Chapter THE SECOND (5)

"Sartinly, sir;--but I think, if you'd let me just----"

"Give it to me, I tell you!" said the squire, in a tone so fierce that the nurse paused in her unfolding of the packet, and handed it with fear and trembling to the already indignant O'Grady. But it is only imagination can figure the outrageous fury of the squire, when, on opening the envelope with his own hand, he beheld the law process before him. There, in the heart of his castle, with his bars, and bolts, and bull-dogs, and blunderbusses round him, he was served--absolutely served,--and he had no doubt the nurse-tender was bribed to betray him.

A roar and a jump up in bed, first startled his wife into terror, and put the nurse on the defensive.

"You infernal old strap!" shouted he, as he clutched up a handful of bottles on the table near him and flung them at the nurse, who was near the fire at the time; and she whipped the pot of gruel from the grate, and converted it into a means of defence against the phial-pelting storm.

Mrs. O'Grady rolled herself up in the bed-curtains, while the nurse screeched "murther!" and at last, when O'Grady saw that bottles were of no avail, he scrambled out of bed, shouting, "Where's my blunderbuss?" and the nurse-tender, while he endeavoured to get it down from the rack, where it was suspended over the mantelpiece, bolted out of the door, which she locked on the outside, and ran to the most remote corner of the house for shelter.

In the mean time, how fared it at Merryvale? Andy returned with his parcel for the squire, and his note from Murtough Murphy, which ran thus:

"MY DEAR SQUIRE.--I send you the
_blister_ for O'Grady, as you insist on it; but I think
you won't find it easy to serve him with it. "Your
obedient and obliged, "MURTOUGH MURPHY." "_To Edward
Egan, Esq. Merryvale._"

The squire opened the cover, and when he saw a real instead of a figurative blister, grew crimson with rage. He could not speak for some minutes, his indignation was so excessive. "So!" said he, at last, "Mr. Murtough Murphy--you think to cut your jokes with me, do you? By all that's sacred! I'll cut such a joke on you with the biggest horsewhip I can find, that you'll remember it. '_Dear squire, I send you the blister._' Bad luck to your impidence! Wait till awhile ago--that's all. By this and that, you'll get such a blistering from me that all the spermaceti in M'Grane's shop won't cure you."

TO A LYRIC AND ARTIST.

(_Which we received from a Correspondent, and could not
possibly insert in a more appropriate place than this._)

No wonder that Painters are "drawing long faces,"
And Poets write badly, the while they discover
How truly the Muses, how fondly the Graces,
Receive the addresses of one little LOVER.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RICHARDSON, THE SHOWMAN.
_With a Peep at Bartholomew Fair._

BY THE AUTHOR OF FISHER'S NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.
_Seventeenth Edition, 4to._

In a periodical like the present, a contributor, if he really have anything in him, ought to set off at score. Such is my determination.

Works of the sort can only be produced by the exhibition of three rare qualities, namely, Wit, Humour, and entertaining Fiction. The first has been compared to a razor, which "cuts the most when exquisitely keen;" the second I will venture to liken to a table-knife, which slashes away at all on the board, and the best when broadly shining and tolerably sharp in the edge; and the last is familiar enough to everybody, under the term of "throwing the hatchet." But whatever the instrument, be it razor, or knife, or axe, it is quite essential that it should never lose its temper.

Mais l'audace est commune, et le bon sens est rare;
Au lieu d'être piquant, souvent on est bizarre:

which, being freely translated, means,

In life there's so much impudence,
And very little common sense,
That writers trying to be witty,
Are only foolish: more's the pity!

"The Showman,"--for so was this eminent individual designated by the world at large, and so upon memorable occasions he called himself;--was, it will be felt, a title of high distinction. When we look around us, and see how many men are playing showmen, and how miserably they succeed, we shall at once be convinced that nothing but very superior merit could have won for Richardson the glory of the definite "the." _He_ was not showing off himself, but others: he was nor showing off his own follies, but the follies of society. Thus, instead of being a laughing-stock, he laughed in his own sleeve; and by keeping a fool, instead of making a fool of himself, he eschewed poverty, and ultimately died in the odour and sanctity of wealth.

Richardson originated at _Great_ Marlow, in the county of Bucks; the very name of the place seeming to intimate that he was born to achieve greatness. Whether he was lineally descended from the author of Clarissa Harlowe is, and will long continue to be, a disputed fact. There was a family resemblance between them; both were country gentlemen, and both wore top-boots.

For breeding, Mr. Richardson was indebted to the parish workhouse,--fair promise of his future industry. In those days the poor laws had not been amended; and children, being victualled satisfactorily, generally throve accordingly. Under correction be it spoken, workhouses in country towns were then far from being houses of correction. So our hero grew up.

When big enough, he acquitted himself with reputation in the employment of out o' door activity; for he never resembled the lazy fellow reduced by idleness to want, who said in excuse, "When they bid me go to the ant to learn wisdom, I am almost always going to my uncle's."

From Marlow, after due probation, young Richardson, it is stated, sought his fortune in the metropolis, and entered into the service of Mr. Rhodes, a huge cow-keeper--a colossus in the milky way. Here it is probable he acquired a taste for pastorals, and that extraordinary proficiency in the Welsh language which rendered his dialogue in after-times so strikingly rich and Celto-Doric. Some etymologists thence infer that it was _Pick't_; but we don't believe it.

