Chapter VIII (3)

“I fill her thoughts--her memory’s vice-gerent?
No, no,--some paltry puppy--three weeks old--
And round as Norval’s shield”--thus incoherent
His fancies grew as he went on to scold;
So stormy waves are into breakers roll’d,
Work’d up at last to mere chaotic wroth--
This--that--heads--tails--thoughts jumbled uncontroll’d
As onions, turnips, meat, in boiling broth,
By turns bob up, and splutter in the froth.

“Fool that I was to let a baby face--
A full one--like a hunter’s--round and red--
Ass that I am, to give her more a place
Within this heart”--and here he struck his head.
“’Sdeath are the Almanack-compilers dead?
But no--’tis all an artifice--a trick,
Some newer face--some dandy under-bred--
Well--be it so--of all the sex I’m sick!”
Here Juno wonder’d why she got a kick.

“‘The moon is full’--where’s her infernal scrawl?
‘And you are in my thought: that silver ray
Will ever your dear image thus recall’--
My image? Mine! She’d barter it away
For Pretty Poll’s on an Italian’s tray!
Three weeks, full weeks,--it is too plain--too bad--
Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day!
My senses have not crazed--but if they had--
Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad!

“Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip
So fair for falsehood? Wherefore have you drest
Deceit so angel-like?” With sudden rip
He tore six new buff buttons from his vest
And groped with hand impetuous at his breast,
As if some flea from Juno’s fleecy curls
Had skipp’d to batten on a human chest,
But no--the hand comes forth, and down it hurls
A lady’s miniature beset with pearls.

Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry,
Before another outrage could be plann’d:
Poor Juno, who had learn’d to fetch and carry,
Pick’d up and brought it to her master’s hand,
Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann’d;
Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth,
He only saw in that fair face, so bland,
Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south.
A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth.

“I’ll go to her,”--herewith his hat he touch’d,
And gave his arm a most heroic brandish;
“But no--I’ll write”--and here a spoon he clutch’d,
And ramm’d it with such fury in the standish,
A sable flood, like Niger the outlandish,
Came rushing forth--Oh Antics and Buffoons!
Ye never danced a caper so ran-dan-dish;
He jump’d, thump’d--tore--swore, more than ten dragoons,
At all nights, noons, moons, spoons, and pantaloons!

But soon ashamed, or weary, of such dancing,
Without a Collinet’s or Weippert’s band,
His rampant arms and legs left off their prancing,
And down he sat again, with pen in hand,
Not fiddle-headed, or King’s-pattern grand,
But one of Bramah’s patent Caligraphics;
And many a sheet it spoil’d before he plann’d
A likely letter. Used to pure seraphics,
Philippics sounded strangely after Sapphics.

Long while he rock’d like Yankee in his chair,
Staring as he would stare the wainscot through,
And then he thrust his fingers in his hair,
And set his crest up like a cockatoo;
And trampled with his hoofs, a mere Yahoo:
At last with many a tragic frown and start,
He penn’d a billet, very far from doux,
’Twas sour, severe--but think of a man’s smart
Writing with lunar caustic on his heart!

The letter done and closed, he lit his taper,
And sealing, as it were, his other mocks,
He stamped a grave device upon the paper,
No Cupid toying with his Psyche’s locks,
But some stern head of the old Stoic stocks--
Then, fiercely striding through the staring streets,
He dropt the bitter missive in a box,
Beneath the cakes and tarts, and sugar’d treats,
In Mrs. Smelling’s window full of sweets.

Soon sped the letter--thanks to modern plans,
Our English mails run little in the style
Of those great German wild-beast caravans,
_Eil_-wagons--tho’ they do not “go like _ile_,”--
But take a good twelve minutes to the mile--
On Monday morning, just at ten o’clock,
As Ellen humm’d “The young May Moon” the while,
Her ear was startled by that double knock
Which thrills the nerves like an electric shock!

Her right hand instantly forgot its cunning,
And down into the street it dropt, or flung,
Right on the hat and wig of Mr. Gunning,
The jug that o’er her ten-week stocks had hung;
Then down the stairs by twos and threes she sprung,
And through the passage like a burglar darted.
Alas! how sanguine are the fond and young--
She little thought, when with the coin she parted,
She paid a sixpence to be broken-hearted!

Too dear at any price--had she but paid
Nothing and taken discount, it was dear;
Yet, worthless as it was, the sweet-lipped maid
Oft kissed the letter in her brief career
Between the lower and the upper sphere,
Where, seated in a study bistre-brown,
She tried to pierce a mystery as clear
As _that_ I saw once puzzling a young clown--
“Reading Made Easy,” but turned upside down.

Yet Ellen, like most Misses in the land,
Had sipped sky blue, through certain of her teens,
At one of those establishments which stand
In highways, byeways, squares, and village greens;
’Twas called “The Grove,”--a name that always means
Two poplars stand like sentries at the gate--
Each window had its close Venetian screens
And Holland blind, to keep in a cool state
The twenty-four Young Ladies of Miss Bate.

But when the screens were left unclosed by chance,
The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead,
Each upper window to a passing glance
Revealed a little dimity white bed;
Each lower one a cropp’d or curly head;
And thrice a week, for soul’s and health’s economies,
Along the road the twenty four were led,
Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies
With faces rather graver than Melpomene’s.

