“Who teach you knacksOf eating flax,And out of their nosesDraw ribbons and posies.”
“Who teach you knacksOf eating flax,And out of their nosesDraw ribbons and posies.”
“Who teach you knacksOf eating flax,And out of their nosesDraw ribbons and posies.”
Are men, thought I, intelligent beings? Is there any essential difference between those who dishonour themselves in representing these fooleries, and those who are entertained by them? And here I stepped into a crowd of persons who were listening to a serious individual who sat upon a platform; he held a cat, and discoursed thus: “Voilà, Messieurs, un animal, qui est digne de fixer l’attention du public. Il a les oreilles du chat, les pattes d’un chat; enfin la queue, le poil, la tête, et le corps du chat. Eh bien! Messieurs, ce n’est pas un chat.—Qu’est ce donc que cet animal?—C’est uneCHATTE.”
At a few steps farther was another individual, who recommended remedies for all diseases;—“Here is my powder, gentlemen, patented by the king; it cures the ear-ache, the tooth-ache and scabby dogs;à six sous, Messieurs! c’est incroyable! c’est pour rien! à six sous!—And here, gentlemen, is something worthy to fix theattention of the naturalist and man of letters. It is a little black powder, which results from the incineration of a little animal, which does not weigh more than four ounces, and which lays eggs that weigh fifteen pounds. It was with these eggs, gentlemen, that General Lafayette nourished his army in Egypt during forty days; here it is—c’est incroyable!And now,Messieurs et Mesdames, here is mypoudre dentifriquewhich is designed to destroy the tartar of the teeth of both sexes. Tartar, gentlemen, is the declared enemy of both. Every thing human is subject to tartar; from the innocent virgin to the venerable matron, all is subject to tartar. Napoleon himself, at the head of 150,000 men of cavalry, was not exempt from tartar. You see this child, (here he exhibited a boy whose teeth were in a ‘frightful condition,’ being painted black.) You see this boy, ‘simple gamin,’ he has the teeth neither more nor less black than pitch, and his breath—You may come, gentlemen, and smell for yourselves—Eh bien, Messieurs; you take mypoudre dentifrique, you just dip your finger into water, spring water, well water, no matter what water, and you just rub lightly, (here he laid the child across his knees, and in the same wayas if sawing a log of wood, rubbed off the paint, and exhibited him with teeth of ivory to the spectators;)—Behold, gentlemen, the effect of mypoudre dentifrique, (and here he sold several boxes.)
The oldest hero, I believe, of the modern stage is Punch, and I am glad to see that he retains yet his place at these public solemnities. His harangues here are not always a ludicrous or unmeaning prattle, but often critical, satirical, and even treasonable; and occasionally, he falls under the reprehension of the police. Several punches have been arrested under the late laws. I penetrated an immense crowd, and heard a little deputy of the “extrême gauche” just end his harangue—“the greatest king of these times, I don’t care who is the other one.” We have been trying kings, one after the other, and have never had a tolerable one since King Pepin. Idiots we have had enough, God knows; we have now our Tarquin, whom we have sent to travel for his health in Germany. We have had our Nero too, and our Otho and Vitellius as well as our Cæsar; theBon Henri, and he was a great rogue, is the only national boast. In fine, gentlemen, we never had any thing of a king down to Louis Philippe. Mywife has called three children after him successively; but when they were born, they all turned out to be girls.
“Gentlemen, we have done more for the glory of France under this king in five years, than under all the kings who preceded him, in all years. We have guillotined Fieschi, conquered the Bedouins, and paved theRue Neuve des Augustins; and finally, gentlemen, we have paid off the ‘twenty-five millions’ to General Jackson, and the sword that was half drawn has been thrust back into its scabbard. Gentlemen, when we want to gather cocoa-nuts in the West Indies, we throw stones at the apes on the trees, at which, they getting mad, shower down the nuts in our faces; and this is the way the American General has got the twenty-five millions.” He bowed, and retired with acclamations. This is enough for the Mountebanks and the Punches, and not too much; for even the tragic Muse, dignified as she now is, in her robe and buskins, took her first lessons from the Harlequins.
In the eating department, in thesucrerieandcharcuiterie, there was of course a display—gimblettes, gaufres, echaudés, and croquignolles. Their very names give one ideas of eating. Doyou know how to sell cakes piping hot that were baked eight days ago? The bottom of your basket is to be a vessel with water in it, reduced by a secret fire into vapour, which penetrates up through the crevices of your cakes. How appetising they look, just smoking from the frying-pan! If I should attempt to tell you the tricks of the jugglers, I should never be done. The prettiest of all these are the lady rope-dancers of Madame Saqui, whom you will see thirty feet in the air, and ten thousand eyes upturned in admiration. The clown beneath holds his cocked hat to catch any one that may fall.
The most athletic and dramatic of all these amusements, is theMat de Cocagne. This is a long pole of about eighteen inches diameter at the base, well polished and greased from head to foot, with soft soap, tallow, and other slippery ingredients. To climb up this pole to the top is the eminent exploit, which crowns the victorious adventurer with a rich prize, and gains him the acclamation of ten thousand spectators. The pretenders strip off their upper gear altogether, and roll up their trousers mid-thigh, and thus accoutred, present themselves at the bottom of the mast.
“The first who attempt the ascent look for no honour; their office is to prepare the way, and put things in train for their successors; they rub off the grease from the bottom, the least practicable part of the mast. In every thing the first steps are the most difficult, though seldom the most glorious; and scarcely ever does the same person commence an enterprise and reap the fruits of its accomplishment. They ascend higher by degrees, and the expert climbers now come forth, the heroes of the list; they who have been accustomed to gain prizes, whose prowess is known, and whose fame is established. These do not expend their strength in the beginning; they climb up gently, and patiently, and modestly, and repose from time to time; and they carry, as is permitted, a little sack at their girdle filled with ashes to neutralise the grease, and render it less slippery.
