His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise enough to be made a fool of. He will make himself happy in the traps that have been laid for him; he will roll in their nets and sleep. All doors will fly open to him who has a mildness more defiant than mere courage. The whole is unerringly expressed in one fortunate phrase—he will be always "taken in." To be taken in everywhere is to see the inside of everything. It is the hospitality of circumstance. With torches and trumpets, like a guest, the greenhorn is taken in by Life. And the sceptic is cast out by it.—"Charles Dickens."
[Sidenote:G.K. Chesterton]
I have often been haunted with a fancy that the creeds of men might be paralleled and represented in their beverages. Wine might stand for genuine Catholicism, and ale for genuine Protestantism; for these at least are real religions, with comfort and strength in them. Clean cold Agnosticism would be clean cold water—an excellent thing if you can get it. Most modern ethical and idealistic movements might be well represented by soda-water—which is a fuss about nothing. Mr. Bernard Shaw's philosophy is exactly like black coffee—it awakens, but it does not really inspire. Modern hygienic materialism is very like cocoa; it would be impossible to express one's contempt for it in stronger terms than that.—"William Blake."
* * * * *
To the quietest human being, seated in the quietest house, there will sometimes come a sudden and unmeaning hunger for the possibilities or impossibilities of things; he will abruptly wonder whether the teapot may not suddenly begin to pour out honey or sea-water, the clock to point to all hours of the day at once, the candle to burn green or crimson, the door to open upon a lake or a potato-field instead of a London street. Upon any one who feels this nameless anarchism there rests for the time being the spirit of pantomime. Of the clown who cuts the policeman in two it may be said (with no darker meaning) that he realises one of our visions.—"The Defendant."
"THE VULGAR TONGUE"[Sidenote:Dean Hole]
First, of abuses. I protest against those sensational adjectives, which are so commonly misapplied—against the union of grand and noble words with subjects of a minute and trivial nature. It is as though a huge locomotive engine were brought out to draw a child's perambulator, or as though an Armstrong gun were loaded and levelled to exterminate a tom-tit.
I heard a tourist say the other day that, when he was at Black GangChine, in the Isle of Wight, he had seen themost magnificent—what doyou think? A sunset, a man-of-war, a thunderstorm? Nothing of the kind.He had seen the mostmagnificent prawnshe ever ate in his life.
And when I asked another young gentleman, who was speaking of "the most tremendous screwever made in the world," to which of our great ironclads he referred, he smiled upon me with a benign and courteous pity, as he said that he "was alluding to a screw into the middle pocket, which he had recently seen during a game at billiards between Cook and the younger Roberts."
When you hear one lady informing another that she had just seen simply the mostexquisite, the mostlovely, the mostperfectthing in existence, is she referring to something wonderful in nature, or to something beautiful in art, or can it be only a bonnet? Has she just come home from the glaciers of Switzerland, the lakes of Italy, the mountains of Connemara, or the castles of the Rhine, or can it be that she has been no farther than Marshall and Snelgrove's shop?
Then there's that awful "awful!" Why, if a thousandth part of things which are commonly affirmed to be aweful were aweful, we should go about with our faces blanched, like his who drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, our teeth chattering, and our hair on end. Everything isaweful—awefully good or awefully bad.
Only last week I handed a plate to a young lady at luncheon, and, looking sweetly upon me, as though I had brought a reprieve from the gallows, she sighed, "Oh thanks! howawfullykind!"
And years ago, I went with John Leech to admire Robson inThe Porter's Knot, and when that pathetic little drama was over, and the actor had stirred our souls with pity, an undergraduate in the stalls before us turned to his companion, as the curtain fell, and said, tremulously, with an emotion which did him honour, although his diction was queer, "Awefully jolly! awefully jolly!"
Yes, it amuses, but it pains us more, this reckless abuse and confusion of words, because it tends to lower the dignity and to pervert the meaning of our language; it dishonours the best member that we have. If we use the most startling and impressive words which we can find, when we do not really require them, when the crisis comes in which they are appropriate, they seem feeble and commonplace. We are as persons who, wearing their best clothes daily, are but dingy guests at a feast.
Then comes retribution. They who cry "Wolf!" whenever they see a leveret are not believed when Lupus comes. They who suffer "excruciating agony" whenever a thorn pricks, can say no more under exquisite pain, and their familiar words are powerless to evoke the sympathy which they have repelled so long. They are more likely to receive the severe rebuke administered by a gruff old gentleman to his maudlin, moribund neighbour, who was ever exaggerating his ailments, and who, upon his doleful declaration that "between three and four o'clock that morning he had been at Death's door!" was abruptly but anxiously asked—"Oh, why didn't you go in?"
I protest, in the next place, against the use of long, large words for the gratification of that conceit or covetousness which seeks to obtain, from mere grandiloquence, reputations and rewards to which it is not entitled. Being a gardener, I like to call a spade as spelt; and if any one terms it an horticultural implement, or a mattock, I do not expect him to dig much. I have used the monosyllable "shop," and I will not recall it, though a thousand pairs of gleaming scissors were pointed at my breast, and I was told by an angry army of apprentices to talk shop no more—the word was vulgar, or rather obsolete, superseded by the more graceful terms of mart, emporium, warehouse, repository, bazaar, and lounge.
Plain folk, who sold drugs when I was a boy, were not ashamed to be called druggists, but now they are pharmaceutical chymists, and analytical Homoeopathists; and one is tempted to quote Canning's paraphrase, which he made when Dr. Addington had been complimenting the country party, "I do remember an apothecary, gulling of simples." Persons who cut hair were known as hair-cutters, and they who attended to the feet were called corn-cutters; but now the former are artists in hair, and the latter are chiropodists.
No long time ago I consulted with an intelligent tradesman as to the best way of protecting from frost a long line of standard rose-trees, growing near a wall in my garden, and shortly afterwards I received from him the drawing of a clever design, with a letter informing me that he had now the pleasure of submitting to my inspection his idea of aCheimoboethus. When I rallied from my swoon, and was staggering towards my lexicon, I remembered that, as [Greek: cheimon] was the Greek for winter, and [Greek: boaethos] for a friend in need, the word was not without appropriate meaning; but I never took heart to order the invention, because I felt convinced that, if I were to inform my gardener that we were going to have a Cheimoboethus, he would say that he would rather leave.
