“Learned men, now and then,Have very strange vagaries!”
However, he commenced spinning the teetotum, turn and turn with Jacob Philpot, who was highly delighted both with the drollery of the thing, and the honour of playing with the parson of the parish, and laughed most immoderately, while the stranger stood by, looking at his stop-watch as demurely as on the preceding evening, until the five minutes had expired; and then, in the middle of the Reverend Mr. Stanhope’s spin, he took up the little toy and put it into his pocket.
Jacob Philpot immediately arose, and shook the stranger warmly by the hand, and told him, that he should be happy to see him whenever he came that way again; and then nodding to Mr. Stanhope and the landlady, went out at the front door, mounted the horse that stood there, and rode away. “Where’s the fellow going?” cried Mrs. Philpot; “Hillo! Jacob, I say!”—“Well mother,” said the Reverend Mr. Stanhope, “what’s the matter now?”—but Mrs. Philpot had reached the front of the house, and continued to shout. “Hillo! hillo, come back, I tell you!”—“That woman is always doing some strange thing or other,” observed Mr. Stanhope to the stranger “What on earth can possess her to go calling after the parson in that manner?”—“I declare he’s rode off with squire Jones’s horse,” cried Mrs. Philpot, re-entering the house. “To be sure he has,” said Mr. Stanhope; “he borrowed it on purpose to go to the Old Boar.”—“Did he?” exclaimed the landlady; “and without telling me a word about it! But I’ll Old Boar him I promise you!”—“Don’t make such a fool of yourself, mother,” said the parson; “it can’t signify twopence to you where he goes.”—“Can’t it?” rejoined Mrs. Philpot. “I’ll tell you what, your worship-”—“Don’t worship me woman,” exclaimed the teetotum landlord parson; “worship, what nonsense now! Why, you’ve been taking your drops again this morning, I think. Worship, indeed! To be sure, I did once, like a fool, promise to worshipyou; but if my time was to come over again, I know what-. But, never mind now—don’t you see it’s twelve o’clock? Come, quick, let us have what there is to eat, and then we’ll have a comfortable pipe under the tree. What say you, Sir?”—“With all my heart,” replied the elderly stranger. The latter hoped they should have the pleasure of Mrs. Philpot’s company; but she looked somewhat doubtfully till the parson said, “Come, come, mother, don’t make a bother about it.” Therefore she smoothed her apron and made one at the dinner table, and conducted herself with so much precision, that the teetotum parson looked upon her with considerable surprise, while she regarded him with no less, inasmuch as he talked in a very unclerical manner; and, among other strange things, swore, that his wife was as “drunk as blazes” the night before, and winked at her, and behaved altogether in a style very unbecoming a minister in his own parish.
At one o’clock there was a great sensation caused in the village of Stockwell, by the appearance of their reverend pastor and the elderly stranger, sitting on the bench which went round the tree, which stood before the sign of the roaring rampant Red Lion, each with a long pipe in his mouth, blowing clouds, which would not have disgraced the most inveterate smoker of the “black diamond” fraternity, and ever and anon moistening their clay with “heavy wet,” from tankards placed upon a small table, which Mrs. Philpot had provided for their accommodation. The little boys and girls first approached within a respectful distance, and then ran away giggling to tell their companions; and they told their mothers, who came and peeped likewise; and many were diverted, and many were scandalized at the sight; yet the parson seemed to care for none of these things, but cracked his joke, and sipped his ale, and smoked his pipe, with as much easy nonchalance as if he had been in his own arm-chair at the rectory. Yet it must be confessed that now and then there was a sort of equivocal remark made by him, as though he had some faint recollection of his former profession, although he evinced not the smallest sense of shame at the change which had been wrought in him. Indeed this trifling imperfection in the change of identity appears to have attended such transformations in general, and might have arisen from the individual bodies retaining their own clothes (for the mere fashion of dress hath a great influence on some minds), or, perhaps, because a profession or trade, with the habits thereof, cannot be entirely shaken off, nor a new one perfectly learned, by spinning a teetotum for five minutes. The time had now arrived when George Syms, the shoemaker, and Peter Brown, the blacksmith, were accustomed to take their “pint and pipe after dinner,” and greatly were they surprised to see their places so occupied; and not a little was their astonishment increased, when the parson lifted up his voice, and ordered Sally to bring out a couple of chairs, and then shook them both warmly by the hand, and welcomed them by the affectionate appellation of “my hearties!”
