M.B.S.
SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.
ON COALHEAVERS.
Although in this age of all but universal hypocrisy and make-believe, every man has at least two fashions of one countenance, it is in dress principally that most men are most unlike themselves. But the coalheaver always sticks close to the attire of his station; he alone wears the consistent and befitting garb of his forefathers; he alone has not discarded "the napless vesture of humility," to follow the always expensive, and often absurd fashions of his superiors. All ungalled of him is each courtier's heel or great man's kibe. Yet, is not even his every-day clothing unseemly, or his aspect unprepossessing. He casts as broad and proper a shadow in the sun as any other man. Black he is, indeed, but comely, like the daughters of Jerusalem.—To begin with the hat which he has honoured with a preference—what are your operas or your fire-shovels beside it? they must instantly (on a fair comparison) sink many degrees below zero in the scale of contempt. In a word, I would make bold to assert that it unites in perfection the two grand requisites of a head covering, beauty and comfort. Gentlemen may smile at this if they will, and take exception to my taste; but, I ask, does the modern round hat, whatever the insignificant variations of its form, possess either quality? No, not a jot of it. One would think, by our pertinacious adherence to the head-ach giving, circular conformation, that we wished to show our anger at the Almighty for not shaping our caputs like cylinders. In fine, though the parson's and the quaker's hat has each its several merits, commend me to the fan-tailed shallow. The flap part attached to the cap seems, at first sight, as to use, supernecessary, although so ornamental withal. It no doubt (as its name, indeed indicates) had its origin in gallantry, and was invented in the age of fans, for the purpose of cooling their mistresses' bosoms, heated—as they would necessarily be—at fair time, by their gravel-grinding walks, under a fervid sun, to the elegant revels of West-end, of Greenwich, or of Tothill-fields. Breeches, rejected by common consent of young and old alike, cling to the legs of the coalheaver with an abiding fondness, as to the last place of refuge; and, on gala-days, a dandy might die of envy to mark the splendour of those nether integuments—which he has not soul enough to dare to wear—of brilliant eye-arresting blue, or glowing scarlet plush, glittering in the sun's rays, giving and taking glory! But enough of the dress of these select "true-born Englishmen"—for right glad I am to state that there are but two Scotch coalheavers on the whole river, and no Irish. I beg leave to return to the more important consideration of their manners. Most people you meet in your walks in the common thoroughfare of London, glide, shuffle, or crawl onward, as if they conscientiously thought they had no manner of right to tread the earth but on sufferance. Not so our coalheaver. Mark how erect he walks! how firm a keel he presents to the vainly breasting human tide that comes rolling on with a show of opposition to his onward course! It is he, and he only, who preserves, in his gait and in his air, the self-sustained and conscious dignity of the first-created man. Surrounded by an inferior creation, he gives the wall to none. That pliancy of temper, which is wont to make itself known by the waiving a point or renouncing a principle for others' advantage, in him has no place; he either knows it not, or else considers it a poor, mean-spirited, creeping baseness, altogether unworthy of his imitation, and best befitted with ineffable contempt. He neither dreads the contact of the baker—the Scylla of the metropolitan peripatetic, nor yet shuns the dire collision of the chimney-sweep—his Charybdis. Try to pass him as he walks leisurely on, making the solid earth ring with his bold tread, and you will experience more difficulties in the attempt than did that famous admiral, Bartholomew Diaz, when he first doubled the Cape of Storms. Or let us suppose, that haply you allow your frail carcass to go full drive against his sturdiness, when lo!—in beautiful illustration of those doctrines in projectiles, that relate to the concussion of moving bodies—you fly off at an angle "right slick" into the middle of the carriage-way; whence a question of some interest presently arises, whether you will please to be run over by a short or a long stage.—But to return. Who hesitates to make way for a coalheaver? As for their drays—as consecutive a species of vehicles as a body can be stopped by—every one knows they make way for themselves.
I one Sunday met a party of my favourites in St. Paul's cathedral. They seemed to view with becoming respect and even awe that splendid place; and they listened to and observed, with apparent profound attention, the cathedral service. Yet I must confess my favourable opinion of their grave looks was rather staggered by overhearing afterwards one of them say to his neighbour, casting a look all round the while, "My eyes, Tom, what lots o' coals this here place would hold." Perhaps the observation was meant in honour.
Monthly Magazine.