Some Roundabout Papers.
by William Makepeace Thackeray.
ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCI
WE have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of ninety, who has pa.s.sed the last twenty-five years of her old life in a great metropolitan establishment, the workhouse, namely, of the parish of Saint Lazarus.
Stay-twenty-three or four years ago, she came out once, and thought to earn a little money by hop-picking; but being overworked, and having to lie out at night, she got a palsy which has incapacitated her from all further labour, and has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since.
An ill.u.s.tration of that dismal proverb which tells us how poverty makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this poor old shaking body has to lay herself down every night in her workhouse bed by the side of some other old woman with whom she may or may not agree. She herself can"t be a very pleasant bed-fellow, poor thing! with her shaking old limbs and cold feet. She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not thinking of happy old times, for hers never were happy; but sleepless with aches, and agues, and rheumatism of old age. "The gentleman gave me brandy-and-water," she said, her old voice shaking with rapture at the thought. I never had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I like her better now from what this old lady told me. The Queen, who loved snuff herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain poorhouses; and, in her watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen Charlotte"s snuff, "and it do comfort me, sir, that it do!" _Pulveris exigui munus_. Here is a forlorn aged creature, shaking with palsy, with no soul among the great struggling mult.i.tude of mankind to care for her, not quite trampled out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny legacy. Let me think as I write. (The next month"s sermon, thank goodness! is safe to press.) This discourse will appear at the season when I have read that wa.s.sail-bowls make their appearance; at the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages, plum-puddings, jollifications for schoolboys; Christmas bills, and reminiscences more or less sad and sweet for elders. If we oldsters are not merry, we shall be having a semblance of merriment. We shall see the young folks laughing round the holly-bush. We shall pa.s.s the bottle round cosily as we sit by the fire. That old thing will have a sort of festival too. Beef, beer, and pudding will be served to her for that day also. Christmas falls on a Thursday. Friday is the workhouse day for coming out. Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has her invitation for Friday, 26th December! Ninety is she, poor old soul?
Ah! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe! "Yes, ninety, sir,"
she says, "and my mother was a hundred, and my grandmother was a hundred and two."
Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a hundred and two?
What a queer calculation!
Ninety! Very good, granny: you were born, then, in 1772.
Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born, and was born therefore in 1745.
Your grandmother was thirty-five when her daughter was born, and was born therefore in 1710.
We will begin with the present granny first. My good old creature, you can"t of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom you mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr Goldsmith, author of a "History of England," the "Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good to children. That gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by sitting down on you as you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr S. Johnson, whose history of "Ra.s.selas" you have never read, my pour soul; and whose tragedy of "Irene" I don"t believe any man in these kingdoms ever perused. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr Burke and your Mr Johnson, and your Dr Goldsmith. Your father often took him home in a chair to his lodgings; and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit.
Of course, my good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No Popery before Mr Langdale"s house, the Popish distiller"s, and that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield"s books in Bloomsbury Square? Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have seen! For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed"s Hill; for the peace in 1814, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St James"s Park; for the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales, Goody, don"t you? Yes; and you went in a procession of laundresses to pay your respects to his good lady, the injured Queen of England, at Brandenburg House; and you remember your mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch lords executed at the Tower. And as for your grandmother, she was born five months after the battle of Malplaquet, she was; where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the Queen. With the help of a "Wade"s Chronology," I can make out ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as many in the peerage-books.
Peerage-books and pedigrees? What does she know about them? Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to her? Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe? Your mother may have seen him embark, and your father may have carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may have cried huzza for Marlborough; but what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever so much as hear tell of his name? How many hundred or thousand of years had that toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct exhibition?-and yet he was not a bit better informed than toads seven or eight hundred years younger.
"Don"t talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and Prince Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is it?" says granny. "I know there was a good Queen Charlotte, for she left me snuff; and it comforts me of a night when I lie awake."
To me there is something very touching in the notion of that little pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully inhaled by her in the darkness. Don"t you remember what traditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of diamonds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the country privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relatives in M-ckl-nb-rg Str-l-tz? Not all the treasure went. _Non omnis moritur_.
A poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts her shaking old hand to her nose. Gliding noiselessly among the beds where lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old ghost with a snuff-box that does not creak. "There, Goody, take of my rappee. You will not sneeze, and I shall not say "G.o.d bless you." But you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won"t you? Ah!
I had a many troubles, a many troubles. I was a prisoner almost so much as you are. I had to eat boiled mutton every day: _entre nous_, I abominated it. But I never complained. I swallowed it. I made the best of a hard life. We have all our burdens to bear. But hark! I hear the c.o.c.k-crow, and snuff the morning air." And with this the royal ghost vanishes up the chimney-if there be a chimney in that dismal harem, where poor old Twoshoes and her companions pa.s.s their nights-their dreary nights, their restless nights, their cold long nights, shared in what glum companionship, illumined by what a feeble taper!
"Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that your mother was seven-and-twenty years old when you were born, and that she married your esteemed father when she herself was twenty-five? 1745, then, was the date of your dear mother"s birth. I daresay her father was absent in the Low Countries, with his Royal Highness the Duke of c.u.mberland, under whom he had the honour of carrying a halberd at the famous engagement of Fontenoy-or if not there, he may have been at Preston Pans, under General Sir John Cope, when the wild Highlanders broke through all the laws of discipline and the English lines; and, being on the spot, did he see the famous ghost which didn"t appear to Colonel Gardner of the Dragoons? My good creature, is it possible you don"t remember that Doctor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Orford, as you justly say), old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr Pope, of Twitnam, died in the year of your birth? What a wretched memory you have! What? haven"t they a library, and the commonest books of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus, where you dwell?"
"Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr Swift, Atossa, and Mr Pope, of Twitnam! What is the gentleman talking about?" says old goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like a old parrot-you know they live to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is comparatively young (ho! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to an immense old age.
Some which Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue mould on their old backs; and they could tell all sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak-but they are very silent, carps are-of their nature _peu communicatives_. Oh! what has been thy long life, old goody, but a dole of bread and water and a perch on a cage; a dreary swim round and round a Lethe of a pond? What are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy ones, and do they know it is a grandchild of England who brings bread to feed them?
No! Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand years old and have nothing to tell but that one day is like another; and the history of friend Goody Twoshoes has not much more variety than theirs. Hard labour, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger most days. That is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, I am not as one of these"? If I were eighty, would I like to feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and make a bow when Mr b.u.mble the beadle entered the common room? to have to listen to Miss Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world? If I were eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of command, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang; to hold out a trembling hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, "Thank you, ma"am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her sermon. John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I desire she may not be disturbed by theological controversies. You have a fair voice, and I heard you and the maids singing a hymn very sweetly the other night, and was thankful that our humble household should be in such harmony. Poor old Twoshoes is so old and toothless and quaky, that she can"t sing a bit; but don"t be giving yourself airs over her, because she can"t sing and you can. Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth. Set that old kettle to sing by our hob. Warm her old stomach with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday.
Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the four-score and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years!
If you were in her place, would you like to have a remembrance of better early days, when you were young and happy, and loving, perhaps; or would you prefer to have no past on which your mind could rest? About the year 1788, Goody, were your cheeks rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some young fellow in powder and a pigtail look in them? We may grow old, but to us some stories never are old. On a sudden they rise up, not dead, but living-not forgotten, but freshly remembered. The eyes gleam on us as they used to do. The dear voice thrills in our hearts. The rapture of the meeting, the terrible, terrible parting, again and again the tragedy is acted over. Yesterday, in the street, I saw a pair of eyes so like two which used to brighten at my coming once, that the whole past came back as I walked lonely, in the rush of the Strand, and I was young again in the midst of joys and sorrows, alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly remembered.
If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old school-girl?
Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was a source of great pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes. She sewed it away in her old stays somewhere, thinking here at least was a safe investment-(vestis-a vest-an investment,-pardon me, thou poor old thing, but I cannot help the pleasantry). And what do you think? Another pensionnaire of the establishment cut the coin out of Goody"s stays-_an old woman who went upon two crutches_! Faugh, the old witch! What? Violence amongst these toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble ones? Robbery amongst the penniless? Dogs coming and s.n.a.t.c.hing Lazarus"s crumbs out of his lap?