We never read the life of an actor or actress without being told, about the period of Richardson's career at which we have now arrived, that the "ruling passion" took such strong possession of them, that they must break all bounds, run away, and join some strolling company, to "imp their wings," or some flight of that sort. So it happened with our hero: he cut the cows, and hastened to adhere to Mrs. Penley, then performing with unprecedented success in a club-room at Shadwell, a small town in the vicinity of Wapping. The houses were crowded; receipts to the full amount of five shillings nightly crowned their efforts, and the corps, consisting of two gentlemen and two ladies, divided the five among four, playing as it were all fours in a fives court. Encouraged by this success, Richardson resolved to extend his fame, and accordingly visited many parts of the provinces, starring it from the Shadwell boards. Mighty as must have been his deserts, he met with no Bath manager, no Tate Wilkinson, no Macready or Kemble, to appreciate his histrionic talents. One night, having accidentally witnessed a representation of the School for Scandal, he fancied he could play the little broker; so he returned to London, and took a small shop in that line of business. About the year ninety-six, he was enabled to rent the Harlequin, a public-house near the stage-door of old Drury, and much frequented by dramatic wights. It was of one of these that Richardson used to tell his most elaborate pun. Being asked if he did anything in the dramatic line, he answered, "I do more or less in it in every way: I do what I can in the first syllable, _dram_, and in the first two syllables, _drama_; in the last two syllables, _attic_, I am to be seen every night; and in the last, _tick_--m' eye! I wish you knew my exertions."

It was not to be expected that the Harlequin could last long without a change; for not only was the sign contrariwise thereto, but the place itself was a change-house. Our landlord therefore let it; and crying "Damned be he that lets me!" bought a caravan, engaged a company from among his customers, and opened his first booth at Bartholomew Fair. But the name of this famed annual assemblage--now, alas! in a deep decline--is enough to tempt a scribbler for hire to branch off into an episode. And here it is.

Proclaimed on the 3rd of September, to last during three lawful days, exclusive of the day of proclamation, "Bartholomew Faire," as appears from a pamphlet under that title, printed for Richard Harper, at the Bible and Harpe, in Smithfield, A. D. 1641, began on the 24th of August, old style. About the year 1102, in the reign of Henry the First, Rahere, a minstrel of the king, founded the priory, hospital, and church of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, as requested by the saint himself in a dream, and, it is presumed, upon a bed where the dreamer could guess what it was to be flea'd alive. Rahere was the first prior, and in his time there was a grand row with Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, on a visitation, when sundry skulls of canons, monks, and friars were cracked, which probably suggested that the site would be very eligible for an annual fair. Henry the Second accordingly granted that privilege to the clothiers of England and the drapers of _London_; and his charter to the mayor and aldermen is extant to this day. Theretofore called "The Elms," from the noble trees which adorned it, Smithfield became in turn a place for splendid jousts, tournaments, pageants, and feats of chivalry; a market for cattle and hay; a scene of cruel executions; and one where, as old Stow acquaints us, loose serving-men and quarrelsome persons resorted and made uproars, thus becoming the rendezvous of bullies and bravoes, till it earned the appropriate name of "Ruffians' Hall." King Solomon, _alias_ Jacobus Primus, caused it to be paved two hundred and twenty years agone, which we have on the authority of Master Arthur Strange-ways, whose statement leads us to infer that the Lord Mayor of 1614 had never opened a railroad, like Lord Mayor Kelly in 1886. Then and there our ancient civic magnates were wont to disport themselves with witnessing "wrastlings," shooting the broad arrow and flights for games, and hunting real wild rabbits by the city boys, with great noise and laughter.

Posterior to the priors, and superior to the sub-priors of St. Bartholomew, the canons have been succeeded by common guns; and the friars by fried pigs, the most renowned viand of the festival;[48] the monks have given place to monkeys, and the recluses to showmen. Such are the mute abilities of Father Time. "The severall enormityes and misdemeanours, which are there seene and acted," are they not upon record? "Hither resort (says Master Harper, 1641) people of all sorts, high and low, rich and poore, from cities, townes, and countrys; of all sects, Papists, Atheists, Anabaptists, and Brownists; and of all conditions, knaves and fooles, cuckolds and cuckoldmakers, pimpes and panders, rogues and rascalls, the little loud-one and the witty wanton. The faire is full of gold and silver drawers: just as Lent is to the fishmonger, so is Bartholomew Faire to the pick-pocket. It is his high harvest, which is never bad but when his cart goes up Holborne. Some of your cut-purses are in fee with cheating costermongers. They have many dainty baits to draw a bit; fine fowlers they are, for every finger of theirs is a lime-twigge with which they catch dotterels. They are excellently well read in physiognomy, for they will know how strong you are in the purse by looking in your face; and, for the more certainty thereof, they will follow you close, and never leave you till you draw your purse, or they for you, though they kisse Newgate for it."

[48] Besides the fried pigs were other most famous delicacies, which to this day are not quite obsolete. There were called _sasserges_.--ED.

Hone, in his Every-day Book (Part X.), furnished an excellent view of this fair, full of curious dramatic and other matter. He describes the shows of 1825, among which, _àpropos_, Richardson's theatre figures prominently. The outside, he tells us, was above thirty feet in height, and occupied one platform one hundred feet in width. The platform was very elevated, the back of it lined with green baize, and festooned with deeply-fringed crimson curtains, except at two places where the money-takers sat, in roomy projections fitted up like Gothic shrinework, with columns and pinnacles. There were fifteen-hundred variegated illumination-lamps, in chandeliers, lustres, wreaths, and festoons. A band of ten musicians in scarlet dresses, similar to those worn by his Majesty's Beefeaters, continually played on various instruments; while the performers paraded in their gayest "properties" before the gazing multitude. Audiences rapidly ascended on each performance being over; and, paying their money to the receivers in their Gothic seats, had tickets in return, which, being taken at the doors, admitted them to descend into the "theatre." The performances were the Wandering Outlaw, a melodrama, with the death of the villain and appearance of the accusing spirit;--a comic harlequinade, Harlequin Faustus;--and concluding with a splendid panorama, painted by the first artists.--Boxes, two shillings; pit, one shilling; and gallery, sixpence.

