would  throw  you  into  a 
deep  sleep — a  sleep  that  none  of  us  could 
wake  you  from,  when  it  was  time  for"  break- 
fast— a  sleep  that  would  make  your  mama 
think  you  were  dead.'  Those  words  were 
hardly  spoken,  when  the  thought  that  I  have 
now  to  tell  you  of,  flashed  across  my  mind. 
But,  before  I  say  anything  more,  answer  me 
one  question.  Am  I  right  in  supposing  that 
our  attempt  at  escape  must  be  made  in  the 
night  ? " 

"At  night,  certainly,"  says  I,  "because 
we  can  be  most  sure,  then,  that  the  Pirates  off 
guard  are  all  in  this  building,  and  not  likely 
to  leave  it." 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  PRISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


[December  7, 1857-1     27 


"I  understand.  Now,  Davis,  hear  what 
I  have  observed  of  the  habits  of  the  men 
•who  keep  us  imprisoned  in  this  place. 
The  first  change  of  guard  at  night,  is  at 
nine  o'clock.  At  that  time,  seven  men 
come  in  from  watching,  and  nine  men  (the 
extra  night-guard)  go  out  to  replace  them  ; 
each  party  being  on  duty,  as  you  know,  for 
six  hours.  I  have  observed,  at  the  nine 
o'clock  change  of  guard,  that  the  seven  men 
who  come  off  duty,  and  the  nine  who  go  on, 
have  a  supply  of  baked  cakes  of  Indian 
corn,  reserved  expressly  for  their  use.  They 
divide  the  food  between  them  ;  the  Pirate 
Captain  (who  is  always  astir  at  the  change  of 
guard)  genei-ally  taking  a  cake  for  himself, 
when  the  rest  of  the  men  take  theirs.  This 
makes  altogether,  seventeen  men  who  partake 
of  food  especially  reserved  for  them,  at  nine 
o'clock.  So  far  you  understand  me  ?  " 

"  Clearly,  Miss." 

"The  next  thing  I  have  noticed,  is  the 
manner  in  which  that  food  is  prepared. 
About  two  hours  before  sunset,  the  Pirate 
Captain  walks  out  to  smoke,  after  he  has 
eaten  the  meal  which  he  calls  his  dinner. 
In  his  absence  from  the  hall,  the  Indians 
light  their  fire  on  the  unsheltered  side  of 
it,  and  prepare  the  last  batch  of  food 
before  they  leave  us  for  the  night.  They 
knead  up  two  separate  masses  of  dough. 
The  largest  is  the  first  which  is  separated 
into  cakes  and  baUed.  That  is  taken  for  the 
use  of  us  prisoners  and  of  the  men  who  are 
off  duty  all  the  night.  The  second  and 
smaller  piece  of  dough  is  then  prepared  for 
the  nine  o'clock  change  of  guard.  On  that 
food — come  nearer,  Davis,  I  must  say  it  in 
a  whisper — on  that  food  all  our  chances  of 
escape  now  turn.  If  we  can  drug  it  unob- 
served, the  Pirates  who  go  off  duty,  the 
Pirates  who  go  on  duty,  and  the  Captain,  who 
is  more  to  be  feared  than  all  the  rest,  will  be 
as  absolutely  insensible  to  our  leaving  the 
Palace,  as  if  they  were  every  one  of  them 
dead  men." 

I  was  unable  to  speak — I  was  unable  even 
to  fetch  my  breath  at  those  words. 

"  I  have  taken  Mr.  Kitten,  as  a  matter  of 
necessity,  into  our  confidence,"  she  said.  "  I 
have  learnt  from  him  a  simple  way  of  obtain- 
ing the  juice  of  that  plant  which  he  forbade 
the  child  to  eat.  I  have  also  made  myself 
acquainted  with  the  quantity  which  it  is 
necessary  to  use  for  our  purpose  ;  and  I  have 
resolved  that  no  hands  but  mine  shall  be 
charged  with  the  work  of  kneading  it  into 
the  dough." 

"  Not  you,  Miss, — not  you.  Let  one  of  us 
— let  me — run  that  risk.'' 

"You  have  work  enough  and  risk  enough 
already,"  said  Miss  Maryou.  "It  is  time  that 
the  women,  for  whom  you  have  suffered  and 
ventured  so  much,  should  take  their  share. 
Besides,  the  risk  is  not  great,  where  the 
Indians  only  are  concerned.  They  are  idle 
and  curious.  I  have  seen,  with  my  own 


eyes,  that  they  are  as  easily  tempted  away 
from  their  occupation  by  any  chance  sight  or 
chance  noise  as  if  they  were  children  ;  and  I 
have  already  arranged  with  Mr.  Macey  that 
he  is  to  excite  their  curiosity  by  suddenly 
pulling  down  one  of  the  loose  stones  in  that 
doorway,  when  the  right  time  comes.  The 
Indians  are  certain  to  run  in  here  to  find 
out  what  is  the  matter.  Mr.  Macey  will 
tell  them  that  be  has  seen  a  snake, — they 
will  hunt  for  the  creature  (as  1  have  seen 
th"m  hunt,  over  and  over  again,  in  this 
ruined  place) — and  while  they  are  so  en- 
gaged, the  opportunity  that  I  want,  the 
two  minutes  to  myself,  which  are  all  that 
I  require,  will  be  mine.  Dread  the  Pirate 
Captain.  Davis,  for  the  slightest  caprice 
of  his  may  ruin  all  our  hopes, — but  never 
dread  the  Indians,  and  never  doubt  me." 

Nobody,  who  had  looked  in  her  face  at 
that  moment — or  at  any  moment  that  ever  I 
knew  of — could  have  doubted  her. 

"  There  is  one  thing  more,"  she  went  on. 
"  When  is  the  attempt  to  be  made  1  " 

"In  three  days'  time,"  I  answered;  "there 
will  be  timber  enough  down  to  make  the 
rafts." 

"  In  three  days'  time,  then,  let  us  decide 
the  question  of  our  freedom  or  our  death." 
She  spoke  those  words  with  a  firmness  that 
amazed  me.  "Best  now,"  she  said.  "Best 
and  hope." 

The  third  day  was  the  hottest  we  had  yet 
experienced ;  we  were  kept  longer  at  work 
than  usual ;  and  when  we  had  done,  we  left 
on  the  bank  enough,  and  more  than  enough, 
of  timber  and  poles,  to  make  both  the  rafts. 

The  Indians  had  gone  when  we  got  baok 
to  the  Palace,  and  the  Pirate  Captain  was 
still  smoking  on  the  flight  of  steps.  As  we 
crossed  the  hall,  I  looked  on  one  side  and 
saw  the  Tortillas  set  up  in  a  pile,  waiting 
for  the  men  who  came  in  and  went  out  at 
nine  o'clock. 

At  the  door  which  opened  between  our 
room  and  the  women's  room,  Miss  Maryon 
was  waiting  for  us. 

"  Is  it  done  ? "  I  asked  in  a  whisper. 

"  It  is  done,"  she  answered. 

It  was,  then,  by  Mr.  Macey's  watch  (which 
he  had  kept  hidden  about  him  throughout 
our  imprisonment),  seven  o'clock.  We  had 
two  hours  to  wait :  hours  of  suspense,  but 
hours  of  rest  also  for  the  overworked  men 
who  had  been  cutting  the  wood.  Before  I  lay 
down,  I  looked  into  the  inner  room.  The 
women  were  all  sitting  together  ;  and  I  saw 
by  the  looks  they  cast  on  me  that  Miss  Maryou 
had  told  them  of  what  was  corning  with  the 
night.  The  children  were  much  as  usual,  play- 
ing quiet  games  among  themselves.  In  the 
men's  room,  I  noticed  that  Mr.  Macey  had 
posted  himself  along  with  Tom  Packer, 
close  to  Serjeant  Drooce,  and  that  Mr.  Fisher 
seemed  to  be  taking  great  pains  to  make 
himself  agreeable  to  Mr.  Pordage.  I  was 
glad  to  see  that  the  two  gentlemen  of  the 


28     [Decemb«  7.  1867.]    THE  PEEILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS.    [Conducted  t>. 


company,  -who  were  quick-witted  and  ex- 
perienced in  most  things,  were  already  taking 
in  hand  the  two  unreasonable  men. 

The  evening  brought  no  coolness  with  it. 
The  heat  was  so  oppressive  that  we  all 
panted  under  it.  The  stillness  in  the  forest 
was  awful.  We  could  almost  hear  the  falling 
of  the  leaves. 

Half-past  seven,  eight,  half-past  eight,  a 
quarter  to  nine — Nine.  The  tramp  of  feet 
came  up  the  steps  on  one  side,  and  the  tramp 
of  feet  came  into  the  hall,  on  the  other. 
There  was  a  confusion  of  voices, — then,  the 
voice  of  the  Pirate  Captain,  speaking  in  his 
own  language, — then,  the  voice  of  the  Ame- 
rican mute,  ordering  out  the  guard, — then 
silence. 

