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Title: The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 6, June 1860)
Author: Various
Release Date: April 8, 2023 [eBook #70508]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE (VOL.
I, NO. 6, JUNE 1860) ***
THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
JUNE, 1860.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LONDON THE STRONGHOLD OF ENGLAND 641
LOVEL THE WIDOWER. (With an Illustration.) 652
CHAPTER VI.—_Cecilia’s Successor._
THE MAIDEN’S LOVER 669
THE PORTENT 670
_II.—“The Omen Coming on.”_
STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE 682
CHAPTER VI.—_Every organism a colony—What is a paradox?—An
organ is an independent individual, and a dependent one—A
branch of coral—A colony of polypes—The Siphonophora—Universal
dependence—Youthful aspirings—Our interest in the youth of
great men—Genius and labour—Cuvier’s college life; his
appearance in youth; his arrival in Paris—Cuvier and
Geoffrey St. Hilaire—Causes of Cuvier’s success—One of his
early ambitions—M. le Baron—Omnia vincit labor—Conclusion._
FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. (With an Illustration.) 691
CHAPTER XVI.—_Mrs. Podgens’ Baby._
” XVII.—_Mrs. Proudie’s Conversazione._
” XVIII.—_The New Minister’s Patronage._
WILLIAM HOGARTH: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. Essays
on the Man, the Work, and the Time 716
_V.—Between London and Sheerness._
AN AUSTRIAN EMPLOYÉ 736
SIR SELF AND WOMANKIND. BY WILLIAM DUTHIE 742
THE POOR MAN’S KITCHEN 745
ROUNDABOUT PAPERS.—NO. 4 755
_On Some late Great Victories._
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.
_LEIPZIG: B. TAUCHNITZ. NEW YORK: WILLMER AND ROGERS.
MELBOURNE: G. ROBERTSON._
⁂ _The FIRST VOLUME of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE will be published on the 4th
of June, handsomely bound in embossed cloth, price Seven Shillings and
Sixpence._
_For the convenience of Subscribers, the Embossed Cloth Cover for the
Volume is sold separately, price One Shilling._
_Reading Covers for separate numbers have also been prepared, and may be
had of all Booksellers, price Sixpence in plain cloth, or One Shilling
and Sixpence in French Morocco._
NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.
⁂ _Communications for the Editor should be addressed to the care of
Messrs. SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, Cornhill and not to the Editor’s
private residence. The Editor cannot be responsible for the return of
rejected contributions._
THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
JUNE, 1860.
London the Stronghold of England.
1. The Commissioners appointed to examine and report upon the state of
our Coast Defences, have recommended the construction of additional
Fortifications at various points, which, it is computed, will involve
an outlay of several millions sterling. The defences of the dockyards
and arsenals are, very properly, to be strengthened so as to enable
them to resist the attacks of steam-ships armed with rifled cannon;
and every assailable part of the coast is to be protected against an
invading force. The defence of London forms no part of the scheme; that
most important topic having been omitted in the Defence Commission. The
reason for such an extraordinary omission need not here be discussed:
suffice it to say that, while the extremities are guarded, the heart of
the country is left exposed.[1] Our first line of defence, the Channel
Fleet, is provided to prevent the sudden descent of a hostile force upon
our shores. Our second line, consisting of forts on various parts of the
coast, will, no doubt, be strengthened by powerful batteries. A third
and innermost line of defences, for the protection of the Capital, the
seat of Government, the centre of the wealth and commerce of the nation,
is wanting. To show how this deficiency may be supplied, speedily, and
economically, and at the same time so effectually as to make London
impregnable and successful invasion hopeless, is the purpose of this
article.
2. If ever an invasion of England be attempted, the point to be aimed
at by the invader will be the capture of London; and for the very
simple reason that _it_ alone would repay the cost and risks of an
attack. If Portsmouth dockyard were destroyed, Devonport would remain;
if both were lost, there would be Chatham; give all three to an enemy,
and we have Pembroke; let him take all four, and England might still
build ships in the Clyde and the Severn and the Mersey by private
enterprise: better, perchance, than in royal dockyards, the gun-boat
failures notwithstanding. An enemy would not be likely to place himself
permanently on Portland Bill, or any other part of England; and certainly
no burning of dockyards, or any other similar contingency, would be
likely to induce England to capitulate and make terms. What might happen
if a conqueror were to get possession of the Bank of England, and appoint
a General of Division Governor _pro tem._, who would make the bank
parlour his head-quarters, and bid his soldiers mount guard over the
bullion-vaults, it is difficult to say. With London in a state of siege,
a Provost-Marshal installed at the Mansion House, a park of artillery
on Tower Hill, the Royal Exchange and Guildhall converted into military
posts, and a foreign soldiery quartered upon the inhabitants, there would
be no “Quotations” of Consols on the Stock Exchange, nor any of the
usual telegrams or leading articles in the newspapers. The Government
would be powerless for anything but “making terms” with the invading
foe; Parliament would be nowhere; martial law alone would prevail; our
glorious old Constitution would be abrogated, and the monarchy itself
might be in jeopardy. The day of England’s disgrace and humiliation might
inaugurate a saturnalia of brutal soldiery; crime and misery, such as
the imagination recoils from conceiving, might desolate our hearths and
homes; and destruction of property to the value of untold millions would
involve paralysis of commerce, death of credit, stoppage of manufactures,
ruin of trade, and the dissolution of every bond of law and society: nay,
even this frightful calamity might be heightened by the horrors of the
sack of London.
3. But, it may be asked, is such a contingency possible? For there are
those who refuse to entertain the idea of an invasion of England ever
being attempted. Rather than contemplate the probable consequences of
a successful invasion, they ridicule the idea of its probability, and
stigmatize as panic-mongers all who regard the possibility of such a
disaster. That the idea of England being invaded is not absurd, we have
the testimony of Wellington himself, and the call upon the nation for
millions of money to prepare against the contingency. And since it is
proved that this country is open to invasion, the impossibility of such
an attempt being successful should be demonstrated so clearly, by the
strength of our defensive preparations, that no foreign foe would dare to
make the attempt.
4. As it is, however, the question whether England could be invaded,
and London taken and sacked, has been frequently discussed by military
engineers on the Continent, and answered by them in the affirmative.[2]
The only difference of opinion that exists is as to the best plan of
proceeding, the amount of forces required, and the places where troops
should be landed. Is it impossible that an enemy, with a fleet nearly
matching our own, and able to embark, at any moment, two or three hundred
thousand troops in four or five divisions, and launch them against the
most assailable parts of our coast, should so lay his plans as to reach
London before we could prevent him? Resolved upon an attempt to occupy
the metropolis, he could make a number of feints and attacks at different
points, with a fair chance of succeeding in one; which would be all that
he would want. A naval action might be fought and lost by England; or, if
not lost, the fleet might be seriously crippled: even whilst the battle
was fighting, or after it was fought, troops might be landed on the coast
at quite another part of the country.
5. We would not infer, from the fact of the fortification of London not
being named in the National Defence Commission, that the Government shut
their eyes to the danger of the metropolis being unprotected; especially
as certain incidents bearing upon the subject are well known to have
occurred, which were calculated to open the eyes of the most passive
and unsuspecting administration. But the remoteness and uncertainty of
the possible peril, combined with a prudent desire to avoid the danger
of creating a panic by implying a doubt of the durability of peace, may
induce even a vigilant executive to postpone precautions which might
denote distrust, until it be too late to adopt them with due effect. If
this be so, the public voice should demand that the heart of England
shall not be left to the chance of an extemporized and therefore
inadequate defence, and that the Capital shall be rendered secure against
an invading force. Such a demand incessantly and resolutely put forward,
would not only strengthen the hands of the Ministry, but supply them with
the needful justification to act, as they are, perhaps, already inclined
to do. Indeed, the fortification of London is a necessary supplement to
the Volunteer force; and the spontaneous offer of our riflemen having
been accepted by the Queen and the Government, it is not likely that
the voice of the nation, if raised to demand fortifications which the
volunteers of the metropolitan districts could defend—and which would
so strengthen our national defences as to render successful invasion
hopeless, by making London an impregnable stronghold—would be unheeded.
For surely no government would refuse a million to insure the safety of
the metropolis and frustrate the aim of an invader, especially as the
protection of the Capital is of paramount importance in any scheme of
National Defences.
6. Again, our fleet might be passed, or even decoyed away, as Nelson’s
was; and then there are about 200 miles of our coast on which an enemy
could land within four days’ march of London. In those short four days
the safety of London would have to be secured, and our work of resistance
to the invader be done. Within that time the enemy must be brought to a
stand. But how is this to be done? Will he be brought up by clouds of
skirmishers, hovering on his flank and rear, and slowly retreating as he
advances his _tirailleurs_? Can we hope, with any number of irregular
riflemen, however perfect may be their practice or superior their
intelligence, so to reduce his numbers and disorganize his ranks, as to
oblige him to pause in his career?—no more than a man would be stopped by
an attack of angry wasps.
7. No! the only stop to an enemy in that hasty rush would be a general
action; and if we give ourselves three days out of the four, which is
little enough, to collect the various component parts of our motley
forces—if we even accomplish this, and are prepared to meet the enemy on
the third day, the action must be fought within one day’s march of London.
8. All honour to the volunteers who have so nobly stepped out at their
country’s call; but on that day—without apprenticeship to their bloody
task, without having ever seen a shot fired in anger—they must match
themselves against veteran legions, led on by well-known and well-tried
leaders, with all their plans of operation ready prepared, and with the
prospect of the sack of the richest city in Europe, and the consummation,
perhaps, of long-nourished plans of revenge.
9. What Englishman would not give all that he had to ensure the victory
on such a day? Who that has a mother, a sister, a wife, or a daughter
living in London, but would make any sacrifice to guard against the
_possibility_ of what might happen, if in that day the issue of this
battle was to be decided against us?
10. Neither confidence in the justice of our cause, nor reliance on the
valour of our defenders, can prevent the mind from growing dizzy at the
thought of what may be the result of that action: for all must depend on
_that_. There would be no time nor space for rallying. _That_ one battle
would decide the fate of England.
11. But this is a fate against which we may guard, with certainty of
success, by adopting precautions which in all cases have been proved to
be sufficient.
12. London’s safety may be secured by the same means by which Wellington
saved his handful of troops in Spain, when Massena was advancing with
his superior army, as it seemed to annihilate him. Napoleon’s order had
gone forth to drive “the leopards” into the sea, and there seemed no
one who could say it might not be done. What made Massena halt in his
advance? Why did he sit down for a whole winter, his army melting away
like snow from off those hills on which it had rested so long? Because
he came in sight of some poor mounds of earth at Torres Vedras,—little
earthen redoubts, thrown up on every vantage ground,—all of which had
been rendered impregnable by the very man whom Massena knew that he had
sufficient strength to crush in the open field; but who, through this
protection, was enabled to brave him, without a moment’s uneasiness, for
a whole winter, during which time he recruited his army by rest and by
supplies from England. The result was the complete discomfiture of the
French army.
13. How was it that, when we had landed in safety in the Crimea, had won
the heights of Alma, and were within two days’ march of Sebastopol, the
victorious forces of France and England were suddenly brought to a stand
and their strength so paralyzed that a year elapsed before we could gain
a mile in advance upon an enemy whom we had in a few hours driven from
his chosen position in the open field?
14. Why in the late campaign in Italy did the French Emperor so suddenly
depart from his programme of “From the Alps to the Adriatic,” and that,
too, after his enemy had proved himself so hopelessly inferior in open
contest? Whatever was the cause of these sudden pauses of great and
conquering armies, it behoves us to know it; for it is this effect which
we desire to produce. We may, and probably shall be taken by surprise;
we may, as has generally happened, get worsted at the commencement: our
volunteers, as well as some of our generals, may require some little
apprenticeships; but if we can only _gain time_,[3] who would for a
moment fear the final result?
15. Let us, then, learn a lesson from these three great examples of
modern warfare. The means we must employ are defensive as well as
offensive resistance, and the science we must call to our aid is
_Fortification_, properly applied to the metropolis, and _entrusted to
our Volunteers_.
16. But before discussing the mode of fortification we will dispose of
the superficial arguments brought against such a means of defence. Of
course there will be the usual cuckoo cry—“Fortifications! why, have not
we strong fortifications at Portsmouth, and Plymouth, and Dover? You
don’t think we can fortify all round the coast? Fortification! What is
the good of building batteries and throwing up earth-works that will be
all out of date and useless in a few years, and at an enormous cost? We
can make better use of our money than that.” And the military man will
come forward and say that our army is small enough as it is, without
locking up a part of it in fortresses which may be masked and passed by;
while the engineer will say we can easily throw up hasty field-works at
the last moment. These objections are really worthless.
17. There is a hazy kind of national prejudice against fortifying,
and especially the metropolis. Yet this was done by the Romans in the
middle ages, and even by the Parliamentarians in defence of liberty
against despotism. In 1642 the very plan now suggested was followed by
Cromwell. Forts were erected at the entrances to the city, and lines and
entrenchments connected them together. The Common Council and other chief
men of the city, with their wives and families, three thousand porters
with their wives, and five thousand shoemakers, six thousand tailors,
and five thousand sailors, all worked in the trenches at different days
in May and June. “Oh, but we have our wooden walls!” Thank God, we have
our wooden walls, and we trust them; but a fleet may be, as it has been,
decoyed out of the Channel; indeed, it is possible that even an English
fleet might meet with a temporary reverse; and in these days of steam,
the time thus gained need not be more than an hour or two to enable
the enemy to get the start of us. To an invading force, the fear of
their retreat being cut off, and being severed from the base of their
operations, would not be thought of. If London is worth attacking, it is
worth running the risk of letting an army be left to its own resources,
or even of being cut off altogether. Our fleet is a great protection,
without doubt; but it does not, and cannot, give that perfect assurance
against a sacking of London which is what we demand. The fleet is a right
thing, but may not be always in the right place.
18. We must have a new and inner line of defence. “Well,” opponents will
say, “we have our great fortresses of Portsmouth and Plymouth, which we
are strengthening at this very time.” Portsmouth and Plymouth are most
valuable, but not directly as defences of the capital: they are virtually
important; but only as naval arsenals, as storehouses, refitting places,
or _points d’affaires_ for our navy. No! we may have as many lines as
we please, but for our last and great efficient line of defence we must
come nearer home. The line, to be well manned, must be short. We must
fortify the point that is most liable to attack. London itself must be
our _Quadrilateral_.
19. The military argument that the construction of fortresses
necessitates the locking up of a great part of our regular troops, was
formerly, no doubt, a strong and valid objection; but it will no longer
hold good: whatever hesitation we may have in trusting untried troops for
the first time in the field, there can be no doubt that we may safely
entrust to them the charge of our fortresses. This is a work, too,
which the intelligence and readiness of resources that we are sure to
find in troops raised from our middle classes, would render volunteers
particularly fitted to perform.
20. If the metropolis were safe, an invader would gain nothing by masking
and passing that position: it being itself the goal to which all his
efforts were tending. _The fortifications of the metropolis would not
lock up our troops: they would have a directly contrary effect._ In the
present state of things, a large covering force _must_ always be employed
in keeping guard over London, and the rest of the kingdom thus be left
comparatively defenceless: but with London fortified, and in the charge
of our volunteers, we could afford to keep almost all our army in the
field.
21. The objection that fortifications are becoming out of date, is
so puerile as scarcely to deserve refutation. We know that, with the
exception of such modifications as have been rendered necessary by
improvements in arms and projectiles, the art of fortification has
scarcely undergone a change for the better since the days of Marshal
Vauban. But are we therefore to reject it until we have a better system?
The percussion musket with which we re-armed all our foot soldiers a few
years ago has been superseded by the Enfield rifle. The Armstrong gun is
rapidly replacing the smooth-bored cannon on our forts and in our ships.
And steam has rendered necessary the reconstruction of our navy. Yet we
don’t leave our soldiers without rifles, our batteries without guns, or
our fleet without steamers, because those we are now constructing may,
(or rather will, most certainly) become out of date in a few years.
22. As we shall show hereafter, the cost of fortifying London could be no
obstacle: it would be an insignificant premium for such an insurance.
23. Fortification is the art of all others that seems at the present
moment fitted to supply our wants. It is the very _complement of our
volunteer movement_. We boast of the talent and intelligence of our
volunteer defenders; and shall we neglect the means of turning that
talent to the best and most profitable account? If our volunteers, from
their superior intelligence, would make the best riflemen, surely these
very qualities fit them in a still higher degree for engineers.
24. Fortification seems as if it were specially contrived for the
benefit of England and Englishmen; for it makes money to do the work of
soldiers. We are the richest country in Europe, with the smallest body
of men under arms. Fortification will render irregular troops as good
as, nay, even better than, regular. Our regular army is but a handful
of men compared with the armies of other great powers; but thanks to
our Volunteers, we are rich in perhaps the finest irregular troops in
the world. Fortification affords the best guarantee against a _coup de
main_; and such a mode of attack is precisely that which we have most
reason to apprehend. Fortification gives the means of gaining time at the
commencement of a campaign; and this of itself is a godsend to the ever
unready Saxon.
25. There is every reason why we should largely avail ourselves of a
science which above all others distinguishes the educated from the
uneducated soldier, the man of intellect from the mere fighting machine.
26. We have shown not only that there is no valid objection to
fortifications, but that they are the best means of defence for us, and
that our metropolis is the point of all others that seems to stand in
need of defence: it is the heart without a breast-plate.
27. We now therefore proceed to the practical application of the
argument. _How_ should London be fortified?
28. In the minds of many may rise visions of an immense bulwark, a kind
of great wall of China, drawn round London, and provided with ditches,
drawbridges, and barred gates; and those who are acquainted with the
customs of continental towns will probably connect them with barriers
and _octrois_, and men examining your luggage and poking among your legs
for contraband articles. On the contrary, now, thanks to our railways,
our long-range guns, and to our volunteers, the fortifications which are
necessary to secure London may be so unobtrusive, and so removed from the
main highways, that no Londoner, save such as know what fortification
really is, would ever realize the fact that they were in any way
connected with its defence.
29. We only want half-a-dozen tolerably large forts, well placed, to
form, as it were, the salient points of our defence. Let the reader
refer to the diagram, and he will see six stars, one on Shooter’s Hill,
one on Norwood Hill to the South of the Crystal Palace, one at or near
Wimbledon, a fourth somewhere near Harrow, then at Mill Hill, and our
last within good range of Enfield Lock. A set of dots (●) then come in
about midway between the five spaces.
[Illustration]
30. Let us now consider the significance of the stars which denote forts:
and first, that on Shooter’s Hill, as the most important.
31. The security of our great arsenal of Woolwich demands (independently
of any plea of metropolitan defence) that this important position should
be occupied by a work of considerable strength. Such a fortress would
answer three purposes, each of them of paramount importance! In the first
place, it would remedy the extremely insecure state, and to an enemy the
most tempting defencelessness, of our greatest military manufactories and
arsenal; secondly, it would, by means of its outworks, effectually bar
the Thames from any gun-boat attack; and thirdly, it would form one of
the angles of our great polygon of positions for the defence of London.
The next of these angles would be at the spur of Norwood Hill; where it
would be necessary to construct a considerable fort. The third permanent
work would come in the immediate vicinity of Wimbledon, where the range
of hills again spurs out to the South; and these three would complete the
salient angles of the southern half of the defence of London. Probably
two works of a like nature would suffice for the northern division; and a
third might be added in the direction of, and perhaps either within range
of, or covering Enfield Lock, the great rifle factory for the Army.
32. These five or six forts should be regular permanent works, and of
sufficient importance to be secure against a _coup de main_: in fact,
to compel an enemy to sit down before them for a siege of greater or
less duration. They should all be armed with heavy long-range guns, and
should besides contain surplus stores of both guns and ammunition for the
armament of other works, to be hereafter described.
33. Such would be all the extent of fortification necessary to be
undertaken at first; but to complete the chain, it would be requisite
that plots of ground should be acquired in suitable positions: generally,
one between each of the permanent forts; and on each of these pieces of
ground should be carefully traced the outline of an earthen work, of
extent and form to suit each particular case.
34. The execution of these works could be undertaken by the garrisons
of the permanent works, which would be relieved from time to time. They
would thus form a series of military industrial schools, in which a large
proportion of our troops might learn the all-important and much-neglected
art, how to use a spade in their own defence. Perhaps some of our
volunteers would not be above taking a few lessons of the same kind. Such
as have formed themselves into engineer corps would of course do so, and
we should thus be able to place another important mode of defence in the
hands of these gentlemen. The outworks of the main forts, indeed, might
be executed by the same means, and they could thus be kept continually
being increased in strength.
35. The secondary earth-works would either be armed at once, upon the
completion of the _enceinte_, or they might be supplied with guns and
ammunition from the main permanent works when occasion might require. In
the latter case, their cost would be very trifling, as it would not be
necessary to construct permanent magazines or stores.
36. These two sets of works having been completed, it would then merely
remain to have the spaces of ground between the several forts carefully
considered, with a view to their occupation by a series of smaller works,
either enclosed or open to the rear. The latter might in this case be
left to be undertaken upon the menace of attack.
37. We should then have London surrounded by a series of strong points of
resistance, consisting of chains of detached works, with large intervals
between them, through which our regular and irregular troops might
advance and retire, and act with a perfect certainty of success.
38. As to the garrisons of the permanent works; we have the Artillery at
Woolwich, who would garrison their own fort at Shooter’s Hill, and thus
be on the spot to assist in the armament of the secondary works.
39. Now that we have given up the idea of employing our troops as police,
we may surely abolish a large proportion of our London barracks, and give
the Guards the benefit of suburban quarters. By this means we should do
much towards improving the health of the troops, and the sale of the
ground on which many of the present barracks are built would go far
towards supplying the cost for the construction of those now proposed.
40. As the presence of a considerable strength of engineers would be
necessary in the construction of the various secondary works, it would be
advisable that one of the large forts should be garrisoned by this force.
This would, perhaps, be best accomplished by the removal of our School
of Military Engineers from Chatham; and it would be most conveniently
located at Wimbledon, where the necessary waste ground could be obtained
for practice in earth-works, while the Thames at Richmond would be
sufficiently close for practice in hydraulic works and in pontooning.
Moreover, the entire force round the metropolis would be able to avail
themselves of this additional means of military education: indeed the
engineers themselves, however learned or scientific they may be, would
be none the worse for being placed within nearer reach of the various
meetings of learned and scientific societies which are always taking
place in the metropolis.
41. Let us now review the positions that we trust we have established. We
have London surrounded by a cordon of detached forts, showing in every
direction an armed front. We have water communication from east to west
of the position, and ample communication by railway and telegraph in all
directions, and to every fort. The leading lines of railway and the river
are everywhere barred, and these very lines put us in communication with
our great camps at Aldershott, Colchester, and Shorncliffe. Within our
circle of forts we have, in material, the whole resources of the nation
in artillery, military stores, small-arms, and ammunition; and as regards
the _personal_, we include the head-quarters of the artillery, our picked
troops, the Guards, the Engineers, the largest companies of Volunteer
corps in the country, and, finally, a population of 8,000,000 from
which to recruit: and with such a position to defend, every man might
be a soldier. We have also the means of obtaining unlimited supplies
of all kinds from the country, and of despatching troops in different
directions: for the idea of investing a position of such extent and
situation could not for a moment be entertained by any army that could be
introduced into this country.
42. With such defences, London might be safely entrusted to the keeping
of a garrison of Volunteers, with but a sprinkling of regulars; so that
the entire Army and Militia would be left free to take the field. Such a
state of things would afford absolute security; for no enemy would then
be mad enough to dream of a descent upon the heart of our empire. With
London safe, and our army thus reinforced by the covering force that
would otherwise be constantly required to defend it, we might, indeed,
laugh at the menace of invasion.
43. What, then, should hinder us from at once putting ourselves beyond
the probability of surprise? In point of inconvenience to the metropolis,
it would be no more than the forts at Dover. The expense would be a mere
nothing to what we are spending every day in less important matters. We
are annually building large barracks for our troops; we have only to
build the next six that we require in these particular positions; so
that, with the exception of those to supply the place of the guards’
barracks, the outlay for barracks may be almost omitted from the
calculation: and in the case of these, their cost would be met by the
sale of their present sites.
44. Again, in calculating the expense, the main works at Shooter’s
Hill may be thrown out; as they must, of necessity, be undertaken for
the defence of Woolwich, and do not come within the category of works
executed solely for the protection of London.
45. What, therefore, remains to be done at once, is to purchase, say,
five plots of ground of fifty acres each, and six plots of thirty acres
each, in all, 430 acres of land: this, considering that some of the
sites are waste land, may possibly be put down at 200_l._ per acre =
86,000_l._ The main works may, perhaps, be estimated at 80,000_l._ each,
or 400,000_l._; so that the entire cost would not exceed half a million
sterling, excluding Woolwich, which must be fortified in any case: an
amount far less than that which the nation is spending ungrudgingly in
constructing iron plated vessels, which, at best, are only experimental,
and may prove failures.
46. A sum of half a million spent on the construction of six large Forts,
would, in the next twelve months, establish a firm and adequate basis for
all future defence. The field-works between the forts might be executed
by the garrisons in them, whilst the smaller earth-works need not be
thrown up until there was an absolute threat, or an imminent danger
of invasion. Surely, the spirit which has evoked the Volunteers, will
provide the funds to make London impregnable, and invasion, therefore,
hopeless.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Such an omission seems hardly credible; but the Commission published
in the _London Gazette_ of 26th August, 1859, recites only that inquiries
are to be made “into the present state, condition, and sufficiency of
the fortifications existing for the defence of our United Kingdom, and
of examining into all works at present in progress for the improvement
thereof, and for considering the most effectual means of rendering the
same complete, especially all such works of defence as are intended for
the protection of our royal arsenals and dockyards in case of any hostile
attack being made by foreign enemies both by sea and land.” Not a word
about the metropolis.
[2] “Mais si soixante mille Français prenaient terre entre Hastings et
Douvres, et qu’une bataille heureuse leur permit de s’avancer jusque sur
les borde de la Medway et de la Tamise, ils pourraient, en vingt-quatre
heures, détruire plusieurs milliards de matériels et de marchandise, et
porter à la fortune de l’Angleterre un coup dont elle aurait peine à se
relever.”—_Extract of Lieut.-Col. Ardent’s (of the Corps du Génie) paper
on “The Defence of the Country south of London,” from papers on subjects
connected with the duties of the corps of Royal Engineers._ 1849.
[3] “If, in 1814, Paris had possessed a citadel capable of holding out
for only eight days, the destinies of the world would have been changed.
If, in 1805, Vienna had been fortified, the battle of Ulm would not have
decided the war. If, in 1806, Berlin had been fortified, the army beaten
at Jena might have rallied there till the Russian army advanced to its
relief. If, in 1808, Madrid had been fortified, the French army, after
the victories of Espenosa, Indela, and Somosierra, could never have
ventured to march upon that capital, leaving the English army in the
neighbourhood of Salamanca in its rear.”—_Alison’s Europe_, c. 37.
Lovel the Widower.
CHAPTER VI.
CECILIA’S SUCCESSOR.
[Illustration]
Monsieur et honore Lecteur! I see, as perfectly as if you were sitting
opposite to me, the scorn depicted on your noble countenance, when you
read my confession that I, Charles Batchelor, Esquire, did burglariously
enter the premises of Edward Drencher, Esquire, M.R.C.S.I. (phew! the
odious pestle-grinder, I never could bear him!) and break open, and read
a certain letter, his property. I may have been wrong, but I am candid.
I tell my misdeeds; some fellows hold their tongues. Besides, my good
man, consider the temptation, and the horrid insight into the paper which
Bedford’s report had already given me. Would _you_ like to be told that
the girl of your heart was playing at fast and loose with it, had none of
her own, or had given hers to another? I don’t want to make a Mrs. Robin
Gray of any woman, and merely because “her mither presses her sair” to
marry her against her will. “If Miss Prior,” thought I, “prefers this
lint-scraper to me, ought I to balk her? He is younger, and stronger,
certainly, than myself. Some people may consider him handsome. (By the
way, what a remarkable thing it is about many women, that, in affairs
of the heart, they don’t seem to care or understand whether a man is a
gentleman or not.) It may be it is my superior fortune and social station
which may induce Elizabeth to waver in her choice between me and my
bleeding, bolusing, toothdrawing rival. If so, and I am only taken from
mercenary considerations, what a pretty chance of subsequent happiness do
either of us stand! Take the vaccinator, girl, if thou preferrest him! I
know what it is to be crossed in love already. It’s hard, but I can bear
it! I ought to know, I must know, I _will_ know what is in that paper!”
So saying, as I pace round and round the table where the letter lies
flickering white under the midnight taper, I stretch out my hand—I seize
the paper—I——well, I own it—there—yes—I took it, and I read it.
[Illustration: LOVEL’S MOTHERS]
Or rather, I may say, I read that part of IT which the bleeder
and blisterer had flung down. It was but a fragment of a letter—a
fragment—oh! how bitter to swallow! A lump of Epsom salt could not
have been more disgusting. It appeared (from Bedford’s statement) that
Æsculapius, on getting into his gig, had allowed this scrap of paper to
whisk out of his pocket—the rest he read, no doubt, under the eyes of
the writer. Very likely, during the perusal, he had taken and squeezed
the false hand which wrote the lines. Very likely the first part of
the _precious document_ contained compliments to him—from the horrible
context I judge so—compliments to that vendor of leeches and bandages,
into whose heart I daresay I wished ten thousand lancets might be stuck,
as I perused the FALSE ONE’S wheedling address to him! So ran the
document. How well every word of it was engraven on my anguished heart.
If page _three_, which I suppose was about the bit of the letter which I
got, was as it was—what must page _one_ and _two_ have been? The dreadful
document began, then, thus:—
“——dear hair in the locket, which I shall _ever_ wear for the sake of
_him who gave it_”—(dear hair! indeed—disgusting carrots! She should have
been ashamed to call it “dear hair”)—“for the sake of him who gave it,
and whose _bad temper_ I shall pardon, because I think, in spite of his
faults, he is a _little fond_ of his poor Lizzie! Ah, Edward! how _could_
you go on so the last time about poor Mr. B.! Can you imagine that I
can ever have more than a filial regard for the kind old gentleman?”
(_Il était question de moi, ma parole d’honneur._ _I_ was the kind old
gentleman!) “I have known him since my childhood. He was intimate in our
family in earlier and happier days; made our house his home; and, I must
say, was most kind to all of us children. If he has vanities, you naughty
boy, is he the only one of his sex who is vain? Can you fancy that such
an old creature (an _old muff_, as you call him, you wicked, satirical
man!) could ever make an impression on my heart? No, sir!” (Aha! So I was
an old muff, was I?) “Though I don’t wish to make _you_ vain too, or that
other people should laugh at you, as you do at poor dear Mr. B., I think,
sir, you need but look _in your glass_ to see that you need not be afraid
of such a rival as _that_. You fancy he is attentive to me? If you looked
only a little angrily at him, he would fly back to London. To-day, when
your _horrid little patient_ did presume to offer to take my hand, when
I boxed his little wicked ears and sent him _spinning_ to the end of the
room—poor Mr. Batch was so _frightened_ that he did not _dare_ to come
into the room, and I saw him peeping behind a statue on the lawn, and he
would not come in until the _servants arrived_. Poor man! We cannot all
of us have courage like _a certain Edward_, who I know is as _bold as a
lion_. Now, sir, you must not be quarrelling with that wretched little
captain for being rude. I have shown him that I can very well _take care
of myself_. I knew the _odious thing_ the first moment I set eyes on him,
though he had forgotten me. Years ago I met him, and I remember he was
equally _rude and tips_——”
Here the letter was torn. Beyond “_tips_” it did not go. But that was
enough, wasn’t it? To this woman I had offered a gentle and manly, I may
say a kind and tender heart—I had offered four hundred a year in funded
property, besides my house in Devonshire Street, Bloomsbury—and she
preferred _Edward_, forsooth, at the sign of the Gallipot: and may ten
thousand pestles smash my brains!
You may fancy what a night I had after reading that scrap. I promise
you I did not sleep much. I heard the hours toll as I kept vigil. I lay
amidst shattered capitals, broken shafts of the tumbled palace which
I had built in imagination—oh! how bright and stately! I sate amongst
the ruins of my own happiness, surrounded by the murdered corpses of
innocent-visioned domestic joys. Tick—tock! Moment after moment I heard
on the clock the clinking footsteps of wakeful grief. I fell into a doze
towards morning, and dreamed that I was dancing with Glorvina, when I
woke with a start, finding Bedford arrived with my shaving water, and
opening the shutters. When he saw my haggard face he wagged his head.
“You _have_ read it, I see, sir,” says he.
“Yes, Dick,” groaned I, out of bed, “I have swallowed it.” And I laughed
I may say a fiendish laugh. “And now I have taken it, not poppy nor
mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups in his shop (hang him) will be able
to medicine me to sleep for some time to come!”
“She has no heart, sir. I don’t think she cares for t’other chap much,”
groans the gloomy butler. “She can’t, after having known _us_”—and my
companion in grief, laying down my hot-water jug, retreats.
I did not cut any part of myself with my razor. I shaved quite calmly.
I went to the family at breakfast. My impression is I was sarcastic and
witty. I smiled most kindly at Miss Prior when she came in. Nobody could
have seen from my outward behaviour that anything was wrong within. I
was an apple. Could you inspect the worm at my core! No, no. Somebody, I
think old Baker, complimented me on my good looks. I was a smiling lake.
Could you see on my placid surface, amongst my sheeny water-lilies, that
a corpse was lying under my cool depths? “A bit of devilled chicken?”
“No, thank you. By the way, Lovel, I think I must go to town to-day.”
“You’ll come back to dinner, of course?” “Well—no.” “Oh, stuff! You
promised me to-day and to-morrow. Robinson, Brown, and Jones are coming
to-morrow, and you must be here to meet them.” Thus we prattle on. I
answer, I smile, I say, “Yes, if you please, another cup,” or, “Be so
good as to hand the muffin,” or what not. But I am dead. I feel as if
I am under ground, and buried. Life, and tea, and clatter, and muffins
are going on, of course; and daisies spring, and the sun shines on the
grass whilst I am under it. Ah, dear me! it’s very cruel: it’s very, very
lonely: it’s very odd! I don’t belong to the world any more. I have done
with it. I am shelved away. But my spirit returns and flitters through
the world, which it has no longer anything to do with: and my ghost,
as it were, comes and smiles at my own tombstone. Here lies Charles
Batchelor, the Unloved One. Oh! alone, alone, alone! Why, Fate! didst
ordain that I should be companionless? Tell me where the Wandering Jew
is, that I may go and sit with him. Is there any place at a lighthouse
vacant? Who knows where is the Island of Juan Fernandez? Engage me a ship
and take me there at once. Mr. R. Crusoe, I think. My dear Robinson, have
the kindness to hand me over your goatskin cap, breeches, and umbrella.
Go home, and leave _me_ here. Would you know who is the solitariest man
on earth? That man am I. Was that cutlet which I ate at breakfast anon,
was that lamb which frisked on the mead last week (beyond yon wall where
the unconscious cucumber lay basking which was to form his sauce)—I
say, was that lamb made so tender, that I might eat him? And my heart,
then? Poor heart! wert thou so softly constituted only that women might
stab thee? So I am a Muff, am I? And she will always wear a lock of his
“dear hair,” will she? Ha! ha! The men on the omnibus looked askance
as they saw me laugh. They thought it was from Hanwell, not Putney, I
was escaping. Escape? Who can escape? I went into London. I went to
the Clubs. Jawkins, of course, was there; and my impression is that he
talked as usual. I took another omnibus, and went back to Putney. “I
will go back and revisit my grave,” I thought. It is said that ghosts
loiter about their former haunts a good deal when they are first dead;
flit wistfully among their old friends and companions, and I daresay,
expect to hear a plenty of conversation and friendly tearful remark about
themselves. But suppose they return, and find nobody talking of them
at all? Or suppose, Hamlet (Père, and Royal Dane) comes back and finds
Claudius and Gertrude very comfortable over a piece of cold meat, or what
not? Is the late gentleman’s present position as a ghost a very pleasant
one? Crow, Cocks! Quick, Sun-dawn! Open, Trap-door! _Allons_: it’s best
to pop underground again. So I am a Muff, am I? What a curious thing that
walk up the hill to the house was! What a different place Shrublands
was yesterday to what it is to-day! Has the sun lost its light, and the
flowers their bloom, and the joke its sparkle, and the dish its savour?