And thus their studies they pursued:--On Sunday,
Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price;
Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar--of a Monday;
Tuesday--hard dumplings, globes, Chapone’s Advice;
Wednesday--fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice);
Thursday--pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading;
Friday--beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice;
Saturday--scraps, short lessons and short feeding,
Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding

From this repertory of female learning,
Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter!
To gratify the eyes of parents yearning.
’Twas evident in bolsters, beef, and batter,
Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter,
But heartily, as Jenkins says, “demollidge;”
But as for any learning, not to flatter,
As often happens when girls leave their college,
She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge.

At Long Division sums she had no chance,
And History was quite as bad a balk;
Her French it was too small for Petty France,
And Priscian suffered in her English talk:
Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk;
As for the globes--the use of the terrestrial
She knew when she went out to take a walk,
Or take a ride; but, touching the celestial,
Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial.

Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars;
Georgium, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo,
Sidus, for Master: then, for northern stars,
The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go,
The Bull was Farmer Giles’s bull, and, ergo,
The Ram the same that butted at her brother;
As for the Twins, she only guessed that Virgo,
From coming after them, must be their mother;
The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other.

As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia,
She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but
A private, may be, in the Kent Militia;
That Charles’s Wain would stick in a deep rut,
That Venus was a real West-End slut--
Oh, Gods and Goddesses of Greek Theogony!
That Berenice’s Hair would curl and cut,
That Cassiopëia’s Chair was good Mahogany,
Nicely French-polished,--such was her cosmogony!

Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics
Lorenzo’s letter came now to dispense;
A lizard, crawling over hieroglyphics,
Knows quite as much of their Egyptian sense;
A sort of London fog, opaque and dense,
Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives.
In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intense;
As well is known to oyster-operatives,
Mere looking at the shells won’t open natives.

Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found
Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers:
Words giving tongue against her, like a hound
At picking out a fault--words speaking daggers.
The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers,
To lash their tails, but not as horses do,
Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers,
But like a lion’s, ere he tears in two
A black, to see if he is black all through.

With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch,
She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry,
No sound--no stir--quite petrified, poor wretch!
As when Apollo, in old allegory,
Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry
Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone;
In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry,
Judge if a suing lover, let alone
A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone.

“Ellen, I will no longer call you mine,
That time is past, and ne’er can come again;
However other lights undimmed may shine,
And undiminishing, one truth is plain,
Which I, alas! have learned,--that love can wane.
The dream is pass’d away, the veil is rent,
Your heart was not intended for my reign;
A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant
With one poor man in it to be content.

“It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure,
To wander underneath the whispering bough
With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure.
Nay, fear not,--I absolve of every vow,--
Use,--use your own celestial pleasure now,
Your apogee and perigee arrange.
Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how,
To me that constant disk has nothing strange--
A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change.

“Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write
Such words unto you, with so hard a pen;
Yet outraged love will change its nature quite,
And turn like tiger hunted to its den--
How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men!
And stands abash’d, discover’d, and forlorn!
Had it been only cusp’d--but gibbous--then
It had gone down--but Faith drew back in scorn,
And would not swallow it--without a horn!

“I am in occultation,--that is plain:
My culmination’s past,--that’s quite as clear.
But think not I will suffer your disdain
To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear.
Whate’er my pangs, they shall be buried here;
No murmur,--not a sigh,--shall thence exhale:
Smile on,--and for your own peculiar sphere
Choose some eccentric path,--you cannot fail,
And pray stick on a most portentous tail!

“Farewell! I hope you are in health and gay;
For me, I never felt so well and merry--
As for the bran-new idol of the day,
Monkey or man, I am indifferent--very!
Nor e’en will ask who is the Happy Jerry;
My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep,
But let me hint that you will want a wherry,
Three weeks’ spring-tide, and not a chance of neap,
Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep!”

“Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light
Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend,
Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night--
No more of that----the lover’s at an end.
Yet if I may advise you, as a friend,
Before you next pen sentiments so fond,
Study your cycles--I would recommend
Our Airy--and let South be duly conn’d,
And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.

“Farewell again! it is farewell for ever!
Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice,
I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River,
Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice,
Or Boothia Felix--happy clime of ice!
For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon,
Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice,
Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon,
Or roaming o’er--The Mountains of the Moon!

“What matters where? my world no longer owns
That dear meridian spot from which I dated
Degrees of distance, hemispheres, and zones,
A globe all blank and barren and belated.
What matters where my future life be fated?
With Lapland hordes, or Koords or Afric peasant,
A squatter in the western woods located,
What matters where? My bias, at the present,
Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!

“Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well!
As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs:
I ask no sexton for his passing-bell,
I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters,
However I may die, transfix’d by Tartars,
By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled,
By shark or cayman snapt above the garters,
By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled,
Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled,

“Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake,
Or smother’d in the sandy hot simoom,
Or crush’d in Chili by earth’s awful quake,
Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb,
Or dirged by syrens and the billows’ boom
Or stiffen’d to a stock mid Alpine snows,
Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom,
Or suck’d by Vampyres to a last repose,
Or self-destroy’d, impatient of my woes,

“Still fare you well, however I may fare,
A fare perchance to the Lethean shore,
Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air,
Or dash’d down cataracts with dreadful roar:
Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core,
This hand you should have claim’d in church or minster
Some cannibal may gnaw”--she read no more--
Prone on the carpet fell the senseless spinster,
Losing herself, as ’twere, in Kidderminster!

Of course of such a fall the shock was great,
In rush’d the father, panting from the shop,
In rush’d the mother, without cap or tête,
Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop;
The cook to change her apron did not stop,
The charwoman next scrambled up the stair,--
All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop,
And then they stand and smother round the chair,
Exclaiming in a chorus, “Give her air!”

