Chapter II: Part 2

As she drove along the twelve miles of road to Clifton, and reflected on all these things, is it any wonder that her frame of mind was an unpleasant one; that her eyes grew hard, and she felt little disposed to be merciful to the owner of that pretty face which threatened to come between her and the cherished schemes of years?

The carriage stopped at the address given her by her son—a quiet little house in a quiet little street, where the arrival of so grand an equipage and so fine a pair of horses was an event of sufficient rarity to make many windows open, and maid-servants, even mistresses, crane out and wonder what it meant. Mrs Abbot, having ascertained that Miss Keene was at home, and having made known her wish to see her, was shown into a room plainly but not untastefully furnished. A piano, an unfinished drawing, some dainty embroidery, gave evidence of more refinement than Mrs Abbot expected, or, to tell the truth, hoped to find in her enemy’s surroundings. A bunch of flowers, artistically arranged, was in a glass vase on the table; and the visitor felt more angry and bitter than before, as she recognised many a choice orchid, and knew by this token that the Chewton hothouses had been robbed for Miss Keene’s sake. Mrs Abbot tapped her foot impatiently as she awaited the moment when her youthful enemy should appear and be satisfactorily crushed.

The mistress of Chewton-Abbot had somehow conceived the idea that the girl who had won her son’s heart was of a dollish style of beauty. She may have jumped at this conclusion from the memories of her own young days, when she found the heart of man was more susceptible to attractions of this type than to those of her own severer charms. Pretty enough, after a fashion, she expected to find the girl, but quite crushable and pliant between her clever and experienced hands. She had no reason for this impression. She had coldly declined to look at the portrait which her son, that morning, had wished to show her. Having formed her own ideal of her would-be successor at Chewton Hall, she regulated her actions accordingly. Her plan was to begin by striking terror into the foe. She wished no deception; the amenities of social warfare might be dispensed with on this occasion. Knowing the advantage usually gained by a sudden and unexpected attack, she had not revealed her name. She simply desired the servant to announce a lady to see Miss Keene.

Hearing a light step approaching the door, Mrs Abbot drew herself up to her full height and assumed the most majestic attitude she could. It was as one may imagine a fine three-decker of the old days turning her broadside, with sixty guns run out and ready for action, upon some puny foe, to show her that at a word she might be blown out of the water. Or it was what is called nowadays a demonstration in force.

The door opened, and Millicent Keene entered. Mrs Abbot bowed slightly; then, without speaking a word, in a deliberate manner looked the newcomer up and down. She did not for a moment attempt to conceal the object of her visit. Her offensive scrutiny was an open declaration of war, and the girl was welcome to construe it as such.

But what did the great lady see as she cast that hostile, but, in spite of herself, half-curious glance on the girl who came forward to greet her unexpected visitor? She saw a beautiful girl of about nineteen; tall, and, making allowances for age, stately as herself. She saw a figure as near perfection as a young girl’s may be. She saw a sweet calm face, with regular features and pale pure complexion, yet with enough colour to speak of perfect health. She saw a pair of dark-brown truthful eyes—eyes made darker by the long lashes—a mass of brown hair dressed exactly as it should be. She saw, in fact, the exact opposite to the picture she had drawn: and as Millicent Keene, with graceful carriage and a firm but light step, advanced towards her, Mrs Abbot’s heart sank. She had entirely miscalculated the strength of the enemy, and she felt that it would be no easy matter to tear a woman such as this from a young man’s heart.

The girl bore Mrs Abbot’s offensive glance bravely. She returned her bow, and without embarrassment, begged her to be seated. Then she waited for her visitor to explain the object of her call.

‘You do not know who I am, I suppose?’ said Mrs Abbot after a pause.

‘I have the pleasure of knowing Mrs Abbot by sight,’ replied Millicent in a perfectly calm voice.

‘Then you know why I have called upon you?’

The girl made no reply.

Mrs Abbot continued, with unmistakable scorn in her voice: ‘I have called to see the young lady whom my son tells me he is resolved, against his parents’ wish, to make his wife.’

‘I am sorry, Mrs Abbot, you should have thought it needful to call and tell me this.’

‘How could you expect otherwise? Frank Abbot bears one of the oldest names, and is heir to one of the best estates in the county. When he marries, he must marry a wife in his own position. What has Miss Keene to offer in exchange for what he can bestow?’

The girl’s pale face flushed; but her brave brown eyes met those of her interrogator without flinching. ‘If I thought you would understand me, Mrs Abbot, I should say that I have a woman’s true love to give him, and that is enough. He sought me, and won that love. He asked for it, and I gave it. I can say no more.’

‘In these days,’ said Mrs Abbot contemptuously, ‘persons in our station require more than love—_that_, a young man like Frank can always have for the asking.—Of what family are you, Miss Keene?’

‘Of none. My father was a tradesman. He was unfortunate in his business, and has been many years abroad trying to redeem his fortunes. With the exception of an education which, I fear, has cost my poor father many privations, I have nothing to boast of. I live with an aunt, who has a small income of her own.—Now you know my history.’