Why, bless my soul! what is Lizzy herself—only an ordinary woman—freckled
certainly—incorrigibly dull, and without a scintillation of humour: and
you mean to say, Charles Batchelor, that your heart once beat about
_that_ woman? Under the intercepted letter of that cold assassin, my
heart had fallen down dead, irretrievably dead. I remember, _àpropos_ of
the occasion of my first death, that perpetrated by Glorvina—on my second
visit to Dublin—with what a strange sensation I walked under some trees
in the Phœnix Park beneath which it had been my custom to meet my False
One Number 1. There were the trees—there were the birds singing—there was
the bench on which we used to sit—the same, but how different! The trees
had a different foliage, exquisite amaranthine; the birds sang a song
paradisaical; the bench was a bank of roses and fresh flowers, which
young Love twined in fragrant chaplets around the statue of Glorvina.
Roses and fresh flowers? Rheumatisms and flannel-waistcoats, you silly
old man! Foliage and Song? O namby-pamby driveller! A statue?—a doll,
thou twaddling old dullard!—a doll with carmine cheeks, and a heart
stuffed with bran——I say, on the night preceding that ride to and from
Putney, I had undergone death—in that omnibus I had been carried over
to t’other side of the Stygian Shore. I returned but as a passionless
ghost, remembering my life-days, but not feeling any more. Love was
dead, Elizabeth! Why, the doctor came, and partook freely of lunch,
and I was not angry. Yesterday I called him names, and hated him, and
was jealous of him. To-day I felt no rivalship; and no envy at his
success; and no desire to supplant him. No—I swear—not the slightest
wish to make Elizabeth mine if she would. I might have cared for her
yesterday—yesterday I had a heart. Psha! my good sir or madam. You sit
by me at dinner. Perhaps you are handsome, and use your eyes. Ogle away.
Don’t balk yourself, pray. But if you fancy I care a threepenny-piece
about you—or for your eyes—or for your bonny brown hair—or for your
sentimental remarks, sidelong warbled—or for your praise to (not of)
my face—or for your satire behind my back—ah me!—how mistaken you are!
_Peine perdue, ma chère dame!_ The digestive organs are still in good
working order—but the heart? _Caret._
I was perfectly civil to Mr. Drencher, and, indeed, wonder to think how
in my irritation I had allowed myself to apply (mentally) any sort of
disagreeable phrases to a most excellent and deserving and good-looking
young man, who is beloved by the poor, and has won the just confidence of
an extensive circle of patients. I made no sort of remark to Miss Prior,
except about the weather and the flowers in the garden. I was bland,
easy, rather pleasant, not too high-spirited, you understand.—No: I vow
you could not have seen a nerve wince, or the slightest alteration in my
demeanour. I helped the two old dowagers; I listened to their twaddle; I
gaily wiped up with my napkin three-quarters of a glass of sherry which
Popham flung over my trowsers. I would defy you to know that I had gone
through the ticklish operation of an excision of the heart a few hours
previously. Heart—pooh! I saw Miss Prior’s lip quiver. Without a word
between us, she knew perfectly well that all was over as regarded her
late humble servant. _She_ winced once or twice. While Drencher was busy
with his plate, the grey eyes cast towards me interjectional looks of
puzzled entreaty. _She_, I say, winced; and I give you my word I did
not care a fig whether she was sorry, or pleased, or happy, or going to
be hung. And I can’t give a better proof of my utter indifference about
the matter, than the fact that I wrote two or three copies of verses
descriptive of my despair. They appeared, you may perhaps remember,
in one of the annuals of those days, and were generally attributed to
one of the most sentimental of our young poets. I remember the reviews
said they were “replete with emotion,” “full of passionate and earnest
feeling,” and so forth. Feeling, indeed!—ha! ha! “Passionate outbursts
of a grief-stricken heart!”—Passionate scrapings of a fiddlestick, my
good friend. “Lonely,” of course, rhymes with “only,” and “gushes” with
“blushes,” and “despair” with “hair,” and so on. Despair is perfectly
compatible with a good dinner, I promise you. Hair is false: hearts are
false. Grapes may be sour, but claret is good, my masters. Do you suppose
I am going to cry my eyes out, because Chloe’s are turned upon Strephon?
If you find any whimpering in mine, may they never wink at a bee’s-wing
again.
When the doctor rose presently, saying he would go and see the gardener’s
child, who was ill, and casting longing looks at Miss Prior, I assure you
I did not feel a tittle of jealousy, though Miss Bessy actually followed
Mr. Drencher into the lawn, under the pretext of calling back Miss Cissy,
who had run thither without her bonnet.
“Now, Lady Baker, which was right? you or I?” asks bonny Mrs. Bonnington,
wagging her head towards the lawn where this couple of innocents were
disporting.
“You thought there was an affair between Miss Prior and the medical
gentleman,” I say, smiling. “It was no secret, Mrs. Bonnington?”
“Yes, but there were others who were a little smitten in that quarter
too,” says Lady Baker, and she in turn wags _her_ old head towards me.
“You mean me?” I answer, as innocent as a new-born babe. “I am a burnt
child, Lady Baker; I have been at the fire, and am already thoroughly
done, thank you. One of your charming sex jilted me some years ago; and
once is quite enough, I am much obliged to you.”
This I said, not because it was true; in fact, it was the reverse of
truth; but if I choose to lie about my own affairs, pray, why not? And
though a strictly truth-telling man generally, when I do lie, I promise
you, I do it boldly and well.
“If, as I gather from Mrs. Bonnington, Mr. Drencher and Miss Prior like
each other, I wish my old friend joy. I wish Mr. Drencher joy with all my
heart. The match seems to me excellent. He is a deserving, a clever, and
a handsome young fellow; and I am sure, ladies, you can bear witness to
_her_ goodness, after all you have known of her.”
“My dear Batchelor,” says Mrs. Bonnington, still smiling and winking, “I
don’t believe one single word you say—not one single word!” And she looks
infinitely pleased as she speaks.
“Oh!” cries Lady Baker, “my good Mrs. Bonnington, you are always
match-making—don’t contradict me. You know you thought——”
“Oh, please don’t,” cries Mrs. B.
“I will. She thought, Mr. Batchelor, she actually thought that our son,
that my Cecilia’s husband, was smitten by the governess. I should like
to have seen him dare!” and her flashing eyes turn towards the late Mrs.
Lovel’s portrait, with its faded simper leering over the harp. “The idea
that any woman could succeed that angel indeed!”
“Indeed, I don’t envy her,” I said.
“You don’t mean, Batchelor, that my Frederick would not make any woman
happy?” cries the Bonnington. “He is only seven-and-thirty, very young
for his age, and the most affectionate of creatures. I’m surprised, and
it’s most cruel, and most unkind of you, to say that you don’t envy any
woman that marries my boy!”
“My dear good Mrs. Bonnington, you quite misapprehend me,” I remark.
“Why, when his late wife was alive,” goes on Mrs. B. sobbing, “you
know with what admirable sweetness and gentleness he bore her—her—bad
temper—excuse me, Lady Baker!”
“Oh, pray, abuse my departed angel!” cries the Baker; “say that your son
should marry and forget her—say that those darlings should be made to
forget their mother. She was a woman of birth, and a woman of breeding,
and a woman of family, and the Bakers came in with the Conqueror, Mrs.
Bonnington——”
“I think I heard of one in the court of Pharaoh,” I interposed.
“And to say that a Baker is not worthy of a Lovel is _pretty_ news
indeed! Do you hear _that_, Clarence?”
“Hear what, ma’am?” says Clarence, who enters at this juncture. “You’re
speakin’ loud enough—though blesht if I hear two sh-shyllables.”
“You wretched boy, you have been smoking!”
“Shmoking—haven’t I?” says Clarence with a laugh; “and I’ve been at the
Five Bells, and I’ve been having a game of billiards with an old friend
of mine,” and he lurches towards a decanter.
“Ah! don’t drink any more, my child!” cries the mother.
“I’m as sober as a judge, I tell you. You leave so precious little in the
bottle at dinner, that I must get it when I can, mustn’t I, Batchelor,
old boy? We had a row yesterday, hadn’t we? No, it was sugar-baker. I’m
not angry—you’re not angry. Bear no malish. Here’s your health, old boy!”
The unhappy gentleman drank his bumper of sherry, and, tossing his hair
off his head, said—“Where’s the governess—where’s Bessy Bellenden? Who’s
that kickin’ me under the table, I say?”
“Where is who?” asks his mother.
“Bessy Bellenden—the governess—that’s her real name. Known her these ten
years. Used to dansh at Prinsh’s Theatre. Remember her in the corps de
ballet. Ushed to go behind the shenes. Dooshid pretty girl!” maunders
out the tipsy youth; and as the unconscious subject of his mischievous
talk enters the room, again he cries out, “Come and sit by me, Bessy
Bellenden, I say!”
The matrons rose with looks of horror in their faces. “A ballet dancer!”
cries Mrs. Bonnington. “A ballet dancer!” echoes Lady Baker. “Young
woman, is this true?”
“The Bulbul and the Roshe—hay?” laughs the captain. “Don’t you remember
you and Fosbery in blue and shpangles? Always all right, though,
Bellenden was. Fosbery washn’t: but Bellenden was. Give you every credit
for that, Bellenden. Boxsh my earsh. Bear no malish—no—no—malish! Get
some more sherry, you—whatsh your name—Bedford, butler—and I’ll pay you
the money I owe you;” and he laughs his wild laugh, utterly unconscious
of the effect he is producing. Bedford stands staring at him as pale as
death. Poor Miss Prior is as white as marble. Wrath, terror, and wonder
are in the countenances of the dowagers. It is an awful scene!
“Mr. Batchelor knows that it was to help my family I did it,” says the
poor governess.
“Yes, by George! and nobody can say a word against her,” bursts in Dick
Bedford, with a sob; “and she is as honest as any woman here!”
“Pray, who told you to put your oar in?” cries the tipsy captain.
“And you knew that this person was on the stage, and you introduced her
into my son’s family? Oh, Mr. Batchelor, Mr. Batchelor, I didn’t think it
of you! Don’t speak to me, Miss!” cries the flurried Bonnington.
“You brought this woman to the children of my adored Cecilia?” calls out
the other dowager. “Serpent, leave the room! Pack your trunks, viper!
and quit the house this instant. Don’t touch her, Cissy. Come to me, my
blessing. Go away, you horrid wretch!”
“She ain’t a horrid wretch; and when I was ill she was very good to us,”
breaks in Pop, with a roar of tears: “and you shan’t go, Miss Prior—my
dear, pretty Miss Prior. You shan’t go!” and the child rushes up to the
governess, and covers her neck with tears and kisses.
“Leave her, Popham, my darling blessing!—leave that woman!” cries Lady
Baker.
“I won’t, you old beast!—and she sha-a-ant go. And I wish you was
dead—and, my dear, you shan’t go, and Pa shan’t let you!”—shouts the boy.
“O, Popham, if Miss Prior has been naughty, Miss Prior must go!” says
Cecilia, tossing up her head.
“Spoken like my daughter’s child!” cries Lady Baker: and little Cissy,
having flung her little stone, looks as if she had performed a very
virtuous action.
“God bless you, Master Pop,—you are a trump, you are!” says Mr. Bedford.
“Yes, that I am, Bedford; and she shan’t go, shall she?” cries the boy.
But Bessy stooped down sadly, and kissed him. “Yes, I must, dear,” she
said.
“Don’t touch him! Come away, sir! Come away from her this moment!”
shrieked the two mothers.
“I nursed him through the scarlet fever, when his own mother would not
come near him,” says Elizabeth, gently.
“I’m blest if she didn’t,” sobs Bedford—“and—bub—bub—bless you, Master
Pop!”
“That child is wicked enough, and headstrong enough, and rude enough
already!” exclaims Lady Baker. “I desire, young woman, you will not
pollute him farther!”
“That’s a hard word to say to an honest woman, ma’am,” says Bedford.
“Pray, miss, are you engaged to the butler, too?” hisses out the dowager.
“There’s very little the matter with Maxwell’s child—only teeth. What on
earth has happened? My dear Lizzy—my dear Miss Prior—what is it?” cries
the doctor, who enters from the garden at this juncture.
“Nothing has happened, only this young woman has appeared in a new
_character_,” says Lady Baker. “My son has just informed us that Miss
Prior danced upon the stage, Mr. Drencher; and if you think such a person
is a fit companion for your mothers and sisters, who attend a place of
Christian worship, I believe—I wish you joy.”
“Is this—is this—true?” asks the doctor, with a look of bewilderment.
“Yes, it is true,” sighs the girl.
“And you never told me, Elizabeth?” groans the doctor.
“She’s as honest as any woman here,” calls out Bedford. “She gave all the
money to her family.”
“It wasn’t fair not to tell me. It wasn’t fair,” sobs the doctor. And he
gives her a ghastly parting look, and turns his back.
“I say, you—Hi! What-d’-you-call-’em? Sawbones!” shrieks out Captain
Clarence. “Come back, I say. She’s all right, I say. Upon my honour, now,
she’s all right.”
“Miss P. shouldn’t have kept this from me. My mother and sisters are
dissenters, and very strict. I couldn’t ask a party into my family who
has been—who has been——I wish you good morning,” says the doctor, and
stalks away.
“And now, will you please to get your things ready and go, too,”
continues Lady Baker. “My dear Mrs. Bonnington, you think——”
“Certainly, certainly, she must go!” cries Mrs. Bonnington.
“Don’t go till Lovel comes home, Miss. _These_ ain’t your mistresses.
Lady Baker don’t pay your salary. If you go, I go, too. There!” calls out
Bedford, and mumbles something in her ear about the end of the world.
“You go, too; and a good riddance, you insolent brute!” exclaims the
dowager.
“O, Captain Clarence! you have made a pretty morning’s work,” I say.
“I don’t know what the doose all the sherry—all the shinty’s about,”
says the captain, playing with the empty decanter. “Gal’s a very good
gal—pretty gal. If she choosesh dansh shport her family, why the doosh
shouldn’t she dansh shport a family?”
“That is exactly what I recommend this person to do,” says Lady Baker,
tossing up her head. “And now I will thank you to leave the room. Do you
hear?”
As poor Elizabeth obeyed this order, Bedford darted after her; and I know
ere she had gone five steps he had offered her his savings and everything
he had. She might have had mine yesterday. But she had deceived me. She
had played fast and loose with me. She had misled me about this doctor. I
could trust her no more. My love of yesterday was dead, I say. That vase
was broke, which never could be mended. She knew all was over between us.
She did not once look at me as she left the room.
The two dowagers—one of them, I think, a little alarmed at her
victory—left the house, and for once went away in the same barouche. The
young maniac who had been the cause of the mischief staggered away, I
know not whither.
About four o’clock, poor little Pinhorn, the child’s maid, came to me,
well nigh choking with tears, as she handed me a letter. “She’s goin’
away—and she saved both them children’s lives, she did. And she’ve wrote
to you, sir. And Bedford’s a-goin’. And I’ll give warnin’, I will,
too!” And the weeping handmaiden retires, leaving me, perhaps somewhat
frightened, with the letter in my hand.
“Dear Sir,” she said—“I may write you a line of thanks and farewell. I
shall go to my mother. I shall soon find another place. Poor Bedford, who
has a generous heart, told me that he had given you a letter of mine to
Mr. D. I saw this morning that you knew everything. I can only say now
that for all your long kindnesses and friendship to my family I am always
your sincere and grateful—E. P.”
Yes: that was all. I think she _was_ grateful. But she had not been
candid with me, nor with the poor surgeon. I had no anger: far from it:
a great deal of regard and goodwill, nay admiration, for the intrepid
girl who had played a long, hard part very cheerfully and bravely. But
my foolish little flicker of love had blazed up and gone out in a day;
I knew that she never could care for me. In that dismal, wakeful night,
after reading the letter, I had thought her character and story over, and
seen to what a life of artifice and dissimulation necessity had compelled
her. I did not blame her. In such circumstances, with such a family, how
could she be frank and open? Poor thing! poor thing! Do we know anybody?
Ah! dear me, we are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have
any who love you, cling to them, and thank God. I went into the hall
towards evening: her poor trunks and packages were there, and the little
nurserymaid weeping over them. The sight unmanned me; and I believe I
cried myself. Poor Elizabeth! And with these small chests you recommence
your life’s lonely voyage! I gave the girl a couple of sovereigns. She
sobbed a God bless me! and burst out crying more desperately than ever.
Thou hast a kind heart, little Pinhorn!
* * * * *
“‘Miss Prior—to be called for.’ Whose trunks are these?” says Lovel,
coming from the city. The dowagers drove up at the same moment.
“Didn’t you see us from the omnibus, Frederick?” cries her ladyship,
coaxingly. “We followed behind you all the way!”
“We were in the barouche, my dear,” remarks Mrs. Bonnington, rather
nervously.
“Whose trunks are these?—what’s the matter?—and what’s the girl crying
for?” asks Lovel.
“Miss Prior is a-going away,” sobs Pinhorn.
“Miss Prior going? Is this your doing, my Lady Baker?—or yours, mother?”
the master of the house says, sternly.
“She is going, my love, because she cannot stay in this family,” says
mamma.
“That woman is no fit companion for my angel’s children, Frederick!”
cries Lady B.
“That person has deceived us all, my love!” says mamma.
“Deceived?—how? Deceived whom?” continues Mr. Lovel, more and more hotly.
“Clarence, love! come down, dear! Tell Mr. Lovel everything. Come down
and tell him this moment,” cries Lady Baker to her son, who at this
moment appears on the corridor which was round the hall.
“What’s the row now, pray?” And Captain Clarence descends, breaking his
shins over poor Elizabeth’s trunks, and calling down on them his usual
maledictions.
“Tell Mr. Lovel, where you saw that—that person, Clarence! Now, sir,
listen to my Cecilia’s brother!”
“Saw her—saw her, in blue and spangles, in the _Rose and the Bulbul_, at
the Prince’s Theatre—and a doosed nice-looking girl she was too!”—says
the captain.
“There, sir!”
“There, Frederick!” cry the matrons in a breath.
“And what then?” asks Lovel.
“Mercy! you ask, What then, Frederick? Do you know what a theatre
is? Tell Frederick what a theatre is, Mr. Batchelor, and that my
grandchildren must not be educated by——”
“My grandchildren—my Cecilia’s children,” shrieks the other, “must not be
poll-luted by——”
“Silence!” I say. “Have you a word against her—have you, pray, Baker?”
“No. ’Gad! I never said a word against her,” says the captain. “No, hang
me, you know—but——”
“But suppose I knew the fact the whole time?” asks Lovel, with rather
a blush on his cheek. “Suppose I knew that she danced to give her
family bread? Suppose I knew that she toiled and laboured to support
her parents, and brothers, and sisters? Suppose I know that out of her
pittance she has continued to support them? Suppose I know that she
watched my own children through fever and danger? For these reasons I
must turn her out of doors, must I? No, by Heaven!—No!—Elizabeth!—Miss
Prior!—Come down!—Come here, I beg you!”
The governess arrayed as for departure at this moment appeared on the
corridor running round the hall. As Lovel continued to speak very loud
and resolute, she came down looking deadly pale.
Still much excited, the widower went up to her and took her hand. “Dear
Miss Prior!” he said—“dear Elizabeth! you have been the best friend of
me and mine. You tended my wife in illness, you took care of my children
in fever and danger. You have been an admirable sister, daughter in your
own family—and for this, and for these benefits conferred upon us, my
relatives—my mother-in-law—would drive you out of my doors! It shall not
be!—by Heavens, it shall not be!”
You should have seen little Bedford sitting on the governess’s box,
shaking his fist, and crying “Hurrah!” as his master spoke. By this time
the loud voices and the altercation in the hall had brought a half-dozen
of servants from their quarters into the hall. “Go away, all of you!”
shouts Lovel; and the domestic _posse_ retires, Bedford being the last to
retreat, and nodding approval at his master as he backs out of the room.
“You are very good, and kind, and generous, sir,” says the pale
Elizabeth, putting a handkerchief to her eyes. “But without the
confidence of these ladies, I must not stay, Mr. Lovel. God bless you for
your goodness to me. I must, if you please, return to my mother.”
The worthy gentleman looked fiercely round at the two elder women, and
again seizing the governess’s hand, said—“Elizabeth! dear Elizabeth! I
implore you not to go! If you love the children——”
“Oh, sir!” (A cambric veil covers Miss Prior’s emotion, and the
expression of her face, on this ejaculation.)
“If you love the children,” gasps out the widower, “stay with them. If
you have a regard for—for their father”—(Timanthes, where is thy pocket
handkerchief?)—“remain in this house, with such a title as none can
question. Be the mistress of it.”
“His mistress—and before me!” screams Lady Baker. “Mrs. Bonnington, this
depravity is monstrous!”
“Be my wife! dear Elizabeth,” the widower continues. “Continue to watch
over the children, who shall be motherless no more.”
“Frederick! Frederick! haven’t they got _us_?” shrieks one of the old
ladies.
“Oh, my poor dear Lady Baker!” says Mrs. Bonnington.
“Oh, my poor dear Mrs. Bonnington!” says Lady Baker.
“Frederick, listen to your mother,” implores Mrs. Bonnington.
“To your mothers!” sobs Lady Baker.
And they both go down on their knees, and I heard a boohoo of a guffaw
behind the green-baized servants’ door, where I have no doubt Mons.
Bedford was posted.
“Ah! Batchelor, dear Batchelor, speak to him!” cries good Mrs. Bonny. “We
are praying this child, Batchelor—this child whom you used to know at
College, and when he was a good, gentle, obedient boy. You have influence
with my poor Frederick. Exert it for his heart-broken mother’s sake; and
you shall have my bubble-uble-essings, you shall.”
“My dear good lady,” I exclaim—not liking to see the kind soul in grief.
“Send for Doctor Straightwaist! Order him to pause in his madness,” cries
Baker; “or it is I, Cecilia’s mother, the mother of that murdered angel,
that shall go mad.”
“Angel! _Allons_, I say. Since his widowhood, you have never given the
poor fellow any peace. You have been for ever quarrelling with him.
You took possession of his house; bullied his servants, spoiled his
children—you did, Lady Baker.”
“Sir,” cries her ladyship, “you are a low, presuming, vulgar man!
Clarence, beat this rude man!”
“Nay,” I say, “there must be no more quarrelling to-day. And I am sure
Captain Baker will not molest me. Miss Prior, I am delighted that my
old friend should have found a woman of good sense, good conduct, good
temper—a woman who has had many trials, and borne them with very great
patience, to take charge of him, and make him happy. I congratulate you
both. Miss Prior has borne poverty so well that I am certain she will
bear good fortune, for it _is_ good fortune to become the wife of such a
loyal, honest, kindly gentleman as Frederick Lovel.”
After such a speech as that, I think I may say, _liberavi animam_.
Not one word of complaint, you see, not a hint about “Edward,” not a
single sarcasm, though I might have launched some terrific shots out of
my quiver, and have made Lovel and his bride-elect writhe before me.
But what is the need of spoiling sport? Shall I growl out of my sulky
manger, because my comrade gets the meat? Eat it, happy dog! and be
thankful. Would not that bone have choked me if I had tried it? Besides,
I am accustomed to disappointment. Other fellows get the prizes which
I try for. I am used to run second in the dreary race of love. Second?
Psha! Third, Fourth. _Que sçais-je?_ There was the Bombay captain in
Bess’s early days. There was Edward. Here is Frederick. Go to, Charles
Batchelor; repine not at fortune; but be content to be Batchelor still.
My sister has children. I will be an uncle, a parent to them. Isn’t
Edward of the scarlet whiskers distanced? Has not poor Dick Bedford
lost the race—poor Dick, who never had a chance, and is the best of us
all? Besides, what fun it is to see Lady Baker deposed: think of Mrs.
Prior coming in and reigning over her! The purple-faced old fury of a
Baker, never will she bully, and rage, and trample more. She must pack
up her traps, and be off. I know she must. I _can_ congratulate Lovel,
sincerely, and that’s the fact.
And here at this very moment, and as if to add to the comicality of the
scene, who should appear but mother-in-law No. 2, Mrs. Prior, with her
blue-coat boy and two or three of her children, who had been invited, or
had invited themselves, to drink tea with Lovel’s young ones, as their
custom was whenever they could procure an invitation. Master Prior had
a fine “copy” under his arm, which he came to show to his patron Lovel.
His mamma, entirely ignorant of what had happened, came fawning in with
her old poke-bonnet, her old pocket, that vast depository of all sorts
of stores, her old umbrella, and her usual dreary smirk. She made her
obeisance to the matrons,—she led up her blue-coat boy to Mr. Lovel, in
whose office she hoped to find a clerk’s place for her lad, on whose very
coat and waistcoat she had designs whilst they were yet on his back: and
she straightway began business with the dowagers—
“My lady, I hope your ladyship is quite well?” (a curtsey.) “Dear, kind
Mrs. Bonnington! I came to pay my duty to you, mum. This is Louisa, my
lady, the great girl for whom your ladyship so kindly promised the gown.
And this is my little girl, Mrs. Bonnington, mum, please; and this is my
big Blue. Go and speak to dear, kind Mr. Lovel, Gus, our dear good friend
and protector,—the son and son-in-law of these dear ladies. Look, sir,
he has brought his copy to show you; and it’s creditable to a boy of his
age, isn’t it, Mr. Batchelor? You can say, who know so well what writing
is, and my kind services to you, sir,—and—Elizabeth, Lizzie, my dear!
where’s your spectacles, you—you——”
Here she stopped, and looking alarmed at the group, at the boxes, at
the blushing Lovel, at the pale countenance of the governess, “Gracious
goodness!” she said, “what has happened? Tell me, Lizzy, what is it?”
“Is this collusion, pray?” says ruffled Mrs. Bonnington.
“Collusion, dear Mrs. Bonnington?”
“Or insolence?” bawls out my lady Baker.
“Insolence, your ladyship? What—what is it? What are these boxes—Lizzy’s
boxes? Ah!” the mother broke out with a scream, “you’ve not sent the poor
girl away? Oh! my poor child—my poor children!”
“The Prince’s Theatre has come out, Mrs. Prior,” here, said I.
The mother clasps her meagre hands. “It wasn’t the darling’s fault. It
was to help her poor father in poverty. It was I who forced her to it.
O ladies! ladies!—don’t take the bread out of the mouth of these poor
orphans!”—and genuine tears rained down her yellow cheeks.
“Enough of this,” says Mr. Lovel, haughtily. “Mrs. Prior, your daughter
is not going away. Elizabeth has promised to stay with me, and never to
leave me—as governess no longer, but as—” and here he takes Miss Prior’s
hand.
“His wife! Is this—is this true, Lizzy?” gasped the mother.
“Yes, mamma,” meekly said Miss Elizabeth Prior.
At this the old woman flung down her umbrella, and uttering a fine
scream, folds Elizabeth in her arms, and then runs up to Lovel; “My
son!” my son! says she (Lovel’s face was not bad, I promise you, at this
salutation and salute). “Come here, children!—come, Augustus, Fanny,
Louisa, kiss your dear brother, children! And where are yours, Lizzy?
Where are Pop and Cissy? Go and look for your little nephew and niece,
dears: Pop and Cissy in the schoolroom, or in the garden, dears. They
will be your nephew and niece now. Go and fetch them, I say.”
As the young Priors filed off, Mrs. Prior turned to the two other
matrons, and spoke to them with much dignity: “Most hot weather, your
ladyship, I’m sure! Mr. Bonnington must find it very hot for preaching,
Mrs. Bonnington! Lor! There’s that little wretch beating my Johnny on the
stairs. Have done, Pop, sir! How ever shall we make those children agree,
Elizabeth?”
Quick, come to me, some skillful delineator of the British dowager, and
draw me the countenances of Lady Baker and Mrs. Bonnington!
“I call this a jolly game, don’t you, Batchelor, old boy?” remarks the
captain to me. “Lady Baker, my dear, I guess your ladyship’s nose is out
of joint.”
“O Cecilia—Cecilia! Don’t you shudder in your grave?” cries Lady B. “Call
my people, Clarence—call Bulkeley—call my maid! Let me go, I say, from
this house of horror!” and the old lady dashed into the drawing room,
where she uttered, I know not what, incoherent shrieks and appeals before
that calm, glazed, simpering portrait of the departed Cecilia.
Now this is a truth, for which I call Lovel, his lady, Mrs. Bonnington
and Captain Clarence Baker, as witnesses. Well, then, whilst Lady B. was
adjuring the portrait, it is a fact that a string of Cecilia’s harp—which
has always been standing in the corner of the room under its shroud of
Cordovan leather—a string, I say, of Cecilia’s harp cracked, and went off
with a loud _bong_, which struck terror into all beholders. Lady Baker’s
agitation at the incident was awful; I do not like to describe it—not
having any wish to say anything tragic in this narrative—though that
I _can_ write tragedy, plays of mine (of which envious managers never
could be got to see the merit) I think will prove, when they appear in my
posthumous works.
Baker has always averred that at the moment when the harp-string broke,
her heart broke too. But as she lived for many years, and may be alive
now for what I know; and as she borrowed money repeatedly from Lovel—he
must be acquitted of the charge which she constantly brings against
him of hastening her own death, and murdering his first wife Cecilia.
“The harp that once in Tara’s Halls” used to make such a piteous feeble
thrumming, has been carted off I know not whither; and Cecilia’s
portrait, though it has been removed from the post of honour (where,
you conceive, under present circumstances it would hardly be _àpropos_)
occupies a very reputable position in the pink room up-stairs, which that
poor young Clarence inhabited during my visit to Shrublands.
All the house has been altered. There’s a fine organ in the hall, on
which Elizabeth performs sacred music very finely. As for _my_ old room,
it would trouble you to smoke _there_ under the present government. It is
a library now, with many fine and authentic pictures of the Lovel family
hanging up in it, the English branch of the house with the wolf crest,
and _Gare à la louve_ for the motto, and a grand posthumous portrait of a
Portuguese officer (Gandish), Elizabeth’s late father.
As for dear old Mrs. Bonnington, she, you may be sure, would be easily
reconciled to any live mortal who was kind to her, and any plan which
should make her son happy; and Elizabeth has quite won her over. Mrs.
Prior, on the deposition of the other dowagers, no doubt expected to
reign at Shrublands, but in this object I am not very sorry to say was
disappointed. Indeed, I was not a little amused, upon the very first day
of her intended reign—that eventful one of which we have been describing
the incidents—to see how calmly and gracefully Bessy pulled the throne
from under her, on which the old lady was clambering.
Mrs. P. knew the house very well, and everything which it contained; and
when Lady Baker drove off with her son and her suite of domestics, Prior
dashed through the vacant apartments, gleaning what had been left in the
flurry of departure—a scarlet feather out of the dowager’s room, a shirt
stud and a bottle of hair-oil, the captain’s property. “And now they are
gone, and as you can’t be alone with him, my dear, I must be with you,”
says she, coming down to her daughter.
“Of course, mamma, I must be with you,” says obedient Elizabeth.
“And there is the pink room, and the blue room, and the yellow room for
the boys—and the chintz boudoir for me—I can put them all away, oh, so
comfortably!”
“I can come and share Louisa’s room, mamma,” says Bessy. “It will not be
proper for me to stay here at all—until afterwards, you know. Or I can
go to my uncle at St. Boniface. Don’t you think that will be best, eh,
Frederick?”
“Whatever you wish, my dear Lizzy!” says Lovel.
“And I daresay there will be some little alterations made in the house.
You talked, you know, of painting, Mr. Lovel; and the children can go to
their grandmamma Bonnington. And on our return when the alterations are
made we shall always be delighted to see _you_, Mr. Batchelor—our kindest
old friend. Shall we not, a—Frederick?”
“Always, always,” said Frederick.
“Come, children, come to your teas,” calls out Mrs. P., in a resolute
voice.
“Dear Pop, I’m not going away—that is, only for a few days, dear,” says
Bessy, kissing the boy; “and you will love me, won’t you?”
“All right,” says the boy. But Cissy said, when the same appeal was made
to her: “I shall love my dear mamma!” and makes her new mother-in-law a
very polite curtsey.
“I think you had better put off those men you expect to dinner to-morrow,
Fred?” I say to Lovel.
“I think I had, Batch,” says the gentleman.
“Or you can dine with them at the club, you know?” remarks Elizabeth.
“Yes, Bessy.”
“And when the children have had their tea I will go with mamma. My boxes
are ready, you know,” says arch Bessy.
“And you will stay, and dine with Mr. Lovel, won’t you, Mr. Batchelor?”
asks the lady.
It was the dreariest dinner I ever had in my life. No undertaker could be
more gloomy than Bedford, as he served us. We tried to talk politics and
literature. We drank too much, purposely. Nothing would do. “Hang me, if
I can stand this, Lovel,” I said, as we sat mum over our third bottle.
“I will go back, and sleep at my chambers. I was not a little soft upon
her myself, that’s the truth. Here’s her health, and happiness to both of
you, with all my heart.” And we drained a great bumper apiece, and I left
him. He was very happy I should go.
Bedford stood at the gate, as the little pony-carriage came for me in the
dusk. “God bless you, sir,” says he. “I can’t stand it; I shall go too.”
And he rubbed his hands over his eyes.
He married Mary Pinhorn, and they have emigrated to Melbourne; whence he
sent me, three years ago, an affectionate letter, and a smart gold pin
from the diggings.
A month afterwards, a cab might have been seen driving from the Temple to
Hanover Square: and a month and a day after that drive, an advertisement
might have been read in the _Post_ and _Times_: “Married, on Thursday,
10th, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, by the Reverend the Master of St.
Boniface College, Oxbridge, uncle of the bride, Frederick Lovel, Esquire,
of Shrublands, Roehampton, to Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the late
Captain Montagu Prior, K.S.F.”
We may hear of LOVEL MARRIED some other day, but here is an end of LOVEL
THE WIDOWER. _Valete et plaudite_, you good people, who have witnessed
the little comedy. Down with the curtain; cover up the boxes; pop out the
gas-lights. Ho! cab. Take us home, and let us have some tea, and go to
bed. Good night, my little players. We have been merry together, and we
part with soft hearts and somewhat rueful countenances, don’t we?
The Maiden’s Lover.
“Woo me not with sighs and tears,
“Woo me not with vows,” she said,
“Tell me not of doubts and fears;
“Deeds, not glowing words, I wed.
“Passion-pale I see thee stand;
“Let Love speak, but not in sighs—
“Passion but unnerves the hand,
“Drains the heart to wet the eyes.
“Who would win me must have won
“Rule right royal o’er his heart;
“Wholly true, from sun to sun,
“So he’ll love me not in part.
“Who would win me, must have found,
“For his deep and manly love,
“Other vent than empty sound—
“Vows protest but do not prove.
“Nobly as old legends tell,
“Rode the knight from land to land,
“Sin and wrong before him fell,
“Conquer’d by his stalwart hand.
“Glorious legends, were they true!
“Make them true if me you’d win;
“Win for me and thee a new
“Triumph over death and sin.
“If thou languish at my side,
“I shall mock thee in my scorn;
“Up, be doing—so thy bride
“On I pass till Death’s dark morn.
“If around thy spirit gather
“Rust of sloth and lustful ease,
“Though I love thee, I would rather
“Thou wert dying on my knees.”
Swift he turned—that flashing face
Woke a new-born love to life;
Then he knew her, all her grace:
Won her nobly for his Wife.
C. U. D.
The Portent.
II.—“THE OMEN COMING ON.”[4]
I was set down at the great gate of Hilton Hall, in which I was to reside
for some indefinite period as tutor to the children of Lord Hilton. I
walked up the broad avenue, through the final arch of which, as through
a huge Gothic window, I saw the hall in the distance. Everything was
rich, lovely, and fairylike about me. Accustomed to the scanty flowers
and diminutive wood of my own country, I looked upon all around me with a
feeling of majestic plenty, which I can recall at will, but which I have
never experienced again. Beyond the trees which formed the avenue, I saw
a shrubbery, composed entirely of flowering plants, almost all strange
to me. Issuing from the avenue, I found myself amid open, wide, lawny
spaces, in which the flower-beds lay like islands of colour. A statue on
a pedestal, the only white thing in the surrounding green of the lawn
and the avenue, caught my eye. I had seen scarcely any sculpture; and
this, attracting my attention by a favourite contrast of colour, retained
it by its own beauty. It was a Dryad, or some nymph of the woods, who
looked as if she had just glided from the solitude of the trees behind,
and had sprung upon the pedestal to look wonderingly around her. A few
large brown leaves lay beneath it, left there, no doubt, by the eddying
around its base of some wind that had torn them from the trees behind.