One sears her nostrils with a burning feather,
Another rams a phial up her nose;
A third crooks all her finger-joints together,
A fourth rips her up laces and her bows,
While all by turns keep trampling on her toes,
And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump
A sudden drench that down her thorax goes,
As if in fetching her--some wits so jump--
She must be fetched with water like a pump!

No wonder that thus drench’d, and wrench’d, and gall’d,
As soon as possible from syncope’s fetter
Her senses had the sense to be recall’d,
“I’m better--that will do--indeed I’m better,”
She cried to each importunate besetter;
Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother,
The prudent parent seized the lover’s letter,
(Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother)
And read it thro’ from one end to the other.

From first to last she never skipp’d a word--
For young Lorenzo of all youths was one
So wise, so good, so moral she averr’d,
So clever, quite above the common run--
She made him sit by her, and call’d him son,
No matrimonial suit, e’en Duke’s or Earl’s,
So flatter’d her maternal feelings--none!
For mothers always think young men are pearls
Who come and throw themselves before their girls.

And now, at warning signal from her finger,
The servants most reluctantly withdrew,
But list’ning on the stairs contrived to linger;
For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue,
At last the features of her parent knew,
And summoning her breath and vocal pow’rs,
“Oh, mother!” she exclaimed--“Oh, is it true--
Our dear Lorenzo”--the dear name drew show’rs--
“_Ours_,” cried the mother, “pray don’t call him ours!”

“I never liked him, never, in my days!”
[“Oh yes--you did”--said Ellen with a sob,]
“There always _was_ a something in his ways--”
[“So sweet--so kind,” said Ellen, with a throb,]
“His very face was what I call a snob,
And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons,
He had a sort of air of the swell mob;
I’m sure when he has come of afternoons
To tea, I’ve often thought--I’ll watch my spoons!”

“The spoons!” cried Ellen, almost with a scream,
“Oh cruel--false as cruel--and unjust!
He that once stood so high in your esteem!”
“He!” cried the dame, grimacing her disgust,
“I like him?--yes--as any body must
An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil:
Didn’t he bring you Bonaparty’s bust?
Lord! when he calls I hardly can be civil--
_My_ favourite was always Mr. Neville.

“Lorenzo?--I should like, of earthly things,
To see him hanging forty cubits high;
Doesn’t he write like Captain Rocks and Swings?
Nay, in this very letter bid you try
To make yourself particular, and tie
A tail on--a prodigious tail!--Oh, daughter!
And don’t he ask you down his area--fie!
And recommend to cut your being shorter,
With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?”

Alas! to think how readers thus may vary
A writer’s sense!--What mortal would have thought
Lorenzo’s hint about Professor Airy
And Pond to such a likeness could be brought!
Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught
To make a comet of poor Ellen’s moon,
Could furnish forth an image so distraught,
As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon,
Tail’d--like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!

And yet, whate’er absurdity the brains
May hatch, it ne’er wants wet-nurses to suckle it!
Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains
To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it;
No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it
To jingle bell-like on his empty head,
No mental mud--but some will knead and knuckle it,
And fancy they are making fancy-bread;--
No ass has written, but some ass has read.

No dolts could lead if others did not follow ’em.
No Hahnémann could give decillionth drops,
If any man could not be got to swallow ’em;
But folly never comes to such full stops.
As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps
Of all Lorenzo’s meanings, heads and tails,
The Father seized upon her malaprops--
“My girl down areas--of a night! ’Ods nails!
I’ll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!”

“I will!--as sure as I was christen’d John!
A girl--well born--and bred,--and school’d at Ditton--
Accomplish’d--handsome--with a tail stuck on!
And chuck’d, Zounds! chuck’d in horseponds like a kitten
I wish I had been by when that was written!”--
And doubling to a fist each ample hand,
The empty air he boxed with, a-la-Bitton,
As if in training for a fight, long plann’d,
With Nobody--for love--at No Man’s Land!

“I’ll pond--I’ll tail him!”--In a voice of thunder
He recommenced his fury and his fuss,
Loud, open-mouth’d, and wedded to his blunder,
Like one of those great guns that end in buss.
“I’ll teach him to write ponds and tails to us!”
But while so menacing this-that-and-t’others,
His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus:
“Men are not women--fathers can’t be mothers,--
Females are females”--and a few such others.

So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly,
She hustled him outside the chamber-door,
Looking, it must be own’d, a little silly;
And then she did as the Carinthian boor
Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that’s poor!
_Id est_, she shut him in the outer space,
With just as much apology--no more--
As Boreas would present in such a case,
For slamming the street door right in your face.

And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept,
What passed in that important tête-à-tête
’Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except
Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate--
So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late,
In front of Mrs. Snelling’s sugar’d snacks,
In such a very waspish stinging state,
But now at the Old Dragon, stretch’d on racks,
Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;

Because that new fast four-inside--the Comet,
Instead of keeping its appointed time,
Had deviated some few minutes from it,
A thing with all astronomers a crime,
And he had studied in that lore sublime;
Nor did his heat get any less or shorter
For pouring upon passion’s unslaked lime
A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water,
Mix’d stiff as starch by the Old Dragon’s daughter.

At length, “Fair Ellen” sounding with a flourish,
The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart:
Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish
The hasty spirit in Lorenzo’s heart,
And soon upon the roof he “topped his part,”
Which never had a more impatient man on,
Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start
Like lightning greased,--or, as at Ballyshannon
Sublimed, “greased lightning shot out of a cannon.”

