Chapter X (1)

My heart is full--my trunks as well;
My mind and caps made up,
My corsets shap’d by Mrs. Bell,
Are premised ere I sup;
With boots and shoes, Rivarta’s best,
And dresses by Ducé,
And a special license in my chest--
I’m going to Bombay!

“LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP.”

“Fallen, fallen, fallen.”--DRYDEN.

My father being what is called a serious tallow-chandler, having supplied the Baptist Meeting-house of Nantwich with _dips_ for many years, intended to make me a field-preaching minister. Alas! _my_ books were plays, _my_ sermons soliloquies. You would not have wondered, had you seen me then, with my large dark eyes, my permanent nose, and a mouth to which my picture does but scanty justice. In large theatres these may be but secondary considerations; but a figure symmetrical as mine must have been seen through all space. Accordingly, I eloped with the young lady who used to rehearse my heroines with me, and came to London, where, after we had studied together till I was in debt, and she, as “ladies wish to be who love their lords,” I began applying to the managers for leave to make my _debût_. I will not describe to you the neglect and rudeness I experienced! It did not abate my enthusiasm: but so true it is, “while the grass grows”--the proverb is somewhat musty,--that I had soon nothing but musty bread on which to feed my hopes, and hopeful wife. One burning spring day I roved as far as the fields near Greenwich, and, book in hand, went through Romeo, though but to a shy audience, for the sheep all took to their trotters, and the crows to their wings, and not without _caws_. (That joke _was_ mine, let who will have claimed it.)

Suddenly somebody hissed; it could not be the sheep, and no geese were near. At that instant a very elegant man, stepping from behind a tree, thus accosted me:--

“Sir, I have heard you with delight. I can procure you an engagement, not perhaps for the Romeos, but all great actors have risen by slow degrees, and the best of them has, at his outset, been attacked by some snake in the grass.” He now pointed out the reptile, who slunk away, looking heartily ashamed of himself. The gentleman continued, “Mr. Richardson and Company are now acting at the fair. I am his scene-painter; see here, I have sketched you in your happiest attitude. Come with me.” We went to the booth. I was hired; but unluckily, my powers being suited for a larger stage, so overpowered my present audience, that I was taken out of all speaking parts, for fear of fatal consequences. Nevertheless, my grace in processions soon raised so much jealousy against me, that in the autumn Master recommended me to one of the Minors in town, where, for twice as much salary, I was never expected to appear before the curtain, but to make myself useful among the carpenters and scene-shifters. That Christmas, during the rehearsal of a Pantomime, four of us were set to catch an Harlequin, each to hold the corner of a blanket, and be ready for his jump through the scene. Alas! one gentleman brought his pot, and one his pipe, and the third an inclination for a snooze. Two were asleep, and one draining the last drops of stout from the pewter. I alone upheld my corner from the boards, when the awful leap came on us, like a star-shoot. I still see the momentary gleam of that strait, spangled, fish-like, head-long figure. Can, candle, bottle, pipes, all crashed beneath the heavy tumbler. With a torrent of apologies, we scrambled up in the dark, to raise the fallen hero; but there he lay, on his face, with legs and arms outspread, as we could feel, without sense, or sound, or motion, cold, stiff, and _dead_! For an instant all was horrid silence; we were as breathless as he. I resolved to give myself up to justice, yet found voice in the boldness of innocence to shout “Help! Lights! All his bones are broken!” “And all yours _shall_ be, ye dogs!” cried a voice. We looked up; there stood one Harlequin over us alive; there lay another under us, without a chance of ever more peeping through the blanket of the dark. That the speaker was no ghost we were soon convinced, as his magic bat battered us. The truth was, he had thrown at us the stuffed Harlequin used in flying ascents, to try our vigilance, before he risked his own neck. I felt, however, that I _might_ have been of a party who had killed a man. It was a judgment on me for being in such a place, with any less excuse than that of acting Romeo. I took my wife and babe back to Cheshire. We knelt at my father’s feet, promising to serve in the shop; fortunately it was one of his melting days: he raised us to his arm;--we formed a _tableau generale_--and the curtain dropped.

ODE

TO THE ADVOCATES FOR THE REMOVAL OF SMITHFIELD MARKET.

“Sweeping our flocks and herds.”--DOUGLAS.

O philanthropic men!--
For this address I need not make apology--
Who aim at clearing out the Smithfield pen,
And planting further off its vile Zoology--
Permit me thus to tell,
I like your efforts well,
For routing that great nest of Hornithology!
Be not dismay’d although repulsed at first,
And driven from their Horse, and Pig, and Lamb parts,
Charge on!--you shall upon their hornworks burst,
And carry all their _Bull_-warks and their _Ram_-parts.

Go on, ye wholesale drovers!
And drive away the Smithfield flocks and herds
As wild as Tartar-Curds,
That come so fat, and kicking, from their clovers,
Off with them all!--those restive brutes, that vex
Our streets, and plunge, and lunge, and butt, and battle;
And save the female sex
From being cow’d--like Iö--by the cattle!

Fancy,--when droves appear on
The hill of Holborn, roaring from its top,--
Your ladies--ready, as they own, to drop,
Taking themselves to Thomson’s with a _Fear-on_!

Or, in St. Martin’s Lane,
Scared by a Bullock, in a frisky vein,--
Fancy the terror of your timid daughters
While rushing souse
Into a coffee-house,
To find it--Slaughter’s.

Or fancy this:--
Walking along the street, some stranger Miss,
Her head with no such thought of danger laden,
When suddenly ’tis “Aries Taurus Virgo!”
You don’t know Latin, I translate it ergo,
Into your Areas a Bull throws the Maiden!
Think of some poor old crone
Treated, just like a penny, with a toss!
At that vile spot now grown
So generally known
For making a Cow Cross!

Nay, fancy your own selves far off from stall,
Or shed, or shop--and that an Ox infuriate
Just pins you to the wall,
Giving you a strong dose of _Oxy-Muriate_!