As I gazed, absorbed in a new pleasure, a drop of rain upon my face made
me look up. From a gray fleecy cloud, with sun-whitened border, lo! a
light, gracious, plentiful rain was falling. A rainbow sprang across the
sky, and the statue stood within the rainbow. At the same moment, from
the base of the pedestal, rose a figure in white, graceful as the Dryad
above, and neither running, nor appearing to walk with rapid steps,
glided swiftly past me at a few paces’ distance, fleet as a ghost; and,
keeping in a straight line for the main entrance of the Hall, entered and
vanished. All that I saw of her was, that she was young, very pale, and
dressed in white.
I followed in the direction of the mansion, which was large, and of
several styles and ages. One wing appeared especially ancient. It seemed
neglected and out of repair, and had in consequence a desolate, almost
sepulchral look, heightened by a number of large cypresses growing along
its line. I went up to the central door and knocked. It was opened by a
grave elderly butler. I passed under its flat arch, as if into the midst
of the waiting events of my story. As I glanced around the hall, my
consciousness was suddenly saturated, if I may be allowed the expression,
with that strange feeling—known to every one, and yet so strange—that
I had seen it before; that, in fact, I knew it perfectly. But what was
yet more strange, and far more uncommon, was, that, although the feeling
with regard to the hall faded and vanished instantly, and although I
could not in the least surmise the appearance of any of the regions into
which I was about to be ushered, I yet followed the butler with a kind of
indefinable expectation of seeing something which I had seen before; and
every room or passage in that mansion affected me, on entering it for the
first time, with the same sensation of previous acquaintance which I had
experienced with regard to the hall. This sensation, in every case, died
away at once, leaving that portion as strange both to eyes and mind as it
might naturally be expected to look to one who had never before crossed
the threshold of the hall. I was received by the housekeeper, a little
prim benevolent old lady, with colourless face and antique head-dress,
who led me to the room which had been prepared for me. To my surprise,
I found a large wood fire burning on the hearth; but the feeling of the
place revealed at once the necessity for it; and I scarcely needed to be
informed that the room, which was upon the ground floor, and looked out
upon a little solitary grass-grown and ivy-mantled court, had not been
used for years, and required to be thus prepared for an inmate. The look
of ancient mystery about it, was to me incomparably more attractive than
any elegance or comfort of an ordinary kind. My bedroom was a few paces
down a passage to the right.
Left alone, I proceeded to make a more critical survey of my room. It
was large and low, panelled in oak throughout, which was black with age,
and worm-eaten in many parts—otherwise entire. Both the windows looked
into the little court or yard before mentioned. All the heavier furniture
of the room was likewise of black oak, but the chairs and couches were
covered with faded tapestry and tarnished gilding, and seemed to be the
superannuated members of the general household of seats. I could give an
individual description of each variety, for every atom in that room large
enough to be possessed of discernible shape or colour seems branded into
my brain. If I happen to have the least feverishness upon me, the moment
I fell asleep, I am in that room.
When the bell rang for dinner, I found my way, though with difficulty,
to the drawing-room, where were assembled Lady Hilton, a girl of about
thirteen, and the two boys, my pupils. Lady Hilton would have been
pleasant, could she have been as natural as she wished to appear. She
received me with some degree of kindness; but the half-cordiality of
her manner towards me was evidently founded on the impassableness of
the gulf between us. I knew at once that we should never be friends;
that she would never come down from the lofty tableland upon which she
walked; and that if, after being years in the house, I should happen to
be dying, she would send the housekeeper to me. All right, no doubt; I
only say that it was so. She introduced to me my pupils; fine, open-eyed,
manly English boys, with something a little overbearing in their manner,
which speedily disappeared in relation to me. They have so little to do
with my tale, that I shall scarcely have occasion to mention them again.
Lord Hilton was not at home. Lady Hilton led the way to the dining-room;
the elder boy gave his arm to his sister, and I was about to follow with
the younger; when from one of the deep bay windows glided out, still in
white, the same figure which had passed me upon the lawn. I started, and
drew back. With a slight bow, she preceded me, and followed the others
down the great staircase. Seated at table, I had leisure to make my
observations upon them all; but I must say most of my glances found their
way to the lady who, twice that day, had affected me like an apparition.
Alas! what was she ever to me but an apparition! What is time, but the
airy ocean in which ghosts come and go! She was about twenty years of
age, rather above the middle height, somewhat slight in form, with a
complexion rather white than pale; her face being only less white than
the deep marbly whiteness of her most lovely arms. Her eyes were large,
and full of liquid night—a night throbbing with the light of invisible
stars. Her hair seemed raven-black, and in quantity profuse. Lady Hilton
called her Lady Alice; and she never addressed Lady Hilton but in the
same ceremonious style.
I afterwards learned from the old housekeeper—who was very friendly,
and used to sit with me sometimes of an evening when I invited her—that
Lady Alice’s position in the family was a very peculiar one. Distantly
connected with Lord Hilton’s family on the mother’s side, she was the
daughter of the late Lord Glendarroch, and step-daughter to Lady Hilton,
who had become Lady Hilton within a year after Lord Glendarroch’s death.
Lady Alice, then quite a child, had accompanied her step-mother, to whom
she was moderately attached, and who, perhaps, from the peculiarities of
Lady Alice’s mind and disposition, had been allowed to retain undisputed
possession of her. Probably, however, she had no near relatives, else
the fortune reported to be at her disposal would most likely have roused
contending claims to the right of guardianship. Although in many respects
very kindly treated by her step-mother, the peculiarities to which I
have already referred tended to an isolation from the family engagements
and pleasures. Lady Alice had no accomplishments, and never could be
taught any. She could neither sing, nor play, nor draw, nor dance. As for
languages, she could neither spell, nor even read aloud, her own. Yet she
seemed to delight in reading to herself, though, for the most part, what
Mrs. Wilson characterized as very odd books. I knew her voice, when she
spoke, had a quite indescribable music in it; and her habitual motion was
more like a rhythmical gliding than an ordinary walk. Mrs. Wilson hinted
at other and even more serious peculiarities, which she either could
not, or would not describe; always shaking her head gravely and sadly,
and becoming quite silent when I pressed her for further explanation;
so that, at last, I gave up all attempts to arrive at an understanding
of the mystery, at least by her means. I could not, however, avoid
speculating on the subject myself. One thing soon became evident to me:
that she was considered by her family to be not merely deficient in the
power of intellectual acquirement, but to be—intellectually considered—in
a quite abnormal condition. Of this, however, I could see no signs:
though there was a peculiarity, almost oddity in some of her remarks,
which was evidently not only misunderstood, but misinterpreted with
relation to her mental state. Such remarks Lady Hilton generally answered
by an elongation of the lips intended to represent a smile. To me, they
appeared to indicate a nature closely allied to genius, if not identical
with it—a power of regarding things from an original point of view, which
perhaps was the more unfettered in its operation from the fact that it
was impossible for her to look at them in the ordinary commonplace way.
It seemed to me sometimes as if her point of observation was outside of
the sphere within which the thing observed took place; and as if what
she said had sometimes a relation to things and thoughts and mental
conditions familiar to her, but at which not even a definite guess could
be made by me. With such utterances as these, however, I am compelled
to acknowledge, now and then others mingled, silly enough for any
drawing-room young lady; but they seemed to be accepted as proofs that
she was not altogether out of her right mind. She was gentle and loving
to her brothers and sister, and they seemed reasonably fond of her.
Taking my leave for the night, after making arrangements for commencing
my instruction in the morning, I returned to my own room, intent upon
completing with more minuteness the survey I had commenced in the
morning: several cupboards in the wall, and one or two doors, apparently
of closets, had especially attracted my attention. The fire had sunk low,
and lay smouldering beneath the white ashes, like the life of the world
beneath the snow, or the heart of a man beneath cold and gray thoughts.
The room, instead of being brightened, when I lighted the candles which
stood upon the table, looked blacker than before, for the light revealed
its essential blackness.
Casting my eyes around me as I stood with my back to the hearth (on
which, for mere companionship sake, I had heaped fresh wood), a slight
shudder thrilled through all my frame. I felt as if, did it last a
moment longer, I should be sufficiently detached from the body to become
aware of a presence besides my own in the room; but happily for me it
ceased before it reached that point; and I, recovering my courage,
remained ignorant of the causes of my threatened fear, if any there were,
other than the nature of the room itself. With a candle in one hand, I
proceeded to open the various cupboards and closets. I found nothing
remarkable in any of them. The latter were quite empty, except the last
I came to, which had a piece of very old elaborate tapestry hanging at
the back of it. Lifting this up, I perceived at first nothing more than
a panelled wall, corresponding to those which formed the room; but on
looking more closely, I soon discovered that the back of the closet was,
or had been, a door. There was nothing unusual in this, especially in
such an old house; but it roused in me a strong curiosity to know what
was behind it. I found that it was secured only by an ordinary bolt, the
handle which had withdrawn it having been removed. Soothing my conscience
with the reflection that I had a right to know what doors communicated
with my room, I soon succeeded, by the help of my deer-knife, in forcing
back the rusty bolt; and though from the stiffness of the hinges I
dreaded a crack, they yielded at last. The opening door revealed a large
waste hall, empty utterly, save of dust and cobwebs which festooned it
in all quarters. The now familiar feeling, that I had seen it before,
filled my mind in the first moment of seeing it, and passed away the
next. A broad right-angled staircase of oak, with massive banisters, no
doubt once brilliantly polished, rose from the middle of the hall. Of
course this could not have originally belonged to the ancient wing which
I had observed on my first approach to the hall, being much more modern;
but I was convinced, from the observations I had made with regard to
the situation of my room, that I was bordering upon, if not within, the
oldest portion of the pile. In sudden horror, lest I should hear a light
footfall upon the awful stair, I withdrew hurriedly, and having secured
both the doors, betook myself to my bedroom; in whose dingy four-post
bed, reminding me of a hearse with its carving and plumes, I was soon
ensconced amidst the snowiest linen, with the sweetest and cleanest odour
of lavender. In spite of novelty, antiquity, speculation, and dread,
I was soon fast asleep; becoming thereby a fitter inhabitant of such
regions than when I moved about with restless and disturbing curiosity
in the midst of their ancient and death-like repose. I made no use of my
discovered door for some time; not even although, in talking about the
building to Lady Hilton, I found that I was at perfect liberty to ramble
over the deserted portions as I pleased. I scarcely ever saw Lady Alice,
except at dinner, or by accidental meeting in the grounds and passages of
the house; and then she took the slightest possible notice of me—whether
from pride or shyness, I could not tell.
I found the boys teachable, and therefore my occupation was pleasant.
Their sister frequently came to me for help, as there happened to be just
then an interregnum of governesses: soon she settled into a regular pupil.
In a few weeks, Lord Hilton returned. Though my room was so far from
the great hall, I heard the clank of his spurs on its pavement. I
trembled; for it suggested the sound of the broken shoe. But I shook
off the influence in a moment, heartily ashamed of its power over me.
Soon I became familiar enough both with the sound and its cause; for his
lordship rarely went anywhere except on horseback, and was booted and
spurred from morning till night. He received me with some appearance of
interest, which instantly stiffened and froze. He began to shake hands
with me as if he meant it, but immediately dropped my hand, as if it
had stung him. His nobility was of that sort which always seems to
stand in need of repair. Like a weakly constitution, it required keeping
up, and his lordship could not be said to neglect it; for he seemed
to find his principal employment in administering to his pride almost
continuous doses of obsequiousness. His rank, like a coat made for some
large ancestor, hung loose upon him; and he was always trying to persuade
himself that it was an excellent fit, but ever with an unacknowledged
misgiving. This misgiving might have done him good, had he not met it
with constantly revived efforts at looking that which he feared he was
not. Yet this man, so far from being weak throughout, was capable of the
utmost persistency in carrying out any scheme he had once devised. But
enough of him for the present: I seldom came into contact with him.
I found many books to my mind in the neglected library of the hall. One
night, I was sitting in my own room, devouring an old romance. It was
late; my fire blazed brightly, but the candles were nearly burnt out,
and I grew rather sleepy over the volume, romance as it was. Suddenly
I found myself springing to my feet, and listening with an agony of
intension. Whether I had heard anything, I could not tell; but it was in
my soul as if I had. Yes: I was sure of it. Far away—somewhere in the
great labyrinthine pile, I heard a voice, a faint cry. Without a moment’s
reflection, as if urged by instinct, or some unfelt but operative
attraction, I flew to the closet door, entered, lifted the tapestry,
unfastened the inner door, and stood in the great echoing hall, amid the
touches, light and ghostly, of the crowds of airy cobwebs set in motion
by the storm of my sudden entrance.
A soiled moonbeam fell on the floor, and filled the place around it
with an ancient, dream-like light, which seemed to work strangely on
my brain,—filling it, too, as if it were but a sleepy deserted house,
haunted by old dreams and memories. Recollecting myself, I re-entered
my room, but the candles were both flickering in the sockets, and I was
compelled to trust to the moonlight for guidance. I easily reached the
foot of the staircase, and began to ascend: not a board creaked, not a
banister shook—the whole seemed as solid as rock. I was compelled to
grope, for here was no moonlight—only the light, through one window,
of the moonlit sky and air. Finding at last no more stairs to ascend,
I groped my way on, in some trepidation, I confess; for how should I
find my way back? But then the worst result likely to ensue was, that I
should have to spend the night without knowing where; for with the first
glimmer of morning, I should be able to return to my room. At length,
after wandering about, in and out of rooms, my hand fell on the latch of
a door, on opening which, I entered a long corridor, with many windows
on one side. Broad strips of moonlight lay slantingly across the narrow
floor, with regular intervals of shade.
I started, and my heart grew thick, for I thought I saw a movement
somewhere—I could neither tell where, nor of what: I only seemed to have
been aware of motion. I stood in the first shadow, and gazed, but saw
nothing. I sped across the stream of light to the next shadow, and stood
again, looking with fearful fixedness of gaze towards the far end of the
corridor. Suddenly a white form glimmered and vanished. I crossed to the
next shadow—again a glimmer and a vanishing, but nearer. Nerving myself
with all my strength, I ceased my stealthy motion, and went straight
forward, slowly but steadily. A tall form, apparently of a woman, dressed
in a long white loose robe, emerged into one of the streams of light,
threw its arms over its head, gave a wild cry—which, notwithstanding its
wildness and force, sounded as if muffled by many intervening folds,
either of matter or space—and fell at full length along the moonlight
track. In the midst of the thrill of agony which shook me at the cry, as
a sudden wind thrills from head to foot the leaves of a tree, I rushed
forward, and kneeling beside the prostrate figure, soon discovered
that, however unearthly the scream which had preceded her fall, it was,
in reality, the Lady Alice. Again I trembled, but the tremor was not
the same as that which preceded. I saw the fact in a moment: the Lady
Alice was a somnambulist. Startled by the noise of my advance, she had
awaked; and the usual terror and fainting had followed. She was cold
and motionless as death. What was to be done? If I called aloud, the
probability was that no one would hear me; or if any one should hear,—but
I need not follow the train of thoughts that passed through my mind, as
I fruitlessly tried to recover the poor girl. Suffice it to say, that I
shrank most painfully, both for her sake and my own, from being found, by
common-minded domestics, in such a situation, in the dead of the night.
While I knelt by her side, hesitating as to what I should do, a horror,
as from the presence of death suddenly recognized—akin to that feeling
which a child experiences when he looks up and sees that his mother,
to whom he thought he had been talking for minutes past, is not in the
room—fell upon me. I thought she must be dead. At the same moment, I
heard, or seemed to hear (how should I know?) the rapid gallop of a
horse, and the clank of a loose shoe.
In an agony of fear, which yet I cannot consider cowardice, I caught her
up in my arms, and as one carries a sleeping child, sped with her towards
that end of the corridor whence I had come. Her head hung back over my
arm, and her hair, which had got loose, trailed on the ground. As I
fled, I trampled upon it and stumbled. She moaned, and I shuddered. That
instant the gallop ceased. Somewhat relieved, I lifted her up across my
shoulder, and carried her more easily. How I found my way to the stairs
I cannot tell. I know that I groped about for some time, like one in a
dream with a ghost in his arms; but at last I reached it, and descending,
entered my room, laid her upon one of the old couches, secured the
doors, and began to breathe—and think. The first thing that suggested
itself was, to try to make her warm—she was so ice-cold. I covered her
with my plaid and my dressing-gown, pulled the couch near the fire, and
considered what to do next.
But while I hesitated, Nature had her own way, and Lady Alice opened her
eyes with a deep-drawn sigh. Never shall I forget the look of mingled
bewilderment, alarm, and shame, with which her great dark eyes met mine.
In a moment her expression changed to anger. Her eyes flashed; a cloud of
roseate wrath grew in her face, till it glowed with the opaque red of a
camellia; and she all but started from the couch to her feet. Apparently,
however, she discovered the unsuitableness of her dress, for she checked
her impetuosity, and remained leaning on her elbow. After a moment’s
pause, in which, overcome by her anger, her beauty, and my own confusion,
I knelt before her, unable to speak, or to withdraw my eye from hers, she
began to question me like a queen, and I to reply like a culprit.
“How did I come here?”
“I carried you.”
Then, with a curling lip—
“Where did you find me, pray?”
“Somewhere in the old house, in a long corridor.”
“What right had you to be there?”
“I heard a cry, and was compelled to go to it.”
“’Tis impossible. I see. Your prying and my infirmity have brought this
disgrace upon me.”
She burst into tears. Then, anger reviving, she went on through her sobs:
“Why did you not leave me where I suppose I fell? You had done enough to
injure me by discovering my weakness, without rudely breaking my trance,
and, after that, taking advantage of the consequences to bring me here.”
Now I found words. “Lady Alice, how could I leave you lying in the
moonlight? Before the sun rose, the terrible moon might have distorted
your beautiful face.”
“Be silent, sir. What have you to do with my face?”
“And the wind, Lady Alice, was blowing through the corridor windows, keen
and cold, as if it were sister-spirit of the keen and cold moonlight. How
could I leave you?”
“You could have called assistance.”
“I knew not whom I should rouse, if any one. And forgive me, Lady
Alice, if I erred in thinking you would rather command the silence of
a gentleman to whom an evil accident had revealed your secret, than be
exposed to the domestics whom a call for help might have gathered round
us.”
She half raised herself again, in anger.
“A secret with you, sir!”
“But, besides, Lady Alice,” I cried, springing to my feet, in distress,
“I heard the horse with the clanking shoe, and I caught you up in terror
and fled with you, almost before I knew what I did. And I hear it now—I
hear it now!”
The angry glow faded from her face, and the paleness grew almost ghastly
with dismay.
“Do you hear it!” she said, throwing back the coverings I had laid over
her, and rising from the couch. “I do not.”
She stood listening, with wide distended eyes, as if _they_ were the
gates by which such sounds could enter.
“I do not hear it,” she said, after a pause; “it must be gone now.” Then,
turning towards me, she laid her hand on my arm, and looked at me. Her
black hair, disordered and entangled, wandered all over her white robe
down to her knees. Her face was paler than ever, and she fixed her dark
eyes on mine, so wide open that I could see the white all round the
unusually large iris.
“Did you hear it? No one ever heard it before but me. I must forgive
you—you could not help it. I will trust you too. Help me to my room.”
Without a word of reply, I took my plaid and wrapped it about her;
prevailed upon her to put on a pair of slippers which I had never worn;
and, opening the doors, led her out of the room, aided by the light of my
bedroom candle.
“How is this? Why do you take me this way! I do not know this part of the
house in the least.”
“This is the way I brought you in, Lady Alice; and I can promise to find
your way no farther than to the spot where I found you. Indeed, I shall
have some difficulty even in that, for I groped my way there for the
first time this night or morning—whichever it may be.”
“It is past midnight, but not morning yet,” she replied; “I always know
by my sensations. But there is another way from your room, of course?”
“There is; but we should have to pass the housekeeper’s door, and she
sleeps but lightly.”
“Are we near the housekeeper’s room? Perhaps I could walk alone. I fear
it would surprise none of the household to see, or even to meet me. They
would say—‘It is only Lady Alice.’ Yet I cannot tell you how I shrink
from being seen by them. No—I will try the way I came, if you do not mind
accompanying me.”
This conversation passed between us in hurried words, and in a low
tone. It was scarcely finished when we found ourselves at the foot of
the staircase. Lady Alice trembled a good deal, and drew my plaid close
around her. We ascended, and with little difficulty found the corridor.
When we left it, she was, as I had expected, rather bewildered as to the
right direction; but at last, after looking into several of the rooms,
empty all, except for stray articles of ancient furniture, she said, as
she entered one, and, taking the candle out of my hand, held it above her
head—
“Ah, yes! I am right at last; this is the haunted room: I know my way
now.”
By the dim light I caught only a darkling glimpse of a large room,
apparently quite furnished; but how, except from the general feeling of
antiquity and mustiness, I could not tell. Little did I think then what
memories—sorrowful and old now as the ghosts that along with them haunt
that old chamber, but no more faded than they—would ere long find their
being and take their abode in that ancient room, to forsake it never,
never more—the ghosts and the memories flitting together through the
spectral moonlight, and weaving strange mystic dances in and out of the
storied windows and the tapestried walls. At the door of this room she
expressed her wish to leave me, asking me to follow to the spot where
she should put down the light, that I might take it back; adding—“I hope
you are not afraid of being left so near the haunted room.” Then, with
a smile that made me strong enough to meet all the ghosts in or out of
Hades, she turned, went on a few paces, and disappeared. The light,
however, remained; and, advancing, I found the candle, with my plaid and
slippers, deposited on the third or fourth step down a short flight, in a
passage at right angles to that she had left. I took them up, made my way
back to my room, lay down on the couch on which she had lain so shortly
before, and neither went to bed nor slept that night. Before the morning
I had fully entered that phase of individual development commonly called
_love_; of which the real nature is as great a mystery to me now, as at
any period previous to its evolution in myself.
I will not linger on the weary fortnight that passed before I even saw
her again. I could teach, but not learn. My duties were not irksome
to me, because they kept me near her; but my thoughts were beyond my
control. It was not love only, but anxiety also, lest she were ill from
the adventures of that night, that caused my distress. As the days went
on, and no chance word about her reached me, I felt the soul within me
beginning to droop. In vain, at night, I tried to read, in my own room.
Nothing could fix my attention. I read and re-read the same page again
and again; but although I seemed to understand every word and phrase
as I read, I found when I had reached the close of the paragraph, that
there lingered in my mind no ghost of the idea embodied in the words. It
was just what one experiences in attempting to read when half-asleep. I
tried Euclid, and fared a little better with that. A very simple equation
I found I could manage, but when I attempted a more complex one—one in
which a little imagination, or something bordering upon it, was necessary
to find out the undefined object for which to substitute the unknown
symbol, that it might be dealt with by thought—I found that the necessary
power of concentrating was itself a missing factor.
But it is foolish to dwell upon an individual variety of an almost
universal stage in the life-fever.
One night, as I sat in my room, I found, as usual, that it was impossible
to read; and throwing the book aside, relapsed into that sphere of
thought which now filled my soul, having for its centre the Lady Alice.
I recalled her form as she lay on the couch, and a longing to see her,
almost unbearable, arose within me.
“Would to heaven,” I said to myself, “that will were power!”
In the confluence of idleness, distraction, and vehement desire, I found
myself, before I knew what I was about, concentrating and intensifying
within me, until it almost rose to a command, the operative volition
(if I may be allowed the phrase) that Lady Alice should come to me.
Suddenly I trembled at the sense of a new power which sprang into being
within me. I had not foreseen it, when I gave way to such extravagant
and apparently helpless wishes. I now actually awaited the fulfilment of
my desire, but in a condition ill fitted to receive it; for the effort
had already exhausted me to such a degree, that every nerve seemed in a
conscious tremor. Nor had I to wait long. I heard no sound of approach.
The closet-door in my room folded back, and in glided, open-eyed, but
sightless, pale as death, and clad in white, ghostly-pure and saint-like,
the Lady Alice. I shuddered from head to foot at what I had done. She was
more terrible to me in that moment, than any pale-eyed ghost could have
been. She passed me, walking round the table at which I was seated, went
to the couch, laid herself upon it, a little on one side, with her face
towards me, and gradually closed her eyes. She lay in something deeper
than sleep, and yet not death. I rose, and once more knelt beside her,
but dared not touch her. In what far realms of mysterious life might the
lovely soul be straying? Thoughts unutterable rose in me, culminated, and
sank like the stars of heaven, as I gazed on the present symbol of an
absent life—a life that I loved by means of the symbol; a symbol that I
loved because of the life. How long she lay thus, how long I gazed upon
her thus, I do not know.
Gradually, but without my being able to distinguish the gradations of
the change, her countenance altered to that of one who sleeps. But the
change did not end there. The slightest possible colour tinged her lips,
and deepened to a pale rose; then her cheek seemed to share in the hue,
then her brow and her neck, as the cloud the farthest from the sunset yet
acknowledges the rosy atmosphere. I watched, as it were, the dawn of a
soul on the horizon of the material. As I watched, the first approaches
of its far-off flight were manifest; and I saw it come nearer and nearer,
till its great, silent, speeding pinions were folded, and it looked
forth, a calm, beautiful, infinite woman, from the face and form sleeping
beside me. But the world without entering, ruffled its calmness, dimmed
its beauty, and dashed its sky with the streaks of earthly vapours. I
knew that she was awake for some moments before she opened her eyes. When
at last those depths of darkness disclosed themselves, slowly uplifting
their white cloudy portals, the same consternation she had manifested on
the former occasion, followed by yet greater anger, was the consequence.
“Yet again! Am I your slave, because I am weak?” She rose in the majesty
of wrath, and moved towards the door.
“Lady Alice, I have not touched you. Yet I am to blame, though not as you
think. Could I help longing to see you? And if the longing passed, ere I
was aware, into a will that you should come, and you obeyed it, forgive
me.”
I hid my face in my hands, overcome by conflicting emotions. A kind of
stupor came over me. When, recovering, I lifted my head, she was standing
by the closet-door.
“I have waited,” she said, “only to make one request of you.”
“Do not utter it, Lady Alice. I know what it is; and I give you my word
and solemn promise that I will never do so again.” She thanked me, smiled
most sweetly, and vanished.
What nights I had after this, in watching and striving lest unawares I
should be led to the exercise of my new power! I allowed myself to think
of her as much as I pleased in the daytime, or at least as much as I
dared; for when occupied with my pupils, I dreaded lest any abstraction
should even hint that I had a thought to conceal. I knew that I could
not hurt her then; for that only in the night did she enter that state
of existence in which my will could exercise authority over her. But at
night—at night—when I knew she lay there, and might be lying here; when
but a thought would bring her, and that thought was fluttering its wings,
ready to wake from the dreams of my heart; then the struggle was fearful.
“Bring her yet once, and tell her all—tell her how madly, hopelessly you
love her—she will forgive you,” said a voice within me; but I heard it
as the voice of the tempter, and kept down the thought which might have
grown to the will.
FOOTNOTES
[4] _Hamlet_, Act 1, Scene i.
Studies in Animal Life.
“Authentic tidings of invisible things;—
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.”—THE EXCURSION.
CHAPTER VI.
Every organism a colony—What is a paradox?—An organ is
an independent individual, and a dependent one—A branch
of coral—A colony of polypes—The Siphonophora—Universal
dependence—Youthful aspirings—Our interest in the youth
of great men—Genius and labour—Cuvier’s college life; his
appearance in youth; his arrival in Paris—Cuvier and Geoffrey
St. Hilaire—Causes of Cuvier’s success—One of his early
ambitions—M. le Baron—_Omnia vincit labor_—Conclusion.
That an animal Organism is made up of several distinct organs, and these
the more numerous in proportion to the rank of the animal in the scale
of beings, is one of those familiar facts which have their significance
concealed from us by familiarity. But it is only necessary to express
this fact in language slightly altered, and to say that an animal
Organism is made up of several distinct _individuals_, and our attention
is at once arrested. Doubtless, it has a paradoxical air to say so; but
Natural History is full of paradoxes; and you are aware that a paradox
is far from being necessarily an absurdity, as some inaccurate writers
would lead us to suppose: the word meaning simply, “contrary to what is
thought,”—a meaning by no means equivalent to “contrary to what is the
fact.” It is paradoxical to call an animal an aggregate of individuals;
but it is so because our thoughts are not very precise on the subject of
individuality—one of the many abstractions which remain extremely vague.
To justify this application of the word individual to every distinct
organ would be difficult in ordinary speech, but in philosophy there is
ample warrant for it.
An organ, in the physiological sense, is an _instrument_ whereby certain
functions are performed. In the morphological sense, it arises in a
_differentiation_, or setting apart, of a particular portion of the body
for the performance of particular functions—a group of cells, instead of
being an exact repetition of all the other cells, takes on a difference
and becomes distinguished from the rest as an organ.[5]
Combining these two meanings, we have the third, or philosophical sense
of the word, which indicates that every organ is an individual existence,
dependent more or less upon other organs for its maintenance and
activity, yet biologically distinct. I do not mean that the heart will
live independent of the body—at least, not for long, although it does
continue to live and manifest its vital activity for some time after the
animal’s death; and, in the cold-blooded animals, even after removal from
the body. Nor do I mean that the legs of an animal will manifest vivacity
after amputation; although even the legs of a man are not dead for some
time after amputation; and the parts of some of the lower animals are
often vigorously independent. Thus I have had the long tentacles of a
_Terebella_ (a marine worm) living and wriggling for a whole week after
amputation.[6] In speaking of the independence of an organ, I must be
understood to mean a very dependent independence: because, strictly
speaking, absolute independence is nowhere to be found; and, in the
case of an organ, it is of course dependent on other organs for the
securing, preparing, and distributing of its necessary nutriment. The
tentacles of my _Terebella_ could find no nutriment, and they perished
from the want of it, as the _Terebella_ itself would have perished under
like circumstances. The frog’s heart now beating on our table with such
regular systole and diastole, as if it were pumping the blood through the
living animal, gradually uses up all its force; and since this force is
not replaced, the beatings gradually cease. A current of electricity will
awaken its activity, for a time; but, at last, every stimulus will fail
to elicit a response. The heart will then be dead, and decomposition will
begin.
Dependent, therefore, every organ must be on some other organs. Let us
see how it is also independent; and for this purpose we glance, as usual,
at the simpler forms of Life to make the lesson easier. Here is a branch
of coral, which you know to be in its living state a colony of polypes.
Each of these multitudinous polypes is an individual, and each exactly
resembles the other. But the whole colony has one nutritive fluid in
common. They are all actively engaged in securing food, and the labours
of each enrich all. It is animal Socialism of the purest kind—there
are no rich and no poor, neither are there any idlers. Formerly, the
coral-branch was regarded as one animal—an individual; and a tree was
and is commonly regarded as one plant—an individual. But no zoologist
now is unaware of the fact that each polype on the branch is a distinct
individual, in spite of its connections with the rest; and philosophic
botanists are agreed that the tree is a colony of individual plants—not
one plant.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.
CAMPANULARIA (Magnified, and Natural Size).]
Let us pass from the coral to the stem of some other polype, say a
Campanularia. Here is the representation of such a stem, of the natural
size, and beside it a tiny twig much magnified. You observe the ordinary
polype issuing from one of the capsules, and expanding its coronal
of tentacles in the water. The food it secures will pass along the
digestive tract to each of the other capsules. Under the microscope,
you may watch this oscillation of the food. But your eye detects a
noticeable difference between this polype in its capsule, and the six
semi-transparent masses in the second capsule: although the two capsules
are obviously identical, they are not the same: a _differentiation_ has
taken place. Perhaps you think that six polypes are here crowding into
one capsule? Error! If you watch with patience, or if you are impatient
yet tolerably dexterous, you may press these six masses out, and then
will observe them swim away, so many tiny jelly-fish. Not polypes at all,
but jelly-fish, are in this capsule: and these in due time will produce
polypes, like that one now waving its tentacles.
Having made this observation, it will naturally occur to you that the
polype stem which bore such different capsules as are represented
by these two, may perhaps be called a colony, but it is a colony of
different individuals. While they have all one skeleton in common,
nutrition in common, and respiration in common, they have at least one
differentiation, or setting apart for a particular purpose, and that is,
the reproductive capsule. This is an individual, as much as any of the
others, but it is an individual that does nothing for the general good;
it takes upon itself the care of the race, and becomes an “organ” for
the community; the others feed it, and it is absolved from the labour of
nutrition, as much as the arm or the brain of a man are.
From this case, let us pass to the group of jelly-fish called
_Siphonophora_ (siphonbearers) by naturalists, and we shall see this
union of very different individualities into one inseparable colony still
more strikingly exhibited: there are distinct individuals to feed the
colony, individuals to float it through the water, individuals to act
as feelers, and to keep certain parts distended with fluid, and finally
reproductive individuals. All these are identical in origin, and differ
only by slight differentiations.[7] Here we have obviously an approach to
the more complex organism in which various distinct organs perform the
several functions; only no one calls the Organism a colony.
The individuals composing one of these Siphonophora are so manifestly
analogous to organs, that their individuality may, perhaps, be disputed,
the more so as they do not live separately. But the gradations of
separation are very fine. You would never hesitate to call a bee, or an
ant, an individual, yet no bee or ant could exist if separated from its
colony. So great is “the physiological division of labour,” which has
taken place among these insects, that one cannot get food, another cannot
feed itself, but it will fight for the community; another cannot work,
but it will breed for the community; another cannot breed, but it will
work. Each of these is little more than _separated_ organs of the great
insect-Organism; as the heart, stomach, and brain are _united_ organs of
the human-Organism. Remove one of these insects from the community, and
it will soon perish, for its life is bound up with the whole.
And so it is everywhere; the dependence is universal:—
“Nothing in this world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another’s being mingle.”
We are dependent on the air, the earth, the sunlight, the flowers, the
plants, the animals, and all created things, directly or indirectly.
Nor is the moral dependence less than the physical. We cannot isolate
ourselves if we would. The thoughts of others, the sympathies of others,
the needs of others,—these too make up our life; without these we should
quickly perish.
It was a dream of the youth Cuvier, that a History of Nature might
be written which would systematically display this universal
interdependence. I know few parts of biography so interesting as those
which show us great men in their early aspirings, when dreams of
achievements vaster than the world has seen, fill their souls with energy
to achieve the something they do afterwards achieve. It is, unhappily,
too often but the ambition of youth we have to contemplate; and yet
the knowledge that after-life brought with it less of hope, less of
devotion, and less of generous self-sacrifice, renders these early days
doubly interesting. Let the abatement of high hopes come when it may,
the existence of an aspiration is itself important. I have been lately
reading over again the letters of Cuvier when an obscure youth, and they
have given me quite a new feeling with regard to him.
There is a good reason why novels always end with the marriage of the
hero and heroine: our interest is always more excited by the struggles,
than by the results of victory. So long as the lovers are unhappy, or
apart, and are eager to vanquish obstacles, our sympathy is active; but
no sooner are they happy, than we begin to look elsewhere, for other
strugglers on whom to bestow our interest. It is the same with biography.
We follow the hero through the early years of struggle with intense
interest, and as long as he remains unsuccessful, baffled by rivals or
neglected by the world, we stand by him and want him to succeed; but the
day after he is recognized by the world our sympathy begins to slacken.
It is this which gives Cuvier’s _Letters to Pfaff_[8] their charm. I
confess that, M. le Baron Cuvier, administrator, politician, academician,
professor, dictator, has always had but a very tepid interest for me;
probably because his career early became a continuous success, and
Europe heaped rewards upon him; whereas, his unsuccessful rival,
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, claims my sympathy to the close. If, however, M.
le Baron is a somewhat dim figure in my biographical gallery, it is
far otherwise with the youth Cuvier, as seen in his letters; and, as
at this present moment there is nothing under our Microscope which can
seduce us from the pleasant volume, suppose we let our “Studies” take a
biographical direction.
“Genius,” says Carlyle, “means transcendent capacity for taking trouble,
first of all.” There are many young gentlemen devoutly persuaded of
their own genius, and yet candidly avowing their imperfect capacity
for taking trouble, who will vehemently protest against this doctrine.
