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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. LXXXI, No. 496, February 1857.
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. LXXXI, NO. 496, FEBRUARY 1857. ***
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXCVI. FEBRUARY 1857. VOL. LXXXI.
CONTENTS.
a. THE WAR IN ASIA, 135
b. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.—NO. I. THE SAD FORTUNES OF THE REVEREND
AMOS BARTON.—PART II., 153
c. TICKET-OF-LEAVE.—A LETTER TO IRENÆUS, 173
d. THE ATHELINGS; OR, THE THREE GIFTS.—PART IX., 189
e. FROM PERA TO BUCHAREST, 205
f. LETTERS FROM A LIGHTHOUSE.—NO. I. 227
g. LORD ST LEONARDS, 243
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET, AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW,
LONDON;
_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
=Lately Published.=
INDEX
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THE FIRST FIFTY VOLUMES
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BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE.
_In Octavo, pp. 588. Price 15s._
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXCVI. FEBRUARY 1857. VOL. LXXXI.
THE WAR IN ASIA.
The Russian Empire has two gates, through which her armies may march on
their mission of territorial aggrandisement. These are not on her
western front. Cossack absolutism, the sway of Muscovite principles, may
yet spread to the Atlantic; but, territorially, Russia will never extend
her rule westwards in Europe beyond the limits of the Slavonian race.
The case is different along her southern frontier. Occupying the vast
territories constituting that _officina gentium_ from whence issued the
invading hordes which overthrew in succession all the old governments of
the civilised world—Hindoo, Persian, Roman, Saracenic, Byzantine—the
Russian Empire still seeks expansion in the same direction. Half
imbedded in its southern frontier lies the Black Sea, forming a barrier
to landward progress nearly 800 miles long, and compelling the downward
pressure of the colossal empire to divide into an eastern and western
stream. Once the Black Sea is fairly enclasped by the dominions of the
Czar, and the Bosphorus closed against hostile fleets, this inland sea
will be no longer an obstacle, but a facility, to the southern advance
of the Muscovite legions: but at present it is as we say,—an impassable
expanse which must be turned by marching round its flanks. The regions
to the east and west of this sea are the two Gates of Russia, through
which the ambition of the Czars has sought and will continue to seek
expansion. The one gate opens into Europe, the other into Asia. The
former at present is shut—the latter stands open.
When at war with a restless and ambitious power—with a young and growing
state whose rulers and people still prefer territorial extension to
commercial development, it is wise, when closing one’s own frontier
against attack, to leave open some other channel into which the energies
of the foe may be directed. This is what the Continental Governments did
at the close of the late war. The French Emperor, having served his own
immediate purpose in the war, and fearing to face the eventualities
which a prosecution of the contest might have produced, resolved
abruptly to close it after the fall of Sebastopol. With this end in
view, no further blow was allowed to be struck in the Crimea; and, at
the same time, not a regiment was allowed to be sent to relieve Kars, or
to support Omar Pasha in his important invasion of Georgia. Russia was
proud, and would rather push the war to extremities than consent to
humiliating terms of peace. The measures of the French Government saved
her from such humiliation. The fall of Sebastopol was made a barren
victory in the Crimea, and was allowed to be balanced in some measure by
the fall of Kars in Armenia; and these facts, duly improved at the
Congress of Peace, resulted in that Treaty of Paris which the _Moniteur_
eulogised as “humiliating to none.” The fall of Kars, and the
withholding of support from Omar Pasha’s invasion of Georgia, enabled
the Continental Powers, while shutting the door against Russia in
Europe, to leave wider open than ever her gate into Asia. The
representatives of England, we hope, struggled against this decision,
but they struggled vainly: (when it comes to a question of votes, the
interests of the Continental Powers must always override those of
insulated Britain).[1] And now we already begin to perceive the
consequence. Russian prestige is greater than ever throughout western
Asia. The capture of Kars enabled General Mouravieff for ten months to
keep possession of that fortress and the surrounding region,—to
distribute far and wide hand-bills announcing the triumph of the Czar,
and representing it, by a colourable lie, as a victory over the arms of
England. The wavering allegiance of the Kurdish tribes of Armenia has
been half-won to the Czar. Persia has gone wholly over to the same side.
A renewed onset is being made to complete the subjugation of the
Caucasus, and render the isthmus between the Euxine and Caspian a broad
highway for Russian advance. From Soujouk-kale to Erivan, from Erivan to
the mouth of the Araxes, and thence northwards along the shores and upon
the islands of the Caspian, an unusual mustering of troops and din of
warlike preparation is going on. The eastern Gate of Russia already
creaks on its hinges. Perhaps while we write, the Muscovite battalions
are once more entering the thrice-despoiled territories of Persia,—this
time all the more dangerously for her, and ominously for us, that they
enter not as enemies but in the guise of friends.
It is long since Russia began to foray southwards by her eastern Gate.
And it is important to note this, for it is only by the light of the
past that we shall properly comprehend the true character of Russian
aggression in this quarter. It is needless to rail at such aggression,
for it is alike natural and inevitable. Russia lies between Europe and
Asia like a vast lake, whose waters are slowly but steadily increasing,
and which, hemmed in by steep banks on its western side, must inevitably
overflow into the vast unbulwarked regions of Central Asia. As Russian
wealth, population, and resources increase, the Muscovite tide will
swell out more and more into the territories of Turkistan, and encroach
more and more upon the native sovereignty of Persia. The tide will never
recede,—for it is but the overflowings of the great fountains of
Slavonian life, which promise, for ages to come, to continue pouring
forth their populating streams into the half-vacant basins of Asia.
Russian domination over the tribes of the Steppes and the organised
communities of Persia and Anatolia is a mere question of time, which may
be as surely predicted as that the Russian population will one day be
double and treble what it is now. That population will for centuries
have room to spread eastward across the Asiatic continent; but it will
take that course reluctantly, and will prefer to foray southwards, until
it reach a limit where other portions of the European race have become
too firmly consolidated to be driven from their ground.
Commerce and ambition alike impel Russia to go forth conquering through
her eastern gates. A century and a half ago the Czar Peter perceived
this, and laid down the outlines of a vast plan of Asiatic conquest for
the guidance of his imperial successors. By an error common to minds of
high speculative and imaginative power—to whom, seeing clearly the
future, distant events often appear too near and their realisation too
easy—Peter himself does not seem to have adequately appreciated the
obstacles to his projects, and by a bold dash at Khiva in 1717,
attempted to win a vantage-ground which was not destined to be gained by
Russia until the present day. The armed mission which he sent to that
Khanate, to establish relations with the natives and to seize a gold
mine, easily reached their destination; but being outwitted by the
Khivans, they were induced to separate into detached parties, and were
then cut to pieces. Six years afterwards witnessed the real commencement
of his schemes of aggression. It was in 1723–25, when the power of
Persia was prostrated by the revolt of the Affghans and the attacks of
the Turks, that Russia first struck her fangs into her prey; and during
the dismemberment of Persia which then occurred, the Russian forces
seized the territories of the Shah lying between the Caspian and the
Black Seas. The martial genius of Nadir Shah temporarily checked the
progress of Muscovite ambition, and in 1735 compelled the Empress Anne
to resign the captured provinces before they had been Russianised. But
in due time the advances of Russia were resumed in a more subtle form;
and in 1774 the Empress Catherine commenced a series of intrigues with
the states lying to the south of the Caucasus, with a view to induce
them to throw off their allegiance to Persia, and to place themselves
under the protectorate of Russia. All the usual Muscovite seductions and
threats were had recourse to: missions and subsidies were first
employed, then the erection of fortresses, and ultimately the
introduction of troops; and so successful were those arts that, in 1773,
Mingrelia, Imeritia, and Georgia accepted the Russian protectorate. For
twelve years Persia submitted to this unjust domination; and when at
length, in 1795, Aga Mahomed Khan attempted to recover the
Trans-Caucasian provinces, the Russians were victorious and pushed their
way still farther along the shores of the Caspian. Thus, ere the death
of Catherine, Russia was paramount all over the isthmus between the
Caspian and Black Seas, and had secured for herself the long-coveted
gate through which she was to push southwards. The advanced posts of
Persia and Turkey had been first sapped and then carried, and now Russia
was brought in contact with the main body of those empires. The ten
years’ war with Persia, which terminated in 1814 by the peace of
Gulistan, accomplished apparently little,—Russia having then fighting
enough in Europe; but during its continuance Muscovite power was
consolidated on the isthmus (the Circassians alone remaining unsubdued),
and Persia surrendered the right of having ships of war on the Caspian,
which handed over that sea to the exclusive domination of Russia. Twelve
years more, and again there was war. The treaty which closed the former
war became the occasion for commencing a new one, furnishing fresh
triumphs to Russia; and at the close of hostilities in 1828, by the
treaty of Turkomanchai, the provinces of Erivan (with the strong
fortress of that name) and Nakchivan were ceded to the Czar,—thus
extending the Muscovite frontier to the banks of the Araxes; while
possession was kept of the province of Talish beyond that river, and a
heavy indemnity (!) was exacted for the expenses of the war. To sum
up,—in the period between 1774 and 1828, Russia advanced her frontier a
thousand miles into Asia; so that the Russian regiment stationed at her
farthest frontier-post, on the western shore of the Caspian, has as
great a distance to march back to Moscow as onward to Attock on the
Indus, and is actually farther from St Petersburg than from Lahore, the
capital of the Punjaub.
Any one who has seen an empty bottle thrown into a river, will have
perceived that at first the vessel shows great repugnance to be immersed
by the fluid, and ever strives to leap towards, and keep itself buoyant
by, the air; but that at last there comes a moment when, the invading
water having fairly overbalanced the rival element, all struggle ceases,
and the vessel, losing all motive power of its own, drifts along
helplessly as if it were actually part of the engulfing stream. It was
in 1828 that this turning-point came to Persia. Prior to that time
British influence had been paramount at the Court of Teheran. Of the
state of matters before Paskewitch’s conquests, we read: “Russia has
always viewed with undisguised jealousy the ascendancy of English
influence in the councils of Persia. She has not hesitated, at different
times, to make it matter of formal complaint even that Persian troops
are commanded by English officers, clothed in English uniforms, and
supplied with English arms. In short, the whole machinery of the Persian
government is put in motion immediately or remotely by English agents
and by English influence.” How Russia has turned the tables upon us
since this was written twenty-seven years ago! Moral as well as material
causes, we are sorry to say, contributed to produce this result. It was
inevitable that the influence of Russia, with her contiguous frontier
and great military power, should one day predominate over that of
Britain in Central Asia; but it is to be regretted that we ourselves
should have furnished discreditable proofs of our inferiority. By the
treaty of Gulistan in 1814, England pledged herself that Russia should
fulfil the engagement to restore Talish; but Russia evaded doing so,
and, either from weakness or bad faith, we took no steps to compel
fulfilment of the promise. Again, at the breaking-out of the war in
1826, England was bound by treaty to assist Persia against any European
power with an army from India, or to pay an annual subsidy of £100,000;
yet England broke her pledge, on the plea that Persia had provoked the
war, although a more transparent case of wolf and lamb never existed.
Well might Mr Kaye remark of this proceeding, that “the backwardness of
England was of dubious honesty, as it doubtless was of dubious
expediency.” And Sir Harford Jones did not much exaggerate the
consequences, when he said, that by the treaty of 1828 “Persia was
delivered, bound hand and foot, to the Court of St Petersburg.”
The turning-point being passed, then began those demonstrations and
expeditions against Herat, which have since, not without reason,
occasioned us so much disquietude. To annex Herat is the most natural
object of Persian ambition, and it is at the same time one which
perfectly coincides with the views of the Russian government.
Geographically as well as politically, Herat belongs to Affghanistan, of
which it is the door. So far from being an appanage of the Shahs, it
was, under the successors of Timour, the seat of a great empire; and in
the early part of last century, the Affghans even extended their rule by
conquest over Persia. Nadir Shah, however, when he set free his country,
retaliated by capturing Herat, and planting there a Persian colony; and
though the city quickly returned into the possession of its natural
owners, the Affghan power no sooner began to decline than the Persian
monarchs cast covetous eyes upon this important frontier city. So
formidable was the Affghan power even at the commencement of the present
century, that the principal object of the treaties between our Indian
government and Persia was, that each might help the other if attacked by
the dreaded mountaineers; but the civil wars which thereafter broke into
fragments the Affghan empire, and arrayed clan against clan, and chief
against chief, not only destroyed its aggressive power, but exposed the
country to the attack of foreign arms and influence. So matters stood
when the treaty of Turkomanchai first demonstrated to the Court of
Teheran that Russia was more potent than England in Central Asia, and
that it was better policy to propitiate the former than the latter.
Accordingly, in 1832, Persia commenced preparations to attack Herat, and
a Russian officer of engineers was ready to accompany the expedition. An
early exertion of British influence succeeded in preventing the
enterprise being carried out; but just four years afterwards, in 1836,
the project was revived,—the Russian ambassador at the same time urging
the Shah to make haste, lest Britain should again interpose. Sir Henry
Ellis, who was then our envoy at the Persian court, lost no time in
apprising his government of what was in preparation, and of urging them
to take vigorous measures to frustrate the project. His own
remonstrances with the Persian government were vain; a quarrel was even
picked with him _à l’Orientale_—a horseman under his protection being
seized by the Persian Government, just as the wife of Mirza Hashem was
eighteen months ago; and, ultimately, like Mr Murray, he felt compelled
to strike his flag, and withdraw from Teheran. Meanwhile the Shah had
set out on his famous expedition against Herat, with the Russian
ambassador Simonich in his train; while Captain Vicovich, a secret agent
of the Russian government, armed with a holograph letter from the Czar,
was busily endeavouring to procure the support of the Affghan chiefs.
Fortunately, Eldred Pottinger, a young lieutenant of the Bombay
artillery, was then in Herat, and conducted the defence of the place
with a courage and ability which have immortalised his name. So
interested was Russia in this attack on Herat, that she remitted £25,000
of the debt contracted by Persia in 1828, in order that it might be
expended in fitting out the expedition, and engaged to remit the
remainder if the expedition proved successful. The Russian Embassy
accompanied the expedition, a body of Russian troops (styled
“deserters”) aided in the siege, and the assaults were led by Russian
officers. But all was in vain. From the first investment in November
1836 to the final raising of the siege in September 1837, three
desperate assaults were made upon the town, and were repulsed by the
garrison, led by the heroic Pottinger,—the assailants on one of those
occasions losing 1700 men. These bloody repulses, combined with the
appearance of a British force in the Persian Gulf, the seizure of the
island of Karrak, and a threat of active hostilities on our part, at
length led the Shah and his counsellors to abandon the enterprise.
Simultaneously with these events in Asia, the dispute arising from the
capture of the “Vixen” in the Black Sea showed the irritation subsisting
between the British and Russian Governments. And it is instructive to
note that all the time that the Russian ambassador was instigating the
Shah to attack Herat, and that Russian money, officers, and troops, were
assisting him in the enterprise, Count Nesselrode professed to agree
with the British Government as to the viciousness of the course pursued
by the Persian monarch, and affirmed that the conduct of the Russian
ambassador and agents was in opposition to his instructions! A good
illustration of the truth of Karamsin’s remark, that it is a maxim of
the Russian government to repudiate the conduct of its officers until
their project is accomplished,—thus preventing opposition until it is
too late for other governments to interfere.
Although this attempt upon Herat was foiled, it naturally occasioned our
Indian Government much disquiet; and it was with a view to strengthen
our influence in that important region that the ill-fated invasion of
Affghanistan was undertaken. Both in a political and military point of
view, the expedition was characterised by the grossest blunders; and the
disastrous retreat from Cabool only served to augment the ascendancy of
Russia at the Court of Teheran. Indeed, to so low an ebb had all other
foreign influence sunk at that court, that M. Ferrier records that,
during his residence in Persia, both British and French subjects were in
the practice of employing the good offices of the Russian ambassador, as
they knew that their own envoys were powerless at court. When war broke
out between Russia and the Allies in Europe, and troops from India were
being brought to the battle-fields of the Crimea, it was only natural
that Russia should seek to convert her ascendancy at the Persian Court
into a means of disquieting us on the side of India. Etiquette is
everything in the East, and when Asiatic governments become hostile,
they almost always choose to testify their feelings by putting a slight
on the representative of the Power whom they mean to defy. In this way
the “Mrs Hashem affair” was not so unimportant as it appears to European
eyes; and from the _animus_ displayed on this and previous occasions by
the Persian Government, it is clear that had Mr Murray continued at his
post, he would only have been subjected to fresh demands and contumely.
It was the last of a series of insults directed against the British
Government; and to those who assume it as the cause of the present war,
it is sufficient to say that not even the Persian Government regards it
in that light, or alleges it as a pretext for its attack upon
Affghanistan. The fall of Kars, in fact, threw Persia completely into
the arms of Russia; and the old design of attacking Herat and extending
Persian influence over Affghanistan was eagerly revived. It is alleged
that, in prospect of the war in Europe continuing, an arrangement had
been made by which a Russian army was to land at Astrabad, and support
the Shah in his advance towards our Indian frontier. There is much
probability in the statement; and it is certain that Persian vessels on
the Caspian assisted the Russians in conveying warlike stores for the
use of Mouravieff’s army,—thus breaking the neutrality which the Shah
professed so greatly to respect. But, leaving the conjectured connivance
between Persia and Russia during the war to be revealed at a future
time, let us look simply at the overt acts of the former Power, and
endeavour to set forth what actually occurred. With this view we must
give our readers a glimpse into Affghan politics and the state of
matters at Herat.
At the commencement of the present century, Affghanistan and Cashmere,
with parts of Khorassan and Scinde, were united under the rule of Zeeman
Shah, grandson of that Ahmed Shah who with his Affghans broke the power
of the Mahrattas at the terrible battle of Paniput in 1761. But the days
of the Dooraunee Empire were numbered, and an era of suicidal
convulsions was about to commence. Zeeman was deposed, and his brother
Mahmoud succeeded. The royal family belonged to the Suddozee tribe,
whose rivals in the state were the great clan of the Barukzees, headed
by Futteh Khan and his twenty brothers, one of the youngest of whom was
Dost Mahomed. Futteh Khan was prime-minister, and proved a _maire du
palais_ to the _roi fainéant_. In the struggles that ensued, Futteh Khan
was barbarously murdered by the Suddozees; but finally the Barukzee
brothers triumphed, and by 1823 had partitioned the country among
themselves,—Dost Mahomed, whose abilities had raised him to the foremost
place among his brethren, obtaining Cabool as his share. One corner
alone of their old empire remained to the fallen Suddozee race—namely,
the principality of Herat, to which place the deposed Mahmoud retired
with his son, Prince Kamram. The prince in due course succeeded his
father, and was ruling Herat, with one Yar Mahomed for his vizier, when
the Persians attacked the place in 1837. On Kamram’s death, the sceptre
departed from the Suddozees, and fell peaceably into the hands of the
old vizier, Yar Mahomed, who had long been the virtual ruler; and who at
his decease, a few years ago, transmitted his power to his son, Mahomed
Said—a weak and dissolute wretch, willing to barter the independence of
Herat for Persian support; but whose myrmidons, seeing him immersed in
sensuality, took advantage of his apathy so to tyrannise over the
community that all classes wished for a revolution. Persia resolved that
the revolution should come from her side; and the Persian envoy at Herat
became prime director of the enterprise. It was his custom to take a
ride of twenty or thirty miles every afternoon, returning to the city
about ten at night, the gate being regularly opened to him. On these
occasions he was escorted by about a hundred horsemen, and generally
rode towards Gorian, on the road to Meshed, the Persian capital of
Khorassan. Now, there was stationed between Gorian and Meshed, for the
purpose of keeping in check the wild Turkomans, a certain Prince Yusoof,
nephew to the departed Shah Kamram, and therefore well fitted to be the
instrument for effecting a revolution in Herat. With this prince and Esa
Khan, a chief of Herat, the Persian envoy arranged the plans for a
surprise; and when all was ready, he was joined on his ride one
afternoon by Prince Yusoof and a body of Persian cavalry. The first
quarter of the night was passed when they arrived at the gates of Herat;
and on admission being given to the envoy as usual, his escort sabred
the guard, and the Prince with his cavalry rushed in, took possession of
the city, and advanced against the Arg citadel. The besotted ruler, in
his cups, shot the servant who first reported to him that the enemy was
in the city, but at length, arousing himself, ordered a charge when it
was too late. The result was that he and all his relatives were captured
and put to death; and Prince Yusoof, a member of the royal Suddozee
race, mounted the throne of Herat. His first act was to thank the Shah
for his success, and to beg him to continue his protection and freely
command his services;—to which the Shah replied by assuring him of aid
against his present or future enemies, and informing him that all the
commanders of the Persian forces in Khorassan had been strictly enjoined
to watch over his welfare, and punish the disturbers of his dominion.[2]
It may easily be believed that Dost Mahomed of Cabool, and his brother
chiefs of the Barukzee clan, by no means relished the appearance of a
prince of the Suddozee line at Herat. The Persian Government had placed
him there as a means of establishing its influence in Affghanistan, and
as a thorn in the side of the old Ameer; and one of the prince’s first
acts was to push forward a detachment to take possession of Furrah, a
town half-way on the road to Candahar. Upon this, the Barukzee chiefs
resolved to forget their disagreements, and unite to prevent the
encroachments of the common foe. Indeed, the aspect of affairs had begun
to look menacing for the independence of Affghanistan. Not only had
Herat been revolutionised by Persian agency, but Khiva had fallen under
the domination of Persia and Russia; and the king of Bokhara was so
concerned by these menacing events, and by the increasing number of
Persian troops in Khorassan, that a letter from Bokhara (Sept. 1855)
states that “owing to his disquiet he frequently fails in going to the
Friday prayers in the Great Mosque.” Kokan, the third and remaining
state of Central Asia, was likewise apprehensive of a Muscovite attack;
and several Russian agents were reported to be wandering about in
Turkistan as petty traders, professing themselves Jews. The danger had
been early descried by the shrewd old Ameer of Cabool, who had sent a
friendly embassy and presents to the king of Khiva; but ere they arrived
the king had been killed, the Russians and Persians were in possession,
and the Affghan embassy was treated with the utmost contumely. Indeed,
the ambitious projects of the Persian government had been revealed to
himself by an offer from the Shah to aid him with money and troops
against all foreign powers, if he would consent to own the suzerainty of
Persia. Turning a deaf ear to the insidious proposal, the old Ameer sent
a trusty messenger to Mahomed Said at Herat, a short time before that
prince’s death, to warn him of his danger from Persia; but that
dissolute wretch being in his cups when the messenger arrived, ordered
his beard to be shaved, and nearly had him blown out of the mouth of a
cannon! Turning to the British, Dost Mahomed contracted with our Indian
Government a treaty of general amity, but failed to obtain from it the
guarantee which he desired for the independence of Affghanistan and
Herat.
It is manifest that the Persian government was resolved to find or make
a pretext for the actual invasion of Affghanistan. In December 1855,
when Prince Yusoof was still its obedient vassal, the Teheran _Official
Gazette_ announced the intention of the government to despatch an army
to Herat,—alleging in excuse that Dost Mahomed had made himself master
of Candahar, to the prejudice of the relatives of the deceased sirdar of
that place, Kohendil Khan (a half-brother of Dost Mahomed, who with his
family leant much to Persia), and that he meditated an attack upon
Herat. In the same article it was insinuated that these proceedings on
the part of the Dost were instigated and aided by the British
Government; nevertheless the Persian Court, following the usual
Muscovite ruse, professed its desire to maintain inviolate its position
of neutrality. In a subsequent manifesto, published before despatching
the army, the Shah represented Mr Murray’s retirement as a mere personal
misunderstanding, and explained the Herat expedition as one undertaken
at the urgent entreaty of Prince Yusoof, in order to save the place from
the threatened attack of Dost Mahomed’s forces. In refutation of these
allegations, it is sufficient to say that neither the Ameer nor a single
soldier of his had been within 200 miles of Herat, and that he had made
no preparations for such an attack. The Persian Government at the same
time announced its intention of despatching a corps of 20,000 men to
Candahar, to reinstate Kohendil Khan’s son in the government.
Last spring the Persian army commenced its march to Herat, and in due
course reached its destination. At Gorian, thirty miles to the west of
Herat, they met and cut up a body either of Affghans or of Turkoman
cavalry coming to the assistance of the menaced city. Prince Yusoof
inclined to favour the Persian cause; and with his consent the first
Persian detachment that arrived, under Sano Khan, was admitted into the
city. But the Barukzee party is strong in Herat; the Alekozee clan, to
which Yar Mahomed belonged, and of which Esa Khan is a chief, likewise
declared against the Persians; and the result was that Sano Khan was
ejected, and preparations made for a vigorous defence. Messengers were
sent to Dost Mahomed, then at Candahar, and to the British Commissioner
in Scinde, urgently entreating aid; and several successful sorties were
made, blowing up the Persian magazines, and destroying their supplies.
The defence was conducted jointly by Prince Yusoof and Esa Khan.
Meanwhile the main body of the Persian army arrived under Murad Mirza,
the commander-in-chief, raising the besieging force to 30,000 men; but
it was not till the end of August that any serious action took place. Of
the two great sects which divide the Mahomedan world, the Persians
belong to one (Sheahs) and the Affghans and Turks to the other
(Sunnees). A portion of the population of Herat, probably descendants of
the Persian colony planted by Nadir Shah, are Sheeites; and betwixt
certain chiefs of this sect and their co-religionists without, a secret
correspondence was opened; and it was concerted that about noon, when
Esa Khan and his chief officers were at prayers in the mosque, a body of
Persians should surprise and take possession of one of the gates and the
tower which commanded it. On the 29th August the attempt was made with
success, and the gate and tower were seized by a detachment of the
besieging force; but the main body remained inactive, and Esa Khan,
hastily collecting his troops, gallantly led them against the enemy. The
_mêlée_ was so confused that the Persians were unable to use their
muskets, and, overpowered by the rush of the Affghans, armed with
hanjars, were driven out with great slaughter. Being pursued by the
Affghans beyond the gates, the routed Persians suffered still more
severely, till they were carried off by a brigade sent to their rescue.
Reinforcements, however, continued to arrive to the besieging army;
intrenchments were thrown up around each gate, to make the blockade
complete; and a native eyewitness states that “the Persians built
barracks for their troops, so that there are so many buildings in the
camp that it appears to form another city rivalling Herat.” M. Buhler, a
French officer, who was sent to the camp with special recommendations
from the Shah, gave an impulse of energy to the whole army; and by his
advice the trenches were pushed far in advance, till at several points
the head of the _boyau_ was within from ten to fifteen yards of the
ditch. Discouragement began to spread in the city; provisions were
scarce; the Sheeites were deserting and taking service with the enemy;
the succours promised by Dost Mahomed were not forthcoming, and
defections were reported among the Affghan chiefs. Finding his affairs
desperate, Prince Yusoof made an attempt to escape from the city—other
accounts say he was ejected by the Affghans; and, being taken by the
Persians, was sent as a prisoner to Teheran, where he received the
pardon of the Shah.
The defence now devolved wholly upon Esa Khan, who appears to have acted
throughout with much gallantry. But it was impossible to avert the fall
of the place. By the third week of October a considerable breach had
been made at the foot of one of the numerous towers which flank the
walls of the town; but in order to reach that spot it was necessary to
carry an advanced work, which had been erected at a former time by the
advice of British officers. The Persian attacking columns, composed of
picked troops, rushed forward to the assault with intrepidity; and the
Affghans, though they stood the first shock, were soon obliged to give
way. Upon this, seeing that further resistance was impossible, Esa Khan
(25th October) surrendered, and Herat was taken possession of by the
Persians.
Nor was Herat the goal of Persian aggression. At an early period of the
siege, a Persian corps had been pushed forward to Furrah, an Affghan
town about 180 miles due south from Herat, at the point where the main
road turns eastward towards Candahar. Furrah, although surrounded by a
high earthen rampart, appears to have been captured without opposition;
and thereafter a further advance was made towards Geerishk (a town lying
between Furrah and Candahar, and within 60 miles of the latter city),
where some skirmishing took place between the Persians and the advanced
guard of the Ameer’s forces,—about 8000 of whom were stationed for the
defence of Candahar. The latest intelligence reports that the Persian
army has greatly extended itself in Affghanistan. It has pushed
southwards from Furrah, taking possession of the province of Seistan—as
well as eastwards, threatening Khelat and Candahar. And the result of
these successes, following the capture of Herat, has been to induce not
a few of the Affghan chiefs to lean to Persia as the winning side,—among
others, Sultan Mahomed, the ex-chief of Peshawur, who was caught
intriguing with the Persians against his brother the Ameer, and by the
latter was summarily ordered off to Cabool.
Independently of any treaty forbidding Persia to invade Affghanistan, it
is obvious that _the British had as clear a right to defend that country
as the Persians had to attack it_. Our aid, moreover, had been urgently
solicited by the Affghans themselves. A proclamation of war,
accordingly, was made at Calcutta, on the 1st of November; and a
fortnight afterwards a naval expedition was despatched from Bombay for
the Persian Gulf, where the island of Karrak (seized in the former war)
has been reoccupied, and the town and port of Bushire taken possession
of. In the proclamation of war (as is too commonly the case in
diplomatic documents), the reasons of common-sense and national interest
are passed over in silence; and the whole ground of hostilities is made
to rest upon the convention concluded between Colonel Sheil and the
Persian Government in January 1853—of which more anon. As it is
important to note the terms of the proclamation, we quote its principal
clauses. After referring to the convention of 1853, it proceeds as
follows:—
“By those articles the Persian Government engaged not to send troops
to Herat on any account, unless foreign troops—that is, troops from
the direction of Cabool or Candahar, or other foreign country—should
invade Herat. In the event of troops being sent, the Persian
Government engaged that the said troops should not enter the city of
Herat; and that, on the return of the foreign troops towards their own
territory, the Persian troops should be immediately withdrawn from the
neighbourhood of Herat to Persian soil.
“The Persian Government also engaged to abstain from all interference
whatsoever in the internal affairs of Herat, whether ‘in taking
possession, or occupying, or assuming the sovereignty, or governing,
except in so far as interference existed between the two parties
during the lifetime of the late Yar Mahomed.’
“And, lastly, the Persian Government engaged to relinquish all
pretension to and demand for the coinage, or the reading of the
Khootbeh, or any other acknowledgment of allegiance or subjection on
the part of the people of Herat to the government of Persia.
“It was, at the same time, stipulated that, so long as there should be
no interference of any sort whatever on the part of the British
Government in the affairs of Herat, the engagements contracted by the
Persian Government, as aforesaid, should remain in full force and
effect. On the other hand, it was agreed in the name of the British
Government, that ‘if any foreign power, such as the Affghans or
others,’ should wish to interfere with, or take possession of Herat,
the British Government, on the requisition of the Persian Ministers,
would not object to restrain such foreign power by friendly advice,
‘so that Herat might remain in its own state of independence.’
“While the British Government has faithfully and constantly adhered to
the obligations which it accepted [?] under the agreement of January
1853, the Government of Persia has manifested a deliberate and
persevering disregard of the reciprocal engagements, by which at the
same time it became bound, and is now endeavouring to subvert by force
the independence of Herat, which was the declared object of the
agreement in question.”
Herat, the proximate cause of this war, needs a word of description. The
_Times_ asks, “Where is Herat?” and as it is obvious that every year
will give the British nation a livelier interest in that part of the
world, it may be useful to give a general sketch of the locality. Let us
say, then, that Affghanistan, with its five millions of a warlike race,
intervenes like a huge quadrangular mountain-citadel between India and
Persia,—and that Herat is the only gate by which entrance can be
obtained to this citadel from the west. The lofty Suleiman range of
mountains, running parallel with the Indus, bounds Affghanistan on the
east; the still more lofty range of the Hindoo Koosh (a continuation of
the Himalayas) bounds it on the north; to the south, the sandy plains of
Beloochistan stretch between it and the sea; and on the west it is
separated from Persia by the deserts of Khorassan. Across those deserts
the only passage for an army is to be found at their north side, where
two or three routes exist more or less practicable for troops. These
routes all converge and unite as they approach the north-west angle of
Affghanistan, where stands HERAT. This city, then, is the door which
must be opened before entrance can be obtained to the quadrangular mass
of mountains, valleys, and waterless plateaus which constitute
Affghanistan. Its situation is one of great military and commercial
importance. The peaceful files of the caravan, and the dread battalions
of war, alike pass through it on their march from India to Persia, or
from Persia to India. The long camel-trains from Delhi, Mooltan, and
Lahore pass through it, bearing the merchandise of India and the
manufactures of England to the distant towns and oases of Persia and
Turkistan; and so completely is Herat a gateway of commerce that it is
called _Bunder_, or Port,—although the only sea upon which it borders
are seas of sand. The march of conquest has passed through it from time
immemorial. The cavalry-host of Timour and the disciplined army of Nadir
Shah, in their invasions of India, went and came by this route; and
though Alexander the Great, Gengis Khan, and Baber marched by Balkh, and
crossed the Hindoo Koosh immediately to the north of Cabool, the route
by Herat is the only one practicable for an army with the usual
complement of artillery. The country around Herat affords an admirable
halting-place for armies. It is a spacious plain, thirty miles long and
half as broad, once studded with villages, and still exhibiting a fair
expanse of gardens, vineyards, and corn-fields; while the Herat river
and “the bright waters of small running streams [canals?] lighten the
pleasant landscape,” and fertilise the plain. In the hamlets and gardens
around, the celebrated _attar_, or otto of roses, is manufactured; and
such is the profusion of this regal flower that Herat has been styled
the City of Roses. In the midst of the plain stands the city, now much
fallen from its olden prosperity, but still containing a population of
about fifty thousand, and destined ever to retain much wealth and
importance from lying in the track of the caravans. Its staple
commodities are silk, assafœtida, and saffron; and the principal
merchants of the place are Hindoos. Like most Asiatic towns, there is
much dirt and desolation within; yet water, that prime necessity of
Oriental life, is so abundant that almost every house has a fountain,
besides the public ones in the bazaars. The city, which forms a square,
each side of which is about a mile long, is strongly fortified for an
Eastern town, being encircled by a solid bastioned earthen wall and wet
ditch; and within there is a citadel, a square castle built of burnt
brick, elevated on a mound, sufficiently strong to constitute a
rallying-point, but incapable of separate defence. Abundant crops of
wheat and barley, and every kind of fruit known in Persia, are supplied
by the fertile region around; and though cattle are not very numerous,
there are large flocks of the broad-tailed sheep so well known and
prized in Central Asia. Thus no better camping-ground and quarters could
be found for an army; and as an intermediate station between the deserts
on the west and the Affghan mountains on the east, it is for such a
purpose invaluable. It is a vast _place d’armes_, where all assaulting
columns from the west must unite and recruit before making their final
attack upon the defences of our Indian empire. To speak in miniature, it
is just such a place as a skilful defender of India would desire to
cover with a horn-work, in order to prevent the enemy from getting
possession of a spot where they could collect their forces under cover,
and from which they could so advantageously push forward their assault
upon our interior works of defence.
“We have a garden, which is India; the walls are the fortified towns of
Tartary and Affghanistan. Let the Russians once seize them, and our
garden is theirs.” So said Sir Richmond Shakspere to the Khan of Khiva,
in language not more finely figurative than true; and M. Ferrier, the
French officer who lately wandered with the caravans throughout that
region, and who has elaborately speculated on the future of Russian and
Anglo-Indian power in the East, adds, “I believe he is right.” In the
imperial policy of Russia, designs upon India have been very long
cherished. First sighted by the genius of Peter, and first practically
contemplated by the madman Paul; talked of by Alexander and Napoleon,
and sketched out like a grand dream by the latter, the invasion of India
is a design never laid aside at the Court of St Petersburg. But apart
from the question of design, look at the mere facts. Russia is advancing
farther and farther into Asia, nearer and nearer to the bulwarks of our
Indian empire. “If we go on at this rate,” said Baron Brunow to Sir John
Hobhouse, in 1837, “the Cossack and the Sepoy will soon meet on the
banks of the Oxus.” They will so meet some day. Russia knows this, and
intends this; and it were well that the grand issue to which things are
tending should be timeously perceived in England. Nothing can stop the
progress of Russia through Central Asia,—one might as well think of
stopping the welling of a fountain or the movement of a glacier. And
before this generation pass away, Russia will have organised the forces
of Persia on her side, and be sitting in armed leaguer around our
mountain outworks of Affghanistan. For we hardly contemplate the
possibility of the British Government being so demented as to allow
these hostile powers to effect a lodgment in the Affghan territories.
When engaged in a desperate war with Great Britain in Europe, it was
most natural for Russia to seek to disquiet us on the side of India. But
even before the war, our Government had felt the serious inconveniences
resulting from the downfall of British ascendancy at the Court of
Teheran. Persia is lastingly covetous of Herat; and knowing that Russia,
now the dominant power in Central Asia, is secretly but assuredly in
favour of the project, it was with difficulty that the Shah could be
induced to keep his hands off the coveted city, or to pay ordinary
respect to our embassy, which was always on the watch to thwart him.
Rarely has the foreign policy of this country been more actively and
beneficially directed than during the nine months that Lord Malmesbury
presided at the Foreign Office; and it is to this statesman that we owe
the “convention” of January 1853, by which Persia bound herself to
abstain from attacking, occupying, or making any claim of sovereignty
over Herat. This convention was signed by the Persian Government, but
was never ratified by ours. An attempt is being now made to show that
this non-ratification is of no importance, as the convention was simply
a pledge on the part of Persia, and was duly signed by her. But this is
not true,—for it contained a reciprocal agreement on the part of the
British Government to restrain any Affghan power from attacking Herat;
therefore, not being ratified by our Government, the whole convention is
null. The question naturally arises,—_Why_ was not the treaty ratified?
The explanation of this unusual and unfortunate circumstance demands
consideration. Diplomacy often keeps secret from one generation what is
duly revealed to the next, (when the information is useless); and
probably it will ere long be known that this country was nearer a
rupture with Russia in 1852 than the public are aware of. In an article
on the Aberdeen Ministry (July 1855), we mentioned the anti-Russian
policy of Lord Derby’s Administration as a secret cause of the abrupt
overthrow of the Conservative rule. Russian influence prevented the
appointment of Lord de Redcliffe to the Foreign Office; and anecdotes
are current which indicate that the differences between the two
Governments were so great as to threaten even a warlike result. Persia,
in fact, was giving us serious provocations, and went the length of
officially announcing her intention to regard Herat as an appanage,
which she would maintain by force of arms against any Affghan power that
might contest her claim. If we are to believe M. Ferrier, a Russian
force of 5000 men was simultaneously (autumn of 1852) landed at
Astrabad, and advanced eastwards up the river Attruck (which forms the
boundary between Persia and Turkistan), and was only recalled upon an
_ultimatum_ to that effect being presented by England at St Petersburg.
At that time the British Government threatened to break off diplomatic
relations with the Court of Teheran, and directed Colonel Sheil to
intimate that hostile measures would be had recourse to in the event of
Persia making any attack upon the independence of Affghanistan. The
result of this firmness on the part of the British Government was, that
the Persian Government gave up its pretensions to Herat, and signed the
terms of treaty required by Colonel Sheil. The treaty was concluded in
January 1853, but in the preceding month a change of Ministry had taken
place in England. Lord Aberdeen and the “Coalition” had displaced Lord
Derby; and philo-Russianism and implicit faith in the word and policy of
the Czar had become the order of the day. _Therefore_, say we, the
treaty was never ratified. If there be another explanation, let it be
stated, and let blame fall upon the right shoulders. But this much is
certain, that in consequence of the non-ratification of that treaty, the
proclamation of war with Persia issued by our Government is groundless;
for it founds wholly upon a violation of that treaty, and the treaty is
utterly _null_.
When the war in Europe commenced, the Shah, flattered by Russia, saw in
it a favourable opportunity for reviving his projects against Herat and
Affghanistan; and so he plunged into the present quarrel. Despite his
professions of neutrality, the crafty Persian is said to have followed
the diplomatic and strategic counsels of the Russian Government; and
there is reason to believe that, but for the intervention of the Paris
negotiations, a Russian armament would have crossed the Caspian early in
spring, and occupied the Persian towns of Amol and Astrabad,—the goal of
the expedition being Herat. The Peace of Paris, though it stopped the
actual entrance of the Russians into Persia, allowed the Court of St
Petersburg to make a great addition to her forces on the Caspian; and at
the beginning of November, immediately after the fall of Herat, orders
were given at St Petersburg to assemble an army of 40,000 men on the
Persian frontiers. Prince Bariatinski was appointed Lieutenant-General
of the Caucasian provinces, with ampler powers than his predecessors.
All the war-steamers on the Caspian have been fully manned by the
arrival of seamen from the naval ports. The war-magazines throughout the
whole region, in part exhausted by the war, have been refilled; and it
appears that both troops and stores have of late been transported by
water to Astrabad, or the islands adjoining it. The “fiery” Chruleff
commands the _corps-d’armée_ echeloned from Bakou to Erivan, along the
verge of the Persian frontier; and as the principal weight of the
Russian armaments is accumulated in this quarter, it is to be expected
that the main intervention (if there be one) will take place from this
point. Several staff-officers have been despatched into the adjoining
Persian province of Mazanderan, to reconnoitre the passage for troops
and to draw topographical plans; and in the event of invasion, it is
designed to occupy strongly the defiles of the Caspian Gates and of
Komis, as it is by these two points that the centre of Persia can be
approached. While these preparations are in progress, the semi-official
letters from St Petersburg which appear in the Continental journals,
boast that, despite the noisy demonstrations of England, Russia, owing
to her silent preparations, will be able to take the upper hand of us in
Persia; and the Russian journal _Le Nord_ points to Persia “as a field
of battle upon which, one day or other, there will be measured the
relative strength of two great powers, which are at the same time
European and Asiatic; and where will be ultimately decided the fortunes
of Russia.”
The long-debated question as to the possibility of Russia attacking
India is now universally regarded as solved in the affirmative. Those
who once so stoutly denied it, must have been men who could not look
beyond the present hour, and conceived that the world would stand still
ever as it was in their day. Every decade of years has been removing
some difficulty which these men thought insuperable. In these days of
railways, telegraphs, and steam-navigation (of all of which Russia is
availing herself), the remaining difficulties will vanish still more
rapidly. Russia is not ready for an actual onset upon our Indian empire,
but she is both ready and willing to engage with us in warlike rivalry
for ascendancy over the intervening region of Persia, and will push
forward her Asiatic vassals against the Indian ramparts which she
herself is not yet ready to assail. The policy of Russia is a game of
centuries. She will not spring too soon; she has learnt that grand
secret of success—to wait. But waiting, with her, is not inaction; and
her approaches towards India are now sufficiently far advanced to cause
us active disquietude. She has begun in earnest to push forward her
tirailleurs against us preparatory to the pitched battle. She will
continue to throw Persia against our first parallel of defence,
Affghanistan; and, if unopposed, will carry the sap of bribery and
coercion through that mountain-rampart up to the very plains of India.
Henceforth we may look for a series of harassing attacks, increasing in
magnitude—wandering Turkomans and civilised Persians being alike pressed
into the service, until Russia descend herself into the arena, and press
the assault with all her forces. It is at present only an affair of
outposts; but such skirmishes often decide the issue of the ensuing
battle, by allowing one side or other to seize posts of vantage which
dominate over the rest of the field. Such a post is Herat; and if we do
not get the Persians quickly expelled from it, we shall give them time
to fortify and maintain it until the Russians also may arrive on the
scene,—in which case the contest around its walls would at once assume
most formidable proportions.
It is important to note the means and routes by which the Russians may
advance to Affghanistan. It has been far too much the custom of
geographers, as well as of the multitude, to regard all unknown regions
as desert. Blank expanses in maps, undotted by the tiny circles which
represent towns, we are too apt to look upon as uninhabitable solitudes,
forgetful that the ignorance of the chart-maker may have as much to do
with the matter as any want of population and fertility in the region
itself. In this way we have been accustomed, from our schooldays
upwards, to regard the whole interior of Africa as an expanse of arid
sand, whereas the recent explorations of Dr Livingstone and others show
it to be in many parts one of the most luxuriant regions of the earth.
We suspect that a larger portion of Central Asia will be found habitable
and fertile than is now believed; and we shall see immediately, on the
testimony of M. Ferrier and others, corroborated by the inductions of
common sense, that not only the routes from the Caspian to Herat, but
also those _viâ_ Khiva and the Oxus, do not lie through such arid wastes
as is commonly supposed. _Omne ignotum pro deserto_ seems to be as
common a notion in geography, as is the tendency in other sciences to
make synonymous terms of the unknown and the wonderful.
In describing the routes by which Russia is advancing towards the
mountain-portals of India, let us start from the heart of the Czar’s
empire, viz., St Petersburg and Moscow,—twin capitals, already united to
one another by railway, and soon about to be similarly united with the
western and southern frontiers of the empire. From Moscow, the ancient
and semi-Asiatic capital of Russia, the route stretches north-east to
the banks of the Volga at Nishni-Novgorod,—the water-gate to Central
Asia, and the scene of the great fair to which traders annually repair
from all parts of northern and central Asia. The projected Moscow and
Novgorod railway will encounter no engineering difficulties; for the
country is an undulating plain, diversified by low hills, none of which
rise more than five hundred feet above the sea-level. From Novgorod the
route to Asia is by water, on the broad and vast stream of the Volga,
upon which ply steamboats and craft of all kinds, in numbers already
great, and yearly increasing; and by this cheapest of all kinds of
conveyance, stores and troops are annually transported to and from the
Persian frontiers. Sixteen or seventeen hundred miles of this watery
highway, running south-eastwards, bring us to Astrakan, where the Volga
debouches into the Caspian Sea. Here a long sheet of water opens out,
extending nearly 700 miles from north to south, and varying from 100 to
250 miles in breadth. With the exception of a part of the western coast
adjoining the mouth of the Terek, the shores are said to be bold, and
the water so deep that in some places 450 fathoms will not reach the
bottom. This inland sea is in the exclusive possession of Russia. No
ship of war can sail its waters unless it bear the Russian flag. Indeed
Persia, forbidden by treaty to have armed vessels of her own in that
sea, has for a long time been compelled to invoke the assistance of the
Russian war-ships, as a means of coercing the Turkomans on the eastern
coast; the consequence of which has been, that not only the Turkomans,
but the population of the Persian provinces adjoining the Caspian, have
learnt to stand more in awe of the Russians than of their natural
rulers. The islands of the Caspian virtually belong to Russia, and two
important insular groups, one in the bay of Balkan, half-way down the
eastern side of the sea, and another in the bay of Astrabad, in the
south-eastern corner, have just been seized by the Muscovites, as if in
preparation for ulterior movements on the adjoining portions of the
mainland.
From the shores of the Caspian, Russia is preparing to advance by two
grand converging lines upon Affghanistan. Of these lines, one sets out
from the north-eastern shores of the Caspian, the other from its
south-eastern extremity. The latter, starting from Astrabad and
proceeding straight to Herat, seems to us designed for the main attack;
the former, proceeding _viâ_ Khiva and the Oxus, as a supporting
flank-movement. Along either of these lines Russian corps may make an
early advance for the purpose of skirmishing, causing disquiet, and
weakening British prestige in Affghanistan; or even, in concert with
Persia, of taking permanent possession of Herat, if we are so tardy in
our movements as to allow of her doing so. But the real attack, the
solid and deliberate charge which meditates no recoiling, will not be
made by Russia until she have converted Persia into a vassal state, and
efficiently organised her forces and resources. This she will seek to do
by keeping the Shah on the throne, but subjecting the Persian army to
Russian officers and drill, and pulling the wires of the puppet
government from St Petersburg. The accomplishment of all this by Russia
is, in our opinion, a mere question of time; and, once accomplished, it
will be found that in absorbing Persia our great Asiatic rival has most
formidably added to his strength. The Persian army at present consists
of 80,000 infantry; an artillery which, like that of all Asiatic
nations, is better than its infantry; and clouds of cavalry, that can
perform marches of sixty or seventy miles a-day for several successive
days, without inconvenience—thus being able to pass over tracts wholly
impracticable to ordinary troops, and make most effective surprises. The
raw material of the Persian army is excellent. “If regularly
disciplined,” says Sir John M‘Neill, “and led by a competent number of
European officers of intelligence and activity, there are few armies
that, in a campaign in Asia, could boast of any great superiority over
that of Persia. The men are singularly tractable, orderly, and
obedient,—active, contented, and intelligent,—capable of enduring
extraordinary fatigue and privations,—easily fed, and maintained at a
moderate cost,—by no means wanting in courage or enterprise, and capable
of perfect attachment to their officers,—in short, admirable materials
for soldiers.” Such is the Power which Russia is moulding to her
purposes,—over which she is likely immediately to get a still firmer
hold,—and which will march by her side, or as a vanguard, in her onsets
upon Affghanistan. So that, while a Russian corps advances from Astrabad
as the base of its Trans-Caspian operations, the military forces of the
Shah will advance from the heart of Persia, and both together march by
contiguous and parallel routes to Herat.
From the Caspian to Herat is a distance of not quite six hundred miles.
Part of this distance the Russians might travel by water, up the river
Goorgan, and the still larger Attruck river,—both of which fall into the
Caspian a little to the north of Astrabad, and the courses of which run
due eastwards in the direction of Herat. Independently of these routes
by water, which might be of use for nearly a third part of the way,
three parallel lines of road lead through northern Khorassan to Herat.
On all of these a scarcity of water, necessitating long marches, occurs
at some points; but they are constantly travelled by the caravans, and
have been repeatedly traversed by Persian armies and their artillery
without difficulty. We could easily accumulate testimony, from the
personal observations of Burnes, Conolly, M‘Neill, and Ferrier, to show
that the region between the Caspian and Herat is no desert, that the
food-supplies are sufficiently abundant, and the roads quite practicable
for armies; but, not to speak of more ancient cases, we think the simple
fact that Persian armies have repeatedly made the journey both backwards
and forwards within the last thirty years, renders the tendering of such
proof mere pedantry and supererogation. Let it suffice, then, to quote
the compendious affirmation of Sir John M‘Neill, who, writing from
Meshed, in the very heart of these routes, and speaking of the region to
the east of Herat as well as to the west of it, says: “The country
between the frontiers of Persia and India is far more productive than I
had imagined it to be; and I can assure your lordship there is no
impediment, either from the physical features of the country or from
deficiency of supplies, to the march of a large army from the frontiers
of Georgia to Candahar, or, as I believe, to the Indus.”
And so we reach Herat, by the main line of Russo-Persian attack. The
other line of attack by which the Russians are advancing towards
Affghanistan starts from the northern instead of the southern extremity
of the Caspian, stretching across to the Aral Sea, making Khiva and its
fertile oasis a base of operations, and thereafter ascending the great
river Oxus to Balkh,—from whence a road leads due south, crossing the
Hindoo Koosh at Bameean, to Cabool. In order to facilitate the crossing
of the steppes between the Caspian and Aral Seas, the Russians have been
slowly preparing three distinct routes for the march of troops. One of
these ascends the course of the navigable river Yemba (which falls into
the Caspian at its north-eastern corner), to a point where the river
approaches the Aral Sea; and from that point there has been dug a line
of wells, around which military colonies of Cossacks have been settled,
across the steppe to the sea. These colonies of Cossacks, says M.
Ferrier, “cultivate the surrounding soil, and create resources which
never existed before; so that in a few years an army will be able to
obtain sufficient food and forage in all their encampments, and will
reach the Aral Sea without difficulty.” To the south of this line of
wells lie two others,—one reaching from the river Ourloo Irghiz (a
tributary of the Caspian), and tending towards the northern part of the
Aral Sea; the other commencing from two points (Mangishlak and
Dash-killeh) on the eastern shore of the Caspian, and uniting half-way
in one line, which thence proceeds in the direction of Khiva, at the
southern end of the Aral Sea. On the Aral, as on the Caspian, the
Russians have already established a flotilla, which will serve to
navigate the great Oxus river,—indeed, it is said that they even have
steamers already plying upon that river. “The outposts of the Orenburg
corps,” says a Russian letter, “extend to the very extremity of the
country of Turan, upon the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes; and the military
flotilla of the Sea of Aral is brought by the above-named rivers to the
frontiers of India.” By this means the Russians will in due time advance
south-eastwards up its course,—past Bokhara, which will fall, as Khiva
has already fallen, under their domination—up to Balkh, where the Oxus
ceases to be navigable, and which they must make a _point d’appui_
before pushing southwards by the Bameean and five other more difficult
passes to Cabool. It was by these passes through the Hindoo Koosh that
Alexander, Baber, and Timour made their way into Affghanistan; but as
the armies of the two latter were chiefly composed of Tartar horse, and
that of the former had no artillery (though heavily baggaged), the
success of their invasions is no test of the practicability of this
route for a modern army; and it appears that, even if undefended, the
Bameean passes are only traversable by a force armed with light or
mountain artillery. As Russia, when she establishes herself at Balkh,
will have the whole cavalry of Khiva, Bokhara, and the Turkomanian
steppes on her side, it is obvious that the least slip made in the
defence—the least opening left in the line of the Hindoo Koosh, would in
such circumstances involve most embarrassing consequences to the
defenders. Nevertheless it is equally obvious that such a quarter is ill
suited to be made the object of the main attack, and that it is rather
to be regarded as a flank movement subsidiary to, and in support of, the
main line of Russo-Persian attack, _viâ_ Astrabad and Meshed, against
Herat.
One important object which, it seems to us, Russia has in advancing by
Khiva and the Oxus, is the power which it will confer of winning or
coercing the hardy tribes of Turkistan, which she will thus, as it were,
catch in a net between her two lines of advance. Horses, cattle, and
camels are the staple products of the region, and will thus be procured
in great abundance; while the horsemen of the steppes, greedy of gain
and fond of warlike adventure, would readily join in any enterprise
against the regions of the south. For such auxiliaries, and even for a
European corps, there is another route from the Oxus than that which
leads to the Bameean passes of the Hindoo Koosh. Instead of proceeding
all the way up the Oxus to Balkh, and thence crossing the mountains to
Cabool, this other route leaves the banks of the Oxus at Charjooee
(half-way between the Aral Sea and Balkh), and strikes due southwards by
Merv to Herat. The desert between Charjooee and Merv was crossed by
Burnes in 1832, and does not present the difficulties which he
anticipated. It is crossed almost annually by the khans of Khiva and
Bokhara, at the head of expeditions sometimes numbering ten or twelve
thousand horse; and M. Ferrier, who believes this route practicable for
an army, states, that in the winter and spring even the desert steppes
are covered with sufficient herbage to meet the requirements of an army.
From Charjooee to Merv is about 130 miles; from Merv to Herat, about
240,—in all, 370. But the difficulties of the route terminate at Merv,
where there is a well-watered oasis; and from thence the expeditionary
force could march along the banks of the Morghab river for nearly the
whole way to Herat.
Thus, while flank-attacks might be made by the passes of the Hindoo
Koosh upon Cabool, everything conspires to show that the main attack
upon Affghanistan must take place by Herat. We have already described
the importance of this place. “Herat,” said Captain Conolly,
twenty-seven years ago, “could be made a place of considerable strength.
