My dear daughter,
Having lately been led to compose an inscription for one of our Garden statues, an authentic account of two such extraordinary works of art has appeared to me so desirable that I even wonder at myself for having so long delayed to write one. It is the more incumbent on me to do this, because neither of the artists have thought proper to inscribe their names upon these master-pieces,—either from that modesty which often accompanies the highest genius, or from a dignified consciousness that it was unnecessary to set any mark upon them, the works themselves sufficiently declaring from what hands they came.
I undertake this becoming task with the more pleasure because our friend Mrs. Keenan has kindly offered to illustrate the intended account by drawings of both Statues,—having as you may well suppose been struck with admiration by them. The promise of this co-operation induces me not to confine myself to a mere description, but to relate on what occasion they were made, and faithfully to record the very remarkable circumstances which have occurred in consequence; circumstances I will venture to say, as well attested and as well worthy of preservation as any of those related in the History of the Portuguese Images of Nossa Senhora, in ten volumes quarto,—a book of real value, and which you know I regard as one of the most curious in my collection. If in the progress of this design I should sometimes appear to wander in digression, you will not impute it to any habitual love of circumlocution; and the speculative notions which I may have occasion to propose, you will receive as mere speculations and judge of them accordingly.
Many many years ago I remember to have seen these popular and rustic rhymes in print,
God made a great man to plough and to sow,
God made a little man to drive away the crow;
they were composed perhaps to make some little man contented with that office, and certain it is that in all ages and all countries it has been an object of as much consequence to preserve the seed from birds when sown, as to sow it. No doubt Adam himself when he was driven to cultivate the ground felt this, and we who are his lineal descendants (though I am sorry to say we have not inherited a rood of his estates) have felt it also, in our small but not unimportant concern, the Garden. Mrs. L., the Lady of that Garden used to complain grievously of the depredations committed there, especially upon her pease. Fowls and Ducks were condemned either to imprisonment for life, or to the immediate larder for their offences of this kind; but the magpies (my protegées) and the sparrows, and the blackbirds and the thrushes bade defiance to the coop and the cook. She tried to fright them away by feathers fastened upon a string, but birds were no more to be frightened by feathers than to be caught by chaff. She drest up two mopsticks; not to be forgotten, because when two youths sent their straw hats upon leaving Keswick to K. and B., the girls consigned the hats to these mopsticks and named the figures thus attired in due honour of the youths, L. N., and C. K. These mopsticks however were well drest enough to invite thieves from the town,—and too well to frighten the birds. Something more effectual was wanted, and Mrs. L. bespoke a man of Joseph Glover.
Such is the imperfection of language that write as carefully and warily as we can it is impossible to use words which will not frequently admit of a double construction, upon this indeed it is that the Lawyers have founded the science of the Law, which said science they display in extracting any meaning from any words, and generally that meaning that shall be most opposite to the intention for which they were used. When I say that your Aunt L. bespoke a man of Joseph Glover, I do not mean that she commissioned him to engage a labourer: nor that she required him actually to make a man like Frankenstein,—though it must be admitted that such a man as Frankenstein made, would be the best of all scarecrows, provided he were broken in so as to be perfectly manageable. To have made a man indeed would have been more than even Paracelsus would have undertaken to perform; for according to the receipt which that illustrious Bombast ab Hohenheim has delivered to posterity, an homunculus cannot be produced in a hot-bed in less than forty weeks and forty days; and this would not have been in time to save the pease; not to mention that one of his homunculi had it been ready could not have served the purpose, for by his account, when it was produced, it was smaller even than Mark Thumb. Such an order would have been more unreasonable than any of those which Juno imposed upon Hercules; whereas the task imposed by Mrs. L. was nothing more than Glover thought himself capable of executing, for he understood the direction plainly and simply in its proper sense, as a carpenter ought to understand it.
An ordinary Carpenter might have hesitated at undertaking it, or bungled in the execution. But Glover is not an ordinary Carpenter. He says of himself that he should have been a capital singer, only the pity is, that he has no voice. Whether he had ever a similar persuasion of his own essential but unproducible talents for sculpture or painting I know not:—but if ever genius and originality were triumphantly displayed in the first effort of an untaught artist, it was on this occasion. Perhaps I am wrong in calling him untaught;—for there is a supernatural or divine teaching;—and it will appear presently that if there be any truth in heathen philosophy, or in that of the Roman Catholicks (which is very much the same in many respects) some such assistance may be suspected in this case.
With or without such assistance, but certainly con amore, and with the aid of his own genius, if of no other, Glover went to work: ere long shouts of admiration were heard one evening in the kitchen, so loud and of such long continuance that enquiry was made from the parlour into the cause, and the reply was that Mrs. L.'s man was brought home. Out we went, father, mother and daughters, (yourself among them,—for you cannot have forgotten that memorable hour), My Lady and the Venerabilis,—and Mrs. L. herself, as the person more immediately concerned. Seldom as it happens that any artist can embody with perfect success the conceptions of another, in this instance the difficult and delicate task had been perfectly accomplished. But I must describe the Man,—calling him by that name at present, the power, æon or intelligence which had incorporated itself with that ligneous resemblance of humanity not having at that time been suspected.