Without discussing it here, let us say that genius, or no genius, success
of any value is only to be purchased by immense labour; and in science,
assuredly, no one will expect success without first paying this price.
In Cuvier’s history may be seen what “capacity for taking trouble” was
required before his success could be achieved; and this gives these
_Lettres à Pfaff_ a moral as well as an interest.
It was in the Rittersaal of the Academia Carolina of Stuttgardt
that Pfaff, the once famous supporter of Volta, and in 1787, the
fellow-student of Cuvier, first became personally acquainted with him.
Although they had been three years together at the same university, the
classification of students there adopted had prevented any personal
acquaintance. Pupils were admitted at the age of nine, and commenced
their studies with the classic languages. Thence they passed to the
philosophical class, and from that they went to one of the four
faculties: Law, Medicine, Administration, and Military Science. Each
faculty, of course, was kept distinct; and as Pfaff was studying
philosophy at the time Cuvier was occupied with the administrative
sciences, they never met, the more so as the dormitories and hours
of recreation were different. The academy was organized on military
principles. The three hundred students were divided into six classes,
two of which comprised the nobles, and the other four the bourgeoisie.
Each of these classes had its own dormitory, and was placed under the
charge of a captain, a lieutenant, and two inferior officers. These six
classes in which the students were entered according to their age, size,
and time of admission, were kept separate in their recreations, as in
their studies. But those of the students who particularly distinguished
themselves in the public examinations were raised to the rank of knights,
and had a dormitory to themselves, besides dining at the same table with
the young princes who were then studying at the university. Pfaff and
Cuvier were raised to this dignity at the same time, and here commenced
their friendship.
What a charm there is in school friendships, when youth is not less eager
to communicate its plans and hopes, than to believe in the plans and
hopes of others; when studies are pursued in common, opinions frankly
interchanged, and the superiority of a friend is gladly acknowledged,
even becoming a source of pride, instead of being, as in after years, a
thorn in the side of friendship! This charm was felt by Cuvier and Pfaff,
and a small circle of fellow-students who particularly devoted themselves
to Natural History. They formed themselves into a society, of which
Cuvier drew up the statutes and became the president. They read memoirs,
and discussed discoveries with all the gravity of older societies, and
even published, among themselves, a sort of _Comptes Rendus_. They made
botanical, entomological, and geological excursions; and, still further
to stimulate their zeal, Cuvier instituted an Order of Merit, painting
himself the medallion: it represented a star, with the portrait of
Linnæus in the centre, and between the rays various treasures of the
animal and vegetable world. And do you think these boys were not proud
when their president awarded them this medal for some happy observation
of a new species, or some well-considered essay on a scientific question?
At this period Cuvier’s outward appearance was as unlike M. le Baron, as
the grub is unlike the butterfly. Absorbed in his multifarious studies,
he was careless about disguising the want of elegance in his aspect. His
face was pale, very thin, and long, covered with freckles, and encircled
by a shock of red hair. His physiognomy was severe and melancholy. He
never played at any of the boys’ games, and seemed as insensible of all
that was going on around him as a somnambulist. His eye seemed turned
inwards; his thoughts moved amid problems and abstractions. Nothing
could exceed the insatiable ardour of his intellect. Besides his special
administrative studies, he gave himself to Botany, Zoology, Philosophy,
Mathematics, and the history of literature. No work was too voluminous,
or too heavy for him. He was reading all day long, and a great part
of the night. “I remember well,” says Pfaff, “how he used to sit by
my bedside going regularly through Bayle’s Dictionary. Falling asleep
over my own book, I used to awake, after an hour or two, and find him
motionless as a statue, bent over Bayle.” It was during these years that
he laid the basis of that extensive erudition which distinguished his
works in after life, and which is truly remarkable when we reflect that
Cuvier was not in the least a bookworm, but was one of the most active
_workers_, drawing his knowledge of details from direct inspection
whenever it was possible, and not from the reports of others. It was
here also that he preluded to his success as a professor, astonishing
his friends and colleagues by the clearness of his exposition, which he
rendered still more striking by his wonderful mastery with the pencil.
One may safely say that there are few talents which are not available in
Natural History; a talent for drawing is pre-eminently useful, since it
not only enables a man to preserve observations of fugitive appearances,
but sharpens his faculty of observation by the exercise it gives.
Cuvier’s facile pencil was always employed: if he had nothing to draw
for his own memoirs, or those of his colleagues, he amused himself with
drawing insects as presents to the young ladies of his acquaintance—an
entomologist’s gallantry, which never became more sentimental.
In 1788, that is in his nineteenth year, Cuvier quitted Stuttgardt,
and became tutor in a nobleman’s family in Normandy, where he remained
till 1795, when he was discovered by the Abbé Tessier, who wrote to
Parmentier, “I have just found a pearl in the dunghill of Normandy;” to
Jussieu he wrote—“Remember it was I who gave Delambre to the academy; in
another department this also will be a Delambre.” Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
already professor at the Jardin des Plantes, though younger than Cuvier,
was shown some of Cuvier’s manuscripts, which filled him with such
enthusiasm that he wrote to him, “Come and fill the place of Linnæus
here; come and be another legislator of natural history.” Cuvier came,
and Geoffroy stood aside to let his great rival be seen.
Goethe, as I have elsewhere remarked, has noticed the curious coincidence
of the three great zoologists successively opening to their rivals the
path to distinction: Buffon called Daubenton to aid him; Daubenton called
Geoffroy; and Geoffroy called Cuvier. Goethe further notices that there
was the same radical opposition in the tendencies of Buffon and Daubenton
as in those of Geoffroy and Cuvier—the opposition of the synthetical
and the analytical mind. Yet this opposition did not prevent mutual
esteem and lasting regard. Geoffroy and Cuvier were both young, and
had in common ambition, love of science, and the freshness of unformed
convictions. For, alas! it is unhappily too true, that just as the free
communicativeness of youth gives place to the jealous reserve of manhood,
and the youth who would only be too pleased to tell all his thoughts and
all his discoveries to a companion, would in after years let his dearest
friend first see a discovery in an official publication; so, likewise,
in the early days of immature speculation, before convictions have
crystalized enough to present their sharp angles of opposition, friends
may discuss and interchange ideas without temper. Geoffroy and Cuvier
knew no jealousy then. In after years it was otherwise.
Geoffroy had a position—he shared it with his friend; he had books
and collections—they were open to his rival; he had a lodging in the
museum—it was shared between them. Daubenton, older and more worldly
wise, warned Geoffroy against this zeal in fostering a formidable rival;
and one day placed before him a copy of Lafontaine open at the fable
of _The Bitch and her Neighbour_. But Geoffroy was not to be daunted,
and probably felt himself strong enough to hold his own. And so the
two happy, active youths pursued their studies together, wrote memoirs
conjointly, discussed, dissected, speculated together, and “never sat
down to breakfast without having made a fresh discovery,” as Cuvier said,
truly enough, for to them every step taken was a discovery.
Cuvier became almost immediately famous on his arrival at Paris, and his
career henceforward was one uninterrupted success. Those who wish to gain
some insight into the causes of this success should read the letters to
Pfaff, which indicate the passionate patience of his studies during the
years 1788-1795, passed in obscurity on the Norman coast. Every animal
he can lay hands on is dissected with the greatest care, and drawings
are made of every detail of interest. Every work that is published of
any note in his way is read, analyzed, and commented on. Lavoisier’s new
system of chemistry finds in him an ardent disciple. Kielmeyer’s lectures
open new vistas to him. The marvels of marine life, in those days so
little thought of, he studies with persevering minuteness, and with
admirable success. He dissects the cuttlefish, and makes his drawings of
it with its own ink. He notes minute characters with the patience of a
species-monger, whose sole ambition is to affix his name to some trifling
variation of a common form; yet with this minuteness of detail he unites
the largeness of view necessary to a comparative anatomist.
“Your reflections on the differences between animals and plants,” he
writes, “in the passage to which I previously referred, will be the
more agreeable to me because I am at present working out a new plan of
a general natural history. I think we ought carefully to seek out the
relation of all existences with the rest of nature, and above all, to
show their part in the economy of the great All. In this work I should
desire that the investigator should start from the simplest things, such
as air and water, and after having spoken of their influence on the
whole, he should pass gradually to the compound minerals, from these
to plants, and so on; and that at each stage he should ascertain the
exact degree of composition, or, which is the same thing, the number of
properties it presents over and above those of the preceding stage, the
necessary effects of these properties, and their usefulness in creation.
Such a work is yet to be executed. The two works of Aristotle, _De
Historia Animalium_, and _De Partibus Animalium_, which I admire more
each time that I read them, contain a part of what I desire, namely, the
comparison of species, and many of the general results. It is, indeed,
the first scientific essay at a natural history. For this reason it
is necessarily incomplete, contains many inaccuracies, and is too far
removed from a knowledge of physical laws.” He passes on from Aristotle
to Pliny, Theophrastus, Discorides, Aldovrandus, Gesner, Gaspar Bauhin,
and Ray, rapidly sketching the history of natural history as a science;
and concluding with this criticism on these attempts at a nomenclature
which neglected real science:—“These are the dictionaries of natural
history; but when will the _language_ be spoken?”
No one who reads these letters attentively, will be surprised at the
young Cuvier’s taking eminent rank among the men of science in France;
and Pfaff, on arriving in Paris six years afterwards, found his old
fellow-student had become “a personage.” The change in Cuvier’s
appearance was very striking. He was then at his maturity, and might
pass for a handsome man. His shock of red hair was now cut and trimmed
in Parisian style; his countenance beamed with health and satisfaction;
his expression was lively and engaging; and although the slight tinge of
melancholy which was natural to him had not wholly disappeared, yet the
fire and vivacity of his genius overcame it. His dress was that of the
fashion of the day, not without a little affectation. Yet his life was
simple, and wholly devoted to science. He had a lodging in the Jardin des
Plantes, and was waited on by an old housekeeper, like any other simple
professor.
On Pfaff’s subsequent visit, things were changed. Instead of the old
housekeeper, the door was opened by a lackey in grand livery. Instead of
asking for “Citizen Cuvier,” he inquired for Monsieur Cuvier; whereupon,
the lackey politely asked, whether he wished to see M. le Baron Cuvier,
or M. Fréderic, his brother? “I soon found where I was,” continues
Pfaff. “It was the baron, separated from me by that immense interval of
thirty years, and by those high dignities which an empire offers to the
ambition of men.” He found the baron almost exclusively interested in
politics, and scarcely giving a thought to science. The “preparations”
and “injections” which Pfaff had brought with him from Germany, as a
present to Cuvier, were scarcely looked at, and were set aside with an
indifferent “that’s good,” and “very fine;” much to Pfaff’s distress, who
doubtless thought the fate of the Martignac ministry an extremely small
subject of interest compared with these injections of the lymphatics.
But it is not my purpose to paint Cuvier in his later years. It is to the
studies of his youth that I would call your attention, to read there,
once again, the important lesson that nothing of any solid value can be
achieved without entire devotion. Nothing is earned without sweat of the
brow. Even the artist must labour intensely. What is called “inspiration”
will create no works, but only irradiate works with felicitous flashes;
and even inspiration mostly comes in moments of exaltation produced by
intense work of the mind. In science, incessant and enlightened labour is
necessary, even to the smallest success. Labour is not all; but without
it, genius is nothing.
With this homily, dear reader, may be closed our FIRST SERIES of Studies;
to be resumed hereafter, let me hope, with as much willingness on your
part as desire to interest you on mine.
FOOTNOTES
[5] See on this point what was said in our first Chapter, No. I. p. 67.
[6] _Seaside Studies_, 2nd edit. p. 59, _sq._
[7] Compare LEUCKART: _Ueber den Polymorphismus der Individuen_.
GEGENBAUR: _Grundzüge der Vergleichende Anatomie_; and HUXLEY’s splendid
monograph on the _Oceanic Hydrozoa_, published by the Ray Society.
[8] _Lettres de Georges Cuvier à C. M. Pfaff_, 1788-92. Traduites de
l’Allemand, par Louis Marchant, 1858.
Framley Parsonage.
CHAPTER XVI.
MRS. PODGENS’ BABY.
The hunting season had now nearly passed away, and the great ones of
the Barsetshire world were thinking of the glories of London. Of these
glories Lady Lufton always thought with much inquietude of mind. She
would fain have remained throughout the whole year at Framley Court,
did not certain grave considerations render such a course on her part
improper in her own estimation. All the Lady Luftons of whom she had
heard, dowager and anti-dowager, had always had their seasons in London,
till old age had incapacitated them for such doings—sometimes for clearly
long after the arrival of such period. And then she had an idea, perhaps
not altogether erroneous, that she annually imported back with her into
the country somewhat of the passing civilization of the times:—may we not
say an idea that certainly was not erroneous? for how otherwise is it
that the forms of new caps and remodelled shapes for women’s waists find
their way down into agricultural parts, and that the rural eye learns to
appreciate grace and beauty? There are those who think that remodelled
waists and new caps had better be kept to the towns; but such people, if
they would follow out their own argument, would wish to see ploughboys
painted with ruddle and milkmaids covered with skins.
For these and other reasons Lady Lufton always went to London in April,
and stayed there till the beginning of June. But for her this was usually
a period of penance. In London she was no very great personage. She had
never laid herself out for greatness of that sort, and did not shine as
a lady-patroness or state secretary in the female cabinet of fashion.
She was dull and listless, and without congenial pursuits in London, and
spent her happiest moments in reading accounts of what was being done at
Framley, and in writing orders for further local information of the same
kind.
But on this occasion there was a matter of vital import to give an
interest of its own to her visit to town. She was to entertain Griselda
Grantly, and as far as might be possible to induce her son to remain in
Griselda’s society. The plan of the campaign was to be as follows. Mrs.
Grantly and the archdeacon were in the first place to go up to London
for a month, taking Griselda with them; and then, when they returned to
Plumpstead, Griselda was to go to Lady Lufton. This arrangement was not
at all points agreeable to Lady Lufton, for she knew that Mrs. Grantly
did not turn her back on the Hartletop people quite as cordially as she
should do, considering the terms of the Lufton-Grantly family treaty.
But then Mrs. Grantly might have alleged in excuse the slow manner in
which Lord Lufton proceeded in the making and declaring of his love, and
the absolute necessity which there is for two strings to one’s bow, when
one string may be in any way doubtful. Could it be possible that Mrs.
Grantly had heard anything of that unfortunate Platonic friendship with
Lucy Robarts?
[Illustration: “WAS IT NOT A LIE?”]
There came a letter from Mrs. Grantly just about the end of March, which
added much to Lady Lufton’s uneasiness, and made her more than ever
anxious to be herself on the scene of action and to have Griselda in her
own hands. After some communications of mere ordinary importance with
reference to the London world in general and the Lufton-Grantly world in
particular, Mrs. Grantly wrote confidentially about her daughter:
“It would be useless to deny,” she said, with a mother’s pride and a
mother’s humility, “that she is very much admired. She is asked out a
great deal more than I can take her, and to houses to which I myself by
no means wish to go. I could not refuse her as to Lady Hartletop’s first
ball, for there will be nothing else this year like them; and of course
when with you, dear Lady Lufton, that house will be out of the question.
So indeed would it be with me, were I myself only concerned. The duke was
there, of course, and I really wonder Lady Hartletop should not be more
discreet in her own drawing-room when all the world is there. It is clear
to me that Lord Dumbello admires Griselda much more than I could wish.
She, dear girl, has such excellent sense that I do not think it likely
that her head should be turned by it; but with how many girls would not
the admiration of such a man be irresistible? The marquis, you know, is
very feeble, and I am told that since this rage for building has come on,
the Lancashire property is over two hundred thousand a year!! I do not
think that Lord Dumbello has said much to her. Indeed it seems to me that
he never does say much to any one. But he always stands up to dance with
her, and I see that he is uneasy and fidgetty when she stands up with any
other partner whom he could care about. It was really embarrassing to see
him the other night at Miss Dunstable’s, when Griselda was dancing with
a certain friend of ours. But she did look very well that evening, and I
have seldom seen her more animated!”
All this, and a great deal more of the same sort in the same letter,
tended to make Lady Lufton anxious to be in London. It was quite
certain—there was no doubt of that, at any rate—that Griselda would see
no more of Lady Hartletop’s meretricious grandeur when she had been
transferred to Lady Lufton’s guardianship. And she, Lady Lufton, did
wonder that Mrs. Grantly should have taken her daughter to such a house.
All about Lady Hartletop was known to all the world. It was known that
it was almost the only house in London at which the Duke of Omnium was
constantly to be met. Lady Lufton herself would almost as soon think of
taking a young girl to Gatherum Castle; and on these accounts she did
feel rather angry with her friend Mrs. Grantly. But then perhaps she did
not sufficiently calculate that Mrs. Grantly’s letter had been written
purposely to produce such feelings—with the express view of awakening
her ladyship to the necessity of action. Indeed in such a matter as this
Mrs. Grantly was a more able woman than Lady Lufton—more able to see her
way and to follow it out. The Lufton-Grantly alliance was in her mind the
best, seeing that she did not regard money as everything. But failing
that, the Hartletop-Grantly alliance was not bad. Regarding it as a
second string to her bow, she thought that it was not at all bad.
Lady Lufton’s reply was very affectionate. She declared how happy she
was to know that Griselda was enjoying herself; she insinuated that Lord
Dumbello was known to the world as a fool, and his mother as——being not
a bit better than she ought to be; and then she added that circumstances
would bring herself up to town four days sooner than she had expected,
and that she hoped her dear Griselda would come to her at once. Lord
Lufton, she said, though he would not sleep in Bruton Street—Lady Lufton
lived in Bruton Street—had promised to pass there as much of his time as
his parliamentary duties would permit.
O Lady Lufton! Lady Lufton! did it not occur to you, when you wrote
those last words, intending that they should have so strong an effect on
the mind of your correspondent, that you were telling a——tarradiddle?
Was it not the case that you had said to your son, in your own dear,
kind, motherly way: “Ludovic, we shall see something of you in Bruton
Street this year, shall we not? Griselda Grantly will be with me, and
we must not let her be dull—must we?” And then had he not answered,
“Oh, of course, mother,” and sauntered out of the room, not altogether
graciously? Had he, or you, said a word about his parliamentary duties?
Not a word! O Lady Lufton! have you not now written a tarradiddle to your
friend?
In these days we are becoming very strict about truth with our children;
terribly strict occasionally, when we consider the natural weakness of
the moral courage at the ages of ten, twelve, and fourteen. But I do
not know that we are at all increasing the measure of strictness with
which we, grown-up people, regulate our own truth and falsehood. Heaven
forbid that I should be thought to advocate falsehood in children; but an
untruth is more pardonable in them than in their parents. Lady Lufton’s
tarradiddle was of a nature that is usually considered excusable—at least
with grown people; but, nevertheless, she would have been nearer to
perfection could she have confined herself to the truth. Let us suppose
that a boy were to write home from school, saying that another boy had
promised to come and stay with him, that other having given no such
promise—what a very naughty boy would that first boy be in the eyes of
his pastors and masters!
That little conversation between Lord Lufton and his mother—in which
nothing was said about his lordship’s parliamentary duties—took place on
the evening before he started for London. On that occasion he certainly
was not in his best humour, nor did he behave to his mother in his
kindest manner. He had then left the room when she began to talk about
Miss Grantly; and once again in the course of the evening, when his
mother, not very judiciously, said a word or two about Griselda’s beauty,
he had remarked that she was no conjuror, and would hardly set the Thames
on fire.
“If she were a conjuror!” said Lady Lufton, rather piqued, “I should not
now be going to take her out in London. I know many of those sort of
girls whom you call conjurors; they can talk for ever, and always talk
either loudly or in a whisper. I don’t like them, and I am sure that you
do not in your heart.”
“Oh, as to liking them in my heart—that is being very particular.”
“Griselda Grantly is a lady, and as such I shall be happy to have her
with me in town. She is just the girl that Justinia will like to have
with her.”
“Exactly,” said Lord Lufton. “She will do exceedingly well for Justinia.”
Now this was not good-natured on the part of Lord Lufton; and his mother
felt it the more strongly, inasmuch as it seemed to signify that he was
setting his back up against the Lufton-Grantly alliance. She had been
pretty sure that he would do so in the event of his suspecting that a
plot was being laid to watch him; and now it almost appeared that he did
suspect such a plot. Why else that sarcasm as to Griselda doing very well
for his sister?
And now we must go back and describe a little scene at Framley which will
account for his lordship’s ill-humour and suspicions, and explain how it
came to pass that he so snubbed his mother. This scene took place about
ten days after the evening on which Mrs. Robarts and Lucy were walking
together in the Parsonage garden, and during those ten days Lucy had not
once allowed herself to be entrapped into any special conversation with
the young peer. She had dined at Framley Court during that interval,
and had spent a second evening there; Lord Lufton had also been up at
the Parsonage on three or four occasions, and had looked for her in her
usual walks; but, nevertheless, they had never come together in their old
familiar way, since the day on which Lady Lufton had hinted her fears to
Mrs. Robarts.
Lord Lufton had very much missed her. At first he had not attributed
this change to a purposed scheme of action on the part of any one; nor,
indeed, had he much thought about it, although he had felt himself to
be annoyed. But as the period fixed for his departure grew near, it did
occur to him as very odd that he should never hear Lucy’s voice unless
when she said a few words to his mother, or to her sister-in-law. And
then he made up his mind that he would speak to her before he went, and
that the mystery should be explained to him.
And he carried out his purpose, calling at the Parsonage on one special
afternoon; and it was on the evening of the same day that his mother
sang the praises of Griselda Grantly so inopportunely. Robarts, he knew,
was then absent from home, and Mrs. Robarts was with his mother down at
the house, preparing lists of the poor people to be specially attended
to in Lady Lufton’s approaching absence. Taking advantage of this, he
walked boldly in through the Parsonage garden; asked the gardener, with
an indifferent voice, whether either of the ladies were at home, and then
caught poor Lucy exactly on the doorstep of the house.
“Were you going in or out, Miss Robarts?”
“Well, I was going out,” said Lucy; and she began to consider how best
she might get quit of any prolonged encounter.
“Oh, going out, were you? I don’t know whether I may offer to——”
“Well, Lord Lufton, not exactly, seeing that I am about to pay a visit to
our near neighbour, Mrs. Podgens. Perhaps, you have no particular call
towards Mrs. Podgens’ just at present, or to her new baby?”
“And have you any very particular call that way?”
“Yes, and especially to Baby Podgens. Baby Podgens is a real little
duck—only just two days old.” And Lucy, as she spoke, progressed a step
or two, as though she were determined not to remain there talking on the
doorstep.
A slight cloud came across his brow as he saw this, and made him resolve
that she should not gain her purpose. He was not going to be foiled in
that way by such a girl as Lucy Robarts. He had come there to speak to
her, and speak to her he would. There had been enough of intimacy between
them to justify him in demanding, at any rate, as much as that.
“Miss Robarts,” he said, “I am starting for London to-morrow, and if I do
not say good-bye to you now, I shall not be able to do so at all.”
“Good-bye, Lord Lufton,” she said, giving him her hand, and smiling on
him with her old genial, good-humoured, racy smile. “And mind you bring
into parliament that law which you promised me for defending my young
chickens.”
He took her hand, but that was not all that he wanted. “Surely Mrs.
Podgens and her baby can wait ten minutes. I shall not see you again for
months to come, and yet you seem to begrudge me two words.”
“Not two hundred if they can be of any service to you,” said she, walking
cheerily back into the drawing-room; “only I did not think it worth while
to waste your time, as Fanny is not here.”
She was infinitely more collected, more master of herself than he was.
Inwardly, she did tremble at the idea of what was coming, but outwardly
she showed no agitation—none as yet; if only she could so possess herself
as to refrain from doing so, when she heard what he might have to say to
her.
He hardly knew what it was for the saying of which he had so resolutely
come thither. He had by no means made up his mind that he loved Lucy
Robarts; nor had he made up his mind that, loving her, he would, or that,
loving her, he would not, make her his wife. He had never used his mind
in the matter in any way, either for good or evil. He had learned to
like her and to think that she was very pretty. He had found out that it
was very pleasant to talk to her; whereas, talking to Griselda Grantly,
and, indeed, to some other young ladies of his acquaintance, was often
hard work. The half hours which he had spent with Lucy had always been
satisfactory to him. He had found himself to be more bright with her than
with other people, and more apt to discuss subjects worth discussing;
and thus it had come about that he thoroughly liked Lucy Robarts. As to
whether his affection was Platonic or anti-Platonic he had never asked
himself; but he had spoken words to her, shortly before that sudden
cessation of their intimacy, which might have been taken as anti-Platonic
by any girl so disposed to regard them. He had not thrown himself at her
feet, and declared himself to be devoured by a consuming passion; but he
had touched her hand as lovers touch those of women whom they love; he
had had his confidences with her, talking to her of his own mother, of
his sister, and of his friends; and he had called her his own dear friend
Lucy.
All this had been very sweet to her, but very poisonous also. She had
declared to herself very frequently that her liking for this young
nobleman was as purely a feeling of mere friendship as was that of her
brother; and she had professed to herself that she would give the lie to
the world’s cold sarcasms on such subjects. But she had now acknowledged
that the sarcasms of the world on that matter, cold though they may be,
are not the less true; and having so acknowledged, she had resolved that
all close alliance between herself and Lord Lufton must be at an end.
She had come to a conclusion, but he had come to none; and in this frame
of mind he was now there with the object of reopening that dangerous
friendship which she had had the sense to close.
“And so you are going to-morrow?” she said, as soon as they were both
within the drawing-room.
“Yes: I’m off by the early train to-morrow morning, and Heaven knows when
we may meet again.”
“Next winter, shall we not?”
“Yes, for a day or two, I suppose. I do not know whether I shall pass
another winter here. Indeed, one can never say where one will be.”
“No, one can’t; such as you, at least, cannot. I am not of a migratory
tribe myself.”
“I wish you were.”
“I’m not a bit obliged to you. Your nomade life does not agree with young
ladies.”
“I think they are taking to it pretty freely, then. We have unprotected
young women all about the world.”
“And great bores you find them, I suppose?”
“No; I like it. The more we can get out of old-fashioned grooves the
better I am pleased. I should be a radical to-morrow—a regular man of the
people,—only I should break my mother’s heart.”
“Whatever you do, Lord Lufton, do not do that.”
“That is why I have liked you so much,” he continued, “because you get
out of the grooves.”
“Do I?”
“Yes; and go along by yourself, guiding your own footsteps; not carried
hither and thither, just as your grandmother’s old tramway may chance to
take you.”
“Do you know I have a strong idea that my grandmother’s old tramway will
be the safest and the best after all? I have not left it very far, and I
certainly mean to go back to it.”
“That’s impossible! An army of old women, with coils of ropes made out of
time-honoured prejudices, could not drag you back.”
“No, Lord Lufton; that is true. But one——” and then she stopped herself.
She could not tell him that one loving mother, anxious for her only son,
had sufficed to do it. She could not explain to him that this departure
from the established tramway had already broken her own rest, and turned
her peaceful happy life into a grievous battle.
“I know that you are trying to go back,” he said. “Do you think that I
have eyes and cannot see? Come, Lucy, you and I have been friends, and we
must not part in this way. My mother is a paragon among women. I say it
in earnest;—a paragon among women: and her love for me is the perfection
of motherly love.”
“It is, it is; and I am so glad that you acknowledge it.”
“I should be worse than a brute did I not do so; but, nevertheless, I
cannot allow her to lead me in all things. Were I to do so, I should
cease to be a man.”
“Where can you find any one who will counsel you so truly?”
“But, nevertheless, I must rule myself. I do not know whether my
suspicions may be perfectly just, but I fancy that she has created this
estrangement between you and me. Has it not been so?”
“Certainly not by speaking to me,” said Lucy, blushing ruby-red through
every vein of her deep tinted face. But though she could not command her
blood, her voice was still under her control—her voice and her manner.
“But has she not done so? You, I know, will tell me nothing but the
truth.”
“I will tell you nothing on this matter, Lord Lufton, whether true or
false. It is a subject on which it does not concern me to speak.”
“Ah! I understand,” he said; and rising from his chair, he stood against
the chimney-piece with his back to the fire. “She cannot leave me alone
to choose for myself my own friends, and my own——;” but he did not fill
up the void.
“But why tell me this, Lord Lufton?”
“No! I am not to choose my own friends, though they be among the best
and purest of God’s creatures. Lucy, I cannot think that you have ceased
to have a regard for me. That you had a regard for me, I am sure.”
She felt that it was almost unmanly of him thus to seek her out, and hunt
her down, and then throw upon her the whole weight of the explanation
that his coming thither made necessary. But, nevertheless, the truth must
be told, and with God’s help she would find strength for the telling of
it.
“Yes, Lord Lufton, I had a regard for you—and have. By that word you
mean something more than the customary feeling of acquaintance which may
ordinarily prevail between a gentleman and lady of different families,
who have known each other so short a time as we have done?”
“Yes, something much more,” said he, with energy.
“Well, I will not define the much—something closer than that.”
“Yes, and warmer, and dearer, and more worthy of two human creatures who
value each other’s minds and hearts.”
“Some such closer regard I have felt for you—very foolishly. Stop! You
have made me speak, and do not interrupt me now. Does not your conscience
tell you that in doing so I have unwisely deserted those wise old
grandmother’s tramways of which you spoke just now? It has been pleasant
to me to do so. I have liked the feeling of independence with which I
have thought that I might indulge in an open friendship with such as you
are. And your rank, so different from my own, has doubtless made this
more attractive.”
“Nonsense!”
“Ah! but it has. I know it now. But what will the world say of me as to
such an alliance?”
“The world!”
“Yes, the world! I am not such a philosopher as to disregard it, though
you may afford to do so. The world will say that I, the parson’s sister,
set my cap at the young lord, and that the young lord had made a fool of
me.”
“The world shall say no such thing!” said Lord Lufton, very imperiously.
“Ah I but it will. You can no more stop it, than King Canute could the
waters. Your mother has interfered wisely to spare me from this; and the
only favour that I can ask you is, that you will spare me also.” And then
she got up as though she intended at once to walk forth to her visit to
Mrs. Podgens’ baby.
“Stop, Lucy!” he said, putting himself between her and the door.
“It must not be Lucy any longer, Lord Lufton; I was madly foolish when I
first allowed it.”
“By heavens! but it shall be Lucy—Lucy before all the world. My Lucy, my
own Lucy—my heart’s best friend, and chosen love. Lucy, there is my hand.
How long you may have had my heart, it matters not to say now.”
The game was at her feet now, and no doubt she felt her triumph. Her
ready wit and speaking lip, not her beauty, had brought him to her
side; and now he was forced to acknowledge that her power over him had
been supreme. Sooner than leave her he would risk all. She did feel her
triumph; but there was nothing in her face to tell him that she did so.
As to what she would now do she did not for a moment doubt. He had been
precipitated into the declaration he had made, not by his love, but by
his embarrassment. She had thrown in his teeth the injury which he had
done her, and he had then been moved by his generosity to repair that
injury by the noblest sacrifice which he could make. But Lucy Robarts was
not the girl to accept a sacrifice.
He had stepped forward as though he were going to clasp her round the
waist, but she receded, and got beyond the reach of his hand. “Lord
Lufton!” she said, “when you are more cool you will know that this is
wrong. The best thing for both of us now is to part.”
“Not the best thing, but the very worst, till we perfectly understand
each other.”
“Then perfectly understand me, that I cannot be your wife.”
“Lucy! do you mean that you cannot learn to love me?”
“I mean that I shall not try. Do not persevere in this, or you will have
to hate yourself for your own folly.”
“But I will persevere, till you accept my love, or say, with your hand on
your heart, that you cannot and will not love me.”
“Then I must beg you to let me go,” and having so said, she paused while
he walked once or twice hurriedly up and down the room. “And, Lord
Lufton,” she continued, “if you will leave me now, the words that you
have spoken shall be as though they had never been uttered.”
“I care not who knows that they have been uttered. The sooner that
they are known to all the world, the better I shall be pleased, unless
indeed——”
“Think of your mother, Lord Lufton.”
“What can I do better than give her as a daughter the best and sweetest
girl I have ever met? When my mother really knows you, she will love you
as I do. Lucy, say one word to me of comfort.”
“I will say no word to you that shall injure your future comfort. It is
impossible that I should be your wife.”
“Do you mean that you cannot love me?”
“You have no right to press me any further,” she said; and sat down upon
the sofa, with an angry frown upon her forehead.
“By heavens,” he said, “I will take no such answer from you till you put
your hand upon your heart, and say that you cannot love me.”
“Oh, why should you press me so, Lord Lufton?”
“Why! because my happiness depends upon it; because it behoves me to know
the very truth. It has come to this, that I love you with my whole heart,
and I must know how your heart stands towards me.”
She had now again risen from the sofa, and was looking steadily in his
face.
“Lord Lufton,” she said, “I cannot love you,” and as she spoke she did
put her hand, as he had desired, upon her heart.
“Then God help me! for I am very wretched. Good-bye, Lucy,” and he
stretched out his hand to her.
“Good-bye, my Lord. Do not be angry with me.”
“No, no, no!” and without further speech he left the room and the house,
and hurried home. It was hardly surprising that he should that evening
tell his mother that Griselda Grantly would be a companion sufficiently
good for his sister. He wanted no such companion.
And when he was well gone—absolutely out of sight from the window—Lucy
walked steadily up to her room, locked the door, and then threw herself
on the bed. Why—oh! why had she told such a falsehood? Could anything
justify her in a lie? Was it not a lie—knowing as she did that she loved
him with all her loving heart?
But, then, his mother! and the sneers of the world, which would have
declared that she had set her trap, and caught the foolish young lord!
Her pride would not have submitted to that. Strong as her love was,
yet her pride was, perhaps, stronger—stronger at any rate during that
interview.
But how was she to forgive herself the falsehood she had told?
CHAPTER XVII.
MRS. PROUDIE’S CONVERSAZIONE.
It was grievous to think of the mischief and danger into which Griselda
Grantly was brought by the worldliness of her mother in those few weeks
previous to Lady Lufton’s arrival in town—very grievous, at least, to
her ladyship, as from time to time she heard of what was done in London.
Lady Hartletop’s was not the only objectionable house at which Griselda
was allowed to reap fresh fashionable laurels. It had been stated openly
in the _Morning Post_ that that young lady had been the most admired
among the beautiful at one of Miss Dunstable’s celebrated _soirées_,
and then she was heard of as gracing the drawing-room at Mrs. Proudie’s
conversazione.
Of Miss Dunstable herself Lady Lufton was not able openly to allege any
evil. She was acquainted, Lady Lufton knew, with very many people of the
right sort, and was the dear friend of Lady Lufton’s highly conservative
and not very distant neighbours, the Greshams. But then she was also
acquainted with so many people of the bad sort. Indeed, she was intimate
with everybody, from the Duke of Omnium to old Dowager Lady Goodygaffer,
who had represented all the cardinal virtues for the last quarter of a
century. She smiled with equal sweetness on treacle and on brimstone;
was quite at home at Exeter Hall, having been consulted—so the world
said, probably not with exact truth—as to the selection of more than
one disagreeably Low Church bishop; and was not less frequent in her
attendance at the ecclesiastical doings of a certain terrible prelate in
the Midland counties, who was supposed to favour stoles and vespers, and
to have no proper Protestant hatred for auricular confession and fish on
Fridays. Lady Lufton, who was very stanch, did not like this, and would
say of Miss Dunstable that it was impossible to serve both God and Mammon.
But Mrs. Proudie was much more objectionable to her. Seeing how sharp was
the feud between the Proudies and the Grantlys down in Barsetshire, how
absolutely unable they had always been to carry a decent face towards
each other in church matters, how they headed two parties in the diocese,
which were, when brought together, as oil and vinegar, in which battles
the whole Lufton influence had always been brought to bear on the Grantly
side;—seeing all this, I say, Lady Lufton was surprised to hear that
Griselda had been taken to Mrs. Proudie’s evening exhibition. “Had the
archdeacon been consulted about it,” she said to herself, “this would
never have happened.” But there she was wrong, for in matters concerning
his daughter’s introduction to the world the archdeacon never interfered.
