Chapter I
“I’ll be hanged if I do!”
I was standing at the verge of the pavement at the bottom of Ludgate-hill, with one foot on the kerb and the other in the kennel.
’Tis an attitude of irresolution and uncertainty, and throws a man off his level. And when a man is thrown off his level there’s no telling what may be the end of it. I took my foot out of the kennel, and as I set it down beside its companion on the granite I repeated my exclamation――
“I’ll be hanged if I do!”
Now, ’tis an undertaking no man in the possession of his senses would make if he was not quite sure of avoiding the penalty. There are many inconveniences connected with being hanged, which would incline us to hesitate. A man of sentiment and refinement would shrink from it. The idea of engrossing the attention of so many people, from the Sheriff and the Ordinary down to the most ragged beggar in the crowd, is a shock to delicacy.
Besides, hanging entails early rising, and early rising is bad. Oh! great Sun! for what dost thou quit thy roseate couch at so unearthly an hour, but to air the world for us poor mortals?
Whip me the man who would rise before eleven, if he could help it. If he couldn’t――well, ’tis different, and there’s an end on’t.
But early rising is a thing I never cared for or practised; and indeed I can think of no worse way of beginning a day than getting up at eight to be hanged.
And this brings me back to my first proposition. “I’ll be hanged if I do!” said I.
As I uttered the words I brought down my cane with a smart rap on the stones――for if the intention and the deed be the same thing, as learned legists tell us, it was on the stones that I brought it down. But between the deed and the intention a plaguy fellow must needs thrust the foot on which he wore his largest and tenderest corn.
Mine is a sensitive heart, and of a truth tenderness is a failing that is always leading me into difficulties.
I could not support the sight of his anguish; and as soon as he found the use of his voice――which was pretty soon――I thought it best to move away.
Chapter II
I had not gone many steps ere I fell in with a donkey. Now an ass is an animal I can never pass without giving him the time of day. There is a gentle patience with which he listens to my discourses that wins my heart in spite of myself.
He was harnessed to a sort of barrow, laden with mackerel, and he was standing in Farringdon-street to allow the stream of traffic to pass up Ludgate-hill.
“’Tis ever so, Honesty!” said I; “thou and I must e’en wait to let our betters go by. See how yon ‘Bow and Stratford’ rolls by――mark that Pickford’s van――and thou’rt obliged to wait with thy fish, though they be perishable goods at best.”
As I said this I had taken up one of the mackerel, and was moralizing over it.
“Come, I say, jest drop that ’ere?” said a voice. I looked up. It was Jack’s master. “And this is thy tyrant, then!” I thought to myself. “Thine must be a hard lot, with one so suspicious of his kind――so devoid of sentiment.” But I said nothing, and replaced the fish.
Just at this moment the tide of traffic was broken for an instant, and the ass’s master hastened to take advantage of it. “Kim up!” said he to Jack; and before the poor animal could obey him, he seized him by the head and dragged him along, dealing him at the same time a score of heavy blows with a thick stick that he carried in his right hand.
I could have found it in my heart to have given the rascal a sound drubbing for his pains. But I refrained. I protest I am too soft-hearted. I feared I might by chance hurt him, or he me.
“Farewell, Honesty!” said I, as Jack shambled off with his load. And then I knew not what tender emotion stirred me, but I felt a tear trickling down my cheek. “Farewell, Honesty!” said I again, as I put my hand into my pocket for my kerchief.
It was gone!――――
Chapter III
I have come to the conclusion that ’tis not the best way to get through a story to begin at the end.
’Tis an unprofitable way at best, and tends to lead one into digressions.
Now, digressions will be the ruin of me in this world and the next. I shall be so beset with digressions I shall never reach my destination.
’Tis a very butterfly-like temptation. Here was I set down to write you out my journey, and I’ve not got three steps from the bottom of Ludgate-hill.
And this because of my fatal failing for digression. I had proposed to write a chapter on Pickford’s vans, and another on Public Executions; but here’s the end of my letter, and I am still standing with one foot on the kerbstone and the other in the kennel.
* * * * *
As I was writing that last sentence, I felt I could bear it no longer. It had rung in my ears all day. I had looked out of windows, and out of doors, and upstairs, and downstairs, but I could not discover whence it came.
“I can’t get on! I can’t get on!”
’Twas a little plaintive voice like a child’s.
“I can’t get on!” This time I traced it to its source. ’Twas nothing but a little squirrel in a revolving cage. As he ran, so his prison turned, and he still kept crying, “I can’t get on!”
Oh! great principle of Liberty! was I wrong to make the instant determination to set that poor little captive free? My heart assures me I was not. I fumbled at the wire-fastening. It resisted my efforts; but the squirrel bit my fingers all the same.
* * * * *
Another digression. But it shall be the last. I have sworn it, and so there’s an end of the matter. And ’tis no much matter either, for after all ’tis no more than this:――
As I stood on the pavement at the bottom of Ludgate-hill, with one foot on the kerb and the other in the kennel, I suddenly remembered that it was Lord Mayors Day.
“Shall I go and see the show?” said I to myself. And myself answered――
“I’ll be hanged if I do!” And I didn’t.
ANONYMOUS.
――――
AFFECTING APPEAL.
Linton, a musician belonging to the orchestra of Covent Garden Theatre, was murdered by street robbers, who were afterwards discovered and executed. A play was given for the benefit of his widow and children; and the day preceding the performance the following appeared in one of the public prints.
“THEATRE ROYAL, COVENT GARDEN. “For the Benefit of Mrs. Linton, &c.”
“The Widow,” said Charity, whispering me in the ear. “must have your mite; wait upon her with a guinea, and purchase a box-ticket.”
“You may have one for five shillings,” observed Avarice, pulling me by the elbow.
My hand was in my pocket, and the guinea, which was between my finger and thumb, slipped out.
“Yes,” said I, “she shall have my five shillings,”
“Good heaven!” exclaimed Justice, “what are you about! Five shillings? If you pay but five shillings for going into the Theatre, then you get value received for your money.”
“And I shall owe him no thanks,” added Charity, laying her hand upon my heart, and leading me on the way to the Widow’s house.
Taking the knocker in my left hand, my whole frame trembled. Looking round, I saw Avarice turn the corner of the street, and I found all the money in my pocket grasped in my hand.
“Is your mother at home, my dear?” said I, to a child who conducted me into a parlour.
“Yes,” answered the infant; “but my father has not been at home for a great while; that is his harpsichord, and that is his violin.――He used to play on them for me.”
“Shall I play you a tune, my boy?” said I.
“No, sir,” answered the boy, “My mother will not let them be touched; for since my father went abroad, music makes her cry, and then we all cry.”
I looked on the violin――it was unstrung. I touched the harpsichord――it was out of tune. Had the lyre of Orpheus sounded in my ear, it could not have insinuated to my heart thrills of sensibility equal to what I felt. It was the spirit in unison with the flesh.
“I hear my mother on the stairs,” said the boy.
I shook him by the hand――“Give her this, my lad,” said I, and left the house.――It rained――I called a coach――drove to a coffee-house, but not having a farthing in my pocket, borrowed a shilling at the bar.
――――
THE CITIZEN.
I took a fat citizen, and having first shut him up in his little sitting-room, I proceeded to take his picture. I beheld his body gorged with long gratification and confinement to the house, and I felt what kind of sickness of the stomach it is that arises from having eaten too much. On looking nearer, I beheld him bloated and feverish. In sixty years the country breeze had not once fanned his blood, and he had seen the sun and moon but indistinctly in all that time. He was seated, or rather buried in a large arm-chair, which stood in front of the fire-place, and which might have served either for a chair or a bed. A bundle of promissory notes lay on the table, scrawled all over, the fruits of the dark and dismal days and nights he had spent there. He had one of these small slips of paper in his hand, and with a pen he was etching his own signature and the day of the month, to add it to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up an eye, swimming in fat, towards the door, bent his head forward earnestly to listen, and then went on with his work of delight.
I heard the rubbing of his hands when he had with difficulty turned his body round to place the note on the bundle――he gave a sigh of joy. I saw the ecstasy that entered into his soul――I burst into a laugh――I could not contain myself at the picture which my fancy had drawn.
TOGATUS.
From The Gownsman, Cambridge, 1830.
Fragments in the Manner of Sterne, by Isaac Brandon. Published in 1797, with fine plates, by Kirk, contained the following chapters:――Address to the Shade of Yorick――War――Prosperity――and Humanity――A Shandean Minister――Justice――Necessity――Anna and an “Apostrophe to the Genius of Yorick Redivivus.”
A second edition was published in 1798, with some additional matter.
The Rambles of Mr. Frankly, published by his Sister, 1772, was written in imitation of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey.
A Sentimental Journey (intended as a sequel to Mr. Sterne’s) through Italy, Switzerland, and France. By Mr. Shandy. 2 vols. 1793.
Yorick’s Sentimental Journey, continued.
The Sentimental Journey, a continuation by Eugenius.
Maria, or a Shandean journey of a young Lady through Flanders and France, in 1822, by my Uncle Oddy. 1823.
These are the titles of a few only of the principal imitations of Sterne, in which his maudlin sentiment is easily burlesqued, but in which little of his wit can be found.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
BORN Dec. 4, 1795. DIED Feb. 5, 1881.
A LATTER-DAY FRAGMENT, 1851. (Carlyle on Bloomerism.)
“A mad world this, my friends, a World in its lunes, petty and other; in lunes other than petty now for sometime; in petty lunes, pettilettes or pantalettes, about these six weeks, ever since when this rampant androgynous Bloomerism first came over from Yankee land. A sort of shemale dress you call Bloomerism; a fashion of SISTER JONATHAN’S.
Trowsers tight at ankles, and for most part frilled; tunic descending with some degree of brevity, perhaps to knees, ascending to throat and open at chemisette front, or buttoned there; collar down-turned over neckerchief; and crowning all, broad brimmed hat; said garments generally feathered, trimmed, ribboned, variegated, according to the fancies and the vanities: these, chiefly, are the outward differences between Bloomer dress and customary feminine Old Clothes. Not much unlike nursery-uniforms, you think this description of costume, but rather considerably like it, I compute. Invisible are the merits of the Bloomer dress, such as it has. A praiseworthy point in Bloomerism the emancipation of the ribs; an exceeding good riddance, the deliverance from corset, trammelling genteel thorax with springs of steel and whalebone, screwing in waist to Death’s hour glass contraction, and squeezing lungs, liver, and midriff into unutterable cram. Commendable, too, the renouncement of sous-jupe bouffante, or ineffable wadding, invented, I suppose, by some Hottentot to improve female contour after the type of Venus, his fatherland’s, and not Cythera’s. Wholesome, moreover, and convenient, the abbreviation of trains, serving in customary female old clothes the purpose of besom, and no other: real improvements, doubtless, these abandonments of ruinous shams, ridiculous unveracities, and idolatries of indescribable mud-Pythons.… Disputes about surplices in pulpit, and also elsewhere, give place to controversies in theatres and lecture-halls concerning petty lunes and frilled trowsers; paraphernalia, however, not less important than canonicals, as I judge for one.… But here are we, my friends in this mad world, amid the hallooings and bawlings, and guffaws, and imbecile simperings, and titterings, blinded by the November smoke fog of coxcombries and vanities, stunted by the perpetual hallelujahs of flunkeys, beset by maniacs and simpletons in the great lunes and the petty lunes; here, I say, do we, with Bloomerism beneath us bubbling uppermost, stand, hopelessly upturning our eyes for the daylight of heaven, upon the brink of a vexed unfathomable gulf of apehood and asshood simmering for ever.”
ANONYMOUS.
――――
THE TICHBORNE TRIAL. By Thomas Carr Lisle.
The Tichborne Trial is ended! Yea, my brother and other things are ended of which that is but a type, Looming Portentous; verily, a sort of Fire-balloon of paper, or of papers rather, Standard, Telegraph, and what not.
Men say “The truth is out at last.” The Truth out! my poor brothers-nay, was the Truth ever in. Surely there was no Truth, rather other than that.
And yet doth it not mean something, think you, this Tichborne Trial, its Solicitor-Generals, Tichborne bonds, and legal Inanities? Says it not “Is there Truth in the land, O Israel?” “What is Truth?” said jesting Pilate, or rather where is it? Cry the question into the bottomless Inane of this our world, and what answer? Nothing but an inarticulate response of Tichborne bonds, Solicitor-Generals, and such.
Yea, they mean something, these Solicitor-Generals and Tichborne bonds:――a Partridge-shooting, Salmon-preserving, Dilettante Aristocracy have said so much, have said so with lifting of hands and Reverence――we fear somewhat of the Rotatory Calabash kind. They mean this much, which is perhaps somewhat other than Double-barrelled Dilettantisms would have them mean. They mean this much. This England of ours believes no longer in Truth, believes rather in a kind of Sham Truth, a stucco business, much to be lamented; at least, by all such as hold their soul for a purpose other than to save salt, to keep them from Rottenness, Stinking, and utter Unsavouryness. “They say unto us ‘make brick,’ and no straw is given unto thy servants.” So might cry our men of law, lacking Truth to work upon; but for straw they cry not, thinking to make brick without straw; and they make no brick, rather Falsity, Puffery, and Unnature.
O, great Roger! these matters of thine call with a tolerably audible voice of Proclamation, and a universal “oyez,” and we English Microcosms may know that it was verily meant in earnest that same Phenomenon, and had its reasons for appearing there――Just and Unjust cause――Dikaios and Adikos Logos――trying to settle or get themselves settled, incessantly protesting against each being the other, and with it may be another kind of Logos from the great Universe with silent continual Beckonings trying to revenge itself, revancher itself, make itself good again.
For does not the Universe hold an inarticulate Sympathy with Justice, yearning that meum be mine tuum thine. That meum be mine! There is surely something Respectable in that.
And what is the outcome, ask Practical men, of all this? What is the import of the matter to us who are not Rogers? Verily, my friends, this――that England is in a state of Chronic Atropos, hath made her a covering of Asses-ears, Midas-leavings, Sermons, parchment and what not, hoping to sleep through it in such caloric apparel in this Glass house of hers, knowing that glass is no conductor――to Heaven’s lightning at least.
The Outcome of ninety-one days’ sittings, Red-tape Philosophies, Club-room jaw-clackings, and Infernal Babel of Telegraphs and Morning Stars is little other than――for Rogers Newgate and the Blackness of Darkness, for those who are not Rogers, discovery of Chronic Atropos in a Rampant state, wholly Insuppressible, Irrepressible, and Mad.
After all, is not Insanity just what is the matter with this English Bull just now? Is there Sanity at all among us butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers, red tape dummies, black crape ludicrousnesses, Puseyisms, Benthamee Radicalisms, Church and Statisms, Dilettantisms, Mammonisms, double-barelled Aristocracies, and inane Chimæras generally? Literature is, perhaps, the Sanest thing we have just at present, at least tolerabler, impressibler, beneficenter than mere Chaos, articulate or inarticulate. Writers, at least, have a Meaning, must have a Meaning; state some Fact or Facts, or what they take for Fact or Facts, intelligibly, so that men may say “Thus thinks a Man, whether he think wrong or right.”
And the Tichborne Trial was mad, utterly mad, with no Truth, hardly even _Un_truth in it, but Confusion and Roaring as of the Pit and Abyss of stupidity.
Did the Insanity thereof dawn upon many, think you? One might have hoped so, have hoped that such had been the Outcome which Practical Men require. One might have hoped that the sense of the World, Judicial, Social, and Otherwise, would have got itself resuscitated from Asphyxia, or proved for ever irresuscitable. But, instead thereof, we have Times Subscription-list actually now present, and Impending Ominous Perjury-trials, fresh Chaotic Incongruities, diabolic Floppings and Caterwaulings hitherto thought moribund, scattering incalculable Contagion.
Thus clearly doth this Roger matter preach its lesson to mankind, teaching and preaching clearly as these Words writ down here the Unveracity of Demiurgurships, of Solicitor-Generals, and such Parchment Kings.
But, my friends, such things will not last, at least not longer than Doomsday in the afternoon. It is very notable, Demiurgurship of Judges, that loud Inane Actuality with justice in its pocket, which rolls along there with trumpeters blaring round it, and all the world escorting it as mute or vocal Flunkey――go thy way. Escort it not thou, my brother. Say unto it rather, “Loud blaring Nonentity, no force of wigs, spectacles, and trumpets can make thee an Entity. Thou art a _Non_entity and deceptive Simulacrum.” Storm-clothed Caverns Cheese and Earwigs! French and Phrygians, Zero. Ba! Moo! Hee Haw! Hee Haw.
From The Light Green, Cambridge, 1872.
――――
The Editor of The World offered two prizes for compositions (in the style of Thomas Carlyle) describing Mr. Gladstone’s portrait by Millais, and on August 6, 1879, it published the two following parodies:――
FIRST PRIZE.
Turn we, therefore, from this jaunting, jostling, pestering Piccadilly into the Academy――whether really Royal this year I know not, or whether it be no more than the grandest Graphic we have had this many months, the most illustrious Illustrated of the year. Pause not to catch glamorous glancing glimpses of the besodden (with rain only, think you?) Season’s Beauties――drawn verily, each of them, by most Special Correspondents――but step sternly on, and stop face to face with this William――the People’s William, as the mob hath not dubiously dubbed him. Is it the Portrait merely or the Man himself that ye have come out for to see? Be you friend or foe to him, is there not in this counterfeit presentment of him――this wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting (not on trees only) man――something which almost attaches you? Is it not the attitude and face of a man who hath said to Cant, ‘Begone!’ to Dilettantism, ‘Here canst thou not be!’ and to Truth, ‘Be thou in place of all――ay, of ‘place’ itself to me!’――a man who hath manfully defied the ‘Time-Prince’ or Devil to his face, by all weapons, in all places, at all times? See you not, in the earnestly, sternly eagle-eyed look of him the ground of the enthusiasm,――The Schwärmerei,――for him? Contrast him not odiously, but in sober, sensible silence, with the dazzling Dizzy, the bright Beaconsfield. Which of them, both great, is really great_est_? Which the grandest Thing and thoughtfullest we have done lately? Which will we send to the next Exhibition, Paris or otherwise? Which of them will we show for our Honour, with Peace or without it, amongst foreign nations, and for our Peace with Honour surely amongst ourselves? Which? Consider now, if they asked us, “Choose ye not this time, like ill-starred princess ’twixt axe and crown,’ but twixt the man who sways the axe, and him who rejects (rightly doubtless) the crown; ’twixt the lopper of laurels, and the creator of crowns, Imperial and other, that fade.” Consider now, if they asked us, “Will you give up your William or your Benjamin,――not little truly, and just now your Ruler――O ye lost Tribes of Israel? Never have had any William, or never have had any Benjamin?” Consider now both of them, all of you, as MEN of State, of Letters, ay, of Post-cards also if you will! Really it were a grave question. Official persons would doubtless answer in official language; but we, for our part, should not we also be forced to answer, ‘Benjamin or no Benjamin, we cannot do without William’? He is verily ours,――not with us here and there only, in Oriental mystery amongst us; but ours always,――Fortnightly, our own Contemporary (or a large part of it), our best Nineteenth Century Man.
CONSERVATIVE.
SECOND PRIZE.
Here, O belated wayfarer, in thy weary march in search of the Beautiful, after painful journeying through a Realm of æsthetic Unrealities, pause! Thou art verily at last in presence of a Man. No mere clothes-bundle of humanity this, presented before thee, smirking, pomatumed, garnered from the Dustbin of the Ages――marvelling by what blundering Miracle of the Destinies he finds himself there. Wandering in this bewildering waste of ruined canvas, that by wise guidance might have evolved itself into practical Breeches for the Breechless in this howling naked world――this many-tinted appalling array of painted, but, alas, soulless Flesh――of bewigged Pomposity, of empty Dead-Sea faces with no Souls behind them, children of the Inane begotten in Vanity and brought forth in Vexation of Spirit, acres of æsthetic Upholstery, Sugar-loaf Confectionary, perpetuated Blockheadism, respectable Giggery, and other like phenomena,――all jumbled together, gibbeted in veneer and gold;――here, at last, I say, amid this motley throng, come we on a glimpse of the Ideal, a Giant among pigmies, a Man surrounded by Tailor-puppets, a human Soul gazing out from an earnest human face intent upon things other than mere cultivation of the Digestive faculty. Yea, look upon him! An earnest, passionate, restless, lean, but withal noble face. An eager eye, but pathetic in its eagerness, looking out compassionately on this sad oppressed world. Stern compressed lips, an undaunted brow, with a Stormy Force hidden under the calm exterior. Straight he looks into the Shams and Chicanery of our insincere Charlatan age,――the keen lightnings of his eye, and fierce thunderbolts of his tongue, cleaving, piercing, exploding the Windbags and inflated Bladders that in our noodle, jabbering, screech-owl Parliament try to pass themselves as Verities and Realities. O my brothers, look on this, a fragment of the Real flung by some miracle amid the Unreal, of the Invisible made Visible, embodying for us, and for those who come after us, a picture, a semblance, an apparition, a Verisimilitude of Greatness that will survive the cacklings and hissings and venom-squirting propensities of a purblind Age!
TEUFELSDRÖCKH JUNIOR.
――――
On March 5th, 1882, The Weekly Dispatch published the result of a Prize competition for parodies on Carlyle’s style. Four imitations were printed, but the prize was awarded to the following:
ON THE PARLIAMENTARY “CLOSURE.”
Business in these latter days the national palaver has mostly ceased to do; talk in every variety, perorations, objurations clamorously vehement have inundated the poor palaver, well-nigh swamping what of sense and work remained to it. Strange have been the sights of late, honourable members struggling all day, all night, stormful, impetuously rampant, found still by saffron Phœbus motioning, dividing, weary, and reckless of everything, wishful only to make an end. Sacred truly are the rights of minorities, sacred too are other rights, for one the right to work and to progress; but this right of the not honourable member, shameless, unreasonable, treasonable to drone, and adjourn, and divide, senselessly and hopelessly seems not sacred; not to me, nor to the Eternal Reason. For from of old was it not given to the strong to rule, and rule well, at peril of their souls; and is not strength with the many and not the few, shriek and expostulate though they may, passionate, hysterical, futile――now to be overborne by the “evident sense of the majority” arresting the inane jabberings with true Puritan earnestness and vigour, rejoiced in by the Empyreans, enemies of froth and the Pit. The sense of the majority cannot too often be “evident.”
J. W. HALE.
――――
PEOPLE OF THE PRESENT. Omitted from Carlyle’s “Reminiscences.”
BROWN, THE POET.
Went last night in wet, bad weather to Dash’s to meet Brown. A lean, long, clothes-prop of a man, with a bilious complexion-spectral, hideous, discordant, almost infernal. Much common-coloured hair streaming over narrow shoulders. Asked leave to present me with his new volume of poems, the result being that I got to talking in the Annandale accent, and communicated large masses of my views on weak verse to all within hearing. Tuneful Brown shaken as with a passing earthquake. A very questionable impression of myself left in that quarter, I imagine.
ROBINSON, THE PAINTER.
In the evening an Oscarian rout. Dauber Robinson was the only novelty, for I have never noticed him before――a man with huge bush of beard, spectacled, staring, owlish. For the rest, a podgy man with loose mouth (spout mouth), cock nose, and shallowest brow. A sandy, barren character, dissonant speaking, dogmatic, trivial, with a singular exasperation on a question of perspective. Let him go on spoiling good canvas with his pictures――save the mark!――in the name of Beelzebub, the God of Ekron, who seems to be his god: but don’t let him flatter himself that he will ever get an order from me――ach Gott!
