THE
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

APRIL, 1860.

CONTENTS.

LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.

LEIPZIG: D. TAUCHNITZ. NEW YORK: WILLMER AND ROGERS.
MELBOURNE: G. ROBERTSON.

THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

CONTENTS of No. 1.
January, 1860.

• Framley Parsonage. Chaps. 1, 2 and 3.
• The Chinese and the “Outer Barbarians.”
• Lovel the Widower. Chapter 1. (With an Illustration.)
• Studies in Animal Life. Chapter 1.
• Father Prout’s Inaugurative Ode to the Author of “Vanity Fair.”
• Our Volunteers.
• A Man of Letters of the last Generation.
• The Search for Sir John Franklin (from the Private Journal of an Officer of the Fox). (With an Illustration and Map.)
• The First Morning of 1860.
• Roundabout Papers.—No. 1. On a Lazy Idle Boy.

CONTENTS of No. 2.
February, 1860.

• Nil Nisi Bonum.
• Invasion Panics.
• To Goldenhair (from Horace). By Thomas Hood.
• Framley Parsonage. Chaps. 4, 5 and 6.
• Tithonus. By Alfred Tennyson.
• William Hogarth: Painter, Engraver, and Philosopher. Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time.—I. Little Boy Hogarth.
• Unspoken Dialogue. By R. Monckton Milnes. (With an Illustration.)
• Studies in Animal Life. Chapter 2.
• Curious if True. (Extract from a Letter from Richard Whittingham, Esq.)
• Life among the Lighthouses.
• Lovel the Widower. Chapter 2. (With an Illustration.)
• An Essay without End.

CONTENTS of No. 3.
March, 1860.

• A Few Words on Junius and Macaulay.
• William Hogarth: Painter, Engraver, and Philosopher. Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time.—II. Mr. Gamble’s Apprentice. (With an Illustration.)
• Mabel.
• Studies in Animal Life. Chapter 3.
• Framley Parsonage. Chapters 7, 8 and 9.
• Sir Joshua and Holbein.
• A Changeling.
• Lovel the Widower. Chapter 3. (With an Illustration.)
• The National Gallery Difficulty Solved.
• A Winter Wedding-party in the Wilds.
• Student Life in Scotland.
• Roundabout Papers.—No. 2. On Two Children in Black.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

⁂ Communications for the Editor should be addressed to the care of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., 65, Cornhill, and not to the Editor’s private residence. The Editor cannot be responsible for the return of rejected contributions.

BESSY’S REFLECTIONS.

THE
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

APRIL, 1860.

Lovel the Widower.

CHAPTER IV.
A Black Sheep.

The being for whom my friend Dick Bedford seemed to have a special contempt and aversion, was Mr. Bulkeley, the tall footman in attendance upon Lovel’s dear mother-in-law. One of the causes of Bedford’s wrath, the worthy fellow explained to me. In the servants’ hall, Bulkeley was in the habit of speaking in disrespectful and satirical terms of his mistress, enlarging upon her many foibles, and describing her pecuniary difficulties to the many habitués of that second social circle at Shrublands. The hold which Mr. Bulkeley had over his lady lay in a long unsettled account of wages, which her ladyship was quite disinclined to discharge. And, in spite of this insolvency, the footman must have found his profit in the place, for he continued to hold it from year to year, and to fatten on his earnings such as they were. My lady’s dignity did not allow her to travel without this huge personage in her train; and a great comfort it must have been to her, to reflect that in all the country houses which she visited (and she would go wherever she could force an invitation), her attendant freely explained himself regarding her peculiarities, and made his brother servants aware of his mistress’s embarrassed condition. And yet the woman, whom I suppose no soul alive respected (unless, haply, she herself had a hankering delusion that she was a respectable woman), thought that her position in life forbade her to move abroad without a maid, and this hulking incumbrance in plush; and never was seen anywhere in watering-place, country-house, hotel, unless she was so attended.

Between Bedford and Bulkeley, then, there was feud and mutual hatred. Bedford chafed the big man by constant sneers and sarcasms, which penetrated the other’s dull hide, and caused him frequently to assert that he would punch Dick’s ugly head off. The housekeeper had frequently to interpose, and fling her matronly arms between these men of war; and perhaps Bedford was forced to be still at times, for Bulkeley was nine inches taller than himself, and was perpetually bragging of his skill and feats as a bruiser. This sultan may also have wished to fling his pocket-handkerchief to Miss Mary Pinhorn, who, though she loved Bedford’s wit and cleverness, might also be not insensible to the magnificent chest, calves, whiskers, of Mr. Bulkeley. On this delicate subject, however, I can’t speak. The men hated each other. You have, no doubt, remarked in your experience of life, that when men do hate each other, about a woman, or some other cause, the real reason is never assigned. You say, “The conduct of such and such a man to his grandmother—his behaviour in selling that horse to Benson—his manner of brushing his hair down the middle”—or what you will, “makes him so offensive to me that I can’t endure him.” His verses, therefore, are mediocre; his speeches in parliament are utter failures; his practice at the bar is dwindling every year; his powers (always small) are utterly leaving him, and he is repeating his confounded jokes until they quite nauseate. Why, only about myself, and within these three days, I read a nice little article—written in sorrow, you know, not in anger—by our eminent confrère Wiggins,[1] deploring the decay of, &c. &c. And Wiggins’s little article which was not found suitable for a certain Magazine?—Allons donc! The drunkard says the pickled salmon gave him the headache; the man who hates us gives a reason, but not the reason. Bedford was angry with Bulkeley for abusing his mistress at the servants’ table? Yes. But for what else besides? I don’t care—nor possibly does your worship, the exalted reader, for these low vulgar kitchen quarrels.

Out of that ground-floor room, then, I would not move in spite of the utmost efforts of my Lady Baker’s broad shoulder to push me out; and with many grins that evening, Bedford complimented me on my gallantry in routing the enemy at luncheon. I think he may possibly have told his master, for Lovel looked very much alarmed and uneasy when we greeted each other on his return from the city, but became more composed when Lady Baker appeared at the second dinner-bell, without a trace on her fine countenance of that storm which had caused all her waves to heave with such commotion at noon. How finely some people, by the way, can hang up quarrels—or pop them into a drawer, as they do their work, when dinner is announced, and take them out again at a convenient season! Baker was mild, gentle, a thought sad and sentimental—tenderly interested about her dear son and daughter, in Ireland, whom she must go and see—quite easy in hand, in a word, and to the immense relief of all of us. She kissed Lovel on retiring, and prayed blessings on her Frederick. She pointed to the picture: nothing could be more melancholy or more gracious.

“She go!” says Mr. Bedford to me at night—“not she. She knows when she’s well off; was obliged to turn out of Bakerstown before she came here: that brute Bulkeley told me so. She’s always quarrelling with her son and his wife. Angels don’t grow everywhere as they do at Putney, Mr. B.! You gave it her well to-day at lunch, you did though!” During my stay at Shrublands, Mr. Bedford paid me a regular evening visit in my room, set the carte du pays before me, and in his curt way acquainted me with the characters of the inmates of the house, and the incidents occurring therein.

Captain Clarence Baker did not come to Shrublands on the day when his anxious mother wished to clear out my nest (and expel the amiable bird in it) for her son’s benefit. I believe an important fight, which was to come off in the Essex Marshes, and which was postponed in consequence of the interposition of the county magistrates, was the occasion, or at any rate, the pretext of the captain’s delay. “He likes seeing fights better than going to ’em, the captain does,” my major-domo remarked. “His regiment was ordered to India, and he sold out: climate don’t agree with his precious health. The captain ain’t been here ever so long, not since poor Mrs. L.’s time, before Miss P. came here: Captain Clarence and his sister had a tremendous quarrel together. He was up to all sorts of pranks, the captain was. Not a good lot, by any means, I should say, Mr. Batchelor.” And here Bedford begins to laugh. “Did you ever read, sir, a farce called Raising the Wind? There’s plenty of Jeremy Diddlers now, Captain Jeremy Diddlers and Lady Jeremy Diddlers too. Have you such a thing as half-a-crown about you? If you have, don’t invest it in some folks’ pockets—that’s all. Beg your pardon, sir, if I am bothering you with talking!”

As long as I was at Shrublands, and ready to partake of breakfast with my kind host and his children and their governess, Lady Baker had her own breakfast taken to her room. But when there were no visitors in the house, she would come groaning out of her bedroom to be present at the morning meal; and not uncommonly would give the little company anecdotes of the departed saint, under whose invocation, as it were, we were assembled, and whose simpering effigy looked down upon us, over her harp, and from the wall. The eyes of the portrait followed you about, as portraits’ eyes so painted will; and those glances, as it seemed to me, still domineered over Lovel, and made him quail as they had done in life. Yonder, in the corner, was Cecilia’s harp, with its leathern cover. I likened the skin to that drum which the dying Zisca ordered should be made out of his hide, to be beaten before the hosts of his people and inspire terror. Vous conçevez, I did not say to Lovel at breakfast, as I sat before the ghostly musical instrument, “My dear fellow, that skin of Cordovan leather belonging to your defunct Cecilia’s harp, is like the hide which,” &c.; but I confess, at first, I used to have a sort of crawly sensation, as of a sickly genteel ghost flitting about the place, in an exceedingly peevish humour, trying to scold and command, and finding her defunct voice couldn’t be heard—trying to re-illume her extinguished leers and faded smiles and ogles, and finding no one admired or took note. In the gray of the gloaming, in the twilight corner where stands the shrouded companion of song—what is that white figure flickering round the silent harp? Once, as we were assembled in the room at afternoon tea, a bird, entering at the open window, perched on the instrument. Popham dashed at it. Lovel was deep in conversation upon the wine duties with a member of parliament he had brought down to dinner. Lady Baker, who was, if I may use the expression, “jawing,” as usual, and telling one of her tremendous stories about the Lord Lieutenant to Mr. Bonnington, took no note of the incident. Elizabeth did not seem to remark it: what was a bird on a harp to her, but a sparrow perched on a bit of leather-casing! All the ghosts in Putney churchyard might rattle all their bones, and would not frighten that stout spirit!

I was amused at a precaution which Bedford took, and somewhat alarmed at the distrust towards Lady Baker which he exhibited, when, one day on my return from town—whither I had made an excursion of four or five hours—I found my bedroom door locked, and Dick arrived with the key. “He’s wrote to say he’s coming this evening, and if he had come when you was away, Lady B. was capable of turning your things out, and putting his in, and taking her oath she believed you was going to leave. The long-bows Lady B. do pull are perfectly awful, Mr. B.! So it was long-bow to long-bow, Mr. Batchelor; and I said you had took the key in your pocket, not wishing to have your papers disturbed. She tried the lawn window, but I had bolted that, and the captain will have the pink room, after all, and must smoke up the chimney. I should have liked to see him, or you, or any one do it in poor Mrs. L.’s time—I just should!”

During my visit to London, I had chanced to meet my friend Captain Fitzb—dle, who belongs to a dozen clubs, and knows something of every man in London. “Know anything of Clarence Baker?” “Of course, I do,” says Fitz; “and if you want any renseignement, my dear fellow, I have the honour to inform you that a blacker little sheep does not trot the London pavé. Wherever that ingenious officer’s name is spoken—at Tattersall’s, at his clubs, in his late regiments, in men’s society, in ladies’ society, in that expanding and most agreeable circle which you may call no society at all—a chorus of maledictions rises up at the mention of Baker. Know anything of Clarence Baker! My dear fellow, enough to make your hair turn white, unless (as I sometimes fondly imagine) nature has already performed that process, when of course I can’t pretend to act upon more hair-dye.” (The whiskers of the individual who addressed me, innocent, stared me in the face as he spoke, and were dyed of the most unblushing purple.) “Clarence Baker, sir, is a young man who would have been invaluable in Sparta as a warning against drunkenness and an exemplar of it. He has helped the regimental surgeon to some most interesting experiments in delirium tremens. He is known, and not in the least trusted, in every billiard-room in Brighton, Canterbury, York, Sheffield,—on every pavement which has rung with the clink of dragoon boot-heels. By a wise system of revoking at whist he has lost games which have caused not only his partners, but his opponents and the whole club to admire him and to distrust him: long before and since he was of age, he has written his eminent name to bills which have been dishonoured, and has nobly pleaded his minority as a reason for declining to pay. From the garrison towns where he has been quartered, he has carried away not only the hearts of the milliners, but their gloves, haberdashery, and perfumery. He has had controversies with Cornet Green, regarding horse transactions; disputed turf-accounts with Lieutenant Brown; and betting and backgammon differences with Captain Black. From all I have heard he is the worthy son of his admirable mother. And I bet you even on the four events, if you stay three days in a country house with him, which appears to be your present happy idea,—that he will quarrel with you, insult you, and apologize; that he will intoxicate himself more than once; that he will offer to play cards with you, and not pay on losing (if he wins, I perhaps need not state what his conduct will be); and that he will try to borrow money from you, and most likely from your servant, before he goes away.” So saying, the sententious Fitz strutted up the steps of one of his many club-haunts in Pall Mall, and left me forewarned, and I trust forearmed against Captain Clarence and all his works.

The adversary, when at length I came in sight of him, did not seem very formidable. I beheld a weakly little man with Chinese eyes, and pretty little feet and hands, whose pallid countenance told of Finishes and Casinos. His little chest and fingers were decorated with many jewels. A perfume of tobacco hung round him. His little moustache was twisted with an elaborate gummy curl. I perceived that the little hand which twirled the moustache shook woefully: and from the little chest there came a cough surprisingly loud and dismal.

He was lying on a sofa as I entered, and the children of the house were playing round him. “If you are our uncle, why didn’t you come to see us oftener?” asks Popham.

“How should I know that you were such uncommonly nice children?” asks the captain.

“We’re not nice to you,” says Popham. “Why do you cough so? Mamma used to cough. And why does your hand shake so?”

“My hand shakes because I am ill: and I cough because I’m ill. Your mother died of it, and I daresay I shall too.”

“I hope you’ll be good, and repent before you die, uncle, and I will lend you some nice books,” says Cecilia.

“Oh, bother books!” cries Pop.

“And I hope you’ll be good, Popham,” and “You hold your tongue, Miss,” and “I shall,” and “I shan’t,” and “You’re another,” and “I’ll tell Miss Prior,”—“Go and tell, telltale,”—“Boo”—“Boo”—“Boo”—“Boo”—and I don’t know what more exclamations came tumultuously and rapidly from these dear children, as their uncle lay before them, a handkerchief to his mouth, his little feet high raised on the sofa cushions.

Captain Baker turned a little eye towards me, as I entered the room, but did not change his easy and elegant posture. When I came near to the sofa where he reposed, he was good enough to call out:

“Glass of sherry!”

“It’s Mr. Batchelor; it isn’t Bedford, uncle,” says Cissy.

“Mr. Batchelor ain’t got any sherry in his pocket:—have you, Mr. Batchelor? You ain’t like old Mrs. Prior, always pocketing things, are you?” cries Pop, and falls a-laughing at the ludicrous idea of my being mistaken for Bedford.

“Beg your pardon. How should I know, you know?” drawls the invalid on the sofa. “Everybody’s the same now, you see.”

“Sir!” says I, and “sir” was all I could say. The fact is, I could have replied with something remarkably neat and cutting, which would have transfixed the languid little jackanapes who dared to mistake me for a footman; but, you see, I only thought of my repartee some eight hours afterwards when I was lying in bed, and I am sorry to own that a great number of my best bon mots have been made in that way. So, as I had not the pungent remark ready when wanted, I can’t say I said it to Captain Baker, but I daresay I turned very red, and said “Sir!” and—and in fact that was all.

“You were goin’ to say somethin’?” asked the captain, affably.

“You know my friend, Mr. Fitzboodle, I believe?” said I; the fact is, I really did not know what to say.

“Some mistake—think not.”

“He is a member of the Flag Club,” I remarked, looking my young fellow hard in the face.

“I ain’t. There’s a set of cads in that club that will say anything.”