Mrs Abbot had soon seen that crushing tactics failed to meet the exigencies of the case. She put on an appearance of frankness. ‘You are candid with me, Miss Keene, and it appears to me you have plenty of common-sense. I put it to you; do you think that Mr Abbot or myself can lend our sanction to this ill-advised affair?’

The girl’s lip curled in a manner which was particularly galling to Mrs Abbot. A tradesman’s daughter, whose proper place was behind a counter, had no right to be able to assume such an expression! ‘That was for Frank, not for me, to consider, Mrs Abbot.’

‘But surely you will not marry him against our wishes?’

The girl was silent for a minute. An answer to such a question required consideration. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘We are both too young. But if, in after-years, Frank Abbot wishes me to be his wife, I will share his lot, let it be high or low.’ She spoke proudly and decisively, as one who felt that her love was well worth having, and would make up for much that a man might be called on to resign in order to enjoy it.

It was this independence, the value the tradesman’s daughter set upon herself, that annoyed Mrs Abbot, and led her into the mistake of firing her last and, as she hoped, fatal shot. ‘You are not perhaps aware,’ she said, ‘that the estate is unentailed?’

Millicent, who did not at once catch the drift of her words, looked inquiringly.

‘I mean,’ explained Mrs Abbot, ‘that my husband may leave it to whom he likes—that if you marry my son, you will marry a beggar.’

The girl rose. With all her practice, Mrs Abbot herself could not have spoken or looked more scornfully. ‘How little you know me, madam, to insult me like that! Have you so poor an opinion of your son as to fancy I cannot love him for himself? Did you marry Mr Abbot for his wealth?’—Mrs Abbot winced mentally at the question.—‘Do you think I wish to marry Francis Abbot only for the position I shall gain? You are wrong—utterly wrong!’

‘Then,’ said Mrs Abbot with the bitterness of defeat, ‘I suppose you will persist in this foolish engagement, and the only chance I have is an appeal to my son?’

‘I have promised to be his wife. He alone shall release me from that promise. But it may be long before he can claim it, and so your anxiety may rest for some time, Mrs Abbot. I have this morning received a letter from my father. He wishes me to join him in Australia. Next month, I shall sail, and it will probably be three or four years before I return. Then, if Frank wishes me to be his wife—if he says to me: “I will risk loss of lands and love of parents for your sake,” I will bid him take me, and carve out a way in the world for himself.’

A weight was lifted from Mrs Abbot’s mind. She caught the situation at once. Three or four years’ separation! What might not happen! Although she strove to speak calmly as a great lady should, she could not keep a certain eagerness out of her voice. ‘But will you not correspond during that time?’

This was another important question. Again Millicent paused, and considered her answer. ‘I will neither write nor be written to. If, eventually, I marry your son—if his love can stand the test of absence and silence—at least you shall not say I did not give him every opportunity of terminating our engagement.’

Mrs Abbot rose and assumed a pleasant manner—so pleasant that, considering the respective positions of herself and Miss Keene, it should have been irresistible. ‘I am compelled to say that such a decision is all I could expect. You must forgive me if, with my views for my son’s career, I have said anything hasty or unjust. I will now wish you good-morning; and I am sure, had we met under other circumstances, we might have been great friends.’

Whatever of dignity and majesty Mrs Abbot dropped as she put on this appearance of friendliness was taken up by the girl. She took no notice of her visitor’s outstretched hand. She rang the bell for the servant, and bowed coldly and haughtily as Mrs Abbot swept from the room.

But bravely as she had borne herself under the eyes of her inquisitor, when the rumble of the carriage wheels died away from the quiet street, Millicent Keene threw herself on the sofa and burst into a flood of tears. ‘O my love!’ she sobbed out. ‘It is hard; but it is right. It will never be, I know! It is too long—too long to wait and hope. Can you be true, when everything is brought to bear against me? Will you forget? Will the love of to-day seem but a boy’s idle dream? Shall _I_ ever forget?’

EPISODES OF LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS.

A great deal might be said on the subject of manuscripts. From the carefully illuminated specimens of old, preserved in our public museums, down to the hastily scribbled printer’s ‘copy’ of to-day, each bears a history, and could contribute to unfold some portion of the life of the author whose hand had wrought it. Indeed, were it possible for each written sheet to tell its own story—we here refer to manuscripts of more modern date—what a picture of intellectual endurance, disappointments, poverty, and ofttimes despair, would be brought to light; what tales of huntings amongst publishers, rebuffs encountered, and hardships undergone, would be added to literary biography.