Methinks I hear the neighbours that live round
The Market-ground
Thus make appeal unto their civic fellows--
“’Tis well for you that live apart--unable
To hear this brutal Babel,
But our _firesides_ are troubled with their _bellows_.

“Folks that too freely sup
Must e’en put up
With their own troubles If they can’t digest;
But we must needs regard
The case as hard
That _others’_ victuals should disturb our rest,
That from our sleep _your_ food should start and jump us!
We like, ourselves, a steak,
But, Sirs, for pity’s sake!
We don’t want oxen at our doors to _rump-us_!

“If we _do_ doze--it really is too bad!
We constantly are roar’d awake or rung,
Through bullocks mad
That run in all the ‘Night Thoughts’ of our Young!”

Such are the woes of sleepers--now let’s take
The woes of those that wish to keep _a Wake_
Oh think! when Wombwell gives his annual feasts,
Think of these “Bulls of Basan,” far from mild ones;
Such fierce tame beasts,
That nobody much cares to see the Wild ones!

Think of the Show woman, “what shows a Dwarf,”
Seeing a red Cow come
To swallow her Tom Thumb,
And forc’d with broom of birch to keep her off!

Think, too, of Messrs. Richardson and Co.,
When looking at their public private boxes,
To see in the back row
Three live sheep’s heads, a porker’s, and an Ox’s!
Think of their Orchestra, when two horns come
Through, to accompany the double drum!

Or, in the midst of murder and remorses,
Just when the Ghost is certain,
A great rent in the curtain,
And enter two tall skeletons--of Horses!

Great Philanthropics! pray urge these topics!
Upon the Solemn Councils of the Nation,
Get a Bill soon, and give, some noon,
The Bulls, a Bull of Excommunication!

Let the old Fair have fair-play as its right,
And to each show and sight
Ye shall be treated with a Free List latitude,
To Richardson’s Stage Dramas,
Dio--and Cosmo--ramas,
Giants and Indians wild,
Dwarf, Sea Bear, and Fat Child,
And that most rare of Shows--a Show of Gratitude!

DRAWN FOR A SOLDIER.

I was once--for a few hours only--in the militia. I suspect I was in part answerable for my own mishap. There is a story in Joe Miller of a man, who, being _pressed_ to serve his Majesty on another element, pleaded his polite breeding, to the gang, as a good ground of exemption: but was told that the crew being a set of sad unmannerly dogs, a Chesterfield was the very character they wanted. The militia-men acted, I presume, on the same principle. Their customary schedule was forwarded to me, at Brighton, to fill up, and in a moment of incautious hilarity--induced, perhaps, by the absence of all business or employment, except pleasure--I wrote myself down in the descriptive column as “_Quite a Gentleman_.”

The consequence followed immediately. A precept, addressed by the High Constable of Westminster to the Low ditto of the parish of St. M*****, and endorsed with my name, informed me that it had turned up in that involuntary lottery, the Ballot.

At sight of the Orderly, who thought proper to deliver the document into no other hands than mine, my mother-in-law cried, and my wife fainted on the spot. They had no notion of any distinctions in military service--a soldier was a soldier--and they imagined that, on the very morrow, I might be ordered abroad to a fresh Waterloo. They were unfortunately ignorant of that benevolent provision which absolved the militia from going out of the kingdom--“except in case of an invasion.” In vain I represented that we were “locals;” they had heard of local diseases, and thought there might be wounds of the same description. In vain I explained that we were not troops of the line;--they could see nothing to choose between being shot in a line, or in any other figure. I told them next that I was not obliged to serve myself; but they answered, “’twas so much the harder I should be obliged to serve any one else.” My being sent abroad, they said, would be the death of them; for they had witnessed, at Ramsgate, the embarkation of the Walcheren expedition, and too well remembered “the misery of the soldiers’ wives at seeing their husbands in _transports_!”

I told them that, at the very worst, if I _should_ be sent abroad, there was no reason why I should not return again; but they both declared, they never did, and never would believe in those “Returns of the Killed and Wounded.”

The discussion was in this stage when it was interrupted by another loud single knock at the door, a report equal in its effects on us to that of the memorable cannon-shot at Brussels; and before we could recover ourselves, a strapping Serjeant entered the parlour with a huge bow, or rather rain-bow, of party-coloured ribbons in his cap. He came, he said to offer a substitute for me; but I was prevented from reply by the indignant females asking him in the same breath, “Who and what did he think _could_ be a substitute for a son and a husband?”

The poor Serjeant looked foolish enough at this turn; but he was still more abashed when the two anxious Ladies began to cross-examine him on the length of his services abroad, and the number of his wounds, the campaigns of the Militia-man having been confined doubtless to Hounslow, and his bodily marks militant to the three stripes on his sleeve. Parrying these awkward questions he endeavoured to prevail upon me to see the proposed proxy, a fine young fellow, he assured me, of unusual stature; but I told him it was quite an indifferent point with me whether he was 6-feet-2 or 2-feet-6, in short whether he was as tall as the flag or “under the standard.”

The truth is, I reflected that it was a time of profound peace, that a civil war, or an invasion, was very unlikely; and as for an occasional drill, that I could make shift, like Lavater, to right-about-face.

Accordingly I declined seeing the substitute, and dismissed the Serjeant with a note to the War-Secretary to this purport:--“That I considered myself _drawn_; and expected therefore to be well _quarter’d_. That, under the circumstances of the country, it would probably be unnecessary for militia-men ‘to be mustarded;’ but that if his Majesty did ‘_call me out_,’ I hoped I should ‘_give him satisfaction_.’”

The females were far from being pleased with this billet. They talked a great deal of moral suicide, wilful murder, and seeking the bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth; but I shall ever think that I took the proper course, for, after the lapse of a few hours, two more of the General’s red-coats, or General postmen, brought me a large packet sealed with the War-office Seal, and superscribed “Henry Hardinge;” by which I was officially absolved from serving on Horse, or on Foot, or on both together, then and thereafter.