“You may not know him, sir, but he seemed to know you very well. Are we to have any tea, children?” I say, flinging myself down on an easy chair, taking up a magazine and adopting an easy attitude, though I daresay my face was as red as a turkey-cock’s, and I was boiling over with rage.

As we had a very good breakfast and a profuse luncheon at Shrublands, of course we could not support nature till dinner-time without a five-o’clock tea; and this was the meal for which I pretended to ask. Bedford, with his silver kettle, and his buttony satellite, presently brought in this refection, and of course the children bawled out to him—

“Bedford—Bedford! uncle mistook Mr. Batchelor for you.”

“I could not be mistaken for a more honest man, Pop,” said I. And the bearer of the tea-urn gave me a look of gratitude and kindness which, I own, went far to restore my ruffled equanimity.

“Since you are the butler, will you get me a glass of sherry and a biscuit?” says the captain. And Bedford retiring, returned presently with the wine.

The young gentleman’s hand shook so, that, in order to drink his wine, he had to surprise it, as it were, and seize it with his mouth, when a shake brought the glass near his lips. He drained the wine, and held out his hand for another glass. The hand was steadier now.

“You the man who was here before?” asks the captain.

“Six years ago, when you were here, sir,” says the butler.

“What! I ain’t changed, I suppose?”

“Yes, you are, sir.”

“Then, how the dooce do you remember me?”

“You forgot to pay me some money you borrowed of me, one pound five, sir,” says Bedford, whose eyes slyly turned in my direction.

And here, according to her wont at this meal, the dark-robed Miss Prior entered the room. She was coming forward with her ordinarily erect attitude and firm step, but paused in her walk an instant, and when she came to us, I thought, looked remarkably pale. She made a slight curtsey, and it must be confessed that Captain Baker rose up from his sofa for a moment when she appeared. She then sate down, with her back towards him, turning towards herself the table and its tea apparatus.

At this board my Lady Baker found us assembled when she returned from her afternoon drive. She flew to her darling reprobate of a son. She took his hand, she smoothed back his hair from his damp forehead. “My darling child,” cries this fond mother, “what a pulse you have got!”

“I suppose, because I’ve been drinking,” says the prodigal.

“Why didn’t you come out driving with me? The afternoon was lovely!”

“To pay visits at Richmond? Not as I knows on, ma’am,” says the invalid. “Conversation with elderly ladies about poodles, bible-societies, that kind of thing? It must be a doocid lovely afternoon that would make me like that sort of game.” And here comes a fit of coughing, over which mamma ejaculates her sympathy.

“Kick—kick—killin’ myself!” gasps out the captain, “know I am. No man can lead my life, and stand it. Dyin’ by inches! Dyin’ by whole yards, by Jo—ho—hove, I am!” Indeed, he was as bad in health as in morals, this graceless captain.

“That man of Lovel’s seems a d—— insolent beggar,” he presently and ingenuously remarks.

“O uncle, you mustn’t say those words!” cries niece Cissy.

“He’s a man, and may say what he likes, and so will I, when I’m a man. Yes, and I’ll say it now, too, if I like,” cries Master Popham.

“Not to give me pain, Popham? Will you?” asks the governess.

On which the boy says,—“Well, who wants to hurt you, Miss Prior?”

And our colloquy ends by the arrival of the man of the house from the city.

What I have admired in some dear women is their capacity for quarrelling and for reconciliation. As I saw Lady Baker hanging round her son’s neck, and fondling his scanty ringlets, I remembered the awful stories with which in former days she used to entertain us regarding this reprobate. Her heart was pincushioned with his filial crimes. Under her chesnut front her ladyship’s real head of hair was grey, in consequence of his iniquities. His precocious appetite had devoured the greater part of her jointure. He had treated her many dangerous illnesses with indifference: had been the worst son, the worst brother, the most ill-conducted school-boy, the most immoral young man—the terror of households, the Lovelace of garrison towns, the perverter of young officers; in fact, Lady Baker did not know how she supported existence at all under the agony occasioned by his crimes, and it was only from the possession of a more than ordinarily strong sense of religion that she was enabled to bear her burden.

The captain himself explained these alternating maternal caresses and quarrels in his easy way.

“Saw how the old lady kissed and fondled me?” says he to his brother-in-law. “Quite refreshin’, ain’t it? Hang me, I thought she was goin’ to send me a bit of sweetbread off her own plate. Came up to my room last night, wanted to tuck me up in bed, and abused my brother to me for an hour. You see, when I’m in favour, she always abuses Baker; when he’s in favour she abuses me to him. And my sister-in-law, didn’t she give it my sister-in-law! Oh! I’ll trouble you! And poor Cecilia—why hang me, Mr. Batchelor, she used to go on—this bottle’s corked, I’m hanged if it isn’t—to go on about Cecilia, and call her.... Hullo!”

Here he was interrupted by our host, who said sternly—

“Will you please to forget those quarrels, or not mention them here? Will you have more wine, Batchelor?”

And Lovel rises, and haughtily stalks out of the room. To do Lovel justice, he had a great contempt and dislike for his young brother-in-law, which, with his best magnanimity, he could not at all times conceal.

So our host stalks towards the drawing-room, leaving Captain Clarence sipping wine.

“Don’t go, too,” says the captain. “He’s a confounded rum fellow, my brother-in-law is. He’s a confounded ill-conditioned fellow, too. They always are, you know, these tradesmen fellows, these half-bred ’uns. I used to tell my sister so; but she would have him, because he had such lots of money, you know. And she threw over a fellar she was very fond of; and I told her she’d regret it. I told Lady B. she’d regret it. It was all Lady B.’s doing. She made Cissy throw the fellar over. He was a bad match, certainly, Tom Mountain was; and not a clever fellow, you know, or that sort of thing; but at any rate, he was a gentleman, and better than a confounded sugar-baking beggar out Ratcliff Highway.”

“You seem to find that claret very good!” I remark, speaking, I may say, Socratically, to my young friend, who had been swallowing bumper after bumper.

“Claret good! Yes, doosid good!”

“Well, you see our confounded sugar-baker gives you his best.”

“And why shouldn’t he, hang him? Why, the fellow chokes with money. What does it matter to him how much he spends? You’re a poor man, I dare say. You don’t look as if you were over-flush of money. Well, if you stood a good dinner, it would be all right—I mean it would show—you understand me, you know. But a sugar-baker with ten thousand a year, what does it matter to him, bottle of claret more—less?”

“Let us go into the ladies,” I say.

“Go into mother! I don’t want to go into my mother,” cried out the artless youth. “And I don’t want to go into the sugar-baker, hang him! and I don’t want to go into the children; and I’d rather have a glass of brandy-and-water with you, old boy. Here, you! What’s your name? Bedford! I owe you five-and-twenty shillings, do I, old Bedford? Give us a good glass of Schnaps, and I’ll pay you! Look here, Batchelor. I hate that sugar-baker. Two years ago I drew a bill on him, and he wouldn’t pay it—perhaps he would have paid it, but my sister wouldn’t let him. And, I say, shall we go and have a cigar in your room? My mother’s been abusing you to me like fun this morning. She abuses everybody. She used to abuse Cissy. Cissy used to abuse her—used to fight like two cats....”

And if I narrate this conversation, dear Spartan youth! if I show thee this Helot maundering in his cups, it is that from his odious example thou mayest learn to be moderate in the use of thine own. Has the enemy who has entered thy mouth ever stolen away thy brains? Has wine ever caused thee to blab secrets; to utter egotisms and follies? Beware of it. Has it ever been thy friend at the end of the hard day’s work, the cheery companion of thy companions, the promoter of harmony, kindness, harmless social pleasure? be thankful for it. Two years since, when the comet was blazing in the autumnal sky, I stood on the château-steps of a great claret proprietor. “Boirai-je de ton vin, O comète?” I said, addressing the luminary with the flaming tail. Shall those generous bunches which you ripen yield their juices for me morituro? It was a solemn thought. Ah! my dear brethren! who knows the Order of the Fates? When shall we pass the Gloomy Gates? Which of us goes, which of us waits to drink those famous Fifty-eights? A sermon, upon my word! And pray why not a little homily on an autumn eve over a purple cluster?... If that rickety boy had only drunk claret, I warrant you his tongue would not have blabbed, his hand would not have shaken, his wretched little brain and body would not have reeled with fever.

“’Gad,” said he next day to me, “cut again last night. Have an idea that I abused Lovel. When I have a little wine on board, always speak my mind, don’t you know. Last time I was here in my poor sister’s time, said somethin’ to her, don’t quite know what it was, somethin’ confoundedly true and unpleasant I daresay. I think it was about a fellow she used to go on with before she married the sugar-baker. And I got orders to quit, by Jove, sir—neck and crop, sir, and no mistake! And we gave it one another over the stairs. O my! we did pitch in!—And that was the last time I ever saw Cecilia—give you my word. A doosid unforgiving woman, my poor sister was, and between you and me, Batchelor, as great a flirt as ever threw a fellar over. You should have heard her and my Lady B. go on, that’s all!—Well, mamma, are you going out for a drive in the coachy-poachy?—Not as I knows on, thank you, as I before had the honour to observe. Mr. Batchelor and me are going to play a little game at billiards.” We did, and I won; and, from that day to this, have never been paid my little winnings.

On the day after the doughty captain’s arrival, Miss Prior, in whose face I had remarked a great expression of gloom and care, neither made her appearance at breakfast nor at the children’s dinner. “Miss Prior was a little unwell,” Lady Baker said, with an air of most perfect satisfaction. “Mr. Drencher will come to see her this afternoon, and prescribe for her, I daresay,” adds her ladyship, nodding and winking a roguish eye at me. I was at a loss to understand what was the point of humour which amused Lady B., until she herself explained it.

“My good sir,” she said, “I think Miss Prior is not at all averse to being ill.” And the nods recommenced.

“As how?” I ask.

“To being ill, or at least to calling in the medical man.”

“Attachment between governess and Sawbones I make bold for to presume?” says the captain.

“Precisely, Clarence—a very fitting match. I saw the affair, even before Miss Prior owned it—that is to say, she has not denied it. She says she can’t afford to marry, that she has children enough at home in her brothers and sisters. She is a well-principled young woman, and does credit, Mr. Batchelor, to your recommendation, and the education she has received from her uncle, the Master of St. Boniface.”

“Cissy to school; Pop to Eton; and Miss Whatdyoucall to grind the pestle in Sawbones’ back-shop: I see!” says Captain Clarence. “He seems a low, vulgar blackguard, that Sawbones.”

“Of course, my love; what can you expect from that sort of person?” asks mamma, whose own father was a small attorney, in a small Irish town.

“I wish I had his confounded good health,” cries Clarence, coughing.

“My poor darling!” says mamma.

I said nothing. And so Elizabeth was engaged to that great, broad-shouldered, red-whiskered, young surgeon with the huge appetite and the dubious h’s! Well, why not? What was it to me? Why shouldn’t she marry him? Was he not an honest man, and a fitting match for her? Yes. Very good. Only if I do love a bird or flower to glad me with its dark blue eye, it is the first to fade away. If I have a partiality for a young gazelle it is the first to——paha! What have I to do with this namby-pamby? Can the heart that has truly loved ever forget, and doesn’t it as truly love on to the—stuff! I am past the age of such follies. I might have made a woman happy: I think I should. But the fugacious years have lapsed, my Posthumus! My waist is now a good bit wider than my chest, and it is decreed that I shall be alone!

My tone, then, when next I saw Elizabeth, was sorrowful—not angry. Drencher, the young doctor, came punctually enough, you may be sure, to look after his patient. Little Pinhorn, the children’s maid, led the young practitioner smiling towards the schoolroom regions. His creaking highlows sprang swiftly up the stairs. I happened to be in the hall, and surveyed him with a grim pleasure. “Now he is in the schoolroom,” I thought. “Now he is taking her hand—it is very white—and feeling her pulse. And so on, and so on. Surely, surely Pinhorn remains in the room?” I am sitting on a hall-table as I muse plaintively on these things, and gaze up the stairs by which the Hakeem (great, carroty-whiskered cad!) has passed into the sacred precincts of the harem. As I gaze up the stair, another door opens into the hall; a scowling face peeps through that door, and looks up the stair, too. ’Tis Bedford, who has slid out of his pantry, and watches the doctor. And thou, too, my poor Bedford! Oh! the whole world throbs with vain heart-pangs, and tosses and heaves with longing, unfulfilled desires! All night, and all over the world, bitter tears are dropping as regular as the dew, and cruel memories are haunting the pillow. Close my hot eyes, kind Sleep! Do not visit it, dear delusive images out of the Past! Often your figure shimmers through my dreams, Glorvina. Not as you are now, the stout mother of many children—you always had an alarming likeness to your own mother, Glorvina—but as you were—slim, black-haired, blue-eyed—when your carnation lips warbled the Vale of Avoca, or the Angels’ Whisper. “What!” I say then, looking up the stair, “am I absolutely growing jealous of yon apothecary?—O fool!” And at this juncture, out peers Bedford’s face from the pantry, and I see he is jealous too. I tie my shoe as I sit on the table; I don’t affect to notice Bedford in the least (who, in fact, pops his own head back again as soon as he sees mine). I take my wide-awake from the peg, set it on one side my head, and strut whistling out of the hall door. I stretch over Putney Heath, and my spirit resumes its tranquillity.

I sometimes keep a little journal of my proceedings, and on referring to its pages, the scene rises before me pretty clearly to which the brief notes allude. On this day I find noted: “Friday, July, 14.—B. came down to-day. Seems to require a great deal of attendance from Dr.—Row between dowagers after dinner.” “B.,” I need not remark, is Bessy. “Dr.,” of course, you know. “Row between dowagers,” means a battle royal between Mrs. Bonnington and Lady Baker, such as not unfrequently raged under the kindly Lovel’s roof.

Lady Baker’s gigantic menial Bulkeley condescended to wait at the family dinner at Shrublands, when perforce he had to put himself under Mr. Bedford’s orders. Bedford would gladly have dispensed with the London footman, over whose calves, he said, he and his boy were always tumbling; but Lady Baker’s dignity would not allow her to part from her own man; and her good-natured son-in-law allowed her, and indeed almost all other persons, to have their own way. I have reason to fear Mr. Bulkeley’s morals were loose. Mrs. Bonnington had a special horror of him; his behaviour in the village public-houses where his powder and plush were for ever visible—his freedom of behaviour and conversation before the good lady’s nurse and parlour-maids—provoked her anger and suspicion. More than once, she whispered to me her loathing of this flour-besprinkled monster; and, as much as such a gentle creature could, she showed her dislike to him by her behaviour. The flunkey’s solemn equanimity was not to be disturbed by any such feeble indications of displeasure. From his powdered height, he looked down upon Mrs. Bonnington, and her esteem or her dislike was beneath him.

Now on this Friday night the 14th, Captain Clarence had gone to pass the day in town, and our Bessy made her appearance again, the doctor’s prescriptions having, I suppose, agreed with her. Mr. Bulkeley, who was handing coffee to the ladies, chose to offer none to Miss Prior, and I was amused when I saw Bedford’s heel scrunch down on the flunkey’s right foot, as he pointed towards the governess. The oaths which Bulkeley had to devour in silence must have been frightful. To do the gallant fellow justice, I think he would have died rather than speak before company in a drawing-room. He limped up and offered the refreshment to the young lady, who bowed and declined it.

“Frederick,” Mrs. Bonnington begins, when the coffee-ceremony is over, “now the servants are gone, I must scold you about the waste at your table, my dear. What was the need of opening that great bottle of champagne? Lady Baker only takes two glasses. Mr. Batchelor doesn’t touch it.” (No, thank you, my dear Mrs. Bonnington: too old a stager.) “Why not have a little bottle instead of that great, large, immense one? Bedford is a teetotaler. I suppose it is that London footman who likes it.”

“My dear mother, I haven’t really ascertained his tastes,” says Lovel.

“Then why not tell Bedford to open a pint, dear?” pursues mamma.

