PART VII.—CHAPTER XVII.
Although I have not specified every place at which we halted, or through which we passed, it may be proper to state that we arrived in due course at St Sever, which was distant only one day's march from the actual headquarters of the British army, Aire on the Adour. Here Pledget interposed his professional authority, and decided that neither Mr Chesterfield nor Jones must proceed farther. They both remained, therefore, under surgical treatment at St Sever. Pledget and Gingham, deeming the road now safe, pushed forward to Aire, leaving the cart to follow with the convoy. At the same time, our numbers experienced a still more considerable diminution. Our cavalry escort, also, received orders to push forward, and started before us in high spirits, with the prospect of immediate operations. The convoy was, accordingly, left with only the infantry as a guard, under Corporal Fraser.
Before starting for this our last day's march I saw both our wounded men, neither of them well pleased at being left behind. As to Jones, I was getting used to him, and could have better spared a better man. I found him confined to his bed, in a house full of sick and wounded; very much down in the mouth, fractious, a little feverish, and not at all satisfied with hospital diet. "Please, sir, the doctor don't not allow me a drop of sperrits, sir; no, nor wine nayther, sir; nothing whatsomdever to drink, only powders, sir."
"Powders to drink, Jones? What d'ye mean, man?"
"Please, sir, what I means is powders, sir. Hope no offence, sir. Doctor calls 'em everfizzing powders, sir."
From the Hon. Mr Chesterfield I parted with unfeigned regret. I believe he had won the respect of the whole party. His manner was a little stiff and aristocratical at first. But he mended on acquaintance; and, in everything connected with duty, he was both highly competent, and pleasant to act with. We got off in good time, and proceeded on our march as on former days, our road carrying us through two or three villages.
In passing one of these, I pulled up to make some trifling purchase; and, when I came out of the shop, found our whole convoy and escort halted. "How's this, Fraser? Why are we not getting on?"
"Orders for the whole party to halt have just arrived from headquarters, sir."
"Indeed! Who brought them?"
"A gentleman belonging to your department, sir."
I rode forward to the head of the column; and there, sure enough, at the entrance of the village inn, saw a uniform resembling my own. In fact, I recognised not only the coat, but the wearer of it, though he did not recognise me. He was a foreigner—Westphalian, Saxon, Bohemian, High Dutch, Low Dutch, or something of that sort; had served at Lisbon as clerk in a civil department attached to the British army; and, in some situation of trust and responsibility, had incurred suspicions of an awkward kind. He had in consequence been suspended. The matter was referred to the home authorities, and the result was his dismissal. This was what I knew of him. As to his having subsequently obtained employment in our department, of this I knew nothing. And it did appear rather curious that a person "disadvantageously known," as he was, should have gained a footing where trustiness was so indispensable. Yet there he stood in full fig, enormous staff-hat, and all the departmental toggery. He addressed me in French, with a tone of authority.
"Why have you come this road? You have followed the wrong route. Your way was by the left bank of the river."
"I came by the high road, of course. The maps show no route by the other side. All the troops take this way, and of course I followed their example."
"Nothing of the kind. They all take the other, which is shorter by nearly a league. Besides, you should not have come by St Sever at all. I am sent from headquarters, to show you the right direction."
"Very good. Of course, then, you bring written orders."
"No written orders are requisite. My directions are, to turn you into the other route. This, in fact, is not safe. You will therefore cross at the ford, and proceed to headquarters along the other bank of the river."
"If, as you say, the other is the usual route, of course they must suppose at headquarters that I have taken it. Very droll they should have sent you to turn me back from this, then."
"Such were my orders. You will proceed by the other road."
"Allow me to inquire," said I, "were your orders from our own department, or from the Quartermaster-General's?" That was a poser; for, if they came from our own, the question would at once arise, Could any such authority enjoin departure from a regular route, given in writing? If, on the other hand, it had been deemed expedient, from circumstances grave and unforeseen, to send me fresh instructions from the higher authority, the bearer of them would probably come direct from the same quarter. He hesitated—looked rather at a loss.
"The directions," said he at length, "come from your own department, of course. I was ordered to ride off, make you come by the other road, and accompany you to the end of the march."
"I had much rather march by the present route. Rather doubt whether I should be justified in leaving it."
"Oblige me," said he, in an altered tone, "by just stepping into the house with me. I am charged with a communication of some importance."
Leaving Sancho in care of an attendant, I followed him into the Auberge. "Have the goodness," said he, "to step into that apartment. Excuse me for one moment. I must just speak to the landlord."
I entered. It was an apartment on the ground floor, with a table laid for two—by no means a disagreeable surprise on a march. On the table were already placed the bread, and the bottle of wine uncorked—sure signs, in a French inn, that dinner will soon make its appearance. "Really, he seems a very good sort of a fellow, after all. This is just the way with the lads of our department. Suspicion be hanged! my first impressions were unjust."
He entered; and the garçon followed with the soup. "Ah," said my new acquaintance, "now be quick with the other things. Come, Mons. d'Y—, this is your longest day's march; you must be hungry, no doubt. Come, sit down; take some soup. We shall soon be better acquainted. Excuse this little ruse."
"Readily," said I; "and you must excuse my quitting you this instant."
A glance from the window had effected a second revolution in my sentiments. Looking out before I sat down, I discovered that the convoy and escort were off! Far down the street, I perceived the last of them disappearing along the road!—walked straight towards the door. He was too quick for me; locked it, and placed himself with his back to it, pocketing the key. "No, no, Mons. d'Y—," said he; "you are my guest. You really must not depart till after dinner. It's absurd. For you I ordered it. Would you hurry away without taking a mouthful?"
Had I removed him by force, I must still have forced the door; and that might have brought upon me the whole establishment, and caused further delay. I therefore took three steps from the door to the window, threw it open, and soon found myself on the pavé, which was higher than the floor of the apartment. To my surprise, Sancho also had disappeared! My first impression was, that he had gone on with the convoy, and I was about to follow on foot;—thought it best, though, to look in the stables first. There he was, sure enough. The attendant had already taken off his saddle, and was about to remove his bridle. "What are you about there, my friend? I requested you to hold him at the door."
"Monsieur, the other English officer came out after you had entered, and desired me to bring him here, take off his saddle and bridle, and give him some orge."
I whipped on the saddle again in no time, mounted, and soon overtook the escort. "Corporal Fraser, why did you go on?"
"I understood that we went on by your orders, sir."
"My orders? Nothing of the sort."
"I am very sorry if I have done wrong, sir. The gentleman who joined just now came out from the inn, and directed us to proceed. Said you would follow immediately. As he wears the same uniform, I supposed a command from him was the same as one from yourself, sir. Indeed, he said it was your order."
"He received no order from me; and he had no business to send you on without."
"Shall I halt the party, sir?"
"No, no; keep on. It was a mistake our stopping at all."
As we passed out of the village, I began to ruminate upon what had just occurred. First of all, there was the character of this gentleman, well known at Lisbon, and, I supposed, at headquarters. Then there was the improbability of his story, to say nothing of one or two little contradictions. Then, it was clear, he had attempted to separate me from the convoy, and to prevent my following it. Then, too, his conduct was doubly incorrect; in taking upon himself, first, to halt the party, secondly, to send it on. Item, in the course of our short interview, he had, it appeared to me, told as many fibs as could well be got into the given time. Moreover, he had attempted to divert us from our route, which was just what Hookey did; and, what made it very remarkable, Hookey and he both wished us to turn aside in the same direction, namely, by the left bank of the river, when the regular route was by the right. Something was evidently not straight. For all that, though, the manner of this intelligent individual was so very easy and impudent, and he seemed so bent upon accomplishing his purpose, whatever it might be, that I felt a strong impression we had not seen the last of him, especially as he appeared utterly unconscious that I knew his previous history.—"Corporal Fraser!"
"What's your pleasure, sir?"
"If that person comes up, I wish you to keep near me. Take no notice; but be prepared, if I direct, to arrest him."
The corporal looked a little queer. "Very good, sir," said he; "upon receiving your orders," (he intoned the word orders,) "I shall be ready to do so."
"In case of my giving you an order to that effect, I, of course, am responsible, not you. If I turn round, give you a look, and say, 'Fraser,' you will consider that you have got your directions."
"Very good, sir; it shall be done."
My anticipations proved correct. Mounted on what had very much the appearance of a French post-horse, my would-be entertainer presently came up at a laborious canter. The moment he got alongside, he began to expostulate. Was profoundly grieved that I had declined his hospitality. It was a long day's march, the longest from Passages to headquarters. "A little refreshment would have recruited your forces, Mons. d'Y—."
"I cannot separate from the convoy and escort. As you thought fit to send them on, I had no choice but to follow."
"Well, pardon me, if I have done wrong," said he. "My intentions were pure, at any rate. Positively, though, you must not follow this road. The way to the ford is now close at hand. Come, let me be your conductor."
"Were you not at Lisbon last autumn?" said I.
"Were you?" said he, in a tone of alarm.
"I was. And though you do not know me, I know you."
"Nothing to my prejudice, I feel convinced." (Still more uneasy.)
"Very well. All will be cleared up at headquarters. Of course, you will accompany us."
"At any rate," replied he, anxious to back out, "I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you there."
"No, no," said I; "you go with us."
By this time he was decidedly in a fidget, and began to hang behind. Just then we came suddenly to a lane, branching off to the right. This was probably the very direction he had wished me to take; though whether it really led to a ford over the Adour, or to what it led, was a different question. Before I was aware of his design, he turned sharp in that direction; and, when I looked after him, he was already some distance down the lane, digging his heels into the old poster's sides. This operation had put the gay old stager into something as much like a gallop as you can hope to get out of a French post-horse. He was off! Ah! our cavalry had left us too soon. I looked round, and shouted "Fraser!"
Fraser, prepared for my order, and anxious to have all ready for executing it, had three men marching at hand, with loaded firelocks. Three balls whistled down the lane. But it was a waste of his Majesty's powder and shot; the fugitive escaped unhurt. Not so, though, the lively old post-horse. His screwed tail, his stradding hind-legs, and his action—for a moment prancing, not progressive—gave evident indications that the luckless beast had not got off so easily as his rider. Then, in an agony of apprehension lest his scutcheon should receive a second totem, he plunged forward again at his previous rate, and soon disappeared down the lane. Pursuit was out of the question, for Sancho's best pace was an up-and-down; even a French horse was too fast for a French pony: so both horse and horseman got off.
My first care, on reaching headquarters, was to make inquiry respecting this new member of our department. You will hardly need to be informed, that there was no such person belonging to us. The only question was, how did he get the uniform coat? It certainly was not that of the corresponding department of the French service, which not only rejoiced in the appropriate embellishment of a key embroidered on the collar, but differed in other respects from ours. Some said he must have procured the coat at Lisbon. Some said he had got it made for the occasion. A gentleman of the Commissariat suggested that he had picked up a coat at headquarters, cast off when some of us had been promoted. But the worst of it was, our department couldn't recollect when any such cheering event had taken place.
As both Hookey, and this more recent adviser, strenuously insisted on our proceeding to headquarters by the country to the south-east of the Adour, and as Hookey particularly inculcated the duty and necessity of our passing through Hagetmau, which lies a few miles to the south of St Sever, it is curious to discover, at this interval of time, that the very neighbourhood indicated by these two talented individuals as offering us the best route, was precisely the most unsafe. I reached headquarters on the 17th of March. The next day the Commander-in-Chief (vide Gurwood) writes to Sir J. Hope,—"I use the cipher, because I understand the enemy were at Hagetmau yesterday." That's just where we should have been on the same day, had I followed Hookey's advice; so that we should have walked right into them; and that, no doubt, was what Hookey intended. But further, by a letter from the Commander-in-Chief to the Mayor of Hagetmau, dated 21st March, we learn that, on the 18th, there was in that place an affair of partisans. It was, therefore, a very eligible neighbourhood to which our two friends wished to introduce us.
When I reached headquarters at Aire with the convoy and escort, a forward movement of the troops appeared to have already commenced. Firing was heard at hand; and the operation was attended with rather more noise than those in which we were engaged the day before. A great army advancing upon the enemy, like the chariot of Jove, cannot move without thunder. I know not how far the arrival of the treasure which we brought up contributed to this movement. Suffice it to say, I find our Commander-in-Chief writing to Sir J. Hope, March 18—"I waited quietly till all my means coming up were arrived, and I am now moving upon them in earnest." Ah, Hookey! you played great stakes, and a deep game, too. But it wouldn't do.
The hour of my arrival, though, was signalised by that event, of all others, which men chronicle as the most important of their lives—an interview with a great man. In my case, it was a very great man. To be sure, he didn't speak to me. But what does that signify? I spoke to him. On arriving with the treasure at the office of our own department, I was directed to go forthwith and report myself at the office of the Quartermaster-General. I went, and found it in a very humble mansion. On entering the passage, found a door to the right, where I was desired to go in. Saw a long table by the window, with two or three officers writing. Before the fire stood ANOTHER. He was drenched with rain; all in a steam, like a hot potato; lost in thought; looked awful; a middle-aged and remarkably well-built man, with a striking—nay, more than striking—with a particular expression of countenance; such a face as I had never seen before; a very keen eye—the eagle's, that can look at the sun, would have quailed before his; and oh, what a beak! I felt rather at a loss. No one did me the honour to notice my entrée. No one took any notice; no one vouchsafed me a look! I stood, for a moment, in silence. As all the others were hard at work, and one was doing nothing, I of course concluded that he was the Head of the Department; and, with crude atrocity, addressed him—though with a queer kind of feeling, which I myself didn't exactly understand—"Are you the Quartermaster-General, sir?"
No reply on his part—no look, no movement of the head, no change of countenance! He merely raised his arm, and pointed to the table. By that act alone he indicated a consciousness of being spoken to; and had he, the next moment, been called upon to describe the speaker, why, I firmly believe he couldn't have done it. I then turned towards the table. One of the writers rose from his seat in silence, walked me out into the passage, made an inquiry or two, and walked in again.
The next day I was once more on the march, riding side by side with a brother clerk. "There he is!" said he. I now beheld, on horseback—a regular centaur, part of his horse—that same distinguished individual whom, the day before, I had so unceremoniously addressed, as he stood reeking before the fire, while great guns were banging right and left, the troops advancing, and he at the best of all possible points to direct and control the vast machinery that he had set in motion.
Life at headquarters proved to be much what I had anticipated. In attending the movements of the army, we officials had sometimes very little work; sometimes, especially when the troops remained a few days stationary, a great deal. While they moved from day to day, we seldom had much to do but to follow them, and make ourselves as comfortable as we could at the end of the day's march. The military movements from Aire to Toulouse were curious. From Aire we went right down to the south, as far as Tarbes and Vic Bigorre—a course which almost brought us back again to the Spanish frontier and the foot of the Pyrenees; then up again to the Garonne and Toulouse. A sailor would have called it tacking. Of course, one could not follow even an advancing and victorious army without undergoing some hardships. On one occasion, after much previous fatigue, in passing a wild and mountainous district, we were suddenly overtaken by a snow-storm. While nodding on Sancho's back from sheer exhaustion, I was caked on the left, from head to foot, with snow, which first began to melt with the warmth of the body, then froze hard with the keenness of the wind. The next moment the sun blazed forth, to the right, with scorching heat. Thus roasted on one side, and frozen on the other, I dozed and nodded on, with just sufficient consciousness to form virtuous resolutions of knocking off the snow, but without sufficient energy to carry them into effect. After all, though, a civilian following the army, supplied pretty regularly with rations for himself, pony, and servant—tolerably sure, too, of a good billet at night, and generally provided with a few dollars, easily convertible into francs—has no business to talk of hardships. The real hardships of a campaign fall on the marching officers and privates. What they endure is past conception. Gingham and I were much together, and carried out our plan of campaigning in company as far as circumstances would allow. At headquarters, also, I fell in again with my old acquaintance and fellow-voyager, Mr Commissary Capsicum, who gloried in giving good dinners. He was never better pleased than when I accepted his invitations, but always gave me a good blowing-up if I dined with Gingham in preference.
