Chapter VI: Introduction (5)

FOR fifteen years had the large wooden arm-chair of the Cat-and-Fiddle been consecrated to the use of Captain Bam. He would sit in it as it were a throne; and the customary guests of the hostelry paid him affectionate loyalty. He had won all hearts by his odd, kind ways; he had become the familiar oracle of all by his strange, yet wise sayings. He had, too, the rare and happy knack of so mixing his wisdom with his drollery, that when men laughed and swallowed his jest, they also, like children cheated with sweetened physic, swallowed something that in proper season would do them hearty good. And then there was a mystery about Captain Bam; and, at times, mystery is a sort of sauce to human character. It will now and then give a strange relish to what without it would be insipid commonplace. Not that it was so with Captain Bam. Certainly not; but the mystery was this. Fifteen years before—on a sharp, wintry afternoon—he crossed the threshold of the Cat-and-Fiddle. He carried a small leathern pack, and appeared otherwise appointed for a long pilgrimage. It was, we say, sharp, blighting weather, and Captain Bam called hastily for a mug of ale. “A mug of ale, and directly,” said Captain Bam, “for I can’t stop a minute.” The ale was brought, and the Captain hastily took a long draught thereof. He then drew his breath, and a smile as from the very roots of his heart broke over his face, and his eye strangely glimmered and twinkled upon the landlord. “_Eureka!_” said Captain Bam, and the host looked. “_Eureka!_” again exclaimed the Captain. “Take my pack,” he said, in a voice trembling with the fulness of satisfaction, “take my pack—I will rest here.”

And Captain Bam—his pack removed—sank in the large arm-chair. It seemed that his travels were ended; that, in a happy moment, he had accomplished the purpose of his life; that all his future existence would be an appointed state of rest. There was a little wooden nook—a sort of summer-house, at the end of a long garden—which, after few words, he hired of the host; whence every night he came to bestow his talk upon the guests of the Cat-and-Fiddle. “And how he would talk! Ha! better than a printed book.” Such was the oft avowed opinion of his gladdened hearers. And now the Captain is dead. His body lies in the churchyard of the market town, but two miles distant from the Cat-and-Fiddle. He had himself written his epitaph. It is a model of brief simplicity—enough to bring a blush into the cheek of many a stone-faced cherub. The epitaph has only one word: it is this: “BAM.”

The Captain died, but not his stories. No; there sat every night in the fireside corner of the Cat-and-Fiddle an ardent, passionate lover of the mind of Bam. He was a silent Pylades—a mute Pythias. He would sit and store himself with the syllables of Bam; then, like the bee, would he fly rejoicing home, and ere he slept hive the wisdom in enduring ink. That wisdom is now before us. The little vellum-bound book, its pages finely written as with the point of a needle, lies upon our desk. Upon the forehead of its title-page there are these words, “CAT-AND-FIDDLE MORALITIES”; touchingly recollectful of the genial haunt where their fine wisdom was audible.

There are—no, we will not tell the number of stories enshrined in this little book. But from time to time we will lay one before the reader, in what we believe to be the very words of Bam.

Yes: we will begin with the first. Here it is—the title beautifully engrossed, from which we guess the legal yearnings of the chronicler—here it is.

THE TALE OF A TIGER

Perhaps, my friends, you have never heard of a place called Singapore. Well, it’s no matter if you haven’t. It’s a long, long way east, where all sorts of shipping trade, and where all sorts of people live—Chinamen, Malays, Javanese, Bengalees, English, Dutch, and what not. Well, there was at Singapore a certain Dutch family in the pepper trade. They were named Vandervermin. They were all rich, cautious, heavy people; all save Jacob Vandervermin, who when a mere youth was left a poor orphan; left, as it might have seemed, on purpose to exercise the loving benevolence of prosperous uncles and aunts, and flourishing cousins. Alas! the whole body of the Vandervermins considered the poverty of Jacob as a blight—a family reproach; a nuisance that every one sought to put off upon the other. Jacob was the little toe of clay that disgraced the Vandervermin body of brass. And what made him worse, he was, for one with Dutch blood in his veins, a sprightly, frolicsome fellow. He was a beggar, and yet, with a stony hardness of heart—as Peter Vandervermin, the head of the family, declared—he would laugh and make offensive jokes upon his wretchedness. There are men who cannot understand a joke, simply because it is a thing that carries no worth with it in a ledger. Now Peter Vandervermin received a joke—especially the joke of a poor man—as an offence to his judgment and a sidelong sneer at his pocket. His wife, Drusilla Vandervermin, was of the same belief; and in this goodly creed man and wife had reared a numerous family. Jacob Vandervermin was the only outcast of the name who had ever disgraced it by a jest. It was plain he would come to no good; plain that he would die the death of a sinner. When one day his body was found mortally mangled by a tiger, not one of the Vandervermins was shocked or surprised. No: they had always said that something dreadful would happen to him, and it had come about. Jacob was buried—handsomely buried. Not one of the Vandervermins would have given him when alive the value of a coffin nail; but, being dead, the case was altered. The pride of the family was concerned in the funeral; hence, they respected themselves in their treatment of the deceased. Doubtless the ghost of a despised, ill-used relation is propitiated by a costly burial; and thus many a cousin or half-brother who has glided through life in a cobweb coat has superfine cloth upon his coffin.

