The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household Words, No. 13, June 22, 1850
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Title: Household Words, No. 13, June 22, 1850
A weekly journal
Editor: Charles Dickens
Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78177]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78177
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Steven desJardins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 13, JUNE 22, 1850 ***
“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
N^{o.} 13.] SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._
THE SUNDAY SCREW.
This little instrument, remarkable for its curious twist, has been at
work again. A small portion of the collective wisdom of the nation has
affirmed the principle that there must be no collection or delivery of
posted letters on a Sunday. The principle was discussed by something
less than a fourth of the House of Commons, and affirmed by something
less than a seventh.
Having no doubt whatever, that this brilliant victory is, in effect, the
affirmation of the principle that there ought to be No Anything hut
churches and chapels on a Sunday; or, that it is the beginning of a
Sabbatarian Crusade, outrageous to the spirit of Christianity,
irreconcileable with the health, the rational enjoyments, and the true
religious feeling, of the community; and certain to result, if
successful, in a violent reaction, threatening contempt and hatred of
that seventh day which it is a great religious and social object to
maintain in the popular affection; it would ill become us to be deterred
from speaking out upon the subject, by any fear of being misunderstood,
or by any certainty of being misrepresented.
Confident in the sense of the country, and not unacquainted with the
habits and exigencies of the people, we approach the Sunday question,
quite undiscomposed by the late storm of mad mis-statement and all
uncharitableness, which cleared the way for Lord Ashley’s motion. The
preparation may be likened to that which is usually described in the
case of the Egyptian Sorcerer and the boy who has some dark liquid
poured into the palm of his hand, which is presently to become a magic
mirror. “Look for Lord Ashley. What do you see?” “Oh, here’s some one
with a broom!” “Well! what is he doing?” “Oh, he’s sweeping away Mr.
Rowland Hill! Now, there is a great crowd; of people all sweeping Mr.
Rowland Hill away; and now, there is a red flag with Intolerance on it;
and now, they are pitching a great many Tents called Meetings. Now, the
tents are all upset, and Mr. Rowland Hill has swept everybody else away.
And oh! _now_, here’s Lord Ashley, with a Resolution in his hand!”
One Christian sentence is all-sufficient with us, on the theological
part of this subject. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
Sabbath.” No amount of signatures to petitions can ever sign away the
meaning of those words; no end of volumes of Hansard’s Parliamentary
Debates can ever affect them in the least. Move and carry resolutions,
bring in bills, have committees, upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady’s
chamber; read a first time, read a second time, read a third time, read
thirty thousand times; the declared authority of the Christian
dispensation over the letter of the Jewish Law, particularly in this
especial instance, cannot be petitioned, resolved, read, or committee’d
away.
It is important in such a case as this affirmation of a principle, to
know what amount of practical sense and logic entered into its
assertion. We will inquire.
Lord Ashley (who has done much good, and whom we mention with every
sentiment of sincere respect, though we believe him to be most
mischievously deluded on this question,) speaks of the people employed
in the Country Post-Offices on Sunday, as though they were continually
at work, all the livelong day. He asks whether they are to be “a Pariah
race, excluded from the enjoyments of the rest of the community?” He
presents to our mind’s eye, rows of Post-Office clerks, sitting, with
dishevelled hair and dirty linen, behind small shutters, all Sunday
long, keeping time with their sighs to the ringing of the church bells,
and watering bushels of letters, incessantly passing through their
hands, with their tears. Is this exactly the reality? The Upas tree is a
figure of speech almost as ancient as our lachrymose friend the Pariah,
in whom most of us recognise a respectable old acquaintance. Supposing
we were to take it into our heads to declare in these Household Words,
that every Post-Office clerk employed on Sunday in the country, is
compelled to sit under his own particular sprig of Upas, planted in a
flower-pot beside him for the express purpose of blighting him with its
baneful shade, should we be much more beyond the mark than Lord Ashley
himself? Did any of our readers ever happen to post letters in the
Country on a Sunday? Did they ever see a notice outside a provincial
Post-Office, to the effect that the presiding Pariah would be in
attendance at such an hour on Sunday, and not before? Did they ever wait
for the Pariah, at some inconvenience, until the hour arrived, and
observe him come to the office in an extremely spruce condition as to
his shirt collar, and do a little sprinkling of business in a very easy
offhand manner? We have such recollections ourselves. We have posted and
received letters in most parts of this kingdom on a Sunday, and we never
yet observed the Pariah to be quite crushed. On the contrary, we have
seen him at church, apparently in the best health and spirits
(notwithstanding an hour or so of sorting, earlier in the morning), and
we have met him out a-walking with the young lady to whom he is engaged,
and we have known him meet her again with her cousin, after the dispatch
of the Mails, and really conduct himself as if he were not particularly
exhausted or afflicted. Indeed, how _could_ he be so, on Lord Ashley’s
own showing? There is a Saturday before the Sunday. We are a people
indisposed, he says, to business on a Sunday. More than a million of
people are known, from their petitions, to be too scrupulous to hear of
such a thing. Few counting-houses or offices are ever opened on a
Sunday. The Merchants and Bankers write by Saturday night’s post. The
Sunday night’s post may be presumed to be chiefly limited to letters of
necessity and emergency. Lord Ashley’s whole case would break down, if
it were probable that the Post-Office Pariah had half as much
confinement on Sunday, as the He-Pariah who opens my Lord’s street-door
when any body knocks, or the She-Pariah who nurses my Lady’s baby.
If the London Post-Office be not opened on a Sunday, says Lord Ashley,
why should the Post-Offices of provincial towns be opened on a Sunday?
Precisely because the provincial towns are NOT London, we apprehend.
Because London is the great capital, mart, and business-centre of the
world; because in London there are hundreds of thousands of people,
young and old, away from their families and friends; because the
stoppage of the Monday’s Post Delivery in London would stop, for many
precious hours, the natural flow of the blood from every vein and artery
in the world to the heart of the world, and its return from the heart
through all those tributary channels. Because the broad difference
between London and every other place in England, necessitated this
distinction, and has perpetuated it.
But, to say nothing of petitioners elsewhere, it seems that two hundred
merchants and bankers in Liverpool “formed themselves into a committee,
to forward the object of this motion.” In the name of all the Pharisees
of Jerusalem, could not the two hundred merchants and bankers form
themselves into a committee to write or read no business-letters
themselves on a Sunday—and let the Post-Office alone? The Government
establishes a monopoly in the Post-Office, and makes it not only
difficult and expensive for me to send a letter by any other means, but
illegal. What right has any merchant or banker to stop the course of any
letter that I may have sore necessity to post, or may choose to post? If
any one of the two hundred merchants and bankers lay at the point of
death, on Sunday, would he desire his absent child to be written to—the
Sunday Post being yet in existence? And how do they take upon themselves
to tell us that the Sunday Post is not a “necessity,” when they know,
every man of them, every Sunday morning, that before the clock strikes
next, they and theirs may be visited by any one of incalculable millions
of accidents, to make it a dire need? Not a necessity? Is it possible
that these merchants and bankers suppose there is any Sunday Post, from
any large town, which is not a very agony of necessity to some one? I
might as well say, in my pride of strength, that a knowledge of
bone-setting in surgeons is not a necessity, because I have not broken
my leg.
There is a Sage of this sort in the House of Commons. He is of opinion
that the Sunday Police is a necessity, but the Sunday Post is not. That
is to say, in a certain house in London or Westminster, there are
certain silver spoons, engraved with the family crest—a Bigot
rampant—which would be pretty sure to disappear, on an early Sunday, if
there were no Policemen on duty; whereas the Sage sees no present
probability of his requiring to write a letter into the country on a
Saturday night—and, if it should arise, he can use the Electric
Telegraph. Such is the sordid balance some professing Heathens hold of
their own pounds against other men’s pennies, and their own selfish
wants against those of the community at large! Even the Member for
Birmingham, of all the towns in England, is afflicted by this selfish
blindness, and, because _he_ is “tired of reading and answering letters
on a Sunday,” cannot conceive the possibility of there being other
people not so situated, to whom the Sunday Post may, under many
circumstances, be an unspeakable blessing.
The inconsequential nature of Lord Ashley’s positions, cannot be better
shown, than by one brief passage from his speech. “When he said the
transmission of the Mail, he meant the Mail-bags; he did not propose to
interfere with the passengers.” No? Think again, Lord Ashley.
When the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres moves his resolution
for the stoppage of Mail Trains—in a word, of all Railway travelling—on
Sunday; and when that Honorable Gentleman talks about the Pariah clerks
who take the money and give the tickets, the Pariah engine-drivers, the
Pariah stokers, the Pariah porters, the Pariah police along the line,
and the Pariah flys waiting at the Pariah stations to take the Pariah
passengers, to be attended by Pariah servants at the Pariah Arms and
other Pariah Hotels; what will Lord Ashley do then? Envy insinuated that
Tom Thumb made his giants first, and then killed them, but you cannot do
the like by your Pariahs. You cannot get an exclusive patent for the
manufacture and destruction of Pariah dolls. Other Honorable Gentlemen
are certain to engage in the trade; and when the Honorable Member for
Whitened Sepulchres makes _his_ Pariahs of all these people, you cannot
refuse to recognise them as being of the genuine sort, Lord Ashley.
Railway and all other Sunday Travelling, suppressed, by the Honorable
Member for Whitened Sepulchres, the same honorable gentleman, who will
not have been particularly complimented in the course of that
achievement by the Times Newspaper, will discover that a good deal is
done towards the Times of Monday, on a Sunday night, and will Pariah the
whole of that immense establishment. For, this is the great
inconvenience of Pariah-making, that when you begin, they spring up like
mushrooms: insomuch, that it is very doubtful whether we shall have a
house in all this land, from the Queen’s Palace downward, which will not
be found, on inspection, to be swarming with Pariahs. Not touch the
Mails, and yet abolish the Mail-bags? Stop all those silent messengers
of affection and anxiety, yet let the talking traveller, who is the
cause of infinitely more employment, go? Why, this were to suppose all
men Fools, and the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres even a
greater Noodle than he is!
Lord Ashley supports his motion by reading some perilous bombast, said
to be written by a working man—of whom the intelligent body of working
men have no great reason, to our thinking, to be proud—in which there is
much about not being robbed of the boon of the day of rest; but, with
all Lord Ashley’s indisputably humane and benevolent impulses, we grieve
to say we know no robber whom the working man, really desirous to
preserve his Sunday, has so much to dread, as Lord Ashley himself. He is
weakly lending the influence of his good intentions to a movement which
would make that day no day of rest—rest to those who are overwrought,
includes recreation, fresh air, change—but a day of mortification and
gloom. And this not to one class only, be it understood. This is not a
class question. If there be no gentleman of spirit in the House of
Commons to remind Lord Ashley that the high-flown nonsense he quoted,
concerning labour, is but another form of the stupidest socialist dogma,
which seeks to represent that there is only one class of laborers on
earth, it is well that the truth should be stated somewhere. And it is,
indisputably, that three-fourths of us are laborers who work hard for
our living; and that the condition of what we call the working man, has
its parallel, at a remove of certain degrees, in almost all professions
and pursuits. Running through the middle classes, is a broad deep vein
of constant, compulsory, indispensable work. There are innumerable
gentlemen, and sons and daughters of gentlemen, constantly at work, who
have no more hope of making fortunes in their vocation, than the working
man has in his. There are innumerable families in which the day of rest,
is the only day out of the seven, where innocent domestic recreations
and enjoyments are very feasible. In our mean gentility, which is the
cause of so much social mischief, we may try to separate ourselves, as
to this question, from the working man; and may very complacently
resolve that there is no occasion for his excursion-trains and
tea-gardens, because we don’t use them; but we had better not deceive
ourselves. It is impossible that we can cramp his means of needful
recreation and refreshment, without cramping our own, or basely cheating
him. We cannot leave him to the Christian patronage of the Honourable
Member for Whitened Sepulchres, and take ourselves off. We cannot
restrain him and leave ourselves free. Our Sunday wants are pretty much
the same as his, though his are far more easily satisfied; our
inclinations and our feelings are pretty much the same; and it will be
no less wise than honest in us, the middle classes, not to be
Janus-faced about the matter.
What is it that the Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres, for whom
Lord Ashley clears the way, wants to do? He sees on a Sunday morning, in
the large towns of England, when the bells are ringing for church and
chapel, certain unwashed, dim-eyed, dissipated loungers, hanging about
the doors of public-houses, and loitering at the street corners, to whom
the day of rest appeals in much the same degree as a sunny summer-day
does to so many pigs. Does he believe that any weight of handcuffs on
the Post-Office, or any amount of restriction imposed on decent people,
will bring Sunday home to these? Let him go, any Sunday morning, from
the new Town of Edinburgh where the sound of a piano would be
profanation, to the old Town, and see what Sunday is in the Canongate.
Or let him get up some statistics of the drunken people in Glasgow,
while the churches are full—and work out the amount of Sabbath
observance which is carried downward, by rigid shows and sad-colored
forms.
But, there is another class of people, those who take little jaunts, and
mingle in social little assemblages, on a Sunday, concerning whom the
whole constituency of Whitened Sepulchres, with their Honorable Member
in the chair, find their lank hair standing on end with horror, and
pointing, as if they were all electrified, straight up to the skylights
of Exeter Hall. In reference to this class, we would whisper in the ears
of the disturbed assemblage, three short words, “Let well alone!”