Nothing can exceed the plenty and excellence of the supplies from the
valley; and an army might be garrisoned there for years with every
necessary within its reach.” That is just what the Russians will do with
it, if ever it falls into their power. They will establish themselves
there,—solidify their communications with the Caspian, by improving the
roads and sinking wells,—push forward the sap of bribery and fair
promises through Affghanistan, and excite disquiet and disaffection in
India, until all things are ready for the grand assault and invasion. On
the other hand, were Herat maintained by a British army, it would be
almost impossible for either Persian or Russian to win a footing in its
fertile valley. For it is one of the necessities of desert travelling,
that an army can never march in a united body. It must advance in
separate divisions, by different routes, or with intervals of one or
more days’ march between each corps, from the difficulty of maintaining
a large force at any one halting-place, and in order that the scanty
wells may have time to refill themselves. The consequence is, that were
an efficient force concentrated about Gorian, at the western extremity
of the Herat valley, it could attack the invading army with decisive
advantage as the wearied corps came up in succession, or by separate
routes, from their thirsty march through northern Khorassan.
Other topics connected with the war in Asia invite attention, and may be
treated of in a future article. It will suffice for the present to have
directed attention to the slow and sure advance of a rival European
Power towards our Indian “garden,”—to the circumstances out of which has
arisen the present war with Persia—and the immense importance of Herat
as the door of Affghanistan and key to the mountain-portals of our
Indian empire. As to the merits of the war with Persia, we have clearly
expressed ourselves. The grounds upon which our Government, in the
proclamation of war, has justified a recourse to hostilities, are quite
inadmissible; for they are founded upon a treaty which never was
ratified. But, though wrong in its plea, the British Government was
perfectly justified in having recourse to hostilities,—nay, more, it was
imperatively called upon by the interests of the empire to take such a
course. It is a strange misfortune that the treaty of 1853 was never
ratified by the Aberdeen Government, and in such circumstances it was a
grievous error of the present Government to found upon a document so
obviously null. But the grand and simple justification of hostilities
remains—namely, that apart from all conventions, if Persia choose to
attack Affghanistan, we have an equal right to act in its defence; and
that every principle of national interest concurred in urging us so to
act. It will be a sad day for our Indian empire when Persia succeeds in
establishing her power in Affghanistan.
As to the military measures of the Government, the least that we can say
is that they have failed in warding off the most pressing danger. Not
only Herat, but the whole western front of Affghanistan, embracing a
third of the entire region, is in the hands of the Persians, who are
doubtless consolidating their position there. The expedition to the
Persian Gulf is a most important movement as regards ulterior results,
but all the measures of actual defence for Affghanistan have been marked
by a dilatoriness which has rendered them fruitless. The plan of the
Government was, that a select band of officers should proceed to Herat
to aid in its defence,—and had they gained that city in time it would
have been saved; but although Herat held out much longer than was
anticipated, the Persians were masters of it before the British officers
had set out on their journey! Money and arms, too, were ordered by the
Home Government to be transmitted to Dost Mahomed, in order that he
might manœuvre to raise the siege; but so tardily was the resolution
taken that even yet no news has arrived of these supplies having reached
Candahar! The fact is, our Indian Government ought to have been left to
deal with Persia when that Power makes any attack upon Affghanistan; for
in no other way can the requisite celerity of movement be attained. An
army from the Caspian can reach Herat before the news of its starting
can reach England, and Herat be easily captured before an answer from
Downing Street be received at Bombay! In truth, even with the entire
direction of affairs committed to the Indian Government, the chances
are, that our measures of defence will be taken too late. The frontier
of the Indus is too distant from Herat to allow of our maintaining that
watch over its independence which is imperatively demanded by a regard
for the safety of India. In 1839 our army, including a short halt at
Khelat, took from the 23d February to the 25th April to march from
Shikarpoor on the Indus to Candahar—about sixty days, a period that
would suffice to bring an army to Herat from the Caspian; and other four
hundred miles intervene between Candahar and Herat. In fact, the journey
from the Indus to Herat is fully a half longer than that from Astrabad
to the same place. These facts suggest grave reflections, which we
cannot enter upon at the close of an article. But let the Government and
public of this country lay this to heart, that a Russian corps could be
landed at Astrabad, and be far on its march to Herat, before any
intelligence of the event could reach England, or even India; and that
the presence of a couple of Russian brigades, and a few engineers of the
Todleben school, could hold the earthen defences of Herat for years
against any force which we could bring against it. Even if the present
danger blow over, these are facts which demand the most earnest
attention of the Government and our military authorities.
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.—NO. I.
THE SAD FORTUNES OF THE REVEREND AMOS BARTON.
PART II.—CHAPTER V.
The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate,
was, you perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character, and
perhaps I am doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a
man who was so very far from remarkable,—a man whose virtues were not
heroic, and who had no undetected crime within his breast; who had not
the slightest mystery hanging about him, but was palpably and
unmistakably commonplace; who was not even in love, but had had that
complaint favourably many years ago. “An utterly uninteresting
character!” I think I hear a lady reader exclaim—Mrs Farthingale, for
example, who prefers the ideal in fiction; to whom tragedy means ermine
tippets, adultery, and murder; and comedy, the adventures of some
personage who is “quite a character.”
But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your
fellow-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp. At least eighty
out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last
census, are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked,
nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with
sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably
had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are
certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not
manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are
simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more
or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people—many of
them—bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the
painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows, and their sacred joys;
their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they
have mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in
their very insignificance,—in our comparison of their dim and narrow
existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which
they share?
Depend upon it, my dear lady, you would gain unspeakably if you would
learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and
the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out
through dull grey eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary
tones. In that case, I should have no fear of your not caring to know
what farther befell the Rev. Amos Barton, or of your thinking the homely
details I have to tell at all beneath your attention. As it is, you can,
if you please, decline to pursue my story farther; and you will easily
find reading more to your taste, since I learn from the newspapers that
many remarkable novels, full of striking situations, thrilling
incidents, and eloquent writing, have appeared only within the last
season.
Meanwhile, readers who have begun to feel an interest in the Rev. Amos
Barton and his wife, will be glad to learn that Mr Oldinport lent the
twenty pounds. But twenty pounds are soon exhausted when twelve are due
as back payment to the butcher, and when the possession of eight extra
sovereigns in February weather is an irresistible temptation to order a
new greatcoat. And though Mr Bridmain so far departed from the necessary
economy entailed on him by the Countess’s elegant toilette and expensive
maid, as to choose a handsome black silk, stiff, as his experienced eye
discerned, with the genuine strength of its own texture, and not with
the factitious strength of gum, and present it to Mrs Barton, in
retrieval of the accident that had occurred at his table, yet, dear
me—as every husband has heard—what is the present of a gown, when you
are deficiently furnished with the et-ceteras of apparel, and when,
moreover, there are six children whose wear and tear of clothes is
something incredible to the non-maternal mind?
Indeed, the equation of income and expenditure was offering new and
constantly accumulating difficulties to Mr and Mrs Barton; for shortly
after the birth of little Walter, Milly’s aunt, who had lived with her
ever since her marriage, had withdrawn herself, her furniture, and her
yearly income, to the household of another niece; prompted to that step,
very probably, by a slight “tiff” with the Rev. Amos, which occurred
while Milly was up-stairs, and proved one too many for the elderly
lady’s patience and magnanimity. Mr Barton’s temper was a little warm,
but, on the other hand, elderly maiden ladies are known to be
susceptible; so we will not suppose that all the blame lay on his
side—the less so, as he had every motive for humouring an inmate whose
presence kept the wolf from the door. It was now nearly a year since
Miss Jackson’s departure, and, to a fine ear, the howl of the wolf was
audibly approaching.
It was a sad thing, too, that when the last snow had melted, when the
purple and yellow crocuses were coming up in the garden, and the old
church was already half pulled down, Milly had an illness which made her
lips look pale, and rendered it absolutely necessary that she should not
exert herself for some time. Mr Brand, the Shepperton doctor so
obnoxious to Mr Pillgrim, ordered her to drink port-wine, and it was
quite necessary to have a charwoman very often, to assist Nanny in all
the extra work that fell upon her.
Mrs Hackit, who hardly ever paid a visit to any one but her oldest and
nearest neighbour Mrs Patten, now took the unusual step of calling at
the vicarage one morning; and the tears came into her unsentimental eyes
as she saw Milly seated pale and feeble in the parlour, unable to
persevere in sewing the pinafore that lay on the table beside her.
Little Dickey, a boisterous boy of five, with large pink cheeks and
sturdy legs, was having his turn to sit with Mamma, and was squatting
quiet as a mouse at her knee, holding her soft white hand between his
little red, black-nailed fists. He was a boy whom Mrs Hackit, in a
severe mood, had pronounced “stocky” (a word that etymologically, in all
probability, conveys some allusion to an instrument of punishment for
the refractory); but seeing him thus subdued into goodness, she smiled
at him with her kindest smile, and, stooping down, suggested a kiss—a
favour which Dickey resolutely declined.
“Now _do_ you take nourishing things anuff?” was one of Mrs Hackit’s
first questions, and Milly endeavoured to make it appear that no woman
was ever so much in danger of being over-fed and led into self-indulgent
habits as herself. But Mrs Hackit gathered one fact from her replies,
namely, that Mr Brand had ordered port-wine.
While this conversation was going forward, Dickey had been furtively
stroking and kissing the soft white hand; so that at last, when a pause
came, his mother said, smilingly, “Why are you kissing my hand, Dickey?”
“It id to yovely,” answered Dickey, who, you observe, was decidedly
backward in his pronunciation.
Mrs Hackit remembered this little scene in after days, and thought with
peculiar tenderness and pity of the “stocky boy.”
The next day there came a hamper with Mrs Hackit’s respects; and on
being opened, it was found to contain half-a-dozen of port-wine and two
couples of fowls. Mrs Farquhar, too, was very kind; insisted on Mrs
Barton’s rejecting all arrow-root but hers, which was genuine Indian,
and carried away Sophy and Fred to stay with her a fortnight. These and
other good-natured attentions made the trouble of Milly’s illness more
bearable; but they could not prevent it from swelling expenses, and Mr
Barton began to have serious thoughts of representing his case to a
certain charity for the relief of needy curates.
Altogether, as matters stood in Shepperton, the parishioners were more
likely to have a strong sense that the clergyman needed their material
aid, than that they needed his spiritual aid,—not the best state of
things in this age and country, where faith in men solely on the ground
of their spiritual gifts has considerably diminished, and especially
unfavourable to the influence of the Rev. Amos, whose spiritual gifts
would not have had a very commanding power even in an age of faith.
But, you ask, did not the Countess Czerlaski pay any attention to her
friends all this time? To be sure she did. She was indefatigable in
visiting her “sweet Milly,” and sitting with her for hours together; and
it may seem remarkable to you that she neither thought of taking away
any of the children, nor of providing for any of Milly’s probable wants;
but ladies of rank and of luxurious habits, you know, cannot be expected
to surmise the details of poverty. She put a great deal of
eau-de-Cologne on Mrs Barton’s pocket-handkerchief, rearranged her
pillow and footstool, kissed her cheeks, wrapped her in a soft warm
shawl from her own shoulders, and amused her with stories of the life
she had seen abroad. When Mr Barton joined them, she talked of
Tractarianism, of her determination not to re-enter the vortex of
fashionable life, and of her anxiety to see him in a sphere large enough
for his talents. Milly thought her sprightliness and affectionate warmth
quite charming, and was very fond of her; while the Rev. Amos had a
vague consciousness that he had risen into aristocratic life, and only
associated with his middle-class parishioners in a pastoral and
parenthetic manner.
However, as the days brightened, Milly’s cheeks and lips brightened too;
and in a few weeks she was almost as active as ever, though watchful
eyes might have seen that activity was not easy to her. Mrs Hackit’s
eyes were of that kind, and one day that Mr and Mrs Barton had been
dining with her for the first time since Milly’s illness, she observed
to her husband—“That poor thing’s dreadful weak an’ delicate, she won’t
stan’ havin’ many more children.”
Mr Barton, meanwhile, had been indefatigable in his vocation. He had
preached two extemporary sermons every Sunday at the workhouse, where a
room had been fitted up for divine service, pending the alterations in
the church; and had walked the same evening to a cottage at one or other
extremity of his parish to deliver another sermon, still more
extemporary, in an atmosphere impregnated with spring-flowers and
perspiration. After all these labours you will easily conceive that he
was considerably exhausted by half-past nine o’clock in the evening, and
that a supper at a friendly parishioner’s, with a glass, or even two
glasses, of brandy-and-water after it, was a welcome reinforcement. Mr
Barton was not at all an ascetic; he thought the benefits of fasting
were entirely confined to the Old Testament dispensation; he was fond of
relaxing himself with a little gossip; indeed, Miss Bond, and other
ladies of enthusiastic views, sometimes regretted that Mr Barton did not
more uninterruptedly exhibit a superiority to the things of the flesh.
Thin ladies, who take little exercise, and whose livers are not strong
enough to bear stimulants, are so extremely critical about one’s
personal habits! And, after all, the Rev. Amos never came near the
borders of a vice. His very faults were middling—he was not _very_
ungrammatical. It was not in his nature to be superlative in anything;
unless, indeed, he was superlatively middling, the quintessential
extract of mediocrity. If there was any one point on which he showed an
inclination to be excessive, it was confidence in his own shrewdness and
ability in practical matters, so that he was very full of plans which
were something like his moves in chess—admirably well calculated,
supposing the state of the case were otherwise. For example, that
notable plan of introducing anti-dissenting books into his lending
library did not in the least appear to have bruised the head of Dissent,
though it had certainly made Dissent strongly inclined to bite the Rev.
Amos’s heel. Again, he vexed the souls of his churchwardens and
influential parishioners by his fertile suggestiveness as to what it
would be well for them to do in the matter of the church repairs, and
other ecclesiastical secularities.
“I never see the like to parsons,” Mr Hackit said one day in
conversation with his brother churchwarden Mr Bond; “they’re al’ys for
meddlin’ wi’ business, an’ they know no moor about it than my black
filly.”
“Ah,” said Mr Bond, “they’re too high learnt to have much common-sense.”
“Well,” remarked Mr Hackit, in a modest and dubious tone, as if throwing
out a hypothesis which might be considered bold, “I should say that’s a
bad sort o’ eddication as makes folks onreasonable.”
So that, you perceive, Mr Barton’s popularity was in that precarious
condition, in that toppling and contingent state, in which a very slight
push from a malignant destiny would utterly upset it. That push was not
long in being given, as you shall hear.
One fine May morning, when Amos was out on his parochial visits, and the
sunlight was streaming through the bow-window of the sitting-room, where
Milly was seated at her sewing, occasionally looking up to glance at the
children playing in the garden, there came a loud rap at the door, which
she at once recognised as the Countess’s, and that well-dressed lady
presently entered the sitting-room, with her veil drawn over her face.
Milly was not at all surprised or sorry to see her; but when the
Countess threw up her veil, and showed that her eyes were red and
swollen, she was both surprised and sorry.
“What can be the matter, dear Caroline?”
Caroline threw down Jet, who gave a little yelp; then she threw her arms
round Milly’s neck, and began to sob; then she threw herself on the
sofa, and begged for a glass of water; then she threw off her bonnet and
shawl; and, by the time Milly’s imagination had exhausted itself in
conjuring up calamities, she said—
“Dear, how shall I tell you? I am the most wretched woman. To be
deceived by a brother to whom I have been so devoted—to see him
degrading himself—giving himself utterly to the dogs!”
“What can it be?” said Milly, who began to picture to herself the sober
Mr Bridmain taking to brandy and betting.
“He is going to be married—to marry my own maid, that deceitful Alice,
to whom I have been the most indulgent mistress. Did you ever hear of
anything so disgraceful? so mortifying? so disreputable?”
“And has he only just told you of it?” said Milly, who, having really
heard of worse conduct, even in her innocent life, avoided a direct
answer.
“Told me of it! he had not even the grace to do that. I went into the
dining-room suddenly and found him kissing her—disgusting at his time of
life, is it not?—and when I reproved her for allowing such liberties,
she turned round saucily, and said she was engaged to be married to my
brother, and she saw no shame in allowing him to kiss her. Edmund is a
miserable coward, you know, and looked frightened; but when she asked
him to say whether it was not so, he tried to summon up courage and say
yes. I left the room in disgust, and this morning I have been
questioning Edmund, and find that he is bent on marrying this woman, and
that he has been putting off telling me—because he was ashamed of
himself, I suppose. I couldn’t possibly stay in the house after this,
with my own maid turned mistress. And now, Milly, I am come to throw
myself on your charity for a week or two. _Will_ you take me in?”
“That we will,” said Milly, “if you will only put up with our poor rooms
and way of living. It will be delightful to have you!”
“It will soothe me to be with you and Mr Barton a little while. I feel
quite unable to go among my other friends just at present. What those
two wretched people will do I don’t know—leave the neighbourhood at
once, I hope. I entreated my brother to do so, before he disgraced
himself.”
When Amos came home, he joined his cordial welcome and sympathy to
Milly’s. By-and-by the Countess’s formidable boxes, which she had
carefully packed before her indignation drove her away from Camp Villa,
arrived at the vicarage, and were deposited in the spare bedroom, and in
two closets, not spare, which Milly emptied for their reception. A week
afterwards, the excellent apartments at Camp Villa, comprising dining
and drawing rooms, three bedrooms and a dressing-room, were again to
let, and Mr Bridmain’s sudden departure, together with the Countess
Czerlaski’s installation as a visitor at Shepperton Vicarage, became a
topic of general conversation in the neighbourhood. The keen-sighted
virtue of Millby and Shepperton saw in all this a confirmation of its
worst suspicions, and pitied the Rev. Amos Barton’s gullibility.
But when week after week, and month after month, slipped by without
witnessing the Countess’s departure—when summer and harvest had fled,
and still left her behind them occupying the spare bedroom and the
closets, and also a large proportion of Mrs Barton’s time and attention,
new surmises of a very evil kind were added to the old rumours, and
began to take the form of settled convictions in the minds even of Mr
Barton’s most friendly parishioners.
And now, here is an opportunity for an accomplished writer to
apostrophise calumny, to quote Virgil, and to show that he is acquainted
with the most ingenious things which have been said on that subject in
polite literature.
But what is opportunity to the man who can’t use it? An unfecundated
egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity. So, as my memory
is ill-furnished, and my note-book still worse, I am unable to show
myself either erudite or eloquent _à propos_ of the calumny whereof the
Rev. Amos Barton was the victim. I can only ask my reader, did you ever
upset your ink-bottle, and watch, in helpless agony, the rapid spread of
Stygian blackness over your fair manuscript or fairer table-cover? With
a like inky swiftness did gossip now blacken the reputation of the Rev.
Amos Barton, causing the unfriendly to scorn and even the friendly to
stand aloof, at a time when difficulties of another kind were fast
thickening around him.
CHAPTER VI.
One November morning, at least six months after the Countess Czerlaski
had taken up her residence at the vicarage, Mrs Hackit heard that her
neighbour Mrs Patten had an attack of her old complaint, vaguely called
“the spasms.” Accordingly, about eleven o’clock, she put on her velvet
bonnet and cloth cloak, with a long boa and a muff large enough to stow
a prize baby in; for Mrs Hackit regulated her costume by the calendar,
and brought out her furs on the first of November, whatever might be the
temperature. She was not a woman weakly to accommodate herself to
shilly-shally proceedings. If the season didn’t know what it ought to
do, Mrs Hackit did. In her best days, it was always sharp weather at
“Gunpowder Plot,” and she didn’t like new fashions.
And this morning the weather was very rationally in accordance with her
costume, for as she made her way through the fields to Cross Farm, the
yellow leaves on the hedge-girt elms, which showed bright and golden
against the low-hanging purple clouds, were being scattered across the
grassy path by the coldest of November winds. “Ah,” Mrs Hackit thought
to herself, “I dare say we shall have a sharp pinch this winter, and if
we do, I shouldn’t wonder if it takes the old lady off. They say a green
Yule makes a fat churchyard; but so does a white Yule too, for that
matter. When the stool’s rotten enough, no matter who sits on’t.”
However, on her arrival at Cross Farm, the prospect of Mrs Patten’s
decease was again thrown into the dim distance in her imagination, for
Miss Janet Gibbs met her with the news that Mrs Patten was much better,
and led her, without any preliminary announcement, to the old lady’s
bedroom. Janet had scarcely reached the end of her circumstantial
narrative how the attack came on and what were her aunt’s sensations—a
narrative to which Mrs Patten, in her neatly plaited night-cap, seemed
to listen with a contemptuous resignation to her niece’s historical
inaccuracy, contenting herself with occasionally confounding Janet by a
shake of the head—when the clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the yard
pavement announced the arrival of Mr Pillgrim, whose large, top-booted
person presently made its appearance up-stairs. He found Mrs Patten
going on so well that there was no need to look solemn. He might glide
from condolence into gossip without offence, and the temptation of
having Mrs Hackit’s ear was irresistible.
“What a disgraceful business this is turning out of your parson’s,” was
the remark with which he made this agreeable transition, throwing
himself back in the chair from which he had been leaning towards the
patient.
“Eh, dear me!” said Mrs Hackit, “disgraceful enough. I stuck to Mr
Barton as long as I could, for his wife’s sake; but I can’t countenance
such goings on. It’s hateful to see that woman coming with ’em to
service of a Sunday, and if Mr Hackit wasn’t churchwarden and I didn’t
think it wrong to forsake one’s own parish, I should go to Knebley
church. There’s a many parish’ners as do.”
“I used to think Barton was only a fool,” observed Mr Pillgrim, in a
tone which implied that he was conscious of having been weakly
charitable. “I thought he was imposed upon and led away by those people
when they first came. But that’s impossible now.”
“O, it’s as plain as the nose in your face,” said Mrs Hackit,
unreflectingly, not perceiving the equivoque in her comparison,—“coming
to Millby, like a sparrow perchin’ on a bough, as I may say, with her
brother, as she called him; and then, all on a sudden, the brother goes
off wi’ himself, and she throws herself on the Bartons. Though what
could make her take up wi’ a poor notomise of a parson, as hasn’t got
enough to keep wife and children, there’s one above knows—_I_ don’t.”
“Mr Barton may have attractions we don’t know of,” said Mr Pillgrim, who
piqued himself on a talent for sarcasm. “The Countess has no maid now,
and they say Mr Barton is handy in assisting at her toilette—laces her
boots, and so forth.”
“Tilette, be fiddled!” said Mrs Hackit, with indignant boldness of
metaphor; “an’ there’s that poor thing a-sewing her fingers to the bone
for them children—an’ another comin’ on. What she must have to go
through! It goes to my heart to turn my back on her. But she’s i’ the
wrong to let herself be put upon a’ that manner.”
“Ah! I was talking to Mrs Farquhar about that the other day. She said,
‘I think Mrs Barton a v-e-r-y w-e-a-k w-o-m-a-n.’” (Mr Pillgrim gave
this quotation with slow emphasis, as if he thought Mrs Farquhar had
uttered a remarkable sentiment.) “They find it impossible to invite her
to their house while she has that equivocal person staying with her.”
“Well!” remarked Miss Gibbs, “if I was a wife, nothing should induce me
to bear what Mrs Barton does.”
“Yes, it’s fine talking,” said Mrs Patten, from her pillow; “old maids’
husbands are al’ys well-managed. If you was a wife you’d be as foolish
as your betters, belike.”
“All my wonder is,” observed Mrs Hackit, “how the Bartons make both ends
meet. You may depend on’t she’s got nothing to give ’em; for I
understand as he’s been havin’ money from some clergy charity. They said
at first as she stuffed Mr Barton wi’ notions about her writing to the
Chancellor an’ her fine friends to give him a living. Howiver, I don’t
know what’s true an’ what’s false. Mr Barton keeps away from our house
now, for I gave him a bit o’ my mind one day. Maybe he’s ashamed of
himself. He seems to me to look dreadful thin an’ harassed of a Sunday.”
“O, he must be aware he’s getting into bad odour everywhere. The clergy
are quite disgusted with his folly. They say Carpe would be glad to get
Barton out of the curacy if he could; but he can’t do that without
coming to Shepperton himself, as Barton’s a licensed curate; and he
wouldn’t like that, I suppose.”
At this moment Mrs Patten showed signs of uneasiness, which recalled Mr
Pillgrim to professional attentions; and Mrs Hackit, observing that it
was Thursday, and she must see after the butter, said good-by, promising
to look in again soon, and bring her knitting.
This Thursday, by the by, is the first in the month—the day on which the
clerical meeting is held at Millby Vicarage; and as the Rev. Amos Barton
has reasons for not attending, he will very likely be a subject of
conversation amongst his clerical brethren. Suppose we go there, and
hear whether Mr Pillgrim has reported their opinion correctly.
There is not a numerous party to-day, for it is a season of sore throats
and catarrhs; so that the exegetical and theological discussions, which
are the preliminary of dining, have not been quite so spirited as usual;
and although a question relative to the Epistle of Jude has not been
quite cleared up, the striking of six by the church clock, and the
simultaneous announcement of dinner, are sounds that no one feels to be
importunate.
Pleasant (when one is not in the least bilious) to enter a comfortable
dining-room, where the closely-drawn red curtains glow with the double
light of fire and candle, where glass and silver are glittering on the
pure damask, and a soup-tureen gives a hint of the fragrance that will
presently rush out to inundate your hungry senses, and prepare them, by
the delicate visitation of atoms, for the keen gusto of ampler contact!
Especially if you have confidence in the dinner-giving capacity of your
host—if you know that he is not a man who entertains grovelling views of
eating and drinking as a mere satisfaction of hunger and thirst, and,
dead to all the finer influences of the palate, expects his guests to be
brilliant on ill-flavoured gravies and the cheapest Marsala. Mr Ely was
particularly worthy of such confidence, and his virtues as an Amphitryon
had probably contributed quite as much as the central situation of
Millby to the selection of his house as a clerical rendezvous. He looks
particularly graceful at the head of his table, and, indeed, on all
occasions where he acts as president or moderator—a man who seems to
listen well, and is an excellent amalgam of discrepant ingredients.
At the other end of the table, as “Vice,” sits Mr Fellowes, rector and
magistrate, a man of imposing appearance, with a mellifluous voice, and
the readiest of tongues. Mr Fellowes once obtained a living by the
persuasive charms of his conversation, and the fluency with which he
interpreted the opinions of an obese and stammering baronet, so as to
give that elderly gentleman a very pleasing perception of his own
wisdom. Mr Fellowes is a very successful man, and has the highest
character everywhere except in his own parish, where, doubtless, because
his parishioners happen to be quarrelsome people, he is always at fierce
feud with a farmer or two, a colliery proprietor, a grocer who was once
churchwarden, and a tailor who formerly officiated as clerk.
At Mr Ely’s right hand you see a very small man with a sallow and
somewhat puffy face, whose hair is brushed straight up, evidently with
the intention of giving him a height somewhat less disproportionate to
his sense of his own importance than the measure of five feet three
accorded him by an oversight of nature. This is the Rev. Archibald Duke,
a very dyspeptic and evangelical man, who takes the gloomiest view of
mankind and their prospects, and thinks the immense sale of the
“Pickwick Papers,” recently completed, one of the strongest proofs of
original sin. Unfortunately, though Mr Duke was not burdened, with a
family, his yearly expenditure was apt considerably to exceed his
income; and the unpleasant circumstances resulting from this, together
with heavy meat breakfasts, may probably have contributed to his
desponding views of the world generally.
Next to him is seated Mr Furness, a tall young man, with blond hair and
whiskers, who was plucked at Cambridge entirely owing to his genius; at
least, I know that he soon afterwards published a volume of poems, which
were considered remarkably beautiful by many young ladies of his
acquaintance. Mr Furness preached his own sermons, as any one of
tolerable critical acumen might have certified by comparing them with
his poems: in both, there was an exuberance of metaphor and simile
entirely original, and not in the least borrowed from any resemblance in
the things compared.
On Mr Furness’s left you see Mr Pugh, another young curate, of much less
marked characteristics. He had not published any poems; he had not even
been plucked; he had neat black whiskers and a pale complexion; read
prayers and a sermon twice every Sunday, and might be seen any day
sallying forth on his parochial duties in a white tie, a well-brushed
hat, a perfect suit of black, and well-polished boots—an equipment which
he probably supposed hieroglyphically to represent the spirit of
Christianity to the parishioners of Whittlecombe.
Mr Pugh’s _vis-à-vis_ is the Rev. Martin Cleves, a man about
forty—middle-sized, broad-shouldered, with a negligently tied cravat,
large irregular features, and a large head, thickly covered with lanky
brown hair. To a superficial glance, Mr Cleves is the plainest and least
clerical looking of the party; yet, strange to say, _there_ is the true
parish priest, the pastor beloved, consulted, relied on by his flock; a
clergyman who is not associated with the undertaker, but thought of as
the surest helper under a difficulty, as a monitor who is encouraging
rather than severe. Mr Cleves has the wonderful art of preaching sermons
which the wheelwright and the blacksmith can understand, not because he
talks condescending twaddle, but because he can call a spade a spade,
and knows how to disencumber ideas of their wordy frippery. Look at him
more attentively and you will see that his face is a very interesting
one—that there is a great deal of humour and feeling playing in his grey
eyes, and about the corners of his roughly cut mouth:—a man, you
observe, who has most likely sprung from the harder working section of
the middle class, and has hereditary sympathies with the checkered life
of the people. He gets together the working men in his parish on a
Monday evening, and gives them a sort of conversational lecture on
useful practical matters, telling them stories, or reading some select
passages from an agreeable book, and commenting on them; and if you were
to ask the first labourer or artisan in Tripplegate what sort of man the
parson was, he would say,—“a uncommon knowing, sensible, free-spoken
gentleman; very kind an’ good-natur’d too.” Yet for all this, he is
perhaps the best Grecian of the party, if we except Mr Baird, the young
man on his left.
Mr Baird has since gained considerable celebrity as an original writer
and metropolitan lecturer, but at that time he used to preach in a
little church something like a barn, to a congregation consisting of
three rich farmers and their servants, about fifteen labourers, and the
due proportion of women and children. The rich farmers understood him to
be “very high learnt;” but if you had interrogated them for a more
precise description, they would have said that he was “a thinnish-faced
man, with a sort o’ cast in his eye, like.”
Seven, altogether: a delightful number for a dinner party, supposing the
units to be delightful, but everything depends on that. During dinner,
Mr Fellowes took the lead in the conversation, which set strongly in the
direction of mangold-wurzel and the rotation of crops; for Mr Fellowes
and Mr Cleves cultivated their own glebes. Mr Ely, too, had some
agricultural notions, and even the Rev. Archibald Duke was made alive to
that class of mundane subjects by the possession of some potato ground.
The two young curates talked a little aside during these discussions,
which had imperfect interest for their unbeneficed minds; and the
transcendental and near-sighted Mr Baird seemed to listen somewhat
abstractedly, knowing little more of potatoes and mangold-wurzel than
that they were some form of the “Conditioned.”
“What a hobby farming is with Lord Watling!” said Mr Fellowes, when the
cloth was being drawn. “I went over his farm at Tetterley with him last
summer. It is really a model farm; first-rate dairy, grazing and wheat
land, and such splendid farm-buildings! An expensive hobby, though. He
sinks a good deal of money there, I fancy. He has a great whim for black
cattle, and he sends that drunken old Scotch bailiff of his to Scotland
every year, with hundreds in his pocket, to buy these beasts.”
“By the by,” said Mr Ely, “do you know who is the man to whom Lord
Watling has given the Bramhill living?”
“A man named Sargent. I knew him at Oxford. His brother is a lawyer, and
was very useful to Lord Watling in that ugly Brounsell affair. That’s
why Sargent got the living.”
“Sargent,” said Mr Ely. “I know him. Isn’t he a showy, talkative fellow;
has written travels in Mesopotamia, or something of that sort?”
“That’s the man.”
“He was at Witherington once, as Bagshawe’s curate. He got into rather
bad odour there, through some scandal about a flirtation, I think.”
“Talking of scandal,” returned Mr Fellowes, “have you heard the last
story about Barton? Nisbett was telling me the other day that he dines
alone with the Countess at six, while Mrs Barton is in the kitchen
acting as cook.”
“Rather an apocryphal authority, Nisbett,” said Mr Ely.
“Ah,” said Mr Cleves, with good-natured humour twinkling in his eyes,
“depend upon it, that is a corrupt version. The original text is, that
they all dined together _with_ six—meaning six children—and that Mrs
Barton is an excellent cook.”
“I wish dining alone together may be the worst of that sad business,”
said the Rev. Archibald Duke, in a tone implying that his wish was a
strong figure of speech.
“Well,” said Mr Fellowes, filling his glass and looking jocose, “Barton
is certainly either the greatest gull in existence, or he has some
cunning secret,—some philtre or other, to make himself charming in the
eyes of a fair lady. It isn’t all of us that can make conquests when our
ugliness is past its bloom.”
“The lady seemed to have made a conquest of him at the very outset,”
said Mr Ely. “I was immensely amused one night at Granby’s, when he was
telling us her story about her husband’s adventures. He said, ‘When she
told me the tale, I felt I don’t know how,—I felt it from the crown of
my head to the sole of my feet.’”
Mr Ely gave these words dramatically, imitating the Rev. Amos’s fervour
and symbolic action, and every one laughed, except Mr Duke, whose
after-dinner view of things was not apt to be jovial. He said:
“I think some of us ought to remonstrate with Mr Barton on the scandal
he is causing. He is not only imperilling his own soul, but the souls of
his flock.”
“Depend upon it,” said Mr Cleves, “there is some simple explanation of
the whole affair, if we only happened to know it. Barton has always
impressed me as a right-minded man, who has the knack of doing himself
injustice by his manner.”
“Now _I_ never liked Barton,” said Mr Fellowes. “He’s not a gentleman.
Why, he used to be on terms of intimacy with that canting Prior, who
died a little while ago;—a fellow who soaked himself with spirits, and
talked of the Gospel through an inflamed nose.”
“The Countess has given him more refined tastes, I dare say,” said Mr
Ely.
“Well,” observed Mr Cleves, “the poor fellow must have a hard pull to
get along, with his small income and large family. Let us hope the
Countess does something towards making the pot boil.”
“Not she,” said Mr Duke; “there are greater signs of poverty about them
than ever.”
“Well, come,” returned Mr Cleves, who could be caustic sometimes, and
who was not at all fond of his reverend brother Mr Duke, “that’s
something in Barton’s favour at all events. He might be poor _without_
showing signs of poverty.”
“Mr Duke turned rather yellow, which was his way of blushing, and Mr Ely
came to his relief by observing:
“They’re making a very good piece of work of Shepperton Church. Dolby,
the architect, who has it in hand, is a very clever fellow.”
“It’s he who has been doing Coppleton Church,” said Mr Furness. “They’ve
got it in excellent order for the visitation.”
This mention of the visitation suggested the Bishop, and thus opened a
wide duct, which entirely diverted the stream of animadversion from that
small pipe—that capillary vessel, the Rev. Amos Barton.
The talk of the clergy about their Bishop belongs to the esoteric part
of their profession; so we will at once quit the dining-room at Millby
Vicarage, lest we should happen to overhear remarks unsuited to the lay
understanding, and perhaps dangerous to our repose of mind.
CHAPTER VII.
I dare say the long residence of the Countess Czerlaski at Shepperton
Vicarage is very puzzling to you also, dear reader, as well as to Mr
Barton’s clerical brethren; the more so, as I hope you are not in the
least inclined to put that very evil interpretation on it which
evidently found acceptance with the sallow and dyspeptic Mr Duke, and
with the florid and highly peptic Mr Fellowes. You have seen enough, I
trust, of the Rev. Amos Barton, to be convinced that he was more apt to
fall into a blunder than into a sin—more apt to be deceived than to
incur a necessity for being deceitful: and if you have a keen eye for
physiognomy, you will have detected that the Countess Czerlaski loved
herself far too well to get entangled in an unprofitable vice.
How, then, you will say, could this fine lady choose to quarter herself
on the establishment of a poor curate, where the carpets were probably
falling into holes, where the attendance was limited to a maid of all
work, and where six children were running loose from eight o’clock in
the morning till eight o’clock in the evening? Surely you must be
misrepresenting the facts.
Heaven forbid! For not having a fertile imagination, as you perceive,
and being unable to invent thrilling incidents for your amusement, my
only merit must lie in the faithfulness with which I represent to you
the humble experience of an ordinary fellow-mortal. I wish to stir your
sympathy with commonplace troubles—to win your tears for real sorrow:
sorrow such as may live next door to you—such as walks neither in rags
nor in velvet, but in very ordinary decent apparel.
Therefore, that you may dismiss your suspicions of my veracity, I will
beg you to consider, that at the time the Countess Czerlaski left Camp
Villa in dudgeon, she had only twenty pounds in her pocket, being about
one-third of the income she possessed independently of her brother. You
will then perceive that she was in the extremely inconvenient
predicament of having quarrelled, not indeed with her bread and cheese,
but certainly with her chicken and tart—a predicament all the more
inconvenient to her, because the habit of idleness had quite unfitted
her for earning those necessary superfluities, and because, with all her
fascinations, she had not secured any enthusiastic friends whose houses
were open to her, and who were dying to see her. Thus she had completely
checkmated herself, unless she could resolve on one unpleasant
move—namely, to humble herself to her brother, and recognise his wife.
This seemed quite impossible to her as long as she entertained the hope
that he would make the first advances; and in this flattering hope she
remained month after month at Shepperton Vicarage, gracefully
overlooking the deficiencies of accommodation, and feeling that she was
really behaving charmingly. “Who, indeed,” she thought to herself,
“could do otherwise with a lovely, gentle creature like Milly? I shall
really be sorry to leave the poor thing.”
So, though she lay in bed till ten, and came down to a separate
breakfast at eleven, she kindly consented to dine as early as five, when
a hot joint was prepared, which coldly furnished forth the children’s
table the next day; she considerately prevented Milly from devoting
herself too closely to the children, by insisting on reading, talking,
and walking with her; and she even began to embroider a cap for the next
baby, which must certainly be a girl, and be named Caroline.
After the first month or two of her residence at the Vicarage, the Rev.
Amos Barton became aware—as, indeed, it was unavoidable that he
should—of the strong disapprobation it drew upon him, and the change of
feeling towards him which it was producing in his kindest parishioners.
But, in the first place, he still believed in the Countess as a charming
and influential woman, disposed to befriend him, and, in any case, he
could hardly hint departure to a lady guest who had been kind to him and
his, and who might any day spontaneously announce the termination of her
visit; in the second place, he was conscious of his own innocence, and
felt some contemptuous indignation towards people who were ready to
imagine evil of him; and, lastly, he had, as I have already intimated, a
strong will of his own, so that a certain obstinacy and defiance mingled
itself with his other feelings on the subject.
The one unpleasant consequence which was not to be evaded or
counteracted by any mere mental state, was the increasing drain on his
slender purse for household expenses, to meet which the remittance he
had received from the clerical charity threatened to be quite
inadequate. Slander may be defeated by equanimity; but courageous
thoughts will not pay your baker’s bill, and fortitude is nowhere
considered legal tender for beef. Month after month the financial aspect
of the Rev. Amos’s affairs became more and more serious to him, and
month after month, too, wore away more and more of that armour of
indignation and defiance with which he had at first defended himself
from the harsh looks of faces that were once the friendliest.
But quite the heaviest pressure of the trouble fell on Milly—on gentle,
uncomplaining Milly—whose delicate body was becoming daily less fit for
all the many things that had to be done between rising up and lying
down. At first, she thought the Countess’s visit would not last long,
and she was quite glad to incur extra exertion for the sake of making
her friend comfortable. I can hardly bear to think of all the rough work
she did with those lovely hands—all by the sly, without letting her
husband know anything about it, and husbands are not clairvoyant—how she
salted bacon, ironed shirts and cravats, put patches on patches, and
redarned darns. Then there was the task of mending and eking out baby
linen in prospect, and the problem perpetually suggesting itself how she
and Nanny _should_ manage when there was another baby, as there would be
before very many months were past.
When time glided on, and the Countess’s visit did not end, Milly was not
blind to any phase of their position. She knew of the slander; she was
aware of the keeping aloof of old friends; but these she felt almost
entirely on her husband’s account. A loving woman’s world lies within
the four walls of her own home; and it is only through her husband that
she is in any electric communication with the world beyond. Mrs Simpkins
may have looked scornfully at her, but baby crows and holds out his
little arms none the less blithely; Mrs Tomkins may have left off
calling on her, but her husband comes home none the less to receive her
care and caresses; it has been wet and gloomy out of doors to-day, but
she has looked well after the shirt buttons, has cut out baby’s
pinafores, and half finished Willy’s blouse.
So it was with Milly. She was only vexed that her husband should be
vexed—only wounded because he was misconceived. But the difficulty about
ways and means she felt in quite a different manner. Her rectitude was
alarmed lest they should have to make tradesmen wait for their money;
her motherly love dreaded the diminution of comforts for the children,
and the sense of her own failing health gave exaggerated force to these
fears.
Milly could no longer shut her eyes to the fact, that the Countess was
inconsiderate, if she did not allow herself to entertain severer
thoughts; and she began to feel that it would soon be a duty to tell her
frankly that they really could not afford to have her visit farther
prolonged. But a process was going forward in two other minds, which
ultimately saved Milly from having to perform this painful task.
In the first place, the Countess was getting weary of Shepperton—weary
of waiting for her brother’s overtures which never came; so, one fine
morning, she reflected that forgiveness was a Christian duty, that a
sister should be placable, that Mr Bridmain must feel the need of her
advice, to which he had been accustomed for three years, and that very
likely “that woman” didn’t make the poor man happy. In this amiable
frame of mind she wrote a very affectionate appeal, and addressed it to
Mr Bridmain, through his banker.
Another mind that was being wrought up to a climax was Nanny’s, the maid
of all work, who had a warm heart and a still warmer temper. Nanny
adored her mistress: she had been heard to say, that she was “ready to
kiss the ground as the missis trod on;” and Walter, she considered, was
_her_ baby, of whom she was as jealous as a lover. But she had from the
first very slight admiration for the Countess Czerlaski. That lady, from
Nanny’s point of view, was a personage always “drawed out i’ fine
clothes,” the chief result of whose existence was to cause additional
bed-making, carrying of hot water, laying of table-cloths and cooking of
dinners. It was a perpetually heightening “aggravation” to Nanny that
she and her mistress had to “slave” more than ever, because there was
this fine lady in the house.
“An’ she pays nothin’ for’t neither,” observed Nanny to Mr Jacob Tomms,
a young gentleman in the tailoring line, who occasionally—simply out of
a taste for dialogue—looked into the vicarage kitchen of an evening. “I
know the master’s shorter o’ money than iver, an’ it maks no end o’
difference i’ th’ housekeepin’—her bein’ here, besides bein’ obliged to
have a charwoman constant.”
“There’s fine stories i’ the village about her,” said Mr Tomms. “They
say as Muster Barton’s great wi’ her, or else she’d niver stop here.”
“Then they say a passill o’ lies, an’ you ought to be ashamed to goo an’
tell ’em o’er again. Do _you_ think as the master as has got a wife like
the missis, ‘ud goo runnin’ arter a stuck up piece o’ goods like that
Countess, as isn’t fit to black the missis’s shoes? I’m none so fond o’
the master, but I know better on him nor that.”
“Well, I didn’t b’lieve it,” said Mr Tomms, humbly.
“B’lieve it? you’d ha’ been a ninny if yer did. An’ she’s a nasty stingy
thing, that Countess. She’s niver giv me a sixpence or an old rag
either, sin’ here she’s been. A-lyin’ a bed an’ a-comin’ down to
breakfast when other folks wants their dinner!”
If such was the state of Nanny’s mind as early as the end of August,
when this dialogue with Mr Tomms occurred, you may imagine what it must
have been by the beginning of November, and that at that time a very
slight spark might any day cause the long smouldering anger to flame
forth in open indignation.
That spark happened to fall the very morning that Mrs Hackit paid the
visit to Mrs Patten, recorded in the last chapter. Nanny’s dislike of
the Countess extended to the innocent dog Jet, whom she “couldn’t a-bear
to see made a fuss wi’ like a Christian. An’ the little ouzle must be
washed, too, ivery Saturday, as if there wasn’t children enoo to wash,
wi’out washin’ dogs.”
Now this particular morning it happened that Milly was quite too poorly
to get up, and Mr Barton observed to Nanny, on going out, that he would
call and tell Mr Brand to come. These circumstances were already enough
to make Nanny anxious and susceptible. But the Countess, comfortably
ignorant of them, came down as usual about eleven o’clock to her
separate breakfast, which stood ready for her at that hour in the
parlour; the kettle singing on the hob that she might make her own tea.
There was a little jug of cream, taken according to custom from last
night’s milk, and specially saved for the Countess’s breakfast. Jet
always awaited his mistress at her bedroom door, and it was her habit to
carry him down stairs.
“Now, my little Jet,” she said, putting him down gently on the
hearth-rug, “you shall have a nice, nice breakfast.”
Jet indicated that he thought that observation extremely pertinent and
well-timed, by immediately raising himself on his hind-legs, and the
Countess emptied the cream-jug into the saucer. Now there was usually a
small jug of milk standing on the tray by the side of the cream, and
destined for Jet’s breakfast, but this morning Nanny, being “moithered,”
had forgotten that part of the arrangements, so that when the Countess
had made her tea, she perceived there was no second jug, and rang the
bell. Nanny appeared, looking very red and heated—the fact was, she had
been “doing up” the kitchen fire, and that is a sort of work which by no
means conduces to blandness of temper.
“Nanny, you have forgotten Jet’s milk; will you bring me some more
cream, please?”
This was just a little too much for Nanny’s forbearance.
“Yes, I dare say. Here am I wi’ my hands full o’ the children an’ the
dinner, and missis ill a-bed, and Mr Brand a-comin’; and I must run o’er
the village to get more cream, because you’ve giv it to that nasty
little blackamoor.”
“Is Mrs Barton ill?”
“Ill—yes—I should think she _is_ ill, an’ much you care. She’s likely to
be ill, moithered as _she_ is from mornin’ to night, wi’ folks as had
better be elsewhere.”
“What do you mean by behaving in this way?”
“Mean? Why, I mean as the missis is a slavin’ her life out an’ a-sittin’
up o’ nights, for folks as are better able to wait of _her_, i’stid o’
lyin’ a-bed an’ doin’ nothin’ all the blessed day, but mek work.”
“Leave the room, and don’t be insolent.”
“Insolent! I’d better be insolent than like what some folks is,—a-livin’
on other folks, an’ bringin’ a bad name on ’em into the bargain.”
Here Nanny flung out of the room, leaving the lady to digest this
unexpected breakfast at her leisure.
The Countess was stunned for a few minutes, but when she began to recall
Nanny’s words, there was no possibility of avoiding very unpleasant
conclusions from them, or of failing to see her position at the Vicarage
in an entirely new light. The interpretation too of Nanny’s allusion to
a “bad name” did not lie out of the reach of the Countess’s imagination,
and she saw the necessity of quitting Shepperton without delay. Still,
she would like to wait for her brother’s letter—no—she would ask Milly
to forward it to her—still better, she would go at once to London,
inquire her brother’s address at his banker’s, and go to see him without
preliminary.
She went up to Milly’s room, and, after kisses and inquiries, said—“I
find, on consideration, dear Milly, from the letter I had yesterday,
that I must bid you good-by and go up to London at once. But you must
not let me leave you ill, you naughty thing.”
“O no,” said Milly, who felt as if a load had been taken off her back,
“I shall be very well in an hour or two. Indeed, I’m much better now.
You will want me to help you to pack. But you won’t go for two or three
days?”
“Yes, I must go to-morrow. But I shall not let you help me pack, so
don’t entertain any unreasonable projects, but lie still. Mr Brand is
coming, Nanny says.”
The news was not an unpleasant surprise to Mr Barton when he came home,
though he was able to express more regret at the idea of parting than
Milly could summon to her lips. He retained more of his original feeling
for the Countess than Milly did, for women never betray themselves to
men as they do to each other; and the Rev. Amos had not a keen instinct
for character. But he felt that he was being relieved from a difficulty,
and in the way that was easiest for him. Neither he nor Milly suspected
that it was Nanny who had cut the knot for them, for the Countess took
care to give no sign on that subject. As for Nanny, she was perfectly
aware of the relation between cause and effect in the affair, and
secretly chuckled over her outburst of “sauce,” as the best morning’s
work she had ever done.
So on Friday morning, a fly was seen standing at the Vicarage gate, with
the Countess’s boxes packed upon it; and presently that lady herself was
seen getting into the vehicle. After a last shake of the hand to Mr
Barton, and last kisses to Milly and the children, the door was closed;
and as the fly rolled off, the little party at the Vicarage gate caught
a last glimpse of the handsome Countess leaning and waving kisses from
the carriage window. Jet’s little black phiz was also seen, and
doubtless he had his thoughts and feelings on the occasion, but he kept
them strictly within his own bosom.
The schoolmistress opposite witnessed this departure, and lost no time
in telling it to the schoolmaster, who again communicated the news to
the landlord of “The Jolly Colliers,” at the close of the morning
school-hours. Nanny poured the joyful tidings into the ear of Mr
Farquhar’s footman, who happened to call with a letter, and Mr Brand
carried them to all the patients he visited that morning, after calling
on Mrs Barton. So that before Sunday, it was very generally known in
Shepperton parish, that the Countess Czerlaski had left the Vicarage.
The Countess had left, but alas! the bills she had contributed to swell
still remained; so did the exiguity of the children’s clothing, which
also was partly an indirect consequence of her presence; and so, too,
did the coolness and alienation in the parishioners, which could not at
once vanish before the fact of her departure. The Rev. Amos was not
exculpated—the past was not expunged. But, what was worse than all,
Milly’s health gave frequent cause for alarm, and the prospect of baby’s
birth was overshadowed by more than the usual fears. The birth came
prematurely, about six weeks after the Countess’s departure, but Mr
Brand gave favourable reports to all inquirers on the following day,
which was Saturday. On Sunday, after morning service, Mrs Hackit called
at the Vicarage to inquire how Mrs Barton was, and was invited up-stairs
to see her. Milly lay placid and lovely in her feebleness, and held out
her hand to Mrs Hackit with a beaming smile. It was very pleasant to her
to see her old friend unreserved and cordial once more. The seven
months’ baby was very tiny and very red, but “handsome is that handsome
does,”—he was pronounced to be “doing well,” and Mrs Hackit went home
gladdened at heart to think that the perilous hour was over.
CHAPTER VIII.
The following Wednesday, when Mr and Mrs Hackit were seated comfortably
by their bright hearth, enjoying the long afternoon afforded by an early
dinner, Rachel, the housemaid, came in and said—
“If you please ‘m, the shepherd says, have you heard as Mrs Barton’s
wuss, and not expected to live?”
Mrs Hackit turned pale, and hurried out to question the shepherd, who,
she found, had heard the sad news at an alehouse in the village. Mr
Hackit followed her out and said, “Thee’dst better have the pony-chaise,
and go directly.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Hackit, too much overcome to utter any exclamations.
“Rachel, come an’ help me on wi’ my things.”
When her husband was wrapping her cloak round her feet in the
pony-chaise, she said—
“If I don’t come home to-night, I shall send back the pony-chaise, and
you’ll know I’m wanted there.”
“Yes, yes.”
It was a bright frosty day, and by the time Mrs Hackit arrived at the
Vicarage, the sun was near its setting. There was a carriage and pair
standing at the gate, which she recognised as Dr Madeley’s, the
physician from Rotherby. She entered at the kitchen door, that she might
avoid knocking, and quietly question Nanny. No one was in the kitchen,
but, passing on, she saw the sitting-room door open, and Nanny, with
Walter in her arms, removing the knives and forks, which had been laid
for dinner three hours ago.
“Master says he can’t eat no dinner,” was Nanny’s first word. “He’s
never tasted nothin’ sin’ yesterday mornin’, but a cup o’ tea.”
“When was your missis took worse?”
“O’ Monday night. They sent for Dr Madeley i’ the middle o’ the day
yesterday, an’ he’s here again now.”
“Is the baby alive?”
“No, it died last night. The children’s all at Mrs Bond’s. She came and
took ’em away last night, but the master says they must be fetched soon.
He’s up-stairs now, wi’ Dr Madeley and Mr Brand.”
At this moment Mrs Hackit heard the sound of a heavy, slow foot, in the
passage; and presently Amos Barton entered, with dry despairing eyes,
haggard and unshaven. He expected to find the sitting-room as he left
it, with nothing to meet his eyes but Milly’s work-basket in the corner
of the sofa, and the children’s toys overturned in the bow-window. But
when he saw Mrs Hackit come towards him with answering sorrow in her
face, the pent-up fountain of tears was opened; he threw himself on the
sofa, hid his face, and sobbed aloud.
“Bear up, Mr Barton,” Mrs Hackit ventured to say at last, “bear up for
the sake o’ them dear children.”
“The children,” said Amos, starting up. “They must be sent for. Some one
must fetch them. Milly will want to......”
He couldn’t finish the sentence, but Mrs Hackit understood him and said,
“I’ll send the man with the pony-carriage for ’em.”
She went out to give the order, and encountered Dr Madeley and Mr Brand,
who were just going.
Mr Brand said: “I am very glad to see you are here, Mrs Hackit. No time
must be lost in sending for the children. Mrs Barton wants to see them.”
“Do you quite give her up, then?”
“She can hardly live through the night. She begged us to tell her how
long she had to live; and then asked for the children.”
The pony-carriage was sent; and Mrs Hackit, returning to Mr Barton, said
she should like to go up-stairs now. He went up-stairs with her and
opened the door. The chamber fronted the west; the sun was just setting,
and the red light fell full upon the bed, where Milly lay with the hand
of death visibly upon her. The feather-bed had been removed, and she lay
low on a mattress with her head slightly raised by pillows. Her long
fair neck seemed to be struggling with a painful effort; her features
were pallid and pinched, and her eyes were closed. There was no one in
the room but the nurse, and the mistress of the free school, who had
come to give her help from the beginning of the change.
Amos and Mrs Hackit stood beside the bed, and Milly opened her eyes.
“My darling, Mrs Hackit is come to see you.”
Milly smiled and looked at her with that strange, far-off look which
belongs to ebbing life.
“Are the children coming?” she said, painfully.
“Yes, they will be here directly.”
She closed her eyes again.
Presently the pony-carriage was heard; and Amos, motioning to Mrs Hackit
to follow him, left the room. On their way down stairs, she suggested
that the carriage should remain to take them away again afterwards, and
Amos assented.
There they stood in the melancholy sitting-room—the five sweet children,
from Patty to Chubby—all, with their mother’s eyes—all, except Patty,
looking up with a vague fear at their father as he entered. Patty
understood the great sorrow that was come upon them, and tried to check
her sobs as she heard her papa’s footsteps.
“My children,” said Amos, taking Chubby in his arms, “God is going to
take away your dear mamma from us. She wants to see you to say good-by.
You must try to be very good and not cry.”