Funny Folks, November 1884.
――――:o:――――
THE GHOST OF CARLYLE AT THE INVENTORIES.
His observations on the equestrian statue of the Prince of Wales in the Entrance Hall.
Beyond doubt a horse――breed questionable――a horse nevertheless. A horse, charging like an unbottled whirlwind, kicking up behind and before; dash, plash! Symptoms unmistakable. Too much other charging for the equine-imity of this full-bodied charger from the stables of Gulliver Swift’s Brobdingnag. Wo, intrepedest! carriest thou not a prince astride; he that is of Wales, yet no Welshman, no Taffy-stick; man of Three Feathers simply! He is the great chum-chum of the sociabilities, knowest thou not? not to be sneezed at like everyday clay. This clay that thou upbearest on that square back of thine is of the Pottery-Royal, good steed; hall-marked from Plantagenet to Guelph with despisable and undespisable Saxon-Norman-Dutch-German interweavings; yet a sound clay, and transparent withal, not mere bric-a-brac. All other sons of Adam bow to him; throw him, therefore, at thy peril. See, the Inanities are coming, with them the Lack-lustres, the Sham-aristocrats, the Brass-brains, the Tittle-tattlers, and the Bubble-mongers. What! still kicking! Do not these High Mightinesses affright thee? What sayest thou to the feminine new clothes-screens that come lilting in, puffy, protuberant, patchy? piquancy personified; all that. Burlesques of anatomy notwithstanding. Nunquam non paratus.
Oh, Bucephalus, I am ashamed of thee; all the fineries are here, and thou shouldst be of the inaudibles. Else, better wert thou with thy commemorative counterpart, in distant, hot-as-Hades Bombay. Dost thou not, like the Heine-immortalised palm, have internal yearnings towards the other self out there in the land of the palanquin――that other self-made gift of to the Bombayliffs by Sir Albert Sassoon, C.S.I.? Ridden by an H.R.H., K.G., G.C.S.I., and presented by a C.S.I. Kt., thou shouldst, with thy O B C T, abide by the letter of thy compact. Look around thee; the show is now going on; the asinines are upon us; “Walk up! walk up!” See how they stream through the turn-stiles; pay here, pay there, pay everywhere; halt cabs, halt carriages; crush; press. Whoogh! Hotter work this than shelling peas in the back kitchen with Gretchen. Why, the very mural panels blush for thee in all their Doulton red-hotness. Yes, they have panelled all the inventions on these walls, from Agricola to Bessemer, from Caxton to Walter, from Jost Amman to Arkwright. These panels empanel thee, kicker. Ach Gott! an’ thou dost not stop thy cursed racket, thou shalt seek the Evermore with a walking-stick betwixt thy ribs! A full score peelers (well I remember Robert o’ that ilk) stand sentry, Right over Wrong, or vice versa, in this Hall of no entrance sans the cash, and yet thou art not mollified.
See, the crowds come in by the Subway also――Subwayters they, with a vengeance, and mix and muddle. Mark, too, the seats for the Demi-semi Flirts and their victims. Followers allowed there, Bucephalus, I surmise. See, how the crowd streams down the broad steps that lead to the great South Gallery in the West. A sunny south it is, methinks, this day of autumn. Wo, wo; gently, gently; thou wilt be Hors de combat of a verity one of these days; and this entrancing Hall of Entrance will be disinvented for its entrance upon the chaos of Do-Nothingness, which will surely come with the Inevitable that lies round the corner of Time’s next street, waiting for the ding of doom. Ah, here comes another tribe of the Monetaries, with parboiled visages, and permeations of fashion――starch all over them, head to foot. Boy, bring me a mushroom!
Gaiety, October 17, 1885.
――――
FROM THE “WORLD-HARMONIC-ÆOLIAN-ATTACHMENT.” A burlesque notice of “The Biglow Papers.”
Speech is silver: silence is golden. No utterance more Orphic than this. While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose works continue heroically unwritten, we have also our hopeful word for those who with pen (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph God-commissioned) record the thing that is revealed.… Under mask of quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh shipwracked) soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articulate but ever climbing hopefully toward the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow.… Yes, thou poor, forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this life of ours has not been without its aspects of heavenliest pity and laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse Thersites cloak, we have revelation of the heart, wild glowing, world-clasping, that is in him. Bravely he grapples with the life-problem as it presents itself to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the “nicer proprieties,” inexpert of “elegant diction,” yet with voice audible enough to whoso hath ears up there on the gravelly side-hills, or down on the splashy, Indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the Necessity of Creating somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If not Œipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God’s name Birdofredum Sawins. These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need) a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him also are Nibelungen-lays and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine Comedies――if only once he could come at them! Therein lies much, nay all; for what truly is this which we name All, but that which we do not possess?... Glimpses also are given us of an old father Ezekiel, not without paternal pride, as is the wont of such. A brown, parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed, we fancy, queued perhaps, with much weather-cunning and plentiful September-gale memories, bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is seen no more.… Of “Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M., Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,” we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the――blindness! A tolerably caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly gentleman, with infinite faculty of sermonizing, muscularized by long practice, and excellent digestive apparatus, and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own. To him, there, “Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,” our Hosea presents himself as a quite inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich poverty of Latin and Greek,――so far is clear enough, even to eyes peering myopic through horn-lensed editorial spectacles,――but naught farther? O purblind, well-meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are things in him incommunicable by stroke of birch! Did it ever enter that old bewildered head of thine that there was the Possibility of the Infinite in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even featherless) biped, has not so much even as a dream of wings ever come? “Talented young parishioner”? Among the Arts whereof thou art Magister, does that of seeing happen to be one? Unhappy Artium Magister! Somehow a Nemean lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in broad-howling sand-wildernesses of a sufficiently rare spirit――Libya (it may be supposed) has got whelped among the sheep. Already he stands wild-glaring, with feet clutching the ground as with oak-roots, gathering for a Remus-spring over the walls of thy little fold. In Heaven’s name, go not near him with that fly-bite crook of thine! In good time, thou painful preacher, thou wilt go to the appointed place of departed Artillery-Election Sermons, Right-Hands of Fellowship, and Results of Councils, gathered to thy spiritual fathers with much Latin of the Epitaphial sort; thou, too, shalt have thy reward; but on him the Eumenides have looked, not Xantippes of the pit, snake-tressed, finger-threatening, but radiantly calm as on antique gems; for him paws impatient the winged courser of the gods, champing unwelcome bit; him the starry deeps, the empyrean glooms, and far-flashing splendors await.
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In Banter (Edited by G. A. Sala) for November 11, 1867, there is a parody on Carlyle entitled Shows and Shams, dealing with the Lord Mayor’s Show for that year. But the topic is exhausted, and the parody is exhausting.
In the Christmas Number of the World for 1879 there is an imitation of Carlyle, descriptive of a picture called Music in the Drawing Room, this parody is of no interest apart from the illustration.
“Carlyle Redivivus, being an occasional discourse on Sauerteig” by Smellfungus, Edited by P. P. Alexander, M. A., was a pamphlet published in Glasgow by Mr. James Maclehose. It was first published during Mr. Carlyle’s lifetime, and ran through several editions. It not only parodied Carlyle’s style, but criticised his theories.
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Here then, by way of conclusion, is a piece of real genuine Carlyleism, printed in The Times as long ago as 1877, and not now so generally remembered as it deserves to be.
MR. CARLYLE ON THE CRISIS. (To the Editor.)
SIR,――A rumour everywhere prevails that our miraculous Premier, in spite of his Queen’s Proclamation of Neutrality, intends, under cover of “care for British interests,” to send the English Fleet to the Baltic, or do some other feat which shall compel Russia to declare war against England. Latterly the rumour has shifted from the Baltic and become still more sinister, on the eastern side of the scene, where a feat is contemplated that will force not Russia only, but all Europe, to declare war against us. This latter I have come to know as an indisputable fact; in our present affairs and outlooks surely a grave one.
As to “British interests,” there is none visible or conceivable to me, except taking strict charge of our route to India by Suez and Egypt; and, for the rest, resolutely steering altogether clear of any copartnery with the Turk in regard to this or any other “British interest” whatever. It should be felt by England as a real ignominy to be connected with such a Turk at all. Nay, if we still had, as, in fact, all ought to have, a wish to save him from perdition and annihilation in God’s world, the one future for him that has any hope in it is even now that of being conquered by the Russians and gradually schooled and drilled into peaceable attempt at learning to be himself governed. The newspaper outcry against Russia is no more respectable to me than the howling of Bedlam, proceeding, as it does, from the deepest ignorant egotism, and paltry national jealousy.
These things I write not on hearsay, but on accurate knowledge, and to all friends of their country will recommend immediate attention to them while there is yet time lest in a few weeks the maddest and most criminal thing that a British Government could do should be done, and all Europe kindle into flames of war. I am, &c.,
T. CARLYLE.
5, Cheyne-row, Chelsea, May 4.
CHARLES DICKENS.
BORN, February 7, 1812. DIED, June 9, 1870.
On the second of August, 1879, there was a severe storm in London, and the Editor of The World offered prizes for the two best descriptions of it to be written in imitation of the style of the fifteenth chapter of Martin Chuzzlewit. This, it will be remembered, recounts the experiences of Martin and Mark Tapley, on their voyage to the States. The following were the successful compositions, which appeared in The World, August 27, 1879.
FIRST PRIZE.
A bright warm close to a dull dripping week; Labour, just paid his weekly wages by Capital, taking a friendly cup in the alehouse porch; Capital giving a last look to his horses and wagons, as he saunters across the Home-meadow to his evening meal; youth of the village disporting itself on the village green; fishers’ boats coming in, booty-laden, from the open-sea; coastguardmen looking anxiously out for what neither village youth, nor Labour, nor keen-eyed Capital himself can see――a thin dark cloud-line upon the horizon, with grey curling fringes that point upwards and move slowly on, just as the advance guard of a mighty army crests with its bayonets the distant hill.
An hour passes. The sun sets, the cloud-bank rising over him, and his struggling beams throwing a wan unearthly glare across the western heavens. Ever and anon as the wind rises, the tall poplars shake their heads and whisper to the oaks and shrubs beneath them; then the breeze as suddenly dies away, and again over all Nature is spread the sable pall and deathlike silence of an impenetrable night; or a few heavy drops patter down on the still pool, and then cease――all again is hushed, all restful, but yet pregnant with the rest and hush that precedes the hurricane.
Ten, eleven, twelve! Does some relentless demon of the storm, from the old church-tower, give the signal for the war of the elements? Scarce has the midnight chime died away when the tempest wakes. First one vivid flash, then, before the crash reverberates from hill to hill, another succeeds it, and another――not the ordinary fitful change from gleam to gloom, from darkness to light, but the mad meeting of storms from every quarter of the heavens, in all the fulness of rage and strife, and never ceasing turmoil.
Again, again! The rain seems to crash down rather than to fall, streaming with a torrent’s force from the hillside, foaming, rushing, seething in a thousand eddies down to the swollen river, till the banks no longer endure the awful pressure, and the wild flashes laugh out, fiend-like, at trees and flocks and newly-stacked hay, all swept adrift, all whirled oceanwards.
Again, again! What further ruin can the storm-demon work? Gradually, unwillingly, the tempest departs; only the gray scattered clouds remain, hanging on the hill slope. Yet, as the daylight dawns, one sad cry is heard from all, “God’s house!”
The chimes are for ever silent, for God’s house has fallen! Just before the storm passed away a vivid flash struck the topmost pinnacle and caught the oaken rafters in the belfry――and now the roof has fallen in; the pillars crumble beneath the still-consuming flame; the bells crash down from the steeple one by one, a smoking mass of blackened walls and arches alone bears witness to the past, alone tells of anthems raised to heaven by the white-robed choir, and earnest words of God’s chosen messengers, and the all-pervading incense of hushed and solemn prayer.
NEW SARUM.
SECOND PRIZE.
Murk midnight. Some in their beds for a moment waking only to hear the buffeting of the elements. Policemen, wetter than Ramsgate bathing-men, seeking the shelter of doorways. The bells of St. Paul’s unwillingly giving utterance to their dissatisfaction with their position by twelve muttering growls. The town, dry in the early spring, now ankle-deep in mud; the wind is no longer still, but, stealthily following the unwary foot-passenger, whirls off his hat, and, stopping for a moment in glee at his discomfiture, rushes on, eager for more mischief.
Now crowds, freed from their cramped postures in the playhouse, rush out upon the wild waste of the dripping Strand.
Here, roaring, fighting, pushing, elbowing each other into the howling fury of the night. Hither come chattering voices from the stalls, pit, and recesses of the theatre, where the chairs remain sole occupants of the place, and seem to say, “Ah, ha, here we are, snug for the night!”
Here in the eagerness of regained liberty, they storm and push each other, while the tempest falls in sheets of water, and howls above them. On and on in countless crowds they rush, like human billows. Men and women, hats, bonnets, and umbrellas, draggled dresses in one rushing wet mass. Pursuit of cabs, and fruitless return to the shelter of the passage; savage struggle of humanity enlivening the black night; little forbearance, but eternal fighting. On and on they surge, backwards and forwards, and darker grows the night, fiercer falls the hail, louder roars the thunder, more clamorous and angry the numberless voices in the street, when a wild cry goes forth, “A cab!” Onward it comes, fighting its way through the elements, the crazy door rattling; onward it comes, now free as the surging crowd falls back, now overwhelmed in a sea of human forms. And every voice in the multitude, answered by storm-voices in the air, shrieks more loudly, “A cab!”
Still he comes driving on, and at the boldness and determination of one man the angry crowd rise up, peering over each other’s heads, and round about the cab they press upon him, forcing each other down, and starting up and rushing forward in reckless eagerness.
Round it they surge and roar, and, giving way to others, moodily depart, still this one fights on bravely.….
At last the eager multitude fall back, and dawn of day discovers the happy occupant within, with the elements still pouring their fury upon the devoted driver in an eternity of hail and rain, as on and on he goes into the far suburbs, with his dim lamps burning, and the fare inside asleep and snoring, as if there were no tempest trying every chink and cranny of the shaky vehicle, and no half-drowned cabby outside with only a moist billycock on his head, and sleepily yawning so wide that the spirits of the air, if they could exist on such a night, might look into the unfathomable depths below.
ROBERT LE DIABLE.
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THE AGE OF LAWN-TENNIS. (After Charles Dickens’s “Pickwick.” A fragment.)
Chapter I
The first record we have of the Hitquick Club, which has since assumed a position of proud eminence in the ball-playing world, is embodied in the following resolution, which appears in an old minute book, lately disinterred from the cloisters of Wymbledoune Priory.
“It is proposed by Mr. Pleycynge, and seconded by Mr. de Vorley,――
“That this Association has heard read, with feelings of unmingled satisfaction, the paper communicated by Verdant Hardcourt Hitquick, Esq., A.E.L.T.C.,[51] P.H.C.,[52] etc., etc., entitled, ‘Speculations on the origin of ball-playing, with some observations on the theory of the back-hander, and the parabola of the lob;’ and that this Association returns its warmest thanks for the same.”
It further appears that an amendment was suggested by Will. O’Bye Wisp, Esq., who had failed as a ball-player, and was better known as an enthusiastic Pyramidalist,――
“That the study of the triangular must inevitably result in greater benefits to the human race than the consideration of the sphere;” but, as this was unsupported by any further argument than that the triangle had more point than the ball, the original resolution was carried, Mr. Will. O’Bye Wisp alone dissenting.
It was further agreed, that V. H. Hitquick, Esq., should be President; that he, with Mr. Cutman, Mr. Shortgrass, and Mr. de Vorley, should be the Committee; and that Mr. Pleycynge should be the Secretary.
“A casual observer,” adds the Secretary, to whose notes we are indebted for the following interesting remarks, “A casual observer might have remarked nothing extraordinary in the appearance of V. H. Hitquick, Esq., during the reading of these resolutions; but to those who knew that there sat the man who had traced the origin of the ball into the early ages, when globular masses had been created by the introduction of the laws of gravity among shapeless matter; who had detected how, true to the model of the planetary system, the earliest balls had been ellipsoidal; how prehistoric men, in their primæval pastimes, had been driven nigh to frenzy by the false bounds arising out of this apparently heaven-directed shape; how, in such times, the advantages of service had been all preponderating; how certain crafty Chaldean astrologers in their studies had discovered the shape of the true sphere, and how, having backed themselves with wagers of corn and oil and wine, they had cheated in their international games by substituting the true spheres when they were being served to, and by using the ellipsoids when serving; to those, I say, who knew that there sat the man who had traced out all this and much else, by the research of half a lifetime, the sight, indeed, was an interesting one. Mr. Hitquick’s oration in response was remarkable;” but the damp of the Wymbledoune cloisters had here much obliterated the Secretary’s notes. It was gathered, however, that he was comparing the life of man to that of a tennis-ball, and was congratulating them “that the philanthropists and the ball-makers were rapidly, in both cases, eliminating the seamy side, though he was fain to acknowledge that some hollowness still remained in both.” Here the entry becomes illegible, and we have had to fall back upon tradition, and other sources, for what we are about to record further of the doings of the Hitquick Club.
Chapter II
Mr. Hitquick, who had been delivering over-night, amidst much applause, an impressive lecture to the members of the Hitquick Club on various phases of Lawn-tennis dynamics, was with some difficulty roused from his slumbers on the particular morning of which it now becomes our duty to write.
“What’s that, Samuel?” he proceeded to say to his servant, as he sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes,――“a letter?”
“Yes, sir,” was the reply.
“Then bring me my spectacles,” said Mr. Hitquick.
“If you please, sir, a boy have walked over with this from Little Mugborough, and he’s a-vaiting below for a hanswer.”
“Very well, Samuel,” said Mr. Hitquick, as he adjusted his spectacles and opened the letter. “Why! dear me! What’s this?”
‘The Secretary of the Little Mugborough Lawn-Tennis Club presents his compliments to Mr. Hitquick, and begs to inform him that two members of his Club will be glad to play any two members of the Hitquick Association at four o’clock this afternoon.’
“Why! a challenge,” said Mr. Hitquick. “Of course, we will meet them. Let me see there’s Shortgrass and Cutman, two active men in the prime of life, who tell me they generally offer half-thirty in mixed country society; the very thing. Here, take this, Samuel.”
“It strikes me wery forcibly,” said Samuel to himself with a wink, “that, if those two gents don’t look a bit more spry this afternoon than I have ever seen them ven I have had the extreme privilege of vatching their performances, the Hitquick Club will have a very considerable wopping,”――and, whistling to himself, he went off with the letter.
Now, it must be confessed that neither Mr. Shortgrass nor Mr. Cutman were such performers on the Tennis-lawn as they had led their worthy President, Mr. Hitquick, to believe, nor as they had described themselves in their after-dinner conversations, as they sipped the soft claret for which the Hitquick Club was so deservedly famous; though certain papers which they had read before the members of the Association had, no doubt, stamped them as theoretical professors of no mean order.
Notably, a paper by Mr. Cutman on “Atmospheric resistance to the Cutman service in the latitude of Greenwich” (a lecture suggested by certain accurate memoranda, prepared by the statist of the Club, to the effect that only ’17 of these services so far overcame it as to pass over the net), had placed him in the front ranks of Lawn-tennis theorists; while a lecture by Mr. Shortgrass, on “Suspected tidal attraction on the Shortgrass lob” (accounting for the discovery by the same scientific observer that it almost always completed its parabola on Mr. Shortgrass’s side of the net), had brought him, too, into a leading position amongst spheric scientists.
At four o’clock, however, Mr. Shortgrass and Mr. Cutman stepped upon the lawn, prepared to do battle for the Hitquickians, and were soon confronted by the team from Little Mugborough.
The game began, A sharp service was sent to Mr. Shortgrass, who shut his eyes, hit wildly, and returned it accidentally. No one’s astonishment was greater than his own; he felt he had done enough; he shouted “yours” to balls which kept striking him on head, stomach, and legs, and did not appear to recover from his intense surprise till the umpire called, “Set the first, six games to love, Little Mugborough wins.”
“Call that placing, Samivel, my boy,” said a stout elderly gentleman, of horsey dress, to his son, who was no other than Mr. Hitquick’s servant; “call that placing? Vy! I should like to see one of these ere ball-placers as could flick a fly off a leader’s ear! That’s wot I calls placing, Samivel.”
Mr. Hitquick’s face had now begun to lengthen to such an extent as to cause a bystander to inform him that a curious compound of brandy and soda-water was to be obtained in the marquee close by, whither Mr. Hitquick, taking such bystander’s advice now adjourned.
“Capital game――smart sport――rare exercise――very,” were the words that fell upon Mr. Hitquick’s ear as he entered the marquee.
“What! Jangle?” said he, recognising an old acquaintance, “What brings you here?”
“ Me here――Wymbledoune Arms――met a party――capital fellows――gin and water――Lawn-tennis――great match――Little Mugborough――came on here――and here we are. What name? Know your face.”
“My name, sir, is Hitquick, author of a ‘Treatise on Balls;’ at your service, sir.”
“Ah! Hitquick――much pleasure――great man――good book――read it myself―― Spheric lore――Sun, Saturn――Earth――Jupiter――pumpkins――balls――inter- threaded――human race――round games――round robins――general idea――deuced clever.”
“And do you――er――join, Mr. Jangle, in this――er――healthgiving pastime?”
“Play, Sir,” said Jangle――“I think I did――never heard?――queer thing――deuced strange――great traveller――round the world――visited Madagascar――met a stranger――said he could play――offered to play him――gave fifteen――thermometer 110 degrees in the shade――threw in a bisque――beat him hollow――no umpire――stranger riled――disputed scoring――they always do――ex-champion――name Shadow――all love- sets――play? rather.”
As Jangle and Mr. Hitquick reapproached the game, it had just become the duty of the umpire to cry: “Three sets to love, Little Mugborough wins,” thus deciding the match adversely to the Hitquickians. Mr. Hitquick retired a few paces from the bystanders, and, beckoning Shortgrass to approach, fixed a keen and searching glance upon him, and uttered in a low tone these remarkable words:――
“Sir, you’re a humbug.”
Turning to Cutman, who was trying to conceal himself behind his late partner, he added,――
“And you, too, sir.”
“What?” they both exclaimed, starting.
“Humbugs, sir. I will speak more plainly, if you desire it. Imposters, sir. Yes; imposters.”
And with these words Mr. Hitquick turned slowly on his heel, and proceeded to rejoin his friends.
This Parody originally appeared in Pastime, July 20, 1883. It was afterwards reprinted in Tennis Cuts and Quips, an amusing volume ably edited by Mr. Julian Marshall, and published by Field and Tuer, London.
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The late Mr. Charles Stuart Calverley, the author of many clever parodies, was a diligent student of the works of Dickens, and when he entered at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in October 1852, it was generally admitted that he was more familiar with the Pickwick Papers than any other man in the University. Hence arose the jocular notion of having a competitive examination on that work, and Calverley drew up an ingenious syllabus of questions, from which it may be gathered how accurate and minute was his acquaintance with Pickwick. The examination was open to all members of Christ’s College, the first prize was taken by Mr. Walter Besant, and the second by Mr. (now Professor) Skeat, two gentlemen whose names have since become familiar in the literary world. The Pickwick Examination Paper will be found in Fly Leaves, by C. S. Calverley, published by G. Bell & Sons, a few specimen questions will show the humour of the thing:――
1. Mention any occasions on which it is specified that the Fat Boy was not asleep; and that (1) Mr. Pickwick and (2) Mr. Weller, senr., ran. Deduce from expressions used on one occasion Mr. Pickwick’s maximum of speed.