A bird-stuffer is now a plumassier and taxidermist; and when I asked a waiter the meaning of "Phusitechnicon," which I read over a shop opposite his hotel, he told me it meant old china. And he bowed respectfully, as one who knew how to treat a great scholar, when he met him, as I remarked gravely, "Ah yes, I see: no doubt fromphusi—the ancients, andtechnicon—cups and saucers."
Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible impulse to be gently nursed by the physician. If a poor man steals, he is a desperate thief; but if a rich man fancies that which does not belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and "the spoons will be returned." If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a drunken sot; but if a rich man is oft intoxicated, he is afflicted with Dipsomania! Interesting patient! I should like to prescribe for him. I feel sure I could do him good with my medicines—the crank and water-gruel!
Leaving him at it, I pass on to another mania, which rather provokes amusement than anger—the mania to be called "Esquire." Forty years ago, the title was restricted to those who carried arms. The armiger, no longer toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his own arms, as he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage door. People who became rich, and found themselves shut out from "genteel society" because they had only letters upon their spoons, instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs, were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds' Office, that one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were consequently entitled to bear upon their arms a stable-bucketazure, between two horses current, and to wear as their crest a curry-comb in base argent, between two wisps of hay proper, they and their descendants, according to the law of arms. But the luxury was expensive: a lump sum to the Heralds, and two pound two to the King's taxes; and so, as time went on, men of large ambition, but of limited means, began to crave for some more economical process by which they might become esquires. They met together, and they solved the difficulty. They conferred the title upon each other, and they charged no fee. And now the postal authorities will tell you that the number of the "esquires" not carrying arms, not having so much as a leg to stand on (in the matter of legal claims), is something "awful!" But the process is so charmingly cheap and easy that we may expect a further development. Why should we not all be baronets? Why should we not raise ourselves, every man of us, on his own private hoist, to the Peerage?
We have all been ladies and gentlemen so long that a little nobility, with its attendant titles, cannot fail to make a pleasant change. Bessie Black, who cleans the fire-irons, has for some years been Miss Cinderella, with a chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms "ladies and gentlemen," which had once such definite and narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, 'Them's ways,' I says, 'as I don't hold to'; and she makes answer to me, 'You better hadn't.'"
Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as all who go amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen illustrious snobs in satin, and sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman! There's no title shouted at a reception so grand in my idea as this; and yet, methinks, that any man may win and wear it who is brave, and truthful, and generous, and pure, and kind—who is, in one word, a Christian!
Some people think to make themselves gentlemen by tampering with their patronymics, and by altering their family name. Brown has added aneto his; and greedy Green, though he had two already, has followed his example; and White spells his with ay; and Bob Smith calls his son and heir Augustus Charlemagne Sacheverel Smythe; and Tailor calls himself Tayleure. And one day Tailor went out a-hunting, and he worried a whipper-in, who had plenty of work on his hands, with a series of silly questions, until, upon his asking the name of a hound, he received an answer which put an end to the discourse: "Well, sir," said the Whip, "we used to call him Towler; but things has got so fine and fashionable we calls himTow-leure."
Passing from abuse to disuse, I would not refer to words which are gradually becoming obsolete, but which some of us, partly from admiration of the words themselves, and partly from old associations, would not willingly let die. Beginning alphabetically, the adjectiveaskis one of those grand old English monosyllables which convey the sense in the sound, It speaks to you of a day in March, when the wind is in the east, and all the clouds are of a dull slate colour, and the roads are white, and the hedges black, and the fallows are dry and hard as bricks, and a bitter, searching, piercing wind whistles at your sealskins and Ulsters, your Lindseys and Jerseys, your foot-warmers and muffatees, and you feel, with Miggs, "as though water were flowing aperiently down your back," and sit shuddering—dithering (there's another word rarely used, but with a sufficient amount of chilliness in it to ice a bottle of champagne) "dithering in theask, ungenial day."
Then I likeabear(the penultimateapronounced ase)—"I can't abeer him";addled—"Bill's addled noat a three week";agate—"I see you've agate on't";among-hands—"Tom schemed to do it among-hands";all along of—"It was all along of them 'osses"; etc.
Of B's there is a swarm:beleddy(a corruption, as most men know, of "by our lady"), and I can only notice a few of the Queens.Botchis a word which, though found in Shakespeare and Dryden, and other authors, is rarely used by us; and yet, methinks, in these days, when the great object seems to be to get quantity in place of quality, and to make as much display as we can at the price—when so much is done by contract, and there is, in consequence, strong temptation to daub with untempered mortar, to use green timber, to put in bad material where it will not be seen, the verbto botchis only too appropriate to all such scampish proceedings.
And what do you think ofbofen-yed? I once heard a farmer, shouting from the garden fence, with the vocal powers of a Boanerges, to a labourer at work about a quarter of a mile away, "Yer gret bofen-yed, can ter ear noat?" (Anglicè, "You ox-headed lout, are you stone deaf?"); and more frequently the terms,pudding-yedandnoggen-yedhave been addressed in my hearing to obtuse and stupid folk. The former requires no comment, and an explanation of the latter—noggen, hard, rough, coarse—may be found in Johnson. "Nay, I did na say thee wor a noggen-yed; I said Lawyer said thee were a noggen-yed," was a poor apology, once spoken in Lancashire. And there also, in time-honoured Lancaster, was made the following illustrative speech. A conceited young barrister, with anez retrousséand a new wig, had been bullying for some time a rough, honest Lancashire lad, who was giving evidence in a trial, and at last the lawyer, thinking that he saw his opportunity, turned sharply upon the witness and said, "Why, fellow, only a short time ago you stated so and so." To which came the indignant answer, "Why, yer powder-yedded monkey, I never said noat o' sort; I appeal to th' company!"
I have a loving faith in children. Mixing with them daily—in church, in school, and at their play—I think that I know something about them; and I maintain that a disagreeable child is a sorrowful exception to the rule, and the result of mismanagement and foolish indulgences on the part of parents and teachers. But when this abnormal nuisance is found, a peevish, fretful child—a child who is always wanting to taste, a child who ignores the admirable purposes for which pocket-handkerchiefs were designed, such anenfant terribleas he who told the kindly mother, offering to bring her 'Gustus to join him in his play, that "if you bring your 'Gustus here I shall make a slit in him with my new knife, and let out his sawdust"—when, I repeat, we come in contact with such an obnoxious precocity as this, what word can describe him so satisfactorily as the monosyllable—brat?