And why, I know not--unless his Majesty doubted the handsomeness of discharging me in particular, without letting off the rest;--but so it was, that in a short time afterwards there issued a proclamation, by which the services of all militia-men were for the present dispensed with,--and we were left to pursue our several avocations,--of course, all the lighter in our _spirits_ for being _disembodied_.

ODE FOR ST. CECILIA’S EVE.

“Look out for squalls.”--THE PILOT.

O come, dear Barney Isaacs, come,
Punch for one night can spare his drum
As well as Pipes of Pan!
Forget not, Popkins, your bassoon,
Nor, Mister Bray, your horn, as soon
As you can leave the Van;
Blind Billy, bring your violin;
Miss Crow, you’re great in Cherry Ripe!
And Chubb, your viol must drop in
It’s bass to Soger Tommy’s pipe.
Ye butchers, bring your bones:
An organ would not be amiss;
If grinding Jim has spouted his,
Lend yours, good Mister Jones.

Do, hurdy-gurdy Jenny,--do
Keep sober for an hour or two,
Music’s charms to help to paint.
And, Sandy Gray, if you should not
Your bagpipes bring--O tuneful Scot!
Conceive the feelings of the Saint!

Miss Strummel issues an invite,
For music, and turn-out to-night
In honour of Cecilia’s session;
But ere you go, one moment stop,
And with all kindness let me drop
A hint to you, and your profession:
Imprimis then: Pray keep within
The bounds to which your skill was born,
Let the one-handed let alone
Trombone,
Don’t--rheumatiz! seize the violin,
Or Ashmy snatch the horn!
Don’t ever to such rows give birth,
As if you had no end on earth,
Except to “wake the lyre;”
Don’t “strike the harp,” pray never do,
Till others long to strike it too;
Perpetual harping’s apt to tire;
Oh I have heard such flat-and-sharpers,
I’ve blest the head
Of good King Ned,
For scragging all those old Welsh Harpers!

Pray, never, ere each tuneful doing,
Take a prodigious deal of wooing;
And then sit down to thrum the strain,
As if you’d never rise again--
The least Cecilia-like of things:
Remember that the saint has wings.
I’ve known Miss Strummel pause an hour,
Ere she could “Pluck the Fairest Flower,”
Yet without hesitation, she
Plunged next into the “Deep Deep Sea,”
And when on the keys she _does_ begin,
Such awful torments soon you share,
She really seems like Milton’s “Sin,”
Holding the keys of--you know where!

Never tweak people’s ears so toughly,
That urchin-like they can’t help saying--
“O dear! O dear--you call this playing,
But oh, it’s playing very roughly!”
Oft, in the ecstasy of pain,
I’ve cursed all instrumental workmen,
Wish’d Broadwood Thurtell’d in a lane,
And Kirke White’s fate to every Kirkman--

I really once delighted spied
“Clementi Collard” in Cheapside.

Another word,--don’t be surprised,
Revered and ragged street Musicians,
You have been only half-baptised,
And each name proper, or improper,
Is not the value of a copper,
Till it has had the due additions,
Husky, Rusky,
Ninny, Tinny,
Hummel, Bummel,
Bowski, Wowski,
All these are very good selectables;
But none of your plain pudding-and-tames--
Folks that are called the hardest names
Are music’s most respectables.
Ev’ry woman, ev’ry man,
Look as foreign as you can,
Don’t cut your hair, or wash your skin,
Make ugly faces and begin.

Each Dingy Orpheus gravely hears,
And now to show they understand it!
Miss Crowe her scrannel throttle clears.
And all the rest prepare to band it.
Each scraper ripe for concertante,
Rozins the hair of Rozinante:
Then all sound A, if they know which,
That they may join like birds in June:
Jack Tar alone neglects to tune,
For he’s all over concert-pitch.
A little prelude goes before,
Like a knock and ring at music’s door
Each instrument gives in its name;
Then sitting in
They all begin
To play a musical round game.
Scrapenberg, as the eldest hand,
Leads a first fiddle to the band,
A second follows suit;
Anon the ace of Horns comes plump
On the two fiddles with a trump.
Puffindorf plays a flute.
This sort of musical revoke,
The grave bassoon begins to smoke
And in rather grumpy kind
Of tone begins to speak its mind;
The double drum is next to mix,
Playing the Devil on Two Sticks--
Clamour, clamour,
Hammer, hammer,
While now and then a pipe is heard,
Insisting to put in a word,
With all his shrilly best,
So to allow the little minion
Time to deliver his opinion,
They take a few bars rest.

Well, little Pipe begins--with sole
And small voice going through the _hole_,
Beseeching,
Preaching,
Squealing,
Appealing,
Now as high as he can go,
Now in language rather low,
And having done--begins once more,
Verbatim what he said before.
This twiddling twaddling sets on fire
All the old instrumental ire,
And fiddles for explosion ripe,
Put out the little squeaker’s pipe;
This wakes bass viol--and viol for that,
Seizing on innocent little B flat,
Shakes it like terrier shaking a rat--
They all seem miching malico!
To judge from a ramble unawares,
The drum has had a pitch down stairs;
And the trumpet rash,
By a violent crash,
Seems splitting somebody’s calico!
The viol too groans in deep distress,
As if he suddenly grew sick;
And one rapid fiddle sets off express,--
Hurrying,
Scurrying,
Spattering,
Clattering,
To fetch him a Doctor of Music.
This tumult sets the Haut-boy crying
Beyond the Piano’s pacifying,
The cymbal
Gets nimble,
Triangle
Must wrangle,
The band is becoming most martial of bands,
When just in the middle,
A quakerly fiddle,
Proposes a general shaking of hands!
Quaking,
Shaking,
Quivering,
Shivering,
Long bow--short bow--each bow drawing:
Some like filing,--some like sawing;
At last these agitations cease,
And they all get
The flageolet,
To breathe “a piping time of peace.”
Ah, too deceitful charm,
Like light’ning before death,
For Scrapenberg to rest his arm,
And Puffindorf get breath!
Again without remorse or pity,
They play “The Storming of a City.”
Miss S. herself compos’d and plann’d it--
When lo! at this renew’d attack,
Up jumps a little man in black,--
“The very Devil cannot stand it!
And with that,
Snatching hat,
(Not his own,)
Off is flown,
Thro’ the door,
In his black,
To come back
Never, never, never more?”