The English people have long been remarkable for their domestic habits,
and their household virtues and affections. They are, now, beginning to
be universally respected by intelligent foreigners who visit this
country, for their unobtrusive politeness, their good-humour, and their
cheerful recognition of all restraints that really originate in
consideration for the general good. They deserve this testimony (which
we have often heard, of late, with pride) most honorably. Long maligned
and mistrusted, they proved their case from the very first moment of
having it in their power to do so; and have never, on any single
occasion within our knowledge, abused any public confidence that has
been reposed in them. It is an extraordinary thing to know of a people,
systematically excluded from galleries and museums for years, that their
respect for such places, and for themselves as visitors to them, dates,
without any period of transition, from the very day when their doors
were freely opened. The national vices are surprisingly few. The people
in general are not gluttons, nor drunkards, nor gamblers, nor addicted
to cruel sports, nor to the pushing of any amusement to furious and wild
extremes. They are moderate, and easily pleased, and very sensible to
all affectionate influences. Any knot of holiday-makers, without a large
proportion of women and children among them, would be a perfect
phenomenon. Let us go into any place of Sunday enjoyment where any fair
representation of the people resort, and we shall find them decent,
orderly, quiet, sociable among their families and neighbours. There is a
general feeling of respect for religion, and for religious observances.
The churches and chapels are well filled. Very few people who keep
servants or apprentices, leave out of consideration their opportunities
of attending church or chapel; the general demeanour within those
edifices, is particularly grave and decorous; and the general
recreations without, are of a harmless and simple kind. Lord Brougham
never did Henry Brougham more justice, than in declaring to the House of
Lords, after the success of this motion in the House of Commons, that
there is no country where the Sabbath is, on the whole, better observed
than in England. Let the constituency of Whitened Sepulchres ponder, in
a Christian spirit, on these things; take care of their own consciences;
leave their Honorable Member to take care of his; and let well alone.
For, it is in nations as in families. Too tight a hand in these
respects, is certain to engender a disposition to break loose, and to
run riot. If the private experience of any reader, pausing on this
sentence, cannot furnish many unhappy illustrations of its truth, it is
a very fortunate experience indeed. Our most notable public example of
it, in England, is just two hundred years old.
Lord Ashley had better merge his Pariahs into the body politic; and the
Honorable Member for Whitened Sepulchres had better accustom his
jaundiced eyes to the Sunday sight of dwellers in towns, roaming in
green fields, and gazing upon country prospects. If he will look a
little beyond them, and lift up the eyes of his mind, perhaps he may
observe a mild, majestic figure in the distance, going through a field
of corn, attended by some common men who pluck the grain as they pass
along, and whom their Divine Master teaches that he is the Lord, even of
the Sabbath-Day.
THE YOUNG ADVOCATE.
Antoine de Chaulieu was the son of a poor gentleman of Normandy, with a
long genealogy, a short rent-roll, and a large family. Jacques Rollet
was the son of a brewer, who did not know who his grandfather was; but
he had a long purse and only two children. As these youths flourished in
the early days of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and were near
neighbours, they naturally hated each other. Their enmity commenced at
school, where the delicate and refined De Chaulieu being the only
gentil-homme amongst the scholars, was the favorite of the master (who
was a bit of an aristocrat in his heart) although he was about the worst
dressed boy in the establishment, and never had a sou to spend; whilst
Jacques Rollet, sturdy and rough, with smart clothes and plenty of
money, got flogged six days in the week, ostensibly for being stupid and
not learning his lessons—which, indeed, he did not—but, in reality, for
constantly quarrelling with and insulting De Chaulieu, who had not
strength to cope with him. When they left the academy, the feud
continued in all its vigour, and was fostered by a thousand little
circumstances arising out of the state of the times, till a separation
ensued in consequence of an aunt of Antoine de Chaulieu’s undertaking
the expense of sending him to Paris to study the law, and of maintaining
him there during the necessary period.
With the progress of events came some degree of reaction in favour of
birth and nobility, and then Antoine, who had passed for the bar, began
to hold up his head and endeavoured to push his fortunes; but fate
seemed against him. He felt certain that if he possessed any gift in the
world it was that of eloquence, but he could get no cause to plead; and
his aunt dying inopportunely, first his resources failed, and then his
health. He had no sooner returned to his home, than, to complicate his
difficulties completely, he fell in love with Mademoiselle Natalie de
Bellefonds, who had just returned from Paris, where she had been
completing her education. To expatiate on the perfections of
Mademoiselle Natalie, would be a waste of ink and paper; it is
sufficient to say that she really was a very charming girl, with a
fortune which, though not large, would have been a most desirable
acquisition to De Chaulieu, who had nothing. Neither was the fair
Natalie indisposed to listen to his addresses; but her father could not
be expected to countenance the suit of a gentleman, however well-born,
who had not a ten-sous piece in the world, and whose prospects were a
blank.
Whilst the ambitious and love-sick young barrister was thus pining in
unwelcome obscurity, his old acquaintance, Jacques Rollet, had been
acquiring an undesirable notoriety. There was nothing really bad in
Jacques’ disposition, but having been bred up a democrat, with a hatred
of the nobility, he could not easily accommodate his rough humour to
treat them with civility when it was no longer safe to insult them. The
liberties he allowed himself whenever circumstances brought him into
contact with the higher classes of society, had led him into many
scrapes, out of which his father’s money had one way or another released
him; but that source of safety had now failed. Old Rollet having been
too busy with the affairs of the nation to attend to his business, had
died insolvent, leaving his son with nothing but his own wits to help
him out of future difficulties, and it was not long before their
exercise was called for. Claudine Rollet, his sister, who was a very
pretty girl, had attracted the attention of Mademoiselle de Bellefonds’
brother, Alphonso; and as he paid her more attention than from such a
quarter was agreeable to Jacques, the young men had had more than one
quarrel on the subject, on which occasions they had each,
characteristically, given vent to their enmity, the one in contemptuous
monosyllables, and the other in a volley of insulting words. But
Claudine had another lover more nearly of her own condition of life;
this was Claperon, the deputy governor of the Rouen jail, with whom she
had made acquaintance during one or two compulsory visits paid by her
brother to that functionary; but Claudine, who was a bit of a coquette,
though she did not altogether reject his suit, gave him little
encouragement, so that betwixt hopes, and fears, and doubts, and
jealousies, poor Claperon led a very uneasy kind of life.
Affairs had been for some time in this position, when, one fine morning,
Alphonse de Bellefonds was not to be found in his chamber when his
servant went to call him; neither had his bed been slept in. He had been
observed to go out rather late on the preceding evening, but whether or
not he had returned, nobody could tell. He had not appeared at supper,
but that was too ordinary an event to awaken suspicion; and little alarm
was excited till several hours had elapsed, when inquiries were
instituted and a search commenced, which terminated in the discovery of
his body, a good deal mangled, lying at the bottom of a pond which had
belonged to the old brewery. Before any investigations had been made,
every person had jumped to the conclusion that the young man had been
murdered, and that Jacques Rollet was the assassin. There was a strong
presumption in favour of that opinion, which further perquisitions
tended to confirm. Only the day before, Jacques had been heard to
threaten Mons. de Bellefonds with speedy vengeance. On the fatal
evening, Alphonse and Claudine had been seen together in the
neighbourhood of the now dismantled brewery; and as Jacques, betwixt
poverty and democracy, was in bad odour with the prudent and respectable
part of society, it was not easy for him to bring witnesses to
character, or prove an unexceptionable alibi. As for the Bellefonds and
De Chaulieus, and the aristocracy in general, they entertained no doubt
of his guilt; and finally, the magistrates coming to the same opinion,
Jacques Rollet was committed for trial, and as a testimony of good will,
Antoine de Chaulieu was selected by the injured family to conduct the
prosecution.
Here, at last, was the opportunity he had sighed for! So interesting a
case, too, furnishing such ample occasion for passion, pathos,
indignation! And how eminently fortunate that the speech which he set
himself with ardour to prepare, would be delivered in the presence of
the father and brother of his mistress, and perhaps of the lady herself!
The evidence against Jacques, it is true, was altogether presumptive;
there was no proof whatever that he had committed the crime; and for his
own part he stoutly denied it. But Antoine de Chaulieu entertained no
doubt of his guilt, and his speech was certainly well calculated to
carry that conviction into the bosom of others. It was of the highest
importance to his own reputation that he should procure a verdict, and
he confidently assured the afflicted and enraged family of the victim
that their vengeance should be satisfied. Under these circumstances
could anything be more unwelcome than a piece of intelligence that was
privately conveyed to him late on the evening before the trial was to
come on, which tended strongly to exculpate the prisoner, without
indicating any other person as the criminal. Here was an opportunity
lost. The first step of the ladder on which he was to rise to fame,
fortune, and a wife, was slipping from under his feet!
Of course, so interesting a trial was anticipated with great eagerness
by the public, and the court was crowded with all the beauty and fashion
of Rouen. Though Jacques Rollet persisted in asserting his innocence,
founding his defence chiefly on circumstances which were strongly
corroborated by the information that had reached De Chaulieu the
preceding evening,—he was convicted.
In spite of the very strong doubts he privately entertained respecting
the justice of the verdict, even De Chaulieu himself, in the first flush
of success, amidst a crowd of congratulating friends, and the approving
smiles of his mistress, felt gratified and happy; his speech had, for
the time being, not only convinced others, but himself; warmed with his
own eloquence, he believed what he said. But when the glow was over, and
he found himself alone, he did not feel so comfortable. A latent doubt
of Rollet’s guilt now burnt strongly in his mind, and he felt that the
blood of the innocent would be on his head. It is true there was yet
time to save the life of the prisoner, but to admit Jacques innocent,
was to take the glory out of his own speech, and turn the sting of his
argument against himself. Besides, if he produced the witness who had
secretly given him the information, he should be self-condemned, for he
could not conceal that he had been aware of the circumstance before the
trial.
Matters having gone so far, therefore, it was necessary that Jacques
Rollet should die; so the affair took its course; and early one morning
the guillotine was erected in the court yard of the jail, three
criminals ascended the scaffold, and three heads fell into the basket,
which were presently afterwards, with the trunks that had been attached
to them, buried in a corner of the cemetery.
Antoine de Chaulieu was now fairly started in his career, and his
success was as rapid as the first step towards it had been tardy. He
took a pretty apartment in the Hôtel Marbœuf, Rue Grange-Batelière, and
in a short time was looked upon as one of the most rising young
advocates in Paris. His success in one line brought him success in
another; he was soon a favourite in society, and an object of interest
to speculating mothers; but his affections still adhered to his old love
Natalie de Bellefonds, whose family now gave their assent to the
match—at least, prospectively—a circumstance which furnished such an
additional incentive to his exertions, that in about two years from the
date of his first brilliant speech, he was in a sufficiently flourishing
condition to offer the young lady a suitable home. In anticipation of
the happy event, he engaged and furnished a suite of apartments in the
Rue du Helder; and as it was necessary that the bride should come to
Paris to provide her trousseau, it was agreed that the wedding should
take place there, instead of at Bellefonds, as had been first projected;
an arrangement the more desirable, that a press of business rendered
Mons. de Chaulieu’s absence from Paris inconvenient.
Brides and bridegrooms in France, except of the very high classes, are
not much in the habit of making those honeymoon excursions so universal
in this country. A day spent in visiting Versailles, or St. Cloud, or
even the public places of the city, is generally all that precedes the
settling down into the habits of daily life. In the present instance St.
Denis was selected, from the circumstance of Natalie’s having a younger
sister at school there; and also because she had a particular desire to
see the Abbey.
The wedding was to take place on a Thursday; and on the Wednesday
evening, having spent some hours most agreeably with Natalie, Antoine de
Chaulieu returned to spend his last night in his bachelor apartments.
His wardrobe and other small possessions, had already been packed up and
sent to his future home; and there was nothing left in his room now, but
his new wedding suit, which he inspected with considerable satisfaction
before he undressed and lay down to sleep. Sleep, however, was somewhat
slow to visit him; and the clock had struck _one_, before he closed his
eyes. When he opened them again, it was broad daylight; and his first
thought was, had he overslept himself? He sat up in bed to look at the
clock which was exactly opposite, and as he did so, in the large mirror
over the fire-place, he perceived a figure standing behind him. As the
dilated eyes met his own, he saw it was the face of Jacques Rollet.
Overcome with horror he sunk back on his pillow, and it was some minutes
before he ventured to look again in that direction; when he did so, the
figure had disappeared.
The sudden revulsion of feeling such a vision was calculated to occasion
in a man elate with joy, may be conceived! For some time after the death
of his former foe, he had been visited by not unfrequent twinges of
conscience; but of late, borne along by success, and the hurry of
Parisian life, these unpleasant remembrancers had grown rarer, till at
length they had faded away altogether. Nothing had been further from his
thoughts than Jacques Rollet, when he closed his eyes on the preceding
night, nor when he opened them to that sun which was to shine on what he
expected to be the happiest day of his life! Where were the high-strung
nerves now! The elastic frame! The bounding heart!
Heavily and slowly he arose from his bed, for it was time to do so; and
with a trembling hand and quivering knees, he went through the processes
of the toilet, gashing his cheek with the razor, and spilling the water
over his well polished boots. When he was dressed, scarcely venturing to
cast a glance in the mirror as he passed it, he quitted the room and
descended the stairs, taking the key of the door with him for the
purpose of leaving it with the porter; the man, however, being absent,
he laid it on the table in his lodge, and with a relaxed and languid
step proceeded on his way to the church, where presently arrived the
fair Natalie and her friends. How difficult it was now to look happy,
with that pallid face and extinguished eye!
“How pale you are! Has anything happened? You are surely ill?” were the
exclamations that met him on sides. He tried to carry it off as well as
he could, but felt that the movements he would have wished to appear
alert were only convulsive; and that the smiles with which he attempted
to relax his features, were but distorted grimaces. However, the church
was not the place for further inquiries; and whilst Natalie gently
pressed his hand in token of sympathy, they advanced to the altar, and
the ceremony was performed; after which they stepped into the carriages
waiting at the door, and drove to the apartments of Madme. de
Bellefonds, where an elegant _déjeuner_ was prepared.