I had this history of Jacob Vandervermin from a Chinaman. He repeated it to me with the eloquence and fervour of a believer. The Chinamen—at least the sort that live at Singapore—believe that when the tiger kills its first man, his ghost becomes its very slave; bound, ordered by fate to be a sort of jackal to the tiger; compelled by destiny to find the beast its dinners, even among his kith and kin. Hence, a tiger having carried off one of a family, not one of the survivors is from that moment safe. My Chinaman—he passed for a very learned fellow among his tribe—had the most intimate knowledge of the Vandervermin tragedy, which, after his own lofty fashion—painting his story as though he was painting his native porcelain—he related to me. I shall give it you in plain, cold English; for, my good friends all, be it known to you, I scorn the flourish of a traveller.

At the age of eighteen Jacob Vandervermin—having been knocked from uncle to uncle, the poor, passive family shuttlecock—fell at length into the counting-house of his richest, and oldest uncle, Peter. For two years did Jacob eat the bread of dependence; for with that bitter word was his bread always buttered—when he awakened the inextinguishable ire of his rich and orderly relative. Jacob had been guilty of a gross wickedness; in fact, of a crime, in the eyes of Peter Vandervermin, of the deepest dye. He had, in a moment of culpable neglect, let fall a large, unsightly blot of ink upon his uncle’s ledger. To the mind of Peter Vandervermin, his graceless nephew had thrown an indelible stain upon the white reputation of the family; at least Peter so avenged the fault, for without a word he seized a ruler that lay upon the desk, and with it smote the skull of the blotting offender. Jacob uttered no syllable; but instantly closing the ledger, and raising it with both his hands, he brought down the book of figures with such precise vehemence upon the head of his uncle, that the principal of the house of Vandervermin & Co. lay stunned and prostrate on the floor of his own temple—that is, of his own counting-house.

Now Jacob was not a man to give unnecessary trouble. He knew that if he remained it would only cause his uncle the pain and the perplexity of thrusting him from the house, and therefore, with scarcely a penny in his purse, did Jacob don his hat and cross his uncle’s threshold.

Vain was it for him to beg the aid of any of the name of Vandervermin. What, he—a poor creature, too, a pauper, a beggar, a—no, there was no worse word for him—he smite so good, so tender an uncle! No, he might starve, perish; it would be to share his wickedness to relieve him. It was a secret comfort to the Vandervermins that Jacob, in a momentary forgetfulness, had knocked down his uncle. That sacrilegious blow had for ever and for ever snapped the thousand fine ties that—despite of his previous errors—still held him to the family heart. Now he might perish; and the sooner the better. The only hope was that he would be drowned, or decently starved to death; that, for the sake of the family, he would not come to be hanged, however richly he deserved it.

For some weeks Jacob continued to live without money. Nothing, perhaps, so eminently shows the superiority, the crowning greatness of the human animal—a fact so well attested in many cases—as the power of man to subsist for a time without cash. He is a self-wonder while he does it; nevertheless, the miracle is performed. Tear a plant up by the roots—fling it aside—and it perishes. Shut a cat up in an empty, mouseless garret, and one by one her nine lives will go out. But take money from man—money, which is the root of evil, a root upon which man best flourishes, thereby proving the wickedness of his nature—and still, still he lives. Perhaps, somehow, the carnivorous, omnivorous animal becomes an air-plant, and so feeds upon the atmosphere about him. I have met with many air-plants of the sort. There is not a city, a town, without them. Such men get over days, and weeks, and months, and wonder how they have so successfully travelled thus far to the grave. They must rub their hands, that they have cheated what seemed to them a vital principle of nature.

And in this way Jacob Vandervermin lived. Every day seemed to him a difficult stepping-stone to get over, and yet the night saw him on the other side of it. But it is hard, miserable work, this keeping check against time by meals in the bowels: this incessant looking for butcher and baker as the allies against death, and wondering and trembling from day to day, lest they should not come to the rescue. My friends, this is hard, debasing work—I have known it.

One day, with thoughts heavy as lead upon his brain, did Jacob Vandervermin wander forth. He wandered and wandered, until, weary and spent, he sank upon the stump of a tree in a desolate place. “How—how,” cried Jacob, “shall I live another day!”

What a mole-eyed thing is man! How he crucifies himself with vain thoughts—how he stands upon tiptoe, straining his eyestrings, trying to look into the future, when at that moment the play is over—the show is done.

Jacob had scarcely uttered—“How shall I live another day!” when a tiger, a royal tiger—wherefore a cruel, treacherous, bloodthirsty beast should be called royal, I know not—when a royal tiger—fell like a thunderbolt upon him.

As a very large tom-cat snaps in its mouth a very small mouse, and looking statelily around seems to say—the mouse kicking all the while—“Pooh, pooh; why this is nothing!” so did the royal tiger look and speak, with Jacob Vandervermin writhing and screaming in its jaw. Well, tigers make short work of men. Almost as short as man himself sometimes makes of his fellow biped. Jacob Vandervermin—it was his luck to meet with a benevolent tiger; he was not played with before he was finally crunched—Jacob Vandervermin was soon dead.

And now, my friends, prepare for a wonder! Long before the tiger had picked the bones of Jacob—Jacob’s ghost stood, like a waiting footman, meekly behind the dining animal. There was Jacob in his wide, parasol-like hat of straw—his white jacket and trousers, in all things the same as when he lived, save that he was so transparent the eye could see through him: and then his look was so serene and passionless! It was odd to see how meekly the ghost looked on the while the tiger gnawed and crunched, and then with its rasping tongue cleaned the bones of the ghost’s late body. It was plain that the ghost cared no more for what he once thought the most valuable thing under heaven, than if it were an old threadbare coat, put aside for a glorious garment. Thus, after a few minutes, the ghost seated itself upon the stump of the tree—where, a short time before, it had sat in the flesh—and twiddling its thumbs, looked composedly about it. And when the tiger had finished Jacob—for the poor animal had not for a week before tasted so much as a field mouse—it stalked away to its den, the ghost of Jacob following it.

