Читать книгу Merrie England in the Olden Time - George Daniel - Страница 12

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The Genius of Mirth never hit upon a happier subject than the humours of Cockneyland. “Man made the town and a pretty sample it is of the maker! Behind or before the counter, at home and abroad, the man of business or the beau, the Cockney is the same whimsical original, baffling imitation, and keeping description in full cry. See him sally forth on a fine Sunday to inhale his weekly mouthful of fresh air, * the world all before him, where to choose occupying his meditations, till he finds himself elevated on High-gate Hill or Hampstead Heath. From those magnificent summits he beholds in panorama, woods, valleys, lofty trees, and stately turrets, not forgetting that glorious cupola dedicated to the metropolitan saint, which points out the locality where, six days out of the seven, his orisons are paid to a deity not contemplated by the apostle.

* Moorfields, Pimlico Path, and the Exchange, were the

fashionable parades of the citizens in the days of Elizabeth

and James I.

He lays himself out for enjoyment, and seeks good entertainment for man and (if mounted, or in his cruelty-van) for horse. Having taken possession of a window that commands the best prospect, the waiter is summoned, the larder called over, the ceremony of lunch commenced, and, with that habitual foresight which marks his character, the all-important meal that is to follow, duly catered for. The interval for rural adventure arrives; he takes a stroll; the modest heath-bell and the violet turn up their dark blue eyes to him; and he finds blackberries enough (as Falstaff's men did linen!) on every hedge. Dinner served up, and to his mind, he warms and waxes cosey, jokes with the waiter, talks anything, and to anybody,

Drinks a glass

To his favourite lass!”

pleased with himself, and willing to please. If his phraseology provoke a laugh, he puts it to the account of his smart sayings, and is loudest in the chorus; for when the ball of ridicule is flying about, he ups with his racket and strikes it off to his neighbour.

He is the worst mortal in the world to be put out of his way. The slightest inconvenience, the most trifling departure from his wonted habits, he magnifies into a serious evil. His well-stocked larder and cheerful fireside are ever present to his view: beef and pudding have taken fast hold of him; and, in default of these, his spirits flag; he is hipped and melancholy. Foreign travel exhibits him in his natural light; his peculiarities break forth with whimsical effect, which, though not always the most amiable, are nevertheless entertaining. He longs to see the world; and having with due ceremony arranged his wardrobe, put money in his purse, and procured his passport to strange lands, he sets forward, buttoned up in his native consequence, to the capital of the grand monarque, to rattle dice, and drink champagne. His expectations are not the most reasonable. Without considering the different manners and customs of foreign parts, he bends to nobody, yet takes it as an affront if everybody bend not to him! His baggage is subjected to rigorous search. The infernal parlez-vous!—nothing like this ever happens in old England! His passport is inspected, and his person identified. The inquisitors!—to take the length and breadth of a man, his complexion and calling! The barriers are closed, and he must bivouac in the Diligence the live-long night. Monstrous tyranny! Every rogue enjoys free ingress and egress in a land of liberty! He calls for the bill of fare, the “carte,” and in his selection puts the cart before the horse! Of course there is a horrible conspiracy to poison him! The wines, too, are sophisticated. The champagne is gooseberry; the Burgundy, Pontac; and the vin ordinaire neither better nor worse than a dose of “Braithwait's Intermediate.” The houses are dirty and dark; the streets muddy and gay; the madames and mademoiselles pretty well, I thank'e; and the Mounseers a pack of chattering mountebanks, stuck over with little bits of red ribbon, and blinded with snuff and whiskers! Even the air is too thin: he misses his London smoke! And but one drunken dog has he encountered (and he was his countryman!) to bring to fond remembrance the land we live in! * What wonder, then, if he sigh for luxurious bachelorship in a Brighton boarding-house? Beds made, dinner provided, the cook scolded by proxy, and all the agreeable etceteras incidental to good living set before him, without the annoyance of idle servants, and the trouble of ordering, leaving him to the delightful abandonment of every care, save that of feasting and pleasure-taking!

* Beware of those who are homeless by choice. Show me the

man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will

show you in the same person one who loves nothing but

himself. Home and its attachments are dear to the ingenuous

mind—to cherish their remembrance is the surest proof of a

noble spirit.