The theatre held nearly a thousand people, continually emptying and filling, and the performances were got over in about a quarter of an hour! And, though anticipating a little of our personal narrative, we may as well mention here, that occasionally, when the outside platform was crowded with impatient spectators waiting for their turn to be admitted, though the performances had not lasted more than five minutes, Mr. Richardson would send in to inquire if _John Over-y_ was there, which was the well-known signal to finish off-hand, strike the gong, turn out the one audience, and turn in their successors, to see as much of the Outlaw, the Devil, or Dr. Faustus, as time permitted.

Ben Johnson's play of Bartholomew Fair in 1614 explains many of its ancient humours, and particularly the eating of Bartholomew pig, already noticed, and not to be repeated, as we desire to pen something more to the purpose in Smithfield than a dry antiquarian essay, though it relate to hares playing on the tabor, or tigers taught to pluck chickens. In the latter way a ballad of 1655 may suffice.

In 55, may I never thrive
If I tell ye any more than is true,--
To London she came, hearing of the fame
Of a fair they call Bartholomew.

In houses of boards men walk upon cords,
As easy as squirrels crack filberds;
But the cut-purses they do bite, and rub away,
But those we suppose to be ill birds.

For a penny you may see a fine puppet play,
And for twopence a rare piece of art;
And a penny a cann, I dare swear a man
May put zix of 'em into a quart.

Their zights be so rich, is able to bewitch
The heart of a very fine man-a;
Here's Patient Grizel here, and Fair Rosamond there,
And the history of Susanna.

At Pye-corner end, mark well, my good friend,
'Tis a very fine dirty place;
Where there's more arrows and bows, the Lord above knows,
Than was handled at Chevy Chase.

Then at Smithfield Bars, betwixt the ground and the stars,
There's a place they call Shoemaker's-Row,
Where that you may buy shoes every day,
Or go barefoot all the year, I tro.

In 1715 the largest booth ever erected was in the centre of Smithfield, "for the King's Players;" and, in later times, we read of Garrick going to see the pieces at Yates' and Shuter's booth. Hogarth in his youth painted scenes for a famous woman who kept a droll in the fair; and the old lady refused to pay because Dutch metal was used instead of real gilding with leaf-gold. Pidcock and Polito exhibited their finest animals; Astley his troop of horse, succeeded by Saunders. Puppet-shows, or motions, as they were called, were also always popular here; and giants, dwarfs, and whatever was singular in nature, or could be made to seem so by art, have from time immemorial been the wonders and favourites of Bartholomew Fair.

Having now brought "_the_ Showman" to the management of what he might have designated the National Theatre, with the long-established Jonases, Penleys, Jobsons, _et hoc genus omne_ as his rivals,--the commencement of a career of half a century's duration,--may we not pause to point towards him the finger of admiration? What are the lessees of Drury Lane or Covent Garden when compared to him? What have they done, or what are they likely to do, for the legitimate drama, when compared to him? He was a manager who paid his performers weekly on the nail; meaning by "the nail" the drum-head. On the Saturday evening, assembling them all, willing and buoyant, around him, he spread the sum total of their salaries upon the drum,--not double base, like the frauds of modern managers,--and then there was a roll-call of the most agreeable description. Sometimes the merry vagabonds would shove one another up against their paymaster; but the worst of his resentment was to detect the _larker_, if he could, and pay him last; or, if sorely annoyed, forget to invite him to the following supper: punishments severe, it must be acknowledged; but still the sufferers had their money to comfort themselves withal, and were not obliged to wait, like the waits in the streets at midnight, till after Christmas for the chance of their hard-earned wages. And he was grateful, too. When marked success attended any performer or performance, a marked requital was sure to follow. The Spotted Boy was a fortune to him, though not all so black as Jim Crow; and his affection grew with his growth. His portrait adorned the Tusculum of the Showman; and, after his death, he could not withdraw the green silk curtain from it without shedding tears. Had that boy lived to be a man, there is no doubt but Richardson would have made him independent of all the dark specks on life's horizon. As it was, he was treated as by a father like a spotless boy, and buried in the catacombs of the race of Richardson.

Next to the Spotted Boy, the performer whom Richardson most boasted of having belonged to his company was Edmund Kean. He, with Mrs. Carey, _quasi_ mamma, and Henry, _quasi_ brother, were engaged by our spirited manager; and Kean, over his cups, used to brag of having, by tumbling in front of the booth, tumbled hundreds of bumpkins in to the spectacles within. He did Tom Thumb as tiny Booth does now at the St. James's Theatre; and at a later period, viz. 1806, is stated to have played Norval, and Motley in the Castle Spectre, for him at Battersea fair. Another story adds, that he was called on to recite his Tom-Thumbery before George the Third at Windsor; but we will not vouch for the truth of the newspaper anecdote.