Ah, how indignant Goody was as she told the story! To that pond at Potsdam where the carps live for hundreds of hundreds of years, with hunches of blue mould on their back, I daresay the little Prince and Princess of Preussen-Britannien come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones. Those eyes may have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon"s jack-boots: they have seen Frederick"s lean shanks reflected in their pool; and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them, and now for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob, squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the ign.o.ble struggle is over. Sans souci, indeed! It is mighty well writing "Sans souci" over the gate; but where is the gate through which Care has not slipped? She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes"
meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again! No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures.
What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and obscure? Peace and goodwill to thee, let us say at this Christmas season. Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim! And of the bread which G.o.d"s bounty gives us, I pray, brother reader, we may not forget to set aside a part for those n.o.ble and silent poor, from whose innocent hands war has torn the means of labour.
Enough! As I hope for beef at Christmas, I vow a note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus Union House, in which Mr Roundabout requests the honour of Mrs Twoshoes" company on Friday, 26th December.
DE JUVENTUTE
WE who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. The children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us, grandpapa, about the old world." And we shall mumble our old stories; and we shall drop off one by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. There will be but ten prae-railroadites left: then three-then two-then one-then 0! If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide or his face), I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come up again.
Does he not see that he belongs to bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out of place in these times? What has he in common with the brisk young life surrounding him? In the watches of the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their chatter, he-I mean the hippopotamus-and the elephant, and the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and have a colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which they remember, where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before men were made to slay them. We who lived before railways are antediluvians-we must pa.s.s away.
We are growing scarcer every day; and old-old-very old relicts of the times when George was still fighting the Dragon.
Not long since, a company of horseriders paid a visit to our watering-place. We went to see them, and I bethought me that young Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might like also to witness the performance. A pantomime is not always amusing to persons who have attained a certain age; but a boy at a pantomime is always amused and amusing, and to see his pleasure is good for most hypochondriacs.
We sent to Walter"s mother, requesting that he might join us, and the kind lady replied that the boy had already been at the morning performance of the equestrians, but was most eager to go in the evening likewise. And go he did; and laughed at all Mr Merryman"s remarks, though he remembered them with remarkable accuracy, and insisted upon waiting to the very end of the fun, and was only induced to retire just before its conclusion by representations that the ladies of the party would be incommoded if they were to wait and undergo the rush and trample of the crowd round about. When this fact was pointed out to him, he yielded at once, though with a heavy heart, his eyes looking longingly towards the ring as we retreated out of the booth. We were scarcely clear of the place, when we heard "G.o.d save the Queen," played by the equestrian band, the signal that all was over. Our companion entertained us with sc.r.a.ps of the dialogue on our way home-precious crumbs of wit which he had brought away from that feast. He laughed over them again as he walked under the stars. He has them now, and takes them out of the pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a sentimental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school by this time; the holidays are over; and Doctor Birch"s young friends have rea.s.sembled.
Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to grin! As the jaded Merryman uttered them to the old gentleman with the whip, some of the old folks in the audience, I daresay, indulged in reflections of their own.
There was one joke-I utterly forget it-but it began with Merryman saying what he had for dinner. He had mutton for dinner, at one o"clock, after which "he had to _come to business_." And then came the point. Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch"s, Market Rodborough, if you read this, will you please send me a line, and let me know what was the joke Mr Merryman made about having his dinner? _You_ remember well enough. But do I want to know? Suppose a boy takes a favourite, long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket, and offers you a bit? _Merci_! The fact is, I _don"t_ care much about knowing that joke of Mr Merryman"s.
But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, and his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about Mr M. in private life-about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and general history, and I daresay was forming a picture of those in my mind:-wife cooking the mutton; children waiting for it; Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth; during which contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and Mr M., resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head and heels. Do not suppose I am going, _sicut est mos_, to indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking. Nay, Prime Ministers rehea.r.s.e their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare and polish them: Tabernacle preachers must arrange them in their minds before they utter them. All I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these performers thoroughly, and out of his uniform: that preacher, and why in his travels this and that point struck him; wherein lies his power of pathos, humour, eloquence;-that Minister of State, and what moves him, and how his private heart is working;-I would only say that, at a certain time of life certain things cease to interest: but about _some_ things when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight, hearing?