Thackeray has himself told us how his _Vanity Fair_ was hawked about from publisher to publisher, and its failure everywhere predicted. For a long period, Charlotte Brontë’s _Jane Eyre_ shared the same fate. Again, Mr Kinglake’s carefully composed _Eothen_, the labour of several years, was destined to go the weary round of publishers in vain; and it was only when its author induced one of that cautious fraternity to accept the classic little work as a present, that he at length enjoyed the gratification of seeing it in print. The first chapter of _The Diary of a Late Physician_ was offered successively to the conductors of the three leading London magazines, and rejected as ‘unsuitable to their pages,’ and ‘not likely to interest the public,’ until Mr Warren, then a young man of three-and-twenty, and a law student, bethought himself of _Blackwood_. ‘I remember taking my packet,’ he says, ‘to Mr Cadell’s in the Strand, with a sad suspicion that I should never see or hear anything more of it; but shortly after, I received a letter from Mr Blackwood, informing me that he had inserted the chapter, and begging me to make arrangements for immediately proceeding regularly with the series. He expressed his cordial approval of that portion, and predicted that I was likely to produce a series of papers well suited to his magazine, and calculated to interest the public.’

Turning now for a moment to the disciples of dramatic authorship, we discover that their experience is similar to that of many authors. Poor Tom Robertson—that indefatigable actor and dramatist—sank into his grave almost before he saw the establishment of his fame; and John Baldwin Buckstone, during his struggling career, was in the habit of pawning his manuscripts with Mr Lacy, the theatrical publisher, in order to procure bread. Upon one occasion, when met by a sympathising actor in the street, he appeared with scarcely a shoe to his feet, and almost broken-hearted, declaring that all his earthly anticipations were centred upon the acceptance of a comedy, the rejection of which would certainly prove fatal to his existence. In the end, happily for him, the comedy was accepted.

The following anecdote is connected with the history of the Odéon, one of the first theatres in Paris. One day a young author came to ascertain the fate of his piece, which, by the way, had appeared such a formidable package upon its receipt, that the secretary was not possessed of sufficient moral courage to untie the tape that bound it. ‘It is not written in the style to suit the theatre,’ he replied, handing back the manuscript. ‘It is not bad, but it is deficient in interest.’ At this juncture, the young man smiled, and untying the roll, he displayed some quires of blank paper! Thus convicted, the secretary shook hands with the aspirant, invited him to dinner, and shortly afterwards assisted him to a successful _début_ at the Odéon. Another author once waited upon the popular manager of a London theatre inquiring the result of the perusal of his manuscript; whereupon the other, having forgotten all about it, carefully opened a large drawer, exhibiting a heterogeneous mass of documents, and exclaimed: ‘There! help yourself. I don’t know exactly which is yours; but you may take any one of them you like!’

In this instance the manager was even more considerate towards the feelings of an author than that other dramatic demigod who, it is said, was regularly in receipt of so many new pieces, good, bad, and indifferent, that he devised an ingenious method of getting rid of them. During that particular season, the exigencies of the play required a roll of papers—presumably a will—to be nightly burned in a candle in full sight of the audience; and in this way he managed to make room for the numerous manuscripts which young authors only too eagerly poured in upon him, quite unconscious of their certain fate!

Indeed, volumes might be written upon the difficulties sometimes encountered in climbing the literary ladder, and whilst the more persevering have ultimately achieved the goal of their ambition, others have been fated to see their writings consigned to oblivion, and have themselves perhaps sunk into an early grave, consequent upon the disappointments and privations endured. When the poet Chatterton was found lying dead in his garret in Brook Street, his manuscripts had been strewn upon the floor, torn into a thousand pieces. Thus much good literature has often been lost to posterity. A number of instances, too, might be cited wherein persons have risen from their deathbed to destroy their manuscripts, and which task has either proved so distressing to their sensibilities, or fatiguing to their physical powers, that they immediately afterwards expired. It is placed upon record how Colardeau, that elegant versifier of Pope’s Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, recollected at the approach of his death that he had not destroyed what was written of a translation of Tasso; and unwilling to intrust this delicate office to his friends, he raised himself from his bed, and dragging his feeble frame to the place where the manuscript was deposited, with a last effort he consumed it in the flames. In another example, an author of celebrity directed his papers to be brought to his bed, and there, the attendant holding a light, he burned them, smiling as the greedy flames devoured what had been his work for years.

Few authors willingly destroy any manuscript that has cost them a long period of toil and research, though history records numerous examples where the loss of certain manuscripts has almost proved an irremediable misfortune to their author. The story of Mr Carlyle lending the manuscript of the first volume of his _French Revolution_ to his friend John Stuart Mill, and its accidental destruction by fire, is well known. A similar disaster once happened to M. Firmin Abauzit, a philosopher who had applied himself to every branch of human learning, and to whom the great Newton had remarked, among other compliments: ‘You are worthy to distinguish between Leibnitz and me.’ It happened on one occasion that he had engaged a fresh female servant, rustic, simple, and thoughtless, and being left alone in his study for a while, she declared to herself that she would ‘set his things to rights;’ with which words she deliberately cleared the table, and swept the whole of his papers into the fire, thus destroying calculations which had been the work of upwards of forty years. Without one word, however, the philosopher calmly recommenced his task, with more pain than can readily be imagined. Most readers also will remember the similar misadventure which occurred to Sir Isaac Newton.