More detestable, because more powerful to do hurt, and with less excuse for doing it, isthe Blab; the unctuous, tattling Blab, who creeps to your side with words softer than butter, but having war in his heart; he "always thought that Sam Smith was such a friend of yours, and" (hardly waiting for your "So he is") "was surprised and rather disgusted by his remarks at the Club last Thursday." And then he tells you something which, for a moment, and until principle prevails over passion, suggests the removal by violence of several of Sam's teeth, and he leaves you distressed and distrustful, until you discover, as you most probably will, that there has been cruel misrepresentation. Ah, if poor Jeannette's desire were realised, and they who make the quarrels were the only men to fight, how nice it would be to sit upon an eminence and watch the Battle of the Blabs!
There was a battle once on a small scale, the only rational duel ever fought, in which a brace of Blabs were sweetly discomfited. They had succeeded in separating "very friends," and had arranged a hostile meeting; but, through the intervention of better men, and without their cognisance, the principals entered into explanation, and, finding that they had been misled, mutually agreed to fire at the seconds, who had made the mischief. One Blab received a bullet in the calf of his leg, and the other apingclose to his whiskers; and then the combatants said that their honour was satisfied, and the party broke up.
Some years ago there lived in our village an individual who was known to us asBrawngingBill. Does not the epithet describe the man? As you pronounce it, does not William's photograph present itself to your mental eye? A large, obese, idlehulkof a man (fine old Saxon word, thathulc!) lounging about with his hands in his pockets and a pipe in his mouth; a man who talks at the top of his voice, and laughs the loud laugh which tells the vacant mind, and lies with such volubility that you would think truth was a fool. Eloquent, didactic, imperious was he in the taproom and by the blacksmith's forge, in the quoit-yard and in the alley of skittles, and yet, whene'er his tongue led him into trouble, and there was whisper of peril to that fat form of his, at the first utterance of a threat, the first sign of aggressive anger, there was a dissolving view of our Brawnging Bill.
From B to C.—Whenever the fairer sex enter Parliament (breathes there a man with ears so deaf as to doubt their powers of parlance?) and we have a House of Ladies as well as a House of Lords, I anticipate that among the first measures introduced will be a coercive Bill for Regulating in the Clay Districts the scraping, wiping, and cleaning of men's boots on their return from the garden or the field. A sore provocation it must surely be to those who love order and brightness to find slabs of dirt upon their new oil-cloth, Indian mats, and bright encaustic tiles. Justly may the gentlest spiritchunterand complain while the guilty husband, from his dressing-room hard by, vainly essays to evade his shame by a quotation—"Would my darling have me come bootless home—home without boots, and in wet weather, too?" Better to give the real, the only excuse, and say that the soil is so—no, not adhesive, not sticky, not tenacious, but, to use a word ten thousand times more expressive than these, soclarty.
And do you not remember (on we go, voyaging among the C's,) a time, a happy time, before you knew what digestion meant, when you delighted tocranchthe unripe gooseberry, until you heard theclompof the paternal tread on thecausey, and crouched lest you shouldcatch it, hid to escape a hiding; and how, nevertheless, swift retribution followed upon the track of crime, and you suffered those internal pains, which were vulgarly known ascolly-wobbles, and werecoddled, in consequence, upon your mother's knee?
Going on to D—Dickens, in a description of a street row, represents one of the lady disputants as saying to her adversary, "You go home, and, when you are quite sober, mend your stockings"; and he adds that these allusions, not only to her intemperate habits but to the state of her wardrobe, were so exasperating to the accused party that she proceeded to comply, not with the suggestion of her accuser, but with the request of the bystanders, and to "pitch in" with considerable alacrity. Assuming that her hose was as reported, let us hope that she had the worst of the combat, for there is something in the idea of adowdywhich is hateful to the manly mind. How life-like the portrait which the word paints for us! a coarse, fat female, her dingy cap, with its faded ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes hookless, holes buttonless, upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on the ground. When we clergy visit Mrs. Dowdy's home, or the residence of her sister, Mrs. Slattern, and find that, though it is towards evening, they have not tidied either self or house, we know why the children are unhealthy and untaught, and why the husband prefers the warmth and cleanliness of "The Manor Arms" to his own miserable hut. As a house-keeper, Mrs. Dowdy could only "please the pigs"; and this reminds me what an apt word we have indunkyfor a rotund, obese, little porket. I do not find the latter in Johnson, but dowdy in Shakespeare, andslatternis from the Swedish.
No word suggests itself as I stand at E's, and I therefore proceed with a sonata in F, composed, not by Beethoven, but by a horse-breaker, with certain amplifications of my own: "The young horse was in famousfettle, andframedsplendidly over theflakes; but he seemed all of aflabber-gasterwhen he caught sight of the water, put himself into a regularfandango, and the more Iflankedhim the more hefunked,till in he went with aflop."
I come now to a gem of purest ray serene. To me the monosyllablegorpis a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Take a youth, who has passed his life as an underling on some secluded farm, to an exhibition of wax figures, gorgeously attired, rolling their eyes and lifting up their arms to slow music, and you shall see himgorp. Or go with that young man to a display of fireworks, and when the first asteroid rocket sends out its glowing stars you shall see that wide-mouthed, wobbling agriculturist so gorp as to make it almost impossible for the descending stick to go anywhere save down his throat.
But we are all of us naturally fond of gorping. We abstain in our sensitive days, because somebody said it was vulgar; but, as we grow older and wiser, and that bell-wether Fashion tinkles vainly in our ears, we flatten our happy noses upon the shop-windows once again, and thoroughly enjoy ourgorp.
At Oxford, I remember, it was considered very low indeed to gorp. In fact, we did not allow ourselves to be astonished at anything, unless it was the audacity of trades-people with reference to the payment of their little bills. Wherefore I the more honour the conduct and courage of a college friend who, honest himself, and as free from humbug as any man I know, was bored, especially in London, by the society of an affected coxcomb, who persisted in attaching himself whenever they met, giving himself all sorts of silly airs, enlarging upon his intimacy with titled folks, and asserting himself to be, like Mrs. Jarley's show, the delight of the nobility and gentry of the day. "Gradually," said my friend to me, "I discovered a process by which I might execute a deed of separation. First, I rattled my stick against the area railings, and I saw him wince; then I whistled an Ethiopian serenade, and 'o'er his face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced'; but when I set my hat well on the back of my head, andgorpedwith open mouth at six legs of pork in a butcher's shop, he fled, and I saw him no more."
