Chapter VII: Foreword (6)

Locke compares the mind of a new-born infant to a sheet of white paper not yet written on. It must be confessed that, whoever wrote upon Mr. A----n's mind has left _large margins._

TO HIS BROTHER [Sidenote: _Keats_]

The thought of your little girl puts me in mind of a thing I heard Mr. Lamb say. A child in arms was passing by his chair towards the mother in the nurse's arms. Lamb took hold of the long-clothes, saying, "Where, God bless me, where does it leave off?"

LAMB'S TASK [Sidenote: _Charles Lamb_]

In those days every morning paper, as an essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke--and it was thought pretty high too--was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but, above all, _dress_, furnished the material. The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.

A fashion of _flesh_-, or rather _pink_-coloured hose for the ladies, luckily coming in at this juncture, when we were on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S----'s paper, established our reputation in that line. We were pronounced a "capital hand." Oh the conceits which we varied upon _red_ in all its prismatic differences! from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea to the flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper," while, like a skilful posture-maker, balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either"; a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the play, still putting off his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good man!" But, above all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astræ--_ultima Coelestum terras reliquit_--we pronounced--in reference to the stockings still--that _Modesty taking her final leave of Mortals, her last blush was visible in her ascent to the Heavens by the tract of the glowing instep._ This might be called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed tolerable writing in those days.

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away; as did the transient mode which had so favoured us. The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought, so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single meanings.

Somebody has said that, to swallow six cross-buns daily consecutively for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder execution. "Man goeth forth to his work until the evening"--from a reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes--our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese--was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man whose occasions call him up so preposterously has to wait for his breakfast.

Oh those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed--(for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising--we liked a parting up at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us--we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold washy, bloodless--we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague--we were right toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they),--but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing Bohea in the distance--to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise"; and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber-door, to be a terror to all such unreasonable rest-breakers in future--

"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on to say--

Revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras

--and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice prepended--there was the "labour," there the "work."

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them--when the mountain must go to Mahomet--

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon--_the Public_--like him in Bel's temple--must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.

MISS PATE [Sidenote: _M.M. Betham_]

A Miss Pate (when he heard of her, he asked if she was any relation to Mr. John _Head_, of Ipswich) was at a party, and he said, on hearing her name, "Miss Pate I hate." "You are the first person who ever told me so, however," said she. "Oh! I mean nothing by it. If it had been Miss Dove, I should have said, Miss Dove I love, or Miss Pike I like." ... Another, who was very much marked with the small-pox, looked as if the devil had ridden roughshod over her face. I saw him talking to her afterwards with great apparent interest, and noticed it, saying, "I thought he had not liked her." His reply was, "I like her internals very well."

THE LOST ORNAMENT [Sidenote: _Washington Allston_]

Lamb was present when a naval officer was giving an account of an action which he had been in, and, to illustrate the carelessness and disregard of life at such times, said that a sailor had both his legs shot off, and as his shipmates were carrying him below, another shot came and took off his arms; they, thinking he was pretty much used up, though life was still in him, threw him out of a port. "Shame, d----d shame," stuttered our Lamb, "he m-m-might have l-lived to have been an a-a-ornament to Society!"

YOUR HAT, SIR [Sidenote: _Crabb Robinson_]

I dined at Lamb's, and then walked with him to Highgate, self-invited. There we found a large party. Mr. and Mrs. Green, the Aderses, Irving, Collins, R.A., a Mr. Taylor, a young man of talents in the Colonial Office, Basil Montagu, a Mr. Chance, and one or two others. It was a _rich_ evening. Coleridge talked his best, and it appeared better because he and Irving supported the same doctrines. His superiority was striking. The idea dwelt on was the higher character of the internal evidence of Christianity, as addressed to our immediate consciousness of our own wants and the necessity of a religion and a revelation. In a style not to me clear or intelligible, Irving and Coleridge both declaimed. The _advocatus diaboli_ for the evening was Mr. Taylor, who, in a way very creditable to his manners as a gentleman, but with little more than verbal cleverness, and an ordinary logic, and the confidence of a young man who has no suspicion of his own deficiencies, affirmed that those evidences which the Christian thinks he finds in his internal convictions, the Mahometan also thinks he has; and he affirmed that Mahomet had improved the condition of mankind. Lamb asked him whether he came in a turban or a hat.