Gorged to the whiskers, almost for two whole days did the tiger sleep. And then rising and stretching itself—like a Mogul after a debauch—the tiger said, “Jacob!”

“What wills my lord?” answered Jacob’s ghost.

“Jacob, I must sup: something nice, now—something delicate. I don’t like to say it to your face, Jacob, but you haven’t quite agreed with me. I could fancy something mild and tender to-night.”

For a moment the ghost was thoughtful; then observed, “What says my lord to a nice sugar-cane salad?”

The tiger leered somewhat pityingly at the ghost; then saying “Look here!” opened its jaws. Even the ghost of Jacob shivered—like moonlight upon water—at the dreadful array of teeth. “Think you,” said the tiger, “such teeth were made for salads?”

“Tigers, I have heard, were not always flesh-eaters,” said the ghost, a little boldly.

“Almost for two whole days did the tiger sleep”
]

“Why, there is a story among tigers,” answered the ingenuous brute, “that at one time—but it’s a long time ago—we used to crop clover and trefoil and wild thyme, for all the world like foolish little lambs. And then suddenly—but how it came about I never heard—we took to eating the kids and lambkins that before we played with. How the change began, and who took to killing first, I know not: I have only heard it wasn’t tigers; and now, I only know that I must sup: that this very night I must have another Vandervermin. Have you any babies in the house?”

“None: I assure you, my lord, not one,” answered the ghost.

“That’s a pity,” said the tiger, “for I feel it, my stomach needs something tender and succulent. However, lead on: air and exercise may tone my vitals a little. Why do you tarry, sirrah?”—and the tiger growled like a stage tyrant—“you know your destiny; lead on.”

The ghost seemed to feel the truthful force of the rebuke, and immediately led the way. As they walked on, the ghost espied a remarkably fine ox, strayed from a neighbouring farm. “See, my lord, see!” cried the shadow.

“No, no,” said the tiger, a little contemptuously. “I can’t do that sort of thing now: having once tasted the goodness of man, I must go on with him. No, no; I thank my luck I now know what good living really is.” And then the tiger paused, and twisting its tail gracefully about its legs, as sometimes an ingenuous maid will twist about a gown flounce, the brute observed—“What a lovely night! How the air freshens one’s spirits! What a beautiful moon—and how the stars shine—and the airs whisper among the tamarind trees, like unseen fairies making love! You are sure, Jacob, there is not a baby in the house?”

“Nothing like it, my lord,” answered Jacob.

“What is the best you can promise me?” asked the tiger.

“To-night, I’m afraid nothing better than Drusilla, my aunt,” said the ghost. The tiger growled dubiously; and then said, “Well, we can but look at her. You know the safest way—so mind what you’re about.”

Cautiously, stealthily, goaded by fate, did the ghost of Jacob lead the tiger to the mansion of Peter Vandervermin. Leaping a low wall, they gained a garden, and proceeded along a winding walk, until they came to a pretty little summer pavilion, wherein sat aunt Drusilla, as was her wont, knitting, with a large Dutch pug at her feet.

“There’s your supper,” said Jacob, pointing to the withered old gentlewoman.

“Humph!” growled the tiger, and angrily twitched its tail—“humph! It’s against my stomach; I can’t do it.”

“What think you,” urged the ghost, “of the pug just for a snack?”

The tiger curled its whiskers with a look of disgust, and growling “dropsical,” turned supperless away. And all the next night did the tiger fast. But sweet is the sauce of hunger; for on the third evening the tiger rose and stretched itself, and its eyes glared with brightening flame as it said—“Come along, Jacob: I don’t know that the old woman will eat badly after all.”

Jacob again conducted the destroyer to the house. Again showed Drusilla, unconscious of her fate, knitting, knitting. There was a slight growl—a spring—an old woman’s scream—a yap, yap from the pug—and then the wall was leapt—and Peter Vandervermin was a widower.

I will not follow the tiger to its banquet. Suffice it to say, the tiger ate and slept. However, very ill and feverish did the tiger awake in the morning. “Jacob,” cried the tiger, “what’s the matter with me? Phew! I can hardly move.”

“Perhaps,” said Jacob, “my lord has just a stitch in his side.”

“No, no,” said the tiger, “I feel ’em now; it’s that abominable old woman’s knitting needles.”

“Every rose has its thorn, my lord,” said the ghost, joking as a ghost may be supposed to joke. “You never find a woman without pins and needles.”

“Jacob,” cried the tiger, “either you come of a very bad family, or, after all, man-eating is by no means so wholesome—however pleasant it may be—as a hearty, simple meal off a buffalo, a deer, or anything of that sort.”

“Then why, my lord,” urged the ghost, “why not return to the humbler diet?”

“That’s all very well, Jacob. Why don’t men—with red noses and no insides—turn from arrack and new rum, and drink only at the diamond spring? I begin to feel myself no better than a drunkard: yes, I fear I’m a lost tiger. It’s very nice—very delicious to eat a man at night—but it’s like what I’ve heard of drink—what a headache it leaves in the morning! Ha!” cried the beast, “I’m afraid I’m making quite a man of myself. Look at my tongue, Jacob; it’s as hard and as dry, you might grind an axe upon it. Oh, that dreadful old woman!”—and the tiger closed its heavy, bloodshot eyes, and tried to sleep.