Thus did my friend successfully assume the lineaments of agawk, and the deportment of agorby, that he might evade the oppressive attentions of a companion given togawster. The enemy whom he so adroitly dispersed bore a strong family likeness to a fraternal nuisance, whom we recently inspected, being, in fact, a new edition, on toned paper and elegantly bound, of the braggart, "Brawnging Bill," and exhibiting the same feeble powers of resistance when his silly conceits were thwarted. Honest men, hoping reformation, rejoice to see him slink away, rejoice to see thegawsterersubdued, as when Theodore Hook rushed across Fleet Street to one, who was walking as proudly down it as though the Bank of England was his counting-house and St. Paul's his private Chapel, and, almost breathless with admiring awe, gasped his anxious question—"O sir, O pray sir, may I ask, sir—are you anybody in particular?" Certainly it is either a great amusement or a great irritation (as the weather, or disposition, or digestion may influence), to meet with persons in parks, promenades, esplanades, and spas who ostensibly expect you to look at them in an ecstasy of wonder, as though they were a sunset on Mont Blanc or the Balaklava Charge.
Only in three exceptional cases is it permissible, as I think, togawster. I like to see a drum-major, with my grandmother's carriage-muff on his head, and a baton in his hand as long as a bean-rod, swaggering at the head of his regiment, as though he had only to knock at the gates of a besieged city and the governor would instantly send the keys. Secondly, I was disappointed the other day at the stolid behaviour of a sheep, who went on grazing with a sublime indifference when a peacock, having marched some distance for the purpose, wheeled round within a yard of his nose, displaying his brilliant charms in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful music, in accordance with the command of Jupiter, and with Lemprière's dictionary, made them wink in a delicious drowse. And, thirdly, in the case of a game bantam, once my property, who flew up every morning to the top of a tall pump, and challenged Nottinghamshire to fight, I could not but admire the gawstering spirit, because he so thoroughly meant all that he said, and would have gladly matched himself against a mad elephant, or would have crowed defiance, midway between the rails, as the express rushed on at speed.
But in other animals I would pitilessly suppress proclivities to gawster. I would ask power from Parliament to whip, when mild persuasion failed, the precocious prig, "neither man nor boy," who struts about on Sundays, scoffing at religion, and polluting the air with bad tobacco and worse talk; and I would authorise the police to supervise, and to send home at their discretion, those small giggling girls who, having lost the shame which is a glory and a grace, and coveting every adornment but one, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, are seen in our streets, with nearly half a year's wage upon their backs, and the change on their faces—in brass.
To gawster, in fine, is a sure indication of moral and physical debility. He who gawsters is like a show, which has enormous pictures and clanging cymbals, and gongs, and drums, and an obese showman, in his shirt-sleeves, lying through a speaking-trumpet at the top of his voice,outside, and little more than a three-headed puppy, or a seven-legged lamb (not in vigorous life, as shown upon the canvas, but in glass and spirits of wine)within. When, for example, you hear a man gawster about his horsemanship, you may be sure that he will never be first over a fence, unless it be some wee obstacle, which you could almost arrange on a rocking-horse, and then he will rush wildly at it, as though he had made up his mind to die; or, if his boasting be of cricket, you may expect next morning to see him miss the first easy catch which comes.
I need hardly ask whether you have known, my reader, what it is to feel yourselfgloppened, as when in boyhood (if feminine, please ask your brother), you had just finished your first pipe of the herb called shag, and on your face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced, as represented in that marvellous sketch by John Leech, "Old Bagshawe under the influence of tobacco"; when you went forth with your mother for an innings, as you hoped, at the confectioner's, and a second ditto at the toyshop, and saw her ringing the dentist's bell; when you had carefully adjusted that cracker to Mr. Nabal's knocker, and were lighting the lucifer within the quiet seclusion of your cap, and suddenly the knuckles of Mr. Nabal's left pressed rudely on your nape, and the thumb and finger of his right essayed to meet each other through the lobe of your ear; when your dearest friend, in the strictest confidence, and having sworn you to secrecy, showed you a lock of gleaming hair, given to him by the girl whom you adored.
And it was you, my Thomas, you,The friend in whom my soul confided,Who dared to gaze on her—to do,I may say, much the same as I did.
Or when, in after-years, unequally mated, you groaned, with Parolles, under the subjection of a stronger will, "a man that's married is a man that's marred"; and it might be said of you, as once it was said by a labourer of one of his neighbours (so have I read in a book about roses, a charming volume, which should be on every table), "Bill has been and married his mestur, and she hasgloppenedhim a goodish bit."
I remember an occasion when a gawsterer was gloppened sorely. There was an ancient mansion, wainscoted and floored with shining oak,glib—I have not heard that apposite, terse little monosyllable since I wentslurringwith the village boys—glib as glass; and in that ancient mansion there was a banquet; and to that banquet came, with other guests, "a fop in a gay coat," a coxcomb wearing the bright vestment of the hunter, albeit in the hour of chase he only hunted gates and gaps; and upon the white satin lining of his "pink" there was a tiny button-hole bouquet, such as Mab might have held with her fairy fingers at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's wing; and he was going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the winsome damsel in particular, and a large "Oh!" from the procession in general, and a flash of horizontal scarlet, as when a soldier falls in battle; and then the bruised and bewildered dandy picked himself up, as best he could, to perform a part for which his qualifications were small—the personification of a man who had a relish for pain; and I sympathised with, though I did not love him—not so much because his feelings, as because his raiment was torn, and he, who was generally the most lively and locomotive of all, was now depressed and sedentary, like the lover of Constance, brooding upon his silent grief, as on its nest the dove, while we remained at the dinner-table, and finally backing out of the drawing-room at an early hour, as though our hostess were the queen.
And his involuntary gymnastics remind me, as I pass on to that "terrible thoroughbred" letter H (I have heard men speak of others who ignored it in conversation as though they must be capable of any crime), of a stout old lady in the manufacturing districts, whose husband had been very successful in business, and had purchased a fine old country residence from some dilapidated squire. She was complaining to a visitor of the difficulty which she had in walking upon the polished floors. "First I sluther," she said, "and then I hutch; and then I sluther, and then I hutch; and the more I hutch the more I sluther."
