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-Project Gutenberg's My Miscellanies, Vol. 1 (of 2), by Wilkie Collins
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: My Miscellanies, Vol. 1 (of 2)
-
-Author: Wilkie Collins
-
-Release Date: October 5, 2013 [EBook #43893]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MISCELLANIES, VOL. 1 (OF 2) ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Note:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
-  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
-
-
-
-
-     MY MISCELLANIES.
-
-     BY WILKIE COLLINS,
-
-     AUTHOR OF 'THE WOMAN IN WHITE,' 'NO NAME,' 'THE DEAD SECRET,'
-     &c. &c. &c.
-
-
-     IN TWO VOLUMES.--VOL. I.
-
-
-     LONDON:
-
-     SAMPSON LOW, SON, & CO., LUDGATE HILL.
-
-     1863.
-
-     The Author reserves the right of Translation.
-
-
-
-
-     LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
-     AND CHARING CROSS.
-
-
-
-
-     Affectionately Inscribed
-     TO
-     HENRY BULLAR
-     (OF THE WESTERN CIRCUIT).
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-The various papers of which the following collection is composed, were
-most of them written some years since, and were all originally
-published--with many more, which I have not thought it desirable to
-reprint--in 'Household Words,' and in the earlier volumes of 'All the
-Year Round.' They were fortunate enough to be received with favour by
-the reader, at the period of their first appearance, and were thought
-worthy in many instances of being largely quoted from in other
-journals. After careful selection and revision, they are now collected
-in book-form; having been so arranged, in contrast with each other, as
-to present specimens of all the shorter compositions which I have
-contributed in past years to periodical literature.
-
-My object in writing most of these papers--especially those collected
-under the general heads of 'Sketches of Character' and 'Social
-Grievances'--was to present what I had observed and what I had
-thought, in the lightest and the least pretentious form; to address
-the public (if I could) with something of the ease of letter writing,
-and something of the familiarity of friendly talk. The literary Pulpit
-appeared to me at that time--as it appears to me still--to be rather
-overcrowded with the Preachers of Lay Sermons. Views of life and
-society to set us thinking penitently in some cases, or doubting
-contemptuously in others, were, I thought, quite plentiful enough
-already. More freshness and novelty of appeal to the much-lectured and
-much-enduring reader, seemed to lie in views which might put us on
-easier terms with ourselves and with others; and which might encourage
-us to laugh good-humouredly over some of the lighter eccentricities of
-character, and some of the more palpable absurdities of
-custom--without any unfair perversion of truth, or any needless
-descent to the lower regions of vulgarity and caricature. With that
-idea, all the lighter contributions to these Miscellanies were
-originally written; and with that idea they are now again dismissed
-from my desk, to win what approval they may from new readers.
-
-     HARLEY STREET, LONDON.
-       September, 1863.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
-
-
-                                                                  PAGE
-
-     Sketches of Character: I.
-
-            Talk-Stoppers                                            1
-
-     Social Grievances: I.
-
-            A Journey in Search of Nothing                          22
-
-     Nooks and Corners of History: I.
-
-            A Queen's Revenge                                       48
-
-     Social Grievances: II.
-
-            A Petition to the Novel-Writers                         72
-
-     Fragments of Personal Experience: I.
-
-            Laid Up in Lodgings                                     90
-
-     Sketches of Character: II.
-
-            A Shockingly Rude Article                              135
-
-     Nooks and Corners of History: II.
-
-            The Great (Forgotten) Invasion                         152
-
-     Curiosities of Literature: I.
-
-            The Unknown Public                                     169
-
-     Social Grievances: III.
-
-            Give us Room!                                          192
-
-     Curiosities of Literature: II.
-
-            Portrait of an Author, Painted by his Publisher        205
-
-     Fragments of Personal Experience: II.
-
-            My Black Mirror                                        250
-
-     Sketches of Character: III.
-
-            Mrs. Badgery                                           274
-
-
-
-
-MY MISCELLANIES.
-
-
-
-
-SKETCHES OF CHARACTER.--I.
-
-TALK-STOPPERS.
-
-
-We hear a great deal of lamentation now-a-days, proceeding mostly from
-elderly people, on the decline of the Art of Conversation among us.
-Old ladies and gentlemen with vivid recollections of the charms of
-society fifty years ago, are constantly asking each other why the
-great talkers of their youthful days have found no successors in this
-inferior present time. Where--they inquire mournfully--where are the
-illustrious men and women gifted with a capacity for perpetual
-outpouring from the tongue, who used to keep enraptured audiences
-deluged in a flow of eloquent monologue for hours together? Where are
-the solo talkers, in this degenerate age of nothing but choral
-conversation?
-
-The solo talkers have vanished. Nothing but the tradition of them
-remains, imperfectly preserved in books for the benefit of an
-ungrateful posterity, which reviles their surviving contemporaries,
-and would perhaps even have reviled the illustrious creatures
-themselves as Bores. If they could rise from the dead, and wag their
-unresting tongues among us now, would they win their reputations anew,
-just as easily as ever? Would they even get listeners? Would they be
-actually allowed to talk? I venture to say, decidedly not. They would
-surely be interrupted and contradicted; they would have their nearest
-neighbours at the dinner-table talking across them; they would find
-impatient people opposite, dropping things noisily, and ostentatiously
-picking them up; they would hear confidential whispering, and
-perpetual fidgeting in distant corners, before they had got through
-their first half-dozen of eloquent opening sentences. Nothing appears
-to me so wonderful as that none of these interruptions (if we are to
-believe report) should ever have occurred in the good old times of the
-great talkers. I read long biographies of that large class of
-illustrious individuals whose fame is confined to the select circle of
-their own acquaintance, and I find that they were to a man, whatever
-other differences may have existed between them, all delightful
-talkers. I am informed that they held forth entrancingly for hours
-together, at all times and seasons, and that I, the gentle, constant,
-and patient reader, am one of the most unfortunate and pitiable of
-human beings in never having enjoyed the luxury of hearing them: but,
-strangely enough, I am never told whether they were occasionally
-interrupted or not in the course of their outpourings. I am left to
-infer that their friends sat under them just as a congregation sits
-under a pulpit; and I ask myself amazedly (remembering what society is
-at the present day), whether human nature can have changed altogether
-since that time. Either the reports in the biographies are one-sided
-and imperfect, or the race of people whom I frequently meet with
-now--and whom I venture to call Talk-stoppers, because their business
-in life seems to be the obstructing, confusing, and interrupting of
-all conversation--must be the peculiar and portentous growth of our
-own degenerate era.
-
-Perplexed by this dilemma, when I am reading in long biographies about
-great talkers, I do not find myself lamenting, like my seniors, that
-they have left no successors in our day, or doubting irreverently,
-like my juniors, whether the famous performers of conversational solos
-were really as well worth hearing as eulogistic report would fain have
-us believe. The one invariable question that I put to myself under
-these circumstances runs thus:--Could the great talkers, if they had
-lived in my time, have talked at all? And the answer I receive is:--In
-the vast majority of cases, certainly not.
-
-Let me not unnecessarily mention names, but let me ask, for example,
-if some such famous talker as, say--the Great Glib--could have
-discoursed uninterruptedly for five minutes together in the presence
-of my friend Colonel Hopkirk?
-
-The colonel goes a great deal into society; he is the kindest and
-gentlest of men; but he unconsciously stops, or confuses conversation
-everywhere, solely in consequence of his own sociable horror of ever
-differing in opinion with anybody. If A. should begin by declaring
-black to be black, Colonel Hopkirk would be sure to agree with him,
-before he had half done. If B. followed, and declared black to be
-white, the colonel would be on his side of the question, before he had
-argued it out; and, if C. peaceably endeavoured to calm the dispute
-with a truism, and trusted that every one would at least admit that
-black and white in combination made grey, my ever-compliant friend
-would pat him on the shoulder approvingly, all the while he was
-talking; would declare that C.'s conclusion was, after all, the common
-sense of the question; and would set A. and B. furiously disputing
-which of them he agreed or disagreed with now, and whether on the
-great Black, White, and Grey question, Colonel Hopkirk could really be
-said to have any opinion at all.
-
-How could the Great Glib hold forth in the company of such a man as
-this? Let us suppose that delightful talker, with a few of his
-admirers (including, of course, the writer of his biography), and
-Colonel Hopkirk, to be all seated at the same table; and let us say
-that one of the admirers is anxious to get the mellifluous Glib to
-discourse on capital punishment for the benefit of the company. The
-admirer begins, of course, on the approved method of stating the
-objections to capital punishment, and starts the subject in this
-manner.
-
-"I was dining out, the other day, Mr. Glib, where capital punishment
-turned up as a topic of conversation----"
-
-"Ah!" says Colonel Hopkirk, "a dreadful necessity--yes, yes, yes, I
-see--a dreadful necessity--Eh?"
-
-"And the arguments for its abolition," continues the admirer, without
-noticing the interruption, "were really handled with great dexterity
-by one of the gentlemen present, who started, of course, with the
-assertion that it is unlawful, under any circumstances, to take away
-life----"
-
-"Unlawful, of course!" cries the colonel. "Very well put. Yes,
-yes--unlawful--to be sure--so it is--unlawful, as you say."
-
-"Unlawful, sir?" begins the Great Glib, severely. "Have I lived to
-this time of day, to hear that it is unlawful to protect the lives of
-the community, by the only certain means----?"
-
-"No, no--O dear me, no!" says the compliant Hopkirk, with the most
-unblushing readiness. "Protect their lives, of course--as you say,
-protect their lives by the only certain means--yes, yes, I quite agree
-with you."
-
-"Allow me, colonel," says another admirer, anxious to assist in
-starting the great talker, "allow me to remind our friend, before he
-takes this question in hand, that it is an argument of the
-abolitionists that perpetual imprisonment would answer the purpose of
-protecting society----"
-
-The colonel is so delighted with this last argument that he bounds on
-his chair, and rubs his hands in triumph. "My dear sir!" he cries,
-before the last speaker can say another word, "you have hit it--you
-have indeed! Perpetual imprisonment--that's the thing--ah, yes, yes,
-yes, to be sure--perpetual imprisonment--the very thing, my dear
-sir--the very thing!"
-
-"Excuse me," says a third admirer, "but I think Mr. Glib was about to
-speak. You were saying, sir----?"
-
-"The whole question of capital punishment," begins the delightful
-talker, leaning back luxuriously in his chair, "lies in a nutshell."
-("Very true," from the colonel.) "I murder one of you--say Hopkirk
-here." ("Ha! ha! ha!" loudly from the colonel, who thinks himself
-bound to laugh at a joke when he is only wanted to listen to an
-illustration.) "I murder Hopkirk. What is the first object of all the
-rest of you, who represent the community at large?" ("To have you
-hanged," from the colonel. "Ah, yes, to be sure! to have you hanged.
-Quite right! quite right!") "Is it to make me a reformed character, to
-teach me a trade, to wash my blood-stains off me delicately, and set
-me up again in society, looking as clean as the best of you? No!"
-("No!" from the compliant colonel.) "Your object is clearly to prevent
-me from murdering any more of you. And how are you to do that most
-completely and certainly? Can you accomplish your object by perpetual
-imprisonment?" ("Ah! I thought we should all agree about it at last,"
-cries the colonel cheerfully. "Yes, yes--nothing else for it but
-perpetual imprisonment, as you say.") "By perpetual imprisonment? But
-men have broken out of prison." ("So they have," from the colonel.)
-"Men have killed their gaolers; and there you have the commission of
-that very second murder that you wanted to prevent." ("Quite right,"
-from the compliant Talk-Stopper. "A second murder--dreadful!
-dreadful!") "Imprisonment is not your certain protective remedy, then,
-evidently. What is?"
-
-"Hanging!!!" cries the colonel, with another bound in his chair, and a
-voice that can no longer be talked down. "Hanging, to be sure! I quite
-agree with you. Just what I said from the first. You have hit it, my
-dear sir. Hanging, as you say--hanging, by all manner of means!"
-
-Has anybody ever met Colonel Hopkirk in society? And does anybody
-think that the Great Glib could possibly have held forth in the
-company of that persistently-compliant gentleman, as he is alleged, by
-his admiring biographer, to have held forth in the peculiar society of
-his own time? The thing is clearly impossible. Let us leave Glib,
-congratulating him on having died when the Hopkirks of these latter
-days were as yet hardly weaned; let us leave him, and ascertain how
-some other great talker might have got on in the society of some other
-modern obstructor of the flow of eloquent conversation.
-
-I have just been reading the Life, Letters, Labours, Opinions, and
-Table-Talk of the matchless Mr. Oily; edited--as to the Life, by his
-mother-in-law; as to the Letters, by his grand-daughter's husband; and
-as to the Labours, Opinions, and Table-Talk, by three of his intimate
-friends, who dined with him every other Sunday throughout the whole of
-his long and distinguished life. It is a very pretty book in a great
-many volumes, with pleasing anecdotes--not only of the eminent man
-himself, but of all his family connections as well. His shortest notes
-are preserved, and the shortest notes of others to him. "My dear O.,
-how is your poor head? Yours, P." "My dear P., hotter than ever.
-Yours, O." And so on. Portraits of Oily, in infancy, childhood,
-youth, manhood, old age active, and old age infirm, concluding with a
-post-mortem mask, abound in the book--so do fac-similes of his
-handwriting, showing the curious modifications which it underwent when
-he occasionally exchanged a quill for a steel-pen. But it will be more
-to my present purpose to announce for the benefit of unfortunate
-people who have not yet read the Memoirs, that Oily was, as a matter
-of course, a delightful and incessant talker. He poured out words, and
-his audience imbibed the same perpetually three times a week from
-tea-time to past midnight. Women especially revelled in his
-conversation. They hung, so to speak, palpitating on his lips. All
-this is told me in the Memoirs at great length, and in several places;
-but not a word occurs anywhere tending to show that Oily ever met with
-the slightest interruption on any one of the thousand occasions when
-he held forth. In relation to him, as in relation to the Great Glib, I
-seem bound to infer that he was never staggered by an unexpected
-question, never affronted by a black sheep among the flock, in the
-shape of an inattentive listener, never silenced by some careless man
-capable of unconsciously cutting him short and starting another topic
-before he had half done with his own particular subject. I am bound to
-believe all this--and yet, when I look about me at society as it is
-constituted now, I could fill a room, at a day's notice, with people
-who would shut up the mouth of Oily before it had been open five
-minutes, quite as a matter of course, and without the remotest
-suspicion that they were misbehaving themselves in the slightest
-degree. What (I ask myself), to take only one example, and that from
-the fair sex--what would have become of Oily's delightful and
-incessant talk, if he had known my friend Mrs. Marblemug, and had
-taken her down to dinner in his enviable capacity of distinguished
-man?
-
-Mrs. Marblemug has one subject of conversation--her own vices. On all
-other topics she is sarcastically indifferent and scornfully mute.
-General conversation she consequently never indulges in; but the
-person who sits next to her is sure to be interrupted as soon as he
-attracts her attention by talking to her, by receiving a confession of
-her vices--not made repentantly, or confusedly, or jocularly--but
-slowly declaimed with an ostentatious cynicism, with a hard eye, a
-hard voice, a hard--no, an adamantine--manner. In early youth, Mrs.
-Marblemug discovered that her business in life was to be eccentric and
-disagreeable, and she is one of the women of England who fulfils her
-mission.
-
-I fancy I see the ever-flowing Oily sitting next to this lady at
-dinner, and innocently trying to make her hang on his lips like the
-rest of his tea-table harem. His conversation is reported by his
-affectionate biographers, as having been for the most part of the
-sweetly pastoral sort. I find that he drove that much-enduring
-subject, Nature, in his conversational car of triumph, longer and
-harder than most men. I see him, in my mind's eye, starting in his
-insinuating way from some parsley garnish round a dish of
-lobsters--confessing, in his rich, full, and yet low voice (vide
-Memoirs) that garnish delights him, because his favourite colour is
-green--and so getting easily on to the fields, the great subject from
-which he always got his largest conversational crop. I imagine his
-tongue to be, as it were, cutting its first preliminary capers on the
-grass for the benefit of Mrs. Marblemug; and I hear that calmly-brazen
-lady throw him flat on his back by the utterance of some such words as
-these:
-
-"Mr. Oily, I ought to have told you, perhaps, that I hate the fields:
-I think Nature in general something eminently disagreeable--the
-country, in short, quite odious. If you ask me why, I can't tell you.
-I know I'm wrong; but hating Nature is one of my vices."
-
-Mr. Oily eloquently remonstrates. Mrs. Marblemug only says, "Yes, very
-likely--but, you see, it's one of my vices." Mr. Oily tries a
-dexterous compliment. Mrs. Marblemug only answers, "Don't!--I see
-through that. It's wrong in me to see through compliments, being a
-woman, I know. But I can't help seeing through them, and saying I do.
-That's another of my vices." Mr. Oily shifts the subject to
-Literature, and thence, gently but surely, to his own books--his
-second great topic after the fields. Mrs. Marblemug lets him go on,
-because she has something to finish on her plate--then lays down her
-knife and fork--looks at him with a kind of wondering indifference,
-and breaks into his next sentence thus:--
-
-"I'm afraid I don't seem quite so much interested as I know I ought to
-be," she says; "but I should have told you, perhaps, when we first sat
-down, that I have given up reading."
-
-"Given up reading!" exclaims Mr. Oily, thunderstruck by the monstrous
-confession. "You mean only the trash that has come into vogue lately;
-the morbid, unhealthy----"
-
-"No, not at all," rejoins Mrs. Marblemug. "If I read anything, it
-would be morbid literature. My taste is unhealthy. That's another of
-my vices."
-
-"My dear madam, you amaze--you alarm me,--you do indeed!" cries Mr.
-Oily, waving his hand in graceful deprecation and polite horror.
-
-"Don't," says Mrs. Marblemug; "you'll knock down some of the
-wine-glasses, and hurt yourself. You had better keep your hand
-quiet,--you had, indeed. No; I have given up reading, because all
-books do me harm--the best--the healthiest. Your books even, I
-suppose, I ought to say; but I can't, because I see through
-compliments, and despise my own, of course, as much as other people's!
-Suppose, we say, I don't read, because books do me harm--and leave it
-there. The thing is not worth pursuing. You think it is? Well, then,
-books do me harm, because they increase my tendency to be envious (one
-of my worst vices). The better the book is, the more I hate the man
-for being clever enough to write it--so much cleverer than me, you
-know, who couldn't write it at all. I believe you call that Envy.
-Whatever it is, it has been one of my vices from a child. No, no
-wine--a little water. I think wine nasty, that's another of my
-vices--or, no, perhaps, that is only one of my misfortunes. Thank you.
-I wish I could talk to you about books; but I really can't read
-them--they make me so envious."
-
-Perhaps Oily (who, as I infer from certain passages in his Memoirs,
-could be a sufficiently dogged and resolute man on occasions when his
-dignity was in danger) still valiantly declines to submit and be
-silent, and, shifting his ground, endeavours to draw Mrs. Marblemug
-out by asking her questions. The new effort, however, avails him
-nothing. Do what he will, he is always met and worsted by the lady in
-the same, quiet, easy, indifferent way; and, sooner or later, even his
-distinguished mouth is muzzled by Mrs. Marblemug, like the mouths of
-all the degenerate talkers of my own time whom I have ever seen in
-contact with her. Are Mr. Oily's biographers not to be depended on, or
-can it really be the fact that, in the course of all his long
-conversational career, that illustrious man never once met with a
-check in the shape of a Mrs. Marblemug? I have no tender prepossession
-in favour of the lady; but when I reflect on the character of Mr.
-Oily, as exhibited in his Memoirs, I am almost inclined to regret that
-he and Mrs. Marblemug never met. In relation to some people, I
-involuntarily regard her as a dose of strong moral physic; and I
-really think she might have done my distinguished countryman some
-permanent good.
-
-To take another instance, there is the case of the once-brilliant
-social luminary, Mr. Endless--extinguished, unfortunately for the new
-generation, about the time when we were most of us only little boys
-and girls.
-
-What a talker this sparkling creature must have been, if one may judge
-by that racy anonymous publication (racy was, I think, the word
-chiefly used in reviewing the book by the critics of the period),
-Evenings with Endless, by A Constant Listener! "I could hardly
-believe," I remember the Listener writes, "that the world was the same
-after Endless had flashed out of this mortal scene. It was morning
-while he lived--it was twilight, or worse, when he died. I was very
-intimate with him. Often has the hand that writes these trembling
-lines smacked that familiar back--often have those thrilling and
-matchless accents syllabled the fond diminutive of my Christian name.
-It was not so much that his talk was ceaseless (though that is
-something), as that it moved incessantly over all topics from heaven
-to earth. His variety of subject was the most amazing part of this
-amazing man. His fertility of allusion to topics of the past and
-present alike, was truly inexhaustible. He hopped, he skipped, he
-fluttered, he swooped from theme to theme. The butterfly in the
-garden, the bee in the flower-bed, the changes of the kaleidoscope,
-the sun and shower of an April morning, are but faint emblems of him."
-With much more to the same eloquent purpose; but not a word from the
-first page to the last to hint even that Endless was ever brought to a
-full stop, on any single occasion, by any one of the hundreds of
-enchanted listeners before whom he figured in his wonderful
-performances with the tongue from morning to night.
-
-And yet, there must surely have been Talk-Stoppers in the world, in
-the time of the brilliant Endless--talk-stoppers, in all probability,
-possessing characteristics similar to those now displayed in society
-by my exasperating connection by marriage, Mr. Spoke Wheeler.
-
-It is impossible to say what the consequences might have been if my
-relative and Mr. Endless had ever come together. Mr. Spoke Wheeler is
-one of those men--a large class, as it appears to me--who _will_ talk,
-and who have nothing whatever in the way of a subject of their own to
-talk about. His constant practice is to lie silently in ambush for
-subjects started by other people; to take them forthwith from their
-rightful owners; turn them coolly to his own uses; and then cunningly
-wait again for the next topic, belonging to somebody else, that passes
-within his reach. It is useless to give up, and leave him to take the
-lead--he invariably gives up, too, and declines the honour. It is
-useless to start once more, seeing him apparently silenced--he becomes
-talkative again the moment you offer him the chance of seizing on your
-new subject--disposes of it without the slightest fancy, taste, or
-novelty of handling, in a moment--then relapses into utter
-speechlessness as soon as he has silenced the rest of the company by
-taking their topic away from them. Wherever he goes, he commits this
-social atrocity with the most perfect innocence and the most provoking
-good humour, for he firmly believes in himself as one of the most
-entertaining men who ever crossed a drawing-room or caroused at a
-dinner-table.
-
-Imagine Mr. Spoke Wheeler getting an invitation to one of those
-brilliant suppers which assisted in making the evenings of the
-sparkling Endless so attractive to his friends and admirers. See him
-sitting modestly at the table with every appearance in his face and
-manner of being the most persistent and reliable of listeners. Endless
-takes the measure of his man, as he too confidently believes, in one
-bright glance--thinks to himself, Here is a new worshipper to
-astonish; here is the conveniently dense and taciturn human pedestal
-on which I can stand to let off my fireworks--plunges his knife and
-fork, gaily hospitable, into the dish before him (let us say a turkey
-and truffles, for Endless is a gastronome as well as a wit), and
-starts off with one of those "fertile allusions," for which he was so
-famous.
-
-"I never carve turkey without thinking of what Madame de Pompadour
-said to Louis the Fifteenth," Endless begins in his most off-hand
-manner. "I refer to the time when the superb Frenchwoman first came to
-court, and the star of the fair Chateauroux waned before her. Who
-remembers what the Pompadour said when the king insisted on carving
-the turkey?"
-
-Before the company can beg Endless, as usual, to remember for them,
-Mr. Spoke Wheeler starts into life and seizes the subject.
-
-"What a vicious state of society it was in the time of Madame de
-Pompadour!" he says, with moral severity. "Who can wonder that it led
-to the French Revolution?"
-
-Endless feels that his first effort for the evening is nipped in the
-bud, and that the new guest is not to be depended on as a listener.
-He, however, waits politely, and every one else waits politely to hear
-something more about the French Revolution. Mr. Spoke Wheeler has not
-another word to say. He has snatched his subject--has exhausted
-it--and is now waiting, with an expectant smile on his face, to lay
-hands on another. Disastrous silence reigns, until Mr. Endless, as
-host and wit, launches a new topic in despair.
-
-"Don't forget the salad, gentlemen," he exclaims. "The emblem, as I
-always fancy, of human life. The sharp vinegar corrected by the soft
-oil, just as the misfortune of one day is compensated by the luck of
-another. Heigho! let moralists lecture as they will, what a true
-gambler's existence ours is, by the very nature of it! Love, fame,
-wealth, are the stakes we all play for; the world is the table; Death
-keeps the house, and Destiny shuffles the cards. According to my
-definition, gentlemen, man is a gambling animal, and woman----"
-Endless pauses for a moment, and lifts the glass to his lips to give
-himself a bacchanalian air before he amazes the company with a torrent
-of eloquence on the subject of woman. Unhappy man! in that one moment
-Mr. Spoke Wheeler seizes on his host's brilliant gambling metaphor,
-and runs away with it as his own property immediately.
-
-"The worst of gambling," he says, with a look of ominous wisdom, "is,
-that when once a man takes to it, he can never be got to give it up
-again. It always ends in ruin. I know a man whose son is in the Fleet,
-and whose daughter is a maid-of-all-work at a lodging-house. The poor
-devil himself once had twenty thousand pounds, and he now picks up a
-living by writing begging-letters. All through gambling. Degrading
-vice, certainly; ruins a man's temper and health, too, as well as his
-property. Ah! a very degrading vice--very much so indeed!"
-
-"I am afraid, my dear sir, you have no vices," says Endless, getting
-angry and sarcastic as a fresh pause follows this undeniable
-commonplace. "The bottle stands with you. Do you abjure even that most
-amiable of human failings--the cheerful glass? Ha!" exclaims Endless,
-seeing that his guest is going to speak again, and vainly imagining
-that he can cut him short this time. "Ha! what a debt we owe to the
-first man who discovered the true use of the grape! How drunk he must
-have got in making his immortal preliminary experiments! How often his
-wife must have begged him to consider his health and his
-respectability, and give up all further investigations! How he must
-have shocked his family with perpetual hiccups, and puzzled the
-medical men of the period with incurable morning headaches! To the
-health of that marvellous, that magnificent, that inestimable human
-being, the first Toper in the world! The patriarchal Bacchus quaffing
-in his antediluvian vineyard! What a picture, gentlemen; what a
-subject for our artists! Scumble, my dear friend," continues Endless,
-breathlessly, feeling that Mr. Spoke Wheeler has got his topic again,
-and anxious to secure assistance in preventing that persistent
-gentleman from making any use of the stolen property--"Scumble, your
-pencil alone is worthy of the subject. Tell us, my prince of painters,
-how would you treat it?"
-
-The prince of painters has his mouth full of turkey, and looks more
-puzzled than flattered by this complimentary appeal. He hesitates, and
-Mr. Spoke Wheeler darts into the conversation on the subject of
-drunkenness, forthwith.
-
-"I'll tell you what," says the Talk-Stopper, "we may all joke about
-drunkenness as much as we please--I'm no saint, and I like a joke as
-well as anybody--but it's a deuced serious thing for all that.
-Seven-tenths of the crime in this country is owing to drunkenness; and
-of all the incurable diseases that baffle the doctors, delirium
-tremens is (next to hydrophobia) one of the worst. I like a cheerful
-glass myself--and this is uncommonly good wine we are drinking
-now--but there's more than you think for to be said on the temperance
-side of the question; there is, indeed!"
-
-Will even the most indiscriminate of the surviving admirers of
-Endless, and of the great talkers generally, venture to assert that
-he, or they, could have shown off with the slightest approach to
-success in the company of Mr. Spoke Wheeler, or of Mrs. Marblemug, or
-of Colonel Hopkirk, or of any of the other dozens on dozens of
-notorious talk-stoppers whose characters I refrain from troubling the
-reader with? Surely not! Surely I have quoted examples enough to prove
-the correctness of my theory, that the days when the eminent professors
-of the Art of Conversation could be sure of perpetually-attentive
-audiences, have gone by. Instead of mourning over the loss of the
-great talkers, we ought to feel relieved (if we have any real regard
-for them, which I sometimes doubt) by their timely departure from the
-scene. Between the members of the modern generation who would not have
-listened to them, the members who could not have listened to them, and
-the members who would have confused, interrupted, and cut them short,
-what extremities of compulsory silence they must have undergone if
-they had lasted until our time! Our case may be lamentable enough in
-not having heard them; but how much worse would theirs be if they came
-back to the world now, and tried to show us how they won their
-reputations!
-
-
-
-
-SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.--I.
-
-A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF NOTHING.
-
-[Communicated by An Anonymous Traveller.]
-
-
-NOTE THE FIRST. TRYING FOR QUIET.
-
-"Yes," said the doctor, pressing the tips of his fingers with a
-tremulous firmness on my pulse, and looking straight forward into the
-pupils of my eyes, "yes, I see: the symptoms all point unmistakably
-towards one conclusion--Brain. My dear sir, you have been working too
-hard; you have been following the dangerous example of the rest of the
-world in this age of business and bustle. Your brain is
-over-taxed--that is your complaint. You must let it rest--there is
-your remedy."
-
-"You mean," I said, "that I must keep quiet, and do Nothing?"
-
-"Precisely so," replied the doctor. "You must not read or write; you
-must abstain from allowing yourself to be excited by society; you must
-have no annoyances; you must feel no anxieties; you must not think;
-you must be neither elated nor depressed; you must keep early hours
-and take an occasional tonic, with moderate exercise, and a nourishing
-but not too full a diet--above all, as perfect repose is essential to
-your restoration, you must go away into the country, taking any
-direction you please, and living just as you like, so long as you are
-quiet and so long as you do Nothing."
-
-"I presume he is not to go away into the country without ME?" said my
-wife, who was present at the interview.
-
-"Certainly not," rejoined the doctor with an acquiescent bow. "I look
-to your influence, my dear madam, to encourage our patient to follow
-my directions. It is unnecessary to repeat them, they are so extremely
-simple and easy to carry out. I will answer for your husband's
-recovery if he will but remember that he has now only two objects in
-life--to keep quiet, and to do Nothing."
-
-My wife is a woman of business habits. As soon as the doctor had taken
-his leave, she produced her pocket-book, and made a brief abstract of
-his directions, for our future guidance. I looked over her shoulder
-and observed that the entry ran thus:--
-
-"Rules for dear William's restoration to health. No reading; no
-writing; no excitement; no annoyance; no anxiety; no thinking. Tonic.
-No elation of spirits. Nice dinners. No depression of spirits. Dear
-William to take little walks (with me). To go to bed early. To get up
-early. N.B.--Keep him quiet. Mem.: Mind he does Nothing."
-
-Mind I do Nothing? No need to mind about that. I have not had a
-holiday since I was a boy. Oh, blessed Idleness, after the years of
-merciless industry that have separated us, are you and I to be brought
-together again at last? Oh, my weary right hand, are you really to
-ache no longer with driving the ceaseless pen? May I, indeed, put you
-in my pocket, and let you rest there, indolently, for hours together?
-Yes! for I am now at last to begin--doing Nothing. Delightful task
-that performs itself! Welcome responsibility that carries its weight
-away smoothly on its own shoulders!
-
-These thoughts shine in pleasantly on my mind after the doctor has
-taken his departure, and diffuse an easy gaiety over my spirits when
-my wife and I set forth, the next day, for the country. We are not
-going the round of the noisy watering-places, nor is it our intention
-to accept any invitations to join the circles assembled by festive
-country friends. My wife, guided solely by the abstract of the
-doctor's directions in her pocket-book, has decided that the only way
-to keep me absolutely quiet, and to make sure of my doing Nothing, is
-to take me to some pretty retired village and to put me up at a
-little primitive, unsophisticated country-inn. I offer no objection
-to this project--not because I have no will of my own and am not
-master of all my movements--but only because I happen to agree with my
-wife. Considering what a very independent man I am naturally, it has
-sometimes struck me, as a rather remarkable circumstance, that I
-always do agree with her.
-
-We find the pretty, retired village. A charming place, full of
-thatched cottages with creepers at the doors, like the first easy
-lessons in drawing-masters' copy-books. We find the unsophisticated
-inn--just the sort of house that the novelists are so fond of writing
-about, with the snowy curtains and the sheets perfumed by lavender,
-and the matronly landlady and the amusing signpost. This Elysium is
-called the Nag's Head. Can the Nag's Head accommodate us? Yes, with a
-delightful bedroom and a sweet parlour. My wife takes off her bonnet
-and makes herself at home, directly. She nods her head at me with a
-look of triumph. Yes, dear, on this occasion also I quite agree with
-you. Here we have found perfect quiet; here we may make sure of obeying
-the doctor's orders; here we have, at last, discovered--Nothing.
-
-Nothing! Did I say Nothing? We arrive at the Nag's Head late in the
-evening, have our tea, go to bed tired with our journey, sleep
-delightfully till about three o'clock in the morning, and, at that
-hour, begin to discover that there are actually noises even in this
-remote country seclusion. They keep fowls at the Nag's Head; and, at
-three o'clock, the cock begins to crow and the hens to cluck under our
-window. Pastoral, my dear, and suggestive of eggs for breakfast whose
-reputation is above suspicion; but I wish these cheerful fowls did not
-wake quite so early. Are there, likewise, dogs, love, at the Nag's
-Head, and are they trying to bark down the crowing and clucking of the
-cheerful fowls? I should wish to guard myself against the possibility
-of making a mistake, but I think I hear three dogs. A shrill dog who
-barks rapidly; a melancholy dog who howls monotonously; and a hoarse
-dog who emits barks at intervals like minute guns. Is this going on
-long? Apparently it is. My dear, if you will refer to your
-pocket-book, I think you will find that the doctor recommended early
-hours. We will not be fretful and complain of having our morning sleep
-disturbed; we will be contented, and will only say that it is time to
-get up.
-
-Breakfast. Delicious meal, let us linger over it as long as we
-can,--let us linger, if possible, till the drowsy midday tranquillity
-begins to sink over this secluded village.
-
-Strange! but now I think of it again, do I, or do I not, hear an
-incessant hammering over the way? No manufacture is carried on in
-this peaceful place, no new houses are being built; and yet there is
-such a hammering that, if I shut my eyes, I can almost fancy myself in
-the neighbourhood of a dock-yard. Waggons, too. Why does a waggon
-which makes so little noise in London, make so much noise here? Is the
-dust on the road detonating powder, that goes off with a report at
-every turn of the heavy wheels? Does the waggoner crack his whip or
-fire a pistol to encourage his horses? Children, next. Only five of
-them, and they have not been able to settle for the last half hour
-what game they shall play at. On two points alone do they appear to be
-unanimous--they are all agreed on making a noise and on stopping to
-make it under our window. I think I am in some danger of forgetting
-one of the doctor's directions: I rather fancy I am actually allowing
-myself to be annoyed.
-
-Let us take a turn in the garden, at the back of the house. Dogs
-again. The yard is on one side of the garden. Every time our walk
-takes us near it, the shrill dog barks and the hoarse dog growls. The
-doctor tells me to have no anxieties. I am suffering devouring
-anxieties. These dogs may break loose and fly at us, for anything I
-know to the contrary, at a moment's notice. What shall I do? Give
-myself a drop of tonic? or escape for a few hours from the perpetual
-noises of this retired spot by taking a drive? My wife says, take a
-drive. I think I have already mentioned that I invariably agree with
-my wife.
-
-The drive is successful in procuring us a little quiet. My directions
-to the coachman are to take us where he pleases, so long as he keeps
-away from secluded villages. We suffer much jolting in by-lanes, and
-encounter a great variety of bad smells. But a bad smell is a
-noiseless nuisance, and I am ready to put up with it patiently.
-Towards dinner-time we return to our inn. Meat, vegetables, pudding,
-all excellent, clean and perfectly cooked. As good a dinner as I wish
-ever to eat;--shall I get a little nap after it? The fowls, the dogs,
-the hammer, the children, the waggons, are quiet at last. Is there
-anything else left to make a noise? Yes: there is the working
-population of the place.
-
-It is getting on towards evening, and the sons of labour are
-assembling on the benches placed outside the inn to drink. What a
-delightful scene they would make of this homely every-day event on the
-stage! How the simple creatures would clink their tin mugs, and drink
-each other's healths, and laugh joyously in chorus! How the peasant
-maidens would come tripping on the scene and lure the men tenderly to
-the dance! Where are the pipe and tabour that I have seen in so many
-pictures; where the simple songs that I have read about in so many
-poems? What do I hear as I listen, prone on the sofa, to the evening
-gathering of the rustic throng? Oaths,--nothing, on my word of honour,
-but oaths! I look out, and see gangs of cadaverous savages, drinking
-gloomily from brown mugs, and swearing at each other every time they
-open their lips. Never in any large town, at home or abroad, have I
-been exposed to such an incessant fire of unprintable words as now
-assail my ears in this primitive village. No man can drink to another
-without swearing at him first. No man can ask a question without
-adding a mark of interrogation at the end in the shape of an oath.
-Whether they quarrel (which they do for the most part), or whether
-they agree; whether they talk of their troubles in this place or their
-good luck in that; whether they are telling a story, or proposing a
-toast, or giving an order, or finding fault with the beer, these men
-seem to be positively incapable of speaking without an allowance of at
-least five foul words for every one fair word that issues from their
-lips. English is reduced in their mouths to a brief vocabulary of all
-the vilest expressions in the language. This is an age of
-civilization; this is a Christian country; opposite me I see a
-building with a spire, which is called, I believe, a church; past my
-window, not an hour since, there rattled a neat pony chaise with a
-gentleman inside, clad in glossy black broad cloth, and popularly
-known by the style and title of clergyman. And yet, under all these
-good influences, here sit twenty or thirty men whose ordinary
-table-talk is so outrageously beastly and blasphemous, that not one
-single sentence of it, though it lasted the whole evening, could be
-printed, as a specimen, for public inspection in these pages. When the
-intelligent foreigner comes to England, and when I tell him (as I am
-sure to do) that we are the most moral people in the universe, I will
-take good care that he does not set his foot in a secluded British
-village when the rural population is reposing over its mug of
-small-beer after the labours of the day.
-
-I am not a squeamish person, neither is my wife, but the social
-intercourse of the villagers drives us out of our room, and sends us
-to take refuge at the back of the house. Do we gain anything by the
-change? Nothing whatever.
-
-The back parlour, to which we have now retreated, looks out on a
-bowling-green; and there are more benches, more mugs of beer, more
-foul-mouthed villagers on the bowling-green. Immediately under our
-window is a bench and table for two, and on it are seated a drunken
-old man and a drunken old woman. The aged sot in trousers is offering
-marriage to the aged sot in petticoats, with frightful oaths of
-endearment. Never before did I imagine that swearing could be twisted
-to the purposes of courtship. Never before did I suppose that a man
-could make an offer of his hand by bellowing imprecations on his eyes,
-or that all the powers of the infernal regions could be appropriately
-summoned to bear witness to the beating of a lover's heart under the
-influence of the tender passion. I know it now, and I derive so little
-satisfaction from gaining the knowledge of it, that I determine on
-having the two intolerable old drunkards removed from the window, and
-sent to continue their cursing courtship elsewhere. The ostler is
-lounging about the bowling-green, scratching his bare brawny arms and
-yawning grimly in the mellow evening sunlight. I beckon to him, and
-ask him if he does not think those two old people have had beer
-enough? Yes, the ostler thinks they have. I inquire next if they can
-be removed from the premises, before their language gets worse,
-without the risk of making any great disturbance. The ostler says,
-Yes, they can, and calls to the potboy. When the potboy comes, he
-says, "Now then, Jack!" and snatches the table away from the two
-ribald old people without another word. The old man's pipe is on the
-table; he rises and staggers forward to possess himself of it; the old
-woman rises, too, to hold him by the arm for fear he should fall flat
-on his face. The moment they are off the bench, the potboy snatches
-their seat away from behind them, and quietly joins the ostler who is
-carrying their table into the inn. None of the other drinkers laugh at
-this proceeding, or pay any attention to it; and the two intoxicated
-old people, left helpless on their legs, stagger away feebly without
-attracting the slightest notice. The neat stratagem which the ostler
-and the potboy have just performed, is evidently the customary and
-only possible mode of letting drinkers know when they have had enough
-at the Nag's Head. Where did those savage islanders live whose manners
-a certain sea-captain once upon a time described as no manners at all,
-and some of whose customs he reprobated as being very nasty? If I did
-not know that we are many miles distant from the coast, I should be
-almost disposed to suspect that the seafaring traveller whose opinion
-I have just quoted had been touching at the Nag's Head.
-
-As it is impossible to snatch away all the tables and all the benches
-of all the company drinking and swearing in front of the house and
-behind it, I inquire of the ostler, the next time he comes near the
-window, at what time the tap closes? He tells me at eleven o'clock. It
-is hardly necessary to say that we put off going to bed until that
-time, when we retire for the night, drenched from head to foot, if I
-may so speak, in floods of bad language.