For, ever since the letter left his hand,
His mind had been in vacillating motion,
Dodge-dodging like a fluster’d crab on land,
That cannot ask its way, and has no notion
If right or left leads to the German Ocean--
Hatred and Love by turns enjoy’d monopolies,
Till, like a Doctor following his own potion,
Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis,
He went and booked himself for our metropolis.

“Oh, for a horse,” or rather four,--“with wings!”
For so he put the wish into the plural--
No relish he retained for country things,
He could not join felicity with rural,
His thoughts were all with London and the mural,
Where architects--not paupers--heap and _pile_ stones;
Or with the horses’ muscles, called the crural,
How fast they could macadamize the milestones
Which pass’d as tediously as gall or bile stones.

Blind to the picturesque, he ne’er perceived
In Nature one artistical fine stroke;
For instance, how that purple hill relieved
The beggar-woman in the gipsy-poke,
And how the red cow carried off her cloak;
Or how the aged horse, so gaunt and grey,
Threw off a noble mass of beech and oak!
Or, how the tinker’s ass, beside the way,
Came boldly out from a white cloud--to bray!

Such things have no delight for worried men,
That travel full of care and anxious smart:
Coachmen and horses, are your artists then:
Just try a team of draughtsmen with the Dart,
Take Shee, for instance, Etty, Jones, and Hart,
Let every neck be put into its noose,
Then tip ’em on the flank to make ’em start,
And see how they will draw!--Four screws let loose
Would make a difference--or I’m a goose!

Nor cared he more about the promised crops,
If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid,
For flies in turnip, or a blight in hops,
Or how the barley prosper’d or decay’d;
In short, no items of the farming trade.
Peas, beans, tares, ’taters, could his mind beguile;
Nor did he answer to the servant maid,
That always asked at every other mile,
“Where do we change, Sir?” with her sweetest smile.

Nor more he listened to the Politician,
Who lectured on his left, a formal prig,
Of Belgium’s, Greece’s, Turkey’s sad condition,
Not worth a cheese, an olive, or a fig;
Nor yet unto the critic, fierce and big,
Who, holding forth, all lonely, in his glory,
Called one a sad bad Poet--and a Whig,
And one, a first-rate proser--and a Tory;
So critics judge, now, of a song or story.

Nay, when the coachman spoke about the ’Leger,
Of Popsy, Mopsy, Bergamotte, and Civet,
Of breeder, trainer, owner, backer, hedger,
And nags as right, or righter than a trivet,
The theme his crack’d attention could not rivet,
Though leaning forward to the man of whips,
He seem’d to give an ear,--but did not give it,
For Ellen’s moon (that saddest of her slips)
Would not be hidden by a “new Eclipse.”

If any thought e’er flitted in his head
Belonging to the sphere of Bland and Crocky,
It was to wish the team all thorough-bred,
And every buckle on their backs a jockey:
When spinning down a steep descent, or rocky,
He never watch’d the wheel, and long’d to lock it,
He liked the bolters that set off so cocky:
Nor did it shake a single nerve or shock it
Because the Comet raced against the Rocket.

Thanks to which rivalry, at last the journey
Finish’d an hour and a quarter under time,
Without a case for surgeon or attorney,
Just as St. James’s rang its seventh chime,
And now, descending from his seat sublime,
Behold Lorenzo, weariest of wights,
In that great core of brick, and stone, and lime,
Call’d England’s Heart--but which, as seen of nights,
Has rather more th’ appearance of its lights.

Away he scudded--elbowing, perforce,
Thro’ cads, and lads, and many a Hebrew worrier,
With fruit, knives, pencils,--all dirt cheap of course,
Coachmen, and hawkers of the Globe and “Currier;”
Away!--the cookmaid is not such a skurrier,
When, fit to split her gingham as she goes,
With six just striking on the clock to hurry her,
She strides along with one of her three beaux,
To get well placed at “Ashley’s”--now Ducrow’s.

“I wonder if her moon is full to-night!”
He mutter’d, jealous as a Spanish Don,
When, lo!--to aggravate that inward spite,
In glancing at a board he spied thereon
A play-bill for dramatic folks to con,
In letters such as those may read, who run,
“‘KING JOHN’--oh yes,--I recollect King John!
‘My Lord, they say five moons’--_five_ moons!--well done!
I wonder Ellen was content with one!

“Five moons--all full!--and all at once in heav’n!
She should have lived in that prolific reign!”
Here he arrived in front of number seven,
Th’ abode of all his joy and all his pain;
A sudden tremor shot through every vein,
He wish’d he’d come up by the heavy waggon,
And felt an impulse to turn back again,
Oh, that he ne’er had quitted the Old Dragon!
Then came a sort of longing for a flagon.

His tongue and palate seem’d so parch’d with drouth,--
The very knocker fill’d his soul with dread,
As if it had a living lion’s mouth,
With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red,
In which he had engaged to put his head,
The bell-pull turn’d his courage into vapour,
As though ’t would cause a shower-bath to shed
Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper--
He look’d askance, and did not like the scraper.

“What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce
A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster,
Instead of putting out its wick at once;
She’s gone--it’s very evident I’ve lost her,--
And to the wanton wind I should have toss’d her--
Pish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease,
To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster,
Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese,
Or make a honey-moon, if so she please.

“Yes--here I leave her,” and as thus he spoke,
He plied the knocker with such needless force,
It almost split the panel of sound oak;
And then he went as wildly through a course
Of ringing, till he made abrupt divorce
Between the bell and its dumfounded handle,
Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse,
And thrust into his face her blown-out candle,
To recognise the author of such scandal.