I  crawled  to  the  door  of  our  room,  and  laid 
myself  down  behind  it,  where  I  could  see  a 
strip  of  the  hall,  being  that  part  of  it  in 
which  the  way  out  was  situated.  Here,  also, 
the  Pirate  Captain's  tent  had  been  set  up, 
about  twelve  or  fourteen  feet  from  the  door. 
Two  torches  were  burning  before  it.  By 
their  light,  I  saw  the  guard  on  duty  file  out, 
each  man  munching  his  Tortilla,  and  each 
man  grumbling  over  it.  At  the  same  time, 
in  the  part  of  the  hall  which  I  could  not  see, 
I  heard  the  men  off  duty  grumbling  also. 
The  Pirate  Captain,  who  had  entered  his  tent 
the  minute  before,  came  out  of  it,  and  calling 
to  the  American  mate,  at  the  far  end  of  the 
hall,  asked  sharply  in  English,  what  that 
murmuring  meant. 

"  The  men  complain  of  the  Tortillas,"  the 
mate  tells  him.  "  They  say,  they  are  nastier 
than  ever  to-night." 

"  Bring  me  one,  and  let  me  taste  it,"  said 
the  Captain.  I  had  often  before  heard  people 
talk  of  their  hearts  being  in  their  mouths, 
but  I  never  really  knew  what  the  sensation 
was,  till  I  heard  that  order  given. 

The  Tortilla  was  brought  to  him.  He 
nibbled  a  bit  off  it,  spat  the  morsel  out 
with  disgust,  and  threw  the  rest  of  the  cake 
away. 

"  Those  Indian  beasts  have  burnt  the 
Tortillas,"  he  said,  "and  their  dirty  hides 
shall  suffer  for  it  to-morrow  morning."  With 
those  words,  he  whisked  round  on  his  heel, 
and  went  back  into  his  tent. 

Some  of  the  men  had  crept  up  behind 
me,  and,  looking  over  my  head,  had  seen 
what  I  saw.  They  passed  the  account  of  it 
in  whispers  to  those  who  could  not  see  ;  and 
they,  in  their  turn,  repeated  it  to  the  women. 
In  five  minutes  everybody  in  the  two  rooms 
knew  that  the  scheme  had  failed  with  the 
very  man  whose  sleep  it  was  most  important 
to  secure.  I  heard  no  stifled  crying  among 
the  women  or  stifled  cursing  among  the  men. 
The  despair  of  that  time  was  too  deep  for 
tears,  and  too  deep  for  words. 

I  myself  could  not  take  my  eyes  off  the 
tent.  In  a  little  while  he  came  out  of  it 
again,  pulling  and  panting  with  the  heat.  He 
lighted  a  cigar  at  one  of  the  torches,  and  laid 


himself  down  on  his  cloak  just  inside  the 
doorway  leading  into  the  portico,  so  that  all 
the  air  from  outside  might  blow  over  him. 
Little  as  he  was,  he  was  big  enough  to  lie 
right  across  the  narrow  way  out. 

He  smoked  and  he  smoked,  slowly  and  more 
slowly,  for,  wh  at  seemed  to  me  to  be,  hours,  but 
for  what,  by  the  watch,  was  little  more  than 
ten  minutes  after  all.  Then,  the  cigar  dropped 
out  of  his  mouth — his  hand  sought  for  it,  and 
sank  lazily  by  his  side — his  head  turned  over 
a  little  towards  the  door — and  he  fell  off:  not 
into  the  drugged  sleep  that  there  was  safety 
in,  but  into  his  light,  natural  sleep,  which  a 
touch  on  his  body  might  have  disturbed. 

"Now's  the  time  to  gag  him,"  says  Short, 
creeping  up  close  to  me,  and  taking  off  his 
jacket  and  shoes. 

"  Steady,"  says  I.  "  Don't  let's  try  that  till 
we  can  try  nothing  else.  There  are  men  asleep 
near  us  who  have  not  eaten  the  drugged  cakes 
— the  Pirate  Captain  is  light  and  active — 
and  if  the  gag  slips  on  his  mouth,  we  are  all 
done  for.  I'll  go  to  his  head,  Short,  with  my 
jacket  ready  in  my  hands.  When  I'm  there, 
do  you  lead  the  way  with  your  mates,  and  step 
gently  into  the  portico,  over  his  body.  Every 
minute  of  your  time  is  precious  on  account  of 
making  the  rafts.  Leave  the  rest  of  the 
men  to  get  the  women  and  children  over ; 
and  leave  me  to  gag  him  if  he  stirs  while 
we  are  getting  out." 

"Shake  hands  on  it,  Davis,"  says  Short, 
getting  to  his  feet.  "A  team  of  horses 
wouldn't  have  dragged  me  out  first,  if  you 
hadn't  said  that  about  the  rafts." 

"  Wait  a  bit,"  says  I,  "  till  I  speak  to  Mr. 
Kitten." 

I  crawled  back  into  the  room,  taking  care 
to  keep  out  of  the  way  of  the  stones  in  the 
middle  of  it,  and  asked  Mr.  Kitten  how  long 
it  would  be  before  the  drugged  cakes  acted 
on  the  men  outside  who  had  eaten  them  ? 
He  said  we  ought  to  wait  another  quarter 
of  an  hour,  to  make  quite  sure.  At  the 
same  time,  Mr.  Macey  whispered  in  my 
ear  to  let  him  pass  over  the  Pirate  Captain's 
body,  alone  with  the  dangerous  man  of 
our  company — Serjeant  Drooce.  "I  know 
how  to  deal  with  mad  people,"  says  he. 
"I  have  persuaded  the  Sergeant  that  if  he  is 
quiet,  and  if  he  steps  carefully,  I  can  help 
him  to  escape  from  Tom  Packer,  whom  he 
is  beginning  look  on  as  his  keeper.  He  has 
been  as  stealthy  and  quiet  as  a  cat  ever  since 
— and  I  will  answer  for  him  till  we  get  to 
the  river  side." 

What  a  relief  it  was  to  hear  that !  I  was 
turning  round  to  get  back  to  Short,  when  a 
hand  touched  me  lightly. 

"I  have  heard  you  talking,"  whispered 
Miss  Maryon  ;  "  and  I  will  prepare  all  in  my 
room  for  the  risk  we  must  now  run.  Robert, 
the  ship's  boy,  whom  the  children  are  so  fond 
of,  shall  help  us  to  persuade  them,  once  more, 
that  we  are  going  to  play  a  game.  If  you 
can  get  one  of  the  torches  from  the  tent,  and 


Charles  Dickens.] 


THE  PRISON  IN  THE  WOODS. 


[December  7,  18570        29 


pass  it  in  here,  it  may  prevent  some  of  us 
from  stumbling.  Don't  be  afraid  of  the 
women  and  children,  Davis.  They  shall  not 
endanger  the  brave  men  who  are  saving 
them." 

I  left  her  at  once  to  get  the  torch.  The 
Pirate  Captain  was  still  fast  asleep  as  I  stole 
on  tiptoe,  into  the  hall,  and  took  it  from  the 
tent.  When  I  returned,  and  gave  it  to  Miss 
Maryon,  her  sister's  little  deaf  and  dumb  boy 
saw  me,  and,  slipping  between  us,  caught 
tight  hold  of  one  of  my  hands.  Having  been 
used  to  riding  on  my  shoulders  for  so  many 
days,  he  had  taken  a  fancy  to  me ;  and, 
when  I  tried  to  put  him  away,  he  only  clung 
the  tighter,  and  began  to  murmur  in  his 
helpless  dumb  way.  Slight  as  the  noise  was 
which  the  poor  little  fellow  could  make,  we 
all  dreaded  it.  His  mother  wrung  her  hands 
iu  despair  when  she  heard  him ;  and  Mr. 
Fisher  whispered  to  me  for  Heaven's  sake  to 
quiet  the  child,  and  humour  him  at  any  cost. 
I  immediately  took  him  up  in  my  arms,  and 
went  back  to  Short. 

"  Sling  him  on  my  back,"  says  I,  "  as  you 
slung  the  little  girl  on  your  own  the  first  day 
of  the  march.  I  want  both  my  hands,  and 
the  child  won't  be  quiet  away  from  me." 

Short  did  as  I  asked  him  in  two  minutes. 
As  soon  as  he  had  finished,  Mr.  Macey  passed 
the  word  on  to  me,  that  the  quarter  of  an 
hour  was  up  ;  that  it  was  time  to  try  the  ex- 
periment with  Drooce ;  and  that  it  was  neces- 
sary for  us  all  to  humour  him  by  feigning 
sleep.  We  obeyed.  Looking  out  of  the 
corner  of  my  eye,  I  saw  Mr.  Macey  take  the 
mad  Serjeant's  arm,  point  round  to  us  all, 
and  then  lead  him  out.  Holding  tight  by  Mr. 
Macey,  Drooce  stepped  as  lightly  as  a  woman, 
with  as  bright  and  wicked  a  look  of  cunning 
as  ever  I  saw  in  any  human  eyes.  They 
crossed  the  hall — Mr.  Macey  pointed  to  the 
Pirate  Captain,  and  whispered,  "  Hush  ! " — 
the  Serjeant  imitated  the  action  and  repeated 
the  word — then  the  two  stepped  over  his 
body  (Drooce  cautiously  raising  his  feet  the 
highest),  and  disappeared  through  the  portico. 
We  waited  to  hear  if  there  was  any  noise  or 
confusion.  Not  a  sound. 

I  got  up,  and  Short  handed  me  his  jacket 
for  the  gag.  The  child,  having  been  startled 
from  his  sleep  by  the  light  of  the  torch,  when 
I  brought  it  iu,  had  fallen  off  again,  already, 
on  my  shoulder.  "  Now  for  it,"  says  I,  and 
stole  out  into  the  hall. 