145m
He then winked, and in an under tone began to sing—
“Though I’m tied to a crusty old woman,Much given to scolding and jealousy,I know that the case is too common,And so I will ogle each girl I see.Toi de roi, loi, &c.
“Come, my lads!” he resumed, “sit you down, and clap half a yard of clay into your mouths.” The two worthy artisans looked at each other significantly, or rather insignificantly, for they knew not what to think, and did as they were bid. “Come, why don’t you talk?” said the teetotum parson landlord, after a short silence. “You’re as dull as a couple of tom cats with their ears cut off—talk, man, talk—there’s no doing nothing without talking.” This last part of his speech seemed more particularly addressed to Peter Brown, who, albeit a man of a sound head, and well skilled in such matters as appertained unto iron and the coal trade, had not been much in the habit of mixing with the clergy; therefore he felt, for a moment, as he said, “nonplushed;” but fortunately he recollected the Catholic question, about which most people were then talking, and which every body professed to understand. Therefore, he forthwith introduced the subject; and being well aware of the parson’s bias, and having, moreover, been told that he had written a pamphlet; therefore (though to do Peter Brown justice, he was not accustomed to read such publications) he scrupled not to give his opinion very freely, and concluded by taking up his pint and drinking a very unchristian-like malediction against the Pope. George Syms followed on the same side, and concluded in the same manner, adding thereunto, “Your good healths, gemmen.”—“What a pack of nonsense!” exclaimed the parson, “I should like to know what harm the Pope can do us! I tell you what, my lads, it’s all my eye and Betty Martin. Live and let live, I say. So long as I can get a good living, I don’t care the toss of a halfpenny who’s uppermost. The Pope’s an old woman, and so are they that are afraid of him.” The elderly stranger here seemed highly delighted, and cried, “Bravo!” and clapped the speaker on the back, and said, “That’s your sort! Go it, my hearty!” But Peter Brown took the liberty of telling the parson, in a very unceremonious way, that he seemed to have changed his opinions very suddenly. “Not I,” said the other; “I was always of the same way of thinking.”—“Then words have no meaning,” observed George Syms, angrily, “for I heard you myself. You talked as loud about the wickedness of ‘mancipation as ever I heard a man in my life, no longer ago than last Sunday.”—“Then I must have been drunk—that’s all I can say about the business,” replied the other, coolly; and he began to fill his pipe with the utmost nonchalance, as though it was a matter of course. Such apparently scandalous conduct was, however, too much for the unsophisticated George Syms and Peter Brown, who simultaneously threw down their reckoning, and, much to their credit, left the turncoat reprobate parson to the company of the elderly gentleman.
If we were to relate half the whimsical consequences of the teetotum tricks of this strange personage, we might fill volumes; but as it is not our intention to allow the detail to swell even into one, we must hastily sketch the proceedings of poor Jacob Philpot, after he left the Red Lion to dine with sundry of the gentry and clergy of the Old Boar, in his new capacity of an ecclesiastic, in the outward form of a somewhat negligently dressed landlord. He was accosted on the road by divers of his coal-carrying neighbours with a degree of familiarity which was exceedingly mortifying to his feelings. One told him to be home in time to take part of a gallon of ale that he had won of neighbour Smith; a second reminded him that to-morrow was club-night at the Nag’s Head; and a third asked him where he had stolen his horse. At length he arrived, much out of humour, at the Old Boar, an inn of a very different description from the Red Lion, being a posting house of no inconsiderable magnitude, wherein that day was to be holden the symposium of certain grandees of the adjacent country, as before hinted.