Oh Music! praises thou hast had,
From Dryden and from Pope,
For thy good notes, yet none I hope,
But I e’er praised the bad,
Yet are not saint and sinner even?
Miss Strummel on Cecilia’s level?
One drew an angel down from heaven!
The other scar’d away the Devil!

REFLECTIONS ON WATER.

“When the butt is out, we will drink water: not a drop before.”--TEMPEST.

I have Stefano’s aversion to Water. I never take any by chance into my mouth, without the proneness of our Tritons and Dolphins of the Fountain,--to spout it forth again. It is, on the palate, as in tubs and hand-basins, egregiously washy. It hath not for me, even what is called “an amiable weakness.” For the sake only of quantity, not quality, do I sometimes adulterate my Cogniac or Geneva with the flimsy fluid. Aquarius is not my sign; at the praises heaped on Sir Hugh Myddelton, for leading his trite streamlet up to London,--my lip curleth. Methinks if such a sloppy labour could at one time more than another betray a misguided taste, it was in those days, when we are told,--“The Grete Conduict, in Chepe, did runne forth Wyne.” And then to hear talk withal of the New River _Head_,--as if, forsooth, the weak current poured even from Ware unto London, were capable of that goodly headed capital, the _caput_, of Stout Porter, or lusty Ale.

The taste for aquatics is none of mine. I laugh at Cowes’--it should be Calves’--Regattas; it passeth my understanding, to conceive the pleasure of contending with all your sail and sea, your might and main, for a prize cup of water. Gentle reader, if ever we two should encounter at good-men’s feasts, say not before me, that “your mouth waters,” for fear of my compelled rejoinder, “The more pump you!”

I am told--_Dic mihi_--by Sir Lauder Dick, that the great floods is Morayshire destroyed I know not how many Scottish bridges,--and I believe it. The element was always our Arch-Enemy. Witness the Deluge, when the whole human-kind would have perished, with water on the chest, but for Noah’s chest on the water. Drowning--by some called Dying made Easy--is to my notions horrible. Conceive an unfortunate gentleman--not by any means thirsty--compelled to swill gulp after gulp of the vapid fluid, even to swelling, “as the water you know will swell a man.” If I said I would rather be hanged, it would be but the truth; although “Veritas in _Puteo_” hath given me almost a disrelish for truth itself.

Excepting their imaginary Castaly, I should be glad to know what poet hath sung ever in the praise of Water? Of wine, many. “Tak _Tent_,” saith the Scottish Burns; “O, was ye at the _Sherry_?”--singeth another. The lofty Douglas, in commending Norval, thus hinteth his cellar; “His _Port_ I like.” Shakspeare discourseth eloquently of both as “Red and white,” and addeth,--“with sweet and cunning hand _laid on_;”--i.e. laid on in pipes. For Madeira, see Bowles of it; and the Muse of Pringle luxuriates in the Cape. Then is there also Mountain celebrated by Pope,--“The Shepherd loves the mountain,”--to Moslem, forbidden draught; yet which Mahomet would condescend to fetch himself, if it failed in coming to hand. Sack, too,--as dear to Oriental Sultanas as his Malmsey to Clarence,--is by Byron touched on in his Corsair; but then, through some Koran-scrupulousness perchance, they take it--in Water!

Praise there hath been of water; but, as became the subject, in prose; M. hath written a volume, I am told, in its commendation, and above all of its nutritive quality; and truly to see it floating the Victory with all her armament and complement of guns, and men, one must confess there is some _support_ in it--at least as an outward application! but then taken internally, look at the wreck of the Royal George!

The mention of Men-of-War, bringeth to mind, opportunely, certain marine reminiscences, pertinent to this subject, referring some years backward, when, with other uniform than my present invariable sables, I was stationed at * * *, on the coast of Sussex. Little as my present-tense habits and occupations savour of the past sea-service,--yet, reader, in the Navy List amongst the Commanders, or years by-gone in the Ship’s Books of H.M.S Hyperion, presently lying in the sequestered harbour of Newhaven, thou wilt find occurring the surname of Hood; a name associated by friends, marine and mechanic, with a contrivance, for expelling the old enemy, water, by a novel construction of Ships’ pumps.

Stanchest of my sect--the Adam’s-Ale-shunners--wert thou, old Samuel Spiller! in the muster-roll charactered an Able Seaman; but most notable for a Landsman’s aversion to unmitigated Water, hard, or soft--fresh or salt! A petty Officer wert thou in that armed band _versus_ contraband, the Coast Blockade, by some miscalled the Preventive Service, if service it be to prevent the influx of wholesome spirits. To do the smuggler bare justice, no seaman, Nelson-bred, payeth greater reverence, or obedience to that signal sentence,--“England expects every man to _do_ his _duty_!” than he. Thine, Spiller, was done to the uttermost. Spirits, legal or illegal, in tub or flask, or pewter measure, didst thou inexorably seize, and gauger-like try the depth thereof,--thy Royal Master, His Majesty, at the latter end of the seizures, faring no better than thy own begotten sea-urchin, of whom, one day remarking that--“he took after his father,” the young would-be Trinculo retorted, “Father never leaveth none to take.” There were strange rumours afloat, and ashore--Samuel! of thy unprofitable vigilance. Many an illicit _Child_, i.e. a small keg, hath been laid at thy door. Thou hadst a becoming respect for thy comrades, as brave men and true, who could stand fire, but the smugglers, I fear, were ranked a streak higher, as men who could stand treat. Still were thy misdeeds like much of thy own beverage--beyond proof. Even as those delinquent utterers of base notes, who swallow their own dangerous forgeries, so didst thou gulp down whatever might else have appeared against thee in evidence. There was no entrapping thee, like rat, or weasel in that Gin, from which deriving a sea-peerage, thou wert commonly known--with no offence, I trust, to the Noble Vassal of Kensington--as Lord Hollands.