He could say no more, but turned round to see if Nanny was there with
Walter, and then led the way up-stairs, leading Dickey with the other
hand. Mrs Hackit followed with Sophy and Patty, and then came Nanny with
Walter and Fred.
It seemed as if Milly had heard the little footsteps on the stairs, for
when Amos entered her eyes were wide open, eagerly looking towards the
door. They all stood by the bedside—Amos nearest to her, holding Chubby
and Dickey. But she motioned for Patty to come first, and clasping the
poor pale child by the hand, said,—
“Patty, I’m going away from you. Love your papa. Comfort him; and take
care of your little brothers and sisters. God will help you.”
Patty stood perfectly quiet, and said, “Yes, mamma.”
The mother motioned with her pallid lips for the dear child to lean
towards her and kiss her; and then Patty’s great anguish overcame her,
and she burst into sobs. Amos drew her towards him and pressed her head
gently to him, while Milly beckoned Fred and Sophy, and said to them,
more faintly:—
“Patty will try to be your mamma when I am gone, my darlings. You will
be good, and not vex her.”
They leaned towards her, and she stroked their fair heads, and kissed
their tear-stained cheeks. They cried because mamma was ill and papa
looked so unhappy; but they thought, perhaps next week things would be
as they used to be again.
The little ones were lifted on the bed to kiss her. Little Walter said,
“Mamma, mamma,” and stretched out his fat arms and smiled; and Chubby
seemed gravely wondering; but Dickey, who had been looking fixedly at
her, with lip hanging down, ever since he came into the room, now seemed
suddenly pierced with the idea that mamma was going away somewhere; his
little heart swelled, and he cried aloud.
Then Mrs Hackit and Nanny took them all away. Patty at first begged to
stay at home and not go to Mrs Bond’s again; but when Nanny reminded her
that she had better go to take care of the younger ones, she submitted
at once, and they were all packed in the pony-carriage once more.
Milly kept her eyes shut for some time after the children were gone.
Amos had sunk on his knees, and was holding her hand while he watched
her face. By-and-by she opened her eyes, and, drawing him close to her,
whispered slowly,
“My dear—dear—husband—you have been—very—good to me. You—have—made
me—very—happy.”
She spoke no more for many hours. They watched her breathing becoming
more and more difficult, until evening deepened into night, and until
midnight was past. About half-past twelve she seemed to be trying to
speak, and they leaned to catch her words.
“Music—music—didn’t you hear it?”
Amos knelt by the bed, and held her hand in his. He did not believe in
his sorrow. It was a bad dream. He did not know when she was gone. But
Mr Brand, whom Mrs Hackit had sent for before twelve o’clock, thinking
that Mr Barton might probably need his help, now came up to him and
said,—
“She feels no more pain now. Come, my dear sir, come with me.”
“She isn’t _dead_?” shrieked the poor desolate man, struggling to shake
off Mr Brand, who had taken him by the arm. But his weary, weakened
frame was not equal to resistance, and he was dragged out of the room.
CHAPTER IX.
They laid her in the grave—the sweet mother with her baby in her
arms—while the Christmas snow lay thick upon the graves. It was Mr
Cleves who buried her. On the first news of Mr Barton’s calamity, he had
ridden over from Tripplegate to beg that he might be made of some use,
and his silent grasp of Amos’s hand had penetrated like the painful
thrill of life-recovering warmth to the poor benumbed heart of the
stricken man.
The snow lay thick upon the graves, and the day was cold and dreary; but
there was many a sad eye watching that black procession as it passed
from the vicarage to the church, and from the church to the open grave.
There were men and women standing in that churchyard who had bandied
vulgar jests about their pastor, and who had lightly charged him with
sin; but now, when they saw him following the coffin, pale and haggard,
he was consecrated anew by his great sorrow, and they looked at him with
respectful pity.
All the children were there, for Amos had willed it so, thinking that
some dim memory of that sacred moment might remain even with little
Walter, and link itself with what he would hear of his sweet mother in
after years. He himself led Patty and Dickey; then came Sophy and Fred;
Mr Brand had begged to carry Chubby, and Nanny followed with Walter.
They made a circle round the grave while the coffin was being lowered.
Patty alone of all the children felt that mamma was in that coffin, and
that a new and sadder life had begun for papa and herself. She was pale
and trembling, but she clasped his hand more firmly as the coffin went
down, and gave no sob. Fred and Sophy, though they were only two and
three years younger, and though they had seen mamma in her coffin,
seemed to themselves to be looking at some strange show. They had not
learned to decipher that terrible handwriting of human destiny, illness
and death. Dickey had rebelled against his black clothes, until he was
told that it would be naughty to mamma not to put them on, when he at
once submitted; and now, though he had heard Nanny say that mamma was in
heaven, he had a vague notion that she would come home again to-morrow,
and say he had been a good boy, and let him empty her workbox. He stood
close to his father, with great rosy cheeks and wide open blue eyes,
looking first up at Mr Cleves and then down at the coffin, and thinking
he and Chubby would play at that, when they got home.
The burial was over, and Amos turned with his children to re-enter the
house—the house where, an hour ago, Milly’s dear body lay, where the
windows were half-darkened, and sorrow seemed to have a hallowed
precinct for itself, shut out from the world. But now she was gone; the
broad snow-reflected daylight was in all the rooms; the Vicarage again
seemed part of the common working-day world, and Amos, for the first
time, felt that he was alone—that day after day, month after month, year
after year, would have to be lived through without Milly’s love. Spring
would come, and she would not be there; summer, and she would not be
there; and he would never have her again with him by the fireside in the
long evenings. The seasons all seemed irksome to his thoughts; and how
dreary the sunshiny days that would be sure to come! She was gone from
him; and he could never show her his love any more, never make up for
omissions in the past by filling future days with tenderness.
O the anguish of that thought, that we can never atone to our dead for
the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to
their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to
that sacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest
thing God had given us to know!
Amos Barton had been an affectionate husband, and while Milly was with
him, he was never visited by the thought that perhaps his sympathy with
her was not quick and watchful enough; but now he re-lived all their
life together, with that terrible keenness of memory and imagination
which bereavement gives, and he felt as if his very love needed a pardon
for its poverty and selfishness.
No outward solace could counteract the bitterness of this inward woe.
But outward solace came. Cold faces looked kind again, and parishioners
turned over in their minds what they could best do to help their pastor.
Mr Oldinport wrote to express his sympathy, and enclosed another
twenty-pound note, begging that he might be permitted to contribute in
this way to the relief of Mr Barton’s mind from pecuniary anxieties,
under the pressure of a grief which all his parishioners must share; and
offering his interest towards placing the two eldest girls in a school
expressly founded for clergymen’s daughters. Mr Cleves succeeded in
collecting thirty pounds among his richer clerical brethren, and, adding
ten pounds himself, sent the sum to Amos, with the kindest and most
delicate words of Christian fellowship and manly friendship. Miss
Jackson forgot old grievances, and came to stay some months with Milly’s
children, bringing such material aid as she could spare from her small
income. These were substantial helps, which relieved Amos from the
pressure of his money difficulties; and the friendly attentions, the
kind pressure of the hand, the cordial looks he met with everywhere in
his parish, made him feel that the fatal frost which had settled on his
pastoral duties, during the Countess’s residence at the Vicarage, was
completely thawed, and that the hearts of his parishioners were once
more open to him.
No one breathed the Countess’s name now; for Milly’s memory hallowed her
husband, as of old the place was hallowed on which an angel from God had
alighted.
When the spring came, Mrs Hackit begged that she might have Dickey to
stay with her, and great was the enlargement of Dickey’s experience from
that visit. Every morning he was allowed—being well wrapped up as to his
chest, by Mrs Hackit’s own hands, but very bare and red as to his
legs—to run loose in the cow and poultry yard, to persecute the
turkey-cock by satirical imitations of his gobble-gobble, and to put
difficult questions to the groom as to the reasons why horses had four
legs, and other transcendental matters. Then Mr Hackit would take Dickey
up on horseback when he rode round his farm, and Mrs Hackit had a large
plumcake in, cut ready to meet incidental attacks of hunger. So that
Dickey had considerably modified his views as to the desirability of Mrs
Hackit’s kisses.
The Miss Farquhars made particular pets of Fred and Sophy, to whom they
undertook to give lessons twice a-week in writing and geography; and Mrs
Farquhar devised many treats for the little ones. Patty’s treat was to
stay at home, or walk about with her papa; and when he sat by the fire
in an evening, after the other children were gone to bed, she would
bring a stool, and placing it against his feet, would sit down upon it
and lean her head against his knee. Then his hand would rest on that
fair head, and he would feel that Milly’s love was not quite gone out of
his life.
So the time wore on till it was May again, and the church was quite
finished and reopened in all its new splendour, and Mr Barton was
devoting himself with more vigour than ever to his parochial duties. But
one morning—it was a very bright morning, and evil tidings sometimes
like to fly in the finest weather—there came a letter for Mr Barton,
addressed in the Vicar’s handwriting. Amos opened it with some
anxiety—somehow or other he had a presentiment of evil. The letter
contained the announcement that Mr Carpe had resolved on coming to
reside at Shepperton, and that, consequently, in six months from that
time Mr Barton’s duties as curate in that parish would be closed.
O, it was hard! Just when Shepperton had become the place where he most
wished to stay—where he had friends who knew his sorrows—where he lived
close to Milly’s grave. To part from that grave seemed like parting with
Milly a second time; for Amos was one who clung to all the material
links between his mind and the past. His imagination was not vivid, and
required the stimulus of some actual perception.
It roused some bitter feeling, too, to think that Mr Carpe’s wish to
reside at Shepperton was merely a pretext for removing Mr Barton, in
order that he might ultimately give the curacy of Shepperton to his own
brother-in-law, who was known to be wanting a new position.
Still, it must be borne; and the painful business of seeking another
curacy must be set about without loss of time. After the lapse of some
months, Amos was obliged to renounce the hope of getting one at all near
Shepperton, and he at length resigned himself to accepting one in a
distant county. The parish was in a large manufacturing town, where his
walks would lie among noisy streets and dingy alleys, and where the
children would have no garden to play in, no pleasant farmhouses to
visit.
It was another blow inflicted on the bruised man.
CHAPTER X.
At length the dreaded week was come, when Amos and his children must
leave Shepperton. There was general regret among the parishioners at his
departure: not that any one of them thought his spiritual gifts
pre-eminent, or was conscious of great edification from his ministry.
But his recent troubles had called out their better sympathies, and that
is always a source of love. Amos failed to touch the spring of goodness
by his sermons, but he touched it effectually by his sorrows; and there
was now a real bond between him and his flock.
“My heart aches for them poor motherless children,” said Mrs Hackit to
her husband, “a-goin’ among strangers, an’ into a nasty town, where
there’s no good victuals to be had, and you must pay dear to get bad
‘uns.”
Mrs Hackit had a vague notion of a town-life as a combination of dirty
backyards, measly pork, and dingy linen.
The same sort of sympathy was strong among the poorer class of
parishioners. Old stiff-jointed Mr Tozer, who was still able to earn a
little by gardening “jobs,” stopped Mrs Cramp, the charwoman, on her way
home from the Vicarage, where she had been helping Nanny to pack up the
day before the departure, and inquired very particularly into Mr
Barton’s prospects.
“Ah, poor mon,” he was heard to say, “I am surry fur ’im. He hedn’t much
here, but he’ll be wuss off theer. Half a loaf’s better nor ne’er ‘un.”
The sad good-byes had all been said before that last evening; and after
all the packing was done and all the arrangements were made, Amos felt
the oppression of that blank interval in which one has nothing left to
think of but the dreary future—the separation from the loved and
familiar, and the chilling entrance on the new and strange. In every
parting there is an image of death.
Soon after ten o’clock, when he had sent Nanny to bed, that she might
have a good night’s rest before the fatigues of the morrow, he stole
softly out to pay a last visit to Milly’s grave. It was a moonless
night, but the sky was thick with stars, and their light was enough to
show that the grass had grown long on the grave, and that there was a
tombstone telling in bright letters on a dark ground, that beneath were
deposited the remains of Amelia, the beloved wife of Amos Barton, who
died in the thirty-fifth year of her age, leaving a husband and six
children to lament her loss. The final words of the inscription were,
“Thy will be done.”
The husband was now advancing towards the dear mound from which he was
so soon to be parted, perhaps for ever. He stood a few minutes reading
over and over again the words on the tombstone, as if to assure himself
that all the happy and unhappy past was a reality. For love is
frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that
encroach by little and little on the dominion of grief, and it makes
efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish.
Gradually, as his eye dwelt on the words, “Amelia, the beloved wife,”
the waves of feeling swelled within his soul, and he threw himself on
the grave, clasping it with his arms and kissing the cold turf.
“Milly, Milly, dost thou hear me? I didn’t love thee enough—I wasn’t
tender enough to thee—but I think of it all now.”
The sobs came and choked his utterance, and the warm tears fell.
CONCLUSION.
Only once again in his life has Amos Barton visited Milly’s grave. It
was in the calm and softened light of an autumnal afternoon, and he was
not alone. He held on his arm a young woman, with a sweet, grave face,
which strongly recalled the expression of Mrs Barton’s, but was less
lovely in form and colour. She was about thirty, but there were some
premature lines round her mouth and eyes, which told of early anxiety.
Amos himself was much changed. His thin circlet of hair was nearly
white, and his walk was no longer firm and upright. But his glance was
calm, and even cheerful, and his neat linen told of a woman’s care.
Milly didn’t take all her love from the earth when she died. She had
left some of it in Patty’s heart.
All the other children were now grown up, and had gone their several
ways. Dickey, you will be glad to hear, had shown remarkable talents as
an engineer. His cheeks are still ruddy, in spite of mixed mathematics,
and his eyes are still large and blue; but in other respects his person
would present no marks of identification for his friend Mrs Hackit, if
she were to see him; especially now that her eyes must be grown very
dim, with the wear of more than twenty additional years. He is nearly
six feet high, and has a proportionately broad chest; he wears
spectacles, and rubs his large white hands through a mass of shaggy
brown hair. But I am sure you have no doubt that Mr Richard Barton is a
thoroughly good fellow, as well as a man of talent, and you will be glad
any day to shake hands with him, for his own sake as well as his
mother’s.
Patty alone remains by her father’s side, and makes the evening sunshine
of his life.
TICKET-OF-LEAVE.
A LETTER TO IRENÆUS.
_Christmas Eve, 1856._
My dear Irenæus,—A merry Yule-tide, and may the young year use you as
well as the old ones, and so you will do very well! So you did not ask
me to eat my Christmas dinner with you; yours is strictly a family
party. The Rector, and the Rose and rose-buds of Devon, and a spinster
cousin of yours, a kind of benignant Banshee of your house, who comes to
light not when any one is going to die, but whenever all the members of
your family are going to live—particularly well: kissed under the
mistletoe like the rest, and blushing like the evening when the Reverend
Celsus unbends so far as to acknowledge that relic of heathendom, the
wicked parasitical plant with which the fair god Balder was slain. Well,
Irenæus, an old bachelor at Christmas is not much unlike the mistletoe;
he cannot live by himself; has no roots of his own, and must find some
family oak to fix himself upon. He cannot dine drearily in his rooms, or
sulk at his club on Christmas day: he must turn parasite for the nonce;
and then it is his duty like the mistletoe to promote the fun as much as
possible. Irenæus, if no eyes but thine were destined to look at this
page, I might tell thee where I ate my Christmas dinner, but my letter
is peculiarly circumstanced. There is a grave old lady called Maga
looking over my shoulder while I write, and I am obliged to be
circumspect in consequence. But if I could have eaten two Christmas
dinners, as young ladies in town go to two or even more balls of a
night, I certainly should like to have eaten my second with you; or had
I the power to divide myself, my wraith or double should have sat down
with you, uninvited as Banquo’s ghost, but rather more cheerfully; that
is, if a wraith or double possesses digestive organs, and organs capable
of digesting a Christmas dinner. Howbeit I can picture in imagination
the cheerfulness of your fireside; the delighted scream of the children
at the blazing pudding, puzzled to know how they were to eat fire,
especially with a grandpapa whose name implies that he is not a
fire-eater himself, although I suspect him of being so in spite of his
name;—the blind man’s buff and hunt-the-slipper with Irenæus obliged to
pay forfeit and remove a taper from a basin of water with his mouth; the
Christmas tree, that prettiest of all modern importations from Germany,
like many other pretty things a little dangerous, liable to set people
a-fire—hung round with the gifts which the little ones believe came from
the Babe of Bethlehem; and when the little ones are gone to bed, the
quiet rubber in the corner, which Irenæus has on principle, because the
Puritans think cards wicked at all times, and especially on Christmas
day; not that he cares much about it himself, for he only plays for
postage stamps. I know that Christmas is a good time with you, Irenæus,
not coming, but come; like that Christmas of the heathen Romans—
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest’s din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within.
When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the fire-brands close;
When the girls are wearing baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows.
Might not Macaulay have said that the girls were also shaping beaux in
their imaginations? Forgive me—but on such a subject and at such a time,
the saturnalia of our year—even a pun is pardonable, however despicable
in itself. How strange is the power of suggestion! I meant not when I
sat down to write, to wish you more than the compliments of the season,
but I see now that I am in for a long letter, and so are you. I do not
mean to cross it, and thus you will have no excuse for not reading it
through. “The good logs of Algidus” have suggested to me your wood-fire,
the very poetry of fires, and your wood-fire has suggested your
wood-cutter, and your wood-cutter has suggested a ticket-of-leave man;
and as I have been thinking somewhat lately on this subject of
tickets-of-leave, I by these presents take you by the button, and compel
you to listen to the matter of my ruminations, even as that eternal
gossip detained Horace, when he was walking in the sacred road
“according to his wont.” I still think your experiment with regard to
that man a dangerous one. Had you been a preserver of game, you would
have done better to have made him a gamekeeper, on the principle of “set
a thief to catch a thief,” as he got into trouble by poaching with
aggravations. The most sensible proposition I have seen yet, with regard
to ticket-of-leave men, was that of some speaker at a country public
dinner, who proposed that they should be made policemen. No other scheme
has appeared to me to hold water in the slightest degree. You get a
parcel of jail-birds together, till their cage or “jug,” as it is
affectionately called by the fraternity, is inconveniently full. In
order to relieve its superabundance, you select the mildest specimens,
or those who appear so to the chaplain, clip a feather of their wings
and let them fly again about society at large, forgetting that a clipt
feather will soon grow again. You give them a ticket-of-leave—to be at
large, and they naturally give a large interpretation to the term, so
that a ticket-of-leave has become like an indulgence in the worst times
of Popery, the principal difference being that those who granted
indulgences were wise enough to get paid for them beforehand, while
those who grant tickets-of-leave are fools enough to do it for nothing,
and earn into the bargain the maledictions of all timid old gentlemen,
and the anathemas of all elderly ladies, if elderly ladies be ever
sufficiently unguarded to utter anathemas, as the Council of Trent did.
The other day poor Mrs Seacole, of Crimean memory,
“Spake a bitter jest”
in the court of bankruptcy, and asked for her ticket-of-leave, adding
that she did not mean to garotte any one in consequence; it being
generally understood that a ticket-of-leave would be interpreted by the
public to be a license to garotte with impunity, giving a sacred or
_sacrosanct_ character to the bearer, like that of a Briton with a
Foreign Office passport, an ancient Roman tribune or a modern Swiss
idiot, the latter two classes of people licensed to make themselves
disagreeable to others to any extent within or without reasonable
bounds. We have all heard of _Le spectre rouge_, and how it has
frightened the French people from their impropriety, bending their necks
to the stern yoke of absolutism. The same honourable position appears to
be occupied now in England by the spectre denominated Ticket-of-leave.
Oh, for the brush of a limner that I might portray him, as he is
portrayed to the imagination of Materfamilias Tomkins, whose husband is
a worthy clerk in the City, and has to walk every evening to a
white-washed cottage at Bow, running the gauntlet of all the
white-washed blackguards of Whitechapel on the road to it! I claim no
originality in wishing for a limner’s brush to eke out the weakness of
my words, the conceit is as old as Anacreon. I naturally turn as a model
to that ode in which the poet apostrophises his mistress—
Ἄγε Ζωγράφων ἄριστε
Γράφε Ζωγράφων ἄριστε
Τεχνοκοίρανε ῥόδειε
Ἀπεοῦσαν ὡς ἂν εἴπω
Γράφε τὴν ἐμὴν ἑταίραν,
with questionable compliment, calling upon the _best animal painter_,
the Landseer of Samos, to paint her according to description in her
absence. But I find as I read on, that the glorifications of feminine
loveliness can scarcely be paraphrased so as to do for Bill Sykes. Here
is one that will serve my purpose better, addressed to some graceless
youth of the poet’s acquaintance, I mean the Ode to Bathyllus. I suppose
a confederate speaking to the painter or photographer, though a case not
likely to happen, in fact, unless he wished to turn Queen’s evidence.
Ἐἰς Βάθυλλον.
Γράφε μοι Βάθυλλον οὕτω
Τὸν ἑταῖρον ὡς διδάσκω
Λιπαρὰς κόμας ποίησον
Τὰ μὲν ἔνδοθεν μελαίνας,
Τὰ δ’ ες ἄκρον ἡλιωσας
Ἕλικας δ’ ἐλαυθέρους μοι
Πλοκάμων, ἀτακτα συνθεὶς,
Ἄφες, ὡς θέλωσι, κεῖσθαι
Απαλὸν δὲ καὶ δροσῶδες
Στεφέτω μέτωπον, ὀφρὺς
Κυανωτέρη δρακόντων.
Μέλας ὄμμα γοργὸν ἔστω,
Κεκερασμένον γαλήνῃ*
Τὸ μὲν ἐξ Ἄρηος ἕλκον
Το δε τῆς καλῆς Κυθήρης
Ἵνα τις τὸ μὲν φοβῆται
Τὸ δ’ ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος κρεμᾶται.
Ῥοδίνην δ’, ὁποια μῆλον
Χνοΐην ποίει παρειήυ*
Ερυθημά δ’ ὡς ἄν Αἰδοῦς
(Λύνασαι) πάλιν ποίησον.
Τὸ δὲ χεῖλος, οὐκ ἔτ’ οἶδα
Τίνι μοι τροπῳ ποιήσεις * *
Ἁπαλὸν, γέμοντε πειθοῦς ——
Τὸ δὲ πᾶν, ὁ κηρὸς αὐτὸς
Ἐχέτω λαλῶν σιωπῇ.
Μετὰ δὲ πρόσωπον ἔστω
Τὸν Ἀδώνιδος παρελθὼν,
Ἐλεφάντινος τράχηλος.
Μεταμάζιον δε ποίει
Δίδυμάς τε χεῖρας Ἑρμοῦ;
Πολυδεύκεος δε μηροὺς
Λιονυσίην δὲ νηδύν.
* * *
Φθονερηὺ ἔχεις δὲ τέχνηυ,
Ὅτι μὴ τὰ νῶτα δεῖξαι,
Δύνασαι* τὰ δ’ ἦν ἀμείνω.
Τί πόδας με δεῖ δί δάσκειν;
Λάβε μισθὸν, ὅσσον εἴπῃς.
Τὸν Ἐκηβόλον δὲ τοῦτον
Καθελὼν, ποίει Βάθυλλον.
Ὅτε δ’ ἐς Σαμου ποτ’ ἐλθης
Γράφε Φοῖβον ἐκ Βαθύλλον.
ON BILL SYKES.
(After Anacreon.)
Paint me, Cruikshank, Doyle, or Leech,
Sykes, my pal, as now I teach.
Paint his hair, smut-black and sleek,
Methodistically meek,
Sheared as round a beechen bowl
On the temples; at the pole,
Topknot like a blacking-brush
Which no comb shall tear or crush;
So the porcupine his quill
Droops or upright sets at will.
Paint a clammy forehead now
Heavy, villanously low;
Eyebrows like a coat threadbare;
Eyelids innocent of hair,
Proof against the grease of bear.
Goggle eyes of sullen glare,
Overspread with oily calm
When he sings the prison-psalm;
Piglike in their want of passion;
Catlike in their hue and fashion;
Which to some suggest resistance,
And to some respectful distance.
With his cheek if art can grapple,
Paint it like a stale pine-apple,
Blotched, and mountainous and yellow,
Never blushing (trust the fellow)
Save when liquor spreads the rose
Sidewards from his blushing nose.
Deeply in your medium dip
When you paint the blubber lip,
Mute, yet eloquent of sin,
Blistered with sulphuric gin.
Paint a bloated figure-head,
As found drowned in Thames’ bed.
Let a flashy kerchief deck
Hippopotamus’s neck.
Paint a chest, the dread of Peelers,
Paint his vice-like, vicious feelers,
Paint his legs, short, bowed, and staunch;
Paint a bacchanalian paunch,
Pity that you cannot turn,
Paint at once both stem and stern;
With those pockets, which in doubt
Beaks and traps turn inside out,
Keeping snugly under hatches
Centrebits, and files and matches,
Crowbars, keys and all the things
Good for opening locks and springs.
Paint me last those high-low’d feet
Wary of policeman’s beat.
When you’ve finished my commission,
Take it to the Exhibition.
Surely their _Hanging_ Committee
Must on William Sykes take pity,
Else you might break in by night
And unfix some city knight,
Some lock-jawed pre-Raphaelite,
Some interior, landscape, plan,
“Portrait of a gentleman.”
So may soar in pride of place
Our Bill Sykes’s gallows face,
Not transported, but in fine
Hung precisely on the line.
But, in sober earnest, I think the portrait of Ticket-of-leave, if it
appeared on the walls of the Royal Academy, might produce unpleasant
consequences to ladies in an interesting condition, as happened when
Æschylus brusquely exhibited his Eumenides at Athens, so great a horror
has been engendered in the public mind by the creature’s _late_
misdoings. The word “ticket” was not in very good odour before, between
pawnbrokers’ tickets and lottery tickets. But it was only disreputable;
now it has become formidable. People will ask tremblingly for tickets of
leave for admission to lectures, concerts, and the opera. They will
fancy that every person travelling by railroad in possession of his
ticket, bears also a ticket-of-leave; and should the omnibus companies
adopt them, as in Paris, they will certainly prove fatal to their
traffic. Joking apart, I am not sorry, for some reasons, for this panic
and its causes. It serves to explode, with other things that have
occurred of late, the bubbles of progress and human perfectibility. The
other day we were almost argued into a belief in universal peace, and we
have been disenchanted by a war as barbaric as any that has been waged
before in pomp and circumstance. Now people are beginning to grow sick
of the humanity-hobby, and to allow that after all there are some worse
remedies for moral disease than honest hanging. Calcraft is likely to
have his declining years consoled by an increasing reverence for his
profession, and even to be looked upon in the end as a most
indispensable member of society. The “London Scoundrel,” if his language
was as unobjectionable as his real meaning, has a chance of finding an
echo in the popular heart, for the sovereign people has as much
objection as any other monarch to have its prerogatives invaded by
having its gullet compressed, or its ten-pound house burglariously
entered. Domitian fell when he began to be an object of terror to the
cobblers, and so, it is to be hoped, will that modern Domitian, the
ticket-of-leave man. He has at length succeeded in moving the masses,
and the masses will come down on his head and crush him. Things were,
indeed, come to a pretty pass. It required almost court interest to get
hanged, and to get transported for life nearly as much as would suffice
to get a subordinate clerkship in the Treasury. The judges seemed to
have got universally bitten with the mania for lecturing, and a lecture
from the bench was the panacea for all weaknesses which endangered or
destroyed the lives and properties of peaceable subjects. Sent to jail,
the prisoner was petted, and every encouragement given him to renew his
visit. In the severest light, he was only looked upon as a patient, put
upon the moral sick-list, and dieted with the same care and tenderness
that patients are in the best regulated hospitals, so that there was
often rather more trouble in getting him out than there was in getting
him in. Not that matters are very much mended as yet. Notwithstanding
the feeding and the petting, there are a class of _detenus_ who, like
spirited footmen, do not much like indoor work, or too much of it at one
time. A craving for physical and intellectual exercise impels them to
seek for means of release. Their trump cards in playing this trick are
the chaplain and the doctor, or both, one after the other. The king and
queen are played, and then to follow suit out comes the knave. Bill
Sykes is contrite, avows that his late course of life is a warning to
him, carefully stifles oaths unutterable, before uttered in conversation
with the chaplain, the king of hearts. Chaplain pleads for his release,
and half believes that he will go to the Antipodes, if he goes at all,
only as a missionary. Doctor, an old woman, of course, and so of the
feminine gender, the queen of hearts, feels his pulse, looks at his
tongue, thinks prison-fare, confinement, and early hours are destroying
his constitution and affecting his spirits. Doctor advises change of air
and scene for the invalid, and so the patient leaves the hospital. A
month afterwards back he comes again, being taken ill of a burglary,
committed in delicate health at twelve o’clock on a night in January,
and maliciously reported by the people in his own neighbourhood to be a
dangerous character, albeit in official estimation a saintly
valetudinarian.[3]
In the days of our fathers the ends of justice were defeated by making
the punishments for crime not so much too heavy as too indiscriminating.
Now they are defeated not so much by being too light as also by being
too indiscriminating. Yet given the proper amount of discrimination, and
they would still carry a little extra weight with advantage. The great
mistake is in regarding the offence and not the offender. The adage that
one man may steal an ox, while another is hanged for looking over the
hedge, is an illustration of our criminal code as applied in past and
present times.
During the Great Exhibition, a gentleman of good family got into a
passion with a policeman who attempted to stop his horses, most probably
adding some of the insolence of office, and cut him over the face with
his whip. His offence was grave, but without malice prepense. The
magistrate sent him to prison, and treated him like a common felon; and
the newspapers eulogised the bright example of equal justice to rich and
poor, and adjudged the administrator of the law a place in history
beside Judge Gascoyne, who committed the king’s son. But in their
intercourse with the professional ruffian, the skins of “unboiled
lobsters” are not rated at so high a figure. Then they do not appear in
the light of inviolable tribunes of the people. Some time ago I
recollect reading of a wretch called Cannon, who infested Southwark, and
was the bugbear of the street in which he lived by a habit he had of
butting the passers-by with his head like a bull, establishing, by the
terror of his name, a Cannon Street of his own on the Surrey side of the
water. This Minotaur, often convicted, nearly killed a policeman in the
execution of his duty, and evidently intended to do it outright. He was
neither hanged nor transported, and so trivial was his sentence that it
is the only circumstance of the case which has faded from my memory.
There was a yet more flagrant case the other day. It is so choice a
morceau to illustrate my position, that I have copied it
circumstantially, if not verbatim, from the _Times_.
MIDDLESEX SESSIONS. _Before the Assistant-Judge at the Guildhall,
Westminster._
Mary Horrigan, 17, and John Regan, 24 (lady first, gentleman
afterwards), were indicted for unlawfully (!) assaulting and beating
William Thorne, a constable of the Metropolitan force, whilst in the
execution of his duty; and the prisoner Regan was further indicted for
unlawfully assaulting and wounding George Anderson. The circumstances
were these. Regan went to light his dudheen (he is an Emerald-Islander
from his name) at the shop of Mr Bills, fishmonger, 27 Great _Wild
Street_, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields; Anderson (probably a Northerner), the
fishmonger’s assistant, being engaged very properly in sweeping the
shop. He went outside with the sawdust, and the Hibernian hit him on the
mouth. Next day Regan, still unsatisfied, came again and brought a
shillelah; Anderson dodged the shillelah; and then Regan hit him on the
mouth again with his fist. Thorne, the policeman, who was on duty near,
was called in; Regan came in without being called, and Anderson, being
at home, naturally followed, Regan observing to him in strong language,
“I’ll have your life before 12 o’clock to-night; you had better get the
police to watch, for your life is in my hands.” Upon this Thorne, _who
knew the antecedents_ of the Regan, went to the station-house for more
power, and returned to Wild Street with P. C. Williams, 133 F. They saw
the Regan in Lincoln Street flourishing his sapling in one hand and a
big knife in the other, apparently prepared for all emergencies. He was
heard to exclaim that he would have the something’s life, and that he
should like to see the policeman who would dare to take him. Thorne said
that he would venture to attempt it, and caught hold of his
shillelah-arm, when Regan made a pass at him with the knife, saying,
“There, take a bit of cold steel.” _The knife passed through his
great-coat, but fortunately coming in contact with one of the metal
buttons of the under coat, was bent._ The Regan gave a fiendish howl,
calling to some one to go and fetch Mike. Enter the Horrigan, a nymph
doubtless inferior in reputation to the general run of her sisters of
the sister isle, armed with a brindled bull-terrier, who answered to the
abbreviation of the archangel’s name. She did not merely set him but
threw him at P. C. Williams, who was helping Thorne to pacify the Regan.
The dog seized Williams by the leg and forced him to let go the other
brute, and Thorne was knocked down and kicked; the frail prisoner
encouraging his male assailants to “give it him.” In the affray the
prisoners _were rescued by a large crowd of companions_. The dog bit
Thorne’s leg several times before he could get away. How these wild
beasts were caught at last does not appear. The Saxon jury found
Horrigan guilty of a _common_ assault, and the Regan of all the counts.
What was the sentence? Did the Assistant-Judge put on the black cap and
condemn Regan to hang by the neck till he was dead, and Horrigan to be
whipped and put to bed? Not a bit of it. He did not do much, but he
_said_ a great deal. He was bitten, like Sir Robert Peel, with the
lecturing mania.
“The assistant Judge said that the prisoner Regan was a most dangerous
character (a new light having dawned upon him); for within the last six
years he had been convicted no less than _nine_ times for assaults on
the police, and he had been dealt with by magistrates (very mild ones)
in summary convictions; he had aimed a blow at the policeman with a
knife (fact), which had providentially (very proper) been stopped by a
button (bathos), or there could be but little doubt that it would have
penetrated the flesh (knives will do so), and caused the man to drop
down dead (another possibility approaching to probability), in which
case he would have been tried (certainly) and hanged for murder (by no
means so certainly.) Such offences must be visited with a long
imprisonment (a little stronger), and he therefore sentenced him to
_imprisonment and hard labour for eighteen calendar_ (not lunar)
_months_. As the Jury (gentle jury) had only found Horrigan guilty of a
_common_ assault (a little sarcastic), he should sentence her to
imprisonment (poor caged dove!) for _four_ months (three times four make
twelve, and twelve months a year, and seventeen years Miss Horrigan’s
life; so that, should she expire at the expiration of her term, a
one-and-fortieth portion of her valuable life will have to pass in
_duresse_. Poor Miss Horrigan!)”
I suppose I need not tell you, Irenæus, that the parentheses are my own.
The magistrate made a proper distinction between sauce for the goose and
sauce for the gander; but he did not spice it highly enough for either.
He should have kept a rod in pickle for the woman, and the man he should
certainly have promoted to the post of honour _par excellence_. Among
certain savages people change names as the Germans drink brotherhood, by
way of compliment. I do not know the name of the assistant Judge; but I
think yours, Irenæus, would suit him to a nicety, and you had better
take his. On the part of those who execute and administer the law, this
tenderness towards malefactors is more intelligible than it is in the
case of other members of society. Were the abolition of the police force
voted by public acclamation to-morrow, each man agreeing to watch for
himself over his own person and property, and at liberty to do justice
to any extent on all aggressors, there is no doubt about it that all
crime would quickly cease, as the criminals are, after all, a ridiculous
minority of the people, as may be judged by the statistics of the
memorable 10th of April 1848, when the peace-keepers mustered as ten to
one to the peace-disturbers; and this is one great argument in favour of
an unpaid magistracy and an unpaid constabulary. In Guernsey, where, to
the best of my knowledge—and I speak from information gained many years
ago—the police functions are undertaken by _amateurs_, no such outrages
on person or property are ever heard of. It was even a dangerous matter
then to attempt a comparatively innocent lark in a place where any one
convicted of breaking a lamp had to pay for all the lamps broken since
the last conviction, and where some of our party nearly frightened to
death, or to taking a fishing-boat to France in stormy weather, a
fellow-undergraduate—who had broken a lamp by accident, while engaged in
the edifying amusement of displacing the lamp-covers—by forging a
summons from the Royal Court of Guernsey, with “God save the Queen” in
large letters at the bottom. We were nearly overdoing the joke, for our
friend was on the way to the Royal Court to make a clean breast of it;
and when we told him we had concocted the summons ourselves, he was for
some time too frightened to believe it, and might have implicated the
whole party. It must be borne in mind that the abolition of a criminal
population would lead to an economical outcry for the abolition of all
paid magistrates and paid policemen, and we cannot expect that a _class_
of men will take pains to destroy their own body, although such conduct
is not unheard of in individuals. It is only on such a principle that we
can account for the existence in the heart of our civilisation of that
_imperium in imperio_—the _kleptocracy_ of England—the definite number
of thousands of convicted thieves at large, somewhat outnumbering, I
believe, the legislative body of Athenian citizens, all “known to the
police,” and yet living in perfect security under the wing and eyes of
the law, until they commit some fresh escapade. Surely it is nonsense to
talk of _habeas corpus_ in reference to these gentry. We expect too much
of human nature. We expect men-catchers as a body to be more
disinterested than rat-catchers. And rat-catchers, it is well known,
have a habit of transferring the rodential population of one barn to
another, that they may get another job. This is quite enough to account
for the ticket-of-leave system.
We have probably the finest detective police in the world; the trouble
they take in tracing crime, and bringing it home to the offender, is
scarcely credible to any one who does not know the facts, or has not
read Dickens’s masterly sketches of their proceedings. The detective,
like a stanch huntsman, runs his fox to earth, digs him out, bags him,
but then bolts him for another run. Thus the same fox, like the carted
deer, will serve for many days’ sport, and perhaps grow old in the
service, and get to enjoy the chase as much as those who pursue him. The
public, however, have begun to grow rather weary of this fun, crying
“what is sport to you is death to us,” and adopting the _ultima ratio_
of writing letters to the _Times_ and other newspapers, proposing
ingenious plans for self-defence, and even retaliation,—some of them
likely to be considered by the mealy-mouthed as a little bordering on
the diabolical. For instance, one correspondent of the _Morning Post_
proposes that persons going about London or its suburbs by night, should
wear an _antigarotte_ collar, on the principle of the collars worn by
sheep-dogs in the Pyrenees to protect them from wolves; the said collar
to be set round with barbed fish-hooks, which will fix themselves under
the epidermis of the human boa constrictor’s hands when he attempts to
throttle, and the said fish-hooks to be previously prepared by taking
them to the nearest dissecting-room, and steeping them in some
decomposed subject, so that the garotter will be certain to die under
the poison, as occasionally happens to medical students who unwarily
prick their fingers in dissection. A correspondent of the _Times_, more
mild in disposition, advises holding the chin tight to the chest and
shouting for the police (who of course are in the area-kitchen below,
but too well occupied to hear). Another, more practical, recommends that
a wrestling dodge should be tried on the garotter, the patient throwing
back his right leg, and entwining it with that of the operator, who will
thus be thrown on his back, with the patient above him, to work his will
on him. Another suggests to the consideration of athletic persons like
you, Irenæus, the possibility of catching the arm of the operator, and
holding it tight, bending the back and throwing him over the head of the
intended victim, breaking his back against the flags, if possible, in
the fall. Another suggests wearing hob-nailed boots, and shin-kicking;
another, of Levantine propensities, a dirk in the sleeve. I wonder that
none of them has suggested, on the principle of setting a thief to catch
a thief, the dog-fancier. I would buy the ugliest procurable bull-dog,
crossed in one generation with a terrier, faithful and stanch, and sure
to make his teeth meet in the calf of any aggressor. It is pleasanter to
get rough work done for one than to do it oneself. That Mike who figured
in our police report, would be exactly the fellow for us; the only fear
is, that he would recognise his older master in the garotter, and as the
Saxons treated Napoleon at Leipsic, go over to the enemy in the crisis
of action.
With respect to burglars, it is really time, now that one policeman has
been convicted of burglary, for the public to take the law into their
own hands. It has been done in one or two instances, where we would
least expect it, by the softer sex. One young lady having found the head
of a man poking through the shutter, diminished it, as the classics
would say, with a crowbar; another, rather too precipitous, and without
asking “wha it is at my bower door?” shot her unexpected sweetheart, not
named Finlay, in mistake for the expected cracksman. Chains, bolts, and
locks are of little use, except to make a noise. Bells are troublesome
for the servants to put up, and give false alarms in windy nights. I
propose three things. A little dog, a big dog, and a revolver. The
little dog to wake the big one, who sleeps soundly, especially after
dinner, and the big dog to wake the many-mouthed barker, and assist in a
scuffle, if a scuffle ensues. As a further precaution, I would suggest
some rather unintelligible notice, such as “burglars decimated on these
premises,” large enough to be read by moonlight; if in Runic characters,
so much the better, for crime is naturally superstitious. Timid persons
might act in this way, but bolder ones might sit up in ambush, place
some plate on the hall table, and leave a window temptingly open,
trusting to their accuracy of fire to give a good account of the
intruder, when once in their power. As I observed before, the interest
the constabulary and magistracy take in the preservation, propagation,
and general encouragement of blackguards is perfectly intelligible; it
would be even more so if, like the preservers of game, they had a
_battue_ for their amusement once in a way; but much less intelligible
to me is the interest that the humanitarians and model-prison people
take in the same direction. Those persons who are for reforming the
human race, should reflect that we all want reform more or less, and
efforts of that kind are much more likely to be successful with the
simply vicious, like nineteen in every twenty of us, than with the
wholly criminal. But benevolence must be eccentric to gain a hearing in
Exeter Hall. As Thomas Carlyle justly observes in his Latter Day
pamphlets, these jail-sweepings are the worst possible investment for
benevolence. These people might as well invest their money in coaches to
oppose the rail, but that in simply worldly matters they are far more
sagacious. But it is intolerable that they should exercise their
Promethean philanthropic turn to the detriment of society at large,
furnishing a premium on crime, and putting it into the heads of quiet
Dorsetshire labourers that it pays better to break the law and get into
Pentonville prison, than to attempt to support a wife and family by
honest labour on twelve shillings a-week. A “Dorsetshire labourer,”
writing to the _Times_, has discovered that the _detenus_ (I use the
polite French word) in that Model prison get each for the sum of his
rations for fifteen months 213 pounds of beef, 248 pounds of mutton, 81
pounds of beef-shins for soup, and for luncheons and _severe teas_ no
less than 655 mutton chops, 432 pints of porter, extra allowance. How
these figures would have made the mouths of our poor heroes in the
Crimea water, whom we were starving while we petted our criminals! What
a frightful expenditure of honest stolid oxen, and innocent sheep and
lambs, and sound wholesome malt, on dishonest men, ox-like only in their
stolidity, sheepish only in their hypocrisy, and committing positive
sacrilege while they unappreciatingly imbibed the heavy-wet which
furnishes thews and sinews to the ploughman or the artisan! What a
holocaust of God’s creatures offered on the altar of his enemy! The
bread of affliction and the water of affliction is the proper diet for
these worthies, not _bœuf à-la-mode_, or _cotelettes à la jardinière_,
or Barclay and Perkins’ extra stout. Why did they not do the thing well
at once, and order them rations of Burgundy, venison, and turtle? They
might by these means make them too aldermanic to commit any of the more
active crimes again, especially if the treadmill be abolished, and
thereby benefit society; whereas by only going half-way they merely keep
them in good condition, good working order for committing fresh
offences. And any parsimony is unaccountable, considering that the money
lavished on the appetites of these hungry villains does not come out of
the pockets of the visiting magistrates, except so far as they are units
in the aggregate of the tax-payers of Great Britain. On the whole, I
think it would have been decidedly more economical to have ordered them
ortolans, truffles, and hock, and champagne to wash them down with. They
will perhaps balance the account better in future. I have been lately
much struck with the extreme tenderness of our age and nation, and
reluctance to take human life when it has become worthless both to the
individual and to society, as contrasted with men’s extreme heedlessness
of exposing valuable human life, or letting it go to be destroyed by a
hundred preventible accidents. While it requires almost Court interest
to get hanged, the commonest regulations to insure the safety of railway
passengers are disregarded; and during the continuance of the late gales
it was perfectly awful to read the list of shipwrecks, where all on
board perished, including two crews of heroes who went in life-boats to
rescue seamen in distress, most of which might be prevented by the
construction of harbours of refuge along the coast at proper intervals
by the very hands of the very scoundrels in question, forced into doing
some good to their kind against their will. Even Palmer seemed to have
some chance of getting off, when a short time before we had sacrificed
the flower of our army by the most abominable official mismanagement.
And although such an argument would not have much weight with the
peace-party, who would endure all things without flinching, both from
Russians and rascals, it seems to me a much stronger measure to
sacrifice some thousands of good men and true, both of ourselves and of
the enemy, in an international war, than to obliterate judicially a few
hundreds of scoundrels who are doing all the harm they can to society.
But I am not advocating at present severe measures. I only ask, why it
is necessary to pet criminals? why, instead of putting them out of
harm’s way, they are put in harm’s way as much as possible by
Pentonville indulgences, tickets of leave, and the like, perpetuating
the corruptions of a society quite bad enough if left to its mere vices,
and multiplying it as they perpetuate it, each criminal forming a
nucleus round which others may gather, like cases of sporadic cholera,
until they have gained such a head that they are too much for us all,
and will be calling out, when Lord John Russell’s new Reform scheme
comes on, for members analogous to those of the Universities to
represent their corporate body, perhaps even for life-peerages for their
higher graduates? Imagine Bill Sykes, Member for the “_Minority_”[4] of
Lambeth, and my Lords Erebus and Terror sitting cheek-by-jowl with the
Archbishop of Canterbury! Or, perhaps, these gentlemen will end by
swelling tickets-of-leave to the dimensions of the Red Spectre of Paris,
and after a few days of barricades and blood, we shall find installed in
the new palace of Westminster, a select provisional government of
garotters, burglars, and murderers! There would be no question then of
the social position of our humanitarian apostles, for even the
_moderados_ of villany will be superseded by the _exaltados_ and
swindlers; fraudulent bankers and adulterators of food will find
themselves, for the first time, in the company of honest men, swept away
in the general deluge. These people are either to be punished or not to
be punished. If they have done nothing worthy of death or bonds, but
only contracted a kind of moral measles which will give way to kind
treatment and easy remedies, why put them in the close air of a prison
at all? The virtue of a close sick-room is entirely exploded in the
medical world, and only lingers in the opinions of superannuated monthly
nurses. Why not put money in their purses, and pay their passages to
some country where their antecedents are not known, and they will have a
chance of living by honest means, which they have not here, even if they
were to wish it? Why condemn them, if they do not wish to punish them,
to the moral disease in perpetuity, inoculating others at the same time?
Is it that they wish to keep them as interesting specimens, too valuable
to the moral physiologist to be let go? If so, it is really time to
interfere with the tastes of these pseudo-philanthropists, and to tell
them that society has the same objection to their museums of abomination
under its nose, as it has to tanyards and slaughter-houses near the
public thoroughfares, or the putrifaction of the body of the great
river-god who dwells in the Thames. As Gulliver recoiled from the
embrace of the philosophers of Laputa, so will society recoil from the
contact of those humanitarians who are engaged in a task of
reconstruction or regeneration, equally hopeless, and equally offensive
to the public senses. But and if these persons deserve punishment
condign—if there is such a thing, and I am old-fashioned enough to
believe it, as justice, human and divine—if impunity in crime inevitably
reacts to the deterioration of human society, and pagan Nemesis has a
living existence even for those who have discarded the divine authority
of the Old Testament, I do think that nearly all the punishments enacted
by law for offences, at least as administered by our magistrates, are
most silly and inadequate; powerless, both for prevention and cure, and
only calculated to reproduce the evil they profess to abate. A system
which would be comparatively harmless in a country of sparse population
like Norway or Canada, becomes multifariously pernicious in a bee-hive
of human beings like that in which it is our destiny to breathe or try
to breathe. It was a great principle with that famous schoolmaster Dr
Arnold, who was withal a most humane and charitable man, in his conduct
of a public school, to get rid as soon as possible of all pupils who,
from his knowledge of human nature, he saw to be doing more harm than
good to their companions and themselves by remaining, even before they
were convicted of any overt infraction of law. Not that such cases are
necessarily irreclaimable, but that in such a crowded place, the worst
chance of reformation is given them, and the evil they do to others is
indefinitely multiplied. With private tutors, or under the eye of
parents, they might do better. He judged very much from physiognomy and
physiology, nor was he often wrong. The consequence of his judicious
system of weeding was, that he sent out into the world, as the rule, a
class of high-minded and virtuous students, though, in the innocence of
their hearts, generally Whigs and something more, being led to believe
that the world in general was as much to be trusted as themselves, and
their friends, and their beloved master. What is the population of
London at the present day? How much above two millions, which is about
the whole population of Norway? The drainage of the vast metropolis is a
difficult problem in these days, but how much more difficult the problem
of keeping the great Babylon sweet with such a cesspool of moral miasma
festering in its vitals? Even a simple alien act, giving the executive
the power of dismissing them from the focus of centralisation, would be
better than the present system, as they would be easier to deal with
when scattered abroad, and not living in a compact phalanx of opposition
to all good government, shoulder to shoulder, as at present. It is
perfectly frightful to think that the worst criminals are now often
rescued from the officers of justice by a mob of bystanders, which
implies that every individual in it is either a contemptible coward, or
sympathises to the full extent with the crime they are committing. I
should think, in charity to human nature, the former supposition the
more probable, the metropolitan population having been panic-stricken by
the long-continued impunity of those who set the law at defiance. Some
time ago one Italian stabbed another in Rupert Street, and no one dared,
although many persons witnessed the attempt at murder, to assist the
police in arresting the offender. This is nearly as bad as the state of
things said to exist at Rome, where the witnesses of an assassination
run away as fast as they can, because it is the rule to arrest the
nearest person on suspicion. British freedom is no doubt a fine thing,
but like other fine things it has its drawbacks. It is one thing to
leave the press unfettered and suppress the press-gang, and another to
leave a university of convicted malefactors chartered and privileged to
educate the young, and grant degrees to the old, in the heart of our
metropolis: a Stinkomalee of rascaldom acting quite as much under the
sanction of Government as Lord Brougham’s creation in Gower Street. This
unquestionably diabolical university has more colleges than Oxford and
Cambridge put together. It has its St Giles’ college, which answers to
Christ Church or Trinity; its Bethnal Green college; its Tooley Street
college; its City of London college; its slow colleges and fast
colleges; its aristocratic Belgravian college, and its ecclesiastical
Westminster college, a truly close foundation; its suburban colleges,
situated half-pleasantly in the country, like St John’s, and Worcester,
and Wadham at Oxford. It has its professors, who are better paid than
ours at Oxford—professors of burglary, professors of highway robbery,
professors of the gentler art of picking pockets, professors of stealing
and receiving stolen goods, many of them on a more liberal principle
than that adopted by our old universities—dissenters from the Church of
England, and even of the Hebrew persuasion—and it has its realisation of
the dreams of Mrs Colonel Bloomer in a strong staff of rights-of-women
female professors, abominable she-devils who, having passed through and
outlived every phase of infamy themselves, make it the last business of
their lives to indoctrinate innocent _freshwomen_ from the English
counties, and if they cannot succeed in tempting them to moral suicide
at home, do not scruple to use force and pack them off to Hamburg or
Paris to be drugged and terrified into children of hell. Surely, if such
an university must exist, it is strange that it is not thought advisable
to put it under Government superintendence, and appoint regius
professorships of Desmoterian History and Pastoral Demonology;
Readerships in the “Mysteries of London,” the “Newgate Calendar,” and
the “Memoirs of Harriet Wilson;” fellowships of felons, vacated like an
Oxford fellowship by matrimony, but by no means by any of its
imitations; chairs of Theoretical Toxicology and Clinical practice,
combined with the whole art of child-murder. We cannot help wondering at
the disinterestedness of a ministry, and that a Whig ministry, which
overlooks such an abundantly fertile field of patronage, and so splendid
an opportunity of providing outlying relatives and dependents at the
expense of the nation. And what a fatal mistake it was to hang Palmer!
He was just the man for the Chancellor of this liberal university of
Alsatia, for that must be its most unchristian name. But to speak more
seriously, if British freedom is not competent to put down such a state
of things, and is for ever condemned to halt on one side, going about
like the goddess Pœna of Horace, with a club-foot, would it be so very
strong a measure to perform Tiefenbach’s operation on British freedom,
and cut the shrunken sinew, or to put it on horseback and give it free
action for a limited period? The Romans used to appoint a dictator in
times of emergency whenever there was a _Gallicus tumultus_ (which we
might translate a French _émeute_), or even for the purpose of driving a
nail into some door, and yet Roman freedom emerged from the temporary
eclipse as bright as ever, perhaps even clearer and brighter. Might we
not appoint a dictator for the purpose of knocking the nail on the head
once for all, a strong responsible Hercules, who would turn the New
River into the Augean stable of our social nuisances, and sweep them
away once and for ever? Such men are to be found; at all events we might
find a brook which would do the work of Hercules’s river, even Rajah
Brooke of Borneo, the man who destroyed by one blast, like that of the
destroying angel, some thousands of pestilent pirates. Such a man would,
I take it, make short work with the “characters known to the police.” He
might proceed either by secret fraud or open force. I should think he
would prefer the latter. He might either, as Lord Shaftesbury did, call
a public meeting of thieves, say in St Martin’s Hall, surround them with
soldiers, and destroy them, as the Corcyræan democratical party in
Thucydides did their political opponents; or he might lay all the heavy
lighters in the Thames, which are so much in the way of its navigation,
under an embargo, and have such a _noyade_ at the river’s mouth as would
turn the Goodwin Sands into corn and pasture land, superseding from
thenceforth all necessity for lighthouses—an immense saving to the
nation, and rendering the destruction of the villains of one generation
a blessing to posterity, and a source of permanent security to mariners
of all nations! And he would surely make short work of the tumbling down
of all those streets, alleys, and courts of the metropolis known to be
inhabited only by two-legged, four-legged, and six-legged vermin,
scorching their sites with fire, and sowing the contaminated ground with
salt; and he would burn with fire the gin-palaces, or Persian
Jin-temples—(what a glorious illumination they would make, far better
than that we had for the Peace!)—and feed the flames of their burning
with all the poisoned products concocted by our adulterators of food,
till all are consumed, the usual consumers standing by and applauding
their great deliverance; and he would break down all the altars of
Mormonism, Socialism, and hideous Infidelity, and burn Holywell Street
with fire, and scatter to the winds the ashes of all ungodly and immoral
publications, both letter-press and pictorial; and purify with the
waters of lustration, so as to make them available for honest purposes,
the Circumlocution offices, the Stock Exchange, the sanctimonious Banks,
&c. &c.; in short, he would do all desirable good, and do away with all
undesirable evil. And then, after his London season was over, during the
continuance of which we would put the town in a state of siege, we would
send him to star it in the provinces, and, to the tune of solemn music,
perform the same office of lustration by all the other great towns of
the British empire. I fear that were such a proposition mooted in the
Imperial Parliament, it would be pooh-pooh’d by the Ministry, and
received with derisive cheers by the Opposition, and voted
unconstitutional by all, the consideration of it being perpetually
adjourned to this day six months; and yet it is difficult to see how it
can be any use to entertain the question of what we shall do with our
criminals, without some such preliminary expurgation and purification.
