Wild oats and dead leaves

Front matter

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Preface

For the last ten years I have been so little before the world in my literary capacity, that it is just possible the taste of the light-reading public may have altered — no less from the inevitable change of opinion which that lapse of time exerts over everything, than from the overworking of a style holding out such great f acuities for imitation that the mere reputation of a " comic writer" has become the last that a literary man at present would wish to possess.

And, therefore, it is with some diffidence that I send this volume before the public. All I myself can say in its favour is, that several of the sketches, commencing in 1840, were received with a degree of popularity that gradually led me to more important work. They were my earliest attempts at magazine writing when I was quite a young man, with very little trouble and very great spirits, — when I never had to " think" of a subject, or to hammer it out when once conceived. And I do not believe that I upset

IV PREFACE.

many conventional notions, or created many angry thoughts by their publication.

They have remained undisturbed in their different repositories for years. Some of them are altogether out of print — others have turned up as new to me upon revising them for this edition as I have no doubt they will be to many of my readers. No attempt to redress great wrongs, alter existing institutions, advance progress, or provide " intellectual food for the masses," will be found in them. There are many great minds — compared to my own as the Coliseum at Eome to a percussion-cap — who take these matters under their own charge. But believing that of every dozen people who take up a book, eleven do so for amusement, I "doubtingly" offer this to the majority.

Albert Smith.

North End Lodge, Walham Green, May, 1860.

Contents

PAGE

1. Thefts from the Percy Reltques . . • • . . 1

2. Bedfordia 25

II. Bedfokdia

Neitheb Mr. Peter Cunningham nor Mr. John Timbs, in their excellent books about London, have done becoming justice to tbe varied district of Bedfordia. "Why not " Bedfordia ?" It has as much right to have a square for its sponsor as any other region more favoured by patrician homes. Belgravia is great in ancestral exclusiveness, and Tyburnia weighty in successful commerce, and Bedfordia is equally important — in its way.

I would define Bedfordia as somewhat freely bounded on the east by the Foundling Hospital, and on the west by that of Middlesex. Northwards, the New-road forms its frontier ; and to the south, the rolling tide of Oxford- street prevents its respectability running astray in St. Giles's. Its inhabitants would repudiate Tottenham-court-road if they could, but it is impossible. It is the great artery of the quarter ; and were it, in surgical phrase, "taken up," no other branches could carry on the circulation of vitality into the contiguous component members.

It comprises several squares besides the one from which it takes its name. The frigid Fitzroy, the respectable Russell, the bland Bloomsbury, and the two- windowed Torrington, ventilate its atmosphere. A large portion of its inhabitants live as they choose ; an equally large portion live as they can. Bussell-square is the region of the first class ; Bathbone-place of the second.

Let us consider the first. Possibly nowhere else in London is the conventional mechanism of set social life so gravely observed. The heavy morning call in the heavier carriage — the raide routine of the society altogether — the grim grind of the dull dinner-parties — the belief that certain articles can only be procured at certain shops, and those the most expensive — the creed that establishes the importance of the tongue and brains of Gunter on the table over the tongues and brains of anybody round it — the immature French beans in April, only because they are dear — the drawing-room table with the same books and articles on it, in the same places, from year to year — the loss what to say next in conversation, and the leaden platitude that it turns out to be when it is said — the pompous, empty arrogance of disbelief in the immeasurable self-relying superiority of artistic and literary life, — all these attributes, and thousands of others that their combined influence, acting together, produce, characterise " the Squares."

I have terribly dull recollections connected with " the Squares." I had all sorts of relations living all about them when I was a child at school, and I used to dine with one or the other on Sunday. It was not lively. However fine the morning might be, the heavy carriage always took us to the Foundling Chapel, which was close at hand ; for, but for this, how could other people see the carriage ? And I had, after this, to walk round and round long tables, and see small children eat graviless boiled beef off wooden plates ; and my relations used to think it such a pretty condescension if they — being governors and coming in their carriages — tasted a piece of boiled beef and pronounced it very good. And having done this, they would look round and smile complacently, as if they had achieved a feat ; in the same way as I have seen feeble persons do upon crossing the road, or entering an omnibus or railway. The sight of these little children dining would have been pretty enough once in its way, but it bored me on constant repetition. And it bored my relations, too ; they did not derive a grain of amusement from it ; but it is considered " the thing" in " the Squares" to go to the Foundling ; and so they wished " to afford an opportunity to all classes" — as they say at an exhibition 'when it does not pay at a shilling and is reduced to sixpence — to see them there. Not, however, that reduction of price had anything to do with them. On the contrary, if their price of admission as a governor, as painted in the dull gold letters on the black board with the names attached, had been doubled, they would have liked " all classes" to have seen them better.