With moderate gastronomical and soporific powers, he may manage to eat, drink, and sleep out three guineas a-week; for the sea is a rare provocative to feeding and repose. Besides, a Brighton boarding-house is a change both of air and condition; bachelors become Benedicks, and widows wives, for three guineas a-week, more or less! It furnishes an extensive assortment of acquaintance, such as nowhere else can be found domiciled under the same roof. Each finds it necessary to make himself and herself agreeable. Pride, mauvaise honte, modesty? that keep people apart in general society, all give way. The inmates are like one family; and when they break up for the season, 'tis often in pairs!

“Uncle Timothy to a T! Pardon me, sir, but he must have sat to you for the portrait. If you unbutton his native consequence a little, and throw a jocular light over his whim-whams and caprices, the likeness would be perfect.”

This was addressed to us by a lively, well-to-do-in-the-world-looking little gentleman, who lolled in an arm-chair opposite to an adjoining window, taking things in an easy pick-tooth way, and coquetting with a pint of old port.

“The picture, sir, that you are pleased to identify is not an individual, but a species—a slight off-hand sketch, taken from general observation.”

“Indeed! That's odd.”

“Even so.”

“Never knew Uncle Tim was like all the world. Would, for all the world's sake, that all the world were like Uncle Tim!”

“A worthy character.”

“Sir, he holds in his heart all the four honours—Truth, Honesty, Affection, and Benevolence—in the great game of humanity, and plays not for lucre, but love! I fear you think me strangely familiar—impertinent too, perhaps. But that portrait, so graphical and complete, was a spell as powerful as Odin's to break silence. Besides, I detest your exclusives—sentimentalising! soliloquising!—Their shirt-collars, affectedly turned down, puts my choler up! Give me the human face divine, the busy haunts of men, the full tide of human existence.”

The little gentleman translated the “full tide” into a full glass to our good healths and better acquaintance, at the same time drawing his chair nearer, and presenting a handsomely embossed card, on which was inscribed, in delicate Italian calligraphy, “Mr. Benjamin Bosky, Dry-salter, Little Britain.”

Drysalter—he looked like a thirsty soul!

“Pleasant prospect from this window; you may count every steeple in London. There's the 'tall bully,'—how gloriously his flaming top-knot glistens in the setting sun! Wouldn't give a fig for the best view in the world, if it didn't take in the dome of St. Paul's! Beshrew the Vandal architect that cut down those beautiful elms.—

'The rogue the gallows as his fate foresees,

And bears the like antipathy to trees,'

and run up the wigwam pavilions, the Tom-foolery baby-houses, the run mad, shabby-genteel, I-would-if-I-could-but-I-can't cottages ornée—ornée?—horney!—the cows popping in their heads at the parlour windows, frightening the portly proprietors from their propriety and port!”

It was clear that Mr. Bosky was not to be so frightened; for he drew another draught on his pint decanter, though sitting beneath the umbrage of a huge pair of antlers that were fixed against the wall, under which innumerable Johnny New-comes had been sworn, according to ancient custom, at the Horns at Highgate. It was equally clear, too, that Mr. Bosky himself might have sat for the portrait that he had so kindly appropriated to Uncle Timothy.

A fine manly voice without was heard to troll with joyous melody—

“The lark, that tirra-lirra chants—

With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay,

Are summer songs for me and my aunts,

While we lie tumbling in the hay.”

“Uncle Tim! Uncle Tim!” shouted the mercurial little Drysalter, and up he started as if he had been galvanised, scampered out of the room, made but one leap from the top of the stairs to the bottom, descended à plomb, was up again before we had recovered from our surprise, and introduced a middle-aged, rosy-faced gentleman, “more fat than bard beseems,” with a perforating eye and a most satirical nose. “Uncle Timothy, gentlemen.—A friend or two, (if I may presume to call them so,) Uncle Timothy, that I have fallen in with most unexpectedly and agreeably.”