Who, presto! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot,
Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair,
With other noise than his whose “very foot
Had music in’t as he came up the stair:”
And then with no more manners than a bear,
His hat upon his head, no matter how,
No modest tap his presence to declare,
He bolted in a room, without a bow,
And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow!

Like fond Medora, watching at her window,
Yet not of any Corsair bark in search--
The jutting lodging-house of Mrs. Lindo,
“The Cheapest House in Town” of Todd and Sturch.
The private house of Reverend Doctor Birch,
The public-house, closed nightly at eleven,
And then that house of prayer, the parish church,
Some roofs, and chimneys, and a glimpse of heaven,
Made up the whole look-out of Number Seven.

Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her,
She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream;
As if her own belov’d full moon still orb’d her,
Lulling her fancy in some lunar scheme,
With lost Lorenzo, may be, for its theme--
Yet when Lorenzo touch’d her on the shoulder,
She started up with an abortive scream,
As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder,
Had come within his bony arms to fold her.

“Lorenzo!” “Ellen!” then came “Sir!” and “Madam!”
They tried to speak, but hammer’d at each word,
As if it were a flint for great Mac Adam:
Such broken English never else was heard,
For like an aspen leaf each nerve was stirr’d,
A chilly tremor thrill’d them through and through,
Their efforts to be stiff were quite absurd,
They shook like jellies made without a due
And proper share of common joiner’s glue.

“Ellen! I’m come--to bid you--fare--farewell!”
They thus began to fight their verbal duel;
“Since some more hap--hap--happy man must dwell--”
“Alas--Loren--Lorenzo!--cru--cru--cruel!”
For so they split their words like grits for gruel.
At last the Lover, as he long had plann’d,
Drew out that once inestimable jewel,
Her portrait, which was erst so fondly scann’d,
And thrust poor Ellen’s face into her hand.

“There--take it, Madam--take it back, I crave,
The face of one--but I must now forget her,
Bestow it on whatever hapless slave
Your art has last enticed into your fetter--
And there are your epistles--there! each letter!
I wish no record of your vow’s infractions,
Send them to South--or Children--you had better--
They will be novelties--rare benefactions!
To shine in Philosophical Transactions!

“Take them--pray take them--I resign them quite!
And there’s the glove you gave me leave to steal--
And there’s the handkerchief, so pure and white,
Once sanctified by tears, when Miss O’Neill--
But no--you did not--cannot--do not feel
A Juliet’s faith, that time could only harden!
Fool that I was, in my mistaken zeal!
I should have led you,--by your leave and pardon--
To Bartley’s Orrery, not Covent Garden!”

“And here’s the birth-day ring--nor man nor devil
Should once have torn it from my living hand,
Perchance ’twill look as well on Mr. Neville;
And that--and that is all--and now I stand
Absolved of each dissever’d tie and band--
And so farewell, till Time’s eternal sickle
Shall reap our lives; in this, or foreign land
Some other may be found for truth to stickle
Almost as fair--and not so false and fickle!”

And there he ceased: as truly it was time,
For of the various themes that left his mouth,
One half surpass’d her intellectual climb:
She knew no more than the old Hill of Howth
About that “Children of a larger growth,”
Who notes proceedings of the F. R. S.’s;
Kit North, was just as strange to her as South,
Except the south the weathercock expresses,
Nay, Bartley’s Orrery defied her guesses.

Howbeit some notion of his jealous drift
She gather’d from the simple outward fact,
That her own lap contained each slighted gift;
Though quite unconscious of his cause to act
So like Othello, with his face unblack’d;
“Alas!” she sobbed, “your cruel course I see
These faded charms no longer can attract;
Your fancy palls, and you would wander free,
And lay your own apostacy on me!”

“_I_, false!--unjust Lorenzo!--and to _you_!
Oh, all ye holy gospels that incline
The soul to truth, bear witness I am true!
By all that lives, of earthly or divine--
So long as this poor throbbing heart is mine--
_I_ false!--the world shall change its course as soon!
True as the streamlet to the stars that shine--
True as the dial to the sun at noon,
True as the tide to ‘yonder blessed moon’!”

And as she spoke, she pointed through the window,
Somewhere above the houses’ distant tops,
Betwixt the chimney-pots of Mrs. Lindo,
And Todd and Sturch’s cheapest of all shops
For ribbons, laces, muslins, silks, and fops:--
Meanwhile, as she upraised her face so Grecian,
And eyes suffused with scintillating drops,
Lorenzo looked, too, o’er the blinds venetian,
To see the sphere so troubled with repletion.

“The Moon!” he cried, and an electric spasm
Seem’d all at once his features to distort,
And fix’d his mouth, a dumb and gaping chasm--
His faculties benumb’d and all amort--
At last his voice came, of most shrilly sort,
Just like a sea-gull’s wheeling round a rock--
“Speak!--Ellen!--is your sight indeed so short?
The Moon!--Brute! savage that I am, and block!
The Moon! (O, ye Romantics, what a shock!)
Why that’s the new Illuminated Clock!”

THOSE EVENING BELLS.

“I’D BE A PARODY.”

THOSE Evening Bells, those Evening Bells,
How many a tale their music tells,
Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime,
And letters only just in time!--

The Muffin-boy has pass’d away,
The Postman gone--and I must pay,
For down below Deaf Mary dwells,
And does not hear those Evening Bells,

And so ’twill be when she is gone,
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
And other maids with timely yells
Forget to stay those Evening Bells.