The landlord, who happened to be standing at the door, was somewhat surprised at the formal manner with which Jacob Philpot greeted him, and gave his horse into the charge of the hostler; but, as he knew him only by sight, and had many things to attend to, he went his way without making any remark, and thus, unwittingly, increased the irritation of Jacob’s new teetotum sensitive feelings. “Are any of the gentlemen come yet?” asked Jacob, haughtily, of one of the waiters.—“What gentlemen?” quoth the waiter. “Any of them,” said Jacob, “Mr. Wiggins, Doctor White, or Captain Pole?” At this moment a carriage drove up to the door, and the bells all began ringing, and the waiters rah to see who had arrived, and Jacob Philpot was left unheeded.—“This is very strange conduct!” observed he; “I never met with such incivility in my life! One would think I was a dog!” Jacob walked into the open air to cool himself, and strolled round the garden of the inn, till the calls of hunger forced him to return to the house, where the odour of delicate viands was quite provoking; so he followed the guidance of his nose, and arrived in the large dining-room, where he found, to his great surprise and mortification, that the company were assembled, and the work of destruction had been going on for some time, as the second course had just been placed on the table. Jacob felt that the neglect with which he had been treated was “enough to make a parson swear;” and perhaps he would have sworn, but that he had no time to spare and, therefore, as all the seats at the upper end of the table were engaged, he deposited himself on a vacant chair about the centre, between two gentlemen with whom he had no acquaintance, and, spreading his napkin on his lap, demanded of a waiter what fish had gone out. The man replied only by a stare and a smile, a line of conduct which was by no means surprising, seeing that the most stylish part of Philpot’s dress was, without dispute, the napkin aforesaid. “What’s the fellow gaping at?” cried Jacob, in an angry voice; “go and tell your master I want to speak to him directly. I don’t understand such treatment. Tell him to come immediately! Do you hear?” The loud tone in which this was spoken aroused the attention of the company; and most of them cast a look of inquiry, first at the speaker, and then round at the table, as if to discern by whom the strange gentleman in the scarlet and yellow plush waistcoat and the dirty shirt might be patronized but there were others who recognized the landlord of the Red Lion at Stockwell. The whole, however, were somewhat startled when he addressed them as follows:—“Really, gentlemen, I must say, that a joke may be carried too far; and, if it was not for my cloth (here he handled the napkin), I declare I don’t know how I might act. Mr. Chairman, we have known each other now for a good many years, and you must be convinced that I can take a joke as well as any man; but human nature can endure this no longer. Mr. Wiggins! Captain Pole! my good friend Doctor White! I appeal to you.” Here the gentlemen named looked especially astounded. “What! can it be possible that you haveallagreed to cut me! Oh, no! I will not believe that political differences of opinion can runquiteso high. Come—let us have no more of this nonsense!”—No, no, we’ve had quite enough of it,” said the landlord of the Old Boar, pulling the chair from beneath the last speaker, who was consequently obliged again to be upon his legs, while there came, from various parts of the table, cries of “Chair! chair! Turn him out!”—“Man!” roared the teetotum par-soned landlord of the Red Lion, to the landlord of the Old Boar, “Man! you shall repent of this! If it wasn’t for my cloth, I’d soon-”— “Come, give me the cloth!” said the other, snatching away the napkin, which Jacob had buttoned in his waistcoat, and thereby causing that garment to fly open and expose more of dirty linen and skin than is usually sported at a dinner party. Poor Philpot’s rage had now reached its acme, and he again appealed to the chairman by name. “Colonel Martain!” said he, “can you sit by and see me used thus? I am sure that you will not pretend that you don’t know me!”—“Not I,” replied the chairman; I know you well enough, and a confounded impudent fellow you are. I’ll tell you what, my lad, next time you apply for a license, you shall hear of this.” The landlord of the Old Boar was, withal, a kind-hearted man; and, as he knew that the loss of its license would be ruin to the rampant Red Lion and all concerned therewith, he was determined that poor Philpot should be saved from destruction in spite of his teeth; therefore, without further ceremony, he, being a muscular man, laid violent hands upon the said Jacob, and, with the assistance of his waiters conveyed him out of the room, in despite of much struggling, and sundry interjections concerning his “cloth.” When they had deposited him safely in an armchair in “the bar,” the landlady, who had frequently seen him before, in his proper character, that of a civil man, who “knew his place” in society, very kindly offered him a cup of tea; and the landlord asked how he could think of making such a fool of himself; and the waiter, whom he had accosted on first entering the house, vouched for his not having had any thing to eat or drink; whereupon they spoke of the remains of a turbot, which had just come down stairs, and a haunch of venison that was to follow. It is a sad thing to have a mind and body that are no match for each other. Jacob’s outward man would have been highly gratified at the exhibition of these things; but the spirit of the parson was too mighty within, and spurned every offer, and the body was compelled to obey. So the horse that was borrowed of the squire was ordered out, and Jacob Philpot mounted and rode on his way in excessive irritation, growling vehemently at the insult and indignity which had been committed against the “cloth” in general, and his own person in particular.