“Oh, Bedford—Bedford, we must not mention him, Mrs. Bonnington!” cries Lady Baker. “Bedford is faultless. Bedford has the keys of everything. Bedford is not to be controlled in anything. Bedford is to be at liberty to be rude to my servant.”

“Bedford was admirably kind in his attendance on your daughter, Lady Baker,” says Lovel, his brow darkening: “and as for your man, I should think he was big enough to protect himself from any rudeness of poor Dick!” The good fellow had been angry for one moment, at the next he was all for peace and conciliation.

Lady Baker puts on her superfine air. With that air she had often awe-stricken good, simple Mrs. Bonnington; and she loved to use it whenever city folks or humble people were present. You see she thought herself your superior and mine: as de par le monde there are many artless Lady Bakers who do. “My dear Frederick!” says Lady B. then, putting on her best Mayfair manner, “excuse me for saying, but you don’t know the—the class of servant to which Bulkeley belongs. I had him as a great favour from Lord Toddleby’s. That—that class of servant is not generally accustomed to go out single.”

“Unless they are two behind a carriage-perch they pine away, I suppose,” remarks Mr. Lovel, “as one love-bird does without his mate.”

“No doubt—no doubt,” says Lady B., who does not in the least understand him; “I only say you are not accustomed here—in this kind of establishment, you understand—to that class of——”

But here Mrs. Bonnington could contain her wrath no more. “Lady Baker!” cries that injured mother, “is my son’s establishment not good enough for any powdered wretch in England? Is the house of a British merchant——”

“My dear creature—my dear creature!” interposes her ladyship, “it is the house of a British merchant, and a most comfortable house too.”

“Yes, as you find it,” remarks mamma.

“Yes, as I find it, when I come to take care of that departed angel’s children, Mrs. Bonnington!” (Lady B. here indicates the Cecilian effigy)—“of that dear seraph’s orphans, Mrs. Bonnington! You cannot. You have other duties—other children—a husband, whom you have left at home in delicate health, and who——”

“Lady Baker!” exclaims Mrs. Bonnington, “no one shall say I don’t take care of my dear husband!”

“My dear Lady Baker!—my dear—dear mother!” cries Lovel, éploré, and whimpers aside to me, “They spar in this way every night, when we’re alone. It’s too bad, ain’t it, Batch?”

“I say you do take care of Mr. Bonnington,” Baker blandly resumes (she has hit Mrs. Bonnington on the raw place, and smilingly proceeds to thong again): “I say you do take care of your husband, my dear creature, and that is why you can’t attend to Frederick! And as he is of a very easy temper,—except sometimes with his poor Cecilia’s mother,—he allows all his tradesmen to cheat him; all his servants to cheat him; Bedford to be rude to everybody; and if to me, why not to my servant Bulkeley, with whom Lord Toddleby’s groom of the chambers gave me the very highest character?”

Mrs. Bonnington in a great flurry broke in by saying she was surprised to hear that noblemen had grooms in their chambers: and she thought they were much better in the stables: and when they dined with Captain Huff, you know, Frederick, his man always brought such a dreadful smell of the stable in with him, that——Here she paused. Baker’s eye was on her; and that dowager was grinning a cruel triumph.

“He!—he! You mistake, my good Mrs. Bonnington!” says her ladyship. “Your poor mother mistakes, my dear Frederick. You have lived in a quiet and most respectable sphere, but not, you understand, not——”

“Not what, pray, Lady Baker? We have lived in this neighbourhood twenty years: in my late husband’s time, when we saw a great deal of company, and this dear Frederick was a boy at Westminster School. And we have paid for everything we have had for twenty years; and we have not owed a penny to any tradesman. And we may not have had powdered footmen, six feet high, impertinent beasts, who were rude to all the maids in the place. Don’t—I will speak, Frederick! But servants who loved us, and who were paid their wages, and who—o—ho—ho—ho!”

Wipe your eyes, dear friends! out with all your pocket-handkerchiefs. I protest I cannot bear to see a woman in distress. Of course Fred Lovel runs to console his dear old mother, and vows Lady Baker meant no harm.

“Meant harm! My dear Frederick, what harm can I mean? I only said your poor mother did not seem to know what a groom of the chambers was! How should she?”

“Come—come,” says Frederick, “enough of this! Miss Prior, will you be so kind as to give us a little music?”

Miss Prior was playing Beethoven at the piano, very solemnly and finely, when our Black Sheep returned to this quiet fold, and, I am sorry to say, in a very riotous condition. The brilliancy of his eye, the purple flush on his nose, the unsteady gait, and uncertain tone of voice, told tales of Captain Clarence, who stumbled over more than one chair before he found a seat near me.

“Quite right, old boy,” says he, winking at me. “Cut again—dooshid good fellosh. Better than being along with you shtoopid-old-fogish.” And he began to warble wild “Fol-de-rol-lolls” in an insane accompaniment to the music.

“By heavens, this is too bad!” growls Lovel. “Lady Baker, let your big man carry your son to bed. Thank you, Miss Prior!”

At a final yell, which the unlucky young scapegrace gave, Elizabeth stopped, and rose from the piano, looking very pale. She made her curtsey, and was departing when the wretched young captain sprang up, looked at her, and sank back on the sofa with another wild laugh. Bessy fled away scared, and white as a sheet.

“Take the brute to bed!” roars the master of the house, in great wrath. And scapegrace was conducted to his apartment, whither he went laughing wildly, and calling out, “Come on, old sh-sh-shugarbaker!”

The morning after this fine exhibition, Captain Clarence Baker’s mamma announced to us that her poor dear suffering boy was too ill to come to breakfast, and I believe he prescribed for himself devilled drum-stick and soda-water, of which he partook in his bedroom. Lovel, seldom angry, was violently wrath with his brother-in-law; and, almost always polite, was at breakfast scarcely civil to Lady Baker. I am bound to say that female abused her position. She appealed to Cecilia’s picture a great deal too much during the course of breakfast. She hinted, she sighed, she waggled her head at me, and spoke about “that angel” in the most tragic manner. Angel is all very well: but your angel brought in à tout propos; your departed blessing called out of her grave ever so many times a day; when grandmamma wants to carry a point of her own; when the children are naughty, or noisy; when papa betrays a flickering inclination to dine at his club, or to bring home a bachelor friend or two to Shrublands;—I say your angel always dragged in by the wings into the conversation loses her effect. No man’s heart put on wider crape than Lovel’s at Cecilia’s loss. Considering the circumstances, his grief was most creditable to him: but at breakfast, at lunch, about Bulkeley the footman, about the barouche or the phaeton, or any trumpery domestic perplexity, to have a Deus intersit was too much. And I observed, with some inward satisfaction, that when Baker uttered her pompous funereal phrases, rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, and appealed to that quarter, the children ate their jam and quarrelled and kicked their little shins under the table, Lovel read his paper and looked at his watch to see if it was omnibus time; and Bessy made the tea, quite undisturbed by the old lady’s tragical prattle.

When Baker described her son’s fearful cough and dreadfully feverish state, I said, “Surely, Lady Baker, Mr. Drencher had better be sent for;” and I suppose I uttered the disgusting dissyllable Drencher with a fine sarcastic accent; for once, just once, Bessy’s grey eyes rose through the spectacles and met mine with a glance of unutterable sadness, then calmly settled down on to the slop-basin again, or the urn in which her pale features, of course, were odiously distorted.

“You will not bring anybody home to dinner, Frederick, in my poor boy’s state?” asks Lady B.

“He may stay in his bedroom, I suppose?” replies Lovel.

“He is Cecilia’s brother, Frederick!” cries the lady.

“Conf——” Lovel was beginning. What was he about to say?

“If you are going to confound your angel in heaven, I have nothing to say, sir!” cries the mother of Clarence.

“Parbleu, madame!” cried Lovel, in French; “if he were not my wife’s brother, do you think I would let him stay here?”

“Parly Français? Oui, oui, oui!” cries Pop. “I know what Pa means!”

“And so do I know. And I shall lend uncle Clarence some books which Mr. Bonnington gave me, and——”

“Hold your tongue all!” shouts Lovel, with a stamp of his foot.

“You will, perhaps, have the great kindness to allow me the use of your carriage—or, at least, to wait here until my poor suffering boy can be moved, Mr. Lovel?” says Lady B., with the airs of a martyr.

Lovel rang the bell. “The carriage for Lady Baker—at her ladyship’s hour, Bedford: and the cart for her luggage. Her ladyship and Captain Baker are going away.”

“I have lost one child, Mr. Lovel, whom some people seem to forget. I am not going to murder another! I will not leave this house, sir, unless you drive me from it by force, until the medical man has seen my boy!” And here she and sorrow sat down again. She was always giving warning. She was always fitting the halter and traversing the cart, was Lady B., but she for ever declined to drop the handkerchief and have the business over. I saw by a little shrug in Bessy’s shoulders, what the governess’s views were of the matter: and, in a word, Lady B. no more went away on this day, than she had done on forty previous days when she announced her intention of going. She would accept benefits, you see, but then she insulted her benefactors, and so squared accounts.

That great healthy, florid, scarlet-whiskered, medical wretch came at about twelve, saw Mr. Baker and prescribed for him: and of course he must have a few words with Miss Prior, and inquire into the state of her health. Just as on the previous occasion, I happened to be in the hall when Drencher went upstairs; Bedford happened to be looking out of his pantry-door: I burst into a yell of laughter when I saw Dick’s livid face—the sight somehow suited my savage soul.

No sooner was Medicus gone, when Bessy, grave and pale, in bonnet and spectacles, came sliding downstairs. I do not mean down the banister, which was Pop’s favourite method of descent, but slim, tall, noiseless, in a nunlike calm, she swept down the steps. Of course, I followed her. And there was Master Bedford’s nose peeping through the pantry-door at us, as we went out with the children. Pray, what business of his was it to be always watching anybody who walked with Miss Prior?

“So, Bessy,” I said, “what report does Mr.—hem!—Mr. Drencher—give of the interesting invalid?”

“Oh, the most horrid! He says that Captain Baker has several times had a dreadful disease brought on by drinking, and that he is mad when he has it. He has delusions, sees demons, when he is in this state—wants to be watched.”

“Drencher tells you everything.”

She says meekly: “He attends us when we are ill.”

I remark, with fine irony: “He attends the whole family: he is always coming to Shrublands!”

“He comes very often,” Miss Prior says, gravely.

“And do you mean to say, Bessy,” I cry, madly cutting off two or three heads of yellow broom with my stick—“do you mean to say a fellow like that, who drops his h’s about the room, is a welcome visitor?”

“I should be very ungrateful if he were not welcome, Mr. Batchelor,” says Miss Prior. “And call me by my surname, please—and he has taken care of all my family—and——”

“And of course, of course, of course, Miss Prior!” say I, brutally; “and this is the way the world wags; and this is the way we are ill, and are cured; and we are grateful to the doctor that cures us!”

She nods her grave head. “You used to be kinder to me once, Mr. Batchelor, in old days—in your—in my time of trouble! Yes, my dear, that is a beautiful bit of broom! Oh, what a fine butterfly!” (Cecilia scours the plain after the butterfly.) “You used to be kinder to me once—when we were both unhappy.”

“I was unhappy,” I say, “but I survived. I was ill, but I am now pretty well, thank you. I was jilted by a false, heartless woman. Do you suppose there are no other heartless women in the world?” And I am confident, if Bessy’s breast had not been steel, the daggers which darted out from my eyes would have bored frightful stabs in it.

But she shook her head, and looked at me so sadly that my eye-daggers tumbled down to the ground at once; for you see, though I am a jealous Turk, I am a very easily appeased jealous Turk; and if I had been Bluebeard, and my wife, just as I was going to decapitate her, had lifted up her head from the block and cried a little, I should have dropped my scimitar, and said, “Come, come, Fatima, never mind for the present about that key and closet business, and I’ll chop your head off some other morning.” I say, Bessy disarmed me. Pooh! I say. Women will make a fool of me to the end. Ah! ye gracious Fates! Cut my thread of life ere it grow too long. Suppose I were to live till seventy, and some little wretch of a woman were to set her cap at me? She would catch me—I know she would. All the males of our family have been spoony and soft, to a degree perfectly ludicrous and despicable to contemplate——Well, Bessy Prior, putting a hand out, looked at me, and said,—

“You are the oldest and best friend I have ever had, Mr. Batchelor—the only friend.”

“Am I, Elizabeth?” I gasp, with a beating heart.

“Cissy is running back with a butterfly.” (Our hands unlock.) “Don’t you see the difficulties of my position? Don’t you know that ladies are often jealous of governesses; and that unless—unless they imagined I was—I was favourable to Mr. Drencher, who is very good and kind—the ladies at Shrublands might not like my remaining alone in the house with—with—you understand?” A moment the eyes look over the spectacles: at the next, the meek bonnet bows down towards the ground.

I wonder did she hear the bump—bumping of my heart? O heart!—O wounded heart! did I ever think thou wouldst bump—bump again? “Egl—Egl—izabeth,” I say, choking with emotion, “do, do, do you—te—tell me—you don’t—don’t—don’t—lo—love that apothecary?”

She shrugs her shoulder—her charming shoulder.

“And if,” I hotly continue, “if a gentleman—if a man of mature age certainly, but who has a kind heart and four hundred a-year of his own—were to say to you, ‘Elizabeth! will you bid the flowers of a blighted life to bloom again?—Elizabeth! will you soothe a wounded heart?’”——

“Oh, Mr. Batchelor!” she sighed, and then added quickly, “Please, don’t take my hand. Here’s Pop.”

And that dear child (bless him!) came up at the moment, saying, “Oh, Miss Prior! look here! I’ve got such a jolly big toadstool!” And next came Cissy, with a confounded butterfly. O Richard the Third! Haven’t you been maligned because you smothered two little nuisances in a Tower? What is to prove to me that you did not serve the little brutes right, and that you weren’t a most humane man? Darling Cissy coming up, then, in her dear, charming way, says, “You shan’t take Mr. Batchelor’s hand, you shall take my hand!” And she tosses up her little head, and walks with the instructress of her youth.

“Ces enfans ne comprennent guère le Français,” says Miss Prior, speaking very rapidly.

“Après lonche?” I whisper. The fact is, I was so agitated, I hardly knew what the French for lunch was. And then our conversation dropped: and the beating of my own heart was all the sound I heard.

Lunch came. I couldn’t eat a bit: I should have choked. Bessy ate plenty, and drank a glass of beer. It was her dinner, to be sure. Young Blacksheep did not appear. We did not miss him. When Lady Baker began to tell her story of George IV. at Slane Castle, I went into my own room. I took a book. Books? Paha! I went into the garden. I took out a cigar. But no, I would not smoke it. Perhaps she——many people don’t like smoking.

I went into the garden. “Come into the garden, Maud.” I sate by a large lilac bush. I waited. Perhaps, she would come. The morning-room windows were wide open on to the lawn. Will she never come? Ah! what is that tall form advancing? gliding—gliding into the chamber like a beauteous ghost? Who most does like an angel show, you may be sure ’tis she. She comes up to the glass. She lays her spectacles down on the mantel-piece. She puts a slim white hand over her auburn hair and looks into the mirror. Elizabeth, Elizabeth! I come!

As I came up, I saw a horrid little grinning, debauched face surge over the back of a great arm-chair and look towards Elizabeth. It was Captain Blacksheep, of course. He laid his elbows over the chair. He looked keenly and with a diabolical smile at the unconscious girl; and just as I reached the window, he cried out, “Betsy Bellenden, by Jove!”

Elizabeth turned round, gave a little cry, and——but what happened I shall tell in the ensuing chapter.

FOOTNOTES

[1] To another celebrated critic. Dear Sir—You think I mean you, but upon my honour I don’t.

Colour Blindness.

If there is one infirmity or defect of those five senses with which we are most of us blest, which more than any other attracts sympathy and claims compassionate consideration, it is blindness—an inability to know what is beautiful in form or in colour, to appreciate light, or to recognize and comprehend the varying features of our fellow-men—a perpetual darkness in the midst of a world of light—a total exclusion from the readiest, pleasantest, and most available means of acquiring ideas.