It was by way of water-penance for one of these Cassio-like derelictions of Mine Ancient, that one evening--the evening succeeding the Great Sea Tempest of 1814--I gave him charge of a boat’s crew, to bring in sundry fragmental relics of some shipwreckt Argosy, that were reported to be adrift in our offing. In two hours he returned, and like Venator and Piscator, we immediately fell into dialogue,--Piscator, i.e. Spiller, “for fear of dripping the carpet,” standing aloof, a vox et preterea nihil, in a dark entry.

“Well, Spiller,”--my phraseology was not then inoculated with the quaintness it hath since imbibed from after lecture--“Well, Spiller, what have you picked up?”

“A jib-boom, I think, Sir, a capital spar; and part of a Ship’s starn. The ‘Planter of Barbadies’--famous place for rum, Sir.”

“Was there any sea--are you wet?”

“Only up to my middle, Sir.”

“Very well--stow away the wreck, and go to your grog. Tell Bunce to give you all double allowance.”

“Thank your honour’s honour!”

The voice ceased: and a pair of ponderous sea-soles, with tramp audible as the marble foot of the Spectre in Giovanni, went hurrying down our main-hatchway. Certain misgivings of a discrepancy between the imputed drenching and the weather, an appeal askance of the rum cask, joined with a curiosity perchance, to inspect the ship-fragments--our flottsom and jettsom, led me soon afterwards below, and there, in the mess-room, sate mine officer, high and dry, with a huge tankard in his starboard hand. I made an obvious remark on it, and had an answer--for Michael Spiller was no adept in the Chesterfieldian refinements--from the interior of the drinking-vessel--

“Your Honour’s right, and I ax your Honour’s pardon. I warn’t wet! but I was _very_ dry!”

A BLOW UP.

“Here we go up, up, up.”--THE LAY OF THE FIRST MINSTREL.

Near Battle, Mr. Peter Baker
Was Powder-maker,
Not Alderman Flower’s flour,--the white that puffs
And primes and loads heads bald, or gray, or chowder,
Figgins and Higgins, Fippins, Filby,--Crowder,
Not vile apothecary’s pounded stuffs,
But something blacker, bloodier, and louder,
Gun-powder!
This stuff, as people know, is _semper
Eadem_; very hasty in its temper--
Like Honour that resents the gentlest taps,
Mere semblances of blows, however slight;
So powder fires, although you only p’rhaps
Strike light.
To make it therefore, is a ticklish business
And sometimes gives both head and heart a dizziness,
For as all human flash and fancy minders,
Frequenting fights and Powder-works well know,
There seldom is a mill without a blow
Sometimes upon the grinders.
But then--the melancholy phrase to soften,
Mr. B.’s mill _transpir’d_ so very often!
And advertised--than all Price Currents louder,
“Fragments look up--there is a rise in Powder.”
So frequently, it caused the neighbours’ wonder,--
And certain people had the inhumanity
To lay it all to Mr. Baker’s vanity,
That he might have to say--“That was _my_ thunder!”
One day--so goes the tale,
Whether, with iron hoof,
Not sparkle-proof,
Some ninny-hammer struck upon a nail,--
Whether some glow-worm of the Guy Faux stamp,
Crept in the building, with Unsafety Lamp--
One day this mill that had by water ground,
Became a sort of windmill and blew round.
With bounce that went in sound as far as Dover, it
Sent half the workmen sprawling to the sky;
Besides some visitors who gained thereby,
What they had asked--permission “to go over it!”
Of course it was a very hard and high blow,
And somewhat differed from what’s called a fly-blow.
At Cowes’ Regatta as I once observed,
A pistol-shot made twenty vessels start;
If such a sound could terrify oak’s heart,
Think how this crash the human nerve unnerved
In fact, it was a very awful thing,--
As people know that have been used to battle,
In springing either mine or mill, you spring
A precious rattle!
The dunniest heard it--poor old Mr. F.
Doubted for once if he was ever deaf;
Through Tunbridge town it caused most strange alarms;
Mr. and Mrs. Fogg,
Who lived like cat and dog,
Were shocked for once into each other’s arms.
Miss M. the milliner--her fright so strong,
Made a great gobble-stitch six inches long;
The veriest quakers quaked against their wish;
The “Best of Sons” was taken unawares,
And kick’d the “Best of Parents” down the stairs;
The steadiest servant dropped the China dish;
A thousand started, though there was but one
Fated to win, and that was Mr. Dunn,
Who struck convulsively, and hooked a fish!

Miss Wiggins, with some grass upon her fork,
Toss’d it just like a hay-maker at work;
Her sister not in any better case,
For taking wine,
With nervous Mr. Pyne,
He jerked his glass of Sherry in her face.

Poor Mistress Davy,
Bobb’d off her bran-new turban in the gravy:
While Mr. Davy at the lower end,
Preparing for a Goose a carver’s labour,
Darted his two-pronged weapon in his neighbour,
As if for once he meant to help a friend.

The nurse-maid telling little “Jack-a-Norey,”
“Bo-peep” and “Blue-cap” at the house’s top,
Scream’d, and let Master Jeremiah drop
From a fourth story!
Nor yet did matters any better go
With Cook and Housemaid in the realms below;
As for the Laundress, timid Martha Gunning,
Expressing faintness and her fear by fits
And starts,--she came at last but to her wits,
By falling in the ale that John left running.

