Part 6

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews, it seems, is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and at that time was kicking his heels for diversion. This authority of the knight, though exerted in that odd manner which accompanies him in all circumstances in life, has had very good effect upon the parish, who are not polite enough to see anything ridiculous in his behaviour; besides that the general good sense and worthiness of his character makes his friends observe these little singularities as foils that rather set off than blemish his good qualities.

As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody presumes to stir until Sir Roger is gone out of the church. The knight walks down from his seat in the chancel between a double row of his tenants, that stand bowing to him on each side; and every now and then inquires how such-an-one’s wife, or mother, or son, or father do, whom he does not see at church; which is understood as a secret reprimand to the person that is absent.

The chaplain has often told me, that upon a catechising day, when Sir Roger has been pleased with a boy that answers well, he has ordered a bible to be given to him next day for his encouragement; and sometimes accompanies it with a fitch of bacon to his mother. Sir Roger has likewise to add five pounds a year to the clerk’s place; and, that he may encourage the young fellows to make themselves perfect in the church service, has promised, upon the death of the present incumbent, who is very old, to bestow it according to merit.

This fair understanding between Sir Roger and his chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing good, is the more remarkable, because the very next village is famous for the differences and contentions that arise between the parson and the squire, who live in a perpetual state of war. The parson is always preaching at the squire, and the squire, to be revenged on the parson, never comes to church. The squire has made all his tenants atheists and tithe-stealers; while the parson instructs them every Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates to them in almost every sermon that he is a better man than his patron. In short, matters have come to such an extremity, that the squire has not said his prayers either in public or private this half-year; and that the parson threatens him, if he does not mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of the whole congregation.

Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the country, are very fatal to the ordinary people; who are so used to be dazzled with riches, that they pay as much difference to the understanding of a man of an estate, as of a man of learning; and are very hardly brought to regard any truth, how important soever it may be, that is preached to them, when they know there are several men of five hundred a-year who do not believe it.

* * * * *

Without any doubt whatsoever, the outstanding characteristic of our present day life is the extreme lack of sociability. It is the more apparent to me, because I have lived in countries at times, especially in Patagonia, where, in some respects, the manners and the customs of the people closely approached the manners and customs of the early eighteenth century. There were scandalous roisterers and hard drinkers there, and vice was in fashion, nor was it a delicate kind of vice. Many of the ladies would lend an ear to obscene ballads, on occasions swear and blaspheme very prettily, and consider as a good joke, the coarse words and oaths that flowed through their lovers’ conversation like filth through a sewer. We were never in a hurry and a horseback journey was an occasion for sociability. It was much so in the Addison days. People on the highway had a will to companionship. _Will Wimble_, as you see in the paper that follows, “joined a couple of plain men who rode before,” and “conversed with them.” It was always so. You pick up your Fielding to see _Tom Jones_ traveling mile after mile in company with a chance acquaintance. _Joseph Andrews_ is carried on his way by a man with a spare horse. _Peregrine Pickle_ on the road to Dover overtakes and journeys with all sorts and conditions of sociable men and _Roderick Random_ never lacks a chance friend.

Indeed, in the days when men were not so eager to save time which, when saved, they knew not what to do with, to encounter a fellow wayfarer was counted a high and joyful privilege. It meant companionship and a “God be wi’ ye” at parting. If fellowship is Heaven, as Morris put it, and the lack of fellowship is hell, then indeed we of today are much further advanced along the downward path that is paved with good intentions. Your present-day autoist is far more prone to knock the wayfarer down than to pick him up, or to insult his ears with a derisive fanfare on his klaxon than he is to bid him “God speed.” And so to Sir Roger.

SIR ROGER AT THE ASSIZES.

NO. 122, 1711, SPECTATOR--ADDISON.

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world; if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.