“What ails you, my dear husband?” enquired Natalie, as soon as they were
alone.
“Nothing, love,” he replied; “nothing, I assure you, but a restless
night and a little overwork, in order that I might have to-day free to
enjoy my happiness!”
“Are you quite sure? Is there nothing else?”
“Nothing, indeed; and pray don’t take notice of it, it only makes me
worse!”
Natalie was not deceived, but she saw that what he said was true; notice
made him worse; so she contented herself with observing him quietly, and
saying nothing; but, as he _felt_ she was observing him, she might
almost better have spoken; words are often less embarrassing things than
too curious eyes.
When they reached Madame de Bellefonds’ he had the same sort of
questioning and scrutiny to undergo, till he grew quite impatient under
it, and betrayed a degree of temper altogether unusual with him. Then
everybody looked astonished; some whispered their remarks, and others
expressed them by their wondering eyes, till his brow knit, and his
pallid cheeks became flushed with anger. Neither could he divert
attention by eating; his parched mouth would not allow him to swallow
anything but liquids, of which, however, he indulged in copious
libations; and it was an exceeding relief to him when the carriage,
which was to convey them to St. Denis, being announced, furnished an
excuse for hastily leaving the table. Looking at his watch, he declared
it was late; and Natalie, who saw how eager he was to be gone, threw her
shawl over her shoulders, and bidding her friends _good morning_, they
hurried away.
It was a fine sunny day in June; and as they drove along the crowded
boulevards, and through the Porte St. Denis, the young bride and
bridegroom, to avoid each other’s eyes, affected to be gazing out of the
windows; but when they reached that part of the road where there was
nothing but trees on each side, they felt it necessary to draw in their
heads, and make an attempt at conversation. De Chaulieu put his arm
round his wife’s waist, and tried to rouse himself from his depression;
but it had by this time so reacted upon her, that she could not respond
to his efforts, and thus the conversation languished, till both felt
glad when they reached their destination, which would, at all events,
furnish them something to talk about.
Having quitted the carriage, and ordered a dinner at the Hôtel de
l’Abbaye, the young couple proceeded to visit Mademoiselle Hortense de
Bellefonds, who was overjoyed to see her sister and new brother-in-law,
and doubly so when she found that they had obtained permission to take
her out to spend the afternoon with them. As there is little to be seen
at St. Denis but the Abbey, on quitting that part of it devoted to
education, they proceeded to visit the church, with its various objects
of interest; and as De Chaulieu’s thoughts were now forced into another
direction, his cheerfulness began insensibly to return. Natalie looked
so beautiful, too, and the affection betwixt the two young sisters was
so pleasant to behold! And they spent a couple of hours wandering about
with Hortense, who was almost as well informed as the Suisse, till the
brazen doors were open which admitted them to the Royal vault.
Satisfied, at length, with what they had seen, they began to think of
returning to the inn, the more especially as De Chaulieu, who had not
eaten a morsel of food since the previous evening, owned to being
hungry; so they directed their steps to the door, lingering here and
there as they went, to inspect a monument or a painting, when, happening
to turn his head aside to see if his wife, who had stopt to take a last
look at the tomb of King Dagobert, was following, he beheld with horror
the face of Jacques Rollet appearing from behind a column! At the same
instant, his wife joined him, and took his arm, inquiring if he was not
very much delighted with what he had seen. He attempted to say yes, but
the word would not be forced out; and staggering out of the door, he
alleged that a sudden faintness had overcome him.
They conducted him to the Hôtel, but Natalie now became seriously
alarmed; and well she might. His complexion looked ghastly, his limbs
shook, and his features bore an expression of indescribable horror and
anguish. What could be the meaning of so extraordinary a change in the
gay, witty, prosperous De Chaulieu, who, till that morning, seemed not
to have a care in the world? For, plead illness as he might, she felt
certain, from the expression of his features, that his sufferings were
not of the body but of the mind; and, unable to imagine any reason for
such extraordinary manifestations, of which she had never before seen a
symptom, but a sudden aversion to herself, and regret for the step he
had taken, her pride took the alarm, and, concealing the distress she
really felt, she began to assume a haughty and reserved manner towards
him, which he naturally interpreted into an evidence of anger and
contempt. The dinner was placed upon the table, but De Chaulieu’s
appetite of which he had lately boasted, was quite gone, nor was his
wife better able to eat. The young sister alone did justice to the
repast; but although the bridegroom could not eat, he could swallow
champagne in such copious draughts, that ere long the terror and remorse
that the apparition of Jacques Rollet had awakened in his breast were
drowned in intoxication. Amazed and indignant, poor Natalie sat silently
observing this elect of her heart, till overcome with disappointment and
grief, she quitted the room with her sister, and retired to another
apartment, where she gave free vent to her feelings in tears.
After passing a couple of hours in confidences and lamentations, they
recollected that the hours of liberty granted, as an especial favour, to
Mademoiselle Hortense, had expired: but ashamed to exhibit her husband
in his present condition to the eyes of strangers, Natalie prepared to
re-conduct her to the _Maison Royale_ herself. Looking into the
dining-room as they passed, they saw De Chaulieu lying on a sofa fast
asleep, in which state he continued when his wife returned. At length,
however, the driver of their carriage begged to know if Monsieur and
Madame were ready to return to Paris, and it became necessary to arouse
him. The transitory effects of the champagne had now subsided; but when
De Chaulieu recollected what had happened, nothing could exceed his
shame and mortification. So engrossing indeed were these sensations that
they quite overpowered his previous ones, and, in his present vexation,
he, for the moment, forgot his fears. He knelt at his wife’s feet,
begged her pardon a thousand times, swore that he adored her, and
declared that the illness and the effect of the wine had been purely the
consequences of fasting and overwork. It was not the easiest thing in
the world to re-assure a woman whose pride, affection, and taste, had
been so severely wounded; but Natalie tried to believe, or to appear to
do so, and a sort of reconciliation ensued, not quite sincere on the
part of the wife, and very humbling on the part of the husband. Under
these circumstances it was impossible that he should recover his spirits
or facility of manner; his gaiety was forced, his tenderness
constrained; his heart was heavy within him; and ever and anon the
source whence all this disappointment and woe had sprung would recur to
his perplexed and tortured mind.
Thus mutually pained and distrustful, they returned to Paris, which they
reached about nine o’clock. In spite of her depression, Natalie, who had
not seen her new apartments, felt some curiosity about them, whilst De
Chaulieu anticipated a triumph in exhibiting the elegant home he had
prepared for her. With some alacrity, therefore, they stepped out of the
carriage, the gates of the Hôtel were thrown open, the _concierge_ rang
the bell which announced to the servants that their master and mistress
had arrived, and whilst these domestics appeared above, holding lights
over the balusters, Natalie, followed by her husband, ascended the
stairs. But when they reached the landing-place of the first flight,
they saw the figure of a man standing in a corner as if to make way for
them; the flash from above fell upon his face, and again Antoine de
Chaulieu recognised the features of Jacques Rollet!
From the circumstance of his wife’s preceding him, the figure was not
observed by De Chaulieu till he was lifting his foot to place it on the
top stair: the sudden shock caused him to miss the step, and, without
uttering a sound, he fell back, and never stopped till he reached the
stones at the bottom. The screams of Natalie brought the concierge from
below and the maids from above, and an attempt was made to raise the
unfortunate man from the ground; but with cries of anguish he besought
them to desist.
“Let me,” he said, “die here! What a fearful vengeance is thine! Oh,
Natalie, Natalie!” he exclaimed to his wife, who was kneeling beside
him, “to win fame, and fortune, and yourself, I committed a dreadful
crime! With lying words I argued away the life of a fellow-creature,
whom, whilst I uttered them, I half believed to be innocent; and now,
when I have attained all I desired, and reached the summit of my hopes,
the Almighty has sent him back upon the earth to blast me with the
sight. Three times this day—three times this day! Again! again!”—and as
he spoke, his wild and dilated eyes fixed themselves on one of the
individuals that surrounded him.
“He is delirious,” said they.
“No,” said the stranger! “What he says is true enough,—at least in
part;” and bending over the expiring man, he added, “May Heaven forgive
you, Antoine de Chaulieu! I was not executed; one who well knew my
innocence saved my life. I may name him, for he is beyond the reach of
the law now,—it was Claperon, the jailer, who loved Claudine, and had
himself killed Alphonse de Bellefonds from jealousy. An unfortunate
wretch had been several years in the jail for a murder committed during
the phrenzy of a fit of insanity. Long confinement had reduced him to
idiocy. To save my life Claperon substituted the senseless being for me,
on the scaffold, and he was executed in my stead. He has quitted the
country, and I have been a vagabond on the face of the earth ever since
that time. At length I obtained, through the assistance of my sister,
the situation of concierge in the Hôtel Marbœuf, in the Rue
Grange-Batelière. I entered on my new place yesterday evening, and was
desired to awaken the gentleman on the third floor at seven o’clock.
When I entered the room to do so, you were asleep, but before I had time
to speak you awoke, and I recognised your features in the glass. Knowing
that I could not vindicate my innocence if you chose to seize me, I
fled, and seeing an omnibus starting for St. Denis, I got on it with a
vague idea of getting on to Calais, and crossing the Channel to England.
But having only a franc or two in my pocket, or indeed in the world, I
did not know how to procure the means of going forward; and whilst I was
lounging about the place, forming first one plan and then another, I saw
you in the church, and concluding you were in pursuit of me, I thought
the best way of eluding your vigilance was to make my way back to Paris
as fast as I could; so I set off instantly, and walked all the way; but
having no money to pay my night’s lodging, I came here to borrow a
couple of livres of my sister Claudine, who lives in the fifth story.”
“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed the dying man; “that sin is off my soul!
Natalie, dear wife, farewell! Forgive! forgive all!”
These were the last words he uttered; the priest, who had been summoned
in haste, held up the cross before his failing sight; a few strong
convulsions shook the poor bruised and mangled frame; and then all was
still.
And thus ended the Young Advocate’s Wedding Day.
EARTH’S HARVESTS.
“Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than War.”—
MILTON’S _Sonnet to Cromwell_.
Two hundred years ago,[1] the moon
Shone on a battle plain;
Cold through that glowing night of June
Lay steeds and riders slain;
And daisies, bending ’neath strange dew,
Wept in the silver light;
The very turf a regal hue
Assumed that fatal night.
Time past—but long, to tell the tale,
Some battle-axe or shield,
Or cloven skull, or shattered mail,
Were found upon the field;
The grass grew thickest on the spot
Where high were heaped the dead,
And well it marked, had men forgot,
Where the great charge was made.
To-day—the sun looks laughing down
Upon the harvest plain,
The little gleaners, rosy-brown,
The merry reaper’s train;
The rich sheaves heaped together stand,
And resting in their shade,
A mother, working close at hand,
Her sleeping babe hath laid.
A battle-field it was, and is,
For serried spears are there,
And against mighty foes upreared—
Gaunt hunger, pale despair.
We’ll thank God for the hearts of old,
Their strife our freedom sealed;
We’ll praise Him for the sheaves of gold
Now on the battle-field.
Footnote 1:
Naseby, June 14, 1646.
“THE DEVIL’S ACRE.”
There are multitudes who believe that Westminster is a city of palaces,
of magnificent squares, and regal terraces; that it is the chosen seat
of opulence, grandeur and refinement; and that filth, squalor, and
misery are the denizens of other and less favoured sections of the
metropolis. The error is not in associating with Westminster much of the
grandeur and splendour of the capital, but in entirely dissociating it
in idea from the darker phases of metropolitan life. As the brightest
lights cast the deepest shadows, so are the splendours and luxuries of
the Westend found in juxta-position with the most deplorable
manifestations of human wretchedness and depravity. There is no part of
the metropolis which presents a more chequered aspect, both physical and
moral, than Westminster. The most lordly streets are frequently but a
mask for the squalid districts which lie behind them, whilst spots
consecrated to the most hallowed of purposes are begirt by scenes of
indescribable infamy and pollution; the blackest tide of moral turpitude
that flows in the capital rolls its filthy wavelets up to the very walls
of Westminster Abbey; and the law-makers for one-seventh of the human
race sit, night after night, in deliberation, in the immediate vicinity
of the most notorious haunt of law-breakers in the empire. There is no
district in London more filthy and disgusting, more steeped in villany
and guilt, than that on which every morning’s sun casts the sombre
shadows of the Abbey, mingled, as they soon will be, with those of the
gorgeous towers of the new “Palace at Westminster.”
The “Devil’s Acre,” as it is familiarly known in the neighbourhood, is
the square block comprised between Dean, Peter, and Tothill Streets, and
Strutton Ground. It is permeated by Orchard Street, St. Anne’s Street,
Old and New Pye Streets, Pear Street, Perkins’ Rents, and Duck Lane.
From some of these, narrow covered passage-ways lead into small
quadrangular courts, containing but a few crazy, tumble-down-looking
houses, and inhabited by characters of the most equivocal description.
The district, which is small in area, is one of the most populous in
London, almost every house being crowded with numerous families, and
multitudes of lodgers. There are other parts of the town as filthy,
dingy, and forbidding in appearance as this, but these are generally the
haunts more of poverty than crime. But there are none in which guilt of
all kinds and degrees converges in such volume as on this, the moral
plague-spot not only of the metropolis, but also of the kingdom. And yet
from almost every point of it you can observe the towers of the Abbey
peering down upon you, as if they were curious to observe that to which
they seem to be indifferent.
