Lord Eldon was fond of relating amusing anecdotes of the famous state trials of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall, which occurred while he was attorney general. "Every evening," he said, "upon my leaving the court, a signal was given that I was coming out, for a general hissing and hooting of the attorney general. This went through the street in which the court sat, from one end of it to the other, and was continued all the way down to Ludgate Hill and by Fleet Market. One evening, at the rising of the court, I was preparing to retire, when Mr. Garrow said, 'Do not, Mr. Attorney, pass that tall man at the end of the table.' 'And why not?' said Mr. Law, who stood next. 'He has been here,' answered Mr. Garrow, 'during the whole trial, with his eyes constantly fixed on the attorney general.' 'I will pass him,' said Mr. Law. 'And so will I,' was my rejoinder. As we passed, the man drew back. When I entered my carriage, the mob rushed forward, crying, 'That's he, drag him out!' Mr. Erskine, from whose carriage the mob had taken off the horses to draw him home in triumph, stopped the people, saying, 'I will not go without the attorney general!' I instantly addressed them: 'So you imagine, that if you kill me, you will be without an attorney general! Before ten o'clock to-morrow there will be a new attorney general, by no means so favorably disposed to you as I am.' I heard a friend in the crowd exclaim, 'Let him alone! let him alone!' They separated, and I proceeded. When I reached my home in Gower Street, I saw, close to my door, the tall man who stood near me in court. I had no alternative; I instantly went up to him: 'What do you want?' I said. 'Do not be alarmed,' he answered; 'I have attended in court during the whole of the trial—I know my own strength, and am resolved to stand by you. You once did an act of great kindness to my father. Thank God, you are safe at home. May He bless and protect you!' He instantly disappeared."
Rulhière told De Tocqueville a very different story, characteristic of a Russian. He was a man of high rank, who had been sent to the French head-quarters on a mission, and lived for some time on intimate terms with the staff, particularly with Rulhière. At the battle of Eylau Rulhière was taken prisoner. He caught the eye of his Russian friend, who came to offer his services. "You can do me," said Rulhière, "an important service. One of your Cossacks yonder has just seized my horse and cloak. I am dying of fatigue and cold. If you can get them for me, you may save my life." The Russian went to the Cossack, talked to him rather sharply, probably on the wickedness of robbing a prisoner; got possession of the horse and cloak; put on the one, and mounted the other, and Rulhière never saw him again.
Incledon, the singer, related to Crabb Robinson, in a stage-coach, anecdotes of Garrick and Foote, which show how completely they both lost themselves in their acting. Garrick had a brother living in the country, who was an idolatrous admirer of his genius. A rich neighbor, a grocer, being about to visit London, this brother insisted on his taking a letter of introduction to the actor. Not being able to make up his mind to visit the great man the first day, the grocer went to the play in the evening, and saw Garrick in Abel Drugger. On his return to the country, the brother eagerly inquired respecting the visit he had been so anxious to bring about. "Why, Mr. Garrick," said the good man, "I am sorry to hurt your feelings, but there's your letter. I did not choose to deliver it." "Not deliver it!" exclaimed the other, in astonishment. "I happened to see him when he did not know me, and I saw that he was such a dirty, low-lived fellow, that I did not like to have anything to do with him." Foote went to Ireland, and took off a celebrated Dublin printer. The printer stood the jest for some time, but found at last that Foote's imitations became so popular, and drew such attention to himself, that he could not walk the streets without being pointed at. He bethought himself of a remedy. Collecting a number of boys, he gave them a hearty meal and a shilling each for a place in the gallery, and promised them another meal on the morrow if they would hiss off the scoundrel who turned him into ridicule. The injured man learned from his friends that Foote was received that night better than ever. Nevertheless, in the morning, the ragged troop of boys appeared to demand their recompense, and when the printer reproached them for their treachery, their spokesman said: "Plase yer honor, we did all we could, for the actor-man had heard of us, and did not come at all at all. And so we had nobody to hiss. But when we saw yer honor's own dear self come on, we did clap, indeed we did, and showed you all the respect and honor in our power. And so yer honor won't forget us because yer honor's enemy was afraid to come, and left yer honor to yer own dear self."