ELIA'S TAIL [Sidenote: _J.B._]

When I first knew Charles Lamb, I ventured, one evening, to say something that I intended should pass for wit. "Ha! very well; very well, indeed!" said he. "Ben Jonson has said worse things" (I brightened up, but he went stammering on to the end of the sentence)--"and--and--and _better_!" A pinch of snuff concluded this compliment, which put a stop to my wit for the evening. I related the thing to Hazlitt, afterwards, who laughed. "Aye," said he, "you are never sure of him till he gets to the end. His jokes would be the sharpest things in the world, but that they are blunted by his good-nature. He wants malice--which is a pity." "But," said I, "his words at first seemed so--" "Oh! as for that," replied Hazlitt, "his sayings are generally like women's letters: all the pith is in the postscript."

CHARLES AND HIS SISTER [Sidenote: _Mrs. Balmanno_]

Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout, and comely maiden lady of middle age. Dressed with quaker-like simplicity in dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, but seldom laughed, partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly nature.

Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. Even when apparently engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high spirits, sauntering about the room, with his hands crossed behind his back, conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him, but evidently mentally acknowledging Miss Kelly to be the _rara avis_ of his thoughts, by the great attention he paid to every word she uttered. Truly pleasant it must have been to her, even though accustomed to see people listen breathless with admiration while she spoke, to find her words have so much charm for such a man as Charles Lamb.

He appeared to enjoy himself greatly, much to the gratification of Mrs. Hood, who often interchanged happy glances with Miss Lamb, who nodded approvingly. He spoke much--with emphasis and hurry of words, sorely impeded by the stammering utterance which in him was not unattractive. Miss Kelly (charming, natural Miss Kelly, who has drawn from her audiences more heart-felt tears and smiles than perhaps any other English actress), with quiet good-humour listened and laughed at the witty sallies of her host and his gifted friend, seeming as little an actress as it is possible to conceive. Once, however, when some allusion was made to a comic scene in a new play then just brought out, wherein she had performed to the life the character of a low-bred lady's-maid passing herself off as her mistress, Miss Kelly arose, and with a kind of resistless ardour repeated a few sentences so inimitably that everybody laughed as much as if the real lady's-maid, and not the actress, had been before them; while she who had so well personated the part quietly resumed her seat without the least sign of merriment, as grave as possible. Most striking had been the transition from the calm, lady-like person, to the gay, loquacious soubrette; and not less so the sudden extinction of vivacity and resumption of well-bred decorum. This little scene for a few moments charmed everybody out of themselves, and gave a new impetus to conversation....

Mr. Lamb oddly walked all round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood that he should by that means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve, and take the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster-salad, observing _that_ was the thing. On her asking him to take some roast fowl, he assented. "What part shall I help you to, Mr. Lamb?" "Back," said he quickly; "I always prefer the back." My husband laid down his knife and fork, and, looking upwards, exclaimed: "By heavens! I could not have believed it, if anybody else had sworn it." "Believed what?" said kind Mrs. Hood, anxiously, colouring to the temples, and fancying there was something amiss in the piece he had been helped to. "Believe what? why, madam, that Charles Lamb was a backbiter?" Hood gave one of his short, quick laughs, gone almost ere it had come, whilst Lamb went off into a loud fit of mirth, exclaiming: "Now, that's devilish good! I'll sup with you to-morrow night." This eccentric flight made everybody very merry, and amidst a most amusing mixture of wit and humour, sense and nonsense, we feasted merrily, amidst jocose health-drinking, sentiments, speeches, and songs.

Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song, "If you go to France, be sure you learn the lingo," his pensive manner and feeble voice making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a string of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood frequently occurred, we ladies thought it was in praise of her. The delivery of his speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman who sat next to me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me that it was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster-salad!

IN A COACH [Sidenote: _Charles Lamb_]

The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell them. We had, then, in the coach a rather talkative gentleman, but very civil, all the way, and took up a servant-maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress.... The _former_ engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which, being merely problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my totally un-engineer-like faculties. But when, somewhere about Stanstead, he put an unfortunate question tome as to the "probability of its turning out a good turnip season," and when I, who am still less of an agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a potato-ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola a-laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquillity for the only moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met with a _well-informed passenger_, which is an accident so desirable in a stage coach. We were rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way.

KING DAVID AND THE GARDENER [Sidenote: _Anon._]

Vrom readin' Scripture well Oi knows
Pzalmist 'e had na rest vrom voes;
Vor po-or ole Dave gre-at pits they'd delve,
An' then, dam loons, vail in theirselve.
This iz ma readin' ov the Book,
An' to ma self do mak' me look;
Wi' dew respeck, Oi veel loike him,
Tho' later born, and deal more slim.

Vor ev'ry day, wi' buzz an' hum,
Into ma garden voes do come;
The waspies starm ma gabled wall
An' into t' trenches t' grub do crawl.
The blackbird, sparrer, tit, an' thrush
Do commandeer each curran' bush,
While slugs off lettuce take their smack,
And maggots turn the celery black.

Wi' greenfly zlimin' roun' ma roses,
An' earwigs pokin' be-astly noses
In dahlias vit vor virst at Show,
Oi ha' ma troubles, as yew may know;
But Dave did circumwent the Devil,
An' wi' ma insecks Oi get level,
Lard! wi' what piety Oi tend 'em,
An' wi' ma boot rejoicin' end 'em!

Zo, maister gets his dish o' peas,
An' mum her roses, if yew please,
But, lawks, they little knaw, Oi 'speck,
What Oi've laid out in intelleck;
But Dave got little praise vrom man,
An' as Oi ta-ake ma wat'rin'-can,
Oi zays, zays Oi, next world wull show
Who wuz tip-tappers here below.

THE CALAIS NIGHT-BOAT [Sidenote: _Charles Dickens_]

It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais it was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness--who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach--who had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a look-out for it, I recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know--and I can bear--its worst behaviour.

Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eye-sight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit and you think you are there--roll, roar, wash!--Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be specially commended to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or two to the right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about for it!

Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much-esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough, without the officious Warden's interference?

As I wait here on board the night-packet, for the South-Eastern train to come down with the mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this slippery deck. The many gas-eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third.

A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which they have no control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated--rumble, hum, scream, roar--and establish an immense family washing-day at each paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending not to expect it. I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is to commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself has gone to bed before we are off! What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature near me--whom I only know to be a fellow-creature because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or bulkhead--clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there an analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies, "Stand by!" "Stand by, below!" "Half a turn ahead!" "Half a turn ahead!" "Half speed!" "Half speed!" "Port!" "Port!" "Steady!" "Steady!" "Go on!" "Go on!"

A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers--these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them up. Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes no good.

It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that hateful town. I have done so before, many times, but that is past. Let me register a vow. Implacable animosity to Calais everm--that was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining roar.

The wind blows stiffly from the nor'-east, the sea runs high, we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the laundress; but, for my own uncommercial part, I cannot pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet, faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with Irish melodies. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," is the particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest expression. Now and then I raise my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don't mind it) and notice that I am a whirling shuttle-cock between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English coast; but I don't notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais. Then I go on again, "Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-r beyond"--I am particularly proud of my execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be--"Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond"--another awkward one here, and the fellow creature with the umbrella down and picked up--"Her spa-a-arkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump roar wash white wand."

