CHARLES DICKENS.
Born, February 7, 1812. Died, June 9, 1870.
On the second of August, 1879, there was a severe storm in London, and the Editor of The World offered prizes for the two best descriptions of it to be written in imitation of the style of the fifteenth chapter of Martin Chuzzlewit. This, it will be remembered, recounts the experiences of Martin and Mark Tapley, on their voyage to the States. The following were the successful compositions, which appeared in The World, August 27, 1879.
First Prize.
A bright warm close to a dull dripping week; Labour, just paid his weekly wages by Capital, taking a friendly cup in the alehouse porch; Capital giving a last look to his horses and wagons, as he saunters across the Home-meadow to his evening meal; youth of the village disporting itself on the village green; fishers’ boats coming in, booty-laden, from the open-sea; coastguardmen looking anxiously out for what neither village youth, nor Labour, nor keen-eyed Capital himself can see—a thin dark cloud-line upon the horizon, with grey curling fringes that point upwards and move slowly on, just as the advance guard of a mighty army crests with its bayonets the distant hill.
An hour passes. The sun sets, the cloud-bank rising over him, and his struggling beams throwing a wan unearthly glare across the western heavens. Ever and anon as the wind rises, the tall poplars shake their heads and whisper to the oaks and shrubs beneath them; then the breeze as suddenly dies away, and again over all Nature is spread the sable pall and deathlike silence of an impenetrable night; or a few heavy drops patter down on the still pool, and then cease—all again is hushed, all restful, but yet pregnant with the rest and hush that precedes the hurricane.
Ten, eleven, twelve! Does some relentless demon of the storm, from the old church-tower, give the signal for the war of the elements? Scarce has the midnight chime died away when the tempest wakes. First one vivid flash, then, before the crash reverberates from hill to hill, another succeeds it, and another—not the ordinary fitful change from gleam to gloom, from darkness to light, but the mad meeting of storms from every quarter of the heavens, in all the fulness of rage and strife, and never ceasing turmoil.
Again, again! The rain seems to crash down rather than to fall, streaming with a torrent’s force from the hillside, foaming, rushing, seething in a thousand eddies down to the swollen river, till the banks no longer endure the awful pressure, and the wild flashes laugh out, fiend-like, at trees and flocks and newly-stacked hay, all swept adrift, all whirled oceanwards.
Again, again! What further ruin can the storm-demon work? Gradually, unwillingly, the tempest departs; only the gray scattered clouds remain, hanging on the hill slope. Yet, as the daylight dawns, one sad cry is heard from all, “God’s house!”
The chimes are for ever silent, for God’s house has fallen! Just before the storm passed away a vivid flash struck the topmost pinnacle and caught the oaken rafters in the belfry—and now the roof has fallen in; the pillars crumble beneath the still-consuming flame; the bells crash down from the steeple one by one, a smoking mass of blackened walls and arches alone bears witness to the past, alone tells of anthems raised to heaven by the white-robed choir, and earnest words of God’s chosen messengers, and the all-pervading incense of hushed and solemn prayer.
New Sarum.
Second Prize.
Murk midnight. Some in their beds for a moment waking only to hear the buffeting of the elements. Policemen, wetter than Ramsgate bathing-men, seeking the shelter of doorways. The bells of St. Paul’s unwillingly giving utterance to their dissatisfaction with their position by twelve muttering growls. The town, dry in the early spring, now ankle-deep in mud; the wind is no longer still, but, stealthily following the unwary foot-passenger, whirls off his hat, and, stopping for a moment in glee at his discomfiture, rushes on, eager for more mischief.
Now crowds, freed from their cramped postures in the playhouse, rush out upon the wild waste of the dripping Strand.
Here, roaring, fighting, pushing, elbowing each other into the howling fury of the night. Hither come chattering voices from the stalls, pit, and recesses of the theatre, where the chairs remain sole occupants of the place, and seem to say, “Ah, ha, here we are, snug for the night!”
Here in the eagerness of regained liberty, they storm and push each other, while the tempest falls in sheets of water, and howls above them. On and on in countless crowds they rush, like human billows. Men and women, hats, bonnets, and umbrellas, draggled dresses in one rushing wet mass. Pursuit of cabs, and fruitless return to the shelter of the passage; savage struggle of humanity enlivening the black night; little forbearance, but eternal fighting. On and on they surge, backwards and forwards, and darker grows the night, fiercer falls the hail, louder roars the thunder, more clamorous and angry the numberless voices in the street, when a wild cry goes forth, “A cab!” Onward it comes, fighting its way through the elements, the crazy door rattling; onward it comes, now free as the surging crowd falls back, now overwhelmed in a sea of human forms. And every voice in the multitude, answered by storm-voices in the air, shrieks more loudly, “A cab!”
Still he comes driving on, and at the boldness and determination of one man the angry crowd rise up, peering over each other’s heads, and round about the cab they press upon him, forcing each other down, and starting up and rushing forward in reckless eagerness.
Round it they surge and roar, and, giving way to others, moodily depart, still this one fights on bravely….
At last the eager multitude fall back, and dawn of day discovers the happy occupant within, with the elements still pouring their fury upon the devoted driver in an eternity of hail and rain, as on and on he goes into the far suburbs, with his dim lamps burning, and the fare inside asleep and snoring, as if there were no tempest trying every chink and cranny of the shaky vehicle, and no half-drowned cabby outside with only a moist billycock on his head, and sleepily yawning so wide that the spirits of the air, if they could exist on such a night, might look into the unfathomable depths below.
Robert le Diable.
The Age of Lawn-Tennis.
(After Charles Dickens’s “Pickwick.” A fragment.)
CHAPTER I.
The first record we have of the Hitquick Club, which has since assumed a position of proud eminence in the ball-playing world, is embodied in the following resolution, which appears in an old minute book, lately disinterred from the cloisters of Wymbledoune Priory.
“It is proposed by Mr. Pleycynge, and seconded by Mr. de Vorley,—
“That this Association has heard read, with feelings of unmingled satisfaction, the paper communicated by Verdant Hardcourt Hitquick, Esq., A.E.L.T.C.,[51] P.H.C.,[52] etc., etc., entitled, ‘Speculations on the origin of ball-playing, with some observations on the theory of the back-hander, and the parabola of the lob;’ and that this Association returns its warmest thanks for the same.”
It further appears that an amendment was suggested by Will. O’Bye Wisp, Esq., who had failed as a ball-player, and was better known as an enthusiastic Pyramidalist,—
“That the study of the triangular must inevitably result in greater benefits to the human race than the consideration of the sphere;” but, as this was unsupported by any further argument than that the triangle had more point than the ball, the original resolution was carried, Mr. Will. O’Bye Wisp alone dissenting.
It was further agreed, that V. H. Hitquick, Esq., should be President; that he, with Mr. Cutman, Mr. Shortgrass, and Mr. de Vorley, should be the Committee; and that Mr. Pleycynge should be the Secretary.
“A casual observer,” adds the Secretary, to whose notes we are indebted for the following interesting remarks, “A casual observer might have remarked nothing extraordinary in the appearance of V. H. Hitquick, Esq., during the reading of these resolutions; but to those who knew that there sat the man who had traced the origin of the ball into the early ages, when globular masses had been created by the introduction of the laws of gravity among shapeless matter; who had detected how, true to the model of the planetary system, the earliest balls had been ellipsoidal; how prehistoric men, in their primæval pastimes, had been driven nigh to frenzy by the false bounds arising out of this apparently heaven-directed shape; how, in such times, the advantages of service had been all preponderating; how certain crafty Chaldean astrologers in their studies had discovered the shape of the true sphere, and how, having backed themselves with wagers of corn and oil and wine, they had cheated in their international games by substituting the true spheres when they were being served to, and by using the ellipsoids when serving; to those, I say, who knew that there sat the man who had traced out all this and much else, by the research of half a lifetime, the sight, indeed, was an interesting one. Mr. Hitquick’s oration in response was remarkable;” but the damp of the Wymbledoune cloisters had here much obliterated the Secretary’s notes. It was gathered, however, that he was comparing the life of man to that of a tennis-ball, and was congratulating them “that the philanthropists and the ball-makers were rapidly, in both cases, eliminating the seamy side, though he was fain to acknowledge that some hollowness still remained in both.” Here the entry becomes illegible, and we have had to fall back upon tradition, and other sources, for what we are about to record further of the doings of the Hitquick Club.
CHAPTER II.
Mr. Hitquick, who had been delivering over-night, amidst much applause, an impressive lecture to the members of the Hitquick Club on various phases of Lawn-tennis dynamics, was with some difficulty roused from his slumbers on the particular morning of which it now becomes our duty to write.
“What’s that, Samuel?” he proceeded to say to his servant, as he sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes,—“a letter?”
“Yes, sir,” was the reply.
“Then bring me my spectacles,” said Mr. Hitquick.
“If you please, sir, a boy have walked over with this from Little Mugborough, and he’s a-vaiting below for a hanswer.”
“Very well, Samuel,” said Mr. Hitquick, as he adjusted his spectacles and opened the letter. “Why! dear me! What’s this?”
‘The Secretary of the Little Mugborough Lawn-Tennis Club presents his compliments to Mr. Hitquick, and begs to inform him that two members of his Club will be glad to play any two members of the Hitquick Association at four o’clock this afternoon.’
“Why! a challenge,” said Mr. Hitquick. “Of course, we will meet them. Let me see there’s Shortgrass and Cutman, two active men in the prime of life, who tell me they generally offer half-thirty in mixed country society; the very thing. Here, take this, Samuel.”
“It strikes me wery forcibly,” said Samuel to himself with a wink, “that, if those two gents don’t look a bit more spry this afternoon than I have ever seen them ven I have had the extreme privilege of vatching their performances, the Hitquick Club will have a very considerable wopping,”—and, whistling to himself, he went off with the letter.
Now, it must be confessed that neither Mr. Shortgrass nor Mr. Cutman were such performers on the Tennis-lawn as they had led their worthy President, Mr. Hitquick, to believe, nor as they had described themselves in their after-dinner conversations, as they sipped the soft claret for which the Hitquick Club was so deservedly famous; though certain papers which they had read before the members of the Association had, no doubt, stamped them as theoretical professors of no mean order.
Notably, a paper by Mr. Cutman on “Atmospheric resistance to the Cutman service in the latitude of Greenwich” (a lecture suggested by certain accurate memoranda, prepared by the statist of the Club, to the effect that only ’17 of these services so far overcame it as to pass over the net), had placed him in the front ranks of Lawn-tennis theorists; while a lecture by Mr. Shortgrass, on “Suspected tidal attraction on the Shortgrass lob” (accounting for the discovery by the same scientific observer that it almost always completed its parabola on Mr. Shortgrass’s side of the net), had brought him, too, into a leading position amongst spheric scientists.
At four o’clock, however, Mr. Shortgrass and Mr. Cutman stepped upon the lawn, prepared to do battle for the Hitquickians, and were soon confronted by the team from Little Mugborough.
