Part 2
“I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of genius; and that several had been entertained by music who had passed it, but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. When he had raised my thought by those transporting airs which he played, to taste the pleasure of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one astonished, he beckoned me and by waving his hand directed me to approach the place where he sat. I drew near with that reverence which is due a superior nature; and as my heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled upon me with a look of compassion and affability that familiarized him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all fears and apprehensions with which I approached him. He lifted me from the ground, and taking me by the hand, ‘Mirza,’ said he, ‘I have heard thee in thy soliloquies; follow me.’
“He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it--‘Cast thy eyes eastward,’ said he, ‘and tell me what thou seest.’ ‘I see,’ said I, ‘a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it.’ ‘The valley that thou seest,’ said he, ‘is the Vale of Misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of eternity.’ ‘What is the reason,’ said I, ‘that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at the other.’ ‘What thou seest,’ said he, ‘is that portion of eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the beginning of the world to its consummation.’ ‘Examine now,’ said he, ‘this sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it.’ ‘I see a bridge,’ said I, ‘standing in the midst of the tide.’ ‘The bridge thou seest,’ said he, ‘is human life; consider it attentively.’ Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I saw that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with several broken arches, which added to those that were entire, made up the number about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted first of about a thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. ‘But tell me further,’ said he, ‘what thou discoverest on it.’ ‘I see multitudes of people passing over it,’ said I, ‘and a black cloud hanging on each end of it.’ As I looked more attentively I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath it; and upon further examination, perceived that there were innumerable trap doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but that they fell through them into the tide and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance to the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner toward the middle, but multiplied and came closer together toward the end of the arches that were entire.
“There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march upon the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.
“I passed some time in contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled with deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up toward heaven in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they thought themselves within reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sank. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped had they not thus been forced upon them.
“The genius seeing me indulge myself in this melancholy prospect, told me that I had dwelt long enough on it. ‘Take thine eyes off of the bridge,’ said he, ‘and tell me if thou seest anything thou dost not comprehend.’ Upon looking up, ‘What mean,’ said I, ‘those great flights of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling on it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and among many other feathered creatures several little winged boys, that perch in great numbers on the middle arches.’ ‘These,’ said the genius, ‘are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the like cares and passions that infest human life.’
“Here I fetched a deep sigh. ‘Alas,’ said I, ‘man was made in vain! how is he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swallowed up in death!’ The genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. ‘Look no more,’ said he, ‘on man in the first stages of his existence, his setting out for eternity; but cast thine eye onto that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it.’ I directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good genius strengthened it with supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley opening at the farther end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into equal parts. The clouds still rested on one-half of it, in so much that I could discover nothing in it: but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were covered with fruits and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see people dressed in glorious habits with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness grew within me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats: but the genius told me that there was no passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge. ‘The islands,’ said he, ‘that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the seashore; there are myriads of islands behind those which thou discoverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine imagination can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands; which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relish and perfection of those who are settled in them; every island is a paradise accommodated to its respected inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable that gives the opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him.’ I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. ‘At length,’ said I, ‘show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant.’ The genius making me no answer I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me: I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating, but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep, and camels, grazing upon the sides of it.”
Remembering the peculiar habits of thought of that day, some indication of which you will find in the chapter that follows, it will be seen that Addison’s aim was a high one. Yet he has the modesty of earnestness. There is no blatant claim to originality, nor verbal pyrotechnics. You sense the quiet of the scholar with a real literary background. “I have,” he wrote, “raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age has fallen.” (Spec. No. 10.)
II.
THE DAYS HE LIVED IN.
The London of Addison and Steele can be very easily reconstructed, from a reading of the _Spectator_. It did not differ from the London of Hogarth, except in very minor details, nor from the London of Johnson of which, in 1768, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Memoirs, (111, 315).
Even this capital is now a daily scene of lawless riot. Mobs patrolling the streets at noonday, some knocking down all who will not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice afraid to give judgment against him; coal heavers and porters pulling down the houses of coal merchants that refuse to give them more wages; sawyers destroying saw mills; sailors unrigging all the outward bound ships and suffering none to sail till merchants agreed to raise their pay; watermen destroying private boats and threatening bridges, soldiers firing among the mobs and killing men, women and children.... While I am writing a great mob of coal porters fill the street, carrying a wretch of their business upon poles to be ducked for working at the old wages.
That paragraph, of course, paints a special picture and goes to show that in some respects there were incidents afoot very similar to those we know in our day. Always there have been labor troubles and those who would grind the faces of the poor, and interfering efficiency experts in the camps of both parties.
