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TEIE CBIIFFONIER.
Pictures from Italy.

PICTURES FROM ITALY.
A MEERICAN NOTES
FOR,
(SENERAL CIRCULATION.
By CHARLES DICKENS.
WITH |LLUSTRATIONS.
NEW YORK :
R. WORTHINGTON, PUBLISHER.
1884.
CONTENTS.
PICTURES FROM ITALY.
THE READER's PASSPORT e ſº
GOING THROUGH FRANCE . º e
LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF AVIGNON º
AVIGNON TO GENOA . * e tº ,-
GENOA AND ITS NEIGEIBOUREIOOD §
TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA e
TEIROU GEI BOLOGNA AND FERRARA
AN ITALIAN DREAM
BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE
SWITZERLAND . e w de
TO ROME BY RISA AND SIENA . e
ROME g tº e * * e
A RAPID DIORAMA-
TO NAPLES e * g e
NAPLES g º wº &
POMPEII—IIERCULANEUM tº &
PAESTUM g e ſº e
PASS OF TEIE
SIMPLON
PAGE
... 1
tº 4
. 12
e 21
. 27
* 59
(39
75
INTO
84
... 100
. 114
& 161
. 167
e 169
. 171
iv CONTENTS,
. PAGE
A RAPID DIORAMA (continued)—
VESUVIUS sº • * * e º g gº tº . 173
RETURN To NAPLES e tº e e iº ſº ge . 177
MONTE CASINO . e tº tº * e e º 181
FLORENCE . e * e G • © & © . 183
AMERICAN NOTES.
CHAPTER
I. GOING AWAY dº § © ge o e gº wº . 193
II. THE PASSAGE OUT . © ſº wº e ſº • • 202
III. BOSTON & tº e & e * e © & . 217
IV. AN AMERICAN RAILROAD.—LoweLL AND ITS FACTORY systEM . 256
v. worcester—the connecticut RIVER, -E[ARTFORD.—NEW EIAVEN.
—TO NEW YORK . § e • • º tº gº 266
VI. NEW YORK * º tº g * tº te iº . 276
VII. PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS solitaRY PRISON . & 8 & . 295
VIII. WASHINGTON.—THE LEGISLATURE. –AND THE PRESIDENT's Hous E . 311
IX. A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER.—VIRGINIA ROAD, AND A
BLACK DRIVER, -RICEIMOND. —BALTIMORE. —TEIE #ARRISBURG
MAIL, AND A GLIMPSE OF THE CITY. —A CANAL BOAT . . 328
sº
x. somE FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS DOMESTIC ECONOMY,
AND ITS PASSENGERS.—JOURNEY TO T21TTSBURG ACROSS TEIE ALLE-
GEIANY MOUNTAINS.–PITTSBURG g e tº p * * * . 346
CONTENTS. W.
CFIAPTER PAGE
XI. FROM PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAMBOAT.—
YII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
CINCINNATI & . . e tº & tº e 357
FROM CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE IN ANOTHER WESTERN STEAMBOAT;
AND FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS IN-ANOTHER.—ST. LOUIS . 367
A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK e º 379
RETURN TO CINCINNATI. —A STAGE-CO ACFI RIDE FROM TEIAT CITY TO
COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO SANDUSKY. —So, BY LAKE ERIE, TO THE
FALLS OF NIAGARA . ë & * ge & te . 388
IN CANADA; TORONTO; KINGSTON; MONTREAL; QUEBEC; ST.
JoEIN'S.–IN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN : LEBANON; THE SHAKER
VILLAGE, AND WEST POINT º * . . º . 406
TEIE PASSAGE EIOME e * e wº * - dº wº 425
SLAVERY e g gº * ſº © tº sº . 434
CONCLUDING REMARKS . e e ſe g º © 451
PICTURES FROM ITALY.
THE READER'S PASSPORT.
F the readers of this volume will be so kind as to take
their credentials for the different places which are the
subject of its author’s reminiscences, from the Author
himself, perhaps they may visit them, in fancy, the
more agreeably, and with a better understanding of
what they are to expect.
Many books have been written upon, Italy, affording
many means of studying the history of that interesting
country, and the innumerable associations entwined
about it. I make but little reference to that stock of in-
formation ; not at all regarding it as a necessary conse-
quence of my having had recourse to the storehouse for
my own benefit, that I should reproduce its easily ac-
cessible contents before the eyes of my readers.
Neither will there be found, in these pages, any grave
examination into the government or misgovernment of
any portion of the country. No visitor of that beautiful
land can fail to have a strong conviction on the subject;
but as I chose when residing there, a Foreigner, to ab-
stain from the discussion of any such questions with
any order of Italians, so I would rather not enter on the
inquiry now. During my twelve months occupation of
a house at Genoa, I never found that authorities consti-
, tutionally jealous, were distrustful of me; and I should
be sorry to give them occasion to regret their free cour-
tesy, either to myself or any of my countrymen.
There is, probably, not a famous Picture or Statue in
all Italy but could be easily buried under a mountain
of printed paper devoted to dissertations on it. I do not,
therefore, though an earnest admirer of Painting and
Sculpture, expatiate at any length on famous Pictures
and Statues.
VOIL. I, 1
2 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
This Book is a series of faint reflections—mere shad-
ows in the water—of places to which the imaginations
of most people are attracted in a greater or less degree,
on which mine had dwelt for years, and which have
some interest for all. The greater part of the descrip-
tions were written on the spot, and sent home, from
time to time, in private letters. I do not mention the
circumstance as an excuse for any defects they may
present, for it would be none ; but as a guarantee to
the Reader that they were at least penned in the fulness
of the subject, and with the liveliest impressions of
novelty and freshness. -
If they have ever a fanciful and idle air, perhaps the
reader will suppose them written in the shade of a
Sunny Day, in the midst of the objects of which they
treat, and will like them none the worse for having
such influences of the country upon them.
I hope I am not likely to be misunderstood by Profes-
sors of the Roman Catholic faith, on account of any-
thing contained in these pages. I have done my best,
in one of my former productions, to do justice to them ;
and I trust, in this, they will do justice to me. When I
mention any exhibition that impressed me as absurd or
disagreeable, I do not seek to connect it, or recognise it
as necessarily connected with, any essentials of their
creed. When I treat of the ceremonies of the Holy
Week, I merely treat of their effect, and do not chal-
lenge the good and learned Dr. Wiseman’s interpreta-
tion of their meaning. When I hint a dislike of nun-
neries for young girls who abjure the world before they
have ever proved or known it ; or doubt the ea:-officio
sanctity of all Priests and Friars; I do no more than
many conscientious Catholics both abroad and at home.
I have likened these Pictures to shadows in the water,
and would fain hope that I have, nowhere, stirred the
water so roughly, as to mar the shadows. I could never
desire to be on better terms with all my friends than now,
when distant mountains rise, Once more, in my path,
For I need not hesitate to avow, that, bent on correcting
a brief mistake I made, not long ago, in disturbing the
old relations between myself and my readers, and de-
parting for a moment from my old pursuits, I am about
to resume them, joyfully, in Switzerland : where, dur-
ing another year of absence, I can at once work out the
THE READER'S PASSPORT. 3
themes I have now in my mind, without interruption ;
and, while I keep my English audience within speaking
distance, extend my knowledge of a noble country, in-
expressibly attractive to me.*
This book is made as accessible as possible, because it
would be a great pleasure to me if I could hope, through
its means, to compare impressions with some among the
multitudes who will hereafter visit the scenes described
with interest and delight.
And I have only now, in passport wise, to sketch m
reader’s portrait, which I hope may be thus supposi-
tiously traced for either sex :
Complexion gº e . Fair. -
Eyes . . te º . . Very cheerful.
Nose . . tº * . Not supercilious.
Mouth . & tº . . Smiling.
Visage & * e . Beaming.
General Expression . . Extremely agreeable.
* This was written in 1846.
GOING THROUGH FRANCE.
N a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time and
weather of eighteen hundred and forty-four, it was,
my good friend, when—don’t be alarmed ; not when two
travellers might have been observed slowly making their
way over that picturesque and broken ground by which
the first chapter of a Middle Aged novel is usually at-
tained—but when an English travelling carriage of con-
siderable proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the
Pantechnicon near Belgrave-square, London, was Ob-
served (by a very small French soldier ; for I saw him
look at it) to issue from the gate of the Hotel Meurice in
the Rue Rivoli at Paris.
I am no more bound to explain why the English fam-
ily travelling by this carriage, inside and out, should be
starting for Italy on a Sunday morning, of all good days
in the week, than I am to assign a reason for all the
little men in France being soldiers, and all the big men
postilions: which is the invariable rule. But, they had
some sort of reason for what they did, I have no doubt ;
and their reason for being there at all, was, as you know,
that they were going to live in fair Genoa for a year;
and that the head of the family purposed, in that space
of time, to stroll about, wherever his restless humour
carried him.
And it would have been small comfort to me to have
explained to the population of Paris generally, that I
was that Head and Chief ; and not the radiant embodi-
ment of good-humour who sat beside me in the person of .
a French Courier—best of servants and most beaming
of men Truth to say, he looked a great deal more
patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow of his portly pres-
ence, dwindled down to no account at all.
There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris
—as we rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the
Pont Neuf-to reproach us for our Sunday travelling. The
wine-shops (every second house) were driving a roaring
DEPARTURE FROM PARIS. 5
trade ; awnings were spreading, and chairs and tables
arranging, outside the cafés preparatory to the eating of
ices, and drinking of cool liquids, later in the day ; shoe-
blacks were busy on the bridges; shops were open ; carts
and waggons clattered to and fro; the narrow, up-hill,
funnel-like streets across the River, were so many dense
perspectives of crowd and bustle, parti-coloured might-
caps, tobacco-pipes, blouses, large boots, and shaggy
heads of hair ; nothing at that hour denoted a day of
rest, unless it were the appearance, here and there, of a
family pleasure-party, crammed into a bulky old lum-
bering cab ; or Some conternplative holiday-maker in the
freest and easiest dishabille, leaning Out of a low gar-
ret window, watching the drying of his newly polished
shoes on the little parapet outside (if a gentleman), or
the airing of her stockings in the sun (if a lady), with
calm anticipation. -
Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven
pavement which surrounds Paris, the first three days
of travelling towards Marseilles are quiet and monot-
omous enough. To Sens. To Avallon. To Chalons. A
sketch of one day’s proceedings is a sketch of all three;
and here it is. - - -
We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a
very long whip, and drives his team, something like the
Courier of Saint Petersburgh in the circle at Astley’s
or Franconi’s : only he sits his own horse instead of
standing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by
these postilions are sometimes a century or two old; and
are so ludicrously disproportionate to the wearer's foot,
that the spur, which is put where his own heel comes,
is generally halfway up the leg of the boots. The man
often comes out of the stable-yard, with his whip in his
hand and his shoes On, and brings out in both hands,
one boot at a time, which he plants on the ground by
the side of his horse, with great gravity, until every-
thing is ready. When it is—and Oh Heaven! the noise
they make about it !—he gets into the boots, shoes and
all, or is hoisted into them by a couple of friends; ad-
justs the rope-harness, embossed by the labours of in-
numerable pigeons in the stables; makes all the horses
kick and plunge ; cracks his whip like a madman ;
shouts “En route—Hi!” and away we go. He is sure
to have a contest with his horse before we have gone
6 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
very far; and then he calls him a Thief, and a Brigand,
and a Pig, and what not; and beats him about the head
as if he were made of wood.
There is little more than one variety in the appear-
ance of the country for the first two days. From a
dreary plain to an interminable avenue, and from an
interminable avenue to a dreary plain again. Plenty of
vines there are, in the open fields, but of a short low
kind, and not trained in festoons, but about straight
sticks. Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere ;
but an extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer
children than I ever encountered. I don’t believe we
saw a hundred children between Paris and Chalons.
Queer old towns, draw-bridged and walled ; with odd
little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as if the
wall had put a mask on, and were staring, down into the
moat ; other strange little towers, in gardens and fields,
and down lanes, and in farm-yards: all alone, and
always round, with a peaked roof, and never used for
any purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all sorts: some-
times an hôtel de ville, sometimes a guard-house, some-
times a dwelling-house, sometimes a château with a
rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and watched over by
extinguisher-topped turrets, and blink-eyed little case-
ments; are the standard objects, repeated over and over
again. Sometimes we pass a village inn, with a crumb-
ling wall belonging to it, and a perfect town of out-
houses: and painted over the gateway, “Stabling for
Sixty Horses; ” as, indeed there might be stabling for
sixty score, were there any horses to be stabled there,
or anybody resting there, or anything stirring about the
place but a dangling bush, indicative of the wine in-
side: which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy keeping
with everything else, and certainly is never in a green
old age, though always so old as to be dropping to
pieces. And all day long, strange little narrow wag-
gons, in Strings of six or eight, bringing cheese from
Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line,
Of One man or even boy—and he very often asleep in
the foremost cart—come jingling past : the horses
drowsily ringing the bells upon their harness, and look-
ing as if they thought (no doubt they do) their great
blue woolly furniture, of immense weight and thick-
ness with a pair of grotesque horns growing out of
TO CHALONS. 7.
the collar, very much too warm for the Midsummer
weather.
Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day;
with the dusty outsides in blue frocks, like butchers;
and the insides in white nightcaps; and its cabriolet
head on the roof, nodding and shaking, like an idiot’s
head and its Young-France passengers staring out of
window, with beards down to their waists, and blue
spectacles awfully shading their warlike eyes, and very
big sticks clenched in their National grasp. Also the
Malle Poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing
along at a real good dare-devil pace, and Out of sight in
no time. Steady old Curés come jolting past, now and
then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering
coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony
women daudle about in solitary places, holding cows by
ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing, or doing
field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing
real shepherdesses with their flocks—to obtain an ade-
quate idea of which pursuit and its followers in any
country, it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem,
or picture, and imagine to yourself whatever is most
exquisitely and widely unlike the descriptions therein
contained.
You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as
you generally do in the last stage of the day; and the
ninety-six bells upon the horses—twenty-four apiece—
have been ringing sleepily in your ears for half an hour
or so; and it has become a very jog-trot, monotonous,
tiresome sort of business; and you have been thinking
deeply about the dinner you will have at the next stage;
when, down at the end of the long avenue of trees
through which you are travelling, the first indication of
a town appears, in the shape of some Straggling cot-
tages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a
horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a
great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage
chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and
splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack,
crack, crack. Crack-crack-crack. Crick-crack. Crick-
crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi
En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars,
children; crack, crack, crack; helo! hola! charité pour
l'amour de Dieu! crick-crack-crick-crack; crick, crick,
S PICTURES FROM ITALY.
crick; bump, jolt, crack, bump, crick-crack; round the
corner, up the narrow street, down the paved hill on the
other side; in the gutter; bump, bump; jolt, jog, crick,
crick, crick; crack, crack, crack; into the shop-windows
on the left-hand side of the street, preliminary to a
sweeping turn into the wooden archway on the right;
rumble, rumble, rumble; clatter, clatter, clatter; crick,
crick, crick; and here we are in the yard of the Hôtel
de l’Ecu d’Or; used up, gone out, smoking, spent, ex-
hausted; but sometimes making a false Start unexpect-
º with nothing coming of it—like a firework to the
ast!
The landlady of the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is here; and
the landlord of the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is here; and the
femme de chambre of the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is here;
and a gentleman in a glazed gap, with a red beard like
a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hôtel de l’Ecu
d'Or, is here; and Monsieur le Curé is walking up and
down in a corner of the yard by himself, with a shovel
hat upon his head, and a black gown on his back, and
a book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other ; and
everybody, except Monsieur le Curé is open-mouthed
and open-eyed, for the opening of the carriage-door.
The landlord of the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or, dotes to that
extent upon the Courier, that he can hardly wait for
his coming down from the box, but embraces his very
legs and boot-heels as he descends. “My Courier! My
brave Courier! My friend! My brother!” The land-
lady loves him, the femme de chambre blesses him,
the garçon worships him. The Courier asks if his let-
ter has been received? It has, it has. Are the rooms
prepared? They are, they are. The best rooms for my
noble Courier. The rooms of state for my gallant Cou-
Tier; the whole house is at the service of my best of
friends! He keeps his hand upon the carriage-door,
and asks some other question to enhance the expecta-
tion. He carries a green leathern purse outside his
coat, suspended by a belt. The idlers look at it; one
touches it. It is full of five-franc pieces. Murmurs
of admiration are heard among the boys. The landlord
falls upon the Courier's neck, and folds him to his
breast. He is so much fatter than he was, he says! He
looks so rosy and so well !
The door is opened. Breathless expectation. The
TO CHALONS. Ø
lady of the family gets out. Ah, sweet lady! Beautiful
lady! The sister of the lady of the family gets out. Great
Heaven, Ma'amselle is charming! First little boy gets
out. Ah, what a beautiful little boy! First little girl gets
out. Ah, but this is an enchanting child! Second little girl
gets out. The landlady, yielding to the finest impulse
of our common nature, catches her up in her arms!
Second little boy gets out. Oh, the sweet boy! Oh, the
tender little family! The baby is handed out. Angelic
baby! The baby has topped everything. All the
rapture is expended on the baby! Then the two nurses
tumbled out; and the enthusiasm swelling into madness,
the whole family are swept up-stairs as on a cloud;
while the idlers press º the carriage, and look
into it, and walk round it, and touch it. For it is
something to touch a carriage that has held so many
people. It is a legacy to leave one’s children.
The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery
for the night, which is a great rambling chamber, with
four or five beds in it: through a dark passage, up two
steps, down four, past a pump, across a balcony, and
next door to the stable. The other sleeping apartments
are large and lofty; each with two small bedsteads,
tastefully hung, like the windows, with red and white
drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner is already
laid in it for three; and the napkins are folded in cocked-
hat fashion. The floors are of red tile. There are no
carpets, and not much furniture to speak of; but there
is abundance of looking-glass, and there are large vases
under glass shades, filled with artificial flowers; and
there are plenty of clocks. The whole party are in
motion. The brave Courier, in particular, is every-
where: looking after the beds, having wine poured
down his throat by his dear brother the landlord, and
picking up green cucumbers—always cucumbers;
Heaven knows where he gets them—with which he
walks about, one in each hand, like truncheons.
Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup; there
are very large loaves—one apiece; a fish; four dishes
afterwards; some poultry afterwards; a dessert after-
wards; and no lack of wine. There is not much in the
dishes; but they are very good, and always ready in-
stantly. When it is nearly dark, the brave Courier,
having eaten the two cucumbers, sliced up in the con-
10 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
tents of a pretty large decanter of oil, and another of
vinegar, emerges from his retreat below, and proposes
a visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns
down upon the courtyard of the inn. Off we go; and
very solemn and grand it is, in the dim light: so dim at
last, that the polite, old, lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has
a feeble little bit of candle in his hand, to grope among
the tombs with—and looks among the grim columns,
very like a lost ghost who is searching for his own.
Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior
servants of the inn are supping in the open air, at a
great table; the dish a stew of meat and vegetables,
smoking hot, and served in the iron caldron it was
boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and are
very merry; merrier than the gentleman with the red
beard, who is playing billiards in the light room on the
left of the yard, where shadows, with cues in their
hands, and cigars in their mouths, cross and recross the
window constantly. Still the thin Curé walks up and
down alone, with his book and umbrella. And there
he walks, and there the billiard-balls rattle, long after
we are fast asleep.
We are astir at six next morning. It is a delightful
day, shaming yesterday’s mud upon the carriage, if
anything could shame a carriage, in a land where car-
riages are never cleaned. Everybody is brisk ; and as
we finish breakfast, the horses come jingling into the
yard from the Post-house. Everything taken out of
the carriage is put back again. The brave Courier an-
nounces that all is ready, after walking into every
room, and looking all round it, to be certain that noth-
ing is left behind. Everybody gets in. Everybody
connected with the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is again en-
chanted. The brave Courier runs into the house for a
parcel.containing cold fowl, sliced ham, bread, and bis-
cuits, for lunch ; hands it into the coach ; and runs
back again.
What has ne got in his hand now P More cucum-
bers ? No. A long strip of paper. It’s the bill.
The brave Courier has two belts on, this morning :
One supporting the purse ; another, a mighty good sort
of leathern bottle, filled to the throat with the best
light Bordeaux wine in the house. He never pays the
bill till this bottle is full. Then he disputes it.
TO CHALONS. 11
He disputes it now, violently. He is still the land-
lord’s brother, but by another father or mother. He is
not so nearly related to him as he was last night. The
landlord scratches his head. The brave Courier points
to certain figures in the bill, and intimates that if they
remain there, the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is thenceforth and
for ever an hôtel de l’Ecu de cuivre. The landlord goes
into a little counting-house. The brave Courier fol-
lows, forces the bill and a pen into his hand, and talks
more rapidly than ever. The landlord takes the pen.
The Courier smiles. The landlord makes an alteration.
The Courier cuts a joke. The landlord is affectionate,
but not weakly so. He bears it like a man. He
shakes hands with his brave brother, but he don’t hug
him. Still he loves his brother ; for he knows that he
will be returning that way, one of these fine days, with
another family, and he foresees that his heart will
yearn towards him again. The brave Courier traverses
all round the carriage once, looks at the drag, inspects
the wheels, jumps up, gives the word, and away we go
It is market morning. The market is held in the lit-
tle square outside, in front of the cathedral. It is
crowded with men and women, in blue, in red, in green,
in white ; with canvassed stalls; and fluttering mer-
chandise. The country people are grouped about, with
their clean baskets before them. Here, the lace-sell-
ers; there, the butter and egg-sellers ; there, the fruit-
sellers; there, the shoe-makers. The whole place looks
as if it were the stage of some great theatre, and the
curtain had just run up for a picturesque ballet. And
there is the cathedral to boot : scene-like : all grim,
and Swarthy, and mouldering, and cold : just splashing
the pavement in One place with faint purple drops, as
the morning Sun, entering by a little window on the
eastern side, struggles through some stained glass
panes, on the western.
In five minutes we have passed the iron Cross, with a
little ragged kneeling-place of turf before it, in the
Outskirts of the town ; and are again upon the road.
LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN
OF AVIGNON.
•=s===ºm-
HALONS is a fair resting-place, in right of its good
inn on the bank of the river, and the little steam-
boats, gay with green and red paint, that come and go
upon it: which make up a pleasant and refreshing scene,
after the dusty roads. But, unless you would like to
dwell on an enormous plain, with jagged rows of irreg-
ular poplars on it, that look in the distance like so many
combs with broken teeth: and unless you would like to
pass your life without the possibility of going up-hill,
or going up anything but stairs: you would hardly ap-
prove of Chalons as a place of residence.
You would probably like it better, however, than
Lyons: which you may reach, if you will, in one of the
before-mentioned steam-boats, in eight hours.
What a city Lyons is! Talk about people feeling, at
certain unlucky times, as if they had tumbled from the
clouds! Here is a whole town that has tumbled, any-
how, Out of the sky; having been first caught up, like
other stones that tumble down from that region, out of
fens and barren places, dismal to behold! The two
great Streets through which the two great rivers dash,
and all the little streets whose name is Legion, were
Scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, high
and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as
thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city in,
these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling
Out of the windows, and drying their ragged clothes on
poles, and crawling in and out at the doors, and coming
Out to pant and gasp upon the pavement, and creeping
in and Out among huge piles and bales of fusty, musty,
stifling goods; and living, or rather not dying till their
time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every
manufacturing town, melted into one, would hardly
Convey an impression of Lyons as it presented itself
LY ONS. - 13
to me: for all the undrained, unscavengered qualities
of a foreign town, seemed grafted, there, upon the na-
tive miseries of a manufacturing one; and it bears such
fruit as I would go some miles Out of my way to avoid
encountering again.
In the cool of the evening: or rather in the faded heat
of the day: we went to see the Cathedral, where divers
old women, and a few dogs, were engaged in contem-
plation. There was no difference, in point of cleanli-
ness, between its stone pavement and that of the Streets;
and there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth
aboard ship, with a glass front to it, whom Madame
Tussaud would have nothing to say to, On any terms,
and which even Westminster Abbey might be ashamed
of. If you would know all about the architecture of
this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions, endow-
ments, and history, is it not written in Mr. Murray’s
Guide-Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks
to him, as I did!
For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the
curious clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a
small mistake I made, in connection with that piece of
mechanism. The keeper of the church was very anx-
ious it should be shown; partly for the honour of the es-
tablishment and the town; and partly, perhaps, because
of his deriving a percentage from the additional con-
sideration. However that may be, it was set in motion,
and thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and in-
numerable little figures staggered out of them, and
jerked themselves back again, with that special un-
steadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which
usually attaches to figures that are moved by clock-
work. Meanwhile, the Sacristan stood explaining these
Wonders, and pointing them out, severally, with a wand.
There was a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary; and
close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another
and a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sud-
den plunges I ever saw accomplished: instantly flop-
ping back again at sight of her, and banging his little
door, violently, after him. Taking this to be emblem-
atic of the victory over Sin and Death, and not at all
unwilling to show that I perfectly understood the sub-
ject, in anticipation of the showman, I rashly said,
“Aha! The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon
14 PICTURES FROM ITALY. }
disposed of.” “Pardon Monsieur,” said the Sacristan,
with a polite motion of his hand towards the little door,
as if introducing somebody—“The Angel Gabriel!”
Soon after day-break next morning, we were steam-
ing down the Arrowy Rhone, at the rate of twenty
miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel full of merchan-
dise, and with only three or four other passengers for
Our companions : among whom, the most remarkable
was a silly, old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasur-
ably-polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of red ribbon
hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it there, to
remind himself of something : as Tom Noddy, in the
farce, ties knots in his pocket-handkerchief.
For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills,
the first indications of the Alps, lowering in the dis-
tance. Now, we were rushing on beside them : some-
times close beside them : sometimes with an interven-
ing slope, covered with vineyards. Villages and Small
towns hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives
seen through the light open towers of their churches,
and clouds moving slowly on, upon the steep acclivity
behind them : ruined castles perched on every emi-
nence; and scattered houses in the clefts and gullies of
the hills; made it very beautiful. The great height of
these, too, making the buildings look so tiny, that they
had all the charm of elegant models ; their excessive
whiteness, as contrasted with the brown rocks, or the
Sombre, deep, dull, heavy green of the olive-tree ; and
the puny size, and little slow walk of the Lilliputian
men and women on the bank; made a charming pict-
ure. There were ferries out of number, too ; bridges;
the famous Pont d’Esprit, with I don’t know how many
arches; towns where memorable wines are made ; Val-
lence, where Napoleon studied ; and the noble river,
bringing at every winding turn, new beauties into
V16 W.
There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken
bridge of Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun,
yet with an under-dome-pie-crust, battlemented wall.
that never will be brown, though it baked for centuries.
The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets,
and the brilliant Oleander was in full bloom every-
where. The streets are old and very narrow, but toler-
ably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from
AVIGNON. 15
house to house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curi-
osities, ancient frames of carved wood, old chairs,
ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring daubs
of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very
quaint and lively. All this was much set off, too, by
the glimpses one caught, through a rusty gate standing
ajar, of quiet sleepy courtyards, having stately old
houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very like
one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The
three one-eyed Calenders might have knocked at any
one of those doors till the street rang again, and the
porter who persisted in asking questions—the man who
had the delicious purchases put into his basket in the
morning—might have opened it quite naturally.
After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see
the lions. Such a delicious breeze was blowing in from
the north as made the walk delightful: though the
pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and houses,
. far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfort-
a DIY.
We went, first of all up a rocky height, to the cathe-
dral: where Mass was performing to an auditory very
like that of Lyons, namely, several old women, a baby,
and a very self-possessed dog, who had marked out for
himself a little course or platform for exercise, begin-
ning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up and
down which constitutional walk he trotted, during the
Service, as methodically and calmly, as any old gentle-
man out of doors. It is a bare old church, and the
paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and
damp weather; but the sun was shining in splendidly,
through the red curtains of the windows, and glittering
on the altar furniture; and it looked as bright and cheer-
ful as need be.
Going apart, in this Church, to see Some painting
which was being executed in fresco by a French artist
and his pupil, I was led to observe more closely than I
might otherwise have done, a great number of votive
offerings with which the walls of the different chapels
were profusely hung. I will not say decorated, for they
were very roughly and comically got up: most likely
by poor sign-painters, who eke out their living in that
way. They were all little pictures: each representing
some sickness or calamity from which the person
16 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
placing it there had escaped, through the interposition
of his or her patron saint, or of the Madonna; and I
may refer to them as good specimens of the class gen-
erally. They are abundant in Italy.
In a grotesque squareness of outline and impossibil-
ity of perspective, they were not unlike the woodcuts
in old books; but they were oil-paintings, and the artist,
like a painter of the Primrose family, had aot been
Sparing of his colours. In One, a lady was having a
toe amputated—an operation which a saintly personage
had sailed into the room, upon a cloud, to superintend.
In another, a lady was lying in bed, tucked up very
tight and prim, and staring with much composure at
a tripod, with a slop-basin on it: the usual form of
Washing-stand, and the only piece of furniture, besides
the bedstead, in her chamber. One would never have
Supposed her to be labouring under any complaint, be-
yond the inconvenience of being miraculously wide
awake, if the painter had not hit upon the idea of put-
ting all her family on their knees in one corner, with
their legs sticking out behind them on the floor, like
boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue
divan, promised to restore the patient. In another case
a lady was in the very act of being run over, immedi-
ately outside the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte van.
But the Madonna was there again. Whether the su-
pernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay
griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don’t know;
but he was galloping away, ding-dong, without the Small-
est reverence or compunction. On every picture “Ex
Voto’’ was painted in yellow capitals in the sky.
Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan
Temples, and are evidently among the many compro-
mises made between the false religion and the true,
when the true was in its infancy, I could wish that all
the other compromises were as harmless. Gratitude and .
Devotion are Christian qualities; and a grateful, hum-
ble, Christian spirit may dictate the observance.
Hard by the cathedral, stands the ancient Palace of
the Popes, of which one portion is now a common jail,
and another a noisy barrack: while gloomy suites of
State apartments, shut up and dºei mock their own
old state and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings.
But we neither went there, to see state-rooms, nor sol-
AVIGNON, 1%
diers' quarters, nor a common jail, though we dropped
Some money into a prisoners’ box outside, whilst the
prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high
P. and watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins
of the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to
sit. -
A little, old, Swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing
black eyes, proof that the world hadn’t conjured down
the devil within her, though it had between sixty
and seventy years to do it in, came out of the Barrack
Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large
keys in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we
should go. How she told us, on the way, that she was
a Government Officer (comeierge du palais apostolique),
and had been, for I don’t know how many years; and
how she had shown these dungeons to princes; and
how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and
how she had resided in the palace from an infant, had
been born there, if I recollect right, I needn’t relate.
But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, emergetic she-
devil I never beheld. She was alight and flaming, all
the time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She
never spoke, without stopping expressly for the pur-
pose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms,
flung herself into attitudes, hammered against walls
with her keys, for mere emphasis; now whispered as if
the Inquisition were there still; now shrieked as if she
were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-
like way with her forefinger, when approaching the re-
mains of Some new horror—looking back and walking
Stealthily, and making horrid grimaces—that might
alone have qualified her to walk up and down a sick
man’s counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures,
through a whole fever.
Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle
soldiers, we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin
unlocked for our admission, and locked again behind
us: and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by
fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking
up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that
once communicated (or is said to have done SO) with
another castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close
to this court-yard, is a dungeon—we stood within it, in
another minute—in the dismal tower des oubliettes,
VOL. I. 2
ſº.
18 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron
chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut
out from the sky which now looks down into it. A few
steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners
of the Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours
after their capture, without food or drink, that their
constancy might be shaken, even before they were con-
fronted by their gloomy judges. The day has not got
in there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four
unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark;
still massively doored and fastened, as of old.
Goblin, looking back as I have described, went Softly
on, into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room:
once the chapel of the Holy Office. The place where
the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have
been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of
the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of
one of these Inquisition chambers! But it was, and
may be traced there yet.
High up in the jealous wall, are niches where the
faltering replies of the accused were heard and noted
down. Many of them had been brought out of the very
cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same
stone passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps.
I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place
inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and
lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key,
upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her.
I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining—a
rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof,
open at the top, to the bright day. I ask what it is.
She folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares. I ask
again. She glances round, to see that all the little com-
pany are there; sits down upon a mound of stones;
throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, “La
Salle de la Question!”
The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of
that shape to stifle the victim’s cries! Oh Goblin, Gob-
lin, let us think of this a while, in silence. Peace,
Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short
legs, upon that heap of stones, for Only five minutes,
and then flame out again.
Minutes! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace
clock, when, with her eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up,
AVIGNON. 19
in the middle of the chamber, describing, with her sun-
burnt arms, a wheel of heavy blows. Thus it ran round!
cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash An endless routine
of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the
sufferer’s limbs. See the stone trough! says Goblin.
For the water torture! Gurgle, Swill, bloat, burst, for
the Redeemer’s honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down
into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath
you draw! And when the executioner plucks it out,
reeking with the smaller mysteries of God’s own Image,
know us for his chosen servants, true believers. in the
Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of Him who never
did a miracle but to heal: who never struck a man with
palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, madness, any one
affliction of mankind; and never stretched His blessed
hand out, but to give relief and ease!
See cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There
they made the irons red-hot. Those holes supported the
sharp stake, on which the tortured persons hung poised:
dangling with their whole weight from the roof. “But;”
and Goblin whispers this ; “Monsieur has heard of this
tower P Yes | Let Monsieur look down, then l’’
A cold air, laden with an earthy Smell, falls upon the
face of Monsieur ; for she has opened, while speaking,
a trap-door in the wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward
to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep, dark, lofty
tower: very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Execu-
tioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her
head to look down also, flung those who were past all
further torturing, down here, “But look | does Mon-
sieur see the black stains on the wall P” A glance, over
his shoulder, at Goblin’s keen eye, shows Monsieur—
and would without the aid of the directing-key—where
they are. “What are they P’’ ‘‘Blood l’’
In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height
here, sixty persons: men and women (“and priests,”
says Goblin, “priests *) : were murdered, and hurled,
the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a
quantity of quick-lime was tumbled down upon their
bodies. Those ghastly tokens of the massacre were
soon no more ; but while one stone of the strong build-
ing in which the deed was done, remains upon another,
there they will lie in the memories of men, as plain to
See as the splashing of their blood upon the wall is now.
20 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution,
that the cruel deed should be committed in this place!
That a part of the atrocities and monstrous institutions,
which had been, for scores of years, at work, to change
men’s nature, should in its last service, tempt them with
the ready means of gratifying their furious and beastly
rage Should enable them to show themselves, in the
height of their frenzy, no worse than a great, solemn,
legal establishment, in the height of its power | No
worse ! Much better | They used the Tower of the For-
gotten, in the name of Liberty—their liberty; an earth-
born creature, nursed in the black mud of the Bastile
moats and dungeons, and necessarily betraying many
evidences of its unwholesome bringing-up—but the In-
quisition used it in the name of Heaven.
Goblin’s finger is lifted; and she steals out again, into
the Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain
part of the flooring. Her great effect is at hand. She
waits for the rest. She darts at the brave Courier, who
is explaining Something ; hits him a sounding rap on
the hat with the largest key ; and bids him be silent.
She assembles us all, round a little trap-door in the floor,
as round a grave. “Voilà l’ she darts down at the
ring, and flings the door open with a crash, in her goblin
energy, though it is no light weight. Voilà les oubliettes!
Voilà les oubliettes | Subterranean Frightful | Black |
Terrible ! Deadly Les oubliettes de l’Inquisition l’’
My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into
the vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with recol-
lections of the world outside: of wives, friends, children,
brothers : starved to death, and made the stones ring
with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on
Seeing the accursed wall below, decayed and broken
through, and the Sun shining in through its gaping
Wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph. I
felt exalted with the proud delight of living, in these
degenerate times, to see it. As if I were the hero of
Some high achievement The light in the doleful vaults
was typical of the light that has streamed in, on all
persecution in God’s name, but which is not yet at its
noon It cannot look more lovely to a blind man newly
restored to sight, than to a traveller who sees it, calmly
and majestically, treading down the darkness of that
Infernal Well. -
AVIGIN ON TO GENOA.
*=====&
OBLIN having shown les oubliettes, felt that her
great coup was struck. She let the door fall with a
crash, and stood upon it with her arms akimbo, Sniffing
prodigiously.
When we left the place I accompanied hor into her
house, under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a
little history of the building. Her cabaret, a dark low
room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the thick wall
—in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney;
its little counter by the door, with bottles, jars, and
glasses on it; its household implements and scraps of
dress against the wall; and a Sober-looking woman
(she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin,)
knitting at the door—looked exactly like a picture by
OSTADE.
I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort
of dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having
awakened from it, of which the light, down in the
vaults, had given me the assurance. The immense
thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous
strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the
building, its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and
barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder. The
recollection of its opposite old uses: an impregnable
fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of
torture, the court of the Inquisition: at one and the
same time, a house of feasting, fighting, religion, and
blood: gives to every stone in its huge form a fearful
interest, and imparts new meaning into its incongru-
ities. I could think of little, however, then, or long
afterwards, but the sun in the dungeons. The palace
coming down to be the lounging-place of noisy Soldiers.
and being forced to echo their rough talk, and Commº-
22 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
Oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from its
dirty windows, was some reduction of its state, and
something to rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the
sky for the roof of its chambers of cruelty—that was
its desolation and defeat! If I had not seen it in a blaze
from ditch to rampart, I should have felt that not that
light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could
waste it, like the Sunbeams in its secret council-chamber,
and its prisons.
Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me trans-
late from the little history I mentioned just now, a short
anecdote, quite appropriate to itself, connected with its
adventures.
“An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew
of Pierre de Lude, the Pope’s legate, seriously insulted
some distinguished ladies of Avignon, whose relations,
in revenge, seized the young man, and horribly muti-
lated him. For several years the legate kept his re-
venge within his own breast, but he was not the less
resolved upon its gratification at last. He even made,
in the fulness of time, advances towards a complete
reconciliation; and when their apparent sincerity had
prevailed, he invited to a splendid banquet, in this
palace, certain families, whole families, whom he
sought to exterminate. The utmost gaiety animated
the repast ; but the measures of the legate were well
taken. When the dessert was on the board, a Swiss pro-
sented himself, with the announcement that a strange
ambassador solicited an extraordinary audience. The
legate, excusing himself, for the moment, to his guests,
retired, followed by his officers. Within a few moments
afterwards, five hundred persons were reduced to
ashes : the whole of that wing of the building having
been blown into the air with a terrible explosion l’
After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you
with churches just now), we left Avignon that after-
noon. The heat being very great, the roads outside the
walls were strewn with people fast asleep in every
little slip of shade, and with lazy groups, half asleep
and half awake, who were waiting until the sun should
be low enough to admit of their playing bowls among
the burnt-up trees, and on the dusty road. The harvest
here, was already gathered in, and mules and horses
were treading out the corn in the fields. We came, at
MARSEILLES. 23
dusk, upon a wild and hilly country, once famous for
brigands; and travelled slowly up a steep ascent. So
we went on, until eleven at night, when we halted at
the town of Aix (within two stages of Marseilles) to
sleep.
#. hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to
keep the light and heat out, was comfortable and airy
next morning, and the town was very clean; but so hot,
and so intensely light, that when I walked out at noon
it was like coming suddenly from the darkened room
into crisp blue fire. The air was so very clear, that dis-
tant hills and rocky points appeared within an hour's
walk : while the town immediately at hand—with a
kind of blue wind between me and it—seemed to be
white hot, and to be throwing off a fiery air from its
surface.
We left this town towards evening, and took the road
to Marseilles. A dusty road it was ; the houses shut up
close ; and the vines powdered white. At nearly all
the cottage doors, women were peeling and slicing
onions into earthen bowls for supper. So they had been
doing last night all the way from Avignon. Wo passed
one or two shady dark châteaux, surrounded by trees,
and embellished with cool basins of water : which were
the more refreshing to behold, from the great scarcity
of such residences on the road we had travelled. As we
approached Marseilles, the road began to be covered
with holiday people. Outside the public-houses were
parties Smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards,
and (once) dancing. . But dust, dust, dust, everywhere.
We went on, through a long, straggling, dirty suburb,
thronged with people ; having on our left a dreary
slope of land, on which the country-houses of the Mar-
seilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled
and heaped without the slightest order: backs, fronts,
sides, and gables towards all points of the compass;
until, at last, we entered the town.
I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather
and foul, and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty
and disagreeable place. But the prospect, from the
fortified heights, of the beautiful Mediterranean, with
its lovely rocks and islands, is most delightful. These
heights are a desirable retreat, for less picturesque rea-
sons—as an escape from a compound of vile smells per-
24 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
petually arising from a great harbour full of stagnant
water, and befouled by the refuse of innumerable ships
with all sorts of cargoes : which, in hot weather, is
dreadful in the last degree.
There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the
streets; with red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny
shirts, and shirts of orange colour; with red caps, blue
caps, green caps, great beards, and no beards; in Turk-
ish turbans, glazed English hats, and Neapolitan head-
dresses. There were the townspeople sitting in clusters
On the pavement, or airing themselves on the tops of
their houses, or walking up and down the closest and
least airy of Boulevards; and there were crowds of
fierce-looking people of the lower sort, blocking up the
way, constantly. In the very heart of all this stir and
uproar, was the common madhouse ; a low, contracted,
miserable building, looking straight upon the street,
without the smallest screen or court-yard ; where chat-
tering madmen and mad-women were peeping out,
through rusty bars, at the staring faces below, while
the sun, darting fiercely aslant into their little cells,
seemed to dry up their brains, and worry them, as if
they were baited by a pack of dogs.
We were pretty well accommodated at the Hôtel du
Paradis, situated in a narrow street of very high houses,
with a hairdresser's shop opposite, exhibiting in One of
its windows two full-length waxen ladies, twirling round
and round : which so enchanted the hairdresser himself,
that he and his family sat in arm-chairs, and in cool
undresses, on the pavement outside, enjoying the grati-
fication of the passers-by, with lazy dignity. The family
had retired to rest when we went to bed, at midnight ;
but the hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers)
was still sitting there, § his legs stretched out before
him, and evidently couldn’t bear to have the shutters
put up. *
Next day we went down to the harbour, where the
sailors of all nations were discharging and taking in
cargoes of all kinds : fruits, wines, oils, silks, stuffs,
velvets, and every manner of merchandise. Taking one
of a great number of lively little boats with gay-striped
awnings, we rowed away, under the sterns of great
ships, under tow-ropes and cables, against and among
other boats, and very much too near the sides of vessels
........* *** -
GENOA. 25
that were faint with oranges, to the Marie Antointette, a
handsome steamer bound for Genoa, lying near the
mouth of the harbour. By-and-by, the carriage, that
unwieldy “trifle from the Pantechnicon,” on a flat
barge, bumping against everything, and giving Occasion
for a prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came
stupidly alongside ; and by five o’clock we were steam-
ing out in the open sea. The vessel was beautifully
clean ; the meals were served under an awning on deck;
the night was calm and clear ; the quiet beauty of the
sea and sky unspeakable.
We were off Nice, early next morning, and coasted
along, within a few miles of the Cornice road (of which
more in its place) nearly all day. We could see Genoa
before three ; and watching it as it gradually developed
its splendid amphitheatre, terrace rising above terrace,
º above garden, palace above palace, height upon
height, was ample occupation for us, till we ran into the
stately harbour. Having been duly astonished here, by
the sight of a few Cappucini monks, who were watching
the fair-weighing of some wood upon the wharf, we
drove off to Albaro, two miles distant, where we had
engaged a house
The way lay through the main streets, but not through
the Strada Nuova, or the Stradi Balbi, which are the
famous streets of palaces. I never, in my life, was so
dismayed The wonderful novelty of everything, the
unusual smells, the unaccountable filth (though it is
reckoned the cleanest of Italian towns), the disorderly
jumbling of dirty houses, one upon the roof of another;
the passages more squalid and more close than any in
Saint Giles, or old Paris; in and out of which, not vaga-
bonds, but well-dressed women, with white veils and
great fans, were passing and repassing; the perfect ab-
sence of resemblance in any dwelling-house, or shop,
or wall, or post, or pillar, to anything one had evor seen
before, and the disheartening dirt, discomfort, and de-
cay; perfectly confounded me. I fell into a dismal
reverie. I am conscious of a feverish and bewildered
vision of Saints and virgins’ shrines at the street corners
—of great numbers of friars, monks, and soldiers
—of vast red curtains waving in the door-ways of the
churches—of always going up hill, and yet seeing every
Other Street and passage going higher up—of fruit-
26 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
stalls, with fresh lemons and Oranges hanging in gar-
lands made of vine-leaves—of a guard-house and a
draw-bridge—and some gateways—and venders of iced .
water, sitting with little trays upon the margin of the
kennel—and this is all the consciousness I had until I
was set down in a rank, dull, weedy court-yard, attach-
ed to a kind of pink jail; and was told I lived there.
I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to
have an attachment for the very stones in the streets of
Genoa, and to look back upon the city with affection as
Connected with many hours of happiness and quiet !
But these are my first impressions honestly set down ;
and how they changed I will set down too. At present,
let us breathe after this long-winded journey.
GENOA. A ND ITS NEIGEIBOUTREIOOTD.
*º-º-º-º-º-º-º-mºmºmº:
THE first impressions of such a place as ALBARO, the
Suburb of Genoa, where I am now, as my American
friends would say, “ located,” can hardly fail, I should
imagine, to be mournful and disappointing. It requires
a little time and use-to overcome the feeling of depres-
Sion consequent, at first, on so much ruin and neglect.
Novelty, pleasant to most people, is particularly de-
lightful, I think, to me. I am not easily dispirited
when I have the means of pursuing my own fancies
and Occupations; and I believe I have some natural ap-
titude for accommodating myself to circumstances.
But, as yet, I stroll about here, in all the holes and cor-
ners of the neighbourhood, in a perpetual state of for-
lorn surprise; and returning to my villa; the Villa
Bagnerello; (it sounds romantic, but Signor Bagnerello
is a butcher hard by), have sufficient occupation in
pondering Over my new experiences, and comparing
them, very much to my own amusement, with my ex-
pectations, until I Wander out again.
The Villa, Bagnerello: or the Pink Jail, a far more
expressive name for the mansion: is in one of the most
Splendid situations imaginable. The noble bay of
Genoa, with the deep blue Mediterranean, lie stretched
Out near at hand; monstrous old desolate houses and
palaces are dotted all about; lofty hills, with their tops
Often hidden in the clouds, and with strong forts
perched high up on their craggy sides, are close upon
the left; and in front, stretching from the walls of the
house, down to a ruined chapel which stands upon the
bold and picturesque rocks on the sea-shore, are green
Vineyards, where you may wander all day long in par-
tial Shade, through interminable vistas of grapes,
trained on a rough trellis-work across the narrow
paths.
28 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
This sequestered spot is approached by lanes SO very
narrow, that when we arrived at the Custom-house, we
found the people here, had taken the measure of the
narrowest among them, and were waiting to apply it to
the carriage; which ceremony was gravely performed
in the street, while we all stood by, in breathless sus-
pense. It was found to be a very tight fit, but just a
possibility, and no more—as I am reminded every day,
by the sight of various large holes which it punched in
the walls on either side as it came along. We are more
fortunate, I am told, than an old lady who took a house
in these parts not long ago, and who stuck fast in her
carriage in a lane; and as it was impossible to Open One
Of the doors, she was obliged to submit to the indignity
of being hauled through one of the little front windows,
like a harlequin.
When you have got through these narrow lanes, you
come to an archway, imperfectly stopped up by a rusty
old gate—my gate. The rusty old gate has a bell to
correspond, which you ring as long as you like, and
which nobody answers, as it has no connection what-
ever with the house. But there is a rusty old knocker,
TOO–very loose, so that it slides round when you touch
it—and if you learn the trick of it, and knock long
enough, somebody comes. The Brave Courier comes,
and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little
garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard
Opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk
up a cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enor-
mous room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls:
not unlike a great Methodist chapel. This is the sala.
It has five windows and five doors, and is decorated
with pictures which would gladden the heart of one of
those picture-cleaners in London who hang up, as a sign,
a picture divided, like death and the lady, at the top of
the old ballad: which always leaves you in a state of
uncertainty whether the ingenious professor has cleaned
One half or dirtied the other. The furniture of this sala
is a sort of red brocade. All the chairs are immovable,
and the sofa weighs several tons.
On the same floor, and opening out of this same cham-
ber, are dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bed-
rooms; each with a multiplicity of doors and windows.
Up-stairs are divers other gaunt chambers, and a
\ GENOA. 2ſ)
kitchen; and down-stairs is another kitchen, which,
with all sorts of strange contrivances for"burning char-
coal, looks like an alchemical laboratory. There are
also some half-dozen Small sitting-rooms, where the
servants in this hot July, may escape from the heat of
the fire, and where the Brave Courier plays all sorts of
musical instruments of his own manufacture, all the
evening long. A mighty old, wandering, ghostly,
echoing, grim, bare house it is, as ever I beheld or
thought of.
There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from
the drawing-room ; and under this terrace, and forming
one side of the little garden, is what used to be the sta-
ble. It is now a cow-house, and has three cows in it,
so that we get new milk by the bucket-full. There is
no pasturage near, and they never go Out, but are con-
stantly lying down, and surfeiting themselves with vine-
leaves—perfect Italian cows—enjoying the dolce far.”
niente all day long. They are presided over, and slept
with, by an old man named Antonio, and his son ; two
burnt-sienna natives with naked legs and feet, , who
wear, each, a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a red sash,
with a relic, or some sacred charm like a bombon off a
twelfth cake, hanging around the neck. The old man
is very anxious to convert me to the Catholic Faith;
and exhorts me frequently. We sit upon a stone by the
door, sometimes, in the evening, like Robinson Crusoe
and Friday reversed; and he generally relates, towards
my conversion, an abridgment of the History of Saint
Peter—chiefly, I believe, from the unspeakable delight
he has in his imitation of the cock.
The view, as I have said, is charming; but in the day
you must keep the lattice-blinds close shut, or the Sun
would drive you mad; and when the sun goes down, you
must shut up all the windows, or the mosquitoes would
tempt you to commit suicide. So at this time of the
year, you don’t see much of the prospect within doors.
As for the flies, you don’t mind them. Nor the fleas,
whose size is prodigious, and whose name is Legion, and
who populate the coach-house to that extent that I daily
expect to see the carriage going off bodily, drawn by
myriads of industrious fleas in harness. The rats are
kept away, quite comfortably, by scores of lean cats,
who roam about the garden for that purpose. The liz-
30 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
ards, of course, nobody cares for; they play in the sun,
and don’t bite. The little scorpions are merely curious.
The beetles are rather late, and have not appeared yet.
The frogs are company. There is a preserve of them in
the grounds of the next villa; and after night-fall, one
would think that scores upon scores of women in pat.
tens were going up and down a wet stone pavement
without a moment’s cessation. That is exactly the
noise they make.
The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful
sea-shore, was dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint
John the Baptist. I believe there is a legend that Saint
John’s bones were received there, with various solemni-
ties, when they were first brought to Genoa; for Genoa
possesses them to this day. When there is any uncom-
mon tempest at sea, they are brought out and exhibited
to the raging weather, which they never fail to calm.
In consequence of this connection of Saint John with
the city, great numbers of the common people are chris-
tened Giovanni Baptista, which latter name is pro-
nounced in the Genoese patois “Batcheetcha,” like a
sneeze. To hear everybody calling everybody else
Batcheetcha, on a Sunday, or Festa-day, when thero
are crowds in the streets, is not a little singular and
amusing to a Stranger.
The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them,
whose walls (outside walls, I mean), are profusely
painted with all sorts of subjects, grim and holy. But
time and the sea-air have nearly obliterated them; and
they look like the entrance to Vauxhall Gardens on a
Sunny day. The court-yards of these houses are over-
grown with grass and weeds; all sorts of hideous patches
cover the base of the statues, as if they were afflicted
with a cutaneous disorder; the outer gates are rusty;
and the iron bars outside the lower windows are all
tumbling down. Firewood is kept in halls where costly
treaSures might be heaped up, mountains high; water-
falls are dry and choked; fountains, too dull to play,
and too lazy to work, have just enough recollection of
their identity, in their sleep, to make the neighbour-
hood damp; and the sirocco wind is often blowing over
all these things for days together, like a gigantic oven
Out for a holiday.
Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the
GENOA. 31
Virgin's mother, when the young men of the neighbour-
hood, having worn great wreaths of the vine in some
procession or other, bathed in them, by scores. It looked
very odd and pretty. Though I am bound to confess
(not knowing of the festa at that time), that I thought,
and was quite satisfied, they wore them as horses do—
to keep the flies off.
Soon afterwards, there was another festa-day, in
honour of a St. Nazaro. One of the Albaro young men
brought two large bouquets soon after breakfast, and
coming up-stairs into the great Sala, presented them him-
self. This was a polite way of begging for a contribution
towards the expenses of some music in the Saint’s
honour, so we gave him whatever, it may have been,
and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six
o'clock in the evening we went to the church—close at
hand—a very gaudy place, hung all Over with festoons
and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the
main door, with women, all seated. They wear no
bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the ‘‘mezzero;”
and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking audience I
ever saw. The young women are not generally pretty,
but they walks remarkably well, and in their personal
carriage and the management of their veils, display
much inmate grace and elegance. There were some
men present: not very many: and a few of these were
kneeling about the aisles, while everybody else tumbled
over them. Innumerable tapers were burning in the
church; the bits of silver and tin about the saints
(especially in the Virgin’s necklace) sparkled brilliantly;
the priests were seated about the chief altar; the organ
played away, lustily, and a full band did the like; while
a conductor, in ea little gallery opposite to the band,
hammered away on the desk before him with a scroll;
and a tenor, without any voice, sang. The band played
one way, the Organ played another, the singer went a
third, and the unfortunate conductor banged and banged,
and flourished his scroll on some principle of his own:
apparently well satisfied with the whole performance.
I never did hear such a discordant din. The heat was
intense all the time.
The men in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on
their shoulders (they never put them on), were playing
bowls, and buying Sweetmeats, immediately outside
32 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
the church. When half-a-dozen of them finished a game,
they came into the aisle, crossed themselves with the
holy water, knelt on One knee for an instant, and walked
off again to play another game at bowls. They are re-
markably expert at this diversion, and will play in the
stony lanes and streets, and on the most uneven and
disastrous ground for such a purpose, with as much
nicety as on a billiard-table. But the most favourite
game is the national One of Mora, which they pursue
with surprising ardour, and at which they will stake
everything they possess. It is a destructive kind of
gambling, requiring no accessaries but the ten fingers,
which are always — I intend no pun—at hand. Two
men play together. One calls a number—say the ex-
treme one, ten. He marks what portion of it he pleases
by throwing out three, or four, or five fingers; and his
adversary has, in the same instant, at hazard, and with-
out seeing his hand, to throw out as many fingers as
will make the exact balance. Their eyes and "hands be-
come so used to this, and act with such astonishing ra-
pidity, that an uninitiated bystander would find it very
difficult, if not impossible, to follow the progress of the
game. The initiated, however, of whom there is always
an eager group looking On, devour it with the most in-
tense avidity; and as they are always ready to cham-
pion one side or the other, in case of a dispute, and are
frequently divided in their partizanship, it is often a
very noisy proceeding. It is never the quietest game in
the world, for the numbers are always called in a loud
sharp voice, and follow as close upon each other as they
can be counted. On a holiday evening, standing at a
window, or walking in a garden, or passing through
the streets, or sauntering in any quiet place about the
town, you will hear this game in progress in a score of
wine-shops at Once; and looking Over any vineyard
walk, or turning almost any corner, will come upon a
knot of players in full cry. It is observable that most
men have a propensity to throw out some particular
number oftener than another; and the vigilance with
which two sharp-eyed players will mutually endeavour
to detect this weakness, and adapt their game to it, is
very curious and entertaining. The effect is greatly
heightened by the universal suddenness and vehemence
of gesture; two men playing for half a farthing with an
●PLAYING AT MORA,
Pictures from Italy.

GENOA. g 33
intensity as all-absorbing as if the stake were life.
Hard by here is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging
to some member of the Brignole family, but just now
hired by a school of Jesuits for their summer quarters.
I walked into its dismantled precincts the other even-
ing about Sunset, and couldn’t help pacing up and down
for a little time, drowsily taking in the aspect of the
place: which is repeated hereabouts in all directions.
Iloitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two
sides of a weedy, grass-grown court-yard, whereof the
house formed a third side, and a low terrace-walk, over-
looking the garden and the neighbouring hills, the
fourth. I don’t believe there was an uncracked stone
in the whole pavement. In the centre was a melan-
choly statue, so piebald in its decay, that it looked ex-
actly as if it had been covered with sticking-plaster,
and afterwards powdered. The stables, coach-houses,
offices, were all empty, all ruinous, all utterly deserted.
Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by
their latches; windows were broken, painted plaster
had peeled Off, and was lying about in clods; fowls and
cats had so taken possession of the Out-buildings, that
I couldn’t help thinking of the fairy tales, and eyeing
them with suspicion, as transformed retainers, waiting
to be changed back again. One Old Tom in particular:
a scraggy brute, with a hungry green eye (a poor rela-
tion in reality, I am inclined to think); came prowling
round and round me, as if he half believed, for the
moment, that I might be the hero come to marry the
lady, and set all to-rights; but discovering his mistake,
he suddenly gave a grim Snarl, and walked away with
such a tremendous tail, that he couldn’t get into the lit-
tle hole where he lived, but was obliged to wait outside,
until his indignation and his tail had gone down to-
gether. -
In a sort of Summer-house, or whatever it may be, in
this colonnade, some Englishmen had been living, like
grubs in a nut; but the Jesuits had given them notice
to go, and they had gone, and that was shut up too.
The house: a wandering, echoing, thundering barrack
of a place, with the lower windows barred up, as usual,
was wide open at the door; and I have no doubt I might
have gone in, and gone to bed, and gone dead, and no-
body a bit the wiser. Only one suite of rooms on an
VOL. I. 3 •
34 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
upper floor was tenanted; and from One of these, the
voice of a young-lady vocalist, practising bravura lust-
ily, came flaunting out upon the silent evening.
I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and
quaint, with avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees,
and statues, and water in stone basins; and everything
was green, gaunt, weedy, straggling, under-grown, Or
over-grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of
slabby, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life.
There was nothing bright in the whole scene but a fire-
fly—one solitary firefly showing against the dark
bushes like the last little speck of the departed Glory
of the house; and even it went flitting up and down at
sudden angles, and leaving a place with a jerk, and
describing an irregular circle, and returning to the
same place with a twitch that startled one: as if it were
looking for the rest of the Glory, and wondering
(Heaven knows it might!) what had become of it.
In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and
shadows of my dismal entering reverie gradually re-
solved themselves into familar forms and substances;
and I already began to think that when the time should
come, a year hence, for closing the long holiday and turn-
ing back to England, I might part from Genoa with any-
thing but a glad heart.
It is a place that “grows upon you” every day.
There seems to be always something to find out in it.
There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways
to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a com-
fort that is, when you are idle !) twenty times a day, if
you like ; and turn up again, under the most unex-
pected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the
Strangest contrasts ; things that are picturesque, ugly,
mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break
upon the view at every turn.
They who would know how beautiful the country im-
mediately surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear
weather) to the top of Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride
round the city walls : a feat more easily performed.
No prospect can be more diversified and lovely than the
changing views of the harbour, and the valleys of the
two rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, from the
heights along which the strongly fortified walls are
carried, like the great Wall of China in little. In not
GENOA. 35
the least picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair
specimen of a real Genoese tavern, where the visitor
may derive good entertainment from real Genoese
dishes, such as Tagliarini; Ravioli ; German sausages,
strong of garlic, sliced and eaten with fresh green figs;
cocks’ combs and sheep-kidneys, chopped up with mut-
ton-chops and liver; Small pieces of some unknown part
of a calf, twisted into small shreds, fried, and served
up in a great dish like whitebait ; and other curiosities
of that kind. . They often get wine at these suburban
Trattorie, from France and Spain and Portugal, which
is brought over by small captains in little trading-
vessels. They buy it at so much a bottle, without
asking what it is, or caring to remember if anybody
tells them, and usually divide it into two heaps; of
which they label One Champagne, and the other
Madeira. The various opposite flavours, quáilities,
countries, ages, and vintages that are comprised
under these two general heads is quite extraordin-
ary. The most limited range is probably from cool
Gruel up to Old Marsala, and down again to apple
Tea. **
The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any
thoroughfare can well be, where people (even Italian
people) are supposed to live and walk about ; being .
mere lanes, with here and there a kind of well, or
breathing-place. The houses are immensely high, painted
in all sorts of colours, and are in every stage and state
of damage, dirt, and lack of repair. They are com-
monly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses in the old
town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris. There
are few street doors; the entrance halls are, for the most
part, looked upon as public property ; and any moder-
ately enterprising scavenger might make a fine fortune
by now and then clearing them out. As it is impossible
for coaches to penetrate into these streets, there are
sedan chairs, gilded and otherwise, for hire in divers
places. A great many private chairs are also kept
among the mobility and gentry. ; and at night these are
trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers
of great lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon a frame.
The sedans and lanthorns are the legitimate successors
of the long strings of patient and much-abused mules,
that go jingling their little bells through these confined
36 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
streets all day long. They follow them, as regularly as
the stars the sun.
When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada
Nuova and the Strada, Balbi ! or how the former looked
One summer day, when I first saw it underneath the
brightest and most intensely blue of summer skies :
which its narrow perspective of immense mansions, re-
duced to a tapering and most precious strip of bright-
ness, looking down upon the heavy shade below ! A
brightness not too common, even in July and August,
to be well esteemed: for, if the Truth must out, there
were not eight blue skies in as many midsummer weeks,
Saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when, look-
ing out to sea, the water and the firmament were one
World of deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there
were clouds and haze enough to make an Englishman
grumble in his own climate.
The endless details of these rich Palaces : the walls of
Some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by
Vandyke! The great, heavy, stone balconies, one above
another, and tier over tier: with here and there, one
larger than the rest, towering high up—a huge marble
platform ; the doorless vestibules, massively barred
lower windows, immense public staircases, thick marble
pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, dream-
ing, echoing vaulted chambers : among which the eye
Wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is
succeeded by another—the terrace gardens between
house and house, with green arches of the vine, and
groves of Orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full
bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street—the
painted halls, mouldering, and blotting, and rotting in
the damp corners, and still shining out in beautiful
Colours and voluptuous designs, where the walls are dry
—the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, hold-
ing wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and down-
Ward, and standing in niches, and here and there look-
ing fainter and more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast
with some fresh little Cupids, who on a more recently
decorated portion of the front, are stretching out what
seems to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed,
a Sun-dial—the steep, steep, up-hill streets of small
palaces (but very large palaces for all that), with marble
terraces looking down into close by-ways—the magni-
GENOA. 3%
ficent and innumerable Churches; and the rapid pas-
sage from a street of stately edifices, into a maze of the
vilest squalor, steaming with unwholesome stenches,
and swarming with half-naked children and whole
worlds of dirty people—make up, altogether, such a
scene of wonder : so lively, and yet so dead : so noisy,
and yet so quiet: so obtrusive, and yet so shy and low-
ering: so wide awake, and yet so fast asleep: that it is
a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and On,
and on, and look about him. A bewildering phantas-
magoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream, and all
the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality!
The different uses to which some of these Palaces are
applied, all at once, is characteristic. For instance, the
English Banker (my excellent and hospitable friend)
has his office in a good-sized Palazzo in the Strada
Nuova. In the hall (every inch of which is elaborately
painted, but which is as dirty as a police-station in Lon-
don), a hook-lnosed Saracen's Head with an immense
quantity of black hair (there is a man attached to it)
sells walking-sticks. On the other side of the doorway,
a lady with a showy handkerchief for head-dress (wife
to the Saracen's Head, I believe) sells articles of her
own knitting ; and sometimes flowers. A little further
in, two or three blind men occasionally beg. Sometimes,
they are visited by a man without legs, on a little go-
cart, but who has such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and
such a respectable, well-conditioned body, that he looks
as if he had sunk into the ground up to his middle, or
had come, but partially, up a flight of cellar-steps to
speak to somebody. A little further in, a few men, per-
haps, lie asleep in the middle of the day ; or they may
be chairmen waiting for their absent freight. If so, they
have brought their chairs in with them, and there they
stand also. On the left of the hall is a little room ; a
hatter’s shop. On the first floor, is the English bank,
On the first floor also, is a whole house, and a good
large residence too. Heaven knows what there may be
above that; but when you are there, you have only just
begun to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down-stairs
again, thinking of this ; and passing out at a great
crazy door in the back of the hall, instead of turning
the other way, to get into the street again; it bangs be-
hind you, making the dismallest and most lonesome
38 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
echoes, and you stand in a yard (the yard of the same
house) which seems to have been unvisited by human
foot, for a hundred years. Not a sound disturbs its re-
pose. Not a head, thrust out of any of the grim, dark,
jealous windows, within sight, makes the weeds in the
cracked pavement faint of heart, by suggesting the
possibility of there being hands to grub them up. Op-
posite to you, is a giant figure carved in stone, reclin-
ing, with an urn, upon a lofty piece of artificial rock-
work; and out of the urn, dangles the fag end of a
leaden pipe, which, Once upon a time, poured a small
torrent down the rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant
are not drier than this channel is now. He seems to
have given his urn, which is nearly upside down, a
final tilt; and after crying, like a sepulchral child, “All
gone !” to have lapsed into a stony silence.
In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller,
but of great size notwithstanding, and extremely high.
They are very dirty : quite undrained, if my nose be at
all reliable : and emit a peculiar fragrance, like the
smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets.
Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would
seem to have been a lack of room in the City, for new
houses are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it has
been possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a
Crack or corner, in it has gone. If there be a nook or
angle in the wall of a church, or a crevice in any other
dead wall, of any sort, there you are sure to find some
kind of habitation : looking as if, it had grown there,
like a fungus. Against the Government house, against
the old Senate house, round about any large building,
little shops stick close, like parasite vermin to the great
carcase. And for all this, look where you may : up
steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere : there are
irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling
down, leaning against their neighbours, crippling them-
selves or their friends by some means or other, until
One, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the way,
and you can’t see any further.
One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think,
is down by the landing-wharf : though it may be, that
its being associated with a great deal of rottenness on
the evening of our arrival, has stamped it deeper in my
mind. Here, again, the houses are very high, and are
GENOA. 39
of an infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have º
most of the houses have) something hanging out of a
great many windows, and wafting its frowsy fragrance
on the breeze. Sometimes, it is a curtain ; sometimes,
it is a carpet ; sometimes, it is a bed ; sometimes, a
whole line-full of clothes; but there is almost always
something. Before the basements of these houses, is an
arcade over the pavement : very massive, dark, and low,
like an old crypt. The stone, or plaster, of which it is
made, has turned quite black ; and against every one of
these black piles, all sorts of filth and garbage seem to
accumulate spontaneously. Beneath. Some of the arches,
the sellers of maccaroni and polenta establish their
stalls, which are by no means inviting. The Offal of a
fish-market, near at hand—that is to say, of a back lane,
where people sit upon the ground and on various old
bulk-heads and sheds, and sell fish when they have any
to dispose of and of a vegetable market, constructed
on the same principle—are contributed to the decoration
of this quarter ; and as all the mercantile business is
transacted here and it is crowded all day, it has a very
decided flavour about it. The Porto Franco, or Free
Port (where goods brought in from foreign countries
pay no duty until they are sold and taken out, as in a
bonded warehouse in England), is down here also ; and
two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the
gate to search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks
and Ladies. For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been
known to yield to the temptation of smuggling, and in
the same way : that is to say, by concealing the smug-
gled property beneath the loose folds of its dress. So
Sanctity and Beauty may, by no means, enter.
The Streets of Genoa would be all the better for the
importation of a few Priests of prepossessing appear-
ance. Every fourth or fifth man in the streets is a
Priest or a Monk; and there is pretty sure to be at least
one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or outside every hack-
ney carriage on the neighbouring roads. I have no
knowledge, elsewhere, of more repulsive countenances
than are to be found among these gentry. If Nature's
handwriting be at all legible, greater varieties of sloth,
deceit, and intellectual torpor, could hardly be observed
among any class of men in the world.
MR. PEPYs once heard a clergyman assert in his ser-
40 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
mon, in illustration of his respect for the Priestly office,
that if he could meet a Priest and angel together, hē
would salute the Priest first. I am rather of the opin-
ion of PETRARCH who, when his pupil BOCCACCIO wrote
to him in great tribulation, that he had been visited and
admonished for his writings by a Carthusian Friar who
claimed to be a messenger immediately commissioned
by Heaven for that purpose, replied, that for his own
part, he would take the liberty of testing the reality of
the commission by personal observation of the Mes-
Senger's face, eyes, forehead, behaviour, and discourse.
I cannot but believe myself, from similar observation,
that many unaccredited celestial messengers may be
seen skulking through the streets of Genoa, or droning
away their lives in other Italian towns.
Perhaps the Cappuccini, though not a learned body,
are, as an order, the best friends of the people. They seem
to mingle with them more immediately, as their coun-
Sellors and comforters; and to go among them more,
When they are sick ; and to pry less than some other
orders, into the secrets of families, for the purpose of
establishing a baleful ascendancy over their weaker
members ; and to be influenced by a less fierce desire
to make converts, and once made, to let them go to
ruin, soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse
dress, in all parts of the town at all times, and begging
in the markets early in the morning. The Jesuits too,
muster strong in the streets, and go slinking noiselessly
about, in pairs, like black cats.
In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades con-
gregate. There is a street of jewellers, and there is a
row of booksellers; but even down in places where no-
body ever can, or ever could, penetrate in a carriage,
there are mighty old palaces shut in among the gloom-
iest and closest walls, and almost shut out from the sun.
Very few of the tradesmen have any idea of setting
forth their goods, or disposing them for show. If you,
a stranger, want to buy anything, you usually look
around the shop till you see it ; then clutch it, if it be
within reach ; and inquire how much. Everything is
sold at the most unlikely place. If you want coffee, you
go to a sweetmeat-shop ; and if you want meat, you
will probably find it behind an old checked curtain,
down half a dozen steps, in some sequestered nook as
GENOA. 41
hard to find as if the commodity were poison, and
Genoa's law were death to any that uttered it.
Most of the apothecaries' shops are great lounging
places. Here, grave men with sticks, sit down in the
shade for hours, together, passing a meagre Genoa
paper from hand to hand, and talking, drowsily and
sparingly, about the News. Two or three of these are
poor physicians, ready to proclaim themselves on an
emergency, and tear Off with any messenger who may
arrive. You may know them by the way in which they
stretch their necks to listen, when you enter; and by
the sigh with which they fall back again into their dull
corners, on finding that you only want medicine. Fow
people lounge in the barbers’ shops; though they are
very numerous, as hardly any man shaves himself.
But the apothecary’s has its group of loungers, who sit
back among the bottles, with their hands folded over
the tops of their sticks. So still and quiet, that either
you don’t see them in the darkened shop, or mistake
them—as I did one ghostly man in bottle-green, one
day, with a hat like a stopper—for Horse Medicine.
On a summer evening the Genoese are as fond of
putting themselves, as their ancestors were of putting
houses, in every available inch of space within and
about the town. In all the lanes and alleys, and up
every little ascent, and on every dwarf wall, and on
every flight of steps, they cluster like bees. Meanwhile
(and especially on Festa-days) the bells of the churches
ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of
sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dim-
gle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle
or so, which is maddening. This performance is usu-
ally achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold
of the clapper, or a little rope alºi to it, and tries
to dingle louder than every other boy similarly em-
ployed. The noise is supposed to be particularly
obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking up into the
steeples, and seeing (and hearing) these young Chris-
tians thus engaged, One might very naturally mistake
them for the Enemy.
Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numerous.
All the shops were shut up, twice within a week, for
these holidays; and One night, all the houses in the
42 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
neighbourhood of a particular church were illuminated,
while the church itself was lighted, outside, with
torches ; and a grove of blazing links was erected, in
an open place Outside one of the city gates. This part
of the ceremony is prettier and more singular a little
Way in the country, where you can trace the illumi-
nated cottages all the way up a steep hill side ; and
where you pass festoons of tapers, wasting away in
the starlight night, before some fºly little house upon
the road.
On these days, they always dress the church of the
Saint in whose honour the Festa is holden, very
gaily. Gold-embroidered festoons of different colours,
hang from the arches, the altar furniture is set forth ;
and, sometimes, even the lofty pillars are swathed from
top to bottom in tight-fitting draperies. The cathedral is
dedicated to St. Lorenzo. On St. Lorenzo’s day, we
went into it just as the sum was setting. Although
these decorations are usually in very indifferent taste,
the effect, just then, was very superb, indeed. For the
whole building was dressed in red ; and the sinking
Sun, streaming in, through a great red curtain in the
chief doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own.
When the sun went down, and it gradually grew quite
dark inside, except for a few twinkling tapers on the
principal altar, and some Small dangling silver lamps,
it was very mysterious and effective. But, sitting in
any of the churches towards evening, is like a mild
dose of opium.
With the money collected at a Festa, they usually
pay for the dressing of the church, and for the hiring
of the band, and for the tapers. If there be any left
(which seldom happens, I believe) the souls in Purga-
tory get the benefit of it. They are also supposed to
have the benefit of the exertions of certain small boys,
who shake money-boxes before some mysterious little
buildings like rural turnpikes, which (usually shut up
close) fly open on Red-letter days, and disclose an im-
age and some flowers inside.
Just without the city gate, on the Albara road, is a
Small house, with an altar in it, and a stationary money-
box: also for the benefit of the souls in Purgatory.
Still further to stimulate the charitable, there is a mon-
Strous painting on the plaster, on either side of the
GENOA. 43
grated door, representing a select party of Souls, fryinge
One of them has a grey moustache, and an elaborate
head of grey hair: as if he had been taken out of a
hairdresser’s window and cast into the furnace. There
he is: a most grotesque and hideously comic old soul:
for ever blistering in the real sun, and melting in the
mimic fire, for the gratification and improvement (and
the contributions) of the poorer Genoese.
They are not a very joyous people, and are seldom seen
to dance on their holidays: the staple places of enter-
tainment among the women, being the churches and
the public walks. They are very good-tempered, oblig-
ing and industrious. Industry has not made them
clean, for their habitations are extremely filthy, and
their usual occupation on a fine Sunday morning, is to
sit at their doors, hunting in each other’s heads. But
their dwellings are so close and confined that if those
parts of the city had been beaten down by Massena in
the time of the terrible Blockade, it would have at least
Occasioned one public benefit among many misfortunes.
The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are
so constantly washing clothes, in the public tanks, and
in every stream and ditch, that one cannot help won-
dering, in the midst of all this dirt, who wears them
when they are clean. The custom is to lay the wet
linen which is being operated upon, On a smooth stone,
and hammer away at it, with a flat wooden mallet.
This they do, as furiously as if they were revenging
themselves on dress in general for being connected with
the Fall of Mankind.
It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank
at these times, or on another flat stone, an unfortunate
baby, tightly swathed up, arms and legs and all, in an
enormous quantity of wrapper, so that it is unable to
move a toe or finger. This custom (which we often see
represented in old pictures) is universal among the com-
mon people. A child is left anywhere without the pos-
sibility of crawling away, or is accidentally knocked
off a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or is hung up to a
hook now and then, and left dangling like a doll at an
English rag shop, without the least inconvenience to
anybody.
I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in
the little country church of San Martino, a couple of
44 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
*miles from the city, while a baptism took place. I saw
the priest, and an attendant with a large taper, and a
man, and a woman, and some others; but I had no more
idea, until the ceremony was all over, that it was a
baptism, or that the curious little stiff instrument, that
was passed from one to another, in the course of the
ceremony, by the handle—like a short poker—was a
child, than I had that it was my own christening. I
borrowed the child afterwards, for a minute or two (it
was lying across the font then) and found it very red
in the face but perfectly quiet, and not to be bent on
any terms. The number of cripples in the streets soon
ceased to surprise me.
There are plenty of Saints’ and Virgins' Shrines, of
course; generally at the corners of streets. The favour-
ite memento to the Faithful, about Genoa, is a painting,
representing a peasant on his knees, with a spade and
some other agricultural implements beside him ; and
the Madonna, with the Infant Saviour in her arms, ap-
pearing to him in a cloud. This is the Legend of the
Madonna della Guardia: a chapel on a mountain with-
in a few miles, which is in high repute. It seems that
this peasant lived all alone by himself, tilling some
land atop of the mountain, where, being a devout man,
he daily said his prayers to the Virgin in the open air;
for his hut was a very poor one. Upon a certain day
the Virgin appeared to him, as in the picture, and said,
“Why do you pray in the open air, and without a
priest ?” The peasant explained because there was
neither priest nor church at hand—a very uncommon
complaint indeed in Italy. “I should wish, then,” said
the Celestial Visitor, “to have a chapel built here, in
which the prayers of the Faithful may be offered up.”
“But Santissima Madonna,” said the peasant, “I am a
poor man; and chapels cannot be built without money.
They must be supported, too, Santissima; for to have a
Chapel and not support it liberally, is a wickedness—a
deadly sin.” This sentiment gave great satisfaction to
the Visitor. “Go!” said she. “There is such a village
in the valley on the left, and such another village in
the valley on the right, and such another village else-
where, that will gladly contribute to the building of a
chapel. Go to them! Relate what you have seen; and
do not doubt that sufficient money will be forthcoming
GENOA. 45
to erect my chapel, or that it will, afterwards, be hand-
somely maintained.” All of which (miraculously)
turned out to be quite true. And in proof of this pre-
diction and revelation, there is the chapel of the
Mºonna della Guardia, rich and flourishing at this
Clay.
The splendour and variety of the Genoese churches
can hardly be exaggerated. The church of the Annun-
ciata especially: built, like many of the others, at the
cost of one ºie family, and now in slow process of
repair, from the outer door to the utmost height of the
high cupola, is so elaborately painted and set in gold,
that it looks (as SIMOND describes it in his charming book
on Italy) like a great enamelled snuff-box. Most of the
richer churches contain some beautiful pictures, or other
embellishments of great price, almost universally set,
side by side, with sprawling effigies of maudlin monks,
and the veriest trash and tinsel ever seen.
It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of
the popular mind and pocket, to the souls in Purgatory,
but there is very little tenderness for the bodies of the
dead here. For the very poor there are, immediately
Outside one angle of the walls, and behind a jutting
point of the fortification, near the sea, certain common
pits—one for every day in the year—which all remain
closed up, until the turn of each comes for its daily re-
ception of dead bodies. Among the troops in the town,
there are usually some Swiss; more or less. When any
of these die, they are buried out of a fund maintained
by such of their countrymen as are resident in Genoa.
Their providing coffins for these men, is matter of great
astonishment to the authorities.
Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent
Splashing down of dead people into so many wells, is
bad. It surrounds Death with revolting associations,
that insensibly become connected with those whom
Death is approaching. Indifference and avoidance are
the natural result, and all the softening influences of
the great sorrow are harshly disturbed.
There is a ceremony when an old Cavalière or the
like, expires, of erecting a pile of benches in the cathe-
dral, to represent his bier; covering them over with a
pall of black velvet ; putting his hat and sword on the
top; making a little square of seats about the whole, and
46 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
sending out formal invitations to his friends and ac-
quaintance to come and sit there and hear Mass, which
is performed at the principal Altar, decorated with an
infinity of candles for that purpose.
When the better kind of people die, or are at the point
of death, their nearest relations generally walk Off: re-
tiring into the country for a little change, and leaving
the body to be disposed of, without any superintendence
from them. The procession is usually formed, and the
coffin borne, and the funeral conducted, by a body of
persons called a Confratérmita, who, as a kind of volun-
tary penance, undertake to perform these offices, in
regular rotation, for the dead; but who, mingling
something of pride with their humility, are dressed in a
loose garment covering their whole person, and wear a
hood, concealing the face; with breathing holes and
apertures for the eyes. The effect of this costume is
very ghastly: especially in the case of a certain Blue
Confratérnita belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least
of them, are very ugly customers, and who look—Sud-
denly encountered in their pious ministration in the
streets—as if they were Ghoules or Demons, bearing off
the body for themselves.
Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse
attendant on many Italian customs, of being recognised
as a means of establishing a current account with
Heaven, on which to draw, too easily, for future bad
actions, or as an expiation for past misdeeds, it must
be admitted to be a good one, and a practical One, and
one involving unquestionably good works. A voluntary
service like this, is surely better than the imposed pen-
ance (not at all an infrequent one) of giving so many
licks to such and such a stone in the pavement of
the cathedral; or than a vow to the Madonna to wear
nothing but blue for a year or two. This is supposed to
give great delight above ; blue being (as is well known)
the Madonna’s favourite colour. Women who have de-
voted themselves to this act of Faith are very commonly
seen walking in the streets.
There are three theatres in the city, besides an old
One now rarely opened. The most important—the Carlo
Felice : the opera house of Genoa-is a very splendid,
commodious, and beautiful theatre. A company of
comedians were acting there, when we arrived : and
GENOA. 47
after their departure, a second-rate opera company
came. The great season is not until the carnival time—
in the spring. Nothing impressed me, so much, in my
visits here (which were pretty numerous) as the uncom-
monly hard and cruel character of the audience, who
resent the slightest defect, take nothing good-humour-
edly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity
to hiss, and spare the actresses as little as the actors.
But, as there is nothing else of a public nature at which
they are allowed to express the least disapprobation,
perhaps they are resolved to make the most of this
Opportunity.
There are a great number of Piedmontese Officers too,
who are allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in
the pit, for next to nothing: gratuitous, or cheap accom-
modation for these gentlemen being insisted on, by the
Governor, in all public or semi-public entertainments.
They are lofty critics in consequence, and infinitely
more exacting than if they made the unhappy manager's
fortune.
The TEATRO DIURNO, or Day Theatre, is a covered
stage in the open air, where the performances take place
by daylight, in the cool of the afternoon; commencing
at four or five o’clock, and lasting some three hours. It
is curious, sitting among the audience, to have a fine
view of the neighbouring hills and houses, and to see the
neighbours at their windows looking on, and to hear the
bells of the churches and convents ringing at most com-
plete cross-purposes with the scene. Beyond this, and
the novelty of seeing a play in the fresh pleasant air,
with the darkening evening closing in, there is nothing
very exciting or characteristic in the performances.
The actors are indifferent; and though they sometimes
represent one of Goldoni’s comedies, the staple of the
Drama is French. Anything like nationality is dan-
gerous to despotic governments, and Jesuit-beleagured
kings.
The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti—a famous com-
pany from Milan—is, without any exception, the drollest
exhibition I ever beheld in my life. I never saw any-
thing so exquisitely ridiculous. They look between
four and five feet high, but are really much smaller, for
when a musician in the orchestra happens to put his
hat on the stage, it becomes alarmingly gigantic, and
*** *
48 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
almost blots out an actor. They usually play a comedy,
and a ballet. The comic man in the comedy I Saw One
summer night, is a waiter at an hotel. There never was
such a locomotive actor, since the world began. Great
pains are taken with him. He has extra joints in his
legs: and a practical eye, with which he winks at the
pit, in a manner that is absolutely, insupportable to a
stranger, but which the initiated audience, mainly Com-
posed of the common people, receive (so they do every-
thing else) quite as a matter of course, and as if he were
a man. His spirits are prodigious. He continually
shakes his legs, and winks his eye. And there is a
heavy father with grey hair, who sits down on the reg-
ular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his daughter
in the regular conventional way, who is tremendous.
No one would suppose it possible that anything short of
a real man could be so tedious. It is the triumph of art.
In the ballet, an Enchanfer runs away with the Bride,
in the very hour of her nuptials. He brings her to his
cave, and tries to soothe her. They sit down on a sofa.
(the regular sofa in the regular place, O.P. Second En-
trance!) and a procession of musicians enter; one creat-
ure playing a drum, and knocking himself off his legs
at every blow. These failing to delight her, dancers
appear. Four first ; then two ; the two ; the flesh-col-
oured two. The way in which they dance ; the height
to which they spring ; the impossible and inhuman ex-
tent to which they pirouette ; the revelation of their
preposterous legs; the coming down with a pause, on
the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it ;
the gentleman’s retiring up, when it is the lady's turn ;
and the lady’s retiring up when it is the gentleman’s
turn ; the final passion of a pas-de-deux ; and the going
off with a bound !—I shall never see a real ballet, with
a composed countenance again.
I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play
called “St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.” It be-
gan by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense
head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena ; to
whom his valet entered, with this obscure announce-
ment : g
“Sir Yew ud se on Low !” (the ow, as in cow).
Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals!)
was a perfect mammoth of a man, to Napoleon; hideously
GENOA. 49
.*
ugly ; with a monstrously disproportionate face, and a
great clump for the lower-jaw, to express his tyrannical
and obdurate nature. He began his system of persecu-
tion, by calling his prisoner “General Buonaparte ; ” to
which the latter replied, with the deepest tragedy, “Sir
Yew ud se on Low, call me not thus. Repeat that
phrase and leave me ! I am Napoleon, Emperor of
France l’ Sir Yew ud se on, nothing daunted, pro-
ceeded to entertain him with an ordinance of the British
Government, regulating the state he should preserve,
and the furniture of his rooms : and limiting his attend-
ance to four or five persons. “Four or five for me!”
said Napoleon. “Me One hundred thousand men
were lately at my sole command ; and this English offi-
cer talks of four or five for me !” Throughout the piece,
Napoleon (who talked very like the real Napoleon, and
was, for ever, having small soliloquies by himself)
was very bitter on “these English officers,” and “these
English soldiers : ” to the great satisfaction of the audi-
ence, who were perfectly delighted to have Low bullied;
and who, whenever Low said “General Buonaparte”
(which he always did : always receiving the same cor-
rection) quite execrated him. It would be hard-to say
why ; for Italians have little cause to sympathise with
Napoleon, Heaven knows. -
There was no plot at all, except that a French officer
disguised as an Englishman, came to propound a plan
of escape ; and being discovered, but not before Na-
poleon had magnanimously refused to steal his free-
dom, was immediately ordered off by Low to be
hanged. In two very long speeches, which Low made
memorable, by winding up with “Yas l’—to show that
he was English—which brought down thunders of ap-
plause. Napoleon was so affected by this catastrophe,
that he fainted away on the spot, and was carried Out
by two other puppets. Judging from what followed, it
would appear that he never recovered the shock ; for
the next act showed him, in a clean shirt, in his bed
(curtains crimson and white), where a lady, prema-
turely dressed in mourning, brought two little children,
who kneeled down by the bedside, while he made a de-
cent end ; the last word on his lips being “Vatterlo.”
It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte's boots
were so wonderfully beyond control, and did such mar-
VOL. I. 4.
50 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
vellous things of their own accord ; doubling them-
selves up, and getting under tables, and dangling in
the air, and sometimes skating away with him, out of
all human knowledge, when he was in full speech—
mischances which were not rendered the less absurd,
by a settled melancholy depicted in his face. To put
an end to one conference with Low, he had to go to a
table, and read a book ; when it was the finest spectacle
I ever beheld, to see his body bending over the volume,
like a boot-jack, and his sentimental eyes glaring ob-
stimately into the pit. He was prodigiously good, in
bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, and his little
hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antom marchi,
represented by a Puppet with long lank hair, like Maw-
worm’s, who, in consequence of some derangement of
his wires, hovered about the coach like a vulture, and
gave medical opinions in the air. He was almost as
good as Low, though the latter was great at all times—
a decided brute and villain, beyond all possibility of
mistake. Low was especially fine at the last, when,
hearing the doctor and the valet say, “The Emperor is
dead l’ he pulled out his watch, and wound up the
piece (not the watch) by exclaiming, with characteris-
tic brutality, “Ha 1 ha / Eleven minutes to six The
General dead and the spy hanged l’’ This brought
the curtain down, triumphantly.
There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them) a
lovelier residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace
of the Fishponds, whither we removed as soon as our
three months’ tenancy of the Pink Jail at Albaro had
ceased and determined.
It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but
aloof from the town: surrounded by beautiful gardens
of its own, adorned with statues, vases, fountains,
marble basins, terraces, walks of Orange-trees and
lemon-trees, groves of roses and camelias. All its
apartments are beautiful in their proportions and dec-
orations; but the great hall, some fifty feet in height,
with three large windows at the end, Overlooking the
whole town of Genoa, the harbour, and the neighbouring
sea, affords one of the most fascinating and delightful
brospects in the world. Any house more cheerful and
}. than the great rooms are, within, it would be
GENOA. 51
difficult to conceive; and certainly nothing more deli-
cious than the scene without, in Sunshine or in moon-
light, could be imagined. It is more like an enchanted
palace in an Eastern story than a grave and sober
lodging.
How you may wander on, from room to room, and
never tire of the wild fancies on the walls and ceilings,
as bright in their fresh colouring as if they had been
painted yesterday; or how one floor, or even the great
hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a spacious
romenade; or how there are corridors and bed-cham-
ers above, which we never use and rarely visit, and
scarcely know the way through; or how there is a view
of a perfectly different character on each of the four
sides of the building; matters little. But that prospect
from the hall, is like a vision to me. I go back to it, in
fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred times
a day; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet
scents from the garden rising up about me, in a perfect
dream of happiness.
There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its
many churches, monasteries, and convents, pointing up
into the sunny sky; and down below me, just where the
roofs begin, a solitary convent parapet, fashioned like a
gallery, with an iron cross at the end, where sometimes,
early in the morning, I have seen a little group of dark-
veiled nuns gliding sorrowfully to and fro, and stopping
now and then to peep down upon the waking world in
which they have no part. Old Monte Faccio, brightest
of hills in good weather, but sulkiest when storms are
coming on, is here, upon the left. The Fort within the
walls (the good King built it to command the town, and
beat the houses of the Genoese about their ears, in case
they should be discontented) commands that height upon
the right. The broad sea lies beyond, in front there;
and that line of coast, beginning by the light-house, and
tapering away, a mere speck in the rosy ãº. is the
beautiful coast-road that leads to Nice. The garden
near at hand, among the roofs and houses, all red with
roses and fresh with little fountains: is the Acqua Sola
—a public promenade, where the military band plays
gaily, and the white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese
nobility ride round, and round, and round, in state-
clothes and coaches at least, if not in absolute wisdom.
52 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
Within a stone’s-throw, as it seems, the audience of the
Day-Theatre sit: their faces turned this way. But as
the stage is hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledge
of the cause, to see their faces change so suddenly from
earnestness to laughter; and Odder still, to hear the
rounds upon rounds of applause, rattling in the evening
air, to which the curtain falls. But, being Sunday night,
they act their best and most attractive play. And now
the sun is going down, in such magnificent array of red,
and green, and golden light, as neither pen nor pencil
could depict; and to the ringing of the vesper bells,
darkness sets in at once, without a twilight. Then,
lights begin to shine in Genoa, and on the country road;
and the revolving lanthorn out at sea there, flashing,
for an instant, on this palace front and portico, illumin-
ates it as if there were a bright moon bursting from be-
hind a cloud; then, merges it in deep obscurity. And this,
so far as I know, is the only reason why the Genoese
avoid it after dark, and think it haunted.
My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to
come; but nothing worse, I will engage. The same
Ghost will occasionally sail away, as I did one pleasant
Autumn evening, into the bright prospect, and Snuff
the morning air at Marseilles.
The corpulent hair-dresser was still sitting in his slip-
pers outside his shop-door there, but the twirling ladies
in the window, with the natural inconstancy of their
sex, had ceased to twirl, and were languishing, stock
still, with their beautiful faces addressed to blind
corners of the establishment, where it was impossible
for admirers to penetrate.
The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run
of eighteen hours, and we were going to run back
again by the Cornice Road from Nice: not being satis-
fied to have seen only the outsides of the beautiful
towns that rise in picturesque white clusters from
among the olive woods, and rocks, and hills, upon the
margin of the Sea.
The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight
o'clock, was very small, and so crowded with goods that
there was scarcely room to move; neither was there any-
thing to eat on board, except bread; nor to drink, except
coffee. But being due at Nice at about eight or so in the
morning, this was of no consequence: So when we began
| |
NICE HARBOUR. 53
to wink at the bright stars, in involuntary acknowledg-
ment of their winking at us, we turned into our berths,
in a crowded, but cool little cabin, and slept Soundly
till morning.
The Boat, being as dull and dogged a little boat as
ever was built, it was within an hour of noon when we
turned into Nice Harbour, where we very little expected
anything but breakfast. But we were laden with wool.
Wool must not remain in the Custom House at Mar-
seilles more than twelve months at a stretch, without
paying duty. It is the custom to make fictitious re-
movals of unsold wool to evade this law; to take it
somewhere when the twelve months are nearly out;
bring it straight back again; and warehouse it, as a
new cargo, for nearly twelve months longer. This
wool of ours, had come originally from some place in
the East. It was recognised as Eastern produce, the
moment we entered the harbour. Accordingly, the gay
little Sunday boats, full of holiday people, which had
come off to greet us, were warned away by the author-
ities; we were declared in quarantine; and a great flag
was solemnly run up to the mast-head on the wharf, to
make it known to all the town. -
It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved,
unwashed, undressed, unfed, and could hardly enjoy
the absurdity of lying blistering in a lazy harbour, with
the town looking on from a respectful distance, all
manner of whiskered men in cocked hats discussing
our fate at a remote guard-house, with gestures (we
looked very hard at them with telescopes) expressive of
a week’s detention at least: and nothing whatever the
matter all the time. But even in this crisis the Brave
Courier achieved a triumph. He telegraphed somebody
(I saw nobody) either naturally connected with the
hotel, or put en rapport with the establishment for that
occasion only. The telegraph was answered, and in
half an hour or less, there came a loud shout from the
guard-house. The captain was wanted. Everbody
helped the captain into his boat. Everybody got his
luggage, and said we were going. The captain rowed
away, and disappeared behind a little jutting corner of
the Galley-slaves’ Prison: and presently came back
with something, very sulkily. The Brave Courier met
him at the side, and received the something as its right-
54 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
ful owner. It was a wicker-basket, folded in a linen
cloth; and in it were two great bottles of wine, a roast
fowl, some salt fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf of
bread, a dozen or so of peaches, and a few other trifles.
When we had selected our own breakfast, the Brave
Courier invited a chosen party to partake of these re-
freshments, and assured them that they need not be de-
terred by motives of delicacy, as he would order a sec-
ond basket to be furnished at their expense. Which
he did—no one knew how—and by and by, the captain
being again summoned, again sulkily returned with an-
other something; over which my popular attendant pre-
sided as before: carving with a clasp-knife, his own per-
Sonal property, something Smaller than a Roman Sword,
The whole party on board were made merry by
these unexpected supplies; but none more so, than a lo-
Quacious little Frenchman, who got drunk in five min-
utes, and a sturdy Cappuccino Friar, who had taken
everybody’s fancy mightily, and was one of the best
friars in the world, I verily believe.
He had a free, open countenance; and a rich brown,
flowing beard; and was a remarkably handsome man,
of about fifty. He had come up to us, early in the
morning, and inquired whether we were sure to be at
Nice by eleven; saying that he particularly wanted to
know, because if we reached it by that time he would
have to perform Mass, and must deal with the conse-
crated wafer, fasting; whereas, if there were no chance
of his being in time, he would immediately breakfast.
He made this communication, under the idea that the
Brave Courier was the captain; and indeed he looked
much more like it than anybody else on board. Being
assured that we should arrive in good time, he fasted, .
and talked, fasting, to everybody, with the most charm-
ing good-humour; answering jokes at the expense of
friars, with other jokes at the expense of laymen, and
saying that friar as he was, he would engage to take
up the two strongest men on board, one after º
with his teeth, and carry them along the deck. Nobody
gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he could have
done it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man,
even in the Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and
most ungainly that can well be.
All this had given great delight to the loquacious
NICE HARBOUR. 55
Frenchman, who gradually patronised the Friar very
much, and seemed to commiserate him as One who
might have been born a Frenchman himself, but for an
infortunate destiny. Although his patronage was such
as a mouse might bestow upon a lion, he had a vast
opinion of its condescension; and in the warmth of that
sentiment, occasionally rose on tiptoe, to slap the Friar
on the back. -
When the baskets arrived: it being then too late for
Mass: the Friar went to work bravely: eating prodig-
iously of the cold meat and bread, drinking deep
draughts of the wine, Smoking cigars, taking Snuff,
sustaining an uninterrupted conversation with all
hands, and occasionally running to the boat's side and
hailing somebody on shore with the intelligence that we
must be got out of this quarantine somehow or other,
as he had to take part in a great religious procession in
the afternoon. After this, he would come back, laugh-
ing lustily from pure good humour: while the Frenchman
wrinkled his small face into ten thousand creases, and
said how droll it was, and what a brave boy was that
Friar! At length the heat of the sun without, and of
the wine within, made the Frenchman sleepy. So, in
the noontide of his patronage of his gigantic protégé,
he lay down among the wool, and began to Snore.
It was four o’clock before we were released; and the
Frenchman, dirty, and woolly, and snuffy, was still
sleeping when the Friar went ashore. As soon as we
were free, we all hurried away, to wash and dress, that
we might make a decent appearance at the Procession;
and I saw no more of the Frenchman until we took up
our station in the main street to see it pass, when he
squeezed himself into a front place, elaborately reno-
vated; threw back his little coat, to show a broad-bar-
red velvet waistcoat sprinkled all over with stars; and
adjusted himself and his cane so as utterly to bewilder
and transfix the Friar, when he should appear.
The procession was a very long one, and included an
immense number of people divided into small parties;
each party chanting nasally, on its own account, with-
Out reference to any other, and producing a most dis-
mal result. There were angels, crosses, Virgins carried
On flat boards surrounded by Cupids, crowns, saints,
missals, infantry, tapers, monks, nuns, relics, digni-
t |
56 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
taries of the church in green hats, walking under crim-
son parasols: and, here and there, a species of sacred
street-lamp hoisted on a pole. We looked out anxiously
for the Cappuccini, and presently their brown robes and
corded girdles were seen coming on, in a body.
I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea
that when the Friar saw him in the broad-barred waist-
coat, he would mentally exclaim, “Is that my Patron
That distinguished man!” and would be covered with
confusion. Ah never was the Frenchman so de-
ceived. As our friend the Cappuccino advanced, with
folded arms, he looked straight into the visage of the
little Frenchman, with a bland, serene, composed ab-
Straction, not to be described. There was not the faint-
est trace of recognition or amusement on his features;
not the Smallest consciousness of bread and meat, wine,
Snuff, or cigars. “C'est lui-même,” I heard the little
Frenchman say, in some doubt. Oh yes, it was himself.
It was not his brother or his nephew, very like him. It
was he. He walked in great state: being one of the
Superiors of the Order: and looked his part to admira-
tion. There never was anything so perfect of its kind
as the contemplative way in which he allowed his plac-
id gaze to rest on us, his late companions, as if he had
never seen us in his life and didn’t see us then. The
Frenchman, quite humbled, took off his hat at last, but
the Friar still passed on, with the same imperturbable
Serenity; and the broad-barred waistcoat, fading into
the crowd, was seen no more.
The procession wound up with a discharge of mus-
ketry that shook all the windows in the town. Next
afternoon we started for Genoa, by the famed Cornice
Road.
The half-French, half-Italian Vetturino, who under-
took, with his little rattling carriage and pair, to convey
us thither in three days, was a careless, good-looking
fellow, whose light-heartedness and singing propensi-
ties knew no bounds as long as we went on smoothly.
So long, he had a word and a smile, and a flick of his
whip, for all the Peasant girls, and odds and ends of
the Sonnambula for all the echoes. So long, he went
jingling through every little village, with bells on his
horses and rings in his ears : a very meteor of gallantry
and cheerfulness. But it was highly characteristic to
NICE HARBOUR. 5?
see him under a slight reverse of circumstances, when,
in one part of the journey, we came to a narrow place
where a waggon had broken down and stopped up the
road. His hands were twined in his hair immediately,
as if a combination of all the direst accidents in life had
suddenly fallen on his devoted head. He swore in
French, prayed in Italian, and went up and down, beating
his feet on the ground in a very ecstasy of despair. There
were various carters and mule-drivers assembled
round the broken waggon, and at last some man, of an
original turn of milld, proposed that a general and joint
effort should be made to get things to-rights again, and
clear the way—an idea which I verily believe would
never have presented itself to our friend, though we had
remained there until now. It was done at no great cost
of labour ; but at every pause in the doing, his hands
were wound in his hair again, as if there were no ray
of hope to lighten his misery. The moment he was on
his box once more, and clattering down hill, he re-
turned to the Sonnambula and the Peasant girls, as if
it were not in the power of misfortune to depress him.
Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and vil-
lages on this beautiful road, disappears when they are
enfered, for many of them are very miserable. The
streets are narrow, dark, and dirty; the inhabitants lean
and squalid; and the withered old women, with their
wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the top of the
head, like a pad to carry loads On, are so intensely ugly,
both along the Riviera, and in Genoa, too, that, seen
straggling about in dim door-ways with their spindles,
or crooning together in by-corners, they are like a popu-
lation of Witches—except that they certainly are not
to be suspected of brooms or any other instrument of
cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in common use
to hold wine, and hung out in the Sun in all directions,
by any means ornamental, as they always preserve the
form of very bloated pigs, with their heads and legs cut
off, dangling upside-down by their own tails.
These towns, as they are seen in the approach, how-
ever: nestling, with their clustering roofs and towers,
among trees on steep-hill sides, or built upon the brink
of noble bays: are charming. The vegetation is, every-
where, luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palm-tree
makes a novel feature in the novel scenery. In one
58 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
town, San Remo–a most extraordinary place, built on
gloomy open arches, so that one might ramble under-
neath the whole town—there are pretty terrace gardens;
in other towns, there is the clang of shipwrights’ ham-
mers, and the building of Small vessels on the beach.
In some of the broad bays, the fleets of Europe might
ride at anchor. In every case, each little group of
houses presents, in the distance, some enchanting con-
fusion of picturesque and fanciful shapes. -
The road itself—now high above the glittering sea,
which breaks against the foot of the precipice : now
turning inland to sweep the shore of a bay : now cross-
ing the stony bed of a mountain stream: now low down
on the beach: now winding among riven rocks of many
forms and colours: now chequered by a solitary ruined
tower, one of a chain of towers built, in old time, to
protect the coast from the invasions of the Barbary Cor-
sairs—presents new beauties every moment. When its
own striking scenery is passed, and it trails on through
a long line of suburb, lying on the flat sea-shore, to
Genoa, then, the changing glimpses of that noble city
and its harbour, awaken a new source of interest :
freshened by every huge, unwieldy, half-inhabited old
house in its outskirts: and coming to its climax when
the city gate is reached, and all Genoa with its beauti.
ful harbour, and neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on
the view,
TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA.
*º-
STROLLED away from Genoa on the 6th of Novem-
ber, bound for a good many places (England among
them), but first for Piacenza; for which town I started
in the coupé of a machine something like a travelling
caravan, in company with the Brave Courier, and a
lady with a large dog, who howled dolefully, at inter-
vals, all night. It was very wet, and very cold ; very
dark, and very dismal; we travelled at the rate of barely
four miles an hour, and stopped nowhere for refresh-
ment. At ten o’clock next morning, we changed coaches
at Alessandria, where we were packed up in another
coach (the body whereof would have been small for a
fly), in company with a very old priest ; a young Jesuit,
his companion—who carried their breviaries and other
books, and who, in the exertion of getting into the coach,
had made a gash of pink leg between his black stocking
and his black knee-shorts, that reminded one of Hamlet
in Ophelia's closet, only it was visible on both legs—a
provincial Avvocêto ; and a gentleman with a red nose
that had an uncommon and singular sheen upon it,
which I never observed in the human subject before.
In this way we travelled on, until four o’clock in the
afternoon ; the roads being still very heavy, and the
coach very slow. To mend the matter, the old priest
was troubled with cramps in his legs, so that he had to
give a terrible yell every ten minutes or so, and be
hoisted Öut by the united efforts of the company ; the
coach always stopping for him, with great gravity.
This disorder, and the roads, formed the main subject
of conversation. Finding, in the afternoon, that the
coupé had discharged two people, and had only one pas-
senger inside—a monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great
(30 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
purple moustache, of which no man could see the ends
when he had his hat on—I took advantage of its better
accommodation, and in company with this gentleman
(who was very conversational and good-humoured)
travelled on, until nearly eleven o'clock at night, when
the driver reported that he couldn’t think of going any
farther, and we accordingly made a halt at a place
called Stradella.
The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding
a yard; where our coach, and a Waggon Or two, and a
lot of fowls and firewood, were all heaped up together
higgledy-piggledy, so that you didn’t know, and couldn’t
have taken your oath, which was a fowl and which was
a cart. We followed a sleepy man with a flaring torch,
into a great, cold room, where there were two im-
mensely broad beds, on what looked like two immensely
broad deal dining-tables; another deal table of similar
dimensions in the middle of the bare floor; four win-
dows; and two chairs. Somebody said it was my room; .
and I had walked up and down it, for half an hour or
So, staring at the Tuscan, the old priest, the young priest,
and the Avvocato (Red-Nose lived in the town, and had
gone home), who sat upon the beds, and stared at me
in return.
The rather dreary whimsicality of this stage of the
proceedings, is interrupted by an announcement from,
the Brave (he has been cooking) that Supper is ready;
and to the priest’s chamber (the next room and the
counterpart of mine) we all adjourn. The first dish is
a cabbage, boiled with a great quantity of rice in a tu-
reen full of water, and flavoured with cheese. It is so hot,
and we are so cold, that it appears almost jolly. The
second dish is some little bits of pork, fried with pig’s
kidneys. The third, two red fowls. The fourth, two
little red turkeys. The fifth, a huge stew of garlic and
truffles, and I don’t know what else; and this, concludes
the entertainment.
Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it
of the dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes mov-
ing in, in the middle of such a quantity of fuel that he
looks like Birnam Wood taking a winter walk. He kin-
dles this heap in a twinkling, and produces a jorum of
hot brandy-and-water; for that bottle of his keeps com-
pany with the seasons, and now holds nothing but the
STRADELLA. (31
purest eau de vie. When he has accomplished this feat,
he retires for the night; and I hear him, for an hour
afterwards, and indeed until I fall asleep, making jokes
in some out-house (apparently under the pillow ), where
he is smoking cigars with a party of confidential
friends. He never was in the house in his life before;
but he knows everybody everywhere, before he has been
anywhere five minutes; and is certain to have attracted
to himself, in the meantime, the enthusiastic devotion
of the whole establishment.
This is at twelve o’clock at night. At four o’clock
next morning he is up again, fresher than a new-blown
rose; making blazing fires without the least authority
from the landlord; producing mugs of Scalding coffee
when nobody else can get anything but cold water; and
going out into the dark streets, and roaring for fresh
milk, on the chance of somebody with a cow getting
up to supply it. While the horses are “coming,” I
stumble out into the town too. It seems to be all one
little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing in and out
of the arches, alternately, in a sort of pattern. But it
is profoundly dark, and raining heavily, and I shouldn’t
know it to-morrow, if I were taken there to try. Which
Heaven forbid! -
The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval,
the driver swears: sometimes Christian oaths, some-
times. Pagan Oaths. Sometimes, when it is a long, com-
pound oath, he begins with Christianity and merges into
Paganism. Various messengers are despatched; not so
much after the horses, as after each other; for the first
messenger never comes back, and all the rest imitate
him. At length the horses appear, Surrounded by all
the messengers, some kicking them, and Some dragging
them, and all shouting abuse to them. Then the old
priest, the young priest, the Avvocato, the Tuscan, and
all of us, take our places; and sleepy voices proceeding
from the doors of extraordinary hutches in divers parts
of the yard, cry out “Addio corrière miol Buon’ viaggio,
corrière!” Salutations which the courier, with his face
one monstrous grin, returns in like manner as we go
jolting and wallowing away, through the mud.
At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey
from the inn at Stradella, we broke up our little com-
pany before the hotel door, with divers manifestations
62 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
of friendly feeling on all sides. The old priest was
taken with the cramp again, before he had got half-way
down the street, and the young priest laid the bundle of
books on a doorstep, while he dutifully rubbed the old
gentlemen’s legs. The client of the Avvocêto was wait-
ing for him at the yard-gate, and kissed him on each
cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I am afraid
he had either a very bad case, or a scantily-furnished
purse. The Tuscam, with a cigar in his mouth, went
loitering off, carrying his hat in his hand that he might
the better trail up the ends of his dishevelled moustache.
And the Brave Courier, as he and I strolled away to
look about us, began immediately to entertain me with
the private histories and family affairs of the whole
Darty. *
| Kºrown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is. A deserted,
solitary, grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts; half
filled-up trenches, which afford a frowsy pasturage to
the lean kine that wander about them ; and streets of
stern houses, moodily frowning at the other houses over
the way. The sleepiest and shabbiest of soldiery go
wandering about, with the double curse of laziness and
poverty, uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting regimen-
tals; the dirtiest of children play with their impromptu
toys (pigs and mud) in the feeblest of gutters; and the
gauntest of dogs trot in and out of the dullest of arch-
ways, in perpetual search of something to eat, which
they never seem to find. A mysterious and solemn Pal-
ace, guarded by two colossal statues, twin Genii of the
place, stands gravely in the midst of the idle town ; and
the king with the marble legs, who flourished in the
time of the thousand and one Nights, might live con-
tentedly inside of it, and never have the energy, in his
upper half of flesh and blood, to want to come out.
What a strange, half-sorrowful and half-delicious
doze it is, to ramble through these places gone to sleep
and basking in the Sun Each, in its turn, appears to
be, of all the mouldy, dreary, God-forgotten towns in
tho wide world, the chief. Sitting on this hillock where
a bastion used to be, and where a noisy fortress was,
in the time of the old Roman station here, I become
aware that I have never known till now, what it is to
be lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much the
same condition before he retires under the wool in his
T” ARMA. 63
cage ; or a tortoise before he buries himself. Ifeel that
I am getting rusty. That any attempt to think, would
be accompanied with a creaking noise. That there is
nothing, anywhere, to be done, or needing to be done.
That there is no more human progress, motion, effort,
or advancement, of any kind beyond this. That the
whole scheme stopped here centuries ago, and lay down
to rest until the Day of Judgment.
Never while the Brave Courier lives | Behold him
jingling out of Piacenza, and staggering this way, in
the tallest posting-chaise ever seen, so that he looks out
of the front window as if he were peeping over a garden
wall; while the postilion, concentrated essence of all
the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his ani-
mated conversation, to touch his hat to a blunt-nosed
little Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, enshrined
in a plaster Punch’s show outside the town.
In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on
trellis-work, supported on square clumsy pillars, which,
in themselves, are anything but picturesque. But here,
they twine them around trees, and let them trail among
the hedges; and the vineyards are full of trees, regularly
planted for this purpose, each with its own vine twin-
ing and clustering about it. Their leaves are now of the
brightest gold and deepest red; and never was anything
so enchantingly graceful and full of beauty. Through
miles of these delightful forms and colours, the road
winds its way. The wild festoons, the elegant wreaths,
and crowns, and garlands of all shapes; the fairy nets
flung Over great trees, and making them prisoners in
Sport; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes
upon the ground; how rich and beautiful they are! And
every now and then, a long, long line of trees will be all
bound and garlanded together, as if they had taken
#: ºf One another and were coming dancing down the
€ LCL |
Parma has cheerful, stirring streets for an Italian
town; and consequently is not so characteristic as many
places of less note. Always excepting the retired Piazza,
where the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Campanile—an-
cient buildings of a sombre brown, embellished with
innumerable grotesque monsters and dreamy-looking
Creatures carved in marble and red stone—are clustered
in a noble and magnificent repose. Their silent presence
64. PICTURES FROM ITALY.
was only invaded, when I saw them, by the twittering
of the many birds that were flying in and out of the
crevices in the stones and little nooks in the architec-
ture, where they had made their nests. They were busy,
rising from the cold shade of Temples made with hands,
into the sunny air of Heaven. Not so the worshippers
within, who were listening to the same drowsy chaunt,
or kneeling before the same kinds of images and tapers,
or whispering, with their heads bowed down, in the
very selfsame dark confessionals as I had left in Genoa.
and everywhere else. e
The decayed and mutilated paintings with which thi
church is covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably
mournful and depressing influence. It is miserable to
see great works of art—something of the Souls of Paint-
ers—perishing and fading away, like human forms.
This cathedral is odorous with the rotting of Correggio's
frescoes in the cupola. Heaven knows how beautiful
they may have been at one time, Connoisseurs fall
into raptures with them now; but such a labyrinth of
arms and legs: such heaps of foreshortened limbs, en-
tangled and involved and jumbled together: no opera-
tive surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in his wildest
delirium.
There is a very interesting subterranean church here;
the roof supported by marble pillars, behind each of
which there seemed to be at least one beggar in am-
bush : to say nothing of the tombs and secluded altars.
From every one of these lurking-places, such crowds
of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men
and women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or
paralytic gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad
infirmity, came hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined
frescoes in the cathedral above, had been suddenly ani-
mated, and had retired to this lower church, they could
hardly have made a greater confusion, or exhibited a
more confounding display of arms and legs.
There is Petrarch’s Monument, too ; and there is the
Baptistery, with its beautiful arches and immense
font ; and there is a gallery containing some very re-
markable pictures, whereof a few were being copied
by hairy-faced artists, with little velvet caps more off
their heads than on. There is the Farnese Palace, too :
and in it one of the dreariest spectacles of decay that
MODEN A. 65
ever was seen—a grand, old, gloomy theatre, moulder-
ing a way.
It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe
shape ; the lower seats arranged upon the Roman plan,
but above them, great heavy chambers rather than
boxes, where the Nobles sat, remote, in their proud
state. Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre, en
hanced in the spectator's fancy by its gay intention
and design, none but worms can be familiar with. A
hundred and ten years have passed, since any play was
acted here. The sky shines through the gashes in the
roof ; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and
only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew Smear the
faded colours, and make spectral maps upon the panels;
lean rags are dangling down where there were gay fes-
toons on the ProScenium ; the stage has rotted so, that
a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it
would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in
the gloomy depth beneath. The desolation and decay
impress themselves on all the senses. The air has a
mouldering Smell, and an earthy taste ; any stray
outer sounds that straggle in with some lost Sunbeam,
are muffled and heavy ; and the worm, the maggot,
and the rot have changed the surface of the w; be-
neath the touch, as time will seam and roughen a
smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act them
on this ghostly stage. *.
It was most delicious weather, when we came into
Modena, where the darkness of the sombre colonnades
over the footways skirting the main street on either
side, was made refreshing and agreeable by the bright
sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all the glory
of the day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was
E.; feeble tapers were burning, people were
neeling in all directions before all manner of shrines,
and officiating priests were crooning the usual chaunt,
in the usual low, dull, drawling, melancholy tone.
Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stag-
nant town, this same Heart beating with the same
monotonous pulsation, the centre of the same torpid,
listless, system, I came out by another door, and was
suddenly scared to death by a blast from the shrillest
trumpet that ever was blown. Immediately, came
tearing round the corner, an equestrian company from
VOL. I. Ö
G6 . PICTURES FROM ITALY.
Paris: marshalling themselves under the walls of the
church, and flouting, with their horses' heels, the
griffins, lions, tigers, and other monsters in stone and
marble, decorating its exterior. First, there came a
stately nobleman with a great deal of hair, and no hat,
bearing an enormous banner, on which was inscribed,
MAZEPPA! To-NIGHT! Then a Mexican chief, with a
great pear-shaped club on his shoulder, like Hercules.
Then, six or eight Roman chariots: each with a beauti-
ful lady in extremely short petticoats, and unnaturally
pink tights, erect within: shedding beaming looks upon
the crowd, in which there was a latent expression of
discomposure and anxiety, for which I couldn’t account,
until, as the open back of each chariot presented itself,
I saw the immense difficulty with which the pink legs
maintained their perpendicular, over the uneven pave-
ment of the town: which gave me quite a new idea of
the ancient Romans and Britons. The procession was
brought to a close, by some dozen indomitable warriors
of different nations, riding two and two, and haughtily
surveying the tame population of Modena: among
whom, however, they occasionally condescended to scat-
ter largesse in the form of a few handbills. After cara-
colling among the lions and tigers, and proclaiming
that evening's entertainments with blast of trumpet, it
then filed off, by the other end of the square, and left a
new and greatly increased dulness behind.
When the procession had so entirely passed away,
that the shril trumpet was mild in the distance, and the
tail of the last horse was hopelessly round the corner,
the people who had come out of the church to stare at
it, went back again. But one old lady, kneeling on the
pavement within, near the door, had seen it all, and
had been immensely interested, without getting up;
and this old lady’s eye, at that juncture, I happened to
catch: to our mutual confusion. She cut our embarrass-
ment very short, however, by crossing herself devoutly,
and going down, at full length, on 5. face, before a
figure in a fancy petticoat and a gilt crown; which was
So like one of the procession-figures, that perhaps at
this hour she may think the whole appearance a celes-
tial vision. Anyhow, I must certainly have forgiven
her interest in the Circus, though I had been her Father
Confessor.
BOLOGNA. 67
There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked
shoulder, in the Cathedral, who took it very ill that I
made no effort to see the bucket (kept in an old tower)
which the people of Modena took away from the people
of Bologna in the fourteenth century, and about which
there was war, made and a mock-heroic poem by TAS-
SONE, too. . Being quite content, however, to look at the
outside of the tower, and feast, in imagination, on the
bucket within; and preferring to loiter in the shade of
the tall Campanile, and about the Cathedral; I have no
personal knowledge of this bucket, even at the present
time.
Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old Iran
(or the Guide-Book) would have considered that we had
half done justice to the wonders of Modena. But it is
such a delight to me to leave new scenes behind, and
still go on, encountering newer scenes—and, moreover, I
have such a perverse disposition in respect of sights
that are cut, and dried, and dictated—that I fear I sin
against similar authorities in every place I visit.
Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna.
I found myself walking next Sunday morning, among
the stately marble tombs and colonnades, in company
with a crowd of Peasants, and escorted by a little Cicer-
One of that town, who was excessively anxious for the
honour of the place, and most solicitous to divert my
attention from the bad monuments: whereas he was
never tired of extolling the good ones. Seeing this
little man (a good-humoured little man he was, who
seemed to have nothing in his face but shining teeth
and eyes) looking, wistfully, at a certain plot of grass,
I asked him who was buried there. “The poor peopke,
Signore,” he said, with a shrug and a smile, sº Stop-
ping to look back at me—for he always went on a little
before, and took off his hat to introduce every new
monument. “Only the poor, Signore! It's very cheer-
ful. It’s very lively. How green it is, how cool! It's
like a meadow ! There are five,”—holding up all the
fingers of his right hand to express the number, which
an Italian peasant will always do, if it be within the
Compass of his ten fingers, “there are five of my little
children buried there, Signore; just there; a little to
the right. Well! Thanks to God! It's very cheerful.
How green it is, how cool it is! It’s quite a meadow !”
68 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing I was
Sorry for him, took a pinch of snuff (every Cicerone
takes snuff), and made a little bow; partly in depreca-
tion of his having alluded to such a subject, and partly
in memory of the children and of his favorite saint. It
was an unaffected and as perfectly natural a little bow,
as ever man made. Immediately afterwards, he took
his hat off altogether, and begged to introduce me to
the next monument; and his eyes and his teeth shone
brighter than before.
TEIROUGH BOLOGINAL AND FERRAIRA.
gammºmºmºm-
THERE was such a very smart official in attendance
at the Cemetery where the little Cicerone had
buried his children, that when the little Cicerone sug-
gested to me, in a whisper, that there would be no
offence in presenting this officer, in return for some
slight extra service, with a couple of pauls (about ten-
pence, English money), I looked incredulously at his
cocked hat, wash-leather gloves, well-made uniform,
and dazzling buttons, and rebuked the little Cicerone
with a grave shake of the head. For, in splendour of
appearance, he was at least equal to the Deputy Usher
of the Black Rod ; and the idea of his carrying, as
Jeremy Diddler would say, “such a thing as tempence.”
away with him, seemed monstrous. He took it in ex-
cellent part, however, when I made bold to give it
him, and pulled off his cocked hat with a flourish that
would have been a bargain at double the money.
It seemed to be his duty to describe the monuments
to the people—at all events he was doing so; and when
I compared him, like Gulliver in Brobdignag, “with
the Institutions of my own beloved country, I could
not refrain from tears of pride and exultation.” He
had no pace at all ; no more than a tortoise. He
loitered as the people loitered, that they might gratify.
their curiosity; and positively allowed them, now and
then, to read the inscriptions on the tombs. He was
neither shabby, nor insolent, nor churlish, nor ignorant.
He spoke his own language with perfect propriety, and
seemed to consider himself, in his way, a kind of
teacher of the people, and to entertain a just respect
both for himself and them. They would no more have
such a man for a Verger in Westminster Abbey, than
they would let the people in (as they do. at Bologna)
to see the monuments for nothing.”
* A far more liberal and just recognition of the public has arisen in West-
m l Inster Abbey slnce this was written.
7() BICTURES FROM ITALY.
Again, an ancient sombre town, under the brilliant
sky; with heavy arcades over the footways of the older
streets, and lighter and more cheerful archways in the
newer portions or the town. Again, brown piles of
sacred buildings, with more birds flying in and out of
chinks in the stones ; and more snarling monsters for
the bases of the pillars. Again, rich churches, drowsy
masses, curling incense, tinkling bells, priests in bright
vestments : pictures, tapers, laced altar cloths, crosses,
images, and artificial flowers.
There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a
pleasant gloom upon it, that would leave it, a distinct
and separate impression in the mind, among a crowd of
cities, though it were not still further marked in the
traveller's remembrance by the two brick leaning towers
(sufficiently unsightly in themselves, it must be ac-
knowledged), inclining cross-wise as if they were bow-
ing stiffly to each other—a most extraordinary termina-
tion of the perspective of some of the narrow streets.
The colleges, and churches too, and palaces : and above
all the academy of Fine Arts, where there are a host of
interesting pictures, especially by GUIDO, DOMENICHINO,
and LUDOVICO CARACCI : give it a place of its own in
the memory. Even though these were not, and there
were nothing else to remember it by, the great Meridian
on the pavement of the church of San Petronio, where
the Sunbeams mark the time among the kneeling people,
would give it a fanciful and pleasant interest.
Bologna being very full of tourists, detained there by
an inundation which rendered the road to Florence im-
passable, I was quartered up at the top of an hotel, in
an out-of-the-way room which I never could find : con-
taining a bed, big enough for a boarding-School, which
I couldn’t fall asleep in. The chief among the waiters
who visited this lonely retreat, where there was no other
company but the swallows in the broad eaves over the
window, was a man of one idea in connection with
the English ; and the subject of this harmless mono-
mania, was Lord Byron. I made the discovery by ac-
cidentally remarking to him, at breakfast, that the
matting with which the floor was covered, was very
comfortable at that season, when he immediately re-
plied that Milor Beeron had been much attached to
that kind of matting. Observing, at the same mo-
BOLOGNA. 71
mont, that I took no milk, he exclaimed with enſhu-
siasm, that Milon Beeron had never touched it. At
first, I took it for granted, in my innocence, that he
had been one of the Beeron servants ; but no, he said
no, he was in the habit of speaking about my Lord,
to English gentleman ; that was all. He knew all
about him, he said. In proof of it, he connected him
with every possible topic, from the Monte Pulciano
wine at dinner (which was grown on an estate he had
owned), to the big bed itself, which was the very
model of his. When I left the inn, he coupled with
his final bow in the yard, a parting assurance that
the road by which I was going, had been Milor Beeron’s
favourite ride ; and before the horse’s feet had well be-
gun to clatter on the pavement, he ran briskly up-
stairs again, I dare say to tell some other Englishman
in some other solitary room that the guest who had
just departed was Lord Beeron’s living image.
I had entered Bologna, by night—almost midnight—
and all along the road thither, after our entrance into
the Papal territory : which is not, in any part, Supremely
well governed, Saint Peter's keys being rather rusty
now : the driver had so worried about the danger of
robbers in travelling after dark, and had so infected the
Brave Courier, and the two had been so constantly stop-
ping and getting up and down to look after a portman-
teau which was tied on behind, that I should have felt
almost obliged to any one who would have had the
goodness to take it away. Hence it was stipulated,
that, whenever we left Bologna, we should start so as
not to arrive at Ferrara later than eight at night ; and a
delightful afternoon and evening journey it was, albeit
through a flat district which gradually became more
marshy from the overflow of brooks and rivers in the
recent heavy rains.
At Sunset, when I was walking on alone, while the
horses rested, I arrived upon a little scene, which, by
one of those singular mental operations of which we are
all conscious, seemed perfectly familiar to me, and
which I see distinctly now. There was not much in it.
In the blood-red light, there was a mournful sheet of
water, just stirred by the evening wind ; upon its mar-
gin a few trees. In the foreground was a group of
silent Peasant-girls leaning over the parapet of a little
72 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
bridge, and looking, now up at the sky, now down into
the Water; in the distance, a deep bell; the shadow of
approaching night on everything. If I had been mur-
dered there, in some former life, I could not have
seemed to remember the place more thoroughly, or with
a more emphatic chilling of the blood ; and the real re-
membrance of it acquired in that minute, is so strength-
ened by the imaginary recollection, that I hardly think
I could forget it.
More solitary, more depoulated, more deserted, old
Ferrara, than any other city of the solemn brotherhood!
The grass so grows up in the silent streets, that anyone
lmight make hay there, literally, while the sun shines.
But the Sun shines with diminished cheerfulness in grim
Ferrara; and the people are so few who pass and repass
through the public places, that the flesh of its inhabitants
might be grass indeed, and growing in the squares.
I Wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian
town, always lives next door to the Hotel, or opposite;
making the visitor feel as if the beating hammers were
his own heart, palpitating with a deadly energy! I
Wonder why jealous corridors surround the bedroom
On all sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that
Can’t be shut, and will not open, and abut on pitchy
darkness! I wonder why it is not enough that these
distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all night,
but there must also be round open portholes, high in
the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard, be-
hind the wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with
his toes, in his endeavours to reach one of these portholes
and lookin! I wonder why the faggots are so constructed,
as to know of no effect but an agony of heat when
they are lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold
and Suffocation at all other times! I wonder, above all,
why it is the great feature of domestic architecture in
Italian inns, that all the fire goes up the chimney, ex-
cept the smoke! º
The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors, port-
holes, smoke, and faggots, are Welcome to me. Give
me the Smiling face of the attendant, man or woman;
the courteous manner; the amiable desire to please and
to be pleased; the light-hearted, pleasant, simple air—
so many jewels set in dirt—and I am theirs again to-
Iihorrow !
FERRARA. 73
ARIOSTO's house, TASSO's prison, a rare old gothic
cathedral, and more churches of course, are the sights
of Ferrara. But the long silent streets, and the dis-
mantled palaces, where ivy waves in lieu of banners,
and where rank weeds are slowly creeping up the long-
untrodden stairs, are the best sights of all.
The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before
Sunrise One fine morning, when I left it, was as pict-
uresque as it seemed unreal and spectral. It was no
matter that the people were not yet out of bed; for if
they had all been up and busy, they would have made
but little difference in that desert of a place. It was
best to see it, without a single figure in the picture; a
city of the dead, without one solitary survivor. Pes-
tilence might have ravaged streets, squares; and
market-places; and sack and siege have ruined the old
houses, battered down their doors and windows, and
made breaches in their roofs. In one part, a great
tower rose into the air; the only landmark in the
melancholy view. In another, a prodigious Castle, with
a moat about it, stood aloof : a sullen city in itself.
In the black dungeons of this castle, Parisima and her
lover were beheaded in the dead of night. The red
light, beginning to shine when I looked back upon it,
stained its walls without, as they have, many a time,
been stained within, in old days; but for any sign of
life they gave, the Castle and the city might have
been avoided by all human creatures, from the mo-
ment when the axe went down upon the last of the
two lovers: and might have never vibrated to another
sound
* . Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock.
Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and
running fiercely, we crossed it by a floating bridge of
boats, and so came into Austrian territory, and resumed
our journey: through a country of which, for some miles,
a great part was under water. The Brave Courier and
the soldiery had first quarreled, for half an hour or
more, over our eternal passport. But this was a daily
relaxation with the Brave, who was always stricken deaf
when shabby functionaries in uniform came, as they
constantly did come, plunging out of wooden boxes to
74. PICTURES FROM ITALY.
look at it—or in other words to beg—and who, stone
deaf to my entreaties that the man might have a trifle
given him, and We resume our journey in peace, was
wont to sit reviling the functionary in broken English:
while the unfortunate man's face was a portrait of men-
tal agony framed in the coach window, from his perfect
ignorance of what was being said to his disparagement.
There was a Postilion, in the course of this day’s jour-
ney, as wild and savagely good-looking a Vagabond as
you would desire to see. He was a tall, stout-made, dark-
complexioned fellow, with a profusion of shaggy black
hair hanging all over his face, and great black whiskers
stretching down his throat. His dress was a torn suit
of rifle green, garnished here and there with red; a
steeple-crowned hat, innocent of map, with a broken and
bedraggled feather stuck in the band; and a flaming red
neck-kerchief hanging on his shoulders. He was not in
the saddle, but reposed, quite at his ease, on a Sort of
low footboard in the front of the postchaise, down
among the horses’ tails—convenient for having his
brains kicked out, at any moment. To this Brigand,
the Brave Courier, when we were at a reasonable trot,
häppened to suggest the practicability of going faster.
He received the proposal with a perfect yell of derision;
brandished his whip about his head (such a whip ! it
was more like a home-made bow ), flung up his heels;
much higher than the horses; and disappeared, in a
paroxysm, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the
axletree. I fully expected to see him lying in the road,
a hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-
crowned hat again, next minute, and he was seen repos-
ing, as on a sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and
crying, “‘Ha ha what next. Oh the devil Faster
too! Shoo-hoo-O-O !” (This last ejaculation, an inex-
pressibly defiant hoot.) . Being anxious to reach our
immediate destination that night, I ventured, by-and-
by, to repeat the experiment. On my own account. It
produced exactly the same effect. Round flew the whip
with the same scornful flourish, up came the heels, down
went the steeple-crowned hat, and presently he reap-
peared, reposing as before and saying to himself, “ Ha
}. what next | Faster too. Oh the devil | Shoo-hoo
—O—O!”
A N ITALIAN DREAM.
*º-º-º-º-º:
T HAD been travelling, for some days; resting very
little in the night, and never in the day. The rapid
and unbroken succession of novelties that had passed
before me, came back like half-formed dreams ; and a
crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion
through my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road.
At intervals, some one among them would stop, as it
were, in its restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to
look at it, quite steadily, and behold it in full distinct-
ness. After a few moments, it would dissolve, like - a.
view in a magic-lantern ; and while I saw some part of
it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not at all,
would show me another of the many places I had lately
seen, lingering behind it, and coming through it. This
was no sooner visible than, in its turn, it melted into
something else.
At one moment, I was standing again, before the
brown old rugged churches of Modena. As I recognised
the curious pillars with grim monsters for their bases, I
seemed to see them, standing by themselves in the
Quiet square at Padua, where there were the staid old
University, and the figures, demurely gowned, grouped
here and there in the open space about it. Then, I was
strolling in the outskirts of that pleasant city, admiring
the unusual neatness of the dwelling-houses, gardens,
and Orchards, as I had seen them a few hours before.
In their stead arose, immediately, the two towers of
Bologna ; and the most obstinate of all these objects,
failed to hold its ground, a minute before the monstrous
moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to
a wild romance, came back again in the red sunrise,
lording it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered
town. In short, I had that incoherent but delightful
76 - PICTURES FROM ITALY.
jumble in my brain, which travellers are apt to have,
and are indolently willing to encourage. Every shake
of the coach in which I sat, half dozing in the dark,
appeared to jerk some new recollection out of its place,
and to jerk some other new recollection into it ; and in
this state I fell asleep.
I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by
the stopping of the coach. It was now quite night, and
we were at the water-side. There lay here, a black boat,
with a little house or cabin in it of the same mournful
colour. When I had taken my seat in this, the boat was
paddled, by two men, towards a great light, lying in the
distance on the sea.
Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind. It
ruffled the water, and rocked the boat, and sent the
dark clouds flying before the stars. I could not but
think how strange it was, to be floating away at that
hour; leaving the land behind, and going On, towards
this light upon the sea. It soon began to burn brighter;
and from being one light became a cluster of tapers,
twinkling and shining out of the water, as the boat ap-
proached towards them by a dreamy kind of track,
marked out upon the sea by posts and piles.
We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark
water, when I heard it rippling, in my dream, against
some obstruction near at hand. Looking Out attent-
ively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black and
massive—like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the
water, like a raft—which we were gliding past. The
chief of the two rowers said it was a burial-place.
Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery
lying out there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to
gaze upon it as it should recede in Our path, when it was
quickly shut out from my view. Before I knew by
what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a street
—a phantom street; the houses rising on both sides,
from the water, and the black boat gliding on beneath
their windows. Lights were shining from some of these
casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream
with their reflected rays; but all was profoundly silent.
So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to
hold our course through narrow stroets and lanes, all
filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners
where our way branched off, were so acute and narrow,
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 77
that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to
turn them; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of
warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Some-
times, the rowers of another black boat like our own,
echoed the cry, and slackening their speed (as I thought
we did ours) would come flitting past us, like a dark
shadow. Other boats, of the same. Sombre hue, were
lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark
mysterious doors that opened straight upon the water.
Some of these were empty; in some, the rowers lay
asleep; towards One, I saw Some figures coming down a
loomy archway from the interior of a palace: gaily
i. and attended by torch-bearers. It was but a
glimpse I had of them; for a bridge, so low and close
upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall down and
crush us: one of the many bridges that perplexed the
Dream: blotted them out, instantly. On we went, float-
ing towards the heart of this strange place—with water
all about us where never water was elsewhere—clusters
of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing
out of it—and, everywhere, the same extraordinary
silence. Presently we shot across a broad and open
stream; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious
paved quay, where, the bright lamps with which it was
illuminated showed long rows of arches and pillars, of
ponderous construction and great strength, but as light
to the eye as garlands of hoar-frost or gossamer—and
where, for the first time, I saw people walking—arrived
at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large
mansion, where, having passed through corridors and
galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest; listening to
the black boats stealing up and down below the window
on the rippling water, till I fell asleep.
The glory of the day that broke upon me in this
Dream ; its freshness, motion, buoyancy ; its sparkles
of the sun in water ; its clear blue sky and rustling
air ; no waking words can tell. But, from my window,
I looked down on boats and barks; on masts, sails, cord-
age, flags; On groups of busy sailors, working at the
cargoes of these vessels; on wide quays, strewn with
bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds ; on great
ships, lying near at hand in stately indolence: on
islands, crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets; and
where golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of won-
78 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
drous churches springing from the sea Going down
upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before the
door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of
such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the
rest was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorb-
ing loveliness. -
It was a great Piazza, as I thought ; anchored, like
all the rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was
a Palace, more majestic and magnificent in its old age,
than all the buildings of the earth, in the high prime
and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries : so
light, they might have been the work of fairy hands :
so strong that centuries had battered them in vain :
wound round and round this palace, and enfolded it
with a Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant
fancies of the East. At no great distance from its
porch, a lofty tower, standing by itself, and rearing its
proud head, alone, into the sky, looked out upon the
Adriatic sea. Near to the margin of the stream, were
two ill-omened pillars of red granite ; one having on
its top, a figure with a sword and shield ; the other, a
winged lion. Not far from these again, a second
tower : richest of the rich in all its decorations : even
here, where all was rich : sustained aloft, a great orb,
gleaming with gold and deepest blue : the Twelve
Signs painted on it, and a mimic sun revolving in its
course around them : while above, two bronze giants
hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell. An
oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone,
surrounded by a light and beautiful arcade, formed
part of this enchanted scene ; and, here and there,
gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the pave-
ment of the unsubstantial ground.
I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and
Out among its many arches : traversing its whole ex-
tent. A grand and dreamy structure, of immense pro-
portions; golden with old mosaics; redolent of per-
fumes ; dim with the smoke of incense ; costly in
treasure of precious” stones and metals, glittering
through iron bars ; holy with the bodies of de-
Ceased saints; rainbow-hued with windows of stained
glass ; dark with carved woods and coloured marbles ;
obscure in its vast heights, and lengthened distances;
Shining with silver lamps and winking lights; unreal,
AN ITALIAN DREAM. - 79
fantastic, solemh, inconceivable throughout. I thought
I entered the old Palace ; pacing silent galleries and
council-chambers, where the old rulers of this mistress
of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from the
walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still victori-
Ous on canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I
thought I wandered through its halls of state and tri-
umph—bare and empty now !—and musing On its
pride and might, extinct : for that was past ; all past :
heard a voice say, “Some tokens of its ancient rule,
and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be
traced here, yet !”
I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous
rooms communicating with a prison near the Palace ;
separated from it by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow
street ; and called, I dreamed, The Bridge of Sighs.
But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall;
the lions' mouth—now toothless—where, in the distem-
pered horror of my sleep, I thought, denunciations of
innocent men to the old wicked Council, had been
dropped through, many a time, when the night was
dark. So, when I saw the council-room to which
such prisoners were taken for examination, and the
door by which they passed out, when they were con-
demned—a door that never closed upon a man with
life and hope before him—my heart appeared to die
within me.
It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand,
I descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one
below another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells.
They were quite dark. Each had a loop-hole in its
massive wall, where, in the old time, every day a torch
was placed—I dreamed—to light the prisoner within,
for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of
these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in
the blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour
with a rusty nail’s point, had outlived their agony and
them, through many generations.
One cell I saw, in which no man remained for
more than four-and-twenty hours; being marked for
dead before he entered it. Hard by, another, and a
dismal One, whereto, at midnight, the confesssor came
—a monk brown-robed, and hooded—ghastly in the day,
and free bright air, but in the midnight of that murky
80 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
Fº Hope’s extinguisher, and Murder's herald. I
ad my foot upon the spot, where, at the same dread
hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled ; and struck
my hand upon the guilty door—low , browed and
stealthy—through which the lumpish sack was carried
out into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it
was death to cast a net.
Around this dungeon stronghold, and above Some part
of it ; licking the rough walls without, and smearing
them with damp and slime within : Stuffing dank
weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices, as if the
very stones and bars had mouths to stop : furnishing
a smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the
secret victims of the state—a road so ready that it
went along with them, and ran before them, like a
cruel officer—flowed the same water that filled this
Dream of mine, and made it seem one, even at the
time. -
Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I
thought, the Giant's—I had some imaginary recollection
of an old man abdicating, coming, more slowly and
more feebly, down it, when he heard the bell, proclaim-
ing his successor—I glided off in one of the dark boats,
until we came to an old arsenal guarded by four marble
lions. To make my Dream more monstrous and unlike-
ly, one of these had words and sentences on its body,
inscribed there at an unknown time and in an unknown
language, so that their purport was a mystery to all
IOleI).
There was little sound of hammers in this place for
building ships, and little work in progress; for the
greatness of the city was no more, as I have said. In-
deed, it seemed a very wreck found drifting on the sea;
a Strange flag hoisted in its honourable stations, and
Strangers standing at its helm. A splendid barge in
which its ancient chief had gone forth, pompously, at
certain periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I thought,
no more; but, in its place, there was a tiny model, made
from recollection like the city’s greatness; and it told of
what had been (so are the strong and weak confounded
in the dust) almost as eloquently as the massive pillars,
arches, roofs, reared to overshadow stately ships that
had no other shadow now, upon the water or the earth.
An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled ;
AN ITALIAN DREAM. Si
but an armoury. With a fierce standard taken from
the Turks, drooping in the dull air of its cage. Rich
suits of mail, worn by great warriors were hoarded
there ; crossbows and bolts ; quivers full of arrows;
spears ; Swords, daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-
headed axes. Plates of wrought steel and iron, to make
the gallant horse a monster cased in metal scales ; and
one spring-weapon (easy to be carried in the breast) de-
signed to do its office noiselessly, and made for shooting
men with poisoned darts. -
One press or case I saw full of accursed instruments
of torture; horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and
grind, and crush men's bones, and tear and twist them
with the torment of a thousand deaths. Before it were
two iron helmets, "with breast-pieces, made to close up
tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers;
and fastened on to each was a small nob or anvil, where
the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease.
and listen, near the walled-up ear to the lamentations and
confessions of the wretch within. There was that
grim resemblance in them to the human shape—they
were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and
cramped—that it was difficult to think them empty; and
terrible distortions lingering within them, seemed to
follow me when, taking to my boat again, I rode off to
a kind of garden or public walk in the Sea, where there
were grass and trees. But I forgot them when I stood
upon its furthest brink—I stood there in my Dream—
and looked along the ripple to the setting Sun; before
me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush ; and
behind me the whole city resolving into streaks of red
and purple, on the water.
In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream,' I took
but little heed of time, and had but little understanding
of its flight. But there were days and nights in it; and
when the sun was high, and when the rays of lamps
were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat. I
thought: plashing the slippery walls and houses with
the cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon
it, skimmed along the streets.
Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and
vast palaces, I wandered on from room to room, from
aisle to aisle, through labyrinths of rich altars, ancient
monuments; decayed apartments where the furniture,
WOL. I. 6
S2 - PICTURES FROM ITALY.
half awful, half grotesque, was mouldering away. Pict-
ures were there, replete with such enduring beauty
and expression: with such passion, truth, and power:
that they seemed so many young and fresh realities
among a host of spectres. I thought these, often in-
termingled with the old days of the city: with its beau-
ties, tyrants, captains, patriots, merchants, courtiers,
priests: nay, with its very stones, and bricks, and pub-
lic places; all of which lived again, about me, on the
walls. Then, coming down some marble staircase where
the water lapped and oozed against the lower steps, I
passed into my boat again, and went on in my Dream.
Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at
work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the
light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like
weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled heap. Past
Open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in
the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine
shone green and bright, making unusual shadows on
the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays
and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were
passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining
in the sunshine, on flag-stones and on flights of steps.
Past bridges, where there were idlers too: loitering and
looking over. Below stone balconies, erected at a giddy
height, before the loftiest windows of the loftiest
houses. Past plots of garden, theatres, shrines, pro-
digious piles of architecture—Gothic—Saracenic—fan-
ciful with all the fancies of all times and countries.
Past buildings that were high, and low, and black, and
white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand,
crazy and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of
boats and barges, and shooting out at last into a Grand
Câmal! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw
old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built
upon with shops and humming with the tongues of
men; a form I seemed to know for Desdemona’s, leaned
down through a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And,
in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's spirit was
abroad upon the water somewhere: stealing through
the city.
At night, when two votive lamps burned before an
image of the Virgin, in a gallery outside the great
Cathedral, near the roof, I fancied that the great piazza
AN ITALIAN DREAM. S3
of the Winged Lion was a blaze of cheerful light, and
that its whole arcade was thronged with people; while
crowds were diverting themselves in splendid coffee-
houses opening from it—which were never shut, I
thought, but open all night long. When the bronze
giants struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought
the life and animation of the city were all centered
here; and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I
only saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping
boatmen wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at full
length upon the stones. s
But, close about the quays and churches, palaces and
prisons: sucking at their walls, and welling up into the
secret places of the town: crept the water always.
Noiseless and watchful: coiled round and round it, in
its many folds, like an old serpent: waiting for the time,
I thought, when people should look down into its depths
for any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its
mistress.
Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old
market-place at Verona. I have, many and many a
time, thought, since, of this strange Dream upon the
water: half-wondering if it lie there yet, and if its name
be VENICE, -
{
BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS
THE PASS OF THE SIMPLON INTO
SWITZERLAND.
arm-mºmºmºmºsºm-
T HAD been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should
at all put me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet.
But I was no sooner come into the old Market-place,
than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint,
and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordi-
nary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there
could be nothing better at the core of even this
romantic town: scene of one of the most romantic and
beautiful of stories.
It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-
place, to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated
into a most miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and
muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the
yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of
splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-
visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would
certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he
put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large
in those times. The orchard fell into other hands, and
was parted off many years ago; but there used to be one
attached to the house—or at all events there may have
been, and the hat (Cappèllo) the ancient cognizance of
the family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the
gateway of the yard. The geese, the market-carts, their
drivers, and the dog, were somewhat in the way of the
story, it must be confessed; and it would have been
leasanter to have found the house empty, and to have
een able to walk through the disused rooms. But the
hat was unspeakably comfortable; and the place where
the garden used to be, hardly less so. Besides, the house
is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would de-
sire to see, though of a very moderate size. So I was
Quite satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion of old
VERON A. 85
Capulet, and was correspondingly grateful in my ac-
knowledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-
aged lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was lounging
on the threshold looking at the geese; and who at least
resembled the Capulets in the one particular of being
very great indeed in the “Family’’ way.
From Juliet's home to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as
natural to the visitor as to fair Juliet herself, or to the
proudest Juliet that ever has taught the torches to burn
bright in any time. So, I went off, with a guide, to an
old, ofd garden, once belonging to an old, old convent,
I suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by
a bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went
down some walks where fresh plants and young flowers
were prettily growing among fragments of old wall,
and ivy-covered mounds; and was shown a little tank,
or water trough, which the bright-eyed woman—drying
her arms upon her 'kerchief – called “La tomba di
Giulietta la stortunéta.” With the best disposition in
the world to believe, I could do no more than believe
that the bright-eyed woman believed ; so I gave her
that much credit, and her customary fee in ready money.
It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that
Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However consol-
atory it may have been to Yorick’s Ghost to hear the
feet upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a
day, the repetition of his name, it is better for Juliet to
lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visitors
but such as come to graves in spring rain, and Sweet
air, and Sunshine.
Pleasant Veronal With its beautiful old palaces, and
charming country in the distance, seen from terrace
walks and stately balustraded galleries. With its RO-
man gates still spanning the fair street, and casting, on
the sunlight of to-day, the shade of fifteen hundred
years ago. With its marble-fitted churches, lofty
towers, rich architecture, and quaint, old, quiet
thoroughfares, where shouts of Montagues and Capu-
lets Once resounded,
And made Verona's ancient citizens
Cast by their grave, beseeming Ornament?
TO Wield Old partizanS.
With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge,
S6 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
great castle, waving cypresses, and prospect so delight-
ful, and so cheerful | Pleasant Verona
In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Brá—a spirit of old
time among the familiar realities of the passing hour—
is the great Roman Amphitheatre. So well preserved,
and carefully maintained, that every row of seats is
there, unbroken. Over certain of the arches the old
Roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are corri-
dors, and staircases, and subterranean passages for
beasts, and winding ways, above ground and belºw, as
when the fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent
upon the bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some
of the shadows and hollow places of the walls, now,
are Smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers
of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and
leaves, and grass, upon the parapet. But little else is
greatly changed. .
When I had traversed all about it, with great interest,
and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turn-
ing-from the lovely panorama closed in by the distant
Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to lie
before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited
straw, with an enormously broad brim and a shallow
crown; the plaits being represented by the four-and-
forty rows of seats. The comparison is a homely and
fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but
it was irresistibly suggested at the moment, neverthe-
less. -
An equestrian troop had been there a short time be-
fore—the same troop, I dare say, that appeared to the
old lady in the church at Modena—and had scooped out
a little ring at one end of the arena; where their per-
formances had taken place, and where the marks of
their horses’ feet were still fresh. I could not but pic-
ture to myself, a handful of spectators gathered to-
gether on One or two of the old stone seats, and a
spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a Policinello funny,
with the grim walls looking on. Above all, I thought
how strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon
the favourite comic scene of the travelling English,
where a British nobleman (Lord John), with a very
loose stomach: dressed in a blue-tailed coat down to his
heels, bright yellow breeches, and a white hat: comes
abroad, riding double on a rearing horse, with an
VERONA. 87
English Lady (Lady Betsey) in a straw bonnot and green
Veil, and a red Spencer ; and who always carries a
gigantic reticule, and a put-up parasol.
I walked through and through the town all the rest
of the day, and could have walked there until now, I
think. In one place there was a very pretty modern
theatre, where they had just performed the opera (al-
ways popular in Verona) of Romeo and Juliet. In an-
other, there was a collection, under a colonnade, of
Greek, Roman, and Etruscan remains, presided over by
an ancient man who might have been an Etruscan relic
himself; for he was not strong enough to open the iron
gate, when he had unlocked it, and had neither voice
enough to be audible when he described the curiosities,
nor sight enough to see them: he was so very old. In
another place there was a gallery of pictures: so
abominally bad, that it was quite delightful to see
them mouldering away. But anywhere: in the churches,
among the palaces, in the Streets, .On the bridge, or
down beside the river: it was always pleasant Verona,
and in my remembrance always will be.
I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn
that night—of course, no Englishman had ever read it
there, before—and set out for Mantua, next day at Sun-
rise, repeating to myself (in the coupé of an omnibus,
and next to the conductor, who was reading the Mys-
teries of Paris)
There is no world without Verona's walls,
But, purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence-banished is banish’d from the world,
And World's exile is deatll
which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-
and-twenty miles after all, and rather disturbed my
confidence in his energy and boldness.
Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I
wonder Did it wind through pasture land as green,
bright with the same glancing streams, and dotted with
fresh clumps of graceful trees | Those purple moun-
tains lay on the horizon, then, for certain; and the
dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great, knob-
bed, silver pin like an English “life preserver” through
their hair behind, can hardly be much changed. The
hopeful feeling of So bright a morning, and so exquisite
a sunrise, can have been no stranger, even to an exiled
SS PICTURES FROM ITALY.
lover's breast; and Mantua itself must have broken on
him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls, and
water, pretty much as on a common-place and matri-
monial Omnibus. He made the same sharp twists and
turns, perhaps, over two rumbling drawbridges; passed
through the like long, covered, wooden bridge; and
leaving the marshy water behind, approached the rusty
gate of stagnant Mantua. -
If ever a man were suited to his place of residence,
and his place of residence to him, the lean Apothecary
and Mantua came together in a perfect fitness of things.
It may have been more stirring then, perhaps. If so,
the Apothecary was a man in advance of his time, and
knew what Mantua would be, in eighteen hundred and
forty-four. He fasted much, and that assisted him in
his foreknowledge.
I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in
my own room arranging plans with the Brave Courier,
when there came a modest little tap at the door, which
Opened on an Outer gallery surrounding a courtyard;
and an intensely shabby little man looked in, to inquire
if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the
town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in the
half-opened doorway, and there was so much poverty
expressed in his faded suit and little pinched hat, and
in the thread-bare worsted glove with which he held it
—not expressed the less, because these were evidently
his genteel clothes, hastily slipped on—that I would as
Soon have trodden on him as dismissed him. I engaged
him on the instant, and he stepped in directly.
While I finished the discussion in which I was en-
gaged, he stood, beaming by himself in a corner, mak-
ing a feint of brushing my hat with his arm. If his fee
had been as many napoleons as it was francs, there
could not have shot over the twilight of his shabbiness
such a gleam of sun, as lighted up the whole man, now
that he was hired. sº
“Well !” said I, when I was ready, “shall we go out
In OW 2 ” -
“If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful day. A
little fresh, but charming; altogether charming. The
gentleman will allow me to open the door. This is the
Inn Yard. The courtyard of the Golden Lion . The
gentleman will please to mind his footing on the stairs.”
MANTUA. 89
We were now in the street.
“This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the out-
side of the Golden Lion. The interesting window up
there, on the first Piano, where the pane of glass is
broken, is the window of the gentleman’s chamber 1’
Having viewed all these remarkable objects, Iinquired
if there were much to see in Mantua.
“Well ! Truly, no. Not much So, so,” he said,
shrugging his shoulders apologetically. º
“Many churches?”
“ No. Nearly all suppressed by the French.”
‘‘ Monasteries or convents P’’
“ No. The French again Nearly all suppressed by
Napoleon.”
“Much business P’’
‘‘Very little business.”
“Many strangers ?”
‘‘ Ah Heaven l’’
I thought he would have fainted. .
“Then when we have seen the two large Churches
yonder, what shall we do next P” said I.
He looked up the street, and down the street, and
rubbed his chin timidly ; and then said, glancing in
my face as if a light had broken on his mind, yet with
a humble appeal to my forbearance that was perfectly
irresistible :
“We can take a little turn about the town, Signore l’
(Si puð far ’un piccologíro della citta).
It was impossible to be anything but delighted with
the proposal, so we set off together in great good-humour.
In the relief of his mind, he opened his heart, and
gave up as much of Mantua as a Cicerone could.
“One must eat,” he said ; “but, Bah it was a dull
place, without doubt l”
He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa
Andrea—a noble church—and of an inclosed portion
of the pavement, about which tapers were burning,
and a few people kneeling, and under which is said to
be preserved the Sangreal of the old Romances. This
church disposed of, and another after it (the cathedral
of San Pietro), we went to the Museum which was shut
up. “It was all the same,” he said ; “Bah There
was not much inside l’” Then we went to see the
Piazza del Diavolo, built by the Devil (for no particular
00 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
purpose) in a single night ; then, the Piazza Virgiliana ;
then the statue of Virgil—our Poet, my little friend
said, plucking up a spirit, for the moment, and putting
his hat a little on one side. Then, we went to a dismal
sort of farmyard, by which a picture-gallery was ap-
proached. The moment the gate of this retreat was
opened, some five hundred geese came waddling round
us, stretching out their necks, and clamouring in the
most hideous manner, as if they were ejaculating,
“Oh ! here’s somebody come to see the Pictures |
Don’t go up ! Don’t go up !” While we went up, they
waited very quietly about the door in a crowd, cackling
to one another occasionally, in a subdued tone ; but the
instant we appeared again, their necks came out like
telescopes, and setting up a great noise, which meant,
I have no doubt, “What, you would go, would you !
What do you think of it ! How do you like it !” they
attended us to the Outer gate, and cast us forth, de-
risively, into Mantua.
The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared
with these, Pork to the learned Pig. What a gallery it
was I would take their opinion on a question of art,
in preference to the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Now that we were standing in the street, after being
thus ignominiously escorted thither, my little friend
was plainly reduced to the “piccolo giro,” or little cir-
cuit of the town, he had formerly proposed. But my
suggestion that we should visit the Palazzo Tè (of which
I had heard a great deal, as a strange wild place) im-
parted new life to him, and away we went.
The secret of the length of Midas' ears, would have
been more extensively known, if that servant of his,
who whispered it to the reeds, had lived in Mantua,
where there are reeds and rushes enough to have pub-
lished it to all the world. The Palazzo Tö stands in a
swamp, among this sort of vegetation ; and is, indeed,
as singular a place as I ever saw.
Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Nor
for its dampness, though it is very damp. Nor for its
desolate condition, though it is as desolate and neglected
as house can be. But chiefly for the unaccountable
nightmares with which its interior has been decorated
(among other subjects of more delicate execution), by
Giulio Romano. There is a leering Giant over a certain
MANTUA. 91
chimney-piece, and there dozens of Giants (Titans
warring with Jove) of the walls of another room, so in-
conceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous
how any man can have imagined such creatures. In
the chamber in which they abound, these monsters, with
swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every kind of
distortion of look and limb, are depicted as staggering
under the weight of falling buildings, and being over-
whelmed in the ruins ; upheaving masses of rock, and
burying themselves beneath; vainly striving to sustain
the pillars of heavy roofs that topple down upon their
heads ; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every
kind of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures
are immensely large, and exaggerated to the utmost
pitch of uncouthness ; the colouring is harsh and dis-
agreeable; and the whole effect more like (I should im-
agine) a violent rush of blood to the head of the spec-
tator, than any real picture set before him by the hand
of an artist. This apoplectic performance was shown by
a sickly looking woman, whose appearance was refer-
able, I dare say, to the bad air of the marshes; but it
was difficult to help feeling as if she were too much
haunted by the Giants, and they were frightening her
to death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of a Palace,
among the reeds and rushes, with the mists hovering
about outside, and Stalking round and round it
continually.
Our walk through Mantua showed us in almost every
street, some suppressed church : now used for a ware-
house, now for nothing at all ; all as crazy and dis-
mantled as they could be, short of tumbling down
bodily. The marshy town was so intensely dull and
flat, that the dirt upon it seemed not to have come there
in the Ordinary course, but to have settled and mantled
on its surface as on standing water. And yet there
were some business-dealings going On, and some profits
realizing ; for there were arcades full of Jews, where
those extraordinary people were sitting outside their
shops, contemplating their stores of Stuffs, and woolens,
and bright handkerchiefs, and trinkets: and looking, in
all respects, as wary and business-like, as their brethren
in Houndsditch, London.
Having selected a Vetturino from among the neigh-
bouring Christians, who agreed to carry us to Milan in
92 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
two days and a half, and to start, next morning, as soon
as the gates were opened, I returned to the Golden Lion,
and dimed luxuriously in my own room, in a narrow
passage between two bedsteads: confronted by a smoky
fire, and backed up by a chest of drawers. At six
o'clock next morning, we were jingling in the dark
through the wet cold mist that enshrouded the town ;
and, before noon, the driver (a native of Mantua, and
sixty years of age or thereabouts), began to ask the waſ
to Milan.
It lay through Bozzolo ; formerly a little republic, and
now one of the most deserted and poverty-stricken of
towns ; where the landlord of the miserable inn (God
bless him it was his weekly custom), was distributing
infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd of women
and children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind
and rain outside his door, where they were gathered to
receive his charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and
rain, and vines trained low upon the ground, all that
day and the next ; the first sleeping-place being Cre-
mona, memorable for its dark brick churches, and im-
mensely high tower, the Torrazzo—to say nothing of its
violins, of which it certainly produces none in these de-
generate days ; and the second, Lodi. Then we went
on, through more mud, mist, and rain, and marshy
ground : and through such a fog, as Englishmen, strong
in the faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe
is nowhere to be found but in their own country, until
we entered the paved streets of Milan.
The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-
famed Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay,
for anything that could be seen of it at that time. But
as we halted to refresh, for a few days then, and re-
turned to Milan again next Summer, I had ample oppor-
tunities of seeing the glorious structure in all its majesty
and beauty. tº
All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it!
There are many good and true saints in the calendar,
but San Carlo Borromeo has—if I may quote Mrs. Prim-
rose on such a subject—“ my warm heart.” A charita-
ble doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to the poor,
and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the
bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church,
I honour his memory. I honour it none the less, because
MILAN. 93
he was nearly slain by a priest, suborned, by priests, to
murder him at the altar: in acknowledgment of his en-
deavours to reform a false and hypocritical brotherhood
of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo
Borromeo as it shielded him A reforming Pope would
need a little shielding, even now.
The subterranean chapel in which the body of San
Carlo Borromeo is preserved, presents as striking and
as ghastly a contrast, perhaps, as any place can show.
The tapers which are lighted down there, flash and
gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately
wrought by skilful hands, and representing the principal
events in the life of the saint. Jewels, and precious
metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A windlass
slowly removes the front of the altar; and within it, in
a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver is seen, through
alabaster, the shrivelled mummy of a man: the ponti-
fical robes with which it is adorned, radiant with dia-
monds, emeralds, rubies: every costly and magnificent
gem. The shrunken heap of poor earth in the midst of
this great glitter, is more pitiful than if it lay upon a
dunghill. There is not a ray of imprisoned light in all
the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to mock the dusty
holes where eyes were, once. Every thread of silk in
the rich vestments seems only a provision from the
worms that spin, for the behoof of worms that propagate
in sepulchres.
In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of
Santa Maria delle Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps
better known than any other in the world : the Last
Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci—with a door cut through
it by the intelligent Domincian friars, to facilitate their
operations at dinner time.
I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of
painting, and have no other means of judging of a pict-
ure than as I see it resembling and refining upon nature,
and presenting graceful combinations of forms and
colours. I am, therefore, no authority whatever, in
reference to the “touch' of this or that master ; though
I know very well (as anybody may, who chooses to think
about the matter) that few very great masters can possi-
bly have painted, in the compass of their lives, one half of
the pictures that bear their names, and that are recog-
nised by many aspirants to a reputation for taste, as
94 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
undoubted originals. But this, by the way. Of the
Last Supper, I would simply observe, that in its beauti-
ful composition and arrangement, there it is at Milan, a
wonderful picture ; and that, in its original colouring,
or in its original expression of any single face or feature,
there it is not. Apart from the damage it has sustained
from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry
shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and that so
clumsily, that many of the heads are, now, positive de-
formities, with patches of paint and plaster sticking upon
them like wens, and utterly distorting the expression.
Where the original artist set that impress of his genius
On a face, which, almost in a line or touch, separated
him from meaner painters and made him what he was,
Succeeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams
and cracks, have been quite unable to imitate his hand ;
and putting in some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of
their own, have blotched and spoiled the work. This is
so well established as a historical fact, that I should not
repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, but for having
observed an English gentleman before the picture, who
was at great pains to fall into what I may describe as
mild convulsions, at certain minute details of expression
which are not left in it. Whereas, it would be com-
fortable and rational for travellers and critics to arrive
at a general understanding that it cannot fail to have
been a work of extraordinary merit, once : when, with
So few of its original beauties remaining, the grandeur
of the general design is yet sufficient to sustain it, as a
piece replete with interest and dignity.
We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course,
and a fine city it is, though not so unmistakeably Italian
as to possess the characteristic qualities of many towns
far less important in themselves. The Corso, where the
Milanese gentry ride up and down in carriages, and
rather than not do which, they would half starve them-
Selves at home, is a most noble public promenade, shaded
by long avenues of trees. In the splendid theatre of La
Scala, there was a ballet of action performed after the
opera, under the title of Promethus: in the beginning of
which, some hundred or two of men and women repre-
sented our mortal race before the refinements of the arts
and Sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth to
soften them. I never saw anything more effective.
|
PASS OF THE SIMPLON. 95.
Generally speaking, the pantomimic action of the Ital-
ians is more remarkable for its sudden and impetuous
character than for its delicate expression; but, in this
case, the drooping monotony: the weary, miserable, list-
less, moping life: the sordid passions and desires of
human creatures, destitute of those elevating influences
to which we owe so much, and to whose promoters we
render so little: were expressed in a maner really power-
ful and affecting. I should have thought it almost im-
possible to present such an idea, so strongly on the stage,
without the aid of speech.
Milan soon lay behind us, at five o'clock in the morn-
ning; and before the golden statue on the summit of the
Cathedral spire was lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stu-
pendously confused in, lofty peaks and ridges, clouds,
and snow, were towering in Our path.
Still we continued to advance towards them until
nightfall; and, all day long, the mountain tops pre-
sented strangely shifting shapes, as the road displayed
them in different points of view. The beautiful day
was just declining, when we came upon the Lago Mag-
iore, with its lovely islands. For however fanciful and
fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it still is beau-
tiful. Anything springing out of that blue water, with
that scenery around it, must be.
It was ten o’clock at night when we got to Domo
d’Ossola, at the foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But
as the moon was shining brightly, and there was not a
cloud in the starlit sky, it was no time for going to bed,
or going anywhere but on. So, we got a little carriage,
after some delay, and began the ascent.
It was late in November; and the snow lying four or
five feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in
Other parts the new drift was already deep), the air
was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the night, and
the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows,
and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining
of the moon, and its incessant roar of falling water,
rendered the journey more and more sublime at every
Step.
Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us,
sleeping in the moonlight, the road began to wind
among dark trees, and after a time emerged upon a
barer region, very steep and toilsome, where the moon
96 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
shone bright and high. By degrees, the roar of water
grew louder; and the stupendous track, after crossing
the torrent by a bridge, struck in between two massive
perpendicular walls of rock that quite shut out the
moonlight, and only left a few stars shining in the
narrow strip of sky above. Then, even this was lost,
in the thick darkness of a cavern in the rock, through
which the way was pierced ; the terrible cataract
thundering and roaring close below it, and its foam
and Spray hanging, in a mist, about the entrance.
Emerging from this cave, and coming again into the
moonlight, and across a dizzy bridge, it crept and
twisted upward, through the Gorge of Gondo, savage
and grand beyond description, with smooth-fronted
precipices, rising up On either hand, and almost meeting
overhead. Thus we went, climbing on our rugged way,
higher and higher all night, without a moment's weari-
ness: lost in the contemplation of the black rocks, the
tremendous heights and depths, the fields of smooth
snow lying in the clefts and hollows, and the fierce tor-
rents thundering headlong down the deep abyss.
Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where
a keen wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some
. trouble, awakened the inmates of a wooden house in
this solitude: round which the wind was howling dis-
mally, catching up the Snow in wreaths and hurling it
away: we got some breakfast in a room built of rough
timbers, but well warmed by a stove, and well con-
trived (as it had need to be) far keeping out the bitter
storms. A sledge being then made ready, and four
horses harnessed to it, we went, ploughing through the
snow. Still upward, but now in the cold light of
morning, and with the great white desert on which we
travelled, plain and clear.
We were well upon the summit of the mountain; and
had before us the rude cross of wood, denoting its great-
est altitude above the sea: when the light of the rising
Sun struck, all at once, upon the waste of snow, and
turned it a deep red. The lonely grandeur of the scene
was then at its height.
As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hos-
spice, founded by Napoleon, a group of Peasant travel-
lers, with staves and knapsacks, who had rested there
last night: attended by a monk or two, their hospitable
GORGE OF THE SALTINE. 97
entertainers, trudging slowly forward with them, for
company’s sake. It was pleasant to give them good
morning, and pretty, looking back a long way after
them, to see them looking back at us, and hesitating
presently, when one of our horses stumbled and fell,
whether or no they should return and help us. But he
was soon up again, with the assistance of a rough wag-
goner whose team had stuck fast there too; and when
we had helped him out of his difficulty, in return, we
left him slowly ploughing towards them, and went
softly and swiftly forward, on the brink of a steep prec-
ipice, among the mountain pines.
Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we be-
gan rapidly to descend ; passing under everlasting
glaciers, by means of arched galleries, hung with clus-
ters of dripping icicles; under and Over foaming water-
falls; near places of refuge, and galleries of -shelter
against Sudden danger; through caverns over whose
arched roofs the avalanches slide, in spring, and bury
themselves in the unknown gulf beneath. Down, over
lofty bridges, and through horrible ravines: a little
shifting speck in the vast desolation of ice and Snow,
and monstrous granite rocks: down through the deep
Gorge of the Saltime, and deafened by the torrent
plunging madly down, among the riven blocks of rock,
into the level country far below. Gradually down, by
Zig-Zag roads, lying between an upward and a down-
Ward precipice, into warmer weather, calmer air, and
Softer scenery, until there lay before us, glittering like
gold or silver in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-
covered, red, green, yellow, domes and church-spires
of a Swiss town.
The business of these recollections being with Italy,
and my business, consequently, being to Scamper back
thither as fast as possible, I will not recall (though I
am sorely tempted) how the Swiss villages, clustered at
the feet of Giant mountains, looked like playthings; or
how confusedly the houses were heaped and piled to-
gether, or how there were very narrow streets to shut
the howling winds out in the winter time; and broken
bridges, which the impetuous torrents, suddenly re-
leased in spring, had swept away. Or how there were
Peasant women here, with great round fur caps: look-
ing, when they peeped out of casements and only their
VOL. I. 7
98 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
heads were seen, like a population of Sword-bearers to
the Lord Mayor of London; or how the town of Vevay,
lying on the smooth lake of Geneva, was beautiful to
see; or how the statue of St. Peter in the street at Fri-
bourg, grasps the largest key that ever was beheld; or
how Fribourg is illustrious for its two suspension
bridges, and its grand cathedral organ.
Or how, between that town and Bâle, the road mean-
dered among thriving villages of wooden Cottages, With
overhanging thatched roofs, and low protruding win-
dows, glazed with small round panes of glass like
crown-pieces; or how, in every little Swiss homestead,
with its cart or waggon carefully stowed away beside
the house, its little garden, stock of poultry, and groups
of red-cheeked children, there was an air of comfort,
very new arid very pleasant after Italy; or how the
dresses of the women changed again, and there were
no more sword-bearers to be seen; and fair white stom-
achers, and great black, fan-shaped, gauzy-looking
caps, prevailed instead.
Or how the country by the Jura mountains, sprinkled
with snow, and lighted by the moon, and musical with
falling water, was delightful; or how, below the win-
dows of the great hotel of the Three Kings at Bâle, the
swollen Rhine ran fast and green; or how, at Straş-
bourg, it was quite as fast but not as green; and was
said to be foggy lower down: and, at that late time of
the year, was a far less certain means of progress, than
the highway road to Paris.
Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic
Cathedral, and its ancient houses with their peaked
roofs and gables, made a little gallery of quaint and in-
teresting views ; or how a crowd was gathered inside
the Cathedral at noon, to see the famous mechanical
clock in motion, striking twelve. How, when it struck
twelve, a whole army of puppets went through many
ingenious evolutions ; and, among them, a huge puppet-
cock, perched on the top, Crowed twelve times, loud and
clear. Or how it was wonderful to see this cock at great
pains to clap its wings, and strain its throat ; but ob-
viously having no connection whatever with its own
voice ; which was deep within the clock, a long way
down.
Or how the road to Paris was one sea of mud, and
STRASBOURG TO PARIS. 90
thence to the coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or
how the cliffs of Dover were a pleasant sight, and
England was so wonderfully meat-–though dark, and
lacking colour on a winter’s day, it must be conceded.
Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-cross-
ing the channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow
lying pretty deep in France. Or how the Malle Poste
scrambled through the Snow, headlong, drawn in the
hilly parts by any number of stout horses at a canter ;
or how there were, outside the Post-office Yard in Paris,
before daybreak, extraordinary adventurers in heaps of
rags, groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, in
search of odds and ends. -
Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being
then exceeding deep, a thaw came on, and the mail
waded rather than rolled for the next three hundred
miles or so ; breaking springs on Sunday nights, and
putting out its two passengers to warm and refresh
themselves pending the repairs, in miserable billiard-
rooms, where hairy company, collected about stoves,
were playing cards ; the cards being very like them-
selves—extremely limp and dirty.
Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress
of weather ; and steamers were advertised to go, which
did not go ; or how the good Steam-packet Charlemagne
at length put out, and met such weather that now she
threatened to run into Toulon, and now into Nice, but,
the wind, moderating, did neither, but ran on into
Genoa harbour instead, where the familiar Bells rang
Sweetly in my ear. Or how there was a travelling
party on board, of whom one member was very ill in
the cabin next to mine, and being ill was cross, and
therefore declined to give up the Dictionary, which he
kept under his pillow ; thereby obliging his companions
to come down to him, constantly, to ask what was the
Italian for a lump of Sugar—a glass of brandy and
water—what’s O’clock 2 and so forth : which he always
insisted on looking out, with his own sea-sick eyes,
declining to entrust the book to any man alive.
Like GRUMIO, I might have told you, in detail, all
this and something more—but to as little purpose—
were T not deterred by the remembrance that my bus-
iness is with Italy. Therefore, like GRUMIO’s story, it
“shall die in Oblivion.”
TO ROME BY PISA AND STEINA.
*sºsºmsºmºsºmºmº
T HERE is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than
the coast-road between Genoa and Spezzia. On One
side : sometimes far below, sometimes nearly on a level
with the road, and often skirted by broken rocks of many
shapes; there is the free blue sea, with here and there
a picturesque felucca gliding slowly on ; on the other
side are lofty hills, ravines besprinkled with white cot-
tages, patches of dark Olive woods, country churches
with their light open towers, and country houses gaily
painted. On every bank and knoll by the wayside, the
wild cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant profusion
and the gardens of the bright villages along the road,
are seen, all blushing in the Summer-time with clusters
of the Belladona, and are fragrant in the autumn and
winter with golden Oranges and lemons.
Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively
by fishermen ; and it is pleasant to see their great boats
hauled up on the beach, making little patches of shade,
where they lie asleep, or where the women and children
sit romping and looking out to Sea, while they mend
their nets upon the shore. There is one town, Camog-
lia, with its little harbour on the sea, hundreds of feet be-
low the road: where families of mariners live, who, time
out of mind, have owned coasting-vessels in that place,
and have traded to Spain and elsewhere. Seen from the
road above, it is like a tiny model on the margin of the
dimpled water, shining in the sun. Descended into by
the winding mule-tracks, it is a perfect miniature of a
primitive seafaring town ; the saltest, roughest, most
piratical little place that ever was seen. Great rusty
iron rings and mooring-chains, capstans, and frag-
ments of old masts and spars, choke up the way ; hardy
rough-weather boats, and seamen’s clothing, flutter in
CAMOGLIA. 101
the little harbour or are drawn out on the Sunny stones
to dry ; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphib-
ious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling
over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to
them, and if they slipped in, they would float away,
dozing comfortably among the fishes ; the church is
bright with trophies of the sea, and votive offerings, in
commemoration of escape from storm and shipwreck.
The dwellings not immediately abutting on the harbour
are approached by blind low archways, and by crooked
steps, as if in darkness and in difficulty of access they
should be like h0lds of ships, or inconvenient cabins
under water ; and everywhere, there is a smell of fish,
and seaweed, and old rope.
The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so far
below, is famous, in the warm season, especially in
some parts near Genoa, for fire-flies. Walking there, on
a dark night, I have seen it made one sparkling firma-
ment by these beautiful insects; so that the distant stars
were pale against the flash and glitter that spangled
every olive wood and hill-side, ină pervaded the whole
3,1]". -
It was not in such a season, however, that we tra-
versed this road on our way to Rome. The middle of
January was Only just passed, and it was very gloomy
and dark weather; very wet besides. In crossing the
fine pass of Bracco, we encountered such a storm of
mist and rain, that we travelled in a cloud the whole way.
There might have been no Mediterranean in the world,
for anything we saw of it there, except when a sudden
gust of wind, clearing the mist before it for a moment,
showed the agitated sea at a great depth below, lashing
the distant rocks, and Spouting up its foam furiously.
The rain was incessant ; every brook and torrent was
greatly Swollen; and Such a deafening leaping, and
roaring, and thundering of water I never heard the like
of in my life. - -
Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that tho
Magra, an umbridged river on the high-road to Pisa,
was too high to be safely crossed in the Ferry Boat, and
were fain to wait until the afternoon of next day, when
it had, in some degree, subsided. Spezzia, however, is
a good place to tarry at ; by reason, firstly, of its beau-
tiful bay; secondly, of its ghostly Inn ; thirdly, of the
102 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
head-dress of the women, who wear on one side of their
head, a small doll’s straw hat, stuck on to the hair;
which is certainly the oddest and most roguish head-
gear that ever was invented.
The Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat—the pas-
sage is not by any means agreeable, when the current
is swollen and strong—we arrived at Carrara, within a
few hours. In good time next morning, we got some
ponies, and went out to see the marble quarries.
They are four or five great glens, running up into a
range of lofty hills, until they can run no longer, and
are stopped by being abruptly strangled by Nature.
The quarries, or “caves,” as they call them there, are
so many openings, high up in the hills, on either side
of these passes, where they blast and excavate for
marble: which may turn out good or bad: may make a
man’s fortune very quickly, or ruin him by the great
expense of working what is worth nothing. Some of
these caves were opened by the ancient Romans, and
remain as they left them to this hour. Many others are
being worked at this moment; others are to be begun
to-morrow, next week, next month; others are unbought,
unthought of; and marble enough for more ages than
have passed since the place was resorted to, lies hidden
everywhere: patiently awaiting its time of discovery.
As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges
(having left your pony soddening his girths in water, a
mile or two lower down) you hear, every now and then,
echoing among the hills, in a low tone, more silent than
the previous silence, a melancholy warning bugle, a
signal to the miners to withdraw. Then, there is a
thundering, and echoing from hill to hill, and perhaps
a splashing up of great fragments of rock into the air;
and on you toil again until Some other bugle sounds, in
a new direction, and you stop directly, lest you should
come within the range of the new explosion. -
There were numbers of men, working high up in these
hills—on the sides—clearing away, and sending down
the broken masses of stone and earth, to make way for
the blocks of marble that had been discovered. As
these came rolling down from unseen hands into the
narrow valley, I could not help thinking of the deep
glen (just the same sort of glen) where the Roc left
Sinbad the Sailor; and where the merchants from the
CARRA.R.A. 103
heights above, flung down great pieces of meat for
the diamonds to stick to. There were no eagles here, to
darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon them;
but it was as wild and fierce as if there had been hun-
dreds.
But the road, the road down which the marble comes,
however immense the blocks | The genius of the coun-
try, and the spirit of its institutions, pave that road : re-
pair it, watch it, keep it going ! Conceive a channel of
water running over a rocky bed, beset with great heaps
of stone of all shapes and sizes, winding down the mid-
dle of this valley ; and that being the road—because it
was the road five hundred years ago | Imagine the
clumsy carts of five hundred years ago, being used to
this hour, and drawn, as they used to be, five hundred
years ago, by oxen, whose ancestors were worn to death
five hundred years ago, as their unhappy descendants
are now, in twelve months, by the suffering and agony
of this cruel work | Two pair, four pair, ten pair, twenty
pair, to one block, according to its size ; down it must
come, this way. In their struggling from stone to stone,
with their enormous loads behind them, they die fre-
quently upon the spot ; and not they alone ; for their
passionate drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their
energy, are crushed to death beneath the wheels. But
it was good five hundred years ago, and it must be good
now ; and a railroad down one of these steeps (the easi-
est thing in the Yºlº would be flat blasphemy.
When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn
by only a pair of oxen (for it had but one small block of
marble on it), coming down, I hailed, in my heart, the
man who sat upon the heavy yoke, to keep it on the
neck of the poor beasts—and who faced backward : not
before him—as the very Devil of true despotism. He had
a great rod in his hand, with an iron point ; and when
they could plough and force their way through the loose
bed of the torrent no longer, and came to a stop, he
poked it into their bodies, beat it on their heads, screwed
it round and round in their nostrils, got them on a yard
or two, in the madness of intense pain ; repeated all
these persuasions, with increased intensity of purpose,
when they stopped again ; got them on, Once more ;
forced and goaded them to an abrupter point of the de-
scent ; and when their writhing and smarting, and the
104 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
weight behind them, bore them plunging down the prec-
ipice in a cloud of scattered water, whirled his rod
above his head, and gave a great whoop and hallo, as if
he had achieved something, and had no idea that they
might shake him off, and blindly mash his brains upon
the road, in the noon-tide of his triumph.
Standing in one of the many studii of Carrara, that
afternoon—for it is a great workshop, full of beauti-
fully-finished copies in marble, of almost every figure,
group, and bust, we know—it seemed, at first, so
Strange to me that those exquisite shapes, replete with
grace, and thought, and delicate repose, should grow
out of all this toil, and sweat, and torture | But I soon
found a parallel to it, and an explanation of it, in
every virtue that springs up in miserable ground, and
overy good thing that has its birth in sorrow and dis
tress. And, looking out of the sculptor’s great window,
upon the marble mountains, all red and glowing in the
decline of day, but stern and solemn to the last, I
thought, my God how many quarries of human hearts
and souls, capable of far more beautiful results, are
left shut up and mouldering away : while pleasure-
travellers through life, avert their faces, as they pass,
†. shudder at the gloom and ruggedness that conceal
them |
The then reigning Duke of Modena, to whom this
territory in part belonged, claimed the proud distinc-
tion of being the only sovereign in Europe who had
not recognised Louis Philippe as King of the French'
He was not a wag, but quite in earnest. He was also
much opposed to railroads; and if certain lines in con-
templation by other potentates, on either side of him,
had been executed, would have probably enjoyed the
Satisfaction of having an Omnibus plying to and fro,
across his not very vast dominions, to forward travel-
lers from one terminus to another.
Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque
and bold. Tew tourists stay there ; and the people are
nearly all connected, in one way or other, with the
Working of marble. There are also villages among the
caves, where the workmen live. It contains a beauti-
ful little Theatre, newly-built ; and it is an interesting
custom there, to form the chorus of labourers in the
marble quarries, who are self-taught and sing by ear.
PISA. 105
I heard them in a comic opera, and in one act of
“Norma ; ” and they acquitted themselves very well ;
unlike the common people of Italy generally, who
(with some exceptions among the Neapolitans) sing
vilely out of tune, and have very disagreeable singing
VOICeS.
From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the
first view of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa
lies—with Leghorn, a purple spot in the flat distance—
is enchanting. Nor is it only distance that lends en-
chantment to the view ; for the fruitful country, and
rich woods of olive-trees, through which the road sub-
sequently passes, render it delightful.
The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and
for a long time we could see, behind the wall, the lean-
ing Tower, all awry in the uncertain light; the shadowy
original of the old pictures in school-books, setting forth
“The Wonders of the World.” Like most things con-
nected in their first associations with school-books and
school-times, it was too small. I felt it keenly. It was
nothing like so high above the wall as I had hoped. It
was another of the many deceptions practised by Mr.
Harris, Bookseller, at the corner of St. Paul’s Church-
yard, London. His Tower was a fiction, but this was
reality—and, by comparison, a short reality. Still, it
looked very well, and very strange, and was quite as
much out of the perpendicular as Harris had represented
it to be. The quiet air of Pisa, too; the big guardhouse
at the gate, with only two little soldiers in it; the streets,
with scarcely any show of people in them; and the Arno,
flowing quaintly through the centre of the town; were
excellent. So, I bore no malice in my heart against
Mr. Harris (remembering his good intentions), but for-
gave him before dinner, and went out, full of confi-
dence, to see the Tower next morning.
I might have known better; but, somehow, I had ex-
pected to see it, casting its long shadow on a public
street where people came and went all day. It was a
surprise to me to find it in a grave retired place, apart
from the general resort, and carpeted with Smooth green
turf. But the group of buildings, clustered on and about
this verdant carpet: comprising the Tower, the Baptis-
tery, the Cathedral, and the Church of the Campo Santo:
is perhaps the most remarkable and beautiful in the
106 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
"Whole world; and from being clustered there together,
away from the ordinary transactions and details of the
town, they have a singularly venerable and impressive
character. It is the architectural essence of a rich old
city, with all its common life and common habitations
pressed out and filtered away.
SISMONDI compares the Tower to the usual pictorial
representations in children’s books of the Tower of
Babel. . It is a happy simile, and conveys a better idea
of the building than chapters of laboured description.
Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the
structure; nothing can be more remarkable than its
general appearance. In the course of the ascent to the
top (which is by an easy staircase) the inclination is not
Very apparent; but, at the summit, it becomes so, and
gives one the sensation of being in a ship that has heeled
over, through the action of an ebb-tide. The effect upon
the low side, so to speak—looking over from the gallery
and seeing the shaft recede to its base—is very start-
ling; and I saw a nervous traveller hold on to the Tower
involuntarily, after glancing down, as if he had some
idea of propping it up. The view within, from the
ground—looking up, as through a slanted tube—is
also very curious. It certainly inclines as much
as the most sanguine tourist could desire. The
natural impulse of ninety-nine people out of a
hundred, who were about to recline upon the grass
below it, to rest and contemplate the adjacent build-
ings, would probably be, not to take up their position
under the leaning side; it is so very much aslant.
The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery
need no recapitulation from me; though in this case, as
in a hundred others, I find it difficult to separate my
own delight in recalling them, from your weariness in
having #. recalled. There is a picture of St. Agnes,
by Andrea del Sarto, in the former, and there are
a variety of rich columns in the latter, that tempt me
strongly.
It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be
tempted into elaborate descriptions, to remember the
Campo Santo; where grass-grown graves are dug in
earth brought more than six hundred years ago from
the Holy Land; and where there are, surrounding them,
such cloisters, with such playing lights and shadows
PISA. T()?
falling through their delicate tracery on the stone pave-
ment, as surely the dullest memory could never forget.
On the walls of this solemn and lovely place are ancient
frescoes, very much obliterated and decayed, but very
curious. As usually happens in almost any collection
of paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where there are many
heads, there is, in one of them, a striking accidental
likeness of Napoleon. At one time I used to please my
fancy with the speculation whether these old painters,
at their work, had a foreboding knowledge of the man
who would one day arise to wreak such destruction upon
art: whose soldiers would make targets of great pict-
ures, and stable their horses among triumphs of archi-
tecture. But the same Corsican face is so plentiful in
some parts of Italy at this day, that a more common-
place solution of the coincidence is unavoidable.
If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right
of its Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second
or third in right of its beggars. They waylay the un-
happy visitor at every turn, escort him to every door he
enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforce-
ments, at every door by which they know he must
come out. The grating of the portal On its hinges is
the signal for a general shout, and the moment he ap- .
pears, he is hemmed in, and fallen On, by heaps of rags
and personal distortions. The beggars seem to embody
all the trade and enterprise of Pisa. Nothing else is
stirring, but warm air. Going through the streets, the
fronts of the sleepy houses look like backs. They are
all so still and quiet, and unlike houses with people in
them, that the greater part of the city has the appear-
ance of a city at daybreak, or during a general siesta of
the population. Or it is yet more like those backgrounds
of houses in common prints, or old engravings, where
windows and doors are squarely indicated, and One
figure (a begger of course) is seen walking off by itself
into illimitable perspective.
Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by SMOLLETT's grave),
which is a thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place,
where idleness is shouldered out of the way by Com-
merce. The regulations observed there, in reference
to trade and merchants, are very liberal and free; and
the town, of course, benefits by them. Leghorn has a
bad name in connection with stabbers, and with some
10S PICTURES FROM ITALY.
justice it must be allowed; for, not many years ago,
there was an assassination club there, the members of .
which bore no ill-will to anybody in particular, but,
stabbed people (quite strangers to them) in the streets
at night, for the pleasure and excitement of the recrea-
tion. I think the president of this amiable society, was
a shoemaker. He was taken, however, and the club
was broken up. It would, probably, have disappeared
in the natural course of events, before the railroad
between Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good One, and
has already begun to astonish Italy with a precedent
of punctuality, Order, plain dealing, and improvement
—the most dangerous and heretical astonisher of all.
There must have been a slight sensation, as of earth-
quake, Surely in the Vatican, when the first Italian rail-
road was thrown open.
Returning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered Vet-
turino, and his four horses, to take us on to Rome, we
travelled through pleasant Tuscan villages and cheer-
ful scenery all day. The roadside crosses in this part
of Italy are numerous and curious. There is seldom a
figure on the cross, though there is sometimes a face;
but they are remarkable for being garnished with little
models in wood, of every possible object that can be
Connected with the Saviour’s death. The cock that
Crowed when Peter had denied his Master thrice, is
usually perched on the tip-top; and an Ornithological
phenomenon he generally is. Under him, is the in-
Scription. Then, hung on to the cross-beam, are the
Spear, the reed with the sponge of vinegar and water
at the end, the coat without seam for which the soldiers
cast lots, the dice-box with which they threw for it, the
hammer that drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled
them Out, the ladder which was set against the cross,
the Crown of thorns, the instrument of flagellation, the
lantern with which Mary went to the tomb (I suppose),
and the sword with which Peter smote the servant of
the high priest,--a perfect toy-shop of little objects, re-
peated at every four or five miles, all along the high-
Wa,V.
On the evening of the second day from Pisa, we
reached the beautiful old city of Siena. There was
What they called a Carnival, in progress; but, as its
Secret lay in a score or two of melancholy people walk-
LEG. HORN. 109
ing up and down the principal Street in common toy-
shop masks, and being more melancholy, if possible,
than the same sort of people in England, I say no more
of it. We went off, betimes next morning, to see the
Cathedral, which is wonderfully picturesque inside and
Out, especially the latter—also the market-place, or
great Piazza, which is a large Square, with a great
broken-nosed fountain in it: some quaint Gothic houses:
and a high square brick tower; outside the top of which
a curious feature in such views in Italy—hangs an
enormous bell. It is like a bit of Venice, without the
water. There are some curious old Palazzi in the town,
which is very ancient, and without having (for me) the
interest of Verona, or Genoa, it is very dreamy and fan-
tastic, and most interesting. -
We went on again, as soon as we had seen these
things, and going over a rather bleak country (there
had been nothing but vines until now: mere walking
Sticks at that season of the year), stopped, as usual, be-
tween one and two hours in the middle of the day, to
rest the horses; that being a part of every Vetturino
contract. We then went on again, through a region
gradually becoming bleaker and wilder, until it became
as bare and desolate as any Scottish moors. Soon after
dark, we halted for the night, at the osteria of La Scala:
a perfectly lone house, where the family were sitting
round a great fire in the kitchen, raised on a stone plat-
form three or four feet high, and big enough for the roast-
ing of an OX. On the upper, and only large floor of this
hotel, there was a great wild rambling sála, with
One very little window in a by-corner, and four black
doors opening into four black bedrooms in various di-
rections. To say nothing of another black door, open-
into another large black Sála, with the staircase coming
abruptly through a kind of trap-door in the floor, and
the rafters of the roof looming above: a suspicious little
press skulking in one obscure corner; and all the knives
in the house lying about in various directions. The fire-
place was of the purest Italian architecture, so that it
was perfectly impossible to see it for the smoke. The
waitress was like a dramatic brigand’s wife, and wore
the same style of dress upon her head. The dogs
barked like mad; the echoes returned the gompliments
bestowed upon them; there was not another house
11() PICTURES FROM ITALY.
within twelve miles; and things had a dreary, and
rather a cut-throat, appearance. -
They were not improved by rumours of robbers hav-
ing come out, strong and boldly, within a few nights;
and of their having stopped the mail very near that
place. They were known to have waylaid some travel-
Iers not long before, on Mount Vesuvius itself, and were
the talk at all the roadside inns. As they were no
business of ours, however (for we had very little with
us to lose), we made ourselves merry on the subject,
and were very soon as comfortable as need be. We had
the usual dinner in this solitary house; and a very good
dinner it is, when you are used to it. There is some-
thing with a vegetable or some rice in it, which is a sort
of short-hand or arbitrary character for soup, and which
tastes very well, when you have flavoured it with plenty
of grated cheese, lots of Salt, and abundance of pepper.
There is the half fowl of which this soup has been
made. There is a stewed pigeon, with the gizzards and
livers of himself and other birds stuck all round him.
There is a bit of roast beef, the size of a small French
roll. There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, and five
little withered apples, all huddled together on a small
plate, and crowding one upon the other, as if each were
trying to save itself from the chance of being eaten.
Then there is coffee; and then there is bed. You don’t
mind brick floors; you don’t mind yawning doors, nor
banging windows; you don’t mind your own horses being
stabled under the bed: and so close, that every time a
horse coughs or sneezes, he wakes you. If you are
good-humoured to the people about you, and speak
pleasantly, and look cheerful, take my word for it you
may be well entertained in the very worst Italian inn,
and always in the most obliging manner, and may go
from one end of the country to the other (despite all
stories to the contrary) without any great trial of your
patience anywhere. Especially, when you get such
wine in flasks, as the Orvieto, and the Monte Pul-
Ciano.
It was a bad morning when we left this place; and
we went, for twelve miles, over a country as barren, as
stony, and as wild, as Cornwall in England, until we
came to Radicofani, where there is a ghostly, goblin
inn: once a hunting-seat, belonging to the Dukes of Tus-
RADICOFANI. 111
Cany. It is full of Such rambling corridors, and gaunt
rooms, that all the murdering and phantom tales that
ever were written might have originated in that one
house. There are some horrible old Palazzi in Genoa:
One in particular, not unlike it, outside: but there is a
windy, creaking, wormy, rustling, door-opening, foot-
On-staircase-falling character about this Radicofani
Hotel, such as I never saw, anywhere else. The town,
Such as it is, hangs on a hill-side above the house, and
in front of it. The inhabitants are all beggars; and as
Soon as they See a carriage coming, they swoop down
upon it, like so many birds of prey.
When we got on the mountain pass, which lies
beyond this place, the wind (as they had forewarned us
at the inn) was so terrific, that we were obliged to take
my other half out of the carriage, lest she should be
blown over, carriage and all, andſ to hang to it, on the
windy side (as well as we could for laughing), to pre-
vent its going, Heaven knows where. For mere force
of wind, this land-storm might have competed with an
Atlantic gale, and had a reasonable chance of coming
off victorious. The blast came sweeping down great
gullies in a range of mountains on the right: so that
we looked with positive awe at a great morass on the
left, and saw that there was not a bush or twig to hold
by. It seemed as if, once blown from our feet, we must
be swept out to sea, or away into space. There was
Snow, and hail, and rain, and lightning, and thunder;
and there were rolling mists, travelling with incredible
velocity. It was dark, awful, and solitary to the last
degree; there were mountains above mountains, veiled
in angry clouds; and there was such a wrathful, rapid,
violent, tumultuous hurry, everywhere, as rendered the
Scene unspeakably exciting and grand.
It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding ;
and to cross even the dismal dirty Papal Frontier.
After passing through two little towns; in one of
which, Acquapendente, there was also a “Carnival”
in progress : consisting of One man dressed and masked
as a woman, and One woman dressed and masked as a
man, walking ankle-deep, through the muddy streets,
in a very melancholy manner : we came at dusk, within
sight of the Lake of Bolsena, on whose bank there is
a little town of the same name, much celebrated for
112 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
malaria. With the exception of this poor place, there
is not a cottage on the banks of the lake, or near it
(for nobody dare sleep there); not a boat upon its
waters; not a stick or stake to break the dismal
monotony of seven-and-twenty watery miles. We were
late in getting in, the roads being very bad from heavy
rains; and, after dark, the dulness of the scene was
quite intolerable. -
We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of
desolation, next night, at sunset. We had passed
through Montefiaschone (famous for its wine) and
Viterbo (for its fountains): and after climbing up a
long hill of eight or ten miles extent, came suddenly
upon the margin of a solitary lake : in One part very
beautiful, with a luxuriant wood ; in another, very bar-
ren, and shut in by bleak volcanic hills. Where this
lake flows, there stood, of old, a city. It was swal-
lowed up One day ; and in its stead, this water rose.
There are ancient traditions (common to many parts of
the world) of the ruined city having been seen below,
when the water was clear ; but, however that may be,
from this spot of earth it vanished. The ground came
bubbling up above it ; and the water too; and here
they stand like ghosts on whom the other world closed
Suddenly, and who have no means of getting back
again. They seem to be waiting the course of ages,
for the next earthquake in that place ; when they will
plunge below the ground, at its first yawning, and be
seen no more. The unhappy city below, is not more
lost and dreary, than these fire-charred hills and the
Stagnant water, above. The red sun looked strangely
on them, as with the knowledge that they were made
for caverns and darkness ; and the melancholy water
OOzed and sucked the mud, and crept quietly among
the marshy grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all
the ancient towers and house-tops, and the death of all
the ancient people born and bred there, were yet heavy
On its conscience.
A short ride from this lake, brought us to Ronciglione;
a little town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the
night. Next morning at seven o’clock, we started for
Rome.
As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on the
Campagna Romana; an undulating flat (as you know,)
CAMPAGNA ROMANA. 113
where few peeple can live and where for miles and miles
there is nothing to relieve the terrible monotony and
gloom. Of all kinds of country that could, by possibility,
lie outside the gates of Rome, this is the aptest and fit-
test burial-ground for the Dead City. So sad, so quiet,
so sullen ; SO secret in its covering up of great masses
of ruin, and hiding them ; so like the waste places into
which the men possessed with devils, used to go and
howl, and rend themselves, in the old days of Jerusalem.
Whe had to traverse thirty miles of this Campagna ;
and for two-and-twenty we went on and on, seeing noth-
ing but now and then a lonely house, or a villainous-look-
ing shepherd : with matted hair all over his face, and
himself wrapped to the chin in a frowsy brown mantle,
tending his sheep. At the end of that distance, we
stopped to refresh the horses, and to get some lunch,
in a common malaria-shaken, despondent little public-
house, whose every inch of wall and beam, inside, was
(according to custom) painted and decorated in a way
so miserable that every room looked like the wrong side
of another room, and, with its wretched imitation of .
drapery, and lop-sided little daubs of lyres, seemed to
have been plundered from behind the scenes of some
travelling circus. -
When we were fairly off again, we began, in a per-
fect fever, to strain our eyes for Rome; and when, after
another mile or two, the Eternal City appeared, at
length, in the distance ; it looked like—I am half afraid
to write the word—like LONDON | | | There it lay,
under a thick cloud, with innumerable towers, and
steeples, and roofs of houses, rising up into the sky, and
high above them all, one Dome. I swear, that keenly
as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, it
was so like London, at that distance, that if you could
have shown it to me, in a glass, I should have taken it
for nothing else. ©
VOL. I. 8
ROME.
W E entered the Eternal City, at about four o’clock
in the afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by
the Porta del Popolo, and came immediately—it was a
dark muddy day, and there had been heavy rain—on
the skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then, know
that we were only looking at the fag end of the masks,
who were driving slowly round and round the Piazza,
until they could find a promising opportunity for
falling into the stream of carriages, and getting, in
good time, into the thick of the festivity; and coming
among them so abruptly, all travel-stained and weary,
was not coming very well prepared to enjoy the scene.
We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle, two or
three miles before. It had looked as yellow as it ought to
look, and hurrying on between its worn-away and miry
banks, had a promising aspect of desolation and ruin.
The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the Carnival,
did great violence to this promise. There was no great
ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity, to be seen;–they
all lie on the other side of the city. There seemed to be
long streets of commonplace shops and houses, such as .
are to be found in any European town; there were busy
people, equipages, ordinary walkers to and fro; a multi-
tude of chattering strangers. It was no more my Rome:
the Rome of anybody’s fancy, man or boy: degraded
and fallen and lying asleep in the Sun among a heap of
ruins: than the Place de la Concorde in Paris is. A
cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and muddy streets, I was
prepared for, but not for this: and I confess to having
gone to bed, that night, in a very indifferent humour,
and with a very considerably quenched enthusiasm.
Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to
St. Peter's. It looked immense in the distance, but dis-
tinctly and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near
approach. The beauty of the Piazza in which it stands,
ROME, 115
with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing
fountains,—so fresh, so broad, and free, and beautiful
—nothing can exaggerate. The first burst of the inter-
ior, in all its expansive majesty and glory: and, most
of all, the looking up into the Dome: is a sensation
never to be forgotten. But, there were preparations for
a Festa; the pillars of stately marble were swathed in
Some impertinent frippery of red and yellow; the altar,
and entrance to the subterranean chapel: which is be-
fore it: in the centre of the church: were like a gold-
Smith’s shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very
lavish pantomime. And though I had as high a sense of
the beauty of the building (I hope) as it is possible to
entertain, I felt no very strong emotion. I have been
infinitely more effected in many English cathedrals
when the Organ has been playing, and in many Eng-
lish country churches when the congregation have been
singing. I had a much greater sense of mystery and
wonder, in the Cathedral of San Mark at Venice.
When we came out of the church again (we stood
nearly an hour staring up into the dome: and would
not have “gone over” the Cathedral then, for any
money), we said to the coachman, “Go to the Colise-um.”
In a quarter of an hour or so, he stopped at the gate,
and we went in.
It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say:
so suggestive and distinct is it at this hour: that, for a
moment—actually in passing in-they who will, may
have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be,
with thousands of eager faces staring down into the
arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust,
going on there, as no language can describe. Its soli-
tude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike
upon the stranger the next moment, like a softened
sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so
moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately
connected with his own affections and afflictions.
To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls
and arches overgrown with green; its corridors open to
the day; the long grass growing in its porches; young
trees of yesterday, Springing up On its ragged parapets,
and bearing fruit: chance produce of the seeds dropped
there by the birds who build their nests within its chinks
and cramnies; to see its Pit of Fight filled up with earth,
116 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre; to climb
into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin,
all about it; the triumphal arches of Constantine, Sep-
timus Severus, and Titus; the Roman Forum; the Palace
of the Caesars; the temples of the old religion, fallen
down and gone; is to see the ghost of Old Rome, wicked
wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which
its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most
stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful
sight, conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can
the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running
over with the...lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it
must move all who look upon it now, a ruin. GOD be
thanked: a ruin!
As it tops the other ruins; standing there, a mountain
among graves: so do its ancient influences outlive all
other remnants of the old mythology and old butchery
of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman
people. The Italian face changes as the visitor ap-
proaches the city; it beauty becomes devilish; and there
is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among the
common people in the streets, that would not be at home
and happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow.
Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as
no one can imagine in its full and awful grandeur! We
wandered out upon the Appian Way and then went on,
through miles of ruined tombs and broken walls, with
here and there a desolate and uninhabited house; past
the Circus of Romulus, where the course of the chariots,
the stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators,
are yet as plainly to be seen as in old time: past the
tomb of Cecilia Metella: past all inclosure, hedge, or
Stake, Wall or fence: away upon the open Campagna,
where on that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but
Ruin. Except where the distant Apennines bound the
view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one field
of ruin. Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque
and beautiful clusters of arches; broken temples; broken
tombs. A desert of decay, sombre and desolate beyond
all expression; and with a history in every stone that
strews the ground.
On Sunday, the Pope assisted in the performance of
High Mass at St. Peter's. The effect of the Cathedral
ROME. 117
on my mind, on that second visit, was exactly what it
was at first, and what it remains after many visits. It
is not religiously impressive or affecting. It is an im-
mense edifice, with no one point for the mind to rest
upon; and it tires itself with wandering round and round.
The very purpose of the place, is not expressed in any-
thing you see thore, unless you examine it's details—and
all examination of details is incompatible with the place
itself. It might be a Pantheon, or a Senate House, or a
great architectural trophy, having no other object than
an architectural triumph. There is a black statue of St.
Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy ; which is larger
than life, and which is constantly having its great toe
kissed by good Catholics. You cannot help seeing that:
it is so very prominent and popular. But it does not
heighten the effect of the temple, as a work of art; and
it is not expressive—to me at least—of its high purpose.
A large space behind the altar, was fitted up with
boxes, shaped like those at the Italian Opera in Eng-
land, but in their decoration much more gaudy. In the
centre of the kind of theatre thus railed off, was a cano-
pied dais with the Pope's chair upon it. The pavement
was covered with a carpet of the brightest green ; and
what with this green, and the intolerable reds and crim-
Sons, and gold borders of the hangings, the whole Con-
cern looked like a stupendous Bon-bon. On either side
of the altar, was a large box for lady strangers. These
were filled with ladies in black dresses and black veils.
The gentlemen of the Pope's guard, in red coats, leather
breeches, and jack-boots, guarded all this reserved
space, with drawn swords, that were very flashy in
every sense ; and from the altar all down the nave, a
broad lane was kept clear by the Pope's Swiss guard,
who wear a quaint striped surcoat, and striped tight
legs, and carry halberds like those which are usually
shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, who
never can get off the stage fast enough, and who may
be generally observed to linger in the enemy’s camp
after the open country, held by the opposite forces, has
been split up the middle by a convulsion of Nature.