2. Translate into coherent English, adding a note wherever a word, a construction, or an allusion requires it:
“Go on, Jemmy――like black-eyed Susan――all in the Downs”――“Smart chap that cabman――handled his fives well――but if I’d been your friend in the green jemmy――punch his head――pig’s whisper――pieman, too.”
3. Elucidate the expression, “the Spanish Traveller,” and the “narcotic bedstead.”
4. What operation was performed on Tom Smart’s chair? Who little thinks that in which pocket, of what garment, in where, he has left what, entreating him to return to whom, with how many what, and all how big?
5. Give, approximately, the height of Mr. Dubbley; and, accurately, the Christian names of Mr. Grummer, Mrs. Raddle, and the Fat Boy; also the surname of the Zephyr.
8. Give in full Samuel Weller’s first compliment to Mary, and his father’s critique upon the same young lady. What church was on the valentine that first attracted Mr. Samuel’s eye in the shop?
11. On finding his principal in the pound, Mr. Weller and the town-beadle varied directly. Show that the latter was ultimately eliminated, and state the number of rounds in the square which is not described.
12. “Any think for air and exercise; as the wery old donkey observed ven they voke him up from his deathbed to carry ten gen’lmen to Greenwich in a tax-cart.” Illustrate this by stating any remark recorded in the Pickwick Papers to have been made by a (previously) dumb animal, with the circumstances under which he made it.
15. Describe Weller’s Method of “gently indicating his presence” to the young lady in the garden; and the Form of Salutation usual among the coachmen of the period.
20. Write down the chorus to each verse of Mr. S. Weller’s song, and a sketch of the mottle-faced man’s excursus on it. Is there any ground for conjecturing that he (Sam) had more brothers than one?
23. “She’s a swelling visibly.” When did the same phenomenon occur again, and what fluid caused the pressure on the body in the latter case?
24. How did Mr. Weller, senior, define the Funds, and what view did he take of Reduced Consols? in what terms is his elastic force described, when he assaulted Mr. Stiggins at the meeting? Write down the name of the meeting?
30. Who, besides Mr. Pickwick, is recorded to have worn gaiters?
In connection with this examination reference may be made to the “Death of Mr. Pickwick,” by Messrs. W. Besant and J. Rice in “The Case of Mr. Lucraft, and other Tales.”
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THE BATTLE WON BY THE WIND.
By the author of the “Picnic Papers,” “Barnaby Fudge,” &c.
Night! Night and a thick darkness on the dreaming city. It was o’er all――that pitchy veil――o’er lone deserted streets and broad suburban roads, along which wagons with their great clamped wheels jolt forward to the early market――o’er square and terrace, and stately dome and carved pinnacle――a deep dense obscurity, into which tower and steeple rose and were lost to the eyes of the gazer from below!
Night! black, stormy, dreary night. Driving in long dim lines athwart the starless sky――lashing the sloping roofs of dripping houses――flooding kennel and gutter and choked-up drain――pattering like a loud chorus of rolling spectre drums at rattling windows and on streaming sky-lights――down――in one steady, uninterrupted, continuous pour――drove the wild storm of lashing hail and rain! A dismal night! A night for the well-housed to snoozle themselves up beneath the bed-clothes, and listen all crouchingly to the roaring of the tempest! A night for the homeless pauper to lie down on the lee side of hedge and stack――and stretching his stiffening limbs in the icy sludge, wait patiently until Death came by and touched him with its sceptre!
Night――a dreary, dismal, rainy, windy night! A night of unchained gale and unbridled hurricane! How the fierce wind roared, to be sure! How it roared in its wrath, and muttered in its sulkiness, and sung in its glee, and howled and shrieked and whistled and raved in the full swing of its fury. It was a jubilee――be certain of it――a time of jubilee with the Wind!――a night when it had full license and authority, and power and sanction, to do its best and its worst――by sea and by land――above and below. And did not the fierce wind avail itself of the opportunity? Did it not muster its forces, and its energies, and its powers, far up amongst the dim-driving clouds, preparing for the onset――preparing for its night of empire and of pillage and of mischief? And then, when its time of liberty came, did it not burst out with a roar, and a shout, and a clang, as of victorious trumpets――did it not career all madly over land and sea, beating down the weak and broken corn, and roaring over the stark brown moors, and catching the big leafy limbs of gnarled trees――gnarled old mighty trees which had stood there for centuries――and wrenching them all torn and riven and splintered from the groaning trunks, and then grappling and wrestling with them as strong men fight, until the victorious wind, with a loud shriek of triumph, would drag the huge branch out, and toss it contemptuously away!
Who――o――o――op! for the Battle won by the Wind!
But that was not all. No, no. It attacked the city too, as well as the country. It did. The wind! Coming with a sweep and a pounce and a roar and a whistle-shrieking up through empty streets――groaning with a hollow sound in dim big archways――catching as with a muscular grasp, vanes and weathercocks――coming to the outside of windows――laying hold of the glazed sashes――shaking and rattling them and shouting hoarse mad greeting to the people within――lingering, I say, an instant at such places, and then departing with a burst of uproarious joy to lay siege to some high old tottering ricketty gable, which it would so shake, and push, and pull, and cause to waver and quake――that the whole crazy old tenement to which it belonged would wheeze and creak and groan in sympathy, until the old men and the old women, who dwelt there for long years, would be terrified and frightened, and would cower down upon the hot hearths or in their beds, crying――“Woe is me, but this is a wild night!”
And it was――it was――a wild night.――Who――o――o――op for the Battle won by the Wind!
On a bridge which spans a black, swollen, mightily rushing river. Dim lights twinkle along its great massive, girding, granite parapets. The wind sweeps over it, and roars in the arches below, and catches up the bright foam from the water, and rushes along with it, scattering the spray in white handfuls aloft, so that the passenger who looks into the gulf from between the balustrades of carven stone which fence the footpath, shrinks to see the driving masses of blurred whiteness――the vexed surface of the waters torn up and carried along by the strong broad hands of the blast!
Where a flickering lamp flashed and paled, and rose and fell within the streaming and storm-lashed crystal of its dripping prison, stood a woman――a woman, beautiful and alone. Black clusters of rain-drenched hair waved and streamed from her pale cheeks. Her garments were mean and sodden, and saturated with the storm; but her eye was bright and fierce, and burning with a fire not of this world――with a fire which once――when the western heaven opened, and the forked lightning leaped out into the darkness――confronted the fierce blaze――and gave it back glare for glare!
She stood beneath the flickering lamp. For a moment only. The next she was erect upon the parapet――her arms extended――her drapery streaming free――like a bird that preens its plumage for a new flight――a flight into another world?
Ha!――a voice! Yes――the woman’s――hark!
What says it? The words――the last words――have gone forth; and as the dark form disappears from its granite resting-place――disappears into the black, howling, lashing gulf beneath――these words ring up and away into the air――being carried on the wings of the tempest whithersoever it will――these awful words――
“Who――o――o――op for the Battle won by the Wind!”
Yes, yes――the wind of Passion――the breath of hopeless, homeless, heartless, Despair!
From The Puppet-Showman’s Album. Illustrated by Gavarni. London, no date.
――――
Amongst the Sensation Novels, so skilfully condensed by Bret Harte, is a humourous parody of the most popular of Charles Dickens’s Christmas books. In it the leading characteristics and failings are admirably hit off, not only of Dickens, but also of Scott, Charles Lever, Marryat, Fennimore Cooper, Hawthorne, and Thackeray, as will be seen from the following extracts:――
THE HAUNTED MAN. A Christmas Story.
I. THE FIRST PHANTOM
Don’t tell me that it wasn’t a knocker. I had seen it often enough, and I ought to know. So ought the three o’clock beer, in dirty highlows, swinging himself over the railing, or executing a demoniacal jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, although butchers as a general thing are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to whom knockers of the most extravagant description were merely human weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used. And so ought, for the matter of that, etc., etc., etc.
But then it was such, a knocker. A wild, extravagant, and utterly incomprehensible knocker. A knocker so mysterious and suspicious that Policeman X 37, first coming upon it, felt inclined to take it instantly in custody, but compromised with his professional instincts by sharply and sternly noting it with an eye that admitted of no nonsense, but confidently expected to detect its secret yet. An ugly knocker; a knocker with a hard, human face, that was a type of the harder human face within. A human face that held between its teeth a brazen rod. So hereafter in the mysterious future should be held, etc., etc.
But if the knocker had a fierce human aspect in the glare of day, you should have seen it at night, when it peered out of the gathering shadows and suggested an ambushed figure; when the light of the street lamps fell upon it, and wrought a play of sinister expression in its hard outlines; when it seemed to wink meaningly at a shrouded figure who, as the night fell darkly, crept up the steps and passed into the mysterious house; when the swinging door disclosed a black passage into which the figure seemed to lose itself and become a part of the mysterious gloom; when the night grew boisterous and the fierce wind made furious charges at the knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry it away in triumph. Such a night as this.
It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that had commenced life as a gentle country zephyr, but wandering through manufacturing towns had become demoralised, and reaching the city had plunged into extravagant dissipation and wild excesses. A roystering wind that indulged in Bacchanalian shouts on the street corners, that knocked off the hats from the heads of helpless passengers, and then fulfilled its duties by speeding away, like all young prodigals――to sea.
He sat alone in a gloomy library listening to the wind that roared in the chimney. Around him novels and storybooks were strewn thickly; in his lap he held one with its pages freshly cut, and turned the leaves wearily until his eyes rested upon a portrait in its frontispiece. And as the wind howled the more fiercely, and the darkness without fell blacker, a strange and fateful likeness to that portrait appeared above his chair and leaned upon his shoulder. The Haunted Man gazed at the portrait and sighed. The figure gazed at the portrait and sighed too.
“Here again?” said the Haunted Man.
“Here again,” it repeated in a low voice.
“Another novel?”
“Another novel.”
“The old story?”
“The old story.”
“I see a child,” said the Haunted Man, gazing from the pages of the book into the fire――“a most unnatural child, a model infant. It is prematurely old and philosophic. It dies in poverty to slow music. It dies surrounded by luxury to slow music. It dies with an accompaniment of golden water and rattling carts to slow music. Previous to its decease it makes a will; it repeats the Lord’s Prayer, it kisses the ‘boofer lady.’ That child――――”
“Is mine,” said the phantom.
“I see a good woman, undersized. I see several charming women, but they are all undersized. They are more or less imbecile and idiotic, but always fascinating and undersized. They wear coquettish caps and aprons. I observe that feminine virtue is invariably below the medium height, and that it is always babyish and infantine. These women――――”
“Are mine.”
“I see a haughty, proud, and wicked lady. She is tall and queenly. I remark that all proud and wicked women are tall and queenly. That woman――――”
“Is mine,” said the phantom, wringing his hands.
“I see several things continually impending. I observe that whenever an accident, a murder, or death is about to happen, there is something in the furniture, in the locality, in the atmosphere that foreshadows and suggests it years in advance. I cannot say that in real life I have noticed it――the perception of this surprising fact belongs――――”
“To me!” said the phantom. The Haunted Man continued, in a despairing tone:
“I see the influence of this in the magazines and daily papers: I see weak imitators rise up and enfeeble the world with senseless formula. I am getting tired of it. It won’t do, Charles! it won’t do!” and the Haunted Man buried his head in his hands and groaned. The figure looked down upon him sternly: the portrait in the frontispiece frowned as he gazed.
“Wretched man,” said the phantom, “and how have these things affected you?”
“Once I laughed and cried, but then I was younger. Now, I would forget them if I could.”
“Have then your wish. And take this with you, man whom I renounce. From this day henceforth you shall live with those whom I displace. Without forgetting me, ’twill be your lot to walk through life as if we had not met. But first you shall survey these scenes that henceforth must be yours. At one to-night prepare to meet the phantom I have raised. Farewell!”
The sound of its voice seemed to fade away with the dying wind, and the Haunted Man was alone. But the firelight flickered gaily, and the light danced on the walls, making grotesque figures of the furniture.
“Ha, ha!” said the Haunted Man, rubbing his hands gleefully; “now for a whiskey punch and a cigar.”
II. THE SECOND PHANTOM
One! The stroke of the far-off bell had hardly died before the front door closed with a reverberating clang. Steps were heard along the passage; the library door swung open of itself, and the Knocker――yes, the Knocker――slowly strode into the room. The Haunted Man rubbed his eyes――no! there could be no mistake about it――it was the Knocker’s face, mounted on a misty, almost imperceptible body. The brazen rod was transferred from its mouth to its right hand, where it was held like a ghostly truncheon.
“It’s a cold evening,” said the Haunted Man.
“It is,” said the Goblin, in a hard, metallic voice.
“It must be pretty cold out there,” said the Haunted Man, with vague politeness. “Do you ever――will you――take some hot water and brandy?”
“No,” said the Goblin.
“Perhaps you’d like it cold, by way of change?” continued the Haunted Man, correcting himself, as he remembered the peculiar temperature with which the Goblin was probably familiar.
“Time flies,” said the Goblin coldly. “We have no leisure for idle talk. Come!” He moved his ghostly truncheon towards the window, and laid his hand upon the other’s arm. At his touch the body of the Haunted Man seemed to become as thin and incorporeal as that of the Goblin himself, and together they glided out of the window into the black and blowy night.
In the rapidity of their flight the senses of the Haunted Man seemed to leave him. At length they stopped suddenly.
“What do you see?” asked the Goblin.
“I see a battlemented medieval castle. Gallant men in mail ride over the drawbridge, and kiss their gauntletted fingers to fair ladies, who wave their lily hands in return. I see fight and fray and tournament. I hear roaring heralds bawling the charms of delicate women, and shamelessly proclaiming their lovers. Stay. I see a Jewess about to leap from a battlement. I see knightly deeds, violence, rapine, and a good deal of blood. I’ve seen pretty much the same at Astley’s.”
“Look again.”
“I see purple moors, glens, masculine women, barelegged men, priggish bookworms, more violence, physical excellence, and blood. Always blood――and the superiority of physical attainments.”
“And how do you feel now?” said the Goblin.
The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders.
“None the better for being carried back and asked to sympathise with a barbarous age.”
The Goblin smiled and clutched his arm; they again sped rapidly through the black night and again halted.
“What do you see?” said the Goblin.
“I see a barrack room, with a mess table, and a group of intoxicated Celtic officers telling funny stories, and giving challenges to duel. I see a young Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of valour. I learn incidentally that the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a dragoon regiment. I hear a good deal of French! No, thank you,” said the Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving hand of the Goblin, “I would rather not go to the Peninsular, and don’t care to have a private interview with Napoleon.”
Again the Goblin flew away with the unfortunate man, and from a strange roaring below them, he judged they were above the ocean. A ship hove in sight, and the Goblin stayed its flight, “Look,” he said, squeezing his companion’s arm.
The Haunted Man yawned. “Don’t you think, Charles, you’re rather running this thing into the ground? Of course, it’s very moral and instructive, and all that. But aint there a little too much pantomime about it! Come now!”
“Look!” repeated the Goblin, pinching his arm malevolently. The Haunted Man groaned.
“Oh, of course, I see Her Majesty’s ship Arethusa. Of course I am familiar with her stern First Lieutenant, her eccentric Captain, her one fascinating, and several mischievous midshipmen. Of course, I know it’s a splendid thing to see all this, and not to be sea-sick. Oh, there the young gentlemen are going to play a trick on the purser. For God’s sake let us go,” and the unhappy man absolutely dragged the Goblin away with him.
* * * * *
The Haunted Man started, and――woke. The bright sunshine streamed into the room. The air was sparkling with frost. He ran joyously to the window and opened it. A small boy saluted him with “Merry Christmas.” The Haunted Man instantly gave him a Bank of England note. “How much like Tiny Tim, Tom and Bobby that boy looked――bless my soul, what a genius this Dickens has!”
A knock at the door, and Boots entered.
“Consider your salary doubled instantly. Have you read David Copperfield?”
“Yezzur.”
“Your salary is quadrupled. What do you think of the Old Curiosity Shop?”
The man instantly burst into a torrent of tears, and then into a roar of laughter.
“Enough. Here are five thousand pounds. Open a porter-house, and call it ‘Our Mutual Friend.’ Huzza! I feel so happy!” And the Haunted Man danced about the room.
And so, bathed in the light of that blessed sun, and yet glowing with the warmth of a good action, the Haunted Man, haunted no longer, save by those shapes which make the dreams of children beautiful, reseated himself in his chair, and finished Our Mutual Friend.
“Sensation Novels,” first introduced to the British public by the late John Camden Hotten in 1871, has been since republished by Ward, Lock & Co., London.
“DOMBEY AND SON” FINISHED. Part the Best and Last.
Chapter I
It was ten o’clock! In the morning! The Easterly sun came down bright upon busy streets and grimy thoroughfares, and quiet places in the far off country. It was eleven o’clock! In the morning! The sun lighted up city churches and the broad river, and shone into death chambers, in houses at the doors of which stood mutes. It was twelve o’clock! Noon! Broad, bright, unwinking noon! The sun gleamed on many roofs――and on market gardens in the suburbs, and on potato cans in the streets, and into the counting house of Dombey and Son.
The clerks worked noiselessly that day――almost breathlessly. Many pens scratched on the paper, and yet no word was spoken. For Carker was there! Carker the smooth, the oily――the velvetty――the sly.
The sun gleamed through the window panes――it fell on Carker――and on Carker’s teeth. And still it gleamed――still it sparkled after the glass door had noiselessly opened, and before Carker was seen standing the form――the stately――cold――wifeless――childless form of Mr. Dombey!
There was a long pause. You could have heard all the pens going in the outer office. A long pause――long――very――very long. Carker spoke first, and when he spoke he seemed all teeth――white glistening teeth――like a shark of smooth tongue and oily address――accustomed to good society.
“Mr. Dombey――I delight to see you――I feel honoured――much honoured――deeply honoured――by this visit.”
There was another pause――longer than the first――Oh, yes! much longer! Eight minutes longer!
And Mr. Dombey drew himself up――up! High! higher! like the Genie in the Arabian Tales, till it appeared (to the eye of Perch which eye happened to be accidentally applied at the keyhole)――that the top of Mr. Dombey’s hat had touched――nay lifted off the roof of the counting house of Dombey and Son.
“Ha!” said Mr. Dombey, and Perch being frightened fell backwards upon a nail, and the pens in the outer office stopped.
“Ha! ha!” said Mr. Dombey――“here――come here――all of you,――and learn how to crush a viper.”
The clerks came accordingly――thronging about the door――with white faces and clenched hands――excepting Robinson, who was of a merry turn of mind, and who said audibly “here’s a lark.”
“Thus”――said Mr. Dombey, “thus it is I crush a viper.” His wild, big, grey eyes were fixed, yet flashing,――his long gaunt form worked and quivered like a galvanized corpse,――his face was as the face of a roasting demon!
Nobody saw anything of Carker but his teeth: yet from these teeth issued a hissing sound of “now.”
Could it be? It could! It was! Four policemen sprung from under the table and held four staffs up to Mr. Dombey’s nose!
“Now,” said the Teeth, “remove that man.”
Dombey stood like a statue carved out of Parian marble, but dressed in a hat, coat, pantaloons, wellingtons, and other minor articles of costume. He waved his hand and the constables fell back.
“Remove me――remove Dombey from the counting house of Dombey and Son?”
These were the only words he spoke; then his tongue clave unto the roof or ceiling of his mouth.
The Teeth spoke not――but they held up a board, a white painted board, such as may be seen at the doors of merchants’ offices. All started. For on the board was painted:――
CARKER. LATE DOMBEY AND SON.
“Mine”――hissed the Teeth――“mine――all is mine Dombey! Dombey! you have fallen! Dombey――you’re a beggar! Dombey――here’s a penny for you! Dombey――move on!”
A pause. Dombey as motionless as the figure-head of a stranded ship.
“You left me to manage your business――you did.――I managed it――ha! ha! ha!――till I made it mine! mine! ha! ha! Take the penny, Dombey! take it, that’s a good man, and go! go! go!”
“No!”
“No”――was it an echo? More actors on the scene? Aye. More! more!
The old woman――the old woman and the handsome daughter!――Edith’s counterpart――Edith in rags――Edith an outcast――Edith――Edith―― Still――Still, Edith.
Oh! how the Teeth chattered――the Teeth――they did――as the lightening of that outcast’s eye flashed――and the cataract of that outcast’s hair streamed, and the trumpet of that outcast’s voice rang and re-echoed in God’s sunshine!
“Forger――Felon――Murderer! Ha! ha! ha! The hour is come――it is!”
And the old crone screamed in chorus “Felon!――it is!”
And where was Carker?
On the floor in a strong fit. Smitten――smitten――in his pride and his power. Smitten by the voice of the woman he had ruined――the woman he had tried to hang.――Now it was her turn! It was!
The policemen were gentle and not rough. They lifted the fallen man and took him away. Perch saw handcuffs on the manager’s wrists.
Then the counting house was locked up and seals put upon the doors. A great crowd stood long opposite to it. In the midst, Mr. Perch found Dombey with Carker’s penny still in his hand, and so led him away gently and gave him shelter at Ball’s-pond.
Chapter II
“Ding-a-dong――a-ding-dong――ding-dong-boum.” Joy-bells――joy――for the wedding! the wedding! Ha! And at the Wooden Midshipman’s! Cap’en Cuttle was magnificent. He had had his hook polished with black lead, and looked himself as radiant as his hook――aye as radiant as he did, when, undressing the night before old Sol Gills tumbled into the garret through the skylight. Where had that old man been! Where――indeed where?
It was the question Cap’en Cuttle put――and in these terms.
“Whereby and awast――keep her head to the wind, and when kitched make a note on. Therefore――if so――say so――what’s in the log? Let dogs delight to bark and fight――for which see Dibdin――therefore――stand by it is――and that steady.”
Thus solemnly adjured Gills spoke――
“Where I have been――and what I have been doing” the old man said “is nothink to nobody.”
Ding-dong-bell――ding-a-dong――a-ding-dong! The wedding at the Wooden Midshipman! It was on the very day, almost at the very hour that the house of Dombey and Son was shut up, that the wedding party left the Wooden Midshipman. And did he not look happy――that Wooden Midshipman? A credible person, a Beadle, avers that the timber face smiled and the timber lips shouted a loud “Hooray” in cadence with those joy-bells which still rung merrily from the grey towers of St. Koweld-without. Aye, and so they rang when, before the altar, stood Old Gills with a radiant countenance and flowing tears――and Captain Cuttle with a prayer-book in his hand (in order to check the parson and keep him right) and his silver chronometer hung on his hook “whereby to see fair play to all――awast and belay”――and Susan Nipper shedding tears indefatigably――and Wall’r and Florence.
The sun was in the heavens! But lo! through the stained glass, amid the saints and angels――gorgeous on that chancel window――fell its blessing light! Walter Gay and his bride stood hoping in the sun-shine!
“Wilt thou take this woman to be thy wedded wife?”
“Of course――no――that is――oh dear――dear――I beg pardon――its of no consequence――none in the least――don’t mind me,” ejaculated a voice from a dimly seen pew beneath the organ.
Thither repaired the Beadle full of wrath――and found the unhappy Toots fainting on a hassock. But the Game Chicken advancing, doubled the Beadle up――carried off Mr. Toots――deposited him in a patent safety, and conducted him――for the improvement and development of his mind, to see three hundred rats killed in five minutes, by a terrier much famed in Whitechapel.