Amongst all my reminiscences of campaigning, none are more vividly impressed upon my mind, than the reminiscence of a campaigning appetite, which I am persuaded is altogether extraordinary, and a thing per se. Did you ever visit Cintra? Now there's the Cintra appetite, and a very good one it is, too. This, also, has its distinguishing feature—namely, that on the one hand, while you are riding about (or, if a sensible person, going on foot, exploring, climbing, scrambling) amongst rocks, and peaks, and splendid scenery, the pleasing idea of the dinner that will be ready for you, on returning to your hotel, blends itself, by a gentle amalgamation, with every discovery, with every prospect; and while, on the other hand, the said dinner is actually on the table before you, and under discussion, the splendid scenes you have been witnessing, like dissolving views, pass in procession before your mind. Thus your dinners are romantic, while your rambles are appetising.
Then, again, there's the nautical appetite, which comes on you like a giant, when you have mastered the qualms of the first few days at sea. The nautical appetite, also, has its peculiar feature, which is this—that the intervals of time between one meal and another appear so awfully long. That's because you've nothing to do. But—
The campaigning appetite, I say, differing from both these, has also its characteristic proper to itself—namely, that there never is a moment when you are unprepared to eat; the instant you have done, you are ready to begin again. You sit down, at headquarters, to a breakfast where the table groans with various and abundant provender—tea, coffee, chocolate, bread, eggs, cold meat, ham, tongue, sausages sublimed with garlic, enormous rashers of bacon, beefsteaks, not to name knick-knackeries innumerable, and something short as a calker. You do ample justice—oh, haven't you made a famous breakfast? and in half-an-hour you are ready for another! If, having stowed away breakfast for two, you happen to pop in upon a friend who is taking his, you join him as a matter of course. And, my dear madam, what makes it so peculiar in my case is, I was always such a very small eater. The only exception to this perpetuity of a campaigning appetite, is when something extraordinary is going on in front—a battle, or what looks just like it, a skirmish. Then, for a while, you forget that you are hungry. The stomach is still equally in a state of preparation to receive and digest food. But, for the nonce, you ignore the fact; the wolf lies dormant. Oh, how savage he wakes up, though, when the fighting is over, and you all at once remember that you haven't dined. In short, with plenty always at command, with no real want unsupplied, I never suffered so much from hunger as when campaigning, and I never ate so often. Your only plan is this: Whenever the opportunity presents itself, take in stock. Breakfast, as if you had no prospect of a dinner; dine, as if you had not breakfasted.
Generally, then, at headquarters, I fared as Gingham fared; and to say that is to say enough. But it was not always so. His engagements, or my duties, sometimes made a separation; and then I learned my loss. Once, when I was so circumstanced, my servant came home with disconsolate looks and a melancholy report: "To day, no beefy, senhor." At that moment, I could have eaten my gloves! Went with him myself; was politely received by a gentleman in a blue apron with a steel dangling in front. "What, no beef to-day?"
"Oh yes, bless your heart. Plenty, sir."
"Well, here's the order. Let's have some, then. Where is it?"
"There it is, sir."
"Don't see any. Where?"
"Why, it's in that 'ere pen, sir. Only you jest look in through the gateway. Wherry find beastesses, I calls 'em. In two hours we shall begin to kill."
He pointed to a large stone enclosure, in which stood a captive herd of horned cattle. An anxious bullock rested his chin upon the wall, and, breathing a misty sigh, with melancholy countenance looked full in mine!
At another time I had been riding on in front, and was coming home at a rambling pace through lanes and by-paths, when suddenly the wolf returned—I was appallingly hungry—must eat or faint. Contrived to ride on to a lone cottage—tapped at the door. It was opened by a very respectable quiet-looking man; old gentleman, I ought to say, for such he was, both in aspect and manners. His garb, indeed, was homely; but his air was superior, his address manly and simple with a certain finish, and his carriage perfectly upright. He courteously invited me to enter; the door led at once into a large room, which was in fact the whole ground-floor of the cottage. A little preliminary chat sufficed to inform him what I was, and me what he was—namely, an old soldier, who had got his discharge, and was living in retirement. No one came to attend on him; a regular old campaigner, he did for himself. I soon came to the point—was in a state of inanition—would pay with alacrity for anything eatable, even bread. "No, no," said he, "wait a while, mon enfant, I shall soon have the pleasure of setting before you a superb repast. It will diversify my existence! Ah! I shall experience an emotion!" He immediately unhooked from the wall an old iron frying-pan, as black inside as out—the only cooking utensil that graced his menage; poured in water, and set it on the fire to simmer. He then took down from the shelf a large brown bowl, and brought out from under the table a goodly loaf of coarse but excellent bread, part of which he cut into the bowl, and sprinkled with a little salt. Then, walking out into his garden, he pulled a leek, and collected two or three kinds of herbs, all which he added to the water, with something that resembled the fat of bacon, though not so solid. When all was scalding hot, he doused it into the bowl upon the bread, then handed me a pewter spoon, and begged me to use no ceremony. Hunger is indeed the best sauce; and, homely as was the fare, I never made a heartier meal.
Somewhat recruited in strength, I rose to take leave, having first requested my brave old entertainer to accept payment, which he declared impossible. However, I had now been long enough on Gallic ground to understand the idiom, so laid my "legal tender" on the table, and said farewell, with many thanks. He tottled with me to the door; then, suddenly stopped me, and looked earnestly in my face, as if he had something very particular to communicate. What was he going to say? He begged to assure me I had laid him under an infinite obligation. Again he arrested my progress, with the door in his hand. Hoped I would honour his menage with a second visit. Admired the brave English, and lamented that he had never had the pleasure of meeting them professionally. "Peut-être encore! Mais hélas! nous sommes les f—s!" Halted me a third time outside. "His cottage was mine, with all that it contained." He had marched through half Europe, and was a simple-hearted, civil, old Frenchman.
There was one circumstance, though, not a little to the advantage of those who dined with Gingham or Capsicum; and this was, that there arose between these two worthies an amicable rivalry on this very affair of giving dinners. The contest, in fact, had its origin a year before, on our voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon, when Capsicum brewed a bowl of punch, and Gingham brewed a better. Capsicum could not brook the idea that any man should brew punch, or give dinners, equal to his. The style of the two entertainers was different. Capsicum's dinners were more profuse, Gingham's more recherchés. Gingham, in fact, had all the appliances of the table in greater perfection. He had plate enough for a handsome dinner—mind, I don't mean to say a state dinner—of eight or ten. His whole dinner-service, too, was handsome, elegant; wines, the choicest that money could command; all the little etceteras excellent—coffee, for instance; such coffee as you could not get elsewhere in France, where they are too apt to make a mess of it. I don't think much of French coffee, except such as you get here and there at private houses. Gingham's coffee was a pure, genial, high-flavoured decoction. Ah! you tasted the berry. As summer came on, Gingham intended ices. And good fish, till we arrived at Bordeaux, being next to unattainable, he had organised a plan for procuring salmon in ice from England. Capsicum, on the other hand, had resources which Gingham had not. He could always command the best cut of the best commissariat beef; and this advantage told with stunning effect when he gave a spread. He had other advantages in foraging, and he knew how to turn them to account. In short, the characteristic of his dinners was abundance; and, with the guests who partook of them on actual service, this would generally secure the preference.
Many dinners might I describe—and, oh! describe con amore—both Capsicum's and Gingham's. But I select one in particular, which was signalised by a hoax. I abstain from entering into the general subject of hoaxes, as hoaxes were practised at headquarters. He that would do justice to it must also treat of shaves. Let us confine ourselves, for the present, to a particular branch of the subject—namely, the dinner hoax. The dinner hoax was twofold. Was it a time of scarcity, when ration beef was all that could be got? Then the hoax was, to create a persuasion in the mind of the unfortunate hoaxee that something else was coming. "Major, a little more bouillie?" "No, I thank you. I'm keeping a corner for the turkey." Hoaxee hears that. He also will keep a corner for the turkey—plays with the beef. Next entrée is—the cheese! Was it, on the other hand, a season of abundance? Then the hoax, equally unfeeling, assumed an opposite character. "Sorry, gentlemen, we're so badly off now," says the host, with a wink seen by all at table, hoaxee excepted; "hope you'll contrive, for once, to make a dinner on soldier's fare." Hoaxee pitches into the beef—stows away a double ration—is pressed and helped, pressed and helped, till he positively declines another mouthful—then enter the roast pig. Unhappy hoaxee! He has dined!
The object of the hoax at Capsicum's was an individual of a particular class. You must know, the home authorities had got a notion, that, amongst the departments attached to the Peninsular army, abuses of all kinds were rife, and required to be looked after. For this purpose, they occasionally sent out some intelligent individual, whose business was to see and report. Sometimes he came for the avowed purpose. It was to a talented character of this kind that the greatest man amongst us—who was as good at a joke as he was at polishing the French—gave the name of "Argus." Sometimes the individual's object was merely suspected; partly betrayed, perhaps, by his own homebred simplicity, which was no proof against the penetration of old campaigners. In either case, as will easily be understood, such a person was no favourite, and was deemed a fair subject for a hoax.
I was walking down a lane towards Capsicum's quarters, when I was overtaken by a gentleman on horseback, who was evidently a fresh arrival from England. Everything about him looked new, a regular London outfit. You'd have said he came direct from Piccadilly in a bandbox. His manner, moreover, announced him to be somebody; he was evidently a very great man. "Pray, sir," said he, "can you inform me the way to Mr Capsicum's?"
"I am going that way myself, sir. I shall be happy to show you the road, as it has one or two turnings."
"Much obleeged, sir. I am going there by invitation to dinner."
"So am I, sir."
"Understand his dinners are capital, sir," said the newly-arrived, somewhat softening.
"Few equal to them at headquarters, sir. He is very great in that line; takes a pleasure in it."
"Really, sir, I'm not sorry to hear it," said he, still more mollified; "for, to tell you the truth, I'm not yet quite at home here; no more is my servant. I've been forced to rough it; and have sometimes come off with short commons."
Other conversation followed, and led to the mention of my own official rank, in the humble capacity of a departmental clerk. A great change took place when the gentleman heard this. He became dignified, absent, and monosyllabic. When we arrived at Capsicum's, as there was no one in attendance, I thought it devolved on me to perform the rites of hospitality, and stepped up to take charge of his horse. He handed me the bridle, and walked at once into the house, without waiting to look, or say, "Much obleeged to you."
The guests, including Pledget, Gingham, the new comer, and myself, amounted to seven. I saw at once that the recent arrival was not very affectionately viewed by Capsicum, who betrayed his feelings by his manner. This, amongst his particulars, was off-hand, easy, and jocular. But towards his newly arrived guest, he was all courtesy and high etiquette. In fact, that gentleman came out professedly to serve, but unfortunately was regarded as a spy. His Christian name was William; a surname was found to fit it; and, ere he left Capsicum's premises, he was dubbed "William Tell." Delighted with the prospect of a dinner such as he had not seen since he disembarked at Santander, with red face and red hair, large in form, and coarse-featured, a burly, bull-necked, bullet-headed man with goggling eyes, his air more confident than genteel; in manners, laboriously free and easy; ostentatiously dressed, and smiling with agreeable anticipations, at one time he twiddled with his forefinger an enormous bunch of seals, at another he complacently boxed his right fist into his open left. The hands then amalgamated, and the punch subsided in a bland and complacent rub.
The cloth was already laid—at headquarters you must manage as you can—in the room where the company met. Mr Barnacles glanced approvingly at the preparations. Ever see a man's eye glisten, when you told him of some generous deed? So glistened the eye of Barnacles, while it glanced at the plates, glasses, bottles, knives and forks, spoons, tumblers, and saltcellars, which in goodly order graced Capsicum's hospitable board.
We sat down; I, under a mandate growled by Capsicum, at the lower end of the table as Vice. Proposed mischief twinkled in the corner of Capsicum's eye. First, as a matter of course, came the soup and bouillie.
"Mr Capsicum," said a brother commissary, "I know it's not genteel to be helped twice to soup; but I'll trouble you for a little more." This was move the first, in the game of hoax.
"Quite right, quite right," said Capsicum. "No market in these country places. Sorry, gentlemen, there's so little variety just now." The speakers exchanged winks. The game was now fairly opened; a hoax had already commenced, and Barnacles was the destined victim.
"Well," said another commissary, "I can always make a good dinner off beef."
Barnacles, it was clear, had now received the desired impression. Beef, he fully understood, was to be the staple of our dinner; and he accordingly stowed with beef. In fact, he did wonders; cleared plate after plate of boiled beef. At length, having stowed till he could stow no more, he sat back in his chair pompously and complacently. A mild perspiration bedewed his forehead; and the damask of his cheeks had given place to a rosy suffusion of the whole countenance. The fingers of his two hands were interlaced over his stomach, while his thumbs stood erect, meeting in a point.
"Mr Barnacles, I beg ten thousand pardons. Pray give me leave to send you a little more beef."
"Much obleeged, sir; not a morsel more. Never made a better dinner in my life."
"Sure you won't, Mr Barnacles? Just a shave from this end, with a morsel of fat."
"Thank you, sir, kindly—I couldn't. Must beg you to excuse me. Much obleeged. Not a morsel more."—Table cleared.
Fresh plates! more knives and forks! Now it was, in reality, that the dinner began;—enormous sirloin, spitting with volcanic heat; roast fowls, that would have softened the hardest heart; elegant hind-quarter of mutton; pretty little fillet of veal; tongue, ham, boiled turkey, &c.
Behold, a new feature in the game! Barnacles wasn't beat yet. In the attempt to hoax Barnacles, allowance had not been made for his gastronomic powers, and previous privations. Never mind. The more sport.
"Mr Barnacles, a slice of the sirloin. Upper cut, or under cut?"
Barnacles, at the sight of the good things before him, contrary to all calculation sat up with renewed vigour, and paused ere he replied.
"Why, if I do take anything more, I think it must be a small slice of this mutton."
Barnacles helped himself. A small slice! Why, if he didn't cut away into the hind quarter, slice after slice, till he had sunk a regular well. Then spooned out the gravy.
"Give Mr Barnacles the currant jelly. Mr Gingham, we owe that to you."
"Plenty more at your service, sir," said Gingham; "got three or four dozen jars. Always bring some when I visit headquarters. Got it in Berkley Square."
Barnacles now sets to again, fresh as when he began. What powers! what capacity! what deglutition! In fact, it was not only the stomach of Barnacles that needed filling. And that's why you see carnivorous cadaverous men perform such extraordinary feats with knife and fork. Not their stomach merely, their system is hungry. So it was now with Barnacles; and his meal was on a commensurate scale. He was redressing the balance of his constitution—compensating previous inanition. When a man, accustomed to full feeding, has been a few days without it, it isn't the mere filling of his stomach that will satisfy his appetite.
Gingham caught the eye of one of the guests—slightly raised his glass—bowed.
"Oh yace," replied a squeaking voice; "now sall I trink you go t'hell!"
I started. When, when, had I heard that voice before? My eye, for the first time, took a particular view of the speaker. He was a diminutive personage, his complexion a sodden white, with unwholesome patches of red; forehead enormous and mis-shapen; bumps prominent and misplaced; large spectacles, no eyes, upper part of nose wanting, a notch where there should have been a bridge; lower limb of nose broad and sunken, as if squashed down between two puffy cheeks, which bagged on each side; between nose and mouth a space incredible; in fact, a huge upper lip was the most prominent feature of the face; for mustaches, a few detached and very coarse black bristles, pointing opposite ways like a cat's whiskers—each particular bristle standing alone, and individually discernible from its insertion to its extremity; mouth, long and sinuous; lips, viciously twisted out; chin, emaciated. Again he spoke, as Gingham drank to him: "You go t' hell!" Where could I have heard that voice? Why, wasn't it at the ferry, among the Frenchmen that opposed our passage? No, no, that can't be; it's impossible.—"Who's that?" I whispered Gingham.
