The great room of this humble building was the curia of the village. In it the patriarchs of the place held their nightly sittings, and discussed ale and politics with unremitting assiduity. There was no inebriety, no tumult, no ill-mannered brutality in their sessions; everything was conducted with the greatest order and tranquillity; the old men assembled with all the gravity, with all the earnestness, perhaps with much of the wisdom, of great statesmen. Alas! ye profane ones, ye smile. Ye look with contempt upon my rustic curia and my weather-beaten statesmen. And what are the great ones of this earth? Shall not the beings of a more exalted sphere contemplate with equal scorn the wranglings of more honoured senates? You turn with disgust from the eloquence of a Huggins or a Muggins! Look ye then to the oratory of a Cicero, to the patriotism of a Brutus, or, if you will, to the commanding energies of a Pitt and a Fox! Years roll on, and—what are they?
However, call it a curia, or a club, or what ye will, custom had established in this mansion a meeting of all the wise heads and all the choice spirits of the hamlet. At first the members of it were very independent of all party con[Pg 168]siderations, and each was too conscious of his own individual merits to become a hanger-on of any more important potentate. Whatever subject was tabled, whether it were the Holy Alliance or the Holy Church—the taste of the new tap or the conduct of the new member—every one said what he thought, and had no idea of bowing to the opinion of his neighbour. In process of time, however, this laudable spirit of liberty and equality began, as in other places, to decline. Some of the members became idle and complaisant, others waxed mighty and overbearing; until at last the Parliament of—— became subservient to the will and wishes of a single ruler, and Jeremiah Snaggs took his place in my memorandum-book as the first Dictator.
He had lived many years in the place, so that he was well known to most of its inhabitants—to some too well. He had long enjoyed the office of collector of the taxes in—— and its neighbourhood, and had contrived to grow rich, as some whispered not by the most creditable methods. However that might be, he was rich, and, as the patriarchal simplicity of the spot declined, many began to look with ill-concealed covetings upon the possessions of Jeremiah Snaggs. He had built to himself a mansion by the roadside, with a small garden in front; and there was a very extraordinary appendage to it, which excited much speculation among his unsophisticated contemporaries, and which he denominated a veranda. For some time he remained shut up in his citadel, and seemed to contemn the courtesies and repel the approaches of the inferior beings who moved around him. Afterwards, however, he found the solitude of his home (for he was a bachelor) insupportable; and he emerged gradually from his retirement, and condescended to join in the social assemblies of his neighbours. He joined them not as a fellow-citizen, but as a sovereign; he came among them, not to brighten their festivity, but to chill their good-humour; his presence was not an assistance, but a restraint. Nevertheless, he was the great man of the place, and in a short time his word was law among its inhabitants. Whether the ascendency was owing rather to the talents which he occasionally displayed, or to the dinners which he occasionally gave, I cannot say. Thomas the boatbuilder, who till now had[Pg 169] the credit of being a staunch Whig, and the boldness to avow it, drew in his horns; his patriotism, his oratory, his zeal shrank into nothing before the fiat of the Tory bashaw. He made indeed a violent opposition when Jeremiah proposed the introduction of port wine in lieu of the malt which had hitherto been the inspiration of their counsels, and he was somewhat refractory when the dictator insisted upon turning out the seats of the last generation and introducing modern chairs. But upon both points the boatbuilder was outvoted; and in obedience to Mr. Snaggs the senators dozed upon nauseous port, and fidgeted upon cane bottoms, for the space of six years. Look now! You smile at the disputes of a Thomas and a Snaggs! Yet why? What is there of greater moment in those of a Londonderry and a Brougham?
A period, however, was soon put to this terrible system of misrule: an old favourite of the hundred returned from fighting his country’s battles, in which occupation he had been perseveringly engaged for the last fourteen years. Sergeant Kerrick was disgusted with the innovations of the day, and set vigorously to work to drive them before him, as he expressed himself, at the point of the bayonet. The sergeant was always a fine man, but he was now a cripple into the bargain; he had always majestic black eyes, but he had now the additional advantage of having a cut over both; he had always the two legs of Hercules, but now—glorious destiny!—he had only one to stand upon. He was irresistible! The veranda, the roast mutton, the will—all, all was forgotten. In a short time Snaggs was beat by unheard-of majorities; a week—and the tide of Whitbread’s best was turned into its proper channel; another—and the cane-bottoms were kicked ignominiously from the Parliament. Thomas the boatbuilder, who had seceded in disappointment, was brought back in triumph; the dictator in vain attempted to check the progress of the revolution! baffled, defeated, insulted on all sides, he retired from the field in dismay, and died within a week afterwards from the falling of his veranda. His death produced no sensation; for it was evident that the man of war had been already installed in his place.