From the metropolitan glory of Bartholomew Fair, the transition to the principal fairs of the kingdom was obvious. Mr. Richardson went the whole hog, and, in so doing, had nearly gone to the dogs. At that revolutionary period, neither the fairs nor the affairs of the country were in a wholesome condition. Politics are ever adverse to amusements. Vain was the attempt to beguile the snobbery of their pence; and our poor caravan, like one in the deserts of the Stony Araby, toiled on their weary march with full hearts and empty stomachs. At length it is told, at Cambridge Fair,--well might it be called by its less euphonous name of Stirbitch, so badly did the speculation pay,--that Richardson and his clown, Tom Jefferies, of facetious memory, were compelled to take a sort of French leave for London, leaving much of their _materiel_ in pawn. Undamped by adversity, they took a fiddler with them; and the merry trio so enamoured the dwellers and wayfarers upon the road, that they not only extracted plentiful supplies for themselves, but were enabled to provide sufficiently for the bodily wants of the main body of the company, who followed at a judicious and respectable distance.

The pressure from without was, however, luckily but of temporary endurance; and Richardson was soon well to do again in the world. Fair succeeded fair, and he succeeded with all. His enterprise was great, and his gains commensurate. He rose by degrees, and at length became the most renowned of dramatic caterers for those classes who are prone to enjoy the unadulterated drama. Why, his mere outside by-play was worth fifty times more than the inside of large houses, to witness such trash as has lately usurped the stage, and pushed Tragedy from her throne, and Comedy from her stool. Of these memorabilia we can call to mind only a few instances; but they speak volumes for the powers of entertaining possessed by our hero.

It was at Peckham one day,--and a day of rain and mud,--when Richardson, stepping from the steps of his booth, as Moncey, the king of the beggars, was shovelling past on _his boards_, happened to slip and fall. We shall not readily forget the good-humour with which he looked, not up, but level, upon his companion, and sweetly said, "'Faith! friend, it seems that neither you nor I can keep our feet."

At Brook Green, as the fair and happy were crushing up to the pay-door, a pretty servant-girl was among the number. "I should like to _hire_ that girl," said a dandy to his comrade. "I rather guess you would like to _lower_ her," whispered Mr. R. in his ear. But she was a good lass, and not at all like the French gentleman's maid, to whom her master uttered these humiliating words: "Bah! you arre a verry bad girl, and I shall make you _no_ better."

Mr. R. misliked drunkenness in his troop. "A fellow," he exclaimed to one he was rating for this vice,--"a fellow who gets tipsy every night will never be _a rising man_ in any profession."

In a remote village some accident had destroyed a grotto necessary to the representation of the piece entitled "The Nymphs of the Grotto." What was to be done? There was no machinist within a hundred miles! "Is there not an _undertaker_?" exclaimed Mr. R.: "he could surely execute a little shell-work!"

In an adjoining booth at Camberwell was exhibited a very old man, whom the placards declared to have reached _a hundred and five years of age_. "Here is a pretty thing to make a show of," observed R. "A wonder, indeed! Why, if my grandfather had not died, he would have been _a hundred and twenty_!"

But why should we dwell on his facetiæ? Only to point the poignant grief which tells us we shall never hear them more,--shall never look upon his like again! Yes: let others mourn their Prichards, their Garricks, their Kembles, and their Keans;--our _keen_ is for thee, John Richardson, the undisputed head of thy profession, the master-spirit of them all, the glory of the mighty multitude,

"Where thou wert fairest of the _Fair_."

And how liberal thou wert! Thou wert not a manager to debar from their just privileges thy dramatic brethren, or insult the literary characters who honourably patronised thy honourable endeavours. Thy "Walk up!" was open and generous. When Jack Reeve and a party from the Adelphi visited the splendid booth at Bartholomew Fair, the veteran recognised his brethren of the buskin, and immediately returned to them the money they had paid on entrance, disdaining to pocket the hard-earned fruits of the stage. "You, or any other actor of talent," said the old man, "are quite welcome to visit my theatre free of expense." "No, no," replied Reeve, "keep it, or (noticing a dissenting shake of the head) give it to the poor." "If I have made a mistake," retorted John, "and have not done so _already_, give it to them yourself; I will have nothing to do with it, and I am not going to turn parish overseer."

At length, alas! his days--his fair days--were numbered, and, as the song says, "the good old man must die." As his first, so was his last exhibition at Smithfield; but Smithfield, like the other national theatres, shorn of its splendour, degenerate, and degraded. It seemed as if the last of the fairs: others had been abolished and put down; and this, the topmost of them all, was sinking under the march of intellect, the diffusion of knowledge, and the confusion of reform. Fairs in Britain were ended, and it was not worth Richardson's while to live any longer. He retired, tired and dejected, to his "Woodland Cottage" in Horsemonger-lane; and on the morning of the 14th of November was expected by the Angel of Death. His finale was serene: his life had been strange and varied, but industrious and frugal. The last time we saw him,--and it was to engage him on his last loyal and public patriotic work, namely, to erect the scaffolding for the inauguration of the statue of George III. in Cockspur-street,--he approached us with a fine cabbage under his arm, which he had been purchasing for dinner. His manners, too, were equally simple and unaffected;--he was the Cincinnatus of his order. He told us of the satisfaction he had given to George IV. by transporting the giraffe in a beautiful caravan to Windsor Park. The caravan was Richardson's world; and he might well have applied to that vehicle the eastern apologue, "the place which changes its occupants so often is not a palace, but a 'caravan'-serai." But we are giving way to sorrow, though "away with melancholy" is our motto. A wide-mouthed musician--we forget whether clarionet or trombone--applied to Richardson at Easter for an engagement at Greenwich fair: "You won't do any thing till Christmas," said he: "you must wait, as you are only fit for a Wait: you are one to play from ear to ear."