I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company
with a great many other gentlemen, attired in black,
(no other passport is necessary), and stood there at my
ease, during the performance of Mass. The singers were
118 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
in a crib of wirework (like a large meat-safe or bird-
cage) in one corner ; and sang most atrociously. All
about the green carpet, there was a slowly moving
crowd of people : talking to each other : staring at the
Pope through eye-glasses : defrauding one another, in
moments of partial curiosity, Out of precarious seats On
the bases of pillars: and grinning hideously at the
ladies. Dotted here and there, were little knots of
friars. (Francescáni, or Cappuccini, in their coarse
brown dresses and peaked hoods) making a strange con-
trast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of higher degree, and
having their humility gratified to the utmost, by being
shouldered about, and elbowed right and left, on all
sides. Some of these had muddy sandals and umbrel-
las, and stained garments : having trudged in from the
country. The faces of the greater part were as coarse
and heavy as their dress; their dogged, stupid, monoto-
nous stare at all the glory and splendour, having some-
thing in it, half miserable, and half ridiculous. -
Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the
altar, was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red,
gold, purple, violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers
from these, went to and fro among the crowd, convers-
ing two and two, or giving and receiving introductions,
and exchanging salutations; other functionaries in black
gowns, and other functionaries in court-dresses, were
similarly engaged. In the midst of all these, and
stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, and the extreme
restlesness of the Youth of England, who were perpetu-
ally wandering about, some few steady persons in black
cassocks, who had knelt down with their faces to the
wall and were poring over their missals, became, unin-
tentionally, a sort of humane man-traps, and with their
Own devout legs, tripped up other people's by the dozen.
There was a great pile of candles lying down on the
floor near me, which a very old man in a rusty black
gown with an open-work tippet, like a Summer Orna-
ment for a fireplace in tissue-paper, made himself very
busy in dispensing to all the ecclesiastics: one apiece.
They loitered about with these for some time, under
their arms like walking-sticks, or in their hands like
truncheons. At a certain period of the ceremony, how-
ever, each carried his candle up to the Pope, laid it
across his two knees to be blessed, took it back again,
ROME. j.1%)
and filed off. This was done in a very attenuated pro-
cession, as you may suppose, and occupied a long time.
Not because it takes long to bless a candle through and
through, but because there were so many candles to be
blessed. At last they were all blessed; and then they
were all lighted; and then the Pope was taken up, chair
and all, and carried round the church.
I must say, that I never saw anything, out of Novem-
ber, so like the popular English commemoration of the
fifth of that month. A bundle of matches and a lantern,
would have made it perfect. Nor did the Pope, himself,
at all mar the resemblance, though he has a pleasant and
venerable face ; for, as this part of the ceremony makes
him giddy and sick, he shuts his eyes when it is per-
formed : and having his eyes shut, and a great mitre on
his head, and his head itself wagging to and fro as they
shook him in carrying, he looked as if his mask were
going to tumble off. The two immense fans which are
always borne, one on either side of him, accompanied
him, of course, on this occasion. As they carried him
along, he blessed the people with the mystic sign ; and as
he passed them, they kneeled down. When he had made
the round of the church, he was brought back again,
and if I am not mistaken, this performance was re-
peated, in the whole, three times. There was, certainly,
nothing solemn or effective in it ; and certainly very
much that was droll and tawdry. But this remark ap-
plies to the whole ceremony, except the raising of the
Host, when every man in the guard dropped on one knee
instantly, and dashed his naked sword on the ground;
which had a fine effect.
The next time I saw the Cathedral, was some two or
three weeks afterwards, when I climbed up into the
ball ; and then, the hangings being taken down, and the
carpet taken up, but all the framework left, the rem-
º: of these decorations looked like an exploded
CI’a,CRCGI’.
The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa
days, and Sunday being always a dies mom in carnival
proceedings, we had looked forward, with some impa-
tience and Curiosity, to the beginning of the new week :
Monday and Tuesday being the two last and best days
of the Carnival.
l 20 . PICTURES FROM ITALY.
On the Monday afternoon at one or two o'clock, there
began to be a great rattling of carriages into the court-
yard of the hotel; a hurrying to and fro of all the ser-
vants in it ; and, now and then, a swift shooting across
some doorway or balcony, of a straggling Stranger in a
fancy dress : not yet sufficiently well used to the same,
to wear it with confidence, and defy public opinion. All
the carriages were open, and had the linings carefully
covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent their
proper decorations from being spoiled by the incessant
pèlting of sugar-plums; and people were packing and
cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its occu-
pants, enormous sacks, and baskets-full of these confétti,
together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nose-
gays, that some carriages were not only brimful of flow-
ers, but literally running over : scattering, at every shake
and jerk of the springs, some of their abundance on the
ground. Not to be behind-hand in these essential par-
ticulars, we caused two very respectable sacks of Sugar-
plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothes-
basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired
barouche, with all speed. And from our place of obser-
vation, in one of the upper balconies of the hotel, we
contemplated these arrangements with the liveliest sat-
isfaction. The carriages now beginning to take up their
company, and move away, we got into ours, and drove
off too, armed with little wire masks for our faces; the
sugar plums, like Falstaff’s adulterated sack, having
lime in their composition.
The Corso is a street a mile long; a street of shops,
and palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening
into a broad piazza. There are verandas and balconies,
Of all shapes and sizes, to almost every house—not on
One story alone, but often to one room or another on
every story—put there in general with so little order or
regularity, that if, year after year, and season after
season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed
balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have
come into existence in a more disorderly manner.
This is the great fountain-head and focus of the
Carnival. But all the streets in which the Carnival is
held, being vigilantly kept by dragoons, it is necessary
for carriages, in the first instance, to pass, in line, down
another thoroughfare, and so come into the Corso at the
*-
*-es-e?
ROME. 121
‘end remote from the Piázza del Popolo; which is one of
its terminations. Accordingly, we fell into the string
of coaches, and, for Some time, jogged on quietly enough;
now crawling on at a very slow walk; now trotting half
a dozen yards; now backing fifty; and now stopping
altogether: as the pressure in front obliged us. If any
impetuous carriage dashed out of the rank and clattered
forward, with the wild idea of getting on faster, it was
Suddenly met, or Overtaken, by a trooper on horseback,
who, deaf as his own drawn sword to all remonstrances,
immediately escorted it back to the very end of the row,
and made it a dim Speck in the remotest perspective.
Occasionally, we interchanged a volley of confétti with
the carriage next in front, or the carriage next behind;
but, as yet, this capturing of stray and errant coaches
by the military, was the chief amusement.
Presently we came into a narrow street, where, be-
sides one line of carriages going there was another line
of carriages returning. Here the Sugar-plums and the
nosegays began to fly about pretty Smartly; and I was
fortunate enough to observe one gentleman attired as a
Greek warrior catch a light-whiskered brigand on the
nose (he was in the very act of tossing up a bouquet
to a young lady in a first-floor window) with a precision
that was much applauded by the by-standers. As this
ferocious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with
a stout gentleman in a door-way—one-half black and
one-half white, as if he had been peeled up the middle
—who had offered him his congratulations on this
achievement, he received an Orange from a house-top,
full on his left ear, and was much surprised, not to
say discomfited. Especially as he was standing up
at the time; and in consequence of the carriage moving
On Suddenly, at the same moment, staggered ignomin-
iously, and buried himself among his flowers.
Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress,
brought us to the Corso; and anything so gay, so bright,
and lively as the whole scene there it would be difficult
to imagine. From all the innumerable balconies, from
the remotest and highest, no less than from the lowest
and nearest, hangings of bright red, bright green, bright
blue, white and gold, were fluttering in the brilliant sun-
light. From windows, and from parapets, and tops of
houses, streamers of the richest colours, and draperies
1 *3 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
of the gaudiest and most sparkling hues were floating
on the street. The buildings seemed to have been
literally turned inside out, and to have all their gaiety
towards the highway. Shop fronts were taken down,
and the windows filled with company, like boxes at a
shining theatre; doors were carried off their hinges,
and long tapestried groves, hung with garlands of flow-
ers and evergreens, displayed within; builders’ scaffold-
ings were gorgeous temples, radiant in silver, gold, and
Crimson; and in every nook and corner, from the pave-
ment to the chimney-tops, where women’s eyes could
glisten, there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled,
like the light in water. Every sort of bewitching mad-
ness of dress was there. Little preposterous Scarlet
jackets; quaint old stomachers, more wicked than the
Smartest bodies; Polish pelisses, strained and tight as
ripe gooseberries; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and cling-
ing to the dark hair, Heaven knows how; every wild,
quaint, bold, shy, pettish, madcap fancy had its illus-
tration in a dress; and every fancy was as dead forgot-
ten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as if the
three old aqueducts that still remain entire, had brought
Lethe into Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that morn-
Ing.
The carriages were now three abreast ; in broader
places four ; often stationary for a long time together;
always one close mass of variegated brightness ; show-
ing, the whole street-full, through the storm of flowers,
like flowers of a larger growth themselves. In some
the horses were richly caparisoned in magnificent trap-
pings ; in others they were decked from head to tail,
with flowing ribbons. Some were driven by coachmen
with enormous double faces: one face leering at the
horses : the other cocking its extraordinary eyes into
the carriage ; and both rattling again, under the hail of
sugar-plums. Other drivers were attired as women,
wearing long ringlets and no bonnets, and looking
more ridiculous in any real difficulty with the horses
(of which, in such a concourse, there were a great
many) than tongue can tell, or pen describe. Instead
of sitting in the carriages, upon the seats, the hand-
some Roman women, to see and to be seen the better,
sit in the heads of the barouches, at this time of gen-
eral license, with their feet upon the cushions—and oh
ROME. tº 123
the flowing skirts and dainty waists, the blessed shapes
and laughing faces, the free, good-humoured, gallant
figures that they make . There were great vans, too,
full of handsome girls—thirty, or more together, per-
haps—and the broadsides that were poured into, and
poured out of, these fairy fire-ships, splashed the air
with flowers and bonbons for ten minutes at a time.
Carriages, delayed long in One place, would begin a de-
liberate engagement with other carriages, or with
people at the lower windows; and the spectators at
some upper balcony or window, joining in the fray, and
attacking both parties, would empty down great bags
of confétti, that descended like a cloud, and in an in-
stant made them white as millers. Still, carriages On
carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds
upon crowds, without end. Men and boys clinging to
the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind, and fol-
lowing in their wake, and diving in among the horses’
feet to pick up scattered flowers to sell again ; maskers
on foot (the drollest, generally) in fantastic exaggera-
tions of court-dresses, surveying the throng through
enormous eye-glasses, and always transported with an
ecstasy of love, on the discovery of any particularly
old lady at a window ; long strings of Policinelli, laying
about them with blown bladders at the ends of sticks ;
a waggon-full of madmen, screaming and tearing to the
life; a coach-full of grave mamelukes, with their horse-
tail standard set up in the midst ; a party of gipsy-
women engaged in terrific conflict with a ship-ful of
sailors; a man-monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange
animals with pigs’ faces, and lions’ tails, carried under
their arms, or worn gracefully over their shoulders;
carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours On
colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Not many
actual characters sustained, or represented, perhaps,
considering the number dressed, but the main pleasure
of the scene consisting in its perfect good temper ; in
its bright, and infinite, and flashing variety ; and in its
entire abandonment to the mad humour of the time—
an abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so irresist-
ible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle
in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of
them all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past four
o'clock, when he is suddenly reminded (to his great re-
124 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
gret) that this is not the whole business of his existence,
by hearing the trumpets sound, and seeing the dragoons
begin to clear the street.
How it ever is cleared for the race that takes place at
five, or how the horses ever go through the race, with-
out going over the people, is more than I can say. But
the carriages get out into the by-streets, or up into the
Plázza del Popolo, and some people sit in temporary
galleries in the latter place, and tens of thousands line
the Corso on both sides, when the horses are brought
Out into the Piazza—to the foot of that same column
which, for centuries, looked down upon the games and
chariot-races in the Circus Maximus.
At a given signal they are started off. Down the live
lane, the whole length of the Corso, they fly like the
wind : riderless, as all the world knows : with shining
ornaments upon their backs, and twisted in their plaited
manes : and with heavy little balls stuck full of spikes,
dangling at their sides, to goad them on. The jingling
of these trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon
the hard stones; the dash and fury of their speed alon
the echoing street ; nay, the very cannon that are fired
—these noises are nothing to the roaring of the multi-
tude : their shouts: the clapping of their hands. But
it is soon over—almost instantaneously. More cannon
shake the town. The horses have plunged into the
carpets put across the street to stop them ; the goal is
reached ; the prizes are won (they are given, in part,
by the poor Jews, as a compromise for not running foot-
races themselves); and there is an end to that day’s
Sport.
But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on
the last day but one, it attains, on the concluding day,
to such a height of glittering colour, swarming life, and
frolicsome uproar, that the bare recollection of it makes
me giddy at this moment. The same diversions, greatly
heightened and intensified in the ardour with which
they are pursued, go on until the same hour. The race
is repeated ; the cannon are fired ; the shouting and
clapping of hands are renewed ; the cannon are fired
again ; the race is over ; and the prizes are won. But,
the carriages : ankle-deep in sugar-plums within, and SO
beflowered and dusty without, as to be hardly recog-
misable for the same vehicles that they were, three
ROME. 125
hours ago : instead of scampering off in all directions,
throng into the Corso, where they are soon wedged to-
gether in a scarcely moving mass. For the diversion of
the Moccoletti, the last gay madness of the Carnival,
is now at hand; and sellers of little tapers like what
are called Christmas candles in England, are shouting
lustily on every side, “Moccoli, Moccoli ! Ecco Moccolil’”
—a new item in the tumult; quite abolishing that other
item of “Ecco Fióri ! Ecco Fior—r—r !” which has been
making itself audible over all the rest, at intervals, the
whole day through.
As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into
one dull, heavy, uniform colour in the decline of the
day, lights begin flashing, here and there : in the win-
dows, on the housetops, in the balconies, in the car-
riages, in the hands of the foot-passengers : little by lit-
tle : gradually, gradually: more and more : until the
whole long street is one great glare and blaze of fire.
Then, everybody present has but one engrossing object :
that is, to extinguish other people's candles, and to keep
his own alight ; and everybody : man, woman, or child,
gentleman or lady, prince or peasant, native or for-
eigner : yells and Screams, and roars incessantly, as a
taunt to the subdued, “Senza Moccolo, Senza, Moccolo l’’
(Without a light ! Without a light !) until nothing is
heard but a gigantic chorus of those two words, mingled
with peals of laughter.
The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extra-
ordinary that can be imagined. Carriages coming
slowly by, with everybody standing on the seats or on
the box, holding up their lights at arms’ length, for
greater safety; some in paper shades; some with a
bunch of undefended little tapers, kindled together;
some with blazing torches; some with feeble little can-
dles; men on foot, creeping along, among the wheels,
watching their opportunity to make a spring at some
particular light, and dash it out; other people climbing
up into carriages, to get hold of them by main force;
others, chasing some unlucky wanderer, round and
round his own coach, to blow out the light he has
begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to
his own company, and enable them to light their ex-
tinguished tapers; others, with their hats off, at a car-
riage-door, humbly beseeching some kind-hearted lady
126 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
to oblige them with a light for a cigar, and when she is
in the fulness of doubt whether to comply or no, blow-
ing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly with her
little hand; other people at the windows, fishing for
candles with lines and hooks, or letting down long
willow-wands with handkerchiefs at the end, and flap-
ping them out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the
height of his triumph; others, biding their time in cor-
ners, with immense extinguishers like halberds, and
suddenly coming down upon glorious torches; others,
gathered round one coach, and sticking to it; others,
raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lan-
term, or regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding
up one man among them, who carries one feeble little
wick above his head, with which he defies them all!
Senza, Moccolo Senza Moccolo l Beautiful women,
standing up in coaches, pointing in derision at extin-
guished lights, and clapping their hands, as they pass
on, crying, ‘i Senza Moccolo! Senza Moccolo!”; low bal-
conies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling
with assailants in the streets; some repressing them as
they climb up, some bending down, Some leaning over,
some shrinking back—delicate arms and bosoms—
graceful figures — glowing lights, fluttering dresses,
Senza, Moccolo, Senza Moccolo, Senza, Moc-co-lo-O-O-O !—
when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest
ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the
church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an instant
—put out like a taper, with a breath!
There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as
dull and senseless as a London One, and Only remark-
able for the summary way in which the house was
cleared at eleven o’clock : which was done by a line of
soldiers forming along the wall, at the back of the stage,
and sweeping the whole company out before them, like
a broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti (the word,
in the singular, Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moccolo,
and means a little lamp or candle-snuff) is supposed by
some to be a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the
death of the Carnival : candles being indispensable to
Catholic grief. But whether it be so, or be a remnant
of the ancient Saturnalia, or an incorporation of both,
or have its origin in anything else, I shall always re-
member it, and the frolic, as a brilliant and most capti-
ROME. 12?
yating sight: no less remarkable for the unbroken good-
humour of all concerned, down to the very lowest (and
among those who scaled the carriages, were many of
the commonest men and boys) than for its innocent
vivacity. For, Odd as it may seem to say so, of a sport
So full of thoughtlessness and personal display, it is as
free from any taint of immodesty as any general ming-
ling of the two sexes can possibly be ; and there seems
to prevail, during its progress, a feeling of general, al-
most childish, simplicity and confidence, which one
thinks of with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung it
away, for a whole year.
Availing Ourselves of a part of the quiet interval be-
tween the termination of the Carnival and the begin-
ning of the Holy Week: when everybody had run away
from the One, and few people had yet begun to run back
again for the other : we went conscientiously to work,
to see Rome. . And, by dint of going out early every
morning, and coming back late every evening, and
labouring hard all day, I believe we made acquaintance
with every post and pillar in the city, and the country
round ; and, in particular, explored so many churches
that I abandoned that part of the enterprise at last, be-
fore it was half finished, lest I should never, of my own
accord, go to church again, as long as I lived. But, I
lºft almost every day, at One time or other, to get
back to the Coliseum, and out upon the Open Campagna,
beyond the Tomb of Cecilia Metella. -
We often encountered, in these expeditions, a com-
pany of English Tourists, with whom I had an ardent
ut ungratified longing, to establish a speaking ac-
quaintance. They were One Mr. Davis, and a small
circle of friends. It was impossible not to know Mrs.
Davis’s name, from her being always in great request
among her party, and her party being everywhere.
During the Holy Week, they were in every part of every
scene of every ceremony. For a fortnight or three weeks
before it, they were in every tomb, and every church, and
every ruin, and every Picture Gallery; and I hardly ever
observed Mrs. Davis to be silent for a moment. Deep
underground, high up in St. Peter's, out on the Cam-
pagna, and stifling in the Jews' quarter, Mrs. Davis
turned up, all the same. I don’t think she ever saw
128 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
anything, or ever looked at anything; and She had
always lost something out of a straw hand-basket, and
was trying to find it, with all her might and, main,
among an immense quantity of English halfpence,
which lay, like sands upon the sea-shore, at the bottom.
of it. There was a professional Cicerone always at-
tached to the party (which had been brought over from
London, fifteen or twenty strong, by contract), and if
he so much as looked at Mrs. Davis, she invariably cut
him short by saying, “There, God bless the man
don’t worrit me ! I don’t understand a word you say,
and shouldn’t if you was to talk till you was black in
the face!” Mr. Davis had a snuff-coloured great-coat on,
and carried a great green umbrella in his hand, and
had a slow curiosity constantly devouring him, which
prompted him to do extraordinary things, such as tak-
ing the covers off urns in tombs, and looking in at the
ashes as if they were pickles—and tracing Out inscrip-
tions with the ferrule of his umbrella, and saying, with
intense thoughtfulness, “Here’s a B you see, and there's
a R, and this is the way we goes on in; is it!” His
antiquarian habits occasioned his being frequently in
the rear of the rest; and one of the agonies of Mrs.
Davis, and the party in general, was an ever-present
fear that Davis would be lost. This caused them to
scream for him, in the Strangest places, and at the most
improper seasons. And when he came, slowly emerg-
ing out of some Sepulchre or other, like a peaceful
Ghoule, saying: “Here I am!” Mrs. Davis invariably
replied, “You’ll be buried alive in a foreign country,
Davis, and it’s no use trying to prevent you!”
Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably,
been brought from London in about nine or ten days.
Eighteen hundred years ago, the Roman legions under
Claudius, protested against being led into Mr. and Mrs.
Davis’s country, urging that it lay beyond the limits of
the world.
Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions
of Rome, there was one that amused me mightily. It is
always to be found there; and its den is on the great
flight of steps that lead from the Piázza di Sápgna, to
the church of Trinita del Monte. In plainer words, these
steps are the great place of resort for the artists’
“Models,” and there they are constantly waiting to be
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\ . ROME. 129
hired. The first time I went up there I could not con-
ceive why the faces seemed familiar to me; why they
appeared to have beset me, for years, in every possible
variety of action and costume; and how it came to pass
that they started up befóre me, in Rome, in the broad
day, like so many saddled and bridled mightmares. I
soon found that we had made acquaintance, and im-
proved it, for several years, on the walls of various
Exhibition Galleries. There is one old gentleman, with
long white hair and an immense beard, who, to my
knowledge, has gone half through the catalogue of the
Royal Academy. This is the venerable, or patriarchal
model. He carries a long staff; and every knot and
twist in that staff I have seen, faithfully delineated,
innumerable times. There is another man in a blue
cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the sun
(when there is any), and who, I need not say, is always
very wide awake, and very attentive to the disposition
of his legs. This is the dolce far” miente model. There
is another man in a brown cloak, who leans against a
wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and looks
out of the corners of his eyes: which are just visible
beneath his broad slouched hat. This is the assassin
model. There is another man, who constantly looks
Over his own shoulder, and is always going away, but
never goes. This is the haughty, or scornful model.
As to Domestic Happiness, and Holy, Families, they
should come very cheap, for there are lumps of them,
all up the steps; and the cream of the thing is, that they
are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, especially
made up for the purpose, and having no counterparts
in Rome or any other part of the habitable globe.
My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its
being said to be a mock mourning (in the ceremony
with which it closes), for the gaieties and merry-mak-
ings before Lent; and this again reminds me of the real
funerals and mourning processions of Rome, which, like
those in most other parts of Italy, are rendered chiefly
remarkable to a Foreigner, by the indifference with
which the mere clay is universally regarded, after life
has left it. And this is not from the survivors having
had time to dissociate the memory of the dead from
their well-remembered appearance and form on earth;
for the interment follows too speedily after death, for
VOI. I. 9
130 PJOTURES FROM ITALY.
that: almost always taking place within four-and-
twenty hours, and, sometimes, within twelve.
At Rome, there is the same arrangement of Pits in a
great, bleak, open, dreary space, that I have already
described as existing in Genoa. When I visited it, at
noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of plain deal: uncov-
ered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that
the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed
it in: carelessly tumbled down, all on One side, on the
door of one of the pits—and there left, by itself, in the
wind and Sunshine. “How does it come to be left
here?” I asked the man who showed me the place.
“It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore,” he
said. I remembered to have met the procession, on its
return : straggling away at a good round pace.
“When will it be put in the pit?” I asked him. “When
the cart comes, and it is opened to-night,” he said.
“How much does it cost to be brought here in this way,
instead of coming in the cart?” I asked him. “ Ten
scudi,” he said (about two pounds, two-and-sixpence,
English). “The other bodies, for whom nothing is
paid, are taken to the church of the Santa Maria della
Consolázione,” he continued, “ and brought here alto-
gether in the cart at night.” I stood, a moment, look-
ing at the coffin, which had two initial letters scrawled
upon the top ; and turned, away with an expression
in my face, I suppose, of not much liking its exposure
in that manner: for he said, shrugging his shoulders
with great vivacity, and giving a pleasant Smile, “But
he's dead, Signore, he’s dead. Why not P’’
Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must
select for separate mention, It is the church of the
Ara Coeli, supposed to be built on the site of the old
Temple of Jupiter Feretrius; and approached, on One
side, by a long steep flight of steps, which seem incom-
plete without some group of bearded soothsayers on
the top. It is remarkable for the possession of a mirac-
ulous Bambino, or wooden doll, representing the Infant
Saviour; and I first saw this miraculous Bambíno, in
legal phrase, in manner following, that is to say :
We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and
were looking down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for
all these ancient churches built upon the ruins of old
ROME. * 131
temples, are dark and sad), when the Brave came run-
ning in, with a grin upon his face that stretched it from
ear to ear, and implored us to follow him, without a
moment’s delay, as they were going to show the Bam-
bíno to a select party, We accordingly hurried off to a
sort of chapel, or sacristy, hard by the chief altar, but
not in the church itself, where the select party; consisting
of two or three Catholic gentleman and ladies (not
Italians) were already assembled: and where one hol-
low-cheeked young monk was lighting up divers
candles, while another was putting on some clerical
robes over his coarse brown habit. The candles were
on a kind of altar, and above it were two delectable
figures, such as you would see at any English fair, rep-
resenting the Holy Virgin and Saint Joseph, as I
suppose, bending in devotion Over a wooden box, or
coffer; which was shut. -
The hollow-cheeked monk number One, having fin-
ished lighting the candles, went down on his knees, in
a corner, before this set-piece; and the monk number
Two, having put on a pair of highly ornamented and
gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer, with
great reverence, and set it on the altar. Then, with
many genuflexions, and muttering certain prayers, he
opened it, and let down the front, and took off sundry
coverings of satin and lace from the inside. The ladies
had been on their knees from the commencement; and the
gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he exposed
to view a little wooden doll, in face very like General
Tom Thumb, the American Dwarf: gorgeously dressed
in satin and gold lace, and actually blazing with rich
jewels. There was scarcely a spot upon its little breast,
or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling with the costly
offerings of the Faithful. Presently, he lifted it out of
the box, and, carrying it round among the kneelers,
set its face against the forehead of every one, and ten-
dered its clumsy foot to them to kiss—a ceremony
which they all performed down to a dirty little ragamuf-
fin of a boy who had walked in from the street. When
this was done, he laid it in the box again: and the
company, rising, drew near, and commended the jewels
in whispers. In good time, he replaced the coverings,
shut up the box, put it back in its place, locked up the
whole concern (Holy Family and all) behind a pair of
132 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
folding-doors; took off his priestly vestments; and
received the customary “small charge,” while his com-
panion, by means of an extinguisher fastened to the
end of a long stick, put out the lights, one after another.
The candles being all extinguished, and the money
all collected, they retired, and so did the spectators.
I met this same Bambino, in the street, a short time
afterwards, going, in great state, to the house of Some
sick person. It is taken to all parts of Rome for this
purpose, constantly; but, I understand that it is not al-
ways as successful as could be wished; for, making its
appearance at the bedside of weak and nervous people
in extremity, accompanied by a numerous escort, it not
unfrequently frightens them to death. It is most popu-
lar in cases of child-birth, where it has done such won-
ders, that if a lady be longer than usual in getting
through her difficulties, a messenger is despatched, with
all speed, to solicit the immediate attendance of the
Bambino. It is a very valuable property, and much
confided in—especially by the religious body to whom
it belongs. *
I am happy to know that it is not considered immac-
ulate, by some who are good Catholics, and who are be-
hind the scenes, from what was told me by the near
relation of a Priest, himself a Catholic, and a gentleman
of learning and intelligence. This Priest made my in-
formant promise that he would, on no account, allow
the Bambino to be borne into the bedroom of a sick
lady, in whom they were both interested. “ For,” said
he, “if they (the monks) trouble her with it, and in-
trude themselves into her room, it will certainly kill
her.” My informant accordingly looked out of the win-
dow when it came; and, with many thanks, declined to
Open the door. He endeavoured, in another case of which
he had no other knowledge than such as he gained as a
passer-by at the moment, to prevent its being carried
into a small unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl
was dying. But, he strove against it unsuccessfully,
and she expired while the crowd were pressing round
her bed.
Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their
leisure, to kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet
prayer, there are certain schools and seminaries, priestly
and otherwise, that come in, twenty or thirty strong.
ROME. 133
These boys always kneel down in single file, one be-
hind the other, with a tall grim master in a black gown,
bringing up the rear : like a pack of cards arranged to
be tumbled down at a touch, with a disproportionately
large Knave of clubs at the end. When they have
had a minute or so at the main altar, they scramble
up, and filing off to the chapel of the Madonna, or
the sacrament, flop down again in the same order; so
that if anybody did stumble against the master, a
general and sudden overthrow of the whole line must
inevitably ensue.
The scene in all the churches is the strangest pos-
sible. The same monotonous, heartless, drowsy chaunt-
ing, always going on ; the same dark building, darker
from the brightness of the street without; the same
lamps dimly burning ; the Self-same people kneeling
here and there; turned towards you, from one altar or
other; the same priest’s back, with the same large cross
embroidered on it ; however different in size, in shape,
in wealth, in architecture, this church is from that, it
is the same thing still. There are the same dirty beg-
gars stopping in their muttered prayers to beg ; the
same miserable cripples exhibiting their deformity at
the doors ; the same blind men, rattling little pots like
kitchen pepper-castors : their depositories for alms;
the same preposterous crowns of silver stuck upon the
painted heads of single Saints and Virgins in crowded
pictures, so that a little figure on a mountain has a head-
dress bigger than the temple in the foreground, or ad-
jacent miles of landscape ; the same favourite shrine or
figure, smothered with little silver hearts and Crosses,
and the like : the staple trade and show of all the jewel-
lers; the same odd mixture of respect and indecorum,
faith and phlegm: kneeling on the stones, and spitting on
them, loudly ; getting up from prayers to beg a little,
or to pursue some other worldly matter: and then kneel-
ing down again, to resume the contrite Supplication at
the point where it was interrupted. In one church, a
kneeling lady got up from her prayers, for a moment,
to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music ; and in an-
other, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-
staff, arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who
was growhing at another dog : and whose yelps and
howls resounded through the church, as his master
134 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
quietly relapsed into his former train of meditation
—keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time,
nevertheless. **
Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contri-
butions of the Faithful, in some form or other. Some-
times, it is a money-box, set up between the worshipper,
and the wooden-life-size figure of the Redeemer; some-
times, it is a little chest for the maintenance of the Vir-
gin; sometimes an appeal on behalf of a popular Bam-
bino; sometimes a bag at the end of a long stick, thrust
among the people here and there, and vigilantly jingled
by an active Sacristan; but there it always is, and, very
often, in many shapes in the same church, and doing
pretty well in all. Nor, is it wanting in the open air—
the streets and roads—for, often as you are walking
along, thinking about anything rather than a tin Canis-
ter, that object pounces out upon you from a little
house by the wayside; and on its top is painted, “ For
the Souls in Purgatory; ” an appeal which the bearer
repeats a great many times, as he rattles it before you,
much as Punch rattles the cracked bell which his san-
guine disposition makes an Organ of.
And this reminds me that some Roman altars of
peculiar sanctity, bear the inscription, “Every mass
performed at this altar, frees a soul from Purgatory.”
I have never been able to find out the charge for one of
these services, but they should needs be expensive.
There are several crosses in Rome too, the kissing of
which confers indulgences for varying terms. That in
the centre of the Coliseum, is worth a hundred days;
and people may be seen kissing it from morning to
night. It is curious that some of these crosses seem to
acquire an arbitrary popularity; this very one among
them. In another part of the Coliseum there is a cross
upon a marble slab, with the inscription, “Who kisses
this cross shall be entitled to Two hundred and forty
days’ indulgence.” But I saw no one person kiss it,
though, day after day, I sat in the arena, and saw
scores upon scores of Peasants pass it, on their way to
kiss the other.
To single out details from the great dream of Roman
Churches, would be the wildest occupation in the world.
But St. Stefano Rotondo, a damp mildewed vault of an
old church in the outskirts of Rome, will always strug-
ROME. 135
gle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous
paintings with which its walls are covered. These
represent the martyrdoms of Saints and early Chris-
tians; and such a panorama of horror and butchery no
man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat
a whole pig, raw, for Supper. Grey-bearded men being
boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild
beasts, joi by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by
horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having
their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut
out, their ears screwed off, their jaws, broken, their
bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the
stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are
among the mildest subjects. So insisted on, and la-
boured at, besides, that every sufferer gives you the
same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke,
in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so
much blood in him.
There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons,
over what is said to have been—and very possibly may
have been—the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is
now fitted up as an Oratory, dedicated to that saint;
and it lives, as a distinct and separate place, in my
recollection, too. It is very small and low-roofed ; and
the dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdurate old
prison are on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist
through the floor. Hanging on the walls, among the
clustered votive offerings, are objects, at once strangely
in keeping, and strangely at variance, with the place—
rusty daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers instruments
of violence and murder, brought here, fresh from use,
and hung up to propitiate offended Heaven ; as if the
blood upon them would drain off in consecrated air, and
have no voice to cry with. It is all so silent and so
close, and tomb-like ; and the dungeons below, are so
black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked ; that this
little dark spot becomes a dream within a dream : and
in the vision of great churches which come rolling past
me like a Sea, it is a small wave by itself, that melts
into no other wave, and does not flow on with the rest.
It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns
that are entered from some Roman churches, and un-
dermine the city. Many churches have crypts and sub-
terranean chapels of great size, which, in the ancient
136 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples, and
what not ; but I do not speak of them. Beneath the
church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, there are the jaws
of a terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and
said to have another outlet underneath the Coliseum—
tremendous darknesses of vast extent, half-buried in the
earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches, flashed
by the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant
vaults branching to the right and left, like streets in a
city of the dead ; and show the cold damp stealing down
the walls, drip-drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water
that lie here and there, and never saw, and never will
see, one ray of the sun. Some accounts make these the
prisons of the wild beasts destined for the amphitheatre;
some the prisons of the condemned gladiators; some,
both. But the legend most appalling to the fancy is,
that in the upper range (for there are two stories of
these caves) the Early Christians destined to be eaten
at the Coliseum. Shows, heard the wild beasts, hungry
for them, roaring down below ; until, upon the night
and solitude of their captivity, there burst the sudden
noon and life of the vast theatre crowded to the para-
pet, and of these, their dreaded neighbours, bounding in!
Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles be-
yond the gate of San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way,
is the entrance to the catacombs of Rome—quarries in
the old time, but afterwards the hiding-places of the
Christians. These ghastly passages have been ex-
plored for twenty miles; and form a chain of laby-
rinths, sixty miles in circumference.
A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was
our only guide, down into this profound and dreadful
place. The narrow ways and openings hither and
thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, soon blot-
ted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track by
which we had come ; and I could not help thinking,
“Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of madness, he
should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized
with a fit, what would become of us !” On we wan-
dered, among martyrs’ graves; passing great subter-
ranean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and
choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves and mur-
derers may not take refuge there, and form a popula-
tion under Rome, even worse than that which lives be-
ROME. * 13%
tween it and the sum. Graves, graves, graves; Graves
of men, of women, of their little children, who ran
crying to the persecutors, “We are Christians ! We are
Christians !” that they might be murdered with their
parents; Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly
cut into their stone boundaries, and little niches, made
to hold a vessel of the martyrs’ blood ; Graves of some
who lived down here, for years together, ministering to
the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort,
from the rude altars, that bear witness to their forti-
tude at this hour ; more roomy graves, but far more
terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed
in and walled up : buried before Death, and killed by
slow starvation. e
“The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in
our splendid churches,” said the friar, looking round
upon us, as we stopped to rest in One of the low pas-
sages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every
side. “They are here! Among the Martyrs’ Graves!”
He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his
heart; but when I thought how Christian men have
dealt with one another; Thow, perverting our most mer-
ciful religion, they have hunted down and tortured,
burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and op-
pressed each other; I pictured to myself an agony Sul-
passing any that this Dust had suffered with the breath
of life yet lingering in it, and how these great and con-
stant hearts would have been shaken—how they would
have quailed and drooped—if a fore-knowledge of the
deeds that professing Christians would commit in the
Great Name for which they died, could have rent them
with its own unutterable anguish, on the cruel wheel,
and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire. -
Such are the spots and patches in my dream of
churches, that remain apart, and keep their separate
identity. I have a fainter recollection, sometimes of
the relics; of the fragments of the pillar of the Temple
that was rent in twain; of the portion of the table that
was spread for the Last Supper; of the well at which
the woman of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour; of
two columns from the house of Pontius Pilate; of the
stone to which the Sacred hands were bound, when the
scourging was performed; of the gridiron of Saint
Lawrence, and the Stone below it, marked with the
138. PICTURES FROM ITALY.
frying of his fat and blood; these set a shadowy mark
on some cathedrals, as an old story, or a fable might,
and stop them for an instant, as they flit before me.
The rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated buildings
of all shapes and fancies, blending one with another; of
battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the
ground, and forced, like giant captives, to support the
roofs of Christian churches; of pictures, bad, and won-
derful, and impious, and ridiculous; of kneeling people,
curling incense, tinkling bells, and, sometimes (but not
often) of a swelling organ; of Madonne, with their
breasts stuck full of Swords, arranged in a half-circle
like a modern fan; of actual skeletons of dead Saints,
hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets
trimmed with gold: their withered crust of skull adorned
with precious jewels, or with chaplets of crushed
flowers; sometimes, of people gathered round the pul- .
pit, and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix,
and preaching fiercely: the Sun just streaming down
through some high window on the sail-cloth stretched
above him and across the church, to keep his high-
pitched voice from being lost among the echoes of the
roof. Then my tired memory comes out upon a flight
of steps, where knots of people are asleep, or basking
in the light; and strolls away, among the rags, and
Smells, and palaces, and hovels, of an old Italian
Street.
On One Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a
man was beheaded here. Nine or ten months before,
he had waylaid a Bavarian countess, travelling as a
pilgrim to Rome—alone and on foot, of course—and
performing, it is said, that act of piety for the fourth
time. He saw her change a piece of gold at Viterbo,
where he lived; followed her; 5. her company on her
journey for Some forty miles or more, on the treacher-
Ous pretext of protecting her; attacked her, in the ful-
filment of his unrelenting purpose, on the Campagna,
within a very short distance of Rome, near to what is
called (but what is not) the Tomb of Nero; robbed her;
and beat her to death with her own pilgrim’s staff. He
was newly married, and gave some of her apparel to
his wife: º that he had bought it at a fair. She,
however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing
ROME. 139
through their town, recognised some trifle as having
belonged to her. Her husband then told her what he
had done. She, in confession, told a priest; and the
man was taken, within four days after the commission
of the murder. -
There are no fixed times for the administration of
justice, or its execution, in this unaccountable country;
and he had been in prison ever since. On the Friday, as
he was dining with the other prisoners, they came and
told him he was to be iješ Inext morning, and took
him away. It is very unusual to execute in Lent; but
his crime being a very bad one, it was deemed advisable
to make an example of him at that time, when great
numbers of pilgrims were coming towards Rome, from
all parts, for the Holy Week. I heard of this on the
Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the churches,
calling on the people to pray for the criminal’s soul. So,
I determined to go, and see him executed. -
The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a half
o'clock, Roman time: or a quarter before nine in the
forenoon. I had two friends with me; and as we did not
know but that the crowd might be very great, we were
on the spot by half-past seven. The place of execution
was.near the church of San Giovanni decolläto (a doubt-
ful compliment to Saint John the Baptist) in one of the
impassable back streets without any footway, of which
a great part of Rome is composed—a street of rotten
houses, which do not seem to belong to anybody, and do
not seem to have ever been inhabited, and certainly were
never built on any plan, or for any particular purpose,
and have no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted
breweries, and might be warehouses but for having
nothing in them. Opposite to one of these, a white
house, the scaffold was built. An untidy, unpainted,
uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course: , some seven
feet high, perhaps: with a tall, gallows-shaped frame
rising above it, in which was the knife, charged with a
ponderous mass of iron, all ready to descend, and glit-
tering brightly in the morning-Sun, whenever it looked
out, now and then, from behind a cloud. -
There were not many people lingering about; and
these were kept at a considerable distance from the
scaffold, by parties of the Pope's dragoons. Two or
three hundred foot-Soldiers were under arms, standing
140 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
at ease in clusters here and there; and the officers were
walking up and down in twos and threes, chatting to-
gether, and Smoking cigars.
At the end of the street, was an open space, where
there would be a dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery,
and mounds of vegetable refuse, but for such things
being thrown anywhere and everywhere in Rome, and
favouring no particular sort of locality. We got into a
kind of wash-house, belonging to a dwelling-house on
this spot; and standing there in an eld cart, and on a
heap of cart wheels piled against the wall, looked,
through a large grated window, at the scaffold, and
Straight down the street beyond it, until, in consequence
of its turning off abruptly to the left, our perspective
was brought to a sudden termination, and had a corpu-
lent officer, in a cocked hat, for its crowning feature.
Nine o’clock struck, and ten o’clock struck, and noth-
ing happened. All the bells of all the churches rang
as usual. A little parliament of dogs assembled in the
Open Space, and chased each other, in and out among
the soldiers. Fierce-looking Romans of the lowest
class, in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked,
came and went, and talked together. Women and chil-
dren fluttered, on the skirts of the scanty crowd. One
large muddy spot was left quite bare, like a bald place
On a man’s head. A cigar-merchant, with an earthen
pot of charcoal ashes in one hand, went up and down,
crying his wares. A pastry-merchant divided his at-
tention between the scaffold and his customers. Boys
tried to climb up walls, and tumbled down again.
Priests and monks elbowed a passage for themselves
among the people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of the
knife : then went away. Artists, in inconceivable hats
of the middle ages, and beards (thank Heaven () of no
age at all, flashed picturesque scowls about them from
their stations in the throng. One gentleman (connected
with the fine arts, I presume) went up and down in a
pair of Hessian-boots, with a red beard hanging down
on his breast, and his long and bright red hair, plaited
into two tails, one on either side of his head ; which
fell over his shoulders in front of him, very nearly to
his waist, and were carefully entwined and braided !
Eleven o’clock struck ; and still nothing happened.
A rumour got about, among the crowd, that the crimi-
ROME. . 141
nal would not confess; in which case, the priests would
keep him until the Ave Maria (sunset); for it is their
merciful custom never finally to turn the crucifix away
from a man at that pass, as one refusing to be shriven,
and consequently a sinner abandoned of the Saviour,
until them. People begin to drop off. The officers
shrugged their shoulders and looked doubtful. The
dragoons, who came riding up below our window, every
now and then, to order an unlucky hackney-coach or
cart away, as soon as it had comfortably established
itself and was covered with exulting people (but never
before), became imperious, and quick-tempered. The
bald place hadn’t a straggling hair upon it ; and the
corpulent officer, crowning the perspective, took a
world Of Snuff.
Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. “Atten-
tion l’’ was among the foot-soldiers instantly. They
were marched up to the scaffold and formed round it.
The dragoons galloped to their nearer stations too.
The guillotine became the centre of a wood of bristling
bayonets and shining sabres. The people closed round
nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A long straggling
stream of men and boys, who had accompanied the pro-
cession from the prison, came pouring into the open
space. The bald spot was scarcely distinguishable from
the rest. The cigar and pastry-merchants resigned all
thoughts of business, for the moment, and abandoning
themselves wholly to pleasure, got good situations in
the crowd. The perspective ended, now, in a troop of
dragoons. And the corpulent officer, Sword in hand, .
looked hard at a church close to him, which he could
see, but we, the crowd, could not. -
After a short delay, some monks were seen approach-
ing to the scaffold from this church ; and above their
heads, coming on slowly and gloomily, the effigy of
Christ upon the cross, canopied with black. This was
carried round the foot of the scaffold, to the front, and
turned towards the criminal, that he might see it to the
last. It was hardly in its place, when he appeared on
the platform, bare-footed ; his hands bound ; and with
the collar and neck of his shirt cut away, almost to the
shoulder. A young man—six-and-twenty—vigorously
made, and well-shaped. Face pale ; small dark mous-
tache ; and dark brown hair.
142 - PICTURES FROM ITALY.
He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first
having his wife brought to see him ; and they had sent
an escort for her, which had occasioned the delay.
He immediately kneeled down, below the knife. His
neck fitting into a hole, made for the purpose, in a CrOSS
plank, was shut down, by another plank above ; exactly
like the pillory. Immediately below him was a leath-
ern bag. And into it his head rolled instantly.
The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walk-
ing with it round the scaffold, showing it to the people,
before one quite knew that the knife had fallen heavily,
and with a rattling sound.
When it had travelled round the four sides of the
scaffold, it was set upon a pole in front—a little patch
of black and white; for the long street to stare at, and
the flies to settle on. The eyes were turned upward, as if
he had avoided the sight of the leathern bag, and looked
to the crucifix. Every tinge and hue of life had left it
in that instant. It was dull, cold, livid, wax. The
body also. *
There was a great deal of blood. When we left the
window, and went close up to the scaffold, it was very
dirty ; one of the two men were throwing water over it,
turning to help the other lift the body into a shell,
picked his way as through mire. A strange appearance
was the apparent annihilation of the neck. The head
was taken off so close, that it seemed as if the knife had
narrowly escaped crushing thre jaw, or shaving off the
ear; and the body looked as if there were nothing left
above the shoulder.
Nobody cared, or was at all affected. There was no
manifestation of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or
sorrow. My empty pockets were tried, several times,
in the crowd immediately below the scaffold, as the
corpse was being put into its coffin. It was an ugly,
filthy, careless, sickening spectacle ; meaning nothing
but butchery beyond the momentary interest, to the one
wretched actor. Yes | Such a sight has one meaning
and One warning. Let me not forget it. The specula-
tors in the lottery, station themselves at favourable
oints for counting the gouts of blood that Spirt out,
here or there ; and buy that number. It is pretty Sure
to have a run upon it.
The body was carted away in due time, the knife
FOME. . 143
cleansed, the scaffold taken down, and all the hideous
apparatus removed. The executioner : an outlaw ea:
officio (what a satire on the Punishment 1) who dare not,
for his life, cross the Bridge of St. Angelo but to do his
work : retreated to his lair, and the show was over.
At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome,
the Vatican, of course, with its treasures of art, its
enormous galleries, and staircases, and suites upon
suites of immense chambers, ranks highest and stands
foremost. Many most noble statues, and wonderful
pictures, are there ; nor is it heresy to say that there is
a considerable amount of rubbish there, too. When any
old piece of sculpture dug out of the ground, finds a
place in a gallery because it is old, and without any ref-
erence to its intrinsic merits : and finds admirers by the
hundred, because it is there, and for no other reason on
earth : there will be no lack of objects, very indifferent
in the plain eyesight of any one who employs so vulgar
a property, when he may wear the spectacles of Cant
for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of
taste for the mere trouble of putting them on.
I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave
my natural perception of what is natural and true, at a
palace-door, in Italy or elsewhere, as I should leave my
shoes if I were travelling in the East. I cannot forget
that there are certain expressions of face, natural to
certain passions, and as unchangeable in their nature
as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an eagle. I cannot
dismiss from my certain knowledge, such common-
place facts as the ordinary proportions of men’s arms,
and legs, and heads; and when I meet with perform-
ances that do violence to these experiences and recol-
lections, no matter were they may be, I cannot honestly
admire them, and think it best to say so; in spite of high
critical advice that we should sometimes feign an ad-
miration, though we have it not.
Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a
Jolly young Waterman representing a cherubim, or a
Barclay and Perkins's Drayman depicted as an Evan-
gelist, I see nothing to commend or admire in the per-
formance, however great its reputed Painter. Neither
am I partial to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and
bassons, for the edification of sprawling monks appar-
144 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
ently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons of gal-
leries, Saint Francis and Saint Sebastian; both of whom
I submit should have very uncommon and rare merits;
as works of art, to justify their compound multiplica-
tion by Italian Painters.
It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and deter-
mined raptures in which some critics indulge, is in-
compatible with the true appreciation of the really great
and transcendent works. I cannot imagine, for example,
how the resolute champion of undeserving pictures can
soar to the amazing beauty of Titian's great picture of
the Assumption of the Virgin at Venice ; or how the
man who is truly affected by the sublimity of that ex-
quisite production, or who is truly, sensible of the
beauty of Tintoretto’s great picture of the Assembly of
the Blessed in the same place, can discern in Michael
Angelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine chapel, any
general idea, or one pervading thought, in harmony
with the stupendous subject. He who will contem:
plate Raphael’s masterpiece, the Transfiguration, and
will go away into another chamber of that same
Vatican, and contemplate another design of Raphael,
representing (in incredible caricature) the miraculous
stopping of a great fire by Leo the Fourth—and who
will say that he admires them both, as works of ex-
traordinary genius—must, as I think, be wanting in
his powers of perception in one of the two instances,
and, probably, in the high and lofty One.
It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt
whether, sometimes, the rules of art are not too strictly
observed, and whether it is quite well'or agreeable that
we should know beforehand where this figure will be
turning round, and where, that figure will be lying
down, and where there will be drapery in folds, and so
forth. When I observe heads inferior to the subject, in
pictures of merit, in Italian galleries, I do not attach
that reproach to the Painter; for I have a suspicion that
these great men who were, of necessity, very much in
the hands of monks and priests, painted monks and
priests a great deal too often. I frequently see, in pict-
ures of real power, heads quite below the story ãºf the
painter: and I invariably observe that those heads are
of the Convent stamp, and have their counterparts
among the Convent inmates of this hour; so I have set-
ROME. 145
tled with myself that, in such cases, the lameness was
not with the painter, but with the vanity and ignorance
of certain of his employers, who would be apostles—on
canvas, at all events.
The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's statues;
the wonderful gravity and repose of many of the ancient
works in sculpture, both in the Capitol and the Vatican;
and the strength and fire of many others; are, in their
different ways, beyond all reach of words. They are
especially impressive and delightful, after the works of
Bernini and his disciples, in which the churches of
Rome, from St. Peter’s downward, abound ; and which
are, I verily believe, the most detestable class of pro-
ductions in the wide world. I would infinitely rather
(as mere works of art) look upon the three deities of the
Past, the Present, and the Future, in the Chinese Col-
lection, than upon the best of these breezy maniacs;
whose every fold of drapery is blown inside out ; whose
smallest vein or artery is as big as an ordinary fore-
finger; whose hair is like a nest of lively snakes; and
whose attitudes put all other extravagance to shame.
Inasmuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no
place in the world where such intolerable abortions, be-
gotten of the sculptor's chisel, are to be found in such
profusion as in Rome. º
There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities, in
the Vatican; and the ceilings of the rooms in which
they are arranged, are painted to represent a star-
light sky in the Desert. It may seem an odd idea, but
it is very effective. The grim, half-human monsters
from the temples, look more grim and monstrous under-
neath the deep dark blue; it sheds a strange uncertain
gloomy air on everything—a mystery adapted to the
objects; and you leave them, as you find them, shrouded
in a Solemn night. -
In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best
advantage. There are seldom so many in one place
that the attention need become distracted, or the eye
confused. You see them very leisurely; and are rarely
interrupted by a crowd of people. There are portraits
innumerable, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Van-
dyke; heads by Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo
Dolci; various subjects by Correggio, and Murillo, and
Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and Spagnoletto—many
VOL. I. 10 **) -
146 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
of which it would be difficult, indeed, to praise too
highly, or to praise enough; such is their tenderness
and grace; their noble elevation, purity, and beauty.
The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo
Berberini, is a picture almost impossible to be forgot-
ten. Through the transcendent sweetness and beauty
of the face, there is a something shining out, that
haunts me. I see it now, as I see this paper, or my
pen. The head is loosely draped in white; the light
hair falling down below the linen folds. She has
turned ja. towards you ; and there is an
expression in the eyes—although they are very tender
and gentle—as if the wildness of a momentary terror,
or distraction, had been struggled with and overcome,
that instant; and nothing but a celestial hope, and a
beautiful sorrow, and a desolate earthly helplessness
remained. Some stories say that Guido painted it, the
night before her execution; some other stories, that he
painted it from memory, after having seen her, on her
way to the scaffold. I am willing to believe that, as
you see her on his canvas, so she turned towards him, in
the crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and stamped
upon his mind a look which he has stamped on mine as
though I had stood beside him in the concourse. The
guilty palace of the Cenci: blighting a whole quarter of
the town, as it stands withering away by grains: had
that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its
black blind windows, and flitting up and down its
dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of its
ghostly galleries. The History is written in the paint-
ing; written in the dying girl’s face, by Nature's own
hand. And oh! how in that one touch she puts to flight
(instead of making kin) the puny world that claim to
be related to her, in right of poor conventional forgeries!
I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey;
the statue at whose base Caesar fell. A stern, tremen-
dous figure! I imagined one of greater finish: of the
last refinement: full of delicate touches: losing its dis-
tinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose blood was
ebbing before it, and settling into some such rigid
majesty as this, as Death came creeping over the up-
turned face. -
The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are
charming, and would be full of interest were it only for
ROME. 147
the changing views they afford, of the wild Campagna.
But, every inch of ground, in every direction, is rich in
associations, and in natural beauties. There is Albano,
with its lovely lake and wooded shore, and with its
wine, that certainly has not improved since the days of
Horace, and in these times hardly justifies his pane-
gyric. There is squalid Tivoli, with the river Anio,
diverted from its course, and plunging down, headlong,
some eighty feet in search of it. With its picturesque
Temple of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag; its minor
waterfalls glancing and sparkling in the Sun; and one
good cavern yawning darkly where the river takes a
fearful plunge and shoots on, low down under beetling
rocks. There, too, is the Villa d’Este, deserted and
decaying among groves of melancholy pine and cypress
trees, where it seems to lie in state. Then, there is
|Frascati, and, on the steep above it, the ruins of Tus-
culum, where Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his
favourite house (some fragments of it may yet be seen
there), and where Cato was born. We saw its ruined
amphitheatre on a grey dull day, when a shrill March
wind was blowing, and when the Scattered stones of
the old city lay strewn about the lonely eminence, as
desolate and dead as the ashes of a long extinguished
fire.
One day, we walked out, a little party of three, to
Albano, fourteen miles distant; possessed by a great
desire to go there, by the ancient Appian way, long
since ruined and overgrown. We started at half-past .
seven in the morning, and within an hour or so, were
out upon the open Campagna. For twelve miles, we
went climbing on, over an unbroken Succession of
mounds, and heaps, and hills of ruin. Tombs and
temples, overthrown and prostrate; Small fragments of
columns, friezes, pediments; great blocks of granite
and marble; mouldering arches, grass-grown and de-
cayed; ruin enough to build a spacious city from; lay
strewn about us. Sometimes, loose walls, built up from
these fragments by the shepherds, came across Our
path; sometimes, a ditch between two mounds of broken
stones, obstructed our progress; sometimes, the frag-
ments themselves, rolling from beneath our feet, made
it a toilsome matter to advance; but it was always
ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of the old road, above
148 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
the ground; now traced it, underneath a grassy cover-
ing, as if that were its grave; but all the way was ruin.
In the distance, ºft aqueducts went stalking on
their giant course along the plain; and every breath of
wind that swept towards us, stirred early flowers and
grasses, Springing up, spontaneously, on miles of ruin.
The unseen larks above us, who alone disturbed the
awful silence, had their nests in ruin; and the fierce
herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and then
scowled upon us from their sleeping nooks, were housed
in ruin. The aspect of the desolate Campagna in One
direction, where it was most level, reminded me of an
American prairie; but what is the solitude of a region
... where men have never dwelt, to that of a Desert, where
a mighty race have left their foot-prints in the earth
from which they have vanished; where the resting-
places of their Dead, have fallen like their Dead; and
the broken hour-glass of Time is but a heap of idle dust!
Returning, by the road, at sunset! and looking, from
the distance, on the course we had taken in the morn-
ing, I almost felt (as I had felt when I first saw it, at
that hour) as if the sun would never rise again, but
looked its last, that night, upon a ruined j.
To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an
expedition, is a fitting close to such a day. The narrow
streets, devoid of footways, and choked, in every ob-
scure corner, by heaps of dunghill-rubbish, contrast so
strongly, in their cramped dimensions, and their filth,
and darkness, with the broad square before some
haughty church: in the centre of which, a hieroglyphic-
covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the
Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about
it; or perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honoured statue
overthrown, supports a Christian saint: Marcus Aurelius
giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter. Then,
there are the ponderous buildings reared from the spoli-
ation of the Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like
mountains; while here and there, are broken arches
and rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the
life comes pouring from a wound. The little town of
miserable houses, walled, and shut in by barred gates,
is the quarter where the Jews are locked up nightly,
when the clock strikes eight—a miserable place,
densely populated, and reeking with bad odours, but
| |
ROME. 149
where the people are industrious and money-getting.
In the day-time, as you make your way along §. Ilal, T-
row streets, you see them all at work: upon the pave-
ment, oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops: fur-
bishing old clothes, and driving bargains.
Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into
the moon once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling
from a hundred jets, and rolling over mimic rocks, is
silvery to the eye and ear. In the narrow little throat of
street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with flaring lamps,
and boughs of trees, attracts a group of Sulky Romans
round its smoking coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower
stew; its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine. As
you rattle round the sharply-twisting corner, a lumber-
ing sound is heard. The coachman stops abruptly, and
uncovers; as a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man
who bears a large cross; by a torch-bearer; and a priest:
the latter chaunting as he goes. It is the Dead Cart,
with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in
the Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will be
thrown into the pit that will be covered with a stone
to-night, and sealed up for a year.
But whether, in this ride, you pass by Obelisks or
columns: ancient temples, theatres, houses, porticoes,
or forums: it is strange to see how every fragment,
whenever it is possible, has been blended into some
modern structure, and made to serve some modern pur-
pose—a wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable—
some use for which it never was designed, and asso-
ciated with which it cannot otherwise than lamely
assort. It is stranger still, to see how many ruins of the
old mythology: how many fragments of obsolete legend
and observance: have been incorporated into the wor-
ship of Christian altars here; and how, in numberless
respects, the false faith and the true are fused into a
monstrous union.
From one part of the city, looking out beyond the
walls, a squat and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of
Caius Cestius) makes an opaque triangle in the moon-
light. But, to an English traveller, it serves to mark
the grave of Shelley too, whose ashes lie beneath a little
garden near it. Nearer still, almost within its shadow, lie
the bones of Keats, “whose name is writ in water,” that
Shines brightly in the landscape of a calm Italian night,
150 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
The Holy Week in Rome is supposed to offer great
attractions to all visitors; but, saving for the sights of
Easter Sunday, I would counsel those who go to Rome
for its own interest, to avoid it at that time. The cere-
monies, in general, are of the most tedious and weari-
some kind ; the heat and crowd at every one of them,
painfully oppressive ; the noise, hubbub, and confusion
Quite distracting. We abandoned the pursuit of these
shows, very early in the proceedings, and betook our-
selves to the Ruins again. But, we plunged into the
crowd for a share of the best of the sights; and what
we saw, I will describe to you.
At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very
little, for by the time we reached it (though we were
early) the besieging crowd had filled it to the door, and
overflowed into the adjoining hall, where they were
Struggling, and squeezing, and mutually expostulating
and making great rushes every time a lady was brought
out faint, as if at least fifty people could be accommo-
dated in her vacant standing-room. Hanging in the
doorway of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this
curtain, some twenty people nearest to it, in their anxiety
to hear the chaunting of the Miserere, were continually
plucking at, in opposition to each other, that it might
not fall down and stifle the sound of the voices. The
consequence was, that it occasioned the most extraordi-
nary confusion, and seemed to wind itself about the
unwary, like a Serpent. Now, a lady was Wrapped up
in it, and couldn’t be unwound. Now, the voice of a
stifling gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching to be
let out. Now, two muffled arms, no man could say of
which sex, struggled in it as in a sack. Now, it was
carried by a rush, bodily overhead into the chapel, like
an awning. Now, it came out the other way, and blinded
one of the Pope's Swiss Guard who had arrived, that
moment, to set things to rights.
Being ‘seated at a little distance, among two or three
of the Pope's gentlemen, who were very weary and
counting the minutes—as perhaps His Holiness was
too—we had better opportunities of observing this
eccentric entertainment, than of hearing the Miserere.
Sometimes, there was a swell of mournful voices that
sounded very pathetic and sad, and died away, into a
low strain again; but that was all we heard.
ROME. 151
At another time, there was the Exhibition of the
Relics in Saint Peter's, which took place at between
six and seven o’clock in the evening, and was striking
from the cathedral being dark and gloomy, and having
a great many people in it. The place into which the
relics were brought, one by one, by a party of three
priests, was a high balcony near the chief altar. This
was the only lighted part of the church. There are
always a hundred and twelve lamps burning near the
altar, and there were two tall tapers, besides, near the
black statue of St. Peter ; but these were nothing in
such an immense edifice. The gloom, and the general
upturning of faces to the balcony, and the prostration of
true believers on the pavement, as shining objects,
like pictures or looking-glasses, were brought out and
shown, had something effective in it, despite the very
preposterous manner in which they were held up for
the general edification, and the great elevation at which
they were displayed ; which one would think rather
calculated to diminish the comfort derivable from a
full conviction of their being genuine.
On the Thursday, we went to see the Pope convey
the Sacrament from the Sistine'chapel, to deposit it in
the Capella Paolina, another chapel in the Vatican;–
a ceremony emblematical of the entombment of the
Saviour before His Resurrection. We waited in a
great gallery with a great crowd of people (three-
fourths of them English) for an hour or so, while
they were chaunting the Miserere, in the Sistino
chapel again. Both chapels opened out of the gallery :
and the general attention was concentrated on the
occasional opening-and shutting of the door of the One
for which the Pope was ultimately bound. None of
these openings disclosed anything more tremendous
than a man on a ladder, lighting a great quantity of
candles; but at each and every opening, there was a
terrific rush made at this ladder and this man, some-
thing like (I should think) a charge of the heavy
British cavalry at Waterloo. The man was never
brought down, however, nor the ladder; for it per-
formed the strangest antics in the world among the
crowd—where it was carried by the man, when the
candles were all lighted; and finally it was stuck up
against the gallery wall, in a very disorderly manner,
152 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
just before the opening of the other chapel, and the
Commencement of a new chaunt, announced the ap-
proach of His Holiness. At this crisis, the soldiers of
the guard, who had been poking the crowd into all
sorts of shapes, formed down the gallery : "and the pro-
cession came up, between the two lines they made.
There were a few choristers, and them, a great many
priests, walking two and two, and carrying—the good-
looking priests at least—their lighted tapers, so as to
throw the light with a good effect upon their faces, for
the room was darkened. Those who were not hand-
Some, or who had not long beards, carried their tapers
anyhow, and abandoned themselves to spiritual con-
templation. Meanwhile, the chaunting was very mo-
notonous and dreary. The procession passed on, slowly,
into the chapel, and the drone of voices went on, and
came On, with it, until the Pope himself appeared,
walking under a white satin canopy, and bearing the
Covered Sacrament in both hands; cardinals and canons
clustered round him, making a brilliant show. The
Soldiers of the guard knelt down as he passed; all the
bystanders bowed; and so he passed on into the chapel:
the white Satin canopy being removed from over him
at the door, and a white satin parasol hoisted over his
boor old head, in place of it. A few more couples
rought up the rear, and passed into the chapel also.
Then, the chapel door was shut; and it was all over;
and everybody hurried off headlong, as for life or death,
to see something else, and say it wasn’t worth the
trouble. Q
I think the most popular and most crowded sight
(excepting those of Easter Sunday and Monday, which
are open to all classes of people) was the Pope washing
the feet of thirteen men, representing the twelve apos-
tles, and Judas Iscariot. The place in which this pious
Office is performed, is one of #. chapels of St. Peter’s,
which is gaily decorated for the occasion; the thirteen
sitting “all of a row,” on a very high bench, and look-
ing particularly uncomfortable, with the eyes of
Heaven knows how many English, French, Americans,
Swiss, Germans, Russians, Swedes, Norwegians, and
other foreigners, nailed to their faces all the time.
They are robed in white; and on their heads they wear
a stiff white cap, like a large English porter-pot, with-
-- ROME. 153
out a handle. Each carries in his hand a nosegay, of
the size of a fine cauliflower; and two of them. On this
occasion, wore spectacles: which, remembering the
characters they sustained, I thought a droll appendage
to the costume. There was a great eye to character. St.
John was represented by a good-looking young man.
St. Peter, by a grave-looking old gentleman, with a
flowing brown beard; and Judas Iscariot by such an
enormous hypocrite (I could not make Out, though,
whether the expression of his face was real or assumed)
that if he had acted the part to the death and had gone
away and hanged himself, he would have left nothing
to be desired.
As the two large boxes, appropriated to ladies, at
this sight, were full to the throat, and getting near was
hopeless, we posted off, along with a great crowd, to be
in time at the Table, where the Pope, in person, waits
on these Thirteen; and after a prodigious struggle at
the Vatican staircase, and several personal conflicts
with the Swiss guard, the whole crowd swept into the
room. It was a long gallery hung with drapery of white
and red, with another great box for ladies (who are
obliged to dress in black at these ceremonies, and to
wear black veils), a royal box for the King of Naples,
and his party; and the table itself, which, set out like a
ball supper, and ornamented with golden figures of the
real apostles, was arranged on an elevated platform. On
one side of the gallery. The counterfeit apostles' knives
and forks were laid out on that side of the table which
was nearest to the wall, so that they might be stared at
again, without let or hindrance.
The body of the room was full of male strangers; the
crowd immense; the heat very great; and the pressure
sometimes frightful. It was at its height when the
stream came pouring in, from the feet-washing;
and then there were such shrieks and outcries, that
a party of Piedmontese dragoons went to the rescue
of the Swiss guard, and helped them to calm the
tumult.
The ladies were particularly ferocious, in their strug-
gles for places. One lady of my acquaintance was
seized round the waist, in the ladies' box, by a strong
matron, and hoisted out of her place; and there was
another lady (in a back row in the same box) who im-
154 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
roved her position by sticking a large pin into the
adies before her.
The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to
see what was on the table; and one Englishman seemed
to have embarked the whole energy of his nature in the
determination to discover whether there was any mus-
tard. “By Jupiter there’s vinegar !” I heard him say
to his friend, after he had stood on tiptoe an immense
time, and had been crushed and beaten on all sides.
“And there's oil ' ' I saw them distinctly in cruets
Can any gentleman, in front there, see mustard on the
table? Sir, will you oblige me! Do you see a Mustard-
Pot?”
The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform,
after much expectation, were marshalled, in line, in
front of the table, with Peter at the top; and a good long
stare was taken at them by the company, while twelve
of them took a long Smell at their nosegays, and Judas
—moving his lips very obtrusively—engaged in inward
prayer. Then, the Pope, clad in a scarlet robe, and
wearing on his head a skull-cap of white satin, ap-
peared in the midst of a crowd of Cardinals and other
dignitaries, and took in his hand a little golden ever,
from which he poured a little water over one of Peter's
hands, while one attendant held a golden basin ; a
second, a fine cloth; a third, Péter's nosegay, which
was taken from him during the operation. This His
Holiness performed, with considerable expedition, on
every man in the line (Judas, I observed, to be particu-
larly overcome by his condescension ); and then the
whole Thirteen sat down to dinner. Grace was said by
the Pope. Peter in the chair.
There was white wine, and red wine: and the dinner
looked very good. The courses appeared in portions,
one for each apostle; and these being presented to the
Pope, by Cardinals upon their knees, were by him
handed to the Thirteen. The manner in which Judas
grew more white-livered over his victuals, and lan-
guished, with his head on One side, as if he had no
appetite, defies all description. Peter was a good,
sound, old man, and went in, as the saying is, “to win; ”
eating everything that was given him (he got the best:
being first in the row) and saying nothing to anybody.
The dishes appeared to be chiefly composed of fish and
ROME. 155
vegetables. The Pope helped the Thirteen to wine also;
and during the whole dinner, somebody read something
aloud, Out of a large book—the Bible, I presume—which
nobody could hear, and to which º paid the least
attention. The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled
to each other, from time to time, as if the thing were a
great farce; and if they thought so, there is little doubt
they were perfectly right. His Holiness did what he
had to do, as a Sensible man gets through a troublesome
ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was all
OVél”.
The Pilgrims' Suppers: where lords and ladies waited
on the Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their
feet when they had been well washed by deputy: were
very attractive. But, of all the many spectacles of
dangerous reliance on Outward observances, in them-
selves mere empty forms, none struck me half so much
as the Scala, Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw sev-
eral times, but to the greatest advantage, or disadvan-
tage, on Good Friday.
This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty
steps, said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house,
and to be the identical stairs on which Our Saviour
trod, in coming down from the judgment-seat. Pil-
grims ascend it, Only on their knees. It is steep; and,
at the summit, is a Chapel, reported to be full of relics;
into which they peep through some iron bars, and then
come down again, by One of two side staircases, which
are not sacred, and may be walked on.
On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate compu-
tation, a hundred people, slowly shuffling up these
stairs, on their knees, at One time; While others, who
were going up, or had come down—and a few who had
done both, and were going up again for the second time
—stood loitering in the porch below, where an old gen-
tleman in a sort of watch-box, rattled a tin canister,
with a slit in the top, incessantly, to remind them that
he took the money. The majority were country people,
male and female. There were four or five Jesuit priests,
however, and some half-dozen well-dressed women. A
whole school of boys, twenty at least, were about half-
way up—evidently enjoying it very much. They were
all wedged together, pretty closely; but the rest of the
company gave the boys as wide a berth as possible, in
156 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
consequence of their betraying some recklessness in
the management of their boots.
I never, in my life, saw anything at Once So ridic-
ulous, and so unpleasant, as this sight—ridiculous in
the absurd incidents inseparable from it ; and un-
pleasant in its senseless and unmeaning degradation.
There are two steps to begin with, and then a rather
broad landing. The more rigid climbers went along
this landing on their knees, as well as up the stairs;
and the figures they cut, in their shuffling progress Over
the level surface, no description can paint. Then, to
see them watch their opportunity from the porch, and
cut in where there was a place next the wall ! And
to see one man with an umbrella (brought on purpose,
for it was a fine day) hoisting himself, unlawfully,
from stair to stair And to observe a demure lady
of fifty-five or so, looking back, every now and then,
to assure herself that her legs were properly disposed
There were such odd differences in the speed of dif-
ferent people, too. Some got On, as if they were doing
a match against time ; others stopped to say a prayer
on every step. This man touched every stair with his
forehead, and kissed it ; that man scratched his head
all the way. The boys got on brilliantly, and were up
and down again before the old lady had accomplished
her half dozen stairs. But most of the Penitents came
down, very sprightly and fresh, as having done a real
good substantial deed which it would take a good deal
of sin to counterbalance ; and the old gentleman in the
watch-box was down upon them with his canister while
they were in this humour, I promise you.
As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably
droll enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a
wooden figure on a crucifix, resting on a sort of great
iron saucer: so rickety and unsteady, that whenever an
enthusiastic person kissed the figure, with more than
usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer, with
more than common readiness (for it served in this re-
spect as a second or supplementary canister), it gave a
great leap and rattle, and nearly shook the attendant
lamp out : horribly frightening the people further down,
and throwing the guilty party into unspeakable
embarrassment.
On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thurs-
|BOME. - 15?
day, the Pope bestows his benediction on the people,
from the balcony in front of St. Peter's. This Easter
Sunday was a day so bright and blue : so cloudless,
balmy, wonderfully bright : that all the previous bad
weather vanished from the recollection in a moment.
I had seen the Thursday’s Benediction dropping damply
on some hundreds of umbrellas, but there was not a
sparkle then, in all the hundred fountains of Rome—
such fountains as they are –and on this Sunday morn-
ing, they were running diamonds. The miles of mis-
erable streets through which we drove (compelled to
a certain course by the Pope’s dragoons: the Roman
police on such occasions) were so full of colour, that
nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded aspect.
The common people came Out in their gayest dresses;
the richer people in their Smartest vehicles ; Cardinals
rattled to the church of the Poor Fishermen in their
state carriages; shabby magnificence flaunted its
thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked hats, in the
sun ; and every coach in Rome was put in requisition
for the Great Piazza. Of St. Peter’s.
One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at
least! Yet there was ample room. How many car-
riages were there I don’t know; yet there was room
for them too, and to spare. The great steps of the
church. were densely crowded. There were many of the
Contadimi, from Albano (who delight in red) in that
part of the square, and the mingling of bright colours
in the crowd was beautiful. Below the steps the troops
were ranged. In the magnificent pronortions of the place
they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans, lively
Peasants from the neighbouring country, groups of pil-
grims from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreign-
ers of all nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like
so many insects; and high above them all, plashing and
bubbling, and making rainbow colours in the light,
the two delicious fountains welled and tumbled
bountifully.
A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of
the balcony; and the sides of the great window were
bedecked with crimson drapery. An awning was
stretched, too, over the top, to screen the old man from
the hot rays of the Sun. As noon approached, all eyes
were turned up to this window. In due time the chair
158 PICTURES FROM ITAT, Y.
was seen approaching to the front, with the gigantic
fans of peacock’s feathers close behind. The doll within
it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up and
stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male specta-
tors in the square uncovered, and some, but not by any
means the greater part, kneeled down. The guns upon
the ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed,
next moment, that the benediction was given; drums
beat; trumpets sounded; arms clashed; and the great
mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, and
scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like parti-
coloured sand. -
What a bright noon it was, as we rode away! The
Tiber was no longer yellow, but blue. There was a
blush on the old bridges that made them fresh and hale
again. The Pantheon, with its majestic front, all
seamed and furrowed, like an old face, had summer
light upon its battered walls. Every squalid and deso.
late hut in the Eternal City (bear witness every grim
old palace to the filth and misery of the plebeian neigh-
bour that elbows it, as certain as Time has laid its grip
on its patrician head () was fresh and new with some
ray of the sun. The very prison in the crowded street,
a whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense
of the day, dropping through its chinks and crevices:
and dismal prisoners who could not wind their faces
round the barricading of the blocked-up windows,
stretched out their hands, and clinging to the rusty
bars, turned them towards the overflowing street: as if
it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, that
way. -
But when the night came on, without a cloud to dim
the full moon, what a sight it was to see the great
square full once more, and the whole church, from the
cross to the ground, lighted with innumerable lanterns,
tracing out the architecture, and winking and shining all
round the colonnade of the piazza! And what a sense of
exultation, joy, delight, it was, when the great bell struck
half-past seven—on the instant—to behold one bright
red mass of fire, soar gallantly from the top of the
cupola to the extremest Summit of the cross, and the
moment it leaped into its place, become the signal of a
bursting out of countless lights, as great, and red, and
blazing as itself, from every part of the gigantic church;
ROME. 1.59
so that every cornice, capital, and Smallest ornament of
stone, expressed itself in fire, and the black Solid
groundwork of the enormous dome seemed to grow
transparent as an egg-shell! -
A train of gunpowder, an electric chain—nothing
could be fired more suddenly and swiftly than this
second illumination; and when we had got away; and
gone upon a distant height, and looked towards it two
hours afterwards, there it still stood, Shining and glit-
tering in the calm night like a jewel ! Not a line of its
proportions wanting; not an angle blunted; not an atom
of its radiance lost.
The next night—Easter Monday—there was a great
display of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo.
We hired a room in an opposite house, and made Our
way, to our places, in good time, through a dense mob
of people choking up the square in front, and all the
avenues leading to it ; and so loading the bridge by
which the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to
sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on
this bridge (execrable works) and, among them, great
vessels full of burning tow were placed ; glaring
strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less
strangely on the stone counterfeits above them.
The show began with a tremendous discharge of can-
non ; and then, for twenty minutes, or half an hour,
the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and
labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colour, size, and
speed: while rockets streamed into the sky, not by Ones
or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. The Con-
cluding burst—the Girandola—-was like the blowing up
into the air of the whole massive castle, without Smoke
or dust.
In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse
had dispersed ; the moon was looking calmly down
upon her wrinkled image in the river ; and half a dozen
men and boys, with bits of lighted candle in their
hands: moving here and there, in search of anything
worth having, that might have been dropped in the
press : had the whole scene to themselves.
By way of contrast, we rode out into old ruined
Rome, after all this firing and booming, to take our
leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it by moonlight be-
fore (I never could get through a day without going
I60 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
back to it), but its tremendous solitude that night is
ast all telling. The ghostly pillars in the Forum ; the
Triumphal Arches of Old Emperors ; those enormous
masses of ruin which were once their palaces; the
grass-grown mounds that mark the graves of ruined
temples; the stones of the Via Sacra, smooth with the
tread of feet in ancient Rome ; even these were dimmed,
in their transcendant melancholy, by the dark ghost of
its bloody holidays, erect and grim ; haunting the old
scene; despoiled by pillaging Pópes and fighting Princes,
but not laid; wringing wild hands of weed, and grass,
and bramble; and lamenting to the night in every
gap and broken arch—the shadow of its awful self, im-
movable !
As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next
day, on our way to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we
saw that a little wooden cross had been erected on the
spot where the poor Pilgrim Countess was murdered.
So, we piled some loose stones about it, as the begin-
ning of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we
should ever rest there again, and look back at Rome.
A RAIPID IDIORAM.A.
E are bound for Naples! And we cross the
threshold of the Eternal City at yonder gate, the
Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where the two last ob-
jects that attract the notice of a departing visitor, and
the two first objects that attract the notice of an arriv-
ing one, are a proud church and a decaying ruin—good
emblems of Rome.
Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more
solemn on a bright blue day like this, than beneath a
darker sky; the great extent of ruin being plainer to
the eye; and the Sunshine through the arches of the
broken aqueducts, showing other broken arches shining
through them in the melancholy distange. When we
have traversed it, and look back from Albano, its dark
undulating surface lies below us like a stagnant lake,
or like a broad dull Lethe flowing round the walls of
Rome, and separating it from all the world! How often
have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering
across that purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now !
How often has the train of captives looked, with sink-
ing hearts, upon the distant city, and beheld its popula-
tion pouring out, to hail the return of their conqueror!
What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad in the
vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble!
What glare of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and
wail of pestilence and famine, have come sweeping
Over the wild plain where nothing is now heard but the
wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol unmolested
in the Sun!
The train of wine-carts going into Rome, each driven
by a shaggy Peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-
fashioned canopy of sheepskin, is ended now, and we go
toiling up into a higher country where there are trees,
VOL. I. | 1
I (52 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
The next day brings us on the Pontine Marshes, wearily
flat and lonesome, and overgrown with brushwood, and
swamped with water, but with a fine road made across
them, shaded by a long, long, avenue. Here and there,
we pass a solitary guard-house; here and there a hovel,
deserted, and walled up. Some herdsmen loiter on the
banks of the stream beside the road, and sometimes a
flat-bottomed boat, towed by a man, comes rippling idly
along it. A horseman passes Occasionally, carrying a
long gun cross-wise on the saddle before him, and at-
tended by fierce dogs; but there is nothing else astir
save the wind and the shadows, until we come in sight
of Terracina.
How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the
windows of the inn so famous in robber stories How
picturesque the great crags and points of rock over-
hanging to-morrow’s narrow road, where galley-slaves
are working in the quarries above, and the sentinels
who guard them lounge on the sea-shore All night
there is the murmur of the sea beneath the stars; and
in the morning, just at daybreak, the prospect suddenly
becoming expanded, as if by a miracle, reveals—in the
far distance, across the sea there !—Naples with its
islands, and Vesuvius spouting fire Within a quarter
of an hour, the whole is gone as if it were a vision in
the clouds, and there is nothing but the sea and sky.
The Neapolitan frontier crossed, after two hours'
travelling ; and the hungriest of soldiers and custom-
house officers with difficultv appeased ; we enter by a
gateless portal, into the first Neapolitan town—Fondi.
Take note of Fondi, in the name of all that is wretched
and beggarly. * -
A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down
the centre of the miserable street, fed by obscene rivu-
lets that trickle from the abject houses. There is not a
door, a window, or a shutter; not a roof, a wall, a post,
or a pillar, in all Fondi, but is decayed, and crazy, and
rotting away. The wretched history of the town, with
all its sieges and pillages by Barbarossa and the rest,
might have been acted last year. How the gaunt dogs
that Sneak about the miserable street, come to be alive,
and undevoured by the people, is one of the enigmas of
the world.
A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are All
,”
NAPLES. 163
beggars; but that's nothing. Look at them as they
gather round. Some, are too idolent to come down-
stairs, or are too wisely mistrustful of the stairs, per-
haps, to Venture : so stretch out their lean hands from
upper windows, and howl ; others, come flocking about
us, fighting and jostling one another, and demanding
incessantly, charity for the love of God, charity for the
love of the blessed Virgin, charity for the love of all the
Saints. A group of miserable children, almost naked,
screaming forth the same petition, discover that they
can see themselves reflected in the varnish of the car-
riage, and begin to dance and make grimaces, that they
may have the pleasure of seeing their antics repeated
in this mirror. A Crippled idiot, in the act of striking
one of them who drowns his clamourous demand for
charity, observes his angry counterpart in the panel,
stops short, and thrusting out his tongue, begins to wag
his head and chatter. The shrill cry raised at this,
awakens half a dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowzy
brown cloaks, who are lying on the church-steps with
pots and pans for sale. These, Scrambling up, approach,
and beg defiantly. “I am hungry. Give me something.
Listen to me, Sigmor. I am hungry !” Then, a ghastly
old woman, fearful of being too late, comes hobbling
down the street, stretching out one hand, and scratch-
ing herself all the way with the other, and screaming,
long before she can be heard, “ Charity, charity I’ll
go and pray for you directly, beautiful lady, if you’ll
give me charity ” Lastly, the members of a brother-
hood for burying the dead ; hideously masked, and at-
tired in shabby black robes, white at the skirts, with the
Splashes of many muddy winters: escorted by a dirty
priest, and a congenial cross-bearer : come hurrying
past. Surrounded by this motley concourse, we move
out of Fondi : bad bright eyes glaring at us, out of the
darkness of every crazy tenement, like glistening frag-
ments of its filth and putrefaction.
A noble mountain-pass, with the ruins of a fort on a
strong eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra
Diavolo ; the old town of Itri, like a device in pastry,
built up, almost perpendicularly, on a hill, and ap-
proached by long steep flights of steps ; beautiful Mola
di Gaéta, whose wines, like those of Albano, have de-
generated since the days of Horace, or his taste for
1ö4 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
wine was bad : which is not likely of one who enjoyed
it so much, and extolled it so well ; another night upon
the road at St. Agata ; a rest next day at Capua, which
is picturesque, but hardly so seductive to a traveller
now, as the soldiers of Praetorian Rome were wont to
find the ancient city of that name ; a flat road among
vines festooned and looped from tree to tree; and Mount
Vesuvius close at hand at last !—its cone and Summit.
whitened with snow ; and its smoke hanging over it,
in the heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense cloud.
So we go, rattling down hill, into Naples.
A funeral is coming up the street, towards us. The
body, on an Open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin,
covered with a gay cloth of crimson and gold. The
mourners, in white gowns and masks. If there be death
abroad, life is well represented too, for all Naples.
would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro
in carriages. Some of these, the common Vetturino
vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast, decked
with Smart trappings and great abundance of brazen
ornament, and always going very fast. Not that their
loads are light; for the smallest of them has at least six
people inside, four in front, four or five more hanging
on behind, and two or three more in a net or bag below
the axle-tree, where they lie half-suffocated with mud
and dust. Exhibitors of Punch, buffo singers with
guitars, reciters of poetry, reciters of stories, a row of
cheap exhibitions with clowns and showmen, drums,
and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders
within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist
the whirl and bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in
doorways, archways, and kennels; the gentry, gaily
dressed, are dashing up and down in carriages on the
Chiaja, or walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet
letter-writers, perched behind their little desks and
inkstands, under the Portico of the Great Theatre of
San Carlo, in the public street, are waiting for clients.
Here is a galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter writ-
ten to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man,
sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain.
He has obtained permission of the sentinel who guards
him: who stands near, leaning against the wall and
Cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of
the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he
NAPLES. - - --- 165
can’t read writing, looks intently in his face, to read
there whether he sets down faithfully what he is told.
After a time the galley-slave becomes discursive—in-
coherent. The secretary pauses and rubs his chin.
The galley-slave is voluble and energetic. The secre-
tary, at length, catches the idea, and with the air of a
man who knows how to word it, sets it down; stopping,
now and then, to glance back at his text admiringly.
The galley-slave is silent. The soldier stoically cracks
his nuts. Is there anything more to say? inquires the
letter-writer. No more. Then listen, friend of mine.
. He reads it through. The galley-slave is quite enchanted.
It is folded, and addressed, and given to him, and he
pays the fee. The secretary falls back indolently in his
chair, and takes a book. The galley-slave gathers up
an empty sack. The sentinel throws away a handful
of nut-shells, shoulders his musket, and away they go
together.
hy do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with
their right hands, when you look at them? Everything
is done in pantomime in Naples, and that is the con-
ventional sign for hunger. A man who is quarrelling
with another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand
on the back of his left, and shakes the two thumbs—
expressive of a donkey’s ears—whereat his adversary
is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for
fish, the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket
when he is told the price, and walks away without a
word : having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that
be considers it too dear. Two people in carriages,
meeting, one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holds up
the five fingers of his right hand, and gives a horizon-
tal cut in the air with the palm. The other nods
briskly and goes his way. He has been invited to a
friendly dinner at half-past five o’clock, and will cer-
tainly come.
All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from
the wrist, with the fore-finger stretched out, expresses
a negative—the only negative beggars will ever under-
stand. But, in Naples, those five fingers are a copious
language. - ->
All this, and every other kind of out-door life and
stir, and maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling
all day long, and begging and stealing everywhere
166 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
and at all hours, you see upon the bright sea-shore,
where the waves of the bay sparkle merrily. But, low-
ers and hunters of the picturesque, let us not keep too
studiously out of view the miserable depravity, degra-
dation. and wretchedness, with which this gay Neapoli-
tan life is inseparably associated! It is not well to find
Saint Giles's so repulsive, and the Porta Capuana, so at-
tractive. A pair of naked legs and a ragged red scarf,
do not make all the difference between what is inter-
esting and what is coarse and odious? Painting and
poetising for ever, if you will, the beauties of this
most beautiful and lovely spot of earth, let us, as our
duty, try to associate a new picturesque with some
faint recognition of man’s destiny and capabilities;
more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and snow of the
North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of Naples.
Capri—once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius
—Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of
the Bay, lie in the blue sea. yonder, changing in the
mist and sunshine twenty times a day : now close at
hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country in
the world, is spread about us. Whether we turn to-
wards the Miseno shore of the splendid watery amphi-
theatre, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto
del Cane and away to Baiae : or take the other way, to-
wards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of de-
lights. In the last-named direction, where, over doors
and archways, there are countless little images of San
Gennaro, with his Canute’s hand stretched out, to check
the fury of the Burning Mountain, we are carried
pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea Beach,
past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the ashes
of the former town destroyed by an eruption of Vesu-
vius, within a hundred years; and past the flat-roofed
houses, granaries, and maccaroni manufactories; to
Castel-a-Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by
fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks.
Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may ride
on, by an unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and
beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of
St. Angelo, the highest neighbouring mountain, down
to the water’s edge—among vineyards, olive trees, gar-
dens of Oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks,
green gorges in the hills—and by the bases of snow-
NAPLES. j6%
covered heights, and through small towns with hand-
some, dark-haired women at the doors—and pass de-
licious summer villas—to Sorrento, where the Poet
Tasso drew his inspiration from the beauty surrounding
him. Returning, we may climb the heights above
Castel-a-Mare, and, looking down among the boughs
and leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun ;
and clusters of white houses in distant Naples, dwin-
dling, in the great extent of prospect, down to dice.
The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at
Sunset : with the glowing sea. On one side, and the dark-
ening mountain, with its smoke and flame, upon the
Other : is a Sublime conclusion to the glory of the day.
That church by the Porta Capuana—near the old fisher-
market in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where
the revolt of Massaniello began—is memorable for hav-
ing been the scene of one of his earliest proclamations
to the people, and is particularly remarkable for moth-
ing else, unless it be its waxen and bejewelled Saint in
a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous
number of beggars who are constantly rapping their
chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral
with the beautiful floor, and the columns of African and
Egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple of
Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San Gen-
naro or Januarius : which is preserved in two phials in
a silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies three
times a-year, to the great admiration of the people. At
the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where
the Saint suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. It
is said that the Officiating priests turn faintly red also,
Sometimes, when these miracles occur.
The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance
of these ancient catacombs, and who, in their age
and infirmity, seem waiting here to be buried them-
selves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal
Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals.
Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted
tapers, to show the caverns of death—as unconcerned
as if they were immortal. They were used as burying-
Fº for three hundred years; and in one part is a
arge pit full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad re-
mains of a great mortality occasioned by a plague. In
the rest is nothing but dust, They consist, chiefly, of
168 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
great wide corridors and labyrinths, hewn out of the
rock. At the end of some of these long passages are
unexpected glimpses of the daylight, Shining down
from above. It looks as ghastly and as Strange, among
the torches, and the dust, and the dark vaults, as if it,
too, were dead and buried.
The present burial place lies out yonder, On a hill
between the city and Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo,
with its three hundred and sixty-five pits, is only used
for those who die in hospitals and prisons, and are un-
claimed by their friends. The graceful new cemetery,
at no great distance from it, though yet unfinished, has
already many graves among its shrubs and flowers, and
airy colonnades. It might be reasonably objected else-
where, that some of the tombs are meretricious and
too fanciful; but the general brightness seems to justify
it here; and Mount Vesuvius, separated from them by a
lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the scene.
If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the
Dead, with its dark Smoke hanging in the clear sky,
how much more awful and impressive is it, viewed
from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii!
Stand at the bottom of the great market place of
Pompeii, and look up the silent streets, through the
ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over the broken
houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day,
away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peace.
ful distance; and lose all count of time, and heed of
Other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation
of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making this
quiet picture in the Sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at
every turn, the little familiar tokens of human habita-
tion and every-day pursuits; the chafing of the bucket-
Pope in the stone rim of the exhausted well; the track
of carriage-wheels in the pavement of the street, the
marks of drinking-vessels on the counter of the wine-
shop; the amphorae in private cellars, stored away so
many hundred years ago, and undisturbed to this hour—
all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of
the place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the
volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the earth,
and sunk it in the bottom of the sea. *
After it was shaken by the earthquake which pre-
ceded the eruption, workmen were employed in shaping
POMPEII. 169
Out, in stone, new ornaments for temples and other
buildings that had suffered. Here lies their work, out-
side the city gate, as if they would return to-morrow.
In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skele-
tons were found huddled together, close to the door,
the impression of their bodies on the ashes, hardenied
with the ashes, and became stamped and fixed there,
after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. So, in
the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating
on the stream when it was hot and liquid, stamped its
mimic features in it as it hardened into stone; and now
it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look it turned
upon the audiences in that same theatre two thousand
years ago.
Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets,
and in and out of the houses, and traversing the secret
chambers of the temples of a religion that has vanished
from the earth, and finding so many fresh traces of re-
mote antiquity: as if the course of Time had been stopped
after this desolation, and there had been no mights and
days, months, years, and centuries, sinces nothing is
more impressive and terrible than the many evidences
of the searching mature of the ashes, as bespeaking
their irresistible power, and the impossibility of escap-
ing them. In the wine-cellars, they forced their way
into the earthen vessels: displacing the wine and chok-
ing them, to the brim, with dust. In the tombs, they
forced the ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, and
rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and
eyes, and skulls of all the skeletons, were stuffed with
this terrible hail. In Herculaneum, where the flood
was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled in, like a
Sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at its
height—and that is what is called “ the lava " here.
Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the
brink of which we now stand, looking down, when
they came on some of the stone benches of the theatre
—those steps (for such they seem) at the bottom of the
excavation—and found the buried city of Herculaneum.
Presently going down with lighted torches, we are per-
łº. by great walls of monstrous thickness, rising up
etween the benches, shutting out the stage, obtruding
their shapeless forms in absurd places, confusing the
whole plan, and making it a disordered dream. We
170 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
cannot, at first, believe, or picture to ourselves, that
THIS came rolling in, and drowned the city; and that
all that is not here, has been cut away, by the axe, like
solid stone. But this perceived and understood, the
horror and oppression of its presence are indescribable.
Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless
chambers of both cities, or carefully removed to the
museum at Naples, are as fresh and plain, as if they
had been executed yesterday. Here are subjects of
still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, and
the like ; familiar classical stories, or mythological
fables, always forcibly and plainly told; conceits of
cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working as trades; theat-
rical rehearsals; poets reading their productions to
their friends; inscriptions chalked upon the walls; polit-
ical Squibs, advertisements, rough drawings by School-
boys; everything to people and restore the ancient
cities, in the fancy of their wondering visitor. Furni-
ture, too, you see, of every kind—lamps, tables, couches;
vessels for eating, drinking, and cooking ; workmen’s
tools, surgical instruments, tickets for the theatre,
pieces of money, personal ornaments, bunches of keys
found clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of
guards and warriors; little household bells, yet musi-
cal with their old domestic tones. -
The least among these objects, lends it aid to swell
the interest of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect
fascination. The looking, from either ruined city, into
the neighbouring grounds overgrown with beautiful
vines and luxuriant trees; and remembering that house
upon house, temple on temple, building after building,
and street after street, are still lying underneath the
roots of all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be turned
up to the light of day; is something so wonderful, so
full of mystery, so captivating to the imagination, that
one would think it would be paramount, and yield to
nothing else. To nothing but Vesuvius; but the moun-
tain is the genius of the scene. From every indication
of the ruin it has worked, we look, again, with an ab-
Sorbing interest to where its smoke is rising up into the
sky. It is beyond us, as we tread the ruined streets:
above us, as we stand upon the ruined walls; we follow
it through every vista of broken columns, as we wander
through the empty courtyards of the houses; and
PAESTUM. 171
through the garlandings and interlacings of every
wanton vine. Turning away to Paestum yonder, to
see the awful structures built, the least aged of them,
hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and stand-
ing yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild, mal-
aria-blighted plain—we watch Vesuvius as it disappears
from the prospect, and watch for it again, on our re-
turn, with the same thrill of interest: as the doom and
destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its terri-
rible time. -
It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring-day,
when we return from Paestum, but very cold in the
shade: insomuch, that although we may lunch, pleas-
antly, at noon in the open air, by the gate of Pompeii,
the neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice for our wine.
But, the sun is shining brightly; there is not a cloud or
speck of vapour in the whole blue sky, looking down upon
the bay of Naples; and the moon will be at the full to-
night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon
the summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on foot
all day at Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that
strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in
such an unusual season. Let us take advantage of the
fine weather; make the best of our way to Resina, the
little village at the foot of the mountain; prepare our-
•selves, as well as we can, On so short a notice, at
the guide's house; ascend at once, and have sunset half-
way up, moonlight at the top, and midnight to come
down in
At four o’clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible
uproar in the little stable-yard of Signior Salvatore, the
recognised head-guide, with the gold band round his
cap; and thirty under-guides who are all scuffling and
screaming at Once, are preparing half a dozen saddled
ponies, three litters, and some stout staves, for the
journey. Every one of the thirty, quarrels with the
other twenty-nine, and frightens the six ponies; and as
much of the village as can possibly squeeze itself into
the little stable-yard, participates in the tumult, and
gets trodden on by the cattle.
After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than
would suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession
starts. The head-guide, who is liberally paid for all the
attendants, rides a little in advance of the party; the
172 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
other thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go forward
with the litters that are to be used by-and-by; and the
remaining two-and-twenty beg.
We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad
flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave
these, and the vineyards on either side of them, and
emerge upon a bleak bare region where the lava lies
confusedly, in enormous rusty masses: as if the earth
had been ploughed up by burning thunderbolts. And
now we halt to see the sun set. The change that falls
upon the dreary region, and on the whole mountain, as
its red light fades, and the night comes on—and the un-
utterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around,
who that has witnessed it, can ever forget!
It is dark, when after winding for some time, over the
broken ground, we arrive at the foot of the come: which
is extremely steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendic-
ularly, from the spot where we dismount. The only
light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and white,
with which the cone is covered. It is now intensely
cold, and the air is piercing. The thirty-one have
brought no torches, knowing that the moon will rise
before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted
to the two ladies; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman
from Naples, whose hospitality and good nature have
attached him to the expedition, and determined him to
assist in doing the honours of the mountain. The rather
heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men: each of the
ladies by half a dozen. We who walk, make the best
use of Our staves; and so the whole party begin to
labour upward over the Snow, as if they were toiling
to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.
We are a long time toiling up; and the head-guide
looks Oddly about him when one of the company—not
an Italian, though an habitué of the mountain for
many years: whom we will call, for our present pur-
pose, Mr. Pickle of Portici—suggests that, as it is freez-
ing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered by
the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to descend.
But the sight of the litters above, tilting up and down,
and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers con-
tinually slip and stumble, diverts our attention:
more especially as the whole length of the rather
heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to
VESUVIUS. 173
us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head down-
wards.
The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the
flagging spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other
with their usual watchword, “ Courage, friend It is
to eat maccaroni l’ they press on, gallantly, for the
summit.
From tinting the top of the snow above us, with a
band of light, and pouring it in a stream through the
valley below, while we have been ascending in the
dark, the moon soon lights the whole white mountain
side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in
the distance, and every village in the country round.
The whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come
upon the platform on the mountain-top—the region of
Fire—an exhausted crater formed of great masses of
gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tre-
mendous waterfall, burnt up ; from every chink and
crevice of which, hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out:
while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present
crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end,
great sheets of fire are streaming forth: reddening the
night with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spot-
ting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into
the air like feathers, and fall down like lead. What
words can paint the gloom and grandeur of this scene!
The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffoca-
tion from the sulphur; the fear of falling down through
the crevices in the yawning ground; the stopping,
overy now and then, for somebody who is missing in
the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon);
the intolerable noise of the thirty; and the hoarse roar-
ing of the mountain; make it a scene of such confusion,
at the same time, that we reel again. But, dragging
the ladies through it, and across another exhausted
crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach
close to it. On the windy side, and then sit down among
the hot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence; faintly
estimating the action that is going on within, from its
being full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than
it was six weeks ago. º
There is something in the fire and roar, that generates
an irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot
rest long, without starting off, two of us, on our hands
174 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
and knees, accompanied by the head-guide, to climb to
the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in.
Meanwhile, the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is
a dangerous proceeding, and call to us to come back;
frightening the rest of the party out of their wits.
What with their noise, and what with the trembling
of the thin crust of ground, that seems about to Open
underneath our feet and plunge us in the burning gulf
below (which is the real danger, if there be any); and
what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the
shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the
choking smoke and sulphur; we may well feel giddy
and irrational, like drunken men. But, we contrive to
climb up to the brim and look down, for a moment,
into the Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we all three
come rolling down; blackened, and singed, and Scorched,
and hot, and giddy: and each with his dress alight in
half a dozen places.
You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way
of descending, is, by sliding down the ashes: which,
forming a gradually increasing ledge below the feet,
prevent too rapid a descent. But, when we have
crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back, and
are come to this precipitious place, there is (as Mr.
Pickle has foretold) no vestage of ashes to be seen; the
whole being a smooth sheet of ice. *
In this dilemma ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously
join hands, and make a chain of men; of whom the
foremost beat, as well as they can, a rough track with
their sticks, down which we prepare to follow. The
way being fearfully steep, and none of the party:
even of the thirty: being able to keep their feet for six
paces together, the ladies are taken out of their litters,
and placed, each between two careful persons; while
others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their
falling forward—a necessary precaution, tending to
the immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel.
The rather heavy gentlemen is adjured to leave his
litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; but
he resolves to be brought down as he was brought
up, On the principle that his fifteen bearers are not
likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer so,
than trusting to his own legs.
In this Order, we begin the descent : sometimes on
VESUVIUS. 175
foot sometimes shuffling on the ice : always proceeding
much more quietly and slowly, than on our upward way:
and constantly alarmed by the falling among us of some-
body from behind, who endangers the footing of the
whole party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody’s
ankles. It is impossible for the litter to be in advance,
too, as the track has to be made ; and its appearance
behind us, overhead—with some one or other of the )
bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman
with his legs always in the air—is very threatening and
frightful. We have gone on thus, a very little way,
painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and regard-
ing it as a great success—and have all fallen several
times, and have all been stopped, somehow or other as
we were sliding away—when Mr. Pickle, of Portici, in
the act of remarking on these uncommon circumstances
as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, disen-
gages himself, with quick presence of mind, from those
about him, plunges away head foremost, and rolls, over
and over, down the whole surface of the cone !
Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to
help him, I see him there, in the moonlight—I have had
such a dream often—skimming over the white ice, like
a cannon-ball. Almost at the same moment, there is a
cry from behind ; and a man who has carried a light
basket of spare cloaks on his head, comes rolling past,
at the same frightful speed, closely followed by a boy.
At this climax of the chapter of accidents, the remain-
ing eight-and-twenty vociferate to that degree, that a
pack of Wolves would be music to them
Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is
Pickle of Portici when we reach the place where we
dismounted, and where the horses are waiting ; but,
thank God, sound in limb And never are we likely to
be more glad to see a man alive and on his feet, than to
See him now—making light of it too, though sorely
bruised and in great pain. The boy is brought into the
Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at supper,
with his head tied up ; and the man is heard of, some
hours afterwards. He too is bruised and stunned, but
has broken no bones; the snow having, fortunately,
covered all the larger blocks of rock and stone, and
rendered them harmless.
After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing
176 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
fire, we again take horse, and continue our descent to
Salvatore’s house—very slowly, by reason of Our bruised
friend being hardly able to keep the saddle, or endure
the pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, or
early in the morning, all the people of the village are
waiting about the little stable-yard when we arrive,
and looking up the road by which we are expected.
Our appearance is hailed with a great clamour of
tongues; and a general sensation for which in Our mod:
esty we are somewhat at a loss to account, until, turning
into the yard, we find that one of a party of French
gentlemen who were on the mountain at the same time
is lying on some straw in the stable, with a broken
limb : looking like Death, and suffering great torture ;
and that we were confidently supposed to have encount-
ered some worse accident. s
So “well returned, and Heaven be praised l’’ as the
cheerful Vetturíno, who has borne us company all the
way from Pisa, says, with all his heart And away
with his ready horses, into sleeping Naples
It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo
singers and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness,
dirt, and universal degradation ; airing its Harlequin
Suit in the sunshine, next day and every day ; singing,
starving, dancing; gaming, on the sea-shore; and leav-
ing all labour to the burning mountain, which is ever
at its work.
Our English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the
subject of the national taste, if they could hear an Italian
opera half as badly sung in England as we may hear the
Foscari performed, to-night, in the splendid theatre of
San Carlo. But, for astonishing truth and spirit in Seiz-
ing and embodying the real life about it, the shabby
little San Carlino Theatre—the rickety house one story
high; with a staring picture outside : down among the
drums and trumpets, and the tumblers, and the lady
conjuror—is without a rival anywhere.
There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of
Naples, at which we may take a glance before we go—
the Lotteries.
They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particu-
larly obvious, in their effects and influences, here.
They are drawn every Saturday. They bring an im-
mense revenue to the Government; and diffuse a taste
MAPLES. 17%
tº.
for gambling among the poorest of the poor, which is
very comfortable to the coffers of the state, and very
ruinous to themselves. The lowest stake is one grain;
less than a farthing. One hundred numbers—from One
to a hundred inclusively—are put into a box. Five are
drawn. Those are prizes. I buy three numbers. If
One of them come up, I win a small prize. If two, some
hundreds of times my stake. If three, three thousand
five hundredtimes my stake. I stake (or play as they call
it) what I can upon my numbers, and buy what num-
bers I please. The amount I play, I pay at the lottery
office, where I purchase the ticket; and it is stated on
the ticket itself.
Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Uni-
versal Lottery Diviner, where every possible accident
and circumstance is provided for, and has a number
against it. For instance, let us stake two carlini—about
sevenpence. On our way to the lottery office, we run
against a black man. When we get there, we say
gravely, “The Diviner.” It is handed over the counter,
as a serious matter of business. We look at black
man. Such a number. “Give us that.” We look at
running against a person in the street. “Give us that.”
..We look at the name of the street itself. “Give us
that.” Now, we have our three numbers.
If the roof of the theatre of St. Carlo were to fall in,
so many people would play upon the numbers attached
to such an accident in the Diviner, that the Govern-
ment would soon close those numbers, and decline to
run the risk of losing any more upon them. This often
happens. Not long ago, when there was a fire in the
King’s palace, there was such a desperate run on fire,
and king, and palace, that further stakes on the num-
bers attached to those words in the Golden Book were
forbidden. Every accident or event, is supposed by the
ignorant populace, to be a revelation to the beholder,
Or party concerned, in connection with the lottery.
Certain people who have a talent for dreaming for-
tunately, are much sought after; and there are some
priests who are constantly favoured with visions of the
lucky numbers. - -
I heard of a horse running away with a man, and
dashing. him down, dead, at the corner of a street.
Pursuing the horse with incredible speed, was another
WOL. I. 12
*-*.
Í78 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
man, who ran so fast, that he came up, immediately
after the accident. He threw himself upon his knees
beside the unfortunate rider, and clasped his hand with
an expression of the wildest grief. “If you have life,” he
said, “speak one word to me ! If you have one gasp of
breath left, mention your age for Heaven’s sake, that I
may play that number in the lottery.”
It is four o’clock in the afternoon, and we may go to
see our lottery drawn. The ceremony takes place every
Saturday, in the Tribunale, or Court of Justice—this
singular, earthy-Smelling room, or gallery, as mouldy
as an old cellar, and as damp as a dungeon. At the
upper end is a platform, with a large horse-shoe table
upon it ; and a President and Council sitting round—all
Judges of the Law. The man on the little stool behind
the President, is the Capo Lazzarone, a kind of tribune of
the people, appointed on their behalf to see that all is
fairly conducted : attended by a few personal friends.
A ragged, swarthy fellow he is : with long matted hair
hanging down all over his face : and covered, from
head to foot, with most unquestionably genuine dirt.
All the body of the room is filled with the commonest
of the Neapolitan people : and between them and the
platform, guarding the steps leading to the latter, is a
Small body of soldiers
There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary
number of judges; during which, the box, in which the
numbers are being placed, is a source of the deepest in-
terest. When the box is full, the boy who is to draw
the numbers out of it becomes the prominent feature of
the proceedings. He is already dressed for his part, in
a tight brown Holland coat, with only one (the left)
sleeve to it, which leaves his right arm bared to the
ºlder. ready for plunging down into the mysterious
Chest.
During the hush and whisper that pervade the room,
all eyes are turned on this young minister of fortune.
People begin to inquire his age, with a view to the next
lottery ; and the number of his brothers and sisters;
and the age of his father and mother ; and whether he
has any moles or pimples upon him ; and where, and
how many ; when the arrival of the last judge but one
(a little old man, universally dreaded as possessing
the Evil Eye) makes a slight diversion, and would
NAPLES. 179
occasion a greater one, but that he is immediately de-
posed, as a source of interest, by the officiating priest,
who advances gravely to his place, followed by a very
dirty little boy, carrying his sacred vestments, and a
pot of Holy Water.
Here is the last judge come at last, and now he takes
his place at the horse-shoe table!
There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation. In the
midst of it, the priest puts his head into the sacred vest-
ments, and pulls the same over his shoulders. Then he
says a silent prayer; and dipping a brush into the pot of
Holy Water, sprinkles it over the box and over the boy,
and gives them a double-barrelled blessing, which the
box and the boy are both hoisted on the table to receive.
The boy remaining on the table, the box is now carried
round the front of the platform, by an attendant, who
holds it up and shakes it lustily all the time; seeming to
say, like the conjurer, “There is no deception, ladies and
gentlemen; keep your eyes upon me, if you please!”
At last, the box is set before the boy; and the boy,
first holding up his naked arm and open hand, dives
down into the hole (it is made like a ballot-box) and
ulls out a number, which is rolled up, round something
hard, like a bonbon. This he hands to the judge next
him, who unrolls a little bit, and hands it to the Presi-
dent, next to whom he sits. The President unrolls it,
very slowly. The Capo Lazzarone, leans over his shoul-
der. The President holds it up, unrolled, to the Capo
Lazzarone. The Capo Lazzarone, looking at it eagerly,
cries out, in a shrill voice, “Sessanta-due!” (sixty-two),
expressing the two upon his fingers, as he calls it out.
Alas! the Capo Lazzarone himself has not staked on
sixty-two. His face is very long, and his eyes roll
wildly.
As it happens to be a favourite number, however, it is
pretty well received, which is not always the case.
They are all drawn with the same ceremony, omitting
the blessing. One blessing is enough for the whole
multiplication-table. The only new incident in the pro-
ceedings, is the gradually deepening intensity of the
change in the Capo Lazzarone, who has evidently specu-
lated to the very utmost extent of his means; and who,
when he sees the last number, and finds that it is not
one of his, clasps his hand, and raises his eyes to the
1 SO PICTURES FROM ITALY
ceiling before proclaiming it, as though remonstrating,
in a Secret agony, with his patron saint, for having
Committed so gross a breach of confidence. I hope the
Capo Lazzarone may not desert him for some other
member of the Calendar, but he seems to threaten it.
Where the winners may be, nobody knows. They cer-
tainly are not present; the general disappointment fill-
ing one with pity for the poor people. They look: when
We Stand aside, observing them, in their passage through
the court-yard down below: as miserable as the prison-
ers in the gaol (it forms a part of the building), who are
peeping down upon them, from between their bars; or,
as the fragments of human heads which are still dang-
ling in chains outside, in memory of the good old times,
when their owners were strung up there, for the popular
edification. -
Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the roa
to Capua, and then on a three days’ journey along bye-
roads, that we may see, on the way, the monastery of
Monte Cassino, which is perched on the steep and lofty
hill above the little town of San Germano, and is lost
On a misty morning in the clouds.
So much the better, for the deep sounding of its bell,
which, as we go winding up, on mules, towards the con-
vent, is heard mysteriously in the still air, while nothing
is seen but the grey mist, moving solemnly and slowly,
like a funeral procession. Behold, at length the shadowy
pile of building close before us: its grey walls and tow-
ers dimly seen, though so near and so vast: and the raw
Vapour rolling through its cloisters heavily.
There are two black shadows walking to and fro in
the quadrangle, near the statues of the Patron Saint
and his sister; and hopping on behind them, in and out
Of the old arches, is a raven, croaking in answer to the
bell, and uttering, at intervals, the purest Tuscan. How
like a Jesuit he looks! There never was a sly and
stealthy fellow so at home as is this raven, standing
now at the refectory door, with his head on one side,
and pretending to glance another way, while he is scru-
timizing the visitors keenly, and listening with fixed
attention. What a dull-headed monk the porter becomes
in comparison!
“. He speaks like us!” says the porter: “quite as
plainly.” Quite as plainly, Porter. Nothing could be
MONTE CASSINO. 181
more expressive than his reception of the peasants who
are entering the gate with baskets and burdens. There
is a roll in his eye, and a chuckle in his throat, which
should qualify him to be chosen Superior of an Order of
Ravens. He knows all about it. “It’s all right,” he
says. “We know what we know. Come along, good
people. Glad to see you!” *
How was this extraordinary structure ever built in
such a situation, where the labour of conveying the
stone, and iron, and marble, so great a height must
have been prodigious? “Caw!” says the raven, wel-
coming the Peasants. How, being despoiled by plum-
der, fire and earthquake, has it risen from its ruins, and
been again made what we now see it, with its church
so sumptuous and magnificent? “Caw'” says the
raven, welcoming the Peasants. These people have a
miserable appearance, and (as usual) are densely igno-
rant, and all beg, while the monks are chaunting in the
chapel. “Caw!” says the raven, “ Cuckoo!”
So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eyes at
the convent gate, and wind slowly down again through
the cloud. At last emerging from it, we come in sight
of the village far below, and the flat green country
intersected by rivulets; which is pleasant and fresh to
See after the obscurity and haze of the convent—no dis-
respect to the raven, or the holy friars.
Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the
most shattered and tattered of villages, where there is
not a whole window among all the houses, or a whole
garment among all the peasants, or the least appear-
ance of anything to eat, in any of the wretched hucks-
sters’ shops. The women wear a bright red bodice laced
before and behind, a white skirt, and the Neapolitan
head-dress of square folds of linen, primitively meant
to carry loads on. The men and children wear any-
thing they can get. The soldiers are as dirty and
rapacious as the dogs. The inns are such hobgoblin
places, that they are infinitely more attractive and
amusing than the best hotels in Paris. Here is one near
Valmontone (that is Valmontone, the round, walled
town on the mount Opposite), which is approached by a
quagmire almost knee-deep. There is a wild colonnade
below, and a dark yard full of empty stables and lofts,
and a great long kitchen with a great long bench and a
182 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
great long form, where a party of travellers, with two
priests among them, are crowding round the fire while
their supper is cooking. Above stairs, is a rough brick
gallery to sit in, with very little windows with very
small patches of knotty glass in them, and all the doors
that open from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and
a bare board on tressels for a table, at which thirty
people might dine easily, and a fire-place large enough
in itself for a breakfast parlor, where, as the faggots
blaze and crackle, they illuminate the ugliest and grim-
mest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed
chimney-sides by previous travellers. There is a flar-
ing country lamp on the table; and, hovering about it,
scraching her thick black hair continually, a yellow
dwarf of a woman, who stands on tiptoe to arrange the
hatchet knives, and takes a flying leap to look into the
water-jug. The beds in the adjoining rooms are of the
liveliest kind. There is not a solitary scrap of looking-
glass in the house, and the washing apparatus is iden-
tical with the cooking utensils. But the yellow dwarf
sets on the table a good flask of excellent wine,
holding a quart at least ; and produces, among
half-a-dozen other dishes, two-thirds of a roasted
kid, smoking hot. She is as good-humoured, too, as
dirty, which is saying a great deal. So here's long
life to her, in the flask of wine, and prosperity to the
establishment.
Rome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims
who are now repairing to their own homes again—each
with his scallop shell and staff, and soliciting alms for
the love of God—we come, by a fair country, to the
Falls of Terni, where the whole Velino river dashes,
headlong, from a rocky height, amidst shining spray
and rainbows. Perugia, strongly fortified by art and
nature, on a lofty eminence, rising abruptly from the
plain where purple mountains mingle with the distant
sky, is glowing, On its market day, with radiant colours.
They set off its sombre but rich Gothic buildings ad-
mirably. The pavement of its market-place is strewn
with country goods. All along the steep hill leading
from the town, under the town wall, there is a noisy
fair of calves, lambs, pigs, horses, mules, and Oxen.
Fowls, geese, and turkeys, flutter vigourously among
their very hoofs; and buyers, sellers, and spectators,
FLORENCE, 183
clustering everywhere, block up the road as we come
shouting down upon them.
Suddenly, there is a ringing sound among our horses.
The driver stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and
casting up his eyes to Heaven, he delivers this apos-
trophe, “Oh Jove Omnipotent! here is a horse has lost
his shoe!”
Notwithstanding the tremendous mature of this acci-
dent, and the utterly forlorn look and gesture (impos-
sible in any one but an Italian Vetturino) with which it
is announced, it is not long in being repaired by a mortal
Farrier, by whose assistance we reach Castiglione
the same night, and Arezzo next day. Mass is, of
course, performing in its fine cathedral, where the sun
shines in among the clustered pillars, through rich
stained-glass windows: half revealing, half concealing
the kneeling figures on the pavement, and striking out
paths of j light in the long aisles.
But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when
On a fair clear morning, we look, from the summit of a
hill, on Florence! See where it lies before us in a sun-
lighted valley, bright with the winding Arno, and shut
in by Swelling hills; its domes, and towers, and palaces,
rising from the rich country in a glittering heap, and
shining in the sun like gold! *
Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of
beautiful Florence; and the strong old piles of building
make such heaps of shadow, on the ground and in the
river, that there is another and a different city of rich
forms and fancies, always lying at our feet. Prodigious
palaces, constructed for defence, with small distrustful
windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness
formed of huge masses of rough stone, frown, in their
old sulky state, on every street. In the midst of the
city—in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned with
beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune —rises
the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging bat-
tlements, and the Great Tower that watches over the
whole town. In its court-yard—worthy of the Castle of
Otranto in its ponderous gloom—is a massive staircase
that the heaviest waggon and the stoutest team of horses
might be driven up. Within it, is a Great Saloon,
faded and tarnished in its stately decorations, and
mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in pictures on
184 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of
the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an
adjacent court-yard of the building—a foul and dismal
lace, where some men are shut up close, in Small cells
ike ovems; and where others look through bars and beg;
where some are playing, draughts, and some are talking
to their friends, who smoke, the while, to purify the
air; and some are buying wine and fruit of women-
venders; and all are squalid, dirty, and vile to look at.
“They are merry enough, Signore,” says the Jailer.
“They are all blood-stained here,” he adds, indicating,
with his hand, three-fourths of the whole building.
Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of age,
Quarrelling over a bargain with a young girl of seven-
teen, stabs her dead, in the market-place full of bright
flowers; and is brought in prisoner, to swell the number.
Among the four old bridges that span the river, the
Ponte Vecchio—that bridge which is covered with the
shops. of Jewellers and Goldsmiths—is a most enchant-
ing feature in the scene. The space of one house, in
the centre, being left open, the view beyond, is shown
as in a frame; and that precious glimpse of sky, and
water, and rich buildings, shining so quietly among the
, huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, is exquisite.
Above it, the Gallery of the Grand Duke crosses the
river. It was built to connect the two Great Palaces
by a secret passage; and it takes its jealous course
among the streets and houses, with true despotism:
going where it lists, and spurning every obstacle away,
before it. g e
The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through
the streets, in his black robe and hood, as a member of
the Compagnia della Misericordia, which brotherhood
includes all ranks of men. If an accident take place,
their office is to raise the sufferer, and bear him tenderly
to the Hospital. If a fire break out, it is one of their
functions to repair to the spot, and render their assist-
ance and protection. It is, also, among their common-
est offices, to attend and console the sick; and they
neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, in any house
they visit for this purpose. Those who are on duty for
the time, are called together, on a moment's notice, by
the tolling of the great bell of the Tower; and it is said
that the Grand Duke has been seen, at this sound,
FLORENCE. 185
to rise from his seat at table, and quietly withdraw to
attend the summons. te
In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of
market is held, and stores of old iron and other small
merchandise are set out on stalls, or scattered on the
pavement, are grouped together, the Cathedral with its
great Dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic Tower, the
Campanile, and the Bapistry with its wrought bronze
doors. And here, a small untrodden Square in the pave-
ment, is “the Stone of DANTE,” where (so runs the story)
he was used to bring his stool, and sit in contemplation.
I wonder was he ever, in his bitter exile, withheld from
cursing the very stones in the streets of Florence the
ungrateful, by any kind remembrance of this old musing-
place, and its association with gentle thoughts of little
Beatrice!
The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels,
of Florence ; the church of Santa Croce where Michael
Angelo lies buried, and where every stone in the
cloisters is eloquent on great . Inen’s deaths; innumer-
able churches, often masses of unfinished heavy brick-
work externally, but solemn and serene within; arrest
our lingering steps, in strolling through the city.
In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the
Museum of Natural History, famous through the world
for its preparations in wax; beginning with models
of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior animals; and gradually
ascending, through separate Organs of the human
frame, up to the whole structure of that wonderful
creation, exquisitely presented as in recent death.
Few admonitions of our frail mortality can be more
Solemn and more sad, or strike so home upon the heart,
as the counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are lying
there, upon their beds, in their last sleep.
Beyond the walls, the whole sweet valley of the Arno,
the convent at Fiesole, the tower of Galileo, BOCCACCIO's
house, old villas and retreats, innumerable spots of
interest, all glowing in a landscape of Surpassing
beauty steeped in the richest light; are spread before
us. Returning from so much brightness, how solemn
and how grand the Streets again, with their great,
dark, mournful palaces, and many legends: not of
siege, and war, and might, and Iron Hand alone, but of
the triumphant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences.
186 PICTURES FROM ITALY.
What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from
amidst these rugged Palaces of Florence Here, open
to all comers, in their beautiful and calm retreats,
the ancient Sculptors are immortal, side by side with
Michael Angelo, 8. Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael,
Poets, Historians, Philosophers—those illustrious men
of history, beside whom its crowned heads and har-
nessed warriors show so poor and small, and are so
soon forgotten. Here the imperishable part of noble
minds survives, placid and equal, when strongholds of
assault and defence are overthrown; when the tyranny
of the many, or the few, or both, is but a tale; when
Pride and Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire
within the stern streets, and among the massive Palaces
and Towers, kindled by rays from Heaven, is still
burning brightly, when the flickering of war is extin-
guished and the household fires of generations have
decayed; as thousands upon thousands of faces
rigid with the strife and passion of the hour, have
faded out of the old Squares and public haunts, while
the nameless Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion
by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in enduring grace
and youth. *
Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when
its shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling through
cheerful Tuscany, with a bright remembrance of it; for
Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. The summer
time being come: and Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake
of Como lying far behind us: and we resting at Faido, a
Swiss village, near the awful rocks and mountains, the
everlasting snows and roaring cataracts of the Great
Saint Gothard: hearing the Italian tongue for the last
time on this journey: let us part from Italy, with all its
miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration of
the beauties, natural and artificial, of which it is full to
overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a people,
naturally well disposed, and patient, and Sweet-tem-
pered. Years of neglect, oppression, and misrule, have
i. at work, to change their nature and reduce their
spirit; miserable jealousies, fomented by petty Princes
to whom union was destruction, and division strength,
have been a canker at the root of their nationality, and
have barbarized their language; but the good that was
in them ever, is in them yet, and a noble people may
FLORENCE. 18?
be, one day, raised up from these ashes. Let us enter-
tain that hope! And let us not remember Italy the less
regardfully, because, in every fragment of her fallen
Temples, and every stone of her deserted palaces and
prisons, she helps to inculcate the lesson that the wheel
of Time is rolling for an end, and that the world is, in
all great essentials, better, gentler, more forbearing,
and more hopeful, as it rolls!
A MEETCAN NOTES.
PREFA CE.
MY readers have opportunities of judging for them-
selves whether the influences and tendencies which I
distrusted in America, had any existence but in my
imagination. They can examine for themselves whether
there has been anything in the public career of that
country since, at home or abroad, which suggests that
those influences and tendencies really did exist. As
they find the fact, they will judge me. If they discern
any evidence of wrong-doing, in any direction that I
have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason
in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing, they
will consider me altogether mistaken—but not wilfully.
Prejudiced, I am not, and never have been, otherwise
than in favour of the United States. I have many
friends in America; I feel a grateful interest in the
country; I hope and believe it will successfully work
out a problem of the highest importance to the whole
human race. To represent me as viewing AMERICA with
ill-nature, coldness, or animosity, is merely to do a very
foolish thing, which is always a very easy one.
A MERICAN NOTES.
CHAPTER I.
GOING AWAY.
SHALL never forget the one-fourth serious and
three-fourths comical astonishment with which, ºn
the morning of the third of January, eighteen hundréd
and forty-two, I opened the door of, and put my head
into, a “state-room * on board the Brittania steam-
acket, twelve hundred tons burthen per register,
j for Halifax and Boston, and carrying Her Ma-
jesty’s mails.
That this state-room had been specially engaged for
“Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady,” was rendered
sufficiently clear even to my scared intellect by a very
small manuscript announcing the fact, which was pin-
ned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress,
spread like a surgical plaster, on a most inaccessible
º But this was the state-room concerning which
Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held daily and
nightly conferences for at least four months preceding;
that this could by any possibility be that small snug
chamber of the imagination which Charles Dickens,
Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy strong upon him,
j always foretold would contain at least one little sofa,
and which his lady, with a modest yet most magnificent
sense of its limited dimensions, had from the first
opined would not hold more than two enormous port-
manteaus in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus
which could now no more be got in at the door, not to
say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or
forced into a flower-pot): that this utterly impracticable,
thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box,
VOL. I. 13
194 AMERICAN NOTES
had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those
chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers,
sketched by a masterly hand in the highly-varnished
lithographic plan hanging up in the agent's counting-
house in the city of London: that this room of State, in
short, could be anything but a pleasant fiction and
cheerful jest of the captain’s, invented and put in prac-
tice for the better relish and enjoyment of the real
state-room presently to be disclosed:—these were truths
which I really could not, for the moment, bring my
mind at all to bear upon or comprehend. And I sat
down upon a kind of horse-hair slab, or perch, of which
there were two within; and looked, without any expres-
Sion of countenance whatever, at Some friends who had
come on board with us, and who were crushing their
faces into all manner of shapes by endeavouring to
º them through the Small doorway.
We had experienced a pretty Smart shock before
coming below, which, but that we were the most San-
guine people living, might have prepared us for the
worst. The imaginative artist to whom I have already
made allusion, has depicted in the same great work, a
chamber of almost interminable perspective, furnished,
as Mr. Robins would say, in a style of more than
Eastern splendour, and filled (but not inconveniently
so) with groups of ladies and º in the very
highest state of enjoyment and vivacity. Before de-
scending into the bowels of the ship, we had passed
from the deck into a long narrow apartment, not unlike
a gigantic hearse with windows in the sides; having
at the upper end a melancholy Stove, at which three or
four chilly stewards were warming their hands; while
on either side, extending down its whole dreary length,
was a long, long, table, Over each of which a rack, fixed
to the low roof, and stuck full of drinking-glasses and
cruet-stands, hinted dismally at rolling seas, and heavy
weather. I had not at that time seen the ideal present-
ment of this chamber which has since gratified me so
much, but I observed that one of our friends who had
made the arrangements for our voyage, turned pale on
entering, retreated on the friend behind him, smote his
forehead involuntarily, and said below his breath,
“Impossible! it cannot be!” or words to that effect.
He recovered himself, however, by a great effort, and
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 195
after a preparatory cough or two, cried, with a ghastly
smile which is still before me, looking at the same time
round the walls, “Ha! the breakfast-room, steward—
eh?” We all foresaw what the answer must be: we
knew the agony he suffered. He had often spoken of
the saloom; had taken in and lived upon the pictorial
idea; had usually given us to understand, at home, that
to form a just conception of it, it would be necessary to
multiply the size and furniture of an ordinary drawing-
room by seven, and then fall short of the reality. When
the man in reply avowed the truth; the blunt, remorse-
less, naked truth; “This is the saloon, sir”—he actually
reeled beneath the blow.
In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose be-
teen their else daily communication the formidable bar-
rier of many thousand miles of stormy space, and who
were for that reason anxious to cast no other cloud, not
even the passing shadow of a moment’s disappointment
or discomfiture, upon the short interval of happy com-
panionship that yet remained to them—in persons so
situated, the natural transition from these first surprises
was obviously into peals of hearty laughter ; and I can
report that I, for one, being still seated upon the slab or
perch before-mentioned, roared outright until the vessel
rang again. Thus, in less than two minutes after coming
upon it for the first time, we all by common consent
agreed that this state-room was the pleasantest and
most facetious and capital contrivance possible ; and
that to have had it one inch larger, would have been quite
a disagreeable and deplorable state of things. And with
this ; and with showing how, by very nearly closing
the door, and twining in and out like serpents, and by
counting the little washing slab as standing-room, we
could manage to insinuate four people into it, all at One
time ; and entreating each other to observe how very
airy it was (in dock), and how there was a beautiful
port-hole which could be kept open all day (weather per-
mitting), and how there was quite a large bull’s eye just
over the looking-glass which would render shaving a
perfectly easy and delightful process (when the ship
didn’t roll too much); we arrived, at last, at the unani-
mous conclusion that it was rather spacious than other-
wise : though I do verily believe that, deducting the two
berths, one above the other, than which nothing smaller
196 AMERICAN NOTES
for sleeping in was ever made except coffins, it was no
bigger than one of those hackney cabriolets which have
the door behind, and shoot their fares out, like sacks of
coals upon the pavement.
Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of
all parties, concerned and unconcerned, we sat down
round the fire in the ladies’ cabin—just to try the effect.
It was rather dark, certainly ; but somebody said, ‘‘ of
course it would be light at sea,” a proposition to which
we all assented ; echoing “ of course, of course ;” though
it would be exceedingly difficult to say why we thought
so. I remember, too, when we had discovered and ex-
hausted another topic of consolation in the circumstance
of this ladies' cabin adjoining our state-room, and the
consequently immense feasibility of sitting there at all
times and seasons, and had fallen into a momentary
silence, leaning our faces on Our hands and looking at
the fire, one of our party said, with the solemn air of a
man who had made a discovery, “What a relish mulled
claret will have down here !” which appeared to strike
us all most forcibly ; as though there were something
spicy and high-flavoured in cabins, which essentially im-
proved that composition, and rendered it quite incapable
of perfection anywhere else.
There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in pro-
ducing clean sheets and tablecloths from the very en-
trails of the sofas, and from unexpected lockers, of such
artful mechanism that it made one’s head ache to see
them opened one after another, and rendered it quite a
distracting circumstance to follow her proceedings,
and to find that every nook and corner and individual
piece of furniture was something else besides what it
pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and
place of secret stowage, whose ostensible purpose was
its least useful one.
God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent
account of January voyages! God bless her for her
clear recollection of the companion passage of last year,
when nobody was ill, and everybody danced from morn-
ing to night, and it was “a run * of twelve days, and
a piece of the purest frolic, and delight, and jollity! All
happiness be with her for her bright face and her pleas-
ant Scotch tongue, which had sounds of old Home in
it for my fellow traveller; and for her predictions of
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 10%
fair winds and fine weather (all wrong, or I shouldn’t
be half so fond of her); and for the ten thousand small
fragments of genuine womanly tact, by which, without
piecing them elaborately together, and patching them
up into shape and form, and care and pointed applica-
tion, she nevertheless did plainly show that all young
mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and close
at hand to their little children left upon the other; and
that what seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey,
was to those who were in the secret, a mere frolic to be
sung about and whistled at Light be her heart, and
gay be her merry eyes, for years!
The state-room had grown pretty fast ; but by this
time it had expanded into something quite bulky, and
almost boasted a bay-window to view the sea from. So
we went upon deck again in high spirits; and there,
everything was in such a state of bustle and active
preparation, that the blood quickened its pace, and
whirled through one's veins on that clear frosty morning
with involuntary mirthfulness. For every gallant ship
was riding slowly up and down, and every little boat
was plashing noisily in the water; and knots of people
stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind of “dread
delight ° on the far-famed fast American steamer; and
one party of men were “taking in the milk,” or, in other
words, getting the cow on board; and another were
filling the icehouses to the very throat with fresh pro-
visions; with butchers'-meat and garden-stuff, pale
Sucking-pigs, calves’ heads in Scores, beef, veal, and
pork, and poultry out of all proportion; and others were
coiling ropes, and busy with oakum yarns; and others
were lowering heavy packages into the hold; and the
purser's head was barely visible as it loomed in a state
of exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of
passengers' luggage; and there seemed to be nothing
going on anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of any-
body, but preparations for this mighty voyage. This,
with the bright cold sun, the bracing air, the crisply-
curling water, the thin white crust of morning ice upon
the decks which crackled with a sharp and cheerful
Sound beneath the lightest tread, was irresistible. And
when, again upon the shore, we turned and saw from
the vessel’s mast her name signalled in flags of joyous
colours, and fluttering by their side the beautiful
º
198 AMERICAN NOTES
American banner with its stars and stripes, the long
three thousand miles and more, and, longer still, the six
whole months of absence, so dwindled and faded, that
the ship had gone out and come home again, and it was
broad spring already in the Coburg Dock at Liverpool.
I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance,
whether Turtle, and cold Punch, with Hock, Cham-
pagne, and Claret, and all the slight et cetera usually
included in an unlimited Order for a good dinner—es-
pecially when it is left to the liberal construction of my
faultless friend, Mr. Radley of the Adelphi Hotel—are
peculiarly calculated to suffer a sea-change; or whether
a plain mutton-chop, and a glass or two of Sherry,
would be less likely of conversion into foreign and dis-
concerting material. My own opinion is, that whether
one is discreet or indiscreet in these particulars, on the
eve of a sea-voyage, is a matter of little consequence;
and that, to use a common phrase, “it comes to very
much the same thing in the end.” Be this as it may, I
know that the dinner of that day was undermiably per-
fect; that it comprehended all these items, and a great
many more; and that we all did ample justiče to it.
And I know, too, that, bating a certain tacit avoidance
of any allusion to to-morrow; Such as may be supposed
to prevail between delicate-minded turnkeys, and a
sensitive prisoner who is to be hanged next morning;
we got on very well, and, all things considered, were
merry enough.
When the morning—the morning—came, and we met
at breakfast, it was curious to see how eager we all
were to prevent a moment’s pause in the conversation
and how astoundingly gay everybody was ; the forced
spirits of each member of the little party having as
much likeness to his natural mirth, as hot-house peas
at five guineas the quart, resemble in flavour the
growth of the dews, and air, and rain of Heaven. But
as one o’clock, the hour for going abroad, drew near,
this volubility dwindled away by little and little, des-
pite the most perserving efforts to the contrary, until
at last, the matter being now quite desperate, we threw
off all disguise ; openly speculated upon where we
should be this time to-morrow, this time next day, and
so forth ; and entrusted a vast number of messages to
those who intended returning to town that night
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 199
which were to be delivered at home and elsewhere
without fail, within the very shortest possible space of
time after the arrival of the railway train at Euston
Square. And commissions and remembrances do so
crowd upon one at such a time, that we were still
busied with this employment when we found ourselves
fused, as it were, into a dense conglomeration of pas-
sengers and passengers' friends and passengers' lug-
gage, all jumbled together on the deck of a small
steamboat, and panting and Snorting off to the packet,
which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon and
was now lying at her moorings in the river! -
And there she is all eyes are turned to where she
lies, dimly discernible through the gathering fog of the
early winter afternoon ; every finger is pointed in the
same direction : and murmurs of interest and admira-
tion—as ‘‘How beautiful she looks l’’ ‘‘How trim she
is l’—are heard on every side. Even the lazy gentle-
man with his hat on one side and his hands in his pock-
ets, who has dispensed so much consolation by inquir-
ing with a yawn of another gentleman whether he is
‘‘going across *—as if it were a ferry—even he con-
descends to look that way, and nod his head, as who
should say, “No mistake about that : ” and not even the
sage Lord Burleigh in his nod, included half so much
as this lazy gentleman of might who has made the pas-
sage (as everybody on board had found out already ; its
impossible to say how) thirteen times without a single
accident There is another passenger very much
wrapped-up, who has been frowned down by the rest,
and morally trampled upon and crushed, for presuming
to inquire with a timid interest how long it is since the
poor President went down. He is standing close to the
lazy gentleman, and says with a faint smile that he be-
lieves She is a very strong Ship ; to which the lazy
gentleman looking first in his questioner’s eye and then
very hard in the wind's, answers unexpectedly and
Ominously, that She need be. Upon this the lazy gentle-
man instantly falls very low in the popular estimation,
and the passengers, with looks of defiance, whisper to
each other that he is an ass, and an impostor, and
clearly don’t know anything at all about it.
But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose
huge red funnel is Smoking bravely, giving rich pro-
200 * AMERICAN NOTES
mise of serious intentions. Packing-cases, portman-
teaus, carpet-bags, and boxes, are already passed from
hand to hand, and hauled on board with breathless ra-
pidity. The officers, Smartly dressed, are at the gang-
way handing the passengers up the side, and hurrying
the men. In five minutes’ time, the little steamer is
utterly deserted, and the packet is beset and over-run
by its late freight, who instantly pervade the whole ship,
and are to be met with by the dozen in every nook and
corner: swarming down below with their own baggage,
and stumbling over other people's; disposing themselves
comfortably in wrong cabins, and creating a most
horrible confusion by having to turn out again ; madly
bent upon Opening locked doors, and on forcing a pas-
sage into all kinds of out-of-the-way places where there
is no thoroughfare ; sending wild stewards, with elfin
hair, to and fro upon the breezy decks on unintel-
ligible errands, impossible of execution : and in short,
creating the most extraordinary and bewildering
tumult. In the midst of all this, the lazy gentleman, who
seems to have no luggage of any kind—not so much as
a friend, even—lounges up and down the hurricane-
deck, coolly puffing a cigar ; and, as this unconcerned
demeanour again exalts him in the opinion of those who
have leisure to observe his proceedings, every time he
looks up at the masts, or down at the decks, or over the
side, they look there too, as wondering whether he sees
anything wrong anywhere, and hoping that, in case he
should, he will have the goodness to mention it.
What have we here P , The captain’s boat and yon-
der the captain himself. Now, by all our hopes and
wishes, the very man he ought to be A well-made,
tight-built, dapper little fellow ; with a ruddy face,
which is a letter of invitation to shake him by both
hands at Once ; and with a clear, blue honest eye,
that it does One good to see One's Sparkling image
in. “Ring the bell !” “Ding, ding, ding !” the very
bell is in a hurry. “Now for the shore—who's for the
shore ?”—“These gentlemen, I am sorry to say.” They
are away, and never said, Good bye. Ah now they
wave it from the little boat. “Good b'ye | Good
b'ye l’’ Three cheers from them ; three more from us ;
three more from them ; and they are gone.
To and fro, to and fro, to and fro again a hun-
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 20 [.
dred times | This waiting for the latest mail-bags is
worse than all. If we could have gone off in the
midst of that last burst, we should have started tri-
umphantly : but to lie here, two hours and more, in the
damp fog, neither staying at home nor going abroad, is
letting one gradually down into the very depths of dul-
ness and low spirits. A speck in the mist at last ! That’s
something. It is the boat we wait for ' That's more to
the purpose. The captain appears on the paddle-box
with his speaking trumpet ; the officers take their sta-
tions; all hands are on the alert ; the flagging hopes of
the passengers revive ; the cooks pause in their savoury
work, and look out with faces full of interest. The
boat comes alongside ; the bags are dragged in anyhow,
and flung down for the moment anywhere. Three
cheers more : and as the first one rings upon our ears,
the vessel throbs like a strong giant that has just re-
ceived the breath of life ; the two great wheels turn
fiercely round for the first time ; and the noble ship,
with wind and tide astern, breaks proudly through the
lashed and foaming water. -
202 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER II.
THE PASSAGE OUT.
WE all dined together that day ; and a rather form-
idable party we were ; no fewer than eighty-six
strong. The vessel being pretty deep in the water, with
all her coals on board and so many passengers, and the
weather being calm and quiet, there was but little
Imotion; so that before the dinner was half over, even
those passengers who were most distrustful of themselves
plucked up amazingly ; and those who in the morning
had returned to the universal question, “Are you a
good sailor ** a very decided negative, now either par-
ried the inquiry with the evasive reply, “Oh! I suppose
I’m no worse than anybody else ; ” or, reckless of all
moral obligations, answered boldly “Yes : ” and with
some irritation too, as though they would add, “I
should like to know what you see in me, sir, particu-
larly, to justify suspicion!”
Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and con-
fidence, I could not but observe that very few remained
long over their wine ; and that everybody had an un-
usual love of the open air ; and that the favourite and
most coveted seats were invariably those nearest to the
door. The tea-table, too, was by no means as well at-
tended as the dinner-table ; and there was less whist-
playing than might have been expected. Still, with the
exception of one lady, who had retired with some precip-
itation at dinner-time, immediately after being assisted
to the finest cut of a very yellow boiled leg of mutton
with very green capers, there were no invalids as yet ;
and walking, and smoking, and drinking of brandy-and-
water, (but always in the open air), went on with un-
abated spirit, until eleven o'clock or thereabouts, when
“turning in ’—no sailor of seven hours' experience talks
of going to bed—became the order of the night. The
**
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 203
perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the decks gave place
to a heavy silence, and the whole human freight was
stowed away below, excepting a very few stragglers,
like myself, who were probably, like me, afraid to go
there.
To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is a very
striking time on shipboard. Afterwards, and when its
novelty had long worn off, it never ceased to have a
peculiar interest and charm for me. The gloom through
which the great black mass holds its direct and certain
course ; the rushing water, plainly heard, but dimly
seen ; the broad, white, glistening track, that follows
in the vessel’s wake ; the men on the look-out forward,
who would be scarcely visible against the dark sky, but
for their blotting out some score of glistening stars;
the helmsman at the wheel, with the illuminated card
before him, shining, a speck of light amidst the dark-
ness, like something sentient and of Divine intelligence ;
the melancholy sighing of the wind through block, and
rope, and chain ; the gleaming forth of light from every
crevice, nook, and tiny piece of glass about the decks,
as though the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready
to burst through any outlet, wild with its resistless
power of death and ruin. At first, too, and even when
the hour, and all the objects it exalts, have come to be
familiar, it is difficult, alone and thoughtful, to hold
them to their proper shapes and forms. They change
with the wandering fancy ; assume the semblance of
things left far away; put on the well-remembered as-
pect of favourite places dearly loved ; and even people
them with shadows. Streets, houses, rooms ; figures so
like their usual occupants, that they have startled me
by their reality, which far exceeded, as it seemed to
me, all power of mine to conjure up the absent ; have,
many and many a time, at such an hour, grown Sud-
denly out of objects with whose real look, and use, and
purpose, I was as well acquainted as with my own two
hands.
My own two hands, and feet likewise, being very cold,
however, on this particular occasion, I crept below at
midnight. It was not exactly comfortable below. It
was decidedly close ; and it was impossible to be uncon-
scious of the presence of that extraordinary compound
of strange Smells, which is to be found nowhere but on
204 AMERICAN NOTES
board ship, and which is such a subtle perfume that it
seems to enter at every pore of the skin, and whisper of
the hold. Two passengers' wives (one of them my own)
lay already in silent agonies on the sofa ; and one
lady’s maid (my lady’s) was a mere bundle on the floor,
execrating her destiny, and pounding her curl-papers
among the stray boxes. Everything sloped the wrong
way : which in itsekf was an aggravation scarcely to be
borne. I had left the door open, a moment before, in
the bosom of a gentle declivity, and, when I turned to
shut it, it was on the summit of a lofty eminence. Now
every plank and timber creaked, as if the ship were
made of wicker-work ; and now crackled, like an enor-
mous fire of the driest possible twigs. There was noth-
ing for it but bed; so I went to bed.
It was pretty much the same for the next two days,
with a tolerably fair wind and dry weather. I read in
bed (but to this hour I don’t know what) a good deal;
and reeled on deck a little ; drank cold brandy-and-
water with an unspeakable disgust, and ate hard bis-
cuit perseveringly: not ill but going to be.
It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my
sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife, who demands
to know whether there’s any danger. I rouse myself,
and look out of bed. The water-jug is plunging and
leaping like a lively dolphin; all the Smaller articles
are afloat, except my shoes, which are stranded on a
Carpet-bag, j. and dry, like a couple of coal-barges.
Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and behold the
looking-glass, which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast
upon the ceiling. At the same time the door entirely
disappears, and a new one is opened in the floor. Then
I begin to comprehend that the state-room is standing
On its head.
Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all
compatible with this novel state of things, the ship
rights. Before one can say, “Thank Heaven l’ she
wrongs again. Before one can cry she is wrong, she
seems to have started forward, and to be a Creature
actively running of its own accord, with broken knees
and failing legs, through every variety of hole and pit-
fall, and stumbling constantly. Before one can so
much as wonder, she takes a high leap into the air.
Before she has well done that, she takes a deep dive
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FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 205
into the water. Before she has gained the surface she
throws a summerset. The instant she is on her legs
she rushes backward! And so she goes on staggering,
heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, pitching,
throbbing, rolling, and rocking: and going through all
these movements, sometimes by turns, and sometimes
all together: until one feels disposed to roar for
mercy.
A steward passes. “Steward l’’ “Sir P” “What is
the matter P What do you call this P” “Rather a heavy
Sea. On, sir, and a head-wind.”
A head-wind! Imagine a human face upon the ves-
sel's prow, with fifteen thousand Samsons in one bent
upon driving her back, and hitting her exactly between
the eyes whenever she attempts to advance an inch.
Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and artery
of her huge body swollen and bursting under this mal-
treatment, sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind
howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating: all in furi-
Ous array against her. Picture the sky both dark and
wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy with the
waves, making another ocean in the air. Add to all
this, the clattering on deck and down below: the tread
of hurried feet; the loud hoarse shouts of seaman; the
gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers; with,
every now and then, the striking of a heavy sea upon
the planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound of
thunder heard within a vault;--and there is the head-
Wind of that January morning.
I say nothing of what may be called the domestic
noises of the ship: such as the breaking of glass and
crockery, the tumbling down of stewards, the gambols,
overhead, of loose casks and truant dozens of bottled
porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarat-
ing sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the
seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to break-
fast. I say nothing of them: for although I lay listen-
ing to this concert for three or four days, I don’t think
I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the
expiration of which term, Ilay down again, excessively
sea-sick.
Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the Ordinary accep-
tation of the term: I wish I had been: but in a form
which I have never seen or heard described, though I
206 AMERICAN NOTES
have no doubt it is very common. I lay there, all the
day long, quite coolly and contentedly; with no sense
of weariness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or
take the air; with no curiosity, or care, or regret of
any sort or degree, saving that I think I can remember,
in this universal indifference, having a kind of lazy
joy—of fiendish delight, if anything so legarthic can
be dignified with the title—in the fact of my wife being
to O º to talk to me. If I may be allowed to illustrate
my state of mind by such an example, I should say
that I was exactly in the condition of the elder Mr.
Willet, after the incursion of the rioters into his bar at
Chigwell. Nothing would have surprised me. If, in
the momentary illumination of any ray of intelligence
that may have come upon me in the way of thoughts
of Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and bell,
had come into that little kennel before me, broad awake
in broad day, and apologising for being damp through
walking in the sea, had handed me a letter, directed to
myself, in familiar characters, I am certain I should
not have felt one atom of astonishment: I should have
been ſº satisfied. If Neptune himself had
walked in, with a toasted shark on his trident, I should
have looked upon the event as one of the very com-
monest everyday occurrences.
Once—once—I found myself on deck. I don’t know
how I got there, or what possessed me to go there, but
there I was; and completely dressed too, with a huge
pea-coat on, and a pair of boots such as no weak man
in his senses could ever have got into. I found myself
standing, when a gleam of consciousness came upon
me, holding on to something. I don’t know what. I
think it was the boatswain: or it may have been the
F.P. or possibly the cow. I can’t say how long I had
een there; whether a day or a minute. I recollect try-
ing to think about something (about anything in
the whole wide world, I was not particular) without the
Smallest effect. I could not even make out which was
the Sea, and which the sky; for the horizon seemed
drunk, and was flying wildly about in all directions.
Even in that incapable state, however, I recognised the
lazy, gentleman standing before me: nautically clad in
a suit of shaggy blue, with an oilskin hat. But I was
too imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to separate
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 207
him from his dress; and tried to call him, I remember,
Pilot. After another interval of total unconsciousness
I found he had gone, and recognised another figure in
its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate before me
as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-
glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the
cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile; yes,
even then I tried to smile. I saw by his gestures that
he addressed me; but it was a long time before I could
make out that he remonstrated against my standing up
to my knees in water—as I was; of course I don’t know
why. I tried to thank him, but couldn’t. I could only
pºin to my boots—or wherever I supposed my boots to
e—and say in a plaintive voice, “Cork soles:” at the same
time endeavouring, I am told, to sit down in the pool.
Finding that I was quite insensible, and for the time a
maniac, he humanely conducted me below.
There I remained until I got better: suffering, when-
ever I was recommended to eat anything, an amount of
anguish only second to that which is said to be endured
by the apparently drowned, in the process of restora-
tion to life. One gentleman on board had a letter of
introduction to me from a mutual friend in London.
He sent it below with his card, on the morning of the
head-wind; and I was long troubled with the idea that
he might be up, and well, and a hundred times a-day
expecting me to call upon him in the saloon. I imag-
ined him one of those cast-iron images—I will not call
them men—who ask, with red faces and lusty voices,
what sea-sickness means, and whether it really is as
bad as it is represented to be. This was very torturing
indeed; and I don’t think I ever felt such perfect grati-
fication and gratitude of heart, as I did when I heard
from the ship's doctor that he had been obliged to put a
large mustard poultice on this very gentleman’s
stomach. I date my recovery from the receipt of that
intelligence.
It was materially assisted though, I have no doubt,
by a heavy gale of wind, which came slowly up at Sun-
set, when we were about ten days out, and raged with
gradually increasing fury until morning, saving that it
lulled for an hour a little before midnight. There was
something in the unnatural repose of that hour, and in
the after gathering of the storm, so inconceivably awful
208 AMERICAN NOTES
and tremendous, that its bursting into full violence was
almost a relief.
The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this
night I shall never forget. “Will it ever be worse than
this?” was a question I had often heard asked, when
everything was sliding and bumping about, and when
it certainly did seem difficult to comprehend the possi-
bility of anything afloat being more disturbed, without
toppling Over and going down. But what the agitation
of a steam-vessel is, on a bad winter’s night, in the wild
Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination
to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her side
in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and
that, springing up again, she rolls over on the other side,
until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a hun-
dred great guns, and hurls her back—that she stops,
and staggers, and shivers, as though stunned, and then,
with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like
a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten down, and
battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry Sea.
—that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and wind, are
all in fierce, contention for the mastery—that every
plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop
of water in the great ocean its howling voice—is
nothing. To say that all is grand, and all appalling
horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words cannot
express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream
can call it up again, in all its fury, rage and passion.
And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was
placed in a situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even
then I had as strong a sense of its absurdity as I have
now: and could no more help laughing than I can at
any other comical incident, happening under circum-
stances the most favourable to its enjoyment. About
midnight we shipped a sea, which forced its way
through the skylights, burst open the doors above, and
came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to
the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little
Scotch lady—who, by the way, had previously sent a
message to the captain by the stewardess, requesting
him, with her compliments, to have a steel conductor
immediately attached to the top of every mast, and to
the chimney, in order that the ship might not be struck
by lightning. They, and the handmaid before-men-
* * *
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. . 209
tioned, being in such ecstacies of fear that I scarcely
knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought my-
self of some restorative or comfortable cordial; and
nothing better occurring to me, at the moment, than
hot brandy-and-water, I procured a tumbler-full , with-
out delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without
holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner
of a long sofa—a fixture, extending entirely across the
cabin—where they clung to each other in momentary
expectation of being drowned. When I approached this
place with my specific, and was about to administer it,
with many consolatory expressions, to the nearest Suf-
ferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly
down to the other end! And when I staggered to that
end, and held out the glass once more, how immensely
baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving an-
other lurch, and their all rolling back again! I suppose
I dodged them up and down this sofa, for at least a
quarter of an hour, without reaching them once; and
by the time I did catch them, the brandy-and-water
was diminished, by constant spilling, to a tea-spoonful.
To complete the group, it is necessary to recognise in
this disconcerted dodger, an individual very pale from
sea-sickness, who had shaved his beard and brushed
his hair, last, at Liverpool; and whose only articles of
dress (linen not included) were a pair of dreadnought
trousers; a blue jacket, formerly admired upon the
Thames at Richmond; no stockings; and one slipper.
Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next
morning; which made bed a practical joke, and getting
up, by any process short of falling out, an impossibility;
I say nothing. But anything like the utter dreariness
and desolation that met my eyes when I, literally
“ tumbled up * on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean
and sky were all of one dull, heavy, uniform, lead
colour. There was no extent of prospect even over
the dreary waste that lay around us, for the sea ran
high, and the horizon encompassed like a large black
hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore,
it would have been imposing and stupendous, no doubt;
but seen from the wet and rolling decks, it only im-
pressed one giddily and painfully. In the gale of last
night the life-boat had been crushed by one blow of the
sea like a walnut-shell' and there it hung dangling in
V OTL. I. 14
210 AMERICAN NOTES
the air ; a mere faggot of crazy boards. The planking
of the paddle-boxes had been torn sheer away. The
wheels were exposed and bare; and they whirled and
dashed their spray about the decks at random. Chim-
ney, white with crusted salt; topmasts struck; storm-
sails set; rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and droop-
ing : a gloomier picture it would be hard to look upon.
I was comfortably established by courtesy in the
ladies’ cabin, where, besides ourselves, there were only
four other passengers. First, the little Scotch lady be-
fore-mentioned, on her way to join her husband at New
York, who had settled there three years before. Sec-
ondly and thirdly, an honest young Yorkshireman,
connected with some American house; domiciled in
that same city, and carrying thither his beautiful young
wife, to whom he had been married but a fortnight,
and who was the fairest specimen of a comely English
country girl I have ever seen. Fourthly, fifthly, and
lastly, another couple : newly married too, if one might
judge from the endearments they frequently inter-
changed ; of whom I know no more than they were
rather a mysterious, run-away kind of couple; that
the lady had great personal attractions also; and that
the gentleman carried more guns with him than Robin-
son Crusoe, wore a shooting-coat, and had two great
dogs on board. On further consideration, I remember
that he tried hot roast pig and bottled ale as a cure
for seasickness; and that he took these remedies (usually
in bed) day after day, with astonishing persever-
ance. I may add, for the information of the curious,
that they decidedly failed.
The weather continuing obstinately and almost un-
precedentedly bad, we usually straggled into this cabin,
more or less faint and miserable, about an hour before
noon, and lay down on the Sofas to recover ; during
which interval, the captain would look in to communi-
cate the state of the wind, the moral certainty of its
changing to-morrow (the weather is always going to
improve to-morrow, at Sea), the vessel's rate of sailing,
and so forth. Observations there were none to tell us
of, for there was no sun to take them by. But a de-
scription of one day will serve for all the rest. Here
it is.
The captain being gone, we compose Ourselves to
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 211
read, if the place be light enough ; and if not, we doze
and talk alternately. At one, a bell rings, and the
stewardess comes down with a steaming dish of baked
potatoes, and another of roasted apples; and plates of
pig’s face, cold ham, salt beef; or perhaps a smoking
mess of rare hot collops. We fall-to upon these dain-
ties; eat as much as we can (we have great appetites
now); and are as long as possible about it. If the fire
will burn (it will sometimes) we are pretty cheerful.
If it won’t, we all remark to each other that it’s very
cold, rub our hands, cover ourselves with coats and
cloaks, and lie down again to doze, talk and read (pro-
vided as aforesaid), until dinner-time. At five, another
bell rings, and the stewardess re-appears with another
dish of potatoes—boiled this time—and store of hot
meat of various kinds : not forgetting the roast pig, to
be taken medicinally. We sit down at table again
(rather more cheerfully than before); prolong the meal
with a rather mouldy dessert of apples, grapes, and
Oranges; and drink our wine and brandy-and-water.
The bottles and glasses are still upon the table, and the
oranges and so forth are rolling about according to their
fancy and the ship's way, when the doctor comes down,
by special nightly invitation, to join our evening rub-
ber : immediately on whose arrival we make a party at
whist, and as it is a rough night and the cards will not
- lie on the cloth, we put the tricks in our pockets as we
take them. At whist we remain with exemplary grav-
ity (deducting a short time for tea and toast) until
eleven o’clock, or thereabouts; when the captain comes
down again, in a sou’-wester hat tied under his chin,
and a pilot-coat ; making the ground wet' where he
stands. By this time the card-playing is over, and the
bottles and glasses are again upon the table; and after
an hour's pleasant conversation about the ship, the
passengers, and things in general, the captain (who
never goes to bed, and is never out of humour) turns
up his coat collar for the deck again ; shakes hands all
round ; and goes laughing out into the weather as
merrily as to a birth-day party.
“As to daily news, there is no dearth of that com-
modity. This passenger is reported to have lost four-
teen pounds at Vingt-et-un in the saloon yesterday; and
that passenger drinks his bottle of champagne every
212 AMERICAN NOTES
day, and how he does it (being only a clerk), nobody
knows. The head engineer has distinctly said that
there never was such times—meaning weather—and
four good hands are ill, and have given in, dead beat.
Several berths are full of water, and all the cabins are
leaky. The ship’s cook, secretly Swigging damaged
whiskey, has been found drunk ; and has been played
upon by the fire-engine until quite sober. All the stew-
ards have fallen down-stairs at various dinner-times,
and go about with plasters in various places. The baker
is ill, and so is the pastry-cook. A new man, horribly
indisposed, has been required to fill the place of the lat-
ter officer ; and has been propped and jammed up with
empty casks in a little house upon deck, and commanded
to roll out pie-crusts, which he protests (being highly
bilious) it is death to him to look at. News | A dozen
murders on shore would lack the interest of these slight
incidents at Sea.
Divided between our rubber and such topics as these,
we were running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour,
on the fifteenth night, with little wind and a bright
moon—indeed, we had made the Light at its Outer en-
trance, and put the pilot in charge—when suddenly the
ship struck upon a bank of mud. An immediate rush
on deck took place of course ; the sides were crowded
in an instant ; and for a few minutes we were in as
lively a state of confusion as the greatest lover of dis-
order would desire to see. The passengers, and guns,
and water-casks, and other heavy matters, being all
huddled together aft, however, to lighten her in the
head, she was soon got off ; and after Some driving on
towards an uncomfortable line of objects (whose vicinity
had been announced very early in the disaster by a loud
cry of “Breakers a-head l’) and much backing of pad-
dles, and heaving of the lead into a constantly decreas-
ing depth of water, we dropped anchor in a strange Out-
landish-looking nook which nobody on board could
recognise, although there was land all about us, and so
close that we could plainly see the waving branches of
the trees.
It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and
the dead stillness that seemed to be created by the Sud-
den and unexpected stoppage of the engine which had
been clanking and blasting in Our ears incessantly for
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 213
so many days, to watch the look of blank astonishment
expressed in every face: begining with the officers, trac-
ing it through all the passengers, and descending to the
very stokers and furnace-men, who emerged from below,
One by One, and clustered together in a Smoky group
about the hatchway of the engine-room, comparin
Inotes in whispers. After throwing up a few rockets an
firing signal-guns in the hope of being hailed from the
land, or at least of seeing a light—but without any oth-
er sight or sound presenting itself—it was determined
to send a boat on shore. It was amusing to observe how
very kind some of the passengers were, in volunteering
to go ashore in this same boat: for the general good of
course: not by any means because they thought the ship
in an unsafe position, or contemplated the possibility of
her heeling over in case the tide were running out. Nor
was it less amusing to remark how desperately unpopu-
lar the poor pilot became in one short minute. He had
had his passage out from Liverpool, and during the
whole voyage had been quite a notorious character, as a
teller of anecdotes and cracker of jokes. Yet here were
the very men who had laughed the loudest at his jests,
now flourishing their fists in his face, loading him with
imprecations, and defying him to his teeth as a villain!
The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry
blue lights on board; and in less than an hour returned;
the officer in command bringing with him a tolerably
tall young tree, which he had plucked up by the roots, to
satisfy certain distrustful passengers whose minds mis-
gave them that they were to be imposed upon and ship-
wrecked, and who would on no other terms believe that
he had been ashore, or had done anything but fraudu-
lently row a little way into the mist, specially to deceive
them and compass their deaths. Our captain had fore-
seen from the first that we must be in a place called the
* Eastern passage; and so we were. It was about the last
place in the world in which we had any business or rea-
son to be, but a sudden fog, and some error on the pilot’s
part, were the cause. We were surrounded by banks, and
rocks, and shoals of all kinds, but had happily drifted, it
seemed, upon the only safe speck that was to be found
thereabouts. Eased by this report, and by the assurance
that the tide was past the ebb, we turned in at three
o'clock in the morning.
214. AMERICAN NOTES
I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when
the noise above hurried me on deck. When I had left
it over-night, it was dark, foggy, and damp, and there
were bleak hills all round us. Now, we were gliding
down a smooth, broad stream, at the rate of eleven
miles an hour: our colours flying gaily; Our crew rigged
Out in their smartest clothes; our officers in uniform
again; the Sun Shining as on a brilliant April day in
England; the land stretched out on either side, streaked
with light patches of snow ; white wooden houses;
people at their doors; telegraphs working; flags hoisted;
wharves appearing; ships; quays crowded with people;
distant noises; shouts; men and boys running down
steep places towards the pier: all more bright and gay
and fresh to our unused eyes than words can paint
them. We came to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces;
got alongside, and were made fast, after some shouting
and straining of cables; darted, a score of us along the
gangway, almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet
us, and before it had reached the ship—and leaped upon
the firm glad earth again
I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Ely-
sium, though it had been a curiosity of ugly dulness.
But I carried away with me a most pleasant impres-
sion of the town and its inhabitants, and have pre-
served it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that
I came home, without having found an opportunity of
returning thither, and once more shaking hands with
the friends I made that day. -
It happened to be the opening of the Legislative
Council and General Assembly, at which Ceremonial
the forms observed on the commencement of a new
session of Parliament in England were so closely copied,
and so gravely presented on a small scale, that it was
like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of
a telescope. The governor, as her. Majesty’s representa-
tive, delivered what may be called the Speech from the
Throne. He said what he had to say manfully and
well. The military band outside the building struck
up “God save the Queen’’ with great vigour before his
Excellency had quite finished; the people shouted; the
ins rubbed their hands; the outs shook their heads; the
Government party said there never was such a good
speech; the opposition declared there never was such a
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 215
bad one; the Speaker and members of the House of
Assembly withdrew from the bar to say a great deal
among themselves and do a little: and in short, every-
thing went on, and promised to go on, just as it does at
home upon the like occasions.
The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest
point being commanded by a strong fortress, not yet
Quite finished. Several streets of good breadth and ap-
pearance extend from its summit to the water-side, and
are intersected by cross streets running parallel with
the river. The houses are chiefly of wood. The market
is abundantly supplied: and provisions are exceedingly
cheap. The weather being unusually mild at that time
for the season of the year, there was no sleighing: but
there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and bye-
places, and some of them, from the gorgeous quality of
their decorations, might have “gone on ” without alter-
ation as triumphal cars in a melodrama at Astley’s.
The day was uncommonly fine ; the air bracing and
healthful; the whole aspect of the town cheerful, thriv-
ing, and industrious.
We lay there seven hours, to deliver and exchange
the mails. At length, having collected all our bags and
all our passengers (including two or three choice spirits,
Who, having indulged too freely in Oysters and cham-
pagne, were found lying insensible on their backs in
unfrequented streets), the engines were again put in
motion, and we stood off for Boston.
Encountering squally weather again in the Bay of
Fundy, we tumbled and rolled about as usual all that
night and all next day. On the next afternoon, that is
to say, on Saturday, the twenty-second of January, an
American pilot-boat came alongside, and soon after-
wards the Britannia steam-packet from Liverpool, eigh-
teen days out, was telegraphed at Boston.
The indescribable interest with which I strained my
eyes as the first patches of American soil peeped like
molehills from the green sea, and followed them, as
they swelled, by slow and almost imperceptible degrees,
into a continuous line of coast, can hardly be exaggerated
A sharp keen wind blew dead against us; a hard frost
prevailed on shore; and the cold was most severe. Yet
the air was so intensely clear, and dry, and bright, that
the temperature was not only endurable, but delicious,
216 AMERICAN NOTIES
How I remained on deck, staring about me, until we
came alongside the dock, and how, though I had had as
many eyes as Argus, I should have had them all wide
Open, and all employed on new objects—are topics which
I will not prolong this chapter to discuss. Neither will
I more than hint at my foreign-like mistake, in suppos-
ing that a party of most active persons who scrambled
on board at the peril of their lives as we approached
the wharf, were newsmen, answering to that indus-
trious class at home; whereas, despite the leathern wal-
lets of news slung about the necks of some, and the
broad sheets in the hands of all, they were Editors who
boarded ships in person (as one gentleman in a worsted
comforter informed me) ‘‘ because they liked the ex-
citement of it.” Suffice it in this place to say, that one
of these invaders, with a ready courtesy, for which I
thank him here most gratefully, went on before to order
rooms at the hotel; and that when I followed, as I
soon did, I found myself rolling through the long pas-
sages, with an involuntary imitation of the gait of Mr.
T. P. Cooke, in a new nautical melodrama.
“Dinner, if you please,” said I to the waiter.
“When P” said the waiter.
“As quick as possible,” said I.
“Right away?” said the waiter.
After a moment’s hesitation, I answered, ‘‘No,” at
hazard.
“Not right way?” cried the waiter, with an amount
of surprise that made me start.
I looked at him doubtfully, and returned, “ No; I would
rather have it in this private room. I like it very much.”
At this, I really thought the waiter must have gone
out of his mind; as I believe he would have done, but
for the interposition of another man, who whispered in
his ear, “Directly.” -
“Well ! and that’s a fact!” said the waiter, looking
helplessly at me: “Right away.” -
I saw now that “Right away ” and “Directly ’’ were
one and the same thing. So I reversed my previous
answer, and sat down to dinner in ten minutes after-
wards; and a capital dinner it was.
The hotel (a very excellent one), is called the Tremont
House. It has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and pas-
sages than I can remember, or the reader would believe.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 217
CHAPTER III.
BOSTON.
T N all the public establishments of America, the ut-
most courtesy prevails. Most of Our Departments
are susceptible of considerable improvement in this re-
spect, but the Custom-house above all others would do
well to take example from the United States, and ren-
der itself somewhat less odious and offensive to foreign-
ers. The servile rapacity of the French officials is suf-
ficiently contemptible ; but there is a surly boorish in-
civility about our men, alike disgusting to all persons
who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the na-
tion that keeps such ill-conditioned curs snarling about
its gates.
When I landed in America, I could not help being
strongly impressed with the contrast their Custom-
house presented, and the attention, politeness and
good humour with which its officers discharged their
duty.
As we did not land in Boston, in consequence of some
detention at the wharf, until after dark, I received my
first impressions of the city in walking down to the
Custom-house on the morning after our arrival, which
was Sunday. I am afraid to say, by the way, how
many offers of pews and seats in church for that
morning were made to us, by formal note of invitation,
before we had half finished our first dinner in America,
but if I may be allowed to make a moderate guess,
without going into nicer calculation, I should say that
at least as many sittings were proffered us, as would
have accommodated a score or two of grown-up fam-
ilies. The number of creeds and forms of religion to
which the pleasure of our company was requested, was
in very fair proportion.
Not being able, in the absence of any change of
2 S AMERICAN NOTES
clothes, to go to church that day, we were compelled
to decline these kindnesses, one and all : and I was re-
luctantly obliged to forego the delight of hearing Dr.
Channing, who happened to preach that morning for
the first time in a very long interval. I mention the
name of this distinguished and accomplished man
(with whom I soon afterwards had the pleasure of be-
coming personally acquainted), that I may have the
gratification of recording my humble tribute of admi-
ration and respect for his high abilities and character:
and for the bold philanthropy with which he has ever
opposed himself to that most hideous blot and foul dis-
grace—Slavery. - -
To return to Boston. When I got into the streets
upon this Sunday morning, the air was so clear, the
houses were so bright and gay ; the signboards were
painted in such gaudy colours; the gilded letters were
so very golden ; the bricks were so very red, the stone
was so very white, the blinds and area railings were so
very green, the knobs and plates upon the street doors
so marvellously bright and twinkling ; and all so slight
and unsubstantial in appearance—that every thorough-
fare in the city looked exactly like a scene in a pan-
tomime. It rarely happens in the business streets that
a tradesman—if I may venture to call anybody a trades-
man, where everybody is a merchant—resides above
his store ; so that many occupations are often carried
on in one house, and the whole front is covered with
boards and inscriptions. As I walked along, I kept
glancing up at these boards; confidently expecting to
see a few of them change intó something ; and I never
turned a corner suddenly without looking out for the
clown and pantaloon, who, I had no doubt, were hiding
in a doorway or behind some pillar close at hand. As
to Harlequin and Columbine, I discovered immediately
that they lodged (they are always looking after lodgings
in a pantomime) at a very Small clock-maker’s, one
story high, near the hotel; which, in addition to various
symbols and devices, almost covering the whole front,
had a great dial hanging out—to be jumped through, of
COUlTS62. -
The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsubstantial-
looking than the city. The white wooden houses (so
white that it makes one wink to look at them), with
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 219
their green jalousie blinds, are so sprinkled and dropped
about in all directions, without seeming to have any
root at all in the ground ; and the small churches and
Chapels are so prim, and bright, and highly varnished ;
that I almost believed the whole affair could be taken
up piecemeal like a child’s toy, and crammed into a
little box. -
The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should
imagine, to impress all strangers very favourably. The
private dwelling-houses are, for the most part, large
and elegant; the shops extremely good; and the public
buildings handsome. The State House is built upon the
Summit of a hill, which rises gradually at first, and
afterwards by a steep ascent, almost from the water’s
edge. In front is a green inclosure, called the Com-
mon. The site is beautiful : and from the top there is a
Charming panoramic view of the whole town and neigh-
bourhood. In addition to a variety of commodious
Offices, it contains two handsome chambers : in one the
House of Representatives of the State hold their meet-
ings: in the other, the Senate. Such proceedings as I
saw here, were conducted with perfect gravity and
decorum ; and were certainly calculated to inspire atten-
tion and respect.
There is no doubt that much of the intellectual refine-
ment and superiority of Boston, is referable to the quiet
influence of the University of Cambridge, which is
within three or four miles of the city. The resident pro-
fessors at that university are gentlemen of learning and
varied attainments; and are, without one exception that
I can call to mind, men who would shed a grace upon,
and do honour to, any society in the civilised world.
Many of the resident gentry in Boston and its neigh-
bourhood, and I think I am not mistaken in adding, a
large majority of those who are attached to the liberal
professions there, have been educated at this same
school. Whatever the defects of American universities
may be, they disseminate no prejudices ; rear no bigots;
dig up the buried ashes of no old Superstitions; never in-
terpose between the people and their improvements; ex-
clude no man because of his religious opinions; above all,
in their whole course of study and instruction, recog.
mise a World, and a broad One too, lying beyond the col-
lege walls. -
220 AMERICAN NOTES
It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me to ob-
serve the almost imperceptible, but not less certain
effect, wrought by this institution among the small com-
munity of Boston ; and to note at every turn the human-
ising tastes and desires it has engendered ; the affec-
tionate friendships to which it has given rise; the amount
of Vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The golden
calf they worship at Boston is a pigmy compared with
the giant effigies set up in other parts of that vast count-
ing-house which lies beyond the Atlantic ; and the
almighty dollar sinks into something comparatively in-
significant, amidst a whole Pantheon of better gods.
Above all, I sincerely believe that the public institu-
tions and charities of this capital of Massachusetts are
as nearly perfect, as the most considerate wisdom, be-
nevolence, and humanity can make them. I never in
my life was more affected by the contemplation of hap-
piness, under circumstances of privation and bereave-
ment, than in my visits to these establishments.
It is a great and º feature of all such institu-
tions in America, that they are either supported by the
State or assisted by the State ; or (in the event of their
not needing its helping hand) that they act in concert
with it, and are emphatically the people’s. I cannot
but think, with a view to the principle and its tendency
to elevate or depress the character of the industrious
classes, that a Public Charity is immeasurably better
than a Private Foundation, no matter how munificently
the latter may be endowed. In our own country, where
it has not, until within these later days, been a very
popular fashion with goverments to display any extra-
ordinary regard for the great mass of the people, or to
recognise their existence as improveable creatures, pri-
vate charities, unexampled in the history of the
earth, have arisen, to do an incalculable amount of
good among the destitute and afflicted. But the gov-
ernment of the country, having neither act nor part in
them, is not in the receipt of any portion of the gratitude
they inspire; and, offering very little shelter or relief
beyond that which is to be found in the workhouse and
the jail, has come, not unnaturally, to be looked upon
by the poor rather as a stern master, quick to correct
and punish, than a kind protector, merciful and vigilant
in their hour of need.
FOR GENERAL CHRCULATION. 221
The maxim that out of evil cometh good, is strongly
illustrated by these establishments at home; as the rec-
ords of the Prerogative Office in Doctors’ Commons can
abundantly prove. Some immensely rich old gentleman
or lady, surrounded by needy relatives, makes, upon a
low average, a will a-week. The old gentleman or lady,
never very remarkable in the best of times for good
temper, is full of aches and pains from head to foot ;
full of fancies and caprices; full of spleen, distrust, sus-
picion, and dislike. To cancel old wills, and invent
new ones, is at last the sole business of such a testator’s
existence; and relations and friends (some of whom
have been bred up distinctly to inherit a large share of
the property, and have been, from their cradles, espe-
cially disqualified from devoting themselves to any use-
ful pursuit, on that account) are so often and so unex-
pectedly and summarily cut off and re-instated, and cut
off again, that the whole family, down to the remotest
cousin, is kept in a perpetual fever. At length it be-
comes plain that the old lady or gentleman has not long
to live; and the plainer this becomes, the more clearly
the old lady or gentleman perceives that everybody is
in a conspiracy against their poor old dying relative ;
wherefore the old lady or gentleman makes another last
will—positively the last this time—conceals the same in
a china tea-pot, and expires next day. Then it turns out,
that the whole of the real and personal estate is divided
between half-a-dozen charities ; and that the dead and
gone testator has in pure spite helped to do a great
deal of good, at the cost of an immense amount of evil
passion and misery.
The Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum
for the Blind, at Boston, is superintended by a body
of trustees who make an annual report to the cor-
poration. The indigent blind of that state are ad-
mitted gratuitously. Those from the adjoining state
of Connecticut, or from the states of Maine, Ver-
mont, or New Hampshire, are admitted by a war-
rant from the state to which they respectively belong;
or, failing that, must find security among their
friends, for the payment of about twenty pounds Eng-
lish for their first year’s board and instruction, and ten
for the second. “After the first year,” say the trustees,
“an account current will be opened with each pupil;
222 AMERICAN NOTES
he will be charged with the actual cost of his board,
which will not exceed two dollars per week;” a trifle
more than eight shillings English; “and he will be
credited with the amount paid for him by the state, or
by his friends; also with his earnings over and above
the cost of the stock which he uses; so that all his earn-
ings over one dollar per week will be his own. By the
third year it will be known whether his earnings will
more than pay the actual cost of his board; if they
should, he will have it at his option to remain and re-
ceive his earnings, or not. Those who prove unable to
earn their own livelihood will not be retained; as it is
not desirable to convert the establishment into an alms-
house, or to retain any but working bees in the hive.
Those who by physical or mental imbecility are disqual-
ified for work, are thereby disqualified from being
members of an industrious community; and they can
be better provided for in establishments fitted for the
infirm.”
I went to see this place one very fine winter morning:
an Italian sky above, and the air so clear and bright on
every side, that even my eyes, which are none of the
best, could follow the minute lines and scraps of tracery
in distant buildings. Like most other public institutions
in America, of the same class, it stands a mile or two
without the town, in a cheerful healthy spot; and is an
airy, spacious, handsome edifice. It is built upon a-
height, commanding the harbour. When I paused for
a moment at the door, and marked how fresh and free
the whole scene was—what sparkling bubbles glanced
upon the waves, and welled up every moment to the
surface, as though the world below, like that above,
were radiant with the bright day, and gushing over
in its fulness of light: when I gazed from sail to sail
away upon a ship at Sea, a tiny speck of shining white,
the only cloud upon the still, deep, distant blue—and
turning, saw a blind boy with his sightless face ad-
dresed that way, as though he too had some sense
within him of the glorious distance: I felt a kind of
sorrow that the place should be so very light, and a
strange wish that for his sake it were darker. It was
but mounentary, of course, and a mere fancy, but I felt
it keenly for all that.
The children were at their daily tasks in different
}
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION 223
rooms, except a few who were aiready dismissed, and
were at play. Here, as in many institutions, no uni-
form is worn; and I was very glad of it, for two rea-
sons. Firstly, because I am sure that nothing but sense-
less custom and want of thought would reconcile us to
the liveries and badges we are so fond of at home.
Secondly, because the absence of these things presents
each child to the visitor in his or her own proper charac-
ter, with its individuality unimpaired; not lost in a dull,
ugly, monotonous repetition of the same unmeaning
garb: which is really an important consideration. The
wisdom of encouraging a little harmless pride in per-
sonal appearance even among the blind, or the whirmsi-
sical absurdity of considering charity and leather
breeches inseparable companions, as we do, requires no
Comment.
Good order, cleanliness, and comfort, pervaded every
corner of the building. The various classes, who were
gathered round their teachers, answered the questions
put to them with readiness and intelligence, and in a
spirit of cheerful contest for precedence which pleased
me very much. Those who were at play were gleesome
and noisy as other children. More spiritual and affec-
tionate friendships appeared to exist among them than
would be found among other young persons suffering
under no deprivation; but this I expected and was pre-
pared to find. It is a part of the great scheme of Heaven’s
merciful consideration for the afflicted.
In a portion of the building, set apart for that pur-
pose, are workshops for blind persons whose education
is finished, and who have acquired a trade, but who
cannot pursue it in an ordinary manufactory because
of their deprivation. Several people were at work here;
making brushes, mattresses, and so forth; and the
cheerfulness, industry, and good order discernible in
every other part of the building, extended to this de-
partment also.
On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired,
without any guide or leader, to a spacious music-hall,
where they took their seats in an orchestra erected for
that purpose, and listened with manifest delight to a
Voluntary on the organ, played by one of themselves.
At its conclusion, the performer, a boy of nineteen or
twenty, gave place to a girl; and to her accompaniment
224. AMERICAN NOTES
they all sang a hymn, and afterwards a sort of chorus.
It was very sad to look upon and hear them, happy
though their condition unquestionably was; and I saw
that one blind girl, who (being for the time deprived of
the use of her limbs, by illness) sat close beside me with
herfacetowards them, wept silently the while she listened.
It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see
how free they are from all concealment of what is
passing in their thoughts; observing which, a man with
eyes may blush to contemplate the mask he wears.
Allowing for one shade of anxious expression which is
never absent from their countenances, and the like of
which we may readily detect in our own faces if we try
to feel our way in the dark, every idea, as it rises within
them, is expressed with the lightning's speed, and na-
ture’s truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing-
room at court, could only for one time be as uncon-
scious of the eyes upon them as blind men and women
are, what secrets would come out, and what a worker
of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so much
pity, would appear to be!
The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another
room, before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb; destitute of
smell; and nearly so, of taste: before a fair young
creature with every human faculty, and hope, and
power of goodness and affection, inclosed within her
delicate frame, and but one outward sense—the sense
of touch. There she, was, before me; built up, as it
were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or
particle of sound; with her poor white hand peeping
through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good
man for help, that an Immortal Soul might be
awakened. *
Long before I looked upon her, the help had come.
Her face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure.
Her hair, braided by her own hands, was bound about
a head, whose intellectual capacity and development
were beautifully expressed in its graceful outline, and
its broad open brow; her dress, arranged by herself,
was a pattern of neatness and simplicity: the work she
had knitted, lay beside her; her writing-book was on
the desk she leaned upon. From the mournful ruin of
such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle,
tender, guileless, grateful-hearted being.
TOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 225
Like other inmates of that house, she had a green
ribbon bound round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed
lay near upon the ground. I took it up, and saw that
she had made a green fillet such as she wore herself,
and fastened it about its mimic eyes.
She was seated in a little enclosure, made by school-
desks and forms, writing her daily journal. But soon
finishing this pursuit, she engaged in an animated com-
munication with a teacher who sat beside her. This
was a favourite mistress with the poor pupil. If she
could see the face of her fair instructress, she would
not love her less, I am sure.
I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her
history, from an account, written by that one man who
has made her what she is. It is a very beautiful and
touching narrative: and I wish I could present it entire.
Her name is Laura Bridgman. “She was born in
Hanover, New Hampshire, on the twenty-first of Decem-
ber, 1829. She is described as having been a very
sprightly and pretty infant, with bright blue eyes.
She was, however, so puny and feeble until she was a
year and a-half old, that her parents hardly hoped to
rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which seemed
to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endur-
ance: and life was held by the feeblest tenure: but when
a year and a-half old, she seemed to rally; the dangerous
symptoms subsided; and at twenty months old, she was
perfectly well.
“Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their
growth, rapidly developed themselves; and during the
four months of health which she enjoyed, she appears
(making due allowance for a fond mother’s account) to
have displayed a considerable degree of intelligence.
“But suddenly she sickened again; her disease raged
with great violence during five weeks, when her eyes
and ears were inflamed, suppurated, and their contents
were discharged. But though sight and hearing were
gone for ever, the poor child’s sufferings were not
ended. The fever raged during seven weeks; for five
months she was kept in bed in a darkened room; it was
a year before she could walk unsupported, and two years
before she could sit up all day. It was now observed
that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed;
and, consequently, that her taste was much blunted,
WOL. I. | 5
226 - AMERICAN NOTES
“It was not until four years of age that the poor
child’s bodily health seemed restored, and she was able
to enter upon her apprenticeship of life and the world.
“But what a situation was hers! The darkness and
the silence of the tomb were around her: no mother’s
smile called forth her answering smile, no father’s voice
taught her to imitate his sounds:–they, brothers and
sisters, were but forms of matter which resisted her
touch, but which differed not from the furniture of the
house, save in warmth, and in the power of locomotion;
and not even in these respects from the dog and the
Cat.
“But the immortal spirit which has been implanted
within her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated;
and though most of its avenues of communication with
the world were cut off, it began to manifest itself
through the others. As soon as she could walk, she
began to explore the room, and then the house; she be-
came familiar with the form, density, weight, and heat,
of every article she could lay her hands upon. She fol-
lowed her mother, and felt her hands and arms, as sho
was occupied about the house; and her disposition to
imitate, led her to repeat everything herself. She even
learned to sew a little, and to knit. -
“The reader will scarcely need to be told, however,
that the opportunities of communicating with her, were
very, very limited; and that the moral effects of her
wretched state Soon began to appear. Those who can-
not be enlightened by reason, can only be controlled by
force; and this, coupled with her great privations, must
soon have reduced her to a worse condition than that
; '. beasts that perish, but for timely and unhoped-
Ol' a,ICI.
“At this time, I was 'so fortunate as to hear of the
child, and immediately hastened to Hanover to see her.
I found her with a well-formed figure ; a strongly-
marked, nervous sanguine temperament ; a large and
beautifully-shaped head; and the whole system in
healthy action. The parents were easily induced to con-
Sent to her coming to Boston, and on the 4th of October,
1837, they brought her to the Institution.
“For a while, she was much bewildered ; and after
waiting about two weeks, until she became acquainted
With her new locality, and somewhat familiar with the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 22?
inmates, the attempt was made to give her knowledge
of arbitrary signs, by which she could interchange
thoughts with others. - -
“There was one of two ways to be adopted : either to
go on to build up a language of signs on the basis of the
natural language which she had already commenced
herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language
in common use : that is, to give her a sign for every
individual thing, or to give her a knowledge of letters
by combination of which she might express her idea of
the existence, and the mode and condition of existence,
of anything. The former would have been easy, but
very ineffectual ; the latter seemed very difficult, but,
if accomplished, very effectual. I determined therefore
to try the latter.
“The first experiments were made by taking articles
in common use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys,
etc., and pasting upon, them labels with their names
printed in raised letters. These she felt very carefully,
and soon, of course, distinguished that the crooked lines
S p O o Tv, differed as much from the crooked lines k e y,
as the spoon differed from the key in form.
“Then small detached labels, with the same words
printed upon them, were put into her hands; and she
Soon observed that they were similar to the ones pasted
on the articles. She showed her perception of this simi-
larity by laying the label k e / upon the key, and the
label S p O o n upon the spoon. She was encouraged
hº by the natural sign of approbation, patting on the
€8, Cl. --
“The same process was then repeated with all the
articles which she could handle ; and she very easily
learned to place the proper labels upon them. It was
evident, however, that the only intellectual exercise was
that of imitation and memory. She recollected that the
label b o O k was placed upon a book, and she repeated
the process first from imitation, next from memory, with
Only the motive of love of approbation, but apparently
without the intellectual perception of any relation be-
tween the things.
“After a while, instead of labels, the individual letters
were given to her on detached bits of paper: they were
arranged side by side so as to spell b o O k, k e y, etc.;
then they were mixed up in a heap, and a sign was made
228 AMERICAN NOTES
for her to arrange them herself, so as to express the
words book, key, etc.; and she did so.
“Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the
success about as great as teaching a very knowing dog
a variety of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute
amazement, and patiently imitated everything her teach-
er did; but now the truth began to flash upon her: her in-
tellect began to work : she perceived that here was a
way by which she could herself make up a sign of any-
thing that was in her own mind, and show it to anothef
mind; and at once her countenance lighted up with a
human expression : it was no longer a dog, or parrot :
it was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new
link of union with other spirits! I could almost fix upon
the moment when this truth dawned upon her mind, and
spread its light to her countenance; I saw that the great
obstacle was overcome; and that henceforward nothing
but patient and persevering, but plain and straightfor-
ward, efforts were to be used.
“The result, thus far, is quickly related, and easily
conceived; but not so was the process; for many weeks
of apparently unprofitable labour were passed before it
was effected. *
“When it was said above, that a sign was made, it
was intended to say that the action was performed by
her teacher, she feeling his hands, and then imitating
the motion.
“The next step was to procure a set of metal types,
with the different letters of the alphabet cast upon
their ends ; also a board, in which were square holes,
into which holes she could set the types ; so that the
letters on their ends could alone be felt above the surface.
Then, on any article being handed to her, for in-
stance, a pencil, or a watch,--she would select the corn-
ponent letters, and arrange them on her board, and read
them with apparent pleasure.
“She was exercised for several weeks in this way,
until her vocabulary became extensive; and then the
important step was taken of teaching her how to repre-
sent the different letters by the position of her fingers,
instead of the cumbrous apparatus of the board and
types. She accomplished this speedily and easily, for
her intellect had begun to work in aid of her teacher,
and her progress was rapid.
H'OR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 22;)
“This was the period, about three months after she
had commenced, that the first report of her case was
made, in which it is stated that ‘she had just learned
the manual alphabet, as used by the deaf mutes, and it
is a subject of delight and wonder to see how rapidly,
correctly, and eagerly, she goes on with her labours.
Her teacher gives her a new object—for instance, a pen-
cil, first lets her examine it, and get an idea of its use,
then teaches her how to spell it by making the signs for
the letters with her own fingers: the child grasps her
hand, and feels her fingers, as the different letters are
formed; she turns her head a little on one side, like a
person listening closely; her lips are apart; she seems
scarcely to breathe; and her countenance, at first anx-
ious, gradually changes to a smile, as she comprehends
the lesson. She then holds up her tiny fingers, and spells
the word in the manual alphabet; next, she takes her
types and arranges her letters; and last, to make sure
that she is right, she takes the whole of the types com-
posing the word, and places them upon or in contact
with the pencil, or whatever the object may be.’
“The whole of the succeeding year was passed in
gratifying her eager inquiries for the names of every
object which she could possibly handle; in exercising
her in the use of the manual alphabet; in extending in
every possible way her knowledge of the physical re-
lations of things; and in proper care of her health.
“At the end of the year a report of her case, was
made, from which the following is an extract.
“It has been ascertained beyond the possibility of
doubt, that she cannot see a ray of light, cannot hear
the least Sound, and never exercises her sense of smell,
if she have any. Thus her mind dwells in darkness and
stillness, as profound as that of a closed tomb at mid-
night. Of beautiful sights, and Sweet sounds, and
pleasant odours, she has no conception; nevertheless,
she seems as happy and playful as a bird or a lamb;
and the employment of her intellectual faculties, or the
acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure,
which is plainly marked in her expressive features. She
never seems to repine, but has all the buoyancy and
gaiety of childhood. She is fond of fun and frolic, and
When playing with the rest of the children, her shrill
laugh sounds loudest of the group.
230 AMERICAN NOTES
“‘When left alone, she seems very happy if she
have her knitting or sewing, and will busy herself for
hours: if she have no occupation, she evidently amuses
herself by imaginary dialogues, or by recalling past
impressions; she counts with her fingers, or Spelis out
names of things which she has recently learned,
in the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes. In this
lonely self-communion she seems to reason, reflect, and
argue: if she spells a word wrong with the fingers of
her right hand, she instantly strikes it with her left as
her teacher does, in sign of disapprobation; if right,
then she pats herself upon the head and looks pleased.
She sometimes purposely spells a word wrong with the
left hand, looks roguish for a moment and laughs, and
then with the right hand strikes the left, as if to
correct it. - t
“‘ During the year she has attained great dexterity
in the use of the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes:
and she spells out the words and sentences which she
knows, so fast and so deftly, that only those accustomed
to this language can follow with the eye the rapid mo-
tions of her fingers. - -
“‘But wonderful as is the rapidity with which she
writes her thoughts upon the air, still more so is the
ease and accuracy with which she reads the words
thus written by another; grasping their hands in hers,
and following every movement of their fingers, as letter
after letter conveys their meaning to her mind. It is in
this way that she converses with her blind playmates,
and nothing can more forcibly show the power of
mind in forcing matter to its purpose than a meeting
between them. For if great talent and skill are neces-
sary for two pantomimes to paint their thoughts and
feelings by the movements of th. body, and the expres-
sion of the countenance, how much greater the diffi-
culty when darkness shrouds them both, and the one
can hear no Sound ! -
“‘When Taura is walking through a passage-way,
with her hands spread before her, she knows instantly
every one she meets, and passes them with a sign of
recognition: but if it be a girl of her own age, and es-
pecially if it be one of her favourites, there is instantly
a bright Smile of recognition, and a twining of arms, a
grasping of hands, and a Swift telegraphing upon the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 231
tiny fingers; whose rapid evolutions convey the thoughts
and feelings from the outposts of one mind to those of
the other. There are questions and answers, exchanges
of joy or Sorrow, there are kissings and partings, just
as between little children with all their senses.’’. ſ
“During this year, and six months after she had left
home, her mother came to visit her, and the scene of
their meeting was an interesting one. -
“The mother stood some time, gazing with overflow-
ing eyes upon her unfortunate child, who, all uncon-
scious of her presence, was playing about the room.
Presently Laura ran against her, and at once began
feeling her hands, examining her dress, and trying to
find out if she knew her; but not succeeding in this, she
turned away as from a stranger, and the poor woman
could not conceal the pang she felt, at finding that her
beloved child did not know her. - -
“She then gave Laura a string of beads which she,
used to wear at home, which were recognised by the
child at Once, who, with much joy, put them around
her neck, and sought me eagerly to say she understood
the string was from her home. . . .
“The mother now tried to caress her, but poor Laura
repelled her, preferring to be with her acquaintances.
“Another article from home was now given her, and
she began to look much interested; she examined the
Stranger much closer, and gave me to understand that
she knew she came from #. she even endured
her caresses, but would leave her with indifference at
the slightest signal. The distress of the mother was
now painful to behold; for, although she had feared
that she should not be recognised, the painful reality of
being treated with cold indifference by a darling child,
was too much for a woman’s nature to bear.
“After a while, on the mother taking hold of her
again, a vague idea. Seemed to flit across Laura's mind,
that this could not be a stranger; she therefore felt her
hands very eagerly, while her countenance assumed an
expression of intense interest; she became very pale,
and then Suddenly red; hope seemed struggling with
doubt and anxiety, and never were contending emo-
tions more strongly painted upon the human face;
at this moment of painful uncertainty, the mother drew
her close to her side, and kissed her fondly, when at
232 AMERICAN NOTES.
once the truth flashed upon the child, and all mistrust
and anxiety disappeared from her face, as with an ex-
ression of exceeding joy she eagerly nestled to the
osom of her parent, and yielded herself to her fond
embraces.
“After this, the beads were all unheeded; the play-
things which were offered to her were utterly disre-
garded; her playmates, for whom but a moment before
she gladly left the stranger, now vainly strove to pull
her from her mother; and though she yielded her usual
instantaneous obedience to my signal to follow me, it
was evidently with painful reluctance. She clung close
to me, as if bewildered and fearful; and when, after a
moment, I took her to her mother, she sprang to her
arms and clung to her with eager joy.
“The subsequent parting between them, showed alike
the affection, the intelligence, and the resolution of the
Child. 3.
“Laura accompanied her mother to the door, clinging
close to her all the way, until they arrived at the
threshold, where she paused, and felt around to ascer-
tain who was near her. Perceiving the matron, of
whom she is very fond, she grasped her with one hand,
holding on convulsively to her mother with the other;
and thus she stood for a moment: then she dropped her
mother’s hand; put her handkerchief to her eyes; and
turning round, clung sobbing to the matron; while her
mother departed, with emotions as deep as those of her
child. - e
>{< >}: >k >k >k
“It has been remarked in former reports, that she
can distinguish different degrees of intellect in others,
and that she soon regarded almost with contempt, a new-
comer, when, after a few days, she discovered her
weakness of mind. This unamiable part of her charac-
ter has been more strongly developed during the past
year.
“She chooses for her friends and companions, those
children who are intelligent, and can talk best with her;
and she evidently dislikes to be with those who are defi-
cient in intellect, unless, indeed, she can make them
serve her purposes, which she is evidently inclined to
do. She takes advantage of them, and makes them
wait upon her, in a manner that she knows she could
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 233
not exact of others; and in various ways she knows her
Saxon blood. -
“She is fond of having other children noticed and
caressed by the teachers, and those whom she respects;
but this must not be carried too far, or she becomes
jealous. She wants to have her share, which if not the
lion’s, is the greater part; and if she does not get it, she
says, “My mother will love me.’
“Her tendency to imitation is so strong, that it leads
her to actions which must be entirely incomprehensible
to her, and which can give her no other pleasure than
the gratification of an internal faculty. She has been
known to sit for half an hour, holding a book before her
sightless eyes, and moving her lips, as she has observed
seeing people do when reading.
‘‘ She one day pretended that her doll was sick; and
went through all the motions of tending it, and giving
it medicine; she then put it carefully to bed, and placed
a bottle of hot water to its feet, laughing all the time
most heartily. When I came home, she insisted upon
my going to see it, and feel its pulse; and when I told
her to put a blister on its back, she seemed to enjoy it
amazingly, and almost screamed with delight.
“Her social feelings, and her affections, are very
strong; and when she is sitting at work, or at her
studies, by the side of one of her little friends, she will
break off from her task every few minutes to hug and
kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is
touching to behold. -
“When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses
herself, and seems quite contented; and so strong seems
to be the natural tendency of thought to put on the
garb of language, that she often soliloquises in the
Jinger language, slow and tedious as it is. But it is only
when alone, that she is quiet: for if she becomes sensible
Of the presence of any one near her, she is restless until
She can sit close beside them, hold their hand, and con-
verse with them by signs.
“In her intellectual character it is pleasing to observe
an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and a quick percep-
tion of the relations of things. In her moral character,
it is beautiful to behold her continual gladness, her
keen enjoyment of existence, her expansive love,
her unhesitating confidence, her sympathy with
234 AMERICAN. NOTES
suffering, her conscientiousness, truthfulness, and
hopefulness.” * *
Such are a few fragments from the simple but most
interesting and instructive history of Laura Bridgman.
The name of her great benefactor and friend, who
writes it, is Doctor Howe. There are not many persons,
I hope and believe, who, after reading these passages,
can ever hear that name with indifference.
A further account has been published by Dr. Howe,
since the report from which I have just quoted. It de-
scribes her rapid mental growth and improvement dur-
ing twelve months more, and brings her little history
down to the end of last year. It is very remarkable,
that as we dream in words, and carry On imagimary con-
versations, in which we speak both for ourselves and
for the shadows who appear to us in those visions of
the night, so she, having no words, uses her finger al-
phabet in her sleep. And it has been ascertained that
when her slumber is broken, and is much disturbed by
dreams, she expresses her thoughts in an irregular and
confused manner on her fingers : just as we should
murmur and mutter them indistinctly, in the like cir-
Cumstances.
I turned over the leaves of her Diary, and found it
written in a fair legible square hand, and expressed in
terms which were quite intelligible without any ex-
planation. On my saying that f should like to see her
write again, the teacher who sat beside her bade her,
in their language, sign her name upon a slip of paper,
twice or thrice. In doing so, I observed that she kept
her left hand always touching, and following up, her
right, in which, of course, she held the pen. No line
was indicated by any contrivance, but she wrote
straight and freely. º
She had, until now, been quite unconscious of the
presence of visitors; but, having her hand placed in
that of the gentleman who accompanied me, she imme-
diately expressed his name upon her teacher's palm.
Indeed her sense of touch is now so exquisite, that hav-
ing been acquainted with a person Once, she can recog-
mise him or her after almost any interval. This gentle-
man had been in her company, I believe, but very sel-
dom, and certainly had not seen her for many months.
My hand she rejected at once, as she does that of any
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 235
man who is a stranger to her. But she retained my
wife's with evident pleasure, kissed her, and examined
her dress with a girl’s curiosity and interest.
She was merry and cheerful, and showed much inno-
cent playfulness in her intercourse with her teacher.
Her delight on recognising a favourite playfellow and
companion—herself a blind girl—who silently, and with
an equal enjoyment of the coming surprise, took a seat
beside her, was beautiful to witness. It elicited from
her at first, as other slight circumstances did twice or
thrice during my visit, an uncouth noise which was
rather painful to hear. But on her teacher touching
her lips, she immediately desisted, and embraced her
laughingly and affectionately.
I had previously been into another chamber, where a
number of blind boys were swinging, and climbing, and
engaged in various sports. They all clamoured, as we
entered, to the assistant-master, who accompanied us,
“Look at me, Mr. Hart! Please, Mr. Hart, look at me!”
evincing, I thought even in this, an anxiety peculiar to
their condition, that their little feats of agility should
be seen. Among them was a small laughing fellow,
who stood aloof, entertaining himself with a gymnastic
exercise for bringing the arms and chest into play;
which he enjoyed mightily; especially when, in thrust-
ing out his right arm, he brought it into contact with
another boy. Like Laura Bridgman, this young child
was deaf, and dumb, and blind.
Dr. Howe's account of this pupil’s first instruction is
so very striking, and so intimately connected with
Laura herself, that I cannot refrain from a short ex-
tract. I may premise that the poor boy’s name is Oliver
Caswell; that he is thirteen years of age; and that he
was in full possession of all his faculties, until three years
and four months old. He was then attacked by scarlet
fever: in four weeks became deaf; in a few weeks more,
blind; in six months, dumb. He showed his anxious
sense of this last deprivation, by often feeling the lips
of other persons when they were talking, and then put-
ting his j upon his own, as if to assure himself that
he had them in the right position.
“His thirst for knowledge,” says Dr. Howe, “pro-
claimed itself as soon as he entered the house, by his
eager examination of everything he could feel or
236 • AMERICAN NOTES
smell in his new location. For instance, treading upon
the register of a furnace, he instantly stooped down,
and began to feel it, and soon discovered the way in
which the upper plate moved upon the lower one; but
this was not enough for him, so lying down upon his
face, he applied his tongue first to one then to the other,
and seemed to discover that they were of .iifferent kinds
of metal.
“His signs were expressive: and the strictly natural
language, laughing, crying, sighing, kissing, embracing,
etc., was perfect.
“Some of the analogical signs which (guided by his
faculty of imitation) he had contrived, were compre-
hensible; such as the waving motion of his hand for
the motion of a boat, the circular one for a wheel,
etc. -
“The first object was to break up the use of these
signs and to substitute for them the use of purely arbi-
trary ones. - *
“Profiting by the experience I had gained in the
other cases, I omitted several steps of the process be-
fore employed, and commenced at once with the finger
language. Taking therefore, several articles having
short names, such as key, cup, mug, etc., and with
Laura for an auxiliary, I sat down, and taking his hand,
placed it upon one of them, and then with my own, made
the letters k e y. He felt my hands eagerly with both
of his, and on my repeating the process, he evidently
tried to imitate the motions of my fingers. In a few
minutes he contrived to feel the motions of my fingers
with one hand, and holding out the other he tried to
imitate them, laughing most heartily when he suc-
ceeded. Laura was by, interested even to agitation;
and the two presented a singular sight: her face was
flushed and anxious, and her fingers twined in among
ours so closely as to follow every motion, but so lightly
as not to embarrass them; while Oliver stood attentive,
his head a little aside, his face turned up, his left hand
grasping mine, and his right held out: at every motion
of my fingers his countenance betokened keen atten-
tion; there was an expression of anxiety as he tried to
imitate the motions; then a smile came stealing out as
he thought he could do so, and spread into a joyous
laugh the moment he succeeded, and felt me pat his
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION, 237
head, and Laura clap him heartily upon the back, and
jump up and down in her joy. g
“He learned more than a half dozen letters in half
an hour, and seemed delighted with his success, at least
in gaining approbation. His attention then began to
flag, and I commenced playing with him. It was evi-
dent that in all this he had merely been imitating the
motions of my fingers, and placing his hand upon
the key, cup, etc., as part of the process, without
. perception of the relation between the sign and
object.
“When he was tired with play I took him back to the
table, and he was quite ready to begin again his process
of imitation. He soon learned to make the letters for
key, pen, pin; and by having the object repeatedly placed
in his hand, he at last perceived the relation I wished
to establish between them. This was evident, because
when I made the letters p i m, or p em, or c w p, he would
select the article.
“The perception of this relation was not accompanied
by that radiant flash of intelligence, and that glow of
joy, which marked the delightful moment when Laura
first perceived it. I then placed all the articles on the
table, and going away a little distance with the children,
placed Oliver's fingers in the positions to spell key, on
which Laura went and brought the article; the little fel-
low seemed to be much amused by this, and looked very
attentive and smiling. I then caused him to make the
Jetters b re a d, and in an instant Laura went and brought
him a piece; he smelled at it, put it to his lips; cocked
up his head with a most knowing look; seemed to reflect
a moment; and then laughed outright, as much as to
say, “Aha! I understand now how something may be
made out of this.’ -
“It was now clear that he had the capacity and in-
clination to learn, that he was a proper subject for in-
struction, and needed only persevering attention. I
therefore put him in the hands of an intelligent teacher,
nothing doubting of his rapid progress.”
Well may this gentleman call that a delightful moment
in which some distant promise of her present state first
gleamed upon the darkened mind of Laura Bridgman.
Throughout his life the recollection of that moment will
be to him a source of pure, unfading happiness; nor
238 AMERICAN NOTES
will it shine least brightly on the evening of his days of
Noble Usefulness. &
The affection that exists between these two—the mas-
ter and the pupil—is as far removed from all ordinary
care and regard as the circumstances in which it has
had its growth are apart from the common occurrences
of life. He is occupied now in devising means of im-
Fº: to her higher knowledge, and of conveying to
her some adequate idea of the Great Creator of that
universe in which, dark and silent and scentless though
it be to her, she has such deep delight and glad enjoy-
ment. -
Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear
not: ye who are as the hypocrites of sad countenances,
and disfigure your faces that ye may seem unto men to
fast; learn healthy cheerfulness, and mild contentment,
from the deaf, and dumb, and blind! Self-elected Saints
with gloomy brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless
child may teach you lessons you will do well to follow.
Let that poor hand of hers lie gently on your hearts;
for there may be something in its healing touch akin
to that of the Great Master whose precepts you miscon-
strue, whose lessons you pervert, of whose charity and
sympathy with all the world, not one among you in his
daily practice knows as much as many of the Worst
among those fallen sinners, to whom you are liberal in
nothing but the preachment of perdition!
As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of One
of the attendants came running in to greet its father.
For the moment, a child with eyes, among the sightless
crowd, impressed me almost as painfully as the blind
boy in the porch had done two hours ago. Ah! how
much brighter and more deeply blue, glowing and rich
though it had been before, was the scene without, Con-
º with the darkness of so many youthful lives
within!
At SOUTH BOSTON, as it is called, in a situation ex-
cellently adapted for the purpose, several charitable
institutions are clustered together. One of these, is the
State Hospital for the insane; admirably conducted
on those enlightened principles of conciliation and kind-
ness, which twenty years ago would have been worse
than heretical, and which have been acted upon with
TOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 23%)
so much success in our own pauper asylum at Hanwell.