Grave Mr. Miles, the meekest of mankind,
Struck all at once deaf, stupid, dumb, and blind,
Sat in his chaise some moments like a corse,
Then coming to his mind,
Was shocked to find,
Only a pair of shafts without a horse.
Out scrambled all the Misses from Miss Joy’s!
From Prospect House, for urchins small and big,
Hearing the awful noise,
Out rushed a flood of boys,
Floating a man in black, without a wig;--
Some carried out one treasure, some another,--
Some caught their tops and taws up in a hurry,
Some saved Chambaud, some rescued Lindley Murray,
But little Tiddy carried his big brother!

Sick of such terrors,
The Tunbridge folks resolv’d that truth should dwell
No longer secret in a Tunbridge Well,
But to warn Baker of his dangerous errors;
Accordingly to bring the point to pass,
They call’d a meeting of the broken glass,
The shatter’d chimney pots, and scatter’d tiles,
The damage of each part,
And packed it in a cart,
Drawn by the horse that ran from Mr. Miles;
While Doctor Babblethorpe, the worthy Rector,
And Mr. Gammage, cutler to George Rex,
And some few more, whose names would only vex,
Went as a deputation to the Ex
Powder-proprietor and Mill-director.

Now Mr. Baker’s dwelling-house had pleased
Along with mill-materials to roam,
And for a time the deputies were teased,
To find the noisy gentleman at home;
At last they found him with undamaged skin,
Safe at the Tunbridge Arms--not out--but Inn.

The worthy Rector, with uncommon zeal,
Soon put his spoke in for the common weal--
A grave old gentlemanly kind of Urban,--
The piteous tale of Jeremiah moulded,
And then unfolded,
By way of climax, Mrs. Davy’s turban;
He told how auctioneering Mr. Pidding
Knock’d down a lot without a bidding,--
How Mr. Miles, in fright, had giv’n his mare
The whip she wouldn’t bear,--
At Prospect House, how Doctor Oates, not Titus,
Danc’d like Saint Vitus,--
And Mr. Beak, thro’ Powder’s misbehaving,
Cut off his nose whilst shaving;--
When suddenly, with words that seem’d like swearing,
Beyond a Licenser’s belief or bearing--
Broke in the stuttering, sputtering Mr. Gammage--
“Who is to pay us, Sir,”--he argued thus,
“For loss of cus-cus-cus-cus-cus-cus-cus--
Cus-custom, and the dam-dam-dam-damage?”

Now many a person had been fairly puzzled
By such assailants, and completely muzzled;
Baker, however, was not dash’d with ease--
But proved he practised after their own system,
And with small ceremony soon dismiss’d ’em,
Putting these words into their ears like fleas;
“If I do have a blow, well, where’s the oddity?
I merely do as other tradesmen do,
You, Sir,--and you--and you!
I’m only puffing off my own commodity!”

THE WOODEN LEG.

“Peregrine and Gauntlet heard the sound of the stump ascending the
wooden staircase with such velocity, that they at first mistook
it for the application of drum-sticks to the head of an empty
barrel.”--PEREGRINE PICKLE.

Ever since the year 1799, I have had, in the coachman phrase, an off leg and a near one; the right limb, thanks to a twelve-pounder, lies somewhere at Seringapatam, its twin-brother being at this moment under a table at Brighton. In plain English, I have a wooden leg. Being thus deprived of half of the implements for marching, I equitably retired, on half-pay, from a marching regiment, and embarked what remained of my body, for the land of its nativity, literally fulfilling the description of man, “with one foot on sea and one on shore,” in the Shakspearian song.

A great deal has been said and sung of our wooden walls and hearts of oak, but legs of ditto make but an inglorious figure on the ocean. No wrestler from Cornwall or Devonshire ever received half so many fair back-falls as I, the least roll of the vessel--and the equinoctial gales were in full blow--making me lose, I was going to say, my feet. I might have walked in a dead calm, and as a soldier accustomed to exercise, and moreover a foot soldier, and used to walking, I felt a great inclination to pace up and down the deck, but a general protest from the cabins put an end to my promenade. As Lear recommends, my wooden hoofs ought to have been “shod with felt.”

At last the voyage terminated, and in my eagerness to land, I got into a fishing-boat, which put me ashore at Dungeness. Those who have enjoyed a ramble over its extensive shingle, will believe that I soon obtained abundance of exercise in walking with a wooden leg among its loose pebbles; in fact, when I arrived at Lydd, I was, as the cricketers say, “stumped out.” It was anything but one of Foote’s farces.

The next morning saw me in sight of home,--as a provincial bard says--

“But when home gleams upon the wanderer’s eye,
Quicken his steps--he almost seems to fly.”

But I wish he had seen me doing my last half mile over Swingfield Hill. I found its deep sand anything but a quicksand, in spite of a distinct glimpse of the paternal roof. I am convinced, when “Fleet Camilla scours the plain,” she does not do it with sand. At last I stood at the lodge-gate, which opened, and let me into a long avenue, the path of which had been newly gravelled, but not well rolled; accordingly, I cut out considerable work for myself and the gardener, who, as he watched the holes I picked in his performance, seemed to look on my advance much as Apollyon did on Pilgrim’s Progress. By way of relief, I got upon the grass, but my wooden leg, though it was a blackleg, did not thrive much upon the turf. Arrived at the house door, filial anxiety caused me to forget to scrape and wipe, and I proceeded to make a fishy pattern of soles and dabs up the stair carpet. The good wife in the Scotch song says--

“His very foot has music in’t,
As he comes up the stair.”