Immortal sermons are disguised in legends; the most familiar objects are perpetually preaching to us. Ages ago, the Germans have it, there went, one Sunday morning, an old man into the forest to cut wood. When he had made a bundle, he slung it on his staff, cast it over his shoulder, and started for home. On his way he met a minister, all in his bands and robes, who asked him, "Don't you know, my friend, that it is Sunday on earth, when all must rest from their labors?" "Sunday on earth, Monday in heaven, it is all one to me," laughed the woodman. "Then bear your burden forever," said the priest; "and as you value not Sunday on earth, you shall have Monday in heaven till the great day." Thereupon the speaker vanished, and the man was caught up, with cane and fagots, into the moon, where you can see him any clear night. The Norwegians think they see both a man and woman; and the legend is, that the former threw branches at people going to church, and the latter made butter on Sunday. In the clear, cold nights of winter they will point out the man carrying his bundle of thorns, and the woman her butter-tub. In Norway, the red-crested, black woodpecker is known under the name of Gertrud's bird. Its origin, according to Thorpe, is as follows: When our Lord, accompanied by St. Peter, was wandering on earth, they came to a woman who was occupied in baking: her name was Gertrud, and on her head she wore a red hood. Weary and hungry from their long journeying, our Lord begged for a cake. She took a little dough and set it on to bake, and it grew so large that it filled the whole pan. Thinking it too much for alms, she took a smaller quantity of dough, and again began to bake, but this cake also swelled up to the same size as the first; she then took still less dough, and when the cake had become as large as the preceding ones, Gertrud said: "You must go without alms; for all my bakings are too large for you." Then was our Lord wroth, and said, "Because thou gavest me nothing, thou shalt for punishment become a little bird, shalt seek thy dry food between the wood and the bark, and drink only when it rains." Hardly were these words spoken when the woman was transformed to the Gertrud bird, and flew away through the kitchen chimney; and at this day she is seen with a red hood and black body, because she was blackened by the soot of the chimney. She constantly pecks the bark of trees for sustenance, and whistles against rain; for she always thirsts and hopes to drink. According to the legend, the Wandering Jew is a poor shoemaker of Jerusalem. When Christ, bearing his cross, passed before his house, and asked his leave to repose for a moment on the stone bench at his door, the Jew replied harshly, "Go on—go on!" and refused him. "It is thou who shalt go on till the end of time!" was Christ's reply, in a sad but severe tone.
Lord Cockburn, in his Memorials, relates an anecdote of Dr. Henry, the historian, as told to him by Sir Harry Moncreiff, who was the doctor's favorite younger friend. The doctor was living at a place of his own in his native county of Stirling. He was about seventy-two, and had been for some time very feeble. He wrote to Sir Harry that he was dying, and thus invited him for the last time—"Come out here directly. I have got something to do this week, I have got to die." Sir Harry went; and found his friend plainly sinking, but resigned and cheerful. He had no children, and there was nobody with him except his wife. She and Sir Harry remained alone with him for about three days, being his last three; during a great part of which the reverend historian sat in his easy chair, and conversed, and listened to reading, and dozed. While engaged in this way, the hoofs of a horse were heard clattering in the court below. Mrs. Henry looked out and exclaimed that it was "that wearisome body," naming a neighboring minister, who was famous for never leaving a house after he had once got into it. "Keep him out," cried the doctor, "don't let the crater in here." But before they could secure his exclusion, the crater's steps were heard on the stair, and he was at the door. The doctor instantly winked significantly, and signed to them to sit down and be quiet, and he would pretend to be sleeping. The hint was taken; and when the intruder entered he found the patient asleep in his cushioned chair. Sir Harry and Mrs. Henry put their fingers to their lips, and pointing to the supposed slumberer as one not to be disturbed, shook their heads. The man sat down near the door, like one inclined to wait till the nap was over. Once or twice he tried to speak; but was instantly repressed by another finger on the lip, and another shake of the head. So he sat on, all in perfect silence for about a quarter of an hour; during which Sir Harry occasionally detected the dying man peeping cautiously through the fringes of his eyelids, to see how his visitor was coming on. At last Sir Harry tired, and he and Mrs. Henry, pointing to the poor doctor, fairly waved the visitor out of the room; on which the doctor opened his eyes wide, and had a tolerably hearty laugh; which was renewed when the sound of the horse's feet made them certain that their friend was actually off the premises. Dr. Henry died that night.
Douglas Jerrold speaks of a London tradesman of great practical benevolence. It was the happiness of his temperament to recommend to the palates of babes and sucklings the homeliest, nay, the most disagreeable shapes, by the lusciousness of their material. The man made semblances of all things in sugar.