“Evince a desire to show some confidence, and repose
some trust, even in mad people,”—said the resident
physician, as we walked along the galleries, his patients
flocking round us unrestrained. Of those who deny or
doubt the wisdom of this maxim after witnessing its
effects, if there be such people still alive, I can only
say that I hope I may never be summoned as a Jury-
man on a Commission of Lunacy whereof they are the
subjects; for I should certainly find them out of their
senses, on such evidence alone.
Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long
gallery" or hall, with the dormitories of the patients
opening from it on either hand. Here they work, read,
play at skittles, and other games; and when the weather
does not admit of their taking exercise out of doors,
pass the day together. In one of these rooms, seated,
calmly, and quite as a matter of course, among a
throng of madwomen, black and white, were the phy-
sician’s wife and another lady, with a couple of Šid:
These ladies were graceful and handsome; and it was
not difficult to perceive at a glance that even their pres-
ence there, had a highly benficial influence on the
patients who were grouped about them.
Leaning her head against the chimney-piece, with a
great assumption of dignity and refinement of manner,
sat an elderly female, in as many scraps of finery as
Madge Wildfire herself. Her head in particular was
so strewn with scraps of gauze and cotton and bits of
paper, and had so many queer odds and ends stuck
all about it, that it looked like a bird's-nest. She was
radiant with imaginary jewels; wore a rich pair of
undoubted gold spectacles ; and gracefully dropped
upon her lap, as we approached, a very old greasy news-
paper, in which I dare say she had been reading an ac-
count of her own presentation at some Foreign Court.
I have been thus particular in describing her, be-
cause she will serve to exemplify the physician’s
manner of acquiring and retaining the confidence of
his patients.
“This,” he said aloud, taking me by the hand, and
advancing to the fantastic figure with great politeness
—not raising her suspicions by the slightest look or
whisper, or any kind of aside, to me : “This lady is the
240 . - AMERICAN NOTES
hostess of this mansion, sir. It belongs to her. Nobody
else has anything whatever to do with it. It is a large
establishment, as you see, and requires a great number
of attendants. She lives, you observe, in the very first
style. She is kind enough to receive my visits, and to
permit my wife and family to reside here ; for which it
is hardly necessary to say, we are much indebted to her.
She is exceedingly courteous, you perceive,” on this hint
she bowed condescendingly, “ and will permit me to
have the pleasure of introducing you : a gentleman
from England, Ma’am : newly arrived from England,
after a very tempestuous passage : Mr. Dickens—the
lady of the house! {e
We exchanged the most dignified salutations with
profound gravity and respect, and so went on. The
rest of the madwomen seemed to understand the joke
perfectly (not only in this case, but in all the others,
except their own), and to be highly amused by it. The
nature of their several kinds of insanity was made
known to me in the same way, and we left each of
them in high good humour. Not only is a thorough
confidence established by these means, between physi-
ciam and patient, in respect of the nature and extent
of their hallucinations, but it is easy to understand that
opportunities are afforded for seizing any moment of
reason to startle them by placing their own delusion be-
fore them in its most incongruous and ridiculous light.
Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner
every day with a knife and fork ; and in the midst of
them sits the gentleman, whose manner of dealing with
his charges, I have just described. At every meal,
moral influence alone restrains the more violent among
them from cutting the throats of the rest ; but the
effect of that influence is reduced to an absolute cer-
tainty, and is found, even as a means of restraint, to say
nothing of it as a means of cure, a humidred times more
efficacious than all the strait-waistcoats, fetters, and
hand-cuffs, that ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have
manufactured since the creation of the world.
In the labour department, every patient is as freely
trusted with the tools of his trade as if he were a sane
man. In the garden, and on the farm, they work with
spades, rakes, and hoes. For amusement they walk,
run, fish, paint, read, and ride out to take the air in
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 241
carriages provided for the purpose. They have among
themselves a sewing society to make clothes for the
poor, which holds meetings, passes resolutions, never
comes to fisty cuffs or bowie-knives as sane assemblies
have been known to do elsewhere ; and conducts all its
proceedings with the greatest decorum. The irritabil-
ity, which would otherwise be expended on their own
flesh, clothes, and furniture, is dissipated in these pur-
suits. They are cheerful, tranquil, and healthy.
Once a week they have a ball, in which the Doctor
and his family, with all the nurses and attendants, take
an active part. Dances and marches are performed al-
ternately, to the enlivening strains of a piano; and
now and then some gentleman or lady (whose pro-
ficiency has been previously ascertained) obliges the
company with a song ; nor does it over degenerate, at
a tender crisis, into a screech or howl; wherein, I must
Confess, I should have thought the danger lay. At an
early hour they all meet together for these festive pur-
poses; at eight o'clock refreshments are served; and at
nine they separate.
Immense politeness and good-breeding are observed
throughout. They all take their tone from the Doctor;
and he moves a very Chesterfield among the company.
Like other assemblies, these entertainments afford a
fruitful topic of conversation among the ladies for some
days; and the gentlemen are so anxious to shine On
these occasions, that they have been sometimes found
“ practising their steps” in private, to cut a more dis-
tinguished figure in the dance. -
It is obvious that one great feature of this system, is
the inculcation and encouragement, even among Such
unhappy persons, of a decent self-respect. Something
of the same spirit pervades all the Institutions at South
Boston. -
There is the House of Industry. In that branch of it,
which is devoted to the reception of old or otherwise
helpless paupers, these words are painted on the walls :
“WoRTHY OF NOTICE. SELF-GOVERNMENT, QUIETUDE,
AND PEACE, ARE BLESSINGs.” It is not assumed and
taken for granted that being there they must be evil-
disposed and wicked people, before whose vicious eyes
it is necessary to flourish threats and harsh restraints.
They are met at the very threshold with this mild ap-
WOL. I. 16
242 - AMERICAN NOTES
peal. All within-doors is very plain and simple, as it
ought to be, but arranged with a view to peace and
comfort. It costs no more than any other plan of ar-
rangement, but it bespeaks an amount of consideration
for those who are reduced to seek a shelter there, which
puts them at once upon their gratitude, and good be-
haviour. Instead of being parcelled out in great, long,
rambling wards, where a certain amount of weazen
life may mope, and pine, and shiver, all day long, the
building is divided into separate rooms, each with its
share of light and air. In these, the better kind of
paupers live. They have a motive for exertion and be-
coming pride, in the desire to make these little chambers
comfortable and decent. I do not remember one but it
was clean and meat, and had its plant or two upon the
window-sill, or row of crockery upon the shelf, or
small display of coloured prints upon the white-washed
wall, or, perhaps, its wooden clock behind the door.
The orphans and young children are in an adjoining
building ; separate from this, but a part of the same
Institution. Some are such little creatures, that the
stairs are of lilliputian measurement, fitted to their tiny
strides. The same consideration for their years and
weakness is expressed in their very seats, which are
perfect curiosities, and look like articles of furniture
for a pauper doll's-house. I can imagine the glee of
our Poor Law Commissioners at the notion of these
seats having arms and backs; but small spines being
of older date than their occupation of the Board-room
at Somerset House, I thought even this provision very
merciful and kind.
Here again, I was greatly pleased with the inscrip-
tions on the wall, which were scraps of plain morality,
easily remembered and understood : such as “Love one
another”—“God remembers the smallest creature in his
creation: ” and straightforward advice of that nature.
The books and tasks of these smallest of scholars, were
adapted, in the same judicious manner, to their childish
powers. When we had examined these lessons, four
morsels of girls (of whom one was blind) sang a little
song, about the merry month of May, which I thought
(being extremely dismal) would have suited an English
November better. That done, we went to see their sleep-
ing-rooms on the floor above, in which the arrangements
{
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 243
were no less excellent and gentle than those we had
seen below. And after observing that the teachers were
of a class and character well suited to the spirit of the
place, I took leave of the infants with a lighter heart
than ever I have taken leave of pauper infants yet.
Connected with the House of Industry, there is also
an Hospital, which was in the best order, and had, I am
glad to say, many beds unoccupied. It had one fault,
however, which is common to all American interiors :
the presence of the eternal, accursed, suffocating, red-
hot demon of a stove, whose breath would blight the
purest air under Heaven.
There are two establishments for boys in this same
neighbourhood. One is called the Boylston school, and
is an asylum for neglected and indigent boys who have
committed no crime, but who in the ordinary course of
things would very soon be purged of that distinction if
they were not taken from the hungry streets and sent
here. The other is a House of Reformation for Juvenile
Offenders. They are both under the same roof, but the
two classes of boys never come in contact.
The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed, have
very much the advantage of the others in point of per-
Sonal appearance. They were in their school-room when
I came upon them, and answered correctly, without
book, such questions as where was England ; how far
was it ; what was its population; its capital city; its form
of government ; and so forth. They sang a song too,
about a farmer sowing his seed : with corresponding
action at such parts as “’tis thus he sows,” “he turns
him round,” “he claps his hands; ” which gave it greater
interest for them, and accustomed them to act together,
in an Orderly manner. They appeared exceedingly well
taught, and not better taught than fed ; for a more
chubby-jooking full-waistcoated set of boys I never saw.
The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant faces by
a great deal, and in this establishment there were many
boys of colour. I saw them first at their work (basket-
making, and the manufacture of palm-leaf hats), after-
wards in their school, where they sang a chorus in
praise of Liberty; an odd, and one would think, rather
aggravating, theme for prisoners. These boys were
divided into four classes, each denoted by a numeral,
worn on a badge upon the arm. On the arrival of a
244 AMERICAN NOTES
newcomer, he is put into the fourth or lowest class, and
left, by good behaviour, to work his way up into the
first. The design and object of this Institution is to re-
claim the youthful criminal by firm but kind and judi-
cious treatment ; to make his prison a place of purifica-
tion and improvement, not of demoralization and cor-
ruption; to impress upon him that there is but one path,
and that one sober industry, which can ever lead him
to happiness; to teach him how it may be trodden, if
his footsteps have never yet been led that way; and to
lure him back to it if they have strayed; in a word, to
Snatch him from destruction, and restore him to
society, a penitent and useful member. The importance
of such an establishment, in every point of view, and
with reference to every consideration of humanity and
Social policy, requires no comment.
One other establishment closes the catalogue. It is
the House of Correction for the State, in which silence
is strictly maintained, but where the prisoners have the
comfort and mental relief of seeing each other, and of
working together. This is the improved system of
Prison Discipline which we have imported into England,
and which has been in successful operation among us
for some years past.
America, as a new and not over-populated country,
has in all her prisons, the one great advantage, of being
enabled to find useful and profitable work for the in-
mates: whereas, with us, the prejudice against prison
labour is naturally very strong, and almost insurmount-
able, when honest men, who have not offended against
the laws, are frequently doomed to seek employment in
vain. Even in the United States, the principle of bring-
ing convict labour and free labour into a competition
which must obviously be to the disadvantage of the
latter, has already found many opponents, whose num-
ber is not likely to diminish with access of years.
For this very reason though, our best prisons would
seem at the first glance to be better conducted than
those of America. The treadmill is accompanied with
little or no noise; five hundred men may pick oakum
in the same room, without a sound; and both kinds of
labour admit of such keen and vigilant superintend-
ence, as will render even a word of personal communi-
cation among the prisoners almost impossible. On the
| |
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 245
other hand, the noise of the loom, the forge, the car-
penter's hammer, or the stone-mason's saw, greatly
favour those opportunities of intercourse—hurried and
brief no doubt, but opportunities still—which these
several kinds of work, by rendering it necessary for
men to be employed very near to each other, and often
side by side, without any barrier or partition between
them, in their very nature resent. A visitor, too, re-
quires to reason and reflect a little, before the sight of
a number of men engaged in ordinary labour, such as
he is accustomed to out of doors, will impress him half
as strongly as the contemplation of the same persons
in the same place and garb would, if they were occu-
pied in some task, marked and degraded everywhere
as belonging only to felons in jails. In an American
state prison or house of correction, I found it difficult
at first to persuade myself that I was really in a jail: a
place of ignominious punishment and endurance. And
to this hour I very much question whether the humane
boast that it is not like one, has its root in the true wis-
dom or philosophy of the matter.
I hope I may not be misunderstood on this subject,
for it is one in which I take a strong and deep interest.
I incline as little to the sickly feeling which makes
every canting lie or maudlin speech of a notorious
criminal a subject, of newspaper report and general
sympathy, as I do to those good old customs of the
good old times which made England, even so recently
as in the reign of the Third King George, in respect of
her criminal code and her prison regulations, one of
the most bloody-minded and barbarous countries on the
earth. If I thought it would do any good to the rising
generation, I would cheerfully give my consent to the
disinterment of the bones of any genteel highwayman
(the more genteel, the more cheerfully), and to their
exposure, piece-meal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet,
that might be deemed a good elevation for the purpose.
My reason is as well convinced that these gentry were
ºutterly worthless and debauched villains, as it is that
the laws and jails hardened them in their evil courses,
or that their wonderful escapes were effected by the
prison-turnkeys who, in those admirable days, had
always been felons themselves, and were, to the last,
their bosom-friends and pot-companions. At the same
246 AMERICAN NOTES
time I know, as all men do or should, that the subject
of Prison Discipline is one of the highest importance to
any community; and that in her sweeping reform and
bright example to other countries on this head,
America has shown great wisdom, great benevolence
and exalted policy. In contrasting her system with
that which we have modelled upon it, Imerely seek to
show that with all its drawbacks, ours has some ad-
vantages of its own.”
The House of Correction which has lead to these re-
marks, is not walled, like other prisons, but is palisaded
round about with tall rough stakes, something after the
manner of an enclosure for keeping elephants in, as we
see it represented in Eastern prints and pictures. The
prisoners wear a parti-coloured dress; and those who
are sentenced to hard labour, work at nail-making or
stone-cutting. When I was there, the latter class of
labourers were employed upon the stone for a new cus-
tom-house in course of erection at Boston. They ap-
peared to shape it skilfully and with expedition, though
there were very few among them (if any) who had not
acquired the art within the prison gates.
The women, all in one large room, were employed in
making light clothing, for New Orleans and the South-
ern States. They did their work in silence, like the
men; and like them, were overlooked by the person
contracting for their labour, or by some agent of his
appointment. In addition to this, they are every mo-
ment liable to be visited by the prison officers ap-
pointed for that purpose.
The arrangements for cooking, washing of clothes,
and so forth, are much upon the plan of those I have
seen at home. Their mode of bestowing the prisoners
at night (which is of general adoption) differs from
ours, and is both simple and effective. In the centre
of a lofty area, lighted by windows in the four walls,
*Apart from profit made by tho useful labour of prisoners which we can nover
hopo to realise to any great extont, and Which it is perhaps not exped iont for
us to try to galn, thero aro two prisons in London, in all rospects colual, and in
some decidedly superior, to any I saw or have ever heard or read of in America.
One is the Totbill Fields Bridewell, conducted by Lieutenant A. F. Tracey, R. N., 1bo
othor the Middlesex House of Correction, superintendod by Mr. Chesterton. This
gentleman also holds an appointmont in tho Public Servico. Both are enlightoned
and superior men ; and it would be as difficult to ſind persons bottor qualiſied for
the functions they discharge With ſirmness, zeal, intelligence, and humanity, as
it would be to exceed the perfect order and arrangement of the institutions they
govern.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 24?
are five tiers of cells, one above the other; each tier
having before it a light iron gallery, attainable by stairs
of the same construction and material: excepting the
lower one, which is on the ground. Behind these, back
to back with them and facing the opposite wall, are five
corresponding rows of cells, accessible by similar
means: so that supposing the prisoners locked up in
their cells, an officer stationed on the ground, with his
back to the wall, has half their number under his eye at
once; the remaining half being equally under the ob-
servation of another officer on the opposite side: and all
in one great apartment. Unless this watch be cor-
rupted or sleeping on his post, it is impossible for a man
to escape; for even in the event of his forcing the iron door
of his cell without noise (which is exceedingly improb-
able), the moment he appears outside, and steps into
that one of the five galleries on which it is situated, he
must be plainly and fully visible to the officer below.
Each of these cells holds a small truckle-bed, in which
one prisoner sleeps; never more. It is small, of course:
and the door not being solid, but grated, and without
blind or curtain, the prisoner within is at all times ex-
posed to the observation and inspection of any guard
who may pass along that tier at any hour or minute of
the night. Every day, the prisoners receive their dim-
ner, singly, through a trap in the kitchen wall; and
each man carries his to his sleeping cell to eat it, where
he is locked up, alone, for that purpose, one hour. The
whole of this arrangement struck me as being ad-
mirable; and I hope that the next new prison we erect
in England may be built on this plan.
I was given to understand that in this prison no
swords or fire-arms, or even cudgels, are kept; nor is it
probable that, so long as its present excellent manage-
ment continues, any weapons, offensive or defénsive,
will ever be required within its bounds.
Such are the Institutions at South Boston! In all of
them, the unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the
State are carefully instructed in their duties both to
God and man; are surrounded by all reasonable means
of comfort and happiness that their condition will ad-
mit of; are appealed to as members of the great human
family, however afflicted, indigent, or fallen; are ruled
by the strong Heart, and not by the strong (though im-
l
248 AMERICAN NOTES
measurably weaker) Hand. I have described them at
Some length: firstly, because their worth demanded it;
and secondly, because I mean to take them for a model,
and to content myself with saying of others we may
come to, whose design and purpose are the same, that
in this or that respect they practically fail, or differ.
I wish by this account of them, imperfect in its exe-
cution, but, in its just intention, honest, I could hope to
convey to my readers one hundreth part of the gratifi-
cation, the sights I have described afforded me.
To an Englishman, accustomed to the paraphernalia
of Westminster Hall, an American Court of Law is as
Odd a sight as, I suppose, an English Court of Law
would be to an American. Except in the Supreme Court
at Washington (where the judges wear a plain black
robe), there is no such thing as a wig or gown connected
with the administration of justice. The gentlemen of the
bar being barristers and attorneys too (for there is no
division of those functions as in England) are no more
removed from their clients than attorneys in our Court
for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors are from theirs.
The jury are quite at home, and make themselves as
comfortable as circumstances will permit. The witness
is so little elevated above, or put aloof from, the crowd
in the court, that a stranger entering during a pause in
the proceedings would find it difficult to pick him out
from the rest. And if it chanced to be a criminal trial,
his eyes, in nine cases out of ten, would wander to the
dock in search of the prisoner in vain; for that gentle-
man would most likely be lounging almong the most
distinguished ornaments of the legal profession, whis-
Dering suggestions in his counsel's ear, or making a
toothpick out of an old quill with his penknife.
I could not but notice these differences when I visited
the Courts at Boston. I was much surprised at first, too,
to observe that the counsel who interrogated the wit-
ness under examination at the time did so sitting. But
seeing that he was also occupied in writing down the
answers, and remembering that he was alone and had
no “junior,” I quickly consoled myself with the reflec-
tion that law was not quite so expensive ar, article here
as at home; and that the absence of sundry formalities
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 249
which we regard as indispensable, had doubtless a very
favourable influence upon the bill of costs.
In every court ample and commodious provision is
made for the accommodation of the citizens. This is
the case all through America. In every Public Insti-
tution, the right of the people to attend, and to have an
interest in the proceedings, is most fully and distinctly
recognised. There are no grim door-keepers to dole out
their tardy civility by the sixpennyworth; nor is there,
I sincerely believe, any insolence of office of any kind.
Nothing national is exhibited for money; and no public
officer is a showman. We have begun of late years to
imitate this good example. I hope we shall continue to
do so; and that, in the fulness of time, even deans and
chapters may be converted.
In the civil court an action was trying for damages
sustained in some accident upon a railway. The wit-
nesses had been examined, and counsel was addressing
the jury. The learned gentleman (like a few of his
English brethren) was desperately long-winded, and
had a remarkable capacity of saying the same thing
over and over again. His great theme was “Warren
the éngine driver,” whom he pressed into the service of
every sentence he uttered. I listened to him for about
a quarter of an hour; and, coming out of court at the
expiration of that time, without the faintest ray of
enlightenment as to the merits of the case, felt as if I
were at home again.
In the prisoners’ cell, waiting to be examined by the
magistrate on a charge of theft, was a boy. This lad,
instead of being committed to a common jail, would be
sent to the asylum at South Boston, and there taught a
trade; and in the course of time he would be bound
apprentice to some respectable master. Thus detection
in this offence, instead of being the prelude to a life of
infamy and a miserable death, would lead, there was a
reasonable hope, to his being reclaimed from vice, and
becoming a worthy member of society.
I am by no means a wholesale admirer of our legal
solemnities, many of which impress me as being ex-
ceedingly ludicrous. Strange as it may seem, too, there
is undoubtedly a degree of protection in the wig and
gown—a dismissal of individual responsibility in dress-
ing for the part—which encourages that insolent bear-
250 AMERICAN NOTES
ing and language, and that gross perversion of the Office
of a pleader for The Truth, so frequent in our courts of
law. Still, I cannot help doubting whether America,
in her desire to shake off the absurdities and abuses of
the old system, may not have gone too far into the Op-
posite extreme; and whether it is not desirable, espe-
cially in the small community of a city like this, where
each man knows the other, to surround the administra-
tion of justice with some artificial barriers against the
“Hail fellow, well met ’ deportment of everyday life.
All the aid it can have in the very high character and
ability of the Bench, not only here but elsewhere, it
has, and well deserves to have; but it may need some-
thing more; not to impress the thoughtful and well-in-
formed, but the ignorant and heedless; a class which
includes some prisoners and many witnesses. These
institutions were established, no doubt, upon the prin-
ciple that those who had so large a share in making the
laws, would certainly respect them. But experience
has proved this hope to be fallacious; for no men know
better than the judges of America that on the occasion
of any great popular excitement the law is powerless,
and cannot, for a time, assert its Own Supremacy.
The tone of society in Boston is one of perfect polite-
ness, courtesy, and good breeding. The ladies are un-
questionably very beautiful—in face; but there I am
compelled to stop. Their education is much as with us;
neither better nor worse. I had heard some very mar-
veilous stories in this respect; but not believing them,
was not disappointed. Blue ladies there are in Boston;
but like philosophers of that colour and sex in most
other latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior
than to be so. Evangelical ladies there are, likewise,
whose attachment to the forms of religion, and horror
of theatrical entertainments, are most exemplary. La-
dies who have a passion for attending lectures are to be
found among all classes and all conditions. In the kind
of provincial life which prevails in cities such as this,
the Pulpit has great influence. The peculiar province
of the Pulpit in New England (always excepting the
Unitarian ministry) would appear to be the denounce-
ment of all innocent and rational amusements. The
church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, are the only
means of excitement excepted; and to the church, the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 251
chapel, and the lecture-room, the ladies resort in crowds.
Wherever religion is resorted to, as a strong drink,
and as an escape from the dull monotonous round of
home, those of its ministers who pepper the highest will
be the surest to please. They who strew the Eternal
Path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and who
most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and leaves that
grow by the way-side, will be voted the most righteous;
and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity on
the difficulty of getting into heaven, will be considered
by all true believers certain of going there : though it
would be hard to say by what process of reasoning this
conclusion is arrived at. It is so at home, and it is SO
abroad. With regard to the other means of excitement,
the Lecture, it has at least the merit of being always
new. One lecture treads so quickly on the heels of an-
other, that none are remembered ; and the course of
this month may be safely repeated next, with its charm
of novelty unbroken, and its interest unabated.
The fruits of the earth have their growth in corrup-
tion. Out of the rottenness of these things, there has
sprung up in Boston a sect of philosophers known as
Transcendentalists. On inquiring what this appellation
might be supposed to signify, I was given to understand
that whatever was unintelligible would be certainly
transcendental. Not deriving much comfort from this
elucidation, I pursued the inquiry still further, and found
that the Transcendentalists are followers of my friend
Mr. Carlyle, or I should rather say, of a follower of his,
Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has writ-
ten a volume of Essays, in which, among much that is
dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying
so) there is much more that is true and manly, honest
and bold. Transcendentalism has its occasional va-
garies (what school has not *) but it has good healthful
qualities in spite of them ; not least among the number
a hearty disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to detect her
in all the million varieties of her everlasting wardrobe.
And therefore if I were a Bostonian, I think I would be
a Transcendentălist. " . . . . . . . s
The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor,
who addresses himself peculiarly to seamen, and who
was once a mariner himself. I found his chapel down
among the shipping, in one of the narrow, old, water-
252 AMERICAN NOTES
side streets, with a gay blue flag waving freely from
its roof. In the gallery opposite to the pulpit were a
little choir of male and female singers, a violoncello, and
a violin. The preacher already sat in the pulpit, which
was raised on pillars, and ornamented behind him with
painted drapery of a lively and somewhat theatrical
appearance. He looked a weather-beaten hard-featured
Imam, of about six or eight arid fifty ; with deep lines
graven as it were into his face, dark hair, and a stern,
keen eye. Yet the general character of his counte-
nance was pleasant and agreeable.
The service commenced with a hymn, to which suc-
ceeded an extemporary prayer. It had the fault of fre-
quent repetition, incidental to all such prayers; but it
was plain and comprehensive in its doctrines, and
breathed a tone of general sympathy and charity, which
is not so commonly a characteristic of this form of ad-
dress to the Deity as it might be. That done he opened
his discourse, taking for his text a passage from the
Song of Solomon, laid upon the desk before the com-
mencement of the service by some unknown member
of the congregation : “Who is this coming up from the
wilderness, leaning on the arm of her beloved l’
He handled his text in all kinds of ways, and twisted
it into all manner of shapes ; but always ingeniously,
and with a rude eloquence, well adapted to the compre-
hension of his hearers. Indeed if I be not mistaken, he
studies their sympathies and understandings much more
than the display of his own powers. His imagery was
all drawn from the sea, and from the incidents of a sea-
man’s life ; and was often remarkably good. He spoke
to them of ‘‘ that glorious man, Lord Nelson,” and of
Collingwood; and drew nothing in, as the saying is, by
the head and shoulders, but brought it to bear upon his
purpose, naturally and with a sharp mind to its effect.
Sometimes, when much excited with his subject, he had
an odd way—compounded of John Bunyan, and Balfour
of Burley——of taking his great quarto bible under his
arm and pacing up and down the pulpit with it ; look-
ing steadily down, meantime, into the midst of the con-
gregation. Thus, when he applied his text to the first
assemblage of his hearers, and pictured the wonder of
the church at their presumption in forming a congre-
gation among themselves, he stopped short with his
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 253
bible under his arm in the manner I have described, and
pursued his discourse after this manner. -
“Who are these—who are they–who are these fel-
lows?—where do they come from? Where are they
going to?—Come from ' What's the answer?”—leaning
out of the pulpit, and pointing downward with his right
hand: “From below !”—starting back again, and look-
ing at the sailors before him: “From below, my breth-
ren. From under the hatches of sin, battened down
above you by the evil one. That’s where you came
from!”—a walk up and down the pulpit: ‘‘ and where
are you going ”—stopping abruptly : “where are you
going? . Aloft!”—very softly, and pointing upward:
‘‘ Aloft l”—louder: ‘‘ aloft| *—louder still: “That’s where
you are going—with a fair wind,-all taut and trim,
steering direct for Heaven in its glory, where there are
no storms or foul weather, and Where the wicked cease
from troubling and the weary are at rest.”—Another
walk: “That's where you’re going to, my friends.
That’s it. That’s the place. That’s the port. That’s
the haven. It’s a blessed harbour—still water there, in
all changes of the winds and tides; no driving ashore
upon the rocks, or slipping your cables and running out
to sea, there: Peace—Peace—Peace—all peace!” An-
Other walk, and patting the bible under his left arm:
“What! These fellows are coming from the wilderness,
are they? Yes. From the dreary, blighted wilderness
of Iniquity, whose only crop is Death. But do they lean
upon anything—do they lean upon nothing, these poor
seamen?”—Three raps upon the bible: “Oh yes.—Yes.
They lean upon the arm of their Beloved ”—three more
raps: ‘‘ upon the arm of their Beloved ”—three more
and a walk: “Pilot, guiding-star, and compass, all in
one, to all hands—here it is "-three more: “Here it is.
They can do their seaman’s duty manfully, and be easy
in their minds in the utmost peril and danger, with
this ’—two more: “ They can come, even these poor fel-
lows can come, from the wilderness, leaning on the arm
of their Beloved, and go up—up—up!” raising his hand
higher and higher, at every repetition of the word, so
that he stood with it at last stretched above his head,
regarding them in a strange, rapt manner, and pressing
the book triumphantly to his breast, until he gradually
Subsided into some other portion of his discourse,
254 AMERICAN NOTES
I have cited this, rather as an instance of the preach-
er's eccentricities than his merits, though taken in con-
mection with his look and manner, and the character of
his audience, even this was striking. It is possible,
however, that my favourable impression of him may
have been greatly influenced and strenghtened, firstly,
by his impressing upon his hearers that the true observ-
ance of religion was not inconsistent with a cheerful
deportment and an exact discharge of the duties of
their station, which, indeed, it scrupulously required of
them; and secondly, by his cautioning them not to set
up any monopoly in Paradise and its mercies. I never
heard these two points so wisely touched (if indeed I
have ever heard them touched at all), by any preacher
of that kind, before.
Having passed the time I spent in Boston, in making
myself acquainted with these things, in settling the
course I should take in my future travels, and in mixing
constantly with its society, I am not aware that I have
any occasion to prolong this chapter. Such of its social
customs as I have not mentioned, however, may be told
in a very few words.
The usual dinner-hour is two o'clock. A dinner-
party takes place at five; and at an evening party, they
seldom sup later than eleven; so that it goes hard but
one gets home, even from a rout by midnight. Inever
could find out any difference between a party at Boston
and a party in London, saving that at the former place
all assemblies are held at more rational hours; that the
conversation may possibly be a little louder and more
cheerful; that a guest is usually expected to ascend to
the very top of the house to take his cloak off; that he
is certain to see, at every dinner, and unusual amount
of poultry on the table; and at every supper, at least two
mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one of
which a half-grown Duke of Clarence might be
smothered easily.
There are two theatres in Boston, of good size and
constuction, but Sadly in want of patronage. The few
ladiès who resort to them, sit, as of right, in the front
rows of the boxes.
The bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there
people stand and Smoke, and loungo about, all the even-
ing: dropping in and Out as the humour takes them.
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 255
There too the stfanger is initiated into the mysteries of
Gin-sling, Cocktail, Sangaree, Mint Julep, Sherry-cob-
bler, Timber Doodle, and other rare drinks. The House
is full of boarders, both married and single, many of
whom sleep upon the premises, and contract by the
week for their board and lodging: the charge for which
diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost. A pub-
lic table is laid in a very handsome hall for breakfast,
and for dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down
together to these meals will vary in number from one
to two hundred: sometimes more. The advent of each
of these epochs in the day is proclaimed by an awful
gong, which shakes the very window frames as it re-
verberates through the house, and horribly disturbs
nervous foreigners. There is an ordinary for ladies,
and an ordinary for gentlemen. f
In our private room the cloth could not, for any
earthly consideration, have been laid for dinner with-
out a huge glass dish of cranberries in the middle of the
table; and breakfast would have been no breakfast un-
lesºthe principal dish were a deformed beefsteak with
a great #. bone in the centre, swimming in hot butter,
and sprinkled with the very blackest of all possible pep-
per. Our bedroom was spacious and airy, but (like every
bedroom on this side of the Atlantic) very bare of fur-
niture, having no curtains to the French bedstead or to
the window. It had one unusual luxury, however, in
the shape of a wardrobe of painted wood, something
smaller than an English watch-box: Or if this compari-
son should be insufficient to convey a just idea of its
dimensions, they may be estimated from the fact of my
having lived for fourteen days and nights in the firm
belief that it was a shower-bath.
256 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER IV.
AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY
SYSTEM.
Bº leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an
excursion to Lowell. I assign a separate chapter
to this visit; not because I am about to describe it at .
any great length, but because I remember it as a thing
by itself, and alm desirous that my readers should do
the same. r
I made acquaintance with an American railroad, on
this occasion, for the first time. As these works *re
pretty much alike all through the States, their general
characteristics are easily described.
There are no first and second class carriages as with
us; but there is a gentleman’s car and a ladies’ car;
the main distinction between which is that in the first,
everybody Smokes; and in the second, nobody does.
As a black man never travels with a white one, there
is also a negro car; which is a great blundering clumsy
chest, such as Gulliver put to sea in, from the kingdom
of Brobdingmag. There is a great deal of jolting, a
great deal of noise, a great deal of wall, not much
window, a locomotive engine, a shriek, and a bell.
The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger hold-
ing thirty, forty, fifty, people. The seats, instead of
stretching from end to end, are placed crosswise. Each
seat holds two persons. There is a long row of them on
each side of the caravan, a narrow passage up the mid-
dle, and a door at both ends. In the centre of the car-
riage there is usually a stove, fed with charcoal Or an-
thracite coal ; which is for the most part red-hot. It is
insufferably close; and you see the hot air fluttering
between yourself and any other object you may happen
to look at, like the ghost of Smoke,
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FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 257
In the ladies' car, there are a great many gentlemen
who have ladies with them. There are also a great
many ladies who have nobody with them: for any lady
may travel alone, from one end of the United States to
the other, and be certain of the most courteous and
considerate treatment everywhere. The conductor or
check-taker, or guard, or whatever he may be, wears
no uniform. He walks up and down the car, and in
and Out of it, as his fancy dictates; leans against the
door with his hands in his pockets and stares at you, if
you chance to be a stranger; or enters into conversa-
tion with the passengers about him. A great many
Inewspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read.
Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else who hits his
fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects that that
railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you
say ‘‘No,” he says “Yes P” (interrogatively), and asks
in what respect they differ. You enumerate the heads
of difference, one by one, and he says “Yes P” (still
interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses that you
don’t travel faster in England; and on your replying
that you do, says “Yes” again (still interrogatively),
and, it is quite evident, don’t believe it. After a long
pause he remarks, partly to you, and partly to the knob
on the top of his stick, that “Yankees are reckoned to
be considerable of a go-ahead people too ; ” upon which
gow say “Yes,” and then he says “Yes” again (affirma-
tively this time); and upon your looking out of win-
dow, tells you that behind that hill, and some three
miles from the next station, there is a clever town in a
Smarf lo-ca-tion, where he expects you have con-cluded
to stop. Your answer in the negative naturally leads
to more questions in reference to your intended route
(always pronounced rout); and wherever you are going,
you invariably learn that you can’t get there without
immense difficulty and danger, and that all the great
sights are somewhere else.
If a lady takes a fancy to any male passenger's seat,
the gentleman who accompanies her gives him notice
of the fact, and he immediately vacates it with great
politeness. Politics are much discussed, so are banks,
So is cotton. Quiet people avoid the question of the
Presidency, for there will be a new election in three
years and a half, and party feeling runs very high : the
WOL. I. ſº 17
258 AMERICAN NOTES
great constitutional feature of this institution being,
that directly the acrimony of the last election is over,
the acrimony of the next one begins ; which is an un-
speakable comfort to all strong politicians, and true
lovers of their country : that is to say, to ninety-nine
men and boys out of every ninety-nine and a quarter.
Except when a branch road joins the main one, there
is seldom more than One track of rails; SO that the road
is very narrow, and the view, where there is a deep
cutting, by no means extensive. When there is not,
the character of the scenery is always the same. Mile
after mile of stunted trees : some hewn down by the
axe, some blown down by the wind, some half fallen
and resting on their neighbours, many mere logs half
hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to spongy
chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute
fragments such as these ; each pool of stagnant water
has its crust of vegetable rottenness ; on every side
there are the boughs, and trunks, and stumps of trees,
in every possible stage of decay, decomposition, and
neglect. Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on
an open country, glittering with some bright lake or
pool, broad as many an English river, but so Small here
that it scarcely has a name ; now catch hasty glimpses
of a distant town, with its clean white houses and their
cool piazzas, its prim New England church and school-
house ; when whir-r-r-r almost before you have seen
them, comes the same dark screen : the stunted trees,
the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water—all so like the
last that you seem to have been transported back again
by magic. e
The train calls at stations in the woods, where the
wild impossibility of anybody having the smallest
reason to get Out, is only to be equalled by the appar-
rently desperate hopelessness of there being anybody
to get in. In rushes across the turnpike road, where
there is no gate, no policeman, no signal : nothing but
a rough wooden arch, on which is painted “WHEN THE
BELL RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE.” On it
Whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, em-
erges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles
upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge
which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, sud-
denly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 254)
Street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-
mell, neck or nothing, down the middle of the road.
There—with mechanics working at their trades, and
people leaning from their doors and windows, and boys
flying kites and playing marbles, and men Smoking,
and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs
burrowing, and unaccustomed horses plunging and
rearing, close to the very rails—there—on, on, on—tears
the mad dragon of an engine with its train of cars ;
scattering in all directions a shower of burning sparks
from its wood fire ; screeching, hissing, yelling, pant-
ing ; until at last the thirsty monster stops beneath a
covered way to drink, the people cluster round, and you
have time to breathe again. -
I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman
intimately connected with the management of the fac-
tories there; and gladly putting myself under his guid-
ance, drove off at once to that quarter of the town in
which the works, the object of my visit, were situated.
Aelthough only just of age—for if my recollection serve
me, it has been a manufacturing town barely one-and-
twenty years—Lowell is a large, populous, thriving
place. Those indications of its youth which first attract
the eye, give it a quaintness and Oddity of character
which, to a visitor from the old country, is amusing
enough. It was a very dirty winter’s day, and nothing
in the whole town looked old to me, except the mud,
which in some parts was almost knee-deep, and might
have been deposited there, on the subsiding of the
waters after the Deluge. In one place, there was a new
Wooden church, which, having no steeple, and being
yet unpainted, looked like an enormous packing-case
without any direction upon it. In another there was a
large hotel, whose walls and colonnades were so crisp,
and thin, and slight, that it had exactly the appearance
of being built with cards. I was careful not to draw my
breath as we passed, and trembled when I saw a work-
man come out upon the roof, lest with one thoughtless
stamp of his foot he should crush the structure beneath
him, and bring it rattling down. The very river that
moves the machinery in the mills (for they are all work-
ed by water power), seems to acquire a new character
from the fresh buildings of bright red brick and painted
Wood among which it takes its course; and to be as
260 AMERICAN NOTES
light-headed, thoughtless, and brisk a young river, in
its murmurings and tumblings, as one would desire to
see. One would swear that every “Bakery,” “Gro-
cery,” and “ Bookbindery,” and other kind of store,
took its shutters down for the first time, and started in
business yesterday. The golden pestles and mortars
fixed as signs upon the sun-blind frames Outside the
Druggists', appear to have been just turned out of the
United States' Mint ; and when I saw a baby of some
week or ten days old in a woman’s arms at a street cor-
ner, I found myself unconsciously wondering where it
came from : never supposing for an instant, that it could
have been born in such a young town as that.
There are several factories in Lowell, each of which
belongs to what we should term a Company of Proprie-
tors, but what they call in America a Corporation. I
went over several of these; such as a woolen factory, a
carpet factory, and a cottom factory: examined them in
every part; and saw them in their ordinary working as-
}. with no preparation of any kind, Or departure
rom their ordinary every-day proceedings. I may add
that I am well acquainted with our manufacturing
towns in England, and have visited many mills in Man-
chester and elsewhere in the same manner.
I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the
dinner hour was over, and the girls were returning to
their work; indeed the stairs of the mill were thronged
with them as I ascended. They were all well-dressed,
but not to my thinking above their condition: for I like
to see the humbler classes of society careful of their
dress and appearance, and even, if they please, decor-
ated with such little trinkets as come within the com-
pass of their means. Supposing it confined within rea-
sonable limits, I would always encourage this kind of
yride, as a worthy element of Self-respect, in any person
employed; and should no more be deterred from doing
so, because some wretched female referred her fall to a
love of dress, than I would allow my construction of
the real intent and meaning of the Sabbath to be influ-
enced by any warning to the well-disposed, founded on
his backslidings on that particular day, which might
emanate from the rather doubtful authority of a mur-
derer in Newgate.
These girls, as I have said, were all well-dressed: and
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 261
*
that phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness.
They had serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks and
shawls; and were not above clogs and pattens. More-
over, there were places in the mill in which they could
deposit these things without injury; and there were
conveniences for washing. They were healthy in ap-
pearance, many of them remarkably so, and had the
manners and deportment of young women: not of de-
graded brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of those
mills (but I did not, though I looked for something of
this kind with a sharp eye), the most lisping, mincing,
affected, and ridiculous young creature that my imagi-
nation could suggest, I should have thought of the care-
less, moping, slatternly, degraded, dull reverse (I have
seen that), and should have been still well pleased to
look upon her.
The rooms in which they worked, were as well or-
dered as themselves. In the windows of some, there
were green plants, which were trained to shade the
glass; in all, there was as much fresh air, cleanliness,
and comfort, as the nature of the occupation would pos-
sibly admit of. Out of so large a number of females,
many of whom were only then just verging upon
womanhood, it may be reasonably supposed that some
were delicate and fragile in appearance : no doubt
there were. But I solemnly declare, that from all the
crowd I saw in the different factories that day, I cannot
recall or separate one young face that gave me a painful
impression; not one young girl whom, assuming it to
be matter of necessity that she should gain her daily
bread by the labour of her hands, I would have re-
moved from those works if I had had the power.
They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand.
The owners of the mills are particularly careful to allow
no persons to enter upon the possession of these houses,
whose characters have not undergone the most search-
ing and thorough inquiry. Any complaint that is made
against them, by the boarders, or by any one else, is
fully investigated; and if good ground of complaint be
shown to exist against them, they are removed, and
their occupation is handed over to some more deserving
person. There are a few children employed in these
factories, but not many. The laws of the State forbid
their working more than nine months in the year, and
262 AMERICAN NOTES
require that they be educated during the other three.
For this purpose there are schools in Lowell; and there
are churches and chapels of various persuasions, in
which the young women may observe that form of
worship in which they have been educated.
At some distance from the factories, and on the
highest and pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood,
stands their hospital, or boarding-house for the sick : it
is the best ‘house in those parts, and was built by an
eminent merchant for his own residence. Dike that
institution at Boston, which I have before described, it
is not parcelled out into wards, but is divided into con-
venient chambers, each of which has all the comforts of
a very comfortable home. The principal medical at-
tendant resides under the same roof; and were the
atients members of his own family, they could not be
etter cared for, or attended with greater gentleness
and consideration. The weekly charge in this estab-
lishment for each female patient is three dollars, or
twelve shillings English; but no girl employed by any
of the corporations is ever excluded for want of the
means of payment. That they do not very often
want the means, may be gathered from the fact,
that in July, 1841, no fewer than nine hundred and
seventy-eight of these girls were depositors in the
Lowell Savings Bank : the amount of whose joint
savings was estimated at one hundred thousand dol-
lars, or twenty thousand English pounds.
I am now going to state three facts which will startle
a large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very
much. -
Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of
the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young
ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they
have got up among themselves a periodical called THE
LOWELL OFFERING, ‘‘A repository of original articles,
written exclusively by females actively employed in the
mills,”—which is duly printed, published and sold; and
whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good
solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end.
The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will
exclaim with one voice, “How very preposterous!”
On my deferentially inquiring why, they will answer,
“These things are above their station.” In reply to
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 263
that objection, I would beg to ask what their stat-
1Oil 18.
It is their station to work. And they do work. They
labour in these mills, upon an average, twelve hours a
day, which is unquestionably work, and pretty tight
work too. Perhaps it is above their station to indulge
in such amusements, on any terms. Are we quite sure
that we in England have not formed our ideas of the
“station” of working people from accustoming our-
selves to the contemplation of that class as they are,
and not as they might be? I think that if we examine
our own feelings we shall find that the pianos, and the
circulating libraries, and even the Lowell Offering, star-
tle us by their novelty, and not by their bearing upon
any abstract question of right Or wrong.
For myself, I know no station in which, the occupa-
tion of to-day cheerfully done and the Occupation of
to-morrow cheerfully looked to, any one of these pur-
suits is not most humanising and laudable. I know no
station which is rendered more endurable to the person
in it, or more safe to the person out of it, by having
ignorance for its associate. I know no station which has
the right to monopolise the means of mutual instruction,
improvement, and rational entertainment; or which has
ever continued to be a station very long, after seeking
to do so. te
Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary
production, I will only observe, putting entirely out of
sight the fact of the articles having been written by
these girls after the arduous labours of the day, that it
will compare advantageously with a great many Eng-
lish Annuals. It is pleasant to find that many of its
Tales are of the Mills and of those who work in them;
that they inculcate habits of self-denial and contentment,
and teach good doctrines of enlarged benevolence. A
strong feeling for the beauties of nature, as displayed
in the solitudes the writers have left at home, breathes
through its pages like wholesome village air; and though
a circulating library is a favourable school for the study
of such topics, it has very scant allusion to fine clothes,
fine marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some persons
might object to the papers being signed Occasionally
With rather fine names, but this is an American fashion.
One of the provinces of the state legislature of Massa-
264 AMERICAN NOTES
chusetts is to alter ugly names into pretty Ones, as the
children improve upon the tastes of their parents.
These changes costing little or nothing, scores of Mary
- Annes are solemnly converted into Bevelinas every
session.
It is said that on the occasion of a visit from General
Jackson or General Harrison to this town (I forget
which, but it is not to the purpose), he walked through
three miles and a half of these young ladies all dressed
out with parasols and silk stockings, But as I am not
aware that any worse consequence ensued, than a
sudden looking-up of all the parasols and silk Stockings
in the market; and perhaps the Bankruptcy of some
speculative New Englander who bought them all up at
any price, in expectation of a demand that never came,
I set no great store by the circumstance.
In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate ex-
pression of the gratification it yielded me, and cannot
fail to afford to any foreigner to whom the condition of
such people at home is a subject of interest and anxious
speculation, I have carefully abstained from drawing a
comparison between these factories and those of our
own land. Many of the circumstances whose strong
influence has been at work for years in Our manufac-
turing towns have not arisen here; and there is no
manufacturing Pºlº in Lowell, so to speak: for
these girls (often the daughters of small farmers) come
from other States, remain a few years in the mills and
then go home for good.
The contrast would be a strong one, for it would be
between the Good and Evil, the living light and deepest
shadow. I abstain from it, because I deem it just to do
so. But I only the more earnestly adjure all those whose
eyes may rest on these pages, to pause and reflect upon
the difference between this town and those great haunts
of desperate misery: to call to mind, if they can in the
midst of party strife and squabble, the efforts that must
be made to purge them of their suffering and danger:
and last, and foremost, to remember how the precious
Time is rushing by.
I returned at night by the same railroad and in the
same kind of car. One of the passengers being exceed-
ingly anxious to expound at great length to my corn-
panion (not to me, of course) the true principles on
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 265
which books of travel in America should be written by
Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep. But glancing all
the way out at window from the corners of my eyes, I
found abundance of entertainment for the rest of the
ride in watching the effects of the wood fire, which had
been invisible in the morning but were now brought out
in full relief by the darkness: for we were travelling in
a whirlwind of bright sparks, which showered about us
like a storm of fiery snow.
266 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER V.
WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER HARTFORD. NEW
IHAVEN TO NEW YORK.
EAVING Boston on the afternoon of Saturday the
fifth of February, we proceeded by another railroad
to Worcester : a pretty New England town, where we
had arranged to remain under the hospitable roof of the
Governor of the State, until Monday morning.
These towns and cities of New England (many of
which would be villages in Old England), are as favour-
able specimens of rural America, as their people are of
rural Americans. The well-trimmed lawns and green
meadows of home are not there ; and the grass, com-
pared with our ornamental plots and pastures, is rank,
and rough, and wild; but delicate slopes of land, gently-
swelling hills, wooded valleys, and slender streams,
abound. Every little colony of houses has its church
and school-house peeping from among the white roofs
and shady trees; every house is the whitest of the
white ; every Venetian blind the greenest of the green ;
every fine day’s sky the bluest of the blue. A sharp
dry wind and a slight frost had so hardened the roads
when we alighted at Worcester, that their furrowed
tracks were like ridges of granite. There was the usual
aspect of newness on every object, of course. All the
buildings looked as if they had been built and painted
that morning, and could be taken down on Monday
with very little trouble. In the keen evening air, every
sharp outline looked a hundredtimes sharper than ever.
The clean card-board colonnades had no more perspec-
tive than a Chinese bridge on a tea-cup, and appeared
equally well calculated for use. The razor-like edges
of the detached cottages seemed to cut the very wind as
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 267
it whistled against them, and to send it smarting On its
way with a shriller cry than before. Those slightly-
built wooden dwellings behind which the Sun was set-
ting with a brilliant lustre, could be so looked through
and through, that the idea of any inhabitant being able
to hide himself from the public gaze, or to have any
secrets from the public eye, was not entertainable for a
moment. Even where a blazing fire shone through the
uncurtained windows of some distant house, it had the
air of being newly-lighted, and of lacking warmth ; and
instead of awakening thoughts of a snug chamber,
bright with faces that first saw the light round that
same hearth, and ruddy with warm hangings, it came
upon one suggestive of the Smell of new mortar and
damp walls.
So I thought, at least, that evening. Next morning
when the sun was shining brightly, and the clear
church bells were ringing, and sedate people in their
best clothes enlivened the pathway near at hand and
dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant
Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good
to feel. It would have been the better for an old
church; better still for some old graves; but as it was, a
wholesome repose and tranquillity pervaded the scene,
which after the restless ocean and the hurried city, had
a doubly grateful influence on the spirits.
We went on next morning, still by railroad, to Spring-
field. From that place to Hartford, whither we were
bound, is a distance of only five-and-twenty miles, but at
that time of the year the roads were so bad that the jour-
ney would probably have occupied ten or twelve hours.
Fortunately, however, the winter having been unusu-
ally mild, the Connecticut River was “open,” or, in
other words, not frozen. The captain of a small steam-
boat was going to make his first trip for the season that
day (the second February trip, I believe, within the
memory of man), and only waited for us to go on board.
Accordingly, we went on board, with as little delay as
might be. He was as good as his word, and started
directly.
It certainly was not called a small steam-boat without
reason. I omitted to ask the question, but I should
think it must have been of about half a pony power.
Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf, might have lived and
26S AMERICAN NOTES
died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with com-
mon sash-windows, like an ordinary dwelling-house.
These windows had bright-red curtains, too, hung on
slack strings across the lower panes; so that it looked
like the parlour of a Lilliputian public-house, which had
got aſloat in a flood or some other water accident, and
was drifting nobody knew where. But even in this
chamber there was a rocking-chair. It would be im-
possible to get on anywhere, in America, without a
rocking-chair.
I am afraid to tell how many feet short this vessel
was, or how many feet narrow; to apply the words
length and width to such measurement would be a con-
tradiction in térms. But I may state that we all kept
the middle of the deck, lest the boat should unexpect-
edly tip over, and that the machinery, by some surpris-
ing process of condensation, worked between it and the
keel; the whole forming a warm sandwich, about three
feet thick.
It rained all day as I once thought it never did rain
anywhere, but in the Highlands of Scotland. The river
was full of floating blocks of ice, which were Constantly
crunching and cracking under us; and the depth of
water, in the course we took to avoid the larger masses,
carried down the middle of the river by the current,
did not exceed a few inches. Nevertheless, we moved
onward, dexterously; and being well wrapped up, bade
defiance to the weather, and enjoyed the journey. The
Connecticut River is a fine stream; and the banks in
Summer-time are, I have no doubt, beautiful : at all
events I was told so by a young lady in the cabin; and
she should be a judge of beauty, if the possession of a
uality include the appreciation of it, for a more beau-
tiful creature I never looked upon.
After two hours and a half of this odd travelling (in-
cluding a stoppage. at a small town, where we were
saluted by a gun considerably bigger than our own
chimney) we reached Hartford, and straightway re-
paired to an extremely comfortable hotel: except, as
usual, in the article of bed-rooms, which, in almost
every place we visited, were very conducive to early
r1Sling. •
We tarried here four days. The town is beautifully
situated in a basin of green hills; the soil is rich, well-
IFOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 269
wooded, and carefully improved. It is the seat of the
local legislature of Connecticut, which sage body
enacted, in by-gone times, the renowned code of “Blue
Laws,” in virtue whereof, among other enlightened pro-
visions, any citizen who could be proved to have kissed
his wife on Sunday, was punishable, I believe, with the
stocks. Too much of the Old Puritan Spirit exists in
these parts to the present hour; but its influence has not
tended, that I know, to make the people less hard in
their bargains, or more equal in their dealings. As I
never heard of its working that effect anywhere else, I
infer that it never will, here. Indeed, I am accustomed,
with reference to great professions and severe faces, to
judge of the goods of the other world pretty much as I.
judge of the goods of this; and whenever I see a dealer
in such commodities with too great a display of them
in his window, I doubt the quality of the article within.
In Hartford stands the famous Oak in which the
charter of King Charles was hidden. It is now enclosed
in a gentleman’s garden. In the State-house is the
charter itself. I found the courts of law here, just the
same as at Boston ; the public Institutions almost as
good. The Insane Asylum is admirably conducted, and
so is the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.
I very much questioned within myself, as I walked
through the Insane Asylum, whether I should have
known the attendants from the patients, but for the
few words which passed between the former, and the
Doctor, in reference to the persons under their charge.
Of course I limit this remark merely to their looks ; for
the conversation of the mad people was mad enough.
There was one little prim old lady, of very smiling
and good-humoured appearance, who came sidling up
to me from the end of a long passage, and with a curtesy
of inexpressible condescension, propounded this unac-
countable inquiry :
“Does Pontefract still flourish, sir, upon the soil of
England P”
“He does ma'am,” I rejoined.
“When you last saw him, sir, he was—
“Well, ma'am,” said I, “extremely well. He begged
me to present his compliments. I never saw him look-
ing better.”
At this, the old lady was very much delighted. After
5
270 AMERICAN NOTES
#lº at me for a moment, as if to be quite sure that
I was serious in my respectful air, she sidled back some
paces; sidled forward again; made a sudden skip (at
* I percipitately retreated a step or two); and
Sal Cl
‘‘ I am an antediluvian, sir.” "
I thought the best thing to say, was, that I had sus-
pected as much from the first. Therefore I said so.
“It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, sir, to
be an antediluvian,” said the old lady.
“I should think it was, ma'am,” I rejoined.
The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip,
Smirked and sidled down the gallery in a most extra-
ordinary manner, and ambled gracefully into her own
bed-chamber.
In another part of the building, there was a male
patient in bed ; very much flushed and heated.
“Well,” said he, starting up, and pulling off his
night-cap : “It’s all settled, at last. I have arranged
it with Queen Victoria.” *
“Arranged what ?” asked the Doctor.
“Why, that business,” passing his hand wearily
across his forehead, “about the siege of New York.”
“Oh l’” said I, like a man suddenly enlightened. For
he looked at me for an answer.
“Yes. Every house without a signal will be fired
upon by the British troops. No harm will be done to
the others. No harm at all. Those that want to be
safe, must hoist flags. That’s all they’ll have to do.
They must hoist flags.” .
Even while, he was speaking he seemed, I thought, to
have some faint idea that his talk was incoherent. Di-
rectly he had said these words, he lay down again ;
gave a kind of a groan ; and covered his hot head with
the blankets. g
There was another : a young man, whose madness
was love and music. After playing on the accordion a
march he had composed, he was very anxious that I
ºuld walk into his chamber, which I immediately
1Ol.
By way of being very knowing, and humouring him
to the top of his bent, I went to the window, which com-
manded a beautiful prospect, and remarked, with an
address upon which I greatly plumed myself.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2;
“What a delicious country you have about these
lodgings of yours.”
“Poh !” said he, moving his fingers carelessly over
the notes of his instrument : “Well enough for such an
Institution as this / ?” -
ić don’t think I was ever so taken aback in all my
II62.
“I come here just for a whim,” he said coolly.
“That’s all,”
“Oh That’s all !” said I.
“Yes. That’s all. The Doctor’s a smart man. He
quite enters into it. It’s a joke of mine. I like it for a
time. You needn’t mention it, but I think I shall go
out next Tuesday.” -
I assured him that I would consider our interview per-
fectly confidential ; and rejoined the Doctor. As we
were passing through a gallery On Our way Out, a well-
dressed lady, of quiet and composed manners, came up,
and proffering a slip of paper and a pen, begged that I
would ...i. with an autograph. I complied, and
we parted. te
“I think I remember having had a few interviews
like that, with ladies out of doors. I hope she is not
rmad?” -
“Yes.”
“On what subject? Autographs?”
“NO. She hears voices in the air.”
“Well!” thought I, “it would be well if we could
shut up a few false prophets of these later times, who
have professed to do the same; and I should like to try
the experiment on a Mormonist or two to begin with.”
In this place, is the best Jail for untried offenders in
the world. There is also a very well-ordered State
prison, arranged upon the same plan as that at Boston,
except that here, there is always a sentry on the wall
with a loaded gum. It contained at that time about two
hundred prisoners. A spot was shown me in the sleep-
ing ward, where a watchman was murdered some years
since in the dead of night, in a desperate attempt to
escape, made by a prisoner who had broken from his
cell. A woman, too, was pointed out to me, who, for
the murder of her husband, had been a close prisoner
for sixteen years.
“Do you think,” I asked of my conductor, “that after
272 AMERICAN NOTES
so very long an imprisonment, she has any thought or
hope of ever regaining her liberty?”
“Oh dear yes,” he answered. “To be sure she
has.” “She has no chance of obtaining it, I
suppose?” *
“Well, I don’t know: ” which, by the bye, is a na-
tional answer. “Her friends mistrust her.”
“What have they to do with it?” I naturally inquired.
“Well, they won’t petition.”
“But if they did, they couldn’t get her out, I sup-
pose?”
“Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the sec-
ond, but tiring and wearying for a few years might
do it.” -
“Does that ever do it?”
“Why yes, that’ll do it sometimes. Political friends
'll do it sometimes. It’s pretty often done, one way or
another.”
I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful
recollection of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had
many friends there, whom I can never remember with
indifference. We left it with no little regret on the
evening of Friday the 11th, and travelled that night
by railroad to New Haven. Upon the way, the guard
and I were formally introduced to each other (as we
usually were on such occasions), and exchanged a va-
riety of small-talk. We reached New Haven at about
eight o’clock, after a journey of three hours, and put
up for the night at the best inn.
New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine
town. Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently im-
ports) are planted with rows of grand old elm-trees; and
the same natural ornaments surround Yale College, an
establishment of considerable eminence and reputation.
The various departments of this Institution are erected
in a kind of park or common in the middle of the town,
where they are dimly visible among the shadowing
trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathedral
yard in England; and when their branches are in full
leaf, must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter
time, these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among
the busy streets and houses of a thriving city, have a
very quaint appearance: seeming to bring about a kind
of compromise between town and country; as if each
WOL. I. 18
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 273
had met the other half-way, and shaken hands upon it;
which is at once novel and pleasant.
After a night's rest, we rose early, and in good time
went down to the wharf, and on board the packet New
York for New York. This was the first American steam-
boat of any size that I had seen; and certainly to an
English eye it was infinitely less like a steamboat than
a huge floating bath. I could hardly persuade myself,
indeed, but that the bathing establishment off West-
minster Bridge, which I left a baby, had suddenly grown
to an enormous size; run away from home; and set up
in foreign parts as a steamer. Being in America, too,
which our vagabonds do so particularly favour, it
seemed the more probable.
The great difference in appearance between these
packets and ours, is, that there is so much of them Out of
the water: the main-deck being enclosed on all sides,
and filled with casks and goods, like any second or third
floor in a stack of warehouses; and the promenade or
hurricane-deck being a-top of that again. A part of the
machinery is always above this deck; where the con-
necting-rod, in a strong and lofty frame, is seen work-
ing away like an iron top-sawyer. There is seldom any
mast or tackle; nothing aloft but two tall black chim-
neys. The man at the helm is shut up in a little house
in the fore part of the boat (the wheel being connected
with the rudder by iron chains, working the whole
length of the deck); and the passengers, unless the
weather be very fine indeed, usually congregate below.
Directly you have left the wharf, all the life, and stir,
and bustle of a packet cease. You wonder for a long
time how she goes on, for there seems to be nobody in
charge of her; and when another of these dull machines
comes splashing by, you feel quite indignant with it, as
a sullen, cumbrous, ungraceful, unshiplike leviathan:
quite forgetting that the vessel you are on board of, is
its very counterpart. -
There is always a clerk’s office on the lower deck,
where you pay your fare ; a ladies' cabin ; baggage and
stowage rooms; engineer’s room ; and in short a great
variety of perplexities which render the discovery of the
gentleman’s cabin, a matter of some difficulty. It Often
occupies the whole length of the boat (as it did in this
case), and has three or four tiers of berths on each side.
274 AMERICAN NOTES
When I first descended into the cabin of the New York,
it looked, in my unaccustomed eyes, about as long as
the Burlington Arcade. -
The Sound which has to be crossed on this passage, is
not always a very safe or pleasant navigation, and has
teen the scene of some unfortunate accidents, it was a
wet morning, and very misty, and we soon lost sight of
land. The day was calm, however, and brightened
towards noon. After exhausting (with good help from
a friend) the larder, and the stock of bottled beer, I lay
down to sleep : being very much tired with the fatigues
of yesterday. But I awoke from my map in time to hurry
up, and see Hell Gate, the Hog’s Back, the Frying Pan,
and other notorious localities, attractive to all readers
of famous Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History. We were
now in a narrow channel, with sloping banks on either
side, besprinkled with pleasant villas, and made refresh-
ing to the sight by turf and trees. Soon we shot in quick
succession, past a lighthouse ; a madhouse (how the
lunatics flung up their caps and roared in sympathy with
the headlong engine and the driving tide 1); a jail; and
other buildings : and so emerged into a noble bay, whose
waters sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine like
Nature’s eyes turned up to Heaven.
Then there lay stretched out before us, to the right,
confused heaps of buildings, with here and there a spire
or steeple, looking down upon the herd below ; and here
and there, again, a cloud of lazy Smoke : and in the fore-
ground a forest of ships’ masts, cheery with flapping
sails and waving flags. Crossing from among them to
the opposite shore, were steam ferry-boats laden with
people, coaches, horses, waggons, baskets, boxes:
crossed and recrossed by other ferry-boats : all travel-
ling to and fro ; and never idle. Stately among these
restless Insects, were two or three large ships, moving
with slow majestic pace, as creatures of a prouder kind,
disdainful of their puny journeys, and making for the
broad sea. Beyond, were shining heights, and islands
in the glancing river, and a distance scarcely less blue
and bright than the sky it seemed to meet. The city’s
hum and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the ringing of
bells, the barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels,
tingled in the listening ear. All of which life and stir,
coming across the stirring water, caught new life and
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION 275
animation from its free companionship ; and, sympa-
thising with its buoyant spirits, glistened as it seemed
in Sport upon its surface, and hemmed the vessel round,
and plashed the water high about her sides, and, float-
ing her gallantly into the dock, flew off again to welcome
Other comers, and speed before them to the busy port.
276 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER VI.
NEW YORK.
THE beautiful metropolis of America is by no means
so clean a city as Boston, but many of its streets
have the same characteristics; except that the houses
are not quite so fresh-coloured, the sign-boards are not
quite so gaudy, the gilded letters not quite so golden,
the bricks not quite so red, the stone not quite so white,
the blinds and area railings not quite so green, the
knobs and plates upon the street doors not quite SO
bright and twinkling. There are many bye-streets,
almost as neutral in clean colours, and positive in dirty
ones, as bye-streets in London; and there is one quar-
ter, commonly called the Five Points, which, in respect
of filth and wretchedness, may be safely backed against
Seven Dials, or any other part of famed St. Giles's.
The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most peo-
ple know, is Broadway; a wide and bustling Street,
which, from the Battery Gardens to its opposite termin-
ation in a country road, may be four miles long. Shall
we sit down in an upper floor of the Carlton House
Hotel (situated in the best part of this main artery of
New York), and when we are tired of looking down
upon the life below, sally forth arm-in-arm and mingle
with the stream?
Warm weather! The sun strikes upon our heads at
this open window as though its rays were concentrated
through a burning-glass; but the day is in its zenith,
and the season an unusual one. Was there ever such a
sunny street as this Broadway! The pavement stones
are polished with the tread of feet until they shine
again; the red bricks of the houses might be yet in the
dry, hot kilns; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as
though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss
and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. No stint
of omnibuses here! Half a dozen have gone by within
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 277
as many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches
too; gigs, phaetons, large-wheeled tilburies, and private
carriages—rather of a clumsy make, and not very dif-
ferent from the public vehicles, but built for the heavy
roads beyond the city pavement. Negro coachmen and
white; in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed
Caps, fur caps; in coats of drab, black, brown, green,
blue, nankeen, striped jean and linen; and there in that
One instance (look while it passes, or it will be too late),
in suits of livery. Some Southern republican that, who
puts his blacks in uniform, and swells with Sultan pomp
and power. Yonder, where that phaeton with the well-
Clipped pair of grays has stopped—standing at their
heads now—is a Yorkshire groom, who has not been
very long in these parts, and looks sorrowfully round
for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may tra-
verse the city half a year without meeting. Heaven
save the ladies, how they dress! We have seen more
colours in these ten minutes, than we should have seen
elsewhere in as many days. What various parasols!
what rainbow silks and satins! what pinking of thin
Stockings, and pinching of thin shoes and fluttering of
ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks with
gaudy hoods and linings! The young gentlemen are
fond, you see, of turning down their shirt-collars and
cultivating their whiskers, especially under the chin;
but they cannot approach the ladies in their dress or
bearing; being, to say the truth, humanity of quite an-
Other sort. Byrons of the desk and counter pass On,
and let us see what kind of men those are behind ye:
those two labourers in holiday clothes, of whom one
carries in his hand a crumpled scrap of paper from
which he tries to spell out a hard name, while the other
looks about for it on all the doors and windows.
Irishmen both ! You might know them, if they were
masked, by their long-tailed blue coats and bright but-
tons, and their drab trousers, which they wear like men
well used to working dresses, who are easy in no others.
It would be hard to keep your model republics going
without the countrymen and countrywomen of those
two labourers. For who else would dig, and delve, and
drudge, and do domestic work, and make canals and
roads, and execute great lines of International Improve-
ment 2 Irishmen both, and sorely puzzled too, to find
278 AMERICAN NOTES
out what they seek. Let us go down and help them, for
the love of home, and that spirit of liberty which ad-
mits of honest service to honest men, and honest work
for honest bread, no matter what it be. s
That’s well ! We have got at the right address at
last, though it is written in strange characters, truly,
and might have been scrawled with the blunt handle of
the spade the writer better knows the use of than a
pen. Their way lies yonder, but what business takes
them there? They carry savings, to hoard up. No.
They are brothers, those men. One crossed the sea
alone, and working very hard for one half year, and
living harder, saved funds enough to bring the other
out. That done, they worked together, side by side,
contentedly sharing hard labour and hard living for an-
other term, and then their sisters come, and then another
brother, and lastly, their old mother. And what now?
Why, the poor old crone is restless in a strange land,
and yearns to lay her bones, she says, among her people
in the old graveyard at home; and so they go to pay
her passage back: and God help her and them, and
every simple heart, and all who turn to the Jerusalem
of their younger days, and have an altar-fire upon the
cold hearth of their fathers.
This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in
the sun, is Wall Street: the Stock Exchange and Lom-
bard Street of New York. Many a rapid fortune has
been made in this street and many a no less rapid ruin.
Some of these very merchants whom you see hanging
about here now, have locked up money in their strong-
boxes, like the man in the Arabian Nights, and opening
them again, have found but withered leaves. Below,
here by the water side, where the bowsprits of ships
stretch across the footway, and almost thrust them-
selves into the windows, lie the noble American vessels
which have made their Packet Service the finest in the
world. They have brought hither the foreigners who
abound in all the Streets: not perhaps, that there are
more here than in other commercial cities; but else-
where they have particular haunts, and you must find
them out ; here, they pervade the town.
We must cross Broadway again; gaining some refresh-
ment from the heat, in the sight of the great blocks of
clean ice which are being carried into shops and bar-
*
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2%)
rooms; and the pine-apples and water-melons profusely
displayed for sale. Fine streets of spacious houses
here, you see!—Wall Street has furnished and disman-
tled many of them very often—and here a deep green
leafy square. Be sure that it is a hospitable house with
inmates to be affectionately remembered always, where
they have the open door and pretty show of plants
within, and where the child with laughing eyes is peep-
ing out of window at the little dog below. You won."
der what may be the use of this tall flag-staff in the
bye-street; with something like Liberty’s head-dress on
its top; so do I. But there is a passion for tall flag-staffs
hereabout, and you may see its twin brother in five
minutes, if you have a mind.
Again across Broadway, and so—passing from the
many-coloured crowd and glittering shops—into an-
other long main street, the Bowery. A rail-road yon-
der, see, where two stout horses trot along, drawing a
score or two of people and a great wooden ark, with
ease. The stores are poorer here ; the passengers less
gay. Clothes ready-made, and meat ready-cooked, are
to be bought in these parts; and the lively whirl of
carriages is exchanged for the deep rumble of carts
and waggons. These signs which are so plentiful, in
shape like river buoys, or small balloons, hoisted by
cords to poles, and dangling there, announce, as you
may see by looking up, “OYSTERS IN EVERY STYLE.”
They tempt the hungry most at night, for then dull
candles glimmering inside, illuminate these dainty
words, and make the mouths of idlers water, as they
read and linger. -
What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian,
like an enchanter’s palace in a melodrama 1–a famous
prison, called The Tombs. Shall we go in?
So. A long narrow lofty building, stove-heated as
usual, with four galleries, one above the other, going
round it, and communicating by stairs. Between the
two sides of each gallery, and in its centre, a bridge,
for the greater convenience of crossing. On each of
these bridges sits a man: dozing or reading, or talking
to an idle companion. On each tier, are two opposite
rows of small iron doors. They look like furnace
doors, but are cold and black, as though the fires within
had all gone out. Some two or three are open, and
280 - AMERICAN NOTES
women, with drooping heads bent down, are talking to
the inmates. The whole is lighted by a skylight, but it
is fast closed; and from the roof there dangle, limp and
drooping, two useless windsails.
A man with keys appears to show us round. A good-
looking fellow, and, in his way, civil and obliging.
“Are those black doors the cells P”
& 4 YeS.”
“Are they all full ?”
“Well, they’re pretty nigh full, and that’s a fact,
and no two ways about it.” e
“Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely?”
“Why, we do only put coloured people in 'em.
That’s the truth.” - w
“When do the prisoners take exercise?”
“Well, they do without it pretty much.”
“Do they never walk in the yard?”
“Considerable seldom.” *
“Sometimes, I suppose?” .
“Well, it’s rare they do. They keep pretty bright
with Out it.” -
“But suppose a man were here for a twelvemonth.
I know this is only a prison for criminals who are
charged with grave offences, while they are awaiting
their trial, or are under remand, but the law, here,
affords criminals many means of delay. What with
motions for new trial, and in arrest of judgment,
and what not, a prisoner might be here for twelve
months, I take it, might he not?” *
“Well, I guess he might.”
“Do you mean to say that in all that time he would
never come out at that little iron door, for exer-
Cise?”
“He might walk some, perhaps—not much.
“Will you open one of the doors?”
“All, if you like.”
The fastenings jar and rattle, and one of fibe doors
turns slowly on its hinges. Let us look in. A small
bare cell, into which the light enters through a high
chink in the wall. There is a rude means of washing,
a table, and a bedstead. Upon the latter sits a man
of sixty, , reading. He looks up for a moment; gives
an impatient dogged shake; and fixes his eyes upon his
book again. As we withdrew our heads the door closes
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 281
on him, and is fastened as before. This man has mur-
dered his wife, and will probably be hanged.
“How long has he been here?”
“A month.” -
“When will he be tried?”
“Next term.”
“When is that?”
“Next month.”
“In England, if a man be under sentence of death
º he has air and exercise at certain periods of the
day.”
‘‘ POSSible?” *
With what stupendous and untranslatable coolnéss
he says this, and how loungingly he leads on to the
women’s side: making, as he goes, a kind of iron cas-
tanet of the key and the stair-rail!
Each cell door on this side has a square aperture in it.
Some of the women peep anxiously through it at the
sound of footsteps; others shrink away in shame.—For
whât offence can that lonely child, of ten or twelve
years old, be shut up here? Oh! that boy? He is the
son of the prisoner we saw just now; is a witness
against his father; and is detained here for safe-keep-
ing, until the trial; that’s all.
But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass the
long days and nights in. This is rather hard treatment
for a young witness, is it not?—What says our con-
ductor? . -
“Well, it an’t a very rowdy life, and that’s a fact!”
Again he clinks his metal castanet, and leads us
leisurely away. I have a question to ask him as we
gC).
“Pray, why do they call this place The Tombs?”
“Well, it’s the cant name.”
“I know it is. Why?”
“Some suicides happened here, when it was first
built. I expect it come about from that.”
‘‘ I saw just now, that that man’s clothes were scat-
tered about the floor of his cell. Don’t you oblige the
prisoners to be orderly, and put such things away?”
“Where should they put 'em?” .
“Not on the ground, Surely. What do you say to
hanging them up?” -
He stops and looks round to emphasise his answer:
282 AMERICAN NOTES
“Why, I say that’s just it. When they had hooks
they would hang themselves, so they’re taken out of
every cell, and there’s only the marks left where they
used to be!”
The prison-yard in which he pauses now, has been
the scene of terrible performances. Into this narrow,
grave-like place, men are brought out to die. The
wretched creature stands beneath the gibbet on the
ground; the rope about his neck; and when the sign is
given, a weight at its other end comes running down,
and swings him up into the air—a corpse.
The law requires that there be present at this dismal
spectacle, the judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount
of twenty-five. From the community it is hidden. To
the dissolute and bad, the thing remains a frightful
mystery. Between the criminal and them, the prison-
wall is interposed as a thick gloomy veil. It is the
curtain to his bed of death, his winding sheet, and
grave. From him it shuts out life, and all the motives
to unrepenting hardihood in that last hour, which its
mere sight and presence is often all-sufficient to sus-
tain. There are no bold eyes to make him bold; no
ruffians to uphold a ruffian’s name before. All beyond
the pitiless stone wall, is unknown space.
Lét us go forth again into the cheerful Streets.
Once more in Broadway! Here are the same ladies
in bright colours, walking to and fro, in pairs and singly;
yonder the very same light blue parasol which passed
and repassed the hotel-window twenty times while we
were sitting there. We are going to cross here. Take
care of the pigs. Two portly sows are trotting up be-
hind this carriage, and a select party of half-a-dozen
gentlemen hogs have just now turned the corner.
Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward by him-
self. He has only one ear; having parted with the other
to vagrant-dogs in the course of his city rambles. But
he gets on very well without it; and leads a roving,
gentlemanly, vagabond kind of life, somewhat answer-
ing to that of our club-men at home. He leaves his
lodgings every morning at a certain hour, throws him-
self upon the town, gets through his day in some man-
ner quite satisfactory to himself, and regularly appears
at the door of his own house again at night, like the
mysterious master of Gil Blas. He is a free-and-easy,
TOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 283
careless, indifferent kind of pig, having a very large
acquaintance among other pigs of the same character,
whom he rather knows by sight than conversation, as he
seldom troubles himself to stop and exchange civilities,
but goes grunting down the kennel, turning up the
news and Small-talk of the city in the shape of Čača:
stalks and Offal, and bearing no tails but his own: which
is a very short one, for his old enemies, the dogs, have
been at that too, and have left him hardly enough to
Swear by. He is in every respect a republican pig,
going wherever he pleases, and mingling with the best
Society, on an equal, if not superior footing, for every
One makes way when he appears, and the haughtiest
give him the wall, if he prefer it. He is a great phil-
Osopher, and seldem moved, unless by the dogs before
mentioned. Sometimes, indeed, you may see his small
eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, whose carcase
garnishes a butcher's door-post, but he grunts Out
“Such is life: all flesh is pork!” buries his nose in the
mire again, and waddles down the gutter: comforting
himself with the reflection that there is one snout the
less to anticipate Stray cabbage-Stalks, at any rate.
They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes
they are ; having, for the most part, scanty, brown
backs, like the lids of old horse-hair trunks: spotted
with unwholesome black blotches. They have long,
gaunt legs, too, and such peaked snouts, that if one
of them could be persuaded to sit for his profile, nobody
would recognise it for a pig’s likeness. They are never
attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are
thrown upon their own resources in early life, and be-
come preternaturally knowing in consequence. Every
pig knows where he lives, much better than anybody
could tell him. At this hour, just as evening is closing
in, you will see them roaming towards bed by scores,
eating their way to the last. Occasionally, some youth
among them who has over-eaten himself, or has been
much worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward,
like a prodigal son : but this is a rare case : perfect self-
E.; and self-reliance, and immovable composure,
eing their foremost attributes.
The streets and shops are lighted now ; and as the
eye travels down the long thoroughfare, dotted with
bright jets of gas, it is reminded of Oxford Street or
284 - AMERICAN NOTES
Piccadilly. Here and there a flight of broad stone ce-
lar-steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you to the
Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley : Ten-Pins being a
game of mingled chance and skill, invented when the
legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins. At
other downward flights of steps, are other lamps, mark-
ing the whereabouts of oyster-cellars—pleasant retreats,
say I : not only by reason of their wonderful cookery of
oysters, pretty nigh as large as cheese-plates, (or for
thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek Professors () but be-
cause of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or fowl, in
these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not
gregarious ; but subduing themselves, as it were, to the
nature of what they work in, and copying the coyness
of the thing they eat, do sit apart in curtained boxes,
and consort by twos, not by two hundreds.
But how quiet the streets are Are there no itinerant
bands; no wind or stringed instruments P No, not one.
By day, are there no Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing-
dogs, Jugglers, Conjurors, Orchestrinas, or even Barrel-
organs ? No, not one. Yes, I remember one. One
barrel-organ and a dancing-monkey—Sportive by na-
ture, but fast fading into a dull, lumpish monkey, of
the Utilitarian school. Beyond that, nothing lively ;
no, not so much as a white mouse in a twirling cage.
Are there no amusements P Yes, there is a lecture-
room across the way, from which that glare of light
proceeds, and there may be evening service for the
ladies thrice a week, or oftener. For the young gentle-
men, there is the counting-house, the store, the bar-
room: the latter, as you may see through these windows,
pretty full. Hark! to the clinking sound of hammers
breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool gurgling of the
pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, they are
poured from glass to glass | No amusements P What
are these suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong
drinks, whose hats and legs we see in every possible
variety of twist, doing, but amusing themselves? What
are the fifty newspapers, which those precocious urchins
are bawling down the street, and which are kept filed
within, what are they but amusements Not vapid
waterish amusements, but good strong stuff; dealing
in round abuse and blackguard names : pulling off the
roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2S5
Spain; pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious
taste, and gorging with coined lies the most voracious
maw; imputing to every man in public life the coarsest
and the vilest motives ; scaring away from the stabbed
and prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan of clear
conscience and good deeds; and setting on, with yell
and whistle, and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest
vermin and worst birds of prey.—No amusements
Let us go on again ; and passing this wilderness of an
hotel with stores about its base, like some Continental
theatre, or the London Opera House shorn of its colon-
nade, plunge into the Five Points. But it is needful, first,
that we take as our escort these two heads of the police,
whom you would know for sharp and well-trained
officers if you met them in the Great Desert. So true it
is, that certain pursuits, wherever carried on, will stamp
men with the same character. These two might have
been begotten, born, and bred, in Bow Street.
We have seen no beggars in the the streets by night
or day; but of other kinds of strollers, plenty, Poverty,
wretchedness, and vice, are rife enough where we are
going now.
This is the place, these narrow ways, diverging to
the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt
and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear the same
fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces
at the doors, have counterparts at home and all the
wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses
prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumb-
ling down, and how the patched and broken windows
seem to Scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in
drunken frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do
they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in
lieu of going on all-fours? and why they talk instead
of grunting? * -
So far, nearly every house is a low tavern; and on the
barroom walls, are coloured prints of Washington, and
Queen Victoria of England, and the American Eagle.
Among the pigeon-holes that hold the bottles, are
pieces of plate-glass and coloured paper, for there is,
in SOme SOrt, a taste for decoration, even here. And
as Seamen frequent these haunts, there are maritime
pictures by the dozen: of partings between sailors and
their lady-loves, portraits of William, of the ballad,
286 AMERICAN NOTES
and his Black-Eyed Susan; of Will Watch, the Bold
Smuggler; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like: on
which the painted eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Wash-
ington to boot, rest in as strange companionship, as on
most of the scenes that are enacted in their wondering
presence.
What place is this, to which the squalid street con-
ducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of
which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs with-
out. What lies beyond this tottering flight of steps,
that creak beneath our tread!—a miserable room, lighted
by one dim candle, and destitute of all comfort, save
that which may be hidden in a wretched bed. Beside
it, sits a man: his elbows on his knees: his forehead
hidden in his hands. “What ails that man P” asks the
foremost officer. “Fever,” he sullenly replies, without
looking up. Conceive the fancies of a fevered brain,
in such a place as this! g
Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false
footing on the trembling boards, and grope your way
with me into this wolfish den, where neither ray of
light or breath of air appears to come. A negro lad,
startled from his sleep by the officer's voice—he knows
it well—but comforted by his assurance that he has not
come on business, officiously bestirs himself to light a
candle. The match flickers for a moment, and shows
great mounds of dusky rags upon the ground; then dies
away and leaves a denser darkness than before, if there
can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down
the stairs and presently comes back, shading a flaring
taper with his }. Then the mounds of rags are seen
to be astir, and rise slowly up, and the floor is covered
with heaps of negro women, waking from their sleep:
their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes
glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and
fear, like the countless repetition of one astonished Afri-
can face, in some strange mirror.
Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there
are traps and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well
escorted as ourselves) into the housetop; where the bare
beams and rafters meet over-head, and calm might looks
down through the crevices in the roof. Open the door
of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes.
Pah! They have a charcoal fire within; there is a smell
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 2S7
of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they gather round
the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind and Suf-
focate. From every corner, as you glance about you in
these dark retreats, some figure crawls half-awakened,
as if the judgment-hour was near at hand, and every
obscene grave were giving up its dead. . Where dogs
would howl to lie, women, and men, and boys slink off
to sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to move away in
quest of better lodgings. - -
Here too are lames and alleys, paved with mud knee-
deep, under-ground chambers, where they dance and
game, the walls bedecked with rough designs of ships,
and forts, and flags, and American Eagles Out of num-
ber: ruined houses, open to the street, whence, through
wide gaps in the walls, other ruins loom upon the eye,
as though the world of vice and misery had nothing
else to show; hideous tenements which take their name
from robbery and murder; all that is loathsome, droop-
in; and decayed is here.
ur leader has his hand upon the latch of “Almack's,”
and calls to us from the bottom of the steps; for the
assembly-room of the Five-Point fashionables is ap-
proached by a descent. Shall we go in It is but a
moment. -
Heyday ! the landlady of Almack's thrives | A
buxom fat mulatto woman, with sparkling eyes, whose
head is daintly ornamented with a handkerchief of
many colours. Nor is the landlord much behind her in
his finery, being attired in a smart blue jacket, like a
ship's steward, with a thick gold ring upon his little
finger, and round his neck a gleaming golden watch-
guard. How glad he is to see us ! What will we
please to call for 2 A dance 2 It shall be done directly,
sir : “a regular break-down.”
The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays
the tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the Small
raised orchestra in which they sit, and plays a lively
measure. Five or six couple come upon the floor, mar-
shalled by a lively young negro, who is the wit of the
assembly, and the greatest dancer known. He never
leaves off making queer faces: and is the delight of
all the rest, who grin from ear to ear incessantly.
Among the dancers are two young mulatto girls, with
large, black, drooping eyes, and head-gear after the
288 AMERICAN NOTES
fashion of the hostess, who are as shy, or feign to be
as though they never danced before, and so look down
before the visitors, that their partners can see nothing
but the long fringed lashes.
But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as
long as he likes to the Opposite lady, and the opposite
lady to him, and all are so long about it that the sport
begins to languish, when Suddenly the lively hero
dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the fiddler grins, and
goes at it tooth and nail ; there is new energy in the
tambourine ; new laughter in the dancers; new Smiles
in the landlady. ; new confidence in the landlord ; new
brightness in the very candles. Single shuffle, double
shuffle, cut, and cross-cut : Snapping his fingers, rolling
his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of
his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels
like nothing but the man’s fingers on the tambourine ;
dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden
legs, two wire legs, two spring legs—all sorts of legs and
no legs—what is this to him 2 And in what walk of
life, or dance of life, does man ever get such stimulat-
ing applause as thunders about him, when, having
danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, he
finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter and
calling for something to drink, with the chuckle of a
million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable
sound.
The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh
after the stifling atmosphere of the houses; and now,
as we emerge into a broader Street, it blows upon us
with a purer breath, and the Stars look bright again.
Here are The Tombs once more. The city watch-house
is a part of the building. It follows naturally on
§, ºntº we have just left. Let us see that, and then
to bed. - º
What do you thrust your common offenders against
the police discipline of the town into such holes as
these? Do men and women, against whom no crime is
proved, lie here all night in perfect darkness, surrounded
by the noisome vapours which encircle that flagging
lamp you light us with, and breathing this filthy and
offensive stench? Why, such indecent and disgusting
dungeons as these cells would bring disgrace upon the
most despotic empire in the world ! Look at them,
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 289
man—you who see them every night, and keep the
keys. Do you see what they are? Do you know how
drains are made below the streets, and wherein these
human sewers differ, except in being always stagnant?
Well, he don’t know. He has had five-and-twenty
young women locked up in this very cell at One time,
and you’d hardly realize what handsome faces there
were among 'em.
In God’s name! shut the door upon the wretched
creature who is in it now, and put its screen before a
place quite unsurpassed in all the vice, neglect, and
deviltry, of the worst old town in Europe.
Are people really left all night, untried, in those black
sties?—Every night. The watch is set at seven in the
evening. The magistrate opens his court at five in the
morning. That is the earliest hour at which the first
prisoner can be released : and if an officer appear
against him, he is not taken out till nine o’clock or ten.
—But if any one among them die in the interval, as
one man did, not long ago? Then he is half-eaten by
the rats in an hour's time; as that man was ; and there
an end.
What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and
crashing of wheels, and shouting in the distance? A
fire. And what that deep red light in the opposite
direction? Another fire. And what these charred and
blackened walls we stand before? A dwelling where a
fire has been. It was more than hinted, in an Official
report, not long ago, that some of these conflagrations
were not wholly accidental, and that speculation and
enterprise found a field of exertior, even in flames: but
be this as it may, there was a fire last night, there are
two to-night, and you may lay an even wager that there
will be at least one to-morrow. So, carrying that with
us for our comfort, let us say Good-night, and climb
up-stairs to bed.
One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit
to the different public institutions on Long Island, or
Rhode Island: I forget which. One of them is a Lunatic
Asylum. The building is handsome; and is remarkable
for a spacious and elegant staircase. The whole struct-
ure is not yet finished, but it is already one of consid:
VOIA. I. * }
290 AMERICAN NOTES
erable size and extent, and is capable of accommodat-
ing a very large number of patients.
I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the
inspection of this charity. The different wards might
have been cleaner and better ordered; I saw nothing of
that salutary system which had impressed me so fa-
vourably elsewhere; and everything had a lounging, list-
less, madhouse air, which was very painful. The moping
idiot, cowering down with long dishevelled hair; the
gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and pointed
finger; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy
picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the
nails: there they were all, without disguise, in naked
ugliness and horror. In the dining-room, a bare, dull,
dreary place, with nothing for the eye to rest on but the
empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. She was
bent, they told me, on committing suicide. If anything
could have strengthened her in her resolution, it would
certainly have been the insupportable monotony of such
an existence.
The terrible crowd with which these halls and gal-
leries were filled so shocked me that I abridged my stay
within the shortest limits, and declined to see that por-
tion of the building in which the refractory and violent
were under closer restraint. I have no doubt that the
gentleman who presided over this establishment at the
time I write of, was competent to manage it, and had
done all in his power to promote its usefulness: but will
it be believed that the miserable strife of Party feeling
is carried even into this sad refuge of afflicted and de-
graded humanity? Will it be believed that the eyes
which are to watch over and control the wanderings of
minds on which the most dreadful visitation to which
our nature is exposed has fallen, must wear the glasses
of some wretched side in Politics? Will it be believed
that the governor of such a house as this, is appointed,
and deposed, and changed perpetually, as Parties fluc-
tuate and Vary, and as their despicable weathercocks
are blown this way or that? A hundred times in every
week, some new most paltry exhibition of that narrow-
minded and injurious Party Spirit, which is the Simoom
of America, sickening , and blighting everything of
wholesome life within its reach, was forced upon my
notice; but I never turned my back upon it with feel-
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 29]
ings of such deep disgust and measureless contempt, as
when I crossed the threshold of this madhouse.
At a short distance from this building is another
called the Alms House, that is to say, the workhouse of
New York. This is a large institution also: lodging, I
believe, when I was there, nearly a thousand poor. It
was bâdly ventilated, and badly lighted; was not too
clean; and impressed me, on the whole, very uncom-
fortably. But it must be remembered that New York,
as a great emporium of commerce, and as a place of
general resort, not only from all parts of the States, but
from most parts of the world, has always a large pauper
population to provide for; and labours, therefore, under
peculiar difficulties in this respect, Nor must it be for-
gotten that New York is a large town, and that in all
large towns a vast amount of good and evil is inter-
mixed and jumbled up together.
In the same neighbourhood is the Farm, where young
orphans are nursed and bred. I did not see it, but I
believe it is well conducted; and I can the more easily
credit it, from knowing how mindful they usually are,
in America, of that beautiful passage in the Litany
which remembers all sick persons and young children.
I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a boat
belonging to the Island Jail, and rowed by a crew of
risoners, who were dressed in a striped uniform of
lack and buff, in which they looked like faded tigers.
They took me, by the same conveyance, to the Jail
itself.
It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer establishment,
On the plan I have already described. I was glad to
hear this, for it is unquestionably a very different one.
The most is made, however, of the means it possesses,
and it is as well regulated as such a place can be.
The women worked in covered sheds erected for that
purpose. If I remember right, there are no shops for
the men, but be that as it may, the greater part of them
labour in certain stone-quarries near at hand. The day
being very wet indeed, this labour was suspended, and
the prisoners were in their cells. Imagine these cells,
some two or three hundred in number, and in every one
a man locked up; this one at his door for air, with his
hands thrust through the gate; this one in bed (in the
middle of the day, remember); and this one flung down
292 AMERICAN NOTES
in a heap upon the ground, with his head against the
bars, like a wild beast. Make the rain pour down, out-
side, in torrents. Put the everlasting stove in the midst;
hot, and suffocating, and vapourous as a witch's caul-
dron. Add a collection of gentle odours, such as would
arise from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet through,
and a thousand buck-baskets, full of half-washed linen
—and there is the prison, as it was that day.
The prison for the State at Sing Sing, is, on the other
hand, a model jail. That, and Auburn, are, I believe,
the largest and best examples of the silent system.
In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the
Destitute: an Institution whose object is to reclaim
youthful offenders, male and female, white and black,
without distinction; to teach them useful trades,
apprentice them to respectable masters, and make them
worthy members of society. Its design, it will be seen,
is similar to that at Boston; and it is a no less meritori-
ous and admirable establishment. A suspicion crossed
my mind during my inspection of this noble charity,
whether the superintendent had quite sufficient know-
ledge of the world and worldly characters; and whether
he did not commit a great mistake in treating some
young girls, who were to all intents and purposes, by
their years and their past lives, women, as though they
were little children; which certainly had a ludicrous
effect in my eyes, and, or I am much mistaken, in theirs
also. As the Institution, however, is always under the
vigilant examination of a body of gentlemen of great
intelligence and experience, it cannot fail to be well
conducted; and whether I am right or wrong in this
slight particular, is unimportant to its deserts and
character, which it would be difficult to estimate too
highly. 4 -
In addition to these establishments, there are in New
York, excellent hospitals and schools, literary institu-
tions and libraries; an admirable fire department (as
indeed it should be, having constant practice), and
charities of every sort and kind. In the suburbs there
is a spacious cemetery; unfinished yet, but every day
improving. The saddest tomb I saw there was “The
Strangers’ Grave. Dedicated to the different hotels in
this city.”
There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 203
Park and the Bowery, are large; elegant, and handsome
buildings, and are, I grieve to write it, generally de-
serted. The third, the Olympic, is a tiny show-box for
vaudevilles and burlesques. It is singularly well con-
ducted by Mr. Mitchell, a comic actor of great quiet
humour and originality, who is well remembered and
esteemed by London play-goers. I am happy to report
of this deserving gentleman, that his benches are
usually well filled, and that his theatre rings with
Inerriment every night. I had almost forgotten a small
summer theatre, called Niblo’s, with gardens and open
air amusements attached; but I believe it is not exempt
from the general depression under which Theatrical
Property, or what is humourously called by that name,
unfortunately labours.
The country round New York is surpassingly and ex-
quisitely picturesque. The climate, as I have already
intimated, is somewhat of the warmest. What it
would be, without the sea breezes which come from its
beautiful Bay in the evening time, I will not throw
myself or my readers into a fever by inquiring.
The tone of the best society in this city, is like that of
Boston; here and there, it may be, with a greater infu-
sion of the mercantile spirit, but generally polished and
refined, and always most hospitable. The houses and
tables are elegant; the hours later and more rakish;
and there is, perhaps, a greater spirit of contention in
reference to appearances, and the display of wealth
and costly living. The ladies are singularly beautiful.
Before I left New York I made arrangements for se-
curing a passage home in the George Washington
packet ship, which was advertised to sail in June: that
being the month in which I had determined, if pre-
vented by no accident in the course of my ramblings,
to leave America.
I never though that going back to England, returning
to all who are dear to me, and to pursuits that have in-
sensibly grown to be part of my nature, I could have
felt so much sorrow as I endured, when I parted at last,
On board this ship, with the friends who had accom-
panied me from this city. I never thought the name of
any place, so far away, and so lately known, could
ever associate itself in my mind with the crowd of affec-
tionate remembrances that now cluster about it. There
294 AMERICAN NOTES
are those in this city who would brighten, to me, the
darkest winter-day that ever glimmered and went out
in Lapland; and before whose presence even Home
grew dim, when they and I exchanged that painful
word which mingles with our every thought and deed;
which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy, and closes up
the Vista of our lives in age.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 295
CHAPTER VII.
PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS solTARY PRISON.
THE journey from New York to Philadelphia is made
by railroad, and two ferries; and usually occupies
between five and six hours. It was a fine evening
when we were passengers in the train: and watching
the bright sunset from a little window near the door
by which we sat, my attention was attracted to a re-
markable appearance issuing from the windows of the
gentlemen’s car immediately in front of us, which I
supposed for some time was occasioned by a number of
industrious persons inside, ripping open feather-beds,
and giving the feathers to the wind. At length it
Occurred to me that they were only spitting, which was
indeed the case; though how any number of passengers
which it was possible for that car to contain, could have
maintained such a playful and incessant shower of ex-
pectoration, I am still at a loss to understand: notwith-
standing the experience in all salivatory phenomena
which I afterwards acquired. -
I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild
and modest young Quaker, who opened the discourse by
informing me, in a grave whisper, that his grandfather
was the inventor of cold-drawn castor oil. I mention the
circumstance here, thinking it probable that this is the
first occasion on which the valuable medicine in ques-
tion was ever used as a conversational aperient.
We reached the city late that night. Dooking out of
my chamber window, before going to bed, I saw, on the
Opposite side of the way, a handsome building of white
marble, which had a mournful ghost-like aspect, dreary
to behold. I attributed this to the sombre influence of
the night, and on rising in the morning, looked out
again, expecting to see its steps and portico thronged
with groups of people passing in and out. The door
was still tight shut, however; the same cold cheerless
air prevailed; and the building looked as if the marble
20.6 AMERICAN NOTES
statue of Don Guzman could alone have any business to
transact within its gloomy walls. I hastened to inquire
its name and purpose, and then my surprise vanished.
It was the Tomb of many fortunes; the Great Cata-
i. of investment; the memorable United States
ank.
The stoppage of this bank, with all its ruinous conse-
quences, had cast (as I was told on every side) a gloom
on Philadelphia, under the depressing effect of which
it yet laboured. It certainly did seem rather dull and
Out of spirits.
It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular.
After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that
I would have given the world for a crooked street. The
collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of
my hat to expand, beneath its Quakerly influence. My
hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded
themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord,
and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane ever
against the Market Place, and of making a large for-
; by speculations in corn came over me involun-
tarily. -
Philadelphia is most bountifully supplied with fresh
water, which is showered and jerked about, and turned
on, and poured off, everywhere. The Waterworks,
which are on a height near the city, are no less Orra-
mental than useful, being tastefully laid out as a public
garden, and kept in the best and neatest order. The
river is dammed at this point, and forced by its own
power into certain high tanks or reservoirs, whence the
whole city, to the top stories of the houses, is supplied
at a very trifling expense.
There are various public institutions. Among them a
most excellent Hospital—a quaker establishment, but
not sectarian in the great benefits it confers; a quiet,
quaint Old Library, named after Franklin; a handsome
Exchange and Post Office; and so forth. In connection
with the Quaker Hospital, there is a picture by West,
which is exhibited for the benefit of the funds of the
institution. The subject is, our Saviour healing the
sick, and it is, perhaps, as favourable a specimen of the
master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high
or low praise, depends upon the reader's taste.
In the same room, there is a very characteristic and
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 29%
life-like portrait by Mr. Sully, a distinguished Ameri-
can artist.
My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I
saw of its Society I greatly liked. Treating of its gen-
eral characteristics, I should be disposed to say that it is
more provincial than Boston or New York, and that
there is afloat in the fair city, an assumption of taste
and criticism, savouring rather of those genteel discus-
Sions upon the same themes, in connection with Shake-
speare and the Musical Glasses, of which we read in the
Vicar of Wakefield. Near the city, is a most splendid
unfinished white marble structure for the Girard College,
founded by a deceased gentleman of that name and
of enormous wealth, which, if completed according to
the original design, will be perhaps the richest edifice of
modern times. But the bequest is involved in legal dis-
putes, and pending them the work has stopped; so that
like many other great undertakings in America, even
this is rather going to be done one of these days, than
doing now.
In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the
Eastern Penitentiary : conducted on a plan peculiar to
the state of Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid,
strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it,
in its effects, to be cruel and wrong.
In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind,
humane, and meant for reformation; but I am per-
suaded that those who devised this system of Prison
Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry
it into execution, do not know what it is that they are
doing. I believe that very few men are capable of es-
timating the immense amount of torture and agony
which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years,
inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it my-
self, and in reasoning from what I have seen written
upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they
feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is
a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the
sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has
a right to inflict upon his fellow creature. I hold this
slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the
brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of
the body : and because its ghastly signs and tokens are
not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as Scars
298 AMERICAN NOTES
upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the
surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can
hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret pun-
ishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up
to stay. I hesitated once, debating with myself,
whether, if I had the power of saying “Yes” or “No,”
I would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where the
terms of imprisonment were short; but now, I solemnly
declare, that with no rewards or honours could I walk
a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or , lie me
down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness
that one human creature, for any length of time, no
matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment
in his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in
the least degree. #.
I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen,
officially connected with its management, and passed
the day in going from cell to cell, and talking with the
inmates. Every facility was afforded me, that the
utmost courtesy could suggest. Nothing was concealed
or hidden from my view, and every piece of information
which I sought, was openly and frankly given. The per-
fect order of the building cannot be praised too highly,
and of the excellent motives of all who are immediately
concerned in the administration of the system, there
can be no kind of question. -
Between the body of the prison and the outer wall,
there is a spacious garden. Entering it, by a wicket in
the massive gate, we pursued the path before us to its
other termination, and passed into a large chamber,
from which seven long passages radiate. On either
side of each, is a long, long row of low cell doors, with
a certain number over every one. Above, a gallery
of cells like those below, except that they have no nar-
row yard attached, (as those in the ground tier have),
and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of
these, is supposed to compensate for the absence of so
much air and exercise as can be had in the dull strip
attached to each of the others, in an hour's time every
day; and therefore every prisoner in this upper story
has two cells, adjoining, and communicating with, each .
other.
Standing at the central point, and looking down these
dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails,
EOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 299
is awful. Occasionally there is a drowsy sound from
some lone weaver’s shuttle, or shoemaker's last, but
it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-
door, and only serves to make the general stillness more
profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner
who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is
drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain
dropped between him and the living world, he is led to
the cell from which he never again comes forth, until
his whole term of imprisonment has expired. He never
hears of wife or children; home or friends; the life or
death of any single creature. He sees the prison-officers,
but with that exception, he never looks upon a human
countenance, or hears a human voice. He is a man
buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years;
and in the meantime dead to everything but torturing
anxieties and horrible despair.
|His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are un-
known, even to the officer who delivers him his daily
food. There is a number over his cell-door, and in a
book of which the governor of the prison has one copy,
and the moral instructor another: this is the index to
his history. Beyond these pages the prison has no
record of his existence: and though he lives to be in the
same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing,
down to the very last hour, in what part of the building
it is situated; what kind of men there are about him;
whether in the long winter nights there are living people
hear, or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail,
with walls, and passages, and iron doors between him
and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors.
Every cell has double doors: the outer one of sturdy
oak, the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap
through which his food is handed. He has a Bible, and
a slate and pencil, and, under certain restrictions, has
sometimes other books, provided for the purpose, and
pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate, and can, and
basin, hang upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf.
Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and he can draw it
at his pleasure. During the day, his bedstead turns
up against the wall, and leaves more space for him to
work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel, is there; and
there he labours, sleeps and wakes, and counts the
Seasons as they change, and grows old.
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The first man I saw was seated at his loom, at work.
He had been there six years, and was to remain, I think,
three more. He had been convicted as a receiver of
stolen goods, but even after this long imprisonment
denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly dealt by.
It was his second offence.
He stopped his work when we went in, took off his
spectacles, and answered freely to everything that was
said to him, but always with a strange kind of pause
first, and in a low, thoughtful voice, He wore a paper
hat of his own making, and was pleased to have it
noticed and commended. He had very ingeniously
manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some disre-
garded odds and ends; and his vinegar-bottle served for
the pendulum. Seeing me interested in this contrive
ance, he looked up at it with a great deal of pride, and
said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that
he hoped the hammer and a little piece of broken glass
beside it “would play music before long.” He had ex-
tracted some colours from the yarn with which he
worked, and painted a few poor figures on the wall.
One, of a female, over the door, he called “The Lady
of the Lake.” -
He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to while
away the time; but, when I looked from them to him,
I saw that his lip trembled, and could have counted the
beating of his heart. I forget how it came about, but
some allusion was made to his having a wife. He shook
his head at the word, turned aside, and covered his face
with his hands.
“But you are resigned now !” said one of the gentle-
men after a short pause, during which he had resumed
his former manner. He answered with a sigh that
seemed quite reckless in its hopelessness, “Oh yes, oh
yes | I am resigned to it.” “And are a better man, you
think 2 ° “Well, I hope so '. I’m sure I hope I may be.”
“And time goes pretty quickly P” “Time is very long,
gentlemen, within these four walls l’ --
He gazed about him—Heaven only knows how
wearily l—as he said these words; and in the act of
doing so, fell into a strange stare as if he had forgotten
something. A moment afterwards he sighed heavily,
put on his spectacles, and went about his work again.
In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to
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five years’ imprisonment for larceny, two of which had
just expired. With colours procured in the same man-
ner, he had painted every inch of the walls and ceiling
quite beautifully. He had laid out the few feet of
ground, behind, with exquisite neatness, and had made
a little bed in the centre, that looked, by the bye, like a
grave. The taste and ingenuity he had displayed in
everything were most extraordinary ; and yet a more
dejected, heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be
difficult to imagine. I never saw such a picture of for-
lorn affliction and distress of mind. My heart bled for
him ; and when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he
took one of the visitors aside, to ask, with his trembling
hands nervously clutching at his coat to detain him,
whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence being
commuted, the spectacle was really too painful to wit-
ness. I never saw or heard of any kind of misery
that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this
Iſla, Il.
In a third cell was a tall strong black, a burglar,
working at his proper trade of making screws and the
like. His time was nearly out. He was not only a
very dexterous thief, but was notorious for his boldness
and hardihood, and for the number of his previous con-
victions. He entertained us with a long account of his
achievements, which he narrated with such infinite
relish, that he actually seemed to lick his lips as he told
us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old ladies whom
he had watched as they sat at windows in silver spec-
tacles (he had plainly had an eye to their metal, even
from the other side of the street) and had afterwards
robbed. This fellow, upon the slightest encouragement,
would have mingled with his professional recollections
the most detestable cant ; but I am very much mistaken
if he could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy
with which he declared that he blessed the day on
which he came into that prison, and that he never.
would commit another robbery as long as he lived.
There was one man who was allowed, as an indul-
gence, to keep rabbits. His room having rather a close
smell in consequence, they called to him at the door to
come out into the passage. He connplied of course, and
stood shading his haggard face in the unwonted Sun-
light of the great window, looking as Wan and unearthly
302 . . AMERICAN NOTES
as if he had been summoned from the grave. He had a
white rabbit in his breast ; and when the little creature,
getting down upon the ground, stole back into the cell,
and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after it, I thought
it would have been very hard to say in what respect
the man was the nobler animal of the two.
There was an English thief, who had been there but
a few days out of seven years: a villanous, low-browed,
thin-lipped fellow, with a white face ; who had as yet
no relish for visitors, and who, but for the additional
penalty, would have gladly stabbed me with his shoe-
maker’s knife. There was another German who had
entered the jail but yesterday, and who started from his
bed when we looked in, and pleaded, in his broken Eng-
lish, very hard for work. There was a poet, who after
doing two days’ work in every four-and-twenty hours,
One for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses
about ships (he was by trade a mariner), and the “mad-
dening wine-cup,” and his friends at home. There were
very many of them. Some reddened at the sight of
visitors, and some turned very pale. Some two or three
had prisoner nurses with them, for they were very sick,
and one, a fat old negro, whose leg had been taken off
within the jail, had for his attendant a classical scholar
and an accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner like-
wise. -Sitting upon the stairs, engaged in Some slight
work, was a pretty coloured boy. “Is there no refuge
for young criminals in Philadelphia, then P’’ said I.
“Yes, but only for white children.” Noble aristocracy
in crime !
There was a sailor who had been there upwards of
eleven years, and who in a few months’ time would be
free. Eleven years of solitary confinement!
‘‘I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out.”
What does he say? Nothing. Why does he stare at
his hands, and pick the flesh upon his fingers, and raise
his eyes for an instant, every now and then, to those
bare walls which have seen his head turn grey P. It is
a way he has sometimes. f
Does he never look men in the face, and does he always
pluck at those hands of his, as though he were bent on
parting skin and bone? It is his humour; nothing more.
It is his humour, too, to say that he does not look for-
ward to going out; that he is not glad the time is draw-
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 303
ing near; that he did look forward to it once, but that
Was Very long ago; that he has lost all care for every-
thing. It is his humour to be a helpless, crushed and
broken man. And Heaven be his witness that he has
his humour thoroughly gratified!
There were three young women in adjoining cells, all
convicted at the same time of a conspiracy to rob their
prosecutor. In the silence and solitude of their lives
they had grown to be quite beautiful. Their looks were
very sad, and might have moved the sternest visitor to
tears, but not to that kind of sorrow which the contem-
plation of the men awakens. One was a young girl;
not twenty, as I recollect, whose snow-white room was
hung with the work of some former prisoner, and upon
whose downcast face the sun in all its splendour shone
down through the high chink in the wall, where one
narrow strip of bright blue sky was visible. She was
very penitent and quiet; had come to be resigned, she
said (and I believe her), and had a mind at peace. “In
a word, you are happy here?” said one of my compan-
ions. She struggled—she did struggle very hard—to
answer Yes; but raising her eyes, and meeting that
glimpse of freedom Over-head, she burst into tears and
said, She tried to be; she uttered no complaint; but it
was natural that she should sometimes long to go out of
that one cell: she could not help that,” she sobbed, poor
thing!
I went from cell to cell that day; and every face I saw,
or word I heard, or incident I noted, is present to my
mind in, all its painfulness. But let me pass them by
for One more pleasant glance of a prison on the same
plan which I afterwards saw at Pittsburgh.
When I had gone over that in the same manner, I
asked the governor if he had any person in his charge
who was shortly going out. He had One, he said, whose
time was up next day; but he had only been a prisoner
two years.
Two years! I looked back through two years in my
own life—out of jail, prosperous, happy, surrounded by
blessings, comforts, and good fortune—and thought how
wide a gap it was, and how long those two years passed
in solitary captivity would have been. I have the face
of this man, who was going to be released next day,
before me now. It is almost more memorable in its hap-
304 AMERICAN NOTES
piness than the other faces in their misery. How easy
and how natural it was for him to say that the system
was a good one; and that the time went “pretty quick
—considering; ” and that when a man once felt he had
offended the law, and must satisfy it, he “got along,
somehow,” and so forth!
“What did he call you back to say to you, in that
strange flutter?” I asked of my conductor, when he had
locked the door and joined me in the passage.
“Oh! That he was afraid the soles of his boots were
not fit for walking, as they were a good deal worn when
he came in; and that he would thank me very much to
have them mended, ready.”
Those boots had been taken off his feet and put away
with the rest of his clothes, two years before!
I took that opportunity of inquiring how they con-
ducted themselves immediately before going out; add-
ing that I presumed they trembled very much.
“Well, it’s not so much a trembling,” was the answer
—‘‘ though they do quiver—as a complete derangement
of the nervous system. They can’t sign their names to
the book; sometimes can’t even hold the pen; look about
'em without appearing to know why, or where they are;
and sometimes get up and sit down again twenty times
in a minute. This is when they are in the office, where
they are taken with the hood on, as they were brought
in. When they get outside the gate they stop and look
first one way and then the other, not knowing which to
take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were
drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against
the fence, they are so bad; but they clear off in course
Of time.”
As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at
the faces of the men within them, I tried to picture to
myself the thoughts and feelings natural to their condi-
tion. I imagined the hood just taken off, and the scene
of their captivity disclosed to them in all its dismal
monotony. -
At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a
hideous vision; and his old life a reality. He throws
himself upon his bed, and lies there abandoned to
despair. By degrees the insupportable solitude and bar-
renness of the place rouses him from this stupor, and
when the trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 305
begs and prays for work. “Give me some work to do,
or I shall go raving mad l’
He has it; and by fits and starts applies himself to
labour; but every now and then there comes upon him a
burning sense of the years that must be wasted in that
stone coffin, and an agony so piercing in the recollection
of those who are hidden from his view and knowledge,
that he starts from his seat, and striding up and down
the narrow room with both hands clasped on his uplifted
head, hears spirits tempting him to beat his brains out
On the wall.
Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there moaning.
Suddenly he starts up, wondering whether any other
man is near; whether there is another cell like that on
either side of him: and listens keenly.
There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near
for all that. He remembers to have heard once, when
He little thought of coming here himself, that the cells
were so constructed that the prisoners could not hear
each other, though the officers could hear them. Where
is the nearest man—upon the right, or on the left P or is
there one in both directions 2 Where is he sitting now
—with his face to the light 2 or is he walking to and fro?
How is he dressed? Has he been here long? Is he
much worn away? Is he very white and spectre-like?
Does he think of his neighbour too?
Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he
thinks, he conjures up a figure with his back towards
him, and imagines it moving about in this next cell.
He has no idea of the face, but he is certain of the dark
form of a stooping man. In the cell upon the other side,
he puts another figure, whose face is hidden from him
also. Day after day, and often when he wakes up in
the middle of the night, he thinks of these two men
until he is almost distracted. He never changes them.
There they are always as he first imagined them—an
old man on the right; a younger man upon the left—
whose hidden features torture him to death, and have a
mystery that makes him tremble.
The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like
mourners at a funeral; and slowly he begins to feel that
the white walls of the cell have something dreadful in
them: that their colour is horrible: that the smooth sur-
face chills his blood: that there is one hateful corner
WOL. I. 20
306 AMERICAN NOTES
which torments him. Every morning when he wakes,
he hides his head beneath the coverlet, and shudders to
see the ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. The
blessed light of day itself peeps in, an ugly phantom
face, through the unchangeable crevice which is his
prison window.
By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful
corner swell until they beset him at all times; invade
his rest, make his dreams hideous, and his nights dread-
ful. At first, he took a strange dislike to it: feeling as
though it gave birth in his brain to something of corre-
sponding shape, which ought not to be there, and racked
his head with pains. Then he began to fear it, then to
dream of it, and of men whispering its name and point-
ing to it. Then he could not bear to look at it, nor yet
to turn his back upon it. Now, it is every night the
lurking-place of a ghost: a shadow:—a silent something,
horrible to see, but whether bird, or beast, or muffled
human shape, he cannot tell.
When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard
without. When he is in the yard, he dreads to re-enter
the cell. When night comes, there stands the phantom
in the corner. If he have the courage to stand in its
place, and drive it out (he had once: Teing desperate),
it broods upon his bed. In the twilight, and always at
the same hour, a voice calls to him by name; as the dark-
ness thickens, his Loom begins to live; and even that, his
comfort, is a hideous figure, watching him till daybreak.
Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart
from him one by one; returning sometimes, unexpect-
edly, but at longer intervals, and in less alarming shapes.
He has talked upon religious matters with the gentle-
man who visits him, and has read his Bible, and has
written a prayer upon his slate, and hung it up as a kind
of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly companion-
ship. He dreams now, sometiraes of his children or his
wife, but is sure that they are dead, or have deserted
him. He is easily moved to tears: is gentle, submis-
sive, and broken-spirited. Occasionally, the old agony
comes back: a very little thing will revive it; even a
familiar sound, or the scent of summer flowers in the
air; but it does not last long, now: for the world without,
has come to be the vision, and this solitary life, the sad
reality.
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If his term of imprisonment be short—I mean com-
paratively, for short it cannot be—the last half year is
almost worse than all; for then he thinks the prison will
take fire and he be burnt in the ruins, or that he is
doomed to die within the walls, or that he will be de-
tained on some false charge and sentenced for another
term: or that something, no matter what, must happen
to prevent his going at large. And this is natural, and
impossible to be reasoned against, because, after his
long separation from human life, and his great Suffer-
ing, any event will appear to him more probable in the
contemplation, than #. being restored to liberty and
his fellow-creatures.
If his period of confinement have been very long, the
prospect of relapse, bewilders and confuses him. His
broken heart may flutter for a moment, when he thinks
of the world outside, and what it might have been to
him in all those lonely years, but that is all. The cell-
door has been closed too long on all its hopes and cares.
Better to have hanged him in the beginning than bring
him to this pass, and send him forth to mingle with his
kind, who are his kind no.more.
On the haggard fade of every man among these pris-
oners, the same expression sat. I know not what to
liken it to. It had something of that strained attention
which we see upon the faces of the blind and deaf,
mingled with a kind of horror, as though they had all
been secretly terrified. In every little chamber that I
entered, and at every grate through which I looked, I
seemed to see the same appalling countenance. It lives
in my memory, with the fascination of a remarkable
picture. Parade before my eyes, a hundred men, with
one among them newly released from this solitary suf-
fering, and I would point him out.
The faces of the women, as I have said, it humanises
and refines. Whether this be because of their better
nature, which is elicited in solitude, or because of their
being gentler creatures, of greater patience and longer
suffering, I do not know; but so it is, That the punish-
ment is nevertheless, to my thinking, fully as cruel and
as wrong in their case, as in that of the men, I need
scarcely add.
My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental
anguish it occasions—an anguish SO acute and so tre-
&
30S AMLERICAN NOTES
mendous, that all imagination of it must fall far short
of the reality—it wears the mind into a morbid state,
which renders it unfit for the rough contact and busy
action of the world. It is my fixed opinion that those
who have undergone this punishment, MUST pass into
society again morally unhealthy and diseased. There
are many instances on record, of men who have chosen,
or have been condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, but
I scarcely remember One, even among sages of strong
and vigorous intellect, where its effect has not become
apparent, in some disordered train of thought, or some
gloomy hallucination. What monstrous phantoms, bred.
of despondency and doubt, and born and reared in soli-
tude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation
ugly, and darkening the face of Heaven! -
Suicides are rare among these prisoners: are almost,
indeed, unknown. But no argument in favour of the
system, can reasonably be deduced from this circum-
stance, although it is very often urged. All men who
have made diseases of the mind their study, know per-
fectly well that such extreme depression and despair as
will change the whole character, and beat down all its
powers of elasticity and self-resistance, may be at work
within a man, and yet stop short of self-destruction.
This is a common case. gº
That it makes the senses dull, and by degrees impairs
the bodily faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to
those who were with me in this very establishment at
Philadelphia, that the criminals who had been there
long, were deaf. They, who were in the habit of see-
ing these men constantly, were perfectly amazed at the
idea, which they regarded as groundless and fanciful.
And yet the very first prisoner to whom they appealed
—one of their own selection—confirmed my impression
(which was unknown to him) instantly, and said, with
a genuine air it was impossible to doubt, that he couldn’t
think how it happened, but he was growing very dull of
hearing.
That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and
effects the worst man least, there is no doubt. In its
superior efficiency as a means of reformation, com-
pared with that other code of regulations which al.
lows the prisoners to work in company without com-
municating together, I have not the Smallest falth.
| l,
tº
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 309
All the instances of reformation that were mentioned
to me, were of a kind that might have been—and I
have no doubt whatever, in my own mind, would have
been—equally well brought about by the Silent System.
With regard to such men as the negro burglar and the
English thief, even the most enthusiastic have scarcely
any hope of their conversion. f
It seems to me that the objection that nothing whole-
some or good has ever had its growth in such unnatural
solitude, and that even a dog or any of the more intel-
ligent among beasts, would pine, and mope, and rust
away, beneath its influence, would be in itself a suffi-
cient, argument against this system. But when we
recollect, in addition, how very cruel and severe it is,
and that a solitary life is always liable to peculiar and
distinct objections of a most deplorable nature, which
have arisen here, and call to mind, moreover, that the
choice is not between this system, and a bad or ill-con-
sidered one, but between it and another which has
worked well, and is, in its whole design and practice,
excellent; there is surely more than sufficient reason
for abandoning a mode of punishment attended by so
little hope of promise, and fraught, beyond dispute,
with such a host of evils.
As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this
chapter with a curious story, arising out of the same
theme, which was related to me, on the occasion of this
visit, by some of the gentlemen concerned.
t one of the periodical meetings of the inspectors of
this prison, a workingman of Philadelphia presented
himself before the Board, and earnestly requested to be
placed in solitary confinement. On being asked what
motive could possibly prompt him to make this strange
demand, he answered that he had an irresistible pro-
pensity to get drunk; that he was constantly indulging
it, to his great misery and ruin; that he had no power
of resistance; that he wished to-be put beyond the reach
of temptation; and that he could think of no better way
than this. It was pointed out to him, in reply, that the
prison was for criminals who had been tried and sen-
tenced by the law, and could not be made available for
any such fanciful purposes; he was exhorted to abstain
from intoxicating drinks, as he surely might if he
would; and received other very good advice, with which
310 AMERICAN NOTES
he retired, exceedingly dissatisfied with the result of
his application.
He came again, and again, and again, and was so
very earnest and importunate, that at last they took
counsel together, and said, “He will certainly qualify
himself for admission, if we reject him any more. Let
us shut him up. He will soon be glad to go away, and
then we shall get rid of him.” So they made him sign
a statement which would prevent his ever sustaining an
action for false imprisonment, to the effect that his in-
carceration was voluntary, and of his own seeking;
they requested him to take notice that the officer in
aſ tendance had orders to release him at any hour of the
day or night, when he might knock upon his door for that
purpose; but desired him to understand, that Once going
out, he would not be admitted any more. These condi-
tions agreed upon, and he still remaining in the same
mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up in
one of the cells.
In this cell, the man, who had not the firmness to
leave a glass of liquor standing untasted on a table be-
fore him—in this cell, in solitary confinement, and work-
ing every day at his trade of shoemaking, this man re-
mained nearly two years. His health beginning to fail
at the expiration of that time, the surgeon recommended
that he should work occasionally in the garden; and as
he liked the notion very much, he went about this new
occupation with great cheerfulness.
He was digging here, one summer day, very indus-
triously, when the wicket in the outer gate chanced to
be left open; showing, beyond, the well-remembered
dusty road and sun-burnt fields. The way was as free
to him as to any man living, but he no sooner raised his
head and caught sight of it, all shining in the light,
than, with the involuntary instinct of a prisoner, he
cast away his spade, Scampered off as fast as his legs
would carry him, and never once looked back.
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CHAPTER VIII.
WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE
PRESIDENT'S HOUSE.
E left Philadelphia by steamboat at six o'clock one
very cold morning, and turned our faces towards
Washington.
In the course of this day's journey, as on subsequent
Occasions, we encountered some Englishmen (Small
farmers, perhaps, or country publicans at home) who
were settled in America, and were travelling on their
own affairs. Of all grades and kinds of men that
jostle one in the public conveyances of the States, these
are often the most intolerable and the most insufferable
companions. United to every disagreeable character-
istic that the worst kind of American travellers possess,
these countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent
conceit and cool assumption of Superiority, quite mon-
strous to behold. In the coarse familiarity of their ap-
proach, and the effrontery of their inquisitiveness
(which they are in great haste to assert as if they
panted to revenge themselves upon the decent old re-
straints of home) they surpass any native specimens
that came within my range of observation : and I
grew so patriotic when I saw and heard them, that I
would cheerfully have submitted to a reasonable fine,
if I could have given any other country in the whole
world, the honour of claiming them for its children.
As Washington may be called the head-quarters of
tobacco-tinctured saliya, the time is come when I must
confess, with OUIf any disguise, that the prevalence of
those two odious practices of chewing and expectorat-
ing began about this time to be anything but agree-
able, and soon became most offensive and sickening.
In all the public places of America, this filthy custom
312 AMERICAN NOTES
is recognised. In the courts of law, the judge has his
spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the
prisoner his ; while the jurymen and spectators are
provided for, as so many men who in the course of
nature must desire to spit incessantly. In the hos-
pitals, the students of medicine are requested, by
notices upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice
into the boxes provided for that purpose, and not to
discolour the stairs. In public buildings, visitors are
implored through the same agency, to squirt the
essence of their quids, or “plugs,” as I have heard
them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweet-
meat, into the national Spittoons, and not about the
bases of the marble columns. But in some parts this
custom is inseparably mixed up with every meal and
morning call, and with all the transactions of social
life. The stranger, who follows in the track I took
myself, will findſ it in its fuji bloom and glory, luxuri-
ant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington.
And let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to
my shame), that previous tourists have exaggerated
its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration of
mastiness, which cannot be Outdone.
On board this steamboat, there were two young gentle-
men, with shirt-collars reversed as usual, and armed
with very big walking sticks; who planted two seats in
the middle of the deck, at a distance of some four paces
apart; took out their tobacco-boxes; and sat down oppo-
'site each other to chew. In less than a quarter of an
hour's time, these hopeful youths had shed about them
on the clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain;
clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, within
whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they
never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was
dry. This being before breakfast, rather disposed me,
I confess, to nausea; but looking attentively at one of
the expectorators, I plainly saw that he was young in
chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy, himself. A glow of
delight came over me at this discovery; and as I marked
his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco
in his left cheek, quiver with his suppressed agony, while
yet he spat, and chewed, and Spat again, in emulation
of his older friend, I could have fallen on his neck and
implored him to go on for hours,

FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 313
We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the
cabin below, where there was no more hurry or confu-
sion than at Such a meal in England, and where there
was certainly greater politeness exhibited than at most
of our stage-coach banquets. At about nine o'clock we
arrived at the railroad station, and went on by the cars.
At noon we turned out again, to cross a wide river in
another steam-boat; landed at a continuation of the rail-
road on the opposite shore; and went on by other cars; .
in which in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed
by wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two creeks,
called respectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The
water in both was blackened with flights of canvas-
backed ducks, which are most delicious eating, and
abound hereabouts at that season of the year.
These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are
Only just wide enough for the passage of the trains;
which, in the event of the smallest accident, would in-
evitably be plunged into the river. They are startling
contrivances, and are most agreeable when passed.
We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in
Maryland, were waited on, for the first time, by slaves.
The sensation of exacting any service from human
creatures who are bought and sold, and being for the
time, a party as it were to their condition, is not an
enviable one. The institution exists perhaps, in its
least repulsive and most mitigated form in such a town
as this; but it is slavery; and though I was with respect
to it, an innocent man, its presence filled me with a
sense of shame and self-reproach.
After dinner, we went down to the railroad again,
and took our seats in the cars for Washington. Being
rather early, those men and boys who happened to have
nothing particular to do, and were curious in foreigners,
came (according to custom) round the carriage in which
I sat; let down all the windows; thrust in their heads
and shoulders; hooked themselves on convoniently, by
their elbows: and fell to comparing notes on the subject
of my personal appearance, with as much indifference as
if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much
uncompromising information with reference to my own
nose and eyes, the various impressions wrought by my
mouth and chin on different minds, and how my head
looks when it is viewed from behind, as on these occa-
314 AMERICAN NOTES
sions. Some gentlemen were only satisfied by exercising
their sense of touch; and the boys (who are surprisingly
precocious in Almerica) were seldom satisfied, even by
that, but would return to the charge over and over
again. Many a budding president has walked into my
room with his cap on his head and his hands in his
pockets, and stared at me for two whole hours: occa-
sionally refreshing himself with a tweak at his nose,
or a draught from the Water-jug; or by walking to the
windows and inviting other boys in the street below, to
come up and do likewise: crying, “Here he is!” “Come
on 1’’ ‘‘Bring all your brothers!” with other hospitable
entreaties of that nature.
We reached Washington at about half-past six that
evening, and had upon the way a beautiful view of the
Capitol, which is a fine building of the Corinthian order,
placed upon a noble and commanding eminence!
Arrived at the hotel, I saw no more of the place that
night; being very tired, and glad to get to bed.
Breakfast Over next morning, I walk about the
streets for an hour or two, and, coming home, throw
up the window in the front and back, and look out.
Here is Washington, fresh in my mind, and under my eye.
Take the worst parts of the City Road and Penton-
ville, or the straggling outskirts of Paris, where the
houses are smallest, º all their Oddities, but
especially the Small shops and dwellings, occupied in
Pentonville (but not in Washington) by furniture
brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of
birds. Burn the whole down; |build it up again in Wood
and plaster ; widen it a little ; throw in part of St.
John’s Wood; put green blinds outside all the private
houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every
window; plough up all the roads; plant a great deal of
coarse turf in every place where it ought motto be; erect
three handsome buildings in stone and marble, any-
where, but the more entirely out of everybody’s way
the better ; call one the Post Office, one the Patent
Office, and one the Treasury; make it scorching hot in
the morning, and freezing cold in the afternoon, with
an occasional tornado of wind and dust; leave a brick-
field without the bricks, in all central places where
a street may naturally be expected : and that’s
Washington.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 315
The hotel in which we live is a long row of small
houses fronting on the street, and opening at the back
upon a common yard, in which hangs a great triangle.
Whenever a servant is wanted, somebody beats upon
this triangle from one stroke up to seven, according to
the number of the house in which his presence is re-
quired; and as all the servants are always being wanted,
and none of them ever come, this enlivening engine is
in full performance the whole day through. Clothes are
drying in this same yard; female slaves, with cotton
handkerchiefs twisted round their heads, are running
to and fro on the hotel business; black waiters cross
and recross with dishes in their hands; two great dogs
are playing upon a mound of loose bricks in the centre
of the little square; a pig is turning up his stomach to
the sun, and grunting “that’s comfortable!” and neither
the men, nor the women, nor the dogs, nor the pig, nor
any created creature takes the smallest notice of the
triangle, which is tingling madly all the time. wº
I walk to the front window, and look across the road
upon a long straggling row of houses, one story high,
terminating, nearly opposite, but a little to the left, in
a melancholy piece of waste ground with frowsy grass,
which looks like a small piece of country that has taken
to drinking, and has quite lost itself. Standing anyhow
and all wrong, upon this open space, like something
meteoric that has fallen down from the moon, is an odd,
lop-sided, one-eyed kind of wooden building, that looks
like a church, with a flag-staff as long as itself sticking
Out of a steeple something larger than a tea-chest.
Under the window is a small stand of coaches, whose
slave-drivers are sunning themselves on the steps of our
door, and talking idly together. The three most obtru-
sive houses near at hand are the three meanest. On one
—a shop which never has anything in the window, and
never has the door Open—is painted in large characters,
“THE CITY LUNCH.” At another, which looks like the
back way to somewhere else, but is an independent
building in itself, oysters are procurable in every style.
At the third, which is a very, very little tailor's shop,
pants are fixed to order; or, in other words pantaloons
are made to measure. And that is our street in
Washington. 3.
It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Dis-
316 AMERICAN NOTES
tances, but it might with greater propriety be termed
the City of Magnificent Intentions; for it is only on tak-
ing a bird’s eye view of it from the top of the Capitol,
that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its
projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues,
that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, mile-
long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants;
public buildings that need but a public to be complete;
and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only lack
great thoroughfares to ornament—are its leading feat-
ures. One might fancy the season over, and most of
the houses gone out of town for ever with their masters.
To the admirers of cities it is a Barmecide Feast; a
pleasant field for the imagination to rove in; a monu-
ment raised to a deceased project, with not even a legi-
ble inscription to record its departed greatness.
Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally
chosen for the seat of Government, as a means of
averting the conflicting jealousies and interests of the
different States; and very probably, too, as being re-
mote from mobs: a consideration not to be slighted,
even in America. It has no trade or commerce of its
own: having little or no population beyond the Presi-
dent and his establishment; the members of the legis-
lature who reside there during the session; the Govern-
ment clerks and officers employed in the various
departments; the keepers of the hotels and boarding-
houses; and the tradesmen who supply their tables. It is
very unhealthy. Few people would live in Washington, I
take it, who were not obliged to reside there; and the
tides of emigration and speculation, those rapid and
regardless currents, are little likely to flow at any time
towards such dull and sluggish water.
The principal features of the Capitol, are, of course,
the two Houses of Assembly. But there is, besides, in
the centre of the building, a fine rotunda, ninety-six feet
in diameter, and ninety-six high, whose circular wall
is divided into compartments, ornamented by historical
pictures. Four of these have for their subjects promi-
ment events in the revolutionary struggle. They were
painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a member of
Washington’s staff at the time of their occurrence; from
which circumstance they derive a peculiar interest of
their own. In this same hall Mr. Greenough’s large
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 31.
statue of Washington has been lately placed. It has
great merits of course, but it struck me as being rather
strained and violent for its subject. I could wish, how-
ever, to have seen it in a better light than it can ever
be viewed in, where it stands. *
There is a very pleasant and commodious library in
the Capitol; and from a balcony in front, the bird’s-eye
view, of which I have just spoken, may be had, to-
gether with a beautiful prospect of the adjacent
country. In one of the ornamented portions of the
building, there is, a figure of Justice; whereunto the
Guide Book says, “the artist at first contemplated
giving more of nudity, but he was warned that the pub-
lic sentiment in this country would not admit of it, and
in his caution he has gone, perhaps, into the Opposite
extreme.” Poor Justice! she has been made to Wear
much stranger garments in America than those she
pines in, in the Capitol. Let us hope that she has changed
her dress-maker since they were fashioned, and that
the public sentiment of the country did not cut out the
clothes she hides her lovely figure in just now.
The House of Representatives is a beautiful and
spacious hall of semi-circular shape, supported by hand-
some pillars. One part of the gallery is appropriated
to the Hadies, and there they sit in front rows, and come
in, and go out, as at a play or concert. The chair is
canopied, and raised considerably above the floor of the
House; and every member has an easy chair and a writ-
ing desk to himself: which is denounced by some people
out of doors as a most unfortunate and injudicious ar-
rangement,tending to long sittings and prosaic speeches.
It is an elegant chamber to look at, but a singularly bad
one for all purposes of hearing. The Senate, which is
smaller, is free from this objection, and is exceedingly
well adapted to the uses for which it is designed. The
sittings, I need hardly add, take place in the day ; and
the parliamentary forms are modelled on those of the
old country. -
I was sometimes asked, in my progress through other
Fº whether I had not been very much impressed
y the heads of the lawmakers at Washington ; mean-
ing not their chiefs and leaders, but literally their in-
dividual and personal heads, whereon their hair grew,
and whereby the phrenological character of each legis-
318 AMERICAN NOTES
lator was expressed : and I almost as often struck my
questioner dumb with indignant consternation by an-
swering “No, that I didn’t remember being at all
overcome.” As I must, at whatever hazard, repeat the
avowal here, I will follow it up by relating my impres-
sions on this subject in as few words as possible.
In the first place—it may be from some imperfect
development of my organ of Veneration—I do not re-
member having ever fainted away, or having even been
moved to tears of joyful pride, at sight of any legis-
lative body. I have borne the House of Commons like
a man, and have yielded to no weakness, but slumber,
in the House of Lords. Ishave seen elections for borough
and county, and have never been impelled (no matter
which party won) to damage my hat by throwing it up
into the air in triumph, or to crack my voice by shout-
ing forth any reference to Our Glorious Constitution, to
the noble purity of our independent voters, or the unim-
peachable integrity of our independent members. Hav-
ing withstood such strong attacks upon my fortitude, it
is possible that I may be of a cold and insensible tem-
perament; amounting to icyness, in such matters; and
therefore my impressions of the live pillars of the Capitol
at Washington must be received with such grains of
allowance as this free confession may seem to demand.
Did I see in this public body an assemblage of men,
bound together in the sacred names of Liberty and
Freedom, and so asserting the chaste dignity of those
twin goddesses, in all their discussions, as to exalt at
Once the Eternal Principles to which their names are
given, and their own character, and the character of
their countrymen, in the admiring eyes of the whole
world 2 -
It was but a week, since an aged, grey-haired man, a
lasting honour to the land that gave him birth, who has
done good service to his country, as his forefathers did,
and who will be remembered scores upon scores of
years after the worms bred in its corruption are but
so many grains of dust—it was but a week since this
old man had stood for days upon his trial before this
very body, charged with having dared to assert the in-.
famy of that traffic, which has for its accursed mer-
chandise men and women, and their unborn children.
Yes. And publicly exhibited in the same city all the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 319
while; gilded, framed and glazed; hung up for general
admiration; shown to strangers, not with shame, but
pride; its face not turned towards the wall, itself not
taken down and burned; is the Unanimous Declaration
of The Thirteen United States of America, which sol-
emnly declares that All Men are created Equal; and
are endowed by their Creator with the Imalienable
Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happi-
ness |
It was not a month since this same body had sat
calmly by, and heard a man, one of themselves, with
oaths which beggars in their drink reject, threaten to
cut one another's throat from ear to ear. There he
sat among them; not crushed by the general feeling of
the assembly, but as good a man as any.
There was but a week to come, and another of that
body, for doing his duty to those who sent him there;
for claiming in a Republic the Liberty and Freedom of
expressing their sentiments, and making known their
prayer; would be tried, found guilty, and have strong
censure passed upon him by the rest. His was a grave
offence indeed; for years before, he had risen up and
said, “A gang of male and female slaves for sale,
warranted to breed like cattle, linked to each other by
iron fetters, are passing now along the open street
beneath the windows of your Temple of Equality
Look l’ But there are many kinds of hunters engaged
in the Pursuit of Happiness, and they go variously
armed. It is the Inalienable Right of some among
them, to take the field after their Happiness, equipped
with cat and Cartwhip, stocks, and iron collar, and to
shout their view halloa' (always in praise of Liberty)
to the music of clanking chains and bloody stripes.
Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats; of
words and blows such as coalheavers deal upon each
other, when they forget their breeding? On ‘.
side. Every session had its anecdotes of that kind,
and the actors were all there.
Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men,
who applying themselves in a new world to correct
some of the falsehoods and vices of the old, purified
the avenues to Public Life, paved the dirty ways to
Place and Power, debated and made laws for the Com-
mon Good, and had no party but their Country?
320 AMERICAN NOTES
I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest per-
version of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst
tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections;
under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly
attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for
shields, and hired pens for daggers; º truck-
lings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be con-
sidered, is, that every day and week they sow new
crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the
dragon’s teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness;
aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the
popular mind, and artful suppressions of all its good
influences : such things as these, and in a word, Dis-
honest Faction in its most depraved and most unblush-
ing form, stared out from every corner of the crowded
hall.
Did I see among them, the intelligence and refine-
ment; the true, honest, patriotic heart of America?
Here and there, were drops of its blood and life, but
they scarcely coloured the stream of desperate adven-
turers which sets that way for profit and for pay. It is
the game of these men, and of their profligate organs,
to make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal, and
so destructive of all self-respect in worthy men, that
sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall be kept
aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out
their selfish views unchecked. And thus this lowest of
all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other
countries would from their intelligence and station,
most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the far-
thest from that degradation.
That there are among the representatives of the
people in both Houses, and among all parties, some men
of high character, and great abilities, I need not say.
The foremost among these politicians who are known
in Europe, have been already described, and I see no
reason to depart from the rule I have laid down for my
guidance, of abstaining from all mention of individuals.
It will be sufficient to add, that to the most favourable
accounts that have been written of them, I more than
fully and most heartily subscribe; and that personal in-
tercourse and free communication have bred within me,
not the result predicted in the very doubtful proverb,
but increased admiration and respect. They are strik-
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 321
ing men to look at, hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions
in energy, Crichtons in varied accomplishment, Indians
in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in Strong and
generous impulse; and they as well represent the honour
and wisdom of their country at home, as the distin-
guished gentleman who is now its minister at the
British Court sustains its highest character abroad.
I visited both Houses nearly every day, during my
stay in Washington. On my initiatory visit to the
House of Representatives, they divided against a deci-
sion of the chair; but the chair won. The second time
I went, the member who was speaking, being inter-
rupted by a laugh, mimicked it, as one child would in
quarrelling with another, and added, “that he would
make honourable gentlemen opposite, sing out a little
more on the other side of their mouths presently.” But
interruptions are rare; the speaker being usually heard
in silence. There are more quarrels than with us, and
more threatenings than gentlemen are accustomed to
exchange in any civilised society of which we have
record; but farm-yard imitations have not as yet been
imported from the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The feature in oratory which appears to be the most
practised, and most relished, is the constant repetition
of the same idea or shadow of an idea in fresh words;
and the inquiry out of doors is not, “What did he say?”
but, ‘‘How long did he speak?” These, however, are
but enlargements of a principle which prevails else-
where.
The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its
proceedings are conducted with much gravity and
order. Both houses are handsomely carpeted ; but the
state to which these carpets are reduced by the univer-
sal disregard of the Spittoon with which every honour-
able member is accommodated, and the extraordinary
improvements on the pattern which are squirted and
dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of
being described. I will merely observe, that I strongly
recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; º if
they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse,
not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any
a CCOUnt.
It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the
least, to see so many honourable members with swelled
WOL. I 21
322 AMERICAN NOTES
faces ; and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover
that this appearance is caused by the quantity of
tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the
cheek. It is strange enough too, to see an honourable
gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair with his
legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient
‘‘plug’ with his penknife, and when it is quite ready
for use, shooting the old one from his mouth, as from a
pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place.
I was surprised to observe that even steady old
chewers of great experience, are not always good
marksmen, which has rather inclined me to doubt that
general proficiency with the rifle, of which we have
heard so much in England. Several gentlemen called
upon me who, in the course of conversation, frequently
missed the Spittoon at five paces ; and One (but he was
certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the
open window, at three. On another occasion, when I
dined out, and was sitting with two ladies and some
gentlemen round a fire before dinner, one of the company
fell short of the fire-place, six distinct times. I am dis-
osed to think, however, that this was occasioned by
is not aiming at that object ; as there was a white
marble hearth before the fender, which was more con-
venient, and may have suited his purpose better,
The Patent Office at Washington, furnishes an ex-
traordinary example of American enterprise and in-
genuity : for the immense number of models it contains
are the accumulated inventions of only five years ; the
whole of the previous collection having been destroyed
by fire. The elegant structure in which they are ar-
ranged, is one of design rather than execution, for there
is but one side erected out of four, though the works
are stopped. The Post Office is a very compact, and
very beautiful building. In one of the departments,
among a collection of rare and curious articles, are de-
pº the presents which have been made from time
o time to the American ambassadors at foreign courts
by the various potentates to whom they were the
accredited agents of the Republic : gifts which by the
law they are not permitted to retain. I confess that I
looked upon this as a very painful exhibition, and one
by no means flattering to the national standard of
honesty and honour. That can scarcely be a high state
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 323
of moral feeling which imagines a gentleman of repute
and station, likely to be corrupted in the discharge of
his duty, by the present of a snuff box, or a richly
mounted sword, or an Eastern shawl; and surely the
Nation who reposes confidence in her appointed ser-
vants, is likely to be better served, than she who makes
them the subject of such very mean and paltry sus-
picions.
At Georgetown, in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit Col-
lege ; delightfully situated, and, so far as I had an Op-
portunity of seeing, well managed. Many persons who
are not members of the Romish Church, avail them-
selves, I believe, of these institutions, and of the advan-
tageous opportunities they afford for the education of
their children. The heights in this neighbourhood,
above the Potomac River, are very picturesque ; and are
free, I should conceive, from some of the insalubrities
of Washington. The air, at that elevation, was quite
cool and refreshing, when in the city it was burning
hot. The President’s mansion is more like an English
club-house, both within and without, than any other
kind of establishment with which I can compare it.
The ornamental ground about it has been laid out in
garden walks ; they are pretty, and agreeable to the
eye : though they have that uncomfortable air of hav-
ing been made yesterday, which is far from favourable
to the display of such beauties.
My first visit to this house was on the morning after
my arrival, when I was carried thither by an official
gentleman, who was so kind as to charge himself with
my presentation to the President.
We entered a large hall, and having twice or thrice
rung a bell which nobody answered, walked without
further ceremony through the rooms on the ground floor,
as divers other gentlemen (mostly with their hats On,
and their hands in their pockets) were doing very leis-
urely. Some of these had ladies with them, to whom
they were showing the premises; others were lounging
On the chairs and sofas ; others, in a perfect state of
exhaustion from listlessness, were yawning drearily.
The greater portion of this assemblage were rather as-
Serting their Supremacy than doing anything else, as
they had no particular business there, that anybody
knew of. A few were closely eyeing the moveables,
324. AMERICAN NOTES
as if to make quite sure that the President (who was far
from popular) had not made away with any of the fur-
niture, or sold the fixtures for his private benefit.
After glancing at these loungers; who were scattered
Over a pretty drawing-room, Opening upon a terrace
which commanded a beautiful prospect of the river and
the adjacent country; and who were sauntering too,
about a larger stateroom called the Eastern Drawing-
room; we went up-stairs into another chamber, where
were certain visitors, Waiting for audiences. At sight
of my conductor, a black in plain clothes and yellow
slippers who was gliding noiselessly about, and whis-
pering messages in the ears of the more impatient,
made a sign of recognition, and glided Off to announce
him.
We had previously looked into another chamber fitted
all round with a great bare wooden desk or counter,
whereon lay files of newspapers, to which Sundry gen-
tlemen were referring. But there were no such means
of beguiling the time in this apartment, which was as
unpromising and tiresome as any waiting-room in one
of our public establishments, or any physician’s diming-
room during his hours of consultation at home.
There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the
room. One, a tall, wiry, muscular old man, from the
west; sunburnt and Swarthy; with a brown-white hat
on his knees, and a giant umbrella resting between his
legs; who sat bolt upright in his chair, frowning steadily
at the carpet, and twitching the hard lines about his
mouth, as if he had made up his mind “to fix” the
President on what he had to say, and wouldn’t bate
him a grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, six-feet-six
in height, with his hat On, and his hands under his
coat-tails, who leaned against the wall and kicked the
floor with his heel, as though he had Time's head under
his shoe, and were literally “killing him. A third, an
oval-faced, bilious-looking man, with sleek black hair
cropped close, and whiskers and beard shaved down to
blue dots, who sucked the head of a thick stick, and
from time to time took it out of his mouth, to see how
it was getting on. A fourth did nothing but whistle.
A fifth did nothing but Spit. And indeed all these gen-
tlemen were so very persevering and emergetic in this
latter particular, and bestowed their favours so abun-
FOR GENERAT, CIRCULATION. 32.5
dantly upon the carpet, that I take it for granted the
Presidential housemaids have high wages, or, to speak
more genteelly, an ample amount of “ compensation: ”
which is the American word for salary, in the case of
all public servants.
We had not waited in this room many minutes, before
the black messenger returned, and conducted usinto an-
other of smaller dimensions, where, at a business-like
table covered with papers, sat the President himself.
He looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he
might: being at war with everybody—but the expres-
sion of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner
was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly and agreeable.
I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanour,
he became his station singularly well. *
Being advised that the sensible etiquette of the re-
publican court, admitted of a traveller, like myself,
declining, without any impropriety, an invitation to
dinner, which did not reach me until I had concluded
my arrangements for leaving Washington some days
before that to which it referred, I only returned to this
house once. It was on the occasion of one of those gen-
eral assemblies which are held on certain nights,
between the hours of nine and twelve o’clock, and are
called, rather oddly, Levees.
I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was a
pretty dense crowd of carriages and people in the court-
yard, and so far as I could make out, there were no very
clear regulations for the taking up or setting down of
company. There were certainly no policemen to soothe
startled horses, either by sawing at their bridles or
flourishing truncheons in their eyes; and I am ready to
make oath that no inoffensive persons were knocked
violently on the head, or poked acutely in their backs
or stomachs, or brought to a stand-still by any such
gentle means, and then taken into custody for not mov-
ing on. But there was no confusion or disorder. Our
carriage reached the porch in its turn, without any
blustering, swearing, shouting, backing, or other dis-
turbance : and we dismounted with as much ease and
comfort as though we had been escorted by the whole
Metropolitan Force from A to Z inclusive,
The suite of rooms on the ground-floor, were lighted
up; and a military band was playing in the hall. In
326 AMERICAN NOTES
the smaller drawing-room, the centre of a circle of
company, were the President and his daughter-in-law,
who acted as the lady of the mansion : and a very in-
teresting, graceful, and accomplished lady too. One
gentleman who stood among this group, appeared to
take upon himself the functions of a master of the cer-
emonies. I saw no other officers or attendants, and
none were needed.
The great drawing-room, which I have already men-
tioned, and the other chambers on the ground-floor,
were crowded to excess. The company was not, in Our
sense of the term, select, for it comprehended persons
of very many grades, and classes; nor was there any
great display of costly attire : indeed some of the cos-
tumes may have been, for aught I know, grotesque
enough. But the decorum and propriety of behaviour
which prevailed, were unbroken by any rude or dis-
agreeable incident ; and every man, even among the
miscellaneous crowd in the hall who were admitted
without any orders or tickets to look on, appeared to
feel that he was a part of the Institution, and was re-
sponsible for its preserving a becoming character, and
appearing to the best advantage.
That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were
not without some refinement of taste and appreciation
of intellectual gifts, and gratitude to those men who, by
the peaceful exercise of great abilities shed new charms
and associations upon the homes of their countrymen,
and elevate their character in other lands, was most
earnestly testified by their reception of Washington
Irving, my dear friend, who had recently been appointed
Minister at the court of Spain, and who was among them
that night, in his new character, for the first and last
time before going abroad. I sincerely believe that in
all the madness of American politics, few public men
would have been so earnestly, devotedly, and affection-
ately caressed, as this most charming writer : and I
have seldom respected a public assembly more, than I
did this eager throng, when I saw them turning with
One mind from noisy Orators and officers of state, and
flocking with a generous and honest impulse round the
man of quiet pursuits: proud in his promotion as reflect-
ing back upon their country : and grateful to him with
their whole hearts for the store of graceful fancies he
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 327
had poured out among them. Long may he dispense
such treasures with unsparing hand; and long may they
remember him as worthily
The term we had assigned for the duration of our
stay in Washington, was now at an end, and we were
to begin to travel ; for the railroad distances we had
traversed yet, in journeying among these older towns,
are on that great continent looked upon as nothing.
I had at first intended going South—to Charleston.
But when I came to consider the length of time which
this journey would occupy, and the premature heat of the
season, which even at Washington had been often very
trying; and weighed moreover, in my own mind, the
pain of living in the constant contemplation of slavery,
against the more than doubtful chances of my ever
seeing it, in the time I had to spare, stripped of the dis-
guises in which it would certainly be dressed, and so
adding any item to the host of facts already heaped to-
gether on the subject ; I began to listen to old whisper-
ings which had often been present to me at home in
England, when I little lºgº of ever being here ; and
to dream again of cities growing up, like palaces in
fairy tales, among the wilds and forests of the West.
The advice I received in most quarters when I began
to yield to my desire of travelling towards that point of
the compass was, according to custom, sufficiently
cheerless: my companion being threatened with more
perils, dangers, and discomforts, than I can remember
or would catalogue if I could; but of which it will be
sufficient to remark that blowings-up in steam-boats and
breakings-down in coaches were among the least. But,
having a western route sketched out for me by the best
and kindest authority to which I could have resorted,
and putting no great faith in these discouragements, I
soon determined on my plan of action.
This was to travel south only to Richmond, in Vir-
ginia; and then to turn, and shape our course for the
Far West; whither I beseech the reader’s company, in
a new chapter.
328 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER IX.
A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER, VIRGINIA.
ROAD, AND A BLACK DRIVER, RICHMOND. BALTIMORE.
THE HARRISBURG . MAIL, AND A GLIMPSE OF THE
CITY. A CANAL BOAT.
E were to proceed in the first instance by steam-
boat ; and as it is usual to sleep On board, in conse-
Quence of the starting-hour being four o’clock in the
morning, we went down to where she lay, at that very
uncomfortable time for such expeditions when slippers
are most valuable, and a familiar bed, in the perspec-
tive of an hour or two, looks uncommonly pleasant.
It is ten o’clock at night : Say half-past ten : moonlight,
warm, and dull enough. The steamer º unlike a
child’s Noah’s ark in form, with the machiiiery on the
töp-of-the Tööf), is riding lazily up and down, and bump-
ing Clumsily against the wooden pier, as the ripple of the
river trifles with its unwieldy carcase. The wharf is
some distance from the city. There is nobody down
here ; and one or two dull lamps upon the steamer's
decks are the only signs ‘of life remaining, when our
coach has driven away. As soon as our footsteps are
heard upon the planks, a fat negress, particularly
favoured by nature in respect of bustle, emerges from
some dark stairs, and marshals my wife towards the
ladies' cabin, to which retreat she goes, followed by a
mighty bale of cloaks and great-coats. I valiantly re-
solve not to go to bed at all, but to walk up and down the
pier till morning.
I begin my promenade—thinking of all kinds of dis-
tant things and persons, and of nothing near—and pace
up and down for half-an-hour. Then I go on board
again; and getting into the light of One of the lamps,
look at my watch and think it must have stopped; and
wonder what has become of the faithful secretary whom
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 329
I brought along with me from Boston. He is supping
with our late landlord (a Field Marshal, at least, no
doubt) in honour of our departure, and may be two hours
longer. I walk again, but it gets duller and duller : the
moon goes down : next June seems farther off in the
dark, and the echoes of my footsteps make me nervous.
It has turned cold too; and walking up and down with-
Out any companion in such lonely circumstances, is but
poor amusement. So I break my staunch resolution,
and think it may be, perhaps, as well to go to bed.
|-f go on board again; open the door of the gentleman’s
} cabin; and walk in. Somehow or other—from its being
SO quiet, I suppose—I have taken it into my head that
there is jºi. there. To my horror and amazement
it is full of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, and
variety of slumber: in the berths, on the chairs, on the
floors, on the tables, and particularly round the stove,
my detested enemy. I take another step forward, and
slip upon the shining face of a black steward, who lies
rolled in a blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins,
half in pain and half in hospitality; whispers my own
name in my ear; and groping among the sleepers, leads
me to my berth. Standing beside it, I count these
slumbering passengers, and get past forty. There is no
use in going further, so I begin to undress. As the
chairs are all occupied, and there is nothing else to put
my clothes on, I deposit them upon the ground: not with-
out soiling my hands, for it is in the same condition as
the carpets in the Capitol, and from the same cause.
Having but partially undressed, I clamber on my shelf,
and hold the curtain open for a few minutes while I
look round on all my fellow-travellers again. That
done, I let it fall on them, and on the world: turn round:
and go to sleep. -
I wake, of course, when we get under weigh, for there
is a good deal of noise. The day is then just breaking.
Everybody wakes at the same time. Some are self-
possessed directly, and some are much perplexed to
make out where they are until they have rubbed their
eyes, and leaning on one elbow, looked about them.
Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a few
get up. I am among the risers: for it is easy to feel,
without going into the fresh air, that the atmosphere of
the cabin is vile in the last degree. I huddle on my
330 AMERICAN NOTES
clothes, go down into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the
barber, and wash myself. The Washing and dressing
apparatus for the passengers generally, consists of two
jack-towels, three small wooden basins, a keg of water
and a ladle to serve it out with, six square inches of
looking-glass, two ditto ditto of yellow soap, a comb and
brush for the head, and nothing for the teeth. Every-
body uses the comb and brush, except myself. Every-
body stares to see me using my own; and two or three
gentlemen are strongly disposed to banter me on my
prejudices, but don’t. When I have made my toilet, I
go up on the hurricane-deck, and set in for two hours
of hard walking up and down. The Sun is rising
brilliantly; we are passing Mount Vernon, where Wash-
ington lies buried; the river is wide and rapid; and its
banks are beautiful. All the glory and splendour of
the day are coming on, and growing brighter every
minute.
At eight o’clock we breakfast in the cabin where I
passed the night, but the windows and doors are all
thrown open, and now it is fresh enough. There is no
hurry or greediness apparent in the despatch of the
meal. It is longer than a travelling breakfast with us;
more orderly, and more polite.
Soon after nine o’clock we come to Potomac Creek,
where we are to land ; and then comes the oddest part
of the journey. Seven stage-coaches are preparing to
carry us on. Some of them are ready, some of them
are not ready. Some of the drivers are blacks, some
whites. There are four horses to each coach, and all
the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are there. The
passengers are getting out of the steamboat, and into
the coaches; the luggage is being transferred in noisy
wheelbarrows; the horses are frightened and impatient
to start; the black drivers are chattering to them like
So many monkeys; and the white ones whooping like so
many drovers: for the main thing to be done in all
kinds of hostlering here, is to make as much noise as
possible. The coaches are something like the French
coaches, but not nearly so good. In lieu of springs they
are hung on bands of the strongest leather. There is
very little choice or difference between them; and they
may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an
English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels,
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 331
and curtained with painted canvas. They are covered
with mud from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have
never been cleaned since they were first built.
The tickets we have received on board the steamboat
are marked No. 1, so we belong to coach No. 1. I throw
my coat on the box, and hoist my wife and her maid
into the inside. It has only one step, and that being
about a yard from the ground, is usually approached by
a chair; when there is no chair, ladies trust in Provi-
dence. The coach holds nine inside, having a seat
across from door to door, where we in England put our
legs: so that there is only one feat more difficult in the
performance than in getting in, and that is, getting out
again. There is only one outside passenger, and he sits
upon the box. As I am that one, I climb up; and while
they are strapping the luggage on the roof, and heaping
it into a kind of tray behind, have a good opportunity
of looking at the driver.
He is a negro–very black indeed. He is dressed in a
coarse pepper-and-salt suit excessively patched and
darned (particularly at the knees), grey stockings, enor-
mous unblacked high-low shoes, and very short trousers.
He has two odd gloves: one of parti-coloured worsted,
and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken
in the middle and bandaged up with string. And yet
he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black hat:
faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of
an English coachman But somebody in authority
cries “Go ahead!” as I am making these observations.
The mail takes the lead in a four-horse waggon, and all
the coaches follow in procession: headed by No. 1.
By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry
“All right!” an American cries “Go ahead!” which is
somewhat expressive of the national character of the
two countries.
The first half mile of the road is over bridges made
of loose planks laid across two parallel poles, which
tilt up as the wheels roll over them; and IN the river.
The river has a clayey bottom and is full of holes, so
that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpect-
edly, and can’t be found again for some time.
But we get past even this, and come to the road itself,
which is a series of alternate swamps and i.º.
A tremendous place is close before us, the black driver
332 AMERICAN NOTES
rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and
looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were
saying to himself, ‘‘We have done this often before,
but now I think we shall have a crash.” He takes a
rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at both; and dances
on the splashboard with both feet (keeping his seat, of
course) like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his
fiery coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the
mire nearly to the coach windows, tilt on One side at an
angle of forty-five degrees, and stick there. The insides
scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses flounder;
all the other six coaches stop; and their four-and-twenty
horses flouilder likewise: but merely for company, and
in sympathy with ours. Then the following circum-
Stances OCCur. -
BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). “Hi!”
Nothing happens. Insides Scream again.
BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). “Ho!”
Horses plunge, and Splash the black driver.
Gºrºss INSIDE (looking out). “Why, what on
airth—” g
Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws
his head in again, without finishing his question or
waiting for an answer.
BLACK DRIVER (still to the horses). “Jiddy! Jiddy!”
Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole,
and draw it up a bank; so steep that the black driver's
legs fly up into the air; and he goes back among the
luggage on the roof. But he immediately recovers him-
sehºº cries (still to the horses),
& 4 i ! 25 e
No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll
back upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which
rolls back upon No. 4, and so on, until No. 7 is
heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a mile
behind.
BLACK DRIVER (louder than before). “Pill!”
Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and
again the coach rolls backward.
BLACK DRIVER (louder than before). “Pe-e-e-ill!”
Horses make a desperate struggle.
P #ºok DRIVER (recovering spirits). “Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy,
i ! 25
Horses make another effort,
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 333
BLACK DRIVER (with great vigour). “Ally Loo! Hi.
Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo!”
Horses almost do it.
BLACK DRIVER (with his eyes starting out of his head).
“Lee, den, Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally
LOO. Lee-e-e-e-el”
They run up the bank, and go down again on the
Other side at a fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them,
and at the bottom there is a deep hollow, full of water.
The coach rolls frightfully. The insides scream. The
mud and water fly about us. The black driver dances
like a madman. Suddenly we are all right by some
extraordinary means, and stop to breathe.
A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a
fence. The black driver recognises him by twirling his
head round and round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes,
shrugging his shoulders, and grinning from ear to ear.
He stops short, turns to me, and says: -
“We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope
a please you when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at
home sir:” chuckling very much. “Outside gentleman
sa, he often remember old 'ooman at home, sa,” grin-
ning again.
‘‘ Aye, aye, we’ll take care of the old woman, Don’t
be afraid.”
The black driver grins again, but there is another
hole, and beyond that, another bank, close before us.
So he stops short: cries (to the horses again) “Easy.
Easy den. Ease. Steady. Hi. Jiddy. Pill. Ally.
LOO,” but never “Lee l’ until we are reduced to the
Very last extremity, and are in the midst of difficulties,
extrication from which appears to be all but impossible.
And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two
hours and a half; breaking no bones, though bruising a
great many; and in short getting through the distance,
‘‘ like a fiddle.”
This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fred-
ericksburg, whence there is a railway to Richmond. The
tract of country through which it takes its course was
Once productive: but the soil has been exhausted by the
system of employing a great amount of slave labour in
forcing crops, without strengthening the land: and it is
now little better than a sandy desert overgrown with
trees. Dreary and uninteresting as its aspect is, I was
334 AMERICAN NOTES
glad to the heart to find anything on which one of the
curses of this horrible institution has fallen; and had
greater pleasure in contemplating the withered ground,
than the richest and most thriving cultivation in the
same place could possibly have afforded me.
In this district, as in all others where slavery sits
brooding, (I have frequently heard this admitted, even
by those who are its warmest advocates:) there is an air
of ruin and decay abroad which is inseparable from the
system. The barns and Outhouses are mouldering away;
the sheds are patched and half roofless; the log cabins
(built in Virginia with external chimneys made of clay
or wood), are squalid in the last degree. There is no
look of decent comfort anywhere. The miserable sta-
tions by the railway side; the great wild woodyards,
whence the engine is supplied with fuel; the negro chil-
dren rolling on the ground before the cabin doors, with
dogs and pigs; the biped beasts of burden slinking past:
gloom and dejection are upon them all.
In the negro car belonging to the train in which we
made this journey, were a mother and her children
who had just been purchased; the husband and father
being left behind with their old Owner. The children
cried the whole way, and the mother was misery’s pict-
ure. The champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit
of Happiness, who had bought them, rode in the same
train; and, every time we stopped, got down to see
that they were safe. The black in Sinbad's Travels
with one eye in the middle of his forehead which shone
like a burning coal, was nature’s aristocrat compared
with this white gentleman.
It was between six and seven o’clock in the evening,
when we drove to the hotel; in front of which, and on
the top of a broad flight of steps leading to the door,
two Or three citizens were iºni. themselves on
rocking-chairs, and Smoking cigars. We found it, a
very large and elegant establishment, and were as well
entertained as travellers need desire to be. The climate
being a thirsty one, there was never, at any hour of the
day, a scarcity of loungers in the spacious bar, or a
cessation of the mixing of cool liquors: but they were a
merrier people here, and had musical instruments play-
ing to them o'nights, which it was a treat to hear
again.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 335
The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about
the town, which is delightfully situated on eight hills,
Overhanging James River; a sparkling stream, studded
here and there with bright islands, or brawling over
broken rocks. Although it was yet but the middle of
March, the weather in this southern temperature was
extremely warm; the peach-trees and magnolias were
in full bloom; and the trees were green. In a low
ground among the hills, is a valley known as ‘‘Bloody
Run,” from a terrible conflict with the Indians which
Once occurred there. It is a good place for such a strug-
gle, and, like ever other spot I saw associated with any
legend of that wild people now so rapidly fading from
the earth, interested me very much.
The city is the seat of the local parliament of Vir-
ginia; and in its shady legislative halls, some orators
were drowsily holding forth to the hot noon day. By dint
of constant repetition, however, these constitutional
sights had very little more interest for me than so many
parochial vestries; and I was glad to exchange this one
for a lounge in a well-arranged public library of some
ten thousand volumes, and a visit to a tobacco manu-
factory, where the workmen were all slaves.
I saw in this place the whole process of picking, roll-
ing, pressing, drying, packing in casks, and branding.
All the tobacco thus dealt with, was in course of manu-
facture for chewing; and one would have supposed
there was enough in that one storehouse to have
filled even the comprehensive jaws of America. . In
this form, the weed looks like the oilcake on which
we fatten cattle; and even without reference to its
consequences, is sufficiently uninviting.
Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men,
and it is hardly necessary to add that they were all
labouring quietly, then. After two o'clock in the day,
they are allowed to sing, a certain number at a time.
The hour striking while I was there, some twenty sang
a hymn in parts, and sang it by no means ill; pursuing
their work meanwhile. A bell rang as I was about to
leave, and they poured forth into a building on the op-
posite side of the street to dinner. I said several times
that I should like to see them at their meal; but as the
gentleman to whom I mentioned this desire appeared
to be suddenly taken rather (leaf, I did not pursue the
336 AMERICAN NOTES
request. Of their appearance I shall have something
to say, presently. -
On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm,
of about twelve hundred acres, on the Opposite bank of
the river. Here, again, although I went down with the
owner of the estate, to “the quarter,” as that part of it
in which the slaves live is called, I was not invited
to enter into any of their huts. All I saw of them, was
that they were very crazy, wretched cabins, near to
which groups of half-naked children basked in the Sun,
or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I believe that
this gentleman is a considerate and excellent master,
who inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer
nor a seller of human stock; and I am sure, from my
own observation and conviction, that he is a kind-
hearted, worthy man.
The planter’s house was an airy rustic dwelling, that
brought Defoe's description of such places strongly to
my recollection. The day was very warm, but the
blinds being all closed, and the windows and doors set
wide open, a shady coolness rustled through the rooms,
which was exquisitely refreshing after the glare and
heat without. Before the windows was an open piazza,
where, in what they call the hot weather—whatever
that may be—they sling hammocks, and drink and doze
luxuriously. I do not know how their cool refections
may taste within the hammocks, but, having experi-
ence, I can report that, out of them, the mounds of ices
and the bowls of mint-julep and sherry-cobbler they
make in these latitudes, are refreshments never to be
thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would
preserve contented minds.
There are two bridges across the river : one belongs to
the railroad, and the other, which is a very crazy affair,
is the private property of some old lady in the neigh-
bourhood, who levies tolls upon the town’s people.
Crossing this bridge, On my way back, I saw a notice
painted on the gate, cautioning all persons to drive
slowly : under a penalty, if the offender were a white
man, of five dollars; if a negro, fifteen stripes.
The same decay and gloom that Overhang the way by
which it is approached, hover above the town of Rich-
mond. There are pretty villas and cheerful houses in
its streets, and Nature Smiles upon the country round ;
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 337
but jostling its handsome residences, like slavery itself
going hand in hand with many lofty virtues, are de-
plorable tenements, fences unrepaired, walls crumbling
into ruinous heaps. Hinting gloomily at things below
the surface, these, and many other tokens of the same
description, force themselves upon the notice, and are
remembered with depressing influence, when livelier
features are forgotten.
To those who are happily unaccustomed to them, the
countenances in the streets and labouring-places, too,
are shocking. All men who know that there are laws
against instructing slaves, of which the pains and pen-
alties greatly exceed in their amount the fines imposed
On those who maim and torture them, must be prepared
to find their faces very low in the scale of intellectual
expression. But the darkness—not of skin, but mind—
which meets the stranger’s eye at every turn ; the brut-
alising and blotting out of all fairer characters traced
by Nature’s hand ; immeasurably outdo his worst belief.
That travelled creation of the great satirist’s brain, who
fresh from living among horses, peered from a high
casement down upon his own kind with trembling hor-
ror, was scarcely more repelled and daunted by the
Sight, than those who look upon some of these faces for
the first time must surely be.
I left the last of them behind me in the person of a
wretched drudge who, after running to and fro all day
till midnight, and moping in his stealthy winks of
Sleep upon the stairs betweenwhiles, was washing the
dark passages at four o'clock in the morning; and went
upon my way with a grateful heart that I was not
doomed to live where slavery was, and had never had
my senses blunted to its wrongs and horrors in a slave-
rocked cradle.
It had been my intention to proceed by James River
and Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore; but one of the steam-
boats being absent from her station through some acci-
dent, and the means of conveyance being consequently
rendered uncertain, we returned to Washington by the
way we had come (there were two constables on board
the Steam-boat, in pursuit of runaway slaves), and
halting there again for one night, went on to Baltimore
next afternoon.
The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had
VOL. I. 22
338 AMERICAN NOTES
any experience in the United States, and they were not
a few, is Barnum’s, in that city: where the English
traveller will find curtains to his bed, for the first and
probably the last time in America (this is a disinterested
remark, for I never use them); and where he will be
likely to have enough water for washing himself, which
is not at all a common case.
This capital of the State of Maryland is a bustling,
busy town, with a great deal of traffic of various kinds,
and in particular of water commerce. That portion of
the town which it most favours is none of the cleanest,
it is true; but the upper part is of a very different
character, and has many agreeable streets and public
buildings. The Washington Monument, which is a
handsome pillar with a statue on its summit ; the Medi-
cal College; and the Battle Monument in memory of an
engagement with the British at North Point ; are the
most conspicuous among them.
There is a very good prison in this city, and the State
Penitentiary is also among its institutions. In this
latter establishment there were two curious cases. .
One, was that of a young man, who had been tried
for the murder of his father. The evidence was en-
tirely circumstantial, and was very conflicting and
doubtful; nor was it possible to assign any motive which
could have tempted him to the commission of so
tremendous a crime. He had been tried twice, and on the
second Occasion the jury felt so much hesitation in con-
victing him, that they found a verdict of manslaughter,
or murder in the second degree; which it could not pos-
sibly be, as there had, beyond all doubt, been no quarrel
or provocation, and if he were guilty at all, he was
unquestionably guilty of murder in its broadest and
worst signification. g
The remarkable feature in the case was, that if the
unfortunate deceased were not really murdered by this
Own Son of his, he must have been murdered by his
own brother. The evidence lay in a most remarkable
manner, between these two. On all the suspicious
points, the dead man’s brother was the witness; all the
explanations for the prisoner, (some of them extremely
plausible) went, by construction and inference, to incul-
pate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon his nephew.
It must have been one of them: and the jury had to
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 339
decide between two sets of suspicions, almost equally
unnatural, unaccountable, and strange.
The other case was that of a man who once went to
a certain distiller's and stole a copper measure
Containing a quantity of liquor. He was pursued
and taken with the property in his possession, and was
sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. On coming out
of the jail, at the expiration of that term, he went back
to the same distiller’s and stole the same copper measure
containing the same quantity of liquor. There was not
the slightest reason to suppose that the man wished
to return to prison: indeed everything, but the commis-
Sion of the Offence, made directly against that assump-
tion. There are only two ways of accounting for this
extraordinary proceeding. One is, that after under-
going SO much for this copper measure he conceived
he had established a sort of claim and right to it. The
other that, by dint of long thinking about, it had be-
come a monomania with him, and had acquired a
fascination which he found it impossible to resist :
swelling from an Earthly Copper Gallon into an Ethereal
Golden Vat.
After remaining here a couple of days I bound my-
self to a rigid adherence to the plan I had laid down so
recently, and resolved to set forward on our western
journey without any more delay. Accordingly, having
reduced the luggage within the smallest possible com-
pass (by sending back to New York, to be afterwards
forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as was not
absolutely wanted); and having procured the necessary
credentials to banking-houses on the way; and having
moreover looked for two evenings at the setting sun,
with as well-defined an idea of the country before us
as if we had been going to travel into the very centre
of that planet; we left Baltimore by another railway at
half-past eight in the morning, and reached the town
of York, some sixty miles off, by the early dinner-time
of the Hotel which was the starting-place of the four-
horse coach, wherein we were to proceed to Harrisburg.
This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate
enough to secure, had come down to meet us at the
railroad station, and was as muddy and cumbersome as
usual. As more passengers were waiting for us at the
inn-door, the coachman observed under his breath, in
340 AMERICAN NOTES
the usual self-communicative voice, looking the while
at his mouldy harness as if it were to that he was
addressing himself :
“I expect we shall want the big coach.”
I could not help wondering within myself what the
size of this big coach might be, and how many persons
it might be designed to hold; for the vehicle which was
too small for Our purpose was something larger than
two English heavy night coaches, and might have been
the twin-brother of a French Diligence. My specula-
tions were speedily set at rest, however, for as soon as
we had dined, there came rumbling up the street, shak-
ing its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge On
wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped
at the door; rolling heavily from side to side when its other
motion had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its damp
stable, and between that, and the having been required
in its dropsical old age to move at any faster pace than
a walk, were distressed by shortness of wind.
“If here ain’t the Harrisburg mail at last, and dread-
ful bright and smalt to look at too,” cried an elderly
gentleman in some excitement, ‘‘darn my mother!”
I don’t know what the sensation of being darned may
be, or whether a man’s mother has a keener relish or
disrelish of the process than anybody else ; but if the
endurance of this mysterious ceremony by the old lady
in question had depended on the accuracy of her son’s
vision in respect to the abstract brightness and Smart-
ness of the Harrisburg mail, she would certainly have
undergone its infliction. However, they booked twelve
people inside ; and the luggage (including such trifles
as a large rocking-chair, and a good-sized dining-table)
being at length made fast upon the roof, we started off
in great State. *
At the door of another hotel, there was another pas-
senger to be taken up.
“Any room, Sir P” Cries the new passenger to the
coachman.
“Well, there’s room enough,” replies the coachman,
without getting down, or even looking at him.
“There ain’t no room at all, sir,” bawls a gentleman
inside. Which another gentleman (also inside) con-
firms, by predicting that the attempt to introduce any
more passengers “won’t fit nohow.”
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 341
The new passenger, without any expression of
anxiety, looks into the coach, and then looks up at the
coachman : “Now, how do you mean to fix it P’’ says
he, after a pause: “ for I must go.”
The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash
of his whip into a knot, and takes no more notice of the
question : clearly signifying that it is anybody’s busi-
ness but his, and that the passengers would do well to
fix it, among themselves. In this state of things, mat-
ters seem to be approximating to a fix of another kind,
when another inside passenger in a corner, who is
nearly Suffocated, cries faintly,
“I’ll get out.”
This is no matter of relief or self-congratulation to
the driver, for his immoveable philosophy is perfectly
undisturbed by anything that happens in the coach. Of
all things in the world, the coach would seem to be the
very last upon his mind. The exchange is made, how-
ever, and then the passenger who has given up his seat
makes a third upon the box, seating himself in what he
calls the middle : that is, with half his person on my
legs, and the other half on the driver’s.
“Go a-head cap’en,” cries the colonel, who directs.
“Go-lang !” cries the cap’en to his company, the
horses, and away we go.
We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a
few miles, an intoxicated gentleman who climbed upon
the roof among the luggage, and subsequently slipping
off without hurting himself, was seen in the distant
perspective reeling back to the grog-shop where we had
found him. We also parted with more of our freight
at different times, so that when we came to change
horses, I was again alone Outside.
The coachmen always change with the horses, and
are usually as dirty as the coach. The first was dressed
like a very shabby English baker ; the second like a
Russian peasant : for he wore a loose purple camlet
robe with a fur collar, tied round his waist with a parti-
coloured worsted sash; grey trousers; light blue gloves;
and a cap of bear skin. It had by this time come on to
rain very heavily, and there was a cold damp mist be-
sides, which penetrated to the skin. I was very glad to
take advantage of a stoppage and get down to stretch
my legs, shake the water of my great-coat, and Swallow
342 AMERICAN NOTES
the usual anti-temperance recipe for keeping out the
cold. - -
When I mounted to my seat again, I observed a new
parcel lying on the coach roof, which I took to be a
rather large fiddle in a brown bag. In the course of a
few miles, however, I discovered that it had a glazed
cap at one end a pair of muddy shoes at the other; and
further observation demonstrated it to be a small boy in -
a snuff-coloured coat, with his arms quite pinioned to
his sides by deep forcing into his pockets. He was, I
presume, a relative or friend of the coachman’s, as he
lay a-top of the luggage with his face towards the rain;
and except when a change of position brought his shoes
in contact with my hat, he appeared to be a sleep. At
last, on Some occasion of Our stopping, this thing slowly
upreared itself to the height of three feet six, and fixing
its eyes on me, observed in piping accents, with a com-
plaisant yawn, half quenched in an obliging air of
friendly patronage, “Well now, stranger, I guess you
find this a most like an English arternoon, hey P*
The scenery which had been tame enough at first,
was, for the last ten or twelve miles, beautiful. Our
road wound through the pleasant valley of the Susque-
hanna ; the river, dotted with innumerable green
islands, lay upon Our right ; and on Our left, a steep
ascent, Craggy with broken rock, and dark with pine-
trees. The mist, wreathing itself into a hundred fan-
tastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water ; and
the gloom of evening gave to all an air of mystery,
and silence which greatly enhanced its natural
interest. -
We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed
and covered in on all sides, and nearly a mile in length.
It was profoundly dark; perplexed, with great beams,
crossing and recrossing it at every possible angle; and
through the broad chinks and crevices in the floor, the
rapid river gleamed, far down below, like a legion of
eyes. We had no lamps; and as the horses stumbled
and floundered through this place, towards the distant
Speck of dying light, it seemed interminable. I really
could not at first persuade myself as we rumbled heavily
on, filling the bridge with hollow noises, and I held
down my head to save it from the rafters above, but
that I was in a painful dream; for I have often dreamed
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 343
of toiling through such places, and as often argued, even
at the time, “this cannot be reality.”
At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of
Harrisburg, whose feeble lights, reflected dismally
from the wet ground, did not shine out upon a very
cheerful city. We were soon established in a smug
hotel, which though smaller and far less splendid than
Imany we put up at, is raised above them all in my
remembrance, by having for its landlord the most oblig-
ing, considerate, and gentlemanly person I ever had to
deal with.
As we were not to proceed upon our journey until
the afternoon, I walked out, after breakfast the next
morning, to look about me; and was duly shown a
model prison. On the solitary system, just erected, and
as yet without an inmate; the trunk of an old tree to
which Harris, the first settler here (afterwards buried
under it) was tied by hostile Indians, with his funeral
pile about him, when he was saved by the timely ap-
pearance of a friendly party on the opposite shore of
the river; the local legislature (for there was another
of those bodies here, again, in full debate); and the
other curiosities of the town. -
I was very much interested in looking over a number
of treaties made from time to time with the poor In-
dians, signed by the different chiefs at the period of
their ratification, and preserved in the office of the
Secretary to the Commonwealth. These signatures,
traced of course by their own hands, are rough draw-
ings of the creatures or weapons they were called
after. Thus, the Great Turtle makes a crooked pen-
and-ink outline of a great turtle; the Buffalo sketches
a buffalo; the War Hatchet sets a rough image of
that weapon for his mark. So with the Arrow, the
Fish, the Scalp, the Big Canoe, and all of them.
I could not but think—as I looked at these feeble
and tremulous productions of hands which could draw
the longest arrow to the head in a stout elk-horn bow,
or split a bead or feather with a rifle-ball—of Crabbe's
musings over the Parish Register, and the irregular
scratches made with a pen, by men who would plough a
lenghty furrow straight from end to end. Nor could I
help bestowing many Sorrowful thoughts upon the simple
warriors whose hands and hearts were set there, in all
344 AMERICAN NOTES
truth and honesty; and who only learned in course of
time from white men how to break their faith, and
quibble out of forms and bonds. I wondered, too, how
many times the credulous Big Turtle, or trusting Little
Hatchet, had put his mark to treaties which were
falsely read to him; and had signed away, he knew not
what, until it went and cast him loose upon the new
possessors of the land, a savage indeed.
Our host announced, before our early dinner, that
some members of the legislative body proposed to do us
the honour of calling. He had kindly yielded up to us
his wife's own little parlour, and when I begged that he
would show them in, I saw him look with painful ap-
prehension at its pretty carpet; though, being otherwise
occupied at the time, the cause of his uneasiness did
not occur to me.
It certainly would have been more pleasant to all
parties concerned, and would not, I think, have com-
romised their independence in any material degree,
if some of these gentlemen had not only yielded to the
prejudice in favour of Spittoons, but had abandoned
themselves, for the moment, even to the conventional
absurdity of pocket-handkerchiefs.
It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went
down to the Canal Boat (for that was the mode of con-
veyance by which we were to proceed) after dinner, the
weather was as unpromising and obstinately wet as
one would desire to see. Nor was the sight of this
canal boat, in which we were to spend three or four
days, by any means a cheerful one; as it involved
some uneasy speculations concerning the disposal of the
passengers at night, and opened a wide field of inquiry
touching the other domestic arrangements of the estab-
lishment, which was sufficiently disconcerting.
However, there it was—a barge with a little house
in it, viewed from the outside; and a caravan at a fair,
viewed from within: the gentlemen being accommo-
dated, as the spectators usually are, in One of those
locomotive museums of penny wonders; and the ladies
being partitioned off by a red curtain, after the manner
of the dwarfs and giants in the same establish-
ments, whose private lives are passed in rather close
exclusiveness.
We sat here, looking silently at the row of little
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 345
tables which extended down both sides of the cabin, and
listening to the rain as it dripped and pattered on the
boat, and splashed with a dismal merriment in the
water, until the arrival of the railway train, for whose
final contribution to our stock of passengers, our de-
parture was alone deferred. It brought a great many
boxes, which were bumped and tossed upon the roof,
almost as painfully as if they had been deposited on
one’s own head, without the intervention of a porter’s
knot; and several damp gentlemen, whose clothes, on
their drawing round the Stove, began to steam again.
No doubt it would have been a thought more comfort-
able if the driving rain, which now poured down more
soakingly than ever, had admitted of a window being
opened, or if Our number had been something less than
thirty; but there was scarcely time to think as much,
When a train of three horses were attached to the tow-
rope, the boy upon the leader Smacked his whip, the
rudder creaked and groaned complaimingly, and we
had begun Our journey.
346 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER X.
SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS
DOMESTIC ECONOMY, AND ITS PASSENGERS. JOURNEY
TO PITTSBURG ACROSS THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS.
PITTSBURG.
A* it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all
remained below: the damp gentlemen round the
stove gradually becoming mildewed by the action of
the fire; and the dry gentlemen lying at full length
upon the seats or slumbering uneasily with their faces
on the tables, or walking up and down the cabin,
which it was barely possible for a man of the middle
height to do, without making bald places on his head
by scraping it against the roof. At about six o'clock,
all the small tables were put together to form one long
table, and everybody sat down to tea, coffee, bread,
butter, salmon, shad, liver, Steak, potatoes, pickles,
ham, chops, black puddings, and Sausages.
“Will you try,” said my opposite neighbour, manding
me a dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter,
“will you try some of these fixings?” e
There are few words which perform such various
duties as this word “fix.” It is the Caleb Quotem of
the American vocabulary. You call upon a gentleman
in a country town, and his help informs you that he is
“fixing himself” just now, but will be down directly:
by which you are to understand that he is dressing.
You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a fellow passen-
ger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells
you he should think so, for when he was last below,
they were “fixing the tables:” in other words, laying
the cloth. You beg a porter to collect your luggage,
and he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he’ll “fix it
presently: ” and if you complain of indisposition, you
are advised to have recourse to Doctor so and so, who
will “fix you” in no time.
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 347
One night, I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an
hotel where I was staying, and waited a long time for
it; at length it was put upon the table with an apology
from the landlord that he feared it wasn’t “fixed
properly.” And I recollect once, at a stage-coach dim-
ner, Overhearing a very stern gentleman demand of
a waiter who presented him with a plate of underdone
roast-beef, “whether he called that fixing God
A’mighty’s vittles?”
There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invita-
tion was tendered to me which has occasioned this
digression, was disposed of somewhat ravenously ; and
that the gentleman thrust the broad-bladed knives and
the two-pronged forks further down their throats than
I ever saw the same weapons go before, except in the
hands of a skilful juggler : but no man sat down until
the ladies were seated ; or omitted any little act of po-
liteness which could contribute to their comfort. Nor
did I ever once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my
rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the slight-
est act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention.
By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed
to have worn itself out by coming down so fast, was
nearly over too ; and it became feasible to go on deck :
which was a great relief, notwithstanding its being a
very small deck, and being rendered still smaller by the
luggage, which was heaped together in the middle
under a tarpaulin covering ; leaving, on either side, a
path so narrow, that it became a science to walk to and
fro without tumbling overboard into the canal. It was
somewhat embarrassing at first, too, to have to duck
nimbly every five minutes whenever the man at the
helm cried “ Bridge l’ and sometimes, when the cry
was “Low Bridge,” to lie down nearly flat. But cus-
tom familiarises one to anything, and there were so
* bridges that it took a very short time to get used
to this.
As night came on, and we drew in sight of the first
range of hills, which are the outposts of the Alleghany
mountains, the scenery. which had been uninteresting
hitherto, became more bold and striking. The wet
ground reeked and smoked, after the heavy fall of rain,
and the croaking of the frogs (whose noise in these
parts is almost incredible) sounded as though a million
348 AMERICAN NOTES
of fairy teams with bells, were travelling through the
air, and keeping pace with us. The night was cloudy
yet, but moonlight too : and when we crossed the Sus-
quehanna river—over which there is an extraordinary
wooden bridge with two galleries, one above the other,
so that even there, two boat-teams meeting, may pass
without confusion—it was wild and grand.
y Tháve mentioned my having been in some uncertainty
and doubt, at first, relative to the sleeping arrangements
on board this boat. Iremained in the same vågåe state
of mind until ten o’clock or thereabouts, when going
below, I found suspended on either side of the cabin,
three long tiers of hanging book-shelves, designed ap-
parently for volumes of the small octavo size. Looking
with greater attention at these contrivances (wondering
to find such literary preparations in such a place), I des-
cried on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and
blanket ; then I began dimly to comprehend that the
passengers were the library, and that they were to be
arranged, edge-wise, on these shelves, till morning. *
I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of
them gathered round the master of the boat, at one of
the tables, drawing lots with all the anxieties and pas-
sions of gamesters depicted in their countenances; while
Others, with Small pieces of cardboard in their hands,
were groping among the shelves in search of numbers
corresponding with those they had drawn. As soon as
any gentleman found his number, he took possession of
it by immediately undressing himself and crawling into
bed. The rapidity with which an agitated gambler sub-
sided into a snoring slumberer, was one of the most
singular effects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies,
they were already a-bed, behind the red curtain, which
was carefully drawn and pinned up the centre; though
as every cough, or sneeze, or whisper, behind this cur-
tain, was perfectly audible before it, we had still a
lively consciousness of their society.
The politeness of the person in authority had secured
to me a shelf in a nook near this red curtain, in some .
degree removed from the great body of sleepers: to
which place I retired, with many acknowledgments to
him for his attention. I found it, on after-measure-
ment, just the width of an ordinary sheet of Bath post
letter-paper; and I was at first in some uncertainty as
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 349
to the best means of getting into it. But the shelf being
a bottom one, I finally determined on lying upon the
floor, rolling gently in, stopping immediately I touched
the mattress, and remaining for the night with that
side uppermost, whatever it might be. Luckily, I came
upon my back at exactly the right moment. I was much
alarmed on looking upward, to see, by the shape of his
half yard of sacking (which his weight had bent into
an exceedingly tight bag), that there was a very heavy
gentleman above me, whom the slender cords seemed .
quite irrcapable of holding; and I could not help reflecting
upon the grief of my wife and family in the event of his
coming down in the might. But as I could not have got
up again without a severe bodily struggle, which might
have alarmed the ladies; and as I had nowhere to go
to, even if I had ; I shut my eyes upon the danger, and
remained there. *
One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably
a fact, with reference to that class of society who travel
in these boats. Either they carry their restlessness to
such a pitch that they never sleep at all; or they expec-
torate in dreams, which would be a remarkable ming-
ling of the real and the ideal. All night long, and every
night, on this canal, there was a perfect storm and tem-
pest of spitting; and Once my coat, being in the very
centre of a hurricane sustained by five gentlemen
(which moved vertically, strictly carrying out Reid’s
Theory of the Law of Storms,) I was fain the next morn-
ing to lay it on the deck, and rub it down with fair
water before it was in a condition to be worn again.
Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got
up, and some of us went on deck, to give them an oppor-
tunity of taking the shelves down; while others, the
morning being very cold, crowded round the rusty stove,
cherishing the newly kindled fire, and filling the grate
with those voluntary contributions of which they had
been so liberal all night. The washing accommoda-
tions were primitive. There was a tin ladle chained to
the deck, with which every gentleman who thought it
necessary to cleanse himself (many were superior to
this weakness), fished the dirty water out of the canal,
and poured it into a tin basin, secured in like manner.
There was also a jack-towel. And, hanging up before
a little looking-glass in the bar, in the immediate vicin-
350 AMERICAN NOTES
ity of the bread and cheese and biscuits, were a public
comb and hair-brush. - sº
At eight o'clock, the shelves being taken down and
put away, and the tables joined together, everybody sat
down to the tea, coffee, bread, butter, Salmon, shad, liver,
Steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings,
and sausages, all over again. Some were fond of com-
pounding this variety, and having it all on their plates
at Once. As each gentleman got through his own per-
sonal amount of tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad,
liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black pud-
dings, and sausages, he rose up and walked off. When
everybody had done with everything, the fragments
were cleared away: and one of the waiters appearing
anew in the character of a barber, shaved such of the
company as desired to be shaved; while the remainder
looked on, or yawned over their newspapers. Dinner
was breakfast again, without the tea and coffee; and
Supper and breakfast were identical.
There was a man on board this boat, with a light
fresh-coloured face, and a pepper-and-salt Suit of
clothes, who was the most inquisitive fellow that can
possibly be imagined. He never spoke otherwise than
interrogatively. He was an embodied inquiry. Sitting
down or standing up, still or moving, walking the deck
or taking his meals, there he was, with a great note of
interrogation in each eye, two in his cocked ears, two
more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least half a
dozen more about the corners of his mouth, and the
largest one of all in his hair, which was brushed pertly
off his forehead in a flaxen clump. Every button in his
clothes said, “Eh P What’s that? Did you speak? Say
that again, will you?” He was always wide awake,
like the enchanted bride who drove her husband frantic;
always restless; always thirsting for answers; perpet-
ually seeking and never finding. There never was such
a Curious man. -
I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we
were well clear of the wharf, he questioned me con-
cerning it, and its price, and where I bought it, and
when, and what fur it was, and what it weighed, and
what it coso. Then he took notice of my watch, and
asked what that cost, and whether it was a French
watch, and where I got it, and how I got it, and whether
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 351
I bought it or had it given me, and how it went, and
where the keyhole was, and when I wound it, every
night or every morning, and whether I ever forgot to
wind it at all, and if I did, what then? Where had I
been to last, and where was I going next, and where
was I going after that, and had I seen the President,
and what did he say, and what did I say, and what did
he say when I had said that? Eh? Lor now ! do tell !
Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his
questions after the first score or two, and in particular
pleaded ignorance respecting the name of the fur
whereof the coat was made. I am unable to say
whether this was the reason, but that coat fascinated
him ever afterwards; he usually kept close behind me
as I walked, and moved as I moved, that he might look
at it the better; and he frequently dived into narrow
places after me at the risk of his life, that he naight
have the satisfaction of passing his hand up the back,
and rubbing it the wrong way.
We had another odd specimen on board, of a differ-
ent kind. This was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of
middle age and stature, dressed in a dusty drabbish-
coloured suit, such as I never saw before. He was
perfectly quiet during the first part of the journey; in-
deed I don’t remember having so much as seen him
until he was brought out by circumstances, as great men
often are. The conjunction of events which made him
famous, happened, briefly, thus.
The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and
there, of course, it stops; the passengers being conveyed
across it by land carriage, and taken on afterwards by
another canal boat, the counterpart of the first, which
awaits, them on the other side. There are two canal
lines of passage-boats; one is called The Express, and
one (a cheaper one) The Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first
to the mountain, and waits for the Express people to
come up; both sets of passengers being conveyed across
it at the same time. We were the Express company; but
when we had crossed the mountain, and had come to
the second boat, the proprietors took it into their heads
to draft all the Pioneers into it likewise, so that we
were five-and-forty at least, and the accession of pas-
sengers was not at all of that kind which improved the
prospect of sleeping at night. Our people grumbled at
352 AMERICAN NOTES
this, as people do in such cases; but suffered the boat to
be towed off with the whole freight aboard nevertheless:
and away we went down the canal. At home, I should
have protested lustily, but being a foreigner here, I held
my peace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path
among the people on deck (we were nearly all on deck),
and without addressing anybody whomsoever, solilo-
quised as follows:
“This may suit you, this may, but it don’t suit me.
This may be all very well with Down Easters, and men
of Boston raising, but it won’t suit my figure no how;
and no two ways about that; and so I tell you. Now !
I’m from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am,
and when the sun shines on me, it does shine—a little.
It don’t glimmer where I live, the sun don’t. No. I’m
a brown forester, I am. I an’t a Johnny Cake. There
are no smooth skins where I live. We’re rough men
there. Rather. If Down Easters and men of Boston
raising like this, I’m glad of it, but I’m none of that
raising nor of that breed. No. This company wants a
little fixing, it does. I’m the wrong sort of man for
'em, I am. They won’t like me, they won’t. This is
piling of it up a little too mountainous, this is.” At the
end of every one of these short sentences he turned
upon his heel, and walked the other way; checking
himself, abruptly when he had finished another short
sentence, and turning back again.
It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning
was hidden in the words of this brown forester, but I
know that the other passengers looked on in a sort of
admiring horror, and that presently, the boat was put
back to the wharf, and as many of the Pioneers as
could be coaxed or bullied into going away, were got
rid of.
When we started again, some of the boldest Spirits on
board made bold to say to the obvious occasion of this
improvement in our prospects, “ Much obliged to you,
sir; ” whereunto the brown forester (waving his hand,
and still walking up and down as before), replied, “No
you a'nt. You’re none o' my raising. You may act for
yourself, you may. I have pinted out the way. Down
Easters and Johnny Cakes can follow if they please.
I an’t a Johnny Cake, I an’t. I am from the brown
forests of the Mississippi, I am ”—and so on, as before.
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 353
He was unanimously voted one of the tables for his bed
at night—there is a great contest for the tables—in
consideration of his public services: and he had the
warmest corner by the stove throughout the rest of the
journey. But I never could find out that he did any-
thing except sit there; nor did I hear him speak again
until, in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of getting
the luggage ashore in the dark at Pittsburg, I stumbled
Over him as he sat Smoking a cigar on the cabin steps,
and heard him muttering to himself, with a short laugh
of defiance, “I an’t a Johnny Cake, I an’t. I’m from
the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am, damme!” I
am inclined to argue from this, that he had never left
off saying so; but I could not make affidavit of that
part of the story, if required to do so by my Queen and
Country.
As we have not reached Pittsburg yet, however, in the
order of our narrative, I may go on to remark that
breakfast was perhaps the least desirable meal of the
day, as an addition to the many savoury odours arising
from the eatables already mentioned, there were whiffs
of gin, whiskey, brandy, and rum, from the little bar
hard by, and a decided seasoning of stale tobacco.
Many of the gentlemen passengers were far from par-
ticular in respect of their linen, which was in some
cases as yellow as the little rivulets that had trickled
from the corners of their mouths in chewing, and dried
there. Nor was the atmosphere quite free from Zephyr
whisperings of the thirty beds which had just been
cleared away, and of which we were further and more
pressingly reminded by the occasional appearance on
the table-cloth of a kind of Game, not mentioned in the
Bill Of Fare. tº
And yet despite these oddities—and even they had, for
me at least, a humour of their own—there was much
in this mode of travelling which I heartily enjoyed at
the time, and look back upon with great pleasure.
Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o’clock in
the morning, from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck;
Scooping up the icy water, plunging one's head into it,
and drawing it out all fresh and glowing with the cold
was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon the tow-
ing-path, between that time and breakfast, when every
vein and artery seemed to tingle with health; the ex-
W OF. I. O tº
354 AMERICAN NOTES
Guisite beauty of the opening day, when light came
gleaming off from everything; the lazy motion of the
boat, when one lay idly on the deck, looking through
rather than at the deep blue sky; the gliding on at
night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills, sullen with
dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red burning
spot high up, where unseen men lay crouching round a
fire; the shining out of the bright stars, undisturbed by
noise of wheels or steam, or any other sound than the
liquid rippling of the water as the boat went On: all
these were pure delights.
Then, there were new settlements and detached log-
cabins and frame-houses, full of interest for strangers
from an old country: cabins with simple ovens, out-
side, made of clay ; and lodgings for the pigs
nearly as good as many of the human quarters;
broken windows, patched with worn out hats, old
clothes, old boards, fragments of blankets and paper; and
home-made dressers standing in the open air without
the door, whereon was ranged the household store, not
hard to count, of earthen jars and pots. The eye was
pained to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn
in every field of wheat, and seldom to lose the eternal
swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks
and twisted branches steeped in its unwholesome water.
It was quite Sad and oppressive, to come upon great
tracts where settlers had been burning down the trees,
and where their wounded bodies lay about, like those of
murdered creatures, while here and there some charred
and blackened giant reared aloft two withered arms,
and seemed to call down curses on his foes. Sometimes,
at night, the way wound through some lonely gorge,
like a mountain pass in Scotland, shining and coldly
glittering in the light of the moon, and so closed in
by high steep hills all round, that there seemed to be
no egress save through the narrower path by which we
had come, until One rugged hillside seemed to open,
and, Shutting out the moonlight as we passed into its
§ throat, wrapped our new course in shade and
darkness. -
We had left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday
morning we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which
is crossed by railroad. There are ten inclined planes:
five ascending and five descending: the carriages are
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 355
dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter,
by means of stationary engines; the comparatively
level spaces between being traversed, sometimes by
horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the case de-
mands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme
Verge of a giddy precipice; and looking from the car-
riage window, the traveller gazes sheer down, without
a stone or scrap of fence between, into the mountain
depths below. The journey is very carefully made,
however; only two carriages travelling together; and,
While proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded
for its dangers.
It was very pretty travelling thus, at a rapid pace
along the heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to
look down into a valley full of light and softness;
catching glimpses, through the tree-tops, of scattered
cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting
Out to bark, whom we could see without hearing; terri-
fied pigs scampering homewards; families sitting Out
in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid
indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at
their unfinished houses, planning out to-morrow’s work;
and we riding onward, high above them, like a whirl-
wind. It was amusing, too, when we had dimed and
rattled down a steep pass, having no other moving
power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to
See the engine released, long after us, come buzzing
down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and
gold So shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair
of wings and soared away, no one would have had oc-
casion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. But it
stopped short of us in a very business-like manner when
we reached the canal ; and before we left the wharf,
went panting up this hill again, with the passengers
who had waited our arrival for the means of traversing
the road by which we had come.
On the Monday evening, furnace fires and clanking
hammers on the banks of the canal, warned us that we
approached the termination of this part of Our journey.
After going through another dreamy place—a long
aqueduct across the Alleghany River, which was
stronger than the bridge at Harrisburg, being a vast
1ow wooden chamber full of water—we emerged upon
that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy
356 AMERICAN NOTES
galleries and stairs, which always abuts on water,
whether it be river, sea, canal, or ditch: and were at
Pittsburg. *...*
Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England; at least its
townspeople say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops,
the houses, waggons, factories, public buildings, and pop-
ulation, perhaps it may be. It certainly has a great
quantity of Smoke hanging about it, and is famous for
its iron-works. Besides the prison to which I have
already referred, this town contains a pretty arsenal
and other institutions. It is very beautifully situated
on the Alleghany River, over which there are two
bridges; and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled
about the high grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty
enough. We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and were
admirably served. As usual it was full of boarders, was
very large, and had a broad colonnade to every story of
the house.
We tarried here, three days. Our next point was
Cincinnati: and as this was a steam-boat journey, and
western steamboats usually blow up one or two a week
in the season, it was advisable to collect opinions in ref-
erence to the comparative safety of the vessels bound
that way, then lying in the river. One called The Mes-
senger was the best recommended. She had been ad-
vertised to start positively, every day for a fortnight or
So, and had not gone yet, nor did her captain seem to
have any very fixed intention on the subject. But this
is the custom: for if the law were to bind down a free
and independent citizen to keep his word with the pub-
lic, what would become of the liberty of the subject P
Besides, it is in the way of trade. And if passengers be
decoyed in the way of trade; and people be inconven-
ienced in the way of trade, what man, who is a sharp
Hººman himself, shall say “We must put a stop to
this P
Impressed by the deep solemnity of the public an-
nouncement, I (being then ignorant of these usages) was
for hurrying on board in a breathiess state, immediately;
but receiving private and confidential information that
the boat would certainly not start until Friday, April
the First, we made ourselves very comfortable in the
mean while, and went on board at noon that day.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 357
CHAPTER XI.
FROM PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAM-
BOAT, CINCINNATI.
Tº Messenger was one among a crowd of high-pres-
sure steamboats, clustered together by the wharf-
side, which, looked down upon from the rising ground
that forms the landing-place, and backed by the lofty
bank on the opposite side of the river, appeared no
larger than so, many floating models. She had some
forty passengers on board; exclusive of the poorer per-
Sons on the lower deck; and in half an hour, or less,
proceeded on her way.
We had, for ourselves, a tiny state-room with two
berths in it, opening out of the ladies' cabin. There
was, undoubtedly, something satisfactory in this “ loca-
tion,” inasmuch as it was in the stern, and we had been
a great many times very gravely recommended to keep
as far aft as possible, ‘‘ because the steamboats gener-
ally blew up forward.” Nor was this an unnecessary
caution, as the occurrence and circumstances of more
than one such fatality during our stay sufficiently testi-
fied. Apart from this source of self-congratulation, it
was an unspeakable relief to have any place, no matter
how confined, where one could be alone; and as the row
of little chambers of which this was one, had each a
Second glass-door besides that in the ladies' cabin, which
opened on a narrow gallery outside the vessel, where the
other passengers seldom came, and where One could sit
in peace and gaze upon the shifting prospect, we took
possession of our new quarters with much pleasure.
If the native packets I have already described be un-
like anything we are in the habit of seeing on water,
these western vessels are still more foreign to all the
ideas we are accustomed to entertain of boats. I
hardly know what to liken them to, or how to de-
scribe them.
358 AMERICAN NOTES
In the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle,
rigging, or other such boat-like gear; nor have they
anything in their shape at all calculated to remind One
of a boat’s head, stern, sides, or keel. Except that they
are in the water, and display a couple of paddle-boxes,
they might be intended, for anything that appears to
the contrary, to perform some unknown service, high
and dry, upon a mountain top. There is no visible deck,
even; nothing but a long, black, ugly roof, covered with
burnt-out feathery sparks; above which tower two iron
chimneys, and a hoarse escape valve, and a glass steer-
age-house. Then, in order as the eye descends towards
the water, are the sides, and doors, and windows of the
state-rooms, jumbled as oddly together as though they
formed a small street, built by the varying tastes of a
dozen men: the whole is supported on beams and pillars.
resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the
water's edge: and in the narrow space between this
upper structure and this barge's deck, are the furnace
fires and machinery, open at the sides to every wind
* blows, and every storm of rain it drives along its
path.
Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the
great body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that
rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted Wood :
the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any way,
but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers
and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck :
under the management, too, of reckless men whose
acquaintance with its rhysteries may have been of six
months’ standing : one feels directly that the wonder is,
not that there should be so many fatal accidents, but
that any journey should be safely made.
Within, there is one long narrow cabin, the whole
length of the boat ; from which the state-rooms Open,
on both sides. A small portion of it at the stern is par-
titioned off for the ladies; and the bar is at the opposite
extreme. There is a long table down the centre, and at
either end a stove. The washing apparatus is forward,
on the deck. It is a little better than on board the canal
boat, but not much. In all modes of travelling, the
American customs, with reference to the means of per-
Sonal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely
negligent and filthy; and I strongly incline to the belief
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 359
that a considerable amount of illness is referable to
this cause. -
We are to be on board The Messenger three days :
arriving at Cincinnati (barring accidents) On Monday
morning. There are three meals a day. Breakfast at
seven, dinner at half-past twelve, supper about six. At
each, there are a great many small dishes and plates
upon the table, with very little in them; so that although
there is every appearance of a “mighty spread,” there
is seldom really more than a joint : except for those who
fancy slices of beet-root, shreds of dried beef, com-
plicated entanglements of yellow pickle; maize, Indian
Corn, apple-Sauce, and pumpkin.
Some people fancy all #. little dainties together
(and sweet preserves beside), by way of relish to their
roast, pig. They are generally those dyspeptic ladies
and gentlemen who eat unheard-of quantities of hot
corn bread (almost as good for the digestion as a
kneaded pin-cushion) for breakfast and for supper.