Only three days past, and then the tiger leapt up, and licking itself all over—as though it was going out to an evening party, and wished to put the very best gloss upon its coat—the creature cried—“Come away, Jacob; I must have another Vandervermin.”

“Oh, my lord,” cried the ghost, “think what you’ll suffer in the morning.”

“_That_ for the morning,” cried the tiger, whisking its tail—“I tell you, Jacob, I intend to make a night of it. Slave, lead on.”

And thus for three months, conducted by the fate-enforced ghost, did the tiger continue to sup off Vandervermins. Uncles and aunts, cousins male and female, in all eight, had the tiger devoured, when one night the brute carried off the ninth and last victim in the person of Justus Vandervermin, lawyer and usurer. The tiger—strange to say—devoured every bit of him; but it was the brute’s last morsel; it never could digest him. Justus Vandervermin remained, like so much india-rubber, in the vitals of the tiger. Nothing could stir the lawyer.

“Jacob,” cried the brute, feeling its last hour approach. “I shall die, and your ghost will be at rest. I forgive you—but why—why didn’t you tell me that Justus was a lawyer?”

And with these words the tiger died, and the ghost of Jacob Vandervermin was instantly at peace.

* * * * *

“And if all this story isn’t true, Captain”—asked one of the Cat-and-Fiddle company—“what do you get out of it?”

“Why, true or not, this much,” answered Captain Bam; “never to neglect and ill-use a poor relation. For however low and helpless he may seem, the day may come when he shall have about him the strength of a tiger.”

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A GOSSIP AT RECULVERS

THE spirit of the Saxon seems still to linger along the shores of Kent. There is the air of antiquity about them; a something breathing of the olden day—an influence, surviving all the changes of time, all the vicissitudes of politic and social life. The genius of the Heptarchy comes closer upon us from the realm of shadows; the Wittenagemote is not a convocation of ghosts—not a venerable House of Mists; but a living, talking, voting Parliament. We feel a something old, strong, stubborn, hearty; a something for the intense meaning of which we have no other word than “English” rising about us from every rood of Kent. And wherefore this? England was not made piecemeal. Her foundations in the deep—could a sea of molten gold purchase the worth of her surrounding ocean?—are of the same age. The same sun has risen and set upon the whole island. Wherefore, then, is Kent predominant in the mind for qualities which the mind denies to other counties? Because it is still invested with the poetry of action. Because we feel that Kent was the cradle of the marrow and bone of England; because we still see, ay, as palpably as we behold yonder trail of ebon smoke—the broad black pennant of that mighty admiral, Steam—the sails of Cæsar threatening Kent, and Kent barbarians clustering on the shore, defying him. It is thus that the spirit of past deeds survives immortally, and works upon the future: it is thus we are indissolubly linked to the memories of the bygone day by the still active soul that once informed it.

How rich in thoughts—how fertile in fancies that quicken the brain and dally with the heart, is every footpace of the soil! Reader, be with us for a brief time at this beautiful village of Herne. The sky is sullen; and summer, like a fine yet froward wench, smiles now and then, now frowns the blacker for the passing brightness: nevertheless, summer in her worst mood cannot spoil the beautiful features of this demure, this antique village. It seems a very nest—warm and snug, and green—for human life; with the twilight haze of time about it, almost consecrating it from the aching hopes and feverish expectations of the present. Who would think that the bray and roar of multitudinous London sounded but some sixty miles away? The church stands peacefully, reverently, like some old visionary monk, his feet on earth—his thoughts with God. And the graves are all about; and things of peace and gentleness, like folded sheep, are gathered round it.

There is a stile which man might make the throne of solemn thought—his pregnant matter, the peasant bones that lie beneath. And on the other side, a park, teeming with beauty; with sward green as emeralds, and soft as a mole’s back; and trees, with centuries circulating in their gnarled massiveness.

But we must quit the churchyard, and turning to the right, we will stroll towards Reculvers. How rich the swelling meadows! How their green breasts heave with conceived fertility! And on this side corn-fields; the grain stalk thick as a reed; the crop level and compact as a green bank. And here, too, is a field of canary seed: of seed grown for London birds in London cages. The farmer shoots the sparrow—the little rustic scoundrel—that with felonious bill would carry away one grain sown for, made sacred to, Portman Square canary! We might, perhaps, find a higher parallel to this did we look with curious eyes about us. Nevertheless, bumpkin sparrow has his world of air to range in; his free loves; and for his nest his ivied wall or hawthorn bush. These, say the worst, are a happy set-off even against a gilt-wired cage; sand like diamond dust; unfailing seed, and sugar from even the sweeter lips of lady mistress. Powder and small shot may come upon the sparrow like apoplexy upon an alderman, with the unbolted morsel in its gullet; yet, consider—hath the canary no danger to encounter? Doth not prosperity keep a cat?

Well, this idle gossip has brought us within a short distance of Reculvers. Here—so goes the hoary legend—Augustine impressed the first Christian foot upon the English shore, sent hither by good Pope Gregory; no less good that, if the same legend be true, he had a subtle sense of a joke. Christianity, unless historians say what is not, owes somewhat of its introduction into heathen England to a pun. The story is so old that there is not a schoolmaster’s dog throughout merry Britain that could not bark it. Nevertheless, we will indicate our moral courage by repeating it. Our ink turns red with blushes at the thought—no matter—for once we will write in our blushes.