And yet who would suppose that there exists, and is tolerably common, a partial blindness, which has hardly been described as a defect for more than half a century, and of which it may be said even now that most of those who suffer from it are not only themselves ignorant of the fact, but that those about them can hardly be induced to believe it. The unhappy victims of this partial blindness (which is real and physical, not moral) are at great pains in learning what to them are minute distinctions of tint, although to the rest of the world they are differences of colour of the most marked kind, and, after all, they only obtain the credit of unusual stupidity or careless inattention in reward for their exertions and in sympathy for their visual defect. We allude to a peculiarity of vision which first attracted notice in the case of the celebrated propounder of the atomic theory in chemistry, the late Dr. Dalton, of Manchester, who on endeavouring to find some object to compare in colour with his scarlet robe of doctor of laws, when at Cambridge, could hit on nothing which better agreed with it than the foliage of the adjacent trees, and who to match his drab coat—for our learned doctor was of the Society of Friends—might possibly have selected crimson continuations as the quietest and nearest match the pattern-book of his tailor exhibited.

An explanation of this curious defect will be worth listening to, the more so as one of our most eminent philosophers, Sir John Herschel, has recently made a few remarks on the subject, directing attention at the same time to other little known but not unimportant phenomena of colour, which bear upon and help to explain it.

It is known that white light consists of the admixture of coloured rays in certain proportions, and that the beautiful prismatic colours seen in the rainbow are produced by the different degree in which the various rays of colour are bent when passing from one transparent substance into another of different density. Thus, when a small group of colour-rays, forming a single pencil or beam of white sunlight, passes into and through the atmosphere during a partial shower, and falls on a drop of rain, it is first bent aside on entering the drop, then reflected from the inside surface at the back of the drop, and ultimately emerges in an opposite direction to its original one. During these changes, however, although all the colour-rays forming the white pencil have been bent, each has been bent at a different angle—the red most, and the blue least. When therefore they come out of the drop, the red rays are quite separated from the blue, and when the beam reaches its destination, the various colours enter the eye separately, forming a line of variously coloured light, the upper part red and the lower part blue, instead of a mere point of white light, as the ray would have appeared if seen before it entered the drop. The eye naturally refers each part of the ray to the place from whence it appears to come, and thus, with a number of drops falling and the sun not obscured, a rainbow is seen, which represents part of a number of concentric circular lines of colour, the outermost of which is red, the innermost violet, and the intermediate ones we respectively name orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo.

It has also been found by careful experiment, that these are not all pure colours, most of them being mixtures of some few that are really primitive and pure, and necessarily belong to solar light. It is these mixed in due proportion which make up ordinary white light, which is the only kind seen when the sun’s rays have not undergone this sort of decomposition or separation into elements. The actual primitive colours are generally supposed to be red, yellow, and blue, and much theoretical as well as practical discussion has arisen as to how these require to be mixed, what proportion they bear to each other in their power of impressing the human eye, and many other matters for which we must refer to Mr. Field, Mr. Owen Jones, and others, who have studied the subject and applied it.

In a general way it is found convenient to remember, or rather to assume, that three parts of red, five parts of yellow, and eight parts of blue form together white, and, therefore, that the pencil of white light contains three rays of red, five of yellow, and eight of blue. To produce the other prismatic colours, we must mix red with a little yellow to form orange; yellow with some blue to form green; much blue with a little red to form indigo, and a little blue with some red to form violet. In performing experiments on colour it is convenient, instead of a drop of water, to substitute a prism of glass in decomposing the rays of light. We may thus produce at will a convenient image, called a prismatic spectrum, which, when thrown on a wall, is a broad band of coloured lights, having all the tints of the rainbow in the same order. Looking at this image, the red is at the top and the violet at the bottom, and it may be asked, How does the red get amongst the blue to form violet, if the red rays are bent up to the top of the spectrum? The answer is, that a quantity of white light not decomposed, and a part of all the colour rays, reach all parts of the spectrum, however carefully it is sheltered, but that so many more red rays get to the top, so many more of the yellow to the middle, and so many more blue to where that colour appears most brilliant, that these are seen nearly pure, whilst where the red and yellow or yellow and blue mix they produce distinct kinds of colour, and where the blue at the bottom is faint, and some of those red rays fall that do not reach the red part of the spectrum, the violet is produced. In point of fact, therefore, all the colours of the spectrum, as seen, are mixtures of pure colour with white light, while all but red are mixtures of other pure colours with some red and some yellow as well as white. Primitive and pure colours, therefore, are not obtained in the spectrum, and a question has arisen as to which really deserve to be called pure, Dr. Young upholding green against yellow, and even regarding violet as primitive, and blue a mixed colour. A consideration of the results of this theory would lead us farther than is necessary for the purpose we have now in view.

We also find philosophers now-a-days calmly discussing a question which most people considered settled very long ago, namely, whether blue and yellow together really make green.

It is of no use for the artist to lift up his eyes with astonishment at any one being so insane as to question so generally admitted a statement. In vain does he point to his pictures, in which his greens have been actually so produced. The strict photologist at once puts him down, by informing him that he knows little or nothing of the real state of the case: his (the artist’s) colours are negative, or hues of more or less complete darkness; whereas in nature, the colour question is to be decided by positive colours, or hues in which all the light used is of one kind. The meaning of this will be best understood by an example: When a ray of white light falls on a green leaf, part of the ray is absorbed and part reflected, and the object is therefore only seen with the part that is reflected. That which is absorbed consists of some of each of the colour rays, and the resulting reflected light is nothing more than a mixture of what remains after this partial absorption. The green we see consists of the original white light deprived of a portion of its rays. It is not a pure and absolute green, but only a residual group of coloured rays, and thus in so far the green colour is negative, or consists of rays not absorbed. It is therefore partial darkness, and not absolute light. If, however, on the other hand, a ray of white light is passed through a transparent medium (e. g. some chemical salt) which has the property of entirely absorbing all but one or more of the colour rays, and no part of the remainder, then all the light that passes through this medium is of the one colour, or a mixture of the several colours that pass: and if such light is thrown on a white ground, the reflected colour will be positive, and not negative, and is far purer as well as brighter than the colour obtained in the other way. It has been found by actual experiment, that when positive blue, thus obtained, is thrown on positive yellow, the resulting reflected colour bears no resemblance to green. Sir John Herschel considers, that whether green is a primitive colour—in other words, whether we really have three or four primitive colours—remains yet an open question.

It was necessary to explain these matters about colour before directly referring to the subject of this paper, namely, blindness to certain colour rays. It should also be clearly understood that the persons subject to this peculiar condition of vision have not necessarily any mechanical or optical defect in the eye as an optical instrument, which may be strong or weak, long-sighted or short-sighted, quite independently of it. Colour blindness does not in any way interfere with the ordinary requirements of vision, nor is there the smallest reason to imagine that it can get worse by neglect, or admit of any improvement by education or treatment.

Assuming that persons of ordinary vision see three simple colours, red, yellow, and blue, and that all the rest of the colours are mixtures of these with each other and with white light, let us try to picture to ourselves what must be the visual condition of a person who is unable to recognize certain rays; and as it appears that there is but one kind of colour-blindness known, we will assume that the person is unable to recognize those rays of white light which consist of pure red and nothing else. In other words, let us investigate the sensations of a person blind so far only as pure red is concerned.

All visible objects either reflect the same kind of light as that which falls on them, absorbing part and reflecting the rest, or else they absorb more of some colour rays than others, and reflect only a negative tint, made up of a mixture of all the colour-rays not absorbed. To a colour-blind person, the mixed light, as it proceeds from the sun, is probably white, as seen by those having perfect vision; for, as we have explained already, positive blue and yellow (the colour rays when red is excluded) do not make green, and the absence of the red ray is likely to produce only a slight darkening effect. So far, then, there is no difference. But how must it be with regard to colour.

Bearing in mind what has been said above, it is evident that in withdrawing the red rays from the spectrum, we affect all the colours. The orange is no longer red and yellow, but darkened yellow; the yellow is purer, the green is quite distinct, the blue purer, and the indigo and violet no longer red and blue, but blue mingled with more or less of darkness, the violet being the darkest, as containing least blue in proportion to red, while the red part itself, though not seen as a colour, is not absolutely black, inasmuch as its part of the spectrum is faintly coloured with the few mixed rays of blue and yellow and white that escape from their proper place. The red then ought to be seen as a gray neutral tint, the orange a dingy yellow, the indigo a dirty indigo, and the violet a sickly, disagreeable tint of pale blue, darkened considerably with black and gray.

Next let us take the case of an intelligent person affected with colour blindness, but who is not yet aware of the fact. He has been taught from childhood that certain shades, some darker and some brighter, but all of neutral tint, and not really presenting to him colour at all, are to be called by various names—scarlet, crimson, pale red, dark red, bright red, dark green, dark purple, brown, and others. With all these he can only associate an idea of gray; nor can he possibly know that any one else sees more than he does. Having been taught the names they are called by, he remembers the names, with more or less accuracy, and thus passes muster. There is a real difference of tint, because each of these colours consists of more or less blue, yellow, and white, mixed with the red; and our friend is enabled to recognize and name them, more or less correctly, according to his acuteness of perception and accuracy of memory.

If we desire to experiment on such a person, we must ask no names whatever, but simply place before him a number of similar objects differently coloured. Taking, for example, skeins of coloured wools, let us select a complete series of shades of tint, from red, through yellow, green, and blue, to violet, and request him to arrange them as well as he is able, placing the darkest shades first, and putting those tints together that are most like each other. It is curious then to watch the progress of the arrangement. In a case lately tried by the writer of this article, the colour-blind person first threw aside at once a particular shade of pale green as undoubted white, and then several dark blues, dark reds, dark greens, and browns, were put together as black. The yellows and pure blues were placed correctly, as far as name was concerned, by arranging several shades in order of brightness—but the order was very different from that which another person would have selected. The greens were grouped, some with yellows, and some with blues.

The colours in this experiment were all negative and impure, but we may also obtain something like the same result with positive colour, transmitted by the aid of polarized light through plates of mica. In a case of this kind described by Sir J. Herschel, the only colours seen were blue and yellow, while pale pinks and greens were regarded as cloudy white, fine pink as very pale blue, and crimson as blue; white red, ruddy pink, and brick red were all yellows, and fine pink blue, with much yellow. Dark shades of red, blue, or brown, were considered as merely dark, no colour being recognized.

The account of Dr. Dalton’s own peculiarity of vision by himself, offers considerable interest. He says, speaking of flowers: “With respect to colours that were white, yellow, or green, I readily assented to the appropriate term; blue, purple, pink, and crimson appeared rather less distinguishable, being, according to my idea, all referable to blue. I have often seriously asked a person whether a flower was blue or pink, but was generally considered to be in jest.” He goes on further to say, as the result of his experience: “1st. In the solar spectrum three colours appear, yellow, blue, and purple. The two former make a contrast; the two latter seem to differ more in degree than in kind. 2nd. Pink appears by daylight to be sky-blue a little faded; by candlelight it assumes an orange or yellowish appearance, which forms a strong contrast to blue. 3rd. Crimson appears muddy blue by day, and crimson woollen yarn is much the same as dark blue. 4th. Red and scarlet have a more vivid and flaming appearance by candlelight than by daylight” (owing probably to the quantity of yellow light thrown upon them).

As anecdotes concerning this curious defect of colour vision, we may quote also the following: “All crimsons appeared to me (Dr. Dalton) to be chiefly of dark blue, but many of them have a strong tinge of dark brown. I have seen specimens of crimson claret and mud which were very nearly alike. Crimson has a grave appearance, being the reverse of every showy or splendid colour.” Again: “The colour of a florid complexion appears to me that of a dull, opaque, blackish blue upon a white ground. Dilute black ink upon white paper gives a colour much resembling that of a florid complexion. It has no resemblance to the colour of blood.” We have a detailed account of the case of a young Swiss, who did not perceive any great difference between the colour of the leaf and that of the ripe fruit of the cherry, and who confounded the colour of a sea-green paper with the scarlet of a riband placed close to it. The flower of the rose seemed to him greenish blue, and the ash gray colour of quick-lime light green. On a very careful comparison of polarized light by the same individual, the blue, white, and yellow were seen correctly, but the purple, lilac, and brown were confounded with red and blue. There was in this case a remarkable difference noticed according to the nature and quantity of light employed; and as the lad seemed a remarkably favourable example of the defect, the following curious experiment was tried. A human head was painted, and shown to the colour-blind person, the hair and eyebrows being white, the flesh brownish, the lips and cheeks green. When asked what he thought of this head? the reply was, that it appeared natural, but that the hair was covered with a nearly white cap, and the carnation of the cheeks was that of a person heated by a long walk.

There is an interesting account in the Philosophical Transactions for 1859 (p. 325), which well illustrates the ideas entertained by persons in this condition with regard to their own state. The author, Mr. W. Pole, a well-known civil engineer, thus describes his case:—“I was about eight years old when the mistaking of a piece of red cloth for a green leaf betrayed the existence of some peculiarity in my ideas of colour; and as I grew older, continued errors of a similar kind led my friends to suspect that my eyesight was defective; but I myself could not comprehend this, insisting that I saw colours clearly enough, and only mistook their names.

“I was articled to a civil engineer, and had to go through many years’ practice in making drawings of the kind connected with this profession. These are frequently coloured, and I recollect often being obliged to ask in copying a drawing what colours I ought to use; but these difficulties left no permanent impression, and up to a mature age I had no suspicion that my vision was different from that of other people. I frequently made mistakes, and noticed many circumstances in regard to colours, which temporarily perplexed me. I recollect, in particular, having wondered why the beautiful rose light of sunset on the Alps, which threw my friends into raptures, seemed all a delusion to me. I still, however, adhered to my first opinion, that I was only at fault in regard to the names of colours, and not as to the ideas of them; and this opinion was strengthened by observing that the persons who were attempting to point out my mistakes, often disputed among themselves as to what certain hues of colour ought to be called.” Mr. Pole adds that he was nearly thirty years of age when a glaring blunder obliged him to investigate his case closely, and led to the conclusion that he was really colour-blind.

All colour-blind persons do not seem to make exactly the same mistakes, or see colours in the same way; and there are, no doubt, many minor defects in appreciating, remembering, or comparing colours which are sufficiently common, and which may be superadded to the true defect—that of the optic nerve being insensible to the stimulus of pure red light. It has been asserted by Dr. Wilson, the author of an elaborate work on the subject, that as large a proportion as one person in every eighteen is colour-blind in some marked degree, and that one in every fifty-five confounds red with green. Certainly the number is large, for every inquiry brings out several cases; but, as Sir John Herschel remarks, were the average anything like this, it seems inconceivable that the existence of the defect should not be one of vulgar notoriety, or that it should strike almost all uneducated persons, when told of it, as something approaching to absurdity. He also remarks, that if one soldier out of every fifty-five was unable to distinguish a scarlet coat from green grass, the result would involve grave inconveniences that must have attracted notice. Perhaps the fact that a difference of tint is recognized, although the eye of the colour-blind person does not appreciate any difference of colour, when red, green, and other colours are compared together, and that every one is educated to call certain things by certain names, whether he understands the true meaning of the name or not, may help to explain both the slowness of the defective sight to discover its own peculiarity, and the unwillingness of the person of ordinary vision to admit that his neighbour really does not see as red what he agrees to call red.