Of manuscripts which have perished through the ignorance or malignancy of the illiterate, there are numerous instances. The original ‘Magna Charta,’ with all its appendages of seals and signatures, was one day discovered, by Sir Robert Cotton, in the hands of his tailor, who with his shears was already in the act of cutting up into measures that priceless document, which had been so long given up as for ever lost. He bought the curiosity for a trifle; and caused it to be preserved, where it is still to be seen, in the Cottonian Library, with the marks of dilapidation plainly apparent. The immortal works of Agobart were found by Papirius Masson in the hands of a bookbinder at Lyons, the mechanic having long been in the habit of using the manuscript sheets for the purpose of lining the covers of his books. Similarly, a stray page of the second decade of Livy was found by a man of letters concealed under the parchment of his battledore, as he was amusing himself at that pastime in the country. He at once hastened to the maker of the battledore; but alas! it was too late—the man had used the last sheet of the manuscript of Livy about a week before!

A treatise printed among the works of Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, fell into the possession of that worthy, it is said, in a rather singular manner. Having sent out for a fish for his table, his domestic brought him one rolled up in a piece of written paper, which excited the bishop’s curiosity so much, that he forthwith rushed out to the market, just in time to discover and rescue the original manuscript from which the leaf had been torn. This work he afterwards published under the title of _De Officio Episcopi_.

The manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci suffered greatly from the wilful ignorance of his relatives. Once, when a curious collector of antiquities chanced to discover a portion of his writings by the merest accident, he eagerly carried them to one of the descendants of the great painter; but the man coldly observed that ‘he had a great deal more in his garret, which had lain there for many years, if the rats had not destroyed them.’

Cardinal Granville was in the habit of preserving his letters, and at his death, he left behind him a prodigious number, written in all languages, and duly noted, underlined, and collated by his own hand. These relics were left in several immense chests, to the mercy of time and the rats; and subsequently, five or six of the chestsful were sold to the grocers as waste paper. It was then that an examination of the treasure was made; and as the result of the united labours of several literary men, enough of the papers to fill eight thick folios were rescued, and afterwards published.

Fire and shipwreck have at various periods caused considerable havoc among manuscripts. Many of our oldest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were consumed some years ago by a fire in the Cottonian Library; and those which remain present a baked and shrivelled appearance, rendering them almost unrecognisable. Ben Jonson on one occasion sustained the loss of the labours of twenty-one years within one short hour, by fire; and Meninsky’s famous Persian Dictionary met with a like fate from the effects of a bomb falling upon the roof of his house during the siege of Vienna by the Turks.

National libraries have occasionally been lost at sea. In the beginning of last century, a wealthy burgomaster of Middelburg, in the Netherlands, named Hudde, actuated solely by literary curiosity, made a journey to China; and after travelling through the whole of the provinces, he set sail for Europe, laden with a manuscript collection of his observations, the labour of thirty years, the whole of which was sunk in the ocean. Again, Guarino Verenese, one of those learned Italians who volunteered to travel through Greece for the recovery of ancient manuscripts, had his perseverance repaid by the acquisition of many priceless treasures. Returning to Italy, however, he was shipwrecked; and such was his grief at the loss of this collection, that his hair became suddenly white.

Differing from those authors who have destroyed their manuscripts before death, are those who have delivered them into the hands of relatives and friends, together with the fullest instructions as to their disposal. It is well known that Lord Byron handed the manuscript of his autobiography to Tom Moore, with the strictest injunctions not to publish it till after his death. Immediately after he expired, Moore sold the manuscript to John Murray the publisher for two thousand pounds; but subsequently knowing something of the nature of the autobiography, and the effect which its publication would exert upon the memory of the deceased author, his own better feelings, united to the persuasions of Byron’s friends, prompted him to regain possession of the document, which he did, at the same time refunding the money to Mr Murray. The manuscript was then burned.

In the matter of the manuscripts of musical works, it may be related that shortly after Handel had settled at Hamburg in the capacity of conductor of the opera in that city, he cultivated the acquaintance of a well-known musician named Mattheson, and the two became great friends. But presently a quarrel arose between them, the result of which was that they drew their swords; and Mattheson’s weapon might in all probability have dealt fatally with the other’s life, had it not chanced to strike and break upon the score of _Almira_, Handel’s first opera, which he had hurriedly stowed beneath his coat, and over which, it is said, the quarrel had really arisen. After this, the combatants became reconciled, and Mattheson eventually bore the principal character in the opera when it was produced.

Returning to literature, it is perhaps not generally known that Swift’s _Tale of a Tub_ was introduced to the world with such cunning secrecy, that the manuscript was actually thrown from a passing coach into the doorway of the bookseller who afterwards published it. _Gulliver’s Travels_ was given to the public in the same mysterious manner. From one of Swift’s letters to Pope, as well as from another epistle to Dr T. Sheridan, we learn that during the time occupied in finishing, revising, and transcribing his manuscript, prior to thinking about a fitting bookseller to publish it, Tickell, then Secretary of State, expressed a strong curiosity to see the work concerning which there was so much secrecy. But the Dean frankly replied that it would be quite impossible for Mr Tickell to find his ‘treasury of _waste-papers_ without searching through nine different houses,’ inasmuch as he had his manuscripts conveyed from place to place through nine or ten different hands; and then it would be necessary to send to him for a key to the work, else he could not understand a chapter of it. In the end, _Gulliver_ came forth from its hiding-place through the medium of Mr Charles Ford, who offered to carry the manuscript to Mr Motte the bookseller, on behalf of his friend, and to whom he afterwards complained that the man’s timidity was such as to compel him to make some important abridgments throughout the work. The book was, however, no sooner published, than it was received with unlimited acclamation by all classes.