Did you ever read that remarkable paper of Lamb's, the Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of Birmingham? It is a nice, microscopic, philosophic study and analysis of meanness,—as common, we dare say, in this world, as avarice,—and will make us wonder that ordinary gifts and traits can be so perverted and belittled by debasing uses. All that is good of humanity was once united with Divinity, and made the best character that ever existed on earth. Humiliating it would be, if not impious, to imagine how much worse might be the devil if he would adopt the bestial qualities and worse than Satanic traits that men are constantly exposing and cultivating in their relations with one another. "I was always," says Juke, "my father's favorite. He took a delight, to the very last, in recounting the little sagacious tricks and innocent artifices of my childhood. One manifestation thereof I never heard him repeat without tears of joy trickling down his cheeks. It seems that when I quitted the parental roof (August 27, 1788), being then six years and not quite a month old, to proceed to the Free School at Warwick, where my father was a sort of trustee, my mother—as mothers are usually provident on these occasions—had stuffed the pocket of the coach, which was to convey me and six more children of my own growth that were going to be entered along with me at the same seminary, with a prodigious quantity of gingerbread, which I remember my father said was more than was needed; and so indeed it was; for, if I had been to eat it all myself, it would have got stale and mouldy before it had been half spent. The consideration whereof set me upon my contrivances how I might secure to myself as much of the gingerbread as would keep good for the next two or three days, and yet none of the rest in manner be wasted. I had a little pair of pocket compasses, which I usually carried about me for the purpose of making draughts and measurements, at which I was always very ingenious, of the various engines and mechanical inventions in which such a town as Birmingham abounded. By the means of these, and a small penknife which my father had given me, I cut out the one half of the cake, calculating that the remainder would reasonably serve my turn; and subdividing it into many little slices, which were curious to see for the neatness and niceness of their proportion, I sold it out in so many pennyworths to my young companions as served us all the way to Warwick, which is a distance of some twenty miles from this town; and very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves with it, feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem, I put double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my purse, and secured as much as I thought would keep good and moist for my next two or three days' eating. When I told this to my parents on their first visit to me at Warwick, my father (good man) patted me on the cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he could never make enough of me; but my mother unaccountably burst into tears, and said 'it was a very niggardly action,' or some such expression, and that 'she would rather it would please God to take me'—meaning, God help me, that I should die—'than that she should live to see me grow up a mean man;' which shows the difference of parent from parent, and how some mothers are more harsh and intolerant to their children than some fathers; when we might expect the contrary. My father, however, loaded me with presents from that time, which made me the envy of my school-fellows. As I felt this growing disposition in them, I naturally sought to avert it by all the means in my power; and from that time I used to eat my little packages of fruit, and other nice things, in a corner, so privately that I was never found out. Once, I remember, I had a huge apple sent me, of that sort which they call cats'-heads. I concealed this all day under my pillow; and at night, but not before I had ascertained that my bed-fellow was sound asleep,—which I did by pinching him rather smartly two or three times, which he seemed to perceive no more than a dead person, though once or twice he made a motion as he would turn, which frightened me,—I say, when I had made all sure, I fell to work upon my apple; and, though it was as big as an ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get through before it was time to get up. And a more delicious feast I never made; thinking all night what a good parent I had (I mean my father), to send me so many nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had no parent or friend in the world to send him anything nice; and, thinking of his desolate condition, I munched and munched as silently as I could, that I might not set him a longing if he overheard me. And yet, for all this considerateness and attention to other people's feelings, I was never much a favorite with my school-fellows; which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never defrauded any one of them of the value of a half-penny, or told stories of them to their master, as some little lying boys would do, but was ready to do any of them all the services in my power that were consistent with my own well-doing. I think nobody can be expected to go further than that." Juke, in the course of time, was engaged to be married to a maiden named Cleora. Hear him relate the circumstance that broke off the engagement: "I was never," he says, "much given to theatrical entertainments; that is, at no turn of my life was I ever what they call a regular play-goer; but on some occasion of a benefit-night, which was expected to be very productive, and indeed turned out so, Cleora expressing a desire to be present, I could do no less than offer, as I did very willingly, to squire her and her mother to the pit. At that time, it was not customary in our town for trades-folk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit, as they now do, in the boxes. At the time appointed, I waited upon the ladies, who had brought with them a young man, a distant relation, whom it seems they had invited to be of the party. This a little disconcerted me, as I had about me barely silver enough to pay for our three selves at the door, and did not at first know that their relation had proposed paying for himself. However, to do the young man justice, he not only paid for himself but for the old lady besides; leaving me only to pay for two, as it were. In our passage to the theatre, the notice of Cleora was attracted to some orange wenches that stood about the doors vending their commodities. She was leaning on my arm; and I could feel her every now and then giving me a nudge, as it is called, which I afterward discovered were hints that I should buy some oranges. It seems it is a custom at Birmingham, and perhaps in other places, when a gentleman treats ladies to the play,—especially when a full night is expected, and that the house will be inconveniently warm,—to provide them with this kind of fruit, oranges being esteemed for their cooling property. But how could I guess at that, never having treated ladies to a play before, and being, as I said, quite a novice