The game began, A sharp service was sent to Mr. Shortgrass, who shut his eyes, hit wildly, and returned it accidentally. No one’s astonishment was greater than his own; he felt he had done enough; he shouted “yours” to balls which kept striking him on head, stomach, and legs, and did not appear to recover from his intense surprise till the umpire called, “Set the first, six games to love, Little Mugborough wins.”
“Call that placing, Samivel, my boy,” said a stout elderly gentleman, of horsey dress, to his son, who was no other than Mr. Hitquick’s servant; “call that placing? Vy! I should like to see one of these ere ball-placers as could flick a fly off a leader’s ear! That’s wot I calls placing, Samivel.”
Mr. Hitquick’s face had now begun to lengthen to such an extent as to cause a bystander to inform him that a curious compound of brandy and soda-water was to be obtained in the marquee close by, whither Mr. Hitquick, taking such bystander’s advice now adjourned.
“Capital game—smart sport—rare exercise—very,” were the words that fell upon Mr. Hitquick’s ear as he entered the marquee.
“What! Jangle?” said he, recognising an old acquaintance, “What brings you here?”
“ Me here—Wymbledoune Arms—met a party—capital fellows—gin and water—Lawn-tennis—great match—Little Mugborough—came on here—and here we are. What name? Know your face.”
“My name, sir, is Hitquick, author of a ‘Treatise on Balls;’ at your service, sir.”
“Ah! Hitquick—much pleasure—great man—good book—read it myself—Spheric lore—Sun, Saturn—Earth—Jupiter—pumpkins—balls—inter-threaded—human race—round games—round robins—general idea—deuced clever.”
“And do you—er—join, Mr. Jangle, in this—er—healthgiving pastime?”
“Play, Sir,” said Jangle—“I think I did—never heard?—queer thing—deuced strange—great traveller—round the world—visited Madagascar—met a stranger—said he could play—offered to play him—gave fifteen—thermometer 110 degrees in the shade—threw in a bisque—beat him hollow—no umpire—stranger riled—disputed scoring—they always do—ex-champion—name Shadow—all love-sets—play? rather.”
As Jangle and Mr. Hitquick reapproached the game, it had just become the duty of the umpire to cry: “Three sets to love, Little Mugborough wins,” thus deciding the match adversely to the Hitquickians. Mr. Hitquick retired a few paces from the bystanders, and, beckoning Shortgrass to approach, fixed a keen and searching glance upon him, and uttered in a low tone these remarkable words:—
“Sir, you’re a humbug.”
Turning to Cutman, who was trying to conceal himself behind his late partner, he added,—
“And you, too, sir.”
“What?” they both exclaimed, starting.
“Humbugs, sir. I will speak more plainly, if you desire it. Imposters, sir. Yes; imposters.”
And with these words Mr. Hitquick turned slowly on his heel, and proceeded to rejoin his friends.
This Parody originally appeared in Pastime, July 20, 1883. It was afterwards reprinted in Tennis Cuts and Quips, an amusing volume ably edited by Mr. Julian Marshall, and published by Field and Tuer, London.
The late Mr. Charles Stuart Calverley, the author of many clever parodies, was a diligent student of the works of Dickens, and when he entered at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in October 1852, it was generally admitted that he was more familiar with the Pickwick Papers than any other man in the University. Hence arose the jocular notion of having a competitive examination on that work, and Calverley drew up an ingenious syllabus of questions, from which it may be gathered how accurate and minute was his acquaintance with Pickwick. The examination was open to all members of Christ’s College, the first prize was taken by Mr. Walter Besant, and the second by Mr. (now Professor) Skeat, two gentlemen whose names have since become familiar in the literary world. The Pickwick Examination Paper will be found in Fly Leaves, by C. S. Calverley, published by G. Bell & Sons, a few specimen questions will show the humour of the thing:—
1. Mention any occasions on which it is specified that the Fat Boy was not asleep; and that (1) Mr. Pickwick and (2) Mr. Weller, senr., ran. Deduce from expressions used on one occasion Mr. Pickwick’s maximum of speed.
2. Translate into coherent English, adding a note wherever a word, a construction, or an allusion requires it:
“Go on, Jemmy—like black-eyed Susan—all in the Downs”—“Smart chap that cabman—handled his fives well—but if I’d been your friend in the green jemmy—punch his head—pig’s whisper—pieman, too.”
Elucidate the expression, “the Spanish Traveller,” and the “narcotic bedstead.”
4. What operation was performed on Tom Smart’s chair? Who little thinks that in which pocket, of what garment, in where, he has left what, entreating him to return to whom, with how many what, and all how big?
5. Give, approximately, the height of Mr. Dubbley; and, accurately, the Christian names of Mr. Grummer, Mrs. Raddle, and the Fat Boy; also the surname of the Zephyr.
8. Give in full Samuel Weller’s first compliment to Mary, and his father’s critique upon the same young lady. What church was on the valentine that first attracted Mr. Samuel’s eye in the shop?
11. On finding his principal in the pound, Mr. Weller and the town-beadle varied directly. Show that the latter was ultimately eliminated, and state the number of rounds in the square which is not described.
12. “Any think for air and exercise; as the wery old donkey observed ven they voke him up from his deathbed to carry ten gen’lmen to Greenwich in a tax-cart.” Illustrate this by stating any remark recorded in the Pickwick Papers to have been made by a (previously) dumb animal, with the circumstances under which he made it.
15. Describe Weller’s Method of “gently indicating his presence” to the young lady in the garden; and the Form of Salutation usual among the coachmen of the period.
20. Write down the chorus to each verse of Mr. S. Weller’s song, and a sketch of the mottle-faced man’s excursus on it. Is there any ground for conjecturing that he (Sam) had more brothers than one?
23. “She’s a swelling visibly.” When did the same phenomenon occur again, and what fluid caused the pressure on the body in the latter case?
24. How did Mr. Weller, senior, define the Funds, and what view did he take of Reduced Consols? in what terms is his elastic force described, when he assaulted Mr. Stiggins at the meeting? Write down the name of the meeting?
30. Who, besides Mr. Pickwick, is recorded to have worn gaiters?
In connection with this examination reference may be made to the “Death of Mr. Pickwick,” by Messrs. W. Besant and J. Rice in “The Case of Mr. Lucraft, and other Tales.”
The Battle won by the Wind.
By the author of the “Picnic Papers,” “Barnaby Fudge,” &c.
Night! Night and a thick darkness on the dreaming city. It was o’er all—that pitchy veil—o’er lone deserted streets and broad suburban roads, along which wagons with their great clamped wheels jolt forward to the early market—o’er square and terrace, and stately dome and carved pinnacle—a deep dense obscurity, into which tower and steeple rose and were lost to the eyes of the gazer from below!
Night! black, stormy, dreary night. Driving in long dim lines athwart the starless sky—lashing the sloping roofs of dripping houses—flooding kennel and gutter and choked-up drain—pattering like a loud chorus of rolling spectre drums at rattling windows and on streaming sky-lights—down—in one steady, uninterrupted, continuous pour—drove the wild storm of lashing hail and rain! A dismal night! A night for the well-housed to snoozle themselves up beneath the bed-clothes, and listen all crouchingly to the roaring of the tempest! A night for the homeless pauper to lie down on the lee side of hedge and stack—and stretching his stiffening limbs in the icy sludge, wait patiently until Death came by and touched him with its sceptre!
Night—a dreary, dismal, rainy, windy night! A night of unchained gale and unbridled hurricane! How the fierce wind roared, to be sure! How it roared in its wrath, and muttered in its sulkiness, and sung in its glee, and howled and shrieked and whistled and raved in the full swing of its fury. It was a jubilee—be certain of it—a time of jubilee with the Wind!—a night when it had full license and authority, and power and sanction, to do its best and its worst—by sea and by land—above and below. And did not the fierce wind avail itself of the opportunity? Did it not muster its forces, and its energies, and its powers, far up amongst the dim-driving clouds, preparing for the onset—preparing for its night of empire and of pillage and of mischief? And then, when its time of liberty came, did it not burst out with a roar, and a shout, and a clang, as of victorious trumpets—did it not career all madly over land and sea, beating down the weak and broken corn, and roaring over the stark brown moors, and catching the big leafy limbs of gnarled trees—gnarled old mighty trees which had stood there for centuries—and wrenching them all torn and riven and splintered from the groaning trunks, and then grappling and wrestling with them as strong men fight, until the victorious wind, with a loud shriek of triumph, would drag the huge branch out, and toss it contemptuously away!
Who—o—o—op! for the Battle won by the Wind!
But that was not all. No, no. It attacked the city too, as well as the country. It did. The wind! Coming with a sweep and a pounce and a roar and a whistle-shrieking up through empty streets—groaning with a hollow sound in dim big archways—catching as with a muscular grasp, vanes and weathercocks—coming to the outside of windows—laying hold of the glazed sashes—shaking and rattling them and shouting hoarse mad greeting to the people within—lingering, I say, an instant at such places, and then departing with a burst of uproarious joy to lay siege to some high old tottering ricketty gable, which it would so shake, and push, and pull, and cause to waver and quake—that the whole crazy old tenement to which it belonged would wheeze and creak and groan in sympathy, until the old men and the old women, who dwelt there for long years, would be terrified and frightened, and would cower down upon the hot hearths or in their beds, crying—“Woe is me, but this is a wild night!”
And it was—it was—a wild night.—Who—o—o—op for the Battle won by the Wind!
On a bridge which spans a black, swollen, mightily rushing river. Dim lights twinkle along its great massive, girding, granite parapets. The wind sweeps over it, and roars in the arches below, and catches up the bright foam from the water, and rushes along with it, scattering the spray in white handfuls aloft, so that the passenger who looks into the gulf from between the balustrades of carven stone which fence the footpath, shrinks to see the driving masses of blurred whiteness—the vexed surface of the waters torn up and carried along by the strong broad hands of the blast!
Where a flickering lamp flashed and paled, and rose and fell within the streaming and storm-lashed crystal of its dripping prison, stood a woman—a woman, beautiful and alone. Black clusters of rain-drenched hair waved and streamed from her pale cheeks. Her garments were mean and sodden, and saturated with the storm; but her eye was bright and fierce, and burning with a fire not of this world—with a fire which once—when the western heaven opened, and the forked lightning leaped out into the darkness—confronted the fierce blaze—and gave it back glare for glare!
She stood beneath the flickering lamp. For a moment only. The next she was erect upon the parapet—her arms extended—her drapery streaming free—like a bird that preens its plumage for a new flight—a flight into another world?
Ha!—a voice! Yes—the woman’s—hark!
What says it? The words—the last words—have gone forth; and as the dark form disappears from its granite resting-place—disappears into the black, howling, lashing gulf beneath—these words ring up and away into the air—being carried on the wings of the tempest whithersoever it will—these awful words—
“Who—o—o—op for the Battle won by the Wind!”
Yes, yes—the wind of Passion—the breath of hopeless, homeless, heartless, Despair!
From The Puppet-Showman’s Album. Illustrated by Gavarni. London, no date.