There is a certain “I no not like thee, Doctor Fell,” feeling, and an “I do,” that have rarely deceived us. With the latter, the satirical-nosed gentleman inspired us at first sight. There was the humorist, with a dash of the antiquary, heightened with a legible expression that nature sometimes stamps on her higher order of intelligences. What a companion, we thought, for “Round about our coal fire” on a winter's evening, or, “Under the green-wood tree” on a summer's clay!

We were all soon very good company; and half a dozen tea-totallers, who had called for a pint of ale and six glasses, having discussed their long division and departed, we had the room to ourselves.

“Know you, Uncle Timothy,” cried Mr. Bosky, with a serio-comic air, “that the law against vagabonds and sturdy beggars is in full force, seeing that you carol in broad daylight, and on the King's highway, a loose catch appertaining to one of the most graceless of their fraternity?”

“Beggars! varlet! I beg nothing of thee but silence, which is gold, if speech be silver. * Is there aught unseemly in my henting the stile with the merry Autolycus? Vagabonds! The order is both ancient and honourable. Collect they not tribute for the crown? Take heed, Benjamin, lest thine be scored on! Are they not solicitors as old as Adam?”

* A precept of the Koran.

“And thieves too, from Mercury downwards, Uncle Timothy.”

“Conveyancers, sirrah! sworn under the Horns never to beg when they can steal. Better lose my purse than my patience. Thou, scapegrace! rob best me of my patience, and beggest nought but the question.”

“Were not the beggars once a jovial crew, sir?” addressing ourselves to the middle-aged gentleman with the satirical nose.

“Right merry! Gentlemen—

'Sweeter than honey

Is other men's money.'

“The joys of to-day were never marred by the cares of to-morrow; for to-morrow was left to take care of itself; and its sun seldom went down upon disappointment. The beggar, * though his pockets be so low, that you might dance a jig in one of them without breaking your shins against a halfpenny; while from the other you might be puzzled to extract as much coin as would pay turnpike for a walking-stick, sings with a light heart; his fingers no less light! playing administrators to the farmer's poultry, and the good housewife's sheets that whiten every hedge!

* “Cast our nabs and cares away—

This is Beggars' Holiday;

In the world look out and see

Who's so happy a king as he?

At the crowning of our king,

Thus we ever dance and sing.

Where's the nation lives so free

And so merry as do we?

Be it peace, or be it war,

Here at liberty we are.

Hang all Harmanbccks! we cry,

And the Cuffinquiers, too, by.

We enjoy our ease and rest,

To the fields we are not press'd;

When the subsidy's increas'd,

We are not a penny cost;

Nor are we called into town

To be troubled with a gown;

Nor will any go to law

With a beggar for a straw.

All which happiness he brags

He doth owe unto his rags!”

Of all the mad rascals that belong to this fraternity, the

Abraham-Man is the most fantastic. He calls himself by the name of Poor Tom, and, coming near to any one, cries out “Poor Tom's a-cold!” Some are exceedingly merry, and do nothing but sing songs, fashioned out of their own brains; some will dance; others will do nothing but laugh or weep; others are dogged, and so sullen, both in look and speech, that, spying but small company in a house, they boldly enter, compelling the servants, through fear, to give them what they demand, which is commonly something that will yield ready money. The “Upright Man” (who in ancient times was, next to the king and those “o' th' blood,” in dignity,) is not a more terrible enemy to the farmer's poultry than Poor Tom. How finely has Shakspeare spiritualized this strange character in the part of Edgar in King Lear! The middle aisle of old St. Paul's was a great resort for beggars. “In Paul's Church, by a pillar, Sometimes ye have me stand, sir, With a writ that shews What care and woes I pass by sea and land, sir. With a seeming bursten belly, I look like one half dead, sir, Or else I beg With a wooden leg, And with a night-cap on my head, sir.” Blind Beggars Song. Wit and Drollery. Jovial Poems. 1682.