LINES

TO A FRIEND AT COBHAM.

’Tis pleasant, when we’ve absent friends,
Sometimes to hob and nob ’em
With Memory’s glass--at such a pass
Remember me at Cobham!

Have pigs you will, and sometimes kill,
But if you sigh and sob ’em,
And cannot eat your home-grown meat,
Remember me at Cobham!

Of hen and cock, you’ll have a stock,
And death will oft unthrob ’em,--
A country chick is good to pick--
Remember me at Cobham!

Some orchard trees of course you’ll lease
And boys will sometimes rob ’em,
A friend (you know) before a foe--
Remember me at Cobham!

You’ll sometimes have wax-lighted rooms,
And friends of course to mob ’em,
Should you be short of such a sort,
Remember me at Cobham!

THE QUAKERS’ CONVERSAZIONE.

“Dost thou love silence, deep as that before the winds were made?
Go not into the wilderness; descend not into the profundities of
the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the cells
of thine ears, with little-faith’d, self-mistrusting Ulysses.
Retire with me into a Quakers’ Meeting.”--ESSAYS OF ELIA.

IT may not, or rather it cannot, be generally known, that an attempt was made last winter, by certain influential members of the Society of Friends, to establish a Conversazione at Tottenham, a neighbourhood especially favoured by that respectable and substantial sect. The idea originated with a junior female branch of the opulent family of the Mumfords, which has been seated, time out of mind, in the vicinity of Bruce Castle; the notion was broached to a select few of the sisterhood, during a Sabbath walk homewards from the conventicle: the suggestion was relished; and a conference was called, at which the scheme was seriously brought forward, and gravely considered. At first there was a little boggling at the proposed title, as savouring, it was thought, of Loquacity; but the objection was dropped, on an explanation that although the word implied conversation, no one would be bidden to discourse against their own inclination; nay that, even amongst other persuasions, the conversazioni were frequently as distant as possible from a Negro “Talk,” or a Red Indian “Palaver.” This little demur excepted, the plan went on swimmingly, and was finally adopted with the subdued hum which, in that quiet-loving community, is equivalent to acclamations. A secretary was formally proposed, and tacitly chosen unanimously; being no other than the fair Foundress herself, the mild-spoken and meek-eyed Ruth Mumford. A few brief rules were then drawn up, and, after no debate, agreed to--some of them, considering the constitutional taciturnity of the sect, being sufficiently superfluous, as guarding against what Bubb Doddington called “a multiplicity of talk.” For instance, the 9th rule provided, that “no brother or sister should indulge in rambling irrelevant discourse, embracing a profusion of topics, wide of the matter in hand.” The 10th, that “no two or more Friends should disburden themselves of speech at one and the same time;” and the 12th, that “no member of this society shall deliver himself or herself with unreasonable continuity, to the prevention of other Friends who might desire to speak to the matter.” From the list of subjects to be “spoken to” politics and polemics were excluded; but poetry was allowed, or at least connived at, the excellent example of Bernard Barton and the Howitts having happily relaxed the primitive rigour of that proscription. Besides, it was well known, between Friends, that several of the younger female members, the fair secretary included, occasionally struck, or rather, as Quakers ought not to strike anything, twanged the lyre. For the rest, the society was modelled after other private literary associations; it was to meet twice weekly, visiting the houses of the members in rotation, when original essays or papers were to be read, and afterwards discussed; provided always, that they afforded any Debateable Land to make a stand upon, seeing that at the end of the rules and regulations, a special article earnestly recommended, that in the selection of subjects all such topics should be avoided “as might lead to differences of opinion amongst the brethren.”

Such was--for it is defunct--the Tottenham Friends’ Conversazione; of whose existence I became aware but by accident. It was my good fortune, till lately, to live next door to a family of Quakers, and to make acquaintance with the eldest daughter, a young lively maiden just wearing out the last of her teens. I am afraid in the austere brown eyes of her parents she was not strictly considered as the flower of their flock, being a sort of nonconformist among nonconformists, as was especially to be seen in comparing her with her younger sisters, who seemed to have been brought up, or stuck up, under the most starched discipline. Instead of their plain close caps,--mere casts of their skulls taken in muslin,--she wore an airy fanciful structure of blonde and white ribbon, that a Parisian woman might have put on--at least of a morning. In lieu of their sleek mohair braids, her auburn ringlets flowed down her neck in all the “Unloveliness of Love-locks.” To her star-like hazel eyes she allowed a little planetary liberty of circulation; whereas it seemed the object of the others, to keep their demure brown orbs as immoveable in their faces, as bad halfpence nailed to counters. Instead of screwing up her lips, as if she had just come, minus a masticator, out of Cartwright’s into an east wind, she sometimes gave her ivory teeth an airing, by smiling at some innocent fancy, to which she would give utterance, without trying to send her clear sweet voice, by a New North-West Passage, through her nose. As for her figure, it was none of those shapes which have no shape, and may be swaddled up without detriment in dingy drabs, olives, slates, and snuffy browns,--shapes which nature makes on her basin-pudding days, instead of using her best jelly-moulds--shapes like the bonnet-shapes which balance baskets of live mackerel. To see the symmetrical Rachel standing near either of her sisters, you would think you beheld (borrowing a local image) Tottenham High Cross, beside the Waithman Obelisk. Accordingly, the orthodox warp of her glossy satin was always _shot_ with a woof of some one of those gayer prismatic tints, to wear which is reckoned, among the severer Foxites, “a profanation of the Rainbow, deserving a second deluge.” As will be seen hereafter, she put a little blue into her superfine silken hose; sometimes I even fancied that I detected a tinge of the more fleshy pink--in short, she was a Quakeress, but not of the sad-brown sort--only a brunette.