There is, however, another consideration that this curious subject leads to. It is known that out of every 10,000 rays issuing from the sun, and penetrating space at the calculated rate of 200,000 miles in each second of time, about one-fifth part is altogether lost and absorbed in passing through the atmosphere, and never reaches the outer envelope of the human eye. It is also known that of the rays that proceed from the sun, some produce light, some heat, and some a peculiar kind of chemical action to which the marvels of photography are due. Of these only the light rays are appreciated specially by the eye, although the others are certainly quite as important in preserving life and carrying on the business of the world. Who can tell whether, in addition to the rays of coloured light that together form a beam of white light, four-fifths of which only pass through the atmosphere, there may not have emanated from the sun other rays altogether absorbed and lost? or whether in entering the human eye, or being received on the retina at the back of the eye, or made sensitive by the optic nerve, there may not have been losses and absorptions sufficient to shut out from us, who enjoy what we call perfect vision, some other sources of information. How, in a word, do we who see clearly only three or four colours, and their various combinations, together with their combined white light—how do we know that to beings otherwise organized, the heat, or chemical rays, or others we are not aware of, may not give distinct optical impressions? We may meet one person whose sense of hearing is sufficiently acute to enable him to hear plainly the shrill night-cry of the bat, often totally inaudible, while his friend and daily companion cannot perhaps distinguish the noise of the grasshopper, or the croaking of frogs, and yet neither of these differs sufficiently from the generality of mankind to attract attention, and both may pass through life without finding out their differences in organization, or knowing that the sense of hearing of either is peculiar. So undoubtedly it is with light. There may be some endowed with visual powers extraordinarily acute, seeing clearly what is generally altogether invisible; and this may have reference to light generally, or to any of the various parts of which a complete sunbeam is composed. Such persons may habitually see what few others ever see, and yet be altogether unaware of their powers, as the rest of the world would be of their own deficiency.

The case of the colour-blind person is the converse. He sees, it is true, no green in the fields, or on the trees, no shade of pink mantling in the countenance, no brilliant scarlet in the geranium flower, but still he talks of these things as if he saw them, and he believes he does see them, until by a long process of investigation he finds out that the idea he receives from them is very different from that received by his fellows. He often, however, lives on for years, and many have certainly lived out their lives without guessing at their deficiency.

These results of physical defects of certain kinds remaining totally unknown, either to the subject of them or his friends, even when all are educated and intelligent, are certainly very curious; but it will readily be seen that they are inevitable in the present development of our faculties. In almost everything, whether moral or intellectual, we measure our fellows by our own standard. He whose faculties are powerful, and whose intellect is clear, looks over the cloud that hovers over lower natures, and wonders why they, too, will not see truth and right as he sees them. Those, on the other hand, who dwell below among the mists of error and the trammels of prejudice, will not believe that their neighbour, intellectually loftier, sees clearly over the fog and malaria of their daily atmosphere.

In taking leave of the question of colour blindness, it should be mentioned that hitherto no case has been recorded in which this defect extends to any other ray than the red.

There seems no reason for this, and possibly, if they were looked for, cases might be found in which the insensibility of the optic nerve had reference to the blue instead of the red ray—the least instead of the most refrangible part of the beam of light. It would also be well worth the trial if those who have any reason to suppose that they enjoy a superiority of vision would determine by actual experiment the extent of their unusual powers, and learn whether they refer to an optical appreciation of the chemical or heat rays, or show any modification of the solar spectrum by enlargement or otherwise.

Lastly, it would be well, when children show an unusual difficulty in describing colours, to try by some such experiments as those here related whether any defect of colour blindness exists or not. It would clearly be undesirable that such children as have this defect should waste time in learning accomplishments or professions which they must always be unable to practise. They, their parents and teachers, may thus be saved some of that disappointment which is always experienced when presumed tastes and talents are cultivated or forced contrary to the natural powers of the individual. It must clearly be hopeless to endeavour to obtain good taste in colours, when most of the colours themselves are not seen at all, or are so recognized as to present appearances altogether different from those seen by the rest of the world.

Spring.

Here, where the tall plantation firs

Slope to the river, down the hill,

Strange impulses—like vernal stirs—

Have made me wander at their will.

I see, with half-attentive eyes,

The buds and flowers that mark the Spring,

And Nature’s myriad prophecies

Of what the Summer suns will bring.

For every sense I find delight—

The new-wed cushat’s murmurous tones,

Young blossoms bursting into light,

And the rich odour of the cones.

The larch, with tassels purple-pink,

Whispers like distant falling brooks;

And sun-forgotten dewdrops wink

Amid the grass, in shady nooks.

The breeze, that hangs round every bush,

Steals sweetness from the tender shoots,

With, here and there, a perfumed gush

From violets among the roots.

See—where behind the ivied rock

Grow drifts of white anemonies,

As if the Spring—in Winter’s mock—

Were mimicking his snows with these.

The single bloom yon furzes bear

Gleams like the fiery planet Mars:—

The creamy primroses appear

In galaxies of vernal stars;—

And, grouped in Pleiad clusters round,

Lent-lilies blow—some six or seven;—

With blossom-constellations crown’d,

This quiet nook resembles Heaven.

Thomas Hood.

Inside Canton.

The mere notion that I was in possession of a room inside Canton—with freedom to wander through every quarter of that hitherto mysterious city, of which former travellers had only conveyed a notion from glances taken from the White Cloud Mountain, revealing nothing but an expanse of tiles and trees, with a pagoda-top or two, and a few mandarin flag-poles—was sufficient to banish anything like sleep. And apart from this constant wondering at perpetually finding myself where I was—the sharp “tung” of the mosquitoes before settling down for their gory banquet, the calls of the French and English bugles answering each other from the five-storied pagoda to the joss-house barracks, the terribly breathless atmosphere, and the grim, gigantic Chinese gods, who sat in the moonlight like pantomime ogres round my chamber, were quite enough to have kept one awake, and would have done so even if a genius had descended to read a paper on Art, which they might have discussed with him afterwards.

At last the quickly-rising tropical sun fired a ray like a shell into my eyes through a broken pane in the mother-of-pearl window of my joss-haunted room. This drove me out of bed, or, rather, off my matting, as quickly as though a real shrapnell had hissed its intention of immediately exploding beneath me. For this fearful sun of a Canton summer falls in red-hot death upon the European whose brain it can reach. Our soldiers were struck down before it in the White Cloud expedition as though a crane had dropped a woolsack on their heads.

We have all of us, at some time or another, said, “I never felt so hot in my life!” This has been less with relation to actual caloric than to a sudden flush of awkwardness attendant upon having asked people after their dead relations, or uncomfortable family affairs; or in expectation of some accidental and unintentional revelation of a circumstance in our own lives, of which we were not remarkably proud. Or, more especially, on being introduced by a gushing man to an enemy you had long since cut, with the assurance that you ought both to know each other. But I find this morning that I feel hotter still. The wind blows against me as from the door of a glasshouse; and the sun comes straight down like a red-hot nail, even through my double umbrella (which I am careful to put up before I venture out on the terrace), and my light but thick pith hat. At such times your claret is self-mulled, and butter becomes thick oil. You cannot find a cool place on your hard-stuffed pillow. The sun apparently twists its rays—sends them round corners, and through venetians, and under porticos; the light being so vivid that its mere reflection banishes shade. The swinging punkah—which A-wa, whose picture you have seen on cheap grocers’ tea-papers, pulls night and day, awake and asleep, as though he were a slightly vitalized lever-escapement—this flounced and flirting terror of all bilious people gets up a delusive breeze, and when it stops the heat comes rushing back with double force. Everything you wear clings to you; or, if flannel, fetches out the “prickly heat” until you are beside yourself. In every draught, one side is chilled whilst the other is burned, as happens at the fireplace of an old country house, where one side is roasted, whilst on the other you are nearly blown up the chimney. And when you are actually out and about, you appear to live and move in the focus of one large burning-glass. It is a dead thick heat, that you fancy might be cut into blocks, and stored in Arctic ships for gradual distribution.

The kindness of General Straubenzee had consigned me to a Buddhist temple for my residence. It was the last costly work of Yeh, on Magazine Hill, and was barely finished when we took the city. An elaborate bell, yet unhung, stood sentinel at my door. I afterwards watched its departure to be taken to England, by Captain Maguire, in the Sanspareil, and it may now be seen in the Crystal Palace. Magazine Hill is to Canton what Montmartre is to Paris, and is covered with joss-houses, now all used as barracks for our men. It is to the extreme north of the city, which it commands, as well as the country outside, and is the only high ground within the walls, which here come close to it. Gazing from this on the open country, one is reminded of the view from the walls of our own Chester, near the jail, looking over the Roodee towards the Welsh mountains. To continue the comparison with places which may be familiar to my readers, the look-out towards the south, comprising the entire city, is marvellously like the eye-stretch over Lyons from the Fourvières, when the air is too hazy to see the Alps. There is, however, one localized object—a tall pagoda, rising high above the expanse of red roofs. One involuntary thought of Kew Gardens brings one back, for the moment, to home; and as this pagoda is not considered safe to ascend—on the authority of Major Luard, who gallantly tried it—and as it promises at some future time, if not taken down, to form a gigantic accident (as all columns and pagodas must do one of these days) the likeness is more perfect.

I found a sturdy little unshod pony waiting for me at the foot of the hill, with a tidy little pigtailed boy to guide him. The pony was for sale for seven dollars—it sounded cheap, but the expense of keep was the great question. My little friend made a speech:—“Chin-chin! my talkee A No. 1 Inglis, all a plopper (proper).” But I found his vocabulary of even the scanty “Canton English” very limited. I made out, however, that he was going to London to learn “all sort pigeon;” and he was very much delighted at pointing out to me some signboards over a few little shops, edging a pond, and reading:—“Best Wash from Hong Kong,” “A No. 1, Washsoap,” &c. And when we passed two culprits, tied together by their pigtails, and lying full-length upon the ground, guarded by an Irishman in front of a baraque, inscribed “Paddy-goose” (a favourite sobriquet at the dram-shops), he roared with laughter, and said:—“Soger hab catchee two piecey pilat, too muchee drunkee—wanchee chokee-pigeon: no loast duck.” This interpreted expressing, with the Chinese substitution of the l for the r, that two pirates had been captured by the police in an extreme state of intoxication, and that they would go to prison, where roast duck would be a novelty.

After passing over a desert of brick rubbish—the remains of houses destroyed because they formed ambuscades from which the lurking braves captured or shot at stragglers on the walls, I was fairly inside Canton. Here the streets are all so exactly alike, that in endeavouring to give a notion of one, I may describe all. The majority appeared to vary from seven to ten feet in breadth—the crowded Cranbourn Passage, which runs from St. Martin’s Lane to Castle Street could be soon transformed into one, by a handful of theatrical mechanics. The houses are two or three stories high, and their signboards, in gaudy paint or gilding, either hang in front of them, or are set up in stone sockets, and all at right angles to the houses, so that, as the China character is written perpendicularly, they can be read going up or down the street. The manner in which they intrude on the thoroughfare braves all notices of Commissioners and Boards. The streets are all paved with granite in large flags, and this has acquired a peculiarly polished appearance from the absence of all wheel and quadrupedal traffic, and the constant shuffling along of the soft soles or naked feet of the natives. For the Cantonese do not appear to understand the use of wheels, or beasts of burden; everything is carried on bamboo poles by the intensely hard-working coolie population. Where they can do it, the streets are shaded with matting.

And now it was that all my childish associations connected with China were on the point of realization. For in the “pigeon” of Lord Elgin and Sir Michael Seymour—who must shake hands, and understand how much and how honestly both are respected by all of us—in the China Mail information that Patna opium is at 770 dollars, Malwa dull, and for Turkey no demand; and that Bank bills are 4s. 9d.; Sycee silver, 5½ per cent. premium, and Shanghai green-tea quotations are unchanged—in a whirl of treaties, and Peiho forts, and conferences totally misunderstood on either side, from the dismal ignorance of the practical Chinese language amongst our professed Chinese students (who could translate the great metaphysical work of Fo, but would be sadly bothered to decide a simple police “row”);—in all this, there is nothing in common with our old China. But here these associations crowded on us. Men ran along with slung tea-packages, as they did on the gaily-varnished canisters of the “Canton T Company,” in the High Street of my boyhood. Women with their bismuthed faces peered from windows, as they did on the fans and plates from which I formed my earliest notions of what was then called “the Celestial Empire.” And then came another memory, clinging to that delightful time when a belief in the reality of everything was our principal mental characteristic, extending even to “Bogey” in the cellar, and the dustman who threw sand in the eyes of sleepy little boys on the staircase, and the black dog in the passage; nay, even to that celebrated silver spade with which the doctor dug up our little baby brother or sister from out of the parsley-bed—when story-books had that astonishing hold on me that, out of our town, I perfectly established the field along which Christian ran with his fingers in his ears when his neighbours tried to call him back. (And if ever there was a case for the parochial authorities of a man deserting his wife and children, Christian’s was one.) In this happy time I had associations with China, and they now come back from one of the most charming of the attractive stories in the Arabian Nights Entertainments. I was now looking—practically, with my own eyes—on a Chinese town, and a group of idle boys playing. A grave stranger of a foreign and travelled aspect was watching them. I should not have been at all surprised if he had recognized, in one of the urchins, the son of his dead brother—had clothed him at a ready-made tailor’s, and then introduced him, by lifting up a stone with a ring in it, to those wonderful nursery grounds of Hunt and Roskill, and Phillips, and Garrard, where the dew was all diamonds, and the wall-fruit all stones. And was it not likely that, in this very street, the stranger might have subsequently passed when anxious to exchange his new moderator lamps for any old argands, or solars, or camphines that might be dust-collecting about the house? Here again was an open space of ground, on which that palace might have stood, which went away one night in such a hurry. And strange to say, there was a palace here, and it did disappear one early January morning. It belonged to that old miscreant Yeh, and its sudden absence was owing rather to the sponging of practical guns than the rubbing of wonderful lamps. And although I heard nothing, both here and at Hong Kong, but of Hall of the Calcutta, and Mr. Oliphant; Telesio’s pale ale “chop” (or boat store); John Dent’s French cook’s chow-chow; the arrival of the Fei-man steamer; Colonel Stevenson’s bamboo balcony on the hill: the 59th; Sir John Bowring and Mr. Chisholm Anstey: and innumerable “shaves:” yet my thoughts ran upon Confucius and pagodas, nodding mandarins, chop-sticks, and the feast of lanterns, and above all, on Aladdin.

I was to join Mr. Parkes at the yamun of the Allied Commissioners, and go with him to pay a visit to Peh-kwei, the Governor of Canton. This yamun had been the palace of the Tartar general, but was now filled with English and French officials, soldiers, marines, compradors, coolies, and Chinese rabble, attending the police cases. We here formed a small procession, and our revolvers came into show; for Mr. Parkes was the most unpopular man in the city with the Cantonese. They called him “the red-bristled barbarian,” and had let fly various jingals at him, at different times, in the streets. But he had the courage of the——anybody you please; and the more they annoyed him, the more he would ride them down, and bang them back into their ambuscades. We were all on ponies or in chairs, with the exception of our guards; and we rode so fast along the narrow streets, and through the bustling crowds of passengers, and almost over the wares displayed out of doors, that a fire-engine going through the Lowther Arcade in a hurry could not have created greater confusion. On entering the first court of Peh-kwei’s yamun, we were saluted with guns, and standards were hoisted on the mandarin poles. These courts are large paved areas, with a very broad flag-path up the middle, and fine trees at the sides; they are divided from each other by vast wooden buildings, like barns, with Chinese roofs, and stone lions guarding them. The patient ingenuity of the makers is shown in these animals; they have a large ball in their mouths, which you can turn round behind the teeth, but cannot take out; it has evidently been cut from the solid. We rode through the centre of these barns, up the stairs, to a higher court beyond, but our attendants filed off round the sides; and then we dismounted, and were introduced to Peh-kwei. I had often seen him wagging his head, and tongue, and hands, in old china-shops; but now he stood upright, in a long, white silk peignoir: and then he and Mr. Parkes began bowing to one another in such continuity, that they looked wound up, and minutes elapsed before either of them would take a seat. Then tea was brought in, and for a little time the talk was exactly like the twaddle that passes at a morning call in England between people who don’t care a straw about each other, never have, and are never likely to. But Mr. Parkes began to pull some Chinese documents from his pocket; and as I had been introduced as “a mandarin on his travels,” Peh-kwei made a very lucky suggestion that I should see his grounds.