So the sun had not begun to descend towards the west――ere the marriage party left the church, and――Wall’r and Florence, now Mr. and Mrs. Gay leading them on――took their way towards London-bridge.
Chapter III
In a spacious room――sat Edith! In a spacious room――richly furnished――but dim――dim――as her aching soul. Gorgeous curtains shut out the light――the blessed light! It fell on all alike――that day――on the infant in his cradle――on the dead man in his coffin. On the kennel――on the palace――on Dombey straying away from Ball’s-pond――on Perch looking after him fruitlessly (in public houses). On Mr. and Mrs. Gay, and the Captain and Gills――all on the steamer’s deck going to eat the marriage feast at a pleasant suburban tavern called the Red House, Battersea――on Toots in the patent safety――on Carker with the teeth, in a cell of Newgate. On all――on all! But on Mrs. Dombey. There, there was darkness――darkness in the air――darkness in the soul――darkness in the light! Dim――aching――lonely――alone! Alone! but for her fearful thoughts! Which haunted her! Spectres――looming ghastly gray in the gloom! Spectres with rods and serpents! Gnawing in her soul――like unblessed things potent for evil and foul thoughts, and things accursed of man! Out――out――awful shadows!
But she sat there――rigid――unmoved. The mortal and the immortal. Edith and the shadows!
Suddenly a voice arose――cleaving the darkness――She listened――mechanically.
“A full, true, and particular account of the harrest of Mister Carker of the ’ouse of Dombey and Son in the City on three distinct charges hof forgery, perjury, and murder all for the small charge of one halfpenny.”
She fell on her knees, That erring woman――on her knees and her hands were uplifted, and on the bright face――tense and passion strung――played strange awful thoughts!
The shadows gathered round her!
Her head drooped――dropped until with a sudden clash the marble forehead smote the floor.
Still the shadows gathered round her! There was silence――but the low deep roar of humanity――the surges of the million-peopled city――spoke voiceless things in the summer air.
Listen to the music?
The shadows listened!
Edith lay on the floor beneath the music and the shadows! When the people of the house came, they found her――――asleep!
“Ding-a-dong-a-ding-dong.” The echoes of the joy bells rung in the ears of the wedding party, even after they had got by steamer――as far as Hungerford. They were still there――lying close to the wooden pier――when there was a great outcry and a confusion, and many shouts of “He’s in――he’s in――a man in the river.” But the Cap’en was all presence of mind.――He saw the struggling form! and clambering down to the water by the paddle-wheel――with his hook――hooked it out. It was Dombey!
Chapter IV
Walter Gay is now the head of the old city house of Dombey and Son.
Carker was hanged; and the Charitable Grinder was transported for picking Joey Bagstock’s pocket on that melancholy occasion.
Mr. Toots, under the tuition of the Game Chicken, set up for a sporting character――took in twelve dozen copies of Bell’s Life every week, and read them all one after the other.
The old woman and the handsome daughter are frequent guests at the Mansion House――where they are usually charged with breaking from 35 to 89 panes of glass in the West London Union.
The Game Chicken espoused Mrs. Pipchin, and the young couple set up a public-house called the “Peruvian Mines,” where Miss Tox is barmaid.
The Cap’en got a medal from the Humane Society for saving Dombey. He always carries it on his hook. Captain Bunsby married Mrs. Macstinger.
As for Dombey, he took to drinking at first――and then to being a church-rate martyr. He has since, however, become a reformed character, and is now a clerk in a saving’s bank at 18s. a-week. Occasionally, however, he and Perch have something comfortable together.
And what of Edith――erring, beauteous, haughty, impassioned Edith. She, too, was repentant. At first she officiated as a pew-opener at a very fashionable chapel. But here she was persecuted by Major Bagstock and Cousin Feenix――both of whom used to squeeze her hand when she showed them into pews. At length she retired from the world, and now gets up fine linen at Tooting.
As for Joey B. and Cousin Feenix they challenged each other with respect to Mrs. Dombey. Neither of them, however, appeared at the place of mortal combat, and neither has been seen, nor heard of since.
From The Man in the Moon, Edited by Angus B. Reach. Volume III. London, no date, but about 1848-9.
――――
OUR MISCELLANY (which ought to have come out, but didn’t); edited by E. H. Yates and R. B. Brough, and published by G. Routledge & Co., London, in 1856, contained several prose parodies, and amongst them one upon Charles Dickens. This was written by Brough, and consisted of three chapters, of which it will suffice to quote the first:
HARD TIMES.[53] (Refinished.)
By Charles Diggins.
Chapter XXXV
They coovered poor Stephen Blackpool’s face!
The crowd from the Old Hell Shaft pressed around him. Mr. Gradgrind ran to look at the sufferer’s face, but in doing so, he trod on a daisy. He wept: and a hundred and sixty more of his hairs turned gray. He would tread on no more daisies!
He was not, however, to be baulked in his humble, honest purpose of self-reform. As he passed over the common, a donkey kicked him. It reminded him that facts were stubborn things: and he had done with facts and stubbornness. He wept again.
“Rachel, beloved lass, art thou by me?”
“Ay, Stephen; how dost thou feel?”
“Hoomble and happy, lass. I be grateful and thankful. I be obliged to them as have brought charges o’ robbery agin me; an’ I hope as them as did it will be happy an’ enjoy the fruits. I do only look on my being pitched down that theer shaft, and having all my bones broke, as a mercy and a providence, and God bless ev’rybody!”
“Stephen, your head be a wandering.”
“Ay, lass; awlus a muddle.”
“Will you take anything, Stephen?”
“I do hoombly thank thee for a good and trew lass thou hast awlus been to me; and I dunnot care if I do take a little soomut warm――wi’ a little sugar.”
The sobered man had still credit at the neighbouring tavern. In two seconds he appeared with a steaming glass of rum-and-water, scarcely stopping to sip it by the way.
“Can thou drink rum, Stephen?” asked Rachel, taking the tumbler from the hands of the sobered man for fear of accidents.
“I do hoombly and kindly thank thee, lass,” said poor Stephen; “I can drink anything.”
Rachel placed the goblet to his parched and quivering lips.
There was a moment of breathless silence. Mr. Bounderby rattled three-and-sixpence in his breeches pocket, and finding that his ostentation was unnoticed, kicked a little boy down the Old Hell Shaft. Mr. Gradgrind purchased a pennyworth of violets from a blue-eyed flower-girl, and true to his new and trusting creed, accepted two counterfeit farthings as change for a sovereign without looking at them. The Whelp glared fiercely at the rum-and-water, and barked.
Stephen drank it, every drop. Finished. Down to the dregs. No heel-taps.
“I do hoombly thank thee, Rachel, good and trew lass as thou hast been to me; but I do feel much better.”
“Oh, here!” Mr. Bounderby blustered forward: “I’m not going to stand this. If a man suspected of robbing Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown’s Bank, is to feel ‘much better,’ I should like to know what’s the use of Old Hell Shafts. There’s a touch of the gold-spoon game in that; and I’m up to the gold-spoon game――rather! And it wont go down with Josiah Bounderby. Of Coketown. Not exactly. Here! Where’s a constable?”
There was none. Of course not. There never is, when wanted.
Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer pressed officiously forward, and volunteered to take Stephen into custody.
“Shame!” cried the populace.
“Oh, I daresay,” said Mr. Bounderby; “I’m a self-made man, and, having made myself, am not likely to be ashamed of anything. There, take him along.”
There was a movement, as if for a rescue. The sobered man had been sober quite long enough without a fight, and tucked up his sleeves.
Stephen prevented this explosion.
“Noa, lads,” he said, in his meek broken voice; “dunnot try to resky me. I be fond o’ constables. I like going to prison. As for hard labour, I ha’ been used to that long enough. Wi’ regard to law――it’s awlus a muddle.”
“Off with him!” said Mr. Bounderby. “When I used to commit robberies, I never had any rum-and-water given to me. No, nor didn’t talk about muddles. And I’m worth sixty thousand pounds, and have got ladies of family――ladies of family;”――he raised his voice to call attention to Mrs. Sparsit, who was ambling gently along with the submissive Stephen on her august shoulders――“acting as beasts of burden for me. Come up, madam!” and he gave Mrs. Sparsit a gentle touch of his whip, causing that high-nosed lady to prance a little.
They moved on, towards Coketown. The lights were beginning to blink through the fog. Like winking. The seven o’clock bells were ringing. Like one o’clock. Suddenly the tramp of horses and the fierce barking of a dog were heard.
With a wild cry, Sissy recognised Sleary’s company galloping towards them――all mounted; Mr. Sleary himself, grown much stouter, on his wonderful trained Arab steed, Bolivar; J. W. B. Childers, who had apparently not had time to change his dress, as the Indian warrior on the celebrated spotted Pegasus of the Caucasus; Kidderminster following, on the comic performing donkey, Jerusalem.
A dog, far in advance of the horse-riders, dashed amongst the astonished crowd, and singling out Mr. Bounderby, seized him by the scruff of the neck.
“Thath wight, Mewwylegth,” cried Mr. S., coming up panting (in addition to his former lisp, advancing age had afflicted him with a difficulty in pronouncing his r’s). “Thath the vewy identical cove: pin him! Good dog!”
“Help! murder!” cried the bully of humility, struggling with the animal. “Will you see a man worth sixty thousand pounds devoured by a dog?”
The prospect seemed to afford the bystanders considerable satisfaction.
“Ith no uthe, Thquire,” said Sleary, calmly; “the dog wont let go hith hold of you;” and he added, in a hissing voice, “ith Jupeth dog!”
“It’s a lie,” Bounderby faltered; “I didn’t murder him――he did it himself. I never saw the man. He hit me first. I never spoke to a clown in my life. Tear this hound off.”
“Quite enough, Thquire,” said Sleary. “I call on everybody in the Queenth name to athitht me in arethting thith man, Jothiah Bounderby, for the murder of my clown, Jupe, thickthteen yearth ago.”
Sissy fainted into the Whelp’s arms. From that moment the latter quadruped resolved to lead a virtuous life.
Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer, with the alacrity of timeservers, released Stephen, and seized on their former patron. Stephen slipped quietly away in the confusion of the moment, remarking, with a wink of satisfaction to Rachel, “Awlus a muddle!”
Merrylegs retained his hold on his victim’s throat. Like a vice.
“Murder!” cried Bounderby! “release me from this dog, or demon, and I will confess all.”
“Mewwylegth, come here, thir!”
Merrylegs released his victim.
“Well, then,” said the detected miscreant, desperately――“sixteen years ago I murdered the man, Jupe, to obtain possession of eighteen-pence, with which I entered Coketown, and set up in business. And now, do your worst.”
The crowd recoiled in horror. The sobered man picked up Mr. Bounderby’s hat, that had dropped off in the scuffle, and immediately pawned it.
“Off with him!” cried Sleary, in a tone of theatrical authority,――“to jail!”
To jail! to jail! to jail!
* * * * *
――――:o:――――
THE POLITICAL “MRS. GUMMIDGE.” A “Dickens” of a Situation.
Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone had been in a low state for some time, and had almost burst into tears when a chill gust from the North, coming suddenly, and――to her――unexpectedly down the chimney, had blown the lid off the bubbling saucepan, and the soot into the stew therein.
“I am a much-crossed cretur’,” were Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, “and everythink goes contrairy with me.”
“Oh, it’ll soon leave off,” said Mr. Peggotty-Bull――meaning the North wind,――“and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than it is to us.”
“I feel it more,” said Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone.
It was indeed a very cold, cheerless day, with cutting blasts of wind, which seemed to blow from every quarter at once, but from the North and East for choice, Mrs. Gummidge’s peculiar corner of the fireside seemed――to her at least――to be the chilliest and most uncomfortable, as her seat was certainly the hardest. She complained of the North-Easter, and of its visitation just at this time and at her back, which she said gave her the “creeps.”
“It is certainly very uncomfortable,” said Mr. Peggotty-Bull. “Everybody must feel it so.”
“I feel it more than other people,” said Mrs. Gummidge.
So at dinner. The fish――from which she had expected great things――were small and bony, and the stew was smoky and burnt. All acknowledged that they felt this something of a disappointment, but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than they did, and again made that former declaration with great bitterness――“I’m a much-crossed cretur’, and every think goes contrairy with me.”
Later, when Mr. Peggotty-Bull came home to tea, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Her knitting――a nondescript piece of work――seemed to be a regular Egyptian labyrinth for complicated tangle, and a very Penelope’s web for inconclusiveness and power of alternate weaving and unweaving. “Cheer up, Grand Mawther!” cried Mr. Peggotty-Bull. (Mr. Peggotty meant Grand Old Girl.)
Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She dropped her knitting with a gesture of despair.
“What’s amiss, Dame?” said Mr. Peggotty-Bull.
“Everythink!” returned Mrs. Gummidge. “Including you,” she continued, dolefully. “You’ve a willing mind to face the troubles before you, but you ain’t ready. I’m sorry it should be along o’ me that you’re so unready.”
“Along o’ you? It ain’t along o’ you!” said Mr. Peggotty, good naturedly, and perhaps without quite meaning it. “Don’t ye believe a bit on it,”
“Yes, yes, it is!” cried Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone. “I know what I am. I know that I am a much-crossed cretur’, and not only that everythink goes contrairy with me, but that I go contrairy with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun.”
One really couldn’t help thinking that the misfortune extended to some other Members of that House, besides Mrs. Gummidge.
“I ain’t what I could wish myself to be,” said Mrs. Gummidge. “I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they makes me contrairy. I wish I didn’t feel them, but I do. I wish I could be harden’d to ’em, but I ain’t. If I felt less, I could do more. I make the House uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. It’s far from right that I should do it. I’d better leave the House. I’m a much-crossed cretur’, and had better not make myself contrairy here. If thinks must go contrairy with me, and I must go contrairy myself, let me go contrairy alone at my own place. I’d better leave the House, and retire and be a riddance.”
Mr. Peggotty-Bull, whose countenance had exhibited the mixed traces of many feelings, including puzzlement, impatience, and profound sympathy, looked upward at a portrait of an ancient, but buck-like and somewhat Hebraic personage upon the wall, and, shaking his head, with a lively expression of those mixed sentiments still animating his face, said, in a solemn whisper,
“She’s been thinking of the Old ’Un!”
This parody of “David Copperfield” appeared in Punch May 2, 1885, it was illustrated by an excellent cartoon of Mr. Gladstone as “Mrs. Gummidge.”
――――:o:――――
Space will not permit of the insertion of further extracts from the parodies on Dickens, it remains, therefore, to enumerate his principal works in chronological order, followed by a list of the parodies, imitations, and plays founded upon them:――
A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS.
Sketches by Boz 1836-37 Sunday under Three Heads 1836 Pickwick Papers 1837 Oliver Twist 1838 Sketches of Young Gentlemen 1838 Nicholas Nickleby 1839 Sketches of Young Couples 1840 Master Humphrey’s Clock (The Old Curiosity Shop & Barnaby Rudge) 1840-1 American Notes 1842 Christmas Carol 1843 Martin Chuzzlewit 1844 The Chimes 1845 Cricket on the Hearth 1846 Pictures from Italy 1846 Battle of Life 1846 Dombey and Son 1848 Haunted Man 1848 David Copperfield 1850 Mr. Nightingale’s Diary 1851 Child’s History of England 1852-4 Bleak House 1853 Hard Times 1854 Little Dorrit 1857 Hunted Down 1859 Tale of Two Cities 1859 Great Expectations 1861 Uncommercial Traveller 1861 Our Mutual Friend 1865 Mystery of Edwin Drood 1870
Sam Weller, a Journal of Wit and Humour. Edited by Sam Slick, with illustrations. 1837.
Posthumous Papers of the Cadgers’ Club. With sixteen engravings. London. E. Lloyd, about 1837.
Posthumous Papers of the Wonderful Discovery Club, formerly of Camden Town. Established by Sir Peter Patron. Edited by “Poz.” With eleven illustrations, designed by Squib, and engraved by Point. London. 1838.
The Post-humourous Notes of the Pickwickian Club. Edited by “Bos.” 2 vols, with numerous illustrations. London.
Pickwick in America, detailing all the adventures of that individual in the United States. Edited by “Bos.” Illustrated with forty-six engravings by “Phis.” London. E. Lloyd, about 1837.
Pickwick Abroad, or a Tour in France, by G. W. M. Reynolds. This is a thick octavo volume, published in 1839, with numerous illustrations. The first edition is rather scarce, but reprints (published by Willoughby & Co., London) are not difficult to procure. The woodcuts, in the body of the book, are curious, as showing the architecture and appearance of the principal streets of Paris fifty years ago.
The Adventures of Marmaduke Midge, the Pickwickian Legatee. (Particulars of this work are wanting.)
Amongst the many piracies and imitations of The Pickwick Papers, was “The Penny Pickwick,” edited by “Bos,” with illustrations. The preface is signed “Bos,” Rose Cottage, St. John’s Wood. Printed and published by E. Lloyd, Bloomsbury. 1838.
There were also numerous song and jest books named after either Mr. Pickwick or Sam Weller, but these scarcely come within the scope of this list.
The Life and Adventures of Oliver Twiss, the Workhouse Boy. Edited by “Bos.” London. No date, about 1840.
Scenes from the Life of Nickleby Married, containing certain Remarkable Passages, Strange Adventures, and Extraordinary Occurrences that befel the Nickleby Family in their further Career, being a Sequel to “Nicholas Nickleby.” Edited by “Guess.” With twenty-one illustrations by “Quiz.” London. John Williams, Paternoster Row. 1840.
Nickelas Nickelbery. Containing the Adventures, Misadventures, Chances, Mis-Chances, Fortunes, Mis-fortunes, Mysteries, Mis-eries, and Miscellaneous manœuvres of the Family of Nickelbery. By “Bos.” With forty-three woodcut illustrations. London. E. Lloyd, about 1838. An impudent piracy upon Nicholas Nickleby, published in penny weekly numbers, and parodying the whole of the story and characters, under very slightly altered names. This has been ascribed to Mr. J. P. Prest.
The Nickleby Papers, by “Poz.” In penny numbers.
Mister Humfries’ Clock. “Bos,” maker. A Miscellany of striking interest. Illustrated. London, 1840.
Master Timothy’s Bookcase; or, the Magic Lanthorn of the World. By G. W. M. Reynolds. London, 1842.
A Girl at a Railway Junction’s Reply [to an article in the Christmas number for 1866 of “All the Year Round,” entitled “Mugby Junction.”] London.
Parley’s Penny Library. Containing piratical versions of Barnaby Rudge, the Old Curiosity Shop, and the Picnic Papers. About 1841.
Change for the American Notes; or, Letters from London to New York. By an American Lady. London. Wiley and Putnam. 1843. (This was written by a Yorkshireman, Mr. Henry Wood.)
Current American Notes. By “Buz.” London. No date.
Christmas Eve with the Spirits, with some further tidings of the Lives of Scrooge and Tiny Tim. London, 1870.
A Christmas Carol. Being a few scattered staves from a familiar composition, re-arranged for performance by a Distinguished Musical Amateur, during the Holiday season, at Hawarden.――Punch. December 26, 1885. This is a political skit, the only present interest of which consists in the four very humourous illustrations by Harry Furniss, which are exquisite parodies of those by John Leech, in the original book.
The Faces in the Fire; a Story for the Season. By Redgap. With illustrations by T. H. Nicholson: London. Willoughby & Co., Warwick Lane. No date. Dedicated to the Earl of Carlisle. Pp. 165. (Written in imitation of Dickens’s Christmas Books, and published about 1845.) In a second edition, published by James Blackwood, in 1856, the name of George Frederick Pardon is given on the title page as the author.
January Eve. A Tale of the Times. By George Soane, B.A. London: E. Churton, 1847: pp. 180. Dedicated to Lord John Russell. In his preface the author not only admits that a similarity exists between his writings and those of Dickens, but is bold enough to assert that he, and not Dickens, is the original “Simon Pure.” “A little tale of mine, the Three Spirits, was thought by many to be exceedingly like Boz’s ‘Christmas Carol,’ yet the Carol was not published till some years after it. If then, there be any imitation in the case at all, it is Boz――glorious Boz――who has taken a hint from my writings.”
The Battle of London Life; or, “Boz” and his Secretary. By Morna. With a portrait and illustrations by G. A. Sala. This is a scarce little volume of 106 pages, which was published by George Peirce, of 310, Strand, London, in 1849. It was written by Thomas M. O’Keefe, although it is generally attributed to Mr. George Augustus Sala; he certainly furnished several illustrations, which are signed G. Sala, and on the cover there is an advertisement of “The April Fool Book,” written by the author of “The Battle of London Life,” also illustrated by George Sala.
Old Jolliffe: Not a Goblin Story. By the Spirit of a little Bell, awakened by “The Chimes.” London: W. N. Wright, 1845. Dedicated to Queen Adelaide. Pp. 56.
The Wedding Bells, an Echo of “The Chimes,” with coloured illustrations by the Author, who states that the work was suggested by “The Chimes” of Charles Dickens.
Facts and Figures from Italy. Addressed during the last two winters to C. Dickens, being an appendix to his “Pictures.” By Don Jeremy Savonarola. London, R. Bentley, 1847. This was written by Francis Mahony. (“Father Prout.”)
The Sketch Book. By “Bos.” Containing tales, sketches, etc. With seventeen woodcut illustrations. London.
Dombey and Daughter: A Moral Fiction. By Renton Nicholson, Lord Chief Baron of the celebrated Judge and Jury Society, held at the Garrick’s Head Hotel, Bow Street. London. Thomas Farris. No date, about 1847. With illustrations. Pp. 94. At the end of the story Baron Nicholson bids his readers Farewell, and remarks, “I think I may, without arrogance, predict that these pages will be read with pleasure by those whose tastes are not vitiated, and who prefer a simple story, representing scenes of real life, to the monstrous productions of a feverish imagination, which of late have been received with unmerited though almost universal applause.” This was published in monthly parts.
Renton Nicholson also wrote Cockney Adventures, and Tales of London Life, in imitation of the Pickwick Papers.
Dombey and Father, by Buz. A Satire on Charles Dickens. New York, 1868.
Micawber Redivivus; or, How to make a fortune as a Middleman, etc. By Jonathan Coalfield [i.e. W. Graham Simpson?].
Bleak House; a Narrative of Real Life. Being a faithful detail of facts connected with a suit in the Irish Court of Chancery, from the year 1826 to 1851. London, H. Elliott. 1856.
Characteristic Sketches of Young Gentlemen. By Quiz Junior. With Illustrations. London. W. Kidd.
A Child’s History of Germany. By H. W. Friedlaender. A pendant to a “Child’s History of England,” by Charles Dickens. Celle, 1861.
No Thoroughfare; the Book in Eight Acts. This parody appeared in “The Mask,” No. 1, February, 1868.
No Thoroughfare. A parody upon Dickens’s N.T. By C――s D――s, B. Brownjohn and Domby. Boston U.S.
The Mystery of Mr. E. Drood. Specimen of an Adaptation. By Orpheus C. Kerr. (Three and a half pages.) Published in The Piccadilly Annual. London. John Camden Hotten. December, 1870. This very scarce little work contains Hunted Down, by Charles Dickens, which is not generally included amongst his collected writings. It was originally written for an American publisher.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Complete. Part the Second by the Spirit Pen of Charles Dickens, through a medium; embodying also that Part of the Work which was published prior to the Termination of the Author’s Earth-Life. 1873. The medium was Mr. J. P. James, of Brattleborough, Vermont, U. S.