On the whole, I am inclined to think that Mrs. Grantly understood the
world better than did Lady Lufton. In her heart of hearts Mrs. Grantly
hated Mrs. Proudie—that is, with that sort of hatred one Christian lady
allows herself to feel towards another. Of course Mrs. Grantly forgave
Mrs. Proudie all her offences, and wished her well, and was at peace
with her, in the Christian sense of the word, as with all other women.
But under this forbearance and meekness, and perhaps, we may say, wholly
unconnected with it, there was certainly a current of antagonistic
feeling which, in the ordinary unconsidered language of every day, men
and women do call hatred. This raged and was strong throughout the whole
year in Barsetshire, before the eyes of all mankind. But, nevertheless,
Mrs. Grantly took Griselda to Mrs. Proudie’s evening parties in London.
In these days Mrs. Proudie considered herself to be by no means the least
among bishops’ wives. She had opened the season this year in a new house
in Gloucester Place, at which the reception rooms, at any rate, were all
that a lady bishop could desire. Here she had a front drawing-room of
very noble dimensions, a second drawing-room rather noble also, though
it had lost one of its back corners awkwardly enough, apparently in a
jostle with the neighbouring house; and then there was a third—shall we
say drawing-room, or closet?—in which Mrs. Proudie delighted to be seen
sitting, in order that the world might know that there was a third room;
altogether a noble suite, as Mrs. Proudie herself said in confidence to
more than one clergyman’s wife from Barsetshire. “A noble suite, indeed,
Mrs. Proudie!” the clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire would usually
answer.
For some time Mrs. Proudie was much at a loss to know by what sort of
party or entertainment she would make herself famous. Balls and suppers
were of course out of the question. She did not object to her daughters
dancing all night at other houses—at least, of late she had not objected,
for the fashionable world required it, and the young ladies had perhaps
a will of their own—but dancing at her house—absolutely under the shade
of the bishop’s apron—would be a sin and a scandal. And then as to
suppers—of all modes in which one may extend one’s hospitality to a large
acquaintance, they are the most costly.
“It is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for
the mere sake of eating and drinking,” Mrs. Proudie would say to the
clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire. “It shows such a sensual propensity.”
“Indeed it does, Mrs. Proudie; and is so vulgar too!” those ladies would
reply.
But the elder among them would remember with regret the unsparing,
open-handed hospitality of Barchester palace in the good old days of
Bishop Grantly—God rest his soul! One old vicar’s wife there was whose
answer had not been so courteous—
“When we are hungry, Mrs. Proudie,” she had said, “we do all have sensual
propensities.”
“It would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide for all
that at home,” Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which opinion I
must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself to coincide.
But a conversazione would give play to no sensual propensity, nor
occasion that intolerable expense which the gratification of sensual
propensities too often produces. Mrs. Proudie felt that the word was
not all that she could have desired. It was a little faded by old use
and present oblivion, and seemed to address itself to that portion of
the London world that is considered blue, rather than fashionable. But,
nevertheless, there was a spirituality about it which suited her, and one
may also say an economy. And then as regarded fashion, it might perhaps
not be beyond the power of a Mrs. Proudie to regild the word with a newly
burnished gilding. Some leading person must produce fashion at first
hand, and why not Mrs. Proudie?
Her plan was to set the people by the ears talking, if talk they would,
or to induce them to show themselves there inert if no more could be
got from them. To accommodate with chairs and sofas as many as the
furniture of her noble suite of rooms would allow, especially with the
two chairs and padded bench against the wall in the back closet—the
small inner drawing-room, as she would call it to the clergymen’s wives
from Barsetshire—and to let the others stand about upright, or “group
themselves,” as she described it. Then four times during the two hours’
period of her conversazione tea and cake was to be handed round on
salvers. It is astonishing how far a very little cake will go in this
way, particularly if administered tolerably early after dinner. The men
can’t eat it, and the women, having no plates and no table, are obliged
to abstain. Mrs. Jones knows that she cannot hold a piece of crumbly cake
in her hand till it be consumed without doing serious injury to her best
dress. When Mrs. Proudie, with her weekly books before her, looked into
the financial upshot of her conversazione, her conscience told her that
she had done the right thing.
Going out to tea is not a bad thing, if one can contrive to dine early,
and then be allowed to sit round a big table with a tea urn in the
middle. I would, however, suggest that breakfast cups should always be
provided for the gentlemen. And then with pleasant neighbours,—or more
especially with a pleasant neighbour, the affair is not, according to my
taste, by any means the worst phase of society. But I do dislike that
handing round, unless it be of a subsidiary thimbleful when the business
of the social intercourse has been dinner.
And indeed this handing round has become a vulgar and an intolerable
nuisance among us second-class gentry with our eight hundred a year—there
or thereabouts;—doubly intolerable as being destructive of our natural
comforts, and a wretchedly vulgar aping of men with large incomes.
The Duke of Omnium and Lady Hartletop are undoubtedly wise to have
everything handed round. Friends of mine who occasionally dine at such
houses tell me that they get their wine quite as quickly as they can
drink it, that their mutton is brought to them without delay, and that
the potato-bearer follows quick upon the heels of carnifer. Nothing
can be more comfortable, and we may no doubt acknowledge that these
first-class grandees do understand their material comforts. But we of
the eight hundred can no more come up to them in this than we can in
their opera-boxes and equipages. May I not say that the usual tether of
this class, in the way of carnifers, cup-bearers, and the rest, does not
reach beyond neat-handed Phyllis and the greengrocer? and that Phyllis,
neat-handed as she probably is, and the greengrocer, though he be ever so
active, cannot administer a dinner to twelve people who are prohibited by
a Medo-Persian law from all self-administration whatever? And may I not
further say that the lamentable consequence to us eight hundreders dining
out among each other is this, that we too often get no dinner at all.
Phyllis, with the potatoes, cannot reach us till our mutton is devoured,
or in a lukewarm state past our power of managing; and Ganymede, the
greengrocer, though we admire the skill of his necktie and the whiteness
of his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us going in sherry.
Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without the small
modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good digestion,
I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I bowed my head
at her, she looked at me withall her eyes, struck with amazement.
Had I suggested that she should join me in a wild Indian war-dance,
with nothing on but my paint, her face could not have shown greater
astonishment. And yet I should have thought she might have remembered the
days when Christian men and women used to drink wine with each other.
God be with the good old days when I could hobnob with my friend over the
table as often as I was inclined to lift my glass to my lips, and make a
long arm for a hot potato whenever the exigencies of my plate required it.
I think it may be laid down as a rule in affairs of hospitality, that
whatever extra luxury or grandeur we introduce at our tables when guests
are with us, should be introduced for the advantage of the guest and not
for our own. If, for instance, our dinner be served in a manner different
from that usual to us, it should be so served in order that our friends
may with more satisfaction eat our repast than our everyday practice
would produce on them. But the change should by no means be made to
their material detriment in order that our fashion may be acknowledged.
Again, if I decorate my sideboard and table, wishing that the eyes of my
visitors may rest on that which is elegant and pleasant to the sight,
I act in that matter with a becoming sense of hospitality; but if my
object be to kill Mrs. Jones with envy at the sight of all my silver
trinkets, I am a very mean-spirited fellow. This, in a broad way, will be
acknowledged; but if we would bear in mind the same idea at all times,—on
occasions when the way perhaps may not be so broad, when more thinking
may be required to ascertain what is true hospitality, I think we of the
eight hundred would make a greater advance towards really entertaining
our own friends than by any rearrangement of the actual meats and dishes
which we set before them.
Knowing, as we do, that the terms of the Lufton-Grantly alliance had been
so solemnly ratified between the two mothers, it is perhaps hardly open
to us to suppose that Mrs. Grantly was induced to take her daughter to
Mrs. Proudie’s by any knowledge which she may have acquired that Lord
Dumbello had promised to grace the bishop’s assembly. It is certainly
the fact that high contracting parties do sometimes allow themselves a
latitude which would be considered dishonest by contractors of a lower
sort; and it may be possible that the archdeacon’s wife did think of that
second string with which her bow was furnished. Be that as it may, Lord
Dumbello was at Mrs. Proudie’s, and it did so come to pass that Griselda
was seated at the corner of a sofa close to which was a vacant space in
which his lordship could—“group himself.”
They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself.
“Fine day,” he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss
Grantly’s elbow.
“We were driving to-day, and we thought it rather cold,” said Griselda.
“Deuced cold,” said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat
and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any
other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped
himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to
Mrs. Proudie.
“This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,” said that lady, coming up to
him and shaking his hand warmly; “so very kind of you to come to my poor
little tea-party.”
“Uncommon pleasant, I call it,” said his lordship. “I like this sort of
thing—no trouble, you know.”
“No; that is the charm of it: isn’t it? no trouble, or fuss, or parade.
That’s what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in
giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts—what we call
conversation.”
“Aw, yes, exactly.”
“Not in eating and drinking together—eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the
practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those
animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world
in this has surely made a great mistake.”
“I like a good dinner all the same,” said Lord Dumbello.
“Oh, yes, of course—of course. I am by no means one of those who would
pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our
enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?”
“A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,” said
Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation.
“An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any
rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating—can we?”
“No,” said Lord Dumbello, “not always.” And he looked as though he
lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.
And then Mrs. Proudie passed on to Mrs. Grantly. The two ladies were
quite friendly in London; though down in their own neighbourhood they
waged a war so internecine in its nature. But nevertheless Mrs. Proudie’s
manner might have showed to a very close observer that she knew the
difference between a bishop and an archdeacon. “I am so delighted to see
you,” said she. “No, don’t mind moving; I won’t sit down just at present.
But why didn’t the archdeacon come?”
“It was quite impossible; it was indeed,” said Mrs. Grantly. “The
archdeacon never has a moment in London that he can call his own.”
“You don’t stay up very long, I believe.”
“A good deal longer than we either of us like, I can assure you. London
life is a perfect nuisance to me.”
“But people in a certain position must go through with it, you know,”
said Mrs. Proudie. “The bishop, for instance, must attend the house.”
“Must he?” asked Mrs. Grantly, as though she were not at all well
informed with reference to this branch of a bishop’s business. “I am very
glad that archdeacons are under no such liability.”
“Oh, no; there’s nothing of that sort,” said Mrs. Proudie, very
seriously. “But how uncommonly well Miss Grantly is looking! I do hear
that she has quite been admired.”
This phrase certainly was a little hard for the mother to bear. All the
world had acknowledged, so Mrs. Grantly had taught herself to believe,
that Griselda was undoubtedly the beauty of the season. Marquises and
lords were already contending for her smiles, and paragraphs had been
written in newspapers as to her profile. It was too hard to be told,
after that, that her daughter had been “quite admired.” Such a phrase
might suit a pretty little red-cheeked milkmaid of a girl.
“She cannot, of course, come near your girls in that respect,” said Mrs.
Grantly, very quietly. Now the Miss Proudies had not elicited from the
fashionable world any very loud encomiums on their beauty. Their mother
felt the taunt in its fullest force, but she would not essay to do battle
on the present arena. She jotted down the item in her mind, and kept it
over for Barchester and the chapter. Such debts as those she usually paid
on some day, if the means of doing so were at all within her power.
“But there is Miss Dunstable, I declare,” she said, seeing that that
lady had entered the room; and away went Mrs. Proudie to welcome her
distinguished guest.
“And so this is a conversazione, is it?” said that lady, speaking, as
usual, not in a suppressed voice. “Well, I declare, it’s very nice. It
means conversation, don’t it, Mrs. Proudie?”
“Ha, ha, ha! Miss Dunstable. There is nobody like you, I declare.”
“Well, but don’t it? and tea and cake? and then, when we’re tired of
talking, we go away,—isn’t that it?”
“But you must not be tired for these three hours yet.”
“Oh, I’m never tired of talking; all the world knows that. How do,
bishop? A very nice sort of thing this conversazione, isn’t it now?”
The bishop rubbed his hands together and smiled, and said that he thought
it was rather nice.
“Mrs. Proudie is so fortunate in all her little arrangements,” said Miss
Dunstable.
“Yes, yes,” said the bishop. “I think she is happy in these matters. I
do flatter myself that she is so. Of course, Miss Dunstable, you are
accustomed to things on a much grander scale.”
“I! Lord bless you, no! Nobody hates grandeur so much as I do. Of course
I must do as I am told. I must live in a big house, and have three
footmen six feet high. I must have a coachman with a top-heavy wig, and
horses so big that they frighten me. If I did not, I should be made
out a lunatic and declared unable to manage my own affairs. But as for
grandeur, I hate it. I certainly think that I shall have some of these
conversaziones. I wonder whether Mrs. Proudie would come and put me up to
a wrinkle or two.”
The bishop again rubbed his hands, and said that he was sure she would.
He never felt quite at his ease with Miss Dunstable, as he rarely could
ascertain whether or no she was earnest in what she was saying. So
he trotted off, muttering some excuse as he went, and Miss Dunstable
chuckled with an inward chuckle at his too evident bewilderment. Miss
Dunstable was by nature kind, generous, and open-hearted; but she was
living now very much with people on whom kindness, generosity, and
open-heartedness were thrown away. She was clever also, and could be
sarcastic; and she found that those qualities told better in the world
around her than generosity and an open heart. And so she went on from
month to month, and year to year, not progressing in a good spirit as she
might have done, but still carrying within her bosom a warm affection
for those she could really love. And she knew that she was hardly living
as she should live,—that the wealth which she affected to despise was
eating into the soundness of her character, not by its splendour, but
by the style of life which it had seemed to produce as a necessity. She
knew that she was gradually becoming irreverent, scornful, and prone to
ridicule; but yet, knowing this and hating it, she hardly knew how to
break from it.
She had seen so much of the blacker side of human nature that blackness
no longer startled her as it should do. She had been the prize at which
so many ruined spendthrifts had aimed; so many pirates had endeavoured
to run her down while sailing in the open waters of life, that she
had ceased to regard such attempts on her money-bags as unmanly or
over-covetous. She was content to fight her own battle with her own
weapons, feeling secure in her own strength of purpose and strength of
wit.
Some few friends she had whom she really loved,—among whom her inner self
could come out and speak boldly what it had to say with its own true
voice. And the woman who thus so spoke was very different from that Miss
Dunstable whom Mrs. Proudie courted, and the Duke of Omnium fêted, and
Mrs. Harold Smith claimed as her bosom friend. If only she could find
among such one special companion on whom her heart might rest, who would
help her to bear the heavy burdens of her world! But where was she to
find such a friend?—she with her keen wit, her untold money, and loud
laughing voice. Everything about her was calculated to attract those whom
she could not value, and to scare from her the sort of friend to whom she
would fain have linked her lot.
And then she met Mrs. Harold Smith, who had taken Mrs. Proudie’s noble
suite of rooms in her tour for the evening, and was devoting to them a
period of twenty minutes. “And so I may congratulate you,” Miss Dunstable
said eagerly to her friend.
“No, in mercy’s name do no such thing, or you may too probably have to
uncongratulate me again; and that will be so unpleasant.”
“But they told me that Lord Brock had sent for him yesterday.” Now at
this period Lord Brock was Prime Minister.
“So he did, and Harold was with him backwards and forwards all the day.
But he can’t shut his eyes and open his mouth, and see what God will send
him, as a wise and prudent man should do. He is always for bargaining,
and no Prime Minister likes that.”
“I would not be in his shoes if, after all, he has to come home and say
that the bargain is off.”
“Ha, ha, ha! Well, I should not take it very quietly. But what can we
poor women do, you know? When it is settled, my dear, I’ll send you a
line at once.” And then Mrs. Harold Smith finished her course round the
rooms, and regained her carriage within the twenty minutes.
“Beautiful profile, has she not?” said Miss Dunstable, somewhat later in
the evening, to Mrs. Proudie. Of course, the profile spoken of belonged
to Miss Grantly.
“Yes, it is beautiful, certainly,” said Mrs. Proudie. “The pity is that
it means nothing.”
“The gentlemen seem to think that it means a good deal.”
“I am not sure of that. She has no conversation, you see; not a word. She
has been sitting there with Lord Dumbello at her elbow for the last hour,
and yet she has hardly opened her mouth three times.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Proudie, who on earth could talk to Lord Dumbello?”
Mrs. Proudie thought that her own daughter Olivia would undoubtedly be
able to do so, if only she could get the opportunity. But, then, Olivia
had so much conversation.
And while the two ladies were yet looking at the youthful pair, Lord
Dumbello did speak again. “I think I have had enough of this now,” said
he, addressing himself to Griselda.
“I suppose you have other engagements,” said she.
“Oh, yes; and I believe I shall go to Lady Clantelbrocks.” And then he
took his departure. No other word was spoken that evening between him
and Miss Grantly beyond those given in this chronicle, and yet the world
declared that he and that young lady had passed the evening in so close
a flirtation as to make the matter more than ordinarily particular; and
Mrs. Grantly, as she was driven home to her lodgings, began to have
doubts in her mind whether it would be wise to discountenance so great an
alliance as that which the head of the great Hartletop family now seemed
so desirous to establish. The prudent mother had not yet spoken a word
to her daughter on these subjects, but it might soon become necessary to
do so. It was all very well for Lady Lufton to hurry up to town, but of
what service would that be, if Lord Lufton were not to be found in Bruton
Street?
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE NEW MINISTER’S PATRONAGE.
At that time, just as Lady Lufton was about to leave Framley for London,
Mark Robarts received a pressing letter, inviting him also to go up to
the metropolis for a day or two—not for pleasure, but on business. The
letter was from his indefatigable friend Sowerby.
“My dear Robarts,” the letter ran:—
“I have just heard that poor little Burslem, the Barsetshire
prebendary, is dead. We must all die some day, you know,—as you
have told your parishioners from the Framley pulpit more than
once, no doubt. The stall must be filled up, and why should not
you have it as well as another? It is six hundred a year and
a house. Little Burslem had nine, but the good old times are
gone. Whether the house is letable or not under the present
ecclesiastical régime, I do not know. It used to be so, for I
remember Mrs. Wiggins, the tallow-chandler’s widow, living in
old Stanhope’s House.
“Harold Smith has just joined the Government as Lord Petty Bag,
and could, I think, at the present moment get this for asking.
He cannot well refuse me, and, if you will say the word, I will
speak to him. You had better come up yourself; but say the word
‘Yes,’ or ‘No,’ by the wires.
“If you say ‘Yes,’ as of course you will, do not fail to come
up. You will find me at the ‘Travellers,’ or at the House. The
stall will just suit you,—will give you no trouble, improve
your position, and give some little assistance towards bed and
board, and rack and manger.
“Yours ever faithfully,
“N. SOWERBY.
“Singularly enough, I hear that your brother is private
secretary to the new Lord Petty Bag. I am told that his chief
duty will consist in desiring the servants to call my sister’s
carriage. I have only seen Harold once since he accepted
office; but my Lady Petty Bag says that he has certainly grown
an inch since that occurrence.”
This was certainly very good-natured on the part of Mr. Sowerby, and
showed that he had a feeling within his bosom that he owed something
to his friend the parson for the injury he had done him. And such was
in truth the case. A more reckless being than the member for West
Barsetshire could not exist. He was reckless for himself, and reckless
for all others with whom he might be concerned. He could ruin his friends
with as little remorse as he had ruined himself. All was fair game that
came in the way of his net. But, nevertheless, he was good-natured, and
willing to move heaven and earth to do a friend a good turn, if it came
in his way to do so.
He did really love Mark Robarts as much as it was given him to love any
among his acquaintance. He knew that he had already done him an almost
irreparable injury, and might very probably injure him still deeper
before he had done with him. That he would undoubtedly do so, if it came
in his way, was very certain. But then, if it also came in his way to
repay his friend by any side blow, he would also undoubtedly do that.
Such an occasion had now come, and he had desired his sister to give the
new Lord Petty Bag no rest till he should have promised to use all his
influence in getting the vacant prebend for Mark Robarts.
This letter of Sowerby’s Mark immediately showed to his wife. How
lucky, thought he to himself, that not a word was said in it about
those accursed money transactions! Had he understood Sowerby better he
would have known that that gentleman never said anything about money
transactions until it became absolutely necessary. “I know you don’t like
Mr. Sowerby,” he said; “but you must own that this is very good-natured.”
“It is the character I hear of him that I don’t like,” said Mrs. Robarts.
“But what shall I do now, Fanny? As he says, why should not I have the
stall as well as another?”
“I suppose it would not interfere with your parish?” she asked.
“Not in the least, at the distance at which we are. I did think of giving
up old Jones; but if I take this, of course I must keep a curate.”
His wife could not find it in her heart to dissuade him from accepting
promotion when it came in his way—what vicar’s wife would have so
persuaded her husband? But yet she did not altogether like it. She feared
that Greek from Chaldicotes, even when he came with the present of a
prebendal stall in his hands. And then what would Lady Lufton say?
“And do you think that you must go up to London, Mark?”
“Oh, certainly; that is, if I intend to accept Harold Smith’s kind
offices in the matter.”
“I suppose it will be better to accept them,” said Fanny, feeling perhaps
that it would be useless in her to hope that they should not be accepted.
“Prebendal stalls, Fanny, don’t generally go begging long among parish
clergymen. How could I reconcile it to the duty I owe to my children to
refuse such an increase to my income?” And so it was settled that he
should at once drive to Silverbridge and send off a message by telegraph,
and that he should himself proceed to London on the following day. “But
you must see Lady Lufton first, of course,” said Fanny, as soon as all
this was settled.
Mark would have avoided this if he could have decently done so, but he
felt that it would be impolitic, as well as indecent. And why should he
be afraid to tell Lady Lufton that he hoped to receive this piece of
promotion from the present government? There was nothing disgraceful in
a clergyman becoming a prebendary of Barchester. Lady Lufton herself
had always been very civil to the prebendaries, and especially to little
Dr. Burslem, the meagre little man who had just now paid the debt of
nature. She had always been very fond of the chapter, and her original
dislike to Bishop Proudie had been chiefly founded on his interference
with the cathedral clergy,—on his interference, or on that of his wife
or chaplain. Considering these things Mark Robarts tried to make himself
believe that Lady Lufton would be delighted at his good fortune. But yet
he did not believe it. She at any rate would revolt from the gift of the
Greek of Chaldicotes.
“Oh, indeed,” she said, when the vicar had with some difficulty explained
to her all the circumstances of the case. “Well, I congratulate you, Mr.
Robarts, on your powerful new patron.”
“You will probably feel with me, Lady Lufton, that the benefice is one
which I can hold without any detriment to me in my position here at
Framley,” said he, prudently resolving to let the slur upon his friends
pass by unheeded.
“Well, I hope so. Of course, you are a very young man, Mr. Robarts, and
these things have generally been given to clergymen more advanced in
life.”
“But you do not mean to say that you think I ought to refuse it?”
“What my advice to you might be if you really came to me for advice, I am
hardly prepared to say at so very short a notice. You seem to have made
up your mind, and therefore I need not consider it. As it is, I wish you
joy, and hope that it may turn out to your advantage in every way.”
“You understand, Lady Lufton, that I have by no means got it as yet.”
“Oh, I thought it had been offered to you: I thought you spoke of this
new minister as having all that in his own hand.”
“Oh, dear, no. What may be the amount of his influence in that respect, I
do not at all know. But my correspondent assures me——”
“Mr. Sowerby, you mean. Why don’t you call him by his name?”
“Mr. Sowerby assures me that Mr. Smith will ask for it; and thinks it
most probable that his request will be successful.”
“Oh, of course. Mr. Sowerby and Mr. Harold Smith together would no doubt
be successful in anything. They are the sort of men who are successful
nowadays. Well, Mr. Robarts, I wish you joy.” And she gave him her hand
in token of her sincerity.
Mark took her hand, resolving to say nothing further on that occasion.
That Lady Lufton was not now cordial with him, as she used to be, he was
well aware; and sooner or later he was determined to have the matter
out with her. He would ask her why she now so constantly met him with a
taunt, and so seldom greeted him with that kind old affectionate smile
which he knew and appreciated so well. That she was honest and true, he
was quite sure. If he asked her the question plainly, she would answer
him openly. And if he could induce her to say that she would return to
her old ways, return to them she would in a hearty manner. But he could
not do this just at present. It was but a day or two since Mr. Crawley
had been with him; and was it not probable that Mr. Crawley had been
sent thither by Lady Lufton? His own hands were not clean enough for a
remonstrance at the present moment He would cleanse them, and then he
would remonstrate.
“Would you like to live part of the year in Barchester?” he said to his
wife and sister that evening.
“I think that two houses are only a trouble,” said his wife. “And we have
been very happy here.”
“I have always liked a cathedral town,” said Lucy; “and I am particularly
fond of the close.”
“And Barchester-close is the closest of all closes,” said Mark. “There
is not a single house within the gateways that does not belong to the
chapter.”
“But if we are to keep up two houses, the additional income will soon be
wasted,” said Fanny prudently.
“The thing would be, to let the house furnished every summer,” said Lucy.
“But I must take my residence as the terms come,” said the vicar; “and
I certainly should not like to be away from Framley all the winter; I
should never see anything of Lufton.” And perhaps he thought of his
hunting, and then thought again of that cleansing of his hands.
“I should not a bit mind being away during the winter,” said Lucy,
thinking of what the last winter had done for her.
“But where on earth should we find money to furnish one of those large,
old-fashioned houses? Pray, Mark, do not do anything rash.” And the wife
laid her hand affectionately on her husband’s arm. In this manner the
question of the prebend was discussed between them on the evening before
he started for London.
Success had at last crowned the earnest effort with which Harold Smith
had carried on the political battle of his life for the last ten years.
The late Lord Petty Bag had resigned in disgust, having been unable to
digest the Prime Minister’s ideas on Indian Reform, and Mr. Harold Smith,
after sundry hitches in the business, was installed in his place. It was
said that Harold Smith was not exactly the man whom the Premier would
himself have chosen for that high office; but the Premier’s hands were
a good deal tied by circumstances. The last great appointment he had
made had been terribly unpopular,—so much so as to subject him, popular
as he undoubtedly was himself, to a screech from the whole nation. The
_Jupiter_, with withering scorn, had asked whether vice of every kind
was to be considered, in these days of Queen Victoria, as a passport to
the cabinet. Adverse members of both Houses had arrayed themselves in a
pure panoply of morality, and thundered forth their sarcasms with the
indignant virtue and keen discontent of political Juvenals; and even his
own friends had held up their hands in dismay. Under these circumstances
he had thought himself obliged in the present instance to select a man
who would not be especially objectionable to any party. Now Harold Smith
lived with his wife, and his circumstances were not more than ordinarily
embarrassed. He kept no race-horses; and, as Lord Brock now heard for the
first time, gave lectures in provincial towns on popular subjects. He had
a seat which was tolerably secure, and could talk to the House by the
yard if required to do so. Moreover, Lord Brock had a great idea that the
whole machinery of his own ministry would break to pieces very speedily.
His own reputation was not bad, but it was insufficient for himself
and that lately selected friend of his. Under all these circumstances
combined, he chose Harold Smith to fill the vacant office of Lord Petty
Bag.
And very proud the Lord Petty Bag was. For the last three or four months,
he and Mr. Supplehouse had been agreeing to consign the ministry to
speedy perdition. “This sort of dictatorship will never do,” Harold
Smith had himself said, justifying that future vote of his as to want
of confidence in the Queen’s government. And Mr. Supplehouse in this
matter had fully agreed with him. He was a Juno whose form that wicked
old Paris had utterly despised, and he, too, had quite made up his mind
as to the lobby in which he would be found when that day of vengeance
should arrive. But now things were much altered in Harold Smith’s views.
The Premier had shown his wisdom in seeking for new strength where
strength ought to be sought, and introducing new blood into the body of
his ministry. The people would now feel fresh confidence, and probably
the House also. As to Mr. Supplehouse—he would use all his influence on
Supplehouse. But, after all, Mr. Supplehouse was not everything.
On the morning after our vicar’s arrival in London he attended at the
Petty Bag office. It was situated in the close neighbourhood of Downing
Street and the higher governmental gods; and though the building itself
was not much, seeing that it was shored up on one side, that it bulged
out in the front, was foul with smoke, dingy with dirt, and was devoid
of any single architectural grace or modern scientific improvement,
nevertheless its position gave it a status in the world which made the
clerks in the Lord Petty Bag’s office quite respectable in their walk
in life. Mark had seen his friend Sowerby on the previous evening, and
had then made an appointment with him for the following morning at the
new Minister’s office. And now he was there a little before his time, in
order that he might have a few moments’ chat with his brother.
When Mark found himself in the private secretary’s room he was quite
astonished to see the change in his brother’s appearance which the change
in his official rank had produced. Jack Robarts had been a well-built,
straight-legged, lissome young fellow, pleasant to the eye because of his
natural advantages, but rather given to a harum-skarum style of gait,
and occasionally careless, not to say slovenly, in his dress. But now
he was the very pink of perfection. His jaunty frock-coat fitted him
to perfection; not a hair of his head was out of place; his waistcoat
and trousers were glossy and new, and his umbrella, which stood in the
umbrella-stand in the corner, was tight, and neat, and small, and natty.
“Well, John, you’ve become quite a great man,” said his brother.
“I don’t know much about that,” said John; “but I find that I have an
enormous deal of fagging to go through.”
“Do you mean work? I thought you had about the easiest berth in the whole
Civil Service.”
“Ah! that’s just the mistake that people make. Because we don’t cover
whole reams of foolscap paper at the rate of fifteen lines to a page, and
five words to a line, people think that we, private secretaries, have got
nothing to do. Look here,” and he tossed over scornfully a dozen or so of
little notes. “I tell you what, Mark; it is no easy matter to manage the
patronage of a cabinet minister. Now I am bound to write to every one of
these fellows a letter that will please him; and yet I shall refuse to
every one of them the request which he asks.”
“That must be difficult.”
“Difficult is no word for it. But, after all, it consists chiefly in the
knack of the thing. One must have the wit ‘from such a sharp and waspish
word as No to pluck the sting.’ I do it every day, and I really think
that the people like it.”
“Perhaps your refusals are better than other people’s acquiescences.”
“I don’t mean that at all. We, private secretaries, have all to do the
same thing. Now, would you believe it? I have used up three lifts of
notepaper already in telling people that there is no vacancy for a lobby
messenger in the Petty Bag office. Seven peeresses have asked for it for
their favourite footmen. But there—there’s the Lord Petty Bag!”
A bell rang and the private secretary, jumping up from his notepaper,
tripped away quickly to the great man’s room.
“He’ll see you at once,” said he, returning. “Buggins, show the Reverend
Mr. Robarts to the Lord Petty Bag.”
Buggins was the messenger for whose not vacant place all the peeresses
were striving with so much animation. And then Mark, following Buggins
for two steps, was ushered into the next room.
If a man be altered by becoming a private secretary, he is much more
altered by being made a cabinet minister. Robarts, as he entered the
room, could hardly believe that this was the same Harold Smith whom Mrs.
Proudie bothered so cruelly in the lecture-room at Barchester. Then he
was cross, and touchy, and uneasy, and insignificant. Now, as he stood
smiling on the hearthrug of his official fireplace, it was quite pleasant
to see the kind, patronizing smile which lighted up his features. He
delighted to stand there, with his hands in his trousers’ pocket, the
great man of the place, conscious of his lordship, and feeling himself
every inch a minister. Sowerby had come with him, and was standing a
little in the background, from which position he winked occasionally at
the parson over the minister’s shoulder.
“Ah, Robarts, delighted to see you. How odd, by-the-by, that your brother
should be my private secretary!”
Mark said that it was a singular coincidence.
“A very smart young fellow, and, if he minds himself, he’ll do well.”
“I’m quite sure he’ll do well,” said Mark.
“Ah! well, yes; I think he will. And now, what can I do for you, Robarts?”
Hereupon Mr. Sowerby struck in, making it apparent by his explanation
that Mr. Robarts himself by no means intended to ask for anything; but
that, as his friends had thought that this stall at Barchester might be
put into his hands with more fitness than in those of any other clergyman
of the day, he was willing to accept the piece of preferment from a man
whom he respected so much as he did the new Lord Petty Bag.
The minister did not quite like this, as it restricted him from much of
his condescension, and robbed him of the incense of a petition which he
had expected Mark Robarts would make to him. But, nevertheless, he was
very gracious.
“He could not take upon himself to declare,” he said, “what might be
Lord Brock’s pleasure with reference to the preferment at Barchester
which was vacant. He had certainly already spoken to his lordship on the
subject, and had perhaps some reason to believe that his own wishes would
be consulted. No distinct promise had been made, but he might perhaps go
so far as to say that he expected such result. If so, it would give him
the greatest pleasure in the world to congratulate Mr. Robarts on the
possession of the stall—a stall which he was sure Mr. Robarts would fill
with dignity, piety, and brotherly love.” And then, when he had finished,
Mr. Sowerby gave a final wink, and said that he regarded the matter as
settled.
“No, not settled, Nathaniel,” said the cautious minister.
“It’s the same thing,” rejoined Sowerby. “We all know what all
that flummery means. Men in office, Mark, never do make a distinct
promise,—not even to themselves of the leg of mutton which is roasting
before their kitchen fires. It is so necessary in these days to be safe;
is it not, Harold?”
“Most expedient,” said Harold Smith, shaking his head wisely. “Well,
Robarts, who is it now?” This he said to his private secretary, who
came to notice the arrival of some bigwig. “Well, yes. I will say good
morning, with your leave, for I am a little hurried. And remember, Mr.
Robarts, I will do what I can for you; but you must distinctly understand
that there is no promise.”
“Oh, no promise at all,” said Sowerby—“of course not.” And then, as he
sauntered up Whitehall towards Charing Cross, with Robarts on his arm, he
again pressed upon him the sale of that invaluable hunter, who was eating
his head off his shoulders in the stable at Chaldicotes.
William Hogarth:
PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER.
_Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time._
V.—BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS.
As one, Reader, who concludes haply, through hearsay, that his uncle
William has left him a ten pound legacy; but, going afterwards to
Doctors’ Commons, paying his shilling, and reading that said uncle’s
will,—receiving letters from stately lawyers, full of congratulation,
at seventy pence a piece,—being bowed and kotoued to by people who
were wont to cut him, and overwhelmed with offers of unlimited credit
by tradesfolk who yesterday would not trust to the extent of a pair of
woollen hose—discovers that he has inherited a fine fortune; so may an
author scarcely help feeling who has commenced a modest little series
of papers in the hope that they would fill a gap and serve a turn, and
who finds himself, now, roaming through a vast country, inexhaustible
in fertility, undermined with treasure, and overstocked with game: of
all which he is expected to give a faithful and accurate report. Yes,
the world Hogarthian is all before me, where to choose. Facilities for
“opening up” the teeming territory present themselves on every side.
Authorities accumulate; microscopes and retrospective spy-glasses are
obligingly lent. The Chamberlain of London politely throws open his
archives. I am permitted to inspect a Hogarth-engraved silver-plate,
forming part of the paraphernalia of the famous past-Overseer’s box of
St. Margaret’s, Westminster. Father Prout sends me from Paris an old
Hogarth etching he has picked up on the Quai Voltaire, and, withal, more
humour and learning in a sheet of letter-paper than ever I shall have in
my head in a lifetime. A large-minded correspondent in Cheshire insists
on tearing a portrait and biography of W. H. from an old book in his
possession, and sending the fragments to me. From the blue shadows of the
Westmoreland Fells comes, by book-post, a copy of “Aid Hoggart’s” poems.
A friend promises to make interest with the authorities of the Painters’
Company for any Hogarthian memorabilia their records may contain. Another
friend advises that I should straightway memorialise the Benchers of
the Honourable Society of Lincolns’ Inn, for information relative to W.
H’s entertainment by the “Sages de la Ley,” A.D. 1750. I am bidden to
remember that I should visit the Foundling Hospital, to see the _March to
Finchley_; that there are original Hogarths in Sir John Soane’s Museum,
and in the church of St. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol.[9] And, upon my word,
I have a collection of correspondence about Hogarth that reads like
an excerpt from the _Clergy List_. Their reverences could not be more
prolific of pen and ink were I a heterodox Bampton Lecturer. How many
times I have been clerically reminded of a blunder I committed (in No.
I.) in assigning a wrong county as the locality of St. Bee’s College. How
many times I have been enlightened as to the derivation of the hangman’s
appellation of Jack Ketch. From rectories, parsonages, endowed grammar
schools, such corrections, such explanations, have flowed in amain. Not
to satiety, not to nausea, on the part of their recipient. To him it
is very good and pleasant to think that some familiar words on an old
English theme can interest cultivated and thoughtful men. It is doubly
pleasant to be convinced that he was not in error when, in the first
section of these essays, he alluded to the favour with which William
Hogarth had ever been held by the clergy of the Church of England.