“Sugar from even the sweeter lips of lady mistress”
]

Pope Gregory, seeing some white-haired, pink-cheeked boys for sale in the Roman slave-market, asked who they were? _Sunt Angli_—they are English, was the response. _Non sunt Angli_—_sed Angeli_; they are not English, but angels, was the Papal playfulness. His Holiness then inquired from what part of England. _Deirii_, they are Deirians, was the answer. Whereupon the pope, following up his vein of pleasantry, said, _Non Deirii, sed De ira_—not Deirians, but from the anger of the Lord: snatched, as his Holiness indicated, from the vengeance that must always light upon heathenism.

This grey-haired story, like the grey hairs of Nestor, is pregnant with practical wisdom. Let us imagine Pope Gregory to have been a dull man; even for a pope a dull man. Let us allow that his mind had not been sufficiently comprehensive to take within its circle the scattered lights of intelligence, which, brought into a focus, make a joke. Suppose, in a word, that the pope had had no ear for a pun? Saint Augustine might still have watched the bubbles upon Tiber, and never have been sea-sick on his English voyage.

What does this prove? What does this incident preach with a thunder-tongue? Why, the necessity, the vital necessity, of advancing no man to any sort of dignity, who is not all alive as an eel to a joke. We are convinced of it. The world will never be properly ruled, until jests entirely supersede the authority of Acts of Parliament. As it is, the Acts are too frequently the jests, without the fun.

We are now close to Reculvers. There, reader, there—where you see that wave leaping up to kiss that big white stone—that is the very spot where Saint Augustine put down the sole of his Catholic foot. If it be not, we have been misinformed and cheated of our money; we can say no more.

Never mind the spot. Is there not a glory lighting up the whole beach? Is not every wave of silver—every little stone, a shining crystal? Doth not the air vibrate with harmonies, strangely winding into the heart, and awakening the brain! Are we not under the spell of the imagination which makes the present vulgarity melt away like morning mists, and shows to us the full, uplighted glory of the past?

There was a landing on the Sussex Coast; a landing of a Duke of Normandy, and a horde of armed cut-throats. Looking at them even through the distance of some eight hundred years, what are they but as a gang of burglars? A band of pick-purses—blood-shedders—robbers!

What was this landing of a host of men, in the full trump and blazonry of war—what all their ships, their minstrelsey, and armed power—to the advent of Augustine and his fellow-monks, brought hither by the forlornness of the soul of man? it is this thought that makes this bit of pebbled beach a sacred spot; it is this spirit of meditation that hears in every little wave a sweet and solemn music.

And there, where the ocean tumbles, was in the olden day a goodly town, sapped, swallowed by the wearing, the voracious sea. At lowest tides the people still discover odd, quaint, household relics, which, despite the homely breeding of the finders, must carry away their thoughts into the mist of time, and make them feel antiquity. The very children of the village are hucksters of the spoils of dead centuries. They grow up with some small trading knowledge of fossils; and are deep, very deep in all sorts of petrifactions. They must have strange early sympathies towards that mysterious town with all its tradesfolk and market-folk sunk below the sea; a place of which they have a constant inkling in the petty spoils lashed upwards by the tempest. Indeed, it is difficult for the mind to conceive the annihilation of a whole town, engulfed in the ocean. The tricksy fancy will assert itself; and looking over the shining water, with summer basking on it, we are apt to dream that the said market-town has only suffered a “sea-change”; and that fathoms deep, the town still stands—that busy life goes on—that people of an odd, sea-green aspect, it may be, still carry on the work of mortal breathing; make love, beget little ones, and die. But this, indeed, is the dream of idleness. Yet, who—if he could change his mind at will, would make his mind incapable of such poor fantasies? How much of the coarse web of existence owes its beauty to the idlest dreams with which we colour it!

The village of Reculvers is a choice work of antiquity. The spirit of King Ethelbert tarries there still, and lives enshrined in the sign of a public-house. It would be well for all kings could their spirits survive with such genial associations. There are some dead royalties too profitless even for a public sign. Who, now, with any other choice would empty a tankard under the auspices of Bloody Mary, as that anointed “femininitie” is called; or take a chop even at Nero’s Head? No; inn-keepers know the subtle prejudices of man, nor violate the sympathies of life with their sign-posts.

Here, on the sanded floor of King Ethelbert’s hostelry, do village antiquarians often congregate. Here, at times, are stories told—stories not all unworthy of the type of Antiquarian _Transactions_—of _fibulæ_, talked of as buckles, and other tangible bits of Roman history. Here, we have heard, how a certain woman—living at this blessed hour, and the mother of a family—went out at very low tide, and found the branch of a filbert-tree with clustering filberts on it, all stone, at least a thousand years old—and more. Here, too, have we heard of a wonderful horse-shoe, picked up by Joe Squellins; a shoe, as the finder averred, as old as the world. Poor Joe! What was his reward?—it may be, a pint of ale for that inestimable bit of iron! And yet was he a working antiquarian. Joe Squellins had within him the unchristened elements of F.S.A.

The sea has spared something of the old churchyard; although it has torn open the sad sanctity of the grave, and reveals to the day, corpse upon corpse—layers of the dead, thickly, closely packed, body upon body. A lateral view of rows of skeletons, entombed in Christian earth centuries since, for a moment staggers the mind, with this inward peep of the grave. We at once see the close, dark prison of the churchyard, and our breath comes heavily, and we shudder. It is only for a moment. There is a lark singing, singing over our head—a mile upwards in the blue heaven—singing like a freed soul: we look again, and smile serenely at the bones of what was man.