Such is the spot which true Christian benevolence has, for some time,
marked as a chosen field for its most unostentatious operations. It was
first taken possession of, with a view to its improvement, by the London
City Mission, a body represented in the district by a single missionary,
who has now been for about twelve years labouring—and not without
success—in the arduous work of its purification; and who, by his energy,
tact, and perseverance, has acquired such an influence over its
turbulent and lawless population, as makes him a safer escort to the
stranger desirous of visiting it, than a whole posse of police. By the
aid of several opulent philanthropists whom he has interested in his
labours, he has reared up within the district two schools, which are
numerously attended by the squalid children of the neighbourhood—each
school having an Industrial Department connected with it. An exclusively
Industrial School for boys of more advanced age has also been
established, which has recently been attached to the Ragged School
Union. In addition to these, another institution has been called into
existence, to which and to whose objects the reader’s attention will be
drawn in what follows.
The Pye Street Schools being designed only for children—many of whom, on
admission, manifest an almost incredible precocity in crime—those of a
more advanced age seeking instruction and reformation were not eligible
to admission. In an applicant of this class, a lad about sixteen, the
master of one of the schools took a deep interest from the earnestness
with which he sought for an opportunity of retrieving himself. He was
invited to attend the school, that he might receive instruction. He was
grateful for the offer, but expressed a doubt of its being sufficient to
rescue him from his criminal and degraded course of life.
“It will be of little use to me,” said he, “to attend school in the
daytime, if I have to take to the streets again at night, and live, as I
am now living, by thieving.”
The master saw the difficulty, and determined on trying the experiment
of taking him entirely off the streets. He accordingly paid for a
lodging for him, and secured him bread to eat. For four months the lad
lived contentedly and happily on “bread and dripping,” during which time
he proved his aptitude for instruction by learning to read, to write
tolerably well, and to master all the more useful rules in arithmetic.
He was shortly afterwards sent to Australia, through the kindness of
some individuals who furnished the means. He is now doing well in the
new field thus opportunely opened up to him, and the experiment of which
he was the subject laid the germ of the Institution in question.
In St. Anne Street, one of the worst and filthiest purlieus of the
district, stands a house somewhat larger and cleaner than the miserable,
rickety, and greasy-looking tenements around it. Over the door are
painted, in large legible characters, the following words: “The Ragged
Dormitory and Colonial Training School of Industry.” On one of the
shutters it is indicated, in similar characters, that the house is a
refuge for “Youths who wish to Reform.” None are admitted under sixteen,
as those under that age can get admission to one or other of the
schools. Those eligible are such vagrants and thieves as are between
sixteen and twenty-two, and desire to abandon their present mode of
life, and lead honest and industrious courses for the future.
It is obvious that such an institution, if not carefully watched, would
be liable to being greatly abused. The pinching wants of the moment
would drive many into it, whose sole object was to meet there, instead
of to subject themselves to the reformatory discipline of the
establishment. Many would press into it whose love of idleness had
hitherto been their greatest vice. As it is, this latter class is
deterred, to a great extent, from applying, by the Institution confining
its operations to the thief and the vagrant. Each applicant, by applying
for admission, confesses himself to belong to one or other of these
classes, or to both. If he is found to be a subject coming within the
scope of the establishment, he is at once admitted, and subjected to its
discipline. The natural inference would be, that the avowed object of it
would turn applicants from its doors. But this is far from being the
case; upwards of two hundred having applied during the past year, the
second of its existence.
To distinguish those who are sincere in their application from those who
merely wish to make a convenience, for the time being, of the
establishment, each applicant, on admission, is subjected to a rigid
test. In the attic story of the building is a small room, the walls and
ceiling of which are painted with yellow ochre. Last year, for it is
only recently that the house has been applied to its present purpose,
this room was occupied by a numerous and squalid family, some of whose
members were the first victims of cholera, in Westminster. The massive
chimney-stack projects far into the room, and in the deep recesses
between it and the low walls on either side are two beds formed of
straw, with a coarse counterpane for a covering. Beyond this there is
not a vestige of furniture in the apartment. This is the Probation-room,
the ordeal of which every applicant must pass ere he is fully received
into the Institution. But he must pass a whole fortnight, generally
alone, his fare being bread and water. His allowance of bread is a pound
a-day, which he may dispose of as he pleases, either at a meal or at
several. He does not pass the entire day in solitude, for during
class-hours he is taken down to the school-room, where he is taught with
the rest. But, with that exception, he is not allowed to mingle with the
rest of the inmates, being separated from them for the remainder of the
day, and left to his own reflections in his lonely cell.
A man, compulsorily subjected to solitude and short commons, may make up
his mind to it, and resign himself to his fate. But no one will
voluntarily subject himself to such a test who is not tired of a
dishonest life, and anxious to reform. In nearly nine cases out of ten
it unmasks the impostor. Many shrink at once from the ordeal, and
retire. Others undergo it for a day or two, and then leave; for, as
there was no compulsion on them to enter, they are at all times at
liberty to depart. Some stay for a week, and then withdraw, whilst
instances have been known of their giving up after ten or twelve days’
endurance. The few that remain are readily accepted as objects worthy
the best efforts of the establishment.
The applicants, particularly the vagrants, are generally in the worst
possible condition, as regards clothing. In many cases they are
half-naked, like the wretched objects who make themselves up for charity
in the streets. Their probation over, they are clad in comparatively
decent attire, consisting chiefly of cast-off clothing, furnished by the
contributors to the institution. They are then released from their
solitary dormitory, and admitted to all the privileges of the house.
The tried and accepted inmates of the Institution have, for the two past
years, averaged about thirty each year. They get up at an early hour,
their first business being to clean out the establishment from top to
bottom. They afterwards assemble at breakfast, which consists of cocoa
and bread, of which they make a hearty meal. The business of instruction
then commences, there being two school-rooms on the first floor, into
one of which the more advanced pupils are put by themselves, the other
being reserved for those that are more backward and for the new comers.
It is into this latter room that the probationers are admitted during
school-hours. During school-hours they are instructed in the fundamental
doctrines of religion, and in the elements of education, including
geography—particularly the geography of the colonies. The master
exercises a general control over the whole establishment. The upper
class is taught by a young man, who was himself one of the earliest
inmates of the Institution, and who is now being trained for becoming a
regular teacher. The other class is usually presided over by a monitor,
also an inmate—but one who is in advance of his fellows. Most of those
now in the house are able to read, and many to read well. Such as have
been thieves are generally able to read when they enter, having been
taught to do so in the prisons; those who cannot read being generally
vagrants, or such as have been thieves without having been apprehended
and convicted. They present a curious spectacle in their class-rooms.
Their ages vary from twenty-one to sixteen, there being two in at
present under sixteen, but they were admitted under special
circumstances. With the exception of the probationers, they are all
dressed comfortably, but in different styles, according to the character
and fashion of the clothing at the command of the establishment. Some
wear the surtout, others the dress-coat; some the short jacket, and
others again the paletot. They are all provided with shoes and
stockings, each being obliged to keep his own shoes scrupulously clean.
Indeed, they are under very wholesome regulations as to their ablutions,
and the general cleanliness of their persons. As they stand ranged in
their classes, the diversity of countenances which they exhibit is as
striking as are the contrasts presented by their raiment. In some faces
you can still trace the brutal expression which they wore on entering.
In others, the low cunning, begotten by their mode of life, was more or
less distinguishable. You could readily point to those who had been
longest in the establishment, from the humanising influences which their
treatment had had upon their looks and expressions. The faces of most of
them were lit up with new-born intelligence, whilst it was painful to
witness the vacant and stolid looks of two of them, who had but recently
passed the ordeal of the dormitory. Generally speaking, they are found
to be quick and apt scholars, their mode of life having tended, in most
instances, to quicken their perceptions.
Between the morning and afternoon classes they dine,—their dinner
comprising animal food three times a week, being chiefly confined on
other days to bread and dripping. They sup at an early hour in the
evening, when cocoa and bread form again the staple of their meal. After
supper, they spend an hour or two in the training school, which is a
large room adjoining the probationers’ dormitory, where they are
initiated into the mysteries of the tailors’ and shoemakers’ arts, under
the superintendence of qualified teachers. They afterwards retire to
rest, sleeping on beds laid out upon the floor, each bed containing one.
When the house is full, the two class-rooms are converted at night into
sleeping apartments. They are also compelled to attend some place of
worship on the Sunday, and, in case of sickness, have the advantage of a
medical attendant. During a part of the day they are allowed to walk
out, in different gangs,—each gang under the care of one of their
number. In their walks they are restricted as to time, and are required
to avoid, as much as possible, the low neighbourhoods of the town.
Should any of them desire to learn the business of a carpenter; they
have the means of doing so; and two are now engaged in acquiring a
practical knowledge of this useful trade.
Such is the curriculum which they undergo after being fully admitted
into the house. They are so instructed as to wean them as much as
possible from their former habits, to inspire them with the desire of
living honest lives, and to fit them for becoming useful members of
society, in the different offices for which they are destined. They must
be six months at least in the house before they are deemed ready to
emigrate. Some are kept longer. They are all eager to go,—being, without
exception, sickened at the thought of recurring to their previous habits
of life. From twenty to thirty have already been sent abroad. The
committee who superintend the establishment are anxious to keep forty on
the average in the house throughout the year, in addition to sending
twenty each year abroad. This, however, will require a larger fund than
they have at present at their disposal.
Such is the Institution which, for two years past, has been silently and
unostentatiously working its own quota of good in this little-known and
pestilential region. It is designed for the reclamation of a class on
which society turns its back. Its doors are open alike to the convicted
and the unconvicted offender. Five-sixths of its present inmates have
been the denizens of many jails—and some of them have only emerged from
the neighbouring Penitentiary. It is not easy to calculate the amount of
mature crime which, in the course of a few years, it will avert from
society, by its timely rescue of the precocious delinquent. It is thus
an institution which may appeal to the selfishness, as well as to the
benevolence, of the community for aid: though not very generally known,
it is visited by many influential parties; and some of the greatest
ornaments of Queen Victoria’s Court have not shrunk from crossing its
threshold and contributing to its support.
Curious indeed would be the biographies which such an institution could
furnish. The following, extracted from the Master’s Record, will serve
as a specimen. The name is, for obvious reasons, suppressed.
“John ——, 16 years of age. Admitted June 3rd, 1848. Had slept for four
months previously under the dry arches in West-street. Had made his
livelihood for nearly five years by picking pockets. Was twice in
jail—the last time in Tothill-Fields Prison. The largest sum he ever
stole at a time, was a sovereign and a half. Could read when admitted.
Learnt to write and cipher. Remained for eight months in the house.
Behaved well. Emigrated to Australia. Doing well.”
It is encouraging to know that the most favourable accounts have been
received both of and from those who have been sent out as emigrants, not
only from this, but also from the Pear Street School. It is now some
time since a lad, who, although only fourteen, was taken into the
latter, was sent to Australia. He had been badly brought up; his mother,
during his boyhood, having frequently sent him out, either to beg or to
steal. About a year after her son’s departure, she called, in a state of
deep distress, upon the missionary of the district, and informed him
that her scanty furniture was about to be seized for rent, asking him at
the same time for advice. He told her that he had none to give her but
to go and pay the rent, at the same time handing her a sovereign. She
received it hesitatingly, doubting, for a moment, the evidence of her
senses. She went and paid the rent, which was eighteen shillings, and
afterwards returned with the change, which she tendered to the
missionary with her heartfelt thanks. He told her to keep the balance,
as the sovereign was her own—informing her, at the same time, that it
had been sent her by her son, and had that very morning so opportunely
come to hand, together with a letter, which he afterwards read to her.
The poor woman for a moment or two looked stupified and incredulous,
after which she sank upon a chair, and wept long and bitterly. The
contrast between her son’s behaviour and her own conduct towards him,
filled her with shame and remorse. She is now preparing to follow him to
Australia.
Another case was that of a young man, over twenty years of age, who had
likewise been admitted, under special circumstances, to the same
Institution. He had been abandoned by his parents in his early youth,
and had taken to the streets to avert the miseries of destitution. He
soon became expert in the art of picking pockets, on one occasion
depriving a person in Cornhill of no less than a hundred and fifty
pounds in Bank notes. With this, the largest booty he had ever made, he
repaired to a house in the neighbourhood, where stolen property was
received. Into the room into which he was shown, a gloved hand was
projected, through an aperture in the wall, from an adjoining room, into
which he placed the notes. The hand was then withdrawn, and immediately
afterwards projected again with twenty sovereigns, which was the amount
he received for the notes. He immediately repaired to Westminster, and
invested ten pounds of this sum in counterfeit money, at a house not a
stone’s throw from the Institution.
For the ten pounds he received, in bad money, what represented fifty.
With this he sallied forth into the country with the design of passing
it off—a process known amongst the craft as “shuffle-pitching.” The
first place he went to was Northampton, and the means he generally
adopted for passing off the base coin was this:—Having first buried in
the neighbourhood of the town all the good and bad money in his
possession, with the exception of a sovereign of each, so that, if
detected in passing a bad one, no more bad money would be found upon his
person; he would enter a retail shop, say a draper’s, at a late hour of
the evening, and say that his master had sent him for some article of
small value, such as a handkerchief. On its being shown him, he would
demand the price of it, and make up his mind to take it; whereupon he
would lay down a good sovereign, which the shopkeeper would take up,
but, as he was about to give him change, a doubt would suddenly arise in
his mind as to whether his master would give the price asked for the
article. He would then demand the sovereign back, with a view to going
and consulting his master, promising, at the same time, to be back again
in a few minutes. Back again he would come, and say that his master was
willing to give the price, or that he wished the article at a lower
figure. He took care, however, that a bargain was concluded between him
and the shopkeeper; whereupon he would again lay down the sovereign,
which, however, on this occasion, was the bad and not the good one. The
unsuspecting shopkeeper would give him the change, and he would leave
with the property and the good money. Such is the process of
“shuffle-pitching.” In the majority of instances he succeeded, but was
sometimes detected. In this way he took the circuit twice of Great
Britain and Ireland; stealing as he went along, and passing off the bad
money, which he received, for good. There are few jails in the United
Kingdom of which he has not been a denizen. His two circuits took him
nine years to perform, his progress being frequently arrested by the
interposition of justice. It was at the end of his second journey that
he applied for admission to the Pear Street School. He had been too
often in jail not to be able to read; but he could neither write nor
cipher when he was taken in. He soon learnt, however, to do both; and,
after about seven months’ probation, emigrated to America from his own
choice. The missionary of the district accompanied him on board as he
was about to sail. The poor lad wept like a child when he took leave of
his benefactor, assuring him that he never knew the comforts of a home
until he entered the Pear Street School. Several letters have been
received from him since his landing, and he is now busily employed,
and—doing well!