Mendicity is a monarchy; it is governed by peculiar laws, and has a language of its own. Reform has waged war to the knife with it. The soap-eater, whose ingenious calling was practised in the streets of London as far back as Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, is admonished to apply the raw material of his trade to an exterior use; * and the tatterdemalions of the Beggar's Opera no longer enjoy the privileges that belonged to their ancestors three centuries ago, when the Barbican, Turnmill Street, and Houndsditch, rang with their nocturnal orgies; and where not unfrequently “an alderman hung in chains” gratified their delicate appetites; as in more recent times,

* Like the Dutchman, who being desired to rub his rheumatic

limb with brandy, improved upon the prescription. “I dosh

better as dat,” roared Mynheer, “I drinks de prandy, and den

I rubs mine leg wit de pottle!”

the happy but bygone days of Dusty Bob and Billy Waters. * The well- known mendicants of St. Paul's churchyard, Waithman's crossing, and Par- liament-Street have, by a sweeping act of the

* The Sons of Carew Made a mighty ado—

The news was a terrible damper;

The blind, in their fright,

Soon recovered their sight,

And the lame thought it prudent to scamper.

They summon'd the nobs of their nation,

St. Giles's was all consternation;

The street they call Dyott

Portended a riot,

Belligerents all botheration!

Mendicity Bill,

Who for prowess and skill

Was dubb'd the bold Ajax of Drury,

With a whistle and stride

Flung his fiddle aside,

And his sky-scraper cock'd in a fury!

“While a drop's to be had to get queer-a,

I'll ne'er go a-begging for beer-a:

Our ducks and green peas

Shall the constable seize—

Our sherry, our port, and Madeira?”

But Law the bold heroes did floor, O!

On dainty fine morsels no more,

O! They merrily sup:

Dusty Bob's doubled up—

Poor Bill's occupation is o'er, O!

legislature, been compelled to brush; their brooms are laid up in ordinary, to make rods for their backs, till the very stones they once swept are ready to rise and mutiny. Well might Epicurus say, 6 Poverty, when cheerful, ceases to be poverty.'”

“Suppose, gentlemen, as the day is closing in, we each of us take our wallet and staff, trudge forth, and levy contribution! I am in a valiant humour to cry 'stand!' to a too powerfully refreshed citizen of light weight and heavy purse.” And Mr. Bosky suited the action to the word.

“Sit down, soul of a grasshopper! The very ghost of his wife's tweezers would snuff out thy small courage. Thou hast slandered the beggars' craft, and, like greater rogues, shalt be condemned to live by thine own! Thou 'gibier de potence!' Thou a prigger! Why thou art only a simple prig, turned out by thy tailor! Steal if thou canst into our good graces; redeem thy turpitude by emulating at least one part of the beggars' calling, ballad-singing. Manifest thy deep contrition by a song.”

“A bargain, Uncle Timothy. If thou wilt rake from a sly corner of that old curiosity shop, thy brain, some pageant of the ancient brethren of Bull-Feathers-Hall. What place more fitting for such pleasant chronicle, than the Horns at Highgate?”

This proposal being assented to by the middle-aged gentleman, Mr. Bosky “rosined,” (swallowed a bumper) and sounded a musical flourish as a preludio.

“But gentlemen, you have not said what I shall sing.”

“Beggars, Mr. Bosky, must not be choosers!”

“Something heroic?

Wonderful General Wolfe,

Uncommon brave; partic'lar!

Swam over the Persian Gulf,

And climb'd rocks perpendic'lar!

Sentimental and tender?

'The mealy potato it grows

In your garden, Miss Maddison cries;

'So I cannot walk there, for I knows,

Like love—that potatoes have eyes!'”

“No buffoonery, if you please, Benjamin Bosky,” cried Uncle Tim.

“Or furiously funny—eh?”

My pipe at your peeper I'll light,

So pop out your jazey so curly;

A jorum of yeast over night,

Will make you next morning rise early!

Arrah I thro' your casement and blind

I'll jist sky a copper and toss one,,

If you do not, Miss Casey, look kind,

Wid your good-natured eye that's a cross one!”

“My good friends,” sighed the middle-aged gentleman, “this unhappy nephew of mine hath as many ballads in his budget as Sancho Panza had proverbs in his belly. And yet—but he seems determined to break my heart.”

Mr. Bosky appeared more bent upon cruelly cracking Uncle Timothy's sides.

“Now I bethink me of a ditty of true love, full of mirth and pastime.” And Mr. Bosky began in a droll falsetto, and with mock gravity,