I  stopped  at  the  tent,  went  in,  and  took 
the  first  knife  I  could  find  there.  With  the 
weapon  between  my  teeth,  with  the  little 
innocent  asleep^  on  my  shoulder,  with  the 
jacket  held  ready  in  both  hands,  I  kneeled 
down  on  one  knee  at  the  Pirate  Captain's 
head,  and  fixed  my  eyes  steadily  on  his  ugly 
sleeping  face. 

The  sailors  came  out  first,  with  their  shoes 
in  their  hands.  No  sound  of  footsteps  from 
any  one  of  them.  No  movement  iii  the  ugly 
face  as  they  passed  over  it. 


The  women  and  children  were  ready  next. 
Kobert,  the  ship's  boy,  lifted  the  children 
over  :  most  of  them  holding  their  little  hands 
over  their  mouths  to  keep  from  laughing — 
so  well  had  Robert  persuaded  them  that  we 
were  only  playing  a  game.  The  women 
passed  next,  all  as  light  as  air  ;  after  them, 
in  obedience  to  a  sign  from  me,  my  com- 
rades of  the  Marines,  holding  their  shoes 
in  their  hands,  as  the  sailors  had  done  before 
them.  So  far,  not  a  word  had  been  spoken, 
not  a  mistake  had  been  made — so  far,  not  a 
change  of  any  sort  had  passed  over  the 
Pirate  Captain's  face. 

There  were  left  now  in  the  hall,  besides 
myself  and  the  child  on  my  back,  only  Mr. 
Fisher  and  Mr.  Pordage.  Mr.  Pordage ! 
Up  to  that  moment,  in  the  risk  and  excite- 
ment of  the  time,  I  had  not  once  thought  of 
him. 

I  was  forced  to  think  of  him  now,  though ; 
and  with  anything  but  a  friendly  feeling. 

At  the  sight  of  the  Pirate  Captain,  asleep 
across  the  way  out,  the  unfortunate,  mis- 
chievous old  simpleton  tossed  up  his  head, 
and  folded  his  arms,  and  was  on  the  point  of 
breaking  out  loud  into  a  spoken  document 
of  some  kind,  when  Mr.  Fisher  wisely  and 
quickly  clapped  a  hand  over  his  mouth. 

"  Government  despatches  outside,"  whispers 
Mr.  Fisher,  in  an  agony.  "Secret  service. 
Forty-nine  reports  from  head-quarters,  all 
waiting  for  you  half  a  mile  off.  I'll  show 
you  the  way,  sir.  Don't  wake  that  man 
there,  who  is  asleep  :  he  must  know  nothing 
about  it — he  represents  the  Public." 

Mr.  Pordage  suddenly  looked  very  knowing 
and  hugely  satisfied  with  himself.  He  fol- 
lowed Mr.  Fisher  to  within  a  foot  of  the 
Pirate  Captain's  body — then  stopped  short. 

"  How  many  reports  ? "  he  asked,  very 
anxiously. 

"Forty-nine,"  said  Mr.  Fisher.  "Come 
along,  sir, — and  step  clean  over  the  Public, 
whatever  you  do." 

Mr.  Pordage  instantly  stepped  over,  as 
jauntily  as  if  he  was  going  to  dance.  At  the 
moment  of  his  crossing,  a  hanging  rag  of  his 
cursed,  useless,  unfortunate,  limp  Diplomatic 
coat  touched  the  Pirate  Captain's  forehead, 
and  woke  him. 

I  drew  back  softly,  with  the  child  still 
asleep  on  my  shoulder,  into  the  black 
shadow  of  the  wall  behind  me.  At  the  in- 
stant when  the  Pirate  Captain  awoke,  I  had 
been  looking  at  Mr.  Pordage,  and  had  conse- 
quently lost  the  chance  of  applying  the  gag 
to  his  mouth  suddenly,  at  the  right  time. 

On  rousing  up,  he  turned  his  face  inwards, 
towards  the  prisoners'  room.  If  he  had 
turned  it  outwards,  he  must  to  a  dead  cer- 
tainty have  seen  the  tail  of  Mr.  Pordage's 
coat,  disappearing  in  the  portico. 

Though  he  was  awake  enough  to  move,  he 
was  not  awake  enough  to  have  the  full  pos- 
session of  his  sharp  senses.  The  drowsiness 
of  his  sleep  still  hung  about  him.  He 


20     tnecemb«  ?,  MS;.:    THE  PERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS.     [Conducted 


yawned,  stretched  himself,  spat  wearily,  sat 
up,  spat  again,  got  on  his  legs,  ami  stood  up, 
within  three  foot  of  the  shadow  in  which  I 
was  hiding  behind  him. 

I  forgot  the  knife  in  my  teeth, — I.  declare 
solemnly,  in  the  frightful  suspense  of  that 
moment,  I  forgot  it — and  doubled  my  fist  as 
if  I  was  an  unarmed  man,  with  the  purpose 
of  stunning  him  by  a  blow  on  the  head  if  he 
came  any  nearer.  I  suppose  I  waited,  with 
my  list  clenched,  nearly  a  minute,  while  he 
waited,  yawning  and  spitting.  At  the  end  of 
that  time,  he  made  for  his  tent,  and  I  heard 
him  (with  what  thankfulness  no  words  can 
tell !)  roll  himself  down,  with  another  yawn, 
on  his  bed  inside. 

I  waited — in  the  interest  of  us  all — to 
make  quite  sure,  before  I  left,  that  he  was 
asleep  again.  In  what  I  reckoned  as  about 
five  minutes'  time,  I  heard  him  snoring,  and 
felt  free  to  take  myself  and  my  little  sleeping 
comrade  out  of  the  prison,  at  last. 

The  drugged  guards  in  the  portico  were 
sitting  together,  dead  asleep,  with  their  backs 
against  the  wall.  The  third  man  was  lying 
flat,  on  the  landing  of  the  steps.  Their  arms 
and  ammunition  were  gone  :  wisely  taken  by 
our  men — to  defend  us,  if  we  were  meddled 
with  before  we  escaped,  and  to  kill  food  for 
us  when  we  committed  ourselves  to  the  river. 

At  the  bottom  of  the  steps  I  was  startled 
by  seeing  two  women  stand  ing  together.  They 
were  Mrs.  Macey  and  Miss  Maryon :  the 
first,  waiting  to  see  her  child  safe  ;  the 
second  (God  bless  her  for  it !)  waiting  to 
see  me  safe. 

In  a  quarter  of  an  hour  we  were  by  the 
river-side,  and  saw  the  work  bravely  begun  : 
the  sailors  and  the  marines  under  their 
orders,  labouring  at  the  rafts  in  the  shallow 
•water  by  the  bank  ;  Mr.  Macey  and  Mr. 
Fisher  rolling  down  fresh  timber  as  it  was 
wanted  ;  the  women  cutting  the  vines, 
creepers,  and  withies  for  the  lashings.  We 
brought  with  us  three  more  pair  of  hands  to 
help  ;  and  all  worked  with  such  a  will,  that, 
in  four  hours  and  twenty  minutes,  by  Mr. 
Macey's  watch,  the  rafts,  though  not  finished 
as  they  ought  to  have  been,  were  still  strong 
enough  to  float  us  away. 

Short,  another  seaman,  and  the  ship's 
boy,  got  aboard  the  first  raft,  carrying 
with  them  poles  and  spare  timber.  Miss 
Mary  on,  Mrs.  Fisher  and  her  husband, 
Mrs.  Macey  and  her  husband  and  three 
children,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pordage,  Mr.  Kitten, 
myself,  and  women  and  children  besides,  to 
make  up  eighteen,  were  the  passengers  on 
the  leading  raft.  The  second  raft,  under  the 
guidance  of  the  two  other  sailors,  held 
Serjeant  Drooce  (gagged,  for  he  now  threat- 
ened to  be  noisy  again),  Tom  Packer,  the 
two  marines,  Mrs.  Belltott,  and  the  rest  of 
the  women  and  children,  We  all  got  on  board 
silently  and  quickly,  with  a  fine  moonlight 
over  our  heads,  and  without  accidents  or  de- 
lays of  any  kind. 


It  was  a  good  half-hour  before  the  time 
would  come  for  the  change  of  guard  at  the 
prison,  when  the  lashings  which  tied  us  to  the 
bank  were  cast  off,  and  we  floated  away,  a 
company  of  free  people,  on  the  current  of 
an  unknown  river. 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE   RAFTS  ON  TIIE  KIVER. 

WE  contrived  to  keep  afloat  all  that  night, 
and,  the  stream  running  strong  with  us,  to 
glide  a  long  way  down  the  river.  But,  we 
found  the  night  to  be  a  dangerous  time  for 
such  navigation,  on  account  of  the  eddies  and 
rapids,  and  it  was  therefore  settled  next  day 
that  in  future  we  would  bring-to  at  sunset, 
and  encamp  on  the  shore.  As  we  knew  of 
no  boats  that  the  Pirates  possessed,  up  at  the 
Prison  in  the  Woods,  we  settled  always  to 
encamp  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  stream, 
so  as  to  have  the  breadth  of  the  river  between 
our  sleep  and  them.  Our  opinion  was,  that 
if  they  were  acquainted  with  any  near  way 
by  land  to  the  mouth  of  this  river,  they 
would  come  up  it  in  force,  and  re-take  us  or 
kill  us,  according  as  they  could  ;  but,  that  if 
that  was  not  the  case,  and  if  the  river  ran  by 
none  of  their  secret  stations,  we  might  escape. 