This was just what I wanted—liberty to invade what would have been deemed a privacy even by the Cantonese; but the acres of unkept, overgrown wilderness, with its rotting pavilions, tumble-down temples, dried-up lakes, crumbling rockwork, and broken seats and tables, formed the spring of all the impressions I afterwards received in and about Canton. Nothing so dreary—not even Vauxhall on a wet Christmas Day—ever could be imagined. It was not the breakdown of acute organic lesion, but the decay of long, long-continued atrophy: and I formed a theory at the moment, which the appearance of every other yamun, or temple, strengthened, that the Chinese had for ages so jealously shut up their vaunted city, not from any terror of the barbarians becoming acquainted with their secrets of trade, government, or manufacture, but from a positive idea of shame that any one should see the mouldering neglected “lions” of their southern capital. True to the estimated value of their curios, everything was in a state of “crackle.” Combine all you can call to mind of dreary places—Miss Linwood’s old room in Leicester Square, and the present aspect of the Square itself; the gaunt, cheerless show-rooms of palaces generally: the “Moated Grange” and “Haunted House;” the old pavilion on Monkey Island, and indeed “pavilions” generally, from that in Hans Place to any damp ceiling-stained summer-house, dedicated to friendship or nature, that you know of—mix them together, and extract their essence, and then you will not have the least idea of the general rot and ruin that is spreading, like an ulcer, throughout Canton.

William Hogarth:
PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER.
Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time.

III.—A long Ladder, and Hard to Climb.

When a cathedral chapter have received their congé d’élire—so runs the popular and perfectly erroneous tradition—and have made choice of a Bishop, the pastor elect simpers, blushes, and says that really he is much obliged, but that he would rather not accept the proffered dignity. “Nolo episcopari,” he urges in graceful deprecation. Nobody in or out of the chapter believes in his reluctance, and nobody now-a-days believes in the harmless legend. Thus, too, when the Commons elect a Speaker, a tradition with little more foundation assumes that the right honourable gentleman approaches the foot of the Throne, hints in the most delicate manner that he, the chosen of the Commons, is a blockhead and an impostor, declares that he shall make but an indifferent Speaker, and seeks to be relieved from his onerous charge. At that same moment, perhaps, Messrs. Adams and Ede are embroidering Mr. Speaker’s gold robe; and experienced tonsors near Lincoln’s Inn are finishing the last row of curls on the ambrosial horse-hair which to-morrow will be a wig. When you ask a young lady to take a little more Mayonnaise de homard, or entreat her to oblige the company with “Entends tu les gondoles?”—that charming Venetian barcarole—does she not ordinarily, and up to a certain degree of pressure, refuse—say that she would rather not, or that she has a cold? Whose health is proposed and drunk amid repeated cheers, but he rises, and assures the assembled guests that he is about the last person in the world who should have been toasted; that he never felt so embarrassed in his life—he leads at the common law bar, and on breaches of promise is immense—and that he wants words to, &c. &c.? At the bar mess he is known as “Talking Smith,” and at school his comrades used to call him “Captain Jaw.” My friends, we do not place any faith in these denials; and forthwith clap the mitre on the Prelate’s head, bow to the Speaker, help the young lady to arrange the music stool, and intone nine times nine with one cheer more.

It is strange—it is vexatious; but I cannot persuade the ladies and gentlemen who peruse these papers to believe that I am not writing the Life of William Hogarth, and that these are merely discursive Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time. People persist in thinking that it is with him who is now writing a case of nolo episcopari. Indeed it is no such thing. I should dearly wish to write myself Biographer. “Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall.” I told you in the outset that this Endeavour was no Life. I disclaimed any possession of exclusive information. I claimed a liberal benefit-of-clergy as to names and dates. I have had no access to muniment rooms. I have explored the contents of no charter chests. I have disentombed no dusty records, and rescued no parish registers from the degrading fate of serving to singe a goose. I am timorous, and seek not to be heard as one speaking with authority. I am anonymous, and risk no fame. But the north country won’t believe me, and the south and the midland shake their heads incredulously when I say this is not Hogarth’s Life, but only so much gossip about him and his pictures and times. I say so again; and if the public won’t be enlightened—si vult decipi—all I can add is, Decipiatur.

Now as to the exact date of the expiration of Hogarth’s apprenticeship—when was it? I have but an impression. I cannot speak from any certain knowledge, and assume, therefore, that the expiry was circa 1720. Ireland opines that it was in 1718, William having then attained his twenty-first year. The registers of the Goldsmiths’ Company might be more explicit, or, better still, Mr. Scott, the chamberlain of London, might enlighten us all, to a month, and to a day. For of old the chamberlain was the official Nemesis to the ofttimes unruly ’prentices of London. The idle, or rebellious, or truant novice, was arraigned before this dread functionary. He had power to relegate the offender to the carcere duro of Bridewell, there to suffer the penance of stripes and a bread-and-water diet. For aught I know, the ministrations of the chamberlain may to this day be occasionally invoked; but it is in his capacity of a recording official, and as having formerly drawn some fees from the attestation and registration of indentures, that his assistance would be useful to me. William Hogarth’s art-and-mystery-parchment may be in the city archives. What other strange and curiously quaint things those archives contain we had an inkling the other day, when the Liber Albus was published. But I have not the pleasure of Mr. Scott’s acquaintance, and he might say me nay.

Hogarth, I presume, was released from silver servitude in 1718-20. April 29th, 1720, is, as I have elsewhere noted, the date affixed to the shop-card he executed for himself, setting up in business, I hope in friendly rivalry to Ellis Gamble in Little Cranbourn Alley, hard by the “Golden Angel.” I stood and mused in Little Cranbourn Alley lately, and tried to conjure up Hogarthian recollections from that well-nigh blind passage. But no ghosts rose from a coffee-shop and a French barber’s, and a murky little den full of tobacco-pipes and penny valentines; so, taking nothing by my motion, I sped my slowest to the Sablonière in Leicester Square. Here even my senses became troubled with the odours of French soups, and I could make nothing Hogarthian out of the hostelry, a wing of which was once Hogarth’s house.

It is my wish to tell as succinctly as is feasible the story of seven years in Hogarth’s progress; seven years during which he was slowly, painfully, but always steadily and courageously, climbing that precipitous ladder which we have all in some sort or another striven to climb. At the top sits Fame kicking her heels, carrying her trumpet mincingly, making sometimes a feint to put it to her lips and sound it, more frequently looking down superciliously with eyes half closed, and pretending to be unaware of the panting wretch toiling up the weary rungs beneath. Some swarm up this ladder as boys up a pole, hand over hand, a good grip with the knees, a confident, saucy, upward look. Others stop in medio, look round, sigh, or are satisfied, and gravely descend to refresh themselves with bread and cheese for life. Some stagger up, wildly, and tumbling off, are borne, mutilated, to the hospital accident-ward to die. Others there are who indeed obtain the ladder’s summit, but are doomed to crawl perpetually up and down the degrees. These are the unfortunates who carry hods to those master bricklayers who have bounded up the ladder with airy strides, or better still, have been born at the top of the ladder. Poor hodmen! they make dictionaries, draw acts of parliament, cram the boy-senator for his maiden speech, form Phidias’ rough clay-sketch into a shapely, polished marble bust, shade with Indian ink Archimedes’ rough draught for the new pump or the tubular bridge, and fill in Sir Joshua’s backgrounds. Some there are who go to sleep at the ladder’s foot, and some, the few, the felicitous, who reach the summit, breathless but triumphant, boldly bidding Fame blow her loudest blast. Forthwith the venal quean makes the clarion to sound, and all the world is amazed. Lowliness, our Shakspeare says, is “young ambition’s ladder:”

“Whereto the climber upward turns his face;

But when he once attains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend: so Cæsar may.

Then——”

But so did not William Hogarth. He was self-confident and self-conscious enough,[2] when, after many years of toilsome struggling he turned up the trump-card, and his name was bruited about with loud fanfares to the crowd. He attained the desired end: this Fame, this renown; and to vulgarize the allegory, he managed to snatch that comfortable shoulder of mutton which surmounts the greasy pole, and which, although we feign to covet it not, we must have. But he never attempted to conceal the smallness of his beginnings, to assert that his ancestors came over with the Conqueror, or to deny that his father came up to London by the waggon. He sets down in his own black and white, how he fought the battle for bread, how he engraved plates, and painted portraits and conversations and assemblies, in order to obtain the necessary bite and sup; how, with no money, he has often “gone moping into the city,” but there receiving “ten guineas for a plate,” has come home, jubilant, “put on his sword,” and swaggered, I doubt it not, with the most dashing bucks in the coffee-house or on the Mall. I think they are happy traits in the character of this good fellow and honest man, that he should have had the courage to accomplish ten guineas’ worth of graver’s work, without drawing money on account, and that he should have had a sword at home for the red-letter days and sunshiny hours. You, brave young student and fellow-labourer! draw on your corduroys, shoulder your pick and shovel, be off to the diggings; do your work, get paid; and then come home, put on your sword and be a gentleman. One sees Mr. Beverly or Mr. Telbin slashing away with a large whitewasher’s brush in a scene-painting room, fagging away in canvas jackets and over-alls, covered with parti-coloured splashes. Then, the work done, they wash their hands and come forth spruce and radiant, in peg-tops and kid-gloves. When our Prime Minister is at Broadlands, I hear that he stands up writing at a high desk, not seated like a clerk, working away bravely at the affairs of the chose publique, as for a wage of five-and-twenty shillings a week, and afterwards enjoys the relaxation of pruning his trees, or riding over his estate. Keep then your swords at home, and don’t wear them in working hours; but, the labour done, come out into the open and claim your rank.

I daresay that for a long time twenty-five shillings a week would have been a very handsome income to William the engraver. He covered many silver salvers and tankards with heraldic devices, but I don’t think he had any “argenterie, bagues et bijouxs,” or other precious stock of his own on sale. Most probable is it, that his old master gave him work to do after he had left his service. I wonder if Mr. Gamble, in after days, when his apprentice had become a great man, would ever hold forth to tavern coteries on the share he had had in guiding the early efforts of that facile hand! I hope and think so; and seem to hear him saying over his tankard: “Yes, sir, I taught the lad. He was bound to me, sir, by his worthy father, who was as full of book learning as the Cockpit is of Hanover rats. He could not draw a stroke when he came to me, sir. He was good at his graving work, but too quick, too quick, and somewhat rough. Never could manage the delicate tintos or the proper reticulations of scroll-foliage. But he was always drawing. He drew the dog. He drew the cat. He drew Dick, his fellow ’prentice, and Molly the maid, and Robin Barelegs the shoeblack at the corner of Cranbourn Street. He drew a pretty configurement of Mistress Gamble, my wife deceased, in her Oudenarde tire, and lapels of Mechlin point, and Sunday sack. But there was ever a leaning towards the caricatura in him, sir. Sure never mortal since Jacques Callot the Frenchman (whose ‘Habits and Beggars’ he was much given to study) ever drew such hideous, leering satyrs. And he had a way too, of making the griffins laugh and the lions dance gambadoes, so to speak, on their hind legs in the escocheons he graved, which would never have passed the College of Arms. Sir, the tankard out: what! drawer, there.”

Thus Ellis Gamble mythically seen and heard. But to the realities. In 1720 or ’21, Hogarth’s father, the poor old dominie, was removed to a land where no grammar disputations are heard, and where one dictionary is as good as another. Hogarth’s sisters had previously kept a “frock shop” in the city; they removed westward after the old man’s death, and probably occupied their brother’s place of business in Little Cranbourn Alley, when, giving up a perhaps momentary essay in the vocation of a working tradesman, he elected to be, instead, a working artist. For Mary and Ann Hogarth he engraved a shop-card, representing the interior of a somewhat spacious warehouse with sellers and customers, and surmounted by the king’s arms. The sisters could not have possessed much capital; and there have not been wanting malevolent spirits—chiefly of the Wilkite way of thinking—to hint that the Misses Hogarths’ “old frock-shop” was indeed but a very old slop-, not to say rag-shop, and that the proper insignia for their warehouse would have been not the royal arms, but a certain image, sable, pendent, clad in a brief white garment: a black doll of the genuine Aunt Sally proportions.

William Hogarth out of his apprenticeship is, I take it, a sturdy, ruddy-complexioned, clear-eyed, rather round-shouldered young fellow, who as yet wears his own hair, but has that sword at home—a silver-hilted or a prince’s metal one—and is not averse to giving his hat a smart cock, ay, and bordering it with a narrow rim of orrice when Fortune smiles on him. Not yet was the ἨΘΟΣ developed in him. It was there, yet latent. But, instead, that quality with which he was also so abundantly gifted, and which combined so well with his sterner faculties—I mean the quality of humorous observation—must have begun to assert itself. “Engraving on copper was at twenty years of age my utmost ambition,” he writes himself. Yes, William, and naturally so. The monsters and chimeras of heraldry and Mr. Gamble’s back-shop had by that time probably thoroughly palled on him. Fortunate if a landscape, or building, or portrait had sometimes to be engraved on a silver snuff-box or a golden fan-mount. The rest was a wilderness of apocryphal natural history, a bewildering phantasmagoria of strange devices from St. Benet’s Hill, expressed in crambo, in jargon, and in heraldic romany: compony, gobony, and chequy; lions erased and tigers couped; bucks trippant and bucks vulnèd; eagles segreiant, and dogs sciant; bezants, plates, torteaux, pomeis, golps, sanguiny-guzes, tawny and saltire.[3] The revulsion was but to be expected—was indeed inevitable, from the disgust caused by the seven years’ transcription of these catalogues of lying wonders, to the contemplation of the real life that surged about Cranbourn Alley, and its infinite variety of humours, comic and tragic. “Engraving on copper” at twenty might be the utmost ambition to a young man mortally sick of silver salvers; but how was it at twenty-one and twenty-two?

“As a child,” writes William, “shows of all kind gave me pleasure.” To a lad of his keen eye and swift perception, all London must have been full of shows. Not only was there Bartlemy, opened by solemn procession and proclamation of Lord Mayor—Bartlemy with its black-puddings, pantomimes, motions of puppets, rope-dancers emulating the achievements of Jacob Hall, sword-swallowing women, fire-eating salamanders, high Dutch conjurors, Alsatian and Savoyard-Dulcamara quacks selling eye-waters, worm-powders, love-philters, specifics against chincough, tympany, tissick, chrisoms, head-mould-shot, horse-shoe-head, and other strange ailments, of which the Registrar-general makes no mention in his Returns, now-a-days;[4] not only did Southwark, Tottenham and Mayfair flourish, but likewise Hornfair by Charlton, in Kent, easy of access by Gravesend tilt-boat, which brought to at Deptford Yard, and Hospital Stairs at Greenwich. There were two patent playhouses, Lincoln’s Inn and Drury Lane; and there were Mr. Powell’s puppets at the old Tennis-court, in James Street, Haymarket—mysterious edifice, it lingers yet! looking older than ever, inexplicable, obsolete, elbowed by casinos, poses plastiques, cafés, and American bowling-alleys, yet refusing to budge an inch before the encroachments of Time, who destroys all things, even tennis-courts. It was “old,” we hear, in 1720; I have been told that tennis is still played there. Gramercy! by whom? Surely at night, when the wicked neighbourhood is snatching a short feverish sleep, the “old tennis-courts” must be haunted by sallow, periwigged phantoms of Charles’s time, cadaverous beaux in laced bands, puffed sleeves, and flapped, plumed hats. Bats of spectral wire strike the cobweb-balls; the moonlight can make them cast no shadows on the old brick-wall. And in the gallery sits the harsh-visaged, cynic king, Portsmouth at his side, his little spaniels mumbling the rosettes in his royal shoes.