Poems are written, and we cease to admire. Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned. The last time I saw a ballet at the opera-oh! it is many years ago-I fell asleep in the stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording amus.e.m.e.nt to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces distant. Ah, I remember a different state of things! _Credite posteri_. To see these nymphs-gracious powers, how beautiful they were! That leering, painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out of time-_that_ an opera-dancer?
Pooh! My dear Walter, the great difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody can like to look at them. And as for laughing at me for falling asleep, I can"t understand a man of sense doing otherwise. In my time, _a la bonne heure_. In the reign of George IV., I give you my honour, all the dancers at the opera were as beautiful as Houris. Even in William IV."s time, when I think of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadere,-I say it was a vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can"t see nowadays. How well I remember the tune to which she used to appear! Kaled used to say to the Sultan, "My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurls called Bayaderes approaches," and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping of my heart, in she used to dance! There has never been anything like it-never. There never will be-I laugh to scorn old people who tell me about your n.o.blet, your Montessu, your Vistris, your Parisot-pshaw, the senile twaddlers! And the impudence of the young men, with their music and their dancers of to-day! I tell you the women are dreary old creatures. I tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and they send all rational creatures to sleep. Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely one! Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel! Ah, Malibran! Nay, I will come to modern times, and acknowledge that Lablache was a very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy for me): and they we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer.
But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage beauty since the days of George IV. Think of Sontag! I remember her in _Otello_ and the _Donna del Lago_ in "28. I remember being behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli. Young fellows have never seen beauty like _that_, heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don"t tell _me_!
A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they won"t see this fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours.
Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I remember the Adelphi, and the actresses there: when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs Serle at Sadler"s Wells, and her forty glorious pupils-of the Opera and n.o.blet, and the exquisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more! One much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the chief _male_ dancer-a very important personage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever.
And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling _laudator temporis acti_-your old fogey who can see no good except in his own time.
They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much improved since the days of _my_ monarch-of George IV. _Pastry Cookery_ is certainly not so good. I have often eaten half-a-crown"s worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school pastrycook"s, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now? I pa.s.sed by the pastrycook"s shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school. It looked a very dingy old baker"s; misfortunes may have come over him-those penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I remember them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning.
Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we constantly grumbled at the quant.i.ty of the food in our master"s house-which on my conscience I believe was excellent and plentiful-and how we tried once or twice to eat him out of house and home. At the pastrycook"s we may have over-eaten ourselves (I have admitted half-a-crown"s worth for my own part, but I don"t like to mention the _real_ figure for fear of perverting the present generation of boys by my monstrous confession)-we may have eaten too much, I say. We did; but what then? The school apothecary was sent for: a couple of small globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught was an actual pleasure.
For our amus.e.m.e.nts, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty much in old times as they are now (except cricket _par exemple_-and I wish the present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces next), there were novels-ah! I trouble you to find such novels in the present day! O Scottish Chiefs, didn"t we weep over you! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn"t I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said? Efforts, feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our friends. "I say, old boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," or, "Draw us Don Quixote and the windmills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys who had a love of drawing. "Peregrine Pickle" we liked, our fathers admiring it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun; but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick Random" was and remains delightful. I don"t remember having Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for young people. Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say a word in disrespect. But I am thankful to live in times when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call blushes on women"s cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions to honest boys. Then, above all, we had WALTER SCOTT, the kindly, the generous, the pure-the companion of what countless delightful hours; the purveyor of how much happiness; the friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our youth! How well I remember the type and the brownish paper of the old duodecimo "Tales of My Landlord!" I have never dared to read the "Pirate," and the "Bride of Lammermoor," or "Kenilworth," from that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and people die, and are murdered at the end. But "Ivanhoe," and "Quentin Durward"! Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those books again! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read them; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes! It may be the tart was good; but how fresh the appet.i.te was! If the G.o.ds would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen of centuries. The boy-critic loves the story: grown up, he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life. I meet people now who don"t care of Walter Scott, or the "Arabian Nights"; I am sorry for them, unless they in their time have found _their_ romancer-their charming Scheherazade. By the way, Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the favourite novelist in the fourth form now?
