Letter XXII.—To Mrs Hedgehog, New York.
Dear Grandmother,—As I don’t think you have any liking for railways—being, like Colonel Sibthorpe, one of those folks loving the good old times when travelling was as sober a thing as a waggon and four horses could make it—I really don’t see how I’m to write you anything of a letter. There’s nobody in town, and nothing in the papers but plans of railways, that in a little time will cover all England like a large spider’s net; and, as in the net, there will be a good many flies caught and gobbled up by those who spin it. Nevertheless, though I know you don’t agree with me any more than Colonel Sibthorpe does, it is a fine sight to open the newspapers and see the railway schemes. What mountains of money they bring to the mind! And then for the wonders they’re big with—why, properly considered, aren’t they a thousand times more wonderful than anything in the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments”? There we have a flying carriage to be brought to every man’s door! All England made to shake hands with itself in a few hours! And when London can in an hour or so go to the Land’s End for a gulp of sea air, and the Land’s End in the same time come to see the shows of London, shan’t all of us the better understand one another? shan’t we all be brought together, and made, as we ought to be, one family of? It’s coming fast, grandmother. Now pigs can travel, I don’t know how far, at a halfpenny a head, we don’t hear the talk that used to be of “the swinish multitude.” And isn’t it a fine thing—I know you don’t think so, but isn’t it—to know that all that’s been done, and all that’s to do, will be done because Englishmen have left off cutting other men’s throats? That peace has done it all! If they oughtn’t to set up a dove with an olive branch at every railway terminus, I’m an impostor and no true cabman! Yes, grandmother, peace has done it all! Only think of the iron that had been melted into cannon, and round-shot and chain-shot, and all other sorts of shot, that the devils on a holiday play at bowls with!—if the war had gone on—all the very same iron that’s now peaceably laid upon sleepers! Think of the iron that had been fired into the sea, and banged through quiet people’s houses, and sent smashing squares and squares of men—God’s likenesses in red, blue, and green coats, hired to be killed at so many pence a day,—only think what would have been this wicked, I will say it, this blasphemous waste of metal—that, as it is, has been made into steam-engines! Very fine, indeed, they say, is the roar of artillery; but what is it to the roar of steam? I never see an engine, with red-hot coals and its clouds of steam and smoke, that it doesn’t seem to me like a tremendous dragon that has been tamed by man to carry all the blessings of civilisation to his fellow-creatures. I’ve read about knights going through the skies on fiery monsters—but what are they to the engineers, at two pound five a week? What is any squire among ’em all to the humblest stoker? And then I’ve read about martial trumpets, why, they haven’t, to my ears, half the silver in their sound as the railway whistle! Well, I should like the ghost of Bonaparte to get up some morning, and take the Times in his thin hands. If he wouldn’t turn yellower than ever he was at St Helena! There he’d see plans for railways in France—belly France, as I believe they call it—to be carried out by Frenchmen and Englishmen. Yes; he wouldn’t see ’em mixing bayonets, trying to poke ’em in one another’s bowels, that a few tons of blood might, as they call it, water his laurels (how any man can wear laurels at all, I can’t tell, they must smell so of the slaughter-house!)—he wouldn’t see ’em charging one another on the battle-field, but quietly ranged cheek by jowl, in the list of directors! Not exchanging bullets, but clubbing together their hard cash.
Consider it, grandmother, isn’t it droll! Here, in these very lists, you see English captains and colonels in company with French viscounts and barons, and I don’t know what, planning to lay iron down in France—to civilise and add to the prosperity of Frenchmen! The very captains and colonels who—but for the peace—would be blowing French ships out of water, knocking down French houses, and all the while swearing it, and believing it, too, that Frenchmen were only sent into this world to be killed by Englishmen, just as boys think frogs were spawned only to be pelted at! Ah, only give her time, and Peace—timid dove as she is—will coo down to the trumpet.