Just as all measures for the diminution of the burden of our taxation
are frustrated by the incubus of the national debt, so must all measures
for the disposition of our rascals be rendered abortive by the enormous
stock of them in hand becoming more morally putrescent and offensive the
longer they endure, and effectually stopping the way of all sanitary and
salutary improvement. It would seem, indeed, somewhat desirable that all
questions of the day, now that the Russians have given us a little
breathing-time, should be postponed to this, that our lay Legislature
should turn away their attention from Committees of Supply, and our
bench of Bishops from deciding on Liddell and Westerton, Ditcher and
Denison cases, questions about more or less candles on the altar, boughs
or flowers in the church, presence or absence of a cross, until this
awful Frankenstein-ghost of our social condition is effectually
exorcised and sent back to the place whence it came. But grant, for
supposition’s sake, that it be done, that we have thus had one thorough
sweeping and cleaning, painting and whitewashing, so as to be able to
keep our house in order for the future by ordinary sweeping down of
cobwebs, and the time come for us to consider what we are to do with our
criminals, I should very much like to hear what your cool head and
practical wisdom, Irenæus, has to say on this subject; and awaiting your
reply, I venture, in the mean time, to lay before you my ruminations on
this all-important matter. We must first take a glance at the nature of
crime. Now crime is happily not the rule but the exception with men; it
is otherwise with vice. Most men are more or less vicious, from those
who suffer from _delirium tremens_ down to those who take snuff; but few
men, and fewer women, are criminal. Those that are so make such a fuss
in the world, and succeed so well in establishing their importance, that
they seem much more numerous than they are. The criminal classes, then,
may be divided into the corrigible and the incorrigible, as, indeed, may
the vicious classes, to which you and I belong, being one of us affected
with the _cacoethes scribendi_, and the other with the evil habit of
taking tobacco; and corrigible crime partakes of the nature of vice,
just as incorrigible vice partakes of the nature of crime, and is apt to
be resolved into it, as all the diseases of Athens were resolved into
the plague. This division is, of course, as old as the hills and
Aristotle, and I do not lay the slightest claim to originality in making
it. Now it seems to me that our laws, in dealing with offences rather
than offenders, take no cognisance of this division of human character,
as to corrigible and incorrigible, except accidentally, and perhaps only
by rule, in one case, that of homicide, where malice prepense is
supposed to give it the character of wilful murder. But it strikes me
that a murderer is by no means of necessity an incorrigible character,
though the punishment of death may be just as the lowest in proportion
to his offence. A man has sustained some grievous wrong from another,
say that a scamp has run away with his wife; he cherishes his vengeance,
he bides his time, he watches for him, and without going through the
etiquette of a formal challenge, shoots him as you and I would be sorry
to shoot a dog. Well, that man is a murderer, and I do not deny that,
for the safety of society, he ought to be hung, and yet I know that he
has lived honourably hitherto, if not very religiously and faithfully,
in all the relations of life. He is certainly by no means one of the
incorrigible class, nor is, as far as we can see, the forgiveness of
Heaven out of the reach of his repentance. But here is a miscreant who
has committed no act of violence, and whom, but for his aquiline
features, you might take for a seedy dissenting minister, whose life has
been passed till he is grey in discounting bills for foolish youths, and
making them and their families miserable for life. He does not perhaps
even cheat in his vile trade, but he pinches and pares and tortures with
interest and compound interest, perhaps, in some cases, making the
greenhorn into a parricide in thought by his post-obits, a fair specimen
of an accomplished usurer, placed by Dante in a circle of the _Inferno_
inhabited by very bad company indeed, and pelted with flakes of fiery
snow. Well, I say that this man, though scarcely a lawbreaker, is an
incorrigible criminal, an enemy of his kind, and it would be no more
than justice to deal with him accordingly. Or take the case of thieving:
one man steals a sheep, as Charles II. did at Boscobel, because he wants
it to eat, or his little ones want it: he is corrigible. Another steals
a widow’s mite in a bank, having seduced her into trusting him with it
by a life of religious hypocrisy: this man is incorrigible, or
corrigible only by the crank and a long course of penal discipline. Or
take the very bad case of poisoning: a young woman was hung some years
ago at Bristol for poisoning an old one who had frightfully and
systematically maltreated her: no doubt the law did right, if it is
right to hang women at all; but I do not look upon the case as
necessarily incorrigible. But look at the case of a baker or a grocer
who poisons the food of multitudes, at all events succeeding so far that
he injures their health, and all for the sake of making a slight profit,
from utter, cold, unmitigated selfishness. I say that such a man is
incorrigible, and deserves to be hung, though whether or not it would be
expedient to hang him is another question. Again, there is a manifest
difference between old and young offenders committing the same crime,
and I believe the usual practice recognises this difference. It does
indeed seem to me unjust to punish at all little children, whom, in the
spirit of our glorious constitution, we have left to be brought up by
vicious parents, without being taught the difference between right and
wrong, or rather, with having been taught to transpose these from the
very first. We are all by nature liars and thieves, as much as these
little children, and unless we had been taken in hand by kind parents
and friends, who imitated in this only the example of a Greater, who
ordered little children to be brought to Him, we should inevitably have
grown up in the same moral ignorance. At the same time, a certain weight
must be given to the fact that vice engenders vice as virtue does
virtue, and that the human race is brutified by generations of evil
living, as it deteriorates by living in a bad climate for many
generations. The low stupid animal configuration is a sad puzzle to the
philanthropist, the ragged schoolmaster, and the keeper of the juvenile
prison; and the actually abandoned children of the metaphorically
abandoned, appear often as hopeless of receiving instruction in better
things as the Bushman or the New Guinea savage. Not that we need
absolutely despair of any human being who retains a vestige of the
human, which is indeed also a vestige of the godlike. He is still
something more than an ourang-outang. Only when he fairly declares war
against society, we have a manifest right to take his life, as we have
the life of our enemies in international war, and on the principle of
self-defence, not only against physical injury, but moral contamination.
Now war is declared against society by certain definite overt acts, such
as murder, and the existence of the incorrigible character, perpetually
asserting, whether with truth or not, its incorrigibility. Although some
who commit great crimes are doubtless corrigible, yet the world is not
strong enough to pardon them, considering the greatness, or rather
extreme dangerousness, of the acts they commit. And it is not the danger
to life and property on which I would lay the greatest stress; it is the
danger of their example to the crowd of waverers between guilt and
innocence, which in fact comprises perhaps a quarter of mankind. Now, as
long as they live, they are objects of a certain interest, and at least
noticeable; whereas, had they ceased to live, they would be virtually
and personally forgotten. If Madame Laffarge had been put to death for
the poisoning of her husband, the crime of poisoning would have been in
a manner put to death with her; whereas her perpetual imprisonment is a
perpetual reminder of her offence. But it seems to some hard to put to
death political offenders. So it is, if we consider the persons only and
not the offence. But rebellion against established government is an act
so very inconvenient to the interests of society that the law is
doubtless in the right in making it a capital offence. And yet a rebel
may be a glorious hero and genuine patriot. But no one ought to be
allowed to assume this character cheaply. If he plays at all, he must
stake his all, and be prepared, if he loses, for loss of head and
confiscation of property. I readily admit that he may be a holy martyr
if he loses, even as he is sure to be a very great man indeed if he
wins: but no less should be the stake he plays for. Although I have a
very high opinion of the French Emperor, and think that, having won, he
most fully deserves to wear the position he holds, I think he would
equally have deserved a bullet or the guillotine had he been unlucky.
Nothing has done more harm in the case of murder than the foolish plea
of insanity, and I do, from my heart, hope that Verger will suffer death
for the murder of the Archbishop of Paris, a crime indeed complicated
with sacrilege as committed at the altar of God, and parricide as
committed by a priest against a spiritual father. The weak conduct of
the poor Archbishop to this ungrateful ruffian, in suffering him to be
appointed to a cure of souls, in spite of his manifest incorrigibleness,
was well commented upon by the _Times_, and illustrates forcibly my
general position. The man who murdered Mr Drummond some years ago
(Macnaughten) ought to have been hung, as he had destroyed his moral
sense by bad habits before he became insane, and his madness was
evidently the child of his badness. Between the labials _b_ and _m_
there is not so wide a difference that the words are not often
interchanged, and it would do no great harm in the world to kill, once
in the way, a mad murderer, even if he is morally innocent, while it is
productive of unending harm to suffer a bad one, who is assuredly
morally guilty, to escape. It seems to me, then, that murder, no matter
whether its subject be corrigible or not, always demands death; in case
of treason the sentence must depend on political expediency. Our
Government was quite strong enough to pardon Smith O’Brien, and
doubtless did infinitely more good by remitting his sentence than by
executing it; but still he would have no reason to complain had he been
shot after a court-martial, by Inspector Trant, in the very
cabbage-garden of the widow Cormack. Our Government did not so well in
mitigating the penalties of the Chartists Frost and Co., who exposed a
number of misguided men to be shot down, keeping out of fire themselves,
and are still, as it appears, engaged in plotting mischief against the
State. Arson should always be capital, because it is a crime of such
portentous consequences, so easy to effect in these days of phosphoric
appliances, and so entirely out of the pale of ordinary temptations.
Whether any other offence should be punished with death should be
decided by a reference to the character of the offender, and the
circumstances under which it is committed. There are a great many crimes
which, though slight in themselves, are evidences of a dangerous and
hopeless brutality of character, and are even more so when committed in
a state of intoxication, because it is in such a state that the real
nature shows itself most strongly. I would cite as an example some
furious assault on a wife by a drunken husband, who had starved her
first to gratify his selfish appetites. Society might surely do without
such a character, in a state of things where even the innocent have such
a hard fight for existence. Again, it is difficult to decide on
incorrigibility, and we are expressly forbidden by a higher law to judge
the heart of man; but when incorrigibility is for ever declaring itself,
and declaring war against society in the devil’s name, I think we should
be justified, even if each overt offence were small in itself, and
again, considering the difficulty of feeding our population, in putting
it quietly out of the way. When Babylon was besieged, the government
adopted the ungallant expedient of killing all the women except enough
to bake bread for the fighting garrison; and as our modern Babylon is at
present in a normal state of siege from the legions of darkness, perhaps
the question is worth entertaining whether its incorrigible male
population might not be abated by some short and summary method, even
after our one great imaginary sweeping. Still, I will not insist on this
point, for I fear to shock your feelings, Irenæus, and the prejudices
which you imbibed in your early intercourse with the Society of Friends.
And I cannot help imagining the reverend Celsus at my elbow with a face
of unusual severity, admonishing me on religious grounds that we ought
not to cut off from the wicked the hope of repentance, for we can never
tell whether there be still room for it or not. Of course this argument
would be tantamount to advocating the entire abolition of capital
punishment. But what would you substitute? Solitary confinement? Would
you convert a man by making him infallibly insane? Perpetual
imprisonment and hard labour in company with others? Is he likely to
think of his latter end in the company of those like himself? He is much
more likely to laugh to scorn with them everything connected with it.
What makes most of us so careless in these matters is, not that we
believe we shall live for ever in this life, but that we do not know,
for the next half-century or less, exactly when we shall die. But place
certain death before our eyes at the distance of a month or so, and we
should think it time, one and all, to make some arrangement of our
affairs both for this world and the next. A prisoner confined in
solitude or condemned to penal servitude for life is not likely to do
himself any good, neither can he do good to the State, for keeping him
and guarding him probably cost more than his hopeless labour. I forbear
the deduction. It is a stern one, but I believe it to be true. The
prisoner may ask for “a long day,” and have it, and benefit of clergy
ought to be denied to none by those who have the thief on the cross
before their eyes; nor ought the services of a national church, which
buries all, as she baptises all, in charitable hope. Secondary
punishments are of course a question of much detail and arrangement, and
many plans have been proposed with regard to them, more or less
sensible. It seems to me that means must be taken to banish from the
country all criminals but the young and those convicted of trifling
offences, or under great temptation, and to banish them for ever. First,
they ought, properly classified and supervised, to be set to useful
public works, and work out at home the term of their punishment, and
then granted a passage to certain stated regions of the earth, not
necessarily colonies, where the people would not object to receive them,
if there were inhabitants already, and where they might, as it were,
begin a new life under fairer auspices. Return to this country, under
any circumstances whatever, should be punished by another and a very
long lease of penal servitude. Nor should that penal servitude be too
light, else it would be resorted to in some cases in order to effect an
ultimate emigration. It should be very severe, but not untempered by
relaxation both of mind and body; nor should the chaplain be the only
reformer. I would have the musician, and even the actor of Shakespeare,
to aid his efforts. Reparation and reformation are the two main objects
of secondary punishments; nor is the more selfish protection of society,
although important, to be weighed in the balance with them. If a crime
is committed, according to divine law, it has to be expiated, sooner or
later, in the person of the offender; and it can be no harm for human
law to endeavour to be in harmony with the divine. After expiation,
forgiveness may come, but not without it, both from man and God. God may
forgive in any case, even the worst; but in the worst cases, man,
conscious of his weakness, must submit to be unforgiving. As to lesser
punishments, I have often wondered why that excellent summary process of
flogging has fallen into such disrepute. Why should we have mercy on the
skin of a man who has no mercy on the skin of his wife, and invest it
with sacerdotal sanctity? And ought not cruelty to animals to be
punished in kind, by scourging the animal that is cruel? As for the
noble _Stocks_, which has become in most villages a significant ruin, it
is a machine which seems to have been created expressly to curb the
national vice of drunkenness. Put your silly Helot by all means in the
stocks, and let all our young village Spartans have a good stare at him,
especially at the time when he is beginning to get sick and sorry. No
rotten eggs, if you please, far less a stone in a snowball! The poor
fellow cannot run after you, and is sufficiently punished by the
degrading exposure. I have no more time or paper, or I would say even
more, Irenæus, on this subject of punishments; but I think you can see
my general drift. After all, prevention is better than cure; and I would
rather put another strain on our British freedom, and take away by force
from their parents all the children who are being brought up under
notoriously evil auspices; beginning by transporting them to be out of
the way, and then bringing them back in ten or fifteen years’ time, if
they wished to come back, to some other spot at home, far from the
habitat of their parents, and not this till the death of their parents
had been ascertained. But even they would perhaps do better in a new
country, as would some of us, who have but a sort of struggle to live
here, and yet very little of a moral nature the matter with us.
Farewell,
Your ever
TLEPOLEMUS.
THE ATHELINGS; OR, THE THREE GIFTS.
BOOK III.—PART IX.
CHAPTER I.—AN OLD STORY.
“Now, mother,” said Charlie, “I’m in real earnest. My father would tell
me himself if he were here. I want to understand the whole concern.”
Mrs Atheling and her son were in Charlie’s little room, with its one
small lattice-window, overshadowed and embowered in leaves—its plain
uncurtained bed, its small table, and solitary chair. Upon this chair,
with a palpitating heart, sat Mrs Atheling, and before her stood the
resolute boy.
And she began immediately, yet with visible faltering and hesitation, to
tell him the story she had told the girls of the early connection
between the present Lord Winterbourne and the Atheling family. But
Charlie’s mind was excited and preoccupied. He listened, almost with
impatience, to the sad little romance of his father’s young sister, of
whom he had never heard before. It did not move him at all as it had
moved Agnes and Marian. Broken hearts and disappointed loves were very
far out of Charlie’s way; something entirely different occupied his own
imagination. He broke forth with a little effusion of impatience when
the story came to an end. “And is this all? Do you mean to say this is
the whole, mother? And my father had never anything to do with him but
through a girl!”
“You are very unfeeling, Charlie,” said Mrs Atheling, who wiped her eyes
with real emotion, yet with a little policy too, and to gain time. “She
was a dear innocent girl, and your father was very fond of her—reason
enough to give him a dislike, if it were not sinful, to the very name of
Lord Winterbourne.”
“I had better go on with my packing, then,” said Charlie. “So, that was
all? I suppose any scamp in existence might do the same. Do you really
mean to tell me, mother, that there was nothing but this?”
Mrs Atheling faltered still more under the steady observation of her
son. “Charlie,” said his mother, with agitation, “your father never
would mention it to any one. I may be doing very wrong. If he only were
here himself to decide! But if I tell you, you must give me your word
never so much as to hint at it again.”
Charlie did not give the necessary pledge, but Mrs Atheling made no
pause. She did not even give him time to speak, however he might have
been inclined, but hastened on in her own disclosure with agitation and
excitement. “You have heard Papa tell of the young gentleman—he whom you
all used to be so curious about—whom your father did a great benefit
to,” said Mrs Atheling, in a breathless hurried whisper. “Charlie, my
dear, I never said it before to any creature—that was _him_.”
She paused only a moment to take breath. “It was before we knew how he
had behaved to dear little Bride,” she continued, still in haste, and in
an undertone. “What he did was a forgery—a forgery! people were hanged
for it then. It was either a bill, or a cheque, or something, and Mr
Reginald had written to it another man’s name. It happened when Papa was
in the bank, and before old Mr Lombard died—old Mr Lombard had a great
kindness for your father, and we had great hopes then—and by good
fortune the thing was brought to Papa. Your father was always very
quick, Charlie, he found it out in a moment. So he told old Mr Lombard
of it in a quiet way, and Mr Lombard consented he should take it back to
Mr Reginald, and tell him it was found out, and hush all the business
up. If your Papa had not been so quick, Charlie, but had paid the money
at once, as almost any one else would have done, it all must have been
found out, and he would have been hanged, as certain as anything—he, a
haughty young gentleman, and a lord’s son!”
“And a very good thing, too,” exclaimed Charlie; “saved him from doing
any more mischief. So, I suppose now, it’s all my father’s blame.”
“This Lord Winterbourne is a bad man,” said Mrs Atheling, taking no
notice of her son’s interruption—“first he was furious to William, and
then he cringed and fawned to him; and of course he had it on his
conscience then about poor little Bride, though we did not know—and then
he raved, and said he was desperate, and did not know what to do for
money. Your father came home to me, quite unhappy about him; for he
belonged to the same country, and everybody tried to make excuses for Mr
Reginald, being a young man, and the heir. So William made it up in his
own mind to go and tell the old lord, who was in London then. The old
lord was a just man, but very proud. He did not take it kind of William,
and he had no regard for Mr Reginald; but for the honour of the family
he sent him away. Then we lost sight of him long, and Aunt Bridget took
a dislike to us, and poor little Bride was dead, and we never heard
anything of the Lodge or the Hall for many a year; but the old lord died
abroad, and Mr Reginald came home Lord Winterbourne. That was all we
ever knew. I thought your father had quite forgiven him, Charlie—we had
other things to think of than keeping up old grudges—when all at once it
came to be in the newspapers that Lord Winterbourne was a political man,
that he was making speeches everywhere, and that he was to be one of the
ministry. When your father saw that, he blazed up into such an anger! I
said all I could, but William never minded me. He never was so bitter
before, not even when we heard of little Bride. He said, Such a man to
govern us and all the people!—a forger! a liar!—and sometimes, I think,
he thought he would expose the whole story, and let everybody know.”
“Time enough for that,” said Charlie, who had listened to all this
without comment, but with the closest attention. “What he did once he’ll
do again, mother; but we’re close at his heels this time, and he won’t
get off now. I’m going to Oxford now to get some books. I say, mother,
you’ll be sure, upon your honour, not to tell the girls?”
“No, Charlie,” said Mrs Atheling, with a somewhat faint affirmation;
“but, my dear, I can’t believe in it. It can’t be true. Charlie, boy! if
this was coming true, our Marian—your sister, Charlie!—why, Marian would
be Lady Winterbourne!”
Charlie did not say a word in return; he only took down his little
travelling-bag, laid it at his mother’s feet to be packed, and left her
to that business and her own meditations; but after he had left the
room, the lad returned again and thrust in his shaggy head at the door.
“Take care of Marian, mother,” said Charlie, in a parting adjuration;
“remember my father’s little sister Bride.”
So he went away, leaving Mrs Atheling a good deal disquieted. She had
got over the first excitement of Miss Anastasia’s great intelligence and
the sudden preparations of Charlie. She had scarcely time enough,
indeed, to give a thought to these things, when her son demanded this
history from her, and sent her mind away into quite a different channel.
Now she sat still in Charlie’s room, pondering painfully, with the
travelling-bag lying quite unheeded at her feet. At one moment she
pronounced the whole matter perfectly impossible—at the next,
triumphantly inconsequent, she leaped to the full consummation of the
hope, and saw her own pretty Marian—dazzling vision!—the lady of
Winterbourne! and again the heart of the good mother fell, and she
remembered little Bride. Louis, as he was now, having no greater friends
than their own simple family, and no pretensions whatever either to
birth or fortune, was a very different person from that other Louis who
might be heir of lands and lordship and the family pride of the
Riverses. Much perplexed, in great uncertainty and pain, mused Mrs
Atheling, half-resentful of that grand discovery of Miss Anastasia,
which might plunge them all into renewed trouble; while Charlie trudged
into Oxford for his Italian grammar—and Louis and Marian wandered
through the enchanted wood, drawing homeward—and Rachel sang to the
children—and Agnes wondered by herself over the secret which was to be
confided only to mamma.
CHAPTER II.—A CRISIS.
That night Charlie had need of all his diplomatic talents. Before he
returned from Oxford, his mother, by way of precaution lest Agnes should
betray the sudden and mysterious visit of Miss Anastasia to Marian,
contrived to let her elder daughter know mysteriously, something of the
scope and object of the sudden journey for which it was necessary to
prepare her brother, driving Agnes, as was to be supposed, into a very
fever of suppressed excitement, joy, triumph, and anxiety. Mrs Atheling,
conscious, hurried, and studying deeply not to betray herself—and Agnes,
watching every one, stopping questions, and guarding off suspicions with
prudence much too visible—were quite enough of themselves to rouse every
other member of the little company to lively pursuit after the secret.
Charlie was assailed by every shape and form of question: Where was he
going—what was he to do? He showed no cleverness, we are bound to
acknowledge, in evading these multitudinous interrogations; he turned an
impenetrable front upon them, and made the most commonplace answers,
making vast incursions all the time into Hannah’s cakes and Mamma’s
bread-and-butter.
“He had to go back immediately to the office; he believed he had got a
new client for old Foggo,” said Charlie, with the utmost coolness;
“making no secret of it at all,” according to Mamma’s indignant
commentary.
“To the office!—are you only going home, after all?” cried Marian.
“I’ll see when I get there,” answered Charlie; “there’s something to be
done abroad. I shouldn’t wonder if they sent _me_. I say, I wish you’d
all come home at once, and make things comfortable. There’s my poor
father fighting it out with Susan. I should not stand it if it was me.”
“Hold your peace, Charlie, and don’t be rude,” said Mrs Atheling. “But,
indeed, I wish we were at home, and out of everybody’s way.”
“Who is everybody?” said Louis. “I, who am going myself, can wish quite
sincerely that we were all at home; but the addition is mysterious—who
is in anybody’s way?”
“Mamma means to wish us all out of reach of the Evil Eye,” said Agnes, a
little romantically.
“No such thing, my dear. I daresay we could do _him_ a great deal more
harm than he can do us,” said Mrs Atheling, with sudden importance and
dignity; then she paused with a certain solemnity, so that everybody
could perceive the grave self-restraint of the excellent mother, and
that she could say a great deal more if she chose.
“But no one thinks what I am to do when you are all gone,” said Rachel;
and her tearful face happily diverted her companions from investigating
and from concealing the secret. There remained among them all, however,
a certain degree of excitement. Charlie was returning home
to-morrow—specially called home on business!—perhaps to go abroad upon
the same! The fact stirred all those young hearts with something not
unlike envy. This boy seemed to have suddenly leaped in one day into a
man.
And it was natural enough that, hearing of this, the mind of Louis
should burn and chafe with fierce impatience. Charlie, who was perfectly
undemonstrative of his thoughts and imaginations, was a very boy to
Louis—yet there was need and occasion for Charlie in the crowd of life,
when no one thought upon this fiery and eager young man. It was late
that night when Louis left this only home and haven which he had ever
known; and though he would fain have left Rachel there, his little
sister would not remain behind him, but clung to his arm with a strange
presentiment of something about to happen, which she could not explain.
Louis scarcely answered a word to the quiet talk of Rachel as they went
upon their way to the Hall. With difficulty, and even with impatience,
he curbed his rapid stride to her timid little footsteps, and hurried
her along without a glance at the surrounding scene, memorable and
striking as it was. The broad moonlight flooded over the noble park of
Winterbourne. The long white-columned front of the house—which was a
great Grecian house, pallid, vast, and imposing—shone in the white light
like a screen of marble; and on the great lawn immediately before it
were several groups of people, dwarfed into minute miraculous figures by
the great space and silence, and the intense illumination, which was far
more striking and particular than the broader light of day. The chances
were that Louis did not see them, as he plunged on, in the blindness of
preoccupation, keeping no path, through light and shadow, through the
trees and underwood, and across the broad unshaded greensward, where no
one could fail to perceive him. His little sister clung to his arm in an
agony of fear, grief, and confidence—trembling for something about to
happen with an overpowering tremor—yet holding a vague faith in her
brother, strange and absorbing. She said, “Louis, Louis!” in her tone of
appeal and entreaty. He did not hear her, but struck across the broad
visible park, in the full stream of the moonlight, looking neither to
the right hand nor to the left. As they approached, Rachel could not
even hear any conversation among the groups on the lawn; and it was
impossible to suppose that they had not been seen. Louis’s abrupt direct
course, over the turf and through the brushwood, must have attracted the
notice of bystanders even in the daylight; it was still more remarkable
now, when noiseless and rapid, through the intense white radiance and
the perfect stillness, the stately figure of the young man, and his
timid, graceful little sister, came directly forward in face of the
spectators. These spectators were all silent, looking on with a certain
fascination, and Rachel could not tell whether Louis was even conscious
that any one was there.
But before they could turn aside into the road which led to the Hall
door—a road to which Rachel most anxiously endeavoured to guide her
brother—they were suddenly arrested by the voice of Lord Winterbourne.
“I must put a stop to this,” said his lordship suddenly and loudly, with
so evident a reference to themselves, that even Rachel stopped without
knowing it. “Here, young fellow, stop and give an account of
yourself—what do you mean by wandering about my park at midnight, eh? I
know your poaching practices. Setting snares, I suppose, and dragging
about this girl as a protection. Get into your kennel, you mean dog; is
this how you repay the shelter I have given you all your life?”
“It would be a fit return,” said Louis. He did not speak so loud, but
with a tremble of scorn and bitterness and intense youthful feeling in
his voice, before which the echo of his persecutor’s went out and died,
like an ignoble thing. “If I were, as you say,” repeated the young
man—“setting snares for your game, or for your wealth, or for your life,
you know it would be a fit return.”
“Yes, I live a peaceful life with this villanous young incendiary under
my roof!” said Lord Winterbourne. “I’ll tell you what, you young
ruffian, if nothing better can restrain you, locks and bars shall. Oh,
no chance of appealing to _my_ pity, with that fool of a girl upon your
arm! You think you can defy me, year after year, because I have given
charity to your base blood. My lad, you shall learn to know me better
before another week is over our heads. Why, gentlemen, you perceive, by
his own confession, I stand in danger of my life.”
“Winterbourne,” said some one over his shoulder, in a reproving tone,
“_you_ should be the last man in the world to taunt this unfortunate lad
with his base blood.”
Lord Winterbourne turned upon his heel with a laugh of insult which sent
the wild blood dancing in an agony of shame, indignation, and rage even
into Rachel’s woman’s face. “Well,” said the voice of their tyrant, “I
have supported the hound—what more would you have? His mother was a
pretty fool, but she had her day. There’s more of her conditions in the
young villain than mine. I have no idea of playing the romantic father
to such a son—not I!”
Louis did not know that he threw his sister off his arm before he sprang
into the midst of these half-dozen gentlemen. She did not know herself,
as she stood behind clenching her small fingers together painfully, with
all the burning vehemence of a woman’s passion. The young man sprang
forward with the bound of a young tiger. His voice was hoarse with
passion, not to be restrained. “It is a lie—a wilful, abominable lie!”
cried Louis fiercely, confronting as close as a wrestler the ghastly
face of his tyrant, who shrank before him. “I am no son of yours—you
know I am no son of yours! I owe you the hateful bread I have been
compelled to eat—nothing more. I am without a name—I may be of base
blood—but I warn you for your life, if you dare repeat this last insult.
It is a lie! I tell every one who condescends to call you friend; and I
appeal to God, who knows that you know it is a lie! I may be the son of
any other wretch under heaven, but I am not yours. I disown it with
loathing and horror. Do you hear me?—you know the truth in your heart,
and so do I!”
Lord Winterbourne fell back, step by step, before the young man, who
pressed upon him close and rapid, with eyes which flamed and burned with
a light which he could not bear. The insulting smile upon his bloodless
face had not passed from it yet. His eyes, shifting, restless, and
uneasy, expressed nothing. He was not a coward, and he was sufficiently
quick-witted on ordinary occasions, but he had nothing whatever to
answer to this vehement and unexpected accusation. He made an
unintelligible appeal with his hand to his companions, and lifted up his
face to the moonlight like a spectre, but he did not answer by a single
word.
“Young man,” said the gentleman who had spoken before, “I acknowledge
your painful position, and that you have been addressed in a most
unseemly manner—but no provocation should make you forget your natural
duty. Lord Winterbourne must have had a motive for maintaining you as he
has done. I put it to you calmly, dispassionately—what motive could he
possibly have had, except one?”
“Ah!” said Louis, with a sudden and violent start, “he must have had a
motive—it is true; he would not waste his cruel powers, even for
cruelty’s sake. If any man can tell me what child it was his interest to
bastardise and defame, there may be hope and a name for me yet.”
At these words, Lord Winterbourne advanced suddenly with a singular
eagerness. “Let us have done with this foolery,” he said in a voice
which was certainly less steady than usual; “I presume we can all be
better employed than listening to the vapourings of this foolish boy. Go
in, my lad, and learn a lesson by your folly to-night. I pass it over,
simply because you have shown yourself to be a fool.”
“I, however, do not pass it over, my lord,” said Louis, who had calmed
down after the most miraculous fashion, to the utter amazement of his
sister. “Thank you for the provision you have given us, such as it is.
Some time we may settle scores upon that subject. My sister and I must
find another shelter to-night.”
The bystanders were half disposed to smile at the young man’s heroical
withdrawal—but they were all somewhat amazed to find that Lord
Winterbourne was as far as possible from sharing their amusement. He
called out immediately in an access of passion to stop the young
ruffian, incendiary, mischief-maker;—called loudly upon the servants,
who began to appear at the open door—ordered Louis to his own apartment
with the most unreasonable vehemence, and finally turned upon Rachel,
calling her to give up the young villain’s arm, and for her life to go
home.
But Rachel was wound to the fever point as well as her brother. “No, no,
it is all true he has said,” cried Rachel. “I know it, like Louis; we
are not your children—you dare not call us so now. I never believed you
were our father—never all my life.”
She exclaimed these words hastily in her low eager voice, as Louis drew
her arm through his, and hurried her away. The young man struck again
across the broad park and through the moonlight, while behind, Lord
Winterbourne called to his servants to go after the fugitives—to bring
that fellow back. The men only stared at their master, looked helplessly
at each other, and went off on vain pretended searches, with no better
intention than to keep out of Louis’s way, until prudence came to the
aid of Lord Winterbourne. “I shall scarcely think my life in safety
while that young fool wanders wild about the country,” he said to his
friends, as he returned within doors; but his friends, one and all,
thought this a very odd scene.
Meanwhile Louis made his rapid way with his little sister on his arm out
over the glorious moonlit park of Winterbourne, away from the only home
he had ever known—out to the night and to the world. Rachel, leaning
closely upon him, scarcely so much as looked up, as her faltering
footstep toiled to keep up with her brother. He, holding his proud young
head high, neither turned nor glanced aside, but pressed on straight
forward, as if to some visionary certain end before his eye. Then they
came out at last to the white silent road, lying ghostlike under the
excess of light—the quiet road which led through the village where all
the houses slept and everything was still, not a curl of smoke in the
moonlight, nor a house-dog’s bark in the silence. It was midnight, vast
and still, a great desolate uninhabited world. There was not a door open
to them, nor a place where they could rest. But on pressed Louis, with
the rapid step and unhesitating course of one who hastened to some
definite conclusion. “Where are we going—where shall we go?” said poor
little Rachel, drooping on his shoulder. Her brother did not hear her.
He was not selfish, but he had not that superhuman consideration for
others which might have broken the fiery inspiration of his own
momentous thoughts, and made him think of the desolate midnight, and the
houseless and outcast condition which were alone present to the mind of
Rachel. He did not see a vast homeless solitude—a vagabond and
disgraceful wandering, in this midnight walk. He saw a new world before
him, such as had never glanced before across his fancy. “He must have
had a notion” he muttered to himself. Rachel heard him sadly, and took
the words as a matter of course. “Where are we to go?”—that was a more
immediately important question to the simple mind of Rachel.
The Old Wood Lodge was as deep asleep as any house in the village. They
paused, reluctant, both of them, to awake their friends within, and went
back, pacing rapidly between the house of the Athelings and that of the
Rector. The September night was cold, and Rachel was timid of that
strange midnight world out of doors. They seemed to have nothing for it
but pacing up and down upon the grassy road, where they were at least
within sight of a friendly habitation, till morning came.
There was one light in one window of the Old Wood House; Rachel’s eye
went wandering to it wistfully, unawares: If the Rector knew—the Rector,
who once would have been kind if Louis would have let him. But as if in
very response to her thoughts, the Rector, when they came back to this
point again, was standing, like themselves, in the moonlight, looking
over the low wall. He called to them rather authoritatively, asking what
they did there—but started, and changed his tone into one of wondering
interest and compassion when Rachel lifted her pale face to him, with
the tears in her eyes. He hastened to the gate at once, and called them
to enter. “Nay, nay, no hesitation—come in at once, that she may have
rest and shelter,” said the Rector in a peremptory tone, which for the
first time in his life Louis had no thought of resenting. He went in
without a word, leading his little sister. Perhaps it was the first
great thing that ever had been done in all her life for Rachel’s
sake—for the sake of the delicate girl, who was half a child though a
woman in years,—for sake of her tenderness, her delicate frame, her
privilege of weakness. The two haughty young men went in silently
together into this secluded house, which never opened its doors to any
guest. It was an invalid’s home, and some one was always at hand for its
ailing mistress. By-and-by Rachel, in the exhaustion of great
excitement, fell asleep in a little quiet room looking over that moonlit
park of Winterbourne. Louis, who was in no mood for sleep, watched
below, full of eager and unquiet thoughts. They had left Winterbourne
Hall suddenly; the Rector asked no further questions, expressed no
wonder, and left the young man who had repelled him once, with a lofty
and dignified hospitality, to his meditations or repose.
CHAPTER III.—CHARLIE’S PREPARATIONS.
Charlie Atheling was not at all of an imaginative or fanciful turn of
mind. His slumbers were not disturbed by castle-building—he wasted none
of his available time in making fancy sketches of the people, or the
circumstances, among which he was likely to be thrown. He was not
without the power of comprehending at a glance the various features of
his mission; but by much the most remarkable point of Charlie’s
character was his capacity for doing his immediate business, whatever
that might be, with undivided attention, and with his full powers. On
this early September morning he neither occupied himself with
anticipations of his interview with Miss Anastasia, nor his hurried
journey. He did not suffer his mind to stray to difficult questions of
evidence, nor wander off into speculations concerning what he might have
to do when he reached the real scene of his investigation. What he had
to do at the moment he did like a man, bending upon his serious business
all the faculties of his mind, and all the furrows of his brow. He got
up at six o’clock, not because he particularly liked it, but because
these early morning hours had become his habitual time for extra work of
every kind, and sat upon Hannah’s bench in the garden, close by the
kitchen door, with the early sun and the early wind playing
hide-and-seek among his elf-locks, learning his Italian grammar, as if
this was the real business for which he came into the world.
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do”—that was Charlie’s secret of
success. He had only a grammar, a dictionary, and a little New Testament
in Italian—and he had not at this moment the slightest ambition to read
Dante in the original—but with steady energy he chased those unknown
verbs into the deep caverns of his memory—a memory which was prodigious,
and lost nothing committed to it. The three books accompanied him when
he went in to breakfast, and marched off in his pocket to Oxford when it
was time to keep his appointment with Miss Anastasia. Meanwhile the
much-delayed travelling-bag only now began to get packed, and Mrs
Atheling, silently toiling at this business, felt convinced that Susan
would mislay all the things most important for Charlie’s comfort, and
very much yearned in her heart to accompany her son home. They were to
meet him at the railway, whence he would depart immediately, after his
interview with Miss Rivers; and Charlie’s secret commission made a
considerable deal of excitement in the quiet little house.
Miss Anastasia, who was much too eager and impetuous to be punctual, had
been waiting for some time, when her young agent made his appearance at
the office of her solicitor. After she had charged him with being too
late, and herself suffered conviction as being too early, the old lady
proceeded at once to business; they were in Mr Temple’s own room, but
they were alone.
“I have made copies of everything that seemed to throw light upon my
late father’s wanderings,” said Miss Anastasia—“not much to speak
of—see! These papers must have been carefully weeded before they came to
my hands. Here is an old guidebook marked with notes, and here a letter
dated from the place where he died. It is on the borders of Italy—at the
foot of the Alps—on the way to Milan, and not very far from there. You
will make all speed, young Atheling; I trust to your prudence—betray
nothing—do not say a word about these children until you find some
certain clue. It is more than twenty years—nearly one-and-twenty
years—since my father died; but a rich Englishman, who married among
them, was not like to be forgotten in such a village. Find out who this
Giulietta was—if you can discover the family, they might know something.
My father had an attendant, a sort of courier, who was with us
often—Jean Monte, half a Frenchman half an Italian. I have never heard
of him since that time; he might be heard of on the way, and _he_ might
know—but I cannot direct you, boy—I trust to your own spirit, your own
foresight, your own prudence. Make haste, as if it was life and death;
yet if time will avail you, take time. Now, young Atheling, I trust
you!—bring clear evidence—legal evidence—what will stand in a court of
law—and as sure as you live your fortune is made!”
Charlie did not make a single protestation in answer to this address. He
folded up carefully those fragments of paper copied out in Miss
Anastasia’s careful old-fashioned lady’s hand, and placed them in the
big old pocket-book which he carried for lack of a better.
“I don’t know much of the route,” said Charlie,—“over the Alps, I
suppose,” and for once his cheek flushed with the youthful excitement of
the travel. “I shall find out all about that immediately when I get to
town; and there is a passport to be seen after. When I am ready to
start—which will be just as soon as the thing can be done—I shall let
you know how I am to travel, and write immediately when I arrive
there;—I know what you mean me to do.”
Then Miss Anastasia gave him—(a very important part of the
business),—two ten-pound notes, which was a very large sum to Charlie,
and directed him to go to the banking-house, with which she kept an
account in London, and get from them a letter of credit on a banker in
Milan, on whom he could draw, according to his occasions. “You are very
young, young Atheling,” said Miss Rivers; “many a father would hesitate
to trust his son as I trust you; but I’m a woman and an optimist, and
have my notions: you are only a boy, but I believe in you—forget how
young you are while you are about my business—plenty of time after this
for enjoying yourself—and I tell you again, if you do your duty, your
fortune is made.”
The old lady and the youth went out together, to where the little
carriage and the grey ponies stood at the solicitor’s door. Charlie, in
his present development, was not at all the man to hand a lady with a
grace to her carriage; nor was this stately gentlewoman, in her brown
pelisse, at all the person to be so escorted; but they were a remarkable
pair enough, as they stood upon the broad pavement of one of the noblest
streets of Christendom. Miss Anastasia held out her hand with a parting
command and warning, as she took her seat and the reins.—“Young
Atheling, remember! it is life and death!”
She was less cautious at that moment than she had been during all their
interview. The words fell upon another ear than his to whom they were
addressed. Lord Winterbourne was making his way at the moment with some
newly arrived guests of his, and under the conduct of a learned pundit
from one of the colleges, along this same picturesque High Street; and,
in the midst of exclamations of rapture and of interest, his suspicious
and alarmed eye caught the familiar equipage and well-known figure of
Miss Anastasia. Her face was turned in the opposite direction,—she did
not see him,—but a single step brought him near enough to hear her
words. “Young Atheling!” Lord Winterbourne had not forgotten his former
connection with the name, but the remembrance had long lain dormant in a
breast which was used to potent excitements. William Atheling, though he
once saved a reckless young criminal, could do no harm with his remote
unbelievable story to a peer of the realm;—a man who had sat in the
councils of the State. Lord Winterbourne had begun his suit for the Old
Wood Lodge with the most contemptuous indifference to all that could be
said of him by anyone of this family; yet somehow it struck him
strangely to hear so sudden a naming of this name. “Young Atheling!” He
could not help looking at the youth,—meeting the stormy gleam in the
eyes of Charlie, whose sudden enmity sprung up anew in an instant. Lord
Winterbourne was sufficiently disturbed already by the departure of
Louis, and with the quick observation of alarm remarked everything. He
could understand no natural connection whatever between this lad and
Miss Anastasia. His startled imagination suggested instantly that it
bore some reference to Louis, and what interpretation was it possible to
give to so strange an adjuration—“It is life and death!”
CHAPTER IV.—GOING AWAY.
“Charlie, my dear boy,” said Mrs Atheling, with a slight tremble in her
voice, “I suppose it may be months before we see you again.”
“I can’t tell, mother; but it will not be a day longer than I can help,”
said Charlie, who had the grace to be serious at the moment of parting.
“There’s only one thing, you know,—I must do my business before I come
home.”
“And take care of yourself,” said Mrs Atheling; “take great care when
you are going over those mountains, and among those people where bandits
are—you know what stories we have read about such robbers, Charlie,—and
remember, though I should be very glad to hear good news about Louis,
Louis is not my own very boy, like you.”
“Hush, mother—no need for naming him,” said Charlie; “he is of more
moment than me, however, this time—for that’s my business. Never
fear—thieves may be fools there as well as at home, but they’re none
such fools as to meddle with me. Now, mother, promise me, the last
thing,—Agnes, do you hear?—don’t tell Marian a word, nor _him_. I’ll
tell old Foggo the whole story, and Foggo will do what he can for him
when he gets to London; but don’t you go and delude him, telling him of
this, for it would just be as good as ruin if I don’t succeed; and it
all may come to nothing, as like as not. I say, Agnes, do you hear?”
“Yes, I hear, very well; but I am not given to telling secrets,” said
Agnes, with a little dignity.
Charlie only laughed as he arranged himself in the corner of the
second-class carriage, and drew forth his grammar: there was no time for
anything more, save entreaties that he would write, and take care of
himself; and the train flashed away, leaving them somewhat dull and
blank in the reaction of past excitement, looking at each other, and
half reluctant to turn their faces homeward. Their minds hurried forth
faster than either steam or electricity to the end of Charlie’s journey.
They went back with very slow steps and very abstracted minds. What a
new world of change and sudden revolution might open upon them at
Charlie’s return!
Mrs Atheling had some business in the town, and the mother and daughter
pursued their way silently to that same noble High Street where Charlie
had seen Lord Winterbourne, and where Lord Winterbourne and his party
were still to be caught sight of, appearing and reappearing by glimpses
as they “did” the halls and colleges. While her mother managed some
needful business in a shop, Agnes stood rather dreamily looking down the
stately street; its strange old-world mixture of the present and the
past; its union of all kinds of buildings; the trim classic pillars and
toy cupolas of the eighteenth century—the grim crumbling front of elder
days—the gleams of green grass and waving trees through college
gateways—the black-gowned figures interrupting the sunshine—the
beautiful spire striking up into it as into its natural element,—a noble
hyacinthine stem of immortal flowers. Agnes did not know much about
artistic effect, nor anything about orders of architecture, but the
scene seized upon her imagination, as was its natural right. Her
thoughts were astray among hopes and chances far enough out of the
common way—but any dream of romance could make itself real in an
atmosphere like this.
She was pale,—she was somewhat of an abstracted and musing aspect. When
one took into consideration her misfortune of authorship, she was in
quite a sentimental _pose_ and attitude—so thought her American
acquaintance, who had managed to secure an invitation to the Hall, and
was one of Lord Winterbourne’s party. But Mr Endicott had “done” all the
colleges before, and he could afford to let his attention be distracted
by the appearance of the literary sister of the lady of his love.
“I am not surprised at your abstraction,” said Mr Endicott. “In this,
indeed, I do not hesitate to confess, my country is not equal to your
Island. What an effect of sunshine! what a breadth of shade! I cannot
profess to have any preference, in respect to Art, for the past,
picturesque though it be—a poet of these days, Miss Atheling, has not to
deal with facts, but feelings; but I have no doubt, before I interrupted
you, the whole panorama of History glided before your meditative eye.”
“No, indeed; I was thinking more of the future than of the past,” said
Agnes hurriedly.
“The future of this nation is obscure and mysterious,” said Mr Endicott,
gathering his eyebrows solemnly. “Some man must arise to lead you—to
glory—or to perdition! I see nothing but chaos and darkness; but why
should I prophesy? A past generation had leisure to watch the signs of
the times; but for us ‘Art is long and time is fleeting,’ and happy is
the man who can snatch one burning experience from the brilliant mirage
of life.”
Agnes, a little puzzled by this mixture of images, did not attempt any
answer. Mr Endicott went on.
“I had begun to observe, with a great deal of interest, two remarkable
young minds placed in a singular position. They were not to be met, of
course, at the table of Lord Winterbourne,” said the American with
dignity; “but in my walks about the park I sometimes encountered them,
and always endeavoured to draw them into conversation. So remarkable, in
fact, did they seem to me, that they found a place in my letters from
England; studies of character entirely new to my consciousness. I
believe, Miss Atheling, I had once the pleasure of seeing them in your
company. They stand—um—unfortunately in a—a—an equivocal relationship to
my noble host.”
“Ah! what of them?” cried Agnes quickly, and with a crimsoned cheek. She
felt already how difficult it was to hear them spoken of, and not
proclaim at once her superior knowledge.
“A singular event, I understand, happened last night,” continued Mr
Endicott. “Viscount Winterbourne, on his own lawn, was attacked and
insulted by the young man, who afterwards left the house under very
remarkable circumstances. My noble friend, who is an admirable example
of an old English nobleman, was at one time in actual danger, and I
believe has been advised to put this fiery youth—”
“Do you mean Louis?” cried Agnes, interrupting him anxiously. “Louis!—do
you mean that he has left the Hall?”
“I am greatly interested, I assure you, in tracing out this romance of
real life,” said Mr Endicott. “He left the Hall, I understand, last
evening—and my noble friend is advised to take measures for his
apprehension. I look upon the whole history with the utmost interest.
How interesting to trace the motives of this young mind, perhaps the
strife of passions—gratitude mixing with a sense of injury! If he is
secured, I shall certainly visit him: I know no nobler subject for a
drama of passion; and dramas of the passions are what we want to ennoble
this modern time.”
“Mother!” cried Agnes, “mother! come; we have no time to lose—Mr
Endicott has told me—Mamma, leave these things to another time. Marian
is alone; there is no one to support her. Oh, mother, mother! make
haste! We must go home!”
She scarcely gave a glance to Mr Endicott as he stood somewhat
surprised, making a study of the young author’s excitable temperament
for his next “letter from England”—but hastened her mother homeward,
explaining, as she went, though not very coherently, that Louis had
attacked Lord Winterbourne—that he had left the Hall—that he had done
something for which he might be apprehended. The terror of disgrace—that
most dread of all fears to people in their class—overwhelmed both mother
and daughter, as they hastened, at a very unusual pace, along the road,
terrified to meet himself in custody, or some one coming to tell them of
his crime. And Marian, their poor beautiful flower, on whom this storm
would fall so heavily—Marian was alone!
CHAPTER V.—THE OLD WOOD HOUSE.
Louis passed the night in the Rector’s library. He had no inclination
for sleep; indeed, he was almost scornful of the idea that he _could_
sleep under his new and strange circumstances; and it was not until he
roused himself, with a start, to see that the pale sheen of the
moonlight had been succeeded by the rosy dawn of morning, that he knew
of the sudden, deep slumber, that had fallen upon him. It was morning,
but it was still a long time till day; except the birds among the trees
there was nothing astir, not even the earliest labourer, and he could
not hear a sound in the house. All the events of the previous night
returned upon Louis’s mind with all the revived freshness of a sudden
awaking. A great change had passed upon him in a few hours. He started
now at once out of the indefinite musings, the flush of vain ambition,
the bitter brooding over wrong which had been familiar to his mind. He
began to think with the earnest precision of a man who has attained to a
purpose. Formerly it had been hard enough for his proud undisciplined
spirit, prescient of something greater, to resolve upon a plan of
tedious labour for daily bread, or to be content with such a fortune as
had fallen to such a man as Mr Atheling. Even with love to bear him out,
and his beautiful Marian to inspire him, it was hard, out of all the
proud possibilities of youth, to plunge into such a lot as this. Now he
considered it warily, with the full awakened consciousness of a man. Up
to this time his bitter dislike and opposition to Lord Winterbourne had
been carried on by fits and starts, as youths do contend with older
people under whose sway they have been all their life. He took no reason
with him when he decided that he was not the son of the man who opposed
him. He never entered into the question how he came to the Hall, or what
was the motive of its master. He had contented himself with a mere
unreasoning conviction that Lord Winterbourne was not his father; but
only one word was wanted to awaken the slumbering mind of the youth, and
that word had been spoken last night. Now a clear and evident purpose
became visible before him. What was Lord Winterbourne’s reason for
keeping him all his life under so killing a bondage? What child was
there in the world whom it was Lord Winterbourne’s interest to call
illegitimate, and keep in obscurity? His heart swelled—the colour rose
in his face. He did not see how hopeless was the search—how entirely
without grounds, without information, he was. He did not perceive how
vain, to every reasonable individual, would seem the fabric he had built
upon a mere conviction of his own. In his own eager perception
everything was possible to that courage, and perseverance indomitable,
which he felt to be in him; and, for the first time in his life, Louis
came down from the unreasonable and bitter pride which had shut his
heart against all overtures of friendship. Friendship—help—advice—the
aid of those who knew the world better than he did—these were things to
be sought for, and solicited now. He sat in the Rector’s chair, leaning
upon the Rector’s writing-table; it was not without a struggle that he
overcame his old repugnance, his former haughtiness. It was not without
a pang that he remembered the obligation under which this stranger had
laid him. It was his first effort in self-control, and it was not an
easy one; he resolved at last to ask counsel from the Rector, and lay
fully before him the strange circumstances in which he stood.
The Rector was a man of capricious hours, and uncertain likings. He was
sometimes abroad as early as the earliest ploughman; to-day it was late
in the forenoon before he made his appearance. Breakfast had been
brought to Louis, by himself, in the library; in this house they were
used to solitary meals at all hours—and he had already asked several
times for the Rector, when Mr Rivers at last entered the room, and
saluted him with stately courtesy. “My sister, I find, has detained your
sister,” said the Rector. “I hope you have not been anxious—they tell me
the young lady will join us presently.”
Then there was a pause; and then Mr Rivers began an extremely polite and
edifying conversation, which must have reminded any spectator of the
courtly amity of a couple of Don Quixotes preparing for the duello. The
Rector himself conducted it with the most solemn gravity imaginable.
This Lionel Rivers, dissatisfied and self-devouring, was not a true man.
Supposing himself to be under a melancholy necessity of disbelieving on
pain of conscience, he yet submitted to an innumerable amount of
practical shams, with which his conscience took no concern. In spite of
his great talents, and of a character full of natural nobleness, when
you came to its foundations, a false tone, an artificial strain of
conversation, an unreal and insincere expression, were unhappily
familiar enough to the dissatisfied clergyman, who vainly tried to
anchor himself upon the authority of the Church. Louis, on the contrary,
knew nothing of talk which was a mere veil and concealment of meaning;
he could not use vain words when his heart burned within him; he had no
patience for those conversations which were merely intended to occupy
time, and which meant and led to nothing. Yet it was very difficult for
him, young, proud, and inexperienced as he was, without any invitation
or assistance from his companion, to enter upon his explanation. He
changed colour, he became uneasy, he scarcely answered the indifferent
remarks addressed to him. At length, seeing nothing better for it, he
plunged suddenly and without comment into his own tale.
“We have left Winterbourne Hall,” said Louis, reddening to his temples
as he spoke. “I have long been aware how unsuitable a home it was for
me. I am going to London immediately. I cannot thank you enough for your
hospitality to my sister, and to myself, last night.”
“That is nothing,” said the Rector, with a motion of his hand. “Some
time since I had the pleasure of saying to your friends in the Lodge
that it would gratify me to be able to serve you. I do not desire to pry
into your plans; but if I can help you in town, let me know without
hesitation.”
“So far from prying,” said Louis eagerly, interrupting him, “I desire
nothing more than to explain them. All my life,” and once again the red
blood rushed to the young man’s face,—“all my life I have occupied the
most humiliating of positions—you know it. I am not a meek man by
nature; what excuse I have had if a bitter pride has sometimes taken
possession of me, you know——”
The Rector bowed gravely, but did not speak. Louis continued in haste,
and with growing agitation, “I am not the son of Lord Winterbourne—I am
not a disgraced offshoot of your family—I can speak to you without
feeling shame and abasement in the very sound of your name. This has
been my conviction since ever I was capable of knowing anything—but
Heaven knows how subtly the snare was woven—it seemed impossible, until
now when we have done it, to disengage our feet.”
“Have you made any discovery, then? What has happened?” said the Rector,
roused into an eager curiosity. Here, at the very outset, lay Louis’s
difficulty—and he had never perceived it before.
“No; I have made no discovery,” he said, with a momentary
disconcertment. “I have only left the Hall—I have only told Lord
Winterbourne what he knows well, and I have known long, that I am not
his son.”
“Exactly—but how did you discover that?” said the Rector.
“I have discovered nothing—but I am as sure of it as that I breathe,”
answered Louis.
The Rector looked at him—looked at a portrait which hung directly above
Louis’s head upon the wall, smiled, and shook his head. “It is quite
natural,” he said; “I can sympathise with any effort you make to gain a
more honourable position, and to disown Lord Winterbourne—but it is vain
where there are pictures of the Riverses to deny your connection with my
family. George Rivers himself, my lord’s heir, the future head of the
family, has not a tithe as much of the looks and bearing of the blood as
you.”
Louis could not find a word to say in face of such an argument—he looked
eagerly yet blankly into the face of the Rector—felt all his pulses
throbbing with fiery impatience of the doubt thus cast upon him—yet knew
nothing to advance against so subtle and unexpected a charge of kindred,
and could only repeat, in a passionate undertone, “I am not Lord
Winterbourne’s son.”
“I do not know,” said the Rector, “I have no information which is not
common to all the neighbourhood—yet I beg you to guard against delusion.
Lord Winterbourne brought you here while you were an infant—since then
you have remained at the Hall—he has owned you, I suppose, as much as a
man ever owns an illegitimate child. Pardon me, I am obliged to use the
common words. Lord Winterbourne is not a man of extended benevolence,
neither is he one to take upon himself the responsibility or blame of
another. If you are not his son, why did he bring you here?”