John Jasper’s Secret, being a Narrative of Certain Events following and Explaining “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” with illustrations. Philadelphia, about 1871. Also published in London in 1872.
The Cloven Foot; being an adaptation of the English novel, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” to American scenes, characters, customs, and nomenclature. By Orpheus C. Kerr. New York, 1870.
A Great Mystery Solved: Being a Sequel to “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” By Gillan Vase. In three vols. London, Remington and Co, 1878. Preface dated Hanover, July 12, 1878.
Rifts in the Veil, a Collection of Inspirational Poems and Essays, given through Various Forms of Mediumship. London, W. H. Harrison. 1878. This work on Spiritualism contains particulars of a continuation of “Edwin Drood,” which is said to have been dictated through a medium. The article occupies 30 closely printed pages, and is entitled “An alleged Postmortem work by Charles Dickens.”
Plays founded upon the Novels of Charles Dickens.
As is well known Charles Dickens strongly objected to his Novels being adapted for the Stage, yet scarcely one of his better known works escaped that penalty of popularity. As most of these stage adaptations are little better than parodies, or imitations, a catalogue of them may be fitly inserted here.
In this compilation some assistance has been derived from the life of Dickens, by Mr. F. T. Marzials, (London, Walter Scott, 1887), but the following list contains more entries, and fuller details than he gave. It is, in fact, the only approximately complete list of plays founded on Dickens’s Works, giving the date and place where first performed, and the names of the publishers, where they could be ascertained.
Sam Weller, or the Pickwickians, a Drama in three acts, first performed at the Strand New Theatre, London, July 17, 1837. By W. T. Moncrieff. (Dicks 541.) This has a long preface, in which the author defends himself against the charge of having merely transferred Dickens’s characters and incidents from the story to a play. He says, indeed, that he thinks Dickens ought to be grateful to him, for the popularity of the play had greatly extended the fame of the story.
The Pickwickians; or, the Peregrinations of Sam Weller. Arranged from Mr. W. T. Moncrieff’s adaptation by T. H. Lacy. London. 1837. (Lacy 315.)
The Pickwick Club. A Burletta in three acts, by E. Stirling. City of London Theatre, April 27, 1837. (Duncombe.)
The Peregrinations of Pickwick, an acting Drama. By William Leman Rede. London, W. Strange. 1837.
Bardell v. Pickwick: versified and diversified. Songs and choruses. Words by T. H. Gem. Leamington, 1881.
The Great Pickwick Case, arranged as a Comic Operetta. The words of the songs by Robert Pollitt. Manchester, Abel Heywood & Son, 1884.
Bardell v. Pickwick. (Dicks 636.)
Last of the Pickwickiana comes Mr. F. C. Burnand’s dramatic Cantata, Pickwick, with music by Mr. Edward Solomon, which was produced at the Comedy Theatre, London, early in 1889. The parts were thus distributed, Pickwick by Mr. Arthur Cecil, Mrs. Bardell by Miss Lottie Venne, and “The Baker” by Mr. Rutland Barrington.
This Cantata has not yet been published.
There can be no doubt but that the character of Sam Weller made the fortune of The Pickwick Papers when they first appeared in monthly parts, and sent the circulation up from a poor 400 to 40,000. The germ of this character has been traced back to a play, written by Mr. Samuel Beazley, entitled “The Boarding House,” and produced at what is now called the Lyceum Theatre, in 1811. That there is a slight resemblance in Simon Spatterdash in this play to Sam Weller cannot be denied, and Dickens may have seen or read the play, and have been struck with the possibility of converting the character of Spatterdash into that of his own immortal Sam.
Oliver Twist; or the Parish Boy’s Progress. A Drama in three acts. By C. Z. Barnett. First performed at the Pavilion Theatre, May 21, 1838. (S. French.)
Oliver Twist. A serio-comic Burletta, in three acts, by George Almar. Performed at the Royal Surrey Theatre, London, November 19, 1838. (Dicks 293.)
A similar adaptation, but in four acts, was published in New York.
Bumble’s Courtship. From Dickens’s “Oliver Twist.” A Comic Interlude, in one act. By Frank E. Emson. London. (Lacy.)
Nicholas Nickleby, a Farce in Two Acts. By Edward Stirling. Produced at the Adelphi Theatre, London 1838. (S. French 264.)
Nicholas Nickleby, a Drama in Four Acts. Adapted by H. Simms. First performed at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, 1875. (Dicks 469.)
The Infant Phenomenon; or, a Rehearsal Rehearsed. A Dramatic Piece in one Act. Being an episode in the adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Adapted by H. Horncastle, and originally produced at the Strand Theatre, London, July 8, 1842. (Dicks 572.)
The Fortunes of Smike, or, a Sequel to Nicholas Nickleby; a Drama in Two Acts. By Edward Stirling, London. Adelphi Theatre. London, March 2, 1840. (Webster’s Acting Drama 94.)
Nicholas Nickleby; an Episodic Sketch; in three tableaux, based upon an incident in “Nicholas Nickleby.” Not published. Strand Theatre, Sept. 10, 1885.
Barnaby Rudge. A Domestic Drama, in Three Acts. By Charles Selby and Charles Melville. First performed at the English Opera House, June 28, 1841. (Dicks 393.)
Barnaby Rudge; or, the Murder at the Warren, a Drama in Three Acts, by Thomas Higgie. No date. (Lacy.)
Barnaby Rudge. A Burlesque upon the Version now being played at the Princess’s Theatre, London. Fun. November 24, 1866.
Master Humphrey’s Clock; a Domestic Drama, in Two Acts. By Frederick Fox Cooper. Victoria Theatre, London, May 26, 1840. (Lacy.)
The Old Curiosity Shop. A Drama in Four Acts. Adapted by George Lander. First produced at the Theatre Royal, York, May 14, 1877. (Dicks 398.)
The Old Curiosity Shop; a Drama in Two Acts. By Edward Stirling. Adelphi Theatre, November 9, 1840. (French 1147.)
The Old Curiosity Shop; a Drama, in Four Acts. Adapted by Mr. Charles Dickens, Junr., from his Father’s Novel. Not published. Opera Comique Theatre. 1884.
Mrs. Jarley’s Far-Famed Collection of Wax-Works, as arranged by G. B. Bartlett. In Two Parts. London.
Yankee Notes for English Circulation. A Farce in One Act, by Edward Stirling. Adelphi Theatre. London. 1843. (Duncombe’s Theatre.)
Martin Chuzzlewit, a Drama in Three Acts by Charles Webb. London. (Barth.)
Martin Chuzzlewit; or, his wills and his ways, what he did, and what he didn’t. A Domestic Drama, in Three Acts, by Thomas Higgie and T. H. Lacy. Lyceum Theatre, London, July 8, 1844. (S. French 330.)
So says the acting copy, but see next entry:
Martin Chuzzlewit; a Drama in Three Acts. By Edward Stirling. This, it is stated on the acting copy, was produced at the Lyceum Theatre July 8, 1844. The two versions are unlike, and it is clearly impossible that both could have been produced on the same night at the same theatre. It is probable that Higgie and Lacy’s version was that which was produced at the Strand Theatre July 15, 1844. (Duncombe’s plays.)
Tom Pinch. Domestic Comedy in Three Acts By Joseph J. Dilley and Lewis Clifton. Vaudeville Theatre, London, March 10, 1881. (S. French 1803.)
Mrs. Sarah Gamp’s Tea and Turn Out; a Bozzian Sketch, in One Act, by B. Webster. Adelphi Theatre, London, October 26, 1846. (Webster’s Drama 136.)
Tartuffe Junior, Von H. C. L. Klein. Neuwied, 1864. (A Play in Five Acts after “Martin Chuzzlewit.”)
Mrs. Gamp’s Party. An adaptation in One Act. Manchester. Abel Heywood & Son.
Mrs. Harris. A Farce in One Act, by Edward Stirling. Lyceum Theatre, October, 1846. (Duncombe.)
The Cricket on the Hearth, a Fairy Tale of Home, in two acts. By Edward Stirling. Adelphi Theatre, London, December 31, 1845. (Webster’s Drama 124.)
The Cricket on the Hearth; or, a Fairy Tale of Home. A Drama, in three acts. Dramatised by Albert Smith, by the express permission of the Author. First produced at the Lyceum Theatre, 1845, and at the Winter Garden, New York, September 14, 1859. (Dicks 394.)
The Cricket on the Hearth, a Fairy Tale of Home in Three Chirps. By W. T. Townsend. London. (Lacy 649.)
This was another version which was produced at the City of London Theatre, January 7, 1846.
A Christmas Carol; or, the Miser’s Warning, by C. Z. Barnett. Produced at the Surrey Theatre, February 5, 1844. This adaptation was published with a note stating that “the extreme necessity (the consequence of its high and deserved popularity) that so imperatively called for its representation on the stage, has also demanded its publication as a Drama, which it is the Adapter’s sincere wish, as it is his conviction, will considerably augment the sale of the original lovely and humanizing creation upon which it is founded.” (Lacy 1410. Dicks 722.)
Dot, a Fairy Tale of Home. A Drama in Three Acts, from “The Cricket on the Hearth.” Dramatised by Dion Boucicault. Not published.
The Haunted Man, a Drama. Adapted from Charles Dickens’s Christmas Story. Not published.
The Chimes, a Goblin Story, of some Bells that rang an Old Year out, and a New Year in; a Drama, in Four Quarters, by Mark Lemon and Gilbert Abbott à Beckett. Adelphi Theatre, London, December 19, 1844. (Webster’s Drama 115.)
La Bataille de la Vie. Pièce en Trois Actes, par M. M. Mèlesville et André de Goy. Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, 1853.
The Battle of Life, founded on the Christmas Annual of Charles Dickens, dramatised by Albert Smith. In Three Acts and in Verse. Lyceum Theatre, London, December 21, 1846. (W. S. Johnson.)
The Battle of Life, a Drama in Three Acts, by Edward Stirling. Surrey Theatre, London. January, 1847. (Duncombe’s Theatre 456.)
Dombey and Son. In three acts. Dramatized by John Brougham, and produced at Burton’s Theatre, New York, 1850. (Dicks 375. French 126.)
Dombey and Son; or, Good Mrs. Brown, the Child Stealer. A Drama, in two acts. “From the pen of the inimitable Charles Dickens, Esq. As performed at the Royal Strand Theatre.” No date.
An impudent theft, in which many liberties are taken with Dickens’s plot. This was published whilst the novel was in progress, and is now very scarce.
Captain Cuttle; a Comic Drama, in one act. By John Brougham. Burton’s Theatre, New York, January 14, 1850. (Dicks 572.)
David Copperfield, a Drama in two acts. Adapted by John Brougham, and first performed at Brougham’s Lyceum, January 6, 1851. New York. (French 133. Dicks 374.)
David Copperfield, a Drama in three acts, by John Brougham. Brougham’s Lyceum Theatre, January 6, 1851. (French.)
Little Emily, a Drama in four acts. Adapted from Dickens’s “David Copperfield,” by Andrew Halliday.
Lady Dedlock’s Secret, a Drama in Four Acts. Founded on an episode in “Bleak House,” by J. Palgrave Simpson. Opera Comique Theatre, London, March 26, 1884. (French.)
“Move on,” or Jo, the Outcast, a Drama in Three Acts. Adapted by James Mortimer. Not published.
Poor Jo, a Drama in Three Acts. Adapted by Terry Hurst. Not published.
Jo, a Drama in Three Acts, by J. P. Burnett. Not published.
Bleak House; or Poor “Jo.” A Drama, in Four Acts. Adapted by George Lander. Pavilion Theatre, London, March 27, 1876. (Dicks 388.)
Hard Times. A Domestic Drama, in Three Acts, by T. Fox Cooper. Strand Theatre, London, August 14, 1854. (Dicks.)
No Thorough Fare; a Drama in Five Acts, and a Prologue. By Charles Dickens and W. Wilkie Collins. Adelphi Theatre, London, December 26, 1867, and afterwards in Paris. Printed in New York.
Identity; or, No Thoroughfare. A Drama in Four Acts. By Louis Lequel. New York. (French.)
L’Abime, drame en cinq actes. (Founded on “No Thoroughfare.”) Paris, 1868.
The Tale of Two Cities; or, the Incarcerated Victim of the Bastille. An Historical Drama, in a Prologue and four acts. Adapted by T. Fox Cooper. First performed at the Victoria Theatre, London, July 7, 1860. (Dicks.)
A Tale of Two Cities; a Drama in two acts and a Prologue. By Tom Taylor. Lyceum Theatre, London, January 30, 1860. (Lacy 661.)
The Tale of Two Cities; a Drama in three acts and a Prologue. Adapted by H. J. Rivers. London.
A Message from the Sea, a Drama in Four Acts. Founded on Charles Dickens’s tale of that name, by John Brougham. Britannia Theatre, London, 1861. (Dicks 459.)
A Message from the Sea; a Drama in Three Acts. By Charles Dickens and W. Wilkie Collins. London, 1861.
The Dead Witness; or Sin and its Shadow. A Drama in Three Acts, by Wybert Reeve, founded on “The Widow’s Story” of The Seven Poor Travellers, by C. Dickens. First produced at the Sheffield Theatre. (S. French 1472.)
Great Expectations, a Drama in Three Acts, and a Prologue. By W. S. Gilbert. Not published.
Dickens himself did not often attempt parody, but his Reports of the Meetings of the “Mudfog Association” are admirable prose burlesques of the early proceedings of the British Association. These originally appeared in “Bentley’s Miscellany,” but have recently been republished.
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SAM WELLER’S ADVENTURES. A Song of the Pickwickians.
Who caused the smiles of rich and poor? Who made a hit so slow, but sure? And rose the worth of literature? Sam Weller.
I’m pretty well known about town, For to gain a repute is my pride, Though no vun can doubt my renown, I’m a covey of polish beside! I renovates cases for feet, Whether high-lows or tops is the same, I turns ’em off hand werry neat, And Samivel Veller’s my name!
In the Borough my trade I dragged on, Vith no vun to envy my sphere; I polish’d the soles of each don, From the cadger bang up to the peer. Their understandings I greatly improved, Vot happen’d to fall in the vay; And many a gen’leman mov’d To me in the course of the day.
Vun gen’leman――Pickwick, Esquire, The head of the noted P. C. Vun day tumbled in to enquire, If I’d had the fortin to see A cove vearing Vellington kicks, And a Miss Rachel Vardle beside, Vot the gent had lugged off by the nicks, And promis’d to make her his bride.
I knowed by the cut of his boot, As the cove had put up at our inn, So Pickwick, without a dispute, Comes tumbling down with the tin! And me arter that he engages, To follow him in his career―― Good togs and twelve shiners for vages, Paid every annual year.
Some coves when they rises you know, They stick to vulgarity will; But that vos my notice below, ’Cos as how I’m a gen’leman still, “For riches is nothing to me, If ever them I vos among――” As the gen’leman said, d’ye see, At the time he vos goin’ to be hung!
(For remainder of this old street ballad see p. 276 of The Life and Times of James Catnach, by Charles Hindley. London. Reeves & Turner, 1878.)
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It should have been stated that the Parodies on Dickens, quoted from The World on p. 215, were written by the Rev. W. H. A. Emra, of Salisbury (“New Sarum”) and by Mr. Walter Fletcher, of Hornsey. (“Robert le Diable.”)
COVENTRY PATMORE.
Amongst the parodies of Coventry Patmore which appeared on p. 194, mention should have been made of one which will be found in Mr. A. C. Swinburne’s Heptalogia, published by Chatto & Windus. It is called The Person of the House, and is in four Idyls, “The Monthly Nurse,” “The Caudle,” “The Sentences,” and “The Kid.”
When Mr. Coventry Patmore’s “Angel in the House” was first published, the Athenæum furnished the following unique criticism:――
“The gentle reader we apprise, that this new Angel in the House Contains a tale not very wise, About a person and a spouse. The author, gentle as a lamb, Has managèd his rhymes to fit, And haply fancies he has writ Another ‘In Memoriam.’ How his intended gathered flowers, And took her tea and after sung, Is told in style somewhat like ours, For delectation of the young. But, reader, lest you say we quiz The poet’s record of his she, Some little pictures you shall see, Not in our language but in his:
‘While thus I grieved and kissed her glove, My man brought in her note to say Papa had bid her send his love, And hoped I dine with them next day; They had learned and practised Purcell’s glee, To sing it by to-morrow night: The postscript was――her sisters and she Inclosed some violets blue and white.
* * * * *
‘Restless and sick of long exile, From those sweet friends I rode, to see The church repairs, and after a while Waylaying the Dean, was asked to tea. They introduced the Cousin Fred I’d heard of, Honor’s favourite; grave, Dark, handsome, bluff, but gently bred, And with an air of the salt wave.’
Fear not this saline Cousin Fred; He gives no tragic mischief birth; There are no tears for you to shed, Unless they may be tears of mirth. From ball to bed, from field to farm, The tale flows nicely purling on; With much conceit there is no harm, In the love-legend here begun. The rest will come another day, If public sympathy allows; And this is all we have to say About the ‘Angel in the House.’”
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OXFORD COMMEMORATION.
“The Encænia,” or Commemoration of Founders and Benefactors which took place in June last, was marked by all the customary boisterous merriment on the part of the undergraduates. The ladies were cheered as usual, whilst marks of disapprobation were addressed at all persons whose attire presented any features of singularity. The Vice-Chancellor’s Latin address was inaudible on account of the interruptions, many of which were in excessively bad taste. The Proctors were loudly hissed, and called upon to retire, and as they did not attempt to do so, they were requested to sing a duet.
It is only perhaps in Oxford that such conduct on the part of educated men, presumably gentlemen, would be tolerated; as it was described (in imitation of Carlyle) fifteen years ago, so it remains:――
“What is Commemoration? Wherefore? Whereunto? Why? Is it a mere vacuous Inanition, or speck cut out of this little world, or has it not rather contrariwise some Meaning, apart from that which is wrapt up in meness and youness and every-one-else-ness, and two or three more beside?
Nay, is it not Portentous, Big with Signs, with its show Sunday, its Dances, its Encænia and what not?
Is it not a time when it is permitted to Man to wriggle out of the inextricable snares of the Fowler with his Attorney-logic, and the frothy effervescences of defunct and buried-in-dusty tomes Antiquity which are nomen-clated Lectures? And to be Oblivious of these Gehenna-Bailiffs emissaried by professors in Tailor-craft, Wine-craft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries ranking under the genus Productive Industry. Aye, and those gaily apparelled young ladies (Madchen) who confluctuate hither as to a Focus, or centre of Attraction, though they themselves are also an Attraction, which is an inextricable mystery of Involvedness; do not these too teach a lesson to the gawks, in whose heads is nothing but the Roots of their World restored Hair, and who imagine that the whole Furniture of that digesting mechanism, Man, is but a Lay-figure, gifted indeed, with struttableness and swagger, on which to hang their Peacock-plumes, fringes, cobwebs, and such.
And there is the Encænia too, with its Chaotic Hubbub of Tympanum-splitting Noise, Undergraduates Noise, Ticket admitted Noise, as it were a sort of Tenfold Bedlam smitten with Interjectional Rabies, of groanings and yelpings, Approbation, Depreciation, and the like.”
* * * * *
From The Shotover Papers. Oxford. 1874.
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“The Irish Revolution, a history in three books.” By Thomas Snarlyle. Such is the title of a parody, to be found in The Puppet-Showman’s Album, published about 1848, which concludes with a sentence curiously appropriate to these times:――
“Ireland, Ireland, thy leaders are in jail. But be not a Rachel weeping for these children, be comforted!”
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JOHN RUSKIN.
Let us take a small extract from his notes on Samuel Prout and William Hunt’s loan collection of pictures:――
“That little brown-red butterfly [142] … is a piece of real painting; and it is as good as Titian or anybody else ever did, and if you can enjoy it you can enjoy Titian and all other good painters; and if you can’t see anything in it you can’t see anything in them, and its all affectation and pretence to say that you care about them. And with this butterfly in the drawing I put first, please look at the mug and loaf in the one I have put last of the Hunt series, No. 171. The whole art of painting is in that mug――as the fisherman’s genius was in the bottle. If you can feel how beautiful it is, how ethereal, how heathery, and heavenly, as well as to the uttermost muggy, you have an eye for colour and can enjoy heather, heaven, and everything else below and above. If not, you must enjoy what you can contentedly, but it won’t be painting; and in mugs it will be more the beer than the crockery, and on the moors rather grouse than heather.”
For those who have neglected the opportunity of testing their taste for art on this butterfly, and on this mug, I would advise a visit to Venice, to learn whether they can appreciate Bassano’s hair trunk, as shown in his grand picture of the Pope Alexander and the Doge of Venice. It is not Ruskin, but Mark Twain who thus describes it:
“The hair of this trunk is real hair, so to speak, white in patches, brown in patches. The details are finely worked out; the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive condition, is charmingly expressed. There is a feeling about this part of the work, which lifts it to the highest altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes away――one recognizes that there is soul here. View this trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, it is a miracle. Some of the effects are very daring, approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo, the sirocco, and the Byzantine schools. Yet the master’s hand never falters――it moves on, calm, majestic, confident; and, with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over the tout ensemble, by mysterious methods of its own, a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the arid components, and endues them with the deep charm and gracious witchery of poesy. Among the art-treasures of Europe there are pictures which approach the hair trunk――there are two which may be said to equal it, possibly――but there is none that surpasses it.”
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ON ALL FOURS CLAVIGERA; OR, Right at Last.
It may be remembered that Professor Buskin during the Spring addressed a letter to a provincial paper, respecting the projected new railway for Derbyshire. As he therein expressed some very strong opinions against the scheme, as one likely to give the miserable, melancholy, and toiling millions who dwell in smoke-stifling and unwholesome towns, an occasional chance of letting a little bright fresh air and sunlight in upon the gloom of their darkened lives, it is satisfactory to know that the letter in question is now believed to have been a clever hoax. At any rate, the zenith of that boon to millions, the summer excursion season has produced a second communication to the same journal: and, as it not only bears the Professor’s signature, but breathes with the spirit of his larger philanthropy, there can be little doubt as to its authenticity.
In the course of this second letter, Professor BUSKIN says:――
“I do not know how this mental revolution has come about within me, nor, were you to ask me, could I tell you. I only recognise the stupendous fact that I feel, and am not ashamed to avow, that I no longer regard the wild witchery of the Derbyshire glens as a precious and special property held by Providence in trust for me and a few exclusive well-to-do Sybarites for our sole select and selfish delectation.
* * * * *
Here it is, this Derbyshire Garden of Eden, with its magic-lantern-slide effects, lost for ever and for ever to everyone save to you and to me and the lucky Stall-sitters who hold, out of the overflowing fulness of their purses, the front places in the world’s glittering show, to the shifting and shutting out of the humbler and poorer from the sight and sense of it.”
“Follow, if you can, without wetted feet, the floretted banks and foam-crisped wavelets of the slyly wilful stream. Into the very heart and depth of this, and politely bending with the bends of it, your railway introduces its close-clinging attention. The rocks are not big enough to be tunnelled, they are cheerily blasted away; the brook is not wide enough to be bridged, it is comfortably covered in, and is thence-forward no physical obstacle to an enterprising Railway Company. I have not said, I leave the clergyman and physician to say, what moral and sanitary changes follow a free access to the gifts of Nature. But I may, at least, advise your correspondent that envenomed air is deadlier to the young than the old, and that the sooner a completed line of railway enables the pent-up thousands of pestiferous cities to figure as three-and-sixpenny excursionists, if only for a few hours, amidst these hitherto inaccessible fairy haunts, the sooner will English children who have been reared in mephitic fume instead of mountain breeze, who have had for playground heaps of ashes instead of banks of flowers, whose Christmas holidays brought them no memory, whose Easter sun no hope, enjoy some of the blessed delight of breezy hillside and sunlit glen hitherto claimed as the special and peculiar heirloom of that unreasoning and wrong-headed class who, singing the sweet song of Nature’s praise, defame that priceless metal line which, like some mighty wizard, alone has borne their welcome echo to a myriad aching city hearts.”