The ordinary books on the drawing-room table were always removed on Sundays, and replaced by religious ones, which, like their predecessors, were never opened. People called after luncheon, and then the Observer — that effete and musty old newspaper, which still seems to be taken in by people who prefer ancient mould candles to moderator lamps, and gives you an impression that the united ages of its editor, leader writers,

BEDFORDIA. 27

reporters, and correspondents, must amount to many hundreds — was put behind the sofa cushions. As the merest boy, I was struck with the twaddle the visitors talked; they told one another things that had been in the newspapers days before, and were especially particular in inquiring after persons I knew they did not care twopence about ; and when at last they said, ""Well, we must go now," I wondered how it was that the necessity of departure had not struck them all before. Some friends did not come in, but merely left cards ; they were sensible people, and had considerably the best of it. The position of their cards in the large china dish depended, in a great measure, upon who they were. There was a fat, wheezing man, who had been knighted in the City sometime, with a fall-blown lady, and who gave heavy dinners, and was very rich, and could procure anything for money except his h's. He was a great card, actually and metaphorically, and was always at the top of the dish. I dined once at his house ; it was a solemn and dismal banquet. At one time, for three minutes at least not a word was said — not even a platitude was launched. The servants stalked round the table, and gravely croaked " Hock or sherry ?" in your ear ; and there was really nothing left, after you had crumbled all your bread away in desperation, but to drink ; and so I took to it for the remainder of the feast. Once I tried to make a little diversion to the dreariness, by offering to bet that there was always more false hair at the Opera on the nights of " Don Giovanni" than at any other representation of the season (which there always is, and I can't tell why), but the attempt was a failure. "When we went up-stairs, a lady who could not sing tootled out something, half inaudibly, at a piano that must have cost two hundred guineas at least. Then came a dead pause, and the mistress of the house said, " Oh, thank you — it is so very kind of you;" and somebody near the instrument, obliged to say something, asked whose song it was ; and on being told, was no wiser. Then came another pause ; and then, as I felt strangely inclined, from simple oppression, to stamp and yell, and smash the costly tea-service that the servant was bringing round, by kicking the tray up into the air, as a relief to my bottled-up feelings, I hurried out of the room, and hurrahed to find myself once more upon the free and common pavement.

Once leave " the Squares," and the population of the streets of Bedfordia is more varied than that of any other department in

London. It is, par excellence, the " Quartier des Arts." Erom the varied struggling for a livelihood in Kathbone-place, to the academical aspirations of Upper Charlotte-street, there is not a floor that does not boast an " artiste" as an occupant. Heaven only knows how a great part of these folk live ! Not the painters who cut large bits out of the fronts of houses over the windows ; nor the sculptors who have roomy studios behind, opening into the mews, with the same dusty old plaster heads, and big hands, and casts of human chines hanging about — of no earthly use but to look professional, as tea-dealers display mandarins and Chinese lanterns — not these clever folks, who are more or less established, but the " professors." Professors swarm hereabouts. They teach the accordion, and model in leather, and have classes for dancing, French, wax flowers, potichomachie, the guitar, photography, and dress-making. They sell cheap music, and clean gloves, and paint on glass, and dye dresses, and work in hair, and deal in Berlin-wool, and open and close small cigar shops, and retail fancy letter-paper and perforated pasteboard, and songs with piratical frontispieces, shilling books, whereof, like a dancing-show at a fair, the best part is outside, and fancy writiDg-paper. In fact, they would form, together, the storehouse of that hopeless suburban and semi-marine establishment known as a " Repository" — one of the havens provided for commercial wrecks. Tor as the Chinese proverb perhaps says, "the barber must be taught his calling, but the repository and the wine-trade require no apprenticeship :" a terse conception of that sagacious and practical people.

If I were asked to name the chief productions of Bedfordia, I should say, " Concerts !" The people who pay the half-guinea for tickets, and the professors who sell them, are alike natives of the district. With the exception of private teaching, this is the only case in which the two classes of the population have much intercourse with each other, and the results of this even are visible only out of the district, except the anomalous gatherings of the Music Hall in Store- street. The concert Bedfordia mostly approves is in the kindly-granted private house of the West-end : when the bedroom chairs descend to the drawing-room, and the more movable knick-knacks go up-stairs for the day in exchange : for safety from breakage, however, be it understood, rather than another danger.