As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open the furnace-doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for-ever-extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is _their_ gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel-roar of protest at every violent roll becomes the regular blast of the high-pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended the Mississippi when the American Civil War was not, and when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so become suggestive of Franconi's Circus in Paris, where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to the selfsame time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first went a-seafaring and near foundering (what a terrific sound that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this, I must ask her (who _was_ she, I wonder!) for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to stray, so lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow creatures with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight, they--what a tremendous one!--love honour and virtue more: For though they love stewards with a bull's-eye bright, they'll trouble you for your ticket, sir--rough passage to-night!

I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent stranger, pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin, asked me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a very agreeable place indeed--rather hilly than otherwise.

So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly--though still I seem to have been on board a week--that I am bumped, rolled, gurgled, washed, and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle. When blest for ever is she who relied On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy timbers--covered with green hair as if it were the mermaid's favourite combing-place--where one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp; but we go steaming up the harbour to the Railway-station Quay. And, as we go, the sea washes in and out among the piles and planks with dead, heavy beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come struggling against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of the dentist's hands. And now we all know for the first time how wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of hearts!

"Hôtel Dessin!" (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of that best of inns). "Hôtel Meurice!" "Hôtel de France!" "Hôtel de Calais!" "The Royal Hotel, sir, Anglaishe 'ouse!" "You going to Parry, sir?" "Your baggage, registair free, sir?" Bless ye, my Touters; bless ye, my commissionaires; bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of military form, who are always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never see you get! Bless ye, my Custom-house officers in green and grey; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my change of linen a peculiar shake-up, as if it were a measure of chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier, except that, when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern my dearest brother and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the names! May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black boat-surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat surmounting his round, smiling, patient face! Let us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours _à tout jamais_--for the whole of ever.

Calais up and doing at the railway-station, and Calais down and dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of "an ancient and fish-like smell" about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais represented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons with a monomania for changing money--though I never shall be able to understand, in my present state of existence, how they live by it; but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency question; Calais _en gros_ and Calais _en détail_, forgive one who has deeply wronged you,--I was not fully aware of it on the other side, but I meant Dover.

Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers. Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest. The train is light to-night, and I share my compartment with but two fellow-travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they don't keep "London time" on a French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a young priest, with a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the network above his head, where he advances twittering to his front wires, and seems to address me in an electioneering manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have it all to ourselves....

LETTERS [Sidenote: _Walter Bagehot_]

The complete letter-writer is now an unknown animal. In the last century, when communications were difficult, and epistles rare, there were a great many valuable people who devoted a good deal of time to writing elaborate letters. You wrote letters to a man whom you knew nineteen years and a half ago, and told him what you had for dinner, and what your second cousin said, and how the crops got on. Every detail of life was described and dwelt on, and improved. The art of writing, at least of writing easily, was comparatively rare, which kept the number of such compositions within narrow limits. Sir Walter Scott says he knew a man who remembered that the London post-bag once came to Edinburgh with only one letter in it. One can fancy the solemn, conscientious elaborateness with which a person would write, with the notion that his letter would have a whole coach and a whole bag to itself, and travel two hundred miles alone, the exclusive object of a red guard's care. The only thing like it now--the deferential minuteness with which one public office writes to another, conscious that the letter will travel on her Majesty's service three doors down the passage--sinks by comparison into cursory brevity.

No administrative reform will be able to bring even the official mind of these days into the grave inch-an-hour conscientiousness with which a confidential correspondent of a century ago related the growth of apples, the manufacture of jams, the appearance of flirtations, and other such-like things. All the ordinary incidents of an easy life were made the most of; a party was epistolary capital, a race a mine of wealth. So deeply sentimental was this intercourse that it was much argued whether the affections were created for the sake of ink, or ink for the sake of the affections. Thus it continued for many years, and the fruits thereof are written in the volumes of family papers, which daily appear, are prized as "materials for the historian," and consigned, as the case may be, to posterity or oblivion. All this has now passed away. Mr. Rowland Hill is entitled to the credit, not only of introducing stamps, but also of destroying letters.