Amongst the Sensation Novels, so skilfully condensed by Bret Harte, is a humourous parody of the most popular of Charles Dickens’s Christmas books. In it the leading characteristics and failings are admirably hit off, not only of Dickens, but also of Scott, Charles Lever, Marryat, Fennimore Cooper, Hawthorne, and Thackeray, as will be seen from the following extracts:—
The Haunted Man.
A Christmas Story.
Part I.
THE FIRST PHANTOM.
Don’t tell me that it wasn’t a knocker. I had seen it often enough, and I ought to know. So ought the three o’clock beer, in dirty highlows, swinging himself over the railing, or executing a demoniacal jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, although butchers as a general thing are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to whom knockers of the most extravagant description were merely human weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used. And so ought, for the matter of that, etc., etc., etc.
But then it was such, a knocker. A wild, extravagant, and utterly incomprehensible knocker. A knocker so mysterious and suspicious that Policeman X 37, first coming upon it, felt inclined to take it instantly in custody, but compromised with his professional instincts by sharply and sternly noting it with an eye that admitted of no nonsense, but confidently expected to detect its secret yet. An ugly knocker; a knocker with a hard, human face, that was a type of the harder human face within. A human face that held between its teeth a brazen rod. So hereafter in the mysterious future should be held, etc., etc.
But if the knocker had a fierce human aspect in the glare of day, you should have seen it at night, when it peered out of the gathering shadows and suggested an ambushed figure; when the light of the street lamps fell upon it, and wrought a play of sinister expression in its hard outlines; when it seemed to wink meaningly at a shrouded figure who, as the night fell darkly, crept up the steps and passed into the mysterious house; when the swinging door disclosed a black passage into which the figure seemed to lose itself and become a part of the mysterious gloom; when the night grew boisterous and the fierce wind made furious charges at the knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry it away in triumph. Such a night as this.
It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that had commenced life as a gentle country zephyr, but wandering through manufacturing towns had become demoralised, and reaching the city had plunged into extravagant dissipation and wild excesses. A roystering wind that indulged in Bacchanalian shouts on the street corners, that knocked off the hats from the heads of helpless passengers, and then fulfilled its duties by speeding away, like all young prodigals—to sea.
He sat alone in a gloomy library listening to the wind that roared in the chimney. Around him novels and storybooks were strewn thickly; in his lap he held one with its pages freshly cut, and turned the leaves wearily until his eyes rested upon a portrait in its frontispiece. And as the wind howled the more fiercely, and the darkness without fell blacker, a strange and fateful likeness to that portrait appeared above his chair and leaned upon his shoulder. The Haunted Man gazed at the portrait and sighed. The figure gazed at the portrait and sighed too.
“Here again?” said the Haunted Man.
“Here again,” it repeated in a low voice.
“Another novel?”
“Another novel.”
“The old story?”
“The old story.”
“I see a child,” said the Haunted Man, gazing from the pages of the book into the fire—“a most unnatural child, a model infant. It is prematurely old and philosophic. It dies in poverty to slow music. It dies surrounded by luxury to slow music. It dies with an accompaniment of golden water and rattling carts to slow music. Previous to its decease it makes a will; it repeats the Lord’s Prayer, it kisses the ‘boofer lady.’ That child——”
“Is mine,” said the phantom.
“I see a good woman, undersized. I see several charming women, but they are all undersized. They are more or less imbecile and idiotic, but always fascinating and undersized. They wear coquettish caps and aprons. I observe that feminine virtue is invariably below the medium height, and that it is always babyish and infantine. These women——”
“Are mine.”
“I see a haughty, proud, and wicked lady. She is tall and queenly. I remark that all proud and wicked women are tall and queenly. That woman——”
“Is mine,” said the phantom, wringing his hands.
“I see several things continually impending. I observe that whenever an accident, a murder, or death is about to happen, there is something in the furniture, in the locality, in the atmosphere that foreshadows and suggests it years in advance. I cannot say that in real life I have noticed it—the perception of this surprising fact belongs——”
“To me!” said the phantom. The Haunted Man continued, in a despairing tone:
“I see the influence of this in the magazines and daily papers: I see weak imitators rise up and enfeeble the world with senseless formula. I am getting tired of it. It won’t do, Charles! it won’t do!” and the Haunted Man buried his head in his hands and groaned. The figure looked down upon him sternly: the portrait in the frontispiece frowned as he gazed.
“Wretched man,” said the phantom, “and how have these things affected you?”
“Once I laughed and cried, but then I was younger. Now, I would forget them if I could.”
“Have then your wish. And take this with you, man whom I renounce. From this day henceforth you shall live with those whom I displace. Without forgetting me, ’twill be your lot to walk through life as if we had not met. But first you shall survey these scenes that henceforth must be yours. At one to-night prepare to meet the phantom I have raised. Farewell!”
The sound of its voice seemed to fade away with the dying wind, and the Haunted Man was alone. But the firelight flickered gaily, and the light danced on the walls, making grotesque figures of the furniture.
“Ha, ha!” said the Haunted Man, rubbing his hands gleefully; “now for a whiskey punch and a cigar.”
Book II.
THE SECOND PHANTOM.
One! The stroke of the far-off bell had hardly died before the front door closed with a reverberating clang. Steps were heard along the passage; the library door swung open of itself, and the Knocker—yes, the Knocker—slowly strode into the room. The Haunted Man rubbed his eyes—no! there could be no mistake about it—it was the Knocker’s face, mounted on a misty, almost imperceptible body. The brazen rod was transferred from its mouth to its right hand, where it was held like a ghostly truncheon.
“It’s a cold evening,” said the Haunted Man.
“It is,” said the Goblin, in a hard, metallic voice.
“It must be pretty cold out there,” said the Haunted Man, with vague politeness. “Do you ever—will you—take some hot water and brandy?”
“No,” said the Goblin.
“Perhaps you’d like it cold, by way of change?” continued the Haunted Man, correcting himself, as he remembered the peculiar temperature with which the Goblin was probably familiar.
“Time flies,” said the Goblin coldly. “We have no leisure for idle talk. Come!” He moved his ghostly truncheon towards the window, and laid his hand upon the other’s arm. At his touch the body of the Haunted Man seemed to become as thin and incorporeal as that of the Goblin himself, and together they glided out of the window into the black and blowy night.
In the rapidity of their flight the senses of the Haunted Man seemed to leave him. At length they stopped suddenly.
“What do you see?” asked the Goblin.
“I see a battlemented medieval castle. Gallant men in mail ride over the drawbridge, and kiss their gauntletted fingers to fair ladies, who wave their lily hands in return. I see fight and fray and tournament. I hear roaring heralds bawling the charms of delicate women, and shamelessly proclaiming their lovers. Stay. I see a Jewess about to leap from a battlement. I see knightly deeds, violence, rapine, and a good deal of blood. I’ve seen pretty much the same at Astley’s.”
“Look again.”
“I see purple moors, glens, masculine women, barelegged men, priggish bookworms, more violence, physical excellence, and blood. Always blood—and the superiority of physical attainments.”
“And how do you feel now?” said the Goblin.
The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders.
“None the better for being carried back and asked to sympathise with a barbarous age.”
The Goblin smiled and clutched his arm; they again sped rapidly through the black night and again halted.
“What do you see?” said the Goblin.
“I see a barrack room, with a mess table, and a group of intoxicated Celtic officers telling funny stories, and giving challenges to duel. I see a young Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of valour. I learn incidentally that the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a dragoon regiment. I hear a good deal of French! No, thank you,” said the Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving hand of the Goblin, “I would rather not go to the Peninsular, and don’t care to have a private interview with Napoleon.”
Again the Goblin flew away with the unfortunate man, and from a strange roaring below them, he judged they were above the ocean. A ship hove in sight, and the Goblin stayed its flight, “Look,” he said, squeezing his companion’s arm.
The Haunted Man yawned. “Don’t you think, Charles, you’re rather running this thing into the ground? Of course, it’s very moral and instructive, and all that. But aint there a little too much pantomime about it! Come now!”
“Look!” repeated the Goblin, pinching his arm malevolently. The Haunted Man groaned.
“Oh, of course, I see Her Majesty’s ship Arethusa. Of course I am familiar with her stern First Lieutenant, her eccentric Captain, her one fascinating, and several mischievous midshipmen. Of course, I know it’s a splendid thing to see all this, and not to be sea-sick. Oh, there the young gentlemen are going to play a trick on the purser. For God’s sake let us go,” and the unhappy man absolutely dragged the Goblin away with him.
* * * * *
The Haunted Man started, and—woke. The bright sunshine streamed into the room. The air was sparkling with frost. He ran joyously to the window and opened it. A small boy saluted him with “Merry Christmas.” The Haunted Man instantly gave him a Bank of England note. “How much like Tiny Tim, Tom and Bobby that boy looked—bless my soul, what a genius this Dickens has!”
A knock at the door, and Boots entered.
“Consider your salary doubled instantly. Have you read David Copperfield?”
“Yezzur.”
“Your salary is quadrupled. What do you think of the Old Curiosity Shop?”
The man instantly burst into a torrent of tears, and then into a roar of laughter.
“Enough. Here are five thousand pounds. Open a porter-house, and call it ‘Our Mutual Friend.’ Huzza! I feel so happy!” And the Haunted Man danced about the room.
And so, bathed in the light of that blessed sun, and yet glowing with the warmth of a good action, the Haunted Man, haunted no longer, save by those shapes which make the dreams of children beautiful, reseated himself in his chair, and finished Our Mutual Friend.
“Sensation Novels,” first introduced to the British public by the late John Camden Hotten in 1871, has been since republished by Ward, Lock & Co., London.
Part the Best and Last.
CHAPTER I.
It was ten o’clock! In the morning! The Easterly sun came down bright upon busy streets and grimy thoroughfares, and quiet places in the far off country. It was eleven o’clock! In the morning! The sun lighted up city churches and the broad river, and shone into death chambers, in houses at the doors of which stood mutes. It was twelve o’clock! Noon! Broad, bright, unwinking noon! The sun gleamed on many roofs—and on market gardens in the suburbs, and on potato cans in the streets, and into the counting house of Dombey and Son.
The clerks worked noiselessly that day—almost breathlessly. Many pens scratched on the paper, and yet no word was spoken. For Carker was there! Carker the smooth, the oily—the velvetty—the sly.
The sun gleamed through the window panes—it fell on Carker—and on Carker’s teeth. And still it gleamed—still it sparkled after the glass door had noiselessly opened, and before Carker was seen standing the form—the stately—cold—wifeless—childless form of Mr. Dombey!
There was a long pause. You could have heard all the pens going in the outer office. A long pause—long—very—very long. Carker spoke first, and when he spoke he seemed all teeth—white glistening teeth—like a shark of smooth tongue and oily address—accustomed to good society.
“Mr. Dombey—I delight to see you—I feel honoured—much honoured—deeply honoured—by this visit.”
There was another pause—longer than the first—Oh, yes! much longer! Eight minutes longer!