“The sun sunk beneath the horizon,” as novelists say, when Jacob Philpot entered the village of Stockwell, and, as if waking from a dream, he suddenly started, and was much surprised to find himself on horseback, for the last thing that he recollected was going up stairs at his own house, and composing himself for a nap, that he might be ready to join neighbour Scroggins and Dick Smith, when they came in the evening to drink the gallon of ale lost by the latter. “And, my eyes!” said he, “if I haven’t got the squire’s horse that the parson borrowed this morning. Well—it’s very odd! however, the ride has done me a deal of good, for I feel as if I hadn’t any thing all day, and yet I did pretty well too at the leg of mutton at dinner.” Mrs. Philpot received her lord and nominal master in no very gracious mood, and said she should like to know where he had been riding. “That’s more than I can tell you,” replied Jacob; “however, I know I’m as hungry as a greyhound, though I never made a better dinner in my life.”—“More shame for you,” said Mrs. Philpot; “I wish the Old Boar was a thousand miles off.”—“What’s the woman talking about?” quoth Jacob. “Eh! what! at it again, I suppose,” and he pointed to the closet containing the rum bottle. “Hush!” cried Mrs. Philpot, “here’s the parson coming down stairs!”—“The parson!” exclaimed Jacob; what’s he been doing up stairs, I should like to know?”—“He has been to take a nap on mistress’s bed,” said Sally.—“The dickens he has! This is a pretty story,” quoth Jacob. “How could I help it?” asked Mrs. Philpot; “you should stay at home and look after your own business, and not go ramshackling about the country. You shan’t hear the last of the Old Boar just yet I promise you.” To avoid the threatened storm, and satisfy the calls of hunger, Jacob made off to the larder, and commenced an attack upon the leg of mutton.
At this moment the Reverend Mr. Stanhope opened the little door at the foot of the stairs—On waking, and finding himself upon a bed, he concluded that he must have fainted in consequence of the agitation of mind produced by the gross insults which he had suffered, or perhaps from the effects of hunger. Great, therefore, was his surprise to find himself at the Red Lion in his own parish; and the first questions he asked of Mrs. Philpot were, how and when he had been brought there. “La, Sir!” said the landlady, “you went up stairs of your own accord, after you were tired of smoking under the tree.”—“Smoking under the tree, woman!” exclaimed Mr. Stanhope; “what are you talking about? Do you recollect whom you are speaking to?”—“Ay, marry, do I,” replied the sensitive Mrs. Philpot; “and you told Sally to call you when Scroggins and Smith came for their gallon of ale, as you meant to join their party.”
The Reverend Mr. Stanhope straightway took up his hat, put it upon his head, and stalked with indignant dignity out of the house, opining that the poor woman was in her cups; and meditated as he walked home, on the extraordinary affairs of the day. But his troubles were not yet ended, for the report of his public jollification had reached his own household; and John, his trusty man-servant, had been dispatched to the Red Lion, and had ascertained that his master was really gone to bed in a state very unfit for a clergyman to be seen in. Some remarkably good-natured friends had been to condole with Mrs. Stanhope upon the extraordinary proceedings of her good man, and to say how much they were shocked, and what a pity it was, and wondering what the bishop would think of it, and divers other equally amiable and consolatory reflections and notes of admiration.—Now Mrs. Stanhope, though she had much of the “milk of human kindness” in her composition, had, withal, a sufficient portion of “tartaric acid” mingled therewith. Therefore, when her beer-drinking husband made his appearance, he found her in a state of effervescence. “Mary,” said he “I am extremely fatigued. I have been exposed to-day to a series of insults, such as I could not have imagined it possible for any one to offer me.”