It is said that Richardson died rich; and indeed the sale of his effects by auction showed that if other persons were men of property, he was a man of properties. Three hundred and thirty-four lots of multitudinous composition were submitted to the hammer; and it was truly a jubilee to see how the Jews did outbid each other. There were Nathan, and Hart, and Clarke, and Levy, besides an inferior and dirtier lot, who got velvets, and silks, and satins, for the old song, "Old Clo'!" Though their late owner, in the heyday of his prime, observed, "I have to show my dresses by daylight, and they must be first-rate; anything will do for the large theatres in the night-time, either green-baize, or tin, or dog-skins for ermine;" yet their prices were by no means considerable. Two Lear's dresses, two Dutch and one Jew's ditto, sold for thirty-five shillings; one spangled Harlequin's dress, one clown's, one magician's, and pantaloon's, came to one pound eleven shillings and sixpence; five priests' and a cardinal's dress, and the next lot, six robbers' dresses and a cardinal's dress, went very low; and six satyrs' dresses were absolutely given away. A large scene waggon brought fourteen pounds, and a ditto scene carriage only eight pounds. Then there were sundries of curious character in the catalogue:

Ten common w_h_igs, trick-bottle, and trick-box (probably what Stanley called the thimble-rig).

A trick-sword, a coffin and pall: tomb of _Capulate_.

_The_ old oak chest, with skeleton and two inscriptions (a very superior property).

A spangled woman's dress, white gown, &c. complete.

Two handsome spangled women's dresses, with caps, complete.

Five chintz women's dresses, two bow [qy. beau?] strings and scarf, eight fans, four baskets, and fifteen tails.

A man's ghost dress, complete.

A handsome woman's velvet dress, and Roman father's ditto.

Three magicians' dresses, and five musicians' ditto.

Nine spangled flys.

A handsome demon's dress, spangled and ornamented with gilt [guilt] mask, and mace.

Four demons' dresses, with _masks, complete_!

_Executioner's_ dress and cap, complete; six black gowns, and _four falls_.

A superfine admiral's coat and hat, trimmed with gold lace, breeches, and waistcoat.

Ditto (no breeches).

Lion, bear, monkey, and cat's dresses, with two masks.

Two handsome _nondescript_ dresses.

Such and so various were the articles in this unique three days' sale; and in the last some pieces of good old china were knocked down. Three weeks previously their owner was deposited in the cold church-yard of Great Marlow, in the grave, we are assured, of the Spotted Boy. The funeral was, at his request, conducted without _Show_; and his nephews and nieces--for he left no family--inherit his worldly wealth, under the executorship of Mr. Cross, the proprietor of the Surrey Zoological Garden and its giraffery.

Many actors who have risen to celebrity began their course with him: Kean, first as outside and inside tumbling boy, and afterwards as a lending tragedian, with a salary of five shillings a day; Oxberry, Mitchell, Walbourn, and Sanders, A. Slader, Thwaites, Vaughan, S. Faucett, &c. were introduced to the public under his auspices. Who now shall open the gates of the temple to dramatic fame? The Janitor is gone for ever. A hearse is the last omnibus, after all. A hearse is the end of the showman's caravans, and the sexton is the last toll-collector he encounters in this world. John Richardson,

FAREWELL!

PADDY BLAKE'S ECHO.
A NEW VERSION FROM THE ORIGINAL IRISH.

"_Ecco_ ridente," &c.

I.
There's a spot by that lake, sirs,
Where echoes were born,
Where one Paddy Blake, sirs,
Was walking one morn
With a great curiosity big in his mind!
Says he, "Mrs. Blake
Doesn't _trate_ me of late
In the fashion she did
When I first call'd her Kate:
She's crusty and surly,--
My cabin's the _dhiaoul_,
My pigs and my poultry
Are all cheek by jowl;
But what is the cause, from the _A_cho I'll find."

(_Spoken._)

So up he goes _bouldly_ to the _A_cho, and says, "The top o' the mornin' t'ye, Misther or Missus _A_cho, for divil a know I know whether ye wear petticoats or breeches."

"Neither," says the _A_cho in Irish.

"Now, that being the case," says Paddy, turnin' sharp 'pon the _A_cho, d'ye see, "ye can tell me the stark-naked truth."

"'Troth, an' ye may say that, with yir own purty mouth," says the _A_cho.

"Well, thin," says Paddy agin, "what the divil's come over Mrs. Blake of late?"

"_Potcheen!_" says the _A_cho.

"Oh! (_shouting_) by the pow'rs of Moll Kelly," says Paddy, "I thought as mich:--

"It wasn't for nothin' the taypot was hid,
Though I guess'd what was in it, by smelling the lid!"

II.
There's another suspicion
Comes over my mind,
That with all this _contrition_
And pray'rs, and that kind,
Ould Father Mahony's a wag in his way.
When a _station_, he says,
Will be held at _my_ house,
_I_ must go my ways,
Or be mute as a mouse.
For _him_ turkey and bacon
Is pull'd from the shelf;
Not so much as a cake on
The coals for myself:
But what all this _manes_, why, the _A_cho will say.

(_Spoken._)

Up he goes agin to the _A_cho, and says, "Tell me, aff ye plase, what is't brings ould Father Mahony so everlastingly to my country seat in the bog of Bally Keeran?"

"Mrs. Blake!" says the _A_cho.

"Oh! hannimandhiaoul!" says Paddy, "I thought as mich--the thief o' the world--I thought as mich. Oh! tundher-a-nouns!