Instances of this kind might be multiplied, if necessary, of what is
thus being done daily and unostentatiously for the reclamation of the
penitent offender, not only after conviction, but also before he
undergoes the terrible ordeal of correction and a jail.
“PRESS ON.”
A RIVULET’S SONG.
“Just under an island, ’midst rushes and moss,
I was born of a rock-spring, and dew;
I was shaded by trees, whose branches and leaves
Ne’er suffered the sun to gaze through.
“I wandered around the steep brow of a hill,
Where the daisies and violets fair
Were shaking the mist from their wakening eyes,
And pouring their breath on the air.
“Then I crept gently on, and I moistened the feet
Of a shrub which enfolded a nest—
The bird in return sang his merriest song,
And showed me his feathery crest.
“How joyous I felt in the bright afternoon,
When the sun, riding off in the west,
Came out in red gold from behind the green trees
And burnished my tremulous breast!
“My memory now can return to the time
When the breeze murmured low plaintive tones,
While I wasted the day in dancing away,
Or playing with pebbles and stones.
“It points to the hour when the rain pattered down,
Oft resting awhile in the trees;
Then quickly descending it ruffled my calm,
And whispered to me of the seas!
“’Twas _then_ the first wish found a home in my breast
To increase as time hurries along;
’Twas then I first learned to lisp softly the words
Which I now love so proudly—‘_Press on!_’
“I’ll make wider my bed, as onward I tread,
A deep mighty river I’ll be—
‘_Press on_’ all the day will I sing on my way,
Till I enter the far-spreading sea.”
It ceased. A youth lingered beside its green edge
Till the stars in its face brightly shone;
He hoped the sweet strain would re-echo again—
But he just heard a murmur,—“_Press on!_”
ADDRESS FROM AN UNDERTAKER TO THE TRADE.
(STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.)
I address you, gentlemen, as an humble individual who is much concerned
about the body. This little joke is purely a professional one. It must
go no further. I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of
undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right
when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket.
Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves,—everybody else as
well as undertakers. Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress.
So is spiritual provision; I mean the maintenance of all our reverends
and right reverends. I am quite sure that both lawyers’ charges and the
revenues of some of the chief clergy are very little, if any, more
reasonable than our own prices. Pluralities are as bad as crowded
gravepits, and I don’t see that there is a pin to choose between the
church and the churchyard. Sanitary revolutionists and incendiaries
accuse us of gorging rottenness, and battening on corruption. We don’t
do anything of the sort, that I see, to a greater extent than other
professions, which are allowed to be highly respectable. Political
military, naval, university, and clerical parties of great eminence
defend abuses in their several lines when profitable. We can’t do better
than follow such good examples. Let us stick up for business, and—I was
going to say—leave society to take care of itself. No; that is just what
we should endeavour to prevent society from doing. The world is growing
too wise for us, gentlemen. Accordingly, this Interments Bill, by which
our interests are so seriously threatened, has been brought into
Parliament. We must join heart and hand to defeat and crush it. Let us
nail our colours—which I should call the black flag—to the mast, and let
our war-cry be, “No surrender!” or else our motto will very soon be,
“Resurgam;” in other words, it will be all up with us. We stand in a
critical position in regard to public opinion. In order to determine
what steps to take for protecting business, we ought to see our danger.
I wish, therefore, to state the facts of our case clearly to you; and I
say let us face them boldly, and not blink them. Therefore, I am going
to speak plainly and plumply on this subject.
There is no doubt—between ourselves—that what makes our trade so
profitable is the superstition, weakness, and vanity of parties. We
can’t disguise this fact from ourselves, and I only wish we may be able
to conceal it much longer from others. As enlightened undertakers, we
must admit that we are of no more use on earth than scavengers. All the
good we do is to bury people’s dead out of their sight. Speaking as a
philosopher—which an undertaker surely ought to be—I should say that our
business is merely to shoot rubbish. However, the rubbish is human
rubbish, and bereaved parties have certain feelings which require that
it should be shot gingerly. I suppose such sentiments are natural, and
will always prevail. But I fear that people will by and by begin to
think that pomp, parade, and ceremony are unnecessary upon melancholy
occasions. And whenever this happens, Othello’s occupation will, in a
great measure, be gone.
I tremble to think of mourning relatives considering seriously what is
requisite—and all that is requisite—for decent interment, in a rational
point of view. Nothing more, I am afraid Common Sense would say, than to
carry the body in the simplest chest, and under the plainest covering,
only in a solemn and respectful manner, to the grave, and lay it in the
earth with proper religious ceremonies. I fear Common Sense would be of
opinion that mutes, scarfs, hatbands, plumes of feathers, black horses,
mourning coaches, and the like, can in no way benefit the defunct, or
comfort surviving friends, or gratify anybody but the mob, and the
street-boys. But happily, Common Sense has not yet acquired an influence
which would reduce every burial to a most low affair.
Still, people think now more than they did, and in proportion as they do
think, the worse it will be for business. I consider that we have a most
dangerous enemy in Science. That same Science pokes its nose into
everything—even vaults and churchyards. It has explained how grave-water
soaks into adjoining wells, and has shocked and disgusted people by
showing them that they are drinking their dead neighbours. It has taught
parties resident in large cities that the very air they live in reeks
with human remains, which steam up from graves; and which, of course,
they are continually breathing. So it makes out churchyards to be worse
haunted than they were formerly believed to be by ghosts, and, I may
add, vampyres, in consequence of the dead continually rising from them
in this unpleasant manner. Indeed, Science is likely to make people
dread them a great deal more than Superstition ever did, by showing that
their effluvia breed typhus and cholera; so that they are really and
truly very dangerous. I should not be surprised to hear some sanitary
lecturer say, that the fear of churchyards was a sort of instinct
implanted in the mind, to prevent ignorant people and children from
going near such unwholesome places.
It would be comparatively well if the mischief done us by
Science—Medicine and Chemistry, and all that sort of thing—stopped here.
The mere consideration that burial in the heart of cities is unhealthy,
would but lead to extramural interment, to which our only
objection—though even that is no very trifling one—is that it would
diminish mortality, and consequently our trade. But this
Science—confound it!—shows that the dead do not remain permanently in
their coffins, even when the sextons of metropolitan graveyards will let
them. It not only informs Londoners that they breathe and drink the
deceased; but it reveals how the whole of the defunct party is got rid
of, and turned into gases, liquids, and mould. It exposes the way in
which all animal matter—as it is called in chemical books—is dissolved,
evaporates, and disappears; and is ultimately, as I may say, eaten up by
Nature, and goes to form parts of plants, and of other living creatures.
So that, if gentlemen really wanted to be interred with the remains of
their ancestors, it would sometimes be possible to comply with their
wishes only by burying them with a quantity of mutton—not to say with
the residue of another quadruped than the sheep, which often grazes in
churchyards. Science, in short, is hammering into people’s heads truths
which they have been accustomed merely to gabble with their mouths—that
all flesh is indeed grass, or convertible into it; and not only that the
human frame does positively turn to dust, but into a great many things
besides. Now, I say, that when they become really and truly convinced of
all this; when they know and reflect that the body cannot remain any
long time in the grave which it is placed in; I am sadly afraid that
they will think twice before they will spend from thirty to several
hundred pounds in merely putting a corpse into the ground to decompose.
The only hope for us if these scientific views become general, is, that
embalming will be resorted to; but I question if the religious feeling
of the country will approve of a practice which certainly seems rather
like an attempt to arrest a decree of Providence; and would, besides, be
very expensive. Here I am reminded of another danger, to which our
prospects are exposed. It is that likely to arise from serious parties,
in consequence of growing more enlightened, thinking consistently with
their religious principles, instead of their religion being a mere
sentimental kind of thing which they never reason upon. We often, you
know, gentlemen, overhear the bereaved remarking that they trust the
departed is in a better place. Why, if this were not a mere customary
saying on mournful occasions—if the parties really believed this—do you
think they would attach any importance to the dead body which we bury
underground? No; to be sure: they would look upon it merely as a suit of
left-off clothes—with the difference of being unpleasant and offensive,
and not capable of being kept. They would see that a spirit could care
no more about the corpse it had quitted, than a man who had lost his
leg, would for the amputated limb. The truth is—don’t breathe it, don’t
whisper it, except to the trade—that the custom of burying the dead with
expensive furniture; of treating a corpse as if it were a sensible
being; arises from an impression—though parties won’t own it, even to
themselves—that what is buried, is the actual individual, the man
himself. The effect of thinking seriously, and at the same time
rationally, will be to destroy this notion, and with it to put an end to
all the splendour and magnificence of funerals, arising from it.
Moreover, religious parties, being particular as to their moral conduct,
would naturally consider it wrong and wicked to spend upon the dead an
amount of money which might be devoted to the benefit of the living; and
no doubt, when we come to look into it, such expenditure is much the
same thing with the practice of savages and heathens in burying bread,
and meat, and clothes, along with their deceased friends.
I have been suggesting considerations which are very discouraging, and
which afford but a poor look-out to us undertakers. But, gentlemen, we
have one great comfort still. It has become the fashion to inter bodies
with parade and display. Fashion is fashion; and the consequence is that
it is considered an insult to the memory of deceased parties not to bury
them in a certain style; which must be respectable at the very least,
and cost, on a very low average, twenty-five or thirty pounds. Many,
such as professional persons and tradespeople, who cannot afford so much
money, can still less afford to lose character and custom. That is where
we have a pull upon the widows and children, many of whom, if it were
not for the opinion of society, would be only too happy to save their
little money, and turn it into food and clothing, instead of funeral
furniture.
Now here the Metropolitan Interments Bill steps in, and aims at
destroying our only chance of keeping up business as heretofore. We have
generally to deal with parties whose feelings are not in a state to
admit of their making bargains with us—a circumstance, on their parts,
which is highly creditable to human nature; and favourable to trade.
Thus, in short, gentlemen, we have it all our own way with them. But
this Bill comes between the bereaved party and the undertaker. By the
twenty-seventh clause, it empowers the Board of Health to provide houses
and make arrangements for the reception and care of the dead previously
to, and until interment; in order, as it explains in a subsequent
clause, to the accommodation of persons having to provide the
funerals—supposing such persons to desire the accommodation. Clause the
twenty-eighth enacts “That the said Board shall make provision for the
management and conduct, by persons appointed by them, of the funerals of
persons whose bodies are to be interred in the Burial Grounds, to be
provided under this Act, where the representatives of the deceased, or
the persons having the care and direction of the funeral, desire to have
the same so conducted; and the said Board shall fix and publish a scale
of the sums to be payable for such funerals, inclusive of all matters
and services necessary for the same, such sums to be proportioned to the
description of the funeral, or the nature of the matter and services to
be furnished and rendered for the same; but so that in respect of the
lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and
solemnity.” Gentlemen, if this enactment becomes law, we shall lose all
the advantages which we derive from bereaved parties’ state of mind. The
Board of Health will take all trouble off their hands, at whatever sum
they may choose to name. Of course they will apply to the Board of
Health instead of coming to us. But what is beyond everything
prejudicial to our interests, is the proviso “that in respect of the
lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and
solemnity.” Hitherto it has been understood that so much respect could
not be paid in the case of what we call a low affair as in one of a
certain style. We have always considered that a funeral ought to cost so
much to be respectable at all. Therefore relations have gone to more
expense with us, than they would otherwise have been willing to incur,
in order to secure proper respect. But if proper respect is to be had at
a low figure, the strongest hold that we have upon sorrowing relatives,
will be taken away.
It is all very fine to say that we are a necessary class of tradesmen,
and if this Bill passes must continue to be employed. If this Bill does
pass we shall be employed simply as tradesmen, and shall obtain, like
other tradesmen, a mere market price for our articles, and common hire
for our labour. I am afraid that it will be impossible to persuade the
public that this would not be perfectly just and right. I think,
therefore, that we had better not attack the Bill on its merits, but try
to excite opposition against it on the ground of its accessary clauses.
Let us oppose it as a scheme of jobbery, devised with a view to the
establishment of offices and appointments. Let us complain as loudly as
we can of its creating a new rate to defray the expenses of its working,
and let us endeavour to get up a good howl against that clause of it
which provides for compensation to incumbents, clerks, and sextons. We
must cry out with all our might upon its centralising tendency, and of
course make the most we can out of the pretence that it violates the
sanctity of the house of mourning, and outrages the most fondly
cherished feelings of Englishmen. Urge these objections upon
church-wardens, overseers, and vestrymen; and especially din the
objection to a burial rate into their ears. Recollect, our two great
weapons—like those of all good old anti-reformers—are cant and clamour.