“Nor any body else,” replied Mrs. Stanhope; “but you are rightly served, and I am glad of it. Who could have supposed that you, the minister of a parish?—Faugh! how filthily you smell of tobacco! I vow I cannot endure to be in the room with you!” and she arose and left the divine to himself, in exceeding great perplexity. However, being a man who loved to do all things in order, he remembered that he had not dined, so he rang the bell and gave the needful instructions, thinking it best to satisfy nature first, andthenendeavour to ascertain the cause of his beloved Mary’s acidity. His appetite was gone but that he attributed to having fasted too long, a practice very unusual with him; however, he picked a bit here and there, and then indulged himself with a bottle of his oldest port, which he had about half consumed, and somewhat recovered his spirits, ere his dear Mary made her re-appearance, and told him that she was perfectly astonished at his conduct.—And well might she say so, fornowthe wine, which he had been drinking with unusual rapidity, thinking, good easy man, that he had taken nothing all day, began to have a very visible effect upon a body already saturated with strong ale. He declared that he cared not a fig for the good opinion of any gentleman in the county; that he would always act and speak according to his principles, and filled a bumper to the health of the Lord Chancellor, and drank sundry more exceedingly loyal toasts; and told his astonished spouse, that he should not be surprised if he was very soon to be made a dean or a bishop; and as for the people at the Old Boar, he saw through their conduct—it was all envy, which doth “merit as its shade pursue.” The good lady justly deemed it folly to waste her oratory upon a man in such a state, and reserved her powers for the next morning; and Mr. Stanhope reeled to bed that night in a condition which to do him justice, he had never before exhibited under his own roof.
The next morning, Mrs. Stanhope and her daughter Sophy, a promising young lady about ten years old, of the hoyden class, were at breakfast, when the elderly stranger called at the rectory, and expressed great concern on being told that Mr. S. was somewhat indisposed, and had not yet made his appearance. He said that his business was of very little importance, and merely concerned some geological inquiries, which he was prosecuting in the vicinity; but Mrs. Stanhope, who had the names of all the ologies by heart, and loved occasionally to talk thereof, persuaded him to wait a short time, little dreaming of the consequence; for the wily old gentleman began to romp with Miss Sophy, and, after a while, produced his teetotum, and, in short, so contrived it, that the mother and daughter played together therewith for five minutes. He then politely took his leave, promising to call again; and Mrs. Stanhope bobbed him a curtsey, and Sophia assured him that Mr. S. would be extremely happy to afford him every assistance in his scientific researches. When the worthy divine at length made his appearance in the breakfast parlour, strangely puzzled as to the extreme feverishness and langour which oppressed him, he found Sophy sitting gravely in an arm-chair, reading a treatise on craniology. It was a pleasant thing for him to see her read any thing; but he could not help expressing his surprise, by observing, “I should think that book a little above your comprehension, my dear.”—“Indeed! Sir,” was the reply; and the little girl laid down the volume, and sat erect in her chair, and thus continued:—“I should think, Mr. Nicodemus Stanhope, that after the specimen of good sense and propriety of conduct which you were pleased to exhibit yesterday, it scarcely becomesyouto pretend to estimate thecomprehensionof others.”—“My dear,” said the astonished divine, “this is very strange language! You forget whom you are speaking to!”—“Not at all,” replied the child. “I knowmyplace, if you don’t know yours, and am determined to speak my mind.” If anything could add to the Reverend Mr. Nicodemus Stanhope’s surprise, it was the sound of his wife’s voice in the garden, calling to his man John to stand out of the way, or she should run over him. Poor John, who was tying up some of her favourite flowers, got out of her way accordingly in quick time, and the next moment his mistress rushed by, trundling a hoop, hallooing and laughing, and highly enjoying his apparent dismay. Throughout that day, it may be imagined that the reverend gentleman’s philosophy was sorely tried; and we are compelled, by want of room, to leave the particulars of his botheration to the reader’s imagination.
We are sorry to say that these were not the only metamorphoses which the mischievous old gentleman wrought in the village of Stockwell.
There was a game of teetotum played between a sergeant of dragoons, who had retired upon his well-earned pension, and a baker, who happened likewise to be the renter of a small patch of land adjoining the village. The veteran, with that indistinctness of character before mentioned, shouldered the peel, * and took it to the field, and used it for loading and spreading manure, so that it was never afterwards fit for any but dirty work. Then, just to show that he was not afraid of any body, he cut a gap in the hedge of a small field of wheat which had just been reaped, and was standing in sheaves, and thereby gave admittance to a neighbouring bull, who amused himself greatly by tossing the said sheaves; but more particularly those which were set apart as tythes, against which he appeared to have a particular spite, throwing them high into the air, and then bellowing and treading them under foot. But—we must come to a close. Suffice it to say, that the village of Stockwell was long in a state of confusion in consequence of these games; for the mischief which was done during the period of delusion, ended not, like the delusion itself, with the rising or setting of the sun.