Of Defoe’s world-famous _Robinson Crusoe_, published in 1719, we are told that it was only taken up by Taylor—who purchased the manuscript, and netted one thousand pounds by the publication—after every other bookseller in town had refused it. In a similar manner, one bookseller refused to give twenty-five pounds for the manuscript of Fielding’s _Tom Jones_; while another bought it, and cleared not less than eighteen thousand pounds by the venture during his lifetime!

With a few particulars touching upon the value of manuscripts which have at various periods been put up for public sale after the death of their authors, we will bring our paper to a conclusion.

When, some years ago, the manuscript of Scott’s _Guy Mannering_ came into the market, the United States gladly secured the precious treasure at a cost of three hundred and eighty guineas; and in 1867, at a sale of the manuscripts which had belonged to Mr Cadell the well-known publisher, the _Lady of the Lake_ was sold for two hundred and seventy-seven guineas, and _Rokeby_ realised one hundred and thirty-six guineas, both becoming the property of Mr Hope-Scott. At the same sale, Sir William Fraser paid two hundred guineas for the manuscript of _Marmion_; whilst the same appreciative collector of literary antiquities paid, in 1875, so high a price as two hundred and fifty guineas for Gray’s _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, a composition occupying no more than four quarto sheets of manuscript.

Of Charles Dickens’s manuscripts, _The Christmas Carol_ was purchased by Mr Harvey of St James’s Street for the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds, and resold by him for two hundred and fifty pounds; _The Battle of Life_ is still held on sale by that gentleman; and _Our Mutual Friend_ was purchased, on behalf of Mr George Washington Childs of Philadelphia, by Mr Hotten, for two hundred pounds. As is well known, the manuscript of _The Pickwick Papers_ was bequeathed by Mr Forster to the South Kensington Museum, and will become the property of the British nation on the death of his widow, who has meanwhile, and in the most generous manner, permitted it and other manuscripts from the pen of Charles Dickens to be publicly exhibited where they will become permanently enshrined.

Not very long ago, the manuscript of a short poem by Burns brought seventy guineas; yet this sum must be regarded as but a small proportion of that value which might be realised for only one line—not to speak of one play—written by Shakspeare’s own hand. In his _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, the late Dean Stanley has told us how Spenser the poet died in King Street, Westminster, and was solemnly interred in Poets’ Corner, hard by. ‘His hearse,’ he says, ‘was attended by poets; and mournful elegies, together with the pens that wrote them, were thrown into his tomb. What a funeral was that at which Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, and, in all probability, Shakspeare attended! what a grave in which the pen of Shakspeare may be mouldering away!’ Certainly, if but one line of that ‘mournful elegy’ written by the Immortal Bard could be recovered and offered for sale, we should then have a pleasing and memorable opportunity of marking the estimation in which the poet is held by mankind.

ANIMAL MEMORIALS AND MEMENTOES.

Commenting on the honour paid by the Athenians to a dog that followed his master across the sea to Salamis, Pope says: ‘This respect to a dog in the most polite people of the world is very observable. A modern instance of gratitude to a dog, though we have but few such, is, that the chief Order of Denmark—now called the Order of the Elephant—was instituted in memory of the fidelity of a dog named Wild-brat to one of their kings, who had been deserted by his subjects. He gave his Order this motto, or to this effect (which still remains): “Wild-brat was faithful.”’

Had Pope been writing half-a-dozen years later, he need not have gone to Denmark for a modern instance of gratitude to a dog. Mr Robert—afterwards Viscount—Molesworth being prevented entering an outhouse by his favourite greyhound pulling him away by his coat lappet, ordered a footman to examine the place. On opening the door, the man was shot dead by a hidden robber. The faithful hound afterwards died in London, and his master sent his body to Yorkshire, to be inurned in Edglington Wood, near Doncaster; the receptacle of his remains bearing an inscription in Latin, which has been thus translated: ‘Stay, traveller! Nor wonder that a lamented Dog is thus interred with funeral honour. But, ah! what a Dog! His beautiful form and snow-white colour; pleasing manners and sportive playfulness; his affection, obedience, and fidelity, made him the delight of his master, to whom he closely adhered with his eager companions of the chase, delighted in attending him. Whenever the mind of his lord was depressed, he would assume fresh spirit and animation. A master, not ungrateful for his merits, has here, in tears, deposited his remains in this marble urn.—M. F. C. 1714.’