"A man of science, sir; a Russian—Mr Wowski, an ardent botanist. Wished to examine the flora of the South of France; brought out letters of recommendation; joined the army, and follows its movements. You'll like his acquaintance vastly." Then louder—"Mr Wowski, my friend, Mr Y—; your junior, but a promising naturalist. Hope at an early day you'll meet him to dinner at my quarters."
"Mr Barnacles, shall I have the pleasure?—some turkey, sir?"
By this time Mr Barnacles seemed again to feel that he had dined.
"The least possible shave," said Mr Barnacles. "I really have made a most capital dinner."
I helped him to a good plateful, which he cleared off.—All removed.
Next followed a few made dishes, light articles; and one real delicacy, which was first introduced to our acquaintance by Gingham. This was no other than a kid, baked whole. I take the liberty, my dear sir, of very particularly and pointedly calling your attention to the dish in question. I have, on previous occasions, ventured to offer gastronomic hints. But a kid thus dressed is a real delicacy, worthy of a place on any table. N. B.—If you bake, envelop in paste. Should you prefer roasting, cover with paper. Let the roasting be gentle, but complete. Of course you don't stretch out the legs. Double them up, and skewer to the sides. For sauce, chop up the pluck. Sauce should be piquant, with lots of cayenne, subacid. Or make a separate dish, with the pluck and heart.
Pensive regret was mingled, in the face of Barnacles, with intense curiosity, while he viewed this novel entrée, as it made its appearance in a case of dough. Capsicum asked no question; sent him a plateful; a great part of which he was forced to send away. It was clear Mr Barnacles was now beat to a standstill.
The dish, though, was rather rich; and what he had eaten took effect. His countenance changed. Suddenly he became pallid, with an effort to look degagé. This lasted about a minute, in which time he swallowed two successive bumpers of madeira. The dose so far kept him right, that Barnacles didn't leave the table: but he was evidently hors de combat.
Mr B. being now brought to a standstill, the joke was so far successful. Yet was not the hoax complete, unless there appeared something on table that he liked, and yet something of which he could not partake.
The sweets now made their appearance, and were viewed by Mr Barnacles with indifference. But when the table was wellnigh covered, and space remained for only a single dish—
Enter a splendid plum-pudding—yes, a regular English plum-pudding—its summit hoary with pounded sugar, its sides distilling brandy sauce.
The eyes of Barnacles lit up again—sparkled. He was alive in a moment. Once more his fist went bang into his hand; once more his hands embraced and rubbed, as in mutual congratulation. Forgetting all his previous performances, he accepted a substantial slice of the plum-pudding. Alas! he had kept no corner!
"You don't seem," said Capsicum, "to like your pudding, Mr Barnacles."
"Oh yes! Oh yes!" said Barnacles, with emotion. "Indeed I do, sir. It's what I never, never expected to see again till my return—till my return to the British metropolis. But"——It ended in a watering-pot scene—a regular boo-hoo. He put his handkerchief to his face. It was too much for his feelings. Plum-pudding before him as good as could be got in London, and he not able to eat a mouthful! The poor man cried.
He made up after dinner, though, by copious potations. After coffee, sat down to a rubber. One of the party proposed guinea points. But Capsicum saw how matters stood with Barnacles, and wouldn't stand it. "No, no, gentlemen," said he; "no stakes; no stakes." In the course of the evening Mr Barnacles disappeared. Alarmed by his prolonged absence, Capsicum sent a servant, who came back with the report that he was not very well. He returned—took a stiff glass of whisky-punch—again disappeared. I, by Capsicum's request, went this time in search. Found him at length in the stable. He was trying to saddle his horse;—couldn't. He wanted to steal away. I reported to Capsicum, who at once decided. "Mr Barnacles must not go home to-night. We must find him a shake-down on the premises." In one way only could this arrangement be effected. Mr Wowski consented to turn out, and accompanied me to my billet.
Amidst the din of war and the monotony of headquarters society, I was really glad to meet with a naturalist and man of science, and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr Wowski accordingly. When, however, I came to try him, he appeared to know about as much of botany as I did myself. Neither, I remarked, in search of specimens, did he visit the most out-of-the-way and likely places. He generally sought those points, in preference, where the troops were moving in masses; and apparently looked much more sharply after the movements of the army than after bulbs. Once, when we had halted at a village, which stood in a wide-spread plain, he invited me to ascend the turret of the church. We reached the summit just in time to behold a comical spectacle. From the church top we looked down vertically on the Place, or open area of the village, which was full, at the moment, of soldiers—British, Portuguese, and Spanish; muleteers, camp-followers—men, women, children—a motley multitude. Just at that moment a fellow rushed into the midst, shouting at the top of his voice, and bearing something aloft in his two hands. It was a bullock's bladder. The multitude gathered round him, eager for a promiscuous game of football, which he soon commenced by a kick that sent the bladder sky-high. Football, probably, you have seen played, or have played at. But did you ever see it played by four or five hundred persons at once, of four or five different nations, and you looking right down upon them from the top of a church? Each was eager to get a kick at the bladder; but a far greater number than succeeded got kicks on their shins. It was a stormy sea of heads. The shout came up to us. No one was more conspicuous in the throng than my Spanish Capataz, whose activity was equal to his bulk. Being stumpy as well as stout, he cut a droll figure viewed from above, as, with sprawling arms and legs, he flung himself forward with a flying leap, and a kick that, if it missed the bladder, was seldom expended on the air. At length the bladder was driven down a street; the rush followed it, shouting; the market-place again became quiet; and I turned to address Mr Wowski, who, like myself, I supposed, had been engaged in surveying the tumultuous scene beneath. Not he. Ensconced behind the parapet, where no one could see him from below, he was quietly looking in advance with a pocket-telescope, as if surveying the movements of the troops. On my approach he started, slapped together the joints of his glass, and hastily restored it to his pocket, where, till that moment, I never knew he carried one.
Mr Wowski, highly recommended by letters, received a good deal of attention. To Gingham he brought a letter from Warsaw. For my own part, I saw reason to doubt whether he was really what he professed himself. Two or three things about him struck me as strange; and, when he spoke, never could I forget the voice at the river.[2]
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
Mr Wowski, during his short sojourn at headquarters, was one day placed in an awkward position. In the south of France, we often met with large fierce dogs, which in country places we sometimes found ugly customers; though, in reality, not one in ten of them possessed the pluck of an English pug. Early one morning, I had to ride a little distance on duty. It was a cross country road, and Gingham favoured me with his company. While ambling along, we overtook Mr Wowski, who had started for one of his peregrinations on foot; and slackened our pace, to secure the pleasure of his society. Presently we came to a hamlet of some ten or a dozen houses, in passing which we were savagely attacked by a gang of formidable-looking dogs. Had Gingham and I been by ourselves, we should soon have been rid of the annoyance, by the mere act of passing on. But the real danger was our pedestrian companion's, whom the whole barking angry pack seemed determined to assail. One shaggy, powerful ruffian led the van; he might have sat to Schneider. His mouth, yawning like a sepulchre, reuttered a deep, sonorous yow—yow; his fangs stood out, ready for action; his eyes flashed fire; while, in size somewhere between a wolf and a jackass, he rushed right up to the unfortunate Wowski, whose only defence was a walking-stick. Wowski cut one, two—one, two—with just sufficient energy to keep off the foe, who contrived to maintain his nose in position, just an inch beyond the range of the sapling. He was backed up by the rest of the curs, who, barking and snarling, formed a semicircle, that threatened to hem in the hapless Wowski. Gingham and I could do nothing. I had only a switch; Gingham hadn't even that. Still the chief assailant, his back bristling like a wild boar's, and his tail swollen and ruffled like an angry cat's, pressed the attack; it was yow—yow on one side, and cut—cut on the other. He jumped, he circled, he ramped, he flew up in the air, spun round, and flew up again;—every moment I expected to see him fly at Wowski's throat. I noticed a woman looking out from the door of one of the cottages—called to her, and made signs—on which she thought fit to disappear. Wowski was now becoming pale and exhausted. "Shorten your stick," said I. He did so. The foe came nearer. "Now give him the full length." Wowski took the hint, and the big beast of a cur caught a crack on his muzzle—a regular smasher; instantly turned tail, and cut away with dismal yowlings. The whole pack, like so many humans, turned against him, and pursued; the great powerful brute was half-a-dozen times knocked over and worried, ere he found refuge in an outhouse. The woman now reappeared, armed with a broomstick; and followed into the shed, where a fresh succession of howls and yells announced a needful though tardy process of castigation. Wowski walked along with us, flourishing his stick; only wished it had been a lion! There may be really courageous dogs among the big-limbed monsters of this part of France; but, from my own observation, I should say the most part are a pluckless race. Indeed, an officer of the Guards, who had got out dogs from England, complained to me that they lost their courage on a foreign soil.
Gingham himself, a few days after, had a much more serious adventure.
We were on the march together, after a wet and stormy night. The morning was unsettled, but soon became sultry. Then followed a shower of hail. Gingham began to philosophise; thought he could explain the phenomenon of hail better than any one else. "It has been remarked," said I, "that hail is never formed, except where there are two strata of clouds, one over the other."
"True," said Gingham; "and some meteorologists have imagined that the hail is generated by the alternate action of the two strata, which action they suppose to be electrical."
"Curious, if true."
"Yes," said Gingham; "but I question the theory altogether. According to the best views of the subject which I have been able to form, the hail is produced simply by a current of very cold air, passing rapidly through hot air charged with vapour. Were the current less rapid, or less cold, the effect would be merely condensation, and we should have rain; but, being both cold and rapid in a high degree, the effect is congelation, and we have hail. The noise which so often accompanies hail-storms is the rush of this current of cold air. Currents of air, I admit, in the higher regions of the atmosphere, are usually mute. But, in this instance, the rush is rendered vocal by the hailstones. As to the two strata of clouds, they merely mark the superior and inferior limit of the intrusive current; and they are due to the action of the cold, there more modified, on the vapour. And as to electricity—"
Gingham's lecture was here interrupted by our reaching a river. The bridge having been destroyed by the enemy, we could cross only by fording; and just as we reached the ford, we saw some persons passing on mules and horses. Half way over appeared a small island, which was in fact only a bank of shingle, thrown up by some previous flood. We perceived, by those who preceded us, that the depth was sufficient to wet our boots, if we rode, as they did; and therefore it was resolved to pass in the cart. The river, though not at the moment swollen, was dark and rapid. It rushed sullenly on, with small whirlpools, but without a ripple; and murmurs were heard at intervals, hoarse and deep, which came not from its surface, but boomed up from the gloomiest and most profound recesses of its vexed channel and hollow banks. By the side, waiting for a passage, we found some slightly wounded soldiers, a party of four. These Gingham mounted at once into the cart; and I, calculating that with Joaquim the driver, Mr Wowski, and Gingham himself, there were now quite passengers enough by that conveyance, turned Sancho's head, and followed Coosey—who led the way across the stream, mounted on one horse, and leading another, while the cart brought up the rear. The cart, it appears, on reaching the island, stuck fast. Its wheels cut into the loose gravel; and there was no remedy, except for the passengers to alight. The wheels were then lifted by main force; and, time having been given for the whole party to remount, Joaquim drove on, and the remainder of the passage was effected. All those who had started from the opposite bank then got out, with one exception. Where was Gingham? My attention was first attracted by an angry shout from Coosey:
"You Joe King, you precious willain, vhy, if you han't a-been and left your master a-standin on the highland!"
To a geologist like Gingham, the loose stones of the bank of gravel, shoved up by the force of the water from the depths of the stream, presented an attraction which banished every other thought from his mind. He had commenced picking up specimens the moment he alighted from the cart; and was so intent upon this pursuit, that he suffered the party to proceed without him. How they came to leave him behind can only be explained by supposing that each, as soon as he remounted, was occupied by the portion of the passage—it was ticklish work—that remained to be effected, and therefore began looking out ahead.
The moment Coosey spoke, I looked toward the island, and there, sure enough, was Gingham, still intent on stone-picking, and, to all appearance, utterly unconscious that the cart had left. The river, meanwhile, had risen considerably. Its course was more turbid and violent, its murmur louder and more continuous, and the island already smaller. We shouted to Gingham—there was need to shout. He looked up, and at once became aware of his position, which was evidently far from eligible. He appeared perfectly cool, but hesitated.
Suddenly, the water came down, in a sort of bank. It was less than a foot high; but the rise left Gingham with much less ground to stand upon, in the midst of the boiling flood. Large trunks of trees, plunging and careering, were now brought rapidly down the current; while the rush of the waters was like the roar of receding billows on a storm-vexed strand. Coosey was about to dash into the flood, which swept by the bank, boiling like a mill-stream. Had I not stopped him, the plucky little Londoner would soon have been carried away, prone and struggling on the angry torrent. He then sprang into the cart; but Gingham made signs to prohibit the attempt, or both cart and Coosey would probably have been lost. In our agony we tore off the cords from the boxes, tied them together, and fastened the end to a large stone, which Coosey attempted to pitch towards Gingham. It fell near him; but out of his reach, in deep water. While we were cautiously hauling it in, down came another freshet. The island was now in great part submerged; and Gingham stood on a mere strip of shingle, with the flood roaring down on each side. The stone was pitched again; and this time went truer than before, but was at once carried off into the deep water below. I again began to haul the line home. It had caught, and wouldn't come in. What could be done? Gingham, I really feared, was a lost man!
Down came another bank of water. Gingham had now scarcely standing-room. The water rushed rapidly by him, and I began to fear he might not long have a footing. At this critical moment, the trunk of a tree, with most of its branches broken off, but here and there a small bough still remaining, came right down towards Gingham, shearing, surging on the tumultuous waters, hung for a moment on the shallow, and then began moving on again with the current. Gingham stooped forward to seize it—he did well, it was his only hope—but lost his feet. He threw himself astride the timber, like Waterton on the crocodile's back, and was borne off from the island, still retaining his hold, though turned over and over by the violence of the current. I saw no hope. What could prevent his being carried away? Yet there was still a possibility of escape, though unforeseen. The trunk, carried a few yards down, was caught by an eddy, and swung round into the slack water below, where the current was broken by the bank on which Gingham had just been standing. There the huge log began slowly moving round in a circle, first ascending in a direction opposite to the stream, then descending again. On reaching the lowest point of the circle, the trunk, with Gingham upon it, was again caught by an eddy, and twirled round like a spindle; then, with solemn movement, began gradually to ascend again, describing the same circle as before. This second time, though, in going down, it reached a lower point ere it was again caught and twirled, by which law, it was clear, the third time it would go with the current. Manfully did Gingham still hold on, though so often under water; and now, for the third time, he and his log began slowly to move in an ascending orbit. A third time he reached the highest point; and a third time, to all appearance the last, he began—I often dream of it—to go down with the stream! We had given up all hope. Joaquim stood wringing his hands; Coosey was like a man distracted; even the crippled soldiers would gladly have given their aid, had any devisable expedient presented itself. There was no visible alternative; this time he must be carried away!—What's that? Something stirred at my feet! I looked down. There was again a little movement. The rope twitched, as if beginning to run out! My foot was on it, in an instant. The next, I and Coosey held it fast. The tree, in moving round and round, had fished hold, and disengaged it from the catch. "Pull away, pull away!" shouted the soldiers.—"Now run him up to the bank."—"Now's your time."—"Make haste!"
"Steady, Coosey, steady," said I. "Take time, or we shall loosen the hitch, perhaps break the rope."
We did not pull. We merely held on. The log and Gingham swung to the bank.