* “Peel—A broad, thin board, with a longhandle, used bybakers to put their bread in and out of the oven.”—Johnson.
Having now related as many particulars of these strange occurrences as our limits will permit, we have merely to state the effects which they produced upon ourselves. Whenever we have since beheld servants aping the conduct of their masters or mistresses, tradesmen wasting their time and money at taverns, clergymen forgetful of the dignity and sacred character of their profession, publicans imagining themselves fit for preachers, children calling their parents to account for their conduct, matrons acting the hoyden, and other incongruities—whenever we witness these and the like occurrences, we conclude that the actors therein have been playing a game with the Old Gentleman’s Teetotum.
168m
Oh, Laura! such a charming party!You’ve missed our pic-nic, foolish girl;I do assure you from my heart,I Hate you, now you’re Mrs. Searle.You know I dote upon the river—‘Twas settled we should row to Kew;And though the cold did make us shiver,In England that’s not very new.But I should tell you that our numberWas rather more than you would like;For Ma would ask that living lumber,That dull, but worthy, Mrs. Pike:Thensheinsisted that her daughterCould not, for worlds, be left behind;The poor girl screamed so, on the water—I wonder mothers are so blind!We’d Clara Smith, and Major Morris,Besides Sir John, and Lady Gann—Their nephew too—his name is Horace—A well-bred, clever, tall young man:Papa, Mamma, and all my brothers—Sophia, Kate, Georgina, and me;I have not time to name the others,Except your old flame, Dr. Lea.The whole arrangement was quite charming;Miss Smith, though, is a shocking flirt;Her conduct really was alarming—Her Mamma is so very pert.The men all chose to praise her singing!But one’s so sick of “Home, sweet Home!”And “Hark, the Village Bells are ringing!”Is duller than the Pope of Rome.Then her “La ci darem la mano,”Was murdered by poor Major M.;She whispered him, in vain, “piano!”That little man is quite a gem—I mean to those who’re fond of quizzing,Which you and I, of course, are not;He looks like soda-water, fizzing,Or like a mutton-chop when hot.The doctor offered to be funny—That is, to sing a comic song;But what it was, for love or money,I cannot tell—it was so long.He gave us too, a “recitation”—To me a most enormous bore;My brother muttered, “botheration!”My father wished him at the Nore.We all had clubbed to take provision,And meant to dine in some one’s field;Old Pike opposed this said decision—His wife, however, made him yield.But when, at last, we’d fairly landed,And spread our cloth upon the ground,(If you won’t laugh, I will be candid),We found our dinner almost drowned!Champagne and claret—every bottleHad cracked, and deluged fowls and hamBut yet it had not spoiled the “tottle”—There still was pigeon-pie and lamb.With cider, porter, port and sherry,We managed vastly well to dine:In spite of all, we were so merry—But still the weather was not fine.In fact, before we finished dinner,There was a kind of Scottish mist;And had our dresses been much thinner,It might have made us somewhat triste.But good stout silk is now the fashion—My green one, though, was sadly spoiled;Mamma flew into such a passion!I could not help its being soiled.We owe, however, to the showerAn unexpected source of mirth;For, when the sky began to pour,The men proposed a snugger berth:Instead of getting wet by rowing,They voted to return by land;We all agreed, without well knowingHow we should ever reach the Strand.Just while we wisely were debating,An Omnibus appeared in sight,Which quickly settled all our prating,And very much to my delight:Yet this machine could scarcely carryThe whole of four-and-twenty friends;But, as it would not do to tarry,We popped in all the odds and ends.Such an odd, facetious journey!We went so fast—‘twas Jike a dream!The coachman, quite another Gurney,Only without that worthy’s steam.In short, the whole was most delightful—We wanted nothing, dear, but you;And now, my paper being quite full,I’ll only add—adieu!—adieu!
[Monthly Magazine.]
175m
There the new-breeched urchin stands on the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, baited with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a yarn-thread, for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut, his rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will he stand during all his play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soul engrossing hope of some time or other catching a minow or a beardie!
