Part 9

As the other inhabitants do not always choose to follow the example of these two--I have known our illuminations to be very select--the great oil and tallow establishments blazing all alone in their glory. On other occasions--for instance, the rejoicings for that bill which Lord L. calls a Bill of Panes and Penalties--I have seen our street assume the motley appearance of a chessboard, alternately dark and bright--to say nothing of Mrs. Frampton’s lodging-house, where every tenant was of a different sentiment,--and the several floors afforded a striking example of the Clare Obscure.

Among general illuminations, I remember none more so than the one on the accession of his late Majesty--but what so universally brightened the Great Britain might be expected to light the Little one. It was in reality an unrivalled exhibition of its kind, and I propose therefore to give some account of it, the situation of my apartment having afforded unusual opportunities--for it is at the angle of a corner house and thus while its easterly windows stare into those of the Rumbold family, its northern ones squint aside into the sashes of that elderly spinster Miss Winter.

It must have been an extreme fit of loyalty that put such a thought into the penurious mind of Miss W., but she resolved for once in her life to illuminate. I could see her at a large dining-table--so called by courtesy, for it never dined--reviewing a regiment of glass custard cups, so called also by courtesy, for they never held custard--and another division of tall jelly glasses, equally unknown to jellies. I might have thought that she meant for once to give a very light supper, had I not seen her fill them all with oil from a little tin can, and afterwards she furnished them with a floating wick. They were then ranged on the window-frame, alternately tall and short; and after this costly preparation, which, by the heaving of her neckerchief, she visibly sighed over, she folded her arms demurely before her, and, by the light of her solitary rush taper, sat down to await the extravagant call of “Light-up!”

The elder Miss Rumbold--the parents were out of town--was not idle in the mean time. She packed all the little R.’s off to bed--(I did not see them have any supper)--and then, having got rid of the family branches, began on the tin ones. She had fixed her head quarters in the drawing-room, from whence I saw Caroline and Henry detached, with separate parcels of tins and candles, to do the same office for the floors above and below. But no such luck! After a while, the street door gently opened, and forth sneaked the two deserters, of course to see better illuminations than their own. At the slam of the door behind them Miss Rumbold comprehended the full calamity: first, she threw up her arms, then her eyes, then clenched her teeth and then her hands; going through all the pantomime for distress of mind--but she had no time for grieving, and indeed but little for rejoicing. Mr. Wix’s was beginning to glitter. Tearing up and down stairs like a lamplighter on his ladder, she furnished all the blank windows, and then returned to the drawing-room; and what was evidently her favourite fancy, she had completed and hung up two festoons of artificial flowers; but alas! her stock on hand fell short a whole foot of the third window--I am afraid for want of the very bouquet in Caroline’s bonnet. Removing the unfortunate garlands, she rushed out full speed, and the next moment I saw her in the story above, rapidly unpapering her curls, and making herself as fit as time allowed, to sit in state in the drawing-room, by the light of twenty-seven long sixes.

A violent uproar now recalled my attention to Number 29, where the mob had begun to call out to Miss Winter for her Northern Lights. Miss W. was at her post, and rushed with her rush to comply with the demand; but a sudden twitter of nervousness aggravating her old palsy, she could not persuade her wavering taper to alight on any one of the cottons. There was a deal of coquetting indeed between wick and wick, but nothing like a mutual flame. In vain the thin lover-like candle kept hovering over its intended, and shedding tears of grease at every repulse; not a glimmer replied to its glance, till at last, weary of love and light, it fairly leaped out of its tin socket, and drowned its own twinkle in a tall jelly-glass. The patience of the mob, already of a thin texture, was torn to rags by this conclusion; they saw that if she would, Miss Winter never _could_ illuminate: but as this was an unwelcome truth, they broke it to her with a volley of stones that destroyed her little Vauxhall in a moment, and in a twinkle left her nothing to twinkle with!