Punch. August 23, 1884.
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ON TOOTHPICKS. By Professor Buskin.
I came the other day quite by chance on this piece of news in my Daily Telegraph:――“It is said that no less than 25 millions of Toothpicks are annually made in England. This is just one to each person.” “Just one?” No, there is no justice here, it is all injustice. Think of this――25 millions, and think further of the 25 millions of Englishmen who can use them. Yes, this is what England has come to be――a nation of Toothpickers; for mark this, each man can use a toothpick if he will; if he can by fair means or foul (too often, alas, by foul!) obtain the paltry coin to purchase the Tooth-pick with.
But then these dilettanti-scribblers, these writers in the newspapers who are paid for their scribbling, these folk (forsooth!) say, “what have you to do with this――this Toothpicking?” I answer we have all to do with it. For hear, yea, and forbear with me a minute while I speak to you of this same Toothpicking.
Friends, it comes to this. Picking is a natural attribute of man. He must throughout life be a picker. But now comes the momentous question, a picker of what? A picker of knowledge, a dabbler in all the ’ologies, an admirable Crichton, veriest of prigs, or a picker of locks, a red-handed burglar, a hero of penny novels, or will he be a picker of teeth, a drawling vacuity weary of himself, weary of every thing, an inane hanger on to the skirts of the Universe? Will not the brave man, the wise man, the man of resolve, of energy, of endurance, a picker of roads, will he not go forth to beautify Hincksey, to plant the new Utopia, to commence the Era of Æstheticism, and of the Fors?
Now, turning his picking propensities to some real use, he will learn to do hard work, to blister his hands, to wheel barrows, to preach Buskinism.
From The Shotover Papers. Oxford, 1874.
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Mr. Ruskin is a depressing pessimist, according to whom nearly everything that was done in England three centuries or so ago was lovely and true, whilst all nineteenth century progress is in the wrong direction. “I know of nothing” he writes “that has been taught the youth of our time except that their fathers were apes, and their mothers winkles; that the world began in accident, and will end in darkness; that honour is a folly, ambition a virtue, charity a vice, poverty a crime, and rascality the means of all wealth and the sum of all wisdom.” Now these sweeping assertions are false, and Mr. Ruskin knows they are false, he could not advance a tittle of proof that any professor in modern times had inculcated any such doctrines. Those who want an antidote to Mr. Ruskin’s views should read “Pre-Raffaelitism; or a Popular enquiry into some newly-asserted Principles connected with the Philosophy, Poetry, Religion and Revolution of Art” by the Rev. Edward Young, M.A. London: Longmans & Co., 1857.
OUIDA.
MOLL MARINE: (BY “Weeder.”)
Moll Marine! A simple, touching name! It had been bestowed upon her by the rude country hinds among whom she dwelt. It was all she received at their hands besides blows and curses. Moll was a common name in those parts, but none knew what it meant, none discerned the hidden poetry in that brief monosyllable. Moll Marine they called her, because she came among them as a waif from the wild waves, as a white foam fleck that the winds toss on to the cold rocks to gleam a moment in the setting sun, and then dissolve for ever into the dews of night.
She was only fifteen, tall and graceful as a young poplar, with a warm brown skin and a scented wealth of amber hair. Everybody hated her. “It was natural,” she thought. They beat her, but she cared not. She was like a lucifer; they struck her, and she blazed forth resplendent; beautiful as the spotted panther of the forest, as the shapely thistle that the ass crops unheeding, as the beaming comet that shakes out her golden tresses in the soft hush of summer nights.
And she loved. Loved madly, passionately, hopelessly.
He knew it. He knew that he had but to say, “Come!” and she would follow him to disgrace or death, to polar snows or deserts arid as Gehenna. To him she was nothing. No more than the painted fly he pinned in sport, than the yellow meadow flowers that he crushed beneath his heel, than the soft tender doves whose downy necks he wrung and whose bodies he eat with cruel relish.
[We regret to say that the rest of this contribution is improper, and unfit for publication.――ED.]
From The Light Green. Cambridge, 1872.
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The World prize competition, for parodies on Ouida’s Under Two Flags, subject “The Cambridgshire Stakes.”
FIRST PRIZE.
‘Seven to 5 on Leoville; 9 to 3 on Lartington; 10 to 2 on Falmouth; 13 to 4 Flotsam; 17 to 9 Exeter; the Field bar one; 22 to 8 Lord Clive; 33 to 12 Discord! Take the Field bar one; take the Field!’ yelled a burly bookmaker, as an elegant young patrician redolent of Jockey Club sauntered past him.
‘I do take it in; also the Life,’ said the noble, as he flicked some dust from his spotless boots, and then he blew his nose gracefully.
‘O, stow yer larks!’ said the other; but the next moment he repented using such language; for the apparently delicate nobleman had carelessly taken him by the seat of his trousers and thrown him over the rails, as though he had been a feather, instead of weighing at least 15 stone.
‘Curse him!’ he muttered, as he came back trying to look pleased. ‘What d’yer want to do, my lord?’ he said, with a ghastly smile.
Mentioning a horse, the haughty young aristocrat asked what he would lay against it.
‘Against it?’ said the welcher. ‘Well, it ain’t usual for us to lay against ’em; but I’ll give yer 4 to 2.’
‘Very well,’ wearily replied the marquis; ‘in half millions. I also want to back it for a lady, in gloves.’
‘Wery good, my lord; dogskin or kid?’
This of course could only be meant for insult. The peer looked at him half amused, half disgusted, and walked listlessly away.
The welcher scowled after him with bitter hatred; but just then the bell rang, and he hurried off to see the horses and jockeys weighed. When he arrived at the shed he found all ready but one, the jockey who was to ride the horse he had laid against. He was just sitting down to dinner.
‘They’re waiting for you,’ said a steward, rushing into the room.
‘Ask them to wait a little longer; I shall be ready in forty minutes,’ said the jockey, taking a spoonful of potage à la Tortue.
The steward rushed out somewhat excitedly.
‘Now’s my time,’ said the welcher, and creeping behind the light weight he gently unfastened one of his spurs, and put another in its place. He had scarcely finished when the referee came in to say that the starter would wait no longer. Quaffing a large goblet of champagne, the jockey murmured, ‘Che, sara, sara,’ and staggered out. Why did the welcher look so fiendish. He had fastened on the jockey’s boot a spur with painted rowels.
Following him out, he could just see him galloping down the course, and hear the people cheer as their favourite went by in his crimson jacket, with scarlet sash, green hoops, pink sleeves, and yellow cap. Before he could get to the starting-box the horses were off; but disdaining to join them in the middle of the race, and wishing also to exchange a few compliments with the starter, he rode up to him, and after relieving his mind, dashed after the others. By the time he got to the ‘Corner’ he was only two furlongs behind; at the distance a hundred yards; at the Red House fifty; and as they passed the Stand he was but a length from the leaders. He touched his gallant steed with the spur for a final effort; but instead of leaving the others behind as usual, it staggered, stopped, and went to sleep. The laudanum had done its work. Just then his rider heard a great shout, and looking up saw thousands of arms carrying the victorious jockey back to the scales. La Merveille had won the Cambridgeshire.
ORACLE. (E. E. D. Davis.)
SECOND PRIZE.
‘Four to none against Hartington!’ ‘8 to none against Sarserperiller!’ ‘25 to none against Stylites!’ (pronounced by the ‘welchers’ as a dissyllable, like Skylights). ‘20 to none against Lar Mervilly!’ (La Merveille). ‘2 to none bar none!’ These and a hundred other cries rose high above the roar of the Ring on the bright October afternoon that shone for the nonce over the wide windy fens and sandy loams of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk on the day of the last great scrambling handicap of the year.
Maunderers muttering to their moustaches, layers, takers, ‘ossy’ cards, tiptop swells, who had ‘put the pot on’ to any extent, ladies of rank and ladies of pleasure (the latter in sealskin and velvet, and gracefully puffing the daintiest of papilitos)――all, with an instinct of stupidity, came down eager for a ‘go in’ on the scratching Cambridgeshire.
The bell was throbbing and sobbing spasmodically; and, as that cynosure of all eyes, Hartington, whose magnificently-desiccated veins bulged out black as the bloody cords of an injected ‘subject,’ strode grandly forth, a roar, deep as the voice of forests or the moan of the sea, went suddenly up――‘the crack!’
La Merveille, the blue filly, whose neck had the Arch of Marble, was a thick, short, long-barrelled horse, with superb Watteau eyes, and an I’ll-take-the-conceit-out-of-a good-many-of-you-if-I-choose-looking head. She belonged to the Lord of the Durdans, Earl Elderberry, whose colours were Hebrew lily inclining to Primrose.
See! Twice ten thousand starters are hoisted in admirable time; the competitors muster at the post, and the coup d’œil, as they glimmer and shimmer there in the sunlight, is as that of an early Turner sunset gone ineffably mad.
Three breaks; the flag falls; a glorious start, and away they go like no end of a line of eager harlequins before their creditors. ‘Off!’ and Out of Pounds, after taking up the running, ‘compounded;’ Adamite fell; Sunburn cooled down; Caxtonian ‘pressed’ onward; Fitz-Pluto ‘warmed’ to his work. ‘Now!’ Blood lashes to fury. The Ring roars――‘It’s a skinner!’ And Breadloser, Lord Strive, Hartington, and Lar Mervilly dash like fiends through the cold, fresh, wild winter wind, blowing as it might have done in Stuart times, when Mistress Nell Gwynn, the fat King’s ‘fancy,’ was here to inhale it.
Hark! ‘The foremost wins!’ ‘Rob Boy’s a “teaser”!’ ‘Mervilly’s lost!’ ‘Flash Man’s a brilliant failure!’
Lost? A palpitating lie!
’Send me a cropper!’ exclaimed Constable, a ‘clipping’ jock who had landed many a mount. ‘Send me a cropper, if you like, but “plant” me a winner!’
The blue filly answered with lightning spontaneity. Game to the last, Constable, a great Pickwick in his mouth, coaxed a final effort out of her. The delirium of pace was upon him. ‘Go in a perisher!’
On came the trio――on, until one last convulsive impulse of the outstretched limbs, and――hark! The cry has changed. ‘Mervilly wins!’
A thousand jewelled hands hold forth bouquets of hissing eau de Cologne. And Constable, true to the canons of his Order, ‘runs her in.’
A cry as of the disappointed, the desperate, or the d――d, went out over the ghastly fens; seemed to reel from many a gallant ‘plunger’ in anticipation of an approaching ‘weigh-in.’ Next to first was Second; Better Last than Never, whose dominant instinct it was to lose, third.
There was much wisdom after the event. Two minutes eight seconds! A man on a bicycle might have done it in less time!
CYRIL. (James Silvester.)
The World November 12, 1879.
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A parody of Ouida’s Ariadne was published in The Weekly Dispatch parody competition, September 13, 1885, but owing to the enforced brevity of the compositions, this one consisted of little more than a catalogue of names and facts, without any fun, or humour.
Of course Mr. F. C. Burnand wrote a parody on “Ouida,” it appeared in Punch in 1878, and was entitled “Strapmore! A Romance by Weeder, author of Folly and Farini, Under Two Rags, Arryadn’ty, Chuck, Two Little Wooden Jews, Nicotine, A Horse with Glanders, In Somers Town, Shamdross, &c., &c.” This wild weird story of blood and crime was republished in book form by Bradbury, Agnew & Co.
Judy also published a parody, entitled “Bluebottles. A Novel of Queer Society” Idylised à la Ouida. This was commenced July 7, 1880.
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The following very happy burlesque of the nautical tales in the style of Captain Marryat and Captain Chamier, was written in 1842 by the late Professor W. E. Aytoun, who, in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, wrote the Bon Gaultier Ballads.
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. A Tale of the Sea.
We were in the midst of the storm-tossed Atlantic. A heavy simoom, blowing N.E. by S., brought in the huge tropical billows mast-high from the Gulf of Labrador, and awoke old ocean, roaring in its fury, from its unfathomable depths. No moon was visible among the hurricane rack of the sky――even the pole-star, sole magnet of the mariner’s path, was buried in the murky obscurity of the tempest; nor was it possible to see which way the ship was steering, except by the long track of livid flames which followed in the wake of the bow, or when, at times, some huge leviathan leapt up from the water beside us, and descending with the vehemence of a rock hurled from heaven, drove up a shower of aquatic splinters, like a burst of liquid lava from the sea. All the sails which usually decorated the majestic masts of H.M.S. Syncope (a real seventy-nine of the old Trafalgar build, teak-built and copper fastened) were reefed tightly up, with the exception of the mainsail, the spritsail, the mizzen-boom sail, and a few others of minor consequence. Everything was cleared away――halyards, hencoop, and binnacle had been taken down below, to prevent accidents; and the whole of the crew, along with the marines and boarders, piped to their hammocks. No one remained upon deck except the steersman, as usual lashed to the helm; Josh Junk, the first bos’un; and the author of this narrative, who was then a midshipman on board the vessel, commanded by his uncle, Commodore Sir Peregrine Pendant.
“Skewer my timbers!” exclaimed Mr. Junk, staggering from one side of the deck to the other as an enormous wave struck us on the leeside, and very nearly unshipped the capstan――“Skewer my timbers, if this a’n’t enough to put an admiral’s pipe out! Why, Master Tom, d’ye see, it’s growing altogether more and more darkerer; and if it a’n’t clearer by twelve bells, we’ll be obligated to drop anchor, which a’n’t by no means so pleasant, with a heavy swell like this, running at nineteen knots an hour in the middle of the wide Atlantic. How’s her head, boy?”
“North by south it is, sir,” replied the steersman.
“Keep her seven points more to the west, you lubber! Always get an offing when there’s a wet sheet and a flowing sea. That’s right, Jem! Hold her hard abaft, and she’ll go slick before the wind, like a hot knife through a pound of butter. Halloo, Master Tom, are you holding on by the seat-railings already――you a’n’t sick, are you? Shall I tell the steward to fetch a basin?”
“No, no, Josh,” I replied, “’tis nothing――merely a temporary qualm. But tell me――do you really apprehend any danger? If so, would it not be prudent to call up the commodore, and hang out the dead-lights?”
“Why, Master Tom,” replied the bos’un, turning his quid, “them ere’s kevestions as I can’t answer. ’Cos, first――there’s no knowing what danger is till it comes; secondly, it’s as much as my place is worth to disturb old Fire-and-Faggots――axing your pardon for the liberty――afore he’s finished his grog with the mates below; and, thirdly, it’s no use hanging out the dead-lights, ’cos we’re entirely out of oil.”
“Gracious heavens!” cried I, “and suppose any other ship should be in the same latitude?”
“Then,” said the bos’un with all imaginable coolness, “I reckon it would be a case of bump. Oak varsus teak, as the law-wers say, and Davy Jones take the weakest.――But hitch my trousers! what’s that?”
As the non-commissioned officer spoke, a bright flash was seen to the seaward immediately ahead of our vessel. It was too bright, too intense to proceed from any meteoric phenomena, such as sometimes are witnessed in those tropical climate, and the sullen report which immediately followed, indicated too clearly that it proceeded from some vessel in the vicinity.
“A first-rater, by jingo!” said Mr. Junk, “and in distress. Hold my telescope, Master Tom, till I go below and turn out the watch,”――――but that instant his course was arrested.
Scarce a second had elapsed after the sound of the discharge reverberated through our rigging, when, only a hawser’s distance from our bowsprit, a phosphoric light seemed to rise from the bosom of the shadowy deep. It hung upon the hull, the binnacle, the masts, the yards of a prodigious ship, pierced apparently for three tier of guns, which, with every sail set, bore down direct upon us. One moment more and collision was inevitable; but Junk, with prodigious presence of mind, sprang to the helm, snatched the wheel from the hands of the petrified steersman, and luffed with almost supernatural force. Like a well-trained courser who obeys the rein, our noble ship instantly yielded to the impulse, and bore up a-lee, whilst the stranger came hissing up, and shot past us so close that I could distinctly mark each lineament of the pale countenances of the crew as they stood clustered upon the rigging, and even read――so powerful was that strange, mysterious light――the words painted within her sides,――“THOSE WHO GO ABAFT THE BINNACLE PAY CABIN FARE!” On, on she drove――a lambent coruscation, cleaving the black billows of the Atlantic main, about to vanish amidst the deep darkness of the night.
“That was a near shave, anyhow,” said Mr. Junk, relinquishing the wheel, “but we must know something more of that saucy clipper,” and catching up a speaking trumpet, he hailed,――
“Ship ahoy!”
“Ship yourself!” was the response.
“What’s your name?”
“What’s yours!”
“Syncope――Britannic Majesty’s seventy-nine――for Trinidad.”
“Yung Fraw――merchant ship, for Rotterdam.”
“What cargo?”
“Soap!” was the reply. “How are YOU off for it? Ha! ha! ha!”
A peal of diabolic laughter rolled across the deep, mingled with the rushing of the waves and the whistling of the winds. Another flash――another report――and the meteor light sunk as noiselessly as it had arisen into the bosom of the watery surge. At that moment the moon burst out from behind a cloud, clear and queenlike, illuminating the ocean for miles. We rushed to the stern and looked back. In vain! no vestige of a ship was there――we were alone upon the warring waters!
“By the Lord Harry!” said the bos’un, dropping the trumpet――“as sure as my name’s Josh Junk, that ’ere was the FLYING DUTCHMAN!” - - - - -
That night we were SWAMPED AT SEA!
――――:o:――――
OUR NEW ACTORS.
Three imitations of Charles Lamb’s essay on “Some of our Old Actors” were published in a Parody Competition in The World, October, 15, 1879. The first prize was awarded to the following:――
Taking up a to-days Standard――I know not by what freak of fancy I came to purchase one――I glanced at a few of the theatrical advertisements, which occupy no inconsiderable space in its columns. One of these presented the cast of parts in the Iron Chest at the Lyceum Theatre――Sir Edward Mortimer, by Henry Irving. What an ambitious sound it has! How clearly it brings before me the comely sad face――thoughtful and therefore sad――and the almost painfully-intense manner of the modern actor!
Of all the ‘Sir Edwards’ who have flourished in my time――a dismal phrase if taken aright, reader――that mad genius, the great little man with the fine Italian face and flashing eyes, Edmund Kean, is the most unforgetable. That of Irving comes next. He, since Kean, most fully realises the author’s idea of the style of man best suited to fill the part――‘a man of sable hue, and one in whose soul there’s something o’er which his melancholy sits and broods.’ But the secret of Irving’s success lies in his fine annihilation of self――a rare quality among players――combined with an originality which triumphs over tradition. There is a marked naturalness about his acting of this character, bottomed on enthusiasm. Like genius, he seems at times to have the power of kindling his own fire into any degree of intensity.
Kean, of whom Mrs. Siddons said, ‘There is too little of him to do anything;’ but of whom his landlady said, ‘There is something about Mr. Kean, ma’am, that tells me he will be a great man;’ Kean, whose exclamation, ‘My God, if I should succeed now, I think it will drive me mad!’ was prophetic, and who, when successful, cried, ‘D―― Lord Essex, Mary; the pit rose at me!’――Kean tore the passion of the play to tatters.
Irving’s recenter style does not go to work so grossly. Seemingly convinced of the facts that whatever is done for effect will be seen to be done for effect, and that Nature for ever puts a premium on reality, he interests, as all may, by being persistently and intensely human. There is a consonancy, so to speak, which the green probationer in tragedy spoils by failing to exercise that repression which is an index of power.
In Hamlet, Mathias, in the remorseful rant of Eugene Aram, and the rest, Irving has proved himself histrionic to a degree that will always command intelligent recognition.
All have seen Sothern! What a Dundreary the world has in him! What witty conceits that pleasant creature has to trifle an hour or two away!――he whose ineffable fooling, if done by another, would partake of the essentially ludicrous. Then there is my beloved Toole, whose quirks never left a sting, who drolls inimitably, and whose quality is so irresistible that like a sunbeam, he exists but to cheer――a touching function, reader. My beloved Toole is, in his walk, in no way inferior.
Shakespeare foresaw the existence of Miss Ellen Terry when he created Portia, as Sir Walter might that of Miss Neilson when he spake in Kenilworth.
There are who say that Barry Sullivan is the leading legitimate actor of the British stage――a big distinction, which few will, perhaps, be disposed to deny him. But the difference between Sullivan and Irving is, I take it, this: Sullivan has the toga virilis, and the old and obvious canons of his art; Irving is an actor less by tradition than instinct. Sullivan’s rich baritone, with its harmonious and not-without-skill-delivered periods, stirs the whole house like the sound of a trumpet: Irving’s shriller pipe is fuller of Nature’s own rhetoric for a finer few. Sullivan may fill the theatre; Irving may find an empty seat or two in the gallery.
CYRIL. (James Silvester.)
LORD MACAULAY.
The Quarterly Review, for April 1868, contained a review of Lady Trevelyan’s edition of the works of Lord Macaulay, in which the following passage was quoted as a specimen of his style:――
“The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had been, had not prevented the common business of life from going steadily and prosperously on. While the honour and independence of the State were sold to a foreign Power, while chartered rights were invaded, while fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest, and industrious families laboured and traded, ate their meals and lay down to rest, in comfort and security. Whether Whig or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to market; the grocer weighed out his currants; the draper measured out his broadcloth; the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns; the harvest-home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent; and the barrows of coal rolled fast along the timber railways of the Tyne.”――(Vol. iv. p. 189.)
There is no reason why this rhetorical diarrhœa should ever stop so long as there was a trade, calling, or occupation to be particularised: the pith of the proposition (which required no proof) being contained in the first sentence. Why not continue thus:――
“The apothecary vended his drugs as usual; the poulterer crammed his turkeys; the fishmonger skinned his eels: the wine-merchant adulterated his port; as many hot-cross buns as ever were eaten on Good Friday, as many pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, as many Christmas-pies on Christmas-day; on area steps the domestic drudge took in her daily pennyworth of the chalky mixture which Londoners call milk; through area bars the feline tribe, vigilant as ever, watched the arrival of the cats’-meat man; the painted courtesan flaunted in the Haymarket; the cabs rattled through the Strand; and from the suburban regions of Fulham and Putney the cart of the market-gardener wended its slow and midnight way along Piccadilly to deposit its load of cabbages and turnips in Covent Garden.”
――――:o:――――
A PAGE BY MACAULAY. (From the History of the Beadleship of Brown.)
When Brown grasped the staff of office, he was in need of the staff of life. Raised at once from want to wealth, from obscurity to renown, from the practice of submission to the habit of command, he did his work sternly; but not too sternly to do it well. The unexpectedly chosen Beadle became a correspondingly energetic Beadle. The new broom swept clean. A week had not passed ere abuses were remedied――the indolence of one portion of the parish officers pricked into action――the disaffection of another crushed into obedience. A benevolent despotism is the best form of government――Brown was despotic, benevolent, and a Beadle.