Only one other specimen (for I must hurry on helter-skelter and harum-scarum) from words beginning with H—to be, or cause others to be, on thehig, that is, to go about, or cause others to go about, in a fume, angrily excited, menacing revenge. "Betty," I asked one of my parishioners, "why do you make these ill-natured, irritating speeches to your next-door neighbour?" "Oh, bless yer," was the reply I received, "I only said 'em just to set old Sally on thehig." She knew that not to many was it given to hear resignedly the bitter word, that not to many was given in its reality the resignation affected by another of my old women, who (one of those wretched combinations of religion and rancour, "who think they're pious when they're only bilious") accosted me with the startling intelligence—"Oh, Mestur 'Ole, I've got another lift towards 'eaven. Bowcocks" (tenants of the cottage adjoining her own), "Bowcocks has been telling more lies; blessed are the parsecuted!" Better open war than this dismal affectation of peace! Better to confess ourselveshity-tity, and to raise ahullabaloo, than suchhumbugas this!
I, the egotist, has for once nothing to say; but J recalls to me an extract from a conversation which took place during one of my parochial visitations.
Pastor.—"Did I not see old Nanny Smith talking with you at your door just now?"
Parishioner.—"Oh yes, she wor' here not three minutes sin', andjabbering, as usual, like a clamm'd [famished] jay in a wood; but when she see your reverence coming up th' lane, th' old lass wor' gone in ajiffey."
K makes no suggestions, and L but few. "I'lllay," has no reference to eggs or to a recumbent posture, but implies a wager. Some years ago, I was riding to the meet, and came up inaudibly, upon the wayside grass, with two grooms on their masters' hunters, peering over their pummels at a mounted horse in the distance before them and anxiously discussing his identity. Just as I was passing the disputants, the one turned to the other and said, "I shalllay yerthree threepenny gins to one as it's Colonel's rat-tailed 'oss."
Ligis still commonly used for "lie." "Our Bob has ligabed sin' Monday." "The moon worliggingbehind a cloud, so they couldn't see keepers coming." Tolorpis to move awkwardly or idly, and the word suggests a noble line for the alliterative poet:
Lo, lazy lubbers loutish, lorp and loll.
In the days of my boyhood I was perplexed conjecturing by what process of the rustic mind moles had changed their names intoMouldi-warps; but I have since discovered that in this instance, as in countless others, the bucolic brain was not so mollified by beans and bacon as some would have us believe. Themould—and very fine mould it is—iswarped, turned up by the mole; and this reminds me of a mole-catcher, whose principles were warped also, and whose occupation was gone awhile in our parts, when it was discovered that he carried a collection of dead moles about with him, with which, the morning after his traps had been set, he made a grand display on some contiguous hedge, inducing his employer fondly to imagine that his enemies (as he thought of them) had been all destroyed in a night.
Flying onwards—for this is a very fugitive piece—I would ask admiration for the adjectivemuggy, as exquisitely descriptive of weather, not uncommon in this climate, where a fog gives one the idea, suggested by Dickens, that nature is brewing on an extensive scale outside, and there's dampness everywhere, taking the curl from ringlet and whisker, and causing our adhesive envelopes to fasten themselves on our writing-table, as though practising the duties of their post.
No sun, no moon,No morn, no noon,No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day—No sky, no earthly view,No distance looking blue.No road, no street, no t'other side the way—No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,No comfortable feel in any member,No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,No … vember!
I love, though not as licensed victuallers love, the little monosyllablenip. What a nimble agility, what a motive power, in that curt, imperative word!—the pistol-shot which starts the boat-race, the brief, shrill whistle which starts the train. "Just nip off your horse and pull out that stake." "You nipped out o' the army," said a snob to a friend of mine, who had retired some years before the Crimean invasion, and who, in his magisterial capacity, had offended the snob; "you know'd t' war wor' a-coming; you nipped out, you didn't relish them Rooshan baggonets a-prodding and a-pricking. You nipped out o' th' army; you know'd t' war wor' coming. Good morning. I think you were right."
When the wind bloweth in from the Orient, or when our discretion has collapsed before a lobster salad (that claw looked so innocently pink, and that lettuce so crisp and green!) then is poor human nature but too prone to be querulous; we disagree, like the lobster, with our fellow creatures; we are peevishly disposed tonag. "My mestur has been a good husband to me," said one of the matrons of my flock, "but he can chime in nasty when he wants tonag."
Times of refinement are probably at hand when, under the sacred influence of School Boards, the rural tongue shall cease to substitute the wordno-atfor nought, or nothing. I am not sorry that when that epoch comes I shall no longer be attached to this machine. I cling to those expressions, which I have heard from childhood: "He's like a _no-at." "_He's up tono-at." One day, years ago, we waited for the train at, not Coventry, but Ratcliffe-on-Trent, and while we waited a weary workman, with his bag of tools on his back, came and sat on the bench beside. Presently we were joined by a third person in the garrulous phase of inebriety, and he pestered the tired artisan with his _bosh_andgibberish(two words which should have been introduced at an earlier period of my history) until he provoked the righteous expostulation, "Oh, don't bother me; you're drunk." Then, with an air of outraged dignity, and with a stern solemnity, which, if he had not wobbled in his gait and stammered in his utterance, might have suggested the idea that he had just been appointed Professor of Philosophy for the Midland Districts, he delivered an oration: "Now just you listen to me. Do you suppose as a Mighty Power 'ud mak the barley to grow, and the 'ops to grow, and then put it into the minds of other parties to mak' 'em foment, and me not meant to drink 'em? why, you knowno-at!" Whereupon the apt rejoinder: "I know this—that a Mighty Power never meant the barley to grow, nor the hops to grow, for you to take and turn yoursen into a be-ast."
Nobbutis still common in these parts, in abbreviation of "nothing but." I congratulated an invalid parishioner on the presence of the doctor, and he said dolefully, "Oh yes, sir; thank yer, sir—but it'snobbutth' 'prentice."
My limits do not allow me to mind my L's and Q's and R's, or I might have enlarged upon such words aspalaver, andpawling, andpeart, andprod, and_romper_, andramshackle, andrawm; and I can only dwell upon one selection from the S's, of which there is a long Sigmatismus, such assnag("Billy and Sally's always atsnags"), andscuft, andscrawl("he wor' just a glass over the scrawl,"i.e.the line of sobriety), andscrawm, andslape, andsnigger, andslive("I see that _shack a-slivingand a_-skulking about"), andslare, and_slawmy_, andsneck, andsnoozle, andspank, andstodge, andstunt, andswish.