I say "the Squares" mainly support these concerts. The

BEDFORDIA. 29

usual habitues of the mansion have been too often bored, and stifled, and crushed in the rooms ; but when Lady de Eobinson kindly allows Signor Dolce Eeroce to hold his matinee at her residence, "the Squares" love to go, because, for the time, they fancy themselves on visiting terms with the establishment, and when they speak of it afterwards, they say " they were at Lady de Robinson's concert on Thursday," as if her ladyship gave it. The Signor is thus ignored altogether. But he gets, in this case, his guinea a ticket just the same ; which, at first sight, may appear a great deal for three hours of heated harmony, occasionally supplied in greater perfection, and more commodiously, by St. James's, or St. Martin's Hall, for a small fraction of that sum ; but as for every ticket sold, eight or ten are given away to eligible people with nice bonnets to " dress" the room and crowd it, and make it appear to the outer world that the Signor is run after by admiring mobs, the price per head comes to about the same thing in the end.

That Bedfordia is gradually decaying there cannot be the least doubt. It has been for some time the " sick man " of the London quarters. As the corners of its streets have gradually turned into shops, so has its commercial spirit extended, stealing on from house to house, as the dining-room windows are one after the other knocked into shop-fronts. I see more bills of " apartments to let" about, and I am told that boarding-houses are on the increase. I believe this to be true ; for on fine afternoons I see at the drawing-room windows, not one, but two or three of those peculiar caps which only ladies at boarding-houses wear. If, however, this innovation forces new sentiments into " the Squares ;" if it teaches them that Verey's ices are as good as Grange's ; that dragging round the Park every afternoon is but a ghastly business of show-off, with the lovely environs of London available ; that literary people are not all " strange sorts of persons ;" that two or three of their favoured watering-places are only bare, chalky, glaring, leafless leagues of pretence, and that they might go to the Pyrenees for the same money ; that heavy plate on the table does not compensate for heavier people around it ; and that the vulgar old woman with the diamonds and rings who sits next to you is worlds and worlds below the nice governess who has not appeared, but is having a dreary time with the children in the schoolroom, — if the change effects all this, and much more in Bedfordia, no amount of administrative reform will ever equal it in value.

III

A WINTER'S NIGHT WITH MY OLD BOOKS, CHIEFLY CONCERNING GHOSTS AND PRODIGIES.

When the weather is cold and the evenings at their longest — when the day closes in at half-past three, and one dines early, because one does not know what else to do ; and afterwards piles up such a fire that, no matter how many candles are lighted, the flashing glow on the ceiling, and glass, and pictureframes overcomes them — at this cozy season I sometimes have a, small party. My visitors are not numerous. They come at the minute I wish for them, and depart with equally agreeable rapidity. They do not cost me anything to entertain. They are not " fast," up-to-the-time fellows, but grave, and even shabby in their appearance ; such as many would not like to be seen in their rooms. We have, however, been friends for many years ; and they have, in times of vexation and fretting, given me more consolation than several others upon whom I might with more plausibility have reckoned. In a word, they are a few favourite red-edged, round-cornered, musty old books.

I have not many; bibliomania is an expensive passion to indulge in, and will affect a large income ; but where that income is fished with a steel pen from the bottom of an inkstand, with the same slippery incertitude that attends the spearing of eels in a muddy pond, the taste is, of necessity, entirely kept down. And so I am content with a very few, that have come to me as heirlooms rather than purchases, awaiting patiently, with the resignation of the ITying Dutchman's wife, the time when the long-expected ship shall come in that contains my fortune.

It so happens that the few old books I have treat almost entirely either of ghosts or prodigies. How our good ancestors contrived to live in full possession of their wits in those old haunted-looking houses, with so many accredited instances in their popular literature of unearthly visitors calling upon them at all times, is, in itself, a marvel. How they ever found themselves alone in their tall, ghastly beds, with the moon shining through the mullioned windows upon the tapestry, as she rose over the yew-trees of the adjoining churchyard, without dying with fright then and there, is matter for serious discussion. Now, it is true, ghosts have somewhat declined in position ; not but that I still devoutly believe in them, but circumstances are not so favourable to their appearance. In the country they would shun spots where the gleam and stream of the mail- train might disturb their importance ; and in London they would hate the gaslight shining through the bedroom blinds; the rattling of the cabs going home with late roysterers ; and, at this their own season, the waits playing the Eclipse Polka, as well as the cornet-a-pistons in the cold can imitate the great fluttering solo of Koenig, Arban, or Macfarlane. Ghosts have never been in force in London. I can't tell what you might see if you were shut up all night by yourself in "Westminster Abbey; but certainly they eschew the squares, and have a horror of hotels. To be in a cellar at midnight might formerly have been considered a favourable position for meeting one. Imagine the chance a spectre would have at twelve p.m., in the Cyder Cellars ! But to our subject more directly.