In a kind of copartnership with Mr. Powell’s puppets—formerly of the Piazza, Covent Garden, was the famous Faux, the legerdemain, or sleight-of-hand conjuror—the Wiljalba Frikell of his day, and whom Hogarth mentions in one of his earliest pictorial satires. But Faux did that which the Russian magician, to his credit, does not do: he puffed himself perpetually, and was at immense pains to assure the public through the newspapers that he was not robbed returning from the Duchess of Buckingham’s at Chelsea. From Faux’s show at the “Long-room,” Hogarth might have stepped to Heidegger’s—hideous Heidegger’s masquerades at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, where also were held “ridotti,” and “veglioni”—junketings of an ultra Italian character, and all presented in 1722 by the Middlesex grand jury as intolerable nuisances. Many times, also, did the stern Sir John Gonson (the Harlot’s Progress Gonson), justice of peace, much feared by the Phrynes of the hundreds of Drury, inveigh in his sessions-charges against the sinful ridotti and the disorderly veglioni. Other performances took place at the King’s Theatre. There was struggling for its first grasp on the English taste and the English pocket—a grasp which it has never since lost—that anomalous, inconsistent, delightful entertainment, the Italian Opera. Hogarth, as a true-born Briton, hated the harmonious exotic; and from his earliest plates to the grand series of the Rake’s Progress, indulges in frequent flings at Handel (in his Ptolomeo, and before his immortal Oratorio stage), Farinelli, Cuzzoni, Senesino, Faustina, Barrenstadt, and other “soft simpering whiblins.” Yet the sturdiest hater of this “new taste of the town” could not refrain from admiring and applauding to the echo that which was called the “miraculously dignified exit of Senesino.” This celebrated sortita must have resembled in the almost electrical effect it produced, the elder Kean’s “Villain, be sure thou prove,” &c. in Othello; John Kemble’s “Mother of the world—” in Coriolanus; Madame Pasta’s “Io,” in Medea; and Ristori’s world-known “Tu,” in the Italian version of the same dread trilogy. One of the pleasantest accusations brought against the Italian Opera was preferred some years before 1720, in the Spectator, when it was pointed out that the principal man or woman singer sang in Italian, while the responses were given, and the choruses chanted by Britons. Judices, in these latter days, I have “assisted” at the performance of the Barber of Seville at one of our large theatres, when Figaro warbled in Italian with a strong Spanish accent, when Susanna was a Frenchwoman, Doctor Bartolo an Irishman, and the chorus sang in English, and without any H’s.

More shows remain for Hogarth to take delight in. The quacks, out of Bartlemy time, set up their standings in Moorfields by the madhouse (illustrated by Hogarth in the Rake’s Progress), and in Covent Garden Market (W. H. in the plate of Morning), by Inigo Jones’s rustic church, which he built for the Earl of Bedford: “Build me a barn,” quoth the earl. “You shall have the bravest barn in England,” returned Inigo, and his lordship had it. There were quacks too, though the loud-voiced beggars interfered with them, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and on Tower Hill, where the sailors and river-side Bohemians were wont to indulge in their favourite diversion of “whipping the snake.” There were grand shows when a commoner was raised to the peerage or promoted in grade therein—a common occurrence in the midst of all the corruption entailed by the Scottish union and Walpole’s wholesale bribery. On these occasions, deputations of the heralds came from their dusty old college in Doctors’ Commons, and in full costume, to congratulate the new peer, the viscount made an earl, or the marquis elevated to a dukedom, and to claim by the way a snug amount of fees from the newly-blown dignitary. Strange figures they must have cut, those old kings-at-arms, heralds, and pursuivants! Everybody remembers the anecdote, since twisted into an allusion to Lord Thurlow’s grotesque appearance, of a servant on such an occasion as I have alluded to, saying to his master, “Please, my lord, there’s a gentleman in a coach at the door would speak with your lordship; and, saving your presence, I think he’s the knave of spades.” I burst out in unseemly cachinnation the other day at the opening of Parliament, when I saw Rougecroix trotting along the royal gallery of the peers, with those table-napkins stiff with gold embroidery pendent back and front of him like heraldic advertisements. The astonishing equipment was terminated by the black dress pantaloons and patent-leather boots of ordinary life. Je crevais de rire: the Lord Chamberlain walking backwards was nothing to it; yet I daresay Rougecroix looked not a whit more absurd than did Bluemantle and Portcullis in 1720 with red heels and paste buckles to their Cordovan shoon, and curly periwigs flowing from beneath their cocked hats.

Shows, more shows, and William Hogarth walking London streets to take stock of them all, to lay them up in his memory’s ample store-house. He will turn all he has seen to good account some day. There is a show at the museum of the Royal Society, then sitting at Gresham College. The queer, almost silly things, exhibited there! queer and silly, at least to us, with our magnificent museums in Great Russell Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Brompton. I am turning over the Royal Society catalogue as I write: the rarities all set down with a ponderous, simple-minded solemnity. “Dr. Grews” is the conscientious editor. Here shall you find the “sceptre of an Indian king, a dog without a mouth; a Pegue hat and organ; a bird of paradise; a Jewish phylactery; a model of the Temple of Jerusalem; a burning-glass contrived by that excellent philosopher and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton” (hats off); “three landskips and a catcoptrick paint given by Bishop Wilkins; a gun which discharges seven times one after the other presently” (was this a revolver?); “a perspective instrument by the ingenious Sir Christopher Wren” (hats off again); “a pair of Iceland gloves, a pot of Macassar poison” (oh! Rowland); “the tail of an Indian cow worshipped on the banks of the river Ganges; a tuft of coralline; the cramp fish which by some humour or vapour benumbs the fisherman’s arms,” and so forth. Hogarth will make use of all these “curios” in the fourth scene of the Marriage à la Mede, and presently, for the studio of Sidrophel in his illustrations to Hudibras.

And there are shows of a sterner and crueler order. Now a pick-pocket yelling under a pump; now a half-naked wretch coming along Whitehall at the tail of a slow-plodding cart, howling under the hangman’s lash (that functionary has ceased to be called “Gregory,” from the great executioner G. Brandon, and is now, but I have not been able to discover for what reason, “Jack Ketch”).[5] Now it is a libeller or a perjurer in the pillory at Charing in Eastcheap or at the Royal Exchange. According to his political opinions do the mob—the mob are chiefly of the Jacobite persuasion—pelt the sufferer with eggs and ordure, or cheer him, and fill the hat which lies at his foot on the scaffold with halfpence and even silver. And the sheriffs’ men, if duly fee’d, do not object to a mug of purl or mum, or even punch, being held by kind hands to the sufferer’s lips. So, in Hugo’s deathless romance does Esmeralda give Quasimodo on the carcan to drink from her flask. Mercy is as old as the hills, and will never die. Sometimes in front of “England’s Burse,” or in Old Palace Yard, an odd, futile, much-laughed-at ceremony takes place: and after solemn proclamation, the common hangman makes a bonfire of such proscribed books as Pretenders no Pretence, A sober Reply to Mr. Higgs’s Tri-theistical Doctrine. Well would it be if the vindictiveness of the government stopped here; but alas! king’s messengers are in hot pursuit of the unhappy authors, trace them to the tripe-shop in Hanging Sword Alley, or the cock-loft in Honey Lane Market, where they lie three in a bed; and the poor scribbling wretches are cast into jail, and delivered over to the tormentors, losing sometimes their unlucky ears. There is the great sport and show every market morning, known as “bull banking,” a sweet succursal to his Majesty’s bear-garden and Hockley in the hole. The game is of the simplest; take your bull in a narrow thoroughfare, say, Cock Hill, by Smithfield; have a crowd of hommes de bonne volonté; overturn a couple of hackney coaches at one end of the street, a brewer’s dray at the other: then harry your bull up and down, goad him, pelt him, twist his tail, till he roar and is rabid. This is “bull-banking,” and oh! for the sports of merry England! William Hogarth looks on sternly and wrathfully. He will remember the brutal amusements of the populace when he comes to engrave the Four Stages of Cruelty. But I lead him away now to other scenes and shows. There are the wooden horses before Sadler’s Hall; and westward there stands an uncomfortable “wooden horse” for the punishment of soldiers who are picketed thereon for one and two hours. This wooden horse is on St. James’s Mall, over against the gun-house. The torture is one of Dutch William’s legacies to the subjects, and has been retained and improved on by the slothfully cruel Hanoverian kings. Years afterwards (1745-6), when Hogarth shall send his picture of the March to Finchley to St. James’s for the inspection of his sacred Majesty King George the Second, that potentate will fly into a guard-room rage at the truthful humour of the scene, and will express an opinion that the audacious painter who has caricatured his Foot Guards, should properly suffer the punishment of the picket on the “wooden horse” of the Mall.

Further afield. There are literally thousands of shop-signs to be read or stared at. There are prize-fights—predecessors of Fig and Broughton contests—gladiatorial exhibitions, in which decayed Life-guardsmen and Irish captains trade-fallen, hack and hew one another with broadsword and backsword on public platforms. Then the “French prophets,” whom John Wesley knew, are working sham miracles in Soho, emulating—the impostors!—the marvels done at the tomb of the Abbé, Diacre or Chanoine, Paris, and positively holding exhibitions in which fanatics suffer themselves to be trampled, jumped upon, and beaten with clubs, for the greater glory of Molinism;[6] even holding academies, where the youth of both sexes are instructed in the arts of foaming at the mouth, falling into convulsions, discoursing in unknown tongues, revealing stigmata produced by the aid of lunar caustic, and other moon-struck madnesses and cheats. Such is revivalism in 1720. William Hogarth is there, observant. He will not forget the French prophets when he executes almost the last and noblest of his plates—albeit, it is directed against English revivalists, Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism. He leaves Soho, and wanders eastward and westward. He reads Madam Godfrey’s six hundred challenges to the female sex in the newspapers; sitting, perhaps, at the “Rose,” without Temple Bar; at the “Diapente,” whither the beaux, feeble as Lord Fanny, who could not “eat beef, or horse, or any of those things,” come to recruit their exhausted digestions with jelly-broth. He may look in at mug-houses, where stum, ’quest ales, Protestant masch-beer, and Derby stingo are sold. He may drop in at Owen Swan’s, at the “Black Swan” Tavern in St. Martin’s Lane, and listen to the hack-writers girding at Mr. Pope, and at the enormous amount of eating and drinking in Harry Higden’s comedies. He may see the virtuosi at Childs’s, and dozens of other auctions (Edward Mellington was the George Robins of the preceding age; the famous Cobb was his successor in auction-room eloquence and pomposity), buying china monsters. He may refect himself with hot furmity at the “Rainbow” or at “Nando’s,” mingle (keeping his surtout well buttoned) with the pickpockets in Paul’s, avoid the Scotch walk on ’Change, watch the garish damsels alight from their coaches at the chocolate-houses, mark the gamesters rushing in, at as early an hour as eleven in the morning, to shake their elbows at the “Young Man’s;” gaze at the barristers as they bargain for wherries at the Temple Stairs to take water for Westminster—a pair of sculls being much cheaper than a hackney coach—meet the half-pay officers at Whitehall, garrulously discussing the King of Spain’s last treaty, as the shoeblacks polish their footgear with oil and soot—Day and Martin are yet in embryo: stand by, on Holborn Hill, about half-past eleven, as Jack Hall, the chimney sweep, winds his sad way in Newgate cart, his coffin before him, and the ordinary with his book and nosegay by his side, towards St. Giles’s Pound, and the ultimate bourne, Tyburn. Jack Hall has a nosegay, too, and wears a white ribbon in his hat to announce his innocence. The fellow has committed a hundred robberies. And Jack Hall is very far gone in burnt brandy. Hogarth marks—does not forget him. Jack Hall—who seems to have been a kind of mediocre Jack Sheppard, although his escape from Newgate was well-nigh as dexterous, and quite as bold as the prison-breaking feat of the arch rascal, Blueskin’s friend—will soon reappear in one of the first of the Hogarthian squibs; and the dismal procession to Tyburn will form the dénoûment to the lamentable career of Tom Idle.

Hogarth must have become poco a poco saturated with such impressions of street life. From 1730 the tide of reproduction sets in without cessation; but I strive to catch and to retain the fleeting image of this dead London, and it baulks and mocks me:—the sham bail, “duffers” and “mounters,” skulking with straws in their shoes about Westminster Hall; the law offices in Chancery Lane and the “devil’s gap” between Great Queen Street and Lincoln’s Inn Fields; the Templars, the moot-men, and those who are keeping their terms in Lincoln’s and Gray’s Inn, dining in their halls at noon, eating off wooden trenchers, drinking from green earthenware jugs, and summoned to commons by horn-blow;—the furious stockjobbers at Jonathan’s and Garraway’s, at the sign of the “Fifteen Shillings,” and in Threadneedle Row; the fine ladies buying perfumery at the “Civet Cat,” in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar—perfumery, now-a-days, is much wanted in that unsavoury locale; the Jacobite ballad-singers growling sedition in Seven Dials; the Hanoverian troubadours crooning, on their side, worn-out scandal touching “Italian Molly” (James the Second’s Mary of Modena) and “St. James’s warming-pan” in the most frequented streets; riots and tumults, spy-hunting, foreigner mobbing, of not unfrequent occurrence, all over the town;—gangs of riotous soldiers crowding about Marlborough House, and casting shirts into the great duke’s garden, that his grace may see of what rascally stuff—filthy dowlas instead of good calico—the contractors have made them. Alas! a wheezing, drivelling, almost idiotic dotard is all that remains of the great duke, all that is left of John Churchill. He had just strength enough at the Bath the season before to crawl home in the dark night, in order to avoid the expense of a chair. There are fights in the streets, and skirmishes on the river, where revenue cutters, custom-house jerkers, and the “Tartar pink,” make retributive raids on the fresh-water pirates: light and heavy horsemen, cope-men, scuffle-hunters, lumpers, and game-watermen. There are salt-water as well as fresh-water thieves; and a notable show of the period is the execution of a pirate, and his hanging in chains at Execution dock. All which notwithstanding, it is a consolation to learn that “Captain Hunt, of the Delight,” is tried at Justice Hall for piracy, and “honourably acquitted.” I know not why, but I rejoice at the captain’s escape. He seems a bold, dashing spirit; and, when captured, was “drinking orvietan with a horse-officer.” But when I come to reperuse the evidence adduced on the trial, I confess that the weight of testimony bears strongly against Captain Hunt, and that in reality it would seem that he did scuttle the “Protestant Betsey,” cause the boatswain and “one Skeggs, a chaplain, transporting himself to the plantations”—at the request of a judge and jury, I wonder?—to walk the plank, and did also carbonado the captain with lighted matches and Burgundy pitch, prior to blowing his (the captain’s) brains out. Hunt goes free, but pirates are cast, and sometimes swing. Hogarth notes, comments on, remembers them. The gibbeted corsairs by the river’s side shall find a place in the third chapter of the history of Thomas Idle.

So wags the world in 1720. Hogarth practising on copper in the intervals of arms and crest engraving, and hearing of Thornhill and Laguerre’s staircase-and-ceiling-painting renown, inwardly longing to be a Painter. Sir George Thorold is lord mayor. Comet Halley is astronomer royal, vice Flamsteed, deceased the preceding year. Clement XI. is dying, and the Jews of Ferrara deny that they have sacrificed a child at Easter, à la Hugh of Lincoln. The great King Louis is dead, and a child reigns in his stead. The Regent and the Abbé Dubois are making history one long scandal in Paris. Bernard Lens is miniature painter to the king, in lieu of Benjamin Acland, dead. Mr. Colley Cibber’s works are printed on royal paper. Sheffield, Duke of Bucks, erects a plain tablet to the memory of John Dryden in Westminster Abbey: his own name in very large letters, Dryden’s in more moderately-sized capitals. Madam Crisp sets a lieutenant to kill a black man, who has stolen her lapdog. Captain Dawson bullies half the world, and half the world bullies Captain Dawson: and bullies or is so bullied still to this day.