Shocked at this catastrophe, I turned with some anxiety to Miss Rumbold’s, but with admirable presence of mind she had lighted every alternate candle in her windows, and was thus able to present a respectable front at a short notice. The mob, however, made as much uproar as at Miss Winter’s, though the noise was different in character, and more resembled the boisterous merriment which attends upon Punch. In fact Miss Rumbold had a Fantoccini over head she little dreamt of. Awakened by the unusual light, the younger Rumbolds had rushed from bed to the window, where, exhilarated by childish spirits and the appearance of a gala, they had got up an extempore Juvenile Ball, and were dancing with all their might in their little nightcaps and nightgowns. In vain the unconscious Matilda pointed to her candles, and added her own private pair from the table to the centre window; in vain she wrung her hands, or squeezed them on her bosom: the more she protested in dumb show, the more the mob shouted; and the more the mob shouted, the wilder the imps jigged about. At last Matilda seemed to take some hint; she vanished from the drawing-room like a Ghost, and reappeared like a Fury in the nursery--a pair of large hands vigorously flourished and flogged--the heels of the Corps de Ballet flew up higher than their heads--the mob shouted louder than ever--and exeunt omnes.

This interlude being over, the rabble moved on to Mr. Wix’s, whose every window, as usual, shone “like nine good deeds in a naughty world,” and he obtained nine cheers for the display. Poor Mr. Sperm was not so fortunate. He had been struggling manfully with a sharp nor-wester to light up his star, but one obstinate limb persisted in showing which way the wind blew. It was a point not to be gained, and though far from red hot, it caused a hiss that reached even to Number 14, and frightened all the Flowerdews. Number 14, as the Clown expresses it in Twelfth Night, was “as lustrous as ebony.” In vain Mrs. Flowerdew pleaded from one window, and Mr. Flowerdew harangued from the other, while Flowerdew junior hammered and tugged at the space between; the glaziers and their friends unglazed everything; and I hope the worthy family, the next time they have a Crown and Anchor, will remember to have them the right side uppermost. Green and yellow lamps decline to hang upon hooks that are topsy-turvy, and the blue and red are just as particular.

I forgot to say that during the past proceedings, my eyes had frequently glanced towards Number 28. Its occupier, Mr. Brookbank, was in some remote way connected with the royal household, and had openly expressed his intention of surprising Little Britain. And in truth Little Britain was surprised enough, when it beheld at Mr. Brookbank’s nothing but a few sorry flambeaux: he talked to the mob, indeed, of a transparency of Peace and Plenty, but as they could see no sign of either, and they had plenty of stones, they again broke the peace. I am sorry to say that in this instance the mob were wrong, for there _was_ a transparency, but as it was lighted from the outer side, Mr. B.’s Peace and Plenty smiled on nobody but himself.

There was only one more disorder, and it occurred at the very house that I help to inhabit. Not that we were dim by any means, for we had been liberal customers to Mr. Sperm and to Mr. Wix: the tallow of one flared in all our panes, and the oil of the other fed a brilliant W. P. Alas! it was these fiery initials, enigmatical as those at Belshazzar’s banquet, that caused all our troubles. The million could make out the meaning of the W, but the other letter, divided in conjecture among them, was literally a split P. Curiosity increased to furiosity, and what might have happened nobody only knows, if my landlady had not proclaimed that her W had spent such a double allowance of lamps, that her R had been obliged to retrench.

To aid her oratory, the rabble were luckily attracted from our own display by a splendour greater even than usual at Number 9. The warehouseman of Mr. Wix--_like Master like Man_--had got up an illumination of his own, by leaving a firebrand among the tallow, that soon caused the breaking out of an insurrection in Grease, and where candles had hitherto been lighted only by Retail, they were now ignited by Wholesale; or as my landlady said,--“All the fat was in the fire!”

I ventured to ask her when all was over, what she thought of the lighting-up, and she gave me her opinion in the following sentiment, in the prayer of which I most heartily concur. “Illuminations,” she said, “were very pretty things to look at, and no doubt new Kings ought to be illuminated; but what with the toil, and what with the oil, and what with the grease, and what with the mob, she hoped it would be long, very long, before we had a new King again!”