And Mr. Dombey drew himself up—up! High! higher! like the Genie in the Arabian Tales, till it appeared (to the eye of Perch which eye happened to be accidentally applied at the keyhole)—that the top of Mr. Dombey’s hat had touched—nay lifted off the roof of the counting house of Dombey and Son.
“Ha!” said Mr. Dombey, and Perch being frightened fell backwards upon a nail, and the pens in the outer office stopped.
“Ha! ha!” said Mr. Dombey—“here—come here—all of you,—and learn how to crush a viper.”
The clerks came accordingly—thronging about the door—with white faces and clenched hands—excepting Robinson, who was of a merry turn of mind, and who said audibly “here’s a lark.”
“Thus”—said Mr. Dombey, “thus it is I crush a viper.” His wild, big, grey eyes were fixed, yet flashing,—his long gaunt form worked and quivered like a galvanized corpse,—his face was as the face of a roasting demon!
Nobody saw anything of Carker but his teeth: yet from these teeth issued a hissing sound of “now.”
Could it be? It could! It was! Four policemen sprung from under the table and held four staffs up to Mr. Dombey’s nose!
“Now,” said the Teeth, “remove that man.”
Dombey stood like a statue carved out of Parian marble, but dressed in a hat, coat, pantaloons, wellingtons, and other minor articles of costume. He waved his hand and the constables fell back.
“Remove me—remove Dombey from the counting house of Dombey and Son?”
These were the only words he spoke; then his tongue clave unto the roof or ceiling of his mouth.
The Teeth spoke not—but they held up a board, a white painted board, such as may be seen at the doors of merchants’ offices. All started. For on the board was painted:—
CARKER. LATE DOMBEY AND SON.
“Mine”—hissed the Teeth—“mine—all is mine Dombey! Dombey! you have fallen! Dombey—you’re a beggar! Dombey—here’s a penny for you! Dombey—move on!”
A pause. Dombey as motionless as the figure-head of a stranded ship.
“You left me to manage your business—you did.—I managed it—ha! ha! ha!—till I made it mine! mine! ha! ha! Take the penny, Dombey! take it, that’s a good man, and go! go! go!”
“No!”
“No”—was it an echo? More actors on the scene? Aye. More! more!
The old woman—the old woman and the handsome daughter!—Edith’s counterpart—Edith in rags—Edith an outcast—Edith—Edith—Still—Still, Edith.
Oh! how the Teeth chattered—the Teeth—they did—as the lightening of that outcast’s eye flashed—and the cataract of that outcast’s hair streamed, and the trumpet of that outcast’s voice rang and re-echoed in God’s sunshine!
“Forger—Felon—Murderer! Ha! ha! ha! The hour is come—it is!”
And the old crone screamed in chorus “Felon!—it is!”
And where was Carker?
On the floor in a strong fit. Smitten—smitten—in his pride and his power. Smitten by the voice of the woman he had ruined—the woman he had tried to hang.—Now it was her turn! It was!
The policemen were gentle and not rough. They lifted the fallen man and took him away. Perch saw handcuffs on the manager’s wrists.
Then the counting house was locked up and seals put upon the doors. A great crowd stood long opposite to it. In the midst, Mr. Perch found Dombey with Carker’s penny still in his hand, and so led him away gently and gave him shelter at Ball’s-pond.
CHAPTER II.
“Ding-a-dong—a-ding-dong—ding-dong-boum.” Joy-bells—joy—for the wedding! the wedding! Ha! And at the Wooden Midshipman’s! Cap’en Cuttle was magnificent. He had had his hook polished with black lead, and looked himself as radiant as his hook—aye as radiant as he did, when, undressing the night before old Sol Gills tumbled into the garret through the skylight. Where had that old man been! Where—indeed where?
It was the question Cap’en Cuttle put—and in these terms.
“Whereby and awast—keep her head to the wind, and when kitched make a note on. Therefore—if so—say so—what’s in the log? Let dogs delight to bark and fight—for which see Dibdin—therefore—stand by it is—and that steady.”
Thus solemnly adjured Gills spoke—
“Where I have been—and what I have been doing” the old man said “is nothink to nobody.”
Ding-dong-bell—ding-a-dong—a-ding-dong! The wedding at the Wooden Midshipman! It was on the very day, almost at the very hour that the house of Dombey and Son was shut up, that the wedding party left the Wooden Midshipman. And did he not look happy—that Wooden Midshipman? A credible person, a Beadle, avers that the timber face smiled and the timber lips shouted a loud “Hooray” in cadence with those joy-bells which still rung merrily from the grey towers of St. Koweld-without. Aye, and so they rang when, before the altar, stood Old Gills with a radiant countenance and flowing tears—and Captain Cuttle with a prayer-book in his hand (in order to check the parson and keep him right) and his silver chronometer hung on his hook “whereby to see fair play to all—awast and belay”—and Susan Nipper shedding tears indefatigably—and Wall’r and Florence.
The sun was in the heavens! But lo! through the stained glass, amid the saints and angels—gorgeous on that chancel window—fell its blessing light! Walter Gay and his bride stood hoping in the sun-shine!
“Wilt thou take this woman to be thy wedded wife?”
“Of course—no—that is—oh dear—dear—I beg pardon—its of no consequence—none in the least—don’t mind me,” ejaculated a voice from a dimly seen pew beneath the organ.
Thither repaired the Beadle full of wrath—and found the unhappy Toots fainting on a hassock. But the Game Chicken advancing, doubled the Beadle up—carried off Mr. Toots—deposited him in a patent safety, and conducted him—for the improvement and development of his mind, to see three hundred rats killed in five minutes, by a terrier much famed in Whitechapel.
So the sun had not begun to descend towards the west—ere the marriage party left the church, and—Wall’r and Florence, now Mr. and Mrs. Gay leading them on—took their way towards London-bridge.
CHAPTER III.
In a spacious room—sat Edith! In a spacious room—richly furnished—but dim—dim—as her aching soul. Gorgeous curtains shut out the light—the blessed light! It fell on all alike—that day—on the infant in his cradle—on the dead man in his coffin. On the kennel—on the palace—on Dombey straying away from Ball’s-pond—on Perch looking after him fruitlessly (in public houses). On Mr. and Mrs. Gay, and the Captain and Gills—all on the steamer’s deck going to eat the marriage feast at a pleasant suburban tavern called the Red House, Battersea—on Toots in the patent safety—on Carker with the teeth, in a cell of Newgate. On all—on all! But on Mrs. Dombey. There, there was darkness—darkness in the air—darkness in the soul—darkness in the light! Dim—aching—lonely—alone! Alone! but for her fearful thoughts! Which haunted her! Spectres—looming ghastly gray in the gloom! Spectres with rods and serpents! Gnawing in her soul—like unblessed things potent for evil and foul thoughts, and things accursed of man! Out—out—awful shadows!
But she sat there—rigid—unmoved. The mortal and the immortal. Edith and the shadows!
Suddenly a voice arose—cleaving the darkness—She listened—mechanically.
“A full, true, and particular account of the harrest of Mister Carker of the ’ouse of Dombey and Son in the City on three distinct charges hof forgery, perjury, and murder all for the small charge of one halfpenny.”
She fell on her knees, That erring woman—on her knees and her hands were uplifted, and on the bright face—tense and passion strung—played strange awful thoughts!
The shadows gathered round her!
Her head drooped—dropped until with a sudden clash the marble forehead smote the floor.
Still the shadows gathered round her! There was silence—but the low deep roar of humanity—the surges of the million-peopled city—spoke voiceless things in the summer air.
Listen to the music?
The shadows listened!
Edith lay on the floor beneath the music and the shadows! When the people of the house came, they found her——asleep!
“Ding-a-dong-a-ding-dong.” The echoes of the joy bells rung in the ears of the wedding party, even after they had got by steamer—as far as Hungerford. They were still there—lying close to the wooden pier—when there was a great outcry and a confusion, and many shouts of “He’s in—he’s in—a man in the river.” But the Cap’en was all presence of mind.—He saw the struggling form! and clambering down to the water by the paddle-wheel—with his hook—hooked it out. It was Dombey!
CHAPTER IV.
Walter Gay is now the head of the old city house of Dombey and Son.
Carker was hanged; and the Charitable Grinder was transported for picking Joey Bagstock’s pocket on that melancholy occasion.
Mr. Toots, under the tuition of the Game Chicken, set up for a sporting character—took in twelve dozen copies of Bell’s Life every week, and read them all one after the other.
The old woman and the handsome daughter are frequent guests at the Mansion House—where they are usually charged with breaking from 35 to 89 panes of glass in the West London Union.
The Game Chicken espoused Mrs. Pipchin, and the young couple set up a public-house called the “Peruvian Mines,” where Miss Tox is barmaid.
The Cap’en got a medal from the Humane Society for saving Dombey. He always carries it on his hook. Captain Bunsby married Mrs. Macstinger.
As for Dombey, he took to drinking at first—and then to being a church-rate martyr. He has since, however, become a reformed character, and is now a clerk in a saving’s bank at 18s. a-week. Occasionally, however, he and Perch have something comfortable together.
And what of Edith—erring, beauteous, haughty, impassioned Edith. She, too, was repentant. At first she officiated as a pew-opener at a very fashionable chapel. But here she was persecuted by Major Bagstock and Cousin Feenix—both of whom used to squeeze her hand when she showed them into pews. At length she retired from the world, and now gets up fine linen at Tooting.
As for Joey B. and Cousin Feenix they challenged each other with respect to Mrs. Dombey. Neither of them, however, appeared at the place of mortal combat, and neither has been seen, nor heard of since.
From The Man in the Moon, Edited by Angus B. Reach. Volume III. London, no date, but about 1848-9.
Our Miscellany (which ought to have come out, but didn’t); edited by E. H. Yates and R. B. Brough, and published by G. Routledge & Co., London, in 1856, contained several prose parodies, and amongst them one upon Charles Dickens. This was written by Brough, and consisted of three chapters, of which it will suffice to quote the first:
Hard Times.[53]
(Refinished.)
By Charles Diggins.
CHAPTER XXXV.
They coovered poor Stephen Blackpool’s face!
The crowd from the Old Hell Shaft pressed around him. Mr. Gradgrind ran to look at the sufferer’s face, but in doing so, he trod on a daisy. He wept: and a hundred and sixty more of his hairs turned gray. He would tread on no more daisies!
He was not, however, to be baulked in his humble, honest purpose of self-reform. As he passed over the common, a donkey kicked him. It reminded him that facts were stubborn things: and he had done with facts and stubbornness. He wept again.
“Rachel, beloved lass, art thou by me?”
“Ay, Stephen; how dost thou feel?”
“Hoomble and happy, lass. I be grateful and thankful. I be obliged to them as have brought charges o’ robbery agin me; an’ I hope as them as did it will be happy an’ enjoy the fruits. I do only look on my being pitched down that theer shaft, and having all my bones broke, as a mercy and a providence, and God bless ev’rybody!”
“Stephen, your head be a wandering.”
“Ay, lass; awlus a muddle.”
“Will you take anything, Stephen?”
“I do hoombly thank thee for a good and trew lass thou hast awlus been to me; and I dunnot care if I do take a little soomut warm—wi’ a little sugar.”