When  I  say  we  settled  this  or  that,  I  do 
not  mean  that  we  planned  anything  with  any 
confidence  as  to  what  might  happen  an  hour 
hence.  So  much  had  happened  in  one  night, 
and  such  great  changes  had  been  violently 
and  suddenly  made  in  the  fortunes  of  many 
among  us,  that  we  had  got  better  used  to  un- 
certainty, in  a  little  while,  than  I  dare  say 
most  people  do  in  the  course  of  their  lives. 

The  difficulties  we  soon  got  into,  through  the 
off-settings  and  point-currents  of  the  stream, 
made  the  likelihood  of  our  being  drowned, 
alone — to  say  nothing  of  our  being  retaken — 
as  broad  and  plain  as  the  sun  at  noon-day  to 
all  of  us.  But,  we  all  worked  hard  at 
managing  the  rafts,  under  the  direction  of 
the  seamen  (of  our  own  skill,  I  think  we 
never  could  have  prevented  them  from  over- 
setting), and  we  also  worked  hard  at  making 
good  the  defects  in  their  first  hasty  construc- 
tion— which  the  water  soon  found  out.  While 
we  humbly  resigned  ourselves  to  going  down, 
if  it  was  the  will  of  Our  Father  that  was  in 
Heaven,  we  humbly  made  up  our  minds,  that 
we  would  all  do  the  best  that  was  in  us. 

And  so  we  held  on,  gliding  with  the  stream. 
It  drove  us  to  this  bank,  and  it  drove  us  to 
that  bank,  and  it  turned  us,  and  whirled  ua  ; 
but  yet  it  carried  us  on.  Sometimes  much 
too  slowly,  sometimes  much  too  fast,  but  yet 
it  carried  us  on. 

My  little  deaf  and  dumb  boy  slumbered 
a  good  deal  now,  and  that  was  the  caae 
with  all  the  children.  They  caused  very 
little  trouble  to  any  one.  They  seemed,  in 
my  eyes,  to  get  more  like  one  another,  not 
only  in  quiet  manner,  but  in  the  face,  too. 
The  motion  of  the  raft  was  usually  so  much 


Ctiarles  Dickens.] 


THE  EAFTS  ON  THE  EIVEE. 


[December  7.  1657.]        31 


the  same,  the  scene  was  usually  so  much  the 
same,  the  sound  of  the  soft  wash  and  ripple 
of  the  water  was  usually  so  much  the  same, 
that  they  were  made  drowsy,  as  they  might 
have  been  by  the  constant  playing  of  one 
tune.  Even  on  the  grown  people,  who  worked 
hard  and  felt  anxiety,  the  same  things  pro- 
duced something  of  the  same  effect.  Every 
day  was  so  like  the  other,  that  I  soon  lost  count 
of  the  days,  myself,  and  had  to  ask  Miss 
Maryou,  for  instance,  whether  this  was  the 
third  or  fourth  ?  Miss  Maryon  had  a  pocket- 
book  and  pencil,  and  she  kept  the  log  ;  that 
is  to  say,  she  entered  up  a  clear  little  journal 
of  the  time,  and  of  the  distances  our  seamen 
thought  we  had  made,  each  night. 

So,  as  I  say,  we  kept  afloat  and  glided  on. 
All  day  long,  and  every  day,  the  water,  and 
the  woods,  and  sky  ;  all  day  long,  and  every 
day,  the  constant  watching  of  both  sides  of 
the  river,  arid  far  a-hoad  at  every  bold  turn 
and  sweep  it  made,  for  any  signs  of  Pirate- 
boats,  or  Pirate-dwellings.  So,  as  I  say,  we 
kept  afloat  and  glided  on.  The  days  melting 
themselves  together  to  that  degree,  that  I 
could  hardly  believe  my  ears  when  I  asked 
"  How  many,  now,  Miss  ? "  and  she  answered, 
"  Seven." 

To  be  sure,  poor  Mr.  Pordage  had,  by 
about  now,  got  his  Diplomatic  coat  into  such 
a  state  as  never  was  seen.  What  with  the 
mud  of  the  river,  what  with  the  water  of  the 
river,  what  with  the  sun,  and  the  dews,  and 
the  tearing  boughs,  and  the  thickets,  it  hung 
aV>out  him  in  discoloured  shreds  like  a  mop. 
The  sun  had  touched  him  a  bit.  He  had 
taken  to  always  polishing  one  particular 
button,  which  just  held  on  to  his  left  wrist, 
and  to  alsvays  calling  for  stationery.  I  sup- 
pose that  man  called  for  pens,  ink,  and  paper, 
tape,  and  sealing-wax,  upwards  of  one  thou- 
sand times  in  four  and  twenty  hours.  He 
had  an  idea  that  we  should  never  get  out  of 
that  river  unless  we  were  written  out  of  it 
in  a  formal  Memorandum  ;  and  the  more  we 
laboured  at  navigating  the  rafts,  the  more  he 
ordered  us  not  to  touch  them  at  our  peril,  and 
the  more  he  sat  and  roared  for  stationery,  j 

Mrs.  Pordage,  similarly,  persisted  in  wear- 
ing her  nightcap.  I  doubt  if  any  one  but 
ourselves  who  had  seen  the  progress  of  that 
article  of  dress,  could  by  this  time  have  told 
what  it  was  meant  for.  It  had  got  so  limp 
and  rugged  that  she  couldn't  see  out  of  her 
eyes  fur  it.  It  was  so  dirty,  that  whether  it 
was  vegetable  matter  out  of  a  swamp,  or 
weeds  out  of  the  river,  or  an  old  porter's- 
knot  from  England,  I  don't  think  any  new 
spectator  could  have  said.  Yet,  this  unfor- 
tunate old  woman  had  a  notion  that  it  was 
not  only  vastly  genteel,  but  that  it  was  the 
correct  thing  as  to  propriety.  And  she  really 
did  carry  herself  over  the  other  ladies  who 
had  no  night-caps,  and  who  were  forced  to  tie 
up  their  hair  how  they  could,  in  a  superior 
manner  that  was  perfectly  amazing. 
^  I  dou't  know  what  she  looked  like,  sitting 


in  that  blessed  night-cap,  on  a  log  of  wood, 
outside  the  hut  or  cabin  upon  our  raft.  She 
would  have  rather  resembled  a  fortune-teller 
in  one  of  the  picture-books  that  used  to  be 
in  the  shop  windows  in  my  boyhood,  except 
for  her  stateliness.  But,  Lord  bless  my  heart, 
the  dignity  with  which  she  sat  and  moped, 
with  her  head  in  that  bundle  of  tatters,  was 
like  nothing  else  in  the  world  !  She  was  not 
on  speaking  terms  with  more  than  three  of 
the  ladies.  Some  of  them  had,  what  she 
called,  "taken  precedence  "  of  her — in  getting 
into,  or  out  of,  that  miserable  little  shelter ! — 
and  others  had  not  called  to  pay  their  re- 
spects, or  something  of  that  kind.  So,  there 
she  sat,  in  her  own  state  and  ceremony,  while 
her  husband  sat  on  the  same  log  of  wood, 
ordering  us  one  and  all  to  let  the  raft  go  to 
the  bottom,  and  to  bring  him  stationery. 

What  with  this  noise  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Commissioner  Pordage,  and  what  with  the 
cries  of  Serjeant  Drooce  on  the  raft  astern 
(which  were  sometimes  more  than  Tom 
Packer  could  silence),  we  often  made  our  slow 
way  down  the  river,  anything  but  quietly. 
Yet,  that  it  was  of  great  importance  that  no 
ears  should  be  able  to  hear  us  from  the  woods 
on  the  banks,  could  not  be  doubted.  We 
were  looked  for,  to  a  certainty,  and  we  might 
be  retaken  at  any  moment.  It  was  an  anx- 
ious time  ;  it  was,  indeed,  indeed,  an  anxious 
time. 

On  the  seventh  night  of  our  voyage  on  the 
rafts,  we  made  fast,  as  usual,  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  river  to  that  from  which  we  had 
started,  in  as  dark  a  place  as  we  could  pick 
out.  Our  little  encampment  was  soon  made, 
and  supper  was  eaten,  and  the  children  fell 
asleep.  The  watch  was  set,  and  everything 
made  orderly  for  the  night.  Such  a  starlight 
night,  with  such  blue  in  the  sky,  and  such 
black  in  the  places  of  heavy  shade  on  the 
banks  of  the  great  stream  ! 

Those  two  ladies,  Miss  Maryon  and  Mrs. 
Fisher,  had  always  kept  near  me  since  the 
night  of  the  attack.  Mr.  Fisher,  who  was  un- 
tiring in  the  work  of  our  raft,  had  said  to  me : 

"  My  dear  little  childless  wife  has  grown  so 
attached  toyou,Davis,andyouare  such  agentle 
fellow,  as  well  as  such  a  determined  one ;" 
our  party  had  adopted  that  last  expression 
from  the  one-eyed  English  pirate,  and  I  re- 
peat what  Mr.  Fisher  said,  only  because  he 
said  it ;  "  that  it  takes  a  load  off  my  mind 
to  leave  her  in  your  charge." 

I  said  to  him  :  "  Your  lady  is  in  far  better 
charge  than  mine,  sir,  having  Miss  Maryon 
to  take  care  of  her  ;  but,  you  may  rely  upon 
it,  that  I  will  guard  them  both — faithful  and 
true." 