-
-I cautiously put my head out of window, and see that the lights of the
-tap-room are really extinguished at the appointed time. I hear the
-drinkers oozing out grossly into the pure freshness of the summer
-night. They all growl together; they all go together. All? Sinner and
-sufferer that I am, I have been premature in arriving at that happy
-conclusion! Six choice spirits, with a social horror in their souls of
-going home to bed, prop themselves against the wall of the inn, and
-continue the evening's conversazione in the darkness. I hear them
-cursing at each other by name. We have Tom, Dick, and Sam, Jem, Bill,
-and Bob to enliven us under our window, after we are in bed. They
-begin improving each other's minds, as a matter of course, by
-quarrelling. Music follows and soothes the strife, in the shape of a
-local duet, sung by voices of vast compass, which soar in one note
-from howling bass to cracked treble. Yawning follows the duet; long,
-loud, weary yawning of all the company in chorus. This amusement over,
-Tom asks Dick for "baccer," and Dick denies that he has got any, and
-Tom tells him he lies, and Sam strikes in and says, "No, he doan't,"
-and Jem tells Sam he lies, and Bill tells him that if he was Sam he
-would punch Jem's head, and Bob, apparently snuffing the battle from
-afar off and not liking the scent of it, shouts suddenly a pacific
-good night in the distance. The farewell salutation seems to quiet the
-gathering storm. They all roar responsive to the good-night roar of
-Bob. A moment of silence, actually a moment, follows--then a
-repetition of the long, loud, weary yawning in chorus--then another
-moment of silence--then Jem suddenly shouts to the retiring Bob to
-come back--Bob refuses, softened by distance--Jem insists, and his
-four friends join him--Bob relents and returns. A shriek of
-indignation, far down the village--Bob's wife has her window open, and
-has heard him consent to go back to his friends. Hearty laughter from
-Bob's five friends; screams from Bob's wife; articulate screams,
-informing Bob that she will "cut his liver out," if he does not come
-home directly. Answering curses from Bob; he will "mash" his wife, if
-she does not hold her tongue. A song in chorus from Bob's five
-friends. Outraged by this time past all endurance, I spring out of bed
-and seize the water-jug. My wife, having the doctor's directions ever
-present to her mind, implores me in heart-rending tones to remember
-that I am under strict medical orders not to excite myself. I pay no
-heed to her remonstrances, and advance to the window with the jug. I
-pause before I empty the water on the heads of the assembly beneath; I
-pause, and hear--O! most melodious, most welcome of sounds!--the
-sudden fall of rain. The merciful sky has anticipated me; the "clerk
-of the weather" has been struck by my idea of dispersing the Nag's
-Head Night Club, by water. By the time I have put down the jug and
-got back to bed, silence--primeval silence, the first, the foremost of
-all earthly influences--falls sweetly over our tavern at last.
-
-That night, before sinking wearily to rest, I have once more the
-satisfaction of agreeing with my wife. Dear and admirable woman! she
-proposes to leave this secluded village the first thing to-morrow
-morning. Never did I share her opinion more cordially than I share it
-now. Instead of keeping myself composed, I have been living in a
-region of perpetual disturbance; and, as for doing nothing, my mind
-has been so agitated and perturbed that I have not even had time to
-think about it. We will go, love--as you so sensibly suggest--we will
-go the first thing in the morning, to any place you like, so long as
-it is large enough to swallow up small sounds. Where, over all the
-surface of this noisy earth, the blessing of tranquillity may be
-found, I know not; but this I do know: a secluded English village is
-the very last place towards which any man should think of turning his
-steps, if the main object of his walk through life is to discover
-quiet.
-
-
-NOTE THE SECOND. DISCOVERY OF--NOTHING.
-
-The next morning we continue our journey in the direction of the
-coast, and arrive at a large watering-place.
-
-Observing that it is, in every respect, as unlike the secluded
-village as possible, we resolve to take up our abode in this populous
-and perfectly tranquil town. We get a lodging fronting the sea. There
-are noises about us--various and loud noises, as I should have
-thought, if I had not just come from a village; but everything is
-comparative, and, after the past experience I have gone through, I
-find our new place of abode quiet enough to suit the moderate
-expectations which I have now learnt to form on the subject of getting
-peace in this world. Here I can at least think almost uninterruptedly
-of the doctor's orders. Here I may surely begin my new life, and enjoy
-the luxury of doing Nothing.
-
-I suppose it _is_ a luxury; and yet so perverse is man, I hardly know
-whether I am not beginning to find it something more like a hardship
-at the very outset. Perhaps my busy and active life has unfitted me
-for a due appreciation of the happiness of being idle. Perhaps I am
-naturally of a restless, feverish constitution. However that may be,
-it is certain that on the first day when I seriously determine to do
-nothing, I fail to find in the execution of my resolution such supreme
-comfort as I had anticipated. I try hard to fight against the
-conviction (which will steal on me, nevertheless) that I have only
-changed one kind of hard work for another that is harder. I try to
-persuade myself that time does not hang at all heavily on my hands,
-and that I am happier with nothing to do than ever I was with a long
-day's work before me. Do I succeed or do I fail in this meritorious
-attempt? Let me write down the results of my first day's experience of
-the Art of doing Nothing, and let the reader settle the question for
-me.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Breakfast at nine o'clock, so as not to make too long a day of it.
-Among the other things on the table are shrimps. I find myself liking
-shrimps for an entirely new reason--they take such a long time to eat.
-Well, breakfast is over at last: I have had quite enough, and yet I am
-gluttonously sorry when the table is cleared. If I were in health I
-should now go to my desk, or take up a book. But I am out of health,
-and I must do Nothing. Suppose I look out of window? I hope that is
-idle enough to begin with.
-
-The sea--yes, yes, the sea! Very large, very grey, very calm; very
-calm, very grey, very large. Anything else about the sea? Nothing else
-about the sea.
-
-Yes--ships. One big ship in front, two little ships behind. (What time
-shall we have dinner, my dear? At five? Certainly at five!) One big
-ship in front, two little ships behind. Nothing more to see? Nothing.
-
-Let me look back into the room, and study the subjects of these
-prints on the walls. First print:--Death of the Earl of Chatham in the
-House of Lords, after Copley, R.A. Just so. Curious idea this picture
-suggests of the uniformity of personal appearance which must have
-distinguished the Peers in the last century. Here is a house full of
-noble lords, and each one of them is exactly like the other. Every
-noble lord is tall, every noble lord is portly, every noble lord has a
-long receding forehead, and a majestic Roman nose. Odd; and leading to
-reflections on the physical changes that must have passed over the
-peerage of the present day, in which I might respectfully indulge, if
-the doctor had not ordered me to abstain from thinking.
-
-Circumstanced as I am, I must mournfully dismiss the death of the Earl
-of Chatham, and pass from the work of Copley, R.A., to the other
-prints on the walls. Dear, dear me! Now I look again, there is nothing
-to pass to. There are only two other prints, and they are both
-classical landscapes. Deteriorated as the present condition of my
-faculties may be, my mind has not sunk yet to the level of Classical
-Landscape. I have still sense enough left to disbelieve in Claude and
-Poussin as painters of Italian scenery. Let me turn from the classical
-counterfeit to the modern reality. Let me look again at the sea.
-
-Just as large, just as grey, just as calm as ever. Any more ships?
-No; still the one big ship in front; still the two little ships
-behind. They have not altered their relative positions the least in
-the world. How long is it to dinner-time? Six hours and a quarter.
-What on earth am I to do? Nothing.
-
-Suppose I go and take a little walk? (No, dear, I will not tire
-myself; I will come back quite fresh to take you out in the
-afternoon.) Well, which way shall I go, now I am on the door-step?
-There are two walks in this place. First walk, along the cliff
-westward; second walk, along the cliff eastward. Which direction shall
-I take? I am naturally one of the most decided men in the world; but
-doing nothing seems to have deprived me already of my usual resolute
-strength of will. I will toss up for it. Heads, westward; tails,
-eastward. Heads! Ought this to be considered conclusive? or shall I
-begin again, and try the best of three? I will try the best of three,
-because it takes up more time. Heads, tails, heads! Westward still.
-Surely this is destiny. Or can it be that doing nothing has made me
-superstitious as well as irresolute? Never mind; I will go westward,
-and see what happens.
-
-I saunter along the path by the iron railings; then down a little dip,
-at the bottom of which there is a seat overlooking a ship-builder's
-yard. Close under me is a small coasting-vessel on the slips for
-repair. Nobody on board, but one old man at work. At work, did I say?
-Oh, happy chance! This aged repairer of ships is the very man, of all
-others, whom I had most need of meeting, the very man to help me in my
-present emergency. Before I have looked at him two minutes, I feel
-that I am in the presence of a great professor of the art of doing
-nothing. Towards this sage, to listen to his precepts and profit by
-his example, did destiny gently urge me, when I tossed up to decide
-between eastward and westward. Let me watch his proceedings; let me
-learn how to idle systematically by observing the actions of this
-venerable man.
-
-He is sitting on the left side of the vessel when I first look at him.
-In one hand he holds a crooked nail; in the other, a hammer. He coughs
-slowly, and looks out to sea; he sighs slowly, and looks back towards
-the land; he rises slowly, and surveys the deck of the vessel; he
-stoops slowly, and picks up a flat bit of iron, and puts it on the
-bulwark, and places the crooked nail upon it, and then sits down and
-looks at the effect of the arrangement so far. When he has had enough
-of the arrangement, he gives the sea a turn again, then the land.
-After that, he steps back a little and looks at the hammer, weighs it
-gently in his hand, moistens his hand, advances to the crooked nail on
-the bit of iron, groans softly to himself and shakes his head as he
-looks at it, administers three deliberate taps with the hammer, to
-straighten it, finds that he does not succeed to his mind; again
-groans softly, again shakes his head, again sits down and rests
-himself on the left side of the vessel. Since I first looked at him I
-have timed him by my watch: he has killed a quarter of an hour over
-that one crooked nail, and he has not straightened it yet! Wonderful
-man, can I ever hope to rival him? Will he condescend to talk to me?
-Stay! I am not free to try him; the doctor has told me not to excite
-myself with society; all communion of mind between me and this
-finished and perfect idler is, I fear, prohibited. Better to walk on,
-and come back, and look at him again.
-
-I walk on and sit down; walk on a little farther and sit down again;
-walk on for the third time, sit down for the third time, and still
-there is always the cliff on one side of me, and the one big ship and
-the two little ships on the other. I retrace my steps, occupying as
-much time as I possibly can in getting back to the seat above the
-coasting-vessel. Where is my old friend, my esteemed professor, my
-bright and shining example in the difficult art of doing nothing?
-Sitting on the right side of the vessel this time, with the bit of
-flat iron on the right side also, with the hammer still in his hand,
-and, as I live, with the crooked nail not straightened yet! I observe
-this, and turn away quickly with despair in my heart. How can I, a
-tyro Do-Nothing, expect to imitate that consummate old man? It is vain
-to hope for success here--vain to hope for anything but dinner-time.
-How many hours more? Four. If I return home now, how shall I go on
-doing nothing? Lunch, perhaps, will help me a little. Quite so! Let us
-say a glass of old ale and a biscuit. I should like to add shrimps--if
-I were not afraid of my wife's disapprobation--merely for the purpose
-of trying if I could not treat them, as my old friend of the
-coasting-vessel treated the crooked nail.
-
-Three hours and a half to dinner-time. I have had my biscuit and my
-glass of old ale. Not being accustomed to malt liquor in the middle of
-the day, my lunch has fuddled me. There is a faint singing in my ears,
-an intense sleepiness in my eyelids, a genial warmth about my stomach,
-and a sensation in my head as if the brains had oozed out of me and
-the cavity of my skull was stuffed with cotton-wool steeped in
-laudanum. Not an unpleasant feeling altogether. I am not anxious; I
-think of nothing. I have a stolid power of staring immovably out of
-window at the one big ship and the two little ships, which I had not
-hitherto given myself credit for possessing. If my wife would only
-push an easy-chair up close behind me, I could sink back in it and go
-to sleep; but she will do nothing of the sort. She is putting on her
-bonnet: it is the hour of the afternoon at which we are to take each
-other out fondly, for our little walk.
-
-The company at the watering-place is taking its little walk also at
-this time. But for the genial influence of the strong ale, I should
-now be making my observations and flying in the face of the doctor's
-orders by allowing my mind to be occupied. As it is, I march along
-slowly, lost in a solemn trance of beer.
-
-One circumstance only, during our walk, is prominent enough to attract
-my sleepy attention. I just contrive to observe, with as much surprise
-and regret as I am capable of feeling at the present moment, that my
-wife apparently hates all the women we meet, and that all the women we
-meet, seem, judging by their looks, to return the compliment by hating
-my wife. We pass an infinite number of girls, all more or less plump,
-all more or less healthy, all more or less overshadowed by eccentric
-sea-side hats; and my wife will not allow that any one of these young
-creatures is even tolerably pretty. The young creatures on their side,
-look so disparagingly at my wife's bonnet and gown, that I should feel
-uneasy about the propriety of her costume, if I were not under the
-comforting influence of the strong ale. What is the meaning of this
-unpleasant want of harmony among the members of the fair sex? Does one
-woman hate another woman for being a woman--is that it? How shocking
-if it is! I have no inclination to disparage other men whom I meet on
-my walk. Other men cast no disdainful looks on me. We lords of the
-creation are quite content to be handsome and attractive in our
-various ways, without snappishly contesting the palm of beauty with
-one another. Why cannot the women follow our meritorious example? Will
-any one solve this curious problem in social morals? Doctor's orders
-forbid me from attempting the intellectual feat. The dire necessity of
-doing nothing narrows me to one subject of mental contemplation--the
-dinner-hour. How long is it--now we have returned from our walk--to
-that time? Two hours and a quarter. I can't look out of window again,
-for I know by instinct that the three ships and the calm grey sea are
-still lying in wait for me. I can't heave a patriot's sigh once more
-over the "Death of the Earl of Chatham." I am too tired to go out and
-see how the old man of the coasting-vessel is getting on with the
-crooked nail. In short, I am driven to my last refuge. I must take a
-nap.
-
-The nap lasts more than an hour. Its results may be all summed up in
-one significant and dreadful word--Fidgets. I start from the sofa
-convulsively, and sit down bolt upright in a chair. My wife is
-opposite to me, calmly engaged over her work. It is an hour and five
-minutes to dinner-time. What am I to do? Shall I soothe the fidgets
-and soften my rugged nature by looking at my wife, to see how she
-gets on with her work?
-
-She has got a strip of calico, or something of that sort, punched all
-over with little holes, and she is sewing round each little hole with
-her needle and thread. Monotonous, to a masculine mind. Surely the
-punching of the holes must be the pleasantest part of this sort of
-work? And that is done at the shop, is it, dear? How curious!
-
-Does my wife lace too tight? I have never had leisure before to look
-at her so long and so attentively as I am looking now; I have been
-uncritically contented hitherto, to take her waist for granted. Now I
-have my doubts about it. I think the wife of my bosom is a little too
-much like an hour-glass. Does she digest? Good Heavens! In the
-existing state of her stays, how do I know whether she digests?
-
-Then, as to her hair: I do not object to the dressing of it, but I
-think--strangely enough, for the first time since our marriage--that
-she uses too much bear's grease and bandoline. I see a thin rim of
-bandoline, shining just outside the line of hair against her temples,
-like varnish on a picture. This won't do--oh, dear, no--this won't do
-at all. Will her hands do? Certainly not! I discover, for the first
-time, that her hands won't do, either. I am mercifully ready to put up
-with their not being quite white enough, but what does the woman mean
-by having such round tips to her fingers? Why don't they taper? I
-always thought they did taper until this moment. I begin to be
-dissatisfied with her; I begin to think my wife is not the charming
-woman I took her for. What is the matter with me? Am I looking at her
-with perceptions made morbid already by excessive idleness? Is this
-dreadful necessity of doing nothing, to end by sapping the foundations
-of my matrimonial tranquillity, and letting down my whole connubial
-edifice into the bottomless abyss of Doctors' Commons? Horrible!
-
-The door of the room opens, and wakes me, as it were, from the hideous
-dream in which my wife's individuality has been entirely altered to my
-eyes. It is only half an hour to dinner; and the servant has come in
-to lay the cloth. In the presence of the great event of the day I feel
-myself again. Once more I believe in the natural slimness of my wife's
-waist; once more I am contented with the tops of her fingers. Now at
-last, I see my way to bed-time. Assuming that we can make the dinner
-last two hours; assuming that I can get another nap after it;
-assuming----
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-No! I can assume nothing more, for I am really ashamed to complete the
-degrading picture of myself which my pen has been painting up to this
-time. Enough has been written--more than enough, I fear--to show how
-completely I have failed in my first day's attempt at doing Nothing.
-The hardest labour I ever had to get through, was not so difficult to
-contend with as this enforced idleness. Never again will I murmur
-under the wholesome necessities of work. Never again--if I can only
-succeed in getting well--will a day of doing nothing be counted as
-pleasant holiday-time by me. I have stolen away at the dead of the
-night, in flat defiance of the doctor's directions, to relieve my
-unspeakable weariness by writing these lines. I cast them on the world
-as the brief personal narrative of a most unfortunate man. If I
-systematically disregard medical advice, I shall make myself ill. If I
-conscientiously obey it, how am I to get through to-morrow? I mustn't
-work, and I can't idle. Will anybody kindly tell me what I am to do?
-
-
-
-
-NOOKS AND CORNERS OF HISTORY.
-
-I.
-
-A QUEEN'S REVENGE.
-
-
-The name of Gustavus Adolphus, the faithful Protestant, the great
-general, and the good king of Sweden, has been long since rendered
-familiar to English readers of history. We all know how this renowned
-warrior and monarch was beloved by his soldiers and subjects, how
-successfully he fought through a long and terrible war, and how nobly
-he died on the field of battle. With his death, however, the interest
-of the English reader in Swedish affairs seems to terminate. Those who
-have followed the narrative of his life carefully to the end, may
-remember that he left behind him an only child--a daughter named
-Christina. But of the character of this child, and of her
-extraordinary adventures after she grew to womanhood, the public in
-England is, for the most part, entirely ignorant. In the popular
-historical and romantic literature of France, Queen Christina is a
-notorious character. In the literature of this country, she has,
-hitherto, been allowed but little chance of making her way to the
-notice of the world at large.
-
-And yet, the life of Christina is in itself a romance. At six years
-old she was Queen of Sweden, with the famous Oxenstiern for guardian.
-This great and good man governed the kingdom in her name until she had
-lived through her minority. Four years after her coronation she, of
-her own accord, abdicated her rights in favour of her cousin, Charles
-Gustavus. Young and beautiful, the most learned and most accomplished
-woman of her time, she resolutely turned her back on the throne of her
-inheritance, and set forth to wander through civilised Europe in the
-character of an independent traveller who was resolved to see all
-varieties of men and manners, to collect all the knowledge which the
-widest experience could give her, and to measure her mind boldly
-against the greatest minds of the age.
-
-So far, the interest excited by her character and her adventures is of
-the most picturesquely-attractive kind. There is something strikingly
-new in the spectacle of a young queen who prefers the pursuit of
-knowledge to the possession of a throne, and who barters a royal
-birthright for the privilege of being free. Unhappily, the portrait of
-Christina cannot be painted throughout in bright colours only. It
-must be recorded to her disgrace that, when her travels brought her to
-Rome, she abandoned the religion for which her father fought and died.
-And it must be admitted in the interests of truth, that she freed
-herself from other restraints besides the restraint of royalty.
-Mentally distinguished by her capacities, she was morally degraded by
-her vices and her crimes.
-
-The events in the strange life of Christina--especially those
-connected with her actions in the character of a Queen-Errant--present
-ample materials for a biography, which might be regarded in England as
-a new contribution to our historical literature. One among the many
-extraordinary adventures which marked the Queen's wandering career,
-may be related in these pages as an episode in the history of her life
-which is complete in itself. The events of which the narrative is
-composed, throw light, in many ways, on the manners, habits, and
-opinions of a past age; and they can, moreover, be presented in the
-remarkable words of an eye-witness who beheld them two centuries ago.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The scene is the Palace of Fontainebleau, the time is the close of the
-year sixteen hundred and fifty-seven, the persons are the wandering
-Queen Christina; her grand equerry, the Marquis Monaldeschi; and
-Father Le Bel of the Convent of Fontainebleau, the witness whose
-testimony we are shortly about to cite.
-
-Monaldeschi, as his name implies, was an Italian by birth. He was a
-handsome, accomplished man, refined in his manners, supple in his
-disposition, and possessed of the art of making himself eminently
-agreeable in the society of women. With these personal recommendations,
-he soon won his way to the favour of Queen Christina. Out of the long
-list of her lovers, not one of the many whom she encouraged caught so
-long and firm a hold of her capricious fancy as Monaldeschi. The
-intimacy between them probably took its rise, on her side at least, in
-as deep a sincerity of affection as it was in Christina's nature to
-feel. On the side of the Italian, the connection was prompted solely
-by ambition. As soon as he had reaped all the advantages of the
-position of chief favourite in the queen's court, he wearied of his
-royal mistress, and addressed his attentions secretly to a young Roman
-lady, whose youth and beauty powerfully attracted him, and whose fatal
-influence over his actions ultimately led to his ruin and his death.
-
-After endeavouring to ingratiate himself with the Roman lady, in
-various ways, Monaldeschi found that the surest means of winning her
-favour lay in satisfying her malicious curiosity on the subject of
-the secret frailties of Queen Christina. He was not a man to be
-troubled by any scrupulous feelings of honour when the interests of
-his own intrigues happened to be concerned; and he shamelessly took
-advantage of the position that he held towards Christina, to commit
-breaches of confidence of the most meanly infamous kind. Not contented
-with placing in the possession of the Roman lady the series of the
-queen's letters to himself, containing secrets that she had revealed
-to him in the fullest confidence of his worthiness to be trusted, he
-wrote letters of his own to the new object of his addresses, in which
-he ridiculed Christina's fondness for him, and sarcastically described
-her smallest personal defects with a heartless effrontery which the
-most patient of women would have found it impossible to forgive. While
-he was thus privately betraying the confidence that had been reposed
-in him, he was publicly affecting the most unalterable attachment and
-the most sincere respect for the queen.
-
-For some time this disgraceful deception proceeded successfully. But
-the hour of discovery was at hand, and the instrument of effecting it
-was a certain cardinal who was desirous of supplanting Monaldeschi in
-the queen's favour. The priest contrived to get possession of the
-whole correspondence which had been privately confided to the Roman
-lady, including, besides Christina's letters, the letters which
-Monaldeschi had written in ridicule of his royal mistress. The whole
-collection of documents was enclosed by the cardinal in one packet,
-and was presented by him, at a private audience, to the queen.
-
-It is at this critical point of the story that the testimony of the
-eye-witness whom we propose to quote, begins. Father Le Bel was
-present at the terrible execution of the queen's vengeance on
-Monaldeschi, and was furnished with copies of the whole correspondence
-which had been abstracted from the possession of the Roman lady.
-Having been trusted with the secret, he is wisely and honourably
-silent throughout his narrative on the subject of Monaldeschi's
-offence. Such particulars of the Italian's baseness and ingratitude as
-have been presented here, have been gathered from the contradictory
-reports which were current at the time, and which have been preserved
-by the old French collectors of historical anecdotes. The details of
-the extraordinary punishment of Monaldeschi's offence which are now to
-follow, may be given in the words of Father Le Bel himself. The reader
-will understand that his narrative begins immediately after
-Christina's discovery of the perfidy of her favourite.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The sixth of November, sixteen hundred and fifty-seven (writes Father
-Le Bel), at a quarter past nine in the morning, Queen Christina of
-Sweden, being at that time lodged in the Royal Palace of
-Fontainebleau, sent one of her men servants to my convent, to obtain
-an interview with me. The messenger, on being admitted to my presence,
-inquired if I was the superior of the convent, and when I replied in
-the affirmative, informed me that I was expected to present myself
-immediately before the Queen of Sweden.
-
-Fearful of keeping her Majesty waiting, I followed the man at once to
-the palace, without waiting to take any of my brethren from the
-convent with me.
-
-After a little delay in the antechamber, I was shown into the Queen's
-room. She was alone; and I saw, by the expression of her face, as I
-respectfully begged to be favoured with her commands, that something
-was wrong. She hesitated for a moment; then told me, rather sharply,
-to follow her to a place where she might speak with the certainty of
-not being overheard. She led me into the Galerie des Cerfs, and,
-turning round on me suddenly, asked if we had ever met before. I
-informed her Majesty that I had once had the honour of presenting my
-respects to her; that she had received me graciously, and that there
-the interview had ended. She nodded her head and looked about her a
-little; then said, very abruptly, that I wore a dress (referring to
-my convent costume) which encouraged her to put perfect faith in my
-honour; and she desired me to promise beforehand that I would keep the
-secret with which she was about to entrust me as strictly as if I had
-heard it in the confessional. I answered respectfully that it was part
-of my sacred profession to be trusted with secrets; that I had never
-betrayed the private affairs of any one; and that I could answer for
-myself as worthy to be honoured by the confidence of a queen.
-
-Upon this, her Majesty handed me a packet of papers sealed in three
-places, but having no superscription of any sort. She ordered me to
-keep it under lock and key, and to be prepared to give it her back
-again before any person in whose presence she might see fit to ask me
-for it. She further charged me to remember the day, the hour, and the
-place in which she had given me the packet; and with that last piece
-of advice she dismissed me. I left her alone in the gallery, walking
-slowly away from me, with her head drooping on her bosom, and her
-mind, as well as I could presume to judge, perturbed by anxious
-thoughts.[1]
-
-On Saturday, the tenth of November, at one o'clock in the afternoon, I
-was sent for to the Palace again. I took the packet out of my private
-cabinet, feeling that I might be asked for it; and then followed the
-messenger as before. This time he led me at once to the Galerie des
-Cerfs. The moment I entered it, he shut the door behind me with such
-extraordinary haste and violence, that I felt a little startled. As
-soon as I recovered myself, I saw her Majesty standing in the middle
-of the gallery, talking to one of the gentlemen of her Court, who was
-generally known by the name of The Marquis, and whom I soon
-ascertained to be the Marquis Monaldeschi, Grand Equerry of the Queen
-of Sweden. I approached her Majesty and made my bow--then stood before
-her, waiting until she should think proper to address me.
-
-With a stern look on her face, and with a loud, clear, steady voice,
-she asked me, before the Marquis and before three other men who were
-also in the gallery, for the packet which she had confided to my care.
-
-As she made that demand, two of the three men moved back a few paces,
-while the third, the captain of her guard, advanced rather nearer to
-her. I handed her back the packet. She looked at it thoughtfully for a
-little while; then opened it, and took out the letters and written
-papers which it contained, handed them to the Marquis Monaldeschi, and
-insisted on his reading them. When he had obeyed, she asked him, with
-the same stern look and the same steady voice, whether he had any
-knowledge of the documents which he had just been reading. The Marquis
-turned deadly pale, and answered that he had now read the papers
-referred to for the first time.
-
-"Do you deny all knowledge of them?" said the Queen. "Answer me
-plainly, sir. Yes or no?"
-
-The Marquis turned paler still. "I deny all knowledge of them," he
-said, in faint tones, with his eyes on the ground.
-
-"Do you deny all knowledge of these too?" said the Queen, suddenly
-producing a second packet of manuscript from under her dress, and
-thrusting it in the Marquis's face.
-
-He started, drew back a little, and answered not a word. The packet
-which the Queen had given to me contained copies only. The original
-papers were those which she had just thrust in the Marquis's face.
-
-"Do you deny your own seal and your own handwriting?" she asked.
-
-He murmured a few words, acknowledging both the seal and the
-handwriting to be his own, and added some phrases of excuse, in which
-he endeavoured to cast the blame that attached to the writing of the
-letters on the shoulders of other persons. While he was speaking, the
-three men in attendance on the Queen silently closed round him.
-
-Her Majesty heard him to the end. "You are a traitor," she said, and
-turned her back on him.
-
-The three men, as she spoke those words, drew their swords.
-
-The Marquis heard the clash of the blades against the scabbards, and,
-looking quickly round, saw the drawn swords behind him. He caught the
-Queen by the arm immediately, and drew her away with him, first into
-one corner of the gallery, then into another, entreating her in the
-most moving terms to listen to him, and to believe in the sincerity of
-his repentance. The Queen let him go on talking without showing the
-least sign of anger or impatience. Her colour never changed; the stern
-look never left her countenance. There was something awful in the
-clear, cold, deadly resolution which her eyes expressed while they
-rested on the Marquis's face.
-
-At last she shook herself free from his grasp, still without betraying
-the slightest irritation. The three men with the drawn swords, who had
-followed the Marquis silently as he led the Queen from corner to
-corner of the gallery, now closed round him again, as soon as he was
-left standing alone. There was perfect silence for a minute or more.
-Then the Queen addressed herself to me.
-
-"Father Le Bel," she said, "I charge you to bear witness that I treat
-this man with the strictest impartiality." She pointed, while she
-spoke, to the Marquis Monaldeschi with a little ebony riding-whip
-that she carried in her hand. "I offer that worthless traitor all the
-time he requires--more time than he has any right to ask for--to
-justify himself if he can."
-
-The Marquis hearing these words, took some letters from a place of
-concealment in his dress, and gave them to the Queen, along with a
-small bunch of keys. He snatched these last from his pocket so
-quickly, that he drew out with them a few small silver coins which
-fell to the floor. As he addressed himself to the Queen again, she
-made a sign with her ebony riding-whip to the men with the drawn
-swords; and they retired towards one of the windows of the gallery. I,
-on my side, withdrew out of hearing. The conference which ensued
-between the Queen and the Marquis lasted nearly an hour. When it was
-over, her Majesty beckoned the men back again with the whip, and then
-approached the place where I was standing.
-
-"Father Le Bel," she said, in her clear, ringing, resolute tones,
-"there is no need for me to remain here any longer. I leave that man,"
-she pointed to the Marquis again, "to your care. Do all that you can
-for the good of his soul. He has failed to justify himself, and I doom
-him to die."
-
-If I had heard sentence pronounced against myself, I could hardly have
-been more terrified than I was when the Queen uttered those last
-words. The Marquis heard them where he was standing, and flung himself
-at her feet. I dropped on my knees by his side, and entreated her to
-pardon him, or at least to visit his offence with some milder
-punishment than the punishment of death.
-
-"I have said the words," she answered, addressing herself only to me;
-"and no power under Heaven shall make me unsay them. Many a man has
-been broken alive on the wheel for offences which were innocence
-itself, compared with the offence which this perjured traitor has
-committed against me. I have trusted him as I might have trusted a
-brother; he has infamously betrayed that trust; and I exercise my
-royal rights over the life of a traitor. Say no more to me. I tell you
-again, he is doomed to die."
-
-With those words the Queen quitted the gallery, and left me alone with
-Monaldeschi and the three executioners who were waiting to kill him.
-
-The unhappy man dropped on his knees at my feet, imploring me to
-follow the Queen, and make one more effort to obtain his pardon.
-Before I could answer a word, the three men surrounded him, held the
-points of their swords to his sides--without, however, actually
-touching him--and angrily recommended him to make his confession to
-me, without wasting any more time. I entreated them, with the tears
-in my eyes, to wait as long as they could, so as to give the Queen
-time to reflect, and, perhaps, to falter in her deadly intentions
-towards the Marquis. I succeeded in producing such an impression on
-the chief of the three men, that he left us, to obtain an interview
-with the Queen, and to ascertain if there was any change in her
-purpose. After a very short absence he came back, shaking his head.
-
-"There is no hope for you," he said, addressing Monaldeschi. "Make
-your peace with Heaven. Prepare yourself to die!"
-
-"Go to the Queen!" cried the Marquis, kneeling before me with clasped
-hands. "Go to the Queen yourself; make one more effort to save me! O,
-Father Le Bel, run one more risk--venture one last entreaty--before
-you leave me to die!"
-
-"Will you wait till I come back?" I said to the three men.
-
-"We will wait," they answered, and lowered their sword-points to the
-ground.
-
-I found the Queen alone in her room, without the slightest appearance
-of agitation in her face or her manner. Nothing that I could say had
-the slightest effect on her. I adjured her by all that religion holds
-most sacred, to remember that the noblest privilege of any sovereign
-is the privilege of granting mercy; that the first of Christian duties
-is the duty of forgiving. She heard me unmoved. Seeing that
-entreaties were thrown away, I ventured, at my own proper hazard, on
-reminding her that she was not living now in her own kingdom of
-Sweden, but that she was the guest of the King of France, and lodged
-in one of his own palaces; and I boldly asked her if she had
-calculated the possible consequences of authorising the killing of one
-of her attendants inside the walls of Fontainebleau, without any
-preliminary form of trial, or any official notification of the offence
-that he had committed. She answered me coldly, that it was enough that
-she knew the unpardonable nature of the offence of which Monaldeschi
-had been guilty; that she stood in a perfectly independent position
-towards the King of France; that she was absolute mistress of her own
-actions, at all times and in all places; and that she was accountable
-to nobody under Heaven for her conduct towards her subjects and
-servants, over whose lives and liberties she possessed sovereign
-rights, which no consideration whatever should induce her to resign.
-
-Fearful as I was of irritating her, I still ventured on reiterating my
-remonstrances. She cut them short by hastily signing to me to leave
-her.
-
-As she dismissed me, I thought I saw a slight change pass over her
-face; and it occurred to me that she might not have been indisposed at
-that moment to grant some respite, if she could have done so without
-appearing to falter in her resolution, and without running the risk
-of letting Monaldeschi escape her. Before I passed the door, I
-attempted to take advantage of the disposition to relent which I
-fancied I had perceived in her; but she angrily reiterated the gesture
-of dismissal before I had spoken half-a-dozen words. With a heavy
-heart, I yielded to necessity, and left her.
-
-On returning to the gallery, I found the three men standing round the
-Marquis, with their sword-points on the floor, exactly as I had left
-them.
-
-"Is he to live or to die?" they asked when I came in.
-
-There was no need for me to reply in words; my face answered the
-question. The Marquis groaned heavily, but said nothing. I sat myself
-down on a stool, and beckoned to him to come to me, and begged him, as
-well as my terror and wretchedness would let me, to think of
-repentance, and to prepare for another world. He began his confession
-kneeling at my feet, with his head on my knees. After continuing it
-for some time, he suddenly started to his feet with a scream of
-terror. I contrived to quiet him, and to fix his thoughts again on
-heavenly things. He completed his confession, speaking sometimes in
-Latin, sometimes in French, sometimes in Italian, according as he
-could best explain himself in the agitation which now possessed him.
-
-Just as he had concluded, the Queen's chaplain entered the gallery.
-Without waiting to receive absolution, the unhappy Marquis rushed away
-from me to the chaplain, and, still clinging desperately to the hope
-of life, besought him to intercede with the Queen. The two talked
-together in low tones, holding each other by the hand. When their
-conference was over, the chaplain left the gallery again, taking with
-him the chief of the three executioners who were appointed to carry
-out the Queen's deadly purpose. After a short absence, this man
-returned without the chaplain. "Get your absolution," he said briefly
-to the Marquis, "and make up your mind to die."
-
-Saying these words, he seized Monaldeschi; pressed him back against
-the wall at the end of the gallery, just under the picture of Saint
-Germain; and, before I could interfere, or even turn aside from the
-sight, struck at the Marquis's right side with his sword. Monaldeschi
-caught the blade with his hand, cutting three of his fingers in the
-act. At the same moment the point touched his side and glanced off.
-Upon this, the man who had struck at him exclaimed, "He has armour
-under his clothes," and, at the same moment, stabbed Monaldeschi in
-the face. As he received the wound, he turned round towards me, and
-cried out loudly, "Father Le Bel! Father Le Bel!"
-
-I advanced towards him immediately. As I did so, the man who had
-wounded him retired a little, and signed to his two companions to
-withdraw also. The Marquis, with one knee on the ground, asked pardon
-of God, and said certain last words in my ear. I immediately gave him
-absolution, telling him that he must atone for his sins by suffering
-death, and that he must pardon those who were about to kill him.
-Having heard my words, he flung himself forward on the floor. While he
-was falling, one of the three executioners who had not assailed him as
-yet, struck at his head, and wounded him on the surface of the skull.
-
-The Marquis sank on his face; then raised himself a little, and signed
-to the men to kill him outright, by striking him on the neck. The same
-man who had last wounded him, obeyed by cutting two or three times at
-his neck, without, however, doing him any great injury. For it was
-indeed true that he wore armour under his clothes, which armour
-consisted of a shirt of mail weighing nine or ten pounds, and rising
-so high round his neck, inside his collar, as to defend it
-successfully from any chance blow with a sword.
-
-Seeing this, I came forward to exhort the Marquis to bear his
-sufferings with patience, for the remission of his sins. While I was
-speaking, the chief of the three executioners advanced, and asked me
-if I did not think it was time to give Monaldeschi the finishing
-stroke. I pushed the man violently away from me, saying that I had no
-advice to offer on the matter, and telling him that if I had any
-orders to give, they would be for the sparing of the Marquis's life,
-and not for the hastening of his death. Hearing me speak in those
-terms, the man asked my pardon, and confessed that he had done wrong
-in addressing me on the subject at all.
-
-He had hardly finished making his excuses to me, when the door of the
-gallery opened. The unhappy Marquis hearing the sound, raised himself
-from the floor, and, seeing that the person who entered was the
-Queen's chaplain, dragged himself along the gallery, holding on by the
-tapestry that hung from the walls, until he reached the feet of the
-holy man. There, he whispered a few words (as if he was confessing) to
-the chaplain, who, after first asking my permission, gave him
-absolution, and then returned to the Queen.
-
-As the chaplain closed the door, the man who had struck the Marquis on
-the neck, stabbed him adroitly with a long narrow sword in the throat,
-just above the edge of the shirt of mail. Monaldeschi sank on his
-right side, and spoke no more. For a quarter of an hour longer he
-still breathed, during which time I prayed by him, and exhorted him as
-I best could. When the bleeding from this last wound ceased, his life
-ceased with it. It was then a quarter to four o'clock. The death agony
-of the miserable man had lasted, from the time of the Queen's first
-pronouncing sentence on him, for nearly three hours.
-
-I said the De Profundis over his body. While I was praying, the three
-executioners sheathed their swords, and the chief of them rifled the
-Marquis's pockets. Finding nothing on him but a prayer-book and a
-small knife, the chief beckoned to his companions, and they all three
-marched to the door in silence, went out, and left me alone with the
-corpse.
-
-A few minutes afterwards I followed them, to go and report what had
-happened to the Queen.
-
-I thought her colour changed a little when I told her that Monaldeschi
-was dead; but those cold clear eyes of hers never softened, and her
-voice was still as steady and firm as when I first heard its tones on
-entering the gallery that day. She spoke very little, only saying to
-herself, "He is dead, and he deserved to die!" Then, turning to me,
-she added, "Father, I leave the care of burying him to you; and, for
-my own part, I will charge myself with the expense of having masses
-enough said for the repose of his soul." I ordered the body to be
-placed in a coffin, which I instructed the bearers to remove to the
-churchyard on a tumbril, in consequence of the great weight of the
-corpse, of the misty rain that was falling, and of the bad state of
-the roads. On Monday, the twelfth of November, at a quarter to six in
-the evening, the Marquis was buried in the parish church of Avon,
-near the font of holy water. The next day the Queen sent one hundred
-livres, by two of her servants, for masses for the repose of his soul.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Thus ends the extraordinary narrative of Father Le Bel. It is
-satisfactory to record, as some evidence of the progress of humanity,
-that this barbarous murder, which would have passed unnoticed in the
-feudal times, as an ordinary and legitimate exercise of a sovereign's
-authority over a vassal, excited, in the middle of the seventeenth
-century, the utmost disgust and horror throughout Paris. The prime
-minister at that period, Cardinal Mazarin (by no means an
-over-scrupulous man, as all readers of French history know), wrote
-officially to Christina, informing her that "a crime so atrocious as
-that which had just been committed under her sanction, in the Palace
-of Fontainebleau, must be considered as a sufficient cause for
-banishing the Queen of Sweden from the court and dominions of his
-sovereign, who, in common with every honest man in the kingdom, felt
-horrified at the lawless outrage which had just been committed on the
-soil of France."
-
-To this letter Queen Christina sent the following answer, which, as a
-specimen of spiteful effrontery, has probably never been matched:
-
-"MONSIEUR MAZARIN,--Those who have communicated to you the details of
-the death of my equerry, Monaldeschi, knew nothing at all about it. I
-think it highly absurd that you should have compromised so many people
-for the sake of informing yourself about one simple fact. Such a
-proceeding on your part, ridiculous as it is, does not, however, much
-astonish me. What I am amazed at, is, that you and the king your
-master should have dared to express disapproval of what I have done.
-
-"Understand, all of you--servants and masters, little people and
-great--that it was my sovereign pleasure to act as I did. I neither
-owe, nor render, an account of my actions to any one,--least of all,
-to a bully like you.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"It may be well for you to know, and to report to any one whom you can
-get to listen to you, that Christina cares little for your court, and
-less still for you. When I want to revenge myself, I have no need of
-your formidable power to help me. My honour obliged me to act as I
-did; my will is my law, and you ought to know how to respect it....
-Understand, if you please, that wherever I choose to live, there I am
-Queen; and that the men about me, rascals as they may be, are better
-than you and the ragamuffins whom you keep in your service.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"Take my advice, Mazarin, and behave yourself for the future so as to
-merit my favour; you cannot, for your own sake, be too anxious to
-deserve it Heaven preserve you from venturing on any more disparaging
-remarks about my conduct! I shall hear of them, if I am at the other
-end of the world, for I have friends and followers in my service who
-are as unscrupulous and as vigilant as any in yours, though it is
-probable enough that they are not quite so heavily bribed."
-
-After replying to the prime minister of France in those terms,
-Christina was wise enough to leave the kingdom immediately.