With the old Friends, her parents, I cannot boast that I was even on speaking terms; but with the lovely and lively Rachel my acquaintance had ripened even to the calling her by her Christian name; and the reciprocation of her thou and thee, to which I was led, not as a convertite, but from learning, in my French and German Grammars, that the use of the second person singular was an especial token of intimacy and affection. In this our neighbourly intercourse, a system of mutual accommodation sprang up between us, not by bills, but by books; for which she drew upon me by pretty little notes of hand, that I duly honoured, making them payable over the back garden wall. Drawings and pieces of new music were equally negotiable. If I remember rightly, it was in return for Moore’s Melodies--the exchange at the time being against me--that I received “Fox’s Martyrs.” It was rather a ponderous tome for a lover of light reading; and if St. Swithin’s Festival had not fallen on a very wet Sunday in the country, I might never have opened its leaves,--if indeed they did not open of themselves,--thus letting fall certain MSS. intrusted to their custody, and which I now proceed to make public. In a new edition of the “Curiosities of Literature” they would deserve a distinguished place.

MINUTES OF THE TOTTENHAM FRIENDS’ CONVERSAZIONE;

ESTABLISHED with a view to sober, Intellectual, and Literary unbendings. Now first held, namely, on the fourteenth day of the eleventh month, one thousand eight hundred thirty and four. Brother Mumford, the Father of the present humble Pen, in the chair.

A most powerful and worthy setting forth, both in regard of numbers and our proceedings. Firstly, a word in season from Friend Oliver. Secondly, a draft of the rules. Thirdly, an opening poem; meditation thereon until the tenth hour, when our sitting was completed. Many congratulations between the brethren on the order, quiet, and decency thereof; myself as its humble founder, very joyously elevated--even unto the shedding of tears.

17. Some awkwardness on this night, arising out of the presentation of nine several Negroes’ Complaints to be read forth. Precedence yielded unto Sister Skeldrum’s complaint, in respect of her being so ancient, namely three-score and ten. After which, Sister Panyer’s was gone through, detaining us nearhand until our hour of dissolution. Friend Black in the chair.

21. The Negro Complaints resumed, whereof three more were gotten over, Sister Fagg kindly taking turn about with me in the deliverance thereof. Friend Thorne in the chair.

24. A spare meeting. The Negro Complaints brought to an end, save one; Sister Rumble consenting, on much persuasion, to reserve the Sorrows of Sambo for the Abolition Anniversary. Friend Woolley in the chair.

28. Friend Greathead read forth an original paper on the Manners of the Beavers. Much meditation thereon. Friend Stillfox in the chair.

1-12. Friend Seagrave in the chair. Sister Meeking read forth her Essay on Silence, but in so humble a tone, that little thereof was taken inward at our ears. No debate thereon. Dorcas Fysche, a visitor, craved to know whether Friends, not being members, were permitted to speak on the subject, and was replied to in the affirmative. Whereupon she held her peace.

5. Sister Knight read forth a self-composed addressing of herself unto Sleep. To which no objection was made by any present. Friend Knapp in the chair.

8. On this night I plucked up courage, and essayed to read forth mine own Stanzas on Universal Love; but my voice failing me in the midst, it was completely finished for me by Friend Thicknesse, who did perversely continue to pronounce _Jews_ instead of _Dews_, whereof came absurdity. Above all in the line which singeth,--“Descend ye Dews on this my head.” And again,--“Ye painted Flies that suck the Dews.”

12. No other member being prepared with originality, Sister Rumble read forth her Sorrows of Sambo. Much silent comment thereon. Brother Kersey in the chair, who shamefully suffered himself to be surprised with sleep.

15. No lecturing, and, by course, no debate; only meditation. A call made to order against Friend Dilly, who was in the chair, for untimeliness in asking the price of Anglo-Mexicans at a quarter before ten.

19. Sister Fetterlock being a visitor in expectancy, every one confined themselves unto Newgate. Several of the brethren declared their convictions. Friend Roper in the chair.

22. No lecturing. Sister Rumble distributed Sambo’s Sorrows amongst us, one unto each; the which she had caused to be imprinted at her own risk and cost. Friend Boulter was the chair.

26. No lecturing. It pleased our worthy Brother Upham, at his House of Welcome, to spread before us the creature comforts most abundantly, with a great out-pouring of the foreign luxury, which is called Champagne; the which was greatly discussed; and Brother Upham thereafter rebuked for the same, for that it was not of the kind which is still.

29. Friend Stock read forth a narrative of his own Life and Personal Adventures, the which held us for half an hour. Some debate touching the imprinting of the same, at the cost of the Society, in the shape of a Tract; which was agreed to, but put off at the instance of Friend Stock himself, in order to give him time to live into the shape of a pamphlet. Friend Smallbones went through the chair.

2-1-35. No assembly, by reason of the outrageous wind and hail, excepting Sister Rumble, with a new original poem, called “The Moral Gipsy.” The which she did read forth from the chair to my humble self and family, and our serving-man, Simon Dunny.

5. Friend Broadbent read forth, in part, an Essay on Innocent Jocularity; the which, in sundry passages, provoked dissentients, as tending to a defence of levity. A stiff debate thereon, in which all the brethren were agreeable to censure. Great merriment at Friend Sexton in his rebuking, saying, “Christian gravy,” instead of gravity, by a slip of the tongue.