Many of our gentle countrymen—fellow-metropolitans—who once a year wriggle out their souls from the slit of their tills to give the immortal essence sea air, make a pilgrimage to Reculvers. This Golgotha, we have noted it, has to them especial attractions. Many are the mortal relics borne away to decorate a London chimney-piece. Many a skeleton gives up its rib, its _ulna_, two or three odd _vertebræ_, or some such gimcrack to the London visitor, for a London ornament. Present the same man with a bone from a London hospital, and he would hold the act abominable, irreligiously presumptuous. But time has “silvered o’er” the bone from Reculvers; has cleansed it from the taint of mortality; has merged the loathsomeness in the curiosity; for time turns even the worst of horrors to the broadest of jests. We have now Guy Fawkes about to blow Lords and Commons into eternity—and now Guy Fawkes masked for a pantomime.

One day, wandering near this open graveyard, we met a boy, carrying away, with exulting looks, a skull in very perfect preservation. He was a London boy, and looked rich indeed with his treasure.

“What have you there?” we asked.

“A man’s head—a skull,” was the answer.

“And what can you possibly do with a skull?”

“Take it to London.”

“And when you have it in London, what then will you do with it?”

“I know.”

“No doubt. But what will you do with it?”

And to this thrice-repeated question the boy three times answered, “I know.”

“Come, here’s sixpence. Now, what will you do with it?”

The boy took the coin—grinned—hugged himself, hugging the skull the closer, and said very briskly, “Make a money box of it!”

A strange thought for a child. And yet, mused we as we strolled along, how many of us, with nature beneficent and smiling on all sides—how many of us think of nothing so much as hoarding sixpences—yea, hoarding them even in the very jaws of desolate Death!

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THE TWO WINDOWS

THE Union Workhouse of the ancient parish of Herne—how calm and pastoral is that little nook of Kent!—has two outward windows. The fabric, built by the inspiration of the New Poor-law, was a blind, eyeless piece of brickwork; a gaol for the iniquity and perseverance of poverty; a Newgate for the felony of want. The chiefs and elders of Parliament had said, “Let us make abiding-places for the poor; let us separate them, lepers as they are, from the clean; let us shut them up from the sight of the green earth; let them not behold the work of the season in the budding trees, in their leafy branches, in their red and golden robes of autumn, in the gaunt bareness of solemn winter. Let the grass spring and the wild-flower blossom; but let not the poor, the unclean of the land, look upon the work of God.” After this resolve the Union was built; with inner windows looking upon walls, and walls turned blank upon the outward world. No crevice, no loophole permitted captive poverty a look, a glimpse of the fresh face of nature; his soul, like his body, was bricked up according to statute; he had by the insolence of destitution offended the niceness of the world, and he was doomed by his judges to a divorce from the commonest rights of earth. Hence, the Union Workhouse turned its sullen, unbroken wall of brick upon the fields and trees, and the pauper was made to look only upon pauperism. The freshness and luxuriance of nature—her prodigal loveliness—was not for his eyes; he was poor, and even to behold the plenteousness of the teeming earth was an enjoyment beyond his state—a banned delight—a luxury which those who paid for his food could not properly vouchsafe him!

At length—when they themselves know it not, men’s hearts will work, a sense of right will sometimes steal upon their sleep, an instinct of goodness will, like silver water from the rock, gush forth—at length it was resolved by the guardians of the poor—guardians of the poor! what a holiness of purpose should inform those well-worn syllables—that the dull, blind, squalid workhouse should have light; that its brick walls should be pierced with two windows; that the fields and trees should gladden pauper eyes, appealing to old recollections; childhood thoughts; daily, customary feelings. It was determined that the pauper prisoner should, through the iron bars of penury, have comforting glimpses of God’s goodness without; that he should, though all unconsciously, make offerings upon the green altar of the earth; that his heart should commune, in its own unknowing way, with those sweet influences, which, coming from God, discourse in some manner to all men.

And so it was determined that the Union Workhouse should have two outward windows. The guardians of the poor appeared with the labourers. “Here,” said the guardians, “break through the wall; here pierce one window—here, another.” Then turning to the paupers, some few age-stricken folks, they said, with smug complacency, “We are going to give you some light.” And this, reader, is not a goosequill fiction; it is a thing of truth.

“We are going to give you some light.” We cannot help it, if this liberal goodness—this gentle philanthropy—drive back thought to the first gift of light; if it call up, as with an iron tongue, the memory of the holy birth of light, word-begotten, of all men. And the nature of man, solemnised by such memories—kindled and uplifted, skies beyond expression, by the sublime inheritance—is it not a hard task to consider with composure even the compunction of a guardian of the poor, who pierces with two windows the prison-house of the pauper to let God’s light in? May not the small authority of man be sometimes as a blaspheming burlesque of Almighty Beneficence?

Let us, for a time forgetful of state philosophy—forgetful of the plausibilities of social prosperity that set the poor apart from the rich and well-to-do, as creatures somewhat different in the real drama of life, although on certain occasions, as it were for form’s sake, for Christian ceremony, allowed to be made from the clay of the same Eden as their masters—let us behold the earth in its freshness, and man, its owner, in the vigour of his new birth, the heir of an impartial Providence, and the receiver of its glories; and then consider him as the task-master of his fellow, as the grudging churl that metes out light and air to his helpless brother; and for this sole cause—this one bitter reason—he _is_ helpless.