Have you got anything so good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth"s _Frank_? It used to belong to a fellow"s sisters generally; but though he pretended to despise it, and said, "Oh, stuff for girls!" he read it; and I think there were one or two pa.s.sages which would try my eyes now, were I to meet with the little book.
As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on purpose to get it; but somehow, if you will press the question so closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I had supposed it to be. The pictures are just as fine as ever; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom with delight, after many year"s absence. But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me; I even thought it a little vulgar-well! well! other writers have been considered vulgar-and as a description of the sports and amus.e.m.e.nts of London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.
But the pictures!-oh! the pictures are n.o.ble still! First, there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom"s tailor. Then away for the career of pleasure and fashion. The park! delicious excitement! The theatre! the saloon!! the green-room!!!
Rapturous bliss-the opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to _knock down a Charley_ there! There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights and little c.o.c.ked hats, coming from the opera-very much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now. There they are at Almack"s itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with the Duke of Clarence himself looking at them dancing. Now, strange change, they are in Tom Cribb"s parlour, where they don"t seem to be a whit less at home than in fashion"s gilded halls; and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors" legs previous to execution. What hardened ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches! What compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain!
Now we haste away to merrier scenes: to Tattersall"s (ah gracious powers!
what a funny fellow that actor was who performed d.i.c.ky Green in that scene in the play!); and now we are at a private party, at which Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and very gracefully too, as you must confess) with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the piano!
"After," the text says, "_the Oxonian_ had played several pieces of lively music, he requested as a favour that Kate and his friend Tom would perform a waltz. Kate without any hesitation immediately stood up. Tom offered his hand to his fascinating partner, and the dance took place.
The plate conveys a correct representation of the "gay scene" at that precise moment. The anxiety of the _Oxonian_ to witness the att.i.tudes of the elegant pair had nearly put a stop to their movements. On turning round from the pianoforte and presenting his comical _mug_, Kate could scarcely suppress a laugh."
And no wonder; just look at it now (as I have copied it to the best of my humble ability), and compare Master Logic"s countenance and att.i.tude with the splendid elegance of Tom! Now every London man is weary and _blase_.
There is an enjoyment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with our feelings of 1860. Here, for instance, is a specimen of their talk and walk, "If," says LOGIC-"if _enjoyment_ is your _motto_, you may make the most of an evening at Vauxhall, more than at any other place in the metropolis. It is all free and easy. Stay as long as you like, and depart when you think proper."-"Your description is so flattering," replied JERRY, "that I do not care how soon the time arrives for us to start." LOGIC proposed a "_bit of a stroll_" in order to get rid of an hour or two, which was immediately accepted by Tom and Jerry. A _turn_ or two in Bond Street, a _stroll_ through Piccadilly, a _look in_ at TATTERSALL"s, a _ramble_ through Pall Mall, and a _strut_ on the Corinthian path, fully occupied the time of our heroes until the hour for dinner arrived, when a few gla.s.ses of TOM"s rich wines soon put them on the _qui vive_. VAUXHALL was then the object in view, and the TRIO started, bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so amply affords."
How n.o.bly those inverted commas, those italics, those capitals, bring out the writer"s wit and relieve the eye! They are as good as jokes, though you mayn"t quite preceive the point. Mark the varieties of lounge in which the young men indulge-now a _stroll_, then a _look in_, then a _ramble_, and presently a _strut_. When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have read in an old Magazine, "the Prince"s lounge" was a peculiar manner of walking which the young bucks imitated. At Windsor George III. had a _cat"s path_-a sly early walk which the good old king took in the grey morning before his household was astir. What was the Corinthian path here recorded? Does any antiquary know? And what were the rich wines which our friends took, and which enable them to enjoy Vauxhall? Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which could occasion such a delightful perversion of the intellect as to enable it to enjoy ample pleasures there, what were they?