My worthy friend Sir Roger is one of those who is not only at peace within himself, but beloved and esteemed by all about him. He receives a suitable tribute for his universal benevolence to mankind, in the returns of affection and good will, which are paid him by every one that lives within his neighborhood. I lately met with two or three odd instances of that respect which is shown to the good old knight. He would needs carry Will Wimble and myself with him to the country assizes: as we were upon the road Will Wimble joined a couple of plain men who rode before us, and conversed with them for some time; during which my friend Sir Roger acquainted me with their characters.

“The first of them,” says he, “that has a spaniel by his side, is a yeoman of about a hundred pounds a year, an honest man: he is just within the Game-Act, and qualified to kill an hare or a pheasant: he knocks down a dinner with his gun twice or thrice a week; and by that means lives much cheaper than those that have not so good an estate as himself. He would be a good neighbor if he did not destroy so many partridges: in short, he is a very sensible man; shoots flying; and has been several times foreman of the petty jury.

“The other that rides along with him is Tom Touchy, a fellow for taking the law of everybody. There is not one in the town where he lives that he has not sued at quarter-sessions. The rogue had once the impudence to go to law with the Widow. His head is full of costs, damages, and ejectments; he plagued a couple of gentlemen so long for a trespass in breaking one of his hedges, till he was forced to sell the ground it enclosed to defray the charges of the prosecution: his father left him fourscore pounds a year; but he has cast and been cast so often, that is not now worth thirty. I suppose he is going upon the old business of the willow-tree.”

As Sir Roger was giving me this account of Tom Touchy, Will Wimble and his two companions stopped short until we came up to them. Will it seems had been giving his fellow traveler an account of his angling one day in such a hole; when Tom Touchy, instead of hearing out his story, told him, that Mr. Such-an-one, if he pleased, might take the law of him for fishing in that part of the river. My friend Sir Roger heard them both upon a round trot; and, after having paused some time, told them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that _much might be said on both sides_. They were neither of them dissatisfied with the knight’s determination, because neither of them found himself in the wrong by it; and upon which we made the best of our way to the assizes.

The court was set before Sir Roger came, but notwithstanding all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old knight at the head of them; who, for his reputation in the country, took occasion to whisper in the judge’s ear, _that he was glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit_. I was listening to the proceedings of the court with much attention, and infinitely pleased with the great appearance of solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws; when, after about an hour’s sitting, I observed to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity.

Upon his first rising the court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among the country people that Sir Roger _was up_. The speech he made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it; and I believe was not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the court, as to give him a figure in my eye, and keep up his credit in the country.

I was highly delighted, when the court rose, to see the gentlemen of the country gathering about my old friend, and striving who should compliment him the most; at the same time that the ordinary people gazed upon him at a distance, not a little admiring his courage, that was not afraid to speak to the judge.

In our return home we met with a very odd accident; which I cannot forbear relating, because it shows how desirous all who know Sir Roger are of giving him marks of their esteem. When we reappeared upon the verge of his estate, we stopped at a little inn to rest ourselves and our horses. The man of the house had, it seems, been formerly a servant in the knight’s family; and, to do honor to his old master, had some time since, unknown to Sir Roger, put him up in a sign-post before the door; so that the _Knight’s Head_ had hung out upon the road a week before he himself knew anything of the matter. As soon as Sir Roger was acquainted with it, finding that the servant’s indiscretion proceeded wholly from affection and good-will, he only told him that he had made him too high a compliment; and, when the fellow seemed to think that hardly could be, added with a more decisive look, that it was too great an honor for any man under a duke; but told him at the same time, that it might be altered with a very few touches, and that he himself would be at the charge of it. Accordingly they got a painter by the knight’s directions to add a pair of whiskers to the face, and by a little aggravation of the features to change it into the _Saracen’s Head_. I should not have known this story, had not the innkeeper, upon Sir Roger’s alighting, told him in my hearing, that his Honor’s head was brought back last night with the alterations that he had ordered to be made in it. Upon this my friend with his usual cheerfulness related the particulars above mentioned, and ordered the head to be brought into the room. I could not forbear discovering greater expressions of mirth than ordinary upon the appearance of this monstrous face, under which, notwithstanding it was made to frown and stare in a most extraordinary manner, I could still discover a distant resemblance of my old friend. Sir Roger, upon seeing me laugh, desired me to tell him truly if I thought it possible for the people to know him in that disguise. I at first kept my usual silence; but, upon the knight conjuring me to tell him whether it was not still more like himself than a Saracen, I composed my countenance in the best manner I could, and replied, _that much might be said on both sides_.