Says  he  :  "I  do  rely  upon  it,  Davis,  and  I 
heartily  wish'allthe  silver  on  our  old  Island 
was  yours." 

That  seventh  starlight  night,  as  I  have 
said,  we  made  our  camp,  and  got  our  supper, 
and  set  our  watch,  and  the  children  fell 
It  was  solemn  and  beautiful  in  those 


32     [December  r.  ISSM    THE  PERILS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS. 


a  i>, 


wild  and  solitary  parts,  to  see  them,  every 
night  before  they  lay  down,  kneeling  under 
the  bright  sky,  saying  their  little  prayers  at 
women's  laps.  At  that  time  we  men  all 
uncovered,  and  mostly  kept  at  a  distance. 
When  the  innocent  creatures  rose  up,  we 
murmured  "Amen!"  all  together.  For, 
though  we  had  not  heard  what  they  said,  we 
knew  it  must  be  good  for  us. 

At  that  time,  too,  as  was  only  natural, 
those  poor  mothers  in  our  company  whose 
children  had  been  killed,  shed  many  tears. 
I  thought  the  sight  seemed  to  console  them 
while  it  made  them  cry  ;  but,  whether  I  was 
right  or  wrong  in  that,  they  wept  very  much. 
On  this  seventh  night,  Mrs.  Fisher  had  cried 
for  her  lost  darling  until  she  cried  herself 
asleep.  She  was  lying  on  a  little  couch  of 
leaves  and  such-like  (I  made  the  best  little 
couch  I  could,  for  them  every  night),  and 
Miss  Maryon  had  covered  her,  and  sat  by 
her,  holding  her  hand.  The  stars  looked 
down  upon  them.  As  for  me,  I  guarded  them. 

"  Davis  !  "  says  Miss  Maryon.  (I  am  not 
going  to  say  what  a  voice  she  had.  I  couldn't 
if  I  tried.) 

"  I  am  here,  Miss." 

"  The  river  Bounds  as  if  it  were  swollen 
to-night." 

"  We  all  think,  Miss,  that  we  are  coming 
near  the  sea." 

"  Do  you  believe,  now,  we  shall  escape  ?  " 

"  I  do  now,  Miss,  really  believe  it."  I  had 
always  said  I  did ;  but,  I  had  in  my  own 
mind  been  doubtful." 

"  How  glad  you  will  be,  my  good  Davis,  to 
see  England  again  !  " 

I  have  another  confession  to  make  that 
will  appear  singular.  When  she  said  these 
words,  something  rose  in  my  throat ;  and  the 
stars  I  looked  away  at,  seemed  to  break  into 
spai-kles  that  fell  down  my  face  and  burnt  it. 

"  England  is  not  much  to  me,  Miss,  except 
as  a  name." 

"  Oh  !  So  true  an  Englishman  should 
not  say  that ! — Are  you  not  well  to-night, 
Davis  ? "  Very  kindly,  and  with  a  quick  change. 

"  Quite  well,  Miss." 

"  Are  you  sure  1  Your  voice  sounds  al- 
tered in  my  hearing." 

"No,  Miss,  I  am  a  stronger  man  than  ever. 
But,  England  is  nothing  to  me." 

Miss  Maryon  sat  silent  for  so  long  a  while, 
that  I  believed  she  had  done  speaking  to  me 
for  one  time.  However,  she  had  not ;  for 
by  and  by  she  said  in  a  distinct,  clear  tone  : 

"  No,  good  friend ;  you  must  not  say,  that 
England  is  nothing  to  you.  It  is  to  be  much  to 
you,  yet — everything  to  you.  You  have  to 
take  back  to  England  the  good  name  you 
have  earned  here,  and  the  gratitude  and  at- 
tachment and  respect  you  have  won  here  ; 
and  you  have  to  make  some  good  English 
girl  very  happy  and  proud,  by  marrying  her ; 
and  I  shall  one  day  see  her,  I  hope,  and  make 
her  happier  and  prouder  still,  by  telling  her 
•what  noble  services  her  husband's  were  in 


South  America,  and  what  a  noble  friend  he 
was  to  me  there." 

Though  she  spoke  these  kind  words  in  a 
cheering  manner,  she  spoke  them  compas- 
sionately. I  said  nothing.  It  will  appear  to 
be  another  strange  confession,  that  I  paced 
to  and  fro,  within  call,  all  that  night,  a  most 
unhappy  man  reproaching  myself  all  the 
night  long.  "You  are  as  ignorant  as  any 
man  alive  ;  you  are  as  obscure  as  any  man 
alive;  you  are  as  poor  as  any  man  alive;  you 
are  no  better  than  the  mud  under  your  foot." 
That  was  the  way  in  which  I  went  on  against 
myself  until  the  morning. 

With  the  day,  came  the  day's  labour. 
What  I  should  have  done  without  the  labour, 
I  don't  know.  We  were  afloat  again  at  the 
usual  hour,  and  were  again  making  our  way 
down  the  river.  It  was  broader,  and  clearer 
of  obstructions  than  it  had  been,  and  it  seemed 
to  flow  faster.  This  was  one  of  Drooce's 
quiet  days ;  Mr.  Pordage,  besides  being 
sulky,  had  almost  lost  his  voice ;  and  we 
made  good  way,  and  with  little  noise. 

There  was  always  a  seaman  forward  on 
the  raft,  keeping  a  bright  look-out.  Sud- 
denly, in  the  full  heat  of  the  day,  when  tho 
children  were  slumbering,  and  the  very  trees 
and  reeds  appeared  to  be  slumbering,  this 
man — it  was  Short — holds  up  his  hand,  and 
cries  with  great  caution  : 

"  Avast !     Voices  ahead  !  " 

We  held  on  against  the  stream  as  soon  as 
we  could  bring  her  up,  and  the  other  raft 
followed  suit.  At  first,  Mr.  Macey,  Mr, 
Fisher,  and  myself,  could  hear  nothing ; 
though  both  the  seamen  aboard  of  us  agreed 
that  they  could  hear  voices  and  oars.  After 
a  little  pause,  however,  we  united  in  thinking 
that  we  could  hear  the  sound  of  voices,  and 
the  dip  of  oars.  But,  you  can  hear  a  long  way 
in  those  countries,  and  there  was  a  bend  of 
the  river  before  us,  and  nothing  was  to  be 
seen  except  such  waters  and  such  banks  as 
we  were  now  in  the  eighth  day  (and  might, 
for  the  matter  of  our  feelings,  have  been  in  the 
eightieth),  of  having  seen  with  anxious  eyes. 

It  was  soon  decided  to  put  a  man  ashore 
who  should  creep  through  the  wood,  see  what 
was  coming,  and  warn  the  rafts.  The  rafts 
in  the  meantime  to  keep  the  middle  of  the 
stream.  The  man  to  be  put  ashore,  and  not 
to  swim  ashore,  as  the  first  thing  could  be 
more  quickly  done  than  the  second.  The  raft 
conveying  him,  to  get  back  into  mid-stream, 
and  to  hold  on  along  with  the  other,  as  well 
as  it  could,  until  signalled  by  the  man.  In 
case  of  danger,  the  man  to  shift,  for  himself 
until  it  should  be  safe  to  take  him  aboard 
I  volunteered  to  be  the  man. 


Weknewthat  the  voicesandoars  must  come 
up  slowly  against  the  stream  ;  and  our  seamen 
knew,  by  the  set  of  the  stream,  under  which 
bank  they  would  come.  I  was  put  ashore 
accordingly.  The  raft  got  off  well,  and  I 
broke  into  the  wood. 

Steaming  hot  it  was,  and  a  tearing  place  to 


Charles  Dtckeni.1 


THE  EAFTS  ON  THE  RIVER, 


[December  7,  W7.]       33 


get  through.  So  much  the  better  for  me, 
since  it  was  something  to  contend  against  and 
do.  I  cut  off  the  bend  in  the  river,  at  a  great 
saving  of  space,  came  to  the  water's  edge 
again,  and  hid  myself,  and  waited.  I  could 
now  hear  the  dip  of  the  oars  very  distinctly ; 
the  voices  had  ceased. 

The  sound  came  on  in  a  regular  tune,  and 
as  I  lay  hidden,  I  fancied  the  tune  so  played 
to  be,  "  Chris'en — George — King  !  Chris'en — 
George— King  !  Chris'en — George — King  !  " 
over  and  over  again,  always  the  same,  with  the 
pauses  always  at  the  same  places.  I  had  like- 
wise time  to  make  up  my  mind  that  if  these 
were  the  Pirates,  I  could  and  would  (barring 
my  being  shot),  swim  off  to  my  raft,  in  spite 
of  my  wound,  the  moment  I  had  given 
the  alarm,  and  hold  my  old  post  by  Miss 
Maryon. 

"  Chris'en —  George  —  King  !  Chris'en — 
George — King  !  Chris'en — George — King  !  " 
coming  up,  now,  very  near. 

I  took  a  look  at  the  branches  about  me, 
to  see  where  a  shower  of  bullets  would  be 
most  likely  to  do  me  least  hurt ;  and  I 
took  a  look  back  at  the  track  I  had  made 
in  forcing  my  way  in ;  and  now  I  was 
wholly  prepared  and  fully  ready  for  them. 

"  Chris'en  —  Geoi-ge  —  King !  Chrise'n — 
George — King  !  Chris'en — George — King !  " 
Here  they  were ! 