THE TRAGEDY [Sidenote: _Ingoldsby_]

Quæque ipse miserrima vidi.--_Virgil_

Catherine of Cleves was a Lady of rank,
She had lands and fine houses, and cash in the bank;
She had jewels and rings, And a thousand smart things;
Was lovely and young, With a rather sharp tongue,
And she wedded a Noble of high degree
With the star of the order of _St. Esprit_;
But the Duke de Guise Was, by many degrees,
Her senior, and not very easy to please;
He'd a sneer on his lip, and a scowl with his eye,
And a frown on his brow,--and he look'd like a Guy,--
So she took to intriguing With Monsieur St. Megrin,
A young man of fashion, and figure, and worth,
But with no great pretensions to fortune or birth;
He would sing, fence, and dance
With the best man in France,
And took his rappee with genteel _nonchalance_;
He smiled, and he flattered, and flirted with ease,
And was very superior to Monseigneur de Guise.
Now Monsieur St. Megrin was curious to know
If the lady approved of his passion or no;
So without more ado, He put on his _surtout_,
And went to a man with a beard like a Jew,
One Signor Ruggieri, A cunning man near, he
Could conjure, tell fortunes, and calculate tides,
Perform tricks on the cards, and Heaven knows what besides,
Bring back a stray'd cow, silver ladle, or spoon,
And was thought to be thick with the Man in the Moon.
The Sage took his stand With his wand in his hand,
Drew a circle, then gave the dread word of command,
Saying solemnly--"_Presto!--Hey, quick!--Cock-a-lorum!_"
When the Duchess immediately popp'd up before 'em.

Just then a conjunction of Venus and Mars,
Or something peculiar above in the stars,
Attracted the notice of Signor Ruggieri,
Who "bolted," and left him alone with his deary.--
Monsieur St. Megrin went down on his knees,
And the Duchess shed tears large as marrow-fat peas,
When,--fancy the shock,--a loud double-knock,
Made the lady cry, "Get up, you fool!--there's De Guise!"--
'Twas his Grace, sure enough; So Monsieur, looking bluff,
Strutted by, with his hat on, and fingering his ruff,
While, unseen by either, away flew the dame
Through the opposite key-hole, the same way she came;
But, alack! and alas! A mishap came to pass,
In her hurry she, somehow or other, let fall
A new silk _bandana_ she'd worn as a shawl;
She used it for drying Her bright eyes while crying,
Ane blowing her nose, as her beau talk'd of dying!

Now the Duke, who had seen it so lately adorn her,
And he knew the great C with the Crown in the corner,
The instant he spied it, smoked something amiss,
And said, with some energy, "D---- it! what's this?"
He went home in a fume, And bounced into her room,
Crying, "So, Ma'am, I find I've some cause to be jealous!
Look here!--here's a proof you run after the fellows!
--Now take up that pen,--if it's bad choose a better,--
And write, as I dictate, this moment a letter
To Monsieur--you know who!" The lady look'd blue;
But replied with much firmness--"Hang me if I do!"
De Guise grasped her wrist With his great bony fist,
And pinched it, and gave it so painful a twist,
That his hard gauntlet the flesh went an inch in,--
She did not mind death, but she could not stand pinching;
So she sat down and wrote This polite little note:--

"Dear Mister St. Megrin, The Chiefs of the League in
Our house mean to dine This evening at nine;
I shall, soon after ten, Slip away from the men,
And you'll find me upstairs in the drawing-room then;
Come up the back way, or those impudent thieves
Of servants will see you; Yours
CATHERINE OF CLEVES."