He was silent, almost exhausted. It was well there were hands to drag him ashore; for he was too far spent to land himself. Awhile he sat motionless on the bank. With eyes uplifted, and lips moving inaudibly, he was apparently returning fervent and heartfelt thanks to heaven, for his all but miraculous deliverance. Coosey, meanwhile, had rushed for some brandy, which he administered with great apparent benefit.
"Hadn't we better take you to the nearest cottage?" said I. "Here's one at hand."
"No, no," replied Gingham, gasping. "Get me into the cart."
We lifted him in. Coosey then let down the tarpaulin, and assisted his master in a thorough change of garments from head to foot. Presently, with solemn look, and an air of authority, Coosey got down from the cart.
"It's master's vishes," said he, "to be left, jist for a few minits, alone by his-self."
Gingham ere long made his appearance, shifted and dry; and, though still looking shakey and exhausted, remounted his horse. When I once saw him fairly across the saddle, and just as we were about to proceed, I turned with vindictive, with savage exultation, to take a parting view of the angry torrent. The island had disappeared. Where Gingham had stood there was now a small race of swift-following rollers, which subsided, below the ledge, in tumultuous undulations and foaming eddies, around a dark, deep fissure in the flood, which gaped like a grave. Ha! Is it so? The hungry waters yawn for their rescued prey, and brawl forth their disappointment in a lengthened moan! We continued our march.
"And as to electricity," said Gingham, resuming where he broke off, "it may, when hail is generated, be disengaged by the process, I admit. But that it is in any way the medium of producing the hail, I strenuously deny. Hail is sufficiently accounted for by the supposition of a current of cold air passing rapidly through warm air charged with vapour; and the same theory will solve all the phenomena."
To which theory I, not being so deep in the subject as Gingham, urged no objections. I remarked, however, that Mr Wowski, professedly a man of science, manifested not the least interest in the question; did not appear to have even an idea on the subject, let alone an opinion. In the late critical scene at the ford, though, he was eminently conspicuous; and, as far as skipping about, shrieking, and getting in the way, his assistance was invaluable.
We lost the little botanist sooner than we expected. A mail—joyful event!—arrived from England; and I was sent to the "Post Office" for our departmental letters. This was not part of my regular duty; but on the occasion in question I received express directions, and went accordingly. Found the post office, a cottage with a front garden. I could but admire the diligent and active exertions to meet the general anxiety of the army, by sorting and delivering the contents of the mail with the least possible delay. The whole lot, say three or four bushels, had been shot out in the middle of the room on the earthen floor. Newspapers, love letters, officers' letters, soldiers' letters, there they lay, and there they were left to lie. In the apartment were two persons, perhaps I ought to say personages. One sat on each side of the hearth; each had torn open a newspaper; and both were conning the news from England. I never saw two people more comfortable in my life. When I entered, neither of them raised his eyes, or took the least notice. They read on. I waited. Still they read. I so far presumed as to announce my mission—had come for the departmental letters. Paused for a reply—stood expectant. At length one of the illustrious two favoured me with an utterance, in a tone somewhat querulous though, and without looking off from his reading—"Three o'clock."
"What, gentlemen!" thought I, "only four hours hence? Why, at this rate, hadn't you better say three o'clock to-morrow?"
So thinking, (not saying,) I walked off. Just as I was going, the one who had not spoken rose. He followed me out, and came on walking by my side down the path toward the garden gate. I really was green enough to fancy he was doing the polite—seeing me to the entrance; felt quite overwhelmed. Any approach, at headquarters to "the sweet courtesies of life"—it was something new! I began to deprecate—hoped he wouldn't. "Pray, sir, don't come a step farther. I can mount without assistance—can open the gate for myself." Without vouchsafing a reply, he began questioning.
"Know Mr Wowski?"
"Have known him for the last few days."
"What is he?"
"He professes himself a botanist, a man of science."
"What does he want at headquarters?"
"He states his object to be botanical research."
"States, you say; professes. Isn't he really a botanist?"
This was an awkward question, for I was beginning to have my doubts. I remained silent.
"You must answer."
"For the last two or three days I have felt it a question, I confess."
"Why?"
"He collects specimens, but doesn't preserve or arrange them. At dinner time he brings home a bundle of common herbs or grasses, which, next morning, he throws away. Then goes out again, and brings home another bundle like it. Don't think he knows much about botany."
"What's your opinion of him?"
"Have hardly known him long enough to form one. He seems decidedly, though, to have a military taste; takes great interest in the movements of the troops."
"Fond of going up steeples?"
"When we enter a place, I believe he makes that his first object; at least, whenever there is a steeple to the church."
"Ever see him making signals?"
"Never noticed anything of the kind."
"Know anything more about him?"
"He brought letters of introduction"—
"Oh, yes; I know all about that. Ever met him before you joined?"
"Can't say. First time we met at headquarters, thought I had heard his voice."
"Where?"
"On our way up with treasure, we were opposed by the peasantry in passing the ferry at—"
"Yes, yes; I know. See him with them?"
"No; I heard a voice, though, which I afterwards thought was very like his."
"Then you didn't see him with them next day, I suppose, when they wounded the officer of your escort?"
"I saw nothing of him then; wasn't near enough to distinguish individuals."
"Oh, I suppose you don't use spectacles. Very well. Say nothing about this."
My questioner then returned to the cottage. He didn't say good morning; and, till I missed him from my side, I wasn't aware of his departure. Then, looking round, I saw him quietly opening the door and going in. Mr Wowski didn't come back to dinner, and we saw him no more. Whether he was arrested, or merely advised to botanise elsewhere, I never knew.
Following the movements of the army from place to place, we approached at length the banks of the Garonne, and the neighbourhood of Toulouse. We now halted for some days at the village of Seysses, where, better off than many of my fellow-campaigners, I enjoyed the luxury of a most enviable bed. On the earthen floor of my apartment was arranged a small stack of faggots. This was the bedstead. On the faggots was spread a lot of worn-out sacking, old clothes, and equally ancient blankets, which, with a very clean pair of sheets, constituted my bed. The first night, I was settling off for a snooze, when a commotion, like a small earthquake, disturbed my prima quies. Something was stirring, immediately under me! What can it be? Why, I can feel it! It's in the bed! What's that again? A mixture of squeaking and scrambling! Oh, rats. They had burrowed through the floor, had established themselves in the faggots, had eaten into the bedding, and there held their midnight revels. There they lived and bred, squeaked and grunted, wriggled and fought, scurried and cuddled, close under the sheet, undulating the whole surface of the bed. Presuming that they would let me alone if I let them alone, I again composed myself to sleep; and, so well was the truce kept on both sides, I had them every night for my bed-fellows. If the tumblification became intolerable, I had only to move, and in a moment all was hushed. When I was still, they stirred; but when I stirred, they were still.
Our last halting place, before we fought the battle of Toulouse, was Grenade, a small town, or large village, a few leagues below the scene of combat, on the left bank of the Garonne. Come, I'll just give you a short account of my entertainment in one more billet, and then we'll rush into the thick of the fight. Approaching Grenade, with the mingled multitude that follow an army, I was met by a French gentleman, who immediately addressed me, and entered into conversation like an old acquaintance. That's the best of the French. In five minutes we were intimate. He was a tall, hearty fellow, in age about five-and-twenty, with rosy cheeks, curly hair, broad shoulders, and prodigious development of the poitrine. Begged to know who and what I was—my age, name, rank, and family. Were my parents living? Had I brothers? A sister? Was I married or unmarried? Had I any intentions? Ever felt the tender passion? What was my pay par mois? Vilinton or Bonaparte, which did I consider the greater general? Ever fought a duel? Were the English merry or tristes? How did I like the French? But the French ladies? Which excelled in female beauty, France or England? Been in many battles? Was I Torrie or Ouigge? Would I accept of a billet in his ménage? By this time my inquisitive friend had turned, and we were walking on together towards Grenade. On our arrival there, he knocked at the door of a great stack of a house in the market-place. In five minutes Sancho was nuzzling a feed of oats in the stable, I was stropping and lathering in an elegant bedroom, and my servant was making love to Cookey in the kitchen. The fact is, when the news arrived that the English were walking in, my new friend had walked out, to secure an inmate to his mind, and I was the fortunate individual. The Parisians ridicule provincials, and so do the Cockneys. But let me tell both Cockneys and Parisians, they have nothing to boast above the rural gentry whom they respectively despise, in good breeding, in refinement, in cultivation, in bonhomie, in gentility, in anything that constitutes a dignified, simple, and likeable character. Happy family! Here, in one house, living together, and happy together, kind, hospitable, loving, and beloved, resided an aged father, a venerable mother, a charming daughter, three strapping sons—one married, with his lively little titbit of a wife, the pet of the household—two single, of whom my friend was the senior. There they dwelt together, in domestic harmony and peace. Yet there too, in that tranquil domicile, sorrow had found an entrance. A son was missing. It was the old story; you couldn't travel through France in those days, without hearing it a hundred times repeated. He had entered the army—entered Spain—and no one knew what had become of him. The family supper—what a meeting of friends, what a cheerful reunion! Each treated the other with marked attention and kindness, as though they were then first met after a long separation. The lady of the house, "madame," advanced in years, but sharp, quick, cheerful, and conversable, demanded from me a reply to the oft-repeated interrogatory, which were fairer, the English fair or the French. I tried to evade it. "No, no," said every voice at table; "Madame has asked. Monsieur must reply."—"Most willingly would I obey," said I, bowing till my nose touched the tablecloth; "but in your presence, madame, how can I decide without prepossession?" (prévention?) This compliment addressed to a dame of sixty-five, with gray hairs, and nothing of beauty but its vestiges, you will of course say was absurd, extravagant, and perfectly out of place. In England, I grant, it would be. But there, in France, where a compliment paid is a benefit conferred, and where civility, like a gift amongst ourselves, is always accepted as a token of goodwill, it was viewed with favour, and received with gratitude. The company, tickled, but delighted, raised a shout of applause; and madame herself, smirking and twinkling, made her acknowledgments with courtly elegance, as though I had conferred an obligation; while her lovely daughter, exclaiming, "Ah, maman!" flung her arms about her neck, with eyes full of tenderness and delight. In short, I was one of the family. In a week I quitted them with regret. The old gentleman made me a parting present of cigars; a small token of gratitude, he was kind enough to say, for the pleasure of my company; and that after I had been hospitably lodged, handsomely entertained, and fèted from first to last as if every day had been a jubilee.
Those cigars! Oh, those cigars! I never smoked the like of those cigars! They beat General Thouvenot's out of the field. They were at least three years old—nearer two pounds of them than one. You may have smoked a good cigar. You may have smoked an old cigar. But these united the two qualities; they were both old and good. The military son had brought them with him from Spain, and left them on his return to the army. The gift of them to me, then, implied a melancholy sentiment; he could not want them. This was expressed by the father, in making the present. It was touching—it was perfectly French. They had one fault, only one; a fault from which no old cigars are free. They were gone too soon; they burned out like tinder. But oh! while they were burning, how shall I describe the sensation! Sensation? It was more than that; it was mental elevation; a vision, a trance, a transfer to the regions of hope, imagination, and enchantment. Every-day nature became prismatic. Matter-of-fact sparkled with variegated lamps. Pledget might have smoked, and fancied himself a poet. Each cigar a tranquillising stimulant, a volatile anodyne, excited, and while it excited soothed, every faculty of the soul; fancy, sentiment, recollection, anticipation, and stern resolve. But ah, my cigar is out! A few puffs have sufficed! Too soon, too soon, it begins to burn my nose! Its last, its dying odours are hurried away by the envious breeze; and the visions which they inspired are gone like a beautiful dream!
[A MONTH AT CONSTANTINOPLE.][3]
Books of travel in the region which modern tourists particularly designate as "the East," and which may be considered to comprise Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, do not, as a class, very forcibly challenge our sympathy and criticism. The best horse may be ridden to death; and no country, however rich in associations and peculiar in its characteristics, however remarkable in configuration and interesting by its traditions, can yield continual fresh pastures to literary travellers, when they descend upon it like a swarm of locusts instead of dropping in at reasonable intervals. Time must be allowed for change and reproduction, or repetition and exhaustion will be the inevitable result. The East, moreover, as a theme for book-wrights, has not only been overdone, but, in many instances, very badly done. People have gone thither with the preconceived idea of publishing, on the strain for the marvellous, the romantic, and the picturesque; and, disdaining the common-sense course of setting down what they saw and giving their real and natural impressions, they have gilt and embellished, like a coach-painter at a sheriff's carriage, till they forced upon us the conviction that they cared more for glitter than for truth. Some, piquing themselves on diplomatic acumen, have filled their volumes with politics, and settled all manner of Eastern questions much to their own satisfaction, and greatly to the weariness of their readers; and these form perhaps the most intolerable of the many classes into which Oriental travellers are subdivisible, but which we shall not here further enumerate, preferring to turn to the examination of the latest Eastern tour that has issued from the English press and found its way to our critical sanctum.
Mr Albert Smith's name, well known within sound of Bow-bells, is far from unfamiliar to a large circle of dwellers without that populous circumference. We cannot affirm that we have read all his numerous works, but with some of them we are acquainted, and we are disposed to think him one of the most amiable and praiseworthy of the school of popular humorists to which he belongs. His jokes are invariably good-humoured and inoffensive—without being on that account deficient in point. He does not wrap radicalism up in fun, as cunning grandmothers envelop sickly drugs with marmalade; nor has his flow of gaiety a sour and mischievous under-current. Neither does he belong to the gang of facetious philanthropists whose sympathies are so exclusively granted to the indigent and miserable, that they have nothing left but gall and bitterness for those of their fellow-creatures who wear a decent coat, and have the price of a dinner in its pocket. A gentleman of most versatile ability, he is by turns dramatist, journalist, essayist, naturalist, novelist, correspondent of a London paper, critic of the ballet, a writer of songs and a manufacturer of burlesque. Such a host of occupations naturally entails the necessity of a little relaxation; and accordingly, in the summer of last year, Mr Smith laid down his pen, shook the sawdust from his buskins, and started for the Mediterranean. As far as Malta we have not ascertained how it fared with him, but of his subsequent proceedings he has informed us in a volume which we had little idea of reviewing when first we learned its expected appearance, but whose perusal has convinced us that it deserves such brief notice as the crowded state of our pages in these busy days will permit us to bestow upon it. We have already implied our opinion that it takes a skilful hand to write an amusing book on so hackneyed a text as a visit to Constantinople. Mr Smith has surmounted the difficulty in an easy and natural manner; and, whilst telling things just as they appeared to him, without affectation or adornment, he has contrived to give an agreeable freshness and originality to a subject which we really deemed threadbare and exhausted.
It was on board the Scamandre, French Mediterranean mail-steamer, that Mr Albert Smith left Malta on an August evening of the year 1849, bound for Constantinople. The weather was fine and the sea smooth as a lake, and there could be no reasonable apprehension of shipwreck even for the crazy French vessel, whose last voyage, save on rivers or along coast, this was intended to be. But although somewhat rickety, of very moderate speed, and not particularly clean externally, the interior accommodations of the Scamandre were by no means bad. And the cabin passengers presented an amusing medley of nations and characters. There were French milliners, striving to pass themselves off as governesses, an elderly French actress from the St James's theatre, a brace of Marseilles bagmen, an enterprising Englishman bent upon smuggling muskets into Hungary, a young Irish officer who had thrown up his commission in the British service to campaign with Bem and Kossuth, and who must have arrived at his destination just as the war reached its end. There was also Mr Sophocles, an intelligent Greek professor from an American university, on his way home after twenty years' absence, and sundry persons unnamed, making about twenty in all, and Mr Smith himself, who, we venture to say, was not the least active and efficient in beguiling the tedium of a week's voyage in a slow steamboat, and who gives us an extremely amusing account of his fellow-passengers and their proceedings. Travelling quite as a citizen of the world, without pretension or care for luxuries, now footing it across the Alps with knapsack on shoulder, then a deck passenger from Genoa to Naples, availing himself of the smooth when it offered, but taking the rough readily when it came, sleeping sometimes on boards for want of a bed, with the knapsack aforesaid for a pillow—Mr Smith seems to have carried through the whole of his ramble those best of travelling companions, imperturbable good humour, and a determination to be pleased with everything and everybody. It is accordingly with all possible indulgence that he views the little foibles of his fellow-passengers per Scamandre, and there is not an atom of acid in the dry humour with which he parades them for the entertainment of his readers. Indeed, before the week's voyage is over, we begin to feel quite intimate with the motley company—to view with indulgence Mademoiselle Virginie's barefaced flirtations with the French commissary, and to sympathise with the good-tempered American, who, having had the misfortune to engage his berth in the first-class cabin—a sort of extra-magnificent place, whose chief distinction from the second class consists, as on German railways, in a heavy additional charge—preferred now and then dining with the less aristocratic inmates of the second cabin, "to know what was going on." There is no place like shipboard for betraying people's habits and peculiarities: everybody is more or less in deshabille; and such a group as that on the Scamandre is a mine to a shrewd observer. Mr Smith kept his eyes and ears wide open, as is his wont, and little escaped him. We select the following specimen of his strictures on foreign habits.