The smallest of my books, looking like a withered old gentleman, is entitled, " Miscellanies, collected by J. Aubrey, Esq." Its title-page of contents, amongst which we find "Apparitions," " Omens," "Voices," "Knockings," " Corpse Candles," and other " shudderish" subjects, bespeaks its tendency. It is, I think, the only published work of the author.

Aubrey must have been on excellent terms with ghosts generally. It is somewhat strange, considering the high respect in which he held them, that none ever paid him a visit. He has, however, no story of his own to recount ; but he evidently believes in all the narrations as though he had been the hero of them ; and it was on this account that Gilford somewhat ill-naturedly called him " a credulous fool." One of his notes, under the head of Majich, will cause a smile. It runs as follows:

" In Herefordshire, and other parts, they do put a cold iron bar upon their barrels, to preserve their beer from being soured by thunder. This is a common practice in Kent."

Modern science has attributed this remedy to other causes than " majick ;" indeed, " progress" has sadly upset the wizards. Mephistopheles himself, when he tapped the table to bring forth wine for the students, would have been quenched altogether by Eobert-Houdin and his inexhaustible bottle. Take another :

" There was in Scotland one (an obsessus) carried in

the air several times in the view of several persons, his fellowsoldiers. Major Henton hath seen him carry' d away from the guard in Scotland, sometimes a mile or two. Sundry persons are living now (1671), that can attest this story. I had it from Sir Eobert Harley (the son), who marryed Major Henton's widow ; as also from E. T. D. D."

And next to it :

" A gentleman of my acquaintance, Mr. M., was in Portugal, anno 1655, when one was burnt by the Inquisition for being brought thither from Goa in East India, in the air, in an incredible short time."

Wonderful as these events must have been at the time, a shilling will procure us a similar spectacle on fine summer Monday afternoons at Cremorne Gardens, when Mr. Green not only carries away one, but a dozen with him in the air. And certainly no Essex Inquisition would now think of condemning to be burnt all "intrepid aeronauts" who come in fifteen minutes from Chelsea to Chelmsford, for which latter neighbourhood descending balloons appear to have a great predilection.

Following up the " Majick," we have a less satisfactory receipt than that for the thunder :

" To Cuke the Thbush. — Take a living frog, and hold it in a cloth, that it does not go down into the child's mouth, and put the head into the child's mouth till it is dead."

It is not here clearly explained whether the death of the child or the frog puts an end to the thrush. The following is more simple, and at all events harmless :

" To Cure the Toothache. — Take a new nail and make the gum bleed with it, and then drive it into an oak. This did cure William Neal, Sir William Weal's son, a very stout gentleman, when he was almost mad with the pain, and had a mind to have pistoll'd himself."

The cure that an inflamed gum might receive from this rude lancing is not hinted at. Going on, we find it clearly shown why the steel horseshoe now hangs from the glittering chatelaine of our most fashionable West-end belles, to which enviable position, it will be seen, they have been promoted from the door-steps :

" It is a thing very common to nail horseshoes on the thresholds of doors, which is to hinder the power of witches that enter into the house. Most houses of the West-end cf London have the horseshoe on the threshold. It should be a horseshoe one finds. In the Bermudas they used to put an iron into the fire when a witch comes in."

We do the latter thing in England, on the entrance of a friend, to give him a cheerful blaze. The next receipt, I think I may safely affirm, is no longer practised :

" At Paris, when it begins to thunder and lighten, they do presently ring out the bell at the Abbey of St. Germain, which they do believe makes it cease. The like was wont to be done heretofore in Wiltshire ; when it thundered and lightened, they did ring St. Adelms bell at Malmsbury Abbey. The curious do say that the ringing of bells exceedingly disturbs spirits."

It certainly exceedingly disturbed mine when I once lived opposite to a country church where the "youths" were wont to ring triple-major-bobs, or whatever they called them, twice a week. The subject is, however, worth investigation. Perhaps by it may be accounted for how it happens always to be such serene and lovely weather on the Queen's festival days, and a new fact in meteorology opened to us.

As regards matrimon}^, Aubrey had collected many secrets : " The last summer," he says, " on the day of St. John Baptist (1694), I accidently was walking in the pasture behind Montague House. It was xii a clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees, very busie, as if they had been weeding. I could now presently learn what the matter was ; at least, a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain to put under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands ; it was to be found that day and hour."

Again : " To know whom one shall marry, you must be in another county, and knit the left garter about the right legg'd. stocking (let the other garter and stocking alone), and as you rehearse these following verses, at every comma knit a knot :

This knot I knit

To know the thing I know not yet

That I may see

The man (woman) that shall my husband (wife) be

How he goes, and what he wears,

And what he does all the days.