An Italian greyhound, buried in Earl Temple’s garden at Stowe, had never saved his master’s life, but was nevertheless held worthy of a memorial stone, bearing the eulogistic epitaph from the pen of Arbuthnot:

‘To the Memory of SIGNOR FIDO—An Italian of good extraction, who came to England not to bite us, like most of his countrymen, but to gain an honest livelihood. He hunted not for fame, yet acquired it; regardless of the praises of his friends, but most sensible of their love. Though he lived among the Great, he neither learned nor flattered any vice. He was no bigot, though he doubted of none of the Thirty-nine Articles. And if to follow Nature and to respect the laws of Society be philosophical, he was a perfect philosopher, a faithful friend, an agreeable companion, a loving husband, distinguished by a numerous offspring, all which he lived to see take good courses. In his old age, he retired to the home of a clergyman in the country, where he finished his earthly race, and died an honour and an example to his species. Reader—This stone is guiltless of flattery, for he to whom it is inscribed was not a Man, but a Greyhound.’

That eulogy is more than could honestly be said of the animal whose monument proclaims:

Here lies the body of my dear retriever;
Of his master alone he was ne’er a deceiver;
But the Game-laws he hated, and poached out of bounds—
His spirit now ranges the glad hunting-grounds.

Not in company, we should say, with that of the blameless creature commemorated by the couplet:

Beneath this stone, there lies at rest
BANDY, of all good dogs the best.

Among the sojourners at the _Grand Hôtel Victoria_, Mentone, in the year 1872, was the Archduchess Marie Régnier, who, during her three months’ stay there, took such a liking to mine host’s handsome dog Pietrino, that she begged him of M. Milandi, and carried her prize with her to Vienna. In less than a fortnight after reaching that capital, Pietrino was back in his old quarters again, having travelled eight hundred miles across strange countries, over mountains, through towns and villages, only to die at his master’s feet five days after his coming home. He was buried among the rose-bushes in the grounds so familiar to him, his resting place marked by a marble column, inscribed, ‘Ci-gît PIETRINO, Ami Fidèle. 1872.’

Exactly a hundred years before that, a dog died at Minorca out of sheer grief for the loss of his master, who, ordered home to England, did not care to encumber himself with his canine friend. Honouring the deserted animal’s unworthily placed affection, his owner’s brother-officers saw him decently interred, and erected a stone to his memory, bearing an epitaph written by Lieutenant Erskine, ending:

His life was shortened by no slothful ease,
Vice-begot care, or folly-bred disease.
Forsook by him he valued more than life,
His generous nature sank beneath the strife.
Left by his master on a foreign shore,
New masters offered—but he owned no more;
The ocean oft with seeming sorrow eyed,
And pierced by man’s ingratitude, he died.

Of tougher constitution was a small Scotch terrier that, in 1868, followed his master’s coffin to the churchyard of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, heedless of the notice forbidding entrance to dogs. The morning after the funeral, Bobby was found lying on the newly-made mound. He was turned out of the churchyard; but the next morning saw him upon the grave, and the next and the next. Taking pity upon the forlorn little creature, the custodian of the burial-ground gave him some food. From that time, Bobby considered himself privileged, and was constantly in and about the churchyard, only leaving it at mid-day to obtain a meal at the expense of a kind-hearted restaurant keeper; but every night was passed upon the spot holding all he had once held dear. Many were the attempts to get him to transfer his allegiance from the dead to the living; but none availed. As long as his life lasted, and it lasted four years, Bobby stayed by, or in the immediate neighbourhood of, his master’s grave. Such fidelity, unexampled even in his faithful race, deserved to be kept in remembrance; and thanks to the most munificent of Lady Bountifuls, his memory is kept green by his counterfeit presentment on a drinking-fountain of Peterhead granite erected on George the Fourth Bridge, as a ‘tribute to the affectionate fidelity of GREYFRIARS BOBBY. In 1868, the faithful dog followed the remains of his master to Greyfriars Churchyard, and lingered near the spot until his death in 1872.’

London is not without its memorials to dogs. On the wall leading to the Irongate Stairs, near the Tower, may be read: ‘In Memory of EGYPT, a favourite dog belonging to the Irongate Watermen, killed on the 4th August 1841, aged 16.

Here lies interred, beneath this spot,
A faithful dog, who should not be forgot.
Full fifteen years he watched here with care,
Contented with hard bed and harder fare.
Around the Tower he daily used to roam
In search of bits so savoury, or a bone.
A military pet he was, and in the Dock,
His rounds he always went at twelve o’clock;
Supplied with cash, which held between his jaws—
The reason’s plain—he had no hands but paws—
He’d trot o’er Tower Hill to a favourite shop,
There eat his meal and down his money drop.
To club he went on each successive night,
Where, dressed in jacket gay, he took his pipe;
With spectacles on nose he played his tricks,
And pawed the paper, not the politics.
Going his usual round, near Traitors’ Gate,
Infirm and almost blind, he met his fate;
By ruthless kick hurled from the wharf, below
The stones on which the gentle Thames does flow,
Mortally injured, soon resigned his breath,
Thus left his friends, who here record his death.’