While the streets were narrow with a single kennel in the middle, the narrow ways being impeded by coaches, sedan-chairs, carts and barrows, it is well to bear in mind that it was but a short walk in any direction to the suburban or genuine open country. A breath of fresh air was thus within easy reach of workers and tradesmen. In one direction indeed, it was a little over a mile from the most crowded part of the city to the famous Bagnigge Wells, established on an old residence of Nell Gwynn, where was a pump room, a formal garden, pond and fountains and three rustic bridges crossed the Fleet River. Here was a place open to all
Where the frail nymphs in amorous dalliance rove, Where prentice youths enjoy the Sunday feast, And city madams boast their Sunday best, Where unfledged Templars first as fops parade, And new made ensigns sport their first cockade.
--Gay.
The wealthy and fortunate, with a view to getting polish, were sent to Paris. What they saw there was not vastly different from conditions in their native country. There would be a furtive visit to the Rue du Haut Pave looking toward the Pantheon--a crooked, evil street, an old and murderous street, a vile and dishonored street where murderers and brigands puffed cigarettes in the Cafe Vachette. Or the old Pont Neuf, heavy and forbidding, which one crossed to the gambling house to see, perhaps on one occasion, the famous Vicomte Nucingens on suicide bent, after having staked his all on a last card. Or the Rue de Fossoyeurs at night, with lights swaying and flickering, as citizens abroad carried their lanterns to awe robbers. The swift _D’Artagnan_ lived there, you may remember, and highwaymen carried off young girls over their shoulders, and assassins cared little whose throats they cut.
But what of the _haut ton_ in those days? For Addison, and those in his circle, climbed high, socially. I quote from the Journal of Madam de Maintenon, January 22, 1713.
As a matter of politeness, the Duc de Bourgogne and his two brothers had been taught to eat with a fork. But when they were admitted to sup with the king, he would not hear of it, and forbade them to do it. He never forbade me to do anything of the kind, for all my life I have never used anything to eat my food save my knife and my fingers.
A Father Tixier tells of being present as spectator at a royal meal and, “every time Marie-Terese spoke to the English King, he lifted his hat to her, and by the end of the meal his hat was most terribly greasy.”
I quote Jacques Boulanger in conclusion. “... access to the royal residences was not difficult to obtain. At Versailles there were beggars and hucksters selling trifles on the landings and stairways. Thieves plied their trade, and one rogue went so far, one day, as to steal the diamonds on the hat the King had just laid on the table.”
The gambling mania told of by Pepys in an earlier day had by no means decreased. It culminated in the sublime madness of the South Sea Bubble and the equally glorious Mississippi Scheme. On a famous day in February, 1771, Charles James Fox set the pace. In Parliament he delivered a speech on a religious question after having prepared himself, as Gibbon put it, “by passing twenty-two hours in the pious exercise of hazard.” During the game, he lost steadily at the rate of five hundred pounds sterling per hour. On the next day he won six thousand pounds, but, later in the week, he dropped twenty-one thousand pounds in two sittings. The young Lord Stavordale, then eighteen, won eleven thousand pounds in a single day and commented upon what would have been the result had he “played deep.” One day, during the progress of an extended game at Brooks’ gambling club, a new invention was born in this wise. The Earl of Sandwich, one of the players, had sat for several hours without interruption. Unwilling to leave the game, but being hungry, he ordered the servant to bring him some meat without a plate, suggesting that a slice of beef be placed between two slices of bread. By such easy means it is given to some to achieve fame, to pass a name to posterity!
The most remarkable social product of the age was the coffee-house. Coffee was known in England a century before tobacco. A passage in Evelyn’s diary of May 10, 1637, reads: “I saw one, Nathaniel Coniopos, a Greek, the first I ever saw drink coffee, (which custom came not into England until thirty years after).”
The earliest two coffee houses in England were established in 1652 and 1656, the second, being one James Farr’s. Admission to the coffee house cost a penny, and a cup of tea or coffee, two pence. Favored and regular customers had their own tables and as soon as one of these appeared, the waiting man carried to him the latest gazette or news sheet. Hence, the statement that Addison made that his _Spectator_ reached twenty more people than bought it, would not appear to be extravagant.