178m
A tug—a tug! with face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull away at the monster—and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans on the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, and sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his small fishy-fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up stairs and down stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the thumbnail, that scooped the pin out of the baggy’s maw—and at night, “cabin’d, cribb’d, confined,” he is overheard murmuring in his sleep, a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams!
From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality—an art—a science—of which the flaxen headed school-boy feels himself to be master—a mystery in which he has been initiated, and off he goes now, all alone, in the power of successful passion, to the distant brook—brook a mile off—with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, between him and the house in which he is boarded or was born! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy shallows—there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree’d waterfall. The sacred water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. And oh! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yellowing along the braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of sunshine! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod, in two pieces—yes, his line is of hair twisted—platted by his own soon instructed little fingers. By heavens, he is fishing with the fly! and the Fates, who, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, ungrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon the padler in the brook, winnowing the air with their wings into western breezes, while at the very first throw, the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstacy of a new life expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden brightens up the sky.Fortuna favet fortibus—and with one long pull, and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelve incher on the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where such an exploit was possible, and dashing upon him like an Osprey, soars up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries off to a spot of safety, twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with unfrequent and feeble motions, bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzlingly; but now the radiance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow sailing mass of clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine.
Springs, summers, autumns, winters,—each within itself longer, by many times longer than the whole year of grown up life, that slips at last through one’s fingers like a knotless thread,—pass over the curled darling’s brow, and look at him now, a straight and strengthy stripling, in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after rock-ledge, nor heeding aught as he splashes knee-deep, or waist-band high, through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious music of his running and ringing reel after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white breakers of the sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown rod of ash framed by village wright, is now in his practised hands, of which the very left is dexterous: but a twenty feet rod of Phin’s, all ring-rustling, and a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the attenuating line itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant’s proboscis—the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw, from butt to fly, a faultless taper, “fine by degrees, and beautifully less.” the beau ideal of a rod by the skill of a cunning craftsman to the senses materialised! A fish-fat, fair, and forty! “She is a salmon, therefore to be woo’d—she is a salmon, therefore to be won”—but shy, timid, capricious, headstrong, now wrathful, and now full of fear, like any other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last, and then with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead, or worse than dead, fast-fading and to be reillumined no more the lustre of her beauty, insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perishable things in a world of perishing!—But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam, like a bar of silver bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the water-fall! Give her the butt—give her the butt—or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep! Now comes the trial of your tackle—and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards—right up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very course where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and deep—and the line goes, steady, boys, steady—stiff and steady as a Tory in the roar of opposition. There is yet an hour’s play in her dorsal fin—danger in the flap of her tail—and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or obstruction—the course is clear—no tree-roots here—no floating branches, for during the night they have all been swept down to the salt loch—in medio tutissimus ibis—ay, now you feel she begins to fail—the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of the Perpetual Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook—you in the tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?—Ha! Watty Richie, my man, is that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council. Curse that colley! Ay! well done Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks—if that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight up tail, come bellowing by between me and the river, then, “Madam! all is lost, except honour!” If we lose this Fish at six o’clock, then suicide at seven. Our will is made—ten thousand to the Foundling—ditto to the Thames Tunnel-ha—ha—my beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver side languidly lying afloat on the foam, as if all farther resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself to death No faith in female—she trusts to the last trial of her tail—sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle spinning sleep’st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy planet.
Scrope—Bainbridge—Maule—princes among Anglers—oh! that you were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious sympathy—far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing the noblest Fish, whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Givan! Alas! alas! Poor Sandy—why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!—Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she saüs, sick and slow, and almost with a swirl—whitening as she nears the sand—there she has it—struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or Venus—fair as the shoulder of our own beloved, and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demi-god angling before the Flood!
“The child is father of the man,And I would wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety!”
So much for the Angler. The Shooter again, he begins with his pop or pipe gun, formed of the last year’s growth of a branch of the plane-tree—the beautiful dark-green-leaved and fragrant-flowered plane-tree, that stands straight in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in sheltered inland vale, still loving the roof of the fisherman’s or peasant’s cottage.