A tablet placed near the north-east end of the platform of the Edgware Road Railway Station, is inscribed:

In Memory of
Poor FAN,
Died May 8, 1876.
For ten years at the Drivers’ call.
Fed by many,
Regretted by all.

Poor Fan lies under an evergreen hard by. She was notable for travelling continually on a railway engine between the Edgware Road and Hammersmith; occasionally getting off at an intermediate station, crossing the line, and returning by the next train; never taking any train but a Hammersmith train when outward bound, or going farther east than her own particular station when journeying homewards.

An Englishman travelling in France in 1698, was disgusted at seeing, in a ducal garden, a superb memorial in the shape of a black marble cat couching on a gilded white marble cushion, on the top of a black marble pedestal bearing the one word ‘MENINE.’ Such posthumous honour is rarely paid to puss; but two other instances of it may be cited. In making excavations near the Place de la Bastille, in the ground formerly occupied by the gardens of the Hôtel de Lesdiguières, the workmen brought to light the handsome tomb of a cat which had belonged to Françoise-Marguerite de Gondy, widow of Emmanuel de Crequi, Duke of Lesdiguières. It bore no laudatory epitaph, but the odd quatrain:

Cy-gist une chatte jolie.
Sa maitresse, qui n’aima rien,
L’aima jusqu’à la folie.
Pourquoi le dire? On le voit bien.

Or to put it into English: ‘Here lies a handsome cat. Her mistress, who loved nothing, loved her out of caprice. Why say so? All the world knew it well.’

‘Grandfather,’ a feline Nestor, belonging to a lady in Scotland, was something more than handsome. When he had passed his twenty-first year, he could climb a tree, catch a bird, hunt a mouse, or kill a rat, as cleverly as in his younger days; and when he died, at the age of twenty-two, had well earned himself a memorial stone and an epitaph. Both were accorded him, the last-named running thus:

‘Life to the last enjoyed,’ here Pussy lies,
Renowned for mousing and for catching flies;
Loving o’er grass and pliant branch to roam,
Yet ever constant to the smiles of home.

. . . . .

The Preux Chevalier of the race of Cats,
He has outlived their customary span,
As Jenkins and Old Parr had that of Man;
And might on tiles have murmured in moonshine
Nestorian tales of youth and Troy divine;
Of rivals fought; of kitten-martyrdoms;
While, meekly listening, round sat Tabs and Toms.
But with the modesty of genuine worth,
He vaunted not his deeds of ancient birth;
His whiskers twitched not, at the world’s applause,
He only yawned, and licked his reverend paws;
Curled round his head his tail, and fell asleep,
Lapped in sweet dreams, and left us here to weep.
Yet pleased to know, that ere he sank to rest,
As far as mortal cats are, he was blest.

The horse, even though he may have won a fortune for his master, as a rule goes literally to the dogs at last. Some few of the wonders of the turf have escaped that indignity. A plain stone inscribed simply ‘SIR PETER,’ tells visitors to Knowsley, Sir Peter Teazle lies beneath it. A sculptured stone, rifled from a cardinal’s monument, overlooks the grave of Emilius at Easby Abbey. A cedar, planted by a once famous jockey, rises hard by the resting-place of Bay-Middleton and Crucifix; Kingston reposes under the shade of a grand oak at Eltham; Blair-Athol, the pride of Malton, lies embowered at Cobham; and green is the grave of Amato, well within hail of the course he traversed triumphantly. The skeleton of Eclipse is still, we believe, on view at Cannons, but it must be minus at least one hoof, since King William IV. gave a piece of plate, with a hoof of Eclipse set in gold, to be run for at Ascot in 1832; the trophy being carried off by Lord Chesterfield’s Priam. Equine mementoes usually take this form, and many a sideboard can show the polished hoof of a famous racehorse. The Prince of Wales is said to possess a hoof of the charger that bore Nolan to his death at Balaklava; it is surmounted with a small silver figure of the Captain, carrying the fatal order for the advance of the Light Brigade. An interesting military souvenir enough; but not so interesting as a polished and shod hoof, mounted so as to serve as a snuff-box, the property of the Guards’ Club; for this bears the inscription: ‘Hoof of MARENGO, rare charger of Napoleon, ridden by him at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, in the campaign of Russia, and lastly at Waterloo;’ while on the margin of the silver shoe is to be read: ‘Marengo was wounded in the near hip at Waterloo, when his great master was on him, in the hollow road in advance of the French position. He had been frequently wounded before in other battles.’

SOME FOOD-NOTES.

We have received the following notes from a gentleman—an occasional contributor—who devotes much of his attention to such matters, making them indeed an especial and constant study.