Yes, I have come into a fine fortune, and the balance at the banker’s
is prodigious. But how if the cheque book be lost? if the pen sputter,
if the ink turn pale and washy, or thick and muddy? Alnaschar! it is
possible to kick over that basket full of vitreous ware. Rash youth of
Siamese extraction, it may have pleased your imperial master to present
you with a white elephant. Woe! for the tons of rice and sugar that the
huge creature consumes, the sweet and fresh young greenstuff for which
he unceasingly craves;—and you but a poor day labourer? You must have
elephants, must you? Better to have gone about with a white mouse and
a hurdy-gurdy: the charitable might have flung you coppers. Shallow,
inept, and pretentious, to what a task have you not committed yourself!
Thus to me have many sincere friends—mostly anonymous—hinted. These are
the wholesome raps on the knuckles a man gets who attempts without being
able to accomplish; who inherits, and lacks the capacity to administer.
Many a fine fortune is accompanied by as fine a lawsuit—remember the
legatee cobbler in _Pickwick_—and dire is the case of the imprudent wight
who finds himself some fine morning in contempt, with Aristarchus for a
Lord Chancellor! But I have begun a journey. The descent of Avernus is
as facile as sliding down a _Montagne Russe_;—_sed revocare gradum_:—no,
one mustn’t revoke, nor in the game of life, nor in the game of whist. We
will go on, if you please; and I am your very humble servant to command.
The stir made by the publication of the set of engravings from the six
pictures of the _Harlot’s Progress_ was tremendous. Twelve hundred copies
of the first impression were sold. Miniature copies of some of the scenes
were engraved on fan-mounts. Even, as occurred with George Cruikshank’s
_Bottle_, the story was dramatised, and an interlude called _The Jew
Decoyed; or, a Harlot’s Progress_, had a most successful “run.” It is
worthy of observation that the perverse and depraved taste of the town
took it as rather a humorous thing that the courtezan, splendidly kept
by a Hebrew money-lender, should decoy and betray her keeper. _The Jew
Decoyed_. Ho! ho! it was a thing to laugh at. Who sympathizes with M.
Géronte in the farce—the poor, feeble, old dotard—when Arlechino runs
off with his daughter, and Pierrot the _gracioso_ half cuts his nose
off while he is shaving him, picking his pocket, and treading on his
tenderest corns, meanwhile? The tradesmen and lodging-house keepers
who are swindled and robbed by clown and pantaloon in the pantomime;
the image boys, fishmongers, and greengrocers whose stock in trade is
flung about the stage; the peaceable watchmaker, who tumbles over on
the slide artfully prepared in front of his own door with fresh butter,
by the miscreant clown; the grenadier bonneted with his own Busby; the
young lady bereft of her bustle; the mother of the baby that is sate
upon, swung round by the legs, and crammed into a letter-box: is any
pity evoked for those innocent and ill-used persons? I am afraid there
is none. I have seen a policeman in the pit roaring with laughter at the
pummelling and jostling his simulated brother receives on the stage.
It is remarkable to watch the keen delight with which exhibitions of
petty cruelty and petty dishonesty, of a gay, lively description, are
often regarded. I can understand the pickpocket detected by Charles the
Second’s keen eye in annexing a snuff-box at court, laying his finger
by the side of his nose, and taking the monarch into his confidence. I
can understand cynic Charles keeping the rogue’s secret for the humour
of the thing. And, verily, when I see children torturing animals,
and senseless louts grinning and jeering, and yelling “Who shot the
dog!” after a gentleman in the street, because he happens to wear the
honourable uniform of a volunteer, and persons who are utter strangers to
one belated runaway joining in the enlivening shout and chase of “Stop
thief!” I can begin to understand the wicked wisdom of the American
Diogenes who coolly indited this maxim: “If you see a drowning man, throw
a rail at him.”
Hogarth’s engravings of the adventures of Kate Hackabout were extensively
and grossly pirated. In those days, as in these, there were pictorial
Curlls in the land. The author of the foregoing has had the honour to
see some early and trifling pictorial performances of his own pirated
upon pocket-handkerchiefs and shirt-fronts; but, dear me, what a legal
pother would have arisen at Manchester if any one had pirated those
beautiful patent cylinders on which the piracies must have been so neatly
engraved! Some vile imitations of Hackabout were even cut on wood; and I
should dearly like to know if any impressions of those blocks are extant.
Mr. Ottley hits none in his _History of Chalcography_; but a series of
woodcuts so long after Albert Durer and Maso Fineguerra, so long before
Bewick the revivalist’s time, would be deeply interesting.[10] Hogarth
smarted under this injury, as well he might. The artist had always a
strong admixture of the British tradesman in his composition, and, as was
his wont when injured, he bellowed lustily. He moved the Lords of the
Treasury. He moved the Houses of Lords and Commons; and, at last (1735),
he obtained an Act of Parliament, specially protecting his copyright in
his prints. As usual, too, he celebrated the victory with a loud and
jubilant cock-crow, and complimented Parliament on their recognition of
the principles of truth and right, in an allegorical etching, with a
flowery inscription. It is good to learn that the Legislature were tender
to this artist even after his death, and that his widow, Jane Hogarth,
obtained, by another special act, a renewal of his copyrights for her
sole use and benefit. In this age of photography and electro-printing,
do we not need a law of artistic copyright somewhat more definite and
more stringent than the loose statutes that lawyers quibble about and
interpret different ways?
Ere I quit the subject of the _Harlot’s Progress_, it is meet to advert
to a little dictum of good Mr. Fuseli, the ambidextrous Anglo-Swiss,
who painted the _Lazar-house_ and other horrifying subjects, who used
to swear so dreadfully at the clerks in Coutt’s banking-house, and who
called for his umbrella when he went to see Mr. Constable’s showery
pictures. “The characteristic discrimination and humorous exuberance,”
says Fuseli, in a lecture, “which we admire in Hogarth, but which,
like the fleeting passion of a day, every hour contributes something
to obliterate, will soon be unintelligible by time or degenerate into
caricature: the chronicle of scandal, and the history book of the
vulgar.” I have the highest respect for the learning and acumen of
Fuseli; but I think he is wholly wrong in assuming that Hogarth’s humour
or discrimination will _ever_ become “unintelligible by time,” or will
“degenerate into caricature.” Look at this _Harlot’s Progress_. Who cares
to know, now, that Charteris continues to rot; that he was guilty of
every vice but prodigality and hypocrisy—being a monster of avarice and
a paragon of impudence; that he was condemned to death for a dreadful
crime, and only escaped the halter by the interest of aristocratic
friends; that he was a liar, a cheat, a gambler, a usurer, and a
profligate; that he amassed an estate of ten thousand a year; that he was
accused while living, and that the populace almost tore his body from his
remote grave in Scotland? Who cares to know how many times Mother Needham
was carted—although you may be sure they were not half so frequent as she
deserved. Is it important to know exactly whether the Caucasian financier
was intended for Sir Henry Furnese, or for Rafael Mendez, or Israel
Vanderplank. The quack Misaubin[11] and his opponent are forgotten.
Stern Sir John Gonson[12] and his anti-Cyprian crusades are forgotten.
For aught we can tell, the Bridewell gaoler, the Irish servant, the
thievish harridan, the Fleet parson, the glowering undertaker, may all be
faithful portraits of real personages long since gone to dust. It boots
little even to know if Kate were really Kate or Mary Hackabout, or Laïs,
or Phryne, or Doll Common. She is dead, and will sin and suffer stripes
no more. But the humour and discrimination of the painter yet live,
the types he pourtrayed endure to this hour. I saw Charteris the day
before yesterday, tottering about in shiny boots beneath the Haymarket
Colonnade. The quacks live and prosper, drive mail-phætons, and enter
horses for the Derby. The Jew financier calls himself Mr. Montmorenci
de Levyson, and lends money at sixty per cent., or as Julius McHabeas,
Gent., one of her Majesty’s attorneys-at-law, issues a writ at the suit
of his friend and father-in-law Levyson. And Kate decoys and cozens the
financier every day in a cottage _ornée_ at Brompton or St. John’s Wood.
Kate! there is her “miniature brougham” gliding through Albert Gate.
There is her barouche on the hill at Epsom. There she is at the play, or
in the garden, flaunting among the coloured lamps. There she is in the
Haymarket, in the Strand, in the New Cut, in the workhouse, in the police
cell, in the hospital. There she is on Waterloo Bridge, and there—God
help her!—in the cold, black river, having accomplished her “progress.”
Take away the whipping-post from Bridewell; and for the boudoir paid for
by the Jew, substitute the garish little sitting-room that Mr. Holman
Hunt painted in his wonderful picture of the _Awakened Conscience_, and
one can realize the “humour” and “discrimination” of Hogarth in a tale as
sad that progresses around us every day.
Every one who has the most superficial acquaintance with a Hogarthian
biography has heard the story of how Mrs. Hogarth, or her mamma, Dame
Alice Thornhill, placed the six pictures of the _Harlot’s Progress_ in
Sir James’s breakfast-parlour one morning, ready for the knight on his
coming down. “Very well, very well,” cried the king’s sergeant painter,
rubbing his hands, and well nigh pacified: “the man who can paint like
this wants no dowry with my daughter.” I am glad to believe the story;
but I don’t believe, as some malevolent commentators have insinuated,
that Sir James Thornhill made his son-in-law’s talent an excuse for
behaving parsimoniously to the young couple after he had forgiven
them. There is nothing to prove that Sir James Thornhill was a stingy
man. He had a son who was a great crony of Hogarth, accompanied him on
the famous journey to Rochester and Sheerness, and afterwards became
sergeant-painter to the navy. I fancy that he was a wild young man,
and cost his father large sums. It is certain, however, that Sir James
frequently and generously assisted his daughter and son-in-law. He set
them up in their house in Leicester Fields; and he appears to have left
Hogarth a considerable interest in his house at 104, St. Martin’s Lane,
whither he had removed from Covent Garden, and the staircase of which he
had painted, according to his incorrigible custom, with “allegories.”
The great artists of those days used to employ one another to paint the
walls and ceilings of each other’s rooms. Thus Kneller gave commissions
to the elder Laguerre, and Thornhill himself employed Robert Brown, the
painter who was so famous for “crimson curtains,” and who justified
having painted two signs for the Paul’s Head Tavern, in Cateaton Street,
on the ground that Correggio had painted the sign of the “Muleteer.”
Be it mentioned likewise, to Thornhill’s honour, that he fruitlessly
endeavoured to persuade Lord Halifax to found a Royal Academy in the
King’s Mews, Charing Cross. It would be better, perhaps, in this place
to make an end of goodman Thornhill. Besides Worlidge’s portrait, there
is one by Hogarth, in oil, of which a vigorous etching was executed by
Samuel Ireland. The portrait was purchased of Mrs. Hogarth, in 1781, and
was deemed by her an excellent likeness. Thornhill died at his seat,
“Thornhill,” near Weymouth, in 1734.[13] He had transferred his academy
or drawing-school, call it what you will, from Covent Garden to St.
Martin’s Lane; and to Hogarth he bequeathed all his casts and bustos,
all his easels and drawing-stools, all the paraphernalia of his studio.
These William ultimately presented to the academy held in St. Peter’s
Court St. Martin’s Lane, in premises that had formerly been the studio of
Roubiliac the sculptor.
I told you that at about the time of his marriage our artist took summer
lodgings at Vauxhall, and first made the acquaintance of Mr. Jonathan
Tyers, the “enterprizing” lessee of the once famous “Royal Property.”
With Tyers he ever maintained a fast friendship, and he materially and
generously assisted him in the decoration of the gardens; for, frugal
tradesman as Hogarth was, and sturdily determined to have the rights he
had bargained for, he was continually giving away something. We have
noticed his donation to the Petro-Roubiliac Academy; to St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital, of which he was a governor, he gave the picture of the _Pool
of Bethesda_; and the governors of the Foundling Hospital know how
nobly munificent was this honest Christian man to the nascent charity.
He gave them handsome pictures; he gave them a large proportion in the
shares of other picture-auctions—shares as good as money: he painted a
splendid portrait of Thomas Coram, the grand old sea-captain, who spent
his fortune in cherishing deserted children, and in his old age was not
ashamed to confess that he had spent his all in doing good; that his
fortune was funded in Heaven—let us trust he is drawing his dividends
now; and that here below he was destitute.[14] His example incited many
more notable artists to contribute pictures to the charity: and the
halls of the Foundling became the chief art-lounge in London. The Royal
Academy Exhibition, even, with its annual revenue of infinite shillings,
sprang from this odd germ. The Foundling Hospital, I have heard, has
wandered from its original purpose; and few of its first attributes are
now recognizable in its constitution; but I hope they still teach every
little boy and girl foundling to murmur a prayer for Thomas Coram and
William Hogarth.
For the embellishment of the supper-boxes at Vauxhall, William made
several designs; but there is not much evidence to prove that he
_painted_ any of them with his own hand. The paintings were mostly
executed by Hogarth’s fast friend, Frank Hayman, and perhaps by
Lanscroon, singer and scene-painter, son of old Lanscroon, Riario’s
condisciple with Laguerre’s son-in-law Tijou, and the author of a
meritorious set of prints illustrating _Hob at the Well_. For Vauxhall,
Hogarth made the designs of the _Four Parts of the Day_, which he
afterwards himself engraved, and which had great success.
Most of us have seen a very ugly, tasteless mezzotinto engraving
representing Henry VIII. in an impossible attitude, leering at a coarse
Anne Boleyn. I am always sorry to see the words “_Hogarth, pinxit_,”
in the left-hand corner of this inelegant performance, and sorrier to
know that he did indeed achieve that daub; and that the picture was hung
in the “old great room at the right hand of entry into the gardens.”
Indeed it is a barbarous thing. The background is, I suppose, intended
to represent an apartment in Cardinal Wolsey’s sumptuous mansion at York
Place; but it would do better for a chamber at the “Rose,” or at the
“Three Tuns,” in Chandos Street. I can speak of it no more with patience.
Why paint it, William? Yet it had all the honours of the mezzotint
scraper; it is engraved likewise in line; and Allan Ramsay—“Gentle
Shepherd” Ramsay—who should have known better, wrote some eulogistic
verses by way of epigraph. Nor did Jonathan Tyers of Vauxhall look the
gift horse in the mouth. He was glad to hang the sorry canvas in his
old great room; and in testimony of many kindnesses received from the
painter, who had “summer lodgings at South Lambeth,” presented him with
a perpetual ticket of admission to the gardens for himself and friends.
Fancy being on the free-list of Vauxhall for ever! The ticket was of
gold, and bore this inscription:—
In perpetuam beneficii memoriam.
Hogarth was a frequent visitor at the “Spring Gardens,” Vauxhall. There,
I will be bound, he and his pretty young wife frequently indulged in that
cool summer evening’s stroll which the French call _prendre le frais_.
There he may have had many a bowl of arrack punch with Harry Fielding—he
was to live to be firm friends with the tremendous author of “_Tom
Jones_;” there I think he may have met a certain Ferdinand Count Fathom,
and a Somersetshire gentleman of a good estate but an indifferent temper
and conversation, by name Western, together with my Lady Bellaston (in a
mask and a cramoisy grogram sack, laced with silver), and, once in a way,
perhaps, Mr. Abraham Adams, clerk. There is an authentic anecdote, too,
of Hogarth standing one evening at Vauxhall listening to the band, and
of a countryman pointing to the roll of paper with which the conductor
was beating time, and asking what musical instrument “that white thing
was?” “Friend,” answered William, “_it is a single handed drum_”—not a
very bright joke, certainly; but then, as has been pertinently observed,
a quibble can be excused to Hogarth, if a conundrum can be pardoned to
Swift.
We would paint our pictures and our progresses in 1730-1-2-3. We
were gaining fame. The Lords of the Treasury, as related by old
under-Secretary Christopher Tilson, could examine and laugh over our
plates even at the august council board, in the cockpit, and, adjourning,
forthwith proceed to purchase impressions at Bakewell’s shop, near
Johnson’s Court, in Fleet Street. “Frances Lady Byron”—more of her
lord hereafter—was sitting to us for her portrait. Theophilus Cibber
had pantomimised us. “Joseph Gay”—the wretched pseudonym of some Grub
Street, gutter-blood rag-galloper—had parodied in “creaking couplets”
the picture-poem of _Kate Hackabout_.[15] Vinny Bourne had headed his
“hendecasyllables,” _ad Gulielmum Hogarth_ Παραινετικον. Somerville,
author of the _Chase_ had dedicated his _Hobbinol_ to us; we were
son-in-law to a knight and M.P., but we were not yet quite emancipated
from struggles, and hardship and poverty. As yet we were very badly paid,
and our small earnings were gnawed away by the villanous pirates soon to
succumb to the protective act of Parliament which Huggins was to draw—how
strangely and frequently that detested name turns up—and draw not too
efficiently on the model of the old literary copyright statute of Queen
Anne. Morris had paid us the thirty pounds adjudged for the _Element
of Earth_: but no munificent, eccentric old maid had as yet arisen to
gratify us with sixty guineas for a single comic design: _Taste in High
Life_. We were poor, albeit not lowly. The wolf was not exactly at the
door. He didn’t howl from morning to night; but, half-tamed, he built
himself a kennel in the porch, and snarled sometimes over the threshold.
Let it be told again that we, William, were “a punctual paymaster.” So
it behoved us to paint as many portraits and conversations as we could
get commissions for, and do an occasional stroke of work on copper-plate
for the booksellers. Coypel and Vandergucht, both approved high Dutch
draughtsmen of the time, shared the patronage of the better class of
booksellers with us; but none of us worked for the polecat Edmund Curll.
One of us, however, made a smart onslaught about this time on Edmund
Curll’s most rancorous foe, Alexander Pope. Many pages ago I hinted at
this attack, as almost the only one that could be traced directly to
Hogarth; although many claim to discern little portraits in disparagement
of Pope Alexander in the print of the _Lottery_, in _Rich’s Triumphal
Entry to Covent Garden_ (in which a suppositious Pope beneath the piazza
is maltreating a copy of the _Beggars’ Opera_—why? had he not a hand
in it?), and in the _Characters at Button’s Coffee-house_. There can
be no mistake, however, about the Pope in the print known as _False
Taste_, or the second _Burlington Gate_. There is no need that I should
trench on the province of Mr. Carruthers, who, in his edition of Pope,
has so admirably narrated the ins and outs of the quarrel between the
poet and the magnificent Duke of Chandos, further than to express an
opinion that the duke had treated the little man of Twickenham with, at
least, courtesy; and that Pope’s description of “Timon’s villa,” was at
best somewhat lacking in courtesy. Hogarth took the Chandos side in the
squabble—the malevolent still hint in deference to Sir James Thornhill
and his old grudge against Kent, the Corinthian petticoat man, and
_protégé_ of Lord Burlington. In the print you see Pope perched on a
scaffolding, and, as he whitewashes Burlington Gate, bespattering the
passing coach of the Duke of Chandos. It would have been well for William
to have avoided these partisan personalities. They never brought him
anything but grief. He should have remembered Vinny Bourne’s allocution—
“Qui mores hominum improbos, ineptos,
Incidis....”
Rogues, and rakes, and misers, and fanatics, and quacks, were his quarry.
It was his to scourge the vices of the great; aye, and to laugh at their
foibles. He has, indeed, well generalized the mansion and villa building
mania in the courtyard perspective of the _Marriage à la Mode_, but he
should have had nothing directly to do with Burlington Gate or with
Canons.
The real scope and bent of his genius were to be triumphantly manifested
at this very period by his wonderful composition _The Modern Midnight
Conversation_. I don’t think there is a single artistic design extant
which exemplifies to the spectator so forcibly and so rapidly the vices
of a coarse and sensual epoch. Most of us have seen that grand picture
in the Luxembourg at Paris, the _Décadence des Romains_ of Coutuse, with
those stern citizens of the old Brutus stamp gazing in moody sorrow
on the enervated patricians, crowned with flowers, golden-sandalled,
purple-robed, rouged, and perfumed, lapped in feasting and luxury, and
the false smiles of meretricious women; listening to dulcet music;
sipping the Chian and the Falernian, babbling the scandal of the bath
to their freedmen, or lisping sophisms in emasculated Greek to their
hireling philosophers. One has but to glance at that picture to know
that the empire is in a bad way; that certain Germanic barbarians are
sharpening short swords or whittling clubs into shape far away, and that
the Roman greatness is in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I remember
once seeing in an old curiosity shop of the Rue Lafitte a water-colour
drawing, probably limned by some rapin for some Sophie Arnould of the
quarter, and sold at one of her periodical boudoir-and-alcove auctions—a
drawing almost as eloquent and as suggestive as the _Décadence_. A group
of ragged little boys, in the peasant costume of Louis the Well-Beloved’s
time, have lifted up a heavy curtain. You see, beyond, the interior of a
_petite maison_. Farmers general, marquises, abbés, are junketing with
the Sophie Arnoulds of the epoch. The uplifted table-cloth shows the keys
of a harpsichord beneath, on which one of the fair dames is tinkling.
There are no servants to disturb the company; the dainty dishes rise
through noiseless traps. Artificial flowers, champagne, wax candles,
Sèvres china and _vermeil_ plate, diamonds, and embroidery: of all these
there is an abundance. Outside, where the little ragged hungry boys are,
you see snow and naked trees, and a little dead baby in a dead mother’s
arms. A fanciful performance, and too violently strained, perhaps; yet
one that tells, undeniably, that the age is going _wrong_; that this
champagne will one day turn red as blood; that these wax candles will
light a flame not to be put out, but that will burn the _petite maison_
about the ears of Farmers general, Sophie Arnoulds, and company; that
the strumming of yonder harpsichord will be inaudible when the dreadful
tocain begins to boom. I need but allude to the Dutch Kermesses of
Teniers, and Ostade, and Jan Steen, and the camp-life pictures of
Wouvermans and Dick Stoop, for those acquainted with those masters to
understand the marvellous and instantaneous concentration of all the low,
sordid, brutal passions and pastimes of the epoch; the daily life and
sports and duties of the boor who swigs the beer and smokes the pipe;
of the vraw, who peels the carrots, swaddles the child, and beats the
servant maid with a broomstick; of the ruffian soldier, rubbing down
his eternal white horse, braying away with his trumpet, gambling under
the tilt of his tent, or brabbling with the baggage-waggon woman, who
reclines yonder among her pots and kettles. These things come upon us
at once; and we are seized and possessed with the life of the time; but
the force and suggestiveness of the works I have named become weak and
ambiguous when compared with this _Modern Midnight Conversation_, this
picture paraphrase of the immortal “_Prospos des Buveurs_” of Francois
Rabelais. You see an epoch of dull, brutish, besotted revelry: an epoch
when my lord duke was taken home drunk in his sedan from the Rose to his
mansion in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields; his chair-men and
flambeau-men very probably as drunk as he; and his chaplain and groom of
the chambers receiving him with bloodshot eyes and hiccuping speech;—when
Jemmy Twitcher lay in the kennel as drunk as my lord duke; only, there
was nobody to take him home; when there were four thousand ginshops in
London; and a grave publicist issued a broadsheet, giving “two hundred
and sixty plain and practical reasons” for the legislative suppression of
the trade in “the dreadful liquor called Geneva.” I wish I could persuade
the temperance societies that this is in comparison a sober age; and that
130 years ago, not only did wine and punch slay their thousands among the
upper classes, but gin and brandy—both of which were horribly cheap—slew
their tens of thousands among the populace. Wait till we come to the
Hogarthian tableaux of Beer Street and Gin Lane. In this _Modern Midnight
Conversation_, everybody is tipsy. The parson, the doctor, the soldier,
the gambler, and the bully—the very drawer himself—are all intoxicated.
Few of the company can see out of more than one eye. Pipes are lighted,
and go out again for want of sober puffing. Songs are commenced, and
the second couplet forgotten. Wigs are pushed awry, or quite fall off.
The furniture is overturned; rivulets of punch flow over the table,
and on to the puddled ground. Men, losing the reins of reason, not
only see, but think double; take their own cracked voices for those of
interlocutors; quarrel with themselves; give each other the lie, and vow
they will draw upon themselves if they, themselves, say something—they
know not what—again. This is the drunkenness that cankered, and bloated,
and corrupted Church and State, in the debased reigns of the two first
Brunswickers; that sent the king fuddled to Heidegger’s masquerade, and
the minister reeling in his blue ribbon to the House, and made tavern
roysterers of the young nobles of Britain. When one has had to wade
through the minor chronicles of this time, it becomes distressingly easy
to recognize the terrible truth of the _Modern Midnight Conversation_.[16]
Now, although William Hogarth, now in his thirty-fifth year, was
passably virtuous, and I have heard no instance of his indulging in
any modern conversation at midnight or other times, to the extent of
becoming overtaken in strong drinks—there were plenty of cakes and ale
in the Hogarthian philosophy. He was a brisk man, liberal and hospitable
in his own house, and not averse from moderate conviviality abroad,
sometimes partaking of the nature of the hilarious gambols known as
“High Jinks.” Brother, we must die. It needs not the digging Trappist to
tell us so. It needs not the moralist with “_Disce mori!_” It needs not
the looking-glass that shows us the wrinkled brow and grizzled locks.
We must die; and we are gravelled, and worn, and sick, and sorry; and
in the night we pray for morning, and in the morning cry out that it
were night. But they need not be grim ghosts, those memories of the old
pleasant follies and “High Jinks.” They did not all belong to the folly
and recklessness of wayward youth. They were jovial and exuberant, and
merry and light-hearted; trivial, certainly, and, maybe, undignified
as when you, John Kemble, rode the hippopotamus at early dawn among
the cabbages in Covent Garden; as when you, grave senator and reverend
seignior, danced the Irish jig over the crossed broomsticks; as when you,
now stately dowager, then sprightly maid of honour, disguised yourself
as a buy-a-broom girl; as when you, grave philosopher, condescended,
“on that occasion only,” to lead the donkey that was the Rosinante of a
fifth of November “Guy.” But you didn’t do any harm. You didn’t exactly
bring your parents’ grey hair with sorrow to the grave when you broke
the half-crown’s worth of crockeryware; nor were you ever brought to the
pass of biting your mamma’s ear off on the Place de Grève, because she
didn’t flay you alive for partaking of apples which you had not precisely
acquired according to the “vendors and purchasers” doctrines of wise
Lord St. Leonards. I say, that I hope we shall not _all_ be brought to
judgment for _all_ the rejoicings of our youth; for the assize would
surely be too black, and shuddering Mercy would tear the calendar.
In 1732 there must have been “high jinks” on foot from time to time at
the Bedford Coffee House, Covent Garden. Now, where was the Bedford
Coffee House? Was it at that Bedford Hotel, under the piazza, so
unceremoniously elbowed by that monstrous glasshouse called the “Floral
Hall”—the Bedford of which Mrs. Warner is so urbane a hostess? Or was it
the “Bedford Head,” in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, a hostelry, where to
this day a club of bookworm men meet to lay the dust of ancient lore with
frugal libations, and talk about Hogarth, and Fielding, and Johnson, and
the brave deeds and the brave men of the days that shall be no more? I
confess that I incline to the “Bedford Head,” and that I have purposely
avoided taking counsel of London antiquaries more learned than myself
on the point, lest I should be undeceived. Moreover, Tothall lived at
the corner of Tavistock Court, Tavistock Street, which, as everybody
knows, is over against Maiden Lane. It was nearer to Leicester Fields,
where Hogarth dwelt, than the Bedford under the piazza, and HOGARTH and
TOTHALL, with THORNHILL, FORREST, and SCOTT, were the immortal FIVE who,
on the morning of Saturday, the 27th of May, 1732, set out on a Kentish
pilgrimage, of which the aim and end were “High Jinks.”
A word as to the Pilgrims. A famous English writer in some lectures
on the “English Humourists,” familiar to us all, has described the
pilgrimage as that of a “jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high jinks.”
Now with the exception of Tothall, who had been pretty nearly everything,
and a woollen draper, among multifarious other callings,[17] the party
were all professional men. What Hogarth was, you know. He had come to the
days when he could wear his sword and bag. Thornhill was Sir James’s son
and heir. He was afterwards sergeant-painter to the navy, and preserved
a good estate in the west. Scott was a marine painter, said by Lord
Orford to be second only to Vandevelde; and Forrest’s poetic narrative
of the Tour, in “Hudibrastic verse,” is so fluent, and often so witty,
as to show a capacity and a facility very uncommon in those days among
tradesmen. The curiosity is that these five accomplished men should have
taken delight in diversions of the plainest and most inelegant kind.
As my author quoted above justly remarks, this was indeed a “jolly
party of tradesmen,” at least, of merrymakers who behaved as we should
expect tradesmen to do; but I suspect that the real London tradesman
of the time would have been frightened out of his life at such wild
doings; and that these jovial Kentish jinks were engaged in by the five
Bedfordians through sheer humorous eccentricity, tinged by that inherent
coarseness and love of horseplay of the age, which we discover, not only
in such holiday jaunts, but in such almost inconceivable frolics as
that of George the Second, the Duke of Montague, with Heidegger at the
masquerade; the escapade of Lord Middlesex and his friends of the Calves’
Head Club, and the hideous practical joke played off by Pope on Curll.
Educated men seemed to share in those days the yearning of the French
actress—the _besoin de s’encanailler_—the desire to disport themselves
in a pigsty, more or less Epicurean; and but for the knowledge of this
prevalent low tone in cultivated society it is difficult to realize
the fact of Hogarth going back to his lady wife, and Thornhill to the
powdered and bewigged grandee, his papa.
Forrest’s narrative of the tour, which began, as I have said, on the
twenty-seventh, and finished on the thirty-first of May, is far too
elaborate for me to give anything beyond a very brief reflex of it here.
I will quote, however, the opening lines:—
“’Twas first of morn on Saturday
The seven and twentieth of May,
When Hogarth, Thornhill, Tothall, Scott,
And Forrest, who this journal wrote,
From Covent Garden took departure,
To see the world by land and water.”
It appears that their hearts were light, and those nether garments, now
fallen almost into desuetude, save among grooms, footmen, blackrods,
and members of the diplomatic service, were thin. They started, singing
after a carouse, during the small hours of the morning, and went down
the river to Billingsgate. At the noted “Dark-house” they met the same
sort of company as Mr. Edward Ward introduces us to in the _London Spy_,
and Hogarth took a portrait, unfortunately not preserved, of a waterside
humorist, known as the “Duke of Puddledock.”
“Of Puddledock a porter grim,
Whose portrait Hogarth in a whim
Presented him in caricature,
He pasted on the cellar door.”
Thence they went to Gravesend in the tilt-boat with a “mackrel gale,”
chanting lustily, and regaling on “biscuit, beef, and gin.” At Gravesend
they put up at “Mrs. Bramble’s.” They had previously seen at Purfleet
three men-of-war, the Dursley Galley, the Gibraltar, and the Tartar Pink,
the pilot of which last vessel begged them to “lend him a cast.” Thence
they walked to Rochester, and saw in the cathedral “th’ unknown person’s
monument.” _Pendente lite_, they drank six pots of ale. They saw “Watt’s
Charity,” and eulogized its hospitality, remarking only
“But the contagiously affected,
And rogues and proctors are rejected,”
marvelling much as to the origin of the distaste conceived by Master
Watts against “proctors.” For dinner at the Crown at Strood they had
“soles and flounders, with crab sauce;” a stuffed and roasted calf’s head
“with purt’nance minced and liver fried;” and by way of a second course,
roast leg of mutton and green peas. Peas were early, alas! in May, ’32.
“The cook was much commended for’t,
Fresh was the beer, and sound the port.”
At Chatham they went aboard two men-of-war, the Royal Sovereign and the
Marlborough. In the churchyard at Hoo they found a curious epitaph,
written by a “servant maid turned poetaster,” in honour of her master,
who had left her all his money, and which Forrest thus, literally,
transcribed——
“And. wHen. he. Died. you. plainly. see.
Hee. freely. gave. al. to Sara. passaWee.
And. in. Doing. so. it. DoTh. prevail.
that. Ion. him. can. well. besTowthis. Rayel
on. Year. sarved. him. it. is well. none
But. Thanks. beto. God. it. is. all. my One.”
How they lay two in a bed, drawing lots who should be the fifth,
fortunate enough to sleep “without a chum;” how they were tormented with
gnats, and tossed and tumbled, and, waking up in the morning, told their
dreams, and could make nothing of them; how Hogarth and Scott played at
“Scotch-hop” in the Town Hall, Rochester; how they pelted and bemired
one another in country lanes and churchyards; how they perambulated
the “Isle of Greane” and the “Isle of Shepey,” and came upon a party
of men-’o-war’s men, who had been left without provisions by their
midshipman, and learnt how the same midshipman had afterwards got into
dire disgrace for philandering with a married lady of Queensborough; how
they ate cockles with the sailors, and sent to the alehouse for beer to
regale them; and treated a loquacious man of Queensborough to “t’other
pot,” whereat the loquacious man began to abuse the mayor of that mighty
borough as a mere custom-house officer; how they found the Market-place
“Just big enough to hold the stocks
And one if not two butchers’ blocks.”
how they abode at the “Swans,” and the landlady threatened to have Scott
up before the mayor; how they heard the famous Isle of Sheppey legend of
“Horse Church” and the wicked Lord of Shorland, so graphically narrated
in our own days by Thomas Ingoldsby in the story beginning “‘He won’t,’
said the Baron. ‘Then bring me my boots.’” How at last they got back to
Gravesend, put up at Mrs. Bramble’s again, and returned per tilt-boat
very tired and jovial to London. All these notable incidents are set down
with a charming simplicity, and an unflagging humour and good nature.
Forrest, as I have said, kept the journal. Hogarth and Scott illustrated
it. Thornhill made the map, and Tothall was the treasurer. The original
drawings, done with a pen and washed with indian ink, and not unlike some
of old Rowlandson’s rough sketches, are now in the Print Room of the
British Museum. I believe this very interesting memorial of an English
artist, this homely _Liber Veritatis_, was secured for our National
Collection at the cost of a hundred pounds. Some of the drawings are
capital; though all are of the very slightest. These boon companions were
too much bent on enjoying themselves to work very hard. There is a view
of Queensborough Market-place and Hôtel de Ville, the manner of taking
the draught of which is thus described:—
“Then to our Swans returning, there
Was borrowed a great wooden chair,
And plac’d it in the open street
Where in much state did Hogarth sit
To draw the townhouse, church and steeple,
Surrounded by a crowd of people.
Tagrag and bobtail stood quite thick there
And cried ‘What a sweet pretty picture!’”
There is certainly nothing very elevated in good Mr. Forrest’s
Hudibrastics; yet the jingle of his verse is by no means disagreeable;
and from his simple description it is easy to form a definite notion of
sturdy little Will Hogarth “sitting in much state” in the great wooden
chair borrowed from the “Swans” at Queensborough, and gravely sketching
with the tagrag and bobtail staring open-mouthed around him.
[Illustration: BREAKFASTING &c.
A. _The Fisherman Shaving._
B. _Mr Thornhill._
C. _Mr Tothall shaving himself._
D. _Mr Hogarth drawing this Drawing._
E. _Mr Forrest at Breakfast._
F. _Mr Scott finishing a Drawing._]
A still better word-picture by Forrest illustrates Hogarth’s drawing of
_Shaving in the Isle of Sheppey_:
“Till six o’clock we quiet lay
And then got out for the whole day;
To fetch a barber out we send;
Stripp’d and in boots he doth attend,
For he’s a fisherman by trade;
Tann’d was his face, and shock his head;
He flours our heads and trims our faces,
And the top barber of the place is;
A bowl of milk and toasted bread
Are brought, of which, while Forrest eats,
To draw our pictures Hogarth sits;
Thornhill is in the barber’s hands;
Shaving himself, Will Tothall stands;
While Scott is in a corner sitting,
And an unfinished sketch completing.”
There is also a very droll tailpiece of Hogarth’s design, and freely,
vigorously and racily touched.
[Illustration]
The “Hudibrastics,” when the accounts were duly audited—and a rare
chronicle these accounts are of pots of ale, cans of flip, bowls of
punch, lobsters and tobacco—were handsomely bound to be preserved as a
perpetual memorial of this famous expedition. By way of motto, Forrest
prefixed to his poem a quotation of the inscription over Dulwich college
porch, _Abi tu, et fac similiter_.