The sobered man had still credit at the neighbouring tavern. In two seconds he appeared with a steaming glass of rum-and-water, scarcely stopping to sip it by the way.
“Can thou drink rum, Stephen?” asked Rachel, taking the tumbler from the hands of the sobered man for fear of accidents.
“I do hoombly and kindly thank thee, lass,” said poor Stephen; “I can drink anything.”
Rachel placed the goblet to his parched and quivering lips.
There was a moment of breathless silence. Mr. Bounderby rattled three-and-sixpence in his breeches pocket, and finding that his ostentation was unnoticed, kicked a little boy down the Old Hell Shaft. Mr. Gradgrind purchased a pennyworth of violets from a blue-eyed flower-girl, and true to his new and trusting creed, accepted two counterfeit farthings as change for a sovereign without looking at them. The Whelp glared fiercely at the rum-and-water, and barked.
Stephen drank it, every drop. Finished. Down to the dregs. No heel-taps.
“I do hoombly thank thee, Rachel, good and trew lass as thou hast been to me; but I do feel much better.”
“Oh, here!” Mr. Bounderby blustered forward: “I’m not going to stand this. If a man suspected of robbing Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown’s Bank, is to feel ‘much better,’ I should like to know what’s the use of Old Hell Shafts. There’s a touch of the gold-spoon game in that; and I’m up to the gold-spoon game—rather! And it wont go down with Josiah Bounderby. Of Coketown. Not exactly. Here! Where’s a constable?”
There was none. Of course not. There never is, when wanted.
Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer pressed officiously forward, and volunteered to take Stephen into custody.
“Shame!” cried the populace.
“Oh, I daresay,” said Mr. Bounderby; “I’m a self-made man, and, having made myself, am not likely to be ashamed of anything. There, take him along.”
There was a movement, as if for a rescue. The sobered man had been sober quite long enough without a fight, and tucked up his sleeves.
Stephen prevented this explosion.
“Noa, lads,” he said, in his meek broken voice; “dunnot try to resky me. I be fond o’ constables. I like going to prison. As for hard labour, I ha’ been used to that long enough. Wi’ regard to law—it’s awlus a muddle.”
“Off with him!” said Mr. Bounderby. “When I used to commit robberies, I never had any rum-and-water given to me. No, nor didn’t talk about muddles. And I’m worth sixty thousand pounds, and have got ladies of family—ladies of family;”—he raised his voice to call attention to Mrs. Sparsit, who was ambling gently along with the submissive Stephen on her august shoulders—“acting as beasts of burden for me. Come up, madam!” and he gave Mrs. Sparsit a gentle touch of his whip, causing that high-nosed lady to prance a little.
They moved on, towards Coketown. The lights were beginning to blink through the fog. Like winking. The seven o’clock bells were ringing. Like one o’clock. Suddenly the tramp of horses and the fierce barking of a dog were heard.
With a wild cry, Sissy recognised Sleary’s company galloping towards them—all mounted; Mr. Sleary himself, grown much stouter, on his wonderful trained Arab steed, Bolivar; J. W. B. Childers, who had apparently not had time to change his dress, as the Indian warrior on the celebrated spotted Pegasus of the Caucasus; Kidderminster following, on the comic performing donkey, Jerusalem.
A dog, far in advance of the horse-riders, dashed amongst the astonished crowd, and singling out Mr. Bounderby, seized him by the scruff of the neck.
“Thath wight, Mewwylegth,” cried Mr. S., coming up panting (in addition to his former lisp, advancing age had afflicted him with a difficulty in pronouncing his r’s). “Thath the vewy identical cove: pin him! Good dog!”
“Help! murder!” cried the bully of humility, struggling with the animal. “Will you see a man worth sixty thousand pounds devoured by a dog?”
The prospect seemed to afford the bystanders considerable satisfaction.
“Ith no uthe, Thquire,” said Sleary, calmly; “the dog wont let go hith hold of you;” and he added, in a hissing voice, “ith Jupeth dog!”
“It’s a lie,” Bounderby faltered; “I didn’t murder him—he did it himself. I never saw the man. He hit me first. I never spoke to a clown in my life. Tear this hound off.”
“Quite enough, Thquire,” said Sleary. “I call on everybody in the Queenth name to athitht me in arethting thith man, Jothiah Bounderby, for the murder of my clown, Jupe, thickthteen yearth ago.”
Sissy fainted into the Whelp’s arms. From that moment the latter quadruped resolved to lead a virtuous life.
Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer, with the alacrity of timeservers, released Stephen, and seized on their former patron. Stephen slipped quietly away in the confusion of the moment, remarking, with a wink of satisfaction to Rachel, “Awlus a muddle!”
Merrylegs retained his hold on his victim’s throat. Like a vice.
“Murder!” cried Bounderby! “release me from this dog, or demon, and I will confess all.”
“Mewwylegth, come here, thir!”
Merrylegs released his victim.
“Well, then,” said the detected miscreant, desperately—“sixteen years ago I murdered the man, Jupe, to obtain possession of eighteen-pence, with which I entered Coketown, and set up in business. And now, do your worst.”
The crowd recoiled in horror. The sobered man picked up Mr. Bounderby’s hat, that had dropped off in the scuffle, and immediately pawned it.
“Off with him!” cried Sleary, in a tone of theatrical authority,—“to jail!”
To jail! to jail! to jail!
* * * * *
——:o:——
The Political “Mrs. Gummidge.”
A “Dickens” of a Situation.
Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone had been in a low state for some time, and had almost burst into tears when a chill gust from the North, coming suddenly, and—to her—unexpectedly down the chimney, had blown the lid off the bubbling saucepan, and the soot into the stew therein.
“I am a much-crossed cretur’,” were Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, “and everythink goes contrairy with me.”
“Oh, it’ll soon leave off,” said Mr. Peggotty-Bull—meaning the North wind,—“and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than it is to us.”
“I feel it more,” said Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone.
It was indeed a very cold, cheerless day, with cutting blasts of wind, which seemed to blow from every quarter at once, but from the North and East for choice, Mrs. Gummidge’s peculiar corner of the fireside seemed—to her at least—to be the chilliest and most uncomfortable, as her seat was certainly the hardest. She complained of the North-Easter, and of its visitation just at this time and at her back, which she said gave her the “creeps.”
“It is certainly very uncomfortable,” said Mr. Peggotty-Bull. “Everybody must feel it so.”
“I feel it more than other people,” said Mrs. Gummidge.
So at dinner. The fish—from which she had expected great things—were small and bony, and the stew was smoky and burnt. All acknowledged that they felt this something of a disappointment, but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than they did, and again made that former declaration with great bitterness—“I’m a much-crossed cretur’, and every think goes contrairy with me.”
Later, when Mr. Peggotty-Bull came home to tea, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Her knitting—a nondescript piece of work—seemed to be a regular Egyptian labyrinth for complicated tangle, and a very Penelope’s web for inconclusiveness and power of alternate weaving and unweaving. “Cheer up, Grand Mawther!” cried Mr. Peggotty-Bull. (Mr. Peggotty meant Grand Old Girl.)
Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She dropped her knitting with a gesture of despair.
“What’s amiss, Dame?” said Mr. Peggotty-Bull.
“Everythink!” returned Mrs. Gummidge. “Including you,” she continued, dolefully. “You’ve a willing mind to face the troubles before you, but you ain’t ready. I’m sorry it should be along o’ me that you’re so unready.”
“Along o’ you? It ain’t along o’ you!” said Mr. Peggotty, good naturedly, and perhaps without quite meaning it. “Don’t ye believe a bit on it,”
“Yes, yes, it is!” cried Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone. “I know what I am. I know that I am a much-crossed cretur’, and not only that everythink goes contrairy with me, but that I go contrairy with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun.”
One really couldn’t help thinking that the misfortune extended to some other Members of that House, besides Mrs. Gummidge.
“I ain’t what I could wish myself to be,” said Mrs. Gummidge. “I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they makes me contrairy. I wish I didn’t feel them, but I do. I wish I could be harden’d to ’em, but I ain’t. If I felt less, I could do more. I make the House uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. It’s far from right that I should do it. I’d better leave the House. I’m a much-crossed cretur’, and had better not make myself contrairy here. If thinks must go contrairy with me, and I must go contrairy myself, let me go contrairy alone at my own place. I’d better leave the House, and retire and be a riddance.”
Mr. Peggotty-Bull, whose countenance had exhibited the mixed traces of many feelings, including puzzlement, impatience, and profound sympathy, looked upward at a portrait of an ancient, but buck-like and somewhat Hebraic personage upon the wall, and, shaking his head, with a lively expression of those mixed sentiments still animating his face, said, in a solemn whisper,
“She’s been thinking of the Old ’Un!”
This parody of “David Copperfield” appeared in Punch May 2, 1885, it was illustrated by an excellent cartoon of Mr. Gladstone as “Mrs. Gummidge.”
——:o:——
Space will not permit of the insertion of further extracts from the parodies on Dickens, it remains, therefore, to enumerate his principal works in chronological order, followed by a list of the parodies, imitations, and plays founded upon them:—
Sam Weller, a Journal of Wit and Humour. Edited by Sam Slick, with illustrations. 1837.
Posthumous Papers of the Cadgers’ Club. With sixteen engravings. London. E. Lloyd, about 1837.
Posthumous Papers of the Wonderful Discovery Club, formerly of Camden Town. Established by Sir Peter Patron. Edited by “Poz.” With eleven illustrations, designed by Squib, and engraved by Point. London. 1838.
The Post-humourous Notes of the Pickwickian Club. Edited by “Bos.” 2 vols, with numerous illustrations. London.
Pickwick in America, detailing all the adventures of that individual in the United States. Edited by “Bos.” Illustrated with forty-six engravings by “Phis.” London. E. Lloyd, about 1837.
Pickwick Abroad, or a Tour in France, by G. W. M. Reynolds. This is a thick octavo volume, published in 1839, with numerous illustrations. The first edition is rather scarce, but reprints (published by Willoughby & Co., London) are not difficult to procure. The woodcuts, in the body of the book, are curious, as showing the architecture and appearance of the principal streets of Paris fifty years ago.
The Adventures of Marmaduke Midge, the Pickwickian Legatee. (Particulars of this work are wanting.)
Amongst the many piracies and imitations of The Pickwick Papers, was “The Penny Pickwick,” edited by “Bos,” with illustrations. The preface is signed “Bos,” Rose Cottage, St. John’s Wood. Printed and published by E. Lloyd, Bloomsbury. 1838.
There were also numerous song and jest books named after either Mr. Pickwick or Sam Weller, but these scarcely come within the scope of this list.
The Life and Adventures of Oliver Twiss, the Workhouse Boy. Edited by “Bos.” London. No date, about 1840.
Scenes from the Life of Nickleby Married, containing certain Remarkable Passages, Strange Adventures, and Extraordinary Occurrences that befel the Nickleby Family in their further Career, being a Sequel to “Nicholas Nickleby.” Edited by “Guess.” With twenty-one illustrations by “Quiz.” London. John Williams, Paternoster Row. 1840.
