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.
“BEAR ABOUT THE MOCKERY OF WOE.”
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.
HOPE DEFERRED.
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.
“IT CAN’T BE HELPED.”
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.
A GENERAL PEACE.
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!”
“No, there be no coach, sure enough,” soliloquised Boots, slowly raising his eyes from the road, where he had been searching for the track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a deprecating expression on my face. “No, there’s no coach—I ax a thousand pardons, your honour—but you see, Sir, what with waiting on her, and talking on her, and expecting on her, and giving notice on her, every night of my life, your honour—why I sometimes dreams on her—and that’s the case as is now!”
“YOU’VE WAKED ME TOO SOON,
I MUST SLUMBER AGAIN.”
A STUFFED BIRD.
THE LAMENT OF TOBY,
THE LEARNED PIG.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”—POPE.
O HEAVY day! oh day of woe!
To misery a poster,
Why was I ever farrow’d—why
Not spitted for a roaster?
In this world, pigs, as well as men,
Must dance to fortune’s fiddlings,
But must I give the classics up,
For barley-meal and middlings?
Of what avail that I could spell
And read, just like my betters,
If I must come to this at last,
To litters, not to letters?
O, why are pigs made scholars of?
It baffles my discerning,
What griskins, fry, and chitterlings
Can have to do with learning.
Alas! my learning once drew cash,
But public fame’s unstable,
So I must turn a pig again,
And fatten for the table.
To leave my literary line
My eyes get red and leaky;
But Giblett doesn’t want me blue,
But red and white, and streaky
Old Mullins used to cultivate
My learning like a gard’ner;
But Giblett only thinks of lard,
And not of Doctor Lardner!
He does not care about my brain
The value of two coppers,
All that he thinks about my head
Is, how I’m off for choppers.
Of all my literary kin
A farewell must be taken,
Goodbye to the poetic Hogg!
The philosophic Bacon!
Day after day my lessons fade,
My intellect gets muddy;
A trough I have, and not a desk,
A sty—and not a study!
Another little month, and then
My progress ends like Bunyan’s;
The seven sages that I loved
Will be chopp’d up with onions!
Then over head and ears in brine
They’ll souse me, like a salmon,
My mathematics turned to brawn,
My logic into gammon.
My Hebrew will all retrograde,
Now I’m put up to fatten;
My Greek, it will all go to grease;
The Dogs will have my Latin!
Farewell to Oxford!—and to Bliss!
To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop,—
I now must be content with chats,
Instead of learned gossip!
Farewell to “Town!” farewell to “Gown!”
I’ve quite outgrown the latter,—
Instead of Trencher-cap my head
Will soon be in a platter!
O why did I at Brazen-Nose
Rout up the roots of knowledge?
A butcher that can’t read will kill
A pig that’s been to college!
For sorrow I could stick myself,
But conscience is a clasher;
A thing that would be rash in man,
In me would be a rasher!
One thing I ask when I am dead,
And past the Stygian ditches—
And that is, let my schoolmaster
Have one of my two flitches:
’Twas he who taught my letters so
I ne’er mistook or miss’d ’em,
Simply by ringing at the nose,
According to Bell’s system.
THE LEARNED PIG GROWN OUT OF KNOWLEDGE.