Accordingly, in your dream you will see him ; if a musitian, with a lute or other instrument ; if a scholar, with a book, &c. A gentlewoman that I knew confessed, in my hearing, that she used this method, and dreamt of her husband whom she had never seen; about two or three years after, as she was on Sunday at church, up pops a young Oxonian in the pulpit ; she cries out presently to her sister, ' This is the very face of the man I saw in my dream.' Sir William Somes lady did the like."

Under the head Apparitions, is the following paragraph, which is, perhaps, better known than most of Aubrey's collection :

" Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition ; being demanded whether a good spirit or a bad ? returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious perfume and most melodious- twang. Mr. W. Lilly believes it was a farie."

This is certainly unsatisfactory ; the locality is hazily denned, and the detail not well filled up. But the fact that " Mr. W. Lilly" believed it to be a "farie" was quite sufficient. Hitherto we have selected the most ridiculous of Aubrey's miscellanies, but we now come to some which, at all events, are well authenticated. And first, under the head of Dreams :

" Sir Christopher "Wren, being at his father's house, anno 1651, at Knahill, in Wilts (a young Oxford scholar), dreamt that he saw a fight in a great market-place, which he knew not, where some were flying and others pursuing ; and among those that fled, he saw a kinsman of his who went into Scotland to the king's army. They heard in the country that the king was come into England, but whereabout he was they could not tell. The next night his kinsman came to his father, at Knahill, and was the first that brought the news of the fight at Worcester."

Sir Christopher, in all probability, told this story himself to Aubrey ; at all events, he lived twenty years after the publication of the book. The chronicler also received the following nearly first hand. There is, however, little that is supernatural in it, but its quaintness is most diverting :

" Dr. Twiss, minister of the new church at Westminster, told me that his father (Dr. Twiss, Prolocutor of the Assembly of Divines, and author of Vindicics), when he was a schoolboy at Winchester, saw the Phantome of a schoolfellow of his deceased (a rakehell), who said to him, ' I am damned.' This was the occasion of Dr. Twiss (the father's) conversion, who had been before that time (as he told his son) a very wicked boy. (He was hypochondriacal.)"

The one or two more stories that we shall steal from Aubrey a wintee's night with my old books. 35

are of a serious character, really " ghost stories," well attested, and inexplicable :

" Anno 1647," he says, " the Lord Mohun's son and heir (a gallant gentleman, valiant, and a great master of fencing and horsemanship) had a quarrel "with Prince Griffin ; there was a challenge, and they were to fight on horseback in Chelsey-fields in the morning ; Mr. Mohun went accordingly to meet him ; but about Ebury Earm he was met by some who quarrell'd with him and pistol' d him ; it was believed by the order of Prince Griffin ; for he was sure that Mr. Mohun, being so much the better horseman, &c, would have killed him, had they fought. In James-street in Covent-garden did then lodge a gentlewoman, who was Mr. Mohun's sweetheart. Mr. Mohun was murthered about ten a-clock in the morning ; and at that very time, his mistress being in bed, saw Mr. Mohun come to her bed-side, drew the curtain, looked upon her, and went away ; she called after him, but no answer ; she knocked for her maid, ask'd her for Mr. Mohun; she said, she did not see him, and had the key of her chamber-door in her pocket. This account my friend, aforesaid, had from the gentlewoman's own mouth, and her maid's. A parallel story to this, is, that Mr. Brown (brother-in-law to Lord Coningsby) discovered his being murthered to several. His Phantome appear' d to his sister and her maid in Fleet-street, about the time he was killed in Herefordshire, which was about a year since, 1693." In the following is ground for a good romance : " Sir "Walter Long, of Draycot (grandfather of Sir James Long), had two wives; the first a daughter of Sir — Packinton in Worcestershire ; by whom he had a son : his second wife was a daughter of Sir John Thinne of Longleat ; by whom he had several sons and daughters. The second wife did use much artifice to render the son by the first wife (who had not much Promethean fire) odious to his father ; she would get her acquaintance to make him drunk ; and then expose him in that condition to his father ; in fine, she never left of her attempts, till she got Sir "Walter to disinherit him. She laid the sceoe for the doing this at Bath, at the assizes, where was her brother Sir Egrimond Thinne, an eminent serjeant-at-law, who drew the writing ; and his clerk was to set up all night to engross it ; as he was writing, he perceived a shadow on the parchment from the candle ; he look'd up, and there appear' d a hand, which immediately vanished; he was startl'd at it, but thought