Louis raised his face from his hands which had covered it—he was very
pale, haggard, almost ghastly. “If you can tell me of any youth—of any
child—of any man’s son, whom it was his interest to disgrace and remove
out of the way,” said the young man with his parched lips, “I will tell
you why I am here.”
The Rector could not quite restrain a start of emotion—not for what the
youth said, for that was madness to the man of the world—but for the
extreme passion, almost despair, in his face. He thought it best to
soothe rather than to excite him.
“I know nothing more than all the world knows,” said Mr Rivers: “but,
though I warn you against delusions, I will not say you are wrong when
you are so firmly persuaded that you are right. What do you mean to do
in London—can I help you there?”
Louis felt with no small pang this giving up of the argument—as if it
were useless to discuss anything so visionary—but he roused himself to
answer the question: “The first thing I have to do,” he said quickly,
“is to maintain my sister and myself.”
The Rector bowed again, very solemnly and gravely—perhaps not without a
passing thought that the same duty imposed chains more galling than iron
upon himself.
“That done, I will pursue my inquiries as I can,” said Louis: “you think
them vain—but time will prove that. I thank you now, for my sister’s
sake, for receiving us—and now we must go on our way.”
“Not yet,” said the Rector. “You are without means of course—what, do
you think it a disgrace, that you blush for it?—or would you have me
suppose that you had taken money from Lord Winterbourne, while you deny
that you are his son? For this once suppose me your friend; I will
supply you with what you are certain to need; and you can repay me—oh,
with double interest if you please!—only do not go to London
unprovided—for that is the maddest method of anticipating a heartbreak;
your sister is young, almost a child, tender and delicate—let it be, for
her sake.”
“Thank you; I will take it as you give it,” said Louis. “I am not so
ungenerous as you suppose.”
There was a certain likeness between them, different as they were—there
was a likeness in both to these family portraits on the walls. Before
such silent witnesses Louis’s passionate disclaimer, sincere though it
was, was unbelievable. For no one could believe that he was not an
offshoot of the house of Rivers, who looked from his face and the
Rector’s to those calm ancient faces on the walls.
CHAPTER VI.—AN ADVENTURER.
“They have left the Hall.”
That was all Marian said when she came to the door to meet her mother
and sister, who paused in the porch, overcome with fatigue, haste, and
anxiety. Mrs Atheling was obliged to pause and sit down, not caring
immediately to see the young culprit who was within.
“And what has happened, Marian,—what has happened? My poor child, did he
tell you?” asked Mrs Atheling.
“Nothing has happened, mamma,” said Marian, with a little petulant
haste; “only Louis has quarrelled with Lord Winterbourne; but, indeed, I
wish you would speak to him. Oh, Agnes, go and talk to Louis; he says he
will go to London to-day.”
“And so he should; there is not a moment to be lost,” said Agnes,—“I
will go and tell him; we can walk in with him to Oxford, and see him
safely away. Tell Hannah to make haste, Marian,—he must not waste an
hour.”
“What does she mean,—what is the matter? Oh, what have you heard,
mamma?” said Marian, growing very pale.
“Hush, dear; I daresay it was not him,—it was Mr Endicott, who is sure
to hate him, poor boy; he said Lord Winterbourne would put him in
prison, Marian. Oh,” said Mrs Atheling, getting up hurriedly, “he ought
to go at once to Papa.”
But they found Louis, whom they all surrounded immediately with terror,
sympathy, and encouragement, entirely unappalled by the threatened
vengeance of Lord Winterbourne.
“There is nothing to charge me with; he can bring no accusation against
me; if he did ever say it, it must have been a mere piece of bravado,”
said Louis; “but it is better I should go at once without losing an
hour, as Agnes says. Will you let Rachel stay? and you, who are the
kindest mother in the world, when will you have compassion on us and
come home?”
“Indeed, I wish we were going now,” said Mrs Atheling; and she said it
with genuine feeling, and a sigh of anxiety. “You must tell Papa we will
not stay very long; but I suppose we must see about this lawsuit first;
and I am sure I cannot tell who is to manage it now, since Charlie is
gone.”
“Shall you go to Papa at once, Louis?” asked Marian, who was very
anxious to conceal from every one the tears in her downcast eyes.
“Surely, at once,” said Louis. “We are in different circumstances now; I
have a great deal to ask any one who knows the family of Rivers. Do you
know it never before occurred to me that Lord Winterbourne must have had
some powerful inducement for keeping me here, knowing as well as I do
that I am not his son.”
Mrs Atheling and Agnes turned a sudden guilty look upon each other; but
neither had betrayed the secret;—what did he mean?
“Unless it was his interest in some way—unless it was for his evident
advantage to disgrace and disable me,” said Louis, groping in the dark,
when they knew one possible solution of the mystery so well, “I am
convinced he never would have kept me as he has done at the Hall.”
He spoke in a tone different to that which he had used to the Rector,
and very naturally different—for Louis here was triumphant in the faith
of his audience, and did not hesitate to say all he felt, nor fear too
close an investigation into the grounds of his belief. He spoke
fervently; and Marian and Rachel looked at him with the faith of
enthusiasm, and Mrs Atheling and Agnes with wonder, agitation, and
embarrassment. But, as he went on, it became too much for the
self-control of the good mother. She hurried out on pretence of
superintending Hannah, and was very soon followed by Agnes. “I durst not
stay, I should have told him,” said Mrs Atheling, in a hurried whisper.
“Who could put so much into his head, Agnes? who could lead him so near
the truth?—only God! My dear child, I believe in it all now.”
Agnes had believed in it all from the first moment of hearing it, but so
singular a strain was upon the minds of both mother and daughter,
knowing this extraordinary secret which the others did not know, that it
was not wonderful they should give a weight much beyond their desert to
the queries of Louis. Yet, indeed, Louis’s queries took a wonderfully
correct direction, and came very near the truth.
It was a day of extreme agitation to them all, and not until Louis, who
had no travelling-bag to pack, had been accompanied once more to the
railway, and seen safely away, with many a lingering farewell, was any
one able to listen to, or understand, Rachel’s version of the events of
last night. When he was quite gone—when it was no longer possible to
wave a hand to him in the distance, or even to see the flying white
plume of the miraculous horseman who bounded along with all that line of
carriages, the three girls came home together through the quiet evening
road—the disenchanted road, weary and unlovely, which Marian marvelled
much any one could prefer to Bellevue. They walked very close together,
with Marian in the midst, comforting her in an implied, sympathetic,
girlish fashion—for Rachel, though Louis had belonged to her so very
much longer, and was her sole authority, lawgiver, and hero,
instinctively kept her own feelings out of sight, and took care of
Marian. These girls were very loyal to their own visionary ideas of the
mysterious magician who had not come to either of them yet, but whose
coming both anticipated some time, with awe and with smiles.
And then Rachel told them how it had fared with her on the previous
night. Rachel had very little to say about the Rector; she had given him
up conscientiously to Agnes, and with a distant and reverent admiration
of his loftiness, contemplated him afar off, too great a person for her
friendship. “But in the morning the maid came and took me to Miss
Rivers—did you ever see Miss Rivers?—she is very pale—and pretty, though
she is old, and a very, very great invalid,” said Rachel. “Some one has
to sit up with her every night, and she has so many troubles—headaches,
and pains in her side, and coughs, and every sort of thing! She told me
all about them as she lay on the sofa in her pretty white dressing-gown,
and in _such_ a soft voice as if she was quite used to them, and did not
mind. Do you think you could be a nurse to any one who was ill, Agnes?”
“She _has_ been a nurse to all of us when we were ill,” said Marian,
rousing herself for the effort, and immediately subsiding into the
pensiveness which the sad little beauty would not suffer herself to
break, even though she began in secret to be considerably interested
about the interior of the mysterious Wood House, and the invisible Miss
Rivers. Marian thought Louis would not be pleased if he could imagine
her thinking of any one but him, so soon after he had gone away.
“But I don’t mean at home—I mean a stranger,” said Rachel, “one whom you
did not _love_. I think it must be rather hard sometimes; but do you
know I was very nearly offering to be nurse to Miss Rivers, she spoke so
kindly to me? And then Louis will have to work,” continued the faithful
little sister, with tears in her eyes; “you must tell me what I can do,
Agnes, not to be a burden upon Louis. Oh, do you think any one would
give me money for singing now?”
CHAPTER VII.—LORD WINTERBOURNE.
Lord Winterbourne, all his life, had been a man of guile; he was so long
experienced in it, that dissimulation became easy enough to him, when he
was not startled or thrown suddenly off his guard. Already every one
around him supposed he had quite forgiven and forgotten the wild
escapade of Louis. He had no confidant whatever, not even a valet or a
steward, and his most intimate associate knew nothing of his dark and
secret counsels. When any one mentioned the ungovernable youth who had
fled from the Hall, Lord Winterbourne said, “Pooh, pooh—he will soon
discover his mistake,” and smiled his pale and sinister smile. Such a
face as his could not well look benign; but people were accustomed to
his face, and thought it his misfortune—and everybody set him down, as,
in this instance at least, of a very forgiving and indulgent spirit,
willing that the lad should find out his weakness by experiment, but not
at all disposed to inflict any punishment upon his unruly son.
The fact was, however, that Lord Winterbourne was considerably excited
and uneasy. He spent hours in a little private library among his
papers—carefully went over them, collating and arranging again and
again—destroyed some, and filled the private drawers of his cabinet with
others. He sent orders to his agent to prosecute with all the energy
possible his suit against the Athelings. He had his letters brought to
him in his own room, where he was alone, and looked over them with eager
haste and something like apprehension. Servants, always sufficiently
quick-witted under such circumstances, concluded that my lord expected
something, and the expectation descended accordingly through all the
grades of the great house; but this did not by any means diminish the
number of his guests, or the splendour of his hospitality. New arrivals
came constantly to the Hall—and very great people indeed, on their way
to Scotland and the moors, looked in upon the disappointed statesman by
way of solace. He had made an unspeakable failure in his attempt at
statesmanship; but still he had a certain amount of influence, and
merited a certain degree of consideration. The quiet country brightened
under the shower of noble sportsmen and fair ladies. All Banburyshire
crowded to pay its homage. Mrs Edgerley brought her own private
menagerie, the newest lion who could be heard of; and herself fell into
the wildest fever of architecturalism—fitted up an oratory under the
directions of a fellow of Merton—set up an Ecclesiological Society in
the darkest of her drawing-rooms—made drawings of “severe saints,” and
purchased casts of the finest “examples”—began to embroider an
altar-cloth from the designs of one of the most renowned connoisseurs in
the ecclesiological city, and talked of nothing but Early English, and
Middle Pointed. Politics, literature, and the fine arts, sport,
flirtation, and festivity, kept in unusual excitement the whole
spectator county of Banbury, and the busy occupants of Winterbourne
Hall.
In the midst of all this, the Lord of Winterbourne spent solitary hours
in his library among his papers, took solitary rides towards Abingford,
moodily courted a meeting with Miss Anastasia, even addressed her when
they met, and did all that one unassisted man could do to gain
information of her proceedings. He was in a state of restless
expectation, not easy to account for. He knew that Louis was in London,
but not who had given him the means to go there; and he could find no
pretence for bringing back the youth, or asserting authority over him.
He waited in well-concealed but frightfully-felt excitement for
_something_, watching with a stealthy but perpetual observation the
humble house of the Athelings and the Priory at Abingford. He did not
say to himself what it was he apprehended, nor indeed that he
apprehended anything; but with that strange certainty which criminals
always seem to retain, that fate must come some time, waited in the
midst of his gay, busy, frivolous guests, sharing all the occupations
round him, like a man in a dream,—waited as the world waits in a pause
of deadly silence for the thunderclap. It would rouse him when it came.
It came, but not as he looked for it. Oh blind, vain, guilty soul, with
but one honest thought among all its crafts and falsehoods! It came not
like the rousing tumult of the thunder, but like an avalanche from the
hills; he fell under it with a groan of mortal agony; there was nothing
in heaven or earth to defend him from the misery of this sudden blow.
All his schemes, all his endeavours, what were they good for now?
FROM PERA TO BUCHAREST.
The map of Europe sufficiently explains why Bucharest, by no means the
smallest or least interesting capital in this division of the globe’s
surface, is unquestionably the least visited and known. Situate beyond
the lands of the Austrian, the Russian, and the Turk, it is remote from
every place to which business or pleasure attracts travellers. Distant
from frequented highways, the paths to it are long and wearisome. Down
the Danube from Vienna, or up it from Constantinople, or across Roumelia
and Bulgaria, with rough and savage posting, are the three best but
still untempting routes. And in Western Europe, people generally know
and care extremely little about Moldavia and Wallachia, provinces
concerning which little has been written, save in the ephemeral pages of
newspapers. The late war has done something to improve our acquaintance
with them; but still there exists concerning them an enormous amount of
ignorance, even amongst persons otherwise well informed. It is not long
since we met with such persons, who imagined a Hospodar to be sort of
savage chief, dressed in sheep’s-skin, and took Boyards to be minor
barbarians, inhabiting caves, and living by plunder and the chase. This
is far, indeed, from the fact. The Moldo-Wallachians are amongst the
greatest ramblers of our time; there are few members of the upper
classes who do not quit their own country for some weeks or months every
year, and those who have met with them in Vienna and Paris, and in their
favourite summer haunts, the baths of France and Germany, will have
found them to be usually people of much external polish, of luxurious
habits and profuse expenditure, speaking French fluently, and (although
often with a bad accent and a deficiency of refinement) almost as their
native tongue, and anxious to elevate their race and country in the eyes
of foreigners, who, they well know, are little acquainted with and apt
to depreciate them. At home they are a good-natured, courteous and
hospitable people, to whom a stranger needs but slight introduction to
be sure of friendly welcome and attention. And if the introduction be a
special one, or the foreigner’s qualities, name or position, recommend
him particularly to the notice, and open to him the heart, of the
Danubian magnate, he will find himself feasted, caressed, and cherished
to an unbounded extent; he will be bidden to repasts savoury of the
skill of exotic artists; he will be supplied with horses and escorted to
promenades, and made welcome at whatever hour he present himself, and
made acquainted with all the pretty women and eligible men in the
country—_bans_, _vorniks_, _logothetes_, _postelniks_, or by whatever
other uncouth-sounding titles they may be known. Certainly whoever goes
to the Principalities with the idea that he is proceeding to an
uncivilised and unpleasant country, will be most agreeably surprised
before he has sojourned there three days. The rural districts may not
much interest him; the roads, or their absence, may provoke his
malediction, and he will not be very loud in praise of the inns; if he
enter by way of Galatz, he will doubtless pronounce that flourishing
town to be the ugliest and most wearisome place in which ever the
convenience or caprice of the Austrian Lloyds’ Steam Company compelled a
disgusted traveller to lose forty-eight hours; the small country towns
will hardly attract him much, unless it be those which, like Giurgevo,
are memorable for actions of war; but the capitals, and especially
Bucharest, will offer him pleasures, amusements, and even comforts he
did not anticipate when plunging into this frontier land of the
Christian and the Turk. The Wallachians have a local proverb to the
effect that he who once drinks of the water of the Dumbrovitza, will
never drink of any other. The Dumbrovitza is a turbid, narrow,
poplar-and-willow-fringed streamlet that flows through Bucharest,
valueless for navigation, and having waters of no very pleasant flavour
or attractive limpidity; but the metaphor is more transparent than the
stream, and intimates the seductions of the gay, idle, _insouciant_,
dissipated, and, if truth must be told, wicked capital of Wallachia.
Even in our luxurious day, wanderers beyond railways, and into regions
little trodden, occasionally find ample cause for complaint of miscalled
houses of entertainment. The inns about the Lower Danube are rather of a
savage sort, and those at Giurgevo and Galatz, especially at the former
place, are decidedly bad; a Spanish posada is not exactly the kind of
hostelry one would select for a long sojourn; even in comfortable
Germany, when one gets off the main tracks, one often finds rough
commons and hard quarters in the small towns and village _gasthaüser_.
But I suppose there is no inn in the world, ranking as the first in a
capital city, from which a person of ordinary palate, patience, and
purse, feels more rejoiced to escape than from the much-trumpeted Hôtel
d’Angleterre, at Pera, Constantinople. Doubtless the author of _Eothen_
little thought, when vaunting the activity, resources, and polyglot
accomplishments of his travelling attendant, that he was providing
future fame and custom for one of the most detestable caravanserais to
which, for want of a better, Englishmen ever thronged. Missiri’s hotel,
the best in Pera, is one of the worst and dearest in Europe. Small
rooms, bad wines, unwholesome dinners of a bastard French description,
enormous charges, and gross impertinence, constitute the programme of an
establishment which, during the war, was so overwhelmed with custom that
it frequently rejected, in one morning, as many guests as would have
filled it from cellar to garret. The notion had got abroad that it was
the only possible inn in Pera; that at all the others you were poisoned,
and plundered, and flea-bitten to an unendurable extent; in short, that
it was _the_ correct house of resort. When an idea of this kind takes
root amongst Englishmen, argument and proof are alike in vain to
eradicate it. The truth is that there were other hotels, very little, if
at all worse, than that of Angleterre, and where, if the dining-room was
rather smaller, the civility was certainly much greater. But this was
not credited; and the English flocked to Missiri’s, until no Englishman
who could possibly find room—though it were but a shakedown in a
subterranean suite, to which lastcomers were consigned—would go
elsewhere, because at Missiri’s alone was he sure to find his
acquaintances and countrymen. So that the hotel had literally the pick
of the innumerable English passing to and from the Crimea, or abiding
for a time in Constantinople. It was in the position of a dealer who
finds ten times as many buyers as his stock will supply, and who sells
at his own price, delivering his goods with a grumble and a snarl, as if
he reproached himself at the last moment with not having been more
extortionate. The cool insolence with which this great, crowded, noisy,
comfortless tavern rejected every species of complaint, however well
founded, bidding malcontents to go farther and fare worse, the
unblushing assurance with which the most exorbitant charges were
defended and maintained, the grudging surliness with which the merest
trifle was conceded when out of the established routine of the house,
the impertinent opposition frequently made to the private arrangements
of guests, caused one to sigh for the comforts and civility of an
English village inn or French provincial hostelry—each fifth-rate in its
own country; but oh! how superior in all essentials to the best hotel at
Pera!
From this, most joyfully, on a morning early in May, did I turn my
steps, followed by two porters bearing my moderate baggage, and descend
that precipitous and perilous street which, its surface agreeably varied
by loose paving-stones, dead rats, and deep holes, is the most direct
route to the Bosphorus. The journey is not fifteen minutes long, but one
passes through much variety. The upper part of the street is rather
busy. First comes the Russian embassy, then scraping and cleaning
preparatory to the reception of a new ambassador. It was used, during
the war, as a hospital for French officers. A little lower down are the
English postoffice and the French army post; also some French _buvettes_
or wineshops, with inscriptions on their windows and walls, such as one
sees at the barriers and in the faubourgs of Paris, announcing the
excellence and price of the wine and absinthe vended within. A hotel
succeeds to the English post, and just opposite to it are some tottering
uninhabited houses, such as there are many of in Pera, uselessly
encumbering ground of immense building value, and threatening to fall
into the balconies over the way. Below this the street gets narrow, and
assumes a solitary and mysterious aspect. Armenian families dwell here;
and here, as may be known by the close latticeshutters that defend every
opening, are the houses of Mussulmans. No sign of life at door or
window, and few passengers in the street. You meet perhaps a porter
toiling up with one of those tremendous loads, which Turks alone have
the power and knack of bearing; his sinewy brown legs bare, and the
sweat raining from his shaggy eyebrows; further on, you come upon a
group of British cavalry officers, just across from Scutari, upon
luncheon and lounging intent; lower down you overtake a commissariat
official in blue uniform, with velvet facings, rosy, and inclined to
corpulence, as commissaries should be, and not unfrequently are. He is
in command of a small party of soldiers, escorting a string of Turks,
laden with specie for the Crimea. Then you are in your turn overtaken by
one in staff uniform, mounted on a handsome Arab, too good to be knocked
about amongst these abominable pavements and holey places, and followed
by an interpreter in cap of red and gold. It is the gallant and popular
Major B—— one of Charles James Napier’s Scinde lambs, who reigns supreme
over the depot of the Turkish Contingent on the Bosphorus, and is on his
way to Stamboul to smoke the pipe of peace and hold converse of grave
import with the worthy Seraskier Mehemet Rushdi Pasha—one of the few
honest and disinterested statesmen, be it said _en passant_, of whom
Turkey at the present day can boast. And now a short turn to the left
and another to the right take us through a series of old-clothes shops,
in and outside of which is exhibited the most extraordinary collection
of cast-off garments and ancient rags that the eccentric fancy of a
crazy painter ever threw together. Houndsditch would stare aghast at the
motley museum of toggery, to which all the nations of the earth have
contributed. Then we got into Pipe Street; so christened from the
occupation of its inhabitants, who are seen sitting in their open shops,
which are exactly like wooden boxes with one side taken out, kneading
and moulding red clay, and gilding and carving it with much cunning, and
fashioning cherry and jasmin sticks, and fitting mouthpieces of glass
and amber, and so composing the tchibouk—instrument well beloved by
Turks, and well enough suited to a sedate people, sedentary in habits
and composed in motions, but ill adapted to Western vivacity and
briskness, and a very sorry exchange for the commodious cigar. After
passing Pipe Street, one gets into the region of strong scents. We will
give a wide berth, if you please, to that butcher’s shop which forms the
corner; but, wide though it be, it suffices not, and we are nearly
knocked down by the whiff that overtakes us. We pass a block of grimy,
tumbledown houses, at whose open windows and doors are seen what we at
first take to be a party of boys in gaudy masquerade dresses. They are
Armenian women, tawdrily attired, for the most part in jackets and loose
trousers, having upon their heads fantastical caps of gaudy embroidered
cloth, and in their mouths large paper cigars. This street is known
amongst the British, and particularly the maritime portion of the
population of Pera, Galata, and Tophaneh, as Kummupjonni Street, a name
on whose etymology we are pondering when we are enveloped and assailed
by such a diabolical and horrible stench that all reflection and
reasoning are at once expelled from our head. It is like passing Death’s
laboratory, just as a bottle of Concentrated Essence of Cholera is
broken. How anybody can live for a day within a thousand yards of this
dreadful exhalation appears miraculous. Yet the neighbourhood is densely
peopled, and the author of the perfume, a fabricator of a mess of faded
vegetables soaked in fetid vinegar—a preparation much approved and
consumed by the Turks—stands in his shop looking healthy and comely, and
seemingly unaffected by the miasma he evokes from a sort of sewer into
which the superfluous acids and steaming residue of his cauldron flow
through a greasy grating. We fly with a shudder, the effluvia pursuing
us, and it is hours before the reminiscence entirely leaves our
nostrils, chased thence by the fresh breezes of the Euxine.
The Ferdinando Primo, Austrian Lloyds’ steamer, advertised to sail at
noon that day, was smoking at her anchorage hard by Seraglio Point when
I pushed off from the dilapidated jetty of Tophaneh. As my caïque neared
her I saw there was no need for hurry, or chance of her sailing at the
appointed time. She was environed, besieged, blockaded, by a flotilla of
the miscellaneous craft that swarm in the Golden Horn. Of all places in
the world, I believe Constantinople, its harbour and environs, to be
that which affords most studies for the painter, whether his taste be
for landscape, groups, physiognomy, or buildings, and there were a
thousand to be found here in the congregation of boats and miscellany of
races that pressed, splashed, rubbed, ground, screamed, scolded, and
swore against the sides of the slovenly Austrian craft, whose decks were
a chaos of lumber and a hive of humanity. My two athletic and
picturesque Greeks, in their red skull-caps, loose shirts, and short
trousers of striped muslin, their berry-brown breasts and magnificent
legs bare, their splendid mustaches—which a British Guardsman would have
thought cheap at a twelvemonth’s pay—twisting out, like the tendrils of
a vine, on either side of their classical countenances, drove the nozzle
of their slender skiff into a narrow opening in the outer line of boats
and lighters, which were five or six deep around the steamer, following
up the intrusion by a volley of those colloquial amenities common
amongst the boatmen, porters, robbers, beggars, and _canaille_ of
Constantinople—that is to say, amongst nine-tenths of the entire
population of that most disreputable capital and its suburbs. The
Billingsgate of the Bosphorus must be heard and understood for its
richness to be appreciated; its furious vehemence makes every stranger
wonder that it so rarely leads to blows. In the case of my oarsmen it
did not even lead to a passage to the vessel’s gangway. Turkish women,
looking like bundles of particoloured rags cast into the bottom of
boats, scarcely vouchsafed a glance of their calm serious dark eyes at
the noisy intruders; lightermen opposed to us the passive resistance of
their heavy-laden barges; three dirty-faced English merchant sailors,
extricating themselves from the press, brought their heavy broadbottomed
ship’s-boat against the bows of our caïque, making her lose what little
vantage she had gained, at which I thought my Greeks would have torn out
their mustaches, or committed suicide on the spot, or done some other
desperate deed in the excess of their frantic fury. And here, before
quitting Constantinople, perhaps, and I hope, for ever (for Stamboul,
which in Turkish estimation is but one remove from Paradise, is a most
detestable residence to a civilised Christian), I will just destroy a
popular delusion, originating, I believe, with Byron, with respect to
the convenience and agreeableness of the “light caïque,” that
description of boat being about the most uncomfortable I am acquainted
with. I do not here refer to fine, roomy, eight-oared caïques, in which
you sit on well-cushioned benches and with perfect convenience, six or
eight persons if you please, whilst in front of you are your eight or
ten rowers, and in rear, on an elevated poop, the helmsman with an
umbrella, at sight of which parasol, and of the multitudinous oars, and
at the general aspect of the whole, the guards turn out wherever you
pass, and arms are presented to you all the way up the Bosphorus, no
matter who or what you are, because you _might_ be a pasha, punctilious
in matters of etiquette, in which case the soldiers might get the stick
for omitting the proper forms. But to keep up a craft of this sort, with
its numerous crew, is no slight expense, and is usually done only by
ambassadors, by wealthy Turkish functionaries, and by contractors for
the supply of the army in the East. Therefore, in speaking of caïques, I
refer to the common sort, hired for the trip or day by ordinary people,
and having one, two, or three rowers. In these cranky things you sit
down on rugs or cushions of questionable purity, your head on a level
with the gunwale, your body forming the letter L, since your legs are
stretched out before you, and your back kept bolt upright by the
perpendicular front of the poop. The only way to be tolerably
comfortable in these boats is to sit cross-legged, like a Turk, a
posture to which few Europeans ever habituate themselves. In hot weather
you lose the breeze, owing to your being so low in the boat, whilst the
glare of the sun is terrific; in winter, if there is the least sea on,
you are sure to get a ducking, and may not improbably get capsized, for
although the boatmen on the Bosphorus are generally skilful, the caïque
is unsafe from its extreme sharpness and narrowness, and no year passes
without accidents, especially between Constantinople and Scutari.
The arrangements of the Austrian Lloyds, up the Danube from
Constantinople to Vienna, are certainly not better than are to be
expected from a company enjoying a complete monopoly. Now that the
Danube is open, it is to be hoped, for the sake of the public, that an
opposition line will be started. This would be a considerable
undertaking, and of course the Austrian company would do its utmost to
impede and embarrass its competitor’s operations; but still I think that
a good line of foreign boats might, by energy and perseverance, overcome
all difficulties. The Austrian Lloyds is not in favour with the public,
and its present system can please none but the shareholders, who
annually divide large profits. Its prices are extremely high, and the
accommodation it offers is very indifferent. Now that Paris is less than
sixty hours’ railway from Pesth, the route to Constantinople by the
Danube ought to be able to compete with that by Marseilles or Trieste.
Doubtless many persons, especially of those who fear sea-sickness, would
prefer it to Mediterranean and Adriatic buffetings, if in other respects
it offered the same advantages as the passage by sea. At present the
Danube route is fully thirty per cent dearer than that by Marseilles. It
is at best but a long and tedious journey up or down the Danube; and
when to its monotony and weariness are added the very worst style of
German _cuisine_ (such as prevails on board most of the boats), and a
system of sleeping accommodation by which the passengers are ranged on a
double row of shelves, in a stifling atmosphere replete with
entomological torments, and with one washing-basin for each thirty
persons—and this for five or six days together—travellers unused to
roughing it will be apt in preference to risk the swell in the Gulf of
Lyons, the smart gales that sometimes blow off Sicily’s shores and
amongst the isles of Greece, and the heavy gusts not unfrequent in the
Sea of Marmora. Then in summer the boats on the Danube do not run often
enough. The fast boat (and the slow ones are out of the question for
persons going any distance, and serve only for goods and aborigines)
runs but once a-week, and is consequently often so overcrowded that
people are compelled to sleep on sofas and tables, and even on deck.
This I myself have seen. On such occasions the officers of the boat are
in the habit of selling their cabins for the voyage at very handsome
prices. And the boats are also badly timed. You wait never less than
one, generally two, sometimes, I was there assured, three days at
Galatz, where the sea-boat from Constantinople leaves you, and the
river-boat takes you up. All this surely requires amendment, now that
there is so great an increase of intercourse between Eastern and Western
Europe. Such amendment would perhaps be made by the Austrians if they
once saw their present monopoly as carriers seriously menaced. Austria
has long been jealous of maintaining influence in Moldo-Wallachia; and
the general opinion in those principalities is that she will do her
utmost to filter her way into the country, and gain a permanent footing
there by appropriating as many public establishments, such as railroads,
banks, and lines of fluvial navigation, as she can get into her hands.
The more suspicious see in these projects a hope and design of ultimate
annexation; but this must be so remote a prospect, that it is more
reasonable to attribute them to the expectation of present profit.
I was informed, on landing at Giurgevo, that a little old gentleman, of
imperious air, and with a full white beard, who seemed to be keeping
everybody in motion for his own special service, was one of the greatest
boyards in Moldavia. This was the first opportunity I had had of
observing a boyard on his own dunghill, and I thought I ought to have
felt more impressed upon the occasion. I confess I should have taken him
for an old Jew, possibly for a dealer in cast-off raiment. I now learned
that the beard was the distinguishing mark of the boyard, and of this I
had further proof as I proceeded towards Bucharest. That city was the
destination of three or four of my fellow-travellers from Galatz, and we
at once informed ourselves as to the best means of getting there. A
diligence would start immediately, we were told, so we hastily devoured
a bad breakfast, and were in readiness to start; not so the diligence,
which was shown to us standing near the inn, and looking as unlike a
move as if it had merely been placed there to ornament the
neighbourhood. Occasionally a Tartar-looking personage, fantastically
clothed in sackcloth, emerged from a tumbledown shed, approached the
vehicle, gazed at it admiringly, and then again disappeared. After this
had been repeated at intervals for about an hour and a half, eight
horses, or rather ponies, entangled in a quantity of rope-work, were
brought into the yard and attached to the diligence, which was evidently
an old German carriage, deemed past work in its own country, but still
good enough for the Danubian Principalities; still there were no signs
of loading our luggage, but presently appeared a cart, in which we were
informed it was to be transported. In most countries, but especially in
the East, imprudent is the traveller who suffers himself to be separated
from his kit, and we protested accordingly, but in vain. The diligence
had its full complement of passengers, and that it should also carry
their baggage, and reach Bucharest that night, or without a breakdown,
was entirely out of the question; so, after stipulating that the cart
should keep up with the diligence, we were fain to submit to the
unsatisfactory arrangement.
It is but forty-two miles from Giurgevo to Bucharest, and as we started
before eleven o’clock, and were told that we should change horses twice
on the road, we thought ourselves justified in believing the assurance
given us that we should reach the latter place by five in the afternoon.
Our team was not a very promising one. The eight horses, of all sizes,
and in most diversified harness, some of the leaders being without bits,
were driven by two wildlooking postilions in sheepskin caps, and started
off at a good pace. But all sign of a road disappeared almost as soon as
we got out of Giurgevo. There was a mere wheel-track across the plain.
For some distance our course lay through pastures, where grazing is
allowed on payment of about a zwanziger, or eightpence English, per head
of cattle, for six months. When we got off the level and upon an
undulating surface, our way was through little copses, and the track was
frequently so narrow that the oak saplings almost brushed into the
carriage as we passed. The road was nowhere very picturesque, but here
and there it was pretty enough, and the woods were thickly fringed with
wildflowers; not, however, in the profusion that existed when I again
travelled along the same track at the beginning of July, when we drove
literally through fields of blossom, marigolds, and hollyhocks, and
purple flowers growing like lavender, and feathery grey flowers, and
beds of pinks. Then, however, I journeyed through the densest clouds of
that insidious white dust which is one of the plagues of Bucharest and
its environs. Now, a shower the night before had soaked the soil, which
is there of a sticky tenacious nature, so entirely without admixture of
stones and pebbles that I do not believe you could gather a bushel of
these on the whole road from Giurgevo to Bucharest. In winter the ground
is so deep that there is almost an end to travelling, except in light
carriages with many horses, and the transport of merchandise and produce
is nearly suspended; this is owing to the want of roads, of which but
very few miles have been made in Wallachia during the whole period of
Prince Stirbey’s hospodarship, although large sums have annually been
set aside for the purpose. In winter, tracks, passable enough in summer,
become quagmires. This was not the case on the day of our journey, but
still there was mud enough to retard our progress, and we got on but
slowly, looking anxiously out for a relay. At last we ascertained that
we should change horses but once, instead of twice or three times, and
glad were we when, after crossing a bridge over a shallow stream, we
pulled up at a road-side inn. We looked for fresh posters, but none
appeared; we were invited to alight, and presently the truth transpired,
which was that we were to go right through to Bucharest with the same
eight weary garrons, and, to enable them to perform this feat, we were
to halt for a time where we now were. This was a nuisance, but grumbling
was useless. I was amused, and perfectly astonished, at the plan adopted
to invigorate our cattle for their second long stage. After they had
devoured a copious feed of corn, they were freed from all harness, and
driven like so many oxen into the river. After unlimited drink and much
splashing and soaking, a mounted man rode into the river on the other
side, and drove them out, and they came scampering, capering and kicking
up to the diligence, and submitted themselves to be rubbed down and
harnessed with the usual docility of Moldo-Wallachian horses.
It was a Sunday, a hot and beautiful day, and the inhabitants of the
straggling village were making the most of the holiday. The inn, a mere
road-side winehouse and baiting place, which a few weeks later was
sacked and partly destroyed by a detachment of Austrian soldiers that
was marching through, was full of peasants eating and drinking. The
sound of music and festivity, a short distance off, attracted us, and we
soon came upon a wedding-party, dancing and making merry outside the
dwelling of the bride’s family. The dance that seemed most in favour was
neither graceful nor diversified in its figures; the dancers formed a
circle, holding hands, and alternately closed in and spread out,
increasing or diminishing the circumference. This seemed the whole of
the dance, which, however, was nearly broken up by such an event as the
approach of four or five strangers, one of them an officer in uniform,
and another having a rather luxuriant beard, which immediately caused
him to be taken for a boyard of the first feather. The women seemed
bashful—they were certainly shy and not pretty, and it struck me that
some of them would have been the better for soap and water. Their dress,
which was that common amongst their class in Wallachia, consisted of a
shirt, fastened round the neck and completely covering the upper part of
their persons. From the waist downwards they were dressed like the women
of nearly all countries—that is to say, they wore a lot of
petticoats—but, above the waist, the chemise was their only covering.
This costume has rather a striking effect, until one gets used to it. To
very well made women, who do not require the support of the corset—and
many such are to be found amongst the Wallachian peasantry—it is far
from unbecoming, since it displays the contour and graces of the form
far better than any artificial tightening; but in the case of women past
a certain age, and who have been addicted to child-bearing, stays are
missed, and the _coup d’œil_ is by no means satisfactory. The shirt is
sometimes of a material which, without being indecently transparent,
allows a slight flesh tint to transpire; but these shirts are usually
thickly sprinkled with stars or other devices worked in gold or silver,
and this is, I believe, considered the strict national costume. The
usual ornaments of the women of the lower classes are gold and silver
coins, and even the mixed metal piastres. They are pierced and strung,
and worn as necklaces, and also in the form of a sort of cap or broad
circlet over the hair. In full dress, a Wallachian peasant girl thus
usually carries her dowry on her person. The temptation of these
rosaries of ducats and dollars sometimes proved too strong for the
virtue of the Austrian occupants of the Principalities, and many stories
did I hear, too many of them well authenticated, of poor girls being
stripped of their little fortune by the rude hand of a brutal
Kaiserlich. To judge from the quantity of coin, chiefly Turkish and
Austrian, displayed, by the ladies of the wedding-party, they were
rather well-to-do people of their class. The bride wore several of the
large gold Turkish coins, as big as Spanish ounces, to say nothing of a
quantity of smaller money. She was brought up to be shown to us, quite
as a matter of course, and kissed the hand of our bearded companion,
who, admonished by some little murmur of _Backshish!_ that reached his
ears, had to requite the compliment in specie. _Backshish_ is quite as
much in favour in the Christian provinces on the Danube as in any other
part of Turkey. I must say that, even if the bride’s kiss had been on
his lips instead of his hand, it would hardly have been worth the money,
for she was an ordinary-looking damsel, much surpassed in beauty by many
of her bridesmaids and companions. Doubtless she was lovely in the eyes
of the bridegroom, a sheepish but good-tempered-looking young fellow,
who seemed immensely gratified by the honour of our visit, and
especially by the condescension of the pseudo-boyard. We were given to
drink, and for aught I know, so rapidly did our popularity increase, we
should have been invited to supper, had not much whip-cracking, and
jingling, and shouting, warned us that our carriage was ready and our
time up. Our horses had had an hour and a half’s rest, thanks to which
they managed to perform the rest of the journey, and brought us, soon
after eight of the clock, to the barrier of Bucharest the well-beloved.
The undulating nature of the ground on which Bucharest is built renders
it difficult to obtain from any point of the environs a full view of the
city. One of the best I have seen is a lithograph published at Vienna,
taken from the river bank, and having the metropolitan church, which
stands on an eminence, in the centre of the picture. After passing the
barrier, one proceeds for a considerable distance over open ground,
diversified with gardens, but sparingly sprinkled with houses, and
giving little the idea of a town. Indeed, except in the very heart of
the place, in the great principal street, the Mogosöe, in the Leipsick
street and a few other shop streets, the Wallachian capital has much
more the look of a large straggling village than of a city. It seems as
if pains had been taken to avoid the compactness which, as economising
distances, is generally held desirable in a large town. It is full of
gardens and enclosures, and of open spaces of waste ground. Every house
of any size and pretensions has a garden, and usually a large one. The
effect produced is very rural and pleasing; the masses of brick and
mortar are few, foliage and flowers are everywhere. Earthquakes being of
no unfrequent occurrence here (although some years have elapsed since
one occurred sufficiently violent to do much damage), few houses are
built more than one story high. Thus it is easy to understand that
Bucharest, with a population of 100,000, or according to the highest
estimate 120,000 souls, includes within its barriers an area said to be
equal to two-thirds of that of Paris. Were it a commercial place, the
distances would be extremely inconvenient; as it is, and for the mere
purposes of social intercourse, the inhabitants spend a very large
portion of their time in carriages, the more so as it can hardly be said
that there is any particular quarter prescribed by fashion as the
residence of the upper classes, who are scattered in very opposite
directions. If it be true, as Sam Slick says, that the way to estimate a
capital is by its private carriages, Bucharest should rank pretty high,
for there, more than anywhere else, is a carriage almost a necessary of
life; and as the expense of keeping it is not great, forage being
abundant and horses cheap, most families in easy circumstances have at
least two vehicles—one for the husband, the other for the wife. When
there is only one the lady generally takes it, and the husband contents
himself with a hired birja—a light calèche, drawn by two horses, which
you engage by the day or hour. In most places this mode of engagement
would imply a very moderate rate of speed; but the birja-drivers, most
of whom are Russians, spurred by the hopes of a _backshish_, go at an
astonishing rate, and a foreigner is more apt—until he becomes aware of
their skill in driving and of the unfrequency of accidents—to check
their speed than to urge them to increased haste over the broken
pavement and many holes and round the sharp corners of the streets of
Bucharest.
One sees few old buildings in Bucharest, the last bad earthquake having
upset nearly all the lofty and ancient fabrics. There are many large
handsome houses, but the style of building is generally plain. The eye
with difficulty gets accustomed to the strange contrasts met with at
every step. Hard by spacious mansions, the residence of wealthy boyards,
one almost literally stumbles over low Bulgarian huts, constructed half
above and half under the ground. There are generally large courts in
front of the better class of houses, and down one side of them
frequently extends a range of low mean buildings, used as stables and
offices, which shock the eye by their juxtaposition to the principal and
handsome edifice. The streets are of extraordinary irregularity, and a
stranger is long in learning his way about the town; the more so as he
rarely walks, the mud in winter, and the dust, heat, and distances in
summer, putting that mode of locomotion nearly out of the question. The
badness of the pavement, and its total absence from a great portion of
the streets, is accounted for by the size of the town, which would
require an enormous paving rate to be levied on its comparatively scanty
population. Moreover, in Wallachia, and especially under its recent
ruler, money levied for useful public objects has but too often been
diverted from its original destination, and scandalously misapplied,
sometimes to purposes of political corruption. And even where public
works have been executed, it has been at an exaggerated cost, explicable
only by a system of robbery unparalleled elsewhere than in the East.
Thus the very handsome opera-house, quite worthy of a first-rate
European capital, filled the pockets of architects and contractors, and
government officials, and might have been erected three or four times
over for the sums that were embezzled and swallowed up in its
construction. The exhospodar Stirbey, in the sort of justification he
has recently published, boasts of this theatre as one of the benefits
conferred on Bucharest during his reign. As far as the fact of its
erection goes, there it stands, to speak for itself, an extremely
handsome house, luxuriously fitted up, with lobbies, staircases, and
saloons on a magnificent scale, and whose only fault is that, in their
anxiety for an imposing effect, the designers have made the boxes so
lofty that it never looks well filled. But touching the cost, Prince
Stirbey is mute, although it is well known in Wallachia how monstrous it
was, and how large a portion of it was absorbed by the most barefaced
peculation.
It is not only as regards the buildings composing it, but in a thousand
other respects, that Bucharest is _par excellence_ the city of
contrasts. Some of the most striking of these are vividly summed up in a
few lines by the late French Consul-general at Bucharest, M. Poujade, in
one of his interesting contributions to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.[5]
“One sees,” he says, “palaces, or at least handsome hotels, and
frightful hovels; carriages from the workshops of Binder or Clochez,
drawn by coachmen in sumptuous livery, and enormous Transylvanian carts,
enclosing a population like that of Noah’s Ark, and drawn by eight, ten,
twenty horses or mares, with their colts playing around them at full
liberty; fiery high-bred Russian and Hungarian horses, and huge red-eyed
buffaloes; elegant men and women dressed according to the latest
Parisian fashion, and peasants in much the same costume as the Dacians
wore two thousand years ago; dirty Albanians perambulating the streets
selling _braga_ (a fermented drink), and shops in which are displayed
the _bonbons_ of Boissier, and the gastronomical delicacies of Potel and
Chabot; monks smoking their pipes at the winehouse, and on the tombs, in
the cemeteries that exist in the very heart of the town, side-by-side
with gypsies, and with itinerant musicians (_laoutari_) dressed in long
flowing cloaks, the violin, mandoline, or pandean-pipes suspended to
their girdle, ready to sell their services at a baptism, a marriage, or
a burial. Oriental life, which is departing, and European life, which
replaces it, are here associated, and succeed each other as in a
panorama.” This is a very well dashed-off glimpse of Bucharest, with
true and lifelike tints, like one of Preziosi’s capital _aquarelles_ of
Constantinople streets. Such contrasts and details might be multiplied
almost infinitely; for the physiognomy of Bucharest has a thousand
different faces, both by day and by night. The gypsies alluded to by M.
Poujade are a singular feature of the sketch, tawny wild figures
dwelling by preference like ghouls in the graveyards, housing themselves
also under ragged canvass on those desert plots of ground which abound
in Bucharest, or taking up temporary quarters in the shells of
unfinished houses. A stranger, unacquainted with their dialect, can gain
but little insight into their usages and customs. Borrow should go
amongst them; he would find a rich field for observation. They work,
many of them, as bricklayers; the women hang about, tawny dishevelled
creatures, with infants tugging at their yellow breasts. The children,
when a little older, are almost like the young of animals. You are
driving down the busiest street of Bucharest on a sultry summer noon.
You have just passed an elegant carriage with a pair of spanking bays; a
most correct coachman on the box; a strapping _chasseur_, bearded,
befeathered, and sword-bearing, in the rumble; within, a couple of
princesses (the Wallachians freely translate their native titles into
the highest current in Western Europe) attired in the last fashions from
Longchamps: the whole turn-out would be perfectly in place in Hyde Park
or the Bois de Boulogne. From the door of a shop full of cravats,
perfumery, and other “nouveautés de Paris,” the mere sight of which
transports you to Regent Street or the Boulevards, a couple of dandies
with well-waxed mustaches have just waved to you a yellow-kid
salutation. Twenty paces further, in a shallow recess of the street, you
come to a bronze pump, under and around which are collected a group of
gypsy urchins, nearly of the same colour as the metal, with thin legs,
prominent abdomens, and monkey features, and all as naked as they were
born. It is hard to believe that any more exact link than this will ever
be found between man and the baboon. The creatures are in a state of
perfect animal enjoyment. The thermometer is at 100° in the shade at the
very least, and they are rushing in and out of the gush of bright cold
water from the fountain, their dingy bodies sparkling in the sun, their
monkey features grinning like chimney-piece ornaments. Their bath over,
they will run naked through the streets to where their mothers’ kettle
boils, and lie down to sleep in the dust, in the shadow of a tombstone.
One is tempted to think that, in that climate, a cool pump, a shady
nook, and the absence of raiment, constitute the perfection of human
happiness.
I believe that every foreigner who visits Bucharest in the fine season
carries away with him a most agreeable impression of the place. In
winter, when the snow lies deep, and the streets are sloughs, and the
wolves prowl hungrily in the fields around the town, and occasionally
risk themselves in the suburbs and carry off a stray child, the
attraction may be less, even though that is the gay season, when balls
and suppers abound, and masquerades occur almost every night. But in
early summer, before the scorching sun has embrowned the foliage and
driven away the wealthier of the inhabitants, nothing can be more
agreeable than this rural city, belted with pleasant meadows and
promenades, and nestling in a net-work of gardens and a bower of vines.
During my two months’ stay I saw many English and French pass through,
chiefly officers from the Crimea or Constantinople, who chose that route
home; and all seemed delighted with their visit, and appeared to depart
with regret. Bucharest is a city of idleness, and life there is arranged
so as to while away as agreeably as possible the superabundant leisure.
The usual dinner-hour is three or four o’clock, and after that meal many
persons go to take ice or a stroll in a large and delightful public
garden in the centre of the town—also a benefit bequeathed to Bucharest
by Prince Stirbey’s administration, at the cost of the unrequited labour
of thousands of unfortunate serfs. The best society, however, frequents
this garden but little, or remains there but a short time, proceeding,
about seven o’clock, to the agreeable drive known as the Chaussée, a
road out of the town which is a continuation of the main street, with
plantation and a garden on either side, and further on, an avenue of
trees separating it from luxuriant pastures. It is here that an idea is
best formed of the luxury and wealth of Bucharest, whither, in fact,
nearly all the rich people of the province repair to spend their money.
On the Chaussée assemble the fashionables of the Wallachian capital, a
few of the men mounted on fine horses, but most of them, and all the
ladies, in elegant carriages of Vienna and Paris build. This, of a
summer evening, is the focus of flirtation, and the source and centre of
not a little scandal. After a few turns up and down, at as rapid a pace
as the throng of vehicles will permit, the ladies generally draw up by
the side of the footpath, and either alight and walk, or receive visits
in their open carriages. Amongst the crowd of dashing equipages were
conspicuous, this last summer, those of the hospodar, known from afar by
the scarlet liveries of the servants, and those of the foreign
diplomatic agents, most of them with chasseurs or richly attired
Albanians. The numerous Austrian uniforms added to the animation of the
scene, some of the young staff-officers driving handsome curricles and
tilburies, whilst the crowd was completed by the humble but ubiquitous
birja. As the daylight waned, the crowd diminished, although, in the
fine summer evenings, not a few promenaders remained till after dark,
strolling amongst the trees, or seated in the carriages, enjoying the
pleasant coolness; and here and there vacant vehicles, whose absent
owners were well known, afforded pretext of malicious comment to
lingering scandal-mongers. Towards nine o’clock, the Chaussée was
generally nearly deserted, and, on driving into town, many of the
carriages might be seen drawn up at the door of the Tortoni of
Bucharest, from which excellent ices and refreshments were brought out
to the fair occupants. A few, braving the heat, would thence proceed to
the theatre, where a French company had replaced the Italians; whilst
the men betook themselves to the Rouman Circle, a newly established
club, or proceeded to join parties of a few friends, a sort of Spanish
conversational _tertulia_, which replace, when the season of gaiety is
over, assemblies of a more numerous and pretentious description.
Night in Bucharest is not without peculiarities which forcibly strike
the stranger. For those persons who insist upon pedestrian exercise, it
is the best time for a stroll, for although the heat often but partially
departs with daylight, the dust is less, and moreover at evening, the
Chaussée, the avenues to it, and some of the principal streets, as well
as those leading to the Tchismedjiou or public garden, are watered in a
sort of primitive way, by men with carts who draw off the water into
churn-shaped tubs and dash it over the thirsty soil and heated
pavements. Of a clear warm night, when the streets and gardens are
bathed in the bright silver light of a Wallachian moon, the people of
Bucharest may be said to live in the open air. Every window is open, and
they stand outside their houses or gossiping at the doors. They are an
early-rising population, and by eleven the streets are nearly deserted
and stillness reigns. One very curious practice which prevails is that
of sleeping in the streets. Walking along between ten and eleven one
warm dark evening (gas is unknown in Bucharest, and oil lamps are dim,
few, and far between) I suddenly found myself trampling upon cushions.
On investigation, the soft substance proved to be a mattress.
Fortunately no one was as yet sleeping on it. It occupied the whole
width of the narrow pavement, and I stepped off into the carriageway.
Just then a man issued from an open door, with a coverlet on his arm; he
was making his bed. Several other beds were arranged in succession close
to the walls of the houses; it was an _al fresco_ dormitory. Doubtless
in a hot climate the plan has its advantages, securing fresh air and
avoiding troublesome domestic insects. The risk of being trampled upon
is small in a city where scarcely a soul is seen in the streets after
midnight. I was informed, just as I was leaving Bucharest, that these
out-of-door slumberers are chiefly Jews, there very numerous, and that
they have a summer festival which lasts about a fortnight and
commemorates the passage of the desert by the children of Israel, during
which they do not sleep under a roof, and that a tradition exists
amongst them that a child conceived during that period will be the
Messiah. This tale was told me by Christians, and I by no means vouch
for its correctness, but it is curious, and I was afterwards sorry I had
not had time to ascertain positively, by inquiry of the Wallachian
Hebrews, whether such a custom and belief really exist amongst them.
Many of the street-sleepers have a small dog beside their couch, which
rushes out, barking furiously, if one inadvertently steps too near its
master’s couch. The precaution must, one would think, be as destructive
of slumber as it may be useful against marauders, the more so as the
bark of the vigilant sentry is usually echoed by that of numerous
vagrant curs of all breeds and sizes which at night infest the streets
of Bucharest, and frequently molest the pedestrian. It is very difficult
to throw stones at these animals, for there are none to be had, as the
benighted and exasperated stranger frequently finds when, returning late
to his lodging, he is beset by dogs of every description, from the
diminutive yelping terrier to animals of a really formidable size and
deep-mouthed aggressive bark, and stoops to seek a missile. These wild
ownerless dogs, formerly so numerous and even dangerous in
Constantinople, but now greatly thinned and wholly daunted there by the
deadly blows and rough usage they have received at the hands of French
soldiers and British mariners, are still plentiful at Bucharest, where,
however, they can hardly be considered dangerous; at least I never heard
of their devouring a human being in the latter place, as they have
occasionally been known to do in the Turkish capital—especially when the
said being had thought proper to take an overpowering quantity of strong
drink and to lie down in the gutter to sleep it off; but still they are
numerous, bold, and noisy enough to alarm a timid person, and one
sometimes hears the affrighted scream of a belated child or woman beset
by these persevering plagues. They are more troublesome than
bloodthirsty; but, although the noise they make is a most
sleep-destroying nuisance, nobody seems to think of taking measures to
expel them, even from his own premises. At the hotel where I lived,
half-a-dozen of them had taken up their quarters in the large courtyard
round which the house was built. Some of them were supposed, I believe,
to belong to hostlers or hangers-on about the establishment; but I could
not find out that their putative owners took any charge of them, and
certainly they did not prevent them from raising the most diabolical din
at hours when the inmates of the hotel might be supposed buried in
sleep, or at least courting it. The gates of the yard were often left
open; street-walking dogs would sneak in, predatorily minded and lured
by the rank odours of the Wallachian kitchen, and desperate conflicts
were the frequent result, the said canine encounters being attended with
an amount of barking, snarling, howling, and yelling, enough to waken
the dead. I do not believe it woke the Bucharestians, although the
complaints of the sleepless strangers staying in the house were loud and
frequent.
Beside the dogs, the most lively and noisy creature in the streets of
Bucharest of a night is the watchman or _chinny-accolo_, a compound word
which I write as pronounced, and possibly with much offence against
correct orthography. The newcomer to the Wallachian capital, returning
home late, is startled by the sudden apparition of a dilapidated figure
which emerges from a dark nook or crazy sentry-box, strikes a heavy
staff upon the pavement and hoarsely shouts _chinnyaccoloooo!_ the last
syllable being drawn out _ad libitum_, and relinquished as if with
regret. Then the figure usually repeats the _chinny_, with a short
exasperated stress on the first syllable, as if he were angry with or
insisting upon something. The foreigner has a vague idea that this
discordant and unintelligible cry is of the nature of a _Qui vive?_ or
_Who goes there?_—as in fact it is—but, observing that the vociferator
has no firearms, and consequently cannot requite silence with a shot,
and being moreover in total ignorance how he should reply, he usually
walks quietly on; and the guardian of the night, perceiving that he is
not a member of the dangerous classes, retreats into his nook and
suffers him to pass without further question. The Moldo-Wallachians are
an inoffensive and honest race—even now, that they have been to a
certain extent demoralised by foreign military occupations—crime is not
frequent amongst them, and the _chinnyaccolos_ have little to do. Now
and then they make a charge upon an unusually noisy troop of dogs, but
their principal employment seems to be that of covering up the sleepers
upon the pavement, when restless slumbers, the result perhaps of an
unquiet conscience or a heavy supper, may cause them to toss their
blankets abroad.