Keep up the same cry against the Bill perseveringly, no matter how
thoroughly it may be refuted or proved absurd. Literally, make the
greatest noise in opposition to it that you are able, especially at
public meetings. There, recollect a groan is a groan, and a hiss a hiss,
even though proceeding from a goose. On all such occasions do your
utmost to create a disturbance, to look like a popular demonstration
against the measure. In addition to shouting, yelling, and bawling, I
should say that another rush at another platform, another upsetting of
the reporters’ table, another terrifying of the ladies, and another
mobbing the chairman, would be advisable. Set to work with all your
united zeal and energy to carry out the suggestions of our Central
Committee for the defeat of a Bill which, if passed, will inflict a blow
on the undertaker as great as the boon it will confer on the widow and
orphan—whom we, of course, can only consider as customers. The
Metropolitan Interments Bill goes to dock us of every penny that we make
by taking advantage of the helplessness of afflicted families. And just
calculate what our loss would then be; for, in the beautiful language of
St. Demetrius, the silversmith, “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we
have our wealth.”
THE TWO SACKS.
IMITATED FROM PHÆDRUS.
At our birth, the satirical elves
Two sacks from our shoulders suspend:
The one holds the faults of ourselves;
The other, the faults of our friend:
The first we wear under our clothes
Out of sight, out of mind, at the back;
The last is so under our nose,
We know every scrap in the sack.
THE MODERN “OFFICER’S” PROGRESS.
I.—JOINING THE REGIMENT.
“I have got some very sad news to tell you,” wrote Lady Pelican to her
friend, Mrs. Vermeil, a faded lady of fashion, who discontentedly
occupied a suite of apartments at Hampton Court; “our Irish estates are
in such a miserable condition—absolutely making us out to be in debt to
_them_, instead of adding to _our_ income, that poor George—you will be
shocked to hear it—is actually obliged to go into the Infantry!”
The communication of this distressing fact may stand instead of the
regular Gazette, announcing the appointment of the Hon. George Spoonbill
to an Ensigncy, by purchase, in the 100th regiment of foot. His military
aspirations had been “Cavalry,” and he had endeavoured to qualify
himself for that branch of the service by getting up an invisible
moustache, when the Irish agent wrote to say that no money was to be had
in that quarter, and all thoughts of the Household Brigade were, of
necessity, abandoned. But, though the more expensive career was shut
out, Lord Pelican’s interest at the Horse Guards remained as influential
as before, and for the consideration of four hundred and fifty pounds
which—embarrassed as he was—he contrived to muster, he had no difficulty
in procuring a commission for his son George, in the distinguished
regiment already named. There were, it is true, a few hundred prior
claimants on the Duke’s list; “but,” as Lord Pelican justly observed,
“if the Spoonbill family were not fit for the army, he should like to
know who were!” An argument perfectly irresistible. Gazetted, therefore,
the young gentleman was, as soon as the Queen’s sign-manual could be
obtained, and, the usual interval for preparation over, the Hon. George
Spoonbill set out to join. But before he does so, we must say a word of
what that “preparation” consisted in.
Some persons may imagine that he forthwith addressed himself to the
study of Polybius, dabbled a little in Cormontaigne, got up Napier’s
History of the Peninsular War, or read the Duke’s Despatches; others,
that he went down to Birdcage-Walk, and placed himself under the tuition
of Colour-Sergeant Pike, of the Grenadier Guards, a warrior celebrated
for his skill in training military aspirants, or that he endeavoured by
some other means to acquire a practical knowledge, however slight, of
the profession for which he had always been intended. The Hon. George
Spoonbill knew better. The preparation _he_ made, was a visit, at least
three times a day, to Messrs. Gorget and Plume, the military tailors in
Jermyn Street, whose souls he sorely vexed by the persistance with which
he adhered to the most accurate fit of his shell-jacket and coatee, the
set of his epaulettes, the cut of his trowsers, and the shape of his
chako. He passed his days in “trying on his things,” and his
evenings—when not engaged at the Casino, the Cider Cellar, or the
Adelphi—in dining with his military friends at St. James’s Palace, or at
Knightsbridge Barracks. In their society he greatly improved himself,
acquiring an accurate knowledge of lansquenet and ecarté, cultivating
his taste for tobacco, and familiarising his mind with that reverence
for authority which is engendered by the anecdotes of great military
commanders that freely circulate at the mess-table. His education and
his uniform being finished at about the same time, George Spoonbill took
a not uncheerful farewell of the agonised Lady Pelican, whose maternal
bosom streamed with the sacrifice she made in thus consigning her
offspring to the vulgar hardships of a marching regiment.
An express train conveyed the honourable Ensign in safety to the country
town where the “Hundredth” were then quartered, and in conformity with
the instructions which he received from the Assistant Military Secretary
at the Horse Guards—the only instructions, by the bye, which were given
him by that functionary—he “reported” himself at the Orderly-room on his
arrival, was presented by the Adjutant to the senior Major, by the
senior Major to the Lieutenant-Colonel, and by the Lieutenant-Colonel to
the officers generally when they assembled for mess.
The “Hundredth,” being “Light Infantry,” called itself “a crack
regiment:” the military adjective signifying, in this instance, not so
much a higher reputation for discipline and warlike achievements, as an
indefinite sort of superiority arising from the fact that no man was
allowed to enter the _corps_ who depended upon his pay only for the
figure he cut in it. Lieutenant-Colonel Tulip, who commanded, was very
strict in this particular, and, having “the good of the service” greatly
at heart, set his face entirely against the admission of any young man
who did not enjoy a handsome paternal allowance or was not the possessor
of a good income. He was himself the son of a celebrated army clothier,
and, in the course of ten years, had purchased the rank he now held, so
that he had a right, as he thought, to see that his regiment was not
contaminated by contact with poor men. His military creed was, that no
man had any business in the army who could not afford to keep his horses
or tilbury, and drink wine every day; _that_ he called respectable,
anything short of it the reverse. If he ever relaxed from the severity
of this rule, it was only in favour of those who had high connections;
“a handle to a name” being as reverently worshipped by him as money
itself; indeed, in secret, he preferred a lord’s son, though poor, to a
commoner, however rich; the poverty of a sprig of nobility not being
taken exactly in a literal sense. Colonel Tulip had another theory also:
during the aforesaid ten years, he had acquired some knowledge of drill,
and possessing an hereditary taste for dress, considered himself, thus
endowed, a first-rate officer, though what he would have done with his
regiment in the field is quite another matter. In the meantime he was
gratified by thinking that he did his best to make it a crack corps,
according to his notion of the thing, and such minor points as the moral
training of the officers, and their proficiency in something more than
the forms of the parade ground, were not allowed to enter into his
consideration. The “Hundredth” were acknowledged to be “a devilish
well-dressed, gentlemanly set of fellows,” and were looked after with
great interest at country balls, races, and regattas; and if this were
not what a regiment ought to be, Colonel Tulip was, he flattered
himself, very much out in his calculations.
The advent of the Hon. George Spoonbill was a very welcome one, as the
vacancy to which he succeeded had been caused by the promotion of a
young baronet into “Dragoons,” and the new comer being the second son of
Lord Pelican, with a possibility of being graced one day by wearing that
glittering title himself, the hiatus caused by Sir Henry Muff’s removal
was happily filled up without any derogation to the corps. Having also
ascertained, in the course of five minutes’ conversation, that Mr.
Spoonbill’s “man” and two horses were to follow in a few days with the
remainder of his baggage; and the young gentleman having talked rather
largely of what the Governor allowed him (two hundred a-year is no great
sum, but he kept the actual amount in the back ground, speaking
“promiscuously” of “a few hundreds”), and of his intimacy with “the
fellows in the Life Guards;” Colonel Tulip at once set him down as a
decided acquisition to the “Hundredth,” and intimated that he was to be
made much of accordingly.
When we described the regiment as being composed of wealthy men, the
statement must be received with a certain reservation. It was Colonel
Tulip’s hope and intention to make it so in time, when he had
sufficiently “weeded” it, but _en attendant_ there were three or four
officers who did not quite belong to his favourite category. These were
the senior Major and an old Captain, both of whom had seen a good deal
of service, the Surgeon, who was a necessary evil, and the
Quartermaster, who was never allowed to show with the rest of the
officers except at “inspection,” or some other unusual demonstration.
But the rank and “allowance” of the first, and something in the
character of the second, which caused him to be looked upon as a
military oracle, made Colonel Tulip tolerate their presence in the
corps, if he did not enjoy it. Neither had the Adjutant quite as much
money as the commanding officer could have desired, but as his position
kept him close to his duties, doing that for which Colonel Tulip took
credit, he also was suffered to pass muster; he was a brisk, precise,
middle-aged personage, who hoped in the course of time to get his
company, and whose military qualifications consisted chiefly in knowing
“Torrens,” the “Articles of War,” the “Military Regulations,” and the
“Army List,” by heart. The last-named work was, indeed, very generally
studied in the regiment, and may be said to have exhausted almost all
the literary resources of its readers, exceptions being made in favour
of the weekly military newspaper, the monthly military magazine, and an
occasional novel from the circulating library. The rest of the officers
must speak for themselves, as they incidentally make their appearance.
Of their character, generally, this may be said; none were wholly bad,
but all of them might easily have been a great deal better.
Brief ceremony attends a young officer’s introduction to his regiment,
and the honourable prefix to Ensign Spoonbill’s name was anything but a
bar to his speedy initiation. Lieutenant-Colonel Tulip took wine with
him the first thing, and his example was so quickly followed by all
present, that by the time the cloth was off the table, Lord Pelican’s
second son had swallowed quite as much of Duff Gordon’s sherry as was
good for him. Though drinking is no longer a prevalent military vice,
there are occasions when the wine circulates rather more freely than is
altogether safe for young heads, and this was one of them. Claret was
not the habitual “tipple,” even of the crack “Hundredth;” but as Colonel
Tulip had no objection to make a little display now and then, he had
ordered a dozen in honour of the new arrival, and all felt disposed to
do justice to it. The young Ensign had flattered himself that, amongst
other accomplishments, he possessed “a hard head;” but, hard as it was,
the free circulation of the bottle was not without its effect, and he
soon began to speak rather thick, carefully avoiding such words as began
with a difficult letter, which made his discourse somewhat periphrastic,
or roundabout. But though his observations reached his hearers
circuitously, their purpose was direct enough, and conveyed the
assurance that he was one of those admirable Crichtons who are “wide
awake” in every particular, and available for anything that may chance
to turn up.
The conversation which reached his ears from the jovial companions who
surrounded him, was of a similarly instructive and exhilarating kind,
and tended greatly to his improvement. Captain Hackett, who came from
“Dragoon Guards,” and had seen a great deal of hard service in Ireland,
elaborately set forth every particular of “I’ll give you my honour, the
most remarkable steeple-chase that ever took place in the three
kingdoms,” of which he was, of course, the hero. Lieutenant Wadding, who
prided himself on his small waist, broad shoulders, and bushy whiskers,
and was esteemed “a lady-killer,” talked of every woman he knew and
damaged every reputation he talked about. Lieutenant Bray, who was
addicted to sporting and played on the French horn, came out strong on
the subject of hackles, May-flies, grey palmers, badgers, terriers,
dew-claws, snap-shots and Eley’s cartridges. Captain Cushion, a great
billiard-player, and famous—in every sense—for “the one-pocket game,”
was eloquent on the superiority of his own cues, which were tipped with
gutta percha instead of leather, and offered, as a treat, to indulge
“any man in garrison with the best of twenty, one ‘up,’ for a hundred
aside.” Captain Huff, who had a crimson face, a stiff arm, and the voice
of a Stentor, and whose soul, like his visage, was steeped in port and
brandy, boasted of achievements in the drinking line, which,
fortunately, are now only traditional, though he did his best to make
them positive. From the upper end of the table, where sat the two
veterans and the doctor, came, mellowed by distance, grim recollections
of the Peninsula, with stories of Picton and Crawford, “the fighting
brigade” and “the light division,” interspersed with endless Indian
narratives, equally grim, of “how our fellows were carried off by the
cholera at Cawnpore,” and how many tigers were shot, “when we lay in
cantonments at Dum-dum;” the running accompaniment to the whole being a
constant reference to so-and-so “of _ours_,” without allusion to which
possessive pronoun, few military men are able to make much progress in
conversation.
Nor was Colonel Tulip silent, but his conversation was of a very lofty
and, as it were, ethereal order,—quite transparent, in fact, if any one
had been there to analyse it. It related chiefly to the magnates at the
Horse Guards,—to what “the Duke” said to him on certain occasions
specified,—to Prince Albert’s appearance at the last levee,—to a
favourite bay charger of his own,—to the probability that Lord Dawdle
would get into the corps on the first exchange,—and to a partly-formed
intention of applying to the Commander-in-Chief to change the regimental
facings from buff to green.
The mess-table, after four hours’ enjoyment of it in this intellectual
manner, was finally abandoned for Captain Cushion’s “quarters,” that
gallant officer having taken “quite a fancy to the youngster,”—not so
much, perhaps, on account of the youngster being a Lord’s youngster, as
because, in all probability, there was something squeezeable in him,
which was slightly indicated in his countenance. But whatever of the
kind there might indeed have been, did not come out that evening, the
amiable Captain preferring rather to initiate by example and the show of
good fellowship, than by directly urging the neophyte to play. The
rubber, therefore, was made up without him, and the new Ensign, with two
or three more of his rank, confined themselves to cigars and brandy and
water, a liberal indulgence in which completed what the wine had begun,
and before midnight chimed the Hon. George Spoonbill was—to use the
mildest expression,—as unequivocally tipsy as the fondest parent or
guardian could possibly have desired a young gentleman to be on the
first night of his entering “the Service.”