Let us review the state of affairs as they existed when he first assumed the cocked hat of office as Beadle of St. Tomkins. Apple-women usurped the pavement. Piemen obstructed the roadway. Professed beggars demanded alms at every door――impostors exhibited artificial sores at every corner. What the parish of St. Giles is to the parish of St. James, the parish of St. Tomkins was to the parish of St. Giles. Nuisances of another nature throve also and waxed great from day to day. The pew opener grumbled; the turncock muttered to himself; the churchwardens squabbled, and the rate-payers complained. There was murmured disaffection in the vestry――open revolt amongst the charity boys. It was a time of mutual recrimination――of mutual dissatisfaction. Jones abused Smith, Smith retorted upon Jones. Robinson hated Thomson, Thomson repaid the compliment with interest to Robinson. There was an unruly license of tongue, a general saturnalia of speech. Whispered scandals grew into outspoken charges, and the malicious reports hatched from the tea and muffins of old maidish parties were repeated with envenomed aggravations over the port and sherry of parish dinners. Then it was that short weights were publicly attributed to Smith, and a false steelyard confidently asserted to belong to Jones. Johnson, heated with gin, said that Jackson beat his wife――Jackson, inflamed with rum, said that Mrs. Johnson beat her husband. Charges, counter-charges, insinuations, inuendos, ran riot. No man looked with complacency on his neighbour; no husband looked with confidence upon his wife; no wife looked with respect upon her husband. As yet the band of Reformers who were shortly to arise was unheard of. Thomas Styles was but sixteen; John Nookes but thirteen-and-a-half. The pen of the great Smythe Smithers was yet employed upon half text. No word indicating his future destiny had fallen from Tomkin’s lips――Gubbins had not yet been born――Snooks was in long clothes――and Trother yet unemancipated from parish leathers.
On Brown then it alone devolved to grapple with the task. He was the dauntless pioneer of a dauntless army, a champion destined to show the world that the glitter of a Beadle’s staff may outshine the splendours of a Marichall’s baton, if it did not dim the magnificence of a Monarch’s sceptre.
From The Man in the Moon, edited by Angus B. Reach. February, 1849.
――――:o:――――
A BIT OF WHIG HIS-TORY. (From what we “Macaulay” History of our own.)
The King had been thrown from his horse at Hampton Court, and was dead. Great were the rejoicings in Paris and Rome on receipt of the tidings, and the hopes of the Jacobite party rose; however, the accession of the second daughter of the last Stuart monarch to the throne as Anna Regina once more clouded their prospects. Her Court, adorned by Marlborough (who did not sell his pictures), Bolingbroke and Swift, would have been as nothing without the genius of one whose name does not figure in the accepted histories of that reign, but whose influence at Court not even the imperious Sarah Jennings, nor her rival, Lady Masham, nor any of the Whigs or Tories of that distracted period, could afford to ignore. A peaceful citizen, whose Hair Preparations gave that graceful brilliancy and tone to the brown hair of the Sovereign, and whose marvellously manufactured Wigs adorned the heads of the noblest in the land, was not one to be lightly passed by, and thus it was Professor Browne was the ruling spirit at the Court of Queen Anne. No Wigs could equal his in form, graceful folds, and luxuriant masses of hair; they covered the heads of the wisest and best in the land, so that it was no wonder the Professor, who had long studied the heads of the people, was universally consulted on all matters of such vital importance. Unfortunately, however, Prince Eugene of Savoy, who at this time came over on a secret mission from the Emperor to the Queen, foolishly declined to pay a visit to Fenchurch Street, and procured from some opposition hairdresser a short campaigning Wig in which to appear at Court. The same evening, the Prince, smoking his cigar at his hotel, happened to be trying on this new head gear when the Hanoverian Minister, Baron Hoffman, called, and seeing that neither in style, make, nor effect was it equal to BROWNE’S, endeavoured to induce the Prince, but in vain, to discard it and patronize F. B. Bye and bye Bolingbroke, who had a secret partiality for the Jacobites, and mistrusted the Prince’s mission, arrived, and affected such admiration for the periwig that the Prince actually did wear it the next day in the throne-room, to the horror of the Lord Chamberlain and Gentlemen Ushers, while the crafty Bolingbroke took care himself to appear in one of BROWNE’S most artistic and luxuriant head-coverings that could possibly be procured; the result being a perfect triumph for the Professor. The Queen expressed high disapproval of the Prince’s Wig, whose mission thereby failed, and once again the hopes of the Jacobites fluttered. At length the wily Bolingbroke was dismissed from Office, and Her Majesty, who had secured the succession to the Crown of the son of her cousin Sophia, ordered that Professor BROWNE, should henceforth be appointed Wig Maker in ordinary to the British Public.
From Professor Browne’s Almanack, 1885.
――――:o:――――
THE NEXT ARMADA.
A Brief Chapter from the History of Macaulay Junior.
* * * * *
In the City the agitation was fearful. None could doubt that the decisive crisis was approaching. It was known, from the second edition of the Times, that the joint Armada, carrying everything before it, was continuing its victorious progress up the Channel. Plymouth had fallen without firing a shot. Portsmouth had speedily followed suit. The former had found itself, at the eleventh hour, unprovided with a single gun. The latter, at the crucial moment, discovered that it was still waiting the arrival of its ammunition. When these facts, mysteriously whispered at first with bated breath, became, later in the day, authenticated by the appearance of succeeding editions of the morning papers, the public excitement knew no bounds. A hideous panic seized the Stock Exchange. “Goschens” went down to sixty at a single leap. Five well-known Stockbrokers went off their heads, and were removed in cabs by the police in violent hysterics. The Lord Mayor appeared on the steps of the Mansion House, and endeavoured to quell the riot. He was at once recognised by the mob, and pelted with Pass-Books.
But things assumed a most threatening aspect at the Admiralty. A vast multitude had assembled at Whitehall, and rendered Parliament Street impassable. There was an angry howl at the “Board.” The Police took the precautionary measure of closing the gates. The First Lord appeared inside the enclosure, and his presence was the signal for an ominous roar. He was deathly pale and trembling, but he managed to scramble up the balustrade, and gazed feebly down on the raving thousands below. He was understood to say that when next Parliament met it would be asked to appoint another Committee to inquire into the naval administration of the country. His speech was cut short by execrations, and he hastily withdrew. Ten minutes later it was understood that he had escaped by the back way over the palings into the Park, and was hiding himself from the fury of the mob in an unfrequented slum in Pimlico.
But while these events were transpiring in the Metropolis of the Empire, still graver issues were being arrived at on that “silver streak,” which, up to now, had popularly, but erroneously, been regarded as its sure defence. What had been left of the British Channel Fleet after its first disastrous encounter with the joint Armada off the Lizard had rallied, and was now awaiting the attack of the again on-pressing and advancing enemy, in what promised to be a decisive encounter for the possession of the Mouth of the Thames, in the immediate neighbourhood of Herne Bay. The Admiral, in his hasty retreat, had collected about the shattered remnant of his forces some auxiliary adjuncts. He had been joined by Her Majesty’s ironclads, Styx and Megatherium, and by the belted cruiser, Daffodil; but owing to the fact that these vessels, not possessing any guns, had had to put to sea without their armaments, the recent arrivals could scarcely be counted on by him as an addition to his fighting power in any pending action. Nor was he sure of his own ship. Her Majesty’s ironclad Blunderer, which carried his flag, was armed with four of the famous 43-ton Collingwood exploding guns, and though hard pressed in the recent engagement, he had not thought it wise to give the order to “fire.”
Such was the position of the British Admiral at the commencement of that fatal afternoon which saw the last blow struck for the preservation of the Empire. The fight commenced by a general attack of the enemy. But it did not last long. In a very few minutes seven of the British ironclads, including that of the Admiral, were blown up by the explosion of their own guns. The rest found that they were supplied with the wrong-sized ammunition, and were rapidly put hors de combat. Within a quarter of an hour of the firing of the first shot the action was over, and the last remnant of the British Fleet had practically disappeared. That evening the advance despatch boats of the joint Armada anchored off Gravesend, and 120,000 men were landed on the Kentish coast between Margate and Whitstable.
When the news of the disaster appeared in the evening papers, the panic, which had been gathering strength as the day progressed, culminated in fever-heat. Everybody was in the streets asking, with staring eyeballs, for the latest news.
Gradually it became known that 75,000 of the enemy were advancing on the capital by way of Aldershot, and that the General in command at the camp, who had 1,371 men of all arms under him, all told, had received orders to oppose them, and this announcement seemed to restore in some measure the public confidence.
Meanwhile a quite phenomenal activity prevailed at the War Office, and the horses of the General Omnibus Company were at once requisitioned for the service of the Royal Artillery. The Duke of Cambridge, on hearing of the catastrophe, had applied to the Authorities instantly for the 11,000 men he had recently insisted on. With that force, he said, even at the eleventh hour, he would guarantee the safety of the country. Mr. Whitely forthwith undertook to furnish them within twenty-four hours. His offer was accepted with enthusiasm. It was known too that Lord Wolseley had already started with a miscellaneous force of Volunteers, Guards, and Policemen, hurriedly collected, for Sydenham, with the intention of taking up a defensive position among the antideluvian animals, and there waiting the course of events.
The Authorities were fairly on their mettle. They instantly supplied three Volunteer regiments with rifles of an obsolete and antiquated pattern. Nor was this all. They telegraphed to Woolwich to expedite the selection of a model for the new magazine rifle, and marked their communication “urgent.” Matters, meanwhile, at headquarters were not less vigorously pushed forward. Inquiries were made for Mr. Stanhope’s plan of “defending the Thames.” Every pigeon-hole was examined, but it could not be found. Still, the Department did not despair. They despatched a third-class War Office clerk to Greenwich to report on the situation and say what he thought of it.
When, however, it transpired the next morning that, spite all the efforts to stay their advance, 50,000 of the enemy had taken possession of the Bank of England, seized the Lord Mayor and Aldermen as hostages, and were prepared to treat with the Government, with a view to evacuation, on the cession of Margate, Canada, India, Gibraltar, Malta, Australia, and Madame Tussaud’s Wax-work Collection, together with a preliminary payment of fifteen milliards. Englishmen began soberly to recognise that what they had so long regarded as an impossible vision had really come about, and that the “Next Armada” was an unhappily accomplished fact.
Punch. May 19, 1888.
――――:o:――――
THE AGE OF LAWN-TENNIS. (After Macaulay’s “History of England”) 1880-81.
Chapter LV
“But while these stirring events were passing in the East, the mind of England was turned into a very different channel. No faithful historian could pass over this period without touching upon a pastime which was now taking a remarkable hold upon the nation, and pervading with its influence the upper and middle classes of British society.
“Rackets, and the old French game of Tennis, had long been popular with the English youth; but by those who had left the public schools and universities they were generally unattainable. It was left for Major Wingfield, the scion of a Shropshire family, to bring home, I may almost say to every door, a game which, little inferior to the classic games which I have just mentioned, was open, without the paraphernalia of a costly court, to every one at least who possessed a moderate-sized and level lawn. Lawn-Tennis was now rapidly elbowing out Archery, a thoroughly English and deep-rooted institution, and Croquet, its younger sister. Cricket was losing many of its most earnest devotees. In some parts of England there was an almost daily rendezvous at one or other of the great houses of the neighbourhood for the new and popular pastime. In country circles, tournaments were rousing the keenest excitement. Society was being differentiated into the good players and the bad. Crowds flocked annually to Wimbledon to watch the great match for the Championship of the world, to which a silver goblet had been added by The Country Gentleman’s Newspaper. Masters of hounds deferred cub-hunting that the Lawn Tennis season might be still further prolonged. A game of Lawn-Tennis was not unfrequently the innocent finish of the Ruridecanal meetings of the clergy. “Will he make a fourth?” was the first question to be asked about the new curate in many a country parish. All-popular among the public schools was Harrow-on-the-Hill, which had now furnished the Lawn-Tennis Champion for four consecutive years. Politics were laid aside in the public press while the rules of the game were discussed. On one side were ranged the net-volleyers: on the other those who thought that net-volleying spoilt all the beauty and elegance of the game. Never, by this latter party, since the time of Guy Fawkes, had man been so intensely hated as he who, standing close to the net with uplifted racket, stifled stroke after stroke as they came to meet him. We shall not enter very fully into the merits of this controversy; to do so would be dull, and possibly, to future generations, unintelligible. It is sufficient to say that while the skilled players defied “the man at the net” to do his worst, another and a larger party, looking, be it supposed, to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, was clamouring for such Lawn-Tennis legislation as would degrade the game to the capabilities of mediocrity, and drive the odious net-player from the courts. So numerous were the grades of dexterity that a leader in the Tennis world, and an author of some repute, had formulated a handicap table by which players of as many degrees as the letters of the alphabet might be brought together on even terms; while Henry Jones, the “Cavendish” of the whist-table, and other mathematicians, had worked out to several places of decimals the advantages of service. * * * * Such was the state of things which was distracting the mind of England while the fleets of Europe patrolled the Mediterranean, and peace and war were trembling in the balance.”
From Tennis Cuts and Quips. Edited by Julian Marshall. London, Field and Tuer.
There are numerous other imitations of Lord Macaulay’s prose writings. One, written by the late Dean Hook, is to be found in his “Life and Letters” by W. R. W. Stephens (vol ii., p. 476), it relates only to ecclesiastical affairs.
Another, entitled The Story of Johnnie Armstrong, the Scotch outlaw, appeared in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, September 22, 1888. It was a prize composition of considerable merit, written by Mr. J. T. Milne, but it is unfortunately too long to be here inserted.
MRS. BROWN AT CAMBRIDGE. By Arthur Sketchey.
Of all the railroads as I ever came across that Great’rn is out and out the worst, thro’ bein’ that tejus slow and the carridges a mask of dirt as you might grow cabbidges on, as the sayin’ is, and took all the freshness out of my light blue pollynaise, as I’d thought the kerrect thing at Cambridge, thro’ Mrs. Burgess a-wearin’ the same at the Boat-race, and some young Cambridge gents a-sayin’ “Mum, you’ve ’it the right colour this time and no mistake,” as pleased ’er no end, tho’ all the time larfin’ at ’er, I’ve no doubt, thro’ bein’ a orkard figger from a child and not one to look well in a Joseph’s coat of many colours, as the sayin’ is.
’Ow ever I met Mrs. Vagg on that everlastin’ endless platform I don’t know, but I says to ’er, “a pint of four ale I must ’ave,” as I saw a refreshmint bar ’andy, but of all the stuck-up trollopin’ things that barmaid was the most orful, as ’ad dressed ’er ’air within a hinch of ’er life, as the sayin’ is, in four false plaits, and three young men a-hoglin’ of ’er across the slab, as might ’ave known better, and took cheek from that gal, as I’d ’ave paid ’er back, and let ’er know ’er place.
I never wish to swaller a better cup of tea than Mrs. Vagg gave me that evenin’ thro’ ’er bein’ a Bed-maker and in course tea a perkisite, and is only fair with ’er maid-of-all-work to seven gentlemen and board and lodge ’erself, not but what ’er house wasn’t very nice, as bein’ in Regint Street with Wictor Emmanivel’s Collidge opposight, for all the world like Clerkenwell jail, with bars to the winders and all, mayhap thro’ fear of burglars a-breakin’ in, and a-carryin’ off the Uniwersity chest, as I’m told would only be poor pickins, and not worth the trouble.
Whether it was that cup of tea, or whether it was talkin’ over old times with Mrs. Vagg, as ’ad been in service with me as a gal, but nine o’clock struck and took me all of a ’eap, thro’ ’avin’ promised Brown as I’d send ’im a ’a-penny card just to say I was all right. So I says “What time do the Post go out?”
“Ten o’clock,” says she, “but you’re never goin’ out there to-night, and a Town and Gown row on too, as is what no decent woman would face.”
“Beggin’ your parding, mum,” says I, “their aint no Town nor Gown neither as shall stand in the way of my duty to my lawful ’usband.”
So seen’ I was in earnest, she ’eld ’er tongue, and ’elped me on with my shawl, and says “Turn to the left and foller your nose, and that’ll bring you straight to the Post Office.”
Well up the hairy steps I went, thro’ ’er a-occypying the ground floor, and a-lettin’ the first, and the very first thing as I sees were a roamin’ candle goin’ off on Parky Peace as they call it, tho’ a poorish Park to me as knows Grinnidge, and as for Peace, it’s a-callin’ peace where there’s no peace, thro’ bein’ a mask of folk all a-’ustling and a-jeerin’, and a-lettin’ off fireworks, as is things I don’t ’old with, thro’ John Biggen as was my first cousin on the mother’s side bein’ blinded with a rocket at Vaux ’all, as were a piece of luck for Mrs. Biggin, as no one would ’ave married with ’is eyes open thro’ ’er face bein’ a puffect cullender from the smallpox.
What the rumpus was all about I don’t know, but the streets was full of young men as would ’ave been better in their beds, some on ’em a-walkin’ two and two and a-smokin’ pipes, and some jinin’ arms, and marchin’ up the streets singin’ for all the world like as if they was tipsy, and the pavemint that narrer as I was shoved off the kerb, and into a gutter, as was a foot deep and wetted me up to my knees, and clean spilte a new petticut, as such things should’nt be allowed in the public streets,――and where’s their Board of ’Ealth?
There was two young fellers a-walkin’ be’ind me, and says one, a-larfin’, and a-pintin’, “That’s a good make up,” meanin’ me, as turned round sharp on ’im, and told ’im to mind ’is own business and not talk about makin’ up to me as were old enough to be ’is mother, let alone ’avin’ twice ’is wits, as were not much better than a fool, and looked only three days in the week, as the sayin’ is. But law bless you, my lord only larfed, and just then I saw a great rampagious mob a-tearin’ up the street as looked the scum of the earth, and gave me that turn as I thought swound away I must, and ketched ’old of ’is arm, and says, “’Elp a lady in distress, and conduc me past them willains.”
Says he, a-takin’ off ’is ’at quite perlite, “With pleasure, mum,” and off he walked with me a-’angin’ on to ’is arm, and my ’eart a-thumpin’ with pannikin’ fear as might ’ave been ’eard ’arf a mile away.
Well I was just a-slippin’ my ’a-penny card into the Post, when up comes an elderly gent a-stridin’ along and a-lookin’ very big, with a gownd a-trailin’ in the mud, and the banns of marridge round ’is neck for all the world like a parson, as no doubt was, and says to the young gent, “Which I must trouble you for six and eightpence for not a-wearin’ of your hacademic dress,” and pulls out a sort of bettin’-book for to enter ’is name and Collidge.
Says the young gent, quite cool and brazen-like, “Excuse me, sir, but I was a-escortin’ of my mother ’ome, and didn’t put on my gownd for fear of the cads.”
This put my blood up, as never could abear anything deceitful or under’and, and I lets go of ’im, and says, “You hartful young ’ypocrate, and me never ’avin’ set my eyes on you before this evenin’, as must ’ave took ’im aback like and serve ’im right, but he didn’t wait for no more, but ran off like a harrer from a bow, as the sayin’ is, and the old chap sets a long legged feller to run after ’im, as I ’ope didn’t ketch ’im, thro’ bein’ a kind-’earted young man spite of ’is owdacious fibbin’.”
By this time there was a reglar Punch and Judy crowd round us, but I grabbed tight on to my umbreller, and thinks I “’it me any of you who dare,” when the elderly gent says, “If so be as you’re a decent woman, you’ll go ’ome.”
Says I, “who says as Martha Brown aint a decent woman, you old waggerbone! I aint a goin’ to stand ’ere to be hinsulted,” and was bouncin’ off feelin’ quite ’urt like, and the crowd a cheerin’ and a sayin’, “Go it, old Fatchops,” when if that old fool didn’t take and say as it were ’is duty to see me ’ome.
Says I, “Thank you for nothin’, as would prefer you did no such thing, thro’ me not bein known ’ere and people might make remarks,” but, law bless you, words wasn’t no good with ’im, as walked along side of me all the way with the crowd a-follerin’ and a-hollerin’ and a-pokin’ their fun at ’im and me.
Right glad I was to stand on Mrs. Vagg’s door-step, and fainted clean away as soon as hever I got down to the kitchen, and you don’t ketch me a-goin’ down that street after dark again, and, tho’ boys will be boys, yet I don’t ’old with all their squibbin’ and fibbin’, nor yet with helderly gents as is paid to hinsult respectable fieldmales, as I wish my ’usband ’ad been there, as would ’ave broke hevery bone in ’is skin and serve ’im right.
From The Light Green. Cambridge, W. Metcalfe and Sons, 1873.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Lord Beaconsfield.
It must be confessed that the burlesques of the novels of Disraeli are not, as a rule, very amusing, but there is one brilliant exception, namely, that written by Bret Harte.
It is entitled “Lothaw, or the Adventures of a Young Gentleman in Search of a Religion,” by Mr. Benjamins. This was first printed in England by the late Mr. J. C. Hotten in 1871. It consists of nine short chapters.
LOTHAW.
Chapter I.
“I remember him a little boy,” said the Duchess. “His mother was a dear friend of mine: you know, she was one of my bridesmaids.”
“And you have never seen him since, mamma?” asked the oldest married daughter, who did not look a day older than her mother.
“Never; he was an orphan shortly after. I have often reproached myself, but it is so difficult to see boys.”
This simple yet first-class conversation existed in the morning-room of Plusham, where the mistress of the palatial mansion sat involved in the sacred privacy of a circle of her married daughters.
One dexterously applied golden knitting-needles to the fabrication of a purse of floss silk of the rarest texture, which none who knew the almost fabulous wealth of the Duke would believe was ever destined to hold in its silken meshes a less sum than £1,000,000 sterling; another adorned a slipper exclusively with seed pearls; a third emblazoned a page with rare pigments and the finest quality of gold-leaf.
Beautiful forms leaned over frames glowing with embroidery, and beautiful frames leaned over forms inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Others, more remote, occasionally burst into melody as they tried the passages of a new and exclusive air given to them in MS. by some titled and devoted friend, for the private use of the aristocracy alone, and absolutely prohibited for publication.
The Duchess, herself the superlative of beauty, wealth, and position, was married to the highest noble in the Three Kingdoms.
Those who talked about such matters said that their progeny were exactly like their parents――a peculiarity of the aristocratic and wealthy.
They all looked like brothers and sisters, except their parents, who, such was their purity of blood, the perfection of their manners, and the opulence of their condition, might have been taken for their own children’s elder son and daughter.
The daughters, with one exception, were all married to the highest nobles in the land.
That exception was the Lady Coriander, who――there being no vacancy above a marquis and a rental of £1,000,000――waited.
Gathered around the refined and sacred circle of their breakfast-table, with their glittering coronets, which, in filial respect to their father’s Tory instinct and their mother’s Ritualistic tastes, they always wore on their regal brows, the effect was dazzling as it was refined.
It was this peculiarity and their strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the good-humoured St. Addlegourd, to say that, “’Pon my soul, you know, the whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack of court cards――don’t you know?”
St. Addlegourd was a radical.
Having a rent-roll of £15,000,000, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, he could afford to be.
“Mamma, I’ve just dropped a pearl,” said the Lady Coriander, bending over the Persian hearth-rug.
“From your lips, sweet friend,” said Lothaw, who came of age and entered the room at the same moment.
“No, from my work. It was a very valuable pearl, mamma; papa gave Isaacs and Sons £50,000 for the two.”
“Ah, indeed,” said the Duchess, languidly rising; “let us go to luncheon.”
“But your Grace,” interposed Lothaw, who was still quite young, and had dropped on all-fours on the carpet in search of the missing gem, “consider the value――――”
“Dear friend,” interposed the Duchess, with infinite tact, gently lifting him by the tails of his dress-coat, “I am waiting for your arm.”