As, if I remember rightly, Murray’s Hand-book for Turkey, by no means
the best of his collection, is extremely brief and unsatisfactory in its
notice of Bucharest, I may perhaps be rendering a service to persons
whom this imperfect sketch of its attractions may induce to pay a summer
visit to that pleasant city, if I devote a few lines to the subject of
hotels. In the first place, it is to be observed that furnished lodgings
are not to be had in Bucharest,—at least they were unobtainable in the
spring and summer of 1856; but that was perhaps owing to the number of
Austrian officers who were billeted upon the houses of the inhabitants.
Unless, therefore, you had a friend to give you quarters, you had no
resource but to stop at an hotel. The best of these is the Hôtel de
Londres, a large house built expressly for an inn, and where one finds
good and lofty apartments, clean and tolerably well-furnished, at high
prices; but Bucharest, especially since the war, is by no means a cheap
place. The hotel is of enormous size, and full of long galleries and
spacious landing-places. The rooms are without bells, and the mode of
summoning the servants is original and inconvenient. On each
landing-place is a bell-rope, below which is a dial-plate, having around
it the numbers of the neighbouring rooms. When you require anything you
have to issue forth from your apartment, ring this bell, once for
waiter, twice for boots, thrice for chambermaid, and turn the needle of
the dial to the number of your room. But it frequently happens that
before the servant answers your call, somebody else gives a pull at the
rope, and shifts the needle to _his_ number; so that you soon find that
the only way of getting attended to is, after ringing, to lie in wait at
your door, and, on the appearance of the slave, to rush out, collar him
drag him into your room, and release him only upon his solemn promise to
do what you require before he even looks at the dial. This is not a
comfortable state of things; but bell-hangers are scarce in Wallachia,
and domestics generally bad. Even in the better class of private houses,
good attendance is secured only by keeping what in England would be
considered an unreasonable number of servants for the requirements of
the family. The Wallachian domestics are lazy, and imported foreigners
soon rival them in this respect. I tried the experiment of hiring one of
the latter sort, but found he would do nothing but sleep in the porter’s
lodge, and, when compelled to work, took sick immediately; so I was
compelled to get rid of him, and to revert to the system of lying in
ambush for waiters. Upon the whole, however, one may be worse put up
than at the Hôtel de Londres, where there is great civility, and a
desire to oblige; but hotel-keeping is a science that has still much
progress to make in the cities of Moldavia and Wallachia. I cannot say
much for the cooking; and the Hôtel de France, in the Mogosöe Street, is
in that respect considered superior, and passes for a first-rate French
restaurant, although in Vienna or Paris it would be set down as a
_gargote_, and indeed a good dinner is to be obtained there only by
ordering it beforehand, and paying rather more than you would for a
sumptuous banquet at the _Trois Frères_.
Early in the month of June, in a cloud of dust and a blaze of heat,
commenced and concluded the annual _mosh_ or fair of Bucharest. The
articles exposed for sale were not calculated to give an exalted idea of
the manufacturing progress of the province, whose best reliance for
prosperity is evidently upon its agricultural produce. The staple
commodities were wicker-baskets, of a wearisome monotony of form, pots
of red earth, not even glazed, and the rough-hewn, churn-shaped buckets
here universally used, in houses, baths, for street-watering, &c.
Anything more primitive than these various articles cannot be imagined;
they are just what one might expect to find amongst a newly-discovered
tribe of Indians, which, lurking in a remote corner of the backwoods,
had avoided all intercourse with the pale-faces. Any idea of ornament
seems utterly alien to the minds of the peasants who manufacture these
useful but uncouth objects, which are brought to town in carts as
antediluvian as themselves,—clumsy, heavy vehicles, roofed in with
boughs. The only other things I could discover in the fair which were
manifestly native productions (the toys and trumpets smelt of Germany),
were rings of coarse, coloured glass, to thrust over the hand and wear
as bracelets, much the sort of thing one might look for upon the ebon
arm of the Queen of the Cannibal Islands, or dangling from the obtuse
snout of some central-African slave-dealing sovereign. There were also
chimney-piece ornaments formed of clay, and representing zoological
monsters, of which traditions may possibly have been handed down from
the days of the Dacians. Shows there were, too: a camel ridden by a
monkey, and a gentleman who sat upon the topmost of a pyramid of
bottles, and balanced plates upon his nose and chin; and, in the corner
of a tent, the emanations from which were far from fragrant, Punch, the
ubiquitous, set up his house, attracted a delighted audience, and went
through the celebrated drama of his serio-comic existence, slightly
varied from the English version, but including even a larger amount of
domestic dissension, violent deaths, and desperate struggles with the
enemy of mankind; the whole winding up with the appearance of a
monstrous head—a cross, apparently, between a Skye terrier and a
snapping turtle—which caught the reprobate Polichinello by the nose, and
dragged him screaming into the showman’s box. The streets of the fair
were formed of huts of branches, some of them neatly enough made, and
comprising two rooms, but which quickly lost their fresh verdant aspect,
the foliage becoming embrowned by the sun, and coated with dust. Inside
these wigwams a promiscuous throng ate, drank, cooked their food,
danced, slept, suckled babies, played upon rude musical instruments, and
contrived to exist in an atmosphere and amongst odours that might have
stifled an habitual inhabitant of a slaver’s hold, or a daily passenger
through the richest streams of Galata. The mere smell of the sausages
dropping their unctuous superabundance into the wood-fires over which
they grizzled, was a week’s dinners to a hungry man. Except in the
evening, when the _beau monde_, deserting the Chaussée, drives to the
fair, the attendance is almost exclusively of the lower orders,—peasants
in their round sheepskin caps and antique costume, which has scarcely
varied since Trajan’s day, many of them stalwart, fine-looking men, with
features telling of their Italian origin; women in more various attire,
not generally very becoming, although one head-dress, consisting of a
thin white shawl gathered over the head, with the ends drooping behind,
is not ungraceful. The most original and characteristic female dress
there worn was the one I have already described,—the shirt, often of a
fine and transparent texture, sprinkled with stars or sprigs worked in
gold or silver, whilst round the waist are fastened petticoats and a
variety of coloured aprons, worn both before and behind. Besides the
peasantry, Wallachian soldiers in their ugly uniforms, nursemaids with
children, and a few white-coated Austrians, made up the morning
attendance at the fair. On the last day the fun terminated with an
evening entertainment annually given by the Aga or prefect of police, in
a space enclosed with hedges and flags, and lighted with coloured lamps,
where music played, and people walked about and ate ices under tents,
and where the hospodar came, with gorgeous liveries and a numerous
escort, to admire his own portrait hung up in a marquee, and where the
aga himself narrowly escaped apoplexy from the violence of his exertions
and effervescence of his hospitality; and people who had no tickets
jockeyed the sentries, leapt the ditches, and got in through gaps in the
hedges, until at last (this being essentially a popular festival) every
one was admitted who chose to walk in; and ragged boys and Wallachian
“roughs” were seen elbowing boyards of fabulous lineage, and making
disorderly and destructive onslaughts upon trays of sweetmeats; and,
finally, everybody got extremely dusty and tired, and began to wish he
had not come, and to long to escape; and there was a general rush for
everybody’s carriage, which nobody could find, and people betook
themselves to bed, and the _mosh_ was at an end in Bucharest for that
year.
At the period of my arrival in the Principalities, the Moldo-Wallachians
were in a fever of impatience to get rid of the Austrian occupation, to
them most odious. The war was over, and they could not understand why a
foreign army should still be imposed upon them, occasioning them great
expense and still greater annoyance. Absorbed by domestic
considerations, they did not appreciate or even discern those important
European ones which induced the Allies to maintain an Austrian force on
the Russian frontier until the terms of the Treaty of Paris should be
carried out. Much as they themselves have suffered from Muscovite bad
faith and encroachment, their exasperation at the prolonged presence of
their detested military guests blinded them to the probability that
Russia might seek to evade the conditions she had agreed to. It must be
owned that the conduct of the Austrian army of occupation had been such
as to explain the furious eagerness of the Moldo-Wallachians for its
departure. Its bearing had certainly not been that becoming friends and
allies in peaceable provinces inhabited by an extremely docile and quiet
race. Had the imperial legions conquered the country after fierce
opposition, and found themselves surrounded by scowling foes, whose
hatred was to be kept from dangerous manifestation by fear alone, their
conduct might have been comprehensible. But when they arrived there was
no particular ill-feeling towards them, and they had only themselves to
thank for the bitter one which afterwards arose. The general order by
which, at the end of last May, the Emperor of Austria congratulated his
army in Moldo-Wallachia on its military spirit and endurance of
privations, excited the laughter of all who were aware of the real
circumstances of the case. There was little to endure for troops whose
requirements and exactions were so great as to constitute a most onerous
burthen on the people; and it is but a poor military spirit that is
testified by cruel ill-treatment of unoffending civilians. At the very
time that the order appeared, no one could pass a few weeks in the
Principalities without becoming convinced, by personal observation, that
the general tone and demeanour of the Austrian soldiery in their
intercourse with the people were overbearing and aggravating, and that
the least show of opposition led to brutality and violence. The people
of those provinces are neither dogged nor disobliging; a word, if they
understand it, generally suffices to procure obedience where it is due;
but they are not particularly quick of comprehension, and, on the other
hand, the Austrians were prone to exact more than they were entitled to,
and to enforce, by blows, unreasonable demands or illunderstood orders.
If the behaviour of the officers was better, although this was by no
means invariably the case, few of them took pains to restrain their men,
but looked on with indifference and without interference. Of this I
could cite many examples which came under my own notice, and others
vouched for by indisputable testimony. On one of the first days of June,
an old white-haired Wallachian peasant was driving a cart through one of
the most frequented streets of Bucharest, when he somehow got in the way
of an Austrian soldier similarly engaged. He was immediately assailed in
the fiercest manner, thrown to the ground, and violently beaten. A
German shopkeeper, standing at his door, witnessed this cruelty and
appealed to an officer who was passing, entreating him to check it.
“_Das geht mich nicht an_”—it is no business of mine—was the cool reply,
and the soldier was left to satiate his fury. As for the bystanders
interfering, none would think of doing so, for the Austrians invariably
carry their side-arms, and instances are abundant of their promptitude
in using them against unarmed and defenceless persons. The Turkish
soldiers in the provinces used not to carry their bayonets and sabres
when off duty, but just before the return of Stirbey from Vienna to
Bucharest, and within a month afterwards, no less than sixty-nine of
them were wounded by Austrians, and it was found necessary to authorise
them to wear their side-arms. Last summer, a well-known English officer,
who holds high rank in the Turkish service, was riding in the suburbs of
Bucharest, in a sort of half uniform, but without arms, when he overtook
an Austrian soldier, carrying his musket sloped over his shoulder and
protruding far behind him. As he passed, the man made a sudden movement
of his body, which caused the musket to swing round and strike the
officer a violent blow. This was doubtless unintentional, but the blow
was so sharp that the officer involuntarily apostrophised the man in
English, forgetting that he would not understand him, and asked him what
he meant. Instead of apologising, the soldier looked steadily at him and
fixed his bayonet. There was nothing for it but to ride on, and
complaint to the fellow’s superiors would have been of little avail.
About this same time there occurred, at the Wallachian town of Busco, an
outrage in which three civilians were wounded, and whose circumstances
were rather curious. An Austrian soldier drank in a wine-shop, and,
notwithstanding the host’s opposition, left it without paying and ran
off. He was pursued, and, being somewhat intoxicated, he ran into a
mill-stream, where he would have been drowned but for the exertions of
his pursuers. Other soldiers came up, and the rescuers were sabred;
because, argued these military sophists, if their comrade had not been
pursued he would not have run, and consequently would not have fallen
into the water and nearly lost his life.
I had scarcely set foot in Moldavia when, at Galatz, numerous instances
of Austrian misconduct were related to me, my informants being some of
the principal local authorities, and their statements being corroborated
by a foreign consul, who was by no means ill-disposed to the Austrians,
and indeed took a more favourable view of their general conduct than
almost any other person I met with in the Principalities. But regard to
truth compelled him to admit that of the incidents in question. A
battalion had arrived two days before, to take its quarters in the town,
and on such occasions there were invariably complaints to the civil
authorities from persons who had been wounded or beaten by the soldiers.
It was no uncommon practice with them to accept money in lieu of lodging
from the persons on whom they were billeted, and then to go and insist
violently on admission into quarters to which they had no claim.
Instances were cited of gross misconduct on the part of officers. On two
different occasions these gentlemen, having had billets assigned them in
two of the best houses in the place, refused to accept the comfortable
rooms allotted to them, and insisted on occupying the apartment of the
lady of the house. Compliance being refused with the caprice of one of
them, he forgot himself so far as to draw his sword, and finding the
door of the room he coveted locked, he endeavoured to kick it open. The
mistress of the house, the Countess P—, behaved with great spirit. “Put
up your sword, sir,” she said; “your Emperor did not give it you to be
thus used.” It was very rare that the least redress could be obtained
for such insults and outrages, any more than for the many grave offences
against person and property, the robberies and murders, that were
clearly brought home to Austrian soldiers. In Wallachia especially, the
perpetrators of such crimes were certain of impunity; for Prince
Stirbey, long devoted to Russia, had become the tool of Austria, by
whose influence he hoped to be maintained in power after his term of
office should have expired. Had he done his duty as ruler of the
Principality, he would have made such forcible representations as must
assuredly have led to a diminution of the evil. Instead of this, with
him whatever the Austrians did was well done, and the strongest proofs
of their excesses, frequently laid before him, were by him smothered and
suppressed. This was notably the case with respect to a disgraceful
affair that occurred on the 31st May at Buseo, a town on the road from
Bucharest to the Wallachian frontier. A body of Austrian lancers,
marching through, required carts for their baggage. Some slight delay
occurred in providing them, and this being reported to the officer
commanding, he is said to have replied: “You have got arms; take carts.”
Thus licensed, the Austrians seized some carts which were just leaving
the town, laden with the baggage and military-chest of a Wallachian
regiment; the slender baggage-guard, although it made little show of
resistance, was mercilessly sabred, and some civilians and soldiers
without arms were also cut down. The prefect of the town was beaten and
ill-treated, and the officer commanding the Wallachians, who reached the
place after the affray was over, was charged and ridden down by the
playful Austrians. Prince Stirbey’s body-surgeon, sent over specially to
look to the wounded, reported, with the counter-signature of an Austrian
surgeon, that there were twenty Wallachians wounded, some very
dangerously. Amongst the twenty men there were upwards of a hundred and
twenty wounds; showing the deliberate cruelty and ferocity of the
Austrians, for not one-third of the wounded were armed when they were
thus barbarously assailed. The report of the medical men was seen by
various persons in Bucharest; the indignation was general, and was
shared and vehemently expressed even by some of the hospodar’s own
household and clique; it was thought impossible that so shameful a
massacre should be overlooked; nevertheless, no steps were taken to
obtain the punishment of the guilty. The first remark of the officer who
replaced the Wallachian minister-of-war, then absent, was, that the
Wallachians were wrong—that they should humour (_ménager_) the
Austrians. Stirbey said it was an unfortunate affair, and forbade the
newspapers to speak of it; and so it was hushed up, as all similar
occurrences had invariably been.
Abandoned by their prince and natural protector to the tender mercies of
foreign intruders and tyrants, the Wallachians testified their hatred
and anger by the only means in their power. They excluded the Austrians
from their society, and refused to have any intercourse with them. The
offensive strangers were sent to Coventry; only in a very few houses was
an Austrian uniform ever seen, and those were the houses of persons
known by their connection with or partiality to Austria, and who got
little credit with their fellow-countrymen by their deviation from the
rule tacitly but generally laid down. The Austrians knew that they were
detested, and requited the aversion shown them by being as insolent and
disagreeable as they could. For all parties it was a most uncomfortable
state of things, resulting in constant mutual annoyances. In June, the
Austrian infantry regiment of Constantine gave an entertainment to
General Coronini, then commanding in chief in the Principalities.
Marquees were pitched on a grassy plain, at a short distance from
Bucharest, and there were bands of music, rifle-practice, fireworks, and
other amusements. Numerous invitations were distributed, but scarcely
any Wallachians went, and the consequence was a lamentable deficiency of
ladies. A Wallachian nobleman of high rank, and notorious for his
Austrian addictions, gave a dinner to General Coronini before his
departure. It was not thought necessary to inform all the persons
invited of the occasion of the banquet; probably because it was thought
that, if they knew it, some of them would refuse to attend. The
consequence was that a portion of the guests, upon seeing whom they were
assembled to honour, considered that a trick had been played them; and
one of them, a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished
families of the country—not of Fanariot origin, but of pure Rouman
blood—kept his seat, and left his glass untasted, when the health of the
Austrian commander was proposed. I might cite many other examples of the
bad feeling and petty warfare between Wallachians and Austrians. The
physical superiority being all on the side of the armed foreigners, it
was seldom that force was opposed to their aggressions. The only
instance I remember was in the case of a plucky little French architect,
settled at Bucharest. Some soldiers in his house ill-treated his
servant-maid and child, and upon his interfering, one of them raised his
arm as if to strike him. But the Frenchman, although a very small man,
was a master in the science of the _savate_; his blood was up, and he
cared nothing for odds. A tremendous kick in the belly laid one soldier
on his back; another was knocked into a well in the yard, and a third
kicked out of the place. In short, the Frenchman completely cleared his
premises, but, for some time afterwards, he was obliged to have a sentry
to protect his house, for the Austrians came to force their way in and
massacre him.
The murder, in cold blood and broad daylight, by a party of Austrians,
of one of the French soldiers in charge of the telegraph, was followed
by a serious investigation, and the guilty persons were severely
punished. This was a lesson which doubtless had its effect. At about the
same time the number of Austrian troops in the Principalities was
diminished by the departure of several regiments. Stirbey also was
removed from power, to the great and universal joy of the Wallachians,
and was succeeded by Prince Alexander Ghika, a man of very moderate
capacity, but well-meaning and honest, and who certainly is incapable of
shielding or conniving at Austrian misconduct. Since then outrages have
been much less frequent, and the Moldo-Wallachians do not appear to have
particular grounds of complaint. A foreign military occupation is of
course, and must inevitably be, to a certain degree, a burthen and a
nuisance to the country that undergoes it.
Independently of the very sufficient reasons already exposed, the people
of the Principalities had, or believed themselves to have, a strong
political motive for desiring the departure of the Austrian army. A
project for the union of the two provinces under a foreign prince had
been put forward, and was ardently advocated and agitated by persons who
imagined that they saw in its realisation the regeneration of their
country. To this project the Austrian government was understood to be
decidedly opposed; the Austrian political agent at Bucharest declared
his disapproval of it in the most public and contemptuous manner, and
with that overbearing insolence of tone which the subserviency of the
hospodar emboldened him upon all occasions to assume; the Austrian
officers, including a body of engineers and their assistants, then
occupied in making a trigonometrical survey of the country, were
generally accused of inciting the lower orders against the Union. Such
opposition to a plan which they somewhat hastily believed would prove a
panacea for all the many griefs they have so long suffered under,
greatly increased the irritation of the Moldo-Wallachians. Their minds
were set upon the Union, and dazzled by visions of the prosperity and
power it was to bring in its train. They already beheld Rouman
nationality restored and established on a firm basis, and an
agricultural Belgium arising in the East, which should rival that of the
West in good government, tranquillity, and wealth. They beheld the men
of their race, of whom several millions now dwell in Transylvania,
Bukovina, the Banat, and Bessarabia, and also in Podolia, Hungary, and
Macedonia, flocking back to the provinces whence many of them originally
emigrated, and supplying the labour which alone is wanted to make
Moldo-Wallachia the granary of Europe. There can be no question that the
Roumans have preserved their nationality to an extent that is
surprising, when we consider the bloody struggle they have had to
maintain against Turks and Tartars, Poles and Magyars, and the numerous
races amongst which they have been scattered, often in far inferior
numbers. There seems to be an innate sentiment of nationality amongst
the lower orders, of which they themselves have not the intelligence. In
emigration (and, owing to the oppressions of foreign armies and native
chiefs, emigrations have been frequent and extensive) they preserve
their native usages, often even when bad, sooner than adopt foreign
ones. The same is the case with their language. In Bulgaria,
Transylvania, and elsewhere, they still speak the Rouman. One of the
most intelligent and distinguished of living Wallachians, John Ghika,
now governor of Samos, estimates the Rouman race (in an interesting
pamphlet, published at Paris under the anagrammatic pseudonyme of G.
Chainoi) at nearly twelve millions. Of these, barely five millions dwell
in Wallachia and Moldavia, where there is not only room for, but need
of, at least double the population. In presence of these facts and
figures, the chiefs of the national party in these provinces built up a
scheme, of which the principal heads were: the union of the two
Principalities into a constitutional monarchy, under a foreign prince
not belonging to the royal family of any one of the countries bordering
on Moldo-Wallachia,—that is to say, neither Austrian nor Russian; the
independence of the new kingdom to be guaranteed by the European powers;
a standing army sufficiently strong to defend the frontier in case of
foreign aggression, at least until such time as succours might arrive
from the guaranteeing powers. And that the rights of Turkey might not
wholly be lost sight of, it was proposed to continue paying her the
tribute to which she is entitled, or to buy it off by a sum once paid
down. Thus constituted, it was argued, Moldavia and Wallachia would form
a much more solid bulwark for Turkey against Russian aggression, than
they do in their present unsettled dependence.
This is the rose-colour view of the question of the Union taken by the
politicians of the Principalities, and especially by a knot of ardent
young men who would fain apply political theories imbibed during their
education and residence in foreign countries, and for which they do not
perceive that their own is not yet ripe. Nearly a year ago they had gone
so far as earnestly to discuss what prince should be placed over them,
and warmly to debate whether one or two legislative chambers were
preferable. Their eagerness blinded them to the fact that it would be
scarcely possible to form an electoral constituency worthy of the name.
The peasants, who compose the great mass of the population, are ignorant
and degraded to a degree which renders them wholly unfit to be intrusted
with the freeman’s rights of voting. They are by no means naturally
vicious or destitute of good qualities, but these have had neither fair
play nor cultivation. The Danubian serf—for, although nominally
emancipated, he is no better than a serf—has been systematically
oppressed and trampled upon. He is wholly uneducated, accustomed to
blind obedience, unrequited toil, and many stripes—in fact, a slave. To
give him a vote would be to place it at the disposal of the boyard on
whose estate he lives. There exists, certainly, a class of small
proprietors, especially in the mountainous parts of Wallachia, which
might be taken advantage of as a sort of link between the ignorant and
too often drunken peasant and the higher ranks. The artisans and people
of the towns might also have votes, but at the best it would be a lame
business, and it would be hard to prevent the real influence from being
concentrated in the hands of the boyards, who hitherto have shown
themselves anything but disposed to ameliorate the condition of their
inferiors, and who would thus have it in their power to impose upon the
constitutional sovereign such measures as were most to their own
advantage. Before seeking to establish in so backward a country as
Moldo-Wallachia that constitutional liberty for whose permanent
enjoyment so few of the most civilised kingdoms of Europe have as yet
shown themselves ripe, a vast deal has to be done by a government of a
more absolute nature. The intellectual progress of the people—or, it
should rather be said, their escape from utter moral darkness—needs to
be facilitated by juster dealing and material improvements. Schools and
roads are wanted, and a ruler who will check with a strong hand the
oppressions and cruelties of the boyards, and the villanies of the
middlemen and usurers to whom the unfortunate boor sells his future
labour for bread and brandy. The earnings of the peasants, especially of
those composing what are called the second and third classes, are so
small that their existence appears a miracle. In the event of failure of
crops, murrain amongst cattle, or any other of the serious but not
unfrequent calamities to which agriculturists are liable—also in the
event of a military occupation, which is worse than hail or rot—the most
fortunate class of peasants cannot expect to pull through the year
without incurring debt. As to the man of the lowest class, he is
invariably and at all times in debt. He gets small loans from the Jew
and Greek middlemen, at enormous interest, which is added to the capital
every two or three months. His only means of payment is by labour, for
which his taskmaster, profiting by his misery, credits him at a very low
rate, until, from less to more, he sinks into the condition of absolute
serfdom, and finds his whole year’s toil the property of another.
To examine in detail the social and political condition of the Danubian
Principalities, would cover much paper, and probably be of small
interest to English readers; but it may be possible to give in short
compass a clear general notion of their position relatively to Turkey.
The original treaties by which they accepted the protection and
suzerainty of the Porte, and which date from the sixteenth century, have
long since been infringed and set at naught. According to these
treaties, a tribute was to be the sole acknowledgment of Turkish
supremacy; the Sultan was forbidden to interfere in the local
administration, and the provinces were to elect their own princes. In
defiance of this contract, the elective right was long ago set aside,
the odious rule of the Greeks of the Fanar was introduced, and the post
of hospodar became the prize of the highest bidder. The office became so
profitable, owing to the unscrupulous means of enriching themselves
resorted to by these Fanariot princes, that it was soon the object of
eager competition. A system of intrigue and bribery was introduced which
gave rise to continual changes in the government of the Principalities,
and accustomed the Porte to look upon them as farms to be let to the
highest bidders. The Greek farmers were deposed and recalled whenever
the offers and promises of others of their countrymen appeared more
advantageous.
“From the period at which this system was introduced, to the beginning
of the present century,” says Wilkinson (whose work, although now of old
date, will be found valuable by persons desirous of tracing from an
early period the not uninteresting history of the Principalities),[6]
“being a space of ninety years, Wallachia alone has passed through the
hands of forty different princes, independently of the time it was
occupied by the Russians, from 1770 to 1774, by the Austrians and
Russians from 1789 to 1792, and by the Russians, again, from 1806 to
1812. The evils which naturally arose from such a state of things
weighed so heavily on the two nations, that the court of Russia, already
authorised by the treaty of Kainardjik[7] to interfere in their behalf,
insisted at the peace of Jassy, in 1792, that the Porte should engage to
maintain the princes of Moldavia and Wallachia in their respective
stations for the space of seven years, and should not molest them in any
manner previously to the expiration of that term.”
In the sequel this agreement was by no means regularly observed, and its
frequent infractions by Turkey led to continual remonstrances from
Russia. The former power had long completely lost sight of the
obligations imposed upon her by her treaties with the Principalities,
and no stronger proof of this can be adduced than her cession to Russia,
by the treaty of Bucharest, in 1812, of nearly half Moldavia, from the
Dniester to the Pruth, now forming the Russian province of Bessarabia, a
portion of which has been restored by the recent treaty of Paris.
According to the capitulations, which to this very day are legally in
force, the Porte had no more right to dispose of that territory than it
had to grant the temporary sovereignty of the provinces to the greedy
and venal Greeks of the Fanar. But the stipulated immunities and
autonomy of the Moldo-Wallachians had long been disregarded and trodden
under foot; they could do nothing against the power of Turkey; and
Russia, whilst seeming to sympathise with them, joyfully beheld, in the
oppressive and illegal conduct of their suzerain, a means of herself
acquiring influence amongst them, and perhaps of eventually bringing
them under her own rule. To do this she reckoned upon the services and
assistance of her party amongst the boyards, the majority of whom,
although claiming to be old nobility, are of mushroom origin and Greek
descent. For the last 150 years the services of the boyards are to be
sought, not in the patriotic annals of their country, but in the
archives of the Fanar or of St Petersburg. It was from those amongst
them devoted to Russia, and including Bibesco and Stirbey, upstart names
now held in abhorrence in Wallachia, that were selected the members of
the commission appointed, at the close of the war that commenced in
1828, to draw up, under the superintendence of Kisseleff, the Organic
Regulations or new Constitution of the Principalities. This constitution
professed to vindicate and insure the rights of the peasantry; but,
although plausible enough in the letter, the manner in which it
practically worked may be inferred from the new and extensive emigration
that quickly followed its promulgation, and from the wholesale departure
of rich Bulgarian colonies, which, encouraged by the just rule of
Gregory Ghika, had settled in Wallachia previously to 1828.
From the date of the treaty of Adrianople until the commencement of the
late war, Russia was all-powerful in the Principalities, and that
period, of nearly a quarter of a century, is marked by repeated acts of
base submission on the part of Turkey, humiliating to herself, and
treacherous to the provinces to which she had promised protection and
the maintenance of their rights. In 1839 a firman granted to Russia the
right of controlling the acts of the Rouman National Assembly. In the
same year Alexander Ghika was dismissed from the hospodariat, because he
was displeasing to Russia. In 1844, the Wallachian Assembly was
suspended for having rejected a project of law by which the monopoly of
working the mines of the province would have been secured to a Russian
company. Finally, in 1849, the Porte subscribed the Sened of Balta
Liman, by which she upset all the institutions of the Principalities,
and made a Russian commissioner their legislator and administrator.
For a period extending far beyond the memory of the oldest man amongst
them, the Moldavians and Wallachians have thus been the sport of rival
and intriguing powers. They have been deceived and oppressed by the
Porte, and sold again and again to the best bidder; they have been the
prey of the vilest Greek adventurers, who have done their best to
introduce amongst them their own principles of falsehood and corruption;
they have been taxed and squeezed by successive foreign rulers, who saw
in their brief period of power only a favourable opportunity of filling
their pockets; they have been harassed and impoverished by foreign
military occupations, which ceased only to be renewed. Russia, whilst
affecting, with crocodile tears, to commiserate and deplore their
unhappy condition, has secretly fomented their vexations, griefs, and
miseries, in hopes of their ultimately throwing themselves into her
arms. The triumph of the Allies has at last delivered them, at least for
the time, from these conflicting and noxious influences, and given them
hopes that Europe will do something to secure their future welfare.
Something ought to be, and it is to be hoped will be, done for them; but
important considerations may render it impossible to grant them all that
they, carried away, after long suffering, by the prospect of a brighter
future, desire and demand. There should be secured to them the
opportunity and means of moral and material improvement, and as much
liberty and self-government as they are fitted to enjoy and able to make
good use of. Their sudden elevation, after they have so long been sunk
in degradation and almost in slavery, into a constitutional kingdom on
the model of Belgium or Piedmont, whilst the most sagacious amongst them
possess as yet scarcely the rudiments of political education, would be
at best, and setting apart considerations of European policy that oppose
themselves to it and demand due weight, a hazardous experiment, and one
which for their own sakes it may be thought hardly advisable to try,
since it is of a class that has hitherto been found more fertile in
failures than in successes. It is one which the majority of the powers
who are to decide upon the question are not likely to risk. Russia is
understood to be favourable to the project, but that alone is a
sufficient reason for regarding it with mistrust. She doubtless reckons
on the powerful influences and successful intrigues she might bring to
bear on a young kingdom adjoining her own frontier. France has somewhat
ostentatiously put herself forward as an advocate of the Union under a
foreign prince; but it is now more than suspected that Russian arguments
have had undue weight with certain prominent members of the French
government and advisers of the French Emperor. England, Austria, and
Turkey, and also Sardinia, will oppose the dangerous scheme, and with
good reason; for although the Moldo-Wallachians, who have an abundantly
high opinion of their own capacities and merits, imagine that, were
their wishes complied with, they should within a very short time offer
to Europe the edifying example of an Oriental Belgium, it is feared by
those who know them best that there would be at least as great a chance
of their scandalising it by the deplorable spectacle of a second Greece.
LETTERS FROM A LIGHTHOUSE.—NO. I.
My dear Ebony,—If you still retain in your composition one drop of the
milk of human kindness, the reappearance of an old contributor, whom
doubtless you long ago considered as irretrievably lost or strayed, must
impart to you a thrill of pleasure. At all events, it ought to do so:
for, though I say it, there seems to have been a sad falling-off in
power and stamina since I withdrew from the literary ring. Nine years
ago, when I regularly stained paper in your service, the world was brisk
and bustling. All of us had drunk more or less deeply of the Circean cup
of speculation; and though the hour of retribution, or rather of paying
up calls, was nigh at hand, we had not yet been summoned to partake of
the soda-water of repentance. The political game was fast and exciting.
There was a clear, distinct, and obvious contest of principles; and it
was a real gratification to see how valiantly men on either side would
stand forth and fisticuff their opponents. The forehead of the
Manchester Goliath was a first-rate mark for the sling of the
Conservative David; and many a time have I groaned with pleasure over
the prostrate carcass of a Quaker Philistine. All things seemed
flourishing, when a heavy shadow passed over me and my fortunes. Don’t
be alarmed. I have no intention of troubling you with details which I
did not think it necessary at the time to divulge to a Court of
Bankruptcy. I have no creditors now. The misfortunate creatures who
arrogated to themselves that absurd and empty title, have long since
bolted also. In fact, if I had not been an ass, I might easily have got
rid of the whole of them by adopting the simple expedient of tarrying
incognito for the space of a twelvemonth at Dalnacardoch, where a friend
of mine, a duiniewassail of the house of M‘Tavish, who was largely
engaged in the process of illicit distillation, would willingly have
afforded me shelter. However, I committed the grievous mistake of
outrunning, not the constable, but my creditors. I shall never forget
the kind manner in which you acceded to my request for an advance of an
hundred pounds, on the strength of future articles. Your liberality was
not thrown away, for the money you gave me materially facilitated my
departure, and enabled me to take my leave with that calmness, decorum,
and equanimity which become a gentleman. I mention this for the purpose
of showing you that I am not oblivious of such favours, though I should
be the last man in the world to insult you by hinting at repayment after
the lapse of so much time. Indeed you will not expect to receive any
such paltry proposal, as the debt must be long ago prescribed. But what
is friendship, if not based upon gratitude and confidence? Therefore
understand, that, if you print this letter or any other lucubration of
mine, I shall consider myself your creditor (at a short date) on the
same terms as before; unless, indeed, you have raised the literary
tariff since the period of our former connection, in which case I shall
gladly avail myself of any reasonable increment.
Business first—pleasure afterwards. That was always my motto; and I
already feel that I can write more easily, and express myself more
felicitously, now that I have discharged this debt upon my conscience. I
have been, it is true, a little out of practice; for amongst the various
kinds of thirst which affected the Californian diggers and the Norfolk
Island whalers, with whom respectively I sojourned for considerable
periods, I did not observe that for literature exorbitantly developed.
Neither were the Bashi-Bazouks, in which honourable corps of irregulars
I held an honourable commission, and whom I might, could, would, or
should have led on to glory, had they not preferred devoting their
energies to the expiscation of hen-roosts, the discovery of secret
cellars, and such-like baubles—neither, I say, were the Bashi-Bazouks a
hard-reading set. Indeed they rather appeared to incline to the tenets
of that capital old cock, Caliph Omar, whom it is the fashion to abuse
because he burned the Alexandrian library. I am sure that if he were
alive again, and could contrive to make a bonfire of every book that has
been printed since Gutenberg drew his first proof-sheet, he would be
regarded as a blessed benefactor by every man who now earns his
livelihood by handling the pen. Positively my mouth waters at the bare
idea of such a thing! Living authors would then have the whole monopoly,
and might fix their own prices; and we should have none of those
rascally reprints of the works of the defunct, which interfere so
materially with our sales. But indulgence in such extravagant dreams is
useless, and even criminal. I simply mean to observe that, while among
my friends the Bashis, I had not much opportunity of giving my nights
and days to the study of Addison, or Alison, or Tennyson, or Emerson, or
any other son of woman born; so that, perhaps, my style may, for some
little time, appear deficient in grace and polish. But since I came here
(I shall presently tell you what I mean by _here_, and how I obtained
the exceedingly desirable situation which I now enjoy), I have had
plenty leisure for reading, and have gradually unstacked a pile of
reviews, big enough, and I must add heavy enough, to sink a respectable
steam-tug. I have read, sir, very nearly through the whole periodical
literature of Great Britain published during the last eight years; and I
have arrived at the deliberate conclusion that the said floating
literature has been gradually becoming water-logged, and is in great
danger of disappearing, like the mysterious islet on Lochlomond.
Time was when the Quarterlies supplied a stock of reading, which, if not
very pungent, was at least easy of digestion, suited to the
comprehension of the numerous class of consumers who do not affect
unusual profundity, and occasionally relieved by a touch of something
which it was possible to mistake for humour. But all that has
disappeared. The new brood of contributors are much too learned for
their audience, and you might as well look for liveliness at an
undertaker’s wedding, as within the pages of a Quarterly Review. I read
a number of one of them—I won’t specify which—no later than last night,
under the reflector; and, do you know, it positively gave me a fit of
colic. Six or eight fellows, each more heavy-sterned than the other,
trudged by in succession, bearing burdens of bosh upon their shoulders;
just as I have seen, on a tearing wet day, some of my Bashi-Bazouks
straggle in from a plundering expedition, one bending beneath a load of
dripping mats not worth an asper, another sweating under the abandoned
pack-saddle of a camel, and a third carrying a dead goat in an advanced
stage of putrefaction. I protest to you, Ebony, that I have a very great
regard in the abstract for the ancients, and am willing to take (or
affect) as much interest in their quondam doings as can possibly be
expected from a gentleman whose fortune it was to be born some two
thousand years or so after their time; but is it reasonable to expect me
to wade through some thirty or forty mortal pages devoted to the subject
of the Peloponnesian war? I like the Orientals, who, after all, have
some sound notions on the subjects of coffee and tobacco; but why should
I be solicited to bother my brains with criticisms upon the Coptic
grammar? My chief objection to Egypt is its fleas; but, at a pinch—or
rather in spite of innumerable pinches—I might bring myself to submit
even to that nuisance, and enjoy in comparative tranquillity the really
salubrious air of the heritage of the Pharaohs, provided I were not
perpetually pestered by jabbering about hieroglyphs, and monoliths, and
Orus, and Osiris, and the beetles, and the Ibis, and the leeks, and the
crocodiles, and Necho, and Psammis, and Rhamses (who was no relation of
the Dalhousies), and other myths, reptiles, vegetables, and divinities,
who at one time molested the Delta. I had the pleasure, a couple of
years ago, of kicking, after various warnings, a British antiquarian out
of a coffee-house in Cairo; and he ought to feel very grateful to me for
having done so, as otherwise he would have been poniarded to a certainty
at a later period of the evening. Well, sir; last night, in the course
of my reading, I recognised my old friend, in the pages of the review,
by marks which I hold to be infallible: for you must know that, before
my patience gave way altogether, I had imparted to him divers startling
details touching discoveries in Upper Egypt, which occurred to me (I was
drinking rum and water at the time, and the lymph of the Nile from a
porous jar is, I assure you, when properly qualified, very seductive
tipple) as extremely probable to be made in localities whereof I had not
the slightest knowledge; and—will you believe it?—the caitiff has
actually embodied in his article the results of my sublime and
extemporaneous researches! If it ever should be my lot to fall in with
him near Nineveh, he may expect a sterner measure of justice and
retribution. Next comes an ecclesiastical monomaniac, maundering—O
me—about the Council of Chalcedon! I thought we really had done with
councils. Most of us of the Protestant way of thinking, are well pleased
to be rid, once and for ever, of a controversy which was understood to
have been settled at the Reformation; and we are entitled to object to
its revival. So about Italian history. We don’t want to hear about Duke
Sforza this, or Count Paolo that;—the record of their crimes, intrigues,
murders, rapes, and adulteries ought to have no manner of interest, and
really has none, except to a few antiquarians with diseased
appetites;—and if deeds of this kind are worthy of promulgation at this
time of day, I am serious in thinking that we do injustice to such
native heroes as Turpin and Abershaw, by giving the foreigners a decided
quarterly preference. Next I observe that an awful deal of drivel is
current about Niebuhr and the Romans. I know something about Niebuhr;
and I always esteemed him a prig. He was a regular old, pottering,
professional German humbug—one of your why-and-wherefore men, who looked
regularly twice at each side of his _kalbs-braten_, and would not have
taken upon trust an ordinary report of a police trial from the columns
of the _Times_. He was as little susceptible of poetical feeling or
inspiration as an ink-fish or a polypus; and thought—for the conceit of
the animal was unbounded—that he knew far more about Roman history than
either Livy or Ovid. It humbly appears to me that, in dealing with the
history of such remote times, the man who, without absolute information
enabling him to substitute truth for falsehood, flies in the face of
tradition, is a blockhead. Tradition is much older than he is, and
infinitely more respectable; and if he cannot disprove it by evidence,
he is bound to let it stand. What is the use of all this captious
infidelity? What does Niebuhr give us in exchange for the story of
Romulus and Remus, or any of the glowing early legends of Rome, which,
despite of the ultra-grammarian tendencies of too many pedagogues, have,
for centuries, roused the curiosity and emulation of our youth, except
the vision of a duffle-clad professor, with a pipe in his mouth,
attempting, in uncleanly fashion, to blow away the settled belief of
ages! And all this passes current under the title of profound criticism!
Then what with philology, archæology, ontology, epistemology, and
æsthetics, a plain fellow like myself feels as though he had lodged
surreptitiously in Bedlam. Lads, in their second year at college, patter
away in a jargon more perplexing than that of the swell-mob or the
gypsies, and discuss the science of mind instead of occupying themselves
with the gustative enjoyment of tarts. One very marked feature of the
age is the growth and excessive multiplication of what are facetiously
called philosophical institutes. I conjecture, from the multitude of
advertisements and circulars which have reached me, that there is now
hardly a village throughout the country without its lecture-room, for
the purpose of affording an easy vent to the available talent and ready
impudence of the district. Lairds, dominies, dissenting ministers,
enthusiastic excisemen, and philanthropic collectors of the revenue,
seem to avail themselves with the utmost eagerness of these
opportunities of displaying the vast treasures of thought and
information stored up in their respectable brains; and they rant,
declaim, speculate, or mumble over every imaginable subject—politics,
poetry, religion, or railways, causality, cookery, or consciousness.
Noble lords and members of the House of Commons, of all shades of
opinion, have been pressed into the service. One day Lord John Russell
drones upon the subject of history; on the next, Sir Robert Peel is
heard spouting the poetry of Mrs Hemans. And on all sides, from every
corner, nook, and cranny, rises a dreary hum about education, which
possibly might be considered as a hopeful symptom, provided any two
people could be found to agree as to the exact meaning of the term.
Far be it from me to object to this general expansion of the public
mind. I fully concur in the observation made a few weeks ago by the
chairman of the Cowcaddens’ Mechanics Institute, that every man
possesses, upon some particular topic, a stock of information which he
is bound to communicate for the advantage of his fellow-creatures: and,
along with him, I expect the advent of the time when the number of the
British lecturers shall exceed that of their collective audiences. I
sometimes experience a feeling of regret that my present circumstances
and position preclude me from taking an active hand in the game, so long
as there is a chance of profit. I am quite certain that I could get up a
stunning course upon less than a fortnight’s warning; and by shifting my
ground dexterously from one institute to another, I have no doubt that I
should be able to pick up guineas as fast as a pigeon gathers peas. But,
after all, it is a great matter to bear a contented mind. I never envied
any one, being of opinion that there is always a skeleton in the closet;
and recent events have convinced me that this is the true philosophy.
Look at Paul the banker, Sadleir, Redpath, Cameron—what has been the
upshot of all their wealth and prosperity? Hang me if I would not rather
cut kelp at sixpence a-day than be a director of the Bank of England!
Then as to power—what is the good of that? Nobody in our time has had a
longer lease of it than Johnny Russell, and yet where is his reputation
now? Where be his followers, the men who used to cheer him so
vociferously—who were so lavish of their adulation, so perfectly slavish
to his will? Dancing at the back of Palmerston, like so many fantoccini,
and shrugging their shoulders with affected pity for the misfortunes of
their former leader! Where is Cobden now? No man in my day, barring
O’Connell, had a larger personal following than the redoubted
crumpler-up of Russia, but somehow his adherents have melted from him,
like snow at the breath of the thaw. Surely it would be better never to
rise from obscurity at all, than, after a splendid meridian, to shiver
in the eve of life under the cold shadows of contumely and neglect.
It is my belief that you men who dwell amidst the whirl and turmoil of
public affairs, who are constantly engaged either in attack or defence,
and whose brains are consequently kept spinning like a whirligig, are
quite unfitted to take a philosophic view of any immediate subject, or
to pronounce a candid opinion upon its merits. You are like the warriors
on the plain of Troy, thrusting, foining, and contending for the armour
of those who are down; and amidst the dust and stour of the battle, it
is physically impossible that you can see anything at the distance of
twenty yards. Very different is the position of us Olympians, who, from
our elevated perch, in clear weather, can survey complacently all that
is passing beneath, without allowing party feeling, or affection, or
prejudice, to distort our deliberate judgments.
“For we lie beside our nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below us in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round our golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.”
But I forget that you are no Œdipus, and necessarily must think me
crazy, unless I condescend to explanation.
Know, then, that after my return from the wars, without accepting a
Pashalik, which was the very least that those ungrateful infidels should
have offered me, I found myself nearly as much out at elbows as the
Copper Captain or the redoubted Bobadil. Arrearages there were none; and
I found myself wandering about the streets of London, with a magnificent
beard, a seedy greatcoat, galligaskins that had seen better days, and a
very few shillings in my pocket. I believe—at least I have been
told—that the British public was exceedingly excited and gratified by
the return of the soldiers from the Crimea, and that all sorts of
hospitalities were lavished upon the victors of Alma and Inkermann. Be
that as it may, I can conscientiously aver that I did not profit, to the
extent of a single beefsteak, by my military renown. True, I did not
belong to the regulars, or even to the German Legion. I never saw
Sebastopol, nor was I quartered at Heligoland. But that was no fault of
mine. Had I, with my brave Bashis, been moved forward to the van of
fight, I flatter myself that—but I will not pursue the subject further.
Suffice it to say, that I received no medals, and no allowances, and
that I was twice requested by the police to exhibit my ticket-of-leave.
Suspicion is a horrid thing, and apt to unsettle even the best-regulated
mind. I began to ponder within myself whether it were worth while to be
suspected without a cause; and had Mephistopheles displayed his usual
diabolic activity on the night of the display of fireworks, I really do
think that I might have been overpersuaded to try my hand at the
garotte. I was, however, such a very dilapidated Faustus, that the demon
passed me by as if I were not worth his notice; and with the return of
morning, virtue reassumed her sway. I then bethought me that in other
and more fortunate days I was known to certain individuals now holding
office under the beneficent administration of the Whigs; and, as it was
notorious that some very loose fish had recently been patronised by that
respectable faction, I thought it not impossible that they might cast a
few crumbs of comfort in the way of a meritorious veteran who was always
ready to serve his country for an extremely moderate consideration. So,
after making what toilet I could, I laid siege to the public offices,
being fully determined that my old besetting sin of modesty should not
this time, at all events, prove a bar to my advancement, and that no one
whom I was privileged to accost should hereafter be able to plead
ignorance as an excuse for having overlooked my claims. Nor was I at all
particular as to the kind of employment. Any of the newly-created
offices in the gift of the Secretary of the War Department would have
suited me like a kid-glove. Had my godfathers and godmothers been gifted
with sufficient prescience to bestow upon me the name of Dowb, I might
possibly have been taken care of; but, alas! I had no part or portion in
that sacred monosyllable. Flights of harpies had been before me; and
they had swept away even the most insignificant remnants of the banquet.
Go where I might, I met with nothing save incivility and official
insolence; until at last one friend, more true than the others,
purchased my evacuation of his lobby, in which I had permanently
encamped myself, by procuring for me a nomination as an assistant
light-keeper. Yes—you may well stare, and drop the paper as you read!
“Is it possible,” you will say—or you ought to say—“that our ancient and
illustrious contributor, a man of such varied learning and minute
accomplishment, &c. &c., should be so depressed by fortune as to immure
himself within the narrow precincts of a lonely Pharos?” Well—why not?
The work is easy and regular, provided you can keep awake; and the pay
and perquisites by no manner of means to be despised. Government is good
enough to find us in all manner of victual and appurtenances (save
liquor, which is somewhat churlishly prohibited); you have comfortable
lodgings, prime air, wholesome exercise in ascending the stair, and the
most magnificent of sea-views, either in calm or in storm. Add to this,
your absolute immunity, nowhere else to be enjoyed in the British
islands, from all visits of those disagreeable savages the
tax-gatherers; and it will require no exorbitant stretch of fancy to
imagine worse quarters. The society, no doubt, is limited, but then it
has the advantage of being select. Archy M‘Craw, my principal, is a
superannuated sergeant of a Highland regiment, who remembers Waterloo,
and has a settled belief in the authenticity of Ossian; and when he
produces his stores of anecdote about Picton and Fingal—heroes whose
deeds he is rather apt to confound—he is anything but stupid company.
His helpmate, Elspeth, is a nice tidy old body, somewhat addicted to
snuff and the perusal of _Boston’s Fourfold State_, but extremely
obliging; and her talents in the concoction of an Irish stew are by no
means despicable. Like all genuine Highlanders, M‘Craw has a proper
respect for birth and education; and as he knows that my circumstances
are now somewhat altered from what they have been, he is courteous in
his demeanour, and, instead of trying to impose upon me, as a newcomer,
additional labour, I observe that he is most anxious to lighten my
burden. So upon the whole we get on capitally, and I do not know that I
was ever more comfortable than now. I was always a consumer of the
midnight oil, which the Government now provides for me _gratis_; and I
have plenty of time for reading in the long watch beneath the glow of
the reflectors. As for the wind and rain—of which, it must be confessed,
there is rather a superabundance here—one becomes used to them after a
certain period of probation; indeed I rather like a storm, as the
roaring of the elements tends to stir poetical ideas, which otherwise
might be apt to stagnate. I wrote a most capital description of an
eruption of Vesuvius, a few nights ago, during one of the most violent
gales that ever swept this Sound. Then, during the daytime, after
polishing the mirrors and making up the log-book, I have plenty of
leisure for meditation. Our lighthouse is perched upon a cliff some
three hundred feet above the sea, and there is a long sloping hillside
behind, where our cattle and ponies graze, which leads down to the
beach. There is prime fishing all about; and the sea-fowl are so
prolific in the matter of eggs, that, at the proper season, it would not
be difficult, from our rocks alone, to furnish a daily ration of
omelette to every soldier in the British army. Then there is a reef on
which the seals at ebb-tide come up to bask, and, as I have not parted
with my rifle, I have had some pretty sport, and have even turned an
honest penny by the disposal of the peltry. On the whole, I should say,
after much experience of life in different phases, that there is no more
agreeable post for a man who unites in himself the combined characters
of philosopher, sportsman, and student, than that of a keeper of a
lighthouse; and I would not, with my present feelings, change places
with the venerated Palmerston. I warrant me I am much more comfortable
while reading the columns of the Magazine (by the way, do not forget to
send me the numbers in future—I have borrowed the last few from the
parish minister), by the mild effulgence of the _Stella maris_, than he
is while compelled, long after midnight, to listen to the dreary debates
in the House of Commons, cursing all the while the imbecility of his
supporters, who attempt to copy his jocular manner, without possessing a
tithe of his ability. If the noble viscount had been but ten years
younger, I would have strenuously recommended him to isolate himself for
a twelvemonth in a lighthouse. If he were to undergo such a
contemplative ordeal, I am ready to stake my life that on his emergence
he would make a clean sweep of such preposterous and exhaustive
satellites as the two Peels, Bernal Osborne, Sir Charles Wood, Vernon
Smith, and Mr Robert Lowe; and would have tried at least to reconstruct
his Administration on the principle of common sense, if he could not
command a more exalted kind of talent. But the Premier, with all his
dexterity, official experience, and sleight-of-hand, is, for the
present, like a theatrical manager at the head of a most sorry _corps
dramatique_, the members of whom he must shift as occasion requires; and
were his own performances not extremely adroit, he could hardly hope to
escape the envenomed hiss which is the sure signal of dissolution.
I will tell you why I make these observations. The last mail brought me
an account of a discourse, lately delivered by the present Sir Robert
Peel, at the opening of some kind of museum in the neighbourhood of
Birmingham, which you, as the conductor of an important organ of public
opinion, are bound to notice in terms of the severest reprobation.
However disposed men may be in this indulgent country of ours, to pass
over youthful follies, or to palliate more matured eccentricities, some
guarantee is required that those who are advanced to responsible
offices, and who are paid servants of the Crown, shall, in that
capacity, maintain ordinary decorum, and, whatever their private
impressions, impulses, or desires may be, conform to that decency which
is the duty of all officials. Sir Robert Peel was among the number of
those selected to represent the Court of St James’s at the recent
coronation of the Emperor of Russia: a ceremony of no ordinary mark and
significance, occurring as it did immediately after the termination of
the war. Of the wisdom of the selection made, I need say nothing, as I
believe upon that point there is no divided opinion in the public mind.
But whether the choice was good or bad, judicious or extremely
imprudent, the fact remains that Sir Robert Peel went to Russia, as a
member of the Legation sent by Her Majesty Queen Victoria, to give a
pledge and testimony of renewed amity between two of the mightiest
nations of Europe. From a man intrusted with so high a function, not
only is the utmost degree of circumspection required during the period
occupied by the discharge of his duties, but an entire suppression of
his private and personal opinions. Gentlemen connected with the press,
or adventurous tourists who went to Moscow in a private capacity, were
perfectly free on their return to lay before the public their
impressions and sentiments. Some of them have done so; but in so far as
I have had the opportunity of observing, in no instance has anything
been written which could by possibility give offence to Russia, or tend
to increase the irritation which will sometimes linger even after peace
has been restored. But Peel stood altogether in a different position. He
was not only a subordinate member of the Ministry, but a special
delegate; and therefore he was doubly bound to use caution, and to
abstain from unguarded speech. Yet no sooner does this favoured
statesman return to his own country, than we find him, on an occasion
quite unsuited for the introduction of such a topic, commenting upon his
Russian experiences in terms which would have disgraced the meanest
mountebank that ever spouted on a platform. Everything in Russia,
according to Sir Robert Peel, is deception and imposture. The Empress,
by a fine stroke of humour, was represented by him as appearing at the
coronation “with her hair dishevelled, looking like Norma in the opera.”
Not in coarser, but not in better taste is his reference to the Archduke
Constantine. “The Marble Palace is the residence of that ‘frank and
open-hearted sailor,’ Constantine. How I laughed when I read that
description of Constantine’s character! With all respect to his
highness, I must say that I never saw a man who gave me less of the
impression of a ‘frank and open-hearted sailor.’ It is all soft sawder,
you know.” Now, setting aside the ineffable vulgarity of the man’s
discourse, I would just ask what kind of sensation would be created in
England, if a representative from the United States, sent to attend the
coronation of Queen Victoria, had, on his return home, used such
offensive language? Why, the whole British press, from Land’s End to
John o’ Groat’s, would have been vociferous in denunciation of the
outrage, as a breach not only of public duty, but of private manners;
and Judge Lynch would have been recommended to take immediate steps for
the punishment of the insolent offender. I have no great faith in the
plenitude of American courtesy; but I do verily believe that it would be
impossible to find, within the compass of Yankee-land, a single man of
ordinary education and breeding, who, after having been accredited as
was this individual, Peel, would so have spoken of the royal family of
Great Britain. The effect of such a speech as this, upon foreigners,
must be twofold. In the first place, they cannot but consider it,
proceeding from the mouth of a member of the Administration, as a
pregnant sign that a bad and rancorous feeling towards Russia still
exists among the British people. In the second place, they will take it
as a proof of the assertion which ere now has been made, that the
British aristocracy are no longer pre-eminently distinguished for
politeness, courtesy, and high-toned chivalry; for we cannot expect
foreigners to be intimately acquainted with the antecedents of the house
of Peel.