The Sergeant bore his faculties right meekly, and[Pg 170] promoted the restoration of l’ancien régime to the utmost of his abilities. During his administration people began to talk with some little degree of freedom, although at first they were much awed by the laurels and the scars of their president. They had a wondrous idea of the wisdom he had attained upon his travels. How could they talk of politics in his presence? Why, gracious! he had held the Emperor o’ Russia’s stirrup at Petersburg, and taken off his hat to the Pope o’ Rome—ay! and caught a glimpse o’ Boney to boot. Then, as to religious matters! why the Vicar was nothing to him: he had seen some nations that pray cross-legged, and some that pray in the open air, and some that don’t pray at all; and he had been to St. Peter’s, and a place they call the Pantheon, and all among the convents and nunneries, where they shut up young folk to make clergymen of them. It is not surprising that all this condensation of knowledge produced much veneration in the neighbourhood; it wore off, however, rapidly, and his companions began to enjoy the tales of his hardships, his privations, his battles, and his triumphs, without any feeling of distance or dissatisfaction. Enchanted by the stories he told, enchanted still more by the enthusiasm with which he told them, the Patres Conscripti began to despise their hitherto pacific habits; they carried their sticks on their shoulders, instead of trailing them on the ground; they longed
To follow to the field some warlike lord;
all of them began to look big, and one or two made some proficiency in swearing. By the edict of the dictator, the Biblical prints which were ranged round the chamber made room for coloured representations of Cressy and Agincourt; and the table was moved into such a situation as to give sufficient room for the manual exercise. The women of the village began to be frightened; Matthew Lock, a fine young man of eighteen, ran away to be listed; Mark Fender, a fine old man of eighty, lost an eye in learning parry tierce; two able-bodied artisans caught an ague by counter-marching in a shower; apprehensions of a military government began to be pretty general—when suddenly the dictator was taken off by an apoplexy. Ibi omnis effusus[Pg 171] labor! He died when the organization of the corps was just completed; he was carried to his final quarters in great state, and three pistols and a blunderbuss were fired over his grave. Why should we contemn his lowly sepulchre? He died—and so did Alexander.
The warlike Tullus was succeeded by the pacific Numa. Kerrick, the sergeant, was succeeded by Nicholas, the clerk. The six months during which the progeny of Mars had held the reins of government, had unsettled everything; the six weeks which saw Nicholas in his stead set everything in its place again. In the course of a few days it was discovered that drab was a better colour than red, and that an oyster-knife was a prettier weapon than a bayonet. In this short reign the magnates of the place imbibed a strong taste for literature and the arts. The blunderbuss was exchanged for the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and one of the pistols for the “Whole Duty of Man.” Nicholas himself was a man of considerable acquirements; he was the best reader in the place next to the Vicar, and by dint of much scraping and perseverance he had managed to fill two shelves with a heterogeneous confusion of ancient and modern lore. There was an odd volume of the “History of England,” sundry ditto of sermons, an account of “Anson’s Voyage Round the World,” and “The righte Pathe toe Welle-Doinge,” by Geoffry Mixon. There was also a sage treatise on Ghosts, Spectres, Apparitions, &c., which instigated me to various acts of atrocity, to which I shall presently allude.
Nicholas had presided over the conclave for four months in uninterrupted tranquillity, when an incident occurred which put the firmness of his character to the test. The Parliament had just finished their second jug one evening, and were beginning to think of an adjournment, when a low rumbling noise, like the echo of distant thunder, was heard, and in a moment afterwards the door, as it were spontaneously, flew open, and a spectre flew in. It is needless for me to describe the spectre: it was, selon règle, above the common height, with pale cheeks, hollow voice, and staring eyes. It advanced to the dictator’s chair, and moaned, in an audible murmur, “I am thine evil genius, Nicholas! Thou shalt see me at church on Sunday.” And then it[Pg 172] immediately vanished, nobody knew how or where. Well indeed it might, for few of the company were qualified to play the spy on its motions. The clerk, however, is said to have kept his seat with great firmness; and all avowed that they had followed his example. Howbeit, unless my memory fails me, there was a whisper that the saddler contrived to be looking under the table for a sixpence, and the exciseman’s sooty appearance told dirty tales of the chimney. The clerk was much importuned not to hazard himself in the church upon the fated Sabbath; but upon this point he was obstinate: it was finally agreed to conceal the matter, and in the event of the apparition’s reappearance to set the minister at him.
On the Sunday (for I suppose the reader is aware that I was intimately acquainted with the causes of the alarm) it was very amusing to watch the different faces of terror or expectation which appeared at public worship, to mark the quivering hue on the sallow cheek of the exciseman, and listen to the querulous intonation of the clerk’s Amen. When at last the sermon was concluded, Nicholas gave his final twang in such a manner that to my ears it resembled an Io pæan. He rose from his knees with a countenance of such unmingled, unrepressed triumph, that I could no longer restrain myself! I laughed. Alas! dearly did I rue, unhappy wight, that freak of sacrilegious jocularity.