A miserable sight—a hideous testimony of the thankfulness of prosperous man—is the rural union, with its blank dead wall of brick; a cold, blind thing, the work of human perversity and human selfishness, amidst ten thousand thousand evidences of Eternal bounty. How beautiful is the beauty of God around it! There is not a sapling waving its green tresses of June that does not make the heart yearn with kindliness; not a field-flower that does not, with its speaking eye, tell of abundant goodness; the brook is musical with the same sweet truth; all sights and sounds declare it. The liberal loveliness of nature, turn where we will, looks upon and whispers to us. We are made the heirs of wealth inexhaustible, of pleasures deep as the sea and pure as the joys of Paradise. And our return for this, our offering to the wretchedness of our fellow-creatures, is yonder prison, with its dead wall turned upon the pleasant aspects of nature, lest the pauper captives within should behold what God has done for that world, in which, according to the world’s justice, they have nothing. Hence is the pauper treated, in his blind dungeon, as though there was a felonious purpose in his eyesight; as though, a prisoner in the union, he would commit larceny on the meads and trees, and all the rural objects that from babyhood have been familiar to him, to the exceeding injury and loss of the free folks, who, by the blessing of skill and good luck, have “land and beeves.”

We know not a more fantastic tyranny, a more wilful assertion of the arrogance of man, than this needless shutting up of his poorer brother in a gaol of poverty—barring his eyes of every comforting object, compelling him to look only upon that which at every look speaks to his soul of his miserable dependence upon his richer fellow; which denies to him the innocent, unbought glimpse of out-door nature, as though the scene was a land of promise from which his beggary had made him alien. Is human want so wicked that it should be unblessed with even a glance at the pleasant things of creation? Has the pauper—because pauper—no further claim upon the earth, save for his final bed—the grave? The rustic unions, with their forlorn blank walls, cry, yes!

If God punish man for crime, as man punishes man for poverty, woe to the sons of Adam!

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THE ORDER OF POVERTY

WHY should not Lazarus make to himself an order of tatters? Why should not poverty have its patch of honour? Wherefore should not the undubbed knights of evil fortune carry about them, with a gracious humility, the inevitable types of their valorous contest with the Paynim iniquities of life? Wherefore may not man wear indigence as proudly as nobility flashes its jewels? Is there not a higher heraldry than that of the college?

Not a very long time ago the King of Greece awarded to an Englishman the Order of the Redeemer. The Englishman did not reject the gift; he did not stare with wonder, or smile in meek pity at the grave mockery of the distinction; but winning the consent of our Sovereign Lady Victoria to sport the jewel, the Knight of Christ—knight by the handiwork of the King of Greece—hung about him the Order of the Redeemer.

And what may be the gracious discipline of this Order of Redemption? Has the new knight sold off all that he had, and given the money to the poor? We have heard of no such broker’s work; and surely the newspaper tongue would have given loud utterance to the penitence of Mammon. What discipline, then, does this Order of Christ compel upon its holy and immaculate brotherhood? What glorifying services towards the heart and spirit of man what self-martyrdom does it recompense? Is it the bright reward of humility—of active loving-kindness towards everything that breathes? Is it that the knighted, beyond ten thousand men, has proved the divine temper of the spiritual follower of Jesus, making his hourly life an active goodness, and with every breath drawn drawing nearer to rewarding Heaven? Surely the Order of the Redeemer—that awful, solemn badge, setting apart its wearer from the sordid crowd of earth—could only be vouchsafed to some hard Christian service—could only reward some triumphant wrestling of the suffering soul—some wondrous victory in the forlorn hope of this dark struggling life. These are our thoughts—these our passionate words; whereupon the herald of the court of Greece—a grave, fantastic wizard—with mildly-reproving look and most delicate speech, says: “You are wrong: quite wrong. The Order of the Redeemer, though by no means the first Order, is a very pretty Order in its way. Six months since we gave it to Captain Jonquil, from Paris; and truly no man more deserved the Order of the Redeemer. He taught His Majesty’s infantry the use of the bayonet: his howitzer practice, too, is a divine thing. Captain Jonquil is a great soldier. Last week the Order of the Redeemer was also bestowed upon Andreas, a great favourite at court—but, if the naughty truth must be told, a pimp.”

Alas! is heraldry always innocent of blasphemy?

On the 13th of June 1843, a grave masque—a solemn ceremony—was held at the court of St James. Heraldry again looked smug and pompous. A knight was to be made of “the most ancient Order of the Thistle.” Let us make a clean breast of our ignorance; we assert nothing against the antiquity of the Thistle; for what we know, it may be as old—ay, as old as asses. But upon the glad 13th of June a chapter was held, and John, Marquis of Bute, and the Right Hon. William, Earl of Mansfield, were elected knights. They of course took the oaths to protect and succour distressed maidens, orphans and widows; to abstain from every sort of wrong, and to do every sort of right.

“The Marquis of Bute then kneeling near the Sovereign, and Mr Woods on his knee, presenting to the Queen the riband and jewel of the Order, Her Majesty was graciously pleased to place the same over the noble Marquis’s left shoulder. His Lordship rising, kissed the Sovereign’s hand, and having received the congratulations of the knights brethren, retired.”

From that moment John, Marquis of Bute, looked and moved with the aspect and bearing of a man, radiant with new honours. He was a Knight of the Thistle, and the jewel sparkling at his bosom feebly typified the bright, admiring looks of the world—the gaze of mingled love and admiration bent upon him. But on this earth—in this abiding-place of equity—men do not get even thistles for nothing. It may, indeed, happen that desert may pant and moan without honour; but in the court of kings, where justice weighs with nicest balance, honour never with its smiles mocks imbecility, or gilds with outward lustre a concealed rottenness. Honour never gives alms, but awards justice. Mendicancy, though with liveried lackies clustering at its carriage—and there is such pauperism—may whine and pray its hardest, yet move not the inflexible herald. He awards those jewels to virtue, which virtue has sweated, bled for. And it is with this belief, yea, in the very bigotry of the creed, we ask—what has John, Marquis of Bute, fulfilled to earn his thistle? What, the Right Hon. William, Earl of Mansfield? What dragon wrong has either overcome? What giant Untruth stormed in Sophist Castle? What necromantic wickedness baffled and confounded? Yet, these battles have been fought—these triumphs won; oh! who shall doubt them? Be sure of it, ye unbelieving demagogues—scoffing plebians, not for nothing nobility browses upon thistles.