Nickelas Nickelbery. Containing the Adventures, Misadventures, Chances, Mis-Chances, Fortunes, Mis-fortunes, Mysteries, Mis-eries, and Miscellaneous manœuvres of the Family of Nickelbery. By “Bos.” With forty-three woodcut illustrations. London. E. Lloyd, about 1838. An impudent piracy upon Nicholas Nickleby, published in penny weekly numbers, and parodying the whole of the story and characters, under very slightly altered names. This has been ascribed to Mr. J. P. Prest.
The Nickleby Papers, by “Poz.” In penny numbers.
Mister Humfries’ Clock. “Bos,” maker. A Miscellany of striking interest. Illustrated. London, 1840.
Master Timothy’s Bookcase; or, the Magic Lanthorn of the World. By G. W. M. Reynolds. London, 1842.
A Girl at a Railway Junction’s Reply [to an article in the Christmas number for 1866 of “All the Year Round,” entitled “Mugby Junction.”] London.
Parley’s Penny Library. Containing piratical versions of Barnaby Rudge, the Old Curiosity Shop, and the Picnic Papers. About 1841.
Change for the American Notes; or, Letters from London to New York. By an American Lady. London. Wiley and Putnam. 1843. (This was written by a Yorkshireman, Mr. Henry Wood.)
Current American Notes. By “Buz.” London. No date.
Christmas Eve with the Spirits, with some further tidings of the Lives of Scrooge and Tiny Tim. London, 1870.
A Christmas Carol. Being a few scattered staves from a familiar composition, re-arranged for performance by a Distinguished Musical Amateur, during the Holiday season, at Hawarden.—Punch. December 26, 1885. This is a political skit, the only present interest of which consists in the four very humourous illustrations by Harry Furniss, which are exquisite parodies of those by John Leech, in the original book.
The Faces in the Fire; a Story for the Season. By Redgap. With illustrations by T. H. Nicholson: London. Willoughby & Co., Warwick Lane. No date. Dedicated to the Earl of Carlisle. Pp. 165. (Written in imitation of Dickens’s Christmas Books, and published about 1845.) In a second edition, published by James Blackwood, in 1856, the name of George Frederick Pardon is given on the title page as the author.
January Eve. A Tale of the Times. By George Soane, B.A. London: E. Churton, 1847: pp. 180. Dedicated to Lord John Russell. In his preface the author not only admits that a similarity exists between his writings and those of Dickens, but is bold enough to assert that he, and not Dickens, is the original “Simon Pure.” “A little tale of mine, the Three Spirits, was thought by many to be exceedingly like Boz’s ‘Christmas Carol,’ yet the Carol was not published till some years after it. If then, there be any imitation in the case at all, it is Boz—glorious Boz—who has taken a hint from my writings.”
The Battle of London Life; or, “Boz” and his Secretary. By Morna. With a portrait and illustrations by G. A. Sala. This is a scarce little volume of 106 pages, which was published by George Peirce, of 310, Strand, London, in 1849. It was written by Thomas M. O’Keefe, although it is generally attributed to Mr. George Augustus Sala; he certainly furnished several illustrations, which are signed G. Sala, and on the cover there is an advertisement of “The April Fool Book,” written by the author of “The Battle of London Life,” also illustrated by George Sala.
Old Jolliffe: Not a Goblin Story. By the Spirit of a little Bell, awakened by “The Chimes.” London: W. N. Wright, 1845. Dedicated to Queen Adelaide. Pp. 56.
The Wedding Bells, an Echo of “The Chimes,” with coloured illustrations by the Author, who states that the work was suggested by “The Chimes” of Charles Dickens.
Facts and Figures from Italy. Addressed during the last two winters to C. Dickens, being an appendix to his “Pictures.” By Don Jeremy Savonarola. London, R. Bentley, 1847. This was written by Francis Mahony. (“Father Prout.”)
The Sketch Book. By “Bos.” Containing tales, sketches, etc. With seventeen woodcut illustrations. London.
Dombey and Daughter: A Moral Fiction. By Renton Nicholson, Lord Chief Baron of the celebrated Judge and Jury Society, held at the Garrick’s Head Hotel, Bow Street. London. Thomas Farris. No date, about 1847. With illustrations. Pp. 94. At the end of the story Baron Nicholson bids his readers Farewell, and remarks, “I think I may, without arrogance, predict that these pages will be read with pleasure by those whose tastes are not vitiated, and who prefer a simple story, representing scenes of real life, to the monstrous productions of a feverish imagination, which of late have been received with unmerited though almost universal applause.” This was published in monthly parts.
Renton Nicholson also wrote Cockney Adventures, and Tales of London Life, in imitation of the Pickwick Papers.
Dombey and Father, by Buz. A Satire on Charles Dickens. New York, 1868.
Micawber Redivivus; or, How to make a fortune as a Middleman, etc. By Jonathan Coalfield [i.e. W. Graham Simpson?].
Bleak House; a Narrative of Real Life. Being a faithful detail of facts connected with a suit in the Irish Court of Chancery, from the year 1826 to 1851. London, H. Elliott. 1856.
Characteristic Sketches of Young Gentlemen. By Quiz Junior. With Illustrations. London. W. Kidd.
A Child’s History of Germany. By H. W. Friedlaender. A pendant to a “Child’s History of England,” by Charles Dickens. Celle, 1861.
No Thoroughfare; the Book in Eight Acts. This parody appeared in “The Mask,” No. 1, February, 1868.
No Thoroughfare. A parody upon Dickens’s N.T. By C—s D—s, B. Brownjohn and Domby. Boston U.S.
The Mystery of Mr. E. Drood. Specimen of an Adaptation. By Orpheus C. Kerr. (Three and a half pages.) Published in The Piccadilly Annual. London. John Camden Hotten. December, 1870. This very scarce little work contains Hunted Down, by Charles Dickens, which is not generally included amongst his collected writings. It was originally written for an American publisher.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Complete. Part the Second by the Spirit Pen of Charles Dickens, through a medium; embodying also that Part of the Work which was published prior to the Termination of the Author’s Earth-Life. 1873. The medium was Mr. J. P. James, of Brattleborough, Vermont, U. S.
John Jasper’s Secret, being a Narrative of Certain Events following and Explaining “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” with illustrations. Philadelphia, about 1871. Also published in London in 1872.
The Cloven Foot; being an adaptation of the English novel, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” to American scenes, characters, customs, and nomenclature. By Orpheus C. Kerr. New York, 1870.
A Great Mystery Solved: Being a Sequel to “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” By Gillan Vase. In three vols. London, Remington and Co, 1878. Preface dated Hanover, July 12, 1878.
Rifts in the Veil, a Collection of Inspirational Poems and Essays, given through Various Forms of Mediumship. London, W. H. Harrison. 1878. This work on Spiritualism contains particulars of a continuation of “Edwin Drood,” which is said to have been dictated through a medium. The article occupies 30 closely printed pages, and is entitled “An alleged Postmortem work by Charles Dickens.”
Plays founded upon the Novels of Charles Dickens.
As is well known Charles Dickens strongly objected to his Novels being adapted for the Stage, yet scarcely one of his better known works escaped that penalty of popularity. As most of these stage adaptations are little better than parodies, or imitations, a catalogue of them may be fitly inserted here.
In this compilation some assistance has been derived from the life of Dickens, by Mr. F. T. Marzials, (London, Walter Scott, 1887), but the following list contains more entries, and fuller details than he gave. It is, in fact, the only approximately complete list of plays founded on Dickens’s Works, giving the date and place where first performed, and the names of the publishers, where they could be ascertained.
Sam Weller, or the Pickwickians, a Drama in three acts, first performed at the Strand New Theatre, London, July 17, 1837. By W. T. Moncrieff. (Dicks 541.) This has a long preface, in which the author defends himself against the charge of having merely transferred Dickens’s characters and incidents from the story to a play. He says, indeed, that he thinks Dickens ought to be grateful to him, for the popularity of the play had greatly extended the fame of the story.
The Pickwickians; or, the Peregrinations of Sam Weller. Arranged from Mr. W. T. Moncrieff’s adaptation by T. H. Lacy. London. 1837. (Lacy 315.)
The Pickwick Club. A Burletta in three acts, by E. Stirling. City of London Theatre, April 27, 1837. (Duncombe.)
The Peregrinations of Pickwick, an acting Drama. By William Leman Rede. London, W. Strange. 1837.
Bardell v. Pickwick: versified and diversified. Songs and choruses. Words by T. H. Gem. Leamington, 1881.
The Great Pickwick Case, arranged as a Comic Operetta. The words of the songs by Robert Pollitt. Manchester, Abel Heywood & Son, 1884.
Bardell v. Pickwick. (Dicks 636.)
Last of the Pickwickiana comes Mr. F. C. Burnand’s dramatic Cantata, Pickwick, with music by Mr. Edward Solomon, which was produced at the Comedy Theatre, London, early in 1889. The parts were thus distributed, Pickwick by Mr. Arthur Cecil, Mrs. Bardell by Miss Lottie Venne, and “The Baker” by Mr. Rutland Barrington.
This Cantata has not yet been published.
There can be no doubt but that the character of Sam Weller made the fortune of The Pickwick Papers when they first appeared in monthly parts, and sent the circulation up from a poor 400 to 40,000. The germ of this character has been traced back to a play, written by Mr. Samuel Beazley, entitled “The Boarding House,” and produced at what is now called the Lyceum Theatre, in 1811. That there is a slight resemblance in Simon Spatterdash in this play to Sam Weller cannot be denied, and Dickens may have seen or read the play, and have been struck with the possibility of converting the character of Spatterdash into that of his own immortal Sam.
Oliver Twist; or the Parish Boy’s Progress. A Drama in three acts. By C. Z. Barnett. First performed at the Pavilion Theatre, May 21, 1838. (S. French.)
Oliver Twist. A serio-comic Burletta, in three acts, by George Almar. Performed at the Royal Surrey Theatre, London, November 19, 1838. (Dicks 293.)
A similar adaptation, but in four acts, was published in New York.
Bumble’s Courtship. From Dickens’s “Oliver Twist.” A Comic Interlude, in one act. By Frank E. Emson. London. (Lacy.)
Nicholas Nickleby, a Farce in Two Acts. By Edward Stirling. Produced at the Adelphi Theatre, London 1838. (S. French 264.)
Nicholas Nickleby, a Drama in Four Acts. Adapted by H. Simms. First performed at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, 1875. (Dicks 469.)
The Infant Phenomenon; or, a Rehearsal Rehearsed. A Dramatic Piece in one Act. Being an episode in the adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Adapted by H. Horncastle, and originally produced at the Strand Theatre, London, July 8, 1842. (Dicks 572.)
The Fortunes of Smike, or, a Sequel to Nicholas Nickleby; a Drama in Two Acts. By Edward Stirling, London. Adelphi Theatre. London, March 2, 1840. (Webster’s Acting Drama 94.)
Nicholas Nickleby; an Episodic Sketch; in three tableaux, based upon an incident in “Nicholas Nickleby.” Not published. Strand Theatre, Sept. 10, 1885.