“All efforts, however, for a long time prove ineffectual. There seems to be an ultimate point, which no one can scan, the measure and term of human strength; and to overreach it, is at last deemed impossible. Now and then a pretender essays his awkward limbs, and reaching scarce half-way even to this point, falls back clumsily amidst the hisses and laughter of the spectators; so in the world empyrical pretension comes out into notoriety for a moment only, to return with ridicule and scorn, to its original obscurity.
“But the charm is at length broken; a victorious climber has transcended the point at which his predecessors were arrested. Every one now does the same; such are men; they want but a precedent; as soon as it is proved that a thing is possible, it is no longer difficult. Our climber continues his success, further and further still; he is at a few feet only from the summit, but he is wearied, he relents; alas, is the prize almost in his grasp to escape from him! He makes another effort, but of no avail. He does not, however, lose ground; he reposes. In the meantime, exclamations are heard, of doubt, of success, of encouragement.
“After a lapse of two or three minutes, which is itself a fatigue, he essays again—it is in vain. He begins even to shrink—he has slipped downwards a few inches, and recovers his loss by an obstinate struggle (applauses), but it is a supernatural effort, and his last. Soon after, a murmur is heard from the crowd, half raillery, half compassion, and the poor adventurer slides down, mortified and exhausted, upon the earth. So a courtier, having planned from his youth,his career of ambition, struggles up the ladder, lubrick and precipitous, to the top, to the very consummation of his hopes, and then falls back into the rubbish from which he has issued, and they who envied his fortune, now rejoice in his fall. What lessons of philosophy in a greasy pole! What moral reflections in a spectacle so empty to the common world! What wholesome sermons are here upon the vanity of human hopes, the disappointments of ambition, and the difficulties of success in the slippery path of fortune and human greatness! But the defeat of the last adventurer has shown the possibility of success, and prepared the way for his successor, who mounts up, and perches on the summit of the mast, bears off the crown, and descends amidst the shouts and applauses of the multitude. It is Americus Vespucius, who bears away from Columbus the recompense of his toils.”
I have placed commas over a few of the preceding paragraphs, to tell you that they are taken chiefly from a French description, much prettier than any thing I could offer you of my own.
And now, farewell, Paris! thou Pandora’s box of all good and all evil, farewell! I oughtnot to take leave without makingamende honorablefor the ill I have said and thought of the French people in my fretful humours. I know some of them I cannot think ill of, for the life of me. I can scarce hate the knaves and fools on their account. Then, farewell, Paris! Thrice I have bid thee adieu, and still am lingering at thy threshold.
THE END.LONDON: STEWART AND MURRAY, OLD BAILEY.
FOOTNOTES:[1]Who would have thought that these two champions of Infidelity, who were refused Christian burial, would one day, have assigned to their remains, the first church of France, and one of the first in Christendom, as their mausoleum. I wonder if Jean Jaques, in his prophetic visions, foresaw this?[2]A nest of students has lately been detected in this employment.[3]Racine told the Duc de Maine, who was anxious for a place at the old Academy, that there was no place vacant; but there was no member, he said, who would not be glad to die to accommodate him—“qui ne tint à grand honneur de mourir, pour lui en faire une”—and Racine said this seriously.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]Who would have thought that these two champions of Infidelity, who were refused Christian burial, would one day, have assigned to their remains, the first church of France, and one of the first in Christendom, as their mausoleum. I wonder if Jean Jaques, in his prophetic visions, foresaw this?
[1]Who would have thought that these two champions of Infidelity, who were refused Christian burial, would one day, have assigned to their remains, the first church of France, and one of the first in Christendom, as their mausoleum. I wonder if Jean Jaques, in his prophetic visions, foresaw this?
[2]A nest of students has lately been detected in this employment.
[2]A nest of students has lately been detected in this employment.
[3]Racine told the Duc de Maine, who was anxious for a place at the old Academy, that there was no place vacant; but there was no member, he said, who would not be glad to die to accommodate him—“qui ne tint à grand honneur de mourir, pour lui en faire une”—and Racine said this seriously.
[3]Racine told the Duc de Maine, who was anxious for a place at the old Academy, that there was no place vacant; but there was no member, he said, who would not be glad to die to accommodate him—“qui ne tint à grand honneur de mourir, pour lui en faire une”—and Racine said this seriously.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:One called the ‘Montyon Prize,’=> One is called the ‘Montyon Prize,’ {pg 95}Their number about fifty thousand=> Their number is about fifty thousand {pg 103}and so screamed on the theatre=> and so screamed in the theatre {pg 187}I attemped a few days=> I attempted a few days {pg 219}Clays, Calhoun’s=> Clays, Calhouns {pg 230}description alogether=> description altogether {pg 238}seen in Eurpoe=> seen in Europe {pg 244}wit an invitation=> with an invitation {pg 244}entertainng sights=> entertaining sights {pg 250}he is a a=> he is a {pg 278}once razeed=> once razed {pg 293}
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
One called the ‘Montyon Prize,’=> One is called the ‘Montyon Prize,’ {pg 95}
Their number about fifty thousand=> Their number is about fifty thousand {pg 103}
and so screamed on the theatre=> and so screamed in the theatre {pg 187}
I attemped a few days=> I attempted a few days {pg 219}
Clays, Calhoun’s=> Clays, Calhouns {pg 230}
description alogether=> description altogether {pg 238}
seen in Eurpoe=> seen in Europe {pg 244}
wit an invitation=> with an invitation {pg 244}
entertainng sights=> entertaining sights {pg 250}
he is a a=> he is a {pg 278}
once razeed=> once razed {pg 293}