Twelfth Night in London Streets.—Page 343.
To illustrate "Twelfth-night," our artist has made two studies of the scenes it presents in London,—abroad and at home; and these involve our consideration of the subject, accordingly.
During the entire twelve months there is no such illumination of pastry-cooks' shops, as on Twelfth-night. Each sends forth a blaze of light; and is filled with glorious cakes, "decorated," to use the words of Mr. Hone, "with all imaginable images of thing animate and inanimate. Stars, castles, kings, cottages, dragons, trees, fish, palaces, cats, dogs, churches, lions, milkmaids, knights, serpents, and innumerable other forms, in snow-white confectionery, painted with variegated colors." "This 'paradise of dainty devices,'" he continues, "is crowded by successive, and successful, desirers of the seasonable delicacies; while alternate tappings of hammers and peals of laughter, from the throng surrounding the house, excite smiles from the inmates." This last observation requires explanation, for our country readers.
Let all idle gazers, then, in the streets of London beware of Twelfth-night! There is then that spirit of mischievous fun abroad, which, carried on without the superintending power of a Lord of Misrule, exhibits itself in transfixing the coat-skirts of the unconscious stranger to the frame of the door or window, at which he may have paused to stare and wonder. Once fairly caught, lucky is the wight who can disengage himself, without finding that, in the interim, his other skirt has been pinned to the pelisse or gown of some alarmed damsel, whose dress is perhaps dragged, at the same moment, in opposite directions, so that he can neither stand still nor move, without aiding the work of destruction. These practical facetiæ are the performances of that class of nondescript lads, "perplexers of Lord Mayors and irritators of the police," whose character Mr. Leigh Hunt has as truly drawn as our artist has depicted their persons: "those equivocal animal-spirits of the streets, who come whistling along, you know not whether thief or errand-boy, sometimes with a bundle and sometimes not, in corduroys, a jacket, and a cap or bit of hat, with hair sticking through a hole in it. His vivacity gets him into scrapes in the street; and he is not ultra-studious of civility in his answers. If the man he runs against is not very big, he gives him abuse for abuse, at once; if otherwise, he gets at a convenient distance, and then halloos out, 'Eh, stupid!' or 'Can't you see before you?' or 'Go and get your face washed!' This last is a favorite saying of his, out of an instinct referable to his own visage. He sings 'Hokee-Pokee,' and 'A shiny Night,' varied, occasionally, with an uproarious 'Rise, gentle Moon,' or 'Coming through the Rye.' On winter evenings, you may hear him indulging himself, as he goes along, in a singular undulation of yowl, a sort of gargle, as if a wolf was practising the rudiments of a shake. This he delights to do, more particularly in a crowded thoroughfare, as though determined that his noise should triumph over every other and show how jolly he is, and how independent of the ties to good behavior. If the street is a quiet one, and he has a stick in his hand (perhaps a hoop-stick), he accompanies the howl with a run upon the gamut of the iron rails. He is the nightingale of mud and cold. If he gets on in life, he will be a pot-boy. At present, as we said before, we hardly know what he is; but his mother thinks herself lucky if he is not transported."
Of Twelfth-night, at home, when "the whole island keeps court,—nay all Christendom,"—when "all the world are kings and queens, and everybody is somebody else," a huge cake, the idol of young hearts, is the presiding genius of the evening. The account given by Nutt, the editor of the "Cook and Confectioner's Dictionary," of the twelfth-cakes and dishes in vogue a hundred years ago, proves the nursery rhymes of—
"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pye,"
who
"When the pye was opened all began to sing,"