The great success of the _Harlot’s Progress_ had naturally incited
William Hogarth with a strong and almost fierce desire to accomplish some
other work of the same satirical force, of the same breadth of morality
with that excellent performance. He determined that there should be on
record a sequel, or at least a pendant to the drama whose lamentable
action his pencil had just so poignantly narrated. He felt that it was
in him, that it was his vocation, his duty to follow step by step the
career of human vice, to point, with unerring finger whither tend the
crooked roads, to demonstrate as clearly as ever did mathematician—much
more explicitly than ever did logician—that as surely as the wheels of
the cart follow the hoofs of the horse, so surely will punishment follow
sin. He was as yet but at the commencement of his trilogy: Clytemnestra
might begin; Orestes might succeed; but the Eumenides had to come at
last. He saw before him a whole ocean, seething, weltering, bubbling of
pravities and impostures, and deadly lies, and evil passions. He heard
the thorns crackling under the pot. He saw vice, not only stalking
about with hungered looks, ragged garb and brandished bludgeon; now
robbing Dr. Mead’s chariot in Holborn; now stopping the Bristol mail;
now cutting Jonathan Wild’s throat on the leads before the Sessions
House, and being pressed to death for it; now with sooty face and wild
disguise of skins, stealing deer in the king’s forests, and rioting in
caves on surreptitious venison and smuggled Nantz;[18] now being ducked
for pocket-picking in the horse-pond behind the King’s Mews, Charing
Cross; now cutting throats in night-cellars; now going filibustering,
and suffering death for piracy, to be afterwards gibbeted at Halfway
Creek and the Triptoptrees; but Vice in embroidery and Mechlin lace,
with a silver-hilted sword, and a snuff-box enamelled by Rouquet, at
its side; vice, painted and patched, whispering over fans, painted with
Hogarth’s own “Progress” at Heidegger’s masquerade; vice punting at the
“Young Man’s,” stock-jobbing in the Alley, brawling with porters and
common bullies at the Rose, chaffering with horse-jockeys at Newmarket,
clustered round the Cock-pit, applauding Broughton the ex-yeoman of the
guard, pugilist, and lending its fine Holland shirt to Mr. Figg the
prize-fighter after a bout at back or broadsword,[19] dancing attendance
on the impudent and ugly German women, for whom the kings of England
forsook their lawful wives, duelling in Hyde Park, and taking bribes in
the very lobby of the Parliament House. William Hogarth knew that he was
enjoined to mark this duplex vice, to burn it in the hand, to force it
into the pillory, to pile the hundredweights of his indignation upon it
in his own pressyard, to scathe and strangle it, and hang it as high as
Haman, to be the loathing and the scorn of better-minded men. Between
the summer lodgings at South Lambeth and other lodgings he took at
Isleworth, between the portraits and conversations, and the book-plates
and the benefit-tickets; odds and ends of artists’ work, done in the way
of business for the lords and gentlemen who were good enough to employ
him; shop-bills, “illustrating the commerce of Florence;” “breaking-up”
tickets for Tiverton School; scenes from _Paradise Lost_; busts of
Hesiod; tickets for Figg the prize-fighter, for Milward, Jemmy Spiller,
Joe Miller, and other comedians; coats of arms for his friend George
Lambert; caricatures of Orator Henley; benefit cards even for Harry
Fielding, illustrating scenes from _Pasquin_ and the _Mock Doctor_;
between high jinks and suburban jaunts, and pleasant evening strolls in
Vauxhall Gardens; between 1733 and 1735, he was planning, and maturing,
and brooding over the _Rake’s Progress_. The experiment was a dangerous
one. The public are averse from tolerating _Paradise Regained_ after
_Paradise Lost_, the _Drunkard’s Children_ after the _Bottle_, the
_Marriage of Figaro_ after the _Barber of Seville_. And who has not
yawned and rubbed his eyes over the second _Faust_? But William Hogarth
saw his way clearly before him, and was determined to pursue it. The
pictures, eight in number, were painted by the end of 1733. In 1734, the
proposals of subscription to the plates were issued. The subscription
ticket was the well-known etching of the _Laughing Audience_. The sums
were one guinea and a half for nine plates; the ninth promised being _The
Humours of a Fair_—no other than the far-famed _Southwark_.
Thus I sweep the stage, and sound the whistle for the curtain to draw up
on the drama of _The Rake’s Progress_, closing this paper with the form
of receipt given by Hogarth to his subscribers:
“Recd. Decr. 18th, of the Rt. Honble. Lord Biron, half a
guinea, being the first payment for nine plates, eight of which
represent a _Rake’s Progress_, and the ninth a _Fair_, which I
promise to deliver at Michaelmas next, on receiving one guinea
more. _Note._—The _Fair_ will be delivered at Christmas next,
at sight of this receipt. The prints of the _Rake’s Progress_
will be two guineas, after the subscription is over.”
“WILLIAM HOGARTH.”
FOOTNOTES
[9] I was at Bristol in the summer of 1858; but the fine old church was
then in process of restoration, and the Hogarths, I heard, had been
temporarily removed. Have those curious altar-pieces been since restored?
[10] There is a mania just now for giving excessive prices for steel
and copper engravings. There is a millennium for artists’ proofs. The
auctioneers only know what a genuine Marc Antonio Raimondi is worth; but
I am told that a “Sunday” proof of the _March to Finchley_—the original
plate was dated on a Sunday, but the _dies non_ was subsequently erased
by Hogarth—will fetch thirty guineas in the market. The price seems as
exorbitant as those sometimes given for a “breeches” or a “vinegar” Bible.
[11] Dr. Misaubin lived at 96, St. Martin’s lane. Of his staircase,
painted by Clermont, the Frenchman, I have already spoken. Those were
the days when “Mrs. Powell, the colourman’s mother, used to make a
pipe of wine every year from the vines that grew in the garden in St
Martin’s Lane.” Traces of its old rurality may also be found in the
name of one of its noisomest offshoots—the “Hop Gardens.” Dr. Misaubin
“flourished” in 1732. He was not a Frenchman born, but of French Huguenot
extraction. He was an arrant and impudent quack, but a good-natured
man, and dispensed the huge fortune he amassed liberally enough. More
anent him when he grows older and more wrinkled, in the _Marriage à la
Mode_. All this man’s gold, however, turned in the end to dry leaves. His
grandson, Angiband, dissipated the pill and nostrum fortune, and died of
Geneva-on-the-brain in St. Martin’s Workhouse. Engraver Smith (J. T.)
says that Misaunbin’s father was a Protestant clergyman, and mentions a
“family picture” representing the Doctor in all his glory, with his son
on his knees, and his reverend papa at a table behind, and arrayed in
full canonicals.
[12] Everybody seems to have had Latin verses, eulogistic or abusive,
addressed to him in those days. Thus the “Sapphics” of Mr. Loveling, a
young gentleman of the university, to the rigorous Middlesex Justice:—
“Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis,
Per minus castus Druriæ tabernas
Lenis incedens, abeas Diones
Æquus Alumnis!”
And so forth.
[13] He sat for Melcombe Regis in the two last parliaments of George
the First. The borough was then a mere pocket one, in the gift of the
backstairs. Thornhill’s “employments” were continued to him for some
time by George the Second; but, like his predecessor, Sir Christopher
Wren, he was removed to make way for place-men who, without any very
high attainments, could be useful to the Ministry. Thenceforth, the
“goodman” amused himself by painting easel-pictures. He was taken for
death in an access of gout, and died in his chair on the 4th of May,
and was buried at Stalbridge on the 13th. He had greatly beautified the
ancestral mansion and estate, and had erected, on an adjacent hill, an
obelisk to the memory of George the First, which was visible to all the
country side. Hogarth himself records the death of his father-in-law, in
Sylvanus Urban’s obituary in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_—then a very young
publication, indeed. He says that he was “the greatest history painter
this age has seen;” and states, that as king’s sergeant painter he had to
decorate all his majesty’s coaches, barges, and “the royal navy.” Are we
to understand from this that Thornhill was expected to carve and gild the
figure heads of three-deckers!
[14] Thomas Coram was born in 1668. He had amassed a competence in
following the sea, and lived at Rotherhithe, like Captain Lemuel
Gulliver, and that greater mariner, Captain Cuttle. In his way to and
from the maritime districts of the town, his honest heart was frequently
afflicted by the sight of destitute and abandoned children. Probably he
had never heard of St. Vincent de Paul—this rough tarry-breeks of the
Benbow and Cloudesley Shovel era—but he set about doing the selfsame
work as that for which the foreign philanthropist was canonized. Coram
had already effected much good by procuring an Act granting a bounty on
naval stores imported to Georgia—where the colonists were frequently left
destitute—and by devising an admirable scheme for the education of Indian
girls. The Foundling Hospital was, however, his great work. He obtained
the charter of incorporation for it, A.D. 1739. These were the words, of
which I have given the sense above:—“I have not wasted the little wealth
of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expense;
and am not ashamed to confess, that in this, my old age, I am poor.”
They raised a pension of a hundred a year for the benevolent veteran;
Sir Sampson Gideon and Dr. Brocklesby being chief managers of the fund.
Captain Coram did not live long to enjoy the pension; and at his death,
it was continued to poor old Leveridge, to whose volume of songs William
Hogarth contributed a frontispiece.
[15] One moment ere I leave the male and female naughtinesses in this
drama for good. Charteris, Hackabout, brother and sister, James Dalton,
the highwayman, whose “wig-box” you see in plate iii. of the _H. P._,
and Mother Needham, who continued the traditions of Dryden’s _Mother
Dulake_ (“Wild Gallant”), to Foote’s _Mother Cole_, all faded into space
before 1733. The colonel “Don Francisco”—as people with a snigger called
Charteris—was very nearly being hanged. He was cast for death; but being
immensely rich, and having, moreover, and luckily, a lord of the land,
the Earl of Wemyss, for his son-in-law, he managed to escape. Not,
indeed, Scot-free. He was compelled to make a handsome settlement on his
victim, one Ann Bond, prosecutrix in the case for which Don Francisco
had so close a riddance of “_sus per coll_” being written against his
name. The sheriffs of London, and the high bailiff of Westminster, had,
moreover, made a seizure of his rich goods and chattels, immediately
after his conviction. He had to compound with them for the restitution
of his effects, and this cost him nearly nine thousand pounds. The
profligate old miser had to sell his South Sea stock, to raise the
amount; a fact which the newspapers of the day record with much
exultation. But Nemesis was not yet satisfied. The colonel’s wife came
back from Scotland on purpose to reproach her lord. The wretched man
on his part fled _to_ Scotland, and died in Edinburgh soon afterwards.
Dalton, of the “wig-box,” having been “boned,” “habbled,” or “snabbled,”
and confined for some time in the “Rumbo,” or “Whid,” finished his
career at the “nubbing cheat,” at the top of the Edgware Road. In other
words—the first are the elegant terms used by the City marshal in his
controversial pamphlet the _Regulator_, written in disparagement of Mr.
Jonathan Wild the great—Mr. James Dalton was arrested, and after lying
some time in Newgate, was duly tried, sentenced, and hanged. “He was a
thief from his cradle, and imbibed the principles of his art with his
mother’s milk.” He went between his father’s legs in the cart to his
fatal exit at Tyburn. _Sic itur ad astra_; and thus Plutarch in the shape
of the ordinary of Newgate. As for Mother Needham, she was sentenced to
stand twice in the pillory. The first ordeal she underwent close to her
own house, in Park Place, St. James’. She was very ill, and lay “all
along” under these Caudine forks, “thus evading the law, which required
that her face should be exposed.” Two days afterwards, “complaining of
the ingratitude of the publick”—the mob had pelted her pitilessly—“and
dreading the second pillorying to which, in Old Palace Yard, she was
doomed, she gave up the ghost.”
[16] The _Modern Midnight Conversation_ had a great vogue abroad, and
is still, perhaps, one of the best known of Hogarth’s works. Copies,
adaptations, paraphrases of it have been multiplied to a vast extent in
Germany. There is a well-known French version, _Société nocturne, nommée
communément Cotterie de Débauche en Punch_; and a collection of heads
from the _Conversation_, catalogued as _Têtes des onze membres, gravées
par M. Riepenhausen_. One ingenious artist even formed a gallery of small
wax models of the principal figures. And finally, I have seen the French
_Cotterie_ enamelled on a porcelain at Leipsic, and on a golden snuffbox
in the museum of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. There is a humorous
modern lithograph, representing a party of sapient-looking bibbers,
assembled in solemn conclave over a hogshead of Rhine wine in a cellar;
and the hint for this—albeit, the grossness is softened down—is evidently
taken from the _M. M. C._
[17] Tothall’s career was a most curious one. He was the son of an
apothecary, was left an orphan, taken care of by an uncle. He ran away
to sea; went to the West Indies, Newfoundland, and Honduras; was on one
occasion captured by hostile Spaniards, and marched “up the country,”
with no other clothing but a woollen cap and a brown waistcoat—a costume
almost as primitive as that of an unhappy French governess taken prisoner
by some followers of Schamyl, in a raid on the Russians, and driven
before them to their mountain home, the poor lady having nothing on but
a pair of blue satin corsets. Tothall had his picture painted in the
brown waistcoat. Coming afterwards to England, he entered the service
of a woollen draper, in Tavistock Court; who, after some time, told him
he was a very honest fellow, and that as he the draper only sold cloth,
Tothall might have half the shop to sell shalloons and trimmings. He
lent him money to buy stock, and recommended him to his chapmen. By and
bye, a relative of Tothall in the West Indies sent him a puncheon of
rum as a present. The recipient was about to sell the alcohol for what
it would fetch—perhaps to the landlord of the Bedford Head—when his
master interposed. “I have no use for my cellar,” quoth this benevolent
woollen draper. “Do you open the door to the street; tap your puncheon,
and draw it off in twopennyworths.” Spirit licences were not yet known.
Tothall followed the draper’s advice, speedily sold all his rum at a
good profit; sent to the West Indies for more, and drove a merry trade
in rum, shalloons, and trimmings, till it occurred to the woollen draper
to inform him one morning that he intended to retire, that he might have
all his stock at prime cost, and pay him as he could. Why are there no
such woollen-drapers now-a-days? Between the shop and the cellar Tothall
contrived to realize a very considerable fortune. All this time, this odd
man had been assiduously collecting fossils, minerals, and shells, of
which he had, at last, a handsome museum. He retired to Dover, and, true
to his old adventurous habits, entered into large speculations, in what
his biographer modestly calls the “smuggling branch of business.” But a
“byeboat,” laden with horses, in which he was interested, having been
lost between Flushing and Ostend, and some other speculations turning out
disastrously, Tothall became in his later days somewhat straitened in his
circumstances. Hogarth used frequently to visit him at a little village
near Dover, whither he retired, and where he died four years after our
painter. He left 1,500_l._ in cash, and his collection of shells, &c.
sold for a handsome sum.
[18] _Vide_ the statutes at largo for the “Black Act,” by which poaching
in disguise was made a felony, punishment death; and the curious relation
of the gentleman who fell among a gang of “Blacks,” and was courteously
entreated by them, and regaled at a rich supper, at which the solids were
composed exclusively of venison, on condition, only, of never revealing
the place of these sooty poachers’ retreat.
[19] Figg fought much more with the sword than with his fists.
An Austrian Employé.
Neither a gipsy nor an Austrian employé has any country. They both lead
a nomadic life, without home or fixed habitation; and when the gipsy has
stolen what the neighbours had to lose, and the Austrian employé has
exhausted all the squeezable properties of his office, they both move
off—the gipsy whither he likes best, the Austrian employé most frequently
whither he likes least.
The Austrian employé seldom administers in the town or province to which
he belongs. The sages of the Austrian empire had one wise axiom, on
which rested the whole of the government machinery. This axiom, sowed
hatred and distrust in the fertile plains of Hungary and the pleasant
gardens of Italy, in the homesteads of the Tyrolese and in the cottages
of the half-starved Silesians: and soon thousands of hirelings were
needed to help cut the rank ears, and bring the poisonous harvest home.
And what harvests did not Austria bring home in 1848 and 1849! The
axiom is “_Divide et impera_;” and forms the secret of Austrian policy.
Government appoints no Austrian subject to any post or office in his
native place. He would have friends and relations there, with whom he
would be tender in the matter of extortion; and Austria wants money, not
friends. If an Italian were suffered to administer in Lombardy, where
would the ducats and the spies come from? He would naturally seek to gain
the love and confidence of his compatriots; but the Government who have
standing armies and above 500,000 employés to pay, would rather have the
ducats than the love—it wants spies, not confidence. Therefore must the
Hungarian Radetsky suck the golden fluid from the veins of Lombardy,
no matter what blood or tears may be shed; the Bohemian Windischgrätz
must rule in Hungary; a garrison of Slavonians must hold the fortresses
of Silesia; a soldier must judge civilians; a council of lords promote
the interests of plebeians; and a celibatarian priest decide on causes
matrimonial.
Consequent upon these regulations, the writer’s father, a native of
Bohemia married to a Viennese lady, was sent to Hungary, to deal with a
people of whose language he knew nothing, and of whose customs he knew
worse than nothing: having scraped what little information he possessed
from books which told him everything of Hungary but the truth.
An Austrian employé has no country. No sooner has he arrived at a place,
than all his endeavours are bent on how to get away again. Of freedom he
has less than any man in the town. He dares do nothing, however innocent,
on which suspicion could by possibility fasten. He dares not visit his
fellow employés: that would be plotting; he dares not openly offer a
pinch of snuff to his superiors: that would be bribery; if he is in the
money department, he must not have father, brother, or far-away cousin
in the same office, for fear of connivance. For the Austrian Government
has the worst possible opinion of its bureaucratic members; saying
“_quibbet præsumitur_,” a thief—“_donec probetur_,” the contrary. If the
employé is an inferior, he is condemned to starvation; if a superior,
he is surrounded by a swarm of inferiors, who wait for his place, like
carrion crows waiting for the carcase on which the vultures are feeding.
When such a place is vacant, what an uproar! what whisperings and
shruggings of shoulders, what calculations and intrigues, hopes,
energies, expectations and disappointments, among the office-seeking
crowd! Early in the morning the candidate’s wife, if she is young,
or his daughters, if they are pretty, go about from office to office
canvassing for votes. Courtesies are proffered, promises are made, tears
are shed, and family miseries related again and again; variegated,
however, in pattern and direction, to suit the exigencies of the moment:
sentimental with the amiable, humble with the proud, pleading poverty to
the rich, and the rapid increase of a family to the bachelor, the fair
petitioners always close with the same formulæ—“generous protector,”
“just appreciator of the meanest merit,” “your great influence,” and
“eternal gratitude.” And sometimes the candidate opens the small chest
where, in spite of multitudinous christenings and many doctors’ bills,
he has managed to keep a few articles of family plate or ancestral
_vertù_, and, with a heavy sigh, wraps perhaps his silver candelabra in
tissue paper, and sends them to the chief power among the electors—an
incorruptible man, whom he does not attempt to bribe, but whose choice
he seeks to enlighten. In this scramble two men only come off well—the
chief elector, whom everybody propitiates, and the successful candidate:
unless, indeed, his place has cost him more than it is worth: which is
not a rare occurrence in bribing, money-loving Austria.
An Austrian employé, is nothing but an animated copying machine: for
in Austria nothing is ever said or done; everything is written. Heaven
only knows what they all write, and where those thousands of reams go
to at last; but every one writes, from nine in the morning to late at
night, and all the year round alike. Bent low over their desks, with
black fingers, black looks, and blackest _ennui_, without hope either
of an early promotion or a late dinner, there they sit and write, till
their brains are muddled and their hands are weary: head, heart, and
life are equally exhausted and dried up. Whole reams of foolscap are
written out for Section A, and duplicates thereof made for Section B.
These duplicates are copied for the Register’s Office; the copy is
copied for the Chancellor; an extract of the original copy is to be
sent to Section D; copy of the copy, and duplicate thereof, are to be
carefully written out again on foolscap, and sent to the so-called Court
Office “Hofkammer,” and there all is again written, copied, labelled,
registered, and numbered; the documents are then thrust away into the
proper pigeon-holes, where, for the most part, they get worm-eaten and
are forgotten.
After an Austrian employé has written, from the 1st of January to the
31st of December, what no one will ever want to read, he must set a
day aside whereon to fill up, in his own handwriting, the blanks left
in a printed form called _Comptabilitäts Tabelle_. The following are
the questions which he must answer there:—1. Name, age, birthplace? 2.
Of what religion? 3. Where and what he has studied? what languages he
speaks? what capabilities he possesses? 4. When he entered his Majesty’s
service? what different situations he has held? and what situation he
holds now while writing this abridged autobiography? 5. Is he husband,
bachelor, or widower? father or childless? 6. Has he any private fortune?
This last question is answered truthfully only by the very poor; for, as
the Government grants no pensions to the widows and orphans of employés
who have had a private income of 20_l._ per annum, it naturally follows
that very few employés are to be found who own to the fraction of a
zwanziger. At the foot of the paper a broad margin is left, headed by the
inoffensive title “Special Remark.” This margin is secretly filled up by
the employé’s immediate superior, who there inscribes his own private
opinion of the man who, throughout all the preceding answers, has sought
to place himself in the best light possible. This opinion is never stated
openly, but is, on the contrary, so carefully concealed that the employé
never knows what his chief thinks of him, nor what report he makes to
the greater chiefs above. The “special remark” is the indication which
the high officials consult: it is the shadow of him who is remarked on,
following him with noiseless step wherever he goes, and looming behind
him, black and threatening, when he stands in the sunlighted prospect
of a hoped-for promotion. An adverse remark is the stumbling-block, the
_pierre d’échopment_ of every Austrian bureaucrat: he cannot get over it;
unless, indeed, he is able to leap over the head of the special remarker,
and so change places and functions with him.
Yet, in spite of all these disagreeables, and notwithstanding the absence
of salary for the first years of service, a place in a Government office
is much sought after, and very difficult to procure. The curriculum, too,
leading to it, is not a light one. Neither in Hungary nor in Bohemia,
neither in Croatia nor in Corinthia, can a man obtain a Government office
unless he has studied Latin and philosophy, logic and the exact sciences.
Not that he is ever required to make use of his knowledge; but it is
decreed that the knowledge should be acquired. The “course” takes eight
years—the term prescribed by Government as absolutely necessary for the
completion of an employé’s polite education. And when, after these eight
years of hard study—after the numberless fees and presents, flatteries,
bowings, and scrapings, initiatory to an appointment—the young man has
at last wormed himself into the service, what is he to the Government?
Not more than a sharp lad who writes a good hand is to the grocer at the
corner. Indeed not so much; for the grocer would have to pay the sharp
lad for his services, while the paternal Government would not dream
of such an extravagance. No young man can hope for an apprenticeship
who expects anything beyond the honour of being allowed to serve for
love—and the future! This paternal Government—this national huckster
which deals only in paper—paper diet, paper constitution, paper money,
paper reform, neutrality, or amnesty—keeps its highly-educated apprentice
of twenty-five somewhat longer than Laban kept Jacob waiting for his
daughter. Ten, fifteen, and even twenty-five years he may have to serve
for his Rachel,—an appointment with a salary; which, however, turns out
most frequently to be only a Leah after all.
But it may be asked, how does the government manage to get so much
gratuitous service? In a country where a man must eat, drink, and clothe
himself handsomely, how can a paternal government be served for nothing?
Is all service in Austria gratuitous? Does the employé receive from the
butcher and baker and tailor the equivalent of what he bestows on the
state? Not quite so. A paternal government which gets its allies to fight
its battles for nothing, is clever enough to secure the support of its
employés by their fathers. The fathers pay their sons for the services
which these render to the state. The father of an employé expectant must
give a promissory note to government, undertaking to supply his son with
all things needful for the young man’s maintenance, if government, in
return, will be generous enough to accept his son’s time and energies,
and provide him with a place on some official treadmill. And the period
for such an undertaking is—“during the emperor’s pleasure.”
The mode in which this magnificent appointment is applied for is much
in the following manner: “The humble undersigned, who, according to
testimonial annexed _sub literâ_ A. has been born and baptized; who,
according to school testimonials _sub literis_ B. C. D. E. has studied
with good success, and pursued the course of philosophy, and has also
_heard_ about law; who, according to medical testimonial _sub literâ_
F. has been vaccinated with equally good success; who, according to
promissory note _sub literâ_ G. has a father who is willing to give
him, for the duration of his (the son’s) apprenticeship, the weekly
stipend of 1_l._; most humbly begs a well-born, most praiseworthy Chamber
to overwhelm him with the inestimable favour of making him honorary
apprentice to such and such an office. Should the undersigned be so happy
as to be accepted, he will be ready to pass the usual examinations in
three months’ time.”
Remark, that the writer of this request speaks of himself in the third
person singular. This is one of the many peculiarities in the Austrian
official style. The third person, singular, is usually employed only in
contempt. The officer addresses the private, the master the servant,
the magistrate the criminal, all as He. A humble petitioner, therefore,
must adopt the same formula when speaking of his own unworthy self
to a well-born Court Chamber. This self-denying request granted, the
candidate enters, as a probationary, the bureau in which he hopes to
become hereafter an integral particle. Here he learns to fawn upon his
chief in the proper official manner, to write confused reports about
things of which he knows nothing, to make copies—reams of copies—of
worthless original compositions; and after three months of these labours
he is examined by the Director, who asks him nothing, but awards him
a first-class testimonial—on the recommendation of the Chief. This
first-class testimonial gives the poor mean-spirited youth the privilege
of writing a second request, informing the Chamber of his good success,
and expressing his ardent desire to leave the list of Honoraries and
become an Ordinary.
Arrived at this Chimborazo of his wishes, the youth dresses himself in
full evening costume, and at nine o’clock in the morning goes to the
office to take the oath of allegiance to his Imperial, Royal, Apostolic
Majesty. All his colleagues assemble there, with solemn faces. A crucifix
and two lighted wax tapers are on the table in the middle of the room,
and the novice, going up to the table, repeats slowly after his Chief the
oath of allegiance; which is, in fact, a solemn promise to be an early
riser and a quick penman, never to divulge an official secret, and to be
incorruptible, generally and particularly.
The first promise is easily kept. The sooner a man rises and is out of
the house, the sooner he is out of the way of his duns; for an unpaid
Austrian employé is continually haunted by his creditors. The second of
those two promises he fulfils by habit. Who would not be a swift and
expert penman when writing all day and every day? The third no one asks
him to break, for no one cares what he writes during all the weary hours
of the day; his official secrets, if he has any, are safe from every
one’s curiosity. As for the fourth, it is not kept at all. An Austrian
employé accepts everything: money and trinkets; playthings for his boy,
and gifts for his wife; hams and tongues; opera tickets and theatre
stalls—he takes them all; and in return he may help the donor over some
slippery pass, by dragging him out of the straight road into the crooked
path leading to legal safety and moral dishonesty. Government gets off
with its interests somewhat sacrificed; but the gain on one side makes up
for the loss on the other. “_Donis semper aperta est_,” is the invisible
inscription written on the Austrian office. It is forbidden to give or
to receive; and he who gives runs as great a risk as he who receives;
but both giver and receiver, running swiftly and keeping time and step
together, generally manage to outstrip the stumbling march of the
detective.
“Do not praise the day till it is over,” says the proverb; and, following
the spirit of the adage, the maxim of the employé is, Do not condemn
the Austrian Government till you are rid of it: that is, till you are
dead. Nay, even then the paternal government steps in, to take care,
not of the widows and orphans, but of more precious things; namely, the
dead employé’s goods and chattels. Widows and orphans may shift for
themselves; goods and chattels must be taken care of. So government sends
an officer to take a list of all the employé’s effects remaining, and
specially to search for money. In the case of any being found—a case as
rare as the sight of a white elephant in Europe—the widow and orphans
must give government a part: for government is co-heir whenever there
is an official inheritance to be had. Then this same wise and liberal
government refuses to grant a pension to the widow or orphan, if a
private income of twenty pounds per annum is found among the reliquiæ.
If nothing is found, and if the employé has been more than ten years an
official, and more than three years in matrimonial bondage, government
grants a pension of ten or twenty pounds yearly. If he has served for a
less term, or been married for only two years and three quarters, the
pension is forfeited.
But to look on the bright side. If the employé has died insolvent, the
sorrowing matron, who was bowed down to earth with grief and tears, rises
consoled. She is a female pensioner. Her husband is gone, her home,
her love, her independence,—all are gone; but she herself must stay.
Government has bought her. She has become its property, and cannot now
leave the country, unless she likes to leave her pension behind her.
Austria turns her paper money into chains, by which she holds her poor
pensioner, as a boy holds a bird or a cockchafer by a string. See this
ward of government, clad in a rusty black dress of doubtful condition;
on her head a black bonnet that has seen its best days, from which hangs
a long black veil; on her arm hangs a long black reticule; on her pale
lips a long tale of privation and misery. This is her picture at she
goes every three months to draw her pitiful allowance—proving by the
attestation of the parish rector that she is alive, that she is herself,
and none other. Just the same, too, is she when she goes her new year’s
rounds to her late husband’s Chiefs and colleagues, and to those members
of the Imperial family most notorious for their benevolence. On these
annual occasions she carries needlework and trifles to be raffled for,
and thinks herself happy if she can buy an extra log for her stove, or
a pound of meat for her broth, from the proceeds. Thus she drags on her
weary life, barely escaping, as _pauvre honteuse_, the misery, shame, and
degradation of downright beggary.
Such is the career of an Austrian employé; and this sketch is equally
characteristic of every employé in the Austrian service, whether civil
or military, or under whatever denomination he serves. In each and every
case the salary of the officials are so utterly inadequate to their
wants, that they are urged by the necessities of their position to devote
all their talents and energies to make money by any means in their power.
Their official rank and influence are available to extort a bribe and to
screen the guilty parties. Where all are corrupt who is to denounce the
offender?
This too faithful picture of an Austrian official will serve as a clue to
unravel the mystery of those enormous defalcations which have recently
come to light in the Austrian administration. Startling as they are to
English readers, those who are acquainted with the secret practices of
Austrian bureaucracy can only wonder that the late astounding frauds
were discovered at all—so intricate and wide-spread is the network
of chicanery and intrigue which enmeshes the Austrian system of
administration.
Sir Self and Womankind.
Sir Self-Sufficient on his mule
Went ambling stiffly o’er the ground.
Quoth he: “This womankind doth rule
Where’er a fool or slave is found;
For she is full of craft and wiles,
And dresses all her looks for show,
But not her cunning nor her smiles
Shall win a heart from me, I trow.”
His way was through the stubble-field,
Where mellow fragrance filled the air;
And from the earth’s o’erflowing yield
The scattered fruits lay ripe and fair.
There women laboured in the sun,
Uncouthly clad, and sun-embrowned,
The old, the weak, the little one,
Upon the stony furrowed ground.
Sir Self laughed softly as he went.
Quoth he: “Here nature hath her way,
And shows no other ornament
Than in the air and sunshine play.
Ah! what a sorry, sordid sight
Doth Beauty thus unfashioned make!—
You, city dames, to such a plight
Would bring the binding weed and rake.”
There came one tripping to his knee,
“Wild flowers: oh! buy wild flowers,” she said,
And looked into his face to see
What answer there was to be read.
Sir Self passed on the other side,
While from his hand a pittance came.
Quoth he: “This nature hath no pride,
Nor knoweth how to blush for shame.”
Then onward through the village lane
Of hovels dark, and cribbed, and low,
Where narrow door and knotted pane
Scant light and less of air bestow:
Scared men and women rested there,
And children swarmed and gambolled by.
Quoth he: “Among so many, where
May modesty find room to lie?”
Sir Self went saddened on his road
Toward the dimly spangled town;
A girl upon a heavy load
Beside the path had sat her down:
“Will no one help you on your way?”
“I want no help,” the girl replied,
“I bear this burden day by day.”
Quoth he: “This is true labour’s pride.”
Then other women sorely bent,
Beneath their burdens passed along;
Yet spoke they gaily as they went,
Or softly hummed a quiet song:
And some bore children, some their load
A failing sister’s pack increased.
Then thought Sir Self: “With whip and goad,
These women were like laden beast!”
The shambling, reeking suburb through,
There rose a mansion broad and high,
Whence light from countless windows flew,
And flamed a meteor in the sky;
And from its gates, at clang of bell,
Came women forth, with saucy word
And cry. Quoth he: “Can this be well
When women like the cattle herd?”
He marked the motley troop; some gay
With wilful burst of mirth long pent;
Some downcast went their silent way;
Some, stolid-featured, mocked content.
But there was labour’s stain on all,
The travailed look, the ashy skin.
Quoth he: “What may this folk befall,
With crime without and want within?”
The gleaming town shone more and more,
As fell the night’s mist-laden gloom,
Till heaven’s face seemed dotted o’er
With feeble sparks, where wheel and loom
Went on their ceaseless whirl and swing,
As busy hand and eager eye,
Mid shuttle’s flight and iron’s ring,
Their still-renewing taskwork ply.
Dismounting from his bridled mule,
Afoot Sir Self pursued his way,
Where cries of mingled mirth and dule
Marked sottish rout or maddened fray;
Where on each lintel sat and croned
Old beldams, and the sluttish brood
Of girl-folk gossiped, laughed, and droned,
As drone the idle, laugh the lewd.
The city hath no solemn night
Like that which shades the dewy lawn,
But with a lurid, ghastly light,
Beshames the gloom, and mocks the dawn.
Still as the restless watches wore
Sir Self the stony footway paced,
Till morning waved the city o’er
Her filmy wings gold-interlaced.
But still through all the midnight blind,
And through the blinking of the morn,
On every side rose womankind
To move his pity—raise his scorn:
One mocked her shame, one pressed along
On some untimely taskwork bound;
One charmed the night with siren song;
One woke the day with plaintive sound.
Here fragile forms Sir Self passed by
At toils which lordly man disdains;
There rose some patient, piteous cry,
Where petty trade sought petty gains.
And in the morning’s mist there sate
With love that would not wince nor fail,
Poor womankind beside the gate
Of hospital and grated jail.
Sir Self forsook his stubborn mule,
And, sadly, homeward paced the ground;
Quoth he: “If womankind doth rule,
May be nor slave nor fool is bound.
’Tis not her beauty nor her wiles,
Nor all her looks dressed up for show,
But something more than craft or smiles
Has won a heart from me, I trow.”
WILLIAM DUTHIE.
The Poor Man’s Kitchen.
Not long ago, it was discovered that our prisons are palaces, that
the treadmill is as pleasant as waltzing, that picking oakum is not
more difficult than potichomanie, and that if any one desires to fare
luxuriously every day, without expense to himself, he has only to turn
thief, and be sentenced to two years’ confinement. Unfortunately, the
life of a prison is attended with a few disadvantages. We are not all
fitted for a life of monastic seclusion; silence is not always agreeable;
restraint very soon becomes irksome. In spite of these drawbacks,
however—which those who have long battled with the world, and whose
spirits are drooping under the fell influence of adversity, might well
be content to endure for the sake of peace and plenty—the condemned cell
seemed a blessed refuge for the distressed, a pretty little chamber in
the Castle of Indolence and Many Delights. In one point, especially, the
House of Correction, it was supposed, might inspire all prisoners to sing
with Dr. Watts—
“I have been there, and still would go;
’Tis like a little heaven below.”
for the larder seemed worthy of an abbey in the rare old time in which
The monks of Melrose made gude kail
On Fridays, when they fasted;
And wanted neither beef nor ale
So long us their neighbours lasted.
At all events, the poor man began to imagine that there was no such
potluck for him as he could get every day of the year in any penitentiary
throughout the land. He and his little ones were starving on a crust of
bread, and cast envious looks at the tabby waiting about the area gate
for the daily visit of the cats’-meat-man. Why should he not have as good
a dinner as the felon who had broken into the house with his centre-bit,
or had broken the bank with his frauds? Why should he pace homewards
day after day, pale-cheeked, hollow-eyed, with sinking heart and hungry
blood, all for the crime of being honest? A cry of indignation rose
throughout the country. If people did not go the length of supposing that
our prisoners are fed on turtle-soup, and sleep on feather-beds, they
declared at least that the management of prisons is such as to place a
heavy premium on crime. The criminal is not punished, but rewarded. Our
philanthropy has gone too far. We are milksops. Gaolers are gentlemen;
turnkeys are bland as the angels that opened the prison doors; they take
care that hinges never grate harshly on the ear, and they shoot the
bolts sweetly, softly, solemnly, as dying falls of music. Success to
swindling! When swindlers are thus petted, who would not go to prison?