“I look upon it,” says Machiavelli, “as one of the greatest points of
discretion in a man, to forbear injury and threatening, especially in
words. Neither of them weakens the enemy; but threatening makes him more
cautious, and injury the more inveterate and industrious to revenge it.
Nothing provokes and incenses a man so highly as to have his
imperfections reaped up: whether in earnest or in jest, ’tis the same
thing. _Nam facetiæ asperæ, quando nimium ex vero traxere, acrem sui
memoriam relinquunt._ For biting raillery, especially with a tincture of
truth, leaves an ill impression on the memory.” I do not, of course,
suppose that Peel has any acquaintance with the writings of the famous
Florentine; but he may, possibly, have looked into the works of Lord
Bacon; and if so, it is a pity that he has forgotten the following
passage: “As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be
privileged from it; namely, religion, matters of state, great persons,
any man’s present business of importance, and any case which deserveth
pity. Yet there be some that think their wits have been asleep except
they dart out somewhat that is piquant and to the quick. That is a vein
which would be bridled;
Parce puer stimulis, et fortius utere loris.
And, generally, men ought to find the difference between saltness and
bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh
others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others’ memory.”
The conclusion of which last sentence Sir Robert Peel has peculiar
reason to study.
But this is not all. It was not enough for the Palmerstonian protegé to
insult Russia—he must also have a fling at the representatives of our
nearer allies. The following is his account of Count de Morny, the
representative of France. “We were presented at the coronation by Count
de Morny, the French ambassador, a spick-and-span man of considerable
_aplomb_, and who, by the way, is one of the greatest speculators in the
world. He speculates in everything, and bought a lot of pictures to sell
again and make a profit of.” The intense indecency of this is only
equalled by its vulgarity. No man with the real feelings of a gentleman
would so have spoken publicly of another, for whose good offices he was,
moreover, indebted. “Spick-and-span man!” Why, the veriest bagman that
ever perambulated the Midland Counties would blush if convicted of
having used such language. I should like to know what Sir Robert Peel
would have thought if Count de Morny, at some public meeting in France,
had regaled his audience by personal allusions of a similar kind, for
which there is no lack whatever of current material. Presently comes the
turn of the ambassador sent by the uncle of Queen Victoria. “Then came
the ambassador of the smallest kingdom in Europe—Belgium—the Prince de
Ligne, the very picture of swelling insignificance; so swelling, indeed,
that he could not, for the life of him, look down from the contemplation
of his own importance.” Apart from the shameless personality of this
sketch, which at once betrays the _parvenu_, the man has contrived in
this sentence to exhibit a degree of ignorance sufficient to entitle him
to a pluck if he offered himself for examination as a candidate for a
portership in a public office. Belgium is so far from being the smallest
kingdom in Europe, that, in point of population and revenue, which have
always been considered the proper tests of the greatness of a state, it
is superior to Portugal, Denmark, Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony, Würtemburg,
and Greece. It has a larger population than Holland; a larger revenue
than Naples, Sweden, or Sardinia; and a larger territorial extent than
three of the kingdoms which I have mentioned. It is to be hoped that
this instance of stupid and gross blunder on the part of a man who was
shoved by paternal interest into important and diplomatic situations,
will convince Sir Charles Trevelyan of the necessity of extending his
system of examination beyond the rank of mere subordinates. However much
Peel may in other respects resemble the renowned Katterfelto, who was
the most famous jack-pudding of his day, he certainly has not acquired
the secret of consummate dexterity and manipulation. It is highly
improbable that the repute of the Prince de Ligne will suffer from the
scratches of so coarse and clumsy a caricaturist. To this succeeds a
touch of Tartuffe. “Then the representative of Naples, of whom, IN
CHARITY, I will say nothing.” It is to be hoped, for the credit of
Drayton Manor, that the representative of Naples will be inspired with
the like Christian forbearance. Lastly comes the poor Turkish
representative, of whom our pattern Englishman says: “You could not look
at him without feeling that he was the representative of an effete and
worn-out nation.” If nations are to be judged by their representatives,
and if Great Britain is to be estimated according to the intellectual
measurement of Peel, I protest that I would rather inscribe myself in
the universal register as a Dog-ribbed Indian, than as a native of these
islands.
But what incenses me more than anything else, is the excessive malignity
exhibited by this flippant and absurd young man while speaking of
Admiral Sir Charles Napier. It is not for me to hazard an opinion
whether the admiral acted wisely or over-cautiously in abstaining from
an attack upon Cronstadt, although the evidence, in so far as it has
been made public, appears to be strong in his justification. The
antecedents of Sir Charles Napier are such that it would be work of
supererogation now to insist upon the courage, intrepidity, and daring,
which he has so often conspicuously displayed. Of his former laurels,
honourably gained and universally acknowledged, no breath of slander can
deprive him. If old age is to be considered as a disqualification for
public service, then the blame rests solely with the Lords of the
Admiralty, who intrusted the charge of the Baltic fleet to a man on the
verge of seventy. They ought to have known that if desperate service was
required, a younger man than Napier would have been a more fitting
leader; but I am not aware that service of that kind was expected, or
that it was necessary in that stage of the war to attempt such a
hazardous exploit as the bombardment of Cronstadt, unless the chances of
success appeared greater than those of failure. Any serious disaster
sustained by our fleet in the Baltic would have been not only a triumph
to Russia, but an immense political advantage; the maintenance of the
blockade was undeniably the chief object of the expedition; and
therefore, the admiral was bound to weigh the consequences deliberately
before attempting any extraordinary enterprise. Sir Charles Napier says
that, with the force at his disposal, he did not consider himself
justified in attacking Cronstadt; and in that view he was fortified by
the opinion of the French admiral. Since then, the Earl of Dundonald,
one of the bravest and most daring of British sailors, has expressed his
deliberate opinion that Napier was perfectly right in abstaining from
any such attempt, because, in all human probability, the result would
have been futile, if not disastrous. With such authorities at his back,
Sir Charles Napier might well afford to despise the insinuations of his
silly persecutor; and I wish that he had done so, instead of flying into
a passion, because he has been assailed by an insect. His evident
annoyance served only to increase the malignity of the wasp who pursued
him; until, in an evil hour for himself, the venomous creature committed
a mistake, which ought, for the remainder of his existence, to put a
stop to his buzzing. Sir Robert Peel had the temerity to assert that, in
the course of conversation, the Archduke Constantine stated to him
(Peel) that if Napier had attacked Cronstadt, the fortress must have
fallen. Upon this, Napier writes to the Archduke, and receives in reply
a letter distinctly stating _that no such conversation took place_!
This, I must needs remark, gives a most serious complexion to the
matter. Either the Archduke or Sir Robert Peel must be guilty of
deliberate falsehood. Peel states that such a conversation was held—the
Archduke denies it _in toto_. Which of them are we to believe?
All I can say is, that it seems to me a very unlikely thing that, under
any circumstances, the Archduke should have selected an underling of the
legation, with whom he had no previous acquaintance, as the depositary
of his confidences; and tenfold more extraordinary, that he should have
made so singular a revelation. What was the use of it? What could be his
object? Had Constantine anything to gain by exposing the weakness or
want of preparation of his country, in a matter so serious as the main
defence and bulwark of St Petersburg? or is he so very “frank and
open-hearted,” as to be in the habit of blurting out state-secrets to
every Tom-noddy who may arrive from England? I cannot answer those
questions, satisfactorily to myself; and no more, I venture to think,
can you. But, observe this, that the matter, as it now stands, is of a
nature exceedingly grave. If the Archduke Constantine held no
conversation of the kind alleged with Sir Robert Peel (and we have his
express denial of it), in what terms shall we characterise the assertion
made by the latter for the evident purpose of blasting the reputation of
one of the oldest and most distinguished of the British admirals? If
Constantine _did_ hold such a conversation with Peel, then the latter
has obviously violated the conventional courtesies of society, by
publishing what must, in any point of view, be held as a private
communication. Lord Palmerston, however jauntily he may ride the public
horse, would do well to pay some attention to its shoeing. Whatever may
be the indiscretions of such men as Sir Charles Napier—however imprudent
they may be in their squabbles with the Admiralty or other boards—they
have at all events won, by honourable and dangerous service, that hold
on the nation’s heart, that no man of generous feeling, whatever his
party may be, will allow them to be wantonly assailed by an
understrapper or buffoon, whose continuance in office must be an
additional disgrace to the Ministry, who were imprudent enough to
elevate him to a position for which he was obviously and notoriously
unfit.
Let me now, for a few moments, direct your attention to another subject.
It is one of considerable importance and vast interest to the public,
who during the last twelve months have expended large sums in the
fortification of their dwelling-houses, to the no small delight and
emolument of the ironmongers and locksmiths. The old adage, that an
Englishman’s house is his castle, which at first was a mere figure of
speech, has now been actually realised. What with bolts, bars, chains,
screws, iron-shutters, and alarum-bells, our private mansions are as
well secured as Newgate; and the burglars, in their more recent
attempts, have been reduced to the unartistic device of breaking through
side-walls, in order to arrive at the plate-chests. But this state of
comparative security has been dearly purchased. Many old ladies, of
nervous temperament, have expired in paroxysms of terror, caused by the
slamming of doors and the creaking of hinges during the silent watches
of the night. I have heard of one timorous gentleman, who coughed
himself to death in consequence of a cold contracted from incarceration
in the coal-cellar, to which donjon-keep he had fled, alarmed by a sound
which resembled the rasping of a file. Innumerable Blowsalindas
threatened to abandon their places, unless a policeman was allowed to
sleep in the house; and in one unfortunate instance, a brace of
glaziers, who had gone early to work, and were engaged in cleaning the
windows, were shot right and left by an eccentric colonel of militia. At
length, by the aid of Chubb and his coadjutors, who must have realised
colossal fortunes during the panic, men are tolerably safe within doors,
and can retire to roost without the dread of being wakened about three
in the morning by the gleam of a lantern carried by a gentleman who has
modestly veiled his countenance with crape, but who, being armed with a
carving-knife, needs not to employ many arguments before you make
surrender of your movables. But alas! the same degree of security does
not exist without. If you tarry at your club until the witching hour of
midnight, in the enjoyment of the conversation of some facetious friend,
or seduced by the charms of roasted oysters, the chances are that, on
your return homeward, you are garotted before you reach the second
lamppost. It is not pleasant to feel your weazand contract under the
gripe of one brawny ruffian, while a second trips up your heels,
bringing your occiput into violent contact with the pavement or the
kerbstone: it is not profitable to lose your watch, your note-case, and
your purse, in so ignominious a manner; and it is decidedly disagreeable
to be compelled to walk about for the next fortnight with your eyes
protruding from your head like those of a lobster, and an expression of
countenance which would infallibly lead a stranger to conjecture that
you had been ordered for execution, and been cut down, in consequence of
the arrival of a reprieve, before the vital spark was extinguished. Many
an excellent gentleman and pious Christian has recently walked the
streets, after sunset, under the influence of those terrors so well
described by Coleridge, who, I think, must have been garotted in his
day;—
“Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
Under such circumstances, fear becomes a positive duty; and the
apparition of an intoxicated apprentice staggering suddenly from a
common stair, is enough to make Julius Cæsar betake himself to his
heels. I have seen a good deal of foreign cities, the repute of which is
by no means creditable, but I give you my word that I would rather
thread the streets of Lisbon or Pera, after nightfall, than perambulate
those of an English town, under the operation of the system now pursued
with regard to the disposal of criminals.
What are you all about, that you submit to lead a life of perpetual
fear, suspicion, and bondage? Do you not see that the remedy is in
your own hands, and that it is a very plain one? Can anything be more
absurd than the assemblage of meetings for the purpose of taking into
consideration schemes of education, projects for the diffusion of
knowledge, further reforms in the constitution, or even the
readjustment of the taxes, before demanding from the Government that
they shall fulfil their first duty, which is that of adequately
protecting the lives and property of the lieges? Have you not had
warning enough of the hideous results of that system of
ticket-of-leave which no one but an absolute idiot can now have the
temerity to defend? Why, the papers daily teem with accounts of
murders, garottings, housebreakings, and the like, to an extent which
never, in my remembrance at least, was paralleled; and yet certain
wiseacres, who hold the office of Ministers, and style themselves
statesmen, very calmly tell you that the system of tickets of leave
has not yet had a fair trial! And so you, Ebony, and your friends, and
all the honest men throughout the country, are to be exposed to the
imminent danger of being throttled, robbed, or murdered, in order that
a parcel of obstinate prigs in high places may have an opportunity of
solving what they are pleased to call an interesting social problem! I
should like to know what is the use of a Government if it does not
provide for the safety of the subject in life, limb, and property. Has
it indeed come to this, that an army of desperate convicts is to be
let loose upon the respectable classes of society, for the purpose of
ascertaining whether they have got rid of their old tendencies towards
crime, the experiment being measured by the number of throats which
are cut, of houses which are broken into and pilfered, of ladies and
gentlemen who are burked in the streets, and of tradesmen’s tills that
are plundered, compared with the number of the convicts who are
released from prison contrary to the sentence which they have
received? Had Swift introduced such a picture of pragmatic imbecility
in his voyage of Gulliver to Laputa, men would have laughed at it as
an utterly impossible extravaganza. It would at once have been said
that in no civilised country in the world—nay, for that matter, in no
country however barbarous, for the sense of justice is instinctive to
man—would the executive be allowed, except in extraordinary and
isolated cases, to interfere with the judgments pronounced by its
judicial tribunals. Yet, what is the fact? Our judges are practically
told that these sentences are of no avail. Having heard the case with
all its concomitant circumstances, which almost invariably indicates
the real character, habits, and tendencies of the accused—and having
received the verdict of the jury—they apportion the punishment, not
for vengeance, but, according to the righteous and humane spirit of
our laws, for the safety of society, and for a solemn warning to
others. Now, I say—and I am ready to maintain the argument against all
the _doctrinaires_ in Christendom and Heathenesse—that if you allow
any functionary or official, who knows nothing of the circumstances
elicited at the trial, to alter arbitrarily the sentence pronounced by
a competent court, a fatal, or, at all events, a very serious blow
will be struck at the best interests of society. Look, for example, at
the procedure in cases where a capital sentence has been pronounced.
The Secretary of State, to whom memorials praying for a mitigation of
punishment are sent, never ventures, on his own responsibility, to
advise the Sovereign to exercise her prerogative of mercy, without
communication with the judge before whom the case was tried. This
practice is laudable and necessary—laudable, because it gives the
judge an opportunity of stating the existence of any mitigating
circumstances—and necessary, because otherwise the dignity and
authority of a Supreme Court could not possibly be maintained. Can any
reason be stated why the like precautions should be dispensed with in
cases where the punishment falls short of a capital one? We have seen,
of late years, a considerable relaxation in our criminal code;
inasmuch as many offences which were formerly capital, are now visited
by arbitrary punishment only. There can be no doubt whatever that the
change was righteous, humane, and such as befitted a Christian nation,
although late occurrences give some colour to the opinion that the
relaxation was carried too far. But, be that as it may, it is
difficult to see—and I, for one, fairly confess that I am utterly
unable to see—why relaxation of statutory penalties, and substitution
of minor punishments, should carry along with it the right of
disregarding the sentence which the court has actually pronounced.
Twenty years ago a man would have been hanged for commission of an
offence, for which, now, he receives the sentence of seven, ten, or
fourteen years’ transportation. Is the relaxation of the law any
reason for dispensing with the precautions which were previously used
before a criminal was admitted to mercy? In the old times, a man was
executed, and there was an end of him. Society had no more to fear, at
least from his particular atrocity or depredations. But, under the new
system, the sentences of the judges, pronounced after a deliberate
investigation of the case, are virtually handed over for the revisal
of the chaplains of jails and penitentiaries, who are utterly ignorant
of the facts which were elicited at the trial. It is a gross mistake
to suppose that ignorance, or want of education, are the most fertile
causes of crime. Petty larcenies and wretched thefts—picking of
pockets, and abstraction of articles exhibited at shop-doors—are
undoubtedly the province of the children of the destitute, and for
them reformatory and ragged schools are imperatively required. But
crime, in the higher branches, is a regular profession, to attain
eminence in which a man must be as dexterous, wary, provident, and
careful, as if he were engaged in any lawful business. Nay, he must be
more so; because, being constantly liable to detection, he is
compelled to strain his ingenuity to the utmost, and so calculate
every step which he makes towards the attainment of his object. It is
a mere farce, an utter delusion, and a perfect abandonment of common
sense, to expect that such men will ever return to the paths of common
industry, or be contented with humble gains. They have an absolute
pride in the exercise of their profession; and they are not haunted by
remorse in consequence of what they do. Their moral perceptions are
utterly blunted; and that being the case, it is in vain to hope that
they will be converted from the error of their ways by occasional
visits from the chaplain of the jail. Very rarely indeed does a felon
of this stamp make any progress during the period of his incarceration
towards amendment. Orderly conduct and respectful demeanour are the
necessary results of strict prison discipline; but they are not by any
means to be taken as symptoms of actual improvement. Nay, the convict
has a direct inducement to assume a decorous, respectful, and even
repentant manner, because he hopes, through the recommendation of the
chaplain, to obtain a remission of his punishment. It is no disrespect
to the clergy to say that, as a body, they are very liable to
imposition. A clever scoundrel, if he addresses himself artfully to
the task, can hardly fail to make a favourable impression. He can soon
acquire the tricks of interlarding his discourse with Scriptural terms
and phraseology, of counterfeiting humility, and of shamming
penitence. Now, to let loose upon society men of this stamp, under
tickets of leave, is simply to encourage further violence and
depredation. I do not say that every convicted sinner must necessarily
be thereafter a felon; but I do say that, after more than one
conviction, his case is, humanly speaking, hopeless. In nine cases out
of ten, such men emerge from the jails and penitentiaries to steal,
rob, and swindle as before.
Philo-convicts of the maudlin school—for I will not call them
philanthropists—say that the frequent relapse into crime of liberated
prisoners, is very much owing to the fact, that no one, who is
acquainted with their previous history, will give them employment. I
grant that. If the gods had provided me with sufficient income to keep a
butler, I certainly should be chary of engaging an individual who had
just completed his sentence for embezzling the silver spoons of his
previous master. If I were a tradesman, I should decline taking the
extra trouble of watching the motions of a young Barnwell, who was
recommended to me by the fact that he had robbed his employer’s till.
And I further tell the philo-convicts, that, in utterly and entirely
refusing to trust a convict, I am acting not only prudentially to
myself, but wisely as regards society; because so long as an honest man
remains without employment, it is bad policy and worse morals to give
the preference to an attainted thief. To act otherwise, is practically
to deny that good character is to be considered as an element in the
selection of servants—a position which may suit the present Ministry,
seeing that some of their appointments have been made altogether
irrespective of character, but which never will be adopted by the great
body of the public. I accept, however, the fact that ticket-of-leave men
and other convicts have little chance in this country of obtaining
employment through the usual channels, even though they should be
sincere in their wishes to return to the ways of industry. Well, then,
what is the obvious deduction from this fact? Is it not that the
Government have been guilty of a grievous dereliction of duty in
commuting the sentences of prisoners, and letting them loose upon
society before the appointed time? It is all very well for officials to
wring their hands; to tell us that the colonies will no longer receive
prisoners from the mother country; that transportation, at least in the
old directions, is now impossible; and finally, to fix a stupid stare
upon the public, and ask _it_ what is to be done with the convicts? The
public ought sternly to reply that the disposal of the convicts is a
matter which the Government must look to; but that at all hazards life
and property must be protected. I deny _in toto_ that you, or I, or any
of us, are bound to tell the Government what they ought to do in regard
to the disposal of convicts. I say it is monstrous and intolerable that
society should be left in a state of siege and panic, exposed to
violence and outrage which seems to be every day on the increase, until
the Government shall determine whether any remote colonial possession is
available for purposes of transportation, or whether convicts ought not
to be employed in public works within the boundaries of Great Britain. I
do not underrate the importance of these questions. I do hope that the
Government will very soon make up their minds to adopt some one
intelligible and consistent course. But I protest against these
questions being mixed up with that of the system of ticket-of-leave,
which has nothing whatever to do with them. It may be a point of
consideration for the custodiers of a menagerie, or travelling
collection of wild beasts, whether it would be most advisable for them
to proceed north, or south, or east, or west, or otherwise to sell and
disperse their animals among the different zoological gardens; but what
right have they, pending their resolution, to open the doors of the
cages, and let wolves, tigers, and hyenas loose on the neighbouring
fields? And yet that is precisely what our Government has done with the
wild animals of which it is the custodier! Their wicked and dangerous
tendencies were known and established. They were tried for outrages on
society, convicted, and sentenced to restraint; and yet the Government,
because a difficulty has arisen abroad, consider themselves entitled to
disregard the sentences of the law, and again to deluge society with
experienced adepts in crime. One of the soundest arguments for the old
system of transportation was that, by removing hardened, expert, and
practised criminals from the country, there was so much the better
chance of reforming those who were merely beginners in crime. All that
is now forgotten. Scholars in larceny will never lack teachers so long
as the present infamous system is persevered in; young cracksmen will
find leaders to organise them into regular gangs, and the function of
the reformatories will be over.
I suspect that very few of the general public are aware of the extent to
which the system of ticket-of-leave has been carried. Blue-books are by
no means lively reading; and yet, without consulting the blue-books, it
is impossible adequately to understand the precise situation in which we
are placed with regard to convicts at large. Let me therefore note down
a few facts extracted from the evidence given before the Select
Committee on Transportation last year.
Mr Waddington, permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department, tells us that, up to March 1856, there were no less than
FIVE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO convicts, who had been sentenced
to transportation, discharged upon the public under licenses or tickets
of leave! How many more have since received their tickets I cannot say,
but judging from the numbers of former years, there cannot now be fewer
than from seven to eight thousand criminals, equivalent to a respectable
army, who are left to forage for themselves. Mr Waddington says very
jauntily,—“The Committee are aware, no doubt, that these persons under
sentence of transportation are persons who had been, most of them, two
or three times convicted that we know of; they may have been convicted
oftener than that, but they are almost all of them old offenders, and
therefore it was highly probable that, upon being thrown back into
society, _a great portion of them would misconduct themselves in a very
serious manner_.” This is, indeed, plain-speaking with a vengeance! Here
you have an admission that the Government _expected_, as the result of
their experiment, that a large portion of the ticket-of-leave men would
return to their old courses; that is, would steal, rob, assault, and
garotte as before! At whose expense, pray? At the expense of that
Issachar the public, who having borne the burden of their previous
offences, were next to bear that of their offences in time to come! Here
is a beautiful conflict between the law and the executive. “John
Noakes,” says the judge at the trial, “you have been convicted no less
than six times in competent courts. You are a hardened, brutal, and
irreclaimable criminal. You cannot be allowed, for the interests of
society, to remain longer in the country. Therefore your sentence is,
that you be transported for the period of fourteen years.” Noakes leaves
the dock, after having delivered himself of an irreverent remark
touching the judge’s eyes, and a facetious reference to being
herring-ponded. But there is yet a door of exit. “John Noakes,” says the
beautifully paternal government with which we are blessed, “you have
doubtless been convicted six times already, but we are willing to think
that, on the whole, you are a harmless and rather well-intentioned
fellow. It is true that you have been sentenced to transportation for
fourteen years; but at present there is some difficulty in finding
quarters for you abroad, and it would be both inconvenient and expensive
to keep you in custody at home. So, upon the whole, we think the best
course is to set you at liberty. Here is a ticket of leave for you,
which you will please accept, on the understanding that, if you are
again convicted, that leave will be revoked. You may not perhaps be able
to find employment, but that is your look-out—so good-by to you.” John
Noakes quits the prison, repairs straightway to the “Jack Sheppard”
public-house, where he falls in with some of his old associates, plans a
new burglary; and on the following night the premises of a respectable
jeweller are broken into, and property abstracted to the value of a
couple of thousand pounds!
Mr Waddington, however, thinks that the effect of the system “has been
at least as good as any reasonable person could have anticipated,
considering the nature of the offenders who have been discharged;” and
he states it to be a fact that out of 5152 liberated on ticket-of-leave,
_only_ 447 have been reported for misconduct; that is, have found their
way back to prison. Now, I must confess that I can see in this no ground
for congratulation, even supposing that no more than 447 have again
betaken themselves to unlawful courses within the short space of two and
a half years. But we have no right whatever to suppose anything of the
kind. We learn from other evidence that the ticket-of-leave men are
scattered all over the kingdom, without any mark or method by which the
police can recognise them; consequently a much larger number than the
above may have been apprehended and tried for new offences without the
knowledge of the authorities. “I think,” says Sir Archibald Alison, who,
as sheriff and criminal judge of Lanarkshire, can speak on this subject
with authority—“I think that the number of ticket-of-leave men who are
proved in courts to be concerned in crime, _bears a very small
proportion_ to the number of those who do commit crime; for this reason,
that they are not known.” In the appendix to the second report there are
some valuable documents touching the habits of ticket-of-leave men. Here
for example is an abridgment of the report of the Superintendent of the
F. Division of the London police, on the habits of the liberated
criminals in his district.
“R. W.: Constant associate of thieves; no lawful occupation; once
convicted of assault. E. M.: Does not follow any occupation, and is well
suspected of being a thief. J. W.: Immediately on his return, cohabited
with a notorious thief and prostitute, and does not follow any awful
occupation at present. C. G.: Does not follow any lawful calling. Since
his return has been the constant and daily associate of thieves and
other notoriously bad characters. J. C.: Keeper of a shop for the sale
of second-hand clothes, and has frequently been seen in the company of
convicted thieves. J. G.: Lodges with a convicted thief, and is supposed
to gain his living by hawking obscene cards, &c. T. C.: Employed as a
messenger or porter, and appears to be gaining an honest living. T. N.:
Was liberated on ticket of leave about two months since; at present does
not follow any employment.”
So that out of _eight_ ticket-of-leave men resident in this Division,
and known to the police, _six_ are supposed to have fallen back on their
old courses; one is doing well; and one has been liberated for so short
a time that, according to the Superintendent, “no decided opinion can be
expressed relative to him.”
Mr Hill, Q. C., Recorder of Birmingham, caused a special report to be
prepared by the police of that town relative to the habits of the
ticket-of-leave men known to reside there, their number being nineteen.
The report bears that of these, _eight_ were considered good, _nine_
bad, and _two_ doubtful.
The impression left upon my mind by the perusal of these and similar
returns, is that at least one half of the liberated convicts are at this
moment preying upon the public. I again quote from Alison’s evidence: “I
should say, from what I have seen, that the ticket-of-leave system has
had the very worst possible effects in Scotland; that it has sent back
the most talented, the most dangerous, and the most formidable class of
depredators; and that they are either concerned in the greatest crimes
themselves, or that they lead others to the commission of the same
description of crimes.”
If the good folks of Great Britain choose to submit to this monstrous
wrong and most iniquitous system—if they are willing without complaint
or murmur to see the dangerous classes, the convicted felons, let loose
among them, to resume the functions of the pick-lock and the crowbar,
the garotte and the bludgeon, and to destroy all chance of the success
of reformatory schools—it is no business of mine. No burglar will ever
think of breaking into a lighthouse, and I feel quite assured that what
little property I have is in perfect safety. But if they, on the
contrary, are convinced that the whole system is a rank imposture and
delusion, and that they, the people of character and property, are left
at the mercy of a rapidly increasing army of convicted scoundrels, in
order to be experimented on for the gratification of a few pragmatic
_doctrinaires_, let them make their voices audible, and the Ministry
must at once succumb. Never, within my recollection, has there been so
fitting an object for agitation, never so imperative a reason for it.
And I do hope that they will not allow themselves to be humbugged or
bamboozled by any difficulties, real or pretended, about the disposal of
the convicts. I am quite aware that there are difficulties; but with
these it is the express duty of the Government to grapple.
Now, Ebony, I have done for the present. You see this has been but a
rambling kind of letter, but I hope in future to be more concise. Send
me as much periodical literature as you can, and a few boxes of cigars,
if you have any to spare, as a token of your continued friendship. I do
not think it prudent, under existing circumstances, to adhibit my real
name and address, as that might awaken, in certain bosoms, expectations
which never can be realised; so I must even find a sobriquet connected
with my present humble though highly useful and honourable situation.
“Pharos” is too Egyptian for my taste—“Hesperus” too maudlin. “Lucifer”
is a title already appropriated, to which I desire to lay no manner of
claim; and therefore I shall modestly subscribe myself, your sincere
well-wisher,
PHOSPHORUS.
_Pictarnie Lighthouse,
North Britain._
LORD ST LEONARDS.[8]
Some little time ago might have been seen in the corner of a weekly
legal periodical the following brief intimation: “Early in January 1857
will be published the Thirteenth Edition of _Sugden’s Law of Vendors and
Purchasers of Estates_, with important additions. This Edition will
contain between eleven and twelve hundred cases, in addition to those in
the last Edition.... The Author has bestowed great pains on this
Edition.” The book now lies before us; and in the preface we find this
observation: “_Every case_ cited I have perused in the original Report,
and _every line_ of the book has been written by myself,” that book
being a royal octavo volume of 720 closely-printed pages, and those
cases—as we vouch, after curiously counting the table of cases—amounting
to upwards of four thousand six hundred! And who, it may be asked, is
this very laborious author? No other than Lord St Leonards, so lately
Lord High Chancellor, now in his seventy-fifth year, yet having the
inclination and the power, mental and physical, thus to occupy the
intervals of _leisure_ occurring in the discharge of his judicial and
legislative duties as a member of the House of Lords! The career of such
a man we commend to the studious attention of some future historian of
the _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_; and in the mean time shall supply
him with some authentic materials, collected in the course of careful
inquiry, and personal observation.
We believe that England never before saw, living at once, three such
remarkable subjects for the portraiture of some future Lord Campbell, as
the three ex-Chancellors now adorning the House of Lords—Lords
Lyndhurst, Brougham, and St Leonards,—Lord Campbell himself being a
distinguished member of that House, for a brief space Lord Chancellor of
Ireland, and now the learned and upright Lord Chief Justice of England.
At some future time we may ourselves attempt sketches of Lords
Lyndhurst, Brougham, and Campbell; but our present concern is with that
one of the aforesaid three ex-Chancellors whose name stands at the head
of this article. Without attributing to him the attractive and dazzling
characteristics of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham as orators and
statesmen—the latter, too, a prodigy of versatility and power—we shall,
by a plain narrative of facts, establish the pretensions of Lord St
Leonards to be regarded as a great lawyer, whose name will be ranked
with those of Lord Hardwicke and Lord Eldon; while, in several respects,
his career is more remarkable and more instructive than that of either.
The race of great lawyers in England is but too evidently dying out.
Perhaps we see the last of them in Lord St Leonards, who may be said to
have exhibited as great legal, as the late Duke of Wellington military,
genius. And the former has this signal characteristic, that throughout
the whole of his long, arduous, and distinguished career as advocate,
judge, and legislator, he has never intermitted the labours of legal
authorship; but brought forth works of practical and profound erudition,
contributing to develop law as a science, aiding the studies, and
facilitating the practice and administration of that law, by every
member of the profession. Under this fourfold aspect, therefore, of
author, advocate, judge, and legislator, we propose to exhibit a sketch
of the life and labours of Lord St Leonards,—tracing him from his first
book and his first brief, to his last edition of that first book; to his
last brief; to his last judgment as Lord High Chancellor; and the most
recent of a long series of Acts of Parliament, of the highest practical
importance, contributed by him to the Statute-book.
Edward Burtenshaw Sugden was born in the year 1781; and having duly
entered himself a student of Lincoln’s Inn, such was the use he had made
of his time, and such his marvellous aptitude for the acquisition of
legal knowledge—for which, indeed, his intellect may be said to have
exhibited a sort of elective affinity—that before he had reached his
twenty-second year, as he himself has left on record,[9] he had written
his _Vendors and Purchasers of Estates_—which was published in February
1805,—_i. e._ in his twenty-fourth year! It is an octavo volume of 461
pages. We have seen a copy of it bearing the date 1805; and no person,
competent to judge, can read its terse and thoroughly practical
exposition of the leading principles applicable to so difficult and
unwieldy a subject, without wondering how the youthful author could have
acquired the requisite knowledge and facility in using it. He was a
pupil of the late eminent conveyancer, Mr Duval, but we are not aware at
what age he entered the chambers of that gentleman. Let us now, however,
leap over a good half-century, and look for a moment at the account of
this early performance, given by its author on the 10th of this present
January 1857, in the highly interesting preface to the edition now under
consideration:—
“After the lapse of half a century since the first publication of this
work, I am about to send forth a thirteenth edition of it. Determined
at my outset in life to write a book, I was delighted when I hit upon
the subject now before the reader—the _Law of Vendors and Purchasers_.
The title promised well; and many portions of the law had not
previously been embodied in any treatise. Modern law-treatises were
indeed few at that period. When this work was announced for
publication, nearly the universal opinion was that it would be a
failure, as the subjects to be considered were too multifarious for
one treatise. Nothing dismayed, I laboured diligently; and with the
aid of Lincoln’s Inn library, in which a considerable portion of the
book was written—for my own shelves were but scantily furnished—I at
length finished the work in its original shape. My courage then failed
me. The expense of publication was certain, and success I thought more
than doubtful; and it was not without some difficulty that I could be
persuaded to refrain from committing the manuscript to the flames, and
to join with a bookseller in incurring the risk of publishing it at
half profit and loss, as it is termed. As soon as the book was
printed, another bookseller bought my interest in the edition, and
thus relieved me from my obligations. The amount I received as the
price of the edition was small, but I have never since received any
sum with anything approaching to the same satisfaction. The book was
certainly the foundation of my early success in life.”
Who does not envy the veteran (not lagging lazily on the stage) this
retrospect, and thank him for a glimpse of his autobiography? He
proceeds to tell us that this first edition was sold “at once;” that a
greatly enlarged one was published in June 1806—both before he was
called to the bar; the third in a year afterwards, in 1808; the fourth
in 1813; and five new and very large editions at regular intervals of
four years, till 1834;—“all these six appearing,” he continues, “while I
was in full practice at the bar, and could ill afford the time required
to re-edit the work.” On returning from Ireland, in 1835, after his
first Chancellorship, “I had,” he says, “for the first time in my
professional life, full leisure, and revised the whole work with great
care;” and published a tenth edition, in three volumes royal 8vo, in
1839. “While yet a second time in office in Ireland” (as to which we
shall have by-and-by to say much that is interesting), “I prepared and
published, on the 1st May 1846” (that is, while holding the Irish
Seals), “the eleventh edition, compressed into two volumes.” A twelfth,
in a greatly compressed form, in one small octavo volume, a work of very
great labour, appeared in June 1851,—every portion, including even index
and table of cases, being his own exclusive personal handiwork. Six
months afterwards he became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain; and now,
at the opening of the new year, 1857, we have, as a sort of parting
gift, of infinite value to the profession of the law, this thirteenth
edition, “the last,” he says, though he is in full health and vigour,
“that I can expect to publish.... To restore the work to its original
shape as a treatise, and at the same time preserve its character as a
concise and practical view of the subject” (the form which the twelfth
edition had assumed), “I have spared neither time nor labour.” Those
only can judge of the labour and time required for such a task, who are
in the habit of perusing all the voluminous reports of our many courts.
The twelfth edition contained some five hundred cases not quoted in the
eleventh; and upwards of _twelve hundred cases_ are included in this
thirteenth which were not in the twelfth. “This collection of cases is
the fruit of upwards of half a century of research and labour;—every
case” (as we have seen), “I have perused in the original report, and
every line of the book has been written by myself. I doubt not that
there are errors which have escaped me, but I have endeavoured to leave
behind me this, my first work, in a shape in some sense worthy of the
acceptance of the members of the profession to which I have the honour
to belong; and I know, by a long experience, that I may safely rely on
their indulgence.” Such is the first glimpse we obtain of Edward Sugden,
starting on his career as an author,—during half a century’s
overwhelming labour and anxiety as a Chancery counsel, as an active
member of the House of Commons, and as thrice a Lord Chancellor.
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ is not the fitting expositor, in detail, of this
great law-treatise, stamped by the unanimous and uninterrupted
approbation, for half a century, of the whole legal profession, of every
rank—by judges, counsel, and solicitors, alike in courts of law and
equity. We think there must at this moment be extant some thirty or
forty thousand copies of the various editions of the “Vendors and
Purchasers;” and we entertain little doubt that, as soon as this last is
seen, no member of the profession, who can afford to procure it, will be
long without doing so. To the general reader we may intimate that this
work is of an intensely practical character; and the art of condensation
which it manifests can go no further. Its sweep is immense. The gifted
author exhibits the power of grasping the whole subject, however
extensive and complicated, and yet applying accurate—and the
latest—legal knowledge to the minutest exigency,—from the terse, clear,
cautious, and yet decisive enumeration of the profoundest principles of
equity, down to a question of costs,—in all the variety of subdivisions
of that somewhat expensive luxury,—whether as “costs” _simpliciter_, or
as “costs, charges, and expenses!” Probably no book of the kind has ever
stood on a lawyer’s shelves, or was constantly in hand, in which so few
errors have been detected; while able and experienced lawyers could
point to great numbers of opinions and doubts from time to time
expressed by the author, which have afterwards been sanctioned by
judicial decision, and are always entertained and canvassed with the
utmost respect—the respect due to one bringing the results of vast
practical and scientific knowledge and experience to bear upon the
ordinary exigencies of litigation. It has facilitated the labour, and
alleviated the anxieties and responsibilities of tens of thousands of
practitioners during half a century:[10] and those of 1857,—students as
well as practitioners—now see a new edition, thoroughly remodelling the
work, and adapting it to existing exigencies with scrupulously
conscientious personal care and labour, by an author who so lately
administered justice as Lord High Chancellor, to the admiration of all.
Shortly after the original appearance of this work, its author, then
seeking practice as a conveyancer under the bar, received a Case for his
opinion, in consequence of a solicitor’s having cancelled the work. Mr
Sugden’s opinion differed from that which, though given by an eminent
counsel, had dissatisfied his client, and proved to be correct. In a
short time he found himself in large and rapidly increasing business.
Two years after the appearance of his book, namely in 1807, he was
called to the bar; and the first trace of him in the reports is to be
found in the 14th volume of Vesey Junior’s _Reports of Cases in
Chancery_, p. 302, on the 18th March in that year, in the case of
_Browne_ v. _Like_, which was, in fact, the first case he ever argued,
and before that very eminent judge, Sir William Grant, then Master of
the Rolls. Mr Sugden’s senior on that occasion was Sir Samuel Romilly,
who left him to open the case. He has since said, that when he first
rose, at the corner of the back bench in that dusky little court, his
knees shook under him; but if this were so, he disguised his
nervousness, and spoke, as we have heard, with apparent calmness and
self-possession,—so effectually arguing the first of the two points in
dispute, and the main one, that, on his proceeding to the second, to his
surprise, Mr Richards, subsequently Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who
led for the defendant, turned round and told him that they should
abandon that point; thereby so encouraging the young counsel, that, in a
more lively and confident frame of mind, he proceeded to his second
point. His opponents were unable to answer his lucid argument; and after
a few words in reply from Sir Samuel Romilly, the court decided in
favour of the plaintiff, and thus enjoyed Mr Sugden his _prædulce decus
primo certamine_! This his first case was a small affair in point of the
property involved, but has its special interest, as far as he is
concerned—not only as occasioning his maiden effort, but because it
affected a branch of the law which, not long afterwards, fell under his
vigorous assault, as most vexatious and oppressive—the enrolling of
Annuities. The facts were shortly these: An uncle had bequeathed to his
niece, for her sole and separate use, a life interest in the dividends
on a small sum in the Funds, vested in trustees for that purpose. Soon
afterwards she married, and, with her husband’s concurrence, _bonâ fide_
sold to Mr Sugden’s client, for £140, twenty pounds a-year of the
aforesaid dividends; but no memorial of the deed of sale was enrolled
according to the Act then in force, and since repealed. The two
questions were, whether the lady had power to sell these dividends? and
whether the transaction _was_ a “sale, out and out,” or the grant of an
annuity? in the former case requiring no enrolment. The first point was
given up,[11] and the second decided against the defendant. Mr Sugden’s
second case in court, as far as we have been able to trace him, was the
well-known one of _Sloane_ v. _Cadogan_, in the Rolls Court in the year
1808. His own outline of his elaborate argument is to be found in the
appendix to the “Vendors and Purchasers.” Those clients of Mr Sugden who
are still living, tell of the peace of mind which ensued their securing
his services as their conveyancer; so prompt, correct, decisive, was he
as an adviser, and, as a draftsman, neat, concise, and elegant. In his
case, confidence was _not_ a plant of slow growth. His practice grew
apace in chambers, and he began more and more frequently to appear, not
only in courts of equity, but in those of common law, to argue questions
connected with conveyancing, and the law of real property: quickly
conciliating the respect of opponents, and of the bench, by his exact
and extensive knowledge, and masterly use of it. Great as was the
pressure of his chamber practice, and constantly increasing as were his
appearances in court, Mr Sugden yet found time to prepare two new
editions of his “Vendors and Purchasers,” as we have seen, in the years
1806 and 1808, that of the latter year in a far more systematic form
than any of the former had exhibited, being, as he now tells us, “the
first divided into sections, with the _placita_ numbered.” And as if
even all this were not sufficient, the selfsame year 1808 saw another
important work of his, of a much higher order than his former one, as of
a more abstruse and scientific character—his Treatise on POWERS. This
elaborate and systematic work, which we regard as eminently
characteristic of its author’s legal genius, at once elevated him—now in
his twenty-seventh year—to a conspicuous position in the foremost rank
of living lawyers. It has ever since continued a text-book of the
highest repute—we might almost say, though in its authors lifetime, of
authority—and has passed through seven large editions, every one
prepared by the indefatigable author, who, in his preface to the first
edition, modestly pleaded, “as an excuse for any inaccuracies in it, the
necessity of devoting his time to other labours, from which moments were
snatched for this performance.” He is here speaking of his labours as a
conveyancer in full practice, whose toils are severe and unremitting;
requiring a close exclusive attention, if he would not run the risk of
making shipwreck of his reputation by perilling, or actually
sacrificing, the important interests confided to his skilled experience.
To such a master of his art as Mr Sugden, these toils would be lightened
as far as their troublesome nature admitted. The _Practical Treatise on_
POWERS, we regard as one of the most remarkable performances on record
in the literature of the law, especially as that of a conveyancer
comparatively so youthful. The attempt to give a mere general reader a
fair notion of what the lawyer means by “powers,” would be about as
hopeful as to explain to a young lady the doctrine of differential
calculus. To form an idea of this kind of “Power,” he must be apprised
of the nature of “Use,” of a “Trust,” of the old common law, and after a
great statute. Blackstone, that exquisitely elegant expositor of
everything susceptible of exposition, declared it “impracticable,” in
the plan of his _Commentaries_, “to pursue the doctrine of Uses through
all the refinements and niceties which the ingenuity of times abounding
in subtle distinctions, deduced from this child of the imagination;” “a
notion transplanted,” he elsewhere tells us, “into England from the
civil law about the close of the reign of Edward III., by means of the
foreign ecclesiastics, who introduced it to evade the statutes of
mortmain.” Would our non-legal readers set out with us, if we were so
disposed, to follow this _ignis fatuus_? Doubtless they would be as
unwilling to follow as we to lead. Suffice it to say, therefore, that
the introduction of Uses and Trusts produced a great revolution in the
transfer and modification of landed property, forming “a law whereupon,”
says Lord Bacon, in his _Reading on the Statute of Uses_, “the
inheritances of this realm are tossed at this day, like a ship upon the
sea, in such sort that it is hard to say which bark will sink, and which
will get to the haven.” It has, however, constituted the main-spring of
the delicate and complex machinery of the conveyancer—to whose craft,
directly or indirectly, fortunate reader! you are indebted at this
moment for the safe enjoyment of your estates, however small, however
large. Yet it would be interesting to an historical and reflecting
reader, to contemplate the great wrestling-match between the Legislature
and the astute Chancery lawyers of the day—how each in his turn defeated
the other, and how it ultimately contributes to the present division
between our systems of law and equity. “Uses” and “Powers” are the means
by which our existing method of “settling” real estates is effected and
maintained, enabling, as they do, the possessor to chalk out the future
enjoyment of it in as many contingencies, and for as long a period, as
the policy of the law admits; and no little of the intricacy of the
existing system is due to the exacting ambition or far-seeing
beneficence of owners of property. Now, “Sugden on Powers” forms a _sine
quâ non_ of the practical conveyancer; and if the student, after
acquiring a knowledge of the doctrine of Uses, of which that of Powers,
says St Leonards, is only a branch that has greatly surpassed in growth
its parent stock, he will find that three-fourths of his difficulties
have vanished. We heard some years ago, and now know it as a fact, that
the late Sir Robert Peel once laughingly told Sir Edward Sugden, at
dinner, that he had, from what he had heard of the difficulty of this
book, regarded it as a sort of legal Euclid; and having ascertained, he
said, that the third section of the first chapter was the _Pons
Asinorum_ of lawyers, he had resolved to master it! So having sat down
for that purpose, he succeeded, as he averred, and had found out all
about _borrescimus referentes_!—“_Scintilla juris._” The aforesaid
section has the inviting heading—“_Of Scintilla Juris_,” a matter which
has exercised, harassed, and well-nigh split the heads of a whole army
of judges—of Lord Bacon even, who seems to speak of it, Sir Edward tells
us, in a contemptuous tone. Sir Edward himself characterises it as a
fiction, invented by perverse astuteness to escape a difficulty which
itself only had created. When a man had indicated the future enjoyment
of his property, in certain specified contingencies, the antique
conveyancer, putting on a pair of huge magnifying-glasses, fancied he
detected in that man, who himself imagined that he had exhausted himself
of all connection with the property, a lambent spark of interest—a mere
metaphysical entity—a momentary seisin, adequate to “feed the use.”
“Over this invention,” says a masterly living writer on conveyancing
(Mr Hayes), “the old judges cast the veil of Latinity, and prudently
withdrew it, under the learned appellation of ‘_Scintilla juris_,’
from profane examination! Westminster Hall resounded with the debate.
The speeches of the eleven judges, who delivered their opinions
_seriatim_, occupied six days! The Lord Chief-Justice Popham declared
that _not_ to cherish the _scintilla juris_ would be to cast the whole
commonwealth into a sea of troubles, and endanger it with utter
confusion and drowning.” “The commonwealth,” adds the sarcastic
writer, himself a first-rate conveyancer, “had little to fear, but
common sense was in imminent danger of perishing between the
conflicting elements of fire and water.”
The “Scintilla” has learned advocates and opponents to this hour; among
the latter being Lord Bacon, Lord St Leonards, Mr Fearne, Mr Butler, Mr
Preston, and Mr Hayes—a sort of legal galaxy. Still, however, to change
the figure, the indurated stump of this doctrine retains a sort of
tenacious vitality in the prolific subsoil of legal ingenuity. While
thus dismissing a matter, savouring, as the unlearned and irreverent
reader might presumptuously imagine, somewhat of the mighty dispute
between _Tweedledum_ v. _Tweedledee_—let us intimate that the “Treatise
on Powers” is divided into nineteen elaborate chapters, each distributed
into sections, so disposed, and so treating an extensive and complicated
subject, as to be almost equally adapted for elementary and practical
purposes. It is a masterly combination of legal subtlety with the
strongest common-sense, applied with the utmost exactness to practical
exigencies—not, as he himself intimated, perversely suggesting doubts,
but supplying solutions for real difficulties. Of these solutions it
were easy to cite many instances of judicial adoption, such as will
readily occur to any well-informed professional reader.
“The author regrets,” he says, in the preface to the sixth edition
(1836), “that he has upon so many points differed from persons for
whom he entertains unfeigned respect, but he has rather considered the
principle of the rule than the weight due to the authority by whom it
was pronounced; and his own erroneous impressions may readily be
corrected; for it is but in few instances that he has given an opinion
without stating the reasons upon which it is grounded.”
And in another part of the same preface to this, his favourite
performance, occurs the following interesting passage:—
“We have many admirable treatises; but, for the most part, our legal
authors want either experience or time, and it ever must be so; for if
a man do not write on law while he is young, he probably never will;
and if at an advanced period he revise his early productions, with the
advantage of reputation and increased experience, _time_, without
which nothing important can be accomplished upon legal subjects, is no
longer at his command. And, besides, a counsel in actual practice can
seldom write freely upon decisions in which he has been engaged. If he
find fault with a decision against him, it may be imputed to partial
or perverted views; and if he disapprove of any in which he has been
successful, the criticism from such a quarter might afford the
groundwork of an appeal.”
The third edition (1821) was dedicated, by permission, to Lord
Chancellor Eldon, than whom no one entertained a greater respect for the
learning of the author,[12] who thus justly and eloquently eulogised
that great judge:—
“I felt the presumption of addressing such a request”—to be allowed to
dedicate to him the work—“to a judge who has so often excited the
admiration of the Bar, by a display, without effort, of an extent of
knowledge in every branch of jurisprudence, which the life of man
appears to be insufficient to acquire. If these considerations
deterred me from making the application, I was encouraged to it by
that judicial mildness and gravity—that urbanity and attention to the
youngest counsel in the Court—the true mark of a great mind—which
operate so powerfully to make your Lordship beloved by the Bar, and
soften the splendour which profound knowledge, high character, and
dignity shed around you.”
In the year following that which saw the third edition of the “Vendors
and Purchasers,” and the first of the “Treatise on Powers”—namely, in
the year 1809—Mr Sugden found time to write a valuable little work for
the guidance of lay gentlemen in the management of their estates,
entitled “A Series of Letters to a Man of Property, on Sales, Purchases,
Mortgages, Leases, Settlements, and Devises of Estates;” in a thin
octavo volume, consisting of twelve letters, all of a practical
character, perfectly intelligible to a non-professional man, and
admirably calculated to enlighten him as to the nature of these
all-important transactions. This work, which passed through six large
editions, has been long out of print; and but for the wise saw
concerning “the last straw which breaks the camel’s back,” we might
venture to intimate that Lord St Leonards would confer a very great
favour on the lay public by reproducing these letters, adapted to the
existing and greatly-altered state of our laws. We regard a work of this
description, undertaken as it was by a lawyer of first-rate attainments
and practice, as a very unassuming and disinterested service rendered to
those who stand not a little in need of it. Three years
afterwards—namely, in the year 1811—Mr Sugden gave to the profession an
edition of the posthumous work of Chief Baron Gilbert on “Uses and
Trusts”—which derived all its real value from the careful revision and
“Introduction” of the accomplished Editor. These notes and introduction
are of a most elaborate character, ably epitomising the law to which
they relate,—chiefly to springing and shifting uses, and the law of
perpetuities.
Between the years 1812 and 1836, we find Mr Sugden, from time to time,
publishing pamphlets on subjects of great practical importance—such as
the mischievous operation of the then (1812) existing Annuity Act,
which, as we have already intimated, he succeeded in getting expunged
from the statute-book, as productive of intolerable vexation and ruinous
litigation—himself drawing the act (53 Geo. III. c. 141) in the ensuing
year which repealed it, and substituted a better system.[13] Other
subjects to which he thus addressed himself were the improvement of the
administration of justice in the Court of Equity; the law of wills; the
rate of interest and redeemable annuities; the appellate jurisdiction of
the Court of Chancery and the House of Lords (1835); and on the late Mr
Humphreys’ proposal to repeal the Laws of Real Property, and substitute
a new code (1826), which Mr Sugden encountered with great power. His
pamphlet, which was very elaborate, attracted much attention, and passed
through three editions. With the exception of these minor and
intermitting literary exertions, and preparing new editions of his great
works, we now lose sight of Mr Sugden as an author—thus, as it were,
only occasionally showing his head above the deep waters of Chancery
practice—till a period to which we must in due time refer.
During his practice as a conveyancing counsel for about eight years,
he more and more frequently varied its oppressive monotony, by going
into courts of law to argue questions relating to real property. It
was about the year 1812 that he took to arguing special cases in the
Common Courts—a work at that time of great labour and anxiety, and
very little profit. His first case may be seen reported as _Goodtitle_
v. _White_, 15 East’s Reports, p. 174 (A.D. 1812). Here he was pitted
against and defeated his formidable brother conveyancer, Mr Preston.
In 1815 he argued in the same court, _Wright_ v. _Barlow_, 3 Maule and
Selwyn’s Rep. 512, but could not succeed in inducing the court to
overrule one of its own decisions. In the latter year he argued the
celebrated case of _Doe_ v. _Jesson_, 5 Maule and Selwyn’s, 95, and
again failed to convince the court; but on appeal, Lord Eldon and Lord
Redesdale reversed the decision, on grounds suggested and argued by Mr
Sugden. Another case argued in the same year, and reported in the same
volume (p. 482), was that of _Doe_ v. _Roach_, in which, after an
arduous argument, Mr Sugden convinced Lord Ellenborough, and
succeeded. He continued to argue cases in the Common Law Courts till
the year 1822, when he finally relinquished the practice. All the
cases reported in the latter year are reported in the fifth volume of
Barnewall and Alderson’s Reports. One of them, _Beard_ v. _Westcott_,
p. 801, affords an excellent specimen of his close and lucid
reasoning. Here he not only again defeated his astute opponent, Mr
Preston, but prevailed on the King’s Bench to differ from the Common
Pleas, though the opinion of the latter had been supported by the
judgment of the Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant. Three other
cases, in courts of equity, afford instructive specimens of the power
of this great legal reasoner—_Bengough_ v. _Edridge_, 1 Simon’s Rep.