Not yet established in barracks, Mr. Spoonbill slept at an hotel, and
thither he was assisted by two of his boon companions, whom he insisted
on regaling with devilled biscuits and more brandy and water, out of
sheer gratitude for their kindness. Nor was this reward thrown away, for
it raised the spirits of these youths to so genial a pitch that, on
their way back—with a view, no doubt, to give encouragement to
trade—they twisted off, as they phrased it, “no end to knockers and
bell-handles,” broke half a dozen lamps, and narrowly escaping the
police (with whom, however, they would gloriously have fought rather
than have surrendered) succeeded at length in reaching their quarters,—a
little excited, it is true, but by no means under the impression that
they had done anything—as the articles of war say—“unbecoming the
character of an officer and a gentleman.”
In the meantime, the jaded waiter at the hotel had conveyed their
fellow-Ensign to bed, to dream—if he were capable of dreaming—of the
brilliant future which his first day’s experience of actual military
life held out.
PICTURES OF LIFE IN AUSTRALIA.
GOING TO CHURCH.
There is something in the dress of an Australian Settler that is no less
characteristic than becoming,—what a splendid turn-out of this class may
be seen at some of the townships as they meet on the Sunday for Divine
service. I have looked at such assemblages in all parts of the colony,
until my eyes have dimmed with national pride, to think that to England
should belong the right to own them; the old-fashioned Sunday scenes and
manners of England, seen in her younger colonies, being thus revived.
The gay carts, the dashing gigs, that are drawn round the fence of the
churchyard enclosures,—the blood-horses, with side saddles, that are
seen quietly roaming about, add much to the interest of the scene. True,
there are no splendid equipages, but, then, there are no poor. The
dress,—the appearance of the men,—the chubby faces of the children,—the
neat and comfortable habiliments of the women (and here let me
remark,—for the information of some of the gay young bachelors of
England, that, among these Sabbath meetings may be seen here and there
the blooming native maiden in a riding habit of the finest cloth, and of
the newest fashion, the substantial settler’s daughter riding her own
beautiful and pet mare; I say “pet mare,” because some of these maidens
have a little stud of their own)—all these realities of rural life
strongly impress a stranger with the real comforts which these people
enjoy.
CHRISTIAN CHARITY.
As people of different religions meet at times on the highway, somewhere
near their respective places of worship, it is delightful to observe
that, whatever faith they possess, Christian charity reigns. As
neighbours, the men group together, sitting upon, or resting their backs
against the fence, whilst a brilliant sun smiles on them. At the same
time, their children may be seen decorating themselves with flowers, or
dragging a splendid creeper, in order to beautify the horses, and make
fly-brushes for them. After the weather has been commented upon, a
political shade is seen to pass over the countenances of the assembly.
There is great earnestness amongst them. The females arrange for their
own comfort, by resting on the shafts of the carts, or seating
themselves on the grass. Matrimony and muslins, births and milch cows,
by turns engross their attention, while the men make free with matters
of State.
As the soft sound of the bell gives notice that the hour of service is
near, the party may be seen to break up: children throw aside their
garlands, wives join their husbands, and with sober countenances and
devout demeanour enter the House of God. There is one circumstance
worthy of remark, namely, the perfect security with which they all leave
their conveyances—great coats, and shawls, whips and saddles, in gigs
and carts; proving that a fair day’s labour for a fair day’s work is a
better protection for property than the police.
When divine service is over, the families keep more together. There is a
sober reverence about them which shows that they have listened
attentively. As they move to their conveyances, or walk on, it is
pleasing to see that if their neighbours have been kept longer at
another church, the first party out will often delay their departure
till they arrive. These charitable pauses are delightful to witness;
these neighbourly greetings make bigotry in dismay crouch to the earth,
and show, that when the mind is rightly directed, the being of different
religions is not inimical to friendship, for frequently in these cases
the elder girl of a Catholic family may be seen in the cart of a
Protestant neighbour; the wife of one carrying the younger child of the
other, at the same time that the two husbands, as they get into the open
road, slowly pace their horses, so that they may converse on their way
home, occasionally interrupted perhaps by their sons, who, mounted on
good horses, try their speed to please their fathers, and throw bunches
of wild flowers to their mothers, while younger hands catch at the
prize.
DINNER IN THE BUSH.
I unexpectedly joined the party I am now attempting to describe, and
leaving my own travelling spring-van at the church-door, took a seat in
their cart. On arriving at the farm, the elder son met the party at the
slip-rail (homely gate). He was a tall, healthy, open-hearted lad, who
greeted us with—
“Come, Mother, be careful. Jump out, girls. Now, Mrs. C——, how welcome
you are; and the dinner just ready! Ah! you need not tell me who gave
you the sermon: he’s as good as the clock.”
As the girls had all been to church, and there was no female servant in
the house, the description of this rural home, and a short detail of the
dinner, may be acceptable.
The family room was large, with a commodious fire-place. The table was
laid for twelve; the plates and dishes were of blue delf; the knives and
forks looked bright and shiny. It may be remarked, that the Settler’s
table in New South Wales is somewhat differently arranged from what one
is accustomed to see in England, for here the knife and fork were placed
at the right of the plate, while a chocolate-coloured tea-cup and saucer
stood at the left; a refreshing cup of tea being made a part of the
dinner repast. By the fire-place might be seen a large black pot, full
of potatoes, with a white cloth laid on the top for the purpose of
steaming them. Again, at the outer door might be noticed the son with a
man-servant, looking into an oven, and drawing from thence a large
hind-quarter of pork, followed by a peach pie.
“Lend a hand here!” shouted the son.
“Ah! I thought you could not do without me,” said the father.
“Keep the youngsters out of the way, and look about you, girls;” cried
the mother.
Moving where I could better see the cause of the outcry, a round of
beef, cut large and “handsome,” as the settlers say in the Bush, had
been forced into a pot; but no fork, although a Bush-fork is rather a
formidable tool, could remove it.
“You ought to have put a cord round it,” remarked the mother.
“Turn the pot on one side,” said the father.
“Over with it; out with it; shake!—oh, here we have it now.”
As the pot was removed, the beef was seen to advantage, reeking in a
bright clean milk-pan.
“Now, let us make it look decent,” said the self-trained cook, as with
his knife he cut the out-pieces off to improve its appearance. His
trimmings were substantial cuttings, and displayed to advantage the fine
quality of the beef; each cutting he threw to his dogs, as they watched
at a respectful distance his operations. Now, though some of my readers
may not much admire this bush-culinary art, and this mode of dishing-up
a dinner, still there was in the whole scene so much of honest
hospitality, so much of cheerful and good humoured hilarity, exhibiting
in the most pleasing form the simple manners of a primitive people,—the
germs, in fact, of the class of English yeomanry, too often unable to
flourish in their own native land, ingrafted and revived in a foreign
distant shore, that even the most fastidious and refined could not but
feel at such a moment a peculiar zest in joining a family so innocently
happy and guileless as this, surrounded as they were by abundance of all
the essential necessaries of life. Not a shade of care clouded the
party, as they sat down with thankfulness to partake of those things
with which God had blessed their labour.
The arrangement of the table was something in unison with the rest. The
pork, so well seasoned, graced the head of the table, while the burly
piece of beef, now reeking and streaming from its late trimming, was
placed before the honest master of this patriarchal family, with a
plentiful supply of potatoes, peas, and greens, ranged in their proper
places. As soon as the party had partaken of the substantials, the
eldest daughter poured tea into the cups set by each one’s plate—for
this is the custom amongst the Australian settlers; at the same time the
good landlady cut up the peach pie.
The eldest son could now be seen through an open doorway, peering again
into the rudely constructed oven, from which he pulled, with a good deal
of self-importance and glee, an orange tart, whilst his assistant-cook
placed custards on the table in tumblers. The good wife looked amazed,
the husband thoughtful.
“How did you get the oranges,” asked the mother.
“Why, Frank Gore brought ’em,” he replied.
“And who made the custards?”
“_I_ made ’em!”
WANTED, A GOOD WIFE.
“What! our Tom make custards!” exclaimed the mother.
“Why not?” replied the young man, evidently anxious to show that he
could turn his hand to anything useful.
“I see, I see how it is,” said the father, “Tom heard that Mrs. C. was
coming, and he wants a wife.”
“A wife! the like of him want a wife,” said the mother, who, for the
first time, looked on his athletic and manly form with sad anxiety.
“Tom made the custard,” said Jane, “and William the tart.”
“I did not bring the oranges,” replied Tom, as Frank Gore entered with a
dish of grapes.
“It’s a regular plot,” said the mother.
“A down right contrivance—and I expect it is a settled affair,” observed
the father.
“Jane, don’t blush,” sportively remarked Lucy.
“Let me see,” said the father, thoughtfully. “Tom is four years older
than I was when I married, so he is,—but Jane is too young.”
“Say a word,” whispered the mother to me; “say a word, Mrs. C.”
“A snug home indeed,—I only wish my father could have seen the comforts
I now enjoy.”
The young people, seeing the turn matters were taking, scampered off
with glowing cheeks.
“We have four farms I can say master to,” pursued the father, “and eight
hundred sheep, and six hundred head of cattle, forty pigs, and a bit of
money in the bank, too, that the youngsters don’t know of. Well, all the
lad will want is a good wife. Let me see,—I’ll be in Sydney next Monday
five weeks,—I must buy them a few things, a chest of drawers,—yes,
they’d be handy; and I might as well buy one for Jane, poor girl. Like
to deal out to all alike; and the wife wants one. I only thought of
taking the cart, but I will want a dray, and eight good bullocks,
besides,—that’s easy enough to be seen. Well, well; it’s a nice snug
home—one hundred and four acres,—two acres laid out for a
vineyard,—forty under crop,—handy for the station, too.” Thus the good
man musingly spoke, partly to himself, and partly addressing his wife,
who, with a cheerful and approving look, nodded consent.
HOMELY HINTS TO MARRIED STATESMEN.
At this little homestead there were five men, whose savings would have
enabled them to have taken farms, if they could have met with suitable
girls as wives; and they pretty plainly animadverted upon the policy of
those whom they considered the proper persons to have rectified their
grievances. One remarked, “What does Lord Stanley care, so that he has a
wife himself!”
“Ah!” responded another; “and Peel, with all his great speeches, never
said a single word about wives for us.”
“Lord John Russell, too,” said Tom Slaney, “seems just as bad as the
rest. What does he think we’re made of? wood, or stone, or dried
biscuit?”
“It ought to be properly represented to Earl Grey,” observed the fourth.
“Do they call this looking after a young colony? Has nobody no sense?”
“Yes,” replied the most sensitive of the party, “the _Queen_ ought to
know it,—it is a cruel shame.”
A COTTAGE, ROMANTIC AND REAL.
John Whitney had now made his hut a comfortable cottage. In the centre
of the room stood a neat table, shelves were arranged over a
bush-dresser, and at one corner of the room could be seen a neat little
plate-rack. A young carpenter in Australia cannot make these things
without thinking of matrimony; and the one in Whitney’s cottage was
beautifully made, evidently intended as a bridal gift. At the opening of
the small window was a neat box of mignonette; whilst a footstool, a
salt-box, a board, a rolling-pin, afforded sufficient evidence that a
wife was all that was wanted to make this abode a happy home.
Nor did the exterior lack any of those embellishments that are required
to invest a cottage with those charms which the hand of nature alone can
fully set forth. The tasteful mind and apt hand of Whitney mingled art
and nature so well that the first could hardly be distinguished by the
luxuriance of the latter. The workman laid first the train, and then
allured nature in a manner to follow and adorn his handy-work. He first
erected an open verandah of posts, saplings, and laths along the whole
front of his cottage, leaving three or four door-ways, or spacious
apertures for entrance. Against these posts he planted rose-trees, which
in Australia grow to an extraordinary height; and around them he
carefully trained beautiful creepers, passionflower, and other wild
plants of the Bush, so that in the course of a short time the framework
became almost invisible. The posts seemed to have grown into pillars of
rosebush, thickly entwined with flowery creepers, threading their way
the whole length and height of the verandah, and here and there forming
the most fanciful festoons over the doorway, or round the tiny windows,
thus throwing a coolness and a freshness of shade into the inmost
recesses of the little cottage. There also might be observed two or
three well-trained vines intermixed with all, which produced the most
tempting clusters of grapes, as they could be seen to hang through the
open lattice of the verandah; while, all over the roof of the house grew
fine water-melons, the strong stems of which closely encircled the
chimney.
It was truly delightful to view this sylvan cottage in the calm and
balmy coolness of a dewy morning, and to behold this structure, as it
were, of rose-trees and creepers, as the warmth of the morning sun
opened those closed flowers that seem thus to take their rest for the
night, and the fresh-blown rosebuds that were hardly to be seen the
evening before; most of those could now be observed to be tenanted by
that busy little creature, the bee, sent “as a colonist,” from England
to Australia, humming, in all the active vivacity of its nature, a
joyful morning carol to the God of Nature. Indeed, were it not that
there were appearances of some more substantial domestic comforts to be
seen in the background—such as rows of beans, sweet peas, beds of
cabbages, &c., set in the garden, and some young fruit-trees; while near
a shady corner might be noticed young ducks feeding under a coop, and
“little roasters” gambolling outside the pig-stye, which by the way was
deeply shaded by large bushy rose-trees, this cottage at a distance
might have been mistaken for a green-house. We ought not to omit that a
number of fowls could be observed quietly roosting in some trees at the
end of one of the outer buildings.