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Let us have
jolly dinners with shut doors in preference to empty stomachs under the
open sky. Instead of plenty to do, and nothing to eat, let us have the
crank on Christian principles—that is, in a fine combination of texts of
scripture and boiled beef. After all, there is not a little attraction
in the fleshpots of Egypt, and for the sake of the garlic, the leeks and
the feast of fat things, with which their souls are satisfied, the chosen
Israel long to enter once more the house of bondage, rather than serve
God in the wilderness on a diet of sparrows—for what else are quails, at
least according to the London experience? Lost in those deserts of brick
and mortar, which all great cities are—famished and faint as he treads
“the stony-hearted Oxford Street”—the British workman is fain to enter
the house of his bondage for the sake of the daily allowance of cooked
meat—three ounces, without bone.
In these flattering descriptions of prison discipline there is a good
deal of exaggeration, but there is truth enough to perplex many worthy
people who are anxious for the wellbeing of the working classes. The
authorities may point to the fact that the fare of our penitentiaries is
barely sufficient to keep the prisoners from losing flesh; but this is
not a fact which appeals to the popular imagination. We see men feeding
sometimes voraciously, and yet never gaining in flesh; while others,
who are very spare eaters, grow fat in spite of themselves. Therefore,
granting that, scientifically, the weighing machine is a fair test of
what a man ought to eat, yet, practically, it is not a standard to which
the common sense of mankind can submit. There is a fallacy in these
measurements which never imposes upon the poor man. He says—“Nobody
takes the trouble to weigh me. I have as little fresh air, and as little
liberty as those fellows. I am confined in a close workshop all day.
I breathe a stifling atmosphere, which the prisoners do not. My whole
manner of life requires even more than these convicts do, a nourishing
diet. But neither for myself, nor for my family, can I get such excellent
or such abundant food as the greatest scoundrel in England obtains every
day from his warders. It is a frightful shame—it is a national crime.
Your weighing machine is a grand imposture.”
And what is the nature of this food which excites so much envy? Between
one prison and another there are differences, and it must be remembered
that in all prisons there is established a considerable difference
between criminals confined for short, and those committed for long
periods. Prisoners are divided into classes—generally three. First-class
prisoners are the aristocracy of crime, who are at the top of their
profession, who are in for more than a couple of months, and who are
entitled to first-class fare. The second-class are those who have been
sentenced to less than two months, but more than a fortnight; while
the third and lowest class includes those who have been committed for
a fortnight and under. Not to make the prisons too attractive to petty
offenders, those in the second and third classes, who may be described
as the fluctuating population of our bridewells, get the very commonest
fare. Those in the second get but a very small portion of animal food;
these in the third get none at all. It is the class who are confined
for lengthened terms, and who may almost be described as the permanent
population of our prisons, that get the sort of fare which has caused so
much envy.
We may take the dietary table of the House of Correction at Cold Bath
Fields as a fair example of the mode in which first-class prisoners are
fed. They get three meals a day—breakfast, dinner, and supper. At the
first of these, every prisoner gets six ounces and two-thirds of bread,
together with a pint of cocoa. The bread, it is true, is brown, and our
lower classes have a prejudice against loaves made from coarse flour; but
the prejudice is an absurd one. The man of wealth regards brown bread as
a luxury; it is the most wholesome, nourishing, and palatable form of
the staff of life; and those who begin by making faces at it very soon
come to enjoy it. Every day a loaf is given to each prisoner, about the
size for which we pay twopence in the shops. With two cuts of a knife,
it is divided into three parts; it is then placed in a bag and handed
to each prisoner, being his allowance for the day. He eats a third at
breakfast, a third at dinner, and the remainder at supper. We are still
at breakfast, however, and wish to know about that pint of cocoa which
is handed to each man. The general way in which the ingredients are
mixed is this:—In every hundred pints of the article, as it issues from
the kitchen, there ought to be three pounds two ounces of cocoa, eight
pounds of molasses, or four pounds of raw sugar, and twelve and a-half
pints of milk. So that the allowance to each man, in his pint of cocoa,
is half-an-ounce of cocoa, half-a-gill of milk, and either one ounce and
a-third of molasses, or two-thirds of an ounce of sugar—the rest being
water. If this is not a very luxurious breakfast, still it is not a bad
one, and many an honest man would be glad if he could command it for
himself and his family.
Dinner comes at two o’clock. The men sit down on narrow benches, before
long strips of table. A table-cloth is laid for each; it is a piece
of brown paper somewhat less than the size of the present page. Upon
this the salt, to which the prisoner is allowed to help himself in any
quantity, or his bread, or anything else, is deposited, and after dinner
he pockets the paper, for he will receive a new table-cloth on the
morrow. His quantity of bread I have already mentioned. It is a third
part of the little loaf which is handed to him in a numbered bag, and for
each meal weighs six ounces and two-thirds. The foundation of the dinner,
however, is animal food. On four days of the week, the prisoners get meat
and potatoes; on three they get soup. The meat (though not the soup) has
the disadvantage of being served up cold; but this is unavoidable when a
great quantity of beef or mutton has to be divided simultaneously into
small pieces for a thousand prisoners, who commence their meal at one and
the same moment. Each man gets six ounces of meat and half a pound of
potatoes. During the winter half of the year the meat is beef and mutton
alternate fortnights; during the summer half it is beef entirely. In some
prisons the allowance is as low as three ounces of cooked meat without
bone; but as provisions are probably dearer in London than anywhere
else, it is worth while for the purposes of comparison, to confine
our attention to the rations permitted in the Houses of Correction at
Clerkenwell and Westminster. We shall then be able to put the case
against the prisons in the strongest light. The sufficiency of the prison
diet will be equally seen if we now turn to examine the nature of the
dinner on the three days of the week, which are allotted to soup, with
the usual modicum of bread. Each man gets a pint and a half of soup.
This mess is so prepared that in every hundred pints of it there are
stewed down two ox-heads, three pounds of barley, six pounds of peas,
three pounds of rice, one pound of salt, and two ounces of pepper, with
a due proportion of such vegetables as are in season—carrots, leeks,
turnips. This is the Westminster receipt. In other prisons the receipt
varies a little. At Lewes, for example, every quart of soup contains
six ounces of meat without bone, five ounces of potatoes, two ounces of
oatmeal and flour mixed, a sufficient quantity of leeks or onions, and a
little parsley or thyme. At Horsemonger Lane, it is made from pot liquor
of the boiling beef, and contains per pint, an ounce of chopped beef,
two ounces of peas or barley, and vegetables seasoned with pepper and
salt. At other prisons the mess is made into a sort of Irish stew, that
besides containing plenty of nourishment, is rendered palatable by mint
or other pot herbs. On the whole it will be admitted that the dinner, if
it is of a very plain character, is also substantial, and that no one
who can command such fare need starve or complain. There are thousands
of poor men who would say that the meal requires but one thing to make
it perfect, and that is the glass of beer which is allowed in the Munich
prison.
Supper is the meal for which fastidious appetites will have least
inclination, for it consists of the usual quantity of bread, together
with a pint of gruel. What is this gruel which has such an evil
reputation? It contains about one and a half ounces of oatmeal to the
pint, and is seasoned with salt or sugar, as the case may be. Now, from
the time when Dr. Johnson in his dictionary defined oats to be the
substance on which horses are fed in England, and men in Scotland, to the
present day, this very fattening article of diet has been the object of
innumerable sneers. Lord Kames, with that audacious patriotism for which
his countrymen are distinguished, retorted with not a little wit—“Yes,
and where can you find such horses and such men?” These matters are very
much under the shadow of prejudice. The Hebrew declines ham, and the
Englishman can never become partial to frogs and snails. A Scotchman is
astonished to find that turnip-tops are eaten in England, and we were
all very much surprised when the illustrious Soyer told us not long ago,
that the nettle is one of the most delicious green vegetables—fit for the
table of a prince, though the poor man can pluck it by the road-side.
About this oatmeal, it was but recently that we had some of our public
men pronouncing upon its merits in the most dogmatic terms. Mr. Bright
described oatmeal porridge as a horrible mess, and seemed to think it
one of the grievances of the lower classes in Scotland that they are
condemned to feed upon it. The Scotch were at once in arms against him,
and they had some right on their side. First of all rose the Duke of
Argyll, and declared emphatically that oatmeal porridge is capital food.
Then came Dr. Guthrie, who did battle for another preparation of oatmeal,
called sowens. “I stand up for Scotland and oatmeal porridge!” he said.
“Clearly Mr. Bright knew nothing of what he was speaking about when he
disparaged them.” (The Scotch, it will be observed, have a respectful
habit of designating their food in the plural number. As kings and
editors are always “we,” broth and porridge are always “they.”) “I have
heard the case of a countryman of his somewhat in point, who was fain
to say a good word for something with less substance. Travelling in the
Highlands, he got tired; he got bemisted; he got, what an Englishman,
is very apt to do, hungry, and so cast himself upon the hospitality of
a cottage he stumbled on. The good woman had no English, and he had no
Gaelic; but by the language of signs she came to understand what he
wanted. She had no oatmeal in the house—nothing better than what we call
sowens. Now sowens, you know, are very good and palatable when they are
manufactured; but before that process they bear a remarkable resemblance
to dirty water. That the man thankfully swallowed them I make no
doubt—for he went home and told his friends that he had been the object
of the most remarkable providence that ever befell a human being. Quoth
he, after telling the first part of the story, the woman took some dirty
water and put it into a pot, and, by the blessing of God, it came out
a pudding!” There is certainly one mode of preparing oatmeal which all
Englishmen relish—namely, when the finer qualities of the meal are baked
into those thin cakes, which are obtained in perfection only in the north
of Scotland; and with regard to the gruel at which Mr. Bright and other
members of “the bloated aristocracy,” turn up their noses, it is, even
in its simplest form, not to be despised by hungering men; while, by the
addition of some cheap condiment, it can always be made agreeable to the
taste. The prisoners, at all events, partake of it heartily; and a little
butter, milk, or treacle, helps it wonderfully.
The conclusion which is drawn from all this is, that prisoners are well
fed, that the diet provided is beyond the means of many poor families and
that there must be something wrong if criminals are so much better off
than the honest artisan who is starving with his family on a pittance of
20_s._ a week. That there is something wrong it is not necessary to deny.
But the question may be raised, whether the wrong lies in our system of
prison discipline. If the fare which is provided for our criminals is
good and ample, is even generous, there is this also to be remembered,
at the same time, that it is dirt-cheap. It is so cheap that when the
cost of it is mentioned, everybody will at once admit that the idea of
lowering the price still further would be a ridiculous meanness. At the
Clerkenwell House of Correction the diet which we have described is
provided to each prisoner at the cost of certainly not more than 4_d._
a day. The average cost of feeding all the prisoners in that gaol
during the year 1859 was 2_s._ a week for each man; but as this average
is struck so as to include the second and third-class prisoners, there
will be a difference in the calculation if we take account only of the
first-class prisoners receiving first-class fare. That difference,
however, must be very slight, as, among the 1,200 daily inmates of
the prison, there is but a sprinkling of the second and third-class
criminals. We are clearly within the mark if we put down 4_d._ a day
for each man. At the Ely House of Correction the charge is 3¼_d._ for
each. At the Salford New Bailey the daily cost of food is 2¾_d._ a head.
For the whole of England the average cost of each prisoner’s diet is
3¾_d._ a day. There is a very curious and instructive table in one of
our blue-books, which shows the total average cost per annum of each
prisoner; and when people talk of the luxury of prisons, we may ask them
to read this table, and then to say what they think:—
£. _s._ _d._
Prison diet, &c. 5 12 5¼
Clothing, bedding, and straw 1 7 2
Medicines, &c. 0 1 7¼
Wine, beer, and spirits 0 0 10
Washing and cooking 0 1 7
Fuel, soap, candles, oil, and gas 1 17 11
Stationary, printing, and books 0 6 3¾
Furniture 0 4 11¼
Rents, rates, and taxes 0 2 6¾
Officers’ salaries 9 19 7¾
Pensions to retired officers 0 7 10¼
Support of prisoners removed under contract to other
jurisdictions 0 3 10½
Removal of prisoners to and from trial 0 8 11¼
Removing transported convicts 0 5 0
Repairs, alterations, and additions 2 9 5
Sundry contingencies not enumerated 1 1 9¾
Annual repayment of principal or interest of money
borrowed for alterations or rebuilding of prison 2 12 9¾
--------------
£26 19 8½
It should be stated with regard to this return, although it does not in
the least affect the general argument, that it is an average with which
what are called the Government prisons have nothing to do. The above
average is derived from a comparison of the county and borough prisons.
In the government establishments, which hold the criminals that under
the old system would be sentenced to transportation, the cost of each
prisoner may be one or two pounds more. If we must be exact, let the
figures be quoted, and from these it will be found that in 1856, the
gross total cost for each prisoner was 28_l._ 5_s._, and that this sum
was reduced to 16_l._ 5_s._ 4_d._ by setting against it the value of
prisoners’ labour. Putting these prisons then aside, as not affecting the
general argument, and looking simply at the ordinary houses of correction
to be found in every county in England, what do we discover? We discover
in the first place, that every prisoner costs the county at the rate of
27_l._ a year, or a trifle over ten shillings a week. If we take into
consideration the numerous items which that sum covers, it does not
appear that this is a vary exorbitant sum. But when we turn our attention
to the first six items of the foregoing list, which include the diet,
the clothing, the bedding, medicines, wine, beer and spirits, washing,
cooking, fuel, soap, candles, oil and gas, everybody must be astonished
at the smallness of the amount sufficient to meet what may be described
as the personal wants of the prisoner. He is fed and clothed, he is
warmed and lighted, he is washed and doctored throughout the year for
9_l._ 1_s._, 6½_d._ These first six items which constitute the expense of
living, are covered by sixpence a day. The one article of diet is, I have
already stated, covered by the sum of threepence-three-farthings a day.
What is the inference to be deduced from such a fact? Will any body say
that our prisoners are extravagantly fed? Will anybody undertake to
keep them in life, on a smaller sum? It is surely palpable that if a
comparison with the diet of prisoners, the fare of our honest poor looks
meagre enough; that if a premium seems to be placed on crime by the
goodness of the penitentiary kitchen, there may be a wrong somewhere, but
it is certainly not in the system of prison discipline. Surely the wrong
is not that prisoners are so well fed, but that honest men are worse fed.
Why should they be worse fed? They pay far more than fourpence a day for
their food, and that food is not nearly so nice, nor so wholesome, as
that which every pick-pocket obtains. The proper inference is that in
prisons these things are managed well, while in the poor man’s dwelling
they are managed badly. It is entirely an affair of management.
There are two great losses which the poor man suffers from. In the first
place he has to buy from the retail dealer, and consequently pays more
for every article that he requires. He has to pay so much indeed for
each item, that a number of little delicacies which he has to buy fresh
every day in order to give a flavour to his food—such as parsley, cost
him far more than they are worth—cost it may be two or three hundred per
cent. beyond their real value. In the second place, after he has got all
his articles of food together, there is a great deal of waste because
things are prepared on a small scale. He will buy bone with his meat, but
he is unable to turn the bone to account. Or he gets too much fat with
his meat, and he has either to cut it off, or to throw it into the pot
so as to spoil the dinner. Besides which, in nine cases out of ten, his
wife is a vile cook, and would spoil the best of food. What with buying
his things dear, buying what he cannot turn to any use, and having to
trust to the tender mercies of those culinary artists who are said to
be chiefly provided by the enemy of mankind, the working man’s teeth
enjoy but poor practice. The remedy for the startling contrast between
the dinner-tables of the thief in prison and honesty in a garret, is not
to place the felon on shorter commons, but to teach honesty the art of
combination, and to bring that system of the division of labour which in
manufactures has achieved the most splendid results, to bear upon the
ordinary economy of human life.
The wild theories of communists have unfortunately brought discredit on
the principle of combination as applied to the domestic life. But there
was wisdom in the idea of a common kitchen, if not of a common purse.
How will the poor man ever be able to command twenty ounces of bread,
six ounces of cooked meat, eight ounces of potatoes, a pint of cocoa and
a pint of gruel, all for fourpence (indeed less than fourpence), except
by combination of some sort? In the manufacturing towns of the north,
the workmen form themselves into a sort of joint-stock company, purchase
their provisions wholesale, sell them to the members of the company at
a profit barely sufficient to cover the expenses, and so contrive to
live at a comparatively cheap rate. There are other schemes of a similar
description afoot, which have been more or less successful; and it may be
that in time the working classes will establish institutions for cooking,
for brewing, and for providing themselves with all the necessaries of
life. Such institutions as these must be left to spring up spontaneously
among themselves; but, in the meantime, it seems to us that something may
be done to show the lower classes what is in their power if they only set
about it in the right way. As a general rule, the establishment of large
kitchens for the purpose of victualling the poor must be left to private
enterprise. They will be established by persons who see their way to make
a moderate profit in providing wholesome food at a cheaper rate than has
yet been possible. If anybody sneers at cheapness, and suggests a doubt
whether such undertakings can ever be sustained except by charitable
contributions, there is a very good answer at hand in the success of the
model lodging-houses. It was said that model lodging-houses would never
pay. But they pay so well, that Mr. Newson, who has built a couple of
such houses at the back of Berkeley Square (and they are well worth going
to see), has declared his readiness to build similar houses in the City,
say about Farringdon Street, if he can only get the ground at a moderate
rent. The accommodation which in this way he gives to the families of
the working classes for 3_s._ 6_d._ or 4_s._ 6_d._ a week, is perfectly
marvellous. And what an enterprising builder has thus accomplished in
providing house-room, enterprising victuallers will emulate in providing
cheap, wholesome, palatable food, and in making a profit out of the
transaction. The idea is not worth much unless it will pay. It can have
no genuine vitality unless it will be self-supporting. If Clerkenwell
House of Correction can feed 1,200 prisoners daily at fourpence each,
surely it is within the bounds of probability that as many customers
can be well served with food for eightpence or ninepence a day, and a
tolerable margin of profit be left to the account?
But those who hold strenuously, as we do, that schemes of this sort
must pay their own way, and should be left to the enterprize of
individuals—that they are purely a question of commerce, with which
charity and patronage have nothing to do—may nevertheless think that,
in the first instance, an example has to be set, and that trade, which
is always suspicious of new projects, is not likely to set the example
in a hurry. It was not the instincts of trade that started the model
lodging-houses; but, once started, the tradesman is glad to keep up
the game. So it is not likely that the mere instinct of trade will in
a moment set cheap kitchens afloat; and in these matters the example
has generally to be given by persons who are willing to act together
on philanthropic grounds. On public grounds, a committee of noblemen
and gentlemen, headed by Prince Albert, started the Crystal Palace, ran
all the risk of failure, carried the scheme to a successful issue, and
inspired the directors of the palace at Sydenham to follow the example,
under certain modifications, with pounds, shillings, and pence as the
motive power. Perhaps a poor man’s kitchen ought not to be mentioned in
the same page with crystal palaces; but perhaps, also, it is capable of
producing as much real good as acres of glass and miles of iron pillars.
And surely there are many gentlemen in this metropolis who take an
interest in the poor of our great cities, who only require that such
facts as the foregoing should be brought under their notice, in order
to follow them up to a practical conclusion, and whose names would be
certain to obtain from the public the small sum of money necessary to
erect the cooking apparatus, and to put the scheme in motion.
The working-classes have lately exhibited such a talent for organization,
that there is every likelihood of their speedily learning the lesson.
The builders have but lately concluded a strike for more pay. It is
demonstrable that they can, by their own exertions, obtain all that
they demand. If they have failed in obtaining more wages, it is still
possible for them to achieve what comes to the same thing—to make the
actual amount of wages go as far as the increased rate which they desire.
Why should not Messrs. Potter and Co. turn their formidable powers of
organization in this direction? It is surely more feasible, as well as
more laudable, for trade unions to provide their members with cheap and
nourishing food, than to aim at the intimidation of masters, and of men
not belonging to the society. The unions are anxious to embrace every
member of the particular trades to which they are attached. Could any
machinery be established more certain to bring about that result, than
the institution of kitchens connected with each trade? Every member of
the union, on presenting his ticket, would get his rations at cost price,
while those, not members of the union, would get the same rations if they
chose to pay a little more. That slight increase of price would be a
screw that would act effectually in inducing all workmen to belong to a
society. The advantages which a trades’ union holds forth to the members
are, for the most part, contingent. If a union workman is sick, he will
have an allowance in his sickness; if he dies, his family will have a
claim on the society; should he innocently get into trouble with his
employers, he will be backed by all the funds and influence of his fellow
members. But many workmen cannot bring themselves to anticipate such
contingencies. They are not sick; they are not going to die; nobody is
troubling them. Why should they join a society? But offer them every day
a cheaper and a better dinner than they can get, save as being enrolled
in the union, and they will join to a man. The unions, which in spite of
the illegal and tyrannical purposes they have been made to serve, are
a most valuable institution, which no man of sense would wish to take
away from the working man, would then produce greater good than they have
yet accomplished; they would fill the poor man’s mouth, and it generally
happens that when the mouth has done all that it wants to do in the way
of eating it is not inclined to do much in the way of sedition.
It is a very humiliating reflection that eating and drinking occupy
more of our thoughts than anything else in heaven above or in the earth
beneath. We are not yet as the lilies that take no thought of such
matters. Man is like the lower animals in this respect that with the
vast majority of our race, the struggle for existence is a struggle for
dinner. We have all somewhat of the Tartar Khan in us, and after we
ourselves have dined, are ready to proclaim that the whole world may
dine also. But we first. Nobody shall dine with our good will, if we are
starving. Who can count all the wars, murders and quarrels that have
arisen out of this one question of dinner—the question of questions? How
many of the piteous cases that come before Sir Cresswell Cresswell are
to be explained by deficiency of food, badness of cooking, and fits of
indigestion? There is no such irritant as hunger and deranged gastronomy.
If we could only get at the wisdom which is supposed to lie in ancient
fables we should probably find that Pandora’s box, the source of every
mischief, was an empty oven or larder, or some such receptacle. The poor
man especially feels the truth of this doctrine. He conspires against the
rich, because he never gets a dinner, and on that point he feels with the
Great Cham. He beats his wife, because with his hard won earnings she
can place only bad food before him. He drinks beer, and drowns himself
in gin, because no meat that he can get is half so pleasant. People
imagine that by introducing the light wines of France into this country
we shall put a stop to drunkenness. It is a great mistake. The French are
a sober people, not because they drink wine, but because they are good
cooks. Where you have bad cookery and good liquor, depend upon it the
liquor will carry the day. And we shall not stop the rage for liquor in
this country by making it still better—by turning the gin into Cognac,
and by turning the beer into Bordeaux. The cure lies rather in restoring
the balance between meat and drink. Put the meat more on a par with the
drink, and then see what the result will be. Either teach the poor man to
cook, or give him his meat well cooked. Let the Temperance Leagues and
Alliances look to it. They will accomplish far more good by improving the
working man’s edibles than by meddling with his potables—by seconding
that natural law which makes a man chiefly dependent on his food, rather
than by attempting to place artificial barriers in the way of his getting
whatever drink he may require. The best cure for the drunkenness of the
lower classes is not a Maine Liquor Law—but soup and sausages, pudding
and pies; is not to shut the beershops, but to open the poor man’s
kitchen.
Roundabout Papers.—No. IV.
ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES.
[Illustration]
On the 18th day of April last I went to see a friend in a neighbouring
Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld a group something
like that here depicted. A news-boy had stopped in his walk, and was
reading aloud the journal which it was his duty to deliver; a pretty
orange girl, with a heap of blazing fruit, rendered more brilliant
by one of those great blue papers in which oranges are now artfully
wrapped, leant over the railing and listened; and opposite the _nympham
discentem_ there was a capering and acute eared young satirist of a
crossing-sweeper, who had left his neighbouring professional avocation
and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little
news-boy.
That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as he
read it out to his audience, was saying:—“And—now—Tom—coming up
smiling—after his fall—dee—delivered a rattling clinker upon the Benicia
Boy’s—potatoe-trap—but was met by a—punisher on the nose—which,” &c. &c.;
or words to that effect. Betty at 52 let me in, while the boy was reading
his lecture; and, having been some twenty minutes or so in the house and
paid my visit, I took leave.
The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and his
audience had scarcely changed their position. Having read every word
of the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay to listen further;
but if the gentleman who expected his paper at the usual hour that day
experienced delay and a little disappointment I shall not be surprised.
I am not going to expatiate on the battle. I have read in the
correspondent’s letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the midst of the
company assembled the reader’s humble servant was present, and in a very
polite society, too, of “poets, clergymen, men of letters, and members of
both Houses of Parliament.” If so, I must have walked to the station in
my sleep, paid three guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction, and
returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly woke there about the time
when history relates that the fight was over. I do not know whose colours
I wore—the Benician’s, or those of the Irish champion; nor remember
where the fight took place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is bound to
recollect. Ought Mr. Sayers to be honoured for being brave, or punished
for being naughty? By the shade of Brutus the elder, I don’t know.
In George II.’s time, there was a turbulent navy lieutenant (Handsome
Smith he was called—his picture is at Greenwich now, in brown velvet, and
gold and scarlet; his coat handsome, his waistcoat exceedingly handsome;
but his face by no means the beauty)—there was, I say, a turbulent
young lieutenant who was broke on a complaint of the French ambassador,
for obliging a French ship of war to lower her topsails to his ship at
Spithead. But, by the King’s orders, Tom was next day made Captain Smith.
Well, if I were absolute king, I would send Tom Sayers to the mill for
a month, and make him Sir Thomas on coming out of Clerkenwell. You are
a naughty boy, Tom! but then, you know, we ought to love our brethren,
though ever so naughty. We are moralists, and reprimand you; and you are
hereby reprimanded accordingly. But in case England should ever have need
of a few score thousand champions, who laugh at danger; who cope with
giants; who, stricken to the ground, jump up and gaily rally, and fall,
and rise again, and strike, and die rather than yield—in case the country
should need such men, and you should know them, be pleased to send lists
of the misguided persons to the principal police stations, where means
may some day be found to utilize their wretched powers, and give their
deplorable energies a right direction. Suppose, Tom, that you and your
friends are pitted against an immense invader—suppose you are bent on
holding the ground, and dying there, if need be—suppose it is life,
freedom, honour, home, you are fighting for, and there is a death-dealing
sword or rifle in your hand, with which you are going to resist some
tremendous enemy who challenges your championship on your native shore?
Then, Sir Thomas, resist him to the death, and it is all right: kill him,
and heaven bless you. Drive him into the sea, and there destroy, smash,
and drown him; and let us sing, _Laudamus_. In these national cases,
you see, we override the indisputable first laws of morals. Loving your
neighbour is very well, but suppose your neighbour comes over from Calais
and Boulogne to rob you of your laws, your liberties, your newspapers,
your parliament (all of which _some_ dear neighbours of ours have given
up in the most self-denying manner): suppose any neighbour were to
cross the water and propose this kind of thing to us? Should we not be
justified in humbly trying to pitch him into the water? If it were the
King of Belgium himself we must do so. I mean that fighting, of course,
is wrong; but that there are occasions when &c.—I suppose I mean that
that one-handed fight of Sayers is one of the most spirit-stirring little
stories ever told: and, with every love and respect for Morality—my
spirit says to her, “Do, for goodness’ sake, my dear madam, keep your
true, and pure, and womanly, and gentle remarks for another day. Have the
great kindness to stand a _leetle_ aside, and just let us see one or two
more rounds between the men. That little man with the one hand powerless
on his breast facing yonder giant for hours, and felling him, too, every
now and then! It is the little Java and the Constitution over again!”
I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave Heenan, who has
acted and written since the battle with a true warrior’s courtesy, and
with a great deal of good logic too, that the battle was a drawn one.
The advantage was all on Mr. Sayers’s side. Say a young lad of sixteen
insults me in the street, and I try and thrash him, and do it. Well,
I have thrashed a young lad. You great, big tyrant, couldn’t you hit
your own size? But say the lad thrashes me? In either case I walk away
discomfited: but in the latter, I am positively put to shame. Now, when
the ropes were cut from that death-grip, and Sir Thomas released by the
recognized, the Eu-rope-an laws—the gentleman of Benicia was confessedly
blind of one eye, and speedily afterwards was blind of both. Could Mr.
Sayers have held out for three minutes, for five minutes, for ten minutes
more? He says he could. So we say _we_ could have held out, and did,
and had beaten off the enemy at Waterloo, even if the Prussians hadn’t
come up. The opinions differ pretty much according to the nature of the
opinants. I say the Duke and Tom could have held out, that they meant
to hold out, that they did hold out, and that there has been fistifying
enough. That crowd which came in and stopped the fight ought to be
considered like one of those divine clouds which the gods send in Homer:
“Apollo shrouds
The godlike Trojan in a veil of clouds.”
It is the best way of getting the godlike Trojan out of the scrape,
don’t you see. The _nodus_ is cut; Tom is out of chancery; the Benicia
Boy not a bit the worse, nay, better than if he had beaten the little
man. He has not the humiliation of conquest. He is greater, and will
be loved more hereafter by the gentle sex. Suppose he had overcome the
godlike Trojan? Suppose he had tied Tom’s corpse to his cab-wheels, and
driven to Farnham, smoking the pipe of triumph? Faugh! the great, hulking
conqueror! Why did you not hold your hand from yonder hero? Everybody,
I say, was relieved by that opportune appearance of the British gods,
protectors of native valour, who interfered, and “withdrew” their
champion.
Now, suppose six-feet-two conqueror, and five-feet-eight beaten; would
Sayers have been a whit the less gallant and meritorious? If Sancho had
been allowed _really_ to reign in Barataria, I make no doubt that, with
his good sense and kindness of heart, he would have devised some means
of rewarding the brave vanquished, as well as the brave victors in the
Baratarian army, and that a champion who had fought a good fight would
have been a knight of King Don Sancho’s orders, whatever the upshot
of the combat had been. Suppose Wellington overwhelmed on the plateau
of Mount St. John; suppose Washington attacked and beaten at Valley
Forge—and either supposition is quite easy—and what becomes of the
heroes? They would have been as brave, honest, heroic, wise; but their
glory, where would it have been? Should we have had their portraits
hanging in our chambers? have been familiar with their histories? have
pondered over their letters, common lives, and daily sayings? There is
not only merit, but luck which goes to making a hero out of a gentleman.
Mind, please you, I am not saying that the hero is after all not so very
heroic; and have not the least desire to grudge him his merit because of
his good fortune.
Have you any idea whither this Roundabout Essay on some late great
victories is tending? Do you suppose that by those words I mean Trenton,
Brandywine, Salamanca, Vittoria, and so forth? By a great victory I can’t
mean that affair at Farnham, for it was a drawn fight. Where then are the
victories, pray, and when are we coming to them?
My good sir, you will perceive that in this Nicæan discourse I have only
as yet advanced as far as this—that a hero, whether he wins or loses, is
a hero; and that if a fellow will but be honest and courageous, and do
his best, we are for paying all honour to him. Furthermore, it has been
asserted that Fortune has a good deal to do with the making of heroes;
and thus hinted for the consolation of those who don’t happen to be
engaged in any stupendous victories, that, had opportunity so served,
they might have been heroes too. If you are not, friend, it is not your
fault, whilst I don’t wish to detract from any gentleman’s reputation who
is. There. My worst enemy can’t take objection to that. The point might
have been put more briefly perhaps; but, if you please, we will not argue
that question.
Well, then. The victories which I wish especially to commemorate in
this the last article of our first volume, are the six great, complete,
prodigious, and undeniable victories, achieved by the corps which the
editor of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE has the honour to command. When I
seemed to speak disparagingly but now of generals, it was that chief I
had in my I (if you will permit me the expression), I wished him not
to be elated by too much prosperity; I warned him against assuming
heroic imperatorial airs, and cocking his laurels too jauntily over
his ear. I was his conscience, and stood on the splash-board of his
triumph-car, whispering, “_Hominem memento te_.” As we rolled along the
way, and passed the weathercocks on the temples, I saluted the symbol
of the goddess Fortune with a reverend awe. “We have done our little
endeavour,” I said, bowing my head, “and mortals can do no more. But we
might have fought bravely, and _not_ won. We might have cast the coin,
calling ‘Head,’ and, lo! Tail might have come uppermost.” Oh! thou
Ruler of Victories!—thou awarder of Fame!—thou Giver of Crowns (and
shillings)—if thou hast smiled upon us, shall we not be thankful? There
is a Saturnine philosopher, standing at the door of his book-shop, who,
I fancy, has a pooh-pooh expression as the triumph passes. (I can’t see
quite clearly for the laurels, which have fallen down over my nose.) One
hand is reining in the two white elephants that draw the car; I raise
the other hand up to—to the laurels, and pass on, waving him a graceful
recognition. Up the Hill of Ludgate—around the Pauline Square—by the side
of Chepe—until it reaches our own Hill of Corn—the procession passes.
The Imperator is bowing to the people; the captains of the legions are
riding round the car, their gallant minds struck by the thought, “Have
we not fought as well as yonder fellow, swaggering in the chariot, and
are we not as good as he?” Granted, with all my heart, my dear lads. When
your consulship arrives, may you be as fortunate. When these hands, now
growing old, shall lay down sword and truncheon, may you mount the car,
and ride to the temple of Jupiter. Be yours the laurel then. _Neque me
myrtus dedecet_, looking cosily down from the arbour where I sit under
the arched vine.
I fancy the Imperator standing on the steps of the temple (erected by
Titus) on the Mons Frumentarius, and addressing the citizens: “Quirites!”
he says “in our campaign of six months, we have been engaged six times,
and in each action have taken near upon a _hundred thousand prisoners_.
Go to! What are other magazines compared to our magazine? (Sound,
trumpeter!) What banner is there like that of Cornhill? You, philosopher
yonder? (he shirks under his mantle). Do you know what it is to have a
hundred and ten thousand readers? A hundred thousand readers? a hundred
thousand _buyers_!’ (Cries of No!—Pooh! Yes, upon my honour! Oh, come!
and murmurs of applause and derision)—‘I say more than a hundred thousand
purchasers—and I believe _as much as a million_ readers! (Immense
sensation.) To these have we said an unkind word? We have enemies; have
we hit them an unkind blow? Have we sought to pursue party aims, to
forward private jobs, to advance selfish schemes? The only persons to
whom wittingly we have given pain are some who have volunteered for our
corps—and of these volunteers we have had _thousands_[20] (Murmurs and
grumbles.) What commander, citizens, could place all these men—could make
officers of all these men? (cries of No—no! and laughter)—could say ‘I
accept this recruit, though he is too short for our standard, because
he is poor and has a mother at home who wants bread? could enrol this
other, who is too weak to bear arms, because he says, ‘Look, sir, I
shall be stronger anon.’ The leader of such an army as ours must select
his men, not because they are good and virtuous, but because they are
strong and capable. To these our ranks are ever open, and in addition
to the warriors—who surround me—(the generals look proudly conscious)—I
tell you, citizens, that I am in treaty with other and most tremendous
champions, who will march by the side of our veterans to the achievement
of fresh victories. Now, blow trumpets! Bang, ye gongs! and drummers,
drub the thundering skins! Generals and chiefs, we go to sacrifice to the
Gods.”
Crowned with flowers, the captains enter the temple, the other magazines
walking modestly behind them. The people huzza; and, in some instances,
kneel and kiss the fringes of the robes of the warriors. The Philosopher
puts up his shutters, and retires into his shop, deeply moved. In ancient
times, Pliny (_apud_ Smith) relates it was the custom of the Imperator
“to paint his whole body a bright red;” and, also, on ascending the Hill,
to have some of the hostile chiefs led aside “to the adjoining prison,
and put to death.” We propose to dispense with both these ceremonies.
FOOTNOTES
[20] The average of contributions has been for the last two months 100
a-week; and we beseech candidates to bear the above fact in mind, and
consider that it is impossible to reply personally to all of them; or
give special reasons why such and such an article is not suited to the
Magazine.—ED. _C. H. M._
London: Printed by SMITH, ELDER and Co.,
Little Green Arbour Court, E.C.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE (VOL. I,
NO. 6, JUNE 1860) ***
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