Barnaby Rudge. A Domestic Drama, in Three Acts. By Charles Selby and Charles Melville. First performed at the English Opera House, June 28, 1841. (Dicks 393.)
Barnaby Rudge; or, the Murder at the Warren, a Drama in Three Acts, by Thomas Higgie. No date. (Lacy.)
Barnaby Rudge. A Burlesque upon the Version now being played at the Princess’s Theatre, London. Fun. November 24, 1866.
Master Humphrey’s Clock; a Domestic Drama, in Two Acts. By Frederick Fox Cooper. Victoria Theatre, London, May 26, 1840. (Lacy.)
The Old Curiosity Shop. A Drama in Four Acts. Adapted by George Lander. First produced at the Theatre Royal, York, May 14, 1877. (Dicks 398.)
The Old Curiosity Shop; a Drama in Two Acts. By Edward Stirling. Adelphi Theatre, November 9, 1840. (French 1147.)
The Old Curiosity Shop; a Drama, in Four Acts. Adapted by Mr. Charles Dickens, Junr., from his Father’s Novel. Not published. Opera Comique Theatre. 1884.
Mrs. Jarley’s Far-Famed Collection of Wax-Works, as arranged by G. B. Bartlett. In Two Parts. London.
Yankee Notes for English Circulation. A Farce in One Act, by Edward Stirling. Adelphi Theatre. London. 1843. (Duncombe’s Theatre.)
Martin Chuzzlewit, a Drama in Three Acts by Charles Webb. London. (Barth.)
Martin Chuzzlewit; or, his wills and his ways, what he did, and what he didn’t. A Domestic Drama, in Three Acts, by Thomas Higgie and T. H. Lacy. Lyceum Theatre, London, July 8, 1844. (S. French 330.)
So says the acting copy, but see next entry:
Martin Chuzzlewit; a Drama in Three Acts. By Edward Stirling. This, it is stated on the acting copy, was produced at the Lyceum Theatre July 8, 1844. The two versions are unlike, and it is clearly impossible that both could have been produced on the same night at the same theatre. It is probable that Higgie and Lacy’s version was that which was produced at the Strand Theatre July 15, 1844. (Duncombe’s plays.)
Tom Pinch. Domestic Comedy in Three Acts By Joseph J. Dilley and Lewis Clifton. Vaudeville Theatre, London, March 10, 1881. (S. French 1803.)
Mrs. Sarah Gamp’s Tea and Turn Out; a Bozzian Sketch, in One Act, by B. Webster. Adelphi Theatre, London, October 26, 1846. (Webster’s Drama 136.)
Tartuffe Junior, Von H. C. L. Klein. Neuwied, 1864. (A Play in Five Acts after “Martin Chuzzlewit.”)
Mrs. Gamp’s Party. An adaptation in One Act. Manchester. Abel Heywood & Son.
Mrs. Harris. A Farce in One Act, by Edward Stirling. Lyceum Theatre, October, 1846. (Duncombe.)
The Cricket on the Hearth, a Fairy Tale of Home, in two acts. By Edward Stirling. Adelphi Theatre, London, December 31, 1845. (Webster’s Drama 124.)
The Cricket on the Hearth; or, a Fairy Tale of Home. A Drama, in three acts. Dramatised by Albert Smith, by the express permission of the Author. First produced at the Lyceum Theatre, 1845, and at the Winter Garden, New York, September 14, 1859. (Dicks 394.)
The Cricket on the Hearth, a Fairy Tale of Home in Three Chirps. By W. T. Townsend. London. (Lacy 649.)
This was another version which was produced at the City of London Theatre, January 7, 1846.
A Christmas Carol; or, the Miser’s Warning, by C. Z. Barnett. Produced at the Surrey Theatre, February 5, 1844. This adaptation was published with a note stating that “the extreme necessity (the consequence of its high and deserved popularity) that so imperatively called for its representation on the stage, has also demanded its publication as a Drama, which it is the Adapter’s sincere wish, as it is his conviction, will considerably augment the sale of the original lovely and humanizing creation upon which it is founded.” (Lacy 1410. Dicks 722.)
Dot, a Fairy Tale of Home. A Drama in Three Acts, from “The Cricket on the Hearth.” Dramatised by Dion Boucicault. Not published.
The Haunted Man, a Drama. Adapted from Charles Dickens’s Christmas Story. Not published.
The Chimes, a Goblin Story, of some Bells that rang an Old Year out, and a New Year in; a Drama, in Four Quarters, by Mark Lemon and Gilbert Abbott à Beckett. Adelphi Theatre, London, December 19, 1844. (Webster’s Drama 115.)
La Bataille de la Vie. Pièce en Trois Actes, par M. M. Mèlesville et André de Goy. Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, 1853.
The Battle of Life, founded on the Christmas Annual of Charles Dickens, dramatised by Albert Smith. In Three Acts and in Verse. Lyceum Theatre, London, December 21, 1846. (W. S. Johnson.)
The Battle of Life, a Drama in Three Acts, by Edward Stirling. Surrey Theatre, London. January, 1847. (Duncombe’s Theatre 456.)
Dombey and Son. In three acts. Dramatized by John Brougham, and produced at Burton’s Theatre, New York, 1850. (Dicks 375. French 126.)
Dombey and Son; or, Good Mrs. Brown, the Child Stealer. A Drama, in two acts. “From the pen of the inimitable Charles Dickens, Esq. As performed at the Royal Strand Theatre.” No date.
An impudent theft, in which many liberties are taken with Dickens’s plot. This was published whilst the novel was in progress, and is now very scarce.
Captain Cuttle; a Comic Drama, in one act. By John Brougham. Burton’s Theatre, New York, January 14, 1850. (Dicks 572.)
David Copperfield, a Drama in two acts. Adapted by John Brougham, and first performed at Brougham’s Lyceum, January 6, 1851. New York. (French 133. Dicks 374.)
David Copperfield, a Drama in three acts, by John Brougham. Brougham’s Lyceum Theatre, January 6, 1851. (French.)
Little Emily, a Drama in four acts. Adapted from Dickens’s “David Copperfield,” by Andrew Halliday.
Lady Dedlock’s Secret, a Drama in Four Acts. Founded on an episode in “Bleak House,” by J. Palgrave Simpson. Opera Comique Theatre, London, March 26, 1884. (French.)
“Move on,” or Jo, the Outcast, a Drama in Three Acts. Adapted by James Mortimer. Not published.
Poor Jo, a Drama in Three Acts. Adapted by Terry Hurst. Not published.
Jo, a Drama in Three Acts, by J. P. Burnett. Not published.
Bleak House; or Poor “Jo.” A Drama, in Four Acts. Adapted by George Lander. Pavilion Theatre, London, March 27, 1876. (Dicks 388.)
Hard Times. A Domestic Drama, in Three Acts, by T. Fox Cooper. Strand Theatre, London, August 14, 1854. (Dicks.)
No Thorough Fare; a Drama in Five Acts, and a Prologue. By Charles Dickens and W. Wilkie Collins. Adelphi Theatre, London, December 26, 1867, and afterwards in Paris. Printed in New York.
Identity; or, No Thoroughfare. A Drama in Four Acts. By Louis Lequel. New York. (French.)
L’Abime, drame en cinq actes. (Founded on “No Thoroughfare.”) Paris, 1868.
The Tale of Two Cities; or, the Incarcerated Victim of the Bastille. An Historical Drama, in a Prologue and four acts. Adapted by T. Fox Cooper. First performed at the Victoria Theatre, London, July 7, 1860. (Dicks.)
A Tale of Two Cities; a Drama in two acts and a Prologue. By Tom Taylor. Lyceum Theatre, London, January 30, 1860. (Lacy 661.)
The Tale of Two Cities; a Drama in three acts and a Prologue. Adapted by H. J. Rivers. London.
A Message from the Sea, a Drama in Four Acts. Founded on Charles Dickens’s tale of that name, by John Brougham. Britannia Theatre, London, 1861. (Dicks 459.)
A Message from the Sea; a Drama in Three Acts. By Charles Dickens and W. Wilkie Collins. London, 1861.
The Dead Witness; or Sin and its Shadow. A Drama in Three Acts, by Wybert Reeve, founded on “The Widow’s Story” of The Seven Poor Travellers, by C. Dickens. First produced at the Sheffield Theatre. (S. French 1472.)
Great Expectations, a Drama in Three Acts, and a Prologue. By W. S. Gilbert. Not published.
Dickens himself did not often attempt parody, but his Reports of the Meetings of the “Mudfog Association” are admirable prose burlesques of the early proceedings of the British Association. These originally appeared in “Bentley’s Miscellany,” but have recently been republished.
Sam Weller’s Adventures.
A Song of the Pickwickians.
Who caused the smiles of rich and poor?
Who made a hit so slow, but sure?
And rose the worth of literature?
Sam Weller.
I’m pretty well known about town,
For to gain a repute is my pride,
Though no vun can doubt my renown,
I’m a covey of polish beside!
I renovates cases for feet,
Whether high-lows or tops is the same,
I turns ’em off hand werry neat,
And Samivel Veller’s my name!
In the Borough my trade I dragged on,
Vith no vun to envy my sphere;
I polish’d the soles of each don,
From the cadger bang up to the peer.
Their understandings I greatly improved,
Vot happen’d to fall in the vay;
And many a gen’leman mov’d
To me in the course of the day.
Vun gen’leman—Pickwick, Esquire,
The head of the noted P. C.
Vun day tumbled in to enquire,
If I’d had the fortin to see
A cove vearing Vellington kicks,
And a Miss Rachel Vardle beside,
Vot the gent had lugged off by the nicks,
And promis’d to make her his bride.
I knowed by the cut of his boot,
As the cove had put up at our inn,
So Pickwick, without a dispute,
Comes tumbling down with the tin!
And me arter that he engages,
To follow him in his career—
Good togs and twelve shiners for vages,
Paid every annual year.
Some coves when they rises you know,
They stick to vulgarity will;
But that vos my notice below,
’Cos as how I’m a gen’leman still,
“For riches is nothing to me,
If ever them I vos among—”
As the gen’leman said, d’ye see,
At the time he vos goin’ to be hung!
(For remainder of this old street ballad see p. 276 of The Life and Times of James Catnach, by Charles Hindley. London. Reeves & Turner, 1878.)
It should have been stated that the Parodies on Dickens, quoted from The World on p. 215, were written by the Rev. W. H. A. Emra, of Salisbury (“New Sarum”) and by Mr. Walter Fletcher, of Hornsey. (“Robert le Diable.”)
Amongst the parodies of Coventry Patmore which appeared on p. 194, mention should have been made of one which will be found in Mr. A. C. Swinburne’s Heptalogia, published by Chatto & Windus. It is called The Person of the House, and is in four Idyls, “The Monthly Nurse,” “The Caudle,” “The Sentences,” and “The Kid.”