These several adventures, with the knight’s behavior in them, gave me as pleasant a day as ever I met with in any of my travels.

* * * * *

If you went abroad at night in those days, it was better to carry a stout cudgel than a walking cane. Says the poet Gay, in his “Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London” Part III, ii, 326,

Who has not trembled at the Mohock’s name? Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds, Safe from their blows or new invented wounds? I pass their desperate deeds and mischief done, Where from Snow hill black steepy torrents run; How matrons, hoop’d within the hogshead womb, Were tumbled furious hence.

The young men of the age, like everyone else, mistook brutality for pleasure just as do shallow minds today. The difference is, that whereas we take it out at second hand, looking at blood letting in a moving picture, or wasting time on a so-called funny sheet where the humor turns on someone being hurt, they were more sincere and honest about it. Gay, in his “hogshead womb” refers to the curious practice of the Mohocks, (which seemed to have something in common with our Ku Klux Klans in a love for cruelty and mob work), by which they caught a woman, packed her in a barrel, and set her rolling down a steep hill. You have seen, and perhaps enjoyed that kind of thing in a screen “comedy.” As the screen men at times picture impossible cowboys making innocent citizens dance by firing revolvers close to their feet, so the Mohocks made them dance by pricking their legs with their swords. Sometimes they went further, and, like latter day self-appointed patriotic leagues, killed those they tortured. Of the Mohocks, Swift writes, in his Journal to Stella, “Did I tell you of a race of rakes, called the Mohocks, that play the devil about this town every night, slit people’s noses and beat them? Faith, they shan’t cut mine; I like it better as it is. The dogs will cost me at least a crown a week in chairs.”

The good knight had sufficient reason for his fear, for the Mohocks at one time were a very serious menace. Eustace Bludgell in No. 347 of the _Spectator_, of April 8, 1712, has a paper on the subject. The fellows who banded themselves together to terrorize quiet citizens, sometimes worked upon the superstitious fears of the ignorant, “like those specters and apparitions which frighten several towns and villages in her majesty’s dominions,” says Bludgell. The Mohocks tried to form a sort of invisible empire, like the Ku Klux Klan of today. They had their Emperor of the Mohocks, who sent anonymous letters of a threatening nature, which were signed, ridiculously enough “Taw Waw Eben Zan Kalader.” They pretended to constitute themselves into guardians of law and order, issuing manifestoes setting forth that “We have received information, from sundry quarters of this great and populous city, of several outrages committed” and so on. They were, of course, full of the sentimentality that finds absurd expression in proclamations that they were defenders of the honor of women. Read this, from Bludgell’s paper:

And whereas, we have nothing more at our imperial heart than the reformation of the cities of London and Westminster, which to our unspeakable satisfaction we have in some measure already affected. We do hereby earnestly pray and exhort all husbands, fathers, housekeepers and masters of families ... not only to repair themselves to their habitations at early and seasonable hours, but also to keep their daughters, wives, sons, servants and apprentices, from appearing in the streets at those times and seasons which may expose them to military discipline as it is practiced by our good subjects the Mohocks; and we do further promise on our imperial word, that as soon as the reformation aforesaid shall be brought about. We will forthwith cause all hostilities to cease.

Given from our Court at the Devil Tavern, March 15th, 1712.

SIR ROGER AT THE THEATRE.

SPECTATOR, NO. 335, MARCH 1712--ADDISON.