SONNET.

Along the Woodford road there comes a noise Of wheels, and Mr. Rounding’s neat postchaise Struggles along, drawn by a pair of bays, With Rev. Mr. Crow and six small Boys; Who ever and anon declare their joys, With trumping horns and juvenile huzzas, At going home to spend their Christmas days, And changing Learning’s pains for Pleasure’s toys. Six weeks elapse, and down the Woodford way, A heavy coach drags six more heavy souls, But no glad urchins shout, no trumpets bray; The carriage makes a halt, the gate-bell tolls, And little Boys walk in as dull and mum As six new scholars to the Deaf and Dumb.

THE STEAM SERVICE.

“Life is but a _kittle_ cast.”--BURNS.

The time is not yet come--but come it will--when the masts of our Royal Navy shall be unshipped, and huge unsightly chimneys be erected in their place. The trident will be taken out of the hand of Neptune, and replaced by the effigy of a red hot poker; the Union Jack will look like a smoke-jack; and Lambtons, Russels, and Adairs, will be made Admirals of the Black; the forecastle will be called the Newcastle, and the cockpit will be termed the coal-pit; a man-of-war’s tender will be nothing but a Shields’ collier: first lieutenants will have to attend lectures on the steam-engine, and midshipmen must take lessons as climbing boys in the art of sweeping flues. In short, the good old tune of “Rule Britannia,” will give way to “Polly put the Kettle on;” while the Victory, the Majestic, and the Thunderer of Great Britain will “paddle in the burn,” like the Harlequin, the Dart, and the Magnet of Margate.

It will be well for our song writers to bear a wary eye to the Fleet, if they would prosper as Marine Poets. Some sea Gurney may get a seat at the Admiralty Board, and then farewell, a long farewell, to the old ocean imagery; marine metaphor will require a new figure-head. Flowing sheets, snowy wings, and the old comparison of a ship to a bird, will become obsolete and out of date! Poetical topsails will be taken aback, and all such things as reefs and double reefs will be shaken out of song. For my own part, I cannot be sufficiently thankful that I have not sought a Helicon of salt water; or canvassed the Nine Muses as a writer for their Marine Library; or made Pegasus a sea-horse, when sea-horses as well as land-horses are equally likely to be superseded by steam. After such a consummation, when the sea service, like the tea service, will depend chiefly on boiling water, it is very doubtful whether the Fleet will be worthy of anything but plain prose. I have tried to adapt some of our popular blue ballads to the boiler, and Dibdin certainly does not steam quite so well as a potato. However, if his Sea Songs are to be in immortal use, they will have to be revised and corrected in future editions thus:--

I _steamed_ from the Downs in the Nancy, My jib how she _smoked_ through the breeze. She’s a vessel as tight to my fancy As ever _boil’d_ through the salt seas.

* * * * *

When up the _flue_ the sailor goes And ventures on the _pot_, The landsman, he no better knows, But thinks hard is his lot.

Bold Jack with smiles each danger meets, Weighs anchor, lights the log; _Trims up the fire, picks out the slates_, And drinks his can of grog.

* * * * *

Go patter to lubbers and swabs, do you see, ’Bout danger, and fear, and the like; But a _Boulton and Watt_ and good _Wall’s-end_ give me; And it an’t to a little I’ll strike.

Though the tempest our _chimney_ smack smooth shall down smite, And shiver each _bundle_ of wood; Clear the wreck, _stir the fire_, and stow everything tight, And _boiling a gallop_ we’ll scud.

I have cooked Stevens’s, or rather Incledon’s Storm in the same way; but the pathos does not seem any the tenderer for stewing.

Hark, the boatswain hoarsely bawling, By shovel, tongs, and poker stand; Down the scuttle quick be hauling, Down your bellows, hand, boys, hand; Now it freshens,--blow like blazes; Now unto the coal-hole go; Stir, boys, stir, don’t mind black faces, Up your ashes nimbly throw.