Who  were  they  ?  The  barbarous  Pirates, 
scum  of  all  nations,  headed  by  such  men  as  the 
hideous  little  Portuguesemonkey,and  the  one- 
eyed  English  convict  with  the  gash  across  his 
face,  that  ought  to  have  gashed  his  wicked 
head  off?  The  worst  men  in  the  world 
picked  out  from  the  worst,  to  do  the  cruel- 
lest and  most  atrocious  deeds  that  ever 
stained  it  ?  The  howling,  murdering,  black- 
flag  waving,  mad,  and  drunken  crowd  of 
devils  that  had  overcome  us  by  numbers 
and  by  treachery  1  No.  These  were  English 
men  in  English  boats — good  blue-jackets  and 
red-coats — marines  that  I  knew  myself,  and 
sailors  that  knew  our  seamen  !  At  the  helm 
of  the  first  boat,  Captain  Carton,  eager  and 
steady.  At  the  helm  of  the  second  boat, 
Captain  Maryon,  brave  and  bold.  At  the 
helm  of  the  third  boat,  an  old  seaman,  with 
determination  carved  into  his  watchful  face, 
like  the  figure-head  of  a  ship.  Every  man 
doubly  and  trebly  armed  from  head  to  foot. 
Every  man  lying-to  at  his  work,  with  a  will 
that  had  all  his  heart  and  soul  in  it.  Every 
man  looking  out  for  any  trace  of  friend  or 
enemy,  and  burning  to  be  the  first  to  do  good, 
or  avenge  evil.  Every  man  with  his  face  on 
fire  when  he  saw  me,  his  countryman  who 
had  been  taken  prisoner,  and  hailed  me  with 
a  cheer,  as  Captain  Carton's  boat  ran  in  and 
took  me  on  board. 

1  reported,  "  All  escaped,  sir  !  All  well, 
all  safe,  all  here  !  " 

God  bless  me — and  God  bless  them — what 
a  cheer !  It  turned  me  weak,  as  I  was 
passed  on  from. hand  to  hand  to  the  stern  of 


the  boat :  every  hand  patting  me  or  grasping 
me  in  some  way  or  other,  iu  the  moment  of 

m7  going  by. 

"  Hold  up,  my  brave  fellow,"  says  Captain 
Carton,  clapping  me  on  the  shoulder  like  a 
friend,  and  giving  me  a  flask.  "  Put  your 
lips  to  that,  and  they'll  be  red  again.  Now, 
boys,  give  way  ! " 

The  banks  flew  by  us,  as  if  the  mightiest 
stream  that  ever  ran  was  with  us ;  and  so 
it  was,  I  am  sure,  meaning  the  stream  of 
those  men's  ardour  and  spirit.  The  banks 
flew  by  us,  and  we  came  in  sight  of  the  rafts 
— the  banks  flew  by  us,  and  we  came  along- 
side of  the  rafts — the  banks  stopped  ;  and 
there  was  a  tumult  of  laughing  and  crying 
and  kissing  and  shaking  of  hands,  and  catching 
up  of  children  and  setting  of  them  down  again, 
and  a  wild  hurry  of  thankfulness  and  joy  that 
melted  every  one  and  softened  all  hearts. 

I  had  taken  notice,  in  Captain  Carton's 
boat,  that  there  was  a  curious  and  quite  new 
sort  of  fitting  on  board.  It  was  a  kind  of  a 
little  bower  made  of  flowers,  and  it  was  set 
up  behind  the  captain,  and  betwixt  him  and 
the  rudder.  Not  only  was  this  arbor,  so  to 
call  it,  neatly  made  of  flowers,  but  it  was 
ornamented  in  a  singular  way.  Some  of  the 
men  had  taken  the  ribbons  and  buckles  off 
their  hats,  and  hung  them  among  the  flowers  ; 
others,  had  made  festoons  and  streamers  of 
their  handkerchiefs,  and  hung  them  there ; 
others,  had  intermixed  such  trifles  as  bits  of 
glass  and  shining  fragments  of  lockets  and 
tobacco-boxes,  with  the  flowers  ;  so  that  alto- 
gether it  was  a  very  bright  and  lively  object  in 
the  sunshine.  But,  why  there,  or  what  for, 
I  did  not  understand. 

Now,  as  soon  as  the  first  bewilderment  was 
over,  Captain  Carton  gave  the  order  to  land 
for  the  present.  But,  this  boat  of  his,  with 
two  hands  left  in  her,  immediately  put  off 
again  when  the  men  were  out  of  her,  and 
kept  off,  some  yards  from  the  shore.  As  she 
floated  there,  with  the  two  hands  gently 
backing  water  to  keep  her  from  going  down 
the  stream,  this  pretty  little  arbor  attracted 
many  eyes.  None  of  the  boat's  crew,  however, 
had  anything  to  say  about  it,  except  that  it 
was  the  captain's  fancy. 

The  captain,  with  the  women  and  children 
clustering  round  him,  and  the  men  of  all 
ranks  grouped  outside  them,  and  all  listening, 
stood  telling  how  the  Expedition,  deceived  by 
its  bad  intelligence,  had  chased  the  light 
Pirate  boats  all  that  fatal  night,  and  had 
still  followed  in  their  wake  next  day,  and 
had  never  suspected  until  many  hours  too 
late  that  the  great  Pirate  body  had  drawn  off 
in  the  darkness  when  the  chace  began,  and 
shot  over  to  the  Island.  He  stood  telling 
how  the  Expedition,  supposing  the  whole 
array  of  armed  boats  to  be  ahead  of  it,  got 
tempted  into  shallows  and  went  aground ; 
but,  not  without  having  its  revenge  upon  the 
two  decoy-boats,  both  of  which  it  had  come 
up  with,  overland,  and  sent  to  the  bottom 


34     [D«cember7, 185M    THE  PERILS  OF  CEETAIN  ENGLISH  PRISONERS.     [Conducted  by 


with  all  on  board.  He  stood  telling  bow  the 
Expedition,  fearing  then  that  the  case  stood 
as  it  did,  got  afloat  again,  by  great  exertion, 
after  the  loss  of  four  more  tides,  and  returned 
to  the  Island,  where  they  found  the  sloop 
scuttled  and  the  treasure  gone.  He  stood 
telling  how  my  officer,  Lieutenant  Linder- 
wood,  was  left  upon  the  Island,  with  as 
strong  a  force  as  could  be  got  together  hur- 
riedly from  the  mainland,  and  how  the  three 
boats  we  saw  before  us  were  manned  and 
armed  and  had  come  away,  exploring  the 
coast  and  inlets,  in  search  of  any  tidings  of 
us.  He  stood  telling  all  this,  with  his  face 
to  the  river  ;  and,  as  he  stood  telling  it,  the 
little  arbor  of  flowers  floated  in  the  sunshine 
])e fore  all  the  faces  there. 

Leaning  on  Captain  Carton's  shoulder, 
between  him  and  Miss  Maryon,  was  Mrs. 
Fisher,  her  head  drooping  on  her  arm.  She 
asked  him,  without  raising  it,  when  he  had 
told  so  much,  whether  he  had  found  her 
mother  1 

"  Be  comforted  !  She  lies,"  said  the  Cap- 
tain, gently,  "  under  the  cocoa-nut  trees  on 
the  beach." 

"And  my  child,  Captain  Carton,  did  you 
iind  my  child,  too  ?  Does  my  darling  rest 
with  my  mother  ?  " 

"  No.  Your  pretty  child  sleeps,"  said  the 
Captain,  "  under  a  shade  of  flowers." 

His  voice  shook  ;  but,  there  was  something 
iu  it  that  struck  all  the  hearers.  At  that 
moment,  there  sprung  from  the  arbor  in  his 
boat,  a  little  creature,  clapping  her  hand 
and  stretching  out  her  arms,  and  crying, 
"  Dear  papa !  Dear  mamma !  I  am  not 
killed.  I  am  saved.  I  am  coming  to  kiss 
you.  Take  me  to  them,  take  me  to  them, 
good,  kind  sailors !  " 

Nobody  who  saw  that  scene  has  ever  for- 
gotten it,  I  am  sure,  or  ever  will  forget  it. 
The  child  had  kept  quite  still,  where  her  brave 
grandmama  had  put  her  (first  whispering  in 
her  ear,  "  Whatever  happens  to  me,  do  not 
stir,  my  dear  !  "),  and  had  remained  quiet 
until  the  fort  was  deserted ;  she  had  then 
crept  out  of  the  trench,  and  gone  into  her 
mother's  house ;  and  there,  alone  on  the 
solitary  Island,  in  her  mother's  room,  and 
asleep  on  her  mother's  bed,  the  Captain  had 
found  her.  Nothing  could  induce  her  to  be 
parted  from  him  after  he  took  her  up  in  his 
arms,  and  he  had  brought  her  away  with 
him,  and  the  men  had  made  the  bower  for 
her.  To  see  those  men  now,  was  a  sight. 
The  joy  of  the  women  was  beautiful ;  the 
joy  of  those  women  who  had  lost  their  own 
children,  was  quite  sacred  and  divine ;  but, 
the  ecstasies  of  Captain  Carton's  boat's  crew, 
when  their  pet  was  restored  to  her  parents, 
were  wonderful  for  the  tenderness  they 
showed  in  the  midst  of  roughness.  As  the 
Captain  stood  with  the  child  in  his  arms,  and 
the  child's  own  little  arms  now  clinging 
round  his  neck,  now  round  her  father's,  now 
round  her  mother's,  now  round  some  one  who 


pressed  up  to  kiss  her,  the  boat's  crew  shook 
hands  with  one  another,  waved  their  hats  over 
their  heads,  laughed,  sang,  cried, danced — and 
all  among  themselves,  without  wanting  to 
interfere  with  anybody — in  a  manner  never 
to  be  represented.  At  last,  I  saw  the  coxswain 
and  another,  two  very  hard-faced  men  with 
grizzled  heads  who  had  been  the  heartiest  of 
the  hearty  all  along-,  close  with  one  another, 
get  each  of  them  the  other's  head  under  his 
arm,  and  pummel  away  at  it  with  his  fist  as 
hard  as  he  could,  in  his  excess  of  joy. " 

When  we  had  well  rested  and  refreshed 
ourselves — and  very  glad  we  were  to  have 
some  of  the  heartening  things  to  eat  and 
drink  that  had  come  up  in  the  boats — we 
recommenced  our  voyage  down  the  river : 
rafts,  and  boats,  and  all.  I  said  to  myself,  it 
was  a  very  different  kind  of  voyage  now,  from 
what  it  had  been;  and  I  fell  into  my  proper 
place  and  station  among  my  fellow-soldiers. 