-
-For three years more, she pursued her travels. At the expiration of
-that time, her cousin, the king of Sweden, in whose favour she had
-abdicated, died. She returned at once to her own country, with the
-object of possessing herself once more of the royal power. Here, the
-punishment of the merciless crime that she had sanctioned overtook her
-at last. The brave and honest people of Sweden refused to be governed
-by the woman who had ordered the murder of Monaldeschi, and who had
-forsaken the national religion for which her father died. Threatened
-with the loss of her revenues as well as the loss of her sovereignty,
-if she remained in Sweden, the proud and merciless Christina yielded
-for the first time in her life. She resigned once more all right and
-title to the royal dignity, and left her native country for the last
-time. The final place of her retirement was Rome. She died there in
-the year sixteen hundred and eighty-nine. Even in the epitaph which
-she ordered to be placed on her tomb, the strange and daring character
-of the woman breaks out. The whole record of that wild and wicked
-existence, was summed up with stern brevity in this one line:
-
-     CHRISTINA LIVED SEVENTY-TWO YEARS.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[1] Although Father Le Bel discreetly abstains from mentioning the
-fact, it seems clear from the context that he was permitted to read,
-and that he did read, the papers contained in the packet.
-
-
-
-
-SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.--II.
-
-A PETITION TO THE NOVEL-WRITERS.
-
-[Communicated by a Romantic Old Gentleman.]
-
-
-I hope nobody will be alarmed if I confess that I am about to disclose
-the existence of a Disreputable Society, in one of the most
-respectable counties in England. I dare not be more particular as to
-the locality, and I cannot possibly mention the members by name. But I
-have no objection to admit that I am perpetual Secretary, that my wife
-is President, that my daughters are Council, and that my nieces form
-the Society. Our object is to waste our time, misemploy our
-intellects, and ruin our morals--or, in other words, to enjoy the
-prohibited luxury of novel-reading.
-
-It is a settled opinion of mine that the dull people in this country,
-are the people who, privately as well as publicly, govern the nation.
-By dull people, I mean people of all degrees of rank and education,
-who never want to be amused. I don't know how long it is since these
-dreary members of the population first hit on the cunning idea of
-calling themselves Respectable; but I do know that, ever since that
-time, this great nation has been afraid of them--afraid in religious,
-in political, and in social matters. If my present business were with
-the general question, I think I could prove this assertion by simple
-reference to those records of our national proceedings which appear in
-the daily newspapers. But my object in writing is of the particular
-kind. I have a special petition to address to the writers of novels,
-on the part of the Disreputable Society to which I belong; and if I am
-to give any example here of the supremacy of the dull people, it must
-be drawn from one or two plain evidences of their success in opposing
-the claims of our fictitious literature to popular recognition.
-
-The dull people decided years and years ago, as every one knows, that
-novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that
-novel-reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time. They
-gave, and still give, reasons for this opinion, which are very
-satisfactory to persons born without Fancy or Imagination, and which
-are utterly inconclusive to everyone else. But, with reason or without
-it, the dull people have succeeded in affixing to our novels the
-stigma of being a species of contraband goods. Look, for example, at
-the Prospectus of any librarian. The principal part of his trade of
-book-lending consists in the distributing of novels; and he is
-uniformly ashamed to own that simple fact. Sometimes, he is afraid to
-print the word Novel at all in his lists, and smuggles in his
-contraband fiction under the head of Miscellaneous Literature.
-Sometimes, after freely offering all histories, all biographies, all
-voyages, all travels, he owns self-reproachfully to the fact of having
-novels too, but deprecatingly adds--Only the best! As if no other
-branch of the great tree of literature ever produced tasteless and
-worthless fruit! In all cases, he puts novels last on his public list
-of the books he distributes, though they stand first on his private
-list of the books he gains by. Why is he guilty of all these sins
-against candour? Because he is afraid of the dull people.
-
-Look again--and this brings me to the subject of these lines--at our
-Book Clubs. How paramount are the dull people there! How they hug to
-their rigid bosoms Voyages and Travels! How they turn their intolerant
-backs on novels! How resolutely they get together, in a packed body,
-on the committee, and impose their joyless laws on the yielding
-victims of the club, who secretly want to be amused! Our book club was
-an example of the unresisted despotism of their rule. We began with a
-law that novels should be occasionally admitted; and the dull people
-abrogated it before we had been in existence a twelvemonth. I
-smuggled in the last morsel of fiction that our starving stomachs were
-allowed to consume, and produced a hurricane of virtuous indignation
-at the next meeting of the committee.
-
-All the dull people of both sexes attended that meeting. One dull
-gentleman said the author was a pantheist, and quoted some florid
-ecstacies on the subject of scenery and flowers in support of the
-opinion. Nobody seemed to know exactly what a pantheist was, but
-everybody cried "Hear, hear,"--which did just as well for the purpose.
-Another dull gentleman said the book was painful because there was a
-death-bed scene in it. A third reviled it for morbid revelling in the
-subject of crime, because a shot from the pistol of a handsome
-highwayman dispatched the villain of the story. But the great effect
-of the day was produced by a lady, the mother of a large family which
-began with a daughter of eighteen years, and ended with a boy of eight
-months. This lady's objection affected the heroine of the novel,--a
-respectable married woman, perpetually plunged in virtuous suffering,
-but an improper character for young persons to read about, because the
-poor thing had two accouchements--only two!--in the course of three
-volumes. "How can I suffer my daughters to read such a book as that?"
-cried our prolific subscriber indignantly. A tumult of applause
-followed. A chorus of speeches succeeded, full of fierce references
-to "our national morality," and "the purity of our hearths and homes."
-A resolution was passed excluding all novels for the future; and then,
-at last, the dull people held their tongues, and sat down with a thump
-in their chairs, and glared contentedly on each other in stolid
-controversial triumph.
-
-From that time forth (histories and biographies being comparatively
-scarce articles), we were fed by the dull people on nothing but
-Voyages and Travels. Every man (or woman) who had voyaged and
-travelled to no purpose, who had made no striking observations of any
-kind, who had nothing whatever to say, and who said it at great length
-in large type on thick paper, with accompaniment of frowsy
-lithographic illustrations, was introduced weekly to our hearths and
-homes as the most valuable guide, philosopher, and friend whom our
-rulers could possibly send us. All the subscribers submitted; all
-partook the national dread of the dull people, with the exception of
-myself and the members of my family enumerated at the beginning of
-these pages. We resolutely abandoned the club; got a box-full of
-novels for ourselves, once a month, from London; lost caste with our
-respectable friends in consequence; and became, for the future,
-throughout the length and breadth of our neighbourhood, the
-Disreputable Society to which I have already alluded. If the dull
-people of our district were told to-morrow that my wife, daughters,
-and nieces had all eloped in different directions, leaving just one
-point of the compass open as a runaway outlet for me and the cook, I
-feel firmly persuaded that not one of them would be inclined to
-discredit the report. "This is what comes of novel-reading!" they
-would say--and would return, with renewed zest, to their Voyages and
-Travels, their accouchements in real life, their canting "national
-morality," and their blustering "purity of our hearths and homes."
-
-And now, to come to the main object of this paper,--the humble
-petition of myself and family to certain of our novel-writers. We may
-say of ourselves that we deserve to be heard, for we have braved
-public opinion for the sake of reading novels; and we have read, for
-some years past, all (I hold to the assertion, incredible as it may
-appear)--all the stories in one, two, and three volumes, that have
-issued from the press. What, then, have we got to petition about? A
-very slight matter. Marking, first of all, as exceptions, certain
-singular instances of originality, I may mention, as a rule, that our
-novel-reading enjoyments have hitherto been always derived from the
-same sort of characters and the same sort of stories--varied, indeed,
-as to names and minor events, but fundamentally always the same,
-through hundreds on hundreds of successive volumes, by hundreds on
-hundreds of different authors. We, none of us complain of this, so
-far; for we like to have as much as possible of any good thing; but we
-beg deferentially to inquire whether it might not be practicable to
-give us a little variety for the future. We have no unwholesome
-craving after absolute novelty--all that we venture to ask for is, the
-ringing of a slight change on some of the favourite old tunes which we
-have long since learnt by heart.
-
-To begin with our favourite Hero. He is such an old friend that we
-have by this time got to love him dearly. We would not lose sight of
-him altogether on any consideration whatever. Far be it from us to
-hint at the withdrawal of this noble, loving, injured, fascinating
-man! We adore his aquiline nose, his tall form, his wavy hair, his
-rich voice. Long may we continue to weep on his deep chest and press
-respectfully to our lips the folds of his ample cloak! Personally
-speaking it is by no means of him that we are getting tired, but of
-certain actions which we think he has now performed often enough.
-
-For instance, may we put it respectfully to the ladies and gentlemen
-who are so good as to exhibit him, that he had better not "stride" any
-more? He has stridden so much, on so many different occasions, across
-so many halls, along so many avenues, in and out at so many
-drawing-room doors, that he must be knocked up by this time, and his
-dear legs ought really to have a little rest. Again, when his dignity
-is injured by irreverent looks or words, can he not be made to assert
-it for the future without "drawing himself up to his full height?" He
-has really been stretched too much by perpetual indulgence in this
-exercise for scores and scores of years. Let him sit down--do please
-let him sit down next time! It would be quite new, and so impressive.
-Then, again, we have so often discovered him standing with folded
-arms, so often beheld him pacing with folded arms, so often heard him
-soliloquise with folded arms, so often broken in upon him meditating
-with folded arms, that we think he had better do something else with
-his arms for the future. Could he swing them for a change? or put them
-akimbo? or drop them suddenly on either side of him? Or could he give
-them a holiday altogether, and fold his legs by way of variety?
-Perhaps not. The word Legs--why, I cannot imagine--seems always
-suggestive of jocularity. "Fitzherbert stood up and folded his arms,"
-is serious. "Fitzherbert sat down and folded his legs," is comic. Why,
-I should like to know?
-
-A word--one respectful word of remonstrance to the lady-novelists
-especially. We think they have put our Hero on horseback often enough.
-For the first five hundred novels or so, it was grand, it was
-thrilling, when he threw himself into the saddle after the inevitable
-quarrel with his lady-love, and galloped off madly to his bachelor
-home. It was inexpressibly soothing to behold him in the milder
-passages of his career, moody in the saddle, with the reins thrown
-loosely over the arched neck of his steed, as the gallant animal paced
-softly with his noble burden, along a winding road, under a blue sky,
-on a balmy afternoon in early spring. All this was delightful reading
-for a certain number of years; but everything wears out at last, and
-trust me, ladies, your hero's favourite steed, your dear, intelligent,
-affectionate, glossy, long-tailed horse, has really done his work, and
-may now be turned loose, for some time to come, with great advantage
-to yourselves, and your readers.
-
-Having spoken a word to the ladies, I am necessarily and tenderly
-reminded of their charming representatives--the Heroines. Let me say
-something, first, about our favourite two sisters--the tall dark one,
-who is serious and unfortunate: the short light one, who is coquettish
-and happy.
-
-Being an Englishman, I have, of course, an ardent attachment to
-anything like an established rule, simply because it is established. I
-know that it is a rule that, when two sisters are presented in a
-novel, one must be tall and dark, and the other short and light. I
-know that five-feet-eight of female flesh and blood, when accompanied
-by an olive complexion, black eyes, and raven hair, is synonymous with
-strong passions and an unfortunate destiny. I know that five feet
-nothing, golden ringlets, soft blue eyes, and a lily-brow, cannot
-possibly be associated by any well-constituted novelist, with anything
-but ringing laughter, arch innocence, and final matrimonial happiness.
-I have studied these great first principles of the art of fiction too
-long not to reverence them as established laws; but I venture
-respectfully to suggest that the time has arrived when it is no longer
-necessary to insist on them in novel after novel. I am afraid there is
-something naturally revolutionary in the heart of man. Although I know
-it to be against all precedent, I want to revolutionise our favourite
-two sisters. Would any bold innovator run all risks, and make them
-both alike in complexion and in stature? Or would any desperate man (I
-dare not suggest such a course to the ladies) effect an entire
-alteration, by making the two sisters change characters? I tremble
-when I see to what lengths the spirit of innovation is leading me.
-Would the public accept the tall dark-haired sister, if she exhibited
-a jolly disposition and a tendency to be flippant in her talk? Would
-readers be fatally startled out of their sense of propriety, if the
-short charmer with the golden hair, appeared before them as a serious,
-strong-minded, fierce-spoken, miserable, guilty woman? It might be a
-dangerous experiment to make this change; but it would be worth
-trying--the rather (if I may be allowed to mention anything so utterly
-irrelevant to the subject under discussion as real life) because I
-think there is some warrant in nature for attempting the proposed
-innovation. Judging by my own small experience, I should say that
-strong minds and passionate natures reside principally in the breasts
-of little, light women, especially if they have angelic blue eyes and
-a quantity of fair ringlets. The most facetiously skittish woman, for
-her age, with whom I am acquainted, is my own wife, who is three
-inches taller than I am. The heartiest laugher I ever heard is my
-second daughter, who is bigger even than my wife, and has the blackest
-eyebrows and the swarthiest cheeks in the whole neighbourhood. With
-such instances as these, producible from the bosom of my own family,
-who can wonder if I want, for once in a way, to overthrow the
-established order of things, and have a jovial dark sister and a
-dismal light one introduced as startling novelties in some few of the
-hundred new volumes which we are likely to receive next season from
-the Circulating Library?
-
-But, after all, our long-established two sisters seem to be
-exceptional beings, and to possess comparatively small importance, the
-moment our minds revert to that vastly superior single personage, THE
-HEROINE.
-
-Let me mention, to begin with, that we wish no change to be made in
-our respectable, recognised, old-fashioned Heroine, who has lived and
-loved and wept for centuries. I have taken her to my bosom thousands
-of times already, and ask nothing better than to indulge in that
-tender luxury thousands of times again. I love her blushing cheek, her
-gracefully-rounded form, her chiselled nose, her slender waist, her
-luxuriant tresses which always escape from the fillet that binds them.
-Any man or woman who attempts, from a diseased craving after novelty,
-to cheat me out of one of her moonlight walks, one of her floods of
-tears, one of her kneeling entreaties to obdurate relatives, one of
-her rapturous sinkings on her lover's bosom, is a novelist whom I
-distrust and dislike. He, or she, may be a very remarkable writer; but
-their books will not do for my family and myself. The Heroine, the
-whole Heroine, and nothing but the Heroine--that is our cry, if you
-drive us into a corner and insist on our stating precisely what we
-want, in the plainest terms possible.
-
-Being thus faithfully attached to the established Heroine, it will
-not, I trust, appear a very unaccountable proceeding, if we now
-protest positively, and even indignantly, against her modern
-successor--a bouncing, ill-conditioned, impudent young woman, who has
-been introduced among us of late years. I venture to call this
-wretched and futile substitute for our dear, tender, gentle, loving
-old Heroine, the Man-Hater; because, in every book in which she
-appears, it is her mission from first to last to behave as badly as
-possible to every man with whom she comes in contact. She enters on
-the scene with a preconceived prejudice against my sex, for which I,
-as a man, abominate her; for which my wife, my daughters, my nieces,
-and all other available women whom I have consulted on the subject,
-despise her. When her lover makes her an offer of marriage, she
-receives it in the light of a personal insult, goes up to her room
-immediately afterwards, and flies into a passion with herself, because
-she is really in love with the man all the time--comes down again, and
-snubs him before company instead of making a decent apology--pouts and
-flouts at him, on all after-occasions, until the end of the book is at
-hand--then suddenly turns round and marries him! If we feel inclined
-to ask why she could not, under the circumstances, receive his
-advances with decent civility at first, we are informed that her
-"maidenly consciousness" prevented it. This maidenly consciousness
-seems to me very like new English for our old-fashioned phrase, bad
-manners. And I am the more confirmed in this idea, because, on all
-minor occasions, the Man-Hater is persistently rude and disobliging to
-the last. Every individual in the novel who wears trousers and gets
-within range of her maidenly consciousness, becomes her natural enemy
-from that moment. If he makes a remark on the weather, her lip curls;
-if he asks leave to give her a potato at dinner-time (meaning, poor
-soul, to pick out for her the mealiest in the dish), her neck curves
-in scorn; if he offers a compliment, finding she won't have a potato,
-her nostril dilates. Whatever she does, even in her least aggressive
-moments, she always gets the better of all the men. They are set up
-like nine-pins for the Man-Hater to knock down. They are described, on
-their introduction, as clever, resolute fellows; but they lose their
-wits and their self-possession the instant they come within hail of
-the Man-Hater's terrible tongue. No man kisses her, no man dries her
-tears, no man sees her blush (except with rage), all through the three
-volumes. And this is the opposition Heroine who is set up as successor
-to our soft, feminine, loveable, sensitive darling of former days!
-
-Set up, too, by lady-novelists, who ought surely to be authorities
-when female characters are concerned. Is the Man-Hater a true
-representative of young women, now-a-days? If so, what is to become of
-my son--my unlucky son, aged twelve years?
-
-In a short time, this boy will be marriageable, and he will go into
-the world to bill and coo, and offer his hand and heart, as his father
-did before him. My unhappy offspring, what a prospect awaits you! One
-forbidding phalanx of Man-Haters, bristling with woman's dignity, and
-armed to the teeth with maidenly consciousness, occupies the wide
-matrimonial field, look where you will! Ill-fated youth, yet a few
-years, and the female neck will curve, the female nostril dilate, at
-the sight of you. You see that stately form, those rustling skirts,
-that ample brow, and fall on your knees before it, and make your
-proposal with the impassioned imbecility which your father exhibited
-before you. My deluded boy, that is not a woman--it is a Man-Hater--a
-whited sepulchre full of violent expostulations and injurious
-epithets. She will lead you the life of a costermonger's ass, until
-she has exhausted her whole stock of maidenly consciousness; and she
-will then say (in effect, if not in words):--"Inferior animal, I loved
-you from the first--I have asserted my dignity by making a fool of you
-in public and private--now you may marry me!" Marry her not, my son!
-Go rather to the slave-market at Constantinople--buy a Circassian
-wife, who has heard nothing and read nothing about man-haters--bring
-her home (with no better dowry than pots of the famous Cream from her
-native land to propitiate your mother and sisters)--and trust to your
-father to welcome an Asiatic daughter-in-law, who will not despise him
-for the unavoidable misfortune of being a Man!
-
-But I am losing my temper over a hypothetical case. I am forgetting
-the special purpose of my petition, which is to beg that the Man-Hater
-may be removed altogether from her usurped position of heroine. The
-new-fashioned heroine is a libel on her sex. As a husband and a
-father, I solemnly deny that she is in any single respect a natural
-woman. Am I no judge? I have a wife, and I made her an offer. Did she
-receive it as the Man-Haters receive offers? Can I ever forget the
-mixture of modest confusion and perfect politeness with which that
-admirable woman heard me utter the most absolute nonsense that ever
-issued from my lips? Perhaps she is not fit for a heroine. Well, I can
-give her up in that capacity without a pang. But my daughters and
-nieces have claims, I suppose, to be considered as examples of what
-young ladies are in the present day. Ever since I read the first novel
-with a Man-Hater in it, I have had my eye on their nostrils, and I can
-make affidavit that I have never yet seen them dilate under any
-circumstances, or in any society. As for curling their lips and
-curving their necks, they have attempted both operations at my express
-request, and have found them to be physical impossibilities. In men's
-society, their manners (like those of all other girls whom I meet
-with) are natural and modest; and--in the cases of certain privileged
-men--winning, into the bargain. They open their eyes with astonishment
-when they read of the proceedings of our new-fashioned heroines, and
-throw the book indignantly across the room, when they find a nice man
-submitting to be bullied by a nasty woman, because he has paid her the
-compliment of falling in love with her. No, no! we positively decline
-to receive any more Man-Haters, and there is an end of it!
-
-With this uncompromising expression of opinion, I think it desirable
-to bring the present petition to a close. There are one or two other
-good things in fiction, of which we have had enough; but I refrain
-from mentioning them, from modest apprehension of asking for too much
-at a time. If the slight changes in general, and the sweeping reform
-in particular, which I have ventured to suggest, can be accomplished,
-we are sure, in the future as in the past, to be grateful,
-appreciating, and incessant novel-readers. If we cannot claim any
-critical weight in the eyes of our esteemed authors, we can at least
-arrogate to ourselves the minor merit, not only of reading novels
-perpetually, but (and this is a rarer virtue) of publicly and proudly
-avowing the fact. We only pretend to be human beings with a natural
-desire for as much amusement as our work-a-day destinies will let us
-have. We are just respectable enough to be convinced of the usefulness
-of occasionally reading for information; but we are also certain (and
-we say it boldly, in the teeth of the dull people), that there are few
-higher, better, or more profitable enjoyments in this world than
-reading a good novel.
-
-
-
-
-FRAGMENTS OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.--I.
-
-Laid up in lodgings.
-
-
-MY PARIS LODGING.
-
-It has happened rather whimsically, and not very fortunately for me,
-that my first experience of living in furnished lodgings abroad, as
-well as in England, has occurred at the very time when illness has
-rendered me particularly susceptible to the temporary loss of the
-comforts of home. I have been ill, alone, in furnished lodgings in
-Paris--ill, alone, on the journey back to England--ill, alone, again,
-in furnished lodgings in London. I am a single man; but as I have
-already intimated, I never knew what it was to enjoy the desolate
-liberty of the bachelor until I became an invalid. Some of my
-impressions of things and persons about me, formed under these
-anomalous circumstances, may, perhaps, prove not altogether unworthy
-of being written down, while they are still fresh in my mind.
-
-How I happen, for a temporary period, to be away from the home in
-which I have hitherto lived with my nearest relatives, and to which I
-hope soon to return, it is of no importance to the reader to know.
-Neither is it at all worth while to occupy time and space with any
-particular description of the illness from which I have been and am
-still suffering. It will be enough for preliminary purposes, if I
-present myself at once in the character of a convalescent visiting
-Paris, with the double intention of passing agreeably an interval of
-necessary absence from home, and of promoting, by change of air and
-scene, my recovery from a distressing and a tedious illness. When I
-add to this, that although I lived alone in my French bachelor
-apartment, I had the good fortune at Paris, as afterwards in London,
-to be in the near neighbourhood of the most kind, attentive, and
-affectionate friends, I have said as much as is needful by way of
-preface, and may get on at once to my main purpose.
-
-What my impressions of my apartment in Paris might have been, if I had
-recovered there according to my anticipations, I cannot venture to
-say; for, before I had got fairly settled in my new rooms, I suffered
-a sudden relapse. My life, again, became the life of an invalid, and
-my ways of thought and observation turned back disastrously to the old
-invalid channel. Change of air and scene--which had done nothing for
-my body--did nothing either for my mind. At Paris, as before in
-London, I looked at the world about me, purely from the sick man's
-point of view--or, in other words, the events that passed, the sights
-that appeared, and the persons who moved around me, interested or
-repelled me only as they referred more or less directly to myself and
-my own invalid situation. This curious narrowness of view, of which I
-am not yet well enough entirely to rid myself, though as conscious as
-another of the mental weakness that it implies, has no connection that
-I can discover with excessive selfishness or vanity; it is simply the
-result of the inevitable increase of a man's importance to himself
-which the very fact of sickness is only too apt to produce.
-
-My own sensations, as a sick man, now fill up the weary blank of my
-daily existence when I am alone, and form the main topic of inquiry
-and conversation when my doctor and my friends enliven my solitude.
-The concerns of my own poor body, which do not, I thank heaven, occupy
-my attention for much more than one hour out of the twenty-four, when
-I am well, become the main business and responsibility of all my
-waking moments, now that I am ill. Pain to suffer, and the swallowing
-of drugs and taking of nourishment at regulated periods; daily
-restraints that I must undergo, and hourly precautions that I am
-forced to practise, all contribute to keep my mind bound down to the
-level of my body. A flight of thought beyond myself and the weary
-present time--even supposing I were capable of the exertion--would
-lead me astray from the small personal rules and regulations on which
-I now depend absolutely for the recovery of my health.
-
-Have my temper and disposition changed for the worse, under these
-unfavourable circumstances? Not much, I hope. I can honestly say for
-myself that I envy no other man's health and happiness. I feel no
-jealous pang when I hear laughter about me. I can look at people out
-of my window, running easily across the road, while I can hardly crawl
-from one end of my chamber to the other, without feeling insulted by
-their activity. Still, it is true, at the same time, that I warm to
-people now exactly in proportion as I see them sensibly and sincerely
-touched by my suffering condition; and that I like, or dislike, my
-habitation for the time being, just as it happens to suit, or not to
-suit, all the little requirements of my temporary infirmity. If I were
-introduced to one of the most eminent men in the country at this
-moment, and if he did not look sorry to see me ill, I should never
-care to set eyes on the eminent man again. If I had a superb room with
-the finest view in the world, but no bed-side conveniences for my
-pill-boxes and medicine-bottles, I would leave that superb room and
-fine view, and go cheerfully to a garret in an alley, provided it
-adapted itself comfortably to the arrangement of my indispensable
-invalid's lumber. This is doubtless a humiliating confession; but it
-is well that I should make it once for all--for, the various opinions
-and impressions which I am about frankly to write down, will be found
-to be more or less coloured by what I venture to describe as the
-involuntary egotism of a sick man.
-
-Let us see how my new lodging in Paris suits me; and why it is that I
-immediately become fond of it.
-
-I live in a little building of my own, called a Pavilion. Outside, it
-resembles, as to size, brightness, and apparent insubstantiality, a
-private dwelling-house in a Pantomime. I expect as I drive up to it,
-for the first time, to see Clown grinning at the door, and Harlequin
-jumping through the window. A key is produced, and an odd little white
-door, through which no fat man could penetrate even sideways, is
-opened; I ascend a steep flight of a dozen steps, and enter my
-toy-castle: my own independent, solitary, miniature mansion.
-
-The first room is the drawing-room. It is about the size of a large
-packing-case, with a gay looking-glass and clock, with bright red
-chairs and sofa, with a cosy round table, with a big window looking
-out on another Pavilion opposite, and on a great house set back in a
-courtyard. To my indescribable astonishment, it actually possesses
-three doors! One I have just entered by. Another leads into a
-bed-chamber of the same size as the drawing-room, just as brightly and
-neatly furnished, with a window that looks out on the everlasting
-gaiety and bustle of the Champs Elysees. The third door leads into a
-dressing-room half the size of the drawing-room, and having a fourth
-door which opens into a kitchen half the size of the dressing-room,
-but of course possessing a fifth door which leads out again to the
-head of the staircase. As no two people meeting in the kitchen could
-possibly pass each other, or remain in the apartment together without
-serious inconvenience, the two doors leading in and out of it may be
-pronounced useful as well as ornamental. Into this quaint little
-culinary crevice the coal-merchant, the wood-merchant, and the
-water-carrier squeeze their way, and find a doll's cellar and cistern
-all ready for them. They might be followed, if I were only well enough
-to give dinners, by a cook and his scullions--for I possess, besides
-the cellar and cistern, an elaborate charcoal stove in the kitchen, at
-which any number of courses might be prepared by any culinary artist,
-who could cook composedly with a row of small fires under his nose, a
-coal-cellar between his legs, a cistern scrubbing his shoulder, and a
-lukewarm wall against his back.
-
-But what is the main secret of my fondness for the Pavilion? It does
-not, I am afraid, lie in the brightness and elegance of the little
-rooms, or even in the delightful independence of inhabiting a lodging,
-which is also a house of my own, where I can neither be disturbed nor
-overlooked by any other lodgers. The one irresistible appeal which my
-Parisian apartment makes to my sympathies, consists in the perfect
-manner in which it fits my wants and flatters my weaknesses as an
-invalid.
-
-I have quite a little druggist's stock-in-trade of physic-bottles,
-glasses, spoons, card-boxes and prescriptions; I have all sorts of
-queer vestments and coverings, intended to guarantee me against all
-variations of temperature and all degrees of exposure, by night as
-well as by day; I have ready remedies that must be kept in my
-bed-chamber, and elaborate applications that I must find handy in my
-dressing-room. In short, I myself am nothing but the centre of a vast
-medical litter, and the closer the said litter revolves round me the
-more comfortable I am. In a house of the usual size, and in rooms
-arranged on the ordinary plan, I should be driven distracted (being an
-untidy man even in my healthiest moments) by mislaying things every
-hour in the day, by having to get up to look for them, and by being
-compelled to walk up and down stairs, or to make others do so for me,
-when I want to establish communications between dressing-room,
-bed-room, drawing-room, coal-cellar, and kitchen. In my tiny Parisian
-house of one small storey, I can wait on myself with the most perfect
-ease; in my wee sitting-room, nine-tenths of the things I want are
-within arm's length of me, as I repose in my elbow-chair; if I must
-move I can get from my bed-chamber to my kitchen in less time than it
-would take me to walk across an English drawing-room; if I lose my
-morning draught, mislay my noontide drops, or leave my evening
-pill-box under my afternoon dressing-gown, I can take my walking-stick
-or my fire-tongs, and poke or fish for missing articles in every
-corner of the room, without doing more than turning round in my chair.
-If I had been well and had given dinner parties, I might have found my
-habitation rather too small for me. As it is, if my Pavilion had been
-built on purpose for a solitary lodger to fall ill in with the least
-possible amount of personal discomfort, it could not have suited my
-sad case better. Sick, I love and honour the skilful architect who
-contrived it. Well, I am very much afraid I should never have bestowed
-so much as a single thought on him.
-
-Why do I become, in one cordial quarter of an hour, friendly,
-familiar, and even affectionate with my portress? Because it is part
-of my unhealthy condition of body and mind, that I like nothing so
-well as being pitied; and my portress sweetens my daily existence with
-so much compassion that she does me more good, I think, than my doctor
-or my drugs.
-
-Let me try to describe her. She is a thin, rapid, cheerful little
-woman, with a tiny face and bright brown eyes. She has a husband
-(Hippolyte-senior) and a son (Hippolyte-junior), and a lodge of one
-room to live in with her family. She has not been in bed, for years
-past, before two or three in the morning; for my Pavilion and the
-second Pavilion opposite and the large house behind, are all shut in
-from the roadway by handsome iron gates, which it is the business of
-somebody in the porter's lodge to open (by pulling a string
-communicating with the latch) at all hours of the night to
-homeward-bound lodgers. The large house has so many tenants that some
-one is always out at a party or a theatre--so the keeping of late
-hours becomes a necessary part of the service in the lodge, and the
-poor little portress is the victim who suffers as perpetual
-night-watch. Hippolyte-senior absorbs his fair share of work in the
-day, and takes the early-rising department cheerfully, but he does not
-possess the gift of keeping awake at night. By eleven o'clock (such is
-sometimes the weakness even of the most amiable human nature) it is
-necessary that Hippolyte-senior should be stretched on his back on the
-nuptial bedstead, snoring impervious to all sounds and all in-comers.
-Hippolyte-junior, or the son, is too young to be trusted with the
-supervision of the gate-string. He sleeps, sound as his father, with a
-half-developed snore and a coiled-up body, in a crib at the foot of
-the parental bed. On the other side of the room, hard by the lodgers'
-keys and candlesticks, with a big stove behind her and a gaslight
-before her eyes, sits the faithful little portress, watching out the
-weary hours as wakefully as she can. She trusts entirely to strong
-coffee and the near flare of the gaslight to combat the natural
-sleepiness which follows a hard day's work begun at eight o'clock
-every morning. The coffee and the gas deserve, to a certain extent,
-the confidence she places in them. They keep her bright brown eyes
-wide open, staring with unwinking pertinacity at the light before
-them. They keep her back very straight against her chair, and her arms
-crossed tightly over her bosom, and her feet set firmly on her
-footstool. But though they stop sleep from shutting her eyes or
-relaxing her limbs, they cannot prevent some few latent Morphian
-influences from stealthily reaching her. Open as her eyes may be, the
-little woman nevertheless does start guiltily when the ring at the
-bell comes at last; does stare fixedly for a moment before she can get
-up; has to fight resolutely with something drowsy and clinging in the
-shape of a trance, before she can fly to the latch-string, and hang on
-to it wearily, instead of pulling at it with the proper wakeful jerk.
-Night after night she has now drunk the strong coffee, and propped
-herself up stiffly in her straight chair, and stared hard at the
-flaring gaslight, for nearly seven years past. Some people would have
-lost their tempers and their spirits under these hard circumstances;
-but the cheerful little portress has only lost flesh. In a dark corner
-of the room hangs a daguerreotype likeness. It represents a buxom
-woman, with round cheeks and a sturdy waist, and dates from the period
-when she was the bride of Hippolyte-senior, and was thinking of
-following him into the Porter's Lodge. "Ah! my dear sir," she says
-when I condole with her, "if we do get a little money sometimes in our
-way of life, we don't earn it too easily. Aie! Aie! Aie! I should like
-a good sleep: I should like to be as fat as my portrait again!"
-
-The same friendly relations--arising entirely, let it always be
-remembered, out of my illness and the portress's compassion for
-me--which have let me into the secrets of the strong coffee, the
-daguerreotype portrait, and the sleepy constitution of Hippolyte-senior,
-also enable me to ascertain, by special invitation, how the
-inhabitants of the lodge dispose of some of the hardly-earned profits
-of their situation.
-
-I find myself suffering rather painfully, one morning, under some
-aggravated symptoms of my illness, and my friend the portress comes
-into the Pavilion to talk to me and keep up my spirits. She has had an
-hour's extra sleep, for a wonder, and is in a chirping state of
-cheerfulness in consequence. She shudders and makes faces at my
-physic-bottles; entreats me to throw them away, to let her put me to
-bed, and administer A Light Tea to begin with, and A Broth to follow
-(un The leger et un Bouillon). If I will only stick to these remedies,
-she will have them ready, if necessary, every hour in the day, and
-will guarantee my immediate restoration to health and strength. While
-we are arguing the question of the uselessness of drugs and the
-remedial excellence of tea and broth, Hippolyte-senior, with a look of
-mysterious triumph, which immediately communicates itself to the face
-of his wife, enters the room to tell her that she is wanted below in
-the lodge. She goes to his side and takes his arm, as if he was a
-strange gentleman waiting to lead her down to dinner, nods to him
-confidentially, then glances at me. Her husband follows her example,
-and the two stand quite unconfusedly, arm-in-arm, smiling upon me and
-my physic-bottles, as if they were a pair of lovers and I was the
-venerable parent whose permission and blessing they were waiting to
-receive.
-
-"Have you been getting a new doctor for me?" I ask, excessively
-puzzled by their evident desire to connect me with some secret in the
-lodge.
-
-"No," says the portress, "I believe in no doctors. I believe in
-nothing but a light tea and a broth."
-
-("My sentiments also!" adds her husband, parenthetically.)
-
-"But we have something to show you in the lodge," continues the
-portress.
-
-(Hippolyte-senior arches his eyebrows, and says "Aha!")
-
-"And when you feel better," proceeds my cheerful little friend, "only
-have the politeness to come down to us, and you will see a marvellous
-sight!"
-
-Hippolyte-senior depresses his eyebrows, and says "Hush!"
-
-"Enough," replies the portress, understanding him; "let us retire."
-
-And they leave the room immediately, still arm-in-arm--the fondest and
-most mysterious married couple that I have ever set eyes on.
-
-That day, I do not feel quite strong enough to encounter great
-surprises; so my visit to the lodge is deferred until the next
-morning. Rather to my amazement, the portress does not pay me her
-usual visit at my waking, on the eventful day. I descend to the lodge,
-wondering what this change means, and see three or four strangers
-assembled in the room which is bed-chamber, parlour, and porter's
-office, all in one. The strangers, I find, are admiring friends: they
-surround Hippolyte-senior, and all look one way with an expression of
-intense pleasure and surprise. My eyes follow the direction of theirs;
-and I see, above the shabby little lodge table, a resplendent new
-looking-glass in the brightest of frames. On either side of it, rise
-two blush-coloured wax tapers. Below it are three ornamental pots with
-blooming rose-trees in them, backed by a fanlike screen of fair white
-paper. This is the surprise that was in store for me; and this is also
-the security in which the inhabitants of the lodge have invested their
-last hard-earned savings. The whole thing has the effect upon my mind
-of an amateur High Altar; and I admire the new purchase accordingly
-with such serious energy of expression, that Hippolyte-senior, in the
-first sweetness of triumph, forgets the modesty proper to his position
-as proprietor of the new treasure, and apostrophises his own property
-as Magnifique, with a power of voice and an energy of gesticulation
-which I have never noticed in him before. When his enthusiasm has
-abated, and just as I am on the point of asking where my friend the
-portress is, I hear a faint little voice speaking behind the group of
-admiring friends:
-
-"Perhaps, Messieurs et Mesdames, you think this an extravagance for
-people in our situation," says the voice, in feebly polite tones of
-apology; "but, alas! how could we resist it? It is so beautiful--it
-brightens the room so--it gives us such a noble appearance. And, then,
-it is also a property--something to leave to our children--in short, a
-pardonable extravagance. Aie! I am shaking all over again; I can say
-no more!"
-
-While these words are in course of utterance, the group of friends
-separate, and I see sitting behind them, close to the big stove, the
-little portress, looking sadly changed for the worse. Her tiny face
-has become very yellow; her bright brown eyes look disproportionately
-large; she has an old shawl twisted round her shoulders and shivers in
-it perpetually. I ask what is the matter, imagining that the poor
-little woman has got a fit of the ague. The portress contrives to
-smile as usual before she answers, though her teeth are chattering
-audibly.
-
-"You will not give me drugs, if I tell you?" she says.
-
-"I will do nothing that is not perfectly agreeable to you," I reply
-evasively.
-
-"My complaint is a violent indigestion (une forte indigestion),"
-continues the portress, indicatively laying one trembling fore-finger
-on the region of her malady. "And I am curing myself with a Light
-Tea."
-
-Here the fore-finger changes its direction and points to a large white
-earthenware teapot, with an empty mug by the side of it. To save the
-portress the trouble of replenishing her drinking vessel, I pour out a
-dose of the Light Tea. It is a liquid of a faint straw colour, totally
-unlike any English tea that ever was made; and it tastes as a quart of
-hot water might taste after a wisp of hay had been dipped into it. The
-portress swallows three mugsful of her medicine in my presence,
-smiling and shivering; looking rapturously at the magnificent new
-mirror with its attendant flower-pots and tapers; and rejecting with
-grimaces of comic disgust, all overtures of medical help on my part,
-even to the modest offering of one small pill. An hour or two later, I
-descend to the lodge again to see how she is. She has been persuaded
-to go to bed; is receiving, in bed, a levee of friends; is answering,
-in the same interesting situation, the questions of all the visitors
-of the day, relating to all the lodgers in the house; has begun a
-fresh potful of the light tea; is still smiling; still shivering;
-still contemptuously sceptical on the subject of drugs.
-
-In the evening I go down again. The teapot is not done with yet, and
-the hay-flavoured hot water is still pouring inexhaustibly into the
-system of the little portress. She happens now to be issuing
-directions relative to the keeping awake of Hippolyte-senior, who, for
-this night at least, must watch by the gate-string. He is to have a
-pint of strong coffee and a pipe; he is to have the gas turned on very
-strong; and he is to be excited by the presence of a brisk and wakeful
-friend. The next morning, just as I am thinking of making inquiries at
-the lodge, who should enter my room but the dyspeptic patient herself,
-cured, and ready to digest anything but a doctor's advice or a small
-pill. Hippolyte-senior, I hear, has not fallen asleep over the
-gate-string for more than half-an-hour every now and then; and the
-portress has had a long night's rest. She does not consider this
-unusual occurrence as reckoning in any degree among the agencies which
-have accomplished her rapid recovery. It is the light tea alone that
-has done it; and, if I still doubt the inestimable virtues of the hot
-hay-water cure, then of all the prejudiced gentlemen the portress has
-ever heard of, I am the most deplorably obstinate in opening my arms
-to error and shutting my eyes to truth.
-
-Such is the little domestic world about me, in some of the more vivid
-lights in which it presents itself to my own peculiar view.
-
-As for the great Parisian world outside, my experience of it is
-bounded by the prospect I obtain of the Champs Elysees from my
-bed-room window. Fashionable Paris spins and prances by me every
-afternoon, in all its glory; but what interest have healthy princes
-and counts and blood-horses, and blooming ladies, plunged in abysses
-of circumambient crinoline, for me, in my sick situation? They all fly
-by me in one confused phantasmagoria of gay colours and rushing forms,
-which I look at with lazy eyes. The sights I watch with interest are
-those only which seem to refer in some degree to my own invalid
-position. My sick man's involuntary egotism clings as close to me
-when I look outward at the great highway, as when I look inward at my
-own little room. Thus, the only objects which I now notice attentively
-from my window, are, oddly enough, chiefly those which I should have
-missed altogether, or looked at with indifference if I had occupied my
-bachelor apartment in the enviable character of a healthy man.
-
-For example, out of the various vehicles which pass me by dozens in
-the morning, and by hundreds in the afternoon, only two succeed in
-making anything like a lasting impression on my mind. I have only
-vague ideas of dust, dashing, and magnificence in connection with the
-rapid carriages late in the day--and of bells and hollow yelping of
-carters' voices in connection with the deliberate waggons early in the
-morning. But I have, on the other hand, a very distinct remembrance of
-one sober brown omnibus, belonging to a Sanitary Asylum, and of a
-queer little truck which carries baths and hot water to private
-houses, from a bathing establishment near me. The omnibus, as it
-passes my window at a solemn jog-trot, is full of patients getting
-their airing. I can see them dimly, and I fall into curious fancies
-about their various cases, and wonder what proportion of the afflicted
-passengers are near the time of emancipation from their sanitary
-prison on wheels. As for the little truck, with its empty zinc bath
-and barrel of warm water, I am probably wrong in sympathetically
-associating it as frequently as I do with cases of illness. It is
-doubtless often sent for by healthy people, too luxurious in their
-habits to walk abroad for a bath. But there must be a proportion of
-cases of illness to which the truck ministers; and when I see it going
-faster than usual, I assume that it must be wanted by some person in a
-fit; grow suddenly agitated by the idea; and watch the empty bath and
-the hot-water barrel with breathless interest, until they rumble away
-together out of sight.