She directed and sealed it, all pale as a ghost,
And De Guise put it into the Twopenny Post.
St. Megrin had almost jumped out of his skin
For joy that day when the post came in;
He read the note through Then began it anew,
And thought it almost too good news to be true.--
He clapp'd on his hat, And a hood over that,
With a cloak to disguise him, and make him look fat;
So great his impatience, from half after Four,
He was waiting till Ten at De Guise's backdoor.
When he heard the great clock of St. Genevieve chime,
He ran up the back staircase six steps at a time,
He had scarce made his bow, He hardly knew how,
When alas! and alack! There was no getting back,
For the drawing-room door was bang'd to with a whack;--

In vain he applied To the handle and tried,
Somebody or other had locked it outside!
And the Duchess in agony mourn'd her mishap:
"We are caught like a couple of rats in a trap."

Now the Duchess's page, About twelve years of age,
For so little a boy was remarkably sage;
And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement,
Popp'd the gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement.
But all would not do,--Though St. Megrin got through
The window,--below stood De Guise and his crew.
And though never man was more brave than St. Megrin,
Yet fighting a score is extremely fatiguing;
He thrust _carte_ and _tierce_ Uncommonly fierce,
But not Beelzebub's self could their cuirasses pierce:
While his doublet and hose, Being holiday clothes,
Were soon cut through and through from his knees to his nose.
Still an old crooked sixpence the Conjurer gave him,
From pistol and sword was sufficient to save him,
But, when beat on his knees, That confounded De Guise
Came behind with the "fogle" that caused all this breeze,
Whipp'd it tight round his neck, and, when backward he'd jerk'd him,
The rest of the rascals jump'd on him and Burked him.
The poor little page, too, himself got no quarter, but
Was served the same way, And was found the next day
With his heels in the air, and his head in the water-butt;

Catherine of Cleves Roar'd "Murder!" and "Thieves!"
From the window above While they murder'd her love;
Till, finding the rogues had accomplish'd his slaughter,
She drank Prussic acid without any water,
And died like a Duke-and-a-Duchess's daughter!

CHATTER OF A DILETTANTE [Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

The people are good-humoured here and easy; and, what makes me pleased with them, they are pleased with me. One loves to find people who care for one, when they can have no view in it.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

As to "Hosier's Ghost," I think it very easy, and consequently pretty; but, from the ease, should never have guessed it Glover's. I delight in your, "the patriots cry it up, and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up and down."

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

There is a little book coming out that will amuse you. It is a new edition of Isaac Walton's "Complete Angler," full of anecdotes and historic notes. It is published by Mr. Hawkins, a very worthy gentleman in my neighbourhood, but who, I could wish, did not think angling so very _innocent_ an amusement. We cannot live without destroying animals, but shall we torture them for our sport--sport in their destruction? I met a rough officer at his house t'other day, who said he knew such a person was turning Methodist; for, in the middle of conversation, he rose and opened the window to let out a moth. I told him I did not know that the Methodists had any principle so good, and that I, who am certainly not on the point of becoming one, always did so too. One of the bravest and best men I ever knew, Sir Charles Wager, I have often heard declare he never killed a fly willingly. It is a comfortable reflection to me, that all the victories of last year have been gained since the suppression of the Bear Garden and prize-fighting; as it is plain, and nothing else would have made it so, that our valour did not singly and solely depend upon these two Universities. Adieu!

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Can we easily leave the remains of such a year as this? It is still all gold. I have not dined or gone to bed by a fire till the day before yesterday. Instead of the glorious and ever-memorable year 1759, as the newspapers call it, I call it this ever-warm and victorious year. We have not had more conquest than fine weather; one would think we had plundered East and West Indies of sunshine. Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories. I believe it will require ten votes of the House of Commons before people will believe it is the Duke of Newcastle that has done this, and not Mr. Pitt. One thing is very fatiguing--all the world is made knights or generals. Adieu! I don't know a word of news less than the conquest of America. Adieu! yours ever.

P.S.--You shall hear from me again if we take Mexico or China before Christmas.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

You are so thoughtless about your dress that I cannot help giving you a little warning against your return. Remember, everybody that comes from abroad is _censé_ to come from France, and whatever they wear at their first reappearance immediately grows the fashion. Now if, as is very likely, you should through inadvertence change hats with a master of a Dutch smack, Offley will be upon the watch, will conclude you took your pattern from M. de Bareil, and in a week's time we shall all be equipped like Dutch skippers. You see I speak very disinterestedly; for, as I never wear a hat myself, it is indifferent to me what sort of hat I don't wear.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Lord Frederick Cavendish is returned from France. He confirms and adds to the amiable accounts we have received of the Duc d'Aiguillon's behaviour to our prisoners. You yourself, the pattern of attentions and tenderness, could not refine on what he has done both in good-nature and good-breeding: he even forbad any ringing of bells or rejoicings wherever they passed--but how your representative blood will curdle when you hear of the absurdity of one of your countrymen: the night after the massacre at St. Cas, the Duc d'Aiguillon gave a magnificent supper of eighty covers to our prisoners--a Colonel Lambert got up at the bottom of the table, and, asking for a bumper, called out to the Duc, "My Lord Duke, here's the Roy de Franse!" You must put all the English you can crowd into the accent. _My Lord Duke_ was so confounded at this preposterous compliment, which it was impossible for him to return, that he absolutely sank back into his chair and could not utter a syllable: our own people did not seem to feel more.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Well! and so you think we are undone!--not at all; if folly and extravagance are symptoms of a nation's being at the height of their glory, as after-observers pretend that they are forerunners of its ruin, we never were in a more flourishing situation. My Lord Rockingham and my nephew Lord Orford have made a match of five hundred pounds, between five turkeys and five geese, to run from Norwich to London. Don't you believe in the transmigration of souls? And are you not convinced that this race is between Marquis Sardanapalus and Earl Heliogabalus? And don't you pity the poor Asiatics and Italians who comforted themselves, on their resurrection, with their being geese and turkeys?

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Here's another symptom of our glory! The Irish Speaker, Mr. Ponsonby, has been _reposing_ himself at _Newmarket_. George Selwyn, seeing him toss about bank-bills at the hazard-table, said, "How easily the Speaker passes the money-bills!"

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose passion is keeping an assembly, and inviting literally everybody to it. She goes to the drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsy, and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and to desire your company next Thursday.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the Irishman in the ship that was on fire--I am but a passenger! If I were not so indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton's geographical resolution of going to China, when Whiston told her the world would be burnt in three years. Have you any philosophy? Tell me what you think.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

If it was not too long to transcribe, I would send you an entertaining petition of the periwig-makers to the King, in which they complain that men will wear their own hair. Should one almost wonder if carpenters were to remonstrate that since the peace their trade decays, and that there is no demand for wooden legs? _Apropos_ my Lady Hertford's friend, Lady Harriot Vernon, has quarrelled with me for smiling at the enormous head-gear of her daughter, Lady Grosvenor. She came one night to Northumberland House with such display of friz that it literally spread beyond her shoulders. I happened to say it looked as if her parents had stinted her in hair before marriage, and that she had determined to indulge her fancy now. This, among ten thousand things said by all the world, was reported to Lady Harriot, and has occasioned my disgrace. As she never found fault with anybody herself, I excuse her. You will be less surprised to hear that the Duchess of Queensberry has not yet done dressing herself marvellously: she was at Court on Sunday in a gown and petticoat of red flannel.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

You perceive that I have been presented. The Queen took great notice of me; none of the rest said a syllable. You are let into the King's bedchamber just as he has put on his shirt; he dresses and talks good-humouredly to a few, glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, and a-hunting. The good old Queen, who is like Lady Primrose in the face, is at her dressing-table, attended by two or three old ladies, who are languishing to be in Abraham's bosom, as the only man's bosom to whom they can hope for admittance.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Old age is no such uncomfortable thing, if one gives oneself up to it with a good grace, and don't drag it about

To midnight dances and the public show.

If one stays quietly in one's own house in the country, and cares for nothing but oneself, scolds one's servants, condemns everything that is new, and recollects how charming a thousand things were formerly that were very disagreeable, one gets over the winters very well, and the summers get over themselves.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]