"I'll go home an' _bate_ her, until my heart's sore,
Then give her the key of the street evermore!"
W.

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD.
BY THE AUTHOR OF HEADLONG HALL.

THE ABBEY HOUSE.

I passed many of my earliest days in a country town, on whose immediate outskirts stood an ancient mansion, bearing the name of the Abbey House. This mansion has long since vanished from the face of the earth; but many of my pleasantest youthful recollections are associated with it, and in my mind's eye I still see it as it stood, with its amiable, simple-mannered, old English inhabitants.

The house derived its name from standing near, though not actually on, the site of one of those rich old abbies, whose demesnes the pure devotion of Henry the Eighth transferred from their former occupants (who foolishly imagined they had a right to them, though they lacked the might which is its essence,) to the members of his convenient parliamentary chorus, who helped him to run down his Scotch octave of wives. Of the abbey itself a very small portion remained: a gateway, and a piece of a wall which formed part of the enclosure of an orchard, wherein a curious series of fish-ponds, connected by sluices, was fed from a contiguous stream with a perpetual circulation of fresh water,--a sort of piscatorial panopticon, where all approved varieties of fresh-water fish had been classified, each in its own pond, and kept in good order, clean and fat, for the mortification of the flesh of the monastic brotherhood on fast-days.

The road which led to the Abbey House terminated as a carriage-road with the house itself. Beyond it, a footpath over meadows conducted across a ferry to a village about a mile distant. A large clump of old walnut-trees stood on the opposite side of the road to a pair of massy iron gates, which gave entrance to a circular gravel road, encompassing a large smooth lawn, with a sun-dial in the centre, and bordered on both sides with tall thick evergreens and flowering shrubs, interspersed in the seasons with hollyhocks, sun-flowers, and other gigantic blossoms, such as are splendid in distance. Within, immediately opposite the gates, a broad flight of stone steps led to a ponderous portal, and to a large antique hall, laid with a chequered pavement of black and white marble. On the left side of the entrance was the porter's chair, consisting of a cushioned seat, occupying the depth of a capacious recess resembling a niche for a full-sized statue, a well-stuffed body of black leather glittering with gold-headed nails. On the right of this hall was the great staircase; on the left a passage to a wing appropriated to the domestics.

Facing the portal, a door opened into an inner hall, in the centre of which was a billiard-table. On the right of this hall was a library; on the left a parlour, which was the common sitting-room; and facing the middle door was a glazed door, opening on the broad flight of stone steps which led into the gardens.

The gardens were in the old style: a large square lawn occupied an ample space in the centre, separated by broad walks from belts of trees and shrubs on each side; and in front were two advancing groves, with a long wide vista between them, looking to the open country, from which the grounds were separated by a terraced wall over a deep sunken dyke. One of the groves we called the green grove, and the other the dark grove. The first had a pleasant glade, with sloping banks covered with flowery turf; the other was a mass of trees, too closely canopied with foliage for grass to grow beneath them.

The family consisted of a gentleman and his wife, with two daughters and a son. The eldest daughter was on the confines of womanhood, the youngest was little more than a child; the son was between them. I do not know his exact age, but I was seven or eight, and he was two or three years more.

The family lived, from taste, in a very retired manner; but to the few whom they received they were eminently hospitable. I was perhaps the foremost among these few; for Charles, who was my schoolfellow, was never happy in our holidays unless I was with him. A frequent guest was an elderly male relation, much respected by the family,--but no favourite of Charles, over whom he was disposed to assume greater authority than Charles was willing to acknowledge.

The mother and daughter had all the solid qualities which were considered female virtues in the dark ages. Our enlightened age has, wisely no doubt, discarded many of them, and substituted show for solidity. The dark ages preferred the natural blossom, and the fruit that follows it; the enlightened age prefers the artificial double-blossom, which falls and leaves nothing. But the double blossom is brilliant while it lasts; and when there is so much light, there ought to be something to glitter in it.

These ladies had the faculty of staying at home; and this was a principal among the antique faculties that upheld the rural mansions of the middling gentry. Ask Brighton, Cheltenham, _et id genus omne_, what has become of that faculty. And ask the ploughshare what has become of the rural mansions.

They never, I think, went out of their own grounds but to church, or to take their regular daily airing in the old family-carriage. The young lady was an adept in preserving: she had one room, in a corner of the hall, between the front and the great staircase, entirely surrounded with shelves in compartments, stowed with classified sweetmeats, jellies, and preserved fruits, the work of her own sweet hands. These were distinguished ornaments of the supper-table; for the family dined early, and maintained the old fashion of supper. A child would not easily forget the bountiful and beautiful array of fruits, natural and preserved, and the ample variety of preparations of milk, cream, and custard, by which they were accompanied. The supper-table had matter for all tastes. I remember what was most to mine.

The young lady performed on the harpsichord. Over what a gulph of time this name alone looks back! What a stride from that harpsichord to one of Broadwood's last grand-pianos! And yet with what pleasure, as I stood by the corner of the instrument, I listened to it, or rather to her! I would give much to know that the worldly lot of this gentle and amiable creature had been a happy one. She often gently remonstrated with me for putting her harpsichord out of tune by playing the bells upon it; but I was never in a serious scrape with her except once. I had insisted on taking from the nursery-maid the handle of the little girl's garden-carriage, with which I set off at full speed; and had not run many yards before I overturned the carriage, and rolled out the little girl. The child cried like Alice Fell, and would not be pacified. Luckily she ran to her sister, who let me off with an admonition, and the exaction of a promise never to meddle again with the child's carriage.