In disjointed language, but with a very earnest purpose, I have endeavoured to trace our painter’s Prelude,—the growth of his artistic mind, the ripening of his perceptive faculties under the influence of the life he saw. Now, for the operation of observation, distilled in the retort of his quaint humour. I record the work he did; and first, in 1720, mention “four drawings in Indian ink” of the characters at Button’s coffee-house.[7] In these were sketches of Arbuthnot, Addison, Pope (as it is conjectured), and a certain Count Viviani, identified years afterwards by Horace Walpole, when the drawings came under his notice. They subsequently came into Ireland’s possession. Next Hogarth executed an etching, whose subject was of more national importance. In 1720-21, as all men know, England went mad, and was drawn, jumping for joy, into the Maëlstrom of the South Sea bubble. France had been already desperately insane, in 1719, and Philip, the Regent, with John Law of Lauriston, the Edinburgh silversmith’s son, who had been rake, bully, and soldier, and had stood his trial for killing Beau Wilson in a duel, had between them gotten up a remarkable mammon-saturnalia in the Palais Royal and the Rue Quincampoix. Law lived en prince in the Place Vendôme. They show the window now whence he used to look down upon his dupes. He died, a few years after the bursting of his bubble, a miserable bankrupt adventurer at Venice. And yet there really was something tangible in his schemes, wild as they were. The credit of the Royal Bank averted a national bankruptcy in France, and some substantial advantage might have been derived from the Mississippi trade. At all events, there actually was such a place as Louisiana. In this country, the geographical actualities were very little consulted. The English South Sea scheme was a swindle, pur et simple. Almost everybody in the country caught this cholera-morbus of avarice. Pope dabbled in S. S. S. (South Sea Stock): Lady Mary Wortley Montague was accused of cheating Ruremonde, the French wit, out of 500l. worth of stock. Ladies laid aside ombre and basset to haunt ’Change Alley. Gay “stood to win” enormous sums—at one time imagined himself, as did Pope also, to be the “lord of thousands,” but characteristically refused to follow a friend’s advice to realize at least sufficient to secure himself a “clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day for life.” He persisted in holding, and lost all. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was deeply implicated in S. S. S. transactions, as were also many peers and members of parliament. The amiable and accomplished Craggs, the postmaster-general, the friend of all the wits, and for whose tomb Pope wrote so touching an epitaph, tarnished his reputation indelibly by unscrupulous jobbery. He died of the small-pox, just in time to avoid disgrace and ruin; but his poor old father was sold up, and was borne to the grave shortly afterward, broken-hearted. Lord Stanhope ruptured a blood-vessel in replying to a furious speech of the Duke of Wharton (who lived a profligate and died a monk) against S. S., and did not long survive. Samuel Chandler, the eminent Nonconformist divine, was ruined, and had to keep a book-stall for bread. Hudson, known as “Tom of Ten Thousand,” went stark mad, and moved about ’Change just as the “Woman in Black” and the “Woman in White” (the son of the one, and the brother of the other were hanged for forgery), used to haunt the avenues of the Bank of England. The South Sea Company bribed the Government, bribed the two Houses, and bribed the Court ladies, both of fair and of light fame. Erengard Melusina Schuylenberg, Princess von Eberstein, Duchess of Munster (1715), and Duchess of Kendal (1729)—Hogarth engraved the High Dutch hussey’s arms—the Countess of Platen, and her two nieces, and Lady Sunderland, with Craggs and Aislabie, got the major part of the fictitious stock of 574,000l. created by the company. The stock rose to thirteen hundred and fifty pounds premium! Beggars on horseback tore through the streets. There were S. S. coaches with Auri sacra fames painted on the panels. Hundreds of companies were projected, and “took the town” immensely. Steele’s (Sir Richard’s) Fishpool Company, for bringing the finny denizens of the deep by sea to London—Puckle’s Defence Gun—the Bottomree, the Coral-fishery, the Wreck-fishing companies, were highly spoken of. Stogden’s remittances created great excitement in the market. There were companies for insurance against bad servants, against thefts and robberies, against fire and shipwreck. There were companies for importing jack-asses from Spain (coals to Newcastle!); for trading in human hair (started by a clergyman); for fattening pigs; for making pantiles, Joppa and Castile soap; for manufacturing lutestring; “for the wheel of a perpetual motion;” and for extracting stearine from sunflower-seed. There were Dutch bubbles, and oil bubbles, and water bubbles—bubbles of timber, and bubbles of glass. There were the “sail cloth,” or “Globe permits”—mere cards with the seal of the “Globe” tavern impressed on them, and “permitting” the fortunate holders to acquire shares at some indefinite period in some misty sailcloth factory. These sold for sixty guineas a piece. There was Jezreel Jones’s trade to Barbary, too, for which the permits could not be sold fast enough. Welsh copper and York Buildings’ shares rose to cent. per cent. premium. Sir John Blunt, the scrivener, rose from a mean estate to prodigious wealth, prospered, and “whale directors ate up all.” There was an S. S. literature—an S. S. anthology.

“Meantime, secure on Garrway’s cliffs,

A savage race, by shipwreck fed,

Lie waiting for the founder’d skiffs,

And strip the bodies of the dead.”

Pshaw! have we not Mr. Ward’s capital picture in the Vernon collection, and hundreds of pamphlets on S. S. in the British Museum? The end came, and was, of course, irrevocable and immortal smash. Ithuriel’s spear, in the shape of a scire facias in the London Gazette, pierced this foully iridescent bubble through and through, producing precisely the same effect as the publication of Mr. Sparkman’s inexorable railway statistics in a supplement to The Times newspaper, A.D. 1845. The city woke up one morning and found itself ruined. The Sword-blade company went bankrupt. Knight, the S.S. cashier, fled, but was captured at Tirlemont in Flanders, at the instance of the British resident in Brussels, and thrown into the citadel of Antwerp, from which he presently managed to escape. In an age when almost every one had committed more or less heinous acts of roguery, great sympathy was evinced for rogues. At home, however, there were some thoughts of vengeance. Honest men began, for the first time these many months, to show their heads, and talked of Nemesis and Newgate. Aislabie resigned. The end of the Craggses you have heard. Parliament-men were impeached and expelled the House. Patriots inveighed against the injuries which corrupt ministers may inflict on the sovereigns they serve, and quoted the history of Claudian and Sejanus. The directors—such as had not vanished—were examined by secret committees, and what effects of theirs could be laid hold of were confiscated for the benefit of the thousands of innocent sufferers. I have waded through many hundred pages of the parliamentary reports of the period, and have remarked, with a grim chuckle, the similarities of swindling between this fraud and later ones. Cooked accounts, torn-out leaves, erasures, and a small green ledger with a brass lock—these are among the flowers of evidence strewn on the heads of the secret committees. Knight took the key away with him, forgetting the ledger, I presume. The lock was forced, and there came floating out a bubble of fictitious stock. The old story, gentles and simples. “Comme Charles Dix, comme Charles Dix,” muttered wretched, wigless, Smithified old Louis Philippe, as he fled in a fiacre from the Tuileries in ’48; and this S.S. swindle of 1720 was only “Comme Charles Dix,”—the elder brother of 1825 and 1845 manias, of Milk Companies, Washing Companies, Poyais Loans, Ball’s Pond Railways, Great Diddlesex Junctions, Borough, British, and Eastern Banks, and other thieveries which this age has seen.

Did William Hogarth hold any stock? Did he ever bid for a “Globe permit?” Did he hanker after human hair? Did he cast covetous eyes towards the gigantic jack-asses of Iberia? Ignoramus: but we know at least that he made a dash at the bubble with his sharp pencil. In 1721 appeared an etching of The South Sea, an Allegory. It was sold at the price of one shilling by Mrs. Chilcot, in Westminster Hall, and B. Caldwell, in Newgate Street. The allegory is laboured, but there is a humorous element diffused throughout the work. The comparatively mechanical nature of the pursuits from which Hogarth was but just emancipated shows itself in the careful drawing of the architecture and the comparative insignificance of the figures. The Enemy of mankind is cutting Fortune into collops before a craving audience of rich and poor speculators. There is a huge “roundabout,” with “who’ll ride?” as a legend, and a throng of people of all degrees revolving on their wooden hobbies. In the foreground a wretch is being broken on the wheel—perhaps a reminiscence of the terrible fate of Count Horn, in Paris. L. H., a ruffian, is scourging a poor fellow who is turning his great toes up in agony. These are to represent Honour and Honesty punished by Interest and Villany. In the background widows and spinsters are crowding up a staircase to a “raffle for husbands,” and in the right-hand corner a Jewish high-priest, a Catholic priest, and a Dissenting minister, are gambling with frenzied avidity. Near them a poor, miserable starveling lies a-dying, and to the left there looms a huge pillar, with this inscription on the base—“This monument was erected in memory of the destruction of the city by South Sea, 1720.” It is to be observed that the figure of the demon hacking at Fortune, and the lame swash buckler, half baboon, half imp, that keeps guard over the flagellated man, are copied, pretty literally, from Callot.

You know that I incline towards coincidences. It is surely a not unremarkable one that Callot, a Hogarthian man in many aspects, but more inclined towards the grotesque-terrible than to the humorous-observant, should have been also in his youth a martyr to heraldry. His father was a grave, dusty old king-at-arms, in the service of the Duke of Lorraine, at Nancy. He believed heraldry, next to alchemy, to be the most glorious science in the world, and would fain have had his son devote himself to tabard and escocheon work; but the boy, after many unavailing efforts to wrestle with these Ephesian wild beasts, with their impossible attitudes and preposterous proportions, fairly ran away and turned gipsy, stroller, beggar, picaroon—all kinds of wild Bohemian things. Had Hogarth been a French boy, he, too, might have run away from Ellis Gamble’s griffins and gargoyles. He must have been a great admirer of Callot, and have studied his works attentively, as one can see, not only from this South Sea plate, but from many of the earlier Hogarthian performances, in which, not quite trusting himself yet to run alone, he has had recourse to the Lorrain’s strong arm. Many other sympathetic traits are to be found in the worthy pair. In both a little too much swagger and proneness to denounce things that might have had some little sincerity in them. The one a thorough foreigner, the other as thorough a foreigner. The herald’s son of Nancy was always “the noble Jacques Callot;” the heraldic engraver’s apprentice of Cranbourn Alley was, I wince to learn, sometimes called “Bill Hogarth.”

One of Hogarth’s earliest employers was a Mr. Bowles, at the “Black Horse in Cornhill,” who is stated to have bought his etched works by weight—at the munificent rate of half-a-crown a pound. This is the same Mr. Bowles who, when Major the engraver was going to France to study, and wished to dispose of some landscapes he had engraved that he might raise something in aid of his travelling expenses, offered him a bright, new, burnished, untouched copper-plate for every engraved one he had by him. This Black Horse Bowles, if the story be true, must have been ancestor to the theatrical manager who asked the author how much he would give him if he produced his five-act tragedy; but I am inclined to think the anecdote a bit of gossip tant soit peu spiteful of the eldest Nicholls. Moreover, the offer is stated to have been made “over a bottle.” ’Twas under the same incentive to liberality that an early patron of the present writer once pressed him to write “a good poem, in the Byron style—you know,” and offered him a guinea for it, down. Copper, fit for engraving purposes, was at least two shillings a pound in Bowles’s time. The half-crown legend, then, may be apocryphal; although we have some odd records of the mode of payment for art and letters in those days, and in the preceding time:—Thornhill painting Greenwich Hall for forty shillings the Flemish ell; Dryden contracting with Left-legged Jacob to write so many thousand lines for so many unclipped pieces of money; and Milton selling the manuscript of Paradise Lost to Samuel Simmons for five pounds.

Mr. Philip Overton at the Golden Buck, over against St. Dunstan’s Church, in Fleet Street, also published Hogarth’s early plates. He was the purchaser, too, but not yet, of the eighteen illustrations to Hudibras. Ere these appeared, W. H. etched the Taste of the Town, the Small Masquerade Ticket; the Lottery—a very confused and obscure allegory, perhaps a sly parody on one of Laguerre or Thornhill’s floundering pictorial parables. Fortune and Wantonness are drawing lucky numbers, Fraud tempts Despair, Sloth hides his head behind a curtain; all very interesting probably at the time, from the number of contemporary portraits the plate may have contained, but almost inexplicable and thoroughly uninteresting to us now. The Taste of the Town, which is otherwise the first Burlington Gate satire (not the Pope and Chandos one) created a sensation, and its author paid the first per-centage on notoriety, by seeing his work pirated by the varlets who did for art that which Edmund Curll, bookseller and scoundrel, did for literature.

Burlington Gate, No. 1, was published in 1723. Hogarth seems to have admired Lord Burlington’s love for art, though he might have paid him a better compliment than to have placarded the gate of his palace with an orthographical blunder. There is in the engraving “accademy” for academy. The execution is far superior to that of the South Sea, and the figures are drawn with much verve and decision. In the centre stand three little figures, said to represent Lord Burlington, Campbell, the architect, and his lordship’s “postilion.” This is evidently a blunder on the part of the first commentator. The figure is in cocked hat, wide cuffs, and buckled shoes, and is no more like a postilion than I to Hercules. Is it the earl’s “poet,” and not his “postilion,” that is meant? To the right (using showman’s language), sentinels in the peaked shakoes of the time, and with oh! such clumsy, big-stocked brown-besses in their hands, guard the entrance to the fane where the pantomime of Doctor Faustus is being performed. From the balcony above Harlequin looks out. Faustus was first brought out at the theatre, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in ’23. It had so prodigious a run, and came into such vogue, that after much grumbling about the “legitimate” and invocations of “Ben Jonson’s ghost” (Hogarth calls him Ben Johnson), the rival Covent Garden managers were compelled to follow suit, and in ’25 came out with their Doctor Faustus—a kind of saraband of infernal persons contrived by Thurmond the dancing-master. He, too, was the deviser of “Harleykin Sheppard” (or Shepherd), in which the dauntless thief who escaped from the Middle Stone-room at Newgate in so remarkable a manner received a pantomimic apotheosis. Quick-witted Hogarth satirized this felony-mania in the caricature of Wilks, Booth, and Cibber, conjuring up “Scaramouch Jack Hall.” To return to Burlington Gate. In the centre, Shakspeare and Jonson’s works are being carted away for waste paper. To the left you see a huge projecting sign or show-cloth, containing portraits of his sacred Majesty George the Second in the act of presenting the management of the Italian Opera with one thousand pounds; also of the famous Mordaunt Earl of Peterborough and sometime general of the armies in Spain. He kneels, and in the handsomest manner, to Signora Cuzzoni the singer, saying (in a long apothecary’s label), “Please accept eight thousand pounds!” but the Cuzzoni spurns at him. Beneath is the entrance to the Opera. Infernal persons with very long tails are entering thereto with joyful countenances. The infernal persons are unmistakeable reminiscences of Callot’s demons in the Tentation de St. Antoine. There is likewise a placard relating to “Faux’s Long-room,” and his “dexterity of hand.”

In 1724, Hogarth produced another allegory called the Inhabitants of the Moon, in which there are some covert and not very complimentary allusions to the “dummy” character of royalty, and a whimsical fancy of inanimate objects, songs, hammers, pieces of money, and the like, being built up into imitation of human beings, all very ingeniously worked out. By this time, Hogarth, too, had begun to work, not only for the ephemeral pictorial squib-vendors of Westminster Hall—those squibs came in with him, culminated in Gillray, and went out with H. B.; or were rather absorbed and amalgamated into the admirable Punch cartoons of Mr. Leech—but also for the regular booksellers. For Aubry de la Mottraye’s Travels (a dull, pretentious book) he executed some engravings, among which I note A woman of Smyrna in the habit of the country—the woman’s face very graceful, and the Dance, the Pyrrhic dance of the Greek islands, and the oddest fandango that ever was seen. One commentator says that the term “as merry as a grig” came from the fondness of the inhabitants of those isles of eternal summer for dancing, and that it should be properly “as merry as a Greek.” Quien sabe? I know that lately in the Sessions papers I stumbled over the examination of one Levi Solomon, alias Cockleput, who stated that he lived in Sweet Apple Court, and that he “went a-grigging for his living.” I have no Lexicon Balatronicum at hand; but from early researches into the vocabulary of the “High Mung” I have an indistinct impression that “griggers” were agile vagabonds who danced, and went through elementary feats of posture-mastery in taverns.