Those who do not observe this custom, and who help
themselves several times instead, usually suck their
knives and forks meditatively, until they have decided
what to take next : then pull them out of their mouths:
put them in the dish ; help themselves; and fall to
work again. At dinner, there is nothing to drink upon
the table, but great jugs full of cold water. Nobody
Says anything, at any meal, to anybody. All the pas-
sengers are very dismal, and seem to have tremendous
secrets weighing on their minds. There is no conver-
sation, no laughter, no cheerfulness, no sociality, except
in Spitting ; and that is done in silent fellowship round
the stove, when the meal is over. Every man sits down,
dull and languid ; swallows his fare as if breakfasts,
dinners, and Suppers, were necessities of nature never
to be coupled with recreation or enjoyment ; and hav-
ing bolted his food in a gloomy silence bolts himself,
in the same state. But for these animal observances,
you might Suppose the whole male portion of the com:-
pany to be the melancholy ghosts of departed book-keep-
ers, who had fallen dead at the desk : such is their weary
air of business and calculation. Undertakers on duty
would be sprightly beside them ; and a collation of
funeral-baked meats, in comparison with these meals,
would be a sparkling festivity.
360 AMERICAN NOTES
The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of
character. They travel about on the same errands, say
and do the same things in exactly the same manner, and
follow in the same dull, cheerless round. All down the
long table, there is scarcely a man who is in anything
different from his neighbour. It is quite a relief to
have, sitting opposite, that little girl of fifteen with the
loquacious chin : Who, to do her justice, acts up to it,
and fully identifies nature's handwriting, for of all the
Small chatterboxes that ever invaded the repose of
drowsy ladies' cabin, she is the first and foremost. The
beautiful girl, who sits a little beyond her—farther
down the table there—married the young man with the
dark whiskers, who sits beyond her, only last month.
They are going to settle in the very Far West, where
he has lived four years, but where she has never been.
They were both overturned in a stage-coach the other
day (a bad omen anywhere else, where overturns are
not so common), and his head; which bears the marks of
a recent wound, is bound up still. She was hurt too, at
the same time, and lay insensible for some days; bright
as her eyes are, now.
Further down still, sits a man who is going some
miles beyond their place of destimation, to “improve’
a newly discovered copper mine. He carries the vil-
lage—that is to be—with him; a few frame cottages,
and an apparatus for Smelting the copper. He carries
its people too. They are partly American and partly
Irish, and herd together on the lower deck; where they
amused themselves last evening until the night was
pretty far advanced, by alternately firing off pistols
and singing hymns.
They, and the very few who have been left at table
twenty minutes, rise, and go away. We do so too; and
passing through our little state-room, resume Our Seats
in the quiet gallery without.
A fine broad river always, but in some parts much
wider than in others; and then there is usually a green
island, covered with trees, dividing it into two streams.
Occasionally, we stop for a few minutes, maybe to
take in wood, maybe for passengers, at some small town
or village (I Ought to say city, every place is a city here);
but the banks are for the most part deep solitudes,
overgrown with trees, which, hereabouts, are already
TOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 361
in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and
miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of hu-
man life or trace of human footstep; nor is anything
seen to move about them but the blue lº whose colour
is so bright, and yet so delicate, that it looks like a flying
flower. At lengthened intervals a log-cabin, with its
little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a
rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curl-
ing up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor
field of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps,
like earthy butchers’-blocks. Sometimes the ground is
Only just now cleared: the felled trees lying yet upon the
soil; and the log-house only this morning begun. As
we pass this clearing the settler leans upon his axe or
hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the
world. The children creep out of the temporary hut,
which is like a gypsy tent upon the ground, and clap
their hands and shout. The dog only glances round at
us; and then looks up into his master’s face again, as
if he were rendered uneasy by any suspension of the
common business, and had nothing more to do with
pleasures. And still there is the same, eternal fore-
ground. The river has washed away its banks, and
stately trees have fallen down into the stream. Some
have been there so long, that they are mere dry grissly
skeletons. Some have just toppled over, and having
earth yet about their roots, are bathing their green
heads in the river, and putting forth new shoots and
branches. Some are almost sliding down, as you look
at them. And some were drowned so long ago, that
their bleached arms start out from the middle of the
current, and seem to try to grasp the boat, and drag
it under water.
Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine
takes its hoarse sullen way: venting, at every revolu-
tion of the paddles, a loud high-pressure blast; enough,
One would think, to waken up the host of Indians who
lie buried in a great mound yonder; so old, that mighty
Oaks and other forest trees have struck their roots into
its earth; and so high, that it is a hill, even among the
hills that Nature planted round it. The very river, as
though it shared one’s feelings of compassion for the
extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in their
blesed ignorance of white existence, hundreds of years
362 AMERICAN NOTES
ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this mound:
and there are few places where the Ohio Sparkles more
brightly than in the Big Grave Creek.
All this I see as I sit in the little stern-gallery men-
tioned just now. Evening slowly steals upon the land-
scape, and changes it before me, when we stop to set
some emigrants ashore.
Five men, as many women, and a little girl. All
their worldly goods are a bag, a large chest and an Old
chair: One, old, high backed, rush-bottomed chair: a
solitary settler in itself. They are rowed ashore in the
boat, while the vessel stands a little off awaiting its re-
turn, the water being shallow. They are landed at the
foot of a high bank, on the summit of which are a few
log cabins, attainable only by a long winding path. It
is growing dusk; but the Sun is very red, and shines in
the water and on some of the tree-tops, like fire.
The men get out of the boat first; help out the women;
take out the bag, the chest, the chair; bid the rowers
“good bye; ” and shove the boat off for them. At the
first plash of the oars in the water, the oldest woman of
the party sits down in the old chair, close to the water’s
edge, without speaking a word. None of the others sit
down, though the chest is large enough for many seats.
They all stand where they landed, as if stricken into
stone; and look after the boat. So they remain, quite
still and silent: the old woman and her old chair, in the
centre; the bag and chest upon the shore, without any-
body heeding them: all eyes fixed upon the boat. It
comes alongside, is made fast, the men jump on board,
the engine is put in motion, and we go hoarsely on again.
There they stand yet, without the motion of a hand. I
can see them, through my glass, when, in the distance
and increasing darkness, they are mere specks to the
eye: lingering there still: the old woman in the old chair,
and all the rest about her: not stirring in the least de-
gree. And thus I slowly lose them.
The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow
of the wooded bank, which makes it darker. After
•gliding past the Sombre maze of boughs for a long time,
we come upon an open space where the tall trees are
burning. The shape of every branch and twig is ex-
pressed in a deep red glow, and as the light wind stirs
and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. It is such a
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FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. ,363
sight as we read of in legends of enchanted forests: Sav-
ing that it is sad to see these noble works wasting away
so awfully, alone; and to think how many years must
come and go before the magic that created them will
rear their like upon this ground again. But the time
will come: and when, in their changed ashes, the growth
of centuries unborn has struck its roots, the restless men
of distant ages will repair to these again unpeopled Soli-
tudes; and their fellows, in cities far away, that slumber
now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read, in lan-
guage strange to any ears in being now but very old to
them, of primeval forests where the axe was never
heard, and where the jungled ground was never trodden
by a human foot. -
Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and thoughts:
and when the morning shines again, it gilds the house-
tops of a lively city, before whose broad paved wharf
the boat is moored : with other boats, and flags, and
moving wheels, and hum of men around it ; as though
there were not a solitary or silent rood of ground within
the compass of a thousand miles.
Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and
animated. I have not often seen a place that commends
itself so favourably and pleasantly to a stranger at the
first glance as this does : with its clean houses of red
and white, its well-paved roads, and foot-ways of bright
tile. Nor does it become less prepossessing on a closer
acquaintance. The streets are broad and airy, the shops
extremely good, the private residences remarkable for
their elegance and neatness. There is something of in-
vention and fancy in the varying styles of these latter
erections, which, after the dull company of the steam-
boat, is perfectly delightful, as conveying an assurance
that there are such qualities still in existence. The dis-
position to ornament these pretty villas and render them
attractive, leads to the culture of trees and flowers, and
the laying out of well-kept gardens, the sight of which,
to those who walk along the streets, is inexpressibly re-
freshing and agreeable. I was quite charmed with the
appearance of the town, and its adjoining suburb of
Mount Auburn ; from which the city, lying in an alm-
phitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remarkable
beauty, and is seen to great advantage.
There happened to be a great Temperance Convention
86, AMERICAN NOTES
held here on the day after our arrival; and as the order
of march brought the procession under the windows of
the hotel in which we lodged, when they started in the
morning, I had a good opportunity of seeing it. It com-
prised several thousand men ; the members of various
“Washington Auxiliary Temperance Societies; ” and
was marshalled by officers on horse-back, who can-
tered briskly up and down the line, with scarves and
ribbons of bright colours fluttering out behind them
gaily. There were bands of music too, and banners
out of number : and it was a fresh, holiday-looking
concourse altogether. gº
I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who
formed a distinct society among themselves, and mus-
tered very strong with their green scarves ; carrying
their national Harp and their Portrait of Father Mathew,
high above the people's heads. They looked as jolly
and good-humoured as ever ; and, working (here) the
hardest for their living and doing any kind of sturdy
labour that came in their way, were the most inde-
pendent fellows there, I thought. -
The banners were very well painted, and flaunted
down the street famously. There was the Smiting of
the rock, and the gushing forth of the waters; and there
was a temperate man with “considerable of a hatchet”
(as the standard-bearer would probably have said),
aiming a deadly blow at a serpent which was apparently
about to spring upon him from the top of a barrel of
spirits. But the chief feature of this part of the show
was a huge allegorical device, borne among the ship-
carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol
was represented bursting her boiler and exploding with
a great crash, while upon the other, the good ship Tem-
perance sailed away with a fair wind, to the heart’s
content of the captain, crew, and passengers. *
After going round the town, the procession repaired
to a certain appointed place, where as the printed pro-
gramme set forth, it would be received by the children
of the different free schools, ‘‘ singing Temperance
Songs.” I was prevented from getting there in time to
hear these Little Warblers, or to report upon this novel
kind of vocal entertainment: novel, at least, to me: but
I found, in a large open space, each Society gathered
round its own banners, and listening in silent attention
- FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 365
to its own orator. The speeches, judging from the little
I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the
occasion, as having that degree of relationship to cold
water which wet blankets may claim: but the main
thing was the conduct and appearance of the audience
throughout the day; and that was admirable and full of
promise.
Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free-schools,
of which it has so many that no person’s child among
its population can, by possibility, want the means of
education, which are extended, upon an average, to
four thousand pupils, annually. I was Only present in
one of these establishments during the hours of instruc-
tion. In the boy’s department, which was full of little
urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six
years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to insti-
tute an extemporary examination of the pupils in alge-
bra; a proposal, which, as I was by no means confident
of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I de-
clined with some alarm. In the girl’s school, reading
was proposed; and as I felt tolerably equal to that art,
I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books were
distributed accordingly, and Some half dozen girls re-
lieved each other in reading paragraphs from English
history. But it seemed to be a dry compilation, infin-
itely above their powers; and when they had blundered
through three or four dreary passages concerning the
treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same
nature (obviously without comprehending ten words),
I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible
that they only mounted to this exalted Stave in the
Ladder of Learning for the astonishment of a visitor;
and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds;
but I should have been much better pleased and satis-
fied if I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons,
which they understood. -
As in every other place I visited, the Judges here
were gentlemen of high character and attainments. I
was in one of the courts for a few minutes, and found
it like those to which I have already referred. A nuis-
ance cause was trying; there were not many spectators;
and the witnesses, counsel, and jury, formed a sort of
family circle, sufficiently jocose and snug.
The society with which I mingled, was intelligent,
36(; AMERICAN NOTES
courteous, and agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincin-
nati are proud of their city, as one of the most interest-
ing in America: and with good reason: for beautiful and
thriving as it is now, and containing, as it does, a popu-
lation of fifty thousand souls, but two-and-fifty years
have passed away since the ground on which it stands
㺠at that time for a few dollars) was a wild wood,
and its citizens were but a handful of dwellers in scat-
tered log huts upon the river's shore. -
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 367
CHAPTER XII.
FROM CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE IN ANOTHER WESTERN
STEAMBOAT ; AND FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS
IN ANOTHER. ST. LOUIS.
EAVING Cincinnati at eleven o’clock in the fore-
noon, we embarked for Louisville in the Pike
steam-boat, which carrying the mails, was a packet of
a much better class than that in which we had come
from Pittsburg. As this passage does not occupy more
than twelve or thirteen hours, we arranged to go ashore
that night : not coveting the distinction of sleeping in
º state room, when it was possible to sleep anywhere
€ ISé.
There chanced to be on board this boat, in addition to
the usual dreary crowd of passengers, one Pitchlynn, a
chief of the Choctaw tribe of Indians, who sent in his
card to me, and with whom I had the pleasure of a long
conversation.
He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not
begun to learn the language, he told me, until he
was a young man grown. He had read many books :
and Scott's poetry appeared to have left a strong im-
pression on his mind ; especially the opening of the
Lady of the Lake, and the great battle-scene in Mar-
mion, in which, no doubt from the congeniality of the
subjects to his own pursuits and tastes, he had great in-
terest and delight. He appeared to understand cor-
rectly all he had read : and whatever fiction had en-
listed his sympathy in its belief, had done so keenly
and earnestly. I might almost say fiercely. He was
dressed in our ordinary every-day costume, which hung
about his fine figure loosely, and with indifferent grace.
On my telling him that I regretted not to see him in his
368 AMERICAN NOTES
own attire, he threw up his right arm, for a moment, as
though he were brandishing some heavy weapon, and
answered, as he let it fall again, that his race were
losing many things besides their dress, and would
soon be seen upon the earth no more: but he wore it at
home, he added proudly.
He told me that he had been away from his home
west of the Mississippi, seventeen months: and was now
returning. He had been chiefly at Washington on some
negotiations pending between his Tribe and the Gov-
ernment : which were not settled yet (he said in a
melancholy way), and he feared never would be: for what
could a few poor Indians do, against such well-skilled
men of business, as the whites ? He had no love for
Washington ; tired of towns and cities very soon ; and
longed for the Forest and its Prairie.
I asked him what he thought of Congress 2 He
answered with a smile, that it wanted dignity, in an
Indian’s eye.
He would very much like, he said, to see England
before he died ; and spoke with much interest about the
great things to be seen there. When I told him of that
chamber in the British Museum wherein are preserved
household memorials of a race that ceased to be, thou-
sands of years ago, he was very attentive, and it was
not hard to see that he had a reference in his mind to
the gradual fading away of his own people.
This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin’s gallery, which he
praised highly ; observing that his own portrait was
among the collection, and that all the likenesses were
‘‘ elegant.” Mr. Cooper, he said, had painted the Red
Man well ; and so would I, he knew, if I would go home
with him and hunt buffaloes, which he was quite
anxious I should do. When I told him that supposing
I went, I should not be very likely to damage the buf-
faloes, much, he took. it as a great joke and laughed
heartily.
. He was a remarkably handsome man ; some years
past forty I should judge ; with long black hair, an
aquiline nose, broad cheek bones, a sun-burnt com-
plexion, and a very bright, keen, dark, and piercing
eye. There were but twenty thousand of the Choctaws
left, he said, and their number was decreasing every
day. A few of his brother chiefs had been obliged to
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 369
become civilised, and to make themselves acquainted
with what the whites knew, for it was their only chance
of existence. But they were not many ; and the rest
were as they always had been. He dwelt on this ; and
said several times that unless they tried to assimilate
themselves to their conquerors, they must be swept
away before the strides of civilised society.
When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must
come to England, as he longed to see the land so much:
that I should hope to see him there, one day : and that
I could promise him he would be well received and
kindly treated. He was evidently pleased by this a S-
surance, though he rejoined with a good-humoured
smile and an arch shake of his head, that the English
used to be very fond of the Red Men when they wanted
their help, but had not cared much for them, since.
He took his leave; as stately and complete a gentle-
man of Nature’s making, as ever I beheld; and moved
among the people in the boat, another kind of being.
He sent me a lithographed portrait of himself soon
afterwards ; very like, though scarcely handsome
enough; which I have carefully preserved in memory
of our brief acquaintance. -
There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of
this day's journey, which brought us at midnight to
Louisville. We slept at the Galt House; a splendid
hotel; and were as handsomely lodged as though we
had been in Paris, rather than hundreds of miles be-
yond the Alleghanies.
The city presenting no objects of sufficient interest to
detain us on our way, we resolved to proceed next day
by another steamboat, the Fulton, and to join it, about
Inoon, at a suburb called Portland, where it would be
delayed some time in passing through a canal.
The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding
through the town, which is regular and cheerful: the
streets being laid out at right angles, and planted with
young trees. The buildings are smoky and blackened,
from the use of bituminous coal, but an Englishman is
well used to that appearance, and indisposed to quarrel
with it. There did not appear to be much business
stirring; and some unfinished buildings and improve-
ments seemed to intimate that the city had been over-
built in the ardour of “going a-head,” and was suffer-
VOT,.. I 24
370 AMERICAN NOTES
ing under the re-action consequent upon such feverish
forcing of its powers. - -
On our way to Portland we passed a “Magistrate’s
office,” which amused me, as looking far more like a
dame school than any police establishment: for this
awful institution was nothing but a little lazy, good-
for-nothing front parlour, open to the street; wherein
two or three figures (I presume the magistrate and his
myrmidons) were basking in the sunshine, the very
effigies of languor and repose. It was a perfect picture
of Justice retired from business for want of customers;
her sword and scales sold off; napping comfortably
with her legs upon the table. -
Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road was per-
fectly alive with pigs of all ages; lying about in every
direction, fast asleep; or grunting along in quest of hid-
den dainties. I had always a sneaking kindness for
these odd animals, and found a constant source of
amusement, when all others failed, in watching their
proceedings. As we were riding along this morning, I
observed a little incident between two youthful pigs,
which was so very human as to be inexpressibly com-
ical and grotesque at the time, though I daresay, in
telling, it is tame enough.
One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with
several straws sticking about his nose, betokening re-
cent investigations in a dunghill), was walking delib-
erately on, profoundly thinking, when suddenly his
brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen by him,
rose up immediately before his startled eyes, ghostly
with damp mud. Never was pig’s whole mass of blood
so turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed
for a moment and then shot.off as hard as he could go:
his excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror
like a distracted pendulum. But before he had gone
very far, he began to reason with himself as to the
nature of this frightful appearance; and as He reasoned,
he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees; until at last
he stopped, and faced about. There was his brother,
with the mud upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring
Out of the very same hole, perfectly amazed at his
proceedings! He was no sooner assured of this; and he
assured himself so carefully that one may almost, say
he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better; then
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 371
he came back at a round trot, pounced upon him, and
summarily took off a piece of his tail; as a caution to
him to be careful at what he was about for the future,
and never to play tricks with his family any more.
We found the steamboat in the canal, waiting for the
slow process of getting through the lock, and went on
board, where we shortly afterwards had a new kind of
visitor in the person of a certain Kentucky Giant
whose name is Porter, and who is of the moderate
height of seven feet eight inches, in his stockings.
There never was a race of people who so completely
gave the lie to history as these giants, or whom all the
chroniclers have so cruelly libelled. Instead of roar-
ing and ravaging about the world, constantly catering"
for their cannibal larders, and perpetually going to
market in an unlawful manner, they are the meekest
people in any man’s acquaintance: I ather inclining to
milk and vegetable diet, and bearing anything for a
quiet life. So decidedly are amiability and mildness
their characteristics, that I confess I look upon that
youth who distinguished himself by the slaughter of
these inoffensive persons, as a false-hearted |brigand,
who, pretending to philanthropic motives, was secretly
influenced only by the wealth stored up within their
castles, and the hope of plunder. And Ilean the more to
this opinion from finding that even the historian of those
exploits, with all his partiality for his hero, is fain to
admit that the slaughtered monsters in question were
of a very innocent and simple turn; extremely guile-
less and ready of belief; lending a credulous ear to the
most improbable tales; suffering themselves to be
easily entrapped into pits; and even (as in the case of the
Welsh Giant) with an excess of the hospitable polite-
ness of a landlord, ripping themselves open, rather
than hint at the possibility of their guest being versed
in the Vagabond arts of sleight-of-hand, and hocus-
poCuS.
The Kentucky Giant was but another illustration of
the truth of this position. He had a weakness in the
region of the knees, and a trustfulness in his long face,
which appealed even to five-feet-mine for encourage-
ment and support. He was only twenty-five years old,
he said, and had grown recently, for it had been found
hecessary to make an addition to the legs of his inex-
372 AMERICAN NOTES
pressibies. At fifteen he was a short boy, and in those
days his English father and his Irish mother had rather
Snubbed him, as being too small of stature to sustain
the credit of the family. He added that his health had
not been good, though it was better now; but short
lºe are not wanting who whisper that he drinks too
hard.
I understand that he drives a hackney-coach, though
how he does it, unless he stands on the footboard behind,
and lies along the roof upon his chest, with his chim in
the box, it would be difficult to comprehend. He
brought his gun with him, as a curiosity. Christened
“The Little Rifle,” and displayed outside a shop-win-
dow, it would make the fortune of any retail business
in Holborn. When he had shown himself and talked
a little while, he withdrew with his pocket-instrument,
and went bobbing down the cabin, among men of six
feet high and upwards, like a lighthouse walking
among lamp-posts.
Within a few minutes afterwards we were out of the
canal, and in the Ohio river again.
The arrangements of the boat were like those of the
Messenger, and the passengers were of the same order
of people. We fed at the same times, on the same
kind of Viands, in the same dull manner, and with
the same observances. The company appeared to be
oppressed by the same tremendous concealments, and
had as little capacity of enjoyment or light-hearted-
ness. I never in my life did see such listless, heavy dul-
ness as brooded over these meals: the very recollection
of it weighs me down, and makes me, for the moment,
wretched. Reading and writing on my knee, in our lit-
tle cabin, I really dreaded the coming of the hour that
summoned us to table; and was as glad to escape from
it again, as if it had been a penance or a punishment.
Healthy cheerfulness and good spirits forming a part of
the banquet, I could soak my crusts in the fountain
with Le Sage’s strolling player, and revel in their glad
enjoyment: but sitting down with so many fellow-ani-
mals to ward off thirst and hunger as a business; to
empty, each creature his Yahoo’s trough as quickly as
he can, and then slink sullenly away; to have these so-
cial sacraments stripped of everything but the mere
greedy satisfaction of the natural cravings; goes so
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 373
against the grain with me, that I seriously believe the
recollection of these funeral feasts will be a waking
nightmare to me all my life.
There was some relief in this boat, too, which there
had not been in the other, for the captain (a blunt
good-natured fellow), had his handsome wife with him,
who was disposed to be lively and agreeable, as were a
few other lady-passengers who had their seats about us
at the same end of the table. But nothing could have
made head against the depressing influence of the
general body. There was a magnetism of dulness in
them which would have beaten down the most face-
tious companion that the earth ever knew. A jest
would have been a crime, and a smile would have
faded into a grinning horror. Such deadly leaden
people; such systematic plodding weary insupportable
heaviness; such a mass of animated indigestion in re-
spect of all that was genial, jovial, frank, social, or
hearty; never, sure, was brought together elsewhere
since the world began.
Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction
of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, at all inspiriting in
its influence. The trees were stunted in their growth;
the banks were low and flat; the settlements and log
cabins fewer in number: their inhabitants more wan
and wretched than any we had encountered yet. No
Songs of birds were in the air, no pleasant scents, no
moving lights and shadows from swift passing clouds.
Hour after hour, the changeless glare of the hot, unwink-
ing sky, shone upon the same monotonous objects.
Hour after hour, the river rolled along, as wearily and
slowly as the time itself.
At length, upon the morning of the third day, we ar-
rived at a spot so much more desolate than any we had
yet beheld, that the forlornest places we had passed,
were, in comparison with it, full of interest. At the
junction of the two rivers, on ground so flat and low and
marshy, that at certain seasons of the year it is inun-
dated to the house-tops, lies a breeding-place of fever,
ague, and death; vaunted in England as a mine of
Golden Hope, and speculated in, on the faith of mon-
Strolls representations, to many people's ruin. A dismal
Swamp, on which the half-built houses rot away: cleared
here and there for the space of a few yards; arid teeming,
374 AMERICAN NOTES
then, with rank unwholesome vegetation, in whose bale-
ful shade the wretched wanderers who are tempted
hither droop, and die, and lay their bones; the hateful
Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and turning Off
upon its southern course a slimy monster hideous to be-
hold; a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave
uncheered by any gleam of promise: a place without
one single quality, in earth or air or water, to commend
it: such is this dismal Cairo. &
But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great
father of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young
children like him An enormous ditch, sometimes two
or three miles wide, running liquid mud, six miles an
hour: its strong and frothy current choked and ob-
structed everywhere by huge-legs—and whole forest
trees: now twining themselves together in great rafts,
from the interstices of which a sedgy lazy foam works
up, to float upon the water’s top: now rolling past, like
monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like mat-
ted hair: now glancing singly by like giant leeches; and
now writhing round and round in the vortex of some
small whirlpool like wounded snakes. The banks low, the
trees dwarfish, the marshes swarming with frogs, the
wretched cabins few and far apart, their inmates hol-
low-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes
penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat,
mud and slime on everything: nothing pleasant in its
aspect, but the harmless lightning which flickers every
night upon the dark horizon. &
For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking
constantly against the floating timber, or stopping to
avoid those more dangerous obstacles, the snags, or
Sawyers, which are the hidden trunks of trees that have
their roots below the tide. When the nights are very
dark, the look-out stationed in the head of the boat,
knows by the ripple of the water if any great impedi-
ment be near at hand, and rings a bell beside him,
which is the signal for the engine to be stopped; but
always in the night this bell has work to do, and after
every ring, there comes a blow which renders it no easy
matter to remain in bed. *
The decline of day here was very gorgeous; tinging
the firmament deeply with red and gold, up to the very
keystone of the arch above us. As the Sun went down
TOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 375
behind the bank, the slightest blades of grass upon it
seemed to become.as distinctly visible as the arteries in
the skeleton of a leaf, and when, as it slowly sank, the
red and golden bars upon the water grew dimmer, and
dimmer yet, as if they were sinking too; and all the
glowing colours of departing day paled, inch by inch,
before the sombre night; the scene became a thousand
times more lonesome and more dreary than before, and
all its influences darkened with the sky.
We drank the muddy water of this river while we
were upon it. It is considered wholesome by the natives,
and is something more opaque than gruel. I have seen
water like it at the Filter-shops, but nowhere else.
On the fourth night after leaving Louisville, we
reached St. Louis, and here I witnessed the conclusion
of an incident, trifling enough in itself but very pleasant
to see, which had interested me during the whole
journey.
There was a little woman on board, with a little baby;
and both little woman and little child were cheerful,
good-looking, bright-eyed, and fair to see. The little
woman had been passing a long time with her sick
mother in New York, and had left her home in St. Louis,
in that condition in which ladies who truly love their
lords desire to be. The baby was born in her mother’s
house; and she had not seen her husband (to whom
she was now returning), for twelve months: having
left him a month or two after their marriage.
Well, to be sure there never was a little woman so
full of hope, and tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as
this little woman was ; and all day long she wondered
whether “He’’ would be at the wharf; and whether
“He’ had got her letter ; and whether, if she sent the
baby ashore by somebody else, “He’’ would know it,
meeting it in the street : which, seeing that he had
never set eyes upon it in his life, was not very likely in
the abstract, but was probable enough, to the young
mother. She was such an artless little creature ; and
was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state ; and let
Out all this matter clinging close about her heart, so
freely ; that all the other lady passengers entered into
the spirit of it as much as she ; and the captain (who
heard all about it from his wife), was wondrous sly, I
promise you : inquiring, every time We met at table, as
376 AMERICAN NOTES
in forgetfulness, whether she expected anybody to meet
her at St. Louis, and whether she would want to go
ashore the night we reached it (but he supposed she
wouldn’t), and cutting many other dry jokes of that
nature. There was one little weazen, dried-apple-faced
old woman, who took occasion to doubt the constancy
of husbands in such circumstances of bereavement ; and
there was another lady (with a lap dog) old enough to
moralise on the lightness of human affections, and yet
not so old that she could help nursing the baby, now and
then, or laughing with the rest, when the little woman
called it by its father's name, and asked it all manner of
fantastic questions concerning him in the joy of herheart.
It was something of a blow to the little woman, that
when we were within twenty miles of our destination,
it became clearly necessary to put this baby to bed.
But she got over it with the same good humour ; tied a 7
handkerchief round her head ; and came out into the
little gallery with the rest. Then, such an Oracle as she
became in reference to the localities 1 and such facetious-
ness as was displayed by the married ladies and such
sympathy as was shown by the single ones 1 and such
peals of laughter as the little woman herself (who would
just as soon have cried) greeted every jest with !
At last, there were the lights of St. Louis, and here
was the wharf, and those were the steps: and the little
woman covering her face with her hands, and laugh-
ing (or seeming to laugh) more than ever, ran into her
own cabin, and shut herself up. I have no doubt that
in the charming inconsistency of such excitement, she
stopped her ears, lest she should hear “Him” asking
for her: but I did not see her do it.
Then, a great crowd of people rushed on board,though
the boat was not yet made fast, but was wandering
about, among the other boats, to find a landing place:
and everybody looked for the husband: and nobody
saw him: when, in the midst of us all—Heaven knows
how she ever got there—there was the little woman
clinging with both arms tight round the neck of a fine,
good-looking, sturdy young fellow! and in a moment
afterwards, there she was again, actually clapping her
little hands for joy, as she dragged him through the
small door of her small cabin, to look at the baby as he
lay asleep!
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 377
We went to a large hotel, called the Planter's House:
built iike an English hospital, with long passages and
bare walls, and skylights above the room-doors for the
free circulation of air. There were º many board-
ers in it; and as many lights sparkled and glistened
from the windows down into the street below, when We
drove up, as if it had been illuminated on Some Occa-
sion of rejoicing. It is an excellent house, and the pro-
prietors have most bountiful notions of providing the
creature comforts. Dining alone with my wife in our
own room, one day, I counted fourteen dishes on the
table at once.
In the old French portion of the town the thorough-
fares are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses
are very quaint and picturesque: being built of wood,
with tumble-down galleries before the windows, ap-
proachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street.
There are queer little barbers’ shops and drinking-
houses too, in this quarter; and abundance of crazy
old tenements with blinking casements, such as may be
seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations,
with high garret gable-windows perking into the roofs,
have a kind of French shrug about them; and being
lop-sided with age, appear to hold their heads askew,
besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at
the American Improvements.
It is hardly necessary to say that these consist of
wharves and warehouses, and new building in all di-
rections; and of a great many vast plans which are still
“ progressing.” Already, however, some very good
houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted shops, have
gone so far a-head as to be in a state of completion;
and the town bids fair in a few years to improve con-
siderably: though it is not likely ever to vie, in point
of elegance or beauty, with Cincinnati.
The Roman 8. religion, introduced here by the
early French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the
public institutions are a Jesuit College; a convent for
“ the Ladies of the Sacred Heart; ” and a large chapel
attached to the college, which was in course of erection
at the time of my visit, and was intended to be conse-
crated on the second of December in the next year. The
architect of this building, is one of the reverend fathers
of the School, and the works proceed under his sole
378 AMERICAN NOTES
direction! The organ will be sent from Belgium.
In addition to these establishments, there is a Roman
Catholic cathedral, dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier;
and a hospital, founded by the munificence- of a de-
ceased resident, who was a member of that church. It
also sends missionaries from hence among the Indian
tribes. g
The Unitarian church is represented, in this remote
place, as in most other parts of America, by a gentleman
of great worth and excellence. The poor have good
reason to remember and bless it; for it befriends them,
and aids the cause of rational education, without any
sectarian or selfish views. It is liberal in all its actions;
of kind construction; and of wide benevolence.
There are three free-schools already erected, and in
full operation in this city. A fourth is building, and
will soon be opened.
No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he
dwells in (unless he is going away from it), and I shall
therefore, I have no doubt, be at issue with the inhabi-
tants of St. Louis, in questioning the perfect salubrity of
its climate, and in hinting that I think it must rather
dispose to fever, in the summer and autumnal seasons.
Just adding, that it is very hot, lies among great rivers,
and has vast tracts of undrained swampy land around
it, I leave the reader to form his own opinion.
As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning
back from the furthest point of my wanderings; and as
Some gentlemen of the town had, in their hospitable
consideration, an equal desire to gratify me; a day was
fixed, before my departure, for an expedition to the
Looking-Glass Prairie, which is within thirty miles of
the town. Deeming it possible that my readers may
not object to know what kind of thing such a gipsy
party may be at that distance from home, and among
what sorts of objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt
in another chapter.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 379
CHAPTER XIII.
A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK.
T MAY premise that the word Prairie is variously pro-
nounced paracter, paredren', and paroarer. The latter
mode of pronunciation is perhaps the most in favour.
We were fourteen in all, and all young men; indeed
it is a singular though very natural feature in the
society of these distant settlements, that it is mainly
composed of adventurous persons in e prime of life,
and has very few grey heads among it. There were no
ladies: the trip being a fatiguing one: and we were to
start at five o’clock in the morning punctually.
I was called at four, that I might be certain of keeping
nobody waiting; and having got some bread and milk
for breakfast, threw up the window and looked down
into the street, expecting to see the whole party busily
astir, and great preparations going on below. But as
everything was very quiet, and the street presented
that hopeless aspect .# which five o’clock in the morn-
ing is familiar elsewhere, I deemed it as well to go to
bed again, and went accordingly.
I awoke again at seven o’clock, and by that time the
party had assembled, and were gathered round, one
light carriage, with a very stout axletree; one some-
thing on wheels like an amateur carrier’s cart: one
double phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly con-
struction; one gig with a great hole in its back and a
broken head; and one rider on horseback who was to go
on before. I got into the first coach with three compan-
ions; the rest bestowed themselves in the other vehicles;
two large baskets were made fast to the lightest; two
large stone jars in wicker cases, technically known as
demi-johns; were consigned to the “least rowdy' of
the party for safe-keeping; and the procession moved
off to the ferry-boat, in which it was to cross the river
380 r AMERICAN NOTES
bodily, men, horses, carriages, and all, as the manner
in these parts is, *
We got over the river in due course, and mustered
again before a little wooden box on wheels, hove down all
aslant in a morass, with “MERCHANT TAILOR" painted
in very large letters over the door. Having settled the
order of proceeding, and the road to be taken, we started
off once more and began to make our way through an ill-
favoured Black Hollow, called, less expressively, The
American Bottom. * *
The previous day had been—not to say hot, for the
term is weak and lukewarm in its power of conveying
an idea of the temperature. The town had been on
fire ; in a blaze. But at night it had come on to rain in
torrents, and all night long it had rained without ces:
sation. We had a pair of very strong horses, but
travelled at the rate of little more than a couple of miles
an hour, through one unbroken slough of black mud and
water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was
only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and
now the coach sank down in it almost to the windows.
The air resounded in all directions with the loud chirping
of the frogs, who, with the pigs (a coarse, ugly breed,
as unwholesome-looking as though they were the spon-
taneous growth of the country), had the whole scene to
themselves. Here and there we passed a log hut ; but
the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scat-
tered, for though the soil is very rich in this place few
people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either
side of the track, if it deserve the name, was the thick
‘‘ bush ; ” and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten,
filthy water.
As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a
gallon or so of cold water whenever he is in a foam
with heat, we halted for that purpose, at a log inn in
the wood, far removed from any other residence. It
consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare-walled of
course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was
a swarthy young savage, in a shirt of cotton print like
bed-furniture, and a pair of ragged trousers. There
were a couple of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying
idly by the well; and they, and he, and the traveller at
the inn, turned out to look at us. -
The traveller was an old man with a grey grisly beard
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 381
two inches long, a shaggy moustache of the same hue,
and enormous eyebrows; which almost obscured his
lazy, semi-drunken glance, as he stood regarding us
with folded arms: poising himself alternately upon his
toes and heels. On being addressed by one of the party,
he drew nearer, and said, rubbing his chin (which
scraped under his horny hand like fresh gravel beneath
a nailed shoe), that he was from Delaware, and had
lately bought a farm “down there * pointing into one
of the marshes where the stunted trees were thickest.
He was “going,” he added, to St. Louis, to fetch his
family, whom he had left behind ; but he seemed in
no great hurry to bring on these incumbrances, for when
We moved away, he loitered back into the cabin, and
was plainly bent on stopping there so long as his money
lasted. He was a great politician of course, and
explained his opinions at some length to one of Our
company ; but I only remember that he concluded with
two sentiments, one of which was, Somebody for ever ;
and the other, Blast everybody else! which is by no
means a bad abstract of the general creed in these
matters.
When the horses were swollen out to about twice their
natural dimensions (there seems to be an idea here, that
this kind of inflation improves their going), we went
forward again, through mud and mire, and damp, and
festering heat, and brake and bush, attended always
by the music of the frogs and pigs, until nearly noon,
when we halted at a place called Belleville.
Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses,
huddled together in the very heart of the bush and
swamp. Many of them had singularly bright doors of
red and yellow; for the place had been lately visited by
a travelling painter, “who got along,” as I was told,
‘‘ by eating his way.” The criminal court was sitting,
and was at that moment trying some criminals for
horse-stealing: with whom it would most likely go
hard: for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very
much exposed in the woods, is held by the community
in rather higher value than human life; and for this
reason, juries generally make a point of finding all men
indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty whether or no.
The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and wit-
nesses, were tied to temporary racks set up roughly in
3S2 AMERICAN NOTES
the road; by which is to be understood, a forest path,
nearly knee-deep in mud and Slime. .
There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels
in America, had its large dining-room for the public
table. It was an odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house,
half-cowshed and half-kitchen, with a coarse brown
canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces stuck against the
walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman
had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables pre-
pared, and they were by this time nearly ready. He
had ordered “wheat-bread and chicken-fixings,” in
preference to “corn-bread and common doings.” The
latter kind of refection includes only pork and bacon.
The former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, Veal
cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of that nature as
may be supposed, by a tolerably wide poetical construc-
tion, “to fix” a chicken comfortably in the digestive
Organs of any lady or gentleman.
n one of the door-posts at this inn, was a tin plate,
whereon was inscribed in letters of gold, “ Doctor Cro-
cus; ” and on a sheet of paper, pasted up by the side of
this plate was a written announcement that Doctor. Cro-
cus would that evening deliver a lecture on Phrenology
for the benefit of the Belleville public; at a charge for
admission of so much a head.
Straying up-stairs during the preparation of the
chicken-fixings, I happened to pass the Doctor’s cham-
ber; and, as the door stood wide open, and the room
was empty, I made bold to peep in.
It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an
unframed portrait hanging up at the head of the bed ; a
likeness, I take it, of the Doctor, for the forehead was
fully displayed, and great stress was laid by the artist
upon its phrenological developments. The bed itself
was covered with an old patchwork counterpane. The
room was destitute of carpet or of curtain. There was
a damp fire-place without any stove, full of wood
ashes; a chair, and a very small table; and on the last-
named piece of furniture was displayed, in grand array,
the Doctor's library, consisting of some half-dozen greasy
old books. -
Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on
the whole earth out of which any man would be likely
to get anything to do him good. But the door, as I have
}
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION 3S3
said, stood coaxingly Open, and plainly said in conjunc-
tion with the chair, the portrait, the table, and the
books, “Walk in, gentlemen, walk in' Don’t be ill,
gentlemen, when you may be well in no time. Doctor
Crocuš is here, gentlemen, the celebrated Doctor Cro-
cus! Doctor Crocus has come all this way to cure you,
gentlemen. If you haven’t heard of Doctor Crocus, it’s
your fault, gentlemen, who live a little way out of the
world here, not Doctor Crocus’s. Walk in, gentlemen,
walk in l’’ *
In the passage below, when I went down-stairs again,
was Doctor Crocus himself. A crowd had flocked in
from the Court-House, and a voice from among them
called out to the landlord: “Colonel ! introduce Doctor
Crocus.”
“Mr. Dickens,” says the colonel, “Doctor Crocus.”
|Upon which Dr. Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking
Scotchman, but rather fierce and warlike in appear-
ance for a professor of the peaceful art of healing,
bursts out of the concourse with his right arm extend-
ed, and his chest thrown out as far as it will possibly
come, and says:
“Your countryman, sir!”
Whereupon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands: and
Doctor Crocus looks as if I didn’t by any means realize
his expectations, which, in a linen blouse, and a great,
Straw hat, with a green ribbon, and no gloves, and my
face and nose profusely ornamented with the stings of
mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it is very likely fdid
not.
“Long in these parts, sir?” says I.
“Three or four months, sir,” says the Doctor.
“Do you think of soon returning to the old country,
sir?” says I.
Doctor Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me
an imploring look, which says so plainly, “Will you
ask me that question again, a little louder, if you
please?” that I repeat the question.
“Think of Soon returning to the old country, sir?”
repeats the Doctor.
“To the old country, sir,” I rejoin.
Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe
the effect he produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a
very loud voice:
384. AMERICAN NOTES
“Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won’t catch me
at that just yet, sir. I am a little too fond of freedom
for that, sir. Ha! haſ It’s not so easy for a man to
tear himself from a free country such as this is, sir.
Ha, ha! No, no! Ha, ha! None of that till one's
obliged to do it, sir. No, no!” -
As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes
his head knowingly, and laughs again. Many of the
bystanders shake their heads in concert with the Doc-
tor, and laugh, too, and look at each other as much as
to say, “A pretty bright and first-rate sort of chap is
Crocus!” and unless I am very much mistaken, a good
many people went to the lecture that night, who never
thought about phrenology or about Doctor Crocus
either, in all their lives before.
From Belleville, we went on, through the same deso-
late kind of waste, and constantly attended, without
the interval of a moment, by the same music; until, at
three o’clock in the afternoon, we halted once more at
a village called Lebanon to inflate the horses again, and
give them some corn besides: of which they stood much
in need. Pending this ceremony, I walked into the
village, where I met a full-sized dwelling-house coming
down-hill at a round trot, drawn by a score or more of
OX62Il. -
The public-house was so very clean and good a One,
that the managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it
and put up there for the night, if possible. This course
decided on, and the horses being well refreshed, we
again pushed forward, and came upon the Prairie at
Sunset.
It would be difficult to say why, or how—though it was
possibly from having heard and read so much about it
—but the effect on me was disappointment. Looking
towards the setting sun, there lay, stretched out before
my view, a vast expanse of level ground; unbroken,
save by one thiri line of trees, which scarcely amounted
to a scratch upon the great blank; until it met the
glowing sky, wherein it seemed to dip: mingling with
its rich colours, and mellowing in its distant blue.
There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if
such a simile be admissible, with the day going down
upon it: a few birds wheeling here and there; and Soli-
tude and silence reigning paramount around. But the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 385
grass was not yet high; there were bare black patches
on the ground, and the few wild flowers that the eye
could see, were poor and Scanty. Great as the picture
was, its very flatness and extent, which left nothing to
the imagination, tamed it down and cramped its interest.
I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration
which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English
downs awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive
in its barren monotony. I felt that in traversing the
Prairies, I could never abandon myself to the scene,
forgetful of all else; as I should do instinctively, were
the heather underneath my feet, or an iron-bound coast
beyond; but should often glance towards the distant and
frequently receding line of the horizon, and wish it
gained and passed. It is not a scene to be forgotten,
but it is scarcely one, I think (at all events, as I saw it),
to remember with much pleasure, or to covet the look-
ing on again, in after life. * -
We encamped near a solitary log house, for the sake
of its water, and dined upon the plain. The baskets
contained roast fowls, buffalo's tongue (an exquisite
dainty, by the way), ham, bread, cheese and butter;
biscuits, champagne, sherry; lemons and Sugar for
punch; an abundance of rough ice. The meal was de-
licious, and the entertainers were the soul of kindness
and good humour. I have often recalled that cheerful
party to my pleasant recollection since, and shall not
easily forget, in junketings nearer home with friends of
older date, my boon companions on the Prairie.
Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little
inn at which we had halted in the afternoon. In point
of cleanliness and comfort it would have suffered by no
comparison with any village alehouse, of a homely
kind, in England.
Rising at five o’clock, next morning, I took a walk
about the village: none of the houses were strolling
about to-day, but it was early for them yet, perhaps:
and then amused myself by lounging in a kind of
farm-yard behind the tavern, of which the leading
features were, a strange jumble of rough sheds for
stables; a rude colonnade, built as a cool place of sum-
mer resort; a deep well; a great earthen mound for
keeping vegetables in, in winter time; and a pigeon-
house, whose little apertures looked, as they do in all
WOL. I. 25
386 AMERICAN NOTES
pigeon-houses, very much too small for the admission
of the plump and swelling-breasted birds who were
strutting about it, though they tried to get in never so
hard. That interest exhausted, I took a survey of the
inn’s two parlours, which were decorated with coloured
prints of Washington, and President Madison, and of
a white faced young lady (much speckled by the flies),
who held up her gold neck-chain for the admiration of
the spectator, and informed all admiring comers that
she was “Just Seventeen:” although I should have
thought her older. In the best room were two oil
portraits of the kit-cat size, representing the landlord
and his infant son; both looking as bold as lions, and
staring out of the canvas with an intensity that would
have been cheap at any price. They were painted, I
think, by the artist who had touched up the Belleville
doors with red and gold; for I seemed to recognise his
style immediately.
After breakfast, we started to return by a differ-
ent way from that which we had taken yesterday, and
coming up at ten o’clock with an encampment of Ger-
man emigrants carrying their goods in carts, who had
made a rousing fire which they were just quitting,
stopped there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire
was; for, hot though it had been yesterday, it was
quite cold to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming
in the distance, as we rode along, was another of the
ancient Indian burial-places, called the Monk’s Mound;
in memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La
Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there, many
years ago, when there were no settlers within a thousand
miles, and were all swept off by the permicious climate;
in which lamentable fatality, few rational people will
suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very
severe deprivation. *
The track of to-day had the same features as the
track of yesterday. There was the swamp, the bush,
the perpetual chorus of frogs, the rank unseemly
growth, the unwholesome steaming earth. Here and
there, and frequently too, we encountered a solitary
broken-down waggon, full of some new settler's goods.
It was a pitiful sight to see one of these vehicles deep
in the mire; the axle-tree broken; the wheel lying idly
by its side; the man gone miles away, to look for as-
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 38%
sistance; the woman seated among their wandering
household goods; with a baby at her breast, a picture of
forlorn, dejected patience; the team of oxen crouching
down mournfully in the mud, and breathing forth such
clouds of vapour from their mouths and nostrils, that
all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have come
direct from them.
In due time we mustered once again before the mer-
chant tailor's, and having done so, crossed over to the
city in the ferry-boat: passing, on the way, a spot
called Bloody Island, the duelling-ground of St. Louis,
and so designated in honour of the last fatal combat
fought there, which was with pistols, breast to breast.
Both combatants fell dead upon the ground; and pos-
sibly some rational people may think of them, as of
the gloomy madmen on the Monk's Mound, that they
were no great loss to the community, &
388 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER XIV.
RETURN TO CINCINNATI. A STAGE-COACH RIDE FROM
THAT CITY TO COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO SANDUSKY.
SO, BY LAKE ERIE, TO THE FALLS OF NLAGARA.
A S I had a desire to travel through the interior of
the State of Ohio, and to “strike the lakes,” as
the phrase is, at a small town called Sandusky, to
which that route would conduct us on our way to Nia-
gara, we had to return from St. Louis by the way we
had come, and retrace our former track as far as
Cincinnati.
The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis
being very fine; and the steam-boat which was to have
started I don’t know how early in the morning, post.
poning, for the third or fourth time, her departure until
the afternoon; we rode forward to an old French village
on the river, called properly Carondelet, and nicknamed
Wide Poche, and arranged that the packet should call
for us there. - !
The place consisted of a few poor cottages, and two
or three public houses; the state of whose larders cer-
tainly seemed to justify the second designation of the
village, for there was nothing to eat in any of them.
At length, however by going back Some half a mile or
so, we found a solitary house where ham and coffee
were procurable; and there we tarried to await the
advent of the boat, which would come in sight from
the green before the door, a long way off.
It was a meat, unpretending village tavern, and we
took our repast in a quaint little room with a bed in it,
decorated with some old oil paintings, which in their
time had probably done duty in a &n. chapel or
monastery. The fare was very good, and served with
great cleanliness. The house was kept by a charac-
teristic old couple, with whom we had a long talk, and
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION 389
who were perhaps a very good sample of that kind of
people in the West.
The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow
(not so very old either, for he was but just turned sixty,
I should think), who had been out with the militia in
the last war with England, and had seen all kinds of
service,—except a battle; and he had been very near
seeing that, he added: very near. He had all his life
been restless and locomotive, with an irresistible desire
for change; and was still the son of his old self: for if
he had nothing to keep him at home, he said (slightly
jerking his hat and his thumb towards the window of the
room in which the old lady sat, as we stood talking in
front of the house) he would clean up his musket, and
be off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one of
the very many descendants of Cain proper to this con-
tinent, who seem destined from their birth to serve as
pioneers in the great human army: who gladly go on
from year to year extending its outposts, and leaving
home after home behind them; and die at last, utterly
regardless of their graves being left thousands of miles
behind, by the wandering generation who succeed.
His wife was a domesticated kind-hearted old soul,
who had come with him “from the queen city of the
world,” which, it seemed, was Philadelphia ; but had
no love for this western country, and indeed had little
reason to bear it any ; having seen her children, one by
one, die here of fever, in the full prime and beauty of
their youth. Her heart was sore, she said, to think of
them ; and to talk on this theme, even to strangers, in
that blighted place, so far from her old home, eased it
Somewhat, and became a melancholy pleasure.
The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu
to the poor old lady and her vagrant spouse, and mak-
ing for the nearest landing-place, were soon on board
The Messenger again, in our old cabin, and steaming
down the Mississippi. *
If the coming up this river, slowly making head
against the stream, be an irksome journey, the shoot-
ing down it with the turbid current is almost worse :
for then the boat, proceeding at the rate of twelve or
fifteen miles an hour, has to force its passage through
a labyrinth of floating logs, which, in the dark, it is often
impossible to see beforehand or avoid. All that night, the
300 AMERICAN NOTES
bell was never silent for five minutes at a time ; and
after every ring the vessel reeled again, sometimes be-'
neath a single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen dealt
in quick succession, the lightest of which seemed more
than enough to beat in her frail keel, as though it had
been pie-crust. Looking down upon the filthy river
after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters, as
these black masses rolled upon the surface, or came
Starting up again, head first, when the boat, in plough-
ing her Yway among a shoal of such obstructions, drove
a few among them, for the moment, under water.
Sometimes, the engine stopped during a long interval,
and then before her and §§ and gathering close
about her on all sides, were so many of these ill-
favoured obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in ; the
centre of a floating island ; and was constrained to
pause until they parted, somewhere, as dark clouds will
do before the wind, and opened by degrees a channel
Out.
In good time next morning, however, we came again in
sight of the detestable morass called Cario; and stopping
there to take in wood, lay alongside a barge, whose
starting timbers scarcely held together. It was moored
to the bank, and on its side was painted “Coffee House;”
that being, I suppose, the floating paradise to which the
people fly for shelter when they loose their houses for a
month or two beneath the hideous waters of the Miss-
issippi. But looking southward from this point, we had
the satisfaction of seeing that intolerable river dragging
its slimy length and ugly' freight abruptly off towards
New Orleans; and passing a yellow line which stretched
across the current, were again upon the clear Ohio,
never, I trust, to see the Mississippi more, saving in
troubled dreams and nightmares. Leaving it for the
Company of its sparkling neighbour, was like the transi-
tion from pain to ease, or the awakening from a horrible
vision to cheerful realities.
We arrived at Louisville on the fourth night, and
gladly availed ourselves of its excellent hotel. Next
day we went on in the Ben Franklin, a beautiful mail
Steam-boat, and reached Cincinnati shortly after mid-
night. Being by this time nearly tired of sleeping upon
shelves, we had remained awake to go ashore straight-
Way; and groping a passage across the dark decks of
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 391
other boats, and among labyrinths of engine-machinery
and leaking casks of molases, we reached the Streets,
knocked up the porter at the hotel where we had stald
before, and were, to our great joy, safely housed. Soon
afterwards.
We rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed
our journey to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties
of stage-coach travelling, which, with those I have
already glanced at, comprehend the main characteristics
of this mode of transit in America, I will take the reader
as our fellow-passenger, and pledge myself to perform
the distance with all possible dispatch.
Our place of destination in the first instance is Col-
umbus, It is distant about a hundred and twenty miles
from Cincinnati, but there is a macadamised road (rare
blessing!) the whole way, and the rate of travelling
upon it is six miles an hour.
We start at eight o’clock in the morning, in a great
mail-coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and
plethoric, that it appears to be troubled with a tendency
of blood to the head. Dropsical it certainly is, for it
will hold a dozen passengers inside. But, wonderful to
add, it is very clean and bright, being nearly new; and
rattles through the streets of Cincinnati gaily.
Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cul-
tivated, and luxuriant in its promise of an abundant
harvest. Sometimes we pass a field where the strong
bristling stalks of Indian corn look like a crop of walk-
ing-sticks, and sometimes an enclosure where the green
wheat is springing up among a labyrinth of stumps; the
primitive worm-fence is universal, and an ugly thing it
is; but the farms are neatly kept, and, save for these
differences, one might be travelling just now in Kent.
We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is
always dull and silent. The coachman dismounts and
fills his bucket, and holds it to the horses’ heads. There
is scarcely ever any one to help him; there are seldom
any loungers standing round: and never any stable-
company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we
have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting
again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking
a young horse: which is to catch him, harness him
against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without
further notice; but we got on somehow or other, after a
302 AMERICAN NOTES
great many kicks and a violent struggle; and jog on as
before again.
Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or
three half-drunken loafers will come loitering out with
their hands in their pockets, or will be seen kicking
their heels in rocking-chairs, or lounging on the window-
sill, or sitting on a rail within the colonnade. they have
not often anything to say though, either to us or to each
other, but sit there idly staring at the coach and horses.
The landlord of the inn is usually among them, and
seems, of all the party, to be the least connected with
the business of the house. Indeed he is with reference
to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the coach
and passengers: whatever happens in his sphere of
action, he is quite indifferent, and perfectly easy in his
mind.
The frequent change of coachmen works no change
or variety in the coachman’s character. He is always
dirty, sullen, and taciturn. If he be capable of Smart-
ness of any kind, moral or physical, he has a faculty
of concealing it which is truly marvellous. He never
speaks to you as you sit beside him on the box, and if
you speak to him, he answers (if at all) in monosylla-
bles. He points out nothing on the road, and seldom
looks at anything: being, to all appearance, thoroughly
weary of it, and of existence generally. As to doing
the honours of his coach, his business, as I have said,
is with the horses. The coach follows because it is at-
tached to them and goes on wheels: not because you
are in it. Sometimes towards the end of a long stage,
he suddenly breaks out into a discordant fragment of
an election song, but his face never sings along with
him: it is only his voice, and not often that.
He always chews and always spits, and never incum-
bers himself with a pocket-handkerchief. The conse-
quences to the box passenger, especially when the wind
blows towards him, are not agreeable.
Whenever the coach stops, and you can hear the
voices of the inside passengers; or whenever any by-
stander addresses them, or any one among them; Or
they address each other; you will hear one phrase re-
peated over and over and over again to the most extra-
ordinary extent. It is an ordinary and unpromising
phrase enough, being neither more nor less than “Yes,
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 393
sir; ” but it is adapted to every variety of circum-
stance, and fills up every pause in the conversation.
Thus:
The time is one o’clock at noon. The scene, a place
where we are to stay to dine on this journey. The
coach drives up to the door of an inn. The day is
warm, and there are several idlers lingering about
the tavern, and waiting for the public dinner. Among
them, is a stout gentleman in a brown hat, Swinging
himself to and fro in a rocking-chair on the pavement.
As the coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat looks
Out of the window.
STRAW HAT. (To the stout gentleman in the rock-
ing-chair). I reckon that’s Judge Jefferson, ain’t it?
BROWN HAT, (Still swinging; speaking very slowly;
and without any emotion whatever). Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. Warm weather, Judge.
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. There was a snap of cold, last week.
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. Yes, sir.
A pause. They look at each other very seriously.
STRAW HAT. I calculate you’ll have got through that
case of the corporation judge, by this time, now?
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. How did the verdict go, sir?
BROWN HAT. For the defendant, sir.
STRAW HAT. (Interrogatively.) Yes, sir.
BROWN HAT. (Affirmatively.) Yes, sir.
BOTH. (Musingly, as each gazes down the street.)
Yes, sir.
Another pause. They look at each other again, still
more seriously than before.
BROWN HAT. This coach is rather behind its time to-
day, I guess.
STRAW HAT. (Doubtingly.) Yes, sir.
BROWN HAT. (Looking at his watch.) Yes, sir; nigh
upon two hours.
STRAW HAT. (Raising his eyebrows in very great
surprise.) Yes, sir.
BROWN HAT. (Decisively, as he puts up his watch.)
Yes, sir.
ALL THE OTHER INSIDE PASSENGERS (among them-
selves.) Yes, sir.
394 AMERICAN NOTES
COACHMAN (in a very surly tone.) No it a'nt,
STRAW HAT (to the coachman.) Well, I don’t know,
sir. We were a pretty tall time coming that last fifteen
mile. That’s a fact,
The coachman making no reply, and plainly declin-
ing to enter into any controversy on a subject so far
removed from his sympathies and feelings, another
passenger says “Yes, sir; ” and the gentleman in the
Straw hat in acknowledgment of his courtesy, says
“Yes, sir,” to him, in return. The straw hat then in-
quires of the brown hat, whether that coach in which
he (the straw hat) then sits, is not a new one? To
which the brown hat again makes answer, “Yes, sir.”
STRAW HAT. I thought so. Pretty loud smell of var-
nish, sir?”
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
AND THE OTHER INSIDE PASSENGERS. Yes, sir.
BROWN HAT. (to the company in general.) Yes, sir.
The conversational powers of the company having
been by this time pretty heavily taxed, the straw hat
Opens the door and gets out; and all the rest alight also.
We dine soon afterwards with the boarders in the
house, and have nothing to drink but tea and coffee. . .
As they are both very bad and the water is worse, I ask’
for brandy; but it is a Temperance Hotel, and spirits
are not to be had for love or money. This preposterous
forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant throats
of travellers is not at all uncommon in America, but I
never discovered that the scruples of such wincing land-
lords induced them to preserve any unusually nice
balance between the quality of their fare, and their
scale of charges: on the contrary, Irather suspected them
of diminishing the one and exalting the other, by way
of recompense for the loss of their profit on the sale of
spirituous liquors. After all, perhaps, the plainest
course for persons of such tender consciences, would be,
a total abstinence from tavern-keeping.
Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is
ready at the door (for the coach has been changed in
the interval), and resume Our journey; which continues
through the same kind of country until evening, when
we come to the town where we are to stop for tea and
Supper; and having delivered the mail bags at the Post-
office, ride through the usual wide street, lined with the
|
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 395
usual stores and houses (the drapers always having
hung up at their door, by way of sign, a piece of bright
red cloth), to the hotel where this meal is prepared.
There being many boarders here, we sit down a large
party, and a very melancholy one as usual. But there
is a buxom hostess at the head of the table, and oppo-
site, a simple Welsh schoolmaster with his wife and
child; who came here, on a speculation of greater
promise than performance, to teach the classics: and
they are sufficient subjects of interest until the meal is
over, and another coach is ready. In it we go on Once
more, lighted by a bright moon, until midnight; when
we stop to change the coach again, and remain for half an
hour or so in a miserable room, with a blurred lithograph
of Washington Over the smoky fireplace, and a mighty
jug of cold water on the table: to which refreshment the
moody passengers do so apply themselves that they would
seem to be, one and all, keen patients of Doctor San-
grado. Among them is a very little boy, who chews
tobacco like a very big one; and a droning gentleman,
who talks arithmetically and statistically on all sub-
jects, from poetry downwards; and who always speaks
in the same key, with exactly the same emphasis, and
with very grave deliberation. He came outside just
now, and told me how that the uncle of a certain young
lady who had been spirited away and married by a cer-
tain captain, lived in these parts; and how this uncle
was so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn’t wonder
if he were to follow the said captain to England, “ and
shoot him down in the street, wherever he found him; ”
in the feasibility of which strong measure I, being for
the moment rather prone to contradiction, from feeling
half asleep and very tired, declined to acquiesce: assur-
ing him that if the uncle did resort to it, or gratified
any other little whim of the like nature, he would find
himself one morning prematurely throttled at the Old
Bailey; and that he would do well to make his will be-
fore he went, as he would certainly want it before he
had been in Britain very long.
On we go, all night, and by-and-by the day begins to
break, and presently the first cheerful rays of the warm
sum come slanting on us brightly. It sheds its light
upon a miserable waste of sodden grass, and dull trees,
and squalid huts, whose aspect is forlorn and grievious
396 AMERICAN NOTES
in the last degree. A very desert in the wood, whose
growth of green is dank and noxious like that upon the
top of standing water: where poisonous fungus grows in
the rare footprint on the oozy ground, and sprouts like
witches’ coral from the crevices in the cabin wall and
floor; it is a hideous thing to lie upon the very threshold
of a city. But it was purchased years ago, and as the
owner cannot be discovered, the State has been unable
to reclaim it. So there it remains, in the midst of culti-
vation and improvement, like ground accursed, and
made obscene and rank by some great crime.
We reached Columbus shortly before seven o’clock,
and stayed there, to refresh, that day and night: hav-
ing excellent apartments in a very large unfinished
hotel called the Neill House, which were richly fitted up
with the polished wood of the black walnut, and opened
on a handsome portico and stone verandah, like rooms
in some Italian mansion. The town is clean and pretty,
and of course is “going to be * much larger. It is the
seat of the State legislature of Ohio, and lays claim, in
consequence, to some consideration and importance.
There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road
we wished to take. I hired “an extra,” at a reasonable
charge, to carry us to Tiffin; a small town from whence
there is a railroad to Sandusky. This extra was an or-
dinary four-horse stage-coach, such as I have described,
changing horses and drivers, as the stage-coach would,
but was exclusively our own for the journey. To ensure
our having horses at the proper stations, and being in-
commoded by no strangers, the proprietors sent an
agent on the box, who was to accompany us the whole
way through; and thus attended, and bearing with us,
besides, a hamper full of savoury cold meats, and fruit,
and wine; we started off again, in high spirits, at half-
past six o'clock next morning, very much delighted to
be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the rough-
est journey,
It was well for us that we were in this humour, for
the road we went Over that day, was certainly enough
to have shaken tempers that were not resolutely at Set
Fair, down to some inches below Stormy. At one time
we were all flung together in a heap at the bottom of
the coach, and at another we were crushing our heads
against the roof. Now, one side was down deep in the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 397
mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now, the
coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers; and
now it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state, with
all four horses standing on the top of an insurmountable
cminence, looking coolly back at it, as though they
would say “ unharness us. It can’t be done.” The
drivers on these roads, who certainly get over the
ground in a manner which is quite miraculous, so twist
and turn the team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew
fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was
quite a common circumstance on looking Out of the win-
dow, to see the coachman with the ends of a pair of
reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing, or play-
ing at horses, and the leaders staring at One unexpect-
edly from the back of the coach, as if they had
some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the
way was over what is called a corduroy road, which is
made by throwing trunks of trees into a marsh, and
leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of the
jolts with which the ponderous carriage fell from log to
log, was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the
bones in the human body. It would be impossible to
experience a similar set of sensations, in any other cir-
cumstances, unless perhaps in attempting to go up to the
top of St. Paul’s in an omnibus. Never, never once,
that day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or
kind of motion to which we are accustomed in coaches.
Never did it make the smallest approach to one’s expe-
rience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle that goes
on wheels.
Still, it was a fine day, and the temperature was de-
licious, and though we had left Summer behind us in
the west, and were fast leaving Spring, we were moving
towards Niagara and home, We alighted in a pleasant
wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a fallen
tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager,
and our worst with the pigs (who swarm in this part of
the country like grains of sand on the sea-shore, to the
great comfort of Our Commissariat in Cañada), we went
forward again, gaily. -
As night came on, the track grew narrower and nar-
rower, until at last it so lost itself among the trees, that
the driver seemed to find his way by instinct. We had
the comfort of knowing, at least, that there was no
398 AMERICAN NOTES
danger of his falling asleep, for every now and then a
wheel would strike against an unseen stump with Such
a jerk, that he was fain to hold on pretty tight and
pretty quick, to keep himself upon the box. Nor was
there any reason to dread the least danger from furious
driving, inasmuch as Over that broken ground the
horses had enough to do to walk; as to shying, there
was no room for that; and a herd of wild elephants
could not have run away in such a wood, with such a
coach at their heels. So we stumbled along, quite
satisfied.
These stumps of trees are a curious feature in Amer-
ican travelling. The varying illusions they present to
the unaccustomed eye as it grows dark, are quite aston-
ishing in their number and reality. Now, there is a
Grecian urn erected in the centre of a lonely field; now
there is a woman weeping at a tomb; now a very com-
mon-place old gentleman in a white waistcoat, with a
thumb thrust into each arm-hole of his coat; now a
student poring on a book; now a crouching negro; now
a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man; and a hunch-
back throwing off his cloak and stepping forth into the
light. They were often as entertaining to me as so
many glasses in a magic lantern, and never took their
shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force themselves
upon me, whether I would or no; and strange to say,
I sometimes recognised in them counterparts of figures
Once familiar to me in pictures attached to childish
books, forgotten long ago.
It soon became too dark, however, even for this
amusement, and the trees were so close together that
their dry branches rattled against the coach on either
side, and obliged us all to keep our heads within. It
lightened too, for three whole hours; each flash being
very bright, and blue, and long; and as the vivid
streaks came darting in among the crowded branches,
and the thunder rolled gloomily above the tree tops, one
could scarcely help thinking that there were better
Ineighbourhoods at such a time than thick woods afford.
At length, between ten and eleven o’clock at night,
a few feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Up-
per Sandusky, an Indian village, where we were to stay
till morning, lay before us.
They were gone to bed at the log Inn, which was the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 39%)
Only house of entertainment in the place, but soon an-
Swered to our knocking, and got some tea for us in a
sort of kitchen or common room, tapestried with old
newspapers, pasted against the wall. The bed-chamber
to which my wife and I were shown, was a large, low,
ghostly room; with a quantity of withered branches on
the hearth, and two º without any fastening, Op-
posite to each other, both opening on the black night
and wild country, and so contrived, that one of them
always blew the other open: a novelty in domestic archi-
tecture, which I do not remember to have seen before,
and which I was somewhat disconcerted to have forced
On my attention after getting into bed, as I had a con-
siderable sum in gold for our travelling expenses, in
my dressing case. Some of the luggage, however, piled
against the panels, soon settled this difficulty, and my
sleep would not have been very much affected that
might, I believe, though it had failed to do so.
My Boston friend climbed up to bed, somewhere in
the roof, where another guest was already snoring
hugely. But being bitten beyond his power of endur-
ance, he turned out again, and fled for shelter to the
coach, which was airing itself in front of the house.
This was not a very politic step, as it turned out; for
the Fº scenting him, and looking upon the coach as a
kind of pie with some manner of meat inside, grunted
round it so hideously, that he was afraid to come out
again, and lay there shivering, till morning. Nor was
it possible to warm him, when he did come out, by
means of a glass of brandy; for in Indian villages, the
legislature, with a very good and wise intention, for-
bids the sale of spirits by tavern keepers. The pre-
caution, however, is quite inefficacious, for the Indians
never fail to procure liquor of a worse kind, at a dearer
price, from travelling pedlars.
It is a settlement of the Wyandot Iridians who inhabit
this place. Among the company at breakfast was a
mild old gentleman, who had been for many years em-
ployed by the United States Government in conducting
negotiations with the Indians, and who had just con-
cluded a treaty with these people by which they bound
themselves, in consideration of a certain annual sum,
to remove next year to some land provided for them,
west of the Mississippi, and a little way beyond St.
400 AMERICAN NOTES
Louis. He gave me a moving account of their strong
attachment to the familiar scenes of their infancy, and
in particular to the burial-places of their kindred; and
of their great reluctance to leave them. He had wit-
nessed many such removals, and always with pain,
though he knew that they departed for their own good.
The question whether this tribe should go or stay, had
been discussed among them a day or two before, in a
hut erected for the purpose, the logs of which still lay
upon the ground before the inn. When the speaking
was done, the ayes and noes were ranged on opposite
sides, and every male adult voted in his turn. The mo-
ment the result was known, the minority (a large One)
cheerfully yielded to the rest, and withdrew all kind of
opposition.
We met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding
on shaggy ponies. They were so like the meaner sort
of gipsies, that if I could have seen any of them in Eng-
land, I should have concluded, as a matter of course,
that they belonged to that wandering and restless
people.
Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed
forward again, over a rather worse road than yesterday,
if possible, and arrived about noon at Tiffin, where we
parted with the extra. At two o clock we took the rail-
road ; the travelling on which was very slow, its con-
struction being indifferent, and the ground wet and
marshy ; and arrived at Sandusky in time to dine that
evening. We put up at a comfortable little hotel on the
brink of Lake Erie, lay there that night, and had no
choice but to wait there next day, until a steamboat
bound for Buffalo appeared. The town, which was
sluggish and uninteresting enough, was something like
the back of an English watering-place, out of the season.
Our host who was very attentive and anxious to make
us comfortable, was a handsome middle-aged man, who
had come to this town from New England, in which
part of the country he was “raised.” When I say that
he constantly walked in and out of the room with his
hat on; and stopped to converse in the same free-and-
easy state; and lay down on our sofa, and pulled his
newspaper out of his pocket, and read it at his ease; I
merely mention these traits as characteristic of the
country: not at all as being matter of complaint, or as
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 401
having been disagreeable to me. I should undoubtedly
be offended by such proceedings at home, because there
they are not the custom, and where they are not, they
would be impertinences; but in America, the only desire
of a good-natured fellow of this kind, is to treat his guests
hospitably and well; and I had no more right, and I can
truly say no more disposition, to measure his conduct
by Our English rule and standard, than I had to quarrel
with him for not being of the exact stature which would
qualify him for admission into the Queen’s Grenadier
Guards. As little inclination had I to find fault with a
funny old lady who was an upper domestic in this estab-
lishment, and who, when she came to wait upon us at
any meal, sat herself down comfortably in the most
convenient chair, and producing a large pin to pick her
teeth with, remained performing that ceremony, and
steadfastly regarding us meanwhile with much gravity
and composure (now and then pressing us to eat a little.
more), until it was time to clear away. It was enough
for us, that whatever we wished done was done with
great civility and readiness, and a desire to oblige, not
only here, but everywhere else; and that all our wants
were, in general, zealously anticipated.
We were taking an early dimner at this house, on the
day after our arrival, which was Sunday, when a steam-
boat came in sight, and presently touched at the Wharf.
As she proved to be on her way to Buffalo, we hurried
on board with all speed, and soon left Sandusky far
behind us. -
She was a large vessel of five hundred tons, and hand-
somely fitted up, though with high-pressure engines;
which always conveyed that kind of feeling to me,
which I should be likely to experience, I think, if I had
lodgings on the first floor of a powder-mill. She was
laden with flour, some casks of which commodity were
stored upon the deck. The captain coming up to have
a little conversation, and to introduce a friend, seated
himself astride of one of these barrels, like a Bacchus
of private life; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of
his pocket, began to “whittle ‘’ it as he talked, by par-
ing thin slices off the edges. And he whittled with
such industry and hearty good will, that but for his be-
ing called away very soon, it must have disappeared bod-
ily and left nothing in its place but grist and shavings,
VOI 2. I. 26
402 AMERICAN NOTES
After calling at one or two flat places, with low dams
stretching out into the lake, whereon were stumpy
lighthouses, like windmills without sails, the whole
looking like a Dutch vignette, we came at midnight to
Cleveland, where we lay all night, and until nine o’clock
-next morning.
I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this
place, from having seen at Sandusky a specimen of its
literature in the shape of a newspaper, which was very
strong indeed upon the subject of Lord Ashburton’s re-
cent arrival at Washington, to adjust the points in dis-
pute between the United States Government and Great
Britain; informing its readers, that as America had
“whipped " England in her infancy, and whipped hor
again in her youth, so it was clearly necessary that she
must whip her once again in her maturity; and pledg-
ing its credit to all True Americans, that if Mr. Web-
ster did his duty in the approaching negotiations, and
sent the English Lord home again in double quick time;
they should, within two years, sing “Yankee Doodle in
Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia in the scarlet courts of
Westminster!” I found it a pretty town, and had the
satisfaction of beholding the outside of the office of the
journal from which I have just quoted. I did not enjoy
the delight of seeing the wit who indited the paragraphs
in question, but I have no doubt he is a prodigious man
in his way, and held in high repute by a select circle.
There was a gentleman. On board to whom, as I unin-
tentionally learned through the thin partition which
divided our stateroom from the cabin in which he and
his wife conversed together, I was unwittingly the
occasion of very great uneasiness. I don’t know why
or wherefore, but I appeared to run in his mind perpet-
ually, and to dissatisfy him very much. First of all I
heard him say: , and the most ludicrous part of the busi-
ness was, that he said it in my very ear, and could not
have communicated more directly with me, if he had
leaned upon my shoulder and whispered me: “ Boz is
On board still, my dear.” After a considerable pause,
he added, complainingly, “ Boz keeps himself very
close; ” which was true enough, for I was not very well
and was lying down, with a book, I thought he had
done with me after this, but I was deceived ; for a long
interval having elapsed, during which I imagine him
FOR GENERAL CIRCUILATION. 403
to have been turning restlessly from side to side, and
trying to go to sleep; he broke out again, with “I Sup-
pose that Boz will be writing a book by-and-by, and
putting all our names in it !” at which imaginary Con-
Sequence of being on board a boat with Boz, he groaned
and became silent. *
We called at the town of Erie, at eight o’clock that
night, and iay there an hour. Between five and six
next morning, we arrived at Buffalo, where we break-
fasted ; and being too near the Great Falls to wait
patiently anywhere else, we set off by the train, the same
morning at nine o’clock, to Niagara. sº
It was a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist
falling ; and the trees in that northern region quite bare
and wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for
the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes in the
direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing
the river rolling on towards them; every moment expect-
ing to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our
stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds rising
up slowly and majestically from the depths of the earth.
That was all. At length we alighted: and then for the
first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt
the ground tremble underneath my feet.
The bank is very steep, and was slippery, with rain,
and half-melted ice. I hardly know how I got down,
but I was soon at the bottom, and climbing, with two
English officers who were crossing and had joined me,
over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise, half-
blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. We were at
the foot of the American Fall. I could see an immense
torrent of water tearing headlong down from some great
height, but had no idea of shape, or situation, or any-
thing but vague immensity.
When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and
were crossing the swollen river immediately before both
cataracts, I began to feel what it was : but I was in a
manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the vast-
ness of the scene. It was not until I came on Table
Rock, and looked—Great Heaven, on what a fall of
bright-green water l—that it came upon me in its full
might and majesty.
Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was stand-
ing, the first effect, and the enduring one—instant and
404 AMERICAN NOTES
lasting—of the tremendous spectacle, was Peace.
Peace of Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections of the
Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness :
nothing of gloom or terror. Niagara was at Once stamped
upon my heart, an Image of Beauty ; to remain there,
changeless and indelible, until its pulses cease to beat,
for ever.
Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded
from my view, and lessened in the distance, during the
ten memorable days we passed on that Enchanted
Ground ! ... What voices spoke from out the thundering
water ; what faces, faded from the earth, looked out
upon me from its gleaming depths; what Heavenly
promise glistened in those angels’ tears, the drops of
many hues, that showered around, and twined them-
selves about the gorgeous arches which the changing
rainbows made
*I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian
side, whither I had gone at first. I never crossed the
river again, for I knew there were people on the other
shore, and in such a place it is natural to shun Strange
company. To wander to and fro all day, and see the
cataracts from all points of view; to stand upon the edge
of the Great Horse Shoe Fall, marking the hurried
water gathering strength as it approached the verge,
yet seeming, too, to pause before it shot into the gulf
below ; to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent
as it came streaming down ; to climb the neighbouring
heights and watch it through the trees, and see the
wreathing water in the rapids hurrying on to take its
fearful plunge ; to linger in the shadow of the solemn .
rocks three miles below ; watching the river as, stirred
by no visible cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke the
echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneath the sur-
face, by its giant leap ; to have Niagara before me,
lighted by the sun and by the moon, red in the day’s
decline, and grey as evening slowly fell upon it; to look
upon it every day, and Wake up in the night and hear
its ceaseless voice : this was enough.
I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters
roll and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long ; still
are the rainbows spanning them, a hundred feet below.
Still, when the sun is on them, do they shine and glow
like molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 405
fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front
of a great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense
white smoke. But always does the mighty stream ap-
pear to die as it comes down, and always from its un-
fathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray
and mist, which is never laid : which has haunted this
E. with the same dread Solemnity since Darkness
rooded on the deep, and that first flood before the
ºr-Light-came rushing on Creation at the word
OI UTOCl.
406 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER XV.
IN CANADA; TORONTO; KINGSTON; MONTREAL; QUEBEC; ST.
JOHN’s. IN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN; LEBANON; THE
SHAKER VLLAGE; AND WEST POINT.
- | WISH to abstain from instituting any comparison,
or drawing any parellel whatever, between the so-
cial features of the United States and those of the
British Possessions in Canada. For this reason, I shall
confine myself to a very brief account of our journey-
ings in the latter territory.
But before I leave Niagara, I must advert to one dis-
gusting circumstance, which can hardly have escaped
the observation of any decent traveller who has visited
the Falls.
On Table Rock, there is a cottage belonging to a
Guide, where little relics of the place are sold, and
where visitors register their names in a book kept for
the purpose. On the wall of the room in which a great
many of these volumes are preserved, the following re-
quest is posted: ‘‘Visitors will please not copy nor
extract the remarks and poetical effusions from the
registers and albums kept here.”
But for this intimation, I should have let them lie
upon the tables on which they were strewn with careful
negligence, like books in a drawing-room: being quite
satisfied with the stupendous silliness of certain stanzas
with an anti-climax at the end of each, which were
framed and hung up on the wall. Curious, however,
after reading this announcement, to see what kind of
morsels were so carefully preserved, I turned a few
leaves, and found them scrawled all Over with the
vilest and the filthiest ribaldry that ever human hogs
delighted in.
It is humiliating enough to know that there are among
men, brutes so obscene and worthless, that they can
ROR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 40%
delight in laying their miserable profanations upon the
very steps of Nature's greatest altar. But that these
should be hoarded up for the delight of their fellow swine,
and kept in a public place where any eyes may see them,
is a disgrace to the English language in which they are
written (though I hope few of these entries have been
made by Englishmen), and a reproach to the English
side, on which they are preserved.
The quarters of our soldiers at Niagara, are finely and
airily situated. Some of them are large detached houses
on the plain above the Falls, which were originally
designed for hotels; and in the evening time, when the
women and children were leaning over the balconies
watching the men as they played at ball and other games
upon the grass before the door, they often presented a
little picture of cheerfulness and animation which made
it quite a pleasure to pass that way.
At any garrisoned point where the line of demarca-
tion between one country and another is so very narrow
as at Niagara, desertion from the ranks can scarcely
fail to be of frequent occurrence: and it may be reason-
ably supposed that when the soldiers entertain the wild-
est and maddest hopes of the fortune and independence
that await them on the other side, the impulse to play
traitor, which such a place suggests to dishonest minds,
is not weakened. But it very rarely happens that the
men who do desert, are happy or contented afterwards;
and many instances have been known in which they
have confessed their grevious dissappointment, and their
earnest desire to return to their old service if they could
but be assured of pardon, or of lenient treatment. Many
of their comrades, notwithstanding, do the like, from
time to time; and instances of loss of life in the effort to
cross the river with this object, are far from being un-
common. Several men were drowned in the attempt to
swim across, not long ago; and One, who had the mad-
ness to trust himself upon a table as a raft, was swept
down to the whirlpool, where his mangled body eddied
round and round some days.
I am inclined to think that the noise of the Falls is
very much exaggerated; and this will appear the more
probable when the depth of the great basin in which the
water is received, is taken into account. At no time
during our stay there, was the wind at all high or bois-
408 AMERICAN NOTES
terous, but we never heard them, three miles off, even
at the very quiet time of sunset, though we often tried.
Queenston, at which place the steamboats start for
Toronto (or I should rather say at which place they call,
for their wharf is at Lewiston on the opposite shore), is
situated in a delicious valley, through which the Nia-
gara river, in color a very deep green, pursues its course.
It is approached by a road that takes its winding
way among the heights by which the town is sheltered;
and seen from this point is extremely beautiful and pict-
uresque. On the most conspicuous of these heights
stood a monument erected by the Provincial legislature
in memory of General Brock, who was slain in a battle
with the American Forces, after having won the vic-
tory. Some vagabond, supposed to be a fellow of the
name of Lett, who is now, or who lately was, in prison
as a felon, blew up this monument two years ago, and
it is now a melancholy ruin, with a long fragment of
iron railing hanging dejectedly from its top, and wav-
ing to and fro like a wild ivy branch or broken vine
stem. It is of much higher importance than it may
seem, that this statue should be repaired at the public
cost, as it ought to have been long ago. Firstly, because
it is beneath the dignity of England to allow a memorial
raised in honour of One of her defenders, to remain in
this condition, on the very spot where he died. Secondly,
because the sight of it in its present state, and the recol-
lection of the unpunished outrage which brought it to
this pass, is not very likely to soothe down border feel-
ings among English subjects here, or compose their
border quarrels and dislikes. -
I was standing on the warf at this place, watching
the passengers embarking in a steamboat which preced-
ed that whose coming we awaited, and participating in
the anxiety with which a sergeant's wife was collecting
her few goods together—keeping one distracted eye
hard upon the porters, who were hurrying them on
board, and the other on a hoopless washing tub for
which, as being the most utterly worthless of all her
movables, she seemed to entertain particular affection
—when three or four soldiers with a recruit came up and
went on board.
The recruit was a likely young fellow enough, strongly
built and well made, but by no means sober: indeed he
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 409
had all the air of a man who had been more or less
drunk for some days. He carried a small bundle
over his shoulder, slung at the end of a walking-stick.
and had a short pipe in his mouth. He was as dusty
and dirty as recruits usually are, and his shoes betok-
ened that he had travelled on foot some distance, but
he was in a very jocose state, and shook hands with this
soldier, and clapped that one on the back, and talked
and laughed continually, like a roaring idle dog as he
W2,S.
The soldiers rather laughed at this blade than with
him: seeming to say, as they stood straightening their
canes in their hands, and looking coolly at him over
their glazed stocks, “Go on, my boy, while you may !
you’ll know better by-and-by : ” when suddenly the
novice, who had been backing towards the gangway in
his noisy merriment, fell overboard before their eyes,
and splashed heavily down into the river between the
vessel and the dock.
I never saw such a good thing as the change that
came over these soldiers in an instant. Almost before
the man was down, their professional manner, their
stiffness and constraint were gone, and they were filled
with the most violent energy. In less time than is re-
. to tell it, they had him out again, feet first, with
the tails of his coat flapping Over his eyes, everything
about him hanging the wrong way, and the water
streaming off at every thread in his threadbare dress.
But the moment they set him upright and found that he
was none the worse, they were soldiers again, looking
over their glazed stocks more composedly than ever.
The half-sobered recruit glanced round for a moment,
as if his first impulse were to express some gratitude
for his preservation, but seeing them with this air of
total unconcern, and having his wet pipe presented to
him with an oath by the soldier who had been by far
the most anxious of the party, he stuck it in his mouth,
thrust his hands into his moist pockets, and without
even shaking the water off his clothes, walked on board
whistling; not to say as if nothing had happened, but
as if he had meant to do it, and it had been a perfect
SUICC 62.SS. *
Our steamboat came up directly this had left the
wharf, and soon bore us out to the mouth of the Niag-
410 AMERICAN NOTES
ara; where the stars and stripes of America flutter on
one side, and the Union Jack of England on the other:
and so narrow is the space between them that the senti-
nels in either fort can often hear the watchword of the
other country given. Thence we emerged on Lake
Ontario, an inland sea; and by half-past six o'clock
were at Toronto.
The country round this town being very flat, is bare
of scenic interest; but the town itself is full of life and
motion, bustle, business, and improvement. The streets
are well paved, and lighted with gas; the houses are
large and good ; the shops excellent. Many of them
have a display of goods in their windows, such as may
be seen in thriving county towns in England; and there
are some which would do no discredit to the metropolis
itself. There is a good stone prison here; and there are,
besides, a handsome church, a court-house, public
offices, many commodious private residences, and a
government observatory for noting and recording the
magnetic variations. In the College of Upper Canada,
which is one of the public establishments of the city,
a sound education in every department of polite learn-
ing can be had, at a very moderate expense: the annual
charge for the instruction of each pupil, not exceeding
nine pounds Sterling. It has pretty good endowments
in the way of land, and is a valuable and useful insti-
tution.
The first stone of a new college had been laid but a
few days before, by the Governor General. It will be a
handsome, spacious edifice, approached by a long
avenue, which is already planted and made available
as a public walk. The town is well adapted for whole-
some exercise at all seasons, for the footways in the
thoroughfares which lie beyond the principal street, are
planked like floors, and kept in very good and clean
repair.
It is a matter of deep regret that political differences
should have run high in this place, and led to most dis-
creditable and disgraceful results. It is not long since
guns were discharged from a window in this town at
the successful candidates in an election, and the coach-
man of one of them was actually shot in the body,
though not dangerously wounded. But one man was
killed on the same occasion; and from the very window
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 411
whence he received his death, the very flag which
shielded his murderer (not only in the commission of
his crime, but from its consequences), was displayed
again on the Occasion of the public ceremony per-
formed by the Governor General, to which I have just
adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow, there is
but one which could be so employed: I need not say
that flag was orange.
The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston is noon.
By eight o'clock next morning the traveller is at the
end of his journey, which is performed by steamboat
upon Lake Ontario, calling at Port Hope and Coburg,
the latter a cheerful thriving little town. Vast quan-
tities of flour form the chief item in the freight of these
vessels. We had no fewer than one thousand and
eighty barrels On board, between Coburg and Kings-
ton.
The latter place, which is now the seat of govern-
ment in Canada, is a very poor town, rendered still
poorer in the appearance of its market-place by the
ravages of a recent fire. Indeed, it may be said of
Kingston, that one half of it appears to be burnt down,
and the other half not to be built up. The Government
House is neither elegant nor commodious, yet it is
almost the only house of any importance in the
neighbourhood.
There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely
governed, and excellently regulated, in every respect.
The men were employed as shoemakers, ropemakers,
blackSmiths, tailors, carpenters, and stonecutters; and
in building a new prison, which was pretty far ad-
Vanced towards completion. The female prisoners were
Occupied in needlework. Among them was a beautiful
girl of twenty, who had been there nearly three years.
She acted as bearer of secret despatches for the self-
styled Patriots on Navy Island, during the Canadian
Insurrection: sometimes dressing as a girl, and carry-
ing them in her stays; sometimes attiring herself as a
boy, and secreting them in the lining of her hat. In the
latter character she always rode as a boy would, which
was nothing for her, for she could govern any horse
that any man could ride, and could drive four-in-hand
with the best whip in those parts. Setting forth on one
of her patriotic missions, she appropriated to herself the
412 AMERICAN NOTES
first horse she could lay her hands on; and this offence
had brought her where I saw her. She had quite a
lovely face, though, as the reader may suppose from
this sketch of her history, there was a lurking devil in
her bright eye, which looked out pretty sharply from
between her prison bars.
There is a bomb-proof fort here of great strength,
which occupies a bold position, and is capable, doubt-
less, of doing good service; though the town is much
too close upon the frontier to be long held, I should
imagine, for its present purpose in troubled times.
There is also a small navy-yard, where a couple of
Government steamboats were building, and getting on
vigourously.
We left Kingston for Montreal on the tenth of May,
at half-past nine in the morning, and proceeded in a
steamboat down the St. Lawrence river. The beauty
of this noble stream at almost any point, but es-
pecially in the commencement of this journey when it
winds its way among the Thousand Islands, can hardly
be imagined. The number and constant succession of
these islands, all green and richly wooded; their
fluctuating sizes, some so large that for half an hour
together one among them will appear as the opposite
bank of the river, and some so small that they are
mere dimples on its broad bosom; their infinite variety
of shapes; and the numberless combinations of beauti-
ful forms which the trees growing on them, present;
all form a picture fraught with uncommon interest and
pleasure.
In the afternoon we shot down some rapids where the
river boiled and bubbled strangely, and where the force
and headlong violence of the current were tremendous.
At seven o’clock we reached Dickenson’s Landing,
whence travellers proceed for two or three hours by
stage-coach : the navigation of the river being rendered
so dangerous and difficult in the interval, by rapids,
that steamboats do not make the passage. The number
and length of those portages, over which the roads are
bad, and the travelling slow, render the way between
the towns of Montreal and Kingston somewhat tedious.
Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of coun-
try at a little distance from the river side, whence the
bright warning lights on the dangerous parts of the St.
FOR GENERAI, CIRCULATION. 413
Lawrence shone vividly. The night was dark and raw,
and the way dreary enough. It was nearly ten o’clock
when we reached the wharf where the next steamboat
lay; and went on board, and to bed.
She lay there all night, and started as soon as it was
day. The morning was ushered in by a violent thunder-
storm, and was very wet, but gradually improved and
brightened up. Going on deck after breakfast, I was
amazed to see floating down with the stream, a most
gigantic raft, with some thirty or forty wooden houses
upon it, and at least as many flag masts, so that it
looked like a nautical street. I saw many of these
rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the tim-
ber, or “lumber,” as it is called in America, which is
brought down the St. Lawrence, is floated down in this
manner. When the raft reaches its place of destination,
it is broken up ; the materials are sold ; and the boat-
men return for more. *
At eight we landed again, and travelled by a stage-
coach for four hours through a pleasant and well-cul-
tivated country, perfectly French in every respect ; in
the appearance of the cottages; the air, language and
dress of the peasantry, the sign-boards on the shops
and taverns; and the Virgin’s shrines and crosses by
the wayside. Nearly every common labourer and boy,
though he had no shoes to his feet, wore round his waist
a sash of some bright colour : generally red : and the
women, who were working in the fields and gardens,
and doing all kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all,
great flat straw hats with most capacious brims. There
were Catholic Priests and Sisters of Charity in the vil-
lage streets ; and images of the Saviour at the corners
of cross-roads, and in other public places.
At noon we went on board another steamboat, and
reached the village of Lachine, nine miles from Mon-
treal, by three o’clock. There we left the river, and
went on by land.
Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the
St. Lawrence, and is backed by some bold heights,
about which there are charming rides and drives. The
streets are generally narrow and irregular, as in most
French towns of any age ; but in the more modern
parts of the city, they are wide and airy. They display
a great variety of very good shops ; and both in the
414 AMERICAN NOTES
town and suburbs there are many excellent private
dwellings. The granite quays are remarkable for their
beauty, solidity, and extent.
There is a very large Catholic cathedral here, recently
erected; with two tall spires, of which one is yet un-
finished. In the open space in front of this edifice
stands a solitary, grim-looking, Square brick tower,
which has a quaint and remarkable appearance, and
which the wiseacres of the place have consequently de-
termined to pull down immediately. The Government
House is very superior to that at Kingston, and the
town is full of life and bustle. In one of the suburbs is
a plank road—not footpath—five or six miles long, and
a famous road it is too. All the rides in the vicinity
were made doubly interesting by the bursting out of
spring, which is here So rapid, that it is but a day’s
leap from barren winter, to the blooming youth of
SULEOIlléI’.
The steamboats to Quebec perform the journey in the
night ; that is to say, they leave Montreal at six in the
evening and arrive in Quebec at six next morning. We
made this excursion during our stay in Montreal (which
exceeded a fortnight), and were charmed by its interest
and beauty.
The impression made upon the visitor by this Gib-
raltar of America : its giddy heights ; its citadel sus-
pended, as it were, in the air ; its picturesque steep
streets and frowning gateways ; and the splendid views
which burst upon the eye at every turn : is at once
unique and lasting.
It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed up in the
mind with other places, or altered for a moment in the
crowd of scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the
realities of this most picturesque city, there are associa-
tions clustering about it which would make a desert
rich in interest. The dangerous precipice along whose
rocky front Wolfe and his brave companions climbed to
glory ; the Plains of Abraham, where he received his
mortal wound ; the fortress so chivalrously defended by
Montcalm ; and his soldier's grave, dug for him while
yet alive, by the bursting of a shell; are not the least
among them, or among the gallant incidents of history.
That is a noble Monument too, and worthy of two great
nations, which perpetuates the memory of both brave
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 4.15
generals, and on which their names are jointly written.
The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic
churches and charities, but it is mainly in the prospect
from the site of the Old Government House, and from
the Citadel, that its surpassing beauty lies. The ex-
Quisite expanse of country, rich in field and forest,
mountain-height and water, which lies stretched out
before the view, with miles of Canadian villages,
glancing in long white streaks, like veins along the
landscape ; the motley crowd of gables, roofs, and
chimney tops in the old hilly town immediately at
hand ; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flash-
ing in the sunlight ; and the tiny ships below the rock
from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like
spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels
on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners be-
come so many puppets: all this, framed by a sunken
window in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed
room within, forms one of the brightest and most en-
chanting pictures that the eye can rest upon.
In the Spring of the year, vast numbers of emigrants
who have newly arrived from England or from Ireland,
pass between Quebec and Montreal on their way to the
back woods and new settlements of Canada. If it be an
entertaining lounge (as I very often found º to take a
morning stroll upon the quay at Montreal, and see them
grouped in hundreds on the public wharfs about their
chests and boxes, it is matter of deep interest to be
their fellow-passenger on One of these steamboats, and,
mingling with the concourse, see and hear them unob-
served.
The vessel in which we returned from Quebec to
Montreal was crowded with them, and at night they
spread their beds between decks (those who had beds
at least), and slept so close and thick about our cabin
door, that the passage to and fro was quite blocked up.
They were nearly all English; from Gloucestershire the
greater part; and had had a long winter-passage out;
but it was wonderful to see how clean the children had
been kept, and how untiring in their love and self-
denial all the poor parents were.
Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all
things, it is very much harder for the poor to be virtu-
Ous than it is for the rich; and the good that is in them,
416 AMERICAN NOTES
shines the brighter for it. In many a noble mansion
lives a man, the best of husbands and of fathers, whose
private worth in both capacities is justly lauded to the
skies. But bring him here, upon this crowded deck. Strip
from his fair young wife her silken dress and jewels,
unbind her braided hair, stamp early wrinkles on her
brow, pinch her pale cheek with care and much priva-
tion, array her faded form in coarsely patched attire,
let there be nothing but his love to set her forth or deck
her out, and you shall put it to the proof indeed. So
change his station in the world, that he shall see in
those young things who climb about his knee: not rec-
ords of his wealth and name: but little wrestlers with
him for his daily bread; SO many poachers on his scanty
meal; so many units to divide his every sum of comfort,
and farther to reduce its small amount. In lieu of the
endearments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap
upon him all its pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills,
its fretfulness, caprice and querulous endurance: let its
prattle be, not of engaging infant fancies, but of cold,
and thirst, and hunger: and if his fatherly affection
outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, and tender;
careful of his children’s lives, and mindful always of
their joys and sorrows; then send him back to Parlia-
ment, and Pulpit, and to Quarter Sessions, and when he
hears fine talk of the depravity of those who live from
hand to mouth, and labor hard to do it, let him speak up,
as one who knows, and tell those holders forth that
they, by parallel with Such a class, should be High
Angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble siege to
Heaven at last.
Which of us shall say what he would be, if such
realities, with small relief or change all through his
days, were his! Looking round upon these people; far
from home, houseless, indigent, wandering, weary with
travel and hard living; and seeing how patiently they
nursed and tended their young children; how they con-
sulted ever their wants first, then half supplied their own;
what gentle ministers of hope and faith the women
were; how the men profited by their example; and how
very, very seldom even a moment’s petulence or harsh
complaint broke out among them: I felt a stronger love
and honour of my kind come glowing On my heart, and
wished to God there had been many Atheists in the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 417
better part of human nature there, to read this simple
lesson in the book of Life.
We left Montreal for New York again, on the thirtieth
of May; crossing to La Prairie, On the opposite shore of
the St. Lawrence, in a steam-boat; we then took the
railroad to St. John’s, which is on the brink of Lake
Champlain. Our last greeting in Canada was from the
English officers in the pleasant barracks at that place
(a class of gentlemen who had made every hour of our
visit memorable by their hospitality and friendship);
and with “Rule Britannia’’ sounding in our ears, soon
left it far behind. s
But Canada has held, and always will retain a fore-
most place in my remembrance. Few Englishmen are
prepared to find it what it is. Advancing quietly; old
differences settling down, and being fast forgotten;
public feeling and private enterprise alike in a sound
and wholesome state; nothing of flush or fever in its
system, but health and vigour throbbing in its steady
pulse: it is full of hope and promise. To me—who had
been accustomed to think of it as something left behind
in the strides of advancing Society, as something
neglected and forgotten, slumbering and wasting in its
sleep—the demand for labour and the rates of wages;
the busy quays of Montreal; the vessels taking in their
cargoes, and discharging them; the amount of shipping
in the different ports; the commerce, roads, and public
Works, all made to last; the respectability and character
of the public journals; and the amount of rational com-
fort and happiness which honest industry may earn:
were very great surprises. The steam-boats on the
lakes, in their conveniences, cleanliness, and safety; in
the gentlemanly character and bearing of their cap-
tains; and in the politeness and perfect comfort of their
Social regulations; are unsurpassed even by the famous
Scotch vessels, deservedly so much esteemed at home.
The inns are usually bad; because the custom of board-
ing at hotels is not so general here as in the States, and
the British officers, who form a large portion of the
Society of every town, live chiefly at the regimental
messes: but in every other respect, the traveller in
Canada will find as good provision for his comfort as in
any place I know.
VOL. I 27
4.18 AMERICAN NOTES
There is one American boat—the vessel which carried
us on Lake Champlain, from St. John’s to Whitehall—
which I praise very highly, but no more than it deserves,
when I say that it is superior even to that in which we
went from Queenston to Toronto, or to that in which
we travelled from the latter place to Kingston, or I
have no doubt I may add, to any other in the World.
This steamboat, which is called the Burlington, is a
perfectly exquisite achievement of neatness, elegance,
and order. The decks are drawing-rooms; the cabins
are boudoirs, choicely furnished and adorned with
prints, pictures, and musical instruments; every nook
and corner in the vessel is a perfect curiosity of grace-
ful comfort and beautiful contrivange. Captain Sher-
man, her commander, to whose ingenuity and excellent
taste these results are solely attributable, has bravely
and worthily distinguished himself on more than One
trying occasion: not least among them, in having the
moral courage to carry British troops, at a time (during
the Canadian rebellion) when no other conveyance was
open to them. He and his vessel are held in universal
respect, both by his own countrymen and Ours; and no
man ever enjoyed the popular esteem, who, in his
sphere of action, won and wore it better than this
gentleman.
By means of this floating palace we were soon in the
United States again, and called that evening at Bur-
lington; a pretty town, where we lay an hour or so.
We reached Whitehall, where we were to disembark,
at six next morning; and might have done so earlier,
but that these steamboats lie for some hours in the night,
in consequence of the lake becoming very narrow at
that part of the journey, and difficult of navigation in
the dark. Its width is so contracted at one point,
indeed, that they are obliged to warp round by means of
a rope.
After breakfasting at Whitehall, we took the stage-
coach for Albany; a large and busy town, where we
arrived between five and six o'clock that afternoon;
after a very hot day's journey, for we were now in the
height of summer again. At seven we started for New
York on board a great North River steamboat, which
was so crowded with passengers that the upper deck
was like the box-lobby of a theatre between the pieces,
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION 419
and the lower one like Tottenham Court Road on a Salt-
urday night. But we slept soundly, notwithstanding,
and soon after five o’clock next morning, reached New
York.
Tarrying there only that day and night to recruit
after Our late fatigues, we started off once more upon
our last journey in America. We had yet five days to
Spare before embarking for England, and I had a great
desire to see the “Shaker Village,” which is peopled by
a religious sect from whom it takes its name.
To this end, we went up the North River again, as far
as the town of Hudson, and there hired an extra to
carry us to Lebanon, thirty miles distant ; and of course
another and a different Lebanon from that village
where I slept on the night of the Prairie trip.
The country through which the road meandered was
rich and beautiful; the weather very fine; and for many
miles the Kaatskill mountains, where Rip Van Winkle
and the ghastly Dutchman played at ninepins One mem-
orable gusty afternoon, towered in the blue distance
like stately clouds. At one point, as we ascended a
steep hill, athwart whose base a railroad, yet construct-
ing, took its course, we came upon an Irish colony.
With means at hand of building decent cabins, it was
wonderful to see how clumsy, rough, and wretched its
hovels were. The best were poor protection from the
Weather; the worst let in the wind and rain through
wide breaches in the roofs of sodden grass, and in the
walls of mud; some had neither door nor window; some
had nearly fallen down, and were imperfectly propped
up by stakes and poles; all were ruinous and filthy.
Hideously ugly old women and very buxom young Ones,
pigs, dogs, men, children, babies, pots, kettles, dung-
hills, vile refuse, rank straw, and standing water, all
wallowing together in an inseparable heap, composed
the furniture of every dark and dirty hut.
Between nine and ten o’clock at night, we arrived at
Lebanon : which is renowned for its warm baths, and
for a great hotel, well adapted, I have no doubt, to the
gregarious taste of those seekers after health Or pleas-
ure who repair here, but inexpressibly comfortless to
me. We were shown into an immense apartment,
lighted by two dim candles, called the drawing-room :
from which there was a descent by a flight of steps, to
420 AMERICAN NOTES
another vast desert called the dining-room : our bed-
chambers were among certain long rows of little white-
washed cells, which opened from either side of a dreary
passage ; and were so like rooms in a prison that I half
expected to be locked up when I went to bed, and list-
ened involuntarily for the turning of the key on the
Outside. There need be baths somewhere in the neigh-
bourhood, for the other washing arrangements were on
as limited a scale as I ever saw, even in America : in-
deed, these bedrooms were so very bare of even such
common luxuries as chairs, that I should say they were
Jnot jº. with enough of anything, but that I be-
think myself of our having been most bountifully bitten
all night.
The house is very pleasantly situated, however, and
we had a good breakfast. That done, we went to visit
our place of destination, which was some two miles off,
and the way to which was soon indicated by a finger-
post, whereon was painted, “To the Shaker Village.”
As we rode along, we passed a party of Shakers, who
were at work upon the road ; who wore the broadest of
all broad-brimmed hats ; and were in all visible re-
spects such very wooden men, that I felt about as much
sympathy for them, and as much interest in them, as if
they had been so many figure-heads of ships. . Presently
we came to the beginning of the village, and alighting
at the door of a house where the Shaker manufactures
are sold, and which is the head-quarters of the elders,
requested permission to see the Shaker worship.
Pending the conveyance of this request to some per-
son in authority, we walked into a grim room, where
several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the
time was grimly told by a grim clock, which uttered
every tick with a kind of struggle, and if it broke the
grim silence reluctantly, and under protest. Ranged
against the wall were six or eight stiff high-backed
Chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general
grimness, that one would much rather have sat on the
#. than incurred the smallest obligation to any of
16]OOl.
Presently, there stalked into this apartment, a grim
Old Shaker, with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold, as
the great round metal buttons on his coat and waist-
Coat ; a sort of calm goblin. Being informed of our
1FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 421
desire, he produced a newspaper wherein the body of
elders, whereof he was a member, had advertised but a
few days before, that in consequence of certain un-
seemly interruptions which their worship had received
from strangers, their chapel was closed to the public for
the space of one year.
As nothing was to be urged in opposition to this reas:
onable arrangement, we requested leave to make some
trifling purchases of Shaker goods; which was grimly
conceded. We accordingly repaired to a store in the
same house and on the opposite side of the passage,
where the stock was presided over by something alive
in a russet case, which the elder said was a woman; and
which I suppose was a woman, though I should not have
suspected it.
On the opposite side of the road was their place of
worship : a cool clean edifice of wood, with large win-
dows and green blinds : like a spacious summer-house.
As there was no getting into this place, and nothing
was to be done but walk up and down, and look at it
and the other buildings in the village (which were
chiefly of wood, painted a dark red like English barns,
and composed of many stories like English factories), I
have nothing to communicate to the reader beyond the
scanty results I gleaned the while our purchases were
making.
These people are called Shakers from their peculiar
form of adoration, which consists of a dance, performed
by the men and women of all ages, who arrange them-
selves for that purpose in opposite parties: the men first
divesting themselves of their hats and coats, which they
gravely hang against the wall before they begin ; and
tying a ribbon round their shirt-sleeves, as though they
were going to be bled. They accompany themselves
with a droming, humming noise, and dance until they are
quite exhausted, alternately advancing and retiring in
a preposterous sort of trot. The effect is said to be un-
speakably absurd g and if I may judge from a print of
this ceremony which I have in my possession ; and
which I am informed by those who have visited the
chapel, is perfectly accurate ; it must be infinitely
grotesque.
They are governed by a woman, and her rule is under-
stood to be absolute, though she has the assistance of a
422 AMERICAN NOTES
council of elders. She lives, it is said, in strict seclusion,
in certain rooms above the chapel, and is never shown
to profane eyes. If she at all resembled the lady who
presided over the store, it is a great charity, to keep
her as close as possible, and I cannot too strongly
express my perfect concurrence in this benevolent pro-
Çeeding.
All the possessions and revenues of the settlement
are thrown into a common stock, which is managed by
the elders. As they have made converts among people
who were well to do in the world, and are frugal and
thrifty, it is understood that this fund prospers : the
more especially as they have made large purchases of
land. Nor is this at Lebanon the only Shaker settle-
ment : there are, I think, at least, three others.
They are good farmers, and all their produce is eagerly
purchased and highly esteemed. “Shaker seeds,”
“Shaker herbs,” and “Shaker distilled waters,” are
commonly announced for sale in the shops of towns and
cities. They are good breeders of cattle, and are kind
and merciful to the brute creation. Consequently,
Shaker beasts seldom fail to find a ready market. s
They eat and drink together, after the Spartan model,
at a great public table. There is no union of the sexes:
and every Shaker, male and female, is devoted to a life
of celibacy. Rumour has been busy upon this theme,
but here again I must refer to the lady of the store, and
say, that if many of the sister Shakers resemble her, I
treat all such slander as bearing on its face the strongest
marks of wild improbability. But that they take as
proselytes, persons so young that they cannot know
their own minds, and cannot possess much strength of
resolution in this or any other respect, I can assert from
my own observation of the extreme juvenility of certain
youthful Shakers whom I saw at work among the party
on the road.
They are said to be good drivers of bargains, but to
be honest and just in their transactions, and even in
horse-dealing to resist those thievish tendencies which
would seem, for some undiscovered reason, to be almost
inseparable from that branch of traffic. In all matters
they hold their own course quietly, live in their gloomy
silent commonwealth, and show little desire to interfere
with other people.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 423
This is well enough, but nevertheless I cannot, I Con-
fess, incline towards the Shakers; view them with much
favour, or extend towards them any very lenient con-
struction. I so abhor, and from my soul detest that bad
spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may be enter-
tained, which would strip life of its healthful graces,
rob youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from maturity
and age their pleasant ornaments, and make existence
but a narrow path towards the grave: that odious Spirit
which, if it could have had full scope and Sway upon
the earth, must have blasted and made barren the
imaginations of the greatest men, and left them, in
their power of raising up enduring images before their
fellow-creatures yet unborn, no better than the beasts:
that, in these very broad-brimmed hats and very Sombre
coats—in stiff-necked solemn-visaged piety, in short,
no matter what its garb, whether it have cropped hair
as in a Shaker village, or long nails as in a Hindoo
temple—I recognise the worst among the enemies of
Heaven and Earth, who turn the water at the marriage
feasts of this poor world, not into wine but gall. And
if there must be people vowed to crush the harmless
fancies and the love of innocent delights and gaieties,
which are a part of human nature: as much a part of it
as any other love or hope that is our common portion:
let them, for me, stand openly revealed among the
ribald and licentious; the very idiots know that they
are not on the Immortal road, and will despise them,
and avoid them readily.
Leaving the Shaker village with a hearty dislike of
the Qld Shakers, and a hearty pity for the young ones:
tempered by the strong probability of their running
away as they grow older and wiser, which they not
uncommonly do: we returned to Lebanon, and so to
Hudson, by the way we had come upon the previous
day. There, we took steamboat down the North River
towards New York, but stopped, some four hours’ journey
short of it, at West Point, where we remained that
night, and all next day, and next night too.
In this beautiful place: the fairest among the fair and
lovely Highlands of the North River: shut in by deep
green heights and ruined forts, and looking down upon
the distant town of Newburgh, along a glittering path
of sunlit water, with here and there a skiff, whose white
424 AMERICAN NOTES
sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws of
wind come down upon her from the gullies in the hills:
hemmed in, besides, all round with memories of Wash-
ington, and events of the revolutionary war: is the
Military School of America.
It could not stand on more appropriate ground, and
any ground more beautiful can hardly be. The course
of education is severe, but well devised, and manly.
Through June, July, and August, the young men encamp
upon the spacious plain whereon the college Stands; and
all the year their military exercises are performed there,
daily. The term of study at this institution, which the
State requires from all cadets, is four years; but, whether
it be from the rigid nature of the discipline, or the
national impatience of restraint, or both causes com-
bined, not more than half the number who begin their
studies here, ever remain to finish them.
The number of cadets being about equal to that of
the members of Congress, one is sent here from every
Congressional district: its member influencing the selec-
tion. Commissions in the service are distributed on the
same principle. The dwellings of the various Professors
are beautifully situated; and there is a most excellent
hotel for strangers, though it has the two drawbacks of
being a total abstinence house (wines and spirits being
forbidden to the students), and of serving the public
meals at rather uncomfortable hours: to wit, breakfast
at seven, dinner at One, and Supper at Sunset.
The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the
the very dawn and greenness of summer—it was then
the beginning of June—were exquisite indeed. Leaving
it upon the sixth, and returning to New York, to embark
for England on the succeeding day, I was glad to think
that among the last memorable beauties which had
glided past us, and softened in the bright perspective,
were those whose pictures, traced by no common hand,
are fresh in most men’s minds; not easily to grow old, or
fade beneath the dust of Time: The Kaatskill Mountains,
Sleepy Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee.
IFOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 425
CHAPTER XVI.
T H E P A S S A G E H O M E.
NEVER had so much interest before, and very
likely I shall never have so much interest again, in
the state of the Wind, as on the long-looked-for morning
of Tuesday the seventh of June. Some nautical author-
ity had told me a day or two previous, “anything with
west in it, will do ;” so when I darted out of bed at day-
light, and throwing up the window, was saluted by a
lively breeze from the north-west which had sprung up
in the night, it came upon me so freshly, rustling with
so many happy associations, that I conceived upon the
spot a special regard for all airs blowing from that
quarter of the compass, which I shall cherish, I dare
say, until my own wind has breathed its last frail puff,
and withdrawn itself for ever from the mortal
calendar.
The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of this
favorable weather, and the ship which yesterday had
been in such a crowded dock that she might have re-
tired from trade for good and all, for any chance she
seemed to have of going to sea, was now full sixteen
miles away. A gallant sight she was, when we, fast
gaining on her in a steamboat, saw her in the distance
riding at anchor : her tall masts pointing up in graceful
lines against the sky, and every rope and spar ex-
pressed in delicate and thread-like outline: gallant, too,
when we, being all aboard, the anchor came up to the
sturdy chorus “ Cheerily men, oh cheerily l’ and she
followed proudly in the towing steamboat's wake : but
bravest and most gallant of all, when the tow-rope
being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts,
and spreading her white wings she soared away upon
her free and solitary course.
In the after-cabin we were only fifteen passengers in
all, and the greater part were from Canada, where some
426 AMERICAN NOTES
of us had known each other. The night was rough and
squally, so were the next two days, but they flew by
quickly, and we were soon as cheerful and as Snug a
party, with an homest, manly-hearted captain at Our
head, as ever came to the resolution of being mutually
agreeable, on land Or Water.
We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, dined at
three, and took our tea at half-past seven. We had
abundance of amusements, and diniher was not the least
among them: firstly for its own sake ; secondly, be-
cause of its extraordinary length ; its duration, inclu-
sive of all the long pauses between the courses, being
seldom less than two hours and a half; which was a
subject of never-failing entertainment. By way of be-
guiling the tediousness of these banquets, a Select as-
sociation was formed at the lower end of the table, be-
low the mast, to whose distinguished president modesty
forbids me to make any further allusion, which, being
a very hilarious and jovial institution, was (prejudice
apart) in high favour with the rest of the community,
and particularly with the black steward, who lived for
three weeks in a broad grin at the marvellous humour
of these incorporated worthies.
Then we had chess for those who played it, whist,
cribbage, books, backgammon, and shovelboard. In
all weathers, fair or foul, calm or windy, we were every
one on deck, walking up and down in pairs, lying in
the boats, leaning Over the side, or chatting in a lazy
group together. We had no lack of music, for one
played the accordion, another the violin, and another
(who usually began at six o'clock A.M.) the key-bugle:
the combined effect of which instruments, when they
all played different tunes in different parts of the ship,
at the same time, and within hearing of each other, as
they sometimes did (everybody being intensely satisfied
with his own performance), was sublimely hideous.
When all these means of entertainment failed, a sail
would heave in sight; looming, perhaps, the very Spirit
of a ship, in the misty distance, or passing us so close
that through our glasses we could see the people on her
decks, and easily make out her name, ...]". hither she
was bound. For hours together we could watch the dol-
phins and porpoises as they rolled and leaped and dived
around the vessel; or those small creatures ever on the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 427
wing, the Mother Carey's chickens, which had borne us
company from New York bay, and for a whole fort-
night fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some days
we had a dead calm, or very light, winds, during which
the crew amused themselves with fishing, and hooked
an unlucky dolphin, who expired, in all his rainbow
colours, on the deck; an event of such importance in
Our barren calendar, that afterwards we dated from the
dolphin, and made the day on which he died, an era.
Besides all this, when we were five or six days out,
there began to be much talk of icebergs, of which wan-
dering islands an unusual number had been seen by the
vessels that had come into New York a day or two be-
fore we left that port, and of whose dangerous neigh-
bourhood we were warned by the sudden coldness of
the weather, and the sinking of the mercury in the
barometer. While these tokens lasted, a double look-
Out was kept, and many dismal tales were whispered,
after dark, of ships that had struck upon the ice and
gone down in the night ; but the wind obliging us to
hold a Southward course, we saw none of them, and
the Weather soon grew warm and bright again.
The observation every day at noon, and the subse-
Quent working of the vessel’s course, was, as may be
supposed, a feature in our lives of paramount impor-
tance; nor were there wanting (as there never are) Saga-
cious doubters of the captain's calculations, who, so
Soon as his back was turned, would, in the absence of
Compasses, measure the chart with bits of string and
ends of pocket-handkerchiefs, and points of snuffers,
and clearly prove him to be wrong by an odd thousand
miles or so. It was very edifying to see these unbe-
lievers shake their heads and frown, and hear them
hold forth strongly upon navigation: not that they
knew anything about it, but that they always mistrusted
the captain in calm weather, or when the wind was
adverse. Indeed, the mercury itself is not so variable
as this class of passengers, whom you will see, when
the ship is going nobly through the water, quite pale
with admiration, Swearing that the captain beats all
Captains ever known, and even hinting at Subscriptions
for a piece of plate; and who, next morning, when the
breeze has lulled, and all the sails hang useless in the
idle air, Shake their despondent heads again, and say,
428 AMERICAN NOTES
with screwed-up lips, they hope that the captain is a
sailor—but they shrewdly doubt him.
It even became an occupation in the calm, to wonder
when the wind would spring up in the favourable quar-
ter, where, it was clearly shown by all the rules and
precedents, it ought to have sprung up long ago. The
first mate, who whistled for it zealously, was much
respected for his perseverance, and was regarded, even
by the unbelievers, as a first-rate sailor. Many gloomy
looks would be cast upward through the cabin sky-
lights at the flapping sails while dinner was in progress;
and some, growing bold in ruefulness, predicted that we
should land about the middle of July. There are al-
ways on board ship, a Sanguine One and a Despondent
One. The latter character carried it hollow at this
period of the voyage, and triumphed over the Sanguine
One at every meal, by inquiring where he supposed the
Great Western (which left New York a week after us)
was now, and where he supposed the “Cunard ” steam-
packet was mow; and what he thought of sailing vessels
as compared with steam-ships now; and so beset his
life with pestilent attacks of that kind, that he, too,
was obliged to affect despondency, for very peace and
Quietude. e
These were additions to the list of entertaining inci-
dents, but there was still another source of interest.
We carried in the steerage nearly a hundred passen-
i. a little world of poverty: and as we came to
now individuals among them by sight, from looking
down upon the deck where they took the air in the day-
time, and cooked their food, and very often ate it too,
we became curious to know their histories, and with
what expectations they had gone out to America, and
On what errands they were going home, and what their
circumstances were. The information we got on these
heads from the carpenter, who had charge of these
people, was often of the strangest kind. Some of them
had been in America, but three days, some but three
months, and some had gone out in the last voyage of
that very ship in which they were now returning home.
Others had sold their clothes to raise the passage-
money, and had hardly rags to cover them; others had
no food and lived upon the charity of the rest: and One
1nam, it was discovered nearly at the end of the Voyage,
FOR GENERAL (CIRCULATION. 429
not before—for he kept his secret close, and did not
court compassion—had had no sustenance whatever
but the bones and scraps of fat he took from the plates
used in the after-cabin dinner, when they were put Out
to be washed. e
The whole system of shipping and conveying these
unfortunate persons, is one that stands in need of thor-
ough revision. If any class deserve to be protected
and assisted by the Government, it is that class who
are banished from their native land in search of the
bare means of subsistence. All that could be done for
these poor people by the great compassion and human-
ity of the captain and officers was done, but they re-
quire much more. The law is bound, at least upon the
English side, to see that too many of them are not put
on board one ship: and that their accommodations are
decent: not demoralising and profligate. It is bound,
too, in common humanity, to declare that no man shall
be taken on board without his stock of provisions being
previously inspected by some proper officer, and pro-
nounced moderately sufficient for his support upon the
voyage. It is bound to provide, or to require that there
be provided, a medical attendant; whereas in these
ships there are none, though sickness of adults, and
deaths of children, on the passage, are matters of the
very commonest occurrence. Above all it is the duty
of any Government, be it monarchy or republic, to in-
terpose and put an end to that system by which a firm
of traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the
whole 'tween-decks of a ship, and send on board as
many wretched people as they can lay hold of, on any
terms they can get, without the smallest reference to
the conveniences of the steerage, the number of berths,
the slightest separation of the sexes, or anything but
their own immediate profit. Nor is even this the worst
of the vicious system: for, certain crimping agents of
these houses, who have a percentage on all the passen-
gers they inveigle, are constantly travélling about
those districts where poverty and discontent are rife,
and tempting the credulous into more misery, by hold-
ing out monstrous inducements to emigration which
can never be realised.
The history of every family we had on board was
pretty much the same. After hoarding up, and borrow-
430 AMERICAN NOTES
ing, and hº and selling everything to pay the
passage, they had gone out to New York, expecting to
find its streets paved with gold; and had found them
paved with very hard and very real stones. Enterprise
was dull; labourers were not wanted; jobs of work were
to be got, but the payment was not. They were com-
ing back, even poorer than they went. One of them
was carrying an open letter from a young English
artisan, who had been in New York a fortnight, to a
friend near Manchester, whom he strongly urged to
follow him. One of the officers brought it to me as a
curiosity. “This is the country, Jem,” said the writer.
‘‘I like America. There is no despotism here; that’s
the great thing. Employment of all sorts is going
a-begging, and wages are capital. You have Only to
choose a trade, Jem, and be it. I haven’t made choice
of one yet, but I shall soon. At present I haven’t quite
made up my mind whether to be a carpenter—or a
taºlo?'.”
There was yet another kind of passenger, and but one
Imore, who, in the calm and the light winds, was a con-
stant theme of conversation and observation am Ong uS.
This was an English sailor, a Smart, thorough-built,
English man-of-war's-man from his hat to his shoes,
who was serving in the American navy, and having
ot leave of absence was On his way home to see his
riends. When he presented himself to take and pay
for his passage, it had been Suggested to him that being
an able seaman he might as well work it and save the
money, but this piece of advice he very indignantly
rejected: saying, “He’d be damned but for once he’d
go aboard-ship, as a gentleman.” Accordingly, they
took his money, but he no sooner came . than he
stowed his kit in the forecastle, arranged to mess with
the crew, and the very first time the hands were
turned up, went aloft like a cat, before anybody. And
all through the passage there he was, first at the
braces, Outermost on the yards, perpetually lending a
hand everywhere, but always with a sober dignity in
his manner, and a sober grin on his face, which plainly
said, “I do it as a gentleman. For my own pleasure,
mind you!”
At length and at last, the promised wind came up in
right good earnest, and away we went before it, with
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 431
every stitch of canvas set, slashing through the water
nobly. There was a grandeur in the motion of the
splendid ship, as overshadowed by her mass of sails,
she rode at a furious pace upon the waves, which filled
one with an indescribable sense of pride and exultation.
As she plunged into a foaming valley, how I loved to
see the green waves, bordered deep with white, come
rushing on astern, to buoy her upward at their pleas-
ure, and curl about her as she stooped again, but al-
ways own her for their haughty mistress still! On, on
We fiew, with changing lights upon the water, being
now in the blessed region of fleecy skies; a bright Sun
lighting us by day, and a bright moon by night; the
vane pointing directly homeward, alike the truthful
index to the favouring wind and to our cheerful hearts;
until at Sunrise, one fair Monday morning—the twenty-
seventh of June, I shall not easily forget the day—
there lay before us old Cape Clear, God bless it, show-
ing, in the mist of early morning, like a cloud : the
brightest and most welcome cloud, to us, that ever hid
the face of Heaven’s fallen sister—Home.
Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the
Sunrise a more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of
human interest which it seems to want at sea. There,
as elsewhere, the return of day is inseparable from
some sense of renewed hope and gladness; but the light
shining on the dreary waste of water, and showing it in
all its vast extent of loneliness, presents a solemn
Spectacle, which even night, veiling it in darkness and
uncertainty, does not surpass. The rising of the moon
is more in keeping with the solitary ocean; and has an
air of melancholy grandeur, which in its soft and gentle
influence, seems to comfort while it saddens. I recol-
lect when I was a very young child having a fancy that
the reflection of the moon in water was a path to
Heaven, trodden by the spirits of good people on their
way to God; and this old feeling often came over me
again, when I watched it on a tranquil night at Sea.
The wind was very light on this same Monday morn-
ing, but it was still in the right quarter, and So, by slow
degrees, we left Cape Clear behind, and sailed along
within sight of the coast of Ireland. And how merry
we all were, and how loyal to the George Washington,
and how full of mutual congratulations, and how ven-
432 AMERICAN NOTES
turesome in predicting the exact hour at which we
should arrive at Liverpool, may be easily imagined and
readily understood. Also, how heartily we drank the
captain’s health that day at dinner; and how restless
we became about packing up: and how two or three
of the most sanguine spirits rejected the idea of going
to bed at all that night as something it was not worth
while to do, so near the shore, but went nevertheless,
and slept Soundly; and how to be so near our journey's
end, was like a pleasant dream, from which one feared
to wake.
The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on
we went Once more before it gallantly: descrying now
and then an English ship going homeward under short-
ened sail, while we with every inch of canvas crowded
on, dashed gaily past, and left her far behind. Towards
evening, the weather turned hazy, with a drizzling
rain; and soon became so thick, that we sailed, as
it were, in a cloud. Still we swept onward like a phan-
tom ship, and many an eager eye glanced up to where
the Look-out on the mast kept watch for Holyhead.
At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at
the same moment there shone out from the haze and
and mist ahead, a gleaming light, which presently was
gone, and Soon returned, and soon was gone again.
Whenever it came back, the eyes of all on board,
brightened and sparkled like itself: and there we all
stood, watching this revolving light upon the rock at
Holyhead, and praising it for its brightness and its
friendly warning, and lauding it, in short, above all
other signal lights that ever were displayed, until it
once more glimmered faintly in the distance, far be-
hind us.
Then, it was time to fire a gun, for a pilot ; and al-
most before its smoke had cleared away, a little boat
with a light at her mast-head came bearing down
upon us, through the darkness, Swiftly. And presently,
our sails being backed, she ran alongside ; and the
hoarse pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-coats and
shawls to the very bridge of his weather-ploughed-up
nose, stood bodily among us on the deck. And I think
if that pilot had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an
indefinite period on Ino security, we should have en-
gaged to lend it him, among us, before his boat had
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 433
dropped astern, or (which is the same thing) before
every scrap of news in the paper he brought with him
had become the common property of all on board.
We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out
pretty early next morning. By six o'clock we clustered
On the deck, prepared to go ashore ; and looked upon
the spires, and roofs, and smoke, of Liverpool. By eight
we all sat down in one of its Hotels, to eat and drink to-
gether for the last time. And by nine we had shaken
hands all round, and broken up our social company for
€Ver.
The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rattled
through it, like a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the
fields (so small they looked!); the hedge-rows, and the
trees; the pretty cottages, the beds of flowers, the old
churchyards, the antique houses, and every well-known
Object ; the exquisite delights of that one journey,
crowding in the short compass of a summer's day, the
joy of many years, and winding up with Home and all
. ºes it dear; no tongue can tell, or pen of mine
€SCTIO6.
VóL. I. 28
434 AMERICAN NOTES
CHAPTER XVII.
STAVERY.
THE upholders of slavery in America—of the atroci-
ties of which system, I shall not write one word for
which I have not ample proof and warrant—may be
divided into three great classes.
The first are those more moderate and rational
owners of human cattle, who have come into the pos-
session of them as so many coins in their trading cap-
ital, but who admit the frightful nature of the Institution
in the abstract, and perceive the dangers to society with
which it is fraught : dangers which, however distant
they may be, or howsoever tardy in their coming On,
are as certain to fall upon its guilty head, as is the Day
of Judgment.
The second consists of all those owners, breeders,
users, buyers and sellers of slaves, who will, until the
bloody chapter has a bloody end, own, breed, use, buy,
and sell them at all hazards; who doggedly deny the
horrors of the system, in the teeth of such a mass of
evidence as never was brought to bear on any other
subject, and to which the experience of every day con-
tributes its immense amount; who would, at this or any
other moment, gladly involve America in a war, civil
or foreign, provided that it had for its sole end and Ob-
ject the assertion of their right to perpetuate slavery, and
to whip and work and torture slaves, unquestioned by
any human authority, and unassailed by any human
power; who, when they speak of Freedom, mean the
Freedom to oppress their kind, and to be savage, mer-
ciless, and cruel; and of whom every man on his own
ground, in republican America, is a more exacting, and
a sterner, and a less responsible despot than the Caliph
Haroun. Alraschid in his angry robe of scarlet.
The third, and not the least numerous or influential,
is composed of all that delicate gentility which cannot
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 435
bear a superior, and cannot brook an equal; of that
class whose Republicanism means, “I will not tolerate
a man above me : and of those below, none must ap-
proach too near;”, whose pride, in a land where volun-
tary servitude is shunned as a disgrace, must be minis-
tered to by slaves; and whose inalienable rights can
only have their growth in negro Wrongs.
It has been sometimes urged that, in the unavailing
efforts which have been made to advance the cause of
Human Freedom in the republic of America (Strange
cause for history to treat of ), sufficient regard has not
been had to the existence of the first class of persons;
and it has been contended that they are hardly used,
in being confounded with the second. This is, no
doubt, the case; noble instances of pecuniary and per-
sonal sacrifice have already had their growth among
them; and it is much to be regretted that the gulf be-
tween them and the advocates of emancipation should
have been widened and deepened by any means: the
rather, as there are, beyond dispute, among these
slave-owners, many kind masters who are tender in the
exercise of their unnatural power. Still it is to be
feared that this injustice is unseparable from the state
of things with which humanity and truth are called
upon to deal. Slavery is not a whit the more endurable
because some hearts are to be found which can partially
resist its hardening influences; nor can the indignant
tide of honest wrath stand still, because in its onward
course it overwhelms a few who are comparatively
innocent, among a host of guilty.
The ground most commonly taken by these better
men among the advocates of slavery is this: “It is a
bad system; and for myself I would willingly get rid of
it, if I could; most willingly. But it is not so bad as
you in England take it to be. You are deceived by the
representations of the emancipationists. The greater
part of my slaves are much attached to me. You will
say that I do not allow them to be severely treated; but
I will put it to you whether you believe that it can be
a general practice to treat them inhumanly, when it
would impair their value, and would be obviously
against the interests of their masters.”
Is it the interest of any man to steal, to game, to
waste his health and mental faculties by drunkenness,
436 - AMERICAN NOTES
to lie, forswear himself, indulge hatred, seek desperate
revenge, or do murder P No. All these are roads to
ruin. And why, then, do men tread them P Because
such inclimations are among the vicious qualities of
mankind. Blot out, ye friends of slavery, from the
catalogue of human passions, brutal lust, cruelty, and
the abuse of irresponsible power (of all earthly tempta-
tions the most difficult to be resisted), and when ye have
done so, and not before, we will inquire whether it be
the interest of a master to lash and maim the slaves,
Over whose lives and limbs he has an absolute control |
But again: this class, together with that last One I
have named, the miserable aristocracy spawned of a
false republic, lift up their voices and exclaim, “Public
opinion is all sufficient to prevent such cruelty as you
denounce.” Public opinion | Why, public opinion in
the slave States is slavery, is it not ? Public opinion
in the slave States has delivered the slaves over to the
gentle mercies of their masters. Public opinion has
made the laws, and denied the slaves legislative pro-
tection. Public opinion has knotted the lash, heated
the branding-iron, loaded the rifle, and shielded the
murderer. Public opinion threatens the abolitionist
with death, if he venture to the South; and drags him
with a rope about his middle, in broad unblushing
noon, through the first city in the East. Public opinion
has, within a few years, burned a slave alive at a slow
fire in the city of St. Louis; and public opinion has to
this day maintained upon the bench that estimable
Judge who charged the Jury, impanelled there to try
his murderers, that their most horrid deed was an act
of public opinion, and being so, must not be punished
by the laws the public sentiment had made. Pub-
lic opinion hailed this doctrine with a howl of wild
applause, and set the prisoners free, to walk the city,
men of mark, and influence, and station as they had
been before.
Public opinion what class of men have an immense
preponderance over the rest of the community, in
their power of representing public opinion in the leg-
islature ? the slave owners. They send from their
twelve States one hundred members, while the four-
teen free States, with a free population nearly double,
return but a hundred and forty-two. Before whom
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 437
do the presidential candidates bow down the most
humbly, on whom do they fawn the most fondly, and for
whose tastes do they cater the most assiduously in
their servile protestations P. The slave owners always.
Public opinion hear the public opinion of the free
South, as expressed by its own members in the House
of Representatives at Washington. “I have a great
respect for the chair,” quoth North Carolina, “I have
a great respect for the chair as an officer of the
House, and a great respect for him personally; nothing
but that respect prevents me from rushing to the
table and tearing that petition which has just been
presented for the abolition of slavery in the district
of Columbia, to pieces.”—“I warn the abolitionists,”
says South Carolina, “ignorant, infuriated barbarians
as they are, that if chance shall throw any of them
into Our hands, he may expect a felon’s death.”—“Let
an abolitionist come within the borders of South
Carolina,” cries a third: mild Carolina's colleague;
“ and if we can catch him, we will try him, and notwith-
standing the interference of all the governments on earth,
including the Federal government, we will HANG him.”
Public opinion has made this law.—It has declared
that in Washington, in that city which takes its name
from the father of American Liberty, any justice of the
peace may bind with fetters any negro passing down
the street and thrust him into jail: no offence on the
black man’s part is necessary. The justice says, “I
choose to think phis man a runaway:” and locks him
up. Public opiñion impowers the man of law when
this is done, to advertise the negro in the newspapers,
warning his owner to come and claim him, or he will be
sold to pay the jail fees. But supposing he is a free
black, and has no owner, it may naturally be presumed
that he is set at liberty. No: HE IS SOLD TO RECOMPENSE
HIS JAILER. This has been done again, and again, and
again. He has no means of proving his freedom; has no
adviser, messenger, or assistance of any sort or kind;
no investigation into his case is made, or inquiry insti-
tuted. He, a free man, who may have served for years,
and bought his liberty, is thrown into jail on no process
for no crime, and on no pretence of crime: and is sold
to pay the jail fees. This seems incredible, even of
America, but it is the law.
4.38 AMERICAN NOTES
Public opinion is deferred to, in such cases as the fol-
lowing; which is headed in the newspapers:
“Interesting Law–Case.
“An interesting case is now on trial in the Supreme
Court, arising Out of the following facts. A gentleman
residing in Maryland had allowed an aged pair of his
slaves, substantial though not legal freedom for several
years. While thus living, a daughter was born to them,
who grew up in the same liberty, until she married a
free negro, and went with him to reside in Pennsylvania.
They had several children, and lived unmolested until
the original owner died, when his heir attempted to re-
gain them; but the magistrate before whom they were
brought, decided that he had no jurisdiction in the case.
The owner seized the woman and her children in the night,
and carried them to Maryland.”
“Cash for negroes,”, “cash for negroes,” “cash for
negroes,” is the heading of advertisements in great
capitals down the long columns of the crowded journals.
Woodcuts of a runaway negro with manacled hands,
crouching beneath a bluff pursuer in top boots, who
having caught him, grasps him by the throat, agreeably
diversify the pleasant text. The leading article protests
against ‘‘ that abominable and hellish doctrine of aboli-
tion, which is repugnant alike to every law of God and
nature.” The delicate mamma, who smiles her acquies-
cence in this sprightly writing as she reads the paper in
her cool piazza, quiets her youngest child who clings
_about her skirts, by promising the boy “a whip to beat
the little niggers with.”—But the negroes, little and big,
are protected by public opinion.
Let us try this public opinion by another test, which
is important in three points of view: first, as showing
how desperately timid of the public opinion slave
owners are, in their delicate descriptions of fugitive
slaves in widely circulated newspapers; secondly, as
showing how perfectly contented the slaves are, and
how very seldom they run away; thirdly, as exhibiting
their entire freedom from scar, or blemish, or any mark
of cruel infliction, as their pictures are drawn, not by
lying abolitionists, but by their own truthful masters.
TOR GENERAL CIFCULATION. 439
The following are a few specimens of the advertise.
ments in the public papers. It is only four years since
the oldest among them appeared; and others of the same
nature continue to be published every day, in shoals.
“Ran away, Negress Caroline. Had on a collar with
One prong turned down.”
‘‘ Ran away, a black woman, Betsy. Had an iron
bar on her right leg.”
“Ran away, the negro Manuel. Much marked with
irons.”
“Ran away, the negress Fanny. Had on an iron
band about her neck.”
“Ran away, a negro boy about twelve years old.
Had round his neck a chain dog-collar with ‘De Lamp-
ert engraved on it.”
“Ran away, the negro Hown. Has a ring of iron on
his left foot. Also, Grise, his wife, having a ring and
chain on the left leg.” -
“Ran away, a negro boy named James. Said boy
was ironed when he left me.”
‘‘ Committed to jail, a man who calls his name John.
He has a clog of iron on his right foot which will weigh
four or five pounds.”
“Detained at the police jail, the negro wench, Myra.
Has several marks of LASHING, and has irons on her
feet.”
‘‘ Ran away, a negro woman and two children. A
few days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot
iron, on the left side of her face. I tried to make the
letter M.”
“Ran away, a negro man named Henry; his left eye
out, some scars from a dirk on and under his left arm,
and much scarred with the whip.”
“One hundred dollars reward, for a negro fellow,
Pompey, 40 years old. He is branded on the left
jaw.”
“Committed to jail, a negro man. Has no toes on
the left foot.”
“Ran away, a negro woman named Rachel. Has
lost all her toes except the large one.”
“Ran away, Sam. He was shot a short time since
through the hand, and has several shots in his left arm
and side.” -
“Ran away, my negro man Dennis. Said negro has
440 AMERICAN NOTES
been shot in the left arm between the shoulders and
elbow, which has paralysed the left hand.”
“Ran away, my negro man named Simon. He has
been shot badly, in his back and right arm.”
“Ran away, a negro named Arthur. Has a consider-
able scar across his breast and each arm, made by a
knife; loves to talk much of the goodness of God.”
“Twenty-five dollars reward for my man Isaac. He
has a scar on his forehead, caused by a blow; and one .
on his back, made by a shot from a pistol.”
“Ran away, a negro girl called Mary. Has a small
scar over her eye, a good many teeth missing, the let-
ter A is branded on her cheek and forehead.”
“Ran away, negro Ben. Has a scar on his right
hand: his thumb and forefinger being injured by being
shot last fall. A part of the bone came out. He has
also one or two large scars on his back and hips.”
“Detained at the jail, a mulatto, named Tom. Has
a scar on the right cheek, and appears to have been
burned with powder on the face.”
“Ran away, a negro man named Ned. Three of his
fingers are drawn into the palm of his hand by a cut.
Has a scar on the back of his neck, nearly half round,
done by a knife.”
“Was committed to jail, a negro man. Says his name
is Josiah. His back very much scarred by the whip;
and branded on the thigh and hips in three or four
Fº thus (J. M.). The rim of his right ear has been
it Or Cut Off.”
“Fifty dollars reward, for my fellow Edward. He
has a scar on the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and
under his arm, and the letter E on his arm.”
“Ran away, negro boy Ellie. Has a scar on one of
his arms from the bite of a dog.”
“Ran away, from the plantation of James Sugette,
the following negroes: Randal, has one ear cropped,
Bob, has lost one eye; Kentucky Tom, has one jaw
broken.” -
“Ran away, Anthony. One of his ears cut off, and
his left hand cut with an axe.” .
“Fifty dollars reward for the negro Jim Blake. Has
a piece cut out of each ear, and the middle finger of the
left hand cut off to the second joint.” r
“Ran away, a negro woman named Maria. Has a
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 441
scar on one side of her cheek, by a cut. Some scars on
her back.”
“Ran away, the mulatto wench Mary. Has a cut on
the left arm, a scar on the left shoulder, and two upper
teeth missing.”
I should say, perhaps, in explanation of this latter
piece of description, that among the other blessings
which public opinion secures to the negroes, is the com-
mon practice of violently punching out their teeth. To
make them wear iron collars by day and night, and to
worry them with dogs, are practices almost too ordi-
nary to deserve mention. -
“Ran away, my man Fountain. Has holes in his ears,
a scar on the right side of his forehead, has been shot
in the hind parts of his legs, and is marked on the back
with the whip.”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars reward for my negro
man Jim. He is much marked with shot in his right
thigh. The shot entered on the outside, halfway be-
tween the hip and knee joints.”
“Brought to jail, John. Left ear cropt.”
‘‘Taken up, a negro man. Is very much scarred
about the face and body, and has the left ear bit off.”
“Ran away, a black girl, named Mary. Has a scar
on her cheek, and the end of one of her toes cut off.”
“Ran away, my mulatto woman, Judy. She has had
her right arm broke.” -
“Ran away, my negro man, Levi. His left hand
has been burnt, and I think the end of his forefinger is
Off.”
‘‘ Ran away, a negro man, NAMED WASHINGTON. Has
lost a part of his middle finger, and the end of his little
finger.”
“Twenty-five dollars reward for my man John. The
tip of his nose is bit off.”
“Twenty-five dollars reward for the negro slave Sally.
Walks as though crippled in the back.”
‘‘ Ran away, Joe Dennis. Has a Small notch in one
of his ears.”
“Ran away, negro boy, Jack. Has a Small crop Out of
his left ear.”
“Ran away, a negro man, named Ivory. Has a small
piece cut out of the top of each ear.”
While upon the subject of ears, I may observe that a
442 AMERICAN NOTES
distinguished abolitionist in New York once received a
negro’s ear, which had been cut off close to the head, in
a general post letter. It was forwarded by the free and
independent gentleman who had caused it to be ampu-
i. with a polite request that he would place the
specimen in his “collection.”
I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms, and
broken legs, and gashed flesh, and missing teeth, and
lacerated backs, and bites of dogs, and brands of red-
hot irons innumerable: but as my readers will be suffi-
ciently sickened and repelled already, I will turn to
another branch of the subject.
These advertisements, of which a similar collection
might be made for every year, and month, and week,
and day; and which are coolly read in families as things
of course, and as a part of the current news and small-
talk; will serve to show how very much the slaves profit
by public opinion, and how tender it is in their behalf.
But it may be worth while to inquire how the slave-
owners, and the class of society to which great numbers
of them belong, defer to public opinion in their conduct,
not to their slaves but to each other; how they are
accustomed to restrain their passions; what their bearing
is among themselves; whether they are fierce or gentle,
whether their social customs be brutal, sanguinary, and
violent, or bear the impress of civilization and refine-
ment.
That we may have no partial evidence from abolition-
ists in this inquiry, either, I will once more turn to their
own newspapers, and I will confine myself, this time, to
a selection from paragraphs which appeared from day
to day, during my visit to America, and which refer to
occurrences happening while I was there. The italics
in these extracts, as in the foregoing, are my own.
These cases did not ALL occur, it will be seen, in terri-
tory actually belonging to legalised Slave States, though
most and those the very worst among them did, as their
counterparts constantly do; but the position of the
scenes of action in reference to places immediately at
hand, where slavery is the law; and the strong resem-
blance between that class of outrages and the rest; lead
to the just presumption that the character of the parties
concerned was formed in slave districts, and brutalized
by slave customs.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 443
“Horrible Tragedy.
“By a slip from The Southport Telegraph, Wisconsin,
we learn that the Hon. Charles C. P. Arndt, Member of
the Council for Brown County, was shot dead on the
floor of the Council Chamber, by James R. Vinyard,
Member from Grant County. The affair grew out of a
nomination for Sheriff of Grant County. Mr. E. S.
Baker was nominated and supported by Mr. Arndt.
This nomination was opposed by Vinyard, who wanted
the appointment to vest in his own brother. In the
course of debate, the deceased made some statements
which Vinyard pronounced false, and made use of
Violent and insulting language, dealing largely in
personalities, to which Mr. A. made no reply. After
the adjournment, Mr. A. stepped up to Vinyard, and
requested him to retract, which he refuſ' ed to do, repeat-
ing the offensive words. Mr. Arndt then made a blow
at Vinyard, who stepped back a pace, drew a pistol, and
shot him dead.
“The issue appears to have been provoked on the
part of Vinyard, who was determined at all hazards to
defeat the appointment of Baker, and who, himself de-
ºurned his ire and revenge upon the unfortunate
I'll City,
“The Wisconsin Tragedy.
“Public indignation runs high in the territory of
Wisconsin, in relation to the murder of C. C. P. Arndt,
in the Legislative Hall of the Territory. Meetings have
been held in different counties of Wisconsin, denounc-
ing the practice of Secretly bearing arms in the Legisla-
tive chambers of the country. We have seen the ac-
count of the expulsion of James R. Vinyard, the perpe-
trator of the bloody deed, and are amazed to hear, that,
after this expulsion by those who saw Vinyard kill Mr.
Arndt in the presence of his aged father, who was on a
visit to see his son, little dreaming that he was to wit-
ness his murder, Judge Dumm has discharged Vimyard
on bail. The ‘Miners’ Free Press’ speaks in terms of
merited rebuke at the outrage upon the feelings of the
people of Wisconsin. Vinyard was within arm’s length
of Mr. Arndt, when he took such deadly aim at him, that
444 AMERICAN NOTES
he never spoke. Vinyard might at pleasure, being so
near, have only wounded him, but he chose to kill him.”
‘‘ Mºrde?".
“By a letter in a St. Louis paper of the 14th, we
notice a terrible outrage at Burlington, Iowa. A Mr.
Bridgman having had a difficulty with a citizen of the
place, Mr. Ross : a brother-in-law of the latter provided
himself with one of Colt's revolving pistols, met Mr. B.
in the street, and discharged the contents of five of the
barrels at him ; each shot taking effect. Mr. B., though
horribly wounded, and dying, returned the fire, and
killed Ross on the spot.”
“Terrible death of Robert Potter.
“From the ‘Caddo Gazette,’ of the 12th inst., we
learn the frightful death of Colonel Robert Potter. . . .
He was beset in his house by an enemy, named Rose.
He sprang from his couch, seized his gun, and, in his
night clothes, rushed from the house. For about two
hundred yards his speed seemed to defy his pursuers;
but, getting entangled in a thicket, he was captured.
Rose told him that he intended to act a generous part,
and give him a chance for his life. He then told Potter
he might run, and he should not be interrupted till he
reached a certain distance. Potter started at the word
of command, and before a gun was fired he had reached
the lake. His first impulse was to jump in the water
and dive for it, which he did. Rose was close behind
him, and formed his men on the bank ready to shoot
him as he rose. In a few seconds he came up to breathe;
and scarce had his head reached the surface of the
water when it was completely riddled with the shot of
their guns, and he sunk, to rise no more l’
*~. , “ Murder im, Arkansas.
“We understand that a severe recontre came off a few
days since in the Seneca Nation, between Mr. Loose,
the sub-agent of the mixed band of the Senecas, Qua-
paw, and Shawnees, and Mr. James Gillespie, of the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 445
mercantile firm of Thomas G. Allison and Co., of Mays-
ville, Benton County, Ark., in which the latter was slain
with a bowie-knife. Some difficulty had for some time
existed between the parties. It is said that Major Gil-
lespie brought on the attack with a cane. A severe
conflict ensued, during which two pistols were fired by
Gillespie and one by Loose. Loose then stabbed Gilles-
E. with one of those never failing weapons, a bowie-
xnife. The death of Major G. is much regretted, as he
was a liberal-minded and energetic man. Since the
above was in type, we have learned that Major Allison
has stated to some of Our citizens in town that Mr.
Loose gave the first blow. We forbear to give any par-
ticulars, as the matter will be the subject of judicial in-
westigation.”
‘‘ Foul Deed.
“The steamer Thames, just from Missouri river,
brought us a handbill, offering a reward of 500 dollars,
for the person who assassinated Lilburn W. Baggs, late
Governor of this State, at Independence, on the night
of the 6th inst. Governor Baggs, it is stated in a writ-
ten memorandum, was not dead, but mortally wounded.
“Since the above was written, we received a note from
the clerk of the Thames, giving the following particu-
lars: Governor Baggs was shot by some villain on Fri-
day, 6th inst., in the evening, while sitting in a room in
his own house in Independence. His son, a boy, hear-
ing a report, ran into the room, and found the Governor
sitting in his chair, with his jaw fallen down, and his
head leaning back; on discovering the injury done his
father, he gave the alarm. Foot tracks were found in
the garden below the window, and a pistol picked up
Supposed to have been overloaded, and thrown from
the hand of the scoundrel who fired it. Three buck
shots of a heavy load, took effect; one going through
his mouth, one into the brain, and another probably in
or near the brain; all going into the back part of the
neck and head. The Governor was still alive on the
morning of the 7th; but no hopes for his recovery by
his friends, and but slight hopes from his physicians.
“A man was suspected, and the Sheriff most prob-
ably has possession of him by this time.
446 AMERICAN NOTES
“The pistol was one of a pair stolen some days pre-
vious from a baker in Independence, and the legal
authorities have the description of the other.”
‘‘ Remcom.tre.
“An unfortunate affair took place on Friday evening
in Chartres Street, in which one of our most respect-
able citizens received a dangerous wound from a poig-
nard in the abdomen. From the Bee, (New Orleans) of
yesterday, we learn the following particulars. It ap-
pears that an article was published in the French side
of the paper on Monday last, containing some strictures
on the Artillery Battalion for firing their guns on Sun-
day morning, in answer to those from the Ontario and
Woodbury, and thereby much alarm was caused to the
families of those persons who were out all night pre-
serving the peace of the city. Major C. Gally, Com-
mander of the battalion, resenting this, called at the
office and demanded the author’s nme; that of M. P.
Arpin was given to him, who was absent at the time.
Some angry words then passed with one of the propri-
etors, and a challenge followed; the friends of both par-
ties tried to arrange the affair, but failed to do so. On
Friday evening, about seven o’clock, Major Gally met
Mr. P. Arpin in Chartres Street, and accosted him. “Are
you Mr. Arpin P
“‘Yes, sir.’”
“‘Then I have to tell you that you are a-’”( apply-
ing an appropriate epithet).
“‘I shall remind you of your words, sir. *
“‘ But I have said I would break my came on your
shoulders.’”
‘‘‘I know it, but I have not yet received the
blow.’”
“At these words, Major Gally, having a cane in his
hands, struck Mr. Arpin across the face, and the latter
drew a poignard from his pocket and stabbed Major
Gally in the abdomen.
“Fears are entertained that the wound will be mortal.
We understand that Mr. Arpin has given security for
his appearance at the Criminal Court to answer the
charge.”
3 25
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 447
“Affray in Mississippi.
“On the 27th ult., in an affray near Carthage, Leake
county, Mississippi, between James Cottingham and
John Wilburn, the latter was shot by the former, and
so horribly wounded, that there was no hope of his re-
covery. On the 2nd instant, there was an affray at
Carthage between A. C. Sharkey and George Goff, in
which the latter was shot, and thought mortally wound-
ed. Sharkey delivered himself up to the authorities,
but changed his mind and escaped /*
‘‘Personal Encounter.
“An encounter took place in Sparta, a few days
since, between the barkeeper of an hotel, and a man
named Bury. It appears that Bury had become some-
what noisy, and that the barkeeper, determined to pre-
serve order, had threatened to shoot Bury, whereupon
Bury drew a pistol and shot the barkeeper down. He
was not dead at the last accounts, but slight hopes were
entertained of his recovery.
‘‘ Duel.
“The clerk of the steamboat Thribune informs us that
another duel was fought on Tuesday last, by Mr. Rob-
bins, a bank officer in Vicksburg, and Mr. Fall, the edi-
tor of the ‘Vicksburg Sentinel.” According to the ar-
rangement, the parties had six pistols each, which,
after the word “Fire!’ they were to discharge as fast as
they pleased. Fall fired two pistols without effect. Mr.
Robbins' first shot took effect in Fall’s thigh, who fell,
and was unabſe to continue the conflict.”
“Affray in Clarke County.
“An unfortunate affray occurred in Clarke county
(Mo.), near Waterloo, on Tuesday, the 19th ult., which
originated in settling the partnership concerns of Messrs.
M“Kane and M*Allister, who had been engaged in the
business of distilling, and resulted in the death of the
latter, who was shot down by Mr. M'Kane, because of
448 AMERICAN NOTES
his attempting to take possession of seven barrels of
whiskey, the property of M*Kane, which had been
knocked off to M*Allister at a sheriff’s sale at One dol-
lar per barrel. M'Kane immediately fled and at the
latest dates had not been taken.
“This unfortunate affray caused considerable excite-
ment in the neighbourhood, as both the parties were
men with large families depending upon them and
stood well in the community.”
I will quote but one more paragraph, which, by rea-
son of its monstrous absurdity, may be a relief to these
atrocious deeds.
“Affair of Honour.
“We have just heard the particulars of a meeting
which took place on Six Mile Island, on Tuesday, be-
tween two young bloods of Our city: Samuel Thurston,
aged fifteem, and William Hine, aged thirteen years.
They were attended by young gentlemen of the same
ge. The * used on the occasion, were a couple
of Dickson’s best rifles; the distance, thirty yards.
They took one fire, without any damage being sus-
tained by either party, except the ball of Thurston’s
un passing through the crown of Hine's hat. Through
he intercession of the Board of Honour, the chal-
lenge was withdrawn, and the difference amicably ad-
justed.”
If the reader will picture to himself the kind of
Board of Honour which amicably adjusted the differ-
ence between these two little boys, who in any other
part of the world would have been am?cably adjusted
on two porter’s backs and soundly flogged with birchen
rods, he will be possessed, no doubt, with as strong a
sense of its ludicrous character, as that which sets me
laughing whenever it's image rises up before me.
Now, I appeal to every human mind, imbued with the
commonest of common sense, and the commonest of
common humanity; to all dispassionate, reasoning
creatures, of any shade of opinion; and ask, with these
revolting evidences of the state of society which exists
in and about the slave districts of America before them,
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 449
can they have a doubt of the real condition of the slave,
or can they for a moment make a compromise between
the institution or any of its flagrant fearful features,
and their own just consciences P Will they say of any
tale of cruelty and horror, however aggravated in
degree, that it is improbable, when they can turn to the
public prints, and, running, read such signs as these,
laid before them by the men who rule the slaves : in
their own acts, and under their own hands P
Do we not know that the worst deformity and ugliness
of slavery are at once the cause and the effect of the
reckless licence taken by these free-born outlaws P DO
we not know that the man who has been born and bred
among its Wrongs; who has seen in his childhood hus-
bands obliged at the word of command to flog their
wives ; women, indecently compelled to hold up their
own garments that men might lay the heavier Stripes
upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers
in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the
field of toil, under the very lash itself; who has read in
youth, and seen his virgin sisters read, descriptions of
runaway men and women, and their disfigured persons,
which could not be published elsewhere, of so much
stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts:—do we not
know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up,
will be a brutal savage P Do we not know that as he is
a coward in his domestic life, stalking among his
shrinking men and women slaves armed with his heavy
whip, so he will be a coward out of doors, and carrying
cowards’ weapons hidden in his breast will shoot men
down and stab them when he quarrels 2 And if our
reason did not teach us this and much beyond ; if we
were such idiots as to close our eyes so that fine mode,
of training which rears up such men ; should we no
know that they who among their equals stab and pistol
in the legislative halls, and in the counting-house, and
on the market-place, and in all the elsewhere peaceful
pursuits of life, must be to their dependants, even though
they were free servants, so many merciless and unre-
lenting tyrants P
What! shall we declaim against the ignorant peas-
antry of Ireland, and mince the matter when these
American taskmasters are in question ? Shall we cry
shame on the brutality of those who ham-string cattle :
VOL. I. 29
450 AMERICANNOTES
and spare the lights of Freedom upon earth who notch
the ears of men and women, cut pleasant postes in the
shrinking flesh, learn to write with pens of red-hot iron
On the human face, rack their poetic fancies for liveries
of mutilation which their slaves shall wear for life and
carry to the grave, break living limbs as did the soldiery
who mocked and slew the Saviour of the world, and set
defenceless creatures up for targets? Shall we whimper
over legends of the tortures practised on each other by
the Pagan Indians, and Smile upon the cruelties of
Christian men P Shall we, so long as these things last,
exult above the scattered remnants of that stately race,
and triumph in the white enjoyment of their broad pos-
sessions P Rather, for me, restore the forest and the
Indian village ; in lieu of stars and stripes, let some
poor feather flutter in the breeze ; replace the streets
and squares by wigwams; and though the death-Song
of a hundred haughty warriors fill the air, it will be
music to the shriek of One unhappy slave.
On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes,
and in respect of which Our national character is chang-
ing fast, let the plain Truth be spoken, and let us not,
like dastards, beat about the bush by hinting at the
Spaniard and the fierce Italian. When knives are drawn
by Englishmen in conflict let it be said and known :
“We owe this change to Republican Slavery. These
are the weapons of Freedom. With sharp points and
edges such as these, Liberty in America, hews and
hacks her slaves; Or, failing that pursuit, her sons
devote them to a better use, and turn them on each
Other.”
FOR GENERAL Clito ULATION. 45l
CHAPTER XVIII.
|
CONCLUDING REMARKS. --
HERE are many passages in this book, where I have
been at some pains to resist the temptation of
troubling my readers with my own deductions and con-
clusions: preferring that they should judge for them-
selves, from such premises as I have laid before them.
My only object in the outset, was, to carry them with
me faithfully wheresoever I went: and that task I have
discharged. -
But I may be pardoned, if on such a theme as the
general character of the American people, and the
general character of their social system, as presented
to a stranger’s eyes, I desire to express my own
Opinions in a few words, before I bring these volumes
to a close.
They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable,
and affectionate. Cultivation and refinement seem but
to enhance their warmth of heart and ardent enthu-
siasm; and it is the possession of these latter qualities in
a most remarkable degree, which renders an educated
American one of the most endearing and most generous
of friends. I never was so won upon, as by this class;
never yielded up my full confidence and esteem so
readily and pleasurably, as to them; never can make
again, in half-a-year, so many friends for whom I seem
to entertain the regard of half a life.
These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to
the whole people. That they are, however, sadly
Sapped and blighted in their growth among the mass;
and that there are influences at work which endanger
them still more, and give but little present promise
of their healthy restoration; is a truth that ought to be
told.
It is an essential part of every national character to
pique itself mightily upon its faults, and to deduce
452 AMERICAN NOTES
tokens of its virtue or its wisdom from their very exag-
geration. One great blemish in the popular mind of
America, and the prolific parent of an innumerable
brood of evils, is universal distrust. Yet the American
citizen plumes himself upon this spirit, even when he
is sufficiently dispassionate to perceive the ruin it
works; and will often adduce it, in spite of his own
reason, as an instance of the great Sagacity and acute-
ness of the people, and their superior shrewdness and
independence.
“You carry,” says the stranger, “this jealousy and
distrust into every transaction of public life. By re-
elling worthy men from your legislative assemblies, it
has bred up a class of candidates for the suffrage, who,
in their every act, disgrace your Institutions and your
people's choice. It has rendered you so fickle, and so
given to change, that your inconstancy has passed into
a proverb; for you no sooner set up an idol firmly, than
you are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments:
and this, because directly you reward a benefactor, or
a public servant, you distrust him, merely because he is
rewarded; and immediately apply yourselves to find
out, either that you have been too bountiful in your
acknowledgments, or here missin his deserts. Any man
who attains a high place among you, from the President
downwards, may date his downfall from that moment;
for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens,
although it militate directly against the character and
conduct of a life, appeals at Once to your distrust, and
is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way of
trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and
well deserved; but you will swallow a whole caravan of
camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts and
mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, or likely to
elevate the character of the governors or the governed,
among you?”
The answer is invariably the same: “There’s freedom
of opinion here, you know. Every man thinks for
himself, and we are not to be easily overreached. That’s
how Our people come to be suspicious.”
Another prominent feature is the love of “Smart”
dealing: which gilds over many a swindle and gross
breach of trust; many a defalcation, public and private;
and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 453
best, who well deserves a halter: though it has not been
without its retributive operation, for this Smartness has
done more in a few years to impair the public credit,
and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty,
however rash, could have effected in a century. The
merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a
successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his ob-
servance of the golden rule, “Do as you would be done
by,” but are considered with reference to their smart-
ness. I recollect, on both occasions of our passing that
ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remarking on the bad
effects such gross deceits must have when they exploded,
in generating a want of confidence abroad, and in dis-
couraging foreign investment: but I was given to under-
stand that this was a very smart scheme by which a deal
of money had been made: and that its smartest feature
was, that they forgot these things abroad, in a very short
time, and speculated again, as freely as ever. The fol-
lowing dialogue I have held a hundred times: “Is it not
a very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as So
and So should be acquiring a large property by the
most infamous and odious means, and notwithstanding
all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be
tolerated and abetted by your citizens? He is a public
nuisance, is he not?” “Yes, sir.” “A convicted liar?”
“Yes, sir.” “He has been kicked, and cuffed, and
caned?” “Yes, sir.” “And he is utterly dishonour-
able, debased, and profligate?” “Yes, sir.” “In the
name of wonder, then, what is his merit?” “Well, sir,
he is a Smart man.”
In like manner, all kinds of deficient and impolitic
usuages are referred to the national love of trade;
though Oddly enough, it would be a weighty charge
against a foreigner that he regarded the Americans as
a trading people. The love of trade is assigned as a
reason for that comfortless custom, so very prevalent
in country towns, of married persons living in hotels,
having no fireside of their own, and seldom ‘meeting
from early morning until late at night, but at the hasty
public meals. The love of trade is a reason why the
literature of America is to remain for ever unprotected:
“For we are a trading people, and don’t care for
poetry: ” though we do, by the way, profess to be very
proud of our poets: while healthful amusements, cheer-
454 AMERICAN NOTES
ful means of recreation, and wholesome fancies, must
fade before the stern utilitarian joys of trade.
These three characteristics are strongly presented at
every turn, full in the stranger's view. But, the foul
growth of America has a more tangled root than this;
and it strikes its fibres, deep in its licentious Press.
Schools may be erected, East, West, North, and South:
pupils be taught, and masters reared, by scores upon
scores of thousands; colleges may thrive, churches may
be crammed, temperance may be diffused, and advanc-
ing knowledge in all other forms walk through the
land with giant strides: but while the newspaper press
of America is in, or near its present abject state, high
moral improvement in that country is hopeless. Year
by year, it must and will go back; year by year, the
tone of public feeling must sink lower down; year by .
year the Congress and the Senate must become of less
account before all decent men; and year by year, the
memory of the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be
outraged more and more, in the bad life of their degen-
erate child.
Among the herd of journals which are published in
the States, there are some, the reader scarcely need be
told, of character and credit. From personal intercourse
with accomplished gentlemen connected with publica-
tions of this class, I have derived both pleasure and
profit. But the name of these is Few, and of the others
Legion; and the influence of the good is powerless to
Counteract the mortal poison of the bad.
Among the gentry of America; among the well in-
formed and moderate; in the learned professions; at the
bar and On the bench: there is, as there can be, but one
Opinion, in reference to the vicious character of these
infamous journals. It is sometimes contended—I will
not say Strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for
Such a disgrace—that their influence is not so great as
a visitor would suppose. I must be pardoned for saying
that there is no warrant for this plea, and that every
fact and circumstance tends directly to the opposite
conclusion.
When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or
character, can climb to any public distinction, no matter
what, in America, without first grovelling down upon
the earth, and bending the knee before this monster
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 455
of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from
its attacks; when any social confidence is left unbroken
by it, or any tie of social decency and honour is held in
the least regard; when any man in that Free Country
has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think for him-
self, and speak for himself, without humble reference
to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and
base dishonesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his
heart; when those who most acutely feel its infamy and
the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who most de-
nounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon and
crush it openly, in the sight of all men: then, I will
believe that its influence is lessening, and men are re-
turning to their manly senses. But while that Press
has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in
every appointment in the State, from a president to a
postman; while, with ribald slander for its only stock
in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous
class, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or
they will not read at all; so long must its odium be upon
the country’s head, and so long must the evil it works
be plainly visible in the Republic.
To those who are accustomed to the leading English
journals, or to the respectable journals of the Continent
of Europe; to those who are accustomed to anything
else in print and paper; it would be impossible, without
an amount of extract for which I have neither space
nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this
frightful engine in America. But if any man desire
confirmation of my statement on this head, let him
repair to any place in this city of London, where scat-
tered numbers of these publications are to be found;
and there, let him form his own opinion.*
It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the Amer-
ican people as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and
the Ideal somewhat more. It would be well, if there
were greater encouragement to lightness of heart and
gaiety, and a wider cultivation of what is beautiful,
without being eminently and directly useful. But here,
* NOTE TO THE ORIGINAL ISDITION.—Or let him refer to an able, and perfectly
truthful article, in The Foreign Quarterly Review, published in the present month of
October; to which my attention has boon attracted, since these sheets have been
passing through the press. He Will find Some Specimens there, by no means
remarkable to any man who has been in America, but sufficiently Striking to One
Who has not.
456 AMERICAN NOTES
I think the general remonstrance, “we are a new coun-
try,” which is so often advanced as an excuse for defects
which are quite unjustifiable, as being of right only the
slow growth of an old one, may be very reasonably
urged: and I yet hope to hear of there being some other
national amusement in the United States, besides news-
paper politics. r & p.
They certainly are not a humourous people, and their
temperament always impressed me as being of a dull
and gloomy character. In shrewdness of remark, and
a certain cast-iron quaintness, the Yankees, or people
of New England, unquestionably take the lead; as they
do in most other evidences of intelligence. But in
travelling about, out of the large cities—as I have re-
marked in former parts of these volumes—I was quite
oppressed by the prevailing seriousness and melancholy
air of business: which was so general and unvarying,
that at every new town I came to I seemed to meet the
very same people whom I had left behind me, at the
last. Such defects as are perceptible in the national
manners, seem, to me, to be referable, in a great degree,
to this cause: which has generated a dull sullen persist-
ence in coarse usages, and rejected the graces of life as
undeserving of attention. There is no doubt that Wash-
ington, who was always most scrupulous and exact On
points of ceremony, perceived the tendency towards
this mistake, even in his time, and did his utmost to
correct it. w -
I cannot hold with other writers on these subjects
that the prevalence of various forms of dissent in
America, is in any way attributable to the non-existence
there of an established church: indeed, I think the
temper of the people, if it admitted of such an Institu-
tion being founded amongst them, would lead them to
desert it, as a matter of course, merely because it was
established. But, supposing it to exist, I doubt its proba-
ble efficacy in summoning the wandering sheep to one
#. fold, simply because of the immense amount of
issent which prevails at home; and because I do not
find in America any one form of religion with which
We in Europe, or even in England, are unacquainted.
Dissenters resort thither in great numbers, as other peo-
ple do, simply because it is a land of resort; and great set-
tlements of them are founded, because ground can be
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 457
purchased, and towns and villages reared, where there
were none of the human creation before. But even the
Shakers emigrated from England; our country is not
unknown to Mr. Joseph Smith, the apostle of Mormon-
ism, or to his benighted disciples; I have beheld religious
scenes myself in some of our populous towns which can
hardly be surpassed by an American camp-meeting;
and I am not aware that any instance of Superstitious
imposture on the one hand, and superstitious credulity
on the other, has had its origin in the United States,
which we cannot more than parallel by the precedents
of Mrs. Southcote, Mary Tofts the rabbit-breeder, or
even Mr. Thom of Canterbury: which latter case arose
Sometime after the dark ages had passed away.
The Republican Institutions of America undoubtedly
lead the people to assert their self-respect and their
equality; but a traveller is bound to bear those Institu-
tions in his mind, and not hastily to resent the near
approach of a class of strangers, who, at home, would
keep aloof. This characteristic, when it was tinctured
with no foolish pride, and stopped short of no honest
service, never offended me; and I very seldom, if ever,
experienced its rude or unbecoming display. Once or
twice it was comically developed, as in the following
case; but this was an amusing incident, and not the rule,
or near it. ©
I wanted a pair of boots at a certain town, for I had
none to travel in, but those with the memorable cork
soles, which were much too hot for the fiery decks of a
steam-boat. I therefore sent a message to an artist in
boots, importing, with my compliments, that I should
be happy to see him, if he would do me the polite
favour to call. He very kindly returned for answer,
that he would “ look round” at six o'clock that evening.
I was lying on the sofa, with a book and a wine-glass,
at about that time, when the door opened, and a gentle-
man in a stiff cravat, within a year or two on either
side of thirty, entered, in his hat and gloves ; walked
up to the looking-glass; arranged his hair; took off his
i. ; slowly produced a measure from the uttermost
depths of his coat pocket ; and requested me, in a
languid tone, to “unfix º' my straps. I complied, but
looked with some curiosity at his hat, which was still
upon his head. It might have been that, or it might
458 AMERICAN NOTES
have been the heat—but he took it off. Then, he sat
himself down on a chair opposite to me; rested an arm
on each knee; and, leaning forward very much, took
from the ground, by a great effort, the Specimen of
metropolitan workmanship which I had just pulled Off:
whistling, pleasantly, as he did so. He turned it. Over
and over; surveyed it with a contempt no language can
express; and inquired if I wished him to fix me a boot
like that ? I courteously replied, that provided the
boots were large enough, I would leave the rest to him ;
that, if convenient and practicable, I should not object
to their bearing some resemblance to the model then be-
fore him ; but that I would be entirely guided by,
and would beg to leave the whole subject to, his judg-
ment and discretion. “You an’t partickler, about this
scoop in the heel I suppose then?” says he “We don’t
foller that, here.” I repeated my last observation. He
looked at himself in the glass again ; went closer to it
to dash a grain or two of dust out of the corner of his
eye ; and settled his cravat. All this time, my leg and
foot were in the air. “Nearly ready, sir?” I inquired.
“Well, pretty nigh,” he said ; “keep steady.” . I kept
as steady as I could, both in foot and face ; and having
by this time got the dust out, and found his pencil-case,
he measured me, and made the necessary notes. When
he had finished, he fell into his old attitude, and taking
up the boot again, mused for some time. “And this,”
he said, at last, “is an English boot, is it ! This is a
London boot, eh?” “That, sir,” I replied, “is a London
boot.” He mused over it again, after the manner of
Hamlet with Yorick’s skull ; nodded his head, as who
should say, “I pity the Institutions that led to the pro-
duction of this boot l”; rose; put up his pencil, notes,
and paper—glancing at himself in the glass all the
time—put on his hat ; drew on his gloves very slowly ;
and finally walked out. When he had been gone about
a minute, the door reopened, and his hat and his head
reappeared. He looked round the room, and at the
boot again, which was still lying on the floor; appeared
thoughtful for a minute ; and then said, “Well, good
arternoon.” “Good afternoon, sir,” said I : and that
was the end of the interview.
There is but one other head on which I wish to offer
a remark; and that has reference to the public health.
FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION, 459
In so vast a country, where there are thousands of
millions of acres of land yet unsettled and uncleared,
and on every rood of which, vegetable decomposition
is annually taking place; where there are so many
great rivers, and such opposite varieties of climate ;
there cannot fail to be a great amount of sickness at
certain seasons. But I may venture to say, after con-
versing with many members of the medical profession
in America, that I am not singular in the opinion that
much of the disease which does prevail, might be
avoided, if a few common precautions were observed.
Greater means of personal cleanliness, are indispen-
sable to this end; the custom of hastily swallowing large
Quantities of animal food, three times a-day, and rush-
ing back to sedentary pursuits after each meal, must be
changed; the gentler sex must go more wisely clad, and
take more healthful exercise ; and in the latter clause
the males must be included also. Above all, in public
institutions, and throughout the whole of every town and
city, the system of ventilation, and drainage, and removal
of impurities requires to be thoroughly revised. There is
no local legislature in America, which may not study
Mr. Chadwick’s excellent Report upon the Sanitary
Condition of Our Labouring Classes, with immense
advantage.
I HAVE now arrived at the close of this book. I have
little reason to believe, from certain warnings I have
had since I returned to England, that it will be tenderly
or favourably received by the American people; and
as I have written the Truth in relation to the mass of
those who form their judgments and express their
opinions, it will be seen that I have no desire to court,
by any adventitious means, the popular applause.
It is enough for me to know, that what I have set
down in these pages cannot cost me a single friend on
the other side of the Atlantic, who is, in anything de-
Serving of the name. For the rest, I put my trust, im-
plicitly, in the spirit in which they have been conceived
and penned ; and I can bide my time.
I have made no reference to my reception, nor have I
suffered it to influence me in what I have written ; for
in either case, I should have offered but a sorry acknowl-
460 AMERICAN NOTES
edgment, compared with that I bear within my breast,
towards those partial readers of my former books,
across the Water, who met me with an open hand, and
not with one that closed upon an iron muzzle. -
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THE MYSTERY
OF
EDWIN DRO OD
_AND
O T H E F S T O R H E S .
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
W IT H I L L U S T R A TI O N S.
NEW YORK :
R. WORTHINGTON, PUBLISHER.
| 8 84 .
CoNTENTs.
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.
cHAPTER
I. THE DAWN e • . e g
‘II. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO . ſº
III. THE NUN’s House . g
IV. M.R. SAPSEA § tº e . . . º
V. . M.R. DURDLES AND FRIEND . . .
VI. PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANoN CORNER
VII. MoRE ConFIDENCES THAN on E: g
VIII. DAGGERs DRAWN . • • ſº e
IX. BIRDs is the BUSII . e . . . .
X. SMooTHING THE WAY . ſº g &
XI. A PICTURE AND A KING . ë *
XII. A NIGHT witH DURDLES
XIII. Both AT THEIR BEST e e
XIV. WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN ?
XV. IMPEACHED • * • • •
XVI. DEVOTED tº . ~ * º º *
XVII. PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
XVIII. A SETTLER IN CLoISTERHAM tº g
XIX. SHADow ON THE SUNDIAL
XX. A FLIGHT! {º * tº ſº e tº
XXI. A RECOGNITION e {} & de
PAGE
205
216
iv CONTENTS.
CITA PTER
XXI. A GRITTY STATE of THINGs comes on. e tº º dº
XXIII. THE DAWN AGAIN . e tº e & º © º
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
I. MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM HIs CLOCK-SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY-
CORNER • tº & tº o e tº e *
THE CLOCK-CASE . C © ſº g & e º
II. MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM IIIs CLOCK-SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY-
CORNER • - *
THE CLOCK-CASE Q wº * e e & te tº ſº
CorrespondENCE . . e tº tº e tº ge tº
III. MASTER HUMPHREY's VISITOR . * tº e
IV. THE CLock is • , , e • • . • O tº
V.
MR. WELLER's WATCH tº is ſº ſº © te e
VI. MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM IIIs CLOCK-SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY-
CoRNER . . . tº tº e & © º tº
HUNTED DOWN . . . . . . . . . .
HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
I. From THE PEN of WILLIAM TINKLING, Esq. • • gº
II. FROM THE PEN OF MIss ALICE RAINBIRD . {º e
III. FROM THE PEN OF LIEUT.-CoI.ONEL ROBIN REDForTH: . Ç
IV. FROM THE PEN OF Miss NETTIE Ashford . ſº e e
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION . . . . .
PAGE
222
239
263
270
291
300
307
310
340
349
359
381
409
417
427
437
447
THE MYSTERY OF
EDWIN D R O O D.
CHAPTER I.
THE DAWN.
AN ancient English Cathedral Tower! How can the
ancient English Cathedral tower be here? The well-
known massive grey square tower of its old Cathedral!
How can that be here? There is no spike of rusty iron
in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the
real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and
who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Sultan’s
orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers,
one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan
goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand
scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand
dancing-girls strew flowers. Then, follow white ele-
phants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colors, and
infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral
Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and
still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is
the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of
a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry?
Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted
to the consideration of this possibility.
Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered
consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself to-
gether, at length rises, supports his trembling frame
upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest
and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged win-
l
2 EDWIN DROOD.
dow-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a
miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large un-
seemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way
under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also
across the bed, not long wise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar,
and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or
stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle
it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean
hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in
º dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees
OT IléI’.
“Another?” says this woman, in a querulous, rattling
whisper. “Have another?”
He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.
“Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at
midnight,” the woman goes on, as she chronically com-
plains. “Poor me, poor me, my head is so bad. Them
two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is
slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and
fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say!
Here’s another ready for ye, deary. Ye'll remember
like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is
dreffle high just now? More nor three shillings and
sixpence for a thimblefull! And ye’ll remember that
nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side the
court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret
of mixing it? Ye'll pay up according, deary, won’t ye?”
She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally
bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents.
“O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad!
It's nearly ready for ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me,
my poor hand shakes like to drop off! I see ye coming-
to, and I ses to my poor self, ‘I’ll have another ready
for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of
opium, and pay according.” O my poor head I makes
my pines of old penny ink-bottles, ye See, deary—this is
oiſe—and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I takes
my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn
spoon; and so I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I
got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to
this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak of. And it
takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.”
She hands him the newly-emptied pipe, and sinks
back, turning over on her face.
EDWIN DROOD. 3
He rises unsteadily from the bod, lays the pipe upon
the hearth-stone, draws back the ragged curtain, and
looks with repugnance at his three companions. He
notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into
a strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek,
eye, and temple, and his color, are repeated in her. Said
Chinaman convulsively wrestles with one of his many
Gods, or Devils, perhaps, and snarls horribly. The Lascar
laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is still.
“What visions can she have?” the waking man
muses, as he turns her face towards him, and Stands
looking down at it. “Visions of many butchers’ shops,
and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of
hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set up-
right again, and this horrible court swept clean? What
can she rise to, under any quantity of Opium, higher.
than that!—Eh?”
He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings.
“ Unintelligible!”
As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that
break out of her face and limbs, like fitful lightning Out
of a dark sky, some contagion in them Seizes upon him:
inasmuch as he has to withdraw himself to a lean arm-
chair by the hearth—placed there, perhaps, for such
emergencies—and to sit in it, holding tight, until he has
got the better of this unclean spirit of imitation.
Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and,
seizing him with both hands by the throat, turns him
violently on the bed. The Chinaman clutches the ag-
gressive hands, resists, gasps, and protests.
“What do you say?”
A watchful pause.
“ Unintelligible!” -
Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incohe-
rent jargon with an attentive frown, he turns to the LaS-
car and fairly drags him forth upon the floor. As he
falls, the Lascar starts into a half-risen attitude, glares
with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his arms,
and draws a phantom knife. It them becomes apparent
that the woman has taken possession of this knife, for
safety’s sake; for, she too starting up, and restraining
and expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her
º not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side by
Sl(162.
4 EDWIN DROOD.
There has been chattering and clattering enough be-
tween them, but to no purpose. When any distinct
word has been flung in the air, it has no sense or se-
quence. Wherefore “unintelligible!” is again the com-
ment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding
of his head, and a gloomy Smile. He then lays certain
silver money on the table, finds his hat, gropes his way
down the, broken Stairs, gives a good morning to some
rat-ridden door-keeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath
the Stairs, and passes out.
That same afternoon, the massive grey square tower
of an old Cathedral rises before the sight of a jaded trav-
eller. The bells are going for daily vesper service, and
he must needs attend it, one would say, from his haste
to reach the open cathedral door. The choir are getting
On their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he ar-
rives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into
the procession filing in to service. Then, the Sacristan
locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary
from the chancel, and all of the procession having scut-
tled into their places, hide their faces; and then the in-
toned words, “WHEN THE WICKED MAN–’ rise among
groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening mut-
tered thunder.
CHAPTER II.
A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO.
WHOSOEVER has observed that sedate and clerical
bird, the rook, may perhaps have noticed that when he
wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate
and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach
themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for
some distance, and will there poise and linger; convey-
ing to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult im-
portance to the body politic, that this artful couple
should pretend to have renounced connection with it.
Similarly, service being over in the old cathedral with
the square tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and
EDWIN DROOD. 5
divers venerable persons of rook-like aspect dispersing,
two of these latter retrace their steps, and walk together
in the echoing Close.
Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low
sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and
the Virginia, creeper on the cathedral wall has showered
half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement. There
has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes
among the little pools on the cracked uneven flag-stones,
and through the giant elm trees as they shed a gust of
tears. Their fallen leaves lie strewn thickly about.
Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary
within the low arched cathedral door; but two men
coming out, resist them, and cast them forth again with
their feet; this done, one of the two locks the door with
a goodly key, and the other flits away with a folio mu-
sic-book.
“Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?”
“Yes, Mr. Dean.”
“He has stayed late.”
“Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Rever-
ence. He has been took a little poorly.”
“Say “taken,” Tope—to the Dean,” the younger rook
interposes in a low tone with this touch of correction, as
who should say: “You may offer bad grammar to the
laity, or the humbler clergy, not to the Dean.”
Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed
to be high with excursion parties, declined with a silent
loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been ten-
dered to him.
“And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken—for,
as Mr. Crisparkle has remarked, it is better to say taken
—taken—” repeats the Dean; ' ' when and how has Mr.
Jasper been Taken—”
“Taken, sir,” Tope deferentially murmurs.
“—Poorly, Tope?”
“Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed—”
“I wouldn’t say ‘That breathed,” Tope,” Mr. Cris-
parkle interposes, with the same touch as before. “Not
English—to the Dean.”
“Breathed to that extent,” the Dean (not unflattered
by this indirect homage) condescendingly remarks,
“would be preferable.”
“Mr. Jasper's breathing was so remarkably short ’—
6 EDWIN IDEROOD.
thus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his way round the
sunken rock—“when he came in, that it distressed him
mightily to get his notes out: which was º the
cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little.
His memory grew DAZED.” Mr. Tope, with his eyes on
the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as
defying him to improve upon it: “ and a dimness and
giddiness crept over him as strange, as ever I saw:
though he didn’t seem to mind it particularly, himself.
However, a little time and a little water brought him
out of his DAZE.” Mr. Tope repeats the word and its
emphasis, with the air of Saying: “As I have made a
success, I’ll make it again.” -
“And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has
he?” asked the Dean.
“Your Reverence, he has gone home quite himself.
And I’m glad to see he's having his fire kindled up, for
it’s chilly after the wet, and the Cathedral had both a
damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he was
very shivery.”
They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse
crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing
beneath it. Through its latticed window, a fire shines
out upon the fast-darkening Scene, involving in shadow
the pendent masses of ivy and creeper covering the
building’s front. As the deep Cathedral-bell strikes the
hour, a ripple of wind goes through these at their dis-
tance, like a ripple of the solemn sound that hums
through tomb and tower, broken niche and defaced
statue, in the pile close at hand.
“Is Mr. Jasper’s nephew with him?” the Dean asks.
“No, sir,” replied the Verger, “but expected. There’s
his own solitary shadow betwixt his two windows—the
one looking this way, and the one looking down into
the High Street—drawing his own curtains now.”
“Well, well,” says the Dean, with a sprightly air of
breaking up the little conference, “I hope Mr. Jasper’s
heart may not be too much set upon his nephew. Our
affections, however laudable, in this transitory world,
should never master us; we should guide them, guide
them. I find I am not disagreeably reminded of my
dinner, by hearing my dinner-bell. Perhaps Mr. Cris-
parkle you will, before going home, look in on Jas-
per?”
EDWIN DROOD. º
“Certainly, Mr. Dean. And tell him that you had
the kindness to desire to know how he was?”
“Ay; do so, do so. Certainly. Wished to know how
he was. By all means. Wished to know how he was.”
With a pleasant air of patronage, the Dean as nearly
Cocks his quaint hat as a Dean in good Spirits may, and
directs his comely gaiters tº: the ruddy dining-
room of the Snug old red-brick house where he is at
present, “in residence ’’ with Mrs. Dean and Miss
Dean.
Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and rosy, and per-
petually pitching himself head-foremost into all the
deep running water in the surrounding country; Mr.
Crisparkle, Minor Canon, early riser, musical, classical,
cheerful, kind, good-natured, social, contented, and boy-
like; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, lately
“Coach" upon the chief Pagan high roads, but since
promoted by a patron (grateful for a well-taught son) to
his present Christian beat; betakes himself to the gate-
house, on his way home to his early tea. *
“Sorry to hear from Tope that you have not been
well, Jasper.”
“O, it was nothing, nothing!”
“You look a little worn.”
“Do I? O, I don’t think so. What is better, I don’t
feel so. Tope has made too much of it, I suspect. It’s
his trade to make the most of everything appertaining
to the Cathedral, you know.”
“I may tell the Dean—I call expressly from the Dean
—that you are all right again?”
The reply, with a slight smile, is: “Certainly; with
my respects and thanks to the Dean.”
“I’m glad to hear that you expect young Drood.”
“I expect the dear fellow every moment.”
“Ah! He will do you more good than a doctor,
Jasper.” -
“More good than a dozen doctors. For I love him
dearly, and I don’t love doctors, or doctors’ stuff.”
Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some six-and-twenty,
with thick, lustrous, well-arranged black hair and
whiskers. He looks older than he is, as dark men often
do. His voice is deep and good, his face and figure are
good, his manner is a little sombre. His room is a little
sombre, and may have had its influence in forming his
8 EDWIN DROOD.
manner. It is mostly in shadow. Even when the Sun
shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the grand piano in
the recess, or the folio music-books on the stand, or the
book-shelves on the wall, or the unfinished picture of a
blooming school-girl hanging over the chimney-piece;
her flowing brown hair tied with a blue ribbon, and her
beauty remarkable, for a quite childish, almost babyish,
touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself.
(There is not the least artistic merit in this picture,
which is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter
has made it humorously—one might almost say, re-
vengefully—like the original.)
“We shall miss you, Jasper, at the ‘Alternate Musi-
cal Wednesdays’ to-night; but no doubt you are best at
home. Good-night. God bless you! ‘Tell me, shep-
herds, te-e-ell me; tell me-e-e, have you seen (have you
Seen, have you seen, have you seen) my-y-y Flo-o-ora-a
pass this way!’” Melodiously good Minor Canon the
Reverend Septimus Crisparkle thus delivers himself, in
musical rhythm, as he withdraws his amiable face from
the doorway and conveys it down-stairs.
Sounds of recognition and greeting pass between the
Reverend Septimus and somebody else, at the stair-foot.
Mr. Jasper listens, starts from his chair, and catches a
young fellow in his arms, exclaiming: *
“My dear Edwin!”
“My dear Jack! So glad to see you!”
“Get off your great-coat, bright boy, and sit down
here in your own corner. Your feet are not wet? Pull
your boots off. Do pull your boots off.”
“My dear Jack, I am as dry as a bone. Don’t mod-
dley-Coddley, there's a good fellow. I like anything
better than being moddley-coddleyed.”
With the check upon him of being unsympathetically
restrained in a genial outburst of enthusiasm, Mr. Jas-
per stands still, and looks on intently at the young
fellow, divesting himself of his outer coat, hat, gloves,
and so forth. Once for all, a look of intentness and in-
tensity—a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, and yet
devoted affection—is always, now and ever afterwards,
On the Jasper face whenever the Jasper face is addressed
in this direction. And whenever it is so addressed, it is
never, on this occasion or on any other, dividedly ad-
dressed; it is always concentrated.
EDWIN DROOD. - 9
“Now I am right, and now I’ll take my corner, Jack.
Any dinner, Jack?”
Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end of the room,
and discloses a small inner room pleasantly lighted and
prepared, wherein a comely dame is in the act of setting
dishes on table. .
“What a jolly old Jack it is!” cries the young fellow,
with a clap of his hands. “Look here, Jack; tell me;
whose birthday is it?”
“Not yours, I know,” Mr. Jasper answers, pausing to
consider.
“Not mine, you know? No; not mine, I know! Pus-
sy’s! 22
Fixed as the look the young fellow meets, is, there is
yet in it some strange power of suddenly including the
sketch over the chimney-piece.
“Pussy’s, Jack! We must drink Many happy returns
to her. Come, uncle; take your dutiful and sharp-set
nephew in to dinner.”
As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand on Jas-
per's shoulder, Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand
on his shoulder, and So Marseillaise-wise they go in to
dinner.
“And, Lord! here’s Mrs. Topel” cries the boy. “Love-
lier than ever!”
“Never you mind me, Master Edwin,” retorts the
Verger's wife; “I can take care of myself.”
“You can’t. You’re much too handsome. Give me
a kiss, because it’s Pussy’s birthday.”
“I’d Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you
call her,” Mrs. Tope blushingly retorts, after being
saluted. “Your uncle’s too much wrapt up in you,
that’s where it is. He makes so much of you, that it’s
my opinion you think you’ve only to call your Pussys
by the dozen, to make 'em come.”
“You forget, Mrs. Tope,” Mr. Jasper interposes, tak-
ing his place at table with a genial smile, “ and so do
you, Ned, that Uncle and Nephew are words prohibited
here by common consent and express agreement. For
what we are going to receive His holy name be praised. ”
“Done like the T)ean! Witness, Edwin Drood! Please
to carve, Jack, for I can’t.”
This sally ushers in the dinner. Little to the present
purpose, or to any purpose, is said, while it is in course *
10 - - EDWIN DROOD.
of being disposed of. At length the cloth is drawn, and
a dish of walnuts and a decanter of rich-colored sherry
are placed upon the table.
“I say! Tell me, Jack,” the young fellow then flows
on: “do you really and truly feel as if the mention of
our relationship divided us at all? I don't.”
“ Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much older than their
nephews,” is the reply, “that I have that feeling in-
stinctively.”
“As a rule! Ah, may-bel But what is a difference
in age of half a dozen years or So? And some uncles,
in large families, are even younger than their nephews.
By George, I wish it was the case with us!”
“Why?”
“Because if it was, I’d take the lead with you, Jack,
and be as wise as Begone, dull Care! that turned a
young man grey, and Begone, dull Care! that turned an
old man to clay.—Halloa, Jack! Don’t drink.”
“Why not?”
“Asks why not, on Pussy’s birthday, and no Happy
returns proposed! Pussy, Jack, and many of 'em!
Happy returns, I mean.”
“Laying an affectionate and laughing touch on the
boy’s extended hand, as if it were at once his giddy
head and his light heart, Mr. Jasper drinks the toast in
silence. -
“Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and one to finish
with, and all that, understood. Hooray, hooray,
hooray!—And now, Jack, let’s have a little talk about
Pussy. Two pairs of nutcrackers? Pass me one, and
take the other.” Crack. “How's Pussy getting on.
Jack?”
“With her music? Fairly.”
“What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you are,
º But I know, Lord bless you! Inattentive, isn’t
She?”
“She can learn anything, if she will.”
“If she will! Egad, that’s it. But if she won’t?”
Crack!—on Mr. Jasper’s part.
“How's she looking, Jack?”
Mr. Jasper's concentrated face again includes the
portrait as he returns: ‘‘Very like your sketch indeed.”
“I am a little proud of it,” says the young fellow,
glancing up at the sketch with complacency, and then
EDWIN DROOD. - 11
shutting one eye, and taking a corrected prospect of it
over a level bridge of nut-crackers in the air: “Not
badly hit off from memory. But I ought to have caught
that expression pretty well, for I have seen it often
enough.” º
Crack!—on Edwin Drood’s part.
Crack!—on Mr. Jasper's part.
“In point of fact,” the former resumes, after some
silent dipping among his fragments of Walnut with an
air of pique, “I see it whenever I go to see Pussy. If I
don’t find it on her face, I leave it there.—You know I
do, Miss Scornful Pert. Booh!” With a twirl of the
nut-crackers at the portrait.
Crack! crack! crack. Slowly, on Mr. Jasper’s part.
Crack, Sharply, on the part of Edwin Drood.
Silence on both sides. iº
“Have you lost your tongue, Jack?”
“Have you found yours, Ned?”
“No, but really;-isn’t it, you know, after all—”
Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly.
“Isn’t it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in
such a matter? There, Jack! I tell you! If I could
choose, I would choose Pussy from all the pretty girls
in the world.” ~.
“But you have not got to choose.”
“That’s what I complain of. My dead and gone
father and Pussy’s dead and gone father must needs
marry us together by anticipation. Why the-Devil, I
was going to say, if it had been respectful to their
memory—couldn’t they leave us alone?”
“Tut, tut, dear boy,” Mr. Jasper remonstrates, in a
tone of gentle deprecation.
“Tut, tut? Yes, Jack, it’s all very well for you. You
can take it easily. Your life is not laid down to scale,
and lined and dotted out for you, like a surveyor's plan.
You have no uncomfortable suspicion that you are
forced upon anybody, nor has . an uncomforta-
ble suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you
are forced upon her. You can choose for yourself.
Life, for you, is a plum with the natural bloom on; it
hasn’t been over-carefully wiped off for you—”
“Don’t stop, dear fellow. Go on.”
“Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings, Jack?”
“How can you have hurt my feelings?”
12 EDWIN DROOD.
“Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill! There's
a strange film come over your eyes.” -
Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out his right
hand, as if at once to disarm apprehension and gain time
to get better. After a while he says faintly:
“I have been taking opium for a pain—an agony—
that sometimes overcomes me. The effects of the medi-
cine steal over me like a blight or a cloud, and pass.
You see them in the act of passing; they will be gone
directly. Look away from me. They will go all the
Sooner.”
With a scared face the younger man complies by cast-
ing his eyes downward at the ashes on the hearth. Not
relaxing his own gaze at the fire, but rather strengthen-
ing it with a fierce, firm grip upon his elbow-chair, the
elder sits for a few moments rigid, and then, with thick
drops standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of
his breath, becomes as he was before. On his so sub-
siding in his chair, his nephew gently and assiduously
tends him while he quite recovers. When Jasper is
restored, he lays a tender hand upon his nephew’s
shoulder, and, in a tone of voice less troubled than the
purport of his words—indeed with something of raillery
or banter in it—thus addresses him:
“There is said to be a hidden skeleton in every house;
but you thought there was none in mine, dear Ned.”
“Upon my life, Jack, I did think so. However, when
I come to consider that even in Pussy’s house—if she
had one—and in mine—if I had one—”
“You were going to say (but that I interrupted you in
spite of myself) what a quiet life mine is. No whirl and
uproar around me, no distracting commerce or calcula-
tion, no risk, no change of place, myself devoted to the
art I pursue, my business my pleasure.”
“I really was going to say something of the kind,
Jack; but you see, you, speaking of yourself, almost
necessarily leave out much that I should have put in.
For instance: I should have put in the foreground your
being so much respected as Lay Precentor, or Lay
Clerk, or whatever you call it, of this Cathedral; your en-
joying the reputation of having such done wonders with
the choir; your choosing your society, and holding such
an independent position in this queer old place; your
gift of teaching (why, even Pussy, who don’t like being
EDWIN DROOD. 13
taught, says there never was such a Master as you are!)
and your connexion.”
“Yes; I saw what you were tending to. I hate it.”
“Hate it, Jack?” (Much bewildered.)
“I hate it. The cramped monotony of my existence
grinds me away by the grain. How does our service
sound to you?” e
“Beautiful! Quite celestiall”
“It often sounds to me quite devilish. I am so weary
of it. The echoes of my own voice among the arches
seem to mock me with my daily drudging round. No
wretched monk who droned his life away in that gloomy
place, before me, can have been more tired of it than
I am. He could take for relief (and did take) to carving
demons out of the stalls and seats and desks. What
shall I do? Must Itake to carving them out of my heart?”
“I thought you had so exactly found your niche in
life, Jack,” Edwin Drood returns, astonished, bending
forward in his chair to lay a sympathetic hand on Jas-
per's knee, and looking at him with an anxious face.
“I know you thought so. They all think so.”
“Well, I suppose they do,” says Edwin, meditating
aloud. “Pussy thinks so.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“The last time I was here. You remember when.
Three months ago.”
“How did she phrase it?”
“O, she only said that she had become your pupil,
and that you were made for your vocation.”
The younger man glances at the portrait. The elder
sees it in him.
“Anyhow, my dear Ned,” Jasper resumes, as he
shakes his hº with a grave cheerfulness, “I must
subdue myself to my vocation: which is much the same
thing outwardly. It’s too late to find another now.
This is a confidence between us.”
“It shall be sacredly preserved, Jack.”
“I have reposed it in you, because—”
“I feel it, F. you. Because we are fast friends,
and because you love and trust lme, as I love and trust
you. Both hands, Jack.”
As each stands looking into the other's eyes, and
as the uncle holds the nephew’s hands, the uncle thus
proceeds:
14 EDWIN DROOD.
“You know now, don’t you, that even a poor monot-
onous chorister and grinder of music—in his niche—
may be troubled with some stray sort of ambition,
aspiration, restlessness, dissatisfaction, what shall we
Call it?”
“Yes, dear Jack.”
“And you will remember?” tº
“My dear Jack, I only ask you, am I likely to forget
what you have said with so much feeling?”
“Take it as a warning, then.”
In the act of having his hands released, and of mov-
ing a step back, Edwin pauses for an instant to consider
the application of these last words. The instant Over,
he says, sensibly touched:
“I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface kind of fel-
low, Jack, and that my head-piece is none of the best.
But I needn’t say I am young; and perhaps I shall not
grow worse as I grow older. At all events, I hope I
have something impressible within me, which feels—
deeply feels—the disinterestedness of your painfully
laying your inner self bare as a warning to me.”
Mr. Jasper’s steadiness of face and figure becomes
so marvellous that his breathing seems to have
stopped.
“I couldn’t fail to notice, Jack, that it cost you a
great effort, and that you were very much moved, and
very unlike your usual self. Of course I knew that
you were extremely fond of me, but I really was not
prepared for your, as I may say, sacrificing yourself to
me in that way.”
Mr. Jasper, becoming a breathing man again without
the smallest stage of transition between the two ex-
treme states, lifts his shoulders, laughs, and waves his
right arm. -
“No; don’t put the sentiment away, Jack; please
don’t; for I am very much in earnest. I have no doubt
that that unhealthy state of mind which you have so
powerfully described is attended with some real suffer-
ing, and is hard to bear. But let me reassure you, Jack,
as to the chances of its overcoming me. I don’t think
I am in the way of it. In some few months less than
another year, you know, I shall carry Pussy off from
school as Mrs. Edwin Drood. I shall then go engineering
into the East, and Pussy with me. And although we have
EDWIN DROOD. 15
Our little tiffs now, arising out of a certain unavoidable
flatness that attends our love-making, Owing to its end
being all settled beforehand, still I have no doubt of
our getting on capitally then, when it’s done and can’t
be helped. In short, Jack, to go back to the old song I
was freely quoting at dinner (and who knows old songs
better than you?), my wife shall dance, and I will sing,
so merrily pass the day. Of Pussy’s being beautiful
there cannot be a doubt;-and when you are good
besides, Little Miss Impudence,” once more apostro-
phising the portrait, “I’ll burn your comic likeness, and
paint your music-master another.”
Mr. Jasper, with his hand to his chin, and with an
expression of musing benevolence on his face, has
attentively watched every animated look and gesture
attending the delivery of these words. He remains in
that attitude after they are spoken, as if in a kind of
fascination attendant on his strong interest in the
youthful spirit that he loves so well. Then he says with
a quiet Smile:
“You won’t be warned then?”
“No, Jack.”
“You can’t be warned, then?”
“No, Jack, not by you. Besides that I don’t really
consider myself in danger, I don’t like your putting
yourself in that position.”
“Shall we go and walk in the churchyard?”
“By all means. You won’t mind my slipping out of
it for half a moment, to the Nuns' House, and leaving a
parcel there? Only gloves for Pussy; as many pairs
of gloves as she is years old to-day. Rather poetical,
Jack?”
Mr. Jasper, still in the same attitude, murmurs:
“‘Nothing half so sweet in life,” Ned!”
“Here's the parcel in my greatcoat-pocket. They
must be presented to-night, or the poetry is gone. It’s
against regulations for me to call at night, but not to
leave a packet. I am ready, Jack!”
Mr. Jasper dissolves his attitude, and they go out to-
gether.
16 EDWIN DROOD.
CHAPTER III.
THE NUN’S HOUSE.
FOR sufficient reasons, which this narrative will itself
unfold as it advances, a fictitious name must be be-
stowed upon the old Cathedral town. Let it stand in
these pages as Cloisterham. It was once possibly known
to the Druids by another name, and certainly to the
Romans by another, and to the Saxons by another,
and to the Normans by another; and a name more or
less in the course of many centuries can be of little
moment to its dusty chronicles.
An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet dwelling-
place for any one with hankerings after the noisy world.
A monotonous, silent city, deriving an earthly flavor
throughout from its cathedral crypt, and so abounding
in vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham
children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and ab-
besses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars; while
every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once
puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and
such-like, the attention which the Ogre in the story-
book desired to render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds
their bones to make his bread.
A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants seem
to suppose, with an inconsistency more strange than
rare, that all its changes lie behind it, and that there
are no more to come. A queer moral to derive from
antiquity, yet older than any traceable antiquity. So
silent are the streets of Cloisterham (though prone to
echo on the smallest provocation), that of a summer-
day the sunblinds of its shops scarce dare to flap in the
south wind; while the sun-browned tramps, who pass
along and stare, quicken their limp a little, that they
may the sooner get beyond the confines of its oppressive
respectability. This is a feat not difficult of achieve-
ment, seeing that the streets of Cloisterham city are
little more than one narrow street by which you get into
it and out of it: the rest being mostly disappointing
yards with pumps in them and nothoroughfare—excep-
tion made of the Cathedral-close, and a paved Quaker
EDWIN DROOD. (A 17
settlement, in color and general conformation very like
a Quakeress’s bonnet, up in a shady corner.
In a word, a city of another and a bygone time is
Cloisterham, with its hoarse cathedral-bell, its hoarso
rooks hovering about the Cathedral tower, its hoarser
and less distinct rooks in the stalls far beneath. Frag-
ments of old wall, saint's chapel, chapter-house, convent
and monastery, have got incongruously or obstructively
built into many of its houses and gardens, much as
kindred jumbled notions have become incorporated into
many of its citizen’s minds. All things in it are of the
past. Even its single pawnbroker takes in no pledges,
nor has he for a long time, but offers vainly an unre-
deemed stock for sale, of which the costlier articles are
dim and pale old watches apparently in a slow perspira-
tion, tarnished sugar-tongs with ineffectual legs, and
odd volumes of dismal books. The most abundant and
the most agreeable evidences of progressing life in
Cloisterham are the evidences of vegetable life in many
gardens; even its drooping and despondent little theatre
has its poor strip of garden, receiving the foul fiend,
when he ducks from its stage into the infernal regions,
among scarlet-beans or Oyster-shells, according to the
season of the year.
In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns' House:
a venerable brick edifice, whose present appellation is
doubtless derived from the legend of its conventual
uses. On the trim gate enclosing its old courtyard is a
resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend:
“Seminary for Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton.” The
house-front is so old and worn, and the brass plate is so
shining and staring, that the general result has re-
minded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau
with a large modern eye-glass stuck in his blind eye.
Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submissive
rather than a stiff-necked generation, habitually bent
their contemplative heads to avoid collision with the
beams in the low ceilings of the many chambers of their
House; whether they sat in its long low windows telling
their beads for their mortification, instead of making
necklaces of them for their adornment; whether they
were ever walled up alive in odd angles and jutting
gables of the building for having some ineradicable
leaven of busy mother Nature in them which has kept
2
18 R EDWIN DROOD.
the fermenting world alive ever since; these may be
matters of interest to its haunting ghosts (if any), but
constitute no item in Miss Twinkleton’s half-yearly
accounts. They are neither of Miss Twinkleton’s in-
clusive regulars, nor of her extras. The lady who
undertakes the poetical department of the establish-
ment at so much (or so little) a quarter has no pieces in
her list of recitals bearing on such unprofitable ques-
tions.
As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of
animal magnetism, there are two states of consciousness
which never clash, but each of which pursues its
separate course as though it were continuous instead of
broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I am drunk, I
must be drunk again before I can remember where), so
Miss Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases of
being. Every night, the moment the young ladies have
retired to rest, does Miss Twinkleton smarten up her
curls a little, brighten up her eyes a little, and become
a sprightlier Miss Twinkleton than the young ladies
have ever seen. Every night, at the same hour, does
Miss Twinkleton resume the topics of the previous
night, comprehending the tenderer scandal of Cloister-
ham, of which she has no knowledge whatever by day,
and references to a certain season at Tunbridge Wells
(airily called by Miss Twinkleton in this state of her
existence “The Wells”), notably the season wherein a
certain finished gentleman (compassionately called by
Miss Twinkleton, in this state of her existence, “Fool-
ish Mr. Porters”) revealed a homage of the heart,
whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic state of
existence, is as ignorant as a granite pillar. Miss
Twinkleton’s companion in both states of existence,
and equally adaptable to either, is one Mrs. Tisher: a
deferential widow with a weak back, a chronic sigh,
and a suppressed voice, who looks after the young
ladies’ wardrobes, and leads them to infer that she has
seen better days. Perhaps this is the reason why it is
an article of faith with the servants, handed down from
race to race, that the departed Tisher was a hair-dresser.