In a few years coffee houses spread over the whole of London and it was currently thought that they were established on granite foundation, but thirty years ago they had declined so that only two or three survived fairly unchanged. I recall going to one one night and meeting there that strange saturnine figure of the 1880’s, Lothrop Withington, reputed to have a very extensive knowledge of Elizabethan England. It was in Tottenham Court Road and Gissing used to frequent the place. We sat in a long room with neatly sanded floor. The tables were bare topped, each with a straight bench on either side, with high partitions between each table and its neighbor. At the end of the room was the open fire-place with a couple of shining steaming kettles at which presided a neat woman in a print frock. There was no bill of fare and no variety in the course served. You had a mutton chop with coffee and bread, or nothing. Entering, a lad brought you a new, long clay pipe called a church-warden. The surroundings were conducive to conversation and the prices charged were extremely modest.
At such coffee houses the affairs of the nation and universe were settled and unsettled; clubs and social groups were formed, and, on occasions, political plots hatched. An amusing account of the various London resorts of this nature in the days of Addison was given in _A Brief and Merry History of Great Britain_, and, for the information of intellectual strangers, the subjects usually discussed at each was listed and classified thus:
At those Coffee Houses, near the Court, called White’s, St. James’, William’s, the conversation turns chiefly upon Equipages, Horse Matches, Mode of Mortgages: The Cocoa Tree upon Bribery and Corruption, Evil Ministers, Errors and Mistakes in Government: the Scotch Coffee-Houses towards Charing Cross, on Places and Pensions; the Tilt Yard and Young Man’s on Affronts, Honor, Satisfaction, Duels and Recounters.... In these Coffee-Houses about the Temple the subjects are generally on Causes, Costs, Demurrers, Rejoiners and Exceptions; David’s the Welch Coffee-House on Fleet Street, on Births, Pedigrees, and Descents; Child’s and the Chapter, upon Globes, Tithes, Rectories, and Lectureships; ... Hamlin’s, Infant Baptism, Lay Ordination, Free Will, Election, Reprobation; ... and all those about the Exchange, where the merchants meet to transact their affairs, are in a perpetual hurry about Stock Jobbing, Lying, Cheating, Tricking Widows and Orphans, and committing Spoil and Rapine on the Publick.
Says the _Spectator_, having in mind the atmosphere intellectual of this coffee house and that:
I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein I do not make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will’s, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences; sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child’s, and, while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James’ Coffee House and sometimes join the little committee in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the theaters both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. (_Spectator_ No. 1.)
That the coffee house was not at all times a cave of harmony is evidenced in many places. We recall that _Sir Roger de Coverley_ had “kicked Bully Dawson in a coffee house for calling him a youngster.” Then, too, a letter written by Colley Cibber to Mr. Pope would seem to show that the irascible and waspish temper of the Twickenham poet had got him into trouble.
“When you used to pass your hours at Button’s,” writes Cibber in 1742, p. 65, “you were even then remarkable for your satirical itch of provocation; scarce was there a gentleman of any pretention to wit, whom your unguarded temper had fallen upon in some biting epigram, among which you once caught a pastoral tartar, whose resentment, that your punishment might be proportionate to the smart of your poetry, had stuck up a birchen rod in the room to be ready whenever you might come within reach of it; and at this rate, you writ and rallied and writ on, till you rhymed yourself quite out of the coffee-house.”
Pope, obviously was made for a coffee house career. Dryden, Addison, Steele and Savage on the other hand were in their glories at such gatherings. Once, at St. James’ Coffee House, Addison and his friends had noticed for several days a singular parson, who put his hat on the table, walked up and down the sanded floor for half an hour without speaking to any one, paid his money and left. They dubbed him the “mad parson.” One day Addison saw this “mad parson” step up to a new arrival who appeared to have come from the country, and heard him say, without any introduction:
“Pray sir, do you know any good weather in the world?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the other, “thank God I remember a great deal of good weather in my time.”
“That is more than I can say,” grumbled the “mad” one. “I never remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet; but however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year ’tis all very well.”
That was the first time Addison and Swift met.
We gather that occasional dead beats walked the world even as with us. In the _Spectator_ of March 28, 1711, appears the following:
ADVERTISEMENT.
To prevent all mistakes that may happen among gentlemen of the other end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James’ Coffee House, either by miscalling the servants, or requiring things from them as are not properly within their provinces; this is to give notice that Kidney, keeper of the book debts of the outlying customers, and observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that employment, is succeeded by John Sowton; to whose place of enterer of messages and first coffee grinder, William Bird is promoted; and Samuel Burdock comes as shoe cleaner in the room of said Bird.
Again, to all men who believe that human nature changes and that only in these latter and effete days are we burdened with bores, dogmatists, pedants and prigs, read what follows. It is Richard Steele writing in No. 145, and under date of August 16, 1711: