Chapter III: Part 3

This was the Honourable Ensign Spoonbill’s first bill-transaction, but, the ice once broken, the second and third soon followed. He found it the pleasantest way in the world of raising money, and in a short time his affairs took a turn so decidedly commercial, that he applied the system to all his mercantile transactions. He paid his tailors after this fashion, satisfied Messrs. Mildew and his upholsterers with negotiable paper, and did “bits of stiff” with Galloper, the horse-dealer, to a very considerable figure. He even became facetious, not to say inspired, by this great discovery; for, amongst his papers, when they were afterwards overhauled by the official assignee—or some such fiscal dignitary,—a bacchanalian song in manuscript was found, supposed to have been written about this period, the _refrain_ of which ran as follows:—

“When creditors clamour, and cash fails the till,
There is nothing so easy as giving a bill.”

It needs no ghost to rise from the grave to prophesy the sequel to this mode of “raising the wind.” It is recorded twenty times a month in the daily papers,—now in the Bankruptcy Court, now in that for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors. Ensign Spoonbill’s career lasted about eighteen months, at the end of which period—not having prospered by means of gaming to the extent he anticipated—he found himself under the necessity of selling out and retiring to a continental residence, leaving behind him debts, which were eventually paid, to the tune of seven thousand, two hundred and fourteen pounds, seventeen shillings, and tenpence three farthings, the vulgar fractions having their origin in the hair-splitting occasioned by reduplication of interest. He chose for his abode the pleasant town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he cultivated his moustaches, acquired a smattering of French, and an insight into the mystery of pigeon-shooting. For one or other of these qualifications—we cannot exactly say which—he was subsequently appointed _attaché_ to a foreign embassy, and at the present moment, we believe, is considered one of those promising young men whose diplomatic skill will probably declare itself one of these days, by some stroke of finesse, which shall set all Europe by the ears.

With respect to Colonel Tulip’s “crack” regiment, it went, as the saying is, “to the Devil.” The exposure caused by the affair of Ensign Spoonbill—the smash of Ensign Brittles, which shortly followed—the duel between Lieutenant Wadding and Captain Cushion, the result of which was a ball (neither “spot” nor “plain,” but a bullet) through the head of the last-named gentleman, and a few other trifles of a similar description, at length attracted the “serious notice” of his Grace the Commander-in-Chief. It was significantly hinted to Colonel Tulip that it would be for the benefit of the service in general, and that of the Hundredth in particular, if he exchanged to half-pay, as the regiment required re-modelling. A smart Lieutenant-Colonel who had learnt something, not only of drill, but of discipline, under the hero of “Young Egypt,” in which country he had shared that general’s laurels, was sent down from the Horse Guards. “Weeding” to a considerable extent took place; the Majors and the Adjutant were replaced by more efficient men, and, to sum up all, the Duke’s “Circular” came out, laying down a principle of _practical military education, while on service_, which, if acted up to,—and there seems every reason to hope it will now be,—bids fair to make good officers of those who heretofore were merely idlers. It will also diminish the opportunities for gambling, drinking, and bill-discounting, and substitute, for the written words on the Queen’s Commission, the real character of a soldier and a gentleman.

HOW TO SPEND A SUMMER HOLIDAY.

If the walls of London—the bill-stickers’ chosen haunt—could suddenly find a voice to tell their own history, we might have a few curious illustrations of the manners and customs—the fashions, fancies, and popular idols—of the English during the last half century,—from the days when a three feet blue bill was thought large enough to tell where Bonaparte’s victories might be read about, to the advent acres of flaring paper and print which announce a Bal Masque or a new Haymarket Comedy. One of the most startling contrasts of such a confession would refer to the announcements about means of locomotion. It is not very long ago that “The Highflyer,” “The Tally-ho,” the Brighton “Age,” and the Shrewsbury “Wonder” boasted, in all the glory of red letters, their wonder-feat speed of ten miles an hour,—“York in one day;” “Manchester in twenty-four hours;” and so on. The same wall now tells the passer-by a different tale, for we have Excursion Trains to all sorts of pleasant places at all sorts of low fares. “Twelve Hours to Paris” is the burden of one placard, whilst another shows how “Cologne on the Rhine” may be reached in twenty-four.

Nor is this marvellous change in speed—this real economy of life—the only variation from old modes; for the cost in money of a journey has diminished with its cost of time. The cash which a few years ago was required to go to York, will now take the tourist to Cologne. The Minster of the one city is now, therefore, rivalled as a point for sight-seers by the Dom-Kirche of the other. When the South Eastern Railway Company offers to take the traveller, who will pay them about three pounds at London Bridge one night, and place him by the next evening on the banks of the Rhine,—the excellent tendency is, that the summer holiday folks will extend their notions of an excursion beyond the Channel.

Steam, that makes the trip from London to Cologne so rapid and so cheap, does not stop there, but is ready now to bear the traveller by railway to Brunswick, Hanover, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna,—nay, with one short gap, he may go all the way to Trieste, on the Adriatic, by the iron road. Steam is ready also on the Rhine to carry him at small charge up that stream towards Switzerland. Indeed, afloat by steamer and ashore by railway, the tourist who leaves London Bridge on a Monday night may well reach Basle by Thursday or Friday, seeing many things on his way, including the best scenery of the Rhine. The beautiful portion of the banks of that river forms but a small part of its entire length; indeed, on reaching Cologne, the traveller is disappointed to find so little that is remarkable in what he beholds on the banks of the famous stream. It is not till he ascends many miles higher that he feels repaid for his journey. _The_ scenery lies between Coblenz and Bingen, and in extent bears some such proportion to the whole length of the river as would the banks of the Thames from Chelsea to Richmond to the entire course of our great river, from its rise in Gloucestershire to its junction with the sea. In addition to the part just named, there are some few other points where the Rhine is worth seeing,—such as the fall at Schaffhausen,—but Switzerland may claim this as one of _its_ attractions. It is a fine river from Basle, even down through the Dutch rushes and flats to the sea; but, with all its reputation, there is only a morsel of the Rhine worth going to look at, and that lies, as we have just said, between its junction with the picturesque Moselle at Coblenz and the small town of Bingen. Between those points it passes through hills and near mountains, whose sides and summits boast the castles and ruins so often painted and often sung; and these spots are now within the reach of the three pounds first-class railway ticket, now-a-days announced by placard on the walls and hoardings of London.

Once on a Rhine steamer, and Switzerland is within easy reach.

On our table, as we write, lies the second edition of a volume[2] written by the physician to the Queen’s Household, Dr. Forbes, showing how a month may be employed in Switzerland. He adopted the South Eastern Railway plan, and, starting by a mail train at half-past eight in the evening of the 3rd of August, found himself and companions on the next evening looking from the window of an hotel on the Rhine. Steam and a week placed him in Switzerland. Here railways must be no longer reckoned on, and the tourist, if he be in search of health, may try what pedestrian exercise will do for him. This the Doctor strongly recommends; and, following his own prescription, we find him—though a sexagenarian—making capital way; now as a pedestrian, anon on horseback, and then again on foot, only adopting a carriage when there was good reason for such assistance. He describes the country, as all do who have been through it, as a land of large and good inns, well stored with luxurious edibles and drinkables. Against a too free use of them, he doctor-like gives a medical hint or two, and goes somewhat out of his way, perhaps, to show how much better the waters of the mountains may be than the wine. Indeed the butter, the honey, the milk, the cheese, and the melted snows of Switzerland win his warmest praises. The bread is less fortunate; but its inferiority, and many other small discomforts, are overlooked and almost forgotten in his enjoying admiration of what he found good on his way amidst the mountain valleys and breezy passes of his route. The bracing air, the brilliant sky, the animating scenes, the society of emulous and cheerful companions, and, above all, the increased corporeal exercise soon produce a change in the mind and the body, in the spirits and the stomach of the tourist.

Footnote 2:

“The Physician’s Holiday.”

What a marvellous change it is for a smoke-dried man who for months, perhaps years, has been “in populous cities pent,” to escape from his thraldom, and find himself far away from his drudgeries and routines up amongst the mountains and the lakes, and surrounded by the most magnificent scenes in nature; where he sees in all its glory that which a townsman seldom gets a glimpse of—a sunrise in its greatest beauty; and where sunsets throw a light over the earth, which makes its beauties emulate those of the heavens! Day by day, during summer in Switzerland, such enjoyments are at hand. One traveller may choose one route, and another another; for there are many and admirable changes to be rung upon the roads to be taken. Dr. Forbes, for instance, went from Basle to Schaffhausen, thence to Zurich, and, steaming over a part of the lake, made for Zug, and thence to the Rigi. He returned to the Zurich-See, and then went to Wallenstadt, Chur, and the Via Mala. Had he to shorten his trip without great loss of the notable scenes, he might, having first reached Lucerne, have left that place for Meyringen, and then pursued his subsequent way by the line of the lakes, visiting the various glorious points in their neighbourhood that challenged his attention—Grindelwald, Schreckhorn, Lauterbrunnen, Unterseen, and so on to Thun; then by the pass of the Gemmi to Leuk, and, from there, to what is described by our author as the gem of his whole Swiss experience—the Riffelberg, and the view at Monte Rosa:—

“Sitting there, up in mid-heaven, as it were, on the smooth, warm ledge of our rock; in one of the sunniest noons of a summer day; amid air cooled by the elevation and the perfect exposure to the most delicious temperature; under a sky of the richest blue, and either cloudless, or only here and there gemmed with those aerial and sun-bright cloudlets which but enhance its depth; with the old field of vision, from the valley at our feet to the horizon, filled with majestic shapes of every variety of form, and of a purity and brilliancy of whiteness which left all common whiteness dull;—we seemed to feel as if there could be no other mental mood but that of an exquisite yet cheerful serenity—a sort of delicious abstraction, or absorption of our powers, in one grand, vague, yet most luxurious perception of Beauty and Loveliness.

“At another time—it would almost seem at the same time, so rapid was the alternation from mood to mood—the immeasurable vastness and majesty of the scene, the gigantic bulk of the individual mountains, the peaks towering so far beyond the level of our daily earth, as to seem more belonging to the sky than to it, our own elevated and isolated station hemmed in on every side by untrodden wastes and impassable walls of snow, and, above all, the utter silence, and the absence of every indication of life and living things—suggesting the thought that the foot of man had never trodden, and never would tread there: these and other analogous ideas would excite a tone of mind entirely different—solemn, awful, melancholy....

“I said at the time, and I still feel disposed to believe, that the whole earth has but few scenes that can excel it in grandeur, in beauty, and in wonderfulness of every kind. I thought then, and I here repeat my opinion in cool blood, that had I been brought hither blindfolded from London, had had my eyes opened but for a single hour on this astonishing panorama, and had been led back in darkness as I came, I should have considered the journey, with all its privations, well repaid by what I saw.”

Having seen this crowning glory of mountain scenery, the tourist intent only upon a short trip might adopt one of many variations for his return to Basle. If on going out he had missed any bright spot, he should see it on his way back. He must remember:

Interlachen, one of the sweetest spots in all Switzerland, which, though only about four miles in extent, affords a perfect specimen of a Swiss valley in its best form.

The Lake of Thun, inferior to that of Wallenstadt in grandeur, and to that of Lucerne in beauty, but superior to the Lake of Zurich in both; and in respect to the view from it, beyond all these; none of them having any near or distant prospect comparable to that looking back, where the snowy giants of the Oberland, with the Jungfrau, and her silver horns, are seen over the tops of the nearer mountains.

The “show glacier” of the Rosenlaui, which is so easy of access.

The view from the Hotel of the Jungfrau on the Wengern Alp.

The lake scenery near Alpnach.

All these points should be made either out or home. They are not likely to be forgotten by the tourist when once seen. On the pilgrimage to these wonders of nature, the other peculiarities of the country and its people will be observed, and amongst them the frequency of showers and the popularity of umbrellas; the great division of landed property; the greater number of beggars in the Romanist as compared with the Protestant Cantons, and the better cultivation of the latter; the numerous spots of historical interest, as Morgarten, Sempach, Naefels; where the Swiss have fought for the liberty they enjoy (to say nothing of the dramatic William Tell, and his defeat of the cruel Gesler); the fruitfulness and number of Swiss orchards (which give us our grocers’ “French plums”), the excellent flavor of Alpine strawberries and cream; the scarcity of birds; and the characteristic sounds of the Swiss horn, the Ranz des Vaches, and the night chaunts of the watchmen.

On the map attached to Dr. Forbes’s volume are the dates, jotted down, when our traveller entered Switzerland, at Basle, and when he left it on his return to smoke and duty in London. He reached the land of mountains and lakes on the 11th of August; he quitted it on the 12th of September; four days afterwards he was being bothered at the Custom-House at Blackwall. The last words of his book are these:—“In accordance with a principle kept constantly in view while writing out the particulars of the Holiday now concluded, viz. to give to those who may follow the same or a similar track, such economical and financial details as may be useful to them, I may here state that the total expenses of the tour—from the moment of departure to that of return—was, as near as may be, _One Guinea per diem_ to each of the travellers.”

The thousands of young gentlemen with some leisure and small means, who are in the habit of getting rid of both in unhealthy amusements, need hardly be told that a winter’s abstinence from certain modes and places of entertainment would be more than rewarded by a single summer holiday spent after the manner of Dr. Forbes and his younger companions. No very heroic self-denial is necessary; and the compensation—in health, higher and more intense enjoyment, and the best sort of mental improvement—is incalculable.

What we have here described is an expensive proceeding compared with the cheap contract trips which are constantly diverging from the Metropolis, to every part of England, Ireland, Scotland, and to all attainable places on the Continent. These, so far as we are able to learn, have hitherto been well conducted; and although the charges for every possible want—from the platform of the London Terminus back again to the same spot, are marvellously moderate—the speculations, from their frequent repetition, appear to have been remunerative to the projectors.

CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE ON THE “DECLINE OF ENGLAND.”

_To Mr. Ledru Rollin._

Sir,

I generally believe everything that is going to happen; and as it is a remarkable fact that everything that is going to happen is of a depressing nature, I undergo a good deal of anxiety. I am very careful of myself (taking a variety of patent medicines, and paying particular attention to the weather), but I am not strong. I think my weakness is principally on my nerves, which have been a good deal shaken in the course of my profession as a practising attorney; in which I have met with a good deal to shock them; but from which, I beg leave most cheerfully to acquaint you, I have retired.

Sir, I am certain you are a very remarkable public gentleman, though you have the misfortune to be French. I am convinced you know what is going to happen, because you describe it in your book on “The Decline of England,” in such an alarming manner. I have read your book and, Sir, I am sincerely obliged to you for what you have made me suffer; I am very miserable and very grateful.

You have not only opened up a particularly dismal future, but you have shown me in what a miserable condition we, here, (I mean in Tooting, my place of abode, and the surrounding portion of the British Empire) are at this present time; though really I was not aware of it.

I suppose that your chapter on the law of this land is the result of a profound study of the statutes at large and the “Reports of Cases argued,” &c.; for students of your nation do not take long for that sort of thing, and you have been amongst us at least three months. In the course of your “reading up” you must doubtless have perused the posthumous reports of J. Miller, Q. C. (Queen’s Comedian). There you doubtless found the cause of Hammer _v._ Tongs, which was an action of _tort_ tried before Gogg, C. J. Flamfacer (Serjeant)—according to the immortal reporter of good things—stated his case on behalf of the plaintiff so powerfully, that before he could get to the peroration, said plaintiff’s hair stood on end, tears rolled down his cheeks in horror and pity at his own wrongs, and he exclaimed, while wringing his pocket-handkerchief, “Good gracious! That villain Tongs! What a terrific box on my ear it must have been! To think that a man may be almost murdered without knowing it!”

I am Hammer, and you, Mr. Rollin, are Tongs. Your book made my ears to tingle quite as sharply as if you had actually boxed them. I must, however, in justice to the little hair that Time has left me, positively state that, even while I was perusing your most powerful passages, it showed no propensity for the perpendicular. I felt very nervous for all that; for still—although I could hardly believe that a French gentleman residing for a few months in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, London, could possibly obtain a thorough knowledge, either from study or personal observation, of the political, legislative, agricultural, agrarian, prelatical, judicial, colonial, commercial, manufacturing, social, and educational systems and condition of this empire—yet, from the unqualified manner in which you deliver yourself upon all these branches, I cannot choose but think that your pages must, like certain fictions, be at least founded on _some_ fact; that to have concocted your volume—of smoke—there must be some fire somewhere. Or is it only the smell of it?

For, Sir, even an alarm of fire is unpleasant; and, to an elderly gentleman with a very small stake in the country (prudently inserted in the three per cent. consols), reading of the dreadful things which you say are to happen to one’s own native land is exceedingly uncomfortable, especially at night; when “in silence and in gloom” one broods over one’s miseries, personal and national; when, in fact, your or any one else’s _bête noire_ is apt to get polished off with a few extra touches of blacking. Bless me! when I put my candle out the other night, and thought of your portrait of Britannia, I quite shook; and when I lay down I could almost fancy her shadow on the wall. Even now I see her looking uncommonly sickly, in spite of the invigorating properties of the waves she so constantly “rules;” the trident and shield—her “supporters” for ages—can hardly keep her up. Grief, and forebodings of the famine which you promise, has made her dwindle down from Great to Little Britain. The British Lion at her feet is in the last stage of consumption; in such a shocking state of collapse, that he will soon be in a condition to jump out of his skin; but you do not point out the Ass who is to jump into it.

Fortunately for my peace I found, on reading a little further, that this is not Britannia as she is, but Britannia seen by you, “as in a glass darkly”—as she is to be—when some more of her blood has been sucked by a phlebotomising Oligarchy and State-pensionary; by an ogreish Cotton lordocracy; by a sanguinary East India Company, whose “atrocious greediness caused ten millions of Indians to perish in a month;” by the servile Parsonocracy, who “read their sermons, in order that the priest may be able to place his discourse before the magistrate, if he should be suspected of having preached anything contrary to law;” by the Landlords, whose oppressions cause labourers to kill one another “to get a premium upon death;” and by a variety of other national leeches, which your imagination presents to our view with the distinctness of the monsters in a drop of Thames water seen through a solar microscope.

But, Sir, as Mr. Hammer said, “to think that a man may be almost murdered without knowing it!” and so, _I_ say, (one trial of your book will prove the fact) may a whole parish—such as Tooting—or an entire country—such as England. If it had not been for your book I should not have had the remotest notion that “English society is about to fall with a fearful crash.” Society at large, so far as I can observe it (at Tooting, and elsewhere), seems to be quite innocent of its impending fate; and if one may judge from appearances (but then you say, we may not),—we are rather better off than usual just now: indeed, when you paint Britannia as she is at the present writing, she makes a rather fat and jolly portrait than otherwise. In your “Exposition” (for 1850) you say: “The problem is not to discover whether England is great, but whether her greatness can endure.” In admitting, in the handsomest manner possible, that England _is_ great, you go on to say, that “Great Britain, which is only two hundred leagues long, and whose soil is far from equal to that of Aragon or Lombardy, draws every year from its agriculture, by a skilful cultivation and the breeding of animals, a revenue which amounts to more than three billions six hundred millions francs, and this revenue of the mother-country is almost doubled by the value of similar produce in its colonies and dependencies. Her industry, her commerce, and her manufactures, create a property superior to the primal land-productions, and all owing to her inexhaustible mines, her natural wealth, and her admirable system of circulation by fourscore and six canals, and seventy lines of railway. The total revenue of England then amounts to upwards of twelve billion francs. Her power amongst the nations is manifest by the number and greatness of her fleets and of her domains. In Europe she possesses, besides her neighbour-islets, Heligoland, Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Islands; in Asia, she holds British Hindostan with its tributaries, Ceylon, and her compulsory allies of the Punjab and of Scinde—that is to say, almost a world; in Africa she claims Sierra Leone with its dependencies, the Isle of France, Seychelles, Fernandez Po, the Cape of Good Hope and Saint Helena; in America, she possesses Upper and Lower Canada, Cape Breton, the Lesser Antilles, the Bermudas, Newfoundland, Lucays, Jamaica, Dominica, Guiana, the Bay of Honduras, and Prince Edward’s Island; lastly, in Oceania, she has Van Dieman’s Land, Norfolk Island, Nova Scotia, Southern Australia; and these hundred nations make up for her more that one hundred and fifty millions of subjects, including the twenty-seven to twenty-eight millions of the three mother kingdoms. As to her mercantile marine, two details will suffice to make it known; she has about thirty thousand sailing-vessels and steamers, without counting her eight thousand colonial ships; and in one year she exports six or seven hundred millions of cotton stuffs, which makes for a single detail an account beyond the sum total of all the manufacturing exportation of France.”

But now for the plague spot! All this territory, and power, and commercial activity is, you say, our ruin; all this wealth is precisely our pauperism; all this happiness is our misery. What Montesquieu says, and you Mr. Ledru Rollin indorse with your unerring imprimatur, _must_ be true:—“The fortune of maritime empires cannot be long, for they only reign by the oppression of the nations, and while they extend themselves abroad, they are undermining themselves within.”

Upon my word, Mr. Rollin, this looks very likely: and when you see your neighbours gaily promenading Regent Street; when you hear of the “Lion of Waterloo” (at whom you are so obliging as to say in your Preface, you have no wish “to fire a spent ball”) giving his usual anniversary dinner to the usual number of guests, and with his usual activity stepping off afterwards to a ball; when you are told that a hundred thousand Londoners can afford to enjoy themselves at Epsom Races; and that throughout the country there is just now more enjoyment and less grumbling than there has been for years, I can quite understand that your horror at the innocent disregard thus evinced at the tremendous “blow up” that is coming, must be infinitely more real than that of Serjeant Flamfacer. “Alas!” you exclaim with that “profound emotion” with which your countrymen are so often afflicted; “Government returns inform me that during the past year English pauperism has decreased eleven per cent., and that the present demand for labour in the manufacturing districts nearly equals the supply? The culminating point is reached; destruction must follow!”

Heavens! Mr. Rollin, I tremble with you. The plethora of prosperity increases, and will burst the sooner! We, eating, drinking, contented, trafficking, stupid, revolution-hating, spiritless, English people, “are undermining ourselves within.” We are gorging ourselves with National prosperity to bring on a National dyspepsia, and will soon fall asleep under the influence of a national nightmare! Horrible! the more so because

“Alas! unconscious of their fate,
The little victims play.”

Now, Sir, I wish to ask you calmly and candidly, if there _is_ any fire at the bottom of your volumes of smoke? or have you read our records, and seen our country through a flaming pair of Red Spectacles, that has converted everything within their range into Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones?

Indeed I hope it is so; for though I am very much obliged to you for putting us on our guard, you have made me very miserable. This is the worst shock of all. With my belief in “what is going to happen,” I have led but a dog-life of it, ever since I retired from that cat-and-dog life, the Law. First, the Reform Bill was to ruin us out of hand; then, the farmers threatened us with what was going to happen in consequence of Free Trade; and that was bad enough, for it was starvation—no less. What was going to happen if the Navigation Laws were repealed, I dare not recall. Now we are to be swept off the face of the earth if we allow letters to be sorted on a Sunday. But these are comparative trifles to what you, Mr. R., assert is going to happen, whatever we do or don’t do. However, I am resolved on one thing—_I_ won’t be in at the death, or rather _with_ the death. I shall pull up my little stake in Capel Court, and retire to some quiet corner of the world, such as the Faubourg St. Antoine, the foot of Mount Vesuvius, or Chinese Tartary.

Yours truly,
CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE.

Paradise Row, Tooting.

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Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS.

_Price 2d., Stamped 3d._,

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OF

CURRENT EVENTS.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in 1^{st}).