If there was any music in mine, it was in the stump, which played a sort of “Dead March in Saul,” up to the landing-place, where the sound and sight of my Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane threw my poor mother into a Macbeth fit of horror, for the preparatory letter which should have broken my leg to her, had been lost on its passage. As for my father, I will not attempt to describe his transport, for I came upon him,

“As fools rush in where angels fear to tread;”

and Gabriel or Michael would not have escaped a volley for treading on his gouty foot. At the same moment, Margaret and Louisa, with sisterly impetuosity, threw themselves on my neck, and not being attentive to my “outplay or loose leg,” according to Sir Thomas Parkyn’s “Instructions for Wrestling,” the result was a “hanging trippet.” “A hanging trippet is when you put your toe behind your adversary’s heel, on the same side, with a design to hook his leg up forwards, and throw him on his back.”

The reader will guess my satisfaction when night came, and allowed me to rid myself of my unlucky limb. Fatigued with my walk through dry sand and wet gravel, exhausted by excessive emotion, and, maybe, a little flustered by dipping into the cup of welcome, I literally tumbled into bed, and was soon dreaming of running races and leaping for wagers, gallopading, waltzing, and other feats of a biped, when I was suddenly aroused by shrill screams of “Thieves!” and “Murder!” with a more hoarse call for “Frank! Frank!” There were burglars, in fact, in the house, who were packing and preparing to elope with the family plate, without the consent of parents. It was natural for the latter to call a son and a soldier to the rescue, but son or soldier never came in time to start for the plate; not that I wanted zeal or courage, or arms, but I wanted that unlucky limb, and I groped about a full half hour in the dark, before I could lay my hand upon my leg.

The next morning I took a solitary stroll before breakfast to look at the estate; but during my absence abroad, some exchanges of land had taken place with our neighbour, Sir Theophilus. The consequence was, in taking my wood through a wood of his, but which had formerly been our own, and going with my “best leg foremost,” as a man in my predicament always does, I popped it into a man-trap. Thus my timber failed me at a pinch when it might really have stood my friend. Luckily the trap was one of the humane sort;--but it was far from pleasant to stand in it for two hours calling out for Leg Bail.

I could give many more instances of scrapes, besides the perpetual hobble which my wooden leg brought me into, but I will mention only one. At the persuasion of my friends, a few years ago, I stood for Rye, but the electors, perhaps, thought I only half stood for it, for they gave me nothing but split votes. It was perhaps as well that I did not go into the House, for with two such odd legs I could never properly have “paired off.” The election expenses, however, pressed, heavily on my pocket, and to defray them, and all for one Wooden Leg, I had to cut down some thousand loads of timber.

THE GHOST.

A VERY SERIOUS BALLAD.

“I’ll be your second.”--LISTON.

In Middle Row, some years ago,
There lived one Mr. Brown;
And many folks considered him
The stoutest man in Town.

But Brown and stout will both wear out,
One Friday he died hard,
And left a widow’d wife to mourn
At twenty pence a yard.

Now widow B. in two short months
Thought mourning quite a tax;
And wished, like Mr. Wilberforce,
To _manumit_ her blacks.

With Mr. Street she soon was sweet;
The thing thus came about,
She asked him in at home, and then
At church he asked her out!

Assurance such as this the man
In ashes could not stand;
So like a Phœnix he rose up
Against the Hand in Hand.

One dreary night the angry sprite
Appeared before her view;
It came a little after one,
But she was after two!

“Oh Mrs. B., oh Mrs. B.!
Are these your sorrow’s deeds,
Already getting up a flame,
To burn your widow’s weeds?

“It’s not so long since I have left
For aye the mortal scene;
My memory--like Roger’s,
Should still be bound in green!

“Yet if my face you still retrace
I almost have a doubt--
I’m like an old For-get-me-Not,
With all the leaves torn out!

“To think that on that finger-joint,
Another pledge should cling;
O Bess! upon my very soul,
It struck like ‘Knock and Ring.’

“A ton of marble on my breast
Can’t hinder my return;
Your conduct, Ma’am, has set my blood
A-boiling in my urn!

“Remember on! remember how
The marriage rite did run--
If ever we one flesh should be,
’Tis now--when I have none!

“And you, Sir--once a bosom friend--
Of perjured faith convict,
As ghostly too can give no blow,
Consider you are kick’d.

“A hollow voice is all I have,
But this I tell you plain,
Marry come up!--you marry, Ma’am,
And I’ll come up again.”

More he had said, but chanticleer
The spritely shade did shock
With sudden crow, and off he went,
Like fowling-piece at cock!

A TALE OF THE GREAT PLAGUE.

“This is one of the _pest_ discretions.”--SIR HUGH EVANS.

About five or six years after that deplorable great Plague of London, there befel a circumstance which, as it is not set forth in Defoe his history of the pestilence, I shall make bold to write down herein, not only on account of the strangeness of the event, but also because it carries a moral pick-a-back, as a good story ought to do.

It is a notoriously known fact, as collected from the bills of mortality, that there died of the plague in the mere metropolis a matter of some hundreds of thousands of human souls; yet notwithstanding this most awful warning to evil doers, the land did nevertheless bring forth such a rank crop of sin and wickedness, that the like was never known before or after; the City of London, especially, being overrun with bands of thieves and murtherers, against whom there was little or no check, the civical police having been utterly disbanded and disrupt during the ravages of the pestilence. Neither did men’s minds turn for some time towards the mere safeguard of property, being still distracted with personal fears, for although the pest had, as it were, died of the excess of its own violence, yet from time to time there arose flying rumours of fresh breakings out of the malady. The small-pox and the malignant fever being the prolific parents of such like alarms. Accordingly many notable robberies and divers grievous murthers having been acted with impunity during the horrible crisis of the pest, those which had before been wicked were now hardened, and became a thousand times worse, till the city and the neighbourhood thereof seemed given in prey to devils, who had been loosened for a season from the everlasting fetters of the law.