in these kind of entertainments? At last, she spoke plain out, and begged that I would buy some of 'those oranges,' pointing to a particular barrow. But, when I came to examine the fruit, I did not think the quality of it was answerable to the price. In this way, I handled several baskets of them; but something in them all displeased me. Some had thin rinds, and some were plainly over-ripe, which is as great a fault as not being ripe enough; and I could not (what they call) make a bargain. While I stood haggling with the women secretly determining to put off my purchase till I should get within the theatre, where I expected we should have better choice, the young man, the cousin (who, it seems, had left us without my missing him), came running to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges, inside and out, as they say. It seems, not liking the look of the barrow-fruit any more than myself, he had slipped away to an eminent fruiterer's, about three doors distant, which I never had the sense to think of, and had laid out a matter of two shillings in some of the best St. Michael's, I think, I ever tasted. What a little hinge, as I said before, the most important affairs in life may turn upon! The mere inadvertence to the fact that there was an eminent fruiterer's within three doors of us, though we had just passed it without the thought once occurring to me, which he had taken advantage of, lost me the affection of my Cleora. From that time she visibly cooled toward me, and her partiality was as visibly transferred to this cousin. I was long unable to account for this change in her behavior; when one day, accidentally discoursing of oranges to my mother, alone, she let drop a sort of reproach to me, as if I had offended Cleora by my nearness, as she called it, that evening. Even now, when Cleora has been wedded some years to that same officious relation, as I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded that such a trifle could have been the motive to her inconstancy; for could she suppose that I would sacrifice my dearest hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I was going to treat her to the play, and her mother too (an expense of more than four times that amount), if the young man had not interfered to pay for the latter, as I mentioned? But the caprices of the sex are past finding out; and I begin to think my mother was in the right; for doubtless women know women better than we can pretend to know them."
Juke would have made a good tradesman under the rules laid down by De Foe: "A tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no passions, no resentment; he must never be angry, no, not so much as seem to be so, if a customer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods, and scarce bids money for anything; nay, though they really come to his shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold, and though he knows they cannot be better pleased than they are at some other shop where they intend to buy, 't is all one; the tradesman must take it; he must place it to the account of his calling, that 't is his business to be ill-used and resent nothing. I could give you many examples, how and in what manner a shopkeeper is to behave himself in the way of business; what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous things he must bear in his trade; and must not show the least return, or the least signal of disgust; he must have no passions, no fire in his temper; he must be all soft and smooth; nay, if his real temper be naturally fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his shop; he must be a perfect, complete hypocrite, if he would be a complete tradesman. It is true, natural tempers are not to be always counterfeited: the man cannot easily be a lamb in his shop and a lion in himself; but, let it be easy or hard, it must be done, and is done. There are men who have by custom and usage brought themselves to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than they when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furious and raging in every other part of life; nay, the provocations they have met with in their shops have so irritated their rage, that they would go up-stairs from their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness, and beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence of it had gotten vent; and the passions abate and cool. I heard once of a shopkeeper that behaved himself thus to such an extreme that, when he was provoked by the impertinence of the customers beyond what his temper could bear, he would go up-stairs and beat his wife, kick his children about like dogs, and be as furious for two or three minutes as a man chained down in Bedlam; and again, when that heat was over, would sit down and cry faster than the children he had abused; and, after the fit, he would go down into the shop again, and be as humble, as courteous, and as calm, as any man whatever; so absolute a government of his passions had he in the shop, and so little out of it: in the shop, a soulless animal that would resent nothing; and in the family, a madman: in the shop, meek like a lamb; but in the family, outrageous, like a Libyan lion. The sum of the matter is, it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself, by all the ways possible, to his business; his customers are to be his idols: so far as he may worship idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them, and worship them; at least, he is not in any way to displease them, or show any disgust or distaste, whatever they may say or do. The bottom of all is that he is intending to get money by them; and it is not for him that gets money to offer the least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it: he is to consider that, as Solomon says, 'the borrower is servant to the lender;' so the seller is servant to the buyer."
Poor George Dyer "commenced life, after a course of hard study, in the 'House of Pure Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish, fanatic school-master, at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never received above half in all the laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, the school-master would take no immediate notice; but after supper, when the school was called together to even-song, he would never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire of them, ending with, 'Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me Agur's wish,'—and the like,—which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor Dyer was a receipt in full for that quarter's demands at least."
Southey wrote to Cottle from Lisbon: "The English here unite the spirit of commerce with the frivolous amusement of high life. One of them, who plays every night (Sundays are not excepted here), will tell you how closely he attends to profit. 'I never pay a porter for bringing a burden till the next day,' says he, 'for while the fellow feels his back ache with the weight, he charges high; but when he comes the next day the feeling is gone, and he asks only half the money.' And the author of this philosophical scheme is worth two hundred thousand dollars!"