My friend Sir Roger De Coverley, when we last met together at the club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy with me, assuring me, at the same time, that he had not been at a play these twenty years. “The last I saw,” said Sir Roger, “was the Committee, which I should not have gone to neither, had I not been told beforehand that it was a good Church of England comedy.” He then proceeded to inquire of me who this distressed mother was; and upon hearing that she was Hector’s widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a school boy he had read his life at the end of the dictionary. My friend asked me, in the next place, if there would not be some danger in coming home late, lest the Mohocks should be abroad. “I assure you,” says he, “I thought I had fallen into their hands last night; for I observed two or three lusty black men that followed me half way up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me, in proportion as I put on to get away from them. You must know,” said the Knight with a smile, “I fancied they had a mind to hunt me; for I remember an honest gentleman in my neighborhood, who was served such a trick in King Charles the Second’s time; for which reason he has not ventured himself in town ever since. I might have shown them very good sport, had this been their design; for as I am an old fox hunter, I should have turned and dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks they had never seen in their lives before.” Sir Roger added, that if these gentlemen had any such intention, they did not succeed very well in it; “for I threw them out,” says he, “at the end of Norfolk Street, where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my lodgings before they could imagine what had become of me, however,” says the knight, “if Captain Sentry will make one with us tomorrow night, and you will both call on me about four o’clock, that we may be at the house before it is full, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for John tells me he has got the fore wheels mended.”

The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger’s servants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plants, to attend their master on this occasion. When he had placed him in the coach, with myself at his left hand, the Captain before him, and his butler at the head of his footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the play house, where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the Captain and I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the pit. As soon as the house was full, and the candles were lighted, my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure, which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment, I could not but fancy to myself as the old man hearing a cluster of them praise Orestes, struck in with them, and told them, that he thought his friend Pylades was a very sensible man; as they were afterwards applauding Pyrrhus Sir Roger put in a second time: “And let me tell you,” says he, “though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them.” Captain Sentry seeing two or three wags, who sat near us, lean with an attentive ear toward Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoke the knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear, that lasted till the opening of the fifth act. The knight was wonderfully attentive to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus’s death; and at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralize (in his way) upon an evil conscience; adding that Orestes in his madness, looked as if he saw something.

As we were the first that came into the house, so we were the last that went out of it; being resolved to have a clear passage for our old friend, whom we did not care to venture among the justling of the crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment, and we guarded him to his lodging in the same manner that we brought him to the playhouse; being highly pleased, for my own part, not only with the performance of the excellent piece which had been presented, but with the satisfaction which it had given the old man.

* * * * *

_Note._ Much as the simple knight seemed to have been pleased with the play, _The Distrest Mother_ was a dull version by Ambrose Philips of Racine’s _Andromaque_. Fielding made a burlesque of it in his _Covent Garden Tragedy_, 1712. The _Committee_, to which Sir Roger refers, had a sub-title by which it was better known, _The Faithful Irishman_. It was written by Robert Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law, and first produced in 1665.

* * * * *

A country cousin could no more pass a week in London in those days without going to Vauxhall, than could a countryman stay any length of time in New York without finding his way to Coney Island. The earliest mention of the place is in Evelyn’s diary, 2nd July, 1661, when he went to see the “New Spring Garden at Lambeth; a pretty contrived plantation where sometimes they would have music and sit upon barges on the water.” Charles II, who missed nothing in the line of gaiety, had built for him “a fine room, the inside all of looking glass, and fountains very pleasant to behold,” which, the grave Morland, his Master Mechanic reports, was for the reception of “the King and his ladies.”

Later, little improvements were made and there was an artificial cascade, a water mill, a bridge with a mail coach passing over it, a cottage scene with animated figures drinking and smoking by machinery. Samuel Pepys, who missed nothing, says, “July 27, 1688--So over the water with my wife and Deb and Mercer, to Spring Garden, and there ate and walked, and observed how rude some of the young gallants of the town are become, to go into people’s arbors, where there are not men, and almost gore the women--which troubled me to see the vice and confidence of the age.” Tom Brown, a little later, speaks of the close walks and wildernesses, which “are so intricate, that the most experienced mothers have often lost themselves looking for their daughters.”