Now, grandmother, only to think of Lord Nelson as a railway director on the Boulogne line to Paris! Well, I know you’ll say it, the world’s going to be turned upside down. Perhaps it is; and after all, it mightn’t be the worse now and then for a little wholesome shaking. They do say there’s to be a rail from Waterloo to Brussels, and the Duke of Wellington, the Iron Duke, with, I’ve no doubt, iron enough in him for the whole line, is to be chairman of the directors.
The Prince Joinville is now and then looking about our coasts to find out, it is said, which is the softest part of us, in the case of a war, to put his foot upon us. Poor fellow! he’s got the disease of glory; only, as it sometimes happens with the smallpox, it has struck inward—it can’t come out upon him. When we’ve railways laid down, as I say, like a spider’s web all over the country, won’t it be a little hard to catch us asleep? For, you see, just like the spider’s web, the electric telegraph (inquire what sort of a thing it is, for I haven’t time to tell you)—the electric telegraph will touch a line of the web, when down will come a tremendous spider in a red coat with all sorts of murder about him! Mind, grandmother, let us hope it never will happen; but when folks who’d molest us, know it can come about, won’t they let us alone? Depend upon it, we’re binding war over to keep the peace, and the bonds are made of railway iron!
You’d hardly think it—you who used to talk to me about the beauty of glory (I know you meant nothing but the red coats and the fine epaulets; for that so often is woman’s notion of glory, though, bless ’em! they’re among the first to make lint, and cry over the sons of glory, with gashes spoiling all their fine feathers)—and you’d hardly think it, but they’re going to put up a statue to the man who first made boiling water to run upon a rail. It’s quite true: I read it only a day or two ago. They’re going to fix up a statue to George Stephenson at Newcastle. How you will cast up your dear old eyes when you hear of this! you, who’ve only thought that statues should be put up to Queen Anne, and George the Third, and his nice son, George the Fourth, and such people! I should only like a good many of the statues here in London, to be made to take a cheap train down to Newcastle, to see it. If, dirty as they are—and dirty as they were—they wouldn’t blush as red as a new copper halfpenny! Why, those statues—especially when they’ve queens and kings in ’em—are the most unfeelingest of metal! What a lot of mangled bodies, and misery, and housebreaking, and wickedness of all sorts, carried on and made quite lawful by a uniform, may we see—if we choose to see at all—about the statue of what is called a conqueror! What a firing of houses, what shame—that, because you’re a woman, I won’t more particularly write about—we might look upon under the statue, that is only so high, because it has so much wickedness to stand upon! If the statue could feel at all, wouldn’t it put up its hands, and hide its face, although it was made of the best of bronze? But Mr Stephenson will look kindly and sweetly about him; he will know that he has carried comfort, and knowledge, and happiness to the doors of millions!—that, that he has brought men together, that they might know and love one another. This is something like having a statue! I’m sure of it—when George the Fourth is made to hear the news (for kings are so very long before the truth comes to ’em), he’d like to gallop off to the first melter’s and go at once into the nothing that men think him.
And besides all this, the railways have got a king! When you hear of a king in England, I know your old thoughts go down to Westminster Abbey, and you think of nothing but bishops and peers, and all that sort of thing, kissing the king’s cheeks, and the holy oil put upon the royal head, that the crown, I suppose, may sit the more comfortably upon it; but this is another sort of king, Mr King Hudson the First. I have read somewhere at a bookstall, that Napoleon was crowned with the Iron Crown of Italy. Well, King Hudson has been crowned with the Iron Crown of England!—a crown melted out of pig-iron, and made in a railway furnace.
I’ve somewhere seen the picture of the River Nile, that with the lifting of his finger made the river flow over barren land, and leave there all sorts of blessings. Well, King Hudson is of this sort; he has made the molten iron flow over all sorts of places, and so bring forth good fruits wherever it went.—So no more, from your affectionate grandson,
Juniper Hedgehog.