The pet pupil of the Nuns' House is Miss Rosa Bud,
of course called Rosebud; wonderfully pretty, wonder-
fully childish, wonderfully whimsical. An awkward
interest (awkward because romantic) attaches to Miss
EDWIN DROOD. 19
Bud in the minds of the young ladies, on account of its
being known to them that a husband has been chosen
for her by will and bequest, and that her guardian is
bound down to bestow her on that husband when he
comes of age. Miss Twinkleton, in her seminarial state
of existence, has combated the romantic aspect of this
destiny by affecting to shake her head over it behind
Miss Bud’s dimpled shoulders, and to brood on the un-
happy lot of that doomed little victim. But with no
better effect—possibly some unfelt touch of foolish Mr.
Porters has undermined the endeavor—than to evoke
from the young ladies an unanimous bedchamber cry of
“O, what a pretending old thing Miss Twinkleton is,
my dear.” -
The Nuns' House is never in such a state of flutter as
when this allotted husband calls to see little Rosebud.
(It is unanimously understood by the young ladies that
he is lawfully entitled to this privilege, and that if Miss
Twinkleton disputed it, she would be instantly taken
up and transported.) When his ring at the gate-bell is
expected, or takes place, every young lady who can,
under any pretence, look out of window, looks out of
window; while every young lady who is “practising,”
practises out of time; and the French class becomes so
demoralised that the mark goes round as briskly as the
bottle at a convivial party in the last century.
On the afternoon of the day next after the dinner of
two at the gatehouse, the bell is rung with the usual
fluttering results. *
“Mr. Edwin Drood to see Miss Rosa.”
This is the announcement of the parlor-maid in chief.
Miss Twinkleton, with an exemplary air of melancholy
on her, turns to the sacrifice, and says: “You may go
down, my dear.” Miss Bud goes down, followed by all
eyes.
Mr. Edwin Drood is waiting in Miss Twinkleton’s own
parlor: a dainty room, with nothing more directly
scholastic in it than a terrestrial and a celestial globe.
These expressive machines imply (to parent and guard-
ians) that even when Miss Twinkleton retires into the
bosom of privacy, duty, may at any moment compel
her to become a sort of Wandering Jewess, scouring
the earth and soaring through the skies in Search of
knowledge for her pupils.
20 EDWIN DROOD.
The last new maid, who has never seen the young
gentleman Miss Rosa is engaged to, and who is making
his acquaintance between the hinges of the open door,
left open for the purpose, stumbles guiltily down the
kitchen stairs, as a charming little apparition, with its
face concealed by a little silk apron thrown over its
head, glides into the parlor.
“O! it is so ridiculous!” says the apparition, stopping
and shrinking. “Don’t, Eddy!”
“Don’t what, Rosa?”
“Don’t come any nearer, please. It is so absurd.”
“What is absurd, Rosa?”
“The whole thing is. It is so absurd to be an engaged
orphan; and it is so absurd to have the girls and the
servants scuttling about after one, like mice in the
wainscot; and it is so absurd to be called upon!” -
The apparition appears to have a thumb in the corner
of its mouth while making this complaint.
“You give me an affectionate reception, Pussy, I
must say.”
“Well, I will in a minute, Eddy, but I can’t just yet.
How are you?” (very shortly.)
“I am unable to reply that I am much the better for
seeing you, Pussy, inasmuch as I see nothing of you.”
This second remonstrance brings a dark bright pout-
ing eye out from a corner of the apron; but it swiftly
becomes invisible again, as the apparition exclaims:
.# good gracious! you have had half your hair cut
O ! 25
“I should have done better to have had my head cut
off, I think,” says Edwin, rumpling the hair in question,
with a fierce glance at the looking-glass, and giving an
impatient stamp. “Shall I go?”
“No; you needn’t go just yet, Eddy. The girls would
all be asking questions why you went.”
“Once for all, Rosa, will you uncover that ridiculous
little head of yours and give me a welcome?”
The apron is pulled off the childish head, as its
wearer replies: “You’re very welcome, Eddy. There!
I’m sure that’s nice. Shake hands. No, I can’t kiss
you, because I’ve got an acidulated drop in my mouth.”
“Are you at all glad to see me, Pussy’”
“O, yes, I’m dreadfully glad.—Go and sit down.—
Miss Twinkleton.” -
EDWIN DROOD. 21
It is the custom of that excellent lady, when these
visits occur, to appear every three minutes, either in
her own person or in that of Mrs. Tisher, and lay an
offering on the shrine of Propriety by affecting to look
for some desiderated article. On the present occasion
Miss Twinkleton, gracefully gliding in and out, says,
in passing: “How do you do, Mr. Drood? Very glad
indeed to have the pleasure. Pray excuse me. Twee-
zers. Thank you!”
‘‘I got the gloves last evening, Eddy, and I like them
very much. They are beauties.”
“Well, that's something,” the affianced replies, half
grumbling. “The smallest encouragement thankfully
received. And how did you pass your birthday, Pussy?”
“Delightfully! Everybody gave me a present. And
we had a feast. And we had a ball at night.”
“A feast and a ball, eh? These occasions seem to go
off tolerably well without me, Pussy l’’
“De-lightfully l’ cries Rosa, in a quite spontaneous
manner, and without the least pretence of reserve.
“Hah! And what was the feast?”
“Tarts, oranges, jellies, and shrimps.”
“Any partners at the ball?”
“We danced with one another, of course, sir. But
some of the girls made game to be their brothers. It
was so droll!” -
“Did anybody make game to be—”
“To be you? O dear yes!” cries Rosa, laughing with
great enjoyment. “That was the first thing dome.”
“I hope she did it pretty well,” says Edwin, rather
doubtfully.
“O, it was excellent!—I wouldn’t dance with you, you
know.”
Edwin scarcely seems to see the force of this; begs to
Know if he may take the liberty to ask why?
“Because I was so tired of you,” returns Rosa. But
she quickly adds, and pleadingly too, seeing displeasure
in his face: “Dear Eddy, you were just as tired of the,
you know.”
“Did I say so, Rosa?”
“Say so! Do you ever say so? No, you only showed
it. O, she did it so well!” cries Rosa, in a sudden
ecstasy with her counterfeit betrothed. -
“It strikes me that she must be a devilish impudent
22 EDWIN DROOD.
girl,” says Edwin Drood. “And so, Pussy, you have
passed your last birthday in this old house.”
“Ah, yes!” Rosa clasps her hands, looks down with a
sigh, and shakes her head.
“You seem to be sorry, Rosa.”
“I am sorry for the poor old place. Somehow, I feel
as if it would miss me, when I am gone so far away, so
young.”
“Perhaps we had better stop short, Rosa?”
She looks up at him with a swift bright look; next
moment shakes her head, sighs, and looks down again.
“That is to say, is it, Pussy, that we are both re-
signed?” g
She nods her head again, and after a short silence,
Quaintly bursts out with: “You know we must be mar-
ried, and married from here, Eddy, or the poor girls
will be so dreadfully disappointed!”
For the moment there is more of compassion, both for
her and for himself, in her affianced husband’s face,
than there is of love. He checks the look, and asks:
“Shall I take you out for a walk, Rosa dear?” *
Rosa dear does not seem at all clear on this point,
until her face, which has been comically reflective,
brightens. “O, yes, Eddy; let us go for a walk! And
I tell you what we’ll do. You shall pretend that you
are engaged to somebody else, and I’ll pretend that I
am not engaged to anybody, and then we sha’n’t
Quarrel.”
“Do you think that will prevent our falling out, Rosa?”
‘‘I know it will. Hush! Pretend to look Out of win-
dow—Mrs. Tisher!”
Through a fortuitous concourse of accidents, the ma-
tronly Tisher heaves in sight, says, in rustling through
the room like the legendary ghost of a dowager in
silken skirts: “I hope I see Mr. Drood well; though I
needn’t ask, if I may judge from his complexion. I
trust I disturb no one; but there was a paper-knife—O,
thank you, I am sure!” and disappears with her prize.
“One other thing you must do, Eddy, to oblige me,”
says Rosebud. “The moment we get into the street,
you must put me outside, and keep close to the house
yourself—squeeze and graze yourself against it.”
jº all means, Rosa, if you wish it. Might I ask
why?” {
EDWIN DROOD. 23
“O! because I don’t want the girls to see you.”
“It’s a fine day; but would you like me to carry an
umbrella up?”
“Don’t be foolish, sir. You haven’t got polishep
leather boots on,” pouting, with one shoulder raised.
“Perhaps that might escape the notice of the girls,
even if they did see me,” remarks Edwin, looking down
at his boots with a sudden distaste for them.
“Nothing escapes their notice, sir. And then I know
what would happen. Some of them would begin reflect-
ing on me by saying (for they are free) that they rever
will on any account engage themselves to lovers with-
out polished leather boots. Hark! Miss Twinkleton. I’ll
ask for leave.”
That discreet lady being indeed heard without, in-
Quiring of nobody in a blandly conversational tone as
she advances: “Eh P Indeed! Are you quite sure you
saw my mother-of-pearl button-holder on the work-
table in my room?” is at once solicited for walking
leave, and graciously accords it. And soon the young
couple go out of the Nuns' House, taking all precau-
tions against the discovery of the so vitally defective
boots of Mr. Edwin Drood: precautions, let us, hope,
gºve for the peace of Mrs. Edwin Drood that is
to be.
“Which way shall we take, Rosa?”
lº replies: “I want to go to the Lumps-of-Delight
shop.”
“To the-?” - -
“A Turkish sweetmeat, sir. ... My gracious me, don’t
you understand anything? Call yourself an engineer,
and not know that?”
“Why, how should I know it, Rosa?”
“Because I am very fond of them. But O' I forgot
what we are to pretend. No, you needn’t know any-
thing about them; never mind.”
So he is gloomily borne off to the Lumps-of-Delight
shop, where Rosa, makes her purchase, and, after offer-
ing some to him (which he rather indignantly declines),
begins to partake of it with great zest: previously taking
off and rolling up a pair of little pink gloves, like rose-
leaves, and occasionally putting her little pink fingers to
her rosy lips, to cleanse them from the Dust of Delight
that comes off the Lumps. tº
24 EDWIN DROOD.
“Now, be a good-tempered Eddy, and pretend. And
so you are engaged?” º
“And so I am engaged.”
“Is She nice?” -
“Charming.”
“Tall?” * -
“Immensely tall!” Rosa being short.
“Must be gawky, I should think,” is Rosa's quiet
Commentary.
“I beg your pardon; not at all,” contradiction rising
in him. “What is termed a fine woman; a splendid
woman.”
“Big nose, no doubt,” is the quiet commentary again.
“Not a little One, certainly,” is the quick reply. (Rosa’s
being a little one.)
“Long pale nose, with a red knob in the middle. I
know the sort of nose,” says Rosa, with a satisfied nod,
and tranquilly enjoying the Lumps.
“You don’t know the sort of nose, Rosa,” with some
warmth; “because it’s nothing of the kind.”
“Not a pale nose, Eddy?”
‘‘No.” Determined not to assent.
“A red rose? O! I don’t like red noses. However;
to be sure she can always powder it.”
“She would scorn to powder it,” says Edwin, becom-
ing heated.
“Would she? What a stupid thing she must be! Is
she stupid in everthing?”
“No; in nothing.” t
After a pause, in which the whimsically wicked face
has not been unobservant of him, Rosa says:
“And this most sensible of creatures likes the idea of
being carried off to Egypt; does she, Eddy?”
“Yes. She takes a sensible interest in the triumphs
of engineering skill: especially when they are to change
the whole condition of an undeveloped country.”
“Lor!” says Rosa, shrugging her shoulders, with a
little laugh of wonder.
“Do you object,” Edwin inquires, with a majestic turn
of his eyes downward upon the fairy figure: “ do you ob-
ject, Rosa, to her feeling that interest?”
“Object? my dear Eddy! But really, doesn’t she hate
boilers and things?”
“I can answer for her not being so idiotic as to hate
EDWIN DROOD. 25
13oilers,” he returns with angry emphasis; “though I
cannot answer for her views about Things; really not
understanding what Things are meant.”
“But don’t she hate Arabs, and Turks, and Fellahs,
and people?”
“Certainly not.” Very firmly.
“At least, she must hate the Pyramids? Come,
Eddy?”
“Why should she be such a little—tall, I mean—
goose, as to hate the Pyramids, Rosa?”
“Ah! you should hear Miss Twinkleton,” often nodding
her head, and much enjoying the Lumps, “bore about
them, and then you wouldn’t ask. Tiresome old burying-
grounds! Isises, and Ibises, and Cheopses, and Pha-
raohses; who cares about them? And then there was
Belzoni, or Somebody, dragged out by the legs, half-
choked with bats and dust. All the girls say: Serve
him right, and hope it hurt him, and wish he had been
quite choked.”
The two youthful figures, side by side, but not now
arm-in-arm, wander discontentedly about the old Close;
and each sometimes stops and slowly imprints a deeper
footstep in the fallen leaves.
“Well!” says Edwin, after a lengthy silence. “Ac-
cording to custom. We can’t get on, Rosa.”
Rosa tosses her head, and says she don’t want to get
Oll.
“That’s a pretty sentiment, Rosa, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“If I say what, you’ll go wrong again.”
“You’ll go wrong, you mean, Eddy. Don’t be ungen-
erous.”
“ Ungenerous! I like that!”
“Then I don’t like that, and so I tell you plainly,”
Rosa pouts.
“Now, Rosa, I put it to you. Who disparaged my
profession, my destination—”
“You are not going to be buried in the Pyramids, I
hope?” she interrupts, arching her delicate eyebrows.
“You never said you were. If you are, why haven’t
you mentioned it to me? I can’t find out your plans by
instinct.”
d “Now, Rosa, you know very well what I mean, my
ear.”
26 EDWIN DROOD.
“Well, then, why did you begin with your detestable
red-nosed giantesses? And she would, she would, she
would, she would, she WOULD powder it!” cries Rosa,
in a little burst of comical contradictory spleen.
“Somehow or other, I never can come right in these
discussions,” says Edwin, sighing and become re-
signed.
“How is it possible, sir, that you ever can come right
when you’re always wrong? And as to Belzoni, I sup-
pose he's dead;—I’m sure I hope he is—and how can his
legs, or his chokes concern you?” sºr
“It is nearly time for your return, Rosa. We have
not had a very happy walk, have we?”
“A happy walk? A detestably unhappy walk, sir.
If I go up-stairs the moment I get in and cry till I can’t
take my dancing-lesson, you are responsible, mind!”
“Let us be friends, Rosa.”
“Ah!” cries Rosa, shaking her head, and bursting
into real tears, “I wish we could be friends. It’s be-
cause we can’t be friends, that we try one another so.
I am a young little thing, Eddy, to have an old heart-
ache; but I really, really have, sometimes. Don’t be
angry. I know you have one yourself too often. We
should both of us have done better, if What is to be had
been left What might have been. I am quite a little
serious thing now, and not teasing you. Let each of us
forbear, this one time, on Our own account, and On the
Other’s ”
Disarmed by this glimpse of a woman’s nature in the
spoiled child, though for an instant disposed to resent it
as seeming to involve the enforced affliction of himself
upon her, Edwin Drood stands watching her as she
childishly cries and sobs, with both hands to the hand-
kerchief at her eyes, and then—she becoming more
composed, and indeed beginning in her young incon-
stancy to laugh at herself for having been so moved—
leads her to a seat hard by, under the elm-trees.
“One clear word of understanding, Pussy dear. I
am not clever out of my own line—now I come to think
of it, I don’t know that I am particularly clever in it—
but I want to do right. There is not—there may be—I
really don’t see my way to what I want to say, but I
must say it before we part—there is not any other
young—”
EDWIN DROOD. 27
“O no, Eddy! It's generous of you to ask me; but
no, no, no!”
They have come very near to the Cathedral windows,
and at this moment the organ and the choir sound out
sublimely. As they sit listening to the solemn swell,
the confidence of last night rises in young Edwin
Drood’s mind, and he thinks how unlike this music is
to that discordance. . --
“I fancy I can distinguish Jack’s voice,” is his re-
mark in a low tone in connection with the train of
thought. g -
“Take me back at once, please,” urges his Affianced,
Quickly laying her light hand upon his wrist. “They
will all be coming out directly; let us get away. O,
what a resounding chord! But don’t let us stop to listen
to it; let us get away!” . -
Her hurry is over as soon as they have passed out of
the Close. They go arm-in-arm now, gravely and
deliberately enough, along the old High-street, to the
Nuns' House. At the gate, the street being within
sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud’s.
She remonstrates, laughing, and is a childish school-
girl again.
“Eddy, no! I’m too stickey to be kissed. But give
me your hand, and I’ll blow a kiss into that.”
He does so. She breathes a light breath into it, and
asks, retaining it and looking into it:
“Now say, what do you see?”
“See, Rosa?”
“Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could look into
a hand and see all sorts of phantoms? Can’t you see a
happy Future?”
For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as
the gate opens and closes, and One goes in, and the
Other goes away. *
22
28 EDWIN DROOD.
CHAPTER IV.
MR. SAPSEA.
ACCEPTING the Jackass as the type of self-sufficient
stupidity and conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few
other customs, more conventional than fair—then the
purest Jackass in Cloisterham is Mr. Thomas Sapsea,
Auctioneer.
Mr. Sapsea “ dresses at ” the Dean; has been bowed
to for the Dean, in mistake; has even been spoken to
in the street as My Lord, under the impression that he
was the Bishop come down unexpectedly, without his
chaplain. Mr. Sapsea is very proud of this, and of his
voice, and of his style. He has even (in selling landed
property) tried the experiment of slightly intoning in
his pulpit, to make himself more like what he takes to
be the genuine ecclesiastical article. So, in ending a .
Sale by Public Auction, Mr. Sapsea finishes off with an
air of bestowing a benediction on the assembled
brokers, which leaves the real Dean—a modest and
worthy gentleman—far behind.
Mr. Sapsea has many admirers; indeed, the proposi-
tion is carried by a large local majority, even including
non-believers in his wisdom, that he is a credit to Clois-
terham. He possesses the great qualities of being por-
tentous and dull, and of having a roll in his speech, and
another roll in his gait; riot to mention a certain gravely
flowing action with his hands, as if he were presently
going to Confirm the individual with whom he holds
discourse. Much nearer sixty years of age than fifty,
with a flowing outline of stomach, and horizontal
creases in his waistcoat; reputed to be rich; voting at
elections in the strictly respectable interest; morally
satisfied that nothing but he himself has grown since
he was a baby; how can dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea be
otherwise than a credit to Cloisterham, and society?
Mr. Sapsea’s premises are in the High-street, over
against the Nuns' House. They are of about the period
of the Nuns' House, irregularly modernised here and
there, as steadily deteriorating generations found, more
and more, that they preferred air and light to Fever
and the Plague. Over the doorway is a wooden effigy,
EDWIN DROOD. 29
about half life-size, representing Mr. Sapsea’s father, in
a curly wig and toga, in the act of Selling. The chastity
of the idea, and the natural appearance of the little
finger, hammer, and pulpit, have been much admired.
Mr. Sapsea sits in his dull ground-floor sitting-room,
giving first on his paved back yard; and then on his
railed-off garden. Mr. Sapsea had a bottle of port wine
on a table before the fire—the fire is an early luxury,
but pleasant on the cool, chilly autumn evening—and is
characteristically attended by his portrait, his eight-day
clock, and his weather-glass. Characteristically, be-
cause he would uphold himself against mankind, his
weather-glass against weather, and his clock against
time. -
By Mr. Sapsea's side on the table are a writing-desk
and writing materials. Glancing at a scrap of manu-
script, Mr. Sapsea reads it to himself with a lofty air,
and then, slowly pacing the room with his thumbs in
the arm-holes of his waistcoat, repeats it from memory:
so internally, though with much dignity, that the word
“Ethelinda,” is alone audible.
There are three clean wine-glasses in a tray on the
table. His serving-maid entering, and announcing
“Mr. Jasper is come, sir,” Mr. Sapsea waves “Admit
him,” and draws two wine-glasses from the rank, as
being claimed.
“Glad to see you, sir. I congratulate myself on hav-
ing the honor of receiving you here for the first time.”
Mr. Sapsea does the honors of his house in this wise.
“You are very good. The honor is mine and the self-
congratulation is mine.”
“You are pleased to say so, sir. But I do assure you
that it is a satisfaction to me to receive you in my
humble home. And that is what I would not say to
everybody.” Ineffable loftiness on Mr. Sapsea’s part
accompanies these words, as leaving the sentence to be
understood: “You will not easily believe that your so-
ciety can be a satisfaction to a man like myself; never-
theless, it is.”
“I have for some time desired to know you, Mr. Sap-
sea.”
“And I, sir, have long known you by reputation as a
man of taste. Let me fill your glass. I will give you,
sir,” said Mr. Sapsea, filling his own:
30 EDWIN DROOD.
“When the French come over,
May we meet them at Dover !’”
This was a patriotic toast in Mr. Sapsea’s infancy, and
he is therefore fully convinced of its being appropriate
to any subsequent era.
“You can scarcely be ignorant, Mr. Sapsea,” observes
Jasper, watching the auctioneer with a smile as the
latter stretches out his legs before the fire, “that you
know the world.”
“Well, sir,” is the chuckling reply, “I think I know
something of it; something of it.”
“Your reputation for that knowledge has always in-
terested and surprised me, and made me wish to know
you. For Cloisterham is a little place. . Cooped up in it
myself, I know nothing beyond it, and feel it to be a
very little place.”
“If I have not gone to foreign countries, young
man,” Mr. Sapsea begins, and then stops:– “You will
excuse me calling you young man, Mr. Jasper? You
are much my junior.” -
“By all means.”
“If I have not gone to foreign countries, young
man, foreign countries have come to me. They have
come to me in the way of business, and I have improved
upon my opportunities. Put it that I take an inventory,
or make a catalogue. I see a French clock. I never
saw him before, in my life, but I instantly lay my
finger on him and say ‘Paris!' I see some cups and
saucers of Chinese make, equally strangers to me per-
sonally: , I put my finger on them, then and there, and
I say ‘Pekin, Nankin, and Canton.” It is the same with
Japan, with Egypt, and with bamboo and sandal-wood
from the East Indies; I put my finger on them all. I
have put my finger on the North Pole before now, and
said “Spear of Esquimaux make, for half a pint of pale
sherry!’” -
“Really? A very remarkable way, Mr. Sapsea, of
acquiring a knowledge of men and things.”
“I mention it, sir,” Mr. Sapsea rejoins, with unspeak-
able complacency, “because, as I say, it don’t do to
boast of what you are; but show how you came to be it,
and then you prove it.”
“Most interesting. We were to speak of the late Mrs.
Sapsea.”
EDWIN IDROOD. 31
*
“We were, sir.” Mr. Sapsea fills both glasses, and
takes the decanter into safe keeping again. “Before I
consult your opinion as a man of taste on this little
trifle ’—holding it up—“ which is but a trifle, and still
has required some thought, sir, some little fever of the
brow, I Ought perhaps to describe the character of the
late Mrs. Sapsea, now dead three quarters of a year.”
Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his wine-
glass, puts down that Screen and calls up a look of inter-
est. . It is a little impaired in its expressiveness by his
having a shut-up gape still to dispose of, with watering
eyes.
“Half a dozen years ago, or so,” Mr. Sapsea proceeds,
“when I had enlarged my mind up to—I will not say to
what it now is, for that might seem to aim at too much,
but up to the pitch of wanting another mind to be ab-
Sorbed in it—I cast my eye about me for a nuptial part-
ner. Because, as I say, it is not good for man to be
alone.” * -
Mr. Jasper appears to commit this original idea to
memory. #
“Miss Brobity at that time kept, I will not call it the
rival establishment to the establishment at the Nuns'
House opposite, but I will call it the other parallel estab-
lishment down town. The world did have it that she
showed a passion for attending my sales, when they
took place on half holidays, or in vacation time. The
world did put it about, that she admired my style. The
world did notice that as time flowed by, my style be-
came traceable in the dictation-exercises of Miss Brob-
ity’s pupils. Young man, a whisper even sprang up in
- pure malignity, that one ignorant and besotted Churl
(a parent) so committed himself as to object to it by
name. But I do not believe this. For is it likely that
any human creature in his right senses would so lay
himself open to be pointed at, by what I call the finger
Of SCOrn?” -
1Mr. Jasper shakes his head. Not in the least likely.
Mr. Sapsea, in a grandiloquent state of absence of mind,
seems to refill his visitor’s glass, which is full already;
and does really refill his own, which is empty.
“Miss Brobity’s Being, young man, was deeply im-
bued with homage to Mind. She revered Mind, when
launched, or, as I say, precipitated, on an extensive
32 EHDWIN DROOD.
knowledge of the world. When I made my proposal,
she did me the honor to be so overshadowed with a
species of Awe, as to be able to articulate only the two
words, “O Thou!’—meaning myself. Her limpid blue
eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-transparent hands
were clasped together, pallor overspread her aquiline
features, and, though encouraged to proceed, she never
did proceed a word further. I disposed of the parallel
establishment by private contract, and we became as
nearly one as could be expected under the circum-
stances. But she never could, and she never did, find
a phrase satisfactory to her perhaps-too-favorable esti-
mate of my intellect. To the very last (feeble action of
liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished terms.”
Mr. Jasper has closed his eyes as the auctioneer has
deepened his voice. He now abruptly opens them, and
says, in unison with the deepened voice “Ah!”—rather
as if stopping himself on the extreme verge of adding—
‘‘ men ” --
“I have been since,” said Mr. Sapsea, with his legs
stretched out, and solemnly enjoying himself with the
wine and the fire, “what you behold me; I have been
since a solitary mourner; I have been since, as I say,
wasting my evening conversation on the desert air. I
will not say that I have reproached myself; but there
have been times when I have asked myself the question:
What if her husband had been nearer on a level with
her? If she had not had to look up quite so high, what
might the stimulating action have been upon the liver?”
Mr. Jasper says, with an appearance of having fallen
into dreadfully low Spirits, that he “supposes it was
to be.”
“We can only suppose so, sir,” Mr. Sapsea coincides.
“As I say, Man proposes, Heaven disposes. It may or
may not be putting the same thought in another form;
but that is the way I put it.”
Mr. Jasper murmurs assent.
“And now, Mr. Jasper,” resumes the auctioneer, pro-
ducing his scrap of manuscript, “Mrs. Sapsea’s monu-
ment having had full time to settle and dry, let me take
your opinion, as a man of taste, on the inscription I
have (as I before remarked, not without some little
fever of the brow) drawn out for it. Take it in
your own hand. The setting out of the lines requires
EDWIN DROOD. 33
to be followed with the eye, as well as the contents with
the mind.”
Mr. Jasper complying, sees and reads as follows:
ETHELINDA,
• Reverential Wife of
MR. THOMAS SAPSEA,
AUCTIONEER, VALUER, ESTATE AGENT, &c.,
OF THIS CITY.
Whose Knowledge of the World,
Though somewhat extensive,
Never brought him acquainted with
A SPIRIT
More capable of
LOOKING UP TO HIM.
STRANGER, PAUSE
And ask thyself the Question,
CANST THOU DO LIKEWISEQ
If Not,
WITH A BLUSH RETIRE.
Mr. Sapsea having risen and stationed himself with
his back to the fire, for the purpose of observing the
effect of these lines on the countenance of a man of
taste, consequently has his face towards the door, when
his serving-maid, again appearing, announces, ‘‘ Dur-
dles is come, sir!” He promptly draws forth and fills the
third wine-glass, as being now claimed, and replies,
“Show Durdles in.”
“Admirable!” quoth Mr. Jasper, handing back the
paper.
“You approve, sir?”
“Impossible not to approve. Striking, characteristic,
and complete.”
The auctioneer inclines his head, as One accepting
his due and giving a receipt; and invites the entering
Durdles to take off the glass of wine (handing the same),
for it will warm him.
Durdles is a stone-mason; chiefly in the gravestone,
tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their Color
from head to foot. No man is better known in Cloister-
ham. He is the chartered libertime of the place. Fame
trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught
that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works);
3
34 EDWIN DROOD.
and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he is.
With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than
any living authority; it may even be than any dead one.
It is said that the intimacy of this acquaintance began
in his habitually resorting to that secret place, to lock-
out the Cloisterham boy-populace, and sleep off the
fumes of liquor: he having ready access to the Cathe-
dral, as contractor for rough repairs. Be this as it may,
he does know much about it, and, in the demolition of
impedimental fragments of wall, buttress and pave-
ment, has seen strange sights. He often speaks of him-
self in the third person; perhaps being a little misty as to
his own identity when he narrates; perhaps impartially
adopting the Cloisterham nomenclature in reference to
a character of acknowledged distinction. Thus he will
say, touching his strange sights: “ Durdles come upon
the old chap,” in reference to a buried magnate of
ancient time and high degree, ‘‘ by striking right into
the coffin with his pick. The old chap gave Durdles a
look with his open eyes, as much as to say ‘Is your
name Durdles? Why, my man, I’ve been waiting for
you a devil of a time!’ And then he turned to powder.”
With a two-foot rule always in his pocket, and a mason’s
hammer all but always in his hand, Durdles goes con-
tinually sounding and tapping all about and about
the Cathedral; and whenever he says to Tope: “ Tope,
here's another old 'un in here!” Tope announces it to
the Dean as an established discovery.
In a suit of coarse flannel with horn buttons, a yellow
neckerchief with draggled ends, an old hat more russet-
colored than black, and laced boots of the hue of his stony
Calling, Durdles leads, a hazy, gipsy sort of life, carrying
his dinner about with him in a small bundle, and sitting
On all manner of tombstones to dine. This dinner of
Durdles’s has become quite a Cloisterham institution:
not only because of his never appearing in public with-
out it, but because of its having been, on certain
renowned occasions, taken into custody along with Dur-
dles (as drunk and incapable), and exhibited before the
Bench of Justices at the town-hall. These occasions,
however, have been few and far apart: Durdles being
as soldom drunk as sober. For the rest, he is an old
bachelor, and he lives in a little antiquated hole of a
house that was never finished: supposed to be built, so
EDWIN DROOD. 35
far, of stones stolen from the city wall. To this abode
there is an approach, ankle-deep in stone chips, resem-
bling a petrified grove of tombstones, urns, draperies,
and broken columns, in all stages of sculpture. Herein
two journeymen incessantly chip, while other two jour-
neymen, who face each other, incessantly saw stone;
dipping as regularly in and out of their sheltering sentry-
boxes, as if they were mechanical figures emblematical
Of Time and Death. -
To Durdles, when he had consumed his glass of port,
Mr. Sapsea intrusts that precious effort of his Muse.
Durdles unfeelingly takes out his two-foot rule, and
measures the lines calmly, alloying them with stone-
rit.
“This is for the monument, is it, Mr. Sapsea?”
“The Inscription. Yes.” Mr. Sapsea waits for its
effect on a common mind.
“It’ll come in to a eighth of an inch,” says Durdles.
“Your servant, Mr. Jasper. Hope I see you well.”
“How are you, Durdles?”
“I’ve got a touch of the Tombatism on me, Mr. Jas-
per, but that I must expect.” -
“You mean the Rheumatism,” says Sapsea, in a sharp
tone. (He is nettled by having his composition so me-
chanically received.) .
“No, I don’t. I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tombatism.
It’s another sort from Rheumatism. Mr. Jasper knows
what Durdles means. You get among them Tombs
afore it’s well light on a winter morning, and keep on,
as the Catechism says, a-walking in the same all the
days of your life, and you’ll know what Durdles means.”
“It is a bitter cold place,” Mr. Jasper assents, with
an antipathetic shiver. -
“And if it’s bitter cold for you, up in the chancel,
with a lot of live breath smoking out about you, what
the bitterness is to Durdles, down in the crypt among
the earthy damps there, and the dead breath of the old
'uns,” returns that individual, “Durdles leaves you to
judge.—Is this to be put in hand at once, Mr. Sapsea?”
Mr. Sapsea, with an Author’s anxiety to rush into
publication, replies that it cannot be out of hand too
SOO]]. -
“You had better let me have the key, then,” says
Durdles.
36 - EDWIN DROOD.
“Why, man, it is not to be put inside the monument!”
“Durdles knows where it's to be put, Mr. Sapsea; no
man better. Ask 'ere a man in Cloisterham whether
T}urdles knows his work.”
Mr. Sapsea rises, takes a key from a drawer, unlocks
an iron safe let into the Wall, and takes from it another
key.
“When Durdles puts a touch or a finish upon his
work, no matter where, inside or outside, Durdles likes
to look at his work all round, and see that his work is
a-doing him credit,” Durdles explains, doggedly.
The key proffered him by the bereaved widower being
a large one, he slips his two-foot rule into a side-pocket
of his flannel trousers made for it, and deliberately
opens his flannel coat, and opens the mouth of a large
breast-pocket within it before taking the key to place it
in that repository.
“Why, Durdles!” exclaims Jasper, looking on amused,
‘’ you are undermined with pockets!”
“And I carries weight in 'em, too, Mr. Jasper. Feel
those!” producing two other large keys.
“Hand me Mr. Sapsea's, likewise. Surely this is the
heaviest of the three.”
“You’ll find 'em much of a muchness, I expect,” says
Durdles. “They all belong to monuments. They all
open Durdles's work. Durdles keeps the keys of his
work mostly. Not that they are much used.”
“By the by,” it comes into Jasper’s mind to say, as
he idly examines the keys. “I have been going to ask
you, many a day, and have always forgotten. You
know they sometimes call you Stony Durdles, don’t
you?”
“Cloisterham knows me as Durdles, Mr. Jasper.”
“I am aware of that, of course. But the boys some-
times—”
“O! if you mind them young imps of boys—” Durdles
gruffly interrupts.
“I don’t mind them any more than you do. But there
was a discussion the other day among the Choir,
whether Stony stood for Tony;” clinking one key
against another.
(“Take care of the wards, Mr. Jasper.”)
“Or whether Stony stood for Stephen; ” clinking with
a change of keys. .
TEDWIN DROOD. 3?
(“You can’t make a pitch-pipe of 'em, Mr. Jasper.”)
“Or whether the name comes from your trade. How
stands the fact?”
Mr. Jasper weighs the three keys in his hand, lifts his
head from his idly stooping attitude Over the fire, and
delivers the keys to Durdles with an ingenuous and
friendly face.
But the stony one is a gruff one likewise, and that
hazy state of his is always an uncertain state, highly
conscious of its dignity, and prone to take offence. He
drops his two keys back into his pocket. One by one, and
buttons them up; he takes his dinner-bundle from the
chair-back on which he hung it when he came in; he
distributes the weight he carries, by tying the third key
up in it, as though he were an Ostrich, and liked to dine
Off Cold iron; and he gets out of the room, deigning no
word of answer.
Mr. Sapsea then proposes a hit at backgammon,
which, seasoned with his own improving conversation,
and terminating in a Supper of cold roast beef and
Salad, beguiles the golden evening until pretty late.
Mr. Sapsea’s wisdom being, in its delivery to mortals,
rather of the diffuse than the epigrammatic order, is by
no means expended even then; but his visitor intimates
that he will come back for more of the precious com-
modity on future occasions, and Mr. Sapsea lets him off
for the present, to ponder on the instalment he carries
a Way. -
CHAPTER V.
MR. D'URDLES AND FRIENT).
JOHN JASPER, on his way home through the Close, is
brought to a stand-still by the spectacle of Stony Dur-
dles, dinner-bundle and all, leaning his back against the
iron railing of the burial-ground enclosing it from the
old cloister-arches; and a hideous small boy in rags
flinging Stones at him as a well-defined mark in the
moonlight. Sometimes the stones hit him, and, some-
times they miss him, but Durdles seems indifferent to
38 EDWIN DROOD.
either fortune. The hideous small boy, on the contrary,
whenever he hits Durdles, blows a whistle of triumph
through a jagged gap, convenient for the purpose, in
the front of his mouth, where half his teeth are want-
ing; and whenever he misses him, yelps out “Mulled
agin!” and tries to atone for the failure by taking a
more correct and vicious aim.
“What are you doing to the man?” demands Jasper,
stepping out into the moonlight from the shade. -
“Making a cock-shy of him,” replies the hideous
Small boy.
“Give me those stones in your hand.”
“Yes, I’ll give 'em you down your throat, if you come
a-ketching hold of me,” says the small boy, 'shaking
himself loose, and backing. “I’ll Smash your eye, if
you don’t look out!”
“Baby-Devil that you are, what has the man done to
you?” *
“He won’t go home.”
“What is that to you?”
“He gives me a 'apenny to pelt him home if I ketches
him out too late,” says the boy. And then chants, like
a little Savage, half stumbling and half dancing among
the rags and laces of his dilapidated boots:
“Widdy widdy wen
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten,
Widdy widdy wyl
Then—E—don't—go—then—I—sby—
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning !”
—with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, and
one more delivery at Durdles.
This would seem to be a poetical note of preparation,
agreed upon, as a caution to Durdles to stand clear if
he can, or to betake himself homeward.
John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his head
to follow him (feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax
him), and crosses to the iron railing where the Stony
(and stoned) One is profoundly meditating.
“Do you know this thing, this child?” asks Jasper,
at a loss for a word that will define this thing.
“Deputy,” says Durdles, with a nod.
“Is that its—his—name?”
“Deputy,” assents Durdles.
EDWIN DROOD. 39
“I’m man-servant up at the Travellers’ Twopenny in
Gas Works Garding,” this thing explains. “All us
man-servants at Travellers’ Lodgings is named Deputy.
When we’re chock full and the Travellers is all a-bed I
come out for my 'elth.” Then withdrawing into the
road, and taking aim, he resumes:
“Widdy widdy went
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—”
“Hold your hand,” cries Jasper, “and don’t throw
while I stand so near him, or I’ll kill you! Come,
Durdles; let me walk home with you to-night. Shall
I carry your bundle?”
“Not on any account,” said Durdles, adjusting it.
“Durdles was making his reflections here when you
come up, sir, Surrounded by his works, like a popular
Author.—Your own brother-in-law; ” introducing a sar-
cophagus within the railing, white and cold in the moon-
light. “Mrs. Sapsea; ” introducing the monument of
that devoted wife. “Late Incumbent; ” introducing the
Reverend Gentleman’s broken column. “Departed As-
sessed Taxes; ” introducing a vase and towel, standing
on what might represent the cake of soap. “Former
pastry-cook and Muffin-maker, much respected; ” intro-
ducing gravestone. “All safe and sound here, sir, and
all Durdles's work! Of the common folk, that is merely
bundled up in turf and brambles, the less said the better.
A poor lot, soon forgot.”
“This creature, Deputy, is behind us,” says Jasper,
looking back. “Is he to follow us?”
The relations between Durdles and Deputy are of a
capricious kind; for, on Durdles's turning himself about
with the slow gravity of beery soddenness, Deputy
makes a pretty wide circuit into the road and stands
on the defensive.
“You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun
to-night,” says Durdles, unexpectedly reminded of, or
imagining, an injury.
“Yer lie, I did,” says Deputy, in his only form of
polite contradiction.
“Own brother, sir,” observes Durdles, turning himself
about again, and as unexpectedly forgetting his offence
as he had recalled or conceived it; “own brother to
40 EDWIN DROOD.
Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in
life.”
“At which he takes aim?” Mr. Jasper suggests.
“That's it, sir,” returns Durdles, quite satisfied; ‘‘ at
which he takes aim. I took him in hand and gave him
an object. What was he before? A destroyer. What
work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did
he earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham Jail. Not a
person, not a piece of property, not a winder, not a
horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird, nor a fowl, nor
a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an enlightened
object. I put that enlightened object before him, and
now he can turn his honest halfpenny by the three
penn'orth a week.” -
“I wonder he has no competitors.” -
“He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones 'em all
away. Now, I don’t know what this scheme of mine
comes to,” pursues Durdles, considering about it with
the same sodden gravity; “I don’t know what you may
precisely call it. It ain’t a sort of a-scheme of a-
National Education?”
“I should say not,” replies Jasper.
“I should say not,” assents Durdles; “then we won’t
try to give it a name.”
“He still keeps behind us,” repeats Jasper, looking
over his shoulder; “is he to follow us?”
“We can’t help going round by the Travellers’ Two-
penny, if we go the short way, which is the back way,”
Durdles answers, “ and we’ll drop him there.”
So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank of one, taking
open order, and invading the silence of the hour and
place by stoning every wall, post, pillar, and other
inanimate object, by the deserted way.
“Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?”
asks John Jasper. -
“Anything old, I think you mean,” growls Durdles.
“It ain’t a spot for novelty.”
“Any new discovery on your part, I meant.”
“There's a old 'un under the seventh pillar on the left
as you go down the broken steps of the little under-
ground chapel as formerly was; I make him out (so fur
as I’ve made him out yet) to be one of them old 'uns
with a crook. To judge from the size of the passages
in the walls, and of the steps and doors, by which they
EDWIN DROOD. 41
come and went, them crooks must have been a good
deal in the way of the old 'uns! . Two on 'em meeting
promiscuous must have hitched one another by the
mitre pretty often, I should say.”
Without any endeavor to correct the literality of this
Opiñion, Jasper surveys his companion—covered from
head to foot with old mortar, lime, and stone grit—as
though he, Jasper, were getting imbued with a romantic
interest in his weird life.
“Yours is a curious existence.”
Without furnishing the least clue to the question,
whether he receives this as a compliment or as quite the
reverse, Durdles gruffly answers: “Yours is another.”
“Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old
earthy, chilly, never-changing place, Yes. But there is
much more mystery and interest in your connexion
with the Cathedral than in mine. Indeed, I am begin-
ning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as
a sort of student, or free 'prentice, under you, and to
let me go about with you sometimes, and see some of
these old nooks in which you pass your days.”
The Stony One replies, in a general way, “All right.
Everybody knows where to find Durdles, when he's
wanted.” Which, if not strictly true, is approximately
So, if taken to express that Durdles may always be
found in a state of vagabondage somewhere.
“What I dwell upon most,” says Jasper, pursuing his
subject of romantic interest, “is the remarkable ac-
curacy with which you would seem to find out where
people are buried.—What is the matter? That bundle
is in your way; let me hold it.”
Durdles has stopped and backed a little (Deputy, at-
tentive to all his movements, immediately skirmishing
into the road), and was looking about for some ledge
or corner to place his bundle on, when thus relieved
Of it.
“Just you give me my hammer Out of that,” says
Durdles, ‘‘ and I’ll show you.”
Clink, clink. And his hammer is handed him.
“Now, lookee here. You pitch your note, don’t you,
Mr. Jasper?”
• * Yog.”
“So I sound for mine. I take my hammer, and I
tap.” (Here he strikes the pavement, and the attentive
42 ED WIN DROOD.
Deputy skirmishes at a rather wider range, as suppos-
ing that his head may be in requisition.) “I tap, tap,
tap. Solid! I go on tapping. Solid still! Tap again.
Holloa! Hollow! Tap again, persevering. Solid in
hollow! Tap, tap, tap, to try it better. Solid in hol-
low; and inside solid, hollow again! There you äre!
Old 'un crumbled away in stone coffin, in vault!”
“Astonishing!”
“I have even done this,” says Durdles, drawing out
his two-foot rule (Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer,
as suspecting that Treasure may be about to be discov-
ered, which may somehow lead to his own enrichment,
and the delicious treat of the discoverers being hanged
by the neck, on his evidence, until they are dead.) “Say
that hammer of mine’s a wall—my work. Two; four;
and two is six,” measuring on the pavement. “Six foot
inside that wall is Mrs. Sapsea.” -
“Not really Mrs. Sapsea?”
“Say Mrs. Sapsea. Her wall’s thicker, but say Mrs.
Sapsea. Durdles taps that wall represented by that
hammer, and says, after good sounding: “Something
betwixt us!' Sure enough, some rubbish has been left
in that same six-foot space by Durdles's men!”
Jasper opines that such accuracy “is a gift.”
“I wouldn’t have it at a gift,” returns Durdles, by no
means receiving the observation in good part. “I
worked it out for myself. Durdles comes by his knowl-
edge through grubbing deep for it, and having it up by
the roots when it don’t want to come.—Holloa you
Deputy!”
“Widdy!” is Deputy's shrill response, standing off
again.
“Catch that ha'penny. And don’t let me see any
more of you to-night, after we come to the Travellers’
Twopenny.”
“Warning!” returns Deputy, having caught the half-
penny, and appearing by this mystic word to express
his assent to the arrangement.
They have but to cross what was once the vineyard,
belonging to what was once the Monastery, to come into
the narrow back lane wherein stands the crazy wooden
house of two low stories currently known as the Travel-
lors’ Twopenny:-a house all warped and distorted, like
the º of the travellers, with scant remains of a
*
.*
EDWIN DROOD. 43
lattices work porch over the door, and also of a rustic
fence before its stamped-out garden; by reason of the
travellers being so bound to the premises by a tender
sentiment (or so fond of having a fire by the roadside in
the course of the day), that they can never be persuaded
or threatened into departure, without violently possess-
ing themselves of Some wooden forget-me-not, and bear-
ing it off.
The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to
this wretched place by fragments of conventional red
curtaining in the windows, which rags are made mud-
dily transparent in the night-season by feeble lights of
rush or cotton dip burning dully in the close air of the
inside. As Durdles and Jasper come near, they are
addressed by an inscribed paper lantern over the door,
Setting forth the purport of the house. They are also
addressed by some half-dozen other hideous small boys
—whether twopenny lodgers or followers or hangers-on
of such, who knows!—who, as if attracted by some
Carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the moon-
light, as vultures might gather in the desert, and in-
stantly fall to stoning him and one another.
“Stop, you young brutes,” cries Jasper angrily, “ and
let us go by!” -
This remonstrance being received with yells and fly-
ing stones, according to a custom of late years com-
fortably established among the police regulations of our
English communities, where Christians are stoned on
all sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were revived,
Durdles remarks of the young savages, with some point,
that “they haven’t got an object,” and leads the way
down the lane.
At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged,
checks his companion and looks back. All is silent.
Next moment, a stone coming rattling at his hat, and a
distant yell of “Wake-Cock! Warning!” followed by a
crow, as from some infernally-hatched Chanticleer,
apprising him under, whose victorious fire he stands, he
turns the corner into safety, and takes Durdles home:
Durdles'stumbling among the litter of his stony yard as
if he were going to turn head foremost into one of the
unfinished tombs.
John Jasper returns by another way to his gatehouse,
and entering softly with his key, finds his fire still
44 EDWIN DROOD.
\
burning. He takes from a locked press a peculiar-look-
ing pipe, which he fills—but not with tobacco–and,
having adjusted the contents of the bowl, very carefully,
with a little instrument, ascends an inner staircase of
only a few steps, leading to two rooms. One of these
is his own sleeping chamber: the other is his nephew’s.
There is a light in each.
His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled. John
Jasper stands looking down upon him, his unlighted
pipe in his hand, for some time, with a fixed and deep
attention. Then, hushing his footsteps, he passes to his
own room, lights his pipe, and delivers himself to the
Spectres it invokes at midnight.
CHAPTER VI.
PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR, CANON CORNER.
THE Reverend Septimus Crisparkle (Septimus, be-
cause six little brother Crisparkles before him went out,
One by One, as they were born, like six weak little rush-
lights, as they were lighted), having broken the thin
morning ice near Cloisterham Weir with his amiable
head, much to the invigoration of his frame, was now
assisting his circulation by boxing at a looking-glass
with great science and prowess. A fresh and healthy
portrait the looking-glass presented of the Reverend
Septimus, feinting and dodging with the utmost artful-
ness, and hitting out from the shoulder with the utmost
Štraightness, while his radiant features teemed with
innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from
his boxing-gloves.
It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs. Crisparkle
—mother, not wife, of the Reverend Septimus—was
Only just down, and waited for the urn. Indeed, the
Reverend Septimus left off at this very moment to take
the pretty old lady’s entering face between his” boxing-
gloves and kiss it. Having done so with tenderness,
the Reverend Septimus turned to again, countering with
his left, and putting in his right, in a tremendous
Illa,]]]].O.I’.
EDWIN DROOD. 45
“I say, every morning of my life, that you’ll do it at
last, Sept,” remarked the old lady, looking on; “and so
you will.”
“Do what, Ma dear?”
“Break the pier-glass, or burst a blood-vessel.”
“Neither, please God, Ma dear. Here's wind, Ma.
- Look at this!” -
In a concluding round of great severity, the Reverend
Septimus administered and escaped all sorts of punish-
ment, and wound up by getting the old lady’s cap into
Chancery—such is the technical term used in scientific
circles by the learned in the Noble Art—with a lightness
of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender or
Cherry ribbon. On it. Magnanimously releasing the de-
feated, just in time to get his gloves into a drawer and
feign to be looking out of window in a contemplative
state of mind when a servant entered, the Reverend
Septimus then gave place to the urn and other prepara-
tions for breakfast. These completed, and the two alone
again, it was pleasant to see (or would have been, if
there had been any one to see it, which there never
was), the old lady standing to say the Lord's Prayer
aloud, and her son, Minor Canon nevertheless, standing
with bent head to hear it, he being within five years of
forty: much as he had stood to hear the same words
from the same lips when he was within five months of
four.
What is prettier than an old lady—except a young
lady—when her eyes are bright, when her figure is trim
and compact, when her face is cheerful and calm, when
her dress is as the dress of a china, shepherdess: so
dainty in its colors, so individually assorted to herself,
so neatly moulded on her? Nothing is prettier, thought
the good Minor Canon frequently, when taking his seat
at table opposite his long-widowed mother. Her thought
at such times may be condensed into the two words
that oftenest did duty together in all her conversations:
“My Sept!”
They were a good pair to sit breakfasting together in
Minor Canon Corner, Cloisterham. For Minor Canon
Corner was a quiet place in the shadow of the Cathe-
dral, which the cawing of the rooks, the echoing foot-
steps of rare passers, the sound of the Cathedral bell,
Or the roll of the Cathedral organ, seemed to render
46 EDWIN DROOD.
more quiet than absolute silence. Swaggering fighting
men had had their centuries of ramping and raving
about Minor Canon Corner, and beateri serfs had had
their centuries of drudging and dying there, and pow-
erful monks had had their centuries of being some-
times useful and sometimes harmful there, and be-
hold they were all gone out of Minor Canon Corner,
and so much the better. Perhaps one of the high-
est uses of their ever having been there, was, that
there might be left behind, that blessed air of tran-
quillity which pervaded Minor Canon Corner, and that
serenely romantic state of the mind—productive for
the most part of pity and forbearance—which is en-
gendered by a sorrowful story that is all told, or a pa-
thetic play that is played out.
Red-brick walls harmoniously toned down in color by
time, strong-rooted ivy, latticed windows, panelled
rooms, big oaken beams in little places, and Stone-
walled gardens where annual fruit yet ripened upon
monkish trees, were the principal surroundings of pretty
old Mrs. Crisparkle and the Reverend Septimus as they
sat at breakfast.
“And what, Ma dear,” inquired the Minor Canon,
giving proof of a wholesome and vigorous appetite,
“ does the letter say?”
The pretty old lady, after reading it, had just laid it
down upon the breakfast-cloth. She handed it over to
her son.
Now, the old lady was exceedingly proud of her
bright eyes being so clear that she could read writing
without spectacles. Her son was also so proud of the
circumstance, and so dutifully bent on her deriving the
utmost possible gratification from it, that he had in-
vented the pretence that he himself could not read
writing without spectacles. Therefore he now assumed
a pair, of grave and prodigious proportions, which not
only seriously inconvenienced his nose and his break-
fast, but seriously impeded his perusal of the letter.
For, he had the eyes of a microscope and a telescope
combined, when they were unassisted.
“It’s from Mr. Honeythunder, of course,” said the
old lady, folding her arms.
“Of course,” assented her son. He then lamely
read on:
EDWIN DROOD. 4?
“Haven of Philanthropy,
“Chief Offices, London, Wednesday.
“DEAR MADAM, . e
“‘I write in the –;’ In the what’s this? What does
he write in P”
“In the chair,” said the old lady. -
The Reverend Septimus took off his spectacles that
he might see her face, as he exclaimed:
“Why, what should he write in?”
“Bless me, bless me, Sept,” returned the old lady,
i you don’t see the context! Give it back to me, my
dear.” -
Glad to get his spectacles off (for they always made
his eyes water), her son obeyed: murmuring that his
Sight for reading manuscript got worse and worse daily.
‘‘‘I write,’” his mother went on, reading very per-
spicuously and precisely, ‘‘‘ from the chair, to which I
shall probably be confined for some hours.’”
Septimus looked at the row of chairs against the wall,
With a half-protesting and half-appealing countenance.
“‘We have,’” the old lady read on with a little extra
emphasis, ‘‘‘ a meeting of our Convened Chief Compos-
ite Committee of Central and District Philanthropists,
at Our Head Haven as above; and it is their unanimous
pleasure that I take the chair.’”
Septimus breathed more freely, and muttered: “O!
if he comes to that, let him.”
‘‘‘Not to lose a day’s post, I take the opportunity of
a long report being read, denouncing a public mis-
Creant—’”
“It is a most extraordinary thing,” interposed the
gentle Minor Canon, laying down his knife and fork to
rub his ear in a vexed manner, “that these Philanthro-
pists are always denouncing somebody. And it is
another most extraordinary thing that they are always
So violently flush of miscreants!”
“‘Denouncing a public miscreant!’”—the old lady
resumed, “‘to get our little affair of business off my
mind. I have spoken with my two wards, Neville and
Helena Landless, on the subject of their defective edu-
Cation, and they have given in to the plan proposed; as
I should have taken good care they did, whether they
liked it or not.’”
“And it is another most extraordinary thing,” re-
48 EDWIN DROOD.
marked the Minor Canon in the same tone as before,
“ that these Philanthropists are so given to seizing their
fellow-creatures by the scruff of the neck, and (as one
may say) bumping them into the paths of peace.—I beg
your pardon, Ma dear, for interrupting.”
“‘Therefore, dear Madam, you will please to prepare
your son, the Rev. Mr. Septimus, to expect Neville as an
inmate to be read with, on Monday next. On the same
day Helena will accompany him to Cloisterham to take
up her quarters at the Nuns' House, the establishment
recommended by yourself and son jointly. Please like-
wise to prepare for her reception and tuition there. The
terms in both cases are understood to be exactly as stated
to me in writing by yourself, when I opened a corre-
spondence with you on this subject, after the honor of
being introduced to you at your sister’s house in town
here. With compliments to the Rev. Mr. Septimus, I
am, Dear Madam, Your affectionate brother (In Philan-
thropy), LUKE HONEYTHUNDER.’” *.
“Well, Ma,” said Septimus, after a little more rubbing
of his ear, “we must try it. There can be no doubt
that we have room for an inmate, and that I have time
to bestow upon him, and inclination too. I must
confess to feeling rather glad that he is not Mr. Honey-
thunder himself. Though that seems wretchedly preju-
diced—does it not?—for I never saw him. Is he a
large man, Ma?”
“I should call him a large man, my dear,” the old
lady replied after some hesitation, “but that his voice
is so much larger.”
“Than himself?”
“Than anybody.”
“Hah!” said Septimus. And finished his breakfast
as if the flavor of the Superior Family Souchong, and
also of the ham and toast and eggs, were a little on the
WV 81) G.
Mrs. Crisparkle's sister, another piece of Dresden
china, and matching her so neatly that they would have
made a delightful pair of ornaments for the two ends of
any capacious old-fashioned chimney-piece, and by right
should never have been seen apart, was the childless wife
of a clergyman holding Corporation preferment in Lon-
don City. Mr. Honeythunder in his public character of
Professor of Philanthropy had come to know Mrs. Cris-
EDWIN DEKOOD. 49
parkle during the last re-matching of the china orna-
ments (in other words during her last annual visit to her
sister), after a public occasion of a philanthropic nature,
when certain devoted orphans of tender years had been
glutted with plum buns, and plump bumptiousness.
These were all the antecedents known in Minor Canon
Corner of the coming pupils. e-
“I am sure you will agree with me, Ma,” said Mr.
Crisparkle, after thinking the matter over, “that the
first thing to be done, is, to put these young people as
much at their ease as possible. There is nothing disin-
terested in the notion, because we cannot be at our ease
with them unless they are at their ease with us. Now,
Jasper’s nephew is down here at present; and like takes
to like, and youth takes to youth. He is a cordial young
follow, and we will have him to meet the brother and
sister at dinner. That’s three. We can’t think of ask-
ing him, without asking Jasper. That’s four. . Add
Miss Twinkleton and the fairy bride that is to be, and
that’s six. Add our two selves, and that's eight. Would
eight at a friendly dinner at all put you out, Ma?”
“Nine would, Sept,” returned the old lady, visibly
Il CTV OllS. - *
“My dear Ma, I particularise eight.”
“The exact size of the table and the room, my dear.”
So it was settled that way; and when Mr. Crisparkle
called with his mother upon Miss Twinkleton, to arrange
for the reception of Miss Helena Landless at the Nuns'
House, the two other invitations having reference to
that establishment were proffered and accepted. Miss
Twinkleton did, indeed, glance at the globes, as regret-
ting that they were not formed to be taken out into
society; but became reconciled to leaving them behind.
Instructions were then dispatched to the Philanthropist
for the departure and arrival, in good time for dinner,
of Mr. Neville and Miss Helena; and stock for soup be-
came fragrant in the air of Minor Canon Corner.
In those days there was no railway to Cloisterham,
and Mr. Sapsea said there never would be. Mr. Sapsea said
more; he said there never should be. And yet, marvel-
lous to consider, it has come to pass, in these days, that
Express Trains don’t think Cloisterham worth stopping
at, but yell and whirl through it on their larger errands,
casting the dust off their Wheels as a testimony against
4
50 EDWIN DROOD.
its insignificance. Some remote fragment of Main Line
to somewhere else, there was, which was going to ruin
the Money Market, if it failed, and Church and State
if it succeeded, and (of course), the Constitution, whether
or no; but even that had already so unsettled Cloister-
ham traffic, that the traffic, deserting the high road,
came sneaking in from an unprecedented part of the
country by a back stable-Way, for many years labelled
at the corner: “Beware of the Dog.”
To this ignominious avenue of approach, Mr. Cris-
parkle repaired, awaiting the arrival of a short Squad
omnibus, with a disproportionate heap of luggage on
the roof–like a little Elephant with infinitely too much
Castle—which was then the daily service between Clois-
terham and external mankind. As this vehicle lum-
bered up, Mr. Crisparkle could hardly see anything else
of it for a large outside passenger seated on the box,
with his elbows squared, and his hands on his knees,
compressing the driver into a most uncomfortably small
compass, and glowering about him with a strongly-
marked face.
“Is this Cloisterham?” demanded the passenger, in a
tremendous voice.
“It is, ’’ replied the driver, rubbing himself as if he
ached, after throwing the reins to the ostler. “And I
never was so glad to see it.”
“Tell your master to make his box-seat wider, then,”
returned the passenger. “Your master is morally
bound—and ought to be legally, under ruinous penal-
ties—to provide for the comfort of his fellow-man.”
The driver instituted, with the palm of his hands, a
Superficial perquisition into the state of his skeleton;
which seemed to make him anxious.
“Have I sat upon you?” asked the passenger.
“You have,” said the driver, as if he didn’t like it at
all.
“Take that card, my friend.” -
“I think I won’t deprive you on it,” returned the
driver, casting his eyes over it with no great favor,
without taking it. “What's the good of it to me?”
“Be a Member of that Society,” said the passenger.
“What shall I get by it?” asked the driver.
“Brotherhood, ” returned the passenger, in a fero-
cious voice.
EDWIN DROOD. 51
“Thankee,” said the driver, very deliberately, as he
got down; “my mother was contented with myself, and
so am I. . I don’t want no brothers.”
“But you must have them,” replied the passenger, also
descending, “whether you like it or not. I am your
brother.”
“I say!” expostulated the driver, becoming more
chafed in temper, “ not too fur! The worm will,
when—”
. But here Mr. Crisparkle interposed, remonstrating
aside, in a friendly voice: “Joe, Joe, Joe! don’t forget
yourself, Joe, my good fellow !” and then, when Joe
peaceably touched his hat, accosting the passenger
with: “Mr. Honeythunder?”
“That is my name, sir."
“My name is Crisparkle. ”
“Reverend Mr. Septimus? Glad to see you, sir. Ne-
ville and Helena are inside. Having a little succumbed
of late, under the pressure of my public labors, I
thought I would take a mouthful of fresh air, and come
down with them, and return at night. So you are the
Reverend Mr. Septimus, are you?” surveying him on
the whole with disappointment, and twisting a double
eyeglass by its ribbon, as if he were roasting it, but not
otherwise using it. “Hah! I expected to see you
older, sir.” -
“I hope you will,” was the good-humored reply.
“Eh!” demanded Mr. Honeythunder.
“Only a poor little joke. Not worth repeating.”
“Joke? Ay; I never see a joke,” Mr. Honeythunder
frowningly retorted. “A joke is wasted upon me, sir.
Where are they? Helena and Neville, come here! Mr.
Crisparkle has come down to meet you.”
An unusually handsome lithe young fellow, and an
unusually handsome lithe girl; much alike; both very
dark, and very rich in color; she, of almost the gipsy
type; something untamed about them both; a certain
air upon them of hunter and huntress; yet withal a cer-
tain air of being the objects of the chase, rather than
the followers. Slender, supple, quick of eye and limb;
half shy, half defiant; fierce of look; an indefinable kind
of pause coming and going on their whole expression,
both of face and form, which might be equally likened
to the pause before a crouch or a bound. The rough
52 IED WIN DROOD.
mental notes made in the first five minutes by Mr. Cris-
parkle would have read thus, verbatim.
He invited Mr. Honeythunder to dinner, with a troub-
led mind (for the discomfiture of the dear old china
shepherdess lay heavy on it), and gave his arm to
Helena Landless. Both she and her brother, as they
Walked all together through the ancient streets, took
great delight in what he pointed out of the Cathedral
and the Monastery ruin, and wondered—so his notes
ran on—much as if they were beautiful barbaric cap-
tives brought from some wild tropical dominion. Mr.
Honeythunder walked in the middle of the road, shoul-
dering the natives out of his way, and loudly developing
a scheme he had, for making a raid on all the unem-
ployed persons in the United Kingdom, laying them ev-
ery one by the heels in jail, and forcing them, On pain
of prompt extermination, to become philanthropists.
Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of philan-
thropy when she beheld this very large and very loud
excrescence on the little party. Always something in
the nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr. Honey-
thunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor
Cannon Corner. Though it was not literally true, as
was facetiously charged against him by public unbe-
lievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures:
“Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be
blessed!” still his philanthropy was of that gunpowder-
ous sort that the difference between it and animosity
was hard to determine. You were to abolish military
force, but you were first to bring all commanding offi-
cers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial
for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish
war, but were to make converts by making war upon
them, and charging them with loving war as the apple
of their eye. You were to have no capital punishment,
but were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legis-
lators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary
Opinion. You were to have universal concord, and
were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn’t,
or conscientiously couldn’t, be concordant. You were
to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite
interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated
him), and calling him all manner of names. Above all
things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your
EDWIN DROOD. 53
own account. You were to go to the offices of the
Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name down as a
Member and a Professing Philanthropist. Then, you
were to pay up your Subscription, get your card of
membership and your ribbon and medal, and were ever-
more to live upon a platform, and evermore to say what
Mr. Honeythunder said, and what the Treasurer said,
and was the sub-Treasurer said, and what the Com-
mittee said, and what the Sub-Committee said, and
what the Secretary said, and what the Vice-Secretary
said. And this was usually said in the unanimously-
carried resolution under hand and seal, to the effect:
“That this assembled Body of Professing Philan-
thropists views, with indignant scorn and contempt,
not unmixed with utter detestation and loathing abhor-
rence,”—in short, the baseness of all those who do not
belong to it, and pledges itself to make as many obnox-
ious statements as possible about them, without being
at all particular as to facts.
The dinner was a most doleful breakdown. The phi-
lanthropist deranged the symmetry of the table, sat
himself in the way of the waiting, blocked up the thor-
oughfare, and drove Mr. Tope (who assisted the parlor-
maid) to the verge of distraction by passing plates and
dishes On, over his own head. Nobody could talk to
anybody, because he held forth to everybody at once,
as if the company had no individual existence, but were
a Meeting. He impounded the Reverend Mr. Septimus,
as an official personage to be addressed, or kind of
human peg to hang his Oratorical hat On, and fell into
the exasperating habit, common among Such Orators,
of impersonating him as a wicked and weak opponent.
Thus, he would ask: “And will you, Sir, now Stultify
yourself by telling me”—and so forth, when the inno-
cent man had not opened his lips, nor meant to Open
them. Or he would say: “Now see, sir, to what a posi-
tion you are reduced. I will leave you no escape. After
exhausting all the resources of fraud and falsehood,
during years upon years; after exhibiting a combination
of dastardly meanness with ensanguined daring, Such
as the world has not often witnessed; you have now the
hypocrisy to bend the knee before the most degraded of
mankind, and to sue and whine and howl for mercy!”
Whereat the unfortunate Minor Canon would look, in
54 , EDWIN DROOD.
part indignant and in part perplexed: while his worthy
mother sat bridling, with tears in her eyes, and the
remainder of the party lapsed into a sort of gelati-
nous state, in which there was no flavor of solidity, and
very little resistance.
But the gush of philanthropy that burst forth when
the departure of Mr. Honeythunder began to impend,
must have been highly gratifying to the feelings of that
distinguished man. His coffee was produced, by the
special activity of Mr. Tope, a full hour before he
wanted it. Mr. Crisparkle set with his watch in his
hand for about the same period, lest he should overstay
his time. The four young people were unanimous in
believing that the Cathedral clock struck three-quarters,
when it actually struck but one. Miss Twinkleton esti-
mated the distance to the Omnibus at five-and-twenty
minutes' walk, when it was really five. The affec-
tionate kindness of the whole circle hustled him into
his great-coat, and shoved him out into the moonlight,
as if he were a fugitive traitor with whom they sym-
pathised, and a troop of horse were at the back door.
Mr. Crisparkle and his new charge, who took him to the
omnibus, were so fervent in their apprehensions of his
catching cold, that they shut him up in it instantly and
left him, with Still half-an-hour to spare.
CHAPTER VII.
MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE.
“I KNOW very little of that gentleman, sir,” said Ne-
ville to the Minor Canon as they turned back.
“You know very little of your guardian?” the Minor
Canon repeated.
“Almost nothing!”
“How came he—”
“To be my guardian? I'll tell you, sir. I suppose
Y. know that we come (my sister and I) from Cey-
On 2 ” -
“Indeed, no.”
EDWIN DROOD. 55
“I wonder at that. We lived with a stepfather there.
Our mother died there, when we were little children.
We have had a wretched existence. She made him our
guardian, and he was a miserly wretch who grudged us
food to eat, and clothes to wear. At his death he passed
us Over to this man; for no better reason that I know of,
than his being a friend or connexion of his, whose name
Was always in print and catching his attention.”
“That was lately, I suppose?”
“Quite lately, sir. This stepfather of ours was a cruel
brute as well as a grinding One. It is well he died when
he did, or I might have killed him.”
Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the moonlight and
looked at his hopeful pupil in consternation.
“I surprise you, sir?” he said, with a quick change to
a Submissive manner.
“You shock me; unspeakably shock me.”
The pupil hung his head for a little while, as they
walked on, and then said: “You never saw him beat
your sister. I have seen him beat mine, more than once
or twice, and I never forgot it.”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “not even a beloved
and beautiful sister’s tears under dastardly ill-usage; ”
he became less severe, in spite of himself, as his indig-
nation rose; “could justify those horrible expressions
that you used.” -
“I am sorry I used them, and especially to you, sir.
I beg to recall them. But permit me to set you right
on one point. You spoke of my sister’s tears. My sis-
ter would have let him tear her to pieces, before she
would have let him believe that he could make her shed
a tear.”
Mr. Crisparkle reviewed those mental notes of his,
and was neither at all surprised to hear it, nor at all dis-
posed to question it.
“Perhaps you will think it strange, sir,”—this was
said in a hesitating voice—“that I should so soon ask
you to allow me to confide in you, and to have the
kindness to hear a word or two from me in my de-
fence?” -
“Defence?” Mr. Crisparkle repeated. “You are not
on your defence, Mr. Neville.”
‘‘I think I am, sir. At least I know I should be, if
you were better acquainted with my character.”
56 EDWIN DROOD.
“Well, Mr. Neville,” was the rejoiner. “What if
you leave me to find it out?”
“Since it is your pleasure, sir,” answered the young
man, with a quick change in his manner to Sullen dis-
appointment: “Since it is your pleasure to check me in
Imy impulse, I must submit.”
There was that in the tone of this short speech which
made the conscientious man to whom it was addressed
uneasy. It was hinted to him that he might, without
meaning it, turn aside a trustfulness beneficial to a mis-
shapen young mind and perhaps to his own power of
directing and improving it. They were within sight of
the lights in his windows, and he stopped.
“Let us turn back and take a turn or two up and
down, Mr. Neville, or you may not have time to finish
what you wish to say to me. You are hasty in thinking
that I mean to check you. Quite the contrary. I invite
your confidence.”
“You have invited it, sir, without knowing it, ever
since I came here. I say “ever since,’ as if I had been
here a week. The truth is, we came here (my sister and
I) to quarrel with you, and affront you, and break away
again.”
“Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle, at a dead loss for any-
thing else to say.
“You see, we could not know what you were before-
hand, sir; could we?”
“Clearly not,” said Mr. Crisparkle.
“And having liked no one else with whom we have
ever been brought into contact, we had made up our
minds not to like you.”
“Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle again.
“But we do like you, sir, and we see an unmistakable
difference between your house and your reception of
us, and anything else we have ever known. This—and
my happening to be alone with you—and everything
around us seeming so quiet and peaceful after Mr.
Honeythunder's departure—and Cloisterham being so
old and grave and beautiful, with the moon shining on
it—these things inclined me to open my heart.”
“I quite understand, Mr. Neville. And it is salutary
to listen to such influences.”
“In describing my own imperfections, sir, I must ask
you not to suppose that I am describing my sister's.
EDWIN DROOD. 5?
She has come out of the disadvantages of Our miserable
life, as much better than I am, as that Cathedral tower
is higher than those chimneys.”
Mr. Crisparkle in his own breast was not so sure of
this.
“I have had, sir, from my earliest remembrance, to
suppress a deadly and bitter hatred. This has made
me secret and revengeful. I have been always tyran-
nically held down by the strong hand. This has driven
me, in my weakness, to the resource of being false and
mean. I have been stinted of education, liberty, money,
dress, the very necessaries of life, the commonest pleas-
ures of childhood, the commonest possessions of youth.
This has caused me to be utterly wanting in I don’t
know what emotions, or remembrances, or good instincts
—I have not even a name for the thing, you see!—that
you have had to work upon in other young men to whom
you have been accustomed.”
“This is evidently true. But this is not encouraging,
thought Mr. Crisparkle as they turned again. - -
“And to finish with, sir: I have been brought up
among abject and servile dependents, of an inferior
race, and I may easily have contracted some affinity
with them. Sometimes, I don’t know but that it may
be a drop of what is tigerish in their blood.”
“As in the case of that remark just now,” thought
Mr. Crisparkle.
“In a last word of reference to my sister, sir (we are
twin children), you ought to know, to her honor, that
nothing in our misery ever subdued her, though it often
cowed me. When we ran away from it (we ran away
four times in six years, to be soon brought back and
cruelly punished), the flight was always of her planning
and leading. Each time she dressed as a boy, and
showed the daring of a man. I take it we were seven
years old when we first decamped; but I remember, when
I lost the pocket-knife with which she was to have cut
her hair short, how desperately she tried to tear it out,
or bite it off. I have nothing further to say, sir, except
that I hope you will bear with me and make allowance
for me.”
“Of that, Mr. Neville, you may be sure,” returned
the Minor Canon. “I don’t preach more than I can
help, and I will not repay your confidence with a ser-
25
58 EDWIN DROOD.
mon. But I entreat you to bear in mind, very seriously
and steadily, that if I am to do you any good, it can
only be with your own assistance; and that you can only
render that efficiently, by seeking aid from Heaven.”
“I will try to do my part, sir.” *
“And, Mr. Neville, I will try to do mine. Here is my
hand on it. May God bless our endeavors!”
They were now standing at his house-door, and a cheer
ful sound of voices and laughter was heard within.
“We will take one more turn before going in,” said
Mr. Crisparkle, “for I want to ask you a question.
When you said you were in a changed mind concern.”
ing me, you spoke, not only for yourself, but for you?
Sister too?”
“Undoubtedly I did, sir.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Neville, but I think you have had
no opportunity of communicating with your sister, since
I met you. Mr. Honeythunder was very eloquent; but
perhaps I may venture to say, without ill-nature, that
he rather monopolised the occasion. May you not
have answered for your sister without sufficient War-
Tant, P”
Neville shook his head with a proud smile.
“You don’t know, sir, yet, what a complete under-
standing can exist between my sister and me, though no
spoken word—perhaps hardly as much as a look—may
have passed between us. She not only feels as I have
described, but she very well knows that I am taking
this opportunity of speaking to you, both for her and
for myself.” t
Mr. Crisparkle looked into his face, with some incredu-
lity; but his face expressed such absolute and firm con-
viction of the truth of what he said, that Mr. Crisparkle
looked at the pavement and mused, until they came
to his door again.
“I will ask for one more turn, sir, this time,” said
the young man with a rather heightened color rising
in his face. “But for Mr. Honeythunder's—I think
you called it eloquence, sir?” (somewhat slyly.)
“I—yes, I called it eloquence,” said Mr. Crisparkle.
“But for Mr. Honeythunder’s eloquence, I might
have had no need to ask you what I am going to ask
you. This Mr. Edwin Drood, sir, I think that’s the
name?”
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EDWIN DROOD. 59
i Quite correct,” said Mr. Crisparkle. “D-r-double
O-d.”
“Does he—or did he—read with you, sir?”
“Never, Mr. Neville. He comes here visiting his re-
lation, Mr. Jasper.”
‘‘Is Miss #. his relation too, sir?”
(“Now, why should he ask that, with Sudden super-
ciliousness?” thought Mr. Crisparkle.) Then he ex-
}lained, aloud, what he knew of the little story of their
etrothal.
“O! that’s it, is it?” said the young man. “I under-
stand his air of proprietorship now!”
This was said so evidently to himself, or to anybody
rather than Mr. Crisparkle, that the latter instinctively
felt as if to notice it would be almost tantamount to
noticing a passage in a letter which he had read by
chance over the writer’s shoulder. A moment after-
wards they re-entered the house.
Mr. Jasper was seated at the piano as they came into
his drawing-room, and was accompanying Miss Rosebud
while she sang. It was a consequence of his playing
the accompaniment without notes, and of her being a
heedless little creature, very apt to go wrong, that he
followed her lips most attentively, with his eyes as well as
hands; carefully and softly hinting the key-note from
time to time. Standing with an arm drawn round her,
but with a face far more intent on Mr. Jasper than on
her singing, stood Helena, between whom and her
brother an instantaneous recognition passed, in which
Mr. Crisparkle saw, or thought he saw, the understand-
ing that had been spoken of, flash out. Mr. Neville
then took his admiring station, leaning against the
piano, opposite the singer; Mr. Crisparkle sat down by
the china, shepherdess; Edwin Drood gallantly furled
and unfurled Miss Twinkleton’s fan; and that lady pas-
sively claimed that sort of exhibitor’s proprietorship in
the accomplishment on view, which Mr. Tope, the Ver-
ger, daily claimed in the Cathedral service.
The song went on. It was a sorrowful strain of part-
ing, and the fresh young voice was very plaintive and
tender. . As Jasper watched the pretty lips, and evor
and again hinted the one note, as though it were a low
whisper from himself, the voice became less steady,
until all at Once the singer broke into a burst of tears,
60 EDWIN DROOD.
and shrieked out, with her hands over her eyes: “I
can’t bear this! I am frightened! Take me away!”
With one swift turn of her lithe figure, Helena laid
the little beauty on a Sofa, as if she had never caught
her up. Then, on One knee beside her, and with one
hand upon her rosy mouth, while with the other she ap-
pealed to all the rest, Helena said to them: “It’s noth-
ing; it's all Over; don’t speak to her for one minute, and
she is well!”
Jasper's hands had, in the same instant, lifted them-
selves from the keys, and were now poised above them,
as though he waited to resume. In that attitude he yet
sat quiet: not even looking round, when all the rest
had changed their places and were re-assuring one an-
Other.
“Pussy’s not used to an audience; that’s the fact,”
said Edwin Drood. “She got nervous and couldn’t hold
out. Besides, Jack, you are such a conscientious master,
and require so much, that I believe you make her afraid
of you. No wonder.”
“, No wonder,” repeated Helena.
“There, Jack, you hear! You would be afraid of him,
under similar circumstances, wouldn’t you, Miss Land-
less?”
“Not under any circumstances,” returned Helena.
Jasper brought down his hands, looked over his shoul-
der, begged to thank Miss Landless for her vindication
of his character. Then he fell to dumbly playing, with-
out striking the notes, while his little pupil was taken
to an open window for air, and was otherwise petted
and restored. When she was brought back, his place
was empty. “Jack's gone, Pussy,” Edwin told her.
‘‘I am more than half afraid he didn’t like to be charged
with being the Monster who had frightened you.” But
she answered never a word, and shivered, as if they had
made her a little too cold.
Miss Twinkleton now opining that indeed these were
late hours, Mrs. Crisparkle, for finding ourselves outside
the walls of the Nuns' House, and that we who under-
took the formation of the future wives and mothers of
England (the last words in a lower voice, as requiring
to be communicated in confidence) were really bound
(voice coming up again) to set a better example than
one of rakish habits, wrappers were put in requisition,
EDWIN DROOD. 61
and the two young cavaliers volunteered to see the
ladies home. It was soon done, and the gate of the
Nuns' House closed upon them.
The boarders had retired, and only Mrs. Tisher in sol-
itary vigil awaited the new pupil. Her bedroom being
within Rosa's, very little introduction or explanation
was necessary, before she was placed in charge of her
new friend, and left for the night.
“This is a blessed relief, my dear,” said Helena. “I
have been dreading all day, that I should be brought to
bay at this time.”
“There are not many of us,” returned Rosa, “ and we
are good-natured girls; at least the others are; I can
answer for them.”
“I can answer for you,” laughed Helena, searching
the lovely little face with her dark fiery eyes, and ten-
derly caressing the Small figure. “You will be a friend
to me, won’t you?”
“I hope so. But the idea of my being a friend to you
seems too absurd, though.”
& 4 Why? 52 -
“O, I am such a mite of a thing, and you are so
womanly and handsome. You seem to have resolution
and power enough to crush me. I shrink into nothing
by the side of your presence even.”
“I am a neglected creature, my dear, unacquainted
with all accomplishments, sensitively conscious that I
have everything to learn, and deeply ashamed to own
my ignorance.”
“And yet you acknowledged everything to me!” said
Rosa.
“My pretty one, can I help it? There is a fascination
in you.”
“O! is there though?” pouted Rosa, half in jest and
half in earnest. “What a pity Master Eddy doesn't
feel it more!”
Of course her relations towards that young gentleman
had been already imparted in Minor Canon Corner.
“Why, surely he must love you with all his heart!”
cried Helena, with an earnestness that threatened to
blaze into ferocity if he didn’t.
“Elm” O, well, I suppose he does,” said Rosa, pouting
again; “I am sure I have no right to say he doesn’t.
Perhaps it's my fault. Perhaps I am not as nice to him
62 EDWIN DROOD.
as I dºught to be. I don’t think I am. But it is so
ridiculous!”
Helena’s eyes demanded what was.
“We are,” said Rosa, answering as if she had spoken
—“We are such a ridiculous couple. And we are al-
ways quarrelling.”
“Why?”
“Because we both know we are ridiculous, my dear!”
Rosa gave that answer as if it were the most conclusive
answer in the world.
Helena's masterful look was intent upon her face for
a few moments, and then she impulsively put out both
her hands and said:
“You will be my friend and help me?”
“Indeed, my dear, I will,” replied Rosa, in a tone of
affectionate childishness that went straight and true to
her heart; “I will be as good a friend as such a mite of
a thing can be to such a noble creature as you. And be
a friend to me, please; for I don’t understand myself:
and I want a friend who can understand me, Very much
indeed.” -
Helena Landless kissed her, and retaining both her
hands said: O
“Who is Mr. Jasper?”
Rosa turned aside her head in answering: “Eddy’s
uncle, and my music-master.” -
“You do not love him?” -
“Ugh!” She put her hands up to her face, and shook
with fear Or horror.
“You know that he loves you?”
“O, don’t, don’t, don't!” cried Rosa, dropping on her
knees, and clinging to her new resource. “Don’t tell
me of it! He terrifies me. He haunts my thoughts,
like a droadful ghost. I feel that I am never safe from
him. I feel as if he could pass in through the wall when
he is spoken of.” She actually did look round, as if
she dreaded to see him standing in the shadow behind
her.
“Try to tell me more about it, darling.”
“Yes, I will, I will. Because you are so strong. But
hold me the while, and stay with me afterwards.”
“My child! You speak as if he had threatened you
in some dark way.”
“He has never spoken to me about—that. Never.”
EDWIN DROOD. 63
“What has he done?”
“He has made a slave of me with his looks. He has
forced me to understand him, without his saying a
word; and he has forced me to keep silence, without his
uttering a threat. When I play, he never moves his
eyes from my hands. When I sing, he never moves his
eyes from my lips. When he corrects me, and strikes
a note, or a chord, or plays a passage, he himself is in
the sounds, whispering that he pursues me as a lover,
and commanding me to keep his secret. I avoid his
eyes, but he forces me to see them without looking at
them. Even when a glaze comes over them (which is
sometimes the case), and he seems to wander away into
a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most, he
obliges me to know it, and to know that he is sitting
close at my side, more terrible to me than ever.”
“What is this imagined threatening, pretty one?
What is threatened?”
“I don’t know. I have never even dared to think or
wonder what it is.”
“And was this all, to-night?”
“This was all; except that to-night when he watched
my lips so closely as I was singing, besides feeling ter-
rified I felt ashamed and passionately hurt. It was as
if he kissed me, and I couldn’t bear it, but cried out.
You must never breathe this to any one. Eddy is de-
voted to him. But you said to-night that you would not
be afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that
gives me—who am so much afraid of him—courage to
tell only you. Hold me! Stay with me! I am too
frightened to be left by myself.”
The lustrous gipsy-face dropped over the clinging arms
and bosom, and the wild black hair fell down protect-
ingly over the childish form. There was a slumbering
gleam of fire in the intense dark eyes, though they were
then softened with compassion and admiration. Let
whomsoever it most concerned look well to it.
64 EDWIN IDROOD.
CHAPTER VIII.
DAGGERS DRAWN.
THE two young men, having seen the damsels, their
charges, enter the courtyard of the Nuns' House, and
finding-themselves coldly stared at by the brazen door-
plate, as if the battered old beau with the glass in his
eye were insolent, look at one another, look along the
perspective of the moonlit street, and slowly walk away
together.
“Do you stay here long, Mr. Drood?” says Neville.
“Not this time,” is the careless answer. “I leave for
London again, to-morrow. But I shall be here, off and
on, until next Midsummer; then I shall take my leave
of Cloisterham, and England too; for many a long day,
I expect.”
“Are you going abroad?”
“Going to wake up Egypt a little,” is the condescend-
ing answer.
* Are you reading?”
“Reading!” repeats Edwin Drood, with a touch of
contempt “ No. Doing, working, engineering. My
small patrimony was left a part of the capital of the
Firm I am with, by my father, a former partner; and I
am a charge upon the Firm until I come of age; and
then I step into my modest share in the concern. Jack
—you met him at dinner—is, until then, my guardian
and trustee.”
“I heard from Mr. Crisparkle of your other good for-
tune.”
“What do you mean by my other good fortune?”
Neville has made his remark in a watchfully advanc-
ing, and yet furtive and shy manner, very expressive of
that peculiar air already noticed, of being at once hunter
and hunted. Edwin has made his retort with an abrupt-
ness not at all polite. They stop and interchange a rather
heated look.
“I hope,” says Neville, “there is no offence, Mr.
Drood, in my innocently referring to your betrothal?”
“By George!” cries Edwin, leading on again at a
somewhat quicker pace; “everybody in this chattering
old Cloisterham refers to it. I Wonder no public-house
EDWIN DROOD. 65
has been set up, with my portrait for the sign of The
Betrothed's Head. Or Pussy’s portrait. One or the other.”
‘‘I am not accountable for Mr. Crisparkle's mention-
ing the matter to me, quite openly,” Neville begins.
“No; that's true; you are not,” Edwin Drood assents.
“But; ” resumes Neville, “I am accountable for men-
tioning it to you. And I did So, On the Supposition that
you could not fail to be highly proud of it.”
Now, there are these two curious touches of human
nature working the secret springs of this dialogue.
Neville Landless is already enough impressed by Little
Rosebud, to feel indignant that Edwin Drood (far below
her) should hold his prize so lightly. Edwin Drood is
already enough impressed by Helena, to feel indignant
that Helena’s brother (far below her) should dispose of
him so coolly, and put him out of the way so entirely.
However, the last remark had better be answered.
So, says Edwin:
“I don’t know, Mr. Neville” (adopting that mode of
address from Mr. Crisparkle), “that what people are
proudest of, they usually talk most about; I don’t know
either, that what they are proudest Öf, they most like
other people to talk about. But I live a busy life, and I
speak under correction by you readers, who ought to
know everything, and I daresay do.”
By this time they have both become savage; Mr.
Neville out in the open; Edwin Drood under the trans-
parent cover of a popular tune, and a stop now and
then to pretend to admire picturesque effects in the
moonlight before him.
“It does not seem to me very civil in you,” remarks
Neville, at length, “to reflect upon a stranger who
comes here, not having had your advantages, to try to
make up for lost time. But, to be sure, I was not
brought up in “busy life,” and my ideas of civility were
formed among Heathens.” *
‘‘Perhaps, the best civility, whatever kind of people
we are brought up among,” retorts Edwin Drood, “is
to mind our own business. If you will set me that
example, I promise to follow it.”
“Do you know that you take a great deal too much
upon yourself,” is the angry rejoinder; ‘‘ and that in
the part of the world I come from, you would be called
to account for it?”
5
66 EDWIN DROOD.
“By whom, for instance?” asks Edwin Drood, coming
to a halt, and surveying the other with a look of dis-
dain.
But, here a startling right hand is laid on Edwin’s
shoulder, and Jasper stands between them. For, it
would seem that he, too, had strolled ‘round by the
Nuns' House, and has come up behind them on the
shadowy side of the road.
“Ned, Ned, Ned!” he says; “we must have no more
of this. I don’t like this. I have overheard high words
between you two. Remember, my dear boy, you are
almost in the position of host to-night. You belong, as
it were, to the place, and in a manner represent it to-
wards a stranger. Mr. Neville is a stranger, and you
should respect the obligations of hospitality. And, Mr.
Neville: ” laying his left hand on the ‘inner shoulder of
that young gentleman, and thus walking on between
them, hand to shoulder on either side: “ you will pardon
me; but I appeal to you to govern your temper too.
Now, what is amiss? But why ask! Let there be noth-
ing amiss, and the question is superfluous. We are all
three on a good understanding, are we not?”
After a silent struggle between the two young men
who shall speak last, Edwin Drood strikes in with:
“So far as I am concerned, Jack, there is no anger in
me.”
“Nor in me,” says Neville Landless, though not so
freely; or perhaps so carelessly. “But if Mr. Drood
knew all that lies behind me, far away from here, he
might know better how it is that sharp-edged words
have sharp edges to wound me.”
‘‘Perhaps,” says Jasper, in a smoothing manner,
“we had better not qualify our good understanding.
We had better not say anything having the appearance
of a remonstrance or condition; it might not seem gen-
erous. Frankly and freely, you see there is no anger
in Ned. Frankly and freely, there is no anger in you,
Mr. Novillo 2 ”
“None at all, Mr. Jasper.” Still, not quite so frankly
or so freely; or, be it said once again, not quite so care-
lessly perhaps.
“All over, then! Now, my bachelor gatehouse is a
few yards from here, and the heater is on the fire, and
the wine and glasses are on the table, and it is not a
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EDWIN DROOD. 67
stone’s throw from Minor Canon Corner. Ned, you are
up and away to-morrow. We will carry Mr. Neville in
With us, to take a stirrup-cup.”
“With all my heart, Jack.”
“And with all mine, Mr. Jasper.” Neville feels it
impossible to say less, but would rather not go. He has
an impression upon him that he has lost hold of his
temper; feels that Edwin Drood’s coolness, so far from
being infectious, makes him red-hot.
Mr. Jasper, still walking in the centre, hand to shoul-
der on either side, beautifully turns the refrain of a
drinking song, and they all go up to his rooms. There,
the first object visible, when he adds the light of a lamp
to that of the fire, is the portrait over the chimney-piece.
It is an object not calculated to improve the understand-
ing between the two young men, as rather awkwardly
reviving the subject of their difference. Accordingly,
they both glance at it consciously, but say nothing.
Jasper, however (who would appear, from his conduct
to have gained but an imperfect clue to the cause of
their late high words), directly calls attention to it.
“You recognise that picture, Mr. Neville?” shading
the lamp to throw the light upon it.
* ºecognise it, but it is far from flattering the orig-
lilºll.
“O, you are hard upon it! It was done by Ned, who
made me a present of it.”
“I am sorry for that, Mr. Drood.” Neville apologises,
with a real intention to apologise; “If I had known I
was in the artist’s presence—”
“O, a joke, sir, a mere joke,” Edwin cuts in, with
a provoking yawn. “A little humoring of Pussy’s
points! I’m going to paint her gravely, one of these
days, if she’s good.”
The air of leisurely patronage and indifference with
which this is said, as the speaker throws himself back
in a chair and clasps his hands at the back of his head,
as a rest for it, is very exasperating to the excitable and
excited Neville. Jasper looks observantly from the one
to the other, slightly smiles, and turns his back to mix
a jug of mulled wine at the fire. It seems to require
much mixing and compounding.
“I suppose, Mr. Neville,” says Edwin, quick to resent
the indignant protest against himself in the face of
25
(38 EDWIN DROOD.
young Landless, which is fully as visible as the portrait,
or the fire, or the lamp: “I suppose that if you painted
the picture of your lady love—”
“I can’t paint,” is the hasty interruption.
“That’s your misfortune, and not your fault. You
would if you could. But if you could, I suppose you
would make her (no matter what she was in reality),
Juno, Minerva, Diana, and Venus, all in One. Eh?’”
“I have no lady love, and I can’t say.”
“If I were to try my hand,” says Edwin, with a boyish
boastfulness getting up in him, “On a portrait of Miss
Landless—in earnest, mind you; in earnest—you should
see what I could do!”
“My sister's consent to sit for it being first got, I sup-
pose? As it never will be got, I am afraid I shall never
see what you can do. I must bear the loss.” .
Jasper turns round from the fire, fills a large goblet
glass for Neville, fills a large goblet glass for Edwin,
and hands each his own; then fills for himself, say-
1119 .
*come. Mr. Neville, we are to drink to my nephew,
Ned. As it is his foot that is in the stirrup—metaphor-
ically—our stirrup-cup is to be devoted to him. Ned,
my dearest fellow, my love!”
Jasper sets the example of nearly emptying his glass,
and Neville follows it. Edwin Drood says, “Thank you
both very much,” and follows the double example.
“Look at him!” Cries Jasper, stretching out his hand
admiringly and tenderly, though rallyingly too. “See
where he lounges so easily, Mr. Neville! The world is
all before him where to choose. A life of stirring work
and interest, a life of change and excitement, a life of
domestic ease and love! Look at him!”
Edwin Drood’s face has become quickly and remark-
ably flushed with the wine; so has the face of Neville
Landless. Edwin still sits thrown back in his chair,
making that rest of clasped hands for his head.
“See how little he heeds it all!” Jasper proceeds in a
bantering vein. “It is hardly worth his while to pluck
the golden fruit that hangs ripe on the tree for him.
And yet consider the contrast, Mr. Neville. You and I
have no prospect of stirring work and interest, or of
change and excitement, or of domestic ease and love.
You and I have no prospect (unless you are more for-
EDWIN DROOD. 69
tunate than I am, which may easily be), but the tedious
unchanging round of this dull place.”
“Upon my soul, Jack,” says Edwin, complacently, “I
feel quite apologetic for having my way Smoothed as .
you describe. But you know what I know, Jack, and
it may not be so very easy as it seems, after all. May
it, Pussy?” To the portrait, with a snap of his thumb
and finger. “We have got to hit it off yet; haven’t we,
Pussy: You know what I mean, Jack.” t
His speech has become thick and indistinct. Jasper,
Quiet and self-possessed, looks to Neville, as expecting
his answer or comment. When Neville speaks, his speech
is also thick and indistinct.
“It might have been better for Mr. Drood to have
known some hardships,” he says, defiantly.
“Pray,” retorts Edwin, turning merely his eyes in
that direction, “pray why might it have been better for
Mr. Drood to have known some hardships?”
“Ay,” Jasper assents, with an air of interest, “let us
know why?”
“Because they might have made him more sensible,”
says Neville, ‘‘ of good fortune that is not by any means
necessarily the result of his own merits.”
Mr. Jasper quickly looks to his nephew for his
rejoinder.
“Have you known hardships, may I ask?” says Edwin
Drood, sitting upright. º
Mr. Jasper quickly looks to the other for his retort.
‘‘I have.”
“And what have they made you sensible of?”
Mr. Jasper’s play of eyes between the two holds good
throughout the dialogue, to the end.
“I have told you once before to-night.”
“You have done nothing of the sort.”
“I tell you I have. That you take a great deal too
much upon yourself.”
“You added something else to that, if I remember?”
“Yes, I did say something else.”
“Say it again.”
“I said that in the part of the world I come from, you
would be called to account for it.”
“Only there?” cries Edwin Drood, with a contempt-
uous laugh. “A long way off, I believe? Yes; I see!
That part of the world is at a safe distance.”
70 º EDWIN DROOD.
“Say, here, then,” rejoins the other, rising in a fury.
“Say anywhere! Your vanity is intolerable, your con-
ceit is beyond endurance; you talk as if you were some
rare and precious prize, instead of a common boaster.
You are a common fellow, and a common boaster.”
“Pooh, pool,” says Edwin Drood, equally furious, but
more collected; “how should you know? You may know
a black common fellow, or a black common boaster, when
you see him (and no doubt you have a large acquaint-
ance that way); but you are no judge of white men.”
This insulting allusion to his dark skin infuriates Ne-
ville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of
his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging
the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of
time by Jasper.
“Ned, my dear fellow!” he cries in a loud voice; “I
entreat you, I command you, to be still!” There has
been a rush of all the three, and a clattering of glasses
and overturning of chairs. “Mr. Neville, for shame!
Give this glass to me. Open your hand, sir. I WILL
have it!” -
But Neville throws him off, and pauses for an instant,
in a raging passion, with the goblet yet in his uplifted
hand. Then, he dashes it down under the grate, with
such force that the broken splinters fly out again in a
shower; and he leaves the house.
When he first emerges into the night air, nothing
around him is still or steady; nothing around him shows
like what it is; he only knows that he stands with a
bare head in the midst of a blood-red whirl, waiting to
be struggled with, and to struggle to the death.
But, nothing happening, and the moon looking down
upon him as if he were dead after a fit of wrath, he holds
his steam-hammer beating head and heart, and staggers
away. Then, he becomes half-conscious of having
heard himself bolted and barred out, like a dangerous
animal; and thinks what shall he do?
Some wildly passionate ideas of the river dissolve
under the spell of the moonlight on the Cathedral and
the graves, and the remembrance of his sister, and the
thought of what he owes to the good man who has but
that very day won his confidence and given him his
pledge. He repairs to Minor Canon Corner, and knocks
softly at the door.
EDWIN DEROOD. 71
It is Mr. Crisparkle's custom to sit up last of the early
household, very softly touching his piano and practising
his favorite parts in concertéd vocal music. The south
wind that goes where it lists, by way of Manor Canon
Corner on a still night, is not more subdued than Mr.
Crisparkle at such times, regardful of the slumbers of
the china, shepherdess.
His knock is immediately answered by Mr. Crisparkle
himself. When he opens the door, candle in hand, his
cheerful face falls, and disappointed amazement is in
it.
b “Mr. Neville! In this disorder! Where have you
een 2 °
“I have been to Mr. Jasper's, sir. With his nephew.”
“Come in.”
The Minor Canon props him by the elbow with a strong
hand (in a strictly scientific manner, worthy of his
morning trainings), and turns him into his own little
book-room, and shuts, the door.
“I have begun ill, sir. I have begun dreadfully ill.”
“Too true. You are not sober, Mr. Neville.”
“I am afraid I am not, sir, though I can satisfy you
at another time that I have had a very little indeed to
drink, and that it overcame me in the strangest and
most sudden manner.”
“Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville,” says the Minor Canon,
shaking his head with a sorrowful smile; “I have heard
that said before.”
“I think—my mind is much confused, but I think—it
is equally true of Mr. Jasper’s nephew, sir.”
“Very likely,” is the dry rejoinder.
“We quarrelled, sir. He insulted me most grossly.
He had heated that tigerish blood I told you of to-day,
before then.”
“Mr. Neville,” rejoins the Minor Canon, mildly, but
firmly: “I request you not to speak to me with that
clenched right hand. Unclench it, if you please.”
“He goaded me, sir,” pursues the young man, in-
stantly obeying, “beyond my power of endurance. I
cannot say whether or no he meant it at first, but he did
it. He certainly meant it at last. In short, sir,” with
an irrepressible outburst, ‘‘ in the passion into which he
lashed me, I would have cut him down if I could, and I
tried to do it.” -
72 EDWIN DROOD.
“You have clenched that hand again,” is Mr. Cris-
parkle's quiet commentary.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“You know your room, for I showed it you before
dinner; but I will accompany you to it. Once more.
. arm, if you please. Softly, for the house is all
a-bed.”
Scooping his hand into the same scientific elbow-rest
as before, and backing it up with the inert strength of
his arm, as skilfully as a Police Expert, and with an
apparent repose, quite unattainable by novices, Mr.
Crisparkle conducts his pupil to the pleasant and
orderly old room prepared for him. Arrived there, the
young man throws himself into a chair, and, flinging
his arms upon his reading-table, rests his head upon
them with an air of wretched self-reproach.
Thé gentle Minor Canon has had it in his thoughts to
leave the room, without a word. But looking round at
the door, and seeing this dejected figure, he turns back to
it, touches it with a mild hand, and says “Good night!”
A sob is his only acknowledgment. He might have
had many a worse; perhaps, could have had few better.
Another soft knock at the Outer door attracts his
attention as he goes down-stairs. He opens it to Mr.
Jasper, holding in his hand the pupil’s hat.
“We have had an awful scene with him,” says Jas-
per, in a low voice.
“Has it been so bad as that?”
“Murderous!” *
Mr. Crisparkle remonstrates: “No, no, no. Do not
use such strong words.”
“He might have laid my dear boy dead at my feet.
It is no fault of his, that he did not. But that I was,
through the mercy of God, swift and strong with him,
he would have cut him down on my hearth.”
The phrase Smites home. “Ah!” thinks Mr. Cris-
parkle, ‘‘ his own words!”
“Seeing what I have seen to-night, and hearing
what I have heard,” adds Jasper, with great earnest-
ness, “I shall never know peace of mind when there is
danger of those two coming together with no one else
to interfere. It was horrible. There is something of
the tiger in his dark blood.”
“Ah!” thinks Mr. Crisparkle, “so he said!”
IED WIN DROOD. 73
“You, my dear sir,” pursues Jasper, taking his hand,
“even you, have accepted a dangerous charge.”
“You need have no fear for me, Jasper,” returns Mr.
Crisparkle, with a quiet smile. “I have none for myself.”
“I have nome for myself,” returns Jasper, with an em-
hasis on the last pronoun, “because I am not, rior am
in the way of being, the object of his hostility. But
you may be, and my dear boy has been. Good night!”
Mr. Crisparkle goes in, with the hat that has so
easily, so almost imperceptibly, acquired the right to be
!';up in his hall; hangs it up; and goes thoughtfully
to bed.
Aº
gººmmasº
CHAPTER IX.
BIRDS IN THE BUSH.
ROSA, having no relation that she knew of in the
world, had, from the seventh year of her age, known
no home but the Nuns' House, and no mother but Miss
Twinkleton. Her remembrance of her own mother was
of a pretty little creature like herself (not much older
than herself it seemed to her), who had been brought
home in her father's arms, drowned. The fatal acci-
dent had happened at a party of pleasure. Every fold
and color in the pretty summer dress, and even the long
wet hair, with scattered petals of ruined flowers still
clinging to it, as the dead young figure, in its sad, sad
beauty lay upon the bed, were fixed indelibly in Rosa’s
recollection. So were the wild despair and the subse-
quent bowed-down grief of her poor young father, who
died broken-hearted on the first anniversary of that
hard day.
The betrothal of Rosa grew out of the soothing of his
year of mental distress by his fast friend and old col-
lege companion, Drood: who likewise had been left a
widower in his youth. But he, too, went the silent road
into which all earthly pilgrimages merge, some sooner,
and some later; and thus the young couple had come to
be as they were.
The atmosphere of pity surrounding the little orphan
74 EDWIN DROOD.
girl when she first came to Cloisterham, had never
cleared away. It had taken brighter hues as she grew
older, happier, prettier; now it had been golden, now
roseate, and now azure; but it had always adorned her
with some soft light of its own. The general desire to
console and caress her, had caused her to be treated in
the beginning as a child much younger than her years;
the same desire had caused her to be still petted when
she was a child no longer. Who should be her favorite,
who should anticipate this or that small present, or do
her this or that small service; who should take her home
for the holidays; who should write to her the oftenest
when they were separated, and whom she would most
rejoice to see again when they were reunited; even
these gentle rivalries were not without their slight
dashes of bitterness in the Nuns' House. Well for the
poor Nuns in their day, if they hid no harder strife
under their veils and rosaries!
Thus Rosa had grown to be an amiable, giddy, wilful,
winning little creature; spoilt, in the sense of counting
upon kindness from all around her; but not in the sense
of repaying it with indifference. Possessing an ex-
haustless well of affection in her nature, its sparkling
waters had freshened and brightened the Nuns' House
for years, and yet its depths had never yet been moved:
what might betide when that came to pass; what devel-
oping changes might fall upon the heedless head, and
light heart, then; remained to be seen.
By what means the news that there had been a quarrel
between the two young men overnight, involving even
some kind of onslaught by Mr. Neville upon. Edwin
Drood, got into Miss Twinkleton’s establishment before
breakfast, it is impossible to say. Whether it was
brought in by the birds of the air, or came blowing in
with the very air itself, when the casement windows
were set open; whether the baker brought it kneaded
into the bread, or the milkman delivered it as part of
the adulteration of his milk; or the housemaids, beating
the dust Out of their mats against the gateposts, received
it in exchange deposited on the mats by the town at-
mosphore; certain it is that the news permeated every
gable of the old building before Miss Twinkleton was
down, and that Miss Twinkleton herself received it
through Mrs. Tisher, while yet in the act of dressing;
JEDWIN DROOD. º'5
or (as she might have expressed the phrase to a parent
or guardian of a mythological turn) of sacrificing to
the Graces.
Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a bottle at Mr.
Edwin Drood.
Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a knife at Mr.
Edwin Drood.
A knife became suggestive of a fork; and Miss Land-
less’s brother had thrown a fork at Mr. Edwin Drood.
As in the governing precedent of Peter Piper, alleged
to have picked the peck of pickled pepper, it was held
physically desirable to have evidence of the existence
of the peck of pickled pepper which Peter Piper was
alleged to have picked: so, in this case, it was held
psychologically important to know Why Miss Land-
less’s brother threw a bottle, knife, or fork—or bottle,
knife and fork—for the cook had been given to under-
stand it was all three—at Mr. Edwin Drood?
Well, then. Miss Landless’s brother had said he ad-
mired Miss Bud. Mr. Edwin Drood had said to Miss
Landless's brother that he had no business to admire
Miss Bud. Miss Landless's brother had then “up d’
(this was the cook's exact information) with the bottle,
knife, fork, and decanter (the decanter now coolly fly-
ing at everybody’s head, without the least introduction),
and thrown them all at Mr. Edwin Drood.
Poor little Rosa put a forefinger into each of her ears
when these rumors began to circulate, and retired into
a corner, beseeching not to be told any more; but Miss
Landless, begging permission of Miss Twinkleton to go
and speak with her brother, and pretty plainly showing
that she would take it if it were not given, struck out
the more definite course of going to Mr. Crisparkle's for
accurate intelligence.
When she came back (being first closeted with Miss
Twinkleton, in order that anything objectionable in her
tidings might be retained by that discreet filter), she
imparted to Rosa only, what had taken place; dwelling
with a flushed cheek on the provocation her brother had
received, but almost limiting it to that last gross affront
as crowning ‘‘some other words between them,” and,
out of consideration for her new friend, passing lightly
over the fact that the other words had originated in her
lover's taking things in general so very easily. To Rosa
76 EDWIN DROOD.
direct, she brought a petition from her brother that she
would forgive him; and, having delivered it with sis-
terly earnestness, made an end of the subject.
It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone down
the public mind of the Nuns' House. That lady, there-
fore, entering in a stately manner what plebeians
might have called the school-room, but what, in the
patrician language of the head of the Nuns' House, was
euphuistically, not to say round-aboutedly, denominated
“ the apartment allotted to study,” and saying with a
forensic air, “Ladies!” all rose. Mrs. Tisher at the
same time grouped herself behind her chief, as repre-
senting Queen Elizabeth’s first historical female friend
at Tilbury Fort. Miss Twinkleton then proceeded to
remark that Rumor, Tadies, had been represented by
the bard of Avon—needless were it to mention the im-
mortal SHAKESPEARE, also called the Swan of his native
river, not improbably with some reference to the ancient
superstition that that bird of graceful plumage (Miss
Jennings will please stand upright) sang Sweetly on the
approach of death, for which we have no Ornithological
authority,+Rumor, Ladies, had been represented by
that bard—hem!— *
“who drew
The celebrated Jew,”
as painted full of tongues. Rumor in Cloisterham (Miss
Ferdinand will honor me with her attention) was no ex-
ception to the great limner's portrait of Rumor else-
where. A slight fracas between two young gentlemen
occurring last night within a hundred miles of these
peaceful walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incor-
rigible, will have the kindness to write out this evening,
in the original language, the first four fables of our vi-
vacious neighbor, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been
very grossly exaggerated by Rumor's voice. In the first
alarm and anxiety arising from our sympathy with a
Sweet young friend, not wholly to be dissociated from
One of the gladiators in the bloodless arena in question
(the impropriety of Miss Reynolds's appearing to stab
Jherself in the band with a pin, is far too obvious, and
too glaringly unlady-like, to be pointed out), we de-
scended from our maiden elevation to discuss this un-
congenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries
EDWIN DROOD. 77
having assured us that it was but one of those “airy
nothings” pointed at by the Poet (whose name and date
of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an hour),
we would now discard the subject, and concentrate Our
minds upon the grateful labors of the day.
But the subject so survived all day, nevertheless, that
Miss Ferdinand got into new trouble by Surreptitiously
clapping on a paper moustache at dinner-time, and
going through the motions of aiming a water-bottle at
Miss Giggles, who drew a table-Spoon in defence.
Now, Rosa thought of this unlucky quarrel a great
deal, and thought of it with an uncomfortable feeling
that she was involved in it, as cause, or Consequence, Ol'
what not, through being in a false position altogether
as to her marriage engagement. Never free from
such uneasiness when she was with her affianced hus-
band, it was not likely that she would be free from it
when they were apart. To-day, too, she was cast in
upon herself, and deprived of the relief of talking freely
with her new friend, because the quarrel had been with
Helena’s brother, and Helena undisguisedly avoided
the subject as a delicate and difficult one to herself,
At this critical time, of all times, Rosa's guardian was
announced as having come to see her. -
Mr. Grewgious had been well selected for his trust, as
a man of incorruptible integrity, but certainly for no
other appropriate quality discernible on the surface. He
was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been put into a
grinding mill, looked as if he would have ground imme-
diately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop
of hair, in color and consistency like some very mangy
yellow fur tippet; it was so unlike hair, that it must
have been a wig, but for the stupendous improbability
of anybody’s voluntarily sporting such a head. The
little play of feature that his face presented, was cut
deep into it, in a few hard curves that made it more
like work; and he had certain notches in his forehead,
which looked as though Nature had been about to touch
them into sensibility or refinement, when she had im-
patiently thrown away the chisel, and said: “I really
sº be worried to finish off this man; let him go as
e is.’
With too great length of throat at his upper end, and
too much ankle-bone and heel at his lower; with an
YS EDWIN DROOD.
awkward and hesitating manner; with a shambling
walk; and with what is called a near sight—which per-
haps prevented his observing how much white cotton
stocking he displayed to the public eye, in contrast
with his black suit—Mr. Grewgious still had some
strange capacity in him of making on the whole an
agreeable impression.
Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his ward, much dis-
comfited by being in Miss Twinkleton’s company in
Miss Twinkleton’s own sacred room. Dim forebodings
of being examined in something, and not coming well
out of it, seemed to oppress the poor gentleman when
found in these circumstances.
“My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you.
My dear, how much improved you are. Permit me to
hand you a chair, my dear.”
Miss Twinkleton rose at her little writing-table, say-
ing, with general sweetness, as to the polite Universe:
“Will you permit me to retire?”
“By no means, madam, on my account. I beg that
you will not move.”
“I must entreat permission to move,” returned Miss
Twinkleton, repeating the word with a charming grace;
“but I will not withdraw, since you are so obliging. If
I wheel my desk to this corner window, shall I be in
the way?”
“Madam! In the way
“You are very kind.—Rosa, my dear, you will be
under no restraint, I am sure.”
Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire with Rosa, said
again: “My dear, how do you do? ... I am glad to see
you, my dear.” And having waited for her to sit down,
sat down himself.
“My visits,” said Mr. Grewgious, ‘ are like those of
the angels—not that I compare myself to an angel.”
“No, sir,” said Rosa.
“Not by any means,” assented Mr. Grewgious. “I
merely refer to my visits, which are few and far be-
tween. The angels are, we know very well, up-stairs.”
Miss Twinkleton looked round with a º Of Stiff
Stare. -
‘‘I refer, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, laying his
hand on Rosa's, as the possibility thrilled through his
frame of his otherwise seeming to take the awful liberty
25
| 22
22
EDWIN DROOD. 79
of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear; “I refer to the
other young ladies.”
Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.
Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having managed
his opening point quite as neatly as he might have de-
sired, smoothed his head from back to front as if he had
just dived, and were pressing the water out — this
smoothing action, however Superfluous, was habitual
with him—and took a pocket-book from his coat-pocket,
and a stump of black-lead pencil from his waistcoat-
pocket.
‘‘I made,” he said, turning the leaves: “I made a
guiding memorandum or so—as I usually do, for I have
no conversational powers whatever—to which I will,
with your permission, my dear, refer. ‘Well and
happy.’ Truly. You are well and happy, my dear?
You look so.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered Rosa.
“For which,” said Mr. Grewgious, with a bend of his
head towards the corner window, “our warmest ac-
knowledgments are due, and I am sure are rendered, to
the maternal kindness and the constant care and con-
sideration of the lady whom I have now the honor to
see before me.”
This point, again, made but a lame departure from
Mr. Grewgious, and never got to its destination; for,
Miss Twinkleton, feeling that the courtesies required
her by this time to be quite outside the conversation,
was biting the end of her pen, and looking upward, as
Waiting for the descent of an idea from any member of
the Celestial Nine who might have one to spare.
Mr. Grewgious Smoothed his smooth head again, and
then made another reference to his pocket-book; lining
Out “well and happy,” as disposed of.
“‘Pounds, shillings, and pence,” is my next note. A
dry Subject for a young lady, but an important subject
too. Life is pounds, shillings, and pence. Death is—”
A sudden recollection of the death of her two parents
Seemed to stop him, and he said in a softer tone, and
evidently inserting the negative as an after-thought:
“Death is not pounds, shillings, and pence.”
His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and Fancy
might have ground it straight, like himself, into high-
dried Snuff. And yet, through the very limited means
S0 EDWIN DROOD.
of expression that he possessed, he seemed to express
kindness. If Nature had but finished him off, kindness
might have been recognisable in his face at this moment.
But if the notches in his forehead wouldn’t fuse together,
and if his face would work and couldn’t play, what
could he do, poor man!
“‘Pounds, shillings, and pence.’ You find your allow-
ance always sufficient for your wants, my dear?”
Rosa wanted for nothing, and therefore it was ample.
“And you are not in debt?”
Rosa laughed at the idea of being in debt. It seemed,
to her inexperience, a comical vagary of the imagina-
tion. Mr. Grewgious stretched his near sight to be sure
that this was her view of the case. ‘‘ Ah!” he said, as
comment, with a furtive glance towards Miss Twinkle-
ton, and lining out pounds, shillings, and pence: “I
spoke of having got among the angels! So I did!”
Rosa felt what his next memorandum would prove to
be, and was blushing and folding a crease in her dress
with one embarrassed hand, long before he found it.
“‘Marriage.” Hem!” Mr. Grewgious carried his
smoothing hand down over his eyes and nose, and even
chin, before drawing his chair a little nearer, and speak-
ing a little more confidentially: “I now touch, my dear,
upon the point that is the direct cause of my troubling
you with the present visit. Otherwise, being a par-
ticularly Angular man, I should not have intruded here.
I am the last man to intrude into a sphere for which I
am so entirely unfitted. I feel, on these premises, as if
I was a bear—with the cramp—in a youthful Cotillon.”
His ungainliness gave him enough of the air of his
simile to set Rosa off laughing heartily.
“It strikes you in the same light,” said Mr. Grew-
gious, with perfect calmness. “Just so. To return to my
memorandum. Mr. Edwin has been to and fro here, as
was arranged. You have mentioned that, in your quar-
terly letters to me. And you like him, and he likes you.”
“I like him very much, sir,” rejoined Rosa.
“So I said, my dear,” returned her guardian, for
whose ear the timid emphasis was much too fine. “Good,
And you correspond.”
“We write to one another,” said Rosa, pouting, as
she recalled their epistolary differences.
“Such is the meaning that I attach to the word ‘cor-
25
EDWIN DROOD. 8].
respond’ in this application, my dear,” said Mr. Grew-
gious. “Good. All goes well, time works On, and at
this next Christmas time it will become necessary, as a
matter of form, to give the exemplary lady in the corner
window, to whom we are so much indebted, business
notice of your departure in the ensuing half-year. Your
relations with her are far more than business relations,
no doubt; but a residue of business remains in them,
and business is business ever. I am a particularly
Angular man,” proceeded Mr. Grewgious, as if it. Sud-
denly occurred to him to mention it, “ and I am not
used to give anything away. If, for these two reasons,
some competent Proxy would give you away, I should
take it very kindly.”
Rosa intimated, with her eyes on the ground, that she
thought a substitute might be found, if required.
“Surely, surely,” said Mr. Grewgious. “For instance,
the gentleman who teaches Dancing here—he would
know how to do it with graceful propriety. He would
advance and retire in a manner satisfactory to the feel-
ings of the officiating clergyman, and of yourself, and
the bridegroom, and all parties concerned. I am–I am
a particularly Angular man,” said Mr. Grewgious, as if
he had made up his mind to screw it out at last: “and
should only blunder.”
Rosa sat still and silent. Perhaps her mind had not
got quite so far as the ceremony yet, but was lagging
on the way there.
“Memorandum, ‘Will.” Now, my dear,” said Mr.
Grewgious, referring to his notes, disposing of “Mar-
riage” with his pencil, and taking a paper from his
pocket: “although I have before possessed you with the
contents of your father’s will, I think it right at this
time to leave a certified copy of it in your hands. And
although Mr. Edwin is also aware of its contents, I
think it right at this time likewise to place a certified
copy of it in Mr. Jasper’s hand—”
“Not in his own!” asked Rosa, looking up quickly.
“Cannot the copy go to Eddy himself?”
“Why, yes, my dear, “if you particularly wish it; but
I spoke of Mr. Jasper as being his trustee.”
‘‘I do particularly wish it, if you please,” said Rosa,
hurriedly and earnestly; “I don’t like Mr. Jasper to
come between us, in any Way.”
3
6
82 EDWIN DROOD.
“It is natural, I suppose,” said Mr. Grewgious, “ that
your young husband should be all in all. Yes. You
observe that I say, I suppose. The fact is, I am a par-
ticularly Unnatural man, and I don’t know from my
own knowledge.”
Rosa looked at him with some wonder.
“I muean,” he explained, “that young ways were
never my ways. I was the only offspring of parents
far advanced in life, and I half believe I was born ad-
vanced in life myself. No personality is intended to-
wards the name you will so soon change, when I remark
that while the general growth of people seem to have
come into existence, buds, I seem to have come into
existence a chip. I was a chip—and a very dry one—
when I first became aware of myself. Respecting the
other certified copy, your wish shall be complied with.
Respecting your inheritance, I think you know all. It
is an annuity of two hundred and fifty pounds. The
savings upon that annuity, and some other items to
your credit, all duly carried to account, with vouchers,
will place you in possession of a lump-sum of money,
rather exceeding Seventeen Hundred Pounds. I am
empowered to advance the cost of your preparations
for your marriage out of that fund. All is told.”
“Will you please tell me,” said Rosa, taking the
paper with a prettily knitted brow, but not opening it:
“whether I am right in what I am going to say? I can
understand what you tell me, so very much better than
what I read in law-writings. My poor papa and Eddy’s
father made their agreement together, as very dear and
firm and fast friends, in order that we, too, might be
very dear and firm and fast friends after them?”
“Just SO.”
“For the lasting good of both of us, and the lasting
happiness of both of us?”
“Just SO.”
“That we might be to one another even much more
than they had been to one another?”
“Just SO.”
“It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was not bound
upon me, by any forfeit, in case—”
“Don’t be agitated, my dear. In the case that it
brings tears into your affectionate eyes even to picture
to yourself—in the case of your not marrying one
EDWIN DROOD. 83
sº
another—no, no forfeiture on either side. You would
then have been my ward until you were of age. No
worse would have befallen you. Bad enough perhaps!”
“And Eddy?”
“He would have come into his partnership derived
from his father, and into its arrears to his credit (if
any), on attaining his majority, just as now.”
Rosa, with her perplexed face and knitted brow, bit
the corner of her attested copy, as she sat with her
head on one side, looking abstractedly on the floor, and
smoothing it with her foot.
“In short,” said Mr. Grewgious, “this betrothal is a
wish, a sentiment, a friendly project, tenderly expressed
on both sides. That it was strongly felt, and that there
was a lively hope that it would prosper, there can be no
doubt. When you were both children, you began to be
accustomed to it, and it has prospered. But circum-
stances alter cases; and I made this visit to-day, partly,
indeed principally, to discharge myself of the duty of
telling you, my dear, that two young people can only be
betrothed in marriage (except as a matter of conven-
ience, and therefore mockery and misery) of their own
free will, their own attachment, and their own assur-
ance (it may or may not prove a mistaken one, but we
must take our chance of that), that they are suited to
each other, and will make each other happy. Is it to
be supposed, for example, that if either of your fathers
were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject,
his mind would not be changed by the change of cir-
cumstances involved in the change of your years? Un-
tenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, and preposterous!”
Mr. Grewgious said all this, as if he were reading it
aloud; or, still more, as if he were repeating a lesson.
So expressionless of any approach to spontaneity were
his face and manner.
-“I have now, my dear,” he added, blurring out “Will”
with his pencil, “ discharged myself of what is doubt-
less a formal duty in this case, but still a duty in such a
case. Memorandum, “Wishes: ' My dear, is there any
wish of yours that I can further?”
Rosa shook her head, with an almost plaintive air of
hesitation in want of help.
“Is there any instruction that I can take from you
with reference to your affairs?”
84 EDWIN DROOD.
“I—I should like to settle them with Eddy first, if
you please,” said Rosa, plaiting the crease in her dress.
“Surely, surely,” returned Mr. Grewgious. “You
two should be of one mind in all things. Is the young
gentleman expected shortly?”
“He has gone away only this morning. He will be
back at Christmas.”
“Nothing could happen better. You will, on his re-
turn at Christmas, arrange all matters of detail with
him; you will then communicate with me; and I will
discharge myself (as a mere business aquittance) of my
business responsibilities towards the accomplished lady
in the corner window. They will accrue at that season.”
13]urring pencil once again. “Memorandum, ‘Leave.’
Yes. I will now, my dear, take my leave.” -
“Could I,” said Rosa, rising, as he jerked out of his
chair in his ungainly way: “could I ask you, most
kindly to come to me at Christmas, if I had anything
particular to say to you?”
“Why, certainly, certainly,” he rejoined; apparently
—if such a word can be used of one who had no ap-
parent lights or shadows about him—complimented by
the question. “As a particularly Angular man, I do
not fit smoothly into the social circle, and consequently
I have no other engagement at Christmas-time than
to partake, on the twenty-fifth, of a boiled turkey and
celery sauce with a-with a particularly Angular clerk
I have the good fortune to possess, whose father, being
a Norfolk farmer, sends him up (the turkey up), as a
present to me, from the neighborhood of Norwich. I
should be quite proud of your wishing to see me, my dear.
As a professional Receiver of rents, so very few people
do wish to see me, that the novelty would be bracing.”
For his ready acquiescence, the grateful Rosa put her
hands upon his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and instantly
kissed him.
“Lord bless me!” cried Mr. Grewgious. “Thank
you, my dear! The honor is almost equal to the pleasure.
Miss Twinkleton, madam, I have had a most satisfac-
tory conversation with my ward, and I will now release
you from the incumbrance of my presence.”
“Nay, sir,” rejoined Miss Twinkleton, rising with a
gracious condescension: “say not incumbrance. Not
So, by any means. I cannot permit you to say so.”
EDWIN DROOD. 85
“Thank you, madam. I have read in the newspapers,”
said Mr. Grewgious, stammering a little, ‘‘that when a
distinguished visitor (not that I am one: far from it)
goes to a school (not that this is one: far from it), he
asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace. It being
now the afternoon in the-College—of which you are
the eminent head, the young ladies might gain nothing,
except in name, by having the rest of the day allowed
them. But if there is any young lady at all under a
cloud, might I solicit—”
“Ah, Mr. Grewgious, Mr. Grewgious!” cried Miss
Twinkleton, with a chastely-rallying forefinger. “O
you gentlemen, you gentlemen! Fie for shame, that
you are SO hard upon us poor maligned disciplinarians
Of Our Sex, for your sakes! But as Miss Ferdinand is at
present weighed down by an incubus”—Miss Twinkle-
ton might have said a pen-and-ink-ubus of writing out
Monsieur La Fontaine—“go to her, Rosa my dear, and
tell her the penalty is remitted, in deference to the in-
tercession of your guardian, Mr. Grewgious.”
Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsey, suggest-
ive of marvels happening to her respected legs, and
which she came out of nobly, three yards behind her
starting-point.
As he held it incumbent upon him to call on Mr.
Jasper before leaving Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went
to the gatehouse, and climbed its postern stair. But Mr.
Jasper’s door being closed, and presenting on a slip of
paper the word “Cathedral,” the fact of its being
service-time was borne into the mind of Mr. Grewgious.
So he descended the stair again, and, crossing the Close,
paused at the great western folding-door of the Cathe-
dral, which stood open on the fine and bright, though
short-lived, afternoon, for the airing of the place.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, “it’s
like looking down the throat of Old Time.”
Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and arch
and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in
Corners; and damps began to rise from green patches
of Stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the
nave from stained glass by the declining sun, began to
perish. Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the
steps surmounted loomingly by the fast-darkening
organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble
86 EDWIN DROOD.
voice, rising and falling in a cracked monotonous mut-
ter, could at intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer
air, the river, the green pastures, and the brown arable
lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by
the sunset: while the distant little windows in wind-
mills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright
beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became grey, murky,
and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter
went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the
choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music.
Then, the sea fell, and the dying voice made another
feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and beat its
life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among the
arches, and pierced the heights of the great tower; and
then the sea was dry, and all was still.
Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to the
chancel-steps, where he met the living waters coming
Out.
“Nothing is the matter?” Thus Jasper accosted him,
rather quickly. “You have not been sent for?”
‘‘Not at all, not at all. I came down of my own ac-
cord. I have been to my pretty ward's, and am now
homeward bound again.”
“You found her thriving?”
“Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I merely came
to tell her, seriously, what a betrothal by deceased .
parents is.”
“And what is it—according to your judgment?”
Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of the lips that
asked the question, and put it down to the chilling ac-
count of the Cathedral.
‘‘I merely came to tell her that it could not be consid-
ered binding, against any such reason for its dissolution
as a want of affection, or want of disposition to carry it
into effect, on the side of either party.”
“May I ask, had you any especial reason for telling her
that?”
Mr. Grewgious answered somewhat sharply: “The
especial reason of doing my duty, sir. Simply that.”
Then he added: “Come, Mr. Jasper; I know your affec-
tion for your nephew, and that you are quick to feel on his
behalf. I assure you that this implies not the least doubt
of, or disrespect to, your nephew.”
“You could not,” returned Jasper, with a friendly.
EDWIN DROOD. 87
pressure of his arm, as they walked on side by side,
“speak more handsomely.”
Mr. Grewgious pulled off his hat to smooth his head,
and, having Smoothed it, nodded it contentedly, and put
his hat on again. º
“I will wager,” said Jasper, smiling—his lips were
still so White that he was conscious of it, and bit and
moistened them while speaking: “I will wager that she
hinted no wish to be released from Ned.”
“And you will win your wager, if you do,” retorted
Mr. Grewgious. “We should allow some margin for
little maidenly delicacies in a young motherless creature,
under such circumstances, I suppose; it is not in my
line; what do you think?” -
“There can be no doubt Of it.”
“I am glad you say so. Because,” proceeded Mr.
Grewgious, who had all this time very knowingly felt
his way round to action on his remembrance of what
she had said of Jasper himself: ‘‘ because she seems to
have some little delicate instinct that all preliminary
arrangements had best be made between Mr. Edwin
Drood and herself, don’t you see? She don’t want us,
don’t you know?”
Jasper touched himself on the breast, and said, some-
what indistinctly: “You mean me.”
Mr. Grewgious touched himself on the breast, and
said: “I mean us. Therefore, let them have their little
discussions and councils together, when Mr. Edwin
Drood comes back here at Christmas; and then you and
I will step in, and put the final touches to the business.”
“So, you settled with her that you would come back
at Christmas?” observed Jasper. “I see! Mr. Grew-
gious, as you quite fairly said just now, there is such an
exceptional attachment between my nephew and me,
that I am more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy,
happy fellow than myself. But it is only right that the
young lady should be considered, as you have pointed
out, and that I should accept my cue from you. I accept
it. I understand that at Christmas they will complete
their preparations for May, and that their marriage will
be put in final train by themselves, and that nothing
will remain for us but to put ourselves in train also, and
have everything ready for Our formal release from Our
trusts, on Edwin’s birthday.”
SS EDWIN DROOD.
“That is my understanding,” assented Mr. Grewgious,
as they shook hands to part. “God bless them both!”
“God save them both!” cried Jasper.
“I said, bless them,” remarked the former, looking
back over his shoulder.
“I said, save them,” returned the latter. “Is there
any difference?”
CHAPTER X.
SMooth.ING THE way.
IT has been often enough remarked that women have
a curious power of divining the characters of men,
which would seem to be innate and instinctive; seeing
that it is arrived at through no patient process of reason-
ing, that it can give no satisfactory or sufficient account
of itself, and that it pronounces in the most confident
manner even against accumulated observation on the
part of the other sex. But it has not been quite so often
remarked that this power (fallible, like every other
human attribute) is for the most part absolutely incapa-
ble of self-revision; and that when it has delivered an
adverse opinion which by all human lights is sub-
sequently proved to have failed, it is undistinguishable
from prejudice, in respect of its determination not to
be corrected. Nay, the very possibility of contradiction
or disproof, however remote, communicates to this
feminine judgment from the first, in nine cases out of
ten, the weakness attendant on the testimony of an in-
terested witness; so personally and strongly does the
fair diviner connect herself with her divination.
“Now, don’t you think, Ma dear,” said the Minor
Canon to his mother one day as she sat at her knitting
in his little book-room, “that you are rather hard on
Mr. Neville?”
“No, I do not, Sept,” returned the old lady.
“Let us discuss it, Ma.”
“I have no objection to discuss it, Sept. I trust, my
dear, I am always open to discussion.” There was a
vibration in the old lady's cap, as though she internally
EDWIN DROOD. 89
added: “ and I should like to see the discussion that
would change my mind!” tº
“Very good, Ma,” said her conciliatory son. “ There
is nothing like being open to discussion.”
“I hope not, my dear,” returned the old lady, evi-
dently shut to it.
“Well! Mr. Neville, on that unfortunate occasion,
commits himself under provocation.”
“And under mulled wine,” added the old lady.
“I must admit the wine. Though I believe the two
young men were much alike in that regard.”
“I don’t,” said the old lady.
“Why not, Ma?”
“Because I don’t,” said the old lady. “Still, I am
Quite open to discussion.”
“But, my dear Ma, I cannot see how we are to dis-
cuss, if you take that line.”
“Blame Mr. Neville for it, Sept, and not me,” said the
old lady, with stately severity.
“My dear Mal why Mr. Neville?”
“Because,” said Mrs. Crisparkle, retiring on first
principles, “he came home intoxicated, and did great
discredit to this house, and showed great disrespect to
this family.”
“That is not to be denied, Ma. He was then, and he
is now, very sorry for it.” *
“But for Mr. Jasper’s well-bred consideration in com-
ing up to me, next day, after Service, in the Nave itself,
with his gown still on, and expressing his hope that I
had not been greatly alarmed or had my rest violentl
broken, I believe I might never have heard of that dis-
graceful transaction,” said the old lady.
“To be candid, Ma, I think I should have kept it from
you if I could: though I had not decidedly made up my
mind. I was following Jasper out, to confer with him
on the subject, and to consider the expediency of his
and my jointly hushing the thing up on all accounts,
wº I found him speaking to you. Then it was too
ate.”
“Too late, indeed, Sept. He was still as pale as gen-
tlemanly ashes at what had taken place in his rooms
overnight.”
“If I had kept it from you, Ma, you may be sure it
would have been for your peace and quiet, and for the
90 EDWIN DROOD.
good of the young men, and in my best discharge of my
duty according to ſhy lights.”
The old lady immediately walked across the room and
kissed him: saying, “Of course, my dear Sept, I am
sure of that.”
“However, it became the town-talk,” said Mr. Cris-
parkle, rubbing his ear, as his mother resumed her seat,
and her knitting, ‘‘ and passed out of my power.”
“And I said then, Sept,” returned the old lady, “that
I thought ill of Mr. Neville. And I say now, that I
think ill of Mr. Neville. And I said then, and I say
now, that I hope Mr. Neville may come to good, but I
don’t believe he will.” Here the cap vibrated again
considerably.
“I am sorry to hear you say so, Ma—”
“I am sorry to say so, my dear,” interposed the old
lady, knitting on firmly, “but I can’t help it.”
“—For,” pursued the Minor Canon, “it is undeniable
that Mr. Neville is exceedingly industrious and attent-
ive, and that he improves apace, and that he has—I
hope I may say—an attachment to me.”
“There is no merit in the last article, my dear,” said
the old lady, quickly; “and if he says there is, I think
the worse of him for the boast.”
“But, my dear Ma, he never said there was.”
“Perhaps not,” returned the old lady; “still, I don’t
sce that it greatly signifies.”
There was no impatience in the pleasant look with
which Mr. Crisparkle contemplated the pretty old piece
of china as it knitted; but there was, certainly, a humor-
ous sense of its not being a piece of chima, to argue with
very closely.
“Besides, Sept, ask yourself what he would be with-
out his sister. You know what an influence she has
over him; you know what a capacity she has; you know
that whatever he reads with you, he reads with her.
Give her her fair share of your praise, and how much
do you leave for him?”
At these words Mr. Crisparkle fell into a little reverie,
in which he thought of several things. He thought of
the times he had seen the brother and sister together in
deep converse over one of his own old college books;
now, in the rimy mornings, when he made those sharp-
ening pilgrimages to Cloisterham Weir; now, in the
EDWIN DROOD. 91
sombre evenings, when he faced the wind at Sunset,
having climbed his favorite Outlook, a beetling frag-
ment of monastery ruin; and the two studious figures
passed below him along the margin of the river, in which
the town fires and lights already shone, making the
landscape bleaker. He thought how the consciousness
had stolen upon him that in teaching one, he was teach-
ing two; and how he had almost insensibly adapted his
explanations to both minds—that with which his own
was daily in contact, and that which he only approached
through it. He thought of the gossip that had reached
him from the Nuns' House, to the effect that Helena,
whom he had mistrusted as so proud and fierce, sub-
mitted herself to the fairy bride (as he called her), and
learnt from her what she knew. He thought of the
picturesque alliance between those two, externally so
very different. He thought—perhaps most of all—could
it be that these things were yet but so many weeks old,
and had become an integral part of his life?
As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing,
his good mother took it to be an infallible sign that he
“wanted support,” the blooming old lady made all
haste to the diming-room closet, to produce from it the
Support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-
made biscuit. It was a most wonderful closet, worthy
of Cloisterham and of Minor Canon Corner. Above it,
a portrait of Handel in a flowing wig beamed down at
the spectator, with a knowing air of being up to the
contents of the closet, and a musical air of intending
to combine all its harmonies in one delicious fugue.
No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges, open-
able all at once, and leaving nothing to be disclosed by
degrees, this rare closet had a lock in mid-air, where
two perpendicular slides met; the one falling down, and
the other pushing up. The upper slide, on being pulled
down (leaving the lower a double mystery), revealed
deep shelves of pickle-jars, jam-pots, tin canisters,
Spice-boxes, and agreeably outlandish vessels of blue
and white, the luscious lodgings of preserved tamarinds
and ginger. Every benevolent inhabitant of this re-
treat had his name inscribed upon his stomach. The
pickles, in a uniform of rich brown double-breasted but-
toned coat, and yellow or sombre drab continuations,
announced their portly forms, in printed capitals, as
92 EDWIN DROOD.
Walnut, Gherkin, Onion, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Mixed,
and other members of that noble family. The jams,
as being of a less masculine temperament, and as
wearing curl-papers, announced themselves in feminine
caligraphy, like a soft whisper, to be Raspberry, Goose- .
berry, Apricot, Plum, Damson, Apple, and Peach. The
scene closing on these charmers, and the lower slide
ascending, oranges were revealed, attended by a mighty
japamned sugar-box, to temper their acerbity if unripe.
Home-made biscuits awaited at the Court of these
Powers, accompanied by a goodly fragment of plum-
cake, and various slender ladies’ fingers, to be dipped
into sweet wine and kissed. Lowest of all, a compact
leaden vault enshrined the sweet wine and a stock of
cordials: whence issued whispers of Seville Orange,
Lemon, Almond, and Caraway-seed. There was a
crowning air upon this closet of closets, of having been
for ages hummed through by the Cathedral bell and
organ, until those venerable bees had made sublimated
honey of everything in store; and it was always ob-
served that every dipper among the shelves (deep, as
has been noticed, and Swallowing up head, shoulders,
and elbows) came forth again mellow-faced, and seem-
ing to have undergone a saccharine transfiguration.
The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up quite as
willing a victim to a nauseous medicinal herb-closet,
also presided over by the china, shepherdess, as to this
glorious cupboard. To what amazing infusions of gen-
tian, peppermint, gilliflower, Sage, parsley, thyme, rue,
rosemary, and dandelion, did his courageous stomach
submit itself! In what wonderful wrappers, enclosing
layers of dried leaves, would he swathe his rosy and
contented face, if his mother suspected him of a tooth-
ache! What botanical blotches would he cheerfully
stick upon his cheek, or forehead, if the dear old lady
convicted him of an imperceptible pimple there! Into
this herbaceous penitentiary, situated on an upper stair-
case-landing: a low and narrow whitewashed cell,
where bunches of dried leaves hung from rusty hooks
in the ceiling, and were spread out upon shelves, in
company with portentous bottles: would the Reverend
Septimus submissively be led, like the highly popular
lamb who has so long and unresistingly been led to the
slaughter, and there would he, unlike that lamb, bore
EDWIN DROOD. 93
nobody but himself. Not even doing that much, so that
the old lady were busy and pleased, he would quietly
swallow what was given him, merely taking a correct-
ive dip of hands and face into the great bowl of dried
rose-leaves, and into the other great bowl of dried lav-
ender, and then would go out, as confident in the Sweet-
ening powers of Cloisterham Weir and a wholesome
mind, as Lady Macbeth was hopeless of those of all the
seas that roll.
In the present instance the good Minor Canon took
his glass of Constantia with an excellent grace, and, SO
supported to his mother’s satisfaction, applied himself
to the remaining duties of the day. In their orderly and
punctual progress they brought round Vesper Service
and twilight. The Cathedral being very cold, he set off
for a brisk trot after service; the trot to end in a charge
at his favorite fragment of rum, which was to be car-
ried by storm, without a pause for breath.
He carried it in a masterly manner, and, not breathed
even then, stood looking down upon the river. The
river at Cloisterham is sufficiently near the sea to throw
up oftentimes a quantity of seaweed. An unusual
quantity had come in with the last tide, and this, and
the confusion of the water, and the restless dipping and
flapping of the noisy gulls, and an angry light out sea-
Ward beyond the brown-sailed barges that were turning
black, foreshadowed a stormy night. In his mind he
was contrasting the wild and noisy sea with the quiet
harbor of Minor Canon Corner, when Helena and Ne-
ville Landless passed below him. He had had the two
together in his thoughts all day, and at once climbed
down to speak to them together. The footing was
rough in an uncertain light for any tread save that of a
good climber; but the Minor Canon was as good a
climber as most men, and stood beside them before
many good climbers would have been half-way down.
“A wild evening, Miss Landless! Do you not find
your usual walk with your brother too exposed and cold
for the time of year? Or at all events, when the sun is
down, and the weather is driving in from the sea?”
Helena thought not. It was their favorite walk. It
was very retired. -
“It is very retired,” assented Mr. Crisparkle, laying
hold of his opportunity straightway, and walking on
94. EDWIN DROOD.
with them. “It is a place of all others where one can
speak without interruption, as I wish to do. Mr. Ne-
ville, I believe you tell your sister everything that
passes between us?”
“Everything, sir.”
“Consequently,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “ your sister is
aware that I have repeatedly urged you to make some
kind of apology for that unfortunate occurrence which
befell, on the night of your arrival here.”
In saying it he looked to her, and not to him; there-
fore it was she, and not he, who replied:
& 4 YeS.”
‘‘I call it unfortunate, Miss Helena,” resumed Mr.
Crisparkle, “forasmuch as it certainly has engendered
a prejudice against Neville. There is a motion about,
that he is a dangerously passionate fellow, of an un-
controllable and furious temper: he is really avoided as
Such.” &
“I have no doubt he is, poor fellow,” said Helena,
with a look of proud compassion at her brother, ex-
pressing a deep sense of his being ungenerously
treated. “I should be quite sure of it, from your
saying so; but what you tell me is confirmed by Sup-
pressed hints and references that I meet with every
day.”
“Now,” Mr. Crisparkle again resumed, in a tone of
mild though firm persuasion, “is not this to be re-
gretted, and ought it not to be amended?. These are
early days of Neville's in Cloisterham, and I have no
fear of his outliving such a prejudice, and proving
himself to have been misunderstood. But how much
wiser to take action at Once, than to trust to uncertain
time! Besides, apart from its being politic, it is right.
For there can be no question that Neville was wrong.”.
“He was provoked,” Helena submitted.
“He was the assailant,” Mr. Crisparkle submitted.
They walked on in silence, until Helena raised her
eyes to the Minor Canon's face, and said, almost re-
proachfully: “O Mr. Crisparkle, would you have Ne-
ville throw himself at young Drood’s feet, or at Mr.
Jasper's, who maligns him every day? In your heart
you cannot mean it. From your heart you could not do
it, if his case were yours.”
“I have represented to Mr. Crisparkle, Helena,” said
EDWIN DROOD. 95
Neville, with a glance of deference towards his tutor,
“that if I could do it from my heart, I would. But I
cannot, and I revolt from the pretence, You forget,
however, that to put the case to Mr. Crisparkle as his
own, is to suppose Mr. Crisparkle to have done what
I did.”
“I ask his pardon,” said Helena.
“You see,” remarked Mr. Crisparkle, again laying
hold of his opportunity, though with a moderate and
delicate touch, “ you both instinctively acknowledge
that Neville did wrong. Then why stop short, and not
otherwise acknowledge it?”
“Is there no difference,” asked Helena, with a little
faltering in her manner, “between submission to a
generous spirit, and submission to a base or trivial one?”
Before the worthy Minor Canon was quite ready with
his argument in reference to this nice distinction, Ne-
ville struck in: -
“Help me to clear myself with Mr. Crisparkle, Helena.
Help me to convince him that I cannot be the first to
make concessions without mockery and falsehood. My
nature must be changed before I can do so, and it is
not changed. I am sensible of inexpressible affront,
and deliberate aggravation of inexpressible affront,
and I am angry. The plain truth is, I am still as angry
when I recall that night as I was that night.”
“Neville,” hinted the Minor Canon, with a steady
countenance, “ you have repeated that former action of
your hands, which I so much dislike.”
“I am sorry for it, sir, but it was involuntary. I con-
fessed that I was still as angry.” -
“And I confess,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “that I hoped
for better things.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but it would be
far worse to deceive you, and I should deceive you
grossly if I pretended that you had softened me in this
respect. The time may come when your powerful in-
flence will do even that with the difficult pupil whose
antecedents you know; but it has not come yet. Is this
so, and in spite of my struggles against myself, Helena?”
She, whose dark eyes were watching the effect of
what he said on Mr. Crisparkle's face, replied—to Mr.
Crisparkle, not to him: “It is so.” After a short pause,
she answered the slightest look of inquiry conceivable,
96 EDWIN DROOD.
in her brother's eyes, with as slight an affirmative bend
of her own head; and he went on: *
“I have never yet had the courage to say to you, sir,
what in full openness I ought to have said when you
first talked with me on this subject. It is not easy
to say, and I have been withheld by a fear of its
seeming ridiculous, which is very strong upon me down
to this last moment, and might, but for my sister, pre-
vent my being quite open with you even now.—I admire
Miss Bud, sir, so very much, that I cannot bear her being
treated with conceit or indifference; and even if I did
not feel that I had an injury against young Drood on
my own account, I should feel that I had an injury
against him on hers.”
Mr. Crisparkſe, in utter amazement, looked at Helena
for corroboration, and met in her expressive face full
corroboration, and a plea for advice.
“The young lady of whom you speak is, as you know,
Mr. Neville, shortly to be married,” said Mr. Crisparkle,
gravely; “therefore your admiration, if it be of that
special nature which you seem to indicate, is outra-
geously misplaced. Moreover, it is monstrous that you
should take upon yourself to be the young lady’s cham-
pion against her chosen husband. Besides, you have
seen them. Only once. The young lady has become your
sister's friend; and I wonder that your sister, even on
her behalf, has not checked you in this irrational and
culpable fancy.” *
“She has tried, sir, but uselessly. Husband or no
husband, that fellow is incapable of the feeling with
which I am inspired towards the beautiful young creat-
ure whom he treats like a doll. I say he is as incapable
of it, as he is unworthy of her. I say she is sacrificed
in being bestowed upon him. I say that I love her, and
despise and hate him!” This with a face so flushed,
and a gesture so violent, that his sister crossed to his side,
and caught his arm, remonstrating, “Neville, Neville!”
Thus recalled to himself, he quickly became sensible
Of having lost the guard he had set upon his passionate
tendency, and covered his face with his hand, as one
repentant and wretched. -
Mr. Crisparkle, watching him attentively, and at the
Same time meditating how to proceed, walked on for
same paces in silence. Then he spoke:
EDWIN DROOD. 97
“Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville, I am sorely grieved to see
in you more traces of a character as sullen, angry, and
wild, as the night now closing in. They are of too
Serious an aspect to leave me the resource of treating
the infatuation you have disclosed, as undeserving
serious consideration. I give it very serious considera-
tion, and I speak to you accordingly. This feud be-
tween you and young Drood must not go on. I cannot
permit it to go on any longer, knowing what I now
know from you, and you living under my roof. What-
ever prejudiced and unauthorised constructions your
blind and envious wrath may put upon his character, it is
a frank, good-natured character. I know I can trust to it
for that. Now, pray observe what I am about to say.
On reflection, and on your sister’s representation, I am
willing to admit that, in making peace with young
Drood, you have a right to be met half way. I will en-
gage that you shall be, and even that young Drood shall
make the first advance. This condition fulfilled, you
will pledge me the honor of a Christian gentleman that
the quarrel is for ever at an end on your side. What
may be in your heart when you give him your hand,
can only be known to the Searcher of all hearts; but it
will never go well with you, if there be any treachery
there. So far, as to that; next as to what I must again
speak of as your infatuation. I understand it to have
been confided to me, and to be known to no other per-
son save your sister and yourself. Do I understand
aright?”
Helena answered in a low voice: “It is only known to
us three who are here together.”
“It is not at all known to the young lady, your
friend?”
“On my soul, no!”
“I require you, then, to give me your similar and Sol-
emn pledge, Mr. Neville, that it shall remain the Secret
it is, and that you will take no other action whatsoever
upon it than endeavoring (and that most earnestly) to
erase it from your mind. I will not tell you that it will
soon pass; I will not tell you that it is the fancy of the
moment; I will not tell you that such caprices have their
rise and fall among the young and ardent every hour;
I will leave you undisturbed in the belief that it has few
parallels or none, that it will abide with you a long time,
7
98 EDWIN DROOD.
and that it will be very difficult to conquer. So much
the more weight shall I attach to the pledge I require
from you, when it is unreservedly given.”
The young man twice or thrice essayed to speak, but
failed.
"“Let me leave you with your sister, whom it is time
you took home,” said Mr. Crisparkle. “You will find
me alone in my room by and by.”
“Pray do not leave us yet,” Helena implored him.
“Another minute.”
“I should not,” said Neville, pressing his hand upon
his face, “ have needed so much as another minute, if
you had been less patient with me, Mr. Crisparkle, less
considerate of me, and less unpretendingly good and
true. O, if in my childhood I had known such a guide!”
“Follow your guide now, Neville,” murmured Helena,
“ and follow him to Heaven!”
There was that in her tone which broke the good
Minor Canon’s voice, or it would have repudiated her
exaltation of him. As it was, he laid a finger on his
lips, and looked towards her brother.
“To say that I give both pledges, Mr. Crisparkle, out of
my innermost heart, and to say that there is no treachery
in it, is to say nothing!” Thus Neville, greatly moved.
“I beg your forgiveness for my miserable lapse into a
burst of passion.”
“Not mine, Neville, not mine. You know with whom
forgiveness lies, as the highest attribute conceivable.
Miss Helena, you and your brother are twin children.
You came into this world with the same dispositions, and
you passed your younger days together surrounded by
the same adverse circumstances. What you have over-
come in yourself, can you not overcome in him? You
see the rock that lies in his course. Who but you can
keep him clear of it?”
“Who but you, sir?” replied Helena. “What is my
influence, or my weak wisdom, compared with yours!”
“You have the wisdom of Love,” returned the Minor
Canon, “and it was the highest wisdom ever known
upon this earth, remember. As to mine—but the less
º of that commonplace commodity the better. Good
night!”
She took the hand he offered her, and gratefully and
almost reverently raised it to her lips.
EDWIN DROOD. 99
“Tut!” said the Minor Canon softly, “I am much
overpaid!” and turned away.
|Retracing his steps towards the Cathedral Close, he
tried, as he went along in the dark, to think out the
best means of bringing to pass what he had promised to
effect, and what must somehow be done. “I shall prob-
ably be asked to marry them,” he reflected, “and I
would they were married and gone! But this presses
first.” He debated principally whether he should write
to young Drood, or whether he should speak to Jas-
per. The consciousness of being popular with the
whole Cathedral establishment inclined him to the
latter course, and the well-timed sight of the lighted
gatehouse decided him to take it. “I will strike while
the iron is hot,” he said, “ and see him now.”
Jasper was lying asleep on a couch before the fire,
when, having ascended the postern-stair, and received
no answer to his knock at the door, Mr. Crisparkle
gently turned the handle and looked in. Long after-
wards he had cause to remember how Jasper sprang
from the couch in a delirious state between sleeping and
waking, and crying out: “What is the matter? Who
did it, P '' ū
“It is only I, Jasper. I am sorry to have disturbed
you.”
The glare of his eyes settled down into a look of recog-
Inition, and he moved a chair or two, to make a way to
the fireside.
‘‘I was dreaming at a great rate, and am glad to be
disturbed from an indigestive after-dinner sleep. Not
to mention that you are always welcome.”
“Thank you. I am not confident,” returned Mr.
Crisparkle, as he sat himself down in the easy-chair
placed for him, “that my subject will at first sight be
quite as welcome as myself; but I am a minister of
peace, and I pursue my subject in the interests of peace.
in a word, Jasper, I want to establish peace between
these two young fellows.”.
A very perplexed expression took hold of Mr. Jasper’s
face; a very perplexing expression too, for Mr. Cris-
parkle could make nothing of it.
“How?” was Jasper's inquiry, in a low and slow
voice, after a silence.
“For the ‘How 'I come to you. I want to ask you to
100 EDWIN DROOD.
do me the great favor and service of interposing with
your nephew (I have already interposed with Mr.
Neville), and getting him to write you a short note, in
his lively way, saying that he is Willing to shake hands.
I know what a good-natured fellow he is, and what in-
fluence you have with him. And without in the least
defending Mr. Neville, we must all admit that he was
bitterly stung.”
Jasper turned that perplexed face towards the fire. Mr.
Crisparkle continuing to observe it, found it even more
perplexing than before, inasmuch as it seemed to denote
(which could hardly be) some close internal calculation.
“I know that you are not prepossessed in Mr. Neville's
favor,” the Minor Canon was going on, when Jasper
stopped him: -
“You have cause to say so. I am not, indeed.”
“ Undoubtedly; and I admit his lamentable violence
of temper, though I hope he and I will get the better of
it between us. But I have exacted a very solemn
promise from him as to his future demeanor towards
your nephew, if you do kindly interpose; and I am Sure
he will keep it.”
“You are always responsible and trustworthy, Mr.
Crisparkle. Do you really feel sure that you can an-
swer for him so confidently?” .
‘‘I do.”
The perplexed and perplexing look vanished.
“Then you relieve my mind of a great dread, and a
heavy weight,” said Jasper; “I will do it.”
Mr. Crisparkle, delighted by the swiftness and com-
pleteness of his success, acknowledged it in the hand-
SOrmest terms. &
“I will do it,” repeated Jasper, “for the comfort of
having your guarantee against my vague and unfounded
fears. You will laugh—but do you keep a Diary?”
“A line for a day; not more.”
“A line for a day would be quite as much as my
uneventful life would need, Heaven knows,” said Jas-
per, taking a book from a desk; “but that my Diary is,
in fact, a Diary of Ned's life too. You will laugh at
this entry; you will guess when it was made:
“Past midnight.—After what I have just now seen, I have a morbid dread
upon me of some horrible consequences resulting to my dear boy, that I call-
EDWIN DROOD. 101
not reason with or in any way contend against. All my efforts are vain. The
demoniacal passion of this Neville Landless, his strength in his fury, and his
savage rage for the destruction of its object, appall me. So profound is the
impression, that twice since I have gone into my dear boy's room, to assure
myself of his sleeping safely, and not lying dead in his blood.”
Here is another entry next morning:
“Ned up and away. Tight-hearted and unsuspicious as ever. He laughed
when I cautioned him, and said he was as good a man as Neville Landless any
day. I told him that might be, but he was not as bad a man. He continued
to make light of it, but I travelled with him as far as I could, and left him
most unwillingly. I am unable to shake off these dark intangible presenti-
ments of evil—if feelings founded upon staring facts are to be so called.”
“Again and again,” said Jasper, in conclusion, twirl-
ing the leaves of the book before putting it by, “I have
relapsed into these moods, as other entries show. But
I have now your assurance at my back, and shall put it
in my book, and make it an antidote to my black
humors.”
“Such an antidote, I hope,” returned Mr. Crisparkie,
“ as will induce you before long to consign the black
humors to the flames. I Ought to be the last to find any
fault with you this evening, when you have met my
wishes so freely; but I must say, Jasper, that your de-
votion to your nephew has made you exaggerative
here.”
“You are my witness,” said Jasper, shrugging his
shoulders, “what my state of mind honestly was, that
night, before I sat down to write, and in what words I
expressed it. You remember objecting to a word I
used, as being too strong? It was a stronger word than
any in my Diary.”
“Well, well. Try the antidote,” rejoined Mr. Cris-
parkle; “and may it give you a brighter and better
view of the case! We will discuss it no more, now. I
have to thank you for myself, and I thank you sin-
cerely.”
“You shall find,” said Jasper, as they shook hands,
“that I will not do the thing you wish me to do, by
halves. I will take care that Ned, giving way at all,
shall give way thoroughly.”
On the third day after this conversation, he called on
Mr. Crisparkle with the following letter:
102 EDWIN DROOD.
“MY DEAR JACK, -
“I am touched by your account of your interview
with Mr. Crisparkle, whom I much respect and esteem.
At once I openly say that I forgot myself on that occa-
sion quite as much as Mr. Landless did, and I wish that
bygone to be a bygone, and all to be right again.
* Look here, dear old boy. Ask Mr. Landless to din-
ner on Christmas Eve (the better the day the better the
deed), and let there be only we three, and let us shake
hands all round there and then, and Say no more
about it.
“My dear Jack,
“Ever your most affectionate,
‘‘ EDWIN DROOD.
“P.S. Love to Miss Pussy at the next music-lesson.”
“You expect Mr. Neville, then?” said Mr. Crisparkle.
“I count upon his coming,” said Mr. Jasper.
*=s===
CHAPTER XI.
A PICTURE AND A RING.
BEHIND the most ancient part of Holborn, London,
where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still
stand looking on the public way, as if disconsolately
looking for the Old Bourne that has long run dry, is a
little mook composed of two irrregular quadrangles,
called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning
into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the
relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton
in his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of
those nooks where a few smoky sparrows twitter in
smoky trees, as though they called to one another,
“Let us play at country,” and where a few feet of gar-
den-mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do
that refreshing violence to their tiny understandings.
Moreover, it is one of those nooks which are legal
nooks; and it contains a little Hall, with a little lantern
in its roof: to what obstructive purposes devoted, and at
whose expense, this history knoweth not.
EDWIN DROOD. 108
In the days when Cloisterham took offence at the
existence of a railroad afar off, as menacing that sensi-
tive constitution, the property of us Britons: the odd
fortune of which sacred institutions it is to be in exactly
equal degrees Croaked about, trembled for, and boasted
of, whatever happens to anything, anywhere in the
world: in those days no neighboring architecture of
lofty proportions had arisen to overshadow Staple Inn.
The westering sun bestowed bright glances on it, and
the south-west wind blow into it unimpeded.
Neither wind nor sun, however, favored Staple Inn
One December afternoon towards six o'clock, when it
was filled with fog, and candles shed murky and blurred
rays through the windows of all its then-occupied sets
of chambers; notably from "a set of chambers in a corner
house in the little inner quadrangle, presenting in black
and White Over its ugly portal the mysterious inscrip-
tion:
P
1747.
T
In which set of chambers, never having troubled his
head about the inscription, unless to bethink himself at
Odd times on glancing up at it, that haply it might mean
. Perhaps John Thomas, or Perhaps Joe Tyler, sat Mr.
Grewgious writing by his fire.
Who could have told, by looking at Mr. Grewgious,
whether he had ever known ambition or disappoint-
ment? He had been bred to the Bar, and had laid himself
out for chamber practice; to draw deeds; “convey the
wise it call,” as Pistol says. But Conveyancing and he
had made such a very indifferent marriage of it that
they had separated by consent—if there can be said to
be separation where there has never been coming to-
gether.
No. Coy Conveyancing would not come to Mr. Grew-
gious. . She was wooed, not won, and they went their
Several ways. But an Arbitration being blown towards
him by some unaccountable wind, and he gaining great
Credit in it as one indefatigable in seeking out right and
doing right, a pretty fat Receivership was next blown
into his pocket by a wind more traceable to its source.
So, by chance, he had found his niche. Receiver and
104 EDWIN DROOD.
Agent now, to two rich estates, and deputing their legal
business, in an amount worth having, to a firm of solic-
itors on the floor below, he had snuffed out his ambi-
tion (supposing him to have ever lighted it), and had
settled down with his snuffers for the rest of his life
under the dry vine and fig-tree of P. J. T., who planted
in seventeen-forty-seven.
Many accounts and account-books, many files of cor-
respondence, and several strong boxes, garnished Mr.
Grewgious's room. They can scarcely be represented
as having lumbered it, so conscientious and precise was
their orderly arrangement. The apprehension of dying
suddenly, and leaving one fact or One figure with any
incompleteness or obscurity attaching to it, would have
stretched Mr. Grewgious stone-dead any day. The
largest fidelity to a trust was the life-blood of the man.
There are sorts of life-blood that course more quickly,
more gaily, more attractively; but there is no better
sort in circulation.
There was no luxury in his room. Even its comforts
were limited to its being dry and warm, and having a
snug though faded fireside. What may be called its
private life was confined to the hearth, and an easy-
chair, and an old-fashioned occasional round table that
was brought out upon the rug after business hours,
from a corner where it elsewise remained turned up
like a shining mahogany shield. Behind it, when
standing thus on the defensive, was a closet, usually
containing something good to drink. An outer room
was the clerk's room; Mr. Grewgious's sleeping-room
was across the common stair; and he held some not
empty cellarage at the bottom of the common stair.
Three hundred days in the year, at least, he crossed
Over to the hotel in Furnival’s Inn for his dinner, and
after dinner crossed back again, to make the most of
these simplicities until it should become broad business
day once more, with P. J. T., date seventeen-forty-
S62 VG1).
As Mr. Grewgious sat and wrote by his fire that after-
noon, so did the clerk of Mr. Grewgious sit and write
by his fire. A pale, puffy-faced, dark-haired person of
thirty, with big dark eyes that wholly wanted lustre,
and a dissatisfied doughy complexion, that seemed to
ask to be sent to the baker's, this attendant was a mys-
EDWIN DROOD. 105
terious being, possessed of some strange power over
Mr. Grewgious. As though he had been called into
existence, like a fabulous Familiar, by a magic spell
which had failed when required to dismiss him, he
stuck tight to Mr. Grewgious's stool, although Mr.
Grewgious’s comfort and convenience would manifestly
have been advanced by dispossessing him. A gloomy
person with tangled locks, and a general air of having
been reared under the shadow of that baleful tree of
Java, which has given shelter to more lies than the
whole botanical kingdom, Mr. Grewgious, nevertheless,
treated him with unaccountable consideration.
“Now, Bazzard,” said Mr. Grewgious, on the en-
trance of his clerk: looking up from his papers as he
arranged them for the night: “what is in the wind
besides fog?”
“Mr. Drood,” said Bazzard.
“What Of him 2 °
“Has called,” said Bazzard.
“You might have shown him in.”
‘‘I am doing it,” said Bazzard.
The visitor came in accordingly.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Grewgious, looking round his
pair of office candles. “I thought you had called and
merely left your name and gone. How do you do, Mr.
Edwin? Dear me, you’re choking!”
“It’s this fog,” returned Edwin; “and it makes my
eyes Smart, like Cayenne pepper.”
“Is it really so bad as that? Pray undo your wrap-
pers. It’s fortunate I have so good a fire; but Mr.
Bazzard has taken care of me.”
“No I haven’t,” said Mr. Bazzard at the door.
“Ah! then it follows that I must have taken care of
myself without observing it,” said Mr. Grewgious.
“Pray be seated in my chair. No. I beg! Coming
Out of Such an atmosphere, in my chair.”
Edwin took the easy-chair in the corner; and the fog
he had brought in with him, and the fog he took off
with his great-coat and neck-shawl, was speedily licked
up by the eager fire.
“I look,” said lºdwin, smiling, “as if I had come to
stop.”
“ —By the by,” cried Mr. Grewgious; “excuse my in-
terrupting you; do stop. The fog may clear in an hour
106 EDWIN DROOD.
or two. We can have dinner in from just across Hol.
born. You had better take your cayenne pepper here
than outside; pray stop and dine.”
“You are very kind,” said Edwin, glancing about
him as though attracted by the notion of a new and rel-
ishing sort of gipsy-party.
“Not at all,” said Mr. Grewgious; “ you are very kind
to join issue with a bachelor in chambers, and take pot-
luck. And Tll ask,” said Mr. Grewgious, dropping his
voice, and speaking with a twinkling eye, as if inspired
with a bright thought: “I’ll ask Bazzard. He mighn’t
like it else.—Bazzard!”
Bazzard reappeared.
“Dine presently with Mr. Drood and me.”
“If I am ordered to dine, of course I will, sir,” was
the gloomy answer.
“Save the man!” cried Mr. Grewgious. “You’re not
ordered; you're invited.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Bazzard; “in that case I don’t
Care if I do.” &
“That’s arranged. And perhaps you wouldn’t mind,”
said Mr. Grewgious, “stepping over to the hotel in
Furnival’s, and asking them to send in materials for
laying the cloth. For dinner we’ll have a tureen of the
hottest and strongest soup available, and we’ll have the
best made-dish that can be recommended, and we’ll have
a joint (such as a haunch of mutton), and we’ll have a
goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed thing of that sort
that may happen to be in the bill of fare—in short, we'll
have whatever there is on hand.”
These liberal directions Mr. Grewgious issued with
his usual air of reading an inventory, or repeating a
lesson, or doing anything else by rote. Bazzard, after
drawing out the round table, withdrew to execute them.
“I was a little delicate, you see,” said Mr. Grewgious,
in a lower tone, after his clerk’s departure, “about em-
ploying him in the foraging or commissariat depart-
ment. Because he mightn’t like it.”
“He seems to have his own way, sir,’
Edwin.
“His own way?” returned Mr. Grewgious. “O dear
no! Poor fellow, you quite mistake him. If he had his
own way, he wouldn't be here.”
‘‘I wonder where he would be!” Edwin thought. But
5
remarked
EDWIN DROOD. 107
he only thought it, because Mr. Grewgious came and
stood himself with his back to the other corner of the
fire, and his shoulder-blades against the chimney-piece,
and collected his skirts for easy conversation.
“I take it, without having the gift of prophecy, that
you have done me the favor of looking in to mention
that you are going down yonder—where I can tell you,
you are expected—and to offer to execute any little corn-
mission from me to my charming ward, and perhaps to
sharpen me up a bit in any proceedings? Eh, Mr. Ed-
Will P ''
“I called sir, before going down, as an act of at-
tention.”
“Of attention!” said Mr. Grewgious. “Ah of
course, not of impatience?”
“Impatience, sir?”
Mr. Grewgious had meant to be arch—not that he in
the remotest degree expressed that meaning—and had
brought himself into scarcely supportable proximity
with the fire, as if to burn the fullest effect of his arch-
ness into himself, as other subtle impressions are burnt
into hard metals. But his archness suddenly flying be-
fore the composed face and manner of his visitor, and
only the fire remaining, he started and rubbed himself.
“I have lately been down yonder,” said Mr. Grew-
gious, rearranging his skirts; “and that was what I re-
ferred to, when I said I could tell you you are expected.”
“Indeed, sir! Yes; I knew that Pussy was looking
Out for me!”
“Do you keep a cat down there?” asked Mr. Grewgious.
Edwin colored a little, as he explained: “I call Rosa
Pussy.”
“O, really,” said Mr. Grewgious, smoothing down his
head; “that’s very affable.”
Edwin glanced at his face, uncertain whether or no
he seriously objected to the appellation. But Edwin
might as well have glanced at the face of a clock.
“A pet name, sir,” he explained again.
“ Umps,” said Mr. Grewgious, with a nod. But with
such an extraordinary compromise between an unqual-
ified assent and a qualified dissent, that his visitor was
much disconcerted.
“Did PROsa—” Edwin began by way of recovering
himself.
10S - FDWIN DEOOD.
“PROsa?” repeated Mr. Grewgious.
“I was going to say Pussy, and changed my mind;—
did she tell you anything about the Landlesses?” &
“No,” said Mr. Grewgious. “What is the Landlesses?
An estate? A villa? A farm?”
“A brother and sister. The sister is at the Nuns'
House, and has become a great friend of P−"
“PRosa's,” Mr. Grewgious struck in, with a fixed
face.
“She is a strikingly handsome girl, sir, and I thought
she might have been described to you, or presented to
you, perhaps?”
“Neither,” said Mr. Grewgious. “But here is Baz-
Zard.” -
Bazzard returned, accompanied by two waiters—an
immovable waiter, and a flying waiter; and the three
brought in with them as much fog as gave a new roar
to the fire. The flying waiter, who had brought every-
thing on his shoulders, laid the cloth with amazing
rapidity and dexterity; while the immovable waiter,
who had brought nothing, found fault with him. The
flying waiter then highly polished all the glasses he
had brought, and the immovable waiter looked through
them. The flying waiter then flew across. Holborn for
the soup, and flew back again, and then took another
flight for the made-dish, and fiew back again, and then
took another flight for the joint and poultry, and flew
back again, and between Whiles took supplementary
flights for a great variety of articles, as it was discov-
ered from time to time that the immovable waiter had
forgotten them all. But let the flying waiter cleave the
air as he might, he was always reproached on his
return by the immovable waiter for bringing fog with
him, and being out of breath. At the conclusion of the
repast, by which time the flying waiter was severely
blown, the immovable waiter gathered up the table-
cloth under his arm with a grand air, and having
sternly (not to say with indignation) looked on at the
flying waiter while he set the clean glasses round,
directed a valedictory glance towards Mr. Grewgious,
conveying: “Let it be clearly understood between us
that the reward is mine, and that Nil is the claim of
this slave,” and pushed the fiying waiter before him out
of the room. &
EDWIN DROOHD. g 109
It was like a highly-finished miniature painting rep-
resenting My Lords of the Circumlocutional Depart-
ment, Commandership-in-Chief of any sort, Govern-
ment. It was quite an edifying little picture to be hung
on the line in the National Gallery.
As the fog had been the proximate cause of this
Sumptuous repast, so the fog served for its general
sauce. To hear the Out-door clerks Sneezing, wheezing,
and beating their feet on the gravel was a zest far sur-
passing Doctor Kitchener’s. To bid, with a shiver, the
unfortunate flying waiter shut the door before he had
Opened it, was a condiment of a profounder flavor than .
Harvey. And here let it be noticed, parenthetically.
that the leg of this young man, in its application to the
door, evinced the finest sense of touch: always preced-
ing himself and tray (with something of an angling air
about it), by Some seconds: and always lingering after
he and the tray had disappeared, like Macbeth’s leg
when accompanying him off the stage with reluctance
to the assassination of Duncan.
The host had gone below to the cellar, and had
brought up bottles of ruby, straw-colored, and golden
drinks, which had ripened long ago in lands where no
fogs are, and had since lain slumbering in the shade.
Sparkling and tingling after so long a nap, they pushed to
their corks to help the corkscrew (like prisoners helping
rioters to force their gates), and danced out gaily. If
P. J. T. in seventeen-forty-seven, or in any other year of
his period, drank such wines—then, for a certainty, P.
J. T. was Pretty Jolly Too.
Externally, Mr. Grewgious showed no signs of being
mellowed by these glowing vintages. Instead of his
drinking then, they might have been poured over him
in his high-dried snuff form, and run to waste, for any
lights and shades they caused to flicker over his face,
Neither was his manner influenced. But, in his wooden
way, he had observant eyes for Edwin; and when, at
the end of dinner, he motioned Edwin back to his own
easy-chair in the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luxu-
riously into it after very brief remonstrance, Mr. Grew-
gious, as he turned his seat round towards the fire
too, and smoothed his head and face, might have
been seen looking at his visitor between his Smoothing
fingers.
110 EDWIN DROOD.
“Bazzard!” said Mr. Grewgious, suddenly turning
to him.
, “I follow you, sir,” returned Bazzard; who had done
his work of consuming meat and drink in a Workman-
like manner, though mostly in speechlessness.
“I drink to you, Bazzard; Mr. Edwin, success to Mr.
Bazzard!” •
“Success to Mr. Bazzard!” echoed Edwin, with a
totally unfounded appearance of enthusiasm, and with
the unspoken addition: “What in, I wonder!”
“And May!” pursued Mr. Grewgious—“I am not at lib-
erty to be definite–May!—my conversational powers are
so very limited that I know I shall not come well out of
this—May!—it ought to be put imaginatively, but I have
no imagination—May!—the thorn of anxiety is as nearly
the mark as I am likely to get—May it come out at last!”
, Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at the fire, put a
hand into his tangled locks, as if the thorn of anxiety were
there; then into his waistcoat, as if it were there; then
into his pockets, as if it were there. In all these move-
ments he was closely followed by the eyes of Edwin, as
if that young gentleman expected to see the thorn in
action. It was not produced, however, and Mr. Bazzard
merely said: “I follow you, sir, and I thank you.”
“I am going, said Mr. Grewgious, jingling his glass
on the table with One hand, and bending aside under
cover of the other, to whisper to Edwin, “to drink to
my ward. But I put Bazzard first. He mightn’t like it
else.” g
This was said with a mysterious wink; or what would
have been a wink if, in Mr. Grewgious's hands, it could
have been quick enough. So Edwin winked respon-
sively, without the least idea what he meant by doing
SO. - w
“And now,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I devote a bumper
to the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa. Bazzard, the fair
and fascinating Miss Rosa!”
‘‘I follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “and I pledge you!”
“And SO do I!” said Edwin. º
“Lord bless me,” cried Mr. Grewgious, breaking the
blank silence which of course ensued: though why these
pauses should come upon us when we have performed
any small social rite, not directly inducive of self-exam-
imation or mental despondency, who can tell? “I am
EDWIN DROOD. 111
a particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may
use the word, not having a morsel of fancy), that I could
draw a picture of a true lover’s state of mind, to-night.”
‘‘Let us follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, ‘‘ and have
the picture.”
“Mr. Edwin will correct it where it’s wrong,” re-
sumed Mr. Grewgious, ‘‘ and will throw in a few touches
from the life. I dare say it is wrong in many particu-
lars, and wants many touches from the life, for I was
born a Chip, and have neither soft sympathies nor soft
experiences. Well! I hazard the guess that the true
lover’s mind is completely permeated by the beloved ob-
ject of his affections. I hazard the guess that her dear
name is precious to him, cannot be heard or repeated
without emotion, and is preserved sacred. If he has
any distinguishing appellation of fondness for her, it is
reserved for her, and is not for common ears. A name
that it would be a privilege to call her by, being alone
with her own bright self, it would be a liberty, a cold-
Iness, an insensibility, almost a breach of good faith, to
flaunt elsewhere.”
It was wonderful to see Mr. Grewgious sitting bolt
upright, with his hands on his knees, continuously
chopping this discourse out of himself: much as a char-
ity boy with a very good memory might get his cate-
chism said: and evincing no correspondent emotion
whatever, unless in a certain occasional little tingling
perceptible at the end of his nose.
“My picture,” Mr. Grewgious proceeded, “goes on to
represent (under correction from you, Mr. Edwin), the
true lover as ever impatient to be in the presence or vi-
cinity of the beloved object of his affections; as caring
very little for his ease in any other society; and as con-
stantly seeking that. If I was to say seeking that, as a
bird seeks its nest, I should make an ass of myself, be-
cause that would trench upon what I understand to be
poetry; and I am so far from trenching upon poetry at
any time, that I never, to my knowledge, got within
ten thousand miles of it. And I am besides totally un-
acquainted with the habits of birds, except the birds of
Staple Inn, who seek their nests on ledges, and in gutter-
pipes and chimney-pots, not constructed for them by the
beneficent hand of Nature. I beg, therefore, to be un-
derstood as foregoing the bird's-nest. But my picture
112 EDWIN DROOD.
does represent the true lover as having no existence
separable from that of the beloved object of his affec-
tions, and as living at once a doubled life and a halved
life. And if I do not clearly express what I mean by
that, it is either for the reason that having no conversa-
tional powers, I cannot express what I mean, or that
having no meaning, I do not mean what I fail to ex-
press. Which, to the best of my belief, is not the case.”
|Edwin had turned red and turned white, as certain
points of this picture came into the light. He now sat
looking at the fire, and bit his lip.
“The speculations of an Angular man,” resumed Mr.
Grewgious, still sitting and speaking exactly as before,
“are probably erroneous on so globular a topic. But
I figure to myself (subject, as before, to Mr. Edwin’s
correction), that there can be no coolness, no lassitude,
no doubt, no indifference, no half fire and half smoke
state of mind, in a real lover. Pray alm I at all near
the mark in my picture?”
As abrupt in his conclusion as in his commencement
and progress, he jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and
stopped when one might have supposed him in the mid-
dle of his oration. -
“I should say, sir,” stammered Edwin, “as you refer
the question to me—”
“Yes,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I refer it to you, as an
authority.”
“I should say, then, sir,” Edwin went on, embarrassed,
“that the picture you have drawn is generally correct;
but I submit that perhaps you may be rather hard upon
the unlucky lover.”
“Likely so,” assented Mr. Grewgious, “likely so. I
am a hard man in the grain.”
“He may not show,” said Edwin, “all he feels; or he
may not—”
There he stopped so long, to find the rest of his sen-
tence, that Mr. Grewgious rendered his difficulty a
thousand times the greater by unexpectedly striking
in with:
“No, to be sure; he may not!”
After that, they all sat silent; the silence of Mr. Baz-
zard being occasioned by slumber.
“His responsibility is very great, though,” said Mr.
Grewgious at length, with his eyes on the fire.
EDWIN IDROOD. 113
Edwin nodded assent, with his eyes on the fire.
“And let him be sure that he trifles with no one,” said
Mr. Grewgious; “neither with himself, nor with any
Other.”
fi Edwin bit his lip again, and still sat looking at the
TG.
“He must not make a plaything of a treasure. Woe
betide him if he does! Let him take that well to heart,”
said Mr. Grewgious.
Though he said these things in short sentences, much
as the supposititious charity boy just now referred to
might have repeated a verse or two from the Book of
Proverbs, there was something dreamy (for so literal a
man) in the way in which he now shook his right fore-
finger at the live coals in the grate, and again fell silent.
But not for long. As he sat upright and stiff in his
chair, he suddenly rapped his knees, like the carved
image of some queer JOSS or other coming out of its
reverie, and said: ‘‘We must finish this bottle, Mr.
Edwin. Let me help you. I’ll help Bazzard too, though
he is asleep. He mightn’t like it else.”
He helped them both, and helped himself, and drained
his glass, and stood it bottom upward on the table, as
though he had just caught a bluebottle in it.
“And now, Mr. Edwin,” he proceeded, wiping his
mouth and hands upon his handkerchief: “to a little
piece of business. You received from me, the other
day, a certified copy of Miss Rosa's father's will. You
knew its contents before, but you received it from me
as a matter of business. I should have sent it to Mr.
Jasper, but for Miss Rosa's wishing it to come straight
to you, in preference. You received it?”
‘‘ Quite safely, sir.”
“You should have acknowledged its receipt,” said Mr.
Grewgious; “business being business all the world over.
However, you did not.” w
‘‘I meant to have acknowledged it when I first came
in this evening, sir.”
“Not a business-like acknowledgment,” returned Mr.
Grewgious; “however, let that pass. Now, in that docu-
ment you have observed a few words of kindly allusion
to its being left to me to discharge a little trust, con-
fided to me in conversation, at such time as I in my
discretion may think best.”
8
114 EDWIN DROOD.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Edwin, it came into my mind just now, when I
was looking at the fire, that I could, in my discretion,
acquit myself of that trust at no better time than the
present. Favor me with your attention, half a minute.”
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, singled out
by the candle-light the key he wanted, and then, with a
candle in his hand, went to a bureau or escritoire, un-
locked it, touched the spring of a little Secret drawer,
and took from it an ordinary ring-case made for a single
ring. With this in his hand, he returned to his chair.
As he held it up for the young man to see, his hand
trembled.
“Mr. Edwin, this rose of diamonds and rubies deli-
cately set in gold was a ring belonging to Miss Rosa's
mother. It was removed from her dead hand, in my
presence, with such distracted grief as I hope it may
never be my lot to contemplate again. Hard man as I
am, I am not hard enough for that. See how bright
these stones shine!” opening the case. “And yet the
eyes that were so much brighter, and that so often
looked upon them with a light and a proud heart, have
been ashes among ashes, and dust among dust, some
years! If I had any imagination (which it is needless
to say I have not), I might imagine that the lasting
beauty of these stones was almost cruel.”
He closed the case again as he spoke.
“This ring was given to the young lady who was
drowned so early in her beautiful and happy career, by
her husband, when they first plighted their faith to one
another. It was he who removed it from her unconscious
hand, and it was he who, when his death drew very
near, placed it in mine. The trust in which I received
it, was, that, you and Miss Rosa growing to manhood
and womanhood, and your betrothal prospering and
coming to maturity, I should give it to you to place
upon her finger. Failing those desired results, it was
to remain in my possession.”
Some trouble was in the young man’s face, and some
indecision was in the action of his hand, as Mr. Grew-
gious, looking steadfastly at him, gave him the ring.
“Your placing it on her finger,” said Mr. Grewgious,
“will be the solemn seal upon your strict fidelity to the
living and the dead. You are going to her, to make the
EDWIN DROOD. 115
last irrevocable preparations for your marriage. Take
it with you.”
The young man took the little case, and placed it in
his breast.
“If anything should be amiss, if anything should be
even slightly wrong, between you; if you should have
any secret consciousness that you are committing your-
self to this step for no higher reason than because you
have long been accustomed to look forward to it; then,”
said Mr. Grewgious, “I charge you once more, by the
living and by the dead, to bring that ring back to me!”
Here Bazzard awoke himself by his own snoring;
and, as is usual in such cases, sat apoplectically staring
at vacancy, as defying vacancy to accuse him of having
been asleep.
“Bazzard!” said Mr. Grewgious, harder than ever.
‘‘I follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “ and I have been
following you.”
“In discharge of a trust, I have handed Mr. Edwin
Drood a ring of diamonds and rubies. You see?”
Edwin reproduced the little case, and opened it; and
Bazzard looked into it.
‘‘I follow you both, sir,’
witness the transaction.”
Evidently anxious to get away and be alone, Edwin
T)rood now resumed his outer clothing, muttering some-
thing about time and appointments. The fog was re-
ported no clearer (by the flying waiter, who alighted
from a speculative flight in the coffee interest), but he
went out into it; and Bazzard, after his manner, “fol-
lowed ” him.
Mr. Grewgious, left alone, walked softly and slowly
to and fro, for an hour and more. He was restless to-
night, and seemed dispirited.
“I hope I have done right,” he said. “The appeal to
him seemed necessary. It was hard to lose the ring,
and yet it must have gone from me very soon.”
He closed the empty little drawer with a sigh, and
shut and locked the escritoire, and came back to the
solitary fireside.
“Her ring,” he went on. “Will it come back to me?
1My mind hangs about her ring very uneasily to-night.
But that is explainable. I have had it so long, and
I have prized it so much! I wonder—”
5
returned Bazzard, “ and I
116 EDWIN DROOD.
He was in a wondering mood as well as a restless;
for, though he checked himself at that point, and took
another walk, he resumed his wondering when he sat
down again.
“I wonder (for the ten-thousandth time, and what a
weak fool I, for what can it signify now!) whether he
confided the charge of their orphan child to me, because
he knew—Good God, how like her mother she has
become!
“I wonder whether he ever so much as suspected that
Some One doted on her, at a hopeless, speechless dis-
tance, when he struck in and won her. I wonder
whether it ever crept into his mind who that unfortu-
nate SOme One was!
“I wonder whether I shall sleep to-night! At all
events, I will shut out the world with the bedclothes,
and try.”
Mr. Grewgious crossed the staircase to his raw and
foggy bedroom, and was soon ready for bed. Dimly
catching sight of his face in the misty looking-glass, he
held his candle to it for a moment.
“A likely some one, you, to come into anybody’s
thoughts in such an aspect!” he exclaimed. “There!
there! there! Get to bed, poor man, and cease to
jabber!”
With that, he extinguished his light, pulled up the
bedclothes around him, and with another sigh shut out
the world. And yet there are such unexplored romantic
nooks in the unlikeliest men, that even old tinderous
and touch-woody P. J. T. Possibly Jabbered Thus, at
Some Odd times, in or about seventeen-forty-seven.
CHAPTER XII.
A NIGHT WITH D'URDILES.
WHEN Mr. Sapsea has nothing better to do, towards
evening, and finds the contemplation of his own pro-
fundity becoming a little monotonous in spite of the
Vastness of the Subject, he often takes an airing in the
EDWIN DROOD. - 117
Cathedral Close and thereabout. He likes to pass the
churchyard with a swelling air of proprietorship, and to
encourage in his breast a sort of benignant-landlord
feeling, in that he has been bountiful towards that mer-
itorious tenant, Mrs. SapSea, and has publicly given her
a prize. He likes to see a stray face or two looking in
through the railings, and perhaps reading his inscrip-
tion. Should he meet a stranger coming from the church-
yard with a quick step, he is morally convinced that the
stranger is “with a blush retiring,” as monumentally
directed.
Mr. Sapsea's importance has received enhancement,
for he has become Mayor of Cloisterham. Without
mayors, and many of them, it cannot be disputed that
the whole framework of society—Mr. Sapsea is confi-
dent that he invented that forcible figure—would fall to
pieces. Mayors have been knighted for “going up ’’
with addresses: explosive machines intrepidly discharg—
ing shot and shell into the English Grammar. Mr. Sap-
sea may “go up ’’ with an address. Rise, Sir Thomas
Sapsea! Of such is the salt of the earth.
Mr. Sapsea has improved the acquaintance of Mr.
Jasper, since their first meeting to partake of port, epi-
taph, backgammon, beef, and Salad. Mr. Sapsea has
been received at the gatehouse with kindred hospitality;
and on that occasion Mr. Jasper seated himself at the
piano, and sang to him, tickling his ears—figuratively
—long enough to present a considerable area for tickling.
What Mr. Sapsea likes in that young man, is, that he is
always ready to profit by the wisdom of his elders, and
that he is sound, sir, at the core. In proof of which, he
sang to Mr. Sapsea that evening, no kickshaw ditties,
favorites with national enemies, but gave him the gen-
uine George the Third home-brewed; exhorting him
(as “my brave boys’) to reduce to a smashed condition
all other islands but this island, and all continents, pen-
insulas, isthmuses, promontories, and other geograph-
ical forms of land soever, besides sweeping the seas in
all directions. In short, he rendered it pretty clear that
Providence made a distinct mistake in originating so
small a nation of hearts of oak, and so many other ver-
minous peoples.
Mr. Sapsea, walking slowly this moist evening near
the churchyard with his hands behind him, on the look-
118 TEDWIN DROOD.
out for a blushing and retiring stranger, turns a corner,
and comes instead into the goodly presence of the Dean,
conversing with the Verger and Mr. Jasper. Mr. Sap-
sea makes his obeisance, and is instantly stricken far
more ecclesiastical than any Archbishop of York or
Canterbury.
“You are evidently going to write a book about us,
Mr. Jasper,” quoth the Dean; “to write a book about us.
Well! We are very ancient, and we ought to make a
good book. We are not so richly endowed in posses-
sions as in age; but perhaps you will put that in your
book, among other things, and call attention to Our
wrongs.”
| Mr. Tope, as in duty bound, is greatly entertained by
this.
“I really have no intention at all, sir,” replies Jasper,
‘‘ of turning author or archaeologist. It is but a whim
of mine. And even for my whim, Mr. Sapsea here is
more accountable than I am.”
“How so, Mr. Mayor?” says the Dean, with a nod of
good-natured recognition of his Fetch. “How is that,
Mr. Mayor?”
“I am not aware,” Mr. Sapsea remarks, looking about
him for information, “to what the Very Reverend the
Dean does me the honor of referring.” And then falls to
studying his original in minute points of detail.
“Durdles,” Mr. Tope hints.
“Ay!” the Dean echoes; “Durdles, Durdles!”
“The truth is, sir,” explains Jasper, “that my curios-
ity in the man was first really stimulated by Mr. Sap-
sea, Mr. Sapsea’s knowledge of mankind and power of
drawing out whatever is recluse or odd around him,
first led to my bestowing a second thought upon the
man: though Of course I had met him constantly about.
You would not be surprised by this, Mr. Dean, if you
hº seen Mr. Sapsea deal with him in his own parlor, as
did.”
“O!” cries Sapsea, picking up the ball thrown to him
with ineffable complacency and pomposity; “yes, yes.
The Very Reverend the Dean refers to that? Yes. I hap-
pened to bring Durdles and Mr. Jasper together. I re-
gard Durdles as a Character.”
“A character, Mr. Sapsea, that with a few skilful
touches you turn inside out,” says Jasper.
EDWIN DROOD. II 0
“Nay, not quite that,” returns the lumbering auction-
eer. “I may have a little influence over him, perhaps;
and a little insight into his character, perhaps. The
Very Reverend the Dean will please to bear in mind that
I have seen the world.” Here Mr. Sapsea gets a little
behind the Dean, to inspect his coat-buttons.
“Well!” says the Dean, looking about him to see what
has become of his copyist: “I hope, Mr. Mayor, you will
use your study and knowledge of Durdles to the good
purpose of exhorting him not to break our worthy and
respected Choir-Master's neck; we cannot afford it; his
head and voice are much too valuable to us.”
Mr. Tope is again highly entertained, and, having
fallen into respectful convulsions of laughter, Subsides
into a deferential murmur, importing that surely any
gentlemen would deem it a pleasure and an honor to
have his neck broken, in return for such a compliment
from such a source.
“I will take it upon myself, sir,” observes Sapsea
loftily, “to answer for Mr. Jasper’s neck. I will tell
Durdles to be careful of it. He will mind what I say.
How is it at present endangered?” he inquires, looking
about him with magnificent patronage.
“Only by my making a moonlight expedition with
T)urdles among the tombs, vaults, towers, and ruins,”
returns Jasper. “You remember suggesting, when you
brought us together, that, as a lover of the picturesque,
it might be worth my while?”
“I remember!” replies the auctioneer. And the sol-
emn idiot really believes that he does remonber.
“Profiting by your hint,” pursues Jasper, “I have had
some day-rambles with the extraordinary old fellow,
and we are to make a moonlight hole-and-corner explo-
ration to-night.”
“And here he is,” said the Dean.
Durdles, with his dinner-bundle in his hand, is in-
deed beheld slouching towards them. Slouching nearer,
and perceiving the Dean, he pulls off his hat, and is
slouching away with it under his arm, when Mr. Sapsea
stops him.
“Mind you take care of my friend,” is the injunction
Mr. Sapsea lays upon him.
“What friend o' yourn is dead?” asks Durdles. “No
orders has come in for any friend o' yourn.”
5
120 EDWIN DROOD.
“I mean my live friend there.”
“O! him?” says Durdles. “He can take care of him-
self, can Mister Jarsper.” --~~
“But do you take care of him too,” says Sapsea.
Whom Durdles (there being command in his tone)
surlily surveys from head to foot.
“With submission to his Reverence the Dean, if you’ll
mind what concerns you, Mr. Sapsea, Durdles he'll mind
what concerns him.” -
“You’re out of temper,” says Mr. SapSea, winking to
the company to observe how Smoothly he will manage
him. “My friend concerns me, and Mr. Jasper is my
friend. And you are my friend.”
, “Don’t you get into a bad habit of boasting,” retorts
Durdles, with a grave cautionary nod. “It’ll grow
upon you.”
“You are out of temper,” says Sapsea again; redden-
ing, but again winking to the company.
“I own to it,” returns Durdles; “I don’t like liberties.”
Mr. Sapsea winks a third wink to the company, as
who should say: “I think you will agree with me that I
have settled his business; ” and stalks out of the contro-
versy.
Durdles then gives the Dean a good evening, and
adding, as he puts his hat on, “You’ll find me at home,
Mister Jarsper, as agreed, when you Want me; I’m
a-going home to clean myself,” soon slouches out of
sight. This going home to clean himself is one of the
man’s incomprehensible compromises with inexorable
facts; he, and his hat, and his boots, and his clothes,
never showing any trace of cleaning, but being uni-
formly in one condition of dust and grit.
The lamplighter now dotting the quiet Close with
Specks of light, and running at a great rate up and
down his little ladder with that object—his little ladder
under the sacred shadow of whose inconvenience gen-
erations had grown up, and which all Cloisterham
would have stood aghast at the idea of abolishing—the
Dean withdraws to his dinner, Mr. Tope to his tea, and
Mr. Jasper to his piano. There, with no light but that
of the fire, he sits chanting choir-music in a low and
beautiful voice, for two or three hours; in short, until it
has been for some time dark, and the moon is about to
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EDWIN DROOD. I2].
Then he closes his piano softly, softly changes his
coat for a pea-jacket, with a goodly wicker-cased bottle
in its largest pocket, and putting on a low-crowned flap-
brimmed hat, goes softly out. Why does he move so
softly to-night? No outward reason is apparent for it.
Can there be any sympathetic reason Crouching darkly
Within him?
... Repairing to Durdles's unfinished house, or hole in the
Čity wall, and seeing a light within it, he softly picks
his course among the gravestones, monuments, and
stony lumber of the yard, already touched here and
there, sidewise, by the rising moon. The two journeymen
have left their two great saws sticking in their blocks of
stone; and two skeleton journeymen out of the Dance of
T)eath might be grinning in the shadow of their sheltering
Sentry-boxes, about to slash away at cutting out the
gravestones of the next two people destined to die in
. Cloisterham. Likely enough, the two think little of
that now, being alive, and perhaps merry. Curious,
to make a guess at the two;-or say one of the two!
“HO! Durdles! ”
The light moves, and he appears with it at the door.
He would seem to have been “cleaning himself” with
the aid of a bottle, jug, and tumbler; for no other cleans-
ing instruments are visible in the bare brick room with
rafters overhead and no plastered ceiling, into which he
shows his visitor.
“Are you ready?”
“I am ready, Mr. Jarsper. Let the old uns come out
if they dare, when we go among their tombs. My spirit
is ready for ‘em.”
“Do you mean animal spirits, or ardent?”
“The one’s the t'other,” answered Durdles, “and I
mean 'em both.”
He takes a lantern from a hook, puts a match or two
in his pocket where with to light it, should there be need;
and they go out together, dinner-bundle and all.
Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition! That
Durdles himself, who is always prowling among old
graves, and ruins, like a Ghoule—that he should be
Stealing forth to climb, and dive, and wander without
an object, is nothing extraordinary; but that the Choir-
Master or any one else should hold it worth his while to *
be with him, and to study moonlight effects in such
122 EDWIN DROOD.
company is another affair. Surely an unaccountable
sört of expedition, therefore!
‘‘’Ware that there mound by the yard-gate, Mister
Jarsper.”
“I see it. What is it?”
‘‘ Lime.”
Mr. Jasper stops, and waits for him to come up, for he
lags behind. “What you call quick-lime?”
“Ay!” says Durdles; “quick enough to eat your
boots. With a little handy stirring, quick enough to
eat your bones.” &
They go on, presently passing the red windows of the
Travellers’ Twopenny, and emerging into the clear
moonlight of the Monks' Vineyard. This crossed, they
come to Minor Canon Corner: of which the greater part
lies in shadow until the moon shall rise higher in the
sky.
The sound of a closing house-door strikes their ears,
and two men come out. These are Mr. Crisparkle and
Neville. Jasper, with a strange and sudden smile upon
his face, lays the palm of his hand upon the breast of
Durdles, stopping him where he stands.
At that end of Minor Canon Corner the shadow is
profound in the existing state of the light: at that end,
too, there is a piece of old dwarf wall, breast high, the
only remaining boundary of what was once a garden,
but is now the thoroughfare. Jasper and Durdles would
have turned this wall in another instant; but, stopping
so short, stand behind it.
“Those two are only sauntering,” Jasper whispers;
“they will go out into the moonlight soon. Let us keep
quiet here, or they will detain us, or want to join us, or
what not.” *
Durdles nods assent, and falls to munching some frag-
ments from his bundle. Jasper folds his arms upon the
top of the wall, and, with his chin resting on them,
watches. He takes no note whatever of the Minor
Canon, but watches Neville, as though his eye were at
the trigger of a loaded rifle, and he had covered him,
and were going to fire. A sense of destructive power is
so expressed in his face, that even Durdles pauses in his
munching, and looks at him with an unmunched some-
* thing in his cheek.
Meanwhile Mr. Crisparkle and Neville walk to and
EDWIN DROOD. 123
fro, quietly talking together. What they say, cannot
be heard consecutively; but Mr. Jasper has already dis-
tinguished his own name more than once,
“This is the first day of the week,” Mr. Crisparkle can
be distinctly heard to observe, as they turn back; “and
the last day of the week is Christmas Eve.”
“You may be certain of me, sir.”
The echoes were favorable at those points, but as the
two approach, the Sound of their talking becomes con-
fused again. The word “confidence,” shattered by the
echoes, but still capable of being pieced together, is
uttered by Mr. Crisparkle. As they draw still nearer,
this fragment of a reply is heard: “Not deserved yet,
but shall be, sir.” As they turn away again, Jasper
again hears his own name, in connexion with the words
from Mr. Crisparkle: “Remember that I said I answered
for you confidently.” Then the sound of their talk be-
comes confused again; they halting for a little while,
and some earnest action on the part of Neville succeed-
ing. When they move once more, Mr. Crisparkle is
Seen to look up at the sky, and to point before him.
They then slowly disappear; passing out into the moon-
light at the opposite end of the Corner.
It is not until they are gone that Mr. Jasper moves.
But then he turns to Durdles, and bursts into a fit of
laughter. Durdles, who still has that suspended some-
thing in his cheek, and who sees nothing to laugh at,
stares at him until Mr. Jasper lays his face down on his
arms to have his laugh out. Then Durdles bolts the
Something, as if desperately resigning himself to indi-
gestion.
Among those secluded nooks there is very little stir
or movement after dark. There is little enough in the
high-tide of the day, but there is next to none at night.
Besides that the cheerfully frequented High Street lies
Inearly parallel to the spot (the old Cathedral rising be-
tween the two), and is the natural channel in which the
Cloisterham traffic flows, a certain awful hush pervades
the ancient pile, the cloisters, and the churchyard, after
dark, which not many people care to encounter. Ask
the first hundred citizens of Cloisterham, met at ran-
dom in the streets at noon, if they believed in Ghosts,
they would tell you no; but put them to choose at night
between these eerie Precincts and the thoroughfare of
124 EDWIN DROOD.
shops, and you would find that ninety-nine declared for
the longer round and the more frequented way. The
cause of this is not to be found.in any local superstition
that attaches to the Precincts—albeit a mysterious lady,
with a child in her arms and a rope dangling from her
neck, has been seen flitting about there by sundry wit-
messes as intangible as herself—but it is to be sought in
the innate shrinking of dust with the breath of life in
it from dust out of which the breath of life has passed;
also, in the widely diffused, and almost as widely un-
acknowledged, reflection: “If the dead do, under any
circumstances, become visible to the living, these are
such likely surroundings for the purpose that I, the liv-
ing, will get Out of them as soon as I can.”
Hence, when Mr. Jasper and Durdles pause to glance
around them, before descending into the crypt by a
small side door, of which the latter has a key, the whole
expanse of moonlight in their view is utterly deserted.
One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by
Mr. Jasper’s own gatehouse. The murmur of the tide
is heard beyond; but no wave passes the archway, over
which his lamp burns red behind his curtain, as if the
building were a Lighthouse.
They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged
steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not
wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined win-
dows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast
patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which sup-
port the roof engender masses of black shade, but
between them there are lanes of light. Up and down
these lanes they walk, Durdles discoursing of the “old
uns” he yet counts on disinterring, and slapping a wall,
in which he considers “a whole family on 'em ’’ to be
stoned and earthed up, just as if he were a familiar
friend of the family. The taciturnity of Durdles is
for the time overcome by Mr. Jasper's wicker bottle,
which circulates freely;-in the sense, that is to say,
that its contents enter freely into Mr. Durdles’s circula-
tion, while Mr. Jasper Only rinses his mouth once, and
casts forth the rinsing.
They are to ascend the great Tower. On the steps by
which they rise to the Cathedral, Durdles pauses for
new store of breath. The steps are very dark, but out
Of the darkness they can see the lanes of light they
EDWIN T).R.O.O.D. 125
have traversed. Durdles seats himself upon a step.
Mr. Jasper seats himself upon another. The odor from
the wicker bottle (which has somehow passed into Dur-
dles's keeping) soon intimates that the cork has been
taken out; but this is not ascertainable through the
sense of sight, since neither can descry the other. And
yet, in talking, they turn to One another, as though
their faces could commune together.
“This is good stuff, Mister Jarsper!”
“It is very good stuff, Ilhope. I bought it on purpose.”
“They don’t show, you see, the old uns don’t, Mister
Jarsper!”
“It would be a more confused world than it is, if they
COUld.”
“Well, it would lead towards a mixing of things,”
Durdles acquiesces: pausing on the remark, as if the
idea of ghosts had not previously presented itself to
him in a merely inconvenient light, domestically or
chronologically. “But do you think there may be
Ghosts of other things, though not of men and Women?”
“What things? Flower-beds and water-pots? horses
and harness?”
“NO. SOunds.”
“What; SOunds?”
“‘Cries.”
“What cries do you mean? Chairs to mend?”
“No. I mean screeches. Now I’ll tell you, Mr. Jarsper.
Wait a bit till I put the bottle right.” Here the cork is evi-
dently taken out again, and replaced again. “ There!
Now it's right! This time last year, only a few days later,
I happened to have been doing what was correct by the
season, in the Way of giving it the Welcome it had a
right to expect, When them town-boys set on me at their
worst. At length. I gave 'em the slip, and turned in
here. And here I fell asleep. And what woke une?
The ghost of a cry. ... The ghost of one terrific shriek,
which shriek was followed by the ghost of the howl of
a dog: a long dismal woeful howl, such as a dog gives
when a person’s dead. That was my last Christmas
Eve.”
“What do you mean?” is the very abrupt, and, one
might say, fierce retort. º
“I mean that I made inquiries everywhere about, and
that no living ears but mine heard either that cry or
126 EDWIN DROOD.
that howl. So I say they was both ghosts; though why
they came to me, I’ve never made out.”
“I thought you were another kind of man,” says Jas-
per, scornfully.
“So I thought myself,” answers Durdles with his
usual composure; “and yet I was picked out for it.”
Jasper had risen Suddenly, when he asked him what
he meant, and he now says, “Come; we shall freeze
here; lead the way.”
Durdles complies, not Over-steadily; opens the door at
the top of the steps with the key he has already used;
and so emerges on the Cathedral level, in a passage at
the side of the chancel. Here, the moonlight is so very
bright again that the colors of the nearest stained-glass
window are thrown upon their faces. The appearance
of the unconscious Durdles, holding the door open for
his companion to follow, as if from the grave, is ghastly
enough, with a purple band across his face, and a yel-
low splash upon his brow; but he bears the close scru-
tiny of his companion in an insensible way, although it
is prolonged while the latter fumbles among his pockets
for a key confided to him that will Open an iron gate so
to enable them to pass to the staircase of the great
tower.
“That and the bottle are enough for you to carry,” he
says, giving it to Durdles; “hand your bundle to me; I
am younger and longer-winded than you.” Durdles
hesitates for a moment between bundle and bottle; but
gives the preference to the bottlo as being by far the
better company, and consigns the dry weight to his fel-
low-explorer.
Then they go up the winding staircase of the great
tower, toilsomely, turning and turning, and lowering
their heads to avoid the stairs above, or the rough stone
pivot around which they twist. Durdles has lighted his
lantern, by drawing from the cold hard wall a spark of
that mysterious fire which lurks in everything, and,
guided by this speck, they clamber up among the cob-
webs and the dust. Their way lies through strange
places. Twice or thrice they emerge into level low-
arched galleries, whence they can look down into the
moonlit nave; and Mhere Durdles, waving his lantern,
waves the dim angels' heads upon the corbels of the
roof, seeming to Watch their progress. Anon they turn
EDWIN DROOD. 127
into narrower and steeper staircases, and the night-air
begins to blow upon them, and the chirp of some
startled jackdaw or frightened rook precedes the heavy
beating of wings in a confined Space, and the beating
down of dust and straws upon their heads. At last,
leaving their light behind a stair—for it blows fresh up
here—they look down on Cloisterham, fair to see in the
moonlight: its ruined habitations and sanctuaries of
the dead, at the tower's base: its moss-Softened red-tiled
roofs and red-brick houses of the living, clustered be-
yond: its river winding down from the mist on the
horizon, as though that were its source, and already heav-
ing with a restless knowledge of its approach towards
the sea. -
Once again, an unaccountable oxpedition this! Jas-
per (always moving softly with no visiole reason) con-
templates the scene, and especially that stillest part of
it which the Cathedral overshadows. But he contem-
plates Durdles quite as curiously, and Durdles is by
times conscious of his watchful eyes.
Only by times, because Durdles is growing drowsy.
As aéronauts lighten the load they carry, when they
wish to rise, similarly Durdles has lightened the wicker
bottle in coming up. Snatches of sleep surprise him on
his legs, and stop him in his talk. A mild fit of calen-
ture seizes him, in which he deems that the ground, so
far below, is on a level with the tower, and would as
lief walk off the tower into the air as not. Such is his
state when they begin to come down. Andi as aéronauts
make themselves heavier when they wish to descend, N
similarly Durdles charges himself with more liquid from
the wicker bottle, that he may come down the better.
The iron gate attained and locked—but not before
Durdles has tumbled twice, and cut an eyebrow open
Once—they descend into the crypt again, with the intent
of issuing forth as they entered. But, while returning
among those lanes of light, Durdles becomes so very
uncertain, both of foot and speech, that he half drops,
half throws himself down, by one of the heavy pillars,
SCarcely less heavy than itself, and indistinctly appeals
to his companion for forty winks of a second each.
“If you will have it so, or must have it so,” replies
Jasper, “I’ll not leave you here. Take them, while I
Walk to and fro.” -
128 EDWIN DROOD.
Durdles is asleep at once; and in his sleep he dreams
a dream.
It is not much of a dream, considering the vast extent
of the domains of dreamland, and their wonderful pro-
ductions; it is only remarkable for being unusually rest-
less and unusually real. He dreams of lying there,
asleep, and yet counting his companion’s footsteps as
he walks to and fro. He dreams that the footsteps die
away into distance of time and of Space, and that SOme-
thing touches him, and that something falls from his
hand. Then something clinks and gropes about, and he
dreams that he is alone for so long a time that the lanes
of light take new directions as the moon advances in
her course. From succeeding unconsciousness he
passes into a dream of slow uneasiness from cold; and
painfully awakes to a perception of the lanes of light—
really changed, much as he had dreamed—and Jasper
walking among them, beating his hands and feet.
“Holloal” Durdles cried out, unmeaningly alarmed.
“Awake at last?” says Jasper, coming up to him.
“Do you know that your forties have stretched into
thousands?” •
& & NO.”
“They have though.”
“What’s the time?”
“Hark! The bells are going in the Tower!”
They strike four quarters, and then the great bell
strikes.
, “Two!” cries Durdles, scrambling up; “why didn’t
you try to wake me, Mister Jarsper?”
“I did. I might as well have tried to wake the dead
—your own family of dead, up in the corner there.”
“Did you touch me?” - -
“Touch you! Yes. Shook you.”
As Durdles, recalls that touching something in his
dream, he looks down on the pavement, and sees the
key of the crypt door lying close to where he himself lay.
“I dropped you, did I?” he says, picking it up, and
recalling that part of his dream. As he gathers himself
up again into an upright position, or into a position as
nearly upright as he ever maintains, he is again con-
Scious of being watched by his companion.
“Well?” says Jasper, Smiling, “are you quite ready?
Dray don’t hurry.”
EDWIN DROOD. 129
“Let me get my bundle right, Mister Jarsper, and I’m
with you.” -
As he ties it afresh, he is once more conscious that he
is very narrowly observed.
“What do you suspect me of, Mister Jarsper?” he
asks, with drunken displeasure. “Let them as has any
suspicions of Durdles name ‘em.”
“I’ve no suspicions of you, my good Mr. Durdles; but
I have suspicions that my bottle was filled with some-
thing stiffer than either of us supposed. And I also
have suspicions,” Jasper adds, taking it from the pave-
ment and turning it bottom upward, “that it’s empty.”
Durdles condescends to laugh at this. Continuing to
chuckle when his laugh is over, as though remonstrant
with himself on his drinking powers, he rolls to the door
and unlocks it. They both pass out, and Durdles re-
locks it, and pockets his key.
“A thousand thanks for a curious and interesting
night,” says Jasper, giving him his hand; “you can
make your own way home?”
“I should think sol” answers Durdles. “If you was
to offer Durdles the affront to show him his way home,
he wouldn’t go home.
Durdles wouldn’t go home till morning;
And then Durdles wouldn’t go home,
Durdles wouldn’t.” This with the utmost defiance.
“Good night, them.”
“Good night, Mister Jarsper.” e
Each is turning his own way, when a sharp whistlo
rends the silence, and the jargon is yelped Out:
“Widdy widdy wen
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar-ter—ten.
Widdy widdy wy! -
Then–E–don't—go—then—I—shy—
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!”
Instantly afterwards, a rapid fire of stones rattles at
the Cathedral wall, and the hideous small boy is beheld
opposite, dancing in the moonlight. .*
“What! Is that baby-devil on the watch there!”
cries Jasper in a fury: so quickly roused, and SQ
violent, that he seems an older devil himself. “I shall
shed the blood of that impish wretch! I know I shall
130 EDWIN DROOD.
do it!” Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more
than once, he rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries
to bring him across. But Deputy is not to be so easily
brought across. With a diabolical insight into the
strongest part of his position, he is no Sooner taken by
the throat than he curls up his legs, forces his assailant
to hang him, as it were, and gurgles in his throat, and
screws his body, and twists, as already undergoing the
first agonies of strangulation. There is nothing for it
but to drop him. He instantly gets himself together,
backs over to Durdles, and cries to his assailant, gnash-
ing the great gap in front of his mouth with rage and
malice:
“I’ll blind yer, s'elp me! I’ll stone yer eyes out, s'elp
me! If I don’t have yer eyesight, bellows me!” At the
same time dodging behind Durdles, and snarling at
Jasper, now from this side of him, and now from that:
prepared, if pounced upon, to dart away in all manner
of curvilinear directions, and, if run down after all, to
grovel in the dust, and cry: “Now, hit me when I’m
down! Do it!”
“Don’t hurt the boy, Mister Jarsper,” urges Durdles,
shielding him. “ Recollect yourself.”
“He followed us to-night, when we first came here
“Yer lie, I didn’t!” replies Deputy, in his one form of
polite contradiction.
“He has been prowling near us ever since!”
“Yer lie, I haven’t,” returns Deputy. “I’d only jist
come out for my 'elth when I see you two a-coming out
of the Kinfreederel. If
“I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten l’
| >>
(with the usual rhythm and dance, though dodging bes
hind Durdles), “it ain’t my fault, is it?”
“Take him home, then,” retorts Jasper, ferociously,
though with a strong check upon himself, “ and let my
eyes be rid of the sight of you!”
Deputy, with another sharp whistle, at once express-
ing his relief, and his commencement of a milder
stoning of Mr. Durdles, begins stoning that respectable
gentleman home, as if he were a reluctant ox. Mr.
Jasper goes to his gatehouse, brooding. And thus, as
everything comes to an end, the unaccountable expedi-
tion comes to an end—for the time,
EDWIN DROOD. 131
CHAPTER XIII.
BOTH AT THEIR BEST.
MISs Twin KLETON's establishment was about to un-
dergo a serene hush. The Christmas recess was at
hand. What had once, and at no remote period, been
called, even by the erudite Miss Twinkleton herself,
“ the half; ” but what was now called, as being more
elegant, and more strictly collegiate, “the term,” would
expire to-morrow. A noticeable relaxation of discipline
had for some few days pervaded the Nuns' House.
Club suppers had occurred in the bedrooms, and a
dressed tongue had been carved with a pair of Scissors,
and handed round with the curling tongs. Portions of
marmalade had likewise been distributed on a service of
lates constructed of curl-paper; and cowslip wine had
een quaffed from the small squat measuring glass in
which little Rickitts (a junior of weakly constitution)
took her steel drops daily. The housemaids had been
bribed with various fragments of ribbon, and Sundry
pairs of shoes more or less down at heel, to make no
mention of crumbs in the beds; the airiest costumes had
been worn on these festive occasions; and the daring
Miss Ferdinand had even surprised the company with
a sprightly solo on the comb-and-curl-paper, until Suffo-
cated in her own pillow by two flowing-haired execu-
tioners.
Nor were these the only tokens of dispersal. Boxes
appeared in the bedrooms (where they were capital at
other times), and a surprising amount of packing took
place, out of all proportion to the amount packed.
Largess, in the form of odds and ends of cold cream
and pomatum, and also of hairpins, was freely distrib-
uted among the attendants. On charges of inviola-
ble secrecy, confidences were interchanged respecting
golden youth of England expected to call, “at home,”
on the first opportunity. Miss Giggles (deficient in
sentiment) did indeed profess that she, for her part,
acknowledged such homage by making faces at the
golden youth; but this young lady was outvoted by an
immense majority.
On the last night before a recess, it was always ex-
132 EDWIN DROOD.
pressly made a point of honor that nobody should go to
sleep, and that Ghosts should be encouraged by all
possible means. This compact invariably broke down,
and all the young ladies went to sleep very Soon, and
got up very early.
The concluding ceremony came off at twelve o’clock
on the day of departure; when Miss Twinkleton, sup-
ported by Mrs. Tisher, held a Drawing-room in her own
apartment (the globes already covered with brown hol-
land), where glasses of white wine and plates of cut
pound-cake were discovered on the table. Miss Twinkle-
ton then said: Ladies, another revolving year has
brought us round to that festive period at which the
first feelings of our nature bounded in Our— Miss
Twinkleton was annually going to add “bosoms,” but
annually stopped on the brink of that expression, and
substituted “hearts.” Hearts; our hearts. Hem! Again
a revolving year, ladies, had brought us to a pause in
our studies—let us hope our greatly advanced studies—
and, like the mariner in his bark, the warrior in his
tent, the captive in his dungeon, and the traveller in
his various conveyances, we yearned for home. Did
we say, on such an occasion, in the opening Words of
Mr. Addison’s impressive tragedy:
“The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers,
And heavily in clouds brings on the day,
The great, th’ important day—?”
Not so. From horizon to zenith all was couleur de
pose, for all was redolent of our relations and friends.
Might we find them prospering as we expected;
might they find us prospering as they expected!
Ladies, we would now, with our love to one another,
wish one another good by, and happiness, until we meet
again. And when the time should come for Our re-
sumption of those pursuits which (here a general depres-
sion set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits which;-
then let us ever remember what was said by the Spartan
General, in words too trite for repetition, at the battle
it were superfluous to specify.
The handmaidens of the establishment, in their best
caps, then handed the trays, and the young ladies
sipped and crumbled, and the bespoken coaches began
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EDWIN DROOD. 133
to choke the street. Then leave-taking was not long
about; and Miss Twinkleton, in Saluting each young
lady’s cheek, confided to her an exceedingly neat letter,
addressed to her next friend at law, “with Miss Twinkle-
ton's best compliments” in the corner. This missive
she handed with an air as if it had not the least con-
nexion with the bill, but were something in the nature
of a delicate and joyful surprise.
So many times had Rosa seen such dispersals, and so
very little did she know of any other Home, that she
was contented to remain where she was, and was even
better contented than ever before, having her latest
friend with her. And yet her latest friendship had a
blank place in it of which she could not fail to be sen-
sible. Helena Landless, having been a party to her
brother’s revelation about Rosa, and having entered
into that compact of silence with Mr. Crisparkle, shrank
from any allusion to Edwin Drood’s name. Why she
so avoided it, was mysterious to Rosa, but she perfectly
perceived the fact. But for the fact, she might have
relieved her own little perplexed heart of some of its
doubts and hesitations, by taking Helena into her con-
fidence. As it was, she had no such vent: she could
only ponder on her own difficulties, and wonder more
and more why this avoidance of Edwin’s name should
last, now that she knew—for so much Helena had told
her—that a good understanding was to be reëstablished
between the two young men, when Edwin came down.
It would have made a pretty picture, so many pretty
girls kissing Rosa in the cold porch of the Nun’s House,
and that Sunny little creature peeping out of it (uncon-
scious of sly faces carved on spout and gable peering
at her), and waving farewells to the departing coaches,
as if she represented the spirit of rosy youth abiding in
the place to keep it bright and warm in its desertion.
The hoarse High Street became musical with the cry,
in various silvery voices, “Good by, Rosebud darling!”
and the effigy of Mr. Sapsea's father over the opposite
doorway seemed to say to mankind: ‘’Gentlemen,
favor me with your attention to this charming little
last lot left behind, and bid with a spirit worthy of the
occasion!” Then the staid street, so unwontedly spark-
ling, youthful, and fresh for a few rippling moments,
ran dry, and Cloisterham was itself again.
134 EDWIN DEROOD.
If Rosebud in her bower now waited Edwin Drood’s
coming with an uneasy heart, Edwin for his part
was uneasy too. With far less force of purpose in
his composition than the childish beauty, crowned
by acclamation fairy queen, of Miss Twinkleton’s estab-
lishment, he had a conscience, and Mr. Grewgious had
pricked it. That gentleman's steady convictions of
what was right and what was wrong in such a case as
his were neither to be frowned aside nor laughed aside.
They would not be moved. But for the dinner in Staple
Inn, and but for the ring he carried in the breast-pocket
of his coat, he would have drifted into their wedding-
day without another pause for real thought, loosely
trusting that all would go well, left alone. But that
serious putting him on his truth to the living and the
dead had brought him to a check. He must either give
the ring to Rosa, or he must take it back. Once put
into this narrowed way of action, it was curious that he
began to consider Rosa's claims upon him more un-
selfishly than he had ever considered them before,
and began to be less sure of himself than he had
ever been in all his easy-going days.
“I will be guided by what she says, and by how we
get on,” was his decision, walking from the gatehouse
to the Nuns' House. “Whatever comes of it, I will bear
his words in mind, and try to be true to the living and
the dead.” -
Rosa was dressed for walking. She expected him. It
was a bright frosty day, and Miss Twinkleton had al-
ready graciously sanctioned fresh air. Thus they got
out together before it became necessary for either Miss
Twinkleton, or the deputy high-priest Mrs. Tisher, to
lay even so much as one of those usual offerings on the
shrine of Propriety. g
“My dear Eddy,” said Rosa, when they had turned
out of the High Street, and had got among the quiet
walks in the neighborhood of the Cathedral and the river:
“I want to say something very serious to you. I have
been thinking about it for a long, long time.”
“I want to be serious with you too, Rosa dear. I
mean to be serious and earnest.”
“Thank you, Eddy. And you will not think me un-
kind because I begin, will you? You will not think I
speak for myself only, because I speak first? That
EDWIN DROOD. 135
would not be generous, would it? And I know you are
generous!”
He said, “I hope I am not ungenerous to you, Rosa.”
He called her Pussy no more. Never again.
‘; And there is no fear,” pursued Rosa, “ of our quar-
relling, is there? Because, Eddy,” clasping her hand on
his arm, “we have so much reason to be very lenient to
each other!”
“We will be, Rosa.”
“That’s a dear good boy! Eddy, let us be courageous.
łºń us change to brother and sister from this day
Orth.”
“Never be husband and wife?”
“Never!”
Neither spoke again for a little while. But after that
pause he said, with some effort:
“Of course I know that this has been in both our minds,
Rosa, and of course I am in honor bound to confess freely
that it does not originate with you.”
“No, nor with you, dear,” she returned, with pathetic
earnestness. “It has sprung up between us. OU1 Cl,I’6”
not truly happy in Our engagement; I am not truly
happy in it. " O, I am so sorry, so sorry!” And there
she broke into tears.
“I am deeply sorry too, Rosa. Deeply sorry for you.”
“And I for you, poor boy? And I for you?”
This pure young feeling, this gentle and forbearing
feeling of each towards the other, brought with it its re-
ward in a softening light that seemed to shine on their
position. The relations between them did not look wilful,
or capricious, or a failure, in such a light; they became
elevated into something more self-denying, honorable,
affectionate, and true.
“If we knew yesterday,” said Rosa, as she dried her
eyes, ‘‘ and we did know yesterday, and on many, many
yesterdays, that we were far from right together in those
relations which were not of our own choosing, what
better could we do to-day than change them? It is nat-
ural that we should be sorry, and you see how sorry we
both are; but how much better to be sorry now than
then?”
“When, Rosa?”
“When it would be too late. And then we should be
angry, besides.”
136 EDWIN DROOD.
Another silence fell upon them.
“And you know,” said Rosa innocently, “you couldn’t
like me them; and you can always like me now, for I . .
shall not be a drag upon you, or a worry to you. And I
can always like you now, and your sister will not tease
or trifle with you. I often did when I was not your
sister, and I beg your pardon for it.”
“Don’t let us come to that, Rosa; or I shall want more
pardoning than I like to think of.”
“No, indeed, Eddy; you are too hard, my generous
boy, upon yourself. Let us sit down, brother, on these
ruins, and let me tell you how it was with us. I think I
know, for I have considered about it very much since
ou were here last time. You liked me, didn’t you?
ou thought I was a nice little thing?”
“Everybody thinks that, Rosa.”
“Do they?’” She knitted her brow musingly for a
moment, and then flashed out with the bright little in-
duction: “Well, but say they do. Surely it was not
enough that you should think of me only as other people
did; now, was it?”
The point was not to be got over. It was not enough.
“And that is just what I mean; that is just how it
was with us,” said Rosa. “You liked me very well,
and you had grown used to me, and had grown used
to the idea of our being married. You accepted the situ-
ation as an inevitable kind of thing, didn’t you? It was
to be, you thought, and why discuss or dispute it?”
It was new and strange to him to have himself pre-
sented to himself so clearly, in a glass of her holding
up. He had always patronised her, in his superiority
to her share of woman’s wit. Was that but another
instance of Something radically amiss in the terms on
which they had been gliding towards a life-long bond-
age? -
“All this that I say of you is true of me as well, Eddy.
Unless it was, I might not be bold enough to say it.
Only, the difference between us was, that by little and
little there crept into my mind a habit of thinking about
it, instead of dismissing it. My life is not so busy as
yours, you see, and I have not so many things to think
of. So I thought about it very much, and I cried about
it very much too (though that was not your fault, poor
boy); when all at once my guardian came down to pre-
EDWIN DROOD. 137
pare for my leaving the Nun’s House. I tried to hint
to him that I was not quite settled in my mind, but I
hesitated and failed, and he didn’t understand me. But
he is a good, good man. And he put before me so
kindly, and yet so strongly, how seriously we ought to
consider, in our circumstances, that I resolved to speak
to you the next moment we were alone and grave. And
if I seemed to come to it easily just now, because I came
to it all at once, don’t think it was so really, Eddy, for
O, it was very, very hard, and O I am very, very sorry!”
Her full heart broke into tears again. He put his arm
about her waist, and they walked by the river-side
together. -
“Your guardian has spoken to me too, Rosa dear. I
saw him before I left London.” His right hand was in
his breast, seeking the ring; but he checked it, as he
ºt “If I am to take it back, why should I tell her
Of it?”
“And that made you more serious about it, didn’t it,
Eddy? And if I had not spoken to you, as I have, you
would have spoken to me? I hope you can tell me so?
I don’t like it to be all my doing, though it is so much
better for us.”
“Yes, I should have spoken; I should have put every-
thing before you; I came intending to do it. But I
never could have spoken to you as you have spoken
to me, Rosa.”
“Don’t say you mean so coldly or unkindly, Eddy,
please, if you can help it.”
“I mean so sensibly and delicately, so wisely and
affectionately.”
“That’s my dear brother!” She kissed his hand in a
little rapture. “The dear girls will be dreadfully dis-
appointed,” added Rosa, laughing, with the dew-drops
glistening in her bright eyes. “They have looked for-
ward to it so, poor pets!”
“Ah! but I fear it will be a worse disappointment to
Jack,” said Edwin Drood, with a start. “I never
thought of Jack!” *
Her swift and intent look at him as he said the words
could no more be recalled than a flash of lightning can.
But it appeared as though she would have instantly
recalled it, if she could; for she looked down, confused,
and breathed quickly. -
138 EDWIN DROOD.
“You don’t doubt its being a blow to Jack, Rosa?”
She merely replied, and that evasively and hurriedly:
Why should she? She had not thought about it. He
seemed, to her, to have so little to do with it.
“My dear child! can you suppose that any one so
wrapped up in another—Mrs. Tope's expression: not
mine—as Jack is in me, could fail to be struck all of a
heap by such a sudden and complete change in my
life? I say sudden, because it will be sudden to him,
you know.”
She nodded once or thrice, and her lips parted as if
she would have assented. But she uttered no sound,
and her breathing was no slower.
“How shall I tell Jack?” said Edwin, ruminating.
If he had been less occupied with the thought, he must
have seen her singular emotion. “I never thought of
Jack. It must be broken to him, before the town-crier
knows it. I dine with the dear fellow to-morrow and
next day—Christmas Eve and Christmas Day—but it
would never do to spoil his feast-days. He always
worries about me, and moddley-coddleys in the merest
trifles. The news is sure to overset him. How on earth
shall this be broken to Jack?”
“He must be told, I suppose?” said Rosa.
“My dear Rosa! who ought to be in our confidence, if
not Jack?” b
“My guardian promised to come down, if I should
write and ask him. I am going to do so. Would you
like to leave it to him?”
“A bright idea!” cried Edwin. “The other trustee,
Nothing more natural. He comes down, he goes to
Jack, he relates what we have agreed upon, and he
states our case better than we could. He has already
spoken feelingly to you, he has already spoken feelingly
to me, and he’ll put the whole thing feelingly to Jack.
That’s it! I am not a coward, Rosa, but, to tell you a
secret, I am a little afraid of Jack.”
“No, no! you are not afraid of him
turning white, and clasping her hands.
“Why, sister Rosa, sister Rosa, what do you see from
the turret?” said Edwin, rallying her. “My dear girl!”
“You frightened me.”
“Most unintentionally, but I am as sorry as if I had
ameant to do it, Could you possibly suppose for a mo-
| 2:
cried Rosa,
EDWIN DROOD. 139
ment, from any loose way of speaking of mine, that I
was literally afraid of the dear fond fellow? What I
mean is, that he is subject to a kind of paroxysm, or fit
—I saw him in it once—and I don’t know but that so
great a surprise, coming upon him direct from me whom
he is so wrapped up in, might bring it on perhaps.
Which—and this is the secret I was going to tell you—
is another reason for your guardian’s making the corn-
munication. He is so steady, precise, and exact, that
he will talk Jack’s thoughts into shape in no time:
whereas with me Jack is always impulsive and hurried,
and, I may say, almost womanish.”
Rosa seemed convinced. Perhaps from her own very
different point of view of “Jack,” she felt comforted
and protected by the interposition of Mr. Grewgious be-
tween herself and him.
And now, Edwin Drood's right hand closed again
upon the ring in its little case, and again was checked
by the consideration: “It is certain, now, that I am to
give it back to him; then why should I tell her of it?”
That pretty sympathetic nature which could be so sorry
for him in the blight of their childish hopes of happi-
Iness together, and could so quietly find itself alone in a
Inew world to weave fresh wreaths of such flowers as it
might prove to bear, the old world’s flowers being
withered, would be grieved by those sorrowful jewels;
and to what purpose? Why should it be? They were
but a sign of broken joys and baseless projects; in their
very beauty, they were (as the unlikeliest of men had
§aid) almost a cruel satire on the loves, hopes, plans, of
humanity, which are able to forecast nothing, and are
so much brittle dust. Let them be. He would restore
them to her guardian when he came down; he in his
turn would restore them to the cabinet from which he
had unwillingly taken them; and there, like old letters
or old vows, or other records of old aspirations come
to nothing, they would be disregarded, until, being
valuable, they were sold into circulation again, to re-
peat their former round.
Let them be. Let them lie unspoken of, in his
breast. However distinctly or indistinctly he enter-
tained these thoughts, he arrived at the conclusion,
Let them be. Among the mighty store of , wonderful
chains that are for ever forgrino, day and night, in the
©
140 EDWIN DROOD.
vast iron-works of time and circumstance, there was
One chain forged in the moment of that small con-
clusion, riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth,
and gifted with invincible force to hold and drag.
They walked on by the river. They began to speak
of their separate plans. He would quicken his de-
parture from England, and she would remain where she
was, at least as long as Helena remained. The poor
dear girls should have their disappointment broken to
them gently, and, as the first preliminary, Miss Twinkle-
ton should be confided in by Rosa, even in advance of
the reappearance of Mr. Grewgious. It should be made
clear in all quarters that she and Edwin were the best
of friends. There had never been so serene an under-
standing between them since they were first affianced.
And yet there was one reservation on each side; on
hers, that she intended through her guardian to with-
draw herself immediately from the tuition of her
music-master; on his, that he did already entertain
Some Wandering speculations whether it might ever
º to pass that he would know more of Miss Land-
€SS.
The bright frosty day declined as they walked and
spoke together. The sun dipped in the river far behind
them, and the old city lay red before them, as their walk
drew to a close. The moaning waters cast its seaweed
duskily at their feet, when they turned to leave its
margin; and the rooks hovered above them with hoarse
cries, darker splashes in the darkening air.
“I will prepare Jack for my flitting soon,” said Edwin,
in a low voice, “ and I will but see your guardian when
he comes, and then go before they speak together. It
will be better done without my being by. Don’t you
think SO?” ſº
“Yes.”
& 4 Yº know we have done right, Rosa?”
& & es.” *
“We know we are better so, even now?”
“And shall be far, far better so by and by.”
Still there was that lingering tenderness in their
hearts towards the old positions they were relinquish-
ing, that they prolonged their parting. When they
came among the elm trees by the Cathedral, where they
had last sat together, they stopped as by consent, and
EDWIN DROOD. 141
Rosa raised her face to his, as she had never raised it
in the old days;–for they were old already.
“God bless you, dear! Good by!”
“God bless you, dear! Good by l’’
They kissed each other fervently.
“Now, please take me home, Eddy, and let me be by
myself.”
“Don’t look round, Rosa,” he cautioned her, as he
drew her arm through his, and led her away. “Didn’t
you see Jack?”
“NO! Where?” -
“ Under the trees. He saw us, as we took leave of
each other. Poor fellow! he little thinks we have parted.
This will be a blow to him, I am much afraid!”
She hurried on, without resting, and hurried on until
they had passed under the gatehouse into the street;
Once there, she asked:
“Has he followed us? You can look without seem-
ing to. Is he behind?”
“No. Yes, he is! He has just passed out under the
gateway. The dear sympathetic old fellow likes to keep
us in sight. I am afraid he will be bitterly disappointed!”
She pulled hurriedly at the handle of the hoarse old
bell, and the gate soon opened. Before going in, she
gave him one last wide wondering look, as if she would
have asked him with imploring emphasis: “O! don’t
you understand?” And out of that look he vanished
from her view.
CHAPTER XIV.
WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN ?
CHRISTMAS EVE in Cloisterham. A few strange faces
in the streets; a few other faces, half strange and half
familiar, once the faces of Cloisterham children, now
the faces of men and women who come back from the
Outer world at long intervals to find the city wonderfully
shrunken in size, as if it had not washed by any means
well in the meanwhile. To these, the striking of the
Cathedral clock, and the cawing of the rooks from the
142 EDWIN DROOT).
Cathedral tower, are like voices of their nursery time.
To such as these it has happened, in their dying hours
afar off, that they have imagined their chamber-floors
to be strewn with the autumnal leaves fallen from
the elm trees in the Close; SO have the rustling Sounds
and fresh scents of their earliest impressions revived
when the circle of their lives was very nearly traced, and
the beginning and the end were drawing close together.
Seasonable tokens are about. Red berries shine here
and there in the lattices of Minor Canon Corner; Mr.
and Mrs. Tope are daintily sticking sprigs of holly into
the carvings and sconces of the Cathedral stalls, as if
they were sticking them into the coat-buttonholes of
the Dean and Chapter. Lavish profusion is in the shops:
particularly in the articles of currants, raisins, Spices,
candied peel, and moist Sugar. An unusual air of gai-
lantry and dissipation is abroad; evinced in an immense
bunch of mistletoe hanging in the green-grocer’s shop
doorway, and a poor little Twelfth Cake, culminating
in the figure of a Harlequin—such a very poor little
Twelfth Cake that one would rather call it a Twenty-
fourth Cake or a Forty-eighth Cake—to be raffled for
at the pastry-cook's, terms one shilling per member.
Public amusements are not wanting. The Wax-Work
which made so deep an impression on the reflective
mind of the Emperor of China is to be seen by par-
ticular desire during Christmas Week only, on the
premises of the bankrupt livery-stable-keeper up the
lane; and a new grand comic Christmas pantomime is
to be produced at the Theatre: the latter heralded by
the portrait of Signor Jacksonini the clown, saying
“How do you do to-morrow?” quite as large as life, and
almost as miserably. In short, Cloisterham is up and
doing: though from this description the High School
and Twinkleton’s are to be excluded. From the former
establishment the scholars have gone home, every one
of them in love with one of Miss Twinkleton’s young
ladies (who knows nothing about it); and only the hand-
maidens flutter occasionally in the windows of the latter.
It is noticed, by the by, that these damsels become, within
the limits of decorum, thore skittish when thus intrusted
with the concrete representatation of their sex than
when dividing the representation with Miss Twinkle-
ton's young ladies.
EDWIN ID.R.O.O.D. 143
Three are to meet at the gatehouse to-night. How
does each one of the three get through the day?
Neville Landless, though absolved from his books for
the time by Mr. Crisparkle—whose fresh nature is by
no means insensible to the charms of a holiday—reads
and writes in his quiet room, with a concentrated air,
until it is two hours past noon. He then sets himself to
clearing his table, to arranging his books, and to tear-
ing up and burning his Stray papers. He makes a clean
sweep of all untidy accumulations, puts all his drawers
in order, and leaves no note or Scrap of paper unde-
stroyed, save such memoranda as bear directly on his
studies. This done, he turns to his wardrobe, selects a
few articles of Ordinary wear—among them, change of
Stout shoes and socks for Walking—and packs these in
a knapsack. This knapsack is new, and he bought it
in the High Street yesterday. He also purchased, at
the same time and at the same place, a heavy walking-
stick: strong in the handle for the grip of the hand, and
iron-shod. He tries this, swings it, poises it, and lays
it by, with the knapsack, on a window-seat. By this
time his arrangements are complete.
He dresses for going Out, and is in the act of going—
indeed has left his room, and has met the Minor Canon
on the staircase, coming out of his bedroom upon the
same story—when he turns back again for his walking-
stick, thinking he will carry it now. Mr. Crisparkle,
who has paused on the staircase, sees it in his hand on
his immediately re-appearing, takes it from him, and
asks him with a Smile how he chooses a stick?
“Really I don’t know that I understand the subject,”
he answers. “I chose it for its weight.”
“Much too heavy, Neville; much too heavy.”
“To rest upon in a long walk, sir?”
“Rest upon?” repeats Mr. Crisparkle, throwing him-
self into pedestrian form. “You don’t rest upon it;
you merely balance with it.”
“I shall know better, with practice, sir. I have not
lived in a walking country, you know.”
“True,” says Mr. Crisparkle. “Get into a little
training, and we will have a few score miles, together.
I should leave you nowhere now. Do you come back
before dinner?” *
144 EDWIN DROOD.
“I think not, as we dine early.”
Mr. Crisparkle gives him a bright nod and a cheerful
good by; expressing (not without intention) absolute
confidence and ease. e
Neville repairs to the Nuns' House, and requests that
Miss Landless may be informed that her brother is
there, by appointment. He waits at the gate, not even
crossing the threshold; for he is on his parole not to put
himself in Rosa's way.
His sister is at least as mindful of the obligation they
have taken on themselves as he can be, and loses not a
moment in joining him. They meet affectionately,
avoid lingering there, and walk towards the upper
inland country.
‘‘I am not going to tread upon forbidden ground,
Helena,” says Neville, when they have walked some
distance and are turning; “you will understand in
another moment that I cannot help referring to—what
shall I say?—my infatuation.”
“Had you not better avoid it, Neville? You know
that I can hear nothing.”
“You can hear, my dear, what Mr. Crisparkle has
heard, and heard with approval.” -
“Yes; I can hear so much.”
“Well, it is this. I am not only unsettled and un-
happy myself, but I am conscious of unsettling and
interfering with other people. How do I know that,
but for my unfortunate presence, you, and—and—the
rest of that former party, Our engaging guardian ex-
cepted, might be dining cheerfully in Minor Canon
Corner to-morrow? Indeed it probably would be so. I
can see too well that I am not high in the old lady’s
opinion, and it is easy to understand what an irksome
clog I must be upon the hospitalities of her orderly
house—especially at this time of year—when I must be
kept asunder from this person, and there is such a
reason for my not being brought into contact with that
person, and an unfavorable reputation has preceded
me with such another person, and so on. I have put
this very gently to Mr. Crisparkle, for you know his
self-denying ways; but still I have put it. What I have
laid much greater stress upon, at the same time, is, that
I am engaged in a miserable struggle with myself, and
that a little change and absence may enable me to come
TEDWIN DROOD. 145
through it the better. So, the weather being bright and
hard, I am going on a walking expedition, and intend
taking myself out of everybody’s way (my Own included,
I hope) to-morrow morning.”
“When to come back?”
“In a fortnight.”
“And going quite alone?”
“I am much better without company, even if there
were any one but you to bear me company, my dear
Helena.”
“Mr. Crisparkle entirely agrees, you say?”
“Entirely. I am not sure but that at first he was in-
clined to think it rather a moody scheme, and one that
might do a brooding mind harm. But we took a moon-
light walk last Monday night, to talk it over at leisure,
and I represented the case to him, as it really is. I showed
him that I do want to conquer myself, and that, this
evening well got over, it is surely better that I should
be away from here just now, than here. I could hardly
help meeting certain people walking together here, and
that could ă. Ino good, and is certainly not the way to
forget. A fortnight hence, that chance will probably
be over, for the time; and when it again arises for the
last time, why, I can again go away. Farther, I really
do feel hopeful of bracing exercise and wholesome fa-
tigue. You know that Mr. Crisparkle allows such
things their full weight in the preservation of his own
sound mind in his own sound body, and that his just
spirit is not likely to maintain one set of natural laws
for himself and another for me. He yielded to my
view of the matter, when convinced that I was honestly
in earnest; and so, with his full consent, I start to-
morrow morning. Early enough to be not only out of
the streets, but out of hearing of the bells, when the
good people go to church.”
Helena thinks it over, and thinks well of it. Mr.
Crisparkle doing so, she would do so; but she does orig-
inally, out of her own mind, think well of it, as a healthy
project, denoting a sincere endeavor and an active at-
tempt at self-correction. She is inclined to pity him,
poor fellow, for going away solitary on the great Christ-
mas festival; but she feels it much more to the purpose
to encourage him. And she does encourage him.
He will write to her?
y \
146 EDWIN DROOD.
He will write to her every alternate day, and tell her
all his adventure.
Does he send clothes on in advance of him?
“My dear Helena, no. Travel like a pilgrim, with
wallet and staff. My wallet—or my knapsack—is
packed, and ready for strapping on; and here is my
Staff ”
He hands it to her; she makes the same remark as
1Mr. Crisparkle, that it is very heavy; and gives it back
to him, asking what wood it is? Iron-wood.
Up to this point he has been extremely cheerful. Per-
haps the having to carry his case with her, and there-
fore to present it in its brightest aspect, has roused his
spirits. Perhaps the having done so with success is fol-
lowed by a revulsion. As the day closes in, and the
city-lights begin to Spring up before them, he grows de-
pressed.
“I wish I were not going to this dinner, Helena.”
“Dear Neville, is it worth while to care much about
it? Think how SOOn it will be over.”
‘‘How soon it will be over!” he repeats gloomily.
“Yes. But I don’t like it.”
There may be a moment's awkwardness, she cheerily
represents to him, but it can only last a moment. He is
quite sure of himself.
“I wish I felt as sure of everything else as I feel of
myself,” he answers her.
“How strangely you speak, dear! What do you
mean?”
“Helena, I don’t know. I only know that I don’t
like it. What a strange dead weight there is in the
{\,.] I’.
She calls his attention to those copperous clouds beyond
the river, and says that the wind is rising. He scarcely
Speaks again until he takes leave of her at the gate of
the Nuns' House. She does not immediately enter,
when they have parted, but remains looking after him
along the street. Twice he passes the gatehouse, re-
luctant to enter. At length, the Cathedral clock chim-
ing one quarter, with a rapid turn he hurries in.
And so he goes up the postern stair.
Edwin Drood passes a solitary day. Something of
deeper moment than he had thought has gone out of
• EDWIN DROOD. 147
his life; and in the silence of his own chamber he wept for
it last night. Though the image of Miss Landless still
hovers in the background of his mind, the pretty little af-
fectionate creature, so much firmer and wiser than he had
supposed, occupies its stronghold. It is with some mis-
giving of his own unworthiness that he thinks of her,
and of what they might have been to one another, if he
had been more in earnest some time ago; if he had set a
higher value on her; if, instead of accepting his lot in
life as an inheritance of course, he had studied the
right way to its appreciation and enhancement. And
still, for all this, and though there is a sharp heartache
in all this, the vanity and caprice of youth sustain that
handsome figure of Miss Landless in the background of
his mind. *
That was a curious look of Rosa's when they parted
at the gate. Did it mean that she saw below the surface
of his thoughts, and down into their twilight depths?
Scarcely that, for it was a look of astonished and keen
inquiry. He decides that he cannot understand it,
though it was remarkably expressive.
As he only waits for Mr. Grewgious now, and will
depart immediately after having seen him, he takes a
sauntering leave of the ancient city and its neighbor-
hood. He recalls the time when Rosa and he walked
here or there, mere children, full of the dignity of being
engaged. Poor children! he thinks, with a pitying sad-
IlêSS. -
Finding that his watch has stopped, he turns into the
jeweller's shop, to have it wound and set. The jeweller
is knowing on the subject of a bracelet, which he begs
leave to submit, in a general and quite aimless way. It
would suit (he considers) a young bride, to perfection;
especially if of a rather diminutive style of beauty.
Finding the bracelet but coldly looked at, the jeweller
invites attention to a tray of rings for gentlemen; here
is a style of ring, now, he remarks—a very chaste signet
—which gentlemen are much given to purchasing, when
changing their condition. A ring of a very responsible
appearance. With the date of their wedding-day en-
graved inside, several gentlemen have preferred it to
any other kind of memento.
The rings are as coldly viewed as the bracelet. Edwin
tells the tempter that he wears no jewellery but his
148 EDWIN DROOD, ,
watch and chain, which were his father's; and his
shirt-pin.
“That I was aware of,” is the jeweller's reply, “for
Mr. Jasper dropped in for a watch-glass the other day,
and, in fact, I showed these articles to him, remarking
that if he should wish to make a present to a gentleman
relative, on any particular occasion— But he said with
a smile that he had an inventory in his mind of all the
jewellery his gentleman relative ever wore; namely, his
watch and chain, and his shirt-pin.” Still (the jeweller
considers) that might not apply to all times, though
applying to the present time. “Twenty minutes past
two, Mr. Drood, I set your watch at. Let me recom-
mend you not to let it run down, sir!”
Edwin takes his watch, puts it on, and goes out, think-
ing: “Dear old Jack! If I were to make an extra
crease in my neckcloth, he would think it worth no-
ticing!”
He strolls about and about, to pass the time until the
dinner hour. It somehow happens that Cloisterham
seems reproachful to him to-day; has fault to find with
him, as if he had not used it well; but is far more pen-
sive with him than angry. His wonted carelessness is
replaced by a wistful looking at, and dwelling upon, all
the old landmarks. He will soon be far away, and may
never see them again, he thinks. Poor youth! Poor
youth! g e
As dusk draws on, he paces the Monks' Vineyard.
He has walked to and fro, full half an hour by the
Cathedral chimes, and it has closed in dark, before he
becomes quite aware of a woman crouching on the
ground near a wicket gate in a corner. The gate com-
mands a cross by-path, little used in the gloaming; and
the figure must have been there all the time, though he
has but gradually and lately made it out.
He strikes into that path, and walks up to the wicket.
By the light of a lamp near it, he sees that the woman
is of a haggard appearance, and that her weazen chin is
resting on her hands, and that her eyes are staring—with
an unwinking, blind sort of stedfastness—before her.
Always kindly, but moved to be unusually kind this
evening, and having bestowed kind words on most of
the children and aged people he has met, he at once
bends down, and speaks to this woman.
EDWIN DROOD. 149
“Are you ill?” - *
“No, deary,” she answers, without looking at him,
and with no departure from her strange blind stare.
“Are you blind?”
“No, deary.”
“Are you lost, homeless, faint? What is the matter,
that you stay here in the cold so long, without moving?”
By slow and stiff efforts, she appears to contract her
vision until it can rest upon him; and then a curious
film passes over her, and she begins to shake.
He straightens himself, recoils a step, and looks down
i. her in a dread amazement; for he seems to know
€I’.
“Good Heaven!” he thinks, next moment. “Like
Jack that night!”
As he looks down at her, she looks up at him, and
whimpers: “My lungs is weakly; my lungs is dreffle
bad. Poor me, poor me, my cough is rattling dry!” and
coughs in confirmation horribly.
“Where do you come from?” .
“Come from London, deary.” (Her cough still rend-
ing her.)
“Where are you going to?”
“Back to London, deary. I came here, looking for a
needle in a haystack, and I ain’t found it. Look’ee,
deary; give me three-and-sixpence, and don’t you be
afeard for me. I’ll get back to London then, and
trouble no one. I’m in a business.-Ah, me! It's slack,
it’s slack, and times is very bad!—but I can make a
shift to live by it.”
“Do you eat opium?”
“Smokes it,” she replies with difficulty, still racked
by her cough. “Give me three-and-sixpence, and I’ll
lay it. Out well, and get back. If you don’t give me
three-and-sixpence, don’t give me a brass farden. And
if you do give me three-and-sixpence, deary, I’ll tell you
Something.” -
He counts the money from his pocket, and puts it in
her hand. She instantly clutches it tight, and rises to her
feet with a croaking laugh of satisfaction.
“Bless ye! Hark’ee, dear genl’mn. What’s your
Chris’en name?”
“Edwin.”
“Edwin, Edwin, Edwin,” she repeats, trailing off into
150 EDWIN DROOD.
a drowsy repetition of the word; and then asks suddenly:
“Is the short of that name, Eddy?”
“It is sometimes called so,” he replies, with the color
starting to his face.
“Don’t sweethearts call it so?” she asks, pondering.
“How should I know?”
“Haven’t you a Sweetheart, upon your soul?”
‘‘ NOne.”
She is moving away, with another “Bless ye, and
thank’ee, deary !” when he adds: “You were to tell me
something; you may as well do so.” *
“So I was, so I was. Well, then. Whisper. You be
thankful that your name ain’t Ned.”
He looks at her, quite steadily, as he asks:
& 4 Why? 25
“Because it’s a bad name to have just now.”
“How a bad name?”
“A threatened name. A dangerous name.”
“The proverb says that threatened men live long,” he
tells her, lightly.
“Then Ned—so threatened is he, wherever he may be
while I am a-talking to you, deary—should live to all
eternity!” replies the woman.
She has leaned forward, to say it in his ear, with her
forefinger shaking before his eyes, and now huddles
herself together, and with another “Bless ye, and
thank’ee!” goes away in the direction of the Travellers’
flodging House.
This is not an inspiriting close to a dull day. Alone,
in a sequestered place, surrounded by vestiges of old
time and decay, it rather has a tendency to call a shud-
der into being. He makes for the better-lighted streets,
and resolves as he walks on to say nothing of this to-
night, but to mention it to Jack (who alone calls him
Ned), as an odd coincidence, to-morrow; of course only
as a coincidence, and not as anything better worth re-
membering.
Still, it holds to him, as many things much better
worth remembering never did. He has another mile or
so to linger out before the dinner-hour; and, when he
walks over the bridge and by the river, the woman’s
words are in the rising wind, in the angry sky, in the
troubled water, in the flickering lights. There is some
solemn echo of them even in the Cathedral chime, which
EDWIN DRO.O.D. 151
strikes a sudden surprise to his heart as he turns in un-
der the archway of the gatehouse. gº
And So he goes up on the postern stair.
John Jasper passes a more agreeable and cheerful
day than either of his guests. Having no music-lessons
to give in the holiday season, his time is his own, but for
the Cathedral services. He is early among the shop-
keepers, ordering little table luxuries that his nephew
likes. His nephew will not be with him long, he tells
his provision-dealers, and so must be petted and made
much of. While out on his hospitable preparations, he
looks in on Mr. Sapsea; and mentions that dear Ned,
and that inflammable young spark of Mr. Crisparkle's,
are to dine at the gatehouse to-day, and make up their
difference. Mr. Sapsea is by no means friendly to-
wards the inflammable young spark. He says that his
complexion is “Un-English.” And when Mr. Sapsea
has once declared anything to be Un-English, he con-
siders that thing everlastingly sunk in the bottomless
pit.
John Jasper is truly sorry to hear Mr. Sapsea speak
thus, for he knows right well that Mr. Sapsea never
Speaks without a meaning, and that he has a subtle
trick of being right. Mr. Sapsea (by a very remarkable
coincidence) is of exactly that opinion.
Mr. Jasper is in beautiful voice this day. In the pa-
thetic supplication to have his heart inclined to keep
this law, he quite astonishes his fellows by his melodious
power. He has never sung difficult music with such
skill and harmony as in this day’s Anthem. His ner-
vous temperament is occasionally prone to take difficult
music a little too quickly; to-day, his time is perfect.
These results are probably attained through a grand
composure of the spirits. The mere mechanism of his
throat is a little tender, for he wears, both with his
Singing-robe and with his ordinary dress, a large black
Scarf of strong close-woven silk, slung loosely round
his neck. But his composure is so noticeable that Mr.
Crisparkle speaks of it as they come out from Vespers.
“I must thank you, Jasper, for the pleasure with
which I have heard you to-day. Beautiful! Delightful!
You could not have so outdone yourself, I hope, without
being wonderfully well.” º ---
152 EDWIN DROOD.
“I am wonderfully well.”
“Nothing unequal,” says the Minor Canon, with a
smooth motion of his hand: “nothing unsteady, nothing
forced, nothing avoided; all thoroughly done in a mas-
terly manner, with perfect self-command.”
“Thank you. ... I hope so, if it is not too much to say.”
“One would think, Jasper, you had been trying a new
medicine for that occasional indisposition of yours.”
“No, really? That’s well observed; for I have.”
“Then stick to it, my good fellow,” says Mr. Crispar-
kle, clapping him on the shoulder with friendly encour-
agement, ‘‘stick to it.”
“I will.”
“I congratulate you,” Mr. Crisparkle pursues, as they
come out of the Cathedral, ‘‘ on all accounts.”
“Thank you again. I will walk round to the Corner
with you, if you don’t object; I have plenty of time be-
fore my company come; and I want to say a word to
you, which I think you will not be displeased to hear.”
“What is it?”
“Well. We were speaking, the other evening, of my
|black humors.”
Mr. Crisparkle's face falls, and he shakes his head
deploringly.
“I said, you know, that I should make you an anti-
dote to those black humors; and you said you hoped I
would consign them to the flames.”
“And I still hope so, Jasper.”
“With the best reason in the world! I mean to burn
this year’s Diary at the year’s end.”
“Because you—?” Mr. Crisparkle brightens greatly
as he thus begins. -
“You anticipate me. Because I feel that I have been
out of sorts, gloomy, bilious, brain-oppressed, whatever
i. may be. You said I had been exaggerative. So I
ave.”
Mr. Crisparkle's brightened face brightens still more.
“I couldn’t see it then, because I was out of sorts;
but I am in a healthier state now, and I acknowledge it
with genuine pleasure. I made a great deal of a very
little; that’s the fact.” *
“It does me good,” cries Mr. Crisparkle, “to hear you
say it!”
“A man leading a monotonous life,” Jasper proceeds,
EDWIN DROOD. 153
“ and getting his nerves, or his stomach, out of order,
dwells upon an idea until it loses its proportions. That
was my case with the idea in question. So I shall burn
the evidence of my case, when the book is full, and
begin the next volume with a clearer vision.”
“This is better,” says Mr. Crisparkle, stopping at the
steps of his own door to shake hands, “than I could
have hoped.”
“Why, naturally,” returns Jasper. “You had but
little reason to hope that I should become more like
yourself. You are always training yourself to be, mind
and body, as clear as Crystal, and you always are, and
never change; whereas I am a muddy, Solitary, moping
weed. However, I have got over that mope. Shall I
wait, while you ask if Mr. Neville has left for my place?
If not, he and I may walk round together.”
“I think,” says Mr. Crisparkle, opening the entrance-
door with his key, “that he left some time ago; at
least I know he left, and I think he has not come back.
But I’ll inquire. You won’t come in?”
“My company wait,” says Jasper, with a smile.
The Minor Canon disappears, and, in a few moments
returns. As he thought, Mr. Neville has not come back;
indeed, as he remembers now, Mr. Neville said he
would probably go straight to the gatehouse.
“Bad manners in a host!” says Jasper. “My com-
pany will be there before me! What will you bet that I
don’t find my company embracing?”
‘‘I will bet—or, I would, if ever I did bet,” returns
Mr. Crisparkle, “that your company will have a gay
entertainer this evening.”
Jasper nods, and laughs good night!
He retraces his steps to the Cathedral door, and turns
down past it to the gatehouse. He sings, in a low voice
and with delicate expression, as he walks along. It still
seems as if a false note were not within his power to-
Inight, and as if nothing could hurry or retard him.
Arriving thus under the arched entrance of his dwelling,
he pauses for an instant in the shelter to pull off that
great black Scarf and hang it in a loop upon his arm.
For that brief time, his face is knitted and stern. But it
immediately clears, as he resumes his singing, and his
way.
And So he goes up the postern stair.
*
154 EDWIN DROOD.
| The red light burns steadily all the evening in the
lighthouse on the margin of the tide of busy life. Soft-
oned sounds and hum of traffic pass it and flow on irreg-
ularly into the lonely Precincts; , but very little else
goes by, save violent rushes of wind. It comes on to
blow a boisterous gale. -
The Precincts are never particularly well lighted; but
he strong blasts of wind blowing out many of the lamps
(in some instances shattering the frames too, and bring-
ing the glass rattling to the ground), they are unusually
dark to-night. The darkness is augmented and con-
fused, by flying "dust from the earth, dry twigs from the
trees, and great ragged fragments from the rooks’ nests
up in the tower. The trees themselves, so toss and
creak, as this tangible part of the darkness madly
whirls about, that they seem in peril of being torn out
of the earth: while ever and again a crack, and a rush-
ing fall, denote that some large branch has yielded to
the storm.
No such power of wind has blown for many a winter-
night. Chimneys topple in the streets, and people hold
to posts and corners, and to One another, to keep them-
selves upon their feet. The violent rushes abate not,
but increase in frequency and fury until at midnight,
when the streets are empty, the storm goes thundering
along them, rattling at all the latches, and tearing at
all the shutters, as if warning the people to get up and
fly with it, rather than have the roofs brought down
upon their brains.
Still, the red light burns steadily. Nothing is steady
but the red light.
All through the night the wind blows, and abates not.
But early in the morning, when there is barely enough
light in the east to dim the stars, it begins to lull. From
that time, with occasional wild charges, like a wounded
monster dying, it drops and sinks; and at full daylight
it is dead.
It is then seen that the hands of the Cathedral clock
are torn off; that lead from the roof has been stripped
away, rolled up, and blown into the Close; and that
Some stones have been displaced upon the summit of
he great tower. Christmas morning though it be, it is
necessary to send up workmen, to ascertain the extent
of the damage done. These, led by Durdles, go aloft;
EDWIN DROOD. 155
while Mr. Tope and a crowd of early idlers gather down
in Minor Canon Corner, shading their eyes and watch-
ing for their appearance up there.
This cluster is suddenly broken and put aside by the
hands of Mr. Jasper; all the gazing eyes are brought
down to the earth by his loudly inquiring of Mr. Cris-
parkle, at an open window:
“Where is my nephew?”
“He has not been here. Is he not with you?”
“No. He went down to the river last night, with Mr.
Neville, to look at the storm, and has not been back.
Call Mr. Neville !”
“He left this morning, early.”
“Left this morning, early? Let me in let me in!”
There is no more looking up at the tower, now. All
the assembled eyes are turned on Mr. Jasper, white,
half-dressed, panting, and clinging to the rail before the
Minor Canon's house.
CHAPTER XV.
IMPEACHED.
NEVILLE LANDLESS had started so early and walked at
So good a pace that, when the church-bells began to ring
in Cloisterham for morning service, he was eight miles
away. As he wanted his breakfast by that time, hav-
ing set forth on a crust of bread, he stopped at the next
roadside tavern to refresh.
Visitors in want of breakfast — unless they were
horses or cattle, for which class of guests there was
preparation enough in the way of water-trough and hay
—were so unusual at the sign of The Tilted Wagon
that it took a long time to get the wagon into the track
of tea and toast and bacon. Neville, in the interval,
Sitting in a Sanded parlor, wondering in how long a
time after he had gone the sneezy fire of damp fagots
would begin to make somebody else warm.
Indeed, The Tilted Wagon, as a cool establishment on
the top of a hill, where the ground before the door was
puddled with damp hoofs and trodden Straw; where a
156 EDWIN DROOD.
scolding landlady slapped a moist baby (with one red
sock on and one wanting) in the bar; where the cheese
was cast aground upon a shelf, in company with a
mouldy table-cloth and a green-handled knife, in a sort
of cast-iron canoe; where the pale-faced bread shed
tears of crumb over its shipwreck in another canoe;
where the family linen, half washed and half dried, led
a public life of lying about; where everything to drink
was drunk out of mugs, and everything else was
suggestive of a rhyme to mugs; The Tilted Wagon, all
these things considered, hardly kept its painted promise
of providing good entertainment for Man and Beast.
However, Man, in the present case, was not critical, but
took what entertainment he could get, and Went. On
again after a longer rest than he needed.
He stopped at some quarter of a mile from the house,
hesitating whether to pursue the road, or to follow a
cart-track between two high hedgerows, which led
across the slope of a breezy heath, and evidently struck
into the road again by and by. He decided in favor of
this latter track, and pursued it with some toil; the rise
being steep, and the way worn into deep ruts.
He was laboring along, when he became aware of
some other pedestrians behind him. As they were com-
ing up at a faster pace than his, he stood aside, against
one of the high banks, to let them pass. But their man-
ner was very curious. Only four of them passed.
Other four slackened speed, and loitered as intending to
follow him when he should go on. The remainder of
the party (half-a-dozen perhaps) turned, and went back
at a great rate.
|He looked at the four behind him, and he looked at
the four before him. They all returned his look. He
resumed his way. The four in advance went on, con-
stantly looking back; the four in the rear came clos-
ing up. -
When they all ranged out from the narrow track upon
the open slope of the heath, and this order was main-
tained, let him diverge as he would to either side, there
was no longer room to doubt that he was beset by these
fellows. He stopped, as a last test; and they all
stopped.
“Why do you attend upon me in this way?” he asked
the whole body. “Are you a pack of thieves?”
EDWIN DROOD. 15?
“Don’t answer him,” said one of the number; he did
not see which. “Better be quiet.”
“Better be quiet?” repeated Neville. “Who said so?”
Nobody replied.
—“It’s good advice, whichever of you skulkers gave
it,” he went on angrily. “I will not submit to be
penned in between four men there, and four men there.
I wish to pass, and I mean to pass, those four in front.”
They were all standing still; himself included.
“If eight men, or four men, or two men, set upon
one,” he proceeded, growing more enraged, “the one
has no chance but to set his mark upon some of them.
And, by the Lord, I’ll do it, if I am interrupted any
farther!”
Shouldering his heavy stick, and quickening his pace,
he shot on to pass the four ahead. The largest and
strongest man of the number changed swiftly to the
side on which he came up, and dexterously closed
with him and went down with him; but not before the
heavy stick had descended smartly. &
“Let him be!” said this man in a suppressed voice,
as they struggled together on the grass. “Fair play!
His is the build of a girl to mine, and he’s got a
weight strapped to his back besides. Let him alone.
I’ll manage him.”
After a little rolling about, in a close scuffle which
caused the faces of both to be besmeared with blood,
the man took his knee from Neville’s chest, and rose,
saying: “There! Now take him arm-in-arm, any two
of you!”
It was immediately done.
“As to our being a pack of thieves, Mr. Landless,”
said the man, as he spat out Some blood, and wiped
more from his face; “you know better than that, at
midday. We wouldn’t have touched you if you hadn’t
forced us. We’re going to take you round to the high
road, anyhow, and you’ll find help enough against
thieves there, if you want it.—Wipe his face, somebody;
see how it's a-trickling down him!”
When his face was cleansed, Neville recognised in
the speaker, Joe, driver of the Cloisterham omnibus,
whom he had seen but once, and that On the day of his
arrival. - -
“And what I recommend you for the present, is, don’t
158 EDWIN DROOD.
talk, Mr. Landless. You’ll find a friend waiting for
you, at the high road—gone ahead by the other way
when we split into two parties—and you had much
better say nothing till you come up with him. Bring
that stick along, somebody else, and let's be moving!”
Utterly bewildered, Neville stared around him and
said not a word. Walking between his two conductors,
who held his arms in theirs, he went on, as in a dream,
until they came again into the high road, and into the
midst of a little group of people. The men who had
turned back were among the group; and its central
figures were Mr. Jasper and Mr. Crisparkle. Neville's
conductors took him up to the Minor Canon, and, there
released him, as an act of deference to that gentleman.
“What is all this, sir? What is the matter? I feel as
if I had lost my senses!” cried Neville, the group clos-
ing in around him.
“Where is my nephew P” asked Mr. Jasper, wildly.
“Where is your nephew?” repeated Neville. “Why
do you ask me?”
“I ask you,” retorted Jasper, “because you were the
last person in his company, and he is not to be found.”
“Not to be found!” cried Neville, aghast.
“Stay, stay,” said Mr. Crisparkle “Permit me,
Jasper. Mr. Neville, you are confounded; collect your
thoughts; it is of great importance that you should col-
lect your thoughts; attend to me.”
“I will try, sir, but I seem mad.”
“You left Mr. Jasper last night with Edwin Drood?”
“Yes.”
“At what hour?”
“Was it at twelve o’clock?” asked Neville, with his
hand to his confused head, and appealing to Jasper.
“Quite right,” said Mr. Crisparkle; “the hour Mr.
Jasper has already named to me. You went down to
the river together?”
“ Undoubtedly. To see the action of the wind there.”
“What followed? How long did you stay there?”
About ten minutes; I should say, not more. We then
Walked together to your house, and he took leave of me
at the door.
“Did he say he was going down to the river again?”
“No. He said that he was going straight back.”
The bystanders looked at one another, and at Mr.
RDWIN DROOD. 159
Crisparkle. To whom Mr. Jasper, who had been in-
tensely watching Neville, said, in a low, distinct, sus-
picious voice: “What are those stains upon his dress?”
All eyes were turned towards the blood upon his
clothes. g
“And here are the same stain upon this stick!” said
Jasper, taking it from the hand of the man who held it.
‘‘I know the stick to be his, and he carried it last night.
What does this mean?”
“In the name of God, say what it means, Neville!”
urged Mr. Crisparkle.
“That man and I,” said Neville, pointing out his late
adversary, “had a struggle for the stick just now, and
you may see the same marks on him, sir. What was
I to suppose, when I found myself molested by eight
people? Could I dream of the true reason when they
would give me none at all?”
They admitted that they had thought it discreet to bo
silent, and that the struggle had taken place. And yet
the very men who had seen it looked, darkly at the
Smears which the bright cold air had already dried.
“We must return, Neville,” said Mr. Crisparkle; “ of
course you will be glad to come back to clear yourself?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Mr. Landless will walk at my side,” the Minor
Canon continued, looking around him. “Come, Neville!”
They set forth on the walk back; and the others, with
one exception, straggled after them at various dis-
tances. Jasper walked on the other side of Neville,
and never quitted that position. He was silent, while
Mr. Crisparkle more than once repeated his former
question, and while Neville repeated his former
answers; also, while they both hazarded some explana-
tory conjectures. He was obstinately silent, because
Mr. Crisparkle's manner directly appealed to him to
take some part in the discussion, and no appeal would
move his fixed face. When they drew near to the city,
and it was suggested by the Minor Canon that they
might do well in calling on the Mayor at once, he as-
sented with a stern nod; but he spake no word until
they stood in Mr. Sapsca’s parlor.
Mr. Sapsea being informed by Mr. Crisparkle of the
circumstances under which they desired to make a vol-
untary statement before him, Mr. Jasper broke silence
160 EDWIN DFOOD.
by declaring that he placed his whole reliance, humanly
speaking, on Mr. Sapsea's penetration. There was
no conceivable reason why his nephew should have
suddenly absconded, unless Mr. Sapsea could suggest
one, and then he would defer. There was no intelligi-
ble likelihood of his having returned to the river, and
been accidentally drowned in the dark, unless it should
appear likely to Mr. Sapsea, and then again he would
defer. He washed his hands as clean as he could of all
horrible suspicions, unless it should appear to Mr. Sapsea
that some such were inseparable from his last compan-
ion before his disappearance (not on good terms with
previously), and then, once more, he would defer. His
own state of mind, he being distracted with doubts, and
laboring under dismal apprehensions, was not to Ue
safely trusted; but Mr. Sapsea's was.
Mr. Sapsea expressed his opinion that the case had a
dark look; in short (and here his eyes rested full on
Neville's countenance), an Un-English complexion.
Having made this grand point, he wandered into a
denser haze and maze of nonsense than even a mayor
might have been expected to disport himself in, and
came out of it with the brilliant discovery that to take
the life of a fellow-creature was to take something that
didn’t belong to you. He wavered whether or no he
should at once issue his warrant for the committal of
Neville Landless to jail, under circumstances of grave
suspicion; and he might have gone So far as to do it
but for the indignant protest of the Minor Canon: who
undertook for the young man’s remaining in his own
house, and being produced by his own hands whenever
demanded. Mr. Jasper then understood Mr. Sapsea to
suggest that the river should be dragged, that its banks
should be rigidly examined, that particulars of the dis-
appearance should be sent to all outlying places and to
London, and that placards and advertisements should
be widely §ºte: imploring Edwin Drood, if for any
unknown reason he had withdrawn himself from his
uncle's home and society, to take pity on that loving
kinsman’s sore bereavement and distress, and some-
how inform him that he was yet alive. Mr. Sapsea
was perfectly understood, for this was exactly his
meaning (though he had said nothing about it); and
measures were taken towards all these ends immediately.
FDWIN DROOD. 161
It would be difficult to determine which was the
more oppressed with horror and amazement: Neville
I andless, or John Jasper. But that Jasper's position
forced him to be active, while Neville's forced him to be
passive, there would have been nothing to choose be-
tween them. Each was bowed down and broken.
• With the earliest light of the next morning, men were
at work upon the river, and other men—most of whom
volunteered for the service—were examining the banks.
All the livelong day the search went on; upon the river,
with barge and pole, and drag and net; upon the muddy
and rushy shore, with jack-boot, hatchet, spade, rope,
dogs, and all imaginable appliances. Even at night,
the river was specked with lanterns, and lurid with
fires; far-off Creeks, into which the tide washed as it
changed, had their knots of watchers, listening to the
lapping of the stream, and looking out for any burden
it might bear; remote shingly causeways near the Sea,
and lonely points off which there was a race of water,
had their unwonted flaring cressets and rough-coated
figures when the next day dawned; but no trace of
Edwin Drood revisited the light of the sun.
All that day, again, the search went on. Now, in
barge and boat; and now ashore among the osiers, or
tramping amidst mud and stakes and jagged stones in
low-lying places, where solitary watermarks and sig-
mals of strange shapes showed like spectres, John
Jasper worked and toiled. But to no purpose; for still
no trace of Edwin Drood revisited the light of the sun.
Setting his watches for that night again, so that vigilant
eyes should be kept on every change of tide, he went
home exhausted. Unkempt and disordered, bedaubed
with mud that had dried upon him, and with much of
his clothing torn to rags, he had but just dropped into
his easy-chair when Mr. Grewgious stood before him.
“This is strange news,” said Mr. Grewgious.
“Strange and fearful news.”
Jasper had merely lifted up his heavy eyes to say it,
and now dropped them again as he drooped, worn out,
Over one side of his easy-chair.
Mr. Grewgious smoothed his head and face, and
stood looking at the fire.
“How is your ward?” asked Jasper, after a time, in
- a faint, fatigued voice.
11
162 |EDWIN DROOD.
“Poor little thing! You may imagine her condition.”
“Have you seen his sister?” inquired Jasper, as be-
fore.
‘‘ Whose?”
The curtness of the counter-question, and the cool
slow manner in which, as he put it, Mr. Grewgious
moved his eyes from the fire to his companion’s faces.
might at any other time have been exasperating. In his
depression and exhaustion, Jasper merely opened his
eyes to say: “The suspected young man’s.”
“Do you suspect him?” asked Mr. Grewgious.
“I don’t know what to think. I cannot make up my
ſº 55
IY).IIl Cl.
“Nor I,” said Mr. Grewgious. “But as you spoke
of him as the suspected young man, I thought you
had made up your mind.—I have just left Miss Land-
less.”
“What is her State?”
“Defiance of all suspicion, and unbounded faith in
her brother.”
“Poor thing!”
“However,” pursued Mr. Grewgious, “it is not of her
that I came to speak. It is of my ward. I have a com-
munication to make that will surprise you. At keast, it
has surprised me.”
Jasper, with a groaning sigh, turned wearily in his
chair.
“Shall I put it off till to-morrow?” said Mr. Grew-
gious. “Mind, I warn you, that I think it will surprise
you!”
More attention and concentration came into John
Jasper’s eyes as they caught sight of Mr. Grewgious
smoothing his head again, and again looking at the fire;
but now, with a compressed and determined mouth.
“What is it?” demanded Jasper, becoming upright in
his chair. º
“To be sure,” said Mr. Grewgious, provokingly
slowly and internally, as he kept his eyes on the fire:
‘‘I might have known it sooner; she gave me the open-
ing; but I am such an exceedingly Angular man, that
it never occurred to me; I took all for granted.”
“What is it?” demanded Jasper once more.
Mr. Grewgious, alternately opening and shutting the
palms of his hands as he warmed them at the fire, and.
EDWIN DROOD. 163
looking fixedly at him sideways, and never changing
either his action or his look in all that followed, went
On to reply.
“This young couple, the lost youth and Miss Rosa,
my ward, though so long betrothed, and so long recog-
nising their betrothal, and so near being married—”
Mr. Grewgious saw a staring white face, and two
quivering white lips, in the easy-chair, and saw two
muddy hands gripping its sides. But for the hands, he
might have thought he had never seen the face.
“ —This young couple came gradually to the discovery
(made on both sides pretty equally, I think) that they
would be happier and better, both in their present
and their future lives, as affectionate friends, or say
rather as brother and sister, than as husband and
wife.”
Mr. Grewgious saw a lead-colored face in the easy-
chair, and on its surface dreadful starting drops or bub-
bles, as if of steel. -
“This young couple formed at length the healthy
resolution of interchanging their discoveries, openly,
sensibly, and tenderly. They met for that purpose.
After some innocent and generous talk, they agreed to
dissolve their existing, and their intended, relations, for-
ever and ever.”
Mr. Grewgious saw a ghastly figure rise, open-
mouthed, from the easy-chair, and lift its outspread
hands towards its head.
“One of this young couple, and that one your nephew,
fearful, however, that in the tenderness of your affec-
tion for him you would be bitterly disappointed by so
wide a departure from his projected life, forbore to tell
you the secret, for a few days, and left it to be dis-
closed by me, when I should come down to speak to
you and he would be gone. I speak to you, and he is
gone.”
Mr. Grewgious saw the ghastly figure throw back its
head, clutch its hair with its hands, and turn with a
writhing action from him.
“I have now said all I have to say: except that this
young couple parted, firmly, though not without tears
and sorrow on the evening when you last saw them to-
gether.” - - *
Mr. Grewgious heard a terrible shriek, and saw no
164 EDWIN DROOD.
ghastly figure, sitting or standing; saw nothing but a
heap of torn and miry clothes upon the floor.
Not changing his action even then, he opened and
shut the palms of his hands as he warmed them, and
looked down at it. *
CHAPTER XVI.
DEVOTED.
º
WHEN John Jasper recovered from his fit or swoon, he
found himself being tended by Mr. and Mrs. Tope, whom
his visitor had summoned for the purpose. His visitor,
wooden of aspect, sat stiffly in a chair, with his hands
upon his knees, watching his recovery.
“There! You’ve come to nicely now, sir,” said the
tearful Mrs. Tope; “you were thoroughly worn out, and
no wonder!”
“A man,” said Mr. Grewgious, with his usual air of
repeating a lesson, “cannot have his rest broken, and
his mind cruelly tormented, and his body overtaxed by
fatigue, without being thoroughly worn out.”
‘‘I fear I have alarmed you?”. Jasper apologised
faintly, when he was helped into his easy-chair.
“Not at all, I thank you,” answered Mr. Grewgious.
“You are too considerate.”
“Not at all, I thank you,” answered Grewgious again.
“You must take some wine, sir,” said Mrs. Tope,
“ and the jelly that I had ready for you, and that you
wouldn’t put your lips to at noon, though I warned you
what would come of it, you know, and you not break-
fasted; and you must have a wing of the roast fowl
that has been put back twenty times if it’s been put
back once. It shall all be on table in five minutes,
and this good gentleman belike will stop and see you
take it.” e
This good gentleman replied with a snort, which
might mean yes, or no, or anything or nothing, and
which Mrs. Tope would have found highly mystifying,
!. that her attention was divided by the service of the
table.
EDWIN DROOD. 165
“You will take something with me?” said Jasper, as
the cloth was laid.
“I couldn’t get a morsel down my throat, I thank
you,” answered Mr. Grewgious.
Jasper both ate and drank almost voraciously. Com-
bined with the hurry in his mode of doing it, Was an
evident indifference to the taste of what he took, Sug-
gesting that he ate and drank to fortify himself against
any other failure of the Spirits, far more than to gratify
his palate. Mr. Grewgious in the meantime sat upright,
with no expression in his face, and a hard kind of im-
perturbably polite protest all Over him: as though he
would have said, in reply to some invitation to dis-
course: “I couldn’t originate the faintest approach to
an observation on any subject whatever, I thank you.”
“Do you know,” said Jasper, when he had pushed
away his plate and glass, and had sat meditating for a
few minutes: “ do you know that I find some crumbs of
comfort in the communication with which you have SO
much amazed me?”
“Do you?” returned Mr. Grewgious; pretty plainly
adding the unspoken clause: “I don't, I thank you!”
“After recovering from the shock of a piece of news
of my dear boy, so entirely unexpected, and so destruc-
tive of all the castles I had built for him; and after
having had time to think of it; yes.”
“I shall be glad to pick up your crumbs,”, said Mr.
Grewgious, dryly. - *
“Is there not, or is there—if I deceive myself, tell me
So, and shorten my pain—is there not, or is there, hope
that, finding himself in this new position, and becom-
ing sensitively alive to the awkward burden of explana-
tion, in this quarter, and that, and the other, with which
it would load him, he avoided the awkwardness, and
took to flight?”
“Such a thing might be,” said Mr. Grewgious, pon-
dering. .*
“Such a thing has been. I have read of cases in
which people, rather than face a seven days’ wonder,
and have to account for themselves to the idle and im-
pertinent, have taken themselves away, and been long
unheard of.”
“I believe such things have happened,
Grewgious, pondering still.
55
said Mr.
166 EDWIN DROOD.
“When I had, and could have, no suspicion,” pur-
sued Jasper, eagerly following the new track, “that
the dear lost boy had withheld anything from me—
most of all, such a leading matter as this—what gleam
of light was there for me in the whole black sky?
When I Supposed that his intended wife was here, and
his marriage close at hand, how could I entertain the
possibility of his voluntarily leaving this place, in a
manner that would be so unaccountable, capricious,
and cruel? But now that I know what you have told
me, is there no chink through which day pierces? Sup-
posing him to have disappeared of his own act, is not
his disappearance more accountable and less cruel?
The fact of his having just parted from your ward
is in itself a sort of reason for his going away. It
does not make his mysterious departure the less cruel
to me, it is true; but it relieves it of cruelty to her.”
Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to this.
“And even as to me,” continued Jasper, still pursu-
ing the new track, with ardor, and, as he did so, bright-
ening with hope: “ he knew that you were coming to
me; he knew that you were intrusted to tell me what
you have told me; if your doing so has awakened a
new train of thought in my perplexed mind, it reason-
ably follows that, from the same premises, he might
have foreseen the inferences that I should draw. Grant
that he did foresee them; and even the cruelty to me
and who am Il-John Jasper, Music Master, van-
ishes!— ”
Once more, Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to
this.
“I have had my distrusts, and terrible distrusts they
have been,” said Jasper; “but your disclosure, over-
powering as it was at first—showing me that Imy own
dear boy had had a great disappointing reservation
from me, who so fondly loved him, kindles hope within
me. - You do not extinguish it when I state it, but
admit it to be a reasonable hope. I begin to believe it
possible: ” here he clasped his hands: ‘‘ that he may
have disappeared from among us of his own accord,
and that he may yet be alive and well.”
Mr. Crisparkle came in at the moment. To whom
Mr. Jasper repeated:
‘‘I begin to believe it possible that he may have dis-
EDWIN DROOT). - 167
appeared of his own accord, and may yet be alive and
Well.” \
Mr. Crisparkle taking a seat, and inquiring: “Why
So?” Mr. Jasper repeated the arguments he had just
set forth. If they had been less plausible than they
were, the good Minor Canon’s mind would have been in
a state of preparation to receive them, as exculpatory
of his unfortunate pupil. But he, too, did really attach
great importance to the lost young man’s having been,
SO immediately before his disappearance, placed in a
new and embarrassing relation towards every one ac-
quainted with his projects and affairs; and the fact
seemed to him to present the question in a new light.
“I stated to Mr. Sapsea, when we waited on him,”
said Jasper: as he really had done: “that there was no
quarrel or difference between the two young men at
their last meeting. We all know that their first meet-
ing was unfortunately very far from amicable; "but all
went smoothly and quietly when they were last to-
gether at my house. My dear boy was not in his usual
spirits; he was depressed—I noticed that—and I am
bound henceforth to dwell upon the circumstance the
more, now that I know there was a special reason for
his being depressed: a reason, moreover, which may
possibly have induced him to absent himself.”
“I pray to Heaven it may turn out so!” exclaimed
Mr. Crisparkle.
“I pray to Heaven it may turn out so!” repeated Jas-
per. “You know—and Mr. Grewgious should now know
likewise—that I took a great prepossession against Mr.
Neville Landless, arising out of his furious conduct on
that first occasion. You know that I came to you, ex-
tremely apprehensive, on my dear boy’s behalf, of his
mad violence. You know that I even entered in my
Diary, and showed the entry to you, that I had dark
forebodings against him. Mr. Grewgious Ought to be
possessed of the whole case. He shall not, through any
suppression of mine, be informed of a part of it, and
kept in ignorance of another part of it. I wish him to
be good enough to understand that the communication
he has made to me has hopefully influenced my mind,
in spite of its having been, before this mysterious oc-
Currence took place, profoundly impressed against young
Landless.” *
16S EDWIN DROOD.
This fairness troubled the Minor Canon much. He felt
that he was not as open in his own dealing. He charged
against himself reproachfully that he had suppressed,
so far, the two points of a second strong outbreak of
temper against Edwin Drood on the part of Neville,
and of the passion of jealousy having, to his own cer-
tain knowledge, flamed up in Neville's breast against
him. He was convinced of Neville’s innocence of
any part in the ugly disappearance; and yet so many
little circumstances combined so wofully against him,
that he dreaded to add two more to their cumulative
weight. He was among the truest of men; but he had
been balancing in his mind, much to its distress, whether
his volunteering to tell these two fragments of truth,
at this time, would not be tantamount to a piecing to-
gether of falsehood in the place of truth.
However, here was a model before him. He hesitated
no longer. Addressing Mr. Grewgious, as one placed
in authority by the revelation he had brought to bear
on the mystery (and surpassingly Angular Mr. Grew-
gious became when he found himself in that unexpected
position), Mr. Crisparkle bore his testimony to Mr. Jasper’s
strict sense of justice, and, expressing his absolute con-
fidence in the complete clearance of his pupil from the
least taint of suspicion, sooner or later, avowed that his
confidence in that young gentleman had been formed,
in spite of his confidential knowledge that his temper
was of the hottest and fiercest, and that it was directly
incensed against Mr. Jasper’s Inephew by the circum-
stance of his romantically supposing himself to be enam-
ored of the same young lady. The sanguine reaction
manifest in Mr. Jasper was proof even against this
unlooked-for declaration. It turned him paler; but he
repeated that he would cling to the hope he had derived
from Mr. Grewgious; and that if no trace of his dear
boy were found, leading to the dreadful inference
that he had been made away with, he would cherish
unto the last stretch of possibility the idea that he
might have absconded of his own wild will.
Now it fell out that Mr. Crisparkle, going away from
this conference still very uneasy in his mind, and very
much troubled on behalf of the young man whom he
held as a kind of prisoner in his own house, took a
memorable night walk.
EDWIN DROOD. I (39
He walked to Cloisterham Weir.
He often did so, and consequently there was nothing
remarkable in his footsteps tending that way. But the
preoccupation of his mind so hindered him from plan-
ning any walk, or taking heed of the objects he passed,
that his first consciousness of being near the Weir, was
derived from the sound of the falling water close at
hand.
“How did I come here!” was his first thought, as he
stopped.
“Why did I come here!” was his second.
Then he stood intently listening to the water. A.
familiar passage in his reading, about airy tongues that
syllable men's names, rose so unbidden to his ear that
he put it from him with his hand, as if it were tangible.
It was starlight. The Weir was full two miles above
the spot to which the young men had repaired to watch
the storm. No search had been made up here, for the
tide had been running strongly down, at that time of
the night of Christmas Eve, and the likeliest places for
the discovery of a body, if a fatal accident had hap-
pened under such circumstances, all lay—both when
the tide ebbed, and when it flowed again—between that
spot and the sea. The water came over the Weir, with
its usual sound on a cold starlight night, and little
could be seen of it; yet Mr. Crisparkle had a strange
idea that something unusual hung about the place.
He reasoned with himself: What was it? Where was
it? Put it to the proof. Which sense did it address?
No sense reported anything unusual there. He
listened again, and his sense of hearing again checked
the water coming over the Weir, with its usual sound
On a cold starlight night.
Knowing very well that the mystery with which his
mind was occupied might of itself give the place
this haunted air, he strained those hawk's eyes of his
for the correction of his sight. He got close to the
Weir, and peered at its well-known posts and timbers.
Nothing in the least unusual was remotely shadowed
forth. But he resolved that he would come back early
in the morning.
The Weir ran through his broken sleep, all night, and
he was back again at sunrise. It was a bright frosty
morning. The whole composition before him, when he
1" () EDWIN DROOD.
stood where he had stood last night, was clearly dis-
cernible in its minutest details. He had surveyed it
closely for some minutes, and was about to withdraw
his eyes when they were attracted keenly to one spot.
He turned his back upon the Weir, and looked far
away at the sky, and at the earth, and then looked
again at that One spot. It caught his sight again im-
mediately, and he concentrated his vision upon it. He
could not lose it now, though it was but such a speck in
the landscape. It fascinated his sight. His hands be-
gan plucking off his coat. For it struck him at that
spot—a corner of the Weir—something glistened, which
did not move and come over with the glistening water-
drops, but remained stationary.
He assured himself of this, he threw off his clothes,
he plunged into the icy water, and swam for the spot.
Climbing the timbers, he took from them, caught
among their interstices by its chain, a gold watch,
bearing engraved upon its back E. D.
He brought the watch to the bank, swam to the Weir
again, climbed it, and dived off. He knew every hole
and corner of all the depths, and dived and dived and
dived, until he could bear the cold no more. His notion
was, that he would find the body; he only found a
shirt-pin sticking in some mud and Ooze.
With these discoveries he returned to Cloisterham,
and, taking Neville Landless with him, went straight
to the Mayor. Mr. Jasper was sent for, the watch and
shirt-pin were identified, Neville was detained, and the
wildest frenzy and fatuity of evil report rose against
him. He was of that vindictive and violent nature
that but for his poor sister, who alone had influence
Over him, and out of whose sight -he was never to be
trusted, he would be in the daily commission of murder.
JBefore coming to England he had caused to be whipped
to death sundry “Natives *—nomadic persons, encamp-
ing now in Asia, now in Africa, now in the West Indies,
and now at the North Pole—vaguely supposed in Clois-
terham to be always black, always of great virtue,
always calling themselves Me, and everybody else
Massa or Missie (according to sex), and always reading
tracts of the obscurest meaning, in broken English, but
always accurately understanding them in the purest
mother tongue. He had nearly brought Mrs. Crisparkle's
EDWIN DROOD. 171
grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. (Those original
expressions were Mr. Sapsea's.) He had repeatedly said
he would have Mr. Crisparkle's life. He had repeatedly
said he would have everybody's life, and become in
effect the last man. He had been brought down to
Cloisterham, from London, by an eminent Philanthro-
pist, and why? Because that Philanthropist had ex-
pressly declared: “I owe it to my fellow-creatures that
he should be, in the words of BENTHAM, where he is the
cause of the greatest danger to the smallest number.” .
These dropping shots from the blunderbusses of blun-
derheadedness might not have hit him in a vital place.
But he had to stand against a trained and well-directed
fire of arms of precision too. He had notoriously threat-
ened the lost young man, and had, according to the
showing of his own faithful friend and tutor who strove
so hard for him, a cause of bitter animosity (created by
himself, and stated by himself) against that ill-starred
fellow. He had armed himself with an offensive weapon
for the fatal night, and he had gone off early in the
morning, after making preparations for departure. He
had been found with traces of blood on him; truly, they
might have been wholly caused as he represented, but
they might not, also. On a search-warrant being issued
for the examination of his room, clothes, and so forth,
it was discovered that he had destroyed all his papers,
and rearranged all his possessions, on the very after-
noon of the disappearance. The watch found at the
Weir was challenged by the jeweller as one he had
wound and set for Edwin Drood at twenty minutes past
two on that same afternoon; and it had run down, be-
fore being cast into the water; and it was the jeweller's
positive opinion that it had never been re-wound. This
would justify the hypothesis that the watch was taken
from him not long after he left Mr. Jasper's house at
midnight, in company with the last person seen with
him, and that it had been thrown away after being re-
tained some hours. Why thrown away? If he had
been murdered, and so artfully disfigured, or concealed,
or both, as that the murderer hoped identification to be
impossible, except from something that he wore, as-
suredly the murderer would seek to remove from the
body the most lasting, the best known, and the most
easily recognisable, things upon it. Those things would
172 - E}_j WIN DROOD.
be the watch and shirt-pin. As to his opportunities of
casting them into the river; if he were the object of
these suspicions, they were easy. For he had been
seen by many persons, wandering about on that side of
the city—indeed on all sides of it—in a miserable and
seemingly half-distracted manner. As to the choice
of the spot, obviously such criminating evidence had
better take its chance of being found anywhere rather
than upon himself, or in his possession. Concerning
the reconciliatory nature of the appointed meeting be-
tween the two young men, very little could be made of
that in young Landless's favor; for it distinctly ap-
peared that the meeting originated, not with him, but
with Mr. Crisparkle, and that it had been urged on by
Mr. Crisparkle; and who could say how unwillingly, or
in what ill-conditioned mood, his enforced pupil had gone
to it? The more his case was looked into, the weaker it
became in every point. Even the broad suggestion that
the lost young man had absconded, was rendered ad-
ditionally improbable on the showing of the young lady
from whom he had so lately parted; for, what did she
Say, With great earnestness and sorrow, when interro-
gated? That he had, expressly and enthusiastically,
planned with her that he would await the arrival of
her guardian, Mr. Grewgious. And yet, be it observed,
he disappeared before that gentleman appeared.
On the Suspicions thus urged and supported, Neville
was detained and re-detained, and the search was
pressed on every hand, and Jasper labored night and
day. But nothing more was found. No discovery be-
ing made which proved the lost man to be dead, it at
length became necessary to release the person suspected
of having made away with him. Neville was set at
large. Then a consequence ensued which Mr. Cris-
parkle had too well foreseen. Neville must leave the
place, for the place shunned him and cast him out.
Even had it not been, the dear old china shepherdess
would have worried herself to death with fears for her
Son, and with general trepidation occasioned by their
having such an inmate. Even had that not been so, the
authority to which the Minor Calion deferred officially,
would have settled the point. * .
“Mr. Crisparkle,” quoth the Dean, “human justice
may err, but it must act according to its lights. The
EDWIN DROOD. 173
days of taking sanctuary are past. This young man
must not take sanctuary with us.”
“You mean that he must leave my house, sir?”
“Mr. Crisparkle,” returned the prudent Dean, “I
claim no authority in your house. Imerely confer with
you, on the painful necessity you find yourself under, of
depriving this young man of the great advantages of
your counsel and instruction.”
“It is very lamentable, sir,” Mr. Crisparkle repre-
sented.
‘‘Very much so,” the Dean assented.
“And if it be a necessity—” Mr. Crisparkle faltered.
“As you unfortunately find it to be,” returned the
Dean.
Mr. Crisparkle bowed submissively. “It is hard to
prejudge his case, sir, but I am sensible that—”
“Just so. Perfectly. As you say, Mr. Crisparkle,”
interposed the Dean, nodding his head smoothly, “there
is nothing else to be done. No doubt, no doubt. There
is no alternative, as your good sense has discovered.”
‘‘I am entirely satisfied of his perfect innocence, sir,
nevertheless.” -
“We-e-ell!” said the Dean, in a more confidential
tone, and slightly glancing around him, “I would not
say SO, generally. Not generally. Enough of Suspicion
attachesto him to—no, I think I Would not say SO, gen-
erally.”
Mr. Crisparkle bowed again.
“It does not become us, perhaps,” pursued the Dean,
“to be partisans. Not partisans. We clergy keep our
hearts warm and our heads cool, and we hold a judi-
cious middle course.” &
“I hope you do not object, sir, to my having stated in
public emphatically, that he will reappear here when-
ever any new suspicion may be awakened, or any new
circumstance may come to light in this extraordinary
Imatter?”
“Not at all,” returned the Dean. “And yet, do you
know, I don’t think,” with a very nice and meat empha-
sis on those two words: “I don’t think I would state it,
emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But emphatically?
No-o-o. I think not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle,
keeping Our hearts warm and Our heads cool, we clergy
need do nothing emphatically.”
174 EDWIN DROOD.
So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless no more;
and he went whithersoever he would, or could, with a
blight upon his name and fame.
It was not until then that John Jasper silently re-
sumed his place in the choir. Haggard and red-eyed,
his hopes plainly had deserted him, his sanguine mood
was gone, and all his worst misgivings had come back.
A day or two afterwards, while unrobing, he took his
Diary from a pocket of his coat, turned the leaves, and
with an impressive look, and without One spoken word,
handed this entry to Mr. Crisparkle to read:
“My dear boy is murdered. The discovery of the watch and shirt-pin con-
vinces me that he was murdered that night, and that his jewellery was taken
from him to prevent identification by its means. All the delusive hopes I had
founded on his separation from his betrothed wife, I give to the winds. They
perish before this fatal discovery. I now swear and record the oath on this
page, That I nevermore will discuss this mystery with any human creature
until I hold the clue to it in my hand. That I never will relax in my secrecy
or in my search. That I will fasten the crime of the murder of my dear dead
boy upon the murderer. And, That I devote myself to his destruction.”
CHAPTER XVII.
PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL, AND UNPROFESSIONAL.
FULL half a year had come and gone, and Mr. Cris-
parkle sat in a waiting-room in the London chief offices
of the Haven of Philanthropy, until he could have au-
dience of Mr. Honeythunder.
In his college days of athletic exercises Mr. Crisparkle
had known professors of the Noble Art of fisticuffs,
and had attended two or three of their gloved gather-
ings. He had now an opportunity of observing that as
to the phrenological formation of the backs of their
heads, the Professing Philanthropists were uncommonly
like the Pugilists. In the development of all those or-
gans which constitute, or attend, a propensity to “pitch
into * your fellow-creatures, the Philanthropists were
remarkably favored. There were several Professors
passing in and Out, with exactly the aggressive air upon
them of being ready for a turn-up with any Novice who
EDWIN DROOD. 175
might happen to be on hand, that Mr. Crisparkle well
remembered in he circles of the fancy. Preparations
were in progress for a moral little Mill somewhere on
the rural circuit, and other Professors were backing this
or that Heavy-Weight as good for such or such speech-
making hits, so very much after the manner of the
sporting publicans, that the intended Resolutions might
have been Rounds. In an official manager of these dis-
plays much celebrated for his platform tactics, Mr
Crisparkle recognized (in a suit of black) the counter-
part of a deceased benefactor of his species, an eminent
public character, once known to fame as Frostyfaced
Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the formation
of the magic circle with the ropes and stakes. There
were only three conditions of resemblance wanting be-
tween these Professors and those. Firstly, the Philan-
thropists were in very bad training: much too fleshy,
and presenting, both in face and figure, a superabundance
of what is known to Pugilistic experts as Suet Pudding.
Secondly, the Philanthropists had not the good temper
of the Pugilists, and used worse language. Thirdly,
their fighting code stood in great need of revision, as
empowering them not only to bore their man to the
ropes, but to bore him to the confines of distraction; also
to hit him when he was down, hit him anywhere and
anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him, gouge him, and
maul him behind his back without mercy. In these last
particulars the Professors of the Noble Art were much
nobler than the Professors of Philanthropy.
Mr. Crisparkle was so completely lost in musing on
these similarities and dissimilarities, at the same time
watching the crowd which came and went by, always,
as it seemed, on errands of antagonistically snatching
Something from somebody, and never giving anything to
anybody, that his name was called before he heard it.
On his at length responding, he was shown by a mis-
erably shabby and underpaid stipendiary Philanthropist
(who could hardly have done worse if he had taken
Service with a declared enemy of the human race) to
Mr. Honeythunder’s room.
“Sir,” said Mr. Honeythunder, in his tremendous
voice, like a schoolmaster issuing Orders to a boy of
whom he had a bad opinion, “sit down.”
Mr. Crisparkle seated himself.
176 EDWIN DROOD.
Mr. Honeythunder having signed the remaining few
score of a few thousand circulars, calling upon a cor-
responding number of families without means to come
forward, stump up instantly, and be Philanthropists, or
go to the Devil, another shabby stipendiary Philan-
thropist (highly disinterested, if in earnest) gathered
these into a basket and walked off with them.
“Now, Mr. Crisparkle,” said Mr. Honeythunder, turn-
ing his chair half round towards him when they were
alone, and squaring his arms with his hands on his
knees, and his brows knitted, as if he added, I am going
to make short work of you: “Now, Mr. Crisparkle, we
entertain different views, you and I, sir, of the Sanctity
of human life.”
“DO we?” returned the Minor Canon.
“We do, sir.”
“Might I ask you,” said the Minor Canon: “what are
your views on that subject?”
“That human life is a thing to be held sacred, sir.”
“Might I ask you,” pursued the Minor Canon as be-
fore: “what you suppose to be my views on that sub-
ject?”
“By George, sir!” returned the Philanthropist, squar-
ing his arms still more, as he frowned on Mr. Crisparkle:
“they are best known to yourself.” *
“Readily admitted. But you began by saying that
we took different views, you know. Therefore (or
you could not say SO) you must have set up some
views as mine. Pray, what views have you set up as
mine?”
“Here is a man—and a young man,” said Mr. Honey-
thunder, as if that made the matter infinitely worse,
and he could have easily borne the loss of an old one,
“swept off the face of the earth by a deed of violence.
What do you call that?”
“Murder,” said the Minor Canon.
“What do you calf the doer of that deed, sir?”
“A murderer,” said the Minor Canon.
‘‘I am glad to hear you admit so much, sir,” retorted
Mr. Honeythunder, in his most offensive manner; “ and
I can candidly tell you that I didn’t expect it.” Here he
lowered heavily at Mr. Crisparkle again.
“Be So good as to explain what you mean by those
very unjustifiable expressions.”
2
EDWIN DROOD. 177
“I don’t sit here, sir,” returned the Philanthropist,
raising his voice to a roar, “to be browbeaten.”
“As the Onky other person present, no one can pos-
sibly know that better than I do,” returned the Minor
Canon very quietly. “But I interrupt your explanation.”
“Murder!” proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, in a kind of
boisterous reverie, with his platform folding of his
arms, and his platform nod of abhorrent reflection after
each short sentiment of a word. “Bloodshed! Abel!
Cain! I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a
shudder the red hand when it is offered me.”
Instead of instantly leaping into his chair and cheer-
ing himself hoarse, as the Brotherhood in public meeting
assembled would infallibly have done on this cue, Mr.
Crisparkle merely reversed the quiet crossing of his
legs, and said mildly: “Don’t let me interrupt your ex-
planation—when you begin it.”
“The Commandments say, no murder. NO murder,
sir!” proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, platformally paus-
ing as if he took Mr. Crisparkle to task for having dis-
tinctly asserted that they said: You may do a little
murder, and then leave off.
“And they also say, you shall bear no false witness,”
observed Mr. Crisparkle.
“Enough!” bellowed Mr. Honeythunder, with a so-
lemnity and severity that would have brought the house
down at a meeting, “E–e—nough! My late wards
being now of age, and I being released from a trust
which I cannot contemplate without a thrill of horror,
there are the accounts which you have undertaken to
accept on their behalf, and there is a statement of the
balance which you have undertaken to receive, and
which you cannot receive too soon. And let me tell
you, sir, I wish that, as a man and a Minor Canon,
you were better employed,” with a nod. “Better em-
pkoyed,” with another nod. “Bet—ter em—ployed!”
with another and the three nods added up.
Mr. Crisparkle rose; a little heated in the face, but
with perfect command of himself.
“Mr. Honeythunder,” he said, taking up the papers
referred to: “my being better or worse employed than
I am at present is a matter of taste and opinion. You
might think me better employed in enrolling myself a
member of your Society.”
12
178 EDWIN DEOOD.
“Ay, indeed, sir!” retorted Mr. Honeythunder, shak-
ing his head in a threatening manner. “It would have
been better for you if you had done that làng ago!”
“I think otherwise.” †
“Or,” said Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his head
again, “I might think one of your profession better
employed in devoting himself to the discovery and pun-
ishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to be under-
taken by a layman.”
“I may regard my profession from a point of view
which teaches me that its first duty is towards those
who are in necessity and tribulation, who are desolate
and oppressed,” said Mr. Crisparkle. “ However, as I
have quite clearly satisfied myself that it is no part of
my profession to make professions, I say no more of
that. But I owe it to Mr. Neville, and to Mr. Neville's
sister (and in a much lower degree to myself), to say to
you that I know I was in the full possession and under-
standing of Mr. Neville's mind and heart at the time of
this occurrence; and that, without in the least coloring
or concealing what was to be deplored in him and re-
quired to be corrected, I feel certain that his tale is true.
Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long as that
certainty shall last, I will befriend him. And if any
consideration could shake me in this resolve, I should
be so ashamed of myself for my meanness, that no man’s
good opinion—no, nor no woman's—so gained, could
compensate me for the loss of my own.”
Good fellow! manly fellow! And he was so modest,
too. There was no more self-assertion in the Minor
Canon than in the school-boy who had stood in the
breezy playing-fields keeping a wicket. He was simply
and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case
and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every
true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is
nothing little to the really great in spirit. O
“Then who do you make out did the deed?” asked
Mr. Honeythunder, turning on him abruptly.
“Heaven forbid,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “that in my
desire to clear one man I should lightly criminate an-
Other! I accuse no one.”
“Tcha!” ejaculated Mr. Honeythunder with great
disgust; for this was by no means the principle on
which the Philanthropic Brotherhood usually proceeded.
EDWIN DROOD. 179
“And, sir, you are not a disinterested witness, we must
bear in mind.” t º
“How am I an interested one?” inquired Mr. Cris-
parkle, smiling innocently, at a loss to imagine.
“There was a certain stipend, sir, paid to you for
your pupil, which may have warped your judgment a
bit,” said Mr. Honeythunder, coarsely.
‘‘Perhaps I expect to retain it still?” Mr. Crisparkle
returned, enlightened, “do you mean that too?”
“Well, sir,” returned the professional Philanthropist,
getting up and thrusting his hands down into his
trousers-pockets, “I don’t go about measuring people
for caps. If people find that I have any about me that
fit 'em, they can put 'em on and wear 'em, if they like.
That’s their lookout: not mine.”
Mr. Crisparkle eyed him with a just indignation, and
took him to task thus: -
“Mr. Honeythunder, I hoped when I came in here
that I might be under no necessity of commenting
on the introduction of platform manners or platform
manoeuvres among the decent forbearances of private
life. But you have given me such a specimen of both,
that I should be a fit subject for both if I remained
silent respecting them. They are detestable.”
“They don’t suit you, I dare say, sir.”
“They are,” repeated Mr. Crisparkle, without noticing
the interruption, “detestable. They violate equally the
justice that should belong to Christians, and the re-
straints that should belong to gentlemen. You assume
a great crime to have been committed by one whom I,
acquainted with the attendant circumstances, and hav-
ing numerous reasons on my side, devoutly believe to
be innocent of it. Because I differ from you on that
vital point, what is your platform resource? Instantly
to turn upon me, charging that I have no sense of the
enormity of the crime itself, but am its aider and abet-
tor! So, another time—taking me as representing your
opponent in other cases—you set up a platform credu-
lity; a moved and seconded and carried-unanimously
profession of faith in some ridiculous delusion or mis-
chievous imposition. I decline to believe it, and you
fall back upon your platform resource of proclaiming
that I believe nothing; that because I will not bow
down to a false God of your maſºng, I deny the true
180 EDWIN DEOOD.
God! Another time you make the platform discovery
that War is a calamity, and you propose to abolish it by
a string of twisted resolutions tossed into the air like
the tail of a kite. I do not admit the discovery to be
yours in the least, and I have not a grain of faith in
your remedy. Again, your platform resource of repre-
senting me as revelling in the horrors of a battle-field
like a fiend incarnate! Another time, in another of
your undiscriminating platform rushes, you would pun-
ish the sober for the drunken. I claim consideration
for the comfort, convenience, and refreshment of the
sober; and you presently make platform proclamation
that I have a depraved desire to turn Heaven’s creatures
into swine and wild beasts! In all such cases your
movers, and your Seconders, and your supporters—your
regular Professors of all degrees, run amuck like so
many mad Malays; habitually attributing the lowest
and basest motives with the utmost recklessness (let
me call your attention to a recent instance in yourself
for which you should blush), and quoting figures which
you know to be as wilfully one-sided as a statement
of any complicated account that should be all Creditor
side and no Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor.
Therefore it is, Mr. Honeythunder, that I consider the
platform a sufficiently bad example and a sufficiently
ad school, even in public life; but hold that, carried
into private life, it becomes an unendurable nuisance.”
“These are strong words, sir!” exclaimed the Philan-
thropist.
“I hope so,” said Mr. Crisparkle. “Good morning.”
He walked out of the Haven at a great rate, but soon
fell into his regular brisk pace, and soon had a smile
upon his face as he went along, wondering what the
China, shepherdess would have said if she had seen him
pounding Mr. Honeythunder in the late little lively
affair. For Mr. Crisparkle had just enough of harmless
Vanity to hope that he had hit hard, and to glow with
the belief that he had trimmed the Philanthropic jacket
pretty handsomely.
He took himself to Staple Inn, but not to P. J. T. and
Mr. Grewgious. Full many a creaking stair he climbed
before he reached some attic rooms in a corner, turned
the latch of their unbolted door, and stood beside the
table of Neville Land Kess.
EDWIN DROOD. 181
An air of retreat and solitude hung about the rooms
and about their inhabitant. He was much worn, and so
were they. Their sloping ceilings, Cumbrous rusty locks
and grates, and heavy wooden bins and beams, slowly
mouldering withal, had a prisonous look, and he had
the haggard face of a prisoner. Yet the Sunlight shone
in at the ugly garret-window, which had a penthouse to
itself thrust out among the tiles; and on the cracked
and smoke-blackened parapet beyond, some of the de-
luded sparrows of the place rheumatically hopped, like
little feathered cripples who had left their crutches in
their nests; and there was a play of living leaves at hand
that changed the air, and made an imperfect sort of
music in it that would have been melody in the country.
The rooms were sparely furnished, but with good
store of books. Everything expressed the abode of a
poor student. That Mr. Crisparkle had been either
chooser, lender, or donor of the books, or that he com-
bined the three characters, might have been easily seen
in º friendly beam of his eyes upon them as he en-
tered.
“How goes it, Neville?”
“I am in good heart, Mr. Crisparkle, and working
away.” g
“I wish your eyes were not quite so large and not
Quite so bright,” said the Minor Canon, slowly releasing
the hand he had taken in his. -
“They brighten at the sight of you,” returned Ne-
ville. “If you were to fall away from me, they would
soon be dull enough.”
“ Rally, rally!” urged the other, in a stimulating tone.
“Fight for it, Neville!”
‘‘If I were dying, I feel as if a word from you would
rally me; if my pulse had stopped, I feel as if your
touch would make it beat again,” said Neville. “But I
have rallied, and am doing famously.”
Mr. Crisparkle turned him with his face a little more
towards the light.
“I want to see a ruddier touch here, Neville; ” he
said, indicating his own healthy cheek by way of pat-
tern; “I want more sun to shine upon you.”
Neville drooped suddenly, as he replied in a lowered
voice: “I am not hardy enough for that, yet. I may
become so, but I cannot bear it yet. If you had gone
182 EDWIN T)ROOD.
through those Cloisterham streets as I did; if you had
seen, as I did, those averted eyes, and the better sort of
people silently giving me too much room to pass, that
I might not touch them or come near them, you wouldn’t
think it quite unreasonable that I cannot go about in
the isiº
“My poor fellow!” said the Minor Canon, in a tone
so purely sympathetic that the young man caught his
hand, “I never said it was unreasonable; never thought
so. But I should like you to do it.”
“And that would give me the strongest motive to do
it. But I cannot yet. I cannot persuade myself that
the eyes of even the stream of strangers I pass in this
vast city look at me without suspicion. I feel marked
and tainted, even when I go out—as I do only—at night.
But the darkness covers me then, and I take courage
from it.”
Mr. Crisparkle laid a hand upon his shoulder, and
stood looking down at him.
“If I could have changed my name,” said Neville, “I
would have done so. But as you wisely pointed out to
me, I can’t do that, for it would look like guilt. If I
could have gone to some distant place, I might have
found relief in that, but the thing is not to be thought
Of, for the same reason. Hiding and escaping would be
the construction in either case. It seems a little hard
; be so tied to a stake, and innocent; but I don’t com-
plain.”
“And you must expect no miracle to help you, Ne-
ville,” said Mr. Crisparkle, compassionately.
“No, sir, I know that. The ordinary fulness of time
and circumstances is all I have to trust to.”
“It will right you at last, Neville.”
“So I believe, and I hope I may live to know it.”
But perceiving that the despondent mood into which
he was falling cast a shadow on the Minor Canon, and
§ may be) feeling that the broad hand upon his shoul-
er was not then quite as steady as its own natural
strength had rendered it when it first touched him just
now, he brightened and said:
“Excellent circumstances for study, anyhow ! and
you know, Mr. Crisparkle, what need I have of study
in all ways. Not to mention that you have advised me
to study for the difficult profession of the law, specially,
EDWIN DROOD. | S3
and that of course I am guiding myself by the advice
of such a friend and helper. Such a good friend and
helper!”
He took the fortifying hand from his shoulder, and
kissed it. Mr. Crisparkle beamed at the books, but not
so brightly as when he had entered.
“I gather from your silence on the subject that my
late guardian is adverse, Mr. Crisparkle?”
The Minor Canon answered: “Your late guardian is
a—a most unreasonable person, and it signifies nothing
to any reasonable person whether he is adverse, or per-
verse, or the reverse.”
“Well for me that I have enough with economy to
live upon,” sighed Neville, half wearily and half cheer-
ily, “while I wait to be learned, and wait to be righted!
Else I might have proved the proverb, that while the
grass grows, the steed starves!”
He opened Šome books as he said it, and was soon
immersed in their interleaved and annotated passages;
while Mr. Crisparkle sat beside him, expounding, cor-
recting, and advising. The Minor Canon’s Cathedral
duties made these visits of his difficult to accomplish,
and only to be compassed at intervals of many weeks.
But they were as serviceable as they were precious to
Neville Landless.
When they had got through such studies as they had
in hand, they stood leaning on the window-sill, and
looking down upon the patch of garden. “Next week,”
said Mr. Crisparkle, “you will cease to be alone, and
will have a devoted companion.”
“And yet,” returned Neville, “this seems an uncon-
genial place to bring my sister to.”
“I don’t think so,” said the Minor Canon. “There is
duty to be done here; and there are womanly feeling,
sense, and courage wanted here.”
“I meant,” explained Neville, “that the surroundings
are so dull and unwomanly, and that Helena can have
no suitable friend or society here.”
“You have only to remember,” said Mr. Crisparkle,
“that you are here yourself, and that she has to draw
you into the sunlight.”
They were silent for a little while, and then Mr. Cris-
parkle began anew.
“When we first spoke together, Neville, you told me
184 EDWIN DROOD.
that your sister had risen out of the disadvantages of
your past lives as superior to you as the tower of Clois-
terham Cathedral is higher than the chimneys of Minor
Canon Corner. Do you remember that?”
“Right well!”
“I was inclined to think it at the time an enthusiastic
flight. No matter what I think it now. What I would
emphasise is, that under the head of Pride your sister is
a great and opportune example to you.”
“ Under all heads that are included in the composition
of a fine character, she is.”
“Say so; but take this one. Your sister has learnt
how to govern what is proud in her nature. She can
dominate it even when it is wounded through her sym-
pathy with you. No doubt she has suffered deeply in
those same streets where you suffered deeply. No doubt
her life is darkened by the cloud that darkens yours.
But bending her pride into a grand composure dº is
not haughty or aggressive, but is a sustained confidence
in you and in the truth, she has won her way through
those streets until she passes along them as high in the
general respect as any one who treads them. Every day
and hour of her life since Edwin Drood's disappearance,
she has faced malignity and folly—for you—as only a
brave nature well directed can. So it will be with her
to the end. Another and weaker kind of pride might
sink broken-hearted, but never such a pride as hers:
which knows no shrinking, and can get no mastery
Over her.” - *
The pale cheek beside him flushed under the compari-
son and the hint implied in it.
“I will do all I can to imitate her,” said Neville.
“Do So, and be a truly brave man, as she is a
truly brave woman,” answered Mr. Crisparkle stoutly.
“It is growing dark. Will you go my way with me,
when it is quite dark? Mind! it is not I who wait for
darkness.”
Neville replied, that he would accompany him directly.
But Mr. Crisparkle said he had a moment’s call to make
On Mr. Grewgious as an act of courtesy, and would run
across to that gentleman’s chambers, and rejoin Neville
On his own doorstep, if he would come down there to
meet him. -
Mr. Grewgious, bolt upright as usual, sat taking his
EDWIN DROOD. 185
wine in the dusk at his open window; his wine-glass and
decanter on the round table at his elbow; himself and
his legs on the window-seat; only one hinge in his whole
body, like a bootjack. *
“How do you do, reverend sir?” said Mr. Grewgious,
with abundant offers of hospitality, which were as
cordially declined as made. “And how is your charge
getting on over the way in the set that I had the pleas-
ure of recommending to you as vacant and eligible?”
Mr. Crisparkle replied suitably.
“I am glad you approve of them,” said Mr. Grew-
gious, ‘‘ because I entertain a sort of fancy for having
him under my eye.”
As Mr. Grewgious had to turn his eye up considerably
before he could see the chambers, the phrase was to be
taken figuratively and not literally.
“And how did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?”
said Mr. Grewgious.
Mr. Crisparkle had left him pretty well.
“And where did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?”
Mr. Crisparkle had left him at Cloisterham.
“And when did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?”
That morning.
“Umps!” said Mr. Grewgious. “He didn’t say he
was coming, perhaps?”
“Coming where?”
& 4 §ºwhere for instance?” said Mr. Grewgious.
& 4 O.”
“Because here he is,” said Mr. Grewgious, who had
asked all these questions, with his preoccupied glance
directed out at window. “And he don’t look agreeable,
does he?”
Mr. Crisparkle was craning towards the window, when
Mr. Grewgious added:
“If you will kindly step round here behind me, in the
gloom of the room, and will cast your eye at the Second-
floor landing window in yonder house, I think you will
hardly fail to see a slinking individual in whom I recog-
nise our local friend.”
“You are right,” cried Mr. Crisparkle. -
“Umps!” said Mr. Grewgious. Then he added, turn-
ing his face so abruptly that his head nearly came into
collision with Mr. Crisparkle's: “what should you say
that our local friend was up to?”
186 - ED WIN DROOD.
g
The last passage he had been shown in the Diary re-
turned on Mr. Crisparkle's mind with the force of a
strong recoil, and he asked Mr. Grewgious if he thought
it possible that Neville was to be harassed by the keep-
ing of a watch upon him?
“A watch,” repeated Mr. Grewgious musingly. “Ay!”
“Which would not only of itself haunt and torture
his life,” said Mr. Crisparkle warmly, “but would ex-
pose him to the torment of a perpetually reviving sus-
picion, whatever he might do, or wherever he might go.”
“Ay!” said Mr. Grewgious, musingly still. “Do I
see him waiting for you?”
“No doubt you do.” -
“Then would you have the goodness to excuse my
getting up to see you Out, and to go out to join him, and
to go the way that you were going, and to take no no-
tice of our local friend?” said Mr. Grewgious. “I enter-
tain a sort of fancy for having him under my eye
to-night, do you know?”
Mr. Crisparkle, with a significant nod, complied; and
rejoining Neville, went away with him. They dined
together, and parted at the yet unfinished and undevel-
oped railway station: Mr. Crisparkle to get home; Ne-
ville to walk the streets, cross the bridges, make a wide
round of the city in the friendly darkness, and tire him-
self out.
It was midnight when he returned from his solitary
expedition and climbed his staircase. The night was
hot, and the windows of the staircase were all wide
open. Coming to the top, it gave him a passing chill of
surprise (there being no rooms but his up there) to find
a stranger sitting on the window-sill, more after the
manner of a venturesome glazier than an amateur Ordi-
narily careful of his neck; in fact, so much more out-
side the window than inside as to suggest the thought
that he must have come up by the water-spout instead
of the stairs.
The stranger said nothing until Neville put his key in
his door; then, seeming to make sure of his identity
from the action, he spoke:
“I beg your pardon,” he said, coming from the win-
dow with a frank and Smiling air, and a prepossessing
address; “the beans.”
Neville was quite at a loss.
EDWIN DROOD. 187
“Runners,” said the visitor. “Scarlet. Next door at
the back.” -
“O,” returned Neville. “And the mignonette and
wall-flower.”
“The same,” said the visitor.
“Pray walk in.”
“Thank you.”
Neville lighted his candles, and the visitor sat down.
A handsome gentleman, with a young face, but an older
figure in its robustness and its breadth of shoulder; say
a man of eight-and-twenty, Or at the utmost thirty: so
extremely sunburnt that the contrast between his brown
visage and the white forehead shaded out of doors by
his hat, and the glimpses of white throat below the neck-
erchief, would have been almost ludicrous but for his
broad temples, bright blue eyes, clustering brown hair,
and laughing teeth.
“I have noticed,” said he; “ —my name is Tartar.”
Neville inclined his head. -
“I have noticed (excuse me) that you shut yourself
up a good deal, and that you seem to like my garden
aloft here. If you would like a little more of it, I could
throw out a few lines and stays between my windows and
yours, which the runners would take to directly. And
I have some boxes, both of mignonette and wall-flower,
that I could shove on along the gutter (with a boat-hook
I have by me ) to your windows, and draw back again
when they wanted watering or gardening, and shove
on again when they were ship-shape; so that they would
cause you no trouble. I couldn’t take this liberty with-
out asking your permission, so I venture to ask it. Tar-
tar, corresponding set, next door.”
“You are very kind.”
“Not at all. I ought to apologise for looking in so
late. But having noticed (excuse me) that you gener-
ally walk out at night, I thought I should inconvenience
you least by awaiting your return. I am always afraid
of inconveniencing busy men, being an idle man.”
“I should not have thought So, from your appear-
ance.”
“No? I take it as a compliment. In fact, I was bred
in the Royal Navy, and was First Dieutenant when I
quitted it. But, an uncle disappointed in the service
leaving me his property on condition that I left the
. . SS EDWIN DROOD.
Navy, I accepted the fortune, and resigned my commis-
sion.”
“Lately, I presume?”
“Well, I had had twelve or fifteen years of knocking
about first. I came here some nine months before you;
I had had one crop before you came. I chose this place,
because, having served last in a little corvette, I knew
I should feel more at home where I had a constant Op-
portunity of knocking my head against the ceiling.
Besides, it would never do for a man who had been
aboard ship from his boyhood to turn luxurious all at
once. Besides, again; having been accustomed to a
very short allowance of land all my life, I thought I’d
feel my way to the command of a landed estate, by be-
ginning in boxes.”
Whimsically as this was said, there was a touch of
merry earnestness in it that made it doubly whimsical.
‘‘However,” said the Lieutenant, “I have talked
quite enough about myself. It is not my way, I hope;
it has merely been to present myself to you naturally.
If you will allow me to take the liberty Ihave described,
it will be a charity, for it will give me something more
to do. And you are not to suppose that it will entail
any interruption or intrusion on you, for that is far from
my intention.”
. Neville replied that he was greatly obliged, and that
he thankfully accepted the kind proposal.
“I am very glad to take your windows in tow,” said
the Lieutenant. “From what I have seen of you when
I have been gardening at mine, and you have been
looking on, I have thought you (excuse me) rather too
studious and delicate. May I ask, is your health at all
affected 2 °
‘‘I have undergone some mental distress,” said Neville,
confused, “which has stood me in the stead of illness.”
‘‘ Pardon me,” said Mr. Tartar.
With the greatest delicacy he shifted his ground to
the windows again, and asked if he could look at one of
them. On Neville's opening it, he immediately sprang
out, as if he were going aloft with a whole watch in an
emergency, and were setting a bright example. *-
“For Heaven’s sake,” cried Neville, “don’t do that!
Where are you going, Mr. Tartar? You’ll be dashed to
pieces!”
EDWIN DROOD. IS9
“All well!” said the Lieutenant, coolly looking about
him on the housetop. “All taut and trim here. Those
lines and stays shall be rigged before you turn out in
the morning. May I take this short cut home, and say
good-night?”
“Mr. Tartar!” urged Neville. “Pray! It makes me
giddy to see you!” -
But Mr. Tartar, with a wave of his hand and the
deftness of a cat, had already dipped through his scut-
tle of Scarlet runners without breaking a leaf, and
“gone below.”
Mr. Grewgious, his bedroom window-blind held aside
with his hand, happened at that moment to have
Neville's chambers under his eye for the last time that
night. Fortunately his eye was on the front of the
house and not the back, or this remarkable appearance
and disappearance might have broken his rest as a phe-
nomenon. But Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing there,
not even a light in the windows, his gaze wandered
from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read
in them something that was hidden from him. Many
of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as
know our letters in the stars yet—or seem likely to do
it, in this state of existence—and few languages can be
read until their alphabets are mastered.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A SETTT, ER IN CLOISTERIHAM.
AT about this time a stranger appeared in Cloister-
ham; a white-haired personage, with black eyebrows.
Being buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout, with a
buff waistcoat and gray trousers, he had something of
a military air; but he announced himself at the Crozier
(the orthodox hotel, where he put up with a portman-
teau) as an idle dog who lived upon his means; and he
farther announced that he had a mind to take a lodging
in the picturesque old city for a month or two, with a
view of settling down there altogether. Both announce-
190 EDWIN DEROOD.
ments were made in the coffee-room of the Crozier, to
all whom it might or might not concern, by the stranger
as he stood with his back to the empty fire-place, wait-
ing for his fried sole, veal cutlet, and pint of sherry.
And the waiter (business being chronically slack at the
Crozier) represented all whom it might or might not
concern, and absorbed the whole of the information.
The gentleman’s white head was unusually large, and
his stock of white hair was unusually thick and ample.
“I suppose, waiter,” he said, shaking his shock of hair,
as a Newfoundland dog might shake his before sitting
down to dinner, “that a fair lodging for a single buffer
might be found in these parts, eh?”
The waiter had no doubt of it.
“Something old,” said the gentleman. “Take my
hat down for a moment from that peg, will you? No, I
don’t want it; look into it. What do you see written
there?”
The writer read: “Datchery.”
“Now you know my name,” said the gentleman;
“Dick Datchery. Hang it up again. I was saying
Something old is what I should prefer, something odd
and out of the way; something venerable, architectural,
and inconvenient.”
“We have a good choice of inconvenient lodgings in
the town, sir, I think,” replied the waiter, with modest
confidence in its resources that way; “indeed, I have
no doubt that we could suit you that far, however par-
ticular you might be. But a architectural lodging!”
That seemed to trouble the waiter’s head, and he
shook it.
“Anything Cathedraly, now,” Mr. Datchery suggested.
‘... Mr. Tope,” said the waiter, brightening, as he rub.
bed his chim with his hand, “would be the likeliest
party to inform in that line.”
Who is Mr. Tope?” inquired Dick Datchery.
The waiter explained that he was the Verger, and
that Mrs. Tope had indeed once upon a time let lodgings
herself—or offered to let them; but that as nobody had
ever taken them, Mrs. Tope’s window-bill, long a
Cloisterham Institution, had disappeared; probably had
tumbled down one day, and never been put up again.
di “I’ll gall On Mrs. Tope,” said Mr. Datchery, “after
inner.”
EDWIN DROOD. 191
So when he had done his dinner, he was duly directed
to the spot, and sallied out for it. But the Crozier being
an hotel of a most retiring disposition, and the waiter’s
directions being fatally precise, he soon became be-
wildered, and went boggling about and about the Cathe-
dral Tower, whenever he could catch a glimpse of it,
with a general impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope’s
was somewhere very near it, and that, like the children
in the game of hot boiled beams and very good butter,
he was warm in his search when he saw the Tower, and
cold when he didn’t see it.
He was getting very cold indeed when he came upon
a fragment of burial-ground in which an unhappy sheep
was grazing. Unhappy, because a hideous small boy
was stoning it through the railings, and had already
lamed it in one leg, and was much excited by the be-
nevolent sportsmanlike purpose of breaking its other
three legs, and bringing it down.
‘‘’It 'im agin!” cried the boy, as the poor creature
leaped; “and made a dint in his wool.”
“Let him be!” said Mr. Datchery. “Don’t you see
you have lamed him?”
“Yer lie,” returned the sportsman. “E went and
lamed isself. I see 'im do it, and I giv’’im a shy as a
Widdy-warning to 'im not to go a-bruisin’ ‘is master's
mutton any more.” - -
‘‘ Come here.”
“I won’t; I’ll come when yer can ketch me.”
“Stay there then, and show me which is Mr. Tope’s.”
“Ow can I stay here and show you which is Tope-
seses, when Topeseses is tºother side the Kinfreederal,
and over the crossings, and round ever so many Corners?
Stoo-pid! Ya-a-ah!”
“Show me where it is, and I’ll give you something.”
“Come on, then!”
This brisk dialogue concluded, the boy led the way,
and by and by stopped at some distance from an arched
passage, pointing.
“Lookie yonder. You see that there winder and
door?”
“That's Tope's?”
“Yer lie; it ain’t. That’s Jarsper’s.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Datchery, with a second look of
some interest.
192. EDWIN DFOOD.
“Yes, and I ain’t a-goin’ no nearer 'IM, I tell yer.”
“Why not?”
“’Cos I ain’t a-goin’ to be lifted off my legs and 'ave
my braces bust and be choked; not if I knows it, and
not by 'Im. Wait till I set a jolly good flint a-flyin’ at
the back o’ is jolly old 'ed some day! Now look t'other
side the harch; not the side where Jarsper’s door is;
t’Other side.”
‘‘I See.”.
“A little way in, o' that side there’s a low door, down
two steps. That's Topeseses with is name on a hoval
late.”
D “Good. See here,” said Mr. Datchery, producing a
shilling. “You owe me half of this.” s
“Yer lie; I don’t owe yer nothing; I never seen
er.”
“I tell you you owe me half of this, because I have
no sixpence in my pocket. So the next time you meet
me you shall do something else for me, to pay me.”
“All right, give us 'old.”
“What is your name, and where do you live?”
“Deputy. Travellers’ Twopenny, cross the green.”
The boy instantly darted off with the shilling, lest Mr.
Datchery should repent, but stopped at a safe distance,
on the happy chance of his being uneasy in his mind
about it, to goad him with a demon dance expressive of
its irrevocability. *
Mr. Datchery, taking off his hat to give that shock
of white hair of his another shake, seemed quite re-
signed, and betook himself whither he had been di-
rected.
Mr. Tope’s official dwelling, communicating by an
upper stair with Mr. Jasper’s (hence Mrs. Tope’s attend-
ance on that gentleman), was of very modest propor-
tions, and partook of the character of a cool dungeon.
Its ancient walls were massive, and its rooms rather
seemed to have been dug out of them than to have been
designed beforehand with any reference to them. The
main door opened at once on a chamber of no describa-
ble shape, with a groined roof, which in its turn opened
on another chamber of no describable shape, with an-
other groined roof: their windows small, and in the
thickness of the walls. These two chambers, close as to
their atmosphere, and Swarthy as to their illumination by
EDWIN DROOD. 193
natural light, were the apartments which Mrs. Tope had
so long offered to an unappreciative city. Mr. Datchery,
however, was more appreciative. He found that if he
sat with the main door open he would enjoy the pass-
ing society of all comers to and fro by the gateway,
and would have light enough. He found that if Mr.
and Mrs. Tope, living overhead, used for their own
egress and ingress a little side stair that came plump into
the Precincts by a door opening outward, to the surprise
and inconvenience of a limited public of pedestrians in a
narrow way, he would be alone, as in a separate resi-
dence. He found the rent moderate, and everything as
quaintly inconvenient as he could desire. He agreed,
therefore, to take the lodging then and there, and
money down, possession to be had next evening, On
condition that reference was permitted him to Mr. Jas-
per as occupying the gatehouse, of which, On the other
side of the gateway, the Verger's hole-in-the-wall was
an appanage or Subsidiary part.
The poor dear gentleman was very solitary and very
sad, Mrs. Tope said, but she had no doubt he would
“speak for her.” Perhaps Mr. Datchery had heard
something of what had occurred there last winter?
Mr. Datchery had as confused a knowledge of the
event in question, on trying to recall it, as he well could
have. He begged Mrs. Tope’s pardon when she found
it incumbent on her to correct him in every detail of
his summary of the facts, but pleaded that he was
merely a single buffer getting through life upon his
means as idly as he could, and that so many people were
so constantly making away with so many other people,
as to render it difficult for a buffer of an easy temper to
preserve the circumstances of the several cases unmixed
in his mind.
Mr. Jasper proving willing to speak for Mrs. Tope,
Mr. Datchery, who had sent up his card, was invited to
ascend the postern staircase. The Mayor was there,
Mr. Tope said; but he was not to be regarded in the
light of company, as he and Mr. Jasper were great
friends.
“I beg pardon,” said Mr. Datchery, making a leg with
his hat under his arm, as he addressed himself equally
to both gentlemen; ‘‘ a selfish precaution on my part,
and not personally interesting to anybody but myself.
13
194. EDWIN DROOD.
But as a buffer living On his means, and having an idea
of doing it in this lovely place in peace and quiet, for re-
maining span of life, beg to ask if the Tope family are
quite respectable?”
Mr Jasper could answer for that without the slightest
hesitation.
“That is enough, sir,” said Mr.T)atchery.
“My friend the Mayor,” added Mr. Jasper, presenting
Mr. Datchery with a courtly motion of his hand towards
that potentate; “whose recommendation is actually
much more important to a stranger than that of any ob-
scure person like myself, will testify in their behalf, I
am sure.” -
he Worshipful the Mayor,” said Mr. Datchery, with
a low bow, “ places me under an infinite obligation.”
“Very good people, sir; Mr. and Mrs. Tope, said Mr.
Sapsea, with condescension. “Very good opinions.
Very well behaved. Very respectful. Much approved
by the Dean and Chapter.”
“The Worshipful the Mayor gives them a character,”
said Mr. Datchery, “ of which they may indeed be proud.
I would ask His Honor (if I might be permitted) whether
there are not many objects of great interest in the city
which is under his beneficent sway ?”
“We are, sir,” returned Mr. Sapsea, “an ancient city,
and an ecclesiastical city. We are a constitutional city,
as it becomes such a city to be, and we uphold and main-
tain our glorious privileges.”
“His Honor,” said Mr. Datchery, bowing, “inspires me
with a desire to know more of the city, and confirms me
in my inclination to end my days in the city.”
“Retired from the Army, sir?” suggested Mr. Sapsea.
“His Honor the Mayor does me too much credit,”
returned Mr. Datchery. -
“Navy, sir?” suggested Mr. Sapsea.
“Again,” repeated Mr. Datchery, “His Honor the
Mayor does me too much credit.”
“Diplomacy is a fine profession,” said Mr. Sapsea, as
a general remark. *.
“'There, 3 confess, His Honor the Mayor is too many
for me,” said Mr. Datchery, with an ingenious smile
and bow; “even a diplomatic bird must fall to such a
gun.”
. Now this was very soothing, Here was a gentleman
EDWIN DROOD. 195
of a great, not to say a grand, address, accustomed to
rank and dignity, really setting a fine example how to
behave to a Mayor. There was something in that
third person style of being spoken to, that Mr. Sapsea
found particularly recognisant of his merits and position.
“But I crave pardon,” said Mr. Datchery. “His
Honor the Mayor will bear with me, if for a monent I
have been deluded into occupying his time, and have
forgotten the humble claims upon my own, of my hotel,
the Crozier.”
“Not at all, sir,” said Mr. Sapsea. “I am returning
home, and if you would like to take the exterior of our
Cathedral in your way, I shall be glad to point it out.”
“His Honor the Mayor,” said Mr. Datchery, “is more
than kind and gracious.” -
As Mr. Datchery, when he had made his acknowledg-
ments to Mr. Jasper, could not be induced to go out of
the room before the Worshipful, the Worshipful led the
way down-stairs; Mr. Datchery following with his hat
under his arm, and his shock of white hair streaming in
the evening breeze.
“Might I ask His Honor,” said Mr. Datchery,
“Whether that gentleman we have just left is the gen-
tleman of whom I have heard in the neighborhood as
being much affected by the loss of a nephew, and con-
centrating his life on avenging the loss?”
“That is the gentleman. John Jasper, sir.”
“Would His Honor allow me to inquire whether there
are strong Suspicions of any one?”
“More than suspicions, sir,” returned Mr. Sapsea; “all
but certainties.”
“Only think now!” cried Mr. Datchery.
‘‘ But proof, Sir, proof must be built up stone by stone,”
said the Mayor. “As I say, the end crowns the work.
It is not enough that Justice should be morally certain;
She must be immorally certain— legally, that is.”
“His Honor,” said Mr. Datchery, “reminds me of the
nature of the law. Immoral. How true!”
“As I say, Sir,” pompously went on the Mayor, “the
arm of the law is a strong arm, and a long arm. That
is the way I put it. A strong arm and a long arm.”
“How forcible!—And yet, again, how true!” mur-
mured Mr. Datchery. -
“And without betraying what I call the secrets of the
196 IED WIN DROOD.
prison-house,” said Mr. Sapsea; “the secrets of the
prison-house is the term I used on the bench.”
“And what other term than His Honor’s would ex-
press it? said Mr. Datchery.
“Without, I say, betraying them, I predict to you,
knowing the iron will of the gentleman we have just
left (I take the bold step of calling it iron, on account of
its strength), that in this case the long arm will reach,
and the strong arm will strike.—This is our Cathedral,
sir. The best judges are pleased to admire it, and the
º among Our townsmen Own to being a little Vain
Of it.”
All this time Mr. Datchery had walked with his hat
under his arm, and his white hair streaming. He had
an odd momentary appearance upon him of having for-
gotten his hat, when Mr. Sapsea now touched it; and
he clapped his hand up to his head as if with some vague
expectation of finding another hat upon it.
“Pray be covered, sir,” entreated Mr. Sapsea; mag-
nificently implying: “I shall not mind it, I assure you.”
“His Honor is very good, but I do it for, coolness,”
said Mr. Datchery.
Then Mr. Datchery admired the Cathedral, and Mr.
Sapsea pointed it out as if he himself had invented and
built it; there were a few details indeed of which he did
not approve, but those he glossed over, as if the work-
men had made mistakes in his absence. The Cathedral
disposed of, he led the way, by the churchyard, and
stopped to extol the beauty of the evening—by chance
—in the immediate vicinity of Mrs. SapSea’s epitaph.
“And, by the by,” said Mr. SapSea, appearing to de-
scend from an elevation to remember it all of a sudden;
like Apollo shooting down from Olympus to pick up his
forgotten lyre ; “that is one of our small lions. The par-
tiality of our people has made it. So, and strangers have
been seen taking a copy of it now and then. I am not a
judge of it myself, for it is a little work of my own.
But it was troublesome to turn, sir; I may say, difficult
to turn with elegance.”
Mr. Datchery became so ecstatic over Mr. Sapsea’s
composition, that, in spite of his intention to end his
days in Cloisterham, and therefore his probably havin
in reserve many opportunities of copying it, he j
have transcribed it into his pocket-book on the spot, but
EDWIN DROOD. 107
for the slouching towards them of its material producer
and perpetuator, Durdles, whom Mr. Sapsea hailed, not
sorry to show him a bright example of behavior to su-
periors.
“Ah, Durdles! This is the mason, sir; one of our
Cloisterham worthies; everybody here knows Durdles.
Mr. Datchery, Durdles; a gentleman who is going to
settle here.”
“I wouldn’t do it if I was him,” growled Durdles.
“We’re a heavy lot.”
“You surely don’t speak for yourself, Mr. Durdles,”
returned Mr. Datchery, “any more than for His
Honor.”
“Who’s His Honor?” demanded Durdles.
“His Honor the Mayor.”
‘‘I never was brought afore him,” said Durdles, with
anything but the look of a loyal subject of the mayor-
alty, “and it'll be time enough for me to Honor him
when I am. Until which, and when, and where,
“Mister Sapsea is his name,
England is his nation,
Cloisterham is his dwelling place,
Aukshneer's his occupation.’”
Here, Deputy (preceded by a flying oyster-shell) ap-
peared upon the Scene, and requested to have the sum
of threepence instantly “chucked ” to him by Mr. Dur-
dles, whom he had been vainly seeking up and down,
as lawful wages overdue. While that gentleman, with
his bundle under his arm, slowly found and counted out
the money, Mr. Sapsea informed the new settler of Dur-
dles's habits, pursuits, abode, and reputation. “I sup-
pose a curious stranger might come to see you, and your
works, Mr. Durdles, at any odd time?” said Mr. Datch-
ery upon that.
“Any gentleman is welcome to come and see me any
evening if he brings liquor for two with him,” returned
Durdles, with a penny between his teeth and certain
halfpence in his hands; “ or if he likes to make it twice
two, he’ll be doubly welcome.”
“I sh. come. Master Deputy, what do you owe me?”
** A. jo .”
“Mind you pay me honestly with the job of showing .
me Mr. Durdles’s house when I want to go there.”
ſ'98 FDWIN DEROOD.
Deputy, with a piercing, broadside of whistle through
the whole gap in his mouth, as a receipt in full for all
arrears, vanished. -
The Worshipful and the Worshipper then passed on
together until they parted, with many ceremonies, at
the Worshipful’s door; even then, the Worshipper car-
ried his hat under his arm, and gave his streaming white
hair to the breeze.
Said Mr. Datchery to himself that night, as he looked
at his white hair in the gas-lighted looking-glass over
the coffee-room chimney piece at the Crozier, and shook
it out: “For a single buffer, of an easy temper, living
idly on his means, I have had a rather busy afternoon!”
CHAPTER XIX.
SHADow on THE SUN-DIAL.
AGAIN Miss Twinkleton has delivered her valedictory
address, with the accompaniments of white-wine and
pound-cake, and again the young ladies have departed
to their several homes. Helena Landless has left the
Nuns' House to attend her brother's fortunes, and pretty
Rosa is alone. e
Cloisterham is so bright and sunny in these summer
days that the Cathedral and the monastery-ruin show
as if their strong walls were transparent. A soft glow
seems to shine from within them, rather than upon them
from without, such is their mellowness as they look
forth on the hot corn-fields and the smoking roads that
distinctly wind among them. The Cloisterham gar-
dens blush with ripening fruit. Time was when travel-
stained pilgrims rode in clattering parties through the
city’s welcome shades; time is when wayfarers, leading
a gipsy life between haymaking time and harvest, and
looking as if they were just made of the dust of the
earth, so very dusty are they, lounge about on cool door-
steps, trying to mend their unmendable shoes, or giving
them to the city kennels as a hopeless job, and seeking
others in the bundles that they carry along with their
EDWIN DROOD. 199
yet unused sickles swathed in bands of straw. At all
the more public pumps there is much cooling of bare
feet, together with much bubbling and gurgling of
drinking with hand to spout on the part of these Bed-
ouins; the Cloisterham police meanwhile looking askant
from their beats with Suspicion, and manifest impa-
tience that the intruders should depart from within the
civic bounds, and Once more fry themselves on the sim-
mering highroads.
On the afternoon of such a day, when the last Cathedral
Service is done, and when that side of the High-street
On which the Nuns' House stands is in grateful shade,
save where its quaint old garden opens to the west be-
tween the boughs of trees, a servant informs Rosa, to
her terror, that Mr. Jasper desires to see her.
If he had chosen his time for finding her at a disad-
vantage, he could have done no better. Perhaps he has
chosen it. Helena Landless is gone, Mrs. Tisher is ab-
sent on leave, Miss Twinkleton (in her amateur state of
existence) has contributed herself and a veal pie to a
picnic.
“O why, why, why, did you say I was at home!”
cries Rosa, helplessly.
The maid replies, that Mr. Jasper never asked the
question. That he said he knew she was at home, and
begged she might be told that he asked to see her.
“What shall I do! what shall I do!” thinks Rosa,
clasping her hands.
Possessed by a kind of desperation, she adds in the
next breath, that she will come to Mr. Jasper in the
garden. She shudders at the thought of being shut up
with him in the house; but many of its windows com-
mand the garden, and she can be seen as well as heard
there, and can shriek in the free air and run away.
Such is the wild idea that flutters through her mind.
She has never seen him since the fatal night, except
when she was questioned before the Mayor, and then
he was present in gloomy watchfulness, as representing
his lost nephew and burning to avenge him. She hangs
her garden-hat on her arm, and goes out. The moment
She sees him from the porch, leaning on the sun-dial,
the old horrible feeling of being compelled by him, as-
Serts its hold upon her. She feels that she would even
then go back, but that he draws her feet towards him.
200 EDWIN DROOD.
She cannot resist, and sits down, with her head bent, on
the garden-seat beside the Sun-dial. She cannot look
up at him for abhorrence, but she has perceived that he
is dressed in deep mourning. So is she. It was not so
at first; but the lost has long been given up, and mourned
for, as dead.
He would begin by touching her hand. She feels the
intention, and draws her hand back. His eyes are then
fixed upon her, she knows, though her Own See nothing
but the grass.
“I have been waiting,” he begins, “for some time, to
be summoned back to my duty near you.”
After several times forming her lips, which she knows
he is closely watching, into the shape of Some other hes-
itating reply, and then into none, she answers: “Duty,
Sir?”
“The duty of teaching you, serving you as your faith-
ful music-master.” 4.
“I have left off that study.”
“Not left off, I think. Discontinued. I was told by
your guardian that you discontinued it under the shock
that we have all felt so acutely. When will you re-
Sume?”
“Never, sir.” &
“Never? You could have done no more if you had
loved my dear boy.”
“I did love him!” cries Rosa, with a flash of anger.
“Yes; but not quite—not quite in the right way, shall
I say? Not in the intended and expected way. Much
as my dear boy was, unhappily, too self-conscious and
self-satisfied (I’ll draw no parallel between him and you
in that respect) to love as he should have loved, or as
any one in his place would have loved—must have
loved!”
She sits in the same still attitude, but shrinking a
little more.
“Then, to be told that you discontinued your study
with me, was to be politely told that you abandoned it
altogether?” he suggested.
“Yes,” says Rosa, with sudden spirit. “The polite-
ness was my guardian’s, not mine. I told him that I
was resolved to leave off, and that I was determined to
Stand by my resolution.”
“And you still are?”
EDWIN DROOD. 201
“I still am, sir. And I beg not to be questioned any
more about it. At all events, I will not answer any
more; I have that in my power.”
She is so conscious of his looking at her with a gloat-
ing admiration of the touch of anger on her, and the
fire and animation it brings with it, that even as her
spirit rises, it falls again, and she struggles with a sense
of shame, affront, and fear, much as she did that night
at the piano.
“I will not question you any more, since you object
to it so much; I will confess—” * >
“I do not wish to hear you, sir,” cries Rosa, rising.
This time he does touch her with his outstretched hand.
In shrinking from it, she shrinks into her seat again.
“We must sometimes act in opposition to our wishes,”
he tells her in a low voice. “You must do so now, or
do more harm to others than you can ever set right.”
“What harm P”
‘‘ Presently, presently. You question me, you see,
and Surely that’s not fair when you forbid me to ques-
tion you. Nevertheless, I will answer the question
presently. Dearest Rosa! Charming Rosa!”
She starts up again.
This time he does not touch her. But his face looks
So wicked and menacing, as he stands leaning against
the sun-dial—setting, as it were, his black mark upon
the very face of day—that her flight is arrested by hor-
ror as she looks at him.
“I do not forgot how many windows command a view
of us,” he says, glancing towards them. “I will not
touch you again; I will come no nearer to you than I
am. Sit down, and there will be no mighty wonder in
your music-master’s leaning idly against a pedestal and
speaking with you, remembering all that has happened,
and our shares in it. Sit down, my beloved.”
She would have gone once more—was all but gone—
and once more his face, darkly threatening what would
follow if she went, has stopped her. Looking at him
with the expression of the instant frozen on her face,
She sits down on the seat again.
“Rosa, even when my dear boy was affianced to you,
I loved you madly; even when I thought his happiness
in having you for his wife was certain, I loved you
madly; even when I strove to make him more ardently
202 EDWIN DROOD.
devoted to you, I loved you madly; even when he gave
me the picture of your lovely face so carelessly tra-
duced by him, which I feigned to hang always in my
sight for his sake, but worshipped in torment for years,
I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day,
in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid
realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of
visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my
arms, I loved you madly.”
If anything could make his words more hideous to
her than they are in themselves, it would be the con-
trast between the violence of his look and delivery,
and the composure of his assumed attitude.
“I endured it all in silence. So long as you were
his, or so long as I supposed you to be his, I hid my
secret loyally. Did I not?”
This lie, so gross, while the mere words in which it is
told are so true, is more than Rosa can endure. She
answers with kindling indignation: “You were as
false throughout, sir, as you are now. You were false
to him, daily and hourly. You know that you made
my life unhappy by your pursuit of me. You know
that you made me afraid to open his generous eyes,
and that you forced me, for his own trusting, good,
good sake, to keep the truth from him, that you were a
bad, bad man!”
His preservation of his easy attitude rendering his
working features and his convulsive hands absolutely
diabolical, he returns, with a fierce extreme of admira-
tion:
“How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in
anger than in repose. I don’t ask you for your love:
give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself
and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that en-
chanting scorn; it will ise enough for me.”
Impatient tears rise to the eyes of the trembling little
beauty, and her face flames; but as she again rises to
leave him in indignation, and seek protection within
the house, he stretches out his hand towards the porch,
as though he invited her to enter it. -
“I told you, you rare chºrmer, you sweet witch, that
you must stay and hear me, or do more harm than can
ever be undone. You asked me what harm. Stay, and
I will tell you. Go, and I will do it!”
EDWIN DROOD. 203
Again Rosa quails before his threatening face, though
innocent of its meaning, and she remains. Her pant-
ing breathing comes and goes as if it would choke her;
but with a repressive hand upon her bosom, she remains.
“I have made my confession that my love is mad. It
is so mad, that had the ties between me and my dear
lost boy been one silken thread less strong, I might
have swept even him from your side when you favored
him.”
A film comes over the eyes she raises for an instant,
as though he had turned her faint.
“Even him,” he repeats. “Yes, even him! Rosa, you
see me and you hear me. Judge for yourself whether
any other admirer shall love you and live, whose life is
in my hand.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean to show you how mad my love is. It was
hawked through the late inquiries by Mr. Crisparkle,
that young Landless had confessed to him that he was
a rival of my lost boy. That is an inexpiable offence in
my eyes. The same Mr. Crisparkle knows under my
hand that I have devoted myself to the murderer’s dis-
covery and destruction, be he whom he might, and that
I determined to discuss the mystery with no one until I
should hold the clue in which to entangle thee murderer
as in a net. I have since worked patiently to wind and
wind it round him; and it is slowly winding as I speak.”
“Your belief, if you believe in the criminality of Mr.
Landless, is not Mr. Crisparkle's belief, and he is a good
man,” Rosa retorts.
“My belief is my own; and I reserve it, worshipped
of my soul! Circumstances may accumulate so strongly
even against an innocent man, that, directed, sharpened,
and pointed, they may slay him. One wanting link dis-
covered by perseverance against a guilty man, proves
his guilt, however slight its evidence before, and he
dies. Young Tandless stands in deadly peril either
way.”
“If you really suppose,” Rosa pleads with him, turn-
ing paler, “that I favor Mr. Landless, or that Mr. Land-
less has ever in any way addressed himself to me, you
are wrong.”
He puts that from him with a slighting action of his
hand and a curled lip.
204 EDWIN DROOD.
“I was going to show you how madly I love you.
More madly now than ever, for I am willing to renounce
the second object that has arisen in my life to divide it
with you; and henceforth to have no object in existence
but you only. Miss Landless has become your bosom
friend. You care for her peace of mind?”
“I love her dearly.”
“You care for her good name?”
“I have said, sir, I love her dearly.”
‘‘I am unconsciously,” he observes, with a smile, as
he folds his hands upon the sun-dial and leans his chim
upon them, so that his talk would seem from the win-
dows (faces occasionally come and go there) to be of the
airiest and playfulest—“I am unconsciously giving
Offence by questioning again. I will simply make
statements, therefore, and not put questions. You do
care for your bosom friend’s good name, and you do
care for her peace of mind. Then remove the shadow
of the gallows from her, dear one!”
“You dare propose to me to—”
‘‘Darling, I dare propose to you. Stop there. If it
be bad to idolise you, I am the worst of men; if it be
good, I am the best. My love for you is above all
other love, and my truth to you is above all other truth.
Let me have hope and favor, and I am a forsworn man
for your sake.”
Rosa puts her hands to her temples, and, pushing back
her hair, looks wildly and abhorrently at him, as though
she were trying to piece together what it is his deep
purpose to present to her only in fragments.
“Reckon up nothing at this moment, angel, but the
sacrifices that I lay at those dear feet, which I could fall
down among the vilest ashes and kiss, and put upon my
head as a poor savage might. There is my fidelity to
my dear boy after death. Tread upon it!”
With an action of his hands, as though he cast down
something precious.
“There is the inexpiable offence against my adoration
of you. Spurn it!”
With a similar action.
“There are my labors in the cause of a just vengeance
for six toiling months. Crush them!”
With another repetition of the action.
“There is my past and my present wasted life. There
EDWIN DROOD. 205
is the desolation of my heart and my soul. There is my
peace; there is my despair. Stamp them into the dust;
so that you take me, were it even mortally hating me!”
The frightful vehemence of the man, now reaching
its full height, so additionally terrifies her as to break
the spell that has held her to the spot. She swiftly moves
towards the porch; but in an instant he is at her side,
and speaking in her ear.
“Rosa, I am self-repressed again. I am walking
calmly beside you to the house. 1 shall wait for some
encouragement and hope. I shall not strike too soon.
Give me a sign that you attend to me,” -
She slightly and constrainedly moves her hand.
“Not a word of this to any one, or it will bring down
the blow as certainly as night follows day. Another
sign that you attend to me.”
She moves her hand once more.
“I love you, love you, love you! If you were to cast
me off now—but you will not—you would never be rid
of me. No One should come between us. I would pur-
sue you to the death.” -
The handmaid coming out to open the gate for him,
he quietly pulls off his hat as a parting salute, and goes
away with no greater show of agitation than is visible
in the effigy of Mr. Sapsea’s father opposite. Rosa,
faints in going up-stairs, and is carefully carried to her
room and laid down on her bed. A thunderstorm is
Coming On, the maids say, and the hot and stifling air
has overset the pretty dear: no wonder; they have felt
their Own knees all of a tremble all day long.
CHAPTER XX.
A FLIGHT.
ROSA no sooner came to herself than the whole of the
'late interview was before her. It even seemed as if it
had pursued her into her insensibility, and she had not
had a moment's unconsciousness of it. What to do, she
Was at a frightened loss to know: the only one clear
206 EDWIN DROOD.
thought in her mind was, that she must fly from this
terrible man. -
But where could she take refuge, and how could she
go? She had never breathed her dread of him to any
one but Helena. If she went to Helena, and told her
what had passed, that very act might bring down
the irreparable mischief that he threatened he had the
power, and that she knew he had the will, to do. The
more fearful he appeared to her excited memory and
imagination, the more alarming her responsibility ap-
peared: Seeing that a slight mistake on her part, either
in action or delay, Imight let his malevolence loose on
Helena’s brother.
Rosa's mind throughout the last six months had been
stormily confused. A half-formed, wholly unexpressed
Suspicion tossed in it, now heaving itself up, and now
sinking into the deep; now gaining palpability, and now
losing it. Jasper's Self-absorption in his nephew when
he was alive, and his unceasing pursuit of the inquiry
how he came by his death, if he were dead, were themes
So rife in the place that no one appeared able to suspect
the possibility of foul play at his hands. She had asked
herself the question, “Am I so wicked in my thoughts
as to conceive a wickedness that others cannot imagine?”
Then she had considered, Did the suspicion come of her
previous recoiling from him before the fact. And if so,
was that a proof of its baselessness? Then she had
reflected, “What motive could he have, according to
my accusation?” She was ashamed to answer in her
mind “The motive of gaining me!” and covered her
face, as if the lightest shadow of the idea of founding
murder on such an idle vanity were a crime almost as
great. g
She ran over in her mind again all that he had said
by the sun-dial in the garden. He had persisted in
treating the disappearance as murder, consistently
with his whole public course since the finding of the
watch and shirt-pin. If he were afraid of the crime
being traced out, would he not rather encourage the
idea of a voluntary disappearance? He had even de-
clared that if the ties between him and his nephew had
been less strong, he might have swept ‘‘ even him *
away from her side. Was that like his having really
done so? He had spoken of laying his six months’
EDWIN DFOOD. 20',
labors in the cause of a just vengeance at her feet.
Would he have done that, with that violence of pas-
sion, if they were a pretence? Would he have ranged
them with his desolate heart and Soul, his wasted life,
his peace and his despair? The very first sacrifice that
he represented himself as making for her, was his
fidelity to his dear boy after death. Surely these facts
were strong against a fancy that Scarcely dared to hint
itself. And yet he was so terrible a man! In short,
the poor girl (for what could she know of the criminal
intellect, which its own professed students perpetually
misread, because they persist in trying to reconcile it
with the average intellect of average men, instead of
identifying it as a horrible wonder apart) could get by
no road to any other conclusion than that he was a ter-
rible man, and must be fled from.
She had been Helena's stay and comfort during the
whole time. She had constantly assured her of her full
belief in her brother's innocence, and of her sympathy
with him in his misery. But she had never seen him
Since the disappearance, nor had Helena ever spoken
one word of his avowal to Mr. Crisparkle in regard of
Rosa, though as a part of the interest of the case it was
well known far and wide. He was Helena’s unfortu-
nate brother, to her, and nothing more. The assurance
she had given her odious suitor was strictly true, though
it would have been better (she considered now) if she
could have restrained herself from so giving it. Afraid
of him as the bright and delicate little creature was,
her Spirit Swelled at the thought of his knowing it from
her own lips.
But where was she to go? Anywhere beyond his
reach, was no reply to the question. Somewhere must
be thought of. She determined to go to her guardian,
and to go immediately. The feeling she had imparted
to Helena on the night of their first confidence, was so
strong upon her—the feeling of not being safe from
him, and of the solid walls of the old convent being
powerless to keep out his ghostly following of her—
that no reasoning of her own could calm her terrors.
The fascination of repulsion had been upon her so long,
and now culminated so darkly, that she felt as if he had
power to bind her by a spell. Glancing out at window,
even now, as she rose to dress, the sight of the sun-dial
208 EDWIN T)R.O.O.D.
on which he had leaned when he declared himself,
turned her cold, and made her shrink from it, as though
he had invested it with some awful quality from his own
Inature.
She wrote a hurried note to Miss Twinkleton, saying
that she had sudden reason for wishing to see her
guardian promptly, and had gone to him; also, entreat-
ing the good lady not to be uneasy, for all was well
with her. She hurried a few quite useless articles into
a very little bag, left the note in a conspicuous place,
and went out, softly closing the gate after her.
It was the first time she had ever been even in Clois-
terham High-street alone. But knowing all its ways and
windings very well, she hurried straight to the Corner
from which the omnibus departed. It was, at that very
moment, going off.
“Stop and take me, if you please, Joe. I am obliged
to go to London.”
In less than another minute she was on the road to
the railway, under Joe's protection. Joe waited on her
when she got there, put her safely into the railway car-
riage, and handed in the very little bag after her, as
though it were some enormous trunk, hundredweights
heavy, which she must on no account endeavor to lift.
“Can you go round when you get back, and tell Miss
Twinkleton that you saw me safely off, Joe?”
“It shall be done, Miss.”
“With my love, please, Joe.”
“Yes, Miss—and I wouldn’t mind having it myself
But Joe did not articulate the last clause, only thought it.
Now that she was whirling away for London in real
earnest, Rosa was at leisure to resume the thoughts
which her personal hurry had checked. The indignant
thought that his declaration of love soiled her; that she
could only be cleansed from the stain of its impurity
by appealing to the honest and true; supported her for
a time against her fears, and confirmed her in her hasty
resolution. But as the evening grew darker and darker,
and the great city impended nearer and nearer, the
doubts usual in such cases began to arise. Whether
this was not a wild proceeding, after all; how Mr.
Grewgious might regard it; whether she should find
him at the journey’s end; how she would act if he were
absent; what might become of her, alone, in a place SO
| >>
EDWIN DROOD. 209
Strange and crowded; how if she had but waited and
taken counsel first; whether, if she could now go back,
she would not do it thankfully; a multitude of such
uneasy Speculations disturbed her, more and more as
they accumulated. At length the train came into Lon-
don Over the housetops; and down below lay the gritty
Streets with their yet un-needed lamps a-glow, on a hot
light Summer night.
‘‘ Hiram Grewgious, Esquire, Staple Inn, London.”
This was all Rosa knew of her destination; but it was
enough to Send her rattling away again in a cab,
through deserts of gritty streets, where many people
crowded at the corner of courts and byways to get some
air, and where many other people walked with a
miserable monotonous noise of shuffling feet on hot
paving-stones, and where all the people and all their
Surroundings were so gritty and so shabby!
There was music playing here and there, but it did
not enliven the case. No barrel-organ mended the
matter, and no big drum beat dull care away. Like
the chapel bells that were also going here and there,
they only seemed to evoke echoes from brick sur-
faces, and dust from everything. As to the flat wind-
instruments, they seemed to have cracked their hearts
and souls in pining for the country.
Her jingling conveyance stopped at last at a fast-
closed gateway, which appeared to belong to some-
body who had gone to bed very early, and was much
afraid of housebreakers; Rosa, discharging her convey-
ance, timidly knocked at this gateway, and was let in,
very little bag and all, by a watchman.
“Does Mr. Grewgious live here?”
“Mr. Grewgious lives there, Miss,
man, pointing further in.
So Rosa went further in, and, when the clocks were
striking ten, stood on P. J. T.’s doorsteps, wondering .
what P. J. T. had done with his street-door.
Guided by the painted name of Mr. Grewgious, she
went up-stairs and Softly tapped and tapped several
times. But no one answering, and Mr. Grewgious's
door-handle yielding to her touch, she went in, and
saw her guardian sitting on a window-seat at an open
window, with a shaded lamp placed far from him on a
table in a corner.
} {
25
said the watch-
210 EDWIN DROOD.
|Bosa drew nearer to him in the twilight of the room.
He saw her, and he said in an under-tone; “Good
Heaven!”
Rosa fell upon his neck, with tears, and then he said,
returning her embrace:
“My child, my child! I thought you were your
mother!—But what, what, what,” he added, soothingly,
“has happened? My dear, what has brought you here?
Who has brought you here?”
“No One. I came alone.”
“Lord bless me!” ejaculated Mr. Grewgious. “Came
alone! Why didn’t you write to me to come and fetch
OUI?”
“I had no time. I took a sudden resolution. Poor,
poor Eddy!”
“Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow !”
“His uncle has made love to me. I cannot bear it,”
said Rosa, at once with a burst of tears, and a stamp of
her little foot; “I shudder with horror of him, and I
have come to you to protect me and all of us from him,
if you will?”
“I will!” cried Mr. Grewgious, with a sudden rush of
amazing energy. “Damn him!
‘Confound his politics
Frustrate his knavish tricks!
On Thee his hopes to fix;
Damn him again ’”
After this most extraordinary outburst, Mr. Grew-
gious, quite beside himself, plunged about the room,
to all appearance undecided whether he was in a fit of
loyal enthusiasm, or combative denunciation.
He stopped and said, wiping his face; “I beg your
yardon, my dear, but you will be glad to know I feel
better. Tell me no more just now, or I might do it
again. You must be refreshed and cheered. What did
you take last? Was it breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or
supper? And what will you take next? Shall it be break-
fast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper?”
The respectful tenderness with which, on one knee
before her, he helped her to remove her hat, and disen-
tangle her pretty hair from it, was quite a chivalrous
sight. Yet who, knowing him only on the surface,
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EDWIN DROOD. 211
would have expected chivalry—and of the true sort too;
not the spurious—from Mr. Grewgious?
“Your rest too must be provided for,” he went on;
“ and you shall have the prettiest chamber in Furni-
val’s. Your toilet must be provided for, and you shall
have everything that an unlimited head chambermaid
—by which expression I mean a head chambermaid not
limited as to outlay—can procure. Is that a bag?” he
looked hard at it; sooth to say, it required hard looking
at to..be seen at all in a dimly-lighted room: “ and is it
your property, my dear?”
“Yes, sir. I brought it with me.”
“It is not an extensive bag,” said Mr. Grewgious,
candidly, “though admirably calculated to contain a
day’s provision for a canary-bird. Perhaps you brought
a canary-bird?”
Rosa smiled, and shook her head.
“If you had, he should have been made welcome,”
said Mr. Grewgious, “ and I think he would have been
pleased to be hung upon a nail outside and pit himself
against Our Staple sparrows; whose execution must be
admitted to be not quite equal to their intention.
Which is the case with so many of us! You didn’t say
what meal, my dear. Have a nice jumble of all meals.”
Rosa thanked him, but said she could only take a cup
of tea. Mr. Grewgious, after several times running out,
and in again, to mention Such supplementary items as
marmalade, eggs, water-cresses, salted fish, and frizzled
ham, ran across to Furnival’s without his hat, to give
his various directions. And soon afterwards they were
realised in practice, and the board was spread.
“Lord bless my soul!” cried Mr. Grewgious, putting
the lamp upon it, and taking his seat opposite Rosa;
“what a new sensation for a poor old Angular bachelor,
to be Sure!”
Rosa's expressive little eyebrows asked him what he
meant?
“The sensation of having a sweet young presence in
the place, that whitewashes it, paints it, papers it, deco-
rates it with gilding, and makes it Glorious!” said Mr.
Grewgious. “Ah me! Ah me!”
As there was something mournful in his sigh, Rosa,
in touching him with her tea-cup, ventured to touch
him with her small hand too.
212 EDWIN DROOD.
“Thank you, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious. “Ahem!
Tet’s talk.” s
“Do you always live here, sir?” asked Rosa.
“Yes, my dear.”
“And always alone?”
“Always alone; except that I have daily company in
a gentleman by the name of Bazzard; my clerk.”
“ He doesn’t live here?”
“No, he goes his way, after office hours. In fact, he
is off duty here, altogether, just at present; and a firm
down-stairs, with which I have business relations, lend
me a substitute. But it would be extremely difficult to
replace Mr. Bazzard.” -
“He must be very fond of you,” said Rosa.
“He bears up against it with commendable fortitude
if he is,” returned Mr. Grewgious, after considering the
matter. “But I doubt if he is. Not particularly so.
You see, he is discontented, poor fellow.”
“Why isn’t he contented?” was the natural inquiry.
“Misplaced,” said Mr. Grewgious, with great mys-
tery.
Rosa's eyebrows resumed their inquisitive and per-
plexed expression.
“So misplaced,” Mr. Grewgious went on, “that I feel
constantly apologetic towards him. And he feels
(though he doesn’t mention it) that I have reason to be.”
Mr. Grewgious had by this time grown so very mys-
terious that Rosa did not know how to go on. While
she was thinking about it Mr. Grewgious suddenly
jerked out of himself for the second time:
“Let’s talk. We were speaking of Mr. Bazzard. It's
a secret, and moreover it is Mr. Bazzard’s secret; but
the sweet presence at my table makes me so unusually
expansive that I feel I must impart it in inviolable con-
fidence. What do you think Mr. Bazzard has done?”
“O dear!” cried Rosa, drawing her chair a little
nearer, and her mind reverting to Jasper, “nothing
dreadful, I hope?”
“He has written a play,” said Mr. Grewgious, in a
solemn whisper. “A tragedy.”
Rosa seemed much relieved.
“And nobody,” pursued Mr. Grewgious in the same
tone, “will hear, on any account whatever, of bringing
it Out.”
EDWIN DROOD. 213
Tosa, looked reflective, and nodded her head slowly;
as who should say: “Such things are, and why are
they?”
“Now, you know,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I couldn’t
write a play.”
“Not a bad one, sir,” asked Rosa, innocently, with
her eyebrows again in action.
“No. If I was under sentence of decapitation, and
was about to be instantly decapitated, and an express
arrived with a pardon for the condemned convict Grew-
gious if he wrote a play, I should be under the necessity
of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to
proceed to extremities, meaning,” said Mr. Grewgious,
passing his hand under his chin, “the Singular number,
and this extremity.” --
Rosa appeared to consider what she would do if the
awkward supposititious case was hers.
“Consequently,” said Mr. Grewgious, “Mr. Bazzard
would have a sense of my inferiority to himself under
any circumstances; but when I am his master, you
know, the case is greatly aggravated.”
Mr. Grewgious shook his head seriously, as if he felt
the offence to be a little too much, though of his own
Committing.
“How came you to be his master, sir?” asked Rosa.
“A question that naturally follows,” said Mr. Grew-
gious. “Let’s talk. Mr. Bazzard’s father, being a Nor-
folk farmer, would have furiously laid about him with
a flail, a pitchfork, and every agricultural implement
available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint
of his son’s having written a play. So the son, bring-
ing to me the father’s rent (which I receive), imparted
his secret, and pointed out that he was determined to
pursue his genius, and that it would put him in peril of
starvation, and that he was not formed for it.”
“For pursuing his genius, sir?”
‘’No, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, “for starvation.
It was impossible to deny the position, that Mr. Bazzard
was not formed to be starved, and Mr. Bazzard then
pointed out that it was desirable that I should stand be-
tween him and a fate so perfectly unsuited to his form-
ation. In that way Mr. Bazzard became my clerk, and
he feels it very much.”
“I am glad he is grateful,” said Rosa.
214 EDWIN DROOD.
“I didn’t quite mean that, my dear. I mean, that he
feels the degradation. There are some other geniuses
that Mr. Bazzard has become acquainted with, who have
also written tragedies, which likewise nobody will on
any account whatever hear of bringing out, and these
choice spirits dedicate their plays to one another in a
highly panegyrical manner. Mr. Bazzard has been the
Subject of one of these dedications. Now, you know, I
never had a play dedicated to me!”
Rosa looked at him as if she would have liked him to
be the recipient of a thousand, dedications.
“Which again, Inaturally, rubs against the grain of
Mr. Bazzard,” said Mr. Grewgious. “He is very short
with me sometimes, and then I feel that he is meditating,
‘This blockhead is my master! A fellow who couldn’t
write a tragedy on pain of death, and who will never
have one dedicated to him with the most complimentary
congratulations on the high position he has taken in the
eyes of posterity!’ Very trying, very trying. How-
ever, in giving him directions, I reflect beforehand:
‘Perhaps he may not like this,” or ‘He might take it
ill if I asked that; and so we get on very well. Indeed,
better than I could have expected.”
“Is the tragedy named, sir?” asked Rosa.
“Strictly between ourselves,” answered Mr. Grew-
gious, “it has a dreadfully appropriate name. It is
called The Thorn of Anxiety. But Mr. Bazzard hopes
—and I hope—that it will Come out at last.” *
It was not hard to divine that Mr. Grewgious had re-
lated the Bazzard history thus fully, at least quite as
much for the recreation of his ward’s mind from the
subject that had driven her there, as for the gratifica-
tion of his own tendency to be social and communica-
tive.
“And now, my dear,” he said at this point, “if you
are not too tired to tell me more of what passed to-day—
but only if you feel quite able—I should be glad to hear
it. I may digest it the better, if I sleep on it to-night.”
Rosa, composed now, gave him a faithful account of
the interview. Mr. Grewgious often smoothed his head
while it was in progress, and begged to be told a second
time those parts which bore on Helena and Neville.
"When Rosa had finished, he sat grave, silent, and med-
itative, for a while.
EDWIN IDROOD. * 215
“Clearly narrated,” was his only remark at last,
“and, I hope, clearly put away here,” Smoothing-his
head again. “See, my dear,” taking her to the open
window, “where they live! The dark windows over
yonder.”
“I may go to Helena to-morrow?” asked Rosa.
“I should like to sleep on that question to-night,” he
answered doubtfully. “But let me take you to your
own rest, for you must need it.”
With that, Mr. Grewgious helped her to get her hat
on again, and hung upon his arm the very little bag
that was of no earthly use, and led her by the hand
(with a certain stately awkwardness, as if he were go-
ing to walk a minuet) across Holborn, and into Fur-
nival’s Inn. At the hotel door, he confided her to the
Unlimited head chambermaid, and said that while she
went up to see her room, he would remain below, in
case she should wish it exchanged for another, or should
find that there was anything she wanted.
Rosa's room was airy, clean, comfortable, almost gay.
The Unlimited had laid in everything omitted from the
very little bag (that is to say, everything she could pos-
sibly need), and Rosa tripped down the great many
stairs again to thank her guardian for his thoughtful
and affectionate care of her. -
“Not at all, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, infinitely
gratified; “it is I who thank you for your charming
confidence and for your charming company. Your
breakfast will be provided for you in a neat, compact,
and graceful little sitting-room (appropriate to your
figure), and I will come to you at ten o’clock in the
morning. I hope you don’t feel very strange, indeed, in
this strange place.”
“O no, I feel so safe!”
“Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fire-proof,”
said Mr. Grewgious, “and that any outbreak of the de-
vouring element would be perceived and suppressed by
the watchmen.” -
“I did not mean that,” Rosa replied. “I mean, I feel
so safe from him.”
“There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep him out,”
said Mr. Grewgious smiling; “ and Furnival’s is fire-
proof, and specially watched and lighted, and I live
over the way!” In the stoutness of his knight-errantry,
216 EDWIN DROOD.
he seemed to think the last-named protection all-suffi-
cielat. In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter, as
he went out, “If some one staying in the hotel should
wish to send across the road to me in the night, a crown
will be ready for the messenger.” In the same spirit,
he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the
best part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally
looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in
a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind
that she might tumble Out.
CHAPTER XXI.
A RECOGNITION.
NOTHING occurred in the night to flutter the tired
dove; and the dove arose refreshed. With Mr. Grew-
gious, when the clock struck ten in the morning, came
Mr. Crisparkle, who had come at One plunge out of the
river at Cloisterham.
“Miss Twinkleton was so uneasy, Miss Rosa,” he ex-
plained to her, “and came round to Ma and me with
your note, in such a state of wonder, that, to quiet her,
J. volunteered on this service by the very first train to
be caught in the morning. I wished at the time that
you had come to me; but now I think it best that you
did as , you did, and came to your guardian.”
“I did think of you,” Rosa told him; “but Minor
Canon Corner was so near him—”
“I understand. It was quite natural.”
“I have told Mr. Crisparkle,” said Mr. Grewgious,
“all that you told me last night, my dear. Of course
I should have written it to him immediately; but his com-
ing was most opportune. And it was particularly kind
of him to come, for he had but just gone.”
“Have you settled,” asked Rosa, appealing to them
both, “what is to be done for Helena and her brother?”
“Why, really,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “I am in great
perplexity. If even Mr. Grewgious, whose head is much
longer than mine, and who is a whole night's cogitation
in advance of me, is undecided, what must I be?”
EDWIN DROOD. 21?
The Unlimited here put her head in at the door—after
having rapped, and been authorised to present herself
—announcing that a gentleman wished for a word with
another gentleman named Crisparkle, if any such gen-
tleman were there. If no such gentleman were there,
he begged pardon for being mistaken.
“Such a gentleman is here,” said Mr. Crisparkle,
‘‘ but is engaged just now.”
“Is it a dark gentleman?” interposed Rosa, retreat-
ing on her guardian.
“No, Miss, more of a brown gentleman.”
“You are sure not with black hair?” asked Rosa,
taking courage.
“Quite sure of that, Miss. Brown hair and blue
eyes.”
“Perhaps,” hinted Mr. Grewgious, with habitual
caution, “it might be well to see him, reverend sir, if
you don't object. When one is in a difficulty or at a
loss, one never knows in what direction a way out may
chance to open. It is a business principle of mine, in
such a case, not to close up any direction, but to keep
an eye on every direction that may present itself. I
could relate an anecdote in point but that it would be
premature.” -
“If Miss Rosa will allow me, then? Let the gentle-
man come in,” said Mr. Crisparkle.
The gentleman came in; apologised, with a frank but
modest grace, for not finding Mr. Crisparkle alone;
turned to Mr. Crisparkle, and smilingly asked the un-
expected question: “Who am I?”
“You are the gentleman I saw smoking under the
trees in Staple Inn a few minutes ago.”
“True. There I saw you. Who else am I?”
Mr. Crisparkle concentrated his attention on a hand-
Some face, much sunburnt; and the ghost of some de-
parted boy seemed to rise, gradually and dimly, in the
I’OOIOl.
The gentleman saw a struggling recollection lighten
up the Minor Canon’s features, and Smiling again, said:
“What will you have for breakfast this morning? You
are out of jam.”
“Wait a moment!” cried Mr. Crisparkle, raising his
right hand. “Give me another instant! Tartar!”
The two shook hands with the greatest heartiness,
218 EDWIN DROOD.
and then went the wonderful length—for Englishmen
—of laying their hands each on the other's shoulders,
and looking joyfully each into the other's face.
“My old fag!” said Mr. Crisparkle.
“My old master!’” said Mr. Tartar. -
“You saved me from drowning?” said Mr. Cris-
parkle.
“After which you took to swimming, you know!”
said Mr. Tartar.
“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Crisparkle.
‘‘ Amen!” said Mr. Tartar.
And then they fell to shaking hands most heartily
again. *
“Imagine,” exclaimed Mr. Crisparkle, with glisten-
ing eyes: “Miss Rosa Bud and Mr. Grewgious, imagine
Mr. Tartar, when he was the smallest of juniors, diving
for me, catching me, a big heavy senior, by the hair of
the head, and striking out for the shore with me like a
water-giant!” 4.
“Imagine my not letting him sink, as I was his fag!”
said Mr. Tartar. “But the truth being that he was my
best protector and friend, and did me more good than
all the masters put together, an irrational impulse seized
me to pick him up, or go down with him.”
“Hem! Permit me, sir, to have the honor,” said Mr.
Grewgious, advancing with extended hand, “ for honor
I truly esteem it. I am proud to make your acquaint-
ance. I hope you didn’t take cold. I hope you were
not inconvenienced by swallowing too much water.
How have you been since?”
It was by no means apparent that Mr. Grewgious
knew what he said, though it was very apparent that
he meant to say something highly friendly and appre-
ciative.
If Heaven, Rosa thought, had but sent such courage
and skill to her poor mother's aid! And he to have
been so slight and young then!
“I don’t wish to be complimented upon it, I thank
you; but I think I have an idea,” Mr. Grewgious an-
Inounced, after making a jog-trot or two across the
room, so unexpected and unaccountable that they all
Stared at him, doubtful whether he was choking or had
the cramp—“I think I have an idea. I believe I have
had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Tartar's name as tenant
EDWIN T)ROOD. 219
of the top set in the house next to the top set in the
COrner?” -
“Yes, sir,” returned Mr. Tartar. “You are right so
far.”
“I am right so far,” said Mr. Grewgious. “Tick that
off; ” which he did, with his right thumb on his left.
“Might you happen to know the name of your neigh-
bor in the top set on the other side of the party-wall?”
coming very close to Mr. Tartar, to lose nothing of his
face, in his shortness of sight. -
“Landless.”
‘‘Tick that off,” said Mr. Grewgious, taking another
trot, and then coming back. “No personal knowledge,
I suppose, sir?”
“Slight, but some.”
“Tick that off,” said Mr. Grewgious, taking another
trot, and again coming back. “Nature of knowledge,
Mr. Tartal:P’’
“I thought he seemed to be a young fellow in a poor
way, and I asked his leave—only within a day or so—
to share my flowers up there with him; that is to say, to
extend my flower-garden to his windows.”
“Would you have the kindness to take seats?” said
Mr. Grewgious. “I have an idea!”
They complied; Mr. Tartar none the less readily for
being all abroad; and Mr. Grewgious, seated in the
Centre, with his hands upon his knees, thus stated his
idea, with his usual manner of having got the State-
ment by heart.
“I cannot as yet make up my mind whether it is
prudent to hold open communication under present cir-
cumstances, and on the part of the fair member of the
present company, with Mr. Neville or Miss Helena. I
F. reason to know that a local friend of ours (on
whom I beg to bestow a passing but a hearty maledic-
tion, with the kind permission of my reverend friend)
Sneaks to and fro, and dodges up and down. When
not doing so himself, he may have some informant
skuiking about, in the person of a watchman, porter, or
such like hanger-on of Staple. On the other hand, Miss
Rosa very naturally wishes to see her friend Miss Hel-
ena, and it would seem important that at least Miss
Helena (if not her brother too, through her) should
privately know from Miss Rosa's lips what has occurred,
2
220 EDWIN DROOD.
and what has been threatened. Am I agreed with gen-
erally in the views I take?”
“I entirely coincide with them,” said Mr. Crisparkle,
who had been very attentive.
“As I have no doubt I should,” added Mr. Tartar,
smiling, “if I understood them.”
“Fair and softly, sir,” said Mr. Grewgious; “we shall
fully confide in you directly, if you will favor us with
your permission. Now, if our local friend should have
any informant on the spot, it is tolerably clear that such
informant can only be set to watch the chambers in the
occupation of Mr. Neville. He reporting, to our local
friend, who comes and goes there, Our local friend
would supply for himself, from his own previous knowl-
edge, the identity of the parties. Nobody can be set to
watch all Staple, or to concern himself with comers
and goers to other sets of chambers: unless, indeed,
mine.” --
“I begin to understand to what you tend,” said Mr.
Crisparkle, ‘‘ and highly approve of your caution.”
‘‘I needn’t repeat that I know nothing yet of the why
and wherefore,” said Mr. Tartar; “but I also under-
stand to what you tend, so let me say at Once that my
chambers are freely at your disposal.”
“There!” cried Mr. Grewgious, smoothing his head
triumphantly, “ now we have all got the idea. You
have it, my dear?”
“I think I have,” said Rosa, blushing a little as Mr.
Tartar looked quickly towards her.
“You see, you go over to Staple with Mr. Crisparkle
and Mr. Tartar,” said Mr. Grewgious; “I going in and
out, and out and in alone, in my usual way; you go up
with those gentlemen to Mr. Tartar's rooms; you look
into Mr. Tartar's flower-garden; you wait for Miss
Helena’s appearance there, or you signify to Miss Helena
that you are close by; and you communicate with her
freely, and no spy can be the wiser.”
‘‘I am very much afraid I shall be—”
“Be what, my dear?” asked Mr. Grewgious, as she
hesitated. “ Not frightened?”
“No, not that,” said Rosa, shyly; “ in Mr. Tartar's
way. We seem to be appropriating Mr. Tartar's resi-
dence so very coolly.”
“I protest to you,” returned that gentleman, “that I
EDWIN DROOD, 221.
shall think the better of it for evermore, if your voice
sounds in it only once.”
Rosa, not quite knowing what to say about that, cast
down her eyes, and turning to Mr. Grewgious, dutifully
asked if she should put her hat on? Mr. Grewgious be-
ing of opinion that she could not do better, she withdrew
for the purpose. Mr. Crisparkle took the Qpportunity
of giving Mr. Tartar a summary of the distresses of
Neville and his sister; the opportunity was quite long
enough, as the hat happened to require a little extra
fitting on.
Mr. Tartar gave his arm to Rosa, and Mr. Crisparkle
walked, detached, in front.
“Poor, poor Eddy!” thought Rosa, as they went
along.
Mr. Tartar waved his right hand as he bent his head
down over Rosa, talking in an animated way.
“It was not so powerful or so sun-browned when it
saved Mr. Crisparkle,” thought Rosa, glancing at it;
“but it must have been very steady and determined
even then.”
Mr. Tartar told her he had been a sailor, roving every-
where for years and years.
“When are you going to Sea again?” asked Rosa.
‘‘ Never!”
Rosa wondered what the girls would say if they could
see her crossing the wide street on the sailor’s arm.
And she fancied that the passers-by must think her very
little and very helpless, contrasted with the strong
figure that could have caught her up and carried her out
of any danger, miles and miles without resting.
She was thinking further, that his far-seeing blue
eyes looked as if they had been used to watch danger
afar off, and to watch it without flinching, drawing
nearer and nearer: when, happening to raise her own
eyes, she found that he seemed to be thinking something
about them.
This a little confused Rosebud, and may account for
her never afterwards quite knowing how she ascended
(with his help) to his garden in the air, and seemed to
get into a marvellous country that came into sudden
bloom like the country on the summit of the magic bean-
stalk. May it flourish for ever!
222 EDWIN DROOD.
CHAPTER XXII.
A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMIES ON.
MR. TARTAR’s chambers were the neatest, the cleanest,
and the best-ordered chambers ever seen under the sun,
moon, and stars. The fioors were scrubbed to that ex-
tent that you might have Supposed the London blacks
enhancipated for ever, and gone out of the land for
good. Every inch of brass-work in Mr. Tartar's posses-
ision was polished and burnished, till it shoné like a
brazen mirror. No speck, nor spot, nor spatter soiled
the purity of any of Mir. Tartar's household gods. large,
small, or middle-sized. His sitting-room was like the
admiral’s cabin, his bath-room was like a dairy, his
sleeping-chamber, fitted all about with lockers and
drawers, was like a seedman’s shop; and his nicely-
balanced cot just stirred in the midst, as if it breathed.
Everything belonging to Mr. Tartar had quarters of its
own assigned to it: his maps and charts had their quar-
ters; his books had theirs; his brushes had theirs; his
boots had theirs; his clothes had theirs; his case-bottles
had theirs; his telescopes and other instruments had
theirs. Everything was readily accessible. Shelf,
bracket, locker, hook, and drawer were equally within
reach, and were equally contrived with a view to avoid-
ing waste of room, and providing some Snug inches of
stowage for something that would have exactly fitted
nowhere eise. His gleaming little Service of plate was
so arranged upon his sideboard as that a slack salt-
spoon would have instantly betrayed itself; his toilet
implements were so arranged upon his dressing-table
as that a toothpick of slovenly deportment could have
been reported at a glanco. So with the curiosities he
had brought home from various voyages. Stuffed, dried,
repolished, or otherwise preserved, according to their
kind; birds, fishes, reptiles, arms, articles of dress,
shells, seaweeds, grasses, or memorials of coral reef;
each was displayed in its especial place, and each could
have been displayed in no better place. Paint and
varnish seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, in
constant readiness to obliterate Stray finger-marks
wherever any might become perceptible in Mr. Tartar's
EDWIN DROOD. 223
chambers. No man-of-war was ever kept more spick
and span from careless touch. On this bright summer
day, a meat awning was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower-
garden as only a sailor could rig it; and there was a
sea-going air upon the whole effect, so delightfully com-
plete, that the flower-garden might have appertäined to
stern-windows afloat, and the whole concern might
have bowled away gallantly with all on board, if Mr.
Tartar had only clapped to his lips the speaking-trumpet
that was slung in a corner, and given hoarse Orders to
have the anchor up, look alive there, men, and get all
sail upon her! -
Mr. Tartar doing the honors of this gallant craft was
of a piece with the rest. When a man rides an amiable
hobby that shies at nothing and kicks nobody, it is only
agreeable to find him riding it with a humorous sense of
the droll side of the creature. When the man is a cor-
dial and an earnest man by nature, and withal is per-
fectly fresh and genuine, it may be doubted whether he
is ever seen to greater advantage than at such a time.
So Rosa would have naturally thought (even if she hadn’t
been conducted over the ship with all the homage due
to the First Lady of the Admiralty, or First Fairy of
the Sea), that it was charming to see and hear Mr. Tar-
tar half laughing at, and half rejoicing in, his various
contrivances. So Rosa would have naturally thought,
anyhow, that the sunburnt sailor showed to great ad-
vantage when, the inspection finished, he delicately
withdrew out of his admiral’s cabin, beseeching her to
consider herself its Queen, and waving her free of his
flower-garden with the hand that had had Mr. Crispar-
kle’s life in it.
“Helena! Helena Landless! Are you there?”
“Who speaks to me? Not Rosa?” Then a second
handsome face appearing.
“Yes, my darling!”
“Why, how did you come here, dearest?”
“I—I don’t quite know,” said Rosa, with a blush;
“unless I am dreaming!”
Why with a blush? For their two faces were alone
with the other flowers. Are blushes among the fruits
of the country of the magic bean-stalk?
“I am not dreaming,” said Helena, smiling, “I
should take more for granted if I were, How do we
224 TEDWIN DROOD.
º together—or so near together—so very unexpect-
edly?”
Unexpectedly indeed, among the dingy gables and
chimney-pots of P. J. T.’s connection, and the flowers
that had sprung from the salt Sea. But Rosa, waking,
told in a hurry how they came to be together, and all
the why and wherefore of that matter.
“And Mr. Crisparkle is here,” said Rosa, in rapid con-
clusion; “and, could you believe it? long ago he saved
his life!”
“I could believe any such thing of Mr. Crisparkle,”
returned Helena, with a mantling face.
(More blushes in the bean-stalk country!)
“Yes, but it wasn’t Mr. Crisparkle,” said Rosa, quickly
putting in the correction.
“I don’t understand, love.”
“It was very nice of Mr. Crisparkle to be saved,” said
Posa, “ and he couldn’t have shown his high opinion of
Mr. Tartar more expressively. But it was Mr. Tartar
who saved him.”
Helena’s dark eyes looked very earnestly at the bright
face among the leaves, and she asked, in a slower and
more thoughtful tone:
“Is Mr. Tartar with you now, dear?”
“No; because he has given up his rooms to me—to
us, I mean. Is it such a dreadful place!”
& 4 Is it? 52 -
“It is like the inside of the most exquisite ship that
ever sailed. It is like—it is like—”
“Like a dream?” suggested Helena.
Rosa answered with a little nod, and smelled the
flowers.
Helena resumed, after a short pause of silence, during
which she seemed (or it was Rosa's fancy) to compas-
sionate somebody: “My poor Neville is reading in his
own room, the sum being so very bright on this side just
now. I think he had better not know that you are so
near.” e
“Oh, I think so too!” cried Rosa very readily.
“I suppose,” pursued Helena, doubtfully, “that he
must know by and by all you have told me; but I am
not sure. Ask Mr. Crisparkle's advice, my darling.
Ask him whether I may tell Neville as much or as little
of what you have told me as I think best.”
EDWIN DROOD. 225
Rosa subsided into her state-cabin, and propounded
the question. The Minor Canon was for the free exer-
cise of Helena’s judgment.
‘‘I thank him very much,” said Helena, when Rosa.
emerged again with her report. “Ask him whether it
would be best to wait until any more maligning and
pursuing of Neville on the part of this wretch shall dis-
close itself, or to try to anticipate it: I mean, so far as
to find out whether any such goes on darkly about us?”
The Minor Canon found this point so difficult to give
a confident opinion on, that, after two or three attempts
and failures, he suggested a reference to Mr. Grewgious.
Helen acquiescing, he betook himself (with a most un-
successful assumption of lounging indifference) across
the quadrangle to P. J. T.’s, and stated it. Mr. Grew-
gious held decidedly to the general principle, that if
you could steal a march upon a brigand or a wild beast,
you had better do it; and he also held decidedly to the
special case, that John Jasper was a brigand and a wild
beast in combination. -
Thus advised, Mr. Crisparkle came back again and
reported to Rosa, who in her turn reported to Helena.
She, now steadily pursuing her train of thought at her
window, considered thereupon.
“We may count on Mr. Tartar's residence to help us,
Rosa?” she inquired.
O yes! Rosa shyly thought so. O yes, Rosa shyly be-
lieved she could almost answer for it. But should she
ask Mr. Crisparkle? “I think your authority on the
point as good as his, my dear,” said Helena, sedately,
“ and you needn’t disappear again for that.” Odd of
Helena."
“You see, Neville,” Helena pursued after more re-
flection, “knows no one else here: he has not so much
as exchanged a word with any one else here. If Mr.
Tartar would call to see him openly and often; if he
would spare a minute for the purpose, frequently; if he
Yºlº even do so, almost daily; something might come
Of it.”
“Something might come of it, dear?” repeated Rosa,
Surveying her friend’s beauty with a highly perplexed
face. “Something might?”
“If Neville's movements are really watched, and if
the purpose really is to isolate him from all friends and
15
226 ED WIN DEROOD.
acquaintance and wear his daily life out grain by grain
(which would seem to be the threat to you), does it not
appear likely,” said Helena, “that his enemy would in
some way communicate with Mr. Tartar to warn him
off from Neville? In which case, we might not only
know the fact, but might know from Mr. Tartar what
the terms of the communication were.”
“I see!” cried Rosa. And immediately darted into
her state-cabin again.
Presently her pretty face reappeared, with a greatly
heightened color, and she said that she had told Mr.
Crisparkle, and that Mr. Crisparkle had fetched in Mr.
Tartar, and that Mr. Tartar—“who is waiting now, in
case you want him,” added Rosa, with a half look back,
and in not a little confusion between the inside of the
state-cabin and out—had declared his readiness to act
as she had suggested, and to enter on his task that very
day.
“I thank him from my heart,” said Helena. “Pray
tell him so.”
Again not a little confused between the Flower-garden
and the Cabin, Rosa dipped in with her message, and
dipped out again with more assurances from Mr. Tartar,
and stood Wavering in a divided state between Helena
and him, which proved that confusion is not always nec-
essarily awkward, but may sometimes present a very
pleasant appearance.
“And now, darling,” said Helena, “we will be mind-
ful of the caution that has restricted us to this interview
for the present, and will part. I hear Neville moving
too. Are you going back?”
“To Miss Twinkleton’s?” asked ROSa.
C. C. Yos.”
“O, T could never go there any more; I couldn’t in-
deed, after that dreadful interview!” said Rosa.
“Then where are you going, pretty one?”
“Now I come to think of it, I don’t know,” said Rosa.
“I have settled nothing at all yet, but my guardian will
take care of me. Don’t be uneasy, dear. I shall be
sure to be somewhere.”
(It did seem likely.)
“And I shall hear of my Rosebud from Mr. Tartar?”
inquired Helena.
“Yes, T suppose so; from-" Rosa looked back again
EDWIN DROOD. 22;
in a flutter, instead of supplying the name. “But tell
me one thing before we part, dearest Helena. Tell me
that you are sure, Sure, sure, I couldn’t help it.”
“Help it, love?”
“Help making him malicious and revengeful. I
couldn’t hold any terms with him, could I?”
“You know how I love you, darling,” answered Hel-
ena, with indignation; “but I would sooner see you
(lead at his wicked feet.” -
“That’s a great comfort to me! And you will tell
your poor brother so, won’t you? And you will give
him my remembrance and my sympathy? And you
will ask him not to hate me?”
With a mournful shake of the head, as if that would
be quite a Superfluous entreaty, Helena lovingly kissed
her two hands to her friend, and her friend's two hands
were kissed to her; and then she saw a third hand (a
brown One) appear among the flowers and leaves, and
help her friend out of sight.
The reflection that Mr. Tartar produced in the Admi-
ral's Cabin by merely touching the spring knob of a
locker and the handle of a drawer, was a dazzling en-
chanted repast. Wonderful macaroons, glittering liq-
uors, magically-preserved tropical spices, and jellies of
celestial tropical fruits, displayed themselves profusely
at an instant’s notice. But Mr. Tartar could not make
time stand still; and time, with his hard-hearted fleet-
ness, strode on so fast that Rosa was obliged to come
down from the bean-stalk couintry to Carth and her
guardian’s chambers.
“And now, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, “what is
to be done next? To put the same thought in another
form; what is to be done with you?”
Rosa could only look apologetically sensible of being
very much in her own way and in everybody else’s.
Some passing idea of living, fireproof, up a good many
stairs in Turnival’s Inn for the rest of her life, was the
only thing in the nature of a plan that occurred to her.
“It has come into my thoughts,” said Mr. Grewgious,
“ that as the respected lady, Miss Twinkleton, occasion-
ally repairs to London in the recess, with the view of
Qxtending her connection, and being available for inter-
views with metropolitan parents, if any—whether, until
we have time in which to turn ourselves round, we
22s EDWIN DROOD.
might invite Miss Twinkleton to come and stay with
you for a month.”
“Stay where, sir?”
“Whether,” explained Mr. Grewgious, “we might
take a furnished lodging in town for a month, and in-
vite Miss Twinkleton to assume the charge of you in it
for that period?” -
“And afterwards?” hinted Rosa.
“And afterwards,” said Mr. Grewgious, “we should
be no worse off than we are now.”
“I think that might smooth the way,” assented Rosa.
“Then let us,” said Mr. Grewgious, rising, “go and
look for a furnished lodging. Nothing could be more
acceptable to me than the sweet presence of last even-
ing for all the remaining evenings of my existence;
but these are not fit surroundings for a young lady.
Let us set out in quest of adventures, and look for a fur-
nished lodging. In the meantime, Mr. Crisparkle here,
about to return home immediately, will no doubt kindly
see Miss Twinkleton, and invite that lady to coöperate
in our plan.”
Mr. Crisparkle, willingly accepting the commission,
took his departure; Mr. Grewgious and his ward set
forth on their expedition.
As Mr. Grewgious’s idea of looking at a furnished
lodging was to get on the opposite side of the street to a
house with a suitable bill in the window, and stare at
it; and then work his way tortuously to the back of the
house, and stare at that; and then not go in, but make
similar trials of another house, with the same result;
their progress was but slow. At length he bethought
himself of a widowed cousin, divers times removed, of
Mr. Bazzard’s, who had once solicited his influence in
the lodger world, and who lived in Southampton Street,
Bloomsbury Square. This lady’s name, stated in uncom-
promising capitals of considerable size on a brass door-
plate, and yet not lucidly as to Sex or condition, was
|BILLICKIN.
Personal faintness, and an overpowering personal
candor, were the distinguishing features of Mrs. Bil-
Jickin’s organisation. She came languishing out of her
own exclusive back parlor, with the air of having been
expressly brought-to for the purpose, from an accumu-
lation of Several swoons.
EDWIN DROOD. 229
“I hope I see you well, sir,” said Mrs. Billickin, recog-
nising her visitor with a bend.
“Thank you, quite well. And you, ma’am?” returned
Mr. Grewgious.
‘‘I am as well,” said Mrs. Billickin, becoming aspira-
tional with excess of faintness, ‘‘ as I hever ham.”
“My ward and an elderly lady,” said Mr. Grewgious,
“wish to find a genteel lodging for a month or so. Have
you any apartments available, ma'am?”
“Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs. Billickin, “I will
not deceive you; far from it. I have apartments avail-
able.”
This, with the air of adding: “convey me to the stake,
if you will; but while I live, I will be candid.”
“And now, what apartments, ma’am’’’ asked Mr.
Grewgious, cosily. To tame a certain severity apparent
on the part of Mrs. Billickin.
“There is this sitting-room—which, call it what you
will, it is the front parlor, Miss,” said Mrs. Billickin,
impressing Rosa into the conversation: “the back par-
lor being what I cling to and never part with; and there
is two bedrooms at the top of the 'ouse with gas laid on.
I do not tell you that your bedroom floors is firm, for
firm they are not. The gas-fitter himself allowed that,
to make a firm job, he must go right under your jistes,
and it were not worth the outlay as a yearly tenant so
to do. The piping is carried above your jistes, and it is
best that it should be made known to you.”
Mr. Grewgious. and Rosa exchanged looks of some
dismay, though they had not the least idea what latent
horrors this carriage of the piping might involve. Mrs.
Billickin put her hand to her heart, as having eased it of
a load.
“Well! The roof is all right, no doubt,” said Mr.
TGrewgious, plucking up a little. -
“Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs. Billickin, “if I was
to tell you, sir, that to have nothink above you is to
have a floor above you, I shall put a deception upon you
which I will not do. No, sir. Your slates will, rattle
loose at that elewation in windy weather, do your ut-
most, best or worst! I defy you, sir, be you what you
may, to keep your slates tight, try how you can.” Here
Mrs. Billickin, having been warm with Mr. Grewgious,
Cooled a little, not to abuse the moral power she held
230 EDWIN DROOD.
over him. “Consequent,” proceeded Mrs. Billickin,
more mildly, but still firmly in her incorruptible can-
dor: “consequent it would be worse than of no use for
me to trapse and travel up to the top of the 'ouse with
you, and for you to say, ‘Mrs. Billickin, what stain do I
notice in the ceiling, for a staim I do consider it?’ and
for me to answer, ‘I do not understand you, sir.’ No,
sir, I will not be so underhand. I do understand you
before you pint it out. It is the wet, sir. It do come in,
and it do not come in. You may lay dry there half your
lifetime; but the time will come, and it is best that you
should know it, when a dripping SOp would be no name
for you.”
Mr. Grewgious looked much disgraced by being pre-
figured in this pickle.
“Have you any other apartments, ma'am?” he asked.
“Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs. Billickin, with much
solemnity, “I have. You ask me have I, and my open
and my honest answer air, I have. The first and sec-
Ond floors is wacant, and sweet rooms.”
“Come, come! There's nothing against them,” said
Mr. Grewgious, comforting himself.
“Mr. Grewgious,” replied Mrs. Billickin, “pardon me,
there is the stairs. Unless your mind is prepared for
the stairs, it will lead to inevitable disappointment.
You cannot, Miss,” said Mrs. Billickin, addressing Rosa
reproachfully, ‘‘place a first floor, and far less a second,
on the level footing of a parlor. No, you cannot do it,
1Miss, it is beyond your power, and wherefore try?”
Mrs. Billickin put it very feelingly, as if Rosa had
shown a headstrong determination to hold the untenable
position. *
“Can we see these rooms, ma’am?” inquired her
guardian. &
“Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs. Billickin, “you can.
I will not disguise it from you, sir; you can.”
Mrs. Billickin then sent into her back-parlor for her
shawl (it being a state fiction, dating from immemorial
antiquity, that she could never go anywhere without
being wrapped up), and having been enrolled by her
attendant, led the way. She made various genteel
pauses on the stairs for breath, and clutched at her
heart in the drawing-room as if it had very nearly got
loose, and she had caught it in the act of taking wing.
EDWIN DROOD. 231
“And the second floor?” said Mr. Grewgious, on find-
ing the first satisfactory.
“Mr. Grewgious,” replied Mrs. Billickin, turning upon
him with ceremony, as if the time had now come when
a distinct understanding on a difficult point must be ar-
rived at, and a solemn confidence estabiished, “the sec-
Ond floor is over this.”
“Can we see that too, ma’am?”
“Yes, sir,” returned Mrs. Billickin, “it is open as the
day.”
That also proving satisfactory, Mr. Grewgious retired
into a window with Rosa for a few words of consulta-
tion, and then asking for pen and ink, sketched out a
line or two of agreement. In the meantime Mrs. Bil-
lickin took a Seat, and delivered a kind of Index to, or
Abstract of, the general question.
“Five-and-forty shillings per week by the month cer-
tain at the time of year,” said Mrs. Billickin, “is only
reasonable to both parties. It is not Bond-street not yet
St. James's Palace; but it is not pretended that it is.
Neither is it attempted to be denied—for why should it?
—that the Arching leads to a Mews. Mewses must ex-
ist. Respecting attendance; two is kep', at liberal
wages. Words has arisen as to tradesmen, but dirty
Shoes on fresh hearthstoning was attributable, and no
Wish for a commission on your orders. Coals is either
by the fire, or per the scuttle.” She emphasised the
prepositions as marking a subtle but immense differ-
ence. “Dogs is not viewed with favior. Besides litter,
they gets stole, and sharing suspicions is apt to creep in,
and unpleasantness takes place.”
By this time Mr. Grewgious had his agreement-lines,
and his earnest-money, ready. “I have signed it for
the ladies, ma'am,” he said, ‘‘ and you’ll have the good-
ness to sign it for yourself, Christian and Surname,
there, if you please.”
“Mr. Grewgious,” said Mrs. Billicken in a new burst
of candor, “no, Sir! You must excuse the Christian
name.”
Mr. Grewgious stared at her.
“The door-plate is used as a protection,” said Mrs.
Billicken, “and acts as such, and go from it I will not.”
Mr. Grewgious stares at Rosa. -
“No, Mr. Grewgious, you must excuse me. So long
232 EDWIN DROOD.
as this 'ouse is known indefinite as Billickin’s, and so
long as it is a doubt with the riff-raff where Billickin
may be hidin', near the street-door or down the airy,
and what his weight and size, so long I feel safe. But
commit myself to a solitary female statement, no, Miss!
Nor would you for a moment wish,” said Mrs. Billickin, .
with a strong Sense of injury, “to take advantage of
your sex, if you was not brought to it by inconsiderate
example.”
Rosa reddening as if she had made some most dis-
graceful attempt to overreach the good lady, besought
Mr. Grewgious to rest content with any signature. And
accordingly, in a baronial way, the sign-manual BILLIC-
KIN got appended to the document.
Details were then settled for taking possession on the
next day but one, when Miss Twinkleton might be rea-
sonably expected; and Rosa went back to Furnival’s Inn
on her guardian’s arm.
Behold Mr. Tartar walking up and down Furnival’s
Inn, checking himself when he saw them coming, and
advancing towards them!
“It occurred to me,” hinted Mr. Tartar, “that we
might go up the river, the weather being so delicious
and the tide serving. I have a boat of my own at the
Temple Stairs.” *
“I have not been up the river for this many a day,”
said Mr. Grewgious, tempted.
“I was never up the river,” added Rosa.
Within half an hour they were setting this matter
right by going up the river. The tide was running
with them, the afternoon was charming. Mr. Tartar's
boat was perfect. Mr. Tartar and Lobley (Mr. Tartar's
man) pulled a pair of oars. Mr. Tartar had a yacht,
it seemed, lying somewhere down by Greenhithe:
and Mr. Tartar's man had charge of this yacht, and
was detached upon his present service. He was a jolly
favored man, with tawny hair and whiskers, and a big
red face. He was the dead image of the sun in old wood-
cuts, his hair and whiskers answering for rays all
round him. Resplendent in the bow of the boat, he
was a shining sight, with a man-of-war's man’s shirt on
—or off, according to opinion—and his arms and breast
tattoo'd all sorts of patterns. Lobley seemed to take it
easily, and so did Mr. Tartar; yet their oars bent as
EDWIN DROOD. 233
they pulled, and the boat bounded under them. Mr.
Tartar talked as if he were doing nothing, to Rosa, who
was really doing nothing, and to Mr. Grewgious who was
doing this much that he steered all wrong; but what did
that matter, when a turn of Mr. Tartar's skilful wrist,
or a mere grin of Mr. Lobley’s over the bow, put all to
rights! The tide bore them on in the gayest and most
sparkling manner, until they stopped to dine in Some
everlastingly-green garden, needing no matter-of-fact
identification here; and then the tide obligingly turned—
being devoted to that party alone for that day; and as they
floated idly among some osier-beds, Rosa tried what she
could do in the rowing way, and came off Splendidly,
being much assisted; and Mr. Grewgious tried what he
could do, and came off on his back, doubled up with an
oar under his chin, being not assisted at all. Then
there was an interval of rest under boughs (such rest!)
what time Mr. Lobley mopped, and, arranging cush-
ions, stretchers, and the like, danced the tight-rope the
whole length of the boat like a man to whom shoes
were a superstition and stockings slavery; and then
came the sweet return among delicious odors of limes
in bloom, and musical ripplings; and, all too soon, the
great black city cast its shadow on the waters, and its
dark bridges spanned them as death spans life, and the
everlastingly-green garden seemed to be left for ever-
lasting, unregainable and far away.
“Cannot people get through life without gritty stages,
I wonder!” Rosa thought next day, when the town
was very gritty again, and everything had a strange
and an uncomfortable appearance of seeming to wait
for something that wouldn’t come. No. She began to
think, that, now the Cloisterham school-days had gilded
past and gone, the gritty stages would begin to set in a
intervals and make themselves wearily known! -
Yet what did Rosa expect? Did she expect Miss
Twinkleton? Miss Twinkleton duly came. Forth from
her back-parlor issued the Billickin to receive Miss
Twinkleton, and War was in the Billickin’s eye from
that fell moment.
Miss Twinkleton brought a quantity of luggage with
her, having all Rosa's as well as her own. The Billickin
took it ill that Miss Twinkleton's mind, being sorely dis-
turbed by this luggage, failed to take in her personal
234 EDWIN DROOD.
identity with that clearness of perception which was
due to its demands. Stateliness mounted her gloomy
throme upon the Billickin’s brow in consequence. And
when Miss Twinkleton, in agitation taking stock of her
trunks and packages, of which she had seventeen, par-
ticularly counted in the Billickin herself as number
eleven, the B. found it necessary to repudiate.
“Things cannot too soon be put upon the footing,”
said she, with a candor so demonstrative as to be al-
most obtrusive, ‘‘that the person of the 'ouse is not a
box nor yet a bundle, nor a carpet-bag. No, I am ºily
obleeged to you, Miss Twinkleton, nor yet a beggar.”
This last disclaimer had reference to Miss Twinkle-
ton’s distractedly pressing two-and-sixpence on her in-
stead of the cabnam.
Thus cast off, Miss Twinkleton wildly inquired “which
gentleman * was to be paid? There being two gentle-
men in that position (Miss Twinkleton having arrived
with two cabs), each gentleman on being paid held .
forth his two-and-sixpence on the flat of his open hand,
and, with a speechless stare and a dropped jaw, dis-
played his wrong to heaven and earth. Terrified by
this alarming spectacle, Miss Twinkleton placed another
shilling in each hand; at the same time appealing to the
law in flurried accents, and recounting her luggage this
time with the two gentlemen in, who caused the total
to come out complicated. Meanwhile the two gentle-
men, each looking very hard at the last shilling grum-
blingly, as if it might become eighteenpence if he kept
his eyes on it, descended the doorsteps, ascended their
Carriages, and drove away, leaving Miss Twinkleton on
a bonnet-box in tears.
The Billickin beheld this manifestation of weakness
without sympathy, and gave directions for ‘‘ a young
man to be got in ’’ to wrestle with the luggage. When
that gladiator had disappeared from the arena, peace
ensued, and the new lodgers dined.
But the Billickin had somehow come to the knowledge
that Miss Twinkleton kept a school. The leap from
that knowledge to the inference that Miss Twinkleton
set herself to teach her something, was easy. “But
you don’t do it,” soliloquised the Billickin; “I am not
your pupil, whatever she,” meaning Rosa, “may be,
poor thing!” -
EDWIN DROOD. 235
Miss Twinkleton, on the other hand, having changed
her dress and recovered her spirits, was animated by a
bland desire to improve the occasion in all ways, and
to be as serene a model as possible. In a happy com-
promise between her two states of existence, she had
already become, with her work-basket before her, the
equably vivacious companion with a slight judicious
flavoring of information, when the Billickin announced
herself.
“I will not hide from you, ladies,” said the B., envel-
oped in the shawl of state, “for it is not my character to
hide neither my motives nor my actions, that I take the
liberty to look in upon you to express a 'ope that your
dinner was to your liking. Though not Professed but
Plain, still her wages should be a sufficient object to her
to stimilate to soar above mere roast and biled.”
“We dined very well indeed,” said Rosa, “ thank
you.”
“Accustomed,” said Miss Twinkleton with a gracious
air, which to the jealous ears of the Billickin seemed to
add “my good woman *—‘‘accustomed to a liberal and
nutritious, yet plain and salutary diet, we have found
no reason to bemoan our absence from the ancient city,
and the methodical household, in which the quiet rou-
time of our lot has been hitherto cast.”
“I did think it well to mention to my cook,” observed
the Billickin with a gush of candor, “which I’ope you
will agree with, Miss Twinkleton, was a right precau-
tion, that the young lady being used to what we should
consider here but poor diet, had better be brought for-
ward by degrees. For, a rush from scanty feeding to
generous feeding, and from what you may call messing
to what you may call method, do require a power of
constitution which is not often found in youth, partic-
ular when undermined by boarding-school!”
It will be seen that the Billickin now openly pitted
herself against Miss Twinkleton, as one to whom she
had fully ascertained to be her natural enemy.
“Your. remarks,” returned Miss Twinkleton, from a
remote moral eminence, “are well meant, I have no
doubt; but you will permit me to observe that they de-
velop a mistaken view of the subject, which can only
be imputed to your extreme want of accurate informa-
tion.”
236 EDWIN DROOD.
“My informiation,” retorted the Billickin, throwing in
an extra syllable for the sake of emphasis at once polite
and powerful—“my informiation, Miss Twinkleton,
were my own experience, which I believe is usually
considered to be good guidance. But whether so or no ,
I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding-school,
the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of about
your own age, or it may be some years younger, and a
poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run
through my life.”
“Very likely,” said Miss Twinkleton, still from her
distant eminence; “ and very much to be deplored.—
|Rosa, my dear, how are you getting on with your work?”
“Miss Twinkleton,” resumed the Billickin, in a courtly
manner, “before retiring on the 'int, as a lady should,
I wish to ask of yourself, as a lady, whether I am to
consider that my words is doubted?”
“I am not aware on what ground you cherish such a
supposition,” began Miss Twinkleton, when the Billickin
neatly stopped her.
“Do not, if you please, put suppositions betwixt my
lips, where none such have been imparted by myself.
Your flow of words is great, Miss Twinkleton, and no
doubt is expected from you by your pupils, and no doubt
is considered worth the money. No doubt, I am sure.
But not paying for flows of words, and not asking to
be favored with them here, I wish to repeat my ques-
tion.”
“If you refer to the poverty of your circulation,” be-
gan Miss Twinkleton, when again the Billickin neatly
stopped her. - te
“I have used no such expressions.”
“If you refer, then, to the poorness of your blood—”
“Brought upon me,” stipulated the Billickin, ex-
pressly, “at a boarding-school—”
“Then,” resumed Miss Twinkleton, “all I can say is,
that I am bound to believe, on your asseveration, that
it is very poor indeed. I cannot forbear adding, that if
that unfortunate circumstance influences your conver-
sation, it is much to be lamented, and it is eminently
desirable that your blood were richer.—Rosa, my dear,
how are you getting on with your work?”
“Hem! Before retiring, Miss,” proclaimed the Billickin
to Rosa, loftily cancelling Miss Twinkleton, “I should
EDWIN DROOD. 23?
wish it to be understood between yourself and me that
my transactions in future is with you alone. I know
no elderly lady here, Miss, none older than yourself.”
“A highly desirable arrangement, Rosa, my deal,”
Observed Miss Twinkleton.
“It is not, Miss,” said the Billickin, with a sarcastic
smile, “that I possess the Mill I have heard of, in which
old single ladies could be ground up young (what a gift
it would be to 'some of us!) but that I limit myself to
you totally.”
“When I have any desire to communicate a request
to the person of the house, Rosa, my dear,” observed
Miss Twinkleton with majestic cheerfulness, “I will
make it known to you, and you will kindly undertake,
I am sure, that it is conveyed to the proper quarter.”
“Good evening, Miss,” said the Billickin, at once
affectionately and distantly. “Being alone in my
eyes, I wish you good evening with best wishes, and
do not find myself drove, I am truly ‘appy to say, into
expressing my contempt for any individual, unfortu-
mately for yourself, belonging to you.” -
The Billickin gracefully withdrew with this parting
Speech, and from that time Rosa occupied the restless
position of shuttlecock between these two battledores.
Nothing could be done without a smart match being
played out. Thus, On the daily-arising question of din-
ner, Miss Twinkleton would say, the three being present
together: *
‘‘Perhaps, my love, you will consult with the person
Of the house, whether she can procure us a lamb’s fry;
Qr, failing that, a roast fowl.”
On which the Billickin would retort (Rosa not having
Spoken a word), “If you was better accustomed to
butcher's meat, Miss, you would not entertain the idea.
of a lamb's fry. Firstly, because lambs has long been
Sheep, and secondly, because there is such things as
killing-days, and there is not. As to roast fowls, Miss,
why you must be quite surfeited with roast fowls, let-
ting alone your buying, when you market for yourself,
the agedest of poultry with the scaliest of legs, quite
as if you was accustomed to picking 'em out for cheap-
ness. Try a little inwention, Miss. Use yourself to
ºfteeping a bit. Come now, think of somethink
else.”
23S EDWIN DROOD.
To this encouragement, offered with the indulgent
toleration of a wise and liberal expert, Miss Twinkle-
ton would rejoin, reddening:
“Or, my dear, you might propose to the person of the
house a duck.” -
“Well, Miss!” the Billickin would exclaim (still no
word being spoken by Rosa), “you do surprise me when
you speak of ducks! Not to mention that they’re get-
ting out of season and very dear, it really strikes to my
heart to see you have a duck; for the breast, which is
the only delicate cuts in a duck, always goes in a direc-
tion which I cannot imagine where, and your own plate
comes down so miserable skin-and-bony! Try again,
Miss. Think more of yourself, and less of others. A
dish of sweetbreads now, or a bit of mutton. Some-
think at which you can get your equal chance.”
Occasionally the game would wax very brisk indeed,
and would be kept up with a smartness rendering such
an encounter as this quite tame. But the Billickin
almost invariably made by far the higher score; and
would come in with side hits of the most unexpected
and extraordinary description, when she seemed with-
out a chance.
All this did not improve the gritty state of things in
London, or the air that London had acquired in Rosa’s
eyes of waiting for something that never came. Tired
of working, and conversing with Miss Twinkleton, she
suggested working and reading: to which Miss Twinkle-
ton readily assented, as an admirable reader, of tried
powers. But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss
Twinkleton didn’t read fairly. She cut the love-scenes,
interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and
was guilty of other glaring pious frauds. As an in-
stance in point, take the glowing passage: “Ever
dearest and best adored,—said Edward, clasping the
dear head to his breast, and drawing the silken hair
through his caressing fingers, from which he suffered
it to fall like golden rain,_ever dearest and best adored,
let us fly from the unsympathetic world and the sterile
coldness of the stony-hearted, to the rich warm Para-
dise of Trust and Love.” Miss Twinkleton’s fraudu-
lent version tamely ran thus: ‘‘ ‘Ever engaged to me.
with the consent of Our parents on both sides, and the
approbaſion of the silver-haired rector of the district,’
EDWIN DROOD. 239
—said Edward, respectfully raising to his Hips the taper
fingers so skilful in embroidery, tambour, crochet, and
other truly feminine arts, ‘let me call on thy papa ere
to-morrow’s dawn has sunk into the west, and propose
a suburban establishment, lowly it may be, but within
our means, where he will be always welcome as an
evening guest, and where every arrangement shall
invest economy, and constant interchange of scholas-
tic acquirements with the attributes of the ministering
angel to domestic bliss.’”
As the days crept on and nothing happened, the
neighbors began to say that the pretty girl at Billickin’s,
who looked so wistfully and so much out of the gritty
windows of the drawing-room, seemed to be losing her
spirits. The pretty girl might have lost them but for
the accident of lighting on some books of voyages and
Sea-adventure. As a compensation against their ro-
mance, Miss Twinkleton, reading aloud, made the most .
of , all the latitudes and longitudes, bearings, winds,
currents, offsets, and other statistics (which she felt to
be none the less improving because they expressed
Inothing whatever to her); while Rosa, listening in-
tently, made the most of what was nearest to her heart.
So they both did better than before.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE DAWN AGAIN.
ALTHOUGH Mr. Crisparkle and John Jasper met daily
under the Cathedral roof, nothing at any time passed
between them having reference to Edwin Drood. after
the time, more than half a year gone by, when Jasper
mutely showed the Minor Canon the conclusion and the
resolution entered in his IDiary. It is not likely that
they ever met, though so often, without the thoughts of
each reverting to the subject. It is not likely that they
ever met, though so often, without a sensation on the part
of each that the other was a perplexing secret to him.
Jasper as the denouncer and pursuer of Neville Land-
240 EDWIN DROOD.
less, and Mr. Crisparkle as his consistent advocate and
protector, must at least have stood sufficiently in oppo-
sition to have speculated with keen interest on the
steadiness and next direction of the other's designs.
But neither ever broached the theme.
False pretence not being in the Minor Canon’s nature,
he doubtless displayed Openly that he would at any time
have revived the subject, and even desired to discuss it.
The determined reticence of Jasper, however, was not
to be so approached. Impassive, moody, solitary, reso-
lute, so concentrated on One idea, and on its attendant
fixed purpose, that he would share it with no fellow-
creature, he lived apart from human life. Constantly
exercising an Art which brought him into mechanical
harmony with others, and which could not have been
pursued unless he and they had been in the micest me-
chanical relations and unison, it is curious to consider
that the spirit of the man was in moral accordance or
interchange with nothing around him. This indeed he
had confided to his lost nephew, before the Occasion for
his present inflexibility arose. -
That he must know of Rosa's abrupt departure, and
that he must divine its cause, was not to be doubted.
Did he suppose that he had terrified her into silence? or
did he suppose that she had imparted to any one—to Mr.
Crisparkle himself, for instance—the particulars of his
last interview with her? Mr. Crisparkle could not de-
termine this in his mind. He could not but admit,
however, as a just man, that it, was not, of itself, a crime
to fall in love with Rosa, any more than it was a crime
to offer to set love above revenge.
The dreadful suspicion of Jasper, which Rosa was so
shocked to have received into her imagination, ap-
peared to have no harbor in Mr. Crisparkle's. If it ever
haunted Helena’s thoughts or Neville's, neither gave it
one spoken word of utterance. Mr. Grewgious took no
pains to conceal his implacable dislike of Jasper, yet he
never referred it, however distantly, to such a source.
But he was a reticent as well as an eccentric man; and
he made no mention of a certain evening when he
warmed his hands at the gatehouse fire, and looked
steadily down upon a certain heap of torn and miry
clothes upon the floor.
Drowsy Cloisterham, whenever it awoke to a passing
EDWIN, DBOOD. 241
reconsideration of a story above six months old and
dismissed by the bench of magistrates, was pretty
equally divided in opinion whether John Jasper's be-
loved nephew had been killed by his treacherously pas-
sionate rival, or in an open struggle; or had, for his own
purposes, spirited himself away. It then lifted up its
head, to notice that the bereaved Jasper was still ever
devoted to discovery and revenge; and then dozed off
again. This was the condition of matters, all round,
at the period to which the present history has now
attained.
The Cathedral doors have closed for the night; and
the Choir-master, on a short leave of absence for two
or three services, sets his face towards London. He
travels thither by the means by which Rosa travelled,
and arrives, as Rosa arrived, on a hot, dusty evening.
His travelling baggage is easily carried in his hand,
and he repairs with it, on foot, to a hybrid hotel in a
little square behind Aldersgate-street, near the General
Post Office. It is hotel, boarding-house, or lodging-
house, at its visitor’s option. It announces itself, in the
new Railway Advertisers, as a novel enterprise, timidly
beginning to Spring up. It bashfully, almost apologetic-
ally, gives the traveller to understand that it does not
expect him, on the good old constitutional hotel plan,
to order a pint of Sweet blacking for his drinking, and
throw it away; but insinuates that he may have his
boots blacked instead of his stomach, and maybe also
have bed, breakfast, attendance, and a porter up all
night, for a certain fixed charge. From these and sim-
ilar premises, many true Britons in the lowest spirits
deduce that the times are levelling times, except in the
article of high roads, of which there will shortly be not
one in England. *
He eats without appetite, and soon goes forth again.
Eastward and still eastward through the stale streets
he takes his way, until he reaches his destination: a
miserable court, specially miserable among many such.
He ascends a broken staircase, opens a door, looks
iº a dark stifling room, and says: “Are you alone
nere?” -
“Alone, deary; worse luck for me, and better for
you,” replies a croaking voice. “Come in, come in,
Whoever you be: I can’t see you till I light a match,
16
242 EDWIN, DFOOD.
yet I seem to know the sound of your speaking. I'm
acquainted with you, ain't I?”
“Light your match, and try.”
“So I will, deary, so I will; but my hand that shakes,
as I can’t lay it on a match all in a moment. And "I
cough so, that, put my matches where I may, I never
find ’em there. They jump and start, as I cough and
cough, like live things. Are you off a voyage, deary?”
( & NO.”
“Not seafaring?”
6 & NO.”
“Well, there's land customers, and there's water cus-
tomers. I’m a mother to both. Different from Jack
Chinaman t’other side the court. He ain’t a father to
neither. It ain’t in him. And he ain’t got the true
secret of mixing, though he charges as much as me that
has, and more if he can get it. Here’s a match, and now
where's the candle? If my cough takes me, I shall cough
out twenty matches afore I gets a light.”
But she finds the candle, and lights it before the
cough comes on. It seizes her in the moment of success,
and she sits down rocking herself to and fro, and gasp-
ing at intervals: “O, my lungs is awful bad! my lungs
is wore away to cabbage-nets!” until the fit is over.
During its continuance she has had no power of sight,
or any other power not absorbed in the struggle; but as
it leaves her, she begins to strain her eyes, and as soon
as she is able to articulate, she cries, staring:
“Why, it's you!” Gº
“Are you so surprised to see me?” -
“Ithought I never should have seen you again, deary.
I thought you was dead, and gone to Heaven.”
< * Why? 32
“I didn’t suppose you could have kept away, alive,
so long, from the poor old soul with the real receipt for
mixing it. And you are in mourning too! Why didn’t
'you come and have a pipe or two of comfort? Did
they leave you money, perhaps, and so you didn’t want
COmfort, P’’
é & NO.”
“Who was they as died, deary?”
“A relative.”
“Died of what, lovey?”
‘‘ Probably, Death.”
EDWIN DROOD. 243
“We are short to-night!” cries the woman, with a
propitiatory laugh. “Short and Snappish we are! But
we’re out of sorts for want of a smoke. We’ve got the
all-overs, haven’t us, deary P. But this is the place to
cure 'em in; this is the place where the all-overs is
Smoked Off.”
“You may make ready, then,” replies the visitor, “as
Soon as you like.”
He divests himself of his shoes, loosens his cravat,
and lies across the foot of the squalid bed, with his head
resting on his left hand.
“Now you begin to look like yourself,” says the wo-
man,” approvingly. “Now I begin to know my old cus-
tomer indeed! Been trying to mix for yourself this long
time, poppet?”
“I have been taking it now and then in my own
way.” *,
“Never take it your own way. It ain’t good for trade,
and it ain’t good for you. Where’s my inkbottle, and
where's my thimble, and where's my little spoon? He's
going to take it in a artful form now, my deary dear!”
Entering on her process, and beginning to bubble and
blow at the faint spark enclosed in the hollow of her
hands, she speaks from time to time, in a tone of snuf-
fing satisfaction, without leaving off. When he speaks,
he does so without looking at her, and as if his thoughts
were already roaming away by anticipation.
‘‘I’ve got a pretty many smokes ready for you, first
and last, haven’t I, chuckey?”
“A good many.”
“When you first come, you was quite new to it;
warn’t ye?”
“Yes, I was easily disposed of, then.”
“But you got on in the world, and was able by and by
to take your pipe with the best of 'em, warn’t ye?”
“Ah; and the worst.”
“It’s just ready for you. What a sweet singer you
was when you first come! Used to drop your head, and
sing yourself off like a bird! It's ready for you now,
deary.”
He takes it from her with great care, and puts the
mouthpiece to his lips. She seats herself beside him,
ready to refill the pipe. After inhaling a few whiffs
in silence, he doubtingly accosts her with:
244 EDWIN DROOD.
“Is it as potent as it used to be?”
“What do you speak of, deary?”
“What should I speak of, but what I have in my
Imouth P”
“It’s just the same. Always the identical same.”
“It doesn’t taste so. And it’s slower.”
“You’ve got more used to it, you see.” -
“That may be the cause, certainly. Look here.” He
stops, becomes dreamy, and seems to forget that he has
invited her attention. She bends over him, and speaks
in his ear.
“I’m attending to you. Says you just now, Look
here. Says I now, I’m attending to ye. We was talk-
ing just before of your being used to it.”
“I know all that. I was only thinking. Look here.
Suppose you had something in your mind; something
you were going to do.”
“Yes, deary; something I was going to do?”
“But had not quite determined to do.”
“Yes, deary.” *
“Might or might not do, you understand.”
“Yes.” With the point of a needle she stirs the con-
tents of the bowl.
“Should you do it in your fancy, when you werelying
here doing this?”
She mods her head. “Over and over again.”
“Just like me! I did it over and over again. I have
done it hundreds of thousands of times in this room.”
“It’s to be hoped it was pleasant to do, deary.”
“It was pleasant to do.”
He says this with a savage air, and a spring or start
at her. Quite unmoved, she retouches and replenishes
the contents of the bowl with her little spatula. Seeing
her intent upon the occupation, he sinks into his former
attitude.
“It was a journey, a difficult and dangerous journey.
That was the subject in my mind. A hazardous and
perilous journey, over abysses where a slip would be
destruction. Look down, look down! You see what
lies at the bottom there?” --
He has darted forward to say it, and to point at
the ground, as though at some imaginary object far be-
neath. The woman looks at him, as his spasmodic face
approaches close to hers, and not at his pointing. She
EDWIN DROOD. - 245
seems to know what the influence of her perfect
Quietude would be; if so, she has not miscalculated it,
for he subsidies again.
“Well; I have told you I did it here hundreds of
thousands of times. What do I say? I did it millions
and billions of times. I did it so often, and through
such vast expanses of time, that when it was really
done, it seemed not worth the doing, it was done so
SOOn.” -
“That’s the journey you have been away upon?” she
Quietly remarks. -
He glares at her as he smokes; and then, his eyes be-
coming filmy, answers: “That’s the journey.”
Silence ensues. His eyes are sometimes closed and
sometimes open. The woman sits beside him, very at-
tentive to the pipe, which is all the while at his lips.
“I’ll warrant,” she observes, when he has been look-
ing fixedly at her for some consecutive moments, with
a singular appearance in his eyes of seeming to see her
a long way off, instead of so near him: “I’ll warrant
you made the journey in a many ways, when you made
it so often.”
‘‘No, always in one way.”
“Always in the same way?”
& K. Ay.”
“In the way in which it was really made at last?”
& C Ay.”
“And always took the same pleasure in harping on
it?”
& 4 Ay.”
For the time he appears unequal to any other reply
than this lazy monosyllabic assent. Probably to assure
herself that it is not the assent of a mere automaton,
she reverses the form of her next sentence.
“Did you never get tired of it, deary, and try to call
up something else for a change?”
He struggles into a sitting posture, and retorts upon
her: “What do you mean? What did I want? What
did I come for?”
She gently lays him back again, and, before returning
him the instrument he has dropped, revives the fire in
it with her own breath; then says to him, coaxingly:
“Sure, sure, Sure! Yes, yes, yes! Now I go along
with you. You was too quick for me. I see now. You
246 EDWIN DROOD.
come o' purpose to take the journey. Why, I might
have known it, through its standing by you so.” -
He answers first with a laugh, and then with a pas-
sionate setting of his teeth: “Yes, I came on purpose.
When I could not bear my life, I came to get the relief,
and I got it. It WAS one! It WAS one!” This repetition
with extraordinary vehemence, and the snarl of a wolf.
She observes him very cautiously, as though mentally
feeling her way to her next remark. It is: “There was
a fellow-traveller, deary.”
‘‘ Ha, ha, ha!” He breaks into a ringing laugh, or
rather yell.
“To think,” he cries, “how often fellow-traveller, and
yet not know it! To think how many times he went
the journey, and never saw the road!”
The woman kneels upon the floor, with her arms
crossed on the coverlet of the bed, close by him, and
her chin upon them. In this crouching attitude she
watches him. The pipe is falling from his mouth. She
puts it back, and laying her hand upon his chest, moves
him slightly from side to side. Upon that he speaks,
as if she had spoken.
“Yes! I always made the journey first, before the
changes of colors and the great landscapes and glitter-
ing processions began. They couldn’t begin till it was
º: my mind. I had no room till then for anything
else.”
Once more he lapses into silence. Once more she
lays her hand upon his chest, and moves him slightly to
and fro, as a cat might stimulate a half-slain mouse.
Once more he speaks, as if she had spoken.
“What? I told you so. When it comes to be real at
last, it is so short that it seems unreal for the first time.
Hark!”
“Yes, deary. I’m listening.”
‘‘Time and place are both at hand.”
He is on his feet, Speaking in a whisper, and as if in
the dark.
‘‘Time, place, and fellow-traveller,” she suggests,
adopting his tone, and holding him softly by the arm.
“How could the time be at hand unless the fellow-
traveller was? Hush! The journey’s made. It’s over.”
“SO SO.On?”
“That’s what I said to you. So soon. Wait a little.
EDWIN T)ROOD. 247
This is a vision. I shall sleep it off. It has been too
short and easy. I must have a better vision than this;
this is the poorest of all. No struggle, no consciousness
of peril, no entreaty—and yet I never saw that before.”
With a Start.
“Saw what, deary?”
“Look at it! Look what a poor, mean, miserable thing
it is! That must be real. It’s Over.”
He has accompanied this incoherence with some wild
unmeaning gestures; but they trail off into the pro-
gressive inaction of stupor, and he lies a log upon the bed.
The woman, however, is still inquisitive. With a
Tepetition of her cat-like action she slightly stirs his
body again, and listens; stirs again, and listens; whis-
pers to it, and listens. Finding it past all rousing for
the time, she slowly gets upon her feet, with an air of
disappointment, and flicks the face with the back of her
hand in turning from it.
But she goes no further away from it than the chair
upon the hearth. She sits in it, with an elbow on one
of its arms, and her chin upon her hand, intent upon
him. “I heard ye say once,” she croaks under her
breath, “I heard ye say once, when I was lying where
you’re lying, and you were making your speculations
upon me, ‘Unintelligible!” I heard you say so, of two
more than me. But don’t ye be too sure always; don’t
ye be too sure, beauty!”
. Unwinking, cat-like, and intent, she presently adds:
“Not so potent as it once was? Ah! Perhaps not at
first. You may be more right there. Practice makes
perfect. I may have learned the secret how to make
ye talk, deary.” -
He talks no more, whether or no. Twitching in an
ugly way from time to time, both as to his face and
limbs, he lies heavy and silent. The wretched candle
burns down; the woman takes its expiring end between
her fingers, lights another at it, crams the guttering
frying morsel deep into the candlestick, and rams it
home with the new candle, as if she were loading some
ill-savored and unseemly weapon of witchcraft; the
new candle in its turn burns down; and still he lies in-
sensible. At length what remains of the last candle is
blown out, and daylight looks into the room.
It has not looked very long, when he sits up, chilled
248 - EDWIN DROOD.
and shaking, slowly recovers consciousness of where
he is, and makes himself ready to depart. The woman
receives what he pays her with a grateful “Bless ye,
bless ye, deary!” and seems, tired out, to begin making
herself ready for sleep as he leaves the room.
But seeming may be false or true. It is false in this
case; for, the moment the stairs have ceased to creak
under his tread, she glides after him, muttering em-
phatically: “I’ll not miss ye twice!”
There is no egress from the court but by its entrange.
With a weird peep from the doorway, slie watches for
his looking back. He does not look back before disap-
pearing, with a wavering step. , She follows him, peeps
from the court, sees him still faltering on without look-
ing back, and holds him in view.
|He repairs to the back of Aldersgate Street, where a
door immediately opens to his knocking. She crouches
in another doorway, watching that One, and easily com-
prehending that he puts up temporarily at that house.
Her patience is unexhausted by hours. For sustenance
she can, and does, buy bread within a hundred yards,
and milk as it is carried past her. *
He comes forth again at noon, having changed his
dress, but carrying nothing in his hand, and having
nothing carried for him. He is not going back into the
country, therefore, just yet. She follows him a little
way, hesitates, instantaneously turns confidently, and
goes straight into the house he has quitted.
“Is the gentleman from Cloisterham indoors?”
“Just gone out.”
“ Unlucky. When does the gentleman return to
Cloisterham P.” º
“At six this evening.”
“Bless ye and thank ye. May the Lord prosper a
business where a civil question, even from a poor soul,
is so civilly answered!” -
“I’ll not miss ye twice!” repeats the poor soul in the
street, and not so civilly. “I lost ye last, where that
Omnibus you got into nigh your journey’s end plied
betwixt the station and the place. I wasn’t so much as
certain that you even went right on to the place. Now I
know ye did. My gentleman from Cloisterham, I’ll be
there before ye, and bide your coming. I’ve swore my
oath that I’ll not miss ye twice!”
EDWIN DROOD. J 249
Accordingly, that same evening the poor soul stands
in Cloisterham High Street, looking at the many quaint
gables of the Nuns' House, and getting through the
time as she best can until nine o’clock; at which hour
she has good reason to suppose that the arriving omni-
bus passengers may have some interest for her. The
friendly darkness, at that hour, renders it easy for her
to ascertain whether this be so or not; and it is so, for
the passenger not to be missed twice arrives among the
rest.
“Now let me see what becomes of you. Go on!”
An observation addressed to the air. And yet it might
be addressed to the passenger, so compliantly does he
go on along the High Street until he comes to an arched
gateway, at which he unexpectedly vanishes. The poor
Soul quickens her pace; is swift, and close upon him
‘entering under the gateway; but only sees a postern
staircase on One side of it, and on the other side an
ancient vaulted room, in which a large-headed, grey-
haired gentleman is writing, under the odd circum-
stances of sitting open to the thoroughfare and eyeing
all who pass, as if he were toll-taker of the gateway:
, though the way is free.
“Halloa!” he cries in a low voice, seeing her brought
to a standstill: “who are you looking for?’’
“There was a gentleman passed in here this minute,
Sir.”
“Of course there was. What do you want with him?”
“Where do he live, deary?”
“Live? Up that staircase.”
“Bless ye! Whisper. What's his name, deary?”
“Surname Jasper, Christian name John. Mr. John
Jasper.”
“Has he a calling, good gentleman?”
“Calling? Yes. Sings in the choir.”
“In the spire?”
“Choir.”
“What’s that P*
“Mr. Datchery rises from his papers, and comes to
his doorstep. “Do you know what a cathedral is?” he
asks, jocosely.
The woman mods.
** What is it?”
She looks puzzled, casting about in her mind to find a
250 EDWIN DROOD.
definition, when it occurs to her that it is easier to point
out the substantial object itself, massive against the
dark-blue sky and the early stars.
‘‘That’s the answer. G.O in there at seven to-morrow
morning, and you may see Mr. John Jasper, and hear
him too.”
“Thank ye! Thank ye!” -
The burst of triumph in which she thanks him does
not escape the notice of the single buffer of an easy
temper living idly on his means. He glances at her;
clasps his hands behind him, as the wont of such buf-
fers is; and lounges along the echoing Precincts at her
side.
“Or,” he suggests, with a backward hitch of his head,
“you can go up at once to Mr. Jasper's rooms there.”
The woman eyes him with a cunning Smile, and
shakes her head. - º:
“O! you don’t want to speak to him?”
She repeats her dumb reply, and forms with her lips
a soundless “ No.”
“You can admire him at a distance three times a day,
whenever you like. It's a long way to come for that,
though.”
The woman looks up quickly. If Mr. Datchery thinks
she is to be so induced to declare where she comes from,
he is of a much easier temper than she is. But she acquits
him of such an artful thought, as he lounges along, like
the Čhartered bore of the city, with his uncovered grey
hair blowing about, and his purposeless hands rattling
the loose money in the pockets of his trousers.
The chink of the money has an attraction for her
greedy ears. “Wouldn’t you help me to pay for my
traveller's lodging, dear gentleman, and to pay my way
along? I am a poor soul, I am indeed, and troubled
With a grievous cough.”
“You know the travellers’ lodging, I perceive, and
are making directly for it,” is Mr. Datchery’s bland
comment, still rattling his loose money. “Been here
often, my good woman?”
‘‘ Once in all my life.”
Q & Ay, ay? 33 *
They have arrived at the entrance to the Monks’ Vine-
yard. An appropriate remembrance, presenting an
exemplary model for imitation, is revived in the woman’s
EDWIN DROOD. 251
mind by the sight of the place. She stops at the gate,
and says energetically:
“By this token, though you mayn’t believe it, That a
young gentleman gave me three and sixpence as I was
coughing my breath away on this very grass. ... I asked
him for three and sixpence, and he gave it me.”
“Wasn’t it a little cool to name your Sum?” hints Mr.
Datchery, still rattling. “Isn't it customary to leave
the amount open? Mightn’t it have had the appearance,
to the young gentleman—only the appearance—that he
was rather dictated to?”
“Look’ee here, deary,” she replies, in a confidential
and persuasive tone, “I wanted the money to lay it Out
on a medicine as does me good, and as I deal in. I told
the young gentleman so, and he gave it me, and I laid
it out honest to the last brass farden. I want to lay Out
the same sum in the same way now; and if you’ll give
it me, I’ll lay it out honest to the last brass farden again,
upon my soul?”
“What’s the medicine?”
“I’ll be honest with you beforehand, as well as after.
It’s opium.”
Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of countenance,
gives her a sudden look.
“It’s opium, deary. Neither more nor less. And it’s
like a human creetur so far, that you always hear what
can be said against it, but seldom what can be said in
its praise.” s
Mr. Datchery begins very slowly to count out the sum
demanded of him. Greedily watching his hands, she
continues to hold forth on the great example set him.
“It was last Christmas Eve, just arter dark, the once
that I was here afore, when the young gentleman gave
me the three and six.”
Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has
counted wrong, shakes his money together, and begins
agall).
“And the young gentleman's name,” she adds, “ was
Edwin.” -
Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to pick it up,
and reddens with the exertion as he asks:
“How do you know the young gentleman’s name?”
“I asked him for it, and he told it me. I only asked
him the two questions, what was his Chris'en name, and
252 EDWIN DROOD.
whether he’d a sweetheart? And ho answered, Edwin,
and he hadn't.” -
Mr. Datchery pauses with the selected coins in his
hand, rather as if he were falling into a brown study of
their value, and couldn’t bear to part with them. The
woman looks at him distrustfully, and with her anger
brewing for the event of his thinking better of the gift;
but he bestows it on her as if he were abstracting his
mind from the sacrifice, and with many servile thanks
she goes her way. -
John Jasper's lamp is kindled, and his Lighthouse is
shining when Mr. Datchery returns alone towards it.
As mariners On a dangerous voyage, approaching an
iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the warm-
ing light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be
reached, so Mr. Datchery’s wistful gaze is directed to
this beacon, and beyond.
His Object in now revisiting his lodging is merely to
put on the hat which seems so superfluous an article in
his wardrobe. It is half-past ten by the Cathedral clock
when he walks out into the Precincts again; he lingers
and looks about him, as though, the enchanted hour
when Mr. Durdles may be stoned home having struck,
he had some expectation of seeing the Imp who is ap-
pointed to the mission of stoning him.
In effect, that Power of Evil is abroad. Having noth-
ing living to stone at the moment, he is discovered by
Mr. Datchery in the unholy office of stoning the dead,
through the railings of the churchyard. The Imp finds
this a relishing and piquing pursuit; firstly, because their
resting-place is announced to be sacred; and secondly,
because the tall headstones are sufficiently like them-
selves, on their beat in the dark, to justify the delicious
fancy that they are hurt when hit.
Mr. Datchery hails him with: “Halloa, Winks!”
He acknowledges the hail with: “Halloa, Dick!” Their
acquaintance seemingly having been established on a
familiar footing. -
“But, Isay,” he remonstrates, “don’t yer go a-making
my name public. I never means to plead to no name,
mind yer. When they says to me in the Lock-up, a-
going to put me down in the book, ‘What’s your name?’
I says to them, “Find out.” Likeways when they says,
‘What's your religion?' I says, “Find out.’”
EDWIN DROOD. 253
Which, it may be observed in passing, it would be
immensely difficult for the State, however statistical,
to do.
“Asides which,” adds the boy, “there ain’t no family
of Winkses.”
“I think there must be.”
“Yer lie, there ain’t. The travellers give me the name
on account of my getting no settled sleep and being
knocked up all night; whereby I gets One eye roused
open afore I’ve shut the other. That's what Winks
means. Deputy’s the nighest name to indict me by: but
yer wouldn’t catch me pleading to that, neither.”
“Deputy be it always, then. We two are good friends:
eh, Deputy?”
“Jolly good.” -
“I forgave you the debt you owed me when we first
became acquainted, and many of my sixpences have
come your way since; eh, Deputy P”
“Ah! And what’s more, yer ain’t no friend o' Jasper's.
What did he go a-histing me off my legs for?”
“What indeed! But never mind him now. A shilling
of mine is going your way to-night, Deputy. You have
just taken in a lodger I have been speaking to; an infirm
woman with a cough.”
“Puffer,” assents Deputy, with a shrewd leer of rec-
ognition, and Smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head
very much on One side and his eyes very much out of
their places: “Hopeum Puffer.”
“What is her name?”
“’Er Royal Highness the Princess Puffer.”
l & 4 She has some other name than that; where does she
ive? &
“ Up in London. Among the Jacks.”
“The Sailors?”
“I said so; Jacks; and Chayner men; and hother
Knifers.”
“I should like to know, through you, exactly where
she lives.”
“All right. Give us 'old.”
A shilling passes; and, in that spirit of confidence
which should pervade all business transactions between
ºpal of honor, this piece of business is considered
O]] G. º
“But here 's a lark!” cries Deputy. “Where did yer
254 EDWIN DROOD.
think "Er Royal Highness is a-goin’ to to-morrow morn-
ing? Blest if she ain’t a-goin’ to the KIN-FREE-DER-EL!”
He greatly prolongs the word in his ecstasy, and smites
his leg, and doubles himself up in a fit of shrill laugh-
ter.
“How do you know that, Deputy?”
“Cos she told me so just now. She said she must be
hup and hout o' purpose. She ses, ‘Deputy, Imust 'ave
a early wash, and make myself as swell as I can, for I’m
a-goin’ to take a turn at the KIN-FREE-DER-EL!’” He
separates the syllables with his former zest, and, not
finding his sense of the ludicrous sufficiently relieved by
stamping about on the pavement, breaks into a slow
and stately dance, perhaps Supposed to be performed by
the Dean.
Mr. Datchery receives the communication with a
well-Satisfied though a pondering face, and breaks up the
Conference, Returning to his quaint lodging, and sitting
long Over the Supper of bread-and-cheese and salad and
ale which Mrs. Tope has left prepared for him, he still
sits when his Supper is finished. At length he rises,
throws. Open the door of a corner cupboard, and refers
to a few uncouth chalked strokes on its inner side.
“I like,” says Mr. Datchery, “the old tavern way of
keeping scores. Illegible except to the scorer. The
scorer not committed, the scorer debited with what is
against him. Hum; haſ A very Small score this; a very
poor score!”
He sighs over the contemplation of its poverty, takes
a bit of chalk from one of the cupboard shelves, and
pauses with it in his hand, uncertain what addition to
make to the account.
“I think a moderate stroke,” he concludes, “is all I
am justified in scoring up; ” so, suits the action to the
word, closes the cupboard, and goes to bed.
A brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiq-
uities and ruins are surpassingky beautiful, with a
lusty ivy gleaming in the Sun, and the rich trees waving
in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from moving
boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods, and
fields—or, rather, from the One great garden of the
whole cultivated island in its yielding time—penetrate
into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odor, and preach
the Resurrection and the Life. The cold stone tombs of
** EDWIN DROOD. ſº 255
centuries ago grow warm; and flecks of brightness dart
into the sternest marble corners of the building, flutter-
ing there like wings.
Comes Mr. Tope with his large keys, and yawningly
unlocks and sets open. Come Mrs. Tope and attendant
Sweeping sprites. Come, in due time, organist and bel-
lows-boy, peeping down from the red curtains in the
loft, fearlessly flapping dust from books up at that re-
Imote elevation, and whisking it from stops and pedals.
Come sundry rooks, from various quarters of the sky,
back to the great tower; who may be presumed to enjoy
vibration, and to know that bell and organ are going to
give it them. Come a very Small and straggling con-
gregation indeed: chiefly from Minor Canon Corner and
the Precincts. Come Mr. Crisparkle, fresh and bright;
and his ministering brethren, not quite so fresh and
bright. Come the Choir in a hurry (always in a hurry,
and struggling into their nightgowns at the last mo-
ment, like children shirking bed), and comes John
Jasper leading their line. Last of all comes Mr. Dat-
chery into a stall, one of a choice empty collection very
much at his service, and glancing about him for Her
Royal Highness the Princess Puffer.
The service is pretty well advanced before Mr. Dat-
chery can discern Her Royal Highness. But by that
time he has made her out, in the shade. She is behind a
pillar, carefully withdrawn from the Choir-master’s
view, but regards him with the closest attention. All
unconscious of her presence, he chants and sings. Shie
grins when he is most musically fervid, and—yes, Mr.
T)atchery sees her do it!—shakes her fist at him behind
the pillar’s friendly shelter.
Mr. Datchery looks again, to convince himself. Yes,
again! As ugly and withered as one of the fantastic
carvings on the under brackets of the stall seats, as
malignant as the Evil One, as hard as the big brass
eagle holding the Sacred books upon his wings (and,
according to the sculptor's representation of his fero-
cious attributes, not at all converted by them), she hugs
herself in her lean arms, and then shakes both fists at
the leader of the Choir.
And at that moment, outside the grated door of the
Choir, having eluded the vigilance of Mr. Tope by shifty
resources in which he is an adept, Deputy peeps, sharp-
256 TEDWIN DROOD.
eyed, through the bars, and stares astounded from th
threatener to the threatened. ;
The service comes to an end, and the servitors dis-
perse to breakfast. . . Mr. Tatchery accosts his last new
acquaintance outside, whens the Choir (as much in a
hurry to get their bedgowns off, as they were but now
to get them on) have scuffled away. -
} “Well, mistress. Good-morning. You have seen
him?” -
“I’ve seen him, deary; I’ve seen him!”
“And you know him?”
“Know him! Better far than all the Reverend Par-
sons put together know him.”
Mrs. Tope’s care has spread a very neat, clean break-
fast ready for her lodger. Before sitting down to it, he
opens his corner-cupboard door; takes his bit of chalk
from its shelf; adds one thick line to the score, extend-
ing from the top of the cupboard door to the bottom;
and then falls to with an appetite.
*
THE PORTIONS OF
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK
NOT INCLUDED IN THE
(OiD CURIOSITY SHOP AND BARNABY RUDGE.
17
P. R. E. F. A. C. E.
WHEN the author commenced this Work, he proposed
to himself three objects.
First. To establish a periodical, which should enable
him to present, under one general head, and not as
separate and distinct publications, certain fictions which
he had it in contemplation to write.
Secondly. To produce these Tales in weekly num-
bers; hoping that to shorten the intervals of com-
munication between himself and his readers would
be to knit more closely the pleasant relations they had
held for Forty Months.
Thirdly. In the execution of this weekly task, to
have as much regard as its exigencies would permit,
to each story as a whole, and to the possibility of its
publication at some distant day, apart from the ma-
chinery in which it had its origin.
The characters of Master Humphrey and his three
friends, and the little fancy of the clock, were the
result of these considerations. When he sought to in-
terest his readers in those who talked, and read, and
listened, he revived Mr. Pickwick and his humble
friends, not with any intention of reopening an ex-
hausted and abandoned mine, but to connect them,
in the thoughts of those whose favorites they had
been, with the tranquil enjoyments of Master Humphrey.
It was never the author’s intention to make the
Members of Master Humphrey’s Clock active agents
200 PREFACE.
in the stories they are supposed to relate. Having .
brought himself, in the commencement of his under-
taking, to feel an interest in these quiet creatures,
and to imagine them in their old chamber of meet-
ing, eager listeners to all he had to tell, the author
hoped—as authors will—to succeed in awakening some
of his own emotions in the bosoms of his readers.
Imagining Master Humphrey in his chimney-corner,
resuming night after night the narrative, say, of the
Old Curiosity Shop, picturing to himself the various
sensations of his hearers, thinking how Jack Red-
burn might incline to poor Kit, and perhaps lean too
favorably even towards the lighter vices of Mr.
Richard Swiveller,-how the deaf gentleman would
have his favorite, and Mr. Miles his, -and how all
these gentle spirits would trace some faint reflection
of their past lives in the varying current of the tale,
—he has insensibly fallen into the belief that they are
present to his readers as they are to him, and has for-
gotten that, like one whose vision is disordered, he may
be conjuring up bright figures where there is nothing
but empty space.
The short papers which are to be found at the begin-
ning of this volume were indispensable to the form of
publication and the limited extent of each number, as
no story of lengthened interest could be begun until
“The Clock” was wound up and fairly going.
The author would fain hope that there are not many
who would disturb Master Humphrey and his friends in
their seclusion; who would have them forego their pres-
ent enjoyments to exchange those confidences with
each other, the absence of which is the foundation of
their mutual trust. For when their occupation is gone,
when their tales are ended, and but their personal his-
tories remain, the chimney-corner will be growing cold,
and the clock will be about to stop forever.
PREFACE. 261
One other word in his own person, and he returns to
the more grateful task of speaking for those imaginary
people whose little world lies within these pages.
It may be some consolation to the well-disposed ladies
or gentlemen who, in the interval between the conclu-
sion of his last work and the commencement of this,
Originated a report that he had gone raving mad, to
know that it spread as rapidly as could be desired, and
was made the subject of considerable dispute; not as
regarded the fact, for that was as thoroughly established
as the duel between Sir Peter Teazle and Charles Sur-
face in the School for Scandal; but with reference to
the unfortunate lunatic's place of confinement—one
party insisting positively on Bedlam, another inclining
favorably towards St. Luke's, and a third swearing
strongly by the asylum at Hanwell; while each backed
its case by circumstantial evidence of the same excel-
lent nature as that brought to bear by Sir Benjamin
Backbite on the pistol-shot which struck against the
little bronze bust of Shakespeare over the fireplace,
grazed out of the window at a right angle, and wounded
the postman, who was coming to the door with a double
letter from Northamptonshire.
It will be a great affliction to these ladies and gentle-
men to learn—and he is so unwilling to give pain, that
he would not whisper the circumstance on any account,
did he not feel in a manner bound to do so, in gratitude
to those among his friends who were at the trouble of
being angry with the absurdity—that their invention
made the author's home unusually merry, and gave rise
to an extraordinary number of jests, of which he will
only add, in the words of the good Vicar of Wakefield:
“I cannot say whether we had more wit among us than
usual; but I am sure we had more laughing.”
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
I.
MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE IN
THE CHIMNEY_CORNER.
THE reader must not expect to know where I live.
At present, it is true, my abode may be a question of
little or no import to anybody; but if I should carry my
readers with me, as I hope to do, and there should spring
up between them and me feelings of homely affection
and regard attaching something of interest to matters
ever so slightly connected with my fortunes or my specu-
lations, even my place of residence might one day have
a kind of charm for them. Bearing this possible con-
tingency in mind, I wish them to understand, in the
Outset, that they must never expect to know it.
I am not a churlish old man. Friendless I can never
be, for all mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill
terms with no one member of my great family. But for
many years I have led a lonely, solitary life;—what
Wound I sought to heal, what sorrow to forget, originally,
matters not now; it is sufficient that retirement has be-
come a habit with me, and that I am unwilling to break
the Spell which for so long a time has shed its quiet in-
fluence upon my home and heart.
I live in a venerable suburb of London, in an old house
which in bygone days was a famous resort for merry
roysterers and peerless ladies, long since departed. It
is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full
of echoes that sometimes I am tempted to believe that
faint responses to the noises of old times linger there
yet, and that these ghosts of Sound haunt my footsteps
264 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
as I pace it up and down. I am the more confirmed in
this belief, because of late years, the echoes that attend
my walks have been less loud and marked than they
were wont to be; and it is pleasanter to imagine in them
the rustling of silk brocade, and the light step of some
lovely girl, than to recognise in their altered note the
failing tread of an old man. *
Those who like to read of brilliant rooms and gorgeous
furniture would derive but little pleasure from a minute
description of my simple dwelling. It is dear to me for
the same reason that they would hold it in slight regard.
Its worm-eaten doors, and low ceilings crossed by
clumsy beams; its walls of wainscot, dark stairs, and
gaping closets; its Small chambers, communicating with
each other by winding passages or narrow steps; its
many nooks, scarce larger than its corner-cupboards;
its very dust and dulness, are all dear to me. The moth
and spider are my constant tenants; for in my house the
One basks in his long sleep, and the other plies his busy
loom secure and undisturbed. I have a pleasure in
thinking on a summer’s day how many butterflies have
sprung for the first time into light and sunshine from
some dark corner of these old walls.
When I first came to live here, which was many years
ago, the neighbors were curious to know who I was, and
whence I came, and why I lived so much alone. As time
Went On, and they still remained unsatisfied on these
points, I became the centre of a popular ferment, ex-
tending for half a mile round, and in one direction for a
full mile. Various rumors were circulated to my preju-
dice. I was a spy, an infidel, a conjurer, a kidnapper of
children, a refugee, a priest, a monster. Mothers caught
up their infants and ran into their houses as I passed;
men eyed me spitefully, and muttered threats and
Curses. I was the object of suspicion and distrust—ay,
of downright hatred too.
But when in course of time they found I did no harm,
but, on the contrary, inclined towards them despite
their unjust usage, they began to relent. I found my
footsteps no longer dogged, as they had often been be-
fore, and observed that the women and children no
longer retreated, but would stand and gaze at me as I
passed their doors. I took this for a good omen, and
Waited patiently for better times. By degrees I began to
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 265
make friends among these humble folks; and though
they were yet shy of speaking, would give them “good-
day,” and so pass On. In a little time, those whom I
had thus accosted would make a point of coming to
their doors and windows at the usual hour, and nod or
courtesy to me; children, too, came timidly within my
reach, and ran away quite scared when I patted their
heads and bade them be good at school. These little
people soon grew more familiar. From exchanging
mere words of course with my older neighbors, I gradu-
ally became their friend and adviser, the depository of
their cares and sorrows, and sometimes, it may be, the
reliever, in my small way, of their distresses. And
now I never walk abroad but pleasant recognitions and
smiling faces wait on Master Humphrey.
It was a whim of mine, perhaps as a whet to the curi-
Osity of•my neighbors, and a kind of retaliation upon
them for their suspicions,—it was, I say, a whim of
mine, when I first took up my abode in this place, to
acknowledge no other name than Humphrey. With
my detractors, I was Ugly Humphrey. When I began
to convert them into friends, I was Mr. Humphrey and
Old Mr. Humphrey. At length. I settled down into
plain Master Humphrey, which was understood to be
the title most pleasant to my ear; and so completely a
matter of course has it become, that sometimes when I
am taking my morning walk in my little court-yard,
I overhear my barber—who has a profound respect for
me, and would not, I am sure, abridge my honors for
the world—holding forth on the other side of the wall,
touching the state of “Master Humphrey’s” health, and
communicating to some friend the substance of the con-
versation that he and Master Humphrey have had to-
gether in the course of the shaving which he has just
concluded.
That I may not make acquaintance with my readers
under false pretences, or give them cause to complain
hereafter that I have withheld any matter which it was
essential for them to have learnt at first, I wish them to
know—and I smile sorrowfully to think that the time
has been when the confession would have given me pain
—that I am a misshapen, deformed old man.
I have never been made a misanthrope by this cause.
I have never been stung by any insult, nor wounded by
266 MASTER HUMPHREY's CL6CK.
any jest upon my crooked figure. As a child I was mel-
ancholy and timid, but that was because the gentle con-
sideration paid to my misfortune sunk deep into my
spirit and made me sad, even in those early days. I
was but a very young creature when my poor mother
died, and yet I remember that often when I hung
around her neck, and oftener still when I played about
the room before her, she would catch me to her bosom,
and, bursting into tears, would soothe me with every
term of fondness and affection. God knows I was a
happy child at those times,—happy to nestle in her
breast,-happy to weep when she did, happy in not
knowing why. o
These occasions are so strongly impressed upon my
memory that they seem to have occupied whole years.
I had numbered very, very few when they ceased for
ever, but before then their meaning had been revealed
to me.
I do not know whether all children are imbued with
a quick perception of childish grace and beauty, and a
strong love for it, but I was. I had no thought that I
remember, either that I possessed it myself or that I
lacked it, but I admired it with an intensity that I can-
not describe. A little knot of playmates—they must
have been beautiful, for I see them now—were clustered
one day round my mother's knee in eager admiration of
some picture representing a group of infant angels,
which she held in her hand. Whose the picture was,
whether it was familiar to me or otherwise, or how all
the children came to be there, I forget; I have some dim
thought it was my birthday, but the beginning of my
Fººtiºn is that we were altogether in a garden, and
it was summer weather,-I am sure of that, for one of
the little girls had roses in her sash. There were many
lovely angels in this picture, and I remember the fancy
coming upon me to point out which of them represented
each child there, and that when I had gone through my
companions I stopped and hesitated, wondering which
was most like me. I remember the children looking at
each other, and my turning red and hot, and their
crowding round to kiss me, saying that they loved me
all the same; and then, and when the old sorrow came
into my dear mother’s mild and tender look, the truth
broke upon me for the first time, and I knew, while
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 267
watching my awkward and ungainly Sports, how keenly
she had felt for her poor Crippled boy.
I used frequently to dream of it afterwards, and now
my heart aches for that child as if I had never been he,
when I think how often he awoke from some fairy
change to his own old form, and sobbed himself to sleep
8,9 &lll.
ºil, well,—all these Sorrows are past. My glancing
at them may not be without its use, for it may help in
some measure to explain why I have all my life been
attached to the inanimate objects that people my cham-
ber, and how I have come to look upon them rather in
the light of old and constant friends than as mere
ºrs and tables which a little money could replace at
WI11.
Chief and first among all these is my Clock,-my old,
cheerful, companionable Clock. How can I ever con-
vey to others an idea of the comfort and consolation
that this old Clock has been for years to me!
It is associated with my earliest recollections. It
stood upon the staircase at home (I call it home still
mechanically), nigh sixty years ago. I like it for that;
but it is not on that account, nor because it is a quaint
old thing in a huge Oaken case curiously and richly
carved, that I prize it as I do. I incline to it as if it
were alive, and could understand and give me back" he
love I bear it.
And what other thing that has not life could cheer
me as it does? what other thing that has not life (I will
not say how few things that have) could have proved
the same patient, true, untiring friend? How often
have I sat in the long winter evenings feeling such
society in its cricket-voice that, raising my eyes from
my book and looking gratefully towards it, the face
reddened by the glow of the shining fire has seemed to
relax from its staid expression and to regard me kindly
how often in the summer twilight, when my thoughts
have wandered back to a melancholy past, have its
regular whisperings recalled them to the calm and
peaceful present! how often in the dead tranquillity of
night has its bell broken the oppressive silence, and
seemed to give me assurance that the old clock was
still a faithful watcher at my chamber-door! My easy-
chair, my desk, my ancient furnituro, my very books,
268 MASTER HUMPHREY's CLOCK.
I can scarcely bring myself to love even these last like
my old clock!
It stands in a snug corner, midway between the fire-
side and a low arched door leading to my bedroom. Its
fame is diffused so extensively throughout the neigh-
borhood that I have often the satisfaction of hearing
the publican, or the baker, and sometimes even the
parish-clerk, petitioning my housekeeper (of whom I
shall have much to say by and by) to inform him the
exact time by Master Humphrey’s clock. My barber,
to whom I have referred, would sooner believe it than
the sun. Nor are these its only distinctions. It has
acquired, I am happy to say, another, inseparably
connecting it not only with my enjoyments and reflec-
tions, but with those of other men; as I shall now
relate. \
I lived alone here for a long time without any friend
or acquaintance. In the course of my wanderings by
night and day, at all hours and seasons, in city streets
and quiet country parts, I came to be familiar with cer-
tain faces, and to take it to heart as quite a heavy dis-
appointment if they failed to present themselves each
at its accustomed spot. But these were the only friends
I knew, and beyond them. I had none.
It happened, however, when I had gone on thus for a
longtime, that I formed an acquaintance with a deaf gen-
tleman, which ripened into intimacy and close compan-
ionship. To this hour, I am ignorant of his name. It is
his humor to conceal it, or he has a reason and purpose
for so doing. In either case, I feel that he has a right
to require a return of the trust he has reposed; and as
he has never sought to discover my secret, I have never
Sought to penetrate his. There may have been some-
thing in this tacit confidence in each other flattering
and pleasant to us both, and it may have imparted in
the beginning an additiontal zest, perhaps, to our
friendship. Be this as it may, we have grown to be
like brothers, and still I only know him as the deaf
gentleman.
I have said that retirement has become a habit with
Jme. When I add that the deaf gentleman and I have
two friends, I communicate nothing which is inconsist-
ent with that declaration. I spend many hours of
every day in solitude and study, have no friends or
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 269
change of friends but these, only see them at stated
periods, and am supposed to be of a retired spirit by the
very nature and object of our association. *
We are men of secluded habits, with something of a
cloud upon Our early fortunes, whose enthusiasm,
nevertheless, has not cooled with age, whose spirit of
romance is not yet quenched, who are content to ram-
ble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than
ever awaken again to its harsh realties. We are
alchemists who would extract the essence of perpetual
youth from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many
light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, and
discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in
the commonest and least-regarded matter that passes
through our crucible. Spirits of past times, creatures
of imagination, and people of to-day are alike the
Objects of our seeking, and unlike the objects of search
with most philosophers, we can insure their coming at
Our command.
The deaf gentleman and I first began to beguile our
days with these fancies, and, Our nights in communicat-
ing them to each other. We are now four. But in my
room there are six old chairs, and we have decided that
the two empty seats shall always be placed at our table
when we meet, to remind us that we may yet increase
Our company by that number, if we should find two
men to our mind. When one among us dies, his chair
will always be set in its usual place, but never occupied
again; and I have caused my will to be so drawn out,
that when we are all dead the house shall be shut up,
and the vacant chairs still left in their accustomed
places. It is pleasant to think that even then our
shades may, perhaps, assemble together as of yore we
did, and join in ghostly converse.
One night in every week, as the clock strikes ten, we
meet. At the second stroke of two, I am alone.
And now shall I tell how that my old servant, besides
giving us note of time, and ticking cheerful encourage-
ment of our proceedings, lends its name to Our Society,
which for its punctuality and my love is christened
“Master Humphrey’s Clock?” Now shall I tell how
that in the bottom of the old dark closet, where the
steady pendulum throbs and beats with healthy action,
though the pulse of him who made it stood still long
270 MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
ago, and never moved again? There are piles of dusty
papers constantly placed there by our hands, that we
may link our enjoyments with my old friend, and draw
means to beguile time from the heart of time itself.
Shall I, or can I, tell with what a secret pride I open
this repository when we meet at night, and still find
new store of pleasure in my dear old Clock?
Friend and companion of my solitude! mine is not a
selfish love; I would not keep your merits to myself,
but disperse something of pleasant association with
your image through the whole wide world; I would
have men couple with your name cheerful and healthy
thoughts; I would have them believe that you keep
true and honest time; and how it would gladden me to
know that they recognised some hearty English work
in Master Humphrey’s Clock!
*
THE CLOCK-CASE.
IT is my intention constantly to address my readers
from the chimney-corner, and I would fain Koº. that
such accounts as I shall give them of our histories and
proceedings, Our quiet speculations or more busy adven-
tures, will never be unwelcome. Lest, however, I
should grow prolix in the outset by lingering too long
upon our little association, confounding the enthusiasm
with which I regard this chief happiness of my life with
that minor degree of interest which those to whom I
address myself may be supposed to feel for it, I have
deemed it expedient to break off as they have seen.
But, still clinging to my old friend, and naturally de-
sirous that all its merits should be known, I am tempted
to open (somewhat irregularly and against our laws, I
must admit) the clock-case. The first roll of paper on
which I lay my hand is in the writing of the deaf gen-
tleman. I shall have to speak of him in my next
paper; and how can I better approach that welcome
task than by prefacing it with a production of his own
pen, consigned to the safe keeping of my honest Clock
by his own hand?
The manuscript runs thus:
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 27 |
INTRODUCTION TO THE GIANT CHRONICLES.
Once upon a time, that is to say, in this our time,
the exact year, month, and day are of no matter, there
dwelt in the city of London a substantial citizen, who
united in his single person the dignities of wholesale
fruiterer, alderman, common-councilman, and member
of the worshipful Company of Patten-makers; who had
Superadded to these extraordinary distinctions the im-
portant post and title of Sheriff, and who at length, and
to crown all, stood next in rotation for the high and
honorable office of Lord Mayor.
He was a very substantial citizen indeed. His face
was like the full moon in a fog, with two little holes
punched out for his eyes, a very ripe pear stuck on for
his nose, and a wide gash to serve for a mouth. The
girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered in his
tailor's shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed
like a heavy Snorer, and his voice in speaking came
thickly forth, as if it were oppressed and stified by
feather-beds. He trod the ground like an elephant, and
eat and drank like—like nothing but an alderman, as he
W8,S.
This worthy citizen had risen to his great eminence
from small beginnings. He had once been a very lean,
weazen little boy, never dreaming of carrying such a
weight of flesh upola his bones or of money in his
pockets, and glad enough to take his dinner at a baker’s
door, and his tea at a pump. But he had long ago for-
gotten all this, as it was proper that a wholesale
fruiterer, alderman, common-councilman, member of
the worshipful Company of Patten-makers, past sheriff,
and, above all, a Lord Mayor that was to be, should;
and he never forgot it more completely in all his life
than on the eighth of November in the year of his elec-
tion to the great golden civic chair, which was the day
before his grand dinner at Guildhall. *
It happened that as he sat that evening all alone in
his counting-house, looking over the bill of fare for
next day, and checking off the fat capons in fifties, and
the turtle-soup by the hundred quarts, for his private
amusement, it happened that as he sat alone, occupied
in these pleasant calculations, a Strange man came in
and asked him how he did, adding, “If I am half as
272 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
much changed as you, sir, you have no recollection of
me, I am sure.”
The strange man was not over and above well
dressed, and was very far from being fat or rich-look-
ing in any sense of the word, yet he spoke with a kind
of modest confidence, and assumed an easy, gentle-
manly sort of an air to which nobody but a rich man
can lawfully presume. Besides this, he interrupted the
good citizen just as he had reckoned three hundred and
seventy-two fat capons, and was carrying them. Over to
the next column; and as if that were not aggravation
enough, the learned recorder for the city of London had
only ten minutes previously gone out at that very same
door, and had turned round and said, “Good-night, my
lord.” Yes, he had said “my lord; ”—he, a man of
birth and education, of the Honorable Society of the
Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law, - he who had an
uncle in the House of Commons, and an aunt almost
but not quite in the House of Lords (for she had married
a feeble peer, and made him vote as she liked), he, this
man, this learned recorder, had said “my lord.” “I’ll.
not wait till to-morrow to give you your title, my Lord
Mayor,” says he, with a bow and a smile; “you are
łº Mayor de facto, if not de jure. Good-night, my
Ord! ” e -
The Lord Mayor elect thought of this, and turning to
the stranger, and sternly bidding him “go out of his
private counting-house,” brought forward the three
hundred and seventy-two fat capons, and went on with
his account.
“Do you remember,” said the other, stepping for-
ward, “do you remember little Joe Toddyhigh?”
The port wine fled for a moment from the fruiterer’s
nose as he muttered, “Joe Toddyhigh! What about
Joe Toddyhigh?”
“...I am Joe Toddyhigh,” cried the visitor. “Look at
me, look hard at me, harder, harder. You know me
now? You know little Joe again? What a happiness
to us both to meet the very night before your grandeur!
O! give me your hand, Jack,--both hands,--both, for
the sake of old times.”
“You pinch me, sir. You’re a-hurting of me,” said
the Lord Mayor elect pettishly. “Don’t, suppose any-
body should come, Mr. Toddyhigh, sir.”
5
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 2
7
“Mr. Toddyhigh!” repeated the other ruefully.
“O, don’t bother,” said the Lord Mayor elect, scratch-
ing his head. “Dear me! Why, I thought you was
dead. What a fellow you are!”
Indeed, it was a pretty state of things, and worthy
the tone of vexation and disappointment in which the
Lord Mayor spoke. Joe Toddyhigh had been a poor
boy with him at Hull, and had oftentimes divided his
last penny and parted his last crust to relieve his wants;
for though Joe was a destitute child in those times he
was as faithful and affectionate in his friendship as
ever man of might could be. They parted one day to
seek their fortunes in different directions. Joe went
to sea, and the now wealthy citizen begged his way to
London. They separated with many tears, like foolish
fellows as they were, and agreed to remain fast friends,
and, if they lived, soon to communicate again.
When he was an errand-boy, and even in the early
days of his apprenticeship, the citizen had many a time
trudged to the Post-office to ask if there were any letter
from poor little Joe, and had gone home again with
tears in his eyes when he found no news of his only
friend. The world is a wide place, and it was a long
time before the letter came; when it did, the writer was
forgotten. It turned from white to yellow from lying
in the Post-office with nobody to claim it, and in course
of time was torn up with five hundred others, and sold
for waste-paper. And now at last, and when it might
least have been expected, here was this Joe Toddyhigh
turning up and claiming acquaintance with a great
public character, who on the morrow would be cracking
jokes with the Prime Minister of England, and who
had only, at any time during the next twelve months,
to say the word, and he could shut up Temple Bar, and
make it no thoroughfare for the king himself!
“I am sure I don’t know what to say, Mr. Toddyhigh,”
said the Lord Mayor elect: “I really don’t. It’s very
inconvenient. I’d sooner have given twenty pound,-
it’s very inconvenient, really.”
A thought had come into his mind that perhaps his
old friend might say something passionate which would
give him an excuse for being angry himself. No such
thing. Joe looked at him steadily, but very mildly, and
did not open his lips.
| 8
274 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
“Of course I shall pay you what I owe you,” said the
Lord Mayor elect, fidgeting in his chair. “You lent
me—I think it was a shilling or some small coin—when
we parted company, and that of course I shall pay with
good interest. I can pay my way with any man, and
always have done. If you look into the Mansion House
the day after to-morrow, some time after dusk,+and
ask for my private clerk, you’ll find he has a draft for
you. I haven’t got time to say anything more just now,
unless,”—he hesitated, for, coupled with a strong desire
to glitter for once in all his glory in the eyes of his
former companion was a distrust of his appearance,
which might be more shabby than he could tell by that
feeble light, “unless you’d like to come to the dinner
to-morrow. I don’t mind your having this ticket, if
you like to take it. A great many people would give
their ears for it, I can tell you.”
His old friend took the card without speaking a word,
and instantly departed. His sunburnt face and grey
hair were present to the citizen’s mind for a moment;
but by the time he reached three hundred and eighty-
One fat capons he had quite forgotten him.
Joe Toddyhigh had never been in the capital of
Europe before, and he wandered up and down the
Streets that night amazed at the number of churches
and other public buildings, the splendor of the shops, the
riches that were heaped up on every side, the glare of
light in which they were displayed, and the concourse of
people who hurried to and fro, indifferent, apparently,
to all the wonders that surrounded them. But in all the
long Streets and broad squares, there were none but
Strangers; it was quite a relief to turn down a by-way
and hear his own footsteps on the pavement. He went
home to his inn, thought that London was a dreary,
desolate place, and felt disposed to doubt the existence
of one true-hearted man in the whole worshipful Com-
pany of Patten-makers. Finally, he went to bed, and
dreamed that he and the Lord Mayor elect were boys
agall).
He went next day to the dinner; and when, in a burst
of light and music, and in the midst of splended decora-
tions and surrounded by brilliant company, his former
friend appeared at the head of the Hall, and was hailed
with shouts and cheering, he cheered and shouted with
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 275
the best, and for the moment could have cried. The
next moment he cursed his weakness in behalf of a man
so changed and selfish, and quite heated a jolly-looking
old gentleman opposite for declaring himself in the
pride of his heart a Patten-maker.
As the banquet proceeded, he took more and more to
heart the rich citizen’s unkindness; and that, not from
any envy, but because he felt that a man of his state
and fortune could all the better afford to recognise an
old friend, even if he were poor and obscure. The more
he thought of this, the more lonely and sad he felt.
When the company dispersed and adjourned to the ball-
room, he paced the hall and passages alone, ruminating
in a very melancholy condition upon the disappoint-
ment he had experienced.
It chanced, while he was lounging about in this
moody state, that he stumbled upon a flight of stairs,
dark, steep, and narrow, which he ascended without
any thought about the matter, and so came into a little
music-gallery, empty and deserted. From this elevated
post, which commanded the whole hall, he amused him-
self in looking down upon the attendants who were
clearing away the fragments of the feast very lazily,
and drinking out of all the bottles and glasses with
most commendable perseverance.
His attention gradually relaxed, and he fell fast
asleep.
When he awoke, he thought there must be something
the matter with his eyes; but, rubbing them a little, he
soon found that the moonlight was really streaming
through the east window, that the lamps were all ex-
tinguished, and that he was alone. He listened, but no
distant murmur in the echoing passages, not even the
shutting of a door, broke the deep silence; he groped
his way down the stairs, and found that the door at the
bottom was locked on the other side. He began now to
comprehend that he must have slept a long time, that
he had been overlooked, and was shut up there for the
night.
His first sensation, perhaps, was not altogether a
comfortable one, for it was a dark, chilly, earthy-
Smelling place, and Something too large for a man so
situated to feel at home in. However, when the
momentary consternation of his surprise was over, he
276 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
made light of the accident, and resolved to feel his way
up the stairs again, and make himself as comfortable.
as he could in the gallery until morning. As he turned
to execute this purpose, he heard the clock strike three.
Amy such invasion of a dead stillness as the striking
of distant clocks causes it to appear the more intense
and insupportable when the sound has ceased. He
listened with strained attention in the hope that some
clock, lagging behind its fellows, had yet to strike,
looking all the time into the profound darkness before
him until it seemed to weave itself into a black tissue,
patterned with a hundred reflections of his own eyes.
But the bells had all pealed out their warning for that
once, and the gust of wind that moaned through the
place seemed cold and heavy with their iron breath.
The time and circumstances were favorable to reflec-
tion. He tried to keep his thoughts to the current,
unpleasant though it was, in which they had moved all
day, and to think with what a romantic feeling he had
looked forward to shaking his old friend by the hand
before he died, and what a wide and cruel difference
there was between the meeting they had had, and that
which he had so often and so long anticipated. Still,
he was disordered by waking to such sudden loneliness,
and could not prevent his mind from running upon odd
tales of people of undoulted courage, who, being shut
up by night in vaults or churches, or other dismal
places, had scaled great heights to get out, and fled
from silence as they had never done from danger. This
brought to his mind the moonlight through the window,
and bethinking himself of it, he groped his way back
up the Crooked stairs, but very stealthily, as though
he were fearful of being overheard.
He was very much astonished when he approached
the gallery again to see a light in the building: still
more SO, on advancing hastily and looking round, to
observe no visible source from which it could proceed.
But how much greater yet was his astonishment at
the spectacle which this light revealed.
The statues of the two giants, Gog and Magog, each
above fourteen feet in height, those which succeeded to
still older and more barbarous figures, after the Great
Fire of London, and which stand in the Guildhall to
this day, were endowed with life and motion. These
*
MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK. 27%
guardian genii of the City had quitted their pedestals,
and reclined in easy attitudes in the great stained glass
window. Between them was an ancient cask, which
seemed to be full of wine; for the younger Giant, clap-
ping his huge hand upon it, and throwing up his mighty
leg, burst into an exulting laugh, which reverberated
through the hall like thunder.
Joe Toddyhigh instinctively stooped down, and, more
dead than alive, felt his hair stand on end, his knees
knock together, and a cold damp break out upon his
forehead. But even at that minute curiosity prevailed
over every other feeling and, somewhat reassured by
the good-humor of the Giants and their apparent un-
consciousness of his presence, he crouched in a corner
of the gallery, in as Small a space as he could, and,
peeping between the rails, observed them closely.
It was then that the elder Giant, who had a flowing
grey beard, raised his thoughtful eyes to his compan-
ion’s face, and in a grave and Solemn voice addressed
him thus:
FIRST NIGHT OF THE GIANT CHRONICLES.
Turning towards his companion, the elder Giant ut-
tered these words in a grave, majestic tone:
“Magog, does boisterous mirth beseem the Giant
Warder of this ancient city? Is this becoming demeanor
for a watchful spirit over whose bodiless head so many
years have rolled, so many changes swept like empty
air—in whose impalpable nostrils the scent of blood
and crime, pestilence, cruelty, and horror, has been
familiar as breath to mortals—in whose sight Time has
gathered in the harvest of centuries, and garnered so
many crops of human pride, affections, hopes, and Sor-
rows? Bethink you of our compact. The night wanes;
feasting, revelry, and music have encroached upon Our
usual hours of solitude, and morning will be here apace.
Ere we are stricken mute again, bethink you of our
compact.”
Pronouncing these latter words with more of impa-
tience than quite accorded with his apparent age and
gravity, the Giant raised a long pole (which he still
bears in his hand) and tapped his brother Giant rather
Smartly on the head; indeed, the blow was so smartly
2?'S MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
administered that the latter quickly withdrew his lips
from the cask to which they had been applied, and,
catching up his shield and halberd, assumed an attitude
of defence. His irritation was but momentary, for he
laid these weapons aside as hastily as he had assumed
them, and said, as he did so:
“You know, Gog, old friend, that when we animate
these shapes which the Londoners of old assigned (and
not unworthily) to the guardian genii of their city, we
are susceptible of some of the sensations which belong
to human kind. Thus when I taste wine, I feel blows;
when I relish the one, I disrelish the other. Therefore,
Gog, the more especially as your arm is none of the
lightest, keep your good staff by your side, else we
may chance to differ. Peace be between us!”
“Amen!” said the other, leaning his staff in the
window-corner. “Why did you laugh just now?”
“To think,” replied the Giant Magog, laying his hand
upon the cask, “ of him who owned this wine, and
kept it in a cellar hoarded from the light of day, for
thirty years, ‘till it should be fit to drink,’ quoth he.
He was twoscore and ten years old when he buried
it beneath his house, and yet never thought that he
might be scarcely ‘fit to drink’ when the wine became
SO. I wonder it never occurred to him to make him-
Self unfit to be eaten. There is very little of him left
by this time.”
“The night is waning,” said Gog mournfully.
“I know it, replied his companion, “and I see you
are impatient. But look. Through the eastern win-
dow—placed opposite to us that the first beams of the
rising Sun may every morning gild Our giant faces—
the moon-rays fall upon the pavement in a stream of
light that to my fancy sinks through the cold stone
and gushes into the old crypt below. The night is
Scarcely past its noon, and our great charge is sleeping
heavily.”
They ceased to speak, and looked upward at the moon.
The sight of their large, black, rolling eyes filled Joe
Toddyhigh, with such horror that he could scarcely draw
his breath. Still they took no note of him, and appeared
to believe themselves quite alone. Q:
“Our Compact,” said Magog after a pause, “is, if I
understand it, that, instead of watching here in silence
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 279
through the dreary nights, we entertain each other
with stories of our past experience; with tales of the
past, the present, and the future; with legends of LOn-
don and her sturdy citizens from the old simple times.
That every night at midnight, when Saint Paul’s bell
tolls out one, and we may move and speak, we thus dis-
course, nor leave such themes till the first grey gleam
of day shall strike us dumb. Is that our bargain,
brother?”
“Yes,” said the Giant Gog, “that is the league be-
tween us who guard this city, by day in spirit, and by
night in body also; and never on ancient holidays have
its conduits run wine more merrily than we will pour
forth our legendary lore. We are old chroniclers from
this time hence. The crumbled walls encircle us once
more, the postern-gates are closed, the drawbridge is
up and, pent in its narrow den beneath, the water foams
and struggles with the Sunken Starlings. Jerkins and
quarter-staves are in the Streets again, the nightly watch
is set, the rebel, sad and lonely in his Tower dungeon,
tries to sleep and weeps for home and children. Aloft
upon the gates and walls are noble heads glaringfiercely
down upon the dreaming city, and vexing the hungry
dogs that scent them in the air, and tear the ground be-
neath with dismal howlings. The axe, the block, the
rack, in their dark chambers give signs of recent use.
The Thames, floating past long lines of cheerful win-
dows whence comes a burst of music and a stream of
light, bears sullenly to the Palace wall the last red stain
brought on the tide from Traitor's Gate. But your par-
don, brother. The night wears, and I am talking idly.”
The other Giant appeared to be entirely of this opinion,
for during the foregoing rhapsody of his fellow-sentinel
he had been scratching his head with an air of comical
uneasiness, or rather with an air that would have been
very comical if he had been a dwarf or an ordinary-
sized man. He winked too, and though it could not be
doubted for a moment that he winked to himself, still
he certainly cocked his enormous eye towards the gallery
where the listener was concealed. Nor was this all, for he
gaped; and when he gaped, Joe was horribly reminded
of the popular prejudice on the Subject of giants, and of
their fabled power of Smelling out Englishmen, however
closely concealed. e
280 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
His alarm was such that he nearly swooned, and it
was some little time before his power of sight or hear-
ing was restored. When he recovered he found that
the elder Giant was pressing the younger to commence
the Chronicles, and that the latter was endeavoring to
excuse himself, on the ground that the night was far
spent, and it would be better to wait until the next.
Well assured by this that he was certainly about to be-
gin directly, the listener collected his faculties by a great
effort, and distinctly heard Magog express himself to
the following effect:
In the sixteenth century and in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth of glorious memory (albeit her golden days
are sadly rusted with blood), there lived in the city of
London a bold young prentice who loved his master's
daughter. There were no doubt within the walls a
great many 'prentices in this condition, but I speak of
only one, and his name was Hugh Graham.
This Hugh was apprenticed to an honest Bowyer who
dwelt in the ward of Cheype, and was rumored to pos-
sess great wealth. Rumor was quite as infallible in
those days as at the present time, but it happened then
as now to be sometimes right by accident. It stumbled
upon the truth when it gave the old Bowyer a mint of
money. His trade had been a profitable one in the time
of King Henry the Eighth, who encouraged English
archery to the utmost, and he had been prudent and
discreet. Thus it came to pass that Mistress Alice, his
only daughter, was the richest heiress in all his wealthy
ward. Young Hugh had often maintained with staff
and cudgel that she was the handsomest. To do him
justice, I believe she was, -
If he could have gained the heart of pretty Mistress
Alice by knocking this conviction into stubborn people's
heads, Hugh would have had no cause to fear. But
though the Bowyer's daughter smiled in secret to hear
of his doughty deeds for her sake, and though her little
waiting-woman reported all her smiles (and many more)
to Hugh, and though he was at a vast expense in kisses
and small coin to recompense her fidelity, he made no
progress in his love. He durst not whisper it to Mistress
Alice save on sure encouragement, and that she never
gave him. A glance of her dark eye as she sat at the
door on a summer's evening after prayer-time, while he
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 281
and the neighboring prentices exercised themselves in
the street with blunted sword and buckler, would fire
Hugh’s blood so that none could stand before him; but
then she glanced at others quite as kindly as on him,
and where was the use of cracking crowns if Mistress
Alice smiled upon the cragked as well as on the cracker?
Still Hugh went on, and loved her more and more.
He thought of her all day, and dreamed of her all night
long. He treasured up her every word and gesture,
and had a palpitation of the heart whenever he heard
her footstep on the stairs or her voice in an adjoining
room. To him, the old Bowyer's house was haunted by
an angel; there was enchantment in the air and space
in which she moved. It would have been no miracle to
Hugh if flowers had sprung from the rush-strewn floors
beneath the tread of lovely Mistress Alice.
Never did 'prentice long to distinguish himself in the
eyes of his lady-love so ardently as Hugh. Sometimes
he pictured to himself the house taking fire by night,
and he, when all drew back in fear, rushing through
flame and smoke, and bearing her from the ruins in his
arms. At other times he thought of a rising of fierce
rebels, an attack upon the city, a strong assault upon
the Bowyer's house in particular, and he falling on the
threshold pierced with numberless wounds in defence
of Mistress Alice. If he could only enact some prodigy
of valor, do some wonderful deed, and let her know
that she had inspired it, he thought he could die con-
tented.
Sometimes the Bowyer and his daughter would go out
to supper with a worthy citizen at the fashionable hour
of six o'clock, and on such occasions Hugh, wearing his
blue 'prentice cloak as gallantly as 'prentice might,
would attend with a lantern and his trusty club to escort
them home. These were the brightest moments of his
life. To hold the light while Mistress Alice picked her
steps, to touch her hand as he helped her over broken
ways, to have her leaning on his arm, it sometimes
even came to that, this was happiness indeed!
When the nights were fair, Hugh followed in the rear,
his eyes riveted on the graceful figure of the Bowyer's
daughter as she and the old man moved on before him.
So they threaded the narrow winding streets of the city,
now passing beneath the Overhanging gables of old
2S2 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
wooden houses whence creaking signs projected into
the street, and now emerging from Some dark and frown-
ing gateway into the clear moonlight. At Such times, or
when the shouts of Straggling brawlers met her ear, the
Bowyer’s daughter would look timidly back at Hugh, be-
seeching him to draw nearer; and then how he grasped
his club and longed to do battle with a dozen rufflers,
for the love of Mistress Alice!
The old Bowyer was in the habit of lending money, on
interest to the gallants of the Court, and thus it hap-
pened that many a richly-dressed gentleman dismounted
at his door. More waving plumes and gallant steeds, in-
deed, were seen at the Bowyer's house, and more embroid-
ered silks and velvets sparkled in his dark shop and
darker private closet, than at any merchant’s in the
city. In those times no less than in the present it would
seem that the richest-looking cavaliers often wanted
money the most.
Of these glittering clients there was one who always
came alone. He was always nobly mounted, and, having
no attendant, gave his horse in charge to Hugh while
he and the Bowyer were closeted within. Once as he
sprung into the saddle Mistress Alice was seated at an
upper window, and before she could withdraw he had
doffed his jewelled cap and kissed his hand. Hugh
watched him caracoling down the street, and burnt with
indignation. But how much deeper was the glow that
reddened in his cheeks when, raising his eyes to the
casement, he saw that Alice watched the stranger
too! - -
He came again and often, each time arrayed more
gaily than before, and still the little casement showed
him Mistress Alice. At length, one heavy day, she fled
from home. It had cost her a hard struggle, for all her
old father's gifts were strewn about her chamber as if
she had parted from them one by One, and knew that
the time must come when these tokens of his love would
wring her heart, yet she was gone.
She left a letter commending her poor father to the
care of Hugh, and wishing he might be happier than
ever he could have been with her, for he deserved the
love of a better and a purer heart than she had to be-
stow. The old man’s forgiveness (she said) she had no
power to ask, but she prayed God to bless him, and so
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 283
ended with a blot upon the paper where her tears had
fallen. *-
At first the old man’s wrath was kindled, and he car-
ried his wrong to the Queen’s throne itself; but there
was no redress he learnt at Court, for his daughter had
been conveyed abroad. This afterwards appeared to be
the truth, as there came from France, after an interval
of several years, a letter in her hand. It was written
in trembling characters, and almost illegible. Little
could be made out save that she often thought of home
and her old dear pleasant room, and that she had
dreamt her father was dead and had not blessed her,
and that her heart was breaking.
The poor old Bowyer lingered on, never suffering
Hugh to quit his sight, for he knew now that he had
loved his daughter, and that was the only link that
bound him to earth. It broke at length and he died, be-
queathing his old 'prentice his trade and all his wealth,
and solemnly charging him with his last breath to re-
venge his child if ever he who had worked her misery
crossed his path in life again.
From the time of Alice's flight, the tilting-ground, the
fields, the fencing-school, the Summer-evening sports,
knew Hugh no more. His spirit was dead within him.
He rose to great eminence and repute among the citi-
zens, but was seldom seen to Smile, and never mingled in
their revelries or rejoicings. Brave, humane, and gener-
ous, he was beloved by all. He was pitied too by those
who knew his story, and these were so many that when
he walked along the streets alone at dusk, even the rude
common people doffed their caps and Imingled a rough
air of sympathy with their respect.
One night in May—it was her birth night, and twenty
years since she had left her home—Hugh Graham sat
in the room she had hallowed in his boyish days. He
was now a grey-haired man, though still in the prime
of life. Old thoughts had borne him company for many
hours, and the chamber had gradually grown quite dark,
when he was roused by a low knocking at the outer door.
He hastened down and opening it saw, by the light of
a lamp which he had seized upgn the way, a female
figure crouching in the portal. if hurried swiftly past
him and glided up the stairs. He looked for pursuers,
There were none in sight. No, not one.
2S4. MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
He was inclined to think it a vision of his own brain,
when suddenly a vague suspicion of the truth flashed
upon his mind. He barred the door and hastened wildly
back. Yes, there she was, there, in the chamber he
had quitted,—there in her old innocent happy home, so
changed that none but he could trace One gleam of what
she had been, there upon her knees, with her hands
clasped in agony and shame before her burning face.
“My God, my God!” she cried, “now strike me
dead! Though I have brought death and shame and
sorrow on this roof, O, let me die at home in mercy!”
There was no tear upon her face then, but she trem-
bled and glanced round the chamber. Everything was
in its old place. Her bed looked as if she had risen
from it but that morning. The sight of these familiar
objects, marking the dear remembrance in which she
had been held, and the blight she had brought upon
herself, was more than the woman’s better nature that
had carried her there could bear. She wept and fell
upon the ground. -
A rumor was spread about, in a few days’ time, that
the Bowyer's cruel daughter had come home, and that
Master Graham had given her lodging in his house. It
was rumored too that he had resigned her fortune, in
order that she might bestow it in acts of charity, and
that he had vowed to guard her in her solitude, but that
they were never to see each other more. These rumors
greatly incensed all virtuous wives and daughters in
the ward, especially when they appeared to receive some
corroboration from the circumstance of Master Graham
taking up his abode in another tenement hard by. The
estimation in which he was held, however, forbade any
Questioning on the subject; and as the Bowyer's house
was close shut up, and nobody came forth when public
shows and festivities were in progress, or to flaunt in
the public walks, or to buy new fashions at the mercers’
booths, all the well-conducted females agreed among
themselves that there could be no woman there.
These reports had scarcely died away when the won-
der of every good citizen, male and female, was utterly
absorbed and swallowed up by a Royal Proclamation,
in which her Majesty, strongly censuring the practice
of wearing long Spanish rapiers of preposterous length
(as being a bullying and Swaggering custom, tending to
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 285
bloodshed and public disorder), commanded that on a
particular day, therein named, certain grave citizens
should repair to the city gates, and there, in public,
break all rapiers worn or carried by persons claiming
admission, that exceeded, though it were only by a
quarter of an inch, three standard feet in length.
Royal Proclamations usually take their course, let the
public wonder never so much. On the appointed day two
citizens of high repute took up their stations at each of
the gates, attended by a party of the city guard, the
main body to enforce the Queen’s will, and take custody
of all such rebels (if any) as might have the temerity to
dispute it: and a few to bear the standard measures and
instruments for reducing all unlawful sword-blades to
the prescribed dimensions. In pursuance of these ar-
rangements, Master Graham and another were posted
at Lud Gate, on the hill before Saint Paul’s.
A pretty numerous company were gathered together
at this spot; for, besides the Officers in attendance to
enforce the proclamation, there was a motley crowd of
lookers-on of various degrees, who raised from time to
time such shouts and cries as the circumstances called
forth. A spruce young courtier was the first who ap-
proached: he unsheathed a weapon of burnished steel
that shone and glistened in the Sun, and handed it with
the newest air to the officer, who, finding it exactly
three feet long, returned it with a bow. Thereupon the
gallant raised his hat and crying, “God save the Queen!”
passed on amidst the plaudits of the mob. Then came
another—a better courtier still—who wore a blade but
two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the
disparagement of his honor’s dignity. Then came a
third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a
rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty’s
pleasure; at him they raised a great shout, and most of
the spectators (but especially those who were armorers
or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which
would ensue. But they were disappointed; for the old
campaigner, coolly unbuckling his sword and bidding .
his servant carry it home again, passed through un-
armed, to the great indignation of all the beholders.
They relieved themselves in some degree by hooting a
tall blustering fellow with a prodigious weapon, who
stopped short on coming in sight of the preparations,
286 MASTER HIUMPHREY’S CLOCK.
and after a little consideration turned back again. But
all this time no rapier had been broken, although it was
high noon, and all cavaliers of any quality or appear-
ance wore taking their way towards Saint Paul’s church-
yard.
During these proceedings, Master Graham has stood
apart, strictly confining himself to the duty imposed
upon him, and taking little heed of anything beyond.
He stepped forward now as a richly dressed gentleman
on foot, followed by a single attendant, was seen ad-
vancing up the hill.
As this person drew nearer, the crowd stopped their
clamor, and bent forward with eager looks. Master
Graham, standing alone in the gateway, and the
stranger coming slowly towards him, they seemed, as
it were, set face to face. The nobleman (for he looked
like one) had a haughty and disdainful air, which be-
spoke the slight estimation in which he held the citi-
zen. The citizen, on the other hand, preserved the
resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned
down or daunted, and who cared very little for any
nobility but that of worth and manhood. It was per-
haps some consciousness on the part of each, of these
feelings in the other, that infused a more stern expres-
sion into their regards as they came closer together.
“Your rapier, worthy sir?”
At the instant that he pronounced these words Gra-
ham started, and falling back some paces, laid his hand
upon the dagger in his belt.
“You are the man whose horse I used to hold before
the Bowyer's door? You are that man? Speak!”
“Out, you 'prentice hound!” said the other.
“You are hel I know you well now!” cried Graham.
‘‘Let no man step between us two, or I shall be his mur-
derer.” With that he drew his dagger and rushed in
upon him. - -
The stranger had drawn his weapon from the scab-
bard ready for the scrutiny, before a word was spoken.
He made a thrust at his assailant, but the dagger
which Graham clutched in his left hand being the
dirk in use at that time for parrying such blows,
promptly turned the point aside. They closed. . The
dagger fell rattling on the ground, and Graham,
Wresting his adversary's sword from his grasp,
MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK. 287
plunged it through his heart. As he drew it out it
snapped in two, leaving a fragment in the dead man’s
body.
All this passed so swiftly that the bystanders looked
on without an effort to interfere; but the man was no
Sooner down than an uproar broke forth which rent the
air. The attendant rushing through the gate pro-
claimed that his master, a nobleman, had been set upon
and slain by a citizen; the word quickly spread from
mouth to mouth; Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and every
book-shop, Ordinary, and Smoking-house in the church-
yard, poured out its stream of Cavaliers and their fol-
lowers, who, mingling together in a dense tumultuous
body, struggled, sword in hand, towards the spot.
With equal impetuosity, and stimulating each other
by loud cries and shouts, the citizens and common peo-
ple took up the quarrel on their side, and encircling
Master Graham a hundred deep, forced him from the
gate. In vain he waved the broken sword above his
head, crying that he would die on London’s threshold
for their sacred homes. They bore him on, and ever
keeping him in the midst, so that no man could attack
him, fought their way into the city.
The clash of swords and roar of voices, the dust and
heat and pressure, the trampling under foot of men,
the distracted looks and shrieks of women at the win-
dows above as they recognised their relatives or lovers
in the crowd, the rapid tolling of alarm-bells, the
furious rage and passion of the Scene, were fearful.
Those who, being on the outskirts of each crowd, could
use their weapons with effect, fought desperately, while
those behind, maddened with baffled rage, struck at
each other over the heads of those before them, and
Crushed their own fellows. Wherever the broken Sword
was seen above the people’s heads, towards that spot
the cavaliers made a new rush. Every One of these
charges was marked by sudden gaps in the throng
where men were trodden down, but as fast as they were
made the tide swept over them, and still the multitude
pressed on again, a confused mass of Swords, clubs,
Staves, broken plumes, fragments of rich cloaks and
doublets, and angry bleeding faces, all mixed up to-
gether in inextricable disorder.
The design of the people was to force Master Gra-
288 MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
ham to take refuge in his dwelling, and to defend it
until the authorities could interfere, or they could gain
time for parley. But either from ignorance or in the
confusion of the moment they stopped at his old house,
which was closely shut. Some time was lost in beating
the doors open and passing him to the front. About a
score of the boldest of the other party threw them-
selves into the torrent while this was being done, and
reaching the “door at the same moment with himself
cut him off from his defenders.
‘‘I never will turn in such a righteous cause, So help
me Heaven!” cried Graham, in a voice that at last
made itself heard, and confronting them as he spoke.
“Least of all will I turn upon this threshold which
owes its desolation to such men as ye. I give no quar-
ter, and I will have none! Strike!”
For a moment they stood at bay. At that moment a
shot from an unseen hand, apparently fired by Some
berson who had gained access to one of the opposite
houses, struck Graham in the brain, and he fell dead.
A low wail was heard in the air, many people in the
concourse cried that they had seen a spirit glide across
the little casement window of the Bowyer's house—
A dead silence succeeded. After a short time some
of the flushed and heated throng laid down their arms
and softly carried the body within doors." Öthers fell
off or slunk away in knots of two or three, others whis-
pered together in groups, and before a numerous guard
which then rode up could muster in the street, it was
nearly empty.
Those who carried Master Graham to the bed up-stairs
were shocked to see a woman lying beneath the window
with her hands clasped together. After trying to
recover her in vain, they laid her near the citizen, who
still retained, tightly grasped in his right hand, the first
and last Sword that was broken that day at Lud Gate.
The Giant uttered these concluding words with Sud-
den precipitation; and on the instant the Strange light
which had filled the hall faded away. Joe Toddyhigh
glanced involuntarily at the eastern window, and saw
the first pale gleam of morning. He turned his head
again towards the other window in which the Giants
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 289
had been seated. It was empty. The cask of wine
was gone, and he could dimly make out that the two
great figures stood mute and motionless upon their
pedestals.
After rubbing his eyes and wondering for full half an
hour, during which time he observed morning come
creeping on apace, he yielded to the drowsiness which
overpowered him and fell into a refreshing slumber.
When he awoke it was broad day; the building was
open, and workmen were busily engaged in removing
the vestiges of last night's feast.
Stealing gently down the little stairs, and assuming
the air of some early lounger who had dropped in from
the street, he walked up to the foot of . pedestal in
turn, and attentively examined the figure it supported.
There could be no doubt about the features of either;
he recollected the exact expression they had worn at
different passages of their conversation, and recog-
nised in every line and lineament the Giants of the
night. Assured that it was no vision, but that he had
heard and seen with his own proper senses, he walked
forth, determining at all hazards to conceal himself in
the Guildhall again that evening. He further resolved
to sleep all day, so that he might be very wakeful and
vigilant, and above all that he might take notice of the
figures at the precise moment of their becoming ani-
mated and subsiding into their old state, which he
greatly reproached himself for not having done already.
CORRESPONDENCE.
to MASTER HUMPHREY.
“SIR,-Before you proceed any further in your ac-
count of your friends and what you say and do when
you meet together, excuse me if I proffer my claim to
be elected to one of the vacant chairs in that old room
of yours. Don’t reject me without full consideration;
for, if you do, you will be sorry for it afterwards—you
will, upon my life.
19
290 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
“I enclose my card, sir, in this letter. I never was
ashamed of my name, and I never shall be. I am con-
sidered a devilish gentlemanly fellow, and I act up to
the character. If you want a reference, ask any of the
men at Our club. Ask any fellow who goes there to
write his letters what sort of Conversation mine is.
Ask him if he thinks I have the sort of voice that will
suit your deaf friend and make him hear, if he can
hear anything at all. Ask the servants what they think
of me. There’s not a rascal among 'em, sir, but will
tremble to hear my name. That reminds me—don’t you
say too much about that housekeeper of yours; it’s a
low subject, dammed low.
‘‘I tell you what, sir. If you vote me into one of
those empty chairs, you’ll have among you a man with
a fund of gentlemanly information that’ll rather aston-
ish you. I can let you into a few anecdotes about some
fine women of title, that are quite high life, sir—the
tiptop sort of thing. I know the name of every man
who has been out on an affair of honor within the last
five-and-twenty years; I know the private particulars
of every cross and squabble that has taken place upon
the turf, at the gaming-table, or elsewhere, during the
whole of that time. I have been called the gentlemanly
chronicle. You may consider yourself a lucky dog;
upon my soul, you may congratulate yourself, though I
Say SO. *
“It’s an uncommon good notion that of yours, not
letting anybody know where you live. I have tried it,
but there has always been an anxiety respecting me,
which has found me out. Your deaf friend is a cumming
fellow to keep his name so close. I have tried that too,
but have always failed. I shall be proud to make his
acquaintance—tell him so, with my compliments.
“You must have been a queer fellow when you were
a child, confounded queer. It’s odd, all that about the
picture in your first paper—prosy, but told in a devilish
gentlemanly sort of way. in places like that I could
come in with great effect with a touch of life—don’t
you feel that?
“I am anxiously waiting for your next paper to know
whether your friends live upon the premises, and at
your expense, which I take it for granted is the case.
If I am right in this impression, I know a charming fel-
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 291.
low (an excellent companion and most delightful com-
pany) who will be proud to join you. Some years ago
he seconded a great many prize-fighters, and once
fought an amateur match himself; since then he has
driven several mails, broken at different periods all
the lamps on the right-hand side of Oxford-street, and
six times carried away every bell-handle in Bloomsbury-
Square, besides turning off the gas in various thorough-
fares. In point of gentlemanliness he is unrivalled, and
I should say that next to myself he is of all men the
best Suited to your purpose.
“Expecting your reply,
‘‘I am,
‘‘ &c. &c.”
Master Humphrey informs this gentleman that his ap-
plication, both as it concerns himself and his friend, is
rejected.
II.
MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE
IN THE CHIMINEY_CORNER.
My old companion tells me it is midnight. The fire
glows brightly, crackling with a sharp and cheerful
sound, as if it loved to burn. The merry cricket on the
hearth (my constant visitor), this ruddy blaze, my clock,
and I, seem to share the world among us, and to be the
only things awake. The wind, high and boisterous but
now, has died away and hoarsely mutters in its sleep.
I love all times and seasons each in its turn, and am
apt., perhaps, to think the present one the best; but past
or coming I always love this peaceful time of night,
when long-buried thoughts, favored by the gloom and
silence, steal from their graves, and haunt the Scenes
of faded happiness and hope.
The popular faith in ghosts has a remarkable affinity
with the whole current of our thoughts at such an hour
as this, and seems to be their necessary and natural
consequence. For who can wonder that man should
292 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wan-
dering through those places which they once dearly af-
fected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from
his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past
emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of
his former self, about the places and people that warmed
his heart of old? It is thus that at this quiet hour I
haunt the house where I was born, the rooms I used to
tread, the scenes of my infancy, my boyhood, and my
youth; it is thus that I prowl around my buried treasure
(though not of gold or silver), and mourn my loss; it is
thus that I revisit the ashes of extinguished fires, and
take my silent stand at old bedsides. If my spirit
should ever glide back to this chamber when my body
is mingled with the dust, it will but follow the course
it often took in the old man’s lifetime, and add but one
more change to the subjects of its contemplation.
In all my idle speculations I am greatly assisted by
various legends connected with my venerable house,
which are current in the neighborhood, and are so nu-
merous that there is scarce a cupboard or corner that
has not some dismal story of its own. When I first en-
tertained thoughts of becoming its tenant, I was as-
sured that it was haunted from roof to cellar, and I
believe the bad opinion in which my neighbors once
held me had its rise in my not being torn to pieces, or
at least distracted with terror, on the night I took pos-
session; in either of which cases I should doubtless have:
arrived by a short cut at the very summit of popularity.
But traditions and rumors all taken into account, who
so abets me in every fancy and chimes with my every
thought, as my dear deaf friend? and how often have I
cause to bless the day that brought us two together!
Of all days in the year I rejoice to think that it should
have been Christmas Day, with which from childhood
we associate something friendly, hearty, and sincere.
I had walked out to cheer myself with the happiness
of others, and, in the little tokens of festivity and re-
joicing, of which the streets and houses present so many
upon that day, had lost some liours. Now I stopped to
look at a merry party hurrying through the snow on
foot to their place of meeting, and now turned back to
See a whole coachful of children safely deposited at the
welcome house. At one time, I admired how carefully
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 203
the working man carried the baby in its gaudy hat and
feathers, and how his wife, trudging patiently on be-
hind, forgot even her care of her gay clothes in
exchanging greetings with the child as it crowed and
laughed over the father's shoulder; at another, I pleased
myself with some passing scene of gallantry or court-
ship, and was glad to believe that for a season half the
world of poverty was gay.
As the day closed in, I still rambled through the
streets, feeling a companionship in the bright fires that
cast their warm reflection on the windows as I passed,
and losing all sense of my own loneliness in imagining
the sociality and kind-fellowship that everywhere pre-
vailed. At length. I happened to stop before a Tavern,
and, encountering a Bill of Fare in the window, it all
at once brought it into my head to wonder what kind
of people dimed alone in Taverns upon Christmas Day.
Solitary men are accustomed, I suppose unconsciously,
to look upon solitude as their own peculiar property. I
had sat alone in my room on many, many anniversaries
of this great holiday, and had never regarded it but as
one of universal assemblage and rejoicing. I had ex-
cepted, and with an aching heart, a crowd of prisoners
and beggars; but these were not the men for whom the
Tavern doors were open. Had they any customers, or
was it a mere form?—a form, no doubt.
Trying to feel quite sure of this, I walked away; but
before I had gone many paces, I stopped and looked
back. There was a provoking air of business in the
lamp above the door which I could not overcome. I
began to be afraid there might be many customers—
young men, perhaps, struggling with the world, utter
strangers in this great place, whose friends lived at a
long distance off, and whose means were too slender to
enable them to make the journey. The supposition gave
rise to so many distressing little pictures that, in pref-
erence to carrying them home with me, I determined to
encounter the realities. So I turned, and walked in.
I was at once glad and sorry to find that there was
only one person in the dining-room; glad to know that
there were not more, and sorry that he should be there
by himself. He did not look so old as I, but like me he
was advanced in life, and his hair was nearly white.
Though I made more noise in entering and seating
2.94. MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
myself than was quite necessary, with the view of
attracting his attention and saluting him in the good
old form of that time of year, he did not raise his head,
but sat with it resting on his hand, musing over his
half-finished meal.
I called for something which would give me an excuse
for remaining in the room (I had dined early, as my
housekeeper was engaged at night to partake of some
friend’s good cheer), and sat where I could observe
without intruding on him. After a time he looked up.
He was aware that somebody had entered, but could
see very little of me, as I sat in the shade and he in the
light. He was sad and thoughtful, and I forbore to
trouble him by Speaking.
Let me believe that it was something better than
curiosity which riveted my attention and impelled me
strongly towards this gentleman. I never saw so pa-
tient and kind a face. He should have been º
by friends, and yet here he sat dejected and alone when
all men had their friends about them. As often as he
roused himself from his reverie he would fall into it
again, and it was plain that, whatever were the subjects
of his thoughts, they were of a melancholy kind, and
would not be controlled.
He was not used to solitude. I was sure of that; for I
know by myself that if he had been his manner would
have been different, and he would have taken some
slight interest in the arrival of another. I could not
fail to mark that he had no appetite; that he tried to
eat in vain; that time after time the plate was pushed
away, and he relapsed into his former posture.
His mind was wandering among old Christmas Days,
I thought. Many of them sprung up together, not with
a long gap between each, but in unbroken succession
like days of the week. It was a great change to find
himself for the first time (I quite settled that it was the
first) in an empty silent room with no soul to care for.
I could not help following him in imagination through
crowds of pleasant faces, and then coming back to that
dull place with its bough of mistletoe sickening in the
gas, and sprigs of holly parched up already by a Simoon
of roast and boiled. The very waiter had gone home;
and his representative, a poor, lean, hungry man, was
keeping Christmas in his jacket.
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 295
I grew still more interested in my friend. His dinner
done, a decanter of wine was placed before him. It re-
mained untouched for a long time, but at length with a
quivering hand he filled a glass and raised it to his lips.
Some tender wish to which he had been accustomed to
give utterance on that day, or some beloved name that
he had been used to pledge, trembled upon them at the
moment. He put it down very hastily—took it up once
more—again put it down—pressed his hand upon his
face—yes—and tears stole down his cheeks, I am cer-
tain. -
Without pausing to consider whether I did right or
wrong, I stepped across the room, and sitting down be-
side him laid my hand gently on his arm.
“My friend,” I said, “forgive me if I beseech you to
take comfort and consolation from the lips of an old
man. I will not preach to you what I have not prac-
tised, indeed. Whatever be your grief, be of a good
heart—be of a good heart, pray!”
“I see that you speak earnestly,” he replied, “ and
kindly I am very sure, but—”
I nodded my head to show that I understood what he
would say; for I had already gathered, from a certain
fixed expression in his face, and from the attention with
which he watched me while I spoke, that his sense of
hearing was destroyed. “There should be a free-
masonry between us,” said I, pointing from himself to
me to explain my meaning; “if not in our grey hairs,
at least in Our misfortunes. You see that I am but a
poor cripple.”
I never felt so happy under my affliction since the try-
ing moment of my first becoming conscious of it as
when he took my hand in his with a smile that has
lighted my path in life from that day, and we sat down
side by side.
This was the beginning of my friendship with the
deaf gentleman; and when was ever the slight and easy
service of a kind word in season repaid by such attach-
ment and devotion as he has shown to me!
He produced a little set of tablets and a pencil to
facilitate our conversation, on that our first acquaint-
ance; and I well remember how awkward and con-
strained I was in writing down my share of the dialogue,
and how easily he guessed my meaning before I had
296 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
written half of what I had to say. He told me in a fal-
tering voice that he had not been accustomed to be
alone on that day—that it had always been a little fes-
tival with him; and seeing that I glanced at his dress
in the expectation that he wore mourning, he added
hastily that it was not that; if it had been, he thought
he could have borne it better. From that time to the
present we have never touched upon this theme. Upon
every return of the same day we have been together;
and although we make it our annual custom to drink to
each other hand in hand after dinner, and to recall with
affectionate garrulity every circumstance of our first
meeting, we always avoid this one as if by mutual con-
Sent.
Mean time we have gone on strengthening in Our
friendship and regard, and forming an attachment
which, I trust and believe, will only be interrupted by
death, to be renewed in another existence. I scarcely
know how we communicate as we do; but he has long
since ceased to be deaf to me. He is frequently the
companion of my walks, and even in crowded streets
replies to my slightest look, or gesture, as though he
could read my thoughts. From the vast number of ob-
jects which pass in rapid succession before our eyes, we
frequently select the same for Some particular notice or
remark; and when one of these little coincidences oc-
curs, I cannot describe the pleasure which animates my
friend, or the beaming countenance he will preserve for
half-an-hour afterwards at least.
He is a great thinker, from living so much within him-
self, and, having a lively imagination, has a facility of
conceiving and enlarging upon odd ideas which renders
him invaluable to our little body, and greatly astonishes
our two friends. His powers in this respect are much
assisted by a large pipe, which he assures us once be-
longed to a German Student. Be this as it may, it has
undoubtedly a very ancient and mysterious appearance,
and is of such capacity that it takes three hours and a
half to smoke it out. I have reason to believe that my
barber, who is the chief authority of a knot of gossips,
who congregate every evening at a small tobacconist's
hard by, has related anecdotes of this pipe and the
grim figures that are carved upon its bowl, at which all
the Smokers in the neighborhood have stood aghast;
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 297
and I know that my housekeeper, while she holds it in
high veneration, has a Superstitious feeling connected
with it which would render her exceedingly unwilling
to be left alone in its company after dark.
Whatever sorrow my dear friend has known, and
whatever grief may linger in some secret corner of his
heart, he is now a cheerful, placid, happy creature.
Misfortune can never have fallen upon such a man but.
for some good purpose; and when I see its traces in his
gentle nature and his earnest feeling, I am the less dis-
posed to murmur at such trials as I may have undergone
myself. With regard to the pipe, I have a theory of my
own; I cannot help thinking that it is in some manner
connected with the event that brought us together; for
I remember that it was a long time before he even
talked about it; that when he did, he grew reserved
and melancholy; and that it was a long time yet before
he brought it forth. I have no curiosity, however,
upon this subject; for I know that it promotes his tran-
quillity and comfort, and I need no other inducement
to regard it with my utmost favor.
Such is the deaf gentleman. I can call up his figure
now, clad in sober grey, and seated in the chimney-
corner. As he puffs out the Smoke from his favorite
pipe, he casts a look on me brimful of cordiality and
friendship, and says all manner of kind and genial
things in a cheerful smile; then he raises his eyes to my
clock, which is just about to strike, and, glancing from
it to me and back again, seems to divide his heart be-
tween us. For myself, it is not too much to say that
I would gladly part with one of my poor limbs, could he
but hear the old clock’s voice. &
Of Our two friends, the first has been all his life one of
that easy, wayward, truant class whom the world is ac-
customed to designate as nobody’s enemies but their
own. Bred to a profession for which he never qualified
himself, and reared in the expectation of a fortune he
has never inherited, he has undergone every vicissitude
of which such an existence is capable. He and his
younger brother, both orphans from their childhood,
were educated by a wealthy relative, who taught them
to expect an equal division of his property; but too indo-
lent to court, and too honest to flatter, the elder gradu-
ally lost ground in the affections of a capricious old man,
29S MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
and the younger, who did not fail to improve his oppor-
tunity, Ilow triumphs in the possession of enormous
wealth. His triumph is to hoard it in solitary wretched-
ness, and probably to feel with the expenditure of every
shilling a greater pang than the loss of his whole in-
heritance ever cost his brother.
Jack Redburn—he was Jack Redburn at the first little
school he went to, where every other child was mas-
tered and surnamed, and he has been Jack Redburn all
his life, or he would perhaps have been a richer man
by this time—has been an inmate of my house these
eight years past. He is my librarian, secretary, stew-
ard, and first minister; director of all my affairs, and in-
spector-general of my household. He is something of a
musician, something of an author, something of an
actor, something of a painter, Very much of a carpen-
ter, and an 'extraordinary gardener, having had all his
life a wonderful aptitude for learning everything that
was of no use to him. He is remarkably fond of chil-
dren, and is the best and kindest nurse in sickness that
ever drew the breath of life. He has mixed with every
grade of society, and known the utmost distress; but
there never was a less selfish, a more tender-hearted,
a more enthusiastic, or a more guileless man; and I dare
say, if few have done less good, fewer still have done
less harm in the world than he. By what chance Nature
forms such whimsical jumbles I don’t know; but I do
know that she sends them among us very often, and
that the king of the whole race is Jack Redburn.
I should be puzzled to say how old he is. His health
is none of the best, and he wears a quantity of iron-
grey hair, which shades his face and gives it rather a
worn appearance; but we consider him quite a young
fellow notwithstanding; and if a youthful spirit, surviv-
ing the roughest contact with the world, confers upon
its possessor any title to be considered young, then he is
a mere child. The only interruptions to his careless
cheerfulness are on a wet Sunday, when he is apt to be
unusually religious and solemn, and sometimes of an
evening, when he has been blowing a very slow tune on
the flute. On these last-named occasions he is apt to in-
cline towards the mysterious or the terrible. As a spec-
imen of his powers in this mood, I refer my readers
to the extract from the clock-case which follows this
MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK. 290
paper: he brought it to me not long ago at midnight,
and informed me that the main incident had been sug-
gested by a dream of the night before.
His apartments are two cheerful rooms looking to-
wards the garden, and One of his great delights is to ar-
range and rearrange the furniture in these chambers,
and put it in every possible variety of position. During
the whole time he has been here, l do not think he has
slept for two nights running with the head of his bed in
the same place; and every time he moves it is to be the
last. My housekeeper was at first well-nigh distracted
by these frequent changes; but she has become quite
reconciled to them by degrees, and has so fallen in with
his humor that they often consult together with great
gravity upon the next final alteration. Whatever his
arrangements are, however, they are always a pattern
of neatness; and every one of the manifold articles con-
nected with his manifold occupations is to be found in
its own particular place. Until within the last two or
three years he was subject to an occasional fit (which
usually came upon him in very fine weather), under the
influence of which he would dress himself with peculiar
Care, and, going out under pretence of taking a walk,
disappear for several days together. At length, after
the interval between each outbreak of this disorder had
gradually grown longer and longer, it wholly disap-
peared; and now he seldom stirs abroad except to stroll
Out a little way. On a summer's evening. Whether he
yet mistrusts his own constancy in this respect, and is
therefore afraid to wear a coat, I know not; but we sel-
dom see him in any other upper garment than an old
spectral-looking dressing gown, with very dispropor-
tionate pockets, full of a miscellaneous collection of odd
matters, which he picks up wherever he can lay his
hands upon them.
Everything that is a favorite with Our friend is a
favorite with us; and thus it happens that the fourth
among us is Mr. Owen Miles, a most worthy gentle-
man, who had treated Jack with great kindness before
my deaf friend and I encountered him by an accident,
to which I may refer on some future occasion. Mr.
Miles was once a very rich merchant; but receiving a
severe shock in the death of his wife he retired from
business, and devoted himself to a quiet, unostentatious
300 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
life. He is an excellent man, of thoroughly sterling
character: not of quick apprehension, and not without
some amusing prejudices, which I shall leave to their
own development. He holds us all in profound venera-
tion; but Jack Redburn he esteems as a kind of pleasant
wonder, that he may venture to approach familiarly.
He believes, not only that no man ever lived who could
do so many things as Jack, but that no man ever lived
who could do anything so well; and he never calls my
attention to any of his ingenious proceedings but he
whispers in my ear, nudging me at the same time with
his elbow, “If he had only made it his trade, sir—if he
had only made it his trade!”
They are inseparable companions; one would almost
suppose that, although Mr. Miles never by any chance
does anything in the way of assistance, Jack could do
nothing without him. Whether he is reading, writing,
painting, carpentering, gardening, flute-playing, or
what not, there is Mr. Miles beside him, buttoned up
to the chin in his blue coat, and looking on with a face
of incredulous delight, as though he could not credit
the testimony of his own senses, and had a misgiving
that no man could be so clever but in a dream.
These are my friends; I have now introduced myself
and them.
THE CLOCK-CASE.
A CONFESSION FOUND IN A PRISON IN THE TIME OF
CHART, ES THE SECOND.
I HELD a lieutenant’s commission in his Majesty’s
army, and served abroad in the campaigns of 1677 and
1678. The treaty of Nimeguen being concluded, I re-
turned home, and, retiring from the service, withdrew
to a small estate lying a few miles east of London,
which I had recently acquired in right of my wife.
This is the last night I have to live, and I will set
down the naked truth without disguise. I was never a
brave man, and had always been from my childhood of
a secret, sullen, distrustful nature. I speak of myself
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 301
as if I had passed from the world; for while I write
this, my grave is digging, and my name is written in
the black-book of death. .e.
Soon after my réturn to England, my only brother
was seized with mortal illness. This circumstance gave
me slight or no pain; for since we had been men, we
had associated but very little together. He was open-
hearted and generous, handsomer than I, more accom-
plished, and generally beloved. Those who sought my
acquaintance abroad or at home, because they were
friends of his, seldom attached themselves to me long,
and would usually say, in Our first conversation, that
they were surprised to find two brothers so unlike in
their manners and appearance. It was my habit to lead
them on to this avowal; for I knew what comparisons
they must draw between us; and having a rankling
envy in my heart, I sought to justify it to myself.
We had married two sisters. This additional tie be-
tween us, as it may appear to Some, only estranged us
the more. His wife knew me well. I never struggled
with any secret jealousy or gall when she was present
but that woman knew it as well as I did. I never raised
my eyes at such times but I found hers fixed upon me;
I never bent them on the ground or looked another way
but I felt that she overlooked me always. It was an in-
expressible relief to me when we quarrelled, and a
greater relief still when I heard abroad that she was
dead. It seems to me now as if some strange and ter-
rible foreshadowing of what has happened since must
have hung over us then. I was afraid of her; she
haunted me; her fixed and steady look comes back upon
me now, like the memory of a dark dream, and makes
my blood run cold.
She died shortly after giving birth to a child—a boy.
When my brother knew that all hope of his own re-
covery was passed, he called my wife to his bedside,
and confided this orphan, a child of four years old, to
her protection. He bequeathed to him all the property
he had, and willed that, in case of his child’s death, it
should pass to my wife, as the Only acknowledgment he
could make her for her care and love. He exchanged a
few brotherly words with me, deploring our long sepa-
ration; and being exhausted, fell into a slumber, from
which he never awoke.
302 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
We had no children; and as there had been a strong
affection between the sisters, and my wife had almost
supplied the place of a mother to this boy, she loved
him as if he had been her own. The child was ardently
attached to her; but he was his mother's image in face
and spirit, and always mistrusted me. -
I can scarcely fix the date when the feeling first came
upon me; but I Soon began to be uneasy when this child
was by. I never roused myself from some moody train
of thought but I marked him looking at me; not with
mere childish wonder, but with something of the pur-
pose and meaning that I had so often noted in his
mother. It was no effort of my fancy, founded on close
resemblance of feature and expression. I never could
look the boy down. He feared me, but seemed by some
instinct to despise me while he did so; and even when
he drew back beneath my gaze—as he would when we
were alone, to get nearer to the door—he would keep
his bright eyes upon me still.
Perhaps I hide the truth from myself, but I do not
think that, when this began, I meditated to do him any
wrong. I may have thought how serviceable his inheri-
tance would be to us, and may have wished him dead;
but I believe I had no thought of compassing his death.
Neither did the idea come upon me at once, but by very
slow degrees, presenting itself at first in dim shapes at
a very great distance, as men may think of an earth-
quake or the last day; then drawing nearer and nearer,
and losing something of its horror and improbability;
then coming to be part and parcel—may nearly the
whole sum and substance—of my daily thoughts, and
resolving itself into a question of means and safety;
not of doing or abstaining from the deed.
While this was going on within me I never could
bear that the child should see me looking at him; and
yet I was under a fascination which made it a kind of
business with me to contemplate his slight and fragile
figure and think how easily it might be done. Some-
times I would steal up-stairs and watch him as he slept;
but usually I hovered in the garden near the window
of the room in which he iearnt his little tasks; and
there, as he sat upon a low seat beside my wife, I
would peer at him for hours together from behind a
tree; starting, like the guilty Wretch I was, at every
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 303
rustling of a leaf and still gliding back to look and start
agall).
Hard by our cottage, but quite out of sight, and (if
there were any wind astir) of hearing too, was a deep
sheet of water. I spent days in shaping with my pocket-
knife a rough model of a boat, which I finished at last
and dropped in the child’s way. Then I withdrew to a
secret place, which he must pass if he stole away alone
to swim this bauble, and lurked there for his coming.
He came neither that day nor the next, though I waited
from noon till nightfall. I was sure that I had him in
my net, for I had heard him prattling of the toy, and
knew that in his infant pleasure he kept it by his side
in bed. I felt no weariness or fatigue, but waited pa-
tiently, and on the third day he passed me, running joy-
Ously along, with his silken hair streaming in the wind,
and he singing—God have mercy upon me!—singing a
merry ballad, who could hardly lisp the words.
I stole down after him, creeping under certain shrubs
which grow in that place, and none but devils know
with what terror I, a strong, full-grown man, tracked
the footsteps of that baby as he approached the water's
brink. I was close upon him, had sunk upon my knee
and raised my hand to thrust him in, when he saw my
shadow in the stream and turned him round.
His mother's ghost was looking from his eyes. The
sun burst forth from behind a cloud; it shone in the
bright sky, the glistening earth, the clear water, the
sparkling drops of rain upon the leaves. There were
eyes in everything. The whole great universe of light
was there to see the murder done. I know not what he
said; he came of bold and manly blood, and, child as he
was, he did not crouch or fawn upon me. I heard him
cry that he would try to love me, not that he did,
and then I saw him running back towards the house.
The next I saw was my own sword naked in my hand,
and he lying at my feet stark dead, dabbled here and
there with blood, but otherwise no different from what
I had seen him in his sleep—in the same attitude too,
with his cheek resting upon his little hand.
I took him in my arms and laid him—very gently
now that he was dead—in a thicket. My wife was from
home that day, and would not return until the next.
Our bedroom window, the only sleeping-room on that
304 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
side of the house, was but a few feet from the ground,
and I resolved to descend from it at night and bury him
in the garden. I had no thought that I had failed in my
design, no thought that the water would be dragged
and nothing found, that the money must now lie waste,
since I must encourage the idea that the child was lost
or stolen. All my thoughts were bound up and knotted
together in the one absorbing necessity of hiding what
I had done.
How I felt when they came to tell me that the child
was missing, when I ordered Scouts in all directions,
when I gasped and trembled at every one’s approach,
no tongue can tell or mind of man conceive. I buried
him that night. When I parted the boughs and looked
into the dark thicket, there was a glow-worm Shining
like the visible spirit of God upon the murdered child.
I glanced down into his grave when I had placed him
there, and still it gleamed upon his breast; an eye of
fire looking up to Heaven in supplication to the Stars
that watched me at my work.
I had to meet my wife, and break the news, and
give her hope that the child would soon be found. All
this I did, -with some appearance, I suppose, of being
sincere, for I was the object of no suspicion. This done,
I sat at the bedroom window all day long, and watched
the spot where the dreadful secret lay.
It was in a piece of ground which had been dug up
to be newly turfed, and which I had chosen on that ac-
count, as the traces of my spade were less likely to at-
tract attention. The men who laid down the grass must
have thought me mad. I called to them continually to ex-
pedite their work, ran out and worked beside them,
trod down the earth with my feet, and hurried them
with frantic eagerness. They had finished their task
ºre night, and then I thought myself comparatively
S8,T62.
I slept, not as men do who awake refreshed and
cheerful, but I did sleep, passing from vague and
shadowy dreams of being hunted down, to visions of
the plot of grass, through which now a hand, and now
a foot, and now the head itself was starting out. At
this point I always woke and stole to the window, to
make sure that it was not really so. That done, I crept
to bed again; and thus I spent the night in fits and
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 305
starts, getting up and lying down full twenty times, and
dreaming the same dream over and Over again, which
•was far worse than lying awake, for every dream had
a whole night's suffering of its own. Once I thought
the child was alive, and that I had never tried to kill
him. To wake from that dream was the most dreadful
agony of all.
The next day I sat at the window again, never once
taking my eyes from the place, which, although it was
Covered by the grass, was as plain to me—its shape, its
size, its depth, its jagged sides, and all—as if it had
been open to the light of day. When a servant walked
across it, I felt as if he must sinkin; when he had passed,
I looked to see that his feet had not worn the edges. If
a bird lighfied there, I was in terror lest by some tremen-
dous interposition it should be instrumental in the dis-
covery; if a breath of air sighed across it, to me it
whispered murder. There was not a sight or a sound—
how Ordinary, mean, or unimportant so ever—but was
fraught with fear. And in this state of ceaseless watch-
ing I spent three days.
On the fourth there came to the gate one who had
served with me abroad, accompanied by a brother officer
of his whom I had never seen. I felt that I could not
bear to be out of sight of the place. It was a summer
evening, and Ibade my people take a table and a flask
of wine into the garden. Then I sat down with my
chair upon the grave and, being assured that nobody
could disturb it now without my knowledge, tried to
drink and talk. *
They hoped that my wife was well,—that she was not
obliged to keep her chamber, that they had not fright-
ened her away. What could I do but tell them with a
faltering tongue about the child? The officer whom I
did not know was a down-looking man, and kept his
eyes upon the ground while I was speaking. Even that
terrified me. I could not divest myself of the idea that
he saw something there which caused him to suspect
the truth. I asked him hurriedly if he supposed that—
and stopped. “That the child has been murdered?”
said he, looking mildly at me: “O no! what could a
man gain by murdering a poor child?” I could have
told him what a man gained by such a deed, no one bet-
ter; but I held my peace and shivered as with an ague.
20
306 MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
Mistaking my emotion, they were endeavoring to
cheer me with the hope that the boy would certainly bo
found,-great cheer that was for me!—when he heard a
low deep howl, and presently there sprung Over the wall
two great dogs, who, bounding into the garden, re-
peated the baying sound we had heard before.
“Bloodhounds!” cried my visitors.
What need to tell me that! I had never seen one of
that kind in all my life, but I knew what they were and
for what purpose they had come. I grasped the elbows
of my chair, and neither spoke nor moved.
“They are of the genuine breed,” said the man whom
I had known abroad, ‘‘ and being out for exercise have
no doubt escaped from their keeper.”
Both he and his friends turned to look at the dogs,
who with their noses to the ground moved restlessly
about, running to and fro, and up and down, and across,
and round in circles, careering about like wild things,
and all this time taking no notice of us, but ever and
again repeating the yell we had heard already, then
dropping their noses to the ground again and tracking
earnestly here and there. They now began to snuff the
earth more eagerly than they had done yet and, although
they were still very restless, no longer beat about in
such wide circuits, but kept near to One spot, and con-
stantly diminished the distance between themselves and
In G.
At last they came up close to the great chair on which
I sat, and raising their frightful howl once more, tried
to tear away the wooden rails that kept them from the
ground beneath. I saw how I looked, in the faces of
the two who were with me.
“They scent some prey,” said they, both together.
“They scent no prey!” cried I.
“In Heaven’s name, move!” said the one I knew,
very earnestly, “ or you will be torn to pieces.”
‘‘ Let them tear me from limb to limb, I’ll never leave
this place!” cried I. “Are dogs to hurry men to shame-
ful deaths? Hew them down, cut them in pieces.”
“There is some foul mystery here!” said the officer
whom I did not know, drawing his sword. “In King
Charles's name, assist me to secure this man.”
They both set upon me and forced me away, though
I fought and bit and caught at them like a madman.
MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK. 307
After a struggle, they got me quietly between them;
and then, my God! I saw the angry dogs tearing at the
earth and throwing it up into the air like water.
What more have I to tell? That I fell upon my knees,
and with chattering teeth confessed the truth, and
prayed to be forgiven. That I have since denied, and
now confess to it again. That I have been tried for the
crime, found guilty, and sentenced. That I have not
he courage to anticipate my doom, or to bear up man-
fully against it. That I have no compassion, no con-
solation, no hope, no friend. That my wife has happily
lost for the time those faculties which would enable her
to know my misery or hers. That I am alone in this
stone dungeon with my evil Spirit, and that I die to-
morrow !”
>}: >k :}; :k :: #: >{< >k
CORRESPONDENCE.
MASTER HUMPHREY has been favored with the follow-
ing letter written on strongly-scented paper, and sealed
in light-blue wax with the representation of two very
plump doves interchanging beaks. It does not conn-
mence with any of the usual forms of address, but
begins as is here set forth.
g Bath, Wednesday night.
Heavens! into what an indiscretion do I suffer myself
to be betrayed! To address these faltering lines to a
total Stranger, and that strangor One of a conflicting
Sex!—and yet I am precipitated into the abyss, and have
no power of self-snatchation (forgive me if I coin that
phrase) from the yawning gulf before me.
Yes, I am writing to a man; but let me not think of
that, for madness is in the thought. You will under-
stand my feelings?... O yes, I am sure you will; and you
will respect them too, and not despise them,--will you?
Let me be calm. That portrait, Smiling as Once he
Smiled on me; that cane,—dangling as I have seen it
* Old Curiosity Shop begins here.
308 MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
dangle from his hand I know not how oft; those legs
that have glided through my nightly dreams and never
stopped to speak; the perfectly gentlemanly, though
false original,—can I be mistaken? O no, no.
Let me be calmer yet; I would be calm as coffins.
You have published a letter from one whose likeness is
engraved, but whose name (and wherefore?) is Sup-
pressed. Shall I breathe that name! Is it—but why ask
when my heart tells me too truly that it is!
I would not upbraid him with his treachery; I would
not remind him of those times when he plighted the
most eloquent of vows, and procured from me a small
pecuniary accommodation; and yet I would see him—
see him did I say—him—alas! such is woman’s nature.
For as the poet beautifully says—but you will already
have anticipated the sentiment. Is it not Sweet? O
yes!
It was in this city (hallowed by the recollection) that
I met him first; and assuredly if mortal happiness be
recorded anywhere, then those rubbers with their three-
and-sixpenny points are scored on tablets of celestial
brass. He always held an honor, generally two. On
that eventful night we stood at eight. He raised his
eyes (luminous in their seductive sweetness) to my
agitated face. “Can you?” said he, with peculiar
meaning. I felt the gentle pressure of his foot on mine;
our corns throbbed in unison. “Can you?” he said
again; and every lineament of his expressive counte-
nance added the words “resist me?” I murmured
“No,” and fainted. -
They said, when I recovered, it was the weather. I
said it was the nutmeg in the negus. How little did they
suspect the truth! How little did they guess the deep
mysterious meaning of that inquiry! He called next
morning on his knees; I do not mean to say that he act-
ually came in that position to the house-door, but that
he went down upon those joints directly the servant had
retired. He brought some verses in his hat, which he
said swere original, but which I have since found were
Milton’s; likewise a little bottle labelled laudanum; also
a pistol and a Sword-stick. He drew the latter, uncorked
the former, and clicked the trigger of the pocket fire-arm.
He had come, he said, to conquer or to die. He did not
die. He wrested from me an avowal of my love, and
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 309
let off the pistol out of a back window previous to par-
taking of a slight repast.
Faithless inconstant man! How many ages seem to
have elapsed since his unaccountable and perfidious dis-
appearance! Could I still forgive him both that and the
borrowed lucre that he promised to pay next week!
Could I spurn him from my feet if he approached in
§: and with a matrimonial object! Would the
landishing enchanter still weave his spells around me,
Or should I burst them all and turn away in coldness! I
dare not trust my weakness with the thought.
My brain is in a whirl again. You know his address,
his occupations, his mode of life, are acquainted, per-
haps, with his in most thoughts. You are a humane and
philanthropic character; reveal all you know—all; but
especially the street and number of his lodgings. The
post is departing, the bellman rings, pray Heaven it be
not the knell of love and hope to
BELINDA.
P. S. Pardon the wanderings of a bad pen and a dis-
tracted mind. Address to the Post-office. The bellman,
rendered impatient by delay, is ringing dreadfully in the
paSSage.
P. P. S. I open this to say that the bellman is gone,
and that you must not expect it till the next post; so don’t
be surprised when you don’t get it. .
Master Humphrey does not feel himself at liberty to
furnish his fair correspondent with the address of the
gentleman in question, but he publishes her letter as a
public appeal to his faith and gallantry.
31() MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
III.
MASTER HUMPHREY'S VISITOR.
WHEN I am in a thoughtful mood, I often succeed in
diverting the current of some mournful reflections, by
conjuring up a number of fanciful associations with the
Objects that surround me, and dwelling upon the scenes
and characters they suggest.
I have been led by this habit to assign to every room
in my house and every old staring portrait on its walls
a separate interest of its own. Thus, I am persuaded
that a stately dame, terrible to behold in her rigid
modesty, who hangs above the chimney-piece of my
bedroom, is the former lady of the mansion. In the
courtyard below is a stone face of surpassing ugliness,
which I have somehow—in a kind of jealousy, I am
afraid—associated with her husband. Above my study
is a little room with ivy peeping through the lattice,
from which I bring their daughter, a lovely girl of
eighteen or nineteen years of age, and dutiful in all
respects save One, that one being her devoted attach-
ment to a young gentleman on the stairs, whose grand-
mother (degraded to a disused laundry in the garden)
piques herself upon an old family quarrel, and is the
implacable enemy of their love. With such materials
as these I work out many a little drama, whose chief
merit is, that I can bring it to a happy end at will. I
have so many of them on hand, that if on my return
home One of these evenings I were to find some bluff
old wight of two centuries ago comfortably seated in
my easy chair, and a lovelorn damsel vainly appealing
to his heart, and leaning her white arm upon my clock
itself, I verily believe I should only express my surprise
that they had kept me waiting so long, and never
honored me with a call before.
I was in Such a mood as this, sitting in my garden
yesterday morning under the shade of a favorite tree,
revelling in all the bloom and brightness about me, and
feeling every sense of hope and enjoyment quickened
by this most beautiful season of Spring, when my med-
itations were interrupted by the unexpected appearance
of my barber at the end of the walk, who I immediately
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CT, OCK. 311
saw was coming towards me with a hasty step that
betokened something remarkable.
My barber is at all times a very brisk, bustling, active
little man,—for he is, as it were, chubby all over, with-
out being stout or unwieldy,+but yesterday his alacrity
was so very uncommon that it quite took me by sur-
prise. For could I fail to observe when he came up to
me that his grey eyes were twinkling in a most extra-
ordinary manner, that his little red nose was in an
unusual-glow, that every line in his round bright face
was twisted and curved into an expression of pleased
Surprise, and that his whole countenance was radiant
with glee? I was still more surprised to see my house-
keeper, who usually preserves a very staid air, and
stands somewhat upon her dignity, peering round the
hedge at the bottom of the walk, and exchanging nods
and smiles with the barber, who twice or thrice looked
over his shoulder for that purpose. I could conceive no
announcement to which these appearances could be the
prelude, unless it were that they had married each other
that morning.
I was, consequently, a little disappointed when it
only came out that there was a gentleman in the house
who wished to speak with me.
“And who is it?” said I. g
The barber, with his face screwed up still tighter
than before, replied that the gentleman would not send
his name, but wished to see me. I pondered for a
moment, wondering who this visitor might be, and I
remarked that he embraced the opportunity of exchang-
ing another nod with the housekeeper, who still lingered
in the distance.
“Well!” said I, “bid the gentleman come here.”
This seemed to be the consummation of the barber's
hopes, for he turned sharp round, and actually ran away.
Now my sight is not very good at a distance, and there-
fore, when the gentleman first appeared in the walk, I
was not quite clear whether he was a stranger to me or
otherwise. He was an elderly gentleman, but came
tripping along in the pleasantest manner conceivable,
avoiding the garden-roller and the borders of the beds
with inimitable dexterity, picking his way among the
fiower-pots, and smiling with unspeakable good humor.
Before he was half-way up the walk he began to salute
312 MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
me; then I thought I knew him; but when he came to-
wards me with his hat in his hand, the Sun shining on
his bald head, his bland face, his bright spectacles, his
fawn-colored tights, and his black gaiters, then my
heart warmed towards him, and I felt quite certain that
it was Mr. Pickwick.
“My dear sir,” said that gentleman as I rose to re-
ceive him, “pray be seated. Pray sit down. Now do
not stand on my account. I must insist upon it, really.”
With these words Mr. Pickwick gently pressed me down
into my seat, and, taking my hand in his, shook it again
and again with a warmth of manner perfectly irresist-
ible. I endeavored to express in my welcome some-
thing of that heartiness and pleasure which the sight of
him awakened, and made him sit down beside me. All
this time he kept alternately releasing my hand and
grasping it again, and Surveying me through his spec-
tacles with such a beaming countenance as I never till
then beheld.
“You knew me directly!” said Mr. Pickwick. “What
a pleasure it is to think that you knew me directly!”
I remarked that I had read his adventures very often,
and his features were quite familiar to me from the
published portraits. As I thought it a good opportunity
of adverting to the circumstance, I condoled with him
upon the various libels on his character which had
found their way into print. Mr. Pickwick shook his
head and for a moment looked very indignant, but,
Smiling again directly, added that no doubt I was ac-
quainted with Cervantes’s introduction to the second
part of Don Quixote, and that it fully expressed his
sentiments on the Subject.
“But now,” said Mr. Pickwick, “don’t you wonder
how I found you out?”
“I shall never wonder, and, with your good leave,
never know,” said I, smiling in my turn. “It is enough
for me that you give me this gratification. I have not
the least desire that you should tell me by what means
I have obtained it.”
“You are very kind,” returned Mr. Pickwick, shaking
me by the hand again; “you are so exactly what I ex-
hº But for what particular purpose do you think I
have sought you, my dear sir? Now what do you think
I have come for?”
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 313
Mr. Pickwick put this question as though he were
persuaded that it was morally impossible that I could
by any means divine the deep purpose of his visit, and
that it must be hidden from all human ken. Therefore,
although I was rejoiced to think that I had anticipated
his drift, I feigned to be quite ignorant of it, and after
a brief consideration shook my head despairingly.
“What should you say,” said Mr. Pickwick, laying
the forefinger of his left hand upon my coat-sleeve, and
looking at me with his head thrown back, and a little
On One side,-‘‘what should you say if I confessed that
after reading your account of yourself and your little
Society, I j come here, a humble candidate for one of
those empty chairs?” - -
“I should say,” I returned, “that I know of only one
circumstance which could still further endear that little
Society to me, and that would be the associating with it
my old friend,-for you must let me call you so, my
old friend, Mr. Pickwick.”
As I made him this answer every feature of Mr. Pick-
wick’s face fused itself into one all-pervading expres-
sion of delight. After shaking me heartily by both
hands at once, he patted me gently on the back, and
then—I well understood why—colored up to the eyes,
and hoped with great earnestness of manner that he
had not hurt me.
If he had, I would have been content that he should
have repeated the offence a hundred times rather than
suppose so; but as he had not, I had no difficulty in
changing the subject by making an inquiry which had
been upon my lips twenty times already.
“You have not told me,” said I, “anything about
Sam Weller.”
“Oh! Sam,” replied Mr. Pickwick, “is the same as
ever. The same true, faithful fellow that he ever was.
What should I tell you about Sam, my dear sir, except
that he is more indispensable to my happiness and com-
fort every day of my life?”
“And Mr. Weller senior?” said T.
“Old Mr. Weller,” returned Mr. Pickwick, “is in no
respect more altered than Sam, unless it be that he is a
little more opinionated than he was formerly, and per-
haps at times more talkative. He spends a good deal
of his time now in our neighborhood, and has so con-
3I4 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
stituted himself a part of my bodyguard that when I
ask permission for Sam to have a seat in your kitchen
on clock nights (supposing your three friends think me
worthy to fill one of the chairs), I am afraid I must
often include Mr. Weller too.” *
I very readily pledged myself to give both Sam and
his father a frec admission to my house at all hours and
seasons, and, this point settled, we fell into a lengthy
conversation which was carried on with as little reserve
On both sides as if we had been intimate friends from
our youth, and which conveyed to me the comfortable
assurance that Mr. Pickwick’s buoyancy of spirit, and
indeed all his old cheerful characteristics, were wholly
unimpaired. As he had spoken of the consent of my
friends as being yet in abeyance, I repeatedly assured
him that his proposal was certain to receive their most
joyful sanction, and several times entreated that he
would give me leave to introduce him to Jack Redburn
and Mr. Miles (who were near at hand) without further
ceremony. -
To this proposal, however, Mr. Pickwick’s delicacy
would by no means allow him to accede, for he urged
that his eligibility must be formally discussed, and that,
until this had been done, he could not think of obtruding
himself further. The utmost I could obtain from him
was a promise that he would attend upon our next night
of meeting, that I might have the pleasure of presenting
him immediately on his election.
Mr. Pickwick, having with many blushes placed in
my hands a small roll of paper, which he termed his
“qualification,” put a great many questions to me touch-
ing my friends, and particularly Jack Redburn, whom
he repeatedly termed “a fine fellow,” and in whose favor
I could see he was strongly predisposed. When I had
satisfied him on these points, I took him up into my
room, that he might make acquaintance with the old
chamber which is our place of meeting.
“And this,” said Mr. Pickwick, stopping short, “is
the clock! Dear me! And this is really the old clock!”
I thought he would never have come away from it.
After advancing towards it softly, and laying his hand
upon it, with as much respoct and as many smiling
looks as if it were alive, he set himself to consider it in
every possible direction, now mounting on a chair to
MASTER HUMPHREY's CLOCK. 315
look at the top, now going down upon his knees to exam-
ine the bottom, now surveying the sides with his spec-
tacles almost touching the case, and now trying to peep
between it and the wall to get a slight view of the back.
Then he would retire a pace or two and look up at the
dial to see it go, and then draw near again and stand
with his head on One side to hear it tick. never failing
to glance towards me at intervals of a few seconds each,
and nod his head with such complacent gratification as
I am quite unable to describe. His admiration was not
confined to the clock either, but extended itself to every
article in the room; and really, when he had gone
through them every one, and at last sat himself down in
all the six chairs, one after another, to try how they
felt, I never saw such a picture of good-humor and hap-
piness as he presented, from the top of his shining head
down to the very last button of his gaiters.
I should have been well pleased, and should have had
the utmost enjoyment of his company, if he had remained
with me all day, but my favorite, striking the hour, re-
minded him that he must take his leave. I could not
forbear telling him once more how glad he had made
me, and we shook hands all the way down-stairs.
We had no sooner arrived in the Hall than my house-
keeper, gliding out of her little room (she had changed
her gown and cap, I observed), greeted Mr. Pickwick
with her best smile and courtesy; and the barber, feigning
to be accidentally passing on his way out, made him a
vast number of bows. When the housekeeper courte-
sied, Mr. Pickwick bowed with the utmost politeness,
and when he bowed, the housekeeper courtesied again;
between the housekeeper and the barber, I should say
that Mr. Pickwick faced about and bowed with undi-
minished affability fifty times at least.
I saw him to the door; an omnibus was at the moment
passing, the corner of the lane, which Mr. Pickwick
hailed and ran after with extraordinary nimbleness.
When he had got about half-way, he turned his head,
and seeing that I was still looking after him and that I
waved my hand, stopped, evidently irresolute whether
to come back and shake hands again, or to go on. The
man behind the Omnibus shouted, and Mr. Pickwick ran
a little way towards him: then he looked round at me,
and ran a little way back again. Then there was an-
316 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
ſº
other shout, and he turned round once more and ran the
other way. After several of these vibrations, the man
settled the question by taking Mr. Pickwick by the arm
and putting him into the carriage; but his last action
was to let down the window and wave his hat to me as
it drove Off.
I lost no time in opening the parcel he had left with
me. The following were its contents:—
MR. PICKWICK's TALE.
A good many years have passed away since old John
Podgers lived in the town of Windsor, where he was
born, and where, in course of time, he came to be com-
fortably and snugly buried. You may be sure that in
the time of King James the First, Windsor was a very
quaint queer old town, and you may take it upon my
authority that John Podgers was a very quaint queer
old fellow; consequently, he and Windsor fitted each
other to a nicety, and seldom parted company even for
half a day.
John Podgers was broad, sturdy, Dutch-built, short,
and a very hard eater, as men of his figure often are.
Being a hard sleeper likewise, he divided his time pretty
equally between these two recreations, always falling
asleep when he had done eating, and always taking an-
other turn at the trencher when he had done sleeping, by
which means he grew more corpulent and more drowsy
every day of his life. Indeed it used to be currently re-
ported that when he sauntered up and down the Sunny
side of the street before dinner (as he never failed to do
in fair weather), he enjoyed his soundest map; but
many people held this to be a fiction, as he had several
times been seen to look after fat oxen on market-days,
and had even been heard, by persons of good credit
and reputation, to chuckle at the sight, and say to him-
self with great glee, “Live beef, live beef!” It was upon
this evidence that the wisest people in Windsor
(beginning with the local authorities of course) held that
John Podgers was a man of strong, sound sense, not
what is called Smart, perhaps, and it might be of a
rather lazy and apoplectic turn, but still a man of solid
parts, and one who meant much more than he cared to
MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK. 317
show. This impression was confirmed by a very digni-
fied way he had of shaking his head and imparting, at the
same time, a pendulous motion to his double Chin; in
short, he passed for one of those people who, being
plunged into the Thames, would make no vain efforts
to set it afire, but would straightway flop down to the
bottom with a deal of gravity, and be highly respected
in consequence by all good men.
Being well to do in the world, and a peaceful wid-
ower, having a great appetite, which, as he could af-
ford to gratify it, was a luxury and no inconvenience,
and a power of going to sleep, which, as he had no Occa-
sion to keep awake, was a most enviable faculty,+you
will readily suppose that John Podgers was a happy
man. But appearances are often deceptive when they
least seem so, and the truth is, that, notwithstanding his
extreme sleekness, he was rendered uneasy in his mind
and exceedingly uncomfortable by a constant apprehen-
sion that beset him night and day.
You know very well that in those times there flour-
ished divers evil old women who, under the name of
Witches, spread great disorder through the land, and
inflicted various dismal tortures upon Christian men;
sticking pins and needles into them when they least ex-
pected it, and causing them to walk in the air with their
feet upwards, to the great terror of their wives and
families, who were naturally very much disconcerted
when the master of the house unexpectedly came home,
knocking at the door with his heels and combing his
hair on the scraper. These were their commonest
pranks, but they every day played a hundred others, of
which none were less objectionable, and many were
much more so, being improper besides; the result was
that vengeance was denounced against all old women,
with whom even the king himself had no sympathy (as
he certainly ought to have had), for with his own most
Gracious hand he penned a most Gracious consignment
of them to everlasting wrath, and devised most Gra-
cious means for their confusion and slaughter, in virtue
whereof scarcely a day passed but one witch at the least
was most graciously hanged, drowned, or roasted in
some part of his dominions. Still the press teemed
with strange and terrible news from the North, or the
South, or the East, or the West, relative to witches and
3.18 MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
their unhappy victims in some corner of the country,
and the Public’s hair stood on end to that degree that it
lifted its hat off its head, and made its face pale with
terror.
You may believe that the little town of Windsor did
not escape the general contagion. The inhabitants
boiled a witch on the king’s birthday and sent a bottle
of the broth to court, with a dutiful address expressive
of their loyalty. The king, being rather frightened by
the present, piously bestowed it upon the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and returned an answer to the address,
wherein he gave them golden rules for discovering
witches, and laid great stress upon certain protecting
charms, and especially horseshoes. Immediately the
towns-people went to work nailing up horseshoes over
every door, and so many anxious parents apprenticed
their children to farriers to keep them out of harm's
way that it became quite a genteel trade, and flour-
ished exceedingly.
In the midst of all this bustle John Podgers ate and
slept as usual, but shook his head a great deal oftener
than was his custom, and was observed to look at the
oxen less, and at the old women more. He had a little
shelf put up in his sitting-room, whereon was displayed,
in a row Whiº, grew longer every week, all the witch-
craft literature of the time; he grew learned in charms
and exorcisms, hinted at certain questionable females
on broomsticks whom he had seen from his chamber
window riding in the air at night, and was in constant
terror of being bewitched. At length, from perpetually
dwelling upon this one idea, which, being alone in his
head, had all its own way, the fear of witches became
the single passion of his life. He, who up to that time
had never known what it was to dream, began to have
visions of witches whenever he fell asleep; waking, they
were incessantly present to his imagination likewise;
and, sleeping or waking, he had not a moment’s peace.
He began to set witch-traps in the highway, and was
often seen lying in wait round the corner for hours to-
gether, to watch their effect. These engines were of
simple construction, usually consisting of two straws
disposed in the form of a cross, or a piece of a Bible
cover with a pinch of salt upon it; but they were infal-
lible, and if an old woman chanced to stumble over
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CHLOCK. 319
them (as not unfrequently happened, the chosen spot
being a broken and stony place), John started from a
doze, pounced out upon her, and hung round her neck
till assistance arrived, when she was immediately car-
ried away and drowned. By dint of constantly inveig-
ling old ladies and disposing of them in this Summary
manner, he acquired the reputation of a great public
character; and as he received no harm in these pursuits
beyond a scratched face or so, he came, in the course of
time, to be considered witch-proof.
There was but one person who entertained the least
doubt of John Podgers's gifts, and that person was his
own nephew, a wild, roving young fellow of twenty
who had been brought up in his uncle's house, and
lived there still,—that is to say, when he was at
home, which was not so often as it might have been.
As he was an apt scholar, it was he that read aloud
every fresh piece of strange and terrible intelligence
that John Podgers brought; and this he always did of
an evening in the little porch in front of the house,
round which the neighbors would flock to hear the dire-
ful news, for people like to be frightened, and when
they can be frightened for nothing and at another
man’s expense, they like it all the better.
One fine midsummer evening, a group of persons
were gathered in this place, listening intently to Will
Marks (that was the nephew’s name), as with his cap
very much on one side, his arm coiled slyly round the
waist of a pretty girl who sat beside him, and his face
screwed into a comical expression intended to represent
extreme gravity, he read—with Heaven knows how
many embellishments of his own—a dismal account of
a gentleman down in Northamptonshire under the in-
fluence of witchcraft and taken forcible possession of
by the Devil, who was playing his very self with him.
John Podgers, in a high sugar-loaf hat and short cloak,
filled the opposite seat, and surveyed the auditory with
a look of mingled pride and horror very edifying to
see; while the hearers, with their heads thrust forward
and their mouths open, listened and trembled, and
hoped there was a great deal more to come. Sometimes
Will stopped for an instant to look round upon his eager
audience, and then, with a more comical expression of
face than before and a settling of himself comfortably,
320 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
which included a squeeze of the young lady before
mentioned, he launched into some new Wonder Surpass-
ing all the others.
The setting sun shed his last golden rays upon this
little party, who, absorbed in their present Occupation,
took no heed of the approach of night, or the glory in
- which the day went down, when the sound of a horse,
approaching at a good round trot, invading the Silence
of the hour, caused the reader to make a sudden stop,
and the listeners to raise their heads in wonder. Nor
was their wonder diminished when a horseman dashed
up to the porch, and abruptly checking his steed, in-
quired where one John Podgers dwelt.
“Here!” cried a dozen voices, while a dozen hands
pointed out sturdy John, still basking in the terrors of
the pamphlet.
The rider, giving his bridle to one of those who sur-
rounded him, dismounted, and approached John, hat in
hand, but with great haste.
“Whence come ye?” said John.
“From Kingston, master.”
“And wherefore?”
“On most pressing business.”
‘‘ Of what nature?” -
‘‘ WitchCraft.” -
Witchcraft! Everybody looked aghast at the breath-
less messenger, and the breathless messenger looked
equally aghast at everybody—except Will Marks, who,
finding himself unobserved, not only Squeezed the
young lady again, but kissed her twice. Surely he
must have been bewitched himself, or he never could
have done it—and the young lady too, or she never
would have let him.
“Witchcraft!” cried Will, drowning the sound of his
last kiss, which was rather a loud one.
The messenger turned towards him, and with a frown
repeated the word more solemnly than before; then
told his errand, which was, in brief, that the people of
Kingston had been greatly terrified for some nights
past by hideous revels, held by witches beneath the
gibbet within a mile of the town, and related and de-
posed to by chance wayfarers who had passed within
ear-shot of the spot; that the sound of their voices in
their wild orgies had been plainly heard by many per-
MASTER • HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 321
sons; that three old women labored under strong sus-
picion, and that precedents had been consulted, and
solemn council had, and it was found that to identify
the hags some single person must watch upon the spot
alone; that no single person had the courage to perform
the task; and that he had been dispatched express to
solicit John Podgers to undertake it that very night, as
being a man of great renown, who bore a charmed life,
and was proof against unholy Spells.
John reºeived this communication with much com-
posure, and said in a few words, that it would have
afforded him inexpressible pleasure to do the Kingston
people so slight a service, if it were not for his unfortu-
nate propensity to fall asleep, which no man regretted
more than himself upon the present occasion, but which
quite settled the question. Nevertheless, he said, there
was a gentleman present (and here he looked very hard
at a tall farrier), who, having been engaged all his life in
the manufacture of horseshoes, must be quite invulner-
able to the power of witches, and who, he had no doubt,
from his own reputation for bravery and good-nature,
would readily accept the commission. The farrier
politely thanked him for his good opinion, which it
would always be his study to deserve, but added that,
with regard to the present little matter, he couldn’t
think of it on any account, as his departing on such an
errand would certainly occasion the instant death of his
wife, to whom, as they ali knew, he was tenderly
attached. Now, so far from this circumstance being
notorious, everybody had suspected the reverse, as the
farrier was in the habit of beating his lady rather more
than tender husbands usually do; all the married men
present, however, applauded his resolution with great
vehemence, and one and all declared that they would
stop at home and die, if needful (which happily it was
not), in defence of their lawful partners.
This burst of enthusiasm over, they began to look,
as by one consent, towards Wiil Marks, who, with his
cap more on one side than ever, Sat Watching the pro-
ceedings with extraordinary unconcern. He had never
been heard openly to express his disbelief in witches,
but had often cut such jokes at their expense as left it
to be inferred; publicly stating on . Several occasions
that he considered a broomstick an inconvenient
21
322 MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK,
charger, and one especially unsuited to the dignity of
the female character, and indulging in other free re-
marks of the same tendency, to the great amusement
of his wild companions. -
As they looked at Will they began to whisper and
murmur among themselves, and at length. One man
cried, “Why don’t you ask Will Marks?” -
As this was what everybody had been thinking of,
they all took up the word, and cried in concert, “Ah!
why don’t you ask Will?” Q
** He don’t care,” said the farrier.
“Not he,” added another voice in the crowd.
“He don’t believe in it, you know,” sneered a little
man with a yellow face and a taunting nose and chin,
which he thrust out from under the arm of a long man
before himr
“Besides,” said a red-faced gentleman with a gruff
voice, “he’s a single man.”
“That’s the point!” said the farrier; and all the mar-
ried men murmured, ah! that was it, and they only
wished they were single themselves; they would show
him what spirit was, very soon.
The messenger looked towards Will Marks beseech-.
ingly.
“It will be a wet night, friend, and my grey nag is
tired after yesterday’s work—”
Here there was a general titter.
“But,” resumed Will, looking about him with a smile,
“if nobody else puts in a better claim to go, for the
credit of the town I am your man, and I would be, if I
had to go afoot. In five minutes I shall be in the sad-
dle, unless I am depriving any worthy gentleman here
of the honor of the adventure, which I wouldn’t do for
the world.”
But here arose a double difficulty, for not only did
John Podgers combat the resolution with all the words
he had, which were not many, but the young lady com-
bated it too with all the tears she had, which were very
many indeed. Will, however, being inflexible, parried
his uncle's objections with a joke, and coaxed the young
lady into a Smile in three short whispers. As it was
lain that he set his mind upon it, and would go, John
Odgers offered him a few first-rate charms out of his.
own pocket, which he dutifully declined to accept; and
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 323
the young lady gave him a kiss, which he also returned.
“You see what a rare thing it is to be married,” said
Will, “ and how careful and considerate all these hus-
bands are. There’s not a man among them but his
heart is leaping to forestall me in this adventure,
and yet a strong sense of duty keeps him back. The
husbands in this one little town are a pattern to the
World, and So must the wives be too, for that matter, or
they could never boast half the influence they have!”
Waiting for no reply to this sarcasm, he snapped his
fingers and withdrew into the house, and thence into
the stable, while some busied themselves in refreshing
the messenger, and others in baiting his steed. In less
than the specified time he returned by another way,
with a good cloak hanging over his arm, a good sword
girded by his side, and leading his good horse capari-
soned for the journey.
“Now,” said Will, leaping into the saddle at a bound,
“ up and away. Upon your mettle, friend, and push on.
Good night!”
He kissed his hand to the girl, nodded to his drowsy
uncle, waved his cap to the rest—and off they flew pell-
mell, as if all the witches in England were in their
horses’ legs. They were out of sight in a minute.
The men who were left behind shook their heads
doubtfully, stroked their chins, and shook their heads
again. The farrier said that certainly Will Marks was
a good horseman, nobody should ever say he denied
that; but he was rash, very rash, and there was no
telling what the end of it might be; what did he go for,
that was what he wanted to know? He wished the
young fellow no harm, but why did he go? Everybody
echoed these words, and shook their heads again,
having done which they wished John Podgers good
night, and straggled home to bed.
The Kingston people were in their first sleep when
Will Marks and his conductor rode through the town
and up to the door of a house where sundry grave func-
tionaries were assembled, anxiously expecting the
arrival of the renowned Podgers. They were a little
disappointed to find a gay young man in his place; but
they put the best face upon the matter, and gave him
full instructions how he was to conceal himself behind
the gibbet, and watch and listen to the witches, and
324 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CT, OCK.
how at a certain time he was to burst forth and cut and
slash among them vigorously, so that the Suspected
parties might be found bleeding in their beds next day,
and thoroughly confounded. They gave him a great
quantity of wholesome advice besides, and—which was
more to the purpose with Will—a good supper. All
these things being done, and midnight, nearly come,
they sallied forth to show him the spot where he was to
keep his dreary vigil.
The night was by this time dark and threatening.
There was a rumbling of distant thunder, and a low
sighing of wind among the trees, which was very dis-
mal. The potentates of the town kept So uncommonly
close to Will that they trod upon his toes, or stumbled
against his ankles, or nearly tripped up his heels at
every step he took, and, besides these annoyances, their
teeth chattered so with fear that he seemed to be ac-
companied by a dirge of castanets.
At last they made a halt at the opening of a lonely,
desolate space, and, pointing to a black object at Some
distance, asked Will if he saw that, yonder.
“Yes,” he replied. “What then?”
Informing him abruptly that it was the gibbet where
he was to watch, they wished him good night in an ex-
tremely friendly manner, and ran back as fast as their
feet would carry them.
Will walked boldly to the gibbet, and, glancing up-
wards when he came under it, saw—certainly with sat-
isfaction—that it was empty, and that nothing dangled
from the top but some iron chains, which swung mourn-
fully to and fro as they were moved by the breeze.
After a careful survey of every quarter he determined
to take his station with his face towards the town; both
because that would place him with his back to the wind,
and because, if any trick or surprise were attempted, it
would probably come from that direction in the first in-
stance. Having taken these precautions, he wrapped
his cloak about him so that it left the handle of his
Sword free, and ready to his hand, and leaning against
the gallows-trees with his cap not quite so much on one
* as it had been before, took up his position for the
night.
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. . 325
SECOND-CHAPTER OF MR. PICKWICK's TALE.
We left Will Marks leaning under the gibbet with his
face towards the town, Scanning the distance with a
keen eye, which sought to pierce the darkness and
catch the earliest glimpse of any person or persons that
might approach towards him. But all was quiet, and,
save the howling of the wind as it swept across the
heath in gusts, and the creaking of the chains that
dangled above his head, there was no sound to break
the sullen stillness of the night. After half an hour or
so this monotony became more disconcerting to Will
than the most furious uproar would have been, and he
heartily wished for some one antagonist with whom he
might have a fair stand-up fight, if it were only to warm
himself.
Truth to tell, it was a bitter wind, and seemed to blow
to the very heart of a man whose blood, heated but now
with rapid riding, was the more sensitive to the chilling
blast. Will was a daring fellow, and cared not a jot
for hard knocks or sharp blades; but he could not per-
suade himself to move or walk about, having just that
vague expectation of a sudden assault which made it a
comfortable thing to have something at his back, even
though that something were a gallows-tree. He had no
great faith in the superstitions of the age, still Such of
them as occurred to him did not serve to lighten the
time, or to render his situation the more endurable. He
remembered how witches were said to repair at that
ghostly hour to churchyards and gibbets, and Such-like
dismal spots, to pluck the bleeding mandrake or scrape
the flesh from dead men’s bones, as choice ingredients
for their spells; how, stealing by night to lonely places,
they dug graves with their finger-mails, or anointed
themselves before riding in the air with a delicate
pomatum made of the fat of infants newly boiled.
These, and many other fabled practises of a no less
agreeable nature, and all having some reference to the
circumstances in which he was placed, passed and re-
bassed in quick succession through the mind of Will
Marks, and adding a shadowy dread to that distrust and
watchfulness which his situation inspired, rendered it,
upon the whole, sufficiently uncomfortable. As he had
foreseen, too, the rain began to descend heavily, and
326 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
driving before the wind in a thick mist, obscured even
those few objects which the darkness of the night had
before imperfectly revealed.
“Look!” shrieked a voice. “Great Heaven, it has
fallen down, and stands erect as if it lived!”
The speaker was close behind him; the voice was al-
most at his ear. Will threw off his cloak, drew his Sword,
and darting swiftly round, seized a woman by the Wrist,
who, recoiling from him with a dreadful shriek, fell
struggling upon her knees. Another woman, clad, like
her whom he had grasped, in mourning garments, stood
rooted to the spot on which they were, gazing upon his
face with wild and glaring eyes that quite appalled
him.
“Say,” cried Will, when they had confronted each
other thus for some time, “what are ye?” -
“Say what are you,” returned the woman, “who
trouble even this obscene resting-place of the dead, and
i. the gibbet of its honored burden? Where is the
ody?”
He looked in wonder and affright from the woman
who questioned him to the other whose arm he clutched.
“Where is the body?” repeated his questioner more
firmly than before. “You wear no livery which marks
you for the hireling of the goverment. You are no friend
to us, or I should recognise you, for the friends of such
as we are few in number. What are you then, and
wherefore are you here?”
“I am no foe to the distressed and helpless,” said Will.
i. j ye among that number? ye should be by your
Ooks.”
“We are!” was the answer.
“Is it ye who have been wailing and weeping here
under cover of the night?” said Will.
“It is,” replied the woman sternly; and pointing, as
she spoke, towards her companion, “she mourns a hus-
band, and I a brother. Even the bloody law that wreaks
its vengeance on the dead does not make that a crime,
and if it did 'twould be alike to us who are past its fear
Or favor.”
Will glanced at the two females, and could barely dis-
cern that the one whom he addressed was much the elder,
and that the other was young and of a slight figure. Both
were deadly pale, their garments wet and worn, their
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 32?
hair dishevelled and streaming in the wind, themselves
bowed down with grief and misery; their whole ap-
pearance most dejected, wretched, and forlorn. A sight
So different from any he had expected to encounter
touched him to the quick, and all idea of anything but
their pitiable condition vanished before it.
“I am a rough, blunt yeoman,” said Will. “Why I
came here is told in a word; you have been overheard
at a distance in the Silence of the night, and I have un-
dertaken a watch for hags or spirits. I came here ex-
pecting an adventure, and prepared to go through with
any. If there be aught that I can do to help or aid you,
name it, and On the faith of a man who can be secret and
trusty, I will stand by you to the death.”
“How comes this gibbet to be empty?” asked the
elder female.
“I swear to you,” replied Will, “that I know as little
as yourself. But this 1 know, that when I came here an
hour ago Or So, it was as it is now; and if, as I gather
from your question, it was not so last night, sure I am
that it has been secretly disturbed without the knowledge
of the folks in yonder town. Bethink you, therefore,
whether you have no friends in league with you or with
him on whom the law has done its worst, by whom these
sad remains have been removed for burial.”
The women spoke together, and Will retired a pace or
two while they conversed apart. He could hear them
Sob and moan, and saw that they wrung their hands in
fruitless agony. He could make out little that they said,
but between whiles he gathered enough to assure him
that his suggestion was not very wide of the mark, and
that they not only suspected by whom the body had been
removed, but also whither it had been conveyed. When
they had been in conversation a long time, they turned
tººls him once more. This time the younger female
spoke.
“You have offered us your help.”
‘‘I have.” e
“And given a pledge that you are still willing to re-
deem?”
“Yes. So far as I may, keeping all plots and con-
Spiracies at arm’s length.”
“Follow us, friend.”
Will, whose self-possession was now quite restored,
32S MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
needed no second bidding, but with his drawn sword in
his hand, and his cloak so muffled over his left arm as
serve for a kind of shield without offering any impedi-
ment to its free action, suffered them to lead the way.
Through mud and mire, and wind and rain, they walked
in silence a full mile. At length they turned into a dark
lane, where, suddenly starting out from beneath Some
trees where he had taken shelter, a man appeared, hav-
ing in his charge three saddled horses. One of these
(his own apparently), in obedience to a whisper from
the women, he consigned to Will, who, seeing that they
mounted, mounted also. Then, without a word spoken,
they rode on together, leaving the attendant behind.
They made no halt nor slackened their pace until they
arrived near Putney. At a large wooden house which
stood apart from any other they alighted, and giving
their horses to one who was already waiting, passed in
by a side door, and so up some narrow creaking stairs
into a small panelled chamber, where Will was left alone.
He had not been here very long when the door was
softly opened, and there entered to him a cavalier whose
face was concealed beneath a black mask.
Will stood upon his guard, and scrutinised this figure
from head to foot. The form was that of a man pretty
far advanced in life, but of a firm and stately carriage.
His dress was of a rich and costly kind, but so soiled
and disordered that it was scarcely to be recognised for
one of those gorgeous suits which the expensive taste
and fashion of the time prescribed for men of any rank
or station. He was booted and spurred, and bore about
him even as many tokens of the state of the roads as
Will himself. All this he noted, while the eyes behind
the mask regarded him with equal attention. This sur-
vey over, the cavalier broke silence.
“Thou’rt young and bold, and wouldst be richer than
thou art?”
“The two first I am,” returned Will. “The last I
have scarcely thought of. But be it so. Say that I
would be richer than I am; what then?”
“The way lies before thee now,” replied the Mask.
“Show it me.”
“First let me inform thee, that thou wert brought
here to-night lest thou shouldst too soon have told thy
tale to those who placed thee on the watch.”
MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK. 329
“I thought as much when I followed,” said Will.
“But I am no blab, not I.” G -
“Good,” returned the Mask. “Now listen. He who
was to have executed the enterprise of burying that
body, which, as thou hast suspected, was taken down
to-night, has left us in our need.”
Will nodded, and thought within himself that if the
Mask were to attempt to play any tricks, the first eyelet-
hole on the left-hand side of his doublet, counting from
the buttons up the front, would be a very good place in
which to pink him neatly.
“Thou art here, and the emergency is desperate. I
propose this task to thee. Convey the body (now coffined
in this house), by means that I shall show, to the church
of St. Dunstan in London to-morrow night, and thy
service shall be richly paid. Thou'rt about to ask
whose corpse it is. Seek not to know, I warn thee,
seek not to know. Felons hang in chains on every
moor and heath. Believe, as Others do, that this was
one, and ask no further. The murders of state policy,
its victims or avengers, had best remain unknown to
such as thee.” * *
“The mystery of this service,” said Will, “bespeaks
its danger. What is the reward?”
“One hundred golden unities,” replied the cavalier.
“The danger to one who cannot be recognised as the
friend of a fallen cause is not great, but there is some
hazard to be run. Decide between that and the reward.”
“What if I refuse?” said Will.
“ Depart in peace, in God’s name,” returned the Mask
in a melancholy tone, ‘‘ and keep Our Secret, remember-
ing that those who brought thee here were crushed and
stricken women, and that those who bade thee go free
could have had thy life with one word, and no man
the wiser.”
Men were readier to undertake desperate adventures
in those times than they are now. In this case the
temptation was great, and the punishment, even in case
of detection, was not likely to be very severe, as Will
came of a loyal stock, and his uncle was in good repute,
and a passable tale to account for his possession of the
body and his ignorance of the identity might be easily
devised. .
The cavalier explained that a covered cart had been
330 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
prepared for the º that the time of departure
could be auranged so that he should reach Tondon
Bridge at dusk, and proceed through the City after the
day had closed in; that people would be ready at his
journey’s end to place the coffin in a vault without a
minute's delay; that officious inquirers in the streets
would be easily repelled by the tale that he was carry-
ing for interment the corpse of one who had died of the
plague; and in short showed him every reason why he
should succeed, and none why he should fail. After
a time they were joined by another gentleman, masked
like the first, who added new arguments to those which
had been already urged; the wretched wife, too, added
her tears and prayers to their calmer representations;
and in the end, Will, moved by compassion and good-
nature, by a love of the marvellous, by a mischievous
anticipation of the terrors of the Kingston people when
he should be missing next day, and finally, by the pros-
pect of gain, took upon himself the task, and devoted
all his energies to its successful execution.
The following night, when it was quite dark, the hol-
low echoes of old London Bridge responded to the rum-
bling of the cart which contained the ghastly load, the
object of Will Marks's care. Sufficiently disguised to
attract no attention by his garb, Will walked at the
horse's head, as unconcerned as a man could be who
was sensible that he had now arrived at the most dan-
gerous part of his undertaking, but full of boldness and
confidence.
It was now eight o'clock. After nine, none could
walk the streets without danger of their lives, and even
at this hour, robberies and murder were of no uncom-
mon occurrence. The shops upon the bridge were all
closed; the low wooden arches thrown across the way
were like so many black pits, in every one of which ill-
favored fellows lurked in knots of three or four; some
standing upright against the wall, lying in wait; others
Skulking in gateways, and thrusting out their uncombed
heads and Scowling eyes; others crossing and recross-
ing, and constantly jostling both horse and man to pro-
Voke a quarrel; others stealing away and summoning
their companions in a low whistle. Once, even in that
short passage, there was the noise of scuffling and the
clash of swords behind him, but Will, who knew the
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 331
City and its ways, kept straight on and scarcely turned
his head.
The streets being unpaved, the rain of the night be-
fore had converted them into a perfect quagmire, which
the Splashing water-Spouts from the gables, and the
filth and Offal cast from the different houses, swelled in
no Small degree. These Odious matters being left to
putrefy in the close and heavy air emitted an insupport-
able stench, to which every court and passage poured
forth a contribution of its own. Many parts, even of
the main streets, with their projecting stories tottering
overhead and nearly shutting out the sky, were more
like huge chimneys than open ways. At the corners of
some of these, great bonfires were burning to prevent
infection from the plague, of which it was rumored that
some citizens had lately died; and few, who availing
themselves of the light thus afforded paused for a mo-
ment to look around them, would have been disposed to
doubt the existence of the disease, or wonder at its
dreadful visitations.
But it was not in such scenes as these, or even in the
deep and miry road, that Will Marks found the chief ob-
stacles to his progress. There were kites and ravens feed-
ing in the streets (the only scavengers the City kept), who,
scenting what he carried, followed the cart or fluttered
on its top, and croaked their knowledge of its burden
and their ravenous appetite for prey. There were dis-
tant fires, where the poor wood and plaster tenements
wasted fiercely, and whither crowds made their way,
clamoring eagerly for plunder, beating down all who
came within their reach, and yelling like devils let
loose. There were single-handed men flying from bands
of ruffians, who pursued them with naked weapons, and
hunted them savagely; there were drunken, desperate
robbers issuing from their dens and staggering through
the open streets where no man dared molest them; there
were vagabond servitors returning from the Bear Gar-
den, where had been good sport that day, dragging after
them their torn and bleeding dogs, or leaving them to
die and rot upon the road. Nothing was abroad but
cruelty, violence, and disorder.
Many were the interruptions which Will Marks en-
countered from these stragglers, and many the narrow
escapes he made. Now some stout bully would take
332 MASTER HUMPHREY's CLOCK.
his seat upon the cart, insisting to be driven to his own
home, and now two or three men would come down
upon him together and demand that on peril of his life
he showed them what he had inside. Then a party of the
city watch, upon their rounds, would draw across the
road, and not satisfied with his tale, would question him
closely, and revenge themselves by a little cuffing and
hustling for maltreatment Sustained at other hands that
night. All these assailants had to be rebutted, some by
fair words, some by foul, and some by blows. But Will
Marks was not the man to be stopped or turned back
now he had penetrated so far, and though he got on
slowly, still he made his way down Fleet-street and
reached the church at last.
As he had been forewarned, all was in readiness. Di-
rectly he stopped, the coffin was removed by four men,
who appeared so suddenly that they seemed to have
started from the earth. A fifth mounted the cart, and
scarcely allowing Will time to snatch from it a little
bundle containing such of his own clothes as he had
thrown off on assuming his disguise, drove briskly
away. Will never saw cart or man again.
He followed the body into the church, and it was well
he lost no time in doing so, for the door was immediately
closed. There was no light in the building save that
which came from a couple of torches borne by two men
in cloaks, who stood upon the brink of a vault. Each
supported a female figure, and all observed a profound
silence. -
By this dim and solemn glare, which made Will feel
as though light itself were dead, and its tomb the dreary
arches that frowned above, they placed the coffin in the
vault, with uncovered heads, and closed it up. One of
the torch-bearers then turned to Will and stretched forth
his hand, in which was a purse of gold. Something told
him directly that those were the same eyes which he had
seen beneath the mask. -
‘‘Take it,” said the cavalier in a low voice, ‘‘ and be
happy. Though these have been hasty obsequies, and
no priest has blessed the work, there will not be the less
peace with thee hereafter for having laid his bones
beside those of his little children. Keep thy own coun-
i. for thy sake no less than ours, and God be with
theo! ”
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 333
“The blessing of a widowed mother on thy head,
good friend!” cried the younger lady through her tears;
“the blessing of one who has now no hope or rest but
in this grave!” .
Will stood with the purse in his hand, and involun-
tarily made a gesture as though he would return it,
for though a thoughtless fellow, he was of a frank and
generous nature. But the two gentlemen, extinguishing
their torches, cautioned him to be gone, as their com-
mon safety would be endangered by a longer delay;
and at the same time their retreating footsteps sounded
through the church. He turned, therefore, towards the
point at which he had entered, and seeing by a faint
gleam in the distance that the door was again partially
open, groped his way towards it and so passed into the
Street.
Meantime the local authorities of Kingston had kept
watch and ward all the previous night, fancying every
now and then that dismal shrieks were borne towards
them on the wind, and frequently winking to each
other, and drawing closer to the fire as they drank the
health of the lonely sentinel, upon whom a clerical
gentleman present was especially severe by reason of
his levity and youthful folly. Two or three of the
gravest in company, who were of a theological turn,
propounded to him the question, whether such a charac-
ter was not but poorly armed for single combat with
the Devil, and whether he himself would not have been
a stronger opponent; but the clerical gentleman, sharply
reproving them for their presumption in discussing such
questions, clearly showed that a fitter champion than Will
could scarcely have been selected, not only for that being
a child of Satan he was the less likely to be alarmed by
the appearance of his own father, but because Satan him-
self would be at his ease in such company, and would not
scruple to kick up his heels to an extent which it was
quite certain he would never venture before clerical
eyes, under whose influence (as was notorious) he be-
came quite a tame and milk-and-water character.
But when next morning arrived, and with it no Will
Marks, and when a strong party repairing to the spot,
as a strong party ventured to do in broad day, found
Will gone and the gibbet empty, matters grew serious
indeed. The day passing away and no news arriving,
334 MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
and the night going on also without any intelligence,
the thing grew more tremendous still; in short, the
neighborhood worked itself up to such a comfortable
pitch of mystery and horror that it is a great question
whether the general feeling was riot one of excessive
disappointment, when, On the Second morning, Will
Marks returned. -
However this may be, back Will came in a very cool
and collected state, and appearing not to trouble himself
much about anybody except old John Podgers, who,
having been sent for, was sitting in the Town Hall cry-
ing slowly, and dozing between whiles. Having em-
braced his uncle and assured him of his safety, Will
mounted on a table and told his story to the crowd.
And surely they would have been the most unreason-
able crowd that ever assembled together if they had
been in the least respect disappointed with the tale he
told them; for besides describing the Witches' Dance to
the minutest motion of their legs, and performing it in
character on the table, with the assistance of a broom-
stick, he related how they had carried off the body in a
copper caldron, and so bewitched him, that he lost his
senses until he found himself lying under a hedge at
least ten miles off, whence he had straightway returned
as they then beheld. The story gained such universal
applause that it soon afterwards ºrought down expres;
from London the great witch-finder of the age, the
Heaven-born Hopkins, who, having examined Will
closely on several points, pronounced it the most extraor-
dinary and the best accredited witch story ever known,
under which title it was published at the Three Bibles
on London Bridge, in Small quarto, with a view of the
caldron from an original drawing, and a portrait of the
clerical gentleman as he sat by the fire.
On one point Will was particularly careful: and that
was to describe for the Witches he had seen, three im-
possible old females, whose likenesses never were or
will be. Thus he saved the lives of the suspected
parties, and of all other old women who were dragged
before him to be identified.
This circumstance occasioned John Podgers much
grief and Sorrow, until happening one day to cast his
eyes upon his housekeeper, and observing her to be
plainly afflicted with rheumatism, he procured her to be
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 335
burnt as an undoubted witch. For this service to the
state he was immediately knighted, and became from
that time Sir John Podgers.
Will Marks never gained any clue to the mystery in
which he had been an actor, nor did any inscription in
the church, which he often visited afterwards, nor any
of the limited inquiries that he dared to make, yield him
the least assistance. As he kept his own secret, he was
compelled to spend the gold discreetly and sparingly.
In the course of time he married the young lady of .
whom I have already told you, whose maiden name is
not recorded, with whom he led a prosperous and happy
life. Years and years after this adventure, it was his
wont to tell her upon a stormy night that it was a great
comfort to him to think those bones, to whomsoever
they might have once belonged, were not bleaching in
the troubled air, but were mouldering away with the
dust of their own kith and kindred in a quiet grave.
FURTHER PARTICULARS OF MASTER HUMPHREY'S VISITOR.
Being very full of Mr. Pickwick’s application, and
highly pleased with the compliment he had paid me, it
will be readily supposed that long before our next night
of meeting I communicated it to my three friends, who
unanimously voted his admission into our body. We
all looked forward with some impatience to the occasion
which would enroll him among us, but I am greatly
mistaken if Jack Redburn and myself were not by
many degrees the most impatient of the party. -
At length the night came, and a few minutes after
ten Mir. Pickwick’s knock was heard at the street-door.
He was shown into a lower room, and I directly took
my crooked Stick and went to accompany him up-stairs,
in order that he might be presented, with all honor and
formality. •
“Mr. Pickwick,” said I, on entering the room, “I am
rejoiced to see you, -rejoiced to believe that this is but
the opening of a long series of visits to this house, and
but the beginning of a close and lasting friendship.”
That gentleman made a suitable reply with a cor-
diality and frankness peculiarly his own, and glanced
with a smile towards two persons behind the door, whom
336 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
I had not at first observed, and whom I immediately
recognised as Mr. Samuel Weller and his father.
It was a warm evening, but the elder Mr. Weller was
attired, notwithstanding, in a most capacious great-coat,
and his chin enveloped in a large speckled shawl,
such as is usually worn by stage coachmen on active
service. He looked very rosy and very stout, especially
about the legs, which appeared to have been compressed
into his top-boots with some difficulty. His broad-
brimmed hat he held under his left arm, and with the
forefinger of his right hand he touched his forehead a
great many times in acknowledgment of my presence.
“I am very glad to see you in such good health, Mr.
Weller,” said I. -
“Why, thankee, sir,” returned Mr. Weller, “the axle
an’t broke yet. We keeps up a steady pace,—not too
sewere, but with a moderate degree o' friction,-and the
consekens is that ve’re still a runnin’ and comes in to
the time reg’lar.—My son Samivel, sir, as you may have
read on in history,” added Mr. Weller, introducing his
first-born.
I received Sam very graciously, but before he could
say a word his father struck in again,
“Samivel Veller, sir,” said the old gentleman, “ has
con-ferred upon me the ancient title o' grandfather vich
had long laid dormouse, and Wos sºposed to be nearly
hex-tinct in our family. Sammy, relate a anecdote o'
vun o’ them boys, that 'ere little anecdote about young
Tony sayin’ as he would Smoke a pipe unbeknown to his
ImOther.”
“Be quiet, can’t you?” said Sam; “I never see such a
old magpie-never!”
“That 'ere Tony is the blessedest boy,” said Mr.
Weller, heedless of this rebuff, “the blessedest boy as
ever I see in my days! of all the charmin’est infants as
ever I heerd tell on, includin’ them as was kivered over
by the robin-redbreasts arter they’d committed sooicide
with blackberries, there never wos any like that 'ere
little Tony. He’s always a playin’ with a quart pot, that
boy is! To see him a settin’ down on the doorstep pre-
tending to drink out of it, and fetching a long breath
artervards, and Smoking a bit of fire-vood, and sayin',
‘Now I’m grandfather,'—to see him a doin’ that at two
year old is better than any play as wos ever wrote.
MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 337
‘Now I’m grandfather!' He wouldn’t take a pint pot
if you wos to make him a present on it, but he gets his
quart, and then he says, “Now I’m grandfather!’”
Mr. Weller was so overpowered by this picture that
he straightway fell into a most alarming fit of cough-
'ing, which must certainly have been attended with
some fatal result but for the dexterity and promptitude
of Sam, who, taking a firm grasp of the shawl just
under his father's chin, shook him to and fro with great
violence, at the same time administering some smart
blows between his shoulders. By this curious mode of
treatment Mr. Weller was finally recovered, but with a
very crimson face, and in a state of great exhaustion.
“He’ll do now, Sam,” said Mr. Pickwick, who had
been in some alarm himself. - .
“He’ll do, sir!” cried Sam, looking reproachfully at
his parent. “Yes, he will do one o’ these days, he’ll do
for his-self and then he'll wish he hadn’t. Did anybody
ever see such a inconsiderate old file, laughing into
convulsions afore company, and stamping on the floor
as if he’d brought his own carpet with him and wos
under a wager to punch the pattern out in a given time?
He'll begin again in a minute. There—he's agoin’ off
—I said he would!”
In fact, Mr. Weller, whose mind was still running
upon his precious grandson, was seen to shake his head.
from side to side, while a laugh, working like an earth-
quake, below the surface, produced various extraordi-
Inary appearances in his face, chest, and shoulders,
the more alarming because unaccompanied by any noise
whatever. These emotions, however, gradually sub-
sided, and after three or four short relapses he wiped
his eyes with the cuff of his coat, and looked about him
with tolerable composure. -
“A fore the governor vith-draws,” said Mr. Weller,
“there is a pint, respecting vich Sammy has a qvestion
to ask. Wile that qvestion is a perwadin this here con-
Wersation, p'raps the genl’men will permit me to re-tire.”
“Wot are you goin’ away for?” demanded Sam, seiz-
ing his father by the coat-tail.
‘‘I never see such a undootiful boy as you, Samivel,”
returned Mr. Weller. “Didn't you make a solemn
promise, amountin’ almost to a speeches o' wow, that
you’d put that ere qvestion on my account?”
22
338 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
“Well, I’m agreeable to do it,” said Sam, “but not if
you go cuttin’ away like that, as the bull turned round
and mildly observed to the drover ven they wos a
goadin’ him into the butcher’s door. The fact is, sir.”
said Sam, addressing me, “that he wants to know
somethin’ respectin’ that 'ere lady as is housekeeper
here.” -
“Ay. What is that?”
“Vy, sir,” said Sam, grinning still more, “he wishes
to know vether she—"
“In short,” interposed old Mr. Weller decisively, a
perspiration breaking out upon his forehead, ‘‘ vether
that 'ere old creetur is or is not a widder.”
Mr. Pickwick laughed heartily, and so did I, as I re-
plied decisively, that “my housekeeper was a spinster.”
“There!” cried Sam, ‘’ now you’re satisfied. You
hear she's a spinster.”
“A wot?” said his father, with deep scorn.
“A spinster,” replied Sam. -
Mr. Weller looked very hard at his son for a minute
or two, and then said, w
“Never mind vether she makes jokes or not, that's no
matter. Wot I say is, is that 'ere female a widder, or is
she not?”
“Wot do you mean by her making jokes?” demanded
Sam, quite aghast at the Obscurity of his parent's
speech.
“Never you mind, Samivel,” returned Mr. Weller
gravely; “puns may be wery good things or they may
be wery bad 'uns, and a female may be none the better
or she may be none the vurse for making of 'em; that’s
got nothing to do with widders.”
“Wy now,” said Sam, looking round, “would any-
body believe as a man at his time o’ life could be run-
Ining his head agin spinsters and punsters being the
same thing?”
“There an’t a straw’s difference between 'em,” said
Mr. Weller. “Your father didn’t drive a coach for SO
Imany years not to be elzal to his own langvidge as far
as that goes, Sammy.”
Avoiding the question of etymology, upon which the
old gentleman’s mind was quite made up, he was several
times assured that the housekeeper had never been mar-
1.ied. He expressed great satisfaction on hearing this.
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 339
and apologised for the question, remarking that he had
been greatly terrified by a widow not long before, and
that his natural timidity was increased in consequence.
“It wos on the rail,” said Mr. Weller, with strong
emphasis; “I WOs a goin’ down to Birmingham by the
rail, and I woS locked up in a close carriage with a liv-
ing widder. Alone we wos; the widder and me woS
alone; and I believe it woS only because we woS alone
and there woS no clergyman in the convayance, that
that 'ere widder didn’t marry me afore ve reached the
half-way station. Ven I think how she began a scream-
ing as we woS a goin’ under them tunnels in the dark,
—how she kept on a faintin’ and ketchin’ hold o' me,
and how Itried to bust open the door as was tight-locked
and perwented all escape—Ah! It was a awful thing,
most awful!”
Mr. Weller was so very much overcome by this re-
trospect that he was unable, until he had wiped his
brow. Several times, to return any reply to the question
whether he approved of railway communication, not-
withstanding that it would appear, from the answer
which he ultimately gave, that he entertained strong
opinions on the subject.
“I con-sider,” said Mr. Weller, “that the rail is un-
constitootional and an inwaser o’ privileges, and I
should wery much like to know what that 'ere old Car- .
ter as once stood up for our liberties and wun 'em too,
—I should like to know wot he would say, if he wos
alive now, to Englishmen being locked up with widders,
or with anybody again their wills. Wot a old Carter
would have said, a old Coachman may say, and I
as-sert that in that pint O’ view alone, the rail is an
inwaser. As to the comfort, Vere's the comfort o' sit-
tin’ in a harm-cheer lookin’ at brick walls or heaps o'
mud, never comin’ to a public-house, never seein’ a
glass o' ale, never goin’ through a pike, never meetin’ a
change o’ no kind (horses or otherwise), but always
comin’ to a place, ven you come to one at all, the wery
picter o’ the last, with the same p’leesemen standing
about, the same blessed old bell a ringin', the same un-
fort’nate people standing behind the bars, a waitin’ to
be let in; and everythin’ the same except the name,
vich is wrote up in the same sized letters as the last
name, and with the same colors. As to the honor and
340 MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
dignity o’ travellin', were can that be without a coach-
man; and wot's the rail to sich coachmen and guards as
is sometimes forced to go by it but a Outrage and a
insult? As to the pace, wot sort O’ pace do you think I,
Tony Weller, could have kept a coach goin’ at, for five
hundred thousand pound a mile, paid in advance afore
the coach was on the road? And as to the ingein, a
nasty, wheezin', creakin', gaspin', puffin', bustin’ mon-
ster, alvays out o' breath, with a shiny green-and-gold
back, like a unpleasant beetle in that 'ere gas magni-
fier, as to the ingein as is always a pourin’ Out red-hot
coals at night, and black Smoke in the day, the sensi-
blest thing it does, in my opinion, is, ven there’s some-
thin’ in the way, and it sets up that 'ere frightful scream
vich seems to say, ‘Now here's two hundred and forty
passengers in the wery greatest extremity O’ danger, and
here’s their two hundred and forty screams in Vun!’”
By this time I began to fear that my friends would be
rendered impatient by my protracted absence. I there-
fore begged Mr. Pickwick to accompany me up-stairs,
and left the two Mr. Wellers in the care of the house-
keeper, laying strict injunctions upon her to treat them
with all possible hospitality.
IV.
THE CLOCK.
As we were going up-stairs, Mr. Pickwick put on his
spectacles, which he had held in his hand hitherto;
arranged his neckerchief, Smoothed down his waist-
coat, and made many other little preparations of that
kind which men are accustomed to be mindful of when
they are going among strangers for the first time, and
are anxious to impress them pleasantly. Seeing that I
Smiled, he smiled too, and said that if it had occurred
to him before he left home, he would certainly have
presented himself in pumps and silk stockings.
‘‘I would, indeed, my dear sir,” he said very seriously;
“I would have shown my respect for the society by lay-
ing aside my gaiters.” -
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 341
“You may rest assured,” said [, “that they would
have regretted your doing so very much, for they are
quite attached to them.”
“No, really!” cried Mr. Pickwick, with manifest
pleasure. “Do you think they care about my gaiters?
Do you seriously think that they identify me at all with
my gaiters?”
“I am sure they do,” I replied.
“Well, now,” said Mr. Pickwick, “that is one of the
most charming and agreeable circumstances that could
possibly have occurred to me!”
I should not have written down this short conversa-
tion, but that it developed a slight point in Mr. Pick-
wick’s character, with which I was not previously
acquainted. He has a secret pride in his legs. The
manner in which he spoke, and the accompanying
glance he bestowed upon his tights, convince me that
Mr. Pickwick regards his legs with much innocent
vanity.
“But here are our friends,” said I, opening the door
and taking his arm in mine; “let them speak for them-
selves.—Gentlemen, I present to you Mr. Pickwick.”
Mr. Pickwick and I must have been a good contrast
just then. I, leaning quietly on my crutch-stick, with
Something of a careworn, patient air; he, having hold
of my arm, and bowing in every direction with the
most elastic politeness, and an expression of face
whose Sprightly cheerfulness and good-humor knew no
bounds. The difference between us must have been
more striking yet, as we advanced towards the table,
and the amiable gentleman, adapting his jocund step to
my poor tread, had his attention divided between treat-
ing my infirmities with the utmost consideration, and
affecting to be wholly unconscious that I required any.
I made him personally known to each of my friends
in turn. First, to the deaf gentleman, whom he re-
garded with much interest, and accosted with great
frankness and cordiality. He had evidently some vague
idea, at the moment, that my friend being deaf must
be dumb also; for, when the latter opened his lips to
express the pleasure it afforded him to know a gentle-
man of whom he had heard so much, Mr. Pickwick was
SO extremely disconcerted, that I was obliged to step in
to his relief.
34? MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
His meeting with Jack Redburn was quite a treat to
see. Mr. Pickwick Smiled, and shook hands, and looked
at him through his spectacles, and under them, and
over them, and nodded his head approvingly, and then
nodded to me, as much as to Say, “ This is just the man;
you were quite right;" and then turned to Jack and
said a few hearty words, and then did and said every-
thing Over again with unimpaired vivacity. As to
Jack himself, he was quite as much delighted with Mr.
Pickwick as Mr. Pickwick could possibly be with him.
Two people never can have met together since the world
began who exchanged a warmer or more enthusiastic
greeting.
It was amusing to observe the difference between this
encounter and that which succeeded between Mr. Pick-
wick and Mr. Miles. It was clear that the latter gentle-
man viewed our new member as a kind of rival in the
affections of Jack Redburn, and besides. this, he had
more than once hinted to me, in secret, that although
he had no doubt Mr. Pickwick was a very worthy man,
still he did consider that some of his exploits were un-
becoming a gentleman of his years and gravity. Over
and above these grounds of distrust, it is one of his fixed
opinions, that the law never can by possibility do any-
thing wrong; he therefore looks upon Mr. Pickwick as one
who has justly suffered in purse and peace for a breach
of his plighted faith to an unprotected female, and holds
that he is called upon to regard him with some suspi-
cion on that account. These causes led to a rather cold
and formal reception; which Mr. Pickwick acknowl-
edged with the same stateliness and intense politeness.
as was displayed on the other side. Indeed, he assumed
an air of such majestic defiance, that I was fearful he
might break out into some solemn protest or declara-
tion, and therefore inducted him into his chair without
a moment’s delay.
This piece of generalship was perfectly successful.
The instant he took his seat, Mr. Pickwick surveyed us
all with a most benevolent aspect, and was taken with a
fit of smiling full five minutes long. His interest in our
ceremonies was immense. They are not very numerous
or complicated, and a description of them may be com-
prised in very few words. As our transactions have
already been, and must necessarily continue to be, more
MASTER HIUMPHREY'S CLOCK, 343
or less anticipated by being presented in these pages at
different times, and under various forms, they do not
require a detailed account.
Our first proceeding when we are assembled is to
shake hands all round, and greet each other with cheer-
ful and pleasant looks. Remembering that we assemble
not only for the promotion of our happiness, but with
the view of adding something to the common stock, an
air of languor or indifference in any member of our
body would be regarded by the others as a kind of trea-
son. We have never had an offender in this respect;
but if we had, there is no doubt that he would be taken
to task pretty severely.
Our salutation over, the venerable piece of antiquity
from which we take our name is wound up in silence.
This ceremony is always performed by Master Hum-
phrey himself (in treating of the club, I may be per-
mitted to assume the historical style, and speak of
myself in the third person), who mounts upon a chair
for the purpose, armed with a large key. While it is
in progress, Jack Redburn is required to keep at the
farther end of the room under the guardianship of Mr.
Miles, for he is known to entertain certain aspiring and
unhallowed thoughts connected with the clock, and has
even gone so far as to state that if he might take the
works out for a day or two he thinks he could improve
them. We pardon him his presumption in considera.
tion of his good intentions, and his keeping this respect-
ful distance, which last penalty is insisted on, lest by
secretly wounding the object of our regard in some ten-
der part, in the ardor of his zeal for its improvement,
he should fill us with dismay and consternation.
This regulation afforded Mr. Pickwick the highest de-
light, and seemed, if possible, to exalt Jack in his good
Opinion.
The next ceremony is the opening of the clock-case
(of which Master Humphrey has likewise the key), the
taking from it as many papers as will furnish forth our
evening’s entertainment, and arranging in the recess
Such new contributions as have been provided since our
last meeting. This is always done with peculiar so-
lemnity. The deaf gentleman then fills and lights his
pipe, and we once more take our seats round the table
before mentioned, Master Humphrey acting as presi-
344 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
dent, if we can be said to have any president where
all are on the same social footing, and Our friend Jack
as secretary. Our preliminaries being now concluded,
we fall into any train of conversation that happens to
suggest itself, or proceed immediately to one of our
readings. In the latter case, the paper selected is con-
signed to Master Humphrey, who flattens it carefully on
the table and makes dog's ears in the corner of every
page, ready for turning over easily; Jack Redburn trims
the lamp with a small machine of his own invention,
which usually puts it out; Mr. Miles looks on with great
approval notwithstanding; the deaf gentleman draws
in his chair so that he can follow the words on the
paper or on Master Humphrey’s lips as he pleases; and
Master Humphrey himself, looking round with mfghty
gratification, and glancing up at his old clock, begins to
read aloud.
Mr. Pickwick’s face, while his tale was being read,
would have attracted the attention of the dullest man
alive. The complacent motion of his head and fore-
finger as he gently beat time, and corrected the air with
imaginary punctuation, the Smile that mantled on his
features at every jocose passage, and the sly look he
stole around to observe its effect, the calm manner in
which he shut his eyes and listened when there was
some little piece of description, the changing expression
with which he acted the dialogue to himself, his agony
that the deaf gentleman should know what it was all
about, and his extraordinary anxiety to correct the
reader when he hesitated at a word in the manuscript,
or substituted a wrong one, were alike worthy of re-
mark. And when at last, endeavoring to communicate
with the deaf gentleman by means of the finger alpha-
bet, with which he constructed such words as are un-
known in any civilised or savage language, he took up
a slate and wrote in large text, one word in a line, the
quiestion, “How—do — you — like — it?”—when he did
this, and handing it over the table awaited the reply,
with a cointenance only brightened and improved by
his great excitement, even Mr. Miles relaxed, and could
Inot forbear looking at him for the moment with interest
and favor.
“It has occurred to me,” said the deaf gentleman,
who had watched Mr. Pickwick and everybody else
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 345
with silent satisfaction—“it has occurred to me,” said
the deaf gentleman, taking his pipe from his lips, ‘‘that
now is our time for filling our only empty chair.”
As our conversation had naturally turned upon the
vacant seat, we lent a willing ear to this remark, and
looked at our friend inquiringly. 6
‘‘I feel Sure,” said he, “that Mr. Pickwick must be
acquainted with somebody who would be an acquisition
to us; that he must know the man we want. Pray let
us not lose any time, but set this question at rest. Is it
so, Mr. Pickwick?”
The gentleman addressed was about to return a verbal
reply, but remembering our friend’s infirmity, he sub-
stituted for this kind of answer some fifty nods. Then
taking up the slate and printing on it a gigantic “Yes,”
he handed it across the table, and rubbing his hands as
he looked round upon our faces, protested that he and
the deaf gentleman quite understood each other, al-
ready. -
“The person I have in my mind,” said Mr. Pickwick,
‘‘ and whom I should not have presumed to mention to
wou until some time hence, but for the opportunity you
hº given me, is a very strange old man. His name
is Bamber.”
“Bamber!” said Jack. “I have certainly heard the
name before.”
“I have no doubt, then,” returned Mr. Pickwick,
“ that you remember him in those adventures of mine
(the Posthumous Papers of our old club, I mean), al-
though he is only incidentally mentioned; and, if I re-
member right, appears but once.”
“That's it,” said Jack. “Let me see. He is the per-
son who has a grave interest in old mouldy chambers
and the Inns of Court, and who relates some anecdotes
having reference to his favorite theme, and an odd
ghost story, is that the man?”
“The very same. Now,” said Mr. Pickwick, lowering
his voice to a mysterious and confidential tone, ‘‘ he is
a very extraordinary and remarkable person; living,
and talking, and looking, like some Strange Spirit,
whose delight is to haunt old buildings; and absorbed
in that one subject which you have just mentioned, to
an extent which is quite wonderful. When I retired
into private life, I sought him out, and I do assure you
346 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
that the more I see of him, the more strongly I am im-
pressed with the strange and dreamy character of his
mind.”
“Where does he live?” I inquired.
“He lives,” said Mr. Pickwick, “in one of those dull,
lonely old places with which his thoughts and stories
are all connected; quite alone, and often shut up close,
for several weeks together. In this dusty Solitude he
broods upon the fancies he has so long indulged, and
when he goes into the world, or anybody from the
world without goes to see him, they are still present
to his mind and still his favorite topic. I may say, I
believe, that he has brought himself to entertain a
regard for me, and an interest in my visits; feelings
which I am certain he would extend to Master Hum-
phrey’s Clock if he were once tempted to join us. All
I wish you to understand is, that he is a strange Se-
cluded visionary, in the world but not of it; and as
unlike anybody here as he is unlike anybody elsewhere
that I have ever met or known.”
Mr. Miles received this account of our proposed com-
panion with rather a wry face and, after murmuring
that perhaps he was a little mad, inquired if he were
rich.
‘‘I never asked him,” said Mr. Pickwick.
“You might know, sir, for all that,” retorted Mr.
Miles, sharply.
“Perhaps so, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick, no less sharply
than the other, “but I do not. Indeed,” he added, re-
lapsing into his usual mildness, “I have no means of
judging. He lives poorly, but that would seem to be in
keeping with his character. I never heard him allude
to his circumstances, and never fell into the society of
any man who had the slightest acquaintance with them.
I have really told you all I know about him, and it rests
with you to say whether you wish to know more, or
know quite enough already.” . -
We were unanimously of opinion that we would seek
to know more; and, as a sort of compromise with Mr.
Miles (who, although he said “Yes—O certainly—he
should like to know more about the gentleman—he had
no"right to put himself in opposition to the general
wish,” and so forth, shook his head doubtfully and
hemmed several times with peculiar gravity), it was
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 34;
arranged that Mr. Pickwick should carry me with him
on an evening visit to the subject of our discussion,
for which purpose an early appointment between that
gentleman and myself was immediately agreed upon;
it being understood that I was to act upon my own re-
sponsibility, and to invite him to join us or not, as I
might think proper. This Solemn question determined,
we returned to the clock-case (where we have been fore-
stalled by the reader), and between its contents, and
the conversation they occasioned, the remainder of our
time passed very quickly.
When we broke up, Mr. Pickwick took me aside to
tell me that he had spent a most charming and delight-
ful evening. Having made this communication with an
air of the strictest Secrecy, he took Jack Redburn into
another corner to tell him the same, and then retired into
another corner with the deaf gentleman and the slate,
to repeat the assurance. It was amusing to observe the
contest in his mind whether he should extend his con-
fidence to Mr. Miles, or treat him with dignified reserve.
Half a dozen times he stepped up behind him with a
friendly air, and as often stepped back again without
saying a word; at last, when he was close to that gen-
tleman’s ear, and upon the very point of whispering
Something conciliating and agreeable, Mr. Miles hap-
pened suddenly to turn his head, upon which Mr. Pick-
wick skipped away, and said with some fierceness,
“Good night, sir, I was about to say good night, sir,
nothing more;’ and so made a bow and left him.
“Now, Sam,” said Mr. Pickwick, when he had got
down-stairs.
“All right, sir,” replied Mr. Weller. “Hold hard,
sir. Right arm fust—now the left—now one strong
convulsion, and the great-coat's On, sir.”
Mr. Pickwick acted upon these directions, and being
further assisted by Sam, who pulled at one side of the
collar, and Mr. Weller, who pulled hard at the other,
was speedily enrobed. Mr. Weller, senior, then pro-
duced a full-sized stable lantern, which he had carefully
deposited in a remote corner, on his arrival, and in-
quired whether Mr. Pickwick would have “the lamps
alight.”
‘‘I think not to-night,” said Mr. Pickwick.
“Then if this here lady vill per-mit,” rejoined Mr.
348 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
Weller, “we’ll leave it here, ready for next journey.
This here lantern, mum,” said Mr. Weller, handing it
to the housekeeper, “Vunce belonged to the celebrated
Bill Blinder as is now at grass, as all on us will be in our
turns. Bill, mum, wos the hostler as had charge o’ them
two well-known piebald leaders that run in the Bristol
fast coach, and would never go to no other tune but a
Sutherly vind and a cloudy sky, which wos conse-
kvently played incessant, by the guard, wenever they
wos on duty. He wos took wery bad one arternoon,
arter having been off his feed, and wery shaky on his
legs for some veeks; and he says to his mate, ‘Matey,’
he says, “I think I’m a-goin’ the wrong side o’ the post,
and that my foot's wery near the bucket. Ton’t say I
an’t,” he says, “for I know I am, and don’t let me be in-
terrupted,” he says, “for I’ve saved a little money, and
I’m a-goin’ into the stable to make my last vill and tes-
tymint.” “I’ll take care as nobody interrupts,” says his
mate, “but you on y hold up your head, and shake your
ears a bit, and you’re good for twenty years to come.’
Bill Blinder makes him no answer, but he goes away
into the stable, and there he soon artervards lays him-
self down a’tween the two piebalds, and dies,—pre-
vously a writin’ outside the corn-chest, ‘This is the last
will and testymint of William Blinder.” They wos natº-
rally wery much amazed at this, and arter looking
among the litter, and up in the loft, and Vere not, they
opens the corn-chest, and finds that he’d been and
chalked his vill inside the lid; so that the lid wos obli-
gated to be took off the hinges, and sent up to Doctor
Commons to be proved, and under that 'ere wery in-
strument this here lantern was passed to Tony Weller;
vich circumstarrice, mum, gives it a wally in my eyes,
and makes me rekvest, if you will be SC kind, as to take
partickler care on it.”
The housekeeper graciously promised to keep the ob-
ject of Mr. Weller’s regard in the safest possible custody,
and Mr. Pickwick, with a laughing face, took his leave.
The body-guard followed, side by side; old Mr. Weller
buttoned and wrapped up from his boots to his chin;
and Sam, with his hands in his pockets and his hat half
off his head, remonstrating with his father, as he went,
On his extreme loquacity.
I was not a little Surprised, on turning to go up-stairs,
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 349
to encounter the barber in the passage at that late hour;
for his attendance is usually confined to Some half-hour
in the morning. But Jack Redburn, who finds out (by
instinct, I think) everything that happens in the house,
informed me with great glee that a society in imitation
of our own had been that night formed in the kitchen,
under the title of “Mr. Weller's Watch,” of which the
barber was a member; and that he could pledge him-
self to find means of making me acquainted with the
whole of its future proceedings, which I begged him,
both on my own account and that of my readers, by no
means to neglect doing.”
th: :k :k :k 3k :::
V.
MR. WELLER’S WATCH.
IT seems that the housekeeper and the two Mr. Wel-
Jers were no sooner left together on the occasion of their
first becoming acquainted, than the housekeeper called
to her assistance Mr. Slithers the barber, who had been
lurking in the kitchen in expectation of her summons;
and with many smiles and much sweetness introduced
him as one who would assist her in the responsible of-
fice of entertaining her distinguished visitors,
“Indeed,” said she, “without Mr. Slithers I should
have been placed in quite an awkward situation.”
“There is no call for any hock’erdness, mum,” said
Mr. Weller with the utmost politeness; “no call wot-
sumever. A lady,” added the old gentleman, looking
about him with the air of one who establishes an incon-
trovertible position,-- a lady can’t be hock’erd. Natur’
has otherwise purwided.”
The housekeeper inclined her head and Smiled yet
more sweetiy. The barber, who had been fluttering
about Mr. Weller and Sam in a state of great anxiety to
* Old Curiosity Shop is continued here, completing No. IV.
350 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
improve their acquaintance, rubbed his hands and cried,
“Hear, hear! Very true, sir;” whereupon Sam turned
about and steadily regarded him for some seconds in
silence. *
‘‘I never knew,” said Sam, fixing his eyes in a rumi-
native manner upon the blushing barber, ‘‘ I never
knew but Vun o' your trade, but he wos worth a dozen,
and wos indeed dewoted to his cailin’ſ ”
“Was he in the easy shaving way, sir,” inquired Mr.
Slithers; “ or in the cutting and curling line?”
“Both,” replied Sam; “easy shavin’ was his natur’,
and cuttin’ and curlin’ was his pride and glory. His
whole delight wos in his trade. He spent all his money
in bears, and run in debt for 'em besides, and there they
wos a growling avay down in the front cellar all day
long, and ineffectooally gnashing their teeth, vile the
grease o’ there relations and friends wos being re-tailed
in gallipots in the shop above, and the first-floor winder
wos ornamented with their heads; not to speak o’ the
dreadful aggrawation it must have been to 'em to see a
man always a walkin' up and down the pavement out-
side, with the portrait of a bear in his last agonies, and
underneath in large letters, ‘Another fine animal, woš
slaughtered yesterday at Jinkinson’s!” Hows’ever,
there they wos, and there Jinkinson wos, till he wos
took wery ill with some inn’ard disorder, lost the use of
his legs, and wos confined to his bed, were he laid a
wery long time, but sich wos his pride in his profession,
even then, that wenever he wos worse than usual the
doctor used to go down-stairs and Say, Jinkinson’s wery
low this mornin’; we must give the bears a stir; ? and
as sure as ever they stirred 'em up a bit and made
'em roar, Jinkinson opens his eyes if he woš ever
so bad, calls out, ‘There's the bears!’ and rewives
agin.”
“Astonishing!” cried the barber.
“Not a bit,” said Sam, “humran natur’ meat as im-
ported. Vun day the doctor happenin’ to say, ‘ I shall
ook in as usual to-morrow morjain’,” Jinkinson catches
hold of his hand and says, “ Doctor,’ he says, “will
you grant me one favor?’ ‘I will, Jinkinson,’ says
the doctor. ‘Then, doctor,’ says Jinkinson, ‘vill you
come unshaved, and let me shave you?’ ‘I will,’ says
the doctor, God bless you,” says Jinkinson. Next
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 351
day the doctor came, and arter he’d been shaved all
skilful and reg’lar, he says, “Jinkinson,’ he says, ‘it’s
wery plain this does you good. Now,’ he says, “I’ve
got a coachman as has got a beard that it ºud warm
your heart to work on, and though the footman,’ he
says, “ hasn’t got much of a beard, still he's a trying it
on with a pair o’ viskers to that extent that razors is
Christian charity. If they take it in turns to mind the
carriage when it’s a waitin’ below,’ he says, “wot's to
hinder you from operatin’ On both of 'em ev’ry day as
well as upon me? you’ve got six children,” he says,
‘wot's to hinder you from shavin’ all their heads and
keepin' 'em shaved? you’ve got two assistants in the
shop down-stairs, wot's to hinder you from cuttin’ and
curlin’ them as often as you like? Do this,” he says,
and you’re a man again.” Jinkinson Squeedged the
doctor’s hand, and begun that wery day; he kept his
tools upon the bed, and wenever he felt his-self gettin’
worse, he turned to at Vun o’ the children who wos a
runnin’ about the house vith heads like clean Dutch
cheeses, and shaved him agin. Vun day the lawyer
come to make his vill; all the time he wos a takin’ it
down, Jinkinson was secretly a clippin’ avay at his
hair vith a large pair of scissors. ‘Wot's that 'ere
snippin’ noise?” says the lawyer every now and then;
‘it’s like a man havin’ his hair cut.” “It is wery like
a man havin’ his hair cut,’ says poor Jinkinson, hidin’
the scissors, and lookin’ quite innocent. By the time
the lawyer found it out, he wos wery nearly bald. Jin-
kinson wos kept alive in this vay for a long time, but
at last vun day he has in all the children vun arter
another, shaves each on `em wery clean, and gives him
vun kiss on the crown o' his head; then he has in the
two assistants, and arter cuttin’ and curlin’ of ’em in
the first style of elegance, says he should like to hear the
woice o’ the greasiest bear, vich rekvest is immedetly ,
complied ºff. ; then he says that he feels wery happy
in his mind and vishes to be left alone; and then he
dies, prevously cuttin’ his own hair and makin’ one flat
curl in the wery middle of his forehead.” .
This anecdote produced an extraordinary effect, not
only upon Mr. Slithers, but upon the housekeeper also,
who evinced so much anxiety to please and be pleased,
that Mr. Weller, with a manner betokening some alarm,
352 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
conveyed a whispered inquiry to his son whether he
had gone “too fur.”
“Wot do you mean by too fur?” demanded Sam.
“In that 'ere little compliment respectin’ the want
of hock’erdness in ladies, Sammy,” replied his father.
“You don’t think she's fallen in love with you in con-
sekens o' that, do you?” said Sam.
“More unlikelier things have come to pass, my boy,”
replied Mr. Weller in a hoarse whisper; “I’m always
afeerd of inadwertent captivation, Sammy. If I
know’d how to make myself ugly or unpleasant, I’d do
it, Samivel, rayther than live in this here state of per-
petival terror!”
|Mr. Weller had, at that time, no further opportunity
of dwelling upon the apprehensions which beset his
mind, for the immediate occasion of his fears proceeded
to lead the way down-stairs, apologising as they went for
conducting him into the kitchen, which apartment,
however, she was induced to proffer for his accommo-
dation in preference to her own little room, the rather
as it afforded greater facilities for smoking, and was
immediately adjoining the ale-cellar. The preparations
which were already made sufficiently proved that these
were not mere words of course, for on the deal table
were a sturdy ale-jug and glasses, flanked with clean
pipes and a plentiful supply of tobacco for the old
gentleman and his son, while on a dresser hard by was
goodly store of cold meat and other eatables. At sight
of these arrangements Mr. Weller was at first distracted
between his love of joviality and his doubts whether
they were not to be considered as so many evidences of
captivation having already taken place; but he soon
yielded to his natural impulse, and took his seat at the
table with a very jolly countenance.