We pay all honour to these inventions, these learned devices of the Herald. They doubtless clothe, comfort, and adorn humanity, which, without them, would be cold, naked, shrunk, and squalid. They, moreover, gloriously attest the supremacy of the tame, the civilised man, over the wild animal. The orders of the Herald are _tattoo_ without the pain of puncture. The New Zealander carries his knighthood, lined and starred and flowered, in his visage. The civilised knight hangs it more conveniently on a riband.

We are such devout believers in the efficacy of Orders, that we devote this small essay to an attempt to make them, under some phase or other, universal. We will not linger in a consideration of the Orders already dead; lovely was their life, and as fragrant is their memory. There was one Order—Teutonic, if we mistake not, the Order of Fools. There was a quaint sincerity in the very title of this brotherhood. Its philosophy was out-speaking; and more than all, the constitution of such a chapter admitted knights against whose worthiness, whose peculiar right to wear the badge, no envious demagogue could say his bitter saying. Surely, in our reverence for the wisdom of antiquity, this Order might have resurrection. The Fool might have his bauble newly varnished—his cap newly hung with tinkling bells. Some of us chirp and cackle of the wisdom of the bygone day; but that is only wisdom which jumps with our own cunning; which fortifies us in the warm and quiet nook of some hallowed prejudice. From the mere abstract love of justice, we should be right glad to have the Order of Fools revived in the fullest splendour of Folly. Such an Order would so beneficently provide for many unrewarded public idlers—ay, and public workers.

There was a time when the world in its first childhood needed playthings. Then was the Herald the world’s toy-maker, and made for it pretty little nick-knacks—golden fleeces—stars, ribands and garters; tempting the world to follow the kickshaws, as nurse with sugared bread-and-butter tempts the yeanling to try its tottering feet. The world has grown old—old and wise: yet is not the Herald bankrupt, but like a pedlar at a fair, draws the hearts of simple men after the shining, silken glories in his box. Meanwhile, philosophy in hodden grey, laughs at the crowd, who bellow back the laugh and sometimes pelt the reverend fool for his irreligious humour: for he who believes not in Stars and Garters is unbeliever; to the world’s best and brightest faith, atheist and scoffer.

Is it not strange that a man should think the better of himself for a few stones glittering in his bosom? That a costly band about the leg should make the blood dance more swiftly through the arteries? That a man seeing his breast set with jewellers’ stars should think them glorious as the stars of heaven—himself, little less than an earthly god, so deified? If these things be really types and emblems of true greatness, what rascal poverty besets the man without them! How is he damned in his baseness! What mere offal of humanity, the biped without an Order! And, therefore, let stars be multiplied; and let nobility—like bees—suck honey from Thistles!

We are, however, confirmed in our late failing faith. We are bigoted to Orders. Men, like watches, must work the better upon jewels. Man is, at the best, a puppet; and is only put into dignified motion when pulled by Blue or Red Ribands. Now, as few, indeed, of us can get stars, garters or ribands, let us have Orders of our own. Let us, with invincible self-complacency, ennoble ourselves.

In the hopeless ignorance and vulgarity of our first prejudice, we might possibly want due veneration for the Golden Fleece; an ancient and most noble Order, worn by few. Yet with all our worst carelessness towards the Order, we never felt for it the same pitying contempt we feel towards an Order worn by many—not at their button-holes, not outside their breasts, but in the very core of their hearts—the Order of the Golden Calf.

Oh! bowelless Plutus, what a host of Knights! What a lean-faced, low-browed, thick-jowled, swag-bellied brotherhood! Deformity, in all its fantastic variety, meets in the chapter. They wear no armour of steel or brass, but are cased in the magic mail of impenetrable Bank-paper. They have no sword, no spear, no iron mace with spikes; but they ride merrily into the fight of life, swinging about gold-gutted purses, and levelling with the dust rebellious poverty. These are the Knights of the Golden Calf. It is a glorious community. What a look of easy triumph they have! With what serene self-satisfaction they measure the wide distance between mere paupers—the Knights of the Order of Nothing—and themselves! How they walk the earth as if they alone possessed the patent of walking upright! How they dilate in the light of their own gold, like adders in the sun!

A most fatal honour is this Order of the Golden Calf. It is worn unseen, as we have said, in the hearts of men; but its effects are visible: the disease speaks out in every atom of flesh—poor human worm’s-meat!—and throbs in every muscle. It poisons the soul; gives the eye a squint; takes from the face of fellow-man its God-gifted dignity, and makes him a thing to prey upon; to work, to use up; to reduce to so much hard cash; then to be put up, with a wary look of triumph, into the pocket. This Order damns with a leprosy of soul its worshipper. It blinds and deafens him to the glories and the harmonies ministrant to poorer men. His eye is jaundiced, and in the very stars of God he sees nought but twinkling guineas.

At this moment great is the Order throughout the land! Tyrannous its laws, reckless its doings. It is strong, and why should it be just? To be of this Order is now the one great striving of life. They alone are men who wear the jewel—wretches they without it. Man was originally made from the dust of the earth: he is now formed of a richer substance: the true man is made of gold. Yes, the regenerate Adam is struck only at the Mint.