Truly, it was a little fairy home, with no rent, no taxes, no rates, to
disturb the peace of the occupier; and no one, who has not lived in
Australia, can conceive with what ease and little expense such rural
beauties, such little paradises, and domestic comforts can be formed and
kept up in that country. Notwithstanding, however, the beauty of all
this—the variety of flowers—the magnificence of the creepers—the
stillness and quietness that reigned around, it must be frankly
confessed there was a certain vacuum that required filling up. If the
animal senses were gratified, the mind felt somehow dissatisfied. There
was a coldness, a death-like silence, which hung over the place; there
appeared to be a want of rationality in the thing, for there seemed to
be no human beings to enjoy it, or not a sufficient number. Yes, this
spot of beauty, to make it a delightful happy home, required, what one
of our favourite poets, and the poet of nature, calls nature’s “noblest
work”—woman. ’Tis but too true—John Whitney wanted a wife to make his
home a fit habitation for man. What is John Whitney without her? He may
be an excellent carpenter, but he is at the same time a desolate, morose
being, incapable of enjoying these beauties of nature. Poor John Whitney
keenly felt this; and it was the hope alone, warming and clinging to his
heart, that some day he could call himself the father of a family, that
inspired him to gather all these beauties and comforts around him.
EBENEZER ELLIOTT.
The name of Ebenezer Elliott is associated with one of the greatest and
most important political changes of modern times;—with events not yet
sufficiently removed from us, to allow of their being canvassed in this
place with that freedom which would serve the more fully to illustrate
his real merits. Elliott would have been a poet, in all that constitutes
true poetry, had the Corn Laws never existed.
He was born on 25th March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masborough, in the
parish of Rotherham, where his father was a clerk in the employment of
Messrs. Walker, with a salary of 60_l._ or 70_l._ per annum. His father
was a man of strong political tendencies, possessed of humorous and
satiric power, that might have qualified him for a comic actor. Such was
the character he bore for political sagacity that he was popularly known
as “Devil Elliott.” The mother of the poet seems to have been a woman of
an extreme nervous temperament, constantly suffering from ill health,
and constitutionally awkward and diffident.
Ebenezer commenced his early training at a Dame’s school; but shy,
awkward, and desultory, he made little progress; nor did he thrive much
better at the school in which he was afterwards placed. Here he employed
his comrades to do his tasks for him, and of course laid no foundation
for his future education. His parents, disheartened by the lad’s
apparent stolidity, sent him next to Dalton School, two miles distant;
and here he certainly acquired something, for he retained, to old age,
the memory of some of the scenes through which he used to pass on his
way to and from this school. For want of the necessary preliminary
training, he could do little or nothing with letters: he rather
preferred playing truant and roaming the meadows in listless idleness,
wherever his fancy led him. This could not last. His father soon set him
to work in the Foundry; and with this advantage, that the lad stood on
better terms with, himself than he had been for a considerable period,
for he discovered that he could compete with others in work,—sheer
hand-labour,—if he could not in the school. One disadvantage, however,
arose, as he tells us, from his foundry life; for he acquired a relish
for vulgar pursuits, and the village alehouse divided his attentions
with the woods and fields. Still a deep impression of the charms of
nature had been made upon him by his boyish rambles, which the debasing
influences and associations into which he was thrown could not wholly
wipe out. He would still wander away in his accustomed haunts, and
purify his soul from her alehouse defilements, by copious draughts of
the fresh nectar of natural beauty imbibed from the sylvan scenery
around him.
The childhood and youth of the future poet presented a strange medley of
opposites and antitheses. Without the ordinary measure of adaptation for
scholastic pursuits, he inhaled the vivid influences of external things,
delighting intensely in natural objects, and yet feeling an infinite
chagrin and remorse at his own idleness and ignorance. We find him
highly imaginative; making miniature lakes by sinking an iron vessel
filled with water in a heap of stones, and gazing therein with wondrous
enjoyment at the reflection of the sun and skies overhead; and
exhibiting a strange passion for looking on the faces of those who had
died violent deaths, although these dead men’s features would haunt his
imagination for weeks afterwards.
He did not, indeed, at this period, possess the elements of an ordinary
education. A very simple circumstance sufficed to apply the spark which
fired his latent energies, and nascent poetical tendencies: and he
henceforward became a different being, elevated far above his former
self. He called one evening, after a drinking bout on the previous
night, on a maiden aunt, named Robinson, a widow possessed of about
30_l._ a-year, by whom he was shown a number of “Sowerby’s English
Botany,” which her son was then purchasing in monthly parts. The plates
made a considerable impression on the awkward youth, and he essayed to
copy them by holding them to the light with a thin piece of paper before
them. When he found he could trace their forms by these means his
delight was unbounded, and every spare hour was devoted to the agreeable
task. Here commenced that intimate acquaintance with flowers, which
seems to pervade all his works. This aunt of Ebenezer’s, (good soul!
would that every shy, gawky Ebenezer had such an aunt!) bent on
completing the charm she had so happily begun, displayed to him still
further her son’s book of dried specimens; and this elated him beyond
measure. He forthwith commenced a similar collection for himself, for
which purpose he would roam the field still more than ever, on Sundays
as well as week days, to the interruption of his attendances at chapel.
This book he called his “Dry Flora,” (_Hortus Siccus_) and none so proud
as he when neighbours noticed his plants and pictures. He was not a
little pleased to feel himself a sort of wonder, as he passed through
the village with his plants; and, greedy of praise, he allowed his
acquaintance to believe that his drawings were at first hard, and made
by himself from nature. “Thompson’s Seasons,” read to him about this
time by his brother Giles, gave him a glimpse of the union of poetry
with natural beauty; and lit up in his mind an ambition which finally
transformed the illiterate, rugged, half-tutored youth into the man who
wrote “The Village Patriarch,” and the “Corn Law Rhymes.”
From this time he set himself resolutely to the work of self-education.
His knowledge of the English language was meagre in the extreme; and he
succeeded at last only by making for himself a kind of grammar by
reading and observation. He then tried French, but his native indolence
prevailed, and he gave it up in despair. He read with avidity whatever
books came in his way; and a small legacy of books to his father came in
just at the right time. He says he could never read through a
second-rate book, and he therefore read masterpieces only;—“after
Milton, then Shakespeare; then Ossian; then Junius; Paine’s ‘Common
Sense;’ Swift’s ‘Tale of a Tub;’ ‘Joan of Arc;’ Schiller’s ‘Robbers;’
Bürger’s ‘Lenora;’ Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall;’ and long afterwards,
Tasso, Dante, De Staël, Schlegel, Hazlitt, and the ‘_Westminster
Review_.’” Reading of this character might have been expected to lead to
something; and was well calculated to make an extraordinary impression
on such a mind as Elliott’s; and we have the fruit of this course of
study in the poetry which from this time he began to throw off.
He remained with his father from his sixteenth to his twenty-third year,
working laboriously without wages, except an occasional shilling or two
for pocket-money. He afterwards tried business on his own account. He
made two efforts at Sheffield; the last commencing at the age of forty,
and with a borrowed capital of 150_l._ He describes in his nervous
language the trials and difficulties he had to contend with; and all
these his imagination embodied for him in one grim and terrible form,
which he christened “Bread Tax.” With this demon he grappled in
desperate energy, and assailed it vigorously with his caustic rhyme.
This training, these mortifications, these misfortunes, and the demon
“Bread Tax” above all, made Elliott successively despised, hated,
feared, and admired, as public opinion changed towards him.
Mr. Howitt describes his warehouse as a dingy, and not very extensive
place, heaped with iron of all sorts, sizes, and forms, with barely a
passage through the chaos of rusty bars into the inner sanctum, at once,
study, counting-house, library, and general receptacle of odds and ends
connected with his calling. Here and there, to complete the jumble, were
plaster casts of Shakspeare, Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon, suggestive of
the presidency of literature over the materialism of commerce which
marked the career of this singular being. By dint of great industry he
began to flourish in business, and, at one time, could make a profit of
20_l._ a-day without moving from his seat. During this prosperous period
he built a handsome villa-residence in the suburbs. He now had leisure
to brood over the full force and effect of the Corn Laws. The subject
was earnestly discussed then in all manufacturing circles of that
district. Reverses now arrived. In 1837 he lost fully one-third of all
his savings, getting out of the storm at last with about 6000_l._, which
he wrote to Mr. Tait of Edinburgh, he intended, if possible, to retain.
The palmy days of 20_l._ profits had gone by for Sheffield, and instead,
all was commercial disaster and distrust. Elliott did well to retire
with what little he had remaining. In his retreat he was still vividly
haunted by the demon “Bread Tax.” This, then, was the period of the Corn
Law Rhymes, and these bitter experiences lent to them that tone of
sincerity and earnestness—that fire and frenzy which they breathed, and
which sent them, hot, burning words of denunciation and wrath, into the
bosoms of the working classes,—the toiling millions from whom Elliott
sprang. “Bread Tax,” indeed, to him, was a thing of terrible import and
bitter experience: hence he uses no gentle terms, or honeyed phrases
when dealing with the obnoxious impost. Sometimes coarse invective, and
angry assertion, take the place of convincing reason, and calm
philosophy. At others, there is a true vein of poetry and pathos running
through the rather unpoetic theme, which touches us with its
Wordsworthian feeling and gentleness. Then he would be found calling
down thunders upon the devoted heads of the monopolists, with all a
fanatic’s hearty zeal, and in his fury he would even pursue them, not
merely through the world, but beyond its dim frontiers and across the
threshold of another state. Take them, however, as they stand—and more
vigorous, effective, and startling political poetry has not graced the
literature of the age.
It was not to be supposed but that this trumpet-blast of defiance, and
shrill scream of “war to the knife,” should bring down upon him much
obloquy, much vituperation: but all this fell harmlessly upon him; he
rather liked it. When people began to bear with the turbid humour and
angry utterances of the “Corn Law Rhymer,” and grew familiar with the
stormy march of his verse, it was discovered that he was something more
than a mere political party song-writer. He was a true poet, whose
credentials, signed and sealed in the court of nature, attested the
genuineness of his brotherhood with those children of song who make the
world holier and happier by the mellifluous strains they bring to us,
like fragments of a forgotten melody, from the far-off world of beauty
and of love.
Elliott will not soon cease to be distinctively known as the “Corn Law
Rhymer;” but it will be by his non-political poems that he will be
chiefly remembered by posterity as the Poet of the People;—for his name
will still be, as it has long been, a “Household Word,” in the homes of
all such as love the pure influences of simple, sensuous, and natural
poetry. As an author he did not make his way fast: he had written poetry
for twenty years ere he had attracted much notice. A genial critique by
Southey in the “Quarterly;” another by Carlyle in the “Edinburgh;” and
favourable notices in the “Athenæum” and “New Monthly,” brought him into
notice; and he gradually made his way until a new and cheap edition of
his works in 1840 stamped him as a popular poet. His poetry is just such
as, knowing his history, we might have expected; and such as, not
knowing it, might have bodied forth to us the identical man as we find
him.
As we have said, Nature was his school; but flowers were the especial
vocation of his muse. A small ironmonger—a keen and successful
tradesman—we should scarcely have given him credit for such an exquisite
love of the beautiful in Nature, as we find in some of those lines
written by him in the crowded counting-room of that dingy warehouse. The
incident of the floral miscellany: the subsequent study of “The
Seasons;” the long rambles in meadows and on hill-sides,
specimen-hunting for his _Hortus Siccus_;—sufficiently account for the
exquisite sketches of scenery, and those vivid descriptions of natural
phenomena, which showed that the coinage of his brain had been stamped
in Nature’s mint. The most casual reader would at once discover that,
with Thompson, he has ever been the devoted lover and worshipper of
Nature—a wanderer by babbling streams—a dreamer in the leafy
wilderness—a worshipper of morning upon the golden hill-tops. He gives
us pictures of rural scenery warm as the pencil of a Claude, and glowing
as the sunsets of Italy.
A few sentences will complete our sketch, and bring us to the close of
the poet’s pilgrimage. He had come out of the general collapse of
commercial affairs in 1837, with a small portion of the wealth he had
realised by diligent and continuous labour. He took a walk, on one
occasion, into the country, of about eighteen miles, reached Argilt
Hill, liked the place, returned, and resolved to buy it. He laid out in
house and land about one thousand guineas. His family consisted of Mrs.
Elliott and two daughters—a servant-maid—an occasional helper—a Welch
pony and small gig,—“a dog almost as big as the mare, and much wiser
than his master; a pony-cart; a wheel-barrow; and a grindstone—and,”
says he, “turn up your nose if you like!”
From his own papers we learn that he had one son a clergyman, at
Lothedale, near Skipton; another in the steel trade, on Elliott’s old
premises at Sheffield; two others unmarried, living on their means;
another “druggisting at Sheffield, in a sort of chimney called a shop;”
and another, a clergyman, living in the West Indies. Of his thirteen
children, five were dead, and of whom he says—“They left behind them no
memorial—but they are safe in the bosom of Mercy, and not quite
forgotten even here!”
In this retirement he occasionally lectured and spoke at public
meetings; but he began to suffer from a spasmodic affection of the
nerves, which obliged him wholly to forego public speaking. This disease
grew worse; and in December, 1839, he was warned that he could not
continue to speak in public, except at the risk of sudden death. This
disorder lingered about him for about six years: he then fell ill of a
more serious disease, which threatened speedy termination. This was in
May, 1849. In September, he writes, “I have been _very, very_ ill.” On
the first of December, 1849, the event, which had so long been
impending, occurred; and Elliott peacefully departed in the 69th year of
his age.
Thus, then, the sun set on one whose life was one continued heroic
struggle with opposing influences,—with ignorance first, then trade,
then the corn laws, then literary fame, and, last of all, disease: and
thus the world saw its last of the material breathing form of the rugged
but kindly being who made himself loved, feared, hated, and famous, as
the “CORN LAW RHYMER.”
* * * * *
Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS.
_Price 2d., Stamped 3d._,
THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
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Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Stand. Printed
by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
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