Charles was fond of romances. The "Mysteries of Udolpho," and all the ghost and goblin stories of the day, were his familiar reading. I cared little about them at that time; but he amused me by narrating their grimmest passages. He was very anxious that the Abbey House should be haunted; but it had no strange sights or sounds, and no plausible tradition to hang a ghost on. I had very nearly accommodated him with what he wanted.

The garden-front of the house was covered with jasmine, and it was a pure delight to stand in the summer twilight on the top of the stone steps inhaling the fragrance of the multitudinous blossoms. One evening, as I was standing on these steps alone, I saw something like the white head-dress of a tall figure advance from the right-hand grove,--the dark grove, as we called it,--and, after a brief interval, recede. This, at any rate, looked awful. Presently it appeared again, and again vanished. On which I jumped to my conclusion, and flew into the parlour with the announcement that there was a ghost in the dark grove. The whole family sallied forth to see the phenomenon. The appearances and disappearances continued. All conjectured what it could be, but none could divine. In a minute or two all the servants were in the hall. They all tried their skill, and were all equally unable to solve the riddle. At last, the master of the house leading the way, we marched in a body to the spot, and unravelled the mystery. It was a large bunch of flowers on the top of a tall lily, waving in the wind at the edge of the grove, and disappearing at intervals behind the stem of a tree. My ghost, and the compact phalanx in which we sallied against it, were long the subject of merriment. It was a cruel disappointment to Charles, who was obliged to abandon all hopes of having the house haunted.

One day Charles was in disgrace with his elderly relation, who had exerted sufficient authority to make him a captive in his chamber. He was prohibited from seeing any one but me; and, of course, a most urgent messenger was sent to me express. I found him in his chamber, sitting by the fire, with a pile of ghostly tales, and an accumulation of lead, which he was casting into dumps in a mould. Dumps, the inexperienced reader must know, are flat circles of lead,--a sort of petty quoits,--with which schoolboys amused themselves half a century ago, and perhaps do so still, unless the march of mind has marched off with such vanities. No doubt, in the "astounding progress of intellect," the time will arrive when boys will play at philosophers instead of playing at soldiers,--will fight with wooden arguments instead of wooden swords,--and pitch leaden syllogisms instead of leaden dumps. Charles was before the dawn of this new light. He had cast several hundred dumps, and was still at work. The quibble did not occur to me at the time; but, in after years, I never heard of a man in the dumps without thinking of my schoolfellow. His position was sufficiently melancholy. His chamber was at the end of a long corridor. He was determined not to make any submission, and his captivity was likely to last till the end of his holidays. Ghost-stories, and lead for dumps, were his stores and provisions for standing the siege of _ennui_. I think, with the aid of his sister, I had some share in making his peace; but, such is the association of ideas, that, when I first read in Lord Byron's Don Juan,

"I pass my evenings in long galleries solely,
And that's the reason I'm so melancholy,"

the lines immediately conjured up the image of poor Charles in the midst of his dumps and spectres at the end of his own long gallery.

EPIGRAM.
BY JOYCE JOCUND.

So well deserved is Roger's fame,
That friends who hear him most, advise
The EGOTIST to Change his name
To "Argus--with his hundred I's!"

FIRE-SIDE STORIES.--No. I.
THE SPECTRE OF TAPPINGTON.

"It is very odd, though, what can have become of them?" said Charles Seaforth, as he peeped under the valance of an old-fashioned bedstead, in an old-fashioned apartment of a still more old-fashioned manor-house; "'tis confounded odd, and I can't make it out at all. Why, Barney, where are they? and where the d--l are you?"

No answer was returned to this appeal; and the lieutenant, who was in the main a reasonable person,--at least as reasonable a person as any young gentleman of twenty-two in "the service" can fairly be expected to be,--cooled when he reflected that his servant could scarcely reply extempore to a summons which it was impossible he should hear.

An application to the bell was the considerate result; and the footsteps of as tight a lad as ever put pipe-clay to belt sounded along the gallery.

"Come in!" said his master. An ineffectual attempt upon the door reminded Mr. Seaforth that he had locked himself in. "By Heaven! this is the oddest thing of all," said he, as he turned the key and admitted Mr. Maguire into his dormitory.

"Barney, where are my pantaloons?"

"Is it the breeches?" asked the valet, casting an inquiring eye round the apartment; "is it the breeches, sir?"

"Yes; what have you done with them?"

"Sure then your honour had them on when you went to bed, and it's hereabouts they'll be, I'll be bail;" and Barney lifted a fashionable tunic from a cane-backed arm-chair, proceeding in his examination. But the search was vain. There was the tunic aforesaid,--there was a smart-looking kerseymere waistcoat; but the most important article in a gentleman's wardrobe was still wanting.

"Where _can_ they be?" asked the master with a strong accent on the auxiliary verb.

"Sorrow a know I knows," said the man.

"It must have been the devil, then, after all, who has been here and carried them off!" cried Seaforth, staring full into Barney's face.

Mr. Maguire was not devoid of the superstition of his countrymen, but he looked as if he did not subscribe to the _sequitur_.

His master read incredulity in his countenance. "Why, I tell you, Barney, I put them there, on that arm-chair, when I got into bed; and, by Heaven! I distinctly saw the ghost of the old fellow they told me of, come in at midnight, put on my pantaloons, and walk away with them."

"Maybe so," was the cautious reply.

"I thought, of course, it was a dream; but then,--where the d--l are the breeches?"

The question was more easily asked than answered. Barney renewed his search, while the lieutenant folded his arms, and, leaning against the toilet, sunk into a reverie.