"I should be very sorry to class foreigners, generally, as a dirty set of people when left to themselves; but I fear there is too much reason to suppose that (in how many cases out of ten I will refrain from saying) a disrelish for a good honest plunging wash is one of their chief attributes. It requires but very little experience, in even their best hotels, to come to this conclusion. I do not mean in those houses where an influx of English has imposed the necessity of providing large jugs, baths, and basins; but in the equally leading establishments patronised chiefly by themselves. In these, one still perceives the little pie-dish and milk-jug, the scanty doily-looking towel, and the absence of a soap dish; whilst it would be perfectly futile to ask for anything further. So, on board the Scamandre, this opinion was not weakened. They dipped a corner of a little towel, not in the basin, but in the stream that trickled from the cistern as slowly as vinegar from any oyster-shop cruet, and dabbed their face about with it. Then they messed about a little with their hands; and then, having given a long time to brushing their hair, they had a cigarette instead of a tooth brush, and their toilet was complete. This description does not only apply to the Scamandre passengers, but to the majority of their race, whom I afterwards encountered about the Mediterranean."
We have a vivid recollection of the consternation of an amiable and numerous French family, in whose house a friend of ours once was domiciled, on finding that he each morning required, for his personal use, more fresh water than sufficed for their entire daily consumption, internal and external. Doubtless the worthy people indulged, every eight days or so, in a warm bath; but they had no notion of such a thing as diurnal ablutions above the waist or below the chin, and they shrugged and grinned monstrously at the eccentricity of the Englishman who commenced the day by a general sluice, whereas they rarely thought of washing even their fingers till they dressed for their ante-prandial promenade. And when our friend was laid up, some time later, with a smart twinge of gout, provoked by too liberal use of a very different liquid from water, the entire family, from the elderly father down to the youngest of the precocious juveniles, gave it as their unqualified opinion, that the ailment proceeded from their inmate's rash and obstinate indulgence in the ungenial and, in their opinion, extremely superfluous element.
"Athens in six hours," Mr Smith observes, is rather quick work; but he nevertheless found he could see in that time nearly as much of it as he wished. The Scamandre allowed but a day, and certainly he made good use of the brief halt. At Athens, as in Switzerland and on the Rhine, he found the ubiquitous Murray's Handbook the great authority and certificate of the native competitors for custom. A skirmish with clubs and boat-hooks—the former brought evidently in anticipation of the contest—took place amongst the fancy-ball-looking boatmen, in white petticoats and scarlet leggings, who crowded in light skiffs round the foot of the steamer's ladder. In the intervals of the fight a dialogue was carried on in English, more or less broken.
"'I say, sir! here, sir! Hotel d'Orient is the best. Here's the card, sir—old palace—Murray says ver good,' cried one of the costumes.
"'Hi!' screamed another; 'don't go with him, master—too dear! Come with me?'
"The parties were immediately engaged in single combat.
"'Hotel d'Angleterre à Athènes, tenu par Elias Polichronopulos et Yani Adamopulos,' shouted another, all in a breath. I copy the names from the card he gave me, for they were such as no one could remember.
"'Yes, sir; good hotel,' said his companion. 'Look in Murray, sir—page 24—there, sir; here, sir; look, sir!'
"'Who believes Murray?' asked a fellow in plain clothes, with a strong Irish accent.
"'You would, if he put your house in the Handbook,' replied another."
By considerable display of mental and physical energy, a few of the passengers at last got into a boat and gained the quay of the Piræus. Grog's-shop was written on the shutter of a petty coffee-house, and a smart-looking Albanian stepped up, and proffered his services in excellent English. He had lived in London, he said: was a subject of Queen Victoria, and had the honour of being set down in Murray, page 25. With such recommendations, who could refuse the guidance of Demetri Pomorn? Not Mr Smith and his party, evidently, for they immediately engaged him for the day, hired a shabby vehicle from an adjacent cab-stand, and started on their hot and dusty road to Athens, thence about five miles distant. There they killed the lions, ate quince ices, bought Latakia tobacco, dined at the Hotel d'Orient à l'Anglaise, with Harvey sauce and pale ale, off English plates and dishes, and pulled on board again at night, to the tune of Jim Crow, played by an Anglified violin in one of the "grog's-shops" aforesaid. At five in the morning sleep was at an end, thanks to the clanking, stamping, and bawling upon the steamer's deck, and Mr Smith left the cabin, to reconnoitre and breathe fresh air. Some deck passengers had come on board at Athens; amongst others, a poor Albanian family, bound to Smyrna to pack figs. They were miserable, broken-spirited looking people, but picturesque in spite of their poverty; a melon or two and some coarse bread composed their entire stores for the voyage. This, however, was of no great duration, for at daybreak the next morning the passengers per Scamandre were told they were off Smyrna.
"It was very pleasant to hear this—to be told that the land I saw close to us was Asia, and that the distant slender spires that rose from the thickly clustered houses were minarets—that I should have twelve hours to go on shore, and see real camels, fig-trees, scheiks, and veiled women! And yet I could scarcely persuade myself that such was the case—that the distant Smyrna—of which I had only heard, in the Levant mail, as a remote place, burnt down once a-year, where figs came from—was actually within a good stone's throw of the steamer."
The travellers' expectations were more than realised. "I do not believe," says Mr Smith, "that throughout the future journey any impressions were conveyed more vivid than those we experienced during our first half hour in the bazaars of the sunny, bustling, beauty-teeming Smyrna." The appearance of a party of foreigners, and of the well-known face of the valet-de-place, caused a stir amongst the dealers, one of whom accosted Mr Smith in good English.
"'How d'ye do, sir; very well? that's right. Look here, sir; beautiful musk purse; very fine smell. Ten piastres.'
"A piastre is worth twopence and a fraction.
"'How did you learn to speak English so well?' I asked.
"'All English gentlemen come to me, sir,' he said, 'and I learn it from the ships, and from the Americans. Shake hands, sir; that's right. Buy the purse, sir?
"'How much is it?' asked one of our party.
"'Six piastres,' replied the brother of the merchant, who also spoke English, but had not heard the first price.
"'And you asked me ten!' I said to the other.
"'So I did, sir,' he replied with a laugh; 'then, if I get the other four, that's my profit—eh? But what's four piastres to an English gentleman?—nothing. It's too little for him to know about. Come—buy the purse. What will you give?'
"'Five piastres,' I answered.
"'It is yours,' he added directly, with a hearty laugh, throwing it to me.
"'What a merry fellow you are!' I observed.
"'Yes, sir; I laugh always; very good to laugh. English gentlemen like to laugh, I know; laugh very well. Look at his turban—laugh at that.'
"He directed our attention to an old Turk, who was going by with a most ludicrous and towering head-dress. It was diverting to find him making fun of his compatriot."
The mode of dealing, which in Christian Europe is stigmatised as Jewish—the system, namely, of asking thrice the value and twice what the seller means to take—is received, and by no means discreditable, in Turkish bazaars. The only way to purchase in such places, without being imposed upon, is at once to offer half the price demanded. This is met with a refusal; you walk away, the merchant calls you back, and you then offer him twenty per cent less than before. This plan Mr Smith, having picked up experience at Smyrna, put in practice at Constantinople, and generally found to answer.
Fig-packing, camels, and the slave-market are the three things which at Smyrna first attract the curiosity of the traveller from the West. Of the first-named, Mr Smith gives us a picturesque account. In the shade of a long alley of acacia and fig trees the packers were seated—Greeks by nation, and the women very handsome. "They first brought the figs from the warehouses, on the floor of which I saw hundreds of bushels, brought in on camels from the country. They were then pulled into shape, this task being confided to females; and after that sent on to the men who packed them. They gathered six or seven, one after the other, in their hand, and then wedged them into the drum, putting a few superior ones on the top, as we have seen done with strawberries." We have already mentioned that our sharp-sighted and lively traveller is somewhat of a naturalist, and here he favours us with the result of his observations upon the camel. That uncouth, but useful hunchback has been belauded and vaunted in prose and verse to such an exaggerated extent that we are quite tired of hearing of his virtues, and feel much indebted to the author of A Month at Constantinople for exhibiting his failings after the following fashion:—
"Your camel is a great obtainer of pity, under false pretence. He can be as self-willed and vicious as you please; and his bite is particularly severe: when once his powerful teeth have fastened, it is with the greatest difficulty that he is made to relinquish his hold. The pitiful noise too, which he makes, as small natural historians remark, upon being overladen, is all sham. It proceeds from sheer idleness, rather than a sense of oppression. With many camels, if you make pretence to put a small object on their back—a tile or a stone, for instance—whilst they are kneeling down, they begin mechanically to bellow, and blink their eyes, and assume such a dismal appearance of suffering and anguish, that it is perfectly painful for susceptible natures to regard them. And yet, when their load is well distributed and packed, they can move along under seven hundredweight."
But we must get on to Constantinople. Often as the magnificent spectacle has been described that bursts upon the view as you round Seraglio Point and glide into the Golden Horn, it yet would seem affected or eccentric of a traveller who writes about Constantinople were he to neglect recording the impression made upon him by that singularly lovely panorama. Mr Albert Smith's description is to the purpose, and we like it the better for the complete absence of that magniloquence in which so many tourists have indulged when discoursing upon the beauties of Stamboul. Probably no city in the world presents so great a contrast as Constantinople, when seen from a short distance and when examined in detail. Floating on the blue waters of the Bosphorus, the wondering stranger gazes upon a fairy spectacle of domes, and minarets, and cypress groves, of graceful palaces and stately mosques, gilded wherries and gaily-attired crowds. A few minutes elapse: the grave custom-house officials in their handsome barge have received the sixpenny bribe which exempts his luggage from examination; he lands at the Tophanné Stairs, and enters the steep lane that leads up to Pera, and in an instant the illusion is dissipated:—
"I felt," says Mr Smith, who readily avails himself, and in this instance very happily, of a theatrical comparison, "that I had been taken behind the scenes of a great 'effect.' The Constantinople of Vauxhall Gardens, a few years ago, did not differ more, when viewed in front from the gallery and behind from the dirty little alleys bordering the river. The miserable, narrow, ill-paved thoroughfare did not present one redeeming feature—even of picturesque dreariness. The roadway was paved with all sorts of ragged stones, jammed down together without any regard to level surface; and encumbered with dead rats, melon-rinds, dogs, rags, brickbats, and rubbish, that had fallen through the mules' baskets, as they toiled along it. The houses were of wood—old and rotten; and bearing traces of having been once painted red. There was, evidently, never any attempt made to clean them, or their windows or doorways. Here and there, where a building had been burnt, or had tumbled down, all the ruins remained as they had fallen. Even the better class of houses had an uncared-for, mouldy, plague-imbued, decaying look about them; with grimy lattices instead of windows, on the upper stories, and dilapidated shutters and doors on the ground-floors."
It will have occurred to many, acquainted with the scenes portrayed, to exclaim, when gazing upon the bright pictures of a David Roberts, a Leopold Robert, or a Villamil, "What a deal of dirt is hidden under all that gay colouring!" It will not do for the artist to look too closely into the details of southern cleanliness and domestic economy; he must elevate his subject and wash off the dirt, or at least paint over it. Constantinople must be viewed as a panorama, not investigated as if for sale. If he would preserve the enchantment unbroken, the spectator must keep his distance, as from a picture painted for distant effect. If he will not do this, if curiosity impels him onwards, let him make up his eyes and olfactories to a cruel disappointment. A minute ago, fairyland was spread before him; he lands, and stumbles over a dead dog. Touching dogs, by the bye, we have a word to say. Mr Smith has numerous passages relating to that quadruped, esteemed in Christendom, abominable in Constantinople. Having once, he informs us, been severely bitten by a hound, and having, moreover, seen several persons die of hydrophobia, he entertains a very justifiable mistrust of the canine race, or at least of such of its specimens as present themselves with slavering mouths, inflamed eyes, guttural yells, and hides ragged and bloody. Now, this being the habitual appearance and bearing of the eighty-thousand pugnacious and starving curs that infest the streets of the Turkish capital, Mr Smith, had he been a nervous person, would have passed rather an agreeable "month in Constantinople." With a paper lantern in one hand, however, and a jagged stone in the other—the usual weapons of defence—he prosecuted his wanderings most courageously, at almost any hour of the night, through the filth-strewn and dog-haunted streets. His first introduction to these pleasant animals was auricular; and truly, compared to their uproar, a German frog-swamp or a strong party of Christmas waits, jangling a negro melody in defiance of time and tune, must be considered a delightful réveil-matin.
"To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images. The whole city rung with one vast riot. Down below me at Tophanné—over at Stamboul—far away at Scutari—the whole eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other, without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking, growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and continuous even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and woke again; and still, with my windows open, I heard the same tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that anything like tranquillity was restored."
The traces of these nocturnal combats are plainly discernible the next morning. There is not a whole skin in the entire canine legion; some have lost eyes, others ears, some a collop of the little flesh that remains on their unfortunate bones, and all bear the scars of desperate conflicts. They keep an active look-out for dead horses and camels, and are even said to devour their defunct comrades; but there is no authenticated account of their making a meal of a human being, although a story is current in Galata of their having one night torn down a tipsy English sailor, and left nothing but his bones to tell the tale in the morning. Drunkards, however, must expect to go to the dogs. Mr Smith kept sober, and carried a lantern. Solely to these two precautions, perhaps, are we to-day indebted for the pleasure of reading his book, instead of mourning his interment in the ravenous stomachs of Mahomedan mongrels.
It can hardly have escaped the observation of any one who has travelled at all, that the presence of even a very few English settlers in a town or district, speedily entails the establishment of "the English shop." The keeper of this is not necessarily an Englishman; he may be of any nation—Pole, Jew, Frenchman, German; the essential is, that he should have a smattering of English and a trader's knowledge of the heterogeneous articles which, in foreign estimation, are indispensable to the existence of Englishmen. Foremost amongst these are beer and pickles, mustard and cayenne, Warren's blacking and Windsor soap, the pills of Professor Holloway, the kalydor of the world-renowned Rowland. Thanks to the extraordinary power of puffing, we dare to say that the paletot of Sheriff Nicoll by this time finds its nook in "the English shop." The growth of these philanthropical depots for the consolation of exiled Britons is often miraculously mushroom-like. Land an English regiment to occupy a menaced point on some distant foreign shore, and within the week "the shop" appears, though it be but a booth with a hamper of porter and a dozen pickle pots for sole stock in trade. In Constantinople, where English abound, either as residents or birds of passage, Stampa is a celebrity. The admirable establishment of Galignani is not more famed for books and newspapers—and especially for that far-famed Messenger, which reaches to the uttermost ends of the earth—than is the shop of Stampa as a rendezvous and receptacle for men and things English. There you may buy everything, from a Stilton to a cake of soap, from a solar lamp to a steel pen; and there obtain all manner of information, from the address of a Galata[4] merchant to the sailing hour of a steamer. Nay, should you be weary of kebobs and craving for a beefsteak, Stampa will provide it you. He did so at least for Mr Smith; but perhaps that gentleman was a favoured customer, as he seems indeed to have found means of rendering himself at more than one place during his ramble.
At Constantinople, as at Smyrna, Mr Smith visited the slave market. There is a volume in the word, and we all know the sort of phantasmagoria it summons up for the benefit of English ladies and gentlemen, as they sit at home at ease, dandling their fancies by the chimney corner. Exeter Hall and the picture shops have made slave-markets of their own, compared to which the reality is a tame and spiritless affair. We are all familiar, at a proper distance, with that group of young ladies, more or less nude, and of every tint—from the pale Georgian to the sable Ethiop—huddled together in great alarm and the most graceful attitudes, whilst a shawled and jewelled Turk scans their perfections with licentious eye, and counts gold into the palm of a truculent dealer in human flesh. None of us but have been painfully affected by representations, both printed and pictorial, of whips and manacles, fettered hands and striped shoulders, kneeling negroes and barbarous taskmasters, whereby tender-hearted gentlemen are moved to unbutton their pockets, and philanthropical ladies of excitable nerve, overlooking the misery that is often close to their doors, are set sewing flannels for remote blacks. We have all seen this sort of thing, and have been interested and touched accordingly. But Mr Smith, in the most unfeeling manner, robs us of our illusions, so far, at least, as Smyrna or Constantinople are concerned. In the slave-market at the latter place—where blacks only are exposed, the Circassian and Georgian beauties being secluded in the dealers' houses—he arrived at the conclusion that the creatures he saw wrapped in their blankets and crouching in corners, and in whom sense and feeling were evidently at the very lowest ebb, had much better chance of such happiness as they were capable of enjoying, if sold as slaves than if left to their own savage resources.
"I should be very sorry," he says, "to run against any proper feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if any person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown these creatures, and told that their lot was to become the property of others, and work in return for food and lodging, he would come to the conclusion it was all they were fit for.... The truth is, that the 'virtuous indignation' side of the question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine writing than the practical fact. But this style of composition should not always be implicitly relied upon. I knew a man who was said, by certain reviews and literary cliques, to be 'a creature of large sympathies for the poor and oppressed,' because he wrote touching things about them; but who would abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was sufficiently full to take up the 'man-and-brother' line of literary business, and suggest that a tipsy Chartist was as good as quiet gentleman."
Mr Albert Smith is evidently a hard-hearted person, and we begin to repent of noticing his book. In the same pitiless matter-of-fact manner he continues to tilt at the several articles of our Eastern creed, pressing into his service as a witness Demetri the Second, (not him of Athens, but a Constantinople cicerone,) a terrible fellow for rubbing the romantic lacquer off Turkish manners and customs. After the slaves, the sack and scimitar are disposed of. "Not many executions now," quoth Demetri,—"only English subjects. Here's where they cut the heads off; just here, where these two streets meet, and the body is left here a day or two, and sometimes the dogs get at it." This was rather startling intelligence, until explained. The "English subjects" proved to be emigrants from Malta and the Ionian islands—the greatest scamps in Pera—which is saying no little, for Pera abounds with scamps. At that time, however, there had not been an execution for a whole year past.
"All English gentlemen," continued Demetri, "think they cut off heads every day in Stamboul, and put them, all of a row, on plates at the Seraglio gate. And they think people are always being drowned in the Bosphorus. Not true. I know a fellow who is a dragoman, and shows that wooden shoot which comes from the wall of the Seraglio Point, as the place they slide them down. It is only to get rid of the garden rubbish. Same with lots of other things."
Nothing like travel to dispel prejudice and romance. People are too apt to adopt Byron's notions of the East. To those who would have their eyes opened we recommend the Mediterranean steamers, or, if these would take them too far, they may stay at home and read Mr Smith.
"Travel," such is his advice to the seeker after truth, "with a determination to be only affected by things as they strike you. Swiss girls, St Bernard dogs, Portici fishermen, the Rhine, Nile travelling, and other objects of popular rhapsodies, fearfully deteriorate upon practical acquaintance. Few tourists have the courage to say that they have been 'bored,' or at least disappointed by some conventional lion. They find that Guide-books, Diaries, Notes, Journals, &c. &c., all copy one from the other in their enthusiasm about the same things; and they shrink from the charge of vulgarity, or lack of mind, did they dare to differ. Artists and writers will study effect rather than graphic truth. The florid description of some modern book of travel is as different to the actual impressions of ninety-nine people out of a hundred—allowing all these to possess average education, perception, and intellect—when painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted lithograph, or picturesque engraving of the portfolio or annual, is to the faithful photograph."
Mr Smith's concluding chapter, including his lazaretto experiences and departure for Egypt, is very amusing, and he shows up the abuses of the quarantine system, his own annoyances when in sickly durance, and the eccentricities of his Mahometan and Christian fellow-travellers, with spirit and humour. We have good will, but no space, to accompany him further in his peregrinations. An appendix, including estimates of expenses, and various remarks suggested by his recent travelling experience, will be found useful by persons contemplating a similar trip. The general texture of his book is certainly of the slightest; but, as already implied, it pretends not to solidity or to the discussion of grave topics. It is just such a volume as might be composed by the amalgamation of a series of epistles from a lively and fluent letter-writer to friends at home, during a few weeks' ramble and abode in Turkey. If it occasionally reminds us of Cockaigne, its author, we are sure, is too patriotic to be ashamed of his native village, and we have no mind to quarrel with him for the almost exclusively metropolitan character of his tropes and similes, for his frequent reminiscences of London streets and Surrey hills, or for his preference of the sunset seen from "The Cricketers" at Chertsey Bridge, to the same sight from "The little Burial-ground" at Pera. A good result—probably the one he aimed at—of the selection, as points of comparison, of localities more particularly familiar to Londoners, is that he thereby conveys, to those who will doubtless form a very large proportion of his readers, a clear idea of the places he visited and would describe. And his little volume affords evidence of good temper and feeling sufficient to cover a multitude of Cockneyisms.
When reviewing, about two years ago, a volume of rambles[5] in a very different region, we stated our opinion as to the style of illustration appropriate to books of this kind, in which cuts or engravings are most acceptable when they explain scenes and objects that written description, even at great length, would less accurately and clearly place before the reader. Mr Smith is evidently of the same way of thinking. "I have given," he says, "only those illustrations which appeared to be the most characteristic rather than the most imposing." In so doing he has shown judgment, and used to the best advantage the pencils and colour-box, which formed part of the heterogeneous contents of his well-stuffed knapsack. The reader will be more obliged to him for the appropriate and useful little sketches that thickly stud his pages, than for any drawings of greater pretensions, whose introduction the size and price of the volume would have permitted.
[MADAME SONTAG AND THE OPERA.]
It is now between three and four years since the town was startled by intelligence that the Opera House was divided against itself, and that melody and grace were about to take flight from the bottom of the Hay-market to the top of the Garden. In our quality of determined foes to unnecessary changes and theoretical reforms, we received the intelligence regretfully, and so, we have reason to believe, did that very considerable section of the London and provincial public into whose annual calculations of refined enjoyments the Italian Opera largely enters. Without going into the merits of the dispute, which up to this hour we have never heard clearly elucidated, we plainly discerned one thing—namely, that there was discord in the operatic camp; that harmony had abandoned its favourite abode; that managers, musicians, singers, and dancers, were drawing different ways: in short, that the Opera, taking the lead in a fashion that soon afterwards became disagreeably prevalent throughout Europe, was in a state of revolution. With whom the fault lay we knew not, and little cared: all that concerned us was the unpleasant fact that the pleasures of the music-loving multitude, quorum pars sumus, were seriously endangered. It is pretty notorious that, with very rare exceptions, professional votaries of the Muses are capricious, and difficult to deal with. Painters are accused of unpunctuality and improvidence; composers are often idle dogs, fretting impresarios into fevers, as Rossini did Barbaja, and fulfilling their engagements only at the last minute of the eleventh hour, with the polenta smoking on the table;[6] even authors we have heard declared, upon no mean authority, to be queer cattle to guide; but, of all classes whose occupation derives from art and poetry, none, assuredly, are harder to manage and to please than actors and musicians. From those early days of Opera, when a Lully shivered Cremonas upon the heads of a refractory orchestra, to the recent ones when a Lumley in vain essayed to appease the petulance of a prima donna, and calm the choler of a conductor, the tribulations of managers have been countless as the pebbles on the shore. To judge, indeed, from their own account, few of the penalties so picturesquely set forth in Fox's martyr-book, but would be preferable to ten years' management of a large lyric theatre. Consult the comedians, and we are presented with the reverse of the medal. A manager, we shall be told, is a covetous and Heliogabalian tyrant, fattening upon the toil and talents of the artist; a sort of vampire in a black coat, sucking the blood of genius, faring sumptuously on the proceeds of a tenor, squeezing the cost of his stud out of a soprano, and making large annual investments on the strength of an underpaid barytone. These things may be true, but we shall more readily credit them when we less frequently see managers in the Gazette, and when we hear of singers putting down their carriages, retrenching their suburban villas, and contenting themselves with salaries less enormous than those they now unblushingly exact. Upon such matters, however, it is not our purpose to expatiate. Theatrical quarrels rarely excite much general interest in this country, except inasmuch as they may exercise an unfavourable influence on the pleasures of the public—which has not been the case, we are happy to say, in the most recent and important instance of disagreement between the lessee of the first London theatre and certain members of his company.
At no period, probably, since London has possessed an Italian Opera, was there more room and a better chance of success for two establishments of that description than just now. Indeed, even if the particular circumstances that have caused a second establishment to be formed had not occurred, it might not improbably have arisen out of the want of remunerative patronage for high musical talent upon the Continent, entailed by the revolutionary convulsions of the last two years. Another circumstance favourable to the Italians is to be found in the depressed state of the native stage—a depression which we maintain is to be attributed to bad management and bad acting, more than to any decline in the public taste for the drama. Second-rate talent, such as now occupies the high places on our principal theatres, will no more permanently attract full houses, than will the burlesque and tinsel that has monopolised the minor stage. It is our conviction that high tragedy and good comedy will still draw together discriminating and desirable audiences; but they must be well acted. Could you bring back Kemble and Siddons, Kean and Young, rely upon it that the taste for the theatre would revive, and Drury Lane might be opened with better than a bare chance of success. And although those masters of their art have disappeared from the scene, there still are actors who, if they would condescend to pull together, might do much to prop the declining national drama. In the provincial towns the Charles Keans, Miss Faucit, or Macready, always draw full houses; and it is our belief they would do so the year through at Drury Lane, if they all belonged to its company, under a judicious management. It is idle to say that the public has lost its taste for theatres, because it will not encourage mediocrity and bad taste; and the best proof of the contrary is, that anything really good in theatricals, no matter in what style, at once draws. We need not go far for examples. About three years ago, the little French theatre in St James's had a good working company, besides a constant flow of still better actors, succeeding each other by twos and threes from Paris. The consequence was, that the house was nightly crowded; not only, be it observed, in its more fashionable divisions, but in those cheaper regions of gallery, pit, and boxes, more accessible to moderate purses and to the general public. In short, the theatre was popular, because the performances were good; although it is, assuredly, but a very limited portion of the English middle classes that can fully enter into and enjoy the spirit of French plays. When the management injudiciously changed the system, which, one would think, must surely have answered its purpose as well as that of the public, and gave indifferently sung comic operas instead of well-acted vaudevilles, dramas, and petites comédies, popularity and audience dwindled. It was no longer good of its kind. People will not be persuaded, for any length of time, that a star and a bundle of sticks compose a theatrical company worth listening to. We may take another instance, still nearer home. Under the management of Vestris and Mathews, and in spite of a deplorable absence of ventilation, the Lyceum Theatre has for many months past been nightly full to the roof, whilst nearly every other London manager has been wofully grumbling at the state of his benches and treasury. It is not that the performances at the Lyceum have been of a very high class; but of their kind they have been good, the company pulls well together, and there is a certain spirit and originality in the conduct of the theatre. And here, whilst avoiding comparisons with any particular theatre to which they might be unfavourable, we are yet led to remark, that an utter want of originality is one of the chief and most lamentable present characteristics of the London stage. Such a monotonous set of imitators was surely never beheld. They all follow each other in a string, like the boors after Dummling's precious goose. Unfortunately the golden feathers become dross in their grasp. If one makes a hit, forthwith the others copy; without pausing to reflect whether the novelty was not the principal charm, which will evaporate on repetition. Thus, last Christmas, at the theatre already referred to, a fairy spectacle of extraordinary beauty was brought out, and "ran," as the phrase is, an unusual number of nights, long outliving most of the very middling pantomimes and holiday entertainments elsewhere produced. Easter came, and behold! half-a-dozen other theatres, taking their cue from the lucky Lyceum, came out in the same line. Ambitious scenery, gorgeous decoration, wholesale glitter, and many-coloured fires, dazzled the eye in all directions. "If your voice were as fine as your feathers," said the crafty fox to the cheese-bearing crow, "what a bird you would be!" Were your taste equal to your tinsel, managers of the London theatres, what an improvement there would be in your receipts! Your dress-boxes and your cash-boxes would alike be replenished; and you would no longer have a pretext to indulge in undignified wailings about want of encouragement to native talent, preference given to foreigners, and the other querulous commonplaces with which the public is periodically bored.
To return, however, to the Opera. As we have already observed, about four years ago its prospects were bad. Discord, the forerunner of dissolution, had squatted itself in the Green-room. With one or two exceptions, the artists who for some years had been the chief pillars of that stage abandoned it for a rival establishment. With the few hands who stuck by the old ship, it seemed scarcely possible to make a fight. But at the most gloomy moment, when all seemed desperate, a good genius came to the rescue. One Swede proved more than an equivalent for half-a-dozen Italians, and impending ruin was replaced by triumphant success. London presented the singular spectacle—unprecedented, we believe, in any capital—of two enormous theatres simultaneously open for the representation of Italian operas. How it fares with the more modern establishment, we have no positive knowledge. Not too well, we fear, judging from the balance-sheet of a recent lessee. Should the experiment succeed, the public will doubtless be the gainers. We shall be glad to learn that all thrive and flourish; but meanwhile we are particularly pleased to find that the more ancient temple of music and dance, endeared to us by long habit, old associations, and much enjoyment, has risen, at the very moment when ill-omened prophets predicted its fall, to as high a pitch of excellence as, within our recollection, it ever attained; and has escaped conversion to an equestrian circus, a shilling concert room, a Radical debating hall, or any other of the profane and degrading purposes to which of late years it has been too much the fashion to apply the large London theatres. When the enthusiasm excited by Jenny Lind, which at one time approached infatuation, began to subside, and that amiable and charitable, but—if rumour lie not—somewhat capricious lady, fluctuating between matrimony and fame, at last took a middle course, and decided to cross the Atlantic, Her Majesty's Theatre had another stroke of good fortune. The Swede disappeared, but Germany came to the rescue. A singer whose name recalls the most glorious days of the Opera, and who, for nearly twenty years, had exchanged the artist's laurel wreath for the coronet of a countess—the plaudits of Europe for the ease and elegance of a court—was induced to return to the profession of which, during the short time she in her youth had exercised it, she had been one of the brightest ornaments.
The double interest excited by her brilliant talent as a vocalist, and by the peculiar circumstances under which she has again sought the scene of her former triumphs, has been so strong, that by this time few can be unacquainted with the leading incidents of the Countess Rossi's career. A humble origin, the precocious development of an exquisite voice and of extraordinary aptitude for music, the conquest with almost unexampled rapidity of a place beside the first singers of the day, a few short years of theatrical triumphs, an advantageous marriage, loss of fortune, return to the stage—and the tale is told. Even in this meagre outline there is no slight savour of the romantic. "The Countess Rossi," it has been truly observed by a French writer, "has scarcely performed in any lyrical drama fuller of incident and romance than her own life. For her the line of flame which in theatres separates the real from the ideal world, has not existed."[7] Doubtless the details of this accomplished lady's life would be otherwise interesting than the bare outline of its leading events with which the world is fain to content itself. Twenty-five years, divided between the aristocracy of musical talent, and the aristocracy of diplomacy and high birth, must afford rich materials for autobiography. Nor would the period of her childhood be without its strong attraction, were she able to remember, and pleased to tell, of those days of infantine renown, when Coblenz and the banks of Rhine rang with praises of the seven-year-old songstress, whose parents, although they had the good sense to refuse the solicitations of managers, anxious to produce the prodigy, would yet at times place her on their table, and bid her sing for the gratification of admiring friends. Her first appearance in public was at the age of eleven, on the Darmstadt theatre; and perhaps even now that dullest of German capitals remains in her memory as a place of brightness and beauty, associated as it is with her early and complete success. But little Henrietta was not yet to continue the career she had so auspiciously begun. Hot theatres and unlimited praise composed a dangerous atmosphere for one so young, and her next step was to the Conservatory or great musical school at Prague, to the head of which she speedily made her way. At the age of fourteen or fifteen her proficiency in the various branches of her art was so great, that her cautious parents had scarcely a pretext for withholding her longer from the stage, which she manifestly was destined to adorn. Still they hesitated, when accident cast the die. The prima donna of the Prague opera was taken ill: not of one of those fleeting maladies to which singers and dancers are proverbially liable—and which appear an hour or two after noon, to disappear in time for a late breakfast next morning—but seriously, and without hope of speedy recovery. The despairing manager appealed to the pity of the Sontags. His only hope was in Henrietta, and Henrietta was allowed to appear upon the boards of the Imperial Opera of Prague—a theatre to which immortality is secured by the first performance of the Nozze di Figaro and the Clemenza di Tito having taken place within its walls. From a recently published and authentic sketch of Madame Sontag's professional life,[8] we extract an account of her entrance.
"If nothing was wanting in courage, natural gifts of voice, and intellectual power, on the part of the child, as regards the height of her person there was a mancamento of several inches. But the stage-manager was not oblivious of the means by which the Greeks gave altitude to their scenic heroes and heroines; and the little prima donna, to whom was assigned for her début the principal female part in a translation of the favourite French opera Jean de Paris, was supplied with enormous cork heels. There was a time, at the court of Louis XV., when an inch and a half of red heel was the distinctive characteristic of a marquis, or of a lady of sufficient quality to be allowed to sit in the presence of royalty. On the occasion of the début of Henriette Sontag, four inches of vermillion-coloured cork foreshadowed the rank of the little lady, destined to become one of the most absolute mimic queens of the lyrical world, and afterwards a real and much respected countess. When the singer who enacted the pompous seneschal in the opera of Jean de Paris came forward, and said, 'It is no less a personage than the Princess of Navarre whose arrival I announce!' the applause and laughter was universal. When the little prodigy appeared on her cork pedestal, the house re-echoed with acclamations. As the business of the stage proceeded, the auditors found there was no longer any indulgence necessary on the score of age, but that there were claims on their admiration for a voice which, for purity, peculiar flute-like tone, and agility, has never been surpassed. The celebrated tenor, Gerstener, that night surpassed himself, finding he had to cope with the attraction of a new musical power. Many nights successively did she thus sing the Princess of Navarre, with increasing success, to crowded houses. Her next part was one far more difficult—that of the heroine in Paer's fine opera, Sargin. But the capital of Bohemia was not long to retain her. The Imperial court heard of her extraordinary success, and Henriette Sontag was summoned to Vienna, where she appeared, the very next season, at the German Opera."
Fraulein Sontag had not been long in the Austrian capital when the eccentric Domenico Barbaja, then lessee of La Scala, the San Carlo, and of the Italian Opera at Vienna, arrived there, incredulous of the merits of the new prima donna. His incredulity must not be ascribed to mere prejudice, for at that time Italy was generally believed to have the monopoly of melodious throats; and even now the exceptions are only just enough to prove the rule, at least as regards female singers. Of these, Germany and Scandinavia have produced but three who have acquired European reputation. The capricious but wonderfully talented Gertrude Schmeling (La Mara,) who at nine years of age drew large audiences at Vienna by her performance on the violin, who afterwards achieved first-rate excellence on the piano, and then, for nearly forty years, held undisputed sway, as unapproachable prima donna, over the entire musical world—and whose name is almost as celebrated by reason of the strange adventures and vicissitudes of her life as on account of her astonishing voice and genius—is the most ancient of these, and Madame Sontag and Jenny Lind complete the trio. When at length prevailed upon to visit the German Opera, Barbaja was astonished, and he immediately offered the young singer an engagement for the San Carlo. This was declined, her parents having a wholesome, perhaps an exaggerated, dread of the temptations and perils that would await their daughter in the luxurious land of Naples. Nay, so deeply rooted was the aversion of the honest Germans for things Italian, that it was with the greatest difficulty Barbaja could obtain their permission for Henrietta to appear at the Italian Opera at Vienna. There she had colleagues worthy of herself—Rubini, the prince of tenors, and the evergreen Lablache, with whom, after an interval of five-and-twenty years, she is now again singing. There also she heard Madame Mainvielle Fodor, by the study of whose admirable style she greatly improved herself. Leipzig and Berlin next witnessed her triumphs, and there she excited great enthusiasm by her singing in Weber's operas of Der Freischütz and Euryanthe.
"The admirers of the genius of that great composer," says M. P. Scudo, in a lively, but not strictly correct sketch of Madame Sontag's career, inserted in the Revue des Deux Mondes, "consisted of the youth of the universities, and of all the ardent and generous spirits who desired to emancipate Germany intellectually as well as politically from foreign domination.... They were grateful to Mademoiselle Sontag for consecrating a magnificent voice, and a method rarely found beyond the Rhine, to the energetic and profound music of Weber, Beethoven, Spohr, and the new race of German composers, who had broken all compact with foreign impiety, and given an impulse to the national genius. Receiving universal homage, celebrated by wits, serenaded by students, and escorted by the huzzas of the German press, Mademoiselle Sontag was called to Berlin, where she made her appearance with immense success at the Koenigstadt Theatre. It was at Berlin, as is well known, that the Freischütz was for the first time performed, in 1821. It was at Berlin, the Protestant and rationalist city, the centre of an intellectual and political movement which sought to absorb the activity of Germany at the expense of Vienna—that catholic capital, where the spirit of tradition, sensuality, the soft breezes and melodies of Italy reigned—it was at Berlin that the new school of dramatic music founded by Weber had taken the firmest hold. With enthusiasm, as the inspired interpreter of the national music, Mademoiselle Sontag was there welcomed. The disciples of Hegel took her for the text of their learned commentaries, and hailed, in her limpid and sonorous voice, the subjective confounded with the objective in an absolute unity! The old King of Prussia received her at his court with paternal goodness. There it was that diplomacy had the opportunity to approach Mademoiselle Sontag, and to make an impression on the heart of the muse."
With all deference to M. Scudo, who is rather smart than accurate, we will remark that the applause of the Berliners was elicited less by the nationality of the music than by the excellence of the singing; and that they were perfectly satisfied to listen to translations of Rossini, and to the music then in vogue in the other chief opera houses of Europe. Doubtless they were proud of their countrywoman; and their jealousy and indignation were highly excited when, after a visit to Paris, she came back to Berlin with the avowed intention of returning to the French capital. This raised a storm, and on her first appearance at the Koenigstadt, she was received, probably for the first and last time in her life, with a storm of groans and hisses. So violent was the tumult that the other actors left the stage in alarm; but the Sontag remained, strong in her right and regardless of the unmerited hurricane of censure, and of the almost menacing adjurations addressed to her by the audience to break off with the French, and remain in her own country. At last, hopeless of making an impression on the resolute young lady, the incensed Prussians calmed themselves, and from that night to the day of her departure she was as popular as ever.
At Paris was fully confirmed the favourable judgment passed upon Mademoiselle Sontag at Prague, Vienna, and Berlin. And, in one respect, her triumph there was more important and complete than any she had previously enjoyed—more important, not so much on account of the superior critical acumen and taste of her hearers, as by reason of the formidable rivals with whom she had to compete. We are far from belonging to that class of persons—a class confined, as we believe, almost exclusively to France—which holds the favourable verdict of the Parisian musical world the most difficult to obtain, and the most flattering to the artist, of any in Europe. This notion has been diligently set abroad by the Parisians themselves, who, with characteristic self-complacency, look upon their tribunal as the court of last appeal in matters of art and music. The only solid ground upon which such a presumption can plausibly be sustained, is the fact that Paris (by its gaiety and central position the European metropolis of pleasure) annually assembles,—or did assemble, before recent disastrous follies closed its saloons and deterred foreign visitors—a very large portion of the intellectual and art-loving of all countries. Upon this basis rests the sole claim of Paris to fastidiousness and infallibility of judgment. This only can give superior value to the laurel wreaths bestowed in the Salle Ventadour, or the Rue Lepelletier, over those that may be acquired in half-a-dozen other European opera houses. As regards the worth of the verdict of an exclusively French audience, we confess that, when we see the crowds that are attracted, and the enthusiasm that is excited, by the usually flimsy and second-rate music given at the Opera Comique, (for many years past unquestionably the most uniformly prosperous and popular of the Paris musical theatres,) we incline to answer in the affirmative the question put by one of the shrewdest and wittiest of Frenchmen, whether the French nation be not rather song-loving than musical?[9] But if Mademoiselle Sontag, after conquering the unbounded applause of Vienna and Berlin audiences, and the suffrage of so keen a connoisseur as Barbaja, had no need to dread the ordeal of Parisian criticism, on the other hand she well might feel trepidation at thoughts of the competitors she was about to encounter, foremost amongst whom were the great names of Pasta, Pisaroni, and Malibran. In presence of such a trio, any but a first-rate talent must have succumbed and fallen back into the rear rank. Not so did the Sontag, but at once took and kept her place on a level with those great singers. It was with Malibran, the ardent, warm-hearted, passionate Spaniard, that she was brought into most frequent comparison. But although many tales have been told of the bitterness of their rivalry, these have been suggested by probability or malice, not by fact; for, from a very early period of their acquaintance, a sincere friendship existed between them. The Countess de Merlin, in her memoir of Malibran, gives the following account of its origin:—
"The presence of Mademoiselle Sontag at the Italian Theatre was fresh stimulus for Maria's talent, and contributed to its perfection. Each time that the former obtained a brilliant triumph, Maria wept and exclaimed, 'Mon Dieu! why does she sing so well?' Then from those tears sprang a beauty and sublimity of harmony, of which the public had the benefit. It was the ardent desire of amateurs to hear these two charming artists sing together in the same opera; but they mutually feared each other, and for some time the much-coveted gratification was deferred. One night they met at a concert at my house; a sort of plot had been laid, and towards the middle of the concert they were asked to sing the duet in Tancredi. For a few moments they showed fear, hesitation; but at last they yielded, and approached the piano, amidst the acclamations of all present. They both seemed agitated and disturbed, and observant of each other; but presently the conclusion of the symphony fixed their attention, and the duet begun. The enthusiasm their singing excited was so vivid and so equally divided, that at the end of the duet, and in the midst of the applause, they gazed at each other, bewildered, delighted, astonished; and by a spontaneous movement, an involuntary attraction, their hands and lips met, and a kiss of peace was given and received with all the vivacity and sincerity of youth. The scene was charming, and has assuredly not been forgotten by those who witnessed it."[10]
The good understanding thus brought about was permanent, and many proofs of it are on record. From that time forward Sontag and Malibran frequently sang together, both in Paris and London, and displayed an amiability very rare amongst operatic celebrities, in respect to distribution of parts, and to other points which often prove a prolific source of strife behind the scenes. In the little English memoir already referred to, we find some anecdotes illustrative of the kindly feeling between the blue-eyed soprano and the dark-browed contralto. Towards the close of the London opera season of 1829, Malibran one day met Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, with discontent stamped upon his features. She asked the cause of his vexation. The time was at hand for his benefit, he said, and he had been unable to fix on an attractive opera.
"'Have you thought of nothing?' inquired Malibran.
"'Yes; I had thought of the Matrimonio Segreto; but Pisaroni says she is quite ugly enough without playing Fidalma: and then you would not be included in the cast; and I don't know what opera to choose in which you would not have the second part to Mademoiselle Sontag's first—that would not please you, and I am in despair.'
"'Well,' said Malibran, 'to please you, and to show you I would play any part with Sontag, I will play Fidalma.'
"'What, old Fidalma? You are joking!'
"'To prove that I am in earnest, announce it this very day.'"
The opera was announced; Malibran was as good as her word, and played the old aunt admirably: not as Fidalma has since been sometimes misrepresented by singers who sacrificed scenic truth to their own coquetry, but with the due allowance of wrinkles and the antiquated costume appropriate to the part.
Some time previously to the date of this last-recorded incident, Mademoiselle Sontag had twice changed her name. The old King of Prussia, informed of her projected marriage with a Sardinian nobleman and diplomatist, to whose sovereign it was possible that her humble birth might be objectionable, ennobled her under the name and title of Mademoiselle de Launstein, which she soon afterwards abandoned for that of Countess de Rossi. Her first visit to England was subsequent to her marriage, then kept private, although pretty generally known. She first sang in this country at a concert at Devonshire House, her passage to which was through a throng of gazers, drawn together by her reputation for grace, beauty, and musical genius. A few days afterwards, on Tuesday the 15th April 1828, occurred her appearance at the London Opera, in the character of Rosina, in the Barbiere di Seviglia. For two seasons she sang in London; then in Berlin and St Petersburg; and then, the King of Sardinia having authorised her husband to declare his marriage, she left the stage—for ever, as she doubtless thought. But in days when kings are discarded, constitutions annulled, and empires turned upside down at a few hours' notice, who shall presume to foretell his fate? For eighteen years Madame de Rossi adorned the various courts to which her husband was successively accredited as ambassador. The Hague, Frankfort, St Petersburg, Berlin, each in turn welcomed and cherished her. Then came the storm: her fortune was swallowed up; her husband's diplomatic prospects were injured; she thought of her children, and sacrificed herself—if sacrifice it is to be called, by which, whilst fulfilling what she feels to be her duty to her family, she may reckon on speedily retrieving the pecuniary losses consequent on German and Sardinian revolutions.
"The position of an actress," says a clever French theatrical critic, in a pamphlet already quoted, "is a very singular one, even in these days, when prejudice is supposed to have disappeared. She is a mark for applause and adulation, for gold and flowers; she is intoxicated with incense and persecuted by lovers; the gravest personages enact follies for her sake; men unharness her horses, and carry her in triumph; the crowns refused to great poets are thrown to her in profusion; the homage that would be servile, done to a queen, seems quite natural when offered to a prima donna. Only, she must not cross the row of lamps which flame at her feet like a magic circle. From the ivory or golden throne of her lyric empire she may demand what she pleases; but let her attempt to overstep the limit, to take her place in the drawing-room by the side of one of those ladies who applaud her to the bursting of their white gloves, and who pluck the bouquets from their bosoms to throw to her, and what a change is there! How haughty now the mien of those who so lately admired! What chilling reserve; what insulting politeness; what a deep and sudden line of demarcation! A polar breeze has succeeded to the warm breath of enthusiasm; frost has replaced flowers; the idol is no longer even a woman, but a creature.