Then comes, perhaps, the city popgun, in shape like a very musket, such as soldiers bear—a Christmas present from parent—once a Colonel of volunteers—nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, formidable to face and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hinder end of play-mate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such ineffectual trigger—and his soul, as well as his hair, is set on fire by that extraordinary compound—Gunpowder. He begins with burning off his eyebrows on the King’s birth-day—squibs and crackers follow—and all the pleasures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let off a gun—“and follows to the field some warlike lord”—in hopes of being allowed to discharge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking among the trees. This is his first practice in fire-arms, and from that hour he is—a Shooter.
Then there is in most rural parishes—and of rural parishes alone do we condescend to speak—a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver on the butt—perhaps one that originally served in the Scots Greys. It is bought, or borrowed, by the young shooter, who begins firing, first at barn doors, then at trees, and then at living things—a strange cur, who, from his lolling tongue, may be supposed to have the hydrophobia—a cat that has purred herself asleep on the sunny church-yard wall, or is watching mice at their hole-mouths among the graves—a water-rat in the mill-lead—or weasel that, running to his retreat in the wall, always turns round to look at you—a goose wandered from his common in disappointed love—or brown duck, easily mistaken by the unscrupulous for a wild one, in pond, remote from human dwelling, or on meadow by the river side, away from the clack of the muter mill. The corby crow, too, shouted out of his nest on some tree lower than usual, is a good flying mark to the more advanced class, or morning magpie, a-chatter at skreigh of day close to the cottage door among the chickens, or a flock of pigeons wheeling over head on the stubble-field, or sitting so thick together that every stook is blue with tempting plumage.
But the pistol is discharged for a fowling piece—brown and rusty, with a slight crack, probably in the muzzle, and a lock, out of all proportion, to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at half-pennies thrown up into the air—and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent dent in copper metal; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming swallow, a household bird, and therefore to be held sacred, but shot at on the excuse of its being next to impossible to hit him, an opinion strengthened into belief by several summers’ practice. But the small brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the many holed red sand bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game—and still more, the long-winged legless black devilet, that, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise again and therefore screams wheeling round the corners and battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of cannon-shot, gambols in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle’s flight. It seems to boyish eyes, that the creatures near the earth, when but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wall-flowers growing on the coign of vantage—the signal is given to fire, but the devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips with a shrill cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground but a tiny bit of mossy mortar, inhabited by a spider!
But the Day of Days arrives at last, when the school-boy—or rather the college boy returning to his rural vacation—for in Scotland, college winters tread close—too close—on the heels of academies—has a gun—a gun in a case—a double barrel too—of his own—and is provided with a license—probably without any other qualification than that of hit or miss. On some portentous morning he effulges with the sun, in velveteen jacket and breeches of the same—many-buttoned gaiters, and an unkerchiefed throat. Tis the fourteenth of September, and lo! a pointer at his heels—Ponto of course—a game bag like a beggar’s wallet by his side—destined to be at eve as full of charity—and all the paraphernalia of an accomplished sportsman. Proud, were she to see the sight, would be the mother that bore him the heart of that old sportsman, his daddy, would leap for joy! The chained mastiff in the yard yowls his admiration, the servant lassies uplift the pane of their garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in their rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab Roger, who has been cleaning out the barn, comes forth to partake of the caulker, and away go the footsteps of the old poacher and his pupil through the autumnal rime, off to the uplands, where—for it is one of the earliest of harvests, there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The turnip-fields are bright green with hope and expectation—and coveys are couching on lazy beds beneath the potatoe shaw. Every high hedge, ditch-guarded on either side, shelters its own brood—imagination hears the whirr shaking the dew-drops from the broom on the brae—and first one bird and then another, and then the remaining number, in itself no contemptible covey, seems to fancy’s ear to spring single, or in clouds, from the coppice brushwood, with here and there an intercepting standard tree.
Poor Ponto is much to be pitied.—Either having a cold in his nose, or having ante-breakfasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a badger; and, every other field, he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his points, inclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between those inexorable knees; out comes the speck and span new dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised infants to their breasts; and the schoolmaster, fastening a knowing eye on dunce and ne’er-do-well, holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the tawse. Frequent flogging will cow the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. Ponto travels now in fear and trembling, but a few yards from his tyrant’s feet, till, rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smelling strongly, he draws slowly and beautifully, and