_The Antipodean Rabbit Nuisance._—That which for several years past has been the bane of agriculturists at the antipodes, is not unlikely to prove in the end something akin to a blessing. Rabbits in many places, notwithstanding what has been done to exterminate them, are nearly as numerous as ever; but instead of killing them by means of poison and burying them in the ground, they are now systematically ‘trapped,’ and, being cooked and tinned, command a large sale. At the Western Meat-preserving Company’s Works, Colac, Victoria, as many as seventeen thousand pairs of rabbits are dealt with in the course of the early weeks of the season, which, it may be explained, lasts for a period of seven months; and although the supply diminishes as the season progresses, over three hundred thousand pairs are annually prepared for sale, finding a ready market. A large number of persons are employed during the continuance of this industry; no fewer than three hundred and fifty people obtaining remunerative work in connection with this one establishment. On an average, over five thousand two-pound tins are turned out every day within the period indicated. These are made up for sale in three different ways—as plain rabbits, as rabbits cooked with onions, and rabbits done up with bacon; and for each description there is now setting in a large European demand. Many of the men engaged in the rabbit-work at Colac are exceedingly dexterous, and work with great rapidity, some individual hands among them being able to skin with ease one hundred pairs of rabbits in an hour. In order to gain a wager, one very expert person skinned four hundred and twenty-eight of these animals in sixty minutes! It should be mentioned, that before being skinned, the heads and feet of the conies are chopped off. Work of every kind is performed by the most cleanly methods, and only the best animals are selected to be tinned, while none are sent out without being carefully examined. The trappers are paid by results, and are, as a rule, welcome to visit those farms which are overrun with the pest. In the earlier weeks of the season, a gang of expert trappers will each earn over five pounds a week. The rabbits as they are caught are slung across poles in convenient places, and then lifted and conveyed in carts to ‘the works.’ There are several establishments of the kind in Victoria, and hopes are now being entertained by farmers of a speedy deliverance from the rabbit nuisance, as the large numbers which are being killed must in time tell on the breeding supplies. Similar establishments are also about to be started in New Zealand.

_Edible Snails._—None but those who have made special inquiry into the subject are aware of the great dimensions which the continental snail-trade has of late assumed. Many tons of these vine-fed delicacies reach Paris every year during the snail season, which lasts from September to about April, during some part of which period under natural circumstances the animals would be asleep. In this country there would be a universal shudder, if it were proposed to add the common garden-snail to the national commissariat, no matter how attractive might be the shape assumed by the _Escargot de Bourgogne_, or other snail of the orchard or vineyard; yet we eat countless quantities of whelks and periwinkles, which are not such clean-feeding animals as the snails of the garden. A recent authority states that enormous quantities of snails are forwarded annually from Marseilles and Genoa to Paris, and that tens of thousands of these creatures find their way to the markets of Bordeaux, Lyons, Vienna, and Munich. Such is the demand, that many persons now ‘cultivate’ snails for the markets, and find the business a remunerative one. As many as twenty or thirty thousand can be bred in a very small space.

_The Conger Eel._—This fish has of late attracted a good deal of attention, from its having been asserted that it was frequently made into turtle-soup. Whether that be so or not, the conger eel is in reality one of our most valuable food-fishes. There is, unfortunately, a prejudice in the public mind against it. In all continental fish-markets—at least in those situated on seas which contain the fish—a plentiful supply of congers may always be had. The writer has seen hundreds of them in the markets at Dieppe, Boulogne, and Paris, and in the _cuisine_ of France the conger occupies a prominent place. It can be converted into excellent soup, and may be cooked in various other palatable ways: it may be roasted, stewed, or broiled, or made into a succulent pie. In Guernsey and Jersey, its flesh is highly esteemed, as being adaptable to the culinary art in an eminent degree. This fish ought to be much more plentifully exposed for sale than it is; and if our fishermen found a market for it, it would no doubt be so. It is a most prolific animal, yielding its eggs in literal millions. A specimen which weighed twenty-eight pounds possessed a roe of the weight of twenty-three ounces, which was computed to contain the almost incredible number of fifteen millions of eggs! Mr Buckland, in one of his fishery Reports, says: ‘What becomes of this enormous number of eggs, is unknown to man; they probably form the food of many small sea-creatures, especially crabs. They are exceedingly minute.’ How curious it seems that the common herring, which yields on the average about thirty thousand ova, should be so plentiful, and the conger, which contains many millions of eggs, should be comparatively so scarce.

SERENADE.

Sweet maiden, awake
From the region of sleep,
Alone for thy sake
Here my vigil I keep;
The moon rides on high,
The stars shine above,
Yet sleepless am I
By the charm of thy love.

All nature reposes:
The sun is at rest,
Fast shut are the roses,
Each bird in its nest;
The air is unstirred
By the drone of the bee,
Safe penned is each herd—
And my thoughts are of thee.

Oh, what is dull Time
In true love’s estimation?
Who measures each chime,
In its rapt contemplation?
Immortal in birth,
It descends from above,
And raises from earth
The frail creatures who love.

Oh, spurn me not, maiden!
Dismiss me not home,
With misery laden
Henceforward to roam;
By the spell of thy power,
Which has fettered the free,
Creation’s sweet flower,
Bend thy fragrance to me!

ALBERT E. STEMBRIDGE.

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Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

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_All Rights Reserved._