But,  when  we  halted  for  the  night,  I  found 
that  Miss  Maryon  had  spoken  to  Captain 
Carton  concerning  me.  For,  the  Captain 
came  straight  up  to  me,  and  says  he,  "  My 
brave  fellow,  you  have  been  M.iss  Maryon's 
body-guard  all  along,  and  you  shall  remain 
so.  Nobody  shall  supersede  you  in  the  dis- 
tinction and  pleasure  of  protecting  that 
young  lady."  I  thanked  his  honor  in  the 
fittest  words  I  could  find,  and  that  night 
I  was  placed  on  my  old  post  of  watching  the 
place  where  she  slept.  More  than  once  in  the 
night,  I  saw  Captain  Carton  come  out  into  the 
air,  and  stroll  about  there,  to  see  that  all  was 
well.  I  have  now  this  other  singular  confession 
to  make,  that  I  saw  him  with  a  heavy  heart. 
Yes  ;  I  saw  him  with  a  heavy,  heavy  heart. 

In  the  day-time,  I  had  the  like  post  in 
Captain  Carton's  boat.  I  had  a  special 
station  of  my  own,  behind  Miss  Maryou,  and 
no  hands  but  hers  ever  touched  my  wound. 
(It  has  been  healed  these  many  long  years  ; 
but,  no  other  hands  have  ever  touched  it.) 
Mr.  Pordage  was  kept  tolerably  quiet  now, 
with  pen  and  ink,  and  began  to  pick  up  his 
senses  a  little.  Seated  in  the  second  boat,  he 
made  documents  with  Mr.  Kitten,  pretty  well 
all  day ;  and  he  generally  handed  in  a  Pro- 
test about  something  whenever  Ave  stopped. 
The  Captain,  however,  made  so  very  light  of 
these  papers  that  it  grew  into  a  saying 
among  the  men,  when  one  of  them  wanted  a 
match  for  his  pipe,  "  Hand  us  over  a  Protest, 
Jack  !  "  As  to  M  rs.  Pordage,  she  still  wore 
the  nightcap,  and  she  now  had  cut  all  the 
ladies  on  account  of  her  not  having  been 
formally  and  separately  rescued  by  Captain 
Carton  before  anybody  else.  The  end  of  Mr. 
Pordage,  to  bring  to  an  end  all  I  know  about 
him,  was,  that  he  got  great  compliments  at 
home  for  his  conduct  on  these  trying  occa- 
sions, and  that  he  died  of  yellow  jaundice,  a 
Governor  and  a  K.C.B. 

Serjeant  Drooee  had  fallen  from  a  high 
fever  into  a  low  one,  Tom  Packer — the  only 
man  who  could  have  pulled  the  Serjeant 


Cbirlei  Dick«ns.l 


THE  EAFTS  ON  THE  RIVER. 


[Dteember  7.  18570     35 


through  it — kept  hospital  a-board  the  old 
raft,  and  Mrs.  Belltott,  as  brisk  as  ever  again 
(but  the  spirit  of  that  little  woman,  when 
things  tried  it,  was  not  equal  to  appearances), 
was  head-nurse  under  his  directions.  Before 
we  got  down  to  the  Mosquito  coast,  the  joke 
had  been  made  by  one  of  our  men,  that  we 
should  see  her  gazetted  Mrs.  Tom  Packer, 
vice  Belltott  exchanged. 

When  we  reached  the  coast,  we  got 
native  boats  aa  substitutes  for  the  rafts ; 
and  we  rowed  along  under  the  land ; 
and  in  that  beautiful  climate,  and  upon 
that  beautiful  water,  the  blooming  days 
were  like  enchantment.  Ah!  They  were 
running  away,  faster  than  any  sea  or  river, 
and  there  was  no  tide  to  bring  them  back. 
We  were  coming  very  near  the  settlement 
where  the  people  of  Silver-Store  were  to  be 
left,  and  from  which  we  Marines  were  under 
orders  to  return  to  Belize. 

Captain  Carton  had,  in  the  boat  by  him,  a 
curious  long-barreled  Spanish  gun,  and  he 
had  said  to  Miss  Maryon  one  day  that  it  was 
the  best  of  guns,  and  had  turned  his  head  to 
me,  and  said  : 

"  Gill  Davis,  load  her  fresh  with  a  couple 
of  slugs,  against  a  chance  of  showing  how 
good  she  is." 

So,  I  had  discharged  the  gun  over  the  sea, 
and  had  loaded  her,  according  to  orders,  and 
there  it  had  lain  at  the  Captain's  feet,  con- 
venient to  the  Captain's  hand. 

The  last  day  but  one  of  our  journey  was 
an  uncommonly  hot  day.  We  started  very 
early  ;  but,  there'owas  no  cool  air  on  the  sea 
as  the  day  got  on,  and  by  noon  the  heat  was 
really  hard  to  bear,  considering  that  there 
were  women  and  children  to  bear  it.  Now, 
we  happened  to  open,  just  at  that  time,  a 
very  pleasant  little  cove  or  bay,  where  there 
was  a  deep  shade  from  a  great  growth  of 
trees.  Now,  the  Captain,  therefore,  made 
the  signal  to  the  other  boats  to  follow  him  in 
and  lie  by  a  while. 

The  men  who  were  off  duty  went  ashore, 
and  lay  down,  but  were  ordered,  for 
caution's  sake,  not  to  stray,  and  to  keep 
within  view.  The  others  rested  on  their 
oars,  and  dozed.  Awnings  had  been  made 
of  one  thing  and  another,  in  all  the  boats, 
and  the  passengers  found  it  cooler  to  be 
under  them  in  the  shade,  when  there  was 
room  enough,  than  to  be  in  the  thick  woods. 
So,  the  passengers  were  all  afloat,  and  mostly 
sleeping.  I  kept  my  post  behind  Miss 
Maryon,  and  she  was  on  Captain  Carton's 
right  in  the  boat,  and  Mrs.  Fisher  sat  on  her 
right  again.  The  Captain  had  Mrs.  Fisher's 
daughter  on  his  knee.  He  and  the  two  ladies 
were  talking  about  the  Pirates,  and  were  talk- 
ing softly :  partly,  because  people  do  talk 
softly  under  such  indolent  circumstances,  and 
partly  because  the  little  girl  had  gone  off 
asleep. 

I  think  I  have  before  given  it  out  for  my 
Lady  to  write  down,  that  Captain  Carton  had 


a  fine  bright  eye  of  his  own.  All  at  once, 
he  darted  me  a  side  look,  as  much  as  to 
say.  "Steady — don't  take  on — I  see  some- 
thing ! " — and  gave  the  child  into  her  mother's 
arms.  That  eye  of  his  was  so  easy  to  under- 
stand, that  I  obeyed  it  by  not  so  much  as 
looking  either  to  the  right  or  to  the  left  out 
of  a  corner  of  my  own,  or  changing  my  atti- 
tude the  least  trifle.  The  Captain  went  on 
talking  in  the  same  mild  and  easy  way  ;  but 
began — with  his  arms  resting  across  his  knees, 
and  his  head  a  little  hanging  forward,  as  if 
the  heat  were  rather  too  much  for  him — be- 
gan to  play  with  the  Spanish  gun. 

"  They  had  laid  their  plans,  you  see,"  says 
the  Captain,  taking  up  the  Spanish  gun 
across  his  knees,  and  looking,  lazily,  at  the 
inlaying  on  the  stock,  a  with  a  great  deal  of 
art ;  and  the  corrupt  or  blundering  local 
authorities  were  so  easily  deceived  ; "  he  ran 
his  left  hand  idly  along  the  barrel,  but  I 
saw,  with  my  breath  held,  that  he  covered 
the  action  of  cocking  the  gun  with  his  right 
— "  so  easily  deceived,  that  they  summoned 
ue  out  to  come  into  the  trap.  But  my  inten- 
tion as  to  future  operations "  In  a  flash  the 

Spanish  gun  was  at  his  bright  eye,  and  he  fired. 