"After all, it must be some trick of my laughter-loving cousins," said Seaforth.

"Ah! then, the ladies!" chimed in Mr. Maguire, though the observation was not addressed to him; "and will it be Miss Caroline, or Miss Margaret, that's stole your honour's things?"

"I hardly know what to think of it," pursued the bereaved lieutenant, still speaking in soliloquy, with his eye resting dubiously on the chamber door. "I locked myself in, that's certain; and--but there must be some other entrance to the room--pooh! I remember--the private staircase: how could I be such a fool?" and he crossed the chamber to where a low oaken door-case was dimly visible in a distant corner. He paused before it. Nothing now interfered to screen it from observation; but it bore tokens of having been at some earlier period concealed by tapestry, remains of which yet clothed the walls on either side the portal.

"This way they must have come," said Seaforth; "I wish with all my heart I had caught them!"

"Och! the kittens!" sighed Mr. Barney Maguire.

But the mystery was yet as far from being solved as before. True, there _was_ the "other door;" but then that, too, on examination, was even more firmly secured than the one which opened on the gallery,--two heavy bolts on the inside effectually prevented any _coup de main_ on the lieutenant's _bivouac_ from that quarter. He was more puzzled than ever; nor did the minutest inspection of the walls and floor throw any light upon the subject: one thing only was clear,--the breeches were gone! "It is _very_ singular," said the lieutenant.

* * * * *

Tappington (generally called Tapton) Everard, is an antiquated but commodious manor-house in the eastern division of the county of Kent. A former proprietor had been high sheriff in the days of Elizabeth, and many a dark and dismal tradition was yet extant of the licentiousness of his life, and the enormity of his offences. The Glen, which the keeper's daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns darkly as of yore; while an ineradicable bloodstain on the oaken stair yet bids defiance to the united energies of soap and sand. But it is with one particular apartment that a deed of more especial atrocity is said to be connected. A stranger guest--so runs the legend--arrived unexpectedly at the mansion of the "Bad Sir Giles." They met in apparent friendship; but the ill-concealed scowl on their master's brow told the domestics that the visit was not a welcome one. The banquet, however, was not spared; the wine-cup circulated freely,--too freely, perhaps,--for sounds of discord at length reached the ears of even the excluded serving-men as they were doing their best to imitate their betters in the lower hall. Alarmed, some of them ventured to approach the parlour; one, an old and favoured retainer of the house, went so far as to break in upon his master's privacy. Sir Giles, already high in oath, fiercely enjoined his absence, and he retired; not, however, before he had distinctly heard from the stranger's lips a menace that "There was that within his pocket which could disprove the knight's right to issue that, or any other, command within the walls of Tapton."

The intrusion, though momentary, seemed to have produced a beneficial effect; the voices of the disputants fell, and the conversation was carried on thenceforth in a more subdued tone, till, as evening closed in, the domestics, when summoned to attend with lights, found not only cordiality restored, but that a still deeper carouse was meditated. Fresh stoups, and from the choicest bins, were produced; nor was it till at a late, or rather early, hour, that the revellers sought their chambers.

The one allotted to the stranger occupied the first floor of the eastern angle of the building, and had once been the favourite apartment of Sir Giles himself. Scandal ascribed this preference to the facility which a private staircase, communicating with the grounds, had afforded him, in the old knight's time, of following his wicked courses unchecked by parental observation; a consideration which ceased to be of weight when the death of his father left him uncontrolled master of his estate and actions. From that period Sir Giles had established himself in what were called the "state-apartments;" and the "oaken chamber" was rarely tenanted, save on occasions of extraordinary festivity, or when the Yule log drew an unusually large accession of guests around the Christmas hearth.

On this eventful night it was prepared for the unknown visitor, who sought his couch heated and inflamed from his midnight orgies, and in the morning was found in his bed a swollen and blackened corpse. No marks of violence appeared upon the body; but the livid hue of the lips, and certain dark-coloured spots visible on the skin, aroused suspicions which those who entertained them were too timid to express. Apoplexy, induced by the excesses of the preceding night, Sir Giles's confidential leech pronounced to be the cause of his sudden dissolution: the body was buried in peace; and, though some shook their heads as they witnessed the haste with which the funeral rites were hurried on, none ventured to murmur. Other events arose to distract the attention of the retainers; men's minds became occupied by the stirring politics of the day, while the near approach of that formidable armada, so vainly arrogating to itself a title which the very elements joined with human valour to disprove, soon interfered to weaken, if not obliterate, all remembrance of the nameless stranger who had died within the walls of Tapton Everard.

Years rolled on: the "Bad Sir Giles" had himself long since gone to his account, the last, as it was believed, of his immediate line; though a few of the older tenants were sometimes heard to speak of an elder brother, who had disappeared in early life, and never inherited the estate. Rumours, too, of his having left a son in foreign lands were at one time rife; but they died away, nothing occurring to support them: the property passed unchallenged to a collateral branch of the family, and the secret, if secret there were, was buried in Denton churchyard, in the lonely grave of the mysterious stranger. One circumstance alone occurred, after a long intervening period, to revive the memory of these transactions. Some workmen employed in grubbing an old plantation, for the purpose of raising on its site a modern shrubbery, dug up, in the execution of their task, the mildewed remnants of what seemed to have been once a garment. On more minute inspection, enough remained of silken slashes and a coarse embroidery to identify the relics as having once formed part of a pair of trunk hose; while a few papers which fell from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned rustics conveyed to the then owner of the estate.