CONFESSORS.
It is a very general impression that the system of auricular confession was given up at the Reformation. Such is by no means the case; every man and mother’s son in the country still keeps hisconfessor. By this epithet, it may be guessed, I mean that chief and most particular friend whom every man keeps about him—who stands his best man when he is married, and becomes his second when hefights a duel—his double, in short, or second self—a creature whom you almost always find with him when you call, and who either walks under his arm in the street, or is found waiting for him while he steps into some neighbouring shop, or, as the case may happen, is waited for by him.
I make bold to say, there is not a trader any where who does not keep his confessor. The creature haunts the shop, till he almost seems the Genius of the Place, to the grievous prepossession of newspapers, and, what is more intolerable still, to the exclusive occupation of the ear of the worthy shopkeeper himself. The evening is the grand revel-time for confessors of this genus. Between eight and nine, you see them gathering to the shops of their respective victims, like fowl to roost. As you pass about nine, you observe, on looking in, that the discipline and rigour of shop-life has dissolved. Master, men, and boys, feel the approach of the moment of emancipation, with a peculiar salience of thought, alternating with a deep and tranquil delight. The confessor reigns in the spirit of this glorious hour, and his laugh, and his joke, and his news, and his proffered pinch, are listened to, re-echoed, and partaken of by his devotee, with a pleasure of the keenest nature, and ominous, you may make sure, of oysters and gin punch on the way home.
In some shops, confessors cluster like grapes over a vintner’s door. They block up the way of custom; and it is evident, in many cases, that the devotee would rather lose the chance of a penny from a customer, by omitting opportunities of attack, temptation, and inveiglement, than lose the joke that is passing in the merry circle of his confessors, which his ear drinks in as a preciousaside, while he only can spare a mere fragment of his attention—a corner of one auditory organ—the front shop of his mind—to the real business before him. In some shops, confessors get no encouragement before dinner. The broad eye of garish day, in those fastidious establishments, could nomore endure such a walking personification of idle gossip, than a ball-room, at high twelve, could tolerate the intrusion of a man in a short coat, with a pen stuck in his ear. But this is by no means the general case; and even in some instances, where the front shop will not admit of such an appendage, ten to one but, if the premises were well ransacked, you would find a specimen of the class snug in some out-of-the-way corner, filling up the greater part of his time with a newspaper, but every now and then resorted to by his votary, in the intervals of actual employment, like an Egeria receiving the visits of a Numa, and no doubt administering equally precious counsel.
The more common position of a shopkeeper’s confessor is a chair opposite the door, whence he may command a view of all that passes on the street, with a full front inspection of every individual that makes bold to enter. Into this chair the confessor invariably glides as a matter of course. There he sits down, and, throwing one limb over the other, considers himself entitled to inflict his company upon the unhappy shopkeeper for any length of time. He notices, as if he were not noticing, all that goes on in the premises. Not an order is given for goods, not a payment made, or a pennyworth sold, but it is seen, and very likely made the subject of after comment. It is of no consequence to the confessor what description of customers enter the place. Were a princess of the blood to come in, he would keep his seat and his countenance equally unmoved, and a whole band of ladies, driven in to escape a shower of rain, will not stir him from the chair, to which he seems nailed, like the marble prince of the Black Islands, in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The customers very naturally feel disinclined to patronise a shop which is thus, as it were, haunted by an evil spirit. “Oh, how I do hate to enter that shop of Mr Such-a-thing,” says one young lady to another, “for every thing you do or say is noticed by that odious person who is always lounging there.” And in this manner Mr Such-a-thing loses his business,almost without the possibility of recalling it. He longs to discover a means of disposing of the confessor, but he finds a great difficulty in accomplishing his purpose. He is disinclined to be churlish to a person to whom he has confessed himself for years. Still he makes an effort. He grows cool in his civility, and makes a point of being always busy on his arrival. Perhaps he has the good luck, at length, to shake off this pest of his premises; but it is more than probable that he submits to the terrific infliction for life, his confessor only leaving him when he is fairly in his grave. I once knew a dreadful case of confessorship, in which the shopkeeper had the hardihood to expel his visitant, and by a plan so ingenious that I think it worth while to advert to it. The shop contained four chairs, including the confessional, which stood opposite the door. One day when the confessor arrived, and, as usual, proceeded to his seat, he was a little surprised in remarking that it was filled to a pretty good height with parcels of some kind or other. But as this appeared naturally enough to be caused by a press in the stock of goods, no observation took place regarding it, and another chair was selected. However, next day when he again appeared, another chair was found covered up in a similar manner. The following day, he even found a third filled with parcels; and on the fourth day the whole were thus engaged. The confessor now saw that a conspiracy had been formed to destroy his functions, and to expel him from his ancient settlements. Like the unhappy antediluvians, who, as the flood arose, were driven from one spot of earth to another, and at last did not find a dry piece of ground whereon to rest their foot, so the unhappy confessor had been driven from chair to chair, till at last he could not discover a place whereon he could plant himself. A pang of vexation shot through his heart; a gleam of mingled shame and indignation passed over his countenance; and, with a last look of despair, he burst from the shop, and “ne’er was heard of more.”
It must be allowed that some men do not stand so muchin need of confessors, or do not indulge so much in them, as others; but, upon the whole, it may be taken as a general rule, that no man can altogether do without such an official. In the fair on-going business of life, one actssuo more solito, according to one’s regular custom of trade, or by the common rules of the world. But occasions occur, where common practice does not furnish a rule. You are in love, and wish to interest a friend in your passion; you are about to marry, and require information about arrangements, and also some one to stand beside you, and pull off your glove, preparatory to the ceremony; you have a quarrel, and need a third party to tell you that you are in the right; you are about to enter into some commercial or other enterprise a little beyond your usual depth, and find it necessary to fortify your resolution by the sanction of a friend; or you write a poem or a novel, and require to have somebody to read the manuscript, and tell you that it is sure of success. In all these cases, the confessor is indispensable.Without him, you would be crossed in love; get stranded in the straits of matrimony; permit yourself, after giving offence and insult, to let off the object of it with impunity for his remonstrance; break down in your new business scheme; and let your manuscript waste its sweetness on the desert scrutoire. Butwith himall goes smooth.
Upon the whole, it is better that one’s confessor should be a little poorer, as well as a little more plausible in speech, than one’s self: he ought to be a man to whom meat and drink are things of some account—a broken-down Scotch licentiate—an author who has published respectable books which have never sold; in short, some idle, poor, servile individual, to whom it is of the last importance to get a good grazing ground in the back premises of a substantial trader, upon whom he may revenge that partiality of fortune, which decrees all the real comforts of life to the mercantile and common-place, while the real “clever fellows” starve.
But, after all, it must be allowed that there is a great deal of confessorship in the world, independent of a regard to cake and pudding. It is in many cases simply a fascination exerted over one mind by another; in others, the result of that very common failing, the want of confidence in one’s own resources. Young men—by which, I mean men in the mason-lodge time of life, say between twenty and five-and-twenty—are most apt to indulge in confession.Theythink friends all in all, and for friends would give up every thing. All business and duty is to them an episode, only consented to because it is unavoidable; while the enjoyment of the countenance of their friends seems the main and true concern of life. Then are the joys of confession truly relished. Then does the vampire confessor suck deepest into the vitals of his devotee. Happy delusion—sweet morning dream—alas! too certain to awake to the conviction that it is “but a dream!”