Now four of these desperadoes having met together at the Dolphin in Deptford, they laid a plot together to rob a certain lone mansion house which stood betwixt the Thames marshes and the Forest of Hainault, and which was left in the charge of only one man, the family being gone off to another mansion house in the county of Wiltshire, for the sake of a more wholesome air. And the manner of the plot was this: one of the villains going in a feigned voice was to knock at the front-door and beg piteously for a night’s shelter, and then the door, being opened, the other knaves were to rush in and bind the serving-man, or murther him, as might seem best, and so taking his keys they were to ransack the house, where they expected to find a good store of plate. Accordingly, one Friday, at the dead of the night, they set forth, having for leader a fellow that was named Blackface, by reason of a vizard which he wore always on such errands, diverting themselves by the way with laying out each man his share of the booty in the manner that pleased him best, wine and the women of Lewkener’s Lane coming in you may be sure for the main burthen of the song. At last they entered the fore-court of the house which they were to rob, and which was as silent as death, and as dark, excepting a glimmer from one window towards the top. Blackface then, as agreed upon, began to beat at the door, but being flushed with drink, instead of entreating for an entrance, he shouted out to the serving-man, bidding him with many terrible oaths to come down and to render up his keys, for that they were come to relieve him of his charge.

“In the name of God, my masters,” cried the serving-man from the window, “what do you want here?”

“We are come,” returned Blackface, “to relieve you of your trust, so throw us down your keys.”

“An that be all,” said the serving-man, whose name was Adams, “wait but a little while and you shall have the keys and my place to boot. Come again but a few hours hence, and you shall find me dead, when you may do with me and my trust as you list.”

“Come, come,” cries Blackface, “no preaching, but come down and open, or we will bring fire and faggot to the door.”

“Ye shall not need,” answered Adams, “hearken only to what I say, and you shall have free passage; but I give you fair warning, though I be but a single man, and without weapon, and sick even unto death, yet shall your coming in cost you as many lives as ye bear amongst you, for within these walls there is a dismal giant that hath slain his thousands, even the plague.” At these dreary words the courage of the robbers was taken somewhat aback, but Blackface spirited them on, saying it was no doubt an invention to deter them from the spoil.

“Alas,” answered Adams, who overheard their argument, “what I say is the solemn and sorrowful truth, and which I am speaking for the last time, for I shall never see to-morrow’s blessed sun. As for the door, I will open it to you with my own hands, beseeching you for your own sakes to stand a little apart, and out of the taint of my breath, which is sure destruction. There is one child herein a dead corpse, as you shall behold if you have so much courage, for it lieth unburied in the hall.” So saying he descended, and presently flung open the hall door, the villains withdrawing a little backward, and they saw verily by the light of a rush wick which he carried, that he was lapt only in a white sheet, and looking very pale and ghost-like, with a most dismal black circle round each of his eyes.

“If ye disbelieve me still,” he said, “look inwards when I draw back from the door, and ye shall see what was a living child this day, but is now a corpse hastening to corruption. Alas! in the midst of life we are in death: she was seized at play.” With these words he drew aside, and the robbers looking through the door, perceived it was even as he said, for the dead body of the child was lying on the hall table, with the same black ring round its eyes, and dressed in brocade and riband as though death had carried it off, even as he said, in its holiday clothes. “Now,” said Adams, after they had gazed awhile, “here be the keys,” therewithal casting towards them a huge bunch; but the villains would now no more meddle with them than with so many aspics or scorpions, looking on them in truth as the very keys of death’s door. Accordingly, after venting a few curses on their ill luck, they began to depart in very ill humour, when Adams again called to them to hear his last words.

“Now,” said he, “though ye came hither with robbery, and perchance murder in your hearts, against me, yet as a true Christian will I not only forgive your wicked intents, but advise you how to shun that miserable end which my own life is coming to so very suddenly. Although your souls have been saved from sin, yet, doubtless ye have not stood so long in this infected air without peril to the health of your bodies, wherefore, by the advice of a dying man, go straightway from this over to Laytonstone, where there be tan pits, and sit there for a good hour amidst the strong smell of the tan, and which hath more virtue as a remedy against the infection of the plague, than even tobacco or the odour of drugs. Do this and live, for the poison is strong and subtle, and seizeth, ere one can be aware, on the springs of life.” Thereupon he uttered a dismal groan, and began yelling so fearfully that the robbers with one accord took to flight, and never stopped till they were come to Laytonstone, and into the tanner’s very yard, where they sat down and stooped over the pit, snuffing up the odours with all the relish of men in whose nostrils it was as the breath of life. In which posture they had been sitting half an hour, when there entered several persons with a lantern, and which they took to be the tanner and his men, and to whom, therefore, they addressed themselves, begging pardon for their boldness, and entreating leave to continue awhile in the tan-yard to disinfect themselves of the plague; but they had hardly uttered these words, when lo! each man was suddenly seized upon, and bound in a twinkling, the constables, for such they were, jeering them withal, and saying the plague had been too busy to come itself, but had sent them a gallows and a halter instead, which would serve their turn. Whereupon, most of the rogues became very chop-fallen, but Blackface swore he could die easy but for one thing upon his mind, and that was, what had become of the dead child and the man dying of the plague, both of which he had seen with his own eyes. Hereupon, the man with a lantern turned the light upon his own face, which the rogues knew directly to be the countenance of Adams himself, but without any of those black rings round the eyes, and for which he explained he had been indebted to a little charcoal. “As for the dead child,” he said, “you must enquire, my masters, of the worshipful company of Barber Surgeons, and they will tell you of a certain waxen puppet of Hygeia, the Goddess of Health, which used to be carried at their pageants, and when it fell into disuse was purchased of them by my Lady Dame Ellinor Wood, for a plaything to her own children. So one head you see is worth four pair of hands, and your whole gang, tall, and strong knaves though you be, have been overmatched by one old man and a doll.”

ODE TO MADAME HENGLER,

FIREWORK-MAKER TO VAUXHALL.

Oh, Mrs. Hengler! Madame,--I beg pardon,
Starry Enchantress of the Surrey Garden!
Accept an Ode not meant as any scoff--
The Bard were bold indeed at thee to quiz,
Whose squibs are far more popular than his;
Whose works are much more certain to go off.