-
-So, again, with regard to the men and women who pass my window by
-thousands every day; my view of them is just as curiously
-circumscribed as my view of the vehicles. Out of all the crowd, I now
-find, on taxing my memory, that I have noticed particularly just three
-people (a woman and two men), who have chanced to appeal to my invalid
-curiosity.
-
-The woman is a nursemaid, neither young nor pretty, very clean and
-neat in her dress, with an awful bloodless paleness in her face, and a
-hopeless consumptive languor in her movements. She has only one child
-to take care of--a robust little girl of cruelly active habits. There
-is a stone bench opposite my window; and on this the wan and weakly
-nursemaid often sits, not bumping down on it with the heavy thump of
-honest exhaustion, but sinking on it listlessly, as if in changing
-from walking to sitting she were only passing from one form of
-weariness to another. The robust child remains mercifully near the
-feeble guardian for a few minutes--then becomes, on a sudden,
-pitilessly active again, laughs and dances from a distance, when the
-nurse makes weary signs to her, and runs away altogether, when she is
-faintly entreated to be quiet for a few minutes longer. The nurse
-looks after her in despair for a moment, draws her neat black shawl,
-with a shiver, over her sharp shoulders, rises resignedly, and
-disappears from my eyes in pursuit of the pitiless child. I see this
-mournful little drama acted many times over, always in the same way,
-and wonder sadly how long the wan nursemaid will hold out. Not being a
-family man, and having nervously-acute sympathies for sickness and
-suffering just now, it would afford me genuine satisfaction to see the
-oppressed nurse beat the tyrannical child; but she seems fond of the
-little despot; and, besides, she is so weak that if it came to blows,
-I am afraid, grown woman as she is, that she might get the worst of
-it.
-
-The men whom I observe, are not such interesting cases; but they
-exhibit, in a minor degree, the peculiarities that are sure to attract
-my attention. The first of the two is a gentleman--lonely and rich, as
-I imagine. He is fat, yellow, and gloomy, and has evidently been
-ordered horse-exercise for the benefit of his health. He rides a quiet
-English cob; never has any friend with him; never--so far as I can
-see--exchanges greetings with any other horseman; is never smiled at
-from a carriage, nor bowed to by a foot-passenger. He rides with his
-flaccid chin sunk on his fat breast; sits his horse as if his legs
-were stuffed and his back boneless; always attracts me because he is
-the picture of dyspeptic wretchedness, and always passes me at the
-same mournful jog-trot pace. The second man is a police agent. I
-cannot sympathise with him in consequence of his profession; but I can
-observe, with a certain lukewarm interest, that he is all but worked
-to death. He yawns and stretches himself in corners; sometimes drops
-furtively on to the stone bench before my window; then starts up from
-it suddenly, as if he felt himself falling asleep the moment he sat
-down. He has hollow places where other people have cheeks; and,
-judging by his walk, must be quite incapable of running after a
-prisoner who might take to flight. On the whole, he presents to my
-mind the curious spectacle of a languid man trying to adapt himself to
-a brisk business, and failing palpably in the effort. As the sick
-child of a thriving system he attracts my attention. I devoutly hope
-that he will not return the compliment by honouring me with his
-notice.
-
-Such are the few short steps that I take in advance to get a
-moderately close glance at French humanity. If my view is absurdly
-limited to my own dim horizon, this defect has at least one advantage
-for the reader: it prevents all danger of my troubling him with my
-ideas and observations at any great length. If other people value this
-virtue of brevity in writers, orators, and preachers as sincerely as I
-do, perhaps I may hope, on account of my short range of observation
-and my few words, to get another hearing, if I write the second
-chapter of my invalid experiences. I began the first half of them (as
-herein related) in France; and I am now completing the second (yet to
-be recorded) in England. When the curtain rises on my sick bed again,
-the scene will be London.
-
-
-CHAPTER THE SECOND.--MY LONDON LODGING.
-
-I last had the honour of presenting myself to the reader's notice in
-the character of an invalid laid up in lodgings at Paris. Let me now
-be permitted to reappear as an invalid laid up, for the time being, in
-a London cab. Let it be imagined that I have got through the journey
-from Paris, greatly to my own surprise and satisfaction, without
-breaking down by the way; that I have slept one night at a London
-hotel for the first time in my life; and that I am now helplessly
-adrift, looking out for Furnished Apartments as near as may be to my
-doctor's place of abode.
-
-The cab is fusty, the driver is sulky, the morning is foggy. A dry
-dog-kennel would be a pleasant refuge by comparison with the miserable
-vehicle in which I am now jolting my way over the cruel London stones.
-On our road to my doctor's neighbourhood we pass through Smeary
-Street, a locality well known to the inhabitants of Northern London. I
-feel that I can go no further. I remember that some friends of mine
-live not far off, and I recklessly emancipate myself from the torment
-of the cab, by stopping the driver at the very first house in the
-windows of which I see a bill with the announcement that Apartments
-are to Let.
-
-The door is opened by a tall muscular woman, with a knobbed face and
-knotty arms besprinkled with a layer of grate-dust in a state of
-impalpable powder. She shows me up into a second-floor front bed-room.
-My first look of scrutiny is naturally directed at the bed. It is of
-the negative sort, neither dirty nor clean; but, by its side, I see a
-positive advantage in connection with it, in the shape of a long
-mahogany shelf, fixed into the wall a few inches above the bed, and
-extending down its whole length from head to foot. My sick man's
-involuntary egotism is as predominant an impulse within me at London
-as at Paris. I think directly of my invalid's knick-knacks: I see
-that the mahogany shelf will serve to keep them all within my reach
-when I am in bed; I know that it will be wanted for no other purpose
-than that to which I design to put it; that it need not be cleared for
-dinner every day, like a table, or disturbed when the servant cleans
-the room, like a moveable stand. I satisfy myself that it holds out
-all these rare advantages to me, in my peculiar situation, and I snap
-at them on the instant--or, in other words, I take the room
-immediately.
-
-If I had been in health, I think I should have had two cogent reasons
-for acting otherwise, and seeking apartments elsewhere. In the first
-place, I should have observed that the room was not very clean or very
-comfortably furnished. I should have noticed that the stained and torn
-drugget on the floor displayed a margin of dirty boards all round the
-bed-chamber; and I should no sooner have set eyes on the venerable
-arm-chair by the bedside than I should have heard it saying privately
-in my ear, in an ominous language of its own, "Stranger, I am let to
-the Fleas: take me at your peril." Even if these signs and portents
-had not been enough to send me out into the street again, I should
-certainly have found the requisite warning to quit the house written
-legibly in the face, figure, and manner of the landlady. I should
-probably have seen something to distrust and dislike in everything
-connected with her, down even to her name, which was Mrs. Glutch; I
-should have made my escape into the street again, and should not have
-ventured near it any more for the rest of the day. But as it was, my
-fatal invalid prepossessions blinded me to everything but the
-unexpected blessing of that mahogany shelf by the bedside. I
-overlooked the torn drugget, the flea-peopled arm-chair, and the
-knotty-faced landlady with the ominous name. The shelf was bait enough
-for me, and the moment the trap was open, I collected my train of
-medicine bottles and confidently walked in.
-
-It is a general subject of remark among observant travellers, that the
-two nations of the civilized world which appear to be most widely
-separated as to the external aspects of life respectively presented by
-them, are also the two which are most closely brought together by the
-neighbourly ties of local situation. Before I had been many days
-established in Smeary Street, I found that I myself, in my own
-circumscribed sphere, offered a remarkable example of the truth of the
-observation just recorded. The strong contrast between my present and
-my past life was a small individual proof of the great social
-contrasts between England and France.
-
-I have truly presented myself at Paris, as living independently in a
-little toy house of my own; as looking out upon a scene of almost
-perpetual brightness and gaiety; and as having people to attend on me
-whose blessed levity of disposition kept them always cheerful, always
-quaintly characteristic, always unexpectedly amusing, even to the
-languid eye of a sick man. With equal candour I must now record of my
-in-door life in London, that it was passed with many other lodgers, in
-a large house without a vestige of toy-shop prettiness in any part of
-it. I must acknowledge that I looked out upon drab-coloured walls and
-serious faces through a smoke-laden atmosphere; and I must admit that
-I was waited on (so far as the actual house-service was concerned) by
-people whose cloudy countenances seemed unconscious of a gleam of
-inner sunshine for days and days together. Nor did the contrast end
-here. In my lodgings at Paris, I have represented myself as having
-about me a variety of animate and inanimate objects which I might
-notice or not just as I pleased, and as using my freedom of choice in
-a curiously partial and restricted manner, in consequence of the
-narrowing effect of my illness on my sympathies and powers of
-observation. In my London lodging, I enjoyed no such liberty. I could
-not get even a temporary freedom of selection, except by fighting for
-it resolutely at odds and ends of time. I had but one object which
-offered itself to my observation, which perpetually presented itself,
-which insisted on being noticed, no matter how mentally unfit and
-morally unwilling my illness rendered me to observe it; and that
-object was--my landlady, Mrs. Glutch.
-
-Behold me then, now, no longer a free agent; no longer a fanciful
-invalid with caprices to confide to the ear of the patient reader. My
-health is no better in Smeary Street than it was in the Champs
-Elysees; I take as much medicine in London as I took in Paris; but my
-character is altered in spite of myself, and the form and colour of my
-present fragment of writing will, I fear, but too truly reflect the
-change.
-
-I _was_ a sick man with several things to discourse of--I _am_ a sick
-man with only one topic to talk about. I may escape from it for a few
-sentences at a time, in these pages, as I escaped from it for a few
-minutes at a time in Smeary Street; but the burden of my song will be
-now, what the burden of my life has been lately--my landlady. I am
-going to begin with her--I shall go on with her--I shall try to wander
-away from her--I shall get back to her--I shall end with her. She will
-mix herself up with everything I have to say; will intrude on my
-observations out of window; will get into my victuals and drink, and
-drops, and draughts, and pills; will come between me and my studies of
-character among maids-of-all-work, in this too faithful narrative,
-just as she did in the real scenes which it endeavours to represent.
-While I make this acknowledgment as a proper warning to the reader
-that I have changed into a monotonous sick man since we met last, let
-me add, in justice to myself, that my one subject has at least the
-advantage of being a terrible one. Think of a sick fly waited on by a
-healthy blue-bottle, and you will have a fair idea of the relative
-proportions and positions of myself and Mrs. Glutch.
-
-I have hardly been settled an hour in my second-floor front room
-before the conviction is forced on my mind that Mrs. Glutch is
-resolved to make a conquest of me--of the maternal, or platonic kind,
-let me hasten to add, so as to stop the mouth of scandal before it is
-well opened. I find that she presents herself before me in the
-character of a woman suffused in a gentle melancholy, proceeding from
-perpetual sympathy for my suffering condition. It is part of my
-character, as a sick man, that I know by instinct when people really
-pity me, just as children and dogs know when people really like them;
-and I have, consequently, not been five minutes in Mrs. Glutch's
-society, before I know that her sympathy for me is entirely of that
-sort of which (in the commercial phrase) a large assortment is always
-on hand. I take no pains to conceal from Mrs. Glutch that I have found
-her out; but she is too innocent to understand me, and goes on
-sympathising in the very face of detection. She becomes, in spite of
-her knobbed face, knotty arms, and great stature and strength,
-languidly sentimental in manner, the moment she enters my room.
-Language runs out of her in a perpetual flow, and politeness encircles
-her as with a halo that can never be dimmed. "I have been so anxious
-about you!" is her first morning's salutation to me. The words are
-preceded by a faint cough, and followed by an expressively weary sigh,
-as if she had passed a sleepless night on my account. The next morning
-she appears with a bunch of wallflowers in her mighty fist, and with
-another faint prefatory cough, "I beg pardon, sir; but I have brought
-you a few flowers. I think they relieve the mind." The expressively
-weary sigh follows again, as if it would suggest this time that she
-has toiled into the country to gather me the flowers at early dawn. I
-do not find, strange as it may seem, that they relieve my mind at all;
-but of course I say, "Thank you."--"Thank _you_, sir," rejoins Mrs.
-Glutch--for it is a part of this woman's system of oppressive
-politeness always to thank me for thanking her. She invariably
-contrives to have the last word, no matter in what circumstances the
-courteous contention which is the main characteristic of our daily
-intercourse, may take its rise.
-
-Let us say, for instance, that she comes into my room and gets into my
-way (which she always does) at the very time when she ought to be out
-of it--her first words are necessarily, "I beg pardon." I growl (not
-so brutally as I could wish, being weak), "Never mind!"--"Thank you,
-sir," says Mrs. Glutch, and coughs faintly, and sighs, and delays
-going out as long as possible. Or, take another example:--"Mrs.
-Glutch, this plate's dirty."--"I am much obliged to you, sir, for
-telling me of it."--"It isn't the first dirty plate I have
-had."--"Really now, sir?"--"You may take away the fork; for that is
-dirty too."--"Thank you, sir."--Oh for one hour of my little Parisian
-portress! Oh for one day's respite from the politeness of Mrs. Glutch!
-
-Let me try if I cannot get away from the subject for a little while.
-What have I to say about the other lodgers in the house? Not much; for
-how can I take any interest in people who never make inquiries after
-my health, though they must all know, by the frequent visits of the
-doctor and the chemist's boy, that I am ill?
-
-The first floor is inhabited by a mysterious old gentleman, and his
-valet. He brought three cart-loads of gorgeous furniture with him, to
-fit up two rooms--he possesses an organ, on which, greatly to his
-credit, he never plays--he receives perfumed notes, goes out
-beautifully dressed, is brought back in private carriages, with tall
-footmen in attendance to make as much noise as possible with the
-door-knocker. Nobody knows where he comes from, or believes that he
-passes in the house under his real name. If any aged aristocrat be
-missing from the world of fashion, we rather think we have got him in
-Smeary Street, and should feel willing to give him up to his rightful
-owners on payment of a liberal reward. Next door to me, in the second
-floor back, I hear a hollow cough and sometimes a whispering; but I
-know nothing for certain--not even whether the hollow cougher is also
-the whisperer, or whether they are two, or whether there is or is not
-a third silent and Samaritan person who relieves the cough and listens
-to the whisper. Above me, in the attics, there is a matutinal stamping
-and creaking of boots, which go down-stairs, at an early hour, in a
-hurry, which never return all day, but which come up-stairs again in a
-hurry late at night. The boots evidently belong to shopmen or clerks.
-Below, in the parlours, there seems to be a migratory population,
-which comes in one week and goes out the next, and is, in some cases,
-not at all to be depended upon in the matter of paying rent. I happen
-to discover this latter fact, late one night, in rather an alarming
-and unexpected manner. Just before bedtime I descend, candle in hand,
-to a small back room, at the end of the passage, on the ground floor
-(used all day for the reception of general visitors, and empty, as I
-rashly infer, all night), for the purpose of getting a sofa cushion to
-eke out my scanty allowance of pillows. I no sooner open the door and
-approach the sofa than I behold, to my horror and amazement, Mrs.
-Glutch coiled up on it, with all her clothes on, and with a wavy,
-coffee-coloured wrapper flung over her shoulders. Before I can turn
-round to run away, she is on her legs, wide awake in an instant, and
-politer than ever. She makes me a long speech of explanation, which
-begins with "I beg pardon," and ends with "Thank you, sir;" and from
-the substance of which I gather that the parlour lodgers for the past
-week are going away the next morning; that they are the likeliest
-people in the world to forget to pay their lawful debts; and that Mrs.
-Glutch is going to lie in ambush for them all night, in the
-coffee-coloured wrapper, ready the instant the parlour door opens, to
-spring out into the passage and call for her rent.
-
-What am I about? I am relapsing insensibly into the inevitable and
-abhorrent subject of Mrs. Glutch, exactly in accordance with my
-foreboding of a few pages back. Let me make one more attempt to get
-away from my landlady. If I try to describe my room, I am sure to get
-back to her, because she is always in it. Suppose I get out of the
-house altogether, and escape into the street?
-
-All men, I imagine, have an interest of some kind in the locality in
-which they live. My interest in Smeary Street is entirely associated
-with my daily meals, which are publicly paraded all day long on the
-pavement. In explanation of this rather original course of proceeding,
-I must mention that I am ordered to eat "little and often," and must
-add, that I cannot obey the direction if the food is cooked on the
-premises in which I live, because I have had the misfortune to look
-down certain underground stairs and to discover that in the lowest
-depth of dirt, which I take to be the stairs themselves, there is a
-lower deep still, which is the kitchen at the bottom of them. Under
-these peculiar circumstances, I am reduced to appeal for nourishment
-and cleanliness in combination, to the tender mercies (and kitchen) of
-the friends in my neighbourhood, to whom I have alluded at the outset
-of this narrative. They commiserate and help me with the readiest
-kindness. Devoted messengers, laden with light food, pass and repass
-all day long between their house and my bedroom. The dulness of Smeary
-Street is enlivened by perpetual snacks carried in public procession.
-The eyes of my opposite neighbours, staring out of window, and not
-looking as if they cared about my being ill, are regaled from morning
-to night by passing dishes and basins, which go westward full and
-steaming, and return eastward eloquently empty. My neighbourhood knows
-when I dine, and can smell out, if it pleases, what I have for dinner.
-The early housemaid kneeling on the doorstep, can stay her scrubbing
-hand and turn her pensive head and scan my simple breakfast, before I
-know what it will be myself. The mid-day idler, lounging along Smeary
-Street, is often sweetly reminded of his own luncheon by meeting mine.
-Friends who knock at my door may smell my dinner behind them, and know
-how I am keeping up my stamina, before they have had time to inquire
-after my health. My supper makes the outer darkness savoury as the
-evening closes in; and my empty dishes startle the gathering silence
-with convivial clatter as they wend on their homeward way the last
-thing at night.
-
-Is there no dark side to this bright picture? Is there never any hitch
-in these friendly arrangements for feeding me in the cleanest way, on
-the most appetising diet? Yes--there is a hitch. Will you give it a
-name? I will. Its name is Mrs. Glutch.
-
-It is, I am well aware, only to be expected that my landlady should
-resent the tacit condemnation of her cleanliness and cookery implied
-in the dietary arrangements which I have made with my friends. If she
-would only express her sense of offence by sulking or flying into a
-passion, I should not complain; for in the first case supposed, I
-might get the better of her by noticing nothing, and, in the second, I
-might hope, in course of time, to smooth her down by soft answers and
-polite prevarications. But the means she actually takes of punishing
-me for my too acute sense of the dirtiness of her kitchen, are of
-such a diabolically ingenious nature, and involve such a continuous
-series of small persecutions, that I am rendered, from first to last,
-quite powerless to oppose her. Shall I describe her plan of annoyance?
-I _must_ describe it--I must return to my one prohibited topic (as I
-foreboded I should) in spite of myself.
-
-Mrs. Glutch, then, instead of visiting her wrath on me, or my food, or
-my friends, or my friends' messengers, avenges herself entirely on
-their tray-cloths and dishes. She does not tear the first nor break
-the second--for that would be only a simple and primitive system of
-persecution--but she smuggles them, one by one, out of my room, and
-merges them inextricably with her own property, in the grimy regions
-of the kitchen. She has a power of invisibly secreting the largest
-pie-dishes, and the most voluminous cloths, under my very eyes, which
-I can compare to nothing but sleight of hand. Every morning I see
-table utensils which my friends lend me, ranged ready to go back, in
-my own room. Every evening, when they are wanted, I find that some of
-them are missing, and that my landlady is even more surprised by that
-circumstance than I am myself. If my friends' servant ventures to say,
-in her presence, that the cook wants her yesterday's tray-cloth, and
-if I refer him to Mrs. Glutch, the immoveable woman only sniffs,
-tosses her head, and "wonders how the young man can have demeaned
-himself by bringing her such a peremptory message." If I try on my own
-sole responsibility to recover the missing property, she lets me see,
-by her manner at the outset, that she thinks I suspect her of stealing
-it. If I take no notice of this manoeuvre, and innocently persist in
-asking additional questions about the missing object, the following is
-a sample of the kind of dialogue that is sure to pass between us:--
-
-"I think, Mrs. Glutch"----
-
-"Yes, sir!"
-
-"I think one of my friends' large pudding-basins has gone
-down-stairs."
-
-"Really, now, sir? A large pudding-basin? No: I think not."
-
-"But I can't find it up here, and it is wanted back."
-
-"Naturally, sir."
-
-"I put it on the drawers, Mrs. Glutch, ready to go back, last night."
-
-"Did you, indeed, sir?"
-
-"Perhaps the servant took it down-stairs to clean it?"
-
-"Not at all likely, sir. If you will please to remember, you told her
-last Monday evening--or, no, I beg pardon--last Tuesday morning, that
-your friends cleaned up their own dishes, and that their things was
-not to be touched."
-
-"Perhaps you took it down-stairs then yourself, Mrs. Glutch, by
-mistake?"
-
-"I, sir! I didn't. I couldn't. Why should I? I think you said a large
-pudding-basin, sir?"
-
-"Yes, I did say so."
-
-"I have ten large pudding-basins of my own, sir."
-
-"I am very glad to hear it. Will you be so good as to look among them,
-and see if my friends' basin has not got mixed up with your crockery?"
-
-Mrs. Glutch turns very red in the face, slowly scratches her muscular
-arms, as if she felt a sense of pugilistic irritation in them, looks
-at me steadily with a pair of glaring eyes, and leaves the room at the
-slowest possible pace. I wait and ring--wait and ring--wait and ring.
-After the third waiting and the third ringing, she reappears, redder
-of face and slower of march than before, with the missing article of
-property held out before her at arm's length.
-
-"I beg pardon, sir," she says, "but is this anything like your
-friends' large pudding-basin?"
-
-"That is the basin itself, Mrs. Glutch."
-
-"Really, now, sir? Well, as you seem so positive, it isn't for me to
-contradict you. But I hope I shall give no offence if I mention that I
-had ten large pudding-basins of my own, and that I miss one of them."
-
-With that last dexterous turn of speech, she gives up the basin with
-the air of a high-minded woman, who will resign her own property
-rather than expose herself to the injurious doubts of a morbidly
-suspicious man. When I add that the little scene just described takes
-place between us nearly every day, the reader will admit that,
-although Mrs. Glutch cannot prevent me from enjoying on her dirty
-premises the contraband luxury of a clean dinner, she can at least go
-great lengths towards accomplishing the secondary annoyance of
-preventing me from digesting it.
-
-I have hinted at a third personage in the shape of a servant, in my
-report of the foregoing dialogue; and I have previously alluded to
-myself (in paving the way for the introduction of my landlady), as
-extending my studies of human character, in my London lodging, to
-those forlorn members of the population called maids-of-all-work. The
-maids--I use the plural number advisedly--present themselves to me to
-be studied, as apprentices to the hard business of service, under the
-matronly superintendence of Mrs. Glutch. The succession of them is
-brisk enough to keep all the attention I can withdraw from my landlady
-constantly employed in investigating their peculiarities. By the time
-I have been three weeks in Smeary Street, I have had three
-maids-of-all-work, to study--a new servant for each week! In reviewing
-the three individually before the reader, I must be allowed to
-distinguish them by numbers instead of names. Mrs. Glutch screams at
-them all indiscriminately by the name of Mary, just as she would
-scream at a succession of cats by the name of Puss. Now, although I am
-always writing about Mrs. Glutch, I have still spirit enough left to
-vindicate my own individuality, by abstaining from following her
-example. In obedience, therefore, to these last relics of independent
-sentiment, permit me the freedom of numbering my maids-of-all-work, as
-I introduce them to public notice in these pages.
-
-Number One is amazed by the spectacle of my illness, and always stares
-at me. If I fell ill one evening, went to a dispensary, asked for a
-bottle of physic, and got well on it the next morning; or, if I
-presented myself before her at the last gasp, and died forthwith in
-Smeary Street, she would, in either case, be able to understand me.
-But an illness on which medicine produces no immediate effect, and
-which does not keep the patient always groaning in bed, is beyond her
-comprehension. Personally, she is very short and sturdy, and is always
-covered from head to foot with powdered black, which seems to lie
-especially thick on her in the morning. How does she accumulate it?
-Does she wash herself with the ordinary liquid used for ablutions; or
-does she take a plunge-bath every morning under the kitchen-grate? I
-am afraid to ask this question of her; but I contrive to make her talk
-to me about other things. She looks very much surprised, poor
-creature, when I first let her see that I have other words to utter in
-addressing her, besides the word of command; and seems to think me the
-most eccentric of mankind, when she finds that I have a decent anxiety
-to spare her all useless trouble in waiting on me. Young as she is,
-she has drudged so long over the wickedest ways of this world, without
-one leisure moment to look up from the everlasting dirt on the road at
-the green landscape around, and the pure sky above, that she has
-become hardened to the saddest, surely, of human lots before she is
-yet a woman grown. Life means dirty work, small wages, hard words, no
-holidays, no social station, no future, according to her experience of
-it. No human being ever was created for this. No state of society
-which composedly accepts this, in the cases of thousands, as one of
-the necessary conditions of its selfish comforts, can pass itself off
-as civilised, except under the most audacious of all false pretences.
-These thoughts rise in me often, when I ring the bell, and the
-maid-of-all-work answers it wearily. I cannot communicate them to her:
-I can only encourage her to talk to me now and then on something like
-equal terms. Just as I am succeeding in the attainment of this object,
-Number One scatters all my plans and purposes to the winds, by telling
-me that she is going away.
-
-I ask Why? and am told that she cannot bear being a-railed at and
-a-hunted about by Mrs. Glutch any longer. The oppressively polite
-woman who cannot address me without begging my pardon, can find no
-hard words in the vocabulary hard enough for the maid-of-all-work. "I
-am frightened of my life," says Number One, apologizing to me for
-leaving the place. "I am so little and she's so big. She heaves things
-at my head, she does. Work as hard as you may, you can't work hard
-enough for her. I must go, if you please, sir. Whatever do you think
-she done this morning? She up, and druv the creases at me." With these
-words (which I find mean in genteel English, that Mrs. Glutch has
-enforced her last orders to the servant by throwing a bunch of
-water-cresses at her head), Number One curtseys and says "Good-bye!"
-and goes out resignedly once again into the hard world. I follow her a
-little while, in imagination, with no very cheering effect on my
-spirits--for what do I see awaiting her at each stage of her career?
-Alas, for Number One, it is always a figure in the likeness of Mrs.
-Glutch.
-
-Number Two fairly baffles me. I see her grin perpetually at me, and
-imagine, at first, that I am regarded by her in the light of a new
-kind of impostor, who shams illness as a way of amusing himself. But I
-soon discover that she grins at everything--at the fire that she
-lights, at the cloth she lays for dinner, at the medicine-bottles she
-brings upstairs, at the furibund visage of Mrs. Glutch, ready to
-drive whole baskets full of creases at her head every morning. Looking
-at her with the eye of an artist, I am obliged to admit that Number
-Two is, as the painters say, out of drawing. The longest things about
-her are her arms; the thickest thing about her is her waist. It is
-impossible to believe that she has any legs, and it is not easy to find
-out the substitute which, in the absence of a neck, is used to keep
-her big head from rolling off her round shoulders. I try to make her
-talk, but only succeed in encouraging her to grin at me. Have ceaseless
-foul words, and ceaseless dirty work clouded over all the little light
-that has ever been let in on her mind? I suspect that it is so, but I
-have no time to acquire any positive information on the subject. At
-the end of Number Two's first week of service, Mrs. Glutch discovers,
-to her horror and indignation, that the new maid-of-all-work possesses
-nothing in the shape of wearing-apparel, except the worn-out garments
-actually on her back; and, to make matters worse, a lady-lodger in the
-parlour misses one of a pair of lace-cuffs, and feels sure that the
-servant has taken it. There is not a particle of evidence to support
-this view of the case; but Number Two being destitute, is consequently
-condemned without a trial, and dismissed without a character. She too
-wanders off forlorn into a world that has no haven of rest or voice
-of welcome for her--wanders off, without so much as a dirty bundle in
-her hand--wanders off, voiceless, with the unchanging grin on the
-smut-covered face. How shocked we should all be, if we opened a book
-about a savage country, and saw a portrait of Number Two in the
-frontispiece as a specimen of the female population!
-
-Number Three comes to us all the way from Wales; arrives late one
-evening, and is found at seven the next morning, crying as if she
-would break her heart, on the door-step. It is the first time she has
-been away from home. She has not got used yet to being a forlorn
-castaway among strangers. She misses the cows of a morning, the
-blessed fields with the blush of sunrise on them, the familiar faces,
-the familiar sounds, the familiar cleanliness of her country home.
-There is not the faintest echo of mother's voice, or of father's
-sturdy footfall here. Sweetheart John Jones is hundreds of miles away;
-and little brother Joe toddles up door-steps far from these to clamour
-for the breakfast which he shall get this morning from other than his
-sister's hands. Is there nothing to cry for in this? Absolutely
-nothing, as Mrs. Glutch thinks. What does this Welsh barbarian mean by
-clinging to my area-railings when she ought to be lighting the fire;
-by sobbing in full view of the public of Smeary Street when the
-lodgers' bells are ringing angrily for breakfast? Will nothing get
-the girl in-doors? Yes, a few kind words from the woman who passes by
-her with my breakfast will. She knows that the Welsh girl is hungry as
-well as home-sick, questions her, finds out that she has had no supper
-after her long journey, and that she has been used to breakfast with
-the sunrise at the farm in Wales. A few merciful words lure her away
-from the railings, and a little food inaugurates the process of
-breaking her in to London service. She has but a few days allowed her,
-however, to practise the virtue of dogged resignation in her first
-place. Before she has given me many opportunities of studying her
-character, before she has done knitting her brows with the desperate
-mental effort of trying to comprehend the mystery of my illness,
-before the smut has fairly settled on her rosy cheeks, before the
-London dirt has dimmed the pattern on her neat print gown, she, too,
-is cast adrift into the world. She has not suited Mrs. Glutch (being,
-as I imagine, too offensively clean to form an appropriate part of the
-kitchen furniture)--a friendly maid-of-all-work, in service near us,
-has heard of a place for her--and she is forthwith sent away to be
-dirtied and deadened down to her proper social level in another
-Lodging-house.
-
-With her, my studies of character among maids-of-all-work come to an
-end. I hear vague rumours of the arrival of Number Four. But before
-she appears, I have got the doctor's leave to move into the country,
-and have terminated my experience of London lodgings, by making my
-escape with all convenient speed from the perpetual presence and
-persecutions of Mrs. Glutch. I have witnessed some sad sights during
-my stay in Smeary Street, which have taught me to feel for my poor and
-forlorn fellow-creatures as I do not think I ever felt for them
-before, and which have inclined me to doubt for the first time whether
-worse calamities might not have overtaken me than the hardship of
-falling ill.
-
-
-
-
-SKETCHES OF CHARACTER.--II.
-
-A SHOCKINGLY RUDE ARTICLE.
-
-[Communicated by A Charming Woman.]
-
-
-Before I begin to write, I know that this will be an unpopular
-composition in certain select quarters. I mean to proceed with it,
-however, in spite of that conviction, because when I have got
-something on my mind, I must positively speak. Is it necessary, after
-that, to confess that I am a woman? If it is, I make the
-confession--to my sorrow. I would much rather be a man.
-
-I hope nobody will be misled by my beginning in this way, into
-thinking that I am an advocate of the rights of women. Ridiculous
-creatures! they have too many rights already; and if they don't hold
-their chattering tongues, one of these days the poor dear deluded men
-will find them out.
-
-The poor dear men! Mentioning them reminds me of what I have got to
-say. I have been staying at the seaside, and reading an immense
-quantity of novels and periodicals, and all that sort of thing,
-lately; and my idea is, that the men-writers (the only writers worth
-reading) are in the habit of using each other very unfairly in books
-and articles, and so on. Look where I may, I find, for instance, that
-the large proportion of the bad characters in their otherwise very
-charming stories, are always men. As if women were not a great deal
-worse! Then, again, most of the amusing fools in their books are,
-strangely and unaccountably, of their own sex, in spite of its being
-perfectly apparent that the vast majority of that sort of character is
-to be found in ours. On the other hand, while they make out their own
-half of humanity (as I have distinctly proved) a great deal too bad,
-they go to the contrary extreme the other way, and make out our half a
-great deal too good. What in the world do they mean by representing us
-as so much better, and so much prettier, than we really are? Upon my
-word, when I see what angels the dear nice good men make of their
-heroines, and when I think of myself, and of the whole circle of my
-female friends besides, I feel quite disgusted,--I do, indeed.
-
-I should very much like to go into the whole of this subject at once,
-and speak my sentiments on it at the fullest length. But I will spare
-the reader, and try to be satisfied with going into a part of the
-subject instead; for, considering that I am a woman, and making
-immense allowances for me on that account, I am really not altogether
-unreasonable. Give me a page or two, and I will show in one
-particular, and, what is more, from real life, how absurdly partial
-the men-writers are to our sex, and how scandalously unjust they are
-to their own.
-
-Bores.--What I propose is, that we take for our present example
-characters of Bores alone. If we were only to read men's novels,
-articles, and so forth, I don't hesitate to say we should assume that
-all the Bores in the human creation were of the male sex. It is
-generally, if not always, a man, in men's books, who tells the
-long-winded story, and turns up at the wrong time, and makes himself
-altogether odious and intolerable to everybody he comes in contact
-with, without being in the least aware of it himself. How very unjust,
-and, I must be allowed to add, how extremely untrue! Women are quite
-as bad, or worse. Do, good gentlemen, look about you impartially, for
-once in a way, and own the truth. Good gracious! is not society full
-of Lady-Bores? Why not give them a turn when you write next?
-
-Two instances: I will quote only two instances out of hundreds I could
-produce from my own acquaintance. Only two: because, as I said before,
-I am reasonable about not taking up room. I can put things into a very
-small space when I write, as well as when I travel. I should like the
-literary gentleman who kindly prints this (I would not allow a woman
-to print it for any sum of money that could be offered me) to see how
-very little luggage I travel with. At any rate, he shall see how
-little room I can cheerfully put up with in these pages.
-
-My first Lady-Bore--see how quickly I get to the matter in hand,
-without wasting so much as a single line in prefatory phrases!--my
-first Lady-Bore is Miss Sticker. I don't in the least mind mentioning
-her name; because I know, if she got the chance, she would do just the
-same by me. It is of no use disguising the fact, so I may as well
-confess at once that Miss Sticker is a fright. Far be it from me to
-give pain where the thing can by any means be avoided; but if I were
-to say that Miss Sticker would ever see forty again, I should be
-guilty of an unwarrantable deception on the public. I have the
-strongest imaginable objection to mentioning the word petticoats; but
-if that is the only possible description of Miss Sticker's figure
-which conveys a true notion of its nature and composition, what am I
-to do? Perhaps I had better give up describing the poor thing's
-personal appearance. I shall get into deeper and deeper difficulties,
-if I attempt to go on. The very last time I was in her company, we
-were strolling about Regent Street, with my sister's husband for
-escort. As we passed a hairdresser's shop, the dear simple man looked
-in, and asked me what those long tails of hair were for, that he saw
-hanging up in the windows. Miss Sticker, poor soul, was on his arm,
-and heard him put the question. I thought I should have dropped.
-
-This is, I believe, what you call a digression. I shall let it stop
-in, however, because it will probably explain to the judicious reader
-why I carefully avoid the subject--the meagre subject, an ill-natured
-person might say--of Miss Sticker's hair. Suppose I pass on to what is
-more importantly connected with the object of these pages--suppose I
-describe Miss Sticker's character next.
-
-Some extremely sensible man has observed somewhere, that a Bore is a
-person with one idea. Exactly so. Miss Sticker is a person with one
-idea. Unhappily for society, her notion is, that she is bound by the
-laws of politeness to join in every conversation which happens to be
-proceeding within the range of her ears. She has no ideas, no
-information, no flow of language, no tact, no power of saying the
-right word at the right time, even by chance. And yet she _will_
-converse, as she calls it. "A gentlewoman, my dear, becomes a mere
-cipher in society unless she can converse." That is her way of putting
-it; and I deeply regret to add, she is one of the few people who
-preach what they practise. Her course of proceeding is, first, to
-check the conversation by making a remark which has no kind of
-relation to the topic under discussion. She next stops it altogether
-by being suddenly at a loss for some particular word which nobody can
-suggest. At last the word is given up; another subject is started in
-despair; and the company become warmly interested in it. Just at that
-moment, Miss Sticker finds the lost word; screams it out triumphantly
-in the middle of the talk; and so scatters the second subject to the
-winds, exactly as she has already scattered the first.
-
-The last time I called at my aunt's--I merely mention this by way of
-example--I found Miss Sticker there, and three delightful men. One was
-a clergyman of the dear old purple-faced Port-wine school. The other
-two would have looked military, if one of them had not been an
-engineer, and the other an editor of a newspaper. We should have had
-some delightful conversation if the Lady-Bore had not been present. In
-some way, I really forget how, we got to talking about giving credit
-and paying debts; and the dear old clergyman, with his twinkling eyes
-and his jolly voice, treated us to a professional anecdote on the
-subject.
-
-"Talking about that," he began, "I married a man the other day for the
-third time. Man in my parish. Capital cricketer when he was young
-enough to run. 'What's your fee?' says he. 'Licensed marriage?' says
-I; 'guinea of course.'--'I've got to bring you your tithes in three
-weeks, sir,' says he; 'give me tick till then.' 'All right,' says I,
-and married him. In three weeks he comes and pays his tithes like a
-man. 'Now, sir,' says he, 'about this marriage-fee, sir? I do hope
-you'll kindly let me off at half-price, for I have married a bitter
-bad 'un this time. I've got a half-a-guinea about me, sir, if you'll
-only please to take it. She isn't worth a farthing more--on the word
-of a man, she isn't, sir!' I looked hard in his face, and saw two
-scratches on it, and took the half-guinea, more out of pity than
-anything else. Lesson to me, however. Never marry a man on credit
-again, as long as I live. Cash on all future occasions--cash down, or
-no marriage!"
-
-While he was speaking, I had my eye on Miss Sticker. Thanks to the
-luncheon which was on the table, she was physically incapable of
-"conversing" while our reverend friend was telling his humorous little
-anecdote. Just as he had done, and just as the editor of the newspaper
-was taking up the subject, she finished her chicken, and turned round
-from the table.
-
-"Cash down, my dear sir, as you say," continued the editor. "You
-exactly describe our great principle of action in the Press. Some of
-the most extraordinary and amusing things happen with subscribers to
-newspapers----"
-
-"Ah, the Press!" burst in Miss Sticker, beginning to converse. "What a
-wonderful engine! and how grateful we ought to feel when we get the
-paper so regularly every morning at breakfast. The only question
-is--at least, many people think so--I mean with regard to the Press,
-the only question is whether it ought to be----"
-
-Here Miss Sticker lost the next word, and all the company had to look
-for it.
-
-"With regard to the Press, the only question is, whether it ought to
-be----O, dear, dear, dear me!" cried Miss Sticker, lifting both her
-hands in despair, "what is the word?"
-
-"Cheaper?" suggested our reverend friend. "Hang it, ma'am! it can
-hardly be that, when it is down to a penny already."
-
-"O no; not cheaper," said Miss Sticker.
-
-"More independent?" inquired the editor. "If you mean that, I defy
-anybody to find more fearless exposures of corruption----"
-
-"No, no!" cried Miss Sticker, in an agony of polite confusion. "I
-didn't mean that. More independent wasn't the word."
-
-"Better printed?" suggested the engineer.
-
-"On better paper?" added my aunt.
-
-"It can't be done--if you refer to the cheap press--it can't be done
-for the money," interposed the editor, irritably.
-
-"O, but that's not it!" continued Miss Sticker, wringing her bony
-fingers, with horrid black mittens on them. "I didn't mean to say
-better printed, or better paper. It was one word I meant, not
-two.--With regard to the Press," pursued Miss Sticker, repeating her
-own ridiculous words carefully, as an aid to memory, "the only
-question is, whether it ought to be----Bless my heart, how
-extraordinary! Well, well, never mind: I'm quite shocked, and ashamed
-of myself. Pray go on talking, and don't notice me."
-
-It was all very well to say, Go on talking; but the editor's amusing
-story about subscribers to newspapers, had been, by this time, fatally
-interrupted. As usual, Miss Sticker had stopped us in full flow. The
-engineer considerately broke the silence by starting another subject.
-
-"Here are some wedding-cards on your table," he said, to my aunt,
-"which I am very glad to see there. The bridegroom is an old friend of
-mine. His wife is really a beauty. You know how he first became
-acquainted with her? No? It was quite an adventure, I assure you. One
-evening he was on the Brighton Railway; last down train. A lovely girl
-in the carriage; our friend Dilberry immensely struck with her. Got
-her to talk after a long time, with great difficulty. Within half an
-hour of Brighton, the lovely girl smiles, and says to our friend,
-'Shall we be very long now, sir, before we get to Gravesend?' Case of
-confusion at that dreadful London Bridge Terminus. Dilberry explained
-that she would be at Brighton in half an hour, upon which the lovely
-girl instantly and properly burst into tears. 'O, what shall I do! O,
-what will my friends think!' Second flood of tears.--'Suppose you
-telegraph?' says Dilberry soothingly.--'O, but I don't know how!' says
-the lovely girl. Out comes Dilberry's pocket-book. Sly dog! he saw his
-way now to finding out who her friends were. 'Pray let me write the
-necessary message for you,' says Dilberry. 'Who shall I direct to at
-Gravesend?'--'My father and mother are staying there with some
-friends,' says the lovely girl. 'I came up with a day-ticket, and I
-saw a crowd of people when I came back to the station, all going one
-way, and I was hurried and frightened, and nobody told me, and it was
-late in the evening, and the bell was ringing, and, O Heavens! what
-will become of me!' Third burst of tears.--'We will telegraph to your
-father,' says Dilberry. 'Pray don't distress yourself. Only tell me
-who your father is.'--'Thank you a thousand times,' says the lovely
-girl, 'my father is----'"
-
-"ANONYMOUS!" shouts Miss Sticker, producing her lost word with a
-perfect burst of triumph. "How glad I am I remembered it at last!