Ply your bellows, raise the wind, boys, See the valve is clear of course; Let the paddles spin, don’t mind, boys, Though the weather should be worse. Fore and aft a proper draft get, Oil the engines, see all clear; Hands up, each a sack of coal get, Man the boiler, cheer, lads, cheer.

Now the dreadful thunder’s roaring, Peal on peal contending clash; On our heads fierce rain falls pouring, In our eyes the paddles splash. One wide water all around us, All above one smoke-black sky: Different deaths at once surround us; Hark! what means that dreadful cry?

The funnel’s gone! cries ev’ry tongue out, The engineer’s washed off the deck: A leak beneath the coal-hole’s sprung out Call all hands to clear the wreck. Quick, some coal, some nubbly pieces; Come, my hearts, be stout and bold; Plumb the boiler, speed decreases, Four feet water getting cold.

While o’er the ship wild waves are beating, We for wives or children mourn; Alas! from hence there’s no retreating; Alas! to them there’s no return. The fire is out--we’ve burst the bellows, The tinder-box is swamped below; Heaven have mercy on poor fellows, For only that can serve us now!

Devoutly do I hope that the kettle, though a great vocalist, will never thus appropriate the old Sea Songs of England. In the words of an old Greenwich pensioner--“Steamin and biling does very well for _Urn_ Bay, and the likes;” but the craft does not look regular and shipshape to the eye of a tar who has sailed with Duncan, Howe, and Jarvis--and who would rather even go without _port_ than have it through a _funnel_.

A LAY OF REAL LIFE.

“Some are born with a wooden spoon in their mouths, and some with a golden ladle.”--GOLDSMITH.

“Some are born with tin rings in their noses, and some with silver ones.”--SILVERSMITH.

Who ruined me ere I was born, Sold every acre, grass or corn, and left the next heir all forlorn? My Grandfather.

Who said my mother was no nurse, And physicked me and made me worse, Till infancy became a curse? My Grandmother.

Who left me in my seventh year, A comfort to my mother dear, And Mr. Pope, the overseer? My Father.

Who let me starve, to buy her gin, Till all my bones came through my skin, Then called me “ugly little sin?” My Mother.

Who said my mother was a Turk, And took me home--and made me work, But managed half my meals to shirk? My Aunt.

Who “of all earthly things” would boast, “He hated others’ brats the most,” And therefore made me feel my post? My Uncle.

Who got in scrapes, an endless score, And always laid them at my door, Till many a bitter bang I bore? My Cousin.

Who took me home when mother died, Again with father to reside, Black shoes, clean knives, run far and wide? My Stepmother.

Who marred my stealthy urchin joys, And when I played cried “What a noise”-- Girls always hector over boys-- My Sister.

Who used to share in what was mine, Or took it all, did he incline, ’Cause I was eight, and he was nine? My Brother.

Who stroked my head, and said “Good lad,” And gave me sixpence, “all he had;” But at the stall the coin was bad? My Godfather.

Who, gratis, shared my social glass, But when misfortune came to pass, Referr’d me to the pump? Alas! My Friend.

Through all this weary world, in brief, Who ever sympathised with grief, Or shared my joy--my sole relief? Myself.

A VALENTINE.

THE WEATHER. To P. MURPHY, Esq., M.N.S.

These, properly speaking, being esteemed the three arms of Meteoric action.

Dear Murphy, to improve her charms, Your servant humbly begs; She thanks you for her leash of arms, But wants a brace of legs.

Moreover, as you promise folks On certain days a drizzle; She thinks, in case she cannot rain, She should have means to _mizzle_.

Some lightning too may just fall due, When woods begin to moult; And if she cannot “fork it out,” She’ll wish to make a _bolt_!

THE ELLAND MEETING.

_Benedict._ “Here’s a dish I love not: I cannot endure my lady Tongue.”--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

“Do you hear the rumour? They say the women are in insurrection, and mean to make a----.”--THE WOMAN’S PRIZE.

“Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.”--K. HENRY IV.

“In a word, the Tartars came on.”--ROBINSON CRUSOE.

In my M. S. days,--and like many bookish bachelors of the same standing,--I was a member of a private literary society, with a name whereof I only remember that it began in Greek and ended in English. This re-union was framed on the usual plan of such institutions; except that the gallantry of the founders had ruled that half the members might be of the female sex, and accordingly amongst our “intellectual legs,” we numbered a fair proportion of the hose that are metaphorically blue. We assembled weekly at the house of some Fellow that had a house, where an original essay was first read by the author, and then submitted to discussion, much as a school-boy first spins his top and then lays it down to be pegged at by the rest of the company. The subjects, like Sir Roger de Coverley’s picture, generally left a great deal to be said on both sides, nor were there wanting choppers, not to say hackers of logic, to avail themselves of the circumstance; and as we possessed, amongst others, a brace of Irish barristers, a Quaker, a dissenter to everything, an author who spoke volumes, a geologist who could find sermons in stones, and one old man eloquent, surnamed for his discursiveness the rambler, we had usually what Bubb Doddington has called “a multiplicity of talk.”

It is worthy of record, however, and especially as running counter to the received opinion of the loquacity of the sex, that no female member was ever known to deliver or attempt to deliver a sentence on the subject in debate. Now and then, perchance, a short clearing cough would flatter us that we were going to benefit by feminine taste and delicacy of sentiment; but the expectation invariably fell to the ground, and we might as well have expected an opinion to transpire from the wax work of Mrs. Salmon or Madame Tussaud. I have since learned, it is true, from one of the maturest of the she-fellows, that she did once actually contemplate a few words to the matter in hand, but that at the very first stitch she lost her needle, by which she meant her tongue, and then in seeking for her needle she lost the thread of her ideas, and so gave up the task, she said, as not being “woman’s work.”

It would seem therefore, that a set discourse in company is altogether incompatible with the innate diffidence and shrinking timidity of the sex. Milton, indeed, makes this silent modesty a peculiar characteristic of perfect womanhood, as evinced in the demeanour of “accomplished Eve.” To mark it the more strongly, he liberally endows our general mother with fluency of speech in her colloquies with Adam, so as even to “forget all time” in conversing with him; whereas in the presence of a third party,--the Angel Visitor for instance, whom she less bids than makes welcome to her dessert,--she seldom opens her lips. Nor is this an overstrained picture: the same matronly, or spinsterly reserve, having survived the Fall, and the confusion of Babel, and the more womanly of her daughters, however good at what the Scotch call “a two-handed crack,” in a corner or behind a curtain will still evince a paradisiacal hesitation, amounting to an impediment, in addressing the most limited audience. In fact up to a comparatively recent period, the Miltonic theory was practically acknowledged and acted upon, at the theatre, the female characters of the Drama being always represented by proxies of men or boys.

Even in the present age, the début of an actress, having so many “lengths” to deliver in public, is reckoned one of the severest ordeals that womanly modesty can undergo. The celebrated Mrs. Siddons described it as a “fiery trial,”--a “terrible moment,”--and any play-goer who has witnessed the first appearance of a young lady on any stage will easily give credit for its agonies. The late Mrs. ---- once described to me very vividly her sufferings on a like awful occasion:--“The voice that would not come, and the tremor that would not go--the frame inclining to sink, and the head determined to swim,--the distinct consciousness of the presence of the body, with the indistinct impression of the absence of the mind. Thank Heaven,” she concluded, “that I had not to ‘extort’ the people, as Mawworm calls it, out of my own head--that I had not to furnish the speech, as well as the courage to utter it; for I protest that I could not have put together a sentence of my own, for the saving of my life!”

With such experience and impressions of the inaptitude of the sex for popular orators, my profound amazement may be conceived when on lately glancing over the columns of a morning journal, my eye was arrested by the extraordinary heading of

PUBLIC MEETING OF WOMEN AGAINST THE POOR LAWS.