9. The remains of Innocent Jocularity brought on again in a decidedly grave way, and nothing savouring of offensive. Followed with silence.

12. There were not sufficient friends to make a sitting, and no chair.

16. At Sister Rumble’s by course of rotation. No other member present, save mine own self, as by duty bound. A deplorable falling away from the cause. Whereof more hereafter.

* * * * *

The Record here breaks off. The society probably did not proceed farther, but died on the spot, of a complication of Innocent Jocularity and Sister Rumble, and was buried tacitly, with the fair Ruth Mumford for its chief mourner. The other papers are in verse, and a reading of them will certainly persuade the reviewers that they were premature in applying the designation of “Quaker Poetry” to foregone lays and lyrics. The first is a genuine brown study after nature; the second a hint how Peace ought _not_ to be proclaimed.

SONNET.

BY R. M.

HOW sweet thus clad, in Autumn’s mellow Tone,
With serious Eye, the russet Scene to view!
No Verdure decks the Forest, save alone
The sad green Holly, and the olive Yew.
The Skies, no longer of a garish Blue,
Subdued to Dove-like Tints, and soft as Wool,
Reflected show their slaty Shades anew
In the drab Waters of the clayey Pool.
Meanwhile yon Cottage Maiden wends to School,
In Garb of Chocolate so neatly drest,
And Bonnet puce, fit object for the Tool,
And chasten’d Pigments, of our Brother West;
Yea, all is silent, sober, calm, and cool,
Save gaudy Robin with his crimson Breast.

LINES

ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE.

BY DORCAS DOVE.

AND is it thus ye welcome Peace,
From Mouths of forty-pounding Bores?
Oh cease, exploding Cannons, cease!
Lest Peace, affrighted, shun our shores!

Not so the quiet Queen should come;
But like a Nurse to still our Fears,
With Shoes of List, demurely dumb,
And Wool or Cotton in her Ears!

She asks for no triumphal Arch;
No Steeples for their ropy Tongues;
Down, Drumsticks, down, She needs no March,
Or blasted Trumps from brazen Lungs.

She wants no Noise of mobbing Throats
To tell that She is drawing nigh;
Why this Parade of scarlet Coats,
When War has closed his bloodshot Eye?

Returning to Domestic Loves,
When War has ceased with all its Ills,
Captains should come like sucking Doves,
With Olive Branches in their Bills.

No need there is of vulgar Shout,
Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife, and Drum,
And Soldiers marching all about,
To let Us know that Peace is come.

Oh mild should be the Signs and meek,
Sweet Peace’s Advent to proclaim!
Silence her noiseless Foot should speak,
And Echo should repeat the same.

Lo! where the Soldier walks, alas!
With Scars received on Foreign Grounds;
Shall we consume in Coloured Glass
The Oil that should be pour’d in Wounds?

The bleeding Gaps of War to close,
Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail?
Will Squibs enliven Orphans’ Woes?
Or Crackers cheer the Widow’s Tale?

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE MORNING CALL.

I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveller than the approach to _Bedfordshire_. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem like blankets, the lakes and ponds are clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of dreams to come. His travelling-cap transforms to a night-cap, the coach lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard’s horn plays “Lullaby.” Every flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble up stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread “all before him where to choose his place of rest.”

It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog-day’s journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room, yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though it had been “a pint of nappy,” surrendered my boots, clutched a candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.

Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep: and blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster: “Great Nature’s second course” was spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace!

Here’s a body--there’s a bed!
There’s a pillow--here’s a head!
There’s a curtain--here’s a light!
There’s a puff--and so Good Night!

It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o’clock the next morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.

How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast as a Cathedral,--as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber: nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster--or rather I must have slept “like winkin,” for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a voice cried “Sleep no more!”

It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, whilst through the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my chamber.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, your honour, I humbly ax pardon--but somehow I’ve oversleeped myself, and the coach be gone by!”

“The devil it is!--then I have lost my place!”

“No, not exactly, your honour. She stops a bit at the Dragon, t’other end o’ the town; and if your honour wouldn’t object to a bit of a run--”

“That’s enough--come in. Put down the light--and take up that bag--my coat over your arm--and waistcoat with it--and that cravat.”

Boots acted according to orders. I jumped out of bed--pocketed my nightcap--screwed on my stockings--plunged into my trowsers--rammed my feet into wrong right and left boots--tumbled down the back stairs--burst through a door, and found myself in the fresh air of the stable-yard, holding a lantern, which, in sheer haste, or spleen, I pitched into the horsepond. Then began the race, during which I completed my toilet, running and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as often as I could spare breath for one.

“And you call this waking me up--for the coach. My waistcoat!--Why I could wake myself--too late--without being called. Now my cravat--and be hanged to you!--Confound that stone!--and give me my coat. A nice road--for a run!--I suppose you keep it--on purpose. How many gentlemen--may you do a week?--I’ll tell you what. If I--run--a foot--further--”

I paused for wind; while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We had turned a corner into a small square; and on the opposite side, certainly stood an inn with the sign of the Dragon, but without any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me aghast, and surveying the house from the top to the bottom; not a wreath of smoke came from a chimney; the curtains were closed over every window, and the door was closed and shuttered. I could hardly contain my indignation when I looked at the infernal somnolent visage of the fellow, hardly yet broad awake--he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out.

“Yes, you may well look--you have overslept yourself with a vengeance. The coach must have passed an hour ago--and they have all gone to bed again!”