-Bless me," exclaims the Lady-Bore, quite unconscious that she has
-brought the engineer's story to an abrupt conclusion, by giving his
-distressed damsel an anonymous father; "Bless me! what are you all
-laughing at? I only meant to say that the question with regard to the
-Press was, whether it ought to be anonymous. What in the world is
-there to laugh at in that? I really don't see the joke."
-
-And this woman escapes scot-free, while comparatively innocent men are
-held up to ridicule, in novel after novel, by dozens at a time! When
-will the deluded male writers see my sex in its true colours, and
-describe it accordingly? When will Miss Sticker take her proper place
-in the literature of England?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-My second Lady-Bore is that hateful creature, Mrs. Tincklepaw. Where,
-over the whole interesting surface of male humanity (including
-Cannibals)--where is the man to be found whom it would not be
-scandalous to mention in the same breath with Mrs. Tincklepaw? The
-great delight of this shocking woman's life, is to squabble with her
-husband (poor man, he has my warmest sympathy and best good wishes),
-and then to bring the quarrel away from home with her, and to let it
-off again at society in general, in a series of short spiteful hints.
-Mrs. Tincklepaw is the exact opposite of Miss Sticker. She is a very
-little woman; she is (and more shame for her, considering how she
-acts) young enough to be Miss Sticker's daughter; and she has a kind
-of snappish tact in worrying innocent people, under every possible
-turn of circumstances, which distinguishes her (disgracefully) from
-the poor feeble-minded Maid-Bore, to whom the reader has been already
-introduced. Here are some examples--all taken, be it observed, from my
-own personal observation--of the manner in which Mrs. Tincklepaw
-contrives to persecute her harmless fellow-creatures wherever she
-happens to meet with them:
-
-Let us say I am out walking, and I happen to meet Mr. and Mrs.
-Tincklepaw. (By the bye, she never lets her husband out of her
-sight--he is too necessary to the execution of her schemes of petty
-torment. And such a noble creature, to be used for so base a purpose!
-He stands six feet two, and is additionally distinguished by a
-glorious and majestic stoutness, which has no sort of connection with
-the comparatively comic element of fat. His nature, considering what a
-wife he has got, is inexcusably meek and patient. Instead of answering
-her, he strokes his magnificent flaxen whiskers, and looks up
-resignedly at the sky. I sometimes fancy that he stands too high to
-hear what his dwarf of a wife says. For his sake, poor man, I hope
-this view of the matter may be the true one.)
-
-I am afraid I have contrived to lose myself in a long parenthesis.
-Where was I? O! out walking and happening to meet with Mr. and Mrs.
-Tincklepaw. She has had a quarrel with her husband at home, and this
-is how she contrives to let me know it.
-
-"Delightful weather, dear, is it not?" I say, as we shake hands.
-
-"Charming, indeed," says Mrs. Tincklepaw. "Do you know, love, I am so
-glad you made that remark to me, and not to Mr. Tincklepaw?"
-
-"Really?" I ask. "Pray tell me why?"
-
-"Because," answers the malicious creature, "if you had said it was a
-fine day to Mr. Tincklepaw, I should have been so afraid of his
-frowning at you directly, and saying, 'Stuff! talk of something worth
-listening to, if you talk at all.' What a love of a bonnet you have
-got on! and how Mr. Tincklepaw would have liked to be staying in your
-house when you were getting ready to-day to go out. He would have
-waited for you so patiently, dear. He would never have stamped in the
-passage; and no such words as, 'Deuce take the woman! is she going to
-keep me here all day?' would by any possibility have escaped his lips.
-Don't love! don't look at the shops, while Mr. Tincklepaw is with us.
-He might say, 'Oh, bother! you're always wanting to buy something!' I
-shouldn't like that to happen. Should you, dear?"
-
-Once more. Say I meet Mr. and Mrs. Tincklepaw at a dinner-party, given
-in honour of a bride and bridegroom. From the instant when she enters
-the house, Mrs. Tincklepaw never has her eye off the young couple. She
-looks at them with an expression of heart-broken curiosity. Whenever
-they happen to speak to each other, she instantly suspends any
-conversation in which she is engaged, and listens to them with a
-mournful eagerness. When the ladies retire, she gets the bride into a
-corner; appropriates her to herself for the rest of the evening; and
-persecutes the wretched young woman in this manner:--
-
-"May I ask, is this your first dinner, since you came back?"
-
-"O, no! we have been in town for some weeks."
-
-"Indeed? I should really have thought, now, that this was your first
-dinner."
-
-"Should you? I can't imagine why."
-
-"How very odd, when the reason is as plain as possible! Why, I noticed
-you all dinner time, eating and drinking what you liked, without
-looking at your husband for orders. I saw nothing rebellious in your
-face when you eat all these nice sweet things at dessert. Dear! dear!
-don't you understand? Do you really mean to say that your husband has
-not begun yet? Did he not say, as you drove here to day, 'Now, mind,
-I'm not going to have another night's rest broken, because you always
-choose to make yourself ill with stuffing creams and sweets, and all
-that sort of thing?' No!!! Mercy on me, what an odd man he must be!
-Perhaps he waits till he gets home again? O, come, come, you don't
-mean to tell me that he doesn't storm at you frightfully, for having
-every one of your glasses filled with wine, and then never touching a
-drop of it, but asking for cold water instead, at the very elbow of
-the master of the house? If he says, 'Cursed perversity, and want of
-proper tact' once, _I_ know he says it a dozen times. And as for
-treading on your dress in the hall, and then bullying you before the
-servant, for not holding it up out of his way, it's too common a thing
-to be mentioned--isn't it? Did you notice Mr. Tincklepaw particularly?
-Ah, you did, and you thought he looked good-natured? No! no! don't say
-any more; don't say you know better than to trust to appearances.
-Please do take leave of all common sense and experience, and pray
-trust to appearances, without thinking of their invariable
-deceitfulness, this once. Do, dear, to oblige _me_."
-
-I might fill pages with similar examples of the manners and
-conversation of this intolerable Lady-Bore. I might add other equally
-aggravating characters, to her character and to Miss Sticker's,
-without extending my researches an inch beyond the circle of my own
-acquaintance. But I am true to my unfeminine resolution to write as
-briefly as if I were a man; and I feel that I have said enough,
-already, to show that I can prove my case. When a woman like me can
-produce, without the least hesitation, or the slightest difficulty,
-two such instances of Lady-Bores as I have just exhibited, the
-additional number which she might pick out of her list, after a little
-mature reflection, may be logically inferred by all impartial readers.
-
-In the meantime, let me hope I have succeeded sufficiently well in my
-present purpose to induce our next great satirist to pause before he,
-too, attacks his harmless fellow-men, and to make him turn his
-withering glance in the direction of our sex. Let all rising young
-gentlemen who are racking their brains in search of originality, take
-the timely hint which I have given them in these pages. Let us have a
-new fictitious literature, in which not only the Bores shall be women,
-but the villains too. Look at Shakespeare--do, pray, look at
-Shakespeare. Who is most in fault, in that shocking business of the
-murder of King Duncan? Lady Macbeth, to be sure! Look at King Lear,
-with a small family of only three daughters, and two of the three,
-wretches; and even the third an aggravating girl, who can't be
-commonly civil to her own father in the first Act, out of sheer
-contradiction, because her elder sisters happen to have been civil
-before her. Look at Desdemona, who falls in love with a horrid
-copper-coloured foreigner, and then, like a fool, instead of managing
-him, aggravates him into smothering her. Ah! Shakespeare was a great
-man, and knew our sex, and was not afraid to show he knew it. What a
-blessing it would be, if some of his literary brethren, in modern
-times, could muster courage enough to follow his example!
-
-I have fifty different things to say, but I shall bring myself to a
-conclusion by only mentioning one of them. If it would at all
-contribute towards forwarding the literary reform that I advocate, to
-make a present of the characters of Miss Sticker and Mrs. Tincklepaw,
-to modern writers of fiction, I shall be delighted to abandon all
-right of proprietorship in those two odious women. At the same time, I
-think it fair to explain that when I speak of modern writers, I mean
-gentlemen-writers only. I wish to say nothing uncivil to the ladies
-who compose books, whose effusions may, by the rule of contraries, be
-exceedingly agreeable to male readers; but I positively forbid them to
-lay hands upon my two characters. I am charmed to be of use to the
-men, in a literary point of view, but I decline altogether to mix
-myself up with the women. There need be no fear of offending them by
-printing this candid expression of my intentions. Depend on it, they
-will all declare, on their sides, that they would much rather have
-nothing to do with _me_.
-
-
-
-
-NOOKS AND CORNERS OF HISTORY.
-
-II.
-
-THE GREAT (FORGOTTEN) INVASION.
-
-
-PREAMBLE.
-
-It happened some sixty years ago; it was a French invasion; and it
-actually took place in England. Thousands of people are alive at the
-present moment, who ought to remember it perfectly well. And yet it
-has been forgotten. In these times, when the French invasion that
-_may_ come, turns up perpetually, in public and in private, as a
-subject of discussion--the French invasion that _did_ come, is not
-honoured with so much as a passing word of notice. The new generation
-knows nothing about it. The old generation has carelessly forgotten
-it. This is discreditable, and it must be set right; this is a
-dangerous security, and it must be disturbed; this is a gap in the
-Modern History of England, and it must be filled up.
-
-Fathers and mothers, read and be reminded; British youths and maidens,
-read and be informed. Here follows the true history of the great
-forgotten Invasion of England, at the end of the last century; divided
-into scenes and periods, and carefully derived from proved and written
-facts recorded in Kelly's History of the Wars:
-
-I. OF THE FRENCH INVASION AS SEEN FROM ILFRACOMBE.
-
-On the twenty-second day of February, in the year seventeen hundred
-and ninety-seven, the inhabitants of North Devonshire looked towards
-the Bristol Channel, and saw the French invasion coming on, in four
-ships.
-
-The Directory of the French Republic had been threatening these
-islands some time previously; but much talk and little action having
-characterised the proceedings of that governing body in most other
-matters, no great apprehension was felt of their really carrying out
-their expressed intention in relation to this country. The war between
-the two nations was, at this time, confined to naval operations, in
-which the English invariably got the better of the French. North
-Devonshire (as well as the rest of England) was aware of this, and
-trusted implicitly in our supremacy of the seas. North Devonshire got
-up on the morning of the twenty-second of February, without a thought
-of the invasion; North Devonshire looked out towards the Bristol
-Channel, and there--in spite of our supremacy of the seas--there the
-invasion was, as large as life.
-
-Of the four ships which the Directory had sent to conquer England, two
-were frigates and two were smaller vessels. This formidable fleet
-sailed along, in view of a whole panic-stricken, defenceless coast;
-and the place at which it seemed inclined to try the invading
-experiment first, was Ilfracombe. The commander of the expedition
-brought his ships up before the harbour, scuttled a few coasting
-vessels, prepared to destroy the rest, thought better of it, and
-suddenly turned his four warlike sterns on North Devonshire, in the
-most unaccountable manner. History is silent as to the cause of this
-abrupt and singular change of purpose. Did the chief of the invaders
-act from sheer indecision? Did he distrust the hotel accommodation at
-Ilfracombe? Had he heard of the clotted cream of Devonshire, and did
-he apprehend the bilious disorganisation of the whole army, if they
-once got within reach of that luscious delicacy? These are important
-questions, but no satisfactory answer can be found to them. The
-motives which animated the commander of the invading Frenchmen, are
-buried in oblivion: the fact alone remains, that he spared Ilfracombe.
-The last that was seen of him from North Devonshire, he was sailing
-over ruthlessly to the devoted coast of Wales.
-
-
-II. OF THE FRENCH INVASION AS SEEN BY WELSHMEN IN GENERAL.
-
-In one respect it may be said that Wales was favoured by comparison
-with North Devonshire. The great fact of the French invasion had burst
-suddenly on Ilfracombe; but it only dawned in a gradual manner on the
-coast of Pembrokeshire. In the course of his cruise across the Bristol
-Channel, it had apparently occurred to the commander of the
-expedition, that a little diplomatic deception, at the outset, might
-prove to be of ultimate advantage to him. He decided, therefore, on
-concealing his true character from the eyes of the Welshmen; and when
-his four ships were first made out, from the heights above Saint
-Bride's Bay, they were all sailing under British colours.
-
-There are men in Wales, as in the rest of the world, whom it is
-impossible to satisfy; and there were spectators on the heights of
-Saint Bride's who were not satisfied with the British colours, on this
-occasion, because they felt doubtful about the ships that bore them.
-To the eyes of these sceptics all four vessels had an unpleasantly
-French look, and manoeuvred in an unpleasantly French manner. Wise
-Welshmen along the coast collected together by twos and threes, and
-sat down on the heights, and looked out to sea, and shook their heads,
-and suspected. But the majority, as usual, saw nothing extraordinary
-where nothing extraordinary appeared to be intended; and the country
-was not yet alarmed; and the four ships sailed on till they doubled
-Saint David's Head; and sailed on again, a few miles to the northward;
-and then stopped, and came to single anchor in Cardigan Bay.
-
-Here, again, another difficult question occurs, which recalcitrant
-History once more declines to solve. The Frenchmen had hardly been
-observed to cast their single anchors in Cardigan Bay, before they
-were also observed to pull them up again, and go on. Why? The
-commander of the expedition had doubted already at Ilfracombe--was he
-doubting again in Cardigan Bay? Or did he merely want time to mature
-his plans; and was it a peculiarity of his nature that he always
-required to come to anchor before he could think at his ease? To this
-mystery, as to the mystery at Ilfracombe, there is no solution; and
-here, as there, nothing is certainly known but that the Frenchman
-paused--threatened--and then sailed on.
-
-
-III. OF ONE WELSHMAN IN PARTICULAR, AND OF WHAT HE SAW.
-
-He was the only man in Great Britain who saw the invading army land on
-our native shores--and his name has perished.
-
-It is known that he was a Welshman, and that he belonged to the lower
-order of the population. He may be still alive--this man, who is
-connected with a crisis in English History, may be still alive--and
-nobody has found him out; nobody has taken his photograph; nobody has
-written a genial biographical notice of him; nobody has made him into
-an Entertainment; nobody has held a Commemoration of him; nobody has
-presented him with a testimonial, relieved him by a subscription, or
-addressed him with a speech. In these enlightened times, this brief
-record can only single him out and individually distinguish him--as
-the Hero of the Invasion. Such is Fame.
-
-The Hero of the Invasion, then, was standing, or sitting--for even on
-this important point tradition is silent--on the cliffs of the Welsh
-coast, near Lanonda Church, when he saw the four ships enter the bay
-below him, and come to anchor--this time, without showing any symptoms
-of getting under weigh again. The English colours, under which the
-Expedition had thus far attempted to deceive the population of the
-coast, were now hauled down, and the threatening flag of France was
-boldly hoisted in their stead. This done, the boats were lowered away,
-were filled with a ferocious soldiery, and were pointed straight for
-the beach.
-
-It is on record that the Hero of the Invasion distinctly saw this; and
-it is _not_ on record that he ran away. Honour to the unknown brave!
-Honour to the solitary Welshman who faced the French army!
-
-The boats came on straight to the beach--the ferocious soldiery leapt
-out on English soil, and swarmed up the cliff, thirsting for the
-subjugation of the British Isles. The Hero of the Invasion, watching
-solitary on the cliffs, saw the Frenchmen crawling up below
-him--tossing their muskets on before them--climbing with the cool
-calculation of an army of chimney-sweeps--nimble as the monkey, supple
-as the tiger, stealthy as the cat--hungry for plunder, bloodshed, and
-Welsh mutton--void of all respect for the British Constitution--an
-army of Invaders on the Land of the Habeas Corpus!
-
-The Welshman saw that, and vanished. Whether he waited with clenched
-fist till the head of the foremost Frenchman rose parallel with the
-cliff-side, or whether he achieved a long start, by letting the army
-get half-way up the cliff, and then retreating inland to give the
-alarm--is, like every other circumstance in connection with the Hero
-of the Invasion, a matter of the profoundest doubt. It is only known
-that he got away at all, because it is _not_ known that he was taken
-prisoner. He parts with us here, the shadow of a shade, the most
-impalpable of historical apparitions. Honour, nevertheless, to the
-crafty brave! Honour to the solitary Welshman who faced the French
-army without being shot, and retired from the French army without
-being caught!
-
-
-IV. OF WHAT THE INVADERS DID WHEN THEY GOT ON SHORE.
-
-The Art of Invasion has its routine, its laws, manners, and customs,
-like other Arts. And the French army acted strictly in accordance with
-established precedents. The first thing the first men did, when they
-got to the top of the cliff, was to strike a light and set fire to the
-furze-bushes. While national feeling deplores this destruction of
-property, unprejudiced History looks on at her ease. Given Invasion as
-a cause, fire follows, according to all known rules, as an effect. If
-an army of Englishmen had been invading France under similar
-circumstances, they, on their side, would necessarily have begun by
-setting fire to something; and unprejudiced History would, in that
-case also, have looked on at her ease.
-
-While the furze-bushes were blazing, the remainder of the
-invaders--assured by the sight of the flames, of their companions'
-success so far--was disembarking, and swarming up the rocks. When it
-was finally mustered on the top of the cliff, the army amounted to
-fourteen hundred men. This was the whole force which the Directory of
-the French Republic had thought it desirable to despatch for the
-subjugation of Great Britain. History, until she is certain of
-results, will pronounce no opinion on the wisdom of this proceeding.
-She knows that nothing in politics, is abstractedly rash, cruel,
-treacherous, or disgraceful--she knows that Success is the sole
-touchstone of merit--she knows that the man who fails is contemptible,
-and the man who succeeds is illustrious, without any reference to the
-means used in either case; to the character of the men; or to the
-nature of the motives under which they may have proceeded to action.
-If the Invasion succeeds, History will applaud it as an act of
-heroism: if it fails, History will condemn it as an act of folly.
-
-It has been said that the Invasion began creditably, according to the
-rules established in all cases of conquering. It continued to follow
-those rules with the most praiseworthy regularity. Having started with
-setting something on fire, it went on, in due course, to accomplish the
-other first objects of all Invasions, thieving and killing--performing
-much of the former, and little of the latter. Two rash Welshmen, who
-persisted in defending their native leeks, suffered accordingly: the
-rest lost nothing but their national victuals, and their national
-flannel. On this first day of the Invasion, when the army had done
-marauding, the results on both sides may be thus summed up. Gains to
-the French:--good dinners, and protection next the skin. Loss to the
-English:--mutton, stout Welsh flannel, and two rash countrymen.
-
-
-V. OF THE BRITISH DEFENCE, AND OF THE WAY IN WHICH THE WOMEN
-CONTRIBUTED TO IT.
-
-The appearance of the Frenchmen on the coast, and the loss to the
-English, mentioned above, produced the results naturally to be
-expected. The country was alarmed, and started up to defend itself.
-
-On the numbers of the invaders being known, and on its being
-discovered that, though they were without field-pieces, they had with
-them seventy cart-loads of powder and ball, and a quantity of
-grenades, the principal men in the country bestirred themselves in
-setting up the defence. Before nightfall, all the available men who
-knew anything of the art of fighting were collected. When the ranks
-were drawn out, the English defence was even more ridiculous in point
-of numbers than the French attack. It amounted, at a time when we were
-at war with France, and were supposed to be prepared for any dangers
-that might threaten--it amounted, including militia, fencibles, and
-yeomanry cavalry, to just six hundred and sixty men, or, in other
-words, to less than half the number of the invading Frenchmen.
-
-Fortunately for the credit of the nation, the command of this
-exceedingly compact force was taken by the principal grandee in the
-neighbourhood. He turned out to be a man of considerable cunning, as
-well as a man of high rank; and he was known by the style and title of
-the Earl of Cawdor.
-
-The one cheering circumstance in connection with the heavy
-responsibility which now rested on the shoulders of the Earl,
-consisted in this: that he had apparently no cause to dread internal
-treason as well as foreign invasion. The remarkably inconvenient spot
-which the French had selected for their landing, showed, not only that
-they themselves knew nothing of the coast, but that none of the
-inhabitants, who might have led them to an easier place of
-disembarkation, were privy to their purpose. So far so good. But
-still, the great difficulty remained of facing the French with an
-equality of numbers, and with the appearance, at least, of an equality
-of discipline. The first of these requisites it was easy to fulfil.
-There were hosts of colliers and other labourers in the
-neighbourhood,--big, bold, lusty fellows enough; but so far as the art
-of marching and using weapons was concerned, as helpless as a pack of
-children. The question was, how to make good use of these men for
-show-purposes, without allowing them fatally to embarrass the
-proceedings of their trained and disciplined companions. In this
-emergency, Lord Cawdor hit on a grand Idea. He boldly mixed the women
-up in the business--and it is unnecessary to add, that the business
-began to prosper from that lucky moment.
-
-In those days, the wives of the Welsh labourers wore, what the wives
-of all classes of the community have been wearing since--red
-petticoats. It was Lord Cawdor's happy idea to call on these
-patriot-matrons to sink the question of skirts; to forego the
-luxurious consideration of warmth; and to turn the colliers into
-military men (so far as external appearances, viewed at a distance,
-were concerned), by taking off the wives' red petticoats and putting
-them over the husbands' shoulders. Where patriot-matrons are
-concerned, no national appeal is made in vain, and no personal
-sacrifice is refused. All the women seized their strings, and stepped
-out of their petticoats on the spot. What man in that make-shift
-military but must think of "home and beauty," now that he had the
-tenderest memento of both to grace his shoulders and jog his memory?
-In an inconceivably short space of time every woman was shivering, and
-every collier was turned into a soldier.
-
-
-VI. OF HOW IT ALL ENDED.
-
-Thus recruited, Lord Cawdor marched off to the scene of action; and
-the patriot women, deprived of their husbands and their petticoats,
-retired, it is to be hoped and presumed, to the friendly shelter of
-bed. It was then close on nightfall, if not actually night; and the
-disorderly marching of the transformed colliers could not be
-perceived. But, when the British army took up its position, then was
-the time when the excellent stratagem of Lord Cawdor told at its true
-worth. By the uncertain light of fires and torches, the French scouts,
-let them venture as near as they might, could see nothing in detail. A
-man in a scarlet petticoat looked as soldier-like as a man in a
-scarlet coat, under those dusky circumstances. All that the enemy
-could now see were lines on lines of men in red, the famous uniform of
-the English army.
-
-The council of the French braves must have been a perturbed assembly
-on that memorable night. Behind them, was the empty bay--for the four
-ships, after landing the invaders, had set sail again for France,
-sublimely indifferent to the fate of the fourteen hundred. Before
-them, there waited in battle array an apparently formidable force of
-British soldiers. Under them was the hostile English ground on which
-they were trespassers caught in the fact. Girt about by these serious
-perils, the discreet commander of the Invasion fell back on those
-safeguards of caution and deliberation of which he had already given
-proofs on approaching the English shore. He had doubted at Ilfracombe;
-he had doubted again in Cardigan Bay; and now, on the eve of the
-first battle, he doubted for the third time--doubted, and gave in. If
-History declines to receive the French commander as a hero, Philosophy
-opens her peaceful doors to him, and welcomes him in the character of
-a wise man.
-
-At ten o'clock that night, a flag of truce appeared in the English
-camp, and a letter was delivered to Lord Cawdor from the prudent chief
-of the invaders. The letter set forth, with amazing gravity and
-dignity, that the circumstances under which the French troops had
-landed, having rendered it "unnecessary" to attempt any military
-operations, the commanding officer did not object to come forward
-generously and propose terms of capitulation. Such a message as this
-was little calculated to impose on any man--far less on the artful
-nobleman who had invented the stratagem of the red petticoats. Taking
-a slightly different view of the circumstances, and declining
-altogether to believe that the French Directory had sent fourteen
-hundred men over to England to divert the inhabitants by the spectacle
-of a capitulation, Lord Cawdor returned for answer that he did not
-feel himself at liberty to treat with the French commander, except on
-the condition of his men surrendering as prisoners of war. On
-receiving this reply, the Frenchman gave an additional proof of that
-philosophical turn of mind which has been already claimed for him as
-one of his merits, by politely adopting the course which Lord Cawdor
-suggested. By noon the next day, the French troops were all marched
-off, prisoners of war--the patriot-matrons had resumed their
-petticoats--and the short terror of the invasion had happily passed
-away.
-
-The first question that occurred to everybody, as soon as the alarm
-had been dissipated, was, what this extraordinary burlesque of an
-invasion could possibly mean. It was asserted, in some quarters, that
-the fourteen hundred Frenchmen had been recruited from those
-insurgents of La Vendee who had enlisted in the service of the
-Republic, who could not be trusted at home, and who were therefore
-despatched on the first desperate service that might offer itself
-abroad. Others represented the invading army as a mere gang of
-galley-slaves and criminals in general, who had been landed on our
-shores with the double purpose of annoying England and ridding France
-of a pack of rascals. The commander of the expedition, however,
-disposed of this latter theory by declaring that six hundred of his
-men were picked veterans from the French army, and by referring, for
-corroboration of this statement, to his large supplies of powder,
-ball, and hand-grenades, which would certainly not have been wasted,
-at a time when military stores were especially precious, on a gang of
-galley-slaves.
-
-The truth seems to be, that the French (who were even more densely
-ignorant of England and English institutions at that time than they
-are at this) had been so entirely deceived by false reports of the
-temper and sentiments of our people, as to believe that the mere
-appearance of the troops of the Republic on these Monarchical shores,
-would be the signal for a revolutionary rising of all the disaffected
-classes from one end of Great Britain to the other. Viewed merely as
-materials for kindling the insurrectionary spark, the fourteen hundred
-Frenchmen might certainly be considered sufficient for the
-purpose--providing the Directory of the Republic could only have made
-sure beforehand that the English tinder might be depended on to catch
-light!
-
-One last event must be recorded before this History can be considered
-complete. The disasters of the invading army, on shore, were matched,
-at sea, by the disasters of the vessels that had carried them. Of the
-four ships which had alarmed the English coast, the two largest (the
-frigates) were both captured, as they were standing in for Brest
-Harbour, by Sir Harry Neale. This smart and final correction of the
-fractious little French invasion was administered on the ninth of
-March, seventeen hundred and ninety-seven.
-
-
-MORAL.
-
-This is the history of the Great (Forgotten) Invasion. It is short, it
-is not impressive, it is unquestionably deficient in serious interest.
-But there is a Moral to be drawn from it, nevertheless. If we are
-invaded again, and on a rather larger scale, let us not be so
-ill-prepared, this next time, as to be obliged to take refuge in our
-wives' red petticoats.
-
-
-
-
-CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.--I.
-
-THE UNKNOWN PUBLIC.
-
-
-Do the customers at publishing-houses, the members of book-clubs and
-circulating libraries, and the purchasers and borrowers of newspapers
-and reviews, compose altogether the great bulk of the reading public
-of England? There was a time when, if anybody had put this question to
-me, I, for one, should certainly have answered, Yes.
-
-I know better now. So far from composing the bulk of English readers,
-the public just mentioned represents nothing more than the minority.
-
-This startling discovery dawned upon me gradually. I made my first
-approaches towards it, in walking about London, more especially in the
-second and third rate neighbourhoods. At such times, whenever I passed
-a small stationer's or small tobacconist's shop, I became mechanically
-conscious of certain publications which invariably occupied the
-windows. These publications all appeared to be of the same small
-quarto size; they seemed to consist merely of a few unbound pages;
-each one of them had a picture on the upper half of the front leaf,
-and a quantity of small print on the under. I noticed just as much as
-this, for some time, and no more. None of the gentlemen who profess to
-guide my taste in literary matters, had ever directed my attention
-towards these mysterious publications. My favourite Review is, as I
-firmly believe, at this very day, unconscious of their existence. My
-enterprising librarian--who forces all sorts of books on my attention
-that I don't want to read, because he has bought whole editions of
-them a great bargain--has never yet tried me with the limp unbound
-picture-quarto of the small shops. Day after day, and week after week,
-the mysterious publications haunted my walks, go where I might; and,
-still, I was too careless to stop and notice them in detail. I left
-London and travelled about England. The neglected publications
-followed me. There they were in every town, large or small. I saw them
-in fruit-shops, in oyster-shops, in cigar-shops, in lozenge-shops.
-Villages even--picturesque, strong-smelling villages--were not free
-from them. Wherever the speculative daring of one man could open a
-shop, and the human appetites and necessities of his fellow-mortals
-could keep it from shutting up again--there, as it appeared to me, the
-unbound picture-quarto instantly entered, set itself up obtrusively in
-the window, and insisted on being looked at by everybody. "Buy me,
-borrow me, stare at me, steal me. Oh, inattentive stranger, do
-anything but pass me by!"
-
-Under this sort of compulsion, it was not long before I began to stop
-at shop-windows and look attentively at these all-pervading specimens
-of what was to me a new species of literary production. I made
-acquaintance with one of them among the deserts of West Cornwall; with
-another in a populous thoroughfare of Whitechapel; with a third in a
-dreary little lost town at the north of Scotland. I went into a lovely
-county of South Wales; the modest railway had not penetrated to it,
-but the audacious picture-quarto had found it out. Who could resist
-this perpetual, this inevitable, this magnificently unlimited appeal
-to notice and patronage? From looking in at the windows of the shops,
-I got on to entering the shops themselves--to buying specimens of this
-locust-flight of small publications--to making strict examination of
-them from the first page to the last--and finally, to instituting
-inquiries about them in all sorts of well-informed quarters. The
-result has been the discovery of an Unknown Public; a public to be
-counted by millions; the mysterious, the unfathomable, the universal
-public of the penny-novel-Journals.[2]
-
-I have five of these journals now before me, represented by one sample
-copy, bought hap-hazard, of each. There are many more; but these five
-represent the successful and well-established members of the literary
-family. The eldest of them is a stout lad of fifteen years' standing.
-The youngest is an infant of three months old. All five are sold at
-the same price of one penny; all five are published regularly once a
-week; all five contain about the same quantity of matter. The weekly
-circulation of the most successful of the five, is now publicly
-advertised (and, as I am informed, without exaggeration) at half a
-Million. Taking the other four as attaining altogether to a
-circulation of another half million (which is probably much under the
-right estimate) we have a sale of a Million weekly for five penny
-journals. Reckoning only three readers to each copy sold, the result
-is _a public of three millions_--a public unknown to the literary
-world; unknown, as disciples, to the whole body of professed critics;
-unknown, as customers, at the great libraries and the great
-publishing-houses; unknown, as an audience, to the distinguished
-English writers of our own time. A reading public of three millions
-which lies right out of the pale of literary civilisation, is a
-phenomenon worth examining--a mystery which the sharpest man among us
-may not find it easy to solve.
-
-In the first place, who are the three millions--the Unknown Public--as
-I have ventured to call them?
-
-The known reading public--the minority already referred to--are easily
-discovered and classified. There is the religious public, with
-booksellers and literature of its own, which includes reviews and
-newspapers as well as books. There is the public which reads for
-information, and devotes itself to Histories, Biographies, Essays,
-Treatises, Voyages and Travels. There is the public which reads for
-amusement, and patronises the Circulating Libraries and the railway
-book-stalls. There is, lastly, the public which reads nothing but
-newspapers. We all know where to lay our hands on the people who
-represent these various classes. We see the books they like on their
-tables. We meet them out at dinner, and hear them talk of their
-favourite authors. We know, if we are at all conversant with literary
-matters, even the very districts of London in which certain classes of
-people live who are to be depended upon beforehand as the picked
-readers for certain kinds of books. But what do we know of the
-enormous outlawed majority--of the lost literary tribes--of the
-prodigious, the overwhelming three millions? Absolutely nothing.
-
-I myself--and I say it to my sorrow--have a very large circle of
-acquaintance. Ever since I undertook the interesting task of exploring
-the Unknown Public, I have been trying to discover among my dear
-friends and my bitter enemies (both alike on my visiting list), a
-subscriber to a penny-novel-journal--and I have never yet succeeded in
-the attempt. I have heard theories started as to the probable
-existence of penny-novel-journals in kitchen dressers, in the back
-parlours of Easy Shaving Shops, in the greasy seclusion of the boxes
-at the small Chop Houses. But I have never yet met with any man,
-woman, or child who could answer the inquiry, "Do you subscribe to a
-penny journal?" plainly in the affirmative, and who could produce the
-periodical in question. I have learnt, years ago, to despair of ever
-meeting with a single woman, after a certain age, who has not had an
-offer of marriage. I have given up, long since, all idea of ever
-discovering a man who has himself seen a ghost, as distinguished from
-that other inevitable man who has had a bosom friend who has
-unquestionably seen one. These are two among many other aspirations of
-a wasted life which I have definitely resigned. I have now to add one
-more to the number of my vanished illusions.
-
-In the absence, therefore, of any positive information on the subject,
-it is only possible to pursue the present investigation by accepting
-such negative evidence as may help us to guess with more or less
-accuracy, at the social position, the habits, the tastes, and the
-average intelligence of the Unknown Public. Arguing carefully by
-inference, we may hope, in this matter, to arrive at something like a
-safe, if not a satisfactory, conclusion.
-
-To begin with, it may be fairly assumed--seeing that the staple
-commodity of each one of the five journals before me, is composed of
-Stories--that the Unknown Public reads for its amusement more than for
-its information.
-
-Judging by my own experience, I should be inclined to add, that the
-Unknown Public looks to quantity rather than quality in spending its
-penny a-week on literature. In buying my five specimen copies, at five
-different shops, I purposely approached the individual behind the
-counter, on each occasion, in the character of a member of the Unknown
-Public--say, Number Three Million and One--who wished to be guided in
-laying out a penny entirely by the recommendation of the shopkeeper
-himself. I expected, by this course of proceeding, to hear a little
-popular criticism, and to get at what the conditions of success might
-be, in a branch of literature which was quite new to me. No such
-result rewarded my efforts in any case. The dialogue between buyer and
-seller always took some such practical turn as this:
-
-_Reader, Number Three Million and One._--"I want to take in one of the
-penny journals. Which do you recommend?"
-
-_Enterprising Publisher._--"Some likes one, and some likes another.
-They're all good pennorths. Seen this one?"
-
-"Yes."
-
-"Seen that one?"
-
-"No."
-
-"Look what a pennorth!"
-
-"Yes--but about the stories in this one? Are they as good, now, as the
-stories in that one?"
-
-"Well, you see, some likes one, and some likes another. Sometimes I
-sells more of one, and sometimes I sells more of another. Take 'em all
-the year round, and there ain't a pin, as I knows of, to choose
-between 'em. There's just about as much in one as there is in another.
-All good pennorths. Bless your soul, just take 'em up and look for
-yourself! All good pennorths, choose where you like!"
-
-I never got any farther than this, try as I might. And yet, I found
-the shopkeepers, both men and women, ready enough to talk on other
-topics. On each occasion, so far from receiving any practical hints
-that I was interrupting business, I found myself sociably delayed in
-the shop, after I had made my purchase, as if I had been an old
-acquaintance. I got all sorts of curious information on all sorts of
-subjects,--excepting the good pennorth of print in my pocket. Does the
-reader know the singular facts in connection with Everton Toffey? It
-is like Eau de Cologne. There is only one genuine receipt for making
-it, in the world. It has been a family inheritance from remote
-antiquity. You may go here, there, and everywhere, and buy what you
-think is Everton Toffey (or Eau de Cologne); but there is only one
-place in London, as there is only one place in Cologne, at which you
-can obtain the genuine article. That information was given me at one
-penny-journal shop. At another, the proprietor explained his new
-system of Staymaking to me. He offered to provide my wife with
-something that would support her muscles and not pinch her flesh; and,
-what was more, he was not the man to ask for his bill, afterwards,
-except in the case of giving both of us perfect satisfaction. This man
-was so talkative and intelligent: he could tell me all about so many
-other things besides stays, that I took it for granted he could give
-me the information of which I stood in need. But here again I was
-disappointed. He had a perfect snow-drift of penny journals all over
-his counter--he snatched them up by handfuls, and gesticulated with
-them cheerfully; he smacked and patted them, and brushed them all up
-in a heap, to express to me that "the whole lot would be worked off by
-the evening;" but he, too, when I brought him to close quarters, only
-repeated the one inevitable form of words: "A good pennorth; that's
-all I can say! Bless your soul, look at any one of them for yourself,
-and see what a pennorth it is!"
-
-Having, inferentially, arrived at the two conclusions that the Unknown
-Public reads for amusement, and that it looks to quantity in its
-reading, rather than to quality, I might have found it difficult to
-proceed further towards the making of new discoveries, but for the
-existence of a very remarkable aid to inquiry, which is common to all
-the penny-novel-journals alike.
-
-The peculiar facilities to which I now refer, are presented in the
-Answers to Correspondents. The page containing these is, beyond all
-comparison, the most interesting page in the penny journals. There is
-no earthly subject that it is possible to discuss, no private affair
-that it is possible to conceive, which the inscrutable Unknown Public
-will not confide to the Editor in the form of a question, and which
-the editor will not set himself seriously and resolutely to answer.
-Hidden under cover of initials, or Christian names, or conventional
-signatures--such as Subscriber, Constant Reader, and so forth--the
-editor's correspondents seem, many of them, to judge by the published
-answers to their questions, utterly impervious to the senses of
-ridicule or shame. Young girls beset by perplexities which are usually
-supposed to be reserved for a mother's or an elder sister's ear,
-consult the editor. Married women who have committed little frailties,
-consult the editor. Male jilts in deadly fear of actions for breach of
-promise of marriage, consult the editor. Ladies whose complexions are
-on the wane, and who wish to know the best artificial means of
-restoring them, consult the editor. Gentlemen who want to dye their
-hair, and get rid of their corns, consult the editor. Inconceivably
-dense ignorance, inconceivably petty malice, and inconceivably
-complacent vanity, all consult the editor, and all, wonderful to
-relate, get serious answers from him. No mortal position is too
-difficult for this wonderful man; there is no change of character as
-general referee, which he is not prepared to assume on the instant.
-Now he is a father, now a mother, now a schoolmaster, now a confessor,
-now a doctor, now a lawyer, now a young lady's confidante, now a young
-gentleman's bosom friend, now a lecturer on morals, and now an
-authority in cookery.
-
-However, our present business is not with the editor, but with his
-readers. As a means of getting at the average intelligence of the
-Unknown Public--as a means of testing the general amount of education
-which they have acquired, and of ascertaining what share of taste and
-delicacy they have inherited from Nature--these extraordinary Answers
-to Correspondents may fairly be produced in detail, to serve us for a
-guide. I must premise, that I have not maliciously hunted them up out
-of many numbers; I have merely looked into my five sample copies of
-five separate journals,--all, I repeat, bought, accidentally, just as
-they happened to catch my attention in the shop windows. I have not
-waited for bad specimens, or anxiously watched for good: I have
-impartially taken my chance. And now, just as impartially, I dip into
-one journal after another, on the Correspondents' page, exactly as the
-five happen to lie on my desk. The result is, that I have the pleasure
-of presenting to those ladies and gentlemen who may honour me with
-their attention, the following members of the Unknown Public, who are
-in a condition to speak quite unreservedly for themselves:--
-
-A reader of a penny-novel-journal who wants a receipt for gingerbread.
-A reader who complains of fulness in his throat. Several readers who
-want cures for grey hair, for warts, for sores on the head, for
-nervousness, and for worms. Two readers who have trifled with Woman's
-Affections, and who want to know if Woman can sue them for breach of
-promise of marriage. A reader who wants to know what the sacred
-initials I. H. S. mean, and how to get rid of small-pox marks. Another
-reader who desires to be informed what an esquire is. Another who
-cannot tell how to pronounce picturesque and acquiescence. Another who
-requires to be told that _chiar'oscuro_ is a term used by painters.
-Three readers who want to know how to soften ivory, how to get a
-divorce, and how to make black varnish. A reader who is not certain
-what the word Poems means; not certain that Mazeppa was written by
-Lord Byron; not certain whether there are such things in the world as
-printed and published Lives of Napoleon Bonaparte.
-
-Two afflicted readers, well worthy of a place by themselves, who want
-a receipt apiece for the cure of knock-knees; and who are referred (it
-is to be hoped, by a straight-legged editor) to a former answer,
-addressed to other sufferers, which contains the information they
-require.
-
-Two readers respectively unaware, until the editor has enlightened
-them, that the author of Robinson Crusoe was Daniel Defoe, and the
-author of the Irish Melodies, Thomas Moore. Another reader, a trifle
-denser, who requires to be told that the histories of Greece and Rome
-are ancient histories, and the histories of France and England modern
-histories.
-
-A reader who wants to know the right hour of the day at which to visit
-a newly-married couple. A reader who wants a receipt for liquid
-blacking.
-
-A lady reader who expresses her sentiments prettily on crinoline.
-Another lady reader who wants to know how to make crumpets. Another
-who has received presents from a gentleman to whom she is not engaged,
-and who wants the editor to tell her whether she is right or wrong.
-Two lady readers who require lovers, and wish the editor to provide
-them. Two timid girls, who are respectively afraid of a French
-invasion and dragon-flies.
-
-A Don Juan of a reader who wants the private address of a certain
-actress. A reader with a noble ambition who wishes to lecture, and
-wants to hear of an establishment at which he can buy discourses
-ready-made. A natty reader, who wants German polish for boots and
-shoes. A sore-headed reader, who is editorially advised to use soap
-and warm water. A virtuous reader, who writes to condemn married women
-for listening to compliments, and who is informed by an equally
-virtuous editor that his remarks are neatly expressed. A guilty
-(female) reader, who confides her frailties to a moral editor, and
-shocks him. A pale-faced reader, who asks if she shall darken her
-skin. Another pale-faced reader, who asks if she shall put on rouge.
-An undecided reader, who asks if there is any inconsistency in a
-dancing-mistress being a teacher at a Sunday-school. A bashful reader,
-who has been four years in love with a lady, and has not yet mentioned
-it to her. A speculative reader who wishes to know if he can sell
-lemonade without a licence. An uncertain reader, who wants to be told
-whether he had better declare his feelings frankly and honourably at
-once. An indignant female reader, who reviles all the gentlemen in her
-neighbourhood because they don't take the ladies out. A scorbutic
-reader, who wants to be cured. A pimply reader in the same condition.
-A jilted reader, who writes to know what his best revenge may be, and
-who is advised by a wary editor to try indifference. A domestic
-reader, who wishes to be told the weight of a newly-born child. An
-inquisitive reader, who wants to know if the name of David's mother is
-mentioned in the Scriptures.
-
-Here are ten editorial sentiments on things in general, which are
-pronounced at the express request of correspondents, and which are
-therefore likely to be of use in assisting us to form an estimate of
-the intellectual condition of the Unknown Public:
-
-1. All months are lucky to marry in, when your union is hallowed by
-love.
-
-2. When you have a sad trick of blushing on being introduced to a
-young lady, and when you want to correct the habit, summon to your aid
-a manly confidence.
-
-3. If you want to write neatly, do not bestow too much ink on
-occasional strokes.
-
-4. You should not shake hands with a lady on your first introduction
-to her.
-
-5. You can sell ointment without a patent.
-
-6. A widow should at once and most decidedly discourage the lightest
-attentions on the part of a married man.
-
-7. A rash and thoughtless girl will scarcely make a steady thoughtful
-wife.
-
-8. We do not object to a moderate quantity of crinoline.
-
-9. A sensible and honourable man never flirts himself, and ever
-despises flirts of the other sex.
-
-10. A collier will not better his condition by going to Prussia.
-
-At the risk of being wearisome, I must once more repeat that these
-selections from the Answers to Correspondents, incredibly absurd as
-they may appear, are presented _exactly as I find them_. Nothing is
-exaggerated for the sake of a joke; nothing is invented, or misquoted,
-to serve the purpose of any pet theory of my own. The sample produced
-of the three million penny readers is left to speak for itself; to
-give some idea of the social and intellectual materials of which a
-portion, at least, of the Unknown Public may fairly be presumed to be
-composed. Having so far disposed of this first part of the matter in
-hand, the second part follows naturally enough of its own accord. We
-have all of us formed some opinion by this time on the subject of the
-Public itself: the next thing to do is to find out what that Public
-reads.
-
-I have already said that the staple commodity of the journals appears
-to be formed of stories. The five specimen copies of the five separate
-weekly publications now before me, contain, altogether, ten serial
-stories; one reprint of a famous novel (to be hereafter referred to);
-and seven short tales, each of which begins and ends in one number.
-The remaining pages are filled up with miscellaneous contributions, in
-literature and art, drawn from every conceivable source. Pickings from
-Punch and Plato; wood-engravings, representing notorious people and
-views of famous places, which strongly suggest that the original
-blocks have seen better days in other periodicals; modern and ancient
-anecdotes; short memoirs; scraps of poetry; choice morsels of general
-information; household receipts, riddles, and extracts from moral
-writers--all appear in the most orderly manner, arranged under
-separate heads, and cut up neatly into short paragraphs. However, the
-prominent feature in each journal is the serial story, which is
-placed, in every case, as the first article, and which is illustrated
-by the only wood-engraving that appears to have been expressly cut for
-the purpose. To the serial story, therefore, we may fairly devote our
-chief attention, because it is clearly regarded as the chief
-attraction of these very singular publications.
-
-Two of my specimen-copies contained, respectively, the first chapters
-of new stories. In the case of the other three, I found the stories in
-various stages of progress. The first thing that struck me, after
-reading the separate weekly portions of all five, was their
-extraordinary sameness. Each portion purported to be written (and no
-doubt was written) by a different author, and yet all five might have
-been produced by the same man. Each part of each successive story,
-settled down in turn, as I read it, to the same dead level of the
-smoothest and flattest conventionality. A combination of fierce
-melodrama and meek domestic sentiment; short dialogues and paragraphs
-on the French pattern, with moral English reflections of the sort that
-occur on the top lines of children's copy-books; incidents and
-characters taken from the old exhausted mines of the circulating
-library, and presented as complacently and confidently as if they were
-original ideas; descriptions and reflections for the beginning of the
-number, and a "strong situation," dragged in by the neck and
-shoulders, for the end--formed the common literary sources from which
-the five authors drew their weekly supply; all collecting it by the
-same means; all carrying it in the same quantities; all pouring it out
-before the attentive public in the same way. After reading my samples
-of these stories, I understood why it was that the fictions of the
-regularly-established writers for the penny journals are never
-republished. There is, I honestly believe, no man, woman, or child in
-England, not a member of the Unknown Public, who could be got to read
-them. The one thing which it is possible to advance in their favour
-is, that there is apparently no wickedness in them. There seems to be
-an intense in-dwelling respectability in their dulness. If they lead
-to no intellectual result, even of the humblest kind, they may have,
-at least, this negative advantage, that they can do no harm.
-
-If it be objected that I am condemning these stories after having
-merely read one number of each of them, I have only to ask in return,
-whether anybody ever waits to go all through a novel before passing an
-opinion on the goodness or the badness of it? In the latter case, we
-throw the story down before we get through it, and that is its
-condemnation. There is room enough for promise, if not for
-performance, in any one part of any one genuine work of fiction. If I
-had found the smallest promise in the style, in the dialogue, in the
-presentation of character, in the arrangement of incident, in any of
-the five specimens of cheap fiction before me, each one of which
-extended, on the average, to ten columns of small print, I should have
-gone on gladly to the next number. But I discovered nothing of the
-kind; and I put down my weekly sample, just as an editor, under
-similar circumstances, puts down a manuscript, after getting through a
-certain number of pages--or a reader a book.
-
-And this sort of writing appeals to a monster audience of at least
-three millions! Has a better sort ever been tried? It has. The former
-proprietor of one of these penny journals commissioned a thoroughly
-competent person to translate The Count of Monte Christo for his
-periodical. He knew that there was hardly a language in the civilised
-world into which that consummate specimen of the rare and difficult
-art of story-telling had not been translated. In France, in England,
-in America, in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, Alexandre Dumas
-had held hundreds of thousands of readers breathless. The proprietor
-of the penny journal naturally thought that he could do as much with
-the Unknown Public. Strange to say, the result of this apparently
-certain experiment was a failure. The circulation of the journal in
-question seriously decreased from the time when the first of living
-story-tellers became a contributor to it! The same experiment was
-tried with the Mysteries of Paris and the Wandering Jew, only to
-produce the same result. Another penny journal gave Dumas a commission
-to write a new story, expressly for translation in its columns. The
-speculation was tried, and once again the inscrutable Unknown Public
-held back the hand of welcome from the spoilt child of a whole world
-of novel-readers.
-
-How is this to be accounted for?
-
-Does a rigid moral sense permeate the Unknown Public from one end of
-it to the other, and did the productions of the French novelists shock
-that sense from the very outset? The page containing the Answers to
-Correspondents would be enough in itself to dispose of this theory.
-But there are other and better means of arriving at the truth, which
-render any further reference to the Correspondents' page unnecessary.
-Some time since, an eminent novelist (the only living English author,
-with a literary position, who had, at that time, written for the
-Unknown Public) produced his new novel in a penny journal. No shadow
-of a moral objection has ever been urged by any readers against the
-works published by the author of It Is Never Too Late To Mend; but
-even he, unless I have been greatly misinformed, failed to make the
-impression that had been anticipated on the impenetrable Three
-Millions. The great success of his novel was not obtained in its
-original serial form, but in its republished form, when it appealed
-from the Unknown to the Known Public. Clearly, the moral obstacle was
-not the obstacle which militated against the success of Alexandre
-Dumas and Eugene Sue.
-
-What was it, then? Plainly this, as I believe. The Unknown Public is,
-in a literary sense, hardly beginning, as yet, to learn to read. The
-members of it are evidently, in the mass, from no fault of theirs,
-still ignorant of almost everything which is generally known and
-understood among readers whom circumstances have placed, socially and
-intellectually, in the rank above them. The mere references in Monte
-Christo, The Mysteries of Paris, and White Lies (the scene of this
-last English fiction having been laid on French ground), to foreign
-names, titles, manners, and customs, puzzled the Unknown Public on the
-threshold. Look back at the answers to correspondents, and then say,
-out of fifty subscribers to a penny journal, how many are likely to
-know, for example, that Mademoiselle means Miss? Besides the
-difficulty in appealing to the penny audience caused at the beginning
-by such simple obstacles as this, there was the great additional
-difficulty, in the case of all three of the fictions just mentioned,
-of accustoming untried readers to the delicacies and subtleties of
-literary art. An immense public has been discovered: the next thing to
-be done is, in a literary sense, to teach that public how to read.
-
-An attempt, to the credit of one of the penny journals, has already
-been made. I have mentioned, in one place, a reprint of a novel, and
-later, a remarkable exception to the drearily common-place character
-of the rest of the stories. In both these cases I refer to one and the
-same fiction--to the Kenilworth of Sir Walter Scott, which is
-reprinted as a new serial experiment in a penny journal. Here is the
-great master of modern fiction appealing, at this time of day, to a
-new public, and (amazing anomaly!) marching in company with writers
-who have the rudiments of their craft still to learn! To my mind, one
-result seems certain. If Kenilworth be appreciated by the Unknown
-Public, then the very best men among living English writers will one
-of these days be called on, as a matter of necessity, to make their
-appearance in the pages of the penny journals.
-
-Meanwhile, it is perhaps hardly too much to say, that the future of
-English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public, which is now
-waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad. It
-is probably a question of time only. The largest audience for
-periodical literature, in this age of periodicals, must obey the
-universal law of progress, and must, sooner or later, learn to
-discriminate. When that period comes, the readers who rank by
-millions, will be the readers who give the widest reputations, who
-return the richest rewards, and who will, therefore, command the
-service of the best writers of their time. A great, an unparalleled
-prospect awaits, perhaps, the coming generation of English novelists.
-To the penny journals of the present time belongs the credit of having
-discovered a new public. When that public shall discover its need of a
-great writer, the great writer will have such an audience as has never
-yet been known.[3]
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[2] It may be as well to explain that I use this awkward compound word
-in order to mark the distinction between a penny journal and a penny
-newspaper. The "journal" is what I am now writing about. The
-"newspaper" is an entirely different subject, with which this article
-has no connection.
-
-[3] Five years have passed since this article was first published, and
-no signs of progress in the Unknown Public have made their appearance
-as yet. Patience! patience! (September, 1863).
-
-
-
-
-SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.--III.
-
-GIVE US ROOM!
-
-[The Imperative Request of a Family Man.]
-
-
-The entertainments of the festive season of the year, so far as I am
-personally concerned, have at last subsided into a temporary lull. I
-and my family actually have one or two evenings to ourselves, just at
-present. It is my purpose to take advantage of this interval of
-leisure to express my sentiments on the subject of evening parties and
-ladies' dress.
-
-Let nobody turn over this page impatiently, alarmed at the prospect of
-another diatribe against Crinoline. I, for one, am not going to
-exhibit myself in the character of a writer who vainly opposes one of
-the existing institutions of this country. The Press, the Pulpit, and
-the Stage, have been in the habit of considering themselves as three
-very powerful levers, capable of being used with terrible effect on
-the inert material of society. All three have tried to jerk that
-flourishing foreign plant, Crinoline, out of English earth, and have
-failed to stir so much as a single root of it. All three have run
-full tilt against the women of England, and have not moved them an
-inch. Talk of the power of the Press!--what is it, compared to the
-power of a French milliner? The Press has tried to abridge the women's
-petticoats, and has entirely failed in the attempt. When the right
-time comes, a French milliner will abridge them at a week's notice.
-The Pulpit preaches, the Stage ridicules; and each woman of the
-congregation or the audience, sits, imperturbable, in the middle of
-her balloon, and lets the serious words or the comic words, go in at
-one ear and come out at the other, precisely as if they were spoken in
-an unknown tongue. Nothing that I can remember has so effectually
-crushed the pretensions of the Press, the Pulpit, and the Stage, as
-the utter failure of their crusade against Crinoline.
-
-My present object in writing is likely, I think, to be popular--at
-least, with the ladies. I do not want to put down Crinoline--I only
-want to make room for it. Personally, I rather like it--I do, indeed,
-though I am a man. The fact is, I am a thoroughly well-disciplined
-husband and father; and I know the value of it. The only defect in my
-eldest daughter's otherwise perfect form, lies in her feet and ankles.
-She is married, so I don't mind mentioning that they are decidedly
-clumsy. Without Crinoline, they would be seen; with Crinoline (except
-when she goes up stairs), nobody has the slightest suspicion of them.
-My wife--pray don't tell her that I ever observed it--my wife used to
-waddle before the invention of Crinoline. Now she swims voluptuously,
-and knocks down all the light articles of furniture, whenever she
-crosses the room, in a manner which, but for the expense of repairs,
-would be perfectly charming. One of my other single daughters used to
-be sadly thin, poor girl. Oh, how plump she is now! Oh, my
-marriageable young men, how ravishingly plump she is now! Long life to
-the monarchy of Crinoline! Every mother in this country who has
-daughters to marry, and who is not quite so sure of their unaided
-personal attractions as she might wish to be, echoes that loyal cry, I
-am sure, from the bottom of her affectionate heart. And the Press
-actually thinks it can shake our devotion to our Queen Petticoat?
-Pooh! pooh!
-
-But we must have room--we must positively have room for our petticoat
-at evening parties. We wanted it before Crinoline. We want it ten
-thousand times more, now. I don't know how other parents feel; but,
-unless there is some speedy reform in the present system of
-party-giving--so far as regards health, purse, and temper, I am a lost
-man. Let me make my meaning clear on this point by a simple and
-truthful process. Let me describe how we went to our last party, and
-how we came back from it.
-
-Doctor and Mrs. Crump, of Gloucester Place (I mention names and places
-to show the respectable character of the party), kindly requested the
-pleasure of our company a week ago. We accepted the invitation, and
-agreed to assemble in my dining-room previous to departure, at the
-hour of half-past nine. It is unnecessary to say that I and my
-son-in-law (who is now staying with me on a visit) had the room
-entirely to ourselves at the appointed time. We waited half-an-hour:
-both ill-tempered, both longing to be in bed, and both obstinately
-silent. When the hall-clock struck ten, a sound was heard on the
-stairs, as if a whole gale of wind had broken into the house, and was
-advancing to the dining-room to blow us both into empty space. We knew
-what this meant, and looked at each other, and said, "Here they are!"
-The door opened, and Boreas swam in voluptuously, in the shape of my
-wife, in claret-coloured velvet. She stands five feet nine, and
-wears--No! I have never actually counted them. Let me not mislead the
-public, or do injustice to my wife. Let me rest satisfied with stating
-her height, and adding that she is a fashionable woman. Her
-circumference, and the causes of it, may be left to the imagination of
-the reader.
-
-She was followed by four minor winds, blowing dead in our teeth--by my
-married daughter in Pink Moire Antique; by my own Julia (single) in
-Violet Tulle Illusion; by my own Emily (single) in white lace over
-glace silk; by my own Charlotte (single) in blue gauze over glace
-silk. The four minor winds, and the majestic maternal Boreas, entirely
-filled the room, and overflowed on to the dining-table. It was a grand
-sight. My son-in-law and I--a pair of mere black tadpoles--shrank into
-a corner, and gazed at it helplessly.
-
-Our corner was, unfortunately, the farthest from the door. So, when I
-moved to lead the way to the carriages, I confronted a brilliant
-intermediate expanse of ninety yards of outer clothing alone (allowing
-only eighteen yards each to the ladies). Being old, wily, and
-respected in the house, I took care to avoid my wife, and succeeded in
-getting through my daughters. My son-in-law, young, innocent, and of
-secondary position in the family, was not so fortunate. I left him
-helpless, looking round the corner of his mother-in-law's
-claret-coloured velvet, with one of his legs lost in his wife's Moire
-Antique. There is every reason to suppose that he never extricated
-himself; for when we got into the carriages he was not to be found;
-and, when ultimately recovered, he exhibited symptoms of physical and
-mental exhaustion. I am afraid my son-in-law caught it--I am very much
-afraid that, during my absence, my son-in-law caught it.
-
-We filled--no, we overflowed--two carriages. My wife and her married
-daughter in one, and I, myself, on the box--the front seat being very
-properly wanted for the velvet and the Moire Antique. In the second
-carriage were my three girls--crushed, as they indignantly informed
-me, crushed out of all shape (didn't I tell you, just now, how plump
-one of them was?) by the miserably-inefficient accommodation which the
-vehicle offered to them. They told my son-in-law, as he meekly mounted
-to the box, that they would take care not to marry a man like him, at
-any rate! I have not the least idea what he had done to provoke them.
-The worthy creature gets a great deal of scolding in the house,
-without any assignable cause for it. Do my daughters resent his
-official knowledge, as a husband, of the secret of their sister's ugly
-feet? Oh, dear me, I hope not--I sincerely hope not!
-
-At ten minutes past ten we drove to the hospitable abode of Doctor and
-Mrs. Crump. The women of my family were then perfectly dressed in the
-finest materials. There was not a flaw in any part of the costume of
-any one of the party. This is a great deal to say of ninety yards of
-clothing, without mentioning the streams of ribbon, and the dense
-thickets of flowery bushes that wantoned gracefully all over their
-heads and half-down their backs--nevertheless, I can say it.
-
-At forty minutes past four, the next morning, we were all assembled
-once more in my dining-room, to light our bed-room candles. Judging by
-costume only, I should not have known one of my daughters again--no,
-not one of them!
-
-The Tulle Illusion, was illusion no longer. My daughter's gorgeous
-substratum of Gros de Naples bulged through it in half a dozen places.
-The Pink Moire Antique was torn into a draggle-tailed pink train. The
-white lace was in tatters, and the blue gauze was in shreds.
-
-"A charming party!" cried my daughters in melodious chorus, as I
-surveyed this scene of ruin. Charming, indeed! If I had dressed up my
-four girls, and sent them to Greenwich Fair, with strict orders to get
-drunk and assault the police, and if they had carefully followed my
-directions, could they have come home to me in a much worse condition
-than the condition in which I see them now? Could any man, not
-acquainted with the present monstrous system of party-giving, look at
-my four young women, and believe that they had been spending the
-evening under the eyes of their parents, at a respectable house? If
-the party had been at a linendraper's, I could understand the object
-of this wanton destruction of property. But Doctor Crump is not
-interested in making me buy new gowns. What have I done to him that he
-should ask me and my family to his house, and all but tear my
-children's gowns off their backs, in return for our friendly
-readiness to accept his invitation?
-
-But my daughters danced all the evening, and these little accidents
-will happen in private ballrooms. Indeed? I did not dance, my wife did
-not dance, my son-in-law did not dance. Have we escaped injury on that
-account? Decidedly not. Velvet is not an easy thing to tear, so I have
-no rents to deplore in my wife's dress. But I apprehend that a
-spoonful of trifle does not reach its destination properly, when it is
-deposited in a lady's lap; and I altogether deny that there is any
-necessary connection between the charms of society, and the wearing of
-crushed macaroons, adhesively dotted over the back part of a
-respectable matron's dress. I picked three off my wife's gown, as she
-swam out of the dining-room, on her way up-stairs; and I am informed
-that two new breadths will be wanted in front, in consequence of her
-lap having been turned into a plate for trifle. As for my son-in-law,
-his trousers are saturated with spilt champagne; and he took, in my
-presence, nearly a handful of flabby lobster salad out of the cavity
-between his shirt-front and his waistcoat. For myself, I have had my
-elbow in a game-pie, and I see with disgust a slimy path of extinct
-custard, meandering down the left-hand lappel of my coat. Altogether,
-this party, on the lowest calculation, casts me in damages to the
-tune of ten pounds, eighteen shillings, and sixpence.[4]
-
-In damages for spoilt garments only. I have still to find out what the
-results may be of the suffocating heat in the rooms, and the freezing
-draughts in the passages, and on the stairs--I have still to face the
-possible doctor's bills for treating our influenzas and our
-rheumatisms. And to what cause is all this destruction and discomfort
-attributable? Plainly and simply, to this. When Doctor and Mrs. Crump
-issued their invitations, they followed the example of the rest of the
-world, and asked to their house five times as many people as their
-rooms would comfortably hold. Hence, jostling, bumping, and tearing
-among the dancers, and jostling, bumping, and spilling in the
-supper-room. Hence, a scene of barbarous crowding and confusion, in
-which the successful dancers are the heaviest and rudest couples in
-the company, and the successful guests at the supper-table, the people
-who have the least regard for the restraints of politeness and the
-wants of their neighbours.
-
-Is there no remedy for this great social nuisance? for a nuisance it
-certainly is. There is a remedy in every district in London, in the
-shape of a spacious and comfortable public room, which may be had for
-the hiring. The rooms to which I allude are never used for doubtful
-purposes. They are mainly devoted to Lectures, Concerts, and Meetings.
-When used for a private object, they might be kept private by giving
-each guest a card to present at the door, just as cards are presented
-at the opera. The expense of the hiring, when set against the expense
-of preparing a private house for a party, and the expense of the
-injuries which crowding causes, would prove to be next to nothing. The
-supper might be sent into the large room as it is sent into the small
-house. And what benefit would be gained by all this? The first and
-greatest of all benefits, in such cases--room. Room for the dancers to
-exercise their art in perfect comfort; room for the spectators to move
-about and talk to each other at their ease; room for the musicians in
-a comfortable gallery; room for eating and drinking; room for
-agreeable equal ventilation. In one word, all the acknowledged
-advantages of a public ball, with all the pleasant social freedom of a
-private entertainment.
-
-And what hinders the adopting of this sensible reform? Nothing but
-the domestic vanity of my beloved countrymen.
-
-I suggested the hiring of a room, the other day, to an excellent
-friend of mine, who thought of giving a party, and who inhumanly
-contemplated asking at least a hundred people into his trumpery little
-ten-roomed house. He absolutely shuddered when I mentioned my idea:
-all his insular prejudices bristled up in an instant. "If I can't
-receive my friends under my own roof, on my own hearth, sir, and in my
-own home, I won't receive them at all. Take a room indeed! Do you call
-that an Englishman's hospitality? I don't." It was quite useless to
-suggest to this gentleman that an Englishman's hospitality, or any
-man's hospitality, is unworthy of the name unless it fulfils the first
-great requisite of making his guests comfortable. We don't take that
-far-fetched view of the case in this domestic country. We stand on our
-own floor (no matter whether it is only twelve feet square or not); we
-make a fine show in our houses (no matter whether they are large
-enough for the purpose or not); never mind the women's dresses; never
-mind the dancers being in perpetual collision; never mind the supper
-being a comfortless, barbarous scramble; never mind the ventilation
-alternating between unbearable heat and unbearable cold--an
-Englishman's house is his castle, even when you can't get up his
-staircase, and can't turn round in his rooms. If I lived in the Black
-Hole at Calcutta, sir, I would see my friends _there_ because I lived
-there, and would turn up my nose at the finest marble palace in the
-whole city, because it was a palace that could be had for the hiring!
-
-And yet the innovation on a senseless established custom which I now
-propose, is not without precedent, even in this country. When I was a
-young man, I, and some of my friends, used to give a Bachelors' Ball,
-once a-year. We hired a respectable public room for the purpose.
-Nobody ever had admission to our entertainment who was not perfectly
-fit to be asked into any gentleman's house. Nobody wanted room to
-dance in; nobody's dress was injured; nobody was uncomfortable at
-supper. Our ball was looked forward to, every year, by the young
-ladies, as the especial dance of the season at which they were sure to
-enjoy themselves. They talked rapturously of the charming music, and
-the brilliant lighting, and the pretty decorations, and the nice
-supper. Old ladies and gentlemen used to beg piteously that they might
-not be left out on account of their years. People of all ages and
-tastes found something to please them at the Bachelors' Ball, and
-never had a recollection, in connection with it, which was not of the
-happiest nature. What prevents us, now we are married, from following
-the sensible proceeding of our younger days? The stupid assumption
-that my house must be big enough to hold all my friends comfortably,
-_because_ it is my house. I did not reason in that way, when I had
-lodgings, although my bachelor sitting-room was, within a few feet
-each way, as large as my householder's drawing-room at the present
-time.
-
-However, I have really some hopes of seeing the sensible reform, which
-I have ventured to propose, practically and generally carried out,
-before I die. Not because I advocate it, not because it is in itself
-essentially reasonable; but merely because the course of Time is
-likely, before long, to leave obstinate Prejudice no choice of
-alternatives and no power of resistance. Party-giving is on the
-increase, party-goers are on the increase, petticoats are on the
-increase,--but private houses remain exactly as they were. It is
-evidently only a question of time. The guests already overflow on to
-the staircase. Give us a ten years' increase of the population, and
-they will overflow into the street. When the door of the Englishman's
-nonsensical castle cannot be shut, on account of the number of his
-guests who are squeezed out to the threshold, then he will concede to
-necessity what he will not now concede to any strength of reasoning,
-or to any gentleness of persuasion. The only cogent argument with
-obstinate people is Main Force--and Time, in the case now under
-consideration, is sooner or later sure to employ it.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[4] For the information of ignorant young men, who are beginning life,
-I subjoin the lamentable particulars of this calculation:--
-
-                                          L.    s.   d.
-
-     A Tulle Illusion spoilt              2     0     0
-
-     Repairing gathers of Moire Antique   0     5     0
-
-     Cheap white lace dress spoilt        3     0     0
-
-       Do.  blue gauze    do.             1     6     0
-
-     Two new breadths of velvet for Mama  4     0     0
-
-     Cleaning my son-in-law's trousers    0     2     6
-
-     Cleaning my own coat                 0     5     0
-                                         --------------
-         Total                           10    18    68
-
-
-
-
-CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.--II.
-
-PORTRAIT OF AN AUTHOR, PAINTED BY HIS PUBLISHER.
-
-
-I.
-
-The Author was born a Frenchman, and died in the year 1850. Over the
-whole continent of Europe, wherever the literature of France has
-penetrated, his readers are numbered by tens of thousands. Women of
-all ranks and orders have singled him out, long since, as the marked
-man, among modern writers of fiction, who most profoundly knows and
-most subtly appreciates their sex in its strength and in its weakness.
-Men, whose critical judgment is widely and worthily respected, have
-declared that he is the deepest and truest observer of human nature
-whom France has produced since the time of Moliere. Unquestionably, he
-ranks as one of the few great geniuses who appear by ones and twos, in
-century after century of authorship, and who leave their mark
-ineffaceably on the literature of their age. And yet, in spite of this
-widely-extended continental fame, and this indisputable right and
-title to enjoy it, there is probably no civilised country in the Old
-World in which he is so little known as in England. Among all the
-readers--a large class in these islands--who are, from various causes,
-unaccustomed to study French literature in its native language, there
-are probably very many who have never even heard of the name of HONORE
-DE BALZAC.
-
-Unaccountable as it may appear at first sight, the reason why the
-illustrious author of Eugenie Grandet, Le Pere Goriot, and La
-Recherche de l'Absolu, happens to be so little known to the general
-public of England is, on the surface of it, easy enough to discover.
-Balzac is little known, because he has been little translated. An
-English version of Eugenie Grandet was advertised, lately, as one of a
-cheap series of novels. And the present writer has some indistinct
-recollection of meeting, many years since, with a translation of La
-Peau de Chagrin. But so far as he knows, excepting the instances of
-these two books, not one other work, out of the whole number of
-ninety-seven fictions, long and short, which proceeded from the same
-fertile pen, has been offered to our own readers in our own language.
-Immense help has been given in this country to the reputations of
-Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Eugene Sue: no help whatever, or
-next to none, has been given to Balzac--although he is regarded in
-France (and rightly regarded, in some respects) as a writer of Action
-superior to all three.
-
-Many causes, too numerous to be elaborately traced within the compass
-of a single article, have probably contributed to produce this
-singular instance of literary neglect. It is not to be denied, for
-example, that serious difficulties stand in the way of translating
-Balzac, which are caused by his own peculiarities of style and
-treatment. His French is not the clear, graceful, neatly-turned French
-of Voltaire and Rousseau. It is a strong, harsh, solidly vigorous
-language of his own; now flashing into the most exquisite felicities
-of expression, and now again involved in an obscurity which only the
-closest attention can hope to penetrate. A special man, not hurried
-for time, and not easily brought to the end of his patience, might
-give the English equivalent of Balzac with admirable effect. But
-ordinary translating of him by average workmen would only lead,
-through the means of feeble parody, to the result of utter failure.[5]
-
-
-The difficulties, again, caused by his style of treatment are not to
-be lightly estimated, in considering the question of presenting this
-author to our own general public. The peculiarity of Balzac's literary
-execution is, that he never compromises the subtleties and delicacies
-of Art for any consideration of temporary effect. The framework in
-which his idea is set, is always wrought with a loving minuteness
-which leaves nothing out. Everything which, in this writer's mind, can
-even remotely illustrate the characters that he depicts, must be
-elaborately conveyed to the minds of his readers before the characters
-themselves start into action. This quality of minute finish, of
-reiterated refining, which is one of Balzac's great merits, so far as
-foreign audiences are concerned, is another of the hindrances, so far
-as an English audience is concerned, in the way of translating him.
-
-Allowing all due weight to the force of these obstacles; and further
-admitting that Balzac lays himself open to grave objection (on the
-part of that unhappily large section of the English public which
-obstinately protests against the truth wherever the truth is painful),
-as a writer who sternly insists on presenting the dreary aspects of
-human life, literally, exactly, nakedly, as he finds them--making
-these allowances, and many more if more be needful--it is still
-impossible not to regret, for the sake of readers themselves, that
-worthy English versions of the best works of this great writer are
-not added to the national library of translated literature. Towards
-the latter part of his career, Balzac's own taste in selection of
-subject seems to have become vitiated. His later novels, consummately
-excellent as some of them were in a literary sense, are assuredly, in
-a moral sense, not to be defended against the grave accusation of
-being needlessly and even horribly repulsive. But no objections of
-this sort apply to the majority of the works which he produced when he
-was in the prime of his life and his faculties. The conception of the
-character of "Eugenie Grandet" is one of the purest, tenderest, and
-most beautiful things in the whole range of fiction; and the execution
-of it is even worthy of the idea. If the translation already
-accomplished of this book be only creditably executed, it may be left
-to speak for itself. But there are other fictions of the writer which
-deserve the same privilege, and which have not yet obtained it. "La
-Recherche de l'Absolu,"--a family picture which, for truth, delicacy,
-and pathos, has been surpassed by no novelist of any nation or any
-time; a literary achievement in which a new and an imperishable
-character (the exquisitely beautiful character of the wife) has been
-added to the great gallery of fiction--remains still unknown to the
-general public of England. "Le Pere Goriot"--which, though it unveils
-some of the hidden corruptions of Parisian life, unveils them nobly
-in the interests of that highest morality belonging to no one nation
-and no one sect--"Le Pere Goriot," which stands first and foremost
-among all the writer's works, which has drawn the tears of thousands
-from the purest sources, has its appeal still left to make to the
-sympathies of English readers. Other shorter stories, scattered about
-the "Scenes de la Vie Privee," the "Scenes de la Vie de Province," and
-the "Scenes de la Vie Parisienne," are as completely unknown to a
-certain circle of readers in this country, and as unquestionably
-deserve careful and competent translation, as the longer and more
-elaborate productions of Balzac's inexhaustible pen. Reckoning these
-shorter stories, there are at least a dozen of his highest
-achievements in fiction which might be safely rendered into English;
-which might form a series by themselves; and which no sensible
-Englishwoman could read and be, either intellectually or morally, the
-worse for them.
-
-Thus much, in the way of necessary preliminary comment on the works of
-this author, and on their present position in reference to the English
-public. Readers who may be sufficiently interested in the subject to
-desire to know something next about the man himself, may now derive
-this information from a singular, and even from a unique source. The
-Life of Balzac has been lately written by his publisher, of all the
-people in the world! This is a phenomenon in itself; and the oddity of
-it is still further increased by the fact that the publisher was
-brought to the brink of ruin by the author, that he mentions this
-circumstance in writing his life, and that it does not detract one
-iota from his evidently sincere admiration for the great man with whom
-he was once so disastrously connected in business. Here is surely an
-original book, in an age when originality grows harder and harder to
-meet with--a book containing disclosures which will perplex and dismay
-every admirer of Balzac who cannot separate the man from his works--a
-book which presents one of the most singular records of human
-eccentricity, so far as the hero of it is concerned, and of human
-credulity so far as the biographer is concerned, which has probably
-ever been published for the amusement and bewilderment of the reading
-world.
-
-The title of this singular work is, "Portrait Intime De Balzac: sa
-Vie, son Humeur et son Caractere. Par Edmond Werdet, son ancien
-Libraire-Editeur." Before, however, we allow Monsieur Werdet to relate
-his own personal experience of the celebrated writer, it will be
-advisable to introduce the subject by giving an outline of the
-struggles, the privations, and the disappointments which marked the
-early life of Balzac, and which, doubtless, influenced his after
-character for the worse. These particulars are given by Monsieur
-Werdet in the form of an episode, and are principally derived, on his
-part, from information afforded by the author's sister.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Honore de Balzac was born in the city of Tours, on the sixteenth of
-May, seventeen hundred and ninety-nine. His parents were people of
-rank and position in the world. His father held a legal appointment in
-the council-chamber of Louis the sixteenth. His mother was the
-daughter of one of the directors of the public hospitals of Paris. She
-was much younger than her husband, and brought him a rich dowry.
-Honore was her first-born; and he retained throughout life his first
-feeling of childish reverence for his mother. That mother suffered the
-unspeakable affliction of seeing her illustrious son taken from her by
-death at the age of fifty years. Balzac breathed his last in the kind
-arms which had first caressed him on the day of his birth.
-
-His father, from whom he evidently inherited much of the eccentricity
-of his character, is described as a compound of Montaigne, Rabelais,
-and Uncle Toby--a man in manners, conversation, and disposition
-generally, of the quaintly original sort. On the breaking out of the
-Revolution, he lost his court situation, and obtained a place in the
-commissariat department of the army of the North. This appointment he
-held for some years. It was of the greater importance to him, in
-consequence of the change for the worse produced in the pecuniary
-circumstances of the family by the convulsion of the Revolution.
-
-At the age of seven years Balzac was sent to the college of Vendome;
-and for seven years more there he remained. This period of his life
-was never a pleasant one in his remembrance. The reduced circumstances
-of his family exposed him to much sordid persecution and ridicule from
-the other boys; and he got on but little better with the masters. They
-reported him as idle and incapable--or, in other words, as ready
-enough to devour all sorts of books on his own desultory plan, but
-hopelessly obstinate in resisting the educational discipline of the
-school. This time of his life he has reproduced in one of the
-strangest and the most mystical of all his novels, "La Vie
-Intellectuelle de Louis Lambert."
-
-On reaching the critical age of fourteen, his intellect appears to
-have suffered under a species of eclipse, which occurred very suddenly
-and mysteriously, and the cause of which neither his masters nor the
-medical men were able to explain. He himself always declared in
-after-life, with a touch of his father's quaintness, that his brain
-had been attacked by "a congestion of ideas." Whatever the cause might
-be, the effect was so serious that the progress of his education had
-to be stopped; and his removal from the college followed as a matter
-of course. Time, care, quiet, and breathing his native air, gradually
-restored him to himself; and he was ultimately enabled to complete his
-studies at two private schools. Here again, however, he did nothing to
-distinguish himself among his fellow-pupils. He read incessantly, and
-preserved the fruits of his reading with marvellous power of memory;
-but the school-teaching, which did well enough for ordinary boys, was
-exactly the species of teaching from which the essentially original
-mind of Balzac recoiled in disgust. All that he felt and did at this
-period has been carefully reproduced by his own pen in the earlier
-pages of "Le Lys dans la Vallee."
-
-Badly as he got on at school, he managed to imbibe a sufficient
-quantity of conventional learning to entitle him, at the age of
-eighteen, to his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was destined for the
-law; and after attending the legal lectures in the various
-Institutions of Paris, he passed his examination by the time he was
-twenty, and then entered a notary's office in the capacity of clerk.
-There were two other clerks to keep him company, who hated the
-drudgery of the law as heartily as he hated it himself. One of them
-was the future author of "The Mysteries of Paris," Eugene Sue; the
-other was the famous critic, Jules Janin.
-
-After he had been engaged in this office, and in another, for more
-than three years, a legal friend, who was under great obligations to
-Balzac the father, offered to give up his business as a notary to
-Balzac the son. To the great scandal of the family, Honore resolutely
-refused the offer--for the one sufficient reason that he had
-determined to be the greatest writer in France. His relations began by
-laughing at him, and ended by growing angry with him. But nothing
-moved Honore. His vanity was of the calm, settled sort; and his own
-conviction that his business in life was simply to be a famous man,
-proved too strong to be shaken by anybody.
-
-While he and his family were at war on this point, a change for the
-worse occurred in the elder Balzac's official circumstances. He was
-superannuated. The diminution of income thus produced was followed by
-a pecuniary catastrophe. He had embarked almost the whole of his own
-little remaining property and his wife's in two speculations; and they
-both failed. No resource was now left him but to retire to a small
-country house in the neighbourhood of Paris, which he had purchased in
-his prosperous days, and to live there as well as might be on the
-wreck of his lost fortune. Honore, sticking fast to the hopeless
-business of becoming a great man, was, by his own desire, left alone
-in a Paris garret, with an allowance of five pounds English a month,
-which was all the kind father could spare to feed, clothe, and lodge
-the wrong-headed son.
-
-And now, without a literary friend to help him in all Paris; alone in
-his wretched attic, with his deal-table and his truckle-bed, his
-dog's-eared books, his bescrawled papers, his wild vanity, and his
-ravenous hunger for fame, Balzac stripped resolutely for the great
-fight. He was then twenty-three years old--a sturdy fellow to look at,
-with a big, jovial face, and a strong square forehead, topped by a
-very untidy and superfluous allowance of long tangled hair. His only
-difficulty at starting was what to begin upon. After consuming many
-lonely months in sketching out comedies, operas, and novels, he
-finally obeyed the one disastrous rule which seems to admit of no
-exception in the early lives of men of letters, and fixed the whole
-bent of his industry and his genius on the production of a tragedy.
-After infinite pains and long labour, the great work was completed.
-The subject was Cromwell; and the treatment, in Balzac's hands,
-appears to have been so inconceivably bad, that even his own
-family--to say nothing of other judicious friends--told him in the
-plainest terms, when he read it to them, that he had perpetrated a
-signal failure. Modest men might have been discouraged by this. Balzac
-took his manuscript back to his garret, standing higher in his own
-estimation than ever. "I will give up being a great dramatist," he
-told his parents at parting, "and I will be a great novelist instead."
-The vanity of the man expressed itself with this sublime disregard of
-ridicule all through his life. It was a precious quality to him--it is
-surely (however unquestionably offensive it may be to our friends) a
-precious quality to all of us. What man ever yet did anything great,
-without beginning with a profound belief in his own untried powers?
-
-Confident as ever, therefore, in his own resources, Balzac now took up
-the pen once more--this time, in the character of a novelist. But
-another and a serious check awaited him at the outset. Fifteen months
-of solitude, privation, and reckless hard writing--months which are
-recorded in the pages of "La Peau de Chagrin" with a fearful and
-pathetic truth, drawn straight from the bitterest of all experiences,
-the experience of studious poverty--had reduced him to a condition of
-bodily weakness which made all present exertion of his mental powers
-simply hopeless, and which obliged him to take refuge--a worn-out,
-wasted man, at the age of twenty-three--in his father's quiet little
-country house. Here, under his mother's care, his exhausted energies
-slowly revived; and here, in the first days of his convalescence, he
-returned, with the grim resolution of despair, to working out the old
-dream in the garret, to resuming the old hopeless business of making
-himself a great man.
-
-It was under his father's roof, during the time of his slow recovery,
-that the youthful fictions of Balzac were produced. The strength of
-his belief in his own resources and his own future, gave him also the
-strength, in relation to these first efforts, to rise above his own
-vanity, and to see plainly that he had not yet learnt to do himself
-full justice. His early novels bore on their title-pages a variety of
-feigned names, for the starving, struggling author was too proud to
-acknowledge them, so long as they failed to satisfy his own conception
-of what his own powers could accomplish. These first efforts--now
-included in the Belgian editions of his collected works, and
-comprising among them two stories, "Jane la Pale" and "Le Vicaire des
-Ardennes," which show unquestionable dawnings of the genius of a great
-writer--were originally published by the lower and more rapacious
-order of booksellers, and did as little towards increasing his means
-as towards establishing his reputation. Still, he forced his way
-slowly and resolutely through poverty, obscurity, and disappointment,
-nearer and nearer to the promised land which no eye saw but his own--a
-greater man, by far, at this hard period of his adversity than at the
-more trying after-time of his prosperity and his fame. One by one, the
-heavy years rolled on till he was a man of thirty; and then the great
-prize which he had so long toiled for, dropped within his reach at
-last. In the year eighteen hundred and twenty-nine, the famous
-"Physiologie du Mariage" was published; and the starveling of the
-Paris garret became a name and a power in French literature.
-
-In England, this book would have been universally condemned as an
-unpardonable exposure of the most sacred secrets of domestic life. It
-unveils the whole social side of Marriage in its innermost recesses,
-and exhibits it alternately in its bright and dark aspects with a
-marvellous minuteness of observation, a profound knowledge of human
-nature, and a daring eccentricity of style and arrangement which amply
-justify the extraordinary success of the book on its first appearance
-in France. It may be more than questionable, judging from the English
-point of view, whether such a subject should ever have been selected
-for any other than the most serious, reverent, and forbearing
-treatment. Setting this objection aside, however, in consideration of
-the French point of view, it cannot be denied that the merits of the
-"Physiology of Marriage," as a piece of writing, were by no means
-over-estimated by the public to which it was addressed. In a literary
-sense, the book would have done credit to a man in the maturity of his
-powers. As the work of a man whose intellectual life was only
-beginning, it was such an achievement as is not often recorded in the
-history of modern literature.
-
-This first triumph of the future novelist--obtained, curiously enough,
-by a book which was not a novel--failed to smooth the way onward and
-upward for Balzac as speedily and pleasantly as might have been
-supposed. He had another stumble on that hard road of his, before he
-fairly started on the career of success. Soon after the publication of
-"The Physiology of Marriage," an unlucky idea of strengthening his
-resources by trading in literature, as well as by writing books, seems
-to have occurred to him. He tried bookselling and printing; proved
-himself to be, in both cases, probably the very worst man of business
-who ever lived and breathed in this world; failed in the most hopeless
-way, with the most extraordinary rapidity; and so learnt at last, by
-the cruel teaching of experience, that his one fair chance of getting
-money lay in sticking fast to his pen for the rest of his days. In the
-next ten years of his life that pen produced the noble series of
-fictions which influenced French literature far and wide, and which
-will last in public remembrance long after the miserable errors and
-inconsistencies of the writer's personal character are forgotten. This
-was the period when Balzac was in the full enjoyment of his matured
-intellectual powers and his enviable public celebrity; and this was
-also the golden time when his publisher and biographer first became
-acquainted with him. Now, therefore, Monsieur Werdet may be encouraged
-to come forward and take the post of honour as narrator of the strange
-story that is still to be told; for now he is placed in the fit
-position to address himself intelligibly, as well as amusingly, to an
-English audience.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The story opens with the starting of Monsieur Werdet as a publisher in
-Paris, on his own account. The modest capital at his command amounted
-to just one hundred and twenty pounds English; and his leading idea,
-on beginning business, was to become the publisher of Balzac.
-
-He had already entered into transactions, on a large scale, with his
-favourite author, in the character of agent for a publishing-house of
-high standing. He had been very well received, on that first occasion,
-as a man representing undeniable capital and a great commercial
-position. On the second occasion, however, of his representing nobody
-but himself, and nothing but the smallest of existing capitals, he
-very wisely secured the protection of an intimate friend of Balzac's,
-to introduce him as favourably as might be, for the second time.
-Accompanied by this gentleman, whose name was Monsieur Barbier, and
-carrying his capital in his pocket-book, the embryo publisher
-nervously presented himself in the sanctum sanctorum of the great man.
-
-Monsieur Barbier having carefully explained the business on which they
-came, Balzac addressed himself, with an indescribable suavity and
-grandeur of manner, to anxious Monsieur Werdet.
-
-"Just so," said the eminent man. "You are doubtless possessed, sir, of
-considerable capital? You are probably aware that no man can hope to
-publish for ME who is not prepared to assert himself magnificently in
-the matter of cash? I sell high--high--very high. And, not to deceive
-you--for I am incapable of suppressing the truth--I am a man who
-requires to be dealt with on the principle of considerable advances.
-Proceed, sir--I am prepared to listen to you."
-
-But Monsieur Werdet was too cautious to proceed without strengthening
-his position before starting. He entrenched himself instantly behind
-his pocket-book.
-
-One by one, the notes of the Bank of France, which formed the poor
-publisher's small capital, were drawn out of their snug hiding-place.
-Monsieur Werdet produced six of them, representing five hundred francs
-each (or, as before mentioned, a hundred and twenty pounds sterling),
-arranged them neatly and impressively in a circle on the table, and
-then cast himself on the author's mercy in an agitated voice, and in
-these words:
-
-"Sir! behold my capital. There lies my whole fortune. It is yours in
-exchange for any book you please to write for me----"
-
-At that point, to the horror and astonishment of Monsieur Werdet, his
-further progress was cut short by roars of laughter--formidable
-roars, as he himself expressly states--bursting from the lungs of the
-highly diverted Balzac.
-
-"What astonishing simplicity!" exclaimed the great man. "Do you
-actually believe, sir, that I--De Balzac--can so entirely forget what
-is due to myself as to sell you any conceivable species of fiction
-which is the product of MY PEN, for the sum of three thousand francs?
-You have come here, Monsieur Werdet, to address an offer to me,
-without preparing yourself by previous reflection. If I felt so
-disposed, I should have every right to consider your conduct as
-unbecoming in the highest degree. But I don't feel so disposed. On the
-contrary, I can even allow your honest ignorance, your innocent
-confidence, to excuse you in my estimation. Don't be alarmed, sir.
-Consider yourself excused to a certain extent."
-
-Between disappointment, indignation, and astonishment, Monsieur Werdet
-was struck dumb. His friend, Monsieur Barbier, therefore spoke for
-him, urging every possible consideration; and finally proposing that
-Balzac, if he was determined not to write a new story for three
-thousand francs, should at least sell one edition of an old one for
-that sum. Monsieur Barbier's arguments were admirably put: they lasted
-a long time; and when they had come to an end, they received this
-reply:
-
-"Gentlemen!" cried Balzac, pushing back his long hair from his heated
-temples, and taking a fresh dip of ink, "you have wasted an hour of MY
-TIME in talking of trifles. I rate the pecuniary loss thus occasioned
-to me at two hundred francs. My time is my capital. I must work.
-Gentlemen! leave me." Having expressed himself in these hospitable
-terms, the great man immediately resumed the process of composition.
-
-Monsieur Werdet, naturally and properly indignant, immediately left
-the room. He was overtaken, after he had proceeded a little distance
-in the street, by his friend Barbier, who had remained behind to
-remonstrate.
-
-"You have every reason to be offended," said Barbier. "His conduct is
-inexcusable. But pray don't suppose that your negotiation is broken
-off. I know him better than you do; and I tell you that you have
-nailed Balzac. He wants money, and before three days are over your
-head he will return your visit."
-
-"If he does," replied Werdet, "I'll pitch him out of window."
-
-"No, you won't," said Barbier. "In the first place, it is an extremely
-uncivil proceeding to pitch a man out of window; and, as a naturally
-polite gentleman, you are incapable of committing a breach of good
-manners. In the second place, rude as he has been to you, Balzac is
-not the less a man of genius; and, as such, he is just the man of
-whom you, as a publisher, stand in need. Wait patiently; and in a day
-or two you will see him, or hear from him again."
-
-Barbier was right. Three days afterwards, the following satisfactory
-communication was received by Monsieur Werdet:--
-
-     "My brain, sir, was so prodigiously preoccupied by work
-     uncongenial to my fancy, when you visited me the other day,
-     that I was incapable of comprehending otherwise than
-     imperfectly what it was that you wanted of me.
-
-     "To-day, my brain is not preoccupied. Do me the favour to
-     come and see me at four o'clock.
-
-     "A thousand civilities.
-
-          "DE BALZAC."
-
-Monsieur Werdet viewed this singular note in the light of a fresh
-impertinence. On consideration, however, he acknowledged it, and
-curtly added that important business would prevent his accepting the
-appointment proposed to him.
-
-In two days more, friend Barbier came with a second invitation from
-the great man. But Monsieur Werdet steadily refused it. "Balzac has
-already been playing his game with me," he said. "Now it is my turn to
-play my game with Balzac. I mean to keep him waiting four days
-longer."
-
-At the end of that time, Monsieur Werdet once more entered the sanctum
-sanctorum. On this second occasion, Balzac's graceful politeness was
-indescribable. He deplored the rarity of intelligent publishers. He
-declared his deep sense of the importance of an intelligent
-publisher's appearance on the literary horizon. He expressed himself
-as quite enchanted to be now enabled to remark that appearance, to
-welcome it, and even to deal with it. Polite as he was by nature,
-Monsieur Werdet had no chance this time against Monsieur de Balzac. In
-the race of civility the publisher was now nowhere, and the author
-made all the running.
-
-The interview, thus happily begun, terminated in a most agreeable
-transaction on both sides. Balzac cheerfully locked up the six bank
-notes in his strong-box. Werdet, as cheerfully, retired with a written
-agreement in his empty pocket-book, authorising him to publish the
-second edition of "Le Medecin de Campagne"--hardly, it may be remarked
-in parenthesis, one of the best to select of the novels of Balzac.
-
-
-II.
-
-Once started in business as the happy proprietor and hopeful publisher
-of the second edition of "Le Medecin de Campagne," Monsieur Werdet was
-too wise a man not to avail himself of the only certain means of
-success in modern times. He puffed magnificently. Every newspaper in
-Paris was inundated with a deluge of advertisements, announcing the
-forthcoming work in terms of eulogy such as the wonderstruck reader
-had never met with before. The result, aided by Balzac's celebrity,
-was a phenomenon in the commercial history of French literature, at
-that time. Every copy of the second edition of "Le Medecin de
-Campagne" was sold in eight days.
-
-This success established Monsieur Werdet's reputation. Young authors
-crowded to him with their manuscripts, all declaring piteously that
-they wrote in the style of Balzac. But Monsieur Werdet flew at higher
-game. He received the imitators politely, and even published for one
-or two of them; but the high business aspirations which now glowed
-within him were all concentrated on the great original. He had
-conceived the sublime idea of becoming Balzac's sole publisher; of
-buying up all his copyrights held by other houses, and of issuing all
-his new works that were yet to be written. Balzac himself welcomed
-this proposal with superb indulgence. "Walter Scott," he said in his
-grandest way, "had only one publisher--Archibald Constable. Work out
-your idea. I authorise it; I support it. I will be Scott, and you
-shall be Constable!"
-
-Fired by the prodigious future thus disclosed to him, Monsieur Werdet
-assumed forthwith the character of a French Constable; and opened
-negotiations with no less than six publishers who held among them the
-much-desired copyrights. His own enthusiasm did something for him; his
-excellent previous character in the trade, and his remarkable success
-at starting, did much more. The houses he dealt with took his bills in
-all directions, without troubling him for security. After innumerable
-interviews and immense exercise of diplomacy, he raised himself at
-last to the pinnacle of his ambition--he became sole proprietor and
-publisher of the works of Balzac.
-
-The next question--a sordid, but, unhappily, a necessary question
-also--was how to turn this precious acquisition to the best pecuniary
-account. Some of the works, such as "La Physiologie du Mariage," and
-"La Peau de Chagrin," had produced, and were still producing, large
-sums. Others, on the contrary, such as the "Contes Philosophiques"
-(which were a little too profound for the public) and "Louis Lambert"
-(which was intended to popularise the mysticism of Swedenborg), had
-not yet succeeded in paying their expenses. Estimating his speculation
-by what he had in hand, Monsieur Werdet had not much chance of seeing
-his way speedily to quick returns. Estimating it, however, by what was
-coming in the future, that is to say, by the promised privilege of
-issuing all the writer's contemplated works, he had every reason to
-look happily and hopefully at his commercial prospects. At this crisis
-of the narrative, when the publisher's credit and fortune depended
-wholly on the pen of one man, the history of that man's habits of
-literary composition assumes a special interest and importance.
-Monsieur Werdet's description of Balzac at his writing-desk, presents
-by no means the least extraordinary of the many singular revelations
-which compose the story of the author's life.
-
-When he had once made up his mind to produce a new book, Balzac's
-first proceeding was to think it out thoroughly before he put pen to
-paper. He was not satisfied with possessing himself of the main idea
-only; he followed it mentally into its minutest ramifications,
-devoting to the process just that amount of patient hard labour and
-self-sacrifice which no inferior writer ever has the common sense or
-the courage to bestow on his work. With his note-book ready in his
-hand, Balzac studied his scenes and characters straight from life.
-General knowledge of what he wanted to describe was not enough for
-this determined realist. If he found himself in the least at fault, he
-would not hesitate to take a long journey merely to ensure truth to
-nature in describing the street of a country town, or in painting some
-minor peculiarity of rustic character. In Paris he was perpetually
-about the streets, perpetually penetrating into all classes of
-society, to study the human nature about him in its minutest
-varieties. Day by day, and week by week, his note-book and his brains
-were hard at work together, before he thought of sitting down to his
-desk to begin. When he had finally amassed his materials in this
-laborious manner, he at last retired to his study; and from that time,
-till his book had gone to press, society saw him no more.
-
-His house-door was now closed to everybody, except the publisher and
-the printer; and his costume was changed to a loose white robe, of the
-sort which is worn by the Dominican monks. This singular writing-dress
-was fastened round the waist by a chain of Venetian gold, to which
-hung little pliers and scissors of the same precious metal. White
-Turkish trousers, and red-morocco slippers, embroidered with gold,
-covered his legs and feet. On the day when he sat down to his desk,
-the light of heaven was shut out, and he worked by the light of
-candles in superb silver sconces. Even letters were not allowed to
-reach him. They were all thrown, as they came, into a japan vase, and
-not opened, no matter how important they might be, till his work was
-all over. He rose to begin writing at two in the morning, continued,
-with extraordinary rapidity, till six; then took his warm bath, and
-stopped in it, thinking, for an hour or more. At eight o'clock his
-servant brought him up a cup of coffee. Before nine his publisher was
-admitted to carry away what he had done. From nine till noon he wrote
-on again, always at the top of his speed. At noon he breakfasted on
-eggs, with a glass of water and a second cup of coffee. From one
-o'clock to six he returned to work. At six he dined lightly, only
-allowing himself one glass of wine. From seven to eight he received
-his publisher again: and at eight o'clock he went to bed. This life he
-led, while he was writing his books, for two months together, without
-intermission. Its effect on his health was such that, when he appeared
-once more among his friends, he looked, in the popular phrase, like
-his own ghost. Chance acquaintances would hardly have known him again.
-
-It must not be supposed that this life of resolute seclusion and
-fierce hard toil ended with the completion of the first draught of his
-manuscript. At the point where, in the instances of most men, the
-serious part of the work would have come to an end, it had only begun
-for Balzac.
-
-In spite of all the preliminary studying and thinking, when his pen
-had scrambled its way straight through to the end of the book, the
-leaves were all turned back again, and the first manuscript was
-altered into a second with inconceivable patience and care.
-Innumerable corrections and interlinings, to begin with, led in the
-end to transpositions and expansions which metamorphosed the entire
-work. Happy thoughts were picked out of the beginning of the
-manuscript, and inserted where they might have a better effect at the
-end. Others at the end would be moved to the beginning, or the middle.
-In one place, chapters would be expanded to three or four times their
-original length; in another, abridged to a few paragraphs; in a third,
-taken out altogether, or shifted to new positions. With all this mass
-of alterations in every page, the manuscript was at last ready for the
-printer. Even to the experienced eyes in the printing-office, it was
-now all but illegible. The deciphering it, and setting it up in a
-moderately correct form, cost an amount of patience and pains which
-wearied out all the best men in the office, one after another, before
-the first series of proofs could be submitted to the author's eye.
-When these were at last complete, they were sent in on large slips,
-and the indefatigable Balzac immediately set to work to rewrite the
-whole book for the third time!
-
-He now covered with fresh corrections, fresh alterations, fresh
-expansions of this passage, and fresh abridgments of that, not only
-the margins of the proofs all round, but even the little intervals of
-white space between the paragraphs. Lines crossing each other in
-indescribable confusion, were supposed to show the bewildered printer
-the various places at which the multitude of new insertions were to
-be slipped in. Illegible as Balzac's original manuscripts were, his
-corrected proofs were more hopelessly puzzling still. The picked men
-in the office, to whom alone they could be entrusted, shuddered at the
-very name of Balzac, and relieved each other at intervals of an hour,
-beyond which time no one printer could be got to continue at work on
-the universally execrated and universally unintelligible proofs. The
-"revises"--that is to say, the proofs embodying the new
-alterations--were next pulled to pieces in their turn. Two, three, and
-sometimes four, separate sets of them were required before the
-author's leave could be got to send the perpetually rewritten book to
-press, at last, and so have done with it. He was literally the terror
-of all printers and editors; and he himself described his process of
-work as a misfortune, to be the more deplored, because it was, in his
-case, an intellectual necessity. "I toil sixteen hours out of the
-twenty-four," he said, "over the elaboration of my unhappy style; and
-I am never satisfied, myself, when all is done."
-
-Looking back to the school-days of Balzac, when his mind suffered
-under the sudden and mysterious shock which has already been described
-in its place; remembering that his father's character was notorious
-for its eccentricity; observing the prodigious toil, the torture
-almost, of mind which the act of literary production seems to have
-cost him all through life, it is impossible not to arrive at the
-conclusion, that, in his case, there must have been a fatal
-incompleteness somewhere in the mysterious intellectual machine.
-Magnificently as it was endowed, the balance of faculties in his mind
-seems to have been even more than ordinarily imperfect. On this
-theory, his unparalleled difficulties in expressing himself as a
-writer, and his errors, inconsistencies, and meannesses of character
-as a man, become, at least, not wholly unintelligible. On any other
-theory, all explanation both of his personal life and his literary
-life appears to be simply impossible.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Such was the perilous pen on which Monsieur Werdet's prospects in life
-all depended. If Balzac failed to perform his engagements punctually,
-or if his health broke down under his severe literary exertions, the
-commercial decease of his unfortunate publisher followed either
-disaster, purely as a matter of course.
-
-At the outset, however, the posture of affairs looked encouragingly
-enough. On its completion in the Revue de Paris, "Le Lys dans la
-Vallee" was republished by Monsieur Werdet, who had secured his
-interest in the work by a timely advance of six thousand francs. Of
-this novel (the most highly valued in France of all the writer's
-fictions), but two hundred copies of the first edition were left
-unsold within two hours after its publication. This unparalleled
-success kept Monsieur Werdet's head above water, and encouraged him to
-hope great things from the next novel ("Seraphita"), which was also
-begun, periodically, in the Revue de Paris. Before it was finished,
-however, Balzac and the editor of the Review quarrelled. The
-long-suffering publisher was obliged to step in and pay the author's
-forfeit-money, obtaining the incomplete novel in return, and with it
-Balzac's promise to finish the work off-hand. Months passed, however,
-and not a page of manuscript was produced. One morning, at eight
-o'clock, to Monsieur Werdet's horror and astonishment, Balzac burst in
-on him in a condition of sublime despair, to announce that he and his
-genius had to all appearance parted company for ever.
-
-"My brain is empty!" cried the great man. "My imagination is dried up!
-Hundreds of cups of coffee and two warm baths a day have done nothing
-for me. Werdet, I am a lost man!"
-
-The publisher thought of his empty cash-box, and was petrified. The
-author proceeded:
-
-"I must travel!" he exclaimed, distractedly. "My genius has run away
-from me--I must pursue it over mountains and valleys. Werdet! I must
-catch my genius up!"
-
-Poor Monsieur Werdet faintly suggested a little turn in the immediate
-neighbourhood of Paris--something equivalent to a nice airy ride to
-Hampstead on the top of an omnibus. But Balzac's runaway genius had,
-in the estimation of its bereaved proprietor, got as far as Vienna
-already; and he coolly announced his intention of travelling after it
-to the Austrian capital.
-
-"And who is to finish 'Seraphita'?" inquired the unhappy publisher.
-"My illustrious friend, you are ruining me!"
-
-"On the contrary," remarked Balzac, persuasively, "I am making your
-fortune. At Vienna, I shall find my genius. At Vienna I shall finish
-'Seraphita,' and a new book besides. At Vienna, I shall meet with an
-angelic woman who admires me--she permits me to call her
-'Carissima'--she has written to invite me to Vienna--I ought, I must,
-I will, accept the invitation."
-
-Here an ordinary acquaintance would have had an excellent opportunity
-of saying something smart. But poor Monsieur Werdet was not in a
-position to be witty; and, moreover, he knew but too well what was
-coming next. All he ventured to say was:
-
-"But I am afraid you have no money."
-
-"You can raise some," replied his illustrious friend. "Borrow--deposit
-stock in trade--get me two thousand francs. Everything else I can do
-for myself. Werdet, I will hire a postchaise--I will dine with my
-dear sister--I will set off after dinner--I will not be later than
-eight o'clock--click clack!" And the great man executed an admirable
-imitation of the cracking of a postilion's whip.
-
-There was no resource for Monsieur Werdet but to throw the good money
-after the bad. He raised the two thousand francs; and away went Balzac
-to catch his runaway genius, to bask in the society of a female angel,
-and to coin money in the form of manuscripts.
-
-Eighteen days afterwards a perfumed letter from the author reached the
-publisher. He had caught his genius at Vienna; he had been
-magnificently received by the aristocracy; he had finished
-"Seraphita," and nearly completed the other book; his angelic friend,
-Carissima, already loved Werdet from Balzac's description of him;
-Balzac himself was Werdet's friend till death; Werdet was his
-Archibald Constable; Werdet should see him again in fifteen days;
-Werdet should ride in his carriage in the Bois de Boulogne, and meet
-Balzac riding in his carriage, and see the enemies of both parties
-looking on at the magnificent spectacle and bursting with spite.
-Finally, Werdet would have the goodness to remark (in a postscript)
-that Balzac had provided himself with another little advance of
-fifteen hundred francs, received from Rothschild in Vienna, and had
-given in exchange a bill at ten days' sight on his excellent
-publisher, on his admirable and devoted Archibald Constable.
-
-While Monsieur Werdet was still prostrate under the effect of this
-audacious postscript, a clerk entered his office with the identical
-bill. It was drawn at one day's sight instead of ten; and the money
-was wanted immediately. The publisher was the most long-suffering of
-men; but there were limits even to his patient endurance. He took
-Balzac's letter with him, and went at once to the office of the
-Parisian Rothschild. The great financier received him kindly; admitted
-that there must have been some mistake; granted the ten days' grace;
-and dismissed his visitor with this excellent and sententious piece of
-advice:
-
-"I recommend you to mind what you are about, sir, with Monsieur de
-Balzac. He is a highly inconsequent man."
-
-It was too late for Monsieur Werdet to mind what he was about. He had
-no choice but to lose his credit, or pay at the end of the ten days.
-He paid; and ten days later, Balzac returned, considerately bringing
-with him some charming little Viennese curiosities for his esteemed
-publisher. Monsieur Werdet expressed his acknowledgments; and then
-politely inquired for the conclusion of "Seraphita," and the
-manuscript of the new novel.
-
-Not a single line of either had been committed to paper.
-
-The farce (undoubtedly a most disgraceful performance, so far as
-Balzac was concerned) was not played out even yet. The publisher's
-reproaches seem at last to have awakened the author to something
-remotely resembling a sense of shame. He promised that "Seraphita,"
-which had been waiting at press a whole year, should be finished in
-one night. There were just two sheets of sixteen pages each to write.
-They might have been completed either at the author's house or at the
-publisher's, which was close to the printer's. But, no--it was not in
-Balzac's character to miss the smallest chance of producing a
-sensation anywhere. His last caprice was a determination to astonish
-the printers. Twenty-five compositors were called together at eleven
-at night, a truckle-bed and table were set up for the author--or, to
-speak more correctly, for the literary mountebank--in the workshop;
-Balzac arrived, in a high state of inspiration, to stagger the sleepy
-journeymen by showing them how fast he could write; and the two sheets
-were completed magnificently on the spot. By way of fit and proper
-climax to this ridiculous exhibition of literary quackery, it is only
-necessary to add, that, on Balzac's own confession, the two concluding
-sheets of "Seraphita" had been mentally composed, and carefully
-committed to memory, two years before he affected to write them
-impromptu in the printer's office. It seems impossible to deny that
-the man who could act in this outrageously puerile manner must have
-been simply mad. But what becomes of the imputation when we remember
-that this very madman has produced books which, for depth of thought
-and marvellous knowledge of human nature, are counted deservedly among
-the glories of French literature, and which were never more living and
-more lasting works than they are at this moment?
-
-"Seraphita" was published three days after the author's absurd
-exhibition of himself at the printer's office. In this novel, as in
-its predecessor--"Louis Lambert"--Balzac left his own firm ground of
-reality, and soared, on the wings of Swedenborg, into an atmosphere of
-transcendental obscurity impervious to all ordinary eyes. What the
-book meant, the editor of the periodical in which part of it
-originally appeared, never could explain. Monsieur Werdet, who
-published it, confesses that he was in the same mystified condition;
-and the present writer, who has vainly attempted to read it through,
-desires to add, in this place, his own modest acknowledgment of
-inability to enlighten English readers in the smallest degree on the
-subject of "Seraphita." Luckily for Monsieur Werdet, the author's
-reputation stood so high with the public, that the book sold
-prodigiously, merely because it was a book by Balzac. The proceeds of
-the sale, and the profits derived from new editions of the old novels,
-kept the sinking publisher from absolute submersion; and might even
-have brought him safely to land, but for the ever-increasing dead
-weight of the author's perpetual borrowings, on the security of
-forthcoming works which he never produced.
-
-No commercial success, no generous self-sacrifice, could keep pace
-with the demands of Balzac's insatiate vanity and love of show, at
-this period of his life. He had two establishments, to begin with;
-both splendidly furnished, and one adorned with a valuable gallery of
-pictures. He had his box at the French Opera, and his box at the
-Italian Opera. He had a chariot and horses, and an establishment of
-men servants. The panels of the carriage were decorated with the arms,
-and the bodies of the footmen were adorned with the liveries, of the
-noble family of D'Entragues, to which Balzac persisted in declaring
-that he was allied, although he never could produce the smallest proof
-in support of the statement. When he could add no more to the
-sumptuous magnificence of his houses, his dinners, his carriage, and
-his servants; when he had filled his rooms with every species of
-expensive knick-knack; when he had lavished money on all the known
-extravagances which extravagant Paris can supply to the spendthrift's
-inventory, he hit on the entirely new idea of providing himself with
-such a walking-stick as the world had never yet beheld.
-
-His first proceeding was to procure a splendid cane, which was sent to
-the jeweller's, and was grandly topped by a huge gold knob. The inside
-of the knob was occupied by a lock of hair presented to the author by
-an unknown lady admirer. The outside was studded with all the jewels
-he had bought, and with all the jewels he had received as presents.
-With this cane, nearly as big as a drum-major's staff, and all a-blaze
-at the top with rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires, Balzac
-exhibited himself, in a rapture of satisfied vanity, at the theatres
-and in the public promenades. The cane became as celebrated in Paris
-as the author. Madame de Girardin wrote a sparkling little book all
-about the wonderful walking-stick. Balzac was in the seventh heaven of
-happiness; Balzac's friends were either disgusted or diverted,
-according to their tempers. One unfortunate man alone suffered the
-inevitable penalty of this insane extravagance: need it be added that
-his name was Werdet?
-
-The end of the connexion between the author and the publisher was now
-fast approaching. All entreaties or reproaches addressed to Balzac
-failed in producing the slightest result. Even confinement in a
-sponging-house, when creditors discovered, in course of time, that
-they could wait no longer, passed unheeded as a warning. Balzac only
-borrowed more money the moment the key was turned on him, gave a
-magnificent dinner in prison, and left the poor publisher, as usual,
-to pay the bill. He was extricated from the sponging-house before he
-had been there quite three days; and, in that time, he had spent over
-twenty guineas on luxuries which he had not a farthing of his own to
-purchase. It is useless, it is even exasperating, to go on
-accumulating instances of this sort of mad and cruel prodigality: let
-us advance rapidly to the end. One morning, Monsieur Werdet balanced
-accounts with his author, from the beginning, and found, in spite of
-the large profits produced by the majority of the works, that
-fifty-eight thousand francs were (to use his own expression) paralysed
-in his hands by the life Balzac persisted in leading; and that
-fifty-eight thousand more might soon be in the same condition, if he
-had possessed them to advance. A rich publisher might have contrived
-to keep his footing in such a crisis as this, and to deal, for the
-time to come, on purely commercial grounds. But Monsieur Werdet was a
-poor man; he had relied on Balzac's verbal promises when he ought to
-have exacted his written engagements; and he had no means of appealing
-to the author's love of money by dazzling prospects of banknotes
-awaiting him in the future, if he chose honestly to earn his right to
-them. In short, there was but one alternative left, the alternative of
-giving up the whole purpose and ambition of the bookseller's life, and
-resolutely breaking off his ruinous connexion with Balzac.
-
-Reduced to this situation, driven to bay by the prospect of
-engagements falling due which he had no apparent means of meeting,
-Monsieur Werdet answered the next application for an advance by a flat
-refusal, and followed up that unexampled act of self-defence by
-speaking his mind at last, in no measured terms, to his illustrious
-friend. Balzac turned crimson with suppressed anger, and left the
-room. A series of business formalities followed, initiated by Balzac,
-with the view of breaking off the connexion between his publisher and
-himself, now that he found there was no more money to be had; Monsieur
-Werdet being, on his side, perfectly ready to "sign, seal, and
-deliver" as soon as his claims were properly satisfied in due form of
-law.
-
-Balzac had now but one means of meeting his liabilities. His personal
-reputation was gone; but his literary reputation remained as high as
-ever, and he soon found a publisher, with large capital at command,
-who was ready to treat for his copyrights. Monsieur Werdet had no
-resource but to sell, or be bankrupt. He parted with all the valuable
-copyrights for a sum of sixty thousand and odd francs, which sufficed
-to meet his most pressing engagements. Some of the less popular and
-less valuable books he kept, to help him, if possible, through his
-daily and personal liabilities. As for gaining any absolute profit, or
-even holding his position as a publisher, the bare idea of securing
-either advantage was dismissed as an idle dream. The purpose for
-which he had toiled so hard and suffered so patiently was sacrificed
-for ever, and he was reduced to beginning life again as a country
-traveller for a prosperous publishing house. So far as his main object
-in existence was concerned, Balzac had plainly and literally ruined
-him. It is impossible to part with Monsieur Werdet, imprudent and
-credulous as he appears to have been, without a strong feeling of
-sympathy, which becomes strengthened to something like positive
-admiration when we discover that he cherished, in after life, no
-unfriendly sentiments towards the man who had treated him so
-shamefully; and when we find him, in the Memoir now under notice,
-still trying hard to make the best of Balzac's conduct, and still
-writing of him in terms of affection and esteem to the very end of the
-book.
-
-The remainder of Balzac's life was, in substance, merely the
-lamentable repetition of the personal faults and follies, and the
-literary merits and triumphs, which have already found their record in
-these pages. The extremes of idle vanity and unprincipled extravagance
-still alternated, to the last, with the extremes of hard mental labour
-and amazing mental productiveness. Though he found new victims among
-new men, he never again met with so generous and forbearing a friend
-as the poor publisher whose fortunes he had destroyed. The women,
-whose impulses in his favour were kept alive by their admiration of
-his books, clung to their spoilt darling to the last--one of their
-number even stepping forward to save him from a debtors' prison, at
-the heavy sacrifice of paying the whole demand against him out of her
-own purse. In all cases of this sort, even where men were concerned as
-well as women, his personal means of attraction, when he chose to
-exert them, strengthened immensely his literary claims on the sympathy
-and good-will of others. He appears to have possessed in the highest
-degree those powers of fascination which are quite independent of mere
-beauty of face and form, and which are perversely and inexplicably
-bestowed in the most lavish abundance on the most unprincipled of
-mankind. Poor Monsieur Werdet can only account for half his own acts
-of indiscretion, by declaring that his eminent friend wheedled him
-into committing them. Other and wiser men kept out of Balzac's way,
-through sheer distrust of themselves. Virtuous friends who tried hard
-to reform him, retreated from his presence, declaring that the
-reprobate whom they had gone to convert had all but upset their moral
-balance in a morning's conversation. An eminent literary gentleman,
-who went to spend the day with him to talk over a proposed work,
-rushed out of the house after a two hours' interview, exclaiming
-piteously, "The man's imagination is in a state of delirium--his talk
-has set my brain in a whirl--he would have driven me mad if I had
-spent the day with him!" If men were influenced in this way, it is not
-wonderful that women (whose self-esteem was delicately flattered by
-the prominent and fascinating position which they hold in all his
-books) should have worshipped a man who publicly and privately
-worshipped them.
-
-His personal appearance would have recalled to English minds the
-popular idea of Friar Tuck--he was the very model of the conventional
-fat, sturdy, red-faced, jolly monk. But he had the eye of a man of
-genius, and the tongue of a certain infernal personage, who may be
-broadly hinted at, but who must on no account be plainly named. The
-Balzac candlestick might be clumsy enough; but when once the Balzac
-candle was lit, the moths flew into it, only too readily, from all
-points of the compass.
-
-The last important act of his life was, in a worldly point of view,
-one of the wisest things he ever did. The lady who had invited him to
-Vienna, and whom he called Carissima, was the wife of a wealthy
-Russian nobleman. On the death of her husband, she practically
-asserted her admiration of her favourite author by offering him her
-hand and fortune. Balzac accepted both; and returned to Paris (from
-which respect for his creditors had latterly kept him absent) a
-married man, and an enviable member of the wealthy class of society. A
-splendid future now opened before him--but it opened too late. Arrived
-at the end of his old course, he just saw the new career beyond him,
-and dropped on the threshold of it. The strong constitution which he
-had remorselessly wasted for more than twenty years past, gave way at
-length, at the very time when his social chances looked most brightly.
-Three months after his marriage, Honore de Balzac died, after
-unspeakable suffering, of disease of the heart. He was then but fifty
-years of age. His fond, proud, heart-broken old mother held him in her
-arms. On that loving bosom he had drawn his first breath. On that
-loving bosom the weary head sank to rest again, when the wild,
-wayward, miserable, glorious life was over.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The sensation produced in Paris by his death was something akin to the
-sensation produced in London by the death of Byron. Mr. Carlyle has
-admirably said that there is something touching in the loyalty of men
-to their Sovereign Man. That loyalty most tenderly declared itself
-when Balzac was no more. Men of all ranks and parties, who had been
-shocked by his want of principle and disgusted by his inordinate
-vanity while he was alive, now accepted universally the atonement of
-his untimely death, and remembered nothing but the loss that had
-happened to the literature of France. A great writer was no more; and
-a great people rose with one accord to take him reverently and
-gloriously to his grave. The French Institute, the University, the
-scientific societies, the Association of Dramatic Authors, the Schools
-of Law and Medicine, sent their representatives to walk in the funeral
-procession. English readers, American readers, German readers, and
-Russian readers, swelled the immense assembly of Frenchmen that
-followed the coffin. Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas were among the
-mourners who supported the pall. The first of these two celebrated men
-pronounced the funeral oration over Balzac's grave, and eloquently
-characterised the whole series of the dead writer's works as forming,
-in truth, but one grand book, the text-book of contemporary
-civilisation. With that just and generous tribute to the genius of
-Balzac, offered by the most illustrious of his literary rivals, these
-few pages may fitly and gracefully come to an end. Of the miserable
-frailties of the man, enough has been recorded to serve the first of
-all interests, the interest of truth. The better and nobler part of
-him calls for no further comment at any writer's hands. It remains to
-us in his works, and it speaks with deathless eloquence for itself.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[5] This sentence has unfortunately proved prophetic. Cheap
-translations of Le Pere Goriot and La Recherche de l'Absolu were
-published soon after the present article appeared in print, with
-extracts from the opinions here expressed on Balzac's writings
-appended by way of advertisement. Critical remonstrance in relation to
-such productions as these would be remonstrance thrown away. It will
-be enough to say here, by way of warning to the reader, that the
-experiment of rendering the French of Balzac into its fair English
-equivalent still remains to be tried.
-
-
-
-
-FRAGMENTS OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.--II.
-
-MY BLACK MIRROR.
-
-
-Has everybody heard of Doctor Dee, the magician, and of the black
-speculum or mirror of cannel coal, in which he could see at will
-everything in the wide world, and many things beyond it? If so, I may
-introduce myself to my readers in the easiest manner possible.
-Although I cannot claim to be a descendant of Doctor Dee, I profess
-the occult art to the extent of keeping a black mirror, made exactly
-after the model of that possessed by the old astrologer. My speculum,
-like his, is constructed of an oval piece of cannel coal, highly
-polished, and set on a wooden back with a handle to hold it by.
-Nothing can be simpler than its appearance; nothing more marvellous
-than its capacities--provided always that the person using it be a
-true adept. Any man who disbelieves nothing is a true adept. Let him
-get a piece of cannel coal, polish it highly, clean it before use
-with a white cambric handkerchief, retire to a private sitting-room,
-invoke the name of Doctor Dee, shut both eyes for a moment, and open
-them again suddenly on the black mirror. If he does not see anything
-he likes, after that--past, present, or future--then let him depend on
-it there is some speck or flaw of incredulity in his nature; and the
-sad termination of his career may be considered certain. Sooner or
-later, he will end in being nothing but a rational man.
-
-I, who have not one morsel of rationality about me; I, who am as true
-an adept as if I had lived in the good old times ("the Ages of Faith,"
-as another adept has very properly called them) find unceasing
-interest and occupation in my black mirror. For everything I want to
-know, and for everything I want to do, I consult it. This very day,
-for instance (being in the position of most of the other inhabitants
-of London, at the present season), I am thinking of soon going out of
-town. My time for being away is so limited, and my wanderings have
-extended, at home and abroad, in so many directions, that I can hardly
-hope to visit any really beautiful scenes, or gather any really
-interesting experiences that are absolutely new to me. I must go to
-some place that I have visited before; and I must, in common regard to
-my own holiday interests, take care that it is a place where I have
-already thoroughly enjoyed myself, without a single drawback to my
-pleasure that is worth mentioning.
-
-Under these circumstances, if I were a mere rational man, what should
-I do? Weary my memory to help me to decide on a destination, by giving
-me my past travelling recollections in one long panorama--although I
-can tell by experience that of all my faculties memory is the least
-serviceable at the very time when I most want to employ it. As a true
-adept, I know better than to give myself any useless trouble of this
-sort. I retire to my private sitting-room, take up my black mirror,
-mention what I want--and, behold! on the surface of the cannel coal
-the image of my former travels passes before me, in a succession of
-dream-scenes. I revive my past experiences, and I make my present
-choice out of them, by the evidence of my own eyes; and I may add, by
-that of my own ears also--for the figures in my magic landscapes move
-and speak!
-
-Shall I go on the continent again? Yes. To what part of it? Suppose I
-revisit Austrian Italy, for the sake of renewing my familiarity with
-certain views, buildings, and pictures which once delighted me? But
-let me first ascertain whether I had any serious drawbacks to complain
-of on making acquaintance with that part of the world. Black mirror!
-show me my first evening in Austrian Italy.
-
-A cloud rises on the magic surface--rests on it a little
-while--slowly disappears. My eyes are fixed on the cannel coal. I see
-nothing, hear nothing of the world about me. The first of the magic
-scenes grows visible. I behold it, as in a dream. Away with the
-ignorant Present. I am in Italy again.
-
-The darkness is just coming on. I see myself looking out of the side
-window of a carriage. The hollow roll of the wheels has changed to a
-sharp rattle, and we have entered a town. We cross a vast square,
-illuminated by two lamps and a glimmer of reflected light from a
-coffee-shop window. We get on into a long street, with heavy stone
-arcades for foot-passengers to walk under. Everything looks dark and
-confused; grim visions of cloaked men flit by, all smoking; shrill
-female voices rise above the clatter of our wheels, then subside again
-in a moment. We stop. The bells on the horses' necks ring their last
-tiny peal for the night. A greasy hand opens the carriage-door, and
-helps me down the steps. I am under an archway, with blank darkness
-before me, with a smiling man holding a flaming tallow candle by my
-side, with street spectators silently looking on behind me. They wear
-high-crowned hats and brown cloaks, mysteriously muffling them up to
-the chin. Brigands, evidently. Pass, Scene! I am a peaceable man, and
-I don't like the suspicion of a stiletto, even in a dream.
-
-Show me my sitting-room. Where did I dine, and how, on my first
-evening in Austrian Italy?
-
-I am in the presence of two cheerful waiters, with two flaring
-candles. One is lighting lamps; the other is setting brushwood and
-logs in a blaze in a perfect cavern of a hearth. Where am I, now that
-there is plenty of light to see by? Apparently in a banqueting-hall,
-fifty feet long by forty wide. This is my private sitting-room, and I
-am to eat my little bit of dinner in it all alone. Let me look about
-observantly, while the meal is preparing. Above me is an arched
-painted ceiling, all alive with Cupids rolling about on clouds, and
-scattering perpetual roses on the heads of travellers beneath. Around
-me are classical landscapes of the school which treats the spectator
-to umbrella-shaped trees, calm green oceans, and foregrounds rampant
-with dancing goddesses. Beneath me is something elastic to tread upon,
-smelling very like old straw, which indeed it is, covered with a thin
-drugget. This is humanely intended to protect me against the cold of
-the stone or brick floor, and is a concession to English prejudices on
-the subject of comfort. May I be grateful for it, and take no
-unfriendly notice of the fleas, though they are crawling up my legs
-from the straw and the drugget already!
-
-What do I see next? Dinner on table. Drab-coloured soup, which will
-take a great deal of thickening with grated Parmesan cheese, and five
-dishes all round it. Trout fried in oil, rolled beef steeped in
-succulent brown gravy, roast chicken with water-cresses, square pastry
-cakes with mince-meat inside them, fried potatoes--all excellent. This
-is really good Italian cookery: it is more fanciful than the English
-and more solid than the French. It is not greasy, and none of the
-fried dishes taste in the slightest degree of lamp oil. The wine is
-good, too--effervescent, smacking of the Muscatel grape, and only
-eighteen-pence a bottle. The second course more than sustains the
-character of the first. Small browned birds that look like larks,
-their plump breasts clothed succulently with a counterpane of fat
-bacon, their tender backs reposing on beds of savoury toast,--stewed
-pigeon,--a sponge-cake pudding,--baked pears. Where could one find a
-better dinner or a pleasanter waiter to serve at table? He is neither
-servile nor familiar, and is always ready to occupy any superfluous
-attention I have to spare with all the small talk that is in him. He
-has, in fact, but one fault, and that consists in his very vexatious
-and unaccountable manner of varying the language in which he
-communicates with me.
-
-I speak French and Italian, and he can speak French also as well as
-his own tongue. I naturally, however, choose Italian on first
-addressing him, because it is his native language. He understands
-what I say to him perfectly, but he answers me in French. I bethink
-myself, upon this, that he may be wishing, like the rest of us, to
-show off any little morsel of learning that he has picked up, or that
-he may fancy I understand French better than I do Italian, and may be
-politely anxious to make our colloquy as easy as possible to me.
-Accordingly I humour him, and change to French when I next speak. No
-sooner are the words out of my mouth than, with inexplicable
-perversity, he answers me in Italian. All through the dinner I try
-hard to make him talk the same language that I do, yet, excepting now
-and then a few insignificant phrases, I never succeed. What is the
-meaning of his playing this game of philological see-saw with me? Do
-the people here actually carry the national politeness so far as to
-flatter the stranger by according him an undisturbed monopoly of the
-language in which he chooses to talk to them? I cannot explain it, and
-dessert surprises me in the midst of my perplexities. Four dishes
-again! Parmesan cheese, macaroons, pears, and green figs. With these
-and another bottle of the effervescent wine, how brightly the evening
-will pass away by the blazing wood fire! Surely, I cannot do better
-than go to Austrian Italy again, after having met with such a first
-welcome to the country as this. Shall I put down the cannel coal, and
-determine without any more ado on paying a second visit to the land
-that is cheered by my comfortable inn? No, not too hastily. Let me try
-the effect of one or two more scenes from my past travelling
-experience in this particular division of the Italian peninsula before
-I decide.
-
-Black Mirror! how did I end my evening at the comfortable inn?
-
-The cloud passes again, heavily and thickly this time, over the
-surface of the mirror--clears away slowly--shows me myself dozing
-luxuriously by the red embers with an empty bottle at my side. A
-suddenly-opening door wakes me up; the landlord of the inn approaches,
-places a long, official-looking book on the table, and hands me pen
-and ink. I inquire peevishly what I am wanted to write at that time of
-night, when I am just digesting my dinner. The landlord answers
-respectfully that I am required to give the police a full, true, and
-particular account of myself. I approach the table, thinking this
-demand rather absurd, for my passport is already in the hands of the
-authorities. However, as I am in a despotic country, I keep my
-thoughts to myself, open a blank page in the official-looking book,
-see that it is divided into columns, with printed headings, and find
-that I no more understand what they mean than I understand an assessed
-tax-paper at home, to which by-the-bye, the blank page bears a
-striking general resemblance. The headings are technical official
-words, which I now meet with as parts of Italian speech for the first
-time. I am obliged to appeal to the polite landlord, and, by his
-assistance, I get gradually to understand what it is the Austrian
-police want of me.
-
-The police require to know, before they will let me go on peaceably
-to-morrow, first, What my name is in full? (Answered easily enough.)
-Second, What is my nation? (British, and delighted to cast it in the
-teeth of continental tyrants.) Third, Where was I born? (In
-London--parish of Marylebone--and I wish my native vestry knew how the
-Austrian authorities were using me.) Fourth, where do I live? (In
-London, again--and I have half a mind to write to the Times about this
-nuisance before I go to bed.) Fifth, how old am I? (My age is what it
-has been for the last seven years, and what it will remain till
-further notice--twenty-five exactly.) What next? By all that is
-inquisitive, here are the police wanting to know (Sixth) whether I am
-married or single! Landlord, what is the Italian for Bachelor? "Write
-Nubile, signor." Nubile? That means Marriageable. Permit me to remark,
-my good sir, that this is a woman's definition of a bachelor--not a
-man's. No matter, let it pass. What next? (O distrustful despots! what
-next?) Seventh, What is my condition? (First-rate condition, to be
-sure,--full of rolled beef, toasted larks, and effervescent wine.
-Condition! What do they mean by that? Profession, is it? I have not
-got one. What shall I write? "Write Proprietor, signor." Very well;
-but I don't know that I am proprietor of anything except the clothes I
-stand up in: even my trunk was borrowed of a friend.) Eighth, Where do
-I come from? Ninth, Where am I going to? Tenth, When did I get my
-passport? Eleventh, Where did I get my passport? Twelfth, Who gave me
-my passport? Was there ever such a monstrous string of questions to
-address to a harmless, idle man, who only wants to potter about Italy
-quietly in a postchaise! Do they catch Mazzini, landlord, with all
-these precautions? No: they only catch _me_. There! there! take your
-Travellers' Book back to the police. Surely, such unfounded distrust
-of my character as the production of that volume at my dinner-table
-implies, forms a serious drawback to the pleasure of travelling in
-Austrian Italy. Shall I give up at once all idea of going there, in my
-own innocent character, again? No; let me be deliberate in arriving at
-a decision,--let me patiently try the experiment of looking at one
-more scene from the past.
-
-Black Mirror! how did I travel in Austrian Italy after I had paid my
-bill in the morning, and had left my comfortable inn?
-
-The new dream-scene shows me evening again. I have joined another
-English traveller in taking a vehicle that they call a caleche. It is
-a frowsy kind of sedan-chair on wheels, with greasy leather curtains
-and cushions. In the days of its prosperity and youth it might have
-been a state-coach, and might have carried Sir Robert Walpole to
-court, or the Abbe Dubois to a supper with the Regent Orleans. It is
-driven by a tall, cadaverous, ruffianly postilion, with his clothes
-all in rags, and without a spark of mercy for his miserable horses. It
-smells badly, looks badly, goes badly; and jerks, and cracks, and
-totters as if it would break down altogether--when it is suddenly
-stopped on a rough stone pavement in front of a lonely post-house,
-just as the sun is sinking and the night is setting in.
-
-The postmaster comes out to superintend the harnessing of fresh
-horses. He is tipsy, familiar, and confidential; he first
-apostrophises the caleche with contemptuous curses, then takes me
-mysteriously aside, and declares that the whole high road onward to
-our morning's destination swarms with thieves. It seems, then, that
-the Austrian police reserve all their vigilance for innocent
-travellers, and leave local rogues entirely unmolested. I make this
-reflection, and ask the postmaster what he recommends us to do for the
-protection of our portmanteaus, which are tied on to the roof of the
-caleche. He answers that unless we take special precautions, the
-thieves will get up behind, on our crazy foot-board, and will cut the
-trunks off the top of our frowsy travelling-carriage, under cover of
-the night, while we are quietly seated inside, seeing and suspecting
-nothing. We instantly express our readiness to take any precautions
-that any one may be kind enough to suggest. The postmaster winks, lays
-his finger archly on the side of his nose, and gives an unintelligible
-order in the patois of the district. Before I have time to ask what he
-is going to do, every idler about the posthouse who can climb, scales
-the summit of the caleche, and every idler who cannot, stands roaring
-and gesticulating below with a lighted candle in his hand.
-
-While the hubbub is at its loudest, a rival travelling carriage
-suddenly drives into the midst of us, in the shape of a huge
-barrel-organ on wheels, and bursts out awfully in the darkness with
-the grand march in Semiramide, played with the utmost fury of the
-drum, cymbal, and trumpet-stops. The noise is so bewildering that my
-travelling companion and I take refuge inside our carriage, and shut
-our eyes, and stop our ears, and abandon ourselves to despair. After a
-time, our elbows are jogged, and a string a-piece is given to us
-through each window. We are informed in shouts, accompanied fiercely
-by the grand march, that the strings are fastened to our portmanteaus
-above; that we are to keep the loose ends round our forefingers all
-night; and that the moment we feel a tug, we may be quite certain the
-thieves are at work, and may feel justified in stopping the carriage
-and fighting for our baggage without any more ado. Under these
-agreeable auspices, we start again, with our strings round our
-forefingers. We feel like men about to ring the bell--or like men
-engaged in deep sea-fishing--or like men on the point of pulling the
-string of a shower-bath. Fifty times at least, during the next stage,
-each of us is certain that he feels a tug, and pops his head agitatedly
-out of window, and sees absolutely nothing, and falls back again
-exhausted with excitement in a corner of the caleche. All through the
-night this wear and tear of our nerves goes on; and all through the
-night (thanks, probably, to the ceaseless popping of our heads out of
-the windows) not the ghost of a thief comes near us. We begin, at
-last, almost to feel that it would be a relief to be robbed--almost to
-doubt the policy of resisting any mercifully-larcenous hands stretched
-forth to rescue us from the incubus of our own baggage. The morning
-dawn finds us languid and haggard, with the accursed portmanteau
-strings dangling unregarded in the bottom of the caleche. And this is
-taking our pleasure! This is an incident of travel in Austrian Italy!
-Faithful Black Mirror, accept my thanks. The warning of the two last
-dream-scenes that you have shown me shall not be disregarded. Whatever
-other direction I may take when I go out of town for the present
-season, one road at least I know that I shall avoid--the road that
-leads to Austrian Italy.
-
-Shall I keep on the northern side of the Alps, and travel a little,
-let us say, in German-Switzerland? Black Mirror! how did I get on when
-I was last in that country? Did I like my introductory experience at
-my first inn?
-
-The vision changes, and takes me again to the outside of a house of
-public entertainment; a great white, clean, smooth-fronted,
-opulent-looking hotel--a very different building from my dingy,
-cavernous Italian inn. At the street-door stands the landlord. He is a
-little, lean, rosy man, dressed all in black, and looking like a
-master undertaker. I observe that he neither steps forwards nor smiles
-when I get out of the carriage and ask for a bedroom. He gives me the
-shortest possible answer, growls guttural instructions to a waiter,
-then looks out into the street again and, before I have so much as
-turned my back on him, forgets my existence immediately. The vision
-changes again, and takes me inside the hotel. I am following a waiter
-up-stairs--the man looks unaffectedly sorry to see me. In the bedroom
-corridor we find a chambermaid asleep with her head on a table. She is
-woke up; opens a door with a groan, and scowls at me reproachfully
-when I say that the room will do. I descend to dinner. Two waiters
-attend on me, under protest, and look as if they were on the point of
-giving warning every time I require them to change my plate. At the
-second course the landlord comes in, and stands and stares at me
-intently and silently with his hands in his pockets. This may be his
-way of seeing that my dinner is well served; but it looks much more
-like his way of seeing that I do not abstract any spoons from his
-table. I become irritated by the boorish staring and frowning of
-everybody about me, and express myself strongly on the subject of my
-reception at the hotel to an English traveller dining near me.
-
-The English traveller is one of those exasperating men who are always
-ready to put up with injuries, and he coolly accounts for the
-behaviour of which I complain, by telling me that it is the result of
-the blunt honesty of the natives, who cannot pretend to take an
-interest in me which they do not really feel. What do I care about the
-feelings of the stolid landlord and the sulky waiters? I require the
-comforting outward show from them--the inward substance is not of the
-smallest consequence to me. When I travel in civilised countries, I
-want such a reception at my inn as shall genially amuse and gently
-tickle all the region round about my organ of self-esteem. Blunt
-honesty which is too offensively truthful to pretend to be glad to see
-me, shows no corresponding integrity--as my own experience informs me
-at this very hotel--about the capacities of its wine-bottles, but
-gives me a pint and charges me for a quart in the bill, like the rest
-of the world. Blunt honesty, although it is too brutally sincere to
-look civilly distressed and sympathetic when I say that I am tired
-after my journey, does not hesitate to warm up, and present before me
-as newly dressed, a Methuselah of a duck that has been cooked several
-times over, several days ago, and paid for, though not eaten, by my
-travelling predecessors. Blunt honesty fleeces me according to every
-established predatory law of the landlord's code, yet shrinks from the
-amiable duplicity of fawning affectionately before me all the way up
-stairs when I first present myself to be swindled. Away with such
-detestable sincerity as this! Away with the honesty which brutalises a
-landlord's manners without reforming his bottles or his bills! Away
-with my German-Swiss hotel, and the extortionate cynic who keeps it!
-Let others pay tribute if they will to that boor in innkeeper's
-clothing, the colour of my money he shall never see again.
-
-Suppose I avoid German-Switzerland, and try Switzerland Proper?
-Mirror! how did I travel when I last found myself on the Swiss side of
-the Alps?
-
-The new vision removes me even from the most distant view of an hotel
-of any kind, and places me in a wild mountain country where the end of
-a rough road is lost in the dry bed of a torrent. I am seated in a
-queer little box on wheels, called a Char, drawn by a mule and a mare,
-and driven by a jovial coachman in a blue blouse. I have hardly time
-to look down alarmedly at the dry bed of the torrent, before the Char
-plunges into it. Rapidly and recklessly we thump along over rocks and
-stones, acclivities and declivities that would shake down the stoutest
-English travelling-carriage, knock up the best-bred English horses,
-nonplus the most knowing English coachman. Jovial Blue Blouse, singing
-like a nightingale, drives a-head regardless of every obstacle--the
-mule and mare tear along as if the journey was the great enjoyment of
-the day to them--the Char cracks, rends, sways, bumps, and totters,
-but scorns, as becomes a hardy little mountain vehicle, to overturn or
-come to pieces. When we are not among the rocks we are rolling and
-heaving in sloughs of black mud and sand, like a Dutch herring-boat in
-a ground-swell. It is all one to Blue Blouse and the mule and mare.
-They are just as ready to drag through sloughs as to jolt over rocks;
-and when we do come occasionally to a bit of unencumbered ground, they
-always indemnify themselves for past hardship and fatigue by galloping
-like mad. As for my own sensations in the character of passenger in
-the Char, they are not, physically speaking, of the pleasantest
-possible kind. I can only keep myself inside my vehicle by dint of
-holding tight with both hands by anything I can find to grasp at; and
-I am so shaken throughout my whole anatomy that my very jaws clatter
-again, and my feet play a perpetual tattoo on the bottom of the Char.
-Did I hit on no method of travelling more composed and deliberate than
-this, I wonder, when I was last in Switzerland? Must I make up my mind
-to be half-shaken to pieces if I am bold enough to venture on going
-there again?
-
-The surface of the Black Mirror is once more clouded over. It clears,
-and the vision is now of a path along the side of a precipice. A mule
-is following the path, and I am the adventurous traveller who is
-astride on the beast's back. The first observation that occurs to me
-in my new position is, that mules thoroughly deserve their reputation
-for obstinacy, and that, in regard to the particular animal on which I
-am riding, the less I interfere with him and the more I conduct myself
-as if I was a pack-saddle on his back, the better we are sure to get
-on together.
-
-Carrying pack-saddles is his main business in life; and though he saw
-me get on his back, he persists in treating me as if I was a bale of
-goods, by walking on the extreme edge of the precipice, so as not to
-run any risk of rubbing his load against the safe, or mountain, side
-of the path. In this and in other things I find that he is the victim
-of routine, and the slave of habit. He has a way of stopping short,
-placing himself in a slanting position, and falling into a profound
-meditation at some of the most awkward turns in the wild
-mountain-roads. I imagine at first that he may be halting in this
-abrupt and inconvenient manner to take breath; but then he never
-exerts himself so as to tax his lungs in the smallest degree, and he
-stops on the most unreasonably irregular principles, sometimes twice
-in ten minutes,--sometimes not more than twice in two hours--evidently
-just as his new ideas happen to absorb his attention or not. It is
-part of his exasperating character at these times, always to become
-immersed in reflection where the muleteer's staff has not room to
-reach him with the smallest effect; and where, loading him with blows
-being out of the question, loading him with abusive language is the
-only other available process for getting him on. I find that he
-generally turns out to be susceptible to the influence of injurious
-epithets after he has heard himself insulted five or six times. Once,
-his obdurate nature gives way, even at the third appeal. He has just
-stopped with me on his back, to amuse himself, at a dangerous part of
-the road, with a little hard thinking in a steeply slanting position;
-and it becomes therefore urgently necessary to abuse him into
-proceeding forthwith. First, the muleteer calls him a Serpent--he
-never stirs an inch. Secondly, the muleteer calls him a Frog--he goes
-on imperturbably with his meditation. Thirdly, the muleteer roars out
-indignantly, Ah sacre nom d'un Butor! (which, interpreted by the help
-of my Anglo-French dictionary, means apparently, Ah, sacred name of a
-Muddlehead!); and at this extraordinary adjuration the beast instantly
-jerks up his nose, shakes his ears, and goes on his way indignantly.
-
-Mule-riding, under these circumstances, is certainly an adventurous
-and amusing method of travelling, and well worth trying for once in a
-way; but I am not at all sure that I should enjoy a second experience
-of it, and I have my doubts on this account--to say nothing of my
-dread of a second jolting journey in a Char--about the propriety of
-undertaking another journey to Switzerland during the present sultry
-season. It will be wisest, perhaps, to try the effect of a new scene
-from the past, representing some former visit to some other locality,
-before I venture on arriving at a decision. I have rejected Austrian
-Italy and German Switzerland, and I am doubtful about Switzerland
-Proper. Suppose I do my duty as a patriot, and give the attractions of
-my own country a fair chance of appealing to any past influences of
-the agreeable kind, which they may have exercised over me? Black
-Mirror! when I was last a tourist at home, how did I travel about
-from place to place?
-
-The cloud on the magic surface rises slowly and grandly, like the
-lifting of a fog at sea, and discloses a tiny drawing-room, with a
-skylight window, and a rose-coloured curtain drawn over it to keep out
-the sun. A bright book-shelf runs all round this little fairy chamber,
-just below the ceiling, where the cornice would be in loftier rooms.
-Sofas extend along the wall on either side, and mahogany cupboards
-full of good things ensconce themselves snugly in the four corners.
-The table is brightened with nosegays; the mantel-shelf has a smart
-railing all round it; and the looking-glass above is just large enough
-to reflect becomingly the face and shoulders of any lady who will give
-herself the trouble of looking into it. The present inhabitants of the
-room are three gentlemen with novels and newspapers in their hands,
-taking their ease in blouses, dressing-gowns, and slippers. They are
-reposing on the sofas with fruit and wine within easy reach--and one
-of the party looks to me very much like the enviable possessor of the
-Black Mirror. They exhibit a spectacle of luxury which would make an
-ancient Spartan shudder with disgust; and, in an adjoining apartment,
-their band is attending on them, in the shape of a musical box which
-is just now playing the last scene in Lucia di Lammermoor.
-
-Hark! what sounds are those mingling with the notes of Donizetti's
-lovely music--now rising over it sublimely, now dying away under it,
-gently and more gently still? Our sweet opera air shall come to its
-close, our music shall play for its short destined time and then be
-silent again; but those more glorious sounds shall go on with us day
-and night, shall still swell and sink inexhaustibly, long after we and
-all who know and love and remember us have passed from this earth for
-ever. It is the wash of the waves that now travels along with us
-grandly wherever we go. We are at sea in a schooner yacht, and are
-taking our pleasure along the southern shores of the English coast.
-
-Yes, this to every man who can be certain of his own stomach, this is
-the true luxury of travelling, the true secret for thoroughly enjoying
-all the attractions of moving about from place to place. Wherever we
-now go, we carry our elegant and comfortable home along with us. We
-can stop where we like, see what we like, and always come back to our
-favourite corner on the sofa, always carry on our favourite
-occupations and amusements, and still be travelling, still be getting
-forward to new scenes all the time. Here is no hurrying to accommodate
-yourself to other people's hours for starting, no scrambling for
-places, no wearisome watchfulness over baggage. Here are no anxieties
-about strange beds,--for have we not each of us our own sweet little
-cabin to nestle in at night?--no agitating dependence at the dinner
-hour upon the vagaries of strange cooks--for have we not our own
-sumptuous larder always to return to, our own accomplished and
-faithful culinary artist always waiting to minister to our special
-tastes? We can walk and sleep, stand up or lie down just as we please,
-in our floating travelling-carriage. We can make our own road, and
-trespass nowhere. The bores we dread, the letters we don't want to
-answer, cannot follow and annoy us. We are the freest travellers under
-Heaven; and we find something to interest and attract us through every
-hour of the day. The ships we meet, the trimming of our sails, the
-varying of the weather, the everlasting innumerable changes of the
-ocean, afford constant occupation for eye and ear. Sick, indeed, must
-that libellous traveller have been who first called the sea
-monotonous--sick to death, and perhaps, born brother also to that
-other traveller of evil renown, the first man who journeyed from Dan
-to Beersheba, and found all barren.
-
-Rest then awhile unemployed, my faithful Black Mirror! The last scene
-you have shown me is sufficient to answer the purpose for which I took
-you up. Towards what point of the compass I may turn after leaving
-London is more than I can tell; but this I know, that my next
-post-horses shall be the winds, my next stages coast-towns, my next
-road over the open waves. I will be a sea-traveller once more, and
-will put off resuming my land journeyings until the arrival of that
-most obliging of all convenient periods of time--a future opportunity.
-
-
-
-
-SKETCHES OF CHARACTER.--III.
-
-MRS. BADGERY.
-
-[Drawn from the Life. By a Gentleman with No Sensibilities.]
-
-
-Is there any law in England which will protect me from Mrs. Badgery?
-
-I am a bachelor, and Mrs. Badgery is a widow. Don't suppose she wants
-to marry me! She wants nothing of the sort. She has not attempted to
-marry me; she would not think of marrying me, even if I asked her.
-Understand, if you please, at the outset, that my grievance in
-relation to this widow lady is a grievance of an entirely new kind.
-
-Let me begin again. I am a bachelor of a certain age. I have a large
-circle of acquaintance; but I solemnly declare that the late Mr.
-Badgery was never numbered on the list of my friends. I never heard of
-him in my life; I never knew that he had left a relict; I never set
-eyes on Mrs. Badgery until one fatal morning when I went to see if the
-fixtures were all right in my new house.
-
-My new house is in the suburbs of London. I looked at it, liked it,
-took it. Three times I visited it before I sent my furniture in. Once
-with a friend, once with a surveyor, once by myself, to throw a sharp
-eye, as I have already intimated, over the fixtures. The third visit
-marked the fatal occasion on which I first saw Mrs. Badgery. A deep
-interest attaches to this event, and I shall go into details in
-describing it.
-
-I rang at the bell of the garden-door. The old woman appointed to keep
-the house answered it. I directly saw something strange and confused
-in her face and manner. Some men would have pondered a little and
-questioned her. I am by nature impetuous and a rusher at conclusions.
-"Drunk," I said to myself, and walked on into the house perfectly
-satisfied.
-
-I looked into the front parlour. Grate all right, curtain-pole all
-right, gas chandelier all right. I looked into the back
-parlour--ditto, ditto, ditto, as we men of business say. I mounted the
-stairs. Blind on back window right? Yes; blind on back window right. I
-opened the door of the front drawing-room--and there, sitting in the
-middle of the bare floor, was a large woman on a little camp-stool!
-She was dressed in the deepest mourning; her face was hidden by the
-thickest crape veil I ever saw; and she was groaning softly to herself
-in the desolate solitude of my new unfurnished house.
-
-What did I do? Do! I bounced back into the landing as if I had been
-shot, uttering the national exclamation of terror and astonishment:
-"Hullo!" (And here I particularly beg, in parenthesis, that the
-printer will follow my spelling of the word, and not put Hillo, or
-Halloa, instead, both of which are senseless compromises which
-represent no sound that ever yet issued from an Englishman's lips.) I
-said, "Hullo!" and then I turned round fiercely upon the old woman who
-kept the house, and said "Hullo!" again.
-
-She understood the irresistible appeal that I had made to her
-feelings, and curtseyed, and looked towards the drawing-room, and
-humbly hoped that I was not startled or put out. I asked who the
-crape-covered woman on the camp-stool was, and what she wanted there.
-Before the old woman could answer, the soft groaning in the
-drawing-room ceased, and a muffled voice, speaking from behind the
-crape veil, addressed me reproachfully, and said:
-
-"I am the widow of the late Mr. Badgery."
-
-What do you think I said in answer? Exactly the words which, I flatter
-myself, any other sensible man in my situation would have said. And
-what words were they? These two:
-
-"Oh, indeed?"
-
-"Mr. Badgery and myself were the last tenants who inhabited this
-house," continued the muffled voice. "Mr. Badgery died here." The
-voice ceased, and the soft groans began again.
-
-It was perhaps not necessary to answer this; but I did answer it. How?
-In two words again:
-
-"Did he?"
-
-"Our house has been long empty," resumed the voice, choked by sobs.
-"Our establishment has been broken up. Being left in reduced
-circumstances, I now live in a cottage near; but it is not home to me.
-This is home. However long I live, wherever I go, whatever changes may
-happen to this beloved house, nothing can ever prevent me from looking
-on it as _my_ home. I came here, sir, with Mr. Badgery after our
-honeymoon. All the brief happiness of my life was once contained
-within these four walls. Every dear remembrance that I fondly cherish
-is shut up in these sacred rooms."
-
-Again the voice ceased, and again the soft groans echoed round my
-empty walls, and oozed out past me down my uncarpeted staircase.
-
-I reflected. Mrs. Badgery's brief happiness and dear remembrances were
-not included in the list of fixtures. Why could she not take them away
-with her? Why should she leave them littered about in the way of my
-furniture? I was just thinking how I could put this view of the case
-strongly to Mrs. Badgery, when she suddenly left off groaning, and
-addressed me once more.
-
-"While this house has been empty," she said, "I have been in the habit
-of looking in from time to time, and renewing my tender associations
-with the place. I have lived, as it were, in the sacred memories of
-Mr. Badgery and of the past, which these dear, these priceless rooms
-call up, dismantled and dusty as they are at the present moment. It
-has been my practice to give a remuneration to the attendant for any
-slight trouble that I might occasion----"
-
-"Only sixpence, sir," whispered the old woman, close at my ear.
-
-"And to ask nothing in return," continued Mrs. Badgery, "but the
-permission to bring my camp-stool with me, and to meditate on Mr.
-Badgery in the empty rooms, with every one of which some happy
-thought, or eloquent word, or tender action of his, is everlastingly
-associated. I came here on my usual errand to-day. I am discovered, I
-presume, by the new proprietor of the house--discovered, I am quite
-ready to admit, as an intruder. I am willing to go, if you wish it
-after hearing my explanation. My heart is full, sir; I am quite
-incapable of contending with you. You would hardly think it, but I am
-sitting on the spot once occupied by _our_ ottoman. I am looking
-towards the window in which _my_ flower-stand once stood. In this very
-place, Mr. Badgery first sat down and clasped me to his heart, when
-we came back from our honeymoon trip. 'Matilda,' he said, 'your
-drawing-room has been expensively papered, carpeted, and furnished for
-a month; but it has only been adorned, love, since you entered it.' If
-you have no sympathy, sir, for such remembrances as these; if you see
-nothing pitiable in my position, taken in connection with my presence
-here; if you cannot enter into my feelings, and thoroughly understand
-that this is not a house, but a Shrine--you have only to say so, and I
-am quite willing to go."
-
-She spoke with the air of a martyr--a martyr to my insensibility. If
-she had been the proprietor and I had been the intruder, she could not
-have been more mournfully magnanimous. All this time, too, she never
-raised her veil--she never has raised it, in my presence, from that
-time to this. I have no idea whether she is young or old, dark or
-fair, handsome or ugly: my impression is, that she is in every respect
-a finished and perfect Gorgon; but I have no basis of fact on which I
-can support that horrible idea. A moving mass of crape, and a muffled
-voice--that, if you drive me to it, is all I know, in a personal point
-of view, of Mrs. Badgery.
-
-"Ever since my irreparable loss, this has been the shrine of my
-pilgrimage, and the altar of my worship," proceeded the voice. "One
-man may call himself a landlord, and say that he will let it; another
-man may call himself a tenant, and say that he will take it. I don't
-blame either of those two men; I don't wish to intrude on either of
-those two men; I only tell them that this is my home; that my heart is
-still in possession, and that no mortal laws, landlords, or tenants
-can ever turn it out. If you don't understand this, sir; if the
-holiest feelings that do honour to our common nature have no
-particular sanctity in your estimation, pray do not scruple to say so;
-pray tell me to go."
-
-"I don't wish to do anything uncivil, ma'am," said I. "But I am a
-single man, and I am not sentimental." (Mrs. Badgery groaned.) "Nobody
-told me I was coming into a Shrine when I took this house; nobody
-warned me, when I first went over it that there was a Heart in
-possession. I regret to have disturbed your meditations, and I am
-sorry to hear that Mr. Badgery is dead. That is all I have to say
-about it; and now, with your kind permission, I will do myself the
-honour of wishing you good morning, and will go up-stairs to look
-after the fixtures on the second floor."
-
-Could I have given a gentler hint than this? Could I have spoken more
-compassionately to a woman whom I sincerely believe to be old and
-ugly? Where is the man to be found who can lay his hand on his heart,
-and honestly say that he ever really pitied the sorrows of a Gorgon?
-Search through the whole surface of the globe, and you will discover
-human phenomena of all sorts; but you will not find that man.
-
-To resume. I made her a bow, and left her on the camp-stool, in the
-middle of the drawing-room floor, exactly as I had found her. I
-ascended to the second floor, walked into the back room first, and
-inspected the grate. It appeared to be a little out of repair, so I
-stooped down to look at it closer. While I was kneeling over the bars,
-I was violently startled by the fall of one large drop of Warm Water,
-from a great height, exactly in the middle of a bald place, which has
-been widening a great deal of late years on the top of my head. I
-turned on my knees, and looked round. Heaven and earth! the
-crape-covered woman had followed me up-stairs--the source from which
-the drop of warm water had fallen was Mrs. Badgery's eye!
-
-"I wish you could contrive not to cry over the top of my head, ma'am,"
-I remarked. My patience was becoming exhausted, and I spoke with
-considerable asperity. The curly-headed youth of the present age may
-not be able to sympathise with my feelings on this occasion; but my
-bald brethren know, as well as I do, that the most unpardonable of all
-liberties is a liberty taken with the unguarded top of the human head.
-
-Mrs. Badgery did not seem to hear me. When she had dropped the tear,
-she was standing exactly over me, looking down at the grate; and she
-never stirred an inch after I had spoken. "Don't cry over my head,
-ma'am," I repeated, more irritably than before.
-
-"This was his dressing-room," said Mrs. Badgery, indulging in muffled
-soliloquy. "He was singularly particular about his shaving-water. He
-always liked to have it in a little tin pot, and he invariably desired
-that it might be placed on this hob." She groaned again, and tapped
-one side of the grate with the leg of her camp-stool.
-
-If I had been a woman, or if Mrs. Badgery had been a man, I should now
-have proceeded to extremities, and should have vindicated my right to
-my own house by an appeal to physical force. Under existing
-circumstances, all that I could do was to express my indignation by a
-glance. The glance produced not the slightest result--and no wonder.
-Who can look at a woman with any effect, through a crape veil?
-
-I retreated into the second-floor front room, and instantly shut the
-door after me. The next moment I heard the rustling of the crape
-garments outside, and the muffled voice of Mrs. Badgery poured
-lamentably through the keyhole.
-
-"Do you mean to make that your bed-room?" asked the voice on the other
-side of the door. "Oh, don't, don't make that your bed-room! I am
-going away directly--but, oh pray, pray let that one room be sacred!
-Don't sleep there! If you can possibly help it, don't sleep there!"
-
-I opened the window, and looked up and down the road. If I had seen a
-policeman within hail I should certainly have called him in. No such
-person was visible. I shut the window again, and warned Mrs. Badgery,
-through the door, in my sternest tones, not to interfere with my
-domestic arrangements. "I mean to have my own iron bedstead put up
-here," I said. "And what is more, I mean to sleep here. And what is
-more, I mean to snore here!" Severe, I think, that last sentence? It
-completely crushed Mrs. Badgery for the moment. I heard the crape
-garments rustling away from the door; I heard the muffled groans going
-slowly and solemnly down the stairs again.
-
-In due course of time I also descended to the ground-floor. Had Mrs.
-Badgery really left the premises? I looked into the front
-parlour--empty. Back parlour--empty. Any other room on the
-ground-floor? Yes; a long room at the end of the passage. The door was
-closed. I opened it cautiously, and peeped in. A faint scream, and a
-smack of two distractedly-clasped hands saluted my appearance. There
-she was, again on the camp-stool, again sitting exactly in the middle
-of the floor.
-
-"Don't, don't look in, in that way!" cried Mrs. Badgery, wringing her
-hands. "I could bear it in any other room, but I can't bear it in
-this. Every Monday morning I looked out the things for the wash in
-this room. He was difficult to please about his linen; the washerwoman
-never put starch enough into his collars to satisfy him. Oh, how often
-and often has he popped his head in here, as you popped yours just
-now; and said, in his amusing way, 'More starch!' Oh, how droll he
-always was--how very, very droll in this dear little back room!"
-
-I said nothing. The situation had now got beyond words. I stood with
-the door in my hand, looking down the passage towards the garden, and
-waiting doggedly for Mrs. Badgery to go out. My plan succeeded. She
-rose, sighed, shut up the camp-stool, stalked along the passage,
-paused on the hall mat, said to herself, "Sweet, sweet spot!"
-descended the steps, groaned along the gravel-walk, and disappeared
-from view at last through the garden-door.
-
-"Let her in again at your peril," said I to the woman who kept the
-house. She curtseyed and trembled. I left the premises, satisfied with
-my own conduct under very trying circumstances; delusively convinced
-also that I had done with Mrs. Badgery.
-
-The next day I sent in the furniture. The most unprotected object on
-the face of this earth is a house when the furniture is going in. The
-doors must be kept open; and employ as many servants as you may,
-nobody can be depended on as a domestic sentry so long as the van is
-at the gate. The confusion of "moving in" demoralises the steadiest
-disposition, and there is no such thing as a properly-guarded post
-from the top of the house to the bottom. How the invasion was managed,
-how the surprise was effected, I know not; but it is certainly the
-fact, that when my furniture went in, the inevitable Mrs. Badgery went
-in along with it.
-
-I have some very choice engravings, after the old masters; and I was
-first awakened to a consciousness of Mrs. Badgery's presence in the
-house, while I was hanging up my proof impression of Titian's Venus
-over the front parlour fire-place. "Not there!" cried the muffled
-voice imploringly. "_His_ portrait used to hang there. Oh, what a
-print--what a dreadful, dreadful print to put where _his_ dear
-portrait used to be!"
-
-I turned round in a fury. There she was, still muffled up in crape,
-still carrying her abominable camp-stool. Before I could say a word in
-remonstrance, six men in green baize aprons staggered in with my
-sideboard, and Mrs. Badgery suddenly disappeared. Had they trampled
-her under foot, or crushed her in the doorway? Though not an inhuman
-man by nature, I asked myself those questions quite composedly. No
-very long time elapsed before they were practically answered in the
-negative by the reappearance of Mrs. Badgery herself, in a perfectly
-unruffled condition of chronic grief. In the course of the day I had
-my toes trodden on, I was knocked about by my own furniture, the six
-men in baize aprons dropped all sorts of small articles over me in
-going up and down stairs; but Mrs. Badgery escaped unscathed. Every
-time I thought she had been turned out of the house she proved, on the
-contrary, to be groaning close behind me. She wept over Mr. Badgery's
-memory in every room, perfectly undisturbed to the last, by the
-chaotic confusion of moving in. I am not sure, but I think she brought
-a tin box of sandwiches with her, and celebrated a tearful pic-nic of
-her own in the groves of my front garden. I say I am not sure of this;
-but I am positively certain that I never entirely got rid of her all
-day; and I know to my cost that she insisted on making me as well
-acquainted with Mr. Badgery's favourite notions and habits as I am
-with my own. It may interest the reader if I report that my taste in
-carpets is not equal to Mr. Badgery's; that my ideas on the subject of
-servants' wages are not so generous as Mr. Badgery's; and that I
-ignorantly persisted in placing a sofa in the position which Mr.
-Badgery, in his time, considered to be particularly fitted for an
-arm-chair. I could go nowhere, look nowhere, do nothing, say nothing,
-all that day, without bringing the widowed incubus in the crape
-garments down upon me immediately. I tried civil remonstrances, I
-tried rude speeches, I tried sulky silence--nothing had the least
-effect on her. The memory of Mr. Badgery was the shield of proof with
-which she warded off my fiercest attacks. Not till the last article of
-furniture had been moved in, did I lose sight of her; and even then
-she had not really left the house. One of my six men in green baize
-aprons routed her out of the back-garden area, where she was telling
-my servants, with floods of tears, of Mr. Badgery's virtuous
-strictness with his housemaid in the matter of followers. My admirable
-man in green baize courageously saw her out, and shut the garden-door
-after her. I gave him half-a-crown on the spot; and if anything
-happens to him, I am ready to make the future prosperity of his
-fatherless family my own peculiar care.
-
-The next day was Sunday; and I attended morning service at my new
-parish church.
-
-A popular preacher had been announced, and the building was crowded. I
-advanced a little way up the nave, and looked to my right, and saw no
-room. Before I could look to my left, I felt a hand laid persuasively
-on my arm. I turned round--and there was Mrs. Badgery, with her
-pew-door open, solemnly beckoning me in. The crowd had closed up
-behind me; the eyes of a dozen members of the congregation, at least,
-were fixed on me. I had no choice but to save appearances, and accept
-the dreadful invitation. There was a vacant place next to the door of
-the pew. I tried to drop into it, but Mrs. Badgery stopped me. "_His_
-seat," she whispered, and signed to me to place myself on the other
-side of her. It is unnecessary to say that I had to climb over a
-hassock, and that I knocked down all Mrs. Badgery's devotional books
-before I succeeded in passing between her and the front of the pew.
-She cried uninterruptedly through the service; composed herself when
-it was over; and began to tell me what Mr. Badgery's opinions had been
-on points of abstract theology. Fortunately there was great confusion
-and crowding at the door of the church; and I escaped, at the hazard
-of my life, by running round the back of the carriages. I passed the
-interval between the services alone in the fields, being deterred from
-going home by the fear that Mrs. Badgery might have got there before
-me.
-
-Monday came. I positively ordered my servants to let no lady in deep
-mourning pass inside the garden-door, without first consulting me.
-After that, feeling tolerably secure, I occupied myself in arranging
-my books and prints.
-
-I had not pursued this employment much more than an hour, when one of
-the servants burst excitably into the room, and informed me that a
-lady in deep mourning had been taken faint, just outside my door, and
-had requested leave to come in and sit down for a few moments. I ran
-down the garden-path to bolt the door, and arrived just in time to see
-it violently pushed open by an officious and sympathising crowd. They
-drew away on either side as they saw me. There she was, leaning on the
-grocer's shoulder, with the butcher's boy in attendance, carrying her
-camp-stool! Leaving my servants to do what they liked with her, I ran
-back and locked myself up in my bedroom. When she evacuated the
-premises, some hours afterwards, I received a message of apology,
-informing me that this particular Monday was the sad anniversary of
-her wedding-day, and that she had been taken faint, in consequence, at
-the sight of her lost husband's house.
-
-Tuesday forenoon passed away happily, without any new invasion. After
-lunch, I thought I would go out and take a walk. My garden-door has a
-sort of peep-hole in it, covered with a wire grating. As I got close
-to this grating, I thought I saw something mysteriously dark on the
-outer side of it. I bent my head down to look through, and instantly
-found myself face to face with the crape veil. "Sweet, sweet spot!"
-said the muffled voice, speaking straight into my eyes through the
-grating. The usual groans followed, and the name of Mr. Badgery was
-plaintively pronounced before I could recover myself sufficiently to
-retreat to the house.
-
-Wednesday is the day on which I am writing this narrative. It is not
-twelve o'clock yet, and there is every probability that some new form
-of sentimental persecution is in store for me before the evening. Thus
-far, these lines contain a perfectly true statement of Mrs. Badgery's
-conduct towards me since I entered on the possession of _my_ house and
-_her_ shrine. What am I to do?--that is the point I wish to insist
-on--what am I to do? How am I to get away from the memory of Mr.
-Badgery, and the unappeasable grief of his disconsolate widow? Any
-other species of invasion it is possible to resist; but how is a man
-placed in my unhappy and unparalleled circumstances to defend himself?
-I can't keep a dog ready to fly at Mrs. Badgery. I can't charge her at
-a police-court with being oppressively fond of the house in which her
-husband died. I can't set man-traps for a woman, or prosecute a
-weeping widow as a trespasser and a nuisance. I am helplessly involved
-in the unrelaxing folds of Mrs. Badgery's crape veil. Surely there was
-no exaggeration in my language when I said that I was a sufferer under
-a perfectly new grievance! Can anybody advise me? Has anybody had even
-the remotest experience of the peculiar form of persecution which I am
-now enduring? If nobody has, is there any legal gentleman in the
-United Kingdom who can answer the all-important question which appears
-at the head of this narrative? I began by asking that question because
-it was uppermost in my mind. It is uppermost in my mind still, and I
-therefore beg leave to conclude appropriately by asking it again:
-
-Is there any law in England which will protect me from Mrs. Badgery?
-
-
-END OF VOL. I.
-
-
-
-
-LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING
-CROSS.
-
-
-
-
-
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