"Some of those singers who are adored amongst the most celebrated and beautiful, imagine that they go into society, because, on certain nights, when camelias deck the staircases and lustres sparkle to the wax-lights, when a crowd throngs the saloons and obstructs the entrance, they are allowed to present themselves, between eleven and twelve o'clock, at everybody's hour, at the hour of uncared-for acquaintances and friends one does not know. But, on their appearance, how quickly is the music-book opened, how speedily are they manœuvred towards the piano or singing desk, how pitilessly is every possible note extracted from these fine singers! If by chance, instead of roulades, they venture upon conversation, and aspire to enjoy the pleasures of elegant and polite society, how quickly comes the cloud on the brow of the fair hostess! How evident is it that, in admitting the singer, she excludes the woman! Let the best received presume to have a cold, and she will soon see!
"A prima donna may obtain everything in the world except one thing. For a smile, for a glance, for a single pearl from her string of notes, for a single rose-leaf from her bouquet, she shall have guineas, rubles, bundles of bank-notes, marble palaces, equipages that kings might envy; the heirs of ancient houses shall give her the castles of their ancestors, and efface their fathers' scutcheon to substitute her cipher. But what she shall not have, and what she never will have is a quarter of an hour's conversation at the chimney corner, in a tone neither too polite nor too familiar, on a footing of equality with a great lady and an honest woman.
"The Countess de Rossi has attained this marvellous result; and certainly, to those who know the invincible obstacles she had to overcome, her talent as a singer will appear but a secondary quality. None can tell all the judgment, tact, reserve, sagacity, delicacy, intuition, the various qualities, in short, that have been required to accomplish this most difficult metamorphosis of the actress into the woman of good society.... To behold the prima donna an ambassadress is strange and striking; but still more so is it to see the ambassadress, after twenty years passed in the highest spheres of life, on an equality with all that is most brilliant and illustrious in nobility and diplomacy, again become a prima donna, taking up her success where she had left it, continuing in womanhood what she had begun in early youth, resuming her part in that duet where Malibran, alas! is now missing, and reconquering applause greater perhaps than that of former days. Time has flown for all of us, except for her. Europe has been revolutionised, a throne has crumbled, a republic has replaced the monarchy; but that one thing, so frail, so fleeting, so aërial, that a nothing can annihilate it—that crystal bell which the slightest shock may crack or shiver, the voice of a songstress—has preserved itself unimpaired; in that pure organ still vibrate the silver notes of youth."
M. Gautier is well known to be a man of wit and talent; in the passages from his pen, whose spirit and letter we have here done our best to render, he gives proof of keen observation and good feeling. But whilst implying his sympathy with the musical artist, who, like Tantalus, beholds but may not partake, and whose admittance to the saloons of good society is as a show, not as a guest, he forgets even to glance at the causes of such exclusion, necessary as a rule, but doubtless admitting of exceptions. He omits reference to the laxity of usages and morals which, although perhaps less so than formerly, is still the frequent characteristic of theatrical and musical professors, and which causes them to be, as he shows, kept at arm's length in good French society. In this country—in such matters the least facile and tolerant of any—there is still greater scruple of admitting singers and actresses, however eminent their talent, to the intercourse even of those classes into which, but for their profession, they would have a right to admission. Exceptions have occasionally, and with much propriety, been made, and royalty itself has been known to set the example. But only under the peculiar circumstances of Madame de Rossi's eventful career—only in presence of a reputation which the breath of scandal has never dared assail, and of social qualities and graces which render her an acquisition to any circle—can it occur to a singer to pass from the boards of the Opera to the most exclusive of London's saloons, to be welcomed as an equal by those who, a few minutes previously, applauded her as an actress.
With respect to Madame Sontag's voice and talent, it is unnecessary to be diffuse. Few comprehend, and still fewer care for, the jargon of contrapuntal criticism, whether applied to a singer or an opera; and for those few, abundant food is continually supplied by dilettanti more profound and scientific than ourselves. Purity, sweetness, flexibility, are the most prominent characteristics of Madame Sontag's voice; her execution is extraordinarily brilliant, correct and elegant, and supremely easy. No appearance of effort ever distresses her audience; the most difficult passages are achieved without the swelling of a vein, the strain of a muscle, or the slightest contortion of her agreeable countenance. Although excelling in those tours-de-force which captivate the multitude, and skilled to decorate the composer's theme with an embroidery of sweet sounds as intricate as graceful, she also well knows how to captivate the true connoisseur by her exquisite taste and sobriety in rendering simple melodies, and such music as would be the worse for adornment. We commenced this paper with a determination to avoid comparisons, and we shall therefore make none: but assuredly Madame Sontag need fear none. In her own style she is quite unrivalled. That style we consider to be more particularly the genteel comedy of opera—a combination of sentiment with gaiety and grace. In her younger days she was considered less successful in more impassioned parts, but this is no longer the case. None who have witnessed her admirable personation of Amina, Linda, and Elvira, will tax her with want of soul and of dramatic energy; and we scarcely know whether to prefer her in those parts, or in the gayer ones of Rosina, Susanna, and Norina—which last character, peculiarly adapted to her arch and ladylike style of acting, she has made her own as completely as Lablache has identified himself with that of her elderly and disappointed wooer. To say the truth, when we first heard of Madame Sontag's expected return to the stage, it was with no pleasurable feeling. The reappearance of a singer after twenty years' absence can in few instances be other than a melancholy sight. It is mournful to listen to the efforts of a deteriorated voice that one has known in its melodious freshness. But an agreeable disappointment awaited all who ventured such unpleasant anticipations with respect to Madame Sontag. Her early campaign had been so short that she was yet in her vigorous prime when she returned, a veteran in fame but not in age or voice. Amidst various statements of her age, the most favourable give her forty-one years, whilst the least so add but two or three to that number. The subject is a delicate one, and we are too happy to give her the benefit of the doubt, which she is the more entitled to that neither on nor off the stage does she look even the least of the ages assigned to her. This would make her but three years older than Madame Grisi, who first saw the light, if theatrical records tell truth, in 1812, and in whose voice none, that we are aware of, have as yet pretended to discover a falling off. Whether twenty years of almost constant exercise, or the same period of comparative repose, be most favourable to the preservation of the singing faculties, we shall not decide. Madame Sontag, however, has never risked by disuse the rusting of her fine organ. At the different courts at which she resided, she invariably showed the utmost complaisance, and willingly contributed, for the pleasure of her friends—and, on occasion, for the purposes of charity—those treasures of song for which managers, before and since, have been glad to pay a prince's ransom. This season her voice is even fresher and more flexible than in 1849; and there can be no reason why the opera-loving public should not, for many years to come, applaud her as their chief favourite—unless, indeed, the very high rate of remuneration her talent commands should, by speedily realising her object in returning to the stage, induce her soon to quit it. We believe it is no secret that her present engagement secures her about fourteen thousand pounds for twelve months' performances—about thrice the salary of a secretary of state. The sum is a very satisfactory one; and, whatever the fortune Madame Sontag has lost, she has evidently at her disposal the means of rapidly amassing another of no mean amount. Who will give the odds that we do not again see her an ambassadress?
A host in herself, Madame Sontag is powerfully seconded. The management of the Opera House, aware of the danger of trusting for success to any one singer, however eminent, to the neglect of that general excellence essential to an effective operatic company, has shown great activity, and has been exceedingly fortunate, in filling those vacancies left by the defections already alluded to. Of first appearances, the most remarkable this season has been that of a young tenor, who has at once taken a very high place amongst that rare class of singers. Since Mario made his debut, a dozen years ago, on the boards of the Académie Royale, Beaucarde is the only pure tenor who has come forward that can fairly be considered a first-rate. Mario, although his debut was decidedly successful, was little appreciated for some time after his first appearance, and, when desirous to transfer himself to the Italian stage, the manager of the French Opera readily cancelled his engagement on a nominal forfeit. The world knows the excellence, both as actor and singer, to which he has since attained. Beaucarde has come before the London public with more experience of the stage than Mario possessed when he first presented himself to the Parisians, and he has become immediately highly and most deservedly popular. Could any doubt of his excellence have existed in the minds of those who had heard him in other parts, his singing and acting of Arturo in the Puritani must at once have dissipated them. Tenderness and elegance marked his delivery of the whole of that graceful music, which displayed his beautiful quality of voice to the utmost advantage. Beaucarde is a very young man, and a very young singer. His father, a French engineer officer, who had settled at Florence after Napoleon's fall, intended him for a painter; but his own bias was for music, the study of which he secretly and enthusiastically pursued. It is not yet two years since his father's death left him at liberty to follow his own inclinations. With great difficulty he obtained an engagement at a second-rate theatre in his native city. There he was so little appreciated that, after being several months before the public, he was refused the very humble salary of two hundred pounds a-year. He was not discouraged. Perhaps he thought of Rubini—how that tenor of tenors, in his early days, could obtain no better place wherein to warble than a squalid booth at a country festival. Many who knew him in his after period of unrivalled prosperity and renown, will remember, in that room full of trophies, amidst plate and jewels bestowed upon him by kings and emperors, where the eye was dazzled with the glitter of gold and diamonds, a certain picture frame which he was wont to turn round and exhibit to his admiring visitors, who beheld with astonishment on its reverse the announcement of his performance at a fair, admission a single soldo—in English currency, a halfpenny. With such an instance before his eyes, Beaucarde might well persevere. At Florence, Romani, the celebrated musical professor, heard him sing, and insisted upon giving him lessons—by which, however, he did not long profit, having accepted an engagement at a Neapolitan minor opera. At Naples he speedily ascended in the scale, and finally made his debut with complete success at the San Carlo. Mercadante, struck by the beauty of his voice, immediately offered his services as his instructor; but, like Romani, he did not long retain his pupil. Perhaps it was as well he did not; for, whatever Beaucarde might have gained in modish art under his tuition, would have been at the expense of that chaste simplicity which now characterises his style, constituting, in our opinion, one of its greatest merits. How far the taste of his present public will suffer that extreme refinement of style to be compatible with his permanent and complete popularity, may be matter of doubt. The London opera is indebted for his acquisition to the veteran Lablache, who, whilst indulging in a vacation ramble through his old haunts, heard him at the San Carlo, and brought news of his excellence from the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of the Thames.
Calzolari, a remarkably sweet singer and graceful actor, and Sims Reeves, complete such a trio of tenors as has not often been united at one opera house. Mr Reeves' reception on the stage of the Italian theatre has certainly not been the less favourable on account of his being of home growth; and the same remark applies to Miss Catherine Hayes, a delightful singer, who will do well to pay attention to her acting. We make this remark in no unfriendly spirit: we are amongst the warm admirers of Miss Hayes' voice and talent, but we have seen her in parts whose dramatic requirements she seemed somewhat to overlook. It may express our meaning to say that she at times reminds us of the concert room. Upon the stage this should never be. We may instance her performance of Cherubino. Her singing in that charming part was excellent; her delivery of the thrilling and impassioned air, Voi che sapete, left nothing to wish for, and elicited as fervent an encore from a very crowded house as the most ambitious could desire. But as to illusion, we are bound to confess there was little enough—what with the ladylike calmness of her acting, and the epicene costume in which she thought proper to appear. We beheld before us a graceful young woman and an excellent singer—but of the wilful and enamoured page we had but glimpses. A little more spirit, and a little less satin, would have been a decided improvement. Of course we are all cognisant of the "wild sweet-briery fence" which, Mr Moore asserts, environs the beauties of Erin. But is it quite necessary that Miss Hayes should interpret the metaphor into feminine attire when she plays a male part?
We are unable, nor is it necessary, individually to criticise all the members of the Italian company now performing at her Majesty's Theatre, and which, in all respects, is excellent and most effective. There is one other singer, however, who must have a word of mention, were it only that he was the indirect means of making the English public acquainted with Jenny Lind. Belletti was formerly engaged at the opera at Stockholm, and was a great favourite with the late king, Bernadotte. Jenny Lind heard him, and his admirable method and acting at once revealed to her the treasures of the Italian school. She saw that she had much to acquire, and departed for Paris to study. But Belletti has a claim to other than second-hand gratitude. His singing and acting are alike first-rate. Nothing can be better than his Figaro; in less important characters he is equally careful and efficient. His forte is in buffo parts, where his rich mellow voice and contagious merriment are greatly relished. He will probably become—we will not say popular, for that he already is in the highest degree, but an indispensable member of the London company. We regret to learn that he is shortly to accompany Miss Lind to America, and trust his absence will not be of long duration.
Can we close this enumeration without a word of our old acquaintance, Luigi Lablache? Surely a small corner may be found for the great man, who flourishes in unabated vigour, in spite of accumulating years and, as we fancy, annually increasing bulk. There is a geniality and a joviality about this long-standing pillar of the opera, which never fails of its effect upon his public. Probably no foreign actor ever enlisted so uniformly and heartily the goodwill of an English audience; and his popularity, although of course augmented by his vocal merits, is by no means dependent on them. We lately somewhere encountered a hypercritical comment upon his acting, in which he was accused of condescending to buffoonery. Never was charge more unfounded and absurd. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Lablache is the extreme skill with which he draws the line between humour and vulgarity; the perfect good taste distinguishing his drolleries and occasional deviations from the letter of his part. The practice of now and then introducing a French or English word or sentence in an Italian opera, for the purpose of producing a comic effect, is one that certainly should only be indulged with great discretion; but in this, and in all other respects, we may be sure that any dereliction from correct taste would promptly be detected and reproved by so sensitive an audience as that of her Majesty's Theatre. But from his first appearance in London, in 1829, to the present day, an instance, we believe, was never known of a sally of Lablache not obtaining at least a smile—far oftener a hearty laugh. In him the rich Italian humour of the buffo Napolitano, the droll of the San Carlino, still exists, happily tempered and modified by the gentlemanly tact of the experienced comedian. Long may the colossus of bassos preserve his voice and his good humour! His loss would be sorely felt, and his place be hard to fill. Who, after him, shall dare undertake Dulcamara and Pasquale? One thing certain is, that, whenever fulness of years or pocket may detach him from the stage he has so long adorned, to bask away his old age, with dignity and ease, in some sunny Italian town, the public of London and Paris, accustomed to his annual presence amongst them, will regret, in Lablache, not less the accomplished actor than the amiable and kind-hearted man.
We have not room for any particular review of the operas that have been this year performed; and, for the same reason, we can give but a few words to the chief novelty announced. We refer to the forthcoming opera of the Tempest, whose composition devolved, after the death of Mendelssohn, upon Halévy, the youngest, and one of the most distinguished, of living French composers. Scribe has supplied the poem. Upon his merits as a librettist it were superfluous to expatiate; it were perhaps more necessary, did it come within the scope of this paper, to correct the popular error that, compared with the music, the libretto of an opera is of little or no consequence. That kind of poetry has certainly been much degraded by the incapacity of many who have presumptuously undertaken it. Good writers of librettos are even more rare than good composers. Since Metastasio's day, those who alone can fairly claim a place in the first rank are Romani, Da Ponte, (the librettist of Don Giovanni,) and Scribe, that able and indefatigable purveyor of the stage, to whom English managers and playwrights owe so heavy a debt of gratitude—a debt which they are not always very prompt to acknowledge. Mendelssohn, when he agreed to compose an opera on the Tempest, stipulated that the libretto should be confided to Scribe, who willingly undertook it, and afterwards declared that he knew few subjects so well adapted for music. This opinion, proceeding from a man who, amongst the various classes of theatrical composition in which he has succeeded, is considered to have been especially successful in that of libretti—so much so, indeed, that it has been asserted he owed more than one vote, at his election as member of the French Academy, to their excellence alone—is of no slight weight. Nor were it reasonable to doubt that the composer of the Juive and of Guido et Ginevra, who seems to have caught, especially in the last-named opera, no feeble spark of the inspiration of his brother Israelite, the great Meyerbeer, will have succeeded in clothing the verse of Scribe in music correspondingly worthy.
We must conclude without even touching upon the ballet. It needs no praise from us: the names alone of Carlotta Grisi, Marie Taglioni, and Amalia Ferraris, are sufficient guarantee of its excellence. Perhaps upon some future day we may be able to discuss its merits.