The word which I would illustrate isskimpy. It signifies something mean and defective; and in the following history, told to me by a clerical friend, it refers to an attenuated and bony female. When a curate in a remote country parish, he took a raw village lad into his service, to train him for some better place; and, when his education was sufficiently advanced, and he had made some progress in the art of writing, he was permitted to accompany his master to a large dinner-party given by a neighbouring squire. Next morning he communicated his experiences to the housekeeper, and she treacherously repeated them to my friend. "'Oh,' he said, 'it just wor' grand. Me and t'other gentlemen in livery we stood i' th' 'all, and they flung open folding-doors, and out comes the quality tu and tu, harm i' harm, all a-talking and a-grinning, and as smart as ninepence. I wor' quite surprised at mestur. He come out last of all, with a _skimpy_old woman. I should say she wor' sisty off, and there were squire's daughter, looking as bewtifle as bewtifle, and dressed up as gay as waxwork. I never made no mistake, except giving one gentleman mustard wrong side, and just a drop or so o' gravy down a hunbeknown young lady's back.'" I have reached the length of my tether, and will go no longer a-tweingafter words, lest I put my readers in atiff, and leave them in atantrum. I willyarkoff. Said an underkeeper who had just shot at a snipe: "Ityarkedup and screeted, and I nipped round and blazed; but I catched my toe on a bit of a tussock, and so, consarn it, I missed." Let me hope that I have not so completely failed in my aim, while firing my small shot against certain abuses and disuses connected with The Vulgar Tongue.
THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD WITH HIS SON[Sidenote:Calverley]
O what harper could worthily harp it,Mine Edward! this wide-stretching wold(Look outwold) with its wonderful carpetOf emerald, purple, and gold?Look well at it—also look sharp, itIs getting so cold.
The purple is heather(erica);The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin."Cruel boys on its pickles might spike aGreen beetle as if on a pin,You may roll in it, if you would like aFew holes in your skin.
You wouldn't? Then think of how kind youShould be to the insects who craveYour compassion—and then, look behind youAt yon barley-ears! Don't they look braveAs they undulate(undulate, mind you,Fromunda, a wave).
The noise of those sheep-bells, how faint itSounds here—(on account of our height)!And this hillock itself—who could paint it,With its changes of shadow and light?Is it not—-(never, Eddy, say "ain't it")—A marvellous sight?
Then yon desolate eerie morasses,The haunts of the snipe and the hern—(I shall question the two upper classesOnaquatileswhen we return)—Why, I see on them absolute massesOffelix, or fern.
How it interests e'en a beginner(Ortiro) like dear little Ned!Is he listening? As I am a sinner,He's asleep—he is wagging his head.Wake up! I'll go home to my dinner,And you to your bed.
The boundless ineffable prairie;The splendour of mountain and lake,With their hues that seem ever to vary;The mighty pine-forests which shakeIn the wind, and in which the unwaryMay tread on a snake;
And this wold, with its heathery garment,Are themes undeniably great.But—although there is not any harm in't—It's perhaps little good to dilateOn their charms to a dull little varmintOf seven or eight.
TARTARIN DE TARASCON[Sidenote:Daudet]
At the time of which I am speaking, Tartarin of Tarascon was not the Tartarin that he is to-day, the great Tartarin of Tarascon, so popular throughout the South of France. However—even then—he was already king of Tarascon.
Let me tell you whence this kingship.
You must know, first, that every one there is a huntsman, from the greatest to the smallest.
So, every Sunday morning, Tarascon takes arms and leaves the walls, game-bag on the back, gun on the shoulder, with a commotion of dogs, ferrets, trumpets, and hunting-horns. It is a superb sight. Unfortunately, game is wanting, absolutely wanting.
However stupid animals may be, in the end they had become wary.
For five leagues round Tarascon warrens are empty, nests deserted. Not a thrush, not a quail, not the least little rabbit, not the smallest leveret.
And yet these pretty Tarascon hillocks are very tempting, perfumed with myrtle, lavender, and rosemary; and these fine muscat grapes, swollen with sweetness, which grow by the side of the Rhone, extremely appetising too—yes, but there is Tarascon behind, and in the little world of fur and feather Tarascon has an evil fame. The birds of passage themselves have marked it with a big cross on their maps of the route, and when the wild-ducks, descending towards Camargue in long triangles, see the steeples of the town in the distance, the leader screams at the top of his lungs, "There is Tarascon!—There is Tarascon!" and the whole flight turns.
In short, as far as game is concerned, only one old rogue of a hare remains, who has escaped by some miracle from the September massacres of the Tarasconners, and who insists on living there. In Tarascon this hare is well known. They have given him a name. He is called "The Express." It is known that his form is in M. Bompard's ground—which, by the way, has doubled and even trebled its price—but so far no one has been able to get at it.
At the present moment there are one or two desperate fellows who have set their hearts upon him.
The others have made up their minds that it is hopeless, and "TheExpress" has become a sort of local superstition, although theTarasconners are not very superstitious and eat swallows in a salmi whenthey can get them.
"But," you object, "if game is so rare in Tarascon, what do the Tarascon sportsmen do every Sunday?"
What do they do?
Well, bless me! they go out into the open country two or three leagues from the town. They gather into little groups of six or seven, stretch themselves tranquilly in the shadow of an old wall, an olive-tree, take out of their game-bags a great piece of beef seasoned withdaube, some uncooked onions, a large sausage, some anchovies, and begin an interminable luncheon, moistened by one of those nice little Rhone wines which make a man laugh and sing.
After that, when one has laid in a good stock of provisions, one rises, whistles the dogs, loads the guns, and the chase begins. That is to say, each gentleman takes his cap, flings it into the air with all his might, and fires at it.
He who puts most shots into his cap is proclaimed king of the hunt, and returns in the evening to Tarascon in triumph, with his peppered cap on the end of his gun, amidst yappings and fanfares.
Needless to say, there is a great trade of caps in the town. There are even hatters who sell caps torn and full of holes for the use of the clumsy. But hardly any one but Bézuquet, the chemist, buys them. It is dishonouring!
As a cap-hunter, Tartarin of Tarascon has no equal. Every Sunday morning he starts with a new cap; every Sunday evening he returns with a rag. At the little house with the baobab-tree the greenhouses were full of the glorious trophies. For this reason all the Tarasconners recognised him as their master, and as Tartarin knew the code of a sportsman through and through, had read all the treatises, all the manuals of every conceivable hunt, from the pursuit of caps to the pursuit of Bengal tigers, these gentlemen made him their great sporting justicier, and appointed him arbitrator in all their discussions.
Every day, from three to four, at Costecalde's the gunsmith, a fat man was to be seen, very grave, with a pipe between his teeth, sitting in a chair covered with green leather, in the middle of a shop full of cap-hunters, all standing and wrangling. It was Tartarin of Tarascon administering justice, Nimrod added to Solomon.
PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN[Sidenote:William Hazlitt]
… "There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, "I would rather see than all these—Don Quixote!"
"Come, come!" said Hunt; "I thought we should have no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb? Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Genghis Khan?"
"Excuse me," said Lamb; "on the subject of characters in active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to reserve."
"No, no! come out with your worthies!"
"What do you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas Iscariot?"
Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. "Your most exquisite reason!" was echoed on all sides; and all thought that Lamb had now fairly entangled himself.
"Why, I cannot but think," retorted he of the wistful countenance, "that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering, annual scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow Godwin will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray Him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it."
"You have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify your choice."
"Oh! ever right, Menenius—ever right!"
"There is only one person I can ever think of after this," continued Lamb; but without mentioning a name that once put on a semblance of mortality. "If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him; but if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment."
HAYDON'S IMMORTAL NIGHT[Sidenote:B.R. Haydon]
On December 28th the immortal dinner came off in my painting-room, with Jerusalem towering up behind us as a background. Wordsworth was in fine cue, and we had a glorious set-to—on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Virgil. Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty; and his fun in the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory was like the sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's passion. He made a speech and voted me absent, and made them drink my health. "Now," said Lamb, "you old lake poet, you rascally poet, why do you call Voltaire dull?" We all defended Wordsworth, and affirmed there was a state of mind when Voltaire would be dull. "Well," said Lamb, "here's Voltaire—the Messiah of the French nation, and a very proper one too."
He then, in a strain of humour beyond description, abused me for putting Newton's head into my picture—"a fellow," said he, "who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank "Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics." It was delightful to see the good-humour of Wordsworth in giving in to all our frolics without affectation, and laughing as heartily as the best of us.
By this time other friends joined, amongst them poor Ritchie, who was going to penetrate by Fezzan to Timbuctoo. I introduced him to all as "a gentleman going to Africa." Lamb seemed to take no notice; but all of a sudden he roared out, "Which is the gentleman we are going to lose?" We then drank the victim's health, in which Ritchie joined.
In the morning of this delightful day, a gentleman, a perfect stranger, had called on me. He said he knew my friends, had an enthusiasm for Wordsworth, and begged I would procure him the happiness of an introduction. He told me he was a comptroller of stamps, and often had correspondence with the poet. I thought it a liberty; but still, as he seemed a gentleman, I told him he might come.
When we retired to tea we found the comptroller. Introducing him to Wordsworth, I forgot to say who he was. After a little time the comptroller looked down, looked up and said to Wordsworth, "Don't you think, sir, Milton was a great genius?" Keats looked at me, Wordsworth looked at the comptroller. Lamb, who was dozing by the fire, turned round and said, "Pray, sir, did you say Milton was a great genius?" "No, sir; I asked Mr. Wordsworth if he were not." "Oh," said Lamb, "then you are a silly fellow." "Charles! my dear Charles!" said Wordsworth; but Lamb, perfectly innocent of the confusion he had created, was off again by the fire.
After an awful pause the comptroller said, "Don't you think Newton a great genius?" I could not stand it any longer. Keats put his head into my books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh. Wordsworth seemed asking himself, "Who is this?" Lamb got up, and, taking a candle, said, "Sir, will you allow me to look at your phrenological development?" He then turned his back on the poor man, and at every question of the comptroller he chaunted:
"Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,Went to bed with his breeches on."
The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he was, said in a spasmodic and half-chuckling anticipation of assured victory, "I have had the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr. Wordsworth." "With me, sir?" said Wordsworth, "not that I remember." "Don't you, sir? I am a comptroller of stamps." There was a dead silence—the comptroller evidently thinking that was enough. While we were waiting for Wordsworth's reply, Lamb sung out:
"Hey diddle fiddle,The cat and the fiddle."
"My dear Charles!" said Wordsworth—
"Diddle, diddle dumpling, my son John"—
chaunted Lamb, and then, rising, exclaimed, "Do let me have another look at that gentleman's organs." Keats and I hurried Lamb into the painting-room, shut the door, and gave way to inextinguishable laughter. Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away. We went back, but the comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled and asked him to supper. He stayed, though his dignity was sorely affected. However, being a good-natured man, we parted all in good-humour, and no ill effects followed.
All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, we could hear Lamb struggling in the painting-room and calling at intervals, "Who is that fellow? Allow me to see his organs once more."
It was indeed an immortal evening. Wordsworth's fine intonation as he quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats's eager, inspired look, Lamb's quaint sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the stream of conversation that in my life I never passed a more delightful time. All our fun was within bounds. Not a word passed that an apostle might not have listened to. It was a night worthy of the Elizabethan age.
"SIXPENNY JOKES"[Sidenote:Charles Lamb]
There is novirtuelikenecessity, says the proverb. If that be true, what a quantity ofvirtuethere must be among the lower orders of people in this country!
* * * * *
Abenchof Justices certainly gives us an idea of somethingwooden. Shakespeare, in his Seven Ages, represents a Justice as made up with saws.
* * * * *
Locke compares the mind of a new-born infant to a sheet of white paper not yet written on. It must be confessed that, whoever wrote upon Mr. A——n's mind has leftlarge margins.
TO HIS BROTHER[Sidenote:Keats]
The thought of your little girl puts me in mind of a thing I heard Mr.Lamb say. A child in arms was passing by his chair towards the mother inthe nurse's arms. Lamb took hold of the long-clothes, saying, "Where,God bless me, where does it leave off?"
LAMB'S TASK[Sidenote:Charles Lamb]
In those days every morning paper, as an essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke—and it was thought pretty high too—was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but, above all,dress, furnished the material. The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.
A fashion offlesh-, or ratherpink-coloured hose for the ladies, luckily coming in at this juncture, when we were on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S——'s paper, established our reputation in that line. We were pronounced a "capital hand." Oh the conceits which we varied uponredin all its prismatic differences! from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea to the flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper," while, like a skilful posture-maker, balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either"; a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the play, still putting off his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good man!" But, above all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astræ—ultima Coelestum terras reliquit—we pronounced—in reference to the stockings still—thatModesty taking her final leave of Mortals, her last blush was visible in her ascent to the Heavens by the tract of the glowing instep.This might be called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed tolerable writing in those days.
But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away; as did the transient mode which had so favoured us. The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought, so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single meanings.
Somebody has said that, to swallow six cross-buns daily consecutively for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder execution. "Man goeth forth to his work until the evening"—from a reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes—our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese—was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man whose occasions call him up so preposterously has to wait for his breakfast.