“As to imbibin’ any o’ this here flagrant veed, mum,
in the presence of a lady,” said Mr. Weller taking up a
pipe and laying it down again, “it couldn’t be. Sami-
vel, total abstinence, if you please.”
“But I like it of all things,” said the housekeeper.
“No,” rejóined Mr. Weller, shaking his head, “no.”
“ Upon my word I do,” said the housekeeper. “Mr.
Slithers knows I do.”
Mr. Weller coughed and, notwithstanding the barber’s
confirmation of the statement, said “No” again, but
MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK. 353
more feebly than before. The housekeeper lighted a
piece of paper, and insisted on applying it to the bowl
of the pipe with her own fair hands; Mr. Woller resisted;
the housekeeper cried that her fingers would be burnt;
Mr. Weller gave way. The pipe was ignited, Mr. Wei-
ler drew a long puff of Smoke, and detecting himself in
the very act of Smiling On the housekeeper, put a sudden
constrainf upon his countenance and looked sternly at
the candle, with a determination not to captivate, him-
self, or encourage thoughts of captivation in others.
From this iron frame of mind he was roused by the
voice of his son.
“I don’t think,” said Sam, who was smoking with
great composure and enjoyment, “that if the lady wos
agreeable it 'ud be wery far out O’ the vay for us four to
make up a club Of Our Own like the governors does up-
stairs, and let him,” Sam pointed with the stem of his
pipe towards his parent, “be the president.”
The housekeeper affably declared that it was the very
thing she had been thinking of. The barber said the
same. Mr. Weller said nothing, but he laid down his
pipe as if in a fit of inspiration, and performed the fol-
lowing manoeuvres:
Unbuttoning the three lower buttons of his waistcoat
and pausing for a moment to enjoy the easy flow of breath
consequent upon this process, he laid violent hands upon
his watch-chain and slowly and with extreme difficulty
drew from his fob an immense double-cased silver watch,
which brought the lining of the pocket with it, and was
not to be disentangled ‘. by great exertions and an
amazing redness of face. Having fairly got it out at
last, he detached the Outer case and wound it up with a
key of corresponding magnitude; then put the case on
again, and having applied the watch to his ear to ascer-
tain that it was still going, gave it some half-dozen hard
knocks on the table to improve its performance.
“That,” said Mr. Weller, laying it on the table with
its face upwards, “is the title and emblem o' this here
society. Sammy, reach them two stools this way for the
wacant cheers. Ladies and gen’lmen, Mr. Weller’s
Watch is vound up and now a goin'. Order!”
By way of enforcing this proclamation, Mr. Weller,
using the watch after the manner of a president’s ham-
mer, and remarking with great pride that nothing hurt
23
354 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
it, and that falls and concussions of all kinds materially
enhanced the excellence of the works and assisted the
regulator, knocked the table a great many times, and
declared the association formally constituted.
“And don’t let’s have no grinnin’ at the cheer, Sam-
ivel,” said Mr. Weller to his son, “ or I shall be com-
mittin' you to the cellar, and then p’r'aps we may get
into what the 'Merrikins call a fix, and the English a
qvestion o’ privileges.”
Having uttered this friendly caution, the President
settled himself in his chair with great dignity, and re-
quested that Mr. Samuel would relate an anecdote.
“I’ve told One,” said Sam.
“Wery good, sir; tell another,” returned the chair.
“We wos a talking jist now, sir,” said Sam, turning
to Slithers, “about barbers. Pursuing that 'ere fruitful
theme, sir, I’ll tell you in a wery few words a romantic
little story about another barber as p’r'aps you may
never have heard.”
“Samivel!” said Mr. Weller, again bringing his watch
and the table into smart collision, “address your Ob-
serwations to the cheer, sir, and not to private indi-
widuals!”
“And if I might rise to order,” said the barber in a
soft voice, and looking round him with a conciliatory
smile as he leant over the table, with the knuckles of
his left hand resting upon it, “if I might rise to order,
I would suggest that “barbers’ is not exactly the kind
of language which is agreeable and soothing to our
feelings. You, sir, will correct me if I’m wrong, but I
believe there is such a word in the dictionary as hair-
dressers.”
S “Well, but suppose he wasn’t a hairdresser,” suggested
&l,IY).
“Wy then, sir, be parliamentary and call him vun all
the more,” returned his father. “In the same way as
ev’ry gen’lman in another place is a honorable, ev’ry
barber in this place is a hairdresser. Ven you read the
speeches in the papers, and see as vun gen’lman says of
another, ‘the honorable member, if he vill allow me to
call him so,” you will understand, sir, that that means,
“if he vill allow me to keep up that 'ere pleasant and
universal fiction?’”
It is a common remark, confirmed by history and ex-
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 355
perience, that great men rise with the circumstances in
which they are placed. Mr. Weller came out so strong
in his capacity of chairman that Sam was for some
time prevented from speaking by a grin of surprise,
which held his faculties enchained, and at last subsided
in a long whistle of a single note. Nay, the old gentle-
man appeared even to have astonished himself, and
that to no small extent, as was demonstrated by the
vast amount of chuckling in which he indulged after
the utterance of these lucid remarks.
“Here’s the story,” said Sam. “Vunce upon a time
there woS a young hairdresser as opened a wery smart
little shop with four wax dummies in the winder, two
gen’lmen and two ladies—the gen’lmen with blue dots
for their beards, wery large viskers, oudacious heads of
hair, uncommon clear eyes, and nostrils of amazin’
pinkness; the ladies with their heads o' one side, their
right forefingers on their lips, and their forms dewel-
oped beautiful, in vich last respect they had the advan-
tage over the gen’lmen, as wasn’t allowed but wery
little shoulder, and terminated rayther abrupt in fancy
drapery. He had also a many hair-brushes and tooth-
brushes bottled up in the winder, neat glass-cases on
the counter, a floor-clothed cuttin’-room up-stairs, and a
weighin’-macheen in the shop, right opposite the door.
IBut the great attraction and ornament wos the dum-
mies, which this here young hairdresser wos constantly
a runnin’ Out in the road to look at, and constantly a
runnin’ in agin to touch up and polish; in short, he woš
so proud on ’em that, ven Sunday come, he wos always
wretched and mis’rable to think they wos behind the
shutters, and looked anxiously for Monday on that
account. Vun o’ these dummies wos a favºrite with
him beyond the others; and ven any of his acquaint-
ance asked him wy he didn’t get married—as the young
ladies he know’d, in partickler, often did—he used to
say, ‘Never! I never vill enter into the bonds of ved-
lock,’ he says, “until I meet vith a young 'OOman as
realises my idea o' that 'ere fairest dummy with the
light hair. Then, and not till then,’ he. says, “I vill
approach the altar.’ All the young ladies he know’d as
had got dark hair told him this wos wery sinful, and
and that he wos wurshippin’ a idle; but them as wos at
all near the same shade as the dummy colored up wery
356 MASTER HUMBHREY'S CLOCK.
much, and wos observed to think him a wery nice young
lman.” -
“Samivel,” said Mr. Weller, gravely, “a member o
this assosiashun bein’ one o’ that 'ere tender sex which
is now immedetly referred to, I have to rekvest that
you will make no reflections.” -
‘‘I ain’t a makin’ any, am I?” inquired Sam.
“Order, sir!” rejoined Mr. Weller, with severe dignity.
Then, sinking the chairman in the father, he added, in
his usual tone of voice: “Samivel, drive on!”
Sam interchanged a smile with the housekeeper, and
proceeded: -
“The young hairdresser hadn’t been in the habit o'
makin’ this awowal above six months, ven he en-count-
ered a young lady as wos the wery picter o’ the fairest
dummy. “Now,’ he says, “it’s all up. I am a slave!”
The young lady wos not only the picter o’ the fairest
dummy, but she was wery romantic, as the young hair-
dresser was, too, and he says, “Oh!’ he says, “here’s a
community o’ feelin', here’s a flow o' soul!' he says,
‘ here's a interchange o’ sentiment!” The young lady
didn’t say much, o' course, but she expressed herself
agreeable, and shortly arterwards vent to see him with
a mutual friend. The hairdresser rushes out to meet
her, but directly she sees the dummies she changes
color and falls a tremblin’ wiolently. ‘Look up, my
love,’ says the hairdresser, ‘behold your imige in my
winder, but not correcter than in my art!” “My imige!’
she says. “Yourn!’ replies the hairdresser. “But whose
imige is that!' she says, a pinting at vun o’ the gen’l-
men. “No vun's, my love,’ he says, “it is but a idea.’
‘A idea!' she cries; “it is a portrait, I feel it is a portrait,
and that 'ere noble face must be in the millingtary!’
Wot do I hear!’ says he, a crumplin’ his curls. ‘Vil-
liam Gibbs,’ she says, quite firm, never renoo the sub-
ject. I respect you as a friend,” she says, but my
affections is set upon that manly brow.’ ‘This,’ says
the hairdresser, ‘is a reg’lar blight, and in it I perceive
the hand of Fate. Farevell!’. With these vords he
rushes into the shop, breaks the dummy’s nose with a
blow of his curlin’-irons, melts him down at the parlor
fire, and never smiles arterwards.”
“The young lady, Mr. Weller?” said the housekeeper.
“Why, ma'am,” said Sam, “finding that Fate had a
5
MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK. 35%
spite agin her, and everybody she come into contact
vith, she never smiled neither, but read a deal o' poetry
and pined away,+by rayther slow degrees, for she an’t
dead yet. It took a deal o' poetry to kill the hairdresser,
and some people say arter all that it was more the gin
and water as caused him to be run over; p’r'aps it was
a little o’ both, and came o’ mixing the two.”
The barber declared that Mr. Weller had related one
of the most interesting stories that had ever come within
his knowledge, in which opinion the housekeeper entirely
concurred. -
“Are you a married man, sir?” inquired Sam.
The barber replied that he had not that honor.
“I s' pose you mean to be?” said Sam. -
“Well,” replied the barber, rubbing his hands smirk-
ingly, “I don’t know; I don’t think it’s very likely.”
“That’s a bad sign,” said Sam; “if you’d said you
meant to be vun o’ these days, I should ha’ looked upon
you as bein’ safe. You’re in a wery precarious state.”
“I am not conscious of any danger, at all events,”
returned the barber. -
“No more wos I, sir,” said the elder Mr. Weller, in-
terposing; “those Vere my symptoms, exactly. I’ve
been took that way twice. Keep your vether eye open,
my friend, or you’re gone.”
There was something so very solemn about this ad-
monition, both in its matter and manner, and also in
the way in which Mr. Weller still kept his eye fixed
upon the unsuspecting victim, that nobody cared to
speak for some little time, and might not have cared to
do so for some time longer if the housekeeper had not
happened to sigh, which called off the old gentleman’s
attention and gave rise to a gallant inquiry whether
“there wos anythin’ wery piercin’ in that 'ere little
heart?”
“Dear me, Mr. Weller!” said the housekeeper, laugh-
ing.
“No, but is there anythin’ as agitates it?” pursued
the old gentleman. “Has it always been obderrate,
always opposed to the happiness o' human creeturs?
|Elh? Has it?”
At this critical juncture for her blushes and confusion,
the housekeeper discovered that more ale was wanted,
and hastily withdrew into the cellar to draw the same,
358 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
followed by the barber, who insisted on carrying the
candle. Having looked after her with a very compla-
cent expression of face, and after him with some dis-
dain, Mr. Weller caused his glance to travel slowly
round the kitchen, until at length it rested on his son.
“Sammy,” said Mr. Weller, “I mistrust that bar-
ber.”
“Wot for?” returned Sam; “wot's he got to do with
you? You’re a nice man, you are, arter pretendin’ all
kinds o' terror, to go a payin’ compliments and talkin’
about hearts and piercers.”
The imputation of gallantry appeared to afford Mr.
Weller the utmost delight, for he replied in a voice
choked by suppressed laughter, and with the tears in
his eyes,
“Wos I a talkin’ about hearts and piercers, wos I
though, Sammy, eh?” -
“Wos you? of course you wos.”
“She don’t know no better, Sammy, there an’t no
harm in it, no danger, Sammy; she's Only a punster.
She seemed pleased, though, didn’t she? O’ course, she
wos pleased, it’s rvatºral she should be, wery natºral.”
“He’s wain of it!” exclaimed Sam, joining in his
father's mirth. “He’s actually wain!”
“ Hush!” replied Mr. Weller, composing his features,
“ they’re a comin’ back,--the little heart’s a comin’ back.
But mark these words o' mine once more, and remem-
ber 'em ven your father says he said 'em. Samivel, I
mistrust that 'ere deceitful barber.”
*
:k ::: :}; $ >}: >k
[Old Curiosity Shop is continued to the end of the number.]
MASTER H UMPHREY'S CLOCK. 359
VI.
MASTER HUMPHREY FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE IN
THE CHIMNEY_CORNER.
TWO or three evenings after the institution of Mr.
Weller's Watch, I thought I heard, as I walked in the
garden, the voice of Mr. Weller himself, at no great dis-
tance; and stopping Once or twice to listen more atten-
tively, I found that the sounds proceeded from my
housekeeper's little sitting-room, which is at the back of
the house. I took no further notice of the circumstance
at that time, but it formed the subject of a conversa-
tion between me and my friend Jack Redburn next morn-
ing, when I found that I had not been deceived in my
impression. Jack furnished me with the following par-
ticulars; and as he appeared to take extraordinary pleas-
ure in relating them, I have begged him in future to jot
down any such domestic scenes or occurrences that may
please his humor, in order that they may be told in his
own way. I must confess that, as Mr. Pickwick and he
are constantly together, I have been influenced, in
making this request, by a secret desire to know some-
thing of their proceedings.
On the evening in question, the housekeeper's room
was arranged with particular care, and the housekeeper
herself was very smartly dressed. The preparations, how-
ever, were not confined to mere showy demonstrations,
as tea was prepared for three persons, with a small dis-
play of preserves and jams and sweet cakes, which her-
alded some uncommon occasion. Miss Benton (my
housekeeper bears that name) was in a state of great
expectation, too, frequently going to the front door and
looking anxiously down the lane, and more than once
observing to the servant-girl that she expected company,
and hoped no accident had happened to delay them.
A modest ring at the bell at length allayed her fears,
and Miss Benton, hurrying into her own room and shut-
ting herself up, in order that she might preserve that
appearance of being taken by Surprise which is so es-
sential to the polite reception of visitors, awaited their
coming with a smiling countenance.
“Good ev’nin', mum,” said the older Mr. Weller, look-
360 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
ing in at the door after a prefatory tap. “I’m afeerd
we've come in rayther arter the time, mum, but the
young colt being full o' wice, has been a boltin’ and
shyin’ and gettin’ his leg over the traces to Sich a extent
that if he an’t wery soon broke in, he'll Wex me into a
broken heart, and then, he’ll never be brought Out no
more except to learn his letters from the writin’ On his
grandfather's tombstone.”
With these pathetic words, which were addressed to
something outside the door about two feet six from the
ground, Mr. Weller introduced a very Small boy firmly
set upon a couple of very sturdy legs, who looked as if
nothing could ever knock him down. Besides having a
very round face strongly resembling Mr. Weller's, and
a stout little body of exactly his build, this young gentle-
man, standing with his little legs very wide apart, as if
the top-boots were familiar to them, actually winked
upon the housekeeper with his infant eye, in imitation
of his grandfather.
“There 's a naughty boy, mum,” said Mr. Weller,
bursting with delight, ‘‘there’s a immoral Tony. Wos
there ever a little chap o' four year and eight months
old as Vinked his eye at a strange lady afore?”
As little affected by this observation as by the former
appeal to his feelings, Master Weller elevated in the air
a small model of a coach whip which he carried in his
hand, and addressing the housekeeper with a shrill “ya
—hip!” inquired if she was “going down the road; ” at
which happy adaptation of a lesson he had been taught
from infancy, Mr. Weller could restrain his feelings no
longer, but gave him twopence on the spot.
“It’s in wain to deny it, mum,” said Mr. Weller,
“this here is a boy arter his grandfather's own heart,
and beats out all the boys as ever was or will be. Though
at the same time, mum,” added Mr. Weller, trying to
look gravely down upon his favorite, “it was wery
wrong on him to want to—over all the posts as we come
along, and wery cruel on him to force poor grandfather
to lift him cross-legged over every vun of 'em. He
wouldn’t pass vuln single blessed post, mum, and at the
top o' the lane there's seven-and-forty on ’em all in a
row, and wery close together.”
Here Mr. Weller, whose feelings were in a perpetual
conflict between pride in his grandson’s achievements
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 361
and a sense of his own responsibility, and the import-
ance of impressing him with moral truths, burst into a
fit of laughter, and, Suddenly checking himself, re-
marked in a severe tone that little boys as made their
grandfathers put 'em Over posts never went to heaven
at any price.
By this time the housekeeper had made tea, and little
Tony, placed on a chair beside her, with his eyes nearly
On a level with the top of the table, was provided with
various delicacies, which yielded him extreme content-
ment. The housekeeper (who seemed rather afraid of
the child, notwithstanding her caresses) then patted him
on the head, and declared that he was the finest boy she
had ever seen.
“Wy, mum,” said Mr. Weller, “I don’t think you’ll
See a many sich, and that's the truth. But if my son
Samivel would give me my way, mum, and only dis-
pense with his—might I wenter to say the vurd?”
“What word, Mr. Weller?” said the housekeeper,
blushing slightly.
“Petticuts, mum,” returned that gentleman, laying
his hand upon the garments of his grandson. “If my
son Samivel, mum, Vould only dis-pense vith these here,
you’d see such a alteration in his appearance as the im-
agination can’t depicter.”
“But what would you have the child wear instead,
Mr. Weller?” said the housekeeper.
“I’ve offered my son Samivel, mum, agen and agen,”
returned the old gentleman, “to purwide him at my own
cost vith a suit o’clothes as 'ud be the makin’ On him,
and form his mind in infancy for those pursuits as I
hope the family o’ the Vellers will always dewote them-
selves to. Tony, my boy, tell the lady wot them clothes
are, as grandfather says, father ought to let you wear.”
“A little white hat and a little sprig weskut and little
knee cords and little top-boots and a little green coat
with little bright buttons and a little welwet collar,” re-
plied Tony, with great readiness and no stops.
“That’s the cos-toom, mum,” said Mr. Weller, looking
proudly at the housekeeper. ‘ Once make sich a model
on him as that, and you’d say he woS a angel!”
Perhaps the housekeeper thought that in such a guise
young Tony would look more like the angel at Islington
than anything else of that name, or perhaps she was
362 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
disconcerted to find her previously-conceived ideas dis.
turbed, as angels are not commonly represented in top-
boots and sprig waistcoats. She coughed doubtfully,
but said nothing.
“How many brothers and sisters have you, my dear?”
she asked, after a short silence.
“One brother and no sister at all,” replied Tony.
“Sam his name is, and so’s my father's. Do you know
my father?” --
“O yes, I know him,” said the housekeeper graciously.
“Is my father fond of you?” pursued Tony.
“I hope so,” rejoined the Smiling housekeeper.
Tony considered a moment, and then said, “Is my
grandfather fond of you?”
WThis would seem a very easy question to answer, but
instead of replying to it, the housekeeper Smiled in
great confusion, and said that really children did ask
such extraordinary questions that it was the most dif-
ficult thing in the world to talk to them. Mr. Weller
took upon himself to reply that he was very fond of the
lady; but the housekeeper entreating that he would not
put such things into the child’s head, Mr. Weller shook
his own while she looked another way, and seemed to
be troubled with a misgiving that captivation was in
progress. It was, perhaps, on this account that he
changed the subject precipitately.
“It’s wery wrong in little boys to make game o’ their
grandfathers, an’t it, mum?” said Mr. Weller, shaking
his head waggishly, until Tony looked at him, when he
counterfeited the deepest dejection and sorrow.
“O, very sad!” assented the housekeeper. “But I
hope no little boys do that?”
“There is vun young Turk, mum,” said Mr. Weller,
“ as havin’ seen his grandfather a little overcome with
drink on the occasion of a friend’s birthday, goes a
reelin’ and staggerin’ about the house, and makin' be-
lieve that he’s the old gen’lm’n.” -
“O, quite shocking!” cried the housekeeper.
“Yes, mum,” said Mr. Weller; “and previously to so
doin’, this here young traitor that I’m a-speakin’ of,
pinches his little nose to make it red, and then he gives
a hiccup and says, “I’m all right,’ he says; ‘give us
another, song!'. Ha, ha! ‘Give us another song,” he
says. Ha, ha, ha!”
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 363
In his excessive delight, Mr. Weller was quite un-
mindful of his moral responsibility, until little Tony
kicked up his legs and, laughing immoderately, cried,
“That was me, that was;” whereupon the grandfather,
by a great effort, became extremely solemn.
“No, Tony, not you,” said Mr. Weller. “I hope it
warn’t you, Tony. It must ha’ been that 'ere naughty
little chap as comes sometimes out o’ the empty watch-
box round the corner, that same little chap as wos
found Standing on the table afore the looking-glass, pre-
tending to shave himself with a oyster-knife.”
“He didn’t hurt himself, I hope?” observed the house-
keeper.
“Not he, mum,” said Mr. Weller proudly; “bless your
heart, you might trust that 'ere boy with a steam-engine
a'most, he's such a knowin' young ‘’—but suddenly re-
collecting himself and observing that Tony perfectly
understood and appreciated the compliment, the old
gentleman groaned and observed that “it wos all wery
shockin’—wery.” -
“O, he’s a bad un,” said Mr. Weller, “is that 'ere
watch-box boy, makin’ such a noise and litter in the
back yard, he does, waterin’ wooden horses and feedin'
of 'em with grass, and perpetivally spillin’ his little
brother out of a veelbarrow and frightenin’ his mother
Out of her vits at the very moment wen she's expectin’
to increase his stock of happiness vith another play-fel-
ler,-O, he’s a bad one! He's even gone so far as to put
On a pair of paper spectacles as he got his father to make
for him, and walk up and down the garden vith his
hands behind him in imitation of Mr. Pickwick,--but
Tony don’t do sich things, O no!”
“O no!” echoed Tony. -
“He knows better, he does,” said Mr. Weller. “He
knows that if he wos to come sich games as these no-
body wouldn’t love him, and that his grandfather in
partickler couldn’t abear the sight on him; for vich rea-
Sons Tony’s always good.”
“Always good,” echoed Tony; and his grandfather
immediately took him on his knee and kissed him, at
the same time, with many nods and winks, slyly point-
ing at the child’s head with his thumb in order that the
housekeeper, otherwise deceived by the admirable man-
ner in which he (Mr. Weller) had sustained his charac-
864 MASTER HUMPHREY's CLOCK.
ter, might not suppose that any other young gentleman
was referred to, and might clearly understand that the
boy of the watch-box was but an imaginary creation,
and a fetch of Tony himself, invented for his improve-
ment and reformation.
Not confining himself to a mere verbal description of
his grandson’s abilities, Mr. Weller, when tea was fin-
ished, invited him by various gifts of pence and half-
pence to smoke imaginary pipes, drink visionary beer
from real pots, imitate his grandfather without reserve,
and in particular to go through the drunken scene, which
threw the old gentleman into ecstasies and filled the
housekeeper with wonder. Nor was Mr. Weller's pride
satisfied with even this display, for when he took his
leave he carried the child, like some rare and astonish-
ing curiosity, first to the barber’s house and afterwards
to the tobacconist's, at each of which places he repeated
his performances with the utmost effect to applauding
and delighted audiences. It was half-past nine o’clock
when Mr. Weller was last seen carrying him home upon
his shoulder, and it has been whispered abroad that at
that time the infant Tony was rather intoxicated.*
[Master Humphrey is revived thus at the close of the Old Curiosity Shop
merely to introduce Barnaby Rudge.]
I was musing the other evening upon the characters
and incidents with which I had been so long engaged;
wondering how I could ever have looked forward with
pleasure to the completion of my tale, and reproaching
myself for having done so, as if it were a kind of cruelty
to those companions of my solitude whom I had now
dismissed, and could never again recall; when my clock
struck tem. Punctual to the hour, my friends appeared.
On our last night of meeting, we had finished the
story which the reader has just concluded. Our con-
Versation took the same current as the meditations
which the entrance of my friends had interrupted, and
The Old Curiosity Shop was the staple of our discourse.
I may confide to the reader now, that in connection
with this little history I had something upon my mind;
* Old Curiosity Shop is continued from here to the end without ſurther
break.
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 365
something to communicate which I had all along with
difficulty repressed; something I had deemed it, during
the progress of the story, necessary to its interest to dis-
guise, and which, now that it was over, I wished, and
was yet reluctant, to disclose.
To conceal anything from those to whom I am at-
tached is not in my nature. I can never close my lips
where I have opened my heart. This temper, and the
consciousness of having done some violence to it in my
narrative, laid me under a restraint which I should have
had great difficulty in overcoming, but for a timely re-
mark from Mr. Miles, who, as I hinted in a former
paper, is a gentleman of business habits, and of great
exactness and propriety in all his transactions.
“I could have wished,” my friend objected, “that we
had been made acquainted with the single gentleman’s
name. I don’t like his withholding his name. It made
me look upon him at first with suspicion, and caused
me to doubt his moral character, I assure you. I am
fully satisfied by this time of his being a worthy crea-
ture; but in this respect he certainly would not appear
to have acted at all like a man of business.”
“My friends,” said I, drawing to the table at which they
were by this time seated in their usual chairs, “do you re-
member that this story bore another title besides that
one we have so often heard of late?” .
Mr. Miles had his pocket-book out in an instant, and
referring to an entry therein, rejoined, “Certainly.
Personal Adventures of Master Humphrey. Here it is.
I made a note of it at the time.”
I was about to resume what I had to tell them, when
the same Mr. Miles again interrupted me, Observing
that the narrative originated in a personal adventure
of my own, and that was no doubt the reason for its
being thus designated.
This led me to the point at Once. -
“You will one and all forgive me,” I returned, “if,
for the greater convenience of my story, and for its
better introduction, that adventure was fictitious... I
had my share, indeed,—no light or trivial one,—in the
pages we have read, but it was not the share I feigned
to have at first. The younger brother, the single gen:
tleman, the nameless actor in this little drama, stands
before you now.”
366 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
It was easy to see they had not expected this dis-
closure.
“Yes,” I pursued. “I can look back upon my part
in it with a calm, half-smiling pity for myself as for
some other man. But I am he, indeed; and now the
chief sorrows of my life are yours.” -
I need not say what true gratification I derived from
the sympathy and kindness with which this acknowl-
edgment was received; nor how often it had risen to
my lips before; nor how difficult I had found it—how
impossible, when I came to those passages , which
touched me most, and most nearly concerned me—
to sustain the character I had assumed. It is enough
to say that I replaced in the clock-case the record of so
many trials, sorrowfully, it is true, but with a softened
sorrow which was almost pleasure; and felt that in liv-
ing through the past again, and communicating to
others the lesson it had helped to teach me, I had been
a happier man. -
We lingered so long over the leaves from which I
had read that, as I consigned them to their former rest-
ing place, the hand of my trusty clock pointed to twelve,
and there came towards us upon the wind the voice of
the deep and distant bell of St. Paul’s as it struck the
hour of midnight.
“This,” said I, returning with a manuscript I had
taken, at the moment, from the same repository, “to
be opened to such music, should be a tale where LOn-
don’s face by night is darkly seen, and where some deed
of such a time as this is dimly shadowed out. Which
of us here has seen the working of that great machine
whose voice has just now ceased?”
Mr. Pickwick had, of course, and so had Mr. Miles.
Jack and my deaf friend were in the minority.
I had seen it but a few days before, and could not
but help telling them of the fancy I had about it.
I paid my fee of twopence upon entering to one of
the money-changers who sit within the Temple; and
falling, after a few turns up and down, into the quiet
train of thought which such a place awakens, paced the
echoing stones like some old monk whose present world
lay all within its walls. As I looked afar up into the
lofty dome, I could not help wondering what were his
reflections whose genius reared that mighty pile, when,
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 367
the last small wedge of timber fixed, the last nail driven
into its home for many centuries, the clang of hammers,
and the hum of busy voices gone, and the Great Silence
whole years of noise had helped to make, reigning un-
disturbed around, he mused, as I did now, upon his
work, and lost himself amid its vast extent. I could
not quite determine whether the contemplation of it
would impress him with a sense of greatness or of in-
significance; but when I remembered how long a time
it had taken to erect, in how short a space it might be
traversed even to its remotest parts, for how brief a
term he, or any of those who cared to bear his name,
would live to see it or know of its existence, I imagined
him far more melancholy than proud, and looking with
regret upon his labor done. With these thoughts in
my mind, I began to ascend, almost unconsciously, the
flight of steps leading to the several wonders of the
building, and found myself before a barrier where an-
other money-taker sat, who demanded which among
them I would choose to see. There were the stone gal-
lery, he said, and the whispering gallery, the geometri-
cal staircase, the room of models, the clock—the clock
being quite in my way, I stopped him there, and chose
that sight from all the rest.
I groped my way into the Turret, which it occupies,
and saw before me, in a kind of loft, what seemed to
be a great, old oaken press with folding doors. These
being thrown back by the attendant (who was sleeping
when I came upon him, and looked a drowsy fellow, as
though his close companionship with Time had made
him quite indifferent to it), disclosed a complicated
crowd of wheels and chains in iron and brass, great,
sturdy, rattling engines, suggestive of breaking a
finger put in here or there, and grinding the bone to
powder, and these were the Clock! Its very pulse, if
I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did
not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle
second stroke, as though it would check Old Time, and
have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with
one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush
the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorse-
lessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment.
I sat down opposite to it, and hearing its regular and
never-changing voice, that one deep constant note, up-
368 MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
bermost amongst all the noise and clatter in the streets
elow, marking that, let that tumult rise or fall, go on
or stop, let it be night or noon, to-morrow or to-day,
this year or next, it still performed its functions with
the same dull constancy, and regulated the progress of
the life around, the fancy came upon me that this was
London’s Heart, and that when it should cease to beat,
the City would be no more.
It is night. Calm and unmoved amidst the scenes
that darkness favors, the great heart of London throbs
in its Giant breast. Wealth and beggary, vice and
virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the direst hun-
ger, all treading on each other and crowding together,
are gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above
the clustering housetops, and you shall have within its
space everything, with its opposite extreme and contra-
diction, close beside. Where yonder feeble light is
shining, a man is but this moment dead. The taper at
a few yards’ distance is seen by eyes that have this in-
stant opened on the world. There are two houses
separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there
are quiet minds at rest; in the other, a waking con-
science that one might think would trouble the very air.
In that close corner where the roofs shrink down and
cower together as if to hide their secrets from the hand-
some street hard by, there are such dark crimes, such
miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in whis-
pers. In the handsome street, there are folks asleep
who have dwelt there all their lives, and have no more
knowledge of these things than if they had never been,
or were transacted at the remotest limits of the world,
—who, if they were himted at, would shake their heads,
look wise, and frown, and say they were impossible,
and out of Nature, as if all great towns were not.
Does not this Heart of London, that nothing moves, nor
stops, nor quickens,—that goes on the same let what
Yºlº done,—does it not express the City’s character
well! º
The day begins to break, and soon there is the hum
and noise of life. Those who have spent the night on
doorsteps and cold stones crawl off to beg; they who
have slept in beds come forth to their occupation, too,
and business is astir. The fog of sleep rolls slowly off,
and London shines awake. The streets are filled with
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 369
carriages, and people gaily clad. The jails are full, too,
to the throat, nor have the work-houses or hospitals
much room to spare. The courts of law are crowded.
Taverns have their regular frequenters by this time,
and every mart of traffic has its throng. Each of these
places is a world, and has its own inhabitants; each is
distinct from, and almost unconscious of the existence
of any other. There are some few people well to do,
who remember to have heard it said that numbers of
men and women—thousands, they think it was—get up
in London every day unknowing where to lay their
heads at night; and that there are quarters of the town
where misery and famine always are. They don’t be-
lieve it quite, there may be some truth in it, but it is
exaggerated, of course. So, each of these thousand
Worlds goes on, intent upon itself, until night comes
again,_first with its lights and pleasures, and its cheer-
ful streets; then with its guilt and darkness.
Heart of London, there is a moral in thy every stroke!
as I look on at thy indomitable working, which neither
death, nor press of life, nor grief, nor gladness out of
doors will influence one jot, I seem to hear a voice
within thee which sinks into my heart, bidding me, as
I elbow my way among the crowd, have some thought
for the meanest wretch that passes, and, being a man,
to turn away with scorn and pride from none that bear
the human shape.
I am by no means sure that I might not have been
tempted to enlarge upon the subject had not the papers
that lay before me on the table been a silent reproach
for even this digression. I took them up again when I
had got thus far, and seriously prepared to read.
The handwriting was strange to me, for the manu-
script had been fairly copied. As it is against our rules,
in such a case, to inquire into the authorship until the
reading is concluded, I could only glance at the different
faces round me, in search of some expression which
should betray the writer. Whoever he might be, he
was prepared for this, and gave no sign for my en-
lightenment.
I had the papers in my hand, when my deaf friend
interposed with a suggestion.
“It has occurred to me,” he said, “bearing in mind
24
370 MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
your sequel to the tale we have finished, that if such of
us as have anything to relate of Our Own lives could
interweave it with our contribution to the Clock, it
would be well to do so. This need be no restraint upon
us, either as to time, or place, Orincident, since any real
passage of this kind may be surrounded by fictitious
circumstances, and represented by fictitious characters.
*What if we make this an article of agreement among
Ourselves?”
The proposition was cordially received, but the diffi-
culty appeared to be that here was a long story written
before we had thought of it.
“ Unless,” said I, “it should have happened that the
writer of this tale—which is not impossible, for men
are apt to do so when they write—has actually mingled
with it something of his own endurance and expe-
rience.”
Nobody spoke, but I thought I detected in one quarter
that this was really the case.
“If I have no assurance to the contrary,” I added,
therefore, “I shall take it for granted that he has done
so, and that even these papers come within our new
agreement. Everybody being mute, we hold that un-
derstanding, if you please.”
And here I was about to begin again, when Jack in-
formed us softly that, during the progress of our last
narrative, Mr. Weller's Watch had adjourned its sit-
tings from the kitchen, and regularly met outside our
door, where he had no doubt that august body would
be found at the present moment. As this was for the
<convenience of listening to our stories, he submitted
that they might be suffered to come in, and hear them
more pleasantly. -
To this we one and all yielded a ready assent, and
the party being discovered, as Jack had supposed, and
invited to walk in, entered (though not without great
confusion at having been detected), and were accom-
modated with chairs at a little distance.
Then, the lamp being trimmed, the fire well stirred
and burning brightly, the hearth clean swept, the cur-
tains closely drawn, the clock wound up, we entered on
our new story, BARNABY RUDGE.
sk >k :k :}; *: 2}: :k
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 371
[This is, as indicated, the final appearance of Master Humphrey's Clock.
It forms the conclusion of Barnaby Itudge.]
.*
It is again midnight. My fire burns cheerfully; the
room is filled with my old friend’s sober voice; and I
am left to muse upon the story we have just now
finished.
It makes me smile, at such a time as this, to think if
there were any one to see me sitting in my easy-chair,
my grey head hanging down, my eyes bent thoughtfully
upon the glowing embers, and my crutch—emblem of
my helplessness—lying upon the hearth at my feet, how
Solitary I should seem. Yet though I am the sole tenant
of this chimney-corner, though I am childless and old,
I have no sense of loneliness at this hour; but am the
centre of a. silent group whose company I love.
Thus, even age and Weakness have their consolations.
If I were a younger man, if I were more active, more
strongly bound and tied to life, these visionary friends
would shun me, or I should desire to fly from them.
Being what I am, I can court their Society, and delight
in it; and pass whole hours in picturing to myself the
shadows that perchance flock every night into this
chamber, and in imagining with pleasure what kind of
interest they have in the frail, feeble mortal who is its
sole inhabitant.
All the friends I have ever lost I find again among
these visitors. I love to fancy their spirits hovering
about me, feeling still some earthly kindness for their
old companion, and watching his decay. “He is weaker,
he declines apace, he draws nearer and nearer to us,
and will soon be conscious of our existence.” What is
there to alarm me in this? It is encouragement and
hope.
These thoughts have never crowded on me half so
fast as they have done to-night. Faces I had long for-
gotten have become familiar to me Once again; traits I
had endeavored to recall for years have come before
me in an instant; nothing is changed but me; and even
I can be my former self at will.
Raising my eyes but now to the face of my old clock,
I remember, quite involuntary, the Veneration, not un-
mixed with a sort of childish awe, with which I used to
sit and watch it as it ticked, unheeded in a dark stair-
372 MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
case corner. I recollect looking more grave and steady
when I met its dusty face, as if, having that Strange
kind of life within it, and being free from all excess of
vulgar appetite, and warning all the house by night
and day, it were a sage. How often have I listened to
it as it told the beads of time, and wondered at its con-
stancy! How often watched it slowly pointing round
the dial, and, while I panted for the eagerly expected
hour to come, admired, despite myself, its steadiness of
purpose and lofty freedom from all human strife, impa-
tience, and desire!
I thought it cruel once. It was very hard of heart, to
my mind, I remember. It was an old servant even then;
and I felt as though it ought to show some sorrow; as
though it wanted sympathy with us in our distress, and
were a dull, heartless, mercenary creature. Ah! how
soon I learnt to know that in its ceaseless going on, and
in its being checked or stayed by nothing, lay its greatest
kindness, and the only balm for grief and wounded
peace of mind.
To-night, to-night, when this tranquillity and calm are
on my spirits, and memory presents so many shifting
scenes before me, I take my quiet stand at will by many
a fire that has been long extinguished, and mingle with
the cheerful group that cluster round it. If I could be
sorrowful in such a mood, I should grow sad to think
what a poor blot I was upon their youth and beauty
once, and now how few remain to put me to the blush;
I should grow sad to think that such among them as I
sometimes meet with in my daily walks are scarcely
less infirm than I; that time has brought us to a level;
and that all distinctions fade and vanish as we take our
trembling steps towards the grave.
But memory was given us for better purposes than
this, and mine is not a torment, but a source of pleasure.
To muse upon the gaiety and youth I have known sug-
gests to me glad scenes of harmless mirth that may be
passing now. From contemplating them apart, I soon
became an actor in these little dramas and, humoring
my fancy, lose myself among the beings it invokes.
When my fire is bright and high, and a warm blush
mantles in the walls and ceiling of this ancient room;
when my clock makes cheerful music, like one of those
chirping insects who delight in the warm hearth, and
MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK. 373
are sometimes, by a good Superstition, looked upon as
the harbingers of fortune and plenty to that household
in whose mercies they put their humble trust; when
everything is in a ruddy genial glow, and there are
voices in the crackling frame, and Smiles in its flashing
light, other Smiles and other voices congregate around
me, invading, with their pleasant harmony, the silence
of the time. *
For then a knot of youthful creatures gather round
my fireside, and the room reëchoes to their merry
voices. My Solitary chair no longer holds its ample
place before the fire, but is wheeled into a smaller cor-
ner, to leave more room for the broad circle formed
about the cheerful hearth. I have sons, and daughters,
and grandchildren, and we are assembled on Some Oc-
casion of rejoicing common to us all. It is a birthday,
perhaps, or perhaps it may be Christmas time; but be
what it may, there is rare holiday among us; we are
full of glee.
In the chimney-corner, opposite myself, sits one who
has grown old beside me. She is changed, of course;
much changed; and yet I recognise the girl even in that
grey hair and wrinkled brow. Glancing from the
laughing child who half hides in her ample skirts, and
half peeps out, -and from her to the little matron of
twelve years old, who sits so womanly and so demure
at no great distance from me, and from her again, to
a fair girl in the full bloom of early womanhood, the
centre of the group, who has glanced more than once
towards the opening door, andſ by whom the children,
whispering and tittering among themselves, will leave
a vacant chair, although she bids them not, I see her
image thrice repeated, and feel how long it is before one
form and set of features wholly pass away, if ever,
from among the living. While I am dwelling upon
this, and tracing out the gradual change from infancy
to youth, from youth to perfect growth, from that to
age, and thinking, with an old man’s pride, that she is
comely yet, I feel a slight thin hand upon my arm, and,
looking down, see seated at my feet a crippled boy, a
gentle, patient child,—whose aspect I know well. He
rests upon a little crutch,--I know it too, and leaning
On it as he climbs my footstool, whispers in my ear, “I
am hardly one of these, dear grandfather, although I
374 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
love them dearly. They are very kind to me, but you
will be kinder still, I know.”
I have my hand upon his neck, and stoop to kiss him,
when my clock strikes, my chair is in its old spot, and I
am alone.
What if I be? What if this fireside be tenantless,
save for the presence of one weak old man? ...From my
house-top. I can look upon a hundred homes, in every
one of which these social companions are matters of
reality. In my daily walks I pass a thousand men
whose cares are all forgotten, whose labors are made
light, whose dull routine of work from day to day is
cheered and brightened by their glimpses of domestic
joy at home, Amid the struggles of this struggling
town what cheerful sacrifices are made; what toil en-
dured with readiness; what patience shown and fortitude
displayed for the mere sake of home and its affec-
tions! Let me thank Heaven that I can people my fire-
side with shadows such as these; with shadows of bright
objects that exist in crowds about me; and let me say,
‘‘I am alone no more.”
I never was less so—I write it with a grateful heart—
than I am to-night. Recollections of the past and visions
of the present come to bear me company; the meanest
man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add
his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and when-
ever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path
upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such
an hour as this, and when I love the World as well as I
do now.
THE DEAF GENTLEMAN FROM HIS OWN APARTMENT.
Our dear friend laid down his pen at the end of the
foregoing paragraph, to take it up no more. I little
thought ever to employ mine upon so sorrowful a task
as that which he has left me, and to which I now de-
vote it.
As he did not appear among us at his usual hour next
morning, we knocked gently at his door. No answer be-
ing given, it was softly opened; and then, to our surprise,
we saw him seated before the ashes of his fire, with a lit-
tle table I was accustomed to set at his elbow when I left
MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK. 375
him for the night at a short distance from him, as
though he had pushed it away with the idea of rising
and retiring to his bed. His crutch and footstool lay at
his feet as usual, and he was dressed in his chamber-
gown, which he had put on before I left him. He was
reclining in his chair, in his accustomed posture, with
his face towards the fire, and seemed absorbed in medi-
tation,-indeed, at first, we almost hoped he was.
Going up to him, we found him dead. I have often,
very often, seen him sleeping, and always peacefully,
but I never saw him look so calm and tranquil. His
face wore a serene, benign expression, which had im-
pressed me very strongly when we last shook hands;
not that he had ever had any other look, God knows;
but there was something in this so very spiritual, so
strangely and indefinably allied to youth, although his
head was grey and venerable, that it was new even in
him. It came upon me all at Once when on some slight
pretence he called me back upon the previous night to
take me by the hand again, and once more say, “God
bless you.” w
A bell-rope hung within his reach, but he had not
moved towards it; nor had he stirred, we all agreed,
except, as I have said, to push away his table, which he
could have done, and no doubt did, with a very slight
motion of his hand. He had relapsed for a rhoment
into his late train of meditation, and, with a thoughtful
Smile upon his face, had died.
I had long known it to be his wish that whenever this
event should come to pass we might be all assembled in
the house. I therefore lost no time in sending for Mr.
Pickwick and Mr. Miles, both of whom arrived before
the messenger’s return.
It is not my purpose to dilate upon the sorrow and
affectionate emotions of which I was at once the witness
and the sharer. But I may say, of the humbler mourn-
ers, that his faithful housekeeper was fairly heart-
broken; that the poor barber would not be comforted;
and that I shall respect the homely truth and warmth of
heart of Mr. Weller and his son to the last moment of
my life.
“And the sweet old creetur, sir,” said the elder Mr.
Weller to me in the afternoon, “has bolted. Him as
had no wice, and was so free from temper that a infant
376 MASTER HUMPHREYS CLOCK.
might ha” drove him, has been took at last with that 'ere
unawoidable fit o' staggers as we all must come to, and
gone off his feed for ever! I see him,” said the old gen-
tleman, with a moisture in his eye, which could not be
mistaken, “I see him gettin', every journey, more and
more groggy; I says to Samivel, “My boy! the Grey’s
a goin’ at the knees; ’ and now my predilictions is fa-
tally werified and him, as I could never do enough to
serve or show my likin’ for, is up the great universal
spout o' natur.” -
I was not the less sensible of the old man’s attachment
because he expressed it in his peculiar manner. Indeed,
I can truly assert of both him and his son, that notwith-
standing the extraordinary dialogues they held together,
and the strange commentaries and corrections with
which each of them illustrated the other’s speech, I do
not think it possible to exceed the sincerity of their re-
gret; and that I am sure their thoughtfulness and
anxiety in anticipating the discharge of many little
offices of sympathy would have done honor to the most
delicate-minded persons.
Our friend had frequently told us that his will would
be found in a box in the Clock-case, the key of which
was in his writing-desk. As he had told us also that he
desired it to be opened immediately after his death,
whenever that should happen, we met together that
night for the fulfilment of his request.
We found it where he had told us, wrapped in a sealed
paper, and with it a codicil of recent date, in which he
named Mr. Miles and Mr. Pickwick his executors, as
having no need of any greater benefit from his estate
than a generous token (which he bequeathed to them)
of his friendship and remembrance.
After pointing out the spot in which he wished his
ashes to repose, he gave to “his dear old friends,” Jack
Redburn and myself, his house, his books, his furniture,
—in short, all that his house contained; and with this
legacy more ample means of maintaining it in its present
state than we, with our habits and at our terms of life,
can ever exhaust. Besides these gifts, he left to us, in
trust, an annual sum of no insignificant amount, to be
distributed in charity among his accustomed pensioners
—they are a long list—and such other claimants on his
bounty as might, from time to time, present themselves.
*~ MASTER, HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 377
And, as true charity not only covers a multitude of sins,
but includes a multitude of virtues, such as forgiveness,
liberal construction, gentleness and mercy to the faults
of others, and the remembrance of our own imperfec-
tions and advantages, he bade us not inquire too closely
into the venial errors of the poor, but finding that they
were poor, first to relieve and then endeavor—at an ad-
vantage—to reclaim them.
To the housekeeper he left an annuity, sufficient for
her comfortable maintenance and support through life.
For the barber, who had attended him many years, he
made a similar provision. And I may make two re-
marks in this place: first, that I think this pair are very
likely to club their means together and make a match
of it; and secondly, that I think my friend had this re-
sult in his mind, for I have heard him say, more than
Once, that he could not concur with the generality of
mankind in censuring equal marriages made in later
life since there were many cases in which such unions
could not fail to be a wise and rational source of hap-
piness to both parties.
The elder Mr. Weller is so far from viewing this pros-
pect with any feelings of jealousy that he appears to be
very much relieved by its contemplation; and his son,
if I am not mistaken, participates in this feeling. We
are all of opinion, however, that the old gentleman’s
danger, even at its crisis, was very slight, and that he
merely labored under one of those transitory weak-
nesses to which persons of his temperament are now
and then liable, and which become less and less alarm-
ing at every return, until they wholly subside. I have
no doubt he will remain a jolly old widower for the rest
of his life, as he has already inquired of me, with much
gravity, whether a writ of habeas corpus would enable
him to settle his property upon Tony beyond the possi-
bility of recall; and has, in my presence, conjured his
son, with tears in his eyes, that in the event of his ever
becoming amorous again, he will put him in a strait-
waistcoat until the fit is passed, and distinctly inform
the lady that his property is “made over.”
Although I have very little doubt that Sam would
dutifully comply with these injunctions in a case of ex-
treme necessity, and that he would do so with perfect
composure and coolness, I do not apprehend things will
378 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
ever come to that pass, as the old gentleman seems per-
fectly happy in the society of his son, his pretty daugh-
ter-in-law, and his grandchildren, and has solemnly
announced his determination to “take arter the old un in
all respects; ” from which I infer that it is his intention
to regulate his conduct by the model of Mr. Pickwick,
who will certainly set him the example of a single life.
I have diverged for a moment from the subject with
which I set out, for I know that my friend was inter-
ested in these little matters, and I have a natural ten-
dency to linger upon any topic that occupied his
thoughts or gave him pleasure and amusement. His re-
maining wishes are very briefly told. He desired that
we would make him the frequent subject of our conver-
sation; at the same time, that we would never speak of
him with an air of gloom or restraint, but frankly, and
as one whom we still loved and hoped to meet again.
He trusted that the old house would wear no aspect of
mourning, but that it would be lively and cheerful; and
that we would not remove or cover up his picture,
which hangs in our dining-room, but make it our com-
panion as he had been. His own room, our place of
meeting, remains, at his desire, in its accustomed state;
our seats are placed about the table as of old; his easy-
chair, his desk, his crutch, his footstool, hold their ac-
customed places, and the clock stands in its familiar
corner. We go into the chamber at stated times to
see that all is as it should be, and to take care that the
light and air are not shut out, for on that point he ex-
pressed a strong solicitude. But it was his fancy that
the apartment should not be inhabited; that it should be
religiously preserved in this condition, and that the
voice of his old companion should be heard no more.
My own history may be summed up in a very few
words; and even those I should have spared the reader
but for my friend’s allusion to me some time since. I
have no deeper sorrow than the loss of a child, - an
only daughter, who is living, and who fled from her
father’s house but a few weeks before our friend and
I first met. I had never spoken of this even to him,
because I have always loved her, and I could not bear
to tell him of her error until I could tell him also of her
sorrow and regret. Happily I was enabled to do so
some time ago. And it will not be long, with Heaven’s
MASTER HUMPHREY's CLOCK. 379
leave, before she is restored to me; before I find in her
and her husband the support of my declining years.
For my pipe, it is an old relic of home, a thing of
no great worth, a poor trifle, but sacred to me for
her sake. -
Thus, since the death of our venerable friend, Jack
Redburn and I have been the sole tenants of the old
house; and, day by day, have lounged together in his
favorite walks. Mindful of his injunctions, we have
long been able to speak of him with ease and cheerful-
ness, and to remember him as he would be remem-
bered. . From certain allusions which Jack has dropped,
to his having been deserted and cast off in early life, I
am inclined to believe that some passages of his youth
may possibly be shadowed out in the history of Mr.
Chester and his son, but seeing that he avoids the sub-
ject, I have not pursued it.
My task is done. The chamber in which we have
whiled away so many hours, not, I hope, without some
pleasure and some profit, is deserted; our happy hour of
meeting strikes no more; the chimney-corner has grown
cold; and MASTER HUMPHREY’s CLOCK has stopped for
€Vel’.
IHUNTED DOW.N.
[1860.]
H U N T E HD. D. O. W N.
H.
MOST of us see some romances in life. In my capacity
as Chief Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I think I
have within the last thirty years seen more romances
than the generality of men, however unpromising the
Opportunity may, at first sight, seem.
As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the
means that I used to want, of considering what I have
Seen at leisure. My experiences have a more remark-
able aspect, so reviewed, than they had when they were
in progress. I have come home from the Play now, and
can recall the scenes of the Drama upon which the cur-
tain has fallen, free from the glare, bewilderment, and
bustle of the Theatre.
Let me recall one of these Romances of the real world.
There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in
Connection with manner. The art of reading that book
of which Eternal Wisdom obliges every human creature
to present his or her own page with the individual
character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is
little studied. It may require some natural aptitude,
and it must require (for everything does) some patience
and Some pains. That these are not usually given to it,
—that numbers of people accept a few stock common-
place expressions of face as the whole list of character-
istics, and neither seek nor know the refinements that
are truest,--that You, for instance, give a great deal of
time and attention to the reading of music, Greek, Latin,
French, Italian, Hebrew, if you please, and do not
Qualify yourself to read the face of the master or mis-
tº CSS looking over your shoulder teaching it to you, -I
384 HUNTED DOWN.
assume to be five hundred times more probable than
improbable. Perhaps a little self-sufficiency may be at
the bottom of this; facial expression requires no study
from you, you think; it comes by mature to you to know
enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.
I confess, for my part, that I have been taken in, over
and over again. Ihave been taken in by acquaintances,
and I have been taken in (of course) by friends; far
oftener by friends than by any other class of persons.
How came I to be so deceived? Had I quite misread
their faces?
No. Believe me, my first impression of those people,
founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true.
My mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me
and explain themselves away.
II.
THE partition which separated my own office from
our general outer office in the City was of thick plate-
glass. I could see through it what passed in the outer
office, without hearing a word. I had it put up in place
of a wall that had been there for years, ever since the
house was built. It is no matter whether I did or did
not make the change in order that I might derive my
first impression of strangers, who came to us on busi-
ness, from their faces alone, without being influenced
by anything they said. Enough to mention that I
turned my glass partition to that account, and that a
Dife Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be prac-
fised upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human
I’8, C62.
It was through my glass partition that I first saw the
gentleman whose story I am going to tell.
He had come in without my observing it, and had put
his hat and umbrella on the broad counter, and was
bending over it to take some papers from one of the
clerks. He was about forty or so, dark, exceedingly
well dressed in black,-being in mourning, and the
hand he extended with a polite air had a particularly
HUNTED DOWN. 385
well-fitting black-kid glove upon it. His hair, which
was elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted straight
up the middle; and he presented this parting to the
clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had said, in so
many, words: “You must take me, if you please, my
friend, just as I show myself. Come straight up here,
follow the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no
trespassing.”
I conceived a very great aversion to that man the
moment I thus saw him. *
He had asked for some of Our printed forms, and the
clerk was giving them...to him and explaining them. An
obliged and agreeable smile was on his face, and his eyes
met those of the clerk with a sprightly look. (I have
known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad
men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that con-
ventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of
countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything
to be got by it.)
I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became
aware of my looking at him. Immediately he turned
the parting in his hair toward the glass partition, as if
he said to me with a sweet Smile, “Straight up here, if
you please. Off the grass!”
In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up
his umbrella, and was gone.
I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, “Who
was that?” -
He had the gentleman’s card in his hand. “Mr. Julius
Slinkton, Middle Temple.”
“A barrister, Mr. Adams?”
“I think not, sir.”
“I should have thought him a clergyman but for his
having no Reverend here,” said I.
“Probably, from his appearance,” Mr. Adams replied,
“he is reading for orders.” *
I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat,
and dainty linem altogether.
“What did he want, Mr. Adams?”
“Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of refer-
ence.”
“Recommended here? Did he say?”
“Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend
of yours. He noticed you, but said that as he had not
25
386 HUNTED DOWN.
the pleasure of your personal acquaintance he would
not trouble you.” -
“Did he know my name?”
“O yes, sir! He said, ‘There is Mr. Sampson, I see!’”
“A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?”
“Remarkably so, sir.”
“Insinuating manners, apparently?”
“Very much so, indeed, sir.”
“Hah!” said I. “I want nothing at present, Mr.
Adams.”
Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine with a
friend of mine, a merchant, a man of taste, who buys
pictures and books; and the first man I saw among the
company was Mr. Julius Slinkton. There he was, stand-
ing before the fire, with good large eyes and an open
expression of face; but still (I thought) requiring every-
body to come at him by the prepared way he offered,
and by no other.
I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr.
Sampson, and my friend did so. Mr. Slinkton was very
happy to see me. Not too happy; there was no over-
doing of the matter; happy in a thoroughly well-bred,
perfectly unmeaning way. -
“I thought you had met,” our host observed.
“No,” said Mr. Slinkton. “I did look in at Mr. Samp-
son’s office, on your recommendation; but I really did
not feel justified in troubling Mr. Sampson himself, on
a point in the everyday routine of an ordinary clerk.”
I said I should have been glad to show him any atten-
tion on our friend’s introduction.
“I am sure of that,” said he, “ and am much obliged.
At another time, perhaps, I may be less delicate. Only,
however, if I have real business; for I know, Mr. Samp-
son, how precious business time is, and what a vast
number of impertinent people there are in the world.”
..I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow.
“You were thinking,” said I, ‘‘ of effecting a policy on
your life.”
“O dear, no! I am afraid i am not so prudent as you
pay me the compliment of Supposing me to be, Mr.
Sampson. I merely inquired for a friend. But you
know what friends are in such matters. Nothing may
ever come of it. I have the greatest reluctance to trouble
men of business with inquiries for friends, knowing the
af
HUNTED DOWN. 387
probabilities to be a thousand to one that the friends will
never follow them up. People are so fickle, so selfish,
so inconsiderate. Don’t you, in your business, find them
so every day, Mr. Sampson?” -
I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned
his smooth, white parting on me with its “Straight up
here, if you please!” and I answered, “Yes.”
“I hear, Mr. Sampson,” he resumed presently, for our
friend had a new cook, and dinner was not so punctual
as usual, “that your profession has recently suffered a
great loss.” -
“In money?” said I.
He laughed at my ready association of loss with
money, and replied, “No, in talent and vigor.”
Not at once following out his allusion, I considered
for a moment. “JHas it sustained a loss of that kind?”
said I. “I was not aware of it.”
“ Understand me, Mr. Sampson. I don’t imagine that
you have retired. It is not so bad as that. But Mr.
Meltham—”
“O, to be sure!” said I. “Yes! Mr. Meltham, the
young actuary of the ‘Inestimable.’”
“Just so,” he returned, in a consoling way.
“He is a great loss. He was at once the most pro-
found, the most original, and the most emergetic man I
have ever known connected with Life Assurance.”
I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admira-
tion for Meltham, and my gentleman had indefinitely
conveyed to me some suspicion that he wanted to sneer
at him. He recalled me to my guard by presenting
that trim pathway up his head, with its infernal “ Not
on the grass, if you please—the gravel.”
‘‘You knew him, Mr. Slinkton.”
“Only by reputation. To have known him as an ac-
Quaintance, or as a friend, is an honor I should have
sought if he had remained in society, though I might
never have had the good fortune to attain it, being a
man of far inferior mark. He was scarcely above
thirty, I suppose?”
“About thirty.”
“Ah!” he sighed, in his former consoling way. “What
Creatures we are! To break up, Mr. Sampson, and be-
Come incapable of business at that time of life!—Any
reason assigned for the melancholy fact?”
388 HUNTED DOWN.
(“Humph!” thought I, as I looked at him. “But I
WON'T go up the track, and I WILL go on the grass.”)
“What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slink-
ton?” I asked, point-blank.
“Most likely a false one. You know what Rumor is,
Mr. Sampson. I never repeat what I hear; it is the
only way of paring the nails and shaving the head of
Rumor. But, when you ask me what reason I have
heard assigned for Mr. Meltham’s passing away from
among men, it is another thing. I am not gratifying
idle gossip then. I was told, Mr. Sampson, that Mr.
Meltham had relinquished all his avocations and all his
prospects, because he was, in fact, broken-hearted. A
disappointed attachment I heard, though it hardly
seems probable, in the case of a man so distinguished
and so attractive.”
“Attractions and distinctions are no armor against
death,” said I.
“O, she died? Pray pardon me. I did not hear that.
That, indeed, makes it very, very sad. Poor Mr. Mel-
tham! She died? Ah, dear me! Lamentable, lamentable!”
I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I
still suspected an unaccountable sneer under all this,
until he said, as we were parted, like the other knots of
talkers, by the announcement of dinner:
“Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved
on behalf of a man whom I have never known. I am
not so disinterested as you may suppose. I have suf-
fered, and recently too, from death myself. I have lost
one of two charming nieces, who were my constant
companions. She died young—barely three-and-twenty:
and even her remaining sister is far from strong. The
world is a grave!”
He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached
for the coldness of my manner. Coldness and distrust
had been engendered in me, I knew, by my bad experi-
ences; they were not natural to me; and I often thought
how much I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, and how
little I had gained, gaining hard caution. This state of
mind being habitual to me, I troubled myself more
about this conversation than I might have troubled
myself about a greater matter. I listened to his talk at
dinner, and observed how readily other men responded
to it, and with what a graceful instinct he adapted his
HUNTED DOWN. we 389
fºubjects to the knowledge and habits of those he talked
with. As, in talking with me, he had easily started the
subject I might be supposed to understand best, and to
be the most interested in, so, in talking with others, he
guided himself by the same rule. The company was of
a varied character; but he was not at fault, that I could
discover, with any member of it. He knew just as
much of each man’s pursuit as made him agreeable to
that man in reference to it, and just as little as made it
Inatural in him to seek modestly for information when
the theme was broached.
As he talked and talked—but really not too much, for
the rest of us seemed to force it upon him—I became
Quite angry with myself. I took his face to pieces in
my mind, like a watch, and examined it in detail. I
could not say much against any of his features sepa-
rately; I could say even less against them when they
were put together. “Then is it not monstrous,” I asked
myself, “that because a man happens to part his hair
straight up the middle of his head, I should permit my-
self to suspect, and even to detest him?”
(I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my
sense. An observer of men who finds himself steadily
repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger
is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to
the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a
º º hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy
OOI’.
I took my part in the conversation with him after a
time, and we got on remarkably well. In the drawing-
room I asked the host how long he had known Mr.
Slinkton. He answered, not many months; he had met
him at the house of a celebrated painter then present,
who had known him well when he was travelling with
his nieces in Italy for their health. His plans in life
being broken by the death of one of them, he was read-
ing with the intention of going back to college as a
matter of form, taking his degree, and going into Or-
ders. I could not but argue with myself that here was
the true explanation of his interest in poor Meltham,
and that I had been almost brutal in my distrust on that
Simple head.
390 º HUNTED DOWN.
III.
ON the very next day but one I was sitting behind my
glass partition, as before, when he came into the outer
office, as before. The moment I saw him again with-
out hearing him, I hated him worse than ever.
It was only for a moment that I had this opportunity;
for he waved his tight-fitting black glove the instant I
looked at him, and came straight in.
“Mr. Sampson, good day! I presume, you see, upon
your kind permission to intrude upon you. I don’t keep
my word in being justified by business, for my business
here—if I may so abuse the word—is of the slightest
nature.”
I asked, was it anything I could assist him in?
“I thank you, no. I merely called to inquire outside
whether my dilatory friend had been so false to himself
as to be practical and sensible. But, of course, he has
done nothing. I gave him your papers with my own
hand, and he was hot upon the intention, but of course
he has done nothing. Apart from the general human
disinclination to do anything that ought to be done, I
dare say there is a specialty about assuring one’s life.
You find it like will-making. People are so supersti-
tious, and take it for granted that they will die soon af-
terwards.”
“ Up here, if you please; straight up here, Mr. Samp-
son. Neither to the right nor to the left.” I almost
fancied I could hear him breathe the words as he sat
smiling at me, with that intolerable parting exactly op-
posite the bridge of my nose.
“There is such a feeling sometimes, no doubt,” I re-
plied; “but I don’t think it obtains to any great ex-
tent.”
“Well,” said he, with a shrug and a smile, “I wish
some good angel would influence my friend in the right
direction. I rashly promised his mother and sister in
Norfolk to see it done, and he promised them that he
would do it. But I suppose he never will.”
He spoke for a minute or two on indifferent topics,
and went away.
I had scarcely unlocked the drawers of my writing-
table, next morning, when he reappeared. I noticed
HUNTED Down. 391
that he came Straight to the door in the glass partition,
and did not pause a single moment outside.
“Can you spare me two minutes, my dear Mr. Samp-
SOrn?”
“By all means.”
“Much obliged,” laying his hat and umbrella on the
table; “I came early, not to interrupt you. The fact is,
I am taken by Surprise in reference to this proposal my
friend has made.” &
“Has he made one?” said I.
“Ye-es,” he answered, deliberately looking at me;
and then a bright idea, seemed to strike him—“ or he
Only tells me he has. Perhaps that may be a new way
* evading the matter. By Jupiter, I never thought of
that l”
Mr. Adams was opening the morning’s letters, in the
Outer office. “What is the name, Mr. Slinkton?” I
asked.
“Beckwith.”
I looked out at the door and requested Mr. Adams, if
there were a proposal in that name, to bring it in. He
had already laid it out of his hand on the counter. It
was easily selected from the rest, and he gave it me.
Alfred Beckwith. Proposal to effect a policy with us
for two thousand pounds. Dated yesterday.
“From the Middle Temple, I see, Mr. Slinkton.”
“Yes. He lives on the same staircase with me; his
door is opposite. I never thought he would make me
his reference though.”
“It seems natural enough that he should.”
“Quite so, Mr. Sampson; but I never thought of it.
Let me see.” He took the printed paper from his pocket.
“How am I to answer all these questions?”
“According to the truth, of course,” said I.
“O, of course!” he answered, looking up from the
paper with a smile; “I meant they were so many. But
you do right to be particular. It stands to reason that
you must be particular. Will you allow me to use your
pen and ink?”
“Certainly.”
“And your desk?”
“Certainly.”
He had been hovering about between his hat and his
umbrella for a place to write on. He now sat down in
392 HUNTED DOWN.
my chair, at my blotting-paper and inkStand, with the
long walk up his head in accurate perspective before
me, as I stood with my back to the fire.
Before answering each question he ran over it aloud,
and discussed it. How long had he known Mr. Alfred
Beckwith? That he had to calculate by years upon his
fingers. What were his habits? No difficulty about
them; temperate in the last degree, and took a little too
much exercise, if anything. All the answers were satis-
factory. When he had written them all, he looked
them over, and finally signed them in a very pretty
hand. He supposed he had now done with the business.
I told him he was not likely to be troubled any farther.
Should he leave the papers there? If he pleased. Much
obliged. Good-morning.
I had had one other visitor before him; not at the
office, but at my own house. That visitor had come to
my bedside when it was not yet daylight, and had
been seen by no one else but by my faithful confidential
Servant.
A second reference paper (for we required always
two) was sent down into Norfolk, and was duly re-
ceived back by post. This, likewise, was satisfactorily
answered in every respect. Our forms were all com-
plied with; we accepted the proposal, and the premium
for one year was paid.
IV.
FOR six or seven months I saw no more of Mr. Slink-
ton. He called once at my house, but I was not at
home; and he once asked me to dine with him in the
Temple, but I was engaged. His friend’s assurance
was effected in March. Late in September or early in
October I was down at Scarborough for a breath of sea-
air, where. I met him on the beach. It was a hot even-
ing; he came towards me with his hat in his hand; and
there was the walk I had felt so strangly disinclined to
take in perfect order again, exactly in front of the
bridge of my nose, -
HUNTED DOWN. 303
... He was not alone, but had a young lady on his arm.
She was dressed in mourning, and I looked at her
with great interest. She had the appearance of being
extremely delicate, and her face was remarkably pale
and melancholy; but she was very pretty. He intro-
duced her as his niece, Miss Niner.
“Are you strolling, Mr. Sampson? Is it possible you
can be idle?”
It was possible, and I was strolling.
“Shall we stroll together?”
“With pleasure.”
The young lady walked between us, and we walked
on the cool sea sand, in the direction of Filey.
“There have been wheels here,” said Mr. Slinkton.
“And now I look again, the wheels of a hand-carriage!
Margaret, my love, your shadow without doubt!”
“Miss Niner’s shadow?” I repeated, looking down at
it on the sand. g
“Not that one,” Mr. Slinkton returned, laughing.
“Margaret, my dear, tell Mr. Sampson.”
“Indeed,” said the young lady, turning to me, “there
is nothing to tell—except that I constantly see the same
invalid old gentleman at all times, wherever I go. I
have mentioned it to my uncle, and he calls the gentle-
man my shadow.”
“Does he live in Scarborough?” I asked.
“He is staying here.”
“Do you live in Scarborough?”
“No, I am staying here. My uncle has placed me
with a family here, for my health.”
“And your shadow?” said I, smiling.
“My shadow,” she answered, smiling too, “is—like
myself—not very robust, I fear; for I lose my shadow
sometimes, as my shadow loses me at other times. We
both seem liable to confinement to the house. I have
not seen my shadow for days and days; but it does oddly
happen, occasionally, that wherever I go, for many days
together, this gentleman goes. We have come together
in the most unfrequented nooks on this shore.”
“Is this he?” said I, pointing before us.
The wheels had swept down to the water’s edge, and
described a great loop on the sand in turning. Bringing
the loop back towards us, and spinning it out as it came,
was a hand-carriage drawn by a man.
394 HUNTED Down.
“Yes,” said Miss Niner, “this really is my shadow,
uncle.” \
As the carriage approached us and we approached
the carriage, I saw within it an old man, whose head
was sunk on his breast, and who was enveloped in a
variety of wrappers. He was drawn by a very quiet
but very keen-looking man, with iron-grey hair, who
was slightly lame. They had passed us, when the car-
riage stopped, and the old gentleman within, putting
out his arms, called to me by my name. I went back,
and was absent from Mr. Slinkton and his niece for
about five minutes. - - -
When I rejoined them, Mr. Slinkton was the first to
speak. Indeed, he said to me in a raised voice before I
came up with him:
“It is well you have not been longer, or my niece
might have died of curiosity to know who her shadow
is, Mr. Sampson.”
“An old East India. Director,” said I. “An intimate
friend of our friend’s, at whose house I first had the
pleasure of meeting you. A certain Major Banks. You
have heard Of him?”
“Never.” - º
“Very rich, Miss Niner; but very old, and very crip-
pled. An amiable man, sensible—much interested in
you. He has just been expatiating on the affection that
he has observed to exist between you and your uncle.”
Mr. Slinkton was holding his hat again, and he passed
his hand up the straight walk, as if he himself went up
it serenely, after me.
“Mr. Sampson,” he said, tenderly pressing his niece's
arm in his, “Our affection was always a strong one, for
we have had but few near ties. We have still fewer
now. We have associations to bring us together that
are not of this world, Margaret.”
“Dear uncle!” murmured the young lady, and turned
her face aside to hide her tears.
“My niece and I have such remembrances and regrets
in common, Mr. Sampson,” he feelingly pursued, ‘‘that
it would be strange indeed if the relations between us
were cold Ör indifferent. If I remember a conversation
we once had together, you will understand the reference
I make. Cheer up, dear Margaret. Don’t droop, don’t
droop. My Margaret! I cannot bear to see you droop!”
HUNTED DOWN. 395
The poor young lady was very much affected, but
controlled herself. . His feelings, too, were very acute.
łn a word, he found himself under such great need of a
restorative, that he presently went away, to take a
bath of Sea-water, leaving the young lady and me sitting
by a point of rock, and probably presurning—but that
you will say was a pardonable indulgence in a luxury—
that she would praise him with all her heart.
She did, poor thing! . With all her confiding heart,
she praised him to me for his care of her dead sister,
and for his untiring devotion in her last illness. The
sister had wasted away very slowly, and wild and ter-
rible fantasies had come over her towards the end, but
he had never been impatient with her, or at a loss; had
always been gentle, Watchful, and self-possessed. The
sister had known him, as she had known him, to be the
best of men, the kindest of men, and yet a man of such
admirable strength of character as to be a very tower
for the support of their weak natures while their poor
lives endured.
“I shall leave him, Mr. Sampson, very soon,” said
the young lady; “I know my life is drawing to an end;
and when I am gone, I hope he will marry and be happy.
I am Sure he has lived single so long only for my sake,
and for my poor, poor sister’s.”
The jittle hiº had made another great loop
on the damp Sand, and was coming back again, grad-
ually spinning out a slim figure of eight, half a mile
long.
“Young lady,” said I, looking around, laying my hand
upon her arm, and Speaking in a low voice, ‘‘time
presses. You hear the gentle murmur of that sea?”
She looked at me with the utmost wonder and alarm,
Saying,
§ - Yes! 35 -
“And you know what a voice is in it when the storm
COmes?”
“Yes!”
“You see how quiet and peaceful it lies before us,
and you know what an awful sight of power without
pityy might be, this very night!”
& 4 es! 22
“But if you had never heard or seen it, or heard of it
in its cruelty. could vou believe that it beats every inani-
396 HUNTED DOWN.
mate thing in its way to pieces, without mercy, and de-
stroys life without remorse?”
“You terrify me, sir, by these questions
“To save you, young lady, to save you! For God’s
sake, collect your strength and collect your firmness!
If you were here alone, and hemmed in by the rising
tide on the flow to fifty feet above your head, you could
not be in greater danger than the danger you are now
to be saved from.” -
The figure on the sand was spun out, and straggled off
into a crooked little jerk that ended at the cliff very
Il Ga, I’ (LS. -
“As I am, before Heaven and the Judge of all man-
kind, your friend, and your dead sister's friend, I sol-
emnly entreat you, Miss Niner, without one moment's
loss of time, to come to this gentleman with me!”
If the little carriage had been less near to us, I doubt
if I could have got her away; but it was so near that
we were there before she had recovered the hurry of
being urged from the rock. I did not remain there
with her two minutes. Certainly within five, I had the
inexpressible satisfaction of seeing her—from the point
we had sat on, and to which I had returned—half sup-
ported and half carried up some rude steps, notched in
the cliff, by the figure of an active man. With that
figure beside her, I knew she was safe anywhere.
I sat alone on the rock, awaiting Mr. Slinkton’s re-
turn. The twilight was deepening and the shadows
were heavy when he came around the point, with his
hat hanging at his button-hole, Smoothing his wet hair
with one of his hands, and picking out the old path with
the other and a pocket-comb.
“My niece not here, Mr. Sampson?” he said, looking
about. sº
‘‘ Miss Niner seemed to feel a chill in the air after the
sun was down, and has gone home.”
He looked surprised, as though she were not accus-
tomed to do anything without him; even to originate so
slight a proceeding.
“I persuaded Miss Niner,” I explained.
“Ah!” said he. “She is easily persuaded—for her
good. Thank you, Mr. Sampson; she is better within
doors. The bathing-place was farther than I thought,
to say the truth.” -
| >>
HUNTED DOWN. 397
“Miss Niner is very delicate,” I observed.
He shook his head and drew a deep sigh. “Very,
very, very. You may recollect my saying so. The time
that has since intervened has not strengthened her.
The gloomy shadow that fell upon her sister so early in
life seems, in my anxious eyes to gather over her, ever
darker, ever darker, Dear Margaret, dear Margaret!
But we must hope.”
The hand-carriage was spinning away before us at a
most indecorous pace for an invalid vehicle, and was
making most irregular curves upon the sand. Mr. Slink-
ton, noticing it after he had put his handkerchief to his
eyes, said: g
“If I may judge from appearances, your friend will
be upset, Mr. Sampson.” •
‘‘ It looks probable, certainly,” said I.
“The servant must be drunk.”
“The servants of old gentlemen will get drunk some-
times,” said I.
“The major draws very light, Mr. Sampson.”
“The major does draw light,” said I.
By this time the carriage, much to my relief, was lost
in the darkness. We walked on for a little, side by side
over the sand, in silence. After a short while he said,
in a voice still affected by the emotion that his niece's
state of health had awakened in him,
“Do you stay here long, Mr. Sampson?” |
“Why, no. I am going away to-night.”
“So soon? But business always holds you in request.
Men like Mr. Sampson are too important to others to be
Spared to their own need of relaxation and enjoyment.”
“I don’t know about that,” said I. “ However, I am
going back.”
“To London?”
‘‘TO LOndon.”
“I shall be there too, soon after you.”
I knew that as well as he did. But I did not tell him
SO. Any more than I told him what defensive weapon
my right hand rested on in my pocket as I walked by
his side. Any more than I told him why I did not walk
On the seaside of him with the night closing in.
We left the beach, and our ways diverged. We ex-
changed good night, and had parted indeed, when he
Said, returning,
39S HUNTED DOWN.
“Mr. Sampson, may I ask? Poor Meltham, whom we
spoke of, dead yet?”
“Not when I last heard of him; but too broken a man
to live long, and hopelessly lost to his old calling.”
“Dear, dear, dear!” said he, with great feeling.
‘‘Sad, sad, sad! The world is a grave!” And so went
his way.
It was not his fault if the world were not a grave;
but I did not call that observation after him, any more
than I had mentioned those other things just now
enumerated. He went his way, and I went mine with
all expedition. This happened, as I have said, either
at the end of September or beginning of October. The
next time I saw him, and the last time, was late in No-
vember.
V.
I HAD a very particular engagement to breakfast in
the Temple. It was a bitter north-easterly morning,
and the sleet and slush lay inches deep in the streets.
I could get no conveyance, and was soon wet to the
knees; but I should have been true to that appointment
though I had to Wade to it up to my neck in the same
impediments.
The appointment took me to some chambers in the
Temple. They were at the top of a lonely corner house
overlooking the river. The name, MR. ALFRED BECK-
WITH, was painted on the Outer door. On the door oppo-
site, on the same landing, the name MR. JULIUS
SLINKTON. The doors of both sets of chambers stood
Open, so that anything said aloud in one set could be
heard in the other.
I had never been in those chambers before. They
were dismal, close, unwholesome, and oppressive; the
furniture, Originally good, and not yet old, was faded
and dirty,+the rooms were in great disorder; there was
a strong prevailing Smell of Opium, brandy, and tobacco;
the grate and fire-irons were splashed all over with un-
sightly blotches of rust; and, on a sofa by the fire, in the
room where breakfast had been prepared, lay the host,
HUNTED DOWN. 39%)
Mr. Beckwith, a man with all the appearances of the
worst kind of drunkard, very far advanced upon his
shameful way to death.
“Slinkton is not come yet,” said this creature, stag-
gering up when I went in; “I’ll call him.—Halloa.
Julius Caesar! Come and drink!” As he hoarsely roared
this out, he beat the poker and tongs together in a mad
way, as if that were his usual manner of summoning
his associate. *
The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through the
clatter from the opposite side of the staircase, and he
came in. He had not expected the pleasure of meeting
me. I have seen several artful men brought to a stand,
but I never saw a man so aghast as he was when his
eyes rested on mine. f
‘‘ Julius Caesar,” cried Beckwith, staggering between
us, “ Mist' Sampson! Mist' Sampson, Julius Caesar! Ju-
lius, Mist' Sampson, is the friend of my soul. Julius
keeps me plied with liquor, morning, noon, and night.
Julius is a real benefactor. Julius threw the tea and
coffee out of the window when I used to have any. Ju-
lius empties all the water-jugs of their contents, and
fills 'em with spirits. Julius winds me up and keeps me
going.—Boil the brandy, Julius!”
There was a rusty and furred saucepan in the ashes,
—the ashes looked like the accumulation of weeks,—
and Beckwith, rolling and staggering between us as if
he were going to plunge headlong into the fire, got the
Saucepan Out and tried to force it into Slinkton’s hand.
“Boil, the brandy, Julius Caesar! Come! Do your
usual office. Boil the brandy!”
He became so fierce in his gesticulations with the
Saucepan that I expected to see him lay open Slinkton’s
head with it. I therefore put out my hand to check
him. He reeled back to the sofa, and sat there panting,
Shaking, and red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown,
looking at us both. I noticed then that there was noth-
ing to drink on the table but brandy, and nothing to
eat but Salted herrings, and a hot, sickly, highly-pep-
pered stew.
“At all events, Mr. Sampson,” said Slinkton, offering
me the smooth gravel path for the last time, ‘‘ I thank
you for interfering between me and this unfortunate
man's violence. However you came here, Mr. Sampson,
400 HUNTED DOWN. . .
or with whatever motive you came here, at least I
thank you for that.”
“Boil the brandy,” muttered Beckwith.
Without gratifying his desire to know how I came
there, I jã quietly, “How is your niece, Mr. Slink-
ton?”
He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him.
‘‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my niece has
roved treacherous and ungrateful to her best friend.
She left me without a word of notice or explanation.
She was misled, no doubt, by some designing rascal.
Perhaps you may have heard of it?”
“I did hear that she was misled by a designing rascal.
In fact, I have proof of it.” -
“Are you sure of that?’” said he.
“Quite.”
“Boil the brandy,” muttered Beckwith. “Company
to breakfast, Julius Caesar. Do your usual office, -pro-
vide the usual breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper. Boil
the brandy!”
The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, and he
said, after a moment’s consideration,
“Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, and so
am I. I will be plain with you,”
“O no, you won’t,” said I, shaking my head.
“I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you.”
“And I tell you you will not,” said I. “I know all
about you, You plain with any one? Nonsense, non-
sense!”
“I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson,” he went on, with
a manner almost composed, “that I understand your
object. You want to save your funds, and escape from
your liabilities; these are old tricks of trade with you
old Office-Gentleman. But you will not do it, sir; you
will not succeed. You have not an easy adversary to
play against, when you play against me. We shall
have to inquire, in due time, when and how Mr. Beck-
with fell into his present habits. With that remark,
sir, I put this poor creature, and his incoherent wan-
derings of speech, aside, and wish you a good morning
and a better case next time.”
While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled a
half-pint glass with brandy. At this moment, he threw
the brandy at his face, and threw the glass after it.
HUNTED DOWN. 401
Slinkton put his hands up, half blinded with the spirit,
and cut with the glass across the forehead. At the
sound of the breakage, a fourth person came into the
room, closed the door, and stood at it; he was a very
quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-grey hair,
and slightly lame.
Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the
pain in his smarting eyes, and dabbled the blood on his
forehead. He was a long time about it, and I saw that,
in the doing of it, a tremendous change came Over him,
occasioned by the change in Beckwith, who ceased to
pant and tremble, sat upright, and never took his eyes
off him. I never in my life saw a face in which abhor-
rence and determination were so forcibly painted as in
Beckwith’s then.
“Look at me, you villain,” said Beckwith, “and see
me as I really am. I took these rooms to make them a
trap for you. I came into them as a drunkard, to bait
the trap for you. You fell into the trap, and you will
never leave it alive. On the morning when you last
went to Mr. Sampson’s office, I had seen him first.
Your plot has been known to both of us, all along, and
you have been counterplotted all along. What? Having
been cajoled into putting that prize of two thousand
pounds in your power, I was to be done to death with
brandy, and, brandy not proving quick enough, with
something quicker? Have I never seen you, when you
thought my senses gone, pouring from your little bottle
into my glass? Why, you Murderer and Förger, alone
here with you in the dead of night, as I have so often
been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol,
twenty times, to blow your brains out!”
This sudden starting up of the thing that he had Sup-
posed to be his imbecile victim into a determined man,
with a settled resolution to hunt him down and be the
death of him, mercilessly expressed from head to foot,
was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without any
figure of speech, he staggered under it. But there is
no greater mistake than to suppose that a man who is a
Calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his guilt, other-
wise than true to himself, and perfectly consistent with
lis whole character. Such a man commits murder, and
murder is the natural culmination of his course; such a
lman has to outface murder, and will do it with hardi-
Q (;
402 HUNTED DOWN.
hood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express
surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime
upon his conscience, can so brave it out. Do you think
that if he had it on his conscience at all, or had a con-
science to have it upon, he would ever have committed
the crime?
Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such
monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered himself, and
showed a defiance that was sufficiently cold and quiet.
He was white, he was haggard, he was changed; but
Only as a sharper who had played for a great stake and
had been outwitted and had lost the game.
“Listen to me, you villain,” said Beckwith, ‘‘ and let
every word you hear me say be a stab in your wicked
heart. When I took these rooms, to throw myself in
your way and lead you on to the scheme that I knew
my appearance and supposed character and habits
would suggest to such a devil, how did I know that?
Because you were no stranger to me. I knew you well.
And I knew you to be the cruel wretch who, for so
much money, had killed one innocent girl while she
trusted him implicitly, and who was by inches killing
another.
Slinkton took out a Snuff-box, took a pinch of snuff,
and laughed.
“But see here,” said Beckwith, never looking away,
never raising his voice, never relaxing his face, never
unclenching his hand. “See what a dull wolf you have
been, after all! The infatuated drunkard who never
drank a fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with,
but poured it away, here, there, everywhere—almost
before your eyes; who bought over the fellow you set
to watch him and to ply him, by outbidding you in his
bribe, before he had been at his work three days—with
whom you have observed no caution, yet who was so
bent on ridding the earth of you as a wild beast that
he would have defeated you if you had been ever so
prudent—that drunkard whom you have, many a time,
left on the floor of this room, and who has even let you
go out of it, alive and undeceived, when you have
turned him over with your foot—has, aimost as often,
on the same night, within an hour, within a few
minutes, watched you awake, had his hand at your
pillow when you were asleep, turned over your naivers.
22
HUNTED DOWN. 403
taken samples from your bottles and packets of powder,
changed their contents, rifled every secret of your
life! ”.
He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but
had gradually let it drop from between his fingers to
the floor; where he now smoothed it out with his foot,
looking down at it the while.
“That drunkard,” said Beckwith, “who had free
access to your rooms at all times that he might drink
the strong drinks that you left in his way and be the
sooner ended, holding no more terms with you than he
would hold with a tiger, has had his master-key for all
your locks, his test for all your poisons, his clue to your
cipher-writing. He can tell you, as well as you can tell
him, how long it took to complete that deed, what doses
there were, what intervals, what signs of gradual de-
cay upon mind and body; what distempered fancies
were produced, what observable changes, what physical
pain. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, that
all this was recorded day by day, as a lesson of experi-
ence for further service. He can tell you, better than
you can tell him, where that journal is at this moment.”
Slinkton stopped the action of his foot and looked at
Beckwith. N
“No,” said the latter, as if answering a question from
him. “ Not in the drawer of the writing-desk that opens
with a spring; it is not there, and it never will be there
again.” g
ºthen you are a thief!” said Slinkton.
Without any change whatever in the inflexible pur-
pose, which it was quite terrific even to me to comtem-
plate, and from the power of which I had always felt
convinced it was impossible for this wretch to escape,
Beckwith returned, -
“And I am your niece's shadow too.”
With an imprecation Slinkton put his hand to his
head, tore out some hair, and flung it to the ground. It
was the end of the smooth walk; he destroyed it in the
action, and it will soon be seen that his use for it was
DaSt.
I Beckwith went on: “Whenever you left here, I left
Jhere. Although I understood that you found it neces-
sary to pause in the completion of that purpose, to avert
suspicion, still I watched you close, with the poor con-
404 HUNTED DOWN.
fiding girl. When I had the diary, and could read it
word by word, it was only about the night before your
last visit to Scarborough, -you remember the night?
you slept with a small flat vial tied to your wrist,-]
sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept out of view. This
is Mr. Sampson’s trusty servant standing by the door.
We three saved your niece among us.”
Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or
two from the place where he had stood, returned to it,
and glanced about him in a very curious way,+as one
of the meaner reptiles might, looking for a hole to hide
in. I noticed at the same time, that a singular change
took place in the figure of the man,—as if it collapsed
within his clothes, and they consequently became ill-
shapen and ill-fitting. - - º
“You shall know,” said Beckwith, for I hope the
knowledge will be bitter and terrible to you, why you
have been pursued by one man, and why, when the
whole interest that Mr. Sampson represents would have
expended any money in hunting you down you have
been tracked to death at a single individual’s charge. I
hear you have had the name of Meltham on your lips
sometimes?”
I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden
stoppage come upon his breathing.
“When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered
(you know with what artfully made-out surroundings
and probabilities you sent her) to Meltham’s office, be-
fore taking her abroad to originate the transaction that
doomed her to the grave, it fell to Meltham’s lot to see
her and to speak with her. It did not fall to his lot to
save her, though I know he would freely give his own
life to have done it. He admired her;-I would say he
loved her deeply if I thought it possible that you could
understand the word. When she was sacrificed, he was
thoroughly assured of your guilt. Having lost her, he
had but one object left in life, and that was to avenge
her and destroy you.” -
I saw the villain’s nostrils rise and fall convulsively;
but I saw no moving at his mouth.
“That man Meltham,” Beckwith steadily pursued,
“ was as absolutely certain that you could never
elude him in this world, if he devoted himself to
your destruction with his utmost fidelity and earnest-
HUNTED DOWN. 405
ness, and if he divided the sacred duty with no other
duty in life, as he was certain that in achieving it he
would be a poor instrument in the hands of Providence,
and would do well before Heaven in striking you out
from among living men. I am that man, and I thank
God that I have done my work!”
If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-
footed savages, a dozen miles, he could not have shown
more emphatic signs of being oppressed at heart, and
laboring for breath, than he showed now, when he
looked at the pursuer who had so relentlessly hunted
him down.
“You never saw me under my right name before;
you see me under my right name now. You shall see
me once again in the body, when you are tried for your
life. You shall see me once again in the spirit, when
the cord is round your neck, and the crowd are Crying
against you!”
When Meltham had spoken these last words, the mis-
creant suddenly turned away his face, and seemed to
strike his mouth with his open hand. At the same in-
stant, the room was filled with a new and powerful
Odor, and, almost at the same instant, he broke into a
crooked run, leap, start, I have no name for the
spasm, and fell, with a dull weight that shook the
heavy old doors and windows in their frames.
That was the fitting end of him.
When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from
the room, and Meltham, giving me his hand, said, with
a weary air,
“I have no more work on earth, my friend. But I
shall see her again elsewhere.”
It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He might
have saved her, he said; he had not saved her, and he
reproached himself; he had lost her, and he was broken-
hearted.
“The purpose that sustained me is over, Sampson,
and there is nothing now to hold me to life. I am not
fit for life; I am weak and spiritless; I have ho hope and
no object; my day is done.”
In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken
man who then spoke to me was the man who had so
strongly and so differently impressed me when his
purpose was before him. I used such entreaties with
406 HUNTED DOWN.
him as I could; but he still said, and always said, in
a patient, undemonstrative way,+nothing could avail
him, he was broken-hearted.
He died early in the next spring. He was buried by
the side of the poor young lady for whom he had cher-
ished those tender and unhappy regrets; and he left all
he had to her sister. She lived to be a happy wife and
mother; she married my sister’s son, who succeeded
poor Meltham; she is living now, and her children ride
sºut the garden on my walking-stick when I go to see
GI’. •
HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
IN FOUR PARTS.
PART I.
INTRODUCTORY ROMANCE FROM THE PEN OF WILLIAM
TINKLING, ESQ.”
THIS beginning-part is not made out of anybody’s
head, you know. It’s real. You must believe this be-
ginning-part more than what comes after, else you
won’t understand how what comes after came to be
written. You must believe it all; but you must believe
this most, please. I am the editor of it. Bob Redforth
(he’s my cousin, and shaking the table on purpose)
wanted to be the editor of it; but I said he shouldn’t
because he couldn’t. He has no idea of being an editor.
Nettie Ashford is my bride. We were married in the
right-hand closet in the corner of the dancing-school,
where first we met, with a ring (a green one) from Wil-
king water's toy-shop. I owed for it out of my pocket-
money. When the rapturous ceremony was over, we
all four went up the lane and let off a cannon (brought
loaded in Bob Redforth’s waistcoat-pocket) to announce
our nuptials. It flew right up when it went off, and
turned over. Next day, Lieut.-Col. Robin Redforth was
united, with similar ceremonies, to Alice Rainbird.
This time the cannon burst with a most terrific explo-
Sion, and made a puppy bark.
My peerless bride was, at the period of which we now
* Aged eight.
410 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
treat, in captivity at Miss Grimmer's. Drowvey and
Grimmer is the partnership, and Opinion is divided
which is the greatest beast. The lovely bride of the
colonel was also immured in the dungeons of the same
establishment. A vow was entered into, between the
colonel and myself, that we would cut them out on the
following Wednesday when walking two and two.
Under the desperate circumstances of the case, the
active brain of the colonel, combining with his lawless
pursuit (he is a pirate), suggested an attack with fire-
works. This, however, from motives of humanity, was
abandoned as too expensive.
Lightly armed with a paper-knife buttoned up under
his jacket, and waving the dreadful black flag at the
end of a cane, the colonel took command of me at two
P. M. on the eventful and appointed day. He had drawn
out the plan of attack on a piece of paper, which was
rolled up round a hoop-stick. He showed it to me. My
position and my full-length portrait (but my real ears
don’t stick out horizontal) was behind a corner lamp-
post, with written orders to remain there till I should
see Miss Drowvey fall. The Drowvey who was to fall
was the one in spectacles, not the one with the large
lavender bonnet. At that signal, I was to rush forth,
seize my bride, and fight my way to the lane. There a
junction would be effected between myself and the
colonel; and putting our brides behind us, between our-
selves and the palings, we were to conquer or die.
The enemy appeared,—approached. Waving his black
flag, the colonel attacked. Confusion ensued. Anx-
iously I awaited my signal; but my signal came not.
So far from falling, the hated Drowvey in spectacles
appeared to me to have muffled the colonel’s head in
his outlawed banner, and to be pitching into him with
a parasol. The one in the lavender bonnet also per-
formed prodigies of valor with her fists on his back.
Seeing that all was for the moment lost, I fought my
desperate way hand to hand to the lane. Through tak-
ing the back road, I was so fortunate as to meet nobody,
and arrived there uninterrupted.
It seemed an age ere the colonel joined me. He had
been to the jobbing tailor’s to be sewn up in several
places, and attributed our defeat to the refusal of the
detested Drowvey to fall. Finding her so obstinate, he
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. . 4.1.1
had said to her, “Die, recreant!” but had found her no
more open to reason on that point than the other.
My blooming bride appeared, accompanied by the
colonel’s bride, at the dancing-school next day. What?
Was her face averted from me? Hah? Even SO. With
a look of Scorn, she put into my hand a bit of paper,
and took another partner. On the paper was pencilled,
“Heavens! Can I write the word? Is my husband a
COW. P.”
In the first bewilderment of my heated brain, I tried
to think what slanderer could have traced my family to
the ignoble animal mentioned above. Vain were my
endeavors. At the enel of that dance I whispered the
colonel to come into the cloak-room, and I showed him
the note.
“There is a syllable wanting,” said he, with a gloomy
brow. .
“Hah! What syllable?” was my inquiry.
“She asks, can she write the word? And no; you
See she couldn’t,” said the colonel, pointing out the
paSSage. e
“And the word was?” said I.
“Cow — cow — coward,” hissed the pirate-colonel in
my ear, and gave me back the note.
Feeling that I must for ever tread the earth a branded
boy, person I mean,—or that I must clear up my honor,
I demanded to be tried by a court-martial. The colonel
admitted my right to be tried. Some difficulty was
found in composing the court, On account of the Em-
peror of France’s aunt refusing to let him come out.
He was to be president. Ere yet we had appointed a
substitute, he made his escape Over the back-wall, and
stood among us a free monarch.
The court was held on the grass by the pond. I recog-
nised, in a certain admiral among my judges, my dead-
liest foe. A cocoanut had given rise to language that
I could not brook; but confiding in my innocence, and
also in the knowledge that the President of the United
States (who sat next him) owed me a knife, I braced
myself for the ordeal.
It was a solemn spectacle, that court. Two execu-
tioners with pinafores reversed led me in. Under the
shade of an umbrella I perceived my bride, supported
by the bride of the pirate-colonel. The president, hav-
412 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
ing reproved a little female ensign for tittering, on a
matter of life or death, called upon me to plead, “Cow-
ard or no coward, guilty or not guilty?” I pleaded in
a firm tone, “No coward and not guilty. (The little
female ensign being again ºpºei by the president
for misconduct, mutinied, left the court, and threw
stones.) -
My implacable enemy, the admiral, conducted the
case against me. The colonel’s bride was called to
prove that I had remained behind the corner lamp-post
during the engagement. I might have been spared the
anguish of my own bride's being also made a witness
to the same point, but the adfmiral knew where to
wound me. Be still, my soul, no matter. The colonel
was then brought forward with his evidence.
It was for this point that I had saved myself up, as
the turning point of my case. Shaking myself clear of
my guards,--who had no business to hold me, the stu-
pids, unless I was found guilty,+I asked the colonel
what he considered the first duty of a soldier? Ere he
could reply, the President of the United States rose and
informed the court that my foe, the admiral, had sug-
gested “ Bravery,” and that prompting a witness wasn’t
fair. The president of the court immediately ordered
the admiral’s mouth to be filled with leaves, and tied
up with String. . I had the satisfaction of seeing the
sentence carried into effect before the proceedings went
further.
I then took a paper from my trousers-pocket, and
asked, “What do you consider, Col. Redford, the first
duty of a soldier? Is it obedience?”
“It is,” said the colonel.
“Is that paper—please to look at it—in your hand?”
“It is,” said the colonel. . .
“Is it a military sketch?”
“It is,” said the colonel.
“Of an engagement?”
“Quite so,” said the colonel.
“Of the late engagement?”
“Of the late engagement.”
“Please to describe it, and then hand it to the presi-
dent of the court.”
From that triumphant moment my sufferings and my
dangers were at an end. The court rose up and jumped,
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. . 413
on discovering that I had strictly obeyed orders. My
foe, the admiral, who though muzzled was malignant
yet, contrived to suggest that I was dishonored by hav-
ing quitted the field. But the colonel himself had done
as much, and gave his opinion, upon his word and honor
as a pirate, that when all was lost the field might be
quitted without disgrace. I was going to be found “No
coward and not guilty,” and my blooming bride was
going to be publicly restored to my arms in a procession,
when an unlooked-for event disturbed the general re-
joicing. This was no other than the Emperor of France’s
aunt catching hold of his hair. The proceedings ab-
ruptly terminated, and the court tumultuously dissolved.
It was when the shades of the next evening but one
were beginning to fall, ere yet the silver beams of Luna,
touched the earth, that four forms might have been des-
cried slowly advancing towards the weeping willow on
the borders of the pond, the now deserted scene of the
day before yesterday’s agonies and triumphs. On a
nearer approach, and by a practised eye, these might
have been identified as the forms of the pirate-colonel
with his bride, and of the day before yesterday’s gal-
lant prisoner with his bride.
On the beauteous faces of the Nymphs dejection sat
enthroned. All four reclined under the willow for some
minutes without speaking, till at length the bride of the
colonel poutingly observed, “It’s of no use pretending
any more, and we had better give it up.”
“Hah!” exclaimed the pirate. “Pretending?” .
b inDon’t go on like that; you worry me,” returned his
T1Cle.
The lovely bride of Tinkling echoed the incredible
declaration. The two warriors exchanged stony
glances.
“If,” said the bride of the pirate-colonel, “grown-up
people WON'T do what they ought to do, and WILL put
us out, what comes of Our pretending?”
“We only get into scrapes,” said the bride of Tink-
ling.
*You knew very well,” pursued the colonel’s bride,
“ that Miss Drowvey wouldn’t fall. You complained of
it yourself. And you know how disgracefully the
court-martial ended. As to our marriage; would my
people acknowledge it at home?”
414 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
“Or would my people acknowledge ours?” said the
bride of Tinkling.
Again the two warriors exchanged Stony glances.
“If you knocked at the door and claimed me, after
you were told to go away,” said the colonel’s bride,
“you would only have your hair pulled, or your ears,
or your nose.”
“If you persisted in ringing at the bell and claiming
me,” said the bride of Tinkling to that gentleman,
“you would have things dropped on your head from
the window over the handle, or you would be played
upon by the garden-engine.”
“And at your own homes,” resumed the bride of the
colonel, “it would be just as bad. You would be sent
to bed, or something equally undignified. Again, how
would you support us?”
The pirate-colonel replied in a courageous voice, “By
rapine!” But his bride retorted, “Suppose the grown-
up people wouldn’t be rapined?” “Then,” said the
colonel, “they should pay the penalty in blood.”—
“But suppose they should object,” retorted his bride,
‘‘ and wouldn’t pay the penalty in blood or anything
else?”
A mournful silence ensued.
“Then you do no longer love me, Alice?” asked the
colonel.
“Redforth! I am ever thine,” returned his bride.
“Then do you no longer love me, Nettie?” asked the
present writer.
‘‘Tinkling! I am ever thine,” returned my bride.
We all four embraced. Let me not be misunderstood
by the giddy. The colonel embraced his own bride,
and I embraced mine. But two times two make four.
“Nettie and I,” said Alice mournfully, “ have been
considering our position. The grown-up people are too
strong for us. They make us ridiculous. Besides, they
have changed the times. William Tinkling’s baby
brother was christened yesterday. What took place?
Was any king present? Answer, William.”
I said No, unless disguised as Great-uncle Chopper.
“Any queen?”
There had been no queen that I knew of at our house.
There might have been one in the kitchen; but I didn’t
think so, or the servants would have mentioned it.
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 415
“Any fairies?”
None that were visible.
“We had an idea among us, I think,” said Alice,
with a melancholy Smile, “we four, that Miss Grimmer
would prove to be the wicked fairy, and would come in
at the christening with her Crutch-stick, and give the
child a bad gift. Was there anything of that sort?
Answer, William.”
I said that ma had said afterwards (and so she had),
that Great-uncle Chopper's gift was a shabby one; but
she hadn’t said a bad One. She had called it shabby,
electrotyped, second-hand, and below his income.
“It must be the grown-up people who have changed
all this,” said Alice. “We couldn’t have changed it, if
we had been so inclined, and we never should have
been. Or perhaps Miss Grimmer is a wicked fairy after
all, and won’t act up to it because the grown-up people
have persuaded her not to. Either way, they would
make us ridiculous if we told them what we expected.”
“Tyrants!” muttered the pirate-colonel.
“Nay, my Redforth,” said Alice, “say not so. Call
not names, my Redforth, or they will apply to pa.”
“Let 'em!” said the colonel. “I don’t care. Who's
he?”
Tinkling here undertook the perilous task of remon-
strating with his lawless friend, who consented to
withdraw the moody expressions above quoted.
“What remains for us to do?” Alice went on in her
mild, wise way. “We must educate, we must pretend
in a new manner, we must wait.”
The colonel clenched his teeth, four out in front, and
a piece of another, and he had been twice dragged to
the door of a dentist-despot, but had escaped from his
guards. “How educate? How pretend in a new man-
Iner? How Wait?”
“Educate the grown-up people,” replied Alice. “We
part to-night. Yes, Redforth,”—for the colonel tucked
up his cuffs, “part to-night! Let us in these next
holidays, now going to begin, throw our thoughts into
something educational for the grown-up people, hinting
to them how things Ought to be. Let us veil our mean-
ing under a mask of romance; you, I, and Nettie.
William Tinkling being the plainest and quickest
writer, shall copy out. Is it agreed?”
416 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
The colonel answered sulkily, “I don’t mind.” He
then asked, “How about pretending?” .
“We will pretend,” said Alice, “that we are children;
not that we are those grow n-up people who won’t help
us out as they ought, and who understand us so badly.”
The colonel still much dissatisfied, growled, “How
about waiting?” -
“We will wait,” answered little Alice, taking Nettie’s
hand in hers, and looking up to the sky, “we will wait
—ever constant and true—till the times have got so
changed as that every thing helps us out, and nothing
makes us ridiculous, and the fairies have come back.
We will wait—ever constant and true—till we are
eighty, ninety, or one hundred. ...And then the fairies
will send us children, and we will help them out, poor
pretty little creatures, if they pretend ever, so much.”
“So we will, dear,” said Nettie Ashford, taking her
round the waist with both arms and kissing her. “And
now if my husband will go and buy some cherries for
us, I have got some money.”
In the friendliest manner I invited the colonel to go
with me; but he so far forgot himself as to acknowledge
the invitation by kicking out behind, and then lying
down on his stomach on the grass, pulling it up and
chewing it. When I came back, however, Alice had
nearly brought him out of his vexation, and was sooth-
ing him by telling him how soon we should all be ninety.
As we sat under the willow tree and ate the cherries
(fair, for Alice shared them out), we played at being
ninety. Nettie complained that she had a bone in her
old back, and it made her hobble; and Alice sang a song
in an old woman's way, but it was very pretty, and we
were all merry. At least, I don’t know about merry,
exactly, but all comfortable.
There was a most tremendous lot of cherries; and
Alice always had with her some neat little bag or box
or case, to hold things. In it that night was a tiny
wine-glass. So Alice and Nettie said they would make
some cherry-wine to drink our love at parting.
Each of us had a glassful, and it was delicious; and
each of us drank the toast, “Our love at parting.” The
colonel drank his wine last; and it got into my head
directly that it got into his directly. Anyhow, his eyes
rolled immediately after he had turned the glass upside
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 4.17
down; and he took me on one side and proposed, in a
hoarse whisper, that we should “Cut 'em out still.”
“How did he mean?” I asked my lawless friend.
“Cut our brides out,” said the colonel, “ and then cut
our way, without going down a single turning, bang to
the Spanish main!”
We might have tried it, though I didn’t think it would
answer; only we looked round and saw that there was
nothing but moonlight under the willow tree, and that
our pretty, pretty wives were gone. We burst out cry-
ing. The colonel gave in second, and came to first; but
he gave in strong. tº -
We were ashamed of our red eyes, and hung about
for half-an-hour to whiten them. Tikewise a piece of
chalk round the rims, I doing the colonel’s, and he mine,
but afterwards found in the bedroom looking-glass not
natural, besides inflammation. Our conversation turned
on being ninety. The colonel told me he had a pair of
boots that wanted soling and heeling; but he thought it
hardly worth while to mention it to his father, as he
himself should so soon be ninety, when he thought
shoes would be more convenient. The colonel also told
me, with his hand upon his hip, that he felt himself al-
ready getting on in life, and turning rheumatic. And
I told him the same. And when they said at our house
at Supper (they are always bothering about something)
that I stooped, I felt so glad! -
This is the end of the beginning-part that you were
to believe most.
PART II. .
tº
ROMANCE, FROM THE PEN OF MISS ALICE RAINBIRD.”
THERE was once a king, and he had a queen; and he
was the manliest of his sex, and she was the loveliest
Of hers. The king was, in his private profession, un-
der government. The queen’s father had been a medi-
Cal man out of town.
* Aged seven.
27
4.18 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
\
They had nineteen children, and were always having
more. Seventeen of these children took care of the
baby; and Alicia, the eldest, took care of them all.
Their ages varied from seven years to seven months.
Let us now resume our story.
One day the king was going to the office, when he
stopped at the fishmonger’s to buy a pound and a half
of salmon not too near the tail, which the queen (who
was a careful housekeeper) had requested him to send
home. Mr. Pickles, the fishmonger, said, “Certainly,
sir; is there any other article? Good morning.”
The king went on towards the office in a melancholy
mood; for quarter-day was such a long way off, and
several of the dear children were growing out of their
clothes. He had not proceeded far, when Mr. Pickles's
errand-boy came running after him, and said, “Sir, you
didn’t notice the old lady in our shop.”
“What old lady?” inquired the king. ... “I saw none.”
Now the king had not seen any old lady, because this
old lady had been invisible to him, though visible to Mr.
Pickles's boy. Probably because he messed and
splashed the water about to that degree, and flopped
the pairs of soles down in that violent manner, that, if
she had not been visible to him, he would have spoilt
her clothes.
Just then the old lady came trotting up. She was
dressed in shot-silk of the richest quality, smelling of
dried lavender.
1 King Watkins the First, I believe?” said the old
aCly. *
“Watkins,” replied the king, “is my name.”
“Papa, if I am not mistaken, of the beautiful Prin-
cess Alicia?” said the old lady.
“And of eighteen other darlings,” replied the king.
l Listen. You are going to the office,” said the old
aCly,
It instantly flashed upon the king that she must be a
fairy, or how could she know that?
“You aré right,” said the old lady, answering his
thoughts. “I am the good Fairy Grandmarina. At-
tend! When you return home to dinner, politely invite
the Princess Alicia to have some of the salmon you
bought just now.”
“It may disagree with her,” said the king.
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 4.19
The old lady became so very, angry at this absurd
idea, that the king was quite alarmed, and humbly
begged her pardon.
“We hear a great deal too much about this thing dis-
agreeing, and that thing disagreeing,” said the old lady,
with the greatest contempt it was possible to express.
“Don’t be greedy. I think you want it all yourself.”
The king hung his head under this reproof, and said
he wouldn’t talk about things disagreeing any more.
“Be good, then,” said the Fairy Grandmarina, “ and
don't! When the beautiful Princess Alicia consents to
partake of the Salmon, as I think she will,—you will
find she will leave a fish bone on her plate. Tell her to
dry it, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like
mother-of-pearl, and to take care of it as a present from
me.”
“Is that all?” asked the king.
“Don’t be impatient, sir,” returned the Fairy Grand-
marina, scolding him severely. “Don’t catch people
short, before they have done speaking. Just the way
with you grown-up persons. You are always doing it.”
The king again hung his head, and said he wouldn’t
do so any more. -
“Be good, then,” said the Fairy Grandmarina, “ and
don't! Tell the Princess Alicia, with my love, that the
fish bone is a magic present which can only be used
once; but that it will bring her, that once, whatever she
wishes for, PROVIDED SHE WISHES FOR IT AT THE RIGHT
TIME. That is the message. Take care of it.”
The king was beginning, “ Might I ask the reason?”
when the fairy became absolutely furious.
“ Will you be good, sir?” she exclaimed, stamping
her foot on the ground. “The reason for this, and the
reason for that, indeed! You are always wanting the
reason. No reason. There! Hoity toity me! I am
sick of your grown-up reasons.”
The king was extremely frightened by the old lady’s
flying into such a passion, and said he was very sorry
to have offended her, and he wouldn’t ask for reasons
any more.
“Be good, then,” said the old lady, “and don't!”
With those words, Grandmarina vanished, and the
king went on and on and on, till he came to the office.
There he wrote and wrote and wrote, till it was time to
420 - HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
go home again. Then he politely invited the Princess
Alicia, as the fairy had directed him, to partake of the
salmon. And when she had enjoyed it very much, he
saw the fish bone on her plate, as the fairy had told him
he would, and he delivered the fairy's message, and the
Princess Alicia took care to dry the bone, and to rub it,
and to polish it, till it shone like mother-of-pearl.
And so, when the queen was going to get up in the
morning, she said, “O, dear me, dear me; my head, my
head!” and then she fainted away.
The Princess Alicia, who happened to be looking in at
the chamber-door, asking about breakfast, was very
much alarmed when she saw her royal mamma in this
state, and she rang the bell for Peggy, which was the
name of the lord chamberlain. But remembering where
the smelling-bottle was, she climbed on a chair and got
it; and after that she climbed on another chair by the
bedside, and held the smelling-bottle to the queen’s
Inose; and after that she jumped down and got Some
water; and after that she jumped up again and wetted
the queen’s forehead; and, in short, when the lord
chamberlain came in, that dear old woman said to the
princess, “What a trot you are! I couldn’t have done
it better myself!”
But that was not the worst of the good queen's illness.
O, no! She was very ill indeed, for a long time. The
Princess Alicia kept the seventeen young princes and
princesses quiet, and dressed and undressed and danced
the baby, and made the kettle boil, and heated the soup,
and swept the hearth, and poured out the Imedicine, and
nursed the queen, and did all that ever she could, and
was as busy, busy, busy as busy could be; for there
were not many servants at that palace for three reasons:
because the king was short of money, because a rise in
his office never seemed to come, and because quarter-
day was so far off that it looked almost as far off and
as little as one of the stars.
But on the morning when the queen fainted away,
where was the magic fish bone? Why, there it was in
the Princess Alicia's pocket! She had almost taken it
out to bring the queen to life again, when she put it
back, and looked for the smelling-bottle.
After the queen had come out of her swoon that
morning, and was dozing, the Princess Alicia hurried
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 421
up-stairs to tell a most particular Secret to a most par-
ticularly confidential friend of hers, who was a duchess.
People did suppose her to be a doll; but she was really
a duchess, though nobody knew it except the princess.
This most particular secret was the secret about the
magic fish bone, the history of which was well known
to the duchess, because the princess told her everything.
The princess kneeled down by the bed on which the
duchess was lying, full-dressed and wide awake, and
whispered the Secret to her. The duchess smiled and
nodded. People might have supposed that she never
smiled and nodded; but she often did, though nobody
knew it except the princess. &
Then the Princess Alicia hurried down stairs again,
to keep watch in the queen's room. She often kept
watch ºy herself in the queen’s room; but every even-
ing, while the illness lasted, she sat there watching
with the king. And every evening the king sat looking
at her with a cross look, wondering why she never
brought out the magic fish bone. As often as she
noticed this, she ran up-stairs, whispered the secret to
the duchess over again, and said to the duchess besides,
“They think we children never have a reason or a
meaning!” And the duchess, though the most fashion-
able duchess that ever was heard of, winked her eye.
“Alicia,” said the king, one evening, when she wished
him good-night.
“Yes, papa.”
“What is become of the magic fish bone?”
“In my pocket, papa!”
“I thought you had lost it.”
“O, no, papa!”
“Or forgotten it?”
“No, indeed, papa.”
And so another time the dreadful little snapping pup-
dog, next door, made a rush at one of the young princes
as he stood on the steps coming home from school, and
terrified him out of his wits; and he put his hand
through a pane of glass, and bled, bled, bled. When
the seventeen other young princes and princesses saw
him bleed, bleed, bleed, they were terrified out of their
wits too, and screamed themselves black in their seven-
teen faces all at once. But the Princess Alicia put her
hands over all their seventeen mouths, one after an-
422 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
other, and persuaded them to be quiet because of the
sick queen. And then she put the wounded prince's
hand in a basin of fresh cold water, while they stared
with their twice seventeen are thirty-four, put down
four and carry three, eyes, and then she looked in the
hand for bits of glass, and there were fortunately no
bits of glass there. And then she said to two chubby-
legged princes, who were sturdy though Small, “Bring
me in the royal rag-bag: I must Snip and Stitch and cut
and contrive.” So these two young princes tugged at
the royal rag-bag, and lugged it in; and the Princess
Alicia sat down on the floor, with a large pair of Scis-
sors and a needle and thread, and Snipped and Stitched
and cut and contrived, and made a bandage, and put it
on, and it fitted beautifully; and So when it was all
done, she saw the king her papa looking on by the door.
‘‘Alicia.”
“Yes, papa.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, papa.”
“Where is the magic fish bone?”
“In my pocket, papa.”
“I thought you had lost it?”
“O, no, papal *
“Or forgotten it?”
‘‘No, indeed, papa.”
After that, she ran up-stairs to the duchess, and told
her what had passed, and told her the secret over again;
and the duchess shook her flaxen curls, and laughed
with her rosy lips, *
Well! and so another time the baby fell under the
grate. The seventeen young princes and princesses
were used to it; for they were almost always falling un-
der the grate or down the stairs: but the baby was not
used to it yet, and it gave him a swelled face and a
black eye. The way the poor little darling came to
tumble was, that he was out of the Princess Alicia's lap
just as she was sitting, in a great coarse apron that
quite smothered her, in front of the kitchen fire, begin-
ning to peel the turnips for the broth for dinner; and
the way she came to be doing that was, that the king’s
cook had run away that morning with her own true
1ove, who was a very tall but very tipsy soldier. Then
the seventeen young princess and princesses, who cried
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 423
at everything that happened, cried and roared. But
the Princess Alicia (who couldn’t help crying a little
herself) quietly called to them to be still, on account of
not throwing back the queen up-stairs, who was fast
getting well, and said, “Hold your tongues, you wicked
little monkeys, every one of you, while I examine baby!”
Then she examined baby, and found that he hadn’t
broken anything; and she held cold iron to his poor
dear eye, and Slmoothed his poor dear face, and he pres-
ently fell asleep in her arms. Then she said to the
seventeen princes and princesses, “I am afraid to let
him down yet, lest he should wake and feel pain; be
good, and you shall all be cooks.” They jumped for joy
when they heard that, and began making themselves
cooks’ caps out of old newspapers. So to one she gave the
salt-box, and to one she gave the barley, and to one she
gave the herbs, and to one she gave the turnips, and to one
she gave the carrots, and to one she gave the onions, and
to one she gave the spice-box, till they were all cooks,
and all running about at work, she sitting in the middle,
smothered in the great coarse apron, nursing baby. By
and by the broth was done; and the baby woke up,
Smiling like an angel, and was trusted to the sedatest
princess to hold, while the other princes and princesses
were squeezed into a far-off corner to look at the Prin-
cess Alicia turning out the saucepanful of broth, for fear
(as they were always getting into trouble) they should
get splashed and scalded. When the broth came tum-
bling out, steaming beautifully, and Smelling like a
nosegay good to eat, they clapped their hands. That
made the baby clap his hands; and that, and his looking
as if he had a comic toothache, made all the princess
and princesses laugh. So the Princess Alicia said,
“Laugh and be good; and after dinner we will make him
a nest on the floor in a corner, and he shall sit in his
nest and see a dance of eighteen cooks.” That delighted
the young princes and princesses, and they ate up all
the broth, and washed up all the plates and dishes, and
cleared away, and pushed the table into a corner; and
then they in their cooks’ caps, and the Princess Alicia,
in the smothering coarse apron that belonged to the cook
that had run away with her own true love that was the
very tall but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of
eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, who forgot
424 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
his swelled face and his black eye, and Crowed with
OY.
J Ånd so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King
Watkins the First, her father, standing in the doorway
looking on, and he said, “What have you been doing,
Alicia?” -
“Cooking and contriving, papa.”
“What else have you been doing, Alicia?”
“Reeping the children light-hearted, papa.”
“Where is the magic fish bone, Alicia?”
“In my pocket, papa.” .
“I thought you had lost it?”
“O, no, papal”
“Or forgotten it?”
“No, indeed, papa.”
The king then sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-
Spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head
upon his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen-table
pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen princes
and princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left
him alone with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby.
“What is the matter, papa?”
“I am dreadfully poor, my child.”
“Have you no money at all, papa?”
“None, my child.” .
“Is there no way of getting any, papa?”
“No way,” said the king. “I have tried very hard,
and I have tried all ways.”
When she heard those last words, the Princess Alicia
began to put her hand into the pocket where she kept
the magic fish bone.
“Papa,” said she, “when we have tried very hard,
i. tried all ways, we must have done our very, very
DeSt?”
“No doubt, Alicia.”
“When we have done our very, very best, papa, and
that is not enough, then I think the right time must
have come for asking help of others.” This was the
very secret connected with the magic fish bone, which
she had found out for herself from the good Fairy
Grandmarina's words, and which she had so often whis-
pered to her beautiful and fashionable friend, the
duchess. ---- .
So she took out of her pocket the magic fish bone, that
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 425
had been dried and rubbed and polished till it shone
like mother-of-pearl; and she gave it one little kiss, and
wished it was quarter-day. And immediately it was
Quarter-day; and the king's quarter’s Salary came rat-
tling down the chimney, and bounced into the middle
of the floor.
But this was not half of what happened,—no, not a
quarter; for immediately afterwards the good Fairy
Grandmarina came riding in, in a carriage and four
(peacocks), with Mr. Pickles's boy up behind, dressed
in silver and gold, with a cocked-hat, powdered hair,
ink silk stockings, a jewelled cane, and a nosegay.
own jumped Mr. Pickles's boy, with his cocked-hat
in his hand, and wonderfully polite (being entirely
changed by enchantment), and handed Grandmarina
out; and there she stood, in her rich shot-silk smelling
of dried lavender, fanning herself with a sparkling fan.
“Alicia,” my dear, said this charming old fairy,
“how do you do? I hope I see you pretty well? Give
me a kiss.”
The Princess Alicia embraced her; and then Grand-
marina turned to the king, and said rather sharply,
“Are you good?”
The king said he hoped so.
“I suppose you know the reason now, why my god-
daughter here,” kissing the princess again, “did not
apply to the fish bone sooner?” said the fairy.
The king made a shy bow.
“Ah! but you didn’t them?” said the fairy.
The king made a shyer bow.
“Any more reasons to ask for?” said the fairy.
The king said, No, and he was very Sorry.
“Be good, then,” said the fairy, “and live happy ever
afterwards.”
Then Grandmarina waved her fan, and the queen
came in most splendidly dressed; and the Seventeen
young princes and princesses, no longer grown out of
their clothes, came in, newly fitted out from top to toe,
with tucks in every thing to admit of its being let Out.
After that, the fairy tapped the Princess Alicia, with
her fan; and the Smothering coal'se apron flew away,
and she appeared exquisitely dressed, like a little bride,
with a wreath of orange-flowers and a silver veil.
After that, the kitchen dresser changed of itself into a
426 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
wardrobe, made of beautiful woods and gold looking-
glass, which was full of dresses of all sorts, all for her
and all exactly fitting her. After that, the angelic baby
came in, running alone, with his face and eye not a bit
the worse, but much the better. Then Grandmarina
begged to be introduced to the duchess; and, when the
duchess was brought down, many compliments passed
between them. -
A little whispering took place between the fairy and
the duchess; and then the fairy said out loud, “Yes, I
thought she would have told you.” Grandmarina then
turned to the king and queen, and said, “We are going
in search of Prince Certain personio. The pleasure of
your company is requested at church in half an hour
precisely.” So she and the Princess Alicia got into the
carriage; and Mr. Pickles's boy handed in the duchess,
who sat by herself on the opposite seat; and then Mr.
Pickles’s boy put up the steps and got up behind, and
the peacocks flew away with their tails behind.
Prince Certain personio was sitting by himself, eating
barley-sugar, and waiting to be ninety. When he saw
the peacocks, followed by the carriage, coming in at the
window, it immediately occurred to him that something
uncommon was going to happen. - -
“Prince,” said Grandmarina, “I bring you your
bride.”
The moment the fairy said those words, Prince Cer-
tain personio's face left off being sticky, and his jacket
and corduroys changed to peach-bloom velvet, and his
hair curled, and a cap and feather flew in like a bird
and settled on his head. He got into the carriage, by the
fairy’s invitation; and there he renewed his acquaint-
ance with the duchess, whom he had seen before.
In the church were the prince's relations and friends,
and the Princess Alicia’s relations and friends, and the
seventeen princes and princesses, and the baby, and a
crowd of the neighbors. The marriage was beautiful
beyond expression. The duchess was bridesmaid, and
beheld the ceremony from the pulpit, where she was
supported by the cushion of the desk.
Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding-feast af-
terwards, in which there was everything and more to
eat, and everything and more to drink. The wedding-
cake was delicately ornamented with white satin rib-
HOLIDAY ROMANCE, 427
bons, frosted silver, and white lilies, and was forty-two
yards round.
When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young
Couple, and Prince Certain personio had made a speech,
and everybody had cried, Hip, hip, hip, hurrah! Grand-
marina announced to the king and queen that in future
there would be eight quarter-days in every year, except
in leap-year, when there would be ten. She then turned
to Certain perSonio and Alicia, and said, “My dears,
you will have thirty-five children, and they will all be
good and beautiful. Seventeen of your children will
be boys, and eighteen will be girls. The hair of the
whole of your children will curl naturally. They will
never have the measles, and will have recovered from
the whooping-cough before being born.”
On hearing such good news, everybody cried out
“Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!” again.
“It only remains,” said Grandmarina in conclusion,
“to make an end of the fish bone.”
So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia,
and it instantly flew down the throat of the dreadful
little Snapping pug-dog, next door, and choked him, and
he expired in convulsions.
PART III.
ROMANCE, FROM THE PEN OF LIEUT.-COL. ROBIN RED-
FORTH. *
THE subject of our present narrative would appear to
have devoted himself to the pirate profession at a com-
paratively early age. We find him in command of a
splendid schooner of one hundred guns, loaded to the
muzzle, ere yet he had had a party in honor of his tenth
birthday.
It seems that our hero, considering himself spited by
a Latin-grammar master, demanded the satisfaction due
from one man of honor to another. Not getting it, he
* Aged nine.
428 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
privately withdrew his haughty spirit from such low
company, bought a second-hand pocket-pistol, folded.
up some Sandwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle of
$ºsh liquorice-water, and entered on a career of
Va, IOI’.
It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his
name) through the commencing stages of his story.
Suffice it, that we find him bearing the rank of Capt.
Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a crimson hearth-
rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner
“The Beauty,” in the China seas. It was a lovely even-
ing; and, as his crew lay grouped about him, he fa-
vored them with the following melody:
O landsmen are folly!
O pirates are jolly
O diddledum lolly,
1 .
Chorus.-Heave yo.
The Soothing effect of these animated sounds floating
Over the waters, as the common sailors united their
rough voices to take up the rich tones of Boldheart, may
be more easily conceived than described.
It was under these circumstances that the lookout at
the mast-head gave the word, “Whales!”
All was now activity. -
‘Where away?” cried Capt. Boldheart, starting up.
“On the larboard bow, sir,” replied the fellow at the
masſ-head, touching his hat. For such was the height
of discipline on board of “The Beauty,” that, even at
that height, he was obliged to mind it, or be shot through
the head.
“This adventure belongs to me,” said Boldheart.
“Boy, my harpoon. Let no man follow; ” and, leaping
alone into his boat, the captain rowed with admirable
dexterity in the direction of the monster.
All was now excitement.
“He nears him!'” said an elderly seaman, following
the captain through his spy-glass.
. “He strikes him!” said another seamen, a mere strip-
ling, but also with a spy-glass.
“He tows him towards us!” said another seaman, a
man in the full vigor of life, but also with a spy-glass.
In fact, the captain was seen approaching, with the
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 429
huge bulk following. We will not dwell on the deafen-
ing cries of “Boldheart! Boldheart!” with which he
was received, when, carelessly leaping on the quarter-
deck, he presented his prize to his men. They after-
wards made two thousand four hundred and seventeen
pound ten and sixpence by it. -
Ordering the sails to be braced up, the captain now
stood W.N.W. “The Beauty” flew rather than floated
Over the dark blue waters. Nothing particular occurred
for a fortnight, except taking, with considerable slaugh-
ter, four Spanish galleons, and a snow from South
America, all richly laden. Inaction began to tell upon
the spirits of the men. Capt. Boldheart called all hands
aft, and said, “My lads, I hear there are discontented
Ones among ye. Let any such stand forth.”
After Some murmuring, in which the expressions,
“Ay, ay, sir!” “Union Jack,” “Avast,” “Starboard,”
‘‘ Port,” “Bowsprit,” and similar indications of a muti-
nous under-current, though subdued, were audible, Bill
Boozey, captain of the foretop, came out from the rest.
His form was that of a giant, but he quailed under the
Captain’s eye. .
“What are your wrongs?” said the captain.
“Why, d'ye see, Capt. Boldheart,” replied the tower-
ing mariner, “I’ve sailed, man and boy, for many a
year, but I never yet know’d the milk served out for
the ship's company’s teas to be So Sour as 'tis aboard
this Craft.”
At this moment the thrilling cry, “Man Overboard!”
announced to the astonished crew that Boozey, in step-
ing back, as the captain (in mere thoughtfulness) laid
#. hand upon the faithful pocket-pistol which he wore
in his belt, had lost his balance, and was struggling
with the foaming tide. - -
All was now stupefaction.
But with Capt. Boldheart, to throw off his uniform
coat, regardless of the various rich orders with which
it was decorated, and to plunge into the Sea after the
drowning giant, was the work of a moment. Madden-
ing was the excitement when boats were lowered; in-
tense the joy when the captain was seen holding up the
drowning man with his teeth; deafening the cheering
when both were restored to the main deck of “The
Beauty.” And, from the instant of his changing his
430 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
wet clothes for dry ones, Capt. Boldheart had no such
devoted though humble friend as William Boozey.
Boldheart now pointed to the horizon, and called the
attention of his crew to the taper spars of a ship lying
snug in harbor under the guns of a fort.
“She shall be ours at sunrise,” said he. “Serve out
a double allowance of grog, and prepare for action.”
All was now preparation.
When morning dawned, after a sleepless night, it was
seen that the stranger was crowding on all sail to come
out of the harbor and offer battle. As the two ships
came nearer to each other, the stranger fired a gun and
hoisted Roman colors. Boldheart then perceived her
to be the Latin-grammar master's bark. Such indeed
she was, and had been tacking about the world in un-
availing pursuit, from the time of his first taking to a
rowing life. -
Boldheart now addressed his men, promising to blow
them up if he should feel convinced that their reputation
required it, and giving orders that the Latin-grammar
master should be taken alive. He then dismissed them
to their quarters, and the fight began with a broadside
from “The Beauty.” She then veered around, and
poured in another. “The Scorpion ” (so was the bark
of the Latin-grammar master appropriately called) was
not slow to return her fire; and a terrific cannomading
ensued in which the guns of “The Beauty’ did tremen-
dous execution.
The Latin-grammar master was seen upon the poop,
in the midst of the Smoke and fire, encouraging his
men. To do him justice, he was no craven, thºugh his
white hat, his short grey trousers, and his long snuff-
colored surtout reaching to his heels (the self-same coat
in which he had spited Boldheart), contrasted most un-
favorably with the brilliant uniform of the latter. At
this moment, Boldheart, seizing a pike and putting
himself at the head of his men, gave the word to board.
A desperate conflict ensued in the hammock-nettings,
— or somewhere in about that direction, — until the
Latin-grammar master, having all his masts gone, his
hull and rigging shot through, and seeing Boldheart
slashing a path towards him, hauled down his flag
himself, gave up his sword to Boldheart, and asked
for quarter. Scarce had he been put into the cap-
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 431
i. boat, ere “The Scorpion” went down with all on
Oa,I'Cl.
On Capt. Boldheart’s now assembling his men, a cir-
cumstance occurred. He found it necessary with one
blow of his cutlass to kill the cook, who, having lost his
brother in the late action, was making at the Latin-
grammar master in an infuriated State, intent on his
destruction with a carving-knife. -
Capt. Boldheart then turned to the Latin-grammar
master, severely reproaching him with his perfidy, and
put it to his crew what they considered that a master
who spited a boy deserved. e
They answered with one voice, “Death.”
“It may be so,” said the captain; “but it shall never
be said that Boldheart stained his hour of triumph with
the blood of his enemy. Prepare the cutter.”
The cutter was immediately prepared.
“Without taking your life,” said the captain, “I must
yet forever deprive you of the power of spiting other
boys. I shall turn you adrift in this boat. You will
find in her two oars, a compass, a bottle of rum, a small
cask of water, a piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and my
Latin grammar. Go! sº spite the natives, if you can
find any.” t
Deeply conscious of this bitter sarcasm, the unhappy
wretch was put into the cutter, and was soon left far
behind. He made no effort to row, but was seen lying
on his back with his legs up, when last made out by the
ship's telescopes. * *
A stiff breeze now beginning to blow, Capt. Boldheart
ave orders to keep her S. S. W., easing her a little dur-
ing the night by falling off a point or two W. by W.,
or even by W. S., if she complained much. He then re-
tired for the night, having in truth much need of repose.
In addition to the fatigues he had undergone, this brave
officer had received sixteen wounds in the engagement,
but had not mentioned it. *
In the morning a white squall came on, and was suc-
ceeded by other squalls of various colors. It thundered
and lightened heavily for six weeks. Hurricanes then
set in for two months. Waterspouts and tornadoes fol-
lowed. The oldest sailor on board—and he was a very
old one—had never seen such weather. “The Beauty’
lost all idea where she was, and the carpenter reported
432 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
six feet two of water in the hold. Everybody fell Sense-
less at the pumps every day. -
Provisions now ran very low. Our hero put the crew
on short allowance, and put himself on shorter allow-
ance than any man in the ship. But his spirit kept him
fat. In this extremity, the gratitude of BOOZey, the
captain of the foretop, whom our readers may remem-
ber, was truly affecting. The loving though lowly
William repeatedly requested to be killed, and preserved
for the captain’s table. -*.
We now approach a change of affairs.
One day during a gleam of sunshine, and when the
weather had moderated, the man at the mast-head—too
weak now to touch his hat, besides its having been
blown away—called out,
“Savages!”
All was now expectation. -
Presently fifteen hundred canoes, each paddled by
twenty savages, were seen advancing in excellent Order.
They were of a light green color (the Savages were),
and sang, with great energy, the following strain:
Choo a choo a choo tooth.
Muntch, muntch. Nycey !
Choo a choo a choo tooth.
Muntch, muntch. Nyce
As the shades of night were by this time closing in,
these expressions were supposed to embody this simple
people's views of the evening hymn. But it too soon
appeared that the song was a translation of “For what
we are going to receive,” &c.
The chief, imposingly decorated with feathers of
lively colors, and having the majestic appearance of a
fighting parrot, no sooner understood (he understood
English perfectly) that the ship was “The Beauty,”
Capt. Boldheart, than he fell upon his face on the deck,
and could not be persuaded to rise until the captain had
lifted him up, and told him he wouldn’t hurt him. All
the rest of the savages also fell on their faces with
marks of terror, and had also to be lifted up one by one.
Thus the fame of the great Boldheart had gone before
him, even among these children of Nature.
Turtles and oysters were now produced in astonishing
numbers; and on these and yams the people made a
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 433
hearty meal. After dinner the chief told Capt. Bold-
heart that there was better feeding up at the village,
and that he would be glad to take him and his officers
there. Apprehensive of treachery, Boldheart ordered
his boat’s crew to attend him completely armed. And
well were it for other commanders if their precautions
—but let us not anticipate.
When the canoes arrived at the beach, the darkness
of the night was illumined by the light of an immense
fire. Ordering his boat's crew (with the intrepid though
illiterate William at their head) to keep close and be
upon their guard, Boldheart bravely went on, arm in
arm with the chief.
But how to depict the captain’s surprise when he
found a ring of Savages singing in chorus that barba-
rous translation of “For what we are going to receive,”
&c., which has been given above, and dancing hand in
hand round the Latin-grammar master, in a hamper
with his head shaved, while two savages floured him,
before putting him to the fire to be cooked!
Boldheart now took counsel with his officers on the
course to be adopted. In the mean time, the miserable
captive never ceased begging pardon and imploring to
be delivered. On the generous Boldheart’s proposal, it
was at length resolved that he should not be cooked,
but should be allowed to remain raw, on two conditions,
namely:
1. That he should never, under any circumstances,
presume to teach any boy any thing any more.
2. That, if taken back to England, he should pass
his life in travelling to find out boys who wanted their
exercises done, and should do their exercises for those
boys for nothing, and never say a word about it.
Drawing the sword from its sheath, Boldheart swore
him to these conditions on its shining blade. The
prisoner wept bitterly, and appeared acutely to feel the
errors of his past career.
The captain then ordered his boat’s crew to make
ready for a volley, and after firing to re-load quickly.
“And expect a score or two on ye to go head over heels,”
murmured William Boozey; “for I’m a-looking at ye.”
With those words, the derisive though deadly William
took a good aim.
“Fire!”
28
4:34 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
The ringing voice of Boldheart was lost in the report
of the guns and the screeching of the savages. Volley
after volley awakened the numerous echoes. Hundreds
of savages were killed, hundreds wounded, and thou-
sands ran howling into the woods. The Latin-grammar
master had a spare night-cap lent him, and a long-tail
coat, which he wore hind side before. He presented a
hºus though pitiable appearance, and serve him
right. - -
"We now find Capt. Boldheart, with this rescued
wretch on board, standing off for other islands. At one
of these, not a cannibal island, but a pork and vegetable
one, he married (only in fun on his part) the king’s
daughter. Here he rested some time, receiving from
the natives great quantities of precious stones, gold
dust, elephants' teeth, and sandal wood, and getting
very rich. This, too, though he almost every day made
presents of enormous value to his men.
The ship being at length as full as she could hold of
all sorts of valuable things, Boldheart gave orders to
weigh the anchor, and turn “The Beauty’s ” head to-
wards England. These orders were obeyed with three
cheers; and ere the sum went down full many a horn-
pipe had been danced on deck by the uncouth though
agile William.
We next find Capt. Boldheart about three leagues off
Madeira, Surveying through his spy-glass a stranger of
suspicious appearance making sail towards him. On
his firing a gun ahead of her to bring her to, she ran up
a flag, which he instantly recognised as the flag from
the mast in the back-garden at home.
Inferring from this that his father had put to sea to
seek his long-lost son, the captain sent his own boat on
board the stranger to inquire if this was so, and, if so,
whether his father’s intentions were strictly honorable.
The boat came back with a present of greens and fresh
meat, and reported that the stranger was “The Family,”
of twelve hundred tons, and had not only the captain’s
father on board, but also his mother, with the majority
of his aunts and uncles, and all his cousins. It was
further reported to Boldheart that the whole of these
relations had expressed themselves in a becoming man-
ner, and were anxious to embrace him and thank him
for the glorious credit he had done them. Boldheart at
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 435
once invited them to breakfast next morning on board
“The Beauty,” and gave orders for a brilliant ball that
should last all day. -
It was in the course of the night that the captain dis-
covered the hopelessness of reclaiming the Latin-gram-
mar master. That thankless traitor was found out, as
the two ships lay near each other, communicating with
“The Family’ by signals, and offering to give up Bold.
heart. He was hanged at the yard-arm the first thing
in the morning, after having it impressively pointed out
to him by Boldheart that this was what spiters came to.
The meeting between the captain and his parents was
attended with tears. His uncles and aunts would have
attended their meeting with tears too, but he wasn’t
going to stand that. His cousins were very much as-
tonished by the size of his ship and the discipline of his
men, and were greatly overcome by the splendor of his
uniform. He kindly conducted them round the vessel,
and pointed out every thing worthy of notice. He also
fired his hundred guns, and found it amusing to witness
their alarm.
The entertainment surpassed everything ever seen on
board ship, and lasted from ten in the morning until
seven the next morning. Only One disagreeable inci-
dent occurred. Capt. Boldheart found himself obliged
to put his cousin Tom in irons, for being disrespectful.
On the boy’s promising amendment, however, he was
humanely released, after a few hours' close confine-
ment. -
Boldheart now took his mother down into the great
cabin, and asked after the young lady with whom, it
was well known to the world, he was in love. His
mother replied that the object of his affections was
then at school at Margate, for the benefit of sea-bathing
(it was the month of September), but that she feared
the young lady’s friends were still opposed to the union.
Boldheart at once resolved, if necessary, to bombard the
town.
Taking the command of his ship with this intention,
and putting all but fighting men on board “The Family,”
with orders to that vessel to keep in company, Bold-
heart soon anchored in Margate Roads. Here he went
ashore well-armed, and attended by his boat’s crew (at
their head the faithful though ferocious William), and
436 BIOLIDAY ROMANCE.
demanded to see the mayor, who came Out of his office.
“Dost know the name of yon ship, mayor?” asked
Boldheart fiercely.
“No,” said the mayor, rubbing his eyes, which he
could scarce believe, when he saw the goodly vessel
riding at anchor.
“She is named ‘The Beauty,’” said the captain.
“Hah!” exclaimed the mayor, with a start. “And
you, then, are Capt. Boldheart?”
“The same.”
A pause ensued. The mayor trembled.
“Now, mayor,” said the captain, “choose! Help me
to my bride, or be bombarded.”
The mayor begged for two hours’ grace, in which to
make inquiries respecting the young lady. Boldheart
accorded him but one; and during that one placed
William Boozey sentry over him, with a drawn sword,
and instructions to accompany him wherever he went,
and to run him through the body if he showed a sign of
playing false.
At the end of the hour the mayor re-appeared more
dead than alive, closely waited on by Boozey more alive
than dead. .
“Captain,” said the mayor, “I have ascertained that
the young lady is going to bathe. Even now she waits
her turn for a machine. The tide is low, though rising.
I, in one of our town-boats, shall not be suispected.
When she comes forth in her bathing-dress into the
shallow water from behind the hood of the machine,
my boat shall intercept her and prevent her return. Do
you the rest.”
“Mayor,” returned Capt. Boldheart, “thou hast saved
thy town.”
The captain then signalled his boat to take him off,
and, steering her himself, ordered her crew to row
towards the bathing-ground, and there to rest upon
their oars. All happened as had been arranged. His
lovely bride came forth, the mayor glided in behind her,
she became confused, and had floated out of her depth,
when, with one skilful touch of the rudder and one
quivering stroke from the boat's crew, her adoring Bold-
heart held her in his strong arms. There her shrieks of
terror were changed to cries of joy.
Before “The Beauty " could get under way, the hoist-
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 437
ing of all the flags in the town and harbor, and the
ringing of all the bells, announced to the brave Bold-
heart that he had nothing to foar. He therefore deter-
mined to be married on the spot, and signalled for a
clergyman and clerk, who came off promptly in a
Sailing-boat named “The Skylark.” . Another great
entertainment was then given on board “The Beauty,”
in the midst of which the mayor was called out by a
messenger. He returned with the news that govern-
ment had sent down to know whether Capt. Boldheart,
in acknowledgment of the great services he had done
his country by being a pirate, would consent to be made
a lieutenant-colonel. For himself he would have spurned
the worthless boon; but his bride wished it, and he con-
sented.
Only one thing further happened before the good ship
“Family ’’ was dismissed, with rich presents to all on
board. It is painful to record (but such is human nature
in some cousins) that Capt. Boldheart's unmannerly Cou-
sin Tom was actually tied up to receive three dozen with
a rope's end “for cheekiness and making game,” when
Capt. Boldheart’s lady begged for him, and he was
spared. “The Beauty.” then refitted, and the captain
and his bride departed for the Indian Ocean to enjoy
themselves forevermore.
PART IV.
ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF MISS NETTIE ASHFORD."
THERE is a country, which I will show you when I get
into maps, where the children have everything their
own way. It is a most delightful country to live in.
The grown-up people are obliged to obey the children,
and are never allowed to sit up to Supper, except on
their birthdays. The children order them to make jam
and jelly and marmalade, and tarts and pies and pud-
* Aged half-past six.
4.38 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
dings, and all manner of pastry. If they say they
won’t, they are put in the corner till they do. They are
sometimes allowed to have some; but when they have
". they generally have powders given them after-
W8,I’CIS. g
One of the inhabitants of this country, a truly sweet
young creature of the name of Mrs. Orange, had the
misfortune to be sadly plagued by her numerous family.
Her parents required a great deal of looking after, and
they had connections and companions who were scarcely
ever out of mischief. So Mrs. Orange said to herself, “I
really cannot be troubled with these torments any longer:
I must put them all to school.”
Mrs. Orange took off her pinafore, and dressed her- e.
self very nicely, and took up her baby, and went out to
call upon another lady of the name of Mrs. Lemon, who
kept a preparatory establishment. Mrs. Orange stood
upon the scraper to pull at the bell, and gave a ring-
ting-ting. g -
Mrs. Lemon’s neat little housemaid, pulling up her
Socks as she came along the passage, answered the
ring-ting-ting.
“Good-morning,” said Mrs. Orange. “Fine day. How
do you do? Mrs. Lemon at home?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Will you say Mrs. Orange and baby?”
“Yes, ma'am. Walk in.”
Mrs. Orange's baby was a very fine One, and real wax
all over. Mrs. Lemon’s baby was leather and bran.
However, when Mrs. Lemon came into the drawing-
room with her baby in her arms, Mrs. Orange said
politely, “Good-morning. Fine day. How do you do?
And how is little Tootleum-boots?”
“Well, she is but poorly. Cutting her teeth, ma'am,”
said Mrs. Lemon.
“O, indeed, ma'am!'” said Mrs. Orange. “No fits, I
liope?”
“ No, ma'am.”
“How many teeth has she, ma’am?”
“Five, ma'am.”
“My Emilia, ma'am, has eight,” said Mrs. Orange.
“Shall we lay them on the mantel-piece side by side,
while we converse?”
“By all means, ma'am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “Hem!”
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 439
“The first question is, ma'am,” said Mrs. Orange. “I
don’t bore you?”
“Not in the least, ma'am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “Far
from it, I assure you.”
“Then pray have you,” said Mrs. Orange, “ have
you any vacancies?”
“Yes, ma'am. How many might you require?”
“Why, the truth is, ma'am,” said Mrs. Orange, “I
have come to the conclusion that my children,”—O, I
forgot to say that they call the grown-up people children
in that country!—“that my children are getting posi-
tively too much for me. Let me see. Two parents, two
intimate friends of theirs, one godfather, two godmothers,
and an aunt. Have you as many as eight vacancies?”
“I have just eight, ma'am,” said Mrs Lemon.
“Most fortunate! Terms moderate, I think?”
“Very moderate, ma'am.”
“Diet good, I believe?”
“Excellent, ma'am.”
“ Unlimited P’’
“ Unlimited.”
“Most satisfactory! Corporal punishment dispensed
With P ''
“Why, we do occasionally shake,” said Mrs. Lemon,
‘‘ and we have slapped. But only in extreme cases.”
“Could I, ma'am,” said Mrs. Orange, “could I see
the establishment?”
“With the greatest of pleasure, ma'am,” said Mrs.
Lemon.
Mrs. Lemon took Mrs. Orange into the school-room,
where there were a number of pupils. “Stand up, chil-
dren,” said Mrs. Temon; and they all stood up.
Mrs. Orange whispered to Mrs. Lemon. “ There is a
pale, bad child, with red whiskers, in disgrace. Might I
ask what he has done?” e
“Come here, White,” said Mrs. Lemon, “ and tell this
lady what you have been doing.”
“Betting on horses,” said White sulkily. -
“Are you sorry for it, you naughty child?” said Mrs.
Lemon.
“No,” said White. “Sorry to lose, but shouldn’t be
sorry to win.” &
“There’s a vicious boy for you, ma'am,” said Mrs.
Lemon. “Go along with you, sir. This is Brown, Mrs.
440 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
Orange. O, a sad case, Brown’s! Never knows when
he has had enough. Greedy. How is your gout, sir?”
“Bad,” said Brown.
“What else can you expect?” said Mrs. Lemon.
“Your stomach is the size of two. Go and take exer-
cise directly. Mrs. Black, come here to me. Now here
is a child, Mrs. Orange, ma'am, who is always at play.
She can’t be kept at home a single day together; al-
ways gadding about and spoiling her clothes. Play,
play, play, play, from morning to night, and to morning
again. How can she expect to improve?”
“Don’t expect to improve,” sulked Mrs. Black. “Don’t
want to.”
“There is a specimen of her temper, ma'am,” said Mrs.
Temon. “To see her when she is tearing about, neg-
lecting everything else, you would suppose her to be at
least good-humored. But bless you, ma'am, she is as
pert and flouncing a minx as ever you met with in all
your days!”
“You must have a great deal of trouble with them,
ma'am,” said Mrs Orange. .
“Ah, I have, indeed, ma'am,” said Mrs. Lemon.
“What with their tempers, what with their quarrels,
what with their never knowing what's good for them,
and what with their always wanting to domineer, deliver
me from these unreasonable children | *
“Well, I wish you good morning, ma'am,” said Mrs.
Orange. &
“Well, I wish you good morning, ma'am,” said Mrs.
Lemon.
So Mrs. Orange took up her baby and went home, and
told the family that plagued her so that they were all
going to be sent to school. They said they didn’t want
to go to school; but she packed up their boxes, and
packed them off. . -
“O, dear me, dear me! Rest, and be thankful!” said
Mrs. Orange, throwing herself back in her little arm-
; “Those troublesome troubles are got rid of, please
the pigs!” &
just then another lady, named Alicum paine, came
calling at the street-door with a ring-ting-ting.
“My dear Mrs. Alicum paine,” said Mrs. Orange, “how
do you do? Pray stay to dinner. We have but a simple
joint of sweet-stuff, followed by a plain dish of bread
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 441
and treacle; but, if you will take us as you find us, it
Will be so kind!”
“Don’t mention it,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine. “I shall
be too glad. But what do you think I have come for,
ma'am? Guess, ma'am.”
“I really cannot guess, ma'am,” said Mrs. Orange. .
“Why, I am going to have a small juvenile party to-
night,” said Mrs. Alicum paine; “and if you and Mr.
* and baby would but join us, we should be com-
plete.”
“More than charmed, I am sure!” said Mrs. Orange.
“So kind of you!” said Mrs. Alicum paine; ‘‘ but I hope
the children won’t bore you?” & *
“Dear things! Not at all,” said Mrs. Orange. “I
dote upon them.” -
Mr. Orange here came home from the city; and he
came, too, with a ring-ting-ting.
“James, love,” said Mrs. Orange, “you look tired.
What has been doing in the city to-day?”
“Trap, bat, and ball, my dear,” said Mr. Orange;
“ and it knocks a man up.”
“That dreadfully anxious city, ma'am,” said Mrs. Or-
ange to Mrs. Alicum paine; “so wearing, is it not?”
“O, so trying!” said Mrs. Alicum paine. “John has
lately been speculating in the peg-top ring; and I often
say to him at night, ‘John, is the result worth the wear
and tear?’” *
Dinner was ready by this time: so they sat down to
dinner; and while Mr. Orange carved the joint of sweet-
stuff, he said, “It’s a poor heart that never rejoices.
Jane, go down to the cellar, and fetch a bottle of the
Upest ginger-beer.” g
At tea-time, Mr. and Mrs. Orange, and baby, and Mrs.
Alicum paine went off to Mrs. Alicum paine's house.
The children had not come yet; but the ballroom was
ready for them, decorated with paper flowers.
“How very sweet!” said Mrs. Orange. “The dear
things! How pleased they will be!”
‘‘I don’t care for children myself,” said Mr. Orange,
gaping.
“Not for girls?” said Mrs. Alicumpaine. “Come!
you care for girls?” -
Mr. Orange shook his head, and gaped again. “Friv-
Olous and vain, ma'am.”
442 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
“My dear James,” cried Mrs. Orange, who had been
peeping about, “do look here. Here's the supper for
the darlings, ready laid in the room behind the folding-
doors. Here’s their little pickled salmon, I do declare!
And here’s their little salad, and their little roast beef
and fowls, and their little pastry, and their wee, wee,
wee champagne!” . .
“Yes, I thought it best, ma'am,” said Mrs. Alicum-
paine, “that they should have their supper by them-
selves. Our table is in the corner, here, where the
gentlemen can have their wine-glass of negus, and their
egg-sandwich, and their quiet game at beggar-my-
neighbor, and look on. As for us, ma'am, we shall have
quite enough to do to manage the company.”
“O, indeed, you may say so! Quite enough, ma'am!”
said Mrs. Orange.
The company began to come. The first of them was
a stout boy, with a white top-knot and spectacles. The
housemaid brought him in and said, “Compliments,
and at what time was he to be fetched!” Mrs. Alicum-
paine said, “ Not a moment later than ten. How do
you do, sir? Go and sit down.” Then a number of
other children came; boys by themselves, and girls by
themselves, and boys and girls together. They didn’t be-
have at all well. Some of them looked through quizzing-
glasses at others, and said, “Who are those? Don’t
know them.” Some of them looked through quizzing-
glasses at others, and said, “How do?” Some of them
had cups of tea or coffee handed to them by others,
and said, “Thanks; much!” A good many boys stood
about, and felt their shirt collars. Four tiresome fat
boys' would stand in the doorway, and talk about the
newspapers, till Mrs. Alicumpaine went to them and
said, “My dears, I really cannot allow you to prevent
people from coming in. I shall be truly sorry to do
it; but, if you put yourselves in everybody’s way, I must
positively send you home.” One boy, with a beard and
a large white waistcoat, who stood straddling on the
hearth-rug warming his coat-tails, was sent home.
“Highly incorrect, my dear,” said Mrs. Alicum paine,
handing him out of the room, ‘‘ and I cannot permit it.”
There was a children’s band,-harp, cornet, and
piano, and Mrs. Alicum paine and Mrs. Orange bustled
among the children to persuade them to take partners
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 443
and dance. But they were so obstinate! For quite a
long time they would not be persuaded to take partners
and dance. Most of the boys said, “Thanks; much!
but not at present.” And most of the rest of the boys
said, “Thanks; much! But never do.” -
“O, these children are very wearing!” said Mrs. Ali-
cumpaine to Mrs. Orange.
“Dear things! I dote upon them; but they ARE wear-
ing,” said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicum paine. -
At last they did begin in a slow and melancholy way
to slide about to the music; though even then they
wouldn’t mind what they were told, but would have
this partner, and wouldn’t have that partner, and
showed temper about it. And they wouldn’t smile, no,
not on any account they wouldn’t; but, when the music
stopped, went round and round the room in dismal
twos, as if everybody else was dead.
“O, it’s very hard indeed to get these vexing children
to be entertained!” said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs.
Orange.
“I dote upon the darlings; but it is hard,” said Mrs.
Orange to Mrs. Alicum paine.
They were trying children, that’s the truth. First,
they wouldn’t sing when they were asked; and then,
when everybody fully believed they wouldn’t, they
would. “If you serve us so any more, my love,” said
Mrs. Alicumpaine to a tall child, with a good deal of
white back, in mauve silk trimmed with lace, “it will
be my painfulº to offer you a bed, and to send
you to it immediately.”
The girls were so ridiculously dressed, too, that they
were in rags before supper. How could the boys help
treading on their trains? And yet, when their trains
were trodden on, they often showed temper again, and
looked as black, they did! However, they all seemed to
be pleased when Mrs. Alicumpaine said, “Supper is
ready, children!” And they went crowding and push-
ing in, as if they had had dry bread for dinner.
“How are the children getting on?” said Mr. Orange
to Mrs. Orange, when Mrs. Orange came to look after
baby. Mrs. Orange had left baby on a shelf near Mr.
Orange while he played at beggar-my-neighbor, and
had asked him to keep his eye upon her now and then.
“Most charmingly, my dear!” said Mrs. Orange.
444 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
“So droll to see their little flirtations and jealousies!
Do come and look!” -
“Much obliged to you, my dear,” said Mr. Orange;
“but I don’t care about children myself.”
So Mrs. Orange, having seen that baby was safe,
went back without Mr. Orange to the room where the
children were having Supper. -
“What are they doing now?” said Mrs. Orange to
Mrs. Alicum paine. . g
“They are making speeches, and playing at parlia-
ment,” said Mrs. Alicum paine to Mrs. Orange.
On hearing this, Mrs. Orange set off once more back
again to Mr. Orange, and said, “James, dear, do come.
The children are playing at parliament.”
“Thank you, my dear,” said Mr. Orange, “but I don’t
care about parliament myself.”
So Mrs. Orange went once again without Mr. Orange
to the room where the children were having supper, to
see them playing at parliament. And she found some
of the boys crying, “Hear, hear, hear!” while other
boys cried “No, no!” and others, “Question!”
“Spoke!” and all sorts of nonsense that ever you heard.
Then one of those tiresome fat boys who had stopped
the doorway told them he was on his legs (as if they
couldn’t see that he wasn’t. On his head, or on his any-
thing else) to explain, and that, with the permission
of his honorable friend, if he would allow him to call
him so (another tiresome boy bowed), he would proceed
to explain. Then he went on for a long time in a sing-
song (whatever he meant), did this troublesome fat
boy, about that he held in his hand a glass; and about
that he had come down to that house that night to dis-
charge what he would call a public duty; and about
that, on the present occasion, he would lay his hand
(his other hand) upon his heart, and would tell honora-
ble gentlemen that he was about to open the door to
general approval. Then he opened the door by saying,
“To our hostess!” and ewerybody else said “To our
hostess!” and then there were cheers. Then another
tiresome boy started up in a sing-song, and then half-
a-dozen noisy and nonsensical boys at Once. But at
last Mrs. Alicum paine said, “I cannot have this din.
Now, children, you have played at parliament very
micely; but parliament gets tiresome after a little
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 445
while, and it’s time you left off, for you.. will soon be
fetched.”
After another dance (with more tearing to rags than
before supper), they began to be fetched; and you will
be very glad to be told that the tiresome fat boy who
had been on his legs was walked off first without any
ceremony. When they were all gone, poor Mrs. Alicum-
paine dropped upon a sofa, and said to Mrs. Orange,
“These children will be the death of me at last,
ma'am, they will indeed!”
“I quite adore them, ma'am,” said Mrs. Orange; “but
they DO want variety.”
Mr. Orange got his hat, and Mrs. Orange got her bon-
net and her baby, and they set out to walk home. They
had to pass Mrs. Lemon’s preparatory establishment on
their way
“I wonder, James, dear,” said Mrs. Orange, looking
up at the window, “whether the precious children are
asleep!” -
“I don’t care much whether they are or not, myself,”
said Mr. Orange.
“James, dear!”
“You dote upon them, you know,” said Mr. Orange.
“That’s another thing.”
“I do,” said Mrs. Orange rapturously. “O, I Do!”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Orange.
“But I was thinking, James, love,” said Mrs. Orange,
pressing his arm, “whether our dear, good, kind Mrs.
Lemon would like them to stay the holidays with her.”
“If she was paid for it, I dare say she would,” said
Mr. Orange.
- “I adore them, James,” said Mrs. Orange, ‘‘ but SUP-
POSE we pay her, then!”
This was what brought that country to such perfec-
tion, and made it such a delightful place to live in. The
grown-up people (that would be in other countries) soon
left off being allowed any holidays after Mr. and Mrs.
Orange tried the experiment; and the children (that
would be in other countries) kept them at School as long
as ever they lived, and made them do whatever they
were told. -
GEORGE SILVERMAN'S
EXPLANATION.
GEO R. G E SILVER MAN'S
EXPLANATION.
FIRST CHAPTER.
IT happened in this wise—
But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those
words again, without descrying any hint in them of the
words that should follow, it comes into my mind that
they have an abrupt appearance. They may serve,
however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very dif-
ficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An
lºth phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a
etter.
SECOND CHAPTER.
IT happened in this wise—
But, looking at those words, and comparing them
with my former opening, I find they are the self-same
words repeated. This is the more surprising to me,
because I employ them in quite a new connexion. For
indeed I declare that my intention was to discard the
commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give
the preference to another of an entirely different nature.
dating my explanation from an anterior period of my
life. I will make a third trial, without erasing this
Second failure, protesting that it is not my design to
conceal any of my infirmities, whether they be of head
Or heart.
29
450 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLAN ATION.
THIRD CHAPTER.
NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I
will come upon it by degrees. The natural manner,
after all, for God knows that is how it came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and
my infant home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the
sound of father’s Lancashire clogs on the street pave-
ment above, as being different in my young hearing from
the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect, that, when
mother came down the cellar steps, I used tremblingly
to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill tem-
pered look,+On her knees, on her waist,-until finally
her face came into view, and settled the question. From
this it will be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-
steps were steep, and that the doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her
face, upon her figure, and not least of all upon her
voice. Her sharp and high-pitched words were squeezed
out of her, as by the compression of bony fingers on
a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes
about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was
gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded,
would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at the
empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under
him, and bid him go bring some money home.
Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, hold-
ing my ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand
(my only braces), would feint and dodge from mother's
pursuing grasp at Imy hair.
A worldly little devil was mother's usual name
for me. Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, Or
for that it was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether
I squeezed myself into a warm corner when there was
a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she
would still say, “O you worldly little devil!” And the
sting of it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a
worldly little devil. Worldly as to wanting to be
housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to be fed,
worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly com-
pared how much I got of those good things with how
much father and mother got, when, rarely, those good
things were going.
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLAN ATION. 451 .
Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and
then I would be locked up in the cellar for a day or two
at a time. I was at my worldliest then. Left alone, I
yielded myself up to a worldly yearning for enough
of anything (except misery), and for the death of
mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birming-
ham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother say,
she would come into a whole courtful of houses “if she
had her rights.” Worldly little devil, I would stand
about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into cracked
bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, walking
Over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the court-
ful of houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and
clothes to wear.
At last a change came down into our cellar. The
universal change came down even as low as that, so
will it mount to any height on which a human creature
can perch,-and brought other changes with it.
We had a heap of I don’t know what foul litter in the
darkest corner, which we called “ the bed.” For three
days mother lay upon it without getting up, and then
began at times to laugh. If I had ever heard her laugh
before, it had been so seldom that the strange sound
frightened me. It frightened father too; and we took
it by turns to give her water. Then she began to move
her head from side to side, and sing. After that, she
getting no better, father fell a-laughing and a-singing;
and then there was only I to give them both water, and
they both died.
FOURTH CHAPTER.
WHEN I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of
whom One came peeping down alone first, and ran
away and brought the other, I could hardly bear the
light of the street. I was sitting in the road-way, blink-
ing at it, and at a ring of people collected around me,
but not close to me, when, true to my character of
Worldly little devil, I broke silence by saying, “I am
hungry and thirsty!”
“Does he know they are dead?” asked one of another.
452 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION.
“Do you know your father and mother are both dead
of fever?” asked a third of me severely.
“I don’t know what it is to be dead. I supposed it
meant that, when the cup rattled against their teeth,
and the water spilt over them. I am hungry and
thirsty.” That was all I had to say about it.
. The ring of people widened outward from the inner
side as I looked around me; and I smelt vinegar, and
what I know to be camphor, thrown in towards where I
sat. Presently some One put a great vessel of smoking
vinegar On the ground near me; and then they all looked
at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was
brought for me. I knew at the time they had a horror
of me, but I couldn’t help it.
I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of dis-
cussion had begun to arise respecting what was to be
done with me next, when I heard a cracked voice some-
where in the ring say, “My name is Hawkyard, Mr.
Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich.” Then the ring
Split in One place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gen-
tleman, clad all in iron-grey to his gaiters, pressed for-
ward, with a policeman and another official of some sort.
He came forward close to the vessel of smoking vine-
gar; from which be sprinkled himself carefully, and me
copiously.
“He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young
boy, who is just dead too,” said Mr. Hawkyard.
I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a
ravening manner, “Where’s his houses?”
“Hah! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave,”
said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over
me, as if to get my devil out of me. “I have under-
taken a slight—a ve-ry slight—trust in behalf of this
boy; quite a voluntary trust; a matter of mere honor, if
not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon my-
self, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged.”
The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this
gentleman much more favorable than their opinion of
IY162.
“He shall be taught,” said Mr. Hawkyard, “ º yes,
he shall be taught!) but what is to be done with him for
the present? He may be infected. He may disseminate
infection.” The ring widened considerably, “What is
to be done with him?”
GEORGE SILVERMAN's EXPLANATION, 453
He held some talk with the two officials. I could dis-
tinguish no word save “Farm-house.” There was
another sound several times repeated, which was wholly
meaningless in my ears then, but which I knew after-
wards to be “Hoghton Towers.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Hawkyard. “I think that sounds
promising; I think that Sounds hopeful. And he can
be put by himself in a ward, for a night or two, you
say?”
It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for
it was he who replied, Yes! It was he, too, who finally
took me by the arm, and walked me before him through
the streets, into a white-washed room in a bare building,
where I had a chair to sit in, a table to sit at, an iron
bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug
and blanket to cover me. Where I had enough to
eat, too, and was shown how to clean the tin porringer
in which it was conveyed to me, until it was as good as
a looking-glass. Here, likewise, I was put in a bath,
and had new clothes brought to me; and my old rags
were burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared and
disinfected in a variety of ways. Q,
When all this was done,—I don’t know in how many
days or how few, but it matters not, Mr. Hawkyard
stepped in at the door, remaining close to it, and said,
“Go and stand against the opposite wall, George Sil-
verman. As far off as you can. That’ll do. How do
you feel?” -
I told him that I didn’t feel cold, and didn’t feel hun-
gry, and didn’t feel thirsty. That was the whole round
of human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain of
being beaten.
“Well,” said he, “ you are going, George, to a healthy
farm-house to be purified. Keep in the air there as
much as you can. Live an out-of-door life there, until
you are fetched away. You had better not say much—
in fact, you had better be very careful not to say any-
thing—about what your parents died of, or they might
not like to take you in. Behave well, and I’ll put you
to school; O, yes! I’ll put you to school, though I am
not obligated to do it. I am a servant of the Lord,
George; and I have been a good servant to him, I have,
these five-and-thirty years. The Lord has had a good
servant in me, and he knows it.”
454 GBORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION.
What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot
imagine. As little do I know when I began to compre-
hend that he was a prominent member of some obscure
denomination or congregation, every member of which
held forth to the rest when so inclined, and among
them he was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough
for me to know, on that day in the ward, that the
farmer's cart was waiting for me at the street corner.
I was not slow to get into it; for it was the first ride I
ever had in my life.
It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, I stared at
Preston streets as long as they lasted; and, meanwhile,
I may have had some small dumb wondering within
me whereabouts our cellar was; but I doubt it. Such a
worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who
would bury father and mother, or where they would
be buried, or when. The question whether the eating
and drinking by day, and the covering by night, would
be as good at the farm-house as at the ward superseded
those questions.
The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke
me; and I found that we were mounting a steep hill,
where the road was a rutty by-road through a field.
And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace, and by
some rugged outbuildings that had once been fortified,
and passing under a ruined gateway we came to the old
farm-house in the thick stone wall outside the old quad-
rangle of Hoghton Towers: which I looked at like a stu-
pid savage, seeing no specialty in, Seeing no antiquity in;
assuming all farm-houses to resemble it; assigning the
decay I noticed to the one potent cause of all ruin that
I knew, poverty; eyeing the pigeons in their flights,
the cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the pond, and the
fowls pecking about the yard, with a hungry hope that
plenty of them might be killed for dinner while I
stayed there; wondering whether the scrubbed dairy
vessels, drying in the Sunlight, could be goodly por-
ringers out of which the master ate his belly-filling
food, and which he polished when he had done, accord-
ing to my ward experience; shrinkingly doubtful
whether the shadows, passing over that airy height on
the bright spring day, were not something in the nature
of frowns,—sordid, afraid, unadmiring, -a Small brute
to shudder at.
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 455
To that time I had never had the faintest impression
of duty. I had had no knowledge whatever that there
was anything lovely in this life. When I had occasion-
ally slunk up the cellar-steps into the street, and glared
in at shop-windows, I had done so with no higher feel-
ings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young
dog or wolf-cub. It is equally the fact that I had never
been alone, in the sense of holding unselfish converse
with myself. I had been solitary often enough, but
nothing better.
Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner
that day, in the kitchen of the old farm-house. Such
was my condition when I lay on my bed in the old
farm-house that night, stretched Out opposite the nar-
row mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon,
like a young vampire.
FIFTH CHAPTER.
WHAT do I know now of Hoghton Towers? Very
little; for I have been gratefully unwilling to disturb
my first impressions. A house, centuries old, on high
ground a mile or so removed from the road between
Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of Eng-
1and, in his hurry to make money by making baronets,
perhaps made some of those remunerative dignities.
A house, centuries old, deserted and falling to pieces,
its woods and gardens long since grass-land Or ploughed
up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it,
and a vague haze of smoke, against which not even
the supernatural prescience of the first Stuart could
foresee a counterblast, hinting at Steam-power, power-
ful in two distances.
What did I know then of Hoghton Towers? When I
first peeped in at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle,
and started from the mouldering statue becoming visi-
ble to me like its guardian ghost; when I stole round
by the back of the farm-house, and got in among the
ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceil-
ings falling, the beams and rafters hanging danger-
Ously down, the plaster dropping aft I trod, the Oaken
*
456 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLAN ATION.
anels stripped away, the windows half walled up, half
roken; when I discovered a gallery commanding the
old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades upon
a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know
not what dead-alive creatures come in and seat them-
selves, and look up with I know not what dreadful eyes,
Or lack of eyes, at me; when all over the house I was
awed by gaps and Chinks where the sky stared sorrow-
fully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy rustled,
and the stains of winter weather blotched the rotten
floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of stair-
case, into which the stairs had sunk, green leaves
trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and
out through the broken doorways; when encircling the
whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of fresh green
growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never
dreamed of, I say, when I passed into such cloudy
perception of these things as my dark soul could com-
pass, what did I know then of Hoghton Towers?
I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me.
Therein have I anticipated the answer. I knew that
all these things looked sorrowfully at me; that they
seemed to sigh or whisper, not without pity for me,
“Alas! poor worldly little devil!”
There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of
the Smaller pits of broken staircase when I craned over
and looked in. They were scuffling for some prey that
was there; and, when they started and hid themselves
close together in the dark, I thought of the old life (it
had grown old already) in the cellar.
How, not to be this worldly little devil? how not to
have a repugnance towards myself as I had towards the
rats? I hid in a corner of one of the smaller chambers,
frightened at myself, and crying (it was the first time I
had ever cried for any cause not purely physical), and I
tried to think about it. One of the farm-ploughs came
into my range of view just then; and it seemed to help
me as it went on with its two horses up and down the
field so peacefully and quietly.
There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-
house family, and she sat opposite to me at the narrow
table at meal-times. It had come into my mind, at our
first dinner, that she might take the fever from me.
The thought had not disquieted me then. I had only
f
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 457
speculated how she would look under the altered cir-
cumstances, and whether she would die. But it came
into my mind now that I might try to prevent her tak-
ing the fever by keeping away from her. I knew I
should have but Scrambling board if I did; so much the
less worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I
thought.
From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning
into Secret corners of the ruined house, and remained
hidden there until she went to bed. At first, when
meals were ready, I used to hear them calling me; and
then my resolution weakened. But I strengthened it
again, by going farther off into the ruin, and getting
out of hearing. I often watched for her at the dim
windows; and, when I saw that she was fresh and rosy,
felt much happier.
Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the human-
ising of myself, I suppose some childish love arose
within me. I felt, in some sort, dignified by the pride
of protecting her, by the pride of making the sacrifice
for her. As my heart swelled with that new feeling, it
insensibly softened about mother and father. It seemed
to have been frozen before, and now to be thawed. The
old ruin and all the lovely things that haunted it were
not sorrowful for me only, but sorrowful for mother and
father as well. Therefore did I cry again, and often
too. -
The farm-house family conceived me to be of a mo-
rose temper, and were very short with me; though they
never stinted me in such broken fare as was to be got
out of regular hours. One night when I lifted the
kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her
pretty name) had but just gone out of the room. Seeing
her ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the
door. She had heard the clink of the latch, and looked
round. -
“George,” she called to me in a pleased voice, ‘‘to-
morrow is my birthday; and we are to have a fiddler,
and there’s a party of boys and girls coming in a cart,
and we shall dance. I invite you. Be Sociable for
once, George.”
“I am very sorry, miss,” I answered; “but I–but,
no; I can’t come.”
“You are a disagreeable, ill-humored lad,” she re-
458 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION.
turned disdainfully; “ and I ought not to have asked
you. I shall never speak to you again.”
As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she
was gone, I felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me.
“Eh, lad!” said he: “Sylvy’s right. You’re as
moody and broody a lad as never I set eyes on yet.”
I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he
only said coldly, “Maybe not, maybe not! There! get
thy supper, get thy Supper; and then thou canst Sulk to
thy heart’s content again.” -
Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin,
watching for the arrival of the cart full of merry young
guests; if they could have seen me at night, gliding out
from behind the ghostly statue, listening to the music
and the fall of dancing feet, and watching the lighted
farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the
ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart, as I
crept up to bed by the back way, comforting myself
with the reflection, “They will take no hurt from me,”—
they would not have thought mine a morose or unsocial
nature.
It was in these ways that I began to form a shy dis-
position; to be of a timidly silent character under miscon-
struction; to have an inexpressible, perhaps a morbid,
dread of ever being sordid or worldly. It was in these
ways that my nature came to shape itself to such a
mould, even before it was affected by the influences of
the studious and retired life of a poor scholar.
SIXTH CHAPTER.
BROTHER HAWKYARD (as he insisted on my calling him)
put me to school, and told me to work my way. “You
are all right, George,” he said. I have been the best
servant the Lord has had in his service for this five-and-
thirty year (O, I have!); and he knows the value of such
a servant as I have been to him (O, yes, he does!); and
he’ll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward.
That’s what he'll do, George. He 'll do it for me.”
From the first I could not like this familiar knowl-
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 450
edge of the ways of the Sublime, inscrutable Almighty,
On Brother Hawkyard’s part. As I grew a little wiser,
and a little wiser, I liked it less and less. His manner,
too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis, as if, know-
ing himself, he doubted his own word, I found dis-
tasteful. I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me;
for I had a dread that they were worldly. -
As time went On, J became a Foundation-boy on a
good foundation, and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing.
When I had worked my way so far, I worked yet harder,
in the hope of ultimately getting a presentation to col-
lege and a fellowship. My health has never been strong
(some vapor from the Preston cellar cleaves to me, I
think); and what with much work and some weakness,
I came again to be regarded—that is, by my fellow-stu-
dents—as unsocial.
All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was
within a few miles of Brother Hawkyard’s congrega-
tion; and whenever I was what we called a leave-boy
On a Sunday, I went over there at his desire. Before
the knowledge became forced upon me that outside
their place of meeting these brothers and sisters were
no better than the rest of the human family, but on the
whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad as most, in
respect of giving short weight in their shops, and not
Speaking the truth, – I say, before this knowledge
became forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their in-
Ordinate conceit, their daring ignorance, their invest-
ment of the Supreme Ruler of heaven and earth with
their own miserable meannesses and littienesses, greatly
Shocked me. Still, as their term for the frame of mind
that could not perceive them to be in an exalted state of
grace was the “wordly ’’ state, I did for a time suffer
tortures under my inquiries of myself whether that
young worldly-devilish spirit of mine could secretly be
lingering at the bottom of my non-appreciation,
Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in
this assembly, and generally occupied the platform
(there was a little platform with a table on it, in lieu of
a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon. He was by trade
a drysalter. Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a
Crabbed face, a large dog's-eared shirt collar, and a
spotted blue neckerchief reaching up behind to the
crown of his head, was also a drysalter and an ex-
460 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION.
pounder. Brother Gimblet professed the greatest ad-
miration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought
more than once) bore him a jealous grudge.
Let whösoever may peruse these lines kindly take the
pains here to read twice my solemn pledge, that what
I write of the language and customs Of the congrega-
tion in question I write scrupulously, literally, exactly,
from the life and the truth.
On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so
long tried for, and when it was certain that I was going
up to college, Brother Hawkyard concluded a long ex-
hortation thus:
“Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told
you when I began, that I didn’t know a word of what I
was going to say to you (and no, I did not!), but that it
was all one to me, because I knew the Lord would put
into my mouth the words I wanted.
(“That’s it!” from Brother Gimblet.)
“And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted.”
(“So he did!” from Brother Gimblet.)
“And why?”
(“Ah, let's have that!” from Brother Gimblet.)
“Because I have been his faithful servant for five-
and-thirty years, and because he knows it. For five-
and-thirty years! And he knows it, mind you! I got
those words that I wanted on account of my wages.
I got 'em from the Lord, my fellow-sinners. Down!
I said, ‘Here’s a heap of wages due; let us have some-
thing down, on account.’ And I got it down, and I
paid it over to you; and you won’t wrap it up in a
napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet pocket-ankercher,
but you’ll put it out at good interest. Very well.
Now, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners, I
am going to conclude with a question, and I’ll make
it so plain (with the help of the Lord, after five-and-
thirty years, I should rather hope!) as that the Devil
shall not be able to confuse it in your heads,--which
he would be overjoyed to do.”
(“Just his way. Crafty old blackguard!” from
Brother Gimblet.”) --
“And the question is this, Are the angels learned?”
(“Not they. Not a bit on it!” from Brother Gimblet,
with the greatest confidence.)
“Not they. And where's the proof? sent ready-made
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 461
by the hand of the Lord. Why, there's one among us
here now, that has got all the learning that can be
Crammed into him. I got him all the learning that
could be crammed into him. His grandfather ” (this I
had never heard before) “was a brother of ours. He
was Brother Parksop. That's what he was. Parksop;
Brother Parksop. His worldly name was Parksop, and
he was a brother of this brotherhood. Then wasn’t he
Brother Parksop?”
(“Must be. Couldn’t help hisself!” from Brother
Gimblet.)
“Well, he left that One now here present among us
to the care of a brother-sinner of his (and that brother-
sinner, mind you, was a sinner of a bigger size in his
time than any of you; praise the Lord!), Brother Hawk-
yard. Me. I got him without fee or reward, without
a morsel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber,
letting alone the honeycomb, all the learning that
Could be crammed into him. Has it brought him into
Our temple, in the spirit? No. Have we had any
ignorant brothers and sisters that didn’t know round O
from Crooked S, come in among us meanwhile? Many.
Then the angels are not learned; then they don’t so
much as know their alphabet. And now, my friends
and fellow-simmers, having brought it to that, perhaps
Some brother present—perhaps you, Brother Gimblet—
will pray a bit for us?”
Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after
having drawn his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered,
“Well! I don’t know as I see my way to hitting any of
you quite in the right place neither.” He said this with
a dark smile and then began to bellow. What we were
Specially to be preserved from, according to his solicita-
tions, was, despoilment of the Orphan, suppression of
testamentary intentions on the part of a father or (say)
grandfather, appropriation of the Orphan’s house-prop-
erty, feigning to give in charity to the wronged one
from whom we withheld his due; and that class of sins.
He ended with the petition, “Give us peace!” which,
Speaking for myself, was very much needed after twenty
minutes of his bellowing. - º
Even though I had not seen him when he rose from
his knees, steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother
Hawkyard, and even though I had not heard Brother
462 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION.
•
Hawkyard’s tone of congratulating him on the vigor
with which he had roared, I should have detected a
malicious application in this prayer. Unformed Sus-
picions to a similar effect had sometimes passed through
my mind in my earlier School-days, and had always
caused me great distress; for they were worldly in their
nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that had
drawn me from Sylvia. They were sordid suspicions,
without a shadow of proof. They were worthy to have
originated in the unwholesome cellar. They were not
only without proof, but against proof; for was I not
myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard had
done? and without him, how should I ever have seen
the sky look sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy
at Hoghton Towers?
Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of Savage
selfishness was less strong upon me as I approached
manhood, and could act in an increased degree for my-
self, yet I was always on my guard against any ten-
dency to such relapse. After getting these suspicions
under my feet, I had been troubled by not being able to
like Brother Hawkyard’s manner, or his professed re-
ligion. So it came about, that, as I walked back that
Sunday evening, I thought it would be an act of repara-
tion for any such injury my struggling thoughts had
unwillingly done him, if I wrote, and placed in his
hands, before going to college, a full acknowledgment
of his goodness to me, and an ample tribute of thanks.
It might serve as an implied vindication of him against
any dark scandal from a rival brother and expounder,
or from any other quarter.
Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care.
I may add with much feeling too; for it affected me as
I went on. Having no set studies to pursue, in the brief
interval between leaving the Foundation and going to
Cambridge, I determined to walk out to his place of
business, and give it into his own hands.
It was a winter afternoon, when I tapped at the door
of his little counting-house, which was at the farther
end of his long, low shop. As I did so (having entered
by the back yard, where casks and boxes were taken in,
and where there was the inscription, “Private way to
the counting-house”), a shopman called to me from the
counter that he was engaged. - -
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 463
“Brother Gimblet ’’(said the shopman, who was one
of the brotherhood) “is with him.”
I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made
bold to tap again. They were talking in a low tone,
and money was passing; for I heard it being counted
Out. -
“Who is it?” asked Brother Hawkyard sharply.
“George Silverman,” I answered, holding the door
open. “ May I come in?”
Both brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I
felt shyer than usual. But they looked quite cadaver-
Ous in the early gaslight, and perhaps that accidental
circumstance exaggerated the expression of their faces.
“What is the matter?” asked Brother Hawkyard.
“Ay! what is the matter?” asked Brother Gimblet.
“Nothing at all,” I said, diffidently producing my
ºnent “I am Only the bearer of a letter from my-
Self.”
“From yourself, George?” cried Brother Hawkyard.
“And to you,” said I.
“And to me, George?”
He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; but looking
Over it, and Seeing generally what it was, became less
hurried, recovered his color, and said, “Praise the
LOrd! ” *
“That's it!” cried Brother Gimblet. “Well put!
Amen.”
Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain,
“You must know, George, that Brother Gimblet and I
are going to make our two businesses one. We are
going into partnership. We are settling it now. Brother
Gimblet is to take one clear half of the profits (O, yes!
he shall have it; he shall have it to the last farthing).”
“D. V. l’” said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist
firmly clinched on his right leg.
“There is no objection,” pursued Brother Hawkyard,
“to my reading this aloud, George?”
As it was what I expressly desired should be done,
after yesterday’s prayer, I more than readily begged
him to read it aloud. He did so; and Brother Gimblet
listened with a crabbed smile.
“It was in a good hour that I came here,” he said,
wrinkling up his eyes. “It was in a good hour, like-
wise, that I was moved yesterday to depict for the terror
464 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION.
of evil-doers, a character the direct opposite of Brother .
|Hawkyard’s. But it was the Lord that done it: I felt
him at it while I was perspiring.”
After that it was proposed by both of them that I
should attend the congregation once more before my
final departure. What my shy reserve would undergo,
from being expressly preached at and prayed at, I knew
beforehand. But I reflected that it would be for the
last time, and that it might add to the weight of my
letter. It was well known to the brothers and sisters
that there was no place taken for me in their paradise;
and if I showed this last token of deference to Brother
Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own sinful in-
clinations, it might go some little way in aid of my
statement that he had been good to me, and that I was
grateful to him. Merely stipulating, therefore, that no
express endeavor should be made for my conversion,--
which would involve the rolling of several brothers and
sisters on the floor, declaring that they felt all their sins
in a heap on their left side, weighing so many pounds
avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of those
repulsive mysteries, I promised.
Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had
been at intervals wiping one eye with an end of his
Spotted blue neckerchief, and grinning to himself. It
was, however, a habit that brother had, to grin in an
ugly manner even when expounding. I call to mind a
delighted Snarl with which he used to detail from the
platform the torments reserved for the wicked (meaning
all human Creation except the brotherhood), as being
remarkably hideous. -
I left the two to settle their articles of partnership,
and Count money; and I never saw them again but on
the following Sunday. Brother Hawkyard died within
two or three years, leaving all he possessed to Brother
Gimblet in virtue of a will dated (as I have been told)
that very day.
Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday
Came, knowing that I had conquered my own mistrust,
and righted Brother Hawkyard in the jaundiced vision
of a rival, that I went, even to that coarse chapel, in a
less sensitive state than usual. How could I foresee
that the delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my
Imind, where I Winced and shrunk when it was touched,
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 465
or was even approached, would be handled as the theme
of the whole proceedings?
On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawk-
yard to pray, and to Brother Gimblet to preach. The
prayer was to open the ceremonies; the discourse was
to come next. Brothers Hawkyard and Gimblet were
both on the platform; Brother Hawkyard on his knees
at the table, unmusically ready to pray; Brother Gim-
blet sitting against the wall, grinningly ready to preach.
“Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers
and sisters and fellow-sinners.” Yes; but it was I who
was the sacrifice. It was our poor, sinful, worldly-
minded brother here present who was wrestled for.
The now-opening career of this our unawakened brother
might lead to his becoming a minister of what was called
‘‘the church.” That was what he looked to. The
church. Not the chapel, Lord. The church. No rectors,
no vicars, no arch-deacons, no bishops, no arch-bishops,
in the chapel, but, O Lord! Imany such in the church.
Protect our sinful brother from his love of lucre.
Cleanse from our unawakened brother's breast his sin
of worldly-mindedness. The prayer said infinitely more
in words, but nothing more to any intelligible effect.
Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I
knew he would) the text, “My kingdom is not of this
world.” Ah! but whose was, my fellow-sinners?
Whose? Why, our brother's here present was. The
only kingdom he had an idea of was of this world
(“That’s it!” from several of the congregation). What
did the woman do when she lost the piece of money?
Went and looked for it. What should our brother do
when he lost his way? (“Go and look for it,” from a
sister.) Go and look for it, true. . But must he look for
it in the right direction, or in the wrong? (“In the
right,” from a brother.) There spake the prophets!'. He
must look for it in the right direction, or he couldn’t
find it. But he had turned his back upon the right
direction, and he wouldn’t find it. Now, my fellow-sin-
ners, to show you the difference betwixt worldly-mind-
edness and unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms
not of this world and kingdoms of this world, here was
a letter wrote by even our worldly-minded brother unto
Brother Hawkyard. Judge, from hearing of it read,
whether Brother Hawkyard was the faithful Steward
* Y
466 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLAN ATION.
that the Lord had in his mind only tºother day, when, in
this very place, he drew you the picter of the unfaithful
one; for it was him that done it, not me. Don’t doubt
that!
Brother Gimblet then groaned and bellowed his way
through my composition, and subsequently through an
hour. The service closed with a hymn, in which the
brothers unanimously roared, and the sisters unani-
mously shrieked at me—That I by wiles of worldly gain
was mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were
rocked; that I with mammon struggled in the dark,
while they were floating in a second ark.
I went out from all this with an aching heart and a
weary spirit: not because I was quite so weak as to con-
sider these narrow creatures interpreters of the Divine
Majesty and Wisdom, but because I was weak enough
to feel as though it were my hard fortune to be misrep-
resented and misunderstood, when I most tried to sub-
due any risings of mere worldliness within me, and
when I most hoped that, by dint of trying earnestly, I
had succeeded.
SEVENTH CHAPTER.
MY timidity and my obscurity occasioned me to live a
secluded life at college, and to be little known. No rel-
ative ever came to visit me, for I had no relative. No
intimate friends broke in upon my studies, for I made
Ino intimate friends. I supported myself on my scholar-
ship, and read much. My college time was otherwise
not so very different from my time at Hoghton Towers.
Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir of social
existence, but believing myself qualified to do my duty
in a moderate, though earnest way, if I could obtain
Some small preferment in the Church, I applied my
Imind to the clerical profession. In due sequence I took
Orders, was ordained, and began to look about me for
employment. I must observe that I had taken a good
degree, that I had succeeded in winning a good fellow-
ship, and that my means were ample for my retired
way of life. By this time I had read with several young
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 467
men; and the Occupation increased my income, while it
was highly interesting to me. I once accidentally over-
heard our greatest don say to my boundless joy, “That
he heard it reported of Silverman that his gift of quiet
explanation, his patience, his amiable temper, and his
Conscientiousness made him the best of coaches.” May
Imy “gift of quiet explanation’ come more seasonably
and powerfully to my aid in this present explanation
than I think it will!
It may be in a certain degree owing to the situation
of my college-rooms (in a corner where the daylight was
Sobered), but it is in a much larger degree referable to
the state of my own mind, that I seem to myself, on
looking back to this time of my life, to have been always
in the peaceful shade. I can see others in the sunlight;
I can see Our boats’ crews and Our athletic young men
On the glistening water, or speckled with the moving
lights of sunlit leaves; but I myself am always in the
Shadow looking on. Not unsympathetically,–God for-
bid!—but looking on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia
from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at the
red gleam shining through the farmer's windows, and
listened to the fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was
dark that night in the quadrangle. -
I now come to the reason of my quoting that lauda-
tion of myself above given. Without such reason, to
repeat it would have been mere boastfulness.
Among those who had read with me was Mr. Fare-
way, second son of Lady Fareway, widow of Sir Gaston
Pareway, baronet. This young gentleman’s abilities
were much above the average; but he came of a rich
family, and was idle and luxurious. He presented him-
Self to me too late, and afterwards came to me too ir-
regularly, to admit of my being of much service to him.
In the end, I considered it my duty to dissuade him from
going up for an examination which he could never pass;
and he left college without a degree. . After his depart-
ure, Lady Fareway wrote to me, representing the justice
of my returning half my fee, as I had been of so little
use to her son. Within my knowledge a similar de-
lmand had not been made in any other case; and I most
freely admit that the justice of it had not occurred to
me until it was pointed out. But I at once perceived it,
yielded to it, and returned the money. -
46S GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION.
Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or more, and I
had forgotten him, when he one day walked into my
rooms as I was sitting at my books.
Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, “Mr.
Silverman, my mother is in town here, at the hotel, and
wishes me to present you to her.”
I was not comfortable with strangers, and I dare say
I betrayed that I was a little nervous or unwilling.
“For,” said he, without my having spoken, “I think
the interview may tend to the advancement of your
prospects.”
It put me to the blush to think that I should be
tempted by a worldly reason, and I rose immediately.
Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, “Are you a
good hand at business?”
“I think not,” said I. -
Said Mr. Fareway then, “My mother is.”
“Truly?” said I.
“Yes: my mother is what is usually called a man-
aging woman. Doesn’t make a bad thing, for instance,
even out of the spendthrift habits of my eldest brother
abroad. In short, a managing woman. This is in con-
fidence.”
He had never spoken to me in confidence, and I was
surprised by his doing so. I said I should respect his
confidence, of course, and said no more on the delicate
subject. We had but a little way to walk, and I was
soon in his mother’s company. He presented me, shook
hands with me, and left us two (as he said) to business.
I saw in my Lady Fareway a handsome, well-pre-
served lady of somewhat large stature, with a steady
glare in her great round dark eyes that embarrassed
JT) G.
Said my lady, “I have heard from my son, Mr. Sil-
verman, that you would be glad of some preferment in
the Church.” -
I gave my lady to understand that was so.
“I don’t know whether you are aware,” my lady pro-
ceeded, “that we have a presentation to a living? I Say
we have; but, in point of fact, I have.”
I gave my lady to understand that I had not been
aware of this.
... Said my lady, “So it is: indeed I have two presenta-
tions,—one to two hundred a year, one to six. Both liv-
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 469
ings are in Our county,+North Devonshire, as you
prºpably know. The first is vacant. Would you like
it? " -
What with my lady’s eyes, and what with the sudden-
ness of this proposed gift, I was much confused.
‘‘I am Sorry it is not the larger presentation,” said my
lady, rather coldly; “ though I will not, Mr. Silverman,
ay you the bad compliment of supposing that you are,
ecause that would be mercenary, and mercenary I
am persuaded you are not.” -
Said I, with my utmost earnestness, “Thank you,
Lady Fareway, thank you, thank you! I should be
deeply hurt if I thought I bore the character.”
“Naturally,” said my lady. “Always detestable, but
particularly in a clergyman. You have not said whether
you will like the living?”
With apologies for my remissness or indistinctness, I
assured my lady that I accepted it most readily and
gratefully. I added that I hoped she would not estimate
my appreciation of the generosity of her choice by my
flow of words; for I was not a ready man in that respect
when taken by surprise or touched at heart.
“The affair is concluded,” said my lady; “concluded.
You will find the duties very light, Mr. Silverman.
Charming house; charming little garden, orchard, and
all that. You will be able to take pupils. By the by
NO: I will return to the word afterwards. What was I
going to mention when it put me out?”
My lady stared at me, as if I knew. And I didn't
Know. And that perplexed me afresh.
Said my lady, after some consideration, “O, of course,
how very dull of me! The last incumbent, least mer-
cenary man I ever saw, in consideration of the duties
being so light and the house so delicious, couldn’t rest,
he said, unless I permitted him to help me with my cor-
respondence, accounts, and various little things of that
kind; nothing in themselves, but which it worries a
lady to cope with. Would Mr. Silverman also like to—?
Or shall I—?”
I hastened to say that my poor help would be always
at her ladyship’s service. .
“I am absolutely blessed,” said my lady, casting up
her eyes (and so taking them off of me for one moment),
“in having to do with gentlemen who cannot endure
470 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLAN ATION.
an approach to the idea of being mercenary!”. She
shivered at the word. “And now as to the pupil.”
“The-?” I was quite at a loss.
“Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is. She
is,” said my lady, laying her touch upon my coat-
sleeve, “I do verily believe, the most extraordinary girl
in this world. Already knows more Greek and Latin
than Lady Jane Grey. And taught herself! Has not
yet, remember, derived a moment’s advantage from Mr.
Silverman’s classical acquirements. To say nothing of
mathematics, which she is bent upon becoming versed
in, and in which (as I hear from my son and others) Mr.
Silverman’s reputation is so deservedly high!”
Under my lady’s eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt
persuaded; and yet I did not know where I could have
dropped it. -
“Adelina,” said my lady, “is my only daughter. If
I did not feel quite convinced that I am not blinded by
a mother’s partiality; unless I was absolutely sure that
when you know her, Mr. Silverman, you will esteem it
a high and unusual privilege to direct her studies, I
should introduce a mercenary element into this conver-
sation, and ask you on what terms—”.
I entreated my lady to go no further. My lady saw
that I was troubled, and did me the honor to comply
with my request.
EIGHTH CHAPTER.
EVERYTHING in mental acquisition that her brother
might have been, if he would, and everything in all
gracious charms and admirable qualities that no one
but herself could be, this was Adelina.
I will not expatiate upon her beauty: I will not expa-
tiate upon her intelligence, her quickness of perception,
her powers of memory, her sweet consideration, from
the first moment, for the slow-paced tutor who minis-
tered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then; I am
over sixty now: she is ever present to me in these hours
as she was in those, bright and beautiful and young,
wise and fanciful and good.
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 471
*
When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say?
In the first day? in the first week? in the first month?
Impossible to trace. If I be (as I am) unable to repre-
sent to myself any previous period of my life as quite
Separable from her attracting power, how can I answer
for this One detail?
Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy
burden on me. And yet, comparing it with the far
heavier burden that I afterwards took up, it does not
seem to me now to have been very hard to bear. In the
knowledge that I did love her, and that I should love
her while my life lasted, and that I was ever to hide
my secret deep in my own breast, and she was never to
find it, there was a kind of Sustaining joy, or pride, or
comfort, mingled with my pain. .
But later on, say, a year later on, when I made an-
other discovery, then indeed my suffering and my
struggle were strong. That other discovery was—
These words will never see the light, if ever, until my
heart is dust; until her bright spirit has returned to the
regions of which, when imprisoned here, it surely re-
tained some unusual glimpse of remembrance; until all
the pulses that ever beat around us shall have long been
quiet; until all the fruits of all the tiny victories and de-
feats achieved in Our little breasts shall have withered
away. That discovery was that she loved me.
She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me
for that; she may have over-valued my discharge of
duty to her, and loved me for that; she may have refined
upon a playful compassion which she would sometimes
show for what she called my want of wisdom, accord-
ing to the light of the world’s dark lanterns, and loved
me for that; she may—she must—have confused the
borrowed light of what I had only learned, with its
brightness in its pure, original rays; but she loved me
at that time, and she made me know it.
Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off
from her in my lady’s eyes as if I had been some domes-
ticated creature of another kind. But they could not
put me farther from her than I put myself when I set
my merits against hers. More than that. . They could
not put me, by millions of fathoms, half so low beneath
her as I put myself when in imagination I took advan-
tage of her noble trustfulness, took the fortune that I
472 GEORGE SILVERMAN's EXPLANATION.
knew she must possess in her own right, and left her to
find herself, in the zenith of her beauty and genius,
bound to poor rusty, plodding me.
No! Worldliness should not enter here, at any cost.
If I had tried to keep it out of other ground, how much
harder was I bound to try to keep it from this sacred
olace! .
I But there was something daring in her broad, gener-
ous character that demanded at so delicate a crisis to
be delicately and patiently addressed. After many and
many a bitter night (O, I found I could cry for reasons
not purely physical, at this pass of my life!) I took my
COUll"Se.
My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously
over-stated the accommodation of my pretty house.
There was room in it for only one pupil. He was a
young gentleman near coming of age, very well con-
nected, but what is called a poor relation. His parents
were dead. The charges of his living and reading with
me were defrayed by an uncle; and he and I were to do
our utmost together for three years towards qualifying
him to make his way. At this time he had entered into
his second year with me. He was well-looking, clever,
emergetic, enthusiastic, bold; in the best sense of the
term, a thorough young Anglo-Saxon.
I resolved to bring these two together.
NINTH CHAPTER.
SAID I, one night, when I had conquered myself, “Mr.
Granville,”—Mr. Granville Wharton his name was,
“I doubt if you have ever yet so much as seen Miss
Fareway.”
“Well, sir,” returned he, laughing, “you see her so
much yourself that you hardly leave another fellow a
chance of seeing her.”
“I am her tutor, you know,” said I.
And there the subject dropped for that time. But I
so contrived as that they should come together shortly
afterwards. I had previously so contrived as to keep
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 473
them asunder; for while I loved her, I mean before I
had determined on my sacrifice,—a lurking jealousy of
Mr. Granville lay within my unworthy breast.
It was quite an ordinary interview in the Fareway
Park; but they talked easily together for some timé:
like takes to like, and they had many points of resem-
blance. Said Mr. Granville to me, when he and I sat
at Our Supper that night, “Miss Fareway is remarkably
beautiful, sir, remarkably engaging. Don’t you think
So?” “I think so,” said I. And I stole a glance at him,
and saw that he had reddened and was thoughtful. I
remember it most vividly, because the mixed feeling of
grave pleasure and acute pain that the slight circum-
stance caused me was the first of a long, long series of
Such mixed impressions under which my hair turned
slowly gray.
I had not much need to feign to be subdued; but I
counterfeited to be older than I was in all respects
(Heaven knows! my heart being all too young the
while), and feigned to be more of a recluse and book-
worm than I had really become, and gradually set up
more and more of a fatherly manner towards Adelina.
Likewise I made my tuition less imaginative than be-
fore; separated myself from my poets and philosophers;
was careful to present them in their own light, and me,
their lowly servant, in my own shade. Moreover, in
the matter of apparel I was equally mindful: not that I
had ever been dapper that way, but that I was slovenly
In OW.
As I depressed myself with one hand, so did I labor
to raise Mr. Granville with the other;. directing his
attention to such subjects as I too well knew most inter-
ested her, and fashioning him (do not deride or miscon-
strue the expression, unknown reader of this writing;
for I have suffered!) into a greater resemblance to my-
Self in my solitary one strong aspect. And gradually,
gradually, as I saw him take more and more to these
thrown-out lures of mine, then did I come to know
better and better that love was drawing him on, and
was drawing her from me.
So passed more than another year; every day a year
in its number of my mixed impressions of grave pleas-
ure and acute pain; and then these two, being of age
and free to act legally for themselves, came before me
474 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION.
hand in hand (my hair being now quite white), and en-
treated me that I would unite them together. “And
indeed, dear tutor,” said Adelina, “it is but consistent
in you that you should do this thing for us, seeing that
we should never have spoken together that first time
but for you, and that but for you we could never have
met SO Often afterwards.” The whole of which was lit-
erally true; for I had availed myself of my many busi-
ness attendances on, and conferences with, my lady, to
take Mr. Granville to the house, and leave him in the
Outer room with Adelina. -
I knew that my lady would object to such a marriage
for her daughter, or to any marriage that was other
than an exchange of her for stipulated lands, goods,
and moneys. But looking on the two, and seeing with
full eyes that they were both young and beautiful; and
knowing that they were alike in the tastes and acquire-
ments that will outlive youth and beauty; and consider-
ing that Adelina had a fortune now, in her Own keeping;
and considering further that Mr. Granville, though for
the present poor, was of a good family that had never
lived in a cellar in Preston; and believing that their love
would endure, neither having any great discrepancy to
find out in the other, I told them of my readiness to do
this thing which Adelina asked of her dear tutor, and
to send them forth, husband and wife, into the shining
world with golden gates that awaited them.
It was on a summer morning that I rose before the
Sun to compose myself for the crowning of my work
with this end; and my dwelling being near to the sea, I
walked down to the rocks on the shore, in order that I
might behold the sun rise in his majesty.
The tranquillity upon the deep, and on the firmament,
the orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise
of coming day, the rosy suffusion of the sky and
waters, the ineffable splendor that then burst forth,
attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the night.
Methought that all I looked on said to me, and that all
I heard in the air and in the sea, said to me, “Be com-
forted, mortal, that thy life is so short. Our preparation
for what is to foilow has endured, and shall endure, for
unimaginable ages.”
I married them. I knew that my hand was cold when
I placed it on their hands clasped together; but the
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 475
words with which I had to accompany the action I
could say without faltering, and I was at peace.
They being well away from my house and from the
place after our simple breakfast, the time was come
when I must do what I had pledged myself to them
that I would do,+break the intelligence to my lady.
I went up to the house, and found my lady in her
ordinary business-room. She happened to have an un-
usual amount of commissions to intrust to me that day;
and she had filled my hands with papers before I could
Originate a word.
“My lady,” I then began, as I stood beside her table.
“Why, what's the matter?” she said quickly, look-
ing up.
“Not much, I would fain hope, after you shall have
prepared yourself, and considered a little.”
“Prepared myself; and considered a little! You ap-
pear to have prepared yourself but indifferently, any-
how, Mr. Silverman.” This mighty scornfully, as I
experienced my usual embarrassment under her stare.
Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, “Lady Fare-
way, I have but to say for myself that I have tried to
do my duty.”
“For yourself?” repeated my lady. “Then there are
others concerned, I see. Who are they?”
I was about to answer, when she made towards the
bell with a dart that stopped me, and said, “Why, where
is Adelina?”
“Forbear! be calm, my lady. I married her this
morning to Mr. Granville Wharton.”
She set her lips, looked more intently at me than ever,
raised her right hand, and Smote me hard upon the
cheek. -
“Give me back those papers! give me back those
papers!” She tore them out of my hands, and tossed
them on her table. Then seating herself defiantly in
her great chair, and folding her arms, she stabbed me
to the heart with the unlooked-for reproach, “You
worldly wretch!”
“Worldly?” I cried. “Worldly?”
“This, if you please,”—she went on with Supreme
scorn, pointing me out as if there were some one there
to see, -“this, if you please, is the disinterested Scholar,
with not a design beyond his books! This, if you please,
476 GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION.
is the simple creature whom any one could overreach in
a bargain! This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman! Not
of this world; not hel He has too much simplicity for
this world’s cunning. He has too much singleness of
Nº. to be a match for this world’s double-dealing.
What did he give you for it?”
‘‘ Tor what? And who?”
“How much,” she asked, bending forward in her
great chair, and insultingly tapping the fingers of her
right hand on the palm of her left, “how much does
Mr. Granville Wharton pay you for getting him Ade-
lina’s money? What is the amount of your percentage
upon Adelina’s fortune? What were the terms of the
agreement that you proposed to this boy when you,
the Rev. George Silverman, licensed to marry, engaged
to put him in possession of this girl? You made good
terms for yourself, whatever they were. He would
stand a poor chance against your keenness.”
Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perver-
Sion, I could not speak. But I trust that I looked inno-
cent, being so.
“Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite,” said my lady,
whose anger increased as she gave it utterance; “attend
to my words, you cunning schemer, who have carried
this plot through with such a practised double face that
I have never suspected you. I had my projects for my
daughter; projects for family connection; projects for
fortune. You have thwarted them, and overreached
me; but I am not one to be thwarted and overreached
without retaliation. Do you mean to hold this living
another month?’” ©
“Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can
hold it another hour, under your injurious words?”
“Is it resigned, then?”
“It was mentally resigned, my lady, Some minutes
ago.”
“Don’t equivocate, sir. Is it resigned?”
“Unconditionally and entirely; and I would that I
had never, never come near it!”
“A cordial response from me to that wish, Mr. Silver-
Iman! But take this with you, sir. If you had not
resigned it, I would have had you deprived of it. And
though you have resigned it, you will not get quit of me
as easily as you think for. I will pursue you with this
GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION. 477
story. I will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours,
for money, known. You have made money by it, but
you have at the same time made an enemy by it. You
will take good care that the money sticks to you; I will
take good care that the enemy sticks to you.”
Then said I, finally, “I lady Fareway, I think my
heart is broken. Until I came into this room just now,
the possibility of such mean wickedness as you have
imputed to me never dawned upon my thoughts. Your
suspicions—”
“Suspicions! Pah!” said she indignantly. “Cer-
tainties.”
“Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, your
suspicions as I call them, are cruel, unjust, wholly de-
void of foundation in fact. I can declare no more;
except that I have not acted for my own profit or my
own pleasure. I have not in this proceeding consid-
ered myself. Once again, I think my heart is broken.
If I have unwittingly done any wrong with a righteous
motive, that is some penalty to pay.” -
She received this with another and more indignant
“Pah!” and I made my way out of her room (I think
I felt my way out with my hands, although my eyes
were open), almost suspecting that my voice had a
repulsive sound, and that I was a repulsive object.
There was a great stir made, the bishop was appealed
to, I received a severe reprimand, and narrowly escaped
suspension. For years a cloud hung over me, and my
name was tarnished. But my heart did not break, if a
broken heart involves death; for I lived through it.
They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, through
it all. Those who had known me at college, and even
most of those who had only known me there by repu-
tation, stood by me too. Little by little, the belief
widened that I was not capable of what was laid to
my charge. At length. I was presented to a college-
living in a sequestered place, and there I now pen my
explanation. I pen it at my Open Window in the sum-
mer-time, before me, lying in the churchyard, equal
resting-place for sound hearts, wounded hearts, and
broken hearts. I pen it for the relief of my own mind,
not foreseeing whether or no it will ever have a reader.
THE END.
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