Chapter II.
Lothaw was immensely rich.
The possessor of seventeen castles, fifteen villas, nine shooting-boxes, and seven town houses, he had other estates of which he had not even heard.
Everybody at Plusham played croquet, and none badly.
Next to their purity of blood and great wealth, the family were famous for this accomplishment.
Yet Lothaw soon tired of the game, and after seriously damaging his aristocratically large foot in an attempt to “tight croquet” the Lady Aniseed’s ball, he limped away to join the Duchess.
“I’m going to the hennery,” she said.
“Let me go with you. I dearly love fowls―――― … broiled,” he added, thoughtfully.
“The Duke gave Lady Montairy some large Cochins the other day,” continued the Duchess, changing the subject with delicate tact.
“Lady Montairy, Quite contrairy, How do your cochins grow?”
sang Lothaw gaily.
The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged silence, Lothaw abruptly and gravely said――
“If you please, ma’am, when I come into my property I should like to build some improved dwellings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander.”
“You amaze me, dear friend, and yet both your aspirations are noble and eminently proper,” said the Duchess; “Coriander is but a child――and yet,” she added, looking graciously upon her companion, “for the matter of that, so are you.”
Chapter III.
Mr. Putney Padwick’s was Lothaw’s first grand dinner-party.
Yet, by carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably, and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing its contents with a spoon.
The conversation was peculiar, and singularly interesting.
“Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer?” said Mrs. Putney Padwick to her companion.
“I certainly think that polygamy should be limited by isothermal lines,” replied Lothaw.
“I should say it was a matter of latitude,” observed a loud, talkative man opposite.
He was an Oxford Professor, with a taste for satire, and had made himself very obnoxious to the company, during dinner, by speaking disparagingly of a former well-known Chancellor of the Exchequer――a great statesman, and brilliant novelist,――whom he feared and hated.
Suddenly there was a sensation in the room; among the females it absolutely amounted to a nervous thrill.
His Eminence, the Cardinal, was announced.
He entered with great suavity of manner, and after shaking hands with everybody, asking after their relatives, and chucking the more delicate females under the chin with a high-bred grace peculiar to his profession, he sat down, saying――
“And how do we all find ourselves this evening, my dears?” in several different languages, which he spoke fluently.
Lothaw’s heart was touched.
His deeply religious convictions were impressed.
He instantly went up to this gifted being, confessed, and received absolution.
“To-morrow,” he said to himself, “I will partake of the Communion, and endow the Church with my vast estates. For the present I’ll let the improved cottages go.”
* * * * *
Novels by Eminent Hands, a series of burlesques upon the works of Bulwer Lytton, Harry Lorrequer, G. P. R. James, and B. Disraeli, which first appeared in Punch were written by W. M. Thackeray. That upon Disraeli came out in 1847, it commenced thus:――
CODLINGSBY. By B. De Shrewsbury.
The noise in the old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming sullenly over the uproar; the bell of Saint Mary’s was clanging with alarm; St. Giles’s tocsin chimed furiously; howls, curses, flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street, proclaimed that the battle was at its height.
In Berlin they would have said it was a revolution, and the cuirassiers would have been charging, sabre in hand, amidst that infuriate mob. In France they would have brought down artillery, and played on it with twenty-four-pounders. In Cambridge nobody heeded the disturbance――it was a Town and Gown row.
The row arose at a boat-race. The Town boat (manned by eight stout bargees, with the redoubted Rullock for stroke) had bumped the Brazennose light oar, usually at the head of the river. High words arose regarding the dispute. After returning from Granchester, when the boats pulled back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance between the Townsmen and the University youths――their invariable opponents――grew louder and more violent, until it broke out in open battle. Sparring and skirmishing took place along the pleasant fields that lead from the University gate down to the broad and shining waters of the Cam, and under the walls of Baliol and Sidney Sussex. The Duke of Bellamont (then a dashing young sizar at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy Butt, the bow oar of the Bargee boat. Vavasour of Brazennose was engaged with a powerful butcher, a well-known champion of the Town party, when, the great University bells ringing to dinner, truce was called between the combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.
During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a Nargilly, had attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a hundred yards ahead of the boats in the race, so that he could have a good view of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared him, with a few rapid strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odour from his cool Nargilly.
“Who is he?” asked the crowds who panted along the shore, encouraging, according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the oarsmen in the race. Town and Gown, alike asked who it was, who, with an ease so provoking, in a barque so singular, with a form seemingly so slight, but a skill so prodigious, beat their best men. No answer could be given to the query, save that a gentleman in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six fourgons and a courier, had arrived the day before at the Hoop Inn, opposite Brazennose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the individual in question.
No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workmen. That boat――slim, shining, and shooting through the water like a pike after a small fish――was a caique from Tophana; it had distanced the Sultan’s oarsmen, and the best crews of the Capitan Pasha in the Bosphorus; it was the workmanship of Togrul-Beg, Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The Bashee had refused fifty thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the Russian Ambassador, for that little marvel. When his head was taken off, the Father of Believers presented the boat to Rafael Mendoza.
* * * * *
――――:o:――――
NIHILISM IN RUSSIA. (In imitation of Disraeli’s Sybil.)
For there opposed each other but two elements in this society at once strange and simple. Around the throne of the Great Peter, and in the marble city which is his monument, the gay circles of the Aristocracy frittered away a frivolous existence amid the blaze of diamonds, the strains of music, and all those Circean enchantments that dull the energy and bid care repose. Here was wealth to make life easy, and here luxury to give it splendour; here was beauty to stir the pulse of youth, and here wit to waken even the most thoughtless to a sense that for them too there were pleasures of the intellect. So lived the lords of those vast plains, whose immensity made aptly significant the proud title of “All the Russias.” And the tiller of those plains, what of him? Surrounded by the sad and sombre Steppe, that breathed its melancholy over him from the cradle, broken by toil and of untutored mind, his life was suffering without interval of enjoyment, degradation without hope of change. Too brutish for the aspirations of Religion, he was well-nigh bereft of that supreme solace wherewith the ingenuity of the sophistical rhetorician may seek to sooth even the aged pauper of St. Pancras. And yet Revolution was as impossible for him as content. For Revolution is the explosion of an Idea, that overturns Society in its struggle to the light. To the Scythian serf was altogether wanting the initial force of the fulminating Idea. Steeped in ignorance, he was also isolated. Through his dreary continent had never permeated the Secret Societies of other lands, and for him there was no magic potency in the mysterious name of “Mary-Anne.” So he thought not of overturning Society, but of effacing it. For the first time in man’s history was seen that portentous birth, an Apostle of Nothing. In a word, he was a Nihilist!
Vainly was it attempted to divert his purposes by the lure of foreign conquest and a fresh Crusade; in vain was dangled before him by the astute Ministers of Muscovy the long-sought guerdon of his efforts――the sacred city of the Sultans. One was on the watch who came of a race not lightly to be beguiled, a race that was ancient thirty centuries before these Scythian hordes had claimed to be a nation. The Great Minister of the West, strong with the might and majesty of England, saw that it was reserved for him to crown that Royal Mistress, on whose brow he had recently set a new and Imperial coronet, with the fresh garland of a bloodless triumph. In the lofty language of the sacred records of his people, ‘Let there be Peace!’ he said; and that which he achieved became known to the world in his own historic phrase of “Peace with Honour!”
BROUGHSHANE.
This imitation won the first prize in a parody competition, in The World, September 17, 1879.
――――:o:――――
DE TANKARD. By Benjamin Dizzyreally, Esq., M.P.
Chapter XL
“What majority had they last night, my lord?” asked a fair young man in the Carlton, from a stately personage who was sitting at a table near him, occupied with a bottle of Lafitte.
“Fifty-two,” was the reply.
“How did Peel look when he heard it?”
“Oh, he smiled in his usual quiet triumphant way,” said Lord Mannerley.
“Ah! while Peel is sultan there will be no want of ruined villages for our political owls to make their nests in,” remarked the youth.
“Yes, these cursed free-traders flourish on the ruins of the agriculturalists,” said Lord Mannerly savagely.
“And they will be soon howling like jackals in the ruins of the constitution,” added his young companion, with a sigh.
“This Lafitte is capital,” said the ruined landowner.
At this moment a young man approached the table. His bearing was proud, his eyes dark and luminous, his figure stately as a palm-tree. His aquiline nose betrayed his superb organisation. You saw at once that he was of the purest Caucasian race. Yes! his lineage sprung from the families who peopled the noble mountain which received the Divine Ark, and cherished the snowy dove that spread its white wings over the waters, that had swallowed up the inhabitants of a world! As he passed up the noble room, how insignificant in his presence appeared the children of the semi-civilized barbarians, spawned in a northern swamp!
“May I offer you a glass of claret, De Tankard?” asked Lord Mannerley.
“Thank you, I only drink sherbet, just now,” replied the youth.
“You can get some Persian sherbet at a penny a glass,” said a witty Milesian lord.
De Tankard smiled compassionately on the aristocratic buffoon. “’Tis doubtless worthy of your English civilization,” was his calm scornful reply.
* * * * *
Chapter XLIV
De Tankard stood at the window of a small country inn, and watched the storm raging in the forest. Lithely bent the straight poplar with a low wail beneath the breath of the north wind. The oak roared, the beech howled, and the wild leaves, caught in the eddies of the winds, were wreathed by them into chaplets, as though the Spirit of the Storm wished to crown with them the noble gazer on his work.
“’Tis a great spectacle,” remarked De Tankard, to a man who stood beside him, of an air――oh, how grand!
Benonia (for it was indeed he!) sneered. “Have you ever seen a Mediterranean white squall, or a whirlwind in the Desert?” he asked.
“Alas, no!” was the reply. “I must soon visit the glorious East, the parent of religion, civilization, science, and art,” and the dark eyes of De Tankard glowed with Eastern fire.
“Ah, you are young,” exclaimed Benonia, with enthusiasm. “Glorious youth! By youth have all great deeds been accomplished. Ransack the history of ages. The fact is stamped on every line. The Trojan, Paris, was but a youth when he ran away with the fair Grecian, and got his native town destroyed for it ten years after! Cæsar was in the freshness of life when he destroyed the Republic and founded a despotism. Nero developed his villany early, and Heliogabalus was a confirmed glutton before his minority was over! Nay, to come to our own country, what was the age of the Boy Jones when he passed the sacred precincts of a Royal palace, and stood where none but Royal feet had ever trod before?――Barely sixteen! Look at Lord William Lennox――how young he was when he wrote his great works!”
Benonia paused. De Tankard dropped a warm and sparkling tear. “I will start to the East to-morrow!” he exclaimed.
“You had better have a couple of millions,” said Benonia. “I have got about half-a-dozen in my pocket to carry me over the night.”
* * * * *
Chapter XLVIII
Silence reigns beneath the brilliant azure of an Oriental sky;――silence, broken only by the silver tinkling of the camel’s bell. A noble creature is the camel. Compared with that Caucasian of beasts, the shapeless quadruped of the Northern, is but an ass!
Ever and anon, through the moist perfumed twilight, steals a delicious breeze. Delicious, but melancholy. For in that breeze floats a prophet’s sigh. The cypress moans as it passes; and the palm-tree bows its proud head in honour to it, as it flies along! On the holy barrenness of the saintly brow of Lebanon, the moon’s rays fall reverently, and Lebanon looks holier under their light.
In the court in front of the counting-house of an Emir, sits De Tankard. From among the round pebbles of the pavement, springs a fresh fountain. On the branches of the trees gleam ripe oranges.
The young man looked sad and solemn. He had that morning seen an angel, as usual! By his side was a lovely female, and near him the lively young Emir Baboo smoked his nargilly.
“Do you often see angels, De Tankard?” he asked, laughing.
“Peace!” was the reply.
“I have a combination!” cried out the Emir, jumping up with a violence which smashed the nargilly. “Let us get the Druses and Maronites to unite, and we’ll go down to Djouni, and seize the English frigate there! What would Palmerston say to that?”
De Tankard laughed. “The East is the cradle of glory,” said he after a pause, with an enthusiastic look.
The Emir stared.
“Ah”! said he, “I had a brave chase yesterday, and ran off with the baggage of a caravan.”
The lady frowned. The Emir fell at her feet, and began to cry.
Next day, De Tankard started off with him on an excursion.
When employed in these ennobling diversions, he learned that his rich maiden aunt had arrived at Jerusalem.
* * * * *
From The Puppet-Showman’s Album. London.
――――
Another parody on Tancred, written by “Cuthbert Bede” (the Rev. Edward Bradley), appeared in The Shilling Book of Beauty, it was entitled “Tancredi; or, the New Party.” By the Right Hon. B. Bendizzy, M.P.
In 1887, Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London, published a shilling volume of prose burlesque novels, written by H. F. Lester. The first, entitled Ben D’ymion, was a parody of Lord Beaconsfield’s novel Endymion. The other authors imitated in this collection were William Black, George Elliot, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and J. H. Shorthouse.
Ben D’ymion had originally appeared in Punch in 1880.
――――:o:――――
THE AGE OF LAWN-TENNIS. (After Lord Beaconsfield’s “SYBIL”.)
Chapter I
“Advantage, we win,” shouted Sphairistikos.
“Never,” replied Retiarius, as he made his favourite stroke, which came speeding, whirling, hissing, the one-thousandth part of an inch over the top of the net, and fell twisting, twirling, shooting, in the extreme left-hand corner of the great twelve-yard court, only to be returned, however, by the flexibility of a wrist which had been famous in Harrow’s playing-fields in days of yore.
“Forty-thirty.”
“Deuce.”
“’Vantage against you!” “Game and set!” Such were the Babel-like cries which greeted our ears, as we approached Tong Castle’s level lawn, one fine autumnal afternoon.
And what was the scene that confronted us?
Ambitious adversaries, on all sides, were hitting to and fro, in alternated strokes, a gyratory ball, and loudly vociferating amœbean numerals as either side became involved in some reticular difficulty.
Here was to be seen, in variegated garb, such a galaxy of beauty as Shropshire seldom sees, assembled to render homage to the great Lawn-Tennis Champion, and to witness the feats of some of England’s doughtiest players.
Here were to be seen the eagle-eyed volleyer, the deft half-volleyer, the swift server, and the nimble net-player; while here, too, the quick cut, the treacherous twister, and the brilliant back-hander were exhibited on all sides in their purest perfection.
“Advantage, we win,” repeated Sphairistikos.
“Deuce,” said Retiarius, as his great stroke passed and shot lightning-like past his adversary’s racket.
And so they played and played on, till the balls began to glance in the golden light of a glorious sunset, and then to grow dimmer and dimmer in the deepening shadows of a rich twilight.
Chapter II
But to what was all this tending, and to what condition had the Lawn-Tennis players brought the Great Western State which they inhabited?
A monarch on the throne, whose age alone prevented her from casting in her lot with an aristocracy of wealth and learning, who had already commenced to narrow life within the limits of the twelve-yard court!!
A gentler sex, forsaking the sacred duties of domesticity that they might lend grace and elegance to the all-prevailing pastime!!
A degraded peasantry, living but to delineate on level lawns the bounds past which England’s greatest and noblest born must not propel the gyrating sphere!!
A rustic generation, rising but to collect for their oppressors the distant-driven ball, and developing into manhood merely to tend and trim the smooth-shaven Lawn-Tennis ground, which had now become a necessary adjunct alike to glebe and manor!!
It was an age of Lawn-Tennis!!
“My prophetical instincts tell me,” said Retiarius, as he and his friends were waiting for the nets to be arranged,――“My prophetical instincts tell me that the great coming stroke will be the volley.”
“Why, so?” said Sphairistikos.
“It is as yet,” replied he, “only half-developed. A nation young in Lawn-Tennis has much to learn; much to forget. My impression is that the volley, properly understood, will convulse the future.”
“I believe in service for my part,” remarked Sphairistikos,――“Secure your first stroke. Demoralize first, win afterwards; I would borrow from the great nation which gave us Tennis, and say, ‘Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte.’”
“But I am looking to a distant future,” continued Retiarius. “We shall see great changes. There will be hereditary volleyers. The theories of Darwin must prevail. Volleyers will play with volleyers. The pastimes of a country lead to its courtships. It has always been so. A generation of volleyers will rise up who will volley from the service-line as accurately as their grandfathers have done from the nets.”
“What news from Afghanistan?” asked a fair player, who was putting on her shoes.
“Fifteen, the Government loses,” replied a Tennis-steeped youth; “they have served two faults,――one into Afghanistan; one into Zululand.”
“Bother Afghanistan,” said another damsel in short petticoats, “I want the scoring question settled.”
But the attendants now announced that the courts were ready.
“Fifteen, I win.”
“Fifteen, all.”
And so on, and on, and on, the adversaries played, with constantly- varying fortunes, till another day was nearly done, and they were once more compelled to surrender before the flickering blaze of a vanishing sun.
From Tennis Cuts and Quips. Edited by Julian Marshall. London. Field and Tuer.
――――:o:――――
It was known that Lord Beaconsfield had drawn many of the characters in Endymion from prominent members of society, and much curiosity was felt as to the identification of these individuals. Notes and Queries published a conjectural list of them, but it must be borne in mind that Lord Beaconsfield was sufficiently cautious not to paint his portraits too distinctly like his originals, in fact some of his puppets represent two or three individuals merged into one
Endymion Benjamin Disraeli Zenobia Lady Jersey Berengaria (Lady Montfort) Hon. Mrs. Norton Agrippina Queen Hortense Adriana Neufchatel Lady Burdett Coutts The Neufchatels The Rothschilds Col. Albert (Prince Florestan) Napoleon III Lord Roehampton Lord Palmerston Myra Roehampton Empress Eugenie Enoch Craggs Co-operation. Lord Montfort The late Lord Hertford Lord Rawchester Earl Granville Earl of Beaumaris The late Earl of Derby Mr. Bertie Tremaine Lord Houghton Count of Ferroll Prince Bismarck Nigel Penruddock Cardinal Manning Mr. Ferrars (the grandfather) Rt. Hon. George Rose George Waldershare Mr. George Smythe (afterwards Lord Strangford) Job Thornberry Richard Cobden Mr. Vigo Mr. Poole Mr. Jorrocks Mr. Milner Gibson Hortensius Sir W. Vernon Harcourt Sidney Wilton Sidney Herbert Mr. Sainte Barbe W. M. Thackeray Mr. Gushy Charles Dickens Topsy Turvy Vanity Fair Scaramouch Punch
――――:o:――――
A curious story of a plagiarism is related of Disraeli in the Life of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., who was formerly on the staff of the Morning Chronicle.
Early in the “fifties,” Mr. Disraeli made sundry depreciatory remarks on the speeches of military members of Parliament, classing them contemptuously as effusions of “the military mind.” The men of the Morning Chronicle replied to Mr. Disraeli’s attack on the intellect of soldiers by printing a translation of a magnificent eulogium on the Maréchal de St. Cyr by M. Thiers, setting forth the qualities necessary to a military commander. Mr. Disraeli was evidently struck by the brilliancy of the counter hit, for a few years later, when the Duke of Wellington died, he interpolated the translation, errors and all, in the oration which as leader of the House of Commons it was his duty to deliver on the death of that great general. The old writers of the Chronicle secured the insertion of the speech and the translated passage in the Globe. Mr. Disraeli’s friends made every attempt to explain away the plagiarism till an article in Fraser’s Magazine, written by Mr. Hayward, showed clearly that the passage was not even taken from the French original, but directly from the translation which appeared in the Morning Chronicle. Mr. Hayward was very proud of this article of his, in which he also handled Mr. Disraeli’s “Revolutionary Epick” very roughly.
――――
THE WOMAN IN TIGHTS.
By Wilkie Collins.
The narrative commenced by Walter Heartbright, teacher of jig-dancing, of Fulwood’s-rents, Holborn. This is a story of what a woman’s impatience can procure, and what a man’s irresolution can achieve. If the law were not such a blundering battering-ram the events which fill these pages might have merited its attention. I live with my mother, who keeps a general shop. Events alter my life. I go to Cumberland to attend on a gentleman. The story continued by Mr. Bearly, Gummeridge House, Cumberland: I am all self, etchings, and nerves. Why? I know not. Perhaps Laura knows, or Sir Pursefull. I am asked to make a statement. Aided by a galvanic battery I make it. Laura has gone on the stage. I am worried. Why should I be? I give it up. Thank you. Don’t bang. Send Heartbright here. I would see him dance. Statement by Hester Teecloth, cook at Count Bosco’s: I remember a lady being brought to our house last June. She came in a temper and a brougham. She was laid on the sofa. She looked wildlike, and kept shouting “There they go, millions of ’em.” When the doctor saw her he winked at the count and whispered, “Delicious trimmings,” but the poor thing was plainly dressed. That’s all I know. Heartbright finishes the story: We are to be married in a week’s time. Laura’s faculties have returned. Mr. Bearly and his nerves have found Nirvana. Sir Pursefull was drowned while showing off a lifebelt of his own invention. Bosco is in an asylum. His time is occupied in plucking green mice from his beard, and chirruping to pink canaries which he fancies he sees on the wall. My mother, always of a retiring disposition, has given up business. I am heir of Gummeridge House. Thus it ends.
WILLIAM EVISON ROSE.
The Weekly Dispatch. February 25, 1883.
In this parody competition the compositions were limited to 300 words, a regulation which sadly hampered the competitors.
In Bret Harte’s Sensation Novels Condensed, there is a parody of Wilkie Collins, called “No Title.”
THE LUCK OF TORY CAMP.
By Bread Tart.
There was commotion in Tory Camp. Outside a rude cabin waited an excited crowd, headed by Solly, a stalwart digger, with a Raphael face and profusion of dark beard, whose duel with Harden Bill, the Rad-Dog Woodcutter, was still talked of with bated breath. The name of a woman was on every lip, a name familiar in the camp――Poll Icy. The less said of her the better; no better than she should be perhaps; half foreign, half Ingin; but yet the only woman in camp, and now in woman’s direst extremity. Suddenly an excited Celestial joined the group. “Lemme investigate, John,” said he; “me Pal-Mal, me washee-washee dirty linen, me go see her.” “Scoot, you dern skunk!” thundered Solly; “none but a down-east johnny-cake ’ud trust you with any woman nowadays.” At that moment a wail, feeble, yet sufficient to quell the laughter that greeted Solly’s sally, announced a birth in Tory Camp.… Little Randy, or the Luck――for by these names the frolicsome miners had christened the infant (in beer)――grew and throve, and soon became a power in the camp. His childish jokes with Sairey Gamp, his nurse, were the delight of the brawny getters of gold from quartz (s), and even Solly smiled when the Luck “tackled the old ’un,” which he did when Harden Bill visited the camp now and then. “Rastled with Bill’s little finger, the derned little cuss,” roared Solly; “rastled with it, dern my skin.”
The winter of 1885 will long be remembered in California. One night Tea-Pot Gulch and Rad-Dog Fork leaped suddenly over their banks, and descended in ruin upon Tory Camp. When morning dawned the Luck lay lifeless in Solly’s arms, and Harden Bill smiled grimly as he watched the strangely assorted pair floating quietly towards the Sea of Oblivion.
J. C. ROSE.
The Weekly Dispatch. September 13, 1885.
There is a parody on Bret Harte’s prose in The Shotover Papers (Oxford, 1874) entitled His Finger, but it is not sufficiently characteristic to merit reprinting.
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY. A NAVAL OFFICER.
By Captain Marryat, R.N.