Oh those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed—(for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising—we liked a parting up at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us—we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold washy, bloodless—we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague—we were right toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they),—but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing Bohea in the distance—to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise"; and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber-door, to be a terror to all such unreasonable rest-breakers in future—
"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on to say—
Revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras
—and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice prepended—there was the "labour," there the "work."
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them—when the mountain must go to Mahomet—
Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.
It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon—the Public—like him in Bel's temple—must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.
MISS PATE[Sidenote:M.M. Betham]
A Miss Pate (when he heard of her, he asked if she was any relation to Mr. JohnHead, of Ipswich) was at a party, and he said, on hearing her name, "Miss Pate I hate." "You are the first person who ever told me so, however," said she. "Oh! I mean nothing by it. If it had been Miss Dove, I should have said, Miss Dove I love, or Miss Pike I like." … Another, who was very much marked with the small-pox, looked as if the devil had ridden roughshod over her face. I saw him talking to her afterwards with great apparent interest, and noticed it, saying, "I thought he had not liked her." His reply was, "I like her internals very well."
THE LOST ORNAMENT[Sidenote:Washington Allston]
Lamb was present when a naval officer was giving an account of an action which he had been in, and, to illustrate the carelessness and disregard of life at such times, said that a sailor had both his legs shot off, and as his shipmates were carrying him below, another shot came and took off his arms; they, thinking he was pretty much used up, though life was still in him, threw him out of a port. "Shame, d——d shame," stuttered our Lamb, "he m-m-might have l-lived to have been an a-a-ornament to Society!"
YOUR HAT, SIR[Sidenote:Crabb Robinson]
I dined at Lamb's, and then walked with him to Highgate, self-invited. There we found a large party. Mr. and Mrs. Green, the Aderses, Irving, Collins, R.A., a Mr. Taylor, a young man of talents in the Colonial Office, Basil Montagu, a Mr. Chance, and one or two others. It was arichevening. Coleridge talked his best, and it appeared better because he and Irving supported the same doctrines. His superiority was striking. The idea dwelt on was the higher character of the internal evidence of Christianity, as addressed to our immediate consciousness of our own wants and the necessity of a religion and a revelation. In a style not to me clear or intelligible, Irving and Coleridge both declaimed. Theadvocatus diabolifor the evening was Mr. Taylor, who, in a way very creditable to his manners as a gentleman, but with little more than verbal cleverness, and an ordinary logic, and the confidence of a young man who has no suspicion of his own deficiencies, affirmed that those evidences which the Christian thinks he finds in his internal convictions, the Mahometan also thinks he has; and he affirmed that Mahomet had improved the condition of mankind. Lamb asked him whether he came in a turban or a hat.
ELIA'S TAIL[Sidenote:J.B.]
When I first knew Charles Lamb, I ventured, one evening, to say something that I intended should pass for wit. "Ha! very well; very well, indeed!" said he. "Ben Jonson has said worse things" (I brightened up, but he went stammering on to the end of the sentence)—"and—and—andbetter!" A pinch of snuff concluded this compliment, which put a stop to my wit for the evening. I related the thing to Hazlitt, afterwards, who laughed. "Aye," said he, "you are never sure of him till he gets to the end. His jokes would be the sharpest things in the world, but that they are blunted by his good-nature. He wants malice—which is a pity." "But," said I, "his words at first seemed so—" "Oh! as for that," replied Hazlitt, "his sayings are generally like women's letters: all the pith is in the postscript."
CHARLES AND HIS SISTER[Sidenote:Mrs. Balmanno]
Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout, and comely maiden lady of middle age. Dressed with quaker-like simplicity in dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, but seldom laughed, partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly nature.
Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. Even when apparently engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high spirits, sauntering about the room, with his hands crossed behind his back, conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him, but evidently mentally acknowledging Miss Kelly to be therara avisof his thoughts, by the great attention he paid to every word she uttered. Truly pleasant it must have been to her, even though accustomed to see people listen breathless with admiration while she spoke, to find her words have so much charm for such a man as Charles Lamb.
He appeared to enjoy himself greatly, much to the gratification of Mrs. Hood, who often interchanged happy glances with Miss Lamb, who nodded approvingly. He spoke much—with emphasis and hurry of words, sorely impeded by the stammering utterance which in him was not unattractive. Miss Kelly (charming, natural Miss Kelly, who has drawn from her audiences more heart-felt tears and smiles than perhaps any other English actress), with quiet good-humour listened and laughed at the witty sallies of her host and his gifted friend, seeming as little an actress as it is possible to conceive. Once, however, when some allusion was made to a comic scene in a new play then just brought out, wherein she had performed to the life the character of a low-bred lady's-maid passing herself off as her mistress, Miss Kelly arose, and with a kind of resistless ardour repeated a few sentences so inimitably that everybody laughed as much as if the real lady's-maid, and not the actress, had been before them; while she who had so well personated the part quietly resumed her seat without the least sign of merriment, as grave as possible. Most striking had been the transition from the calm, lady-like person, to the gay, loquacious soubrette; and not less so the sudden extinction of vivacity and resumption of well-bred decorum. This little scene for a few moments charmed everybody out of themselves, and gave a new impetus to conversation….
Mr. Lamb oddly walked all round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood that he should by that means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve, and take the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster-salad, observingthatwas the thing. On her asking him to take some roast fowl, he assented. "What part shall I help you to, Mr. Lamb?" "Back," said he quickly; "I always prefer the back." My husband laid down his knife and fork, and, looking upwards, exclaimed: "By heavens! I could not have believed it, if anybody else had sworn it." "Believed what?" said kind Mrs. Hood, anxiously, colouring to the temples, and fancying there was something amiss in the piece he had been helped to. "Believe what? why, madam, that Charles Lamb was a backbiter?" Hood gave one of his short, quick laughs, gone almost ere it had come, whilst Lamb went off into a loud fit of mirth, exclaiming: "Now, that's devilish good! I'll sup with you to-morrow night." This eccentric flight made everybody very merry, and amidst a most amusing mixture of wit and humour, sense and nonsense, we feasted merrily, amidst jocose health-drinking, sentiments, speeches, and songs.
Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song, "If you go to France, be sure you learn the lingo," his pensive manner and feeble voice making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a string of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood frequently occurred, we ladies thought it was in praise of her. The delivery of his speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman who sat next to me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me that it was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster-salad!