207, 227; _Cholmondley_ v. _Clinton_, 2 Merivale, 221, 241; _Lord
Deerhurst_ v. _The Duke of St Albans_, 5 Madd., 243.[14] He at length
began to consider whether he would not altogether quit chamber for
court practice; a very bold step, indeed, for one who, with a large
family to support, was realising an ample income, which he was about
to surrender, perhaps for ever. It may be well imagined that this
afforded matter for anxious and painful deliberation. His chambers
were crowded with pupils, his tables groaned under “papers,” and most,
if not all, the leading solicitors were his confiding and devoted
clients—bringing him far more business than he could by any effort
conscientiously dispose of, and which he therefore declined. A
distinguished member of the profession besought him with the utmost,
and almost tearful urgency, not to take a step which he believed, with
many others, would prove fatal to his prosperity. We have heard that
the late Vice-Chancellor of England, then Mr Shadwell, made no secret
of his opinion, that Mr Sugden’s appearance at the bar would be a
complete failure; he at length made up his mind, and passed the
Rubicon. Shortly before he did so, he said to our informant, an
eminent living Queen’s Counsel, with whom he was one night walking
home, “I am going to give up conveyancing, and go to the bar. I don’t
know whether it will answer, but I will try.” This was said with an
air of great resolution; and it is for us to tell the issue. The
intrepid aspirant after forensic honours found himself in a moment
deserted by almost every client of importance, who appeared to feel
personally offended at being, as it were, suddenly left in the lurch
by their favourite conveyancer, on whom they had been accustomed to
rely so long and so implicitly. For a very short time the forebodings
of evil appeared being realised; and he had to sit in court, day after
day, witnessing his once stanch clients pouring their briefs into the
hands of other counsel, without vouchsafing a solitary one to the
new-fledged one! Whatever inward mortification or apprehension he but
too probably experienced, he concealed; saying, perhaps, within
himself, If the great solicitors will not have me, perhaps some small
one may, one fine day, give me an opportunity of showing that they
will not slight me with impunity. By-and-by came Mr Sugden’s
opportunity; he was intrusted by a “small” solicitor with a “small”
brief; and it may be supposed with what perfect preparation such a man
would come into court. On his consummate knowledge of the law of real
property he consciously stood, as upon a rock; and his rigorous logic
enabled him to wield that knowledge with irresistible effect. It did
not take long to show those former clients, who stood aloof from him,
that they were making a mistake—which we may be sure their deserted
counsel would give them more and more frequent opportunities of
feeling. A few exhibitions of his easy mastery over business, his
steady self-possession and resolution, and the influence he was
visibly acquiring over the court, soon began to put a different
complexion on matters; and the commiserating smile, perchance, of
supercilious rivals somewhat suddenly began to settle into an
expression of something like a well-founded anxiety! Mr Sugden
advanced rapidly into practice of the highest class. Every moment,
during which he was not actually employed in court, he might have been
seen sitting there answering cases, generally of an intricate and
troublesome kind, buried in their details, undisturbed by all the
hubbub around him, for he was always distinguished by the power of
abstraction. All was thenceforth plain sailing. His old clients became
as anxious to secure his services in court, as formerly in chambers. A
few years afterwards—namely, in the year 1822—he received a silk gown
from Lord Eldon, thereby taking another decisive step in advance,
surrendering junior for leading business. In this year, also,
appeared, edited wholly and elaborately by himself, the sixth edition
of his “Vendors and Purchasers”—though how he found time to do so, at
such an anxious crisis of his fortunes, and with such uninterrupted
demands on his time and energies, it is not easy to discover. His silk
gown was a splendid success, silencing sneers and whispering
disparagements from every quarter. A consummate knowledge of the
principles and details of real-property law, and conveyancing, and
equity; rapidity of perception; conscientious devotion to the
interests of his clients; imperturbable coolness and self-possession;
the pith and brevity of his arguments, and lucid exposition of the
most involved facts—all combined to invest his advocacy with such
charms in the eyes of anxious solicitors and their clients, that
retainers were soon showered on Mr Sugden from all quarters—and it was
almost always a race between rival solicitors who should first retain
him!
As though his cup of labour were not yet brimful, on the 20th February
1828 Mr Sugden was elected a member of Parliament for the borough of
Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, after a ten days’ expensive and harassing
contest. He was returned twice afterwards for the same place, once on
being appointed Solicitor-General. Mr Sugden sustained three other
severe election contests, one for the Rape of Bramber in 1826, and two
for the borough of Cambridge, against the present Lord Monteagle. He
also sate for the borough of St Mawes (extinguished by Schedule A)
during the period of the Reform Bill debates, and twice for Ripon, after
his first retirement from the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in
1835, as we shall presently mention,—representing that borough at the
time of his second and final acceptance of the Irish Seals, in 1841. We
doubt whether any man ever underwent greater labour than Mr Sugden
throughout the harassing but prosperous twelve or thirteen years
following his attaining the rank of King’s Counsel, particularly during
the period of his sitting in the House of Commons. We first saw him one
morning in the court of Sir Lancelot Shadwell, then the only
Vice-Chancellor; and, without at first knowing who he was, were forcibly
struck by his care-worn countenance. His manner was calm, but he looked
harassed, as though he had sate up the whole night. And perhaps he had!
He has often been known to return to his house, then in Guildford
Street, Russell Square, from the House of Commons, at three o’clock in
the morning, having been engaged incessantly in court all the previous
day till he went to the House; and at six o’clock his servant would
bring candles to his bedside, when he would sit up to read his briefs.
At a quarter to nine o’clock he would be seen at Westminster, holding
five or six consultations before ten o’clock, when the Lord Chancellor’s
and Vice-Chancellor’s courts opened; then he was retained probably in
every case in either court, which he would be addressing incessantly. At
the rising of the court, a little after four, he would betake himself to
the House of Commons, and remain here often till two o’clock in the
morning, or later, reading his briefs in a room at the coffee-house at
Bellamy’s of that day, during the intervals of his attending the
debates, snatching a hasty dinner at any moment that served. Once he
returned home at half-past six o’clock in the morning, and went to bed
till eight o’clock, when he rose to prepare for such another day as the
one before! How mortal flesh and blood—how any mortal brain, could stand
such tear and wear as this, seems a mystery; but he was blessed with a
fine constitution, and was of temperate and abstemious habits. The
income which he derived from these labours, as may easily be believed,
was very large. His fees were often enormous. The business rejected at
his chambers’ door must have amounted to many thousands a-year. In the
great case of _Small_ v. _Attwood_ he received four thousand guineas,
and accepted the retainer only very reluctantly, and after having
several times refused it. To protect himself as much as possible, he
refused, for a long time, for any consideration, to go into other courts
than his own, and never would give an opinion on a case, except in
consultation with another counsel. The facility with which he despatched
business was most remarkable; and that not cursory and slovenly reading
of his papers, but really mastering and exhausting them. One evening
after dinner, without leaving the room, he began to read his briefs for
the ensuing day, which was a “Motion” day; but those intrusted to _him_
were generally of difficulty and importance. He continued reading brief
after brief as long as they were supplied to him, in successive bags, by
his clerk. Having at length despatched them all, he saw himself
surrounded with so many as astonished himself. He had the curiosity to
count them; and in three hours and a half’s time he had thoroughly read
_thirty-five_! By this time it was eleven o’clock; and instead of
dropping exhausted into bed, he called a coach, and went down to the
House of Commons! We have heard that when this little feat was recalled
to his recollection, he vouched for its truth; but added, with a smile,
that he never could have attacked such a number of briefs, had they been
brought before him all at once, instead of in successive bagfuls! But
what, after all, is such a life as this, but one of splendid slavery?
In the year 1829, Mr Sugden was appointed Solicitor-General, succeeding
the late amiable and learned Sir Nicholas Tindal, on his receiving the
appointment of Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas,[15] thereby, of
course, superadding to his private professional labours the onerous
cares of office. He received, as usual, the honour of knighthood, but
did not retain office long. Passing over an interval of five years, we
arrive at the year 1834, when Sir Edward Sugden’s name appears for the
last time that we have been able to discover in the Law Reports, as
counsel. He had ceased to attend the Rolls Court long before he retired
from the Bar; and his last argument in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court is
that of _Cash_ v. _Dean and Chapter of Ely_, 7 Simon’s Rep. 211 (A. D.
1834); and his last before the Lord Chancellor was the well-known case
of _Kennedy_ v. _Green_, 3 Myhere and Keen, 699, in the same year. At
the close of his judgment in this latter case, Lord Brougham, as
Chancellor, took leave of the Bar. The seventh volume of Simon’s Cases,
above referred to, incidentally affords some evidence of the extent, at
that time, of Sir Edward’s business: the volume contains thirty-five
cases, of which he appeared as counsel in twenty-seven! On quitting the
Bar, he returned fees exceeding a thousand guineas.
On the 13th January 1835 Sir Edward Sugden was induced[16] to accept the
appointment of Lord Chancellor of Ireland; a post, however, which he
filled only three months, but long enough to exhibit the highest
judicial qualities, and to cause general regret at being deprived of
such services. On returning from Ireland he found himself, as we have
seen, “for the first time in his professional life, in full leisure,”
seizing the opportunity thoroughly to revise his “Vendors and
Purchasers,” of which, in 1839, he published a new edition—the tenth—in
three royal octavo volumes. In addition to this, he read and critically
examined every reported decision of all the courts of law and equity. In
1837 he reappeared in the House of Commons as member for the borough of
Ripon, taking an active part in the more important subjects of
legislative discussion, particularly those with which he was so
pre-eminently qualified to deal. In the month of October 1841, however,
he finally retired from the House of Commons, on being appointed a
second time Lord Chancellor of Ireland—a post which he occupied till the
month of July 1846. We believe we speak the universal opinion of the
Irish Bar, and indeed of the general public of Ireland, that it was a
fortunate day that saw this great and upright magistrate a second time
in its supreme seat of justice, to occupy it for a period of five years.
We feel justified in attributing, not now for the first time, the utmost
weight to the judgment of the Bench and Bar of Ireland. They are acute,
dexterous, and learned, and capable of appreciating thoroughly a display
of the highest judicial qualifications. Sir Edward himself declared on
one occasion, recently, that he could never mention the Bar of Ireland
but in cordial terms of affection and respect; and that, when he finally
quitted Ireland, he had experienced not one unkind or disrespectful
expression towards himself, nor witnessed any personal disagreement
among themselves. He was undoubtedly exact and severe in maintaining
that order in his court, without which, while justice is administered
with difficulty, judicial decisions may fail to command the prompt
respect and consideration which are their due. Himself profoundly
attentive to what went on, involving such important interests, he also
required that counsel should receive no interruption, and that they
should address themselves, with all due brevity and closeness, to the
real points at issue. An attentive and watchful Bar has a most salutary
effect on both judge and counsel; and a court gravely and decorously
ordered in all things, produces a fitting impression, as well on the
public as on even the most disappointed suitor. Sir Edward’s great
reputation as an equity lawyer stimulated counsel to make fitting
exertions, and a protracted desultory volubility found no encouragement
or even toleration in the court of Lord Chancellor Sugden, whose
presence put even the ablest of his Bar on their mettle: while his deep
attention repaid their pains in preparing and condensing their
arguments. We are not, however, left to the expression of our own
opinion. His first chancellorship lasted for only three months,—viz.
from the 13th January to the 22d April 1835; and on the latter day,
after having pronounced an important judgment, with a view to securing
the due and economical administration of justice in the courts of
equity, the Attorney-General rose and asked if his lordship intended to
sit again? and being answered in the negative, thus addressed the
Chancellor:—[17]
“My Lord, I should do great injustice to my own feelings, and, I am
persuaded, to those of the Bar of Ireland, if I allowed your lordship
to retire from that seat without attempting, however feebly, to convey
to your lordship the impression of the deep sense which we entertain
of the eminent ability and dignity of demeanour with which you have
discharged the important duties of your high office. Short as has been
the period of your lordship’s elevation, it has afforded ample
opportunity for the display of judicial powers of the highest degree
of excellence. Had that period been still shorter—had it been limited
to the observation of a single day—it would have been sufficient to
have impressed us with an indelible conviction of the profound,
extensive, and accurate learning, the patience and discrimination, the
masterly exposition and application of the authorities and principles
of equity, and, above all, of the ardent love of justice, and elevated
tone of moral feeling, which marked and distinguished your judgments.
I have only to add our acknowledgments for your uniform urbanity and
kindness, and to assure your lordship that you bear with you our
regret at your retirement, and our most anxious wishes for your future
happiness and welfare.”
To this affecting address the Chancellor, declaring that he had been
“totally unprepared for it,” made a brief and dignified reply,[18]
acknowledging the uniform kindness and attention of the Bar; after which
one of the most eminent of the solicitors rose and expressed their
concurrence in the sentiments which had been so eloquently expressed by
the Bar.
Sir Edward Sugden’s second return to Ireland as Lord Chancellor afforded
him a more extended opportunity of exhibiting judicial and
administrative power. It is perhaps needless to say, that he manifested
throughout the same acuteness, strength, stretch, and exactness of legal
judgment, which had elicited, at the close of his former brief tenure of
the Seals, the spontaneous and weighty approbation of all legal circles
in Ireland. Every one of his judgments appealed from, was affirmed by
the House of Lords, with the exception of two, and a single point in a
third. The propriety of even these few reversals, however, is gravely
questionable, and is denied by Sir Edward himself; who elaborately
examines the grounds on which they proceeded, in his _Treatise on the
Law of Property, as administered in the House of Lords_,[19] and thereby
enables those who are competent to do so, to pronounce an opinion for
themselves.
Two of his judgments in the year 1843 were attended by incidents so
remarkable, as testified to us by those who were present and vouch for
the facts, that we mention them. In the case of _Box_ v. _Jackson_,
Drury’s Reports 42–85, the case was deemed by the Chancellor of such
difficulty and importance, that he requested the present distinguished
Lord-Justice of Ireland, Mr Blackburn, then Master of the Rolls, to
assist him in hearing it. On a subsequent day the decision was given—the
Master of the Rolls reading an elaborate written judgment; at the close
of which the Chancellor, “without the assistance of a single note of any
sort,”[20] says our informant, “proceeded _instanter_ to deliver his
judgment, extending over seventeen pages, and comprising at once a
luminous and minute critical examination of a long series of decisions,
by Lord Hardwicke and other great authorities, from the year 1739 to
1818!” The point was, whether, by analogy to a fine at common law, the
court had power to take the consent of a married woman, and by force of
it give effect to a transfer by her of her equitable reversionary
interest in stock: the Chancellor deciding, concurrently with the Master
of the Rolls, in the negative. Immediately after delivering this
judgment, the court adjourned for the usual brief interval; and on the
Chancellor’s return, the whole Bar rose up to do him honour! The other
case is that of _Stackpoole_ v. _Stackpoole_, 4 Drury and Warren’s Rep.
320; in which, at the close of a learned argument by the most eminent
counsel in Ireland, on the Chancellor’s inquiring whether the parties
wished him to decide the question, or send a case to a court of law, and
being informed that “it was the general wish that his lordship should
decide the case at once,” he did so _instanter_, and elaborately, though
it happened that he had not taken a single note of any argument, or case
cited by counsel![21] Such an effect had the Chancellor’s promptness and
felicity of judgment in delivering his _vivâ voce_ judgments, that, on
his beginning to deliver written judgments, the present Mr Justice
Moore, on the part of the Bar, requested him to continue delivering
judgments _vivâ voce_. It must not, however, be supposed that the
Chancellor of Ireland was so absorbed with his judicial, as to be
unmindful of the important duties devolving upon him in his
administrative capacity. It were equally invidious and unjust to make or
insinuate comparisons between Sir Edward Sugden and his predecessors or
successors, in this latter case, or in any other respect; but all
practical professional people in Ireland know under what obligations the
public were placed, by their Chancellor, during the period referred to.
In conjunction with the then Master of the Rolls, Mr Blackburn, he
consolidated all the Orders of the Irish Court of Chancery, repealing
all preceding ones, so as to render it unnecessary any longer to refer
to a long series of Orders, many of them obscure, and totally
inconsistent with each other. This proved a great relief to the suitor,
and was a work of much labour; but, undoubtedly, no little had been
previously accomplished by Lord Plunket. Another great benefit conferred
by the Chancellor, was in respect of the grievous burthens inflicted
upon suitors in equity, under the name of Searches for Incumbrances. He
put an end to this grievance by issuing an order allowing solicitors a
sufficient fixed charge for such searches; while their costs in other
matters were placed on a new and equitable footing, as between them and
their clients. Again, tenants of land, over which Receivers were
appointed by the Court of Chancery, were subjected to serious hardships,
in respect of the payment of their rents, or the reduction of them in
hard times. These evils were effectually redressed by orders, and
otherwise, of the Chancellor. Various other beneficial changes in the
existing order of things were introduced by the Chancellor, beyond our
province here to specify, but the effect of which is felt to this day.
Infinitely to his honour were his unintermitted and powerful exertions
in behalf of lunatics. The public minutes and orders, after his visits
to the public and private asylums, where he made, personally, minute and
laborious inquiries, pointing out what required a remedy, and affording
that remedy where he had the power, would fill a not inconsiderable
volume. He took a special interest in the district asylums, and in the
proceedings for the custody of criminal and pauper lunatics. Nothing, in
fact, relating to this unhappy class of our fellow-creatures, escaped
the humanely watchful eye of the Chancellor, who issued orders
calculated to subject the proceedings of all in authority in these
institutions to publicity and responsibility. It is difficult
sufficiently to estimate the amount of benefit thus conferred upon this
large and deplorably afflicted class, and who, as will hereafter be
seen, appear to have been always subjects of Sir Edward Sugden’s special
solicitude, both judicial and legislative.
How it may be now, we profess not to be able to say; but it is well
known that the magistrates of Ireland occasioned the Chancellor, at the
troublous time of which we are speaking, almost as much anxiety and
trouble as his judicial duties. He instituted an order of procedure in
appointing magistrates, which operated most advantageously; his evident
object being to conciliate the respect of all classes for the vigorous
and faithful administration of justice, as well by these as by all other
functionaries. He superseded magistrates without hesitation, whatever
their position or influence, if he thought that the public interest
required it; of which a memorable instance is on record, greatly to his
honour, in respect of his resolute and impartial spirit. We allude to
his dismissal of a nobleman of the Chancellor’s own political party, and
his agent and brother magistrate, from the commission, for intemperate
conduct towards each other on the bench. The matter was brought before
the House of Lords, but the Government upheld their Chancellor with a
high hand. It was, however, in the Repeal year, 1843, that the greatest
amount of anxiety and responsibility was thrown on the Chancellor of
that then distracted portion of the empire. In compliance with the views
of the Government, he refused to appoint any man a magistrate who
belonged to the Repeal Association; and in consequence of their acts and
speeches, superseded on the same day Lord French and Mr O’Connell. A
storm was of course the immediate result. The Chancellor’s letter
conveying their dismissal was read in the House of Lords by Lord
Brougham, who defended Sir Edward in a generous spirit, amidst repeated
cheering; and it was indeed a most satisfactory and conclusive statement
of the principles on which Sir Edward had proceeded. Acting upon them,
he almost immediately afterwards removed numerous other magistrates,
amongst whom were Mr Morgan John O’Connell, and Mr Smith O’Brien, for
presiding at tumultuous Repeal meetings. When Mr Daniel O’Connell seemed
bent on raising the standard of civil war at Clontarf, on the 8th
October 1843, the Lord-Lieutenant (Earl De Grey) and the Chancellor went
to England, to consult definitively with the Government on the
threatening state of affairs; but on hearing of the meeting so
appointed, returned _instanter_ to Ireland. They pronounced the meeting
illegal, and took steps so formidable and decisive, that Mr O’Connell
and his agitation were crushed together. All this, however, is matter of
history—that of a very momentous period. The calmness and strength of
the Chancellor’s judgment, backed by his immense reputation, rendered a
service to the menaced cause of order and good government never to be
forgotten.
His judicial and administrative duties not being sufficient to satisfy
this _helluo laborum_—as surely we may with justice style him—he devoted
himself at every spare moment to the systematic revision of his
“Treatise on Vendors and Purchasers,” and the compression of it into two
volumes, instead of the three into which it had swollen in the preceding
edition.
In July 1846, Sir Edward a second time resigned the Irish seals, with
the regret and applause of the whole country, and especially of the
legal profession. His administration of justice was pronounced to be
unequalled in Ireland, even organs of public opinion not favourable to
his party giving him in several respects the palm over no less a
distinguished predecessor than Lord Redesdale. “He never,” says one of
these now lying before us, “mixed himself up in the party-politics of
the country: he had no followers or connections there; was ruled by no
clique, and ear-wigged by no favourites. He was distinguished as a great
Chancery reformer as well as a great Chancery judge. He reformed the
Master’s offices, and established a tribunal for the taxation of costs.
In matters of lunacy, and in the Accountant-General’s department, he
introduced large and sweeping changes, some of which have been followed
in England by Lord Cottenham.”
Relieved from the pressure of judicial and parliamentary business, Sir
Edward betook himself to his lovely retreat on the banks of the
Thames—Boyle Farm; but how his leisure for the next three years was
spent, is attested by a large royal octavo volume of nearly 800 pages,
now before us, entitled _A Treatise on the Law of Property, as
administered in the House of Lords_, published on the 11th January 1849.
We doubt whether any more remarkable work has been given to the legal
profession during the present century, having regard to the
qualifications of its author, the pains he has bestowed on it, and the
commensurate interest, difficulty, and importance of the subject-matter.
The general reader must needs take this for granted, as we have no means
of giving him detailed proofs of our assertion. Imagine a lawyer like
Sir Edward Sugden, who, previously to having been twice made Lord
Chancellor of Ireland, as we have seen him, had been _facile princeps_
as a real-property and equity lawyer at the bar for nearly forty
years,—dealing with every case of the least importance,—sitting down
with the pressure upon him of his own reputation, and a delicate sense
of responsibility; imagine, we say, such a man devoting all his
faculties to the task of weighing in the critical balance every decision
of the supreme Court of Appeal during the last thirty years, with a view
to developing them into a systematic treatise on the Law of Real and
Personal Property, in respect of all the great moot-points started and
disposed of during that long interval by this august tribunal, and
thereby placing that law on a solid foundation! We know of no book
entitled to be studied with greater attention and deference by any
lawyer, from a Lord Chancellor, Chief-Justice, and Judge, down to the
ranks of such of the junior bar as are capable of understanding and
appreciating a performance of so high an order. Not a case is here dealt
with which has not been evidently mastered in all its bearings, as if
the writer had had the responsibility of adjudicating upon it: the facts
and arguments, often of rare complication and difficulty, are in every
instance stated by himself, and with so much brevity and clearness as to
bring the point at issue at once before _competent_ eyes. Take, for
instance, the great case of _Doe_ v. _Perratt_, decided by the Court of
King’s Bench in 1826, occupying fifty-two pages in the fifth volume of
Barnwell and Cresswell’s Reports; and seventy-one in the sixth volume of
Manning and Granger—argued twice before the House of Lords, with the
opinions of the judges, summoned to attend, declared by Lord Cottenham
so much at variance, that “it was impossible that authority could be
more equally divided.” The whole history of the case, the points of
difference, and the main point itself, are disposed of with masterly
precision in fewer than eight pages; whereas, without such assistance,
it would require any man many hours to master the case; “a careful study
of which,” concludes the author, “though it may perplex the student,
will amply repay his trouble.” We had marked no fewer than twenty-one
cases, all of greater or less permanent interest and importance, thus
admirably dealt with, explaining difficulties, and pointing out where
they are open to grave doubts; but, we are bound to say, without losing
sight of the deference due to the exalted tribunal on whose decisions,
nevertheless, he is sitting in judgment—moreover, he who was destined so
soon after himself to occupy the Woolsack. To two only of the cases
referred to can we briefly allude, as richly repaying the best attention
which the reader can bestow upon them. The first is _Gibson_ v. _D’Este_
(pp. 614, 649), which is, so to speak, placed on the rack of an
excruciating legal criticism, and demonstrated, as we think, to be a
faulty decision. The other case is that of _Howard_ v. _Lord Digby_ (p.
162), also disapproved of by the author, all after a rigorous
examination. It is highly interesting, if for no other reason, for
exhibiting a vivid contrast between the characteristic methods of
dealing with legal subjects, by Lord Brougham and Lord St Leonards; the
one vigorous, graphic, and even dramatic—the other dry and cold, but
with a certain Saxon purity and vigour about his style of expression.
The subject is that of the right to pin-money; and Sir Edward has for
once deviated so very far from his wont, as to enliven his work by an
interesting note from his learned and accomplished friend Sir George
Rose, as to the origin of pin-money. To a great extent, the author, as
he explains, has relied on his own copious and authentic notes of the
arguments in cases where he was himself engaged as counsel—and gives us,
thus, accounts of cases decided between 1821 and 1826, not elsewhere to
be found reported. The subjects are classified as relating to contract
deeds, and settlements; testamentary dispositions; powers, in deeds as
well as wills; and the rights and liabilities of lessors and lessees,
mortgagers, and mortgagees, vendors and purchasers, husbands and wives.
How long the author was occupied with preparing this work we know not;
but we think no other living man would have ventured to do so under ten
or even twenty years’ deep consideration. But where is he that could
bring to bear upon the task such vast stores of experience and learning?
Shortly after the appearance of this _magnum opus_, the _Times_
newspaper (10th Dec. 1850) commenced a leading article with the
following allusion—equally applicable at the present moment, and for the
last five years—to the veteran in repose:—
“The name of Sir Edward Sugden is at once the ornament and reproach of
the legal annals of this country. Unrivalled in the depth and
minuteness of his knowledge of the more abstruse branches of the law,
unequalled for logical power and critical acumen in discharging the
duties of an advocate, a writer of the rarest excellence, a judge of
unwearied diligence, and of authority second to none, he has been
condemned by the vicissitudes of party and our wretched system of
political judgeship, to pass the latter years of his valuable life in
comparative obscurity and retirement; and this has happened at a time
when great lawyers and great men of all kinds are growing scarce among
us. Mediocrity is, if backed by party influence, everywhere
triumphant, while one of the greatest legal geniuses that has ever
adorned the bench, is carelessly flung aside, as if the country were
too affluent in talent to require the aid of his extraordinary
abilities!”
The occasion of this article was a speech delivered the day before at a
county meeting in Surrey by Sir Edward Sugden—the only time in his life,
as he stated, of his having done so—on the subject of the Papal
Aggression. “That speech,” continues the editor, “appears to us one of
the best which has been delivered on the occasion; combining a spirit of
toleration and charity with a masterly exposure of the hollow sophisms
of the Romanists and their pseudo-liberal apologists, and an exposition
of the law showing indisputably that whatever difficulty may lie in the
way of punishment, there is no doubt that an offence has been
committed.” The speech in question deserved this eulogy, and had instant
and great weight with the country at large, and the Legislature.
In less than a month’s time afterwards, Sir Edward Sugden made a second
public appearance of quite a new sort—to vindicate the law of the land,
which he himself had presumed to make such, against certain groundless
accusations by Mr Dickens, in one of his tales, in a chapter headed “The
Martyrs of Chancery.” The sprightly and gifted novelist had fluttered
into the dusky regions of fact and law, with which he was necessarily
unfamiliar; and he, as well as others who laboured under similar
misconception on the subject of imprisonment for contempt of court, was
at once silenced by Sir Edward’s lucid and authoritative account of the
true state of the case.[22] To that subject, however, we shall have to
advert again, in considering Sir Edward Sugden in another phase—that of
legislator.
So determined was Sir Edward to illustrate the modest motto he had
chosen—_Labore vinces_—that the same year, 1851, of which we have been
speaking, beheld two more elaborate works of his appearing respectively
in the months of June and December. The former was _An Essay on the New
Real Property Statutes_, of the last few years, in one small octavo
volume—a work so highly esteemed as to find its place at once in every
lawyer’s library. The latter was a _Concise and Practical View of the
Law of Vendors and Purchasers of Estates_, being a condensation of the
two large volumes of the existing work into one octavo volume of upwards
of 700 pages, being “an attempt,” as he states in the preface, “to
compress the whole of the law on this important subject, into as narrow
a compass as appeared compatible with accuracy and distinctness”—for
which purpose “many portions of the original work have been rewritten,
and every proposition added or retained, has been anxiously considered.
The references, in some places, occupy nearly as much space as the text
in its compressed form; but the writer was unwilling to deprive the
student and the practitioner of any portion of a collection of cases
which,” he adds, “it has required many years and much reading to bring
together.” He also added no fewer than five hundred new cases! This work
was not long in following the fortune of its predecessors, and was in
time succeeded by that admirable contribution to legal literature, which
appeared at the commencement of the present month of January, and of
which we have already spoken. We have compared it with the “Concise
View,” and the edition at large which that concise view followed, and
have no hesitation in expressing our opinion that the alterations
introduced are of great magnitude, and materially enhance the value of
the work as a comprehensive, accurate, and authoritative statement of
the law on this all-important subject. The second chapter, for instance,
is entirely new, consisting of an elaborate and luminous exposition of
“Sales to Railway Companies,” and containing “the law, so far as it
places a Company, and an owner of land, in the relation of vendor and
purchaser” (p. 57). The work is, in short, a perfect masterpiece of
practical jurisprudence, more worthy than ever of the deference which
has been paid to it for so long a series of years by even judicial
authorities.[23] Before, however, quitting Sir Edward in his literary
capacity—seeing him, as an _ex_-Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain
devoting himself as patiently and laboriously to the re-editing and
reconstruction of his earliest publication, as if his professional
interests and reputation depended upon it entirely—let us offer one word
of suggestion to those whom it may concern. Let a young gentleman, who
has just donned his wig and gown, study to imitate the example of this
great living sage; and if he must turn author at a period when he is
really only commencing as learner, let him well consider the nature of
the work which he proposes to offer to a learned profession. Let it not
consist of hasty and flimsy comments on newly-enacted statutes, or on
heads of law already bristling with text-books; but let a real _want_ be
looked for, and then let due time and consideration be devoted to
supplying it. Thus it was that Edward Burtenshaw Sugden planted the
acorn which he has lived to see flourishing in full vigour as the oak.
Within little more than a year after the _Times_ newspaper had pointed
to Sir Edward Sugden’s name as at once “the ornament and the reproach of
the country,” that name had ceased to be a reproach; for the month of
February 1852—within only a few weeks of his laborious appearance as an
author, on the formation of the Earl of Derby’s Administration—saw Her
Majesty deliver the Great Seal into his hands, those of as profoundly
learned a Chancellor as ever served any of her predecessors. When, as
Lord St Leonards, he first took his seat at Lincoln’s Inn, the spacious
hall was so densely crowded with professional men, collected to see and
do honour to the greatest lawyer of the age, that numbers were unable to
get within the doors. The new Chancellor settled into the office, as it
were, in a moment, as quietly as if he had occupied it for years. In
fact, a more thoroughly businesslike Chancellor never held the Great
Seal, as all with whom he had to do found out very soon. His practical
penetrating sagacity, and boundless learning, rendered the appearance
before him of the most able and experienced counsel, a matter, for them,
of serious moment. They were somewhat peremptorily taught to come to the
point as soon as possible, before one who puffed away the chaff from the
wheat in a moment; who was always ready for work, and looked askance at
suggested adjournments or postponements. The first appeal case before
him in the House of Lords, on the 10th March 1852, only a week after he
had taken his seat on the Woolsack, was that of _De Beauvoir_ v. _De
Beauvoir_ (reported in the third volume of the _House of Lords’ Cases_,
p. 524), involving the right to nearly six hundred thousand pounds,
dependent on the construction of a singular and obscurely-worded will.
The matter was argued at great length by eminent counsel; but when they,
and all others, expected that the Chancellor would, as had been usual,
ask for the “papers,” and “take time to consider,” he rose from the
Woolsack, and delivered at once an admirable judgment, luminous and
conclusive, occupying nearly twenty pages of the printed Report—going at
length into, ably commenting on, and felicitously distinguishing a
number of cases cited—as may be seen on reference to the report; which,
we have personally ascertained from the learned reporter who took it
down in short-hand, is given as it fell from the Chancellor’s lips. One
of the most eminent solicitors in England recently observed, that he was
concerned in an appeal arising out of a suit of many years’ standing,
which had gradually become so complicated that neither counsel nor
solicitor could really understand it! After lengthened argument before
the Lord Chancellor, he rose from the Woolsack, as our informant and all
others supposed, to move that judgment should be postponed to a future
day; but—“nothing of the sort,” said the solicitor; “he immediately
began to deliver judgment, which sounded as if he were reading off a
chapter of his book on Powers. He cut us up root and branch. I saw only
too clearly where we had all gone wrong; and had not a word to say,
though he dismissed our appeal with costs!” How Lord St Leonards
discharged his duties in his own court, it may be safely left to every
practitioner in it to say. His manner was somewhat dry and quiet, but
had real judicial dignity. Nothing could exceed the patience and
attention with which he listened to every counsel who really addressed
himself to the merits of the case under consideration, but who, at the
same time, had knowledge and tact enough to see how early and
tenaciously the Chancellor had grasped these merits, and to shape his
course accordingly. No suitor ever had to complain that his case, how
tangled and multifarious soever, had not been completely ransacked in
quest of its merits, down to even the minutest details. And conclusive
evidence of the sterling quality of the judgments which he
pronounced—not after time taken to consider, but at the close of the
argument—is afforded by the fact, that not one of them was reversed, or
even qualified, on appeal. There is one interesting passage to be found
in the evidence of Lord St Leonards himself, before the Lords’ Appellate
Jurisdiction Committee of last session:—
“I could not myself have performed the duties of the office which I
filled, except by disposing, as far as I was competent, of the cases
as soon as the argument had closed; for otherwise I should have had
the whole arguments operating and weighing upon my mind, night and
day, till I had disposed of them; and the effect was, that there was
no delay in giving judgment. Despatch is not undue haste. With a
knowledge of the law on the part of the judge, and undivided attention
to the arguments, I believe that, in a great majority of cases, a
perfect master of the law may dispose of the greater proportion of
them as soon as the arguments are closed.”[24]
In the great case of _Egerton_ v. _Brownlow_,[25] we are not certain
whether Lord St Leonards delivered a _vivâ voce_ or a written judgment;
but there it is, on record, a fine specimen of judicial reasoning
applied to a question lying, however, very nearly on the confines of
legislation. Before quitting Lord St Leonards in his judicial capacity,
we must indicate the great service he did by his several rules and
orders, whenever he deemed them necessary, in order to improve and
quicken procedure in equity. Short, too, as was his tenure of the Great
Seal, he disposed of such patronage as fell to his lot with a scrupulous
regard to individual fitness, of which we could cite several instances
of gentlemen promoted without any solicitation whatever, and to their
own surprise. In another particular the conduct of Lord St Leonards is
worthy of observation,—his objection to the facile and profuse creation
of Queen’s Counsel, against which, as having a mischievous and
derogatory tendency, he appears to have long set his face. In 1835, in
his letter to Lord Melbourne on the Appellate Jurisdiction, we find him
saying,—“I believe the true way to recruit the Inner Bar is not by
batches, but by steadily advancing individuals, as their claims appear,
by the exhibition of talents, learning, good conduct, and a command of
business;” and he traces one cause of “the evil of excessively long
speeches by counsel, to the great competition at the bar, since the
number has received such large additions.” Acting uniformly on these
principles when in Ireland, he did not wait to be solicited for a silk
gown, as for a favour, by any gentleman possessing proper claims, but at
the proper moment offered it to him; thereby infinitely enhancing its
significance and value. While holding the Great Seal in England, he
found the Inner Bar full, and did not appoint a single Queen’s Counsel.
In considering Lord St Leonards as a legislator, it is not our intention
to dwell on his parliamentary speeches, though they have been many and
important. That against the bill of 1853, imposing duties on succession
to property, as well as the protest which he entered in the Journals of
the House, appears to us unanswerable. His speech on projected
improvements in the administration of the law, on the 16th November
1852, gave universal satisfaction; and that on life-peerages, on the 7th
February 1856, was a calm but excruciating exposure of not only the
impolicy, but the _illegality_ of that step. The speeches, indeed, on
that subject, of the Earl of Derby, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord St Leonards,
and Lord Campbell, will ever reflect bright credit on the hereditary
branch of the Legislature.
In sketching the character of a late luminary,[26] we “asked, with
sorrowful sincerity and reluctance, what did he ever do to advance the
interests of the profession to which he belonged?—and what page in the
Statute-Book attests his handiwork?” In the case of the distinguished
person now before the reader, the former question has been abundantly
answered in the foregoing pages; and the latter admits of as conclusive
and triumphant an answer, by a simple reference to the chief acts of
parliament for which Lord St Leonards is responsible, and many of which
were drawn by his own hand. We have taken some trouble to insure
correctness,—but if we have made any material errors or omissions, we
must trust to some future opportunity to correct them. Those which we
cite will be found of an eminently practical character, conferring great
and permanent advantage on the community, and redressing evils with
which his vast knowledge of business, and unwavering watchfulness,
peculiarly qualified him to deal.
(1.) The Annuity Act of 1813 (statute 53 Geo. III., c. 141), itself
recently repealed, together with the Usury Laws, was drawn by Lord St
Leonards, following out those views which he had urged in his pamphlet
of 1812. That act had the signal merit of putting an end to a floodtide
of ruinous and disgraceful litigation, for which Mr Sugden richly
deserved the thanks of the country. (2.) The statute 6 Geo. IV., c. 93
(1825), to “render valid certain decrees and orders at the Rolls Court,”
rendered necessary in consequence of Chief Baron Richards and other
judges having sate during Sir Thomas Plumer’s illness at the Rolls
Court, without legal authority. To avert the public scandal of avoiding
so many important judicial acts, Mr Sugden, with Lord Eldon’s consent,
prepared this bill, which became a law at the close of the session in
which it had been introduced. (3.) The next statute is one reflecting
peculiar lustre on the name of its framer—that of 1 Will. IV. c. 36
(1830)—in itself a code, having for its main objects to prevent long and
continued imprisonment for contempt; to afford assistance and relief to
parties poor and ignorant; and prevent obstinate parties from impeding
the course of justice after the decree or order of the Court. This act
was, two years afterwards, greatly extended by (4.) Stat. 4 Will. IV. c.
58. Had these been the only acts for which the country is indebted to
Lord St Leonards, he would have earned an enduring title to their
gratitude.
Having humanely provided a legislative remedy, he made the noblest
personal efforts to carry it into prompt effect, frequently visiting the
Fleet Prison—(how he found the time is hard to understand)—seeing and
conversing with the impoverished prisoners, giving them wise advice, and
himself actually paying, out of his own purse, the costs for which they
were incarcerated, so as to procure their immediate discharge—and even
assisting them afterwards! The scandal of throwing a man into prison for
not “answering,” and then leaving him there to rot out the rest of his
life, thank Heaven, can no longer exist. When Chancellor of Ireland, Sir
Edward Sugden extended this admirable measure to that country, by (5.)
Stat. 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 16 (1835), the Government taking charge of the
bill. (6.) Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 46 (1830), amending the laws relating to
Illusory Appointments, restored the law to its original state, putting
the rule at law and in equity on the same footing with respect to
appointments: a provision removing at once a prolific source of
litigation, and enabling a parent or trustee to act so as best to meet
the exigencies of a family, and give children aid and provision in
proportion to their actual wants. (7.) Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 47 (1830),
consolidates and amends the law for payment of debts out of real
estate—one of great importance, and a considerable step in advance, the
Legislature having since gone still farther in that direction. (8.)
Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 60 (1830), is another act of great importance,
investing courts of equity with ampler powers than they had possessed,
with regard to trustees and mortgagees, and enabling them to make a
perfect title to whatever they sold. This act Sir Edward undertook at
the request of Lord Eldon; and the Legislature have since gone much
farther in that direction. (9.) Stat. 1 Will. IV., c. 65, extended to
Ireland by (10) 5 and 6 Will. IV., c. 17, arms courts of equity with
very useful powers over the property of infants, married women, and
lunatics. (11.) Stat. 2 and 3 Vict., c. 11, extended to Ireland by (12.)
Stat. 7 and 8 Vict., c. 90, with careful modifications, conferred a vast
boon on purchasers, and greatly facilitated the transfer of
land—providing as it did a complete registration of various kinds of
incumbrances, collected in one office, and allowing them to be searched
for a mere nominal sum—a shilling. These acts were (in 1855) followed by
(13.) Stat. 18 and 19 Vict., c. 15, conferring on purchasers further
important provisions for their protection. (14.) Stat. 5 and 6 Vict., c.
123, for the first time required private lunatic asylums to have a
licence, and placed them under salutary restraints and supervision. This
act had to encounter fierce opposition, but succeeded, followed up, as
we have already seen, by the Chancellor’s vigilant personal attention,
in greatly ameliorating the condition and management of lunatics. (15.)
Stat. 8 and 9 Vict., c. 115, appointed a taxing-master for the Irish
Court of Chancery, thereby greatly relieving the overburdened Masters of
the Court. This has since been carried much farther. (16.) Stat. 15
Vict., c. 24, after a vehement opposition, put an end to an evil utterly
intolerable, and has proved one of the greatest blessings to the people,
afforded by modern legislation. It puts an end to the incessant defeat
of wills by petty technical objections, embracing every evil conceivable
to occur through haste, ignorance, or accident. The editors of the new
edition of the _Standard Text-Book on Wills_ (Jarman), omit a long
chapter of decisions of this kind, as “it is almost impossible that the
validity of any will should hereafter turn upon them.” (17.) Stat. 15
Vict., c. 48, amends the law relating to the property of lunatics. (18.)
Stat. 15 Vict., c. 80, abolishes the Masters’ offices, and expedites the
business of the Court of Chancery. (19.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 86, amends
the practice and course of proceeding in the Court of Chancery. (20, 21,
22.) Stat. 16 and 17 Vict., c. 70, is for the regulation of proceedings
under commissions of lunacy, and consolidating the former acts,—and
itself constitutes a most important code; c. 96, for regulating the care
and treatment of lunatics; c. 97, consolidating and amending the laws
relating to lunatic asylums for counties and boroughs, and the
maintenance and care of pauper lunatics. When these three acts were
passed, Lord St Leonards declared, in his place in the House of Lords,
that no other country possessed such excellent provisions for the care
of lunatics and of their property—and none more minutely and anxiously
careful than those which secure the welfare of pauper lunatics. He might
have added, that the preparation of these enactments entailed upon
himself protracted and exhausting labour. (24) Stat. 16 and 17 Vict., c.
98, provides for the further relief of suitors in the Court of Chancery,
appropriating its unclaimed funds to the relief of the suitors, to whom
they properly belong. This, also, is a very important act. Lastly, (25.)
Stat. 17 and 18 Vict., c. 60, has for its humane object to make more
effectual provisions for preventing cruelty to animals.—Here ends, as
far as we know, the catalogue of Lord St Leonards’ contributions to the
Statute-Book of his country: twenty-five in number, and those not showy,
rash, and slovenly, but deeply-considered and skilfully framed; the
result of great forensic and judicial experience, or, in some instances,
masterly developments of alterations and improvements contemplated by
others. We are, moreover, inclined to consider Lord St Leonards largely
entitled to credit for the original suggestion of that bold enactment
which called into existence the Incumbered Estates Court in Ireland.
Unless, indeed, we are mistaken, he lately claimed the paternity of that
measure, in speaking in the debate for renewing the powers of the
Commissioners. It is said that in his original sketch of the proposed
Court, transmitted to the late Sir Robert Peel, he observed that the
Court ought to exist only until the mischief should have been remedied;
that it was, as regarded property, what the suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act was with reference to personal liberty. It is, however,
undoubtedly possible that the existing scheme may have been devised by
the Government before they became possessed of Sir Edward Sugden’s
communication to Sir Robert Peel; though this has not hitherto been
asserted. And these legislative labours have been continued during a
long series of years, while Lord St Leonards was either burthened with
enormous practice at the bar, or absorbed with judicial cares as twice
Chancellor of Ireland, and afterwards of England (his is the only
instance on record of such promotion;) or as a law-lord sitting on
Appeals; or engaged from time to time writing profound and universally
accepted treatises on the law, or carefully adapting them to successive
variations in that law. The patience, the self-denial, the indomitable
industry and resolution with which his great endowments and acquirements
have been and continue to be devoted to the service of his profession
and of his country, will enshrine his name in the memory of his
countrymen, long after he shall have passed away from the scene of his
untiring exertions. As author, advocate, judge, and legislator, he
appears to exhibit a combination of claims to our respect and gratitude,
that is unique.
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
ENDNOTES:
Footnote 1:
These views are not an after-thought, but will be found expressed in
our article on “The Peace,” written before the Treaty of Paris was
ratified. _Inter alia_, alluding to the probable results of the
Treaty, we observed—“By guarding the line of the Danube, while leaving
open the Transcaucasian frontier and the shores of Anatolia, you
change the main line of Russian advance from the western to the
eastern side of the Black Sea. You divert it from Europe into Asia,
and by so doing change the Powers by whom such southward progress
brings her into collision. On the Danube, Russia has Austria for a
rival; but for Asia Minor, Austria has no concern,—there Russia will
meet no rival but Great Britain, who will be left to struggle with her
single-handed.” And we characterised this as “the best method for
directing the march of Russia from Europe into Asia, and thereby not
only freeing France and her Austrian alliance from the rivalry and
pressure of the Czar, but of raising a new and permanent source of
antagonism between Russia and England,—every step of the former of
those Powers necessarily bringing her nearer to the Indian empire, and
line of communication therewith, of the latter. The general public,
alive only to the interests of the moment, may underrate the
importance of this stipulation, but its consequences will be none the
less momentous because not immediate. It is a legacy of hostility
between Russia and England which the future will duly honour.”—(_May
1856_, p. 617.)
Footnote 2:
The relation subsisting between Prince Yusoof and the Shah was openly
acknowledged by the latter, who, even as reported by the Teheran _Rouz
Namé_, or official journal of court news, thus addressed the Prince,
when subsequently captured by the Persian army which besieged
Herat:—“At that time we considered thee as one of our faithful
servants, and thou wert under the shadow of our protection; and as it
was for the advantage of our kingdom, and of the independence of
Herat, to resist the overwhelming march of Dost Mahomed Khan, we
therefore sent thee the reinforcements which thou didst require.”
Footnote 3:
Fact.
Footnote 4:
See the Scheme of Members for Minorities.
Footnote 5:
1st September 1856.
Footnote 6:
Wilkinson’s _Wallachia and Moldavia_: London, 1820.
Footnote 7:
The treaty of Kainardjik (10th July 1775) gave the right of
interference in the affairs of the Principalities to the Russian
ministers resident at Constantinople, and bound the Porte to pay
regard to their representations.
Footnote 8:
_A Concise and Practical Treatise of the Law of Vendors and Purchasers
of Estates._ By EDWARD SUGDEN (now Lord St Leonards). 13th Edition. 1
vol. royal 8vo. 1857. Sweet, London.
_Practical Treatise of Powers._ By the Right Honourable Sir EDWARD
SUGDEN. 2 vols. 8vo. 7th Edition. 1845.
_The Law of Uses and Trusts._ By the late Chief Baron GILBERT; with
Notes, References, and an Introduction, by EDWARD BURTENSHAW SUGDEN,
Esq., Barrister-at-Law. 1 vol. 8vo. 3d Edition. 1811.
_A Treatise of the Law of Property, as Administered by the House of
Lords._ By Sir EDWARD SUGDEN. 1 vol. royal 8vo. 1849.
_An Essay on the New Statutes relating to Real Property._ By Sir
EDWARD SUGDEN. 1 vol. 8vo. 1852.
_A Series of Letters to a Man of Property on Sales, Purchases,
Mortgages, Leases, Settlements, and Devises of Estates._ By Sir EDWARD
B. SUGDEN. 1 vol. 8vo. 6th Edition.
_Pamphlets_, &c.
_Speeches_, &c.
Footnote 9:
Preface to the fourth edition of the “Vendors and Purchasers” quoted
in the preface to the thirteenth edition. In justice to the memory of
the late Mr Preston, one of the most eminent conveyancers that ever
lived, it should be stated that he also in early life published—we
believe in his twenty-first year (1791)—an elementary treatise on the
_Quantity of Estates_, which has, with modifications in successive
editions, continued even to the present time a standard text-book in
the profession. In its original form it may be regarded as the anatomy
of the body of real-property law—and a doubt may be entertained
whether subsequent editions were improvements on the first. This book
laid the foundation, in his case also, of an enormous practice and
great wealth; but never, as in the case of his distinguished
contemporary, led to judicial office.
Footnote 10:
It is well known that for a single edition, Sir Edward Sugden once
received the sum, unprecedented in the writers of law books, of four
thousand guineas!
Footnote 11:
The uncle might have prohibited his niece from thus alienating, or
“anticipating,” as it is called, any portion of what he had bequeathed
her, but had not thought fit to do so. A woman who has thus property
in equity, is the creature of equity, and may have as much or as
little capacity of dealing with it, as her donor may have chosen to
confer upon her. Possibly this was something like the argument of Mr
Sugden, which is not given by the reporter.
Footnote 12:
Lord Eldon once sent for Mr Sugden into his private room, during the
argument of an important case in which he was not concerned, to ask
his opinion concerning the main point of law involved in it—relating,
if we are correctly informed, to “springing uses.” Mr Sugden’s
impression differed from that of Lord Eldon, who ultimately yielded to
Mr Sugden’s.
Footnote 13:
This Act has itself just been repealed.
Footnote 14:
The principles involved in all these cases are elaborately discussed
by Lord St Leonards himself in his Treatise of the Law of Property, to
be afterwards noticed.
Footnote 15:
H. B. had a caricature representing “A Meeting in the Pleas”—between
Sir James Scarlett, Attorney-General, and Sir Edward Sugden,
Solicitor-General, with Sir N. Tindal on the Bench, and Sir Charles
Wetherall and Mr Brougham in the wings.
Footnote 16:
Sir Edward Sugden was twice offered office by the Whigs, but he
declined it.
Footnote 17:
Lloyd and Goold’s _Reports of the High Court of Chancery, tempore_
Sugden, pp. 380–1.
Footnote 18:
_Vide supra._
Footnote 19:
See them—_Stokes_ v. _Heron_, p. 236; _Shaw_ v. _Lawless_, p. 394;
_Creed_ v. _Creed_, p. 428.
Footnote 20:
This reminds us of the prodigious effort of Lord Lyndhurst, C., in the
case of _Small_ v. _Attwood_, which had been argued by Sir Edward
Sugden.
Footnote 21:
In the course of his judgment he pronounced the late Lord Kenyon, “one
of the most consummate Real Property lawyers that ever adorned the
Bench.”—P. 350.
Footnote 22:
See the Letter in the _Times_ of 7th January 1851.
Footnote 23:
We could fill a page with references to cases in courts of law and
equity in which such judicial deference is paid to the “Vendors and
Purchasers.” One or two of the latter instances may be seen in
Matthews _v._ Bowles, 6 Hare’s Rep. 111; Wykes _v._ Lee, 3 Drury, 396.
We should add that, with a dignified modesty, credit has never been
taken, in new editions, for the adoption of rules which had been laid
down by the author, or for the approbation bestowed on the work.
Footnote 24:
_Report_, p. 183.
Footnote 25:
Delivered after he had ceased to be Chancellor.
Footnote 26:
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, January 1846.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
135 hordes which overthrow in hordes which overthrew in
succession succession
174 Ἄγε Σωγράφων ἄριστε Γράφε Ἄγε Ζωγράφων ἄριστε Γράφε
Σωγράφων ἄριστε Τεχνοκοίρανε Ζωγράφων ἄριστε Τεχνοκοίρανε
ῥόδαιε Ἀπεοῦσαν ὡς ἂν εἴπω Γράφε ῥόδειε Ἀπεοῦσαν ὡς ἂν εἴπω Γράφε
τὴν ἐμὴν ἑταιραν τὴν ἐμὴν ἑταίραν
175 Γράφε μοι Βάθυλλον οὕτω Τὸν Τὸν ἑταῖρον ὡς διδάσκω Λιπαρὰς
ἑταῖρον ὡς διδάσκω Λιπαρὰς κόμας κόμας ποίησον Τὰ μὲν ἔνδοθεν
ποίησον Τὰ μὲν ἔνδοθεν μελαίνας, μελαίνας, Τὰ δ’ ες ἄκρον ἡλιωσας
Τὰ δ’ ες ἄκρον ἡλιωσας Ἕλικας δ’ Ἕλικας δ’ ἐλαυθέρους μοι
ἐλαυθέρους μοι Πλοκάμων, ἀτακτα Πλοκάμων, ἀτακτα συνθεὶς, Ἄφες,
συνθεὶς, Ἄφες, ὡς θέλωσι, ὡς θέλωσι, κεῖσθαι Απαλὸν δὲ καὶ
κεῖσθαι Απαλὸν δὲ καὶ δροσῶδες δροσῶδες Στεφέτω μέτωπον, ὀφρὺς
Στεφέτω μέτωπον, ὀφρὺς Κυανωτέρη Κυανωτέρη δρακόντων. Μέλας ὄμμα
δρακόντων. Μέλας ὄμμα γοργὸν γοργὸν ἔστω, Κεκερασμένον
ἔστω, Κεκερασμένον γαλήνῃ* Τὸ γαλήνῃ* Τὸ μὲν ἐξ Ἄρηος ἕλκον Το
μὲν ἐξ Ἄρηος ἕλκον Το δε τῆς δε τῆς καλῆς Κυθήρης Ἵνα τις τὸ
καλῆς Κυθήρης Ἵνα τις τὸ μὲν μὲν φοβῆται Τὸ δ’ ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος
φοβῆται Τὸ δ’ ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος κρεμᾶται. Ῥοδίνην δ’, ὁποια
κρεμᾶται. Ῥοδίνην δ’, ὁποια μῆλον Χνοΐην ποίει παρειήυ*
μῆλον Χνοΐην ποίει παρειήυ* Ερυθημά δ’ ὡς ἄν Αἰδοῦς
Ερυθημά δ’ ὡς ἄν Αἰδοῦς (Λύνασαι) πάλιν ποίησον. Τὸ δὲ
(Λύνασαι) πάλιν ποίησον. Τὸ δὲ χεῖλος, οὐκ ἔτ’ οἶδα Τίνι μοι
χεῖλος, οὐκ ἔτ’ οἶδα Τίνι μοι τροπῳ ποιήσεις * * Ἁπαλὸν,
τροπῳ ποιήσεις * * Ἁπαλὸν, γέμοντε πειθοῦς —— Τὸ δὲ πᾶν, ὁ
γέμοντε πειθοῦς —— Τὸ δὲ πᾶν, ὁ κηρὸς αὐτὸς Ἐχέτω λαλῶν σιωπῇ.
κηρὸς αὐτὸς Ἐχέτω λαλῶν σιωπῇ. Μετὰ δὲ πρόσωπον ἔστω Τὸν
Μετὰ δὲ πρόσωπον ἔστω Τὸν Ἀδώνιδος παρελθὼν, Ἐλεφάντινος
Ἀδώνιδος παρελθὼν, Ἐλεφάντινος τράχηλος. Μεταμάζιον δε ποίει
τράχηλος. Μεταμάζιον δε ποίει Δίδυμάς τε χεῖρας Ἑρμοῦ;
Δίδυμάς τε χεῖρας Ἑρμοῦ; Πολυδεύκεος δε μηροὺς Λιονυσίην
Πολυδεύκεος δε μηροὺς Λιονυσίην δὲ νηδύν. Φθονερηὺ ἔχεις δὲ
δὲ νηδύν. Φθονερηὺ ἔχεις δὲ τέχνηυ, Ὅτι μὴ τὰ νῶτα δεῖξαι,
τέχνηυ, Ὅτι μὴ τὰ νῶτα δεῖξαι, Δύνασαι* τὰ δ’ ἦν ἀμείνω. Τί
Δύνασαι* τὰ δ’ ἦν ἀμείνω. Τί πόδας με δεῖ δί δάσκειν; Λάβε
πόδας με δεῖ δί δάσκειν; Λάβε μισθὸν, ὅσσον εἴπῃς. Τὸν
μισθὸν, ὅσσον εἴπῃς. Τὸν Ἐκηβόλον δὲ τοῦτον Καθελὼν,
Ἐκηβόλον δὲ τοῦτον Καθελὼν, ποίει Βάθυλλον. Ὅτε δ’ ἐς Σαμου
ποίει Βάθυλλον. Ὅτε δ’ ἐς Σαμου ποτ’ ἐλθης Γράφε Φοῖβον ἐκ
ποτ’ ἐλθης Γράφε Φοῖβον ἐκ Βαθύλλον.
Βαθύλλον.
● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Renumbered footnotes and moved them all to the end of the final
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. LXXXI, NO. 496, FEBRUARY 1857. ***
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