When Mr. Coventry Patmore’s “Angel in the House” was first published, the Athenæum furnished the following unique criticism:—
“The gentle reader we apprise, that this new Angel in the House Contains a tale not very wise, About a person and a spouse. The author, gentle as a lamb, Has managèd his rhymes to fit, And haply fancies he has writ Another ‘In Memoriam.’ How his intended gathered flowers, And took her tea and after sung, Is told in style somewhat like ours, For delectation of the young. But, reader, lest you say we quiz The poet’s record of his she, Some little pictures you shall see, Not in our language but in his:
‘While thus I grieved and kissed her glove,
My man brought in her note to say
Papa had bid her send his love,
And hoped I dine with them next day;
They had learned and practised Purcell’s glee,
To sing it by to-morrow night:
The postscript was—her sisters and she
Inclosed some violets blue and white.
* * * * *
‘Restless and sick of long exile,
From those sweet friends I rode, to see
The church repairs, and after a while
Waylaying the Dean, was asked to tea.
They introduced the Cousin Fred
I’d heard of, Honor’s favourite; grave,
Uark, handsome, bluff, but gently bred,
And with an air of the salt wave.’
Fear not this saline Cousin Fred; He gives no tragic mischief birth; There are no tears for you to shed, Unless they may be tears of mirth. From ball to bed, from field to farm, The tale flows nicely purling on; With much conceit there is no harm, In the love-legend here begun. The rest will come another day, If public sympathy allows; And this is all we have to say About the ‘Angel in the House.’”
——:o:——
OXFORD COMMEMORATION.
“The Encænia,” or Commemoration of Founders and Benefactors which took place in June last, was marked by all the customary boisterous merriment on the part of the undergraduates. The ladies were cheered as usual, whilst marks of disapprobation were addressed at all persons whose attire presented any features of singularity. The Vice-Chancellor’s Latin address was inaudible on account of the interruptions, many of which were in excessively bad taste. The Proctors were loudly hissed, and called upon to retire, and as they did not attempt to do so, they were requested to sing a duet.
It is only perhaps in Oxford that such conduct on the part of educated men, presumably gentlemen, would be tolerated; as it was described (in imitation of Carlyle) fifteen years ago, so it remains:—
“What is Commemoration? Wherefore? Whereunto? Why? Is it a mere vacuous Inanition, or speck cut out of this little world, or has it not rather contrariwise some Meaning, apart from that which is wrapt up in meness and youness and every-one-else-ness, and two or three more beside?
Nay, is it not Portentous, Big with Signs, with its show Sunday, its Dances, its Encænia and what not?
Is it not a time when it is permitted to Man to wriggle out of the inextricable snares of the Fowler with his Attorney-logic, and the frothy effervescences of defunct and buried-in-dusty tomes Antiquity which are nomen-clated Lectures? And to be Oblivious of these Gehenna-Bailiffs emissaried by professors in Tailor-craft, Wine-craft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries ranking under the genus Productive Industry. Aye, and those gaily apparelled young ladies (Madchen) who confluctuate hither as to a Focus, or centre of Attraction, though they themselves are also an Attraction, which is an inextricable mystery of Involvedness; do not these too teach a lesson to the gawks, in whose heads is nothing but the Roots of their World restored Hair, and who imagine that the whole Furniture of that digesting mechanism, Man, is but a Lay-figure, gifted indeed, with struttableness and swagger, on which to hang their Peacock-plumes, fringes, cobwebs, and such.
And there is the Encænia too, with its Chaotic Hubbub of Tympanum-splitting Noise, Undergraduates Noise, Ticket admitted Noise, as it were a sort of Tenfold Bedlam smitten with Interjectional Rabies, of groanings and yelpings, Approbation, Depreciation, and the like.”
* * * * *
From The Shotover Papers. Oxford. 1874.
“The Irish Revolution, a history in three books.” By Thomas Snarlyle. Such is the title of a parody, to be found in The Puppet-Showman’s Album, published about 1848, which concludes with a sentence curiously appropriate to these times:—
“Ireland, Ireland, thy leaders are in jail. But be not a Rachel weeping for these children, be comforted!”
——:o:——
JOHN RUSKIN.
Let us take a small extract from his notes on Samuel Prout and William Hunt’s loan collection of pictures:—
“That little brown-red butterfly [142] … is a piece of real painting; and it is as good as Titian or anybody else ever did, and if you can enjoy it you can enjoy Titian and all other good painters; and if you can’t see anything in it you can’t see anything in them, and its all affectation and pretence to say that you care about them. And with this butterfly in the drawing I put first, please look at the mug and loaf in the one I have put last of the Hunt series, No. 171. The whole art of painting is in that mug—as the fisherman’s genius was in the bottle. If you can feel how beautiful it is, how ethereal, how heathery, and heavenly, as well as to the uttermost muggy, you have an eye for colour and can enjoy heather, heaven, and everything else below and above. If not, you must enjoy what you can contentedly, but it won’t be painting; and in mugs it will be more the beer than the crockery, and on the moors rather grouse than heather.”
For those who have neglected the opportunity of testing their taste for art on this butterfly, and on this mug, I would advise a visit to Venice, to learn whether they can appreciate Bassano’s hair trunk, as shown in his grand picture of the Pope Alexander and the Doge of Venice. It is not Ruskin, but Mark Twain who thus describes it:
“The hair of this trunk is real hair, so to speak, white in patches, brown in patches. The details are finely worked out; the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive condition, is charmingly expressed. There is a feeling about this part of the work, which lifts it to the highest altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes away—one recognizes that there is soul here. View this trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, it is a miracle. Some of the effects are very daring, approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo, the sirocco, and the Byzantine schools. Yet the master’s hand never falters—it moves on, calm, majestic, confident; and, with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over the tout ensemble, by mysterious methods of its own, a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the arid components, and endues them with the deep charm and gracious witchery of poesy. Among the art-treasures of Europe there are pictures which approach the hair trunk—there are two which may be said to equal it, possibly—but there is none that surpasses it.”
On All Fours Clavigera;
OR, Right at Last.
It may be remembered that Professor Buskin during the Spring addressed a letter to a provincial paper, respecting the projected new railway for Derbyshire. As he therein expressed some very strong opinions against the scheme, as one likely to give the miserable, melancholy, and toiling millions who dwell in smoke-stifling and unwholesome towns, an occasional chance of letting a little bright fresh air and sunlight in upon the gloom of their darkened lives, it is satisfactory to know that the letter in question is now believed to have been a clever hoax. At any rate, the zenith of that boon to millions, the summer excursion season has produced a second communication to the same journal: and, as it not only bears the Professor’s signature, but breathes with the spirit of his larger philanthropy, there can be little doubt as to its authenticity.
In the course of this second letter, Professor Buskin says:—
“I do not know how this mental revolution has come about within me, nor, were you to ask me, could I tell you. I only recognise the stupendous fact that I feel, and am not ashamed to avow, that I no longer regard the wild witchery of the Derbyshire glens as a precious and special property held by Providence in trust for me and a few exclusive well-to-do Sybarites for our sole select and selfish delectation.
* * * * *
Here it is, this Derbyshire Garden of Eden, with its magic-lantern-slide effects, lost for ever and for ever to everyone save to you and to me and the lucky Stall-sitters who hold, out of the overflowing fulness of their purses, the front places in the world’s glittering show, to the shifting and shutting out of the humbler and poorer from the sight and sense of it.”
“Follow, if you can, without wetted feet, the floretted banks and foam-crisped wavelets of the slyly wilful stream. Into the very heart and depth of this, and politely bending with the bends of it, your railway introduces its close-clinging attention. The rocks are not big enough to be tunnelled, they are cheerily blasted away; the brook is not wide enough to be bridged, it is comfortably covered in, and is thence-forward no physical obstacle to an enterprising Railway Company. I have not said, I leave the clergyman and physician to say, what moral and sanitary changes follow a free access to the gifts of Nature. But I may, at least, advise your correspondent that envenomed air is deadlier to the young than the old, and that the sooner a completed line of railway enables the pent-up thousands of pestiferous cities to figure as three-and-sixpenny excursionists, if only for a few hours, amidst these hitherto inaccessible fairy haunts, the sooner will English children who have been reared in mephitic fume instead of mountain breeze, who have had for playground heaps of ashes instead of banks of flowers, whose Christmas holidays brought them no memory, whose Easter sun no hope, enjoy some of the blessed delight of breezy hillside and sunlit glen hitherto claimed as the special and peculiar heirloom of that unreasoning and wrong-headed class who, singing the sweet song of Nature’s praise, defame that priceless metal line which, like some mighty wizard, alone has borne their welcome echo to a myriad aching city hearts.”
Punch. August 23, 1884.
On Toothpicks.
By Professor Buskin.
I came the other day quite by chance on this piece of news in my Daily Telegraph:—“It is said that no less than 25 millions of Toothpicks are annually made in England. This is just one to each person.” “Just one?” No, there is no justice here, it is all injustice. Think of this—25 millions, and think further of the 25 millions of Englishmen who can use them. Yes, this is what England has come to be—a nation of Toothpickers; for mark this, each man can use a toothpick if he will; if he can by fair means or foul (too often, alas, by foul!) obtain the paltry coin to purchase the Tooth-pick with.
But then these dilettanti-scribblers, these writers in the newspapers who are paid for their scribbling, these folk (forsooth!) say, “what have you to do with this—this Toothpicking?” I answer we have all to do with it. For hear, yea, and forbear with me a minute while I speak to you of this same Toothpicking.
Friends, it comes to this. Picking is a natural attribute of man. He must throughout life be a picker. But now comes the momentous question, a picker of what? A picker of knowledge, a dabbler in all the ’ologies, an admirable Crichton, veriest of prigs, or a picker of locks, a red-handed burglar, a hero of penny novels, or will he be a picker of teeth, a drawling vacuity weary of himself, weary of every thing, an inane hanger on to the skirts of the Universe? Will not the brave man, the wise man, the man of resolve, of energy, of endurance, a picker of roads, will he not go forth to beautify Hincksey, to plant the new Utopia, to commence the Era of Æstheticism, and of the Fors?
Now, turning his picking propensities to some real use, he will learn to do hard work, to blister his hands, to wheel barrows, to preach Buskinism.
From The Shotover Papers. Oxford, 1874.
Mr. Ruskin is a depressing pessimist, according to whom nearly everything that was done in England three centuries or so ago was lovely and true, whilst all nineteenth century progress is in the wrong direction. “I know of nothing” he writes “that has been taught the youth of our time except that their fathers were apes, and their mothers winkles; that the world began in accident, and will end in darkness; that honour is a folly, ambition a virtue, charity a vice, poverty a crime, and rascality the means of all wealth and the sum of all wisdom.” Now these sweeping assertions are false, and Mr. Ruskin knows they are false, he could not advance a tittle of proof that any professor in modern times had inculcated any such doctrines. Those who want an antidote to Mr. Ruskin’s views should read “Pre-Raffaelitism; or a Popular enquiry into some newly-asserted Principles connected with the Philosophy, Poetry, Religion and Revolution of Art” by the Rev. Edward Young, M.A. London: Longmans & Co., 1857.
