THE SPLENDID ANNUAL.
By the Author of "Sayings and Doings."
Literature, even in this literary age, is not the ordinary pursuit of the citizens of London, although every merchant is necessarily a man of letters, and underwriters are as common as cucumbers. Notwithstanding, however, my being a citizen, I am tempted to disclose the miseries and misfortunes of my life in these pages, because having heard the "ANNIVERSARY" called a splendid annual, I hope for sympathy from its readers, seeing that I have been a "splendid annual" myself.
My name is Scropps—I am an Alderman—I was Sheriff—I have been Lord Mayor—and the three great eras of my existence were the year of my shrievalty, the year of my mayoralty, and the year after it. Until I had passed through this ordeal I had no conception of the extremes of happiness and wretchedness to which a human being may be carried, nor ever believed that society presented to its members an eminence so exalted as that which I once touched, or imagined a fall so great as that which I experienced. I came originally from that place to which persons of bad character are said to be sent—I mean Coventry, where my father for many years contributed his share to the success of parliamentary candidates, the happiness of new married couples, and even the gratification of ambitious courtiers, by taking part in the manufacture of ribands for election cockades, wedding favours, and cordons of chivalry; but trade failed, and, like his betters, he became bankrupt, but, unlike his betters, without any consequent advantage to himself; and I, at the age of fifteen, was thrown upon the world with nothing but a strong constitution, a moderate education, and fifteen shillings and eleven pence three farthings in my pocket.
With these qualifications I started from my native town on a pedestrian excursion to London; and although I fell into none of those romantic adventures of which I had read at school, I met with more kindness than the world generally gets credit for, and on the fourth day after my departure, having slept soundly, if not magnificently, every night, and eaten with an appetite which my mode of travelling was admirably calculated to stimulate, reached the great metropolis, having preserved of my patrimony, no less a sum than nine shillings and seven pence.
The bells of one of the churches in the city were ringing merrily as I descended the heights of Islington; and were it not that my patronymic Scropps never could, under the most improved system of campanology, be jingled into any thing harmonious, I have no doubt I, like my great predecessor Whittington, might have heard in that peal a prediction of my future exaltation; certain it is I did not; and, wearied with my journey, I took up my lodging for the night at a very humble house near Smithfield, to which I had been kindly recommended by the driver of a return postchaise, of whose liberal offer of the moiety of his bar to town I had availed myself at Barnet.
As it is not my intention to deduce a moral from my progress in the world at this period of my life, I need not here dilate upon the good policy of honesty, or the advantages of temperance and perseverance, by which I worked my way upwards, until after meriting the confidence of an excellent master, I found myself enjoying it fully. To his business I succeeded at his death, having several years before, with his sanction, married a young and deserving woman, about my own age, of whose prudence and skill in household matters I had long had a daily experience.
To be brief, Providence blessed my efforts and increased my means; I became a wholesale dealer in every thing, from barrels of gunpowder down to pickled herrings; in the civic acceptation of the word I was a merchant, amongst the vulgar I am called a dry-salter. I accumulated wealth; with my fortune my family also grew, and one male Scropps, and four female ditto, grace my board at least once in every week.
Passing over the minor gradations of my life, the removal from one residence to another, the enlargement of this warehouse, the rebuilding of that, the anxiety of a canvass for common council man, activity in the company of which I am liveryman, inquests, and vestries, and ward meetings, and all the other pleasing toils to which an active citizen is subject, let us come at once to the first marked epoch of my life—the year of my Shrievalty. The announcement of my nomination and election filled Mrs. S. with delight; and when I took my children to Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, to look at the gay chariot brushing up for me, I confess I felt proud and happy to be able to show my progeny the arms of London, those of the Spectacle Makers' Company, and those of the Scroppses (recently found at a trivial expense) all figuring upon the same panels. They looked magnificent upon the pea-green ground, and the wheels, "white picked out crimson," looked so chaste, and the hammercloth, and the fringe, and the festoons, and the Scropps' crests all looked so rich, and the silk linings and white tassels, and the squabs and the yellow cushions and the crimson carpet looked so comfortable, that, as I stood contemplating the equipage, I said to myself, "What have I done to deserve this?—O that my poor father were alive to see his boy Jack going down to Westminster, to chop sticks and count hobnails, in a carriage like this!" My children were like mad things: and in the afternoon, when I put on my first new brown court suit (lined, like my chariot, with white silk) and fitted up with cut steel buttons, just to try the effect, it all appeared like a dream; the sword, which I tried on every night for half an hour after I went up to bed, to practise walking with it, was very inconvenient at first; but use is second nature; and so by rehearsing and rehearsing, I made myself perfect before that auspicious day when Sheriffs flourish and geese prevail—namely, the twenty-ninth of September.
The twelve months which followed were very delightful; for independently of the positive honour and éclat they produced, I had the Mayoralty in prospectû (having attained my aldermanic gown by an immense majority the preceding year), and as I used during the sessions to sit in my box at the Old Bailey, with my bag at my back and my bouquet on my book, my thoughts were wholly devoted to one object of contemplation; culprits stood trembling to hear the verdict of a jury, and I regarded them not; convicts knelt to receive the fatal fiat of the Recorder, and I heeded not their sufferings, as I watched the Lord Mayor seated in the centre of the bench, with the sword of justice stuck up in a goblet over his head—there, thought I, if I live two years, shall I sit—however, even as it was, it was very agreeable. When executions, the chief drawbacks to my delight, happened, I found, after a little seasoning, I took the thing coolly, and enjoyed my toast and tea after the patients were turned off, just as if nothing had happened; for, in my time, we hanged at eight and breakfasted at a quarter after, so that without much hurry we were able to finish our muffins just in time for the cutting down at nine. I had to go to the House of Commons with a petition, and to Court with an address—trying situations for one of the Scroppses—however, the want of state in parliament, and the very little attention paid to us by the members, put me quite at my ease at Westminster; while the gracious urbanity of our accomplished monarch on his throne made me equally comfortable at St. James's. Still I was but a secondary person, or rather only one of two secondary persons—the chief of bailiffs and principal Jack Ketch; there was a step to gain—and, as I often mentioned in confidence to Mrs. Scropps, I was sure my heart would never be still until I had reached the pinnacle.