All  started  up ;  innumerable  echoes  re- 
peated the  sound  of  the  discharge  ;  a  cloud  of 
bright-colored  birds  flew  out  of  the  woods 
screaming ;  a  handful  of  leaves  were  scat- 
tered in  the  place  where  the  shot  had  struck  ; 
a  crackling  of  branches  was  heard  ;  and  some 
lithe  but  heavy  creature  sprang  into  the  air, 
and  fell  forward,  head  down,  over  the  muddy 
bank. 

"  What  is  it  ?  "  cries  Captain  Maryon  from 
his  boat.  All  silent  then,  but  the  echoes 
rolling  away. 

"  It  is  a  Traitor  and  a  Spy,"  sard  Captain 
Carton,  handing  me  the  gun  to  load  again. 
"  And  I  think  the  other  name  of  the  animal 
is  Christian  George  King  !  " 

Shot  through  the  heai-t.      Some  of  the- 
people  ran  round  to  the  spot,  and  drew  him 
out,  with  the  slime  and  wet  trickling  down 
his  face  ;  but,  his  face  itself  would  never  stir 
any  more  to  the  end  of  time, 

"  Leave  him  hanging  to  that  tree,"  cried 
Captain  Carton  ;  his  boat's  crew  giving  way, 
and  he  leaping  ashore.  "  But  first  into  this 
wood,  every  man  in  his  place.  And  boats  ! 
Out  of  gunshot !  " 

It  was  a  quick  change,  well  meant  and 
well  made,  though  it  ended  in  disappointment. 
No  Pirates  were  there  ;  no  one  but  the  Spy 
was  found.  It  was  supposed  that  the  Pirates, 
unable  to  retake  us,  and  expecting  a  great 
attack  upon  them,  to  be  the  consequence  of 
our  escape,  had  made  from  the  ruins  in  the 
Forest,  taken  to  their  ship  along  with  the 
Treasure,  and  left  the  Spy  to  pick  up  what 
intelligence  he  could.  In  the  evening  we 
went  away,  and  he  was  left  hanging  to  the 
tree,  all  alone,  with  the  red  sun  making  a 
kind  of  a  dead  sunset  on  his  black  face. 

Next  day,  we  gained  the  settlement  on  the 


36 


THE  PEPJLS  OF  CERTAIN  ENGLISH  PEISONERS 


[December  7,  183;.] 


Mosquito  coast  for  which  we  were  bound. 
Having  stayed  there  to  refresh,  seven  days, 
and  having  been  much  commended,  and  highly 
spoken  of,  and  finely  entertained,  we  Marines 
stood  under  orders  to  inarch  from  the  Town- 
Gate  (it  was  neither  much  of  a  town  nor 
much  of  a  gate),  at  five  in  the  morning. 

My  officer  had  joined  us  before  then. 
When  we  turned  out  at  the  gate,  all  the 
people  were  there ;  in  the  front  of  them  all 
those  who  had  been  our  fellow-prisoners,  and 
all  the  seamen. 

"Davis,"  says  Lieutenant  Linderwood. 
"  Stand  out,  my  friend !  " 

I  stood  out  from  the  ranks,  and  Miss 
Mary  on  and  Captain  Carton  came  up  to  me. 

"Dear  Davis,"  says  Miss  Maryon,  while 
the  tears  fell  fast  down  her  face,  "your 
grateful  friends,  in  most  unwillingly  taking 
leave  of  you,  ask  the  favour  that,  while  you 
bear  away  with  you  their  affectionate  remem- 
brance which  nothing  can  ever  impair,  you 
will  also  take  this  purse  of  money — far  more 
valuable  to  you,  we  all  know,  for  the  deep 
attachment  and  thankfulness  with  which  it  is 
offered,  than  for  its  own  contents,  though  we 
hope  those  may  prove  useful  to  you,  too,  in 
after  life." 

I  got  out,  in  answer,  that  I  thankfully 
accepted  the  attachment  and  affection,  but 
not  the  money.  Captain  Carton  looked  at  me 
very  attentively,  and  stepped  back,  and  moved 
away.  I  made  him  my  bow  as  he  stepped 
back,  to  thank  him  for  being  so  delicate. 

"No,  miss,"  said  I,  "I  tfuuk  it  would 
break  my  heart  to  accept  of  money.  But,  if 
you  could  condescend  to  give  to  a  man  so  ig- 
norant and  common  as  myself,  any  little  thing 
you  have  worn — such  as  a  bit  of  ribbon — '•" 

She  took  a  ring  froiu  her  finger,  and  put  it 
iu  my  hand.  And  she  rested  her  hand  in 
mine,  while  she  said  these  words  : 

"  The  brave  gentlemen  of  old — but  not  one 
of  them  was  braver,  or  had  a  nobler  nature 
than  you — took  such  gifts  from  ladies,  and 
did  all  their  good  actions  for  the  givers'  sakes. 
If  you  will  do  yours  for  mine,  I  shall  think 
with  pride  that  I  continue  to  have  some  share 
in  the  life  of  a  gallant  and  generous  man." 

For  the  second  time  in  my  life,  she  kissed 
my  hand.  I  made  so  bold,  for  the  first  time, 
as  to  kiss  hers  ;  and  I  tied  the  ring  at  my 
breast,  and  I  fell  back  to  my  place. 

Then,  the  horse-litter  went  out  at  the  gate, 
with  Serjeant  Droooe  in  it ;  and  the  horse- 
litter  went  out  at  the  gate  with  Mrs.  Belltott 
in  it ;  aud  Lieutenant  Linderwood  gave  the 
word  of  command,  "  Quick  march  !  "  and, 
cheered  and  cried  for,  we  went  out  of  the 
gate  too,  marching  along  the  level  plain 
towards  the  nerene  blue  sky  as  if  we  were 
marching  straight  to  Heaven. 


When  I  have  added  here  that  the  Pirate 
scheme  was  blown  to  shivers,  by  the  Pirate- 
ship  which  had  the  Treasure  on  board  being  so 
vigorously  attacked  by  one  of  His  Majesty's 
cruisers,  among  the  West  India  Keys,  and 
being  so  swiftly  boarded  aud  carried,  that  no- 
body suspected  anything  about  the  scheme 
until  three -fourths  of  the  Pirates  were  killed, 
and  the  other  fourth  were  in  irons,  and  the 
Treasure  was  recovered ;  I  come  to  the  last 
singular  confession  I  have  got  to  make. 

It  is  this.  I  well  knew  what  an  immense 
and  hopeless  distance  there  was  between  me 
and  Miss  Maryon  ;  I  well  knew  that  I  was  no 
fitter  company  for  her  than  I  was  for  the  angels ; 
I  well  knew  that  she  was  as  high  above  my 
reach  as  the  sky  over  my  head ;  and  yet  I  loved 
her.  What  put  it  in  my  low  heart  to  be  so 
daring,  or  whether  such  a  thing  ever  hap- 
pened before  or  since,  as  that  a  man  so  uniu- 
structed  and  obscure  as  myself  got  his 
unhappy  thoughts  lifted  up  to  such  a  height, 
while  knowing  very  well  how  presumptuous 
and  impossible  to  be  realised  they  were,  I  am 
unable  to  say  ;  still,  the  suffering  to  me  was 
just  as  great  as  if  I  had  been  a  gentleman. 
I  suffered  agony — agony.  I  suffered  hard,  and 
I  suffered  long.  I  thought  of  her  last  words 
to  me,  however,  and  I  never  disgraced  them. 
If  it  had  not  been  for  those  dear  words,  I 
think  I  should  have  lost  myself  in  despair 
and  recklessness. 

The  ring  will  be  found  lying  on  my  heart,  of 
course,  and  will  be  laid  with  me  wherever  I 
am  laid.  I  am  getting  on  in  years  now, 
though  I  am  able  aud  hearty.  I  was  recom- 
mended for  promotion,  and  everything  was 
done  to  reward  me  that  could  be  done  ;  but, 
my  total  want  of  all  learning  stood  in  my 
way,  and  I  found  myself  so  completely  out  of 
the  road  to  it,  that  I  could  not  conquer  any 
learning,  though  I  tried.  I  was  long  in  the 
service,  aud  I  respected  it,  and  was  respected 
in  it,  aud  the  service  is  dear  to  me  at  this 
present  hour. 

At  this  present  hour,  when  I  give  this  out 
to  my  Lady  to  be  written  down,  all  my  old 
pain  has  softened  away,  and  I  am  as  happy 
as  a  man  can  be,  at  this  present  fine  old 
country-house  of  Admiral  Sir  George  Carton, 
Baronet.  It  was  my  Lady  Carton  who  herself 
sought  me  out,  over  a  great  many  miles  of 
the  wide  world,  and  found  me  in  Hospital 
wounded,  and  brought  me  here.  It  is  my 
Lady  Carton  who  writes  down  my  words. 
My  Lady  was  Miss  Iviaryou.  And  now,  that 
I  conclude  what  I  had  to  tell,  I  see  my  Lady's 
honored  grey  hair  droop  over  her  face,  as  she 
leans  a  little  lower  at  her  desk  ;  and  I  fer- 
vently thank  her  for  being  so  tender  as  I 
see  she  is,  towards  the  past  pain  and  trouble 
of  her  poor,  old,  faithful,  humble  soldier. 


THE   END  OF  THK  CHRISTMAS  NUMBER  FOR   1857. 


I'uM-ikrr.  HI  tU  OKcr,  No.  !(,.  Wellington  Street  Nortb.Strand.    Printed  by  BKAUBURY  